The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller Part 18

"The One remains, the many change and pa.s.s, Heaven's light forever s.h.i.+nes, earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-colored gla.s.s, Stains the white radiance of Eternity."

--_Sh.e.l.ley's "Adonais"_.]

[Footnote 104: Bulwer's Translation.]

[Footnote 105: Bulwer's Translation.]

[Footnote 106: "Social Forces in German Literature", p. 376.]

[Footnote 107: "Dichtung und Wahrheit", sechzehntes Buch.]

[Footnote 108: Buiwer translates the lines, somewhat lamely, thus:

Honour to Woman! To her it is given To garden the earth with the roses of Heaven!

All blessed, she linketh the Loves in their choir....

From the bounds of Truth careering, Man's strong spirit wildly sweeps, With each hasty impulse veering Down to Pa.s.sion's troubled deeps.]

[Footnote 109:

Ehret die Frauen! Sie stricken die Strumpfe, Wollig und warm, zu durchwaten die Sumpfe, Flicken zerriss'ne Pantalons aus....

Doch der Mann, der tolpelhafte, Find't am Zarten nicht Geschmack; Zum gegohrnen Gerstensafte Raucht er immerfort Taback.]

[Footnote 110:

"In the waste the Beast is free, And the G.o.d upon his throne!

Unto each the curb must be But the nature each doth own.

Yet the Man--betwixt the two-- Must to man allied belong; Only law and Custom thro'

Is the Mortal free and strong."

--_Bulwer's Translation._]

[Footnote 111: Otto Harnack, "Schiller", page 274.]

[Footnote 112:

Der Eichwald brauset, die Wolken ziehn, Das Magdlein sitzet an Ufers Grun, Es bricht sich die Welle mit Macht, mit Macht, Und sie seufzt hinaus in die finstere Nacht, Das Auge von Weinen getrubet.

"Das Herz ist ges...o...b..n, die Welt ist leer, Und weiter giebt sie dem Wunsche nichts mehr.

Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zuruck, Ich habe genossen das irdische Gluck, Ich habe gelebt und geliebet."]

CHAPTER XVI

Wallenstein

So hab' ich Mit eignem Netz verderblich mich umstrickt, Und nur Gewaltthat kann es reiszend losen.

_'Wallenstein'._

The great play which signalizes the return of Schiller to dramatic poetry must be accounted upon the whole his masterpiece. To be sure it is less popular than 'Tell' and less immediately effective than 'Mary Stuart'. It has not the romantic soulfulness of 'The Maid of Orleans', nor the splendid diction of 'The Bride of Messina'. On the stage, too, its effectiveness is somewhat impaired by its great length. But in the imaginative power whereby history is made into drama; in the triumph of artistic genius over a vast and refractory ma.s.s of material, and in the skill with which the character of the hero is conceived and denoted, 'Wallenstein' is unrivaled. Well might Goethe p.r.o.nounce it 'so great that nothing could be compared with it'. Its chief figure is by far the stateliest and most impressive of German tragic heroes.

Since the completion of 'Don Carlos' Schiller had written nothing of any moment in the dramatic form. For nine years he had been occupied with historical and philosophic studies which he himself regarded as preparatory to some new and n.o.bler flight of artistic creation. Of course he had been aware all along, none better than he, that great poetry cometh not by theorizing; that theory could have at the best only a general regulative value. At the same time, with the example of Lessing before him, he could not but feel that this regulative value might be very great. And so he had gone resolutely on his way, even after the dread truth had come home to him that he had not long to live and might never be able to reap the fruit of what he was sowing.

He had studied certain epochs of history very carefully and had acquired a deeper insight into that tangled interplay of inward motive and outward circ.u.mstance which determines the course of events.

Philosophy had only deepened his early conviction that man's dignity, his heroism, consists in his free self-determination; but who knew better than he the infinite pathos of the battle between 'will' and 'must'? He had become familiar with the spirit and the technique of the Greek drama and learned to admire its simple and stately architecture.

Latterly, however, he had been drawn toward the moderns and had found in the expression of the modern spirit-with all its idealisms, its heights and depths and mysteries of feeling--a higher artistic goal than antiquity had ever imagined. Finally, his a.s.sociation with Goethe had taught him the importance of looking fairly at life and portraying it not indeed just as it is, but in its essential human spirit. This, for him, was to idealize.

Two themes had been suggested by his historical studies, and both had haunted his thoughts for years,--'The Knights of Malta' and 'Wallenstein'. The former, if his plan had been carried out, would have yielded a play of the cla.s.sical type, with few characters and a severely simple structure. In the final balancing of the two subjects 'Wallenstein' prevailed, no doubt because it seemed in advance the easier and the more promising. It pointed to a familiar field where history itself had already shaped in the rough a stupendous and fascinating tragedy. To reproduce the form and pressure of the Thirty Years' War, at one of its most exciting moments, was an alluring problem to a dramatist who had written a history of the struggle, and who had always felt that his strength lay in the historical drama.

Serious musings upon 'Wallenstein' began, as we have seen, in the autumn of 1796.[113] The first great problem was, of course, the general plan of the piece,--how to select, dispose and concentrate. To quicken his imagination Schiller commenced reading again upon the history of the period and soon perceived that what he already knew would be quite inadequate; that it would be necessary to go over the whole ground anew and more thoroughly. He found the material dry, chaotic and abstract; in short, lacking in nearly all the poetic elements which he would have thought indispensable a few years before. He could not treat it in his earlier manner. He had no love for any of his personages except Max and Thekla, whom he had invented for the purpose of infusing a little warm blood into an action which would otherwise have been dominated altogether by the cold pa.s.sions of ambition, vindictiveness and fear.

Wallenstein was not great or n.o.ble; at best he could only be made terrible. The basis of his power was his army, and this--so it seemed to Schiller at first--was too large and complex a thing to be effectively portrayed. Then, too, his enterprise failed chiefly because of bad management, and he himself rather than fate was to blame for his catastrophe. This Schiller regarded as the weak point of the whole subject; but he took some comfort from the example of 'Macbeth'.

Notwithstanding these difficulties, however, he worked at his task with great eagerness, feeling that just such a subject as 'Wallenstein' would prove the crucial test of his powers. His old theory that love is what makes the artist was now completely outgrown, and he was gratified to observe that he had learned to keep himself out of his work. So much for the influence of Goethe, to whom he wrote, in November, 1796, as follows:

With the general spirit of my work you will probably be satisfied. I might almost say that the subject does not interest me at all. I have never combined such coolness toward my theme with such a warmth of feeling for my work. My princ.i.p.al character, and the most of my subordinate characters, I have treated up to this time with the pure love of the artist.

After some hesitation between prose and verse he began in prose, being led thereto partly by the advice of Wilhelm von Humboldt and partly by his own desire to produce this time an acceptable stage-play. His progress was at first very slow. There was endless reading to be done and endless rumination over the plot. In the winter season, with its close confinement and its lowered vitality, the invalid could accomplish but little. He fixed his hopes longingly upon the return of spring and decided to buy a house with a garden, so that he could muse and write in the open air. In May, 1797, the purchase was made, but by this time work on 'Wallenstein' had completely stagnated and other interests were at the fore. He was back among the Greeks. Renewed study of Sophocles, particularly of the 'Trachiniae' and the 'Philoctetes', had convinced him that everything hinges upon the invention of a poetic fable. To quote again from a letter to Goethe:

The modern poet wrestles laboriously and anxiously with accidental and subordinate matters and, in his effort to be very realistic, loads himself down with the vacuous and the trivial. Thus he runs a risk of losing the deep-lying truth which const.i.tutes the real nature of the poetical. He would fain imitate an actual occurrence, and does not consider that a poetic representation can never coincide with actuality, because it is absolutely true.

A little later he took up the study of Aristotle's 'Poetics' and was delighted to find that the dread Rhadamanthus was after all so very liberal and sensible. He had now reached a firm footing and was not to be dislodged even by Aristotle, whose whole body of doctrine, as he did not fail to observe, was deduced empirically from concrete specimens of a particular type of play. It could not be canonical for all the world, but it was very instructive. Schiller was glad that he had finally discovered Aristotle, but glad also that he had never read him before.

On returning to 'Wallenstein' in October, after the summer claims of the 'Almanac' had been satisfied, he noticed that what he had written was characterized by a certain dryness. It was evident that, in his strenuous effort to avoid his besetting sin of rhetoric, he was in danger of becoming trivial. He had still a sustaining faith in the goodness of his subject, but the great problem would be to make it poetical. It was necessary to find the middle way between the rhetorical and the prosaic. The practical result of these cogitations was a decision to write 'Wallenstein' in verse. In versifying the completed scenes he found himself, so he wrote to Goethe, before a different tribunal. Much that had seemed very good in prose would not do at all; for verse tended to invest everything with an imaginative nimbus which rendered triviality and mere logic intolerable.

But the new form brought with it a new danger--that of prolixity. It was necessary that the exposition account for Wallenstein's conduct by exhibiting the sources of his power. This meant a dramatic picture of his wild and irresponsible soldatesca. The theme was boundless and Schiller was a facile verse-maker. Ere long he reported ruefully to Goethe that his first act was already longer than three acts of 'Iphigenie'. He was in doubt whether his friend had not infected him with a 'certain epic spirit' which tended to diffuseness. In his embarra.s.sment of riches he decided to give the preliminary picture the form of a dramatic prologue having but a loose connection with the play proper, which was still conceived as a five-act tragedy.

During the winter of 1797-8 he worked as he could, steadily upborne by the friendly encouragement of Goethe. When summer arrived the last two acts were still unfinished, and the first three had grown to portentous dimensions. It was now that he decided to divide his unmanageable tragedy into two parts, 'The Piccolomini' and 'Wallenstein's Death'; his idea being that 'The Piccolomini', preceded by the dramatic prologue, which was now christened 'Wallenstein's Camp', would fill up an evening and prepare the way for the real tragedy of 'Wallenstein's Defection and Death'. This plan, involving a reconstruction of the whole, was carried out in the ensuing months. At the urgent request of Goethe, preparations were made to reopen the newly-renovated Weimar theater with a performance of the 'Camp' alone. As the piece was too short for this purpose, Schiller hastily amplified it to a sufficient size and wrote for it a n.o.ble prologue, which ranks among the best of his poems. When played at Weimar, in October, 1798, the 'Camp' was well received as a picturesque novelty, but that was all. It gave no clew to what was coming, and there was nothing in it to stir the depths of human nature.

'The Piccolomini' was completed in December and put upon the Weimar stage, under Schiller's personal direction, on January 30, 1799. As then performed it included two acts of 'Wallenstein's Death'. The first performance was a great success. The Weimarians, with Goethe at their head, were enthusiastic; and Schiller, who had of late known but little of popular favor, found himself suddenly invested with a new renown. He was pleased, elated; from this time on he felt sure of his vocation as dramatic poet. Returning to Jena he applied himself steadily to 'Wallenstein's Death', completing it finally in March. It was first played on the 20th of April, preceded at short intervals by the 'Camp'

and 'The Piccolomini'. And great indeed was the poet's triumph, now that his achievement could be judged as a whole. He had given his best after years of preparation, and the world saw at once that it was very good.

The animosities aroused by the Xenia lingered for a while in a few small minds, but it was of no use to fight genius with the missiles of petty malice. The Germans had accepted Schiller as their great dramatist.

To form a right estimate of 'Wallenstein' one must first look at it in a large way, remembering that structurally it forms a cla.s.s all by itself.

The name 'trilogy', in the technical sense of the Greeks, does not apply to it, seeing that the 'Camp' is not an integral part of the whole, but a dramatic prelude in an entirely different key. In a loose sense, to be sure, it forms a part of the exposition; but it can be omitted entirely, if one chooses, since everything technically necessary to be known is repeated in 'The Piccolomini'. Its characters are different and nothing is said or done that is vitally related to the ensuing complication. Its purpose is to show the nature of Wallenstein's soldiers and the grounds of their attachment to their commander. Their loyalty is of course the great factor in Wallenstein's position; it is because he relies upon their fidelity that he dares to dally with the thought of treason. But this fidelity of theirs, their st.u.r.dy _esprit du corps_, their unwillingness to be separated, could have been indicated in a scene, or in the report of a messenger; in fact it _is_ indicated in the memorial which they place in the hands of Max Piccolomini.

The 'Camp', then, with its eleven-hundred verses, is to be regarded as a military genre-picture, elaborated for its own sake into an independent piece. As a prelude it transports us into the _milieu_ of the tragedy, but without anywhere striking its key-note; for the tragedy is intensely serious, while the note of the 'Camp',--notwithstanding an undertone of seriousness without which it could not have been the work of Schiller,--is that of jovial humor. And the poet's scheme required just this effect in the prelude. One can hardly a.s.sent, therefore, to the suggestion of Harnack[114] that it would have been well if the sentiment of loyalty to the emperor had been made more prominent and given a more worthy champion than the stolid Tiefenbachers, who have nothing to say.

Had this been attempted it must have led to an adumbration of the coming tragic conflict,--which is what Schiller wished to avoid. He wished that spectator and reader should accept the prelude as a thing of its own kind, complete in itself. It was for this reason that he gave it a distinctive meter, having convinced himself that meter of some kind was essential if he would avoid ba.n.a.lity. With a wise instinct he chose the old free-and-easy tetrameter, which Goethe had used with excellent effect in some of his early plays. In German this meter lends itself beautifully to the bluff, off-hand discourse of soldiers. It gives an illusion of realism while preserving the effect of poetry.

Particularly admirable is the art with which Schiller has contrived to denote the motley variety of human types gathered under Wallenstein's banner, while giving to each of his figures a fairly distinct individuality. With a little study of costume a painter could paint them all. There is the wretched Peasant, who has been reduced to beggary and is willing to retrieve his fortunes by gambling with loaded dice; the sagacious Sergeant, who always knows more than other people, and prides himself upon 'the fine touch and the right tone' that can only be acquired near the person of the commander; the depraved Cha.s.seur, who glories in fighting for its own sake, cares not for whom or what, and objects to discipline; the philosophic Cuira.s.seur, who argues for a higher ideal and pities the woes of the producing cla.s.s, but cannot help matters; and the fiery Capuchin, who p.r.o.nounces his wordy anathema against the whole G.o.dless crowd. What a picturesque a.s.sembly they make and how admirably they bring out the lights and shadows of the Wallenstein regime! One wonders how an invalid recluse, a bookish philosopher like Schiller, should ever have been able to write such scenes.

The total effect of the prelude is to put one in a very good humor with the personages who figure there. One indeed feels sub-consciously that they are detestable--not a whit better than the angry friar paints them.

One sympathizes intellectually with his fierce denunciation and pities the land that is exposed to such a scourge. And yet--such is the poetic glamour thrown over them--feelings of this kind never become dominant.

It is like the squalid slums of a great city, when seen through the sun-lit morning mist. The reality is horrible, revolting. The soul of the philanthropist is pained--but not so the eye of the artist. Schiller contrives that we see his vagabonds with the artistic eye and are drawn to them by their very picturesqueness. We quickly impute to them more virtue than their ways betoken; and when in their l.u.s.ty final song they break out in a strain of lofty idealism:

Und setzet ihr nicht das Leben ein, Nie wird euch das Leben gewonnen sein,

one is hardly conscious of the incongruity.

The dramatic fable devised by Schiller for the tragedy proper carries us back to the winter of 1634. Events extending over several months are concentrated by poetic fiat into the four days preceding the a.s.sa.s.sination of Wallenstein, which took place on the 25th of February.

The prominent characters fall into two groups,--the abettors of Wallenstein in his treason, and the imperialists who work his ruin. The first group consists of historical personages, mainly officers, whom he had bound to him by one or another tie of selfish interest. Foremost among these are Illo, the Count and Countess Terzky, and General Butler, who turns against his chief and becomes the agent of his taking-off. The central figure of the other group is Octavio Piccolomini, whom Schiller converts from a young officer of thirty into an elderly man with a grown-up son. Octavio, in reality the trusted agent of the emperor, is regarded by Wallenstein with a superst.i.tious infatuation as his own most faithful friend. Between these two groups stand the ingenuous lovers, Max and Thekla, imaginary characters who can make their perfect peace with neither side and are done to death in a pathetic struggle between love and duty.