Aesthetic Writings
Es ist gewisz von keinem Sterblichen kein gröszeres Wort gesprochen als dieses Kantische, was zugleich der Inhalt seiner ganzen Philosophie ist: Bestimme dich aus dir selbst.Letter of 1793.
From a quotation in the preceding chapter we have seen what Schiller hoped for when he resolved to grapple with the Kantian philosophy. He was in pursuit of that which would help him as a poet. He felt that a little philosophy had done him harm by quenching his inner fire and destroying his artistic spontaneity. The rules were continually coming between him and his creative impulses. His hope was that more philosophy would repair the damage by making the principles of art so clear and so familiar that they would become as second nature, and therefore cease to be felt as a clog or an interference.
This expectation, looking at the mattera priori,was reasonable enough. Looking at it retrospectively, Goethe came to the conclusion, as is well known, that Schiller's philosophic bent had injured his poetry by teaching him to 'regard the idea as higher than all nature'. Goethe thought it 'depressing to see how such an extraordinarily gifted man had tormented himself with philosophic modes of thought that could be of no use to him'.[92] But this does not tell the whole story, notwithstanding the greatness of the authority. To assert that all philosophy is always harmful to a poet would be to assert the most patent nonsense. Goethe himself at one time found help and inspiration in Spinoza, the dryest and most abstract of thinkers;[93] and after all, 'nature' comes off about as well in 'Wallenstein' as in 'Faust'. It is a question of personal endowment, of what the mind can assimilate and turn to account. There are many kinds of the poetic temper, the intellectual element blending variously with the emotional, the instinctive and the visional. For Schiller poetry was not 'somnambulism', but a very deliberate process; wherefore it was quite natural for him to expect that a season of philosophic study would be good for him. So he set out to fathom the laws of beauty; assuming, of course, that there must be such laws and that they must be, in some sense or other, laws of human nature.
To follow him critically in all the by-ways of his theorizing would require a treatise; and the treatise would be dull reading, except, peradventure, to such as might be specially interested in the history of aesthetic discussion. In the end, too, it would shed but little light upon Schiller's later plays, which were in no sense the offspring of theory and were influenced only in a very general way by their author's previous philosophical studies. To understand the poet's development it is nowise necessary to lose one's self with him in the Serbonian bog of metaphysic. On the other hand, itwillbe useful to know what the problems were that chiefly interested him, and to see how he attacked them and what conclusions he arrived at. With the soundness of his reasoning and the final value of his contributions to the literature of aesthetics we need hardly concern ourselves at all; since the scientific questions involved are differently stated and differently approached at the present time.[94]
The pre-Kantian stage of Schiller's aesthetic philosophy is of quite minor importance. He obtained his original stock of ideas at the Stuttgart academy from Ferguson's 'Institutes', as translated by Garve. In Ferguson, who rested strongly upon Shaftesbury, no line was drawn between the moral and the aesthetic domain. It was taught that all truth is beauty and that 'the most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth'. Perfection was made to depend on harmony and proportion; and moral beauty upon the harmony of the individual soul with the general system of things. Wrong action was regarded as discord, imperfection. Virtue, being a disposition toward the general harmony, necessarily meant happiness. Thoughts of this kind, mixed up with vague ideas of a pre-established harmony, constituted the staple of Schiller's early philosophizing. The identity of the good, the true and the beautiful, was for him the highest of all generalizations, though more a matter of pious emotion than of close thinking.
Nor do we observe any noteworthy change of attitude in the minor philosophic writings, such as the letters of Julius and Raphael, and the second book of 'The Ghostseer',—which he published prior to his acquaintance with Kant. In these it is always the moralist that speaks, and the great question is the bearing of skepticism on individual happiness. But by the end of his first year in Weimar the moralist had begun to retreat before the aesthetic philosopher. For the author of 'The Gods of Greece' and 'The Artists', it is evident that the beautiful has become the corner-stone of the temple. He saw before him all at once a new region that invited exploration. If art had played such a commanding role in the history of the world, it was evidently of the greatest importance to understand it. It was this feeling for the dignity of art, as the greatest of factors in human perfectibility, that led him to devote the leisure afforded by his Danish pension to a thorough study of Kantian aesthetics.
He began quite independently, as we have seen, with a course of lectures upon the theory of tragedy. The lectures were never published, but the cream of them is probably contained in two essays, 'On the Rational Basis of Pleasure in Tragic Themes', and 'On the Tragic Art', which were contributed to theNew Thaliain 1792. In the former Schiller first combats the idea that art has any higher aim than the giving of pleasure. Its aim, he argues, is not morality but 'free pleasure', the 'free' meaning subject to no law but its own. If morality is made its final aim, it ceases to be 'free'. Then the essay goes on to discuss thecruxof our feeling pleasure in painful representations. All pleasure, we read, comes from the perception ofZweckmäszigkeit, that is, the quality of being adapted to the furtherance of an end. Since man is meant to be happy and naturally seeks happiness, human suffering affects us primarily as a 'maladaptation', and so gives us pain. But in this very pain our reason recognizes a higher 'adaptation', since we are incited by it to activity. We know that it is good for us and for society; and so we take pleasure in our own pain. The total effect of tragedy depends upon the proportion in which this higher sense of adaptation is present.
The important thing to notice in this argument is that aesthetic judgments are made to depend upon concepts of the mind. The reason, with its abstractions of 'fitness' and what not, is regarded as the prior and the dominating factor. In the second of the two essays, however, we find a distinct recognition of the fact that emotional excitement may give pleasure in and of itself. Illustrations are brought in,—such as the passion for gaming and for dangerous adventure, and the general love of ghost stories and tales of crime,—which go to show that Schiller by no means overlooked the non-rational element in the pleasure afforded by tragedy. Nevertheless he seems to have attached very little importance to that element, for he goes on to observe that we know only two sources of pleasure, namely, the satisfaction of our bent for happiness (Glückseligkeitstrieb), and the fulfillment of moral laws. As the pleasure we take in acted or narrated suffering cannot proceed from the former, it must spring from the latter and do its work by gratifying the 'bent for activity'(Thätigkeitstrieb), which is a moral bent.—After a long tussle with such hazy abstractions the essayist attempts a working definition and practical discussion of tragedy. This part of the essay is still eminently readable, but need not be analyzed here. Sufficient to say that Schiller regards the excitation of 'sympathy' as the sole aim of tragedy. He has nothing to say of the Aristotelian 'fear' or 'katharsis'; in fact he did not make the acquaintance of Aristotle until 1797.[95]
It would be next in order to consider the lectures of 1792-93, but unluckily they are known only from the notes of a student.[96] As published in 1806 they bear the impress of Schiller's mind, but are too brief and summary to be counted among his works. They show that by 1793 he had come to feel at home in the field of aesthetic speculation. He had read Kant and Moritz and Burke, and was ready with his criticisms. In particular, he had found what he regarded as a weak point in the system of Kant, who had not only made no attempt to establish an objective criterion of beauty, but had summarily dismissed the whole problem as obviously hopeless. Schiller felt that, if this were so, there was no firm foundation anywhere, and all aesthetic judgments were reduced to a matter of taste,—which was of course a very unwelcome conclusion. In the belief that he had found the missing link he planned, toward the end of 1792, a treatise to be known as 'Kallias, or Concerning Beauty'. It was to take the form of a dialogue, to be written in a pleasing style, with a plenty of illustration,—merits to which Kant could lay no claim,—and to review the whole history of aesthetic theorizing.
This plan was finally given up, but a series of rather abstruse letters to Körner, beginning in January, 1793, may be regarded as preparatory studies for the contemplated treatise. Schiller's idea was, evidently, to blaze a private trail through the jungle of Kantian theory, with Körner's critical assistance, and then to return and convert the trail into an agreeable road for the general reader. In the end he chose a different form than that of the Socratic dialogue for the literary presentation of his doctrine, but what he wrote subsequently was based partly at least upon conclusions that he had reached through his correspondence with Körner; wherefore it will be well to look a little more closely, at this point, into his quarrel with the Königsberg philosophy.
As is well known, Kant placed the aesthetic faculty under the jurisdiction of the 'judgment', which he regarded as a sort of connecting link between the pure reason and the practical reason, that is, between cognition and volition. A judgment is teleologic, according to his scheme, if it implies a pre-existing notion to which the object is expected to conform; it is aesthetic when pleasure or pain is produced directly by the object itself. In the good and the agreeable we have an interest,—we will the former and desire the latter. The beautiful, on the other hand, is that which pleases without appealing to any interest (interesseloses Wohlgefalien). This is its character under the category of quality. Under that of quantity it is a universal pleasure; under that of relation, a form of adaptation (Zweckmäszigkeit), with no end present to the mind. Finally, under the fourth category—modality—it is 'necessary', being determined not by any objective criterion, but by thesensus communisof mankind, that is, their agreement in taste.
For Kant, then, the whole matter of aesthetics is a subjective matter. He does not inquire what it is that makes objects beautiful, but how it is that we 'judge' them to be beautiful. While his predecessors made the impression of the beautiful to depend upon objective attributes of form, proportion, harmony, completeness and the like, he insisted that the essence of beauty was to please without reference to any such intellectual concept whatever. His terminology was not very happy, since a judgment that has nothing to do with the intellect is not a judgment at all, but a feeling; nevertheless his system brought out clearly,—and this is perhaps his most important merit in the domain of aesthetics,—the necessity of distinguishing more sharply between the beautiful, on the one hand, and the good and agreeable, on the other. But in expounding his central doctrine, that beauty cannot depend upon a mental concept, he is not quite consistent; for he recognizes 'adaptation' as a form of beauty, and adaptation is a concept of the mind. To meet this difficulty he makes a distinction between free beauty (pulchritudo vaga) and adherent beauty (pulchritudo adhaerens), the latter being mixed up with the good or the desirable. Even a generic or a normative concept was for him fatal to the idea of pure beauty. Thus pure beauty could not be affirmed of a horse, because one inevitably has in his mind an antecedent notion as to how a horse ought to look. Again, there could be no such thing as pure beauty,—at the best only adherent beauty,—in a moral action, since a moral action does not please in and of itself. At the same time Kant held that the highest use of beauty is to symbolize moral truth, and in illustrating the possibilities of this symbolism he indulged in some rather fanciful speculations.
Now we can easily understand that Schiller, notwithstanding all his admiration of Kant and his prompt recognition of the far-reaching importance of Kant's doctrine, could not be perfectly satisfied with a philosophy which decreed that an arabesque is more beautiful than any woman, and that morality cannot be beautiful at all, except in some mystical poetic sense. Nor could he be content with Kant'ssensus communis aestheticus, which seemed to leave the beautiful finally a matter of taste. His mental attitude is clearly brought to view in a letter of February 9, 1793, to the Prince of Augustenburg. After speaking warmly of Kant's great service to philosophy, he describes thus the problem which Kant regarded as impossible of solution and which he himself, Schiller, was bold enough to attempt:
When I consider how closely our feeling for the beautiful and the great is connected with the noblest part of our being, it is impossible for me to regard this feeling as a mere subjective play of the emotional faculty, capable of none but empirical rules. It seems to me that beauty too, as well as truth and right, must rest upon eternal foundations, and that the original laws of the reason must also be the laws of taste. It is true that the circumstance of our feeling beauty and not cognizing it seems to cut off all hope of our finding a universal law for it, because every judgment emanating from this source is a judgment of experience. As a rule people accept an explanation of beauty only because it harmonizes in particular cases with the verdict of feeling; whereas, if there were really such a thing as the cognition of beauty from principles, we should trust the verdict of feeling because it coincides with our explanation of the beautiful. Instead of testing and correcting our feelings by means of principles, we test aesthetic principles by our feelings.
So then Schiller attacked his problem in the aforementioned letters to Körner and was soon able to announce his solution: Beauty is nothing else than freedom-in-the-appearance (Freiheit in der Erscheinung).
To make clear the steps by which he arrived at that formula and the wealth of meaning that it contained for him would require a fuller analysis of his argument than there is space for in this chapter. Suffice it to say that he now fully accepts the dogma of Kant that beauty cannot depend upon a mental concept,—the feeling of pleasure is the prior fact. At the same time he has an unshakable conviction that beauty must somehow fall under the laws of reason. He gets rid of thecruxby taking the aesthetic faculty away from the jurisdiction of Kant's rather mysterious 'judgment', and turning it over to the 'practical reason'. His argument is that the practical reason demands freedom, just as the 'pure' or theoretic reason demands rationality. Freedom is the form which the practical reason instinctively applies upon presentation of an object. It is satisfied when, and only when, the object is free, autonomous, self-determined. He then propounds his theory that beauty is simply an analogon of moral freedom. On the presentation of an object the practical reason (i.e., the will) may banish for the time being all concepts of the pure reason, may assume complete control and ask no other question than whether the object is free, self-determined, autonomous. If, then, the object appears to be free, to follow no law but its own, the practical reason is satisfied; the effect is pleasurable and we call it beauty. Schiller is careful to point out that it is all a question of appearance: the object is not really free,—since freedom abides only in the supersensual world,—but the practical reason imputes or lends freedom to it. Hence beauty is freedom in the appearance.
In a letter of February 23, 1793, he applies his dogma to an exposition of the relation between nature and art. The problem of the artist in the representation of an object, so the theory runs, is to convey a suggestion of freedom, that is, of not-being-determined-from-without. This he can only do by making the object appear to be determined from within, in other words, to follow its own law. It must have a law and obey it, while seeming to be free. The law of the object is what is disclosed by technique, which is thus the basis of our impression of freedom. Starting from Kant's saying that nature is beautiful when it looks like art, and art beautiful when it looks like nature, Schiller gives a large number of concrete illustrations of his theory. Thus a vase is beautiful when, without prejudice to the vase-idea, it looks like a free play of nature. A birch is beautiful when it is tall and slender, an oak when it is crooked; the shape in either case expressing the nature of the tree when it follows nature's law. 'Therefore', he concludes his illustrations, 'the empire of taste is the empire of freedom; the beautiful world of sense being the happiest symbol of what the moral world should be, and every beautiful object about me being a happy citizen who calls out: Be free like me.'
It did not escape our theorist that his hard-won criterion of beauty was after all, apparently, an idea of the reason. He was however prepared to meet this difficulty and promised to do so in a future letter. But the aesthetic correspondence with Körner was not continued beyond February. The project of the 'Kallias' continued for some time longer to occupy Schiller's mind, but a fresh attack of illness intervened, and when he was again able to work he turned his mind to an essay upon 'Winsomeness and Dignity' (Anmut und Würde). It was written in May and June, 1793, and printed soon afterwards in theNew Thalia. In this essay we can observe a growing independence of thought and an amazing gift for the analysis of subtle impressions. In the main it is lucid enough, especially when one calls in the aid of the preceding letters to Körner; but portions are hard reading. To give the gist of it in a few words is next to impossible, because it is so largely taken up with superfine distinctions in the meaning of words for which our language has at best but rough equivalents.
It will be recalled that Kant had denied pure beauty to the human form, on the ground that the human form expresses the moral dignity of human nature, which is an idea of the reason. Schiller was piqued by this dictum to testhistheory of beauty on the human form. He begins, in a manner fitted to make old Homer smile, with a rationalizing account of the girdle of Venus,—the girdle which Venus lends to Juno when the latter wishes to excite the amorous desire of Jove. Venus, we are told, is pure beauty as it comes from the hand of nature. Her girdle makes her 'winsome'. So winsomeness is something distinct from beauty; something transferable, movable. It is then further defined as beauty of motion; as the special prerogative of man; as the element of beauty which is not given by nature but is produced by the object. The essay then goes on to make a distinction between architectonic and technical beauty. The former is defined as a beautiful presentation of the aims of nature, the latter as referring to the aims themselves. The aesthetic faculty is concerned with architectonic beauty. In contemplation of an object it isolates the appearance and is affected by that alone, irrespective of any ideas of purpose or adaptation. At the same time the reason imputes freedom to the object, and when the object is a human form, this imputed freedom, whereby the object seems to assert its own autonomous personality, this which is superadded to the beauty that nature creates by the law-governed adaptation of means to ends, is winsomeness.—All of which seems to mean substantially this: That while Pygmalion's statue was still ivoryitwas beautiful; but when it became a woman with winsome waysshewas winsome.
Having demonstrated to his satisfaction that beauty is really compounded of two elements, first the sensuous pleasure caused by the play of personality, and secondly the rational gratification caused by the idea of adaptation to an end, Schiller takes up the questions of moral beauty and of the ideal of character. He deprecates Kant's strenuous insistence upon the categorical imperative of duty. A man, he urges, must be free; and the slavery of duty is no better than any other slavery. Virtue is inclination to duty, and the ideal is to be found in the perfect equipoise of the sensuous and the rational nature; in other words, when 'thou shalt' and 'I would' pull steadily and harmoniously in the same direction. So he defines 'dignity' (Würde) as the expression of a lofty mind, just as winsomeness is the expression of a beautiful soul. Control of impulses by moral strength is intellectual freedom, and dignity is the visible expression of this freedom. Dignity is manifested rather in suffering ([Greek: pathos]), winsomeness in behavior ([Greek: ethos]). Each acts as a check upon the other. We demand that virtue be winsome and that inclination be dignified, and where winsomeness and dignity are present in harmonious equipoise in the same person, there the expression of humanity is complete.
In the essay just spoken of reference is made more than once to a contemplated 'Analytic of the Beautiful', which was to clear up this and that. Instead of attempting a treatise, however, Schiller chose to go on settling his account with Kant through the medium of contributions to theNew Thalia. Those published immediately (1793-4) were the essay 'On the Sublime', which included a special chapter 'On the Pathetic'; and 'Scattered Reflections on Various Aesthetic Subjects'. Two other papers of kindred import, dating from this period, were not published until 1801. These were: 'On the Artistic Use of the Vulgar and the Low', and a second disquisition 'On the Sublime'.
Following Kant Schiller defines the sublime as the impression produced by an object which excites in man's sensuous nature a feeling of weakness and dependence, and at the same time in his rational nature a feeling of freedom and superiority. He objects, however, to the Kantian nomenclature. For the two kinds of sublime which Kant called the mathematical and the dynamic, he proposes the names of the theoretical and the practical; meaning by the former that which tends to overawe the mind, by the latter that which tends to overawe the feeling. Then follows a long and juicelessBegriffszergliederung, which may be passed over as containing little that is of importance for the understanding of Schiller's individuality. At last he comes to the subject of tragic pathos, as the most important phase of the practical-sublime. Here he lays down the dogma that the final aim of art is the representation of the supersensuous. The essence of tragic pathos is declared to be the representation of moral superiority under the stress of suffering. The hero's sufferings must seem to be real that he may obtain due credit for his moral triumph. In connection with this thought Schiller takes occasion to deride the genteel sufferers of the French classic tragedy and to commend the Greeks for their fidelity to nature. At the same time he utters his word of warning to those poets who think to gain their end merely by the spectacle of great suffering. The sensuous, he Insists, has in itself no aesthetic value; it is the moral resistance that counts, and the suffering is needed only to show that there really was something to resist. The latter part of the essay is directed against those who would try the creations of the poet by the standards of the moral judgment. It is argued that the moral and the aesthetic spheres of interest are separate and distinct. The poet is concerned with the latter. What he needs for his purpose is the manifestation of strength; whether the strength is put forth to a good or an evil purpose is, in itself, a matter of indifference. The poet cannot serve two masters.
In all these discussions of the sublime and the pathetic, et cetera, Schiller exhibits a pathetically sublime faith in the possibility of settling the questions at issue by the analytic method. He writes as if the human mind were composed of air-tight compartments, wherein the various operations of reason, understanding, taste, feeling and what not, are carried on under immutable laws growing out of the nature of man. His philosophy is also dualistic. He regards 'man' as consisting of two parts joined like the Siamese twins. The one part, sensuous man, which is like unto the animals, is a part of 'nature'; the other part, the rational man, which is dowered with the birth-right of 'freedom', is outside of nature and above it. The untenableness of this conception has become since Schiller's time increasingly evident. Moreover, we have learned to look upon all things under the aspect of development and to know that man's reason, like the rest of him, is very much the creature of time and place. This being so, one finds it difficult, nowadays, to read the philosophic lucubrations of Schiller with that patience which their well-meant seriousness really deserves. Indeed he himself seems to have felt all along that there was some danger of his being carried too far away into the region of barren speculation; wherefore it was necessary, as he thought, not only to present his ideas in a popular form, but also to prove their relevancy to the practical concerns of human life.
It was with this thought in mind that he finally began, instead of the 'Kallias', a series of letters to his benefactor, the Prince of Augustenburg. In a long letter of July 13, 1793, he explained his point of view. The political dream of the century, he declared, that is, the dream of recreating society upon a foundation of pure reason, had come to naught. 'Man' had shown himself unfit for freedom. His chains removed, he stood revealed as a barbarian and a slave,—the slave of unruly passion. And this notwithstanding all that the century had done for the enlightenment of his mind! Evidently the need of the hour and of the future was not so much enlightenment of the mind as discipline of the feelings. In a number of subsequent letters, admirable in style and spirit, Schiller set forth his theory of aesthetic education and his vision of the great good to be accomplished by it in the redemption of mankind from the dominion of the grosser passions. Objections were duly considered, especially the discouraging fact that, historically, aesthetic refinement has too often coincided with supineness of character and moral degeneracy. This consideration made it an important part of the problem to show how the dangers of aesthetic culture could best be counteracted.
The letters to the Danish prince formed the basis of the 'Letters on Aesthetic Education', which were published in 1795 in theHoren, and constitute the ripest and most pleasing expression of Schiller's aesthetic philosophy. In the first ten of the 'Letters' he discusses the spirit of the age, for the purpose of showing that some sort of educational process is needed in order to fit mankind for the high calling of the freeman. The problem is to transform the state-ruled-by-force into a state-ruled-by-reason. To this end man must learn to resist and subdue the two inveterate enemies of his nobility, namely, the tyranny of sense which leads to savagery, and the inertness of mind which leads to barbarism, Schiller defines the savage as a man whose feelings control his principles, the barbarian as a man whose principles destroy his feelings. At present, he declares, the mass of men still oscillate between savagery and barbarism, but the mancomme il fautmust establish and preserve a perfect equipoise between his sensuous and his rational nature. Whither shall he look for help? The state cannot aid him, for it treats him as if he had no reason; nor can philosophy save him through the mere cultivation of the reason, for it treats him as if he had no feelings. His only redeemer is the aesthetic sense, the love of beauty.
The 'Letters' then take up the desperate task of showing how the aesthetic sense can do this wonderful work. Descending to the lowest nadir of abstraction,—Schiller calls it rising to the highest heights,—he brings up two ultimate instincts or bents of mankind, to which he gives the appalling names of the 'thing-bent' and the 'form-bent' (SachtriebandFormtrieb). The former impels to a change of status, the latter to the preservation of personality. The one is satisfied with what is mutable and finite, the other demands the immutable and the rational. To harmonize these two instincts, to take care that neither gets the better of the other or invades the other's territory, is the problem of culture. For a driver of the ill-matched team Schiller calls in theSpieltrieb, or play-bent, which is only a new name for the aesthetic faculty. His idea is that in the moment of aesthetic contemplation the sensuous and the rational instinct both find their account. In the act of escaping from the serious pull of thought and feeling to a mental state which satisfies both without succumbing completely to either, he finds an analogy to the act of playing. At the same time he is careful to point out that this kind of play is different from the sports of common life. As he uses the word, it means surrender to the illusion of art. Play is thus the symbol of the highest self-realization. Only in playing is man completely man.
The last ten letters are devoted to what Schiller, following Kant, calls 'melting beauty' (_schmelzendeSchönheit), which is opposed to 'energizing beauty' (energische Schönheit). The former is the natural corrective to the emotional excess which leads to savagery, while the latter (the sublime, the stirring,) is the antidote to the mental inertness which leads to barbarism. It is admitted that the aesthetic state is perfectly neutral so far as concerns the influencing of the will. A good work of art should leave us in a state of lofty serenity and freedom of mind. If we find ourselves influenced to a particular course of action, that is a sure sign that the art was bad. Nevertheless,—and here lies the kernel of the whole discussion, so far as it bears upon education,—the aesthetic state is a necessary stage in the restoration of imperilled freedom. It is valuable morally simply because itisneutral ground. When a man is under the too exclusive domination of either principles or feelings, he is in danger of becoming a slave, and needs to be pulled back to the neutral belt of freedom, in order that he may start afresh. 'In a word', says Schiller, 'there is no other way of making the sensuous man rational except by first making him aesthetic.' Finally the 'Letters' take up the evolution of man from the state of savagery and attempt to show argumentatively and in detail how his progress has been determined by the development of his aesthetic sense.
Such are the 'Letters on Aesthetic Education', which Schiller regarded, in the year 1795, as a tract for the times. Years agone he had made Karl Moor talk of poisoning the ocean; now he himself was thinking to sweeten a poisoned ocean with a bottle of aesthetic syrup. We see that the gist of the whole matter is simply this: That sanity and refinement are pressing needs; that good art makes for these things and in so doing makes indirectly for progress in right living and right thinking. This looks like a painfully small result to have been reached by such long and laborious logic-chopping; so that one is reminded of Carlyle's cynical observation that the end and aim of the Kantian philosophy "seem not to make abstruse things simple, but to make simple things abstruse". It is to be remarked, however, that the real value of the 'Letters' is not to be found in the logic-chopping, for which their author apologizes again and again; not in the "dreadful array of first principles, the forest huge of terminology and definitions, where the panting intellect of weaker men wanders as in pathless thickets and at length sinks powerless to the earth, oppressed with fatigue and suffocated with scholastic miasma",[97]—but in the incidental flashes of luminous and suggestive comment.
Having himself conquered the Kantian dialect and learned to write it, Schiller had little patience with those who supposed that philosophic truth could and should be set forth in the easy manner of a fireside yarn. It was to free his mind on this subject that he published, in one of the early numbers of theHoren, an essay 'On the Necessary Limits of the Beautiful'. Here the burden of his thought is that the philosopher, aiming at truth, must not yield to the seduction of trying to write beautifully. His concern is with fact and logic; imagination and feeling have no place in his domain. The lure of beauty may relax the mind and endanger truth, just as it may relax the will and endanger morality. This last thought contained the germ of his further essays, 'On the Dangers of Aesthetic Culture' and 'On the Moral Benefit of Aesthetic Culture'. These, however, are only an amplification of ideas contained in the 'Letters'.
There remain for consideration, to complete our survey of Schiller's philosophical writings, his short essay on Matthison's poems and his long disquisition upon 'Naive and Sentimental Poetry'. In the review he discusses the subject of landscape poetry, thus touching upon a question that had occupied Lessing in the 'Laokoön'. But instead of arguing like Lessing that detailed description of objects is necessarily out of place in poetry, Schiller defends it as capable in a high degree of giving pleasure. The poetic effectiveness of a description he finds to consist, first, in the truthfulness of the description; secondly, in its power, analogous to that of music, to excite vague emotion; and finally, in its power to awaken ideas by the law of association. He distinguishes between 'true' nature and 'actual' nature. We arrive at true nature when we take away from actual nature whatever is accidental, peculiar or unnecessary. This process is precisely what is described in one of the 'Kallias' letters as 'idealization'.
To idealize an object is, then, in Schiller's vocabulary, not to beautify it, or to make it in any way other than it is, but to portray the 'idea' of it, that is, its essential truth, apart from all that is accidental or individual. He lays down the general rule that poetry is only concerned with true (or ideal) nature in this sense; never with actual (or historical) nature. 'Every individual man', he declares, 'is by just so much less a man as he is an individual; every mode of feeling is by just so much less necessary and purely human as it is peculiar to a particular person. The grand style consists in the rejection of all that is accidental and the pure expression of the necessary.'
Of the essay upon 'Naïve and Sentimental Poetry', contributed to theHorenin 1795, the first part is devoted to the 'Naïve', which is defined as nature in felt contrast with art. To be naïve an action must not only be natural but must put us to shame by suggesting a contrast with our own sophisticated standards. From this it follows that our pleasure in the naïve, being connected with an idea of the reason, is not purely aesthetic, but partly moral. Thenaïvetéof children appeals to us because they are what we were and what we should again become. They represent an ideal, a theophany. Though we may look down upon the childish, we can only look up to the childlike. A naïve action always implies a triumph of nature over art: if it is unintentional (naïve of surprise) we are amused; if deliberate (naïve of character) we are touched. Genius is always naïve. Both in its works and in social intercourse, it manifests the simplicity and directness of nature. It is modest because nature is modest; but cares nothing for decency, for decency is the offspring of corruption. It is sensible, but not shrewd. It expresses its loftiest and deepest thoughts with naive grace: they are divine oracles from the mouth of a child.
These thoughts duly expounded, the essay goes on to consider the modern man's feeling for nature. This results, according to Schiller, from our imputingnaïvetéto the non-rational world. We are conscious of having wandered away from the state of innocence, happiness and perfection. 'Nature' represents this state to our imaginations; it is the voice of the mother calling us back home, or whispering to us of boundless happiness and perfection. Poetry which expresses this boundless longing for the ideal is 'sentimental', while that which reflects nature herself, in some definite part or phase, is 'naïve'. The naïve poetisnature; the sentimental poet seeks a lost nature. The Greeks are prevailingly naïve, the moderns prevailingly sentimental, but neither in any exclusive sense. The words are to be understood as expressing only a mode of feeling. The same poet, the same poem, may be naïve at one moment and sentimental at another. All sentimental poetry, then, is concerned with the disparity or contrast between reality and the ideal. If the poet is mainly interested in the real, we have, in the broad sense, satire, which may be pathetic or humorous. If he dwells more upon the ideal, we have elegiac poetry—elegiac in the narrower sense, if the ideal is conceived as a distant object of longing, idyllic if it is portrayed as a present reality. The second part of the essay is devoted to a review of the sentimental poets of modern Germany.
In the third part the naïve and sentimental poets are contrasted. The former, Schiller contends, is concerned with the definite, the latter with the infinite. From the realist we turn easily and with pleasure to actual life; the idealist puts us for the moment out of humor with it. The one follows the laws of nature, the other those of reason. The one asks what a thing is good for, the other whether it is good. Withal, however, Schiller is careful to insist that even the naïve poet, the realist, is properly concerned only with true nature, and not with actual nature. Everything that is,—for example, a violent outbreak of passion,—is actual nature; but this is not true human nature, because that implies free self-determination. True human nature can never be anything but noble. 'What disgusting absurdities', exclaims Schiller,—and the words might well be taken to heart by some of our modern naturalists—'have resulted both in criticism and in practice from this confusion of true with actual nature! What trivialities are permitted, yea even praised, because unfortunately they are actual nature!' It is a part of Schiller's theory that the true realist and the sane idealist must finally come together on common ground.
[Footnote 92: Eckermanns "Gespräche", under date of November 14, 1823.]
[Footnote 93: He also admitted that he himself had profited from the study of Kant; cf. Eckermann, under date of April 11, 1827.]
[Footnote 94: Schiller's aesthetic writings, and especially his relation to Kant, have been much discussed in recent years. For a list of the more important works consult the Appendix.]
[Footnote 95: An oft-repeated assertion to the contrary, which goes back to Karoline von Wolzogen, "Schillers Leben", Achter Abschnitt, is contradicted by a letter of Schiller to Goethe, written May 5, 1797.]
[Footnote 96: They are reprinted in Sämmtliche Schriften. X, 41 ff.]
[Footnote 97: Carlyle's "Life of Schiller", page 137 (edition of 1845).]
The Great Duumvirate
Nun kann ich aber hoffen, dasz wir, so viel von dem Wege noch übrig sein mag, in Gemeinschaft durchwandeln werden, und mit um so gröszerem Gewinn, da die letzten Gefährten auf einer langen Reise sich immer am meisten zu sagen haben.Letter of 1794.
The coupled names of Goethe and Schiller denote a literary epoch as well as a peculiarly inspiring personal friendship. What a vista opens before the mind's eye when one thinks of all the influence that went out from them into the wide world during the nineteenth century! The visitor to Weimar who goes to look at Rietschel's famous statue in front of the theater has a sensation like that of standing at the source of a mighty river. Of course the men and their time have been greatly idealized; like the sculptor, the imagination of posterity has lifted them above the level of the earth, joined their hands and given them the pose of far-seeing literary heroes. We think of each as increased by the whole strength of the other. As Herman Grimm puts it algebraically, the formula is not G + S, but G(+ S) + S(+ G).[98]
And all this hits an essential truth, albeit the student of the documents—the letters and journals of the duumvirs, and of their friends and enemies—has great difficulty at times to imagine himself in an atmosphere of heroism. No nation, no public life of any account; a complete lack of interest, apparently, in many matters that now bulk very large in the minds of men; a small theater, equal to none but very modest demands; a few engravings and plaster-casts and paintings—many of them very poor—to serve as a basis for theories of art; a little optical apparatus, a few minerals and plants and bones, to aid in the advancement of science; everything material on a small scale,—this was Weimar a hundred years ago. Truly a restricted outlook upon this spacious world as it appears to us to-day!
And then the duumvirs had their struggle with the infinitely little, and they fussed over this and that. This is especially true of Goethe. His journals produce upon the reader now and then not so much an impression of glorious many-sidedness as of precious time wasted in futile puttering. But who shall dare to say that it was so in reality? The genius of life tells every great man what he can do, and it is for posterity to accept him and understand him as he was, without complaint and without sophistication. What Goethe and Schiller did in the midst of all their other doings, was to set their stamp upon the culture of their time; to create a new ideal of letters and of life, and to enrich their country's literature with a number of masterpieces which have since furnished food and inspiration to countless myriads. This is quite enough to justify a perennial curiosity concerning the details of their alliance.
For six years the two men, though living as neighbors with many friends and many interests in common, had steadily held each other aloof. That they did so was Goethe's fault, at least in the beginning. We may be very sure that a friendly advance from him would have melted Schiller's animosity as the sun melts April snow. But he did not say the word. He looked upon Schiller as the spokesman of a new and perverse generation that knew not Joseph; and so he went his own way, serenely indifferent to the personality of the man whose talent he had recognized by helping him to a Jena professorship. He paid some attention, it is true, to Schiller's philosophic writings, but what he read did not altogether please him. When the essay upon 'Winsomeness and Dignity' came out, it seemed to him that Schiller, in his enthusiasm for freedom and self-determination, was inclined to lord it all too proudly over mother Nature. Goethe was no less interested in 'ideas' than Schiller, but he had not the same fondness for abstract reasoning from mental premises. His starting-point was always the external fact, and he regarded ideas as possessing a sort of objective reality. His homage was paid to nature and the five senses; Schiller's to the deductive reason.
Nevertheless, the whole trend of Schiller's aesthetic speculations brought him steadily nearer to Goethe's way of thinking. His intense Hellenism; his insistence upon the immense importance of art as an element of culture; his fervid championship of art for art's sake; his practical identification of the ideal with the typical; his doctrine of genius in its relation to abstract dogma, and above all his great earnestness, as of one striving with all his powers towards the better light,—this and much more could not fail to meet Goethe's approval. And then came the great project of theHoren, which was to unite all the best writers of Germany in a common effort for the advancement of letters and the elevation of the public taste. This was an opportunity not to be despised, for Goethe was at last beginning to be weary of his isolation at Weimar. Although at heart very desirous of exerting a large influence, he had well-nigh lost touch with the literary public. For four years he had done nothing worthy of his great name. People took little interest in his scientific studies, his 'Grosz-Cophta', and his 'Citizen-General'. He felt the need of rehabilitating himself. So when he received Schiller's polite invitation anent theHoren, he accepted with alacrity; declaring himself ready not only to contribute, but to serve on the editorial committee. And a few days later,—it was on June 28, 1794, before he had seen Schiller or exchanged further letters with him,—he wrote to Charlotte von Kalb that 'since the new epoch Schiller too was becoming more friendly and trustful towards us Weimarians'; whereat he rejoiced, 'hoping for much good from intercourse with him'. So we see that, as the matter then lay in Goethe's mind, it was Schiller who was the distant and distrustful party.
Thus the way was all prepared for the 'Happy Event', as Goethe called it in an oft-quoted bit of reminiscence published many years later. It chanced that he and Schiller were both present at a meeting of naturalists in Jena. As they left the room together Schiller let fall a remark to the effect that such piecemeal treatment of nature as they had been listening to was dull business for the layman. Goethe replied that there were experts who could not approve it either. Then he proceeded to explain his own views. They reached Schiller's house in earnest conversation, and Goethe went in to continue his demonstration with the aid of a drawing—probably of a typical plant. Schiller listened with seeming comprehension and then shook his head, saying: 'But that is not an experience; that is an idea.' Goethe was disappointed, perplexed. All his labor had gone for naught, and the awful chasm was still yawning. He replied that he was glad if he had ideas without knowing it and could actually see them with his eyes, Schiller defended himself suavely as a good Kantian, and the men separated, each in a docile mood with respect to the other.
Herman Grimm will have it that Schiller now entered upon a crafty campaign for the conquest of Goethe; and really the facts give some color to such a view, albeit, as we have seen, the battle was more than half won before a shot was fired. Schiller had his magazine very much at heart, and besides that he had always been a very sincere and ungrudging admirer of Goethe's poetic genius. Very likely he looked upon him as a weakling in philosophy. To talk of seeing ideas with the bodily eye! Evidently there was no profit in bombarding such a man with syllogisms. But it might be useful to show that one understood him. So Schiller sat him down and wrote out, in the form of a letter, a little essay upon Goethe's individuality, attributing to him a wonderful intuition whereby he saw in advance all that philosophy could prove:
Minds of your sort seldom know how far they have advanced, and how little reason they have to borrow from philosophy, which can only learn from them…. For a long time, though at a considerable distance, I have been watching the course of your mind and noticing with ever-renewed admiration the way that you have marked out for yourself. You seek the necessary in nature, but by the very hardest path,—a path which weaker minds would take good care not to attempt. You take all nature together, in order to get light upon the particular. In the totality of her manifestations you hope to find the rationale of the individual…. Had you been born a Greek or even an Italian, and thus surrounded from infancy with exquisite scenery and idealizing art, your way would have been infinitely shortened, perhaps rendered unnecessary…. As it was, having been born a German, you had to refashion the old inferior nature that was thrust upon your imagination, after the better pattern which your imagination had created; and this could only be done by means of leading principles. But this logical direction which the reflecting mind is compelled to take does not tally well with the aesthetic direction of the creating mind. So you had another task; just as you passed previously from intuition to abstraction, you had now to convert concepts back into intuitions, and thoughts into feelings; for only through these can genius create.
For Goethe, whose nature really craved friendship hardly less than Schiller's, there was something very grateful in this frank homage combined with rare perspicacity. He saw that Schiller understood him or was at least concerned to understand him. With all their differences they were spiritual congeners, and much might be hoped for from this new connection. So he sent a very cordial reply to the man who had thus 'with friendly hand struck the balance of his existence'; averring that he too dated a new epoch from their meeting in Jena; expressing the hope that they might soon find opportunity for a further interchange of views and that, having mutually cleared up their past course of thinking, they might proceed on their way together. A few weeks later Schiller spent two weeks as Goethe's guest in Weimar, where long discussions, spun out on one occasion from noon to midnight, begot a perfect understanding and laid the foundation of a lifelong friendship. It was a friendship based upon mutual respect and mutual need, full of high advantage on both sides and cherished loyally to the end.
Between then and now many and many a writer has compared Goethe with Schiller and undertaken to reckon up the balance of their respective merit. The task is not easy, even though the world is now well agreed that Goethe's was the rarer genius. No doubt he, much more than Schiller, was destined to be a bringer of light to the coming century; but the immense prestige of his name is due partly to the happy fate that gave him a long life and invested his old age with the glamour of literary kingship. If we compare the actual production of the two men during the eleven years of their association, it is not at all clear that the palm should be given to Goethe. The five plays of Schiller, with the 'Song of the Bell', and the best of his shorter poems, will bear comparison very well, in the aggregate, with 'Wilhelm Meister', 'Hermann and Dorothea', the 'Natural Daughter' and those portions of 'Faust' which were written at this time. Unquestionably Goethe at his best was a far greater poet than Schiller; but he was less steadily at his best, and his artistic conscience was more lax than Schiller's. He envisaged life more largely and more truly, and he wrote with his eye upon the object. His nature inclined to placid contemplation; he was no orator, though something of a preacher. He did not care so much to stir the depths of feeling as to inform and liberalize. In his imaginative work he let himself gomit holdem Irrenand preferred to avoid artificial surprises and stagy contrasts. Wherefore his work is the more illuminative, the more suggestive,—he is the poet of the literary class. Schiller, on the other hand, was an orator who never lost sight of the effect he wished to produce. He worked more intensely, more methodically, and was less dependent upon mood. He is thus the poet of those who care less for delicacy of workmanship than for sonorous diction, elevated sentiment and telling effects. There is room in the world for both kinds of endowment.
It is quite probable that Goethe and Schiller would sooner or later have come together in a friendly relation even if theHorenhad never been thought of; and in that case their friendship would have lacked the militant tinge that it presently took on. It was the magazine that leagued them together as allies against the forces of Philistia and made Thuringia the storm-center of a new literary movement. But for this it would probably never have occurred to any one to dub them 'the Dioscuri'.
Prior to the appearance of the first number, in January, 1795, the new journal had been well advertised. Cotta was prepared to spend money on it freely; the contributors were to be handsomely paid, and twenty-five of the best known writers in Germany had promised their cooperation. There was every reason to hope for a dashing success; and to make assurance doubly sure Schiller arranged for 'cooked' reviews of theHorento be paid for by its publisher. But when the time came to launch his enterprise the hopeful editor found himself left very much in the lurch. 'Lord help me, or I perish' he wrote ruefully to Körner, on December 29; 'Goethe does not wish to print his 'Elegies' in the first number, Herder also prefers to wait, Fichte is busy with his lectures, Garve is sick, Engel lazy and the others do not answer.'
And so it came about that the first number of theHorenwas largely made up of rather abstruse reading. Schiller did not fully realize that the philosophy on which he had been feeding with satisfaction for three years was not a palatable diet for the general literary public. He regarded his own 'Letters on Aesthetic Education' as a model of lucid popular exposition,—as indeed they are in comparison with Kant. But the number was further freighted with a deep-diving article by Fichte, while Goethe's poetic 'Epistle' in hexameters, and the beginning of his 'Conversations of German Emigrés ', though in a lighter vein, were not of thrilling interest to seekers after entertainment. The public, which had expected something different, was disappointed; and when succeeding numbers brought further brain-racking profundities, there was a large ebullition of disgust. Cotta began to write of complaints and cancelled subscriptions; and ere long it looked as if theHorenwould prove a big fiasco.
Schiller, who should have been inured by this time to the consequences of editorial misjudgment, was disgruntled, vexed. He began to feel that the German public was an indolent, long-eared beast that needed the education of the scourge rather than of aesthetic letters. He made some effort, it is true, to enliven his columns with more entertaining matter, but the abstruse, in prose and verse, continued to preponderate. By autumn he was minded to give up the whole undertaking, but was persuaded by Cotta to go on. Meanwhile he had begun to grow weary of theorizing and to feel the homesickness of the poet. 'Wilhelm Meister', as it began to issue from the press, excited his unbounded enthusiasm. 'I cannot tell you', he wrote to his new friend,
I cannot tell you how painful it is to me oftentimes to turn from a work of this character to philosophy. There everything is so bright, so living, so harmonious and humanly true; here everything is so strict, so rigid, so very unnatural…. This much is certain: the poet is the only true human being, and the best philosopher is only a caricature beside him.
So, in the summer of 1795, he began once more to poetize,—'not venturing out upon the high sea of invention', as he expressed it, 'but keeping close to the shore of philosophy'. In other words he wrote a number of philosophic poems, partly for theHorenand partly for the new poetic 'Almanac' that he had undertaken to edit, in addition to theHoren. This return to poetry was a joy to him, notwithstanding the ill health which confined him to the house and cut him off from the exhilarations of the external world. It must never be forgotten that those philosophic poems are the effusions of a lonely thinker who was compelled to draw his inspiration from within, and was not entirely unaware of the fetters he had forged for himself by his long addiction to philosophy.
There was, however, one more subject, of literary as well as philosophic interest, which he was minded to treat before turning his back finally upon the arid wastes of theory;—the subject of realism versus idealism, or, as he decided to phrase it, of naïve and sentimental poetry. This essay, published in 1796, was briefly analyzed in the last chapter. It marks the end of Schiller's one-sided glorification of the Greeks. In more than one passage he comes to the rescue of the modern poet—the sentimentalist—as the poet of the infinite, of the ideal. His contention is that while the realist may be the more admirable in a limited sphere, the idealist has a larger sphere, and his perfection is a higher thing. This attempt of Schiller's to describe, in a scientific spirit, the different kinds of artistic endowment, and to do full justice to all, grew naturally out of his intercourse with Goethe. He admired Goethe more and more. The fifth book of 'Meister' produced in him a 'veritable intoxication'; yet its quality was strikingly unlike that of 'Werther' or 'Iphigenie', and totally different from anything that he himself had done or could possibly do. Perhaps he may have been further influenced by A.W. Schlegel's sympathetic papers upon Dante, which had been published in theHorenand which revealed to him a new poetic genius of the highest order, yet not at all Homeric. So he wrote his famous disquisition,—next to Lessing's 'Laokoön' the most thoughtful and the most influential piece of criticism produced anywhere in the eighteenth century,—and endeavored to make it as readable as possible. Goethe, who read the manuscript in November, 1795, wrote of it thus:
Since this theory treats me so well, nothing is more natural than that I should approve its principles and that its conclusions should seem to me correct. I should be more distrustful, however, if I had not at first found myself in an attitude of opposition to your views; for it is not unknown to you that, from an excessive predilection for the ancient poets, I have often been unjust to the modern. According to your doctrine I can now be at one with myself, since I no longer need to contemn that which, under certain conditions, an irresistible impulse compelled me to produce; and it is a very pleasant feeling to be not altogether dissatisfied with one's self and one's contemporaries.
Thus the two men were drawn closer together in mutual sympathy and appreciation, and found in each other more and more a bulwark against the whips and scorns of hostile criticism. Of such criticism there was no lack. TheHorenwas making enemies rapidly and had become, as Schiller put it, a veritableecclesia militans. One Jakob in Halle made an assault upon Schiller's aesthetic writings. Dull old Nicolai in Berlin complained of the ravages of Kantism in German literature. Pious souls like Stolberg were scandalized by the lubricity of Goethe's 'Elegies' and 'Wilhelm Meister'. The famous philologist, Wolf, pounced violently upon one of Herder's Homeric essays. Schiller had now fallen out with his old friend Göschen, who was a center of contemptuous opposition at Leipzig. And Goethe, too, had his quarrel with the world: he felt absurdly sore over the neglect by scientific men of his optical theories in opposition to Newton. Friendly voices were scarcely heard anywhere. There was little opportunity for indulging that pleasant emotion of 'being satisfied with one's contemporaries'.
And so it came to pass that the two friends waxed wroth and determined to strike back. At first they thought of a withering review in theHoren, but this idea was given up in favor of another. Goethe had taken a great fancy to the ancient elegiac meter and for some time past it had been his favorite form of poetic expression. Schiller, originally a hater of the hexameter, had caught the fever from Goethe, and used the elegiac form in a number of poems. In December, 1795, Goethe suggested that they amuse themselves by making epigrams, in the style of Martial's 'Xenia', upon the various journals against which they had a grudge, devoting a distich to each. His plan was that each should make a large number; then they would compare, select the best and publish them in the second volume of the 'Almanac'. Schiller was captivated by the idea, and 'Xenia' now became the order of the day. It was soon decided not to restrict them to the offensive journals, but to take a shot wherever there was a mark. Both conspirators took great delight in the proposedTeufelei,—it would be such sport to stir up the vermin and hear them buzz. They gave the milder 'Xenia' pet names such as 'jovial brethren', 'little fellows', 'teasing youngsters', while the harsher ones were likened to stinging insects, or to the foxes of Samson:
You with the blazing tails, away to Philistia, foxes!Spoil the flourishing crops, crops of paper and ink.
As Goethe was still preoccupied with 'Wilhelm Meister', it happened at first that Schiller was the more active in the production of these 'kitchen presents', especially such as had pepper in them. With the lapse of time Goethe's share increased. The two were frequently together, for days or weeks at a time, and the mass of Xenia grew rapidly. They determined to swell the number to a thousand and to give the collection a sort of artistic completeness; to make it, that is, a sort of general confession of faith. They agreed furthermore that they would publish the epigrams as a joint production and treat their separate authorship as an inviolable secret. As a matter of fact, some of them really were joint productions. One would suggest the idea or the title, and the other write the verses; or one write the hexameter and the other the pentameter.
During the first half of 1796 Schiller wrote little else than Xenia. By the arrival of summer the joint output amounted to nearly a thousand, but less than half that number found their way into the famous 'Xenia Almanac' of 1797. Of these the targets were legion and the merit various. Some few of them were very good, others little short of atrocious, particularly in the matter of form. As for the general mass, their piquancy is not so great as to superinduce in the reader of to-day a dangerously violent cachinnation. Neither Goethe nor Schiller can be credited with a large vein of sparkling wit. Some of the Xenia are far-fetched and operose, while others sound rather vacuous. The form of the monodistich was in itself a safeguard against diffuseness, but not against the equal peril of inanity.
It would be impossible here to do more than glance at the personalities involved in this rather inglorious squabble. Many of the Xenia were personal pin-pricks. Thus several were directed against the musician Reichardt, who, as editor of two journals, had shown strong sympathy with the Revolution. Goethe, the courtier, and Schiller, who had no democratic proclivities, came to the defense of the gentry thus;
Aristocratical dogs will growl at beggars, but mark youHow little democrat Spitz soaps at the stockings of silk.
And again:
Gentlemen, keep your seats! for the curs but covet your places,Elegant places to hear all the other dogs bark.
A whole broadside was aimed at the garrulous Nicolai, who deserved a better fate. As the champion of lucidity and reasonableness he stood in reality for a very good cause,—no preachment more necessary in Germany then or since. But in his old age he had fallen a prey to thecacoethes scribendi;he insisted upon having his say about everything, yet his stock of ideas had long since run out. So he became the bogey of the Weimar-Jena people. The Xenia assailed him with frank brutality, thus:
What is beyond your reach is bad, you think in your blindness,Yet whatever you touch, that you cover with dirt.
Other objects of attack were the brothers Stolberg, for their narrow religiosity; Friedrich Schlegel, for his bumptious self-conceit; and various small fry for this and that peccadillo.[99]
A large part of the epigrams, however, were of the 'tame' variety, that is, stingless outgivings of a jocund humor, or grave pronunciamentos upon religion, philosophy, art and so forth. The authors did not wish to appear before the world as mere executioners, but as men with a positive creed, comprising things to be loved as well as things to be hated. They pleaded for sanity, clearness and moderation, and frowned upon the fanatics, hypocrites, vulgarians and cranks. The well-known distich entitled 'My Creed' is representative of many which were directed against the spirit of blind partisanship:
Which religion is mine? Not one of the many you mention.'Why', do you venture to ask? Too much religion, I say.
Even virtue was to be cherished temperately,—without too much talk about it:
Nothing so hateful as Vice, and all the more to be hated,Since because of it, now, Virtue is really a need.
And so on in endless variety, on all sorts of subjects. Further illustration shall be dispensed with, seeing that the ancient distich is a poetic form for which the English language has, at the best, but little sympathy. In German it goes much better; and for Schiller in particular, with his natural love of antithesis, it proved a convenient setting for his opinions.
The effect of the Xenia was to set literary Germany agog with curiosity. Two editions of the 'Almanac' were quickly bought up and a third became necessary. There was infinite guessing, speculating, interpreting, and among those who had been hit there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, A very few friends of Goethe and Schiller, such as Körner, Humboldt and Zelter, watched the commotion with solemn glee. Others were shocked or grieved at such a mode of warfare. Wieland mildly regretted that he had come off well in the Xenia, seeing that many other honest people had fared so badly. Herder was much more outspoken and declared that he hated the whole accursed species. The replies, protests and counter-attacks were legion, some in brutal belligerent prose, others in more or less clever Anti-xenia. Some of the latter were grossly abusive, and even indecent; a few contained very pretty home-thrusts, as when in allusion to a well-known poem of Schiller's he was advised to trouble himself less about the 'Dignity of Women' and more about his own;[100] or where his 'Realm of Shades' was declared to be so very shadowy that one could not see the shades for the shadow.[101] But the best of all perhaps was the oft-quoted gem:
In Weimar and in Jena they make hexameters like this,But the pentameters are even more excellent.[102]
Historians of German literature are probably right in believing that the Xenia fusillade produced on the whole a salutary effect, although many of the objects of attack seem, at this date, to have been hardly worth the ammunition. But the explosion cleared the muggy air like a thunder-storm and denned many an issue that it was well to have defined. Writers of every ilk were shaken out of their somnolence and compelled to look in the direction of Weimar; and when it was a question of taking sides, where was the force that could hope to make headway against the combined strength of Goethe and Schiller? The odds were too great; there was nothing to do but to grumble a little and then—acquiesce in the new leadership. As for the Dioscuri, they had the wisdom to see that one sharp campaign was enough; that for the rest they could further the good cause much more effectively by admirable creation than by peppery epigrams. Prod a man for his bad taste or his foolish opinions, and you harden his heart and provoke him to retaliate; give him something to admire, and you make him a friend in spite of himself.
In the autumn of 1796 Schiller addressed himself to 'Wallenstein', and from that time on dramatic poetry continued to be his chief concern. He led a quiet, laborious life, battling often with disease and depression, but sustained by high resolution and finding joy enough in domestic affection and the friendship of Goethe. TheHorenlasted three years and then died an easy death by the mutual consent of editor and publisher. Of the 'Almanac' five numbers appeared, beginning with 1796. In these small annual volumes a large part of Schiller's best poems were originally published. His work upon the 'Almanac' was usually done in the summer, other activities being then temporarily laid aside. From, the time of his connection with Cotta, who took over the 'Almanac' after the first number had appeared, Schiller usually had money enough for his needs. But his needs were very modest, the demands of social life in Jena—or even in Weimar under the fiercer but still not very fierce light of the court—being extremely simple. He had not to reckon with the Persian apparatus that disturbed the soul of Horace.
The further relations of Goethe and Schiller, so far as they have any important bearing upon the works of the latter, will be touched on in subsequent chapters. Here let it be remarked in passing that their friendship was not, as it has sometimes been represented, a mere relation of master and disciple. It was rather a spiritual copartnership of equals, each recognizing the other's strength, respecting the other's individuality and eager to profit by discussion. In the beginning, it is true, Schiller looked up to Goethe as to a great and wise teacher who was to give everything and receive little or nothing in return. Every one will recall his saying that he was a mere poetic scalawag in comparison with Goethe. But it is worth remembering that this remark was made after the reading of 'Wilhelm Meister',—a work which, notwithstanding his admiration, he criticised very sharply. And the justice of his criticism was admitted by Goethe; whereupon Schiller drily observed in a letter to Körner that Goethe was a man who could be told a great deal of truth. As time passed, Schiller dropped the tone of humble docility and became more and more independent. If he deferred to the superior wisdom of Goethe in dealing with the plastic arts and natural science, there were other matters,—philosophy, poetic theory and the dramatic art,—upon which he felt that he could speak as one having authority. And his authority was respected by Goethe, especially after the completion of 'Wallenstein'. Goethe saw that Schiller, along with his poetic gift, possessed a practical dramatic talent,—an eye for effect and a power of appealing to the general heart,—such as he, Goethe, could by no means claim for himself. And so the nominal director of the Weimar theater leaned heavily upon his friend and looked to him as the best hope of the German drama.
[Footnote 98: "Goethe", einundzwanzigste Vorlesung.]
[Footnote 99: All the extant Xenia, nine hundred and twenty-six in number,—many of them previously unknown,—were published in 1893 by Erich Schmidt and Bernhard Suphan, with copious introduction and notes, as Volume 8 of the "Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft" in Weimar.]
[Footnote 100:
Lasz doch die Frauen in Ruhe mit ihrer Würde, und sorgeFür die deine, mein Freund. Ihre bewahren sie schon.]
[Footnote 101:
Nun, was denkt ihr vom Reiche der Schatten? Es schattet und schattetDasz man vor Schatten umher nichts von den Schatten erkennt.]
[Footnote 102:
In Weimar und in Jena macht man Hexameter wie der;Aber die Pentameter sind doch noch excellenter.]