how much greater and more remarkable they become every day, and how
much, as it were, they are imbued with one spirit. Such a paper would
be utterly impossible in Germany. We are mere individuals; harmony
and concert are not to be thought of; each has the opinions of his
province, his city, and his own idiosyncrasy; and it will be a long
while before we have attained an universal culture.
_The Construction of a Good Play_
When a piece makes a deep impression on us in reading, we think that it
will do the same on the stage, and that such a result can be obtained
with little trouble. But this is by no means the case. A piece that is
not originally, by the intent and skill of the poet, written for the
boards, will not succeed; but whatever is done to it will always remain
something unmanageable. What trouble have I taken with my _Goetz von
Berlichingen_! Yet it will not quite do as an acting play; it is too
long; and I have been forced to divide it into two parts, of which the
last is indeed theatrically effective, while the first is to be looked
upon as a mere introduction. If the first part were given only once
as an introduction, and then the second repeatedly, it might succeed.
It is the same with _Wallenstein_; the _Piccolomini_ does not bear
repetition, but _Wallenstein’s Death_ is always seen with delight.
The construction of a play must be symbolical; that is to say, each
incident must be significant in itself, and lead to another still more
important. The _Tartuffe_ of Molière is, in this respect, a great
example. Only think what an introduction is the first scene! From
the very beginning everything is highly significant, and leads us to
expect something still more important which is to come. The beginning
of Lessing’s _Minna von Barnhelm_ is also admirable; but that of
_Tartuffe_ is absolutely unique: it is the greatest and best thing that
exists of the kind.
In Calderon you find the same perfect adaptation to the theatre. His
pieces are throughout fit for the boards; there is not a touch in them
which is not directed towards the required effect. Calderon is a genius
who had also the finest understanding.
Shakespeare wrote his plays direct from his own nature. Then, too, his
age and the existing arrangements of the stage made no demands upon
him; people were forced to put up with whatever he gave them. But if
Shakespeare had written for the court of Madrid, or for the theatre
of Louis XIV, he would probably have adapted himself to a severer
theatrical form. This, however, is by no means to be regretted, for
what Shakespeare has lost as a theatrical poet he has gained as a poet
in general. Shakespeare is a great psychologist, and we learn from his
pieces what really moves the hearts of men.
_Dramatic Unities_
He [Byron] understood the purpose of this law no better than the rest
of the world. Comprehensibility [_das Fassliche_] is the purpose, and
the three unities are only so far good as they conduce to this end.
If the observance of them hinders the comprehension of a work, it is
foolish to treat them as laws, and to try to observe them. Even the
Greeks, from whom the rule was taken, did not always follow it. In
the _Phaethon_ of Euripides, and in other pieces, there is a change
of place, and it is obvious that good representation of their subject
was with them more important than blind obedience to law, which, in
itself, is of no great consequence. The pieces of Shakespeare deviate,
as far as possible, from the unities of time and place; but they
are comprehensible--nothing more so--and on this account the Greeks
would have found no fault in them. The French poets have endeavored
to follow most rigidly the laws of the three unities, but they sin
against comprehensibility, inasmuch as they solve a dramatic law, not
dramatically, but by narration.
_The Theatre_
Any one who is sufficiently young, and who is not quite spoiled, could
not easily find any place that would suit him so well as a theatre.
No one asks you any questions: you need not open your mouth unless
you choose; on the contrary, you sit quite at your ease like a king,
and let everything pass before you, and recreate your mind and senses
to your heart’s content. There is poetry, there is painting, there
are singing and music, there is acting, and what not besides. When
all these arts, and the charm of youth and beauty heightened to an
important degree, work in concert on the same evening, it is a bouquet
to which no other can compare. But even when part is bad and part is
good, it is still better than looking out of the window, or playing a
game of whist in a close party amid the smoke of cigars.
_Acting_
It is a great error to think that an indifferent piece may be played
by indifferent actors. A second or third rate play can be incredibly
improved by the employment of first-rate talents, and be made something
really good. But if a second or third rate play be performed by second
or third rate actors, no one can wonder if it is utterly ineffective.
Second-rate actors are excellent in great plays. They have the same
effect that the figures in half shade have in a picture; they serve
admirably to show off more powerfully those which have the full light.
_Dramatic Situations_
Gozzi maintained that there are only thirty-six tragical situations.
Schiller took the greatest pains to find more, but he did not find even
so many as Gozzi.
_Management of the Theatre_
The Grand Duke disclosed to me his opinion that a theatre need not
be of architectural magnificence, which could not be contradicted.
He further said that it was after all but a house for the purpose
of getting money. This view appears at first sight rather material;
but rightly considered, it is not without a higher purport. For if
a theatre is not only to pay its expenses, but is, besides, to make
and save money, everything about it must be excellent. It must have
the best management at its head; the actors must be of the best; and
good pieces must continually be performed, that the attractive power
required to draw a full house every evening may never cease. But that
is saying a great deal in a few words--almost what is impossible.
Even Shakespeare and Molière had no other view. Both of them wished,
above all things, to make money out of their theatres. In order
to attain this, their principal aim, they necessarily strove that
everything should be as good as possible, and that, besides good old
plays, there should be some worthy novelty to please and attract.
Nothing is more dangerous to the well-being of a theatre than when
the director is so placed that a greater or less receipt at the
treasury does not affect him personally, and he can live on in careless
security, knowing that, however the receipts at the treasury may fail
in the course of the year, at the end of that time he will be able to
indemnify himself from another source. It is a property of human nature
soon to relax when not impelled by personal advantage or disadvantage.
_Menander_
I know no one, after Sophocles, whom I love so well. He is thoroughly
pure, noble, great, and cheerful, and his grace is inimitable. It is
certainly to be lamented that we possess so little of him, but that
little is invaluable, and highly instructive to gifted men.
_Calderon_
The great point is that he from whom we would learn should be congenial
to our nature. Now, Calderon, for instance, great as he is, and much
as I admire him, has exerted no influence over me for good or for ill.
But he would have been dangerous to Schiller--he would have led him
astray; and hence it is fortunate that Calderon was not generally known
in Germany till after Schiller’s death. Calderon is infinitely great
in the technical and theatrical; Schiller, on the contrary, far more
sound, earnest, and great in his intention, and it would have been a
pity if he had lost any of these virtues, without, after all, attaining
the greatness of Calderon in other respects.
_Molière_
Molière is so great that one is astonished anew every time one reads
him. He is a man by himself--his pieces border on tragedy; they are
apprehensive; and no one has the courage to imitate them. His _Miser_,
where the vice destroys all the natural piety between father and son,
is especially great, and in a high sense tragic. But when, in a German
paraphrase, the son is changed into a relation, the whole is weakened,
and loses its significance. They feared to show the vice in its true
nature, as he did; but what is tragic there, or indeed anywhere, except
what is intolerable?
I read some pieces of Molière’s every year, just as, from time to time,
I contemplate the engravings after the great Italian masters. For we
little men are not able to retain the greatness of such things within
ourselves; we must therefore return to them from time to time, and
renew our impressions.
* * * * *
If we, for our modern purposes, wish to learn how to conduct ourselves
upon the theatre, Molière is the man to whom we should apply.
Do you know his _Malade Imaginaire_? There is a scene in it which,
as often as I read the piece, appears to me the symbol of a perfect
knowledge of the boards. I mean the scene where the “malade imaginaire”
asks his little daughter Louison if there has not been a young man in
the chamber of her eldest sister.
Now, any other who did not understand his craft so well would have let
the little Louison plainly tell the fact at once, and there would have
been the end of the matter.
But what various motives for delay are introduced by Molière into this
examination, for the sake of life and effect. He first makes the little
Louison act as if she did not understand her father; then she denies
that she knows anything; then, threatened with the rod, she falls down
as if dead; then, when her father bursts out in despair, she springs up
from her feigned swoon with roguish hilarity, and at last, little by
little, she confesses all.
My explanation can only give you a very meagre notion of the animation
of the scene; but read this scene yourself till you become thoroughly
impressed with its theatrical worth, and you will confess that there is
more practical instruction contained in it than in all the theories in
the world.
I have known and loved Molière from my youth, and have learned from
him during my whole life. I never fail to read some of his plays every
year, that I may keep up a constant intercourse with what is excellent.
It is not merely the perfectly artistic treatment which delights me;
but particularly the amiable nature, the highly-formed mind, of the
poet. There is in him a grace and a feeling for the decorous, and a
tone of good society, which his innate beautiful nature could only
attain by daily intercourse with the most eminent men of his age. Of
Menander, I only know the few fragments; but these give me so high an
idea of him that I look upon this great Greek as the only man who could
be compared to Molière.
_Shakespeare_
We cannot talk about Shakespeare; everything is inadequate. I have
touched upon the subject in my _Wilhelm Meister_, but that is not
saying much. He is not a theatrical poet; he never thought of the
stage; it was far too narrow for his great mind: nay, the whole visible
world was too narrow.
He is even too rich and too powerful. A productive nature ought not to
read more than one of his dramas in a year if it would not be wrecked
entirely. I did well to get rid of him by writing _Goetz_ and _Egmont_,
and Byron did well by not having too much respect and admiration for
him, but going his own way. How many excellent Germans have been ruined
by him and Calderon!
Shakespeare gives us golden apples in silver dishes. We get, indeed,
the silver dishes by studying his works; but, unfortunately, we have
only potatoes to put into them.
* * * * *
_Macbeth_ is Shakespeare’s best acting play, the one in which he shows
most understanding with respect to the stage. But would you see his
mind unfettered, read _Troilus and Cressida_, where he treats the
materials of the _Iliad_ in his own fashion.
_A. W. Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature_
It is not to be denied that Schlegel knows a great deal, and one is
almost terrified at his extraordinary attainments and his extensive
reading. But this is not enough. Learning in itself does not constitute
judgment. His criticism is completely one-sided, because in all
theatrical pieces he merely regards the skeleton of the plot and
arrangement, and only points out small points of resemblance to great
predecessors, without troubling himself in the least as to what the
author brings forward of graceful life and the culture of a high soul.
But of what use are all the arts of genius, if we do not find in a
theatrical piece an amiable or great personality of the author? This
alone influences the cultivation of the people.
I look upon the manner in which Schlegel has treated the French drama
as a sort of recipe for the formation of a bad critic, who is wanting
in every organ for the veneration of excellence, and who passes over
an able personality and a great character as if they were chaff and
stubble.
_The French Romanticists_
Extremes are never to be avoided in any revolution. In a political
one nothing is generally desired in the beginning but the abolition
of abuses; but before people are aware, they are deep in bloodshed
and horror. Thus the French, in their present literary revolution,
desired nothing at first but a freer form; however, they will not stop
there, but will reject the traditional contents together with the
form. They begin to declare the representation of noble sentiments and
deeds as tedious, and attempt to treat of all sorts of abominations.
Instead of the beautiful subjects from Grecian mythology, there are
devils, witches, and vampires, and the lofty heroes of antiquity must
give place to jugglers and galley slaves. This is piquant! This is
effective! But after the public has once tasted this highly seasoned
food, and has become accustomed to it, it will always long for more,
and that stronger. A young man of talent, who would produce an effect
and be acknowledged, and who is great enough to go his own way, must
accommodate himself to the taste of the day--nay, must seek to outdo
his predecessors in the horrible and frightful. But in this chase after
outward means of effect, all profound study, and all gradual and
thorough development of the talent and the man from within, is entirely
neglected. And this is the greatest injury which can befall a talent,
although literature in general will gain by this tendency of the moment.
The extremes and excrescences which I have described will gradually
disappear; but this great advantage will finally remain--besides
a freer form, richer and more diversified subjects will have been
attained, and no object of the broadest world and the most manifold
life will be any longer excluded as unpoetical. I compare the present
literary epoch to a state of violent fever, which is not in itself good
and desirable, but of which improved health is the happy consequence.
That abomination which now often constitutes the whole subject of a
poetical work will in future only appear as a useful expedient; aye,
the pure and the noble, which is now abandoned for the moment, will
soon be resought with additional ardor.
Mérimée has treated these things very differently from his
fellow-authors. These poems, it is true, are not deficient in various
horrible motifs, such as churchyards, nocturnal crossroads, ghosts and
vampires; but the repulsive themes do not touch the intrinsic merit
of the poet. On the contrary, he treats them from a certain objective
distance, and, as it were, with irony. He goes to work with them like
an artist, to whom it is an amusement to try anything of the sort. He
has, as I have said before, quite renounced himself, nay, he has even
renounced the Frenchman, and that to such a degree that at first these
poems of Guzla were deemed real Illyrian popular poems, and thus little
was wanting for the success of the imposition he had intended.
Mérimée, to be sure, is a splendid fellow! Indeed, more power and
genius are generally required for the objective treatment of a
subject than is supposed. So Lord Byron, also, notwithstanding his
predominant personality, has sometimes had the power of renouncing
himself altogether, as may be seen in some of his dramatic pieces,
particularly in his _Marino Faliero_. In this piece one quite forgets
that Lord Byron, or even an Englishman, wrote it. We live entirely in
Venice, and entirely in the time in which the action takes place. The
personages speak quite from themselves, and from their own condition,
without having any of the subjective feelings, thoughts, and opinions
of the poet. That is as it should be. Of our young French romantic
writers of the exaggerating sort, one cannot say as much. What I
have read of them--poems, novels, dramatic works--have all borne the
personal coloring of the author, and none of them ever make me forget
that a Parisian--that a Frenchman--wrote them. Even in the treatment of
foreign subjects one still remains in France and Paris, quite absorbed
in all the wishes, necessities, conflicts, and fermentations of the
present day.
_Victor Hugo_
He has a fine talent, but quite entangled in the unhappy romantic
tendency of his time, by which he is seduced to represent, together
with what is beautiful, also that which is most insupportable and
hideous. I have lately been reading his _Notre Dame de Paris_, and
required no little patience to support the horror with which this
reading has inspired me. It is the most abominable book that ever
was written! Besides, one is not even indemnified for the torture
one has to endure by the pleasure one might receive from a truthful
representation of human nature or human character. His book is, on
the contrary, utterly destitute of nature and truth! The so-called
characters whom he brings forward are not human beings with living
flesh and blood, but miserable wooden puppets, which he deals with as
he pleases, and which he causes to make all sorts of contortions and
grimaces just as he needs them for his desired effects. But what an age
it must be which not only renders such a book possible and calls it
into existence, but even finds it endurable and delightful.
_The “Idea” of Goethe’s Tasso and Faust_
Idea! as if I knew anything about it. I had the life of Tasso, I had
my own life; and whilst I brought together two odd figures with their
peculiarities, the image of Tasso arose in my mind, to which I opposed,
as a prosaic contrast, that of Antonio, for whom also I did not lack
models. The further particulars of court life and love affairs were at
Weimar as they were in Ferrara; and I can truly say of my production,
_it is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh_.
The Germans are, certainly, strange people. By their deep thoughts and
ideas, which they seek in everything and fix upon everything, they make
life much more burdensome than is necessary. Only have the courage to
give yourself up to your impressions, allow yourself to be delighted,
moved, elevated, nay, instructed and inspired for something great; but
do not imagine all is vanity, if it is not abstract thought and idea.
Then they come and ask what idea I meant to embody in my _Faust_. As if
I knew myself and could inform them. _From heaven, through the world,
to hell_, would indeed be something; but this is no idea, only a course
of action. And further, that the devil loses the wager, and that a man,
continually struggling from difficult errors towards something better,
should be redeemed, is an effective, and to many, a good enlightening
thought; but it is no idea which lies at the foundation of the whole
and of every individual scene. It would have been a fine thing,
indeed, if I had strung so rich, varied, and highly diversified a life
as I have brought to view in _Faust_ upon the slender string of one
pervading idea.
It was, on the whole, not in my line, as a poet, to strive to embody
anything _abstract_. I received in my mind _impressions_, and those
of a sensuous, animated, charming, varied, hundredfold kind, just as
a lively imagination presented them; and I had, as a poet, nothing
more to do than artistically to round off and elaborate such views and
impressions, and by means of a lively representation so to bring them
forward that others might receive the same impression in hearing or
reading my representation of them.
If I however wished, as a poet, to represent any idea, I did it in
short poems, where a decided unity could prevail, as, for instance, in
the _Metamorphosis of Animals_, that of _Plants_, the poem _Legacy_,
and many others. The only production of greater extent, in which I am
conscious of having labored to set forth a pervading idea, is probably
my _Elective Affinities_. This novel has thus become comprehensible
to the intellect; but I will not say that it is therefore better. I
am rather of the opinion that the more incommensurable, and the more
incomprehensible to the intellect, a poetic production is, so much the
better it is.
_Schiller_
Yes, everything else about him was proud and majestic, only the eyes
were soft. And his talent was like his outward form. He seized boldly
on a great subject, and turned it this way and that, and handled it
this way and that. But he saw his object, as it were, only from the
outside; a quiet development from within was not his province. His
talent was desultory. Thus he was never decided--could never have done.
He often changed a part just before a rehearsal.
And, as he went so boldly to work, he did not take sufficient pains
about _motives_. I recollect what trouble I had with him when he wanted
to make Gessler, in _Tell_, abruptly break an apple from the tree, and
have it shot from the boy’s head. This was quite against my nature,
and I urged him to give at least some motive to this barbarity, by
making the boy boast to Gessler of his father’s dexterity, and say that
he could shoot an apple from a tree at a hundred paces. Schiller, at
first, would have nothing of the sort: but at last he yielded to my
arguments and intentions, and did as I advised him. I, on the other
hand, by too great attention to _motives_, kept my pieces from the
theatre. My _Eugenie_ is nothing but a chain of _motives_, and this
cannot succeed on the stage.
Schiller’s genius was really made for the theatre. With every piece he
progressed, and became more finished; but, strange to say, a certain
love for the horrible adhered to him from the time of the _Robbers_,
which never quite left him even in his prime. I still recollect
perfectly well that in the prison scene in my _Egmont_, where the
sentence is read to him, Schiller would have made Alva appear in the
background, masked and muffled in a cloak, enjoying the effect which
the sentence would produce on Egmont. Thus Alva was to show himself
insatiable in revenge and malice. I, however, protested, and prevented
the apparition. He was a singular, great man.
Every week he became different and more finished; each time that I saw
him he seemed to me to have advanced in learning and judgment. His
letters are the fairest memorials of him which I possess, and they are
also among the most excellent of his writings.
_Edinburgh Review_
It is a pleasure to me to see the elevation and excellence to which
the English critics now rise. There is not a trace of their former
pedantry, but its place is occupied by great qualities. In the last
article--the one on German literature--you will find the following
remark:--“There are some poets who have a tendency always to occupy
themselves with things which another likes to drive from his mind.”
What say you to this? There we know at once where we are, and how we
have to classify a great number of our most modern literati.
_Byron_
Lord Byron is to be regarded as a man, as an Englishman, and as a great
genius. His good qualities belong chiefly to the man, his bad to the
Englishman and the peer, his talent is incommensurable.
All Englishmen, as such, are without reflection, properly so called;
distractions and party spirit will not permit them to perfect
themselves in quiet. But they are great as practical men.