For the rest it is remarkable that Schiller's contemporaries and a large part of posterity looked upon 'Tell' as a peculiarly German play, and that too in respect of its subject-matter. They conceived it as a glorification of German deeds and held it up to admiration as a sort of symbol of German sentiment, in opposition to the French policy of subjugation in 1806-1813; the fact being that Tell's deed, as it appears in the saga and in Schiller's drama, represents and glorifies the unfortunate and in part criminal detachment of Switzerland from the German Empire. Napoleon was in those days the only one who saw this and expressed his amazement that Germans could thus praise such a thoroughly anti-German play as a drama glorifying the German fatherland.
It is sufficient to remark, if the matter were of any importance, that the Swiss revolution, as portrayed by Schiller, is not directed against the Empire, but against the brutes sent out by the Hapsburg dynasty in pursuance of a policy of dynastic aggrandizement. In numerous passages it is brought out that the very thing the conspirators are concerned about is to preserve their ancient Reichsunmittelbarkeit. All that they wish is to get back and perpetuate the liberties they have until lately enjoyed under the Empire. 'Freedom' nowhere means 'independence', and there is no vista of independence at the end of the play.
The year 1859 was marked by a prodigious ebullition of Schiller enthusiasm. While the hundredth birthday of Goethe had passed, ten years before, with but little notice, that of Schiller was made the occasion of a demonstration the like of which the modern world has hardly seen made in honor of any other poet whatsoever. In every part of Germany, and not in Germany only but in Austria, Switzerland, England and the New World, the memory of Schiller was honored in speech and song, in the unveiling of monuments, and in commemorative writings large and small. It was as if the entire German-speaking world, still dreaming the lately baffled dream of national unity, had turned to him as the noblest of the spiritual ties that bind Germans together. In the mass of literature dating from that time of flood-tide in the veneration of Schiller, one finds a good deal that is interesting in its own way, for one reason or another, but not very much that is highly valuable for illuminative criticism of Schiller. The best of the biographies are those of Palleske and Scherr; of the minor tributes the famous address of Jacob Grimm in the Berlin Academy. The spirit of the time was not favorable to a calm, objective view, but it is in itself a fact of immense significance that a great and critical, doctrine-ridden and passion-distracted people should have united in honoring a poet as Schiller was honored by the Germans in the year 1859.
A new epoch may be dated from about 1871,—the epoch of the historical critics and philologers. With the realization of national unity the vista of the past rapidly cleared up and new points of view were gained. It was as if a height had been won from which it was possible to see over the dust and smoke of the past three decades. The pride of the new-born nation now looked back with quickened interest to the great writers of the eighteenth century, but with the feeling that they had done enough for the glory of the fatherland in simply being great writers. It was time to see them as they were, without writing them up or down, according to their supposed attitude toward questions which were not their questions. It was in 1874 that Herman Grimm remarked, in a lecture at Berlin, that henceforth there was to be a science called Goethe. All the world knows how the prediction has been fulfilled. During the last two decades the science called Goethe has marched bravely on, enlisting a small army of workers, creating a vast jungle of literature,—selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte,—and making friends and enemies. And the science called Schiller is like unto it, only not quite so big.
To attempt any sort of review or conspectus of all this Alexandrian activity would be, for the purposes of this book, a futile undertaking; it would lead off into an interminable and dry bibliography, which in the end would convey little instruction as to Schiller's real popularity. It would show that he is very extensively studied and commented on by the academic class, which in Germany constitutes by itself an enormous public. It would also show that good judges, of apparently equal competence, still think very differently of the general merit of his art and are very differently affected by particular works. This is only to reiterate the familiar truth that literary criticism has not become, does not tend to become, an exact science. The feeling one has for poetry, or the effect produced upon one by a particular artistic individuality, is the result of a hundred subtle influences that combine to give each one of us his private form and range of susceptibility; and this susceptibility itself varies with the Zeitgeist and with the age and nerve-state of the individual. The mere craving for novelty makes itself felt; so that that which once gave pleasure gives it no longer, or gives it in a lower degree. There is disputing about tastes, but there is no settling of the dispute. For A to give logical reasons why B should admire that which, as a matter of fact, B does not admire, or vice versa, is always a tempting, and in the long run a useful, form of literary exertion; only one must not expect B to be convinced or to mend his ways immediately.
Beyond a doubt there have been strong influences at work in Germany, during the past two decades, which are unfavorable to Schiller's prestige. Now and then some cocksure champion of some nova fede announces that the day of poetic idealism is past. There have always been such voices, and a few years ago they were perhaps a little more numerous and more shrill than usual. Of late, however, they have seemed to grow fainter, and there are already signs of the idealistic reaction that is sure to come. Meanwhile the day of Schiller does not pass and is not likely to pass. The isms come and go, but his plays retain their popularity, because they appeal to sentiments that are deeply rooted in the affections of an immense portion of the German people who care but little for the doctrines of the doctrinaire. And so it will continue to be. To talk of returning to Schiller, or to hold up his style and technique as models for imitation, is foolish. Of such imitation, which could lead to nothing but the ossification of the German drama, there has been quite enough in the past. To imitate his spirit is to 'keep the type-idea flexible in one's mind' and reach out continually after that which is new, elevating and adapted to the present need. This is the best form of respect to his memory.
Unquestionably Schiller lacked the supreme qualities that go to the making of a great world-poet. With all his cosmopolitanism he was a German of the Germans. For them his work has a meaning and an importance which it cannot have for others, because he is the organ-voice of their ethnic instincts and idealisms. Think of a sentiment that Germans love, and you shall find it, if you search, expressed in sonorous verse in some poem or play of Schiller. The schools and the theaters keep his name steadily before the great public, while the intellectual classes, as Gervinus foresaw, are coming to dwell less on the great qualities that he lacked than on the great qualities that he possessed. As to the present attitude of sober German thought, nothing could possibly be more illuminative than the following words of Otto Brahm:
As a student I was a Schiller-hater. I make this preliminary confession not because I attach personal importance to it, but because, on the contrary, I think I see in my attitude one that is typical for our time. Every one of us, it seems to me, travels this road: After a period of early veneration, which is awakened in us by tradition and by the earliest literary impressions of youth, there comes, as a reaction against an uncritical overestimate, and under the influence of changed ideals of art, a defection from Schiller, which parades itself in a one-sided and unhistorical emphasis of his weak points. Then gradually this negative attitude corrects itself to a positive one, and we recognize the folly of that young-and-verdant bumptiousness which would think of consigning the greatest of German dramatists to the realms of the dead. And now at last, after it has passed through doubt, our enthusiasm is imperishable; with clear eye we look up to the greatness of the man, and to the splendid model for all intellectual work which is exhibited in that life of passionate striving for the ideal.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 131: The meaning of the famous verses, divested perforce of much of their German music, may be expressed thus: