The hundredth anniversary of the birthday of Schiller, which, according to
the accounts published in the German newspapers, seems to have been
celebrated in most parts of the civilized, nay, even the uncivilized
world, is an event in some respects unprecedented in the literary annals
of the human race. A nation honors herself by honoring her sons, and it is
but natural that in Germany every town and village should have vied in
doing honor to the memory of one of their greatest poets. The letters
which have reached us from every German capital relate no more than what
we expected. There were meetings and feastings, balls and theatrical
representations. The veteran philologist, Jacob Grimm, addressed the
Berlin Academy on the occasion in a soul-stirring oration; the directors
of the Imperial Press at Vienna seized the opportunity to publish a
splendid album, or “Schillerbuch,” in honor of the poet; unlimited
eloquence was poured forth by professors and academicians; school children
recited Schiller’s ballads; the German students shouted the most popular
of his songs; nor did the ladies of Germany fail in paying their tribute
of gratitude to him who, since the days of the Minnesängers, had been the
most eloquent herald of female grace and dignity. In the evening torch
processions might be seen marching through the streets, bonfires were
lighted on the neighboring hills, houses were illuminated, and even the
solitary darkness of the windows of the Papal Nuncio at Vienna added to
the lustre of the day.(11) In every place where Schiller had spent some
years of his life, local recollections were revived and perpetuated by
tablets and monuments. The most touching account of all came from the
small village of Cleversulzbach. On the village cemetery, or, as it is
called in German, the “God’s-acre,” there stands a tombstone, and on it
the simple inscription, “Schiller’s Mother.” On the morning of her son’s
birthday the poor people of the village were gathered together round that
grave, singing one of their sacred hymns, and planting a lime-tree in the
soil which covers the heart that loved him best.
But the commemoration of Schiller’s birthday was not confined to his
native country. We have seen, in the German papers, letters from St.
Petersburg and Lisbon, from Venice, Rome, and Florence, from Amsterdam,
Stockholm, and Christiana, from Warsaw and Odessa, from Jassy and
Bucharest, from Constantinople, Algiers, and Smyrna, and lately from
America and Australia, all describing the festive gatherings which were
suggested, no doubt, by Schiller’s cosmopolitan countrymen, but joined in
most cheerfully by all the nations of the globe. Poets of higher rank than
Schiller—Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe—have never aroused such world-wide
sympathies; and it is not without interest to inquire into the causes
which have secured to Schiller this universal popularity. However
superlative the praises which have lately been heaped on Schiller’s poetry
by those who cannot praise except in superlatives, we believe that it was
not the poet, but the man, to whom the world has paid this unprecedented
tribute of love and admiration. After reading Schiller’s works we must
read Schiller’s life,—the greatest of all his works. It is a life not
unknown to the English public, for it has been written by Carlyle. The
last festivities, however, have given birth to several new biographies.
Palleske’s “Life of Schiller” has met with such success in Germany that it
well deserved the honor which it has lately received at the hands of Lady
Wallace, and under the special patronage of the Queen, of being translated
into English. Another very careful and lucid account of the poet’s life is
due to the pen of a member of the French Institute, M. A. Regnier, the
distinguished tutor of the Comte de Paris.
In reading these lives, together with the voluminous literature which is
intended to illustrate the character of the German poet, we frequently
felt inclined to ask one question, to which none of Schiller’s biographers
has returned a satisfactory answer: “What were the peculiar circumstances
which brought out in Germany, and in the second half of the eighteenth
century, a man of the moral character, and a poet of the creative genius,
of Schiller?” Granted that he was endowed by nature with the highest
talents, how did he grow to be a poet, such as we know him, different from
all other German poets, and yet in thought, feeling, and language the most
truly German of all the poets of Germany? Are we reduced to appeal to the
mysterious working of an unknown power, if we wish to explain to ourselves
why, in the same country and at the same time, poetical genius assumed
such different forms as are seen in the writings of Schiller and Goethe?
Is it to be ascribed to what is called individuality, a word which in
truth explains nothing; or is it possible for the historian and
psychologist to discover the hidden influences which act on the growing
mind, and produce that striking variety of poetical genius which we admire
in the works of contemporaneous poets, such as Schiller and Goethe in
Germany, or Wordsworth and Byron in England? Men grow not only from
within, but also from without. We know that a poet is born,—_poeta
nascitur_,—but we also know that his character must be formed; the seed is
given, but the furrow must be ploughed in which it is to grow; and the
same grain which, if thrown on cultivated soil, springs into fullness and
vigor, will dwindle away, stunted and broken, if cast upon shallow and
untilled land. There are certain events in the life of every man which
fashion and stamp his character; they may seem small and unimportant in
themselves, but they are great and important to each of us; they mark that
slight bend where two lines which had been running parallel begin to
diverge, never to meet again. The Greeks call such events _epochs_, _i.e._
halts.
We halt for a moment, we look about and wonder, and then choose our
further way in life. It is the duty of biographers to discover such
epochs, such halting-points, in the lives of their heroes; and we shall
endeavor to do the same in the life of Schiller by watching the various
influences which determined the direction of his genius at different
periods of his poetical career.
The period of Schiller’s childhood is generally described with great
detail by his biographers. We are told who his ancestors were. I believe
they were bakers. We are informed that his mother possessed in her
_trousseau_, among other things, four pairs of stockings,—three of cotton,
one of wool. There are also long discussions on the exact date of his
birth. We hear a great deal of early signs of genius, or rather, we should
say, of things done and said by most children, but invested with
extraordinary significance if remembered of the childhood of great men. To
tell the truth, we can find nothing very important in what we thus learn
of the early years of Schiller, nor does the poet himself in later years
dwell much on the recollections of his dawning mind. If we must look for
some determinating influences during the childhood of Schiller, they are
chiefly to be found in the character of his father. The father was not
what we should call a well-educated man. He had been brought up as a
barber and surgeon; had joined a Bavarian regiment in 1745, during the
Austrian war of succession; and had acted as a non-commissioned officer,
and, when occasion required, as a chaplain. After the peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle he had married the daughter of an innkeeper. He was a
brave man, a God-fearing man, and, as is not unfrequently the case with
half-educated people, a man very fond of reading. What he had failed to
attain himself, he wished to see realized in his only son. The following
prayer was found among the papers of the father: “And Thou, Being of all
beings, I have asked Thee after the birth of my only son, that Thou
wouldst add to his powers of intellect what I from deficient instruction
was unable to attain. Thou hast heard me. Thanks be to Thee, bounteous
Being, that Thou heedest the prayers of mortals.” A man of this stamp of
mind would be sure to exercise his own peculiar influence on his children.
He would make them look on life, not as a mere profession, where the son
has only to follow in the steps of his father; his children would early
become familiar with such ideas as “_making_ one’s way in life,” and would
look forward to a steep path rather than to a beaten track. Their thoughts
would dwell on the future at a time when other children live in the
present only, and an adventurous spirit would be roused, without which no
great work has ever been conceived and carried out.
When his children, young Frederick and his sisters, were growing up, their
father read to them their morning and evening prayers; and so fond was the
boy of the Old and New Testament stories that he would often leave his
games in order to be present at his father’s readings. In 1765 the family
left Marbach on the Neckar. The father was ordered by the Duke of
Wurtemberg to Lorch, a place on the frontier, where he had to act as
recruiting officer. His son received his education in the house of a
clergyman, began Latin at six, Greek at seven; and as far as we are able
to see, he neither seems to have considered himself, nor to have been
considered by his masters, as very superior to other boys. He was a good
boy, tenderly attached to his parents, fond of games, and regular at
school. There are but two marked features which we have an opportunity of
watching in him as a boy. He knew no fear, and he was full of the warmest
sympathy for others. The first quality secured him the respect, the second
the love, of those with whom he came in contact. His parents, who were
poor, had great difficulty in restraining his generosity. He would give
away his school-books and the very buckles off his shoes. Both his
fearlessness and universal sympathy are remarkable through the whole of
his after-life. Not even his enemies could point out one trait of
cowardice or selfishness in anything he ever did, or said, or wrote. There
are some pertinent remarks on the combination of these two qualities,
sympathy with others and courage, by the author of “Friends in Council.”
“If greatness,” he writes, “can be shut up in qualities, it will
be found to consist in courage and in openness of mind and soul.
These qualities may not seem at first to be so potent. But see
what _growth_ there is in them. The education of a man of open
mind is never ended. Then with openness of soul a man sees some
way into all other souls that come near him, feels with them, has
their experience, is in himself a people. Sympathy is the
universal solvent. Nothing is understood without it.... Add
courage to this openness, and you have a man who can own himself
in the wrong, can forgive, can trust, can adventure, can, in
short, use all the means that insight and sympathy endow him
with.”
A plucky and warm-hearted boy, under the care of an honest, brave, and
intelligent father and a tender and religious mother,—this is all we know
and care to know about Schiller during the first ten years of his life. In
the year 1768 there begins a new period in the life of Schiller. His
father was settled at Ludwigsburg, the ordinary residence of the reigning
Duke of Wurtemberg, the Duke Charles. This man was destined to exercise a
decisive influence on Schiller’s character. Like many German sovereigns in
the middle of the last century, Duke Charles of Wurtemberg had felt the
influence of those liberal ideas which had found so powerful an utterance
in the works of the French and English philosophers of the eighteenth
century. The philosophy which in France was smiled at by kings and
statesmen, while it roused the people to insurrection and regicide,
produced in Germany a deeper impression on the minds of the sovereigns and
ruling classes than of the people. In the time of Frederick the Great and
Joseph II. it became fashionable among sovereigns to profess Liberalism,
and to work for the enlightenment of the human race. It is true that this
liberal policy was generally carried out in a rather despotic way, and
people were emancipated and enlightened very much as the ancient Saxons
were converted by Charlemagne. We have an instance of this in the case of
Schiller. Duke Charles had founded an institution where orphans and the
sons of poor officers were educated free of expense. He had been informed
that young Schiller was a promising boy, and likely to reflect credit on
his new institution, and he proceeded without further inquiry to place him
on the list of his _protégés_, assigning to him a place at his military
school. It was useless for the father to remonstrate, and explain to the
Duke that his son had a decided inclination for the Church. Schiller was
sent to the Academy in 1773, and ordered to study law. The young student
could not but see that an injustice had been done him, and the irritation
which it caused was felt by him all the more deeply because it would have
been dangerous to give expression to his feelings. The result was that he
made no progress in the subjects which he had been commanded to study. In
1775 he was allowed to give up law, not, however, to return to theology,
but to begin the study of medicine. But medicine, though at first it
seemed more attractive, failed, like law, to call forth his full energies.
In the mean time another interference on the part of the Duke proved even
more abortive, and to a certain extent determined the path which
Schiller’s genius was to take in life. The Duke had prohibited all German
classics at his Academy; the boys, nevertheless, succeeded in forming a
secret library, and Schiller read the works of Klopstock, Klinger,
Lessing, Goethe, and Wieland’s translations of Shakespeare with rapture,
no doubt somewhat increased by the dangers he braved in gaining access to
these treasures. In 1780, the same year in which he passed his examination
and received the appointment of regimental surgeon, Schiller wrote his
first tragedy, “The Robbers.” His taste for dramatic poetry had been
roused partly by Goethe’s “Goetz von Berlichingen” and Shakespeare’s
plays, partly by his visits to the theatre, which, under the patronage of
the Duke, was then in a very flourishing state. The choice of the subject
of his first dramatic composition was influenced by the circumstances of
his youth. His poetical sympathy for a character such as Karl Moor, a man
who sets at defiance all the laws of God and man, can only be accounted
for by the revulsion of feeling produced on his boyish mind by the strict
military discipline to which all the pupils at the Academy were subjected.
His sense of right and wrong was strong enough to make him paint his hero
as a monster, and to make him inflict on him the punishment he merited.
But the young poet could not resist the temptation of throwing a brighter
light on the redeeming points in the character of a robber and murderer by
pointedly placing him in contrast with the even darker shades of
hypocritical respectability and saintliness in the picture of his brother
Franz. The language in which Schiller paints his characters is powerful,
but it is often wild and even coarse. The Duke did not approve of his
former _protégé_; the very title-page of “The Robbers” was enough to
offend his Serene Highness,—it contained a rising lion, with the motto
“_In tyrannos_.” The Duke gave a warning to the young military surgeon,
and when, soon after, he heard of his going secretly to Mannheim to be
present at the first performance of his play, he ordered him to be put
under military arrest. All these vexations Schiller endured, because he
knew full well there was no escape from the favors of his royal protector.
But when at last he was ordered never to publish again except on medical
subjects, and to submit all his poetical compositions to the Duke’s
censorship, this proved too much for our young poet. His ambition had been
roused. He had sat at Mannheim a young man of twenty, unknown, amid an
audience of men and women who listened with rapturous applause to his own
thoughts and words. That evening at the theatre of Mannheim had been a
decisive evening,—it was an epoch in the history of his life; he had felt
his power and the calling of his genius; he had perceived, though in a dim
distance, the course he had to run and the laurels he had to gain. When he
saw that the humor of the Duke was not likely to improve, he fled from a
place where his wings were clipped and his voice silenced. Now, this
flight from one small German town to another may seem a matter of very
little consequence at present. But in Schiller’s time it was a matter of
life and death. German sovereigns were accustomed to look upon their
subjects as their property. Without even the show of a trial the poet
Schubart had been condemned to life-long confinement by this same Duke
Charles. Schiller, in fleeing his benefactor’s dominions, had not only
thrown away all his chances in life, but he had placed his safety and the
safety of his family in extreme danger. It was a bold, perhaps a reckless
step. But whatever we may think of it in a moral point of view, as
historians we must look upon it as the Hegira in the life of the poet.
Schiller was now a man of one or two and twenty, thrown upon the world
penniless, with nothing to depend on but his brains. The next ten years
were hard years for him; they were years of unsettledness, sometimes of
penury and despair, sometimes of extravagance and folly. This third period
in Schiller’s life is not marked by any great literary achievements. It
would be almost a blank were it not for the “Don Carlos,” which he wrote
during his stay near Dresden, between 1785-87. His “Fiesco” and “Cabale
und Liebe,” though they came out after his flight from Stuttgard, had been
conceived before, and they were only repeated protests, in the form of
tragedies, against the tyranny of rulers and the despotism of society.
They show no advance in the growth of Schiller’s mind. Yet that mind,
though less productive than might have been expected, was growing as every
mind grows between the years of twenty and thirty; and it was growing
chiefly through contact with men. We must make full allowance for the
powerful influence exercised at that time by the literature of the day (by
the writings of Herder, Lessing, and Goethe), and by political events,
such as the French Revolution. But if we watch Schiller’s career
carefully, we see that his character was chiefly moulded by his
intercourse with men. His life was rich in friendships, and what mainly
upheld him in his struggles and dangers was the sympathy of several
high-born and high-minded persons, in whom the ideals of his own mind
seemed to have found their fullest realization.
Next to our faith in God, there is nothing so essential to the healthy
growth of our whole being as an unshaken faith in man. This faith in man
is the great feature in Schiller’s character, and he owes it to a kind
Providence which brought him in contact with such noble natures as Frau
von Wolzogen, Körner, Dalberg; in later years with his wife; with the Duke
of Weimar, the Prince of Augustenburg, and lastly with Goethe. There was
at that time a powerful tension in the minds of men, and particularly of
the higher classes, which led them to do things which at other times men
only aspire to do. The impulses of a most exalted morality—a morality
which is so apt to end in mere declamation and deceit—were not only felt
by them, but obeyed and carried out. Frau von Wolzogen, knowing nothing of
Schiller except that he had been at the same school with her son, received
the exiled poet, though fully aware that by doing so she might have
displeased the Duke and blasted her fortunes and those of her children.
Schiller preserved the tenderest attachment to this motherly friend
through life, and his letters to her display a most charming innocence and
purity of mind.
Another friend was Körner, a young lawyer living at Leipzig, and
afterwards at Dresden—a man who had himself to earn his bread. He had
learned to love Schiller from his writings; he received him at his house,
a perfect stranger, and shared with the poor poet his moderate income with
a generosity worthy of a prince. He, too, remained his friend through
life; his son was Theodore Körner, the poet of “Lyre and Sword,” who fell
fighting as a volunteer for his country against French invaders.
A third friend and patron of Schiller was Dalberg. He was the coadjutor,
and was to have been the successor, of the Elector of Hesse, then an
ecclesiastical Electorate. His rank was that of a reigning prince, and he
was made afterwards by Napoleon Fürst-Primas—Prince Primate—of the
Confederation of the Rhine. But it was not his station, his wealth, and
influence, it was his mind and heart which made him the friend of
Schiller, Goethe, Herder, Wieland, Jean Paul, and all the most eminent
intellects of his time. It is refreshing to read the letters of this
Prince. Though they belong to a later period of Schiller’s life, a few
passages may here be quoted in order to characterize his friend and
patron. Dalberg had promised Schiller a pension of 4,000 florins (not
4,000 thalers, as M. Regnier asserts) as soon as he should succeed to the
Electorate, and Schiller in return had asked him for some hints with
regard to his own future literary occupations. The Prince answers: “Your
letter has delighted me. To be remembered by a man of your heart and mind
is a true joy to me. I do not venture to determine what Schiller’s
comprehensive and vivifying genius is to undertake. But may I be allowed
to humbly express a wish that spirits endowed with the powers of giants
should ask themselves, ‘How can I be most useful to mankind?’ This
inquiry, I think, leads most surely to immortality, and the rewards of a
peaceful conscience. May you enjoy the purest happiness, and think
sometimes of your friend and servant, Dalberg.” When Schiller was
hesitating between history and dramatic poetry, Dalberg’s keen eye
discovered at once that the stage was Schiller’s calling, and that there
his influence would be most beneficial. Schiller seemed to think that a
professorial chair in a German university was a more honorable position
than that of a poet. Dalberg writes: “Influence on mankind” (for this he
knew to be Schiller’s highest ambition) “depends on the vigor and strength
which a man throws into his works. Thucydides and Xenophon would not deny
that poets like Sophocles and Horace have had at least as much influence
on the world as they themselves.” When the French invasion threatened the
ruin of Germany and the downfall of the German sovereigns, Dalberg writes
again, in 1796, with perfect serenity: “True courage must never fail! The
friends of virtue and truth ought now to act and speak all the more
vigorously and straightforwardly. In the end, what you, excellent friend,
have so beautifully said in your ‘Ideals’ remains true: ‘The diligence of
the righteous works slowly but surely, and friendship is soothing comfort.
It is only when I hope to be hereafter of assistance to my friends that I
wish for a better fate.’ ” The society and friendship of such men, who are
rare in all countries and in all ages, served to keep up in Schiller’s
mind those ideal notions of mankind which he had first imbibed from his
own heart, and from the works of philosophers. They find expression in all
his writings, but are most eloquently described in his “Don Carlos.” We
should like to give some extracts from the dialogue between King Philip
and the Marquis Posa; but our space is precious, and hardly allows us to
do more than just to glance at those other friends and companions whose
nobility of mind and generosity of heart left so deep an impress on the
poet’s soul.
The name of Karl August, the Duke of Weimar, has acquired such a
world-wide celebrity as the friend of Goethe and Schiller that we need not
dwell long on his relation to our poet. As early as 1784 Schiller was
introduced to him at Darmstadt, where he was invited to court to read some
scenes of his “Don Carlos.” The Duke gave him then the title of “Rath,”
and from the year 1787, when Schiller first settled at Weimar, to the time
of his death, in 1804, he remained his firm friend. The friendship of the
Prince was returned by the poet, who, in the days of his glory, declined
several advantageous offers from Vienna and other places, and remained at
the court of Weimar, satisfied with the small salary which that great Duke
was able to give him.
There was but one other Prince whose bounty Schiller accepted, and his
name deserves to be mentioned, not so much for his act of generosity as
for the sentiment which prompted it. In 1792, when Schiller was ill and
unable to write, he received a letter from the Hereditary Prince of
Holstein-Augustenburg and from Count Schimmelmann. We quote from the
letter:—
“Your shattered health, we hear, requires rest, but your
circumstances do not allow it. Will you grudge us the pleasure of
enabling you to enjoy that rest? We offer you for three years an
annual present of 1,000 thalers. Accept this offer, noble man. Let
not our titles induce you to decline it. We know what they are
worth; we know no pride but that of being men, citizens of that
great republic which comprises more than the life of single
generations, more than the limits of this globe. You have to deal
with men,—your brothers,—not with proud princes, who, by this
employment of their wealth, would fain indulge but in a more
refined kind of pride.”
No conditions were attached to this present, though a situation in Denmark
was offered if Schiller should wish to go there. Schiller accepted the
gift so nobly offered, but he never saw his unknown friends.(12) We owe to
them, humanly speaking, the last years of Schiller’s life, and with them
the master-works of his genius, from “Wallenstein” to “William Tell.” As
long as these works are read and admired, the names of these noble
benefactors will be remembered and revered.
The name of her whom we mentioned next among Schiller’s noble friends and
companions,—we mean his wife,—reminds us that we have anticipated events,
and that we left Schiller after his flight in 1782, at the very beginning
of his most trying years. His hopes of success at Mannheim had failed. The
director of the Mannheim theatre, also a Dalberg, declined to assist him.
He spent the winter in great solitude at the country-house of Frau von
Wolzogen, finishing “Cabale und Liebe,” and writing “Fiesco.” In the
summer of 1783 he returned to Mannheim, where he received an appointment
in connection with the theatre of about £40 a year. Here he stayed till
1785, when he went to Leipzig, and afterwards to Dresden, living chiefly
at the expense of his friend Körner. This unsettled kind of life continued
till 1787, and produced, as we saw, little more than his tragedy of “Don
Carlos.” In the mean time, however, his taste for history had been
developed. He had been reading more systematically at Dresden, and after
he had gone to Weimar in 1787 he was able to publish, in 1788, his
“History of the Revolt of the Netherlands.” On the strength of this he was
appointed professor at Jena in 1789, first without a salary, afterwards
with about £30 a year. He tells us himself how hard he had to work: “Every
day,” he says, “I must compose a whole lecture and write it out,—nearly
two sheets of printed matter, not to mention the time occupied in
delivering the lecture and making extracts.” However, he had now gained a
position, and his literary works began to be better paid. In 1790 he was
enabled to marry a lady of rank, who was proud to become the wife of the
poor poet, and was worthy to be the “wife of Schiller.” Schiller was now
chiefly engaged in historical researches. He wrote his “History of the
Thirty Years’ War” in 1791-92, and it was his ambition to be recognized as
a German professor rather than as a German poet. He had to work hard in
order to make up for lost time, and under the weight of excessive labor
his health broke down. He was unable to lecture, unable to write. It was
then that the generous present of the Duke of Augustenburg freed him for a
time from the most pressing cares, and enabled him to recover his health.
The years of thirty to thirty-five were a period of transition and
preparation in Schiller’s life, to be followed by another ten years of
work and triumph. These intermediate years were chiefly spent in reading
history and studying philosophy, more especially the then reigning
philosophy of Kant. Numerous essays on philosophy, chiefly on the Good,
the Beautiful, and the Sublime, were published during this interval. But
what is more important, Schiller’s mind was enlarged, enriched, and
invigorated; his poetical genius, by lying fallow for a time, gave promise
of a richer harvest to come; his position in the world became more
honorable, and his confidence in himself was strengthened by the
confidence placed in him by all around him. A curious compliment was paid
him by the Legislative Assembly then sitting at Paris. On the 26th of
August, 1792, a decree was passed, conferring the title of _Citoyen
Français_ on eighteen persons belonging to various countries, friends of
liberty and universal brotherhood. In the same list with Schiller were the
names of Klopstock, Campe, Washington, Kosciusko, and Wilberforce. The
decree was signed by Roland, Minister of the Interior, and countersigned
by Danton. It did not reach Schiller till after the enthusiasm which he
too had shared for the early heroes of the French Revolution had given way
to disappointment and horror. In the month of December of the very year in
which he had been thus honored by the Legislative Assembly, Schiller was
on the point of writing an appeal to the French nation in defense of Louis
XVI. The King’s head, however, had fallen before this defense was begun.
Schiller, a true friend of true liberty, never ceased to express his
aversion to the violent proceedings of the French revolutionists. “It is
the work of passion,” he said, “and not of that wisdom which alone can
lead to real liberty.” He admitted that many important ideas, which
formerly existed in books only or in the heads of a few enlightened
people, had become more generally current through the French Revolution.
But he maintained that the real principles which ought to form the basis
of a truly happy political constitution were still hidden from view.
Pointing to a volume of Kant’s “Criticism of Pure Reason,” he said, “There
they are, and nowhere else; the French republic will fall as rapidly as it
has risen; the republican government will lapse into anarchy, and sooner
or later a man of genius will appear (he may come from any place) who will
make himself not only master of France, but perhaps also of a great part
of Europe.” This was a remarkable prophecy for a young professor of
history.
The last decisive event in Schiller’s life was his friendship with Goethe.
It dates from 1794, and with this year begins the great and crowning
period of Schiller’s life. To this period belong his “Wallenstein,” his
“Song of the Bell,” his Ballads (1797-98), his “Mary Stuart” (1800), the
“Maid of Orleans” (1801), the “Bride of Messina” (1803), and “William
Tell;” in fact, all the works which have made Schiller a national poet and
gained for him a worldwide reputation and an immortal name.
Goethe’s character was in many respects diametrically opposed to
Schiller’s, and for many years it seemed impossible that there should ever
be a community of thought and feeling between the two. Attempts to bring
together these great rivals were repeatedly made by their mutual friends.
Schiller had long felt himself drawn by the powerful genius of Goethe, and
Goethe had long felt that Schiller was the only poet who could claim to be
his peer. After an early interview with Goethe, Schiller writes, “On the
whole, this meeting has not at all diminished the idea, great as it was,
which I had previously formed of Goethe; but I doubt if we shall ever come
into close communication with each other. Much that interests me has
already had its epoch with him; his world is not my world.” Goethe had
expressed the same feeling. He saw Schiller occupying the very position
which he himself had given up as untenable; he saw his powerful genius
carrying out triumphantly “those very paradoxes, moral and dramatic, from
which he was struggling to get liberated.” “No union,” as Goethe writes,
“was to be dreamt of. Between two spiritual antipodes there was more
intervening than a simple diameter of the spheres. Antipodes of that sort
act as a kind of poles, which can never coalesce.” How the first approach
between these two opposite poles took place Goethe has himself described,
in a paper entitled “Happy Incidents.” But no happy incident could have
led to that glorious friendship, which stands alone in the literary
history of the whole world, if there had not been on the part of Schiller
his warm sympathy for all that is great and noble, and on the part of
Goethe a deep interest in every manifestation of natural genius. Their
differences on almost every point of art, philosophy, and religion, which
at first seemed to separate them forever, only drew them more closely
together, when they discovered in each other those completing elements
which produced true harmony of souls. Nor is it right to say that Schiller
owes more to Goethe than Goethe to Schiller. If Schiller received from
Goethe the higher rules of art and a deeper insight into human nature,
Goethe drank from the soul of his friend the youth and vigor, the purity
and simplicity, which we never find in any of Goethe’s works before his
“Hermann and Dorothea.” And, as in most friendships, it was not so much
Goethe as he was, but Goethe as reflected in his friend’s soul, who
henceforth became Schiller’s guide and guardian. Schiller possessed the
art of admiring, an art so much more rare than the art of criticising. His
eye was so absorbed in all that was great, and noble, and pure, and high
in Goethe’s mind, that he could not, or would not, see the defects in his
character. And Goethe was to Schiller what he was to no one else. He was
what Schiller believed him to be; afraid to fall below his friend’s ideal,
he rose beyond himself until that high ideal was reached, which only a
Schiller could have formed. Without this regenerating friendship it is
doubtful whether some of the most perfect creations of Goethe and Schiller
would ever have been called into existence.
We saw Schiller gradually sinking into a German professor, the sphere of
his sympathies narrowed, the aim of his ambition lowered. His energies
were absorbed in collecting materials and elaborating his “History of the
Thirty Years’ War,” which was published in 1792. The conception of his
great dramatic Trilogy, the “Wallenstein,” which dates from 1791, was
allowed to languish until it was taken up again for Goethe, and finished
for Goethe in 1799. Goethe knew how to admire and encourage, but he also
knew how to criticise and advise. Schiller, by nature meditative rather
than observant, had been most powerfully attracted by Kant’s ideal
philosophy. Next to his historical researches, most of his time at Jena
was given to metaphysical studies. Not only his mind, but his language
suffered from the attenuating influences of that rarefied atmosphere which
pervades the higher regions of metaphysical thought. His mind was
attracted by the general and the ideal, and lost all interest in the
individual and the real. This was not a right frame of mind, either for an
historian or a dramatic poet. In Goethe, too, the philosophical element
was strong, but it was kept under by the practical tendencies of his mind.
Schiller looked for his ideal beyond the real world; and, like the
pictures of a Raphael, his conceptions seemed to surpass in purity and
harmony all that human eye had ever seen. Goethe had discovered that the
truest ideal lies hidden in real life; and like the master-works of a
Michael Angelo, his poetry reflected that highest beauty which is revealed
in the endless variety of creation, and must there be discovered by the
artist and the poet. In Schiller’s early works every character was the
personification of an idea. In his “Wallenstein” we meet for the first
time with real men and real life. In his “Don Carlos,” Schiller, under
various disguises more or less transparent, acts every part himself. In
“Wallenstein” the heroes of the “Thirty Years’ War” maintain their own
individuality, and are not forced to discuss the social problems of
Rousseau, or the metaphysical theories of Kant. Schiller was himself aware
of this change, though he was hardly conscious of its full bearing. While
engaged in composing his “Wallenstein,” he writes to a friend:—
“I do my business very differently from what I used to do. The
subject seems to be so much outside me that I can hardly get up
any feeling for it. The subject I treat leaves me cold and
indifferent, and yet I am full of enthusiasm for my work. With the
exception of two characters to which I feel attached, Max
Piccolomini and Thekla, I treat all the rest, and particularly the
principal character of the play, only with the pure love of the
artist. But I can promise you that they will not suffer from this.
I look to history for limitation, in order to give, through
surrounding circumstances, a stricter form and reality to my
ideals. I feel sure that the historical will not draw me down or
cripple me. I only desire through it to impart life to my
characters and their actions. The life and soul must come from
another source, through that power which I have already perhaps
shown elsewhere, and without which even the first conception of
this work would, of course, have been impossible.”
How different is this from what Schiller felt in former years! In writing
“Don Carlos,” he laid down as a principle, that the poet must not be the
painter but the lover of his heroes, and in his early days he found it
intolerable in Shakespeare’s dreams that he could nowhere lay his hand on
the poet himself. He was then, as he himself expresses it, unable to
understand nature, except at second-hand.
Goethe was Schiller’s friend, but he was also Schiller’s rival. There is a
perilous period in the lives of great men, namely, the time when they
begin to feel that their position is made, that they have no more rivals
to fear. Goethe was feeling this at the time when he met Schiller. He was
satiated with applause, and his bearing towards the public at large became
careless and offensive. In order to find men with whom he might measure
himself, he began to write on the history of Art, and to devote himself to
natural philosophy. Schiller, too, had gained his laurels chiefly as a
dramatic poet; and though he still valued the applause of the public, yet
his ambition as a poet was satisfied; he was prouder of his “Thirty Years’
War” than of his “Robbers” and “Don Carlos.” When Goethe became intimate
with Schiller, and discovered in him those powers which as yet were hidden
to others, he felt that there was a man with whom even he might run a
race. Goethe was never jealous of Schiller. He felt conscious of his own
great powers, and he was glad to have those powers again called out by one
who would be more difficult to conquer than all his former rivals.
Schiller, on the other hand, perceived in Goethe the true dignity of a
poet. At Jena his ambition was to have the title of Professor of History;
at Weimar he saw that it was a greater honor to be called a poet, and the
friend of Goethe. When he saw that Goethe treated him as his friend, and
that the Duke and his brilliant court looked upon him as his equal,
Schiller, too modest to suppose he had earned such favors, was filled with
a new zeal, and his poetical genius displayed for a time an almost
inexhaustible energy. Scarcely had his “Wallenstein” been finished, in
1799, when he began his “Mary Stuart.” This play was finished in the
summer of 1800, and a new one was taken in hand in the same year,—the
“Maid of Orleans.” In the spring of 1801 the “Maid of Orleans” appeared on
the stage, to be followed in 1803 by the “Bride of Messina,” and in 1804
by his last great work, his “William Tell.” During the same time Schiller
composed his best ballads, his “Song of the Bell,” his epigrams, and his
beautiful Elegy, not to mention his translations and adaptations of
English and French plays for the theatre at Weimar. After his “William
Tell” Schiller could feel that he no longer owed his place by the side of
Goethe to favor and friendship, but to his own work and worth. His race
was run, his laurels gained. His health, however, was broken, and his
bodily frame too weak to support the strain of his mighty spirit. Death
came to his relief, giving rest to his mind, and immortality to his name.
Let us look back once more on the life of Schiller. The lives of great men
are the lives of martyrs; we cannot regard them as examples to follow, but
rather as types of human excellence to study and to admire. The life of
Schiller was not one which many of us would envy; it was a life of toil
and suffering, of aspiration rather than of fulfillment, a long battle
with scarcely a moment of rest for the conqueror to enjoy his hard-won
triumphs. To an ambitious man the last ten years of the poet’s life might
seem an ample reward for the thirty years’ war of life which he had to
fight single-handed. But Schiller was too great a man to be ambitious.
Fame with him was a means, never an object. There was a higher, a nobler
aim in his life, which upheld him in all his struggles. From the very
beginning of his career Schiller seems to have felt that his life was not
his. He never lived for himself; he lived and worked for mankind. He
discovered within himself how much there was of the good, the noble, and
the beautiful in human nature; he had never been deceived in his friends.
And such was his sympathy with the world at large that he could not bear
to see in any rank of life the image of man, created in the likeness of
God, distorted by cunning, pride, and selfishness. His whole poetry may be
said to be written on the simple text, “Be true, be good, be noble!” It
may seem a short text, but truth is very short, and the work of the
greatest teachers of mankind has always consisted in the unflinching
inculcation of these short truths. There is in Schiller’s works a kernel
full of immortal growth, which will endure long after the brilliant colors
of his poetry have faded away. That kernel is the man, and without it
Schiller’s poetry, like all other poetry, is but the song of sirens.
Schiller’s character has been subjected to that painful scrutiny to which,
in modern times, the characters of great men are subjected; everything he
ever did, or said, or thought, has been published; and yet it would be
difficult, in the whole course of his life, to point out one act, one
word, one thought, that could be called mean, untrue, or selfish. From the
beginning to the end Schiller remained true to himself; he never acted a
part, he never bargained with the world. We may differ from him on many
points of politics, ethics, and religion; but though we differ, we must
always respect and admire. His life is the best commentary on his poetry;
there is never a discrepancy between the two. As mere critics, we may be
able to admire a poet without admiring the man; but poetry, it should be
remembered, was not meant for critics only, and its highest purpose is
never fulfilled, except where, as with Schiller, we can listen to the poet
and look up to the man.
1859.