The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller Part 11

x.x.xII; reprinted by Braun, "Schiller und Goethe im Urteile ihrer Zeitgenossen", I, 152 ff.]

[Footnote 68: The fragments published in the _Thalia_ contained 4140 lines; the _editio princeps_ of 1787, 6283; the edition of 1801, this being the form in which the play is usually read, 5370.]

[Footnote 69: Letter to Reinwald April 14, 1783.]

[Footnote 70: Kuno Fischer, "Schiller-Schriften," I, 217, observes: "Freilich bedarf die Schauspielkunst um diese Scene [the great scene between Posa and Philip] so magisch wirken zu la.s.sen, wie das Genie des Dichters sie erzeugt und gestaltet hat, eines Posa, dem die Natur die seltensten Gaben verliehen. Jede seiner Bewegungen, jede Geberde, jeder Ton, ist Anmut und Wohlklang. Er uberzeugt den Konig nicht durch den Inhalt seiner Rede, er ruhrt ihn nicht durch seine Ideen, und doch gewinnt er ihn vollig, weil er ihn personlich bezaubert." The natural effect of Schiller's words, however, is to give an impression that the king is moved not solely by Posa's personal charm, but in part by the idealism of his character.]

[Footnote 71: Perhaps the best possible account of his death is that of Kuno Fischer, "Schiller-Schriften", I, 215: "Er opfert sich fur ein weltgeschichtliches Ideal, das er idyllisch traumte."]

[Footnote 72: See above, page 169.]

CHAPTER X

Anch.o.r.ed in Thuringia

Ich musz ein Geschopf um mich haben, das mir gehort.

_Letter of 1788_.

The Weimar of Schiller's first acquaintance--arrived there July 21, 1787--consisted of a petty provincial court plus an unsightly village.

The inhabitants numbered about six thousand. Of the s.p.a.ce built over about one-third was occupied by the buildings of the court, much of the outlying modern Weimar being then under water. The streets were narrow, muddy lanes, the houses plain and poor. And yet the sluggish little place, so unprepossessing in all material ways, was already beginning to a.s.sert that claim to glory which has since been conceded to it by all the world. Princely patronage of art and letters was by no means unknown elsewhere in Germany, but it was usually a matter of gracious condescension on the one side and grateful adulation on the other. Very different in Weimar, where Goethe was not only a member of the Council, but the duke's most intimate friend and trusted adviser. In his heart Karl August cared less for aesthetic matters than is often supposed, but his mother, the Dowager d.u.c.h.ess Amalie, patronized art for the real love of it. Poetry and music were as the breath of life to her, and her taste in poetry had been trained by the greatest living master. Aside from Goethe, two other distinguished writers had found a home in Weimar. The kindly but changeable Wieland, not really one of the _dii majores_, but so regarded at the time, had lived there since 1772; Herder, much more n.o.bly endowed, but less amiable and less popular, since 1776.

At the time of Schiller's advent Goethe was still in Italy, whither he had gone the previous autumn to find relief from the miseries of duodecimo statesmanship. Karl August and the reigning d.u.c.h.ess Luise were also absent, but several minor notables of the court circle had remained 'in town', and the dowager d.u.c.h.ess was giving aesthetic teas as usual in her easily accessible 'castle' at Tiefurt. Wieland and Herder were likewise at home. On his arrival Schiller was taken charge of by the Baroness von Kalb, who was awaiting her soul's affinity with feverish eagerness. Her excitement at seeing him again amounted to a 'paroxysm'

which made her ill for a week. Then she grew better and her emotions gradually found the level of a friendliness too pa.s.sionate to be called Platonic, but not sinful in the lower sense. As for Schiller, he devotedly let himself be loved and introduced to Weimar society, the pair making no concealment of their liking for each other. At first he felt some compunctions on account of the absent husband, who might be annoyed by gossip. It pleased him to observe, therefore, that in Weimar such a friendship was taken as a matter of course and treated with delicacy.[73] 'Charlotte' he wrote to Korner, 'is a grand, exceptional, womanly soul, a real study for me and worthy to occupy a greater mind than mine. With each forward step in our intercourse I discover in her new manifestations that surprise and delight me like beautiful spots in a broad landscape.'

For several months he played this unwholesome role of cicisbeo to Charlotte von Kalb. Then another and very different Charlotte crossed his path and quickly taught him the better way.

The story of Schiller's gradual adjustment to the Weimar _milieu_ is told very fully in his frequent letters to Korner. He called upon Herder and Wieland, and was received with 'amazing politeness' by the one, with loquacious cordiality by the other. Herder knew nothing of his writings and regaled him with idolatrous talk about Goethe. Wieland knew all about him except that he had not yet seen 'Don Carlos'; criticised his early plays frankly as lacking in correctness and artistic finish, but expressed the utmost confidence in him nevertheless. He was received at Tiefurt, but did not like the dowager d.u.c.h.ess: her mind, he reported, was very narrow; nothing interested her but the sensuous. A few days later he heard that 'Don Carlos' had been read to a select a.s.sembly at Tiefurt and had not made a good impression; there had been caustic criticism of the piece, particularly the last two acts, and Wieland, who was present, had not stood up for it. This led to a coolness toward Wieland. By the end of three weeks Schiller had despaired of Weimar and was miserable. He thought of leaving the place in disgust.

In August he spent a week at Jena as the guest of Professor Reinhold, who was about to begin lecturing upon Kant and was predicting that after a century the Konigsberg philosopher would have a reputation like that of Jesus Christ. Reinhold's enthusiasm led Schiller to read some of Kant's shorter essays, among which a paper upon universal history gave him 'extraordinary satisfaction'. From Reinhold came also the a.s.surance that it would be easy to secure a Jena professorship. The idea did not at once take hold of him in the sense of becoming a definite purpose, but it tallied with his inclination. His experience with 'Don Carlos'

had left him in doubt whether the drama was after all his true vocation, and he had already begun to work fitfully upon a history of the Dutch Rebellion.

So he decided to remain a little longer in Weimar and devote himself to historical writing; and, this resolution formed, life at once began to open more pleasantly before him. He saw that he had made the mistake of taking the Weimar magnates too seriously; of imagining that they were all sitting in judgment upon him, and that it was of the greatest importance to win their favor. 'I begin to find life here quite tolerable,' he wrote early in September, 'and the secret of it--you will wonder that it did not occur to me before--is not to bother my head about anybody.' And indeed he had no reason to be disgruntled. Herder was pleased with 'Don Carlos' and came out in its favor before the aesthetic tribunal of Tiefurt. Wieland noticed it favorably in the _Merkur_, spoke flatteringly of it in conversation and declared himself now convinced that Schiller's forte was the drama. Henceforth the two men were fast friends and presently Schiller was toying with the thought of marrying Wieland's favorite daughter. 'I do not know the girl at all', he wrote, 'but I would ask for her to-day if I thought I deserved her.'[74] His scruple was that he was too much of a cosmopolitan to be permanently contented with 'these people'. A simple-minded, innocent girl of domestic proclivities would not be happy with him.

The autumn pa.s.sed in quiet work devoted mainly to his 'Defection of the Netherlands'. The Duke of Weimar came home for a few days towards the ist of October, but immediately went away again to Holland. Schiller did not even see him. Evidently there was nothing to be hoped for immediately in that quarter; he would have to rely upon himself. But he was now in demand. The _Merkur_ was eager for contributions from his pen, and so was the _Litteratur-Zeitung_, whose extensive review factory had been shown him during his sojourn in Jena. Then there was the comatose _Thalia_, which he determined to revive after New Year's.

In November he spent a few days at Meiningen, where his sister Christophine was now living as the wife of Reinwald. He saw Frau von Wolzogen and Lotte (who was about to be married), but Bauerbach had lost its charm. 'The old magic,' he wrote to Korner, 'had been blown away. I felt nothing. None of all the places that formerly made my solitude interesting had anything to say to me.' On his return fate was lurking for him at Rudolstadt, where his friend, Wilhelm von Wolzogen, introduced him to Frau von Lengefeld and her two daughters, 'Both creatures ', Schiller wrote, 'are attractive, without being beautiful and please me much. You find here considerable acquaintance with recent literature, also refinement, feeling and intelligence. They play the piano well, which gave me a delightful evening.' The elder daughter, Karoline, was married unhappily to a Herr von Beulwitz, from whom she afterwards separated to marry Wilhelm von Wolzogen. She was a woman of much literary talent, which found employment later in a novel, 'Agnes von Lilien', and in her excellent memoir of Schiller. The other daughter was unmarried and bore the auspicious name of Charlotte.

Lotte von Lengefeld, whose memory Is cherished with idealizing tenderness by the Germans, was now twenty-one years old,--a demure maiden whose eyes spake more than her tongue. She had long since won the heart of the Baroness von Stein, who had introduced her at the Weimar court and held out to her the hope of becoming a lady-in-waiting to the d.u.c.h.ess Luise. Goethe was fond of her and did not omit to send her affectionate greetings from distant Italy. Some time before, she had spent a year with her mother and sister in Switzerland for the purpose of improving her French; and on the way home, in the summer of 1784, the party had caught a glimpse of Schiller in Mannheim. Now the sisters were living in a sort of idyllic solitude at Rudolstadt, cut off from the great world, absorbed in their books, their music, and the memories of that happy year in Switzerland. Karoline von Wolzogen writes, in speaking of this occasion:

My sister was seemingly in every respect a desirable match for Schiller. She had a very winsome form and face. An expression of purest goodness of heart enlivened her features, and her eyes flashed only truth and innocence. Thoughtful and susceptible to the good and the beautiful in life and in art, her whole nature was a beautiful harmony. Of even temper, but faithful and tenacious in her affections, she seemed created to enjoy the purest happiness.

Making all needful allowance for the partiality of a sister, one cannot wonder that the visitor went on his way with the feeling that Rudolstadt might be a good place in which to spend the summer.

The condition of his mind was certainly such as to facilitate the designs of Providence. In January, 1788, he wrote to Korner as follows:

I am leading a miserable life, miserable through the condition of my inner being. I must have a creature about me who belongs to me; whom I can and must make happy; in whose existence my own can grow fresh again. You do not know how desolate my soul is, how dark my mind; and all not because of my external fortune,--for I am really very well off so far as that is concerned,--but because of the inward wearing out of my feelings.... I need a medium through which I can enjoy the other blessings. Friendship, taste, truth and beauty will produce a greater effect upon me when a continual succession of sweet, beneficent, domestic feelings attune me to joy and warm up my torpid being.

In mid-winter Lotte von Lengefeld came to Weimar for the social season and Schiller saw her occasionally with steadily increasing interest.

Their famous correspondence, beginning in February, 1788, is at first very reserved, very formal and decorous, but soon begins to bewray the beating of the heart. 'You will go, dearest Fraulein', writes Schiller on the 5th of April, as Lotte was about to return to Rudolstadt, 'and I feel that you take away with you the best part of my present joys.' A month later she had found him lodgings in the neighboring village of Volkstedt, and then came a delightful summer idyl, which prolonged itself until the middle of November,--an idyl not of love-making, for Schiller could not yet pluck up the courage for that, but of spiritual comradeship. To quote Karoline again:

A new life began for Schiller in our house. He had long been denied the delight of a free, friendly intercourse, and he always found us susceptible to the thoughts that filled his soul. He wished to influence us, to teach us what might serve our turn of poetry, art, and philosophy, and this effort gave to himself a gentle harmonious disposition.... When we saw him coming to our house in the shimmer of the sunset, a bright ideal life disclosed itself to our inner sense. Lofty seriousness and the light gracious winsomeness of a pure and open soul were always present in Schiller's conversation; in listening to him one walked as among the changeless stars of heaven and the flowers of the earth.... Schiller became calmer, clearer; his appearance and his character more winsome, his mind more averse to those fantastic views of life which he had hitherto not been able to banish. A new hope and joy dawned in the heart of my sister, and I returned, in the happiness of a new inspiring friendship, to a true enjoyment of life. Our whole social circle shared in the pleasure of this kindly magic.

The discourse of these amiable truth-seekers turned partly at least upon the Greeks. Up to this time Schiller had remained virtually ignorant of the Greek poets, thus missing the best of all sanative influences. He had absorbed indirectly something of the h.e.l.lenism that had been diffused through the air by Winckelmann, Lessing, Herder and Goethe, but his knowledge of the Greek language was very rudimentary, and good translations had not been easily procurable. Thus the glory that was Greece now came to him with the charm of a new discovery. The poem, 'The G.o.ds of Greece,' contributed to the _Merkur_ in March, 1788, marks the beginning of his h.e.l.lenizing. A little later Homer fascinated him. A letter written in August runs thus:

I now read almost nothing but Homer. I have got Voss' translation of the Odyssey, which is in truth excellent, aside from the hexameters, which I cannot endure.... For the next two years I have made up my mind to read no more modern authors.... Not one of them benefits me.

They all lead me away from myself, and the ancients now give me true enjoyment. At the same time I need them most urgently to purify my own taste, which through subtlety, artificiality and smartness was beginning to depart from true simplicity. You will find that familiar intercourse with the ancients will benefit me exceedingly, perhaps give me cla.s.sicity. I shall first study them in good translations and then, when I almost know them by heart, read the Greek originals. In this way I expect to play at the study of the Greek language.

On the 7th of September, 1788, an event occurred: Goethe, who had now returned from Italy, came to visit the Lengefelds, and Schiller was introduced to him. For a year he had heard Goethe idolized on every hand and felt his spirit brooding over the Weimar atmosphere. What he heard did not please him. The local Goethe-cult, so he wrote to Korner, was characterized by a proud, philosophic contempt of all speculation and investigation. This 'child-like simplicity of mind', this 'resigned surrender to the five senses', seemed to him a sort of affectation.

Besides this he was irritated by Goethe's prosperity and lordly independence. At the same time he could not help admiring him as a poet.

The new 'Iphigenie' gave him a 'happy day', though his pleasure was somewhat marred by the depressing thought that he himself would never be able to produce anything like it. And so he waited with eager expectation to see what a personal acquaintance would bring forth. It brought forth pleasure mixed with dubiety. After that first interview with the great man he wrote to Korner thus:

On the whole, my idea of him, which was in truth very great, has not suffered from this personal acquaintance; but I doubt whether we shall ever come very close to each other. Much that is still interesting to me has had its day with him. He is so far in advance of me,--not so much in years but in self-development and experience of life,--that we shall never come together. And then his whole being is differently organized from mine. His world is not mine; our ways of looking at things seem essentially different.

Nevertheless one cannot draw a sure conclusion from such a meeting.

Time will tell.

Upon Goethe the meeting made no impression at all. For him Schiller was the author of 'The Robbers', a work whose popularity annoyed him. He did not know, and he took no pains to find out, that Schiller was no longer in sympathy with the ideas that had found expression in the detested play. So he held himself aloof and six years pa.s.sed ere the two men came together in a friendly intimacy. At the same time there was nothing like ill-will on Goethe's part. He recognized Schiller's talent, praised 'The G.o.ds of Greece' and was half pleased with the review of 'Egmont', which might well have nettled a less Olympian temper. In the fall of 1788 'The Defection of the Netherlands' was published and favorably received.

About the same time a vacancy occurred in the Jena faculty, and Schiller's friends proposed him for the position. Goethe took the matter up with the various governments concerned and met with no opposition.

And so it came about, one day in December, that Schiller, who had meanwhile taken to translating Euripides and was planning a whole Greek theater in German, was interrupted by an official notice that he had been appointed professor of history at Jena and would be expected to enter upon his duties in the spring. It was only an 'extraordinary'

professorship without salary, but its possibilities as a stepping-stone were alluring. He decided to accept.

Now came a short season of helpless and comical dismay. 'I would take a thrashing', he wrote to Korner, 'if I could have you here for four-and-twenty hours. Goethe quotes his _docendo discitur_, but these gentlemen do not seem to know how small my learning is.' To Lotte he declared that he should feel ridiculous in the new situation. 'Many a student will perhaps know more history than the professor. Nevertheless I think like Sancho Panza with respect to his governorship: To whom G.o.d gives an office, to him he gives understanding; and when I have my island I shall rule it like a nabob.' It was not pleasant to drop his fascinating studies of the Greek poets and bury himself in learned sawdust, but the thing was not to be helped. So the winter and spring were devoted mainly to historical reading. At the same time, however, 'The Ghostseer' was carried along in the now resuscitated _Thalia_, and the long poem, 'The Artists', was slowly and with infinite revision got ready for publication in the _Merkur_.

During this period he saw little or nothing of Goethe and steadily nursed a splenetic determination not to like the man. Pa.s.sages in his letters are almost comical in their perversity of misjudgment. He was exasperated by Goethe's reticence, composure and self-sufficiency,--qualities which seemed to him to spring out of calculating egotism. Goethe, so the arraignment ran, was a man who went on his way serenely dispensing favors, winning love and admiration and putting people under obligation, but always like a G.o.d,--without ever giving his intimate self or surrendering his own freedom. For his part, he, Schiller, did not wish to live near such a man, much as he admired his intellect and valued his judgment. This att.i.tude of his was a great trial to the Lengefeld sisters, who did not fail to expostulate with him. But it was of no use. 'I have not time', he declared, 'in this short and busy life, to attempt a decipherment of Goethe's enigmatic character. If he is really such a very lovable being, I shall find it out in the next world, when we shall all be angels.' In fine he was not yet ripe for an understanding of the Weimar sovereign. He did not see that Goethe's method was after all a giving of himself, and that the self thus given was not the worse but the better for having outgrown the effusive raptures of sentimentalism.

In May the lectures at Jena began with great _eclat_. On the first day students to the number of five or six hundred flocked to hear the author of 'The Robbers' expound the difference between the philosophic scholar and the bread-and-b.u.t.ter professor. It was an inspiring discourse, full of high idealism and well fitted to inspire the souls of ingenuous youth, even though they might not quite understand it. The students were enthusiastic and gave the new professor the unusual compliment of a serenade. Having decided to begin with a course of free public lectures upon universal history, he took his duties very seriously, and even after curiosity had abated he continued, during the first term, to address a large audience. He had hoped only for prestige, and the game was quickly won. He was the most popular professor in Jena. All this time, however, his heart was in Rudolstadt,--with the two sisters to whom, for a year and a half, he had been writing letters of impartial Platonic devotion. Late in July he received a hint from Karoline to the effect that her sister was very much in love with him and that an understanding might be desirable. Then at last the timorous, cunctatory worshiper of femininity in the abstract declared himself and prayed to know if the good news could be true. Lotte a.s.sured him that it was; if she could make him happy she was willing to devote herself to the enterprise during the remainder of her days.

Now the millennium began. Our celestial dreamer, who had thus been gently pushed over the threshold by a friendly hand, found himself in a human paradise much more grateful to the soul than the court of Venus Urania. He was very, very happy. The black phantoms that had beset his pathway hitherto,--the depressing sense of loneliness, of having missed the great prize, of being _de trop_ at the banquet of life, the occasional promptings of pessimism and misanthropy, the baleful pull of illicit pa.s.sion, the selfish hugging of an illusory freedom,--all these took their flight to return no more. He had found what he needed--salvation from self through a woman's love. But he did not behave like other sons of Adam. He continued to address his love-letters to both sisters impartially, as if the possession of Lotte were after all to be only a subordinate incident in the preservation of a triangular spiritual friendship. Sometimes it is 'my dearest, dearest Karoline', again 'my dearest, dearest Lotte', most frequently 'my dearest dears'.

At first the trio agreed to keep their momentous secret from _chere mere_. Schiller was poor and his prospects all uncertain. When he began, in the fall of 1789, to give lectures that were to be paid for, he found that his income from students' fees would be insignificant. Lotte had but a slender portion, and then there was that dreadful _von_ in her name. To meet this difficulty Schiller procured the t.i.tle of 'Hofrat'

from the Duke of Meiningen. Then he laid the case before Karl August of Weimar, who was very sympathetic but also very poor. The best he could do was to promise shamefacedly a pittance of two hundred thalers by way of professorial salary. This, with love, was enough. In one of the n.o.blest letters he ever wrote Schiller now addressed himself to _chere mere_ who made no objections; and on the 22nd of February, 1790, the impecunious Hofrat Professor Schiller and his courageous, aristocratic sweetheart were married.

The work of Schiller in the historical field will be considered by itself in the next chapter. Before pa.s.sing on to that subject, however, let us glance at the more important of the minor writings produced during the period just traversed.

In 'The G.o.ds of Greece' he strikes with almost clangorous emphasis the note of pagan aestheticism. The poem sees the world under the aspect of the Beautiful and regards that as its most important aspect. The Greek religion, we hear, peopled earth and sky and sea with lovely forms that gave warmth and color to life and fed the imagination with sensuous poetry. Nature appeared living, spiritual. Rock and stream and tree had each its tale to tell, its tale of pa.s.sionate personal history. The G.o.ds were near, intelligible, sympathetic; and divine gifts were more precious for being shared by the giver. And as the G.o.ds were more human, so man was more divine. In comparison our modern monotheism is cold, abstract, mechanical. Instead of a radiant Apollo, we have the law of gravitation. We have lost the many fair G.o.ds of old to enrich One who is remote, unfathomable, self-sufficient.

Where art thou, beauteous world of story?

Fair morning of a vanished day!

Alas! the magic of thine ancient glory Lives only in the poet's lay.[75]

It was inevitable that such a frank eulogy of the old G.o.ds at the expense of the Christian Demiurgus should give offense. Count Leopold von s...o...b..rg put himself at the head of a vociferous opposition by denouncing the poem in a Leipzig journal as blasphemous, and lamenting that the author of the n.o.ble 'Song to Joy' should have fallen so low.

The modern reader finds it easy to acquit him on the religious arraignment, since he did not profess to present the claims of monotheism completely. We are quite willing to judge of poetry as poetry and to leave it its ancient privilege of pa.s.sionate overstatement. Of this privilege Schiller availed himself in the fullest measure, going quite beyond the bounds of sanity in his idealization of the Greeks, Well might the indignant s...o...b..rg ask him if he really believed that the 'eternal bonds of the heart were gentler and holier when Hymen tied them'. Whatever else may be said of them, the amours of the Greeks (G.o.ds and men) were not remarkably strong on the side of gentleness, holiness and fidelity.

In respect of poetic merit Schiller certainly had the right to his opinion that 'The G.o.ds of Greece' surpa.s.sed his earlier efforts. To please Wieland he aimed at Horatian correctness, and he came near hitting the mark. There is no progress toward lightness of touch or melody of phrasing,--Schiller was not the man for tuneful t.i.tillation of the ear,--but the poem is tolerably free from the bizarre hyperboles that mar its predecessors. It is intellectual, argumentative, but suffused at the same time with genuine feeling, and the stanzas have a stately impressive swing. Goethe was pleased with the poem, but thought it too long,--a well-founded criticism, since many of the stanzas merely brought fresh ill.u.s.trations of the same thought. In his revision Schiller reduced the twenty-five stanzas of the original version to sixteen, and at the same time omitted or toned down the lines that had given offense. In its revised form it is in every way a better poem.

In 'The Artists' we have a sonorous panegyric of Art as the great teacher and refiner of mankind. The poem shows the influence of Herder's evolutionary speculations, being in reality nothing less than a condensed history of civilization. The old Rousseauite point of view is here completely abandoned. No more girding at the degeneracy of the 'ink-spattering century'! The opening lines glorify the modern man as the 'ripest son of time, free through reason, strong through laws, great through gentleness'. Then the sublime creature is admonished not to forget the G.o.ddess who made him what he is: