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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller
+by Calvin Thomas
+
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+Title: The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller
+
+Author: Calvin Thomas
+
+Release Date: December, 2005  [EBook #9403]
+[This file was first posted on September 29, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE LIFE AND WORKS OF FRIEDRICH SCHILLER ***
+
+
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Thomas Berger, and the
+Project Gutenbert Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND WORKS
+
+OF
+
+FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
+
+By
+
+Calvin Thomas
+
+Professor in Columbia University
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To
+
+Eleanor Allen Thomas
+
+
+  Herzelibe frouwe min,
+    Got gebe dir hiute und iemer guot!
+  Kunde ich bas gedenken din,
+    Des haete ich willeclichen muot.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+I have wished to give a trustworthy account of Schiller and his works on
+a scale large enough to permit the doing of something like justice to
+his great name, but not so large as in itself to kill all hope and
+chance of readableness. By a trustworthy account I mean one that is
+accurate in the matters of fact and sane in the matters of judgment.
+That there is room for an English book thus conceived will be readily
+granted, I imagine, by all those who know. At any rate Schiller is one
+of those writers of whom a new appreciation, from time to time, will
+always be in order.
+
+I have thought it important that my work, while taking due note of
+recent German scholarship, should rest throughout on fresh and
+independent study. Accordingly, among all the many books that have aided
+me more or less, I have had in hand most often, next to the works of
+Schiller, the collection of his letters, as admirably edited by Jonas.
+Among the German biographers I owe the most to Minor, Weltrich and
+Brahm, for the period covered by their several works; for the later
+years, to Wychgram and Harnack. Earlier biographers, notably Hoffmeister
+and Palleske, have also been found helpful here and there.
+
+Of course I have not flattered myself, in writing of a man whose
+uneventful career has repeatedly been explored in every nook and cranny,
+with any hope of adding materially to the tale of mere fact. One who
+gleans after Minor and Weltrich and Wychgram will find little but chaff,
+and I have tried to avoid the garnering of chaff. One of my chief
+perplexities, accordingly, has been to decide what to omit. If there
+shall be those who look for what they do not find, or find what they did
+not expect, I can only say that the question of perspective, of the
+relative importance of things, has all along received my careful
+attention. Thoroughness is very alluring, but life is short and some
+things must be taken for granted or treated as negligible. Otherwise one
+runs a risk, as German experience proves, of beginning and never
+finishing.
+
+My great concern has been with the works of Schiller--to interpret them
+as the expression of an interesting individuality and an interesting
+epoch. It is now some twenty years since I first came under the
+Weimarian spell, and during that time my feeling for Schiller has
+undergone vicissitudes not unlike those described by Brahm in a passage
+quoted at the very end of this volume. At no time, indeed, could I
+truthfully have called myself a "Schiller-hater", but there was a time,
+certainly, when it seemed to me that he was very much overestimated by
+his countrymen; when my mind was very hospitable to demonstrations of
+his artistic shortcoming. Time has brought a different temper, and this
+book is the child of what I deem the wiser disposition.
+
+For the poet who wins the heart of a great people and holds it for a
+century is right; there is nothing more to be said, so far as concerns
+his title to renown. The creative achievement is far more precious and
+important than any possible criticism of it. This does not mean that in
+dealing with such a poet the critic is in duty bound to abdicate his
+lower function and to let his scruples melt away in the warm water of a
+friendly partisanship; it means only that he will be best occupied,
+speaking generally, in a conscientious attempt to see the man as he was,
+to "experience the savor of him", and to understand the national
+temperament to which he has endeared himself.
+
+This, I hope, defines sufficiently the spirit in which I have written.
+In discussing the plays I have endeavored to deal with them in a large
+way, laying hold of each where it is most interesting, and not caring
+to be either systematic or exhaustive. Questions of minute and
+technical scholarship, such as have their proper place in a learned
+monograph, or in the introduction and notes to an edition of the text,
+have been avoided on principle. Everywhere--even in the difficult
+thirteenth chapter--my aim has been to disengage and bring clearly into
+view the essential, distinctive character of Schiller's work; and where
+I have had to fear either that the professional scholar would frown at
+my sins of omission, or that the mere lover of literature would yawn at
+my sins of commission, I have boldly accepted the first-named horn of
+the dilemma.
+
+New York, Nov. 6, 1901.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Parentage and Schooling
+
+Captain Schiller and his wife--Sojourn at Lorch--Traits of
+Friedrich's childhood--Removal to Ludwigsburg--Karl Eugen, Duke of
+Württemberg--Impressions from court, theater and school--Poetic
+beginnings--Duke Karl's change of heart--Franziska von Hohenheim--The
+Academy at Solitude--Schiller at the Academy--School exercises--From law
+to medicine--Early poems and orations--An ardent friend--Books read and
+their effect--Dramatic plans--Dissertation rejected--Genesis of 'The
+Robbers'--Morbid melancholy--Release from the Academy--Value of the
+education received.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The Robbers
+
+General characterization--The Schubart story--Schiller and
+Schubart--The contrasted brothers--Comparison with Klinger and
+Leisewitz--Influence of Rousseau and Goethe--Unlike earlier attacks
+on the social order--Outlawry in the eighteenth century--The
+noble bandit in literature--Karl Moor's crazy ambition--His
+sentimentalism--Schiller's sympathy with his hero--Character of
+Franz--Influence of Shakespeare--Ethical attitude of Franz--A dull
+villain--Character of Amalia--The subordinate outlaws--A powerful
+stage-play--Defects and merits.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The Stuttgart Medicus
+
+Schiller's position at Stuttgart--Personal appearance--Convivial
+pleasures--Visits at Solitude--Revision of 'The Robbers' for
+publication--The two prefaces--Reception of 'The Robbers'--A stage-version
+prepared for Dalberg--Changes in the stage-version--Popularity of
+the play--Medicus and poet--The 'Anthology' of 1782--Character
+of Schiller's youthful verse--Various poems considered--The songs
+to Laura--Poetic promise of the 'Anthology'--Journalistic
+enterprises--Schiller as a critic of himself--Quarrel with Duke
+Karl--The Swiss imbroglio--The duke implacable--Flight from Stuttgart.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa
+
+General characterization--The historical Fiesco--Influence of
+Rousseau--The conflicting authorities--Fact and fiction in the play--Not
+really a republican tragedy--Character of Fiesco--Of Verrina--Schiller's
+vacillation--Fiesco's inconsistency--Lack of historical lucidity--The
+changed conclusion--Weak and strong points--Fiesco and the Moor--The
+female characters--Extravagant diction.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The Fugitive in Hiding
+
+Reception at Mannheim--An elocutionary failure--'Fiesco' rejected by
+Dalberg--Refuge sought in Bauerbach--A new friend--Relations
+with outside world--Interest in Lotte von Wolzogen--Literary
+projects and employments--Beginnings of 'Don Carlos'--Friendly
+overtures from Dalberg--Work upon 'Louise Miller'--Jealousy and
+resignation--Flutterings of the heart--Departure from Bauerbach
+with new play completed.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Cabal and Love
+
+General characterization--English Beginnings of bourgeois
+tragedy--'Miss Sara Sampson'--Development of the tragedy
+of social conflict--Love in the age of sentimentalism--Rousseau
+and the social conflict--Wagner and Lenz--Diderot's 'Father
+of the Family'--Gemmingen's 'Head of the House'--Evolution
+of Schiller's plan--Debt to predecessors--Hints from Wagner
+and Lessing and 'Siegwart'--Weakness of the tragic conclusion--Character
+of Louise--Her religious sentimentalism--Fearsomeness--Lack of
+mother-wit--A cold heroine--Character of Ferdinand--Sentimental
+extravagance--Father and son--Prototypes of President von Walter.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Theater poet in Mannheim
+
+Mannheim in 1783--Dalberg and his theater--The situation on Schiller's
+arrival--Letter to Frau von Wolzogen--Contract with Dalberg--Illness and
+disappointments--Pecuniary troubles--'Fiesco' on the stage--Triumph of
+'Cabal and Love'--Critical notices--Discourse on the theater--Contract
+with Dalberg not renewed--Disappointments and distractions--Relations to
+women--Charlotte von Kalb--The poems 'Resignation' and 'Radicalism of
+Passion'--A friendly message from Leipzig--Project of the _Rhenish
+Thalia_--Honored by the Duke of Weimar--Unhappiness and longing for
+friendship--Escape from Mannheim.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The Boon of Friendship
+
+Gottfried Körner and the Stock sisters--Huber--Schiller's arrival in
+Leipzig--A proposal of marriage--Sojourn at Gohlis--Schiller and
+Körner--An enthusiastic letter--Körner's helpfulness--With the new
+friends in Dresden--Influence of Körner--A poetic 'Petition'--The 'Song
+to Joy'--Contributions to the _Thalia_--Quickened interest in
+history--Letters of Julius and Raphael--'The Ghostseer'
+begun--Unwillingness to leave Dresden--A dramatic skit--Affair with
+Henriette von Arnim--From Dresden to Weimar.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Don Carlos
+
+Poetic merit of 'Don Carlos'--Its slow genesis--Schiller's
+explanation--St. Réal's 'Dom Carlos'--The original plan--Ripening
+influences--Decision in favor of verse--Change of attitude toward Carlos
+and Philip--Influence of Körner--Completion of the play--Character of
+Prince Carlos--The Marquis of Posa--Posa and the king--Posa's heroics in
+the last two acts--Character of Philip--General estimate.
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Anchored in Thuringia
+
+Weimar in Schiller's time--Renewal of relations with Charlotte von
+Kalb--First meeting with Herder and Wieland--Visit to Jena--Pleased with
+Weimar--New literary pursuits--Visit to Meiningen and introduction to
+the Lengefeld family--Charlotte von Lengefeld--A summer idyl--Awakening
+interest in the Greeks--First meeting with Goethe--Appointed professor
+at Jena--Bitterness toward Goethe--Love, betrothal and marriage--'The
+Gods of Greece'--'The Artists'--'The Ghostseer'--The 'Letters on Don
+Carlos'--Review of 'Egmont'--'The Misanthrope'--Translations from
+Euripides and other minor writings.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Historical Writings
+
+Schiller's merit as a historian--Genesis of 'The Defection of the
+Netherlands'--The author's self-confidence--His readableness--Freedom
+the animating idea--Attitude toward past and present--Position as a
+historian--Too little regard for the fact--First lecture at
+Jena--Influence of Kant--Theory of the Fall--The 'Historical
+Memoirs'--Inchoate Romanticism--'History of the Thirty Years'
+War'--Skill in narrating--Conception of the war as a struggle for
+freedom--View of Gustav Adolf.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Dark Days Within and Without
+
+A happy year--Disastrous illness in January, 1791--Feud with
+Bürger--Interest in epic poetry--Second illness and desperate
+plight--Help from Denmark--Resolution to master Kant's philosophy--Visit
+to Suabia--Enterprise of the _Horen_--Attitude toward the
+Revolution--Sympathy for Louis XVI.--Prediction of Napoleon--Made a
+citizen of the French Republic--Disgust with politics--Program of the
+_Horen_--Genius and vocation.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Aesthetic Writings
+
+Value of philosophy to a poet--Goethe's opinion--Schiller's early
+philosophizing--The essays on Tragedy--Plan of 'Kallias'--Kant's
+aesthetics--Schiller's divergence from Kant--Beauty identified with
+freedom-in-the-appearance--Explication of the theory--Essay on
+'Winsomeness and Dignity'--Essay on 'The Sublime'--Remarks on
+Schiller's general method--Letters to the Duke of Augustenburg--The
+'Letters on Aesthetic Education'--Some minor papers--Essay on 'Naïve
+and Sentimental Poetry'.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The Great Duumvirate
+
+Goethe and Schiller--Six years of aloofness--Beginning of intimacy--The
+'happy event'--Campaign for the conquest of Goethe---Schiller, on
+Goethe's genius--A friendly relation established--Comparison of the
+duumvirs--Fortunes of the _Horen_--Return to poetry--Significance of the
+essay on 'Naive and Sentimental Poetry'--Goethe on Schiller's
+theory--Enemies assail the _Horen_--The Xenia planned in retaliation--A
+militant league formed--The fusillade of the Xenia--Effect of the
+Xenia--Return to the drama--Further relations of Goethe and Schiller.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Later Poems
+
+General character of Schiller's poetry--'The Veiled Image at Sais'--'The
+Ideal and Life'--Idealism of Goethe and Schiller--'The Walk'--Poems of
+1796--'Dignity of Women'--'The Eleusinian Festival'--The
+ballads--Attitude toward the present--Lyrics of thought--'The Maiden's
+Lament'--Popularity of Schiller's cultural poems--'The Song of the
+Bell'--Latest poems.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Wallenstein
+
+General characterization--Preparatory studies--Difficulties of the
+subject--Study of Sophocles and Aristotle--Decision in favor of
+verse--Completion of the play--'Wallenstein's Camp'--The historical
+Wallenstein--Schiller's artistic achievement--Character of
+the hero--His impressiveness--Effect of contrast--Octavio
+Piccolomini--Max Piccolomini--Max and Thekla--Lyrical passages--Absence
+of humor and irony.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Mary Stuart
+
+Genesis of the play--Schiller's removal to Weimar--'Mary Stuart'
+characterized--The fundamental difficulty--Unhistorical
+inventions--Effect of these--The meeting of the queens--Character of
+Elizabeth--Romantic tendencies--Mary conceived as a purified
+sufferer--Pathos of the conclusion--Ugly portrait of Elizabeth
+accounted for--The historical background--Dramatic qualities--Character
+of Mortimer.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+The Maid of Orleans
+
+Variety in Schiller's work--Genesis of 'The Maid of Orleans'--Schiller's
+Johanna--Miraculous elements--Attitude of the critics--Difficulty of the
+subject--Johanna's tragic guilt--Her supernatural power--The scene with
+Lionel--Schiller's poetic intention--A drama of patriotism--The
+subordinate characters--Excellence of the composition.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+The Bride of Messina
+
+Genesis of the play--General characterization--Disagreement of the
+critics--Relation to Sophocles--Substance of the plot--Ancients and
+moderns--Fate and responsibility--Schiller's invention--Unnaturalness of
+the action--Strange conduct of Don Manuel, Beatrice and the
+mother--Lavish use of silence--Schiller's contempt of realism--Don
+Cesar's expiatory death the real tragedy--Use of the fate idea--Apologia
+for the chorus--Poetic splendor.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+William Tell
+
+'Tell' and 'The Robbers'--General characterization--Genesis--Attention
+to local color--An interruption--Success on the stage--The theme of
+'Tell'--A drama of freedom--The play intensely human--Goodness of the
+exposition--Departures from usual method--Character of Tell--The
+apple-shooting scene--The scene in the 'hollow way'--Tell's long
+soliloquy--Introduction of Parricida--Bertha and Rudenz.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+The End.--Unfinished Plays and Adaptations
+
+A Russian theme chosen--Berlin negotiations--Work on 'Demetrius'--'The
+Homage of the Arts'--Last illness and death--The unfinished
+'Demetrius'--The historical Dmitri--The original plan modified--Character
+of the hero--Poetic promise of 'Demetrius'--'Warbeck'--'The Princess
+of Celle'--'The Knights of Malta'--Other unfinished plays--Adaptation
+of 'Egmont'--Of 'Nathan the Wise'--Of 'Macbeth'--Of 'Turandot'--Interest
+in the French drama--Adaptations from the French.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+The Verdict of Posterity
+
+Schiller a national poet--His idealized personality--Estimate of
+Dannecker--Of Madame de Staël--Goethe's 'Epilogue'--Controversy over
+Goethe and Schiller--Attitude of Schlegel--Of Menzel--Goethe's
+loyalty to his friend--The mid-century epoch--Unreasonable
+criticism--Interesting prophecy of Gervinus--Schiller's aesthetic
+idealism often misunderstood--Schiller as a friend of the
+people--Partisan misconceptions--The enthusiasm of 1859--Epoch of the
+philologers--Present opinion of Schiller--Conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+LIVE AND WORKS OF SCHILLER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Parentage and Schooling
+
+  Nur, Vater, mir Gesänge.
+
+_From the poem 'Evening', 1776._
+
+When the Austrian War of Succession came to an end, in the year 1748, a
+certain young Suabian who had been campaigning in the Lowlands as army
+doctor was left temporarily without employment. The man's name was
+Johann Kaspar Schiller; he was of good plebeian stock and had lately
+been a barber's apprentice,--a lot that he had accepted reluctantly when
+the poverty of a widowed mother compelled him to shift for himself at an
+early age. Having served his time and learned the trade of the
+barber-surgeon, he had joined a Bavarian regiment of hussars. Finding
+himself now suddenly at leisure, after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, he
+mounted his horse and rode away to the land of his birth to visit his
+relations. Reaching Marbach--it was now the spring of 1749--he put up at
+the 'Golden Lion', an inn kept by a then prosperous baker named Kodweis.
+Here he fell in love with his landlord's daughter Dorothea, a girl of
+sixteen, and in the course of the summer married her. He was at this
+time about twenty-six years old. He now settled down In Marbach to
+practice his crude art, but the practice came to little and Kodweis soon
+lost his property in foolish speculation. So the quondam soldier fell
+out of humor with Marbach, went into the army again, and when the Seven
+Years' War broke out, in 1756, he took the field with a Württemberg
+regiment to fight the King of Prussia. He soon reached the grade of
+lieutenant, in time that of captain; fought and ran with his countrymen,
+at Leuthen, floundered at peril of life in the swamps of Breslau and
+otherwise got his full share of the war's rough-and-tumble. From time to
+time, as the chance came to him, he visited his young wife in Marbach.
+
+These were the parents of the poet Schiller, who was born November 10,
+1759, ten years after Goethe, ten years before Napoleon. It is worth
+remembering that he who was to be in his way, another great protestant
+came into the world on an anniversary of the birth of Lather. He was
+christened Johann Christoph Friedrich.
+
+The childhood of little Fritz unfolded amid conditions that must have
+given to life a rather somber aspect. After the close of the war Captain
+Schiller moved his little family to Lorch, a village some thirty miles
+east of Stuttgart, where he was employed by the Duke of Württemberg in
+recruiting soldiers for mercenary service abroad. This hateful business,
+which was in due time to form a mark for one of the sharp darts of
+'Cabal and Love', seems to have been managed by him with a degree of
+tact and humanity; for he won the esteem of all with whom he had to do.
+At home, being of a pious turn and setting great store by the formal
+exercises of religion, he presided over his household in the manner of
+an ancient patriarch. Between him and his son no very tender relation
+ever existed, though the poet of later years always revered his father's
+character. The child's affections clung rather to his mother, whom he
+grew up to resemble in form and feature and in traits of character. She
+was a woman of no intellectual pretensions, but worthy of honor for her
+qualities of heart.[1] Of education in the modern sense she had but
+little. Her few extant letters, written mostly in her later years, tell
+of a simple and lovable character, tenderly devoted to husband and
+children. Tradition credits her with a certain liking for feeble poets
+of the Uz and Gellert strain, but this probably did not amount to much.
+Her sphere of interest was the little world of family cares and
+affections. Her early married life had been darkened by manifold sorrows
+which she bore at first with pious resignation, becoming with the flight
+of time, however, more and more a borrower of trouble.[2] At Lorch her
+trials were great, for Captain Schiller received no pay and the family
+felt the pinch of poverty. Here, then, was little room for that merry
+comradeship, with its _Lust zum Fabulieren_, which existed between the
+boy Goethe and his playmate mother at Frankfurt-on-the-Main.
+
+In after-time, nevertheless, Schiller was wont to look back upon the
+three years at Lorch as the happiest part of his childhood. The village
+is charmingly situated in the valley of the Rems, a tributary of the
+Neckar, and the region round about is historic ground. A short walk
+southward brings one to the Hohenstaufen, on whose summit once stood the
+ancestral seat of the famous Suabian dynasty, and close by Lorch is the
+Benedictine monastery in which a number of the Hohenstaufen monarchs are
+buried. Here was the romance of history right at hand, but we can hardly
+suppose that it meant much to the child. The Middle Ages were not yet in
+fashion even for adults, and little Fritz had other things to think of.
+With his sister Christophine, two years older than himself, he was sent
+to the village school, where he proved so apt a pupil that his parents
+became ambitious for him and sent him to the village pastor, a man named
+Moser, to be taught Latin. The child looked up to his august teacher and
+resolved to become himself some day a preacher of the word. Not much is
+known of Moser, but to judge from his namesake in 'The Robbers', where
+all passions and qualities are raised to the _n_th power, he must have
+been a man for whom the reproof of sinners was not only a professional
+duty but a personal pleasure. The plan of making their Fritz a man of
+God was eagerly embraced by the pious parents and became a settled
+family aspiration.
+
+The boy himself was very susceptible at this time to religious
+impressions. Sister Christophine carried with her through life a vivid
+memory of his appearance at family worship, when the captain would
+solemnly intone the rimed prayers that he himself had composed for a
+private ritual. 'It was a touching sight', she says in her
+recollections[3] of this period, 'to see the reverent expression on the
+child's winsome face. The pious blue eyes lifted to heaven, the light
+yellow hair falling about his forehead, and the little hands folded in
+worship, suggested an angel's head in a picture.' From the same source
+we learn that Fritz was very fond of playing church, with himself in the
+role of preacher. Another reminiscence tells how he one day ran away
+from school and, having unexpectedly fallen under the paternal eye in
+his truancy, rushed home to his mother in tearful excitement, got the
+rod of correction and besought her to give him his punishment before his
+sterner parent should arrive on the scene. Still another, from a
+somewhat later period, relates how the mother was once walking with her
+children and told them a Bible story so touchingly that they all knelt
+down and prayed. This is about all that has come down concerning
+Schiller's early childhood. He may have seen the passion-play at Gmünd,
+but this is uncertain. In any case it only added one more to the
+religious impressions that already dominated his life.
+
+Toward the end of the year 1766, having exhausted his private resources
+at Lorch, Captain Schiller applied for relief and was transferred to
+duty at Ludwigsburg, where the family remained under somewhat more
+tolerable conditions for about nine years. At Ludwigsburg he began to
+interest himself in agriculture and forestry. In 1769 he published
+certain 'Economic Contributions', which exhibit him as a sensible,
+public-spirited man, eagerly bent upon improving the condition of
+Suabian husbandry. In 1775, having become known as an expert in
+arboriculture, he was placed in charge of the ducal forests and
+nurseries at Castle Solitude, and there he spent the remainder of his
+days in peaceful and congenial activity. He died in 1796.
+
+For the impressionable Fritz one can hardly imagine a more momentous
+change of environment than this which took him from a quiet rural
+village to the garish Residenz of a licentious and extravagant prince.
+Karl Eugen,[4] Duke of Württemberg, whom men have often called the
+curse, but the gods haply regard as the good genius, of Schiller's
+youth, came to power in 1744 at the age of sixteen. The three preceding
+years he had spent at the Prussian court, where Frederick the Second
+(not yet the Great) had taken a deep interest in him and tried to teach
+him serious views of a ruler's responsibility. But the youth had no
+stomach for the doctrine that he was in the world for the sake of
+Württemberg. Having come to his ducal throne prematurely, through the
+influence of the King of Prussia, he began well, but after a few years
+shook off the restraints of good advice and entered upon a course of
+autocratic folly that made Württemberg a far-shining example of the
+evils of absolutism under the Old Régime. Early in his reign he married
+a beautiful and high-minded princess of Bayreuth, but his profligacy
+soon drove her back to the home of her parents. Then a succession of
+mistresses ruled his affections, while reckless adventurers in high
+place enjoyed his confidence and fleeced the people at pleasure. To
+gratify his passion for military display he began to raise unnecessary
+troops and to hire them out as mercenaries. In 1752 he agreed with the
+King of France, in consideration of a fixed annual subsidy, to supply
+six thousand soldiers on demand. The money thus obtained was mostly
+squandered upon his private vices and extravagances. On the outbreak of
+the Seven Years' War the French king demanded the promised troops; and
+so it came about that the Suabian Protestants were compelled, in
+defiance of public sentiment, to make war against their co-religionists
+of Prussia. In the inglorious campaigns which followed, the Duke of
+Württemberg cut a rather sorry figure, but criticism only exasperated
+him. He promised another large body of troops to France, and the men
+were raised by harsh measures of conscription. The Estates of the duchy
+protested against this autocratic procedure, and, as Stuttgart sided
+with the opposition, the duke determined to punish his unruly capital by
+removing his court to Ludwigsburg, where an ancestor of his, early in
+the century, had founded a city to match Versailles and serve the
+express purpose of a 'Trutz-Stuttgart'.
+
+The removal of the court to Ludwigsburg took place in 1764, three years
+before the Schiller family found a home there. From the first a purely
+artificial creation, the little city had been going backwards, but it
+now leaped into short-lived glory as the residence of a prodigal prince
+who was bent on amusing himself magnificently. The existing ducal palace
+was enlarged to huge dimensions and lavishly decorated. Great parks and
+gardens were laid out, the market-place was surrounded with arcades, and
+an opera-house was built, with a stage that could be extended into the
+open air so as to permit the spectacular evolution of real troops.
+Everything about the place was new and pretentious. The roomy streets
+and the would-be gorgeous palaces, flaunting their fresh coats of yellow
+and white stucco, teemed with officers in uniform, with blazing little
+potentates of the court and with high-born ladies in the puffs and
+frills of the rococo age. Here Karl Eugen gave himself up to his dream
+of glory, which was to rival the splendors of Versailles. He maintained
+a costly opera, procuring for it the most famous singers and dancers in
+Europe, and squandered immense sums upon 'Venetian nights' and other
+gorgeous spectacles. For all this barbaric ostentation the people of
+Württemberg were expected to foot the bills. 'Fatherland!' said his
+Highness, when a protest was raised on behalf of the country, 'Bah! I am
+the fatherland.'
+
+Here it was, then, that the young Friedrich Schiller got his first
+childish impressions of the great world; of sovereignty exercised that a
+few might strut in gay plumage while the many toiled to keep them in
+funds; of state policies determined by wretched court intrigues; of
+natural rights trampled upon at the caprice of a prince or a prince's
+favorite. There is no record that the boy was troubled by these things
+at the time, or looked upon them as anything else than a part of the
+world's natural order. It is a long way yet to President von Walter.
+
+The house occupied by Captain Schiller at Ludwigsburg was situated close
+by the theater, to which the duke's officers had free admission. As a
+reward of industry little Fritz was allowed an occasional evening in
+front of the 'boards that signify the world'. The performances, to be
+sure, were French and Italian operas, wherein the ballet-master, the
+machinist and the decorator vied with one another for the production of
+amazing spectacular effects. People went to stare and gasp--the language
+was of no importance. It was not exactly dramatic art, but from the
+boy's point of view it was no doubt magnificent. At any rate it made him
+at home in the dream-world of the imagination, filled his mind with
+grandiose pictures and gave him his first rudimentary notions of stage
+effect. We are not surprised to learn, therefore, that in his home
+amusements playing theater now took the place of playing church. Sister
+Christophine was a faithful helper. A stage could be made of big books,
+and actors out of paper. When the puppet-show was outgrown, the young
+dramatist took to framing plays for living performers of his own
+age,--with a row of chairs for an audience, and himself as manager and
+protagonist.
+
+Christophine relates that her brother's fondness for this sort of
+diversion lasted until he was thirteen years old. In the mean time,
+however, his chosen career was kept steadily in view. He was sent to the
+Latin school, from which, if his marks should be good, he might hope to
+advance in about five years to one of the so-called convent schools of
+Württemberg. After this his theological education would proceed for
+about nine years more at the expense of the state. The Ludwigsburg
+school was a place in which the language of Cicero and the religion of
+Luther were thumped into the memory of boys by means of sticks applied
+to the skin; Fritz Schiller was a capable scholar, though none of his
+teachers ever called him, as in the case of the boy Lessing at Meissen,
+a horse that needed double fodder. The ordinary ration sufficed him, but
+he memorized his catechism and his hymns diligently, fussed faithfully
+over his Latin longs and shorts, and took his occasional thrashings with
+becoming fortitude. On one occasion we hear that he was flogged by
+mistake and disdained to report the incident at home. Religious
+instruction consisted of mechanical repetition insisted on with brutal
+severity,--a mode of presenting divine things that must have contrasted
+painfully, for the sensitive boy, with his mother's simple religion of
+the heart. When it is added that he was often nagged and punished by a
+too exacting father, we get a not very sunny picture of our poet's
+boyhood. It is told,[5] and it may well be true, that he was subject to
+fits of moodiness, in which he would complain of his lot and brood
+gloomily over his prospects. Nevertheless a schoolmate[6] has left it on
+record that Schiller as a lad was normally high-spirited, a leader in
+sports as well as in study, and very steadfast in his friendships.
+
+While at Ludwigsburg he read from the prescribed Latin authors,
+making the acquaintance of Ovid, Vergil and Horace, and in time won
+praise for his facility in writing Latin verses. Some of his school
+exercises have chanced to be preserved. The earliest, dated Jan. 1,
+1769, is a Latin translation in prose of some verses which seem to have
+been supplied by his teacher for the purpose. The handwriting and the
+Latin tell of faithful juvenile toil and moderate success--nothing more.
+Nor can we extract much biographic interest from the later distichs and
+_carmina_ which he turned out at school festivals. Such things have
+flowed easily from the pen of many a bright schoolboy whom the bees of
+Hymettus failed to visit.
+
+According, to Schiller's own testimony[7] his earliest attempt at German
+verse was made on the occasion of his confirmation, in April, 1772. On
+the day before the solemn ceremony he was playing about with his
+comrades in what seemed to his mother an all too worldly frame of mind.
+She rebuked him for his unseasonable levity, whereat the youngster went
+into himself, as the Germans say, and poured out his supposed feelings
+in a string of verses so tender and soulful as to draw from his amazed
+father the exclamation: 'Fritz, are you going crazy?'
+
+After such a beginning we are not surprised to learn that German poetry
+made its first strong appeal to him through the pious muse of Klopstock.
+His earliest more ambitious note is heard in a 'Hymn to the Sun',
+written in his fourteenth year. It is the note of supernal religious
+pathos. In rimeless lines of unequal length he celebrates the glory of
+God in the firmament, soars into celestial space and winds up with a
+vision of the last great cataclysm. All this is sufficiently
+Klopstockian, as is also the boyish dream of an epic about Moses, and of
+a tragedy to be called 'The Christians'.
+
+But the time came when our young psalmodist of Zion was to be pulled out
+of his predetermined course and made to sing another song. Were the
+overruling powers malign or benevolent? Who shall say, remembering the
+Greek proverb that a man is not educated save by flaying? Let us not
+pause to speculate; but proceed as quickly as may be across the interval
+that separates these innocent religious effusions from the opening of a
+great literary career with the cannon-shot of 'The Robbers'.
+
+About the year 1770 Duke Karl began to undergo a change of heart.
+Wearying at last of life's vanities and frivolities, the middle-aged
+sinner took up virtue and philanthropy, as if to show mankind that he
+too could be a benevolent father to his people. The new departure was
+due in part to the political success of the Estates in curbing his
+extravagance, but rather more, no doubt, to the personal influence of
+his mistress, Franziska von Hohenheim. This lady, whose maiden name was
+Bernerdin, had been given in marriage as a girl of sixteen to a
+worthless Baron von Leutrum, who misused her. Escaping from him with
+thoughts of divorce in her mind, she went to visit friends in
+Ludwigsburg. Here the inflammable duke fell in love with her, and, after
+a not very tedious resistance, carried her away to his castle. This was
+in 1772. Her divorce followed soon after, and she remained at court as
+the duke's favorite mistress. He presently procured for her an imperial
+title, that of Countess Hohenheim, and after the death of his duchess,
+in 1780, he married her. She was not beautiful or talented, but she
+possessed amiable qualities that made and kept her the object of Karl's
+honest affection. She knew how to humor his whims without crossing his
+stubborn will, and she chose to exert her influence in promoting humane
+enterprises and leading her liege lord in the paths of virtuous
+frugality. On the whole, the people of Württemberg, who had suffered
+much from mistresses of a different ilk, had reason to bless their
+ruler's fondness for his amiable 'Franzele'. She was not unworthy to sit
+for the portrait of Lady Milford.
+
+An educational project, the founding of a school which later came to be
+known as the Karlschule, marks the beginning of the duke's career in
+his new rôle. He began very modestly in the year 1770 by gathering a
+few boys, the sons of officers, at his castle called Solitude, and
+undertaking to provide for their instruction in gardening and forestry.
+This Castle Solitude was itself an outcome of the same lordly mood that
+had led to the removal of the court to Ludwigsburg. It was situated on
+a wooded height some six miles west of Stuttgart. Here, by means of
+forced labor and at enormous expense,--and this was only one of many
+similar building enterprises,--he had cleared a site in the forest and
+erected a huge palace which, according to the inscription over the
+door, was to be 'devoted to tranquillity'. But how was a prince to
+enjoy tranquillity without the necessaries of life? In a short time a
+score of other buildings, including an opera-house and a barracks, had
+sprung up about the castle in the woods, while an immense outlying
+tract had been converted into a park with exotic attractions in the
+style of the time. Here, then, was need of expert forestry--whence the
+opening of the school as aforesaid. Once started, it became the duke's
+special pet and pride. His immense energy had found a new fad--that of
+the schoolmaster. He was bent on having a model training-school for the
+public service. In his own house, under his own eye, he proposed to
+mould the future servants of the state like potter's clay. In this way
+he would have them as he wanted them. To provide the clay for his
+experiment he began to look around for promising boys, and thus his eye
+fell on Friedrich Schiller. Summoning the father and making some
+gracious inquiries, he offered to provide for the boy's education at
+the new school. The anxious captain, knowing that divinity was not to
+be on the program at Castle Solitude, sought to evade his sovereign's
+kindness by pleading that Fritz had set his heart upon the service of
+the church. The reply was that something else, law for example, would
+no doubt do as well. Resistance to the earthly Providence was not to be
+thought of by a man in Captain Schiller's position; and so the step was
+taken which deprived some Suabian flock of a shepherd and gave the
+world instead a great poet.
+
+It was on the 17th of January, 1773, that schoolboy Schiller, with
+disappointment in his heart, said farewell to his tearful mother and
+took his cold way up the long avenue which led from Ludwigsburg to
+Castle Solitude. According to the official record he arrived there with
+a chillblain, an eruption of the scalp, fourteen Latin books, and
+forty-three kreutzers in money. Soon afterwards his father signed a
+document whereby he renounced all control of the boy and left him in the
+hands of his prince.
+
+The school at Solitude had now come to be known as the Military
+Academy, and well it deserved its name. The duke himself was the
+supreme authority in large matters and in small. The nominal head,
+called the intendant, was a high military officer who had a sufficient
+detail of majors, captains and lower officers to assist him in
+maintaining discipline. Under the eye of these military potentates the
+_élèves_, as they were called,--for the official language of the school
+was French,--lived and moved in accordance with a rigid routine. They
+rose at six and marched to the breakfast-room, where an overseer gave
+them their orders to pray, to eat, to pray again, and then to march
+back. Then there were lessons until one o'clock, when they prepared for
+the solemn function of dinner. Dressed in the prescribed uniform,--a
+blue coat with white breeches and waistcoat, a leather stock and a
+three-cornered hat, with pendent queue and at each temple four little
+puffs,--they marched to the dining-room and countermarched to their
+places. When his Highness gave the command, _Dinez, messieurs_, they
+fell to and ate. From two to four there were lessons again, then
+exercise and study hours. At nine they were required to go to bed.
+There were no vacations and few holidays. Visits to and from parents
+were prohibited, and letters sent or received had to be submitted to
+the Intendant. Books of a stirring character were proscribed, along
+with tobacco and toothsome edibles, and quarters were often searched
+for contraband articles. Whoso transgressed received a 'billet', which
+he took to headquarters. Punishments were numerous, if not very severe,
+and were sometimes administered by his Highness in person. The duke
+wished his protégés to regard him as their father, but his system
+tended to the encouragement not so much of honest gratitude as
+of rank sycophancy. On occasion he could be very gracious and
+condescending,--would take the youngsters into his carriage, give
+them fatherly counsel, box their ears, suggest subjects for essays,
+offer himself as opponent at their disputations, and so forth. He
+was very proud of showing off the school to visitors. His birthday
+and Franziska's were festal occasions, at which he would distribute
+the prizes in person and allow the winners, if of gentle birth, to
+kiss his hand; if commoners, to kiss the hem of his garment.
+
+A modern reader will be very ready with his criticism of these
+educational arrangements. The constant and petty surveillance, the
+deliberate alienation of boys from all ties of home and kindred, the
+systematic training in duplicity and adulation, were certainly not well
+calculated for a school of manhood. Schiller himself, after his escape
+from the academy, was wont to speak very bitterly of the education that
+he had received there. Nevertheless the school had its good points,
+especially after the removal to Stuttgart, in 1775. Here it became a
+combination of university (minus the theological faculty) with a school
+of art, a school of technology and a military academy proper. Several of
+the professors were inspiring teachers who made friends of their
+students. The fame of the institution brought together promising young
+men from all parts of Germany and from foreign parts; and several of
+them besides Schiller attained distinction in after-life.[8] There was
+thus intellectual comradeship of the very best kind. And there was much
+freedom in the choice of studies.
+
+But the solid merits of the academy were the growth of time; in the
+beginning it was, for Schiller at least, mere chaos and misery. The boy
+grew rapidly into a lank, awkward youngster for whom the military
+discipline was a great hardship; he never got entirely rid of the stiff
+gait and ungainly bearing which resulted from these early struggles with
+the unattainable. Frequent illness led to a bad record on the books of
+the faculty. In 'conduite' he made but a poor showing, and he was
+several times billeted for untidiness. In Latin and religion he got
+along fairly well, and in Greek he actually took a prize toward the end
+of the year 1773. But the Greek which procured him this distinction
+hardly went beyond the rudiments and was mostly brought with him from
+Ludwigsburg. For mathematics he had but little talent. His bitterest
+trial, however, came with the law studies which he was obliged to take
+up in his second year. A dry subject, a dull teacher and an immature,
+reluctant pupil made a hopeless combination. And so he got the name of a
+dullard. During the whole of the year 1775 it is recorded that he was at
+the foot of his class.
+
+Two bits of writing have come down to give us a glimpse of the boy's
+mind during these two years of helpless floundering. A detestable
+practice of the school authorities required the pupils to criticise one
+another in moral disquisitions. On one occasion the duke gave out the
+theme: 'Who is the meanest among you?' Schiller did his task in Latin
+distichs which have been preserved. They show a healthy feeling for the
+odiousness of the business, but he cleverly shifts the responsibility to
+_Dux serenissimus_, who must of course know what is good for him. Then
+he proceeds to depict one Karl Kempff as the worst boy in
+school,--_defraudans socios, rudis ignarusque_,--but he hopes that the
+wretched sinner will yet mend his ways and become worthy of his gracious
+prince's favor.
+
+In a much longer prose document he portrays the characters of some two
+score schoolmates and finally his own. He begins modestly with a
+deprecatory address to his most gracious sovereign, without whose wise
+order he would never think of setting himself up as a judge of his
+fellows. The portraits are amusingly ponderous in style, but their
+substance is very creditable to their author's head and heart. Toward
+the end he burns more incense to the duke: 'This prince who has enabled
+my parents to do well by me; this prince through whom God will attain
+his ends with me; this father who wishes to make me happy, is and must
+be much more estimable to me than parents who depend upon his favor.' He
+frankly confesses his own shortcomings: 'You will find me', he writes,
+'often overhasty, often frivolous. You will hear that I am obstinate,
+passionate and impatient; but you will also hear of my sincerity, my
+fidelity and my good heart.' He owns that he has not thus far made the
+best use of his gifts, but he pleads illness in excuse. His gracious
+prince knows how eagerly he has taken up the study of the law and how
+happy he will be some day to enter the service of his country. But, he
+ventures to insinuate, he would be very much happier still if he could
+serve his country as a teacher of religion.
+
+The divinity was out of the question, but relief was at hand. Toward the
+end of 1775, having come to terms with the Stuttgart people, Duke Karl
+transferred his academy to more commodious quarters in the city. A
+department of medicine was added and Schiller gladly availed himself of
+the duke's permission to enroll in the new faculty. His professional
+studies were now more to his taste and he applied himself to them with
+sufficient zeal to make henceforth a decent though never a brilliant
+record. His heart was already elsewhere. For some time past he had been
+nourishing his soul on forbidden fruit,--books that had to be smuggled
+in and were of course all the more seductive for that very reason. With
+a few intimates--Scharffenstein, the Von Hovens and Petersen--he formed
+a sort of literary club which read and discussed things. What they read
+spurred them to imitation and to mutual criticism. Presently they
+commenced sending their productions to the magazines. Schiller began to
+indulge in pleasing dreams of literary fame; and with this new-born
+confidence in himself there came, as his health improved, a firmer step,
+a more erect bearing and an increased energy of character. To be a poet
+by grace of God was better than the favor of princes.
+
+For some time, however, the youth's effusions gave little evidence of a
+divine call. His first poem to get into print was the one entitled
+'Evening', which appeared in Haug's _Suabian Magazine_ in the autumn of
+1776. In irregular rimed verses--the rimes often very Suabian--we hear
+of sunset glories producing in the bard a divine ecstasy that carries
+him away through space. Then he returns to earth and hears in the voices
+of evening a general symphony of praise. It is still the Klopstockian
+strain of magniloquent religiosity, tempered somewhat by the influence
+of Haller. In 'The Conqueror', a poem published in 1777, the
+Klopstockian note is still more audible. The form is a pseudo-antique
+strophe such as Klopstock often used; the substance a rhetorical
+denunciation of military ambition. The most awful curses are imprecated
+upon the head of the ruthless 'conqueror', whose badness is portrayed in
+lurid images and wild syntax that fairly rack the German language.[9] No
+wonder that editor Haug cautioned the young poet against nonsense,
+obscurity and exaggerated metatheses.
+
+Nor is there much more of promise in the few occasional poems that have
+come down from Schiller's salad days in the academy. One of them was
+inspired by a visit of the emperor Joseph, whom our poet glorifies in
+strains almost too fervid for utterance.[10] The other two are birthday
+greetings to Franziska von Hohenheim--effusions of 'gratitude', as it is
+called. The gratitude purports to come, in one of the poems, from the
+_école des demoiselles_, which Franziska had founded as a feminine
+pendant to the academy. Schiller's verses, truth to tell, sound like
+rank fustian. The duke's mistress is glorified as a paragon of virtue.
+'Her sweet name flies high on the wings of glory, her very glance
+promises immortality. Her life is the loveliest harmony, irradiated by a
+thousand virtuous deeds.' And so on. As poetic spokesman of the girls he
+pours out those 'Elysian feelings' which he supposes them to cherish
+toward their kind and virtuous 'mother'.
+
+There are two or three extant school orations which likewise exhibit
+him in the rôle of a fervid eulogist. The rhetoric of them is very
+highfalutin, and the flattery would be nauseating if one did not
+remember that it was largely a matter of fashion. Custom required that
+a prince be addressed in the language of adulation, and nothing in that
+line was too extravagant for the taste of the time. As for Schiller, he
+had got the reputation of an orator and he only did what was expected
+of him as the public representative of the school. Nor should we think
+too harshly of the duke for encouraging the foolishness, since he too
+only conformed to the custom of the Old Regime. At the same time it is
+a pleasure to learn from certain well authenticated anecdotes that he
+and his _élèves_ did not always live in a fool's paradise of
+sycophancy. There is a story, vouched for by Weltrich, to the effect
+that Schiller, who had acquired fame as a mimic, was one day asked by
+the duke, with Franziska on his arm, to give an impromptu specimen of
+his powers by imitating his sovereign. The youth hesitated, but after
+some urging borrowed the duke's cane and proceeded to examine him. As
+his Highness did not answer well, Schiller exclaimed: 'Oh, you are an
+ass!' Then he took Franziska's arm and began to walk away with her.
+Serenissimus looked on with mixed emotions, but only said: 'Come now,
+leave Franzele to me!'
+
+The young Schiller was nothing if not intense. When an emotion took
+possession of him it set him on fire, and the expression of it was like
+the eruption of a volcano. Toward the end of his course at the academy
+he had a misunderstanding with his dear friend Scharffenstein, with whom
+he had sworn eternal brotherhood. The result was a long letter of wild
+expostulation in this vein:
+
+    What was the bond of our friendship? Was it selfishness? Was it
+    frivolity? Was it folly? Was it an earthly, vulgar, or a higher,
+    immortal, celestial bond? Speak! Speak! Oh, a friendship erected
+    like ours might have endured through eternity.... If you or I had
+    died ten times, death should not have filched from us a single hour!
+    What a friendship that might have been! And now! Now! What has
+    become of it?... Hear, Scharffenstein! God is there! God hears me
+    and thee, and may God judge!
+
+And so on for six mortal pages, octavo print. The modern cynic will
+smile at this ecstatic cultus of friendship, but let him at the same
+time recall the saying of Goethe that what makes the poet is a heart
+completely filled with one emotion.[11]
+
+It is now time to glance at the really important phase of Schiller's
+youthful development--his reading. While his native Suabia, just then
+rather backward in literary matters, was still chewing the cud of pious
+conventionality, a prodigious ferment had begun in the outside world.
+What is called the 'Storm and Stress' was under way. The spirit of
+revolt, which in France was preparing a political upheaval, was abroad
+in Germany, where it found expression in stormy or sentimental plays and
+novels,--works composed on the principle that everything is permissible
+except the tame and the conventional. The productions of these young
+innovators differed widely from one another, but they had a common note
+in their vehement would-be naturalism. There were over-wrought pictures
+of daring sin and terrible punishment; novels and plays laying bare the
+_misère_ of the social conflict; tragedies of insurgent passion at war
+with conventional ideas; of true love crossed and done to death by the
+prejudice of caste. And so forth.
+
+How much of this literature fell into the hands of Schiller at the
+academy can not be told with perfect certainty, but it would seem that
+very little of it escaped him. He read and was deeply touched by
+Gerstenberg's 'Ugolino', with its horrific picture of the agonies of
+starvation. He read the early writings of Goethe, of Leisewitz and of
+Klinger, and was touched by the woes of Miller's Siegwart. In 'Emilia
+Galotti', with its drastic comment upon the infamies of princely lust,
+he saw the subject of court life in a light very different from that in
+which it habitually appeared to the carefully guarded pupils of the
+Stuttgart academy. He became acquainted with Ossian, and the shadowy
+forms of the Celtic bard, big with their indefinable woe, increased the
+turmoil of his soul. Probably he read Rousseau more or less, though
+direct evidence of the fact is lacking. At any rate the air was
+surcharged with Rousseauite feeling. Certainly he read Plutarch and
+Cervantes, and along with all these came Shakspere,[12] to whom he was
+introduced--in the Wieland translation--by his favorite teacher, Abel.
+
+The effect of this reading upon the mind of Schiller was prodigious. It
+changed the native docility of his temper, weaned him completely from
+his seraphic proclivities and carried him with a rush into the
+mid-current of the literary revolution. There came a time when the young
+medical student, faithfully pursuing his routine and on festal occasions
+spouting fervid panegyrics of the noble Karl and the divine Franziska,
+was not altogether what he seemed to be. There was another Schiller,
+burning with literary ambition and privately engaged in forging a
+thunderbolt.
+
+Two dramatic attempts preceded 'The Robbers'. The first had to do with
+Cosmo dei Medici; the second, called 'The Student of Nassau', was based
+upon a newspaper story of suicide. Both were destroyed by their
+disgusted author, in what stage of progress we do not know. Still he was
+not discouraged; the tragic drama was clearly his field and he might
+succeed better the next time. But where to find a subject? His
+perplexity became so great that, as he said later, he would have given
+his last shirt for a good theme. Finally, in the year 1777, his friend
+Hoven drew his attention to a story by Schubart that had lately been
+published in the _Suabian Magazine_,--a story of a father and his two
+dissimilar sons, one of them frank and noble-minded but wild, the other
+a plausible moralist but at heart a scoundrel. Schiller took the hint
+and began to write, his interest being no doubt increased by the
+miserable fate of Schubart, who was then languishing in the Hohenasperg
+as the helpless victim of Karl Eugen's pusillanimous tyranny.[13]
+
+Just how much progress was made with 'The Robbers' in the year 1777 is
+not known; probably not much, for Schiller soon decided to drop his
+literary pursuits for the present and devote himself closely to his
+medical studies. Perhaps he may have hoped by hard work to finish his
+course in four years instead of the expected five. At any rate he now
+bent to his toil and allowed the play to lie dormant in his mind. In
+1779 he submitted a thesis on 'The Philosophy of Physiology', but it was
+judged unfit for print. The professors condemned it variously as
+tedious, florid, obscure, and, worst of all, disrespectful toward
+recognized authorities such as Haller. In these judgments the duke
+concurred. He found that Elève Schiller had said many fine things and in
+particular had shown much 'fire'. But the fire was too strong; it needed
+to be 'subdued' by another year of study.
+
+It has usually been assumed by Schiller's biographers that in his
+intense longing for liberty he was embittered by this disappointment,
+and that in his mood of wrath he now took up his neglected play and
+poured into it, hissing hot, the whole fury of his quarrel with the
+world. There is, however, no evidence that he really hoped to win his
+release from the academy in the year 1779, or that the thesis just
+spoken of was regarded as a graduation thesis.[14] Neither his own
+letters nor those of his friends indicate that he was angry at being
+kept in school another year. Probably the critics have made too much
+out of this factor of personal disgruntlement. Schiller was a poetic
+artist, and his first play is much more than the wild expression of a
+plucked student's resentment. Nevertheless it is only natural to
+suppose that his proud and ambitious spirit chafed more or less under
+the requirements of an academic routine that his manhood had
+outgrown. That he succeeded after all, at the end of the year 1779,
+in capturing a number of prizes and received them in the presence of
+Goethe and the Duke of Weimar, who happened just then to be visiting
+Stuttgart, could do but little to sweeten the bitter dose that had
+been prescribed for him.
+
+He now set about the preparation of a new thesis, and in the intervals
+of his professional occupation he worked with feverish energy upon 'The
+Robbers'. To gain time for writing he would often feign illness, and
+when the duke or an inspector surprised him would hide his manuscript in
+a big medical treatise kept at hand for the purpose. A few comrades who
+were in the secret eagerly watched the progress of his work and
+vociferously applauded the scenes which he now and then read to them.
+One of these comrades has left it on record that in the excitement of
+composition Schiller would often stamp and snort and roar.--And thus it
+was, in the stolen hours of the night and driven by the demon that
+possessed him, that he bodied forth his titanic drama of revolt. It was
+virtually finished during the year 1780. In after-time Schiller reasoned
+himself into the conviction that art must be 'cheerful',[15] but very
+little of cheerfulness went to the composition of 'The Robbers'. It was
+the disburthening of an oppressed soul that suffered horribly at times
+from morbid melancholy--the chicken-pox of youthful genius. A letter of
+June, 1780, shows how he had battled with the specters of despair.
+Writing to Captain von Hoven, whose son had lately died, he says:
+
+    A thousand times I envied your son as he was wrestling with death,
+    and would have given up my life as calmly as I go to bed. I am not
+    yet twenty-one years old, but I can tell you frankly that the world
+    has no further charm for me. I have no delight in thinking of the
+    world, and the day of my departure from the academy, which a few
+    years ago would have been a day of festal joy, will not be able to
+    force one happy smile from me. With each step, as I grow older, I
+    lose more and more of my contentedness; and the nearer I come to the
+    age of maturity, the more I could wish that I had died in childhood.
+
+This sounds gloomy enough, but the desperate mood did not last long, A
+number of medical reports written in the summer of 1780 indicate that
+Schiller was able to take the calm professional view of a case very
+similar to his own. A fellow-student named Grammont was afflicted with
+hypochondria, and Schiller was set to watch him. His analysis of the
+case is eminently sane. He finds it difficult to decide whether the
+young man's malady has its seat in the mind or in the bowels: whether
+too much brooding over hard problems has ruined his digestion and
+given him a headache, or whether a physical derangement has confused
+his ideas of duty and religion. He thinks there is a fair chance of
+curing the patient by means of medicine and good advice.--A youth who
+can talk thus of another's _Weltschmerz_ is himself in no great danger
+from the malady.
+
+In November, 1780, he submitted a new thesis upon 'The Connection
+between Man's Animal and Spiritual Nature'. In this essay he considers
+the question whether, for the purposes of moral perfection, the body is
+to be regarded as the enemy and gaoler of the soul, or as its friend and
+coadjutor. The drift of his argument is to show in detail the dependence
+of the spirit upon the flesh. Finding that philosophers have been unjust
+to the body, he comes to its rescue,--expounding good doctrine in an
+interesting though rather florid and unprofessional style. In the course
+of his philosophizing he perpetrates the sly joke of quoting from his
+own manuscript play and ascribing the words to an imaginary 'Life of
+Moor', by one Krake.--Further comment upon the essay may be dispensed
+with,[16] seeing that Schiller as a medical man does not greatly
+interest us at the present time. Enough that it was accepted and
+procured him his release from bondage toward the close of the year.
+
+Afterwards, in the bitterness of his quarrel with the Duke of
+Württemberg, Schiller took an altogether gloomy view of the training he
+had received at the Military Academy. He saw only the forcing process to
+which he had been subjected, the narrow life that had kept him from a
+knowledge of the world, and the petty restrictions that had prevented
+his love of poetry from developing in a sane and natural manner.
+However, it is always the poet's fate to grow strong through his own
+gifts and his own trials; what schools of any kind can do for him or
+against him is of comparatively little moment. Had Schiller enjoyed in
+his youth the freedom of a real university, his literary career would no
+doubt have opened differently, and with another beginning the whole
+would have been different; but whether it would then have interested the
+world after a hundred years, as that of the real Schiller does, is a
+question for omniscience. Speaking humanly one can only say that the
+misguided paternalism of Karl Eugen in rousing the tiger proved a
+blessing in disguise. And the schooling itself was by no means so
+despicable. Schiller left the academy a good Latinist, though with but
+little Greek. He had learned to read French, if not English. He had
+dabbled in such philosophy as there was going and acquired an interest
+in the fundamental problems. He had read not widely but intensely--which
+is always better. He had made a number of good friends. And not least
+important for his future career, he had had an excellent opportunity to
+observe the forms and usages of high life.[17]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: What is known of her has been put together by Ernst Müller,
+in "Schillers Mutter, ein Lebensbild", Leipzig, 1894.]
+
+[Footnote 2: "Unsere Mutter nährt sich gleichsam von beständiger Sorge",
+wrote her son to his sister in 1784.]
+
+[Footnote 3: As quoted by Schiller's sister-in-law, Karoline von
+Wolzogen, in her 'Life of Schiller', first published in 1830. The
+Baroness von Wolzogen quoted from a manuscript by Christophine, which
+was at that time in the family archives and has since been published in
+the _Archiv für Litteraturgeschichte_, I, 452. Christophine wrote down
+her recollections in order to counteract the false stories of Schiller's
+childhood which began to get into print soon after his death. Of this
+character, for example, is the oft-repeated tale of his climbing a tree
+during a thunder-storm in order to see where the lightning came from.
+This is an invention of Oemler, his earliest biographer, who invented
+much besides.]
+
+[Footnote 4: An excellent account of him is to be found in Vol. 15 of
+"Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie".]
+
+[Footnote 5: By Schiller's youthful friend Petersen, _Morgenblatt_,
+1807; quoted by Weltrich, "Friedrich Schiller", I, 77, and by other
+biographers.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Wilhelm von Hoven, quoted by Karoline von Wolzogen.]
+
+[Footnote 7: As reported by his friend Conz, _Morgenblatt_, 1807. Cf.
+Weltrich, p. 80, foot-note.]
+
+[Footnote 8: For example: Cuvier, Dannecker and the musician Zumsteeg.
+The pros and cons of the Karlschule are discussed very fully by Weltrich
+and also by Minor in their biographies of Schiller.]
+
+[Footnote 9: For example:
+
+  Und mit offenem Schlund, welcher Gebirge schluckt,
+  Ihn das Weltmeer mir nach,--ihn mir der Orkus nach
+    Durch die Hallen des Todes--
+      Deinen Namen, Eroberer!]
+
+[Footnote 10: Weltrich, p. 182, argues that the poem is spurious. The
+question is hard to decide.]
+
+[Footnote 11: "Götz von Berlichingen", Act I.]
+
+[Footnote 12: The acquaintance began, it would seem, in 1775 or 1776. At
+first Schiller was repelled by Shakspere's 'coldness',--his intermixture
+of humor and buffoonery with pathos. Of this first impression he wrote
+many years later, in his essay on 'Naïve and Sentimental Poetry', as
+follows: "Durch die Bekanntschaft mit neueren Poeten verleitet, in den
+Werken den _Dichter_ zuerst aufzusuchen, _seinem Herzen_ zu begegnen ...
+war es mir unertraglich, dasz der Poet sich hier gar nirgends fassen
+liesz und mir nirgends Rede stehen wollte. Mehrere Jahre hatte er meine
+ganze Verehrung, und war mein Studium, ehe ich sein Individuum lieb
+gewinnen konnte. Ich war noch nicht fähig, die Natur aus erster Hand zu
+verstehen."]
+
+[Footnote 13: Schubart's crime was the utterance of a mild poetic
+lampoon to the effect that 'when Dionysius of Syracuse was compelled to
+go out of the tyranny business he became a Schulmeisterlein.' He had
+also commented too frankly on the duke's relation to Franziska. Angered
+by these things Karl caused him to be tricked over the borders into
+Württemberg, seized, and without trial shut up in the dungeon of
+Hohenasperg, where he was kept for ten years (1777-1787). Schiller
+visited him in November, 1781, and was received with tears of joy as the
+author of 'The Robbers'.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Cf. Weltrich, I, 278.]
+
+[Footnote 15: "Ernst ist das Leben, heiter ist die Kunst."--_Prologue to
+'Wallenstein'_.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Weltrich, I, 298 ff., analyzes it and discusses its
+scientific value at some length.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Kuno Fischer, "Schiller-Schriften", I, 139, has some very
+interesting remarks on this subject. "Woher gewann er [says Fischer],
+der Sohn eines Dorfbarbiers,... eine solche sichere und eingelebte
+Anschauung, ich möchte sagen, Fühlung fürstlichen Wesens, wenn nicht
+Herzog Karl, ein Meister in der Kunst fürstlichen Repräsentierens, ihn
+zum Modell gedient hätte?"]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The Robbers
+
+    O über mich Narren, der ich wähnete die Welt durch Greuel zu
+    verschönern und die Gesetze durch Gesetzlosigkeit aufrecht zu
+    erhalten.--'_The Robbers_'.
+
+After leaving the academy Schiller soon began to look about for a
+publisher of his precious manuscript. Not finding one he presently
+decided to borrow money and print the play at his own expense. It
+appeared in the spring of 1781, accompanied by a modest preface in which
+the anonymous author pronounced his work unsuited to the stage but hoped
+it would be acceptable as a moral contribution to literature. In less
+than a year it had been played with ever memorable success and ere long
+it was the talk of Germany.
+
+In dealing with 'The Robbers' it has always been much easier to point
+out faults than to do justice. Schiller himself set the fashion of a
+drastic criticism which had the effect of advertising 'The Robbers' as a
+violent youthful explosion containing more to be apologized for than to
+be admired. And indeed it is not a masterpiece of good taste. Upon an
+adult mind possessing some knowledge of the world's dramatic literature
+at its best, and particularly if the piece be read and not seen,
+Schiller's first play is very apt to produce the impression of a boyish
+extravaganza. The sentimental bandit who nourishes his mighty soul on
+the blood of his fellow-men, and undertakes to right a private wrong by
+running amuck against society in another part of the world, is a figure
+upon which we decline to waste our sympathy. We have no place for him in
+our scheme of art unless it be in comic opera or in the penny dreadful.
+Emotionally we have lost touch with him as we have with Byron's Corsair.
+When he stalks across the serious stage and rages and fumes and wipes
+his bloody sword, we are inclined to smile or to yawn. As for the
+villain Franz, with his abysmal depravity, and Amalia, with her witless
+sentimentalism, we find it hard to take them seriously; they do not
+produce a good illusion. And then the whole style of the piece, the
+violent and ribald language, the savage action, the rant and swagger,
+the shooting and stabbing,--all this seems at first calculated for the
+entertainment of young savages, and moves one to approve the oft-quoted
+_mot_ of the German prince who said to Goethe: 'If I had been God and
+about to create the world, and had I foreseen that Schiller would write
+'The Robbers' in it, I should not have created it.'[18]
+
+This is one side of the story. The other side is that 'The Robbers'
+made an epoch in German dramatic literature. Not only is it the
+strongest and completest expression of the eighteenth-century storm and
+stress, but it proved a highly effective stage-play. Nor was its
+success ephemeral. Its author quickly outgrew it, but it maintained
+itself during the entire period of Germany's leadership in matters of
+dramatic art, and even to-day it preserves much of its old vitality. It
+is true that when a modern audience assembles to see a performance of
+'The Robbers', they are not impelled solely by the intrinsic merits of
+the piece. Loyalty to the great dramatic poet of the nation plays its
+part. People think: Thus our Schiller began,--and they expect to make
+allowances. But when all such allowances are made, it remains true that
+'The Robbers' is a powerful stage-play which reveals in every scene the
+hand of the born dramatist. We may call it boyish if we will, but its
+boyishness is like that of 'Titus Andronicus'. Each is the work of a
+young giant who in learning the use of his hammer lays about him
+somewhat wildly and makes a tremendous hubbub. But Thor is Thor, and
+such boys are not born every day.
+
+The starting-point of Schiller's invention was the conception of the two
+hostile brothers, and this he had from Schubart, although other writers,
+notably Klinger and Leisewitz, had already made use of it in dramatic
+productions. In the Schubart story[19] we hear of a nobleman with two
+sons, of whom the elder, Karl, is high-minded but dissolute, while the
+younger, Wilhelm, is a hypocritical zealot. Karl plays the rôle of the
+prodigal son and his excesses are duly reported at home by his brother.
+After a while the sinner repents and writes his father a remorseful
+letter, which is intercepted by Wilhelm. Then the older brother returns
+to the vicinity of his home and takes service with a poor farmer. Here
+it falls to his lot to rescue his father from the hands of assassins. It
+turns out that the instigator of the murder was no other than Wilhelm.
+When the plot is discovered the magnanimous Karl entreats pardon for his
+vile brother. His prayer is granted, Wilhelm receives a share of the
+estate and all ends in happy tears.--In publishing the sketch Schubart
+recommended it to the geniuses of the day as an excellent foundation for
+a novel or a comedy. Here was a chance, he thought, to prove that the
+Germans, notwithstanding the servility of their pens, were not the
+spiritless race that foreigners saw in them; 'to show that we too, in
+spite of our oppressive forms of government, which permit only a
+condition of passivity, are men who have their passions and can act, no
+less than a Frenchman or a Briton.' He therefore cautioned any
+playwright who might try his hand upon the subject to lay the scene not
+in a foreign country but in contemporary Germany.
+
+We see here the thought that struck fire in the mind of young Schiller,
+whose bent was all for tragedy. If there was to be a proof that strong
+passion and bold action were still possible, notwithstanding the
+degeneracy of the age, what better object could there be for the
+passion to wreak itself upon than the age itself? If life had become
+vapid, and the German character servile and pusillanimous, here was the
+very field for a mad Ajax who should make havoc among the cowards and
+the pigmies. In Schubart's tragi-comedy there are no heroic passions
+whatever. Nothing is conceived in a large and bold way. The characters
+live and move throughout in the little world of their own selfish
+interests. Such a piece, in which the penitent hero bends his back to
+the plow and weakly pardons an abominable crime, did not comport with
+Schiller's mood of fierce indignation. So he converted the story into a
+tragedy and turned Schubart's meek and forgiving prodigal into a
+terrible avenger of mankind.
+
+In the contrasted brothers we see what Minor[20] well enough calls the
+hot and cold passions. Karl is a hotspur whose emotions are always keyed
+up to the highest pitch; he is never calm and is incapable of sober
+reasoning. His boiling blood and his insensate ambition are his only
+oracles. We may say that his motives are lofty, but in trying to set the
+world right and make it conform to his perfervid dreams of justice and
+freedom, he becomes a madman and a criminal. Franz, on the other hand,
+represents the scheming intellect sundered from conscience and natural
+feeling. He is a monster of cool, calculating, hypocritical villainy. At
+the end he cowers in abject terror before the phantom conscience that he
+has reasoned out of existence in the first act. The portrait of the two
+brothers, as thus conceived, is crudely simple. There are no delicacies
+of shading, no subtleties of psychological analysis. In short, Robber
+Moor and his brother give the impression of having been made to a scheme
+rather than copied from nature. Nevertheless the scheme is conceived
+with superb audacity and executed with a dramatic power and insight that
+had never been surpassed in Germany.
+
+To understand the furore created by 'The Robbers' one should read two
+other storm-and-stress plays, by writers of no mean dramatic talent,
+which present the same fundamental situation,[21]--'The Twins', by
+Klinger, and 'Julius of Tarentum', by Leisewitz. Both these plays came
+out in the year 1776 and were evidently studied with care by Schiller.
+Both follow the timid example which had been set by Lessing of laying
+the scene in a foreign land, Klinger gives us two brothers, Guelfo and
+Ferdinando, of whom neither the mother nor her physician can tell which
+was born first. But Ferdinando has always been treated as the elder, has
+enjoyed the favor of his father, risen to power and distinction and won
+the prize in love. He is of a noble and forgiving temper and plays only
+a subordinate part. The hero is Guelfo, who, like Schiller's Karl Moor,
+has read Plutarch and would fain do something great, like Brutus or
+Cassius. But he remains after all only a poor knight. His hand is
+unnerved and his heroic spirit paralyzed by the suspicion that he has
+been the life-long victim of a conspiracy; that he and not Ferdinando is
+the elder brother. The whole interest of the play turns upon the
+portraiture of his morbid, insensate jealousy. In the fourth act he
+takes a morning ride with his brother and murders him. Then he defiantly
+reports the deed at home and is himself slain by his father.
+
+In 'Julius of Tarentum' the younger brother, Guido, is, again, the man
+of action; a _miles gloriosus_ who boasts of his strong arm and dreams
+of glory. He looks with contempt and hatred upon his gentle, sentimental
+brother Julius, who, though heir to the throne, prepares to renounce his
+career because he is thwarted in love. The girl Blanca, upon whom he has
+fixed his affections, is not deemed a suitable bride for him by his
+father and has been shut up in a convent. He determines to abduct her by
+night and flee with her to some romantic spot in the far north. In the
+execution of this purpose he is killed by his jealous brother Guido, who
+is then made to suffer death at the hands of his own father.
+
+In both these plays we have, as in 'The Robbers', an aged father whose
+dynastic hopes center in an excellent son; this son the object of mad
+jealousy on the part of a younger brother, and both brothers in love
+with the same girl. The plays exhibit talent of a high order, but talent
+that always falls short of genius. Psychical states are portrayed by
+means of talk, and the talk is big enough; but very little actually
+happens. The mighty passions have to be taken largely upon trust and the
+conversation often drags. Dramatic possibilities are not fully grasped,
+the situations are felt but not seen, and there is an obvious reluctance
+to make unusual demands upon the stage. Even Klinger, whose play of
+'Storm and Stress' gave a name to the whole contemporary movement in
+German literature, reads tamely enough in comparison with 'The Robbers'.
+But what is most noteworthy of all, Klinger and Leisewitz give us simply
+dynastic tragedies. In both the outlook is limited to the fortunes of a
+single house. In both we miss the great dramatist who looks upon life
+with a roving eye and intertwines his tale of private woe with the
+larger tangle of human destiny.
+
+This last is what the young Schiller did with masterly insight. He
+converted the dynastic tragedy of his predecessors into a tragedy of the
+social revolution; and his work has lived because we can hear in it the
+preliminary roar of the storm which was soon to burst in the streets of
+Paris.[22] He laid his scene not in far-off Italy nor in the remote
+past, but in Germany and in the middle of the century which boasted of
+its enlightened philosophy and its excellent police regulations. Of the
+two brothers he took the sentimentalist for his hero, but made him at
+the same time a man of action, a man of heroic mould and a self-helper.
+The logic of Rousseau finds in Karl Moor a practical interpreter. What
+the Frenchman had preached concerning the infamies of civilization, the
+badness of society and politics, the reign of injustice and unreason,
+the petty squabbles of the learned, the necessity of a return to
+nature,--all this seethes in the blood of Moor, but he does not content
+himself with indignant rhetoric or sentimental repining. He takes arms
+against the sea of troubles. Instead of an excellent youth pitifully
+done to death by a jealous brother, we get a towering idealist who is
+the moulder of his own fate. With sublime [Greek: hubris] he takes it
+upon himself to wield the avenging bolts of Jove, but finds that Jove
+rejects his assistance. He errs disastrously in his judgment, like any
+short-sighted mortal, and his work goes all agley. But when the end
+comes it is not depressing. We see no longer a revolting fratricide and
+the painful sacrifice of virtue to the meanest of passions, but the
+verdict of the gods upon human presumption.
+
+In making his hero a defiant self-helper and sending him with sword in
+hand against the minions of the established order, Schiller was
+obviously influenced by the example of 'Götz von Berlichingen'. Like
+Götz, Karl Moor regards himself as the champion of freedom against the
+law, which is its enemy. Both are friends of the oppressed and haters of
+pedantry and pettifoggery. Both fight like lions against tremendous
+odds. Both assume the leadership of a band of outlaws whom they cannot
+control, and thus become responsible for revolting crimes not foreseen
+or intended. But along with these and other resemblances that might be
+pointed out there is an important difference. In the fourth act of the
+earlier play a Heilbronn Councillor says to Götz: 'We owe no faith to a
+robber.' Whereat Götz exclaims: 'If you did not wear the emperor's
+emblem, which I honor in the vilest counterfeit, you should take back
+that word or choke upon it. Mine is an honorable feud.' That is, the
+knight of the sixteenth century repudiates the name in which Karl Moor
+glories. Says Schiller's Pater in the second act: 'And you, pretty
+captain! Duke of cutpurses! King of scoundrels! Great Mogul of all
+rogues under the sun!' To which Moor replies: 'Very true. Very true.
+Just proceed.' In comparison with such a daredevil Goethe's hero seems
+to roar like a sucking dove. In his own mind Götz never really burns the
+bridge behind him. He is at heart a loyalist who recognizes the
+emperor's claim to his allegiance. As a free imperial knight he feels
+himself within his right under the feudal system. In resisting his
+enemies he does not set himself in opposition to governmental authority
+_per se_, but only to the abuse of authority by subordinates who
+disgrace their master and his. And in assuming the leadership of the
+insurgent rabble he thinks to restrain their ferocity and thus earn the
+thanks of the supreme authority.--It remained for Schiller to convert
+this rude self-helper in the age of expiring feudalism into a savage
+anarchist in the boastful age of enlightenment.
+
+It was a bold idea to be conceived by a youth in a school where every
+third word was of virtue and philanthropy. Not that there was anything
+particularly audacious in a strong presentation of the spirit of revolt.
+For some time past this spirit had been nourished by the writings of
+Rousseau and those who followed in his wake, until attacks upon the
+social order, in some phase of it, had come to be almost the staple of
+literature. But the attacks had not been very dangerous. Either they
+were veiled by a distant setting of the scene, or the indictment of the
+age was presented incidentally in connection with some lacrimose tragedy
+of the individual. People had learned to sigh and weep that things
+should be so, but there the matter ended. The German princeling could
+look on with equanimity, assured that the rhetoric and the tears did not
+mean him, or that if they did it did not matter. In real life those who
+felt themselves oppressed by the civilization of Europe could emigrate,
+and they did emigrate in large numbers. This was one form of the return
+to nature. In literature, however, the usual expedient was to let the
+hero chafe himself to death and go down, without striking a blow, before
+the irresistible tyranny of the established order. Schiller's hero is of
+another ilk. Romantic flight with his lady-love does not occur to him.
+Surrender to the wrong is out of the question. He finds another form for
+the return to nature and puts into practice the maxim, Here or nowhere
+is America. He stays and fights at the head of a troop of bandits. Thus
+the play which was originally to have been called 'The Lost Son' became
+'The Robbers'.
+
+In their way, then, Schiller's outlaws stand for the state of nature.
+They represent natural man rising in brute strength against the
+oppressions of a depraved society. Such at least is Karl Moor's
+construction of the matter when he says to the Pater: 'Tell them that my
+business is retribution, that my trade is vengeance.' Under our modern
+development of the social sentiment we can hardly imagine a really
+high-minded youth setting out in such a Quixotic and fanatical
+enterprise. This feature of Schiller's plot, which has for us something
+of the burlesque about it, has been taken more than any other to prove
+his inexperience of life. But the fact is that the thing was after all
+not so unthinkable. Outlawry on a large scale was by no means unknown,
+and the romance of outlawry was familiar in literature. The Thirty
+Years' War had familiarized Germany with marauding bands who recognized
+no authority save that of their leader. Even in the eighteenth century
+the brigandage which was common in the Mediterranean countries continued
+to flourish in Southern Germany. As late as 1781, the very year in which
+'The Robbers' appeared, we hear of the capture in Bavaria of a band of
+outlaws numbering nearly a thousand men. The year 1771 witnessed the
+execution of the robber-chieftain Klostermayer, who, under the name of
+the Bavarian Hiesel, became the subject of an idealizing saga in which
+we recognize the essential features of Karl Moor.[23]
+
+Schiller's main fiction was thus, in a sense, warranted by the facts;
+and it gains further in artistic plausibility when we consider that the
+idealized bandit was already a familiar type in literature. The author
+of 'The Robbers' was acquainted with Robin Hood, and he had probably
+read 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona', in which the banished Valentine
+becomes the captain of a band of outlaws on condition that they "do no
+outrages on silly women or poor passengers", and the outlaws reply that
+they "detest such vile, base practices."[24] He had also read, in 'Don
+Quixote', of the high-toned robber, Roque Guinart, who had more of
+compassion, in his nature than cruelty. Cervantes makes Roque comment
+thus upon his mode of life: "Injuries which I could not brook and thirst
+for revenge first led me into it contrary to my nature; for the savage
+asperity of my present behavior is a disgrace to my heart, which is
+gentle and humane." At the end of the episode Roque sends his captives
+away "admiring his generosity, his gallantry, and his extraordinary
+conduct, and looking upon him rather as an Alexander the Great than as a
+notorious robber."[25] Here was a sufficient hint for a criminal in the
+grand style, who should imagine himself the spiritual congener of
+Plutarch's heroes.
+
+'A singular Don Quixote whom we abominate and love, admire and
+pity',--such was Schiller's own formula for his first dramatic hero.
+From the standpoint of ordinary logic it must be admitted that Moor's
+motive for becoming a robber (the lying letter that he receives from
+Franz) is quite insufficient. He is duped too easily and should have
+known his brother better. He is too ready to give up everything dear to
+him, including the dear Amalia. 'I have no sweetheart any more', is a
+weak surrender for a man of his heroic stamp. In any case the wrong that
+has been done him is a private wrong that has nothing to do with the
+constitution of society. One does not see how it is to be righted or how
+the world is to be purged of such baseness by killing and plundering
+people in the Bohemian Forest.
+
+The only reply which our drama makes to this objection is to be found in
+Moor's crazy ambition for distinction. He has the 'great-man-mania'.
+What attracts him in the career of crime is not the wickedness but the
+bigness of it; the opportunity of lifting himself above the common herd
+and sending his name down to posterity as that of a very extraordinary
+person. 'I loathe this ink-spattering century', he says, 'when I read in
+my Plutarch of great men.... I am to squeeze my body into a corset and
+lace up my will in laws.... Law has never made a great man, but freedom
+hatches out colossi and extremes, O that the spirit of Hermann were
+still glowing in the ashes! Place me at the head of an army of fellows
+like myself, and Germany shall become a republic in comparison with
+which Rome and Sparta were nunneries.' Such, monstrous egotism needs no
+motive, but only an occasion, for breaking with the order of
+civilization. An occasion is furnished by the letter.
+
+But that which marks Karl Moor as a genuine child of Schiller's
+imagination and of the sentimental age is his combination of virile
+energy with soft-heartedness and true nobility of feeling. In all his
+robbings and burnings he does not become vulgarized like his comrades.
+He imagines that he is engaged in a righteous work and has God on his
+side. For this reason he has a right to his melting moods, as, for
+example, in the famous and oft-praised scene on the Danube. This
+delicacy of feeling, which to an American or Englishman is apt to seem
+absurd in a bandit-chief who is engaged in wholesale crime, is an
+essential part of Moor's character. It is this which, on German soil,
+gave to 'The Robbers' tragic interest and insured its immortality. One
+sees all along that Moor is a wanderer in the dark, and one can
+sympathize with his purposes and his dreams while detesting his conduct.
+This makes him a heroic figure. And when the clearing-up comes and he
+discovers that he has been the victim not of society but of an
+individual villain; that his attempt to right wrongs by committing new
+wrongs, to enforce the laws by lawlessness, and to correct violence by
+violence, was nothing but presumptuous and criminal folly,--when all
+this becomes clear to him, we have a tragic situation of the most
+pathetic character. This element of high tragic pathos was first given
+to a German drama by Schiller. It had not been given by Goethe and
+Lessing, nor was it in them to give it. This is why German tragedy in
+the true sense may be said to have its beginning in 'The Robbers'.
+
+That Schiller in a sense sympathized with his hero is undeniable. What
+gives vitality to the character is here as always the fact that the
+author looked into his own heart and then wrote. This, however, only
+means that the moods of Moor are veritable moods of Schiller, raised to
+a white heat and translated into action. The young student, dreaming the
+dreams of youth and pining for freedom and action, had more than once
+felt his gorge rise to the choking-point as he found himself forced to
+plod on among the dull, oppressive, unheroic facts of life; and those
+acts of official villainy against which Moor draws the sword he had
+himself seen flourishing unavenged in his native Württemberg. But, on
+the other hand, he was never for a moment insensible to the moral
+hideousness and the tragic folly of Moor's conduct. It was to be
+sublime, but insane and calamitous nevertheless. One is justified in
+thinking, therefore, that Goedeke goes too far, or does not express the
+truth felicitously, when he says that the author of 'The Robbers' 'felt
+himself one' with his hero.[26] He felt himself one with certain phases
+of Moor's thought and feeling; for the rest, however, the
+robber-chieftain was to be abominated as well as admired. There has been
+too much of the tendency to see in 'The Robbers' only a personal
+document; only a youth's incoherent cry for liberty. The piece is a work
+of art, duly calculated with reference to artistic effects.
+
+Turning now from the figure of Karl to that of his brother, one is
+struck at once with the artificiality of the portrait. We seem to have
+before us in Franz Moor the result of a deliberate effort to conceive
+the vilest possible travesty of human nature. Nothing here that was
+copied from nature, nothing that Schiller found in his own heart. It is
+all a brain-spun creation, born of his dramatic reading and of his
+studies in medicine and philosophy. In the first place we can observe
+that Franz is studiously contrasted with his brother. Karl is an
+idealist and a man of sentiment; Franz is a materialist to whom the
+natural emotions of the heart are objects of cynical derision. For Karl,
+who knows his Klopstock as well as his Plutarch, love is a
+transcendental dream foretelling a spiritual union in a world without
+end; for Franz it is carnal appetite. Karl wears his heart upon his
+sleeve; Franz is wily and hypocritical. The one is handsome and
+chivalrous, the other ill-favored and cruel.
+
+The jealous cadet who plots criminally against his more fortunate
+brother is common to both Leisewitz and Klinger, but in neither is he an
+intriguing villain. In 'Julius of Tarentum' Guido is really the more
+masterful man of the two. He despises his brother as a weakling and
+asserts no other claim than that of the strongest. In Klinger's play, as
+we have seen, everything is made to turn upon Guido's cankering doubt of
+his brother's seniority. One gets the impression that if the doubt could
+be settled by indisputable evidence in favor of Ferdinando, there would
+be no _casus belli_; the younger son would bow to the law of
+primogeniture and that would end the matter. Schiller, however, felt the
+need of a bolder contrast to his hero. The 'sublime criminal' required a
+colossal foil; and as equality with the sword was out of the question,
+the most obvious recourse was to pit natural depravity against natural
+greatness; scheming intellect against hot blood.
+
+In working out his conception Schiller took counsel freely of Shakspere,
+whose name had now become for young Germany the symbol of all things
+great in dramatic writing. The first soliloquy of Franz Moor reminds one
+at once of Edmund in 'Lear', though there is none of the kind of
+borrowing which makes easy prey for the philologist. Both villains covet
+the wealth and station of a preferred brother; both make use of a
+specious obstetrical argument and both operate with forged letters. In
+general, however, the portrait of Franz was more influenced by Richard
+the Third than by Edmund, or Iago, or any of the other Shaksperian
+villains. Franz is the British Richard divested of his Shaksperian
+lordliness, transferred to a humbler sphere of action and provided with
+the mental outfit of an eighteenth-century _philosophe_, as seen by
+hostile critics. Both descant on their own deformity and confide to the
+public their villainous designs. But while Richard speaks in a tone of
+genial cynicism, as if his principal concern were only to bring a little
+variety into the tameness of "these fair, well-spoken days", the German
+villain solemnly turns himself inside out and regales us _ad nauseam_
+with the metaphysics of iniquity. This is his mode of reasoning:
+
+    Why did nature put upon me this burden of ugliness--this Laplander's
+    nose, this Moorish mouth, these Hottentot eyes? Death and
+    destruction! Why was she such a partisan?--But no, I do her
+    injustice. She gave us wit when she placed us naked and miserable on
+    the shore of this great ocean-world. Swim who can, and whoso is too
+    clumsy let him sink. The right is with him that prevails. Family
+    honor? A valuable capital for him that knows how to profit by
+    it.--Conscience? An excellent scarecrow with which to frighten
+    sparrows from cherry-trees.--Filial love? Where is the obligation?
+    Did my father beget me because he loved me? Did he think of me at
+    all? Is there anything holy in his gratification of carnal appetite?
+    Or shall I love him because he loves me? That is mere vanity, the
+    usual predilection of the artist for his own work.
+
+Such is the ethical attitude of Franz Moor, as we gather it from his
+first soliloquy. One sees that Schiller was concerned to portray a
+scoundrel who had read deeply and come to the conclusion that in a world
+like this there is no valid reason why a man should be virtuous.
+Evidently the author had himself breathed the mephitic air of
+eighteenth-century skepticism. His natural goodness of heart safeguarded
+him from corruption, but it pleased him as artist to dip his pen in the
+blackest ink and draw the picture of the devil with whom he had wrestled
+in moments of solitary musing.
+
+In spite of his intellectual subtlety, however, Franz is a rather dull
+villain. His philosophical and physiological pedantry--for Schiller
+endows him lavishly with the special lore of the medical man--obfuscates
+his vision for the ordinary facts of human nature. He has upon the whole
+a more intelligible motive for his rascality than Iago, but he is much
+less interesting, much less picturesque, for simple lack of mother-wit.
+What a woeful blunder, for example, is his attempt to win Amalia by
+depicting her absent lover, at great length and with all manner of
+revolting details, as the victim of the most loathsome of diseases! And
+why should such a crafty schemer risk his neck and put himself in the
+hands of a dangerous confederate for the purpose of hastening by a few
+hours the demise of a childish old man who is already in his power? And
+in his final agony of terror, when we should expect him to hide himself
+or try to escape, how absurd that he should summon Pastor Moser merely
+for the purpose of arguing with him upon immortality and judgment! We
+see that he is after all a wretched coward who has merely cheated us
+into the belief that he has put away the superstitions of orthodox
+belief, while in reality they still linger in his blood. We miss in him
+the invincible sang-froid of villainy which might have given a touch of
+Shaksperian grandeur to his character. As it is, he is not grand, but
+pitiable and revolting. When he strangles himself with his hat-band, one
+is quite satisfied with the unheroic manner of his taking-off.
+
+The subordinate characters of the piece are hardly worth discussing at
+any length. The elder Moor is a mere nonentity,--a dummy in a
+rocking-chair would have done as well. Evidently Schiller was concerned
+to make the way as easy as possible for the clumsy villainy of Franz. A
+more vigorous father, he may have felt, would have necessitated a more
+subtle and plausible intrigue, which would have diverted attention from
+the main issue of the contrasted sons. The heroine Amalia has always
+been recognized, and was immediately recognized by Schiller himself, as
+the weakest character in the play. But posterity's criticism is hardly
+that formulated by him, namely, that we miss in Amalia the 'gentle,
+suffering, pining thing--the maiden.'[27] Of gentle, suffering, pining
+things there is no dearth in the German drama, and they were not in
+Schiller's line. Nearly all of his women are made of heroic stuff, and
+we honor him not the less for that. No one should blame Amalia for
+boxing the ears of Franz or drawing the sword upon him: it is unladylike
+conduct, but very good storm-and-stress realism.
+
+What one must deplore, however, is the general mental inadequacy that is
+paired with this spasmodic energy of scorn. Common sense is not the
+highest of dramatic qualities, but a modicum of it would have made
+Schiller's first heroine, to say the least, more interesting. She has no
+power of initiative and seems made only to be duped. Her inability to
+recognize her lover in the fourth act is a terrible strain upon one's
+patience. Indeed the whole love-affair between her and Karl is utterly
+un-human. What can one think, for example of a pair of ecstatically
+faithful lovers to whom it has evidently never occurred to write to each
+other? Here, if anywhere, one recalls Schiller's oft-quoted observation
+that he had attempted in 'The Robbers' to depict human beings before he
+had seen any.[28] Aside from his acquaintance with Franziska von
+Hohenheim, and an occasional nearer view of the coy maidens of the
+_école des demoiselles_, the female sex and the grand passion were for
+him only bookish mysteries.
+
+Of the subordinate outlaws there are several whose portraits are very
+well drawn. Here Schiller was able to profit by the psychological
+observations he had made upon his comrades in the academy. There were no
+cutthroats there, but there were traits and exploits, animosities and
+fidelities, which only needed to be heated in the poetic crucible in
+order to befit the rôle of robbers in the Bohemian Forest. In particular
+we may guess that the blatherskite Jew, Spiegelberg, with his swaggering
+self-conceit and his bestial vulgarity, was copied to some extent from
+life, though nothing definite is known of his original. Taken as a whole
+the robbers form a picturesque company, each with his own character.
+Shakspere would probably have been content to say 'first robber','second
+robber', etc.; but for Schiller, accustomed to the pose of leadership
+among his fellows, to company drill and to the weighing of men according
+to their moral qualities, this was not enough. There had to be sheep and
+goats, classified according to their loyalty. On the one hand, closest
+to the leader stand the devoted Roller, the sturdy Schweizer and the
+romantic idealist, Kosinsky; on the other are the envious malcontent,
+Spiegelberg, and the wretched Schufterle. The others, less distinctly
+characterized, represent the mass.
+
+It will now be in order to look at 'The Robbers' a moment from the point
+of view of dramatic art.[29] In a suppressed preface to the first
+edition Schiller expressed himself very contemptuously with regard to
+the stage, declaring that he had essayed a dramatized story and not a
+stage-play. He would not advise that his work be put upon the boards;
+for the rabble of the theater would not understand him, would take him
+for an apologist of vice, and so forth. There seems no good reason to
+doubt the essential sincerity of these expressions, though their author
+quickly changed his tune when the staging of 'The Robbers' became a
+practical question. In the heat of authorship, however, he had aimed at
+a literary rather than a dramatic triumph. His chief models were
+literary dramas. 'Götz von Berlichingen' had won its way into favor as a
+book for the reader. The dramatic works of Klinger, Lenz, Wagner and the
+like, were for the most part too extravagant and amorphous for
+representation, and Shakspere's day had not yet come.
+
+This being so, it is a fact of interest that 'The Robbers' first
+captured the public as a stage-play, and that too in a very much
+modified version, from which all references to contemporary society had
+been expunged, the action having been dated back into the fifteenth
+century. This indicates that the initial success of the work was not due
+mainly to the social 'tendency' which we see in it, but to its dramatic
+power. And the dramatic power is there. With but slender knowledge of
+the rules and the conventions, without ever having seen a moderately
+good play in his life, with little help save from the poet's eye in a
+fine frenzy rolling, the young student had shown himself at a stroke the
+coming dramatist of his nation.
+
+Let us freely admit that he had not shown himself a master of dramatic
+craftsmanship. Faulty the piece no doubt is in several particulars. The
+soliloquies of Franz are too long-winded, and the same may be said of
+some of the robber-scenes. Spiegelberg's vulgar tongue is allowed to wag
+too freely. Contempt of quotidian probability is now and then carried so
+far as to produce an unintended effect of burlesque: as when the
+robbers, who are merely dissolute students from Leipzig, fight with
+twenty times their number of soldiers, lose one man and slay three
+hundred. Again, one does not quite see the moral necessity of honest
+Schweizer's killing himself, when he has the misfortune to find Franz
+dead. He has indeed promised to capture him or die in the attempt, but
+his promise was never meant to cover the case of the villain's suicide.
+Under the circumstances his shooting himself is mere exuberance of
+dramatic bloodshed.
+
+But how absurd it would be to dwell upon these things as if they were
+serious defects! Young Schiller undertook to Shaksperize. His parole
+was not to be the natural and the probable, but the extraordinary, the
+tremendous. Why then should he have been more timid than the author of
+'Lear' and 'Macbeth'? One who is borne along by a whirlwind may be
+pardoned for ignoring the rules and the proprieties. Of course it is
+not intended to compare 'The Robbers' with the riper works of
+Shakspere. That would be absurd, and yet no more absurd than to gird at
+Schiller for doing what we pardon or even admire in Shakspere. Like
+every great dramatist Schiller has an indefeasible right to demand that
+we take his point of view, make his assumptions and enter into the
+spirit of his creation. And when we do this, how magnificently he
+carries us along! What animation in the dialogue everywhere, and what
+fire in the robber-scenes! From first to last the play fairly throbs
+with passion, and always with passion made visible. It is all action,
+all meant to be done and seen. Extravagant it is, no doubt; but while
+there are always hundreds of critics in the world who can see that and
+say it more or less cleverly, there is but one man in a century who can
+write such scenes.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 18: The Schubart story is reprinted by Weltrich, I, p. 183
+ff., who attempts to trace its provenience. It was not entirely fiction.
+Cf. Minor, I, 298, to whom this chapter is indebted in many places.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Eckermann's "Gespräche mit Goethe", under date of Jan.
+17, 1827.]
+
+[Footnote 20: "Schiller, sein Leben und seine Werke," I, 299.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Bitter family fends, and particularly the fiction of the
+hostile brothers,--with motives of rivalry, jealousy and hatred, with
+paternal curses and parricide and fratricide and filicide,--were just
+then a literary fashion. It is worth noting in this connection that
+J.M.R. Lenz published in 1776 a story entitled "Die beiden Alten", in
+which a son shuts up his father in a cellar and sends a man to kill him.
+But the man's heart fails him and the prisoner escapes,--to reappear
+like a ghost among his kin. That Schiller read this story is at any rate
+thinkable, though there is no direct evidence of the fact.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Cf. Minor, I, 300: "Die Räuber des jungen Schiller,
+welcher sich damals nicht einmal um den nordamerikanischen
+Freiheitskrieg, geschweige denn um das gewitterschwüle Frankreich
+bekümmerte, waren nur ein Symptom und eine Vorahnung; eine Wirkung im
+Kleinen vor der groszen Katastrophe."]
+
+[Footnote 23: Cf. Minor, I, 313 ff.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Act IV, scene I.]
+
+[Footnote 25: "Don Quixote," Chapter 89.]
+
+[Footnote 26: "Grundrisz zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung", V, 19.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Sämmtliche Schriften, II, 365. Citations from Schiller
+refer, unless otherwise expressly indicated, to Goedeke's
+historico-critical edition in 15 vols. Stuttgart, 1867-1876.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Sämmtliche Schriften, III, 529.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Cf. Bulthaupt, "Dramaturgie des Schauspiels," I, 209, who
+has some excellent remarks upon the dramatic qualities of the play and
+the histrionic problems connected with it.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The Stuttgart Medicus
+
+    So gewisz ich sein Werk verstehe, so musz er starke Dosen in
+    Emeticis ebenso lieben als in Aestheticis, und ich möchte ihm lieber
+    zehen Pferde als meine Frau zur Kur übergeben.--_Review of 'The
+    Robbers', 1782_.
+
+The career that opened before Schiller on his release from the academy,
+in December, 1780, turned out a wretched mockery of his hopes. He had,
+or supposed he had, the right to expect a decent position in the public
+service and a measure of liberty befitting a man who had served his time
+under tutelage. What his august master saw fit to mete out to him,
+however, was neither the one nor the other: he was stationed at
+Stuttgart as 'medicus' to an ill-famed regiment consisting largely of
+invalids. His pay was eighteen florins a month--say seven or eight
+dollars. His duties consisted of routine visits to the hospital and
+daily appearance at parade, with reports upon the condition of the
+luckless patients whom he doctored savagely with drastic medicines.
+Withal he was required to wear a stiff, ungainly uniform which did not
+carry with it the distinction of an 'officer' and exposed him to the
+derision of his friends. A humble petition of Captain Schiller that his
+son be permitted to wear the dress of a civilian and extend his practice
+among the people of the city met with a curt refusal.
+
+Of Schiller's personal appearance at about this time we have two or
+three descriptions by friends who knew him well.[30] Putting them
+together we get a picture something like the following: He was about
+five feet and nine inches in height, erect of bearing and knock-kneed.
+He had reddish hair, a broad forehead, and bushy eyebrows which came
+close together over a long, thin, arched nose. He was near-sighted. His
+eyes, of a bluish-gray color, were usually inflamed, but very expressive
+when he spoke with animation. One friend credits him with an 'eagle's
+glance', another with an uncanny, demonic expression. He had a strong
+chin, a prominent under-lip, and sunken, freckled cheeks. Altogether his
+face and bearing told of immense energy.--One can imagine how the
+creator of Karl Moor must have felt in his new situation. The young lion
+had escaped from one cage into another that was even worse.
+
+Nevertheless the new life did not altogether preclude an occasional sip
+from the cup of earthly cheer. The young medicus found himself within
+easy reach of a number of jovial friends whom he had known at the
+academy. With one of these, a youth named Kappf, he hired a room of a
+certain Frau Vischer, a widow who was to become the muse of his
+high-keyed songs to Laura. The furniture consisted of a table and two
+benches. In one corner were usually to be seen a pile of potatoes and
+some plates. Here the friends feasted upon sausage and potato-salad of
+their own make, a bottle of wine being added if the host happened to be
+in funds. Sometimes there were convivial card-parties at a local inn,
+where more than enough wine was drunk and bills were run up that still
+remain unpaid. Tradition tells of a military banquet from which our
+medicus had to be assisted home.
+
+A nobler pleasure incident to the new life was the opportunity of
+frequent visits to Castle Solitude. For eight years Schiller had been
+cut off from intercourse with his parents and sisters, save through the
+medium of officially inspected letters. Returning now at last he found
+his mother in frail health, but his father still vigorous and active.
+Sister Christophine had grown into a strong and self-reliant young
+woman, the mainstay of the household. She took an interest in
+literature, loved her brother devotedly, had a sister's boundless faith
+in his genius, and now became his confidante and amanuensis. Another
+sister, Louise, had reached the age of fourteen, two others had died,
+and the youngest of all, Nanette, was now three years old. It was a
+happy, sensible, affectionate family-circle, in which the long-lost son
+and brother found sweet relief from the _misère_ of Stuttgart. The only
+cloud in the sky was the mother's anxiety for the welfare of her son's
+soul, with the resulting necessity of replying somewhat disingenuously
+to her tender inquiries into his religious condition. To his parents and
+sister the disgruntled medicus expressed freely his disappointment at
+the provision which the duke had made for him. A hard fate, indeed, to
+have studied seven years for the privilege of starving one's mind and
+body as an insignificant army doctor!
+
+It was partly the hope of earning money that led him to seek a publisher
+for 'The Robbers'. Friend Petersen was exhorted to find one, if
+possible, and was promised whatever he could get for the piece over and
+above fifty florins. But Petersen had no luck and at last the ambitious
+author decided, as the author of 'Götz' had done before him, to print
+his drama at his own expense. The money that he borrowed for the
+purpose, on the security of a friend, involved him in debts that were to
+hang over him for years and cause him endless trouble.
+
+His plan once formed he began to take counsel with friends and revise
+his manuscript in the light of their criticisms. Even after the printing
+had begun, the revision continued. Things looked differently in the cold
+type of the proof-sheet, and he saw that he had occasionally gone too
+far in the direction of coarseness and extravagance. Thus the original
+draft had provided that Amalia should actually be sent to a convent, and
+that the furious Karl should appear with his robbers and threaten to
+convert the nunnery into a brothel unless his sweetheart should be
+delivered to him. This scene was condemned and the exploit given a more
+appropriate place among the _res gestae_ of Spiegelberg. In many places
+extravagant diction was toned down. The original preface, which was
+mainly occupied with a labored defence of the literary drama as against
+the stage-play, was rejected, and a new preface written which was
+devoted chiefly to moral considerations. The author here admitted that
+he had portrayed characters who would offend the virtuous, but insisted
+that he could not do otherwise if he was to copy nature, because in the
+real world virtue shines only in contrast with vice. He went on to say:
+
+    He who makes it his object to overthrow vice, and to avenge
+    religion, morality and social law upon their enemies, must unveil
+    vice in all its naked hideousness and bring it before the eyes of
+    mankind in colossal size; he must himself wander temporarily through
+    its nocturnal labyrinths and must be able to force himself into
+    states of feeling that revolt his soul by their unnaturalness. I may
+    properly claim for my work, in view of its remarkable catastrophe, a
+    place among moral books. Vice meets the end that befits it. The
+    wanderer returns to the track of law. Virtue triumphs. Whoever is
+    fair enough to read me through and try to understand me, from him I
+    may expect, not that he admire the poet, but that he respect the
+    right-minded man.
+
+This attempt to recommend 'The Robbers' as a text-book in morality has
+now a curious sound. It is a safe guess that the young attorney for the
+defence wrote with his tongue in his cheek and an eye on the censor.
+
+The first edition, which appeared in May, 1781, was styled a
+'Schauspiel' and bore the Hippocratic motto: _Quae medicamenta non
+sanant, ferrum sanat; quae ferrum non sanat, ignis sanat_. The author's
+name was not given and the work purported (fallaciously) to have been
+published at Frankfurt and Leipzig. The anonymity was not taken
+seriously, however, and the Stuttgart medicus soon found himself a bit
+of a literary lion. He was pointed out on the street as the man who had
+written 'The Robbers', and distinguished travellers began to call upon
+him. The reviewers mingled praise and blame, and the most thoughtful of
+them, one Timme, declared in the Erfurt _Zeitung_ that here if anywhere
+was the coming Shakspere,--which was a little wild from posterity's
+point of view, but not an unpleasant thing for a young author to read in
+a newspaper.
+
+Luckily for Schiller his work was not long left to make its way as 'mere
+literature'. Among those to whom he had sent the sheets was a Mannheim
+bookseller, named Schwan, who had an eye for dramatic merit. Before
+Schwan had read many pages it came over him that here was a prize for
+the stage, and he hurried with it to Baron Dalberg, intendant of the
+Mannheim theater. Dalberg was easily convinced,--only the work would
+need to be radically revised. A complimentary letter was addressed to
+Schiller, proposing a stage version of 'The Robbers' and offering to
+bring out future plays that he might write. Schiller was quite willing,
+notwithstanding his preface, and about the middle of August he addressed
+himself to his task. Profiting by the suggestions of Dalberg and the
+reviewers, he devoted six weeks to adding, subtracting, re-writing, and
+re-arranging,--a new masterpiece, he averred, would have cost him less
+labor. But Dalberg was not yet satisfied; correspondence ensued about
+various points, Schiller showing himself very tractable, and it was not
+until the close of the year that the stage version was finally ready. It
+was played on the 12th of January, 1782,--its author having stolen away
+from Stuttgart to see the performance,--and scored an unheard-of
+success.[31] Shortly afterwards the new version, in slightly modified
+form, was published by Schwan under the name of a 'Trauerspiel' by
+Friedrich Schiller.
+
+The changes made in the new version do not reflect the free play of
+Schiller's dramatic instinct so much as his deferential attitude towards
+Dalberg. Thus we know that the most important of them all, the shifting
+of the action back into the age of expiring feudalism, was made
+reluctantly. Schiller felt, and had reason to feel, that the modernity
+of his drama was its very life-blood;[32] for the squeamish Dalberg,
+however, the robbers in the age of Frederick the Great were a painful
+anachronism. So they were put back three centuries and costumed in the
+style of the 'Ritterstück'. Other less dubious changes were also made.
+Thus the long soliloquies of Franz and the ribald garrulities of
+Spiegelberg were reduced to more tolerable proportions. Robber Schwarz
+and Pastor Moser were omitted, and the bastard Hermann was vitalized
+into a person of some account by means of his counter-plot against
+Franz. The un-lyrical songs by which Schiller had set great store were
+dropped, and the catastrophe was so changed as to bring the two brothers
+finally face to face. The life of Schweizer was spared and Franz,
+instead of being torn limb from limb, was derisively pardoned by his
+great-souled brother and then, amid mocking laughter, thrust into the
+selfsame dungeon in which he had confined his father. Much against
+Schiller's will Amalia was made to kill herself with a dagger snatched
+from one of the outlaws, instead of receiving her death at the hands of
+her lover.
+
+The prodigious success of 'The Robbers' upon the Mannheim stage, and
+upon other stages where it was soon produced in more or less garbled
+form, made the work famous. Famous and at the same time notorious. New
+editions, most of them pirated, began to appear, and a mania similar to
+the Werther-mania of the previous decade spread over Germany. The
+newspapers told of conspiring schoolboys whose heads had been turned
+toward a career of crime. A well-born youth who had essayed the rôle of
+Robin Hood near Strassburg and was hanged there in October, 1783,
+confessed suspiciously that he had been brought to his fate by the
+reading of bad books. The sedate authorities of Leipzig forbade the
+further performance of the play in their city because they had observed
+a sudden increase of burglary and petit larceny. An edition of 1782,
+which the publisher, possibly without Schiller's knowledge, had adorned
+with a rampant lion and the motto _In Tirannos_, probably added to the
+vogue of the piece as a revolutionary document. A French translation
+appeared in 1785 and drew the attention of the turbulent Gauls to that
+'Monsieur Gille', who was in time to receive the diploma of a French
+citizen. The first English translation dates from 1792.
+
+It is not difficult to imagine the emotions with which Schiller, now at
+the fervid age of twenty-two, returned to his post after that
+intoxicating visit to Mannheim, and, his ears still tingling with the
+thunderous plaudits of the theater and the complimentary babble of his
+new friends, resumed the dosing of his sick grenadiers in Stuttgart. For
+a while things went on very much as before. In order to better his
+position in a professional way, he formed the plan of taking his
+doctor's degree and then qualifying for a professorship in physiology.
+But from the first the poet in him prevailed more and more over the
+medical man. Soon after leaving the academy he had published a long
+elegy upon the death of a young friend named Weckerlin. It is a
+rebellious, declamatory poem, in which the pathos of untimely death is
+made the occasion for ventilating radical views as to the goodness of
+God and the consolations of religion. Passages like the following show
+the young Schiller at his best as a poet:
+
+  Liebe wird Dein Auge nie vergolden,
+    Nie umhalsen Deine Braut wirst Du,
+  Nie, wenn unsere Thränen stromweis rollten,
+    Ewig, ewig, ewig sinkt Dein Auge zu.[33]
+
+For the rest, the death of Weckerlin is a 'discord on the great lute',
+and a 'barbarous doom'. And yet, the poem continues, the dead youth has
+drawn the better lot; he will sleep calmly in his narrow house,
+unmindful of the wretched tragi-comedy going on above his head. So his
+friends are bidden 'to clap their hands and shout a loud _plaudite_'. As
+for a reunion, there will be one, but it will not be in the 'paradise of
+the rabble'.--In another poem dating from this period, 'The Chariot of
+Venus,' the love-goddess is put on trial and castigated for her sins.
+Her havoc among the sons of men is described in half a hundred
+rhetorical stanzas which were evidently inspired by the genius of the
+clinic or the hospital, rather than by one of the sacred nine.
+
+Besides these poems a large number of others were written by Schiller
+during the year 1781, prior to the time when Dalberg's invitation caused
+him to turn his attention to the stage. It was of course important to
+acquaint the public with his lucubrations, but poetry in large
+quantities was not an easily marketable commodity. The usual mode of
+publication was the poetic 'almanac' or 'calendar', in which a number of
+ambitious verse-makers would unite their wares in a single volume. Of
+such almanacs there were several in Germany and one at least in Suabia.
+It was edited by one Stäudlin, a rival whom Schiller thought it would be
+both feasible and pleasant to outshine. So he sent out letters to his
+friends inviting contributions, and in due time there appeared, after a
+fresh outlay of borrowed money, an 'Anthology for the Year 1782'. It
+consisted of some four-score poems, signed with all manner of
+intentionally misleading symbols and purporting to emanate from
+Tobolsko, in Siberia. The most of the verses were the work of
+Schiller.[34]
+
+Among the poems of the 'Anthology' there are none that have become very
+popular, none that are capable of affording any very keen delight to
+the lover of poetry. One sees that their author's lyric gift was not of
+the highest order. What is heard is not so much the note of honest
+feeling as the effort of an active intellect, searching heaven and
+earth for clever and striking things to say. Instead of learning from
+the folk-song, Schiller had learned originally from Klopstock; and what
+he had learned was to pose and philosophize and invest fictitious
+sentiment with a maze of bewildering and far-fetched imagery. Then he
+had lost sympathy with Klopstock's religiosity, had acquired a better
+opinion of the things of sense, and had had his introduction to doubt
+and disgust and rebellion. When now these moods sought expression in
+verse, the verse took the form of impassioned rhetoric. He sang not as
+the bird sings, but as a fervid youth sings who is eager to assert as
+strongly as possible his emancipation from conventional modes of
+thought and feeling.
+
+The poems of the 'Anthology' are too numerous and in the main too
+unimportant for an exhaustive review; it must suffice to glance at a few
+of the more noteworthy. Several had been written at the academy and were
+now published with more or less of retouching. To this number, it would
+seem, belongs the one entitled 'The Glory of Creation', which is a
+perfectly serious and devout poem on the grandeur and beauty of the
+world. Along with this, however, we find another, entitled 'To God',
+which tells of moods like those which had led Werther to characterize
+Nature as 'an eternally ruminating monster'. It consists of five unrimed
+stanzas, all but one ending with an emphatic 'Thou big thing'.
+
+  Thou who didst summon earth and sky,
+    And earth and sky came forth;
+  Who sayest the word and worlds arise,
+    Who art thou, mighty thing?
+
+  O big, amazingly big thing!
+    My head swims when I look;
+  I shudder and start back afraid
+    And fall--upon my knees.
+
+These verses--the translation may hold up its head quite unabashed
+beside the original--hardly rise above the plane of doggerel; they
+signify nothing except that their author has had his little quarrel with
+this best of all possible worlds and is not unwilling to shock people.
+
+Of far greater poetic interest are the verses entitled 'Rousseau', whose
+neglected grave (he died in 1778) is made the point of departure for a
+vigorous denunciation of the bigotry that had driven him from place to
+place and denied him peace among the living. The poem foresees a time
+when streams of blood shall flow for the honor of calling him son. There
+is no effort at portraiture, and no suggestion of any repellent or
+pitiable traits.[35] We get not Byron's "self-torturing sophist", but a
+martyred sage who suffered and died at the hands of Christians,--'he who
+makes out of Christians human beings'. Toward the end he is
+apostrophized as the 'Great Endurer, and bidden to leap joyously into
+Charon's boat and go tell the spirits about this 'dream of the war of
+frogs and mice, the hand-organ doodle-doodle of this life'.[36]
+
+In this poem there is certainly no lack of that 'fire' which Duke Karl
+found in Schiller's dissertation. Indeed fire abounds everywhere in his
+youthful versifying. He never contemplates, never dwells upon a
+temperate emotion. The poetry of common things and of the gentler
+feelings seems to have been nonexistent for him. His imagination likes
+to occupy itself with the supernal, the stupendous, or else with the
+awful and the revolting. This is seen in the two poems 'Elysium' and 'A
+Group from Tartarus'; the one aiming to portray a land of ineffable
+happiness, where sorrow has no name and the only pain is a gentle
+ecstasy, the other depicting the infinite misery of the inferno. In both
+there is a free blending of Christian with pagan conceptions, 'Elysium'
+being put for heaven and 'Tartarus' for hell. A similar blending is
+noticeable in many of the other poems, ancient mythology being made to
+furnish forth the setting and the symbols of modern passion. So it is,
+for example, in the lyric operetta 'Semele', the longest and most
+pretentious of the 'Anthology' poems. It consists of two scenes in
+irregular verses, dealing with Jupiter's love for the mortal Semele' and
+Juno's jealousy. Artistically it is much in need of the file, and Its
+sustained note of passionate pathos hardly comports, perhaps, with the
+type of the operetta. Nevertheless it contains powerful passages and
+telling stage effects. One can see that the young student--'Semele'
+appears to have been written at the academy--had learned, through, his
+occasional visits to the opera, how to manage a conventional theme and
+conventional machinery in such a way as to startle and thrill.
+
+More noteworthy, for the characterization of the youthful Schiller, is
+the ode entitled 'Friendship', which purports to be taken 'from the
+letters of Julius to Raphael, an unpublished novel'. In this poem we
+have not so much the expression of a real human affection as a
+philosophy of friendship; just as in the Laura poems we have a
+philosophy of love. The verses remind one immediately of Rousseau's
+saying that he was 'intoxicated with love without an object'. Friendship
+is described as a mystic attraction of souls, identical with the
+attraction of gravitation. This it is which makes the beauty and the
+glory of the spiritual world. 'We are dead groups when we hate, gods
+when we love.'
+
+  If in creation's All I stood alone,
+  Souls would I dream into the senseless stone
+    And kiss them in a fond embrace.
+
+Then we hear of a hierarchy of spirits, ascending 'from the Mongol to
+the Greek seer, who precedes the last of the seraphs'; and in this
+harmonious ring-dance of souls Raphael and Julius 'sweep onward to where
+time and space are submerged in the sea of eternal glory'.
+
+Other poems which rise above the general level are 'The Bad Monarchs', a
+poetic castigation (without mention of names) of the type of ruler
+perfectly exemplified by Duke Karl of Württemberg, up to about the year
+1770; 'In a Battle', a powerful description of the rage of combat, with
+all its sickening and inspiring details; 'The Pestilence', a gruesome
+tribute to the power of God as manifested in the horrors of the plague,
+and 'Count Eberhard the Quarreler', a patriotic battle-ballad in honor
+of a locally renowned Suabian fighter. Better than any of these,
+however, from a poetic point of view, is the 'Funeral Fantasy', which
+was occasioned by the death of young Von Hoven in 1780. One may perhaps
+doubt the genuineness of the grief that could find expression in such a
+pomp of words, but there is no doubting the poetic power of pictures
+like this:
+
+  Pale, at its ghastly noon,
+  Pauses above the death-still wood the moon;
+    The night-sprite sighing, through the dim air stirs;
+      The clouds descend in rain;
+      Mourning, the wan stars wane,
+    Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres!
+
+  Haggard as spectres, vision-like and dumb,
+    Dark with the pomp of Death, and moving slow,
+  Towards that sad lair the pale Procession come
+    Where the Grave closes on the Night below.[37]
+
+But the most famous and on the whole the most interesting of the
+effusions in the 'Anthology' are the erotic verses addressed to Laura.
+Whether Schiller was humanly in love with his landlady, Frau Luise
+Vischer, is a rather futile question which German erudition has argued
+pro and con these many years without coming to an inexpugnable
+conclusion. Probably he was not, though he may have thought that he was.
+If he had been we should have heard of it sooner or later in authentic
+prose. But she interested him as the first of her sex who had come under
+his close observation. There were on his part the small gallantries of
+daily life, and on hers the responsiveness of a not very prudish widow
+quite willing to be adored. She played the piano. It was enough: the
+needy Petrarch had found a sufficient Laura--and never was a poet's
+goddess worshiped in such singular strains. We miss in them altogether
+that captivating simplicity which the young Goethe, and later the young
+Heine, caught from the songs of the people. Schiller is always in
+pursuit of the intense, the extraordinary, the ecstatic, and sometimes
+fails to impress through sheer superabundance of the impressive. His
+imagination wanders between a wild sensuality,--so lubricious in its
+suggestions, now and then, as to occasion gossip to the effect that he
+had become a libertine,--and a sublimated philosophy based on Platonic
+conceptions of a prenatal existence, or upon Leibnitzian conceptions of
+a pre-established harmony. But while the Laura poems are sufficiently
+sensual, they are not sensuous; or if they try to be, the sensuous
+element is unreal and unimaginable. Some of them, with their
+overstrained vehemence of expression, their fervid and far-fetched
+tropes, their involved and sometimes obscure diction, are little more
+than intellectual puzzles: they so occupy the mind in the mere effort of
+comprehension that little room is left for any emotion whatever. They
+leave one altogether cold.
+
+A 'Fantasie to Laura' identifies the rapturous passion with the force of
+gravitation which holds planets and systems in order. 'Blot it out from
+the mechanism of nature and the All bursts asunder in fragments; your
+worlds thunder into chaos; weep, Newtons, for their giant fall!' And
+then Laura's kiss!
+
+  Aus den Schranken schwellen alle Sehnen,
+    Seine Ufer überwallt das Blut;
+  Körper will in Körper überstürzen,
+    Lodern Seelen in vereinter Glut.[38]
+
+When Laura plays the piano, her adorer stands there, one moment an
+exanimate statue, the next a disembodied spirit,--while the listening
+zephyrs murmur more softly in reverence. In a 'Reproach to Laura' she is
+taxed with being the ruin of her lover's ambition. Because of her the
+'giant has shriveled to a dwarf'. She has 'blown away the mountains',
+that he had 'rolled up' to the sunny heights of glory. In another poem,
+'Mystery of Reminiscence', we hear of a cosmic golden age in which
+Laura, one with her poet, was a part of the Godhead. One and yet two,
+they swept through space in unimaginable ecstasy. Somehow,--the point is
+not made very clear,--there came a great cataclysm and separated them.
+Now they are beautiful fragments of the God, evermore yearning to
+restore the lost unity:
+
+  Darum Laura dieses Wutverlangen,
+  Ewig starr an deinen Mund zu hangen,
+  Und die Wollust deinen Hauch zu trinken,
+  In dein Wesen, wenn sich Blicke winken,
+    Sterbend zu versinken.[39]
+
+Without lingering longer over the erotic poems of the 'Anthology', one
+may say that they are characterized, like 'The Robbers', by a fiery
+intensity of expression which, in the search after the sublime,
+occasionally passes the bounds of good taste. Their author already has
+at his command a gorgeous poetic diction that is all his own. One is
+often amazed at his mere command of words, the audacity of his tropes,
+the sweep of his imagination. But he does not convince. When at his best
+he only produces an impression of magnificent feigning. The reader soon
+sees that, notwithstanding all the impassioned hyperboles, it is really
+intellectual poetry,--a youth philosophizing about his passion. And the
+philosophy is little more than a matter of fine-sounding but vacuous
+analogies that have no root in the facts of experience.[40] And so the
+poetry does not take hold of one. Nor does it charm with its music;
+there is vigor and sweep and swing, but the subtler elements of
+melodious verse are lacking.
+
+These qualities of the youthful Schiller's poetry foretell that he will
+never be a great lyrist, but they promise well enough for the poetic
+tale. This promise is seen notably in the poem called 'The
+Infanticide'. It is a gruesome thing, with the pathos here and there
+overstrained, but what a power of vivid narration! What a gift for the
+portraiture of frenzied passion! For the rest, it should not go
+unrecorded that certain poems of the 'Anthology' went altogether too
+far in the defiance of conventional morality. The study of medicine,
+combined with the ardor of youthful revolt and the seductions of a new
+bohemian life, had so sensualized the mind of Schiller that, for a
+brief period in his career, he found pleasure in exploiting the
+indecent. It was but a passing phase, and not very bad at its worst.
+Still, if Heine, and the other emancipators of the flesh who came
+later, had felt the need of supporting their cause by an appeal to
+distinguished authority, they might have referred quite unabashed to
+the youthful sins of the idealist Schiller.
+
+Little notice was taken of the 'Anthology' even in Suabia, and none at
+all, apparently, in the outside German world. The investment brought no
+immediate returns in fame or in money, and other experiments of a
+different character turned out but little better.
+
+As early as the spring of 1781 Schiller had assumed the editorial charge
+of a would-be popular magazine intended to contribute to the 'benefit
+and pleasure' of the Suabians. It was a weak provincial affair that soon
+died of inanition. The hack-work that Schiller did for it is of no
+biographical interest, save that it brought him into connection with
+Suabian writers and suggested to him that with a freer hand he might
+produce a better journal. In the following year, accordingly, we find
+him starting, in conjunction with his friends Abel and Petersen, the
+_Wirtemberg Repertory of Literature_. It was to be a quarterly, and bore
+the ominous legend: 'at the expense of the editors'. To this journal
+Schiller contributed various essays and reviews which show that as a
+critic he had been influenced by Lessing, but had not acquired the knack
+of Lessing's luminous and straightforward style. In a rather badly
+written paper on 'The Present Condition of the German Theater', he takes
+up a question which was destined to interest him later,--that of the
+relation of the drama to morality. He has no difficulty in showing that
+people are not deterred from the vices or impelled to the virtues that
+they see represented on the stage.
+
+But by far the most important of these contributions to the _Repertory_
+are two reviews (of course anonymous) of his own writings. In a long
+notice of 'The Robbers' he discusses the work with a coolness that is
+simply amazing. His own child has become a _corpus vile_ that he has
+the nerve to dissect without the slightest tremor of parental sympathy.
+Nearly everything that a century's criticism has found to urge against
+the play,--the dubiousness of the entire invention, the impossibility
+of such a devil as Franz, the insipidity of Amalia and the old Count
+Moor, the faults of the diction and the barbarism of the action,--is
+here set forth with remorseless severity. The review closes with the
+facetious comment which appears at the head of this chapter. Not quite
+so caustic is the notice of the 'Anthology', but it contains a
+significant 'admonition to our young poets' to the effect that
+'extravagance is not strength, that violation of the rules of taste and
+propriety is not boldness and originality, that fancy is not feeling,
+and high-flown rhetoric is not the talisman on which the arrows of
+criticism break and recoil'.
+
+Verily it is not given every young author to see himself thus clearly
+in the glass of criticism. We may guess, however, that these critical
+mystifications were not altogether free from the element of
+calculating humbug. Schiller knew full well that to be castigated in
+public would not be a bad thing for his budding reputation; and so, as
+no one else came forward to do the slashing, he did it himself. It is
+amusing to read that a Frankfurt correspondent was so pained by the
+review of 'The Robbers' that he sent in a defence of the piece and was
+greatly surprised to learn that reviewer and author were one and the
+same person.
+
+These contributions to the _Repertory_ appeared in the first two
+numbers; before the third came out Schiller had turned his back for good
+and all upon his native Württemberg. Ever since that first visit to
+Mannheim he had felt drawn to the 'Greek climate of the Palatinate'. On
+the 1st of April, 1782, we find him writing to Dalberg that it 'would be
+untrue were he to deny his growing inclination for the drama'. The
+letter goes on to say that he was then expecting to be very much
+occupied, for several months, with medical studies; but he hoped to
+finish a new play, 'Fiesco', by the end of the year. Toward the end of
+May, taking advantage of the absence of the duke, he visited Mannheim
+again and saw a second representation of 'The Robbers'. Through the
+indiscreet gossip of the friends who accompanied him, the duke got wind
+of this unauthorized journey, ordered 'the deserter' under arrest for
+two weeks, and forbade him all further intercourse with foreign parts.
+
+Schiller made use of his enforced leisure to work upon 'Fiesco', and to
+plan a third drama, 'Louise Miller', which promised a chance of revenge
+upon the petty tyrant who sought to own him body and soul. After serving
+his time in the guard-house he wrote an urgent appeal to Dalberg, to
+rescue him from his intolerable situation by giving him employment at
+Mannheim. But Dalberg, a fearsome and politic creature, had no mind to
+compromise himself by befriending a youth who had quarreled with the
+powerful duke of Württemberg. Schiller now began to think of running
+away, and his thoughts were soon quickened into resolution by fresh
+exasperations.
+
+In the second act of 'The Robbers' he had made Spiegelberg refer to the
+Swiss canton of the Grisons as the 'Athens of modern scalawags.'
+Tradition has it that the passage was a thrust at an unpopular Swiss
+overseer in the academy. It is probable, however, that it was in no way
+malicious, but merely a thoughtless jest at the expense of a canton
+which had actually got a bad reputation for lax enforcement of the law.
+Be this as it may, the passage gave offence to a patriotic Swiss named
+Amstein, who aired his grievance in print and demanded a retraction.
+When Schiller paid no attention to this, Amstein appealed to one Walter,
+a fussy official living at Ludwigsburg. Walter took up the case of the
+traduced canton with great zeal, and brought it to the attention of the
+duke. The result was a summons to Schiller, a sharp reproof, and an
+order to write no more 'comedies'. He was to confine himself strictly to
+medicine or he would be cashiered.
+
+Matters now came swiftly to a head. On September 1, 1782, Schiller
+addressed to his sovereign a very humble letter of remonstrance, setting
+forth that his authorship had added more than five hundred florins to
+his income,[41] and that this money was absolutely necessary for the
+prosecution of his studies; that he was winning reputation and thus
+bringing honor to the academy and to its illustrious founder, and so
+forth. The duke's reply was to threaten him with arrest in case he
+should write any more letters upon this subject. Schiller now resolved
+to take his fate in his own hands. Resistance and submission to the
+autocrat were alike out of the question; the only recourse was flight
+from Württemberg.
+
+In the days of German absolutism, this was a dangerous step to take.
+Technically he would be a deserter. He had reason to fear that he would
+not be allowed to make his way in the world by his own merit, unharmed
+and unhelped, but would be dogged by the malice of a despot and perhaps
+brought back to undergo the fate of Schubart. Worse still was the
+possibility that his father might be made to suffer from the duke's
+anger. Nevertheless he resolved to take the risk. He made known his
+purpose to a very few friends, one of whom, Frau von Wolzogen, offered
+him her house in Bauerbach, in the event of his sometime needing a quiet
+refuge. Another friend, Andreas Streicher, nobly offered to share his
+fortunes, Streicher, to whom we owe a classical account of this episode
+in Schiller's life, was a young musician living with his mother in
+Stuttgart. It had been planned that he should visit Hamburg in the near
+future, but he now persuaded his mother to advance him the money that
+was to have been devoted to his journey, in order that he might
+accompany his beloved Schiller into exile. So the friends bided their
+time and meanwhile 'Fiesco' made rapid progress.
+
+The wished-for opportunity came on the 22nd of September. The court was
+in a flutter over the visit of a Russian prince for whose reception
+great preparations had been made. In the general excitement Schiller
+counted upon getting away unobserved. So he bade a tearful farewell to
+his mother and sisters, who knew of the secret that had been kept away
+from the father for reasons of policy, and in the evening he drove out
+of Stuttgart with his friend Streicher, giving to the guard the names of
+Dr. Ritter and Dr. Wolf. The friends set their faces northward towards
+Mannheim. As they passed the brilliantly illuminated Castle Solitude, so
+Streicher relates, Schiller fell into a long revery. At last the
+exclamation 'My Mother!' told the tale of his thoughts. But the mood of
+sadness did not last long. Cheerful talk enlivened the journey, and when
+the two travellers crossed the boundary of the Palatinate Schiller was
+jubilant. He felt that he had entered a land of freedom and
+enlightenment, where art was esteemed and talent honored.
+
+He had with him, virtually complete, the manuscript of the new play upon
+which he had built illusory hopes. It will be in order to consider
+'Fiesco' before we follow its author into the vicissitudes of his exile.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 30: The somewhat conflicting data are subjected to a critical
+scrutiny by Weltrich, I, 323 ff.]
+
+[Footnote 31: Bulthaupt, I, 210, quotes from Pichler's history of the
+Mannheim theater the following account by an eye-witness; 'The theater
+was like a mad-house,--rolling eyes, clenched fists, stamping feet and
+hoarse shrieks from the spectators. Strangers fell sobbing into each
+other's arms, and women staggered to the door at the point of fainting.
+There was a general dissolution, as in chaos, from the mists of which a
+new creation bursts forth.' This description is perhaps the best
+possible antidote to Matthew Arnold's fastidious observation that 'The
+Robbers' is violent and tiresome.]
+
+[Footnote 32: In a letter of Dec. 12, 1781, to Dalberg, he admits the
+cogency of the objection to his horde of robbers 'in our enlightened
+century' and virtually expresses regret that he had not himself, from
+the beginning, imagined an earlier date for the action. But he fears
+that to change the time, now that the piece is finished, will result in
+making it a monstrosity, a 'crow with peacock's feathers'.]
+
+[Footnote 33:
+
+  "Love gilds not for thee all the world with its glow,
+    Never Bride in the clasp of thine arms shall repose;
+  Thou canst see not our tears, though in torrents they flow.
+    Those eyes in the calm of eternity close."
+--_Bulwer's Translation_.]
+
+[Footnote 34: As different poems undoubtedly Schiller's were variously
+signed, and as many of his youthful effusions were excluded by him from
+the collection of 1801, the sifting out of his share in the 'Anthology'
+and the ascription of the remaining poems to their proper authors are
+tasks of no small difficulty. The critical student should consult
+Weltrich, I, 501 ff.]
+
+[Footnote 35: Schiller seems to have got his idea of Rousseau chiefly
+from H.P. Sturz's "Denkwürdigkeiten von Johann Jakob Rousseau" (1779).
+The famous 'Confessions' did not begin to appear until 1781. Curiously
+enough our poem refers to Rousseau as 'suckled on the banks of the
+Seine', and as having 'stood like a meteor on the banks of the
+Garonne'.]
+
+[Footnote 36:
+
+  Geh, du Opfer dieses Trillingsdrachen,
+  Hüpfe freudig in den Todesnachen,
+    Grosser Dulder, frank und frei!
+  Geh, erzähl' dort in der Geister Kreise
+  Diesen Traum vom Krieg der Frösch' und Mäuse,
+    Dieses Lebens Jahrmarktsdudelei.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Bulwer's translation, which is here particularly good.]
+
+[Footnote 38:
+
+  "Out from their bounds swell nerve, and pulse, and sense,
+    The veins in tumult would their shores o'erflow;
+  Body to body rapt--and, charmèd thence,
+    Soul drawn to soul with intermingled glow."
+--_Bulwer's Translation_.]
+
+[Footnote 39:
+
+  "And therefore came to me the wish to woo thee--
+  Still, lip to lip, to cling for aye unto thee;
+  _This_ made thy glances to my soul the link--
+  _This_ made me burn thy very breath to drink--
+    My life in thine to sink."
+--_Bulwer's Translation, _]
+
+[Footnote 40: Concerning the provenience and the philosophic connection
+of the youthful Schiller's ideas of love and friendship the reader will
+do well to consult Kuno Fischer, "Schiller-Schriften", I, 41 ff.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Of course this roseate statement to his Highness took no
+account of his debts, which had not yet begun to be particularly
+pressing.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa
+
+    Ein Diadem erkämpfen ist grosz; es wegwerfen ist göttlich.
+_'Fiesco'_.
+
+As we have seen, 'Fiesco' was written during the summer and fall of
+1782. The following winter, having been rejected by the Mannheim stage,
+it was published as a literary drama. This first edition bore the
+sub-title: 'A Republican Tragedy.'
+
+There is a very general agreement that 'Fiesco' is upon the whole the
+weakest of Schiller's plays. As a 'republican tragedy' it is a
+disappointment, since its political import, though obvious enough to one
+acquainted with Schiller from other sources, is not brought out
+distinctly in the play itself. Neither the friend nor the enemy of
+republicanism, in any historical or human sense of the word, can derive
+the slightest edification from 'Fiesco,' The political talk is vague and
+unpractical, and we get no clear idea of the contending forces. When the
+curtain goes down upon the chaos of intrigue, one is at a loss to know
+how one is expected to feel. And yet the play is full of powerful
+scenes, developed with masterly dramatic skill. As a mere spectacle it
+rivals 'The Robbers', to which as a drama it is decidedly inferior. In
+general its defects strike the reader more than the spectator. It is not
+the hand of the dramatist but the eye of the historian that is lacking.
+In other words the author, with all his seeming profundity of
+philosophic reflection, was simply not ripe for historical tragedy.
+
+The bare facts of Fiesco's conspiracy, related with as little
+ascription of motive as possible, are these: In the year 1528 Andrea
+Doria, who had won great distinction as an admiral in the French
+service, but had now quarreled with the King of France and hoisted the
+colors of Emperor Charles the Fifth, landed an expedition in Genoa and
+captured the city from the French. Historians agree that he could
+easily have made himself sovereign, but instead of doing so he restored
+the old aristocratic republic, thus winning for himself the enduring
+title of 'father and liberator of his country.' Although Doria was
+simply an influential citizen of Genoa and enjoyed the general esteem
+of his countrymen, his prominence in the state gave rise to animosities
+among the noble families, and these were increased when he made his
+young and headstrong kinsman, Gianettino, his heir. In the year 1547
+the malcontents found a leader in the person of Giovanni Ludovigi
+Fiesco, Count of Lavagna. Fiesco was young, handsome, rich and
+ambitious--a dashing and unscrupulous cavalier. His first thought was
+to restore the French domination and make himself only a viceroy of the
+French king; but a fellow conspirator, Verrina, persuaded him to seize
+for himself the sovereign power to which his rank and talents entitled
+him. The conspiracy was carefully matured, Fiesco meanwhile, to divert
+suspicion, acting the part of a giddy spendthrift and man of fashion.
+On the night of January 2, 1547, the conspirators made their attack
+upon the city. Gianettino Doria was killed, but the aged Andrea made
+his escape. The success of Fiesco appeared to be complete, but as he
+was going on board a galley the gang-plank turned, he fell into the sea
+and his heavy armor bore him down. Without a leader the conspiracy
+instantly collapsed. On the following day Andrea returned and the
+Genoese republic went on as before,
+
+It was a hint from Rousseau that suggested to Schiller, during his last
+year in the academy, the idea of dramatizing this episode of Genoese
+history. In the German 'Memoirs of Rousseau' by H.P. Sturz, referred to
+in the preceding chapter, he found Rousseau quoted as follows:
+
+    The reason why Plutarch wrote such noble biographies is that he
+    never selected half-great men, such as exist by the thousands in
+    quiet states, but grand exemplars of virtue or sublime criminals. In
+    modern history there is a man deserving of his brush, and that is
+    Count Fiesco, whose training made him the very man to liberate his
+    country from the rule of the Dorias.... There was no other thought
+    in his soul than to dethrone the usurper.[42]
+
+Here was a tempting theme for a young dramatist who had fed his own soul
+upon Plutarch, was enamored of 'greatness' in whatever form, and had
+already tried his hand upon a 'sublime criminal.' What could be better
+for his purpose than a daring conspiracy, led by a Plutarchian hero who
+was at the same time a single-minded patriot? In his earliest musings it
+is probable that Schiller accepted Rousseau's view of Fiesco at its face
+value, and when he began to consult the historians he found at first
+some support for his preconception. Among his sources was the
+'Conjuration du Comte de Fiesque', by De Retz; a book which was written,
+according to a somewhat doubtful tradition, when its author was but
+eighteen years old, and which, by its clever perversion of history and
+its subtle insinuation of revolutionary ideas, is said to have drawn
+from Richelieu the comment: 'There is a dangerous man!'[43] In the
+sophisticated narrative of De Retz Fiesco appears as a modern Brutus,
+whose thought of personal aggrandizement was altogether subordinate to
+the thought of his country's welfare. He is made much better than he
+really was, and the two Dorias much worse.
+
+Further study of the subject, however, soon opened the eyes of Schiller
+to the other side of the question; for in Robertson's 'Charles the
+Fifth' he found Fiesco portrayed as an ambitious revolutionist who
+sought to overthrow the Dorias only in order that he might make himself
+the master of Genoa--in short as a Catiline instead of a Brutus. The
+dramatic problem then turned from the first upon the character of
+Fiesco. In the 'Dramaturgic' of Lessing the doctrine had been proclaimed
+that the dramatist is not bound by the so-called facts of history; that
+he may deal with them as suits his artistic purpose. But what was the
+purpose to be in this case? Should it be a tragedy of austere patriotism
+going down against a relatively bad order too strong to be resisted, or
+a tragedy of corrupt ambition dashing itself to death against a
+relatively good order too strong to be overthrown? Either conception, if
+consistently worked out, might have sufficed for the groundwork of a
+good historical tragedy. What Schiller did, however, was to vacillate
+between the two, to blend them in a confusing way, and finally to let
+the interest of his play turn largely upon the hero's mental struggle
+between selfish ambition and unselfish patriotism.
+
+The Catiline conception required an avenger of Genoa, for it was
+evident[44] that the accidental drowning of Fiesco in the moment of his
+triumph would never do in a play. It was necessary that his death appear
+as a punishment, a nemesis. So for the role of avenger Schiller invented
+a stern patriot to whom, without historical warrant, he gave the name of
+Verrina. Verrina is the real Brutus. To furnish the conspirators with a
+definite grievance Gianettino was made to violate the helpless Bertha,
+who was then provided with an avenger in the person of the young
+Bourgognino. Leonora, the wife of Fiesco, is historical. Robertson
+relates that on the night of the uprising Fiesco went to take leave of
+his wife, "whom he loved with tender affection." He found her "in all
+the anguish of uncertainty and fear"; and her terror was increased when
+she learned what was on foot. She endeavored by her tears and entreaties
+and her despair to divert him from his purpose. But in vain; he left her
+with the exclamation: "Farewell! You shall either never see me more, or
+you shall behold to-morrow everything in Genoa subject to your power."
+On the other hand, the intrigue of Fiesco and Julia, the sister of
+Gianettino, is unhistorical. It was invented by Schiller as a part of
+the general scheme of duplicity and frivolity by which Fiesco should
+seek to quiet the suspicion of the Dorias. If this particular invention
+was upon the whole unfortunate--the matter will be discussed further
+on,--the same cannot be said of the Moor Hassan, who becomes Fiesco's
+factotum and ends his career on the gallows. The rascally Moor is the
+most picturesque figure and the most telling role in the whole piece.
+
+Schiller introduces Fiesco as a seemingly frivolous _roué_, flirting
+desperately with the Countess Julia, to the great torment of his wife
+Leonora. We soon see, however, that the frivolity is only a mask: he has
+a serious purpose and that purpose is to make himself master of Genoa.
+At first, indeed, he toys with the idea of a nobler fame. In a soliloquy
+at the end of the second act he exclaims: 'To conquer a diadem is grand;
+to throw it away is divine. Down, tyrant! Let Genoa be free and me be
+its happiest citizen!' But this mood does not long withstand the
+intoxication of power. To rule, to rule alone, to feel that Genoa owes
+everything to him only,--this soon becomes his all-absorbing ambition.
+At the last, when the revolution has succeeded, he puts on the ducal
+purple and the people are ready to acquiesce in the new régime. But old
+Verrina is not so tractable. When he cannot prevail upon Fiesco to doff
+the hateful insignia, he pushes him into the sea and exclaims in
+disgust: 'I am going to Andrea!'
+
+Such a scheme, it is evident, does not provide for a 'republican
+tragedy', except in a very loose sense. If we had a republican idealist
+pitting his strength against a tyrant and going down in the battle,
+either because of his adversary's superior strength or because of some
+weakness in his own character, that would be a tragedy of republicanism.
+In Schiller's play, however, the conflict is not of that character. At
+heart Fiesco is never a republican, though he sometimes takes his mouth
+full of fine republican phrases. His mainspring of action is not the
+welfare of Genoa, but his own aggrandizement. Old Andrea, whose power he
+plots to overthrow and whose magnanimity puts him to shame, is actually
+a better man than he. If he has a measure of our sympathy in his feud
+with the younger Doria, that is only because Gianettino is portrayed as
+a vulgar brute deserving of nothing but the gallows. Politically there
+is little to choose between the two, so long as we regard virtue as
+consisting in an unselfish devotion to an ideal of republican liberty.
+
+The character of Fiesco being what it is, his final catastrophe produces
+no very clear impression. One does not see precisely what bearing it is
+to have on the political fortunes of Genoa. At first blush the
+conclusion seems to mean that the state has been saved from the clutches
+of a tyrant who was about to subvert its liberties. But if we look at
+the matter in that light we have a tragedy, not of republicanism, but of
+the "vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other."
+With the usurper Fiesco, and the brute Gianettino, out of the way, the
+state returns to the good regimen of Andrea, who represents the only
+republicanism then thinkable, democracy in the modern sense being
+nowhere in question. But it is doubtful whether Schiller intends Fiesco
+to be thus reprobated. The hot-blooded Italian has certain traits that
+win sympathy; and even his consuming ambition is so invested with a
+glamour of romantic enthusiasm that it is difficult to reckon him among
+the dangerous tyrants. If he is false to his better nature, we at any
+rate see that he has a better nature. One is thus tempted to regard
+Verrina's act as that of a madman who cares more for form than for
+substance and sees danger where there is none.
+
+For Verrina, who plays the part of Brutus to his country's Caesar and
+seems to represent the sternest type of republican virtue, is a
+repulsive fanatic. The horrible curse that he pronounces upon his
+daughter when he hears that she has been outraged is significant at once
+for his character and for the young Schiller's notion of tragic pathos.
+Throwing a black veil over her head he vociferates thus:
+
+    Be blind! Accursed be the air that fans your cheek! Accursed be the
+    sleep that refreshes you! Accursed be every human trace that is
+    welcome to your misery! Go down into the deepest dungeon of my
+    house! Moan! Howl! Drag out the time with your woe. Let your life be
+    the slimy writhing of the dying worm,--the obstinate, crushing
+    struggle between being and not-being. And this curse shall rest upon
+    you until Gianettino has gasped out his last breath.
+
+After this it is difficult to look up to Verrina as a competent savior
+of society, however much one may sympathize with him in his private
+feud. His cynical tergiversation at the end makes his previous conduct
+ridiculous. It seems to say that he has been participating in a tragic
+farce which is now ended. One might almost get the impression that the
+whole play is only a satire upon republican clap-trap.
+
+Satire, however, was very far from Schiller's thoughts. His enthusiasm
+for liberty was much too genuine to permit any trifling with the sacred
+theme. There is no doubt that he began 'Fiesco' supposing that it would
+prove a convenient setting for those inspiring ideas of liberty which he
+had absorbed from the reading of ancient history and of modern
+revolutionary literature. They were vague and tumultuous ideas, which
+had very little relation to a definite theory of government, but he was
+very much in earnest with them, especially after his rasping experience
+with the Duke of Württemberg. No one can mistake the autobiographic note
+in the speech of Bourgognino which closes the first act: 'I have long
+felt in my breast something that would not be satisfied. Now of a sudden
+I know what it was. (Springing up heroically) I have a tyrant.' But the
+young dramatist had not proceeded far before he discovered that his
+ideal requirement was out of tune with the facts. To represent Fiesco as
+a would-be liberator of his country was impossible without a violent
+perversion of history for which he was not prepared. Out of deference to
+history he was led to abase his hero into something like a Catilinarian
+conspirator. But he could not give up the idea of a republican tragedy;
+so he tried to save it by depicting his hero as a man who had it in him
+to become a noble liberator, but is corrupted by the dazzling lures of
+power and so led on to ruin.
+
+There are those who regard Fiesco's inconsistency as an artistic
+complexity of motive going to show that Schiller had progressed in the
+knowledge of life and become aware that human heroism is apt to be more
+or less mixed with base alloy. One writer[45] thinks it shows "how
+intelligently he had studied the Italian Renaissance and how correctly
+he had grasped its spirit." But this is to give him a credit that he
+does not fully deserve. The simple truth is that 'Fiesco' was written
+very hastily and that its author had spent precious little time in
+studying the Italian Renaissance, though it must be admitted that he
+possessed a remarkable gift for visualizing the little that he had
+read. Complexity of motive is all very well,--very human and very
+Italian; but the difficulty is that in this case it is not properly
+subordinated to a luminous dramatic idea. When a man's motives become
+so complex and contradictory that one does not know how to take him, he
+ceases to be available for the higher purposes of tragedy. That
+'Fiesco' produces this bewildering effect is due to the fact that the
+inner logic of the piece had not been fully and consistently thought
+out when the writing began.
+
+And this is not all. The author seems unable to control and guide the
+unruly spirits whom he has conjured into life. There is no lucid
+grouping of historical forces. France, Germany and the Pope stand dimly
+in the background like mechanical puppets, and we never learn what they
+severally represent in relation to Genoese politics, Gianettino pulls a
+string and has a sanction for the wholesale murder of his countrymen.
+Fiesco pulls another string and gets men and galleys ad libitum. We do
+not see an intelligible clash of great political ideas, but a wild
+mêlée, in the outcome of which we have no reason to be particularly
+interested. It is all as little tragic as a back-country vendetta, or a
+factional fight in the halls of a modern parliament.
+
+How loosely the play is articulated, and how little of logical
+compulsion there Is in the catastrophe, is shown with fatal clearness by
+Schiller's procedure in revising his work for the Mannheim stage. By a
+few strokes of the pen at the end he changed its entire character. In
+the original draft his vacillating mind had leaned more and more
+decisively towards the Catilinarian conception of his hero, and the
+book-version of 1783 was accordingly supplied with a motto from
+Sallust's 'Catiline.' The sentence runs: _Nam id facinus imprimis ego
+memorabile existimo, sceleris atque periculi novitate._ So the
+conspiracy was to be a _facinus_ and a _scelus_, and the hero, of
+course, another 'exalted criminal' in the style of Karl Moor. In the
+stage version we observe that the motto from Sallust has been dropped,
+and that while the title of 'tragedy' (_Trauerspiel_) is retained, the
+adjective 'republican' is omitted. Furthermore, without any radical
+revision of the preceding portraiture taken as a whole, a non-tragical
+conclusion has been substituted for the final catastrophe. Fiesco, hard
+pressed by the strenuous Verrina, declares that his heart has been right
+all along; only he was resolved that Genoa's freedom should be his work
+and his alone. So he breaks his scepter, concludes an eternal friendship
+with the amazed Verrina, and bids the people embrace their 'happiest
+fellow-citizen.' Thus the original version, which had called itself a
+republican tragedy and was a tragedy without being republican, became a
+play which is truly republican without being called so, but is no longer
+a tragedy.
+
+This singular _volte-face_ on the part of our dramatist has of course
+been the subject of infinite discussion. The most of the critics appear
+to regard it as a mistake, to say the least. One of them,
+Bellermann,[46] surmises that Schiller made the change against his will
+to meet the views of Dalberg. But of this there is no clear proof; and
+surely we cannot suppose that Schiller would have consented even
+reluctantly to a change which he himself felt to be utterly absurd
+because a complete stultification of the preceding plot. He must have
+felt that the new ending was artistically at least possible. And so it
+is. It is with 'Fiesco' somewhat as with the Bible: the conclusion that
+one reaches must depend upon the particular texts that one selects for
+emphasis. If we accent certain passages and pass lightly over others, we
+get the impression that it is a tragedy of selfish ambition doomed to
+disaster. If we accent a different set of passages, we are sure that it
+is a drama of republican idealism, sorely tempted by autocratic
+ambition, but destined to triumph finally over the baser motive. In the
+one view Verrina is a virtuous patriot; in the other he is a mad fanatic
+who does not understand the greatness of his chief. After Fiesco
+declares in soliloquy,--when a dramatic character is supposed to speak
+his real sentiments if anywhere,--that it is far nobler to renounce a
+diadem than to win it, we are certainly justified in expecting that he
+will seek the higher glory for himself. Thus either ending is possible,
+and which is the better is mainly a question of stage effect. Neither is
+historical, and neither gives a republican tragedy.
+
+It would be pedantic indeed to have devoted so many words to a mere
+matter of name. If a drama is good it signifies but little what we call
+it, or whether its title be exactly appropriate. In this case, however,
+we have to do with a vital defect and not merely with a misnomer. A play
+may be good in different ways; and what the preceding criticism is
+intended to bring out is the fact that the strength of 'Fiesco', such as
+it has, does not lie in the intellectual organization of the whole. The
+mind of Schiller, but little trained hitherto upon historical studies,
+had not yet learned how to extract a clear poetic essence from a
+confused medley of recorded facts and opinions. Nature had endowed him
+with a vivid imagination for details, but study had not yet fitted him
+to exercise in a large and luminous way the sovereignty of the artist.
+His facts confused him and pulled him this way and that. And so we miss
+in 'Fiesco' that 'monumental fresco-painting', as it has been called,
+which constitutes the charm of his riper historical dramas.
+
+But average play-goers are wont to bother their heads but little over
+these questions of higher artistic import which are apt to bulk so large
+before the mind of the literary critic. There are hundreds of literary
+dramas that are impossible or deadly dull upon the stage; and conversely
+dramatic talent will often make an interesting play out of a succession
+of scenes that lead the philosophic mind no whither. If 'Fiesco' remains
+a fairly good stage-play, it is because the interest turns not upon its
+ultimate import, but upon its elaborate intrigue, its exciting
+situations and its general picturesqueness. The intrigue carries one
+along by its very audacity, notwithstanding that in the light of reason
+much of it appears rather absurd. Thus we wonder how a mere brute like
+Gianettino can have become such a power in the state right under the
+eyes of the wise and good Andrea, who is subject to no illusions with
+regard to him. No objection can be made to Fiesco's mask of gayety and
+cynicism in the first two acts, for that is historical. But was it
+necessary for him to deceive and torture the wife to whom in the end he
+appears loyally devoted? In any case it is clear that the exposition
+should have hinted somehow at the true condition of affairs, for it is a
+good old rule that while the people on the stage may disguise themselves
+and befool one another as they will, the audience must be kept posted.
+
+As it is, there is no suggestion of make-believe in Fiesco's courting of
+Julia. When he exclaims in soliloquy that she loves him and he 'envies
+no god', one is justified in assuming that chivalrous devotion to his
+wife is not among his virtues. It is to be supposed, apparently, that he
+makes love to Julia in order to be seen of men; but as a matter of fact
+nothing comes of his flirtation except the torture of his wife. No one
+is deceived whom it was important for him to deceive, and the whole
+incident serves only to put his character in a dubious light. Is this
+what Schiller intended? Did he feel that his hot-blooded Italian should
+not be made too much of an idealist in his relation to women? Did he
+wish it to be understood that Fiesco is honestly infatuated with the
+voluptuous Julia until he learns of her attempt to poison his wife?
+These are queries to which the play gives no very clear answer. So far
+as the conspiracy is concerned the whole affair with Julia is rather
+badly motivated.
+
+Still more dubious, from a rational point of view, is Fiesco's relation
+to the Moor. That a man having large political designs requiring secrecy
+and fidelity should, on the spur of the moment, choose as his
+confidential agent a venal scoundrel who has just tried to murder him,
+is, to say the least, a little improbable. Here Schiller was evidently
+trying to Shaksperize again; trying, that is, to assert the poet's
+sovereign lordship over the petty bonds of Philistine logic. The Moor's
+frank exposition of the professional ethics of rascality, the dash with
+which he does his work, his ubiquitous serviceableness, and his rogue's
+humor make him a picturesque character and account for his having become
+on the stage the most popular figure in the piece; but that Fiesco
+should be willing to trust himself and his cause to such a scamp, and
+that such remarkable results should be achieved by the black man's
+kaleidoscopic activity, brings into the play an element of buffoonery
+that injures it on the serious side. The daring play of master and man
+excites a certain interest in their game, but it is impossible to care
+very much who wins. From a dramaturgic point of view, however, the Moor
+is a very useful invention, since Fiesco is thereby enabled to direct
+the whole conspiracy from his palace, and at the same time, in the
+person of his lieutenant, to be in every part of the city. Thus the
+action is concentrated and changes of scene are avoided.
+
+As a portrayer of female character the author of 'Fiesco' has clearly
+made some progress since his first lame attempt in 'The Robbers', but
+the improvement is by no means dazzling. Both Leonora and Julia are
+singular creatures, and their unaccountableness is not of the right
+feminine kind that offers an attractive rôle to a good actress. Why
+should the Countess Fiesco, herself an aristocrat and a woman with
+heroic blood in her veins, submit so meekly in her own house to the
+coarse effrontery of the woman who has wronged her? We get the
+impression that she is only a crushed flower,--a helpless, wan-cheeked
+thing, with nothing womanly about her except her jealousy. And then, at
+the end, she suddenly develops into a heroine. And what a strange
+heroine! No one will chide her for resorting on the fatal night to the
+protection of male attire,--a good enough Shaksperian device,--but how
+remarkable that a woman wandering crazily in the dark, and already
+sufficiently disguised, should borrow a tell-tale cloak and a worse than
+useless sword from a corpse that she happens to stumble upon! No wonder
+that Schiller in revising for the stage decided to let Leonora live
+rather than provide for her death by such a stagy _tour de force_. In
+the stage version, however, she does not reappear after the parting
+scene, and so we are left to wonder why she was introduced at all.
+
+In Madame Julia we have a type of woman who was meant to be repulsive,
+and so far forth the young artist must be admitted to have wrought
+successfully. She is somewhat minutely described as a 'tall and plump
+widow of twenty-five; a proud coquette, her beauty spoiled by its
+oddity; dazzling and not pleasing, and with a wicked, cynical
+expression.' That such a woman should befool Fiesco and rejoice in her
+triumph is quite thinkable, but her qualities are those which usually go
+with a certain amount of discretion. That she should suddenly lose her
+head and throw herself away in a voluptuous frenzy hardly comports with
+the type. Nor is there anything in the inventory of her qualities that
+prepares us for her sudden assumption of the role of poisoner, when she
+is already, as she must suppose, the mistress of the situation. In her
+altercation with Leonora in the second scene of Act II she uses a number
+of coarse expressions befitting a woman of vulgar birth,--wherein some
+of the critics see an evidence of Schiller's unfamiliarity with the ways
+of refined ladies. It is quite possible, however, that we have to do
+instead with a realistic attempt to make her language match the
+essential vulgarity of her character. At any rate it is interesting to
+know that the scene was offensive to Schiller himself. He worked upon it
+with repugnance and was glad to be able to omit it entirely from the
+stage version.[47]
+
+In respect of its diction 'Fiesco' is in no way essentially different
+from 'The Robbers', albeit some have imagined that a faint improvement
+is discernible. There is the same tearing of passion to tatters, the
+same predilection for florid rhetoric in the sentimental passages, and
+for frenzied talk and action in passages of more violent emotion. When
+Fiesco discovers that he has killed his wife, he first thrashes about
+him furiously with his sword. Then he gnashes his teeth at God in heaven
+and expresses himself thus: 'If I only had His universe between my
+teeth, I feel in a mood to tear all nature into a grinning monster
+having the semblance of my pain.' In his final expostulation with the
+would-be tyrant, Verrina delivers himself of this sentence: 'Had I too
+been such an honest dolt as not to recognize the rogue in you, Fiesco,
+by all the horrors of eternity, I would twist a cord out of my own
+intestines and throttle you with it, so that my fleeing soul should
+bespatter you with yeasty foam-bubbles.'
+
+No wonder that critics and actors alike were offended by such insanity
+of rant and that Schiller himself soon saw the folly of it. He had got
+the idea that when a man is figuratively 'beside himself', the most
+effective way to portray his state of feeling is to make him talk and
+act like a veritable madman. He had yet to learn the profound wisdom,
+for poets as well as actors, of Hamlet's rule to "acquire and beget, in
+the whirlwind of passion, a temperance that may give it smoothness."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 42: Schiller refers to the quoted passage in his review of
+'The Robbers', Schriften, II, 357. It has not been found in Rousseau's
+writings. Sturz drew from unpublished sources.]
+
+[Footnote 43: On the character of De Retz's work, and its relation to
+the original of Mascardi, consult the Notes and Introduction by
+Chantelauze in Vol. V of the 'Grands Ecrivains' edition of De Retz,
+p. 473 ff.]
+
+[Footnote 44: It was evident, that is, to Schiller. In the dedication of
+'Fiesco' to Professor Abel he wrote; "Die wahre Katastrophe des
+Komplotts, worin der Graf durch einen unglücklichen Zufall am Ziel
+seiner Wünsche zu Grunde geht, muszte durchaus verändert werden, denn
+die Natur des Dramas duldet den Finger des Ungefährs oder der
+unmittelbaren Vorsehung nicht."]
+
+[Footnote 45: H. H. Boyesen, in his biography of Schiller, Chapter III.]
+
+[Footnote 46: "Schillers Dramen," Berlin, 1898, I, III ff. Bellermann,
+who defends through thick and thin the unity and consistency of the
+original 'Fiesco', thinks that it is from first to last a tragedy of
+vaulting ambition,--not a political play at all, but a character
+play,--and that no other idea ever entered Schiller's mind. But his
+argument is anything but convincing and he carefully refrains from all
+discussion of the tell-tale phrase, 'a republican tragedy'.]
+
+[Footnote 47: This appears from a letter of Sept. 29, 1783, to Dalberg.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The Fugitive in Hiding
+
+  Ich kann nicht Fürstendiener sein.--_'Don Carlos'_.
+
+When Schiller arrived at Mannheim, in the latter part of September,
+1782, he was soon made aware that he had reckoned badly on the 'Greek
+climate of the Palatinate'. The friends to whom he showed himself were
+shocked at the audacity of his conduct; they could only advise him to
+conciliate the Duke of Württemberg and meanwhile to keep out of sight.
+So he wrote another very humble letter to his sovereign, explaining the
+desperate circumstances that had led to his flight and offering to
+return on condition of being allowed to continue his authorship. This
+letter he sent to his general, Augé, asking his mediation. In due time
+Augé replied, advising him to return, as the duke was 'graciously
+minded.' But this was not enough; Schiller knew his man too well and
+had probably never expected that his appeal would have any other effect
+than possibly to mollify the duke a little and thus avert trouble for
+Captain Schiller.
+
+The fugitive had fixed all his hopes on the production of 'Fiesco' at
+the Mannheim theater. The manager, Meyer, was well disposed toward him,
+and it was soon arranged that Schiller should read his new play to a
+company of actors. The reading turned out a dismal failure. One by one
+the distressed auditors withdrew, wondering if what they heard was
+really the work of the same man who had written 'The Robbers'. The next
+day Meyer looked over the manuscript by himself and saw that it was not
+so bad after all; it had merely been murdered in the reading by its
+author's bad voice and extravagant declamation. But the decision did not
+rest with the friendly Meyer; it rested with Dalberg, who was just then
+away from home. Meanwhile, as reports came from Stuttgart to the effect
+that Schiller's disappearance had caused a great sensation and that
+there was talk of pursuit, or of a possible demand for his extradition,
+the two friends thought it best not to remain in Mannheim. Schiller did
+not actually believe that the duke would pursue him, but there was no
+telling; it was best to be on the safe side.
+
+Accordingly 'Dr. Ritter' and 'Dr. Wolf' set out for Frankfurt. From
+there Schiller addressed a pathetic letter to Dalberg, setting forth
+that he was in great distress and asking for an advance of money
+against the first performance of 'Fiesco'. But the cautious Dalberg,
+who had just been in Stuttgart, replied coolly that 'Fiesco' was
+unsuited to the stage and would need to be radically revised. So the
+luckless author, having no other recourse, returned to the village of
+Oggersheim, in the vicinity of Mannheim, and there, with the faithful
+Streicher to keep him company, he spent the next few weeks, partly upon
+the thankless revision of 'Fiesco' and partly upon 'Louise Miller',
+which interested him more. Having done his best with 'Fiesco' he sent
+it to Dalberg, who curtly refused it a second time. His theatrical
+hopes thus completely baffled, Schiller turned over his play to the
+bookseller Schwan, who gave him eleven louis d'ors for it and
+immediately published it as a book for the reader.
+
+In his extremity the exile now bethought him of the kind-hearted lady
+who had offered him an asylum in case of need. Frau Henriette von
+Wolzogen was a widow of humble means who had several sons in the
+academy at Stuttgart. She had conceived a liking for Schiller, and
+although there was some danger that her rôle of protectress might, if
+discovered, offend the Duke of Württemberg, she did not hesitate to
+keep her word. The necessary arrangements were soon made, and late in
+November Schiller bade farewell to Streicher and set out for Bauerbach,
+a little village near Meiningen, to occupy the vacant cottage that had
+been placed at his disposal. He still kept the name of 'Dr.
+Ritter',--not so much from the fear of arrest, probably, as from a
+natural desire to remain in obscurity until he had won a position which
+would justify his flight in the eyes of the world, and more
+particularly of his father. While at Oggersheim he had occasionally
+sent out misleading letters, in which he spoke of journeys here and
+there, of remarkable prosperity and of brilliant prospects in Leipzig,
+Berlin and St. Petersburg. But his family knew of his whereabouts, and
+before leaving the Palatinate he contrived a meeting with his mother
+and his sister Christophine, who drove over to a half-way village to
+see him. He arrived at Bauerbach on the 7th of December, and wrote thus
+to Streicher on the following day: 'At last I am here, happy and
+contented that I am actually ashore. I found everything in excess of my
+wishes; needs no longer trouble me, and no annoyances from outside
+shall disturb my poetic dreams and my idealistic illusions.'--And in
+this quiet retreat, well supplied by the villagers with the necessaries
+of physical existence, he did actually find for the next seven months
+all that he needed. There were books, friendship, leisure,
+peace,--until the peace was disturbed by a maiden's eyes.
+
+The books came from a man named Reinwald, who was in charge of the ducal
+library at Meiningen and to whom Schiller, foreseeing his own need, had
+made haste to introduce himself. Reinwald was some twenty-two years
+older than Schiller, a bit of a poet and a man of some literary
+ambition; but he had not got on well in the world. It was fated that he
+should marry Christophine Schiller, become peevish and sour in the
+course of time and lose the respect of his brother-in-law. For the
+present, however, he proved a very useful friend; for he not only
+executed orders for books and tobacco (Schiller had learned to smoke and
+take snuff), but he served as general intermediary between the
+mysterious Dr. Ritter and the outside world. Schiller's nature craved
+friendship, and his imagination easily endowed Reinwald with the
+qualities of an ideal companion of the soul. After a while we find him
+writing in such a strain as this:
+
+    Your visit the day before yesterday produced a glorious effect, I
+    feel my spirits renewed and a warmer life courses through all my
+    nerves. My situation in this solitude has drawn upon my soul the
+    fate of stagnant water, which becomes foul unless it Is stirred up a
+    little now and then. And I too hope to become necessary to your
+    heart.[48]
+
+As for Reinwald, he had long since passed the effusive age, but it
+pleased him to receive the younger man's confidence. He wrote in his
+diary: 'To-day Schiller opened his heart to me,--a youth who has already
+been through the school of life,--and I found him worthy to be called my
+friend. I do not believe that I have given my confidence to an unworthy
+man. He has an extraordinary mind and I believe that Germany will some
+day name his name with pride.'--Which was not bad guessing in its way.
+
+Excepting Reinwald and the villagers Schiller saw at first but little of
+his fellow-mortals. Both on his own account and for the sake of Frau von
+Wolzogen he wished that the persons who saw him should not know who he
+was. So he continued to scatter false reports with a liberal hand: he
+had gone to Hannover, was going to London, to America, and so forth. In
+the mean time, with no thought of leaving his nest at Bauerbach, he
+devoted himself to his work. For the first time in his life he was the
+master of his own movements; he had a chance to collect himself, to
+browse among his books, to meditate and to dream. And as for mankind in
+general, he felt that he had no cause to love it. 'With the warmest
+feeling ', so he wrote after a time, when the first bitterness had
+passed away, 'I had embraced half the world and found at last that I had
+in my arms a cold lump of ice.'[49] Withal the demands of work were
+imperious. He had risked everything upon his chances of literary success
+and it was necessary to win. He had broken for good and all with the
+Duke of Württemberg and there was nothing to be hoped for in that
+quarter. At the same time,--and the fact is characteristic of his
+large-mindedness,--he resolved not to air his personal grievance. To
+Frau von Wolzogen, who had been admonishing him never to forget his debt
+to the Stuttgart Academy, he wrote: 'However it may be with regard to
+that, you have my word that I will never belittle the Duke of
+Württemberg.'
+
+Toward the end of December the wintry dullness of his Bauerbach cottage
+was brightened by the arrival of its owner and her daughter. Lotte von
+Wolzogen was a blond school-girl who had not yet passed her seventeenth
+birthday. The records do not credit her with exceptional beauty, but she
+was sufficiently good-looking and her demure girlish innocence appeared
+to Schiller very lovable. Not that his plight was at all desperate; he
+hardly knew his own mind and was in no position to make love to any
+maiden, least of all to one with that menacing _von_ in her name. Still
+he liked Fräulein Lotte very much, and the tenderness which now began to
+manifest itself in his letters to the mother must be credited in part to
+the daughter. Were this not so we could hardly account for such
+expressions as these, which are contained in a letter written after the
+ladies had left Bauerbach for a short sojourn in the neighboring
+Waldorf: 'Since your absence I am stolen from myself. To feel a great
+and lively rapture is like looking at the sun; it is still before you
+long after you have turned away your face, and the eye is blinded to all
+weaker rays. But I shall take great care not to extinguish this
+agreeable illusion.' And again after they had left the Meiningen region
+for Stuttgart, with a promise to return in May: 'Dearest friend--a week
+behind me without you. So there is one of the fourteen got rid of. I
+could wish that time would put on its utmost speed until May, so as to
+move thereafter so much the more slowly.'
+
+Such flutterings of the heart were not altogether favorable to that
+austere program of literary industry which the ambitious young
+dramatist had set for himself. When a man is in love other things seem
+more or less negligible, and it takes resolution to steer a firm
+course. Schiller was resolute--by spells. In the first list of books
+ordered from Meiningen we find noted, along with works of Shakspere,
+Robertson, Hume and Lessing, 'that part of the Abbé St. Réal's works
+which contains the history of Don Carlos of Spain.' From this we see
+that a second historical drama was already under way. At first,
+however, it was not 'Don Carlos' that claimed the most attention, but
+'Louise Miller ', which had made considerable progress in Oggersheim.
+By January 14, 1785, Schiller was able to pronounce the new play
+finished, though his letters show that the revision occupied him some
+time longer. Meanwhile we hear of other dramatic projects,--a 'Maria
+Stuart' and a 'Friedrich Imhof', whatever this last may have been.
+Nothing is known of it save that it was to deal with Jesuitical
+intrigue, the Inquisition, religious fanaticism, the history of the
+Bastille, and the passion for gambling.[50] By the end of March he had
+decided, after long vacillation between these two themes, to drop both
+of them and proceed with 'Don Carlos'.
+
+He began in prose, identifying himself completely with his hero and
+writing with joyous enthusiasm. A letter of April 14 to Reinwald deals
+at length with love and friendship and their relation to poetic
+creation. All love, we read, is at bottom love of ourselves. We see in
+the beloved person the sundered elements of our own being, and the soul
+yearns to perfect itself in the process of reunion. Thus love and
+friendship are of the nature of poetic imagination,--the waking into
+life of a pleasing illusion. Wherefore the poet must love his
+characters. He must not be the painter of his hero, but rather his
+hero's sweetheart or bosom friend. Then he makes the application to Don
+Carlos in these words:
+
+    I must confess to you that in a sense he takes the place of my
+    sweetheart, I carry him in my heart,--_ich schwärme mit ihm durch
+    die Gegend um_.... He shall have the soul of Shakspere's Hamlet,
+    the blood and nerves of Leisewitz's Julius, and his pulse from me.
+    Besides that I shall make it my duty in this play, in my picture
+    of the Inquisition, to avenge outraged mankind ... and pierce to
+    the heart a sort of men whom the dagger of tragedy has hitherto
+    only grazed.
+
+But the 'bosom friend' of Don Carlos soon had his thoughts pulled in
+other directions. In the first place there came, very unexpectedly, a
+sugary letter from Dalberg. What led him to make fresh overtures to the
+man whom, a few months before, he had treated so shabbily, is not
+difficult to make out. He had become convinced that there was after all
+nothing to be feared from the Duke of Württemberg. Moreover, since the
+peremptory rejection of 'Fiesco' the Mannheim theater had been doing a
+very poor business. What more natural than that the shrewd intendant,
+with an eye to better houses, should bethink him of the pen that had
+written 'The Robbers'? From Schwan and from Streicher, who had remained
+in Mannheim, he knew of Schiller's address and occupation. So he wrote
+him a gracious letter, inquiring after his welfare and expressing
+particular interest in the new play. It was now Schiller's turn to be
+foxy. He replied that he was very well, and that as for the play,
+'Louise Miller', it was a tragedy with a copious admixture of satirical
+and comic elements that would probably render it quite unfit for the
+stage. Dalberg replied that the specified defects were merits,--he would
+like to see the manuscript. The upshot of the correspondence was that
+Schiller, who had been negotiating with a Leipzig publisher but had been
+unable to make an acceptable bargain for the publication of 'Louise
+Miller', now determined to revise it for the stage and meet the views of
+Dalberg if possible. So about the middle of April he laid aside 'Don
+Carlos' and, for the third time in his life, devoted himself to the
+irksome task of converting a literary drama into a stage-play. On the
+3rd of May he wrote to Reinwald:
+
+    My L.M. drives me out of bed at five o'clock in the morning. Here I
+    sit now, sharpening pens and chewing thoughts. It is certain and
+    true that compulsion clips the wings of the spirit. To write with
+    such solicitude for the theater, so hastily because I am pressed for
+    time, and yet without fault, is an art. But I feel that my 'Louise'
+    is a gainer.... My Lady [Lady Milford in the play] interests me
+    almost as much as my Dulcinea in Stuttgart [Lotte von Wolzogen].
+
+Ere the revision of the new tragedy was finished Dulcinea herself
+arrived in Bauerbach; an event to which Schiller had looked forward with
+joyous palpitations and anxious forebodings. For back in March Frau von
+Wolzogen had written him that she and her daughter would be accompanied
+on their northward journey by a certain Herr Winkelmann, a friend of the
+family. Schiller at once divined the approach of a rival and wrote in
+great agitation that he would go to Berlin if Winkelmann came. In
+justification of his threat he made the diaphanous plea that his
+incognito was of the utmost importance to him, and that the inquisitive
+Winkelmann (whom he had known at the academy) would be sure to blab. To
+this Frau von Wolzogen sent some sort of soothing reply, hinting at the
+same time that she, the mother, would not interfere with her daughter's
+choice. So Schiller resolved to stand his ground. The ladies arrived in
+the latter part of May and soon thereafter he was given to understand
+that Lotte's affections were fixed upon the other man. There was nothing
+for him now but the role of lofty resignation. To his former schoolmate,
+Wilhelm von Wolzogen, he wrote as follows:
+
+    You have commended to me your Lotte, whom I know completely, I thank
+    you for the great proof of your love.... Believe me, my best of
+    friends, I envy you this amiable sister. Still just as if from the
+    hands of the Creator, innocent, the fairest, tenderest, most
+    sensitive soul, and not yet a breath of the general corruption on
+    the bright mirror of her nature,--thus I know your Lotte, and woe to
+    him who brings a cloud over this innocent soul!... Your mother has
+    made me a confidant in a matter that may decide the fate of your
+    Lotte and has told me how you feel upon the subject. [It appears
+    that Wilhelm disliked the young man,] I know Herr W--n and ...
+    believe me, he is not unworthy of your sister.... I really esteem
+    him, though I cannot at present be called his friend. He loves your
+    Lotte and I know he loves her like a noble man, and your Lotte loves
+    him like a girl that loves for the first time.
+
+But the foolish dreams were not so easily to be given their quietus,
+especially when he discovered that Lotte was only half in love with
+Winkelmann after all. Then there seemed hope for him and he surrendered
+himself freely to the intoxication of his little summer romance. What
+were the world and a poet's fame in comparison with happiness? Still he
+did not declare himself. He often called Frau von Wolzogen 'mother', and
+averred in letters that no son could love her better. Probably a word
+from her might have led to an engagement. But the word was not spoken.
+She was a sensible lady, who knew how to look into the future and to
+guard the welfare both of her daughter and of her protege. She saw that
+if he was to make his way in the world as a dramatist he must return to
+the world; a prolongation of the Bauerbach idyl could lead to nothing
+but disappointment and unhappiness. Besides, his incognito had now
+become only a conventional fiction; everybody knew who he was.
+
+One day, accordingly, as they were walking together, she suggested that
+he pay a visit to Mannheim and see what could be done with Dalberg. He
+resolved to follow her advice. Late in July he set out, promising
+himself and her a speedy return. But it was not so to be. Becoming
+absorbed in the business of a new career he continued, indeed, to think
+of her affectionately and to write to her, but at ever-increasing
+intervals; and after a few months Bauerbach and the Wolzogens were only
+a delightful memory. It is true that after the lapse of nearly a year he
+one day took it into his head to suggest to the mother that she take him
+for a son-in-law. But the wooing went no further. After all he had not
+really been in love with Lotte in particular so much as with an ideal of
+domestic bliss.
+
+Shortly before his departure from Bauerbach there had been some talk of
+his accompanying Reinwald on a contemplated journey to Weimar, where he
+might make the acquaintance of Karl August, Goethe and Wieland. In his
+excellent little book upon Schiller, Streicher expresses regret that his
+friend had not acted upon this suggestion instead of following the
+'siren voice' that led to the Palatinate. But it is difficult to
+sympathize with this regret. He was not yet ripe for the role that fate
+held in store for him in Thüringen. His education was to proceed yet a
+while longer by the process of flaying. He was to suffer and grow
+strong; to battle further with the goblins of despair; to tread the
+quicksands of adversity and fight his way through to a firm footing
+among the sons of men. Who shall say that it was not better so?
+
+The long-cherished hopes of a connection with the Mannheim theater were
+destined this time to be fulfilled. In the course of a few weeks
+Schiller entered into a contract which assured him, for a year at least,
+a respectable status in society and opened a new chapter in his life.
+Before we take up that chapter, however, it will be proper to consider
+the new play which he had brought with him as a passport to Dalberg's
+favor. Thus far he had called it by the name of its heroine, but when it
+was put upon the stage it was rechristened, at the suggestion of the
+actor Iffland, and has ever since been known as 'Cabal and Love'. The
+revision which he had undertaken, after the reopening of correspondence
+with Dalberg, was even now not quite finished; so that the final touches
+had to be given at Mannheim. It is probable that the political satire,
+which was based in part upon veritable history and contained transparent
+allusions to well-known personages, was more or less toned down in
+deference to the wishes of Dalberg. Minor changes were also made at the
+behest of the actors. But while it was not played and not printed until
+the spring of 1784, it belongs in its substance and its spirit, not to
+the Mannheim period of Schiller's life, but to the period which he had
+spent in hiding. It is a freeman's comment upon high life as he had
+known it. Scrupulously enough Schiller kept the letter of his promise
+not to use his pen in belittling the Duke of Württemberg. But the
+_Wirtschaft_ in Stuttgart was fair game, and there were other ways of
+masking a dramatic battery than to lay the scene in Italy. In 'Cabal and
+Love' the reigning prince does not appear upon the stage.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 48: Letter of March, 1783; in "Schillers Briefe", edited by
+Jonas, Vol. I, page 101.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Letter of Jan. 4, 1783, to Frau von Wolzogen. ]
+
+[Footnote 50: Undated letter of March, 1783; "Schillers Briefe", I,
+101.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Cabal and Love
+
+    Ich bin ein Edelmann--Lasz doch sehen, ob mein Adelbrief älter ist
+    als der Risz zum unendlichen Weltall; oder mein Wappen gültiger ist
+    als die Handschrift des Himmels in Louisens Augen: Dieses Weib ist
+    für diesen Mann.--'_Cabal and Love_'.
+
+In 'Cabal and Love' Schiller found again, as he had previously found in
+'The Robbers', a thoroughly congenial theme. More properly the theme
+found him, took possession of him and would not let him go, until the
+inner tumult had subsided and German literature had been enriched with
+its most telling tragedy of the social conflict. 'Fiesco' had proved a
+disappointment; he had not been able to bring himself into perfect
+sympathy with the subject, and at the best his Italian conspiracy was a
+far-away matter. Now he set foot again upon his native heath and all
+went better. In spite of certain defects which led him to speak of it
+later as rather badly designed, 'Cabal and Love' must be pronounced the
+most artistic and the most interesting of his early plays.
+
+It is the tragedy of two lovers, an honorable aristocrat and a girl of
+humble birth, who are done to death through a vile intrigue which is
+dictated by the exigencies of an infamous political régime. By means of
+a compromising letter, which is not forged but extorted under duress,
+the lover is made to suspect his sweetheart's fidelity; and she, though
+innocent, is prevented by scruples of conscience from undeceiving him.
+In a jealous fury he gives her poison and then partakes of it himself.
+The mischief is wrought not so much by the wickedness of the great,
+albeit that comes in for a share of the responsibility, as by the
+obstinate class prejudice, amounting to a tragic superstition, of the
+heroine and her father. Many of the details were taken over by Schiller
+from his predecessors; but he so improved upon them, so vitalized the
+familiar conflicts and situations, and threw into his work such a power
+of genuine pathos, caught from the pathos of real life, that 'Cabal and
+Love' still stands out as a notable document of the revolutionary epoch.
+The epoch produced many bourgeois tragedies, but Schiller's is much the
+best of them all. Before we look at it more closely it will be worth
+while to glance at the history of the type in Germany.
+
+The tragedy of middle-class life first took root, as is well known, in
+England. It was in 1732 that Lillo brought upon the Drury Lane stage his
+acted tale of George Barnwell, the London 'prentice who is beguiled by a
+harlot, robs his master, kills his uncle and ends his career on the
+gallows, to the great grief of the doting Maria, his master's daughter.
+The prologue tells how the experiment was expected to strike the public
+of that day:
+
+  The Tragic Muse sublime delights to show
+  Princes distrest and scenes of royal woe;
+  In awful pomp majestic to relate
+  The fall of nations or some hero's fate;
+  That scepter'd chiefs may by example know
+  The strange vicissitudes of things below....
+  Upon our stage indeed, with wished success,
+  You've sometimes seen her in a humbler dress,
+  Great only in distress. When she complains,
+  In Southern's, Rowe's, or Otway's moving strains,
+  The brilliant drops that fall from each bright eye
+  The absent pomp with brighter gems supply,
+  Forgive us then if we attempt to show
+  In artless strains a tale of private woe.
+
+So it appears that 'Barnwell' was something new, yet not entirely new.
+The stately tragedy of solemn edification, at which no one was expected
+to weep, had already yielded a part of its sovereignty to the tragedy of
+distress. It occurred to Lillo that tears could be drawn for the woes of
+the middle class, which had been looked upon as suitable only for
+comedy. The event proved that he had reckoned well: the "brilliant
+drops" fell copiously, the innovation crossed the Channel, and soon the
+bourgeois tragedy,--whence by an easy differentiation the lacrimose,
+pathetic, or serious comedy,--had entered upon its European career.
+
+The first German example was 'Miss Sara Sampson', written in 1755,
+wherein the daughter of a fond English squire is lured away from her
+home, like Clarissa Harlowe, by the profligate Mellefont, who promises
+to marry her. The pair take lodgings at a low London inn, where
+Mellefont finds pretexts for delaying the marriage ceremony. Presently
+his former mistress, Marwood, appears--a proud and passionate woman of
+sin. She claims him as the mother of his child, but having now found out
+what true love is he spurns her. Bitter interviews follow, with,
+spiteful recriminations and awful threats. Marwood tells her story to
+Sara and finally ends the tension by poisoning her, whereupon Mellefont
+commits suicide. In writing this play Lessing was in no way concerned
+with any social question. He constituted himself the champion of the
+bourgeoisie before the tribunal of Melpomene, but not before the
+conscience of mankind. The woes of hero and heroine are in no way
+related to class prejudice or to the great democratic upheaval of the
+century. Lessing's atmosphere is the moral and sentimental atmosphere of
+Richardson, though his literary power is incomparably greater.
+
+'Miss Sara Sampson' did not long hold the stage, but its influence is
+discernible in subsequent developments. The 'man between two women'
+became a regular feature of the new domestic tragedy. In play after play
+we find a soulful, clinging, romantic creature--usually the
+title-heroine--set over against a full-blooded rival whose ways are ways
+of wantonness. Lessing himself repeated the group in 'Emilia Galotti',
+which in its turn became the mother of a new brood. The tragedy of
+lawless passion led by an easy step to the tragedy of social conflict,
+which portrayed the depravity of princes and nobles in their relation to
+the common people, or called upon mankind to weep for the woes of lovers
+separated by the barriers of rank. In Germany the species was very
+timely. Nowhere else in Europe had the nobility so little to be proud
+of, and nowhere else was the pride of birth so stupidly intolerant. That
+fruitful theme of earlier and later poets, the love of nobleman for maid
+of low degree, had been lost in the age of gallantry, save in lubricious
+tales of intrigue and seduction. The appalling dissoluteness which
+characterized the French court during the first half of the eighteenth
+century, and was duly copied by the princelings of Germany, had poisoned
+the minds of high and low alike and led to a state of affairs in which
+there was little room for a noble or even a serious conception of love.
+Love was understood to be concupiscence. If an aristocrat stooped to a
+bourgeois girl, it was his affair and at the worst only an aberration of
+taste; her fate was of no importance.
+
+When the inevitable reaction set in, it took the form of a debauch of
+sentimentalism. The poetry of real passion came back into literature and
+people wept for joy to find that they had hearts. Love was no longer a
+frivolous game played for the gratification of lust, but a divine
+rapture of fathomless and ineffable import. It was now the era of the
+beautiful soul, of tender sentiment, of virtuous transports and of
+endless talk about all these things. Love being natural,--a part of that
+nature to which the world was now resolved to return,--it was sacred,
+and superior to all human conventions. It belonged to the sphere of the
+rights of man. Its enemy was everywhere the corrupt heart and the
+worldly, calculating mind. Fortunately the new ecstasy associated itself
+with a strong enthusiasm for the simplification of life; for the poetry
+of nature and of rustic employments; for the sweetness of domestic
+affection. In Germany public sentiment had already been prepared for a
+certain idealization of the bourgeoisie. Enlightened rulers and
+publicists, here and there, were coming to feel that a virtuous yeomanry
+was the sure foundation of a state's welfare. Countless idyls and
+pastorals and moralizing romances had thrown a nimbus of poetry about
+the simple virtues and humble employments of the poor, and taught people
+to contrast these things with the corruption and artificiality of courts
+and cities. It was, however, the passionate eloquence of Rousseau which
+first gave to this contrast a revolutionary significance, and it was
+Rousseau who first stirred the reading world with a woeful tale of
+lovers separated by the prejudices of caste.
+
+In 'The New Heloise' it is the lady who is the aristocrat. Julie
+d'Etange, the daughter of a baron, wishes to marry the untitled St.
+Preux, to whom in a transport of passion she has yielded up her honor.
+But the Baron d'Etange is an implacable stickler for rank and she is a
+dutiful daughter; whence her marriage to the elderly infidel, Wolmar,
+and the well-known moral ending of the novel. The thought that concerns
+us here is best expressed by the enlightened English peer, Lord B., who
+thus expostulates with Baron d'Etange:
+
+    Let us judge of the past by the present; for two or three citizens
+    who win distinction by honest means, a thousand knaves every day get
+    their families ennobled. But to what end serves that nobility of
+    which their descendants are so proud, unless it be to prove the
+    robberies and infamy of their ancestor? There are, I confess, a
+    great number of bad men among the common people; but the odds are
+    always twenty to one against a gentleman that he is descended from a
+    scoundrel.... In what consists then the honor of that nobility of
+    which you are so proud? How does it affect the glory of one's
+    country or the good of mankind? A mortal enemy to liberty and the
+    laws, what did it ever produce, in the most of those countries where
+    it has flourished, but the power of tyranny and the oppression of
+    the people? Will you presume to boast, in a republic, of a rank that
+    Is destructive to virtue and humanity? Of a rank that makes its
+    boast of slavery and wherein men blush to be men?[51]
+
+This is of course the language of passion and prejudice (it would not
+else be Rousseau), but there was enough of truth in it, as in the case
+of Rousseau's other fervors, to rouse the revolutionary spirit. German
+literature began to teem with novels and plays which exhibit the
+sufferings of some untitled hero or heroine at the hands of a vicious
+aristocracy. The theme is touched upon in 'Werther', but without
+becoming an Important issue. It appears in Wagner's 'Infanticide',
+wherein a butcher's daughter, Evchen Humbrecht, is violated by a titled
+officer, runs away from home in her shame, kills her child and is
+finally found by the repentant author of her disgrace. We meet it again
+in Lenz's 'Private Tutor', the tragedy of a German St. Preux who falls
+in love with his titled pupil and dishonors her, with the result that
+she too runs away from home and tries to commit suicide, while her lover
+in his chagrin emasculates himself. These are grotesque tragedies, not
+devoid of literary power, but devoid of high sentiment and saturated
+with a woeful vulgarity. We cannot wonder that the high-minded Schiller
+should have condemned Wagner's malodorous play as a mediocre
+performance. His incentive came rather from Gemmingen's 'Head of the
+House', which in turn carries us back to Diderot.
+
+In the hands of Diderot, democrat, moralist and apostle of the _genre
+honnête_, it was natural that the drama of class conflict should end
+happily. In his 'Father of the Family', written in 1758 and first played
+in 1761, the contrast of high and low is vividly portrayed, but without
+bitterness. The aristocratic St. Albin d'Orbisson falls in love with a
+poor girl from the country who lives in an attic and earns her own
+living. Sophie's beauty and virtue make a man of him and he wishes to
+marry her, but is opposed by his kind-hearted, querulous father, who
+argues the case with him at great length, confronting passion with
+prudential common-sense. St. Albin is also opposed by his rich uncle,
+the Commandeur, from whom he has prospects. The uncle plots to get
+Sophie away by having her arrested, but is baffled by a
+counter-intrigue. Stormy scenes follow the revelation, and in the end it
+appears that Sophie is not a plebeian maiden at all, but the niece of
+the purse-proud Commandeur, who has neglected his poor relations. With
+the literary and dramatic qualities of this play, its absence of humor
+and of sparkling dialogue, its tedious moralizing, its hollow pathos and
+its general relation to Diderot's dramatic theory, we are not here
+directly concerned. What is important to observe is that, as a
+contribution to the burning social question, its point is blunted by the
+fact that its heroine is not what she seems to be. The whole matter
+reduces to a brief misunderstanding in an aristocratic family. Villainy
+is thwarted, true love comes into its own, and the foundations of
+society remain as they were.
+
+Diderot's 'Father of the Family' enjoyed a short vogue in France and
+Italy and met with considerable favor in Germany. Most noteworthy among
+minor German plays that were influenced by it is Gemmingen's 'Head of
+the House'. Gemmingen was himself an aristocrat, a baron by title, who
+was born in 1755. After studying law he settled in Mannheim, where he
+became deeply interested in the drama, so that in 1778 he was given the
+position of dramatist to the newly established 'national theater'. Two
+years later he brought out his 'Head of the House' with great success.
+The piece is a pendant of Diderot's, but by no means a slavish
+imitation.
+
+Gemmingen's 'head of the house' is an upright German nobleman of the
+admirable sort, who returns home after a long absence to find the
+affairs of his family very much deranged. His eldest son, Karl, has
+fallen madly in love with Lotte Wehrmann, the daughter of an impecunious
+artist, gotten her with child, and promised to marry her when his father
+shall have returned and given his consent. The younger son, Ferdinand,
+an officer, has taken to gaming, lost heavily and has a duel on his
+hands. His son-in-law, Monheim, has become infatuated with a dazzling
+widow, Countess Amaldi, grown cold toward his wife Sophie, and the
+quarreling pair are eager for a divorce. The tangle is further
+complicated by the fact that Amaldi, an excellent match, is in love with
+Karl. The perplexed father sets at work with the tools of common sense
+and rational argument. He urges Karl to break with Lotte for his
+career's sake. The irresolute and dutiful Karl consents, saying nothing
+of Lotte's approaching motherhood, and the rumor of his intended
+marriage to the countess is spread abroad. When Lotte hears it she
+rushes to Amaldi and wildly demands her lover in the name of her unborn
+child. When the father hears the whole story he no longer thinks of rank
+but of honor. He bids Karl marry his true love and retire to the
+country, where, as overseer of a large estate, he will be less
+encumbered by a plebeian wife than in the career which had been planned
+for him. The magnanimous Amaldi furnishes the bride's dowry, the other
+domestic complications are easily adjusted and all ends happily.
+
+Dramatically Gemmingen's play is rather tame, though its literary merit
+is considerable. He had a fair measure of constructive skill, but very
+little of poetic impulse or of dramatic verve. His best scenes interest
+us more for their good sense than for any more stirring qualities. His
+nearest approach to a strong character is the paterfamilias himself, who
+is certainly much less "woolly and mawkish"[52] than his pendant in
+Diderot. Next one may place the artist Wehrmann. Karl is a poor stick,
+Amaldi is rather colorless, and Lotte would be quite insipid but for her
+impending motherhood, on which everything is made to turn. Such as it
+was, however, the play excited the cordial admiration of Schiller, who
+read it soon after its appearance. Very likely it may have suggested to
+him the thought of trying his own hand upon a drama in the bourgeois
+sphere, but it was not until July, 1782,--just after he had finished
+reading Wagner's 'Infanticide',--that the plan of 'Louise Miller' began
+to take shape in his mind. Gemmingen's poor artist, Wehrmann, became the
+poor fiddler, Miller, and the daughter Lotte was rechristened Louise.
+The aristocratic lover, Gemmingen's Karl, was named Ferdinand von
+Walter, and Amaldi was converted into Lady Milford. One of Gemmingen's
+subordinate characters, the foppish nobleman, Dromer, who goes about
+making compliments to everybody, reappears in Schiller's play as the
+perfumed tale-bearer and exquisite ladies' man, Chamberlain von Kalb.
+The places represented are three in number and the same in both plays.
+Here, however, the parallel ends. Instead of Gemmingen's high-minded
+paterfamilias we have the rascally President von Walter, who, with his
+tool Wurm, reminds one of Lessing's Prince and Marinelli. And what is
+much more important, the relation of the lovers is so portrayed that we
+get the pure poetry of passion, such as it is, without any tinge of
+grossness.
+
+In its earliest phase Schiller's plan looked toward a telling
+tragi-comedy for the stage, with a plenty of rough humor and caustic
+satire at the expense of 'high-born fools and scoundrels'. As he worked,
+the possibilities of his theme developed. An abstract enthusiasm for the
+rights of man was kindled by honest love of the common people, and by
+the lingering smart of a personal wrong, into a holy zeal of vengeance.
+President Walter was painted in colors which were taken largely from the
+political history and the _chronique scandaleuse_ of the Württemberg
+court. As this court had its angel of light in soiled garments, Lady
+Milford was fitted out with the benevolent qualities of Franziska von
+Hohenheim; and as the portrait grew In firmness its author fell in love
+with it, like the young Goethe with his Adelheid. When he came to depict
+the jealousy of Ferdinand, he had the advantage of a personal
+acquaintance with the green-eyed monster. Thus the play was extracted
+from the book of life, as Schiller had been able to read it, and that
+accounts for its vitality. But in his details he is nowhere less
+original. Not only in the general conception of important characters,
+but in particular scenes, situations, motives, contrasts and forms of
+expression, we can see the influence of the literary tradition which he
+inherited.
+
+To show the exact nature and the full extent of this indebtedness would
+be a tedious undertaking, which would require pages of quotation from
+works whose chief interest now is that they served as quarry for
+Schiller. Three or four illustrations will suffice. Our play begins with
+a scene which at once recalls what was originally the opening scene of
+Wagner's 'Infanticide'. In both there is a blustering father,--Lessing's
+Odoardo reduced to the bourgeois sphere,--discoursing with his silly
+wife upon the dangers that threaten their daughter from keeping
+aristocratic company. In both the domestic thunderer expresses himself
+in rough, strong language, and is only made the more furious by his
+wife's efforts to allay his fears. In Wagner's next scene Magister
+Humbrecht comes to woo Evchen, just as Schiller's Wurm comes to woo
+Louise, and we hear that the girl's head has been turned by reading
+novels. Just so Louise, whose father can scarcely find words to express
+his detestation of the young baron's infernal, belletristic poison. When
+Wurm arrives at Miller's and asks for Louise, he is informed that she
+has just gone to church. 'Glad of that, glad of that', he replies, 'I
+shall have in her a pious Christian wife'. Here is a reminiscence of the
+scene in which Lessing's Count Appiani exclaims, on hearing that Emilia
+has just been at church: 'That is right; I shall have in you a pious
+wife'. The devout heroine was a hardly less hackneyed figure in the
+dramatic literature of the time than the blustering father of whom
+Goethe complained.[53] In Schiller's Louise we have the religious
+sentiment sublimated into something quite too seraphic for human
+nature's daily food. Her high-keyed sense of duty to God, her natural
+filial piety and her superstitious reverence for the social order,
+combine to produce in her a curious distraction which is the real source
+of the tragic conflict. She feels that her love is holy but that
+marriage would be sinful; and so she hesitates, responds to her lover's
+ardor with tremblings and solicitudes, knows not what to do, does the
+foolish thing and atones tragically for her weakness.
+
+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 momentary _accès_ or
+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 she _must_ die because she belongs to the bourgeoisie is
+mere moonshine, for common sense can readily find a number of escapes.
+She may cleave to her father and send her lover packing, after proper
+explanations; or she may cleave to her lover in the face of her
+father's displeasure; or she may temporize in the hope of changing her
+father's mind. What she actually does is to goad her lover into a
+frenzy by her singular conduct and then come to her senses when it is
+too late. The effect is to cast doubt upon the intensity of her
+supposed 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 sentimental
+_Schwärmerin_, 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 invest _his_ bourgeois maidens.
+For aught we can learn from her discourse Schiller's Louise might be a
+princess, brought up on a diet of Klopstock's odes. That a girl,
+returning from church, should inquire of her parents if her lover has
+called, is quite in order. That she should then confess that thoughts of
+him have come between her and her Creator, is pardonable. But what are
+we to think when she goes on to say to her own parents:
+
+    This little life of mine, oh that I might breathe it out into a soft
+    caressing zephyr to cool his face! This little flower of youth, were
+    it but a violet, that he might step on it, and it might die modestly
+    beneath his feet! That would be enough for me, my father.... Not
+    that I want him now. I renounce him for this life. But then, mother,
+    then, when the barriers of rank are laid low; when all the hateful
+    wrappings of earthly station fall away from us, and men are only
+    men,--I shall bring nothing with me save my innocence; but, you
+    know, father has so often said that pomp and splendid 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 a _von_ in his name and
+prospects in life would be 'the violation of a sanctuary'; would
+'unjoint the social world and demolish the eternal, universal order'.
+Wherefore she is minded to renounce him. 'Let the vain, deluded
+girl'--so she sighs--'weep away her grief within lonely walls; no one
+will trouble himself about her tears,--empty and dead is my future,--but
+I shall still now and then take a smell at the withered nosegay of the
+past'--No wonder that before she reaches this awful climax, Ferdinand
+smashes the fiddle and bursts into laughter.
+
+On the stage, the scene in which the agonized Louise is compelled to
+write the compromising letter is one of the most effective in the piece;
+and yet how futile and absurd the whole intrigue would be if the
+conspirators were not able to count upon her being a goose! One cannot
+blame her, of course, for doing that which appears to be necessary in
+order to save her father's life. One may pardon to her distress the
+solemn oath that she will acknowledge the letter as her voluntary act.
+But if she were really in love with Ferdinand as she has pretended to
+be, how easy it would be for her, without violating her oath, to put him
+on his guard against the trap that has been laid for him! In the scene
+with Lady Milford she appears as a pert little pharisee, caustic,
+sententious and philosophical beyond her years; so that one wonders why
+a girl that knows so much should not know more. She herself has just
+cast her lover off, after meeting his 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 that _this_ mythology was simply history. The rapier-thrusts
+of the dramatist were not directed against wind-mills of the
+imagination, but against political infamies that make one's blood boil
+in the reading and that would have moved a more spirited people to hang
+their rulers to the nearest tree. This should be borne in mind by any
+one who, in the milder light of a later and better era, is disposed to
+carp at Schiller for caricaturing the 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[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",--says
+Diderot's St. Albin, in recounting the beginning of his infatuation for
+Sophie. So with Faust and Margaret, and with Schiller's beautiful Greek
+lady in 'The Ghostseer'.]
+
+[Footnote 54: "Schillers Leben und Werke", 15. Aufl. (1900), p. 297. In
+earlier editions of Palleske's work, which appeared originally in
+1858-9, Louise was further characterized as 'the crushed heart of the
+German people'; and the sentence, 'which had to recover from those
+wounds', read: 'which is beginning to recover'.]
+
+[Footnote 55: One strophe runs:
+
+  Dann wird ein Tag sein, den werd' ich auferstehn!
+  Dann wird ein Tag sein, den wirst du auferstehn!
+    Dann trennt kein Schicksal mehr die Seelen,
+      Die du einander, Natur, bestimmtest.]
+
+[Footnote 56: See above, page 7.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Theater Poet in Mannheim
+
+    Die Schaubühne ist mehr als jede andere öffentliche Anstalt des
+    Staats eine Schule der praktischen Weisheit, ein Wegweiser, durch
+    das bürgerliche Leben, ein unfehlbarer Schlüssel zu den geheimsten
+    Zugängen 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 with _éclat_ in the fourth act. (The rescue scene in 'The
+Robbers' had been a great success.) It has already been noted that the
+offensive quarrel between Julia and Leonora was omitted and that Leonora
+was allowed to live. And there were other such changes. Schiller had
+been impressed by an actor's criticism of his florid and violent
+language. He accordingly removed or toned down a few blemishes of this
+kind, but without making a radical revision of the style. Even in the
+stage version there is quite too much of rant and fustian.
+
+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. From _his_ point 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, begehre
+    Die andre Schwester nicht.
+  Geniesze wer nicht glauben kann. Die Lehre
+  Ist 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 the _Rhenish Thalia_ was 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 by _the_ prince of the Greeks! Henceforth he was in a sense the
+colleague of Goethe and Wieland. He began to speak of the Duke of Weimar
+as _his_ duke, 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 the _Rhenish 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 du
+  Was 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 the _Thalia_ (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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[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 und
+Goethe 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 see
+    The sister's forfeit bloom:
+  Let Unbelief enjoy--Belief must be
+  All to the chooser;--the world's history
+    Is the world's judgment doom."]
+
+[Footnote 63:
+
+  Thou askest in a single moment that
+  Which only time can give with cautious hand.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+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 the _Thalia_, 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. The _Thalia_, 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;
+    its _non plus ultra_ the Godhead.
+
+Then, as if momentarily abashed by his own extravagance of expression,
+he protests that his _Schwärmerei_, 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 the _Thalia_ were 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 shirt
+    A-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 the _Thalia_, 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. The _crux_ of 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.
+
+Along with these contributions there also appeared in the second number
+of the _Thalia_ a translation of the 'Précis Historique', prefixed by
+Mercier to his recently published 'Portrait de Philippe Second'. The
+'portrait' itself was a dramatic picture, in fifty-two scenes, without
+division into acts. The work of Mercier, who paints the Spanish king in
+the darkest possible colors, furnished a few hints for 'Don Carlos', but
+its influence was not very great. What chiefly concerns us here is to
+note Schiller's awakening interest in historical studies. In the spring
+of 1786, during an absence of the Körners which deprived him of his
+wonted inspiration, he found himself unable to work. Letter after letter
+tells of laziness and mental vacuity. As he could do nothing else he
+took to desultory reading, and this did not satisfy him. 'Really', he
+wrote on the 15th of April:
+
+    Really I must turn over a new leaf with my reading. I feel with
+    pain, that I still have such an astonishing amount to learn; that I
+    must sow In order to reap.... History is becoming dearer to me every
+    day. I have this week read a history of the Thirty Years' War, and
+    my head is still quite feverish from it. That this epoch of the
+    greatest national misery should have been at the same time the most
+    brilliant epoch of human power! What a number of great men came
+    forth from this night! I could wish that for the ten years past I
+    had done nothing but study history. I believe I should have become a
+    very different fellow. Do you think I shall yet be able to make up
+    for lost time?
+
+One sees from this language by what particular hook the study of history
+had taken hold of Schiller's mind, and what kind of profit he was
+promising himself from further reading. He was interested in the
+evolution of great men. For him, as for the poets always, from Homer
+down, history resolved itself into the doings of the leaders.
+
+For the time being, however, the new zeal seems to have been a mere
+flash in the pan, that set nothing in motion. Nor was Körner able, for
+some time to come, to induce his friend to make a serious study of
+Kant's 'Critique', though every third word between them was of
+philosophy. Nevertheless their philosophic debates did bear literary
+fruit. The third number of the _Thalia_, which came out in May,
+contained the first installment of the 'Philosophical Letters', a
+fictitious correspondence between two friends, Julius and Raphael, who
+have arrived by different routes at the same way of thinking, and are
+resolved to tell the world how it all came about. Julius is Schiller;
+Raphael is Körner, who actually contributed one of the later letters. We
+learn that Julius was passing through a spiritual crisis. He was happy
+but he had not reflected. The little world of his rapturous emotions
+sufficed him. Now, however, Raphael has enlightened his mind, made him a
+citizen of the world and taught him to comprehend the all-sufficient
+majesty of reason; but he has won enlightenment at the expense of peace.
+He is miserable and demands back his soul. Raphael rebukes him gently
+for his faint-heartedness and asks for a history of his thinking. So
+Julius rummages through his papers and sends on a somewhat elaborate
+'Theosophy of Julius',--a sort of _précis_, it would seem, of Schiller's
+earlier views. It is religious mysticism set forth with warm eloquence.
+The universe is a thought of God. The highest aim of thinking is to read
+the divine plan. All spirits are attracted by perfection. The supreme
+perfection is God, of whom love is an emanation. Love is gain; hate is
+loss; pardon, the recovery of lost property; misanthropy a prolonged
+suicide; egoism the utmost poverty. If every man loved all mankind,
+every man would possess the world. If we comprehend perfection it
+becomes ours. If we plant beauty and joy, beauty and joy shall we reap.
+If we think clearly we shall love fervently.
+
+To this 'theosophy' Julius adds a few comments, evidently of later
+origin, which show that he has now become aware of its intellectual
+inadequacy. Still he does not repudiate it. He thinks it may do for a
+doctrine, if one's nature is adapted to it.--Herewith, so far as
+Schiller was concerned, the 'Philosophic Letters' came to an end; but in
+the spring of 1788, Körner surprised him with a letter by Raphael, which
+is, philosophically speaking, by far the best of the entire collection.
+But this book is not concerned with the writings of Körner.
+
+Ere the third number of the _Thalia_ appeared it had become evident that
+the enterprise would not be profitable, and its perplexed editor was in
+doubt whether to continue it. He finally decided to go on. When the
+fourth number came out, early in 1787, it contained the beginning of a
+novel, 'The Ghostseer', wherein a mysterious Sicilian, and a still more
+mysterious Armenian, dog the footsteps of a German Prince von ----
+living at Venice, and do various things suggesting a connection
+with occult powers. The first installment of the story broke off at a
+very exciting point,--just when the Sicilian has produced his amazing
+ghost-scene, but has not yet been unmasked as a vulgar fraud. Schiller
+evidently began the novel in no very strenuous frame of mind. He
+wished to profit by the popular interest in tales of mysterious
+charlatanry which had been aroused by the exploits of Cagliostro. So
+he set out to spin a yarn in that vein, but he had no definite plan
+and did not himself know where he would bring up. The literary merits
+of 'The Ghostseer', Schiller's most noteworthy attempt in prose
+fiction, will come up for consideration in connection with the
+conclusion, or rather the continuation, which he published some two
+years later, when he had left Dresden to seek his fortune in Weimar.
+
+Even now the necessity of seeking his fortune somewhere was daily
+becoming more imperious. The _Thalia_ did not pay, though the critics
+spoke well of it, and he could not live forever upon Körner's friendly
+advances of money. The sense of his dependence often galled him; and yet
+when a proposal, in itself highly attractive, came to him from a distant
+city, he could not pluck up courage to leave his friend. Friedrich
+Schröder, the greatest German actor of the time, wished to draw him to
+Hamburg. Schiller looked up to Schröder with genuine admiration and
+speculatively promised himself great gain from association with 'the one
+man in Germany who could realize all his ideas of art.' In Mannheim,--so
+he wrote in October, 1786,--he had lost all his enthusiasm for the
+theater; it was now beginning to revive, but he shuddered at the
+treatment to which playwrights were exposed by theatrical people.
+Moreover he was living at Dresden 'in the bosom of a family to which he
+had become necessary'. So nothing came of the negotiations except the
+preparation of a stage version of 'Don Carlos' for the Hamburg theater.
+
+An amusing glimpse of domestic conditions in the Körner household is
+afforded by Schiller's dramatic skit, entitled 'Körner's Forenoon'. It
+belongs apparently to the year 1787, but was not published until 1862.
+The busy councillor of the Dresden Consistory sees a little leisure
+before him and squares off at his desk for a solid forenoon's work. He
+begins by ordering his man to shave him. Then he is interrupted by a
+procession of callers,--Schiller, in various rôles, and Minna, and
+Dorchen, and Professor Becker and others--who keep the stream of babble
+flowing until one o'clock. Körner is too late for the consistory and all
+that he has accomplished is to get shaved. The piece is a slight affair,
+but there is enough of solemn fun in it to make one wish that its author
+had seen fit to work his lighter vein more frequently.
+
+About the time when this facetious bagatelle was penned, or a little
+earlier perhaps, Schiller became the hero of a comedy in real life. In
+the winter of 1787 he attended a masked ball where he met 'a pretty
+domino--a plump voluptuous maiden,--who fascinated him. Her name was
+Henriette von Arnim. He followed up the acquaintance and was soon quite
+seriously interested. As the Arnim family did not enjoy the best of
+reputations, the Körners were annoyed at Schiller's seeming lack of
+connoisseurship in women. They contrived to let him know that on the
+evenings when Henriette was not at home to him she was at home to a
+certain earthy Count Waldstein, or to a certain jew banker, as the case
+might be. This was painful, but not immediately decisive, and miserable
+days ensued. In the spring he was persuaded to try a few weeks' outing
+in the country. Here he was at first frightfully lonesome,--a dejected
+Robinson Crusoe, who could neither work nor amuse himself. To his
+pathetic demands for reading-matter his friends replied with malicious
+humor by sending him Goethe's 'Werther' and Laclos's 'Liaisons
+Dangereuses'. After a while the Arnims followed him, but presently the
+count came also; and then the course of true love, thus awkwardly
+bifurcated, was more troubled than ever. After Henriette's return to
+Dresden there was an interchange of letters, wherein love fought a
+losing battle with doubt and suspicion.
+
+This half-year of amatory perturbation was of course unfavorable to
+literary labor. No further numbers of the _Thalia_ appeared, and 'The
+Misanthrope', a new play of excellent promise, made no progress. But
+'Don Carlos' did at last get itself completed--after a fashion. It was
+published early in the summer. And now, with this burden lifted, the
+time seemed to have arrived for carrying out the long-cherished plan of
+a visit to Weimar. Who could tell what might come of it? Körner was just
+as loyal as ever, but he was also wise enough to respect his friend's
+longing for a more assured and less dependent existence. And so in July
+Schiller set out for Thüringen,--to be seen no more in Dresden save as
+an occasional visitor. But the letters he wrote to the noble-minded
+friend who had done and been so much for him constitute, for several
+years to come, our best source of information concerning his outward
+fortune and his inner history. Before we follow him to Weimar, however,
+it will be in order to consider the play which remains as the most
+important achievement of his Dresden period.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 64: Letter of March 25, 1785.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Don Carlos
+
+                                Arm in Arm mit dir,
+  So fordr' ich mein Jahrhundert in die Schranken.
+  _'Don Carlos'_.
+
+With the publication of 'Don Carlos' Schiller's literary reputation
+entered upon a new phase. Hitherto he had been known as a playwright in
+whom the passion for strong effects often obscured the sense of artistic
+fitness. Of his dramatic power there could be no doubt, but had he the
+higher gift of the great poet? Would he ever be able to clothe his
+conceptions in a form that would appeal permanently to the general heart
+because of high and rare artistic excellence? Doubts of this kind were
+quite justifiable up to the year 1787, but they were set at rest by 'Don
+Carlos'. However vulnerable it may be as a poetic totality, it has
+passages that are magnificent. Its sonorous verse, wedded to a lofty
+argument and freighted with the noblest idealism of the century, made
+sure its author's title to a place in the Walhalla of the poets.
+
+Except 'Wallenstein' no other work of Schiller cost him such long and
+strenuous toil. 'Don Carlos', like Goethe's 'Faust', is a stratified
+deposit. The time that went to the making of it, only four years in all,
+was comparatively short, but it was for Schiller a time of rapid change;
+and the play, intensely subjective from the first, participated in the
+ripening process. The result is a certain lack of artistic congruity.
+Schiller himself, always his own best critic, felt this and frankly
+admitted it in the first of his 'Letters upon Don Carlos'.
+
+    It may be [he wrote] that in the first [three] acts I have aroused
+    expectations which the last do not fulfill. St. Réal's novel,
+    perhaps also my own remarks upon it in the first number of the
+    _Thalia_, may have suggested to the reader a standpoint from which
+    the work can no longer be regarded. During the period of
+    elaboration, which on account of divers interruptions was a pretty
+    long time, much changed within myself.... What had mainly attracted
+    me at first, attracted me less later on, and at last hardly at all.
+    New ideas that came into my mind crowded out the earlier ones.
+    Carlos himself had declined in my favor, for no other reason perhaps
+    than that I had outgrown him, and for the opposite reason the
+    Marquis of Posa had taken his place. So it came about that I brought
+    a very different heart to the fourth and fifth acts. Yet the first
+    three were already in the hands of the public, and the plan of the
+    whole could not be recast; I had either to suppress the piece
+    entirely (for which very few of my readers would have thanked me),
+    or else to fit the second half to the first as best I could.
+
+Let us look somewhat closely at the process of evolution here alluded to
+in general terms.
+
+The original impulse came from a work of romantic fiction, the 'Dom
+Carlos' of St. Réal, which was first read by Schiller in the summer of
+1782 and drew from him the comment that the story 'deserved the brush of
+a dramatist'. St. Réal's novel begins by telling how Charles the Fifth
+arranged, just before his abdication, that his grandson Carlos should
+some day marry Elizabeth of Valois: and how afterwards Philip determined
+to take the French princess for his own wife instead of leaving her to
+his son. Meanwhile, however, by much gazing at the picture of his
+betrothed, young Carlos had learned to love her, and she in turn had
+conceived for him a 'disposition to love rather than a veritable
+passion'. Arrived at the Spanish court the young queen wins all hearts;
+even the white-haired Philip falls in love with her, though he treats
+her with stately reserve in the presence of others and surrounds her
+with the restraints of Spanish etiquette. Thus the queen comes to feel
+that she possesses 'only the body of her husband, his soul being filled
+with the designs of his ambition and the meditation of his policy'. As
+for Carlos, his love-lorn eyes soon betray to her how it is with him,
+but she can only pity him, though she secretly returns his love, for she
+is as virtuous as she is beautiful.
+
+Not so the Princess Eboli, wife of Ruy Gomez, the tutor of Carlos.
+Having tried to win the love of the king and found her designs thwarted
+by the queen's beauty, Eboli makes advances to Prince Carlos, who lets
+her know that he cannot love her and thus makes her angry. In this mood
+she bestows her favor upon the king's half-brother, Don Juan of Austria,
+who is also enamored of the queen and has been watching Carlos
+suspiciously. Having thus made enemies of Eboli and Don Juan, Carlos
+next draws upon himself the hatred of the powerful Duke of Alva, of Ruy
+Gomez, and of the Inquisition. This he does by his outspoken criticism
+of their doings and his threats of punishment to be meted out to them
+when he shall have become king. Anxious for their own future Alva and
+Ruy Gomez conspire together and cause suspicions of Carlos to be
+whispered in the ear of the king. At first Philip is not greatly
+excited. When Carlos, importuned by Count Egmont, asks for a commission
+to the Netherlands, Philip does not refuse, but declares that he will go
+too and share the peril of his son. This, however, is a mere ruse to
+gain time. While they are waiting, the king meanwhile feigning illness,
+Carlos communicates freely with the queen through his bosom friend, the
+Marquis of Posa. Hearing of this intimacy the king now becomes really
+jealous, but of Posa not of Carlos. Maddened by suspicion he has the
+marquis murdered on the street and employs Eboli to watch the queen.
+After this Carlos resolves upon independent action and begins to
+negotiate with the Netherlanders. His operations are watched and
+reported by his enemies, and just as he is about to leave Spain he is
+arrested. The king places his case before the Holy Office, which decrees
+that he must die. Being allowed to choose the manner of his death he
+opens his veins while bathing.
+
+With the actual Don Carlos, whose story bears but little resemblance to
+that of St. Réal's hero, we are not particularly concerned. The French
+Abbé's drift is to exalt the French princess and to give a telling
+picture of a pair of high-minded lovers who are brought to their death
+by a complicate intrigue begotten of jealousy, political hatred and
+religious fanaticism. After the death of Carlos the queen is poisoned
+and then, one after the other, all the conspirators meet with poetic
+justice. "Ainsi", the Abbé concludes, "furent expiées les morts à jamais
+déplorables d'un prince magnanime, et de la plus belle et de la plus
+vertueuse princesse qui fut jamais. C'est ainsi que leurs ombres
+infortunées furent enfin pleinement appaisées par les funestes destinées
+de tous les complices de leur trépas."
+
+St. Réal's novel was published in 1672 and has been a favorite quarry of
+the dramatist. Of the plays of Otway (1676) and Campistron (1685)
+Schiller had no knowledge, nor did he receive any suggestions from the
+fierce and gloomy 'Filippo' of Alfieri, which appeared in 1783. He
+approached the subject in his own way and his first thought was simply
+to dramatize St. Réal, who is mainly interested in the love tragedy and
+writes as a literary artist rather than as a political or religious
+pamphleteer. We possess a prose outline[65] of 'Don Carlos', written
+probably at Bauerbach, which shows exactly how the theme first bit into
+Schiller's mind. The exposition was to show the secret passion of the
+lovers and the dangers threatening them from the jealousy of Philip, the
+political hostility of the grandees and the malice of the slighted
+Eboli. In the third act the king would become madly suspicious and
+resolve upon his son's death. Then there was to be a gleam of hope: the
+ambition of Carlos would awaken and begin to prevail over his love,
+while Posa would divert the king's suspicion to himself and fall a
+sacrifice to friendship. Then a new danger would arise: the king would
+discover Don Carlos in a seeming 'rebellion', and decree his death. The
+dying declaration of Carlos would prove his innocence and the king would
+be left alone to mourn the havoc he had wrought and to punish the
+conspirators who had deceived him.
+
+This sketch promises, it will be observed, not a political tragedy,
+but, as Schiller himself afterwards phrased it, a 'domestic tragedy in
+a royal household'. Springing up from the same soil and at the same
+time as 'Cabal and Love', it was to be much the same sort of play. In
+both a pair of high-minded lovers belonging together by natural
+affinity, but separated by artificial barriers; the rights of passion
+battling in the one case with social prejudice, in the other with the
+law of Rome and the malice of courtiers; in both a court plot against
+the lovers; the hero beset by a fair sinner who receives him in her
+private room, lays siege to him, and is angered by the slighting of her
+love; in both a tyrannical and headstrong father at enmity with his
+son. Of the political ideas which the world associates with 'Don
+Carlos' there is here no adumbration. We hear nothing of the
+Netherlanders, nor of the Inquisition, nor of the rights of man. Posa
+is only a friend of Carlos, not the ambassador of all mankind, and
+there is no room for his golden dreams of philanthropic statesmanship.
+And yet it is worth noticing that in three points (all in the third
+act) Schiller adds to his French source: Carlos's ambition was to waken
+and prevail over his love, Posa was to sacrifice himself, and the
+lovers were to rise superior to their passion.
+
+However, no sooner did our playwright address himself seriously to his
+task than his imagination began to break over the bounds he had set for
+it. Even at Bauerbach, as his letters show, his mind was occupied with
+the thought of 'avenging mankind' by scourging the gloomy despotism of
+Philip, the monstrous cruelty of Alva, the dark intrigues of the Jesuits
+and the hideous crimes of the Inquisition. That he made any progress in
+the spring of 1783, further than to cogitate upon his general plan and
+to fall in love with his hero, is not probable; nor do his Mannheim
+letters allude to 'Don Carlos' until June, 1784. In a letter of that
+date he assures Dalberg,--mindful of that good man's trials in
+connection with 'Cabal and Love',--that the new play will be 'anything
+but a political piece'. Whatever could offend the feelings was to be
+strictly avoided. August 24 he writes that 'Don Carlos' is a 'splendid,
+subject', especially for himself. Four great characters, Carlos, Philip,
+the queen, and Alva (no mention of Posa) open before him a boundless
+field. He cannot forgive himself for having tried to shine in the
+bourgeois drama, where another may easily surpass him (this in allusion
+to Iffland), whereas in historical tragedy he need fear no rival. He
+adds that he is now fairly master of the iambic form and that the verse
+cannot fail to impart splendor and dignity.
+
+So we see that by the end of his first year in Mannheim Schiller had
+indeed undergone a change. The _saeva indignatio_ of the dramatic
+pamphleteer had given way to the serener mood of the poetic artist. This
+change would doubtless have come about under any circumstances, through
+the natural ripening of his mind and art, but it was hastened by the
+influence of Klein and Wieland, and by the example of Lessing's
+'Nathan'. Anton von Klein, a Jesuit _bel esprit_ living at Mannheim, was
+a steadfast champion of the regular heroic tragedy. He had written a
+searching review of 'The Robbers', pointing out its many faults and
+absurdities, but he recognized Schiller's talent and saw in him a man
+worth converting. At Mannheim a friendship sprang up between the two,
+and Schiller heard much talk about the superior merit of the noble
+poetic style,--a region of thought in which he had hitherto wandered but
+little. He had written thus far out of the fervor of his soul, and
+theory of any sort had touched him but little. From Rousseauite
+literature he had caught a fantastic conception of 'nature', and this
+had led him to portray men and women who were scarcely more natural than
+those of Gottsched himself. In the rush of feeling he had enlisted among
+the young revolutionists whose stormy and stressful tendency, curiously
+enough, was regarded as 'English'. And now he found that there was after
+all something to be said in favor of the classical French type. The
+'anglo-maniacs' were not in possession of the whole truth. Might there
+not be, perhaps, a _tertium quid_,--a German drama having a character of
+its own and combining the literary dignity and artistic finish of the
+French with the warmth and variety of the pseudo-English school? As if
+in answer to this query, Lessing's 'Nathan', published in 1779, had
+already opened a vista of limitless possibilities. And 'Nathan' was in
+blank verse.
+
+To this was added the influence of Wieland, who had lately published a
+series of 'Letters to a Young Poet',[66] in which he read his
+contemporaries a lecture on the absurdity of their boasting over the
+French. He wanted to know where the German dramas were that could
+compare with the best works of Racine, Corneille and Molière. He
+insisted that a perfect drama no less than a perfect epic must be in
+verse. Even rime in his opinion was indispensable. Such doctrine coming
+from a man of Wieland's immense authority in literary matters could not
+fail to influence the groping mind of Schiller, though he could not
+stomach the demand for rime. The blank verse of Shakspere and Lessing
+seemed to promise best, and so he set about practicing upon it. At first
+the meter gave him great difficulty; he could not subdue his strong
+passion and his wild tropes to the even tenor of the decasyllabic
+cadence. Then followed his decision to publish his play piecemeal in the
+_Thalia_,--an unfortunate decision as it proved. His hope was to profit
+betimes by what his critics might say. He was in a mood of boundless
+docility and boundless confidence in the public. Resolved to write 'no
+verses that could not be submitted to the best heads in the nation', he
+fondly imagined that the nation would be as eager to help him as he was
+eager to be helped. As a matter of fact he got but little assistance
+from the critic tribe, and his piecemeal publication only served to
+embarrass him when he came to the final redaction of the whole.
+
+In the short preface which introduced the first installment to the
+public, Schiller ventured the opinion that the excellence of his tragedy
+would depend mainly upon his success in portraying the king. The
+situation of Carlos and the queen was interesting, he thought, but not
+tragically pathetic; it would be difficult to create sympathy for them.
+If, however, King Philip was to be the center of tragic interest, it was
+evident that he could not be depicted, in accordance with a one-sided
+tradition, as a repellent monster. From these and other expressions in
+the same essay we can see that Schiller was growing cool toward his
+hero. He felt that the troubles of Carlos and the queen could not be
+regarded under the Rousseauite scheme of natural passion battling with
+odious convention, but that the passion was itself odious. He felt that
+a young prince, pining and whining and plunging himself into disaster
+all on account of an illicit and mawkish love for his stepmother, was
+not a very inspiring personage to be the hero of a great historical
+drama. The solution of the problem seemed for the moment to lie in a
+'rescue' of King Philip. So the love-tragedy in a royal household began
+to take on more than ever the character of a political tragedy, the
+promise to Dalberg being quickly forgotten. When he began to publish,
+however, his political program was still rather vague and negative; it
+hardly went beyond the intention to bestow an incidental scourging upon
+the enemies of mankind in church and state.
+
+Then came the influence of Körner, the effect of which was to give
+great prominence to the character of Posa as a positive champion of the
+right, and to make him for a while the real hero of the play. There
+seems at first blush but little resemblance between the fanatical
+idealist of Schiller's imagination and the sensible Dresden lawyer, but
+the Körner strain in Posa is unmistakable. In his intercourse with
+Schiller he was evermore insisting on the importance of doing something
+for mankind. Enthusiasm, love, friendship, sentiment of any kind, were
+valuable in his estimation only as sources of inspiration for telling
+activity. As matters of mere private ecstasy, of froth and foam rising
+and falling to no effect in the turmoil of the individual soul, they
+were for him objects of mild derision. And the idea that lay nearest
+his heart as a student of Kant was the idea of freedom. And so, as
+Schiller worked upon his play at Dresden, Posa was made the exponent of
+the new point of view. He became the teacher of the unripe Carlos, even
+as Körner had been the teacher of the unripe Schiller; the subduer of
+unmanly emotionalism; the apostle of renunciation; the pointer of the
+way to great deeds; the prophet of a free humanity to come. In the
+brilliant light thus thrown upon Posa the other heroes were somewhat
+obscured. The poet's original love, Don Carlos, and his second love,
+Don Philip, had to make way for a third passion that was stronger than
+either of the others.
+
+The four installments of 'Don Carlos' that were printed in the _Thalia_,
+up to the end of 1786, comprised in all three acts. They carried the
+action to the point where the king, lonely amid sycophants and
+deceivers, sighs for a 'man' to counsel him. The great scene between
+Posa and Philip was yet to come in Act IV. The matter already in print
+contained more than four thousand verses, and several scenes had only
+been sketched in prose. At this rate it was evident that the play would
+reach twice the length of a regular tragedy and would be an
+impossibility on the stage. Schiller began to see that his impatience of
+stage restrictions and his subjective interest in certain situations had
+done him an evil turn. He had been deplorably long-winded. And just then
+came out a caustic review which showed him that he had committed other
+sins than those of prolixity.[67] Nevertheless he did not now have
+recourse to that drastic surgery whereby, in the edition of 1801, he
+reduced the unwieldy play to more manageable dimensions.[68] Without any
+radical revision of the part already in print, he completed the last two
+acts as best he could, with Minerva often unwilling. Posa was made to
+gain the king's confidence, to become seemingly omnipotent, and in the
+pride of his imagined strength to enter upon that desperate game of
+intrigue and double-dealing which involves himself and his cause and his
+helpless friend, Don Carlos, in final disaster.
+
+Thus St. Réal's pathetic tale of love and intrigue had been left far
+behind, and out of it had come a tragedy of amiable political idealism,
+growing insolent with self-confidence and losing touch with present
+realities in its dazzling dream of things to come.
+
+'The soul of Shakspere's Hamlet, the blood and nerves of Leisewitz's
+Julius, the pulse of Schiller himself',--this, it will be recalled, was
+the original formula for the composition of Prince Carlos. But, alas,
+the soul of one of Shakspere's heroes is not so easily purloined, and
+Schiller did not succeed well in his proposed larceny. What we find is
+not the soul but the situation of Hamlet: a young prince just returned
+from the university,--troubled by a strange melancholy,--a mystery to
+king and court,--beset by spies whom he sends packing,--visited by a
+dear academic friend,--called to a great work to which he feels himself
+unequal, and so forth. The parallel is obvious, but it hardly goes
+beyond externalities. Nor does the portrait of Carlos owe very much that
+is vital to Leisewitz. He gives us, to be sure, a love-sick prince whose
+illicit passion unnerves him, and like Carlos Julius has a friend who
+admonishes him to be a man. But there the resemblance ends; he has not
+the strength to renounce and remains to the end a sentimental weakling.
+
+The truth is that the soul, pulse, blood and nerves of Carlos are simply
+Schiller's own. There is no other creation of his into which he put so
+much of himself. That feeling of dark despair and dead ambition to which
+Carlos gives expression in his first dialogue with Posa is but a poetic
+echo of actual experiences.
+
+  I too have known a Carlos in my dreams
+  Whose cheek flushed crimson when he heard the name
+  Of Freedom. But that Carl is dead and buried,--
+
+sighs the Spanish prince. 'I might perhaps have become great, but fate
+took the field against me too early.... Love and esteem me for that
+which I might have become under more favorable stars',--writes the
+actual Schiller.[69] And just as Carlos throws himself into the arms of
+Posa and thinks to find his all in friendship, so Schiller hoped
+ineffable things from Körner. Nowhere else in literature has the
+eighteenth-century cult of friendship found such fervid, and in the main
+such noble, expression as in 'Don Carlos'.
+
+It may indeed be fairly objected that, in view of what is to come later,
+the Carlos of the first act is a little too soft even for the
+sentimental age. We are required to have faith in his heroic capacity
+for enterprises of great pith and moment. But after his first dialogue
+with Posa it is as difficult for the reader or spectator to trust him as
+it is for King Philip. His lacrimose raptures over so simple a thing as
+a youthful friendship; his abject confession of despair and dependence;
+his long-drawn-out revelation of a sick heart, and his morbid craving
+for sympathy in a passion which he himself feels to be abominable,--all
+this suggests a cankered soul of which there can be little hope. Hamlet
+greets the returning Horatio with the simple words:
+
+  Sir, my good friend. I'll change that name with you.
+
+The corresponding passage in Schiller runs:
+
+        Can it be?
+  Is't true? Is't possible? 'Tis really thou.
+  I press thee to my heart and feel the beat
+  Of thine omnipotent against my own.
+  Now all is well again.--In this embrace
+  The sickness of my soul is cured. I lie
+  Upon my Roderick's neck.
+
+One does not see how such pitiful weakness is all at once to be
+converted into manly strength by the mere arrival of a friend; wherefore
+that fine saying of Carlos which closes the first act,
+
+  Arm in arm with thee,
+  I hurl defiance at my century,
+
+sounds a trifle bombastic.
+
+So again at his first meeting with Elizabeth, Carlos is distressingly
+mawkish. She pictures him, in pitying indignation, as succeeding to the
+throne, undoing his father's work and at last marrying herself. Then he
+exclaims in sudden horror:
+
+  Accursed son! Yes, it is over. Now
+  'Tis over. Now I see it all so clearly,
+
+and much more of the same purport. But how strange that he should have
+brooded for eight moons over his passion without ever having considered
+how it might appear to the object of it! His talk here suggests a mental
+inadequacy which one is hardly prepared to see change all of a sudden
+into heroic resolution.
+
+To be sure it was a part of Schiller's design to represent in Carlos a
+process of evolution. Under the influence of manly friendship the puling
+sentimentalist was to have his fiber toughened into the stuff that great
+men are made of; and so it was quite in order that he should appear at
+first as a weakling. But he is too much of a weakling, and the reason is
+that Schiller did not foresee the end from the beginning. He thought of
+Carlos originally as a hapless youth having a sort of natural right to
+rebel. It was a part of the plan, moreover, that he should renounce and
+grow strong through renunciation. But this was to come later in the
+third act; in the beginning he was to dally with the morbid passion
+which was to be his tragic guilt. Now with this conception of the
+subject, the portrait of Carlos, just as we have it, fits in very well;
+but when the main interest of the play had become political, when the
+lawless love had become of no account and the renunciation
+everything,--then it was surely an error to introduce Carlos in such a
+pitiful plight of soul that faith in him is next to impossible, and the
+next moment require us to accept him as a hero.
+
+In fine, one may well wish that Carlos had a little more of the soul of
+Hamlet,--leastwise of Hamlet's rough energy of character and saving
+sense of humor. But the time is past for thinking to dispose of Schiller
+by saying that he was no Shakspere. Enough that he was himself. And
+nowhere was he more himself than in just this combination of infinite
+soft-heartedness with large manly ambition. When Carlos preaches to his
+father that 'tears are the eternal credential of humanity', he utters a
+genuine oracle of the sentimental age. And when in the final scene he
+appears purified by suffering, master of his selfish passion and all
+intent upon that higher good of which he has caught a glimpse, he speaks
+again from the heart of Schiller. What a noble figure is Carlos in this
+last interview with his mother! What matchless poetry in the lines! And
+how genuinely, thrillingly tragic is the ending of the scene!
+
+The teacher of Prince Carlos is the amazing Marquis of Posa. In a
+cynical foot-note of the year 1845 Carlyle quotes, with seeming
+approval, Richter's comparison of Posa to the tower of a
+light-house,--"high, far-shining, empty". But what would Jean Paul have
+had? Is it not quite enough for a light-house to be high and
+far-shining? One does not see how its usefulness would be enhanced by
+filling it with the beans and bacon of practical politics. Here surely
+one must side with Schiller and never think of criticising him for not
+making his Posa an exponent of political ideas that belong to a later
+time. Every age has its dream. Ours is of a people to be made happy by
+democratic legislation; Schiller's was of a people to be made happy by
+the personal goodness and enlightenment of the monarch. That the one
+dream, seen _sub specie aeternitatis_, is any more empty and fatuous
+than the other, would be very difficult to prove.
+
+The sentimental imagination of the eighteenth century was fond of
+dwelling upon the loneliness of the princely station. Standing above all
+other men, occupied habitually with weighty matters of state, surrounded
+by self-seeking flatterers and schemers, how was a ruler ever to hear
+the truth or to know the blessedness of disinterested friendship? Awful
+fate to be thus cut off from tender human affection and compelled to
+tread the wine-press alone! And if a prince should really find a friend,
+how fortunate for him and his subjects! It was the simple theory of
+idealists under the Old Régime that the happiness of a people depended
+altogether upon the wisdom and goodness of the king; and in an age when
+'feeling was everything' it was natural that goodness of the heart
+should count for more than mere sagacity. What the king was believed to
+need pre-eminently, was to keep alive his human sympathies; and how
+could he do this better than by having some one to love and confide in?
+
+So Schiller provides his Spanish prince with a friend. Our drama seems
+to wish to impute to Posa a lovable personality; else how account for
+the spell that he casts over all three of the royal personages?[70]
+Looked at closely, however, and judged by his conduct rather than by his
+fine phrases, he appears anything but lovable. After his death it comes
+to light that he is deeply involved in a conspiracy for which the
+ordinary name is treason. He has been organizing a combination of
+European powers for the purpose of detaching the Netherlands by force
+from the Spanish crown. He returns to Spain as an arch-traitor,--with
+his pockets full of letters which if discovered would cost him his head.
+When one learns this and then thinks back in the light of this
+knowledge, his conduct throughout the play appears absolutely
+inconceivable; so that one is driven to the conjecture that Schiller did
+not think of him all along as an out-and-out traitor, but added this
+touch at the last, along with others, for the purpose of accenting his
+character as a Quixotic madman.
+
+Up to the fourth act the impression produced by him is that of an
+amiable idealist, who has travelled extensively and acquired liberal
+ideas of government. He has been shocked by the regime of persecution
+and bloodshed in the Netherlands. He cares nothing for Protestantism as
+a creed, but he is an apostle of tolerance in the style of Frederick the
+Great. He returns to Spain intent upon securing for the Netherlands not
+political independence through revolution, but freedom of thought under
+the Spanish crown; and this he thinks to accomplish by procuring the
+stadholdership for Prince Carlos. Now this being the presupposition, it
+was a great thought of Schiller to bring his humane dreamer face to face
+with the somber despot, Philip the Second, Let it be granted that Posa's
+views of statesmanship, which belong to the Age of Enlightenment, could
+hardly have found lodgment in the brain of a chevalier of the 16th
+century. The thing is perhaps supposable only in poetry; but there it is
+supposable enough, and Schiller need not have troubled himself to argue
+away the anachronism. It is the poet's prerogative to mask himself and
+his own age in the forms of the fictitious past. He will do it anyway,
+no matter how hard he may strive after historical verisimilitude. It is
+just as well, therefore, for him to throw away his scruples and stand
+boldly on his rights.
+
+From a dramaturgic point of view, indeed, the long political altercation
+between Posa and Philip is out of place; it is magnificent, but it holds
+up the action to no purpose, and the play goes on as if it had not been.
+Schiller was evidently concerned to produce a pendant to the great scene
+in 'Nathan the Wise'. Saladin wants truth, Philip wants a man. Both the
+prophets prepare themselves for their ordeal in a brief soliloquy. Both
+monarchs get their wish, and a friendly relation ensues. Both scenes are
+purple patches of didacticism,--the author preaching a sermon to his
+contemporaries. Unfortunately Schiller did not have at hand a matchless
+fable to make his doctrine concrete and give it human interest. In
+places his language is abstract and difficult to follow, but taken as a
+whole the scene is admirable in its denotation of Posa's manly
+independence and humane philosophy. For a moment the marquis dreams of
+accomplishing his purpose by an appeal to the goodness and enlightenment
+of the king; and into his appeal he pours all the eloquence of
+eighteenth-century humanitarianism. All that the literature of
+generations had garnered up; all that lay on the heart of the young
+Schiller, in the way of fair hopes for mankind to be realized by humane
+and enlightened rulership, finds here immortal expression through the
+mouth of Posa.
+
+And then what a revulsion in the last two acts! The great scene of the
+third act leaves an impression that the world's affairs are not in such
+bad hands after all. Posa does not convince the king's mind, but he
+finds his heart and wins his confidence. One has the feeling that, if he
+bide his time and use some tact, he can accomplish all that he desires.
+But to our amazement he gives up the king and enters upon a desperate
+game of double-dealing in which he deceives everybody. He forms the plan
+of sending Carlos to the Netherlands as the leader of a revolt. Of this
+plan he says nothing to his friend, nor does he tell him of his own new
+relation to the king. Instead he wraps himself in mystery and asks
+Carlos for his letter-case. This he turns over to the king, and gets a
+warrant for the arrest of Carlos. The young prince, suspecting quite
+reasonably that he has been betrayed, goes to Eboli for enlightenment.
+Here Posa finds him and draws his dagger upon the woman, as if she were
+the possessor of some terrible secret,--which in fact she is not. Then
+he relents and arrests Carlos without explanation. He now writes a
+compromising letter which he knows will cause his own death. Then, after
+some delay, he goes to Carlos and tries to explain his strange conduct,
+and while he is telling his story the bullet of the king's assassin
+finds him. Carlos mourns the Great Departed as a pattern of unexampled
+heroic virtue, but one can have little sympathy with the panegyric,
+especially after one learns that Posa was a traitor from the beginning.
+
+There would be little profit in discussing the last two acts of 'Don
+Carlos' with respect to their inherent reasonableness. It is possible to
+frame an intelligible theory of Posa's conduct, but not one which is
+perfectly coherent, and least of all one which shall harmonize with the
+impression produced by the first three acts. There we have an amiable
+idealist, whom we can at least understand; here a madman smitten, like
+Fiesco, with a mania for managing a large and dangerous intrigue all in
+his own way, and accomplishing his ends by modes of action which seem to
+him heroic, but to the ordinary mind utterly preposterous. Thus he
+accounts for his failure to confide his plans to Carlos by saying that
+he was 'beguiled by false delicacy',--which seems to mean that his
+relation to the king was felt by him as a breach of friendship. But how
+strange that a man with public ends in view should feel thus under the
+circumstances! So too his self-sacrifice is nothing but heroic folly,
+since his death in no way betters the chances of Carlos for escape. The
+flight would have had a better chance of success had Posa omitted his
+heroics altogether and quietly planned to escape with his friend. In
+fine, we have to do here with entirely abnormal psychic processes. The
+reader and still more the spectator is bewildered by Posa, and does not
+know any better than Carlos and the king know how to take him.[71]
+
+Turning now to the portrait of the king we find there too the traces of
+a wavering purpose. The original conception was dark as Erebus. In the
+first act, more especially in the first act as originally printed, the
+King of Spain is painfully suggestive of a wicked ogre swooping in upon
+a nursery of naughty children. Such an insanely jealous, swaggering,
+domineering, cruel fanatic is too loathsome to be interesting. Then came
+the thought, suggested partly by the reading of Brantôme and Ferrera, of
+presenting Philip's character in a more favorable light and making him
+the center of tragic interest,--a thought which was neither given up nor
+consistently carried out. In October, 1785, Schiller wrote to Körner
+that he was reading Watson and that 'weighty reforms were threatening
+his own Philip and Alva.' The Rev. Robert Watson's history by no means
+idealizes Philip, but it credits him with sincerity, vigilance,
+penetration, self-control, administrative capacity and a 'considerable
+share of sagacity' in the choice of ministers and generals,--not an
+altogether mean list of kingly qualities. On the other hand, in
+Mercier's book[72] Philip appears as the embodiment of all those
+qualities which the Age of Enlightenment regarded as odious in a ruler.
+Thus, just as in the case of Fiesco, Schiller found himself pulled this
+way and that by his authorities; and the result of his attempt to graft
+an impressive monarch upon the stock furnished by St. Réal's jealous
+husband is a Philip who does not fully satisfy either the historic sense
+or the poetic imagination.
+
+For Schiller, of course, a truly great monarch needed to have a tender
+heart; so Philip was given certain sentimental traits. He feels the
+loneliness of his station. In spite of his seeming coldness the pleading
+of Carlos for affection touches him, and he gives orders that henceforth
+his son is to stand nearer to the throne. For the purpose of exhibiting
+the king's magnanimity we have the anachronistic scene in which he is
+made to pardon Medina Sidonia for the loss of the great armada,--an
+event which happened twenty years later. Then he becomes suspicious of
+Domingo and Alva and longs for an honest man to tell him the truth. And
+when the man appears the king is most surprisingly open-minded. 'This
+fire', he says to Posa,
+
+  Is admirable. You would fain do good,
+  Just _how_ you do it, patriot and sage
+  Can little care.
+
+So Philip is a patriot and a sage, glowing with the holy fire of
+humanity; and as such he even deigns to explain his policy and to enter
+into a contest of magnanimity with Posa. But the large-hearted monarch
+of whom we get a glimpse in this scene is soon reduced back to the
+jealous husband of St. Réal, and his jealousy is closely patterned upon
+that of Othello. The Philip of the last two acts is sometimes pitiable,
+sometimes repulsive, never great. One is not very much surprised when he
+hires an assassin to kill Posa, instead of handing him over to the law.
+
+Of the remaining characters the queen is the most interesting. In her
+Schiller for the first time depicts a woman convincingly. His Elizabeth
+is perhaps a shade too angelic,--she is an ideal figure like all his
+women,--but winsome she certainly is. One is a little startled by the
+readiness with which she approves Posa's treasonable plan of a
+revolution to be headed by Don Carlos, but in this play the sentiment of
+patriotism cuts no figure anywhere. The principal characters are all
+occupied with the idea of 'humanity', and are not troubled by any
+scruples arising out of national feeling.
+
+Taken as a whole 'Don Carlos' is too complicated to yield an unalloyed
+artistic pleasure. It suffers from a lack of simplicity and
+concentration. There is material in it for two or three plays. The
+double intrigue of love and politics becomes toward the end very
+confusing. The confusion is increased by the unexpected turn given to
+the character of Posa, and reaches a climax when we learn from the Grand
+Inquisitor that _he_ has been pulling all the strings from first to
+last, and that the entire tragedy was foreordained in the secret
+archives of the Holy Office. The unity of interest is marred by the fact
+that in the last two acts the real hero, Don Carlos, drops into the
+background as the helpless tool of the incalculable marquis. And Carlos,
+too, sometimes acts rather unaccountably; for example, when he supposes
+that the wanton _billet-doux_ signed 'E.' can come from the queen, of
+whose purity and high-mindedness he has just had convincing evidence.
+Then again his conduct toward the Princess Eboli in the love scene is
+very singular,--one might say amazing. And there are some other such
+defects, which concern the stage more than the reader and which, by
+skillful acting and judicious excision, can be reduced to insignificant
+proportions. When well played 'Don Carlos' produces a powerful
+impression. For the reader it is a noble poem containing a large
+ingredient of Schiller's best self.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 65: It is printed in Sämtliche Schriften, III, 180.]
+
+[Footnote 66: In the _Teutsche Merkur_ for October, 1782.]
+
+[Footnote 67: In the _Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften_, Vol.
+XXXII; reprinted by Braun, "Schiller und Goethe im Urteile ihrer
+Zeitgenossen", I, 152 ff.]
+
+[Footnote 68: The fragments published in the _Thalia_ contained 4140
+lines; the _editio princeps_ of 1787, 6283; the edition of 1801, this
+being the form in which the play is usually read, 5370.]
+
+[Footnote 69: Letter to Reinwald April 14, 1783.]
+
+[Footnote 70: Kuno Fischer, "Schiller-Schriften," I, 217, observes:
+"Freilich bedarf die Schauspielkunst um diese Scene [the great scene
+between Posa and Philip] so magisch wirken zu lassen, wie das Genie des
+Dichters sie erzeugt und gestaltet hat, eines Posa, dem die Natur die
+seltensten Gaben verliehen. Jede seiner Bewegungen, jede Geberde, jeder
+Ton, ist Anmut und Wohlklang. Er überzeugt den König nicht durch den
+Inhalt seiner Rede, er rührt ihn nicht durch seine Ideen, und doch
+gewinnt er ihn völlig, weil er ihn persönlich bezaubert." The natural
+effect of Schiller's words, however, is to give an impression that the
+king is moved not solely by Posa's personal charm, but in part by the
+idealism of his character.]
+
+[Footnote 71: Perhaps the best possible account of his death is that of
+Kuno Fischer, "Schiller-Schriften", I, 215: "Er opfert sich für ein
+weltgeschichtliches Ideal, das er idyllisch träumte."]
+
+[Footnote 72: See above, page 169.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Anchored in Thuringia
+
+    Ich musz ein Geschöpf um mich haben, das mir gehört.
+_Letter of 1788_.
+
+The Weimar of Schiller's first acquaintance--arrived there July 21,
+1787--consisted of a petty provincial court plus an unsightly village.
+The inhabitants numbered about six thousand. Of the space built over
+about one-third was occupied by the buildings of the court, much of the
+outlying modern Weimar being then under water. The streets were narrow,
+muddy lanes, the houses plain and poor. And yet the sluggish little
+place, so unprepossessing in all material ways, was already beginning to
+assert that claim to glory which has since been conceded to it by all
+the world. Princely patronage of art and letters was by no means unknown
+elsewhere in Germany, but it was usually a matter of gracious
+condescension on the one side and grateful adulation on the other. Very
+different in Weimar, where Goethe was not only a member of the Council,
+but the duke's most intimate friend and trusted adviser. In his heart
+Karl August cared less for aesthetic matters than is often supposed, but
+his mother, the Dowager Duchess Amalie, patronized art for the real love
+of it. Poetry and music were as the breath of life to her, and her taste
+in poetry had been trained by the greatest living master. Aside from
+Goethe, two other distinguished writers had found a home in Weimar. The
+kindly but changeable Wieland, not really one of the _dii majores_,
+but so regarded at the time, had lived there since 1772; Herder, much
+more nobly endowed, but less amiable and less popular, since 1776.
+
+At the time of Schiller's advent Goethe was still in Italy, whither he
+had gone the previous autumn to find relief from the miseries of
+duodecimo statesmanship. Karl August and the reigning Duchess Luise were
+also absent, but several minor notables of the court circle had remained
+'in town', and the dowager duchess was giving aesthetic teas as usual
+in her easily accessible 'castle' at Tiefurt. Wieland and Herder were
+likewise at home. On his arrival Schiller was taken charge of by the
+Baroness von Kalb, who was awaiting her soul's affinity with feverish
+eagerness. Her excitement at seeing him again amounted to a 'paroxysm'
+which made her ill for a week. Then she grew better and her emotions
+gradually found the level of a friendliness too passionate to be called
+Platonic, but not sinful in the lower sense. As for Schiller, he
+devotedly let himself be loved and introduced to Weimar society, the
+pair making no concealment of their liking for each other. At first he
+felt some compunctions on account of the absent husband, who might be
+annoyed by gossip. It pleased him to observe, therefore, that in Weimar
+such a friendship was taken as a matter of course and treated with
+delicacy.[73] 'Charlotte' he wrote to Körner, 'is a grand, exceptional,
+womanly soul, a real study for me and worthy to occupy a greater mind
+than mine. With each forward step in our intercourse I discover in her
+new manifestations that surprise and delight me like beautiful spots in
+a broad landscape.'
+
+For several months he played this unwholesome role of cicisbeo to
+Charlotte von Kalb. Then another and very different Charlotte crossed
+his path and quickly taught him the better way.
+
+The story of Schiller's gradual adjustment to the Weimar _milieu_ is
+told very fully in his frequent letters to Körner. He called upon Herder
+and Wieland, and was received with 'amazing politeness' by the one, with
+loquacious cordiality by the other. Herder knew nothing of his writings
+and regaled him with idolatrous talk about Goethe. Wieland knew all
+about him except that he had not yet seen 'Don Carlos'; criticised his
+early plays frankly as lacking in correctness and artistic finish, but
+expressed the utmost confidence in him nevertheless. He was received at
+Tiefurt, but did not like the dowager duchess: her mind, he reported,
+was very narrow; nothing interested her but the sensuous. A few days
+later he heard that 'Don Carlos' had been read to a select assembly at
+Tiefurt and had not made a good impression; there had been caustic
+criticism of the piece, particularly the last two acts, and Wieland, who
+was present, had not stood up for it. This led to a coolness toward
+Wieland. By the end of three weeks Schiller had despaired of Weimar and
+was miserable. He thought of leaving the place in disgust.
+
+In August he spent a week at Jena as the guest of Professor Reinhold,
+who was about to begin lecturing upon Kant and was predicting that after
+a century the Königsberg philosopher would have a reputation like that
+of Jesus Christ. Reinhold's enthusiasm led Schiller to read some of
+Kant's shorter essays, among which a paper upon universal history gave
+him 'extraordinary satisfaction'. From Reinhold came also the assurance
+that it would be easy to secure a Jena professorship. The idea did not
+at once take hold of him in the sense of becoming a definite purpose,
+but it tallied with his inclination. His experience with 'Don Carlos'
+had left him in doubt whether the drama was after all his true vocation,
+and he had already begun to work fitfully upon a history of the Dutch
+Rebellion.
+
+So he decided to remain a little longer in Weimar and devote himself to
+historical writing; and, this resolution formed, life at once began to
+open more pleasantly before him. He saw that he had made the mistake of
+taking the Weimar magnates too seriously; of imagining that they were
+all sitting in judgment upon him, and that it was of the greatest
+importance to win their favor. 'I begin to find life here quite
+tolerable,' he wrote early in September, 'and the secret of it--you will
+wonder that it did not occur to me before--is not to bother my head
+about anybody.' And indeed he had no reason to be disgruntled. Herder
+was pleased with 'Don Carlos' and came out in its favor before the
+aesthetic tribunal of Tiefurt. Wieland noticed it favorably in the
+_Merkur_, spoke flatteringly of it in conversation and declared himself
+now convinced that Schiller's forte was the drama. Henceforth the two
+men were fast friends and presently Schiller was toying with the thought
+of marrying Wieland's favorite daughter. 'I do not know the girl at
+all', he wrote, 'but I would ask for her to-day if I thought I deserved
+her.'[74] His scruple was that he was too much of a cosmopolitan to be
+permanently contented with 'these people'. A simple-minded, innocent
+girl of domestic proclivities would not be happy with him.
+
+The autumn passed in quiet work devoted mainly to his 'Defection of the
+Netherlands'. The Duke of Weimar came home for a few days towards the
+ist of October, but immediately went away again to Holland. Schiller did
+not even see him. Evidently there was nothing to be hoped for
+immediately in that quarter; he would have to rely upon himself. But he
+was now in demand. The _Merkur_ was eager for contributions from his
+pen, and so was the _Litteratur-Zeitung_, whose extensive review factory
+had been shown him during his sojourn in Jena. Then there was the
+comatose _Thalia_, which he determined to revive after New Year's.
+
+In November he spent a few days at Meiningen, where his sister
+Christophine was now living as the wife of Reinwald. He saw Frau von
+Wolzogen and Lotte (who was about to be married), but Bauerbach had lost
+its charm. 'The old magic,' he wrote to Korner, 'had been blown away. I
+felt nothing. None of all the places that formerly made my solitude
+interesting had anything to say to me.' On his return fate was lurking
+for him at Rudolstadt, where his friend, Wilhelm von Wolzogen,
+introduced him to Frau von Lengefeld and her two daughters, 'Both
+creatures ', Schiller wrote, 'are attractive, without being beautiful
+and please me much. You find here considerable acquaintance with recent
+literature, also refinement, feeling and intelligence. They play the
+piano well, which gave me a delightful evening.' The elder daughter,
+Karoline, was married unhappily to a Herr von Beulwitz, from whom she
+afterwards separated to marry Wilhelm von Wolzogen. She was a woman of
+much literary talent, which found employment later in a novel, 'Agnes
+von Lilien', and in her excellent memoir of Schiller. The other daughter
+was unmarried and bore the auspicious name of Charlotte.
+
+Lotte von Lengefeld, whose memory Is cherished with idealizing
+tenderness by the Germans, was now twenty-one years old,--a demure
+maiden whose eyes spake more than her tongue. She had long since won the
+heart of the Baroness von Stein, who had introduced her at the Weimar
+court and held out to her the hope of becoming a lady-in-waiting to the
+Duchess Luise. Goethe was fond of her and did not omit to send her
+affectionate greetings from distant Italy. Some time before, she had
+spent a year with her mother and sister in Switzerland for the purpose
+of improving her French; and on the way home, in the summer of 1784, the
+party had caught a glimpse of Schiller in Mannheim. Now the sisters were
+living in a sort of idyllic solitude at Rudolstadt, cut off from the
+great world, absorbed in their books, their music, and the memories of
+that happy year in Switzerland. Karoline von Wolzogen writes, in
+speaking of this occasion:
+
+    My sister was seemingly in every respect a desirable match for
+    Schiller. She had a very winsome form and face. An expression of
+    purest goodness of heart enlivened her features, and her eyes
+    flashed only truth and innocence. Thoughtful and susceptible to the
+    good and the beautiful in life and in art, her whole nature was a
+    beautiful harmony. Of even temper, but faithful and tenacious in her
+    affections, she seemed created to enjoy the purest happiness.
+
+Making all needful allowance for the partiality of a sister, one cannot
+wonder that the visitor went on his way with the feeling that Rudolstadt
+might be a good place in which to spend the summer.
+
+The condition of his mind was certainly such as to facilitate the
+designs of Providence. In January, 1788, he wrote to Korner as follows:
+
+    I am leading a miserable life, miserable through the condition of my
+    inner being. I must have a creature about me who belongs to me; whom
+    I can and must make happy; in whose existence my own can grow fresh
+    again. You do not know how desolate my soul is, how dark my mind;
+    and all not because of my external fortune,--for I am really very
+    well off so far as that is concerned,--but because of the inward
+    wearing out of my feelings.... I need a medium through which I can
+    enjoy the other blessings. Friendship, taste, truth and beauty will
+    produce a greater effect upon me when a continual succession of
+    sweet, beneficent, domestic feelings attune me to joy and warm up my
+    torpid being.
+
+In mid-winter Lotte von Lengefeld came to Weimar for the social season
+and Schiller saw her occasionally with steadily increasing interest.
+Their famous correspondence, beginning in February, 1788, is at first
+very reserved, very formal and decorous, but soon begins to bewray the
+beating of the heart. 'You will go, dearest Fräulein', writes Schiller
+on the 5th of April, as Lotte was about to return to Rudolstadt, 'and I
+feel that you take away with you the best part of my present joys.' A
+month later she had found him lodgings in the neighboring village of
+Volkstedt, and then came a delightful summer idyl, which prolonged
+itself until the middle of November,--an idyl not of love-making, for
+Schiller could not yet pluck up the courage for that, but of spiritual
+comradeship. To quote Karoline again:
+
+    A new life began for Schiller in our house. He had long been denied
+    the delight of a free, friendly intercourse, and he always found us
+    susceptible to the thoughts that filled his soul. He wished to
+    influence us, to teach us what might serve our turn of poetry, art,
+    and philosophy, and this effort gave to himself a gentle harmonious
+    disposition.... When we saw him coming to our house in the shimmer
+    of the sunset, a bright ideal life disclosed itself to our inner
+    sense. Lofty seriousness and the light gracious winsomeness of a
+    pure and open soul were always present in Schiller's conversation;
+    in listening to him one walked as among the changeless stars of
+    heaven and the flowers of the earth.... Schiller became calmer,
+    clearer; his appearance and his character more winsome, his mind
+    more averse to those fantastic views of life which he had hitherto
+    not been able to banish. A new hope and joy dawned in the heart of
+    my sister, and I returned, in the happiness of a new inspiring
+    friendship, to a true enjoyment of life. Our whole social circle
+    shared in the pleasure of this kindly magic.
+
+The discourse of these amiable truth-seekers turned partly at least upon
+the Greeks. Up to this time Schiller had remained virtually ignorant of
+the Greek poets, thus missing the best of all sanative influences. He
+had absorbed indirectly something of the Hellenism that had been
+diffused through the air by Winckelmann, Lessing, Herder and Goethe, but
+his knowledge of the Greek language was very rudimentary, and good
+translations had not been easily procurable. Thus the glory that was
+Greece now came to him with the charm of a new discovery. The poem, 'The
+Gods of Greece,' contributed to the _Merkur_ in March, 1788, marks the
+beginning of his Hellenizing. A little later Homer fascinated him. A
+letter written in August runs thus:
+
+    I now read almost nothing but Homer. I have got Voss' translation of
+    the Odyssey, which is in truth excellent, aside from the hexameters,
+    which I cannot endure.... For the next two years I have made up my
+    mind to read no more modern authors.... Not one of them benefits me.
+    They all lead me away from myself, and the ancients now give me true
+    enjoyment. At the same time I need them most urgently to purify my
+    own taste, which through subtlety, artificiality and smartness was
+    beginning to depart from true simplicity. You will find that
+    familiar intercourse with the ancients will benefit me exceedingly,
+    perhaps give me classicity. I shall first study them in good
+    translations and then, when I almost know them by heart, read the
+    Greek originals. In this way I expect to play at the study of the
+    Greek language.
+
+On the 7th of September, 1788, an event occurred: Goethe, who had now
+returned from Italy, came to visit the Lengefelds, and Schiller was
+introduced to him. For a year he had heard Goethe idolized on every hand
+and felt his spirit brooding over the Weimar atmosphere. What he heard
+did not please him. The local Goethe-cult, so he wrote to Körner, was
+characterized by a proud, philosophic contempt of all speculation and
+investigation. This 'child-like simplicity of mind', this 'resigned
+surrender to the five senses', seemed to him a sort of affectation.
+Besides this he was irritated by Goethe's prosperity and lordly
+independence. At the same time he could not help admiring him as a poet.
+The new 'Iphigenie' gave him a 'happy day', though his pleasure was
+somewhat marred by the depressing thought that he himself would never be
+able to produce anything like it. And so he waited with eager
+expectation to see what a personal acquaintance would bring forth. It
+brought forth pleasure mixed with dubiety. After that first interview
+with the great man he wrote to Korner thus:
+
+    On the whole, my idea of him, which was in truth very great, has
+    not suffered from this personal acquaintance; but I doubt whether
+    we shall ever come very close to each other. Much that is still
+    interesting to me has had its day with him. He is so far in advance
+    of me,--not so much in years but in self-development and experience
+    of life,--that we shall never come together. And then his whole
+    being is differently organized from mine. His world is not mine;
+    our ways of looking at things seem essentially different.
+    Nevertheless one cannot draw a sure conclusion from such a meeting.
+    Time will tell.
+
+Upon Goethe the meeting made no impression at all. For him Schiller was
+the author of 'The Robbers', a work whose popularity annoyed him. He did
+not know, and he took no pains to find out, that Schiller was no longer
+in sympathy with the ideas that had found expression in the detested
+play. So he held himself aloof and six years passed ere the two men came
+together in a friendly intimacy. At the same time there was nothing like
+ill-will on Goethe's part. He recognized Schiller's talent, praised 'The
+Gods of Greece' and was half pleased with the review of 'Egmont', which
+might well have nettled a less Olympian temper. In the fall of 1788 'The
+Defection of the Netherlands' was published and favorably received.
+About the same time a vacancy occurred in the Jena faculty, and
+Schiller's friends proposed him for the position. Goethe took the matter
+up with the various governments concerned and met with no opposition.
+And so it came about, one day in December, that Schiller, who had
+meanwhile taken to translating Euripides and was planning a whole Greek
+theater in German, was interrupted by an official notice that he had
+been appointed professor of history at Jena and would be expected to
+enter upon his duties in the spring. It was only an 'extraordinary'
+professorship without salary, but its possibilities as a stepping-stone
+were alluring. He decided to accept.
+
+Now came a short season of helpless and comical dismay. 'I would take a
+thrashing', he wrote to Körner, 'if I could have you here for
+four-and-twenty hours. Goethe quotes his _docendo discitur_, but these
+gentlemen do not seem to know how small my learning is.' To Lotte he
+declared that he should feel ridiculous in the new situation. 'Many a
+student will perhaps know more history than the professor. Nevertheless
+I think like Sancho Panza with respect to his governorship: To whom God
+gives an office, to him he gives understanding; and when I have my
+island I shall rule it like a nabob.' It was not pleasant to drop his
+fascinating studies of the Greek poets and bury himself in learned
+sawdust, but the thing was not to be helped. So the winter and spring
+were devoted mainly to historical reading. At the same time, however,
+'The Ghostseer' was carried along in the now resuscitated _Thalia_, and
+the long poem, 'The Artists', was slowly and with infinite revision got
+ready for publication in the _Merkur_.
+
+During this period he saw little or nothing of Goethe and steadily
+nursed a splenetic determination not to like the man. Passages
+in his letters are almost comical in their perversity of
+misjudgment. He was exasperated by Goethe's reticence, composure and
+self-sufficiency,--qualities which seemed to him to spring out of
+calculating egotism. Goethe, so the arraignment ran, was a man who went
+on his way serenely dispensing favors, winning love and admiration and
+putting people under obligation, but always like a god,--without ever
+giving his intimate self or surrendering his own freedom. For his part,
+he, Schiller, did not wish to live near such a man, much as he admired
+his intellect and valued his judgment. This attitude of his was a great
+trial to the Lengefeld sisters, who did not fail to expostulate with
+him. But it was of no use. 'I have not time', he declared, 'in this
+short and busy life, to attempt a decipherment of Goethe's enigmatic
+character. If he is really such a very lovable being, I shall find it
+out in the next world, when we shall all be angels.' In fine he was not
+yet ripe for an understanding of the Weimar sovereign. He did not see
+that Goethe's method was after all a giving of himself, and that the
+self thus given was not the worse but the better for having outgrown the
+effusive raptures of sentimentalism.
+
+In May the lectures at Jena began with great _éclat_. On the first day
+students to the number of five or six hundred flocked to hear the author
+of 'The Robbers' expound the difference between the philosophic scholar
+and the bread-and-butter professor. It was an inspiring discourse, full
+of high idealism and well fitted to inspire the souls of ingenuous
+youth, even though they might not quite understand it. The students were
+enthusiastic and gave the new professor the unusual compliment of a
+serenade. Having decided to begin with a course of free public lectures
+upon universal history, he took his duties very seriously, and even
+after curiosity had abated he continued, during the first term, to
+address a large audience. He had hoped only for prestige, and the game
+was quickly won. He was the most popular professor in Jena. All this
+time, however, his heart was in Rudolstadt,--with the two sisters to
+whom, for a year and a half, he had been writing letters of impartial
+Platonic devotion. Late in July he received a hint from Karoline to the
+effect that her sister was very much in love with him and that an
+understanding might be desirable. Then at last the timorous, cunctatory
+worshiper of femininity in the abstract declared himself and prayed to
+know if the good news could be true. Lotte assured him that it was; if
+she could make him happy she was willing to devote herself to the
+enterprise during the remainder of her days.
+
+Now the millennium began. Our celestial dreamer, who had thus been
+gently pushed over the threshold by a friendly hand, found himself in a
+human paradise much more grateful to the soul than the court of Venus
+Urania. He was very, very happy. The black phantoms that had beset his
+pathway hitherto,--the depressing sense of loneliness, of having missed
+the great prize, of being _de trop_ at the banquet of life, the
+occasional promptings of pessimism and misanthropy, the baleful pull of
+illicit passion, the selfish hugging of an illusory freedom,--all these
+took their flight to return no more. He had found what he
+needed--salvation from self through a woman's love. But he did not
+behave like other sons of Adam. He continued to address his love-letters
+to both sisters impartially, as if the possession of Lotte were after
+all to be only a subordinate incident in the preservation of a
+triangular spiritual friendship. Sometimes it is 'my dearest, dearest
+Karoline', again 'my dearest, dearest Lotte', most frequently 'my
+dearest dears'.
+
+At first the trio agreed to keep their momentous secret from _chère
+mère_. Schiller was poor and his prospects all uncertain. When he began,
+in the fall of 1789, to give lectures that were to be paid for, he found
+that his income from students' fees would be insignificant. Lotte had
+but a slender portion, and then there was that dreadful _von_ in her
+name. To meet this difficulty Schiller procured the title of 'Hofrat'
+from the Duke of Meiningen. Then he laid the case before Karl August of
+Weimar, who was very sympathetic but also very poor. The best he could
+do was to promise shamefacedly a pittance of two hundred thalers by way
+of professorial salary. This, with love, was enough. In one of the
+noblest letters he ever wrote Schiller now addressed himself to _chère
+mère_ who made no objections; and on the 22nd of February, 1790, the
+impecunious Hofrat Professor Schiller and his courageous, aristocratic
+sweetheart were married.
+
+The work of Schiller in the historical field will be considered by
+itself in the next chapter. Before passing on to that subject, however,
+let us glance at the more important of the minor writings produced
+during the period just traversed.
+
+In 'The Gods of Greece' he strikes with almost clangorous emphasis the
+note of pagan aestheticism. The poem sees the world under the aspect of
+the Beautiful and regards that as its most important aspect. The Greek
+religion, we hear, peopled earth and sky and sea with lovely forms that
+gave warmth and color to life and fed the imagination with sensuous
+poetry. Nature appeared living, spiritual. Rock and stream and tree had
+each its tale to tell, its tale of passionate personal history. The gods
+were near, intelligible, sympathetic; and divine gifts were more
+precious for being shared by the giver. And as the gods were more human,
+so man was more divine. In comparison our modern monotheism is cold,
+abstract, mechanical. Instead of a radiant Apollo, we have the law of
+gravitation. We have lost the many fair gods of old to enrich One who is
+remote, unfathomable, self-sufficient.
+
+  Where art thou, beauteous world of story?
+  Fair morning of a vanished day!
+  Alas! the magic of thine ancient glory
+  Lives only in the poet's lay.[75]
+
+It was inevitable that such a frank eulogy of the old gods at the
+expense of the Christian Demiurgus should give offense. Count Leopold
+von Stolberg put himself at the head of a vociferous opposition by
+denouncing the poem in a Leipzig journal as blasphemous, and lamenting
+that the author of the noble 'Song to Joy' should have fallen so low.
+The modern reader finds it easy to acquit him on the religious
+arraignment, since he did not profess to present the claims of
+monotheism completely. We are quite willing to judge of poetry as poetry
+and to leave it its ancient privilege of passionate overstatement. Of
+this privilege Schiller availed himself in the fullest measure, going
+quite beyond the bounds of sanity in his idealization of the Greeks,
+Well might the indignant Stolberg ask him if he really believed that the
+'eternal bonds of the heart were gentler and holier when Hymen tied
+them'. Whatever else may be said of them, the amours of the Greeks (gods
+and men) were not remarkably strong on the side of gentleness, holiness
+and fidelity.
+
+In respect of poetic merit Schiller certainly had the right to his
+opinion that 'The Gods of Greece' surpassed his earlier efforts. To
+please Wieland he aimed at Horatian correctness, and he came near
+hitting the mark. There is no progress toward lightness of touch or
+melody of phrasing,--Schiller was not the man for tuneful titillation of
+the ear,--but the poem is tolerably free from the bizarre hyperboles
+that mar its predecessors. It is intellectual, argumentative, but
+suffused at the same time with genuine feeling, and the stanzas have a
+stately impressive swing. Goethe was pleased with the poem, but thought
+it too long,--a well-founded criticism, since many of the stanzas merely
+brought fresh illustrations of the same thought. In his revision
+Schiller reduced the twenty-five stanzas of the original version to
+sixteen, and at the same time omitted or toned down the lines that had
+given offense. In its revised form it is in every way a better poem.
+
+In 'The Artists' we have a sonorous panegyric of Art as the great
+teacher and refiner of mankind. The poem shows the influence of Herder's
+evolutionary speculations, being in reality nothing less than a
+condensed history of civilization. The old Rousseauite point of view is
+here completely abandoned. No more girding at the degeneracy of the
+'ink-spattering century'! The opening lines glorify the modern man as
+the 'ripest son of time, free through reason, strong through laws, great
+through gentleness'. Then the sublime creature is admonished not to
+forget the goddess who made him what he is:
+
+  In industry the bee may scorn thy merits,
+  In cleverness a worm thy teacher be;
+  Thy knowledge thou must share with happier spirits,
+  But Art, O Man, is all for thee.[76]
+
+After this we hear that man entered the land of knowledge through the
+morning gate of the beautiful; it was his inchoate art-sense that
+developed his understanding. The heavenly goddess Urania, whom we know
+here as Beauty and shall one day known as Truth, accompanied him into
+the exile of mortality and became his loving nurse, teaching him to live
+by her law, free from wild passion and from the bondage of duty. To aid
+her in this work she chose a select body of priests, the artists, and
+taught them to imitate the fair forms of nature. In the contemplation of
+their work savage man was lifted to the heights of spiritual joy and
+forgot his gross appetites. He became acquainted with ideals and made
+gods and heroes for himself. Then he began to weigh and compare these
+ideals and thus arose philosophy and science, which aim in their slow
+and halting way to explain the full import of the primeval revelation.
+All truth was given in symbols at the beginning, and the artists still
+remain the conservators and prophets of the highest spiritual things.
+
+In case of such a metrical disquisition it is not easy to separate the
+poetry, which in places is very good, from the intellectual content,
+which is not so good from a modern point of view. By the joint aid of
+several sciences laboriously piecing together bits of knowledge that
+have nothing to do with the goddess Urania, we have learned something of
+primitive man, and what we have learned is very much out of tune with
+Schiller's dream. He assigns to the aesthetic thrill a larger rôle than
+it has actually played in human history. This, however, is unimportant.
+What is more important is that by investing his subject with a nimbus of
+poetic mysticism he became one of the founders of the modern Religion of
+Art. For the theological revelation of truth he substitutes a secular
+revelation of beauty, which, however, was regarded by him as containing
+the germs of all truth and virtue. We see him moving toward a theory
+that Truth, Beauty and Goodness are one, and that Beauty is the one.
+To-day these abstractions, even when written with a capital initial,
+have no power to turn the heads of any but a few of the
+hyperaesthetical. For Schiller's contemporaries, aweary of rationalistic
+narrowness and reaching out after new sources of inspiration, the
+Religion of Art had the great advantage of novelty. It laid hold of them
+powerfully, remaining, however, a dignified intellectual cult which was
+quite compatible with plain surroundings. It was a very different thing
+from the later decorative aestheticism.
+
+As poetry 'The Artists' may be said to come under the head of metrical
+rhetoric. It quite lacks the simplicity and sensuousness of Milton's
+canon, and as for passion, it is florid rather than passionate. It is
+however strong in Schiller's strength,--in its vastness of outlook, its
+splendid sweep of thought, its magnificent phrase-making. At first
+indeed the reader is disturbed and perplexed by the argument. He is
+lifted up into the blue mists, far above the plane of the verifiable,
+and borne along hither and thither by successive gusts of the poetic
+afflatus. Presently he is lost; there is no north and no south. By dint
+of review and cogitation he gets his bearings (if he is lucky), but only
+to lose them again as he is wafted on through the empyrean. Not until he
+has read the poem many times, knows where he is going and is no longer
+pestered by the necessity of thinking, can he hope to enjoy the voyage.
+
+The beginning of 'The Ghostseer,' published while Schiller was still in
+Dresden, was spoken of in Chapter VIII. His general idea, it would seem,
+was to describe an elaborate and fine-spun intrigue devised by
+mysterious agents of the Romish Church for the purpose of winning over a
+Protestant German prince. But the details had not been very fully
+excogitated, and his foremost thought, after all, was simply to
+popularize the _Thalia_, which was largely caviare to the general. The
+experiment proved moderately successful. Curiosity was excited and
+inquiries began to be made. When, therefore, he was ready to resume the
+publication of the _Thalia_, in the spring of 1788, he had reason to
+regard 'The Ghostseer' as his most valuable asset. He set about
+continuing the story, feeling that it was 'miserable daubing' and a
+'sinful waste of time'.[77] In this temper he wrote and published a
+second installment, which carried the story through what was
+subsequently known as the first book. In this installment the hoax of
+the ghost scene is cleared up, but the Armenian remains a mystery. The
+Prince maintains a sensible, rationalistic attitude, asks many
+questions, puts this and that together and finally concludes that
+Armenian and Sicilian are two charlatans working In collusion.
+
+Up to this point 'The Ghostseer' is a well-told and readable yarn, with
+only just philosophizing enough to give it a touch of dignity. In the
+second book it runs off into a quagmire of abstruse speculation,
+Schiller had got the idea--and it interested him for personal
+reasons--of carrying his hero through a debauch of skepticism. This he
+thought would give weight and distinction to the book. So the Prince's
+philosophic demoralization is described at tedious length and the story
+drops out of sight for a long time. Then it is taken up again and the
+Prince falls in love with a beautiful Greek _réligieuse_. The portrayal
+of this woman aroused another flicker of interest on Schiller's part,
+though she too was finally to be unmasked as one of the conspirators.
+Then he seems to have tired of 'The Ghostseer' altogether; at any rate
+he choked it off suddenly with a 'Farewell', in which nothing is
+concluded save that the Prince goes over to the Catholic Church.
+
+From this description it is evident that Schiller's one attempt at
+novel-writing is of no great account as a contribution to artistic
+fiction. It is a torso consisting of two heterogeneous parts. It is not
+a study of life based upon the observation of life, but a tale of
+marvelous happenings which are recounted for the purpose of showing
+their subtle reaction upon the plastic mind of the Prince. The hero is
+taken over a route that was to become very familiar,--the route from a
+narrow and gloomy type of Protestantism through liberalism, rationalism,
+skepticism, Pyrrhonism, and mental exhaustion to the repose of the
+Catholic Church. Of course the story was not to end there, but what the
+further developments were to have been one can only guess. Schiller
+himself did not think it worth while to enlighten the public, even after
+his 'Ghostseer' began to call out imitations and continuations.
+
+In the 'Letters upon Don Carlos', published in 1788, in Wieland's
+_Merkur_, Schiller undertook to defend himself against his critics and
+to correct some misapprehensions. In temper and style they are
+admirable, even when they do not convince. They begin by admitting and
+accounting for that seeming incongruity between the first three and the
+last two acts, which has always been the gravamen of critical objection
+to 'Don Carlos'. After this they attempt to show that such a character
+as Posa might very well have existed in the sixteenth century at the
+Spanish court. Then we are told that it was not the author's purpose to
+depict Carlos and Posa as a pair of ideal friends. For Carlos, indeed,
+friendship is everything, but not for Posa. In him the passion for
+friendship is everywhere subordinated to the passion for humanity. He is
+not to be blamed, therefore, for belying the character of a true friend,
+since that is not his dominant and essential character. He regards
+Carlos merely as an indispensable tool for his political designs. In his
+interview with the king he is carried away by a momentary
+enthusiasm,--what he says there is of no importance, his hopes being
+really fixed upon Don Carlos. At the beginning of the fourth act he sees
+not his personal friend, but the instrument of his political plans, in
+awful danger. He resolves to save him for Flanders and for humanity by
+sacrificing himself. This is no more unnatural or inconceivable than the
+self-sacrifice of Regulus. But Posa wishes to save his friend like a god
+and not like a common level-headed Philistine. He has the soul of a
+Plutarchian hero, and where two ways present themselves, the most
+natural is for him the most heroic. Hence his desperate procedure and
+its disastrous consequences.
+
+To all of which one can give but a qualified assent, the difficulty
+being that the play is not so constructed as to bring out its author's
+intention. The character of Posa in Act IV is a surprise, and a
+disagreeable surprise. His conduct may harmonize with a theory of
+antique heroism, but it does not grow naturally out of what precedes.
+There is no exigency that calls for his heroic foolhardiness. The reader
+or the spectator can hardly be supposed to know that the famous tenth
+scene in the third act, the longest and most carefully elaborated in the
+whole play, does not count. One naturally supposes that it does count,
+and the only way it can count is to create a hopeful situation of which
+Posa is absolute master. When, therefore, he throws away his advantage
+and deliberately plunges his friend into a needless danger, in order to
+make an opportunity for rescuing him at the cost of his own life, one
+inevitably associates him mentally not with antique heroes but with
+modern lunatics.
+
+A man capable of conceiving such a hero as Posa, and defending the
+conception as true to life, could hardly be expected to adjust his mind
+easily to such a work as Goethe's 'Egmont'. In his review of the play,
+published in 1788, Schiller found, indeed, much to praise; but his
+general praise was so mixed up with general fault-finding as to produce
+upon the Rudolstadt people the impression of a naughty _lèse-majesté_.
+He divined correctly enough that 'Egmont' was to be regarded as a drama
+of character, rather than of plot or of passion. But Egmont's character
+seemed to him painfully lacking in 'greatness'. Egmont, so the criticism
+runs, really does nothing extraordinary. He is idolized by the people,
+but the deeds upon which his fame rests have all been done before the
+curtain rises. In the play he appears as a light-hearted cavalier who
+affronts us by persistently refusing to take serious things seriously.
+In particular the review objected to Goethe's perversion of history in
+representing Egmont not as a married man with a large family of children
+but as a bachelor with a bourgeois sweetheart. Not that Schiller
+regarded the departure from history as reprehensible in itself. The
+dramatist has a right to pervert facts for the purpose of exciting
+sympathy for his hero; but in this case, Schiller argued, the effect is
+to degrade the character of Egmont and thus to alienate sympathy.
+Finally the review took exception to Egmont's vision of Freedom In the
+form of Clärchen; this, Schiller thought, was a deplorable plunge into
+opera at the end of a serious drama.
+
+To adjudicate the issue thus sharply drawn between the two great German
+poets would require some preliminary attention to their fundamental
+difference of artistic method,--a subject that will concern us in a
+subsequent chapter. Here suffice it to remark that Schiller was not
+entirely in the wrong. While Goethe was incomparably the more subtle
+psychologist, Schiller had the better eye, or rather he cared more, for
+that which is dramatically effective, average human nature being such,
+as it is. His dramatic instinct told him that Egmont was not a very
+powerful stage-play. Its subtle psychology did not impress him so much
+as its lack of 'greatness'. And then he had his pique against Goethe and
+wished to show the Weimarians that _he_ at least could perceive the
+spots on the sun. Goethe's serene comment upon reading the critique was
+to the effect that the reviewer had analyzed the moral part of the play
+very well indeed, but in dealing with the poetic aspect of it he had
+left something to be done by others.[78]
+
+The dramatic fragment, 'The Misanthrope Reconciled', which Schiller
+fished up out of his drawer in 1790 and used, _faute de mieux_, to fill
+space in the eleventh number of the _Thalia_, was begun, as we have
+seen, in Dresden. Possibly the theme may have been suggested at Mannheim
+by the problem of staging Shakspere's 'Timon'. At any rate the theme was
+congenial for a man who had 'embraced the world in glowing passion and
+found in his arms a lump of ice'. At Weimar he returned to it several
+times, puzzled over the general plan, added a little here and there, but
+finally gave it up as a bad subject for dramatic treatment. The
+published fragment is certainly of no great account. It introduces a
+misanthrope, Hutten by name, who, as feudal lord, treats his dependents
+handsomely out of sheer contempt for them. When they come to thank him
+on his birthday, he spurns their gratitude and scolds them, having made
+up his mind never to be duped again by any show of human emotion. He has
+brought up his beautiful and dutiful daughter to be an angel of mercy
+and a paragon of perfection, but he insists that she too shall be a
+misanthrope like himself. He makes her swear that she will never marry,
+but she shrewdly tacks on the proviso, 'except with papa's consent'. The
+exposition shows her duly in love with a cheerful and estimable youth
+named Rosenberg; and the problem is: How will Rosenberg manage the
+misanthrope? That he was to win somehow is evident from the title.
+
+In his translations from Euripides, which also belong to the period
+under consideration, Schiller aimed partly at the improvement of his own
+taste. He hoped to familiarize himself with the spirit of the Greeks and
+to acquire something of their manner. He thought that they might teach
+him simplicity both in expression and in the construction of dramatic
+plots; and he felt that his style was in need of their chastening
+influence. Of 'The Phoenician Women' he translated about one-third, but
+omitted the choruses entirely; of the 'Iphigenia in Aulis' he translated
+nearly the whole text, rendering the choruses very freely in rimed lines
+of uneven length and varying cadence. His work reads smoothly and gives
+the general effect of Euripides, but cannot count as good translation.
+It was not only that his Greek scholarship was deficient, but he lacked
+patience,--an indispensable virtue for the translator. His real original
+was not the Greek text at all, but the Latin version of Joshua Barnes;
+and when this appeared to him jejune and unpoetic he sometimes created
+an original of his own.
+
+The other minor writings of the years 1788 and 1789 may be passed over
+as of little significance. On the poetic side there were three or four
+occasional poems, and also the rimed epistle called 'The Celebrated
+Wife', in which the unfortunate husband of a literary lady pours out the
+tale of his domestic woes. In prose there were several perfunctory
+reviews contributed to the _Litteratur-Zeitung_, and also an
+anecdote--exhumed from an old chronicle and retold for the
+_Merkur_--relating to a breakfast given to the Duke of Alva by the
+Countess of Schwarzburg in the year 1547. To these may be added,
+finally, the short story entitled 'Play of Fate,' also published in the
+_Merkur_, which describes, under a thin disguise of fictitious names,
+the rise and fall and rehabilitation of Karl Eugen's former minister,
+P.H. Rieger.[79]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 73: Letter of July 28, 1787, to Körner.]
+
+[Footnote 74: Letter of Nov. 19, 1787.]
+
+[Footnote 75: In the original, lines 145-8, of the earlier version:
+
+  Schöne Welt, wo bist du?--Kehre wieder,
+  Holdes Blültenalter der Natur!
+  Ach! nur in dem Feenland der Lieder
+  Lebt noch deine goldne Spur.]
+
+[Footnote 76: In the original:
+
+  Im Fleisz kann dich die Biene meistern,
+  In der Geschicklichkeit ein Wurm dein Lehrer sein,
+  Dein Wissen teilest du mit vorgezogenen Geistern,
+  Die Kunst, O Mensch, hast du allein.]
+
+[Footnote 77: Letter of March 17, to Körner.]
+
+[Footnote 78: Letter of Oct. 1, 1788, Goethe to Karl August.]
+
+[Footnote 79: See above, page 135.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Historical Writings
+
+    Der Mensch verwandelt sich und flieht von der Bühne, seine Meinungen
+    verwandeln sich und fliehen mit ihm; die Geschichte allein bleibt
+    unausgesetzt auf der Bühne, eine unsterbliche Bürgerin aller
+    Nationen und Zeiten.--_First lecture at Jena_.
+
+Schiller's merit as a writer of history has been much discussed and very
+differently estimated by high authorities. In general one may say that
+his historical writings have fared at the hands of experts very much
+like the scientific writings of Goethe; both being treated as the rather
+unimportant incursions of a poet into a field which he had not the
+training or the patience to cultivate with the best results. Niebuhr's
+adverse opinion is well known and has often been echoed in one form or
+another by later critics. On the other hand, lovers of the poet are very
+apt to overestimate the historian, who would probably be seldom heard of
+to-day If he had not achieved immortal fame by his plays and poems. As
+it is, his historical writings have become, for better or worse, a part
+of the classical literature of Germany, and as such we have to reckon
+with them.
+
+And the best way to reckon with them is to describe them as objectively
+as possible and to consider them in relation to the intellectual
+tendencies of Schiller's own time. We shall see that he began a history
+of the Dutch Rebellion without knowing Dutch or Spanish, and without
+spending any time in a preliminary study of the original sources of
+information.[80] His 'History of the Thirty Years' War' was a
+bread-winning enterprise, hastily executed for a ladies' magazine. For
+neither work did he draw a full breath. To compare him, therefore, with
+the modern giants of research, would be quite absurd; and the more
+absurd since Schiller the historian, unlike Goethe the scientist, was
+extremely modest in his self-estimate and fully aware of his limitations
+on the side of scholarship.
+
+Of the qualities that go to the making of a great historian he had
+two,--the philosophic mind and the vivid imagination. But he lacked the
+spirit of the investigator and had not a sufficient reverence for the
+naked fact. History interested him for the sake of his theories and his
+pictures, and rhetoric was his element. This being so it is not strange
+that we get from him now and then a distorted image. Great movements
+and prominent characters are depicted by him in accordance with his
+freedom-loving, cosmopolitan preconception; and his study was not to
+correct this preconception by a survey of all the evidence, but rather
+to select that which would confirm his view in a striking manner. On
+the whole, however, the tale of his positive error, as brought to light
+by the critics, is not as large as one might expect. This chapter will
+not deal with it at all, but rather with his general method and point
+of view.[81]
+
+'The Defection of the Netherlands' was begun in the summer of 1787 and
+grew out of the reading of Watson's 'Philip the Second'. This book
+impressed Schiller strongly and he attributed its fascination to the
+working of his own imaginative faculty. He wished that others might see
+and feel what he had seen and felt. So he began to retell the story in
+his own way, intending at first only a brief sketch. As he proceeded, he
+found gaps and contradictions and isolated facts of obscure import. He
+began to consult the authorities, not so much to increase his store of
+information as to clear up his doubts. In this way the intended sketch
+expanded ideally into a six-volume treatise which should present the
+history of the Netherlands from the earliest times down to the
+establishment of their independence. Of the _magnum opus_ thus planned
+the first volume, the only one that was ever written, appeared in the
+autumn of 1788, in three books. The first book sketched the history of
+the Low Countries down to the Spanish domination; the second dealt with
+the regency of Margaret of Parma, and the third with the conspiracy of
+the nobles, ending with the supersession of Margaret by the Duke of
+Alva, in 1567. Thus the most dramatic period of the great struggle was
+not reached. Subsequently, however, the narrative was supplemented by
+two separate pictures, 'The Death of Egmont' and 'The Siege of Antwerp,'
+which in the edition of 1801 were first printed with the history.
+
+Letters of Schiller indicate that for a while at least he was very
+enthusiastic in his new pursuit. He found in the seeming capriciousness
+of history a constant challenge to the philosophic mind, and he enjoyed
+the imaginative exercise of investing the dry bones with muscles and
+nerves. It struck him that the inner necessity was much the same in
+history as in a work of art. He even went so far as to contend that the
+fame of the historian was on the whole preferable to that of the poet,
+and to express the opinion that his own nature was more akin to that of
+Montesquieu than to that of Sophocles. He felt that he was getting new
+ideas and expanding his soul at every step. 'Really,' he wrote to Körner
+in 1788, 'I find each day that I am pretty well suited to the business I
+am now carrying on. Perhaps there are better men, but where are they? In
+my hands history is becoming something in many respects different from
+what it has been.'
+
+And so it really was. In point of readableness 'The Defection of the
+Netherlands' is vastly superior to any previous historical writing in
+the German language. The stately march of its paragraphs, each bearing
+the impress of a serious and lofty mind; the care with which seemingly
+small matters are logically connected with great issues, the mingling of
+philosophic reflection with the narrative,--all this gave to the work an
+air of literary distinction. It was actually interesting, and this was
+much in a land that had no historical classics whatsoever. To be
+interesting was what Schiller frankly aimed at; he wished to 'convince
+one portion of his readers that history might be written with fidelity
+to the facts, but without becoming a trial to the reader's patience; and
+another portion that it might borrow something from a kindred art
+without becoming romance'. And he succeeded. In reading him it is easy
+to see that the poetic habit of conceiving his characters to fit a
+preconceived scheme, his vivid imagination, his love of sharp contrasts,
+telling analogies and broad generalizations, occasionally distort the
+true relation of things. He was an artist rather than a scholar, and one
+must e'en accept him as such. A letter to Karoline von Beulwitz puts the
+matter thus:
+
+    I shall always be a poor authority for any future investigator who
+    has the misfortune to consult me. But perhaps at the expense of
+    historic truth I shall find readers, and here and there I may hit
+    upon that other kind of truth which is philosophic. History is in
+    general only a magazine for my fancy, and the objects must content
+    themselves with the form, they take under my hands.
+
+The animating Idea of 'The Defection of the Netherlands' is the same
+that Goethe found running through all the writings of Schiller--the idea
+of freedom. From the days of his youth 'freedom', however
+unphilosophically he might think about it, had connoted for his
+imagination the highest and holiest interest of mankind; and when he
+began his first historical work his enthusiasm had not yet been sicklied
+o'er by the events of the Paris Terror. He saw in the Dutch revolt a
+glorious battle for liberty; the struggle of a small trading population
+against the proudest, richest and most powerful monarch of the century;
+a cause seemingly hopeless at first, but growing stronger through pluck,
+union, tenacity and wise leadership, until the Spanish Goliath was
+completely beaten. It was magnificent and Schiller desired that his
+countrymen should feel its magnificence and take to heart its lesson. So
+he adorned his title-page with an emblem of freedom,--a broad-brimmed
+hat and a feather upon a pole,--and began his treatise with a
+bugle-blast that left no doubt of his purpose: 'I have thought it worth
+while to set up before the world this fair monument of civic
+strength, in order to waken in the breast of my people a joyous
+self-consciousness, and to give a fresh and pertinent example of what
+men may venture for a good cause and may accomplish by united action.'
+
+A remarkable passage of the introduction runs as follows:
+
+    Let no one expect to read here of towering, colossal men, or of
+    amazing deeds such as the history of earlier times offers in such
+    abundance. Those times are past, those men are no more. In the soft
+    lap of refinement we have allowed the powers to languish which those
+    ages exercised and made necessary. With humble admiration we gaze
+    now at those gigantic forms, as a nerveless old man at the manly
+    sports of youth. Not so in the case of this history. The people that
+    we here see upon the stage were the most peaceful in this part of
+    the world, and less capable than their neighbors of that heroic
+    spirit which gives sublimity to even the most paltry action. The
+    pressure of circumstances surprised this people into a knowledge of
+    their own strength, forcing upon them a transitory greatness which
+    did not belong to them and which they perhaps will never again
+    exhibit. So then the strength they manifested has not vanished from
+    among us, and the success which crowned their desperate adventure
+    will not be denied to us if, in the lapse of time, similar occasions
+    call us to similar deeds.
+
+One sees from this that Schiller is, halting between the poetic and the
+scientific view of the past, uncertain which way to set his face. The
+poet in him is inclined to idealize the brave days of old and to mourn
+that the ancient giants are no more. At the same time he finds that the
+struggle of the Low Countries, while not 'heroic', was very remarkable,
+very instructive and very inspiring. From this observation it is but a
+step to the recognition of the truth that it is his own conventional
+notion of 'heroism' that needs revising; that the giants of yore were no
+taller than those of to-day and that the world's supply of courage and
+devotion is not running low. It is an interesting fact that the sentence
+beginning, 'So then the strength they manifested,' was omitted by
+Schiller from the edition of 1801, possibly because the horrors of the
+Revolution had put him out of humor with fighting. But he might well
+have allowed the words to stand. Their truth was soon to be memorably
+proved by the German uprising against Napoleon.
+
+A German writer[82] remarks correctly that Schiller occupies with Kant a
+middle stage between the older pragmatic historians, upon whom Faust[83]
+pours his scathing ridicule, and the later school of Ranke, whose
+principle was to extinguish self and simply tell what happened and how.
+He does not moralize like his predecessors, nor is he guilty of treating
+the distant past with patronizing condescension. At the same time he
+wishes to instruct and does not hesitate to point out where the
+instruction is to be found. He aims to be impartial to the extent of
+giving both sides a hearing, but he imputes motives freely and does not
+pretend to extinguish self. Probably the effort to do so would have
+seemed to him absurd. His sympathy is of course with the Netherlanders,
+but he writes as a philosophic champion of freedom rather than as a
+partisan of Protestantism. His concern is not to excite indignation at
+the colossal wickedness of Philip and Alva, but to show up their
+colossal folly. As we should expect he devotes his best powers to his
+portraits, some of which,--as those of Margaret, Granvella, Egmont and
+Orange,--are deservedly famous. At the same time they are subject to
+correction from the documents. Thus the crafty politician, William the
+Silent, in whom there was very little of the strenuous idealist, is
+presented as a 'second Brutus, who, far above timid selfishness,
+magnanimously renounces his princely station, descends to voluntary
+poverty, becomes a citizen of the world and consecrates himself to the
+cause of freedom'.
+
+From what has been said it is clear that Schiller regarded the writing
+of history as essentially an exercise of the creative imagination. And
+such in a sense it really is and always must be, since no historian can
+divest himself of his own personality. He will inevitably see the events
+with his own eyes and put his own construction upon them. His very
+arrangement of his materials, his distribution of lights and shades, his
+selection of the matters to be recorded and commented upon, will involve
+a subjective coloring of his narrative. This being so, one cannot
+reasonably criticize Schiller for having his point of view, but only for
+taking too little trouble in the gathering and verification of his
+facts. He did not think it important to study his subject from
+first-hand sources of information. He quotes more than a score of
+authorities in Latin, French and German, but he uses them quite
+uncritically, and chiefly, it would seem, to give his work a semblance
+of learning. The facts were for him nothing but the raw material of
+history; the important thing was their philosophic truth, that is, the
+intellectual formula that should explain them. In our day we have grown
+distrustful of the 'philosophy of history', especially of any philosophy
+that does not rest upon a basis of long and thorough investigation.
+
+'The Defection of the Netherlands' was very favorably received by the
+German public. Its merits lay on the surface, while its defects were not
+patent to the casual reader. Every one felt that Schiller had set a new
+pattern for historical composition. In his hands history had become
+literature. With such an achievement to his credit it was natural that
+his _début_ in Jena should be looked forward to in academic circles as a
+great occasion. Feeling that much would be expected of him he prepared
+with great care his inaugural discourse upon the study of universal
+history. The address, which was subsequently published in the _Merkur_,
+begins with a vigorous elucidation of the difference between the
+bread-and-butter scholar and the philosophic thinker. The former is
+depicted in caustic terms as a narrow, selfish, timorous time-server. He
+is the enemy of reform and discovery, because he is forever dreading
+that the enlargement of the human outlook may disturb his little private
+routine. He cares for truth only so far as it can be turned to his
+personal gain in the form of money, praise or princely favor. The
+philosophic thinker, on the other hand, is a joyous lover of his kind.
+Feeling the essential solidarity of all knowledge he seeks ever for the
+unifying principle. He loves truth for its own sake. Every advance of
+knowledge is welcome to him, and he willingly sees his private edifice
+go to ruin for the joy of building a new and better one. Then the
+lecture proceeds to describe the splendid progress of the human race.
+The task of universal history is declared to be the explanation of this
+evolutionary process. It must show how all things hang together, and,
+selecting for description those portions of the record which have a more
+obvious bearing upon the present form of the world, it must seek to
+bring home to the modern man the full import of his heirship.
+
+In this address we begin to trace the influence of Kant, whose 'Idea of
+a Universal History in a Cosmopolitan Spirit', published in 1784, was
+read by Schiller with great interest. The leading thoughts of this
+memorable paper, new then but very familiar now, are that the race and
+not the individual is nature's concern in her scheme of man's
+perfectibility; that the only perfection and happiness possible to him
+are those which he creates for himself by the progressive triumph of
+reason over instinct; that the fighting-spirit, antagonisms, wars, the
+madness and the calamity of the individual, are the necessary condition
+of race-progress; that the goal is a just civil society, which in turn,
+since man is an animal that needs a master, is inseparable from the idea
+of a law-governed state. Thus, while Herder's formula for the great
+evolutionary process was the upbuilding of the individual man to
+humanity, that of Kant was the preparation of man for a free citizenship
+which should ultimately embrace the world.
+
+By the general bent of his mind Schiller was nearer to the humane
+idealism of Herder than to the law-governed collectivism of Kant. At the
+same time we can see from many a sentence in his inaugural address that
+the far more rigorous logic of the Königsberg philosopher had had its
+effect upon him. In particular he was captivated by the idea that the
+individual exists for the sake of the race, and that the gruesome
+antagonisms of history are therefore to be regarded with composure as
+the birth-pains of the modern man. A striking passage of the lecture
+runs thus:
+
+    History, like the Homeric Zeus, looks down with the same cheerful
+    countenance upon the bloody works of war and upon the peaceful
+    peoples that innocently nourish themselves upon the milk of their
+    herds. However lawlessly the freedom of man may seem to operate upon
+    the course of the world, she gazes calmly at the confused spectacle;
+    for her far-reaching eye discovers even from a distance where this
+    seemingly lawless freedom is led by the cord of necessity....
+    History saves us from an exaggerated admiration of antiquity and
+    from a childish longing for the past. Reminded by her of our own
+    possessions we cease to wish for a return of the lauded golden age
+    of Alexander or of Caesar.
+
+From this way of thinking it seems but a span to the modern scientific
+point of view; for that, however, neither Schiller nor Kant was ripe,
+since both thought it necessary to assume that human history began about
+six thousand years ago and began substantially as reported in Genesis,
+however the original authentic tradition might have been incrusted with
+spurious supernaturalism. The explanation of society thus resolved
+itself for them into the problem of a rational interpretation of the
+Bible. Kant believed, like Rousseau, in an original paradisaic
+condition, in which man had lived as a happy, peaceful animal. But while
+man's emergence from that state was regarded by Rousseau as a disaster,
+the selfish passions, with their resulting antagonisms, were conceived
+by Kant as the _sine qua non_ of rational development. This thought,
+with its corollaries, was set forth by Kant in an essay of the year
+1786, entitled 'Conjectural Beginning of Human History'. The Fall is
+there explained as a good thing, the story in Genesis being interpreted
+as a symbol of the emergence of man from the estate of a peaceful but
+instinct-governed animal to that of a quarrelsome but rational being.
+Kant's line of reasoning interested Schiller deeply, and in 1790 he
+published in the _Thalia_ a paper upon the same general subject. It was
+entitled 'Something about the First Human Society on the Basis of the
+Mosaic Record'.
+
+Portions of this essay, with its naïve license of affirmation, would
+make a modern anthropologist shudder. It begins with a description of
+the original paradise, from which the infant man was to be led forth
+into life by Providence, his watchful nurse. To quote a few words:
+
+    By means of hunger and thirst She showed him [let us keep the
+    feminine providence of the German] the need of nourishment; what he
+    required for the satisfaction of his needs She had placed around him
+    in rich abundance; and by the senses of smell and taste She guided
+    him in his choice. By means of a mild climate She had spared his
+    nakedness, and through a universal peace round about him She had
+    secured his defenceless existence. For the preservation of his kind
+    provision was made in the sexual impulse. As plant and animal man
+    was complete.... If, now, we regard the voice of God which forbade
+    the tree of knowledge as simply the voice of instinct warning man
+    away from this tree, then the eating of the fruit becomes merely a
+    defection from instinct, that is, the first manifestation of
+    rational independence, the origin of moral being; and this defection
+    from instinct, which brought moral evil into the world, but at the
+    same time made moral good possible, was incontestably the happiest
+    and greatest event in the history of mankind.
+
+It has seemed worth while to linger a moment over these two rather
+unimportant productions for the sake of the light they throw on
+Schiller's general attitude. One sees that remote antiquity has lost in
+his eyes something of its old poetic glamour. He is content to explain
+it like any rationalizing professor. The past interests him mainly for
+the sake of the present, and of the present he now has a very good
+opinion,--especially of the Goddess of Reason. He did not know what a
+terrible trial was preparing for this goddess and her self-complacent
+worshippers. Ere long he himself was destined to lose a little of his
+buoyant faith in her and to become in part responsible for the apostasy
+of many. For the present, however, it was no inchoate Romanticism, but
+a publisher's enterprise, that led him into the study of the Middle
+Ages. He had undertaken to edit a great 'Collection of Historical
+Memoirs'. There were to be several volumes each year for an indefinite
+time; the volumes to consist of translations from various languages and
+to cover European history from the twelfth century down. Schiller was
+to supervise the undertaking and furnish the needful introductions. His
+plans were presently thwarted by illness and then by his increasing
+interest in philosophic studies; so that after the first few volumes
+had appeared he withdrew and left the continuation of the 'Memoirs' to
+other hands.
+
+Of his various contributions to the initial volumes of the 'Historical
+Memoirs' a part are mere hack-work and therefore devoid of biographical
+interest. Somewhat different is the case with an elaborate account of
+the crusades, in which he attempts to show that that great medieval
+madness,--so it was regarded by the Age of Enlightenment,--was 'in its
+origin too natural to excite our surprise and in its consequences too
+beneficent to convert our displeasure into a very different feeling'.
+The general argument is that the ancient civilizations were dominated by
+the idea of the state; they produced excellent Greeks and Romans but not
+excellent men. The prestige of the despotic states was destroyed by the
+great migrations, but it was the crusades which first taught the nations
+to subordinate patriotism to a higher and broader sentiment. It was then
+that men learned to fight for an idea of the reason,--for the truth as
+they saw it. And thus the crusades prepared the way for the Reformation.
+The interest of the essay lies not in the vigor of its logic, which is
+lame here and there, but in the evidence it affords of Schiller's
+increasing respect for the Middle Ages. And he went further still. In a
+preface which he wrote in 1792, for a German translation of Vertot's
+work on the Knights of Malta, we find a passage which sounds very much
+like Inchoate Romanticism:
+
+    The contempt we feel for that period of superstition, fanaticism and
+    mental slavery betrays not so much the laudable pride of conscious
+    strength as the petty triumph of weakness avenging itself in
+    unimportant mockery for the shame wrung from it by superior
+    merit.... The advantage of clearer ideas, of vanquished prejudice,
+    of more subdued passions, of freer ways of thinking (if we really
+    can claim this credit), costs us the great sacrifice of active
+    virtue, without which our better knowledge can hardly be counted as
+    a gain. The same culture that has extinguished in our brains the
+    fire of fanatical zeal has also smothered the glow of inspiration in
+    our hearts, clipped the wings of our sentiment, and destroyed our
+    doughty energy of character.... Granted that the period of the
+    crusades was a long and sad stagnation of culture, and even a
+    return, of Europe to its former barbarism; still, humanity had
+    clearly never before been so near to its highest dignity as it was
+    then,--if indeed it is a settled doctrine that the essence of man's
+    dignity is the subordination of his feelings to his ideas.
+
+We see that Schiller, though he was in no danger of becoming a renegade
+on the main issue, had his moods of disgust, as Goethe and Herder had
+had before him, at the shallow self-complacency of the Age of
+Enlightenment.
+
+In comparison with these disconnected and more or less perfunctory
+studies, the 'History of the Thirty Years' War' seems like a large
+undertaking. But it was not so conceived at first. While 'The Defection
+of the Netherlands' is the fragment of a great project, the 'Thirty
+Years' War' is the expansion of a small one. We first hear of it in a
+letter of December, 1789, wherein Schiller, just then casting about
+eagerly for possibilities of income, informs Körner that he is to have
+four hundred thalers from Göschen for an 'essay' upon the Thirty Years'
+War, to be published in the 'Historical Calendar for Ladies'. He
+felicitates himself that the labor will be light, since the material is
+so abundant and he is to write only for amateurs. The following spring
+he took up his task, which then grew upon his hands as he proceeded. Two
+books were printed in the 'Calendar' for 1791, a third in 1792, the
+fourth, and also a separate book-edition, in 1793. It met with great
+favor, the sales running up to seven thousand, and the author winning
+the name of Germany's greatest historian.
+
+And, indeed, it does exhibit Schiller's historical style at its best,
+there being here, in comparison with his earlier work, somewhat less of
+heavy philosophical ballast. The narrative moves more lightly. There is
+this time not even a pretense of erudite scholarship. He does not quote
+authorities, rarely indulges in polemic, avoids tedious 'negotiations'
+and all political disquisitions which might be dull reading to the
+'female fellow-citizens' for whom he writes. He endeavors merely to tell
+his complicated story in a lucid and interesting manner. The third book,
+which describes the career of Gustav Adolf from the great battle of
+Breitenfeld, in 1631, to his death at Lützen in the following year, is
+an admirable specimen of vivid historical writing. It may well be
+doubted whether any successors of Schiller have surpassed him in the art
+of narrating, though they may have been able to correct him here and
+there in matters of fact. What a telling description, for example, is
+that of the desperate charge at Lützen just after the death of the
+Swedish king!
+
+In his last historical work, just as in his first, the burden of
+Schiller's thought is evermore the idea of freedom. The Thirty Years'
+War is conceived by him as the successful struggle of German liberty
+against Hapsburg imperialism. Upon the abstract merits of the religious
+controversy he has little to say; the subject evidently does not
+interest him. He does indeed make himself the champion of Protestantism,
+but only because Protestantism is identified in his mind with the august
+cause of liberty. The Protestant princes fought, he tells us, for what
+they took to be the truth,--whether it really was the truth does not
+matter. Their motives were not always lofty and their historian is not
+in the least concerned to hide or to gloss over their frequent venality
+and selfishness. His point of view is that they fought for a higher good
+than that which their eyes were fixed upon, and this higher good was the
+advancement of free cosmopolitanism, 'Europe', he writes in his
+introductory reflections, 'emerged unsubdued and free from this terrible
+war in which, for the first time, it had recognized itself as a
+connected society of states; and this interest of the states in one
+another, to which the war first gave rise, would alone be a sufficient
+gain to reconcile the citizens of the world to its horrors. The hand of
+industry has gradually obliterated the evil effects of the struggle, but
+its beneficent consequences have remained.'
+
+Our historian, it is plain, was very firmly convinced that his own
+cosmopolitanism was a European finality and was worth all that it had
+cost. What would he have said if he could have looked ahead a hundred
+years and beheld the nations still snarling at each other's heels in the
+same old way!
+
+It is pertinent to observe in this connection that Schiller's enthusiasm
+for liberty is quite unaffected by the 'ideas of 1789'. Neither in his
+letters nor elsewhere does he manifest any strong sympathy with the
+revolutionary aims of the French democracy. Liberty is for him the
+perfect fruitage of the benevolent despotism. It is something that
+concerns the prince in his relation to some other prince, rather than in
+relation to his own subjects. Of the German people at the time of the
+Thirty Years' War he has but little to say, his thoughts being fixed
+always upon the leaders. His great hero is Gustav Adolf, whom he regards
+at first as the unselfish champion of German freedom. Little by little,
+however, the portrait of the king undergoes a change: the ideal knight
+of Protestantism shades off into the earthy politician and selfish
+conqueror. And when at last death overtakes him his historian is
+prepared to admit that the event was fortunate for his own royal renown
+and for the welfare of Germany. A part of his final estimate runs thus:
+
+    Unmistakably the ambition of the Swedish monarch aimed at such power
+    in Germany as was incompatible with the freedom of the Estates, and
+    at a permanent possession in the heart of the Empire. His goal was
+    the Imperial throne; and this dignity, supported and made efficient
+    by his activity, was in his hands liable to far greater abuse than
+    was to be feared from the race of Hapsburg. A foreigner by birth,
+    brought up in the maxims of absolutism, and in his pious enthusiasm
+    a declared enemy of all papists, he was not the man to guard the
+    sanctuary of the German constitution, or to respect the freedom of
+    the Estates.
+
+After the death of Gustav Adolf the focus of interest is Wallenstein,
+and when Wallenstein is disposed of the history soon becomes a lean and
+hurried summary, the perfunctory character of which Is quite obvious to
+the reader.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 80: It is to be taken into consideration that the 'sources',
+as the word is now understood, were for the most part inaccessible in
+the eighteenth century.]
+
+[Footnote 81: The subject which is here necessarily treated in a general
+way is discussed much more fully and with admirable balance by K.
+Tomaschek, "Schiller in seinem Verhältnis zur Wissenschaft", Wien, 1862.
+Another excellent book, if used with some care, is J. Janssen's
+"Schiller als Historiker", Freiburg, 1879.]
+
+[Footnote 82: Otto Brahm, "Schiller", II, 209.]
+
+[Footnote 83:
+
+  Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heiszt,
+  Das ist im Grund der Herren eigner Geist
+  In dem die Zeiten sich bespiegeln.--_'Faust', lines 577-8_.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Dark Days Within and Without
+
+1791-1794
+
+    Zu einer Zeit, wo das Leben anfing, mir seinen ganzen Wert zu
+    zeigen, wo ich nahe dabei war, zwischen Vernunft und Phantasie in
+    mir ein zartes und ewiges Band zu knüpfen,... nahte sich mir der
+    Tod.--_Letter of 1791._
+
+The year 1790 was the happiest of Schiller's life. For a little while,
+at last, fate became supremely kind to him. The reality of wedlock more
+than fulfilled his dreams, and it seemed as if all his vague _malheur
+d'être poète_ were about to be buried in the deep bosom of connubial
+beatitude. 'We lead the blessedest life together', he wrote to
+Christophine Reinwald in May, 'and I no longer know my former self.' And
+a month later to Wilhelm von Wolzogen: 'My Lotte grows dearer to me
+every day; I can say that I am just beginning to prize my life, since
+domestic happiness beautifies it for me.' His income, indeed, was
+pitifully small, but his courage was great, his fame well grounded, and
+there were prospects here and there. From the first he had regarded the
+Jena professorship only as a makeshift. To bring variety into his
+academic routine he began, in the summer term of 1790, to lecture upon
+the theory of tragedy, developing the subject from his own brain and
+paying little attention to the authorities. In the autumn these lectures
+were resumed, and soon the aesthetic philosopher began to prevail over
+the historian.
+
+And now came his great calamity. In reading the later writings of
+Schiller, whether philosophical or poetical, it is difficult to imagine
+them the work of an invalid, produced in the intervals of physical
+suffering such as would utterly have broken the courage of a less
+resolute man. But so it was. The early winter of 1791 brought with it a
+disastrous illness which shattered his health, doomed him for the rest
+of his days to an incessant battle with disease and finally carried him
+away prematurely at the age of forty-five.
+
+Among the acquaintances that he had made through his connection with the
+Lengefeld family was a little group of people in Erfurt. There were
+Karoline von Dacheröden and her lover, Wilhelm von Humboldt, who was
+destined to become Schiller's intimate friend and also his faithful
+comrade in the field of aesthetic philosophizing. Then there was the
+influential Baron Karl Theodor von Dalberg, a brother of the Mannheim
+intendant. This elder Dalberg, who some years later became dubiously
+prominent in connection with Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine, was
+now residing at Erfurt as Coadjutor to the Elector of Mainz and
+expecting to become Elector himself on the death of his superior. He was
+an energetic, good-natured man, not free from ostentatious fussiness,
+and he enjoyed the rôle of Maecenas. In Schiller and Lotte he took a
+deep interest, promising to do something handsome for them when he
+should come to power at Mainz. While spending his vacation with these
+Erfurt friends, at the close of the year 1790, Schiller took a cold
+which brought on an attack of pneumonia. An Erfurt doctor treated the
+case lightly and unskillfully and sent him back half cured to Jena,
+where he resumed his lectures. Now came a second and sharper attack,
+with hemorrhage and other alarming symptoms. The doctors operated upon
+him as best they knew, with leeches and phlebotomy and purgatives and
+vomitives, and came very near killing him. For days he lay at the point
+of death, a few faithful students sharing the young wife's anxious vigil
+at his bedside. His convalescence was slow and in the end imperfect,
+leaving him with wasted strength, a pain in the right lung and a serious
+difficulty in breathing. Of course it was all up with his lecturing; but
+he easily obtained a release for the summer term from the sympathetic
+Duke of Weimar. In March he was well enough to take up the reading of
+Kant's then recently published 'Critique of the Judgment', and a little
+later to try his hand at translating from the Aeneid in stanzas and to
+write a rejoinder to the 'anticritique' of the aggrieved Bürger.
+
+This unfortunate feud with Bürger grew out of a magisterial review
+published by Schiller in 1791; a review which, while dignified in tone
+and purporting to speak solely in the interest of the lyric art,
+amounted to a scathing condemnation of Bürger's character. After
+expatiating upon the high vocation of the poet, the necessity of his
+thinking and feeling nobly, and the importance of his giving only his
+idealized self, the anonymous critic proceeded to comment upon Bürger's
+frequent lapses from good taste, his crudities, indecencies and vulgar
+ding-dongs, and to refer these things with remorseless directness to
+personal defects. The criticism was just and had all the other merits
+save discretion and urbanity, Goethe was pleased with it before he knew
+who wrote it,[84] and eleven years later Schiller saw nothing in it to
+change. In writing it, as a matter of fact, he was only breaking the rod
+over his own early self; for in his Stuttgart 'Anthology' he had
+committed nearly every sin for which now, from the serene heights of a
+better artistic insight, he castigated his victim. To poor Bürger, whose
+life was just then bitter enough at the best, the review was a terrible
+blow. He at once published a reply, which is also very good reading in
+its way, but might have been made much more spicy had he known the name
+of his adversary. Schiller's final rejoinder added nothing of importance
+to the discussion.[85]
+
+This short digression leads naturally to another. While still at Weimar
+Schiller received a visit from Bürger, and the two agreed to vie with
+each other in a translation from Vergil. Schiller chose for his
+experiment the eight-line stanza which he was proposing to use in an
+epic upon Frederick the Great. This 'Fredericiad' was much on his mind
+in the spring of 1789. His plan was to center his story about some
+ominous juncture in Frederick's career (say the battle of Kollin), and
+write a poem which should exhibit in lightly-flowing stanzas the 'finest
+flower' of eighteenth-century civilization.[86] Albeit intensely modern
+it was to have the indispensable epic 'machinery'. Nothing came of the
+project, but a year later he was still ruminating upon it and declared
+that he should not be truly happy until he was again making verses.
+
+Instead of attempting an original epic, however, he now began to
+translate from the Aeneid, and this light and congenial labor continued
+to occupy him for a year or more after the break-down of his health. He
+finally completed two books, the second and fourth. The translation is
+sonorous and otherwise readable, but it is not Vergil and does not
+produce the effect of Vergil. The breaking up of the matter into
+stanzas, each having a unity of its own, led to additions, omissions and
+perversions,--there are 2104 lines in the translation to 1509 in the
+original,--and substituted an interrupted romantic cadence for the
+stately continuous roll of the hexameter.
+
+The opening lines of the second book will serve as well as any others to
+illustrate Schiller's method as a translator:
+
+  Conticuere omnes, intentique ora tenebant.
+  Inde toro pater Aeneas sic orsus ab alto:
+  'Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem,
+  Trojanas ut opes et lamentabile regnum
+  Eruerint Danai; quaeque ipse miserrima vidi
+  Et quorum pars magna fui.'
+
+Schiller's version runs thus:
+
+  Der ganze Saal war Ohr, jedweder Mund verschlossen,
+  Und Fürst Aeneas, hingegossen
+  Auf hohem Polstersitz, begann:
+  Dein Wille, Königin, macht Wunden wieder bluten,
+  Die keine Sprache schildern kann:
+  Wie Trojas Stadt verging in Feuerfluten,
+  Den Jammer willst du wissen, die Gefahr,
+  Wovon ich Zeuge, ach, und meistens Opfer war.
+
+
+As for the 'Fredericiad', it never got beyond the status of a plan. By
+November, 1791, Schiller had concluded that Gustav Adolf would be a
+better subject for an epic,--he could get up no enthusiasm for Unser
+Fritz and shrank from the 'gigantic labor of idealizing him'. Soon after
+this he seems to have dropped altogether the idea of writing an epic.
+
+In the spring of 1791, when he had grown strong enough to think of
+attacking the second installment of the 'Thirty Years' War', Schiller
+took up his abode in Rudolstadt; and there, in May, he was prostrated by
+a second illness which was worse than the first. His life was despaired
+of, he bade his friends farewell and the report went out from Jena that
+he was dead. After the crisis was past came weary weeks of lassitude and
+pain, with no possibility of writing or reading. In July he took the
+waters at Karlsbad, with some slight benefit. By autumn he was well
+enough to do the promised continuation of his history and to lay plans
+with Göschen for a _New Thalia_ to begin with the next year. But he was
+now in desperate straits for money. His illness had been very costly and
+the cessation of work had brought a cessation of income. He was in debt
+to various friends, and the Duke of Weimar was too poor to help him.
+Saddest of all, his beloved wife's health was broken with anxiety and
+watching. 'It is a joy to me', he wrote to Körner in October, 'even when
+I am busy, to think that she is near me. Her dear life and influence
+round about me, the childlike purity of her soul and the warmth of her
+love, give me a repose and serenity that would otherwise be impossible
+in my hypochondriac condition. If we were only well we should need
+nothing else to live like the gods.'
+
+It was a dark juncture, darker far than that of 1784, and now as then
+help came unexpectedly from afar. It came this time from Denmark.
+
+The Danish author Baggesen had visited Jena the previous year and
+returned home a fervid admirer of Schiller. At Copenhagen he had
+imparted his enthusiasm to Count Schimmelmann and the Duke of
+Holstein-Augustenburg, who, with their wives, proceeded to found a sort
+of Schiller-sect. Full of the time's generous ardor for high and humane
+ideas, they were just about to give a rustic fête in honor of their
+great German poet, when the news of his death arrived. They met with
+heavy hearts and sang the 'Song to Joy', with an added stanza by
+Baggesen, wherein they pledged themselves to 'be faithful to Schiller's
+spirit until they should meet above'. When they learned a little later
+that the author of the 'Song' was alive, after all, and very much in
+need of money, the two noblemen immediately wrote him a joint letter,
+offering him, in language of admirable delicacy, a gift of a thousand
+thalers a year for three years, with no conditions whatever. He was
+simply to give himself needed rest and follow the bent of his mind, free
+from all anxiety. Should he choose to come to Copenhagen they assured
+him that he would find loyal friends and admirers, and a position in the
+government service if he desired it.
+
+This timely windfall 'from the clouds' put an end to the misery of
+distress about money. For the first time in his life Schiller found
+himself free to consult inclination in the forming of his plans and
+the disposition of his time. Without hesitation he gratefully accepted
+the gift and resolved now at last to take up the study of Kant and
+fathom him, though it should require three years. A strange
+resolution, it would seem, for a sick poet! Many have judged it unwise
+and have deprecated that long immersion in Kantian metaphysic. But
+Schiller was the best judge of his own needs, and how he felt about
+the matter appears very clearly from a letter that he wrote to Körner
+a few months later:
+
+    I am full of eagerness for some poetic task and particularly my pen
+    is itching to be at 'Wallenstein.' Really it is only in art itself
+    that I feel my strength. In theorizing I have to plague myself all
+    the while about principles. There I am only a dilettante. But it is
+    precisely for the sake of artistic creation that I wish to
+    philosophize. Criticism must repair the damage it has done me. And
+    it has done me great damage indeed; for I miss in myself these many
+    years that boldness, that living fire, that was mine before I knew a
+    rule. Now I see myself in the act of creating and fashioning; I
+    observe the play of inspiration, and my imagination works less
+    freely, since it is conscious of being watched. But if I once reach
+    the point where artistic procedure becomes natural, like education
+    for the well-nurtured man, then my fancy will get back its old
+    freedom, and know no bounds but those of its own making.
+
+And so it was destined to be. His philosophic studies, pursued with
+tireless zeal for a period of three or four years, gave him the
+self-assurance that he hoped for. They created for him at least, if not
+for all men everywhere, a poetical _modus vivendi_ between natural
+impulse and artistic rule. 'Nature' learned to wear the fetters of art
+without feeling them as fetters. At last he grew weary of theorizing;
+but his later plays, produced in rapid succession, each unlike the other
+and all characterized by a remarkable imaginative breadth and freedom,
+bear witness to the quantity of artistic energy stored up during this
+period of artistic self-repression.
+
+A few words of biography will suffice for the goings and comings of this
+Kantian period, which was for Schiller a period of quiet study, eager
+discussion and laborious authorship. At first he continued to reside in
+Jena. Early in 1792 he started the _New Thalia_, and this he used for
+the publication of his earlier aesthetic lucubrations. With the
+perfunctory conclusion of the 'Thirty Years' War', in September, his
+work as a historian virtually came to an end. He now began to lecture
+again, but gave only an aesthetic _privatissimum_ in his own room. He
+went out of the house hardly five times during the whole winter, and
+when spring came his health was again very precarious. He now determined
+to try the effect upon body and soul of the milder climate of his native
+Suabia. He set out in August and took the precaution to halt in
+Heilbronn, not knowing what brutality the Duke of Württemberg might
+still be capable of. On receiving the blessed assurance that his
+Highness would 'ignore' him, he continued on his way to Ludwigsburg,
+where a son was born, to him in September. He remained in Ludwigsburg
+during the winter in pleasant intercourse with his family and friends.
+In October Karl Eugen went to his reward. 'The death of the old Herod',
+Schiller wrote to Körner, 'does not concern me or my family, except that
+all who have to do directly, like my father, with the head of the state,
+are glad that they now have a man before them.'[87]
+
+One of the first important official acts of the new duke was to abolish
+the Karlschule; but this did not happen until after Schiller had visited
+the scene of his former woes, in the role of distinguished son, and had
+received the enthusiastic plaudits of the four hundred students. It was
+here in Ludwigsburg that his ripest philosophic work, the 'Letters upon
+Aesthetic Education' came into being. In the spring he spent some weeks
+in Stuttgart, where Dannecker began to model the famous bust that now
+adorns the Weimar library. In Stuttgart he made the acquaintance of the
+enterprising publisher Cotta, who wished him to undertake the editorship
+of a great political journal. But another plan lay nearer to Schiller's
+heart, and before he left Suabia he had arranged with Cotta to edit a
+high-class literary magazine to be known as _Die Horen_. In May, 1794,
+he returned to Jena, glad to have escaped at last from his dear,
+distracting fatherland and to be once more at home. His health had not
+improved, and he had now become reconciled in a measure to the doom of
+the invalid. But although he knew that the death-mark was upon him, the
+knowledge only spurred him to more eager activity.[88] He felt that he
+had a great work to do and that the time might be short. By this time
+his acquaintance with Humboldt had ripened into a warm friendship. 'What
+a life it will be', he wrote to Korner, 'when you come here and complete
+the triad. Humboldt is for me an infinitely agreeable and at the same
+time useful acquaintance; for in conversation with him all my ideas move
+happily and move quickly. There is in his character a totality that is
+rarely seen and that, except in him, I have found only in you.'
+
+After his return to Jena he lectured no more, but threw all his energy
+into the new journal. He prepared an alluring prospectus and invited the
+cooperation of all the best writers in Germany. Among these was Goethe,
+who sent a favorable reply. And thus began a correspondence which
+presently led, as all the world knows, to an ever memorable friendship.
+The activities centering in the _Horen_ ushered in a new literary epoch,
+the epoch of Germany's brief leadership in modern literature.
+
+Thus the period of his Kantian studies, a time of tremendous political
+excitement in Europe, was for Schiller a quiet period of intense
+thinking and of eager debate with like-minded friends, upon the abstruse
+questions of aesthetic theory. The turmoil of the revolution affected
+him hardly at all. There was nothing of the democrat about him. With all
+his devotion to liberty and with all his poetic fondness for
+republicanism, he remained at heart a devoted monarchist. All his life,
+nearly, he had lived with aristocrats, and he himself had the temper of
+an aristocrat. There is no evidence in his letters that he ever really
+sympathized with the French people, even during the early days of the
+revolution, in their practical program of 'liberty, equality and
+fraternity'. His notion of liberty was at no time a definite political
+concept, but always a rainbow in the clouds,--something to rave and
+philosophize over. Of human brotherhood he had sung most affectingly in
+the 'Song to Joy', but it was only a poetic kiss that he had ready for
+all mankind. He would have been amazed if any plebeian stranger had
+proposed to take him at his word. As for equality, there is no evidence
+that it entered as a factor or an ideal into his scheme of man's better
+time to come.
+
+It was thus perfectly natural, when the proceedings were Instituted
+against the ill-fated Louis the Sixteenth, that Schiller should take the
+part of the accused. The fierce determination of the French democracy to
+exact a reckoning from their sovereign, not so much for what _he_ had
+done as for ages of accumulated wrong, appeared to him the very madness
+of injustice. In December, 1792, he planned to write a book or a
+pamphlet in defence of the king, and have it translated into French for
+the purpose of influencing public opinion in Paris.[89] He seems
+actually to have begun the work, but the fate of the unlucky Bourbon was
+swifter than the pen of his German defender. Schiller's horror of the
+regicide knew no bounds. 'These two weeks past', he wrote on February 8,
+1793, 'I can read no more French papers, so disgusted am I with these
+wretched executioners.' The ensuing events of the Terror intensified
+this feeling. In speaking of the year 1793, Karoline von Wolzogen has
+this to say of her brother-in-law:
+
+    He regarded the French Revolution as the effect of passion and not
+    as a work of wisdom, which alone could produce true freedom. He
+    admitted, indeed, that many ideas which had previously been found
+    only in books and in the heads of enlightened men, were now matters
+    of public discussion; but, he said, the real principles which must
+    underlie a truly happy civil constitution are not yet so common
+    among men; they are found (pointing to a copy of Kant's 'Critique'
+    that lay on the table) nowhere else but here. The French Republic
+    will cease as quickly as it has come into being. The republican
+    constitution will give rise to a state of anarchy, and sooner or
+    later a capable strong man will appear from some quarter and make
+    himself master not only of France but also, perhaps, of a large part
+    of Europe.[90]
+
+If this remarkable prediction of Napoleon is rightly reported and
+rightly dated by the Baroness von Wolzogen, one can hardly suppose that
+Schiller was very much elated when he read in a paper, towards the close
+of the year 1792, that he had been made an honorary citizen of the
+French Republic. Under a law passed in August of that year,--_l'an
+premier de la liberté_,--the name and rights of a French citizen were
+bestowed upon a number of foreigners who had 'consecrated their arms and
+their vigils to defending the cause of the people against the despotism
+of kings'. A motley band of heroes had been selected for this
+honor,--the names of Washington and Wilberforce and Kosciusko being put
+to pickle in the same brine with those of Pestalozzi, J. H. Campe,
+Klopstock and Anacharsis Cloots,--and the bill was about to pass when a
+deputy arose,--he must have been an Alsatian,--and proposed to add the
+name of M. Gille, _publiciste allemand_. The amendment was accepted, and
+a few weeks later Minister Roland transmitted to 'M. Gille' an official
+diploma of French citizenship. It took the postal authorities of Germany
+some six years to deliver the letter, and when at last they succeeded,
+its recipient was less than ever in a mood to be overjoyed at the
+well-meant distinction that had been conferred upon him by the French
+republicans.
+
+The progress of the Revolution appeared to Schiller to endanger the
+higher interests of civilization. He was too close to it for a serenely
+impartial view. Had it been an occurrence of the sixteenth century, he
+would have been just the man to philosophize over it and to show that in
+this case, again, "the frenzy of the nations was the statesmanship of
+fate". As it was, the unrest of the people, and their increasing
+absorption in questions of mere politics, disgusted him. He felt that a
+counteragent was needed. And so, declining Cotta's offer anent the
+political journal, and thus leaving the famous _Allgemeine Zeitung_ to
+begin its career a few years later under other hands, he chose Instead
+to found the _Horen_, which was to exclude politics altogether and
+induce people, if possible, to think of something else. He saw that the
+times were unpropitious for his enterprise, but felt that it was for
+that very reason the more urgently needed. In announcing the _Horen_ to
+the public in 1795 he wrote:
+
+    The more the minds of men are excited, shut in and subjugated by the
+    narrow interests of the present, the more urgent is a general and
+    higher interest in that which is purely human and superior to all
+    influences of the time; an interest which shall set men free again
+    and unite the politically divided world under the banner of truth
+    and beauty. This is the point of view from which the authors of the
+    _Horen_ wish it to be regarded. The journal is to be devoted to
+    cheerful and passionless entertainment, and to offer the mind and
+    heart of its readers, now angered and depressed by the events of the
+    day, a pleasant diversion. In the midst of this political tumult it
+    will form for the Muses and Graces a little intimate circle, from
+    which everything will be banished that is stamped with the impure
+    spirit of partisanship.
+
+Many a modern reader will be inclined, perhaps, to smile at this
+deliverance and to see in it a fatuous misjudgment of the relative
+importance of things. The French Revolution versus a spray of aesthetic
+rose-water! But we must not be too hasty. Posterity has no better
+criterion for judging great men than the criterion of service. And
+service is a question of vocation. As the matter is put by Goethe, who
+himself a little later took refuge from the _misère_ of the Napoleonic
+epoch in the contemplative poetry of the Orient: 'Man may seek his
+higher destiny on earth or in heaven, in the present or in the future;
+yet for that reason he remains exposed to constant wavering within and
+to continual disturbance from without, until he once for all makes up
+his mind to declare that that is right which is in accordance with his
+own nature,'[91] It was not in Schiller to be a political journalist or
+a pamphleteer. In that field he would have wasted his splendid energy.
+He knew what he could do best; and it was well for his country and for
+the world that he chose to withdraw from the turmoil of the Revolution
+and prepare himself for 'Wallenstein' and 'William Tell'.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 84: So, at least, Schiller states in a letter of March 3,
+1791, to Körner.]
+
+[Footnote 85: The original review, together with Bürger's reply and
+Schiller's rejoinder, are printed in Sämmtliche Schriften, VI, 314 ff.]
+
+[Footnote 86: The plan is very fully discussed in a letter of March 10,
+1789, to Körner.]
+
+[Footnote 87: On the other hand, Wilhelm von Hoven, who was with
+Schiller at the time, represents him as deeply touched by the death of
+Duke Karl and as expressing himself thus: "Da ruht er also, dieser
+rastlos thätig gewesene Mann. Er hatte grosze Fehler als Regent,
+gröszere als Mensch, aber die ersteren wurden vor seinen groszen
+Eigenschaften weit überwogen, und das Andenken an die letzteren musz mit
+dem Toten begraben werden; darum sage ich dir, wenn du, da er nun dort
+liegt, jetzt noch nachteilig von ihm sprechen hörst, traue diesem
+Menschen nicht: er ist kein guter, wenigstens kein edler Mensch." Cf.
+Kuno Fischer, "Schiller-Schriften", I, 153, and Karoline von Wolzogen,
+"Schillers Leben", Achter Abschnitt.]
+
+[Footnote 88: A letter of May 24, 1791, contains the brave words: "Ich
+habe mehr als einmal dem Tod ins Gesicht gesehen, und mein Mut ist
+dadurch gestärkt worden."]
+
+[Footnote 89: Letter of December 21, to Körner.]
+
+[Footnote 90: "Schillers Leben", Achter Abschnitt.]
+
+[Footnote 91: "Dichtung und Wahrheit", Elftes Buch.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+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 matter _a 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, it _will_ be 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 the _New Thalia_ in 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 the
+_crux_ of our feeling pleasure in painful representations. All pleasure,
+we read, comes from the perception of _Zweckmäszigkeit_, 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 the _sensus communis_ of 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's _sensus
+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 the
+_crux_ by 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 the _New 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 test _his_ theory 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 ivory _it_ was beautiful; but when it became a woman with
+winsome ways _she_ was 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
+the _New 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 juiceless _Begriffszergliederung_, 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 the _Horen_, 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 man _comme
+il faut_ must 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' (_Sachtrieb_ and _Formtrieb_). 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 the _Spieltrieb_, 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' (_schmelzende _Schönheit_), 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 it _is_ neutral 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 the _Horen_, 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 the
+_Horen_ in 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. The _naïveté_ of 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
+imputing _naïveté_ to 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 poet _is_
+nature; 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[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).]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+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 the _Horen_, 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 the _Horen_, 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 go _mit holdem Irren_ and 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 the _Horen_ had 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 the
+_Horen_ to 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 the _Horen_ was 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 the _Horen_ would 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 the _Horen_ and partly for the
+new poetic 'Almanac' that he had undertaken to edit, in addition to the
+_Horen_. 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
+the _Horen_ and which revealed to him a new poetic genius of the
+highest order, yet not at all Homeric. So he wrote his famous
+disquisition,--next to Lessing's '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. The _Horen_ was making enemies rapidly and had become, as
+Schiller put it, a veritable _ecclesia 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 the
+_Horen_, but this idea was given up in favor of another. Goethe had
+taken a great fancy to the ancient elegiac meter and for some time past
+it had been his favorite form of poetic expression. Schiller, originally
+a hater of the hexameter, had caught the fever from Goethe, and used the
+elegiac form in a number of poems. In December, 1795, Goethe suggested
+that they amuse themselves by making epigrams, in the style of Martial's
+'Xenia', upon the various journals against which they had a grudge,
+devoting a distich to each. His plan was that each should make a large
+number; then they would compare, select the best and publish them in the
+second volume of the 'Almanac'. Schiller was captivated by the idea, and
+'Xenia' now became the order of the day. It was soon decided not to
+restrict them to the offensive journals, but to take a shot wherever
+there was a mark. Both conspirators took great delight in the proposed
+_Teufelei_,--it would be such sport to stir up the vermin and hear them
+buzz. They gave the milder 'Xenia' pet names such as 'jovial brethren',
+'little fellows', 'teasing youngsters', while the harsher ones were
+likened to stinging insects, or to the foxes of Samson:
+
+  You with the blazing tails, away to Philistia, foxes!
+    Spoil the flourishing crops, crops of paper and ink.
+
+As Goethe was still preoccupied with 'Wilhelm Meister', it happened at
+first that Schiller was the more active in the production of these
+'kitchen presents', especially such as had pepper in them. With the
+lapse of time Goethe's share increased. The two were frequently
+together, for days or weeks at a time, and the 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 you
+    How little democrat Spitz soaps at the stockings of silk.
+
+And again:
+
+  Gentlemen, keep your seats! for the curs but covet your places,
+    Elegant places to hear all the other dogs bark.
+
+A whole broadside was aimed at the garrulous Nicolai, who deserved a
+better fate. As the champion of lucidity and reasonableness he stood in
+reality for a very good cause,--no preachment more necessary in Germany
+then or since. But in his old age he had fallen a prey to the _cacoethes
+scribendi;_ he insisted upon having his say about everything, yet his
+stock of ideas had long since run out. So he became the bogey of the
+Weimar-Jena people. The Xenia 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. The _Horen_ lasted three years
+and then died an easy death by the mutual consent of editor and
+publisher. Of the 'Almanac' five numbers appeared, beginning with 1796.
+In these small annual volumes a large part of Schiller's best poems were
+originally published. His work upon the 'Almanac' was usually done in
+the summer, other activities being then temporarily laid aside. From,
+the time of his connection with Cotta, who took over the 'Almanac' after
+the first number had appeared, Schiller usually had money enough for his
+needs. But his needs were very modest, the demands of social life in
+Jena--or even in Weimar under the fiercer but still not very fierce
+light of the court--being extremely simple. He had not to reckon with
+the Persian apparatus that disturbed the soul of Horace.
+
+The further relations of Goethe and Schiller, so far as they have any
+important bearing upon the works of the latter, will be touched on in
+subsequent chapters. Here let it be remarked in 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 98: "Goethe", einundzwanzigste Vorlesung.]
+
+[Footnote 99: All the extant Xenia, nine hundred and twenty-six in
+number,--many of them previously unknown,--were published in 1893 by
+Erich Schmidt and Bernhard Suphan, with copious introduction and notes,
+as Volume 8 of the "Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft" in Weimar.]
+
+[Footnote 100:
+
+  Lasz doch die Frauen in Ruhe mit ihrer Würde, und sorge
+    Für die deine, mein Freund. Ihre bewahren sie schon.]
+
+[Footnote 101:
+
+  Nun, was denkt ihr vom Reiche der Schatten? Es schattet und schattet
+    Dasz man vor Schatten umher nichts von den Schatten erkennt.]
+
+[Footnote 102:
+
+  In Weimar und in Jena macht man Hexameter wie der;
+    Aber die Pentameter sind doch noch excellenter.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Later Poems
+
+  So führt zu seiner Jugend Hütten,
+  Zu seiner Unschuld reinem Glück,
+  Vom fernen Ausland fremder Sitten
+  Den Flüchtling der Gesang zurück,
+  In der Natur getreuen Armen
+  Von kalten Regeln zu erwarmen.
+_'The Power of Song'_.
+
+The dominant note of Schiller's later poetry is intellectual
+seriousness; wherefore, if there be those for whom intellectual
+seriousness is not a quality of poetry at all, for them he has not
+written. The element of reflection is nearly always prominent in his
+verse, though there are a few of his poems, notably his best ballads,
+in which it is conspicuously lacking. What we usually hear is the man
+of culture commenting upon life, and everywhere he makes his appeal
+to universal sentiments. The spontaneity, or seeming spontaneity, of
+the great lyrists was no part of his gift. To catch a fleeting fancy,
+or some eccentricity of private emotion, and fix it in musical verse
+of a vague suggestiveness, was not in his line. If he had ever, like
+Heine, imagined himself joining his sweetheart in the grave and
+defying the resurrection in a rapturous embrace, he would probably
+have thought it beneath his dignity to versify the whimsy. Of course
+his verse is self-revelation, without which poetry cannot be; but it
+is the revelation of a soul dwelling habitually in the upper
+altitudes of thought and emotion, and always assuming that
+fellow-mortals who care for poetry at all will be capable of a
+serious joy in the things of the mind.
+
+One may say that his art as a poet consists not so much in the direct
+expression of feeling in sensuous and passionate language, as in the
+transfiguration of thought by means of impassioned imagery. In his poems
+as elsewhere he is a good deal of a rhetorician, but he is never
+insincere. His verse came from the heart, only it was the expression of
+character and convictions rather than of moods and fancies. It seems
+intended to edify rather than to portray; to impress rather than to
+delight. Some of it, too, is occupied with ideal sentiments so abstract
+and sublimated as to possess but languid interest for normally
+constituted lovers of poetry. For a while, at least, after his return to
+poetry, he may fairly be said to have cared a little too much for the
+white radiance of eternity, and not quite enough for the colored
+reflection beneath the dome.[103]
+
+This last observation has in view more particularly the poems he wrote
+in the year 1795, while still 'hugging the shore of philosophy'. Take
+for example 'The Veiled Image at Sais', which tells in rather prosaic
+pentameters of an ardent young truth-seeker who is escorted by an
+Egyptian hierophant to a veiled statue and told that whoso lifts the
+veil shall see the Truth. At the same time he is warned that the veil
+must not be lifted save by the consecrated hand of the priest himself.
+Moved by a curiosity which can hardly seem anything but
+laudable,--unless one is prepared to take the side of the sacerdotal
+humbug,--the young man returns in the night and raises the veil. In the
+morning he is found pale and unconscious at the foot of the statue. Soon
+afterwards he dies; leaving to mankind the message:
+
+  Woe unto him who seeks the Truth through Guilt.
+
+This has an unctuous sound, and one gets a vague impression that the old
+story has been dressed up for the sake of some modern application. One
+is piqued to reflect upon it; but the more one reflects the more clearly
+one sees that there is no real instruction in it. But if there is no
+instruction, there is nothing at all; since the mysticism is of a kind
+that appeals solely to the intellect.
+
+Far more interesting is the poem which was at first called 'The Realm of
+Shades' and later 'The Ideal and Life',--a difficult production, which
+resembles 'The Artists' in its suggestion of a voyage through the
+imponderable ether. We begin with the blessed gods in Olympus and end
+with the apotheosis of Hercules; and the intervening stretch is like the
+vasty realm of the Mothers in 'Faust'. The poem is intellectual, in the
+sense that its theme is a concept of the mind, and its structure logical
+throughout; yet every strophe is surcharged with feeling, and the
+diction presents a marvelous wealth of imagery. It must be conquered by
+study before it can yield any great pleasure; but the conquest once
+made, one finds a noble delight in the gorgeous coloring with which
+Schiller invests his idealistic rainbow in the clouds. Good critics,
+favorable to Schiller's genius, regard 'The Ideal and Life' as the
+greatest of his philosophic poems and the most characteristic expression
+of his nature. He himself felt a sort of reverence for it. 'When you
+receive this letter', he wrote to Humboldt, 'put away everything that is
+profane and read this poem in solemn quiet.' And Humboldt replied: 'How
+shall I thank you for the indescribable pleasure that your poem has
+given me? Since the day on which I received it, it has in the truest
+sense possessed me; I have read nothing else, have scarcely thought of
+anything else.'
+
+The general drift of the wonderfully pregnant verses is that man attains
+peace only by renouncing the things of sense and living in the realm of
+shades, that is, among eternal ideals. Here he is free--like the gods.
+
+  The Weavers of the Web--the Fates--but sway
+  The matter and the things of clay;
+    Safe from each change that Time to Matter gives,
+  Nature's blest playmate, free at will to stray
+  With Gods a god, amidst the fields of Day,
+    The FORM, the ARCHETYPE, serenely lives.
+  Wouldst thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing?
+    Cast from thee Earth, the bitter and the real,
+  High from this cramped and dungeon being, spring
+    Into the Realm of the Ideal.[104]
+
+Throughout the poem 'Beauty' is put for 'the Ideal'; and we get a reflex
+of the philosophic doctrine that only the aesthetic faculty can resolve
+the eternal conflict between the sensuous and the rational man. Life Is
+and must be struggle, that being its very essence; but by taking refuge
+in the Realm of the Ideal, man anticipates his apotheosis. There he
+escapes from the tyranny of the flesh and the bondage of nature's law.
+The misery of struggle and defeat no longer vexes him. The warring
+forces are reconciled and he sees their conflict under the aspect of
+eternal beauty. Thus, like the new-born god, Alcides, taking leave of
+the terrestrial battle-ground, he mounts into heaven, while the
+nightmare of the earthly life 'sinks and sinks and sinks'.
+
+                 Behold him spring
+  Blithe in the pride of the unwonted wing,
+    And the dull matter that confined before
+  Sinks downward, downward, downward, as a dream!
+    Olympian hymns receive the escaping soul,
+  And smiling Hebe, from the ambrosial stream,
+    Fills for a God the bowl.[105]
+
+All this may seem, at first blush, to attach excessive importance to the
+attainment of inward peace and harmony,--as if one's private comfort
+were the greatest thing in life. It _seems_ to recommend a quietistic,
+contemplative life; for how else shall one escape from the actual into
+the ideal? Nevertheless it would be a great mistake to read into the
+poem anything like a recommendation of quietism. The ultimate goal is
+described in terms which suggest now the mythology of Homer, now the
+Platonic realm of ideals, and again the Christian heaven; but however
+the blessed existence is imaged, it is always thought of as attainable
+only through a strenuous grapple with the realities of this life. Thus
+the essential spirit of the poem is the spirit of energetic, hopeful
+endeavor. Its doctrine is, to quote the words of Kuno Francke, that
+"only through work are we delivered from the slavery of the senses";
+that "the very trials and sufferings of mankind bring out its divine
+nature and insure its ultimate transition to an existence of ideal
+harmony and beauty".[106]
+
+The doctrine, in its essence, was dear to Goethe, as well as to
+Schiller, and takes us into the holy-of-holies of their joint
+philosophy. What else did Goethe mean by his oft-reiterated preachment
+of renunciation, and by his well-known verses about 'weaning oneself
+from the half and living resolutely in the whole, the good and the
+beautiful'? In his excellent book upon Diderot Mr. John Morley speaks
+somewhere of "that affectation of culture with which the great Goethe
+infected part of the world". Let it not be forgotten, however, in our
+latter-day contempt of culture, that the Weimar poets were great
+workers, and also, in their way, great fighters. They did not turn their
+attention--at least not directly--to the crushing of the Infamous, nor
+to any battle against social or political wrong. They fought rather for
+sanity, for good art, for philosophy; for those things which go to
+enrich and broaden the life of the individual. It was a good fight,--the
+best which, at their time, with their gifts, they could possibly have
+engaged in.
+
+Schiller's fervid verses, recommending an escape from the bondage of
+sense to the free realm of the mind, correspond of course to nothing
+that is humanly feasible. The shackles of the flesh are upon us and
+there is no way to get rid of them. It is only an ideal, a poet's dream.
+Nevertheless the subject has a practical aspect which is definable in
+plain prose. It is found in the following passage from Goethe:
+
+    We put one passion in place of another; employments, dilettantisms,
+    amusements, hobbies,--we try them all through to the end only to cry
+    out at last that all is vanity. No one is horrified at this false,
+    this blasphemous saying; indeed it is thought to be wise and
+    irrefutable. But there are a few persons who, anticipating such
+    intolerable feelings, in order to avoid all partial resignations,
+    resign themselves universally once for all. Such persons convince
+    themselves with regard to the eternal, necessary, law-governed order
+    of things, and seek to acquire ideas which are indestructible and
+    are only confirmed by the contemplation of that which is
+    transient.[107]
+
+Other poems of the year 1795 were 'The Partition of the Earth', wherein
+Zeus takes pity on the portionless poet by giving him a perpetual
+_entrée_ to the celestial court; the mildly humorous 'Deeds of the
+Philosopher', a bit of persiflage on the art of proving what everybody
+knows, and also several pieces in the elegiac form.
+
+Of these last the weightiest is the one at first called simply 'Elegy',
+and later 'The Walk'. Just as Goethe had used the elegiac meter for his
+reminiscences of Rome, so Schiller employs it for his impressions of
+such small travel as fate permitted him,--a summertime walk in field or
+forest. The verses will bear comparison very well with the 'Roman
+Elegies'. Instead of paintings, statues, marble palaces and the
+troublesome Amor, we have the aspects of nature,--the music of bird and
+bee, and the toil of the husbandman 'not yet awakened to freedom'. As
+our sauntering poet comes in sight of a city,--the locus of the poem is
+the neighborhood of Jena, with reminiscent and imaginative touches here
+and there,--he is moved to reflections upon the more eager life of the
+townspeople. This leads to a retrospective survey of the origins of
+civilization,--of agriculture, the mechanical crafts, trade, letters,
+art, science and the social sentiments. Then the darker side of the
+picture is developed,--the evils, inhumanities, corruptions and vices of
+civilized life. For some time the wanderer pursues his way completely
+lost in these sad contemplations; then suddenly he returns to the
+present and finds himself alone with nature, from whose 'pure altar' he
+receives back again the joyousness of youth. Thus the poem ends, like
+'The Ideal and Life', upon an idyllic note; the one pointing forward,
+beyond the warfare of life, to an unimaginable Elysium, the other
+pointing backward to a happy golden age of which Mother Nature is the
+living reminder:
+
+  Ever the will of man is changing the rule and the purpose,
+    Ever the genius of life alters the form of his deed.
+  But in eternal youth, in ever varying beauty,
+    Thou, O Mother of Men, keepest the ancient law....
+    Under the selfsame blue, over the same old green,
+  Wander together the near, and wander the far-away races,
+    And old Homer's sun, lo! it shines on us now.
+
+The inner form of 'The Walk'--loving contemplation of nature, giving
+rise to general reflections upon life--is essentially Goethean; one may
+safely regard it as a conscious experiment in Goethe's manner. As such
+it is very good indeed, although its exotic meter has stood in the way
+of its attaining the popularity of the ballads and the 'Song of the
+Bell'. 'The Walk' and 'The Ideal and Life' are the noblest gifts of
+Schiller's didactic muse.
+
+Coming now to the poems of the year 1796, and regarding them first in a
+general way as a group by themselves, we can observe that Schiller has
+made progress in weaning himself from abstract modes of thought. The
+stanzas entitled 'The Power of Song' tell of a fugitive in strange lands
+lured back to warm himself in the embrace of nature from the chill of
+'cold rules'. Another reminds the metaphysician, who boasts of the great
+height to which he has climbed, that his altitude can do nothing for him
+except give him a view of the valley below, 'Pegasus in Harness' is a
+humorous apologue intended to enforce the truth that the winged horse is
+of no use for drudgery and exhibits his proper mettle only when ridden
+by a poet. Of much greater interest than any of these is 'The Ideals'.
+Here the middle-aged poet recalls the fervid dreams of his youth and
+thinks of them under the image of airy sprites attending his rushing
+chariot, like the Hours in Guido's picture. Midway in his course he
+finds that they have all dropped away, save Friendship and
+Work,--Friendship that lovingly shares the burdens of life, and Work
+that only brings grains of sand one by one to the Builder,
+
+  Yet from the debt-book of the ages
+  Erases minutes, days and years.
+
+Most noteworthy in this group, however, is unquestionably that famous
+tribute to womanhood which goes by the name of 'Dignity of Women'.
+Looked at with the scientific eye it is sheer gyneolatry,--the
+chivalrous sentiment inflated with poetic wind, like a bubble, to the
+utmost possible degree of iridescent tenuity. Man is depicted as a wild
+creature, ever tossing on the sea of passion, or chasing phantoms in the
+empyrean. Reckless and vehement, he lives by the law of force, or, at
+the best, by the law of reason and logic. Woman, on the other hand,
+follows the better light of feeling and gently lures the daring wanderer
+back to present realities. In her little sphere of intuition she is
+richer and freer than he in his boundless kingdom of thought and
+imagination. Her sovereignty is that of a child or an angel, making
+always for peace, gentleness and goodness.--All of which is extremely
+interesting as a classical expression of an old-fashioned sentiment that
+good men used once to believe in. Schiller believed in it ardently, and
+one loves him none the less for that. The most cogent objection to his
+verses is their generality. For 'man' it is necessary to read 'Friedrich
+Schiller', and for 'woman', his wife.
+
+In its metrical form the poem attempts to express the lovableness of the
+'eternal-womanly' by means of a lightly flowing dactylic measure, while
+a heavier trochaic cadence is employed to denote the nature of man:
+
+  Ehret die Frauen! Sie flechten und weben
+  Himmlische Rosen ins irdische Leben,
+  Flechten der Liebe beglückendes Band....
+      Ewig aus der Wahrheit Schranken
+      Schweift des Mannes wilde Kraft,
+      Und die irren Tritte wanken
+      Auf dem Meer der Leidenschaft.[108]
+
+Such a scheme, in the hands of a Schiller, leads inevitably to a
+crescendo of rhetorical contrasts, which in the end sound somewhat
+flighty and forced. The poem was an object of ridicule to the
+Romanticists, and the elder Schlegel wrote a saucy parody of the first
+two strophes.[109]
+
+The few poems that found a place in the 'Almanac' of 1797, along with
+the luxuriant crop of Xenia, are relatively unimportant. The difference
+between the sexes, a subject which Wilhelm von Humboldt had discussed
+in the _Horen_, was expounded anew by Schiller in distichs. It is very
+much the same story as the 'Dignity of Women', the distich form lending
+itself beautifully to those antitheses which were Schiller's delight.
+Then there was a poetic riddle, called 'The Maiden from Afar',--a
+slight affair, but pretty in its way; a 'Lament of Ceres', in trochaic
+tetrameters, and a 'Dithyramb', wherein a poet is visited by all the
+Olympian gods and cheered with a draught of Hebe's joy-giving nectar.
+These classicizing poems, which purport to express modern feeling in
+the terms of Greek mythology, sound now a little hollow and
+conventional. The vein had been worked to excess even in Schiller's
+day, and it is no wonder that the Romanticists pined for something new.
+The best of them all is 'The Eleusinian Festival', called originally
+'Song of the Citizen', in which Schiller returns to his favorite
+theme--the origin and progress of civilized society. The climactic
+thought of the twenty-seven sonorous stanzas is contained in the
+Kantian oracle of Ceres:
+
+  Freiheit liebt das Tier der Wüste,
+  Frei im Äther herrscht der Gott,
+  Ihrer Brust gewalt'ge Lüste
+  Zähmet das Naturgebot;
+  Doch der Mensch, in ihrer Mitte,
+  Soll sich an den Menschen reihn,
+  Und allein durch seine Sitte
+  Kann er frei und mächtig sein.[110]
+
+In the spring of the year 1797, as 'Hermann and Dorothea' was
+approaching completion, Goethe and Schiller were led to an interchange
+of views concerning the distinctive qualities of epic poetry. Their
+discussion begot an interest in the kindred type of the ballad, which
+may be regarded as a miniature epic in a lyrical form. The result was
+that both poets began to make ballads for the next year's 'Almanac'.
+Schiller contributed five: 'The Diver', 'The Ring of Polycrates', 'The
+Cranes of Ibycus', 'The Errand at the Furnace' and 'The Knight of
+Toggenburg'. In subsequent years he wrote three others: 'The Pledge',
+'Hero and Leander' and 'The Count of Hapsburg'. To these may be added
+'The Glove ', which was not called a ballad because not written in
+uniform stanzas, and 'The Fight with the Dragon ', which was called a
+'romanza'.
+
+These poems, taken as a whole, owe nothing whatever to the folk-song.
+The popular ballad, which had once fascinated Goethe and Herder and
+Bürger, and the Göttingen poets generally, seems never to have appealed
+to Schiller in any notable degree. If we except 'The Count of Hapsburg',
+his ballad themes are all exotic, that is, they do not deal with German
+legend or history or superstition. The suggestions came generally from
+out-of-the-way reading, and in one or two cases his exact source has not
+been certainly identified. The tales have no odor of the soil, no local
+color. They make no use of the supernatural, the gruesome or the
+uncanny. They are not wild roses, but jaqueminots cultivated with an
+aesthetic end in view. Their aroma is distinctly literary, and they are
+all eminently serious. Not a smile is provided for in the whole list.
+There is no element of mystery about them. The passions and sentiments
+illustrated are of the universal kind. And just as vague, uncanny and
+bizarre feelings play no part, so there is no resort to verbal tricks,
+such as meaningless repetitions, or onomatopoetic jingles. The language
+is dignified and classical. Their great merit is the vivid and strong
+imaginative coloring with which situations and actions are portrayed.
+While in no sense folk-songs, they have always been great favorites with
+the German people.
+
+In 'The Diver' the stress falls upon the portraiture of the raging deep
+and its awful horrors. It is a rhetorical _Prachtstück_, which has done
+good service to many an elocutionist and declaiming schoolboy. Schiller
+himself had never seen the sea, nor any body of water remotely
+resembling the Charybdis of the poem. Observation, as he humbly
+confessed, had given him nothing more awesome than a mill-dam,--the
+rest was Homeric and imaginative; wherefore it no doubt gratified him
+when Goethe reported from Schaffhausen, after a visit to the cataract,
+that the line
+
+  Und es wallet, und siedet, und brauset, und zischt,
+
+was scientifically correct. 'The Glove' merely versifies a simple
+incident of a brave knight whose courage is put to an inhuman test by
+his lady-love; he brings her glove from among the 'horrible cats', and
+then contemptuously cuts her acquaintance. In these two, the earliest
+of the ballads, description of the situation preponderates over the
+epic element, and there is no 'idea' except to narrate an
+extraordinarily brave action. In 'The Ring of Polycrates' one can
+discern progress in the mastery of the ballad form, though the subject
+was none of the best. Based upon a story in Herodotus, it is a poetic
+setting of the ancient idea that excessive good fortune provokes the
+anger of the gods and portends disaster. Strangely enough Schiller's
+poem breaks off with the recovery of the ring from the fish's belly,
+and the consequent warning and departure of the Egyptian guest. One
+would expect an additional stanza or two, showing how the forebodings
+of Amasis were presently realized.
+
+Much better than any of the foregoing is 'The Cranes of Ibycus'. In the
+composition of this ballad Goethe took a deep interest, giving several
+suggestions which were adopted by Schiller to the great advantage of the
+poem. The Greek legend does not explain, or explains variously, just why
+the murderers in the theater call out the name of Ibycus when they see
+the cranes flying over. Schiller supposes that the spectacle just then
+going on was a solemn chorus of the Eumenides. Thus the unaccountable
+exclamation of the murderers is connected with the mysterious power of
+the avenging Furies. It is this use of the nemesis idea that makes the
+merit of the ballad.
+
+'The Knight of Toggenburg' is a sentimental tale of romantic love, while
+'The Pledge'--a captivating and powerful version of the Damon and
+Pythias story--is a heroic ballad of loyal friendship. 'The Errand at
+the Furnace', wherein a spiteful tale-bearer meets the horrible fate he
+has prepared for the innocent and devout Fridolin,--may be styled a
+ballad of pious edification. Here, as a critic observes, Schiller
+purposely essays a tone of childlike _naïveté_ which was foreign to his
+nature.[111] 'The Battle with the Dragon' has for its theme the moral
+majesty of self-conquest. With 'The Cranes of Ibycus' and 'The Pledge',
+it forms a triad which may be regarded as the choicest fruitage of
+Schiller's interest in the ballad. The later ones, 'The Count of
+Hapsburg' and 'Hero and Leander', are no less finished in the matter of
+form, but have more of a lyric tinge.
+
+We see that as a balladist Schiller got his inspiration mainly from two
+sources: the traditions of Greek antiquity and the traditions of
+chivalrous romance. He dwelt habitually in the idealisms of the past,
+and his controlling purpose was to make these idealisms live again in
+stirring poetic pictures. The present time, with its fierce national
+conflicts, the larger meaning of which was not yet apparent, seemed to
+him barbarous and depressing. In the prologue to 'Wallenstein', it is
+true, he was able to survey the situation with a calm artistic eye and
+to see in the 'solemn close of the century' a period in which 'reality
+is becoming poetry'. But this is an isolated deliverance. His habitual
+mood was one of aversion, from which he sought relief by an escape into
+the kingdom of the mind. Thus, in some stanzas on the opening of the new
+century, he laments that the English-French war has overspread sea and
+land and left no place on earth for 'ten happy mortals'. Then he bids
+the friend to whom the verses are addressed take refuge in the holy
+temple of the heart, seeing that Freedom and Beauty dwell only in
+dreamland. A similar sentiment finds expression in 'The Words of
+Illusion', published in 1801, as a sort of pendant to the earlier 'Words
+of Faith'. The words of faith are Freedom, Virtue and God. Men are
+exhorted to cling steadfastly to these eternal verities, whereof only
+the heart gives knowledge. The other poem is directed against the
+superstition of believing in a golden age, or in any external
+realization of the right, the good and the true. The final stanza runs:
+
+  And so, noble soul, forget not the law,
+    And to the true faith be leal;
+  What ear never heard and eye never saw,
+    The Beautiful, the True, they are real.
+  Look not without, as the fool may do;
+  It is in thee and ever created anew.
+
+These last-named poems belong to a type which the Germans sometimes
+call the 'lyric of thought',--a name which is fairly appropriate to a
+goodly number of Schiller's shorter effusions. Other examples--to
+mention a few of the best--are 'Light and Warmth', 'Breadth and Depth'
+and 'Hope'. They might be called lyrics of culture, since they regard
+the perfection of the individual,--the equipoise of heart and head,
+steadfast seriousness as opposed to showy sciolism, the preservation of
+hope and faith,--as a noble object of emotion. They are not
+intellectual in the opprobrious sense of the word as applied to poetry;
+they are suffused with warm feeling and their language is simple and
+natural. On the other hand they _are_ argumentative: they state
+propositions and draw conclusions the value of which must in the end be
+gauged by the mind. For this reason one who has no sympathy with
+Schiller's idealism,--one who either never felt it or has lost it in
+the stress of life,--will not be touched by these poems, but will
+regard them as hollow. Yet they are no more hollow than the lyrics of
+Goethe or Heine or Shelley, though the illusion of sincerity is less
+perfect than in the work of these great lyrists.
+
+A pure lyric effusion, of the kind that seems to sing itself without
+help or let from the brooding philosopher, was not often attempted by
+Schiller. Perhaps his very best achievement in this sort is 'The
+Maiden's Lament', of which the first two stanzas, translated as closely
+as possible with reference to both substance and form, run as follows:
+
+  The oak-wood moans, the clouds float o'er,
+  The maiden sits by the green sea-shore.
+  The waves are breaking with might, with might,
+  And she breathes out a sigh in the gloom of the night,
+    And her eyes are dim with weeping.
+
+  'My heart is dead, the world is naught,
+  It brings nothing more to my longing thought,
+  I have lived and loved,--earth's fortune was mine,
+  Thou Holy One, take this child of thine,
+    Take her back into thine own keeping.'[112]
+
+Such verses, and one might adduce further the admirable songs in
+'William Tell', show that Schiller had in him, when he could find it and
+let it have its way, a lyric gift of a high order. As a rule, however,
+when he attempted to sing, the attempt resulted in a philosophic
+evaluation of the feelings expressed. Thus in his well-known 'Punch
+Song', he is mainly concerned with the ethical symbolism of the four
+elements,--the lemon-juice, the sugar, the water and the spirits. In
+other cases he suggests an allegorical symbolism, and leaves the reader
+puzzling over an intellectual query that may or may not be worth
+puzzling over. Examples are 'The Maiden from Afar', 'The Youth at the
+Brook', 'The Mountain Song'. He even wrote a number of professed poetic
+riddles,--which may be left without commentary to those who like that
+sort of poetry.
+
+The cultural poems of Schiller have always enjoyed a high degree of
+popularity. A large number of his lines and couplets have become
+familiar quotations that come readily to the tongue or pen of the
+educated German. There is probably no modern poet who has taken a deeper
+hold upon the intellectual life of his countrymen. This is partly
+attributable to the fact that his idealistic sentiments appeal
+especially to the youthful. No poet that ever lived is better adapted to
+the needs of the school; none more infallibly safe and inspiring to the
+young of both sexes. For the riper mind and the larger experience his
+oracles are apt to lose somewhat of their impressiveness; for it is not
+to be denied that his poetry at its best is seldom supremely good. The
+divine spark that fuses rare thought and waiting expression in the white
+heat of the imagination and gives one the sense of artistic perfection
+is not often there. His verse is never cold, never trivial; but; it does
+lack artistic distinction. Its highest claim is to give expression to
+the maxims of a ripe culture in tuneful verses and pleasing imagery that
+impress themselves readily upon the general heart. This is what he does
+in the most famous of all his poems, 'The Song of the Bell'. It is not
+great poetry, but it is a pleasing production which well deserves its
+popularity.
+
+'The Song of the Bell' was first given to the world in the 'Almanac' of
+1800, after several years of incubation. Its germ-idea is similar to
+that of the 'Punch Song'; that is, we have a mechanical process,--in the
+one case the mixing of a glass of punch, in the other the casting of a
+bell,--accompanied at its various stages by reflections of an ethical
+character. The bell-founder is an idealist with a feeling for the
+dignity of man and of man's handiwork. As he orders his workmen to
+perform the successive operations involved in the casting of a bell, he
+delivers, from the depths of his larger experience, a little homily,
+suggested, in each case, by the present stage of the labor. The master's
+orders are given in a lively trochaic measure, while the homilies move
+at a slower gait in iambic lines of varying length. The fiction is
+handled with scrupulous attention to technical details, and is made to
+yield at the same time a series of easy and natural starting-points for
+a poetic review of life from the cradle to the grave.
+
+The great charm of the 'Song' lies in its vivid pictures of the epochs,
+pursuits and occurrences which constitute the joy and the woe of life
+for an ordinary industrious burgher. Childhood and youth; the passion of
+the lover, sobering into the steadfast love of the husband; the busy
+toil of the married pair in field and household; the delight of
+accumulation and possession; the calamity of fire that destroys the
+labor of years; the blessedness of peaceful industry; the horrors of
+revolutionary fanaticism; the benediction of civic concord,--these are
+the themes that are brought before us in a series of stirring pictures
+that are irresistibly fascinating. To have felt and expressed so
+admirably the poetry of every-day life, and that at the very time when
+the Romanticists were beginning to fill the air with noise about the
+prosaic dullness of the present time as compared with the Middle Ages,
+was a great achievement, and all the greater as Schiller himself had not
+remained unaffected by the Romantic doctrine. He could Hellenize and
+philosophize, and, on occasion, he could Romanticize; but 'The Song of
+the Bell' shows how deeply, after all, his feeling was rooted in the
+life of the German people.
+
+The 'Almanac' for 1800 was the last volume that appeared, and after the
+removal of this exigency Schiller's lyrical production diminished. His
+best strength was devoted to his plays, which in themselves, however,
+contain a large lyric element. The choral parts of 'The Bride of
+Messina' show the final phase of his art in its perfection. Like these,
+the few independent poems written by him during the last years of his
+life are characterized by great beauty of diction and of rhythmic
+cadence, but in their substance they hardly compare with the best of his
+previous work. Most noteworthy are 'Cassandra', devoted to the pathos of
+foreseeing calamity without being able to prevent it, and 'The Festival
+of Victory', wherein the Greek heroes, assembled for departure after the
+sack of Troy, discourse amiably and profoundly upon the finer issues of
+life. In some of the shorter and more subjective poems there is
+discernible a note of sadness, as of a drooping spirit unreconciled,
+after all, to the stress of this earthly existence. This is heard, for
+example, in 'Longing' and 'The Pilgrim'. But from such sporadic
+utterances no large inference should be drawn respecting Schiller's
+mental history. They proceeded from a sick man whose days were numbered.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 103:
+
+  "The One remains, the many change and pass,
+    Heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadows fly;
+  Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
+    Stains the white radiance of Eternity."
+--_Shelley's "Adonais"_.]
+
+[Footnote 104: Bulwer's Translation.]
+
+[Footnote 105: Bulwer's Translation.]
+
+[Footnote 106: "Social Forces in German Literature", p. 376.]
+
+[Footnote 107: "Dichtung und Wahrheit", sechzehntes Buch.]
+
+[Footnote 108: Buiwer translates the lines, somewhat lamely, thus:
+
+  Honour to Woman! To her it is given
+  To garden the earth with the roses of Heaven!
+  All blessed, she linketh the Loves in their choir....
+      From the bounds of Truth careering,
+      Man's strong spirit wildly sweeps,
+      With each hasty impulse veering
+      Down to Passion's troubled deeps.]
+
+[Footnote 109:
+
+  Ehret die Frauen! Sie stricken die Strümpfe,
+  Wollig und warm, zu durchwaten die Sümpfe,
+  Flicken zerriss'ne Pantalons aus....
+      Doch der Mann, der tölpelhafte,
+      Find't am Zarten nicht Geschmack;
+      Zum gegohrnen Gerstensafte
+      Raucht er immerfort Taback.]
+
+[Footnote 110:
+
+  "In the waste the Beast is free,
+  And the God upon his throne!
+  Unto each the curb must be
+  But the nature each doth own.
+  Yet the Man--betwixt the two--
+  Must to man allied belong;
+  Only law and Custom thro'
+  Is the Mortal free and strong."
+--_Bulwer's Translation._]
+
+[Footnote 111: Otto Harnack, "Schiller", page 274.]
+
+[Footnote 112:
+
+  Der Eichwald brauset, die Wolken ziehn,
+  Das Mägdlein sitzet an Ufers Grün,
+  Es bricht sich die Welle mit Macht, mit Macht,
+  Und sie seufzt hinaus in die finstere Nacht,
+    Das Auge von Weinen getrübet.
+
+  "Das Herz ist gestorben, die Welt ist leer,
+  Und weiter giebt sie dem Wunsche nichts mehr.
+  Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurück,
+  Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück,
+    Ich habe gelebt und geliebet."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Wallenstein
+
+                                So hab' ich
+  Mit eignem Netz verderblich mich umstrickt,
+  Und nur Gewaltthat kann es reiszend lösen.
+_'Wallenstein'._
+
+The great play which signalizes the return of Schiller to dramatic
+poetry must be accounted upon the whole his masterpiece. To be sure it
+is less popular than 'Tell' and less immediately effective than 'Mary
+Stuart'. It has not the romantic soulfulness of 'The Maid of Orleans',
+nor the splendid diction of 'The Bride of Messina'. On the stage, too,
+its effectiveness is somewhat impaired by its great length. But in the
+imaginative power whereby history is made into drama; in the triumph of
+artistic genius over a vast and refractory mass of material, and in the
+skill with which the character of the hero is conceived and denoted,
+'Wallenstein' is unrivaled. Well might Goethe pronounce it 'so great
+that nothing could be compared with it'. Its chief figure is by far the
+stateliest and most impressive of German tragic heroes.
+
+Since the completion of 'Don Carlos' Schiller had written nothing of any
+moment in the dramatic form. For nine years he had been occupied with
+historical and philosophic studies which he himself regarded as
+preparatory to some new and nobler flight of artistic creation. Of
+course he had been aware all along, none better than he, that great
+poetry cometh not by theorizing; that theory could have at the best only
+a general regulative value. At the same time, with the example of
+Lessing before him, he could not but feel that this regulative value
+might be very great. And so he had gone resolutely on his way, even
+after the dread truth had come home to him that he had not long to live
+and might never be able to reap the fruit of what he was sowing.
+
+He had studied certain epochs of history very carefully and had
+acquired a deeper insight into that tangled interplay of inward motive
+and outward circumstance which determines the course of events.
+Philosophy had only deepened his early conviction that man's dignity,
+his heroism, consists in his free self-determination; but who knew
+better than he the infinite pathos of the battle between 'will' and
+'must'? He had become familiar with the spirit and the technique of the
+Greek drama and learned to admire its simple and stately architecture.
+Latterly, however, he had been drawn toward the moderns and had found
+in the expression of the modern spirit-with all its idealisms, its
+heights and depths and mysteries of feeling--a higher artistic goal
+than antiquity had ever imagined. Finally, his association with Goethe
+had taught him the importance of looking fairly at life and portraying
+it not indeed just as it is, but in its essential human spirit. This,
+for him, was to idealize.
+
+Two themes had been suggested by his historical studies, and both had
+haunted his thoughts for years,--'The Knights of Malta' and
+'Wallenstein'. The former, if his plan had been carried out, would have
+yielded a play of the classical type, with few characters and a severely
+simple structure. In the final balancing of the two subjects
+'Wallenstein' prevailed, no doubt because it seemed in advance the
+easier and the more promising. It pointed to a familiar field where
+history itself had already shaped in the rough a stupendous and
+fascinating tragedy. To reproduce the form and pressure of the Thirty
+Years' War, at one of its most exciting moments, was an alluring problem
+to a dramatist who had written a history of the struggle, and who had
+always felt that his strength lay in the historical drama.
+
+Serious musings upon 'Wallenstein' began, as we have seen, in the autumn
+of 1796.[113] The first great problem was, of course, the general plan
+of the piece,--how to select, dispose and concentrate. To quicken his
+imagination Schiller commenced reading again upon the history of the
+period and soon perceived that what he already knew would be quite
+inadequate; that it would be necessary to go over the whole ground anew
+and more thoroughly. He found the material dry, chaotic and abstract; in
+short, lacking in nearly all the poetic elements which he would have
+thought indispensable a few years before. He could not treat it in his
+earlier manner. He had no love for any of his personages except Max and
+Thekla, whom he had invented for the purpose of infusing a little warm
+blood into an action which would otherwise have been dominated
+altogether by the cold passions of ambition, vindictiveness and fear.
+Wallenstein was not great or noble; at best he could only be made
+terrible. The basis of his power was his army, and this--so it seemed to
+Schiller at first--was too large and complex a thing to be effectively
+portrayed. Then, too, his enterprise failed chiefly because of bad
+management, and he himself rather than fate was to blame for his
+catastrophe. This Schiller regarded as the weak point of the whole
+subject; but he took some comfort from the example of 'Macbeth'.
+
+Notwithstanding these difficulties, however, he worked at his task
+with great eagerness, feeling that just such a subject as
+'Wallenstein' would prove the crucial test of his powers. His old
+theory that love is what makes the artist was now completely outgrown,
+and he was gratified to observe that he had learned to keep himself
+out of his work. So much for the influence of Goethe, to whom he
+wrote, in November, 1796, as follows:
+
+    With the general spirit of my work you will probably be satisfied. I
+    might almost say that the subject does not interest me at all. I
+    have never combined such coolness toward my theme with such a warmth
+    of feeling for my work. My principal character, and the most of my
+    subordinate characters, I have treated up to this time with the pure
+    love of the artist.
+
+After some hesitation between prose and verse he began in prose, being
+led thereto partly by the advice of Wilhelm von Humboldt and partly by
+his own desire to produce this time an acceptable stage-play. His
+progress was at first very slow. There was endless reading to be done
+and endless rumination over the plot. In the winter season, with its
+close confinement and its lowered vitality, the invalid could accomplish
+but little. He fixed his hopes longingly upon the return of spring and
+decided to buy a house with a garden, so that he could muse and write in
+the open air. In May, 1797, the purchase was made, but by this time work
+on 'Wallenstein' had completely stagnated and other interests were at
+the fore. He was back among the Greeks. Renewed study of Sophocles,
+particularly of the 'Trachiniae' and the 'Philoctetes', had convinced
+him that everything hinges upon the invention of a poetic fable. To
+quote again from a letter to Goethe:
+
+    The modern poet wrestles laboriously and anxiously with accidental
+    and subordinate matters and, in his effort to be very realistic,
+    loads himself down with the vacuous and the trivial. Thus he runs a
+    risk of losing the deep-lying truth which constitutes the real
+    nature of the poetical. He would fain imitate an actual occurrence,
+    and does not consider that a poetic representation can never
+    coincide with actuality, because it is absolutely true.
+
+A little later he took up the study of Aristotle's 'Poetics' and was
+delighted to find that the dread Rhadamanthus was after all so very
+liberal and sensible. He had now reached a firm footing and was not to
+be dislodged even by Aristotle, whose whole body of doctrine, as he did
+not fail to observe, was deduced empirically from concrete specimens of
+a particular type of play. It could not be canonical for all the world,
+but it was very instructive. Schiller was glad that he had finally
+discovered Aristotle, but glad also that he had never read him before.
+
+On returning to 'Wallenstein' in October, after the summer claims of the
+'Almanac' had been satisfied, he noticed that what he had written was
+characterized by a certain dryness. It was evident that, in his
+strenuous effort to avoid his besetting sin of rhetoric, he was in
+danger of becoming trivial. He had still a sustaining faith in the
+goodness of his subject, but the great problem would be to make it
+poetical. It was necessary to find the middle way between the rhetorical
+and the prosaic. The practical result of these cogitations was a
+decision to write 'Wallenstein' in verse. In versifying the completed
+scenes he found himself, so he wrote to Goethe, before a different
+tribunal. Much that had seemed very good in prose would not do at all;
+for verse tended to invest everything with an imaginative nimbus which
+rendered triviality and mere logic intolerable.
+
+But the new form brought with it a new danger--that of prolixity. It was
+necessary that the exposition account for Wallenstein's conduct by
+exhibiting the sources of his power. This meant a dramatic picture of
+his wild and irresponsible soldatesca. The theme was boundless and
+Schiller was a facile verse-maker. Ere long he reported ruefully to
+Goethe that his first act was already longer than three acts of
+'Iphigenie'. He was in doubt whether his friend had not infected him
+with a 'certain epic spirit' which tended to diffuseness. In his
+embarrassment of riches he decided to give the preliminary picture the
+form of a dramatic prologue having but a loose connection with the play
+proper, which was still conceived as a five-act tragedy.
+
+During the winter of 1797-8 he worked as he could, steadily upborne by
+the friendly encouragement of Goethe. When summer arrived the last two
+acts were still unfinished, and the first three had grown to portentous
+dimensions. It was now that he decided to divide his unmanageable
+tragedy into two parts, 'The Piccolomini' and 'Wallenstein's Death'; his
+idea being that 'The Piccolomini', preceded by the dramatic prologue,
+which was now christened 'Wallenstein's Camp', would fill up an evening
+and prepare the way for the real tragedy of 'Wallenstein's Defection and
+Death'. This plan, involving a reconstruction of the whole, was carried
+out in the ensuing months. At the urgent request of Goethe, preparations
+were made to reopen the newly-renovated Weimar theater with a
+performance of the 'Camp' alone. As the piece was too short for this
+purpose, Schiller hastily amplified it to a sufficient size and wrote
+for it a noble prologue, which ranks among the best of his poems. When
+played at Weimar, in October, 1798, the 'Camp' was well received as a
+picturesque novelty, but that was all. It gave no clew to what was
+coming, and there was nothing in it to stir the depths of human nature.
+
+'The Piccolomini' was completed in December and put upon the Weimar
+stage, under Schiller's personal direction, on January 30, 1799. As then
+performed it included two acts of 'Wallenstein's Death'. The first
+performance was a great success. The Weimarians, with Goethe at their
+head, were enthusiastic; and Schiller, who had of late known but little
+of popular favor, found himself suddenly invested with a new renown. He
+was pleased, elated; from this time on he felt sure of his vocation as
+dramatic poet. Returning to Jena he applied himself steadily to
+'Wallenstein's Death', completing it finally in March. It was first
+played on the 20th of April, preceded at short intervals by the 'Camp'
+and 'The Piccolomini'. And great indeed was the poet's triumph, now that
+his achievement could be judged as a whole. He had given his best after
+years of preparation, and the world saw at once that it was very good.
+The animosities aroused by the Xenia lingered for a while in a few small
+minds, but it was of no use to fight genius with the missiles of petty
+malice. The Germans had accepted Schiller as their great dramatist.
+
+To form a right estimate of 'Wallenstein' one must first look at it in a
+large way, remembering that structurally it forms a class all by itself.
+The name 'trilogy', in the technical sense of the Greeks, does not apply
+to it, seeing that the 'Camp' is not an integral part of the whole, but
+a dramatic prelude in an entirely different key. In a loose sense, to be
+sure, it forms a part of the exposition; but it can be omitted entirely,
+if one chooses, since everything technically necessary to be known is
+repeated in 'The Piccolomini'. Its characters are different and nothing
+is said or done that is vitally related to the ensuing complication. Its
+purpose is to show the nature of Wallenstein's soldiers and the grounds
+of their attachment to their commander. Their loyalty is of course the
+great factor in Wallenstein's position; it is because he relies upon
+their fidelity that he dares to dally with the thought of treason. But
+this fidelity of theirs, their sturdy _esprit du corps_, their
+unwillingness to be separated, could have been indicated in a scene, or
+in the report of a messenger; in fact it _is_ indicated in the memorial
+which they place in the hands of Max Piccolomini.
+
+The 'Camp', then, with its eleven-hundred verses, is to be regarded as a
+military genre-picture, elaborated for its own sake into an independent
+piece. As a prelude it transports us into the _milieu_ of the tragedy,
+but without anywhere striking its key-note; for the tragedy is intensely
+serious, while the note of the 'Camp',--notwithstanding an undertone of
+seriousness without which it could not have been the work of
+Schiller,--is that of jovial humor. And the poet's scheme required just
+this effect in the prelude. One can hardly assent, therefore, to the
+suggestion of Harnack[114] that it would have been well if the sentiment
+of loyalty to the emperor had been made more prominent and given a more
+worthy champion than the stolid Tiefenbachers, who have nothing to say.
+Had this been attempted it must have led to an adumbration of the coming
+tragic conflict,--which is what Schiller wished to avoid. He wished that
+spectator and reader should accept the prelude as a thing of its own
+kind, complete in itself. It was for this reason that he gave it a
+distinctive meter, having convinced himself that meter of some kind was
+essential if he would avoid banality. With a wise instinct he chose the
+old free-and-easy tetrameter, which Goethe had used with excellent
+effect in some of his early plays. In German this meter lends itself
+beautifully to the bluff, off-hand discourse of soldiers. It gives an
+illusion of realism while preserving the effect of poetry.
+
+Particularly admirable is the art with which Schiller has contrived to
+denote the motley variety of human types gathered under Wallenstein's
+banner, while giving to each of his figures a fairly distinct
+individuality. With a little study of costume a painter could paint
+them all. There is the wretched Peasant, who has been reduced to
+beggary and is willing to retrieve his fortunes by gambling with loaded
+dice; the sagacious Sergeant, who always knows more than other people,
+and prides himself upon 'the fine touch and the right tone' that can
+only be acquired near the person of the commander; the depraved
+Chasseur, who glories in fighting for its own sake, cares not for whom
+or what, and objects to discipline; the philosophic Cuirasseur, who
+argues for a higher ideal and pities the woes of the producing class,
+but cannot help matters; and the fiery Capuchin, who pronounces his
+wordy anathema against the whole godless crowd. What a picturesque
+assembly they make and how admirably they bring out the lights and
+shadows of the Wallenstein régime! One wonders how an invalid recluse,
+a bookish philosopher like Schiller, should ever have been able to
+write such scenes.
+
+The total effect of the prelude is to put one in a very good humor with
+the personages who figure there. One indeed feels sub-consciously that
+they are detestable--not a whit better than the angry friar paints them.
+One sympathizes intellectually with his fierce denunciation and pities
+the land that is exposed to such a scourge. And yet--such is the poetic
+glamour thrown over them--feelings of this kind never become dominant.
+It is like the squalid slums of a great city, when seen through the
+sun-lit morning mist. The reality is horrible, revolting. The soul of
+the philanthropist is pained--but not so the eye of the artist. Schiller
+contrives that we see his vagabonds with the artistic eye and are drawn
+to them by their very picturesqueness. We quickly impute to them more
+virtue than their ways betoken; and when in their lusty final song they
+break out in a strain of lofty idealism:
+
+  Und setzet ihr nicht das Leben ein,
+  Nie wird euch das Leben gewonnen sein,
+
+one is hardly conscious of the incongruity.
+
+The dramatic fable devised by Schiller for the tragedy proper carries us
+back to the winter of 1634. Events extending over several months are
+concentrated by poetic fiat into the four days preceding the
+assassination of Wallenstein, which took place on the 25th of February.
+The prominent characters fall into two groups,--the abettors of
+Wallenstein in his treason, and the imperialists who work his ruin. The
+first group consists of historical personages, mainly officers, whom he
+had bound to him by one or another tie of selfish interest. Foremost
+among these are Illo, the Count and Countess Terzky, and General Butler,
+who turns against his chief and becomes the agent of his taking-off. The
+central figure of the other group is Octavio Piccolomini, whom Schiller
+converts from a young officer of thirty into an elderly man with a
+grown-up son. Octavio, in reality the trusted agent of the emperor, is
+regarded by Wallenstein with a superstitious infatuation as his own most
+faithful friend. Between these two groups stand the ingenuous lovers,
+Max and Thekla, imaginary characters who can make their perfect peace
+with neither side and are done to death in a pathetic struggle between
+love and duty.
+
+As we have already seen, Schiller found it no easy task to mould the
+historical Wallenstein into a satisfactory tragic hero. The character
+was lacking in nobility. To be sure it was not necessary to make him out
+an infamous traitor; for his character, his motives, the measure of his
+guilt, were subjects of debate among the historians, and the evidence
+was, as it still is, inconclusive. It was therefore quite within the
+license of a dramatic poet to take the part of Wallenstein, so far at
+least as to throw into strong light all the palliating circumstances
+that could be urged in his favor. Such were, for example, that he was a
+prince of the empire and as such had a right to conduct negotiations and
+to make peace; that he wished to give rest to a torn and bleeding
+Germany; that he had been ignobly treated by the House of Austria, and
+so forth. By laying stress upon these things and passing lightly over
+others, it was easily possible to save Wallenstein from the detestation
+that is wont to associate itself with the idea of a traitor.
+
+But for an interesting tragic hero it is not enough to fall short of
+infamy. He must have some sort of distinction. He must be a towering
+personality. One does not go to the theater to be convinced in a moral
+or political argument, but to be carried along with a rush of feeling,
+for which the old term sympathy is perhaps as good a name as any other.
+A magnificent criminal will serve the purpose very well, as Schiller had
+discovered in his early years, but he must be magnificent. Now it was
+precisely this element of greatness that was lacking in the character of
+the historical Wallenstein. No lofty idealism of any kind could be
+imputed to him. He was not a religious zealot, like Cromwell or Gustav
+Adolf, nor was he a strenuous German patriot, like Frederick the Great.
+He was not even a great soldier; for while, as the head of a great host
+of marauding mercenaries, he made himself the scourge and the terror of
+Germany, he never won a decisive battle against an equal enemy. The
+history of his fighting is largely a history of futilities. And when he
+formed the plan of a separate peace,--a plan which if promptly and
+vigorously executed might possibly have succeeded and have caused him to
+be numbered with the benefactors of Europe,--he dallied with the thought
+until it was too late, fell into the pit which he had digged for
+himself, and, in trying to flounder out, met his death at the hands of
+an assassin who had a grudge against him. Thus even his death was
+pitiful rather than tragic. It does not appear to be the work of that
+high Nemesis which Schiller noticed as dominating the career of
+Shakspere's Richard the Third.
+
+To have succeeded as Schiller did succeed, in the face of such
+difficulties, is a memorable triumph of the poetic art. By purely
+aesthetic means, without any appeal to political or religious passion,
+without requiring us to take sides in any debatable cause, but simply by
+the skill and subtlety of his drawing, he has invested Wallenstein with
+an impressiveness such, as belongs only to the great creations of the
+great tragic poets. His overruling trait is ambition; and in the
+denotation of this, as of his whole relation to the Countess Terzky, the
+influence of 'Macbeth' is obvious. And yet he is very far from being a
+copy of Shakspere's hero, or a mere embodiment of ambition. On the
+contrary, he is the most complicate of all Schiller's creations, and the
+most difficult to portray on the stage in a thoroughly satisfactory
+manner. As a good critic observes, he is 'fascinating and repulsive,
+admirable and contemptible, fantastic and cunning, cautious and
+frivolous, a mighty organizer and a helpless child, false and true,
+touching and terrible, a mixture of all possible qualities, and yet a
+unity, a totality'.[115] The promise of the Prologue is admirably
+fulfilled:
+
+  But art shall show him in his human form
+  And bring him nearer to your eyes and hearts;
+  She sees the man in all the stress of life,
+  And for the greater portion of his guilt
+  She blames the working of malignant stars.
+
+The last two lines, be it observed, involve much more than a mere
+allusion to Wallenstein's superstitious belief in astrology. Schiller's
+idea, schooled as he had been for years upon Sophocles and Shakspere,
+was to blend the fate-tragedy of the ancients with the modern tragedy of
+character. The two things were not incompatible, since in a broad view
+of the matter a man's character is his fate. It is to be observed also
+that the peculiar effect of Greek tragedy does not depend upon the way
+in which the external [Greek: moira] was conceived, but upon the fact
+that the hero seems to be battling, and was by the audience known to be
+battling, against the inevitable. The situation is not what he supposes,
+and the event will not be what he intends. He is the subject: of an
+illusion, an infatuation; and this [Greek: ate] is the principal factor
+in the tragic effect.[116]
+
+Now Wallenstein's [Greek: ate] takes the form of a blind and overweening
+self-conceit. He has the 'great-man-mania' hardly less than Karl Moor.
+Accustomed to follow his own light, to command and to be obeyed, and to
+look with contempt upon the interference of priests and courtiers in the
+business of war, he thinks himself omnipotent. There is no power that he
+fears save that of the stars; and even that he imagines he can bend to
+his will by studious attention to astrologic portents. He has found it
+possible to raise and maintain a great army by taking good care of his
+officers and men; and appealing thus constantly to the lower motives of
+human nature, he comes to think at last that there are no others. When
+the Swede Wrangel suggests a suspicion of his Chancellor that it 'might
+be an easier thing to create out of nothing an army of sixty thousand
+men than to lead a sixtieth part of them into an act of treachery',
+Wallenstein replies: 'Your Chancellor judges like a Swede and a
+Protestant.' And when he finds that this sentiment of loyalty--_die
+Treue_, one of the most ancient and powerful of motives--is still a real
+force in human affairs, he can only account for it as a curious
+superstition:
+
+  'Tis not the embodiment of living strength
+  That makes the truly terrible. It is
+  The vulgar brood of all the yesterdays,
+  The eternally recurring commonplace,
+  That was and therefore is and hence will be.
+  For man is fashioned of the trivial
+  And customary use he names his nurse.[117]
+
+It would seem as if such a blind and superstitious self-worshiper could
+have but little chance of winning sympathy, and the less chance for the
+reason that he really does nothing in the play to justify his grand
+airs. His mighty deeds are a matter of hearsay. We are obliged to take
+his greatness on trust, as something growing out of the past. And yet
+Schiller contrives, with splendid artistic cunning, that we do take him
+from first to last at his own estimate. His assumption of superiority
+appears perfectly reasonable; and even in the ticklish astrological
+scenes, about which Schiller himself was in doubt until reassured by
+Goethe, he never becomes ridiculous. His belief in destiny and his
+unctuous palaver about the occult connection of events do not detract
+from his dignity. One understands that his oracles are fallacious, that
+it is all a humbug; but so perfect is the illusion that instead of
+smiling one mentally associates him with other men undoubtedly
+great,--men like Caesar, Cromwell and Napoleon,--who were haunted by
+more or less similar hallucinations.
+
+This is effected, in part at least, by bringing Wallenstein into
+contrast with vulgar and commmonplace natures. In the presence of a real
+hero he would be a pigmy,--even under the searchlight of the ardent
+young Max his effulgence pales somewhat,--but surrounded by the Illos,
+the Terzkys, Isolanis and the rest of them, he is a moral and
+intellectual giant. One does not wish to belong to _their_ company or to
+believe in their arguments; and so when they urge him to act one is
+quite prepared to credit the mysterious oracles which assure him that
+the time is not yet ripe. Thus even his indecision,--most damning of
+weaknesses in a great soldier,--does not seem to belittle him. One
+enters into the spirit of his self-defense, is half inclined to believe
+in his innocence and to sympathize with him, when the psychological
+moment arrives and the capture of Sesina compels him to translate a
+traitorous thought into a traitorous deed. And even after this, when he
+stands forth as a declared traitor; while his trusted friends are
+secretly turning against him, and his unsuspected enemies are quietly
+plotting his doom; when, with a futile energy, he is making the plans
+that are yet, as he believes, to leave him master of the situation; and
+when, finally, in his bereavement and isolation, he is brought to face
+his miserable fate,--everywhere he looms up as a grand figure. Schiller
+has taken good care that one shall not think of his treason or of his
+weakness, but rather of his imposing personality.
+
+That Wallenstein produces such an impression is largely due to the
+character of his chief antagonist. Octavio Piccolomini is certainly one
+of Schiller's most notable minor studies. It is he who stands for the
+cause of loyalty to which one naturally leans; but he is so portrayed
+that one soon distrusts and in the end almost despises him. And yet he
+is no villain of the extreme type so dear to Schiller in his early
+years. Octavio's conduct and his sentiments are technically correct. He
+is a faithful servant of the empire, a far-sighted and energetic
+commander and an affectionate father. The groundwork of his character
+seems much better entitled to sympathy than that of Wallenstein. In the
+play, however, from the moment we hear of the secret order making him
+temporary commander-in-chief, we begin to suspect that he too is playing
+a game for profit. And when he lays his secret plans against
+Wallenstein, while openly appearing as his friend; when he craftily
+works upon the vanity of Butler, and instils into Butler's small soul
+the poison of a murderous hate, one is not drawn to the cause which
+needs such championship.
+
+Rationally and before the bar of politics, Octavio's conduct is
+unimpeachable. He does his duty in baffling a powerful traitor in the
+most effective way. It is not his fault that Wallenstein is deceived in
+him, and nothing requires that he go and undeceive him. He resorts to no
+tricks, he feigns no sentiments that are not his. He but tells the truth
+to Butler in regard to the ancient matter of the title. It is no part of
+his plan that Butler shall murder his former chief. And when Wallenstein
+falls, not so much because of his present treason as because of his
+former duplicity, Octavio is technically guiltless of the deed. And yet
+so skillfully is the portrait drawn, so subtly are the lights and
+shadows managed, that when the curtain falls one is little disposed to
+sympathize with him in his triumph. There is a world of ironical pathos
+in those last words of the play: 'To Prince Piccolomini'.
+
+A very important element in the impression produced by Octavio, as
+also in that produced by Wallenstein himself, is the fact that we are
+made to try them not at the bar of worldly ethics, but before the
+tribunal of the heart as represented by the young idealist, Max. It is
+a weak criticism of Wallenstein which objects to the love-story or
+regards it as a mere concession to the sentimental demands of the
+average play-goer. For the reason just stated it must rather be looked
+upon as a vital element of the plot. No doubt the play can be imagined
+without it and would in that case be more in accordance with history.
+But what a relatively cold affair it would be! The tragedy of the
+lovers is an important part of the Nemesis that follows Wallenstein
+from the moment of his taking the fateful step. It is this which makes
+in no small degree the real impressiveness of his final isolation.
+Without it we should see in Wallenstein a masterful spirit, like
+Macbeth, playing fast and loose with the higher law and meeting an
+ignoble fate at the hands of enemies meaner than himself. In a sense
+the moral law would be vindicated, but how much more effective is the
+vindication when this masterful spirit first makes havoc of all that
+should be dearest to him as a man!
+
+It is quite true that the figure of Max, like that of Posa, is out of
+harmony with the general _milieu_. Schiller was a lover of contrast, and
+in his skillful use of it lies a large part of his effectiveness as a
+playwright. To a certain extent his contrasts are made to order; that
+is, they proceed from the vision of the artist calculating an effect,
+rather than from the observation of life as it is. Partisans of realism
+tell us that this propensity is a weakness, a fault; and such it is,
+beyond question, whenever it leads to forced and stagy contrasts. But
+surely no general indictment can lie against Schiller for taking
+advantage of a principle which is perfectly legitimate in itself and has
+been employed more or less freely by the dramatists of all ages,
+including realists like Ibsen and Hauptmann. After all life does really
+offer contrasts of character as glaring as any that poet ever imagined,
+only they are not apt to be found in juxtaposition. The artist, however,
+has a perfect right to juxtapose them if it suits his purpose; that is,
+if it will really enhance the effect that he wishes to produce. If ever
+he departs too far from the familiar verities of life, he pays the
+penalty; for the judicious, instead of being thrilled by his pathos (or
+whatever it may be), are annoyed by his artificiality. This is the whole
+law of the matter, so far as its general aspect is concerned.
+
+As for Max Piccolomini, he is a perfectly thinkable character--in the
+time of the Thirty Years' War or at any other time. There is nothing
+supernal about him; he is simply the type of a brave and honorable young
+soldier who tries to walk by the higher law of conscience. There are
+always such men in the world, and Schiller cannot be blamed for locating
+one in the camp of Wallenstein, though history omitted to hand down his
+name. It is perhaps a little surprising that such a youngster as Max
+should be in command of the great Pappenheim's regiment; that, however,
+is a part of the presupposition which one must mentally adjust as best
+one can. Within the limits of the play everything follows naturally. As
+a soldier he loves his commander and sides with him instinctively
+against the courtiers and politicians. His enthusiasm increases the
+'mighty suggestion' that goes out from Wallenstein; one feels that the
+object of such idolatry from such a worshiper must indeed be great. In
+the love-scenes Max is always a man,--no trace here of sentimental
+weakness, or of any leaning to Quixotic folly. In his relation to
+Wallenstein, to Octavio, and to Thekla, his character is firmly and
+naturally drawn. And when his great disillusionment comes and he is
+forced to choose between love and duty, he makes a man's choice and his
+career ends as it must end--in a tragic drama.
+
+The drawing of the female characters in 'Wallenstein' bears witness,
+like all the rest of the play, to the ripening power of the years that
+had intervened since the writing of 'Don Carlos'. That indefinable
+something that infects the earlier heroines of Schiller and gives them
+an air of sentimental futility, or else of schematic unnaturalness, has
+disappeared. The Countess Terzky, in particular, is a strong portrait
+which one can admire without reservation. As for Thekla, while her
+essence is an all-absorbing love for Max, she has at the same time a
+will and an energy of resolution which make her the worthy daughter of
+her father. Upon the whole she is the most lovable of all the heroines
+of Schiller. It is her tragedy of the heart which renders 'Wallenstein'
+perennially interesting to the young. And this is much; for does not
+Goethe's shrewd Merry-Andrew declare that the great object of dramatic
+art is to please the young,--that _die Werdenden_ are the very ones to
+be considered?[118]
+
+It is true that critics, speaking more for _die Gewordenen_, have often
+objected that the love-story in 'Wallenstein' is unduly expanded and
+that the lines have here and there, for a historical tragedy, rather too
+much of a sentimental, lyrical coloring. In the first of these
+objections, at any rate, there is some force. It was Schiller's personal
+fondness for his pair of lovers that led him to spin out his material
+until it became necessary to divide it into two plays of five acts each.
+This, from a dramatic point of view, was unfortunate, albeit the reader
+who knows the entire work will hardly find it in his heart to wish that
+any portion of it had remained unwritten. Properly speaking, the entire
+'Piccolomini' should constitute the first two acts of a five-act
+tragedy. It has no distinct unity of its own, but it takes an entire
+evening with what is properly the exposition and the entanglement of a
+play relating to Wallenstein's defection and death. The result of a
+separate performance is that the climax of what should be the third
+act--Wallenstein's momentous decision--comes right at the beginning of
+the second evening, and is thus not adequately led up to, save as one
+carries over the impressions of a preceding occasion. The effect is like
+that of dividing any other play between the second and the third act.
+One could wish, therefore, that Schiller had seen fit in his later years
+to prepare a stage version which would have made it possible to present
+the entire play in a single evening. It would have been a difficult
+task,--hopeless for an ordinary theatrical man working by the process of
+excision,--but for Schiller it would have been possible. And if he had
+attempted it, we may be quite certain that the love-story would have
+been very much abbreviated.
+
+As regards the lyrical and softly-sentimental passages, the cogency of
+the critical objection is not so clear. Any opinion grounded upon an
+abstract theory of historical tragedy as such can have but little
+weight. Schiller had no models for 'Wallenstein'; and if he had had,
+there is always more merit in finding new paths than in following the
+old. Historical tragedy without tender sentiment is possible, but it
+presupposes a public politically awake and an author upborne and
+inspired by a vigorous national life. Schiller could appeal to no such
+public, and his instinct told him that a play based upon cold passions
+must itself be cold. So he chose to sentimentalize history, at the
+expense of detracting somewhat from its dignity, rather than to make
+frigid plays which no one would care to see or to read. And if we grant
+a _raison d'être_ to the sentimentalized historical drama, no fault can
+reasonably be found with lyrical passages like that at the end of the
+third act of 'The Piccolomini'. Schiller found the soliloquy at hand as
+an accepted convention of the stage and he converted it occasionally
+into a lyric monologue, as Goethe had done before him in 'Iphigenie' and
+'Faust'. This looked toward opera, toward Romanticism, toward a mixture
+of types; but it was effective as a mode of portraying states of
+feeling. The lyric monologue is of course out of tune with the modern
+naturalistic dogma, but so is Hamlet's soliloquy. And then it must be
+remembered that the naturalistic dogma was no part of Schiller's creed.
+
+A noteworthy characteristic of 'Wallenstein', as of all the plays that
+followed it, is its pervading seriousness. Humor plays no part. There
+are no Dogberries or grave-diggers, no quips or quibbles. Schiller had
+but little of the far-famed quality of 'irony'. It did not lie in his
+nature to take a position aloof from the moving panorama of life and
+depict it impassively as it runs, with its sharp contrasts of grave and
+gay, of high and low. He is always a part of the world that he creates.
+For the other and higher method, as exemplified by Shakspere and also by
+Goethe in 'Wilhelm Meister', he showed a keen appreciation, and for a
+little while he imagined that he himself was catching the trick. That he
+did not altogether deceive himself is abundantly proved by
+'Wallenstein's Camp'. After that, however, the ingrained seriousness of
+his temperament reasserted itself with all-controlling power. The gift
+of humor was not denied him, but the use of it in a grave drama was
+repugnant to his sense of style. In this respect he was more a disciple
+of the French and of the Greeks than of Shakspere.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 113: Let it be said once for all (to avoid frequent
+references), that the following account of the genesis of 'Wallenstein'
+is based upon Schiller's letters--chiefly to Körner and to
+Goethe--beginning in November, 1796.]
+
+[Footnote 114: "Schiller", p. 286.]
+
+[Footnote 115: Bulthaupt, "Dramaturgie des Schauspiels", I, 288.]
+
+[Footnote 116: Notwithstanding frequent references to occult powers and
+overruling destiny, the Greek idea of fate is quite foreign to
+"Wallenstein". It is essentially a modern character-drama. Cf. Fielitz,
+"Studien zu Schillers Dramen ", page 9 ff.]
+
+[Footnote 117:
+
+  Nicht was lebendig, kraftvoll sich verkündigt,
+  Ist das gefährlich Furchtbare. Das ganz
+  Gemeine ist's, das ewig Gestrige,
+  Was immer war und immer wiederkehrt,
+  Und morgen gilt, weil's heute hat gegolten!
+  Denn aus Gemeinem ist der Mensch gemacht,
+  Und die Gewohnheit nennt er seine Amme. ]
+
+[Footnote 118:
+
+  Dann sammelt sich der Jugend schönste Blüte
+  Vor eurem Spiel und lauscht der Offenbarung,
+  Dann sauget jedes zärtliche Gemüte
+  Aus eurem Werk sich melanchol'sche Nahrung....
+  Wer fertig ist, dem ist nichts recht zu machen;
+  Ein Werdender wird immer dankbar sein.--'_Faust_'.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Mary Stuart
+
+  Wohlthätig heilend nahet mir der Tod,
+  Der ernste Freund! Mit seinen schwarzen Flügeln
+  Bedeckt er meine Schmach--den Menschen adelt,
+  Den tiefstgesunkenen das letzte Schicksal--_'Mary Stuart'_.
+
+After the completion of 'Wallenstein', in the spring of 1799, Schiller
+was not long in selecting a new dramatic theme. The unwonted leisure was
+irksome to him, so that he felt like one living in a vacuum. At first,
+being weary of war and politics, he was minded to try his hand upon
+something altogether imaginary, some unhistorical drama of passion. But
+the aversion to history and the balancing of attractions did not last
+long. On the 26th of April he wrote to Goethe as follows:
+
+    I have turned my attention to a political episode of Queen
+    Elizabeth's reign and have begun to study the trial of Mary Stuart.
+    One or two first-rate tragic motives suggested themselves
+    straightway, and these have given me great faith in the subject,
+    which incontestably has much to recommend it. It seems to be
+    especially adapted to the Euripidean method, which consists in the
+    completest possible development of a situation; for I see a
+    possibility of making a side issue out of the trial, and beginning
+    the tragedy directly with the condemnation,
+
+This time the historical orientation proceeded very rapidly. By the 4th
+of June he was ready to begin the first act, which formed his principal
+occupation during the next two months. From a letter to Goethe, written
+June 18, it is clear that he was then thinking especially of the danger
+of sentimentalizing his heroine. She was to excite sympathy, of course,
+but, so he averred, it was not to be of the tender, personal kind that
+moves to tears. It was to be her fate to experience and to arouse
+vehement passions, but only the nurse was to 'feel any tenderness for
+her'. As we shall see, he did not remain entirely faithful to this
+early conception of Mary's character. In August, the second act was
+completed and the third begun. Then came a long interruption,
+occasioned by the demands of the 'Almanac', the dangerous illness of
+Frau Schiller,--a lingering puerperal fever following the birth of her
+third child, Caroline, on the 11th of October,--and finally by the
+distractions incident to a change of residence. For Schiller had now
+decided to make his winter home in Weimar, so that he might be near the
+theater. He was heart and soul in the business of play-making, and
+looked forward to devoting the next six years of his life to that kind
+of work. To Körner he did not confide his new plan at first, though he
+wrote of it often to Goethe.
+
+The removal to Weimar took place early in December, having been made
+possible by an increase of stipend amounting to two hundred thalers. In
+granting this increase Karl August intimated that it might be of
+advantage to Schiller as a dramatic poet if he were to take the
+Weimarians into his confidence and discuss his plays with them. 'What is
+to influence society', he sagely remarked, 'can be better fashioned in
+society than in isolation'; and he added a very gracious expression of
+his own personal friendliness. Schiller thus found himself once more
+virtually a theater poet. The Weimar stage, with its little and large
+problems, became the focus of his activity. As a good repertory was of
+prime importance, much of his time went to the making of translations
+and adaptations. Thus he began a version of Shakspere's 'Macbeth', and
+had not finished it when he was again prostrated by a fresh and
+dangerous attack of his malady. After the completion of 'Macbeth, in the
+spring of 1800, he returned to 'Mary Stuart', but found his progress
+impeded by manifold interruptions. To escape these he retired to the
+quiet of Ettersburg, and there, early in June, he finished his tragedy
+of the Scottish queen. A few days later, June 14, it was played at
+Weimar, and from that time to this it has been one of the accepted
+favorites of the stage. One who saw the second performance has left it
+on record that the spectators unanimously declared it to be 'the most
+beautiful tragedy ever represented on the German boards'. Madame de
+Staël characterized it as the most moving and methodical of all German
+tragedies.
+
+Schiller conceives Mary Queen of Scots as a beautiful sinner who has
+repented. Her sins are grievous and she does not deny or extenuate
+them. But they are in the distant past; so far as the present is
+concerned, she is in the right. She has come to England seeking an
+asylum, but instead of being treated as a queen she has been confined
+in one prison after another and finally brought to Fotheringay, where
+she is subjected to petty indignities and denied the consolations of
+the Catholic religion. She has been charged with a crime of which she
+declares herself innocent, has been brought to trial before a
+commission of judges whose jurisdiction she indignantly repudiates, and
+has even been denied the common right to confront the witnesses
+testifying against her. At the opening of the play she does not yet
+know the verdict of the court.
+
+This is the substance of Schiller's masterly exposition; and the effect
+of it, upon the reader or spectator who has not prejudged the case, is
+to create an attitude of compassion for the prisoner. But the sympathy
+that one feels for the passive victim of political or legal injustice is
+not the kind which Schiller regarded as 'tragic'. There had to be some
+sort of 'guilt', and it was also necessary that this guilt should grow
+out of the free act of the individual. But what was to be done with a
+helpless captive who was not free to shape her own fate? From the
+above-quoted letter to Goethe, of April 26, 1799, it is inferable that
+Schiller at first thought of representing the trial of Mary. He soon
+saw, however, that this would make the effect of the drama turn upon
+political, religious and legal considerations of an abstruse and
+doubtful character. It would be with the play as it always had been with
+the historical controversy: the devout Catholic would regard Queen Mary
+as the victim of brutal tyranny, while the Protestant would think her
+deserving of her fate. Schiller did not wish to take sides boldly in a
+partisan controversy, but to make a tragedy the effect of which should
+grow out of universal human emotions. So he felt happy when a
+'possibility' occurred to him of dispensing altogether with the trial
+and beginning with the last three days of Mary's life.
+
+The expedient that had suggested itself to him involved three
+unhistorical inventions: first, an attempt to escape, in which Mary and
+her cause would become involved in the guilt of the murderous fanatic,
+Mortimer; secondly, a supposititious love for Leicester, who would use
+his influence with Elizabeth to bring about a meeting of the two queens;
+and, finally, the meeting itself, in which Mary's long pent-up passion
+would get the better of her and betray her into a deadly insult of her
+rival. After this her fate would appear inevitable and incurred by her
+own act. This concentration of the action brought with it certain other
+departures from history which are of minor importance. Mary was beheaded
+in February, 1587, in the forty-fifth year of her age. At the time of
+her death her captivity in England had lasted about nineteen years. In
+order to account for the infatuation of Mortimer and the still lingering
+passion of Leicester, our drama imagines her some twenty years younger
+than she actually was.[119]
+
+As thus made over by Schiller, Queen Mary is a pathetic rather than a
+tragically imposing figure. She appeals, after all, to the sentimental
+side of human nature and does not produce that effect of tragic
+sublimity which is produced by 'Wallenstein'. The sympathy that she
+excites is like that one feels for a martyr. We see in her a royal
+_réligieuse_ who is persecuted by powerful and contemptible enemies and
+is unable to help herself. Her death is decreed from the beginning and
+there is no way of averting it. The object of fierce contentions on the
+part of others, she herself does nothing, and can do nothing, to change
+the predestined course of events. She is never placed, as the real
+tragic hero must be, before an alternative where the decision is big
+with fate. When the end comes there is nothing to do but let her
+renounce all earthly passion and face the headsman as a purified saint.
+So far as she is concerned, there is no action at all, but only the
+dramatic development of a situation.[120]
+
+For, after all, the expedients just spoken of do not hit the mark
+exactly, in the sense of making the heroine responsible for her own
+fate. They bring in some new and exciting complications, which, however,
+do not affect the course of events at all. The catastrophe would have
+been just the same without them. This, nevertheless, is something that
+one does not see until we reach the end and look back. Before the two
+queens come together it seems as if the meeting might be a turning-point
+in Mary's fate; and this appearance is all that Schiller aimed at. In a
+letter to Goethe he spoke of this scene as 'impossible', and he was
+curious to know what success he had had with it. By this he meant,
+seemingly, that the futility of the scene, as affecting Mary's fate, was
+predetermined by the nature of the subject[121]. Mary was to die; it was
+impossible to make Elizabeth pardon her or treat her claims with
+Indulgence. And yet it was necessary to create the illusion of great
+possibilities hanging upon this interview of the two queens. This was a
+very pretty problem for a playwright, and the skill with which it is
+solved by Schiller is the most admirable feature of the whole piece. The
+scene is not great dramatic poetry, for there is too little of subtlety
+in it,--we are simply placed between light and darkness, as one critic
+says,--but it is the perfection of telling workmanship for the stage.
+
+The preparation for the scene begins back in the first act, where Mary
+declares to Mortimer that Leicester is the only living man who can
+effect her release. When she produces her picture and sends it to him
+for a token of her love, we begin to share her premonition that
+something may indeed be hoped for if her cause is taken up by the
+powerful favorite of Elizabeth. The lyric passages at the beginning of
+the third act fix attention altogether upon Mary's longing for mere
+physical freedom. There is no room for the suspicion that she wishes to
+use her liberty for any political purpose whatever. She appears as a
+noble sufferer whose whole being is absorbed in the delirious joy of
+breathing once more the free air of heaven. She surmises rightly that
+her unwonted liberty to walk in the park is due to Leicester, and she
+imagines that greater favors are in store for her:
+
+  They mean to enlarge the confines of my prison,
+  By little favors to lead up to greater,
+  Until at last I see the face of him
+  Whose hand shall set me free forevermore.
+
+And the hope seems reasonable. May not the queen of England--so one
+is inclined to speculate--be moved to pity? May she not be persuaded
+that policy is on the side of mercy? May she not at least postpone
+the execution of the death-sentence and gradually increase her
+prisoner's liberty?
+
+When Elizabeth appears it is quickly made evident that these hopes are
+vain. Mary humbles herself to no purpose. Her enemy, a consummate
+hypocrite herself, sees in her self-abasement nothing but hypocrisy.
+Mary's earnest pleading, her offer to renounce all for the boon of
+freedom, are met with bitter taunts and accusations which culminate in
+the galling insult:
+
+  To be the general beauty, it would seem,
+  One needs but to be everybody's beauty.
+
+Then Mary loses her self-control and throws discretion to the winds. In
+a wild outburst of passionate hate she accuses Elizabeth of secret
+incontinence and calls her bastard and usurper. Thus she triumphs in
+the war of words, for her enemy retreats in speechless amazement; but
+there is no more room for hope in the clemency of Elizabeth. The
+prisoner's fate is sealed even without the murderous attempt of the
+fanatic Sauvage.
+
+It must be repeated that the whole famous scene is better contrived for
+the groundlings in a theater than for the lover of great dramatic
+poetry. Mary's crescendo of feeling, from humble supplication to
+reckless defiance, gives an excellent opportunity for a tragic actress,
+but the whole thing is rather crass. The effect is produced by
+confronting Mary with a vain and spiteful termagant bearing the name of
+the great English queen. One could wish, not only in the interest of
+historical truth, the obligation of which Schiller denied, but also in
+the interest of poetic beauty, the obligation of which he regarded as
+paramount, that Elizabeth had been painted here in less repulsive
+colors. She might have been allowed to show a trace of human, or even of
+womanly, feeling. She might have been represented as touched for the
+moment by Mary's entreaty, and as holding out to her some small hope of
+life and liberty, under conditions which it would have been reasonable
+to discuss. If she had been so portrayed and then later brought back to
+a sterner mood by the attempt upon her own life and the discovery of
+Mortimer's conspiracy, the final result would have been just the same;
+the meeting of the two queens would have served even better the dramatic
+purpose which it was meant to serve, and we should have had from it a
+noble poetic effect instead of a crass theatrical effect. The pathos of
+Mary's position would have been increased, because it would have been
+made evident that, whatever her own inner thoughts and purposes might
+be, she was a standing menace to the English monarchy. Thus her death
+would have appeared in the play what it was in fact,--a measure of high
+political expediency with which petty female spite had nothing to do.
+
+It is natural to raise the query whether these considerations, which are
+so obvious and are of the very kind that would have appealed to
+Schiller, were overlooked by him or were set aside for reasons of his
+own. Virtually he takes the Catholic side of the controversy. The ugly
+traits of Mary's character, while we cannot say that they are concealed
+with partisan intent, are so wrought into the picture that they do not
+impress the imagination as ugly at all. They are consigned to the dim
+limbo of the past and have the effect of winning for her that sympathy
+which human nature is always ready to bestow, in art if not in life,
+upon the Magdalen type. On the other hand, the ignoble traits of Queen
+Elizabeth are brought into the foreground and made the most of, while
+her great qualities are hardly more than adumbrated in the picture. The
+result is a canonization and a caricature; and one cannot help wondering
+how Schiller was brought thereto, when it would seem that his Protestant
+sympathies, as we have known him hitherto, should have led him in the
+contrary direction.
+
+The key to the riddle is, no doubt, that he had begun to feel the
+influence of the Romantic movement, which was well under way when 'Mary
+Stuart' was written. The influence is difficult to prove, because
+Schiller always maintained ostensibly a very cool and critical attitude
+toward the efforts of the new school. His relations with its leaders
+were not intimate, and one of them at least, the younger Schlegel, was
+his particular aversion. Nevertheless he read their works; and while he
+always professed to be but little edified, there is abundant evidence
+that his ideas of literary art were considerably affected by the new
+propaganda. So, too, Goethe was never a partisan of the Romanticists,
+and he often spoke derisively of them; yet when he published the Second
+Part of 'Faust', the world saw that he had learned from them all there
+was to be learned. An author is not always most influenced by that which
+he consciously approves.
+
+As for Schiller there was much in common between him and the
+Romanticists. He had worked out an aesthetic religion which completely
+satisfied him. In religious dogma of any kind he had ceased to take a
+practical interest. His ethical ideal was an ideal of harmony, of
+equipoise. His critical studies had cured him of his one-sided
+Hellenism, and his historical studies had taught him that the Middle
+Ages were not without their own peculiar greatness. It was thus natural
+enough that the Catholicizing drift of the Romantic school should appeal
+to his aesthetic sympathies. When a man of poetic temper drifts away
+from his theological moorings and becomes indifferent to positive dogma,
+he is apt to value the historical religions according to their aesthetic
+qualities. That is best which has the most warmth and color and makes
+the strongest appeal to the imagination.
+
+It is along this line of reflection that we must seek the explanation of
+Schiller's Catholicizing tendency in 'Mary Stuart'. Her creed, if
+reduced to dogma, would have offended his intellect, just as her
+political claims would have been rejected by his historical judgment.
+But he saw in her character that which could be poetically transmuted
+into a type of the noble sufferer, burdened with remorse, fated to
+contend with injustice, and betrayed by her own rebellious nature; but
+triumphing at last in the peaceful assurance that her death is the
+divinely appointed expiation of her sins. The drama was to represent a
+process of inward purification,--the attainment, after fierce storms and
+buffetings, of a calm haven for the soul. Queen Mary was to appear at
+last as the embodiment of all the qualities that seem most noble and
+enviable in one who "feels the winnowing wings of death". And of this
+idea what better dramatic setting can be imagined than the ceremony of
+confession and absolution in accordance with the forms of the Catholic
+Church? The solemn searching of the heart gives to Mary's character a
+saintly dignity, as of one already beatified, and invests the whole
+scene with an incomparable pathos.[122] Swinburne makes his Mary
+declare, in angry scorn of woman's weakness, that
+
+        Even in death,
+  As in the extremest evil of all our lives,
+  We can but curse or pray, but prate and weep,
+  And all our wrath is wind that works no wreck,
+  And all our fire as[*] water.
+
+[* Transcriber's note: So in original.]
+
+Schiller's Mary meets her fate in a nobler mood. She sees in death the
+'solemn friend' who comes to lift the ancient burden from her soul. Not
+only does she forgive and bless her enemies, but she sees in the very
+injustice of her death a part of the divine benediction:
+
+  God deems me fit, through this unmerited death,
+  To expiate my heavy guilt of yore.
+
+Such a sentiment, it must be admitted, is rather too sublimated to
+harmonize perfectly with the political complications that precede. We
+seem to have come suddenly into another world; and so we have in
+truth,--the world of medieval mysticism. That which begins as a drama
+of conflicting political passions, ends as a drama of mystical
+edification. The rationalist does not see how the divine order can be
+vindicated by the triumph of gross injustice; nevertheless he
+recognizes that the ways of God are inscrutable, and he knows that such
+ideas, of the winning of peace through blood-atonement, were once
+intensely real to the Christian world. Schiller requires the
+rationalist to return in his imagination to this time and place himself
+in the emotional _milieu_ of the medieval church.
+
+Returning now, in the light of these considerations, to the famous
+quarrel-scene in the third act, we see that a more favorable portrait of
+Elizabeth, while it would have had the advantage pointed out, would have
+weakened the final effect which Schiller wished to produce. It was
+necessary that Mary appear as the victim of injustice in order that her
+saintly triumph might shine with the greater luster. Moreover, Mary's
+outburst of passion, for which there would have been no room if her
+enemy had been given a nobler character, was needed in order to make her
+earlier sins credible. Without that scene we should have difficulty in
+believing that so excellent a lady could ever have committed those
+crimes of hot blood which weigh upon her soul. All this means that a
+noble-minded Elizabeth would not have fallen in with Schiller's artistic
+idea, but it hardly justifies him in making her the monster that she
+appears. In making her heartless he might at least have left her head in
+the possession of ordinary common sense. Her off-hand employment of the
+stranger, Mortimer, as an assassin; her stagy signing of the
+death-warrant, after a speech indicating that she acts from
+pusillanimous motives of personal spite; her silly comedy with Davison
+about the execution of the death-sentence; her coquettish airs with the
+wretched Leicester,--these are repulsive touches which are difficult to
+justify on any aesthetic grounds, and the total effect of which
+approaches perilously near to caricature.
+
+'Mary Stuart' may be described, then, as a tragedy of self-conquest in
+the presence of an undeserved death. The stage climax is the meeting of
+the two queens in the third act, but the psychological climax occurs in
+the fifth act, when Queen Mary gives up her hopes of freedom and of life
+and welcomes the 'solemn friend' who is to lift the burden from her
+soul. In working out this conception Schiller did not trouble himself
+greatly about the historical verisimilitude of his chief personages. One
+who looks for the real Mary, Elizabeth, Burleigh and Leicester, will not
+find them in his pages. The principal figures are drawn with less
+impartiality than in 'Wallenstein', the subjective presence of the
+author is more noticeable. And yet, looked at in a large way, the play
+is an excellent piece of historical fresco-painting. The whole spirit of
+the time with its warring passions, its intrigues of fanaticism, is
+vividly and powerfully brought before us. The author's partisanship is
+aesthetic only, not religious or political. The many counts in the long
+indictment of Queen Mary, the motives and arguments of the English
+government, even the higher traits of Queen Elizabeth, are all brought
+out in the course of the play. Nothing of importance is neglected, and
+the whole complicated situation is made admirably clear. The historical
+background, with its luminous vistas of European politics, really leaves
+very little to be desired.
+
+Masterly, too, in the main, is the constructive skill with which all
+this history is brought to view in a dramatic action concentrated into
+the last three days of Queen Mary's life. The great difficulty which
+always besets the 'drama of the ripe situation',--to use a modern
+phrase for a thing as old as Euripides,--is the difficulty of
+explaining the past without forcing the dialogue into unnatural
+channels; in other words, of orienting the public without seeming to
+have that object in view. As regards this merit of good craftsmanship,
+'Mary Stuart' is here and there vulnerable. For example: in the fourth
+scene of the first act, the nurse, Hannah Kennedy, recounts to her
+mistress at great length the latter's past sins and sufferings,
+describing her motives, her infatuation, her heart-burnings and much
+else that the queen must know far better than any one else in the
+world. Such passages, obviously intended for the instruction of the
+audience, were permitted by the traditions of the drama, but they are
+bad for the illusion. In 'Wallenstein' they are much less
+noticeable,--a fact which indicates that Schiller was now disposed to
+make his labor easier by availing himself of conventional privileges.
+In most respects, however, the technique of 'Mary Stuart' is excellent.
+The scenes are lively, varied and very rarely too long. Everything is
+well articulated. Dramatic interest is not sacrificed to any sort of
+private enthusiasm or special pleading.
+
+One who reads the history of Mary Queen of Scots in any good historian,
+and endeavors to follow the maze of intrigues, uprisings, plots,
+assassinations and what not, is impressed by no other characteristic of
+the age more strongly than by its complete dissociation of religion from
+humane ethics. The religion of love to one's neighbor, though the
+neighbor be an enemy, had become a fierce fanaticism which scrupled at
+nothing and recognized no fealty higher than the supposed secular
+interest of the church. In his 'Mary Stuart in Scotland' Björnson makes
+the queen put to Bothwell the question: 'You are surely no gloomy
+Protestant, you are certainly a Catholic, are you not?' To which
+Bothwell replies: 'As for myself, I have never really figured up the
+difference, but I have noticed that there are hypocrites on both sides.'
+For the modern man this is an eminently natural point of view, and we
+might have expected, from all we know of Schiller, that he would
+introduce into his play some representative of this sentiment. Or if not
+that, we might have expected some representative of the religion of
+love. Instead of either we have a romantic youth who has forsworn the
+Protestant creed on purely aesthetic grounds.
+
+Mortimer is on the whole the most interesting of the subordinate
+characters. He was obviously suggested by Babington, but the coarse
+fanatic of history was too repulsive for a proper champion of Schiller's
+idealized heroine. So the name was changed, and we get an imaginary
+youth who has been intoxicated by the glamour of the Catholic forms as
+he has seen them at Rome. The description of Mortimer's conversion,--his
+sudden resolve to abjure the dismal, art-hating religion of the
+incorporeal word, and to go over to the communion of the joyous,--is one
+of the telling declamatory passages of the play. With the sentiment
+expressed Schiller can have had, in the bottom of his heart, but little
+sympathy; but his artistic nature had begun to respond to the Romantic
+propaganda. For the rest, Mortimer is not a very convincing creation.
+One is a little surprised that a youth who purports to be so very
+soft-hearted, so very susceptible to the religion of the beautiful,
+should undertake so jauntily the rôle of murderer. As for his amorous
+passion, that is credible enough if, in accordance with Schiller's
+direction, we think of Queen Mary as twenty-five years old. But in that
+case one's imagination has difficulty with that perspective of years
+which have accumulated the ancient burden of guilt.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 119: In a letter to Iffland, written June 22, 1800, Schiller
+directed that his Queen Elizabeth be represented as a woman thirty years
+old, Mary as twenty-five.]
+
+[Footnote 120: The thought is expressed thus by Harnack, "Schiller",
+page 324: "Der eigentliche tragische Konflikt, der den Helden vor
+grosze Entscheidungen stellt und endlich in sein Verhängnis
+hinabreiszt, _fehlt_ in 'Maria Stuart'. Die gefangene Königin befindet
+sich im Konflikt mit ihrer unwürdigen äuszeren Lage, aber nicht mit
+sich selbst."]
+
+[Footnote 121: Compare, however, Fielitz, "Studien zu Schillers
+Dramen", page 49.]
+
+[Footnote 122: Even Macaulay, who was certainly not the man to be
+captivated by anything in the scene save its poetry, thought the
+"Fotheringay scenes in the fifth act ... equal to anything dramatic that
+had been produced in Europe since Shakspere."--Trevelyan, "Life and
+Letters of Lord Macaulay", II, 182.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+The Maid of Orleans
+
+    Die Schönheit ist für ein glückliches Geschlecht; ein unglückliches
+    musz man erhaben zu rühren suchen.--_Letter of July 26, 1800_.
+
+It was well observed by Wilhelm von Humboldt that Schiller's plays are
+not repetitions of the same thing, such as talent is wont to produce
+when it has once met with a success, but the productions of a spirit
+that ever kept wrestling anew with the demands of art. With each fresh
+attempt he essayed a really new theme, and taken as a whole his works
+exhibit a remarkable variety of substance. Each one has its own
+individuality, its own atmosphere. And he himself wished that this
+should be so; it was a part of his study to avoid repeating himself.
+'One must not become the slave of any general concept',--so he wrote to
+Goethe in July, 1800,--'but have the courage to invent a new form for
+each new matter and keep the type-idea flexible in one's mind.'
+
+These words were penned with direct reference to 'The Maid of Orleans',
+which was begun very soon after the completion of 'Mary Stuart'. Whether
+Schiller then had in mind all those elements which subsequently led to
+the sub-title, 'a romantic tragedy', is not at all certain; it would be
+natural to surmise that he may have thought at first of a drama within
+the lines of authentic tradition. However, we know very little in detail
+about the genesis of this particular play. The letter just quoted tells
+of the usual initial difficulty in concentrating the action, the
+interesting occurrences being so widely separated in time and place.
+Later letters hardly do more than occasionally to report progress; they
+do not discuss artistic questions, nor give any information as to books
+read. Three acts were finished by mid-winter, and the whole on the 15th
+of April, 1801. Schiller had now learned his routine; he felt confidence
+in himself and went ahead in his own way, with but little discussion
+of his plans. What he finally gave to the world is a tragedy
+in which he proceeds still further along the path of romantic
+idealization,--proceeds indeed so far that one can no longer follow him
+without some rather serious misgivings.
+
+The French peasant girl becomes an ambassadress of heaven, gifted with
+second sight and the power of working miracles. She not only leads the
+French troops in battle, but she herself fights with a magic sword and
+kills English soldiers with the ruthlessness of a veteran in slaughter.
+Through it all, however, she is supposed to remain a tender-hearted and
+lovable maiden, such as the highest officers of France may wish to
+marry. By the command of the Holy Virgin, from whom her mission and
+power derive, she is bound to refrain from all earthly love. A momentary
+tenderness for the English general, Lionel, which leads her to spare his
+life, presents itself to her conscience as an infraction of the divine
+command. She is overwhelmed with remorse and loses all her power. Arm
+and soul are paralyzed. Taxed by her superstitious father with
+witchcraft, she cannot find speech to defend herself and imagines that a
+thunder-clap is heaven's testimony against her. Then she wanders about
+as a helpless and disgraced fugitive and is captured by English
+soldiers. With fettered hands she is compelled to witness a new battle,
+in which her countrymen, deprived of her aid, are about to be worsted.
+But through adversity she has been purged of her sin. Her
+self-confidence returns, and with it her miraculous power. By the
+efficacy of prayer she breaks her chains and rushes into the fray. Her
+reappearance brings victory to the French arms, but she herself is
+mortally wounded and dies in glory on the battle-field.
+
+It is evident that such a conception carries us back into the dreamland
+of pious romance. It presupposes a world in which things did not happen
+as they happen now; in which the incredible is assumed to be real and
+the course of events is shaped by miracle. To be sure, miracle is but
+sparingly used in the dramatic action itself, and the totality of the
+play is only a little more wonderful than the Maid's actual history as
+given by authentic records. Johanna's vision of the Virgin is merely
+described retrospectively and is parallel to the Voices of the
+historical Joan. So too her recognition of the King, whom she has never
+seen before; her reading of his mind; her wonderful influence over the
+French army, and much more of the kind, are part of a well-authenticated
+tradition with which the skeptical mind must make its peace as best it
+can. And the feat is not altogether easy. The modern rationalist will
+say, and is no doubt right in saying, that if we knew all the pertinent
+facts accurately from first to last, the Maid's story would fit
+perfectly into our scheme of scientific knowledge and would appear no
+more mysterious than other stories of obsession, genius and devotion.
+Still the fact remains that upon ordinary human nature, without regard
+to religious prepossessions, the record of the Maid's life, as brought
+out at her trial, makes an impression of the marvelous. This is quite
+enough for the purposes of a dramatic poet. But when Schiller introduces
+a magic sword; when he makes his heroine talk with a ghost upon the
+battle-field, and break her heavy fetters by the power of prayer; and
+when we not merely hear these things reported, but see them,--then we
+are clearly in the realm of pure miracle.
+
+Schiller's ultra-romantic treatment of the Maid's story has often been
+sharply criticised, even by those who are in the main friendly to his
+genius; while those who are not friendly have always seen in it the
+complete flowering of his worst tendencies. Critics have debated at
+great length the question whether he was 'justified' in introducing the
+supernatural at all. They have fallen back upon the ghost in 'Hamlet'
+for a precedent and have tried to illuminate the subject with the light
+of Lessing's famous comparison of Shakspere's ghost with Voltaire's in
+'Semiramis'. Others have been shocked by Schiller's bold departure from
+history at the close. On a first reading of 'The Maid of Orleans',
+Macaulay recorded in his journal an opinion that "the last act was
+absurd beyond description. Schiller might just as well have made
+Wallenstein dethrone the emperor and reign himself over Germany--or Mary
+become Queen of England and cut off Elizabeth's head--as make Joan fall
+in the moment of victory."[123]
+
+Now opinions of this kind have a certain interest for the student of
+literature, but it is best not to take them too seriously. A dramatist
+is 'justified' if his intention is good and he succeeds in it. The proof
+of the pudding is not in the cook's recipe. If any dramatist in the wide
+world chooses, for reasons of his own, to experiment with an imaginary
+reversal of the verdict of history, there is no abstract reason why he
+should not do so. It is just as well, as Schiller said, to 'keep the
+type-idea flexible in one's mind',--especially when we know that his
+experiment was received with ecstasy at its first performance and has
+ever since held its place in the affection of German play-goers. They
+are not troubled by its irrationalities, but receive them with pious
+awe, as Schiller intended. For the reader, too, 'The Maid of Orleans'
+has a deep and perennial fascination. Theorize about it as we may, it is
+a great popular classic, which has exerted an enormous educative
+influence and proves how thoroughly its author knew the heart of the
+German people.
+
+It is perfectly safe to conjecture, even without documentary evidence,
+that when Schiller began to think of Joan the Maid as the possible
+heroine of a tragedy, his first perplexity related to the question of
+her 'guilt'. This was for him an indispensable ingredient of the tragic,
+whatever later theorists may think of it.
+
+Although, as we have seen, he contemned the bondage of general concepts,
+he never came to the point of imagining a tragedy without 'tragic
+guilt'. But the story of Joan offers no suggestion of guilt in any sense
+whatever,--she was the innocent victim of groveling superstition playing
+into the hands of insane political hate. For modern sentiment, Catholic
+and Protestant alike, and quite independently of the view one may take
+of her claims to divine illumination, her death at the stake was simply
+a horrible and revolting wrong. In comparison with those who put her to
+death she was an angel of light. To follow the lines of history here was
+for Schiller unthinkable, since the end would have been a mad fatality,
+leaving no room for any feeling of acquiescence in the wise ordering of
+the world. If the story of Joan was to yield a tragedy at all, it was
+necessary to have recourse to some bold invention which should bring her
+fate into harmony with the central tightness of things.[124]
+
+Schiller solves the problem in the terms of religious mysticism: he
+endows his Johanna with a supernatural power dependent upon her
+renunciation of earthly love, and then makes her fall in love contrary
+to the divine command. In one of her lonely vigils under the 'holy oak'
+the Virgin appears to her and bids her go forth and destroy the enemies
+of her country and crown the king at Rheims. When Johanna asks how a
+gentle girl can hope to accomplish such a work, Mary replies,
+
+                    A maiden chaste
+  Can bring to pass all glorious things on earth
+  If only she renounces earthly love.
+
+Thus far we are close enough to tradition; for the historical Joan, who
+habitually called herself the Maid, knew very well that love and
+marriage would be fatal to her mission. Moreover, the idea of a
+non-natural power attaching to the state of virginity is sufficiently
+familiar both to Christian and to Pagan story. From this conception it
+is no very far cry to the idea that the very thought of love, bringing
+with it a sense of guilt, might cause an impairment of the maiden's
+divinely bestowed strength. These are mystical ideas, but the mysticism
+is of a kind familiar to the imagination of medieval Europe and
+therefore quite permissible to a poet who had set out to romanticize.
+If, therefore, Schiller had made his heroine fall in love in human
+fashion, and had then connected this lapse from virginal ideality a
+little more clearly with the final catastrophe, there could be no
+reasonable objection to his fundamental idea, and we should have,
+probably, the best imaginative basis for a romantic tragedy on the story
+of Joan of Arc. One has no right to play the rationalist in such a
+matter and argue that falling in love is no sin and cannot be felt as a
+sin by the modern mind. It can be so felt by the modern imagination, and
+that is quite enough.
+
+As the play stands, however, it must be allowed that the demand made
+upon the imagination is quite too severe. The love-incident is
+preposterous in itself and a mere episode at that, serving no purpose
+finally but that of a picturesque contrast. It is a sort of thing which
+one can put up with very well in a romantic opera, but not so well in a
+serious drama. To begin with, Schiller makes his heroine a supernatural
+being. His Johanna is not a peasant girl who imagines herself the bearer
+of a divine mission, and by the human qualities of purity, bravery,
+devotion and self-confidence, exerts a _seemingly_ magic influence upon
+the French army,--but she is actually endowed with superhuman powers.
+She carries a charmed sword which, against her will, guides itself
+miraculously in her hand to the work of slaughter. No enemy can
+withstand her. To all Englishmen she is incarnate Death. In the full
+frenzy of combat she meets Lionel--for the first time. They fight and
+she strikes his sword from his hand. Then, as he closes with her, she
+seizes his plume from behind, lifts his helmet and draws her sword to
+cut off his head. As his comely face is bared her heart fails her, her
+arm sinks and the whole mischief is done. No wonder that an early critic
+objected to a tragedy turning thus upon the weak fastening of a helmet!
+
+It is difficult to justify such a scene upon any theory of poetic art.
+The romantic drama since Schiller's time has served up many a greater
+marvel than this; but it produces a truly poetic effect only by keeping
+within the limits of tradition. The poet who deals with Siegfried and
+Brunhilde, or with Lohengrin or Faust, may very properly require us to
+accept the miracles which pertain in each case to the saga. But such a
+being as Schiller's Johanna is found in no saga; she is a purely
+arbitrary creation. A very thoughtful German critic, Bellermann,
+attempts to defend our love-episode by showing how Schiller took good
+care in the preceding scenes to depict his heroine as susceptible to the
+tender emotions of her sex; in other words, to depict her as a maiden
+who might conceivably love and be loved. But earthly maidens do not
+suddenly fall in love with their mortal enemies upon the battle-field;
+and when a celestial amazon like Johanna does so, one can only imagine
+that she has been mysteriously forsaken by her Protectress in the skies.
+In that case, however, the fault lies with heaven. It is really quite
+futile to discuss the artistic reasonableness of this scene, since
+Johanna's supernatural character takes her outside the range of human
+psychology. If one likes it and is touched by it, very well; but a
+prudent poet might well have had some regard for the very large number
+of people who would find such a scene ridiculous rather than touching.
+
+One could wish, in fine, that Schiller had omitted his disturbing
+supernaturalism altogether. If it was necessary that his heroine fall
+in love, one could wish that he had let her affections fasten humanly
+upon the good Raimond or some other honest Frenchman. And he might well
+have spared us the Black Knight,--that revenant ghost of Talbot, who
+comes to frighten Johanna but does not succeed, and whose function in
+the economy of the play remains in the end somewhat mysterious. Had he
+left out these things, the real greatness of the play would have
+suffered not a whit, and the artistic idea which kindled his
+imagination would have found a no less noble expression. That idea was
+to reproduce the spirit of the epoch which saw the birth of French
+patriotism. He wished to bring before his rationalizing contemporaries
+a picture of the Middle Ages as a time when, to quote the words of a
+recent American writer, "life was lived passionately and imaginatively
+under haunted heavens ".[125]
+
+What thoughts were agitating him at the very time when 'The Maid of
+Orleans' was taking shape in his mind can be seen from an interesting
+letter which he wrote to a certain Professor Süvern, who had favored him
+with a critique of 'Wallenstein'. Schiller answered under date of July
+26, 1800, and one paragraph of his reply runs as follows:
+
+    I share your unconditional admiration of the Sophoclean tragedy, but
+    it was a phenomenon of its time, which cannot come again. It was the
+    living product of a definite, individual present; to force it as a
+    standard and a pattern upon an entirely different epoch would be to
+    kill rather than to quicken art, which must always come into being
+    and do its work as a living dynamic influence. Our tragedy, if we
+    had such a thing, has to wrestle with the time's impotence, laziness
+    and lack of character, and with a vulgar mental habit. It must
+    therefore exhibit force and character. It must endeavor to stir and
+    uplift the feelings, but not to resolve them into calm. Beauty is
+    for a happy race; an unhappy race one must seek to move by
+    sublimity.
+
+These words, which contain implicitly the whole Romantic confession of
+faith, give the right point of view from which to judge 'The Maid of
+Orleans'. Schiller felt that the need of the hour was to escape from the
+banality of conventional ideas and feel the thrill of sympathy with
+great, overmastering emotions. To-day this seems a very simple and
+obvious matter, because we have learned to think of the imaginative
+appeal of poetry as the corner-stone of the temple. But a hundred years
+ago the outlook was different. Notwithstanding the revolt which Goethe
+and Schiller had themselves led against the self-complacent rationalism
+of the century, the old spirit was still potent even in Germany, where
+the reaction first gathered force. Among the intellectual classes
+religion had well-nigh ceased to be reckoned with as a mystic passion of
+the soul. Several decades of tolerance,--practically an excellent method
+for keeping the sectaries from one another's throats,--had produced a
+public sentiment which looked with mild contempt upon all religious
+fervors. When Schleiermacher published his famous 'Discourses on
+Religion', in the year 1799, he addressed them 'to the cultivated among
+its despisers',--which was only his phrase for what we should call the
+general public.
+
+Nor was the case very different with respect to another mystic passion,
+which derives from the tribal instinct of the primitive savage and which
+the civilized man calls patriotism. The lesson of Frederick the Great
+had not been entirely forgotten, but it was lying inert,--waiting to be
+kindled into fiery zeal by the humiliations of Jena and Tilsit and
+Wagram. Schiller was no mystic, nor was he, in our narrow sense, a
+patriot; but he had a poet's feeling for the sublimity of great and
+passionate devotion. He was a man of the eighteenth century, and as
+thinker he understood full well its imperishable claims to honor; but as
+poet it was not for him to fall into that cynical, vulgarizing drift
+which had led the greatest Frenchman of his day to make Joan of Arc the
+butt of his lewd wit. Voltaire saw in her one of the pious frauds of
+that Infamous he was bent on crushing; for her national mission he had
+little feeling, because of his fixed idea that nothing good could have
+come from the ages of superstition.[126] Schiller saw in her, and was
+the first great poet to see what all the world sees now, the heroic
+deliverer of her country from a hated foreign invader. And so he threw
+down the gauntlet to his century and lifted the _ludibrium_ of the
+French wits to the pedestal of an inspired savior of France. It was a
+great deed of poetry; in the presence of which a right-minded critic,
+after duly airing his little complaints, as critics must, will be
+disposed to doff his hat and say Bravo! Well might Schiller declare in
+the stanzas entitled 'The Maid of Orleans':
+
+  The world brooks not nobility,--disdaining,
+    Defaming, smirching, goes its vulgar gait;--
+  But fear thou not, true hearts are still remaining,
+    To love thee for the heart that made thee great.
+
+In its inmost essence, then, 'The Maid of Orleans' is a drama of
+patriotism. It is Johanna's love of country that gives her a measure of
+human interest, in spite of the supernaturalism that invests her. Were
+she not thus the representative of a passion that is intensely real, and
+that has come to be regarded, for better or for worse, as preëminently
+noble, she would now possess but very languid interest for the sublunary
+mind. Her mystical attributes and her unthinkable love-affair would
+place her beyond the range of natural sympathy. As it is, one is made to
+forget, or at least to pass lightly over, everything else but her love
+for France. She wins favor by her patriotic devotion, and when the end
+comes one thinks of her under the familiar rubric of the hero dying for
+his country. The episode with Lionel and the humiliation of the
+Cathedral scene have all been forgotten, and one does not mentally
+connect these things with Johanna's death in any way whatsoever. Her
+death is sufficiently provided for from the beginning in her own
+fatalistic prevision:
+
+  Johanna goes and never shall return.
+
+It must be admitted that a heroine who excites interest chiefly by
+virtue of her patriotic sentiments and the bravery of her conduct does
+not represent the highest type of poetic creation. The muse will always
+lend virtue and bravery to any common poetaster for the mere asking; but
+she does not so readily vouchsafe a convincing semblance of complex
+human nature. A distinctly human Johanna, with a definite girlish
+individuality and a character all her own,--such as Goethe might have
+given us had he turned his thoughts in that direction,--would have been
+a higher and a more difficult achievement than the schematic creature of
+Schiller's imagination. Such a Johanna, however, would hardly be
+thinkable on the stage: the final horror of her fate would be
+intolerable in the visible representation, while to leave it
+unrepresented would be to admit the reasonableness of Schiller's
+departure from history. Shall we then take refuge in the position that
+the Maid's story is not adapted to dramatic treatment at all? Such a
+position is at once rendered absurd by the perennial popularity and
+effectiveness of Schiller's play. Until some great realistic poet shall
+prove the contrary by deeds, the mere critic is certainly justified in
+holding that, whatever may be thought of his love-episode, the ghost and
+the miraculous escape from bondage, the general requirements of the
+theme are best met by Schiller's romantic treatment.
+
+Turning from the heroine to the other characters, one finds but little
+that invites discussion. Johanna is the central sun of the system, and
+in the romantic light that goes out from her the others seem rather pale
+and uninteresting. Father Thibaut impresses one in the Prologue as a
+little too refined, intelligent and far-sighted for the rôle of besotted
+superstition and misunderstanding which he subsequently plays in the
+cathedral scene. La Hire and the Duke of Burgundy and the Bastard of
+Orleans, who preserves only a suggestion of the rugged soldier that once
+bore his name, are there only to illustrate the divine magic of the
+Maid. Two of them wish to marry her, and when we add the Englishman,
+Lionel, and the French peasant, Raimond, we have a quartet of lovers.
+Verily the little god Cupido would seem to be something too prominent
+and ubiquitous for a military drama. History required that the Dauphin
+should be a weakling, and such he is in the play; but he too is
+romanticized through his devotion, to the tender and soulful Agnes. More
+strongly drawn, if not exactly more lifelike, than any of these, are the
+sensual old fury, Isabeau, and the English general, Talbot, whose fierce
+valedictory to this folly-ridden earth is deservedly famous:
+
+  Soon it is over, and to earth go back--
+  To earth and the eternal sun--the atoms
+  Erstwhile combined in me for pain and joy.
+  And of the mighty Talbot, whose renown
+  But now filled all the world, nothing remains
+  Except a handful of light dust. So ends
+  The life of man--and all we bear away,
+  As booty from the battle of existence,
+  Is comprehension of its nothingness
+  And sovereign contempt of all the ends
+  That seemed exalted and desirable.
+
+In short, the characters of 'The Maid of Orleans' leave much to be
+desired on the score of verisimilitude. One has the feeling all along,
+as in the case of Goethe's 'Helena', of being in an artificial world
+made to order by an imaginative fiat. To enjoy the play it is necessary
+to put aside one's rationalism and surrender oneself to the illusion one
+knows that the author wishes to produce. 'The Maid of Orleans' does not
+compel the surrender like 'Wallenstein'; one must meet the poet
+half-way. That done, however, everything is in order, for the technique
+of the play is faultless. It is not easy to point to a better piece of
+dramatic exposition than the scenes which precede the appearance of
+Johanna in the French army. The Prologue is perhaps a trifle too long,
+but serves admirably to give the tragic keynote, by picturing the
+shepherd-girl of Dom Remi leading a life apart from that of her family,
+given to strange brooding, and at last receiving the sign from Heaven,
+which she prophetically feels to be the call of death. And then the
+desperate plight of France; the helpless weakness of the king; the
+disgust and discouragement of the generals; and after this the news of a
+long unwonted victory, followed quickly by the appearance of Johanna and
+the magic change of the military situation,--how vividly it is all
+brought before one! And what a fine scene is that at the end of the
+second act, in which Burgundy is won over! One who is not touched by
+this portion of the play; who does not return to it with ever-renewed
+pleasure after each sojourn in the choking air of naturalism, is--to
+state the case as gently as possible--unfortunately endowed.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 123: Trevelyan, "The Life and Letters of Lord
+Macaulay", II, 249.]
+
+[Footnote 124: According to Böttiger, whose statements are not always
+trustworthy in matters of detail, Schiller said to him in November,
+1801, that he had at one time planned three different plays on the
+subject of the Maid of Orleans, and that he would have executed all
+three if he had had time. One of these was to have been a historical
+tragedy, with Johanna dying at the stake in Rouen.--This can hardly
+mean anything more than that Schiller was in doubt for a while as to
+the best treatment of his theme. The idea of his actually making three
+different plays on the same subject is quite too preposterous. His
+promise, in a letter of March 1, 1802, that _if_ he should write a
+second 'Maid of Orleans', Göschen should publish it, is only an
+author's playful 'jollying' of a friendly publisher. The passage from
+Böttiger is quoted at length by Boxberger in his Introduction to 'The
+Maid of Orleans' (Kürschners Deutsche National-Litteratur, Vol. CXXII,
+second part, page 211).]
+
+[Footnote 125: Lewis E. Gates, "Studies and Appreciations."]
+
+[Footnote 126: Compare Morley's "Voltaire", Chapter III.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+The Bride of Messina
+
+  Das Leben ist der Güter höchstes nicht,
+  Der Übel grösztes aber ist die Schuld.
+_'The Bride of Messina'_.
+
+After the completion of 'The Maid of Orleans', in the spring of 1801,
+Schiller found himself once more the unhappy victim of leisure. A new
+task was needed to make life tolerable, but what should it be? 'At my
+time of life', he remarked in a letter to Körner, 'the choice of a
+subject is far more difficult; the levity of mind which enables one to
+decide so quickly in one's youth is no longer there, and the love,
+without which there can be no poetic creation, is harder to arouse.' Ere
+long, having a mind to try his hand upon a tragedy in 'the strictest
+Greek form', he was musing upon that which in time came to be known as
+'The Bride of Messina'.
+
+For the present, however, and for some time to come, he did not advance
+beyond very general planning. In the summer he spent several weeks with
+Körner in Dresden, during which literary labor was suspended. After his
+return to Weimar, in September, he found the conditions without and
+within unfavorable to a serious creative effort, so he undertook a
+German version of Gozzi's 'Turandot'. This occupied him until January,
+1802. Then it was a question whether his next theme should be 'The
+Knights of Malta', or 'Warbeck', or 'William Tell', the last having
+begun to interest him because of a persistent rumor that he was working
+upon a play of that name. But none of the four projects carried the day
+immediately, and the winter and spring passed without bringing a
+decision. He began to be worried over the 'spirit of distraction' that
+had come upon him. In August, however, the long vacillation came to an
+end, and 'The Bride of Messina' began to take shape on paper. He found
+it more instructive than any of his previous works. It was also, he
+remarked in a letter, a more grateful task to amplify a small matter
+than to condense a large one. Once begun, the composition proceeded very
+steadily,--but little disturbed by the arrival, one day in November, of
+a patent of nobility from the chancellery of the Holy Roman
+Empire,--until the end was reached, in February, 1803.
+
+The play may be described as an attempt to treat a medieval romantic
+theme in such a manner as to convey a suggestion of Greek tragedy.
+Although written with enthusiasm it is not the bearer of any heartfelt
+message and must be regarded as a study of theory rather than of life.
+The highly artificial plot does not reflect any past or present verities
+of human existence upon the planet earth. Nor can we call the play an
+imitation of the Greeks, its general atmosphere being anything but
+Greek. The dialogue is not written in classical trimeters, but in the
+modern pentameter; while the speaking chorus, divided into two warring
+factions and going about here and there as the scene changes, has little
+resemblance to anything found in the Greek drama. On the other hand,
+there _is_ a chorus, and there are dreams which take the place of
+oracles. There is also a further suggestion of the antique in the
+pervading fatalism of the piece.
+
+Of all Schiller's works 'The Bride of Messina' has been the most
+variously judged by the critics. Some have seen in it the very
+perfection of art, others the climax of artificiality. Schiller himself
+reported, after seeing it performed at Weimar, in 1803, that he had
+'received for the first time the impression of true tragedy'. There is
+also an authentic record to the effect that Goethe was inexpressibly
+delighted with it and declared that 'by this production the boards had
+been consecrated to higher things'. Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote that
+nothing could surpass the majesty of the play, and Körner assigned it a
+high rank among Schiller's productions. On the other hand it was spoken
+of by the satellites of the disgruntled Herder as a 'singular _fata
+morgana_', and a 'shocking monstrosity'; while F.H. Jacobi characterized
+it as a 'disgusting spook made by mixing heaven and hell'. And these
+discordant voices, in all their vehemence of expression, have been
+echoed by later critics; so that in the case of this particular drama,
+as Bellermann observes, it is hardly possible to speak of a settled
+average opinion. On one point, nevertheless, there is very general
+agreement: namely, that the diction of the choruses is magnificent in
+its kind. Nothing finer in German poetry anywhere.
+
+From the outset critical discussion of 'The Bride of Messina' has turned
+mainly upon its antique elements, that is, upon its chorus and its
+treatment of the fate-idea. There has been endless comparison of
+Sophocles' 'King Oedipus' and endless logomachy about free-will and
+predestination in their relation to guilt. And such discussion is
+pertinent, because we have Schiller's own word that he wished to vie
+with Sophocles. An oft-quoted passage from a letter to Wilhelm von
+Humboldt runs as follows:
+
+    My first attempt at a tragedy in the strict form will give you
+    pleasure. From it you will be able to judge whether I could have
+    carried off a prize as a contemporary of Sophocles. I do not forget
+    that you have called me the most modern of modern poets, and have
+    thus thought of me in the sharpest contrast to everything that is
+    styled antique. I should thus have reason to be doubly pleased if I
+    could wrest from you the admission that I have been able to make
+    even this strange spirit my own.
+
+At first blush this looks like an abandonment of the position stated so
+clearly and emphatically in the letter to Süvern (page 380). In reality,
+however, it is not so. Schiller was not concerned to imitate Sophocles,
+nor to revive an ancient form with, pedantic rigor. He was as far as
+possible from a one-sided worship of the Greeks. His reference to his
+'strict form' hardly means more than is implied in simplicity of plot,
+fewness of characters and observance of the unities. He did not write
+'The Bride of Messina' in any doctrinaire spirit,--either to reform the
+German drama, or to furnish a model for imitation. The play is simply an
+aesthetic experiment; a tentative excursion into a field confessedly
+'strange'. What Schiller wished was to produce upon a modern audience,
+by an original treatment of a medieval theme, a tragic effect similar to
+that which, as he supposed, must have been produced upon an Athenian
+audience by a play of Sophocles,--more especially by the 'King Oedipus'.
+
+For the groundwork of his tragedy he resorted to the well-worn fiction
+of the hostile brothers, giving it this form: Two princes grow up in
+mutual hatred, but are finally reconciled through the influence of their
+mother. Both fall in love, each without the other's knowledge, with a
+young woman of whose family they know nothing, and who is in reality
+their sister. One day the younger prince finds the object of his passion
+in the arms of his brother, who has just learned the secret of the
+girl's birth. Instantly the old hate blazes up anew, and in a paroxysm
+of blind rage Don Cesar kills his brother. Then, when he discovers the
+whole truth, he expiates his crime by a voluntary death.--In this
+scheme, it will be observed, the salient point is the fratricide
+committed in a sudden frenzy of passion: everything else leads up to
+this or grows out of it. From a modern point of view the crime is
+adequately accounted for by the character of Don Cesar; but if the story
+was to be given a Sophoclean coloring it was necessary that the horrors
+appear as the necessary evolution of ineluctable fate.
+
+In employing the fate-idea for dramatic purposes the Greek poet had, in
+the first place, the great advantage of a definite mythological
+tradition which was known to everybody. In the second place, he wrote
+for people who still believed in oracles and received them seriously as
+credible manifestations of divine foreknowledge. Again, he could count
+on a living belief in the hereditary character of guilt: the belief that
+a good man, leading his life without evil intent, might be led to commit
+horrible and revolting acts because of some ancient taint in his blood;
+or because the gods, in their inscrutable government of the world, had
+decreed that he should thus sin and suffer. Just how far the Greek
+conception of moral responsibility differed in a general way from the
+modern, is a trite question which need not be gone into here. Suffice it
+to say that the difference has often been too broadly and too sharply
+stated. Not all Greek tragedies were tragedies of fate,--indeed it was a
+saying of Schiller that the 'King Oedipus' constitutes a genus by
+itself--nor is there any definite unitary conception which can be
+described as 'modern' for the purpose of a contrast.
+
+After all, that which affects us in tragedy is very much the same as
+that which affected the Greeks, namely, the sense of life's overruling
+mystery. And whether we refer the happenings of life to an all-wise
+Providence, or to a scientific order which is so because it is so, they
+remain alike incommensurable with our ethical feeling. The bullet of a
+crazed fanatic, or a lethal germ in a glass of water, may end the
+noblest career in horrible suffering. In the drama, it is true, we
+prefer that no use be made of such mad calamities and that what befalls
+a man shall at least seem to grow out of his character. But then a man's
+character is the effect of a hundred subtle causes which began their
+operation in part before he was born; so that there is an element of
+essential truth in the saying that character is fate. We have become
+aware that there is a sense in which it is exactly true that the sins of
+the father are visited upon the children.
+
+In short, modern thought has not tended to clear up but rather to deepen
+the mystery of life in its relation to antecedent conditions; of fate in
+its relation to desert. Our common sense, as embodied in law, treats a
+man as responsible for the good or evil that he personally intends. This
+is no doubt an excellent practical rule, without which society could
+hardly exist at all; but looked at philosophically it does not really
+touch the heart of the great mystery which is the theme of 'King
+Oedipus' and of 'The Bride of Messina'. The young Oedipus, while living
+at Corinth with his foster-father, Polybus, whom he supposes to be his
+real father, is told by the oracle that he is destined to kill his
+father and marry his mother. What should he do? Commit suicide in order
+to stultify the oracle, or resolve to kill no man and to marry no woman?
+The story imputes to him no blame for doing neither of these things. He
+acts as a man would act who sees himself confronted by an evitable
+danger. He leaves Corinth, but the very step that he takes to avoid his
+fate brings it surely to pass. He meets a stranger in the road. A
+quarrel arises over the question of passing,--a quarrel as to the merit
+of which the legend is silent. Oedipus kills his antagonist, and that
+antagonist is his father. Then he delivers Thebes from the scourge of
+the Sphinx and receives the hand of Queen Jocasta as his due reward. He
+has forgotten the oracle, or imagines that he has eluded his
+foreordained fate by leaving Corinth; but the oracle has fulfilled
+itself, as the spectator knew from the beginning that it would. The
+interest of the tragedy turns largely upon the overwhelming remorse of
+Oedipus and Jocasta when they discover the truth.
+
+To match these conditions Schiller requires us to imagine a medieval
+prince of Messina reigning at some indefinite time in the Middle Ages.
+While his two sons are yet children he has a dream in which he sees two
+laurel-trees growing out of his marriage-bed, and between them a lily
+which changes to flame and consumes his house. An Arabian astrologer,
+for whom he has a heathenish partiality, interprets the dream as meaning
+that a daughter yet to be born will cause the destruction of his
+dynasty. So when a daughter is born he orders her put to death. But the
+mother has also had _her_ dream,--of a lion and an eagle bringing their
+bloody prey in sweet concord to a little child playing on the grass. A
+pious Christian monk explains this dream as meaning that a daughter will
+unite the quarrelsome sons in passionate love. So the queen saves the
+life of her new-born child and has her secretly brought up in a convent
+not far from Messina. As long as the father lives the hostile brothers
+are restrained from fighting, but when he dies their feud breaks out in
+open war. Each surrounds himself with retainers, Messina is torn by
+factional strife, and there is danger from external enemies. Citizens
+implore the mother to effect a reconciliation, failing which they
+threaten a revolution. At last she succeeds in arranging a peaceful
+meeting in her presence.
+
+Such is Schiller's presupposition,--a singular blend of Christianity and
+paganism, such as at once gives difficulty to the imagination. A prince
+reigning under a Christian order of things, in a city of churches and
+convents, yet willing to murder his child on account of a dream
+interpreted to him by an Arab soothsayer, is not a very plausible
+invention. And the same may be said of much that follows. In
+half-a-dozen places the tragedy would come to an untimely end did not
+one or another of the characters conveniently refrain from doing or
+saying what a human being would inevitably do or say under the
+circumstances. Beatrice grows up in the convent without taking vows and
+is kept in ignorance of her lineage. Though her mother longs for her,
+she never sees her, and communicates with her only through the old
+servant, Diego. Such conduct is perhaps intelligible during the life of
+the king, but with him out of the way one would expect the mother to
+take her daughter home without a moment's delay. Instead of that she
+waits two months, merely sending word to Beatrice to prepare for some
+unnamed change of fortune. She also keeps the secret from her sons
+during these two months, without any sufficient reason. When questioned
+on the subject by Don Cesar in the play, she makes the bitter feud of
+the brothers her excuse:
+
+  How could I place your sister here atwixt
+  Your bare and reeking swords? In your fierce rage
+  You would not hearken to a mother's voice;
+  And could I have brought her, the pledge of peace,
+  The anchor of my every dearest hope,
+  To be perchance the victim of your strife?
+
+But this is strange logic. One does not see at all how the sister's life
+would have been imperiled; and if she was to be the pledge of peace,--as
+the mother's dream seemed to foretell,--then there was the best of
+reasons for bringing her home at the earliest possible moment.
+
+And then how singularly Don Manuel behaves! He is the elder son, and as
+such must be heir to the throne; but of that we hear nothing in the
+play. He falls in love with Beatrice, sees her often during a period of
+months, and secures from her a promise of marriage; but he never tells
+her who he is, nor does he ask her a question about her own lineage.
+When she tells him of an old man who comes to her occasionally as
+messenger from her unknown family, and who has at last bidden her
+prepare for a change of abode, he makes no attempt to see the stranger
+and find out whither his bride is to be taken. For such conduct _he_ can
+have no possible reason, but Schiller has one; for were Don Manuel once
+to set eyes on the old family servant, Diego, a clearing-up would of
+course be inevitable. Instead of doing the one natural thing, Don Manuel
+abducts his sweetheart during the night, with her consent, and takes her
+to a garden in Messina. There he leaves her alone to await his
+coming,--a singular thing for a prince to do with his bride, but
+necessary to the tragedy.
+
+More dubious still is the remarkable silence of Beatrice when she is
+exposed to the stormy wooing of Don Cesar in the garden. The fiction is
+that he has caught a glimpse of her two months before, on the occasion
+of his father's funeral, and has since been constantly searching for
+her. Having now found her, through one of his spies, he makes love to
+her jubilantly through sixty lines of text, but she answers never a
+syllable and lets him go away in supposed triumph. A bare word from her,
+such as a woman could not help saying under the circumstances, would end
+the complication, since it would send Don Cesar away baffled; and then
+there would be no occasion for his returning to the garden a little
+later. Maidenly fright and consternation cannot account rationally for
+such behavior; one sees that she holds her tongue because to set it in
+motion would be dramaturgically disastrous.
+
+But the climax of unnaturalness is reached in the scene between the
+queen and her two sons, when old Diego reports that Beatrice has been
+abducted from the convent--presumbly by Moorish corsairs. The distracted
+mother urges her sons to go at once to the rescue of their sister. But
+here a difficulty presents itself. If the brothers are to have the
+faintest chance of finding their sister, it is clearly of the first
+importance that they know something about her, and particularly that
+they know where she has been kept in hiding. Now this knowledge can be
+safely imparted to Don Cesar but not to Don Manuel. So Don Cesar is made
+to rush away hotly, at all adventure, without the slightest clew of any
+kind,--the reason being that it would not do for him to hear that which
+Diego is about to tell. The younger brother thus conveniently out of the
+way, Don Manuel, who has begun to suspect the truth, implores his mother
+to tell him where the lost Beatrice has been concealed. Evidently the
+only natural part for the mother is to answer the question. But that
+would not do; so she interrupts him and urges him away with such
+senseless exclamations as 'Fly to action!' 'Follow your brother's
+example!' 'Behold my tears!' And when at last he succeeds in bringing
+out the fateful inquiry, she only answers:
+
+  The bowels of earth were not a safer refuge!
+
+Then Don Manuel ceases to press his question and stands quietly by while
+Diego tells his remorseful story of Beatrice's visit to the church on
+the day of her father's funeral. Strangely enough this recital suggests
+to Don Manuel the hopeful suspicion that his sister and his sweetheart
+may, after all, not be the same person; so he rushes away to question
+Beatrice, when he must know that his mother is the one person in the
+world who can best resolve his doubts. Then, when he is gone, Don Cesar
+comes back, and the mother very calmly proceeds to give him the
+all-important information which she has just withheld from Don Manuel.
+
+Such is the device, of convenient silence at critical points where
+speech would be natural but ruinous, by which Schiller leads up to his
+climax. There is no other play of his, early or late, the entanglement
+of which is so palpably artificial; so like a child's house of cards,
+built up with bated breath lest a breath should topple it over.
+According to Böttiger, Schiller once took note of what some critic had
+remarked upon this lavish use of silence in 'The Bride of Messina' and
+expressed surprise that any one could so misconceive him. He went on to
+say, if we can trust Böttiger, that it is 'precisely in this closing of
+the mouth at critical moments, when a saving word might rend the iron
+net of fate, that the unevadable and demonic power of evil-brooding
+destiny manifests itself most clearly and sends a gruesome shudder of
+awe through every spectator.' This is certainly a good defense if we
+assume that the great object of dramatic poetry is to exhibit the
+working-out of some abstract scheme of mysterious fate. Under that
+hypothesis one has no right to complain if the characters are treated
+like puppets,--pulled hither and thither in unnatural directions and
+made to speak when they should be silent, and to be silent when they
+should speak. If one finds the scheme impressive, one will think of
+that, get his thrill of awe and be thankful. But it is somewhat
+different if one holds that the verities of human nature are more
+interesting than any scheme, and that the great object of the serious
+drama should be to exhibit human beings in the stress of life. One who
+takes that view will wish, while recognizing the great qualities of 'The
+Bride of Messina', that its author had not gone quite so far in his
+contempt of realism.
+
+For, after all, the highest law of the drama is the law of
+psychological truth, which requires that the characters be humanly
+conceivable and act as human beings would act under the circumstances
+imagined. This law is not kept in 'The Bride of Messina', with the
+result that the first three acts fall short of the effect that they are
+intended to produce. It is different with the fourth act. There
+everything is in order, and the simple and noble impressiveness of the
+tragedy leaves nothing to be desired. And it is an interesting fact
+that this impressiveness depends only in a slight degree upon the
+fulfillment of the old dreams and prophecies. To be sure they are
+fulfilled; but we are not required to put faith in the inspiration
+either of the Arab soothsayer or of the Christian monk. Their
+vaticinations might be mere fallible guess-work; Don Cesar might live
+and give them the lie, so far as any external constraint is concerned.
+But he himself _feels_ that the heavy hand of fate is upon him and that
+continued life would be intolerable. The whole pathos of the tragedy is
+transferred to the inner being of the surviving brother, and one feels
+that his self-destruction proceeds from the law of his own nature, and
+not from any fatalistic necessity that is laid upon him.
+
+The truth would seem to be that the fate-idea, while of course it must
+be taken into consideration in any careful estimate of 'The Bride of
+Messina', has been made a little too prominent by many of the critics.
+What the spectator sees, says one writer who is in the main an admirable
+expounder of Schiller, is "gigantic Fate striding over the stage. He
+sees a wild, tyrannical race, burdened with ancestral guilt, turning
+against its own flesh and blood.... He is made to feel that the
+self-destruction of this race is nothing accidental, that it is a divine
+visitation, a judgment of eternal justice pronounced against usurpation
+and lawlessness, that it means the birth of a new spiritual order out of
+doom and death."[127] But is this what is actually seen? Is it not
+rather true that Schiller makes but little out of the matter of
+ancestral guilt? We hear, it is true, that the old prince was of an
+alien stock that had won the sovereignty of Messina with the sword and
+held it by force. But this is no very appalling crime as the world goes,
+and especially as the world went in the Middle Ages. One hardly thinks
+of William of Normandy, for example, as a revolting criminal deserving
+of the divine wrath. Then we hear, too, that the old prince had
+appropriated to himself a wife who was 'his father's choice'. But the
+whole matter is disposed of in two or three choral lines which leave not
+even a clear, much less a strong impression. There are no data for an
+ethical judgment. We are not told wherein the superior right of the
+father consisted. For aught we know the son may have had the better
+claim, and the father's curse may have been only the impotent scolding
+of a disappointed dotard. It is difficult to see anything here which can
+rationally warrant eternal justice in extirpating the race. And when we
+pass from the presuppositions to the play itself, we see that none of
+the characters except Don Cesar does anything seriously blameworthy.
+
+If then it were clearly the central purpose of Schiller to justify the
+moral government of the world, or to exhibit the workings of an august
+Fate in itself worthy of reverence, we should have to admit that he has
+missed the mark; for the fate that he represents is not worthy of
+reverence at all. But what is the central fact of the play, as seen by
+the unsophisticated spectator who has never read the Greek poets nor
+heard of the house of Labdacus? Evidently it is the murder expiated by a
+voluntary death. A high-minded youth knowingly kills his brother in a
+moment of blind rage, because he thinks that his brother has deceived
+him. When he learns the truth, and learns also of the old dreams and
+prophecies, he feels that he too must die. Here is the real tragedy,--in
+the resolution of Don Cesar and his steadfast adherence to it in the
+face of his mother's and his sister's entreaties. The apparatus of
+dreams and prophecies and fate is meant to work upon the mind of Don
+Cesar rather than upon that of the spectator. Superstition adds to the
+burden of his remorse until it becomes unbearable and death appears the
+only road to peace:
+
+  Dying I bring to naught the ancient curse,
+  A free death only breaks the chain of fate,
+
+In a prefatory essay upon 'The Use of the Chorus in Tragedy' Schiller
+defended his innovation and incidentally set his heel upon the head of
+the serpent of naturalism. True art, he insisted, must have a higher aim
+than to produce an illusion of the actual. Its object is not to divert
+men with a momentary dream of freedom, but to make them truly free by
+awakening and developing the power of imaginative objectivation. Nature
+itself being only an idea of the mind, and not something that appears to
+the senses, art must be ideal in order to represent the reality of
+nature. To demand upon the stage an illusion of the actual is absurd,
+since dramatic art rests entirely upon ideal conventions of one kind or
+another. Therefore, so the argument goes on, it was well when a poetic
+diction was substituted for the prose of every-day life, and the next
+great step is to reintroduce the chorus and thereby 'declare war openly
+and honestly against naturalism in art'. The chorus is likened to a
+'living wall which tragedy builds about itself in order completely to
+shut out the actual world and to preserve for itself its ideal domain,
+its poetic freedom'.
+
+In consonance with these ideas we have a chorus divided into two parts,
+one consisting of the elderly retainers of Don Manuel, the other of the
+younger retainers of Don Cesar. These two semi-choruses take a certain
+part in the action. On the one hand they are like the materialized
+shadows of their respective leaders, having no will of their own. When
+the brothers compose their feud and embrace each other, the
+semi-choruses do likewise,--which comes perilously near to the
+ridiculous. On the other hand the semi-choruses have a horizon of their
+own and perform, to a certain extent, the old function of the ideal
+spectator. They comment in sonorous strains upon present, past and
+future, and upon the high matters of life and death and fate.
+
+Schiller's argument on the use of the chorus, while interesting in its
+way, does not now sound very convincing; perhaps because we have come to
+have less faith than he had in the possibility of settling such
+questions by abstract reasoning. Forms of art spring out of local and
+temporal conditions; they have their exits and their entrances. Now and
+then a reversion to some earlier form may prove acceptable, but in
+general it can have only a curious or antiquarian interest. The man of
+reading, who knows his Greek poets, will be glad to have seen once or
+twice in his life a genuine Greek play,--preferably in the Greek
+language, with all the accessories as perfect as possible. Next to that
+he will enjoy a perfect imitation, like the first portion of Goethe's
+'Helena'. But just in proportion as he is permeated by the Greek spirit
+he will feel the spuriousness of Schiller's so-called chorus. For the
+effect of the Greek chorus depended not so much upon the meaning of the
+words as upon the sensuous charm of the music and the dance. To
+sacrifice these is to sacrifice that which is most vital and leave only
+the simulacrum of a chorus. Some small effects in the line of the
+picturesque can be achieved by means of costuming, marching and
+grouping, but the rest can be nothing but elocution,--a frosty appeal to
+the ethical sense, offered as a surrogate for the witchery of song and
+rhythmic motion. One may be pardoned for thinking that a good ballet
+would have served the purpose better.
+
+The reader of the play, however, is not disturbed by any considerations
+of this kind. For him the choruses are simply poetry,--admirable poetry,
+for the most part, in Schiller's very best vein. What a wealth of
+imagery and what a splendor of varying rhythms! And how cunningly the
+gorgeous diction twines itself, like ivy about a bare wall, concealing
+the nakedness of commonplace and giving an effect of noble sententious
+wisdom! This is and must remain the great value of 'The Bride of
+Messina',--to delight the reader with the charm of its style. Schiller's
+plea for the chorus passed unheeded save by the philologists. His
+example was not imitated; indeed he himself probably had no serious hope
+that it would be. On the other hand, there did spring up in the next two
+decades a most luxuriant crop of so-called fate-tragedies, which, with
+their horrors, banalities and puerilities, soon brought the species into
+contempt and made it fair game for the telling satire of Platen. The
+fashion,--a thoroughly bad fashion in the main,--was undoubtedly set by
+'The Bride of Messina'; but we cannot make Schiller answerable for the
+hair-raising and blood-curdling inventions of Werner, Houwald, Müllner,
+Grillparzer and Heine.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 127: Kuno Francke, "Social Forces in German Literature,"
+page 394.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+William Tell
+
+  Der alte Urstand der Natur kehrt wieder,
+  Wo Mensch dem Menschen gegenübersteht;
+  Zum letzten Mittel, wenn kein andres mehr
+  Verfangen will, ist ihm das Schwert gegeben.
+_'William Tell'_.
+
+Schiller's last play, like his first, was inspired by the Goddess of
+Freedom, but what a difference between the wild-eyed bacchante of the
+earlier day and the decorous muse of 'William Tell'! There the frenzied
+revolt of a young idealist against chimerical wrongs of the social
+order; here a handful of farmers, rising sanely in the might of union
+and appealing to the old order against intolerable oppression. There the
+tragedy of an individual madman; here the triumph of a laudable
+patriotism.
+
+'Tell' is a fresh illustration of its author's versatility, for nothing
+more different from its immediate predecessors could easily be imagined.
+It is also the most thoroughly human among his plays, and the only one
+that does not end upon a tragic note. Finally it is the most popular,
+though the most loosely articulated,--a fact that shows how little the
+permanent interest and classical prestige of a dramatic production
+depend upon its satisfying the ideal demands of critical theory.
+
+It was noted casually in the preceding chapter that rumor began to be
+occupied with speculations about Schiller's 'Tell' before he had
+seriously thought of writing a play on the subject. In the summer of
+1797 Goethe had revisited Switzerland and brought back with him the idea
+of a narrative poem about William Tell. He discussed the matter with
+Schiller, incidentally telling him much about the Forest Cantons.
+Possibly he may have suggested, in the presence of a mutual friend, that
+the theme had dramatic possibilities,--which would account sufficiently
+for the aforesaid rumor. Finding his supposed plan the subject of
+curious gossip, Schiller was led to look more closely into the subject.
+He read Tschudi's 'Chronicon' and found it Homeric and Herodotean in its
+simple straightforwardness. The legend fascinated him and he began to
+see in it the material of a popular drama that should take the
+theatrical world by storm. He was eager for such a triumph, and the more
+so because 'The Bride of Messina', as staged by Iffland in Berlin, had
+met only with an equivocal success: many were pleased, but there was a
+plenty of adverse comment. Iffland was now the director of the Royal
+Prussian Theater, and thus in a position to serve the interests of
+Schiller, whom he devotedly admired. It was therefore worth while for a
+man who had chosen to be a dramatic poet, and whose income depended upon
+his popularity, to forego further experimentation with unfamiliar
+art-forms and set about supplying that which would interest average
+human nature.
+
+Work began in the spring of 1803 and proceeded very steadily during the
+ensuing months. The letters of the period express unbounded confidence
+in the nascent play. It was to be a 'powerful thing which should shake
+the theaters of Germany', and a 'genuine folk-play for the entire
+public'. Honest Tschudi continued to be the great source, but other
+writers were read and excerpted. Schiller took infinite pains with his
+local color, noting down from the books all sorts of minutiae that might
+aid his imagination. Take for illustration the following jottings from
+Fäsi and Schleuchzer, two of his subsidiary authorities:
+
+    There are mountains that consist entirely of ice--_Firnen_; they
+    shine like glass and get their isolated conical shape from the
+    process of melting in the summer.--Clouds form in the
+    mountain-gorges and attach themselves to the rocks; herefrom
+    prognostication of the weather.--View from on high when one stands
+    above the clouds. The landscape seems to lie before one like a great
+    lake, from which islands stand forth.--In the summer, cascades
+    everywhere in the mountains.--Chamois graze in flocks, the picket
+    (_Vorgeis_) piping in case of danger.--Weather signs: Swallows fly
+    low, aquatic birds dive, sheep graze eagerly, dogs paw up the earth,
+    fish leap from the water. 'The gray governor of the valley
+    (_Thalvogt_) is coming'; when this or that mountain puts on a cap,
+    then drop the scythe and take the rake.--Peculiarity of a certain
+    lake that it draws to itself persons sleeping on its bank.
+
+A large amount of such conscientious note-taking, aided by a marvelous
+power of visualization, and supplemented also by what Goethe could tell
+from personal observation, resulted in a remarkably vivid and accurate
+local color. A letter of Schiller's written in December, 1803, tells of
+a purpose to go to Switzerland before he should print his play. The plan
+was not carried out, but if it had been there would have been little to
+change; for 'William Tell' reads throughout like the work of one
+thoroughly familiar with Swiss character, topography and folk-lore.
+There is not a slip of any importance in the entire play. Of course the
+conspiring farmers are idealized and their enemies are diabolized; but
+all this is so in the saga. Schiller had to deal with a patriotic myth,
+and he made no attempt to go behind the romantic veil of tradition; his
+purpose being simply to present the poetic essence of the saga as handed
+down by Tschudi. And he succeeded admirably. So far as the Swiss people
+are concerned, he well deserves the memorial they have placed in his
+honor upon the Mythenstein, near the legendary birth-place of their
+national independence.
+
+Toward the close of the year 1803 came an interruption, Weimar society
+being thrown into a flutter by the visit of Madame de Staël, now on her
+famous tour of inspection. It was of course fitting that Schiller, as a
+local lion, should take his part in entertaining her; but the voluble
+lady was an _Erscheinung_ new to his experience, and with his imperfect
+command of colloquial French he was hard put to it to bear up against
+the torrent of her conversation. He measured her very correctly at their
+first meeting, when they fell into an argument on the merits of the
+French drama. 'For what we call poetry', he wrote to Goethe, 'she has no
+sense'; nevertheless he gave her full credit for her great qualities, in
+especial for a good sense amounting to genius. And she in turn was
+pleased with the serious German who argued with her in lame French, not
+as one caring to hold his own in a conversational fencing-match, but as
+one wishing to convince her of important truths in which he really
+believed. It must have been an interesting occasion in a small way, this
+first rencontre between Schiller and the lady who was afterwards to
+speak of him so nobly and withal so justly in her celebrated book about
+Germany. Madame de Staël's sojourn in Weimar lasted some ten weeks, her
+portentous gift of speech becoming gradually more and more irksome to
+Schiller and Goethe. The social gayeties occasioned by her presence
+caused some retardation in the progress of 'William Tell', but on
+February 18, 1804, it was completed, and two days later the final
+installment was despatched to the waiting Iffland. How eagerly he was
+waiting may be inferred from the language used by him after perusal of
+the first act, which had been sent him a month earlier:
+
+    I have read, devoured, bent my knee; and my heart, my tears, my
+    rushing blood, have paid ecstatic homage to your spirit, to your
+    heart. Oh more! Soon, soon, more! Pages, scraps--whatever you can
+    send! I tender hand and heart to your genius. What a work! What
+    wealth, force, poetic beauty and irresistible power! God keep
+    you! Amen.
+
+These high-keyed expectations were not disappointed. The first
+performances of 'Tell', in the spring of 1804, were received with
+prodigious enthusiasm, and ever since then it has been a prime favorite
+of the German stage. It has no characters that can be called great, as
+Wallenstein is great, no complexity of plot, no thrilling surprises; and
+as for its psychology, a fairy tale could hardly be more simple. That
+which has endeared it to the Germans is its picturesqueness and its
+passionate zeal for freedom.
+
+The theme of 'Tell' is the successful revolt of the Forest Cantons
+against their governors. Three actions that have no necessary connection
+with one another--the conspiracy of the cantons, the private feud of
+Tell and Gessler, and the love-affair of Rudenz and Bertha--are carried
+along together in such a way that all find their natural conclusion in
+the final celebration of victory. This feature of the play has often
+been criticized as impairing its unity; and certainly, from the
+conventional point of view the objection has some force. 'Tell' is a
+play without a preponderating hero. We may say that it has three heroes,
+or rather five, since among the conspirators interest is pretty evenly
+distributed between Stauffacher, Melchthal and Walther Fürst. But in
+reality the hero is the Swiss people considered as a unit. Stauffacher
+and the other conspirators interest us as representatives of a suffering
+population. To portray the suffering and the termination of it through
+sturdy self-help is the central purpose of the play. This it is which
+gives it an essential unity, notwithstanding the three separate actions.
+
+The theme is an inspiring one, and the modern world owes Schiller an
+immense debt for presenting it in austere simplicity, unincumbered with
+any dubious or disturbing philosophy. One cannot help loving so good a
+lover of freedom; for the sentiment does honor to human nature,
+notwithstanding some latter-day indications that it is going out of
+fashion. It may not be the highest and holiest of enthusiasms for the
+individual,--we give our best homage rather to self-surrender,--but if
+any political emotion is worthy of a lasting reverence, it is that one
+which attaches men to the motherland and leads them to stand together
+against an alien oppressor. Sometimes it may be well, in God's long
+providence, that a weak or a backward people should be absorbed or ruled
+by a stronger power; but the sentiment which leads it to fight against
+absorption or subjugation is none the less admirable. And when the
+foreign domination is reckless and inhuman, standing for nothing but
+vindictive malice and the greed of empire; and when the victims of the
+misrule are strong in the simple virtues of the poor, we have the case
+in its most appealing aspect.
+
+This is the case that is presented in 'William Tell',--the most notable
+drama in modern literature upon the theme of national resistance to
+foreign tyranny. Its influence in Germany as a classic of political
+freedom--during the Napoleonic era and later, when it was a question of
+setting a limit to domestic absolutism--has been immense. And there is
+really no danger of its losing its potency; for it appeals to a
+sentiment which, while it may wax and wane with the movements of the
+_Zeitgeist_, is now wrought into the heart-fiber of all the occidental
+nations, and not least of all--contrary to an opinion widely accepted in
+this country--of the Germans.
+
+The uppermost thought of Schiller, then, was to win sympathy for freedom
+and the rights of man; yet in 'William Tell' we have nothing to do with
+any species of cloud-born idealism. The bearers of the message are not
+fantastic dreamers, like Posa; they do not call themselves ambassadors
+of all mankind, or citizens of the centuries to come. They are a plain,
+practical folk, whose wishes do not fly far afield and who attempt
+nothing that they cannot carry through. They are not in the least given
+to fighting for the sake of fighting; on the contrary, the thought of
+bloodshed is abhorrent to them. All they wish is to be allowed to pursue
+their peaceful, partriarchal industries, as their fathers did before
+them, under laws of their own devising. But things have come to such a
+pass that their lives, their property and the honor of their women are
+not safe from the malice, cupidity and lust of their rulers. And even
+under such conditions the thought of a radical revolution does not occur
+to them: they do not rise against the overlordship of the emperor, but
+only against the brutal tyranny of the governors who disgrace him. Their
+final triumph opens no other vista of change than that, in the future,
+another emperor will send them better governors. Thus the upshot of the
+whole revolution is simply a provisional demonstration of Stauffacher's
+proposition that 'tyrannical power has a limit'.
+
+This seems, at first, like a rather lame vindication of the sacred
+majesty of freedom, especially when we reflect that the whole question
+at issue is not a question of independence at all, but merely whether
+the cantons will give up their _Reichsunmittelbarkeit_,--and with it
+certain old customs to which they are attached,--in order to become
+vassals of the House of Hapsburg. Were they willing to do that,--so it
+is said by Rösselmann at the Rütli meeting,--all their troubles would
+end forthwith; the cruel governors would deal kindly with them, would
+'fondle' them. If this is so,--and other passages confirm the saying of
+the priest Rösselmann,--then it is patent that the conduct of Gessler is
+not the aimless brutality of a brute, but a policy deliberately pursued
+for the purpose of terrorizing the cantons into an acceptance of
+Hapsburg overlordship. And this in turn throws its own light on the
+character of Gessler. Only a blockhead would try to gain such an end in
+such a way. This, however, is only another way of saying what has often
+been pointed out, that Gessler is simply a fairy-tale tyrant, copied
+very closely from Tschudi; a sort of typical bad man, whom the saga,
+after inventing him out of nothing, has made as black as possible in
+order the more clearly and strongly to justify the revolt. And yet, in
+the play, Gessler never becomes entirely ridiculous; he does not seem a
+caricature of humanity,--perhaps because history teems with governors
+and viceroys who have exercised their little brief authority very much
+in his spirit, even if they have failed to commit his particular
+atrocities.
+
+These last considerations are meant to light up the fact that the effect
+of the play does not, after all, depend mainly upon its vindication of
+any political doctrine. We are nowhere in the region of abstractions.
+The sympathy that one feels for the insurgents is in no sort political,
+but purely human; it is of the same kind that one might feel for a
+community of Hindu ryots in their efforts to rid themselves of a
+man-eating tiger. Only in the play this sympathy is very much
+intensified by the picturesque lovableness of the afflicted population.
+It is here, in the picture of land and people, that Schiller's mature
+art, which had brought him to a sovereign mastery of stage effects, may
+be said to win its greatest triumph. One may describe his method, fairly
+if somewhat paradoxically, as that of romantic realism. What a
+masterpiece of exposition we have in the opening scenes! The beautiful
+lake, at precisely its most fascinating point; the fisher-boy, all
+careless of the great world, singing his pretty song of the smiling but
+treacherous water; the herdsman and the hunter, announcing themselves
+above on the rocks in characteristic songs, and then conversing for a
+moment about the weather and their employments; the sudden arrival of
+Baumgarten with his tale of wrong and vengeance; the storm on the lake,
+and the hurried dialogue between the cautious fisherman and the
+stout-hearted Tell, who 'does what he cannot help doing'; the building
+of the hateful Zwing-Uri; the death of the slater and Bertha's curse;
+the grief and fury of young Melchthal, and, finally, the solemn covenant
+for life and death of the three leaders,--what variety and animation are
+here, and what a wealth of realistic detail! And how perfectly
+convincing it all is,--not a false note anywhere, nor a note that is
+held too long! Well might Goethe characterize this exposition as 'a
+complete piece in itself and withal an excellent one'. The first act of
+'Tell' is one of the best first acts in all dramatic literature.
+
+It is quite true that the exposition seems to promise somewhat more than
+is afterwards fulfilled. One who is familiar with Schiller's usual
+method naturally expects that something will come of the rescue of
+Baumgarten; but nothing does come of it except to throw a side-light
+upon the general situation and to bring out the character of Tell.
+Again, one expects to see more of Dame Gertrud, the 'wise daughter of
+noble Iberg'. One looks for her to reappear under circumstances that
+shall give her something important to do and shall put her sagacity and
+courage to the test. It is not the habit of Schiller to introduce such
+weighty personages at the beginning of a play and then drop them. To
+understand him in this instance one has but to remember that his hero is
+always the Swiss people. The Stauffachers, as a shining example of
+thrift and virtue; their dignified and influential position in the
+community; their fine new house that has roused the venomous jealousy of
+Gessler,--all this is part of the situation, and it is the situation
+that counts. And how superbly the picture is completed by the meeting at
+the Rütli! Such an old-fashioned parliament, held of necessity under the
+stars and in the darkness of night, but with all possible regard to the
+ancient forms, was not only a novel and a picturesque idea in itself,
+but it was the best device which could possibly be imagined for bringing
+sharply into view the whole character of the Swiss, in its winsome,
+patriarchal simplicity.
+
+Here again, however, we have a radical departure from Schiller's usual
+method; for what is actually done at this seemingly important meeting
+is, after all, in itself rather insignificant, and without direct
+influence upon the subsequent course of events. The conspirators decide
+to do nothing immediately, but to wait for a favorable opportunity
+during the Christmas season, some seven or eight weeks ahead. This
+determination obviously involves a halt in the dramatic action, so far
+as the conspiracy is concerned. In dealing with this difficulty,
+Schiller departs from his ordinary method of concentration and allows
+himself to be guided by the epical character of Tschudi's narrative. The
+result is that we have, somewhat as in Goethe's 'Götz von Berlichingen',
+a succession of dramatic pictures, rather than a drama bound together by
+a severe logic. In the third and fourth acts we hear no more of the
+conspirators,--aside from some expressions of regret for the delay,--and
+attention is concentrated upon Tell, who has hitherto taken no part
+except to rescue Baumgarten and to refuse his coöperation at the Rütli,
+on the ground that he is not the man for a confab, and that 'the strong
+man is mightiest alone'.
+
+The character of Tell, as depicted by Schiller, has been the subject of
+much criticism, the strictures relating more particularly to his
+shooting the apple from his son's head, and then to his subsequent
+assassination of Gessler. There is an oft-quoted opinion of Bismarck,
+which may be quoted again, since it expresses so well a thought that has
+no doubt occurred, some time or other, to most readers and spectators of
+the play. Busch makes Bismarck say, under date of October 25,
+1870:
+
+    It would have been more natural and more noble, according to my
+    ideas, if, instead of shooting at the boy, whom the best of archers
+    might hit instead of the apple, he had killed the governor on the
+    spot. That would have been righteous wrath at a cruel demand. I do
+    not like his hiding and lurking; that does not befit a hero--not
+    even a bushwhacker.
+
+Undoubtedly such conduct as is here suggested for Tell would be more
+'heroic', in accordance with, our conventional ideas of heroism. And the
+thing would have been dramatically feasible. We can imagine Tell, for
+example, as making sham preparations to shoot at the apple and then
+suddenly sending his arrow through the heart of his enemy; and we can
+also imagine a further management of the scene such that Tell should
+escape with his boy. Thus everything would be accomplished on the public
+square at Altorf, in full face of the enemy, which is subsequently
+accomplished from the secure ambush by the 'hollow way' near Küssnacht.
+Such conduct would have been 'heroic', but the obvious objection to it
+is that it would have destroyed the very heart of the saga, which it was
+not for Schiller to make over but to render dramatically plausible. It
+may be urged, perhaps, that a poet who had made Joan of Arc die in glory
+on the battle-field need not have been so punctilious in following the
+exact line of Tschudi's story. But the cases are not exactly parallel.
+There the alternative was a scene of unmitigated and revolting horror,
+which would have destroyed the effect of the tragedy; here it was simply
+a question of _when_ Gessler should be killed with an arrow. To make
+Tell do just what the saga makes him do, and do it without forfeiting
+sympathy, was a delicate problem, which may well have fascinated
+Schiller, who is surely the last man in the world to be accused of
+holding tame views as to 'heroism'. At any rate he must have felt that a
+Tell who should not shoot at the apple and hit it would be simply no
+Tell at all.
+
+One who looks closely at the famous scene will not fail to see that it
+is very cleverly constructed and that every objection which has been
+urged against it is really met in the text. In the first place, Tell is
+not, and was never meant for, a hero of the conventional sort. There is
+no element of Quixotry about him. He is a plain man, of limited horizon
+and small gift of speech. Public affairs do not particularly interest
+him. He is a hardy mountaineer, with a strong trust in his own strength
+and resourcefulness; a good oarsman and a great shot with the crossbow;
+but he makes no fuss about these things. Let it be repeated that he is
+not foolhardy. The dangers of the mountain, which bulk so large in the
+imagination of his wife, are simply the familiar element of the life
+that he loves. He treats her timorous apprehensions with the
+good-natured coolness of a man who knows how to take care of himself. He
+is affectionate, but not a bit sentimental. All this makes an eminently
+natural and consistent character.
+
+Now what must such a character do when required, under penalty of death,
+by a brutal tyrant whose power is absolute, to hit an apple on his son's
+head? Naturally his first thought is of the child, and he tries to
+escape by offering his own life. The reply is that he must shoot or die
+_with_ his child. Thus there is no recourse; to refuse to shoot at all
+is worse than to shoot and miss. If he kill Gessler on the spot,--and we
+must suppose that the thought occurs to him,--he will expose not only
+himself but his child and his wife and children at home to the fury of
+the troopers. The only safety lies in making a successful shot. And
+after all Tell knows that he _can_ make it; it is only a question of
+nerve, and he has the nerve if he can only find it. And here comes in an
+important touch which is not in Tschudi--the fearless confidence of
+Walther Tell in his father's marksmanship. The effect of this is to
+touch the pride of the bowman, to clear his eye, and to steady his hand.
+It is also a familiar fact that, with strong natures, a terrible danger,
+with just one chance of escape, may produce a moment of perfect
+self-control while the chance is taken.
+
+The whole scene, in addition to its effectiveness on the stage, is
+psychologically true to life. With all deference to the great qualities
+of the first Chancellor of the German Empire, one must insist that
+Schiller was a better playwright than he and found precisely the best
+solution to his dramatic problem.
+
+And so of the later scene in the 'hollow way'; there is nothing wrong
+with it, unless it be the great length of the soliloquy. The killing of
+an enemy from an ambush, without giving him a chance for his life, is of
+course somewhat repugnant to our ideas of chivalry. We think of it
+instinctively as the deed of a savage, and not of a man with a pure
+heart and a good cause. But it must be remembered that such ideas are
+themselves conventional, and that we have in 'Tell' a reversion to
+primitive conditions in which 'man stands over against man'. Gessler has
+forfeited all right to chivalrous treatment, and Tell is no knight
+engaged in fighting out a gentleman's feud. What is he to do? For
+himself, perhaps, he might take the chances of a fugitive in the
+mountains, but he cannot leave his wife and children exposed to
+Gessler's vengeful malice. There is no law to which he can appeal, the
+only law of the land being Gessler's will. In such a situation, clearly,
+there is no place for refined and chivalrous compunctions, or for
+ethical hair-splitting. Tell does what he must do. He is in the position
+of a man protecting his family from a savage or a dangerous beast, and
+is not called upon to risk his own life needlessly. Every reader of the
+old saga instinctively justifies him. His conduct is not noble or
+heroic, but natural and right.
+
+If this is so, however, there would seem to be no pressing need of his
+long soliloquy. He being _ex proposito_ a man of few words, his sudden
+volubility is a little surprising, though it should be duly noticed that
+the soliloquy is not a self-defense. There is no casuistry in it. Tell
+does not argue the case with himself, like one in doubt about the
+rightness of his conduct. That is as clear as day to him, and he never
+wavers for a moment. But he has time to think while waiting, and his
+soliloquy is only his thinking made audible. Delivered with even a
+slight excess of declamatory fervor, the lines are ridiculously out of
+keeping with Tell's character; but they can be spoken so as to seem at
+least tolerably natural,--as natural, perhaps, as any soliloquy. And
+this is true, let it be remarked in passing, of many and many a passage
+in Schiller. To some extent, very certainly, his reputation as a
+rhetorician is due to the histrionic spouting of lines that do not need
+to be spouted. To some extent, but not entirely: for even in 'Tell' his
+old fondness for absurdly extravagant forms of expression sometimes
+reasserted itself. Thus what can one make of a plain fisherman who talks
+in this wise about a rainstorm?
+
+  Rage on, ye winds! Flame down, ye lightning-bolts!
+  Burst open, clouds! Pour out, ye drenching streams
+  Of heaven, and drown the land! Annihilate
+  I' the very germ the unborn brood of men!
+  Ye furious elements, assert your lordship!
+  Ye bears, ye ancient wolves o' the wilderness,
+  Come back again! The land belongs to you.
+  Who cares to live in it bereft of freedom!
+
+The most serious blemish in 'William Tell' is the introduction of
+Johannes Parricida in the fifth act,--an idea which Goethe attributed to
+feminine influence of some sort.[128] The effect of it is to convert the
+rugged, manly Tell of the preceding acts into a sanctimonious Pharisee
+with whom one can have little sympathy. No doubt there is a moral
+difference between his act and that of Parricida, but it is a difference
+which one does not wish to hear Tell himself dilate upon. Seeing that
+the murdered emperor was solely responsible for the brutal governors and
+thus indirectly for all the woes of Switzerland; and seeing, too, that
+his death is the only guarantee we have at the end that the killing of
+Gessler will do any good, and not simply have the effect to bring down
+upon the land, including Tell and his family, the vengeance of some
+still more fiendish successor,--considering all this, one would rather
+not hear those horrified ejaculations of Tell about the pollution of the
+murderer's presence. They may produce a certain stagy effect of
+contrast, but the effect was not worth producing at the expense of
+Tell's character.
+
+As for the love-story in 'William Tell', it is hardly of sufficient
+weight to merit extended discussion. Both Bertha and Rudenz are rather
+tamely and conventionally drawn, to meet the need of a pair of romantic
+lovers; they evidently cost their creator no very strenuous communings
+with the Genius of Art. Their private affair of the heart has nothing to
+do with the Tell episode and is but loosely related to the popular
+uprising. Their absence would not be very seriously felt in the drama,
+save that one would not like to miss Attinghausen as a picturesque
+representative of the old patriarchal nobility. The two scenes in which
+he appears are in themselves admirable.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 128: See Eckermann's "Gespräche", under date of March 16,
+1831. What Goethe there says, however, is in flat contradiction of the
+following passage contained in a letter of Schiller to Iffland,
+written April 14, 1804: "Auch Goethe ist mit mir überzeugt, dasz ohne
+jenen Monolog und ohne die persönliche Erscheinung des Parricida der
+Tell sich gar nicht hätte denken lassen."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+The End.--Unfinished Plays, Translations and Adaptations
+
+  Es stürzt ihn mitten in der Bahn,
+  Es reiszt ihn fort vom vollen Leben.
+_'William Tell'_.
+
+Our story of Schiller's life draws to a close. After the completion of
+'William Tell' his tireless energy of production found its next theme in
+the story of Dmitri, the reputed son of Ivan the Terrible. Just how and
+whence the suggestion came to him is unknown, but the connection of
+things is patent enough in a general way. Far-reaching intrigues in high
+life had always had a fascination for him, and recent studies undertaken
+for 'Warbeck' had interested him in the type of the pretender whose
+kingly bearing seems to betoken kingly blood. In a work upon Russia,--a
+land which had been brought closer to the Schiller household by the
+appointment of Wilhelm von Wolzogen as Weimarian envoy to the Czar,--he
+read anew the history of the 'false Dmitri', and was struck by its
+dramatic capabilities. In 'Warbeck' he had thought to portray a
+pretender who knew that his claims were fraudulent; in Dmitri he found
+one who believed in himself. The psychological problem, and the idea of
+conquering an entirely new territory for the German drama, attracted him
+strongly, and he set about the laborious task of self-orientation.
+
+Ere long, however, there came an interruption which, for a while, seemed
+to promise a momentous change in the tenor of his life. Iffland wished
+to lure him to Berlin and had intimated that the Prussian government
+might be disposed to offer inducements. Schiller was not entirely averse
+to the idea; at least he thought it worth while to reconnoitre. So,
+toward the end of April, 1804, he set out with wife and children for the
+Prussian capital, where he was received with the greatest cordiality.
+The king and queen of Prussia, to whom he was presented, were very
+gracious, and it was all decidedly pleasant. So at least he thought and
+so his wife pretended to think,--keeping down for her husband's sake the
+dismay which a daughter of fair Thuringia could not help feeling at the
+thought of making a home on the flat banks of the Spree. After a
+fortnight Schiller returned to Weimar and was presently invited by the
+Prussian minister, Beyme, to name his terms. Now came the rub; for he
+did not really wish to leave Weimar. He had taken deep root there and
+his affections clung to the place for the sake of Goethe and a few other
+friends. On the other hand, his stipend was but four hundred thalers,
+and his other sources of income were by no means such as to free him
+from anxiety about the future of his family. Feeling that it was his
+duty to better his position if possible, he laid his case before Karl
+August, who promptly doubled his stipend. After this it was virtually
+impossible for him to leave Weimar. Unwilling nevertheless to renounce
+the Berlin prospects altogether, he wrote to Beyme that for a
+consideration of two thousand thalers annually he would reside a few
+months of each year in Berlin. To this proposition Beyme made no answer.
+Possibly he thought the price too high for a fractional poet.
+
+Pending these futile negotiations Schiller worked with great zest upon
+'Demetrius ',--reading, excerpting, examining maps and pictures,
+schematizing, balancing possibilities, and so forth. But again he was
+interrupted; first by an unusually severe illness, which brought him to
+death's door and left him for weeks in a condition of helpless languor,
+and then by the distractions incident to the arrival of the hereditary
+Prince of Weimar with his Russian bride, Maria Paulovna. Golden reports
+had preceded this princess, who was expected to reach Weimar in
+November, and preparations were made to welcome her with distinguished
+honors. For some reason Goethe, in his capacity of director of the
+theater, remained inactive amid the general flutter until a few days
+before the great event, when he besought Schiller to come to the rescue.
+The result was 'The Homage of the Arts', called by its author a
+'prologue'.
+
+We have a rustic scene in which country-folk plant an orange-tree and
+invoke the blessing of pagan divinities. The Genius of Art appears, and
+with him the seven goddesses: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Poetry,
+Music, Dance and Drama. Genius asks for an explanation of the
+tree-planting, and is told by the rustics that it is an act of homage to
+their new queen, who has come from high imperial halls to live in their
+humble valley. They wish to bind her to them by keeping her reminded of
+home. On hearing this Genius assures them that the queen will not find
+all things strange in her new home: old friends are there after all.
+Then he leads forward his seven goddesses, who explain themselves and
+say pretty things about Russia. 'The Homage of the Arts' is in no sense
+a weighty production, but its graceful verse and well-turned compliments
+had the desired effect. Maria Paulovna was pleased with it.
+
+The reaction from these Russophile festivities fell heavily upon
+Schiller and he became gradually weaker. Unequal to creative effort he
+undertook a translation of Racine's 'Phèdre' in German pentameters and
+finished it about the middle of January, 1805. After this he threw
+himself with great energy upon 'Demetrius', but it was the final flicker
+of a dying flame. In February came a fresh prostration, and it was then
+evident that the end was near. Nevertheless he worked on for a few weeks
+longer with feverish eagerness. On the evening of April 29, he went to
+the theater. After the play was over, the young Voss,--a son of the
+poet, who had attached himself warmly to Schiller during these latest
+years,--came to him to attend him home. He found him in a violent fever,
+which soon led to exhaustion and delirium. This time the strong will of
+the sufferer and the eager offices of wife and physician proved
+unavailing. He lingered on a few days longer, now and then in his
+delirium reciting disconnected verse or scraps of Latin, until the end
+came, on the afternoon of the 9th of May. Three days later, between
+twelve and one o'clock at night, the body of the dead man was borne by a
+little group of friends through the silent and deserted streets of
+Weimar, and lowered into a vault in the churchyard of St. James. There
+it remained until 1826, when the remains were exhumed and, after some
+curious vicissitudes, were placed in an oaken coffin and deposited in
+the ducal mausoleum, where they now rest near those of Goethe and Karl
+August.[129]
+
+The death of Schiller made many mourners. Goethe, who had himself been
+very ill, wrote to a friend in Berlin: 'I thought to lose myself, and
+now I lose a friend, and with him the half of my existence.' From every
+hand came tokens of sympathy for the widow. Maria Paulovna asked for the
+privilege of caring for the children. Queen Luise of Prussia sent a
+message of heartfelt condolence. Cotta, whose business relations with
+Schiller had given rise to a warm personal affection, made generous
+offers of financial aid. As for the nation at large, however, it can
+hardly be said that much notice was taken of the event. Schiller had led
+a secluded life, had been but little in the public eye, and his
+personality was known to but few. What should the passing of a single
+dreamer signify in the stirring epoch of Austerlitz and Jena? Not many
+knew that one of the real immortals had ceased to breathe,--one whose
+figure would loom up larger and larger in receding time, like a high
+mountain in the receding distance.
+
+But leaving this subject, of Schiller's subsequent influence and
+reputation, for discussion in the concluding chapter, let us now turn to
+a brief survey of his unfinished plays and of his more important work as
+translator and adapter.
+
+And first, 'Demetrius', of which one may say, as Schiller said of the
+Faust-fragment of 1790, that it is the torso of a Hercules. Such extant
+portions as had reached something like a final form in verse tell of a
+tragedy that bade fair to rank with 'Wallenstein', perhaps to surpass
+'Wallenstein', in dramatic power and psychological interest. The
+completed portions pertain mainly to the first two acts; for the rest we
+have an immense mass of schemes, arguments, excerpts and collectanea. To
+read through this material, particularly the various schemes laboriously
+written out in numberless revisions, conveys at first an impression of
+over-solicitude, as if erudition and logical analysis were being relied
+upon to take the place of slackening inspiration. The moment one turns
+to the finished scenes, however, one sees that the poetic spring was
+still flowing in full measure; and one is amazed at the creative power
+which could still, with death knocking at the door, so swiftly and so
+surely fashion great poetry out of dull and contradictory books.
+
+The story of the false Demetrius had been familiar to Schiller from his
+youth, but there is no evidence that he ever thought of dramatizing it
+until the year 1802, when we hear of an intended drama to be called 'The
+Massacre at Moscow'. Just as before in the cases of Fiesco and
+Wallenstein, he found here a notable conspirator whose character and
+motives were the subject of dispute among the historians. The more usual
+view was that Demetrius was an escaped monk who gave himself out as the
+son of Ivan the Terrible, having either himself invented the fraud or
+else taken upon himself a rôle that was suggested to him by some one
+else. On the other hand, there were those who regarded him as the
+genuine son of Ivan and thus entitled to the throne which he conquered
+from the usurper, Boris Gudunoff, in the year 1605. Fraudulent
+pretender, or genuine Czar of the blood of Rurik,--this was the great
+question. With a fine dramatic intuition Schiller conceived a third
+possibility, namely, that Demetrius, though not in reality Ivan's son,
+fully believed himself to be such until he had triumphed, and then,
+though undeceived, went on his calamitous way as a tyrant because he
+could not turn back.
+
+His first thought was to begin with a scene at Sambor in Galicia,
+wherein the escaped monk Grischka, tarrying at the house of Mnischek in
+complete ignorance of his high birth, but given none the less to
+ambitious dreaming, should be made known as Ivan's son, Demetrius,
+supposed to have been murdered sixteen years before at the instigation
+of Boris. Several scenes, interesting in their way but somewhat lacking
+in horizon, were elaborated in accordance with this idea. Then, however,
+the plan was modified and it was decided to begin directly with a
+session of the Polish parliament at Cracow, at which Demetrius should
+appear and triumphantly assert his claims before King Sigismund and the
+assembled nobles. This scene, though left imperfect here and there, is
+certainly one of the best that ever came from Schiller's pen. As usual
+we have a bit of world-drama, for the element out of which the action
+grows is the national antipathy of Poles and Russians. And what an
+interesting figure is the young Demetrius, confronting all the pomp and
+power with the easy dignity of one born to kingship, and carrying the
+parliament with him by dint of his own self-confidence and royal
+bearing. He is essentially a new creation, unlike any of Schiller's
+other youthful heroes, though a certain family resemblance is of course
+discernible. Ambition of power is the great mainspring of his character,
+and he is as unscrupulous as Napoleon. Nevertheless he has his
+sentimental and his ethical promptings, and the whole basis of his
+conduct in this first part of the play is his perfect confidence that he
+is the son of Ivan.
+
+It is thus ever to be regretted that Schiller did not live to write the
+later scenes in which Demetrius, on the eve of his triumphant entry into
+Moscow, should be approached by the _fabricator doli_ and told the true
+story of his vulgar birth. Here, just as in the 'Oedipus Rex', was a
+stupendous tragic fate, unconnected with any conscious guilt and growing
+entirely out of the circumstances. What should Demetrius do? What he was
+to _say_ we know from a prose sketch which runs as follows:
+
+    You [addressed to the _fabricator doli_, who appears in the
+    manuscript as X] have pierced the heart of my life, you have taken
+    from me my faith in myself. Away, Courage and Hope! Away, joyous
+    self-confidence! I am caught in a lie. I am at variance with myself.
+    I am an enemy of mankind. I and truth are parted forever! What?
+    Shall I undeceive the people? Unmask myself as a deceiver?--I must
+    go forward. I must stand firm, and yet I can do it no longer in the
+    strength of inward conviction. Murder and blood must maintain me in
+    my position. How shall I meet the Czarina? How shall I enter Moscow
+    amid the plaudits of the people, with this lie in my heart?
+
+One sees from this whither Schiller's idea was tending. From the time
+that Demetrius is undeceived his character changes. The youth who, with
+truth on his side, had it in him to become a great and wise ruler,
+breaks with the moral law and becomes a Macbeth, or a Richard the Third.
+His course from this time on is flecked with blood and dishonored by
+treachery and tyranny. As Czar he excites the hatred of the Russians by
+his impolitic contempt of their customs. His Poles are insolent and
+trouble begins to brew about him. Finally there is an uprising against
+him and he falls--the victim of his own [Greek: hubris].
+
+Had Schiller been permitted by fate to complete 'Demetrius', we should
+have had, it is safe to say, the most impressive of all his heroes, with
+the possible exception of Wallenstein. And we should have had also, in
+all probability, the very best of his historical tragedies; for his plan
+had provided for an unusually large number of highly promising scenes.
+The picturesque Polish parliament, with its tumultuous ending; the first
+meeting of Demetrius with his reputed mother; the scene with the
+_fabricator doli_; the triumphal entry into Moscow; Demetrius as Czar in
+the Kremlin; his love intrigues with Axinia and his perfunctory marriage
+to Marina; the final gathering and bursting of the storm of
+indignation,--all this would have been wrought into a dramatic
+masterpiece of the first order.
+
+Like 'Demetrius' in having a royal pretender for a hero, but unlike it
+in every other respect, is the play which was to have been called
+'Warbeck'. To this subject Schiller's attention was drawn in the summer
+of 1799, while reading English history in Rapin de Thoyras. During the
+ensuing years he took it up repeatedly, but each time dropped it in
+favor of some other theme. At the time of his death he left 'Warbeck'
+material sufficient to make eighty-four pages of octavo print. The most
+of this material consists of prose schemes, but there are also several
+hundred verses, some of them complete, others with lacunae, great or
+small. By a close study of these data one can make out the general
+character of the proposed play and the essential lineaments of the more
+important characters. The play was not to have been a tragedy, and it
+would have owed to history hardly anything more than its _milieu_ and a
+few names. The plan was something like this:
+
+About the year 1492 there turns up at Brussels, at the court of
+Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, a young man calling himself Warbeck. He
+is ignorant of his own birth, and does not suppose himself to be of
+royal blood, but he has a strong resemblance to Edward the Fourth of
+England. Being herself of York blood and wishing to make trouble for the
+Tudor king, Henry the Seventh, Margaret persuades the stranger to
+pretend that he is the son of Edward the Fourth,--one of the two boys
+supposed to have been murdered in the tower by Richard of Gloucester. He
+consents to the fraud and speedily acquires a following as pretender to
+the English throne. In reality Margaret despises him and merely wishes
+to use him as a tool, but it soon appears that Warbeck is a man of
+character who insists on playing his assumed rôle in a manner worthy of
+an English sovereign. Preparations are made for an invasion of England
+to assert his claim. Meanwhile Warbeck falls in love with Adelaide, a
+princess of Brittany, for whom the imperious Margaret has other designs.
+Presently a man named Simnel appears, asserting fraudulently that _he_
+is a son of the fourth Edward. He and Warbeck fight a duel and Simnel is
+killed. Then the real Edward Plantagenet appears, with a convincing
+story of his own wonderful escape from the executioner in the Tower. A
+murderous plot is concocted against the boy's life, but he is saved by
+Warbeck, who acknowledges him as his rightful king. All this time
+Warbeck has supposed himself to be acting a part of pure fraud; and as
+he is really a man of honor, and in love with an amiable princess, the
+rôle of deceit has become increasingly hateful to him. At last, however,
+the old Earl of Kildare arrives, and from the depths of his superior
+knowledge makes it plain that Warbeck is in truth a natural son of
+Edward the Fourth. Thus all ends romantically and we have no adumbration
+of that later scene of the year 1499, when Perkin Warbeck was drawn and
+quartered at Tyburn.
+
+From this plan it is clear that the principal stress was to fall on the
+character of Warbeck, conceived as a high-minded youth entangled in an
+odious lie. To quote Schiller's exact words: 'The problem of the piece
+is to carry him (Warbeck) ever deeper into situations in which his
+deceit brings him to despair, and to let his natural truthfulness
+increase as the circumstances force him to deception.' To arouse
+sympathy for such a character would have been, to say the least, a
+difficult task; one cannot wonder that Schiller was perplexed by it. The
+schemes indicate that his main reliance was the love-story, which would
+have been very prominent. Of the other characters, the most important,
+probably, was the Duchess Margaret, conceived as a selfish, overbearing,
+heartless creature, in sharp contrast with the romantic Adelaide. On the
+whole, judging from such imperfect data as we possess, one must regard
+'Warbeck' as a far less powerful and promising design than 'Demetrius'.
+
+Contemporaneous with 'Warbeck' and 'Demetrius', and broadly similar to
+them in that it was to deal with a political adventurer and to present
+an elaborate picture of intrigue in high life, is the plan of a play
+which was at first called 'Count Königsmark'. The subject occupied the
+thoughts of Schiller for some little time in the summer of 1804, until
+it was dropped in favor of 'Demetrius'. Count Königsmark was a nobleman
+who was murdered in the year 1694, at the court of Duke George I., of
+Hannover, in consequence of a supposed criminal relation with the
+Duchess Sophia, a princess of the house of Celle. As he mused upon the
+dramatic possibilities of the story, Schiller became less interested in
+Königsmark and more in the compromised duchess; so the name of the piece
+was changed to 'The Princess of Celle'. From his extant notes and
+sketches one can make out that the heroine was conceived, like Mary
+Stuart, as a noble sufferer. She is a virtuous lady who is given in
+marriage for political reasons to an unloved and licentious duke, whose
+mistresses insult her. In her misery she makes a friend of the
+chivalrous but inflammable Königsmark. Their relation excites suspicion,
+Königsmark is murdered and the duchess sent to prison,--disgraced but
+innocent. In prison she finds peace of soul, just as Mary Stuart finds
+it in the presence of death.
+
+Much older than any of these plans and entirely different from them, is
+that of the 'Knights of Malta', which dates back to the year 1788. While
+pursuing his studies for 'Don Carlos' Schiller had become greatly
+interested in the story of La Valette's heroic defense of Malta in 1565.
+It seemed to him to promise well for a tragedy in the Greek style,--with
+a chorus, a simple plot and few characters. He began work upon it, but
+was soon diverted by his historical studies. In subsequent years,
+however, he returned to 'The Knights of Malta' from time to time, and as
+late as 1803 was strongly minded to attempt the completion of the work.
+During these fifteen years the plan underwent various changes. Although
+certain aspects of the subject made it very attractive to Schiller, he
+felt from the first that it lacked the 'salient point' of a good
+tragedy. The extant data show him working tentatively with one idea
+after another, without ever finding exactly what he wanted. This being
+so, it is hardly worth while to go minutely into the history of his
+plans and perplexities.
+
+'The Knights of Malta' was to have been a poetic tragedy of heroic
+devotion, friendship and self-sacrifice. The exposition, as we have it
+in outline, shows,--partly by means of a chorus of 'spiritual'
+knights,--the desperate plight of the besieged Christians. The crisis
+requires absolute devotion to the principles of the order, but the
+knights have degenerated. Two of them are quarreling over a captured
+Greek girl, and so forth. La Valette, the grandmaster, institutes stern
+measures of reform to restore the ancient _morale_ of the order, and
+these provoke intrigue and opposition. The defenders of Fort St. Elmo
+ask to be relieved, on the ground that the place cannot be held. La
+Valette decides that St. Elmo must be defended to the last: it is a case
+where a few must be ready to sacrifice themselves for their principles
+and for the order as a whole. Among those thus sent to death is La
+Valette's own son, who leaves behind a very dear friend. In the end the
+defenders of St. Elmo are killed, but Malta and the order are saved. The
+Turks raise the siege.
+
+Reading this outline one has no great difficulty In seeing why
+Schiller's dramatic instinct could never be satisfied with 'The Knights
+of Malta'. It has no tragic climax, no point upon which the action could
+be focused. As a stage-play it would have had small chance of favor, on
+account of its chorus and its entire lack of female characters. Romantic
+love was to be left out and friendship to take its place. But could
+anything worth while have been done with the heroics of friendship after
+'Don Carlos'? On the whole one must regard it as a great good fortune
+for the German drama that, when Schiller was hesitating in 1796 between
+'Wallenstein' and 'The Knights of Malta', the former carried the day. As
+for the pseudo-antique chorus, the best that he could do with that, by
+way of an experiment, was done later in 'The Bride of Messina'.
+
+Besides those already mentioned, there are a number of other plans which
+deserve a word, were it only to show the wide range of Schiller's
+interest and the eagerness of his quest after variety. Thus we find him
+occupied, at one time or another, with two antique themes, 'Aggripina'
+and 'The Death of Themistocles'; with an Anglo-Saxon theme of the tenth
+century, 'Elfride', and with a medieval romantic theme, 'The Countess of
+Flanders'. Then we find two subjects that were suggested by the reading
+of modern travels, 'The Ship' and 'The Filibuster'. In one the scene was
+to be laid on some distant coast or island, and the plot was to
+illustrate sea-life and commerce, with their characteristic types. In
+the other the whole action was to take place on shipboard, bringing in a
+mutiny, ship's justice, a sea-fight, trade with savages, and so forth.
+Finally there are sketches of two other plays, based on the annals of
+crime. In one of them, called 'The Children of the House', the hero was
+to be a thorough scoundrel, whom Nemesis would impel mysteriously to a
+course of conduct whereby his long hidden crimes would be discovered.
+The other, entitled 'The Police', was to present a story of crime and
+its discovery at Paris,--with telling realistic pictures for which
+Schiller took a mass of interesting notes.
+
+Verily, a rich collection, which shows that a good deal of Schiller
+failed to find expression in the works he completed. One could wish
+particularly that we had those sea-plays, and the Parisian criminal
+drama. Perhaps in that case the critics who have taxed him with this or
+that narrowness would have found it more difficult to make headway.
+
+We turn now from these dramatic might-have-beens to glance at the
+translations and adaptations made for the Weimar theater.[130] And first
+it should be observed that in all these, without exception, Schiller's
+point of view was that of a practical playwright, not that of a literary
+virtuoso. His concern was to enrich the repertory of the theater with
+good acting plays; plays which, when put upon the boards, would 'go',
+and go with such actors and such properties as were to be had. In his
+efforts to do this he was never restrained by any feeling of piety
+toward his originals from making such changes as commended themselves to
+his dramaturgic principles or instinct. The first work of this kind
+undertaken by him at Weimar was a version of Goethe's 'Egmont', made in
+1796. Iffland was starring in Weimar and wished to appear as Egmont.
+Goethe was just then somewhat lukewarm toward the theater, and even if
+he had not been, it was by no means hidden from him that his own
+strength lay in the poetic rather than the dramatic sphere. So it was
+arranged that Schiller, as a man of experience, should operate upon the
+play that he had reviewed so candidly some years before. His procedure
+was 'consistent but cruel', as Goethe afterward phrased it. He dropped
+the rôle of Margaret of Parma entirely, rearranged here and there in
+order to avoid a too frequent change of scene, and made a multitude of
+little changes in the interest of stage effect. As to the propriety of
+these alterations it is futile to argue on general grounds, since so
+much depends on the point of view, and the point of view has changed.
+To-day people who go to the theater to see 'Egmont' prefer to see the
+play, for better or worse, as Goethe wrote it. Piety toward the author
+counts more than abstract principles. For a while Schiller's version of
+'Egmont' had a certain vogue in the German theaters, but it soon gave
+way to an increasing preference for the original. Goethe himself was
+pleased when this tendency manifested itself.
+
+Similar considerations apply to the version of Lessing's 'Nathan',
+which was made in 1801. Strangely enough, as it seems to us now,
+Lessing's masterpiece had up to that time met with no favor on the
+German stage. It was not so much that people objected to its
+philosophic drift as that something seemed to be lacking in its
+dramatic quality. Very naturally Goethe and Schiller, who were strongly
+in sympathy with Lessing's tendency, were desirous of domesticating
+'Nathan' on the Weimar boards. So Schiller undertook an adaptation,
+taking the task very seriously. Years before, while following up the
+theory of the drama in his strict and strenuous fashion, he had
+convinced himself that 'Nathan' was a monstrosity; it was neither
+tragedy nor comedy nor tragi-comedy, and he was opposed to a mixture of
+types. In tragedy, so he had reasoned in his essay upon 'Naïve and
+Sentimental Poetry', _raisonnement_ is out of place; in comedy, pathos.
+Lessing had yielded to the 'whim' of mixing the two. If, therefore, it
+was desired to make an acceptable stage-play out of 'Nathan' it would
+be advisable to modify it in the direction of tragedy by reducing its
+_raisonnement_, or else to make it more like comedy by reducing its
+pathos. In other words, theory had given Schiller a point of view which
+is not the modern point of view. To-day no one, unless it were a
+pedant, would be disposed to criticize Lessing, because, toward the end
+of his days, out of the fullness of his heart and following the impulse
+that was in him, he for once threw his own theories to the winds and
+wrote a dramatic masterpiece of its own peculiar kind. The very fact
+that it is unique is for us a part of its merit.
+
+But now, as was pointed out in a preceding chapter, the effect of
+Schiller's occupation with the drama at Weimar was to weaken his
+reverence for theory and to convince him of the importance of 'keeping
+the type-idea flexible in one's mind'. So when he came to adapt 'Nathan'
+for the stage he proceeded much less radically than one might expect
+from his previous utterances. The tendency of the play was left intact,
+but many changes were made in the interest of brevity, simplicity and
+rapidity of movement. To these no one can seriously object, since
+Lessing's text is too long for an evening in the theater, as the matter
+was regarded in those pre-Wagnerian days. Not so readily to be approved
+are certain other changes which amount to a retouching of some of the
+portraits with which Schiller was dissatisfied,--notably that of the
+Sultan Saladin.
+
+Of much greater interest than either of these adaptations is that of
+'Macbeth', which was made in January and February, 1800. This particular
+tragedy of Shakspere had always been a favorite with Schiller, and its
+influence is discernible in some of his plays, especially in
+'Wallenstein'. It was only natural, therefore, at a time when Goethe and
+Schiller were reaching out in every direction for the enrichment of
+their theatrical repertory, that the staging of 'Macbeth' should appear
+as a consummation devoutly to be wished. There were already German
+versions which had been used at various theaters, but they were wretched
+travesties of Shakspere. In setting out to make a new and better one,
+Schiller took as the basis of his operations the translations of Wieland
+and of Eschenburg, following now the one and now the other. When he was
+half through with his labor he procured the English text and used it
+thereafter as a corrective. He added, subtracted and rearranged at will,
+and converted Shakspere's prose into verse. The result is a decidedly
+Schilleresque 'Macbeth', the merit of which has been debated to this
+day. The Romanticists, with A. W. Schlegel at their head, were disgusted
+with it and did not hide their emotions. Others have defended it through
+thick and thin. The questions involved are too far-reaching to be
+discussed here, but it may at least be remarked that there is no ground
+for a severely unfavorable judgment of Schiller's work. It is in no
+sense a translation and is not to be judged as a literary performance at
+all, but as a stage-play. As such it served its purpose very well; it
+made Shakspere acceptable at Weimar in the only way then possible under
+the circumstances. And it helped bring Shakspere into favor elsewhere.
+The Schillerized 'Macbeth' may be regarded as a sort of necessary
+transition-stage between the gross travesties of an earlier time and the
+more faithful presentations that were to come.
+
+With respect to 'Turandot' a few words must suffice. This again grew out
+of the laudable desire of the duumvirs to acclimate in Weimar dramatic
+productions that had pleased the public in other climes. Gozzi's
+so-called _fiabe_ belonged to this class. They had had a great though
+short-lived vogue at Venice, and this had led to a German translation in
+prose by a man named Werthes. What Schiller did was to turn the prose of
+Werthes into pentameters of the style that he had made peculiarly his
+own. He seems not to have looked at the Italian text at all, and indeed
+it could have been of little use to him. As one would expect, he made an
+attempt to give some poetic weight to the fantastic trifle, but it was a
+thankless undertaking, albeit good Italian critics have praised his
+'Turandot' as far superior to the original. The comic-opera subject, for
+such it really is, was not adapted to Schiller's vein. His 'Turandot' is
+distinctly stiff and operose. It had a short run at two or three
+theaters, where, as at Weimar, it excited a small interest on account of
+the riddles and the Chinese 'business', and then it was quietly
+consigned to the limbo of things that were.
+
+The remaining adaptations made by Schiller were from the French, a
+language which he knew better than any other except his own. The Duke of
+Weimar, and with him a considerable portion of the Weimar public, had
+retained from early education a strong predilection for the French
+drama, both in comedy and in the _haute tragédie_. It was thus a cause
+of joy in court circles when it became known, in the autumn of 1799,
+that Goethe had so far overcome his early anti-Gallic prejudices as to
+have undertaken a translation for the stage of Voltaire's 'Mahomet'. To
+this enterprise, however, he was moved not so much by any change of
+heart, or by poetic sympathy, as by a desire to improve the style of the
+Weimar actors,--to teach them ideality and self-abnegation. With this
+purpose Schiller was in hearty accord, as can be seen from his verses
+'To Goethe', written in January, 1800, in which he set forth his
+dramatic confession of faith. The Frenchman, he declared with unction,
+could by no means serve them as a model; there must be no bringing back
+of the old fetters. The Germans had advanced to a new era, and demanded
+now a faithful picture of nature. Nevertheless their histrionic art was
+in a backward condition, lacking in ideality and distinction. Wherefore
+the French tragedy was to be welcomed as a 'guide to the better'. It was
+to come 'like a departed spirit and purify the desecrated stage into a
+worthy seat of the ancient Melpomene'.
+
+The result of this new _rapprochement_ was that Schiller began to take a
+more lively interest in the French drama, and out of this interest grew
+presently his translations of two of Picard's comedies, 'Médiocre et
+Rampant' and 'Encore des Ménechmes'. In both he took his task very
+lightly. Picard's alexandrines, in 'Médiocre et Rampant', were converted
+into German prose, and the play was christened 'The Parasite'. In the
+case of the other, renamed 'The Nephew as Uncle', the original was in
+prose and Schiller merely made a free translation. These enterprises
+were little more than hackwork, which had its suitable reward of brief
+popularity. Of an entirely different character is the version of
+Racine's 'Phèdre', which, as we have seen, was finished a few weeks
+before Schiller's death. Here we have for the first time what can
+properly be called a poetic translation. To a large extent Schiller's
+version is a line-for-line rendering of the French alexandrines into
+German pentameters,--a thing by no means easy to do. 'Phedra' is by far
+the best specimen we have of Schiller's powers as a translator.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 129: In the year 1805 it was still usual at Weimar to have the
+bodies of the dead borne to the grave in the night by hired workmen. On
+the death of Schiller the burgomaster gave orders in accordance with the
+custom, and it was with some difficulty that friends of the dead man
+succeeded in displacing the guild on which the lot had fallen and
+securing for themselves the privilege of acting as bearers. While lying
+in the old churchyard the bones of Schiller became commingled with
+others in the vault, so that the proper reassembling of his mortal
+framework, in the year 1826, was a matter of some perplexity. For a
+while the skull was exhibited in the court library, where it called
+forth Goethe's well-known poem.]
+
+[Footnote 130: For an excellent discussion of Schiller's more important
+adaptations the reader is referred to A. Köster, "Schiller als
+Dramaturg", Berlin, 1891.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+The Verdict of Posterity
+
+    Alles was der Dichter geben kann ist seine Individualität; diese
+    musz also wert sein, vor Welt und Nachwelt aufgestellt zu
+    werden.--_Review of Bürger, 1791_.
+
+Rather more than in other countries it is the fashion in Germany to
+regard literature under a national aspect, and to judge of writers not
+so much according to their power of titillating a fastidious literary
+taste as according to the degree in which they have entered into and
+affected the intellectual life of the people at large. Looked at from
+this point of view, Schiller well deserves the name of a national poet;
+indeed it would be hard to find another modern man who deserves it
+better. Critics there have always been to find fault with this and that,
+yet he remains, after a century, the most truly popular of German poets;
+not the most admired by the literary class, or by the outside world, but
+the most beloved in his own country. Most Germans have a different
+feeling for Schiller from that which they cherish for any other of their
+great writers.
+
+For this his idealized personality is largely responsible. He is
+habitually thought of as an exceptionally noble and lofty character; as
+a man more singly and more strenuously devoted than most men to those
+starry ideals of truth, beauty and freedom, to which in the abstract all
+acknowledge fealty. His memory was early invested with a sort of halo,
+as of secular sainthood, for which, when one soberly reviews the facts
+of his career, there seems at first but little warrant. Many another man
+has been no less serious in his philosophizing, no less conscientious in
+his artistic performance. There is nothing heroic in the story of his
+life, unless it were his battle with disease; and this might have been
+managed more wisely, if not more bravely. And yet the halo is not
+altogether factitious. Many who knew him in his later years have borne
+witness to his spiritualized expression and the fine dignity of his
+presence. He gave the impression of an eminent personage whose "soul was
+like a star and dwelt apart". Withal he was a pattern of the homely
+virtues; an affectionate husband and father and a loyal friend. There
+was no dissonance between his life and his poetry. On hearing of his
+death, the sculptor Dannecker wrote:
+
+    The godlike man stands continually before my eyes, I will make him
+    life-like. Schiller must live in sculpture as a colossal form. I
+    intend an apotheosis.... The king was lately in my studio, and when
+    he saw Schiller so large he said: 'Zounds! But why so large?' I
+    answered: 'Majesty, Schiller must be thus large; the Suabian must
+    make a monument to the Suabian.' Said the king: 'You must have been
+    a good friend of his.' I answered: 'Yes, Majesty, from my youth up.
+    I occupy myself with him daily, working at the colossal bust. It
+    costs trouble, but it gives me joy, because the colossal image will
+    make an indescribable impression.'
+
+But it was not only his friends who were thus affected by his
+personality. Madame de Staël said of him in her famous book on Germany,
+which was published in 1813:
+
+    Schiller was as admirable for his virtues as for his talents.
+    Conscience was his muse.... He loved poetry, the dramatic art,
+    history, literature, for their own sake. Had he been resolved not
+    to publish his works, he would have bestowed the same care upon
+    them.... In his youth he had been guilty of some vagaries of
+    fancy, but with the strength of manhood he acquired that exalted
+    purity which springs from great thoughts. He never had anything to
+    do with the vulgar feelings. He lived, spoke and acted as if bad
+    people did not exist; and when he portrayed them in his works, it
+    was with more exaggeration and less depth than if he had known
+    them. The bad presented themselves to his mind as an obstacle, as
+    a physical scourge.
+
+In this characterization, truth to tell, there is a considerable element
+of pure moonshine, as any one may convince himself who will read through
+Schiller's letters, more especially those written during the lifetime of
+the _Horen_. He had in him quite enough of the fighter and of the
+schemer, and it came out in human ways. Moreover he wrote constantly for
+immediate publication, under the goad of strong necessity; what he might
+have done if this necessity had not existed, no man, or woman, can tell.
+Still, Madame de Staël's portrait is highly interesting, as the first
+that went out to the world at large, and as evidence of the impression
+produced by Schiller in his later years even upon those who were under
+no peculiar temptation to idealize him.
+
+Much more influential in shaping the sentiment of posterity was Goethe's
+magnificent 'Epilogue', dating from the year 1815. In this poem the
+essential lineaments of Schiller's character, as seen through the
+soothing but not yet obscuring vista of ten years by the wisest of those
+who knew him well, were fixed for all time. He was here described as one
+who had 'mounted to the highest heights, closely akin to all that we
+esteem'; and posterity was besought to give him that which life had
+denied. Henceforth it was possible only for purblind partisanship to
+think otherwise than nobly of a man concerning whom a Goethe could say
+such words as these:
+
+  Denn er war unser. Mag das stolze Wort
+  Den lauten Schmerz gewaltig übertönen.
+  Er mochte sich bei uns im sichern Port,
+  Nach wildem Sturm, zum Dauernden gewöhnen.
+  Indessen schritt sein Geist gewaltig fort
+  Ins Ewige des Guten, Wahren, Schönen;
+  Und hinter ihm, in wesenlosem Scheine,
+  Lag was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine.[131]
+
+Nevertheless the purblind partisanship was already beginning its
+campaign, though less against Schiller's character than against his art;
+and this campaign soon led to a terrific logomachy, which was destined
+to convulse the German empire of the air for something like two
+generations. The controversy related to the comparative merit of Goethe
+and Schiller as men and as poets. In general the Romantic school was
+hostile to Schiller, partly for private reasons that had very little to
+do with critical theories. In his famous 'Lectures on Dramatic Art',
+originally delivered at Vienna in 1808 and published a few years later,
+A.W. Schlegel dealt briefly with Schiller at the end of the course. What
+he said was not unmixed with just appreciation, but the lectures set a
+bad fashion in German criticism. Modern poetry was identified with
+Romantic poetry and Shakspere was held up as _the_ Romantic poet. Not
+only his greatness, but his rubbish, his rodomontade, his quips and
+quibbles and buffoonery, were treated as if they belonged to a
+sacrosanct canon of dramatic art. From this the natural inference was
+that to be like Shakspere was to be great, and that no other kind of
+greatness was possible for the Romantic, or modern, poet. As for
+Schiller, he was treated by Schlegel with urbane condescension as a
+gifted playwright who had tried to imitate Shakspere and met with but
+limited success. The early plays were dismissed with a mere cry of pain,
+and the later ones were discussed very briefly and perfunctorily with
+respect to purely formal matters.
+
+As already remarked, the lectures of Schlegel were sufficiently urbane
+in tone and gave no foretaste of that bitterness with which he
+subsequently attacked Schiller in some of his poems. What is here
+important to observe is that Schlegel, and the other Romanticists who
+took their cue from him, set the vogue of judging Goethe and Schiller
+according to their imagined resemblance to Shakspere. Certain catchwords
+and phrases, such as universality, objectivity, irony, and what not,
+were imported into the literature of discussion, and these concepts were
+used as absolute criteria by which to write Goethe up and Schiller down.
+This naturally provoked the many friends of Schiller, and they replied
+by assailing Goethe. His 'universality' was decried as a lamentable
+weakness: it meant lack of character, of principle, of patriotism. His
+pleasing form was only the seductive veil of immorality and
+pococurantism. And so the controversy raged, becoming at last, in some
+cases, mere blind fury. One who would like to get a vivid impression of
+the state of German criticism at this time, and of the extent to which
+partisanship could obfuscate the vision of an intelligent and
+well-meaning man, should read the third volume of Wolfgang Menzel's
+'German Literature', published in 1828. Menzel's treatment of Goethe is
+one long diatribe of misrepresentation, becoming at times a mere
+ululation of malignant hatred. Schiller, on the other hand, is exalted
+to the skies as the peerless representative of all that is noble in
+human nature and in poetry.
+
+This fierce old battle of pen and ink, which was really a disgrace to
+German civilization, is still capable of affording, for the passionate
+fury and wrong-headedness of it, a modicum of amusement to the
+retrospective scholar of to-day. And it amused Goethe, who as usual
+found the sane point of view. Said he to Eckermann, one day in the year
+1825: 'These twenty years the public has been contending as to which is
+the greater, Schiller or I; they ought rather to be glad that they have
+a brace of such fellows to quarrel about.' In all his talks with
+Eckermann Goethe remained steadfastly faithful to the memory of his
+friend, giving no comfort to those who were using his own name as a
+bludgeon wherewith to batter the prestige of Schiller. 'Schiller', said
+he, 'could do nothing that did not turn out greater than the best work
+of these moderns. Yes, even when he cut his finger-nails he was greater
+than these gentlemen.' He freely criticized this and that in particular
+plays, observing that there was 'something violent' in Schiller's
+methods; he even committed himself to the dubious conjecture that
+certain weak passages might be due to physical exhaustion or to the
+unwholesome stimulation of flagging energies. But the ever recurring
+burden of his discourse was--_Er war ein prächtiger Mensch_.
+
+The death of Goethe, in 1832, brought to an end conspicuously the epoch
+of the Weimarian poets. Indeed it had ended virtually long before, but
+it was not until Goethe too had become a memory that its significance
+was fully realized. The Germans now saw, and the rest of the world saw
+too, that they had a classical literature which really counted. They
+began to speak of 'our classics', and to compare and contrast
+them with the newest literary manifestations. Writers of every
+kind,--philosophers, literary critics and historians, poets, novelists,
+journalists, politicians and agitators,--had now to adjust themselves
+mentally to Goethe and Schiller and what they stood for, or were
+supposed to stand for. And so the river of literature, which in our day
+has become a great Amazon, commenced flowing in a small, but steady and
+ever widening stream. Hoffmeister's monumental biography of Schiller, in
+five volumes, appeared between 1838 and 1842, and in the ensuing years
+there came a procession of less thorough biographers, writing more for
+the unlearned public. The criticism of him as a poet and a dramatist was
+still subordinated, in a large degree, to the consideration of him as
+the prophet of ideas which were to be examined with reference to their
+ethical and moral value, or to the degree of their applicability to then
+existing conditions.
+
+The period now under consideration is, roughly speaking, the period from
+the beginning of acute political agitation, about 1830, to the
+realization of national unity in 1871. During the first part of this era
+academic philosophy was still largely under the influence of Hegel, but
+the reaction had set in and was destined to grow into a widespread
+distrust of all speculative philosophy. Not to explain and justify the
+existing world by the arachnean method of spinning a _Weltanschauung_
+out of one's own interior, but to make the world different,--was the new
+watchword. It was widely felt that Germans had speculated and theorized
+and dreamed too much; it was time to assert their strength in practical
+affairs. Men's minds began to be engaged with questions of political
+reform and social regeneration. It was no longer the ideal, the good,
+the beautiful and the true, that pressed for consideration, but
+constitutional government, the freedom of the press, popular
+representation and, above all, German unity. But chaos seemed to reign
+in the intellectual sphere. Young Germany, so called, began a noisy
+agitation which had no definite goal in view, but was characterized by a
+fierce hostility to existing forms in church and state,--to princes,
+aristocrats, priests, Christian marriage and conventional morality. And
+there were other agitations, doctrines, theories and tendencies
+innumerable. Germany had become, to revive a comparison then much in
+vogue, an irresolute Hamlet, sicklied o'er with the pale cast of
+thought. Talk, talk, everywhere, and nowhere the strong hand of
+constructive statesmanship. And so came the abortive revolution of 1848,
+with its ensuing disgusts, until finally the man of destiny appeared and
+conducted affairs, by way of Sadowa and Sedan, to the new German Empire.
+
+Now in that era of the doctrinaires, of the philosophical break-up and
+of seething political passions, it was but natural that those who
+thought of Schiller at all thought not so much of the dramatic artist as
+of the prophet whose sentiments could be quoted for present edification
+or reproof. The men of the middle part of the century judged him
+generally from the partisan standpoint of their own political,
+philosophical and religious prejudices. This is true not only of the
+forgotten criticasters, but of the most famous, the most widely read and
+the most authoritative literary historians of the time, such as Gervinus
+and Vilmar. And in the domain of pure dramatic criticism, or what
+purported to be such, there was quite too much of that captious
+dogmatism which had come down from the Romanticists and which had its
+origin, as we have seen, in the habit of regarding Shakspere, not as the
+great dramatist of a nation and an epoch, but as _the_ universal modern
+poet, whose methods and peculiarities must be canonical for
+everybody.[132] Instead of looking fairly and squarely at Schiller's
+plays and endeavoring to understand and interpret them as the expression
+of the life of a past epoch, and of an artistic individuality which had
+its own right to be and to grow in its own way, the dogmatic critics
+treated him, in many cases, _de haut en bas_, as if they knew everything
+better than he. Men who would have thought it a little absurd to assail
+Mont Blanc for not being Chimborazo did not scruple to gird at Schiller
+for not being something else than that which his nature made him. And so
+it was that the great dramatic poet of the nation, whose plays were
+daily proving their vitality in scores of theaters and were giving
+pleasure to millions of readers, was treated oftentimes with incredible
+severity by pompous Rhadamanthine critics who did not see that they were
+thereby making themselves and their critical pretensions slightly
+ridiculous.
+
+Of course this line of remark is not meant to imply that the works of
+anybody should have been regarded as above criticism because they were
+popular and had become classical. What is intended is simply to
+characterize a past critical epoch which, in dealing with imaginative
+literature, cared a little too much for abstract dogmas and
+theoretical standpoints; which, instead of trying to enter humanly
+into the spirit of an author and to judge him according to the nature
+of his intentions and his success in carrying them out, preferred to
+lay him on a bed of Procrustes and hack at him with the axe of
+philosophy. Literature, like language, goes on its way with very
+little tenderness for theories and dogmas. That which meets the needs
+of human nature lives and after a while its 'faults' are forgotten; or
+mayhap they come to be regarded as merits, and the rules are extended
+to include the new case. Not to have seen this quite clearly enough
+was a weakness of the vigorous and rigorous German critics of half a
+century ago. And yet, some of them did see it dimly now and then.
+Reference was made a moment ago to Gervinus,--certainly one of the
+most learned, thoughtful and generally meritorious of German literary
+historians,--and it was implied that he too was affected by the bias
+of his age. It is thus a pleasure to quote a passage from him which
+shows him in a different light. It is from the fifth volume of his
+'National-Litteratur der Deutschen', published in 1842:
+
+    If one insists on condemning 'Wallenstein' as a whole because one
+    must reject the episode (of Max and Thekla), then one blinds oneself
+    deliberately to great merits on account of small faults. The
+    historical critic feels clearly here the disadvantage in which a
+    living or recently deceased writer is placed, in comparison with an
+    earlier one whose entire individuality has receded into the distance
+    and is beyond the strife of the passions. Soon after Shakspere's
+    death there was the same quarrel about him that we are having now
+    about Schiller. To-day that which was imputed to him as vice is so
+    interblended with his virtues that it is regarded as trivial to
+    waste a serious word upon it. So it may be one day with our poets;
+    and then people will look at the faults in Schiller's compositions
+    from other points of view. We shall then manage to get along with
+    what was done and accepted long ago, and content ourselves with
+    explaining it; whereas now, at the beginning of its course, though
+    we cannot unmake it, we think perhaps to prevent its acceptance and
+    deprive it of immortality by rejecting it unexplained.
+
+Here is certainly a highly interesting modern case of the fulfillment
+of prophecy.
+
+Another phase of the Schiller-question which was much discussed in the
+middle portion of the nineteenth century was his aesthetic idealism.
+While his plays carry one into the rushing currents of life, and while
+his ballads are poems of action, it was possible to extract from his
+'Letters on Aesthetic Education' and from some of his poems, notably
+'The Ideal and Life', what seemed to be a message of aesthetic quietism;
+a message which appeared to say that the attainment of inward peace,
+freedom and harmony was the highest goal of human effort. Naturally
+enough the individualism and aestheticism of the Weimarian poets were
+not welcome doctrine to an excited generation that had caught a glimpse
+of an immense work to be done for the fatherland. The ever increasing
+pressure of social emotions made it seem a selfish and unmanly thing to
+be so concerned about one's own spiritual equipoise. This feeling finds
+frequent expression in the literature of the time; and so much was it
+harped on, and so feebly were the countervailing considerations
+presented, that many people, both in Germany and outside of it, got into
+their heads a radically wrong conception of the Weimarian Dioscuri; a
+conception which quite forgot that both of them, all their lives long,
+were very strenuous workers, strongly possessed by the social sentiment.
+And even those who were too wise to be thus completely misled as to the
+significance and the value of the Weimarian legacy could not help
+feeling that for the present, at least, it were better regarded as a
+dead issue. One can understand the sentiment with which Gervinus closed
+his great history of the national literature: 'The rival contest of the
+arts is finished. Now we should set before us the other mark, which no
+archer among us has yet hit, and see if peradventure Apollo will grant
+us here too the renown that he did not refuse us there.'
+
+But while the critics and doctrinaires were contending thus variously
+about the merits of Schiller, his name endeared itself more and more to
+the many who were chafing under the régime of princely absolutism and
+were longing for a freer Germany. They idealized him as the poet of
+liberty,--chiefly, it would seem, on account of 'William Tell', or,
+among radical and boisterous youth, on account of 'The Robbers'; for the
+'freedom' of his poems is a metaphysical rather than a political
+concept. In the year 1844 Freiligrath committed himself definitively to
+the cause of 'the people', as he understood it, which proved to be the
+cause of the Red Republicans. In announcing his conversion he wrote a
+poem called 'Good Morning', the last stanza of which, done into rough
+English rime, runs thus:
+
+  Good morning then! Behold a freeman here,
+  Walking henceforward in the people's ways;
+  For with the people is the poet's sphere,--
+  'Tis thus I read my Schiller nowadays.[133]
+
+But he read him quite wrongly. For a much saner view of this question
+one should go back to honest Eckermann, who reports Goethe as saying to
+him in 1824: 'Schiller, who, between ourselves, was much more of an
+aristocrat than I, has the remarkable fortune to count as a particular
+friend of the people.' This is exactly right. Neither man had in him
+much of the stuff that tribunes of the people are made of, but Schiller
+had less of it than Goethe. His whole temper was that of an aristocrat.
+Had he lived in the forties of the nineteenth century, we may be very
+sure that he would have scented a return of the French Terror, and would
+have spoken, if at all, as an arch-conservative.
+
+And really there is but cold comfort in 'William Tell' for those who, in
+the revolutionary epoch, were clamoring against princes as such. The
+play is in no sense anti-monarchical, nor is it either German or
+un-German, but simply human. As a curious illustration of the unreason
+that men could once be guilty of through their habit of regarding
+Schiller as a political poet, it is worth while to quote a passage from
+Vilmar, whose history of German literature enjoyed great popularity half
+a century ago. Speaking of 'William Tell', Vilmar has this to say:
+
+    For the rest it is remarkable that Schiller's contemporaries and a
+    large part of posterity looked upon 'Tell' as a peculiarly German
+    play, and that too in respect of its subject-matter. They conceived
+    it as a glorification of German deeds and held it up to admiration
+    as a sort of symbol of German sentiment, in opposition to the French
+    policy of subjugation in 1806-1813; the fact being that Tell's deed,
+    as it appears in the saga and in Schiller's drama, represents and
+    glorifies the unfortunate and in part criminal detachment of
+    Switzerland from the German Empire. Napoleon was in those days the
+    only one who saw this and expressed his amazement that Germans could
+    thus praise such a thoroughly anti-German play as a drama glorifying
+    the German fatherland.
+
+It is sufficient to remark, if the matter were of any importance, that
+the Swiss revolution, as portrayed by Schiller, is not directed
+against the Empire, but against the brutes sent out by the Hapsburg
+dynasty in pursuance of a policy of dynastic aggrandizement. In
+numerous passages it is brought out that the very thing the
+conspirators are concerned about is to preserve their ancient
+_Reichsunmittelbarkeit_. All that they wish is to get back and
+perpetuate the liberties they have until lately enjoyed _under the
+Empire_. 'Freedom' nowhere means 'independence', and there is no vista
+of independence at the end of the play.
+
+The year 1859 was marked by a prodigious ebullition of Schiller
+enthusiasm. While the hundredth birthday of Goethe had passed, ten years
+before, with but little notice, that of Schiller was made the occasion
+of a demonstration the like of which the modern world has hardly seen
+made in honor of any other poet whatsoever. In every part of Germany,
+and not in Germany only but in Austria, Switzerland, England and the New
+World, the memory of Schiller was honored in speech and song, in the
+unveiling of monuments, and in commemorative writings large and small.
+It was as if the entire German-speaking world, still dreaming the lately
+baffled dream of national unity, had turned to him as the noblest of the
+spiritual ties that bind Germans together. In the mass of literature
+dating from that time of flood-tide in the veneration of Schiller, one
+finds a good deal that is interesting in its own way, for one reason or
+another, but not very much that is highly valuable for illuminative
+criticism of Schiller. The best of the biographies are those of Palleske
+and Scherr; of the minor tributes the famous address of Jacob Grimm in
+the Berlin Academy. The spirit of the time was not favorable to a calm,
+objective view, but it is in itself a fact of immense significance that
+a great and critical, doctrine-ridden and passion-distracted people
+should have united in honoring a poet as Schiller was honored by the
+Germans in the year 1859.
+
+A new epoch may be dated from about 1871,--the epoch of the historical
+critics and philologers. With the realization of national unity the
+vista of the past rapidly cleared up and new points of view were
+gained. It was as if a height had been won from which it was possible
+to see over the dust and smoke of the past three decades. The pride of
+the new-born nation now looked back with quickened interest to the
+great writers of the eighteenth century, but with the feeling that they
+had done enough for the glory of the fatherland in simply being great
+writers. It was time to see them as they were, without writing them up
+or down, according to their supposed attitude toward questions which
+were not their questions. It was in 1874 that Herman Grimm remarked, in
+a lecture at Berlin, that henceforth there was to be a science called
+Goethe. All the world knows how the prediction has been fulfilled.
+During the last two decades the science called Goethe has marched
+bravely on, enlisting a small army of workers, creating a vast jungle
+of literature,--_selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte_,--and making friends
+and enemies. And the science called Schiller is like unto it, only not
+quite so big.
+
+To attempt any sort of review or conspectus of all this Alexandrian
+activity would be, for the purposes of this book, a futile undertaking;
+it would lead off into an interminable and dry bibliography, which in
+the end would convey little instruction as to Schiller's real
+popularity. It would show that he is very extensively studied and
+commented on by the academic class, which in Germany constitutes by
+itself an enormous public. It would also show that good judges, of
+apparently equal competence, still think very differently of the general
+merit of his art and are very differently affected by particular works.
+This is only to reiterate the familiar truth that literary criticism has
+not become, does not tend to become, an exact science. The feeling one
+has for poetry, or the effect produced upon one by a particular artistic
+individuality, is the result of a hundred subtle influences that combine
+to give each one of us his private form and range of susceptibility; and
+this susceptibility itself varies with the _Zeitgeist_ and with the age
+and nerve-state of the individual. The mere craving for novelty makes
+itself felt; so that that which once gave pleasure gives it no longer,
+or gives it in a lower degree. There is disputing about tastes, but
+there is no settling of the dispute. For A to give logical reasons why B
+should admire that which, as a matter of fact, B does not admire, or
+vice versa, is always a tempting, and in the long run a useful, form of
+literary exertion; only one must not expect B to be convinced or to mend
+his ways immediately.
+
+Beyond a doubt there have been strong influences at work in Germany,
+during the past two decades, which are unfavorable to Schiller's
+prestige. Now and then some cocksure champion of some _nova fede_
+announces that the day of poetic idealism is past. There have always
+been such voices, and a few years ago they were perhaps a little more
+numerous and more shrill than usual. Of late, however, they have seemed
+to grow fainter, and there are already signs of the idealistic reaction
+that is sure to come. Meanwhile the day of Schiller does not pass and is
+not likely to pass. The isms come and go, but his plays retain their
+popularity, because they appeal to sentiments that are deeply rooted in
+the affections of an immense portion of the German people who care but
+little for the doctrines of the doctrinaire. And so it will continue to
+be. To talk of returning to Schiller, or to hold up his style and
+technique as models for imitation, is foolish. Of such imitation, which
+could lead to nothing but the ossification of the German drama, there
+has been quite enough in the past. To imitate his spirit is to 'keep the
+type-idea flexible in one's mind' and reach out continually after that
+which is new, elevating and adapted to the present need. This is the
+best form of respect to his memory.
+
+Unquestionably Schiller lacked the supreme qualities that go to the
+making of a great world-poet. With all his cosmopolitanism he was a
+German of the Germans. For them his work has a meaning and an importance
+which it cannot have for others, because he is the organ-voice of their
+ethnic instincts and idealisms. Think of a sentiment that Germans love,
+and you shall find it, if you search, expressed in sonorous verse in
+some poem or play of Schiller. The schools and the theaters keep his
+name steadily before the great public, while the intellectual classes,
+as Gervinus foresaw, are coming to dwell less on the great qualities
+that he lacked than on the great qualities that he possessed. As to the
+present attitude of sober German thought, nothing could possibly be more
+illuminative than the following words of Otto Brahm:
+
+    As a student I was a Schiller-hater. I make this preliminary
+    confession not because I attach personal importance to it, but
+    because, on the contrary, I think I see in my attitude one that is
+    typical for our time. Every one of us, it seems to me, travels this
+    road: After a period of early veneration, which is awakened in us by
+    tradition and by the earliest literary impressions of youth, there
+    comes, as a reaction against an uncritical overestimate, and under
+    the influence of changed ideals of art, a defection from Schiller,
+    which parades itself in a one-sided and unhistorical emphasis of his
+    weak points. Then gradually this negative attitude corrects itself
+    to a positive one, and we recognize the folly of that
+    young-and-verdant bumptiousness which would think of consigning the
+    greatest of German dramatists to the realms of the dead. And now at
+    last, after it has passed through doubt, our enthusiasm is
+    imperishable; with clear eye we look up to the greatness of the man,
+    and to the splendid model for all intellectual work which is
+    exhibited in that life of passionate striving for the ideal.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 131: The meaning of the famous verses, divested perforce of
+much of their German music, may be expressed thus:
+
+  For he was ours. So let the note of pride
+  Hush into silence all the mourner's ruth;
+  In our safe harbor he was fain to bide
+  And build for aye, after the storm of youth.
+  We saw his mighty spirit onward stride
+  To eternal realms of Beauty and of Truth;
+  While far behind him lay phantasmally
+  The vulgar things that fetter you and me.]
+
+[Footnote 132: The disparagement of Schiller on account of his
+unlikeness to Shakspere was carried to almost absurd lengths in the
+"Shakespeare-Studien" of Otto Ludwig. One of Ludwig's critiques, written
+about 1858, begins thus: "Ich kenne keine poetische, namentlich keine
+dramatische Gestalt, die in ihrem Entwurfe so zufällig, so krankhaft
+individuell, in ihrer Ausführung so unwahr wäre, als Schiller's
+Wallenstein; keine, die mit ihren eignen Voraussetzungen so im Streite
+läge, keine, die sich molluskenhafter der Willkür des Dichters fügte."]
+
+[Footnote 133:
+
+  Guten Morgen denn! Frei werd' ich stehen
+  Für das Volk und mit ihm in der Zeit;
+  Mit dem Volke soll der Dichter gehen,--
+  So les' ich meinen Schiller heut.]
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+A Survey of Schiller Literature
+
+The mass of literature pertaining to Schiller has now grown so great
+that an exhaustive bibliography would fill a good-sized volume. All that
+can be attempted here is a selection of the more important works. The
+fullest bibliography thus far is that contained in the fifth volume of
+Goedeke's Grundrisz zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, 2nd edition,
+Dresden, 1893. Annual reviews of Schiller literature appear in the
+Jahresberichte für neuere deutsche Litteraturgeschichte and in the
+Berichte des Freien Deutschen Hochstiftes. Valuable especially for its
+English titles is the bibliography compiled by John P. Anderson for
+Nevinson's Life of Schiller, London, 1889.
+
+
+EDITIONS
+
+During the lifetime of Schiller his writings were printed in different
+forms by different publishers, and owing to the absence of copyright
+unauthorized reprints were numerous. He himself undertook no complete
+and final redaction of all his works, though in his later years he
+revised and arranged a selection of his poems. 'Don Carlos' and some of
+the prose writings also underwent revision at the hands of their author.
+
+The first edition calling itself complete was that of Körner, which was
+published in 1812-15, in twelve volumes, by Cotta of Stuttgart. Körner
+divided the poems into three periods,--a division which has since been
+extensively copied. Körner's edition became the basis of the later Cotta
+editions (down to 1868), which were reprinted in various forms and
+degrees of completeness, but without important changes or additions.
+With the expiration of Cotta's monopoly and the opening of the
+philological era, the works of Schiller began to be deemed worthy of the
+same scrupulous editorial care that had long been bestowed on the Greek
+and Latin classics. The mid-century researches of Hoffmeister and
+others, particularly Hoffmeister's Supplemente zu Schillers Werken,
+1840-1, had brought to light much new material not usually printed with
+the works of Schiller, and the received text, even of the more important
+works, was known to be more or less faulty and uncertain. To meet the
+new demand a historico-critical edition was undertaken by Goedeke, with
+the assistance of several sub-editors. The result was Schillers,
+Sämmtliche Schriften, Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, 15 vols., Cotta,
+Stuttgart, 1868-76. This edition aimed at completeness, arranged the
+works chronologically and went deeply into the matter of variant
+readings. It is still indispensable to the scholar, though not free from
+pedantries.
+
+Contemporaneous with this work of critical scholarship was the cheaper
+and more popular edition of Boxberger and Maltzahn, published by Hempel
+in Berlin--Schillers Werke, nach den vorzüglichsten Quellen revidierte
+Ausgabe, 16 parts in 6 vols., 1868-74,--which, though unsightly, is
+valuable for its introductions and notes. In more recent years several
+good editions have appeared, the most noteworthy being (1) that of
+Boxberger and Birlinger, published as a part of Kürschner's Deutsche
+National-Litteratur, 12 vols., Stuttgart, 1882-91; (2) that of L.
+Bellermann, Kritisch durchgesehene und erläuterte Ausgabe, 14 vols.,
+Leipzig, 1895 ff., and (3) the latest of the critical Cotta editions,
+completed in 16 vols. in 1894.
+
+The dramatic fragments have been twice edited by Kettner, Schillers
+Dramatischer Nachlasz nach den Handschriften herausgegeben, Weimar,
+1895, and Schillers Dramatische Entwürfe und Fragmente aus dem Nachlasz
+zusammengestellt, Stuttgart, 1899. The Xenia have recently been edited
+by Schmidt and Suphan, Xenien 1796, nach den Handschriften des
+Goethe-Schiller Archivs herausgegeben, Weimar, 1893.
+
+As is well known the later plays of Schiller, to a certain extent also
+some of his prose writings, are familiar school classics wherever German
+is studied. The school editions, many of them meritorious works of
+scholarship, are very numerous. They are not mentioned here because a
+mere list of names and dates would be of no use, while a selection with
+discriminative or critical comment would be a difficult and invidious
+task to which the compiler of this survey has no inclination. Any of the
+scholarly editions published in recent years, in Germany, the United
+States or England, will usually be found to contain a sufficient
+bibliography of the particular work under consideration.
+
+
+LETTERS AND MEMOIRS
+
+It was the opinion of Goethe that Schiller's style was at its best in
+his letters (see Eckermann's Gespräche, 14. April, 1824). Letters of
+Schiller, including some forged ones to Karl Moser, began to get into
+print in the early years of the nineteenth century, and as interest
+increased the publications became exceedingly numerous (see the
+extensive bibliography in Goedeke's Grundrisz, V. 98 ff.). So far as the
+authentic letters of Schiller himself are concerned, these separate
+publications have now been superseded by the admirable work of F. Jonas,
+Schillers Briefe, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 7 vols., Stuttgart, 1892 ff.
+It only remains, therefore, to make note of the more important
+publications that contain correspondence, or reminiscences having a
+biographical value. They are as follows:
+
+Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe, mit einer Einleitung von F.
+Muncker, Stuttgart, 1893. The correspondence is also to be had, edited
+by Vollmer, in Cotta's Bibliothek der Weltlitteratur. It was first
+published in 1828-9 in 6 vols.
+
+Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Wilhelm von Humboldt, dritte
+vermehrte Ausgabe mit Anmerkungen von A. Leitzmann, Stuttgart, 1900.
+First published in 1830, with a Vorerinnerung by Von Humboldt.
+
+Schillers Briefwechsel mit Körner, herausgegeben von K. Goedeke,
+Leipzig, 1874; also a later edition by L. Geiger, Stuttgart, 1893. The
+correspondence was first published in 1847 and soon after translated
+into English by Simpson, 3 vols., London, 1849.
+
+Schiller und Lotte, dritte, den ganzen Briefwechsel umfassende Ausgabe,
+von W. Fielitz, Stuttgart, 1879; later edition, also by Fielitz, 1893.
+First published in 1856.
+
+Karl Augusts erstes Anknüpfen mit Schiller, Stuttgart, 1857, edited by
+Schiller's daughter, Emilie von Gleichen.
+
+Schillers Beziehungen zu Eltern, Geschwistern und der Familie von
+Wolzogen, herausgegeben von A. von Wolzogen, Stuttgart, 1859.
+
+Charlotte von Schiller und ihre Freunde, herausgegeben von L. Urlichs, 3
+vols., Stuttgart, 1860-5.
+
+Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller and Iffland, herausgegeben von F.
+Dingelstedt, Stuttgart, 1863.
+
+Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und seiner Schwester Christophine,
+herausgegeben von W. von Maltzahn, Leipzig, 1875.
+
+Schillers Briefwechsel mit dem Herzog von Augustenburg, herausgegeben
+von Max Müller, Berlin, 1875.
+
+Geschäftsbriefe Schillers, gesammelt, erläutert und herausgegeben von K.
+Goedeke, Leipzig, 1875.
+
+Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Cotta, herausgegeben von W. Vollmer,
+Stuttgart, 1876.
+
+To these may be added--here better than elsewhere:
+
+Charlotte von Kalb und ihre Beziehungen zu Goethe und Schiller, von E.
+Köpke, Berlin, 1843, and The Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence of
+Henry Crabbe Robinson, edited by Th. Sadler, London, 1869.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+The first account of Schiller by a conscientious and competent writer
+was that by Körner, which accompanied his edition of 1812-15. This,
+however, was a mere sketch.
+
+In 1825 Carlyle published his Life of Schiller at London, and a few
+years later the book was translated into German and supplied with an
+introduction by Goethe. It was based on very imperfect information, but
+was an inspiring work of genius nevertheless. It is now more valuable as
+a Carlyle document than as a Schiller-document.
+
+In 1830 Karoline von Wolzogen, Schiller's sister-in-law, published her
+memoir of the poet, which is now to be had in Cotta's Bibliothek der
+Weltlitteratur. It contained a large number of authentic letters and
+was based upon an intimate personal acquaintance dating from the year
+1787. For the earlier years data were furnished by friends and
+relatives. The little book has many excellencies, but the portrait of
+Schiller, as it came from the hands of the talented but aging Baroness,
+is a shade too idealistic and sentimental. Of his virile youth one gets
+hardly an inkling.
+
+The year 1836 brought a valuable contribution to the knowledge of
+Schiller's youth in Schillers Flucht von Stuttgart, by Andreas
+Streicher.
+
+From this time on the biographies are numerous. A mediocre one
+by Doering, first published in 1832, was often reprinted in
+subsequent years. Between 1838 and 1842 appeared Schillers Leben,
+Geistesentwickelung und Werke im Zusammenhang, von Karl Hoffmeister.
+This monumental work of scholarship, in five volumes, has been
+indispensable to later biographers, however they might differ with
+Hoffmeister in matters of critical estimate. Hoffmeister's learned
+work was made the basis of a more popular biography by H. Viehoff,
+which appeared first in 1846. A new and revised edition was published
+in 1875. Of the shorter and more popular biographies which appeared
+down to 1859, it may suffice to mention those by G. Schwab (1840) and
+J.W. Schäfer (1853). The sketch by Bulwer, which accompanied his
+translation of Schiller's poems, London, 1844, was based mainly on
+Hoffmeister and Schwab.
+
+The great Schiller-festival of 1859 called forth a mass of literature
+of which the titles fill ten octavo pages in Goedeke's Grundrisz. Of
+the longer biographies dating from this period the most important are
+that by J. Scherr, Schiller and seine Zeit, Leipzig, 1859 (English
+translation by Elizabeth MacLellan, Philadelphia, 1881), and that by E.
+Palleske, Schillers Leben und Werke, Berlin, 1858-9. Palleske's work,
+of which an English translation by Lady Wallace appeared in London in
+1860, soon attained a remarkable popularity, which it still enjoys with
+some abatement. It is the work of a conscientious Schiller enthusiast,
+written with great warmth of feeling and great fulness of biographical
+detail, but not strong on the critical side. A twelfth edition,
+somewhat popularized by H. Fischer, appeared in 1886, a fifteenth
+edition in 1900.
+
+For some twenty years Palleske and Scherr held the field in Germany
+without serious competition, and then a new crop of biographies began to
+appear. That of H. Düntzer, Schillers Leben, mit 46 Illustrationen und 5
+Beilagen, Leipzig, 1881 (English translation by Pinkerton, London,
+1883), retold the familiar story in a style less attractive than that of
+Palleske, and without adding anything of great importance in the way of
+critical appreciation. The same may be said of the biography by C. Hepp,
+Leipzig, 1885.
+
+Of an entirely different character are the contributions of Weltrich,
+Minor, and Brahm, which are essentially works of historico-critical
+interpretation. Unfortunately, however, they were begun on a scale of
+such magnitude, and with such an uncompromising respect for the
+infinitely little, that there is small prospect of their completion.
+
+Of the work of Weltrich, Friedrich Schiller, Geschichte seines Lebens
+und Charakteristik seiner Werke, unter kritischem Nachweis der
+biographischen Quellen, the first installment appeared in 1885, the
+second in 1891, and the third (completing the first volume) in 1899.
+
+The work of Minor, Schiller, sein Leben und seine Werke, of which two
+volumes appeared in 1890, ends with a discussion of 'Don Carlos'. More
+readable, but proportionally less thorough than either of these, is the
+work of Brahm, of which the second volume, first part, appeared in 1892,
+bringing the story down through Schiller's Kantian period.
+
+The learnedly philological character of the works just mentioned,
+together with their incompleteness, left room enough for further
+attempts at a popular biography of Schiller. This demand has been met in
+recent years by Wychgram, whose well-written and handsomely illustrated
+Schiller, Leipzig, 1891, is worthy of high commendation; and also by the
+little book of Harnack, Berlin, 1898 (one of the 'Geisteshelden'
+series), which is admirable within the limits set. Of the short
+biographies in English the best are those of Boyesen, Goethe and
+Schiller, New York, 1882, and Sime, Schiller, London, 1882. That of
+Nevinson, London, 1889 (one of the 'Great Writers' series), contains,
+along with much sound criticism, a good deal that is rather too
+peremptory and unsympathetic.
+
+
+CRITICISM
+
+The following notes take no account of criticism contained in the
+general histories of German literature and philosophy, nor of the
+multitudinous articles, essays, reviews, programs and dissertations
+relating to particular works.
+
+_Plays_.--The best treatise on the plays as a whole is that of
+Bellermann, Schillers Dramen, 2nd edition, 2 vols., Berlin, 1898-9.
+Bellermann's point of view is that of a learned dramatic critic and
+expounder. He writes as a warm admirer of Schiller and is at his best
+when defending him against ill-grounded censures. Occasionally his
+friendly partisanship carries him a little too far.--A good discussion
+from the dramatic and histrionic point of view is contained in
+Bulthaupt, Dramaturgie des Schauspiels, 5th edition, Oldenburg,
+1891.--The Studien zu Schillers Dramen, by W. Fielitz, Leipzig, 1876,
+are excellent, but relate only to 'Wallenstein', 'Maria Stuart' and 'The
+Maid of Orleans'.--Suggestive and eminently readable is Werder,
+Vorlesungen über Wallenstein, Berlin, 1889.--Rather more valuable for
+facts than for criticism are the Schiller volumes of Düntzers
+Erläuterungen zu den deutschen Klassikern (beginning in
+1876).--References to Schiller are numerous in Freytag, Die Technik des
+Dramas (first edition in 1859), and also in the Shakespeare-Studien of
+Otto Ludwig (edited by Heyderich, 1872).--On the work of Schiller as
+translator and adapter consult A. Köster, Schiller als Dramaturg,
+Berlin, 1891.--An up-to-date French treatise on the early plays is that
+of Kontz, Les drames de la jeunesse de Schiller, Paris, 1899.
+
+_Poems_.--Viehoff, Schillers Gedichte erläutert, und auf ihre
+Veranlassungen, Quellen und Vorbilder zurückgeführt, 7th edition,
+Stuttgart, 1895.--Hauff, Schillerstudien, Stuttgart, 1880.--Philippi,
+Schillers Lyrische Gedankendichtung in ihrem ideellen Zusammenhange
+beleuchtet, Augsburg, 1888.--Helene Lange, Schillers Philosophische
+Gedichte, sechs Vorträge, Berlin, 1887.--Schiller als Lyrischer Dichter
+in Düntzers Erläuterungen.--Considerable commentary is contained in The
+Poems and Ballads of Schiller translated by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton,
+1st edition, London, 1844.--On the Xenia consult, in addition to the
+edition by Schmidt and Suphan, Boas, Schiller und Goethe im Xenienkampf,
+Stuttgart, 1851.
+
+_Historical Writings_.--Tomaschek, Schiller in seinem Verhältnisse zur
+Wissenschaft; von der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Wien
+gekrönte Preisschrift, Wien, 1862.--Janssen, Schiller als Historiker,
+2nd edition, Freiburg, 1879.--Ueberweg, Schiller als Historiker und
+Philosoph, Leipzig, 1884 (written, however, in 1859 in competition for
+the prize of the Vienna Academy, which was won by Tomaschek).
+
+_Philosophical Writings._--Harnack, Die klassische Aesthetik der
+Deutschen, Würdigung der kunsttheoretischen Arbeiten Schillers, Goethes
+und ihrer Freunde, Leipzig, 1892.--Berger, K. (pseudonym for Adolf
+Wechssler), Die Entwickelung von Schillers Aesthetik, Weimar,
+1894.--Kühnemann, Die Kantischen Studien Schillers und die Komposition
+des 'Wallenstein', Marburg, 1889.--Gneisse, Schillers Lehre von der
+aesthetischen Wahrnehmung, Berlin, 1893. Zimmermann, Schiller als
+Denker, 1859.--The works of Tomaschek and Ueberweg (see above under
+'Historical Writings') deal also with Schiller as a philosophic thinker.
+
+_Miscellaneous._--Fischer, Schiller-Schriften, Heidelberg, 1891 (revised
+edition of earlier studies comprising Schillers Jugend- und Wanderjahre
+in Selbstbekenntnissen, Schiller als Komiker, and Schiller als
+Philosoph).--Belling, Die Metrik Schillers, Breslau, 1883.--Rudolph,
+Schiller-Lexikon, Erläuterndes Wörterbuch zu Schillers Dichterwerken, 2
+vols., Berlin, 1890.--Rieger, Schillers Verhältnis zur französischen
+Revolution, Wien, 1885.--Pietsch, Schiller als Kritiker, Königsberg,
+1898.--Mauerhof, Schiller und Heinrich von Kleist, Zürich und Leipzig
+(no date).--Ehrlich, Goethe und Schiller, Berlin, 1897.--Portig,
+Schiller in seinem Verhältnis zur Freundschaft und Liebe, sowie in
+seinem inneren Verhältnis zu Goethe, Hamburg, 1894 (long-winded and
+amorphous, but useful in places).
+
+
+
+
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