Book the Sixth 1794 to 1805 "Für mich war es ein neuer Frühling, in welchem Alles froh neben einander keimte, und aus aufgeschlossenen Samen und Zweigen hervorging." "Denn Er war unser! Mag das stolze Wort Er mochte sich bei uns, im sichern Port Nach wildem Sturm zum Dauernden gewöhnen. GOETHE, OF Schiller. CHAPTER I. GOETHE AND SCHILLER. THERE are few nobler spectacles than the friendship of two great men; and the History of Literature presents nothing comparable to the friendship of Goethe and Schiller. The friendship of Montaigne and Etienne de la Boëtie was, perhaps, more passionate and entire; but it was the union of two kindred natures, which from the first moment discovered their affinity, not the union of two rivals incessantly contrasted by partisans, and originally disposed to hold aloof from each other. Rivals Goethe and Schiller were, and are; natures in many respects directly antagonistic; chiefs of opposing camps, and brought into brotherly union only by what was highest in their natures and their aims. To look on these great rivals was to see at once their profound dissimilarity. Goethe's beautiful head had the calm, victorious grandeur of the Greek ideal; Schiller's the earnest beauty of a Christian looking toward the Future. The massive brow, and largepupilled eyes, like those given by Raphael to the infant Christ, in the matchless Madonna di San Sisto, -the strong and well-proportioned features, lined indeed by thought and suffering, yet showing that thought and suffering have troubled, but not vanquished, the strong man, a certain healthy vigour in the brown skin, and an indescribable something which shines out from the face, make Goethe a strik ing contrast to Schiller, with his eager eyes, narrow brow, tense and intense, his irregular features lined by thought and suffering, and weakened by sickness. The one looks, the other looks out. Both are majestic; but one has the majesty of repose, the other of conflict. Goethe's frame is massive, imposing; he seems much taller than he is. Schiller's frame is disproportioned; he seems less than he is. Goethe holds himself stiffly erect; the long-necked Schiller "walks like a camel." 1 Goethe's chest is like the torso of the Theseus; Schiller's is bent, and has lost a lung. The impression made by these two remarkable men on a young Englishman when he saw them for the first time in 1801 may here be cited. Mr. Henry Crabb Robinson was taken to visit Goethe by Seume. "On our entrance he rose, and with a rather cool and distant air beckoned us to take seats. As he fixed his beaming eye on Seume, who took the lead, I had his profile before me, and this was the case during the whole of our twenty minutes' stay. He was then about fifty-two years of age, and was beginning to be corpulent. He was, I think, one of the most oppressively handsome men I ever saw. My feeling of awe was heightened by an accident. The last play which I had seen in England was Measure for Measure,' in which one of the most remarkable moments was when John Kemble (the duke), disguised as a monk, had his hood pulled off by Lucio. On this, Kemble, with an expression of wonderful dignity, ascended the throne. and delivered judgment on the wrong-doers. Goethe sat in precisely the same attitude, and I had precisely the same side-view of his face. My companion talked 1 This picturesque phrase was uttered by Tieck, the sculptor, to Rauch, from whom I heard it. Let me add that Schiller's brow is called in the text "narrow," in defiance of Dannecker's bust, with which I compared Schiller's skull, and found that the sculptor, as usual, had grossly departed from truth in his desire to idealise. Artists always believe they know better than Nature. about his youth of adversity and strange adventures. Goethe smiled with, as I thought, the benignity of condescension. When we were dismissed, and I was in the open air, I felt as if a weight were removed from my breast, and exclaimed 'Gott sei dank!'... Schiller had a wild expression and a sickly look; and his manners were those of one who is not at his ease. There was in him a mixture of the wildness of genius and the awkwardness of a student. His features were large and irregular." 1 "An A similar difference is traceable in details. air that was beneficial to Schiller acted on me like poison," Goethe said to Eckermann. "I called on him one day, and as I did not find him at home, I seated myself at his writing-table to note down various matters. I had not been seated long before I felt a strange indisposition steal over me, which gradually increased, until at last I nearly fainted. At first I did not know to what cause I should ascribe this wretched and to me unusual state, until I discovered that a dreadful odour issued from a drawer near me. When I opened it, I found, to my astonishment, that it was full of rotten apples. I immediately went to the window and inhaled the fresh air, by which I was instantly restored. Meanwhile his wife came in, and told me that the drawer was always filled with rotten apples, because the scent was beneficial to Schiller, and he could not live or work without it." As another and not unimportant detail, characterising the healthy and unhealthy practice of literature, it may be added that Goethe wrote in the freshness of morning, entirely free from stimulus; Schiller worked in the feverish hours of night, stimulating his languid brain with coffee and champagne. 1" Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson," 1869, i. 111 and 114. The same work contains many other notices of Goethe and the celebrities at Weimar and Jena. |