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Read Ebook: The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume 03 Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes by Francke Kuno Editor
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Ebook has 4934 lines and 158348 words, and 99 pages
POEMS
To the Ideal The Veiled Image at Sa?s The Ideal and The Actual Life Genius Votive Tablets The Maiden from Afar The Glove The Diver The Cranes of Ibycus Thee Words of Belief The Words of Error The Lay of the Bell The German Art Commencement of the New Century Cassandra Rudolph of Hapsburg
DRAMAS
The Death of Wallenstein. Translated by S. T. Coleridge
William Tell. Translated by Sir Theodore Martin, K.C.B.
HISTORY AND LITERATURE
The Thirty Years' War--Last Campaigns of Gustavus Adolphus. Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison
On the Use of the Chorus in Tragedy. Translated by A. Lodge
Schiller's Correspondence with Goethe. Translated by L. Dora Schmitz
Schiller's Father and Mother
Schiller's House in Weimar and Birthplace in Marbach
Military Academy in Stuttgart and the Theatre in Mannheim, 1782
Church in which Schiller was married
Schiller at the Court of Weimar
Wallenstein and Seni
Wallenstein and Terzky
Wallenstein hears of Octavio's Treason
Wallenstein warned by his Friends
Stauffacher and his Wife Gertrude
The Oath on the R?tli
Tell takes Leave of his Family
Tell and Gessler
Gustavus Adolphus
The Goethe and Schiller Archives in Weimar
Facsimile of Leaf from the Album of Schiller's Letters to Charlotte von Lengefeld
THE LIFE OF SCHILLER
BY CALVIN THOMAS, LL.D.
Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Columbia University
He kept the faith. The ardent poet-soul, Once thrilled to madness by the fiery gleam Of Freedom glimpsed afar in youthful dream, Henceforth was true as needle to the pole. The vision he had caught remained the goal Of manhood's aspiration and the theme Of those high luminous musings that redeem Our souls from bondage to the general dole Of trivial existence. Calm and free He faced the Sphinx, nor ever knew dismay, Nor bowed to externalities the knee, Nor took a guerdon from the fleeting day; But dwelt on earth in that eternity Where Truth and Beauty shine with blended ray.
Friedrich Schiller, the greatest of German dramatic poets, was born November 10, 1759, at Marbach in Swabia. His father was an officer in the army which the Duke of W?rttemberg sent out to fight the Prussians in the Seven Years' War. Of his mother, whose maiden name was Dorothea Kodweis, not much is known. She was a devout woman who lived in the cares and duties of a household that sometimes felt the pinch of poverty. After the war the family lived a while at the village of Lorch, where Captain Schiller was employed as recruiting officer. From there they moved, in 1766, to Ludwigsburg, where the extravagant duke Karl Eugen had taken up his residence and was bent on creating a sort of Swabian Versailles. Here little Fritz went to school and was sometimes taken to the gorgeous ducal opera, where he got his first notions of scenic illusion. The hope of his boyhood was to become a preacher, but this pious aspiration was brought to naught by the offer of free tuition in an academy which the duke had started at his Castle Solitude near Stuttgart.
This academy was Schiller's world from his fourteenth to his twenty-first year. It was an educational experiment conceived in a rather liberal spirit as a training-school for public service. At first the duke had the boys taught under his own eye at Castle Solitude, where they were subjected to a strict military discipline. There being no provision for the study of divinity, Schiller was put into law, with the result that he floundered badly for two years. In 1775 the institution was augmented by a faculty of medicine and transferred to Stuttgart, where it was destined to a short-lived career under the name of the Karlschule. Schiller gladly availed himself of the permission to change from law to medicine, which he thought would be more in harmony with his temperament and literary ambitions. And so it proved. As a student of medicine he made himself at home in the doctrines and practices of the day, and for several years after he left school he thought now and then of returning to the profession of medicine.
Perhaps this reading would have made a radical of him even if he had just then been enjoying the normal freedom of a German university student. Be that as it may, the time came--it was about 1777--when the young Schiller, faithfully pursuing his medical course and doing loyal birthday orations in praise of the duke or the duke's mistress, was not exactly what he seemed to be. Underneath the calm exterior there was a soul on fire with revolutionary passion.
On the 22d of February, 1790, Schiller was married to Lotte von Lengefeld, with whom he lived most happily the rest of his days. His letters of this period tell of a quiet joy such as he had not known before. And then, suddenly, his fair prospects were clouded by the disastrous breakdown of his health. An attack of pneumonia in the winter of 1790-1791 came near to a fatal ending, and hardly had he recovered from that before he was prostrated by a second illness worse than the first. He bade farewell to his friends, and the report went abroad that he was dead. After a while he rallied, but never again to be strong and well. From this time forth he must be thought of as a semi-invalid, doomed to a very cautious mode of living and expectant of an early death. It was to be a fourteen years' battle between a heroic soul and an ailing body.
For a while, owing to the forced cessation of the literary work on which his small income depended, he was in great distress for lack of money. His wife, while of noble family, had brought nothing but herself to the marriage partnership. And then, just as in the dark days at Mannheim in 1784, help seemed to come from the clouds. Two Danish noblemen, ardent admirers quite unknown to him personally, heard of his painful situation and offered him a pension of a thousand thalers a year for three years. No conditions whatever were attached to the gift; he was simply to follow his inclination, free from all anxiety about a livelihood. Without hesitation he accepted the gift and thus found himself, for the first time in his life, really free to do as he chose. What he chose was to use his freedom for a grapple with Kant's philosophy. Today this seems a strange choice for a sick poet, but let Schiller himself explain what lay in his mind. He wrote to K?rner:
"It is precisely for the sake of artistic creation that I wish to philosophize. Criticism must repair the damage it has done me. And it has done me great damage indeed; for I miss in myself these many years that boldness, that living fire, that was mine before I knew a rule. Now I see myself in the act of creating and fashioning; I observe the play of inspiration, and my imagination works less freely, since it is conscious of being watched. But if I once reach the point where artistic procedure becomes natural, like education for the well-nurtured man, then my fancy will get back its old freedom and know no bounds but those of its own making."
Gentlemen, keep your seats! for the curs but covet your places, Elegant places to hear all the other dogs bark.
And so, noble soul, forget not the law, And to the true faith be leal; What ear never heard and eye never saw, The Beautiful, the True, they are real. Look not without, as the fool may do; It is in thee and ever created anew.
"I have read, devoured, bent my knee; and my heart, my tears, my rushing blood, have paid ecstatic homage to your spirit, to your heart. Oh, more! Soon, soon more! Pages, scraps--whatever you can send. I tender heart and hand to your genius. What a work! What wealth, power, poetic beauty, and irresistible force! God keep you! Amen."
Another important factor in his classicity is the suggestion that goes out from his idealized personality. German sentiment has set him on a high pedestal and made a hero of him, so that his word is not exactly as another man's word. Something of this was felt by those about him even in his lifetime. Says Karoline von Wolzogen: "High seriousness and the winsome grace of a pure and noble soul were always present in Schiller's conversation; in listening to him one walked as among the changeless stars of heaven and the flowers of earth." This is the tribute of a partial friend, but it describes very well the impression produced by Schiller's writings. His love of freedom and beauty, his confidence in reason, his devotion to the idea of humanity, seem to exhale from his work and to invest it with a peculiar distinction. His plays and poems are a priceless memento to the spirit of a great and memorable epoch. Hundreds of writers have said their say about him, but no better word has been spoken than the noble tribute of Goethe:
For he was ours. So let the note of pride Hush into silence all the mourner's ruth; In our safe harbor he was fain to bide And build for aye, after the storm of youth. We saw his mighty spirit onward stride To eternal realms of Beauty and of Truth; While far behind him lay fantasmally The vulgar things that fetter you and me.
FOOTNOTES:
POEMS
TO THE IDEAL
Then wilt thou, with thy fancies holy-- Wilt thou, faithless, fly from me? With thy joy, thy melancholy, Wilt thou thus relentless flee? O Golden Time, O Human May, Can nothing, Fleet One, thee restraint? Must thy sweet river glide away Into the eternal Ocean Main?
The suns serene are lost and vanish'd That wont the path of youth to gild, And all the fair Ideals banish'd From that wild heart they whilome fill'd. Gone the divine and sweet believing In dreams which Heaven itself unfurl'd! What godlike shapes have years bereaving Swept from this real work-day world!
As once, with tearful passion fired, The Cyprian Sculptor clasp'd the stone, Till the cold cheeks, delight-inspired, Blush'd--to sweet life the marble grown: So youth's desire for Nature!--round The Statue so my arms I wreathed, Till warmth and life in mine it found, And breath that poets breathe--it breathed;
With my own burning thoughts it burn'd;-- Its silence stirr'd to speech divine;-- Its lips my glowing kiss return'd-- Its heart in beating answer'd mine! How fair was then the flower--the tree!-- How silver-sweet the fountain's fall! The soulless had a soul to me! My life its own life lent to all!
The Universe of things seem'd swelling The panting heart to burst its bound, And wandering Fancy found a dwelling In every shape, thought, deed, and sound. Germ'd in the mystic buds, reposing, A whole creation slumbered mute, Alas, when from the buds unclosing, How scant and blighted sprung the fruit!
How happy in his dreaming error, His own gay valor for his wing, Of not one care as yet in terror Did Youth upon his journey spring; Till floods of balm, through air's dominion, Bore upward to the faintest star-- For never aught to that bright pinion Could dwell too high, or spread too far.
Though laden with delight, how lightly The wanderer heavenward still could soar, And aye the ways of life how brightly The airy Pageant danced before! Love, showering gifts down, Fortune, with golden garlands gay, And Fame, with starbeams for a crown, And Truth, whose dwelling is the Day.
Ah! midway soon lost evermore, Afar the blithe companions stray; In vain their faithless steps explore, As one by one, they glide away. Fleet Fortune was the first escaper-- The thirst for wisdom linger'd yet; But doubts with many a gloomy vapor The sun-shape of the Truth beset!
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