Shortly before their marriage in 1828, Charlotte, at her fiancé's request, bought a poniard for him to wear on their wedding tour, the weapon with which, six years later, she took her own life. It was but a short time of unmixed happiness that she enjoyed after their marriage. But she completely identifies herself with her husband, and is miserable because he, the genius, is compelled to spend so much of his time and energy on his library work and teaching. She devotes much of hers to writing letters to their rich relations in Russia, who are ministers and privy-councillors, and to other patrons and friends, in the hope of improving his position. She encourages him indefatigably; she knows every one of his poems by heart, parodies one of them with affectionate playfulness. A certain scene in his tragedy, Selim III., is costing him much time and trouble. One day when he comes home, she leads him smilingly to his desk, where he finds it lying, completed—the fine scene between the Sultan's mother and the physician in the Third Act.
From time to time there came over her what she calls her champagne-mood; she grieves that this is no longer the case with him. She writes a poem to him, with a present of six quills, exhorting him to be energetic and determined, and not to reflect too long before he begins:
"Giess ein Füllhorn aus mit Früchten,
Blüth und Früchte gieb zugleich,
Weisheit sei in deinem Dichten,
Witz und Jugend mach' es reich.
Menschen lass uns drinnen finden,
Menschen die gelebt, gedacht,
Lass von Lieb' dich warm entzünden
Und von Zorns Gewitternacht."[7]
She firmly believes in the existence of mighty Titanic thoughts and imaginations in his soul, which it is difficult for him to persuade his lips to utter. Alas! he is not only uncommunicative, he is barren, and on the verge of insanity, at times possibly over the verge. He listens to her exhortations with indifference. She writes: "O Heinrich, for God's sake let us be inconsistent at times, let us blaze up wildly, despair madly, rise to the bliss of heaven, sink to the depths of hell—anything but be stolidly indifferent!" We feel the spiritual kinswoman, the admirer of Rahel, in these words.
Harassed by the drudgery of his daily life, troubled by the sterility of his overrated talent, he was sometimes irritable, sometimes gloomily stolid. She tries every means to brace him. At one time she fancies that he is too lonely, that he requires the stimulation of more female society—and she is not jealous. She writes (October 1834): "I wish, Heinrich, that you could have more intercourse, either personal or by correspondence, with clever, womanly women. They are the poet's true public. It would be of interest to you to learn, frankly and truthfully, what they think of you and your works. Such intercourse would be both instructive and refreshing, a useful and agreeable diversion for you."
She is determined that they are to travel, to go far afield. He throws up his appointments and they go off to St. Petersburg and Finland. But it is all in vain.
As she and Stieglitz stood looking at the waterfall of Imatra in Finland, in July 1833, she spoke the following memorable words: "Is not this like a great thought which has strayed into these mountain solitudes? Feelings like mighty billows, thunderstorms, a hurricane, would be a suitable accompaniment to this tumbling, foaming water. How poor the song about the little violet would sound here, pretty as it is in itself! Like the mighty waterfall, this foaming, wildly excited time cries for mighty song. You will give what it demands...."
In October 1835, when he was making perpetual complaint of the small pin-pricks of life, she said to him (as he himself has noted): "My careful observation of you has led me to the conclusion that whoever wishes to do you real service must provide a real, great sorrow for you. Nothing would do you so much good as that; nothing would so surely bring out your powers."
Like most people whose minds are affected, Stieglitz had periods of violent excitement, after which he relapsed into his ordinary state of silent, almost animal-like brooding. Once when they were on a walking tour, he was so lost in his own thoughts, so indifferent to all else, that she left him and went off by herself, hoping that this would rouse him; but he did not even notice it. It was a kind of warning that her final desertion of him would be of no avail; but it was a warning that she did not understand.
Entirely possessed by the latest ideas of the day, persuaded that a poet ought to live in the world, to influence and be influenced by it, it was her constant desire to drive him to action. She said to him one day: "I long for your spiritual regeneration. You will be born again! I know you will! Would that I could hasten that birth—even if it were by artificial means! But how if my surgical operation miscarried!" And in December 1834 she writes in her diary that Goethe's life becomes fuller from the moment that Schiller enters into it, but that Goethe ought to have profited more by his friend's death, and would have done so, if he had not, according to his custom, determinedly refused to sorrow; if he had allowed the sorrow to enter into him, to become part of himself, the result would have been a renewal of youth as far as his poetical productivity was concerned.