• 115. Caroline to Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer in Berlin: Mainz, 22 September 1792 [*]
Mainz, 22 September [17]92
|267| What would you say if, rather than answering your letter and thanking you for it, I were to demand today that you justify yourself? And what if I now tell you quite straightforwardly that you have done something I find quite incomprehensible for you? Will you think me presumptuous?
My dear Meyer, I must either say what I think or hold my tongue entirely. Although I intended to do the latter, I am determined to go ahead and do the former. For you should never say that anyone was able to make me doubt you except you yourself. To wit, I received a copy of the Göttinger Musenalmanach, and what I found was that you had contributed toward turning it into a gathering place for second-rate characters.
I am not entirely sure to whom your “Huberulus Murz[uphlus]” is alluding, but even were my own suspicions in this regard off the mark, I am nonetheless sure about one thing, namely, that you should not have put any of your female friends into the embarrassing position of — having to overlook such delicate satire. Although as a woman I may have a somewhat limited notion of what a man might be allowed to say in the circle of his close friends, I do nonetheless maintain that there are certain things he must not publish.
And there is indeed one situation |268| in which I find it totally unpardonable, namely, when the first syllables of someone’s name and the word “Mainz” refer to the object. Meyer, what could you possibly have been thinking? And where was your sense of self-worth in doing such a thing? Were you trying to be hurtful? I will concede that such is not necessarily a dishonorable characteristic, but to do it this way? — one so certain of missing its mark if ever discovered?
You are not indifferent to the judgment of your friends — and far removed from mocking such a weakness, I have always loved that about you — but how will people judge you now? And, truly, this time it will not be merely self-interest and partisan friendship alone that will pronounce sentence.
I genuinely hope you will be able to clarify this for me — but just now I cannot — and also do not want to add anything further.
Please do write soon.
Notes
[*] Letter background: Caroline’s error in this letter, which she quickly retracted (see her letter to Meyer on 6 October 1792 [letter 116]), involves the suggestive, in part lightly obscene (whence her allusion “you should not have put any of your female friends into the embarrassing position of — having to overlook such delicate satire”) satirical poem in Alexandrines in the Göttinger Musenalmanach (1793), 178–88, “Huberulus Murzuphlus oder der poetische Kuss. Ein oratorisches Monodrama, nach Lesung einiger der neuesten unter der Rubrik Schöne Künste in der Jenaischen Al[l]g[emeinen] Lit[eratur-]Zeitung abgedruckten angeblichen Recensionen zu monodramiren.” As was often the case with such almanacs, the issue appeared in the preceding autumn, here: 1792.
The name “Huberulus” refers to Ludwig Ferdinand Huber; the surname “Murzuphlus,” although suggesting “Mainz,” is presumably an allusion to Alexis Dukas, called “Mourtzouphlos,” a Byzantine emperor (as Alexios V Doukas, died 1204) during the second and final siege of Constantinople by the participants of the Fourth Crusade. His nickname referred to either his bushy, overhanging eyebrows or his sullen character. The term has the meaning of one being crestfallen, depressed, despondent, downcast, gloomy, sullen, and evidently frowning or scowling (see James M. Ludlow, The Age of the Crusades [New York 1896], 282; the nickname was later used as a surname) (Cronaca di Zonara e altri brevi testi di storia bizantina [Joannes Zonaras’s Epitome of Histories]; Mutinensis gr. 122, Estense Digital Library):
For the text of “Huberulus Murzuphlus oder der poetische Kuss” (prose rendering) as well as, in the same issue, the accompanying poems on 215, “Murzuphlus der Kritiker” (a eunuch), and on 55, “Wie man sich irren kann,” both by “Baiocco Romano,” see supplementary appendix 115.1.
The author, however, was not Meyer at all, who in any event never used this pseudonym, though it may be recalled from Caroline’s letter to Meyer on 6 December 1791 (letter 111), note 15, that he did publish eleven poems in the Göttinger Musenalmanach for 1792, including one on the page preceding a poem by “Baiocco Romano”; he also published ten poems in this particular (1793) volume as well.
The author of this present piece, however, was Friedrich Bouterwek (see Goedeke, 5:467), who was exacting revenge on Huber for the latter’s criticism of Bouterwek’s novel Graf Donamar. Briefe, geschrieben zur Zeit des siebenjährigen Krieges in Deutschland (Göttingen 1791–93) in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (1791) 349 (Saturday, 31 December 1791) 677–78, reprinted in Huber’s Sämmtliche Werke seit dem Jahre 1802, vol. 2 (Tübingen 1810), 121–24; a review of this edition of Huber’s works in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung Ergänzungsblätter (1810) 96 (Tuesday, 28 August 1810) 761–65, remarks (762–63) that this particular review, one “not entirely free of vehement passion and alien influence,” “might better have been left out of the present collection entirely.” For the text of Huber’s review, see supplementary appendix 115.2.
Concerning the novel otherwise and the relationship between the character of Laurette and Emilie von Berlepsch, see Caroline’s remarks in her letter to Luise Gotter on 20 April 1792 (letter 112), text and note 14, which includes a cross reference to a synopsis of the story.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg in Göttingen writes to Johann Christian Dieterich’s daughters on 18 November 1792 (Lichtenberg, Briefe 3:59):
Although I already knew that B[outerwek] wrote the poem on page 178 [of the Göttinger Musenalmanach (1793)], I did not know that the woman mentioned in it [Madame La Choisie] was Madame F[orster]. . . . I viewed it simply as revenge against the young Huber — here with the name Huberulus Murzuphlus — since he is the author who took Graf Donamar so severely to task in the Literatur-Zeitung. In German, Huberulus means “little Huber.” The young woman could just as easily have been anyone else, since the comely description alludes to nothing more than universal natural gifts possessed by any woman.
It is quite atrocious. I am certainly glad I never engaged in anything like that and indeed am quite incapable of such. In any event, may all of you stay well with all your highly estimable natural gifts.
See also Lichtenberg, Briefe 3:308, in the annotations to above: Lichtenberg noted in his diary for 18 November: “My dear wife visited the Dieterichs today, where they spoke about Bouterwek’s poem regarding Huberulus.”
Gottfried August Bürger’s similarly comments concerning the Göttinger Musenalmanach (1793) to Wilhelm Schlegel on 28 September 1792 (Strodtmann 4:215):
The sonnets signed by “B.” are by Bouterweck, who is also Baiocco Romano and who was seeking revenge on his presumed reviewer in the Allg[emeine] L[iteratur] Z[eitung], Signor Huber in Mainz. His “Huberulus Murzuphlus” will probably not be as well-received as my “Vogel Urselbst” contra Schiller, [Georg Gottlieb] Schatz, and their consorts [i.e., Bürger’s poem “Der Vogel Urselbst, seine Rezensenten und der Genius. Eine Fabel in Burcard Waldis Manier,” Göttinger Musenalmanach (1793), 169–77, immediately preceding Bouterwek’s piece in the Almanach]. Write and tell me your opinion on all this.
Friedrich Schlegel says the following about Huber’s review of Donamar in a letter to Wilhelm from Leipzig on 13 April 1792 (Walzel, 44; KFSA 23:50): “Bouterweck’s reviewer speaks the truth, namely, that his work is an empty mishmash of tormented, strained exaggeration and congenital dullness — with all of which I concur; indeed I would extend it to include his entire personality. Otherwise the review is awful.”
Finally, in his autobiography, “Der Verfasser: eine litterarische Biographie,” Kleine Schriften, vol. 1 (Göttingen 1818), 39–40, Bouterwek himself assesses the novel in hindsight:
The years the author recalls with least pleasure include the initial ones during his second stay in Göttingen, when his literary folly reached its pinnacle. In Graf Donamar, which was published at the time, the author’s errant imagination concentrated into a single focal point all the extravagance and false ideality that was currently afflicting his entire being. If the German reading public had simply forgiven the twenty-four-year-old author the ostentatious distortions of life with which the novel is replete, such would have been fair enough.
What happened instead, however, is that not only did the book enjoy such enormous success among the public that prefers to read nothing but novels that it was quickly reprinted and even translated into several other languages, it was also given at least one public review characterized by truly rare enthusiasm.
The quite justified condemnation that was finally passed on Donamar in the Jena Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, probably by [Ludwig Ferdinand] Huber, was all the less capable of opening the author’s eyes because, like many other similar reviews, it was composed much in the style of an oracle, its harsh reproach simply being presented without proof.
Fortunately, however, the author’s clearly overheated imagination had largely spent itself in this novel, and when the third volume was finally published, even he himself had lost faith in its overall merit.
Schiller and Goethe’s Xenien 275 (in Schiller’s Musen-Almanach für das Jahr 1797 [1797], 267) refers to Bouterweck:
If nature and genius were venerated by all people, Then what, Phantast, would be left for you as a reading public?
In a letter to Goethe on 28 April 1797, Schiller refers to Bouterwek as the “the most shallow, lamentable moron imaginable.” Concerning Huber, see Schiller’s letter to Christian Gottfried Körner on 15 October 1792, after some remarks about attacks leveled by the poet Gottfried August Bürger at Schiller himself in the same issue of the Göttinger Musenalmanach (Schillers Briefwechsel mit Körner: Von 1784 bis zum Tode Schillers, 2 vols., 2nd ed., ed. Karl Goedeke, vol. 1, 1784–1792 [Leipzig 1878], 471):
Friend Boutterwek . . . fell upon Huber and . . . leveled some crude and equally shallow sottises at him. . . . The ridicule heaped on Huber here, despite coming from so inferior a hand, is not entirely inopportune for Dora Stock, and some good may come of it after all, particularly since the Forster woman [Therese] seems to be mixed up in this as well.
Schiller is alluding to Huber’s prior engagement to Dora Stock, the sister of Körner’s wife; in Mainz, Huber would eventually break off his engagement to Dora Stock, take up with Therese Forster, give up his diplomatic post, depart Mainz, later meet up with Therese and her children, and marry Therese, eventually landing in Switzerland.
Concerning Dora Stock, Friedrich Schlegel writes to Wilhelm from Leipzig on 17 May 1792 (Walzel, 46; KFSA 23:52):
The Stock woman is an extremely bright girl, though for the rest she remains too much of a puzzle for me to give an assessment this early. Hardenberg — not without some justification, in my opinion — finds an element of “acquired goodwill” and “artificial naturalness” about her. She does in any event parade about with all sorts of goodness and naturalness — though I must say her emotions have a sort of used quality about them.
Walzel, 46n1, wonders whether “the expression ‘used’ does not contain a malicious allusion to her unhappy relationship with Ludwig Ferdinand Huber.” Back.
Translation © 2011 Doug Stott