181g. Schiller to Wilhelm Schlegel in Jena: Jena, 31 May 1797 [*]
Jena, 31 May 1797
Please find enclosed what I yet owe you after subtracting the small remnant from the Böhmer assignation; [1] this effectively settles our account.
I am pleased to have had the opportunity to provide a source of income for you not otherwise so easily available by publishing your translations of Dante and Shakespear in Die Horen. [2] Since, however, I now find that Herr Friedrich Schlegel, at the same time I am offering you this advantage, is publicly reproaching me precisely for having too many translations in Die Horen, I beg to take leave of you for the future.
And, that I might free you for the future once and for all from a relationship that for an open sensibility and a delicate disposition must necessarily be quite burdensome, allow me to break off entirely a relationship that under such circumstances as these really is too peculiar and has already too often compromised my own trust. [3]
Schiller
Notes
[*] Source: Körner-Wieneke, 38. Back.
[1] The bookseller Böhmer was Johann Friedrich Cotta’s broker in Leipzig. Back.
[2] “Scenen aus Romeo und Julie,” Die Horen (1796) 5, no. 3, 92–104; “Szenen aus Shakespeare. Der Sturm,” Die Horen 6, no. 6, 61–82. Back.
[3] Concerning the complicated break with Schiller and its background, see supplementary appendix 181g.1. Back.
Translation © 2012 Doug Stott