Not before Schiller's time had this conflict between love and filial duty been so powerfully depicted, but it is found in Wagner's 'Remorse after the Deed' (1775), wherein a coachman's daughter, Friederike Walz, is loved by the aristocratic Langen, who is opposed by his mother. Langen goes to his sweetheart, all courage and resolution. He is prepared, like Leisewitz's Julius, to defy his kin, renounce the lures of his rank and flee to the ends of the earth with 'Rikchen'. To which she replies: 'Langen, you are terrible. To marry with the curse of parents is to make one's whole posterity miserable'. So Louise replies to Ferdinand's similar entreaty: 'And be followed by your father's curse! A curse, thoughtless man, which even murderers never utter in vain, and which like a ghost would pursue us fugitives mercilessly from sea to sea.'
In the sentimental novel 'Siegwart', the heroine, Therese, loves a young squire, not for his blue blood, but for the nobility of his heart. Like Louise she renounces her love for this life, and bids him farewell. In writing to him she describes a scene between her father and his:
Your father came dashing into our yard with two huntsmen. 'Are you the ——?' he called up to me. 'Is that Siegwart? He's a scoundrel, if he knows it. He wants to seduce my son. And this, I suppose, is the nice creature (here he turned to me again) who has made a fool of him. A nice little animal, by my soul!'… My father, who can show heat when he is provoked, told him to stop calling such names; that he was a decent man and I a decent girl.
Here we seem to have the suggestion of the stirring scene in which the irate old fiddler threatens to throw President von Walter out of doors for insulting Louise.
It would be very easy to give further examples of Schiller's talent for taking what suited his purpose, but such philology is not very profitable. After all, what one wishes to know is not where the architect got his materials, but what he made of them. And what he made was a play abounding in admirable scenes, but ending in a rather unsatisfactory manner. With even less violence to the inner logic of the piece than was necessary in the case of 'Fiesco', 'Cabal and Love' might have been given a happy ending. The whole tragedy hangs by a thread in the fifth act. Lady Milford has fled and is no longer a factor in the entanglement. The wicked president has relented and is ready to yield. Old Miller, released from prison, returns to his house and finds Louise brooding over her purpose of suicide. He preaches to her upon the sin of self-destruction and pleads with her to give up her aristocratic lover. She promises. Then Ferdinand comes and demands an explanation of the fatal letter. A word from her at this point, a momentaryaccèsor simple common sense, would undeceive him and end the whole difficulty. Of course she must not break her oath; and one cannot blame her sweet simplicity for not taking refuge in the maxim that an oath given under duress is not binding. But her oath merely pledges her to acknowledge the letter as her voluntary act. There is no reason why she should not solemnly assure Ferdinand of her innocence, tell him that they are the victims of a plot and send him to his father for an explanation. Nothing prevents her from speaking in time the words that she actually does speak after she has taken the poison, but before she knows that she has taken it: 'A horrible fatality has confused the language of our hearts. If I might open my mouth, Walter, I could tell you things', etc.
If, out of filial piety, Louise is minded to give up her lover, there is at any rate no reason why she should wish him to despise her forever. Every natural girlish instinct requires her to clear herself. That she does not do this, but persists in a course which of all courses is the most unnatural,—seeing that she now has nothing to fear from any source,—produces a painful suspense which is anything but tragic. No skill of the actress can altogether save her from a certain appearance of fatuous weak-mindedness, or forestall the cynical conclusion that she dies chiefly in order that it may be fulfilled which was said unto himself by the author, namely: I will write a tragedy.
And yet such a conclusion would not be perfectly just to Schiller. It is true that he was all for tragedy and that a happy moral ending, in the vein of Diderot, would not have been to his taste. But this does not tell the whole story. The romantic lovers are sacrificed in order that the guilty president and his vile accomplices may be brought to book and punished for their sins. The heart of the matter for Schiller was to free his mind with respect to the infamies of high life. It was this that tipped his pen with fire.
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 analyzed, 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 shemustdie 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 passion 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 sentimentalSchwärmerin, 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 butter,—with which Goethe knew how to investhisbourgeois 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 titles will be cheap when God 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 Fanny'?[55]
Louise's passion, 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 entity, 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 Clärchen, 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 assures 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 avonin 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 passionate 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 passionate 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 passion 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 tittle 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 titanic force. Thus when he says to Louise, who has just been reminding him of his prospects: 'I am a nobleman,—we will see, however, whether my patent of nobility 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 coarseness, 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 Württemberg. 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 Württemberg 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 lusts 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 Württemberg during Schiller's childhood. It furnished him with his dramatic 'mythology', as it has been called. The name may be allowed to pass, only it should be remembered thatthismythology 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 nobility. 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.
[Footnote 51: 'The New Heloise', Part 1, letter 62.]
[Footnote 52: The adjectives are John Morley's; "Diderot", Chap. VII.]
[Footnote 53: "La première fois que je la vis, ce fut à l'église",—saysDiderot's St. Albin, in recounting the beginning of his infatuation forSophie. So with Faust and Margaret, and with Schiller's beautiful Greeklady 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.]
Theater Poet in Mannheim
Die Schaubühne ist mehr als jede andere öffentliche Anstalt desStaats eine Schule der praktischen Weisheit, ein Wegweiser, durchdas bürgerliche Leben, ein unfehlbarer Schlüssel zu den geheimstenZugängen 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 München. 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 amusement, but as the dignified representatives of a noble 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 nobleman (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 assembled 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 nobler. 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 amusement 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 assure 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 assured 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 assured 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 withéclatin 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.
The Mannheimers took but little interest in 'Fiesco,'—it was too erudite for them, as Schiller explained to Reinwald some months later.[58] Republican liberty, he went on to say, was in that region a sound without meaning; there was no Roman blood in the veins of the Pfälzer. In Berlin and Frankfurt, however, the piece had met with good success. We cannot blame Schiller for trying to extract comfort from these bits of evidence that the prophet was not without honor save in his own country, though we may question his implication that republican ideas were just then less rife in the Palatinate than in Berlin and Frankfurt. The fact is that the lover of republican ideas must have been the very person to feel the keenest dissatisfaction with 'Fiesco.' Where it did succeed, its success was due to causes having little to do with political sentiment. The Berlin triumph was equivocal, being the triumph not so much of Schiller as of one Plümicke, who took high-handed liberties with the original text and made it over, in both language and thought, so as to suit the taste of the Berlin actors. This northern version, thus diluted with the water of the Spree, was presently published by the enterprising pirate, Himburg, and proved a formidable rival of the genuine edition. The play was tried at several theaters and with various endings,—curiously enough Plümicke made Fiesco commit suicide in the moment of his triumph,—but it never became really popular. It was translated into English in 1796, into French in 1799.
Much more favorable was the reception given to 'Cabal and Love', which was first played at Mannheim on the 15th of April, 1784.[59] The part of the lackey who describes the horrors attending the exportation of soldiers to America was omitted; the satire was too strong for the politic Dalberg, who had all along been troubled by Schiller's drastic treatment of princely iniquity and his obvious allusions to well-known persons. Even Schwan, who was delighted with 'Louise Miller' from the first and readily undertook to publish it, described its author as an executioner. This time the Mannheimers had no difficulty of comprehension and they gave their applause unstintingly. After the great scene in the second act they rose and cheered vociferously,—whereat Schiller bowed and felt very happy. 'His manner', says honest Streicher, who has left a report of the memorable evening, 'his proud and noble bearing, showed that he had satisfied himself and was pleased to see his merit appreciated.'
A few days later the Mannheim players repeated their triumph at Frankfurt, where Schiller was lionized to his heart's content. 'Cabal and Love' now quickly became a stage favorite. Within a few months it was played successfully at nearly all the more important theaters of Germany. Even Stuttgart fell into line, but the Duke of Württemberg was not pleased, and a memorial of the nobility led to the prohibition of a second performance. At Braunschweig It was tried with a happy ending, but this innovation, reasonable as it seems, took no root. A badly garbled English translation by Timaeus appeared in 1795; a better one by Monk Lewis, under the title of 'The Minister', in 1797. A French translation by La Martellière was hissed off the stage of the Théâtre Français in 1801.
From the Minerva press the new play got blame and praise. One writer saw in it the same Schiller who was already known as the 'painter of terrible scenes and the creator of Shaksperian thoughts'. A Berlin critic named Moritz, of whom we shall hear later, called the piece a disgrace to the age and wondered how a man could write and print such nonsense. The plot consisted, he declared, of a simpleton's quarrel with Providence over a stupid and affected girl. It was full of crass, ribald wit and senseless rodomantade. There were a few scenes of which something might have been made, but 'this writer converted everything into inflated rubbish'. Some one taxed Moritz with undue severity, whereupon he returned to the attack, insisting that this extravagant, blasphemous and vulgar diction, which purported to be nature rude and strong, was in reality altogether unnatural.[60]
And, to be candid, the critic was able to bring together an anthology of quotations which seemed like a rather forcible indictment of Schiller's literary taste. What Moritz failed to see was that the bad taste was only an excrescence growing upon a very vigorous stock. This was felt by another reviewer who declared that high poetic genius shone forth from every scene of Schiller's works. Many years later Zelter, the friend of Goethe, bore witness to the electric effect of the play upon himself and the other excitable youth who saw it in the first days of its popularity. Like 'The Robbers,' it was a harbinger of the revolution. It seemed to voice the hitherto voiceless woe of the third estate; and just because of that savage force which made it seem absurd to sedate minds, just because it rang out in such shrill and clangorous notes, it has continued to be heard. Good taste is a matter of fashion. It is never the most vital quality of literature.
If any one should be tempted to think that Schiller's youthful ideals of the dramatic art were not sufficiently exalted, he should read the lecture given before the Mannheim German Society, in June, 1784, on the question: 'What can a good permanent theater really effect?' It is an excellent, thoughtful essay, instinct with lofty idealism and at the same time full of sound observation. Setting out from the postulate that the highest aim of all institutions whatsoever is the furtherance of the general happiness, the paper discusses the theater as a public institution of the state. Its claims are examined, and the sphere and manner of its influence discussed, along with those of religion and the laws. Probably too much is made out of the moral and educational utility of the stage,—so at least it will be apt to seem to an American or an Englishman,—but the familiar arguments, the validity of which is now generally recognized in Germany, are marshalled with a fine breadth of view and with many felicities of expression. Toward the end there is a passage which shows that Schiller himself felt the shakiness of the utilitarian argument. He says: 'What I have tried to prove hitherto—that the stage exerts an essential influence upon morals and enlightenment—was doubtful'; and then he goes on to speak of a value not doubtful, namely, its value as a means of refined pleasure. This is the heart of the matter forever and ever; and one could hardly sum up the case more sagely than Schiller does in the sentence: 'The stage is the institution in which pleasure combines with instruction, rest with mental effort, diversion with culture; where no power of the soul is put under tension to the detriment of any other, and no pleasure is enjoyed to the damage of the community,'
The experience of Schiller at Mannheim illustrates the higher uses of adversity. Had he been well and happy, he might have written his third play, won the good will of Dalberg and then stuck fast for years in the Palatinate; which would have been a misfortune for him and for German letters. As it was, Mannheim gradually became odious to him. He had no buoyancy of spirit. 'God knows I have not been happy here', he wrote to Reinwald in May, 1784. His life was full of petty worries and distractions which weighted his imagination as with lead. As his year drew to an end he imagined that he had but to say the word to have his contract with the Mannheim theater renewed, but it was not so; Dalberg had quietly decided to get rid of him. Fromhispoint of view his poet had been a bad investment. Schiller had not kept his contract in the matter of the new play; he had done nothing but procrastinate and make excuses. 'Don Carlos' had not even been begun. There seemed to be no excuse for such dawdling, when a man like Iffland could always be relied upon to turn out a fairly acceptable play in a few weeks. No great wonder, therefore, that Dalberg lost faith in Schiller and concluded that he had exhausted his vein. Through a friend he suggested a return to medicine.
Curiously enough Schiller grasped at the idea, professing that a medical career was the one thing nearest his heart. He had long feared, so he wrote, that his inspiration would forsake him if he relied upon literature for his living; but if he could devote himself to it in the intervals of medical practice, good things might be hoped for. He accordingly proposed a renewal of the contract for another year, with the understanding that he devote himself principally to his medical studies to the end of qualifying for the doctor's degree; in the mean time he would undertake to produce one 'great play' and also to edit a dramatic journal. To this amazing proposal Dalberg paid no attention; and when the 1st of September arrived Schiller's connection with the Mannheim theater came to an end.
It was a troublous, harassing time for him, that summer of 1784, and the more since the woes of the distracted lover were added to those of the disappointed playwright and the impecunious debtor. A German savant observes that Schiller was not, like Goethe, a virtuoso in love. And so it certainly looks, albeit the difference might perhaps appear a little less conspicuous if he had lived to a ripe old age and dressed up his recollections of youth in an autobiographical romance. He did not lack the data of experience, but without the charm of the retrospective poetic treatment his early love-affairs are not profoundly interesting. In the midst of his troubles it came over him that marriage might be the right thing for him; and so, one day in June, 1784, he offered himself to Frau von Wolzogen for a son-in-law. Nothing came of the suggestion; it was only a passing tribute to the abstract goodness of matrimony. About a year later he made, with similar results, an argumentative bid for the hand of Margarete Schwan. On the aforementioned visit to Frankfurt he met Sophie Albrecht, a melancholy poetess who had sought relief from the tameness of her married life by going upon the stage. Of her he wrote shortly afterwards:
In the very first hours a firm and warm attachment sprang up between us; our souls understood each other. I am glad and proud that she loves me and that acquaintance with me may perhaps make her happy. A heart fashioned altogether for sympathy, far above the pettiness of ordinary social circles, full of noble, pure feeling for truth and virtue, and admirable even where her sex is not usually so. I promise myself divine days in her immediate society.[61]
But all these palpitations were as water unto wine in comparison with his unwholesome passion for Charlotte von Kalb, whom he also met first in the spring of 1784. This lady, after a lonely and loveless girlhood, in which she had been tossed about as an unwelcome incumbrance from one relation to another, had lately married a Baron von Kalb. Her heart had no part in the marriage, which was arranged by her guardian. In the pursuit of his career her husband left her much to herself. She was an introspective creature, very changeable in her moods and passionately fond of music and poetry. In Schiller she found her affinity. He acted first as her guide about Mannheim, then as her mentor in matters of literature. They saw much of each other; became intimately confidential and soon were treading a dangerous path,—though not so dangerous, peradventure, as has sometimes been inferred from the two poems, 'Radicalism of Passion' and 'Resignation', which belong to this period.
In the first of these poems our old friend, the lover of Laura, who is supposed to have married another man in the year 1782, resolves to fight no longer the 'giant-battle of duty'. He apostrophizes Virtue and bids her take back the oath that she has extorted from him in a moment of weakness. He will no longer respect the scruples that restrained him when the pitying Laura was ready to give all. Her marriage vow was itself sinful, and the god of Virtue is a detestable tyrant. In the other poem, which is a sort of antidote to the first, we hear of a poet, born in Arcadia, who surrendered his claim to earthly bliss on the promise of a reward in heaven. He gave up his all, even his Laura, to Virtue, though mockers called him a fool for believing in gods and immortality. At last he appears before the heavenly throne to claim his guerdon, but is told by an invisible genius that two flowers bloom for humanity,—Hope and Enjoyment. Who has the one must renounce the other. The high Faith that sustained him on earth was his sufficient reward and the fulfillment of Eternity's pledge.
Wer dieser Blumen eine brach, begehreDie andre Schwester nicht.Geniesze wer nicht glauben kann. Die LehreIst ewig wie die Welt. Wer glauben kann entbehre.Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht.[62]
When these poems were published, in 1786, their author saw fit to caution the public in a foot-note not to mistake an ebullition of passion for a system of philosophy, or the despair of an imaginary lover for the poet's confession of faith. Thus warned one should not be too curious about the reality which is half revealed and half concealed by the verses. Enough that it was not altogether a calm, Platonic sentiment, and that the torment of it was a factor in that uneasiness which finally became a burning desire to escape from Mannheim. And the fates were preparing a way.
One day in June, when all was looking dark, Schiller received a packet containing an epistolary greeting, an embroidered letter-case and four portrait sketches. The letter was anonymous, but he presently discovered that it came from Gottfried Körner, a young privat-docent in Leipzig, who had united with three friends in sending this token of regard to a Suabian poet whom they had found reason to like. Schiller did not answer immediately and the skies grew darker still. His relations with the Mannheim theater were presently strained to the point of disgust by the production of a farce in which he was satirized. He was in terrible straits for money. To have something to do, after he was set adrift by Dalberg, he decided to go ahead with his project of a dramatic journal. An attractive prospectus for theRhenish Thaliawas issued, and he began to prepare for the first number, which was to contain an installment of 'Don Carlos'. The advance subscriptions fell far short of his sanguine hopes. In these occupations the time passed until December. Then one day he penned an answer to the Leipzig letter. It was a turning-point in his destiny. A correspondence sprang up which presently convinced him that where these people were, there he must be.
Toward the end of the year there came another glint of good-will from the north. The Duke of Weimar happened to be visiting at the neighboring Darmstadt, and through Frau von Kalb Schiller procured an introduction and an invitation to read the beginning of 'Don Carlos'. The result was the title of Weimar Councillor. This was very pleasant indeed; for while it put no florins in his purse, it gave him an honorable status in the German world. He had been cast off by a prince of the barbarians to be taken up bytheprince of the Greeks! Henceforth he was in a sense the colleague of Goethe and Wieland. He began to speak of the Duke of Weimar ashisduke, and to indulge in day-dreams concerning the little city of the Muses in Thüringen. For the rest there was an element of fate's amusing irony in the new title, seeing that he had just announced himself, in the prospectus of theRhenish Thalia, as a literary free-lance who served no prince, but only the public. The announcement contained a sketch of his life and a confession of his sins,—which he laid at the door of the Stuttgart Academy. 'The Robbers', he declared, had cost him home and country; but now he was free, and his heart swelled at the thought of wearing no other fetter than the verdict of the public, and appealing to no other throne than the human soul.
Owing to various delays the first number of the new journal did not appear until the spring of 1785, and by that time Schiller was all ready for his flight northward. Matters had continued to go badly with him. On the 22nd of February he wrote to Korner, 'in a nameless oppression of the heart', as follows:
I can stay no longer in Mannheim. For twelve days I have carried the decision about with me like a resolution to leave the world. People, circumstances, earth and sky, are repulsive to me. I have not a soul to fill the void in my heart—not a friend, man or woman; and what might be dear to me is separated from me by conventions and circumstances…. Oh, my soul is athirst for new nourishment, for better people, for friendship, affection and love. I must come to you; must learn, in your immediate society and in intimate relations with you, once more to enjoy my own heart, and to bring my whole being to a livelier buoyancy. My poetic vein is stagnant; my heart has dried up toward my associations here. You must warm it again. With you I shall be doubly, trebly, what I have been hitherto; and more than all that, my dearest friends, I shall be happy. I have never been so yet. Weep for me that I must make this confession. I have not been happy; for fame and admiration and all the other concomitants of authorship do not weigh as much as one moment of love and friendship. They starve the heart.
To the worldly-wise such a perfervid sight-draft upon the bank of love, made after a few weeks of epistolary acquaintance, will no doubt seem a little risky. One is reminded of Goethe's Tasso, impulsively offering his friendship to a cooler man and getting the reply:
In Einem Augenblicke forderst duWas wohlbedächtig nur die Zeit gewährt.[63]
But this time Schiller's instinct had guided him aright. Körner was no Antonio, and he did not recoil even when he learned that his new friend was very much in need of money and would not be able to leave Mannheim, unless a Leipzig publisher could be found who would take over his magazine and advance a few pounds upon its uncertain prospects. This was easily arranged, for Korner was well-to-do and had himself lately acquired an interest in the publishing business of Göschen at Leipzig. Göschen took theThalia(dropping the 'Rhenish'), Schiller paid his more pressing debts, and early in April was on his way to Leipzig, panting for the new friends as the hart panteth after the water-brooks.
[Footnote 57:
A talent forms itself in solitude,A character in the flowing tide of life.—_Goethes 'Tasso'.]
[Footnote 58: Letter of May 5, 1784.]
[Footnote 59: But this performance was not the first in order of time. 'Cabal and Love' had already been played on the 13th of April by Grossmann's company at Frankfurt. Grossmann was an intelligent theatrical man, who had conceived a liking for Schiller; only he wished that the 'dear fiery man' would be a little more considerate of stage limitations.]
[Footnote 60: Moritz's critique is reprinted in J. Braun's "Schiller undGoethe im Urteile ihrer Zeitgenossen", I, 103.]
[Footnote 61: From the letter of May 5, quoted above.]
[Footnote 62: In Bulwer's translation:
"He who has plucked the one, resigned must seeThe sister's forfeit bloom:Let Unbelief enjoy—Belief must beAll to the chooser;—the world's historyIs the world's judgment doom."]
[Footnote 63:
Thou askest in a single moment thatWhich only time can give with cautious hand.]
The Boon of Friendship
Wem der grosse Wurf gelungen,Eines Freundes Freund zu sein,…Mische seinen Jubel ein.—'Song to Joy'.
Gottfried Körner, father of the more famous Theodor, was some three years older than Schiller and belonged to an opulent and distinguished family. His father was a high church dignitary, his mother the daughter of a well-to-do Leipzig merchant. The boy had grown up under austere religious influences and then drifted far in the direction of liberalism. After a university career devoted at first to the humanities and then to law, he had travelled extensively in foreign countries, and then returned to Leipzig, full of ambition but undecided as to his future course. Here, in 1778, he became acquainted with Minna Stock, the daughter of an engraver who had once been the teacher of Goethe. Stock died in 1773, leaving a widow and two daughters to battle with poverty. The elder daughter, Dora, inherited something of her father's vivacious humor and artistic talent, while the younger and handsomer, Minna, was of a more domestic temper. When Körner fell in love with the amiable Minna and wished to marry her, he met with opposition in his own family, who thought that the 'engraver's mamsell' was not good enough for him. This little touch of adversity converted him from a gentleman of leisure and a browsing philosopher into a man with a purpose in life. He set about making himself independent of the family wealth. To this end he offered himself as a privat-docent in law at the Leipzig university. When this expedient failed him through lack of students, he began to practice and soon received an appointment which took him to Dresden. This in 1783. Dresden now became his official residence, but he made frequent visits to his betrothed in Leipzig, and during one of these his memorable letter to Schiller was indited.
The other member of the quartette was Ludwig Huber, at that time the accepted lover of Dora Stock. Huber was three years younger than Schiller,—an impressionable youth, of some linguistic talent, who had his occasional promptings of literary ambition. But his soarings were mere grasshopper flights; steady effort was not his affair and he lacked solid ability. A doting mother had watched and coddled him until in practical affairs he was comically helpless. As the futility of his character became more apparent with the lapse of time, he lost the esteem of his friends, and the engagement with Dora Stock was broken off. So far as Schiller is concerned, the friendship of Huber was a passing episode of no particular importance.
Early in the year 1785 Körner lost both his parents and found himself the possessor of a considerable fortune. There was now no further obstacle to his marriage; so the time was fixed for the wedding and he set about preparing a home for his bride. Thus it came about that when Schiller arrived in Leipzig, on the 17th of April, 1785,—mud, snow and inundations had made the journey desperately tedious,—he did not at once meet the man whom he most cared to know. Huber and the two ladies, who seem to have expected a wild, dishevelled genius, were astonished to see a mild-eyed, bashful man, who bore little resemblance to Karl Moor and needed time to thaw up. But the stranger soon felt at home. He had explained to Huber minutely how he wished to live. He would no longer keep his own establishment,—he could manage an entire dramatic conspiracy more easily than his own housekeeping. At the same time he did not wish to live alone.
I need for my inward happiness [he wrote] a right, true friend who is always at hand like my angel; to whom I can communicate my budding ideas and emotions in the moment of their birth, without writing letters or making visits. Even the trivial circumstance that my friend lives outside my four walls; that I must go through the street to reach him, that I must change my dress, or the like, kills the enjoyment of the moment. My train of thought is liable to be rent in pieces before I can get to him…. I cannot live parterre, nor in the attic, and I should not like to look out upon a churchyard. I love men and the thronging crowd. If I cannot arrange it so that we (I mean the five-parted clover-leaf) may eat together, then I might resort to the table d'hôte of an inn, for I had rather fast than not dine in company.[64]
It is clear that, notwithstanding experiences which might have embittered a less genial nature, Schiller was in no danger of becoming a misanthrope. For him the throng upon the street was not the madding crowd of the English poet, nor the 'cursed race' of Frederick the Great, but an inspiration; a spectacle to keep the heart warm and foster the sense of brotherhood. He felt the need of men, however shabbily they might treat him. And men enough were at hand; for the Leipzig fair was then on, and the town was full of strangers who were eager to gape at the author of 'The Robbers', to be introduced to him, to invite him here and there. So for a week he floated with the current of casual dissipation and then, caught for an hour by a refluent eddy of lonesomeness,—four parts of the pentamerous clover-leaf were paired lovers,—he penned a missive which might have changed much in his future career: He sent to Christian Schwan a formal proposal for the hand of Margarete. With characteristic optimism he urged that fortune had at last turned favorably. He had good prospects. He proposed to work hard upon 'Don Carlos' and theThalia, and meanwhile quietly to return to medicine. Wherefore he now made bold to express a hope that he had long cherished but had not dared to utter.
The sequelae of this wooing have never been cleared up in detail. Schiller's letter as preserved bears a marginal note by Schwan to the effect that Laura in the poem 'Resignation' was no other than his eldest daughter. 'I gave her this letter to read', the note says, 'and told Schiller to apply directly to her. Why nothing came of the affair has remained a riddle to me. Happy my daughter would not have been with Schiller.' The annotation is not dated. The identification of Laura with Margarete is obviously wrong. Was Schwan's memory also at fault? Did he imagine, long after the fact, that he had actually taken what must have seemed to him, when Schiller had become a famous poet, the reasonable course to have pursued? Did he withhold the letter too long and then show it? Or was Margarete herself disinclined,—piqued perhaps by Schiller's neglect of her, or by his passion for Charlotte von Kalb? Or did Schiller's own courage fail him after he had received a hint of favor? A letter to Körner, written May 7, tells of pleasant news from Mannheim, and shortly afterward a rumor was in circulation that Schiller was about to marry a rich wife. The probability is that neither party was more than half inclined to the match. The blue flame perished naturally for lack of fuel.
Early in May, following the custom of well-to-do Leipzigers, Schiller sought refuge from the incipient summer heat of the city by taking rooms in the suburban village (such it was then) of Gohlis. Here, in a little second-story chamber, which was provided with an infinitesimal bed-room, he lived some four months,—happy months, in the main, even If the famous 'Song to Joy', which local tradition ascribes to this time and place, was in fact written a little later in Dresden. Various friends were at hand. Besides Huber there was Göschen, with whom he was soon on terms of intimacy. The Stock sisters,—'our dear girls', as he calls them in a letter to the absent Korner,—had likewise quartered themselves in Gohlis; and so had Dr. Albrecht and his wife, Sophie, the actress. These with one or two others were enough for converse and for jollity; and there were merry evenings, with wine and talk, and cards and skittles and nonsense. Though ordinarily he 'joked wi' difficulty', Schiller could be jovial enough in a company of congenial spirits. Nevertheless there was but little of the bohemian about him. That dignified seriousness which pervades all his later writings, and gave to Goethe the impression of a man dwelling habitually above the plane of vulgar things, was beginning even now to characterize him as a social being.
While living at Gohlis he received a visit from Moritz, the man who had written so savagely of 'Cabal and Love'. If ever an author has been justified in giving the cut direct to a pestilent reviewer, this was the occasion. But Schiller received his visitor with suave courtesy; an interchange of views followed and the two men parted with embraces and protestations of friendly esteem. Schiller was not a good hater, except of hate. His nature craved love and friendship. He was eager to learn of his critics and could not long cherish resentment over an honest expression of opinion. Besides this he had now come to feel that his early writings were anything but invulnerable.
Notwithstanding his promise of steady industry, Schiller accomplished but little during his sojourn at Gohlis. It was the old story: There were too many distractions, too many confusing images of what might be done. The scheme of an antidote to 'The Robbers', in the shape of a moral sequel, gradually dropped out of view, along with the medical studies. TheThalia, originally planned with reference to the public at Mannheim, refused to bear transplanting to another soil without a season of wilting. Instead of manuscript for the second number, Göschen was obliged to content himself for several months with excuses for postponement. And as for 'Don Carlos', the conception had so changed with the lapse of time that its author felt at a loss how to manage It. The play, with its wonderful pair of dreamers, was waiting for the inspiration of a real friendship at Dresden.
Long before they met in the body Schiller and Körner had given expression to their mutual trust in language of romantic enthusiasm. On the 2nd of May Körner wrote at length of his own life, character and aspirations. The letter reveals a noble nature conscious of an exceptional indebtedness to fortune and eager to pay the debt by solid work for mankind, but lacking the ability to decide and execute. Körner evidently felt that he was in some danger of becoming an intellectual Sybarite, and he hoped that Schiller's example would save him from this danger by spurring him to literary effort. In his reply Schiller expresses his admiration of a character to whom fortune's favor means not, as for most men, the opportunity of enjoyment, but the duty of more strenuous living; then he sends a jubilant Godspeed to the 'dear wanderer who wishes to accompany him in such faithful, brotherly fashion on his romantic journey to truth, fame and happiness.' The letter continues:
I now feel realized in us what as poet I but prophetically imagined. Brotherhood of spirits is the most infallible key to wisdom. Separately we can do nothing…. Do not fear from this time forth for the endless duration of our friendship. Its materials are the fundamental impulses of the human soul. Its territory is eternity; itsnon plus ultrathe Godhead.
Then, as if momentarily abashed by his own extravagance of expression, he protests that hisSchwärmerei, if such it be, is nothing but a 'joyful paroxysm anticipating our future greatness'. For his part, he would not 'exchange one such moment for the highest triumph of cold reason'. Enthusiasm, he declares, is the greatest thing in life.
The two men did not see each other until July, when a meeting was arranged at an interjacent village, to which Schiller rode out with the Leipzig friends. The next day he wrote a letter to Körner, who had returned to Dresden, describing an incident of the return journey,—a letter so full of instruction with regard to the Schiller of this period that it deserves to be quoted at some length:
Somehow we came to speak of plans for the future. My heart grew warm. It was not idle dreaming. I had a solid philosophic assurance of that which I saw lying before me in the glorious perspective of time. In a melting mood of shame, such as does not depress but rouses to manly effort, I looked back into the past, which I had misused through the most unfortunate waste of energy. I felt that nature had endowed me with powers on a bold plan, and that her intention with me (perhaps a great intention) had so far been defeated. Half of this failure was due to the insane method of my education, and the adverse humor of fate; the other and larger half, however, to myself. Deeply, my best of friends, did I feel all that, and in the general fiery ferment of my emotions, head and heart united in a Herculean vow to make good the past and begin anew the noble race to the highest goal. My feeling became eloquent and imparted itself to the others with electric power. O how beautiful, how divine, is the contact of two souls that meet on the way to divinity! Thus far not a syllable had been spoken of you, but I read your name in Huber's eyes and involuntarily it came to my lips. Our eyes met and our holy purpose fused with our holy friendship. It was a mute hand-clasp—to remain faithful to the resolution of this moment; to spur each other on to the goal, to admonish and encourage, and not to halt save at the bourne where human greatness ends…. Our conversation had taken this turn when we got out for breakfast. We found wine in the inn, and your health was drunk. We looked at each other silently; our mood was that of solemn worship and each one of us had tears in his eyes, which he tried to keep back…. I thought of the beginning of the eucharist: 'Do this as often as ye drink in memory of me.' I heard the organ and stood before the altar. Suddenly I remembered that, it was your birthday. Unwittingly we had celebrated it with a holy rite. Dearest friend, had you seen your glorification in our faces, heard it in our tear-choked voices, at that moment you would have forgotten even your betrothed; you would have envied no happy mortal under the sun. Heaven has strangely brought us together, but in our friendship it shall have wrought a miracle. Dim foreboding led me to expect much, very much of you, when I first decided to come to Leipzig; but Providence has more than fulfilled the promise, and has vouchsafed to me in your arms a happiness of which I could not form an image.
It tends to provoke a smile to read on in this letter and find It suddenly turning from such ecstasies to a straightforward confession that the writer is embarrassed for lack of ready cash. He had met with disappointments. The Mannheim people had not treated him handsomely, the subscribers to theThaliawere delinquent, and so forth. Could not Göschen be persuaded to undertake a new and authentic edition of the published plays and to advance a sum of money on the prospects? Körner's reply was prompt and characteristic. He enclosed a draft for current expenses, promised more against the time of need and bade his friend have no further solicitude about money. He knew very well, so he averred with politic delicacy, that Schiller could easily earn enough by working for money; but for a year at least he was to let himself be relieved of that degrading necessity. They would keep an account and all should be paid back with interest in the time of abundance; but for the present no more of pecuniary anxieties! Schiller, to whose brief experience in a selfish world this sort of conduct was something new, replied that he would not entrench himself in a false pride, as the great Rousseau had done on a similar occasion, but would accept the generous offer; this being the best possible expression of his gratitude. Korner was pleased to have the business settled by letter. 'I have always despised money', he wrote, 'to a degree that it disgusts me to talk about it with souls that are dear to me. I attach no importance to actions that are natural to people of our sort, and which you would perform for me were the conditions reversed.'
It was now arranged that after Körner's marriage Schiller should make his home in Dresden. The eagerly awaited migration took place in September, and Schiller entered the Saxon capital, which was to be his home for the next two years, in a flutter of joyous anticipation. The Körners quartered him in their charming suburban cottage at Loschwitz, in the loveliest region he had known since his childhood. The guest, who had seen but little of the quiet joys of domestic life and was now received on the footing of an adopted brother, felt very happy. His intercourse with Körner gave him the very kind of intellectual stimulus that he most needed. Körner was at this time the more solid character of the two. He had seen more of the world. While capable of warm affection and strong enthusiasm, he had adopted, a profession which inevitably gave to his thoughts a practical bent. Besides this he had taken up the study of Kant with great earnestness and was thereby more than ever disposed to see all questions in the white light of pure reason. He was thus the very man to pour a cool Mephistophelean spray upon Schiller's emotional fervors. One can easily imagine the general drift of the philosophical discussions that took place during the lengthening evenings of September, 1785, when we find Schiller expressing himself to the absent Huber in such language as this:
The boyhood of our minds is now over, I imagine, and likewise the honeymoon of our friendship. Let our hearts now cleave to each other in manly affection, gush little and feel much; plan little and act the more fruitfully. Enthusiasm and ideals have sunk incredibly in my estimation. As a rule we make the mistake of estimating the future from a momentary feeling of enhanced power, and painting things in the color of our transient exaltation of feeling. I praise enthusiasm, and love the divine ethereal power of kindling to a great resolution. It pertains to the better man, but it is not all of him.
But life at Loschwitz was not lived altogether in the upper altitudes of solemn philosophy. From this period dates the well-known 'Petition',—one of the few glints of playful humor to be found among Schiller's poems. He had been left alone one day with 'Don Carlos', and he found his meditations disturbed by the operations of the washerwoman. The result was a string of humorous stanzas bewailing the fate of a poet who is compelled by his vocation to fix his mind upon the love ecstasies of Princess Eboli, and listen at the same time to the swashy music of the wash-tub:
I feel my love-lorn lady's hurt,My fancy waxes hotter;I hear,—the sound of sock and shirtA-swishing in the water.
Vanished the dream—the faery chimes—My Princess, pax vobiscum!The devil take these wash-day rimes,I will no longer risk 'em.
When the Körners occupied their winter residence in the city, Schiller found rooms hard by, and was presently joined by Huber, who had secured a position in the diplomatic service. The time was now ripe for that jubilant song, more frequently set to music than any other of Schiller's poems, wherein we are introduced to a mystic brotherhood, worshiping in fiery intoxication at the shrine of the celestial priestess, Joy, whose other name is Sympathy. A mystic brotherhood; yet not an exclusive one, since the fraternal kiss is—freely offered to every mortal on the round earth who has found one soul to love. The lines glorify Joy, just as the odes to Laura had previously glorified Love, as a mystic attraction pervading all nature and leading up to God; as that which holds the stars in their course, inspires the searcher after truth, sustains the martyr and gives a pledge of immortality. Wherefore the millions are exhorted to endure patiently for the better world that is coming, when a great God will reward. Anger and vengeance are to be forgotten, and our mortal foe forgiven. After these rapturous strophes, culminating in a health to the good Spirit above, one is just a little surprised to hear the singer urge, with unabated ardor, a purely militant ideal of life,—firm courage in heavy trial, succor to the oppressed, manly pride in the presence of kings, and death to the brood of liars. A final strophe, urging grace to the criminal on the scaffold, general forgiveness of sinners and the abolition of hell, was rejected by Schiller, who later characterized the song as a 'bad poem'. The 'Song to Joy' sprang from noble sentiment and has the genuine lyric afflatus; but its author had not yet emerged from that nebulous youthful sentimentalism according to which joy, sympathy, love, friendship, virtue, happiness, God, were all very much the same thing. And the thought is a trifle incoherent. If the good Spirit above the stars is to pardon everybody, what becomes of the incentive to a militant life? Why should one strive and cry and get into a feaze about tyrants and liars?
The 'Song to Joy', with music by Körner, was published in the second number of theThalia, which, after hanging fire for months, finally appeared in February, 1786. It contained also the poems 'Radicalism of Passion' and 'Resignation', and a fresh installment of 'Don Carlos'. Of the prose contributions the most important was the story, 'The Criminal from Disgrace', later called 'The Criminal from Lost Honor'. It was based upon a true story, got from Professor Abel in Stuttgart, concerning the life and death of a notorious Suabian robber, named Schwan, who was put to death in 1760. Schiller changed the name to Christian Wolf and built out of the ugly facts a strumous tale of criminal psychology,—the autopsy of a depraved soul, as he called it. His hero is a sort of vulgarized Karl Moor; that is, an enemy of society who might have been its friend if things had not happened so and so. The successive steps of his descent from mild resentment to malignant fury, libertinism and crime, and the reaction of his own increasing depravity upon his own mind, are described in a manner which is fairly interesting from a literary point of view, whatever a modern expert criminologist might think of it. Thecruxof the ever difficult problem,—the precise division of responsibility between society and the wretch whom it spews out of its mouth,—is brought clearly into view, but without any attempt at an exact solution. The tale is not a homily, but an object-lesson designed to show how things go. It is too slight an affair to be worthy of extended comment, but it shows Schiller becoming interested in the psychological analysis of conduct. Moral goodness and badness are beginning to appear less simple concepts, and the tangle of human motive more intricate, than he had supposed.