254a. Louise Brachmann to Wilhelm Schlegel in Jena: Weissenfels, 7 November 1799 [*]
Weissenfels, 7 November [17]99
I am hoping your friend Hardenberg will be able to excuse the boldness with which I dare write to you here; I have long nourished this wish and was thus glad to follow his urging. [1] Both he and my own intimation would quite have deceived me were I not to receive a favorable reception from your kindness.
In my isolation from the scholarly world, I currently wholly lack the opportunity to have my modest attempts published anywhere appropriate; in most of the almanacs and journals today, poesy simply does not seem to me to be at home, as often as they may well adduce its name; hence will I take refuge with you! I would be infinitely obliged if you could find a place for some of the poems I am enclosing with this letter; given your widespread literary acquaintances, such should not be too difficult.
I will also trust your kindness to give me a more specific assessment of those poems; I need not tell you what a joy it would be for me could you do so; as young and inexperienced in the rules of art as I am, I no doubt still need a guide lest I fail to take the correct path, and where could I be more assured of finding that path than with you? Were you to fulfill my request, you would at very least gain an extremely willing pupil. [2]
In any case, I am happy to have the opportunity here to thank you for so many beautiful things, especially for the magnificent sonnets in Athenaeum. [3] It is only from my childhood that I still have certain hazy memories of the Dresden gallery; [4] because I never saw it again in later years, I can justifiably call you my mediator for these works of art. You have brought to me wonderful revelations from heaven, and awakened my most sacred longing.
Please also pass along to my dear namesake the most ardent thanks on my behalf; [5] she, too, through the imaginative delicacy of her portrayals, brought a great many beautiful pictures to life for me. I would consider myself quite fortunate indeed if among my own poems she might find at least some not unworthy of her approval. My friend Sidonie sends her kind regards, [6] and I am with true admiration
Yours,
Louise Brachmann [7]
Notes
[*] Source: Körner, (1930), 1:101–2. Back.
[1] In a letter to Schiller on 9 April 1802 (Bilder aus der Schillerzeit, mit ungedruckten Briefen an Schiller, ed. Ludwig Speidel and Hugo Wittmann [Berlin, Stuttgart 1885], 328), Louise Brachmann mentions how grievously she was afflicted by Friedrich von Hardenberg’s death the previous year:
I was afflicted during this period [after having written Schiller for the first time] by severe sufferings of more than one kind . . . The death of our good Hardenberg, whom you also found worthy of your good will, was the beginning; in him I lost a loyal friend of my youth, and I would almost call him a teacher in some respects, and a brilliant advisor in my poetic affairs.
And yet his loss was soon overshadowed by an even more painful one, by the death of my only, in truth incomparable sister [Amalie], who died in her nineteenth year. I can compare her in terms of amiability and excellence to only a single other person, a person who followed her in death only a few months later, namely, Sidonie von Hardenberg, she to whom along with so many other good and beautiful things I also owed your acquaintance. Back.
[2] In a letter from Weissenfels to Wilhelm Schlegel on 7 February 1800 (Körner, [1930], 1:105), Louise Brachmann thanks Wilhelm for his “kind letter” (not extant), for his criticisms of her poems, and for suggesting various publishers; she mentions her decision to send her pieces to Wilhelm Gottlieb Becker’s journal Erholungen, and the latter did indeed publish three of her poems in Erholungen (1800) 4, signed simply “Louise”: “Rinaldos Braut. Romanze” (4:277–81); “Elegie” (“Wahrlich, so rufen wir oft die Gespielen”) and “Bitte” (“Alles versagt mir, o Götter”) (4:285–90).
Here Louise’s poetic tribute to her friendship with Sidonie von Hardenberg (Anthologie aus den Gedichten von Louise Brachmann und G. A. v. Maltitz, Familien-Bibliothek der Deutschen Klassiker, 29 [Hildburghausen, Amsterdam 1846], 47–48; approximate rendering):
Sidonie
No more does door now open wide, No more she enter through, No more I see gracious, sublime The gaze of eyes so true. At twilight's hour, softly come, Soft tread I heard approach, Long weary from yearning, I listened close For beloved steps. 'Twas she! I hastened to her form! Ardently Did heart on heart pulse! And in the magic of her smile Did disappear this world's pain. No, not friendship, too cold by far A word for such feeling dear! No earthly love, nor earthly devotion, Attains such sacred, sublime emotion! As angels love, companion kin, In celestial fields far, far removed, With such love did she me embrace, She herself: angelic face! Then did treasures even dear To more noble, lofty sense now yield; On gentle wings did pass in haste Our sacred hour together. — As she took leave, I could but sense: Felicity and joy depart my sphere; To her heart I flew, ardent it was, Ardently ten times back! Intimation? Yes, thou heart so poor, Was that which pierced you through: That soon, for long, eternal pain Did her "farewell" then resound. No more does door now open wide, No more she enter through, No more I see gracious, sublime The gaze of eyes so true. Back.
[3] At the conclusion of Wilhelm and Caroline’s “Die Gemählde: Ein Gespräch von W.,” in Athenaeum (1799) 39–151, here 137–43. Back.
[4] The essay in Athenaeum deals with a visit to the gallery during the summer of 1798. Back.
[5] I.e., to Caroline as “Louise” in the Athenaeum essay; as Wilhelm relates to Goethe in his letter of 8 March 1799 (letter 224bb), “most of the painting descriptions as well as the material concerning Raphael” were actually written by Caroline. Back.
[6] Sidonie von Hardenberg had visited the Schlegels in Jena in June 1799; see Caroline’s letter to Johann Diederich Gries on 9 June 1799 (letter 240). Back.
[7] Luise Brachmann corresponded further with Wilhelm and also met him when he stopped in Weissenfels at the beginning of May 1800 after he had accompanied Caroline and Auguste as far as Saalfeld, where the latter met Schelling and continued on the Bamberg (see Auguste’s letter to Cäcilie Gotter on 16 May 1800 [letter 260]); in Weissenfels, they visited Friedrich von Hardenberg, whose sister, Sidonie, had been sick since April. Luise Brachmann cordially chastises Wilhelm in a letter from Weissenfels on 28 May 1800 (Körner, [1930], 1:109–12) for not keeping his word and visiting them a second time, that is, on his return trip back to Jena from Leipzig (Rudolf Koch and Fritz Kredel, Deutschland und angrenzende Gebiete [Leipzig 1937]):
You did not keep your word and visit us again on your return trip, and now all the pleasure we had promised ourselves from that second visit has been lost because of that breach of promise; moreover, my lady friend had in the meantime recovered and was planning on making up during that second visit what she missed of your company during the first, and I, too, still had hundreds of things left which I would so gladly have discussed with you but from which I was hindered that evening in part by my friend’s indisposition and in part by the unexpected visit that interrupted us after dinner.
Mainly I just had so much to tell you about your own poems, and about the individual impressions they made on me; but no! in reality I had nothing to tell you about them! one can actually speak about tones only in other tones, or about Lieder in other Lieder!
Let me copy out for you here the sonnet I composed in the first flush of enthusiasm that came over me after reading your divine sonnets. Sonnets have always exerted a magical influence over me, and yet I never ventured into this particular genre because I considered it too difficult — and yet this time I felt swept up by an alien power, the artistic arrays assembled themselves as if by their own volition, and the poem was finished before I was even vaguely aware of having even the slightest intention of composing it; so in this sense I have at least not willfully sinned if I have violated anything about this poesy, and I leave it wholly to your judgment whether I might yet try my hand further in this genre:
For tones, one can but give thanks in tones; Accept then this Lied for your own delicate Lieder, How I myself would like to render such sweet magic, Could I but, like you, borrow such from heaven itself. Melodically, within the gracious meter of beauty itself, Does your Lied arise on joyous wings; One is quickly wandering about among blossoms, Then to sink, forgetful, in sweet longing. But the comely garland is especially captivating, Which you weave from your most beautiful blossoms, Then to dedicate to singers of old; And do you not sense that in radiant springtime The blossoms you find solely for others Array themselves as a garland for you? Back.
Translation © 2013 Doug Stott