DURING the next period of Goethe’s life, extending from 1794 to 1805—that is, from his forty-fifth to his fifty-sixth year—the central facts are those relating to his friendship with Schiller.
Schiller, who was ten years younger than Goethe, came to Weimar from Dresden in 1787, when Goethe was in Italy. He was then twenty-eight years of age, and was known chiefly as the author of “The Robbers” and “Don Carlos.” He had passed through many a harsh and stern experience, but retained in all their freshness the high, ideal impulses of his early youth. Of the many striking figures who arose in Germany during the second half of the eighteenth century, Schiller, not as a writer only but as a man, was one of the noblest. It was his destiny to have to endure much physical pain, but his sufferings were never allowed to embitter his spirit or to depress his courage. He marched steadily forward on his chosen path, keeping always before himself the loftiest aims, and kindling in other minds something of his own generous passion for truth, humanity, and freedom.
Dramatic work having been anything but profitable in a material sense, Schiller began, soon after his arrival at Weimar, to write his book on the revolt of the Netherlands, hoping that as an historian he might secure the independence that was necessary to enable him to do justice to his powers as a poet. He had the warmest admiration for Goethe’s genius, and looked forward eagerly to his return.
The two poets met for the first time in the summer of 1788, at Rudolstadt, in the house of Frau von Lengefeld, whose daughter Charlotte afterwards became Schiller’s wife. Goethe, who had no means of knowing that Schiller’s ideas had been in some respects gradually approaching his own, thought of him simply as one of the vehement “Sturm und Drang” writers. On this occasion, therefore, their talk did not pass beyond the limits of ordinary politeness, and Schiller obtained the impression that they were so different from one another that friendship between them would be impossible. Nevertheless, he thought much about Goethe, and sometimes could not help rather enviously contrasting Goethe’s prosperity with his own crushing difficulties.
In 1789 Schiller settled in Jena as a professor of history, having obtained this appointment through Goethe’s influence. Early in the following year he married Charlotte von Lengefeld, his union with whom may have brought him repeatedly into contact with Goethe, who was an old friend of Charlotte’s family. We know of one meeting between them in the autumn of 1790, when Goethe called at Schiller’s house. They talked of the philosophy of Kant; and Schiller, in writing about the conversation to his friend Körner, spoke of Goethe as being, in his opinion, too much occupied with the laws of the outward world. He recognized, however, Goethe’s great way of thinking, and his effort to detect the meaning of individual facts by combining them in a whole.
Broken in health, Schiller went with his wife, in 1793, to Würtemberg, in the hope that he might benefit by his native air. While staying at Stuttgart, he made arrangements with the publisher Cotta for the issue of a literary periodical, the Horen (“The Hours”); and after his return to Jena, in 1794, he wrote to Goethe, asking him to become a contributor. Goethe cordially undertook to give what help he could. Shortly afterwards they both happened to attend a meeting of a scientific society at Jena, and as they walked together towards Schiller’s house they had an interesting discussion about the true method of science. In the course of this conversation Goethe was for the first time attracted by Schiller; and he was drawn towards him still more strongly by a later talk, in which he found that they did not essentially differ from one another in their ideas about art.
In September of the same year Goethe invited Schiller to visit him, that they might come to an understanding about the nature of the work to be done for the Horen. Schiller gladly promised to spend a fortnight in Goethe’s house, and it was during this visit that the deep and solid bases of their friendship were laid. Each gave his heart to the other without reserve, and to the end of Schiller’s life nothing was permitted to stand in the way of their mutual love and confidence. Goethe often went to Jena, where he had rooms in the old Schloss, and Schiller was never happier than when he had an opportunity of spending some time at Weimar. On every occasion when they met, each seemed to find some new quality to intensify his admiration for the other’s thought and character.
Goethe and Schiller took the purest delight in one another’s achievements, and neither of them was ever tired of stimulating the other to bring forth the noblest fruits of his genius. The tendency of Schiller, who was hardly less a philosopher than a poet, was to give his ideas, even in poetry, an abstract expression. Through contact with Goethe he was led, almost unconsciously, to present his conceptions in more imaginative forms. His style became more direct, lucid, and animated, and deeper appreciation of the real world around him imparted fresh life and colour to his pictures of purely ideal realms. Goethe, whose genius was of an incomparably higher order, and responded to a wider range of influences, had nothing, so far as art was concerned, to learn from Schiller. Nevertheless, he owed to Schiller, as he himself was always eager to acknowledge, a deep debt of gratitude. From the time when he had finished “Tasso” and the “Roman Elegies,” he had produced nothing that was worthy to rank with his best work. He had occupied himself chiefly with ministerial business and physical science, and seemed almost to have lost the impulse to visit the imaginative world in which he had for a while moved so freely and so happily. His power of poetic creation was, however, only slumbering; and by his intercourse with Schiller it was awakened to splendid activity. Schiller’s enthusiasm called forth in him what Goethe himself called “a second youth,” “a new spring.”
The Horen, which began to appear in 1795, excited much antagonism, and Schiller was excessively annoyed by the attacks directed against it. Goethe did not let himself be disturbed by hostile judgments, but towards the end of the year he proposed that they should amuse themselves by making their opponents the subjects of a series of epigrams, each epigram consisting of a distich. This suggestion delighted Schiller, and they lost no time in giving effect to it. The scheme widened as they went on, being made to include not only writers who had directly assailed them, but others whose methods and tendencies they disliked. They also seized the opportunity to do honour to various great writers, such as Lessing and Kant. A vast collection of epigrams soon accumulated, some by Goethe, some by Schiller, and some the work of both poets. They were called “Xenien” (“Xenia,” hospitable gifts: a title borrowed from Martial), and published in the “Musenalmanach,” a yearly volume of poems, edited by Schiller. These epigrams, many of which are bright and keen, fluttered the dovecots of criticism, and caused Goethe and Schiller, whose names were always henceforth closely associated, to be held in wholesome dread by pedants and literary impostors.
The first important work completed by Goethe after the beginning of his friendship with Schiller was “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre” (“Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship”). In 1793 he had taken in hand the task of revising the part he had written before his sojourn in Italy, but it is doubtful whether he would have gone on with it but for Schiller’s influence. Schiller was intensely interested in the book, and often talked about it with Goethe, who sought his advice as to the best way of rounding it off. Encouraged by his friend’s enthusiasm, Goethe carried on his labours steadily until it was finished in 1796.