Der Schuss von der Kanzel is at once the least pretentious of Meyer's Novellen and the one which best captures the contemporary tone of bourgeois realism. Yet in reading it we have the feeling of moving in an uncanny private world of the author amid submerged fears and portents; it is the type of story which, despite its overt claim to prosaicness and innocuousness, seems to demand some degree of psychological subtlety in its interpretation. Indeed, Meyer, while hardly a spontaneous writer, seems unable to edit out a strong component of the unconscious in his works. His statements of artistic purpose are notorious for their lack of insight into his true strengths and weaknesses. Sigmund Freud was struck by the accurate portrayal of the mechanics of repression, with respect to an incest theme, in Meyer's Richterin and there is some reason to think that this encounter was instrumental in the birth of psychoanalysis. It is safe to assume that Meyer's outstanding psychological insight in this case was more the result of personal affinities than of his observation of other persons. Meyer writes, in general, as Freud's patients spoke: in urbanely acceptable transformations of unacceptable horrors. The suggestion that Meyer, even in his best years, displayed "neurotic" symptoms may offend some of his admirers; it should not, since his claim to be wresting significance from chaos and nothingness is thereby strengthened. It is time again to cast doubt on the comfortable fiction of the healthy author writing for healthy readers, a fiction which makes little allowance for spiritual depth. If literary study needs protecting, it is not from intimations of morbidity, but from preconceived ideas of health.

There are, of course, powerful arguments against psychological approaches to literature. They are said to shift attention from the work to the author-as-person. If they admit to psychoanalytic influence, they are thought to be wholly bent upon uncovering unconscious motivations, which, aside from being difficult to prove, are also difficult to distinguish from conscious ones. While these objections actually seem most applicable to the cruder attempts of Freud's disciples in the 1920's and 30's, they must be taken into account. Perhaps it would be helpful to take the standpoint that, although it would indeed be futile to seek out unconscious motivations exclusively, it is likewise foolish to think that one will be so fortunate as to be able to deal entirely with conscious motivations in connection with a phenomenon as complex as a work of art. Then, too, certain questions arise: Can the work really be cleanly severed from the author? Is the elusiveness of unconscious elements really sufficient excuse for ignoring them? Does not strict Werkimmanenz eliminate consideration not only of the author's unconscious tendencies, but of his conscious intent also? If our answer to the last question is affirmative, then we might have all the more grounds to be skeptical of Meyer's direct or implied claim to be presenting a constructive, optimistically tinged world picture, and our estimation of his humor must be determined more by the quality of our laughter than by any protestation of light-heartedness on his part. Werkimmanenz, while it provides a valuable technique, must be practiced consistently or not at all; it cannot be used to justify a Gottschedian rationalism in the face of the creative act.

The following consideration of Der Schuss von der Kanzel does not conform to the prevalent notion that interpretations must be total revaluations, exhaustive and artfully wrought. It is intended rather as an admittedly partial treatment supplementing the existing body of critical opinion. It will proceed on the assumption that the author's statement or implication of intent should neither be accepted unquestioningly nor totally ignored. It is assumed, further, that authors' minds, like those of other persons, operate according to certain ultimately or generally determinable patterns, on levels other than the strictly conscious. Finally, while we cannot hope, in the absence of more concrete information, to uncover all, or even most, of Meyer's basic irrational motive factors, it is our contention that any partial revelation of them can only be regarded as a gain. We shall assume, in other words, that the body of psychoanalytical literature has not failed to reveal some patterns in the operation of the mind at different levels; that most thought does, indeed, tend to move on different levels; that literature, as a product of mind, is not devoid of these patterns; that its aesthetic merit is by no means endangered thereby; and that, on the whole, one stands to gain more by being aware of the existence of such patterns than by repudiating them.

When we turn to Meyer's actual statements about Der Schuss von der Kanzel in his correspondence, we find, as it happens, a curious strain of dissatisfaction and uneasiness. He repeatedly refers to it as a potboiler and bagatelle, a work undertaken against his better judgment and outside his real sphere of competence; he is even annoyed afterward at the praise it has received. The vehemence of the statements suggests that he is protesting too much, and a closer examination of them shows that his feelings about the work are highly ambivalent. Far from going about his task offhandedly, he is quite absorbed in it, while at the same time somewhat awed at the "craziness" of his prankish fantasy which comes to light:

Ich bin gegenwärtig versehollen bis ich meine Novelle beendigt habe, worin ich mich völlig vergaâ mit der ich aber, bei anhaltender guter Stimmung, in dieser Woche zu Ende zu kommen hoffe. Es ist tolles Zeug, das mir eigentlich nicht zu Gesichte steht.

To be sure, he attempts to give the impression that the "craziness" was injected intentionally for reasons of practical craftsmanship; he reports having told the potential publisher: "ich hätte von Zürchersachen nur diess geringe Sujet und ich müsste es toll behandeln, sonst werde es gemein." Similarly: "Ich hoffe, der ernste Hintergrund wird dem tollen Zeuge wohlthun. Es war gar nicht leicht und brauchte eine feste Hand, die Novelle so zu halten, dass sich kein Vernünftiger daran stossen kann."

The stimulus for these defensive remarks seems to have been a series of complaints by literal-minded, pious, and patriotic readers regarding the treatment of Swiss historical figures, especially General Werdmüller. Such unpleasantnesses even make Meyer wish he had not written the "Teufelsnovelle," and they cause him to request of his editor "eine Andeutung über den Humor, wie er auf alle Gesichter dasselbe groteske Licht fallen lässt," in connection with a projected foreword. In another, almost identical, passage he speaks of "barokke Beleuchtung" his overt purpose is to assert that he is singling out no one personage or faction for exaggerated treatment or caricature, but we can discern also the realization that he is creating a special kind of world, one governed by a strained and fanciful humor.

Meyer's own remarks thus detract somewhat from the idea of an innocuous literary joke, and they make us wonder whether the rather forcible application of humor has helped render palatable other injudicious things besides those mentioned as being inherent in the historical subject matter. It is clear that Meyer is made uneasy by his own attempts at fanciful humor, which began as a cloak for unsavory matters and then somehow became unsavory themselves. Perhaps his discomfort stems from the fact that his own inner tensions, being afforded no opportunity for sublimation in this "lowly" genre, threaten to expose themselves. This would explain the oftencited remark to Wille:

Sie schlagen den "Schuss" entschieden zu hoch an, ohne die Nötigung des gegebenen Wortes wäre die Posse ungeschrieben geblieben. Mir individuell hinterlässt das Komische immer einen bittern Gesehmack, wahrend das Tragische mich erhebt und beseligt.

A parallel may be seen in the case of Theodor Storm, who, in his Novelle Der Herr Etalsrat, likewise decides upon a tone of boisterous, drastic, fanciful humor, which he also refers to as "grotesk," explicitly in order to deal with an aesthetically (or otherwise) questionable theme, and he likewise ends by making the work a vehicle for his own anxieties.

Der Schuss von der Kanzel, in its serenely humorous and idyllic aspect, has been taken as an expression of Meyer's new-found domestic happiness. No doubt there is an ironic self-portrait, or perhaps a caricature of a discarded former self, to be glimpsed in the inept suitor Pfannenstiel. Furthermore, the setting of the story, the peninsula "die Au" (the site of Wertmüller's estate), was also the site of Meyer's proposal of marriage. It is very likely, however, that Meyer's marital bliss was far from undisturbed, in view of the interruption of his long-standing attachment to his sister and the obvious disquiet he reveals everywhere in regard to erotic matters. In a poem on his betrothal, left unpublished during his lifetime (perhaps wisely so), we are struck by the air of gloom and moribundity that threatens to assume dominance over the assertion of fulfilled life:

Kennst du, Kind, im Sterngefunkel
Noch das Eichendunkel?
Noch das Eiland unbelauscht,
Dran die Welle rauscht?

Dort im Abendlicht vor wenig Wochen
Ward ein Wort gesprochen—
Zwei Verarmte macht' es ewig reich—
Doch du wurdest bleich.

Dort im Abendlicht vor wenig Wochen
Ward ein Bann gebrochen,
Dass der Quell des Lebens überquoll,
O wie voll, wie voll!

The story, revolving as it does about the paradoxical situation of the pistol shot in a sanctified place, has the skeletal sparseness of a Boccaccio tale, but with noticeable idiosyncrasies. The vicar Pfannenstiel, a scholarly young man lacking in self-assurance, calls upon General Wertmüller, a notorious rugged individualist bordering, it seems, on schizoid eccentricity, who, though at heart good-natured, cannot resist a prank. In the eyes of his pious neighbors, the General is probably damned, if not actually in league with the Devil. Pfannenstiel has been warned to expect merciless harassment from him. The General, feeling that it is time to put his house in order, has mellowed somewhat and would not be averse to performing an act of benevolence, providing it could be combined with some lusty piece of mischief. He dismisses, understandably, the unassuming Pfannenstiel's petition for the chaplainship of a remote military unit. However, he sees also that some powerful motive must underlie such a peculiar request, and he correctly surmises that an attachment to his goddaughter Rahel is behind it all, and that a bit of skulduggery on his part might put things right by facilitating the desired marriage. Rahel's father, a pastor and cousin of the General, has a nearly disgraceful weakness for firearms. Through crafty maneuvering, the General first presents him with an exceptionally hard-firing antique pistol and then surreptitiously substitutes its hair-triggered companion piece. As expected, the clergyman cannot refrain from trying the mechanism, and a loud report ensues just as he is exhorting the congregation to praise God with loud acclaim. The scandal is so great that he must relinquish his holy office—and his daughter—to Pfannenstiel. The baffled congregation is sworn to silence in return for being bequeathed a long-coveted piece of land. Soon afterward, we are told the General has died of a sudden and mysterious illness in the midst of his new campaign; the stage is returned, so to speak, to the grand events of history.

The pistol shot is the focus of the story. It is awaited by the reader with almost unpleasant suspense and serves as a wondrous immediate resolution of most of the story's problems, a purge of various anxieties. The humor is clouded; there is a strange air of the infantile about the whole affair. Nevertheless, the pastor's passion for firearms is more acceptably rechanneled; the General is able to dispose of his worldly goods in a constructive way while bolstering his pretensions to omnipotence by means of a consummate prank; and while Pfannenstiel is not directly involved, the symbolic reflection of the psychic development taking place within him is unmistakable.

Pfannenstiel's problem, in the General's estimation, is a lack of elemental masculinity ("männliche Elementarkraft") that prevents him from winning the girl he loves in the face of rather insignificant obstacles. She eventually makes it clear that she accepts, or perhaps prefers, him the way he is, but meanwhile Pfannenstiel has himself become aware of a certain deficiency in this area, which he vaguely associates with ineptness in the use of firearms. The General, in one of his more malicious outbursts of teasing, has tried to persuade Pfannenstiel to rush to his sweetheart and entreat her to flee with him, and to threaten suicide if she refuses. Pfannenstiel does not take this suggestion seriously, but he does have a dream in which he carries this proof of manliness to its fatal conclusion. Though one must be on guard against the tendency of Freud's early adherents to assume a fixed language of sexual symbols, it is evident that the firing of a gun is here closely associated with Pfannenstiel's emergent virility, while yet standing for the punishment that awaits the emergence.

From a psychoanalytical point of view, to be sure, it would be difficult to say without further evidence whether the gunfire in church—the libidinous discharge in a sanctified place—is indicative here of a wholesome incipient genitality or perhaps of recalcitrant, regressive anal tendencies. Nevertheless, it seems not incompatible with our understanding of the story to surmise that one or the other pattern, or perhaps both, may exist as an overtone to the more obvious train of motivated events. The role of General Wertmüller cannot be regarded as entirely benevolent to Pfannenstiel's psychic growth. His insistence, however playful, upon self-destruction as the only alternative to successful wooing is only too suggestive of Meyer's frequent pairing of erotic love and death in general; it is consistent, however, also with the role of a fatherly guardian of familial purity, the senior partner of an Oedipal relationship. On the morning after his dream, Pfannenstiel leaps a fence and visits his beloved in a wild-eyed, disheveled state; but soon we leave the couple in a scene of domestic bliss, or perhaps tedium, with her sewing onto his coat the buttons that the General, in his importunate "button-holing," had detached. Pfannenstiel, indeed, feels that he has attained a lattice-enclosed paradise on earth: "Nun kam es über ihn wie Paradieses-glück. Licht und Grün, die niedrige Laube, das bescheidene Pfarrhaus, die Erlösung von den Dämonen des Zweifels und der Unruhe!"

There is thus a real and symbolic resolution of conflicts, but one which somehow remains less than satisfactory. The shot in church calls forth no relief on the part of the outraged congregation. Their enforced secrecy is ironically described as the reverse of the acclaim which Wilhelm Tell's feat enjoyed, a remark which favors the seeking of Oedipal implications (since the Tell-shot represents a unique and fabled reversal of the Oedipal situation). The General seems to have used the near-sacrilegious gunfire to maintain his sovereignty as the dangerous, arms-bearing symbolic father, the discourager of virility in others. He has engineered the disgrace of a fumbling quasi-father (the pastor), who then retires into the woman's world of domesticity with his equally inept successor. Pfannenstiel, when first questioned as to his identity by the General, can only mutter: "Ich bin der Vetter . . . des Vetters . . . vom Vetter," thus stamping himself as a denizen of the world of uncles and cousins, not that of fathers and sons. His very name (notwithstanding the fact that it is the name of a nearby mountain) suggests a ludicrous appendage, not to mention the repeated motif of torn-off buttons (Pfannenstiel's colleague has come from an interview with the General "mit abgerissenen Knöpfen und gerädert").

Meyer, perhaps unwittingly, has embarked upon a bawdy Aristophanean comedy based on the disgrace of the inept male, i.e., symbolic castration. Being basically ill at ease with bawdiness, he is unable to maintain the corresponding tone for long, especially when it comes to the restoration of a main character to respectable status. This is possible only by a general renunciation of heroism in terms of the lowered horizons of Biedermeier resignation and self-irony. The comedy of the eunuch is replaced by the exploits of the little man, content in the end to return to his slot in the contemporary social structure. The moderate success of Pfannenstiel then serves to transform the laughter of contempt into the benign chuckle of sympathy reserved for one's inferiors; the procedure in Keller's Kleider machen Leute is similar, in that the tailor is rehabilitated only after renunciations of his high aspirations, that is, his aspirations to be like us.

Certain details of the story, which stand out strangely from the realistic narrative, render these symbolic considerations more plausible. As Pfannenstiel approaches the General's isolated domain we note an air of enigma and magic, not without sinister overtones. His companion, a neighboring pastor, warns him of the General's blasphemous nature and fiery diabolical pastimes. Pfannenstiel defends his undertaking in terms that suggest a determination to communicate with the unconscious: "Ich will es ein bisschen mit der Torheit versuchen, die Weisheit hat mir bis jetzt nur herbe Früchte gezeitigt." There is the hint of an underworld voyage in the boat trip across to the uncanny realm: "Schon warf das schweig-same Eichendunkel seine schwarzen Abendschatten weit auf die schauernden Gewässer hinaus." (After his arrival, Pfannenstiel's initial feeling of being in a bad dream gives way to that of an apprehensive but intrepid bather about to plunge into the water.)

The ferryman can be persuaded to go on only with difficulty in the face of the harassments of the General's Moorish servant, a good-natured primitive who revels in shouting imprecations ("Swineund!"), as it seems, ubiquitously across the water through a megaphone, to the indignation of God-fearing citizens. Conceived along similar lines—namely, as a signal that a more primal realm is being entered—is the figure of a Turkish girl seen at a window of the General's estate. Implausibly enough, this painted semblance of an exotic temptress is taken to be a flesh-and-blood person by passing boatmen. The apparition haunts Pfannenstiel's dreams—those same dreams in which the pistol shot reaches fateful proportions. The idea that some profound feminine archetype is working its way toward Pfannenstiel's consciousness is heightened by the transformation of the Turkish girl into his beloved Rahel. Even before he falls asleep, he is fascinated by the hushing gesture of the painted girl, which he takes to signify: "Come, but be silent," perhaps an invitation to explore the recesses of his own mind, or to do so without arousing the paternal guardian. The author tells us, in fact, that something heretofore unrecognized rose to the surface of Pfannenstiel's mind at this time, something to which he dared not yet give a name: a burning desire and the blissful possibilities of fulfillment: "Es tauchte etwas ihm bis heute völlig unbekannt Gebliebenes in seiner Seele auf, etwas, dem er keinen Namen geben durfte,—eine brennende Sehnsucht, die glückselige Möglichkeit ihrer Erfüllung." Negative feelings, however, are not easily removed from this arousal of slumbering eroticism, and we read further of a thrice-repeated cycle of desire, wickedness, and repentance.

Despite the rather inconclusive results as far as the hero is concerned, we can observe here a remarkable, probably instinctive, pre-Freudian understanding of the fact that erotic desire may be attached to different types of objects and may go through progressive changes in the development of an individual, and that such changes may be heralded in such partially disguised forms as dreams.

Not only Eros but also Thanatos sends representatives into the General's eerie realm. He himself is a man consecrated to death, and like the numerous characters of this type in other works of Meyer he takes on some features of the Grim Reaper himself. It is not difficult to glimpse in him also the archetype of the trickster, in Jung's words "a minatory and ridiculous figure" who "stands at the very beginning of the way of individuation, posing the deceptively easy riddle of the Sphinx." This is, for Jung, a variant of the Shadow, the elemental inferior aspect lying just below the surface of any personality—a regressive figure, but one sometimes presaging greater awareness of the contents of the personal unconscious. General Wertmüller seems to play such a role, especially when taken together with his barely civilized servant. He acts as a mischievous protector of Pfannenstiel, but also as a guardian of Orphic mysteries. His surface benevolence is constantly threatened by cruptions of diabolical trickery. His face is likened to a grotesque mask, he is compared to an Egyptian god, his goddaughter refers to him as a kobold or troll, and when he conceives of his plan his laughter is echoed "in so geisterhafter und grotesker Weise, dass es war, als hielten sich alle Faune und Panisken der Au die Bäuchlein über einen tollen und gottvergessenen Einfall."

Also, it cannot be reckoned merely as the scurrilous whim of a man used to facing death that the General keeps a uniformed skeleton standing watch before his bedchamber. Through Pfannenstiel's eyes, we apprehend in the face of this figure that the fight for psychic identity and independence calls for an encounter with the specter of death, a recognition of one's mortality that, if successful, will dispel the preoccupation with mortality. The threat-and-promise of libidinal release that gives the story its peculiar tone is undoubtedly bound to this incipient awareness, most probably as the result of a lingering unconscious conviction on the author's part that eroticism is punishable by death. It is doubtful that Meyer himself succeeded in taking the step toward a more mature recognition of mortality; but then it is also a matter of some conjecture whether any poet can afford to do so without sacrificing his art.

On the whole, we may say that Meyer almost unwittingly avails himself of the framework of an unprepossessing humorous interlude in his production to present, symbolically, certain psychological insights that could have been formulated otherwise, on the basis of existing knowledge, only with great difficulty. Apparent sexual conflicts appear, veiled but near the surface. They press for an eruption into consciousness and threaten fusion with the specific, overt, but somewhat de-eroticized theme of male inadequacy (a theme that appears trite only to the post-Freudian reader). Meyer thus approaches, by virtue of his peculiar symbolic method, a directness in dealing with sexual matters seldom equaled among his contemporaries. Even the radicals of midcentury, such as Gutzkow, are painfully self-conscious in erotic matters. In the conservative camp of Biedermeier-Poetic Realism, as in English Victorianism, the question is neatly avoided by two mechanisms: assimilation and demonization. Sex is assimilated into the confines of orderly and polite society in its approved (marriage-oriented) form by means of the fiction that it is not problematic and that, out of gentility, one chooses not to discuss it (whereas in fact one dare not); and to the extent that it cannot be assimilated, it joins antisocial and disruptive elements to become the familiar bugbear of lasciviousness. Keller, for example, arrives at a statement of healthy eroticism in Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe, but one feels that the relaxing of constraints there is made acceptable only by the impending death of the characters. In Frau Regel Amrain und ihr Jüngster, on the other hand, a theme patently impinging on the erotic sphere, a mother's education of her son toward his masculine role in society, is treated with more typical indirectness, masculinity being regarded clearly as a socio-economic matter rather than a biological one. Still, in fairness to Keller, it must be said that he generally contrives, through an adroit use of symbol and suggestion, to convey an affirmation of eroticism slightly in excess of the prevailing quota.

Meyer's link with such authors as Keller, Stifter, and Storm, however, is tenuous at best, and in view of his predilection for unfettered heroes who live in the grand style, we should not expect to find the customary bourgeois restraints in his work. Yet in the case of his most erotically obsessed major character, the monk Astorre, there is a suggestion of bourgeois demonization in his mind-clouding, tainted passion, especially since it is unclear to what extent the short-lived heroic hedonism of the protagonist is to be commended. In general, there is a pronounced erotic strain in Meyer's works, but the forms assumed by it make a curiously stunted impression. The reasons for this pattern are probably to be sought more within Meyer's psyche than in external factors such as the literary demands of particular works (though an aesthetically fortunate union of the two is not ruled out). Thus, aside from the literary merits, under certain circumstances, of comparisons between love and death, it is ominous in terms of Meyer's psychic well-being that he makes them so often. The incest theme in Die Richterin has been the object of speculation as something perhaps not unrelated to personal problems of the author. Meyer's attachment to his sister, in any case, was a strong one, and his paranoid denunciation of her in his final mental illness points up the profundity of the problem.

Der Schuss von der Kanzel can scarcely be regarded as an innocuous document of marital bliss on the part of a man with an easy grasp upon maturity. It is one of the records left by a man straining toward normal libidinal development, and we may expect the product, whatever its merits, to show traces of the struggle. It is in the area of character development that we may expect such matters to be most directly dealt with, for character development is, after all, a question of the channeling of psychic energies. It is noteworthy that Meyer's later works, for better or worse, lack the urge observed here toward moderation and psychic integration within the "healthy" region. They pursue instead the fates of bizarre and heroic characters somewhat outside the pale of ordinary society and dominated by extreme active or passive principles—unfettered heroes and abject martyrs, with a curious air of morbidity and impotence about even the more energetic ones. Perhaps Meyer became unable to conceive a life of grandiosity without the taint of monstrosity, an understandable development in view of the standards of his day and a tendency which others were to carry still further near the turn of the century.

When he does conceive of harmonious social integration, as we have seen, it is in terms of recognizing one's limitations and being content with one's station in life—that is, agreeing that one's true being does not go beyond the role assigned by society. Meyer here seems to underwrite the General's admonition to Pfannenstiel: "Wozu sind die Geleise bügerlicher Berufsarten da, als dass Euresgleichen sie befahre? Ihr wisst nicht, welcher Schenkelschluss dazu gehört, um das Leben souverän zu traktieren." On the other hand, he is affirming the right of the exceptionally vital and strong individual to defy the social leveling process. Meyer's essential difference from the Poetic Realists may lie in his Faustian suspicion that the psychic development of the individual is inseparable from questions of libido and that it follows inner laws rather than being necessarily compatible with the prevailing social system.

The resulting conflict receives a turbulent, inconclusive direct expression in Die Hochzeit des Mönchs, historically displaced, to be sure, and with the complication of personality deterioration on the part of the protagonist simultaneous with his self-realization. In Der Schuss von der Kanzel the conflict is more dimly rendered, and the fiction of harmonious resolution is allowed to prevail, in keeping with Meyer's tendency to see the domain of humor as a stagnant pool apart from the mainstream of life and history. In Jürg Jenatsch Meyer had attempted to portray the exceptional person who changes history (though his treatment turns out to be somewhat unproblematic); and it is only fitting that in Der Schuss von der Kanzel, this later, more static examination of a single segment of Swiss history, the dynamic figure of Jenatsch has become legendary and diabolical for the likes of Pfannenstiel. Wertmüller's role is that of a lesser demon who renders the apocalyptic specter of change into something assimilable for the average person. Meyer's condescension toward that average person may well constitute self-irony; he, too, is a Pfannenstiel, for whom the threat of inner revolution is fearsome enough.

Thus, the willingness to acknowledge psychological symbolism of the kind elucidated by psychoanalysis, while it has not really cast much light on Meyer's personal mental problems (that was not our aim), has at least raised some questions about the work itself, questions not without pertinence to its style and structure. It is of course possible to interpret a work without considering the author's intent or motivation. Often, however, attempts in this direction merely seize upon the author's overt statement at the expense of the numerous covert and half-unwitting ways in which he may be signalling the reader. It has often been claimed that psychological approaches are one-dimensional, that they stunt our understanding of the work by stressing only one aspect of it. The possibility seems to exist, however, that, if followed cautiously, such approaches may instead add a dimension to our insight.