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GOETHE TO WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT
July 30, 1804.
Months ago I wrote the inclosed sheet to your dear wife. She has recently been here, and I have had the pleasure of conversing with her; she has, so I hear, safely reached Paris and been delivered. I trust that, ere long, she may there embrace your dear brother, who has, in a sense, risen for us from the dead. Your precious letter of February 25 reached me safely in good time, and as I reflect on the long interval during which I have left you without news from me, I now note through what singular emotions I have passed during this time.
Schiller's Tell has been completed for some time and is now on the stage. It is an extraordinary production wherein his dramatic skill puts forth new branches, and it justly creates a profound sensation. You will surely receive it before long, for it is already in press.
I have permitted myself to be persuaded to try to make my Götz von
Berlichingen suitable for the stage.
This was an undertaking well-nigh impossible, for its very trend is untheatrical; like Penelope, I, too, have ceaselessly woven and unwoven it for a year; and in the process I have learned much, though, I fear, I have not perfectly attained the end which I had in view. In about six weeks I hope to present it, and Schiller will, no doubt, speak to you about it.
Have you chanced to see our Jena Literatur-Zeitung for this year, and has anything which it contained aroused your interest?
I am extremely grateful to you for the very welcome information which you give me regarding an improvisatrice. Could I possibly dare to make use of it in the advertising columns of the Literatur-Zeitung? What you have said I would modify in every way consonant with its relation to the public, which needs not know everything. If you could occasionally communicate to me some information of this type from the wealth of your observations, you would confer a great pleasure upon us.
Since Jagemann's death, Fernow has received an appointment at the library of the Duchess Dowager, and his connection with it is of great value for her house and for the society which assembles there; he makes love for Italian literature a living force and gives occasion for witty readings and conversations.