The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller by Calvin Thomas

C >> Calvin Thomas >> The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31

In Ferdinand we have Schiller's favorite type of tragic hero,--the
fervid young enthusiast whose calamity grows out of his own strenuous
idealism. He is, however, a less weighty character than Karl Moor, or
Carlos, or Max Piccolomini, because we see in him nothing more than the
infatuate lover. In their case love is paired with the spirit of great
enterprise; for him it is all in all, so far at least as the action of
the play is concerned. His Louise sums up the entire macrocosm. If he
thinks of doing anything in the world, it is only in order that he may
marry her and live with her in a lover's paradise all his life. This is
his way of talking:

Let obstacles come between us like mountains; I will make steps of
them and fly to my Louise's arms. The storms of adverse fate shall
inflate my feeling, danger shall only make my Louise the more
charming.... I will guard you as the dragon guards the subterraneous
gold. Trust yourself to me. You need no other angel. I will throw
myself between you and fate, receive every wound for you and catch
for you every drop from the cup of joy. On this arm shall my Louise
dance through life, etc.

One can pardon some extravagance to a stage lover, since his
intoxication is what makes him amiable. Who, for example, would abate a
jot or tittle from the delicious nonsense of Romeo? When he says that
carrion flies

may seize
On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand
And steal immortal blessings from her lips,

he seems to have expressed himself appropriately. There is no suggestion
of mawkishness in his discourse. Our Ferdinand, however, is distinctly
spoony. There went no poetic irony to his creation, and he has no saving
sense of humor. He never seems, like Romeo, to be toying with hyperbole
in an artistic spirit, but it is all dead earnest. Such a love-lorn
youth must expect to recruit his admirers chiefly from the ranks of the
very young. And yet there are times, just as in the case of Karl Moor,
when Ferdinand's rhetoric becomes impressive from sheer titanic force.
Thus when he says to Louise, who has just been reminding him of his
prospects: 'I am a nobleman,--we will see, however, whether my patent of
nobility is older than the ground-plan of the eternal universe; whether
my escutcheon is more valid than the hand-writing of heaven in Louise's
eyes: This woman is for this man.'

It is undoubtedly in the scenes with his father that Ferdinand appears
at his best. Here at least there is manly vigor. The contrast between
the wicked father and the good son is effectively brought out, although,
as in the case of Karl and Franz Moor, it is carried beyond the limits
of easy credibility. How unnatural is the relation of the pair! One
would think they had never talked with each other before, and that each
had lived in complete ignorance of the other's character and
inclinations. The father, by way of founding a claim to his son's
grateful affection, declares that he has 'trodden the dangerous path to
the heart of the prince' and killed his predecessor,--all for the sake
of his son. He admits that he is suffering the 'eternal scorpion-stings
of conscience,' and yet he expects Ferdinand to follow him without a
whimper, and he is angry when the young man indignantly renounces the
usufruct of his father's crimes. Although Ferdinand is a major in the
army, his marriage with Lady Milford is arranged for him as if he had no
claim to be consulted. The president blurts out his plan with brutal
coarseness, and urges it in language which he knows will rouse his son's
anger. So when he appears in the Miller house he makes himself as odious
as possible. Diplomacy and finesse are weapons not found in his armory,
though he is a courtier and a successful politician. He is simply a
cynical brute in high office. In truth his conduct is so very inhuman as
to convey an impression of burlesque. He seems copied from some ogre in
a fairy tale.

But if President von Walter appears now like a melodramatic caricature,
it is partly because times have changed; for Schiller was not without
his models in the recent history of Wuerttemberg. During the period of
Karl Eugen's worst recklessness--the decade beginning with 1755,--he was
loyally abetted by two men, Rieger and Montmartin, who made themselves
thoroughly odious. Rieger was a man of talent and knowledge, but without
heart and without conscience. It was he who managed the cruel and
lawless conscriptions whereby Duke Karl raised the desired troops for
France.[56] Young men were simply taken wherever they could be
found,--pulled from their beds at night, or seized as they came from
church,--and forced into the army under brutal conditions of service.
Many a Wuerttemberg family could have told a tale of barbarity
essentially similar to that recounted by the lackey to Lady Milford in
the second act of Schiller's play. Remorseless oppression of the people,
for the purpose of raising money to be spent on the duke's costly whims,
became the order of the day.

Still more brutal and cynical in his methods than Rieger was Count
Montmartin, who was made President of the State Council in 1758. A
cunning and wicked intriguer, he lent himself without scruple to the
gratification of his master's lusts and caprices. The daughters of the
land were unsafe from his machinations if they had had the misfortune to
attract the wanton eye of their sovereign. In 1762, wishing to be rid of
his powerful rival, Montmartin trumped up a charge that Rieger was
engaged in treasonable correspondence with Prussia. The result was that
Rieger was publicly disgraced. Meeting him one day on parade the duke
angrily tore off his military order, struck him with his cane and then
shut him up in the Hohentwiel, where he lay for four years without
light, table, chair or bed. In like manner the patriotic publicist,
Moser, was imprisoned for five years, without trial and without
sentence, because he had withheld his consent to the duke's high-handed
proceedings.

Such was the political system that had afflicted Wuerttemberg during
Schiller's childhood. It furnished him with his dramatic 'mythology', as
it has been called. The name may be allowed to pass, only it should be
remembered that _this_ mythology was simply history. The rapier-thrusts
of the dramatist were not directed against wind-mills of the
imagination, but against political infamies that make one's blood boil
in the reading and that would have moved a more spirited people to hang
their rulers to the nearest tree. This should be borne in mind by any
one who, in the milder light of a later and better era, is disposed to
carp at Schiller for caricaturing the nobility. He was not concerned
with aristocracy in general, but with the particular kakistocracy that
had disgraced his native land. And all that he did was to exhibit it as
it was, or lately had been.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 51: 'The New Heloise', Part 1, letter 62.]

[Footnote 52: The adjectives are John Morley's; "Diderot", Chap. VII.]

[Footnote 53: "La premiere fois que je la vis, ce fut a l'eglise",--says
Diderot's St. Albin, in recounting the beginning of his infatuation for
Sophie. So with Faust and Margaret, and with Schiller's beautiful Greek
lady in 'The Ghostseer'.]

[Footnote 54: "Schillers Leben und Werke", 15. Aufl. (1900), p. 297. In
earlier editions of Palleske's work, which appeared originally in
1858-9, Louise was further characterized as 'the crushed heart of the
German people'; and the sentence, 'which had to recover from those
wounds', read: 'which is beginning to recover'.]

[Footnote 55: One strophe runs:

Dann wird ein Tag sein, den werd' ich auferstehn!
Dann wird ein Tag sein, den wirst du auferstehn!
Dann trennt kein Schicksal mehr die Seelen,
Die du einander, Natur, bestimmtest.]

[Footnote 56: See above, page 7.]

CHAPTER VII

Theater Poet in Mannheim

Die Schaubuehne ist mehr als jede andere oeffentliche Anstalt des
Staats eine Schule der praktischen Weisheit, ein Wegweiser, durch
das buergerliche Leben, ein unfehlbarer Schluessel zu den geheimsten
Zugaengen der menschlichen Seele.--_Discourse on the Theater, 1784_.

Mannheim, famed for the geometric regularity of its streets, was in
Schiller's day a city of about twenty thousand inhabitants. Since 1720
it had been the capital of the Bavarian Palatinate, and under the
Elector Karl Theodor it had acquired some distinction as a nursery of
the arts. We have seen that Schiller, coming thither from Suabia,
imagined himself escaping from the land of the barbarians to the land
of the Greeks. In the year 1777 the Upper and Lower Palatinate were
united, and the Elector transferred his residence to Muenchen. For this
withdrawal of the light of their ruler's countenance the Mannheimers
were compensated in a measure by the establishment among them of a
so-called National Theater. There was no German nation at the time, but
there was a very general interest in the German drama. Lessing's famous
experiment at Hamburg, though it turned out badly, had set people
thinking. Playwrights and actors were learning to regard themselves no
longer as purveyors of mere amusement, but as the dignified
representatives of a noble art having boundless possibilities of
influence. The public was becoming interested in the principles of
dramatic construction and in the criteria of excellence. Scholars were
beginning to inquire whether the stage might not again become what it
had been for the ancient Athenians. And so the way had been prepared
for a serious conception of the theater and for experiments like that
at Mannheim.

The management of the enterprise was placed in the hands of Baron
Heribert von Dalberg, a young nobleman (born in 1750), who had given no
evidence of unusual fitness for such an office, but was a connoisseur
and a gentleman. He devoted himself zealously to his work and soon made
his theater famous. He was courteous and hospitable, kept an eye open
for promising talent and enjoyed the role of Maecenas. His system
provided for regular meetings of his actors, at which plays were
discussed, reports rendered and grievances ventilated. For the rest he
was not a man of ideas, but a follower of tradition. He disliked to take
risks and often missed the mark in his judgment of persons and of plays.
He continued until 1803 to act as intendant and occasionally tried his
hand at dramatic composition, or the adaptation of a Shaksperian play,
All told, his services were such that the Mannheiniers have deemed him
worthy of a statue.

Among the actors whom Baron Dalberg's enterprise had assembled at
Mannheim were three or four of notable talent. Thus there was Iffland,
of the same age as Schiller, who was destined to win fame as an actor,
playwright and manager. Like Diderot, Iffland believed ardently in the
moral mission of the drama. He was himself a man of character who had
taken to the stage against the wish of his kinfolk, and now his hobby
was to refine the language of the stage and to elevate the actor's
profession. He was an industrious and thoughtful player, who gave
careful attention to the little matters of mimicry and personation and
seldom failed to please. Another was Beil, a greater actor in point of
natural endowment, who relied more upon vigorous realism than upon
studied refinements. Then there was Beck, who was at his best as a
portrayer of youthful enthusiasm and sentiment. His nature was akin to
Schiller's and a warm friendship sprang up between the two.

When Schiller arrived in Mannheim, late in July, 1783, Dalberg was in
Holland. There was nothing going on at the theater, and the sweltering
town, deserted by such as could get away, was suffering from an epidemic
of malarial fever. But the faithful Streicher was there and friend
Meyer, the manager, and Schwan, the publisher, whose vivacious daughter,
Margarete, gradually kindled in the heart of the new-comer another faint
blue flame which he ultimately mistook for love. His first concern was
to write to Frau von Wolzogen, who had loaned him money for his journey,
a detailed report of his finances. He was the possessor of fifteen
thalers, whereof he had reserved five for the return to Bauerbach. His
friend Meyer had found him a nice place where, by dispensing with
breakfast, he could eat, drink and lodge for about two thalers a week.
Hair-dresser, washerwoman, postman and tobacconist would require, all
told, one thaler. So he hoped to keep afloat in the great world at least
three weeks, and then,--back to his heart's home in Saxony! The letter
continues:

Oh, I shall long to be soon, soon, with you again; and meanwhile, in
the midst of my greatest distractions, I shall think of you, my
dearest friend. I shall often break away from social circles and,
alone in my room, sadly dream myself back with you and weep.
Continue, my dear, continue to be what you have been hitherto, my
first and dearest friend; and let us be, all by ourselves, an
example of pure friendship. We will make each other better and
nobler. By mutual sympathy and the delicate tie of beautiful
emotions we will exhaust the joys of this life and at the last be
proud of this our blameless league. Take no other friend into your
heart. Mine remains yours unto death and beyond that, if possible.

One sees that the writer of this letter had lived quite long enough
in his idyllic retirement, and that his benefactress had judged the
case wisely.

Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,
Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.[57]

We who do not live in an epoch of emotional expansion have the right to
get what amusement we can out of this note of high-flown sentimentalism.
At the same time its instructive aspect should not be lost sight of.
When a youth of twenty-three, battling with the vulgar prose of life,
falls into such a tone in writing to a middle-aged lady who has
befriended him; when he lets his imagination brood upon the coming
luxury of tears and of beautiful emotions; when he is so pathetically
eager to reign without a rival in the heart of his friend, and to assure
her of his everlasting loyalty in the world to come,--how shall we
expect him to express himself when he undertakes to speak the language
of strong feeling in works of the imagination? Evidently we must be
prepared for all things in the way of sentimental extravagance.

After two weeks of idle waiting Schiller was able to report that Dalberg
had returned and was showing himself very friendly. The man was 'all
fire,'--only it was gunpowder flame that would not last long. The genial
intendant insisted that Schiller should by all means remain in Mannheim.
'Fiesco,' now in print as a tragedy, should be put upon the stage at
once; 'Louise Miller' should be taken under consideration, a performance
of 'The Robbers' be given for the author's special gratification, and so
forth. At first Schiller was little disposed to bank upon this effusive
kindness. His plans went no further than to effect a sale of the
stage-rights of his two plays and then to return to Bauerbach. But the
lures of Dalberg finally prevailed and in September he made a contract
for a year's employment as dramatist of the Mannheim theater. He was to
furnish one entirely new play, in addition to those he had on hand, and
to have as compensation three hundred florins, the copyright of all the
plays and the receipts of a single performance of each of them. For a
moment the future looked tolerably bright. He saw in his mind's eye an
assured income of more than twelve hundred florins, which would provide
amply for his needs and enable him to pay his debts.

But his plans went all wrong. In the first place, the pestilent fever,
which he fought with giant doses of quinine, proved very intractable and
held him in its grip for months. He was unable to work and fell into a
sort of mental coma. In a letter of November 13 he describes himself as
eating Peruvian bark like bread; and six weeks later he was still
suffering from the effects of his unlucky midsummer plunge into the
miasmatic air of Mannheim. In other ways, too, the new situation proved
a disappointment. Social demands involved him in expenditures far in
excess of his modest calculations, while the intervals of relief from
physical incapacity were filled with a hundred distractions which left
him no time for sustained mental effort. And so he drifted into the
winter without accomplishing anything more notable than the final
revision of 'Fiesco'.

About this time he was elected a member of the so-called 'German
Society', a learned body which enjoyed the protection of the Elector.
This little honor was highly valued by Schiller, since it made him a
citizen of the Palatinate and gave him an assured social status. On the
other hand, his emergence into the light of day as a respectable
functionary was not without its disadvantages, since his creditors now
became importunate. There were pressing duns from Stuttgart and from
Bauerbach, but the debtor could not pay. He became involved in a painful
correspondence with his father, who had undertaken to guarantee a small
debt of his son provided that another larger one be paid so and so. When
this hope failed, the old captain lost patience and began to deal out
counsel, reproof and warning with a lavish hand. He recommended his son
to save the pennies and live more economically; to return to medicine;
to marry a wife; to remember his Creator, and so on. To all of which the
perplexed Friedrich could only reply with fresh promises, excuses and
recommendations of patience. In like manner he put off Frau von Wolzogen
until she began to lose faith in him. A sharp letter from her brought
him to his knees with a humble apology, but it was years before he could
pay his debt to her.

The first performance of 'Fiesco', the adaptation of which to the stage
had cost its author such a world of trouble, took place on the 12th of
January, 1784. As played it differed a good deal from the published
version, and not alone with respect to the catastrophe. Thus the painful
episode of Bertha was worked over into something less revoltingly
horrible. In the stage version, instead of being brutally violated, she
is abducted by a tool of Gianettino, but rescued and restored to her
home unharmed. With this change made it would seem as if there were less
reason than ever for her being cursed and sent to a subterraneous
prison-vault. Nevertheless Verrina's curse was allowed to
remain,--chiefly, as one cannot help surmising, that the girl might be
rescued with _eclat_ in the fourth act. (The rescue scene in 'The
Robbers' had been a great success.) It has already been noted that the
offensive quarrel between Julia and Leonora was omitted and that Leonora
was allowed to live. And there were other such changes. Schiller had
been impressed by an actor's criticism of his florid and violent
language. He accordingly removed or toned down a few blemishes of this
kind, but without making a radical revision of the style. Even in the
stage version there is quite too much of rant and fustian.

The Mannheimers took but little interest in 'Fiesco,'--it was too
erudite for them, as Schiller explained to Reinwald some months
later.[58] Republican liberty, he went on to say, was in that region a
sound without meaning; there was no Roman blood in the veins of the
Pfaelzer. In Berlin and Frankfurt, however, the piece had met with good
success. We cannot blame Schiller for trying to extract comfort from
these bits of evidence that the prophet was not without honor save in
his own country, though we may question his implication that republican
ideas were just then less rife in the Palatinate than in Berlin and
Frankfurt. The fact is that the lover of republican ideas must have been
the very person to feel the keenest dissatisfaction with 'Fiesco.' Where
it did succeed, its success was due to causes having little to do with
political sentiment. The Berlin triumph was equivocal, being the triumph
not so much of Schiller as of one Pluemicke, who took high-handed
liberties with the original text and made it over, in both language and
thought, so as to suit the taste of the Berlin actors. This northern
version, thus diluted with the water of the Spree, was presently
published by the enterprising pirate, Himburg, and proved a formidable
rival of the genuine edition. The play was tried at several theaters and
with various endings,--curiously enough Pluemicke made Fiesco commit
suicide in the moment of his triumph,--but it never became really
popular. It was translated into English in 1796, into French in 1799.

Much more favorable was the reception given to 'Cabal and Love', which
was first played at Mannheim on the 15th of April, 1784.[59] The part of
the lackey who describes the horrors attending the exportation of
soldiers to America was omitted; the satire was too strong for the
politic Dalberg, who had all along been troubled by Schiller's drastic
treatment of princely iniquity and his obvious allusions to well-known
persons. Even Schwan, who was delighted with 'Louise Miller' from the
first and readily undertook to publish it, described its author as an
executioner. This time the Mannheimers had no difficulty of
comprehension and they gave their applause unstintingly. After the great
scene in the second act they rose and cheered vociferously,--whereat
Schiller bowed and felt very happy. 'His manner', says honest Streicher,
who has left a report of the memorable evening, 'his proud and noble
bearing, showed that he had satisfied himself and was pleased to see his
merit appreciated.'

A few days later the Mannheim players repeated their triumph at
Frankfurt, where Schiller was lionized to his heart's content. 'Cabal
and Love' now quickly became a stage favorite. Within a few months it
was played successfully at nearly all the more important theaters of
Germany. Even Stuttgart fell into line, but the Duke of Wuerttemberg was
not pleased, and a memorial of the nobility led to the prohibition of a
second performance. At Braunschweig It was tried with a happy ending,
but this innovation, reasonable as it seems, took no root. A badly
garbled English translation by Timaeus appeared in 1795; a better one by
Monk Lewis, under the title of 'The Minister', in 1797. A French
translation by La Martelliere was hissed off the stage of the Theatre
Francais in 1801.

From the Minerva press the new play got blame and praise. One writer saw
in it the same Schiller who was already known as the 'painter of
terrible scenes and the creator of Shaksperian thoughts'. A Berlin
critic named Moritz, of whom we shall hear later, called the piece a
disgrace to the age and wondered how a man could write and print such
nonsense. The plot consisted, he declared, of a simpleton's quarrel with
Providence over a stupid and affected girl. It was full of crass, ribald
wit and senseless rodomantade. There were a few scenes of which
something might have been made, but 'this writer converted everything
into inflated rubbish'. Some one taxed Moritz with undue severity,
whereupon he returned to the attack, insisting that this extravagant,
blasphemous and vulgar diction, which purported to be nature rude and
strong, was in reality altogether unnatural.[60]

And, to be candid, the critic was able to bring together an anthology of
quotations which seemed like a rather forcible indictment of Schiller's
literary taste. What Moritz failed to see was that the bad taste was
only an excrescence growing upon a very vigorous stock. This was felt by
another reviewer who declared that high poetic genius shone forth from
every scene of Schiller's works. Many years later Zelter, the friend of
Goethe, bore witness to the electric effect of the play upon himself and
the other excitable youth who saw it in the first days of its
popularity. Like 'The Robbers,' it was a harbinger of the revolution. It
seemed to voice the hitherto voiceless woe of the third estate; and just
because of that savage force which made it seem absurd to sedate minds,
just because it rang out in such shrill and clangorous notes, it has
continued to be heard. Good taste is a matter of fashion. It is never
the most vital quality of literature.

If any one should be tempted to think that Schiller's youthful ideals of
the dramatic art were not sufficiently exalted, he should read the
lecture given before the Mannheim German Society, in June, 1784, on the
question: 'What can a good permanent theater really effect?' It is an
excellent, thoughtful essay, instinct with lofty idealism and at the
same time full of sound observation. Setting out from the postulate that
the highest aim of all institutions whatsoever is the furtherance of the
general happiness, the paper discusses the theater as a public
institution of the state. Its claims are examined, and the sphere and
manner of its influence discussed, along with those of religion and the
laws. Probably too much is made out of the moral and educational utility
of the stage,--so at least it will be apt to seem to an American or an
Englishman,--but the familiar arguments, the validity of which is now
generally recognized in Germany, are marshalled with a fine breadth of
view and with many felicities of expression. Toward the end there is a
passage which shows that Schiller himself felt the shakiness of the
utilitarian argument. He says: 'What I have tried to prove
hitherto--that the stage exerts an essential influence upon morals and
enlightenment--was doubtful'; and then he goes on to speak of a value
not doubtful, namely, its value as a means of refined pleasure. This is
the heart of the matter forever and ever; and one could hardly sum up
the case more sagely than Schiller does in the sentence: 'The stage is
the institution in which pleasure combines with instruction, rest with
mental effort, diversion with culture; where no power of the soul is put
under tension to the detriment of any other, and no pleasure is enjoyed
to the damage of the community,'

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31