The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller Part 7

Of course there are German critics who find Louise's conduct in this last scene quite 'inevitable' and full of a high tragic pathos. Thus Palleske says of her:

Her anxious piety, her touching and indeed so intelligible devotion to her father, her lack of freedom, bring on her fate. A veil of mourning rests upon all she says. Heroic liberty of action, such as befits a Juliet, is made impossible to this girl by her birth in the bourgeoisie; she has only the liberty to perish, not the courage to be happy. Of guilt there can be no question in this case: her anxiety, her filial devotion, are her whole guilt; her virtue, her love for her father, become her ruin. Whoever thoroughly knows the bourgeoisie, which had yet to recover from these wounds,[54] will admit that this character is drawn with terrible truthfulness.

This, however, is putting too fine a point upon it; it implies, when closely a.n.a.lyzed, that Schiller deliberately made his heroine a little stupid,--a view of her that hardly comports with the rest of the play.

To say that she _must_ die because she belongs to the bourgeoisie is mere moonshine, for common sense can readily find a number of escapes.

She may cleave to her father and send her lover packing, after proper explanations; or she may cleave to her lover in the face of her father's displeasure; or she may temporize in the hope of changing her father's mind. What she actually does is to goad her lover into a frenzy by her singular conduct and then come to her senses when it is too late. The effect is to cast doubt upon the intensity of her supposed pa.s.sion for Ferdinand. One gets the impression that her previous sentimental ecstasies were not perfectly genuine; that she does not really know what it is to be in love, or how to speak the veritable language of the heart.

The truth seems to be that when Schiller wrote 'Cabal and Love', he had not progressed far enough in the knowledge of femininity to be able to draw a perfectly life-like portrait of a girl in Louise's station. She is a creature of the same order as Amalia and Leonora,--a sentimental _Schwarmerin_, very much lacking in character and mother-wit. From the first the expression of her love does not ring perfectly true. We suspect her of phrase-making,--she is quite too ethereal and ecstatic for a plain fiddler's daughter. No trace here of that homely poetic realism,--Gretchen at the wash-tub, or Lotte cutting bread and b.u.t.ter,--with which Goethe knew how to invest _his_ bourgeois maidens.

For aught we can learn from her discourse Schiller's Louise might be a princess, brought up on a diet of Klopstock's odes. That a girl, returning from church, should inquire of her parents if her lover has called, is quite in order. That she should then confess that thoughts of him have come between her and her Creator, is pardonable. But what are we to think when she goes on to say to her own parents:

This little life of mine, oh that I might breathe it out into a soft caressing zephyr to cool his face! This little flower of youth, were it but a violet, that he might step on it, and it might die modestly beneath his feet! That would be enough for me, my father.... Not that I want him now. I renounce him for this life. But then, mother, then, when the barriers of rank are laid low; when all the hateful wrappings of earthly station fall away from us, and men are only men,--I shall bring nothing with me save my innocence; but, you know, father has so often said that pomp and splendid t.i.tles will be cheap when G.o.d comes, and that hearts will rise in price. Then I shall be rich. Then tears will be counted for triumphs, and beautiful thoughts instead of ancestry. I shall be aristocratic then, mother. What advantage will he have then over his sweetheart?

What can one think, indeed, except that this supernal maiden has been reading Klopstock's famous 'Ode to f.a.n.n.y'?[55]

Louise's pa.s.sion, then, is no dangerous earthly flame, but a sentimental dream, a private revel in ecstatic emotion. We opine that she does not really need her lover, as a mortal ent.i.ty, at all, and are prepared to find her fearsome and irresolute in his presence. 'They are going to separate us,' she exclaims, as if she herself had no voice in the matter, when really her own timidity is the great obstacle. She is no Gretchen, or Clarchen, ready to give all for love's sake and Jump the consequences; still less is she a bourgeois Juliet, prepared to brave a family tempest provided only that her Romeo's bent be honorable, his purpose marriage. Those externalities of rank which she expects to drop out of sight in heaven loom up very large in her earthly field of vision. She fears her father's displeasure. She pretends to fear the ruin of her Ferdinand's career, albeit he a.s.sures her solemnly that she is of more importance to him than all else in the world. She is of the opinion that her marriage to a man with a _von_ in his name and prospects in life would be 'the violation of a sanctuary'; would 'unjoint the social world and demolish the eternal, universal order'.

Wherefore she is minded to renounce him. 'Let the vain, deluded girl'--so she sighs--'weep away her grief within lonely walls; no one will trouble himself about her tears,--empty and dead is my future,--but I shall still now and then take a smell at the withered nosegay of the past'--No wonder that before she reaches this awful climax, Ferdinand smashes the fiddle and bursts into laughter.

On the stage, the scene in which the agonized Louise is compelled to write the compromising letter is one of the most effective in the piece; and yet how futile and absurd the whole intrigue would be if the conspirators were not able to count upon her being a goose! One cannot blame her, of course, for doing that which appears to be necessary in order to save her father's life. One may pardon to her distress the solemn oath that she will acknowledge the letter as her voluntary act.

But if she were really in love with Ferdinand as she has pretended to be, how easy it would be for her, without violating her oath, to put him on his guard against the trap that has been laid for him! In the scene with Lady Milford she appears as a pert little pharisee, caustic, sententious and philosophical beyond her years; so that one wonders why a girl that knows so much should not know more. She herself has just cast her lover off, after meeting his pa.s.sionate entreaties with cool prudential argument. In a stagy paroxysm of jealousy she resigns her Ferdinand to Lady Milford, warning her, however, that her bridal chamber will be haunted by the ghost of a suicide. But why should Louise wish to quit this life? She has said farewell to Ferdinand, alleging that duty bids her remain and endure. She has chosen her part. All that separates her from her lover is her own chimerical sentiment of duty. Her virtue is intact. She has not the motive, say of Gemmingen's Lotte, for self-destruction. It is hard to take her seriously at this point, and we wonder that Lady Milford takes her seriously.

Truth to tell, Louise makes a rather tame and uninteresting tragic heroine. Notwithstanding all her fervid phrases, she is essentially cold. Did Schiller intend this effect, or is it due to the fact that he could not have portrayed her differently? Did it really spring from his limited observation of the feminine heart and of girlish ways, or from a deliberate artistic purpose to account adequately for Ferdinand's jealousy? Had he taken a lesson from the maidenly reserve of Lotte von Wolzogen and the prudential scruples of her mother? These are questions upon which one can only speculate. As matters stand, the whole catastrophe is made to hinge upon Ferdinand's suspicion. A little patience, a little faith in his sweetheart, would turn the course of fate. But her conduct makes faith difficult; so we understand his jealousy, but not so well his previous infatuation. He is in love with a beautiful soul and a pair of forget-me-not eyes, but the presuppositions are a little difficult. He is resolved to marry Louise for better or worse,--it is all understood, so far as he is concerned. Although there is no love-scene in the play, we do hear of precedent scenes of pa.s.sionate self-surrender (always within the limits of virtue). One cannot help asking: Where were Louise's scruples then? Was she ignorant of her father's prejudice or resolved to brave it? Had she never reflected upon the august foundations of the social order? Had she resisted Ferdinand's suit and warned him that he must be content with a yearning friendship on earth and a union of souls in heaven? None of these suppositions can be said to prepare us fully for her actual conduct in the play, where she appears all along as a helpless bundle of tremors, vacillating between an alleged pa.s.sion in which we do not fully believe and a sublimated sense of duty that we cannot fully understand.

In Ferdinand we have Schiller's favorite type of tragic hero,--the fervid young enthusiast whose calamity grows out of his own strenuous idealism. He is, however, a less weighty character than Karl Moor, or Carlos, or Max Piccolomini, because we see in him nothing more than the infatuate lover. In their case love is paired with the spirit of great enterprise; for him it is all in all, so far at least as the action of the play is concerned. His Louise sums up the entire macrocosm. If he thinks of doing anything in the world, it is only in order that he may marry her and live with her in a lover's paradise all his life. This is his way of talking:

Let obstacles come between us like mountains; I will make steps of them and fly to my Louise's arms. The storms of adverse fate shall inflate my feeling, danger shall only make my Louise the more charming.... I will guard you as the dragon guards the subterraneous gold. Trust yourself to me. You need no other angel. I will throw myself between you and fate, receive every wound for you and catch for you every drop from the cup of joy. On this arm shall my Louise dance through life, etc.

One can pardon some extravagance to a stage lover, since his intoxication is what makes him amiable. Who, for example, would abate a jot or t.i.ttle from the delicious nonsense of Romeo? When he says that carrion flies

may seize On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand And steal immortal blessings from her lips,

he seems to have expressed himself appropriately. There is no suggestion of mawkishness in his discourse. Our Ferdinand, however, is distinctly spoony. There went no poetic irony to his creation, and he has no saving sense of humor. He never seems, like Romeo, to be toying with hyperbole in an artistic spirit, but it is all dead earnest. Such a love-lorn youth must expect to recruit his admirers chiefly from the ranks of the very young. And yet there are times, just as in the case of Karl Moor, when Ferdinand's rhetoric becomes impressive from sheer t.i.tanic force.

Thus when he says to Louise, who has just been reminding him of his prospects: 'I am a n.o.bleman,--we will see, however, whether my patent of n.o.bility is older than the ground-plan of the eternal universe; whether my escutcheon is more valid than the hand-writing of heaven in Louise's eyes: This woman is for this man.'

It is undoubtedly in the scenes with his father that Ferdinand appears at his best. Here at least there is manly vigor. The contrast between the wicked father and the good son is effectively brought out, although, as in the case of Karl and Franz Moor, it is carried beyond the limits of easy credibility. How unnatural is the relation of the pair! One would think they had never talked with each other before, and that each had lived in complete ignorance of the other's character and inclinations. The father, by way of founding a claim to his son's grateful affection, declares that he has 'trodden the dangerous path to the heart of the prince' and killed his predecessor,--all for the sake of his son. He admits that he is suffering the 'eternal scorpion-stings of conscience,' and yet he expects Ferdinand to follow him without a whimper, and he is angry when the young man indignantly renounces the usufruct of his father's crimes. Although Ferdinand is a major in the army, his marriage with Lady Milford is arranged for him as if he had no claim to be consulted. The president blurts out his plan with brutal coa.r.s.eness, and urges it in language which he knows will rouse his son's anger. So when he appears in the Miller house he makes himself as odious as possible. Diplomacy and finesse are weapons not found in his armory, though he is a courtier and a successful politician. He is simply a cynical brute in high office. In truth his conduct is so very inhuman as to convey an impression of burlesque. He seems copied from some ogre in a fairy tale.

But if President von Walter appears now like a melodramatic caricature, it is partly because times have changed; for Schiller was not without his models in the recent history of Wurttemberg. During the period of Karl Eugen's worst recklessness--the decade beginning with 1755,--he was loyally abetted by two men, Rieger and Montmartin, who made themselves thoroughly odious. Rieger was a man of talent and knowledge, but without heart and without conscience. It was he who managed the cruel and lawless conscriptions whereby Duke Karl raised the desired troops for France.[56] Young men were simply taken wherever they could be found,--pulled from their beds at night, or seized as they came from church,--and forced into the army under brutal conditions of service.

Many a Wurttemberg family could have told a tale of barbarity essentially similar to that recounted by the lackey to Lady Milford in the second act of Schiller's play. Remorseless oppression of the people, for the purpose of raising money to be spent on the duke's costly whims, became the order of the day.

Still more brutal and cynical in his methods than Rieger was Count Montmartin, who was made President of the State Council in 1758. A cunning and wicked intriguer, he lent himself without scruple to the gratification of his master's l.u.s.ts and caprices. The daughters of the land were unsafe from his machinations if they had had the misfortune to attract the wanton eye of their sovereign. In 1762, wishing to be rid of his powerful rival, Montmartin trumped up a charge that Rieger was engaged in treasonable correspondence with Prussia. The result was that Rieger was publicly disgraced. Meeting him one day on parade the duke angrily tore off his military order, struck him with his cane and then shut him up in the Hohentwiel, where he lay for four years without light, table, chair or bed. In like manner the patriotic publicist, Moser, was imprisoned for five years, without trial and without sentence, because he had withheld his consent to the duke's high-handed proceedings.

Such was the political system that had afflicted Wurttemberg during Schiller's childhood. It furnished him with his dramatic 'mythology', as it has been called. The name may be allowed to pa.s.s, only it should be remembered that _this_ mythology was simply history. The rapier-thrusts of the dramatist were not directed against wind-mills of the imagination, but against political infamies that make one's blood boil in the reading and that would have moved a more spirited people to hang their rulers to the nearest tree. This should be borne in mind by any one who, in the milder light of a later and better era, is disposed to carp at Schiller for caricaturing the n.o.bility. He was not concerned with aristocracy in general, but with the particular kakistocracy that had disgraced his native land. And all that he did was to exhibit it as it was, or lately had been.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 51: 'The New Heloise', Part 1, letter 62.]

[Footnote 52: The adjectives are John Morley's; "Diderot", Chap. VII.]

[Footnote 53: "La premiere fois que je la vis, ce fut a l'eglise",--says Diderot's St. Albin, in recounting the beginning of his infatuation for Sophie. So with Faust and Margaret, and with Schiller's beautiful Greek lady in 'The Ghostseer'.]

[Footnote 54: "Schillers Leben und Werke", 15. Aufl. (1900), p. 297. In earlier editions of Palleske's work, which appeared originally in 1858-9, Louise was further characterized as 'the crushed heart of the German people'; and the sentence, 'which had to recover from those wounds', read: 'which is beginning to recover'.]

[Footnote 55: One strophe runs:

Dann wird ein Tag sein, den werd' ich auferstehn!

Dann wird ein Tag sein, den wirst du auferstehn!

Dann trennt kein Schicksal mehr die Seelen, Die du einander, Natur, bestimmtest.]

[Footnote 56: See above, page 7.]

CHAPTER VII

Theater Poet in Mannheim

Die Schaubuhne ist mehr als jede andere offentliche Anstalt des Staats eine Schule der praktischen Weisheit, ein Wegweiser, durch das burgerliche Leben, ein unfehlbarer Schlussel zu den geheimsten Zugangen der menschlichen Seele.--_Discourse on the Theater, 1784_.

Mannheim, famed for the geometric regularity of its streets, was in Schiller's day a city of about twenty thousand inhabitants. Since 1720 it had been the capital of the Bavarian Palatinate, and under the Elector Karl Theodor it had acquired some distinction as a nursery of the arts. We have seen that Schiller, coming thither from Suabia, imagined himself escaping from the land of the barbarians to the land of the Greeks. In the year 1777 the Upper and Lower Palatinate were united, and the Elector transferred his residence to Munchen. For this withdrawal of the light of their ruler's countenance the Mannheimers were compensated in a measure by the establishment among them of a so-called National Theater. There was no German nation at the time, but there was a very general interest in the German drama. Lessing's famous experiment at Hamburg, though it turned out badly, had set people thinking. Playwrights and actors were learning to regard themselves no longer as purveyors of mere amus.e.m.e.nt, but as the dignified representatives of a n.o.ble art having boundless possibilities of influence. The public was becoming interested in the principles of dramatic construction and in the criteria of excellence. Scholars were beginning to inquire whether the stage might not again become what it had been for the ancient Athenians. And so the way had been prepared for a serious conception of the theater and for experiments like that at Mannheim.

The management of the enterprise was placed in the hands of Baron Heribert von Dalberg, a young n.o.bleman (born in 1750), who had given no evidence of unusual fitness for such an office, but was a connoisseur and a gentleman. He devoted himself zealously to his work and soon made his theater famous. He was courteous and hospitable, kept an eye open for promising talent and enjoyed the role of Maecenas. His system provided for regular meetings of his actors, at which plays were discussed, reports rendered and grievances ventilated. For the rest he was not a man of ideas, but a follower of tradition. He disliked to take risks and often missed the mark in his judgment of persons and of plays.

He continued until 1803 to act as intendant and occasionally tried his hand at dramatic composition, or the adaptation of a Shaksperian play, All told, his services were such that the Mannheiniers have deemed him worthy of a statue.

Among the actors whom Baron Dalberg's enterprise had a.s.sembled at Mannheim were three or four of notable talent. Thus there was Iffland, of the same age as Schiller, who was destined to win fame as an actor, playwright and manager. Like Diderot, Iffland believed ardently in the moral mission of the drama. He was himself a man of character who had taken to the stage against the wish of his kinfolk, and now his hobby was to refine the language of the stage and to elevate the actor's profession. He was an industrious and thoughtful player, who gave careful attention to the little matters of mimicry and personation and seldom failed to please. Another was Beil, a greater actor in point of natural endowment, who relied more upon vigorous realism than upon studied refinements. Then there was Beck, who was at his best as a portrayer of youthful enthusiasm and sentiment. His nature was akin to Schiller's and a warm friendship sprang up between the two.

When Schiller arrived in Mannheim, late in July, 1783, Dalberg was in Holland. There was nothing going on at the theater, and the sweltering town, deserted by such as could get away, was suffering from an epidemic of malarial fever. But the faithful Streicher was there and friend Meyer, the manager, and Schwan, the publisher, whose vivacious daughter, Margarete, gradually kindled in the heart of the new-comer another faint blue flame which he ultimately mistook for love. His first concern was to write to Frau von Wolzogen, who had loaned him money for his journey, a detailed report of his finances. He was the possessor of fifteen thalers, whereof he had reserved five for the return to Bauerbach. His friend Meyer had found him a nice place where, by dispensing with breakfast, he could eat, drink and lodge for about two thalers a week.

Hair-dresser, washerwoman, postman and tobacconist would require, all told, one thaler. So he hoped to keep afloat in the great world at least three weeks, and then,--back to his heart's home in Saxony! The letter continues:

Oh, I shall long to be soon, soon, with you again; and meanwhile, in the midst of my greatest distractions, I shall think of you, my dearest friend. I shall often break away from social circles and, alone in my room, sadly dream myself back with you and weep.

Continue, my dear, continue to be what you have been hitherto, my first and dearest friend; and let us be, all by ourselves, an example of pure friendship. We will make each other better and n.o.bler. By mutual sympathy and the delicate tie of beautiful emotions we will exhaust the joys of this life and at the last be proud of this our blameless league. Take no other friend into your heart. Mine remains yours unto death and beyond that, if possible.

One sees that the writer of this letter had lived quite long enough in his idyllic retirement, and that his benefactress had judged the case wisely.

Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.[57]

We who do not live in an epoch of emotional expansion have the right to get what amus.e.m.e.nt we can out of this note of high-flown sentimentalism.

At the same time its instructive aspect should not be lost sight of.

When a youth of twenty-three, battling with the vulgar prose of life, falls into such a tone in writing to a middle-aged lady who has befriended him; when he lets his imagination brood upon the coming luxury of tears and of beautiful emotions; when he is so pathetically eager to reign without a rival in the heart of his friend, and to a.s.sure her of his everlasting loyalty in the world to come,--how shall we expect him to express himself when he undertakes to speak the language of strong feeling in works of the imagination? Evidently we must be prepared for all things in the way of sentimental extravagance.

After two weeks of idle waiting Schiller was able to report that Dalberg had returned and was showing himself very friendly. The man was 'all fire,'--only it was gunpowder flame that would not last long. The genial intendant insisted that Schiller should by all means remain in Mannheim.

'Fiesco,' now in print as a tragedy, should be put upon the stage at once; 'Louise Miller' should be taken under consideration, a performance of 'The Robbers' be given for the author's special gratification, and so forth. At first Schiller was little disposed to bank upon this effusive kindness. His plans went no further than to effect a sale of the stage-rights of his two plays and then to return to Bauerbach. But the lures of Dalberg finally prevailed and in September he made a contract for a year's employment as dramatist of the Mannheim theater. He was to furnish one entirely new play, in addition to those he had on hand, and to have as compensation three hundred florins, the copyright of all the plays and the receipts of a single performance of each of them. For a moment the future looked tolerably bright. He saw in his mind's eye an a.s.sured income of more than twelve hundred florins, which would provide amply for his needs and enable him to pay his debts.

But his plans went all wrong. In the first place, the pestilent fever, which he fought with giant doses of quinine, proved very intractable and held him in its grip for months. He was unable to work and fell into a sort of mental coma. In a letter of November 13 he describes himself as eating Peruvian bark like bread; and six weeks later he was still suffering from the effects of his unlucky midsummer plunge into the miasmatic air of Mannheim. In other ways, too, the new situation proved a disappointment. Social demands involved him in expenditures far in excess of his modest calculations, while the intervals of relief from physical incapacity were filled with a hundred distractions which left him no time for sustained mental effort. And so he drifted into the winter without accomplishing anything more notable than the final revision of 'Fiesco'.

About this time he was elected a member of the so-called 'German Society', a learned body which enjoyed the protection of the Elector.

This little honor was highly valued by Schiller, since it made him a citizen of the Palatinate and gave him an a.s.sured social status. On the other hand, his emergence into the light of day as a respectable functionary was not without its disadvantages, since his creditors now became importunate. There were pressing duns from Stuttgart and from Bauerbach, but the debtor could not pay. He became involved in a painful correspondence with his father, who had undertaken to guarantee a small debt of his son provided that another larger one be paid so and so. When this hope failed, the old captain lost patience and began to deal out counsel, reproof and warning with a lavish hand. He recommended his son to save the pennies and live more economically; to return to medicine; to marry a wife; to remember his Creator, and so on. To all of which the perplexed Friedrich could only reply with fresh promises, excuses and recommendations of patience. In like manner he put off Frau von Wolzogen until she began to lose faith in him. A sharp letter from her brought him to his knees with a humble apology, but it was years before he could pay his debt to her.

The first performance of 'Fiesco', the adaptation of which to the stage had cost its author such a world of trouble, took place on the 12th of January, 1784. As played it differed a good deal from the published version, and not alone with respect to the catastrophe. Thus the painful episode of Bertha was worked over into something less revoltingly horrible. In the stage version, instead of being brutally violated, she is abducted by a tool of Gianettino, but rescued and restored to her home unharmed. With this change made it would seem as if there were less reason than ever for her being cursed and sent to a subterraneous prison-vault. Nevertheless Verrina's curse was allowed to remain,--chiefly, as one cannot help surmising, that the girl might be rescued with _eclat_ in the fourth act. (The rescue scene in 'The Robbers' had been a great success.) It has already been noted that the offensive quarrel between Julia and Leonora was omitted and that Leonora was allowed to live. And there were other such changes. Schiller had been impressed by an actor's criticism of his florid and violent language. He accordingly removed or toned down a few blemishes of this kind, but without making a radical revision of the style. Even in the stage version there is quite too much of rant and fustian.