The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 03

I cannot sufficiently regret that Wilhelm Meister is lost to our periodical. However, I hope that your fertile mind and friendly interest in our undertaking will give us some compensation for this loss, whereby the admirers of your genius will be double gainers. In the number of the Thalia which I herewith send you, you will find some ideas of Körner's on Declamation, which, I think, will please you.

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SCHILLER to GOETHE

Jena, January 7, 1795.

Accept my best thanks for the copy of the novel you have sent me. The feeling which penetrates and takes hold of me with increasing force the further I read on in this work, I cannot better express in words than by calling it a delicious, inward sense of comfort, a feeling of mental and bodily well-being, and I will vouch that this will be the effect produced upon all readers.

This sense of comfort I account for from the calm clearness, smoothness, and transparency which pervade the whole of your work, and which leave nothing to disturb or to dissatisfy the mind, and the mind is not more excited than is necessary to fan and maintain a joyous life. Of the individual parts I shall say nothing till I have seen the Third Book, which I am looking forward to with longing.

I cannot express to you what a painful feeling it often is to me to pass from a work of this kind into one of a philosophical character. In the former all is so joyous, so alive, so harmoniously evolved, and so true to human life; in the latter all is so stern, so rigid, abstract, and so extremely unnatural; for all nature is synthesis, and philosophy but antithesis. I can, in fact, give proof of having been as true to nature in my speculations as is compatible with the idea of analysis; indeed, I have perhaps been more faithful to her than our Kantians would consider permissible or possible. But still I am no less fully conscious of the infinite difference between Life and Reasoning, and cannot, in such melancholy moments, help perceiving a want in my own nature which in happier hours I am forced to think of only as a natural duality of the thing itself. This much, however, is certain—the poet is the only true man, and the best philosopher is but a caricature in comparison with him.

I need scarcely assure you that I am in the utmost anxiety to know what you have to say to my philosophy of the Beautiful. As the Beautiful itself is derived from man as a whole, so my analysis of it is drawn from my own whole being, and I cannot but be deeply interested in knowing how this accords with yours.

Your presence here will be a source of nourishment both to my mind and my heart. Especially great is my longing to enjoy some poetical works in common with you.

You promised to let me hear some of your epigrams when an opportunity occurred. It would be a great and additional pleasure to me if this could be done during your approaching visit to Jena, as it is still very uncertain when I may be able to get to W.

Just as I am about to close comes the welcome continuation of your Meister. A thousand thanks for it!

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GOETHE to SCHILLER

Weimar, November 21, 1795.

Today I received twenty-one of Propertius' elegies from Knebel and shall look them over carefully and then let the translator know where I find anything to object to; for, as he has given himself so much trouble, nothing ought, perhaps, to be altered without his sanction.

I wish you could induce Cotta to pay for this manuscript at once; it could easily be calculated how many sheets it would print. I have, it is true, no actual occasion to ask this, but it would look much better, would encourage energetic coöperation, and also help in making the good name of the Horen better known. A publisher has often enough to pay money in advance, so Cotta might surely once in a way pay upon the receipt of a manuscript. Knebel wants the Elegies to be divided into three contributions; I, too, think this the right proportion, and we should thus have the first three numbers of next year's Horen nicely adorned. I will see to it that you get them in proper time.

Have you seen Stolberg's abominable preface to his Platonic discourses? The disclosures he there makes are so insipid and intolerable that I feel very much inclined to step out and chastise him. It would be a very simple matter to hold up to view the senseless unreasonableness of this stupid set of people, if, in so doing, one had but a rational public on one's side; this would at the same time be a declaration of war against that superficiality which it has now become necessary to combat in every department of learning. The secret feuds of suppressing, misplacing, and misprinting, which it has carried on against us, have long deserved that this declaration should be held in honorable remembrance, and that continuously.

I find this doubly necessary and unavoidable in the case of my scientific works, which I am gradually getting into order. I intend to speak out my mind pretty frankly against reviewers, journalists, collectors of magazines, and writers of abridgments, and, in a prelude or prolog, openly to declare myself against the public; in this instance, especially, I do not intend to allow any one's opposition or reticence to pass.

What do you say, for instance, to Lichtenberg, with whom I have had some correspondence about the optical subjects we spoke of, and with whom, besides, I am on pretty good terms, not even mentioning my essays in his new edition of Erxleben's Compendium, especially as a new edition of a compendium is surely issued in order to introduce the latest discoveries, and these gentlemen are usually quick enough in noting down everything in their interleaved books! How many different ways there are of dispatching a work like this, even though it were but done in a passing manner I However, at the present moment, my cunning brains cannot think of any one of these ways.

I am, at present, very far from being in anything like an esthetic or sentimental mood, so what is to become of my poor novel? Meanwhile, I am making use of my time as best I can, and my comfort is that, at so low an ebb, one may hope that the flood is about to return.

Your dear letter reached me safely, and I thank you for your sympathy, which I felt sure you would give me. In such cases one hardly knows what is best to do—to let grief take its natural course or to fortify oneself with the assistance which culture gives us. If one determines to follow the latter course—as I always do—one feels better merely for the moment, and. I have noticed that Nature always reasserts her rights in other ways.

The Sixth Book of my novel has made a good impression here also; to be sure, the poor reader never knows what he is about with works of this kind, for he does not consider that he would probably never take them up had not the author contrived to get the better of his thinking powers, his feelings, and his curiosity.

Your testimony in favor of my tale I prize very highly, and I shall henceforth work with more confidence at this species of composition.

The last volume of my novel cannot in any case appear before Michaelmas; it would be well if we could arrange the plans we lately discussed in reference to this.

My new story can, I think, hardly be ready by December, and, moreover, I can scarcely venture to pass on to it till I have, in some way or other, written something in explanation of the first. If, by December, I could write something of this kind neatly, I should be very glad of thus being able to give you a contribution for next year's opening number. Farewell. May we long enjoy having around us those who are nearest and dearest to us. Toward New Year's I hope again to spend some time with you.

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SCHILLER to GOETHE

Jena, July 2, 1796.

I have now run through all the eight Books of your novel, very hurriedly, it is true, but the subject-matter alone is so large that I could scarcely get through it in two days' reading. Properly speaking, therefore, I ought not to say anything about it even today, for the surprising and unparalleled variety which is therein concealed—in the strictest sense of the word—is overpowering. I confess that what I have as yet grasped correctly is but the continuity, not the unity, although I do not for a moment doubt that I shall become perfectly clear on this point also, if, as I think, in works of this kind, the continuity is more than half the unity.

As, under the circumstances, you cannot exactly expect to receive from me anything thoroughly satisfactory and yet wish to hear something, you must be content with a few remarks; these, however, are not altogether without value, inasmuch as they will tell of direct impressions. To make up for this, I promise you that our discussions about your novel shall continue throughout the month. To give an adequate and truly esthetic estimate of a whole work, as a work of art, is a serious undertaking. I shall devote the whole of the next four months to it, and that with pleasure. Besides this, it is one of the greatest blessings of my existence that I have lived to see this work of yours completed, that it has been written while my faculties are still in a state of growth, and that I may draw inspiration from this pure source; further, the beautiful relation that exists between us makes it seem to me a kind of religious duty to call your cause my own, and to develop all that is real in my nature so fully that my mind may become the clearest mirror of what exists beneath this covering, and that I may deserve the name of being your friend in the higher sense of the word. How vividly have I felt, at this time, that excellence is a power, that it can influence selfish natures only as a power, and that, as contrasted with excellence, there is no freedom but love!

I cannot say how much I have been moved by the truth, the beautiful vitality, and the simple fulness of your work. My agitation, it is true, is greater than it will be when I have completely mastered your subject, and that will be an important crisis in my intellectual life; but yet this agitation is the effect of the Beautiful and only of the Beautiful, and is merely the result of my reason not having yet been able to master my feelings. I now quite understand what you meant by saying that it was the Beautiful, the True, that could often move you to tears. Calm and deep, clear and yet incomprehensible, like nature, your work makes its influence felt; it stands there, and even the smallest secondary incident shows the beautiful equanimity from which all has emanated.

But I cannot, as yet, find words to describe these impressions, and, moreover, I must today confine myself to the Eighth Book. How well you have succeeded in bringing the large and widely extended circle, the different attitudes and scenes of the events, so closely together again! Your work may be compared to a beautiful planetary system; everything belongs together, and it is only the Italian figures which, like comets and as weirdly as they, connect the system with one that is more remote and larger. Further, these figures, as also Marianna and Aurelia, run wholly out of this system again, and, after having merely served to produce a poetical movement in it, separate themselves from it as foreign individuals. How beautifully conceived it is to derive what is practically monstrous and terribly pathetic in the fate of Mignon and the Harpist from what is theoretically monstrous, from the abortions of the understanding, so that nothing is thereby laid to the charge of pure and healthy nature! Senseless superstition alone gives birth to such monstrous fates as pursue Mignon and the Harpist. Even Aurelia's ruin is but the result of her own unnaturalness, her masculine nature. Toward Marianna alone could I accuse you of poetic selfishness. I could almost say she has been made a sacrifice to the novel, as the nature of the case would not permit of her being saved. Her fate, therefore, will ever draw forth bitter tears, while in the case of the three others the reader will gladly turn from what is individual to the idea of the whole.

Wilhelm's false relationship to Theresa is admirably conceived, motivated, and worked out, and still more admirably turned to account. Many a reader will at first be actually alarmed at it, for I can promise Theresa but few wellwishers; all the more beautiful is the way in which the reader is rescued from this state of uneasiness. I cannot imagine how this false relation could have been dissolved more tenderly, more delicately, or more nobly. How pleased Richardson and all his set would have been had you made a scene out of it and been highly indelicate in the display of delicate sentiments! I have but one little objection to raise: Theresa's courageous and determined resistance to the person who wishes to rob her of her lover, even although the possibility is thereby reopened to her of possessing Lothar, is quite in accordance with nature, and is excellent; further, I think there are good reasons for Wilhelm's showing deep indignation and a certain amount of pain at the banterings of his fellowmen and of fate—but it seems to me that he ought to complain less deeply of the loss of a happiness which had already ceased to be anything of the kind to him. In Natalie's presence, as it seems to me, his regained freedom ought to be to him a greater happiness than he allows it to be. I am quite aware of the complication of this state of things and what is demanded by delicatesse, but, on the other hand, Natalie may in some measure be said to be hurt by this same delicatesse when, in her presence, Wilhelm is allowed to lament over the loss of Theresa.

One other thing I specially admire in the concatenation of the events is the great good which you have contrived to draw from Wilhelm's already-mentioned false relation to Theresa so as most speedily to bring about the true and desired end, the union of Natalie and Wilhelm. In no other manner could this end have been arrived at so well and so naturally as by the path you have pursued, although this very path threatened to lead from it. It can now be maintained, with the most perfect innocence and purity, that Wilhelm and Natalie belong to each other; and Theresa's letters to Natalie lead up to this beautifully. Such contrivances are of the greatest beauty, for they unite all that could be desired, nay, all that appeared wholly ununitable; they complicate, and yet carry the solution in themselves; they produce restlessness, and yet lead to repose; they succeed in reaching the goal, while appearing to be making every effort to keep from it.

Mignon's death, although we are prepared for it, affects one powerfully and deeply—so deeply, in fact, that many will think you quit the subject too abruptly. This, upon first reading it, was a very decided feeling in my own case; but, on reading it a second time, when surprise had subsided, I felt it less, and yet I fear that you may have, in this, gone a hair's breadth too far. Mignon, before her end, had begun to appear more womanly and softer, and thus to have become more interesting in herself; the repulsive heterogeneity of her nature had relaxed, and with this relaxation some of her impetuosity had likewise disappeared. Her last song, especially, melts one's heart to the most intense sympathy. Hence it strikes one as odd that, directly upon the affecting scene of her death, the doctor should make an experiment upon her corpse, and that this living being should so soon be able to forget the person, merely in order to regard her as the instrument of a scientific inquiry. It strikes one as being equally strange that Wilhelm—who, after all, is the cause of her death, and is aware of it—should at that moment notice the instrument-case and be lost in the recollection of past scenes, when the present should have so wholly absorbed him.

You may, in this case also, justify yourself as having been quite true to nature, but I doubt whether you will be able to do this as regards the "sentimental" demands of your readers; and therefore—in order that nothing should interfere with the reader's acceptance of a scene which is so splendidly motivated and so well worked out—I would advise you to pay some attention to it.

Otherwise, I find everything you do with Mignon, when living as well as when dead, most uncommonly beautiful. This pure and poetic creature is specially and excellently qualified to have so poetical a funeral. In her isolated condition, her mysterious existence, her purity and innocence, she is so truly a representative of the period of life in which she stands that she moves one to a feeling of unmixed sadness and genuine human sorrow, for nothing but pure humanity was manifested in her. That which, in every other individual, would be inconsistent, nay, in a certain sense, revolting, is, in her, sublime and noble.

I should have liked to see the appearance of the Marquis in the family motivated by something more than his mere dilettanteism in art. He is too indispensable to the development, and the need of his interference might easily have been made more conspicuous than the inner necessity. You have yourself spoilt the reader by the arrangement of the rest of your work, and have justified him in making greater demands than can generally be required of novel writers. Could not the Marquis be made an old acquaintance of Lothar or of the Uncle, and his journey hither be more interwoven with the whole?

The end, as well as the whole history of the Harpist, excites the greatest interest. I have already said how excellent I find your thought of deriving the terrible destinies of the Harpist and of Mignon from religious extravagance. The priest's notion of describing a small transgression as monstrous, in order that a great crime—which he will not mention for humanity's sake—may be atoned for by it, is sublime of its kind and a worthy representative of this whole mode of thinking. You might perhaps make Sperate's story a little shorter still, as it comes in at the end where one is prone to hurry impatiently to the goal.

That the Harpist should prove to be Mignon's father, and that you yourself do not mention it or thrust it at the reader, makes the effect all the greater. One is forced to reflect upon the fact oneself, to recall to mind how close in life was the relation which existed between these two mysterious natures, and to look down into an unfathomable depth of fate. But no more for today. My wife wishes to inclose a little note to tell you her impressions of your Eighth Book.

Farewell, my beloved, my esteemed friend! I am deeply moved when I think that that which we otherwise look for and rarely find in the far distance of favored antiquity lies so close to me in you. You need no longer be astonished that there are so few who are capable or worthy of understanding you. The wonderful naturalness, truth, and fluency of your description hide from the common herd of critics every thought of the difficulty, of the grandness of your art, and those who are capable of following the artist, who perceive the means by which the effects have been produced, will feel themselves so averse, so hostile toward the genial power which they there see in action, and find their needy selves in such straits, that they will angrily thrust the work from them, while in their hearts—though with de mauvaise grace—they are certain to be your liveliest worshippers.

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GOETHE to SCHILLER Weimar, July 5, 1796.

As soon as I received your first letter I at once sat down to write to you; but verily your two following letters have come to me, in the midst of my truly worldly occupations, like two voices from another world to which I can do naught but listen. Pray continue to refresh and to encourage me! Your suggestions will enable me to finish the Eighth Book as soon as I am able again to take it in hand. I already possess the means to satisfy nearly every one of your suggestions, by which, moreover, even to my mind, the whole work becomes more connected at the points in question, and both truer and more pleasing. Do not become weary of telling me your opinion frankly, and keep the book a week longer. What you require of Cellini I shall meanwhile push forward; I shall also give you a sketch of what I still think of doing to my Eighth Book, and hence the last transcript shall be out of our hands by the beginning of August.

Your letters are now my sole recreation, and you must know how grateful I am to you for having so unexpectedly set my mind at ease about so many points. Farewell, and give my kind greetings to your dear wife.

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GOETHE to SCHILLER

March 18, 1799.

I congratulate you with all my heart upon having finished your work; it has given me particular satisfaction, although I have, so to say, but tasted the outside of it, and that on a most disturbed morning. For stage purposes it is quite sufficiently developed; the new motives, which I did not know of, are very good and to the point.

If, at some future time, you could cut off a little from The Piccolomini, both pieces would be a priceless gift to the German stage, and they would have to be given throughout many a long year.

The last piece has, it is true, this great merit, that everything ceases to be political and becomes of purely human interest; nay, the historical element itself is but a light veil through which we have the purely human element shining forth. The effect upon the mind is neither interfered with nor disturbed.

I would certainly close with the monologue by the Princess, for it is, in any case, left to the imagination as to what becomes of her. It might perhaps be well, eventually, to have the Equerry introduced in the first piece.

The close of the whole with the address of the letter is, in reality, frightening, especially considering the tender state of one's feelings at the moment. It is doubtless an exceptional case to conclude with what is terrible after having exhausted all that was capable of rousing fear and pity.

I shall not add more, and can but say that I am delighted at the prospect of enjoying this work with you. I hope still to be able to start on Thursday. You shall know for certain on Wednesday; we will then read the play together, and I intend then to enjoy it in a thoroughly composed state of mind.

Farewell; take a rest now and let us both begin a new life during the vacation. My kind greetings to your dear wife, and think of me.

I do not intend, just yet, to boast of the work extorted from the Muses; it is still a great question whether it is worth anything; in any case, however, it may be regarded as preparatory.

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SCHILLER to GOETHE

Jena, March 19, 1799.

I have for long dreaded the moment when I should be rid of my work, much as I wished for the time to come; and, in fact, I do feel my present freedom to be worse than the state of bondage I have hitherto been in. The mass which has formerly drawn and held me to it has now gone, and I feel as if I were hanging indefinitely in empty space. At the same time I feel also as if it were absolutely impossible for me ever to produce anything again; I shall not be at rest till I once more have my thoughts turned to some definite subject, with hope and inclination in view. When I again have some definite object before me, I shall be rid of the feeling of restlessness which at present is also drawing me off from smaller things I have in hand. When you come I mean to lay before you some tragic materials of my own invention, in order that I may not, in the first instance, make a mistake as regards subject. Inclination and necessity draw me toward subjects of pure fancy, not to historical ones, and toward such in which the interest is of a purely sentimental and human character; for of soldiers, heroes, and commanders, I am now heartily tired.

How I envy you your present activity—your latest! You are standing on the purest and sublimest poetic ground, in the most beautiful world of definite figures where everything is ready-made or can be re-made. You are, so to say, living in the home of poetry and being waited upon by the gods. During these last days I have again been looking into Homer, and there have read of the visit of Thetis to Vulcan with immense pleasure. There is, in the graceful description of a domestic visit such as we might receive any day, and in an account of any kind of handicraft, an infinity of material and form, and the Naïve shows the full nature of the Divine.