258e. Wilhelm Schlegel to Johann Diederich Gries in Göttingen: Jena, 12 January 1800 [*]
Jena, 12 January 1800
My most esteemed Saint Tri-Magus!
We successfully received both your solid, smoked poem as well as the jesting and audacious products of the Göttingen butchers and have read, devoured, and enjoyed both with their exquisite taste. [1]
Caroline would have had a doubly bad conscience with your parcel had she not shortly beforehand paid at least part of her debt to you with a long letter. [2] I for my part have dispensed once and for all with this business of “conscience” and am instead counting on my absent friends forgiving me for merely thinking of them rather than genuinely writing, since I am at least otherwise writing for them.
Now that my brother has been living in the same locale with me, [3] I am in fact carrying on no correspondence at all except with booksellers, and even that has now transitioned into the malady all too familiar under the name epistolophobia. [4] —
But what will you say if instead of entertaining you now I immediately burden you with yet more requests? The enclosed parcel has doubtless already given you an ominous premonition of exactly that. It contains books from the Göttingen library that Tieck, my brother, and I are sending back, along with an enclosed list of those we would now like to receive. Please consider that we need them for our poetic studies, and that if you could assist us in receiving them soon you would be performing a service not only to us, but also to the fatherland. . . .
Caroline recently wrote you a rather thorough account of what I am doing these days. I am adding even more to my poems, so that quite a few will be new to you. I will send them to you as soon as they have appeared — although the printing has not yet commenced, it should be finished within a month. [5] —
Then the new piece this year is a parody of Voss, Matthisson, and Schmidt together. People are saying that it is quite successful; at the very least, it has prompted considerable laughter. But please do not mention it to anyone; it will appear in the next issue of Athenaeum. [6] If you are eager to see it beforehand, write to us quickly and I will see to it that a copy is sent to you. There is no more time today for such, which is also why you will, I hope, excuse the haste with which this letter is written.
I have been extremely busy, in part with my present works, in part with plans for the future that will mature in their own time. And all sorts of other things have also emerged in our circle here, in part incubated merely by our being together but about which I cannot and prefer not to say anything beforehand until they have actually seen the light of day. [7]
Stay very well, remember us, and follow the example of your friend Steffens by visiting us soon. [8]
Yours,
A. W. Schlegel
[Addendum of book requests, primarily Spanish, not included here, some of which were presumably preliminary studies for Wilhelm’s later Blumensträusse italiänischer, spanischer und portugiesischer Poesie (Berlin 1804)]
Notes
[*] Source: Körner, (1930), 1:102–3.
Wilhelm sent this letter to Gries in care of Carl Wilhelm Hoppenstedt in Göttingen, who had married Caroline’s sister-in-law Philippine Böhmer and had just visited the Schlegels in Jena back in mid-October 1799 (see Caroline’s letter to Auguste on 14 October 1799 (letter 248). Although Gries notes having answered the letter on 3 February 1800 as well as on 19 May 1800 (Körner [1930], 2:42), those letters do not seem to have survived.
Concerning Gries’s itinerary and sojourn in Göttingen, see Wilhelm’s earlier letter to Gries on 10 May 1799 (letter 236c), with note 2 and the editorial note to Caroline’s letter to Gries on 27 December 1799 (letter 258), which includes an additional cross reference to her letter to Auguste on 16 September 1799 (letter 244) with note 11. Back.
[1] The reference to “Saint Tri-Magus” and to Göttingen butchers is alluding to the jesting poem “Die heiligen drei Könige, an Caroline, mit einem Pack Göttinger Würste”; for the background, see Wilhelm’s earlier letter to Gries on 10 May 1799 (letter 236c), with note 1, including (for the text of the poem) the supplementary appendix on Gries’s poems to Caroline and Wilhelm. Back.
[2] Caroline’s letter to Gries on 27 December 1799 (letter 258). The chronological question is whether Wilhelm is here referring to a second parcel of sausages, since his earlier letter to Gries (see above) acknowledging such a gift (and poems) was written back in May 1799. Caroline similarly responded to Gries with a long letter on 9 June 1799 (letter 240). Back.
[3] Gries was already aware, having visited Jena during the previous autumn, that Friedrich had been in Jena since early September 1799. Back.
[4] “Fear of, aversion to letters.” Back.
[5] Wilhelm’s Gedichte (Tübingen 1800) appeared at Easter 1800. Back.
[6] The parody “Wettgesange” in Athenaeum (1800) 161–64; see Caroline’s letter to Gries on 27 December 1799 (letter 258) with note 19. Back.
[7] Wilhelm was constantly at work writing new poems to fill his volume Gedichte (see Caroline’s letter to Auguste on 30 September 1799 [letter 245]: “Wilhelm composes a poem each morning”), and Friedrich remarks to Gries on 28 January 1800 (cited in Körner [1930], 2:43): “I, too, have entered to order of poesy. Such is presumably to be attributed to infection, since for some time now I have been sharing a room with my brother”; his first poem, “An Heliodora,” was published in Athenaeum (1800) 1–3. Back.
[8] Gries would be back in Jena in March 1800, in connection with which he would also complete his required disputatio to be awarded the degree of doctor of law. Back.
Translation © 2013 Doug Stott