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FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 63: Permission G. Bell & Sons, Ltd., London, and The
Macmillan Co., New York.]
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SCHILLER-GOETHE CORRESPONDENCE[64]
TRANSLATED BY L. DORA SCHMITZ
SCHILLER to GOETHE
Jena, August 23, 1794.
I yesterday received the welcome news that you had returned from your journey. We may therefore hope to see you among us again soon, which I, on my part, most heartily wish. My recent conversations with you have put the whole store of my ideas in motion, for they related to a subject which has actively engaged my thoughts for some years past. Many things upon which I could not come to a right understanding with myself have received new and unexpected light from the contemplation I have had of your mind (for so I must call the general impression of your ideas upon me). I needed the object, the body, for several of my speculative ideas, and you have put me on the track of finding it. Your calm and clear way of looking at things keeps you from getting on the by-roads into which speculation as well as arbitrary imagination—which merely follows its own bent—are so apt to lead one astray. Your correct intuition grasps all things, and that far more perfectly than what is laboriously sought for by analysis; and merely because this lies within you as a whole, is the wealth of your mind concealed from yourself. For, alas! we know only that which we can take to pieces. Minds like yours, therefore, seldom know how far they have penetrated and how little cause they have to borrow from philosophy, which, in fact, can learn only from them. Philosophy can merely dissect what is given it, but the giving itself is not the work of the analyzer but of genius, which combines things according to objective laws under the obscure but safe influence of pure reason.
Although I have done so at a distance, I have long watched the course which your mind has pursued, and have observed, with ever renewed admiration, the path which you have marked out for yourself. You seek for the necessary in nature, but you seek it by the most difficult route—one which all weaker minds would take care to avoid. You look at Nature as a whole, when seeking to get light thrown upon her individual parts; you look for the explanation of the individual in the totality of her various manifestations. From the simple organism you ascend step by step to those that are more complex, in order, in the end, genetically to form the most complicate of all—man—out of the materials of nature as a whole. By thus, as it were, imitating nature in creating him, you try to penetrate into his hidden structure. This is a great and truly heroic idea, which sufficiently shows how your mind keeps the whole wealth of its conceptions in one beautiful unity. You can never have expected that your life would suffice to attain such an end, but to have struck out such a path is worth more than reaching the end of any other; and you, like Achilles in the Iliad, made your choice between Phthia and immortality. Had you been born a Greek, or even an Italian, and had you from infancy been placed in the midst of choice natural surroundings and of an idealizing Art, your path would have been infinitely shortened, perhaps even have been rendered entirely superfluous. Had such been the case, you would, on your first perception of things, have taken up the form of the Necessary, and the grand style would have been developed in you with your first experience. But being born a German, and your Grecian spirit having been cast in this Northern mold, you had no other choice but either to become a Northern artist; or, by the help of the power of thought, to supply your imagination with what reality withheld from it, and thus, as it were, to produce a Greek from within by a reasoning process. At that period of life when the soul, surrounded by defective forms, constructs its own inward nature out of outward circumstances, you had already assumed a wild Northern nature, and your victorious genius, rising above its materials, then discovered this want from within, and became convinced of it from without through its acquaintance with Greek nature. You had then, in accordance with the better model which your developing mind created for itself, to correct your old and less perfect nature, and this could be effected only by following leading ideas. However, this logical direction which a reflecting mind is forced to pursue, is not very compatible with the esthetic state of mind by which alone a reflecting mind becomes creative. You, therefore, had one task more: for inasmuch as your mind had passed over from intuition to abstraction, so you had now to go back and retranslate ideas into intuitions, and to change thoughts into feelings; for it is only through the latter that genius can be productive.
It is somewhat in this manner that I imagine the course pursued by your mind, and whether I am right or not you will yourself know best. However, what you yourself can scarcely be aware of (as genius ever remains the greatest mystery to itself) is the beautiful harmony between your philosophical instinct and the purest results of your speculative reason. Upon a first view it does indeed seem as if there could not be any greater opposites than the speculative mind which proceeds from unity, and the intuitive mind which proceeds from variety. If, however, the former seeks experience with a pure and truthful spirit, and the latter seeks law with self-active and free power of thought, then the two cannot fail to meet each other half way. It is true that the intuitive mind has only to deal with individuals, the speculative mind only with species. But if the intuitive mind is that of a genius and seeks the nature of the Necessary in experience, then individuals will be produced, it is true, but they will possess the character of the species; and again, if the speculative mind is that of a genius, and does not lose sight of experience when rising above it, then it will indeed produce species only, but with the possibility of individual life and with a well-founded relation to actual objects.
But I find that in place of sending you a letter I am writing an essay—pray excuse this, and ascribe it to the lively interest with which the subject has filled me; and should you not recognize your own image in this mirror, do not on that account flee from it, I pray. * * *
Diderot's work[65], especially the first part, is very interesting, and, considering the subject, is handled with edifying delicacy. I beg to be permitted to keep this book for a few days longer.
It would, I think, be well if we could now soon start the new periodical, and you would perhaps be kind enough to let the first number be opened with something of yours. I, therefore, take the liberty of asking you whether you would be willing to let your novel[66] appear in our journal in successive numbers? But whether you determine to let us have it or not, I should consider it a very great favor to be allowed to read it.
My friends and my wife commend themselves to your kind remembrance.
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GOETHE to SCHILLER
Ettersburg, August 27, 1794.
On the anniversary of my birthday, which took place this week, I could not have received a more acceptable gift than the letter in which you give the sum of my existence in so friendly a manner, and in which, by your sympathy, you encourage me to a more assiduous and active use of my powers.
Pure enjoyment and true usefulness can only be reciprocal, and it will be a pleasure to me to unfold to you at leisure what your conversation has been to me; how I, too, regard those days as an epoch in my life, and how contented I feel in having gone on my way without any particular encouragement; for it seems to me that, after so unexpected a meeting, we cannot but wander on in life together. I have always prized the frank and rare earnestness which is displayed in all that you have written and done, and I may now claim to be made acquainted by yourself with the course taken by your own mind, more especially during these latter years. If we make it clear to each other to which point we have thus far attained, the better able we shall be to work on together without interruption.
All that relates to myself I will gladly communicate to you; for, being fully conscious that my undertaking far exceeds the measure of human capabilities and their earthly duration, I should like to deposit many things with you, and thereby not only preserve them but give them life.
Of what great advantage your sympathy will be to me you will yourself soon perceive, when, upon a closer acquaintance, you discover in me a kind of obscurity and hesitation which I cannot entirely master, although distinctly aware of their existence. Such phenomena, however, are often found in our natures, and we quietly submit to them as long as they do not become too tyrannical.
I hope to be able to spend some time with you soon, when we shall talk over many things.
Unfortunately, a few weeks before receiving your proposal, I had given my novel to Unger,[67] and the first proof sheets have already come to hand. I have more than once thought, during these last days, that it would have been very suitable for your periodical. It is the only thing I have by me of any size, and is a kind of problematical work such as the good Germans like.
I will send the first Book as soon as I get all the proof sheets. It is so long since it was written that, in the actual sense of the word, I may be said to be only the editor.
Goethe on Schiller.]
If, among my projects, there were anything that would serve the purpose you mention, we should, I think, easily agree as to the most appropriate form to put it in, and there should be no delay in my working it out. Farewell, and remember me to your circle.
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SCHILLER to GOETHE
Jena, August 31, 1794.
On my return from Weissenfels, where I met my friend Körner from Dresden, I received your last letter but one, the contents of which pleased me for two reasons; for I perceive from it that the view I took of your mind coincides with your own feelings, and that you were not displeased with the candor with which I allowed my heart to express itself. Our acquaintance, although it comes late, awakens in me many a delightful hope, and is to me another proof of how much better it often is to let chance have its way than to forestall it with too much officiousness. Great as my desire always was to become more closely acquainted with you than is possible between the spirit of a writer and his most attentive reader, I now clearly see that the very different paths upon which you and I have moved could not, with any advantage to ourselves, have brought us together sooner than at the present time. I now hope, however, that we may travel over the rest of our life's way together, and, moreover, do this with more than usual advantage to each other, inasmuch as the last travelers who join company on a long journey have always the most to say to each other.
Do not expect to find any great store of ideas in me; this is what I shall find in you. My need and endeavor are to make much out of little, and, when you once come to know my poverty in all so-called acquired knowledge, you will perhaps find that I have sometimes succeeded in doing this; for, the circle of my ideas being small, I can the more rapidly and the more frequently run through it; for that very reason I can use my small resources with more effect, and can, by means of form, produce that variety which is wanting in the subject-matter. You strive to simplify your great world of ideas; I seek variety for my small means. You have to govern a whole realm, I but a somewhat numerous family of ideas, which I would be heartily glad to be able to extend into a little world.
Your mind works intuitively to an extraordinary degree, and all your thinking powers appear, as it were, to have come to an agreement with your imagination to be their common representative. In reality, this is the most that a man can make of himself if only he succeeds in generalizing his perceptions and making his feelings his supreme law. This is what you have endeavored to do, and what in a great measure you have already attained. My understanding works more in a symbolizing method, and thus I hover, as a hybrid, between ideas and intentions, between law and feeling, between a technical mind and genius. This it is that, particularly in my earlier years, gave me a rather awkward appearance both in the field of speculation and in that of poetry; for the poetic mind generally got the better of me when I ought to have philosophized, and my philosophical mind when I wished to poetize. Even now it frequently enough happens that imagination intrudes upon my abstractions, and cold reason upon my poetical productions. If I could obtain such mastery over these two powers as to assign to each its limits, I might yet look forward to a happy fate; but, alas! just when I have begun to know and to use my moral powers rightly, illness seizes me and threatens to undermine my physical powers. I can scarcely hope to have time to complete any great and general mental revolution in myself; but I will do what I can, and when, at last, the building falls, I shall, perhaps, after all, have snatched from the ruins what was most worthy of being preserved.
You expressed a wish that I should speak of myself, and I have made use of the permission. I make these confessions to you in confidence, and venture to hope that you will receive them in a kindly spirit.
I shall today refrain from entering into details about your essay, which will at once lead our conversations on this subject upon the most fertile track. My own researches—entered upon by a different path—have led me to a result rather similar to that at which you have arrived, and in the accompanying papers you will perhaps find ideas which coincide with your own. I wrote them about a year and a half ago, for which reason, as well as on account of the occasion for which they were penned (they were intended for an indulgent friend), there is some excuse for their crudeness of form. These ideas have, indeed, since then, received in me a better foundation and greater precision, and this may possibly bring them much nearer to yours.
I cannot sufficiently regret that Wilhelm Meister is lost to our periodical. However, I hope that your fertile mind and friendly interest in our undertaking will give us some compensation for this loss, whereby the admirers of your genius will be double gainers. In the number of the Thalia which I herewith send you, you will find some ideas of Körner's on Declamation, which, I think, will please you.
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SCHILLER to GOETHE
Jena, January 7, 1795.
Accept my best thanks for the copy of the novel you have sent me. The feeling which penetrates and takes hold of me with increasing force the further I read on in this work, I cannot better express in words than by calling it a delicious, inward sense of comfort, a feeling of mental and bodily well-being, and I will vouch that this will be the effect produced upon all readers.
This sense of comfort I account for from the calm clearness, smoothness, and transparency which pervade the whole of your work, and which leave nothing to disturb or to dissatisfy the mind, and the mind is not more excited than is necessary to fan and maintain a joyous life. Of the individual parts I shall say nothing till I have seen the Third Book, which I am looking forward to with longing.
I cannot express to you what a painful feeling it often is to me to pass from a work of this kind into one of a philosophical character. In the former all is so joyous, so alive, so harmoniously evolved, and so true to human life; in the latter all is so stern, so rigid, abstract, and so extremely unnatural; for all nature is synthesis, and philosophy but antithesis. I can, in fact, give proof of having been as true to nature in my speculations as is compatible with the idea of analysis; indeed, I have perhaps been more faithful to her than our Kantians would consider permissible or possible. But still I am no less fully conscious of the infinite difference between Life and Reasoning, and cannot, in such melancholy moments, help perceiving a want in my own nature which in happier hours I am forced to think of only as a natural duality of the thing itself. This much, however, is certain—the poet is the only true man, and the best philosopher is but a caricature in comparison with him.
I need scarcely assure you that I am in the utmost anxiety to know what you have to say to my philosophy of the Beautiful. As the Beautiful itself is derived from man as a whole, so my analysis of it is drawn from my own whole being, and I cannot but be deeply interested in knowing how this accords with yours.
Your presence here will be a source of nourishment both to my mind and my heart. Especially great is my longing to enjoy some poetical works in common with you.
You promised to let me hear some of your epigrams when an opportunity occurred. It would be a great and additional pleasure to me if this could be done during your approaching visit to Jena, as it is still very uncertain when I may be able to get to W.
Just as I am about to close comes the welcome continuation of your Meister. A thousand thanks for it!
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GOETHE to SCHILLER
Weimar, November 21, 1795.
Today I received twenty-one of Propertius' elegies from Knebel and shall look them over carefully and then let the translator know where I find anything to object to; for, as he has given himself so much trouble, nothing ought, perhaps, to be altered without his sanction.
I wish you could induce Cotta to pay for this manuscript at once; it could easily be calculated how many sheets it would print. I have, it is true, no actual occasion to ask this, but it would look much better, would encourage energetic coöperation, and also help in making the good name of the Horen better known. A publisher has often enough to pay money in advance, so Cotta might surely once in a way pay upon the receipt of a manuscript. Knebel wants the Elegies to be divided into three contributions; I, too, think this the right proportion, and we should thus have the first three numbers of next year's Horen nicely adorned. I will see to it that you get them in proper time.
Have you seen Stolberg's abominable preface to his Platonic discourses? The disclosures he there makes are so insipid and intolerable that I feel very much inclined to step out and chastise him. It would be a very simple matter to hold up to view the senseless unreasonableness of this stupid set of people, if, in so doing, one had but a rational public on one's side; this would at the same time be a declaration of war against that superficiality which it has now become necessary to combat in every department of learning. The secret feuds of suppressing, misplacing, and misprinting, which it has carried on against us, have long deserved that this declaration should be held in honorable remembrance, and that continuously.
I find this doubly necessary and unavoidable in the case of my scientific works, which I am gradually getting into order. I intend to speak out my mind pretty frankly against reviewers, journalists, collectors of magazines, and writers of abridgments, and, in a prelude or prolog, openly to declare myself against the public; in this instance, especially, I do not intend to allow any one's opposition or reticence to pass.
What do you say, for instance, to Lichtenberg, with whom I have had some correspondence about the optical subjects we spoke of, and with whom, besides, I am on pretty good terms, not even mentioning my essays in his new edition of Erxleben's Compendium, especially as a new edition of a compendium is surely issued in order to introduce the latest discoveries, and these gentlemen are usually quick enough in noting down everything in their interleaved books! How many different ways there are of dispatching a work like this, even though it were but done in a passing manner I However, at the present moment, my cunning brains cannot think of any one of these ways.
I am, at present, very far from being in anything like an esthetic or sentimental mood, so what is to become of my poor novel? Meanwhile, I am making use of my time as best I can, and my comfort is that, at so low an ebb, one may hope that the flood is about to return.
Your dear letter reached me safely, and I thank you for your sympathy, which I felt sure you would give me. In such cases one hardly knows what is best to do—to let grief take its natural course or to fortify oneself with the assistance which culture gives us. If one determines to follow the latter course—as I always do—one feels better merely for the moment, and. I have noticed that Nature always reasserts her rights in other ways.
The Sixth Book of my novel has made a good impression here also; to be sure, the poor reader never knows what he is about with works of this kind, for he does not consider that he would probably never take them up had not the author contrived to get the better of his thinking powers, his feelings, and his curiosity.
Your testimony in favor of my tale I prize very highly, and I shall henceforth work with more confidence at this species of composition.
The last volume of my novel cannot in any case appear before Michaelmas; it would be well if we could arrange the plans we lately discussed in reference to this.
My new story can, I think, hardly be ready by December, and, moreover, I can scarcely venture to pass on to it till I have, in some way or other, written something in explanation of the first. If, by December, I could write something of this kind neatly, I should be very glad of thus being able to give you a contribution for next year's opening number. Farewell. May we long enjoy having around us those who are nearest and dearest to us. Toward New Year's I hope again to spend some time with you.
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SCHILLER to GOETHE
Jena, July 2, 1796.
I have now run through all the eight Books of your novel, very hurriedly, it is true, but the subject-matter alone is so large that I could scarcely get through it in two days' reading. Properly speaking, therefore, I ought not to say anything about it even today, for the surprising and unparalleled variety which is therein concealed—in the strictest sense of the word—is overpowering. I confess that what I have as yet grasped correctly is but the continuity, not the unity, although I do not for a moment doubt that I shall become perfectly clear on this point also, if, as I think, in works of this kind, the continuity is more than half the unity.
As, under the circumstances, you cannot exactly expect to receive from me anything thoroughly satisfactory and yet wish to hear something, you must be content with a few remarks; these, however, are not altogether without value, inasmuch as they will tell of direct impressions. To make up for this, I promise you that our discussions about your novel shall continue throughout the month. To give an adequate and truly esthetic estimate of a whole work, as a work of art, is a serious undertaking. I shall devote the whole of the next four months to it, and that with pleasure. Besides this, it is one of the greatest blessings of my existence that I have lived to see this work of yours completed, that it has been written while my faculties are still in a state of growth, and that I may draw inspiration from this pure source; further, the beautiful relation that exists between us makes it seem to me a kind of religious duty to call your cause my own, and to develop all that is real in my nature so fully that my mind may become the clearest mirror of what exists beneath this covering, and that I may deserve the name of being your friend in the higher sense of the word. How vividly have I felt, at this time, that excellence is a power, that it can influence selfish natures only as a power, and that, as contrasted with excellence, there is no freedom but love!
I cannot say how much I have been moved by the truth, the beautiful vitality, and the simple fulness of your work. My agitation, it is true, is greater than it will be when I have completely mastered your subject, and that will be an important crisis in my intellectual life; but yet this agitation is the effect of the Beautiful and only of the Beautiful, and is merely the result of my reason not having yet been able to master my feelings. I now quite understand what you meant by saying that it was the Beautiful, the True, that could often move you to tears. Calm and deep, clear and yet incomprehensible, like nature, your work makes its influence felt; it stands there, and even the smallest secondary incident shows the beautiful equanimity from which all has emanated.
But I cannot, as yet, find words to describe these impressions, and, moreover, I must today confine myself to the Eighth Book. How well you have succeeded in bringing the large and widely extended circle, the different attitudes and scenes of the events, so closely together again! Your work may be compared to a beautiful planetary system; everything belongs together, and it is only the Italian figures which, like comets and as weirdly as they, connect the system with one that is more remote and larger. Further, these figures, as also Marianna and Aurelia, run wholly out of this system again, and, after having merely served to produce a poetical movement in it, separate themselves from it as foreign individuals. How beautifully conceived it is to derive what is practically monstrous and terribly pathetic in the fate of Mignon and the Harpist from what is theoretically monstrous, from the abortions of the understanding, so that nothing is thereby laid to the charge of pure and healthy nature! Senseless superstition alone gives birth to such monstrous fates as pursue Mignon and the Harpist. Even Aurelia's ruin is but the result of her own unnaturalness, her masculine nature. Toward Marianna alone could I accuse you of poetic selfishness. I could almost say she has been made a sacrifice to the novel, as the nature of the case would not permit of her being saved. Her fate, therefore, will ever draw forth bitter tears, while in the case of the three others the reader will gladly turn from what is individual to the idea of the whole.
Wilhelm's false relationship to Theresa is admirably conceived, motivated, and worked out, and still more admirably turned to account. Many a reader will at first be actually alarmed at it, for I can promise Theresa but few wellwishers; all the more beautiful is the way in which the reader is rescued from this state of uneasiness. I cannot imagine how this false relation could have been dissolved more tenderly, more delicately, or more nobly. How pleased Richardson and all his set would have been had you made a scene out of it and been highly indelicate in the display of delicate sentiments! I have but one little objection to raise: Theresa's courageous and determined resistance to the person who wishes to rob her of her lover, even although the possibility is thereby reopened to her of possessing Lothar, is quite in accordance with nature, and is excellent; further, I think there are good reasons for Wilhelm's showing deep indignation and a certain amount of pain at the banterings of his fellowmen and of fate—but it seems to me that he ought to complain less deeply of the loss of a happiness which had already ceased to be anything of the kind to him. In Natalie's presence, as it seems to me, his regained freedom ought to be to him a greater happiness than he allows it to be. I am quite aware of the complication of this state of things and what is demanded by delicatesse, but, on the other hand, Natalie may in some measure be said to be hurt by this same delicatesse when, in her presence, Wilhelm is allowed to lament over the loss of Theresa.
One other thing I specially admire in the concatenation of the events is the great good which you have contrived to draw from Wilhelm's already-mentioned false relation to Theresa so as most speedily to bring about the true and desired end, the union of Natalie and Wilhelm. In no other manner could this end have been arrived at so well and so naturally as by the path you have pursued, although this very path threatened to lead from it. It can now be maintained, with the most perfect innocence and purity, that Wilhelm and Natalie belong to each other; and Theresa's letters to Natalie lead up to this beautifully. Such contrivances are of the greatest beauty, for they unite all that could be desired, nay, all that appeared wholly ununitable; they complicate, and yet carry the solution in themselves; they produce restlessness, and yet lead to repose; they succeed in reaching the goal, while appearing to be making every effort to keep from it.
Mignon's death, although we are prepared for it, affects one powerfully and deeply—so deeply, in fact, that many will think you quit the subject too abruptly. This, upon first reading it, was a very decided feeling in my own case; but, on reading it a second time, when surprise had subsided, I felt it less, and yet I fear that you may have, in this, gone a hair's breadth too far. Mignon, before her end, had begun to appear more womanly and softer, and thus to have become more interesting in herself; the repulsive heterogeneity of her nature had relaxed, and with this relaxation some of her impetuosity had likewise disappeared. Her last song, especially, melts one's heart to the most intense sympathy. Hence it strikes one as odd that, directly upon the affecting scene of her death, the doctor should make an experiment upon her corpse, and that this living being should so soon be able to forget the person, merely in order to regard her as the instrument of a scientific inquiry. It strikes one as being equally strange that Wilhelm—who, after all, is the cause of her death, and is aware of it—should at that moment notice the instrument-case and be lost in the recollection of past scenes, when the present should have so wholly absorbed him.
