Читать книгу The Short Stories - Frederick Schiller - Страница 6

Wollmar and Edwin, two friends who live together in a peaceful hermitage in which they have retreated from the tumult of the busy world, discuss during a walk about the remarkable destinies of their lives in full philosophical leisure. Edwin, the fortunate one, embraced the world with a joyful tenderness which put the gloomier Wollmar into a miserable mood because of his misfortune. An alley of lime trees were the favourite place of their debates. At one time, they walked again there on a lovely May day; I account the following discussion:

Edwin

The weather is so beautiful, the whole nature is cheering up, and you are so thoughtful, Wollmar?

Wollmar

Alone me, please! You know this is my way to corrupt your mood!

Edwin

But is it then possible to be so much disgusted by the cup of joy?

Wollmar

If one finds a spin in it; why not? You see, Nature depicts itself to you, now, as a young lady with red cheeks on her wedding day. To me, it seems like an old matron with exaggerated red make-up on her yellow-green cheeks and with inherited diamonds in her hair.

How she ridicules herself in this Sunday attire! These are just old clothes worn already a thousand times. Even this green, flowing dress train of hers, she wore already before Deucalion, just as perfumed and just as colourful!

For thousand years, she has only fed herself with the proceeds from death bulletins, made artifice from the bones of her own children and lightened such decay with blinding tinsel.

She is an indecent monster who has been a thousand times warmed up from her own death, who fattens herself, patches together her rags and makes them well into new fabric, carries it to the market and again, makes them into nasty rags! Young man, do you know very well in what society you are maybe, now, walking!? Did you ever think, indeed, that Nature's endless circle is your forefathers' tomb, that the winds which bring you the scents of the lime trees, maybe blow to your nose the dispersed force of Arminius, that in the refreshing source you maybe tasting the crushing bones of our great Henry!?

Pfff! Pfff! Should maybe the Roman conquerors who divided the majestic world into three parts, just the same way young boys share a bouquet among them and put them afterwards on their hats, extort from the throat of their weakened descent a moaning opera aria!? The atom which gave divine thoughts to Plato’s mind, which made Titus' heart tremble with pity, shudders maybe, now, with the ardour of an animal in Sardanapale's veins, or will be dispersed by the ravens in the carrion of a recently hanged local thief. Disgraceful! Disgraceful!

We have made our Harlequin masks from the sanctified ashes of our fathers; we have fed our bell hood with the wisdom of the ancient times. You seem to find that amusing, Erwin?

Edwin

Forgive me! Your observations remind me of comical scenes. How? Picture our bodies wandering away from our spirits, as people affirm in these laws! Imagine the same bodies, after the death of the machine, still keeping the administration under the command of the soul; the same way as the spirits of the deceased repeat the tasks of their previous life, quae cura fuit vivis, eadem sequitur tellure repostos.

Wollmar

Hence, Lycurgus' ashes may still lie, until now and for eternity, in the ocean!?

Edwin

Do you hear, there, the voice of the tender Philomele complaining? As if she were the urn keeping Tibullus’s ashes, which could sing so tenderly as she does?

Maybe the sublime Pindar is ascending with every eagle into the blue firmament? Maybe is vibrating in every courting Zephyr an atom of Anacreon? Who can tell if it is not the bodies of their former seducers which fly in tender little flocks of powder into their mistresses' hairlocks? If it is not the usurer's remains which are captured within the hundred year old rust on the buried coins?

If it is not the Polygraphs' bodies which are damned to be melted into letters, or turned into paper; to groan, now, eternally under the pressure of the printing machine and to help eternalize the nonsense of their colleagues? Who can prove to me that our neighbour's painful kidney stone is not the rest of an unskilled doctor who, as punishment, now guards like an uninvited doorman the formerly mistreated bladder, condemned to this dishonourable jail, until a doctor's consecrated hand frees the cursed Prince? Do you see, Wollmar!? From precisely the cup which created bitter angers in you, my mood creates merry jokes!

Wollmar

Edwin! Edwin! How you diffuse earnestness again with a laughing joke! People say such things about our Princes who believe they can provoke some destructive effect with just a wink of an eye. People say that about our beauties who want to fool our wisdom with some colours painted on their faces. People say that about the sweet little gentlemen who make of a handful of blond hair into an object of worship of their God! Do they only care how roughly the shovels of the grave diggers stroke Yorik's skull!? What good is a woman with all her beauty, if the great Caesar is reduced to repair a fissuring wall to protect himself from the wind?

Edwin

But what is the meaning of all this?

Wollmar

Miserable catastrophe of a miserable farce! Do you not see it, Edwin? The destiny of the soul is written in the matter. Now, make for yourself the happy conclusion.

Edwin

Calm down, Wollmar! You are getting all excited. Do you know how careless you were, there!

Wollmar

Let me go on! Good things have nothing to shy away from inspection.

Edwin

Wollmar should only indulge in inspection when he is in a happier mood!

Wollmar

Oh, come on! There you are opening again, the most dangerous wounds. According to you, wisdom is like a talkative laundress who goes cleaning in every house and adapts with dexterity her talk to any possible mood: denying even grace to unfortunate people, approving even malevolence in the fortunate ones. A stomachache can make people take the planets for hell; a glass of wine can make people idolize a devil. If our moods are the models of our philosophies, you say, to me, Edwin, in which one will truth be found? I am afraid, Edwin, that you are only wise, when you are gloomy!

Edwin

I do not want to be gloomy to be wise!

Wollmar

You have used the word „fortunate“. How do people become fortunate, Edwin? Work is the condition of life, the goal is wisdom: and felicity, you say, is the price. Thousand and again thousand wide open sails leave the port to look for the happy island in the immense sea and to rob the Golden Fleece. Tell me now, you wise man, how many of them will find it? I see, in one instance, a flotilla whirled around in the eternal ring of needs, leaving eternally this shore to land eternally again on it, eternally landing on it to leave it again. It hurries into the entrance hall of its determination, cruises fearfully along the shore to pick provisions and to do some repair works, but never charts onto the high sea. These are the people who, today, tire themselves on what can tire them again tomorrow. If I put them aside, then the number of candidates is already reduced by approximately its half.

The whirlpool of sensibility pulls again other sails into an inglorious tomb. These are the ones who waste the whole force of their existence to enjoy the labor of previous existences. When people disregard them, then only a little quarter of the whole candidates still remains on course.

Anxious and shy, the remaining candidates sail further without any compass, escorted by the corresponding stars, on the fearsome ocean; the happy coast already scintillates like white clouds in the horizon, “Land!” shouts the steersman and then what!? A miserable little plank breaks somewhere on board, and the leaking ship sinks heavily along the shore. Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto. Almost unconscious, the most skilled swimmer fights his way to the land, like a foreigner in the ethereal zone, he wanders in loneliness and seeks with crying eyes to return to his Nordic homeland. In this way, I remove from the great number in your generous system one million people after the other. The children rejoice over the protection of adult men, and these men weep that they are not any more children. The stream of our knowledge meanders backwards from its delta to find maturity, the evening is dawning like the morning; in the namely night where Aurora and Hesperus are embracing, the wise man who would like to break the walls of mortality, sinks downwards and becomes again a loving boy. Now, Edwin, do you prove the potter's skill in the pot, please answer, Edwin!?

Edwin

The potter's skill is already proven, when he can prove that the pot is his work, no matter how beautiful it may be!

Wollmar

Please answer!

Edwin

I only say that even if people don't reach the island, yet is the journey not lost.

Wollmar

To content oneself with grazing the eye, with just the picturesque landscape which appears on one's right and left? Edwin!? And why would one be thrown into internal turmoil only for such views!? Why tremble as if before a fearful obstacle only for such views!?

Why agonize oneself of rage in the undulating desert of a threefold death only for such views!? Do not speak any more; my sorrow is more eloquent than your happiness!

Edwin

And should I crush the little violet under my feet, because I cannot

obtain the rose? Or should I not enjoy this Mayday, because a thunderstorm can darken it? I create cheerfulness under the cloudless blueness which will shorten itself for me, later on, its unpredictable boredom. Should I not pick the flower today, because it will fade away tomorrow? I throw it away when it withers, and pick its young sister who already springs attractively from the bud.

Wollmar

For nothing! In vain! Wherever a burgeon of pleasure only blooms, thousand seeds of misery are already germinating. Wherever a tear of joy is only shed, thousand tears of affliction lie beneath.

Here, on the spot where the human being exults, thousand insects have perished. In precisely the moment where our delight whirls into heaven, thousand curses of damnation are profferred. It is a deceiving lottery; the few miserable gains hide the numerous failures! Every moment in time is a dying minute for joy; every blessing dust is the tombstone of a buried pleasure! In every point in the eternal universe, death has impressed its monarchic seal. In every atom, I read the desolate inscription: death!

Edwin

And why not death? May every sound from a death song become happiness! It is also the hymn of the all-encompassing love! Wollmar, against this lime tree, my Juliet has kissed me for the first time!

Wollmar (suddenly leaving the place)

Young man! It is under these lime trees that I have lost my Laura!