• 237. Friedrich Schlegel to Wilhelm and Caroline Schlegel in Jena: Berlin, May 1799 [*]
[Berlin, May 1799]
To Wilhelm.
[Literary and publication issues.]
Steffens tells me the Philosophisches Journal will probably cease publication. [1] Would you be in favor of inviting Schelling to participate in a limited fashion in Athenaeum, even were it only a survey of physics, since his critical surveys would doubtless admittedly not really fit? In and of themselves, they are probably not popular enough, and are too careless. But perhaps a philosophical essay on a definite subject. [2]
To Caroline.
|541| Dorothea is already pacing around the room again utterly vexing me because she wants to clean things up. My eyes are doing tolerably well.
Your Steffens paid us a visit and pleases me quite well. He sends his regards to you all. This evening he is here to drink tea with Tieck. [3]
Everything is fine with Unger. [4] I went to see him, he was quite cordial, said that if I was sure about the 3 louis d’or, then that is how things must stay. Since I now no longer have to fear her pushiness, it will be easy for me to keep him on cordial terms. He will also take the small [piece?] for Fichte. — Admittedly, now I will have to perform miracles. —
As you see, I am constantly writing something down here and then crossing it out. I am not really sure whether it is a good idea if Wilhelm occasionally writes something about me to Unger. If no letters turn up, it would probably be good if he could voice his opinion, in a gentle, cordial manner, of course.
Moreover, he could perhaps also say something to the effect explaining my hesitation on the basis of the nature of this piece of work; all the more so, since he himself is such a zealous taskmaster; he might also, even if only as a joke, offer to play the taskmaster toward me himself. I will leave it for him to determine whether the latter might be effective and appropriate in the case that any letters have indeed turned up making such an attestation unnecessary.
Regarding the enclosure, let me remark merely that the first volume of Lucinde is finished. I am now in the process of constituting myself Athenaeically and Fichtically. [5] —
It is unfortunate that Fröhlich would really like to have more of the manuscript before he begins the printing. [6] I will try to persuade and pressure him the best I |542| know how and am able. If it will help move things toward the goal, however, then I will risk sending the letter on Shakespeare on for publication without Wilhelm’s censorship. [7] —
There can in any event be no thought of any collision of shared or one-sided circumstances here, and it is that to which we are primarily restricting our mutual censorship as long as we are not living together. —
The next thing I will have ready is then perhaps a moral discourse that in a certain sense will follow the constitution of popularity in the letter on φς. [8] The first will be quite general, merely an offer to all educated persons en masse to listen to someone speak about humanity and culture in a humane and educated fashion. — Then I will address the topics of family, religion, social company, etc.
An extremely small serving of ideas — I would prefer to refer to them thus rather than as fragments — but exquisite ones, merely needing to be copied out. [9]
I recently delivered a lecture at a social gathering here on the stylistic differences in Goethe’s earlier and later works. [10] — I dictated it when my eyes were so weak. I at least have a guiding idea for it now, and if I extract and polish all the better individual thoughts I have written down, e.g., in my notebook concerning Goethe, it will probably come out the way it should if it is to be a more indirect continuation of “Ueber Meister,” [11] which I consider a better idea than a direct one.
As far as Herder is concerned, I would merely like to receive some provisional word from you how it would be whether. I was thinking it would sooner be something you two would get. I would like to avoid buying it if I know not beforehand that it will be worth the trouble. [12]
As far as Wieland is concerned, I share half your opinion. |543| The idea in and of itself is delightful, nor does it seem to me to be too bitter. But all the others are just such excessively pathetic sinners; and as wondrous chance would have it, all of them have attacked us — except him alone. People would find that quite frightful. A systematic annihilation of all his poesy or non-poesy would be a different matter entirely. [13]
The latter could not be more timely — and neither age nor life circumstances should be a consideration. Quite the contrary, if Wilhelm causes him to die, then people will say that while he was still alive no one had the heart, and all sorts of things like that. So, en masse, en masse!
But until then, it is probably best to save this idea until later, which would tend to preempt too much from the larger critical undertaking beforehand than announce it. — It would come across better as a fragment in which one lets fly a few salty remarks about better heads than Wieland himself. But then we would lose the form of a preliminary announcement, which makes the whole thing so piquant in the first place. [14]
[*] Also in KFSA 24:285–87, the remarks to Wilhelm on 285–86, those to Caroline on 286–87. Back.
[1] Articles published in the Philosophisches Journal had prompted the atheism dispute that ultimately cost Fichte his position in Jena. Fichte and Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer edited the periodical, which ceased publication after 1800. Back.
[2] Schelling never published in Athenaeum, though his poem “Die Letzten Worte des Pfarrers zu Drottning auf Seeland,” eventually translated as “The Last Words of the Pastor of Drottning, in Zealand” was originally intended for inclusion. Because Athenaeum had in the meantime ceased publication, the piece was eventually published in Wilhelm’s and Ludwig Tieck’s Musen-Almanach für das Jahr 1802, 118–27, under the name Bonaventura. See Caroline’s undated letter to Schelling in early January 1801 (letter 279). Back.
[3] Concerning Steffens in Berlin, see Was ich erlebte 4:182–202. Although Steffens was impressed by Berlin’s imposing grandeur on several levels, he was also discomfited by various aspects of both the town and its inhabitants. Nor are his recollections of his initial time there entirely accurate. Although he arrived in Berlin in May 1799 (182), he remarks (189) that he
did not visit any scholars, neither did I make the acquaintance of anyone interesting. Friedrich Schlegel had already left Berlin, nor did I seek out Schleiermacher at all, and only by chance did I make Tieck’s acquaintance.
(Rudolf Koch and Fritz Kredel, Deutschland und angrenzende Gebiete [Leipzig 1937]):
Later in the same volume of his memoirs, (302), Steffens recalls that “it was during my visit to Jena that I made Friedrich Schlegel’s acquaintance, who was staying with his brother there.” Friedrich’s present letter and Steffens’s own letters make it clear that he and Friedrich met in Berlin in the spring of 1799. Steffens similarly met Schleiermacher then as well, as attested by his letter to Wilhelm Schlegel on 26 July 1799 (letter 242c, also concerning his impressions of Friedrich).
Regarding other acquaintances in Berlin, Steffens remarks (190) that “Iffland was still in his prime, and the theater was elevated especially by Fleck and the singular Madam Unzelmann.” And at dinner at the composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt’s (195–97),
his stepdaughter and her husband, Alberti, who at the time was a Kriegsrath, sat opposite me, while Tieck, his brother-in-law, sat near me with his wife.
As it happened, by making a rather one-sided and harsh remark about the writer Voss, I managed to offend, if not Tieck, then certainly the rest of the family, since Voss had been a close family friend for many years.
I now learned how well known Reichardt was in Hamburg and Holstein. His wife was the daughter of the pastor Alberti in Hamburg, Lessing’s friend, known for his disputes with the orthodox pastor Goeze [concerning the Reimarus-fragments and the suggestion that the disciples’ resurrection narratives were in fact a result of deception]. . . .
I began to converse with Tieck about Holberg and quickly learned how highly Tieck esteemed him as a playwright. Anyone who recalls the impression made on me by Tieck’s Prinz Zerbino can understand how delighted I was to make the acquaintance of Tieck himself, even if only for a short period.
Tieck was a handsome, slim man at the time; his bright eyes were full of ardor, his facial features intelligent, his judgments brief and incisive, cogent and meaningful. I left the company that evening quite satisfied, a company that had brought me the acquaintance of such excellent men, even though with my harsh judgment of Voss I had probably not particularly commended myself to a family with whom I would later become so intimately connected [Steffens married the Reichardts’ daughter Johanna in 1803]. Back.
[4] The allusions in this paragraph are not clear. In any event, Heinrich Frölich, not Unger, published Lucinde. Back.
[5] I.e., after getting Lucinde to the publisher (the first volume was published in May 1799; no second volume was ever published), Friedrich was now ready to get back to work on Athenaeum and, presumably, on his proposed piece in defense of Fichte, which he never wrote. Back.
[6] The manuscript(s) for the next issue of Athenaeum? Back.
[7] Friedrich did not publish any “letter on Shakespeare.” Back.
[8] Gk., for “philosophy,” Friedrich’s essay “Über die Philosophie. An Dorothea von F.,” Athenaeum (1799) 1–38. The “constitution of popularity” is presumably a reference to his attempts — at Fröhlich’s prompting — to make Athenaeum more generally accessible. Back.
[9] Friedrich’s “Ideen,” Athenaeum (1800) 4–33. Back.
[10] Friedrich’s “Gespräch über die Poesie” in Athenaeum (1800) (in two parts: 58–128; continuation in 169–87) includes the “Versuch über den verschiedenen Styl in Goethe’s früheren und späteren Werken” (170–81). Back.
[11] “Über Goethe’s Meister,” Athenaeum (1798) 323–54. Back.
[12] Johann Gottfried Herder’s piece contra Immanuel Kant, Verstand und Erfahrung. Eine Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Leipzig 1799), which August Ferdinand Bernhardi harshly reviewed in Athenaeum (1800) 268–83. Back.
[13] See the section on “Wieland’s annihilation” in supplementary appendix 194c.2. Back.
[14] Reference either to the “Citatio edictalis” in Athenaeum (1799) 340 or the “announcement” in Athenaeum (1799) 331, both in supplementary appendix 194c.2. Back.
Translation © 2013 Doug Stott