No conditions were attached to this present, though a situation in Denmark was offered if Schiller should wish to go there. Schiller accepted the gift so nobly offered, but he never saw his unknown friends.[12] We owe to them, humanly speaking, the last years of Schiller's life, and with them the master-works of his genius, from “Wallenstein” to “William Tell.” As long as these works are read and admired, the names of these noble benefactors will be remembered and revered.
The name of her whom we mentioned next among Schiller's noble friends and companions,—we mean his wife,—reminds us that we have anticipated events, and that we left Schiller after his flight in 1782, at the very beginning of his most trying years. His hopes of success at Mannheim had failed. The director of the Mannheim theatre, also a Dalberg, declined to assist him. He spent the winter in great solitude at the country-house of Frau von Wolzogen, finishing “Cabale und Liebe,” and writing “Fiesco.” In the summer of 1783 he returned to Mannheim, where he received an appointment in connection with the theatre of about £40 a year. Here he stayed till 1785, when he went to Leipzig, and afterwards to Dresden, living chiefly at the expense of his friend Körner. This unsettled kind of life continued till 1787, and produced, as we saw, little more than his tragedy of “Don Carlos.” In the mean time, however, his taste for history had been developed. He had been reading more systematically at Dresden, and after he had gone to Weimar in 1787 he was able to publish, in 1788, his “History of the Revolt of the [pg 090] Netherlands.” On the strength of this he was appointed professor at Jena in 1789, first without a salary, afterwards with about £30 a year. He tells us himself how hard he had to work: “Every day,” he says, “I must compose a whole lecture and write it out,—nearly two sheets of printed matter, not to mention the time occupied in delivering the lecture and making extracts.” However, he had now gained a position, and his literary works began to be better paid. In 1790 he was enabled to marry a lady of rank, who was proud to become the wife of the poor poet, and was worthy to be the “wife of Schiller.” Schiller was now chiefly engaged in historical researches. He wrote his “History of the Thirty Years' War” in 1791-92, and it was his ambition to be recognized as a German professor rather than as a German poet. He had to work hard in order to make up for lost time, and under the weight of excessive labor his health broke down. He was unable to lecture, unable to write. It was then that the generous present of the Duke of Augustenburg freed him for a time from the most pressing cares, and enabled him to recover his health.
The years of thirty to thirty-five were a period of transition and preparation in Schiller's life, to be followed by another ten years of work and triumph. These intermediate years were chiefly spent in reading history and studying philosophy, more especially the then reigning philosophy of Kant. Numerous essays on philosophy, chiefly on the Good, the Beautiful, and the Sublime, were published during this interval. But what is more important, Schiller's mind was enlarged, enriched, and invigorated; his poetical genius, by lying fallow for a time, gave promise of [pg 091] a richer harvest to come; his position in the world became more honorable, and his confidence in himself was strengthened by the confidence placed in him by all around him. A curious compliment was paid him by the Legislative Assembly then sitting at Paris. On the 26th of August, 1792, a decree was passed, conferring the title of Citoyen Français on eighteen persons belonging to various countries, friends of liberty and universal brotherhood. In the same list with Schiller were the names of Klopstock, Campe, Washington, Kosciusko, and Wilberforce. The decree was signed by Roland, Minister of the Interior, and countersigned by Danton. It did not reach Schiller till after the enthusiasm which he too had shared for the early heroes of the French Revolution had given way to disappointment and horror. In the month of December of the very year in which he had been thus honored by the Legislative Assembly, Schiller was on the point of writing an appeal to the French nation in defense of Louis XVI. The King's head, however, had fallen before this defense was begun. Schiller, a true friend of true liberty, never ceased to express his aversion to the violent proceedings of the French revolutionists. “It is the work of passion,” he said, “and not of that wisdom which alone can lead to real liberty.” He admitted that many important ideas, which formerly existed in books only or in the heads of a few enlightened people, had become more generally current through the French Revolution. But he maintained that the real principles which ought to form the basis of a truly happy political constitution were still hidden from view. Pointing to a volume of Kant's “Criticism of Pure Reason,” he said, “There they are, and [pg 092] nowhere else; the French republic will fall as rapidly as it has risen; the republican government will lapse into anarchy, and sooner or later a man of genius will appear (he may come from any place) who will make himself not only master of France, but perhaps also of a great part of Europe.” This was a remarkable prophecy for a young professor of history.
The last decisive event in Schiller's life was his friendship with Goethe. It dates from 1794, and with this year begins the great and crowning period of Schiller's life. To this period belong his “Wallenstein,” his “Song of the Bell,” his Ballads (1797-98), his “Mary Stuart” (1800), the “Maid of Orleans” (1801), the “Bride of Messina” (1803), and “William Tell;” in fact, all the works which have made Schiller a national poet and gained for him a worldwide reputation and an immortal name.
Goethe's character was in many respects diametrically opposed to Schiller's, and for many years it seemed impossible that there should ever be a community of thought and feeling between the two. Attempts to bring together these great rivals were repeatedly made by their mutual friends. Schiller had long felt himself drawn by the powerful genius of Goethe, and Goethe had long felt that Schiller was the only poet who could claim to be his peer. After an early interview with Goethe, Schiller writes, “On the whole, this meeting has not at all diminished the idea, great as it was, which I had previously formed of Goethe; but I doubt if we shall ever come into close communication with each other. Much that interests me has already had its epoch with him; his world is not my world.” Goethe had expressed the same feeling. He saw Schiller occupying the very [pg 093] position which he himself had given up as untenable; he saw his powerful genius carrying out triumphantly “those very paradoxes, moral and dramatic, from which he was struggling to get liberated.” “No union,” as Goethe writes, “was to be dreamt of. Between two spiritual antipodes there was more intervening than a simple diameter of the spheres. Antipodes of that sort act as a kind of poles, which can never coalesce.” How the first approach between these two opposite poles took place Goethe has himself described, in a paper entitled “Happy Incidents.” But no happy incident could have led to that glorious friendship, which stands alone in the literary history of the whole world, if there had not been on the part of Schiller his warm sympathy for all that is great and noble, and on the part of Goethe a deep interest in every manifestation of natural genius. Their differences on almost every point of art, philosophy, and religion, which at first seemed to separate them forever, only drew them more closely together, when they discovered in each other those completing elements which produced true harmony of souls. Nor is it right to say that Schiller owes more to Goethe than Goethe to Schiller. If Schiller received from Goethe the higher rules of art and a deeper insight into human nature, Goethe drank from the soul of his friend the youth and vigor, the purity and simplicity, which we never find in any of Goethe's works before his “Hermann and Dorothea.” And, as in most friendships, it was not so much Goethe as he was, but Goethe as reflected in his friend's soul, who henceforth became Schiller's guide and guardian. Schiller possessed the art of admiring, an art so much more rare than the art of criticising. His eye was so absorbed in all that was [pg 094] great, and noble, and pure, and high in Goethe's mind, that he could not, or would not, see the defects in his character. And Goethe was to Schiller what he was to no one else. He was what Schiller believed him to be; afraid to fall below his friend's ideal, he rose beyond himself until that high ideal was reached, which only a Schiller could have formed. Without this regenerating friendship it is doubtful whether some of the most perfect creations of Goethe and Schiller would ever have been called into existence.
We saw Schiller gradually sinking into a German professor, the sphere of his sympathies narrowed, the aim of his ambition lowered. His energies were absorbed in collecting materials and elaborating his “History of the Thirty Years' War,” which was published in 1792. The conception of his great dramatic Trilogy, the “Wallenstein,” which dates from 1791, was allowed to languish until it was taken up again for Goethe, and finished for Goethe in 1799. Goethe knew how to admire and encourage, but he also knew how to criticise and advise. Schiller, by nature meditative rather than observant, had been most powerfully attracted by Kant's ideal philosophy. Next to his historical researches, most of his time at Jena was given to metaphysical studies. Not only his mind, but his language suffered from the attenuating influences of that rarefied atmosphere which pervades the higher regions of metaphysical thought. His mind was attracted by the general and the ideal, and lost all interest in the individual and the real. This was not a right frame of mind, either for an historian or a dramatic poet. In Goethe, too, the philosophical element was strong, but it was kept under by the practical tendencies of his mind. Schiller looked for [pg 095] his ideal beyond the real world; and, like the pictures of a Raphael, his conceptions seemed to surpass in purity and harmony all that human eye had ever seen. Goethe had discovered that the truest ideal lies hidden in real life; and like the master-works of a Michael Angelo, his poetry reflected that highest beauty which is revealed in the endless variety of creation, and must there be discovered by the artist and the poet. In Schiller's early works every character was the personification of an idea. In his “Wallenstein” we meet for the first time with real men and real life. In his “Don Carlos,” Schiller, under various disguises more or less transparent, acts every part himself. In “Wallenstein” the heroes of the “Thirty Years' War” maintain their own individuality, and are not forced to discuss the social problems of Rousseau, or the metaphysical theories of Kant. Schiller was himself aware of this change, though he was hardly conscious of its full bearing. While engaged in composing his “Wallenstein,” he writes to a friend:—
“I do my business very differently from what I used to do. The subject seems to be so much outside me that I can hardly get up any feeling for it. The subject I treat leaves me cold and indifferent, and yet I am full of enthusiasm for my work. With the exception of two characters to which I feel attached, Max Piccolomini and Thekla, I treat all the rest, and particularly the principal character of the play, only with the pure love of the artist. But I can promise you that they will not suffer from this. I look to history for limitation, in order to give, through surrounding circumstances, a stricter form and reality to my ideals. I feel sure that the historical will not draw me down or cripple me. I only desire through it to impart life to my characters and their actions. The life and soul must come from another source, through that power which I have already perhaps shown elsewhere, and without which even the first conception of this work would, of course, have been impossible.”
How different is this from what Schiller felt in [pg 096] former years! In writing “Don Carlos,” he laid down as a principle, that the poet must not be the painter but the lover of his heroes, and in his early days he found it intolerable in Shakespeare's dreams that he could nowhere lay his hand on the poet himself. He was then, as he himself expresses it, unable to understand nature, except at second-hand.
Goethe was Schiller's friend, but he was also Schiller's rival. There is a perilous period in the lives of great men, namely, the time when they begin to feel that their position is made, that they have no more rivals to fear. Goethe was feeling this at the time when he met Schiller. He was satiated with applause, and his bearing towards the public at large became careless and offensive. In order to find men with whom he might measure himself, he began to write on the history of Art, and to devote himself to natural philosophy. Schiller, too, had gained his laurels chiefly as a dramatic poet; and though he still valued the applause of the public, yet his ambition as a poet was satisfied; he was prouder of his “Thirty Years' War” than of his “Robbers” and “Don Carlos.” When Goethe became intimate with Schiller, and discovered in him those powers which as yet were hidden to others, he felt that there was a man with whom even he might run a race. Goethe was never jealous of Schiller. He felt conscious of his own great powers, and he was glad to have those powers again called out by one who would be more difficult to conquer than all his former rivals. Schiller, on the other hand, perceived in Goethe the true dignity of a poet. At Jena his ambition was to have the title of Professor of History; at Weimar he saw that it was a greater honor to be called a poet, and the friend of Goethe. [pg 097] When he saw that Goethe treated him as his friend, and that the Duke and his brilliant court looked upon him as his equal, Schiller, too modest to suppose he had earned such favors, was filled with a new zeal, and his poetical genius displayed for a time an almost inexhaustible energy. Scarcely had his “Wallenstein” been finished, in 1799, when he began his “Mary Stuart.” This play was finished in the summer of 1800, and a new one was taken in hand in the same year,—the “Maid of Orleans.” In the spring of 1801 the “Maid of Orleans” appeared on the stage, to be followed in 1803 by the “Bride of Messina,” and in 1804 by his last great work, his “William Tell.” During the same time Schiller composed his best ballads, his “Song of the Bell,” his epigrams, and his beautiful Elegy, not to mention his translations and adaptations of English and French plays for the theatre at Weimar. After his “William Tell” Schiller could feel that he no longer owed his place by the side of Goethe to favor and friendship, but to his own work and worth. His race was run, his laurels gained. His health, however, was broken, and his bodily frame too weak to support the strain of his mighty spirit. Death came to his relief, giving rest to his mind, and immortality to his name.
Let us look back once more on the life of Schiller. The lives of great men are the lives of martyrs; we cannot regard them as examples to follow, but rather as types of human excellence to study and to admire. The life of Schiller was not one which many of us would envy; it was a life of toil and suffering, of aspiration rather than of fulfillment, a long battle with scarcely a moment of rest for the conqueror to enjoy his hard-won triumphs. To an ambitious man the [pg 098] last ten years of the poet's life might seem an ample reward for the thirty years' war of life which he had to fight single-handed. But Schiller was too great a man to be ambitious. Fame with him was a means, never an object. There was a higher, a nobler aim in his life, which upheld him in all his struggles. From the very beginning of his career Schiller seems to have felt that his life was not his. He never lived for himself; he lived and worked for mankind. He discovered within himself how much there was of the good, the noble, and the beautiful in human nature; he had never been deceived in his friends. And such was his sympathy with the world at large that he could not bear to see in any rank of life the image of man, created in the likeness of God, distorted by cunning, pride, and selfishness. His whole poetry may be said to be written on the simple text, “Be true, be good, be noble!” It may seem a short text, but truth is very short, and the work of the greatest teachers of mankind has always consisted in the unflinching inculcation of these short truths. There is in Schiller's works a kernel full of immortal growth, which will endure long after the brilliant colors of his poetry have faded away. That kernel is the man, and without it Schiller's poetry, like all other poetry, is but the song of sirens. Schiller's character has been subjected to that painful scrutiny to which, in modern times, the characters of great men are subjected; everything he ever did, or said, or thought, has been published; and yet it would be difficult, in the whole course of his life, to point out one act, one word, one thought, that could be called mean, untrue, or selfish. From the beginning to the end Schiller remained true to himself; he never acted a part, he never bargained with the world. We [pg 099] may differ from him on many points of politics, ethics, and religion; but though we differ, we must always respect and admire. His life is the best commentary on his poetry; there is never a discrepancy between the two. As mere critics, we may be able to admire a poet without admiring the man; but poetry, it should be remembered, was not meant for critics only, and its highest purpose is never fulfilled, except where, as with Schiller, we can listen to the poet and look up to the man.