The Life of Friedrich Schiller

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Томас Карлейль. The Life of Friedrich Schiller

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION [1845.]

PART I. SCHILLER'S YOUTH (1759-1784)

PART FIRST [1759-1784.]

PART II. FROM SCHILLER'S SETTLEMENT AT MANNHEIM TO HIS. SETTLEMENT AT JENA. (1783-1790.)

PART SECOND [1783-1790.]

PART III. FROM HIS SETTLEMENT AT JENA TO HIS DEATH (1790-1805.)

PART THIRD [1790-1805.]

Act I. Scene IV. Max Piccolomini, Octavio Piccolomini, Questenberg

Act IV. Scene X. Thekla; the Swedish Captain; Fräulein Neubrunn

Scene XI. Neubrunn; Thekla

Scene XII. Thekla

Act III. Scene IV

Scene V. A Knight [in haste]

Scene VI

Scene VII

Scene IX

Scene X. Lionel, Joanna

Act IV. Scene III

SUPPLEMENT OF 1872

HERR SAUPE'S BOOK [NOTE IN PEOPLE'S EDITION.]

SAUPE'S "SCHILLER AND HIS FATHER'S HOUSEHOLD."

I. THE FATHER

II. THE MOTHER

III. THE SISTERS

APPENDIX I

NO. 1. PAGE 31. DANIEL SCHUBART

NO. 2. PAGE 33. LETTERS OF SCHILLER

NO. 5. PAGE 114. FRIENDSHIP WITH GOETHE

NO. 4. PAGE 125. DEATH OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS

APPENDIX II

APPENDIX II

'Special Indication of the Localities represented

Nähere Bezeichnung der dargestellten Lokalitäten

Schillers Leben

SUMMARY AND INDEX

SUMMARY

PART I. SCHILLER'S YOUTH (1759-1784.)

PART II. FROM HIS SETTLEMENT AT MANNHEIM. TO HIS SETTLEMENT AT JENA (1784-1790:)

PART III. FROM HIS SETTLEMENT AT JENA TO HIS DEATH (1790-1805.)

SUPPLEMENT OF 1872

SCHILLER'S FATHER

HIS MOTHER

HIS SISTERS

APPENDIX I

No. 1. DANIEL SCHUBART

No. 2. LETTERS OF SCHILLER TO DALBERG

No. 3. FRIENDSHIP WITH GOETHE

No. 4. DEATH OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS

APPENDIX II

Отрывок из книги

Among the writers of the concluding part of the last century there is none more deserving of our notice than Friedrich Schiller. Distinguished alike for the splendour of his intellectual faculties, and the elevation of his tastes and feelings, he has left behind him in his works a noble emblem of these great qualities: and the reputation which he thus enjoys, and has merited, excites our attention the more, on considering the circumstances under which it was acquired. Schiller had peculiar difficulties to strive with, and his success has likewise been peculiar. Much of his life was deformed by inquietude and disease, and it terminated at middle age; he composed in a language then scarcely settled into form, or admitted to a rank among the cultivated languages of Europe: yet his writings are remarkable for their extent and variety as well as their intrinsic excellence; and his own countrymen are not his only, or perhaps his principal admirers. It is difficult to collect or interpret the general voice; but the World, no less than Germany, seems already to have dignified him with the reputation of a classic; to have enrolled him among that select number whose works belong not wholly to any age or nation, but who, having instructed their own contemporaries, are claimed as instructors by the great family of mankind, and set apart for many centuries from the common oblivion which soon overtakes the mass of authors, as it does the mass of other men.

Such has been the high destiny of Schiller. His history and character deserve our study for more than one reason. A natural and harmless feeling attracts us towards such a subject; we are anxious to know how so great a man passed through the world, how he lived, and moved, and had his being; and the question, if properly investigated, might yield advantage as well as pleasure. It would be interesting to discover by what gifts and what employment of them he reached the eminence on which we now see him; to follow the steps of his intellectual and moral culture; to gather from his life and works some picture of himself. It is worth inquiring, whether he, who could represent noble actions so well, did himself act nobly; how those powers of intellect, which in philosophy and art achieved so much, applied themselves to the every-day emergencies of life; how the generous ardour, which delights us in his poetry, displayed itself in the common intercourse between man and man. It would at once instruct and gratify us if we could understand him thoroughly, could transport ourselves into his circumstances outward and inward, could see as he saw, and feel as he felt.

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In the mean time, however, various mortifications awaited Schiller. It was in vain that he discharged the humble duties of his station with the most strict fidelity, and even, it is said, with superior skill: he was a suspected person, and his most innocent actions were misconstrued, his slightest faults were visited with the full measure of official severity. His busy imagination aggravated the evil. He had seen poor Schubart9 wearing out his tedious eight years of durance in the fortress of Asperg, because he had been 'a rock of offence to the powers that were.' The fate of this unfortunate author appeared to Schiller a type of his own. His free spirit shrank at the prospect of wasting its strength in strife against the pitiful constraints, the minute and endless persecutions of men who knew him not, yet had his fortune in their hands; the idea of dungeons and jailors haunted and tortured his mind; and the means of escaping them, the renunciation of poetry, the source of all his joy, if likewise of many woes, the radiant guiding-star of his turbid and obscure existence, seemed a sentence of death to all that was dignified, and delightful, and worth retaining, in his character. Totally ignorant of what is called the world; conscious too of the might that slumbered in his soul, and proud of it, as kings are of their sceptres; impetuous when roused, and spurning unjust restraint; yet wavering and timid from the delicacy of his nature, and still more restricted in the freedom of his movements by the circumstances of his father, whose all depended on the pleasure of the court, Schiller felt himself embarrassed, and agitated, and tormented in no common degree. Urged this way and that by the most powerful and conflicting impulses; driven to despair by the paltry shackles that chained him, yet forbidden by the most sacred considerations to break them, he knew not on what he should resolve; he reckoned himself 'the most unfortunate of men.'

Time at length gave him the solution; circumstances occurred which forced him to decide. The popularity of the Robbers had brought him into correspondence with several friends of literature, who wished to patronise the author, or engage him in new undertakings. Among this number was the Freiherr von Dalberg, superintendent of the theatre at Mannheim, under whose encouragement and countenance Schiller remodelled the Robbers, altered it in some parts, and had it brought upon the stage in 1781. The correspondence with Dalberg began in literary discussions, but gradually elevated itself into the expression of more interesting sentiments. Dalberg loved and sympathised with the generous enthusiast, involved in troubles and perplexities which his inexperience was so little adequate to thread: he gave him advice and assistance; and Schiller repaid this favour with the gratitude due to his kind, his first, and then almost his only benefactor. His letters to this gentleman have been preserved, and lately published; they exhibit a lively picture of Schiller's painful situation at Stuttgard, and of his unskilful as well as eager anxiety to be delivered from it.10 His darling project was that Dalberg should bring him to Mannheim, as theatrical poet, by permission of the Duke: at one time he even thought of turning player.

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