Tieck must have been liberally baptized with Spree-water, for the instantaneous, corrosive Berlin wit was a large part of his endowment.  His cool irony associated him more closely to the Schlegels than to Novalis, with his life-and-death consecrations.  His absurd play-within-a-play, Puss in Boots (1797), is delicious in its bizarre ragout of satirical extravaganzas, where the naive and the ironic lie side by side, and where the pompous seriousness of certain complacent standards is neatly excoriated.

Such publications as the two mentioned were hailed with rejoicing by the Schlegels, who at once adopted Tieck as a natural ally.  Even more after their own hearts was the long novel, Franz Sternbald’s Wanderings (1798), a vibrant confession, somewhat influenced by Wilhelm Meister, of the Religion of Art (or the Art of Religion):  “Devout worship is the highest and purest joy in Art, a joy of which our natures are capable only in their purest and most exalted hours.”

[Illustration:  #A WANDERER LOOKS INTO A LANDSCAPE# MORITZ VON SCHWIND]

Sternbald, a pupil of Albrecht Duerer, makes a roving journey to the Low Countries, the Rhine, and Italy, in order to deepen his artistic nature.  The psychology of the novel is by no means always true to the spirit of the sixteenth century; in fact a good part of the story reflects aristocratic French chateau-life in the eighteenth century.  The intensities of romantic friendship give a sustained thrill, and the style is rhythmic, though the action is continually interrupted by episodes, lyrics, and discourses.  In the unworldliness, the delicacy of sensibility, and the somewhat vague outlines of the story one may be reminded, at times, of The Marble Faun.  Its defense of German Art, as compared with that of the Italian Renaissance, is its chief message.

This novel has been dwelt upon because of its direct influence upon German painting and religion.  A new verb, “sternbaldisieren,” was coined to parody a new movement in German art toward the medieval, religious spirit.  It is this book which Heine had in mind when he ridiculed Tieck’s “silly plunge into medieval naivete.”  Overbeck and Cornelius in Rome, with their pre-Raphaelite, old-German and catholicizing tendencies, became the leaders of a productive school.  Goethe scourged it for its “mystic-religious” aspirations, and demanded a more vigorous, cheerful and progressive outlook for German painting.

Having already formed a personal acquaintance with Friedrich Schlegel in Berlin, Tieck moved to Jena in 1799, came into very close relations with Fichte, the Schlegels, and Novalis, and continued to produce works in the spirit of the group, notably the tragedy Life and Death of Saint Genoveva (1800).  His most splendid literary feat at this period, however, was the translation of Don Quixote (1799-1801), a triumph over just those subtle difficulties which are well-nigh insurmountable, a rendering which went far beyond any mere literalness of text, and reproduced the very tone and aura of its original.