The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Iii Part 143

I hope to be able to spend some time with you soon, when we shall talk over many things.

Unfortunately, a few weeks before receiving your proposal, I had given my novel to Unger,[67] and the first proof sheets have already come to hand. I have more than once thought, during these last days, that it would have been very suitable for your periodical. It is the only thing I have by me of any size, and is a kind of problematical work such as the good Germans like.

I will send the first Book as soon as I get all the proof sheets. It is so long since it was written that, in the actual sense of the word, I may be said to be only the editor.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

The highest aim he reached on soaring pinion Closely allied to all we value most Thus honor him! What life but scantily To Genius yields, in full shall give Posterity.

Goethe on Schiller.]

If, among my projects, there were anything that would serve the purpose you mention, we should, I think, easily agree as to the most appropriate form to put it in, and there should be no delay in my working it out. Farewell, and remember me to your circle.

SCHILLER _to_ GOETHE

Jena, August 31, 1794.

On my return from Weissenfels, where I met my friend Korner from Dresden, I received your last letter but one, the contents of which pleased me for two reasons; for I perceive from it that the view I took of your mind coincides with your own feelings, and that you were not displeased with the candor with which I allowed my heart to express itself. Our acquaintance, although it comes late, awakens in me many a delightful hope, and is to me another proof of how much better it often is to let chance have its way than to forestall it with too much officiousness. Great as my desire always was to become more closely acquainted with you than is possible between the spirit of a writer and his most attentive reader, I now clearly see that the very different paths upon which you and I have moved could not, with any advantage to ourselves, have brought us together sooner than at the present time. I now hope, however, that we may travel over the rest of our life's way together, and, moreover, do this with more than usual advantage to each other, inasmuch as the last travelers who join company on a long journey have always the most to say to each other.

Do not expect to find any great store of ideas in me; this is what I shall find in you. My need and endeavor are to make much out of little, and, when you once come to know my poverty in all so-called acquired knowledge, you will perhaps find that I have sometimes succeeded in doing this; for, the circle of my ideas being small, I can the more rapidly and the more frequently run through it; for that very reason I can use my small resources with more effect, and can, by means of form, produce that variety which is wanting in the subject-matter. You strive to simplify your great world of ideas; I seek variety for my small means. You have to govern a whole realm, I but a somewhat numerous family of ideas, which I would be heartily glad to be able to extend into a little world.

Your mind works intuitively to an extraordinary degree, and all your thinking powers appear, as it were, to have come to an agreement with your imagination to be their common representative. In reality, this is the most that a man can make of himself if only he succeeds in generalizing his perceptions and making his feelings his supreme law.

This is what you have endeavored to do, and what in a great measure you have already attained. My understanding works more in a symbolizing method, and thus I hover, as a hybrid, between ideas and intentions, between law and feeling, between a technical mind and genius. This it is that, particularly in my earlier years, gave me a rather awkward appearance both in the field of speculation and in that of poetry; for the poetic mind generally got the better of me when I ought to have philosophized, and my philosophical mind when I wished to poetize. Even now it frequently enough happens that imagination intrudes upon my abstractions, and cold reason upon my poetical productions. If I could obtain such mastery over these two powers as to a.s.sign to each its limits, I might yet look forward to a happy fate; but, alas! just when I have begun to know and to use my moral powers rightly, illness seizes me and threatens to undermine my physical powers. I can scarcely hope to have time to complete any great and general mental revolution in myself; but I will do what I can, and when, at last, the building falls, I shall, perhaps, after all, have s.n.a.t.c.hed from the ruins what was most worthy of being preserved.

You expressed a wish that I should speak of myself, and I have made use of the permission. I make these confessions to you in confidence, and venture to hope that you will receive them in a kindly spirit.

I shall today refrain from entering into details about your essay, which will at once lead our conversations on this subject upon the most fertile track. My own researches--entered upon by a different path--have led me to a result rather similar to that at which you have arrived, and in the accompanying papers you will perhaps find ideas which coincide with your own. I wrote them about a year and a half ago, for which reason, as well as on account of the occasion for which they were penned (they were intended for an indulgent friend), there is some excuse for their crudeness of form. These ideas have, indeed, since then, received in me a better foundation and greater precision, and this may possibly bring them much nearer to yours.

I cannot sufficiently regret that _Wilhelm Meister_ is lost to our periodical. However, I hope that your fertile mind and friendly interest in our undertaking will give us some compensation for this loss, whereby the admirers of your genius will be double gainers. In the number of the _Thalia_ which I herewith send you, you will find some ideas of Korner's on Declamation, which, I think, will please you.

SCHILLER _to_ GOETHE

Jena, January 7, 1795.

Accept my best thanks for the copy of the novel you have sent me. The feeling which penetrates and takes hold of me with increasing force the further I read on in this work, I cannot better express in words than by calling it a delicious, inward sense of comfort, a feeling of mental and bodily well-being, and I will vouch that this will be the effect produced upon all readers.

This sense of comfort I account for from the calm clearness, smoothness, and transparency which pervade the whole of your work, and which leave nothing to disturb or to dissatisfy the mind, and the mind is not more excited than is necessary to fan and maintain a joyous life. Of the individual parts I shall say nothing till I have seen the Third Book, which I am looking forward to with longing.

I cannot express to you what a painful feeling it often is to me to pa.s.s from a work of this kind into one of a philosophical character.

In the former all is so joyous, so alive, so harmoniously evolved, and so true to human life; in the latter all is so stern, so rigid, abstract, and so extremely unnatural; for all nature is synthesis, and philosophy but ant.i.thesis. I can, in fact, give proof of having been as true to nature in my speculations as is compatible with the idea of a.n.a.lysis; indeed, I have perhaps been more faithful to her than our Kantians would consider permissible or possible. But still I am no less fully conscious of the infinite difference between Life and Reasoning, and cannot, in such melancholy moments, help perceiving a want in my own nature which in happier hours I am forced to think of only as a natural duality of the thing itself. This much, however, is certain--the poet is the only true man, and the best philosopher is but a caricature in comparison with him.

I need scarcely a.s.sure you that I am in the utmost anxiety to know what you have to say to my philosophy of the Beautiful. As the Beautiful itself is derived from man as a whole, so my a.n.a.lysis of it is drawn from _my_ own whole being, and I cannot but be deeply interested in knowing how this accords with yours.

Your presence here will be a source of nourishment both to my mind and my heart. Especially great is my longing to enjoy some poetical works in common with you.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Schiller on Goethe]

You promised to let me hear some of your epigrams when an opportunity occurred. It would be a great and additional pleasure to me if this could be done during your approaching visit to Jena, as it is still very uncertain when I may be able to get to W.

Just as I am about to close comes the welcome continuation of your _Meister_. A thousand thanks for it!

GOETHE _to_ SCHILLER

Weimar, November 21, 1795.

Today I received twenty-one of Propertius' elegies from Knebel and shall look them over carefully and then let the translator know where I find anything to object to; for, as he has given himself so much trouble, nothing ought, perhaps, to be altered without his sanction.

I wish you could induce Cotta to pay for this ma.n.u.script at once; it could easily be calculated how many sheets it would print. I have, it is true, no actual occasion to ask this, but it would look much better, would encourage energetic cooperation, and also help in making the good name of the _h.o.r.en_ better known. A publisher has often enough to pay money in advance, so Cotta might surely once in a way pay upon the receipt of a ma.n.u.script. Knebel wants the Elegies to be divided into three contributions; I, too, think this the right proportion, and we should thus have the first three numbers of next year's _h.o.r.en_ nicely adorned. I will see to it that you get them in proper time.

Have you seen s...o...b..rg's abominable preface to his Platonic discourses? The disclosures he there makes are so insipid and intolerable that I feel very much inclined to step out and chastise him. It would be a very simple matter to hold up to view the senseless unreasonableness of this stupid set of people, if, in so doing, one had but a rational public on one's side; this would at the same time be a declaration of war against that superficiality which it has now become necessary to combat in every department of learning. The secret feuds of suppressing, misplacing, and misprinting, which it has carried on against us, have long deserved that this declaration should be held in honorable remembrance, and that continuously.

I find this doubly necessary and unavoidable in the case of my scientific works, which I am gradually getting into order. I intend to speak out my mind pretty frankly against reviewers, journalists, collectors of magazines, and writers of abridgments, and, in a prelude or prolog, openly to declare myself against the public; in this instance, especially, I do not intend to allow any one's opposition or reticence to pa.s.s.

What do you say, for instance, to Lichtenberg, with whom I have had some correspondence about the optical subjects we spoke of, and with whom, besides, I am on pretty good terms, not even mentioning my essays in his new edition of Erxleben's Compendium, especially as a new edition of a compendium is surely issued in order to introduce the latest discoveries, and these gentlemen are usually quick enough in noting down everything in their interleaved books! How many different ways there are of dispatching a work like this, even though it were but done in a pa.s.sing manner I However, at the present moment, my cunning brains cannot think of any one of these ways.

I am, at present, very far from being in anything like an esthetic or sentimental mood, so what is to become of my poor novel? Meanwhile, I am making use of my time as best I can, and my comfort is that, at so low an ebb, one may hope that the flood is about to return.

Your dear letter reached me safely, and I thank you for your sympathy, which I felt sure you would give me. In such cases one hardly knows what is best to do--to let grief take its natural course or to fortify oneself with the a.s.sistance which culture gives us. If one determines to follow the latter course--as I always do--one feels better merely for the moment, and. I have noticed that Nature always rea.s.serts her rights in other ways.

The Sixth Book of my novel has made a good impression here also; to be sure, the poor reader never knows what he is about with works of this kind, for he does not consider that he would probably never take them up had not the author contrived to get the better of his thinking powers, his feelings, and his curiosity.

Your testimony in favor of my tale I prize very highly, and I shall henceforth work with more confidence at this species of composition.

The last volume of my novel cannot in any case appear before Michaelmas; it would be well if we could arrange the plans we lately discussed in reference to this.

My new story can, I think, hardly be ready by December, and, moreover, I can scarcely venture to pa.s.s on to it till I have, in some way or other, written something in explanation of the first. If, by December, I could write something of this kind neatly, I should be very glad of thus being able to give you a contribution for next year's opening number. Farewell. May we long enjoy having around us those who are nearest and dearest to us. Toward New Year's I hope again to spend some time with you.

SCHILLER to GOETHE

Jena, July 2, 1796.

I have now run through all the eight Books of your novel, very hurriedly, it is true, but the subject-matter alone is so large that I could scarcely get through it in two days' reading. Properly speaking, therefore, I ought not to say anything about it even today, for the surprising and unparalleled variety which is therein _concealed_--in the strictest sense of the word--is overpowering. I confess that what I have as yet grasped correctly is but the _continuity_, not the _unity_, although I do not for a moment doubt that I shall become perfectly clear on this point also, if, as I think, in works of this kind, the continuity is more than half the unity.

As, under the circ.u.mstances, you cannot exactly expect to receive from me anything thoroughly satisfactory and yet wish to hear something, you must be content with a few remarks; these, however, are not altogether without value, inasmuch as they will tell of direct impressions. To make up for this, I promise you that our discussions about your novel shall continue throughout the month. To give an adequate and truly esthetic estimate of a whole work, as a work of art, is a serious undertaking. I shall devote the whole of the next four months to it, and that with pleasure. Besides this, it is one of the greatest blessings of my existence that I have lived to see this work of yours completed, that it has been written while my faculties are still in a state of growth, and that I may draw inspiration from this pure source; further, the beautiful relation that exists between us makes it seem to me a kind of religious duty to call your cause my own, and to develop all that is real in my nature so fully that my mind may become the clearest mirror of what exists beneath this covering, and that I may deserve the name of being your friend in the higher sense of the word. How vividly have I felt, at this time, that excellence is a power, that it can influence selfish natures only as a power, and that, as contrasted with excellence, there is no freedom but love!

I cannot say how much I have been moved by the truth, the beautiful vitality, and the simple fulness of your work. My agitation, it is true, is greater than it will be when I have completely mastered your subject, and that will be an important crisis in my intellectual life; but yet this agitation is the effect of the Beautiful and only of the Beautiful, and is merely the result of my reason not having yet been able to master my feelings. I now quite understand what you meant by saying that it was the Beautiful, the True, that could often move you to tears. Calm and deep, clear and yet incomprehensible, like nature, your work makes its influence felt; it stands there, and even the smallest secondary incident shows the beautiful equanimity from which all has emanated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCHILLER RECITING FROM HIS WORKS TO HIS WEIMAR FRIENDS]

But I cannot, as yet, find words to describe these impressions, and, moreover, I must today confine myself to the Eighth Book. How well you have succeeded in bringing the large and widely extended circle, the different att.i.tudes and scenes of the events, so closely together again! Your work may be compared to a beautiful planetary system; everything belongs together, and it is only the Italian figures which, like comets and as weirdly as they, connect the system with one that is more remote and larger. Further, these figures, as also Marianna and Aurelia, run wholly out of this system again, and, after having merely served to produce a poetical movement in it, separate themselves from it as foreign individuals. How beautifully conceived it is to derive what is practically monstrous and terribly pathetic in the fate of Mignon and the Harpist from what is theoretically monstrous, from the abortions of the understanding, so that nothing is thereby laid to the charge of pure and healthy nature! Senseless superst.i.tion alone gives birth to such monstrous fates as pursue Mignon and the Harpist. Even Aurelia's ruin is but the result of her own unnaturalness, her masculine nature. Toward Marianna alone could I accuse you of poetic selfishness. I could almost say she has been made a sacrifice to the novel, as the nature of the case would not permit of her being saved. Her fate, therefore, will ever draw forth bitter tears, while in the case of the three others the reader will gladly turn from what is individual to the idea of the whole.