266c. Ludwig Tieck to Wilhelm Schlegel in Bamberg: Hamburg, 27 August 1800 [*]
Hamburg, 27 August 1800 [1]
Dearest friend,
You can well imagine how heartbroken I am at your and Caroline’s painful loss and how shocked at the sad news itself. [2] It has been a long time since anything has saddened me this profoundly and since any event has affected me so painfully.
But the peculiar thing about me is that several frightful, upsetting losses have already accustomed me to perceive everything merely as a dream, and not to believe in its reality, so that for quite some time now real life — with all its happenings and events — hovers before me only like a dream such that I never really lose any being that was once part of my life, and such that now only my own thoughts and feelings, my own love for the objects that offer me love and friendship, are genuinely, really close to me.
But now, events such as this one remind me in the most painful fashion that a real, concrete world is indeed there, a world that, in its way, constitutes the hard prose and the almost vulgar irony of fate.
How is Caroline doing? Please assure her of both my and my wife’s sympathy, whom this news has saddened to the bottom of her soul. Could I but offer some consolation!
I will write to my brother immediately, as indeed I am writing this one with the first post, it is just that I know not whether my letter will still find him in Paris. If he does return, as I believe he will, I have no doubt he will be glad to take on this work and execute it according to your plans. [3] As soon as I receive an answer from him, I will pass it along to you.
If you write to me before Michaelmas, address the letter to Hamburg, Katharinen-Kirchhof, in care of the wife of Pastor Alberti. Afterward I will be in Berlin, so please do come then yourself as well. [4] I now have a double need to be with you, and it now seems to me that during some periods we were not really close enough, as if I have not been friend enough to you. Time is simply so fleeting, we must be more mindful of holding more firmly together. Let us genuinely work together and think and speak together. . . .
Please extend my warmest regards to Caroline; and please do write me and let me know how she is doing; both I and my wife worry and grieve for her. [5]
Notes
[*] Source: Georg Waitz, (1882), 83–84 (frag.); Lohner 43–44. — Wilhelm had left Jena on 21 July 1800 and responded to Tieck from Bamberg on 14 September 1800 (letter 267e), whereas Tieck was in Hamburg (on which see below) (Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki, Besetztere und illuminierte Landkarte von Deutschland Elementarwerk, from the (Kupfersammlung zu J[ohann] B[ernhard] Basedows Elementarwerke für die Jugend und ihre Freunde: Erste Lieferung in 53 Tafeln. Zweyte Lieferung in 47 Tafeln von L bis XCVI [Leipzig, Dessau, Berlin 1774], plate xlv):
[1] Concerning the Tiecks’ departure from Jena and their itinerary, see Wilhelm’s letter to Johann Diederich Gries on 22 June 1800 (letter 264a), note 6. Back.
[2] The reference, of course, is to Auguste’s death in Bocklet on 12 July 1800. Back.
[3] Although the letter does not seem to have been preserved, Wilhelm has obviously queried Tieck about engaging the latter’s brother, the sculptor Friedrich Tieck, to work on a memorial for Auguste in Bocklet (see also the gallery on Auguste’s memorial). As it turns out, Friedrich Tieck did indeed complete a bust of Auguste, whose genesis and history is followed in volume 2. Back.
[4] The Church of St. Catherine, where Tieck’s father-in-law, Julius Gustav Alberti, was pastor, is located on the southern edge of the older town in Hamburg and indeed essentially right on parts of the harbor (P. G. Heinrich, Hamburg mit seinen nächsten Umgebungen im Jahre 1810 [1810]; Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Hamburg, circa 1590, from their Civitates Orbis Terrarum [1590]):
Wilhelm moved permanently to Berlin from Braunschweig in February 1801 and did not return to Jena except for a brief visit during the late summer and autumn of 1801. Back.
[5] Illustration from L. F. Huber (=Therese Huber), Die Familie Seldorf: Eine Geschichte, vol. 1 (Tübingen 1795):
Translation © 2014 Doug Stott