252e. Gottlieb Hufeland to Wilhelm Schlegel in Jena: Jena, 3 November 1799 [*]
Jena, 3 November 1799
I have been charged with relating the following concerning the declaration you sent in to us: [1]
The editors of the A.L.Z. are quite prepared to publish this declaration in the A.L.Z., it goes without saying with all necessary explications, as you yourself could doubtless not otherwise expect, since your inserendum contains in every line insinuations against the A.L.Z. and quite specifically against the editors themselves. [2] One would hope that the matter itself, however, would come to expression solely through facta and its manner of expression also be completely neutral, thereby leaving it to readers themselves to form a wholly impartial opinion.
The two assertions, however, that in the indicated time period almost all reviews with claims to even modest significance in the area of belles lettres come from your hand and that they were in fact somewhat ashamed to be in the company of many of the reviews authored by others, cannot be proved in any other way than by publishing a complete and thorough enumeration of all the reviews you have contributed. Such enumeration must be thorough, since the possibility that those not included be incorrectly attributed to you or someone else can be a matter of indifference neither to you nor to us. [3]
In such a public feud against the entire journal and its editors, extending even to statements against the very character of the latter (the claim that one can only become acquainted with the spirit of the journal through proximity to it) — although in such a feud, one hitherto quite unprecedented for us, any and all means of defense must remain an open possibility for us, we did consider it our duty, given our previous relationship with you, to alert you beforehand concerning this line of action, one that to us seems indispensable and in this case the only way of achieving our purpose.
We will initially make no suggestions before the reading public; in defending ourselves against indefinite accusations, however, we do consider ourselves justified, in our familiar, long-standing fashion, to present to the public complete facts and documentation as openly as we deem necessary, albeit not to defend this or that particular reviewer (according to our long familiar customs and principles in such cases), but certainly to defend the journal as a whole, which certainly has no need to fear the light of day in this instance and for which such declarations will in fact be quite welcome that offer it the opportunity to enter into a full discussion of its own behavior.
Jena, 3 November 1799
G. Hufeland [4]
Notes
[*] Source: Körner, (1930), 99–100. Back.
[1] Wilhelm’s statement of farewell, dated 30 October 1799, published in the Intelligenzblatt of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (1799) 145 (Wednesday, 13 November 1799) 1179 (Sämmtliche Werke 11:427–30) (letter/document 255a):
Farewell to the
Allgemeine Literatur-ZeitungI herewith announce to the readers of the A.L.Z. that I will no longer be contributing to same; I feel obliged to make this announcement because since approximately mid-1796 until very recently, almost all the reviews of any significance regarding belles-lettres have been my own. I am prompted to take this step in part by the increasing proliferation of empty reviews whose company has already often enough made me ashamed and among which of late especially some clearly betray a desire to set criticism back thirty years. Even more, however, I find the guidelines and goals now unmistakably guiding the editors to be incompatible with my own principles, and after acquiring a thorough acquaintance with the spirit of this journal through observation from close proximity, the utterly straightforward openness to which I adhere as a writer no longer allows me to participate in this enterprise.
Jena, 30 October 1799
August Wilhelm Schlegel Back.
[2] Hufeland and his co-editor, Christian Gottfried Schütz, did indeed publish a lengthy and contemptuous explication immediately following Wilhelm’s declaration (Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung [1799] 145, 1179–84) (letter/document 255a). Back.
[3] Wilhelm published precisely such a list (unpaginated) in Athenaeum (1800) following page 164; see letter/document 255a. Back.
[4] See Wilhelm’s response on 3 or 4 November 1799 (letter 252f). Back.
Translation © 2013 Doug Stott