Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 1476

[To the Memory of the noble Poet, Brother, and Friend, Wieland.]

Most serene protector!

Right worshipful master I

Very honorable assembly I

Although under no circumstances does it become the individual to set himself in opposition to ancient, venerable customs, or of his own will to alter what our ancestors in their wisdom have deemed right and have ordained, nevertheless, had I really at my bidding the magician's wand which the muses in spirit intrusted to our departed friend, I should in an instant transform all these sad surroundings into those of joy. This darkness would straightway grow radiant before your eyes, and before you there would appear a hall decked for a feast, with varied tapestries and garlands of gaiety, joyous and serene as our friend's own life. Then your eyes, your spirit, would be attracted by the creations of his luxuriant imagination; Olympus with its gods, introduced by the Muses and adorned by the Graces, would be a living testimony that he who lived amid such glad surroundings, and who also departed from us in the spirit of that gladness, should be counted among the most fortunate of mankind, and should be interred, not with lamentation, but with expressions of joy and of exultation.

And yet, what I cannot present to the outward senses, may be offered to the inward. Eighty years, how much in how few syllables! Who of us dares hastily to run through so many years and to picture to himself the significance of them when well employed? Who of us would dare assert that he could in an instant measure and appraise the value of a life that was complete from every point of view?

[Illustration: MARTIN WIELAND]

If we accompany our friend step by step through all his days, if we regard him as a boy and as a youth, in his prime and in his old age, we find that to his lot fell the unusual fortune of plucking the bloom of each of these seasons; for even old age has its bloom, and the happiest enjoyment of this, also, was vouchsafed him. Only a few months have passed since for him the brethren of our lodge crowned their mysterious sphinx with roses, to show that, if the aged Anacreon undertook to adorn his exalted sensuality with the rose's light twigs, the ethical sensuousness, the tempered joy of life and wit which animated our noble friend also merited a rich and abundant garland.

Only a few weeks have elapsed since this excellent man was still with us, not merely present but active at our gatherings. It was through the midst of our intimate circle that he passed from things earthly; we were the nearest to him, even at the last; and if his fatherland as well as foreign nations celebrate his memory, where ought this to be done earlier and more emphatically than by us?

I have not, therefore, dared to disobey the mandates of our masters, and before this honorable assembly I speak a few words in his memory, the more gladly since they may be fleeting precursors of what in the future the world and our brotherhood shall do for him. This is the sentiment, and this the purpose, for the sake of which I venture to entreat a gracious hearing; and if what I shall say from an affection tested for almost forty years rather than for mere rhetorical effect—by no means well composed, but rather in brief sentences, and even in desultory fashion—may seem worthy neither of him who is honored nor of them who honor, then I must remark that here you may expect only a preliminary outline, a sketch, yes, only the contents and, if you so will, the marginal notes of a future work. And thus, then, without more delay, to the theme so dear, so precious, and, indeed, so sacred to us!

Wieland was born in 1733 near Biberach, a small imperial free-town in Swabia. His father, a Lutheran clergyman, gave him a careful training and imparted to him the first elements of education. He was then sent to the monastery of Bergen on the Elbe, where the truly pious Abbot Steinmetz presided over an educational institution of good repute. Thence he went to the University of Tübingen, and then lived for some time as a private tutor in Bern, but he was soon attracted to Bodmer, at Zurich, who, like Gleim at a later date in North Germany, might be called the midwife of genius in South Germany. There he gave himself over entirely to the joy that arises from youth's self-creation, when talents develop under friendly guidance without being hampered by the higher requirements of criticism. Soon, however, he outgrew this stage, returned to his native town, and henceforth became his own teacher and trainer, while with ceaseless activity he pursued his inclination toward literature and poetry.

His mechanical official duties as the chief of the chancery robbed him, it is true, of time, though they could not deprive him of joy and courage; and that his spirit might not be dwarfed amid such narrow surroundings, he fortunately became acquainted with Count Stadion, whose estates lay in the vicinity, and who was a minister of the Prince Elector of Mainz. In this illustrious and well-appointed house the atmosphere of the world and of the court was for the first time wafted to him; he became no stranger to domestic and foreign affairs of state; and in the count he gained a patron for all his life. In consequence, he did not remain unknown to the Prince Elector of Mainz, and since the University of Erfurt was to be revived under Emmerich Joseph, our friend was summoned thither, thus exemplifying the tolerant sentiments which, from the beginning of the century, have spread among men who are akin through the Christian faith, and have even permeated humanity as a whole.

He could not labor long at Erfurt without becoming known to the Duchess Regent of Weimar, at whose court Count von Dalberg, so active in every form of good work, did not fail to introduce him. An adequate education of her princely sons was the chief object of a tender mother, herself highly cultured, and thus he was called thither to employ his literary talents and his moral endowments for the best interests of the princely house, for our weal, and for the weal of all.

The retirement promised him after the completion of his educational duties was given him at once, and since he received a more than promised alleviation of his domestic circumstances, he led, for nearly forty years, a life of complete conformity to his disposition and to his wishes.

The influence of Wieland on the public was uninterrupted and permanent. He educated his generation up to himself, giving to the taste and to the judgment of his contemporaries a decided trend, so that his merits have already been sufficiently recognized, appraised, and even portrayed. In many a work on German literature he is discussed as honorably as judiciously; I need only recall the laudations which Küttner, Eschenburg, Manso, and Eichhorn have bestowed upon him.

And whence came the profound influence which he exercised on the Germans? It was a result of the excellence and of the openness of his nature. In him man and author had completely interpenetrated; he wrote poetry as a living soul, and lived the poet's life. In verse and prose he never hid what was at the instant in his mind and what each time he felt, so that judging he wrote and writing he judged. From the fertility of his mind sprang the fertility of his pen.

I do not employ the term "pen" as a rhetorical phrase; here it is valid in the strictest sense, and if a pious reverence pays homage to many an author by seeking to gain possession of the quill with which he formed his works, the quill of which Wieland availed himself, would surely be worthy of this distinction above many another. For the fact that he wrote everything with his own hand and most beautifully, and, at the same time, with freedom and with thoughtfulness; that he ever had before him what he had written, carefully examining, changing, improving, indefatigably fashioning and refashioning, never weary even of repeatedly transcribing voluminous works—this gave to his productions the delicacy, the gracefulness, the clearness, the natural elegance which can be bestowed on a work already completed, not by effort, but by unruffled, inspired attention.

This careful preparation of his writings had its origin in a happy conviction which apparently came to him toward the end of his residence in Switzerland, when impatience at production had in some measure subsided, and when the desire to present a perfected result to the public had become more decidedly and more obviously active.

Since, then, in him the man and the poet were a single individuality, we shall also portray the latter when we speak of the former. Irritability and versatility, the accompaniments of poetical and of rhetorical talents, dominated him to a high degree, but an acquired rather than an innate moderation kept them in equilibrium. Our friend was capable of enthusiasm in highest measure, and in youth he surrendered himself wholly to it, the more actively and assiduously since, in his case, for several years that happy period was prolonged when within himself the youth feels the worth and the dignity of the most excellent, be it attainable or not.

In that pure and happy field of the golden age, in that paradise of innocence, he dwelt longer than others. The house where he was born, in which a cultivated clergyman ruled as father; the ancient, linden-embowered monastery of Bergen on the Elbe, where a pious teacher kept up his patriarchal activity; Tübingen, still monastic in its essential form; those simple Swiss dwellings about which the brooks murmured, which the lakes laved, and which the cliffs surrounded—everywhere he found another Delphi, everywhere the groves in which as a mature and cultivated youth he continued to revel even yet. There he was powerfully attracted by the monuments of the manly innocence of the Greeks which have been left us. Cyrus, Araspes, Panthea, and forms of equal loftiness revived in him; he felt the spirit of Plato weaving within him; he felt that he needed that spirit to reproduce those pictures for himself and for others—so much the more since he desired not so keenly to evoke poetic phantoms as, rather, to create a moral influence for actual beings.

Yet the very fact that he had the good fortune to dwell so protractedly in these loftier realms, and that he could long regard as the most perfect verity all that he thought, felt, imagined, dreamed, and fancied—this very fact embittered for him the fruit which he was obliged at last to pluck from the tree of knowledge.

Who can escape the conflict with the outer world? Even our friend is drawn into this strife; reluctantly he submits to contradiction by experience and by life; and since, after a long struggle, he succeeds not in uniting these august figures with those of the vulgar world, or that high desire with the demands of the day, he resolves to let the actual pass current as the necessary, and declares that what has thus far seemed real to him is phantasy.

Yet even here the individuality and the energy of his spirit reveals itself to be worthy of admiration. Despite all the fulness of his life, despite so strong a joy of living, despite noble inward talents and honorable spiritual desires and purposes, he feels himself wounded by the world and defrauded of his greatest treasures. Henceforth he can in experience nowhere find what had constituted his joy for so many years, and what had even been the inmost content of his life; yet he does not consume himself in idle lamentations, of which we know so many in the prose and verse of others, but he resolves upon counter-action. He proclaims war on all that cannot be demonstrated in reality; first and foremost, therefore, on Platonic love, then on all dogmatizing philosophy, especially its two extremes of Stoicism and Pythagoreanism. Furthermore, he works implacably against religious fanaticism, and against all that to reason appears eccentric.

But he is at once overwhelmed with anxiety lest he go too far, lest he himself act fantastically, and now he simultaneously begins battle against commonplace reality. He opposes everything which we are accustomed to understand under the name Philistinism—musty pedantry, provincialism, petty etiquette, narrow criticism, false prudery, smug complacency, arrogant dignity, and whatever names may be applied to all these unclean spirits, whose name is Legion.

Herein he proceeds in an absolutely natural manner, without preconceived purpose or self-consciousness. He stands before the dilemma of the conceivable and the real, and, as he must advise moderation to control or to unite the two, he must hold himself in check, and must be many-sided, since he wishes to be just.

He had long been attracted by the pure, rational uprightness of noble Englishmen, and by their influence in the moral sphere, by an Addison, by a Steele; but now in their society he finds a man whose type of thought is far more agreeable to him.

Shaftesbury, whom I need only mention to recall a great thinker to the mind of every well-informed man—Shaftesbury lived at a time when much disturbance reigned in the religion of his native land, when the dominant church sought by force to subdue men of other modes of thought. State and morals were also threatened by much that must arouse the anxiety of the intelligent and right-thinking. The best counter-action to all this, he believed, was cheerfulness; in his opinion, only what was regarded with serenity would be rightly seen. He who could look serenely into his own bosom must be a good man. This was the main thing, and from it sprang all other good. Spirit, wit, and humor were, he held, the real agencies by which such a disposition should come in contact with the world. All objects, even the most serious, must be capable of such clarity and freedom if they were not bedizened with a merely arrogant dignity, but contained within themselves a true value which did not fear the test. In this spirited endeavor to become master of things it was impossible to avoid casting about for deciding authorities, and thus human reason was set as judge over the content, and taste over the manner, of presentation.

In such a man our Wieland now found, not a predecessor whom he was to follow, nor a colleague with whom he was to work, but a true elder twin brother in the spirit, whom he perfectly resembled, without being formed in his likeness; even as it could not be said of the Menæchmi which was the original, and which the copy.

What Shaftesbury, born in a higher station, more favored with worldly advantages, and more experienced by travel, office, and cosmopolitan knowledge, did in a wider circle and at a more serious period in sea-girt England, precisely this our friend, proceeding from a point at first extremely limited, accomplished through persistent activity and through ceaseless toil, in his native land, surrounded on every side by hills and dales; and the result was—to employ, in our condensed address, a brief but generally intelligible term—that popular philosophy whereby a practically trained intelligence is set in decision over the moral worth of things, and is made the judge of their aesthetic value.

This philosophy, prepared in England and fostered by conditions in Germany, was thus spread far and wide by our friend, in company with countless sympathizers, by poems and by scholarly works, even by life itself.

And yet, if we have found Shaftesbury and Wieland perfectly alike so far as point of view, temperament, and insight are concerned, nevertheless, the latter was far superior to the former in talent; for what the Englishman rationally taught and desired, the German knew how to elaborate poetically and rhetorically in verse and prose.

In this elaboration, however, the French mode of treatment was necessarily most suitable to him. Serenity, wit, spirit, and elegance are already at hand in France; his luxuriant imagination, which now desires to be occupied only with light and joyous themes, turns to tales of fairies and knights, which grant it the greatest freedom. Here, again, in the Arabian Nights and in the Bibliotheque universelle des romans, France offered him materials half-prepared and adapted, while the ancient treasures of this sort, which Germany possesses, still remained crude and unavailable.

It is precisely these poems which have most widely spread and most firmly established Wieland's fame. Their light-heartedness gained them access to everyone, and even the serious Germans deigned to be pleased with them; for all these works appeared indeed at a happy and favorable time. They were all written in the spirit which we have developed above. Frequently the fortunate poet undertook the artistic task of giving a high value to very mediocre materials by revising them; and though it cannot be denied that he sometimes permits reason to triumph over the higher powers, and at other times allows sensuality to prevail over the moral qualities, yet we must also grant that, in its proper place, everything which can possibly adorn noble souls gains supremacy.

Earlier than most of these works, though not the earliest of all, was the translation of Shakespeare. Wieland did not fear impairment of his originality by study; on the contrary, he was convinced at an early date that a lively, fertile spirit found its best stimulus not only in the adaptation of material that was already well known, but also in the translation of extant works.

In those days the translation of Shakespeare was a daring thought, for even trained litterateurs denied the possibility of the success of such an undertaking. Wieland translated freely, grasped the sense of his author, and omitted what appeared to him untranslatable; and thus he gave to his nation a general idea of the most magnificent works of another people, and to his generation an insight into the lofty culture of by-gone centuries.

Great as was the effect of this translation in Germany, it appears to have exercised little influence upon Wieland himself. He was too thoroughly antagonistic to his author, as is sufficiently obvious from the passages omitted and passed over, and still more from the appended notes, in which the French type of thought is evident.

On the other hand, the Greeks, with their moderation and clarity, are to him most precious models. He feels himself allied with them in taste; religion, customs, and legislation all give him opportunity to exercise his versatility, and since neither the gods nor the philosophers, and neither the nation nor the nations are any more compatible than politicians and soldiers, he everywhere finds the desired opportunity, amid his apparent doubts and jests, of repeatedly inculcating his equitable, tolerant, human doctrines.

At the same time, he takes delight in presenting problematical characters, and he finds pleasure, for example, in emphasizing the lovable qualities of a Musarion, a Lais, and a Phryne without regard to womanly chastity, and in exalting their practical wisdom above the scholastic wisdom of the philosophers.

But among these he also finds a man whom he can develop and set forth as the representative of his own convictions—I mean Aristippus. Here philosophy and worldly pleasure are through wise moderation so united in serene and welcome fashion that the wish arises to be a contemporary in so fair a land, and in such goodly company. Union with these educated, right-thinking, cultivated, joyous men is so welcome, and it even seems that so long as one may walk with them in thought, one's mind will be as theirs, and one will think as they.

In these circles our friend maintained himself by careful experiments, which are still more necessary to the translator than to the poet; and thus arose the German Lucian, which necessarily presented the Greek to us the more vividly since the author and the translator could be regarded as true kindred spirits.

But however much a man of such talents preaches decency, he will, nevertheless, sometimes feel himself tempted to transgress the boundaries of propriety and decorum, since from time immemorial genius has reckoned such escapades among its prerogatives. Wieland indulged this impulse when he sought to assimilate himself to the daring, extraordinary Aristophanes, and when he was able to translate his jests, as audacious as they were witty, though he toned them down with his own innate grace.

For all these presentations an insight into the higher plastic art was also obviously necessary, and since our friend was never vouchsafed the sight of those ancient masterpieces which still survive, he sought to rise to them in thought, to bring them before his eyes by the power of imagination; so that we cannot fail to be amazed to see how talent is able to form for itself a conception even of what is far away. Moreover, he would have been entirely successful if his laudable caution had not restrained him from taking decisive steps; for art in general, and especially the art of the ancients, can neither be grasped nor comprehended without enthusiasm. He who will not commence with amazement and with admiration finds no entrance into the holy of holies. Our friend, however, was far too cautious, and how could he have been expected to make in this single instance an exception from his general rule of life?

If, however, he was near akin to the Greeks in taste, in sentiment he was still more closely allied to the Romans—not that he would have allowed himself to be carried away by republican or by patriotic zeal, but he really finds his peers among the Romans, whereas he has, in a sense, only fictitiously assimilated himself to the Greeks. Horace has much similarity to him; himself an artist, and himself a man of the court and of the world, he intelligently estimates life and art; Cicero, philosopher, orator, statesman, and active citizen, also closely resembles him—and both arose from inconsiderable beginnings to great dignities and honors.

While our friend occupies himself with the works of both these men, how gladly would he transport himself back into their century and their surroundings, and transfer himself to their epoch, in order to transmit to us a clear picture of that past; and he succeeds amazingly. Perhaps, on the whole, more sympathy might be desired for the men with whom he is concerned, but such is his fear of partisanship that he prefers to take sides against them rather than on their behalf.

There are two maxims of translation. The one demands that the author of an alien nation be brought over to us so that we may regard him as our own; the other, on the contrary, lays upon us the obligation that we should transfer ourselves to the stranger and accommodate ourselves to his conditions, to his diction, and to his peculiarities. The advantages of both are sufficiently well known to all cultured men by masterly examples. Our friend, who here also sought the middle way, endeavored to combine both; yet, as a man of taste and feeling, in doubtful cases he gave the preference to the first maxim.

Perhaps no one has so keenly felt as he how complicated a task translation is. How deeply was he convinced that not the letter but the spirit giveth life! Consider how, in his introductions, he first endeavors to shift us to the period and to make us acquainted with the personages; how he then makes his author speak in a way which we already know, akin to our own thought and familiar to our ear; and how, finally, in his annotations, he seeks to explain and to obviate many a detail which might remain obscure, rouse doubt, and be offensive. Through this triple endeavor one can see clearly that he first has mastered his subject, and then he also takes the most praiseworthy pains to put us in a position in which his insight can be communicated to us, that we also may share the enjoyment with him.

Although he was equally master of many tongues, yet he clung to the two in which the value and the dignity of the ancient world have most purely been transmitted to us. For little as we would deny that many a treasure has been drawn and is still to be drawn from the mines of other ancient literatures, so little shall we be contradicted when we assert that the language of the Greeks and of the Romans has transmitted to us, down to this very day, priceless gifts which in content are equal to the best, and in form are superior to every other.

The organization of the German Empire, which includes so many small states within itself, herein resembled the Greek. Since the tiniest, most unimportant, and even invisible city had its special interests it was constrained to cherish and to maintain them, and to defend them against its neighbors. Accordingly, its youth were early roused and summoned to reflect upon affairs of state. And thus Wieland, too, as the chief of the chancery of one of the smallest imperial free-towns, was in a position calculated to make of him a patriot and, in the best sense of the term, a demagogue; as when later, in one such instance, he resolved to bring down upon himself the temporary disfavor of his patron, the neighboring Count Stadion, rather than to make an unpatriotic submission.

His Agathon itself teaches us that within this sphere as well he gave preference to sound principles; nevertheless, he took such interest in the realities of life that all his occupations and all his predilections ultimately failed to prevent him from thinking about the same. He particularly felt himself summoned anew to this when he dared promise himself a weighty influence on the training of princes from whom much might be expected.

In all the works of this type which he wrote a cosmopolitan spirit is manifest, and since they were composed at a time when the power of absolute monarchy was not yet shaken, it became his main purpose insistently to set their obligations before the rulers and to point them to the happiness which they should find in the happiness of their subjects.

Now, however, the epoch came when an aroused nation tore down all that had thus far stood, and seemed to summon the spirits of all the dwellers upon earth to a universal legislation. On this matter, likewise, he declared himself with cautious modesty; and by rational presentations, which he clothed under a variety of forms, he sought to produce some measure of equilibrium in the excited masses. Since, however, the tumult of anarchy became more and more furious, and since a voluntary union of the masses appeared inconceivable, he was the first once more to counsel absolutism and to designate the man to work the miracle of reëstablishment.

If, now, it be remembered in this connection that our friend wrote concerning these matters not, as it were, after, but during, events, and that, as the editor of a widely-read periodical he had occasion—and was even compelled—on the spur of the moment to express his views each month, then he who is called to trace chronologically the course of his life will perceive, not without amazement, how attentively he followed the swift events of the day, and how shrewdly he conducted himself throughout as a German and as a thinking, sympathetic man. And here is the place to recall the periodical which was so important for Germany, the Deutscher Merkur. This undertaking was not the first of its kind, yet at that time it was new and significant. The name of its editor immediately created great confidence in it; for the fact that a man who was himself a poet also promised to introduce the poems of others into the world, and that an author to whom such magnificent works were due would himself pass judgment and publicly express his opinion—this aroused the greatest hopes. Moreover, men of worth quickly gathered about him, and this alliance of preëminent litterateurs was so active that the Merkur during a period of several years may be employed as a textbook of our literary history. On the public generally its influence was profound and significant, for if, on the one hand, reading and criticism became the possession of a greater multitude, the desire to give instant expression to his thoughts became active in everyone who had anything to give. More was sent to the editor than he expected and desired; his success awakened imitators; similar periodicals arose which crowded upon the public, first monthly, then weekly and daily, and which finally produced that confusion of Babel of which we were and are witnesses, and which, strictly speaking, springs from the fact that everyone wishes to talk, but no one is willing to listen..

The quality which maintained the value and the dignity of the Deutscher Merkur for many years was its editor's innate liberality. Wieland was not created to be a party leader; he who recognizes moderation as the chief maxim cannot make himself guilty of one-sidedness. Whatever excited his active spirit he sought to equalize within himself through taste and common sense, and thus he also treated his collaborators, for none of whom he felt very much enthusiasm; and as, while translating the ancient authors whom he so highly esteemed, he was accustomed frequently to attack them in his notes, so, by his disapproving annotations, he often vexed, and actually estranged, valued and even favorite contributors.

Even before this, our friend had been forced to endure full many an attack on account of major or minor writings; so much the less as the editor of a periodical could he escape literary controversies. Yet here, too, he shows himself ever the same. Such a paper war can never last long for him, and if it threatens to be in any degree protracted, he gives his opponent the last word and goes his wonted path.

Foreigners have sagaciously observed that German authors regard the public less than the writers of other nations, and that, therefore, one can tell from his writings the man who is developing himself, and the man who seeks to create something to his own satisfaction—and, consequently, the character of these two types soon becomes obvious. This quality we have already ascribed to Wieland in particular; and it will be so much the more interesting to arrange and to follow his writings and his life in this sense, since, formerly and latterly, the attempt has been made to cast suspicion on our friend's character from these very writings. A large number of men are even yet in error regarding him, since they fancy that the man of many sides must be indifferent, and the versatile man must be wavering; it is forgotten that character is concerned simply and solely with the practical. Only in that which a man does and continues to do, and in that to which he is constant, does he reveal his character, and in this sense there has been no more steadfast man, no man constantly more true to himself, than Wieland. If he surrendered himself to the multiplicity of his emotions, and to the versatility of his thoughts, and if he permitted no single impression to gain dominion over him, in this very way he proved the firmness and the sureness of his mind. This witty man played gladly with his opinions, but—I can summon all contemporaries as witnesses—never with his convictions. And thus he won for himself many friends, and kept them. That he had any decided enemy is not known to me. In the enjoyment of his poetic works he lived for many years in municipal, civic, friendly, and social surroundings, and gained the distinction of a complete edition of his carefully revised works, and even of an édition de luxe of them.

But even in the autumn of his years he was destined to feel the influence of the spirit of the age, and in an unforeseen manner to begin a new life, a new youth. The blessings of sweet peace had long ruled over Germany; general outward safety and repose coincided most happily with the inward, human, cosmopolitan views of existence. The peaceful townsman seemed no longer to require his walls; they were dispensed with; and there was a yearning after rustic life. The security of landed property gave confidence to everyone; the untrammelled life of nature attracted everyone; and as man, born a social being, can often fancy to himself the sweet deceit that he lives better, easier, happier in isolation, so Wieland also, who had already been vouchsafed the highest literary leisure, seemed to look about him for an abode more quiet in which to cultivate the Muses; and when he found opportunity and strength to obtain an estate in the very vicinity of Weimar, he formed the resolution there to pass the remainder of his life. And here they who have often visited him, and who have lived with him, may tell in detail how it was precisely here that he appeared in all his charm as head of the house and of the family, as friend, and as husband, and especially how, since he could indeed withdraw from men but men could not dispense with him, he most delightfully developed his social virtues as a hospitable host.

While inviting younger friends to elaborate this idyllic portrayal, I may merely note, briefly and sympathetically, how this rural joy was troubled by the passing away of a dear woman friend who resided with them, and then by the death of his esteemed and careful consort. He laid these dear remains in his own property, and although he resolved to give up agricultural cares, which had become too intricate for him, and to dispense with the estate which for some years he had enjoyed, he retained for himself the place and the space between his two dear ones that there he, too, might find his resting place. And there, then, the honorable brethren have accompanied him, yea, brought him, and thus have they fulfilled his lovely and pleasant wish that posterity might visit and reverence his tomb within a living grove.

Yet not without a higher reason did our friend return to the city, for his devotion to his great patroness, the Duchess Dowager, had more than once given him sad hours in his rural retirement. He felt only too keenly how much it cost him to be far from her. He could not forego association with her, and yet he could enjoy it only with inconvenience and with discomfort. And thus, after he had seen his household now expanded and now contracted, now augmented and now diminished, now gathered together and now scattered, the exalted princess draws him into her own immediate circle. He returns, occupies a house very close to the princely residence, shares in the summer sojourn in Tiefurt, and now regards himself as a member of the household and of the court.

In very peculiar measure Wieland was born for the higher circles of society, and even the highest would have been his proper element; for since he nowhere wished to stand supreme, but gladly sought to take part in everything, and was inclined to express himself with moderation regarding everything, he must inevitably appear an agreeable companion, and in still higher degree he would have been such in a more light-hearted nation which did not take too seriously every form of recreation.

For his poetic and his literary aspirations were alike addressed immediately to life, and though he did not seek a practical end with absolute invariability, yet he ever had a practical aim before his eyes, whether it was near or far. Therefore his thought was always clear, his phraseology was lucid and readily intelligible, and since, with his extensive knowledge, he continually held to the interest of the day, followed it, and intelligently occupied himself with it, his conversation also was diversified and stimulating throughout; so that I have not readily become acquainted with anyone who more gladly received and more spiritedly responded to whatever happy idea others might bring forward.

Bearing in mind his type of thought, his mode of entertaining himself and others, and his honorable purpose of influencing his generation, he can scarcely be reproached for feeling an antagonism toward the more modern philosophical schools. When, at an earlier period, Kant gave merely the preludes of his greater theories in his minor writings, and in a lighter style seemed to express himself problematically upon the most weighty themes, then he still stood close enough to our friend; but when the huge system was erected, all those who had thus far gone their way poetizing and philosophizing in full freedom, were forced to see in Kant's monumental work a menacing citadel which would limit their serene excursions over the field of experience.

Yet not merely the philosophers, but also the poets, had much, and, indeed, everything, to fear from the new intellectual tendency, so soon as large numbers should allow themselves to be attracted by it. It would at first appear as though its purpose was mainly directed toward knowledge, and then toward the theory of morals and its immediately subsidiary subjects. It was readily obvious, however, that, if it was intended to establish, more firmly than had hitherto been the case, those weighty affairs of higher knowledge and of moral conduct, and if there the demand was made for a sterner, more coherent judgment, developed from the depths of humanity—it was readily obvious, I repeat, that taste also would soon be referred to such principles, and, therefore, the attempt would be made absolutely to set aside individual fancies, chance culture, and popular peculiarities, and to evoke a more general law as a deciding factor.

This was, moreover, actually realized, and in poetry a new epoch emerged which was necessarily as antagonistic to our friend as he was to it. From this time on he experienced many unfavorable judgments, yet without being very deeply influenced by them; and I here expressly mention this circumstance, since the consequent struggle in German literature is as yet by no means allayed and adjusted, and since a friend who desires to value Wieland's merits and sturdily to uphold his memory must be perfectly conversant with the situation of affairs, with the rise and with the sequence of opinions, and with the character and with the talents of the cooperators; he must know well the powers and the services of both sides; and, to work impartially, he must, in a sense, belong to both factions. Yet from those minor or major controversies which arose from his intellectual attitude I am drawn by a serious consideration, to which we must now turn.

The peace which for many years had blissfully dwelt amid our mountains and hills, and in our delightfully watered valleys, had long been, if not disturbed, at least threatened, by military expeditions. When the eventful day dawned which filled us with amazement and alarm, since the fate of the world was decided in our walks, even in those terrible hours toward which our friend's carefree life flowed on, fortune did not desert him, for he was saved first through the precaution of a young and resolute friend, and then through the attention of the French conquerors, who honored in him both the meritorious author, famed throughout the world, and a member of their own great literary institute.

Soon afterward he had to bear the loss of Amelia, so bitter to us all. Court and city endeavored to extend him every compensation, and soon afterward he was favored by two emperors with insignia of honor, the like of which he had not sought, and had not even expected, throughout his long life.

Yet in the day of joy as in the day of sorrow he remained constant to himself, and thus he exemplified the superiority of delicate natures, whose equanimity knows how to meet with moderation good and evil fortune alike.

But he appeared most remarkable of all, considered in body and in spirit, after the bitter calamity which befell him in such advanced years when, together with a beloved daughter, he was very severely injured by the overturning of his carriage. The painful results of the accident and the tedium of convalescence he bore with the utmost equanimity, and he comforted his friends rather than himself by the declaration that he had never met with a like misfortune, and it might well have seemed pleasing to the gods that in this way he discharge the debt of humanity. Now, moreover, he speedily recovered, since his constitution, like that of a youth, was quickly restored, and thus he became a proof for us of the way in which great physical strength may be combined with delicacy and clean living.

As, then, his philosophy of life remained firm even under this test; such an accident produced no change in his convictions or in his mode of life. Companionable after his recovery as before, he took part in the customary recreations of the social life of the court and of the city, and with true affection and with constant endeavor shared in the activities of the brethren of our lodge. But however much his eye seemed always fixed on things earthly, and on the understanding and utilization of them—yet, as a man of exceptional gifts, he could in no wise dispense with the extramundane and the supersensual. Here also that conflict, which we have deemed it our duty to portray in detail above, became evident in a remarkable degree; for though he appeared to reject everything which lay outside the bounds of general knowledge, and beyond the sphere of what may be exemplified from experience, none the less, while he did not transgress the lines so sharply drawn, he could never refrain, in tentative fashion, as it were, from peeping over them, and from constructing and representing, in his own way, an extramundane world, a state concerning which all the innate powers of our soul can give us no information.

Single traits of his writings afford manifold examples of this; but I may especially recall his Agathodämon and his Euthanasie, and also those beautiful declarations, as rational as they were sincere, which he was permitted, only a short while since, to express openly and frankly before this assembly. For a confiding love toward our lodge of brethren had developed within him. Acquainted even as a youth with the historical traditions regarding the mysteries of the ancients, he indeed shunned, in conformity with his serene, lucid mode of thought, those dark secrets; yet he did not deny that precisely under these, perhaps uncouth, veils, higher conceptions had first been brought to barbarous and sensual men, that, through awe-inspiring symbols, powerful, illuminating ideas had been awakened, the belief in one God, ruling over all, had been introduced, virtue had been represented more desirably, and hope for the continuance of our existence had been purified both from the false terrors of a dark superstition and from the equally false demands of an Epicurean sensuality.

Then, as an aged man left behind on earth by so many valued friends and contemporaries, and feeling himself in many respects alone, he drew near to our dear lodge. How gladly he entered it, how constantly he attended our gatherings, vouchsafed his attention to our affairs, rejoiced in the reception of excellent young men, was present at our honorable banquets, and did not refrain from expressing his thoughts upon many a weighty matter—of this we are all witnesses; we have recognized it with friendly gratitude. Indeed, if this ancient lodge, often reëstablished after many a change of time, required any testimony here, the most perfect would be ready at hand, since a talented man, intelligent, cautious, circumspect, experienced, benevolent, and moderate, felt that with us he found kindred spirits, and that with us he was in a company which he, accustomed to the best, so gladly recognized to be the realization of his wishes as a man and as a social being.

Although summoned by our masters to speak a few words concerning the departed, before this so distinguished and highly esteemed assembly, I might surely have ventured to decline to do so, in the conviction that not a fleeting hour, not loose notes superficially jotted down, but whole years, and even several well weighed and well ordered volumes are requisite worthily to celebrate his memory in consideration of the monument which he has worthily erected for himself in his works and in his influence. This delightful duty I undertook only in the conviction that what I have here said may serve as an introduction to what should in future be better done by others at the repeated celebration of his memory. If it shall please our honored masters to deposit in their ark, together with this essay, all that shall publicly appear concerning our friend, and, still more, what our brethren, whom he most greatly and most peculiarly influenced and who enjoyed an uninterrupted and a closer association with him, may confidentially express and communicate, then through this would be collected a treasure of facts, of information, and of valuations which might well be unique of its kind, and from which our posterity might draw, in after times, in order to protect, to maintain, and to hallow for evermore so worthy a memory with love unwavering.