"Yes, let us die! What care we for the sun!"

Spare your sympathy, reader or spectator; you must not think that you have to do with men who care anything for their lives, and who therefore are making a sacrifice—no indeed! They have nothing in common with such a weakling as you.

I hope I shall not be accused of hastiness—I must hurry on to the end, for there are just as many absurdities in Zriny as there are verses—if from all this I draw the conclusion that Theodor Körner had not the slightest talent for the drama. I promised, a while ago, to specify some plagiarisms from Schiller, but I may safely refer to the whole book. Instead I will make a few more remarks on the death-scene of Helena, scene six, act five.

This scene is not badly constructed. I will not, indeed, examine too closely how far love made it justifiable for a girl to ask of her lover to kill her. For once we will take Helena's word for it that under similar circumstances she would have done the like had Juranitsch demanded it, and then she, as well as the poet, is held excused. We will only listen to what Juranitsch answers when she has made her wish clear to him. He says:

"Thee, I must kill? Thee? no, I cannot kill thee!"

This would be human, but listen to what follows:

"—When the storm wind
O'erthrows the oak and rages 'mongst the pines,
It leaves unharmed the tender floweret,
Its thunders change to gentle whisp'ring zephyrs
And shall I wilder be than the wild storm?
Shall I destroy life's loveliest vernal wreath?
In cruelty the boisterous elements
Surpassing, shall I break this floweret
To touch which destiny's hand has yet not dared?"

I ask you is it possible to surpass such trivial nonsense?

I shall say no more concerning Körner's individual scenes. This is not committing an injustice; for it is absolutely unimportant, so far as our investigation is concerned, whether and in how far Körner had the ability to construct a tragedy, since this faculty—as Goethe's example shows us—has nothing to do with poetry in itself. There is no need for us to draw the parallel between the Prince of Homburg and Zriny; it is quite evident. One reproach, however, which might be made by an attentive reader, I must anticipate: namely, I might be asked why I have subjected the two principal characters of Körner's tragedy to a regular police examination, and, instead of accepting them in their totality, have required them to render account in how far they were heroes, commanders, tyrants, etc. But since they are, like all creations of mere talent, nothing but arrows which are shot from a certain bow-string toward a certain target, it follows that they can only be judged by the deflections from their course. Herein—be it remarked incidentally—lies the difference, often perceived but seldom explained, between the characters portrayed by Schiller and those portrayed by Goethe. Schiller's characters—to use a play on words which for once expresses the truth—are beautiful because they are self-contained; Goethe's characters because they are unrestrained. Schiller delineates the man who is complete in his own strength, and, a man of iron, is tried by circumstances; for this reason Schiller was great only in the historical drama. Goethe delineates the endless creations of the moment, the eternal modifications of the man caused by every step that he takes; this is the token by which we may recognize genius, and it seems to me that I have discovered it also in Heinrich von Kleist.

At this moment, when I would pass on to review the achievements of Körner and Kleist in the field of comedy, I remember that I was not sufficiently definite, above, when developing my conception of the drama. I should have added that I cannot, strictly speaking, count comedy as a form of drama, but must include it in the category of dialogue narrative. If one recalls to mind the purpose of high-class comedy—"to describe individual ages and classes," one must admit that I am entitled to do so. I must remark in advance that neither Körner nor Kleist has done anything for high-class comedy. But Kleist in his Broken Pitcher has drawn a comic character-picture which is so full of life that it reminds us of Shakespeare, if of any one, while Körner in his Nightwatchman has drawn nothing but a funny caricature; with the former the character shapes the situations, whereas with the latter the situations shape the characters, if I may use this expression. I should be giving myself a great deal of unnecessary trouble if I should engage in a further analysis of the two comedies which I have mentioned, since at all events I could only adduce sundry details, and such details in this case prove absolutely nothing; for the only safe criterion of the truly comic is that the picture as a whole, apart from what wit has done for it, should arouse interest as an organic adaptation of nature. With the rascally, lustful, country judge, Adam, in the Broken Pitcher, this is certainly the case; one can safely take away from him the few witty sallies which he indulges in: but what the nightwatchman Schwalbe would become if one attempted the same procedure with him, I should not like to decide; probably a clown, who has been deprived of his wooden sword and cap and bells, and whose plain, honest features show that he has only executed such droll antics for the sake of his bread and butter. Schwalbe is merely ridiculous, but Adam is comic; the difference, to define it more clearly, consists in this; every caricature, because it diverges from laws which are eternal and necessary, without standing in eternity as a peculiarly constructed whole, has a tinge of incongruity, consequently of ridiculousness; while only that caricature of nature can be comic of which the divergences are self-consistent, which shows therefore that it is founded in itself. The poet should take only the comic as a subject of treatment; for he can never lay stress upon detached separate phenomena, if he cannot prove the connection between them and the general whole, if they do not constitute for him a window through which he looks down into Nature's breast. It is easy to calculate, accordingly, how high Theodor Körner's services to the comedy should be rated, provided he has actually succeeded with his smaller things, The Nightwatchman, The Green Domino, etc., in furnishing amusing farces. To accomplish this, nothing was required but natural gaiety combined with a talent for representation, and many men who were anything but poets have been equipped with both.