181a. Wilhelm and Caroline Schlegel to Karl August Böttiger in Weimar: Jena, 23 March 1797 [*]
Jena, 23 March [17]97
[Wilhelm:]
The news of Gotter’s death, my esteemed friend, could not really be all that unexpected for us, since we had already heard on Saturday that his condition was hopeless [1] — in the meantime, however, it has indeed greatly grieved my wife, since she has known him for such a long time and is such an intimate friend of Madam Gotter.
I am very sorry indeed that we have lost the visit you had planned for Jena. If only you could manage it before Easter, since afterward we will be traveling to Dresden and would thus miss you. . . .
I am glad to see you engaged in such a chivalrous duel with my brother. I love a manly clash of lances, nor is there any risk that the combatants might have a falling out if both but be concerned solely with the cause itself and with fathoming the truth. [2] . . .
Stay very well, my valued friend, and do come to Jena soon. Kind regards from my spouse . . .
. . . who has yet one request. Would it be too much trouble for you to send me the issue of Merkur with “Die Künstler” by Schiller? [3] He himself does not have it and was unsure whether it is to be found in the volume from [17]88 or from [17]89. You would be doing me a great favor. In return I can promise that you will no longer have to go to the trouble of sending me Le coeur devoilé now that the Merkur has hung such a dark sign on it. [4]
My poor lady friend in Gotha grieves me greatly.
Notes
[*] Source: Körner (1930), 1:59–60. Back.
[1] Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter had died on Saturday, 18 March 1797; Wilhelm is writing here on the following Thursday. See Caroline’s undated letter to Luise Gotter in March 1797 (letter 181). Back.
[2] At issue is Böttiger’s essay “Waren die Frauen in Athen Zuschauerinnen bey den dramatischen Vorstellungen?”, Der Neue Teutsche Merkur (1796) 1 (January 1796), 23–46, in which Böttiger denied that Athenian women were allowed to attend theater performances.
Friedrich Schlegel polemicized against this view in his essay “Über die Diotima,” Berlinische Monatsschrift 26 (1795) July, no. 3, 30–64; August, no. 4, 154–86 (Jugendschriften, here 69 with footnote). Böttiger responded in his essay “Waren die Athenerinnen wirklich vom Theater ausgeschlossen?”, Der Neue Teutsche Merkur (1797) 2 (February), 224–35, an issue that appeared just a month before Wilhelm is writing here. For the essentials of this discussion, see supplementary appendix 181a.2. Back.
[3] Schiller’s lengthy philosophical poem, which outlines his understanding of human nature, morality, and the role art — from art’s very inception — plays in human progress, was first published in Der teutsche Merkur (1789) vol. 1, 3 (March), 283–302. For the text see supplementary appendix 181a.1. Wilhelm Schlegel had reviewed the poem in “Ueber die Künstler, ein Gedicht von Schiller. 1790,” Akademie der schönen Redekünste (1791) 2, no. 1, 127–79. Back.
[4] The autobiography by Retif de la Bretonne, Monsieur Nicolas ou le Coeur humain dévoilé, 16 vols. (1794–97), which Böttiger himself had reviewed in “Ueber Retifs neuesten Roman: le Coeur humain devoilé,” Der Neue Teutsche Merkur (1797) March, 264–67. Concerning the “dark sign”: after introductory comments, Böttiger continues:
It has been proven that Retif really did intend faithfully to present his own life story, and there is certainly sufficient internal and external evidence to confirm that assertion; hence [Louis-Sébastien] Mercier was speaking the literal truth when he said he had never read anything like it and never would. In that case, however, this particular truth also contains a terrible impertinence and inclination for heroic public exhibition.
The best and worst one can say in this regard is what Retif himself said in the preface that stands before the introduction: “Malefactors in England sell their corpses to anatomists while alive. I morally anatomized myself while still alive that I might through its yield prolong my wretched existence. Omnia paupertas iubet et facere et pati [Cicero, “poverty makes a person do anything and suffer anything”].”
Even assuming, however, that a novelist with such a wild and undisciplined imagination, even with the best intentions of presenting truth, still could write only a novel, this particular novel does nonetheless remain one of the most peculiar products of the French Revolution, which alone made it possible in the first place to make public such a new satyricon after the style of Petronius while naming so many names, and yet at the same time to say: Behold, I myself am the hero of this piece! — and yet a revolution that through the scenes of unspeakable corruption in Paris presented here (and likely yet to be presented in the final four parts) is, as it were, introduced and rendered comprehensible completely anew.
Almost every page contains profound insights into the human heart. Yet one must merely consider that in very few climes are the seeds so highly developed and forced, through all the arts of the hothouse, into such luxuriantly twisted excrescence. As long as Retif is still among the peasant women of Courgis, or is still a printer’s apprentice in Auxerre, that is, still in the first 4 parts of the book, many readers will still manage to make it through the reading, or at least — be permitted to admit as much. Indeed, many will even be inclined to compare the scenes with the baron and the noble Parangon to the best in Rousseau’s Héloise [Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (Amsterdam 1761)]
We will let the cognoscenti make further judgments. Only the author [i.e., Retif] of Le Pornografe [London 1769; addressing prostitution reform], which was publicly burned in Vienna in 1786, and Les Contemporaines [Les Contemporaines, ou Aventures des plus jolies femmes de l’Âge présent, 42 vols. in 12. (Leipzig 1780–85); see Caroline’s letter to Lotte Michaelis from Clausthal in 1786 (letter 72), note 3] could so emphasize a zephyr. –
One does not, by the way, call an apothecary a den of poison simply because, contrary to authorized attestations of the landlords, arsenic, too, must be present there. Similarly, it is from the same material that the Neapolitan makes his tisana and the physician a heroic remedy for illness. Danton read the notorious Justine [Marquis de Sade, Justine ou les malheurs de la vertu (“En Hollande” 1791)] whenever he wanted to be particularly cruel; who knows to what purpose some people will be reading Monsieur Nicolas? Back.
Translation © 2012 Doug Stott