• 237a. Friedrich Schlegel to Auguste Böhmer in Jena: Berlin, May 1799 [*]
[Berlin, May 1799]
Dearest little child,
|642| I will pay you the six kisses in person in Jena because I fear that if I put them in with my letter, they might be confiscated somewhere along the way as contrebande.
Your Steffens pleases me quite well, [1] and my Tieck also intended to write you recently in Knittel verses, but he was just talking. [2]
I love you very much and am angry with Dorothea and her cursed tidiness. [3] She can hardly walk, and creeps around the room trying to bring about some sort of weather-beaten cleanliness that in the final analysis consists merely in having restricted every single object’s freedom and having driven me crazy. I am going straightaway over to Tieck’s to take a walk with him along the Philosopher’s Walk or Paradies. [4]
Stay well, child.
Your Friedrich
Notes
[*] Source: Schmidt (1913), 1:642 (letter 29); Waitz (1871), 1:373; reprinted in KFSA 24:289. — Concerning the textual history of Friedrich Schlegel’s letters to Auguste Böhmer, see supplementary appendix 181d.1. Back.
[1] Concerning Henrik Steffens in Berlin, see Friedrich’s letter to Wilhelm and Caroline in May 1799 (letter 237). Back.
[2] Tieck’s letter was to be a response to Auguste’s earlier undated verse-letter to Friedrich and Tieck (letter 232). Back.
[3] Since Friedrich’s undated letter to Wilhelm and Caroline (letter 237) similarly speaks about Dorothea cleaning up, perhaps this letter was written at the same time. Back.
[4] Concerning the lengthy “Philosopher’s Walk” in Jena (Philosophenweg, though Friedrich here calls it Philosophengang) — not in Berlin —, see the Übersichtsplan der Residenz und Universitätsstadt Jena nebst Umgebung (Gera 1905), here indicating both the Upper and the Lower Philosopher’s Walks, the former beginning just around the corner from Leutragasse, where the Schlegels lived, and continuing into the area north of the town proper (representative illustration: Georg Schule, Parkszene [1801]; Herzog August Bibliothek; Museums./Signatur Graph. A1: 2576):
Here the view of Jena from the Philosopher’s Walk; the town church is visible at center (Jacob Roux, Die Gegenden um Jena, no. 1 [Jena, Weimar 1806], plate 1):
Translation © 2013 Doug Stott