• 241a. (was 238). Friedrich Schlegel, Dorothea Veit, and Schleiermacher to Caroline in Jena: Berlin, July 1799 [*]
[Berlin, July 1799]
|543| Dear Caroline, I am hoping for and requesting letters from you letting us know whether you will still be coming earlier with Auguste. That is wonderful, and will be wonderful as well.
We are doing well, though also a bit badly, since I lost a few days this week because I simply did not feel well. Fichte is boarding with us, and we are living quite well, are happy, and are learning much from one another. I am also with him at least most evenings, though there, too, I admittedly often lose yet another hour.
|544| The decision to come to Jena for the winter remains firm. Dorothea has already arranged to rent her furniture for the winter for 6 rh. a month, which will help us recover some of our loss. [1]
Otherwise I am working very hard on the Shakespeare piece and believe it will turn out well. [2]
I am suffering similarly with the fairy tales, i.e., my hopes are high for them while suffering all sorts of troubles on their behalf. — I need two proper fairy tales for the second Lucinde; one is to signify love, the other poesy. [3]
Give our warm regards to Tieck if, God willing, he is now with you. We miss him greatly and would do so increasingly this winter.
But what on earth is Hardenberg doing? How is his silence possible and real? — I just do not comprehend it. [4]
Hülsen is a strange person whom I must nonetheless greatly love. — He was greatly offended at Lucinde and is advising me to leave it unfinished.
[Friedrich]
I for my part do not love Hülsen all that much even though he is a strange person. I am certainly willing to forgive someone for being offended by Lucinde, but how can one only take offense at it? And then the most charming demand to leave the second part completely unwritten — and whatever other most charming things are in his most charming letter. I would like to get to know him personally so I could determine whether I am accurately judging him from these letters; that is to say, I believe he is harboring considerable repressed, personal anger, and affected simplicity! You know him, dear, so please do tell me whether I am not a little bit right.
If Tieck was cheerful and in good spirits in Jena, then I do not doubt for a moment |545| you were greatly pleased with him. May heaven but protect him from his bad moods, which come over him all too easily and can be carried in on even the slightest breeze. We are greatly interested in learning whether he has decided to spend the winter in Jena. [5] That would be splendid, were it not for his wife! his wife! [6]
Things are going very well here for Fichte; people are leaving him in peace. Nicolai let it be known that no one would be even in the least concerned with him, except that he should not plan to hold any public lectures, since that would not be viewed favorably. —
I get along quite excellently with Fichte, [7] and in general I get on as well in this philosophers’ convent as if I had never been accustomed to anything worse. It is simply that I still have a certain fear with regard to Fichte, though that is caused less by him than by my own circumstances with the world and with Friedrich — I fear — — but perhaps I am mistaken.
I cannot write another word, dear, for I am getting dizzy from my philosophers pacing back and forth in the room here. Moreover Friedrich is also annoyed † because I began writing in the middle of his letter even though he had planned to write all sorts of witty things. But since I am unwilling to take on the burden of such a sin, I will leave him enough space to offer at least a sample of such wit; and offer it he must, since what he wrote before is so horrifyingly dry — Stay well, dear friend, I commend myself to our Schlegel.
Dorothea
† What an excessively horrific lie! Through servile kowtowing I finally got her to help me when I simply did not know what else to write: I really am that stupid these days.
[Friedrich]
|546| Friedrich thought there was still space left and that we ought to put more nothing in, so let me sit down now and add some of it myself. Because I now see, however, that such is not the case, I will merely attest hereby his good intentions.
Schleierm.
Madam Herz, who is back in Berlin now, requests that you write your sister in Braunchschweig and tell her she cannot yet send her a red scarf, since the manufacturer is not here.
[Dorothea]
Notes
[*] Also in KFSA 24:299–300. — Dating in concurrence with KFSA, since Fichte arrived in Berlin on 3 July 1799 and Ludwig Tieck in Jena on 17 July 1799, who was staying with the Schlegels (Rudolf Koch and Fritz Kredel, Deutschland und angrenzende Gebiete [Leipzig 1937]):
[1] Dorothea had also managed to sublease her new apartment; see Friedrich’s undated letter to Caroline in July 1799 (letter 241); she had earlier rented an apartment on Ziegelstrasse. Back.
[2] An allusion to an otherwise vaguely defined “letter on Shakespeare”; see Friedrich’s letter to Caroline in May 1799 (letter 237) with note 7. Back.
[3] Nothing came of the anticipated second volume of Lucinde except that Friedrich asked Heinrich Frölich for an advance. Back.
[4] Friedrich von Hardenberg was also visiting Jena at the time; it was, in fact, during this visit that he first made Tieck’s acquaintance, a spirit perhaps more kindred to him than Friedrich. See supplementary appendix 242a.2. Back.
[5] Tieck and his family arrived in Jena on 17 October 1799 and stayed into the following summer. Back.
[6] See Friedrich’s assessment of Amalie Tieck in his letter to Auguste in October 1798 (letter 203e) — “Tieck is very happily married except for complaining that his dear Amalie does not have much sense for art. She always falls asleep when he reads his things aloud to her” — and Caroline’s jesting response in her letter to Friedrich on 15 October 1798 (letter 204) — “I have almost as little artistic sensibility as Tiek’s dear Amalie, for yesterday I fell asleep while reading it [Tieck’s Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen], which does not, however, mean anything.” Back.
[7] Fichte had a similarly positive initial impression of Dorothea, writing in a letter to Johanne Fichte on 2 August 1799 (see the full letter in supplementary appendix 241.1): “Madam Veit is goodness and gentleness itself, and will doubtless become good friends with you.” And just a month later, on 13 September 1799, again in a letter to Johanne Fichte (Gesamtausgabe III/4, 78–79):
And in general I owe it to both Madam Veit and you to urgently commend this woman to you. Although praise of a Jewess may sound strange coming from me, this woman has robbed me of my belief that nothing good can come of this nation. She is unusually intelligent and knowledgeable amid little, or actually no outward glamour, with a complete lack of pretension and much kindheartedness. One gradually grows fond of her, but then from the bottom of one’s heart. I do hope you two will become friends. Back.
Translation © 2013 Doug Stott