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 role 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 'Naive 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 tragedie. 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, 'Mediocre et Rampant' and 'Encore des Menechmes'. In both he took his task very lightly. Picard's alexandrines, in 'Mediocre 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 'Phedre', 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. Koester, "Schiller als Dramaturg", Berlin, 1891.]



CHAPTER XXII

The Verdict of Posterity

Alles was der Dichter geben kann ist seine Individualitaet; diese musz also wert sein, vor Welt und Nachwelt aufgestellt zu werden.—Review of Buerger, 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 Stael 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 Stael'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 uebertoenen. Er mochte sich bei uns im sichern Port, Nach wildem Sturm, zum Dauernden gewoehnen. Indessen schritt sein Geist gewaltig fort Ins Ewige des Guten, Wahren, Schoenen; Und hinter ihm, in wesenlosem Scheine, Lag was uns alle baendigt, 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 praechtiger 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 regime 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 zufaellig, so krankhaft individuell, in ihrer Ausfuehrung so unwahr waere, als Schiller's Wallenstein; keine, die mit ihren eignen Voraussetzungen so im Streite laege, keine, die sich molluskenhafter der Willkuer des Dichters fuegte."]

[Footnote 133:

Guten Morgen denn! Frei werd' ich stehen Fuer 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 fuer 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 Koerner, which was published in 1812-15, in twelve volumes, by Cotta of Stuttgart. Koerner divided the poems into three periods,—a division which has since been extensively copied. Koerner'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, Saemmtliche 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 vorzueglichsten 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 Kuerschner's Deutsche National-Litteratur, 12 vols., Stuttgart, 1882-91; (2) that of L. Bellermann, Kritisch durchgesehene und erlaeuterte 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 Entwuerfe 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 Gespraeche, 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 Koerner, 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 Anknuepfen 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 Mueller, Berlin, 1875.

Geschaeftsbriefe Schillers, gesammelt, erlaeutert 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. Koepke, 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 Koerner, 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. Schaefer (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. Duentzer, 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 ueber Wallenstein, Berlin, 1889.—Rather more valuable for facts than for criticism are the Schiller volumes of Duentzers Erlaeuterungen 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. Koester, 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 erlaeutert, und auf ihre Veranlassungen, Quellen und Vorbilder zurueckgefuehrt, 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 Vortraege, Berlin, 1887.—Schiller als Lyrischer Dichter in Duentzers Erlaeuterungen.—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 Verhaeltnisse zur Wissenschaft; von der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Wien gekroente 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, Wuerdigung der kunsttheoretischen Arbeiten Schillers, Goethes und ihrer Freunde, Leipzig, 1892.—Berger, K. (pseudonym for Adolf Wechssler), Die Entwickelung von Schillers Aesthetik, Weimar, 1894.—Kuehnemann, 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, Erlaeuterndes Woerterbuch zu Schillers Dichterwerken, 2 vols., Berlin, 1890.—Rieger, Schillers Verhaeltnis zur franzoesischen Revolution, Wien, 1885.—Pietsch, Schiller als Kritiker, Koenigsberg, 1898.—Mauerhof, Schiller und Heinrich von Kleist, Zuerich und Leipzig (no date).—Ehrlich, Goethe und Schiller, Berlin, 1897.—Portig, Schiller in seinem Verhaeltnis zur Freundschaft und Liebe, sowie in seinem inneren Verhaeltnis zu Goethe, Hamburg, 1894 (long-winded and amorphous, but useful in places).

THE END