The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller by Calvin Thomas

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From this plan it is clear that the principal stress was to fall on the
character of Warbeck, conceived as a high-minded youth entangled in an
odious lie. To quote Schiller's exact words: 'The problem of the piece
is to carry him (Warbeck) ever deeper into situations in which his
deceit brings him to despair, and to let his natural truthfulness
increase as the circumstances force him to deception.' To arouse
sympathy for such a character would have been, to say the least, a
difficult task; one cannot wonder that Schiller was perplexed by it. The
schemes indicate that his main reliance was the love-story, which would
have been very prominent. Of the other characters, the most important,
probably, was the Duchess Margaret, conceived as a selfish, overbearing,
heartless creature, in sharp contrast with the romantic Adelaide. On the
whole, judging from such imperfect data as we possess, one must regard
'Warbeck' as a far less powerful and promising design than 'Demetrius'.

Contemporaneous with 'Warbeck' and 'Demetrius', and broadly similar to
them in that it was to deal with a political adventurer and to present
an elaborate picture of intrigue in high life, is the plan of a play
which was at first called 'Count Koenigsmark'. The subject occupied the
thoughts of Schiller for some little time in the summer of 1804, until
it was dropped in favor of 'Demetrius'. Count Koenigsmark was a nobleman
who was murdered in the year 1694, at the court of Duke George I., of
Hannover, in consequence of a supposed criminal relation with the
Duchess Sophia, a princess of the house of Celle. As he mused upon the
dramatic possibilities of the story, Schiller became less interested in
Koenigsmark and more in the compromised duchess; so the name of the piece
was changed to 'The Princess of Celle'. From his extant notes and
sketches one can make out that the heroine was conceived, like Mary
Stuart, as a noble sufferer. She is a virtuous lady who is given in
marriage for political reasons to an unloved and licentious duke, whose
mistresses insult her. In her misery she makes a friend of the
chivalrous but inflammable Koenigsmark. Their relation excites suspicion,
Koenigsmark is murdered and the duchess sent to prison,--disgraced but
innocent. In prison she finds peace of soul, just as Mary Stuart finds
it in the presence of death.

Much older than any of these plans and entirely different from them, is
that of the 'Knights of Malta', which dates back to the year 1788. While
pursuing his studies for 'Don Carlos' Schiller had become greatly
interested in the story of La Valette's heroic defense of Malta in 1565.
It seemed to him to promise well for a tragedy in the Greek style,--with
a chorus, a simple plot and few characters. He began work upon it, but
was soon diverted by his historical studies. In subsequent years,
however, he returned to 'The Knights of Malta' from time to time, and as
late as 1803 was strongly minded to attempt the completion of the work.
During these fifteen years the plan underwent various changes. Although
certain aspects of the subject made it very attractive to Schiller, he
felt from the first that it lacked the 'salient point' of a good
tragedy. The extant data show him working tentatively with one idea
after another, without ever finding exactly what he wanted. This being
so, it is hardly worth while to go minutely into the history of his
plans and perplexities.

'The Knights of Malta' was to have been a poetic tragedy of heroic
devotion, friendship and self-sacrifice. The exposition, as we have it
in outline, shows,--partly by means of a chorus of 'spiritual'
knights,--the desperate plight of the besieged Christians. The crisis
requires absolute devotion to the principles of the order, but the
knights have degenerated. Two of them are quarreling over a captured
Greek girl, and so forth. La Valette, the grandmaster, institutes stern
measures of reform to restore the ancient _morale_ of the order, and
these provoke intrigue and opposition. The defenders of Fort St. Elmo
ask to be relieved, on the ground that the place cannot be held. La
Valette decides that St. Elmo must be defended to the last: it is a case
where a few must be ready to sacrifice themselves for their principles
and for the order as a whole. Among those thus sent to death is La
Valette's own son, who leaves behind a very dear friend. In the end the
defenders of St. Elmo are killed, but Malta and the order are saved. The
Turks raise the siege.

Reading this outline one has no great difficulty In seeing why
Schiller's dramatic instinct could never be satisfied with 'The Knights
of Malta'. It has no tragic climax, no point upon which the action could
be focused. As a stage-play it would have had small chance of favor, on
account of its chorus and its entire lack of female characters. Romantic
love was to be left out and friendship to take its place. But could
anything worth while have been done with the heroics of friendship after
'Don Carlos'? On the whole one must regard it as a great good fortune
for the German drama that, when Schiller was hesitating in 1796 between
'Wallenstein' and 'The Knights of Malta', the former carried the day. As
for the pseudo-antique chorus, the best that he could do with that, by
way of an experiment, was done later in 'The Bride of Messina'.

Besides those already mentioned, there are a number of other plans which
deserve a word, were it only to show the wide range of Schiller's
interest and the eagerness of his quest after variety. Thus we find him
occupied, at one time or another, with two antique themes, 'Aggripina'
and 'The Death of Themistocles'; with an Anglo-Saxon theme of the tenth
century, 'Elfride', and with a medieval romantic theme, 'The Countess of
Flanders'. Then we find two subjects that were suggested by the reading
of modern travels, 'The Ship' and 'The Filibuster'. In one the scene was
to be laid on some distant coast or island, and the plot was to
illustrate sea-life and commerce, with their characteristic types. In
the other the whole action was to take place on shipboard, bringing in a
mutiny, ship's justice, a sea-fight, trade with savages, and so forth.
Finally there are sketches of two other plays, based on the annals of
crime. In one of them, called 'The Children of the House', the hero was
to be a thorough scoundrel, whom Nemesis would impel mysteriously to a
course of conduct whereby his long hidden crimes would be discovered.
The other, entitled 'The Police', was to present a story of crime and
its discovery at Paris,--with telling realistic pictures for which
Schiller took a mass of interesting notes.

Verily, a rich collection, which shows that a good deal of Schiller
failed to find expression in the works he completed. One could wish
particularly that we had those sea-plays, and the Parisian criminal
drama. Perhaps in that case the critics who have taxed him with this or
that narrowness would have found it more difficult to make headway.

We turn now from these dramatic might-have-beens to glance at the
translations and adaptations made for the Weimar theater.[130] And first
it should be observed that in all these, without exception, Schiller's
point of view was that of a practical playwright, not that of a literary
virtuoso. His concern was to enrich the repertory of the theater with
good acting plays; plays which, when put upon the boards, would 'go',
and go with such actors and such properties as were to be had. In his
efforts to do this he was never restrained by any feeling of piety
toward his originals from making such changes as commended themselves to
his dramaturgic principles or instinct. The first work of this kind
undertaken by him at Weimar was a version of Goethe's 'Egmont', made in
1796. Iffland was starring in Weimar and wished to appear as Egmont.
Goethe was just then somewhat lukewarm toward the theater, and even if
he had not been, it was by no means hidden from him that his own
strength lay in the poetic rather than the dramatic sphere. So it was
arranged that Schiller, as a man of experience, should operate upon the
play that he had reviewed so candidly some years before. His procedure
was 'consistent but cruel', as Goethe afterward phrased it. He dropped
the role of Margaret of Parma entirely, rearranged here and there in
order to avoid a too frequent change of scene, and made a multitude of
little changes in the interest of stage effect. As to the propriety of
these alterations it is futile to argue on general grounds, since so
much depends on the point of view, and the point of view has changed.
To-day people who go to the theater to see 'Egmont' prefer to see the
play, for better or worse, as Goethe wrote it. Piety toward the author
counts more than abstract principles. For a while Schiller's version of
'Egmont' had a certain vogue in the German theaters, but it soon gave
way to an increasing preference for the original. Goethe himself was
pleased when this tendency manifested itself.

Similar considerations apply to the version of Lessing's 'Nathan',
which was made in 1801. Strangely enough, as it seems to us now,
Lessing's masterpiece had up to that time met with no favor on the
German stage. It was not so much that people objected to its
philosophic drift as that something seemed to be lacking in its
dramatic quality. Very naturally Goethe and Schiller, who were strongly
in sympathy with Lessing's tendency, were desirous of domesticating
'Nathan' on the Weimar boards. So Schiller undertook an adaptation,
taking the task very seriously. Years before, while following up the
theory of the drama in his strict and strenuous fashion, he had
convinced himself that 'Nathan' was a monstrosity; it was neither
tragedy nor comedy nor tragi-comedy, and he was opposed to a mixture of
types. In tragedy, so he had reasoned in his essay upon 'Naive and
Sentimental Poetry', _raisonnement_ is out of place; in comedy, pathos.
Lessing had yielded to the 'whim' of mixing the two. If, therefore, it
was desired to make an acceptable stage-play out of 'Nathan' it would
be advisable to modify it in the direction of tragedy by reducing its
_raisonnement_, or else to make it more like comedy by reducing its
pathos. In other words, theory had given Schiller a point of view which
is not the modern point of view. To-day no one, unless it were a
pedant, would be disposed to criticize Lessing, because, toward the end
of his days, out of the fullness of his heart and following the impulse
that was in him, he for once threw his own theories to the winds and
wrote a dramatic masterpiece of its own peculiar kind. The very fact
that it is unique is for us a part of its merit.

But now, as was pointed out in a preceding chapter, the effect of
Schiller's occupation with the drama at Weimar was to weaken his
reverence for theory and to convince him of the importance of 'keeping
the type-idea flexible in one's mind'. So when he came to adapt 'Nathan'
for the stage he proceeded much less radically than one might expect
from his previous utterances. The tendency of the play was left intact,
but many changes were made in the interest of brevity, simplicity and
rapidity of movement. To these no one can seriously object, since
Lessing's text is too long for an evening in the theater, as the matter
was regarded in those pre-Wagnerian days. Not so readily to be approved
are certain other changes which amount to a retouching of some of the
portraits with which Schiller was dissatisfied,--notably that of the
Sultan Saladin.

Of much greater interest than either of these adaptations is that of
'Macbeth', which was made in January and February, 1800. This particular
tragedy of Shakspere had always been a favorite with Schiller, and its
influence is discernible in some of his plays, especially in
'Wallenstein'. It was only natural, therefore, at a time when Goethe and
Schiller were reaching out in every direction for the enrichment of
their theatrical repertory, that the staging of 'Macbeth' should appear
as a consummation devoutly to be wished. There were already German
versions which had been used at various theaters, but they were wretched
travesties of Shakspere. In setting out to make a new and better one,
Schiller took as the basis of his operations the translations of Wieland
and of Eschenburg, following now the one and now the other. When he was
half through with his labor he procured the English text and used it
thereafter as a corrective. He added, subtracted and rearranged at will,
and converted Shakspere's prose into verse. The result is a decidedly
Schilleresque 'Macbeth', the merit of which has been debated to this
day. The Romanticists, with A. W. Schlegel at their head, were disgusted
with it and did not hide their emotions. Others have defended it through
thick and thin. The questions involved are too far-reaching to be
discussed here, but it may at least be remarked that there is no ground
for a severely unfavorable judgment of Schiller's work. It is in no
sense a translation and is not to be judged as a literary performance at
all, but as a stage-play. As such it served its purpose very well; it
made Shakspere acceptable at Weimar in the only way then possible under
the circumstances. And it helped bring Shakspere into favor elsewhere.
The Schillerized 'Macbeth' may be regarded as a sort of necessary
transition-stage between the gross travesties of an earlier time and the
more faithful presentations that were to come.

With respect to 'Turandot' a few words must suffice. This again grew out
of the laudable desire of the duumvirs to acclimate in Weimar dramatic
productions that had pleased the public in other climes. Gozzi's
so-called _fiabe_ belonged to this class. They had had a great though
short-lived vogue at Venice, and this had led to a German translation in
prose by a man named Werthes. What Schiller did was to turn the prose of
Werthes into pentameters of the style that he had made peculiarly his
own. He seems not to have looked at the Italian text at all, and indeed
it could have been of little use to him. As one would expect, he made an
attempt to give some poetic weight to the fantastic trifle, but it was a
thankless undertaking, albeit good Italian critics have praised his
'Turandot' as far superior to the original. The comic-opera subject, for
such it really is, was not adapted to Schiller's vein. His 'Turandot' is
distinctly stiff and operose. It had a short run at two or three
theaters, where, as at Weimar, it excited a small interest on account of
the riddles and the Chinese 'business', and then it was quietly
consigned to the limbo of things that were.

The remaining adaptations made by Schiller were from the French, a
language which he knew better than any other except his own. The Duke of
Weimar, and with him a considerable portion of the Weimar public, had
retained from early education a strong predilection for the French
drama, both in comedy and in the _haute tragedie_. It was thus a cause
of joy in court circles when it became known, in the autumn of 1799,
that Goethe had so far overcome his early anti-Gallic prejudices as to
have undertaken a translation for the stage of Voltaire's 'Mahomet'. To
this enterprise, however, he was moved not so much by any change of
heart, or by poetic sympathy, as by a desire to improve the style of the
Weimar actors,--to teach them ideality and self-abnegation. With this
purpose Schiller was in hearty accord, as can be seen from his verses
'To Goethe', written in January, 1800, in which he set forth his
dramatic confession of faith. The Frenchman, he declared with unction,
could by no means serve them as a model; there must be no bringing back
of the old fetters. The Germans had advanced to a new era, and demanded
now a faithful picture of nature. Nevertheless their histrionic art was
in a backward condition, lacking in ideality and distinction. Wherefore
the French tragedy was to be welcomed as a 'guide to the better'. It was
to come 'like a departed spirit and purify the desecrated stage into a
worthy seat of the ancient Melpomene'.

The result of this new _rapprochement_ was that Schiller began to take a
more lively interest in the French drama, and out of this interest grew
presently his translations of two of Picard's comedies, 'Mediocre et
Rampant' and 'Encore des Menechmes'. In both he took his task very
lightly. Picard's alexandrines, in 'Mediocre et Rampant', were converted
into German prose, and the play was christened 'The Parasite'. In the
case of the other, renamed 'The Nephew as Uncle', the original was in
prose and Schiller merely made a free translation. These enterprises
were little more than hackwork, which had its suitable reward of brief
popularity. Of an entirely different character is the version of
Racine's 'Phedre', which, as we have seen, was finished a few weeks
before Schiller's death. Here we have for the first time what can
properly be called a poetic translation. To a large extent Schiller's
version is a line-for-line rendering of the French alexandrines into
German pentameters,--a thing by no means easy to do. 'Phedra' is by far
the best specimen we have of Schiller's powers as a translator.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 129: In the year 1805 it was still usual at Weimar to have the
bodies of the dead borne to the grave in the night by hired workmen. On
the death of Schiller the burgomaster gave orders in accordance with the
custom, and it was with some difficulty that friends of the dead man
succeeded in displacing the guild on which the lot had fallen and
securing for themselves the privilege of acting as bearers. While lying
in the old churchyard the bones of Schiller became commingled with
others in the vault, so that the proper reassembling of his mortal
framework, in the year 1826, was a matter of some perplexity. For a
while the skull was exhibited in the court library, where it called
forth Goethe's well-known poem.]

[Footnote 130: For an excellent discussion of Schiller's more important
adaptations the reader is referred to A. Koester, "Schiller als
Dramaturg", Berlin, 1891.]

CHAPTER XXII

The Verdict of Posterity

Alles was der Dichter geben kann ist seine Individualitaet; diese
musz also wert sein, vor Welt und Nachwelt aufgestellt zu
werden.--_Review of Buerger, 1791_.

Rather more than in other countries it is the fashion in Germany to
regard literature under a national aspect, and to judge of writers not
so much according to their power of titillating a fastidious literary
taste as according to the degree in which they have entered into and
affected the intellectual life of the people at large. Looked at from
this point of view, Schiller well deserves the name of a national poet;
indeed it would be hard to find another modern man who deserves it
better. Critics there have always been to find fault with this and that,
yet he remains, after a century, the most truly popular of German poets;
not the most admired by the literary class, or by the outside world, but
the most beloved in his own country. Most Germans have a different
feeling for Schiller from that which they cherish for any other of their
great writers.

For this his idealized personality is largely responsible. He is
habitually thought of as an exceptionally noble and lofty character; as
a man more singly and more strenuously devoted than most men to those
starry ideals of truth, beauty and freedom, to which in the abstract all
acknowledge fealty. His memory was early invested with a sort of halo,
as of secular sainthood, for which, when one soberly reviews the facts
of his career, there seems at first but little warrant. Many another man
has been no less serious in his philosophizing, no less conscientious in
his artistic performance. There is nothing heroic in the story of his
life, unless it were his battle with disease; and this might have been
managed more wisely, if not more bravely. And yet the halo is not
altogether factitious. Many who knew him in his later years have borne
witness to his spiritualized expression and the fine dignity of his
presence. He gave the impression of an eminent personage whose "soul was
like a star and dwelt apart". Withal he was a pattern of the homely
virtues; an affectionate husband and father and a loyal friend. There
was no dissonance between his life and his poetry. On hearing of his
death, the sculptor Dannecker wrote:

The godlike man stands continually before my eyes, I will make him
life-like. Schiller must live in sculpture as a colossal form. I
intend an apotheosis.... The king was lately in my studio, and when
he saw Schiller so large he said: 'Zounds! But why so large?' I
answered: 'Majesty, Schiller must be thus large; the Suabian must
make a monument to the Suabian.' Said the king: 'You must have been
a good friend of his.' I answered: 'Yes, Majesty, from my youth up.
I occupy myself with him daily, working at the colossal bust. It
costs trouble, but it gives me joy, because the colossal image will
make an indescribable impression.'

But it was not only his friends who were thus affected by his
personality. Madame de Stael said of him in her famous book on Germany,
which was published in 1813:

Schiller was as admirable for his virtues as for his talents.
Conscience was his muse.... He loved poetry, the dramatic art,
history, literature, for their own sake. Had he been resolved not
to publish his works, he would have bestowed the same care upon
them.... In his youth he had been guilty of some vagaries of
fancy, but with the strength of manhood he acquired that exalted
purity which springs from great thoughts. He never had anything to
do with the vulgar feelings. He lived, spoke and acted as if bad
people did not exist; and when he portrayed them in his works, it
was with more exaggeration and less depth than if he had known
them. The bad presented themselves to his mind as an obstacle, as
a physical scourge.

In this characterization, truth to tell, there is a considerable element
of pure moonshine, as any one may convince himself who will read through
Schiller's letters, more especially those written during the lifetime of
the _Horen_. He had in him quite enough of the fighter and of the
schemer, and it came out in human ways. Moreover he wrote constantly for
immediate publication, under the goad of strong necessity; what he might
have done if this necessity had not existed, no man, or woman, can tell.
Still, Madame de Stael's portrait is highly interesting, as the first
that went out to the world at large, and as evidence of the impression
produced by Schiller in his later years even upon those who were under
no peculiar temptation to idealize him.

Much more influential in shaping the sentiment of posterity was Goethe's
magnificent 'Epilogue', dating from the year 1815. In this poem the
essential lineaments of Schiller's character, as seen through the
soothing but not yet obscuring vista of ten years by the wisest of those
who knew him well, were fixed for all time. He was here described as one
who had 'mounted to the highest heights, closely akin to all that we
esteem'; and posterity was besought to give him that which life had
denied. Henceforth it was possible only for purblind partisanship to
think otherwise than nobly of a man concerning whom a Goethe could say
such words as these:

Denn er war unser. Mag das stolze Wort
Den lauten Schmerz gewaltig uebertoenen.
Er mochte sich bei uns im sichern Port,
Nach wildem Sturm, zum Dauernden gewoehnen.
Indessen schritt sein Geist gewaltig fort
Ins Ewige des Guten, Wahren, Schoenen;
Und hinter ihm, in wesenlosem Scheine,
Lag was uns alle baendigt, das Gemeine.[131]

Nevertheless the purblind partisanship was already beginning its
campaign, though less against Schiller's character than against his art;
and this campaign soon led to a terrific logomachy, which was destined
to convulse the German empire of the air for something like two
generations. The controversy related to the comparative merit of Goethe
and Schiller as men and as poets. In general the Romantic school was
hostile to Schiller, partly for private reasons that had very little to
do with critical theories. In his famous 'Lectures on Dramatic Art',
originally delivered at Vienna in 1808 and published a few years later,
A.W. Schlegel dealt briefly with Schiller at the end of the course. What
he said was not unmixed with just appreciation, but the lectures set a
bad fashion in German criticism. Modern poetry was identified with
Romantic poetry and Shakspere was held up as _the_ Romantic poet. Not
only his greatness, but his rubbish, his rodomontade, his quips and
quibbles and buffoonery, were treated as if they belonged to a
sacrosanct canon of dramatic art. From this the natural inference was
that to be like Shakspere was to be great, and that no other kind of
greatness was possible for the Romantic, or modern, poet. As for
Schiller, he was treated by Schlegel with urbane condescension as a
gifted playwright who had tried to imitate Shakspere and met with but
limited success. The early plays were dismissed with a mere cry of pain,
and the later ones were discussed very briefly and perfunctorily with
respect to purely formal matters.

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