The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller Part 16

I cannot tell you how painful it is to me oftentimes to turn from a work of this character to philosophy. There everything is so bright, so living, so harmonious and humanly true; here everything is so strict, so rigid, so very unnatural.... This much is certain: the poet is the only true human being, and the best philosopher is only a caricature beside him.

So, in the summer of 1795, he began once more to poetize,--'not venturing out upon the high sea of invention', as he expressed it, 'but keeping close to the sh.o.r.e of philosophy'. In other words he wrote a number of philosophic poems, partly for the _h.o.r.en_ and partly for the new poetic 'Almanac' that he had undertaken to edit, in addition to the _h.o.r.en_. This return to poetry was a joy to him, notwithstanding the ill health which confined him to the house and cut him off from the exhilarations of the external world. It must never be forgotten that those philosophic poems are the effusions of a lonely thinker who was compelled to draw his inspiration from within, and was not entirely unaware of the fetters he had forged for himself by his long addiction to philosophy.

There was, however, one more subject, of literary as well as philosophic interest, which he was minded to treat before turning his back finally upon the arid wastes of theory;--the subject of realism versus idealism, or, as he decided to phrase it, of nave and sentimental poetry. This essay, published in 1796, was briefly a.n.a.lyzed in the last chapter. It marks the end of Schiller's one-sided glorification of the Greeks. In more than one pa.s.sage he comes to the rescue of the modern poet--the sentimentalist--as the poet of the infinite, of the ideal. His contention is that while the realist may be the more admirable in a limited sphere, the idealist has a larger sphere, and his perfection is a higher thing. This attempt of Schiller's to describe, in a scientific spirit, the different kinds of artistic endowment, and to do full justice to all, grew naturally out of his intercourse with Goethe. He admired Goethe more and more. The fifth book of 'Meister' produced in him a 'veritable intoxication'; yet its quality was strikingly unlike that of 'Werther' or 'Iphigenie', and totally different from anything that he himself had done or could possibly do. Perhaps he may have been further influenced by A.W.

Schlegel's sympathetic papers upon Dante, which had been published in the _h.o.r.en_ and which revealed to him a new poetic genius of the highest order, yet not at all Homeric. So he wrote his famous disquisition,--next to Lessing's 'Laokoon' the most thoughtful and the most influential piece of criticism produced anywhere in the eighteenth century,--and endeavored to make it as readable as possible. Goethe, who read the ma.n.u.script in November, 1795, wrote of it thus:

Since this theory treats me so well, nothing is more natural than that I should approve its principles and that its conclusions should seem to me correct. I should be more distrustful, however, if I had not at first found myself in an att.i.tude of opposition to your views; for it is not unknown to you that, from an excessive predilection for the ancient poets, I have often been unjust to the modern. According to your doctrine I can now be at one with myself, since I no longer need to contemn that which, under certain conditions, an irresistible impulse compelled me to produce; and it is a very pleasant feeling to be not altogether dissatisfied with one's self and one's contemporaries.

Thus the two men were drawn closer together in mutual sympathy and appreciation, and found in each other more and more a bulwark against the whips and scorns of hostile criticism. Of such criticism there was no lack. The _h.o.r.en_ was making enemies rapidly and had become, as Schiller put it, a veritable _ecclesia militans_. One Jakob in Halle made an a.s.sault upon Schiller's aesthetic writings. Dull old Nicolai in Berlin complained of the ravages of Kantism in German literature. Pious souls like s...o...b..rg were scandalized by the lubricity of Goethe's 'Elegies' and 'Wilhelm Meister'. The famous philologist, Wolf, pounced violently upon one of Herder's Homeric essays. Schiller had now fallen out with his old friend Goschen, who was a center of contemptuous opposition at Leipzig. And Goethe, too, had his quarrel with the world: he felt absurdly sore over the neglect by scientific men of his optical theories in opposition to Newton. Friendly voices were scarcely heard anywhere. There was little opportunity for indulging that pleasant emotion of 'being satisfied with one's contemporaries'.

And so it came to pa.s.s that the two friends waxed wroth and determined to strike back. At first they thought of a withering review in the _h.o.r.en_, but this idea was given up in favor of another. Goethe had taken a great fancy to the ancient elegiac meter and for some time past it had been his favorite form of poetic expression. Schiller, originally a hater of the hexameter, had caught the fever from Goethe, and used the elegiac form in a number of poems. In December, 1795, Goethe suggested that they amuse themselves by making epigrams, in the style of Martial's 'Xenia', upon the various journals against which they had a grudge, devoting a distich to each. His plan was that each should make a large number; then they would compare, select the best and publish them in the second volume of the 'Almanac'. Schiller was captivated by the idea, and 'Xenia' now became the order of the day. It was soon decided not to restrict them to the offensive journals, but to take a shot wherever there was a mark. Both conspirators took great delight in the proposed _Teufelei_,--it would be such sport to stir up the vermin and hear them buzz. They gave the milder 'Xenia' pet names such as 'jovial brethren', 'little fellows', 'teasing youngsters', while the harsher ones were likened to stinging insects, or to the foxes of Samson:

You with the blazing tails, away to Philistia, foxes!

Spoil the flourishing crops, crops of paper and ink.

As Goethe was still preoccupied with 'Wilhelm Meister', it happened at first that Schiller was the more active in the production of these 'kitchen presents', especially such as had pepper in them. With the lapse of time Goethe's share increased. The two were frequently together, for days or weeks at a time, and the ma.s.s of Xenia grew rapidly. They determined to swell the number to a thousand and to give the collection a sort of artistic completeness; to make it, that is, a sort of general confession of faith. They agreed furthermore that they would publish the epigrams as a joint production and treat their separate authorship as an inviolable secret. As a matter of fact, some of them really were joint productions. One would suggest the idea or the t.i.tle, and the other write the verses; or one write the hexameter and the other the pentameter.

During the first half of 1796 Schiller wrote little else than Xenia. By the arrival of summer the joint output amounted to nearly a thousand, but less than half that number found their way into the famous 'Xenia Almanac' of 1797. Of these the targets were legion and the merit various. Some few of them were very good, others little short of atrocious, particularly in the matter of form. As for the general ma.s.s, their piquancy is not so great as to superinduce in the reader of to-day a dangerously violent cachinnation. Neither Goethe nor Schiller can be credited with a large vein of sparkling wit. Some of the Xenia are far-fetched and operose, while others sound rather vacuous. The form of the monodistich was in itself a safeguard against diffuseness, but not against the equal peril of inanity.

It would be impossible here to do more than glance at the personalities involved in this rather inglorious squabble. Many of the Xenia were personal pin-p.r.i.c.ks. Thus several were directed against the musician Reichardt, who, as editor of two journals, had shown strong sympathy with the Revolution. Goethe, the courtier, and Schiller, who had no democratic proclivities, came to the defense of the gentry thus;

Aristocratical dogs will growl at beggars, but mark you How little democrat Spitz soaps at the stockings of silk.

And again:

Gentlemen, keep your seats! for the curs but covet your places, Elegant places to hear all the other dogs bark.

A whole broadside was aimed at the garrulous Nicolai, who deserved a better fate. As the champion of lucidity and reasonableness he stood in reality for a very good cause,--no preachment more necessary in Germany then or since. But in his old age he had fallen a prey to the _cacoethes scribendi;_ he insisted upon having his say about everything, yet his stock of ideas had long since run out. So he became the bogey of the Weimar-Jena people. The Xenia a.s.sailed him with frank brutality, thus:

What is beyond your reach is bad, you think in your blindness, Yet whatever you touch, that you cover with dirt.

Other objects of attack were the brothers s...o...b..rg, for their narrow religiosity; Friedrich Schlegel, for his b.u.mptious self-conceit; and various small fry for this and that peccadillo.[99]

A large part of the epigrams, however, were of the 'tame' variety, that is, stingless outgivings of a jocund humor, or grave p.r.o.nunciamentos upon religion, philosophy, art and so forth. The authors did not wish to appear before the world as mere executioners, but as men with a positive creed, comprising things to be loved as well as things to be hated. They pleaded for sanity, clearness and moderation, and frowned upon the fanatics, hypocrites, vulgarians and cranks. The well-known distich ent.i.tled 'My Creed' is representative of many which were directed against the spirit of blind partisanship:

Which religion is mine? Not one of the many you mention.

'Why', do you venture to ask? Too much religion, I say.

Even virtue was to be cherished temperately,--without too much talk about it:

Nothing so hateful as Vice, and all the more to be hated, Since because of it, now, Virtue is really a need.

And so on in endless variety, on all sorts of subjects. Further ill.u.s.tration shall be dispensed with, seeing that the ancient distich is a poetic form for which the English language has, at the best, but little sympathy. In German it goes much better; and for Schiller in particular, with his natural love of ant.i.thesis, it proved a convenient setting for his opinions.

The effect of the Xenia was to set literary Germany agog with curiosity.

Two editions of the 'Almanac' were quickly bought up and a third became necessary. There was infinite guessing, speculating, interpreting, and among those who had been hit there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, A very few friends of Goethe and Schiller, such as Korner, Humboldt and Zelter, watched the commotion with solemn glee. Others were shocked or grieved at such a mode of warfare. Wieland mildly regretted that he had come off well in the Xenia, seeing that many other honest people had fared so badly. Herder was much more outspoken and declared that he hated the whole accursed species. The replies, protests and counter-attacks were legion, some in brutal belligerent prose, others in more or less clever Anti-xenia. Some of the latter were grossly abusive, and even indecent; a few contained very pretty home-thrusts, as when in allusion to a well-known poem of Schiller's he was advised to trouble himself less about the 'Dignity of Women' and more about his own;[100]

or where his 'Realm of Shades' was declared to be so very shadowy that one could not see the shades for the shadow.[101] But the best of all perhaps was the oft-quoted gem:

In Weimar and in Jena they make hexameters like this, But the pentameters are even more excellent.[102]

Historians of German literature are probably right in believing that the Xenia fusillade produced on the whole a salutary effect, although many of the objects of attack seem, at this date, to have been hardly worth the ammunition. But the explosion cleared the muggy air like a thunder-storm and denned many an issue that it was well to have defined.

Writers of every ilk were shaken out of their somnolence and compelled to look in the direction of Weimar; and when it was a question of taking sides, where was the force that could hope to make headway against the combined strength of Goethe and Schiller? The odds were too great; there was nothing to do but to grumble a little and then--acquiesce in the new leadership. As for the Dioscuri, they had the wisdom to see that one sharp campaign was enough; that for the rest they could further the good cause much more effectively by admirable creation than by peppery epigrams. Prod a man for his bad taste or his foolish opinions, and you harden his heart and provoke him to retaliate; give him something to admire, and you make him a friend in spite of himself.

In the autumn of 1796 Schiller addressed himself to 'Wallenstein', and from that time on dramatic poetry continued to be his chief concern. He led a quiet, laborious life, battling often with disease and depression, but sustained by high resolution and finding joy enough in domestic affection and the friendship of Goethe. The _h.o.r.en_ lasted three years and then died an easy death by the mutual consent of editor and publisher. Of the 'Almanac' five numbers appeared, beginning with 1796.

In these small annual volumes a large part of Schiller's best poems were originally published. His work upon the 'Almanac' was usually done in the summer, other activities being then temporarily laid aside. From, the time of his connection with Cotta, who took over the 'Almanac' after the first number had appeared, Schiller usually had money enough for his needs. But his needs were very modest, the demands of social life in Jena--or even in Weimar under the fiercer but still not very fierce light of the court--being extremely simple. He had not to reckon with the Persian apparatus that disturbed the soul of Horace.

The further relations of Goethe and Schiller, so far as they have any important bearing upon the works of the latter, will be touched on in subsequent chapters. Here let it be remarked in pa.s.sing that their friendship was not, as it has sometimes been represented, a mere relation of master and disciple. It was rather a spiritual copartnership of equals, each recognizing the other's strength, respecting the other's individuality and eager to profit by discussion. In the beginning, it is true, Schiller looked up to Goethe as to a great and wise teacher who was to give everything and receive little or nothing in return. Every one will recall his saying that he was a mere poetic scalawag in comparison with Goethe. But it is worth remembering that this remark was made after the reading of 'Wilhelm Meister',--a work which, notwithstanding his admiration, he criticised very sharply. And the justice of his criticism was admitted by Goethe; whereupon Schiller drily observed in a letter to Korner that Goethe was a man who could be told a great deal of truth. As time pa.s.sed, Schiller dropped the tone of humble docility and became more and more independent. If he deferred to the superior wisdom of Goethe in dealing with the plastic arts and natural science, there were other matters,--philosophy, poetic theory and the dramatic art,--upon which he felt that he could speak as one having authority. And his authority was respected by Goethe, especially after the completion of 'Wallenstein'. Goethe saw that Schiller, along with his poetic gift, possessed a practical dramatic talent,--an eye for effect and a power of appealing to the general heart,--such as he, Goethe, could by no means claim for himself. And so the nominal director of the Weimar theater leaned heavily upon his friend and looked to him as the best hope of the German drama.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 98: "Goethe", einundzwanzigste Vorlesung.]

[Footnote 99: All the extant Xenia, nine hundred and twenty-six in number,--many of them previously unknown,--were published in 1893 by Erich Schmidt and Bernhard Suphan, with copious introduction and notes, as Volume 8 of the "Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft" in Weimar.]

[Footnote 100:

Lasz doch die Frauen in Ruhe mit ihrer Wurde, und sorge Fur die deine, mein Freund. Ihre bewahren sie schon.]

[Footnote 101:

Nun, was denkt ihr vom Reiche der Schatten? Es schattet und schattet Dasz man vor Schatten umher nichts von den Schatten erkennt.]

[Footnote 102:

In Weimar und in Jena macht man Hexameter wie der; Aber die Pentameter sind doch noch excellenter.]

CHAPTER XV

Later Poems

So fuhrt zu seiner Jugend Hutten, Zu seiner Unschuld reinem Gluck, Vom fernen Ausland fremder Sitten Den Fluchtling der Gesang zuruck, In der Natur getreuen Armen Von kalten Regeln zu erwarmen.

_'The Power of Song'_.

The dominant note of Schiller's later poetry is intellectual seriousness; wherefore, if there be those for whom intellectual seriousness is not a quality of poetry at all, for them he has not written. The element of reflection is nearly always prominent in his verse, though there are a few of his poems, notably his best ballads, in which it is conspicuously lacking. What we usually hear is the man of culture commenting upon life, and everywhere he makes his appeal to universal sentiments. The spontaneity, or seeming spontaneity, of the great lyrists was no part of his gift. To catch a fleeting fancy, or some eccentricity of private emotion, and fix it in musical verse of a vague suggestiveness, was not in his line. If he had ever, like Heine, imagined himself joining his sweetheart in the grave and defying the resurrection in a rapturous embrace, he would probably have thought it beneath his dignity to versify the whimsy. Of course his verse is self-revelation, without which poetry cannot be; but it is the revelation of a soul dwelling habitually in the upper alt.i.tudes of thought and emotion, and always a.s.suming that fellow-mortals who care for poetry at all will be capable of a serious joy in the things of the mind.

One may say that his art as a poet consists not so much in the direct expression of feeling in sensuous and pa.s.sionate language, as in the transfiguration of thought by means of impa.s.sioned imagery. In his poems as elsewhere he is a good deal of a rhetorician, but he is never insincere. His verse came from the heart, only it was the expression of character and convictions rather than of moods and fancies. It seems intended to edify rather than to portray; to impress rather than to delight. Some of it, too, is occupied with ideal sentiments so abstract and sublimated as to possess but languid interest for normally const.i.tuted lovers of poetry. For a while, at least, after his return to poetry, he may fairly be said to have cared a little too much for the white radiance of eternity, and not quite enough for the colored reflection beneath the dome.[103]

This last observation has in view more particularly the poems he wrote in the year 1795, while still 'hugging the sh.o.r.e of philosophy'. Take for example 'The Veiled Image at Sais', which tells in rather prosaic pentameters of an ardent young truth-seeker who is escorted by an Egyptian hierophant to a veiled statue and told that whoso lifts the veil shall see the Truth. At the same time he is warned that the veil must not be lifted save by the consecrated hand of the priest himself.

Moved by a curiosity which can hardly seem anything but laudable,--unless one is prepared to take the side of the sacerdotal humbug,--the young man returns in the night and raises the veil. In the morning he is found pale and unconscious at the foot of the statue. Soon afterwards he dies; leaving to mankind the message:

Woe unto him who seeks the Truth through Guilt.

This has an unctuous sound, and one gets a vague impression that the old story has been dressed up for the sake of some modern application. One is piqued to reflect upon it; but the more one reflects the more clearly one sees that there is no real instruction in it. But if there is no instruction, there is nothing at all; since the mysticism is of a kind that appeals solely to the intellect.

Far more interesting is the poem which was at first called 'The Realm of Shades' and later 'The Ideal and Life',--a difficult production, which resembles 'The Artists' in its suggestion of a voyage through the imponderable ether. We begin with the blessed G.o.ds in Olympus and end with the apotheosis of Hercules; and the intervening stretch is like the vasty realm of the Mothers in 'Faust'. The poem is intellectual, in the sense that its theme is a concept of the mind, and its structure logical throughout; yet every strophe is surcharged with feeling, and the diction presents a marvelous wealth of imagery. It must be conquered by study before it can yield any great pleasure; but the conquest once made, one finds a n.o.ble delight in the gorgeous coloring with which Schiller invests his idealistic rainbow in the clouds. Good critics, favorable to Schiller's genius, regard 'The Ideal and Life' as the greatest of his philosophic poems and the most characteristic expression of his nature. He himself felt a sort of reverence for it. 'When you receive this letter', he wrote to Humboldt, 'put away everything that is profane and read this poem in solemn quiet.' And Humboldt replied: 'How shall I thank you for the indescribable pleasure that your poem has given me? Since the day on which I received it, it has in the truest sense possessed me; I have read nothing else, have scarcely thought of anything else.'