• 70. Caroline to Lotte Michaelis in Göttingen: Clausthal, 28 May 1786
[Clausthal] 28 May [1786]
|151| You are truly a poor luckless devil with your flounces! Without a doubt, they are under the influence of an evil constellation with ill intentions toward my poor money purse. But you yourself are innocent, dear soul, a mere instrument in the hands of unrelenting fate — there solely for the sake of sweetening or embittering grief. How could you know I was able to buy crepe in this forsaken place? . . . And now I wish the fairy Cocombre would just come and seize all the finery! [1]
Where is Meyer’s journey actually taking him? [2] As I understand it, he will be returning so late that he could still meet you here. |152| You were initially talking about 3 weeks, but in this case it would have to be at least 7. I am so looking forward to your coming. And then hopefully good weather! and we can wander all around the Harz Mountains together.
This area is beginning to please me now that I am getting better acquainted with it. Much about Clausthal itself is very pretty indeed — my senses are gladdened, for even these meadows, which once seemed so dark to me, as well as our fir trees and the slate that shields our houses during the rain — are beginning to smile. But one needs sunshine for that, and enough remains from my first impression to give the whole a certain air of melancholy that I would very much like to erase.
By the way, what Meyer once said is nonsense. I am not unhappy, at least not because of my circumstances, but then what am I saying? Am I such even at all? [3] Does he consider it misfortune to have a soul? It almost seems he does. There was a time when Therese considered everyone unlucky who loved her, that is the source of that statement. She has since left that peculiar whim behind. She does believe in happiness.
Although I do not put excessive expectations on my own, I am its creator, and the question doubtless did occur to me during my initial time here — “Why must you spend your youth here, why you, why precisely here, before all others? you who are, after all, more capable of playing a greater role than are many others, and who has more right to entertain greater hopes?”
But that was vanity. Now my pride tells me that what I have here has been given to me that I might bear this situation, that I might bear and sustain myself. I am quite satisfied. I do not deny not having been so at the beginning, and I did indeed lament as much to Therese. [4] Much, however, resulted from my having not been healthy, certainly never as healthy as I am now, and that weakens my understanding, and weakness always generates ardent fantasies in me. And those fantasies are invariably inclined to sadness along with all my other feelings, which themselves are far removed from any sort of rapturous emotion.
|153| How few objects are there where an even halfway reasonable imagination can engage itself in genuine joy. I am no longer a young girl; love now offers me nothing more to do apart from light household chores — I no longer expect anything from some rosy future — my lot has been cast. Nor am I some mystically inclined religious enthusiast — and those are, after all, the two spheres within which women’s passions move. [4a] Hence because I found nothing close that occupied me, the wide world remained open to me — and that world — made me weep. People always talk about “weak moments.” Woe to me if even in good ones I found joy lacking. I am not that restricted. I enjoy my existence through my interest in things outside me, through observation, though motherhood, through everything I do. [4b]
Enough, my darling. Listen, I am still reading Valiska, [5] but do send me Archenholz next time. [6] I will surely die if I do not receive it. Can you not find it in any bookstore? no lending library? Lichtenberg reviewed it, [7] so he must have a copy, and Heyne certainly as well. It must be quite entertaining.
Please keep me updated about the course of Luther’s and Marianne’s love [8] — it really is so interesting. Perhaps he will seduce her, will be dismissed, she will flee with him, they will go to Rome, convert to Catholicism, marriage for priests will be introduced, he will become a cardinal — pope — Prince of Heaven — Farewell! — Farewell!
The wind is blowing frightfully outside. [9] Yesterday, Saturday evening between 7:00 and 8:00, did you, too, suddenly have heath smoke brought by a gust of wind, smoke that also stank? Böhmer wanted to know.
Caroline
Notes
[1] Erich Schmidt (1913), 1:684, remarked that not even Johannes Bolte, the premiere authority on fairy tales, was able to answer his query and find any mention of the “fairy Cocombre” (thus Caroline’s orthography) in a Cabinet des fées or any similar source. The fée Concombre (as “infernal Concombre”), however, is a character in Claude-Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (fils) (1707–77), L’écumoire, ou Tanzaï et Néadarné, histoire japonoise, 2 vols. (Pekin 1734).
Although the first edition seems to have had no illustrations, subsequent editions provided rich and — especially for younger, largely sheltered and (so Eckart Klessman, Caroline. Das Leben der Caroline Michaelis-Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling [Munich 1975], 44) sexually naive middle-class women such as Caroline and Lotte — sometimes overtly salacious illustrations (concerning Caroline’s and Lotte’s familiarity with such literature, however, see Caroline’s next letter to Lotte, presumably also in 1786 [letter 72], note 3). There is no indication with which edition Caroline and Lotte were familiar. Here the frontispiece and title page from vol. 1 of Tanzaï et Néadarné, histoire japonaise, 2 vols. (Pekin 1740), then composites of the interior vignettes from vol. 1, following pp. 30, 104, and vol. 2, following pp. 134, 168:
The German translation was C. P. J. de Crébillon. Vorzüglichste Werke. T[eil] 3. Aus dem Französischen. Tanzai und Neadarne oder der Schaumlöffel. Eine Japanische Geschichte, trans. W. C. S. Mylius (Berlin 1785); English, The Skimmer, or the History of Tanzai and Neardarne (a Japanese tale) (London 1735). The book, published clandestinely, lampoons disputes between the Jansenists and Montinists; amid its incorporation of the wondrous elements of fairy tales, it is essentially a satire à clef concerning disputes surrounding the papal bull Unigenitus promulgated by Pope Clement XI in 1713 and the psychology of love and sexuality.
Here the frontispieces to both volumes of the edition of 1786, an edition with which Caroline and Lotte, corresponding in 1786, could have been familiar, and now with the true place of publication (L’écumoire ou Tanzaï et Néadarné, histoire japonaise, 2 vols. [Paris 1786]):
[2] Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer, currently working in the Göttingen university library, had left Göttingen on 21 May 1786 and would return on the evening of 23 June after visiting an astonishing number of cities and acquaintances, including (Elise Campe, Erinnerungen 1:159–61) Marburg, Giessen, Frankfurt (calling on Goethe’s mother), Wilhelmsbad, Hanau (Anton Wilhelm Tischbein), Mainz (Caroline’s nemesis Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring), Darmstadt, Mannheim (August Wilhelm Iffland, Sophie von La Roche and Maximiliane von La Roche), Heidelberg (Johann Heinrich Jung [Jung-Stilling]), Heilbronn, Ludwigslust, Stuttgart, Mergentheim, Würzburg, Brückenau, Fulda, the Wartburg, Eisenach, Gotha, Weimar (Herder, Bode, Einsiedel, Musäus, Wieland, Goethe, Bertuch, Duchess Amalia), Erfurt, Mühlhausen, and back to Göttingen. Back.
[3] Erich Schmidt (1913), 1:684, points out that here and in letter 111, Caroline uses Germ. überall (normally meaning “everywhere”) to mean überhaupt (“at all, in the larger sense”). Back.
[4] See Therese Forster’s letter to her stepmother on 26 March 1786 (letter 67a). Back.
[4a] For the Goettinger Taschen Calendar vom Jahr 1779, Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki did a series of illustrations on “natural and affected behavior in life.” One such act was that of prayer; on the left: natural prayer; on the right: affected prayer (Das Gebeth [1778], from the series Natürliche und affectirte Handlungen des Lebens, erste Folge; Herzog August Bibliothek; Museums./Signatur Uh 4° 47 [190]; additional illustration source: Inhaltsverzeichnis deutscher Almanache, Theodor Springmann Stiftung):
[4b] In this paragraph, Caroline provides a remarkably accurate assessment of the hierarchy or significance in her own life of what in the twentieth century became known in German as die drei K as such circumscribe the traditional role of women, namely, Kinder, Küche, Kirche, “children, kitchen, church,” here in representative period illustrations ([1] Almanach für Kinder [1800]; [2, 3] Taschenbuch für Damen [1807]):
To wit, she has “only light” household chores (kitchen) and is no “mystically inclined religious enthusiast” (church), “the two spheres within which women’s passions move.” Tellingly, she adduces motherhood (children) separately from the other two 3-K areas and among those aspects of her life that, as she emphasizes, she does indeed enjoy (“I am not that restricted”), namely, “interest in things outside me . . . observation . . . motherhood . . . everything I do.” Back.
[5] Des Christlichen Teutschen Groß-Fürsten Herkules und der Böhmischen Königlichen Fräulein Valiska Wunder-Geschichte, 1st ed. (Braunschweig 1659), the first chivalric historical novel in German literature not based on foreign models. It was a prodigious (1800 pages), piously learned novel by the Braunschweig superintendent Andreas Heinrich Bucholtz, whose purpose was to counter the shallow popular literature of contemporary Amadis-novels with principles of Christian morality, though in truth it contained hardly fewer bloody scenes than did its competition. It was reissued several times between 1659 and 1744.
Click on the image below to open a gallery of illustrations, including battle scenes, from the edition of 1676:
[6] Johann Wilhelm Archenholz, England und Italien, 3 vols. (Leipzig 1785); concerning Goethe’s assessment, see Caroline’s letter to Lotte on 4 April 1786 (letter 69), note 5. Here the frontispieces to vol. 1 (1785), vol. 2 (1787), and vol. 3 (1787):
[7] Although Albert Leitzmann related to Erich Schmidt (1913), 1:684, that he knew of no such review by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Waitz (1871), 1:37n1, had already adduced such. In fact, Caroline was remarkably well (and quickly) informed, since Lichtenberg had just reviewed Archenholz’s work in the Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen (1786) 80 (20 May 1786), 793–806. Back.
[8] Although Erich Schmidt (1913), 1:685, believed Caroline’s mention of “Luther’s and Marianne’s love” is alluding to Christian Julius Luther’s son, Martin Luther (born 1766), Julius Steinberger, Erinnerungen, 128, believes the reference is instead to the father himself, Superintendent Luther (born 1735).
Although Steinberger does not mention as much, the implication is apparently that such an illicit relationship with the much younger Marianne Heyne (born 1768) would have constituted a risk to his professional clerical status, whence Caroline’s reference to dismissal (which would seem to apply less to the son) as well as her otherwise curiously mocking portrayal here. The portrait on the wall in the following illustration is that of Johann Melchior Goetze (Ein junger Mann schäkert mit einer jungen Frau [ca. 1776–1800]; Herzog August Bibliothek; Museums./Signatur Graph. Res. B: 191):
Daniel Nicholas Chodowiecki provides a slightly tongue-in-cheek portrayal of a traditional marriage proposal made by a clergyman at the time (Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki, Heirahts Antrag des Predigers [1781]; Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum; Museums./Signatur Chodowiecki Sammlung [3-190]):
Nothing, however, is otherwise known about this relationship (Therese Huber Briefe, 1:585n96–97, cites only Caroline’s letter here and accepts the reference to the son, Martin Luther). Back.
[9] Schauplatz der Natur und der Künste, vol. 5 (Vienna 1777), plate 10:
Translation © 2011 Doug Stott