• 218. Friedrich Schlegel to Caroline and Wilhelm Schlegel in Jena: Berlin, 12 February 1799 [*]
[Berlin, 12? February 1799]
|494| Let me quickly use these few moments to compose a modest epistle in response to your rich gift.
Fichte is good and capable, so please give him my regards as well. He admonished me more with respect to my own finitude and the temporalities that separate me from him. [1]
Schleiermacher believes one ought to demand from the prince elector of Saxony |495| a legally consistent definition of God and his existence. [2]
The postal carrier hastens, the quill lingers, the soul thrashes – [2a]
But how good and beautiful καλονκαγαθον [3] of you to be translating As You Like It purely on your own divine initiative. [4] Now only the singular Love’s Labour Lost is missing from those four which I consider to be classic and great among the romantic plays. The fourth is Hamlet, while Romeo goes without saying. — I also reckon Much Ado among the lesser gods, though still higher than the Merchant; and yet both are still gods, albeit lesser ones. [5]
Am I not right in being hesitant to sell Lucinde for less than it is worth? —
Jette is now completely enchanted by and with the Itzigs. ( — Wilhelm will perhaps still recall a souper at a certain Mademoiselle Levi’s — she is the best among the boring people — where he sat next to a secretly laced-up Jewish general’s wife) — She has become a bit gidry [6] because, of course, she shines quite radiantly in this otherwise dull circle of people; she is like someone who has not waltzed in a long time. By the way, do not take your own heartlessness so hard. [7] One can, of course, also acquire a heart. She simply does not have that either, since [she] never has or keeps hold of anything.
Notes
[*] Also in KFSA 24:229–30; also Waitz, (1871), 1:239, with a different reading (see below).
Dating: KFSA 24:435n137.1 points out that Josef Kröner, Briefe von und an Friedrich und Dorothea Schlegel, ed. Josef Körner (Berlin 1926), 611, no. 12, does not add the “?”, and that Haym, Die romantische Schule, 487n*, suggests this letter was in fact an enclosure to Friedrich’s letter to Wilhelm of 25 February 1799, something possibly also suggested by the manuscript’s original archival location after that letter in the manuscript collection, while Waitz, (1871), 239n1, suggests it is likely to be dated a bit earlier, perhaps to 12 February 1799. Back.
[1] Friedrich is likely referring to Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Appelation an das Publikum über die durch ein Kurfürstlich Sächsisches Confiscationsrescript ihm beigemessenen atheistischen Äußerungen. Eine Schrift, die man erst zu lesen bittet, ehe man sie confiscirt (Jena, Tübingen 1799). See Wilhelm’s letter to Friedrich von Hardenberg on 12 January 1799 (letter 215a), note 12. Back.
[2] Georg Waitz, (1871), 1:239, originally read “Definition von Gott und Deist (?) darzu (?) verlangen,” approx. “demand a definition of God and deist as well.” See Waitz, ibid, ix (introduction), note 1:
The passage I could never quite decipher, 1:239, line 12 [i.e., this present letter 218], Rudolf Haym, Die romantische Schule, 487n*, reads as “and his existence” [“und seinem Daseyn”; in fact, Haym reads “and the latter’s existence,” “und dessen Dasein”]; I will leave in abeyance whether his reading is correct, since I no longer have the original with me.
Schmidt, (1913), and KFSA 24 follow the reading “und dessen Daseyn.” Back.
[2a] Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki, Lateinisches Elementarbuch/Masculina; Herzog August Bibliothek; Museums. Signatur Chodowiecki Sammlung 3-177:
[3] Gk., καλοkαγαθος, for καλος και αγαθος “beautiful and good, noble and good.” The educational ideal of the nobility in ancient Greece was known as kalokagathos, kalos kai agathos, or kalos kagathos (here k as an abbreviation for kai, “and”) (Friedrich uses the neuter kalon and agathon), namely, the physically and intellectually capable and competent individual who is both physically beautiful (kalos) and intellectually good (agathos, here: morally beautiful); the latter included the notion of various virtues. Back.
[4] See Caroline’s letter to Friedrich von Hardenberg on 4 February 1799 (letter 219). This piece would appear in May 1799 in volume 4 of Caroline and Wilhelm’s edition of Shakespeare as Wie es euch gefällt (along with The Merchant of Venice, as Der Kaufmann von Venedig). Back.
[5] Neither Love’s Labour Lost nor Much Ado About Nothing were included in the translations Caroline and Wilhelm published; Romeo and Juliet appeared in volume 1, Hamlet in volume 3. Back.
[6] In English in original; misspelling for “giddy.” Back.
[7] Wordplay on the name of Henriette Herz (Herz, “heart”). Back.
Translation © 2013 Doug Stott