258l. Mother (Johanna Christiane Erdmuthe) Schlegel to Wilhelm Schlegel in Jena: Hannover, 12 February 1800 [*]
[Hannover] 12 February 1800
Dearest, most dear Wilhelm,
I wrote you about 3 or 4 weeks ago. [1] In that letter, I asked you some questions about Fritz and earnestly asked you to answer me soon. Did you not receive the letter? and why are you not writing me? — —
Herr Brandes published a long essay in our Hannöverisches Magazin about people reading so excessively many fashionable books and such, and the consequences. [2] It has not been well received at all because it is too long-winded, says nothing new, and exhibits too much presumption; he is trying to instruct all the learned classes. [3]
He is making a lot of enemies with it because people are interpreting some of it as referring to specific people here. You and Fritze and your friends are also getting your share in it, and with some really harsh words. [4] If you can get hold of it, I would very much like for you to read it.
I also wish someone would really let him have it because of this thing, but not somebody from among those who feel they have been singled out in it; the saucy fellow deserves it. — —
Notes
[*] Source: Waitz, (1882), 77–78. Back.
[1] Mother Schlegel to Wilhelm Schlegel on 5 January 1800 (letter 258b). Back.
[2] Mother Schlegel is paraphrasing the main part of the title of Ernst Brandes’s genuinely long-winded “Ueber die Leserei der Modebücher und ihre Folgen in einigen Klassen der höhern Stände,” Neues Hannöverisches Magazin 10 (1800) 6 (Monday, 20 January 1800) 81–96; 7 (24 January 1800) 97–112; 8 (Monday, 27 January 1800) 113–28; 9 (31 January 1800) 129–44; 10 (Monday, 3 February 1800) 145–60 [with mispagination]; 11 (Friday, 7 February 1800) 159–72 [with mispagination]; 12 (Monday 10 February 1800) 173–76. Back.
[3] In his essay, Brandes enumerates the ills of the various types of proliferating journals and periodicals, including (1) scholarly reviews and journals, (2) monthlies and periodicals, (3) political newspapers, and (4) new books generally, and then similarly enumerates the various professionals who stand to lose by spending excessive time reading such journals, including (1) “so-called businessmen,” (2) clerics and teachers, and (3) physicians. Back.
[4] Because Brandes does not name names, it is difficult to know when he is singling out Wilhelm and Friedrich specifically, on the one hand, or is including them in blanket statements that apply to several others as well, on the other (e.g., when he castigates the literary feuds that play out in periodicals and journals). He seems, however, to have Athenaeum in mind when he speaks about certain journals’ efforts to remain viable even after their time has passed (ibid. 113–15):
Indeed, if the majority of editors were but honest enough to allow, on their own initiative, their periodicals to die a quiet death once they have seen that they no longer have access to enough good materials (or good material at all), then from at least one perspective one could hardly object to the emergence of so many periodicals.
Alas, quite apart from the vanity and favoritism these literary midwives usually harbor for their birthlings, self-interest runs mightily counter to any timely cessation of these periodicals. As long as the publication of a periodical still results in profit, many editors simply do not want to cease operations, likely deceiving themselves with the notion that the monthly is doubtless still good simply because it still earns money, though without considering that many people continue, without thinking, to buy certain periodicals once they have begun receiving them, and that the host of reading societies assures a certain number of sales for many such publications, not to mention other factors.
And thus does any given periodical continue to limp along. Only very few die a timely death, and even when their death does come about after sales have declined, too often the public itself was already weary of their existence long beforehand.
In such cases, it is the publisher who administers the real coup de grâce, and all sorts of devious arts are engaged to postpone such as long as possible. There is a plea for “just one more year,” so one can deliver something that can really make some noise. And to bring such about, what has in fact happened is that the new volume is adorned with a pasquinade in which many of the most respected men of our literature are attacked in the most shameful fashion, and solely for the purpose of securing readers for the publisher and thereby to ensure for oneself the continuation of the periodical itself, that is, to ensure one’s own income.
Shortly thereafter (ibid., 116–17), Brandes also seems to be alluding to Athenaeum, and perhaps Friedrich Schlegel specifically, in some of the following remarks:
And yet even if some quite good essays are still published from time to time in various periodicals, our literature has sunk to an extraordinarily low level as a result of the unfortunate turn taken by philosophical and aesthetic speculation, the affected language and words so often used in such speculations . . .
The inferior essays on the most varied subjects, where behind the prattle or sing-song of mere words one finds few or, if any, then rather immature ideas, or where such ideas are cloaked in obscure, ponderous words and sentences according to the model of new philosophy, or in empty, bombastic, poetical-philosophical phrases, hard nuts without any meat inside — provide little or no healthy nourishment for the spirit and intellect. Back.
Translation © 2013 Doug Stott