Read Ebook: The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller by Thomas Calvin

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Ebook has 641 lines and 133164 words, and 13 pages

Parentage and Schooling

Captain Schiller and his wife--Sojourn at Lorch--Traits of Friedrich's childhood--Removal to Ludwigsburg--Karl Eugen, Duke of W?rttemberg--Impressions from court, theater and school--Poetic beginnings--Duke Karl's change of heart--Franziska von Hohenheim--The Academy at Solitude--Schiller at the Academy--School exercises--From law to medicine--Early poems and orations--An ardent friend--Books read and their effect--Dramatic plans--Dissertation rejected--Genesis of 'The Robbers'--Morbid melancholy--Release from the Academy--Value of the education received.

The Robbers

General characterization--The Schubart story--Schiller and Schubart--The contrasted brothers--Comparison with Klinger and Leisewitz--Influence of Rousseau and Goethe--Unlike earlier attacks on the social order--Outlawry in the eighteenth century--The noble bandit in literature--Karl Moor's crazy ambition--His sentimentalism--Schiller's sympathy with his hero--Character of Franz--Influence of Shakespeare--Ethical attitude of Franz--A dull villain--Character of Amalia--The subordinate outlaws--A powerful stage-play--Defects and merits.

The Stuttgart Medicus

Schiller's position at Stuttgart--Personal appearance--Convivial pleasures--Visits at Solitude--Revision of 'The Robbers' for publication--The two prefaces--Reception of 'The Robbers'--A stage-version prepared for Dalberg--Changes in the stage-version--Popularity of the play--Medicus and poet--The 'Anthology' of 1782--Character of Schiller's youthful verse--Various poems considered--The songs to Laura--Poetic promise of the 'Anthology'--Journalistic enterprises--Schiller as a critic of himself--Quarrel with Duke Karl--The Swiss imbroglio--The duke implacable--Flight from Stuttgart.

The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa

General characterization--The historical Fiesco--Influence of Rousseau--The conflicting authorities--Fact and fiction in the play--Not really a republican tragedy--Character of Fiesco--Of Verrina--Schiller's vacillation--Fiesco's inconsistency--Lack of historical lucidity--The changed conclusion--Weak and strong points--Fiesco and the Moor--The female characters--Extravagant diction.

The Fugitive in Hiding

Reception at Mannheim--An elocutionary failure--'Fiesco' rejected by Dalberg--Refuge sought in Bauerbach--A new friend--Relations with outside world--Interest in Lotte von Wolzogen--Literary projects and employments--Beginnings of 'Don Carlos'--Friendly overtures from Dalberg--Work upon 'Louise Miller'--Jealousy and resignation--Flutterings of the heart--Departure from Bauerbach with new play completed.

Cabal and Love

General characterization--English Beginnings of bourgeois tragedy--'Miss Sara Sampson'--Development of the tragedy of social conflict--Love in the age of sentimentalism--Rousseau and the social conflict--Wagner and Lenz--Diderot's 'Father of the Family'--Gemmingen's 'Head of the House'--Evolution of Schiller's plan--Debt to predecessors--Hints from Wagner and Lessing and 'Siegwart'--Weakness of the tragic conclusion--Character of Louise--Her religious sentimentalism--Fearsomeness--Lack of mother-wit--A cold heroine--Character of Ferdinand--Sentimental extravagance--Father and son--Prototypes of President von Walter.

Theater poet in Mannheim

The Boon of Friendship

Don Carlos

Poetic merit of 'Don Carlos'--Its slow genesis--Schiller's explanation--St. R?al's 'Dom Carlos'--The original plan--Ripening influences--Decision in favor of verse--Change of attitude toward Carlos and Philip--Influence of K?rner--Completion of the play--Character of Prince Carlos--The Marquis of Posa--Posa and the king--Posa's heroics in the last two acts--Character of Philip--General estimate.

Anchored in Thuringia

Weimar in Schiller's time--Renewal of relations with Charlotte von Kalb--First meeting with Herder and Wieland--Visit to Jena--Pleased with Weimar--New literary pursuits--Visit to Meiningen and introduction to the Lengefeld family--Charlotte von Lengefeld--A summer idyl--Awakening interest in the Greeks--First meeting with Goethe--Appointed professor at Jena--Bitterness toward Goethe--Love, betrothal and marriage--'The Gods of Greece'--'The Artists'--'The Ghostseer'--The 'Letters on Don Carlos'--Review of 'Egmont'--'The Misanthrope'--Translations from Euripides and other minor writings.

Historical Writings

Schiller's merit as a historian--Genesis of 'The Defection of the Netherlands'--The author's self-confidence--His readableness--Freedom the animating idea--Attitude toward past and present--Position as a historian--Too little regard for the fact--First lecture at Jena--Influence of Kant--Theory of the Fall--The 'Historical Memoirs'--Inchoate Romanticism--'History of the Thirty Years' War'--Skill in narrating--Conception of the war as a struggle for freedom--View of Gustav Adolf.

Dark Days Within and Without

Aesthetic Writings

Value of philosophy to a poet--Goethe's opinion--Schiller's early philosophizing--The essays on Tragedy--Plan of 'Kallias'--Kant's aesthetics--Schiller's divergence from Kant--Beauty identified with freedom-in-the-appearance--Explication of the theory--Essay on 'Winsomeness and Dignity'--Essay on 'The Sublime'--Remarks on Schiller's general method--Letters to the Duke of Augustenburg--The 'Letters on Aesthetic Education'--Some minor papers--Essay on 'Na?ve and Sentimental Poetry'.

The Great Duumvirate

Later Poems

General character of Schiller's poetry--'The Veiled Image at Sais'--'The Ideal and Life'--Idealism of Goethe and Schiller--'The Walk'--Poems of 1796--'Dignity of Women'--'The Eleusinian Festival'--The ballads--Attitude toward the present--Lyrics of thought--'The Maiden's Lament'--Popularity of Schiller's cultural poems--'The Song of the Bell'--Latest poems.

Wallenstein

General characterization--Preparatory studies--Difficulties of the subject--Study of Sophocles and Aristotle--Decision in favor of verse--Completion of the play--'Wallenstein's Camp'--The historical Wallenstein--Schiller's artistic achievement--Character of the hero--His impressiveness--Effect of contrast--Octavio Piccolomini--Max Piccolomini--Max and Thekla--Lyrical passages--Absence of humor and irony.

Mary Stuart

Genesis of the play--Schiller's removal to Weimar--'Mary Stuart' characterized--The fundamental difficulty--Unhistorical inventions--Effect of these--The meeting of the queens--Character of Elizabeth--Romantic tendencies--Mary conceived as a purified sufferer--Pathos of the conclusion--Ugly portrait of Elizabeth accounted for--The historical background--Dramatic qualities--Character of Mortimer.

The Maid of Orleans

Variety in Schiller's work--Genesis of 'The Maid of Orleans'--Schiller's Johanna--Miraculous elements--Attitude of the critics--Difficulty of the subject--Johanna's tragic guilt--Her supernatural power--The scene with Lionel--Schiller's poetic intention--A drama of patriotism--The subordinate characters--Excellence of the composition.

The Bride of Messina

Genesis of the play--General characterization--Disagreement of the critics--Relation to Sophocles--Substance of the plot--Ancients and moderns--Fate and responsibility--Schiller's invention--Unnaturalness of the action--Strange conduct of Don Manuel, Beatrice and the mother--Lavish use of silence--Schiller's contempt of realism--Don Cesar's expiatory death the real tragedy--Use of the fate idea--Apologia for the chorus--Poetic splendor.

William Tell

'Tell' and 'The Robbers'--General characterization--Genesis--Attention to local color--An interruption--Success on the stage--The theme of 'Tell'--A drama of freedom--The play intensely human--Goodness of the exposition--Departures from usual method--Character of Tell--The apple-shooting scene--The scene in the 'hollow way'--Tell's long soliloquy--Introduction of Parricida--Bertha and Rudenz.

The End.--Unfinished Plays and Adaptations

A Russian theme chosen--Berlin negotiations--Work on 'Demetrius'--'The Homage of the Arts'--Last illness and death--The unfinished 'Demetrius'--The historical Dmitri--The original plan modified--Character of the hero--Poetic promise of 'Demetrius'--'Warbeck'--'The Princess of Celle'--'The Knights of Malta'--Other unfinished plays--Adaptation of 'Egmont'--Of 'Nathan the Wise'--Of 'Macbeth'--Of 'Turandot'--Interest in the French drama--Adaptations from the French.

The Verdict of Posterity

Schiller a national poet--His idealized personality--Estimate of Dannecker--Of Madame de Sta?l--Goethe's 'Epilogue'--Controversy over Goethe and Schiller--Attitude of Schlegel--Of Menzel--Goethe's loyalty to his friend--The mid-century epoch--Unreasonable criticism--Interesting prophecy of Gervinus--Schiller's aesthetic idealism often misunderstood--Schiller as a friend of the people--Partisan misconceptions--The enthusiasm of 1859--Epoch of the philologers--Present opinion of Schiller--Conclusion.

LIVE AND WORKS OF SCHILLER

Parentage and Schooling

Nur, Vater, mir Ges?nge.

When the Austrian War of Succession came to an end, in the year 1748, a certain young Suabian who had been campaigning in the Lowlands as army doctor was left temporarily without employment. The man's name was Johann Kaspar Schiller; he was of good plebeian stock and had lately been a barber's apprentice,--a lot that he had accepted reluctantly when the poverty of a widowed mother compelled him to shift for himself at an early age. Having served his time and learned the trade of the barber-surgeon, he had joined a Bavarian regiment of hussars. Finding himself now suddenly at leisure, after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, he mounted his horse and rode away to the land of his birth to visit his relations. Reaching Marbach--it was now the spring of 1749--he put up at the 'Golden Lion', an inn kept by a then prosperous baker named Kodweis. Here he fell in love with his landlord's daughter Dorothea, a girl of sixteen, and in the course of the summer married her. He was at this time about twenty-six years old. He now settled down In Marbach to practice his crude art, but the practice came to little and Kodweis soon lost his property in foolish speculation. So the quondam soldier fell out of humor with Marbach, went into the army again, and when the Seven Years' War broke out, in 1756, he took the field with a W?rttemberg regiment to fight the King of Prussia. He soon reached the grade of lieutenant, in time that of captain; fought and ran with his countrymen, at Leuthen, floundered at peril of life in the swamps of Breslau and otherwise got his full share of the war's rough-and-tumble. From time to time, as the chance came to him, he visited his young wife in Marbach.

These were the parents of the poet Schiller, who was born November 10, 1759, ten years after Goethe, ten years before Napoleon. It is worth remembering that he who was to be in his way, another great protestant came into the world on an anniversary of the birth of Lather. He was christened Johann Christoph Friedrich.

The boy himself was very susceptible at this time to religious impressions. Sister Christophine carried with her through life a vivid memory of his appearance at family worship, when the captain would solemnly intone the rimed prayers that he himself had composed for a private ritual. 'It was a touching sight', she says in her recollections of this period, 'to see the reverent expression on the child's winsome face. The pious blue eyes lifted to heaven, the light yellow hair falling about his forehead, and the little hands folded in worship, suggested an angel's head in a picture.' From the same source we learn that Fritz was very fond of playing church, with himself in the role of preacher. Another reminiscence tells how he one day ran away from school and, having unexpectedly fallen under the paternal eye in his truancy, rushed home to his mother in tearful excitement, got the rod of correction and besought her to give him his punishment before his sterner parent should arrive on the scene. Still another, from a somewhat later period, relates how the mother was once walking with her children and told them a Bible story so touchingly that they all knelt down and prayed. This is about all that has come down concerning Schiller's early childhood. He may have seen the passion-play at Gm?nd, but this is uncertain. In any case it only added one more to the religious impressions that already dominated his life.

Toward the end of the year 1766, having exhausted his private resources at Lorch, Captain Schiller applied for relief and was transferred to duty at Ludwigsburg, where the family remained under somewhat more tolerable conditions for about nine years. At Ludwigsburg he began to interest himself in agriculture and forestry. In 1769 he published certain 'Economic Contributions', which exhibit him as a sensible, public-spirited man, eagerly bent upon improving the condition of Suabian husbandry. In 1775, having become known as an expert in arboriculture, he was placed in charge of the ducal forests and nurseries at Castle Solitude, and there he spent the remainder of his days in peaceful and congenial activity. He died in 1796.

For the impressionable Fritz one can hardly imagine a more momentous change of environment than this which took him from a quiet rural village to the garish Residenz of a licentious and extravagant prince. Karl Eugen, Duke of W?rttemberg, whom men have often called the curse, but the gods haply regard as the good genius, of Schiller's youth, came to power in 1744 at the age of sixteen. The three preceding years he had spent at the Prussian court, where Frederick the Second had taken a deep interest in him and tried to teach him serious views of a ruler's responsibility. But the youth had no stomach for the doctrine that he was in the world for the sake of W?rttemberg. Having come to his ducal throne prematurely, through the influence of the King of Prussia, he began well, but after a few years shook off the restraints of good advice and entered upon a course of autocratic folly that made W?rttemberg a far-shining example of the evils of absolutism under the Old R?gime. Early in his reign he married a beautiful and high-minded princess of Bayreuth, but his profligacy soon drove her back to the home of her parents. Then a succession of mistresses ruled his affections, while reckless adventurers in high place enjoyed his confidence and fleeced the people at pleasure. To gratify his passion for military display he began to raise unnecessary troops and to hire them out as mercenaries. In 1752 he agreed with the King of France, in consideration of a fixed annual subsidy, to supply six thousand soldiers on demand. The money thus obtained was mostly squandered upon his private vices and extravagances. On the outbreak of the Seven Years' War the French king demanded the promised troops; and so it came about that the Suabian Protestants were compelled, in defiance of public sentiment, to make war against their co-religionists of Prussia. In the inglorious campaigns which followed, the Duke of W?rttemberg cut a rather sorry figure, but criticism only exasperated him. He promised another large body of troops to France, and the men were raised by harsh measures of conscription. The Estates of the duchy protested against this autocratic procedure, and, as Stuttgart sided with the opposition, the duke determined to punish his unruly capital by removing his court to Ludwigsburg, where an ancestor of his, early in the century, had founded a city to match Versailles and serve the express purpose of a 'Trutz-Stuttgart'.

The removal of the court to Ludwigsburg took place in 1764, three years before the Schiller family found a home there. From the first a purely artificial creation, the little city had been going backwards, but it now leaped into short-lived glory as the residence of a prodigal prince who was bent on amusing himself magnificently. The existing ducal palace was enlarged to huge dimensions and lavishly decorated. Great parks and gardens were laid out, the market-place was surrounded with arcades, and an opera-house was built, with a stage that could be extended into the open air so as to permit the spectacular evolution of real troops. Everything about the place was new and pretentious. The roomy streets and the would-be gorgeous palaces, flaunting their fresh coats of yellow and white stucco, teemed with officers in uniform, with blazing little potentates of the court and with high-born ladies in the puffs and frills of the rococo age. Here Karl Eugen gave himself up to his dream of glory, which was to rival the splendors of Versailles. He maintained a costly opera, procuring for it the most famous singers and dancers in Europe, and squandered immense sums upon 'Venetian nights' and other gorgeous spectacles. For all this barbaric ostentation the people of W?rttemberg were expected to foot the bills. 'Fatherland!' said his Highness, when a protest was raised on behalf of the country, 'Bah! I am the fatherland.'

Here it was, then, that the young Friedrich Schiller got his first childish impressions of the great world; of sovereignty exercised that a few might strut in gay plumage while the many toiled to keep them in funds; of state policies determined by wretched court intrigues; of natural rights trampled upon at the caprice of a prince or a prince's favorite. There is no record that the boy was troubled by these things at the time, or looked upon them as anything else than a part of the world's natural order. It is a long way yet to President von Walter.

The house occupied by Captain Schiller at Ludwigsburg was situated close by the theater, to which the duke's officers had free admission. As a reward of industry little Fritz was allowed an occasional evening in front of the 'boards that signify the world'. The performances, to be sure, were French and Italian operas, wherein the ballet-master, the machinist and the decorator vied with one another for the production of amazing spectacular effects. People went to stare and gasp--the language was of no importance. It was not exactly dramatic art, but from the boy's point of view it was no doubt magnificent. At any rate it made him at home in the dream-world of the imagination, filled his mind with grandiose pictures and gave him his first rudimentary notions of stage effect. We are not surprised to learn, therefore, that in his home amusements playing theater now took the place of playing church. Sister Christophine was a faithful helper. A stage could be made of big books, and actors out of paper. When the puppet-show was outgrown, the young dramatist took to framing plays for living performers of his own age,--with a row of chairs for an audience, and himself as manager and protagonist.

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