The Boon of Friendship
Wem der grosse Wurf gelungen,
Eines Freundes Freund zu sein,...
Mische seinen Jubel ein.
--'_Song to Joy_'.
Gottfried Körner, father of the more famous Theodor, was some three
years older than Schiller and belonged to an opulent and distinguished
family. His father was a high church dignitary, his mother the daughter
of a well-to-do Leipzig merchant. The boy had grown up under austere
religious influences and then drifted far in the direction of
liberalism. After a university career devoted at first to the humanities
and then to law, he had travelled extensively in foreign countries, and
then returned to Leipzig, full of ambition but undecided as to his
future course. Here, in 1778, he became acquainted with Minna Stock, the
daughter of an engraver who had once been the teacher of Goethe. Stock
died in 1773, leaving a widow and two daughters to battle with poverty.
The elder daughter, Dora, inherited something of her father's vivacious
humor and artistic talent, while the younger and handsomer, Minna, was
of a more domestic temper. When Körner fell in love with the amiable
Minna and wished to marry her, he met with opposition in his own family,
who thought that the 'engraver's mamsell' was not good enough for him.
This little touch of adversity converted him from a gentleman of leisure
and a browsing philosopher into a man with a purpose in life. He set
about making himself independent of the family wealth. To this end he
offered himself as a privat-docent in law at the Leipzig university.
When this expedient failed him through lack of students, he began to
practice and soon received an appointment which took him to Dresden.
This in 1783. Dresden now became his official residence, but he made
frequent visits to his betrothed in Leipzig, and during one of these his
memorable letter to Schiller was indited.
The other member of the quartette was Ludwig Huber, at that time the
accepted lover of Dora Stock. Huber was three years younger than
Schiller,--an impressionable youth, of some linguistic talent, who had
his occasional promptings of literary ambition. But his soarings were
mere grasshopper flights; steady effort was not his affair and he lacked
solid ability. A doting mother had watched and coddled him until in
practical affairs he was comically helpless. As the futility of his
character became more apparent with the lapse of time, he lost the
esteem of his friends, and the engagement with Dora Stock was broken
off. So far as Schiller is concerned, the friendship of Huber was a
passing episode of no particular importance.
Early in the year 1785 Körner lost both his parents and found himself
the possessor of a considerable fortune. There was now no further
obstacle to his marriage; so the time was fixed for the wedding and he
set about preparing a home for his bride. Thus it came about that when
Schiller arrived in Leipzig, on the 17th of April, 1785,--mud, snow and
inundations had made the journey desperately tedious,--he did not at
once meet the man whom he most cared to know. Huber and the two ladies,
who seem to have expected a wild, dishevelled genius, were astonished to
see a mild-eyed, bashful man, who bore little resemblance to Karl Moor
and needed time to thaw up. But the stranger soon felt at home. He had
explained to Huber minutely how he wished to live. He would no longer
keep his own establishment,--he could manage an entire dramatic
conspiracy more easily than his own housekeeping. At the same time he
did not wish to live alone.
I need for my inward happiness [he wrote] a right, true friend who
is always at hand like my angel; to whom I can communicate my
budding ideas and emotions in the moment of their birth, without
writing letters or making visits. Even the trivial circumstance that
my friend lives outside my four walls; that I must go through the
street to reach him, that I must change my dress, or the like, kills
the enjoyment of the moment. My train of thought is liable to be
rent in pieces before I can get to him.... I cannot live parterre,
nor in the attic, and I should not like to look out upon a
churchyard. I love men and the thronging crowd. If I cannot arrange
it so that we (I mean the five-parted clover-leaf) may eat together,
then I might resort to the table d'hôte of an inn, for I had rather
fast than not dine in company.[64]
It is clear that, notwithstanding experiences which might have
embittered a less genial nature, Schiller was in no danger of becoming a
misanthrope. For him the throng upon the street was not the madding
crowd of the English poet, nor the 'cursed race' of Frederick the Great,
but an inspiration; a spectacle to keep the heart warm and foster the
sense of brotherhood. He felt the need of men, however shabbily they
might treat him. And men enough were at hand; for the Leipzig fair was
then on, and the town was full of strangers who were eager to gape at
the author of 'The Robbers', to be introduced to him, to invite him here
and there. So for a week he floated with the current of casual
dissipation and then, caught for an hour by a refluent eddy of
lonesomeness,--four parts of the pentamerous clover-leaf were paired
lovers,--he penned a missive which might have changed much in his future
career: He sent to Christian Schwan a formal proposal for the hand of
Margarete. With characteristic optimism he urged that fortune had at
last turned favorably. He had good prospects. He proposed to work hard
upon 'Don Carlos' and the _Thalia_, and meanwhile quietly to return to
medicine. Wherefore he now made bold to express a hope that he had long
cherished but had not dared to utter.
The sequelae of this wooing have never been cleared up in detail.
Schiller's letter as preserved bears a marginal note by Schwan to the
effect that Laura in the poem 'Resignation' was no other than his eldest
daughter. 'I gave her this letter to read', the note says, 'and told
Schiller to apply directly to her. Why nothing came of the affair has
remained a riddle to me. Happy my daughter would not have been with
Schiller.' The annotation is not dated. The identification of Laura with
Margarete is obviously wrong. Was Schwan's memory also at fault? Did he
imagine, long after the fact, that he had actually taken what must have
seemed to him, when Schiller had become a famous poet, the reasonable
course to have pursued? Did he withhold the letter too long and then
show it? Or was Margarete herself disinclined,--piqued perhaps by
Schiller's neglect of her, or by his passion for Charlotte von Kalb? Or
did Schiller's own courage fail him after he had received a hint of
favor? A letter to Körner, written May 7, tells of pleasant news from
Mannheim, and shortly afterward a rumor was in circulation that Schiller
was about to marry a rich wife. The probability is that neither party
was more than half inclined to the match. The blue flame perished
naturally for lack of fuel.
Early in May, following the custom of well-to-do Leipzigers, Schiller
sought refuge from the incipient summer heat of the city by taking
rooms in the suburban village (such it was then) of Gohlis. Here, in a
little second-story chamber, which was provided with an infinitesimal
bed-room, he lived some four months,--happy months, in the main, even
If the famous 'Song to Joy', which local tradition ascribes to this
time and place, was in fact written a little later in Dresden. Various
friends were at hand. Besides Huber there was Göschen, with whom he was
soon on terms of intimacy. The Stock sisters,--'our dear girls', as he
calls them in a letter to the absent Korner,--had likewise quartered
themselves in Gohlis; and so had Dr. Albrecht and his wife, Sophie, the
actress. These with one or two others were enough for converse and for
jollity; and there were merry evenings, with wine and talk, and cards
and skittles and nonsense. Though ordinarily he 'joked wi' difficulty',
Schiller could be jovial enough in a company of congenial spirits.
Nevertheless there was but little of the bohemian about him. That
dignified seriousness which pervades all his later writings, and gave
to Goethe the impression of a man dwelling habitually above the plane
of vulgar things, was beginning even now to characterize him as a
social being.
While living at Gohlis he received a visit from Moritz, the man who had
written so savagely of 'Cabal and Love'. If ever an author has been
justified in giving the cut direct to a pestilent reviewer, this was the
occasion. But Schiller received his visitor with suave courtesy; an
interchange of views followed and the two men parted with embraces and
protestations of friendly esteem. Schiller was not a good hater, except
of hate. His nature craved love and friendship. He was eager to learn of
his critics and could not long cherish resentment over an honest
expression of opinion. Besides this he had now come to feel that his
early writings were anything but invulnerable.
Notwithstanding his promise of steady industry, Schiller accomplished
but little during his sojourn at Gohlis. It was the old story: There
were too many distractions, too many confusing images of what might be
done. The scheme of an antidote to 'The Robbers', in the shape of a
moral sequel, gradually dropped out of view, along with the medical
studies. The _Thalia_, originally planned with reference to the public
at Mannheim, refused to bear transplanting to another soil without a
season of wilting. Instead of manuscript for the second number, Göschen
was obliged to content himself for several months with excuses for
postponement. And as for 'Don Carlos', the conception had so changed
with the lapse of time that its author felt at a loss how to manage It.
The play, with its wonderful pair of dreamers, was waiting for the
inspiration of a real friendship at Dresden.
Long before they met in the body Schiller and Körner had given
expression to their mutual trust in language of romantic enthusiasm. On
the 2nd of May Körner wrote at length of his own life, character and
aspirations. The letter reveals a noble nature conscious of an
exceptional indebtedness to fortune and eager to pay the debt by solid
work for mankind, but lacking the ability to decide and execute. Körner
evidently felt that he was in some danger of becoming an intellectual
Sybarite, and he hoped that Schiller's example would save him from this
danger by spurring him to literary effort. In his reply Schiller
expresses his admiration of a character to whom fortune's favor means
not, as for most men, the opportunity of enjoyment, but the duty of more
strenuous living; then he sends a jubilant Godspeed to the 'dear
wanderer who wishes to accompany him in such faithful, brotherly fashion
on his romantic journey to truth, fame and happiness.' The letter
continues:
I now feel realized in us what as poet I but prophetically imagined.
Brotherhood of spirits is the most infallible key to wisdom.
Separately we can do nothing.... Do not fear from this time forth
for the endless duration of our friendship. Its materials are the
fundamental impulses of the human soul. Its territory is eternity;
its _non plus ultra_ the Godhead.
Then, as if momentarily abashed by his own extravagance of expression,
he protests that his _Schwärmerei_, if such it be, is nothing but a
'joyful paroxysm anticipating our future greatness'. For his part, he
would not 'exchange one such moment for the highest triumph of cold
reason'. Enthusiasm, he declares, is the greatest thing in life.
The two men did not see each other until July, when a meeting was
arranged at an interjacent village, to which Schiller rode out with the
Leipzig friends. The next day he wrote a letter to Körner, who had
returned to Dresden, describing an incident of the return journey,--a
letter so full of instruction with regard to the Schiller of this period
that it deserves to be quoted at some length:
Somehow we came to speak of plans for the future. My heart grew
warm. It was not idle dreaming. I had a solid philosophic assurance
of that which I saw lying before me in the glorious perspective of
time. In a melting mood of shame, such as does not depress but
rouses to manly effort, I looked back into the past, which I had
misused through the most unfortunate waste of energy. I felt that
nature had endowed me with powers on a bold plan, and that her
intention with me (perhaps a great intention) had so far been
defeated. Half of this failure was due to the insane method of my
education, and the adverse humor of fate; the other and larger half,
however, to myself. Deeply, my best of friends, did I feel all that,
and in the general fiery ferment of my emotions, head and heart
united in a Herculean vow to make good the past and begin anew the
noble race to the highest goal. My feeling became eloquent and
imparted itself to the others with electric power. O how beautiful,
how divine, is the contact of two souls that meet on the way to
divinity! Thus far not a syllable had been spoken of you, but I read
your name in Huber's eyes and involuntarily it came to my lips. Our
eyes met and our holy purpose fused with our holy friendship. It was
a mute hand-clasp--to remain faithful to the resolution of this
moment; to spur each other on to the goal, to admonish and
encourage, and not to halt save at the bourne where human greatness
ends.... Our conversation had taken this turn when we got out for
breakfast. We found wine in the inn, and your health was drunk. We
looked at each other silently; our mood was that of solemn worship
and each one of us had tears in his eyes, which he tried to keep
back.... I thought of the beginning of the eucharist: 'Do this as
often as ye drink in memory of me.' I heard the organ and stood
before the altar. Suddenly I remembered that, it was your birthday.
Unwittingly we had celebrated it with a holy rite. Dearest friend,
had you seen your glorification in our faces, heard it in our
tear-choked voices, at that moment you would have forgotten even
your betrothed; you would have envied no happy mortal under the sun.
Heaven has strangely brought us together, but in our friendship it
shall have wrought a miracle. Dim foreboding led me to expect much,
very much of you, when I first decided to come to Leipzig; but
Providence has more than fulfilled the promise, and has vouchsafed
to me in your arms a happiness of which I could not form an image.
It tends to provoke a smile to read on in this letter and find It
suddenly turning from such ecstasies to a straightforward confession
that the writer is embarrassed for lack of ready cash. He had met with
disappointments. The Mannheim people had not treated him handsomely, the
subscribers to the _Thalia_ were delinquent, and so forth. Could not
Göschen be persuaded to undertake a new and authentic edition of the
published plays and to advance a sum of money on the prospects? Körner's
reply was prompt and characteristic. He enclosed a draft for current
expenses, promised more against the time of need and bade his friend
have no further solicitude about money. He knew very well, so he averred
with politic delicacy, that Schiller could easily earn enough by working
for money; but for a year at least he was to let himself be relieved of
that degrading necessity. They would keep an account and all should be
paid back with interest in the time of abundance; but for the present no
more of pecuniary anxieties! Schiller, to whose brief experience in a
selfish world this sort of conduct was something new, replied that he
would not entrench himself in a false pride, as the great Rousseau had
done on a similar occasion, but would accept the generous offer; this
being the best possible expression of his gratitude. Korner was pleased
to have the business settled by letter. 'I have always despised money',
he wrote, 'to a degree that it disgusts me to talk about it with souls
that are dear to me. I attach no importance to actions that are natural
to people of our sort, and which you would perform for me were the
conditions reversed.'
It was now arranged that after Körner's marriage Schiller should make
his home in Dresden. The eagerly awaited migration took place in
September, and Schiller entered the Saxon capital, which was to be his
home for the next two years, in a flutter of joyous anticipation. The
Körners quartered him in their charming suburban cottage at Loschwitz,
in the loveliest region he had known since his childhood. The guest, who
had seen but little of the quiet joys of domestic life and was now
received on the footing of an adopted brother, felt very happy. His
intercourse with Körner gave him the very kind of intellectual stimulus
that he most needed. Körner was at this time the more solid character of
the two. He had seen more of the world. While capable of warm affection
and strong enthusiasm, he had adopted, a profession which inevitably
gave to his thoughts a practical bent. Besides this he had taken up the
study of Kant with great earnestness and was thereby more than ever
disposed to see all questions in the white light of pure reason. He was
thus the very man to pour a cool Mephistophelean spray upon Schiller's
emotional fervors. One can easily imagine the general drift of the
philosophical discussions that took place during the lengthening
evenings of September, 1785, when we find Schiller expressing himself to
the absent Huber in such language as this:
The boyhood of our minds is now over, I imagine, and likewise the
honeymoon of our friendship. Let our hearts now cleave to each
other in manly affection, gush little and feel much; plan little
and act the more fruitfully. Enthusiasm and ideals have sunk
incredibly in my estimation. As a rule we make the mistake of
estimating the future from a momentary feeling of enhanced power,
and painting things in the color of our transient exaltation of
feeling. I praise enthusiasm, and love the divine ethereal power of
kindling to a great resolution. It pertains to the better man, but
it is not all of him.
But life at Loschwitz was not lived altogether in the upper altitudes of
solemn philosophy. From this period dates the well-known
'Petition',--one of the few glints of playful humor to be found among
Schiller's poems. He had been left alone one day with 'Don Carlos', and
he found his meditations disturbed by the operations of the washerwoman.
The result was a string of humorous stanzas bewailing the fate of a poet
who is compelled by his vocation to fix his mind upon the love ecstasies
of Princess Eboli, and listen at the same time to the swashy music of
the wash-tub:
I feel my love-lorn lady's hurt,
My fancy waxes hotter;
I hear,--the sound of sock and shirt
A-swishing in the water.
Vanished the dream--the faery chimes--
My Princess, pax vobiscum!
The devil take these wash-day rimes,
I will no longer risk 'em.
When the Körners occupied their winter residence in the city, Schiller
found rooms hard by, and was presently joined by Huber, who had secured
a position in the diplomatic service. The time was now ripe for that
jubilant song, more frequently set to music than any other of Schiller's
poems, wherein we are introduced to a mystic brotherhood, worshiping in
fiery intoxication at the shrine of the celestial priestess, Joy, whose
other name is Sympathy. A mystic brotherhood; yet not an exclusive one,
since the fraternal kiss is--freely offered to every mortal on the round
earth who has found one soul to love. The lines glorify Joy, just as the
odes to Laura had previously glorified Love, as a mystic attraction
pervading all nature and leading up to God; as that which holds the
stars in their course, inspires the searcher after truth, sustains the
martyr and gives a pledge of immortality. Wherefore the millions are
exhorted to endure patiently for the better world that is coming, when a
great God will reward. Anger and vengeance are to be forgotten, and our
mortal foe forgiven. After these rapturous strophes, culminating in a
health to the good Spirit above, one is just a little surprised to hear
the singer urge, with unabated ardor, a purely militant ideal of
life,--firm courage in heavy trial, succor to the oppressed, manly pride
in the presence of kings, and death to the brood of liars. A final
strophe, urging grace to the criminal on the scaffold, general
forgiveness of sinners and the abolition of hell, was rejected by
Schiller, who later characterized the song as a 'bad poem'. The 'Song to
Joy' sprang from noble sentiment and has the genuine lyric afflatus; but
its author had not yet emerged from that nebulous youthful
sentimentalism according to which joy, sympathy, love, friendship,
virtue, happiness, God, were all very much the same thing. And the
thought is a trifle incoherent. If the good Spirit above the stars is to
pardon everybody, what becomes of the incentive to a militant life? Why
should one strive and cry and get into a feaze about tyrants and liars?
The 'Song to Joy', with music by Körner, was published in the second
number of the _Thalia_, which, after hanging fire for months, finally
appeared in February, 1786. It contained also the poems 'Radicalism of
Passion' and 'Resignation', and a fresh installment of 'Don Carlos'. Of
the prose contributions the most important was the story, 'The Criminal
from Disgrace', later called 'The Criminal from Lost Honor'. It was
based upon a true story, got from Professor Abel in Stuttgart,
concerning the life and death of a notorious Suabian robber, named
Schwan, who was put to death in 1760. Schiller changed the name to
Christian Wolf and built out of the ugly facts a strumous tale of
criminal psychology,--the autopsy of a depraved soul, as he called it.
His hero is a sort of vulgarized Karl Moor; that is, an enemy of society
who might have been its friend if things had not happened so and so. The
successive steps of his descent from mild resentment to malignant fury,
libertinism and crime, and the reaction of his own increasing depravity
upon his own mind, are described in a manner which is fairly interesting
from a literary point of view, whatever a modern expert criminologist
might think of it. The _crux_ of the ever difficult problem,--the
precise division of responsibility between society and the wretch whom
it spews out of its mouth,--is brought clearly into view, but without
any attempt at an exact solution. The tale is not a homily, but an
object-lesson designed to show how things go. It is too slight an affair
to be worthy of extended comment, but it shows Schiller becoming
interested in the psychological analysis of conduct. Moral goodness and
badness are beginning to appear less simple concepts, and the tangle of
human motive more intricate, than he had supposed.
Along with these contributions there also appeared in the second number
of the _Thalia_ a translation of the 'Précis Historique', prefixed by
Mercier to his recently published 'Portrait de Philippe Second'. The
'portrait' itself was a dramatic picture, in fifty-two scenes, without
division into acts. The work of Mercier, who paints the Spanish king in
the darkest possible colors, furnished a few hints for 'Don Carlos', but
its influence was not very great. What chiefly concerns us here is to
note Schiller's awakening interest in historical studies. In the spring
of 1786, during an absence of the Körners which deprived him of his
wonted inspiration, he found himself unable to work. Letter after letter
tells of laziness and mental vacuity. As he could do nothing else he
took to desultory reading, and this did not satisfy him. 'Really', he
wrote on the 15th of April:
Really I must turn over a new leaf with my reading. I feel with
pain, that I still have such an astonishing amount to learn; that I
must sow In order to reap.... History is becoming dearer to me every
day. I have this week read a history of the Thirty Years' War, and
my head is still quite feverish from it. That this epoch of the
greatest national misery should have been at the same time the most
brilliant epoch of human power! What a number of great men came
forth from this night! I could wish that for the ten years past I
had done nothing but study history. I believe I should have become a
very different fellow. Do you think I shall yet be able to make up
for lost time?
One sees from this language by what particular hook the study of history
had taken hold of Schiller's mind, and what kind of profit he was
promising himself from further reading. He was interested in the
evolution of great men. For him, as for the poets always, from Homer
down, history resolved itself into the doings of the leaders.
For the time being, however, the new zeal seems to have been a mere
flash in the pan, that set nothing in motion. Nor was Körner able, for
some time to come, to induce his friend to make a serious study of
Kant's 'Critique', though every third word between them was of
philosophy. Nevertheless their philosophic debates did bear literary
fruit. The third number of the _Thalia_, which came out in May,
contained the first installment of the 'Philosophical Letters', a
fictitious correspondence between two friends, Julius and Raphael, who
have arrived by different routes at the same way of thinking, and are
resolved to tell the world how it all came about. Julius is Schiller;
Raphael is Körner, who actually contributed one of the later letters. We
learn that Julius was passing through a spiritual crisis. He was happy
but he had not reflected. The little world of his rapturous emotions
sufficed him. Now, however, Raphael has enlightened his mind, made him a
citizen of the world and taught him to comprehend the all-sufficient
majesty of reason; but he has won enlightenment at the expense of peace.
He is miserable and demands back his soul. Raphael rebukes him gently
for his faint-heartedness and asks for a history of his thinking. So
Julius rummages through his papers and sends on a somewhat elaborate
'Theosophy of Julius',--a sort of _précis_, it would seem, of Schiller's
earlier views. It is religious mysticism set forth with warm eloquence.
The universe is a thought of God. The highest aim of thinking is to read
the divine plan. All spirits are attracted by perfection. The supreme
perfection is God, of whom love is an emanation. Love is gain; hate is
loss; pardon, the recovery of lost property; misanthropy a prolonged
suicide; egoism the utmost poverty. If every man loved all mankind,
every man would possess the world. If we comprehend perfection it
becomes ours. If we plant beauty and joy, beauty and joy shall we reap.
If we think clearly we shall love fervently.
To this 'theosophy' Julius adds a few comments, evidently of later
origin, which show that he has now become aware of its intellectual
inadequacy. Still he does not repudiate it. He thinks it may do for a
doctrine, if one's nature is adapted to it.--Herewith, so far as
Schiller was concerned, the 'Philosophic Letters' came to an end; but in
the spring of 1788, Körner surprised him with a letter by Raphael, which
is, philosophically speaking, by far the best of the entire collection.
But this book is not concerned with the writings of Körner.
Ere the third number of the _Thalia_ appeared it had become evident that
the enterprise would not be profitable, and its perplexed editor was in
doubt whether to continue it. He finally decided to go on. When the
fourth number came out, early in 1787, it contained the beginning of a
novel, 'The Ghostseer', wherein a mysterious Sicilian, and a still more
mysterious Armenian, dog the footsteps of a German Prince von ----
living at Venice, and do various things suggesting a connection
with occult powers. The first installment of the story broke off at a
very exciting point,--just when the Sicilian has produced his amazing
ghost-scene, but has not yet been unmasked as a vulgar fraud. Schiller
evidently began the novel in no very strenuous frame of mind. He
wished to profit by the popular interest in tales of mysterious
charlatanry which had been aroused by the exploits of Cagliostro. So
he set out to spin a yarn in that vein, but he had no definite plan
and did not himself know where he would bring up. The literary merits
of 'The Ghostseer', Schiller's most noteworthy attempt in prose
fiction, will come up for consideration in connection with the
conclusion, or rather the continuation, which he published some two
years later, when he had left Dresden to seek his fortune in Weimar.
Even now the necessity of seeking his fortune somewhere was daily
becoming more imperious. The _Thalia_ did not pay, though the critics
spoke well of it, and he could not live forever upon Körner's friendly
advances of money. The sense of his dependence often galled him; and yet
when a proposal, in itself highly attractive, came to him from a distant
city, he could not pluck up courage to leave his friend. Friedrich
Schröder, the greatest German actor of the time, wished to draw him to
Hamburg. Schiller looked up to Schröder with genuine admiration and
speculatively promised himself great gain from association with 'the one
man in Germany who could realize all his ideas of art.' In Mannheim,--so
he wrote in October, 1786,--he had lost all his enthusiasm for the
theater; it was now beginning to revive, but he shuddered at the
treatment to which playwrights were exposed by theatrical people.
Moreover he was living at Dresden 'in the bosom of a family to which he
had become necessary'. So nothing came of the negotiations except the
preparation of a stage version of 'Don Carlos' for the Hamburg theater.
An amusing glimpse of domestic conditions in the Körner household is
afforded by Schiller's dramatic skit, entitled 'Körner's Forenoon'. It
belongs apparently to the year 1787, but was not published until 1862.
The busy councillor of the Dresden Consistory sees a little leisure
before him and squares off at his desk for a solid forenoon's work. He
begins by ordering his man to shave him. Then he is interrupted by a
procession of callers,--Schiller, in various rôles, and Minna, and
Dorchen, and Professor Becker and others--who keep the stream of babble
flowing until one o'clock. Körner is too late for the consistory and all
that he has accomplished is to get shaved. The piece is a slight affair,
but there is enough of solemn fun in it to make one wish that its author
had seen fit to work his lighter vein more frequently.
About the time when this facetious bagatelle was penned, or a little
earlier perhaps, Schiller became the hero of a comedy in real life. In
the winter of 1787 he attended a masked ball where he met 'a pretty
domino--a plump voluptuous maiden,--who fascinated him. Her name was
Henriette von Arnim. He followed up the acquaintance and was soon quite
seriously interested. As the Arnim family did not enjoy the best of
reputations, the Körners were annoyed at Schiller's seeming lack of
connoisseurship in women. They contrived to let him know that on the
evenings when Henriette was not at home to him she was at home to a
certain earthy Count Waldstein, or to a certain jew banker, as the case
might be. This was painful, but not immediately decisive, and miserable
days ensued. In the spring he was persuaded to try a few weeks' outing
in the country. Here he was at first frightfully lonesome,--a dejected
Robinson Crusoe, who could neither work nor amuse himself. To his
pathetic demands for reading-matter his friends replied with malicious
humor by sending him Goethe's 'Werther' and Laclos's 'Liaisons
Dangereuses'. After a while the Arnims followed him, but presently the
count came also; and then the course of true love, thus awkwardly
bifurcated, was more troubled than ever. After Henriette's return to
Dresden there was an interchange of letters, wherein love fought a
losing battle with doubt and suspicion.
This half-year of amatory perturbation was of course unfavorable to
literary labor. No further numbers of the _Thalia_ appeared, and 'The
Misanthrope', a new play of excellent promise, made no progress. But
'Don Carlos' did at last get itself completed--after a fashion. It was
published early in the summer. And now, with this burden lifted, the
time seemed to have arrived for carrying out the long-cherished plan of
a visit to Weimar. Who could tell what might come of it? Körner was just
as loyal as ever, but he was also wise enough to respect his friend's
longing for a more assured and less dependent existence. And so in July
Schiller set out for Thüringen,--to be seen no more in Dresden save as
an occasional visitor. But the letters he wrote to the noble-minded
friend who had done and been so much for him constitute, for several
years to come, our best source of information concerning his outward
fortune and his inner history. Before we follow him to Weimar, however,
it will be in order to consider the play which remains as the most
important achievement of his Dresden period.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 64: Letter of March 25, 1785.]