• 176. Caroline to Karl August Böttiger, Weimar: Jena, 5 January 1797
[Jena, 5 January 1797]
[Postscript to one of Wilhelm Schlegel’s letters.] [1]
|413| I am especially obliged to you for having sent along the Mercur, since while Schlegel was writing I did indeed read the Gespräch, albeit hastily, and yet did so with a certain measure of understanding (we women usually exhibit better understanding in haste than at leisure), and since I am extraordinarily satisfied with it as well, which could not be otherwise insofar as I flatter myself with having come to approximately the same conclusion. Please do send us the next installment as soon as it is printed, and you can be assured beforehand of our gratitude.
Caroline S.
Notes
The reference is to Christoph Martin Wieland’s article “Die Musen-Almanache für das Jahr 1797. Ein Gespräch zwischen einem Freund und Mir,” Der Neue Teutsche Merkur (1797) 1 (January), 64–100; continuation (February), 167–204.
Eduard Boas, Schiller und Goethe im Xenienkampf, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, Tübingen 1851), 2:59–68, discusses this article and the ensuing public reaction. Because Wieland himself had been targeted by several epigrams in Schiller and Goethe’s Xenien (e.g., 280–84, 360–62) (here, Boas, Schiller und Goethe im Xenienkampf, 2:60), Wieland
. . . was himself now sulking again over the matter, and certain friends were busily trying to fan the embers of this anger into a larger flame. Each year Wieland was accustomed to holding a thorough review in his Merkur of the year’s Almanache, and in the January issue of 1797, too, he published the first part of the essay “Die Musen-Almanache für das Jahr 1797. Ein Gespräch zwischen einem Freund und Mir.”
The “friend” summons Wieland to publish a review, as usual at the beginning of the year, of the poetic anthologies, at least of the better ones. Wieland tries to decline, and among the reasons he adduces, one he especially emphasizes is that the material now involves either acknowledged poets or young, up-and-coming talent. . . . Moreover he would rather review a poet of recognized merit with the severity of a judge from hell than mercilessly reprimand the deficiencies of an up-and-coming artistic disciple.
But since the friend does finally convince Wieland to publish such a review, and since the conversation ends with the ominous words “To be continued,” Schiller concluded that his own Almanach would be taken up and chided in the second issue. . . .
Although Schiller was anticipating a severe critique, others were disappointed by the prospect. Christian Garve thought “the beginning of Wieland’s review of the Musenalmanach in the first issue of Merkur shows he is not interested in ruining his own standing with the party of the Xenien authors” (ibid., 2:61).
The continuation appeared in the February issue of Merkur; hence in this letter to Karl August Böttiger, Caroline is referring to this initial piece. In the February continuation, Wieland does indeed criticize aspects of the Xenien, but remarkably does not lay the blame directly at the feet of Schiller and Goethe, whom as a matter of fact he does not even consider the authors. His conjecture is that at the last minute Schiller needed additional material to fill out the issue and remembered some distichs that younger “disciples” had given him; hence the Xenien were “filler items,” material Schiller may well have edited (“some doubtless needed a file, some even an anvil”) but did not author himself. Boas continues (ibid., 2:67):
The reaction of the reading public to Wieland’s critique was in general that it broke off precisely where the real point should have been made, and people found Wieland’s attempt to rescue the names of the “xenists” at all costs a bit too transparent.
Wilhelm Schlegel and Caroline apparently received the February issue from Christian Gottfried Schütz, who in turn had received it from Böttiger at the beginning of the month with an accompanying note to the effect “as soon as you have read it, please send it on, if I may ask as much, to Herr Rath Schlegel, who is waiting for it” (Böttiger to Schütz, 1 February 1797, ibid., 2:67).
On 7 January 1797 (Körner [1930], 1:49–50), Böttiger wrote to Wilhelm Schlegel from Weimar:
I could not bring myself to deprive our good Father Wieland of the pleasure your spouse’s approval could not but give him. I related to him yesterday what you had remarked to me concerning his reviews of the Musenalmanach, and he said that the nod of her head was worth more to him than the noisy natterings of the entire herd of authors grazing in the common literary pasturage. [ . . . ] Please give my best regards to your brother . . . and I respectfully kiss the hand of your noble Caroline, who wrote the brief, charming postscript to your letter.
(Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki, Alcest [1775]; Herzog August Bibliothek; Museums./Signatur Uh 4° 47 [121]):
This letter is that postscript. Back.
Translation © 2012 Doug Stott