267d. Wilhelm Schlegel to Schleiermacher in Berlin: Bamberg, 8 September 1800 [*]
Bamberg, 8 September 1800
. . . I do hope the piece on Kotzebue will end up living up to your expectations! [1] I am saving it until after his return and have simply not been in the mood to work on it again. At the moment I am completely immersed in Shakespeare. [2] The grand poem will probably be considerably delayed because of the Jahrbücher. [3] It is to become a courtly poem and will be called “Tristan.” But please do not speak about it. [4] . . .
I am tentatively planning to travel from here to Gotha in about two weeks and then on to Göttingen, Braunschweig, and Hannover, but I am certain to be back in Jena during the first half of October. I hear you will be coming there in November and am certainly looking forward to your visit. [5] I am hoping to be in Berlin during the second half of the winter. [6]
My wife’s health is tolerably better again, though our sense of loss remains the same. Stay well. . . .
Notes
[*] Sources: Aus Schleiermacher’s Leben 3:223–26 (frag.); KGA V/4 249–55.
In this letter, similar to those to Wilhelm from Schleiermacher and Fichte on 29 Auguste and 7 September 1800 (letters 267a, 267c), Wilhelm spends considerable time discussing literary projects, esp. the anticipated Jahrbücher (see below); even in the short excerpt translated here, readers can see how quickly after Auguste’s death the group resumed its professional activities with a frenzy, not least from necessity, both immediately financial and also broadly professional. Back.
[1] Wilhelm’s anticipated Ehrenpforte und Triumphbogen für den Theater-Präsidenten von Kotzebue bei seiner gehofften Rückkehr in’s Vaterland. Mit Musik. Gedruckt zu Anfange des neuen Jahrhunderts (Braunschweig 1801), Wilhelm’s Kotzebuade.
In his letter to Wilhelm on 29 Auguste 1800 (letter 267a), Schleiermacher had expressed his doubts about Wilhelm’s habit of exciting “my expectations after only half satisfying the previous ones.” See esp. note 5 in that letter. See also Friedrich and Dorothea’s letter to Wilhelm on 6 August 1800 (letter 265j), note 10, and Wilhelm’s letter to Goethe on 11 July 1800 (letter 265b), note 2. Back.
[2] Volume 7 of the edition of Shakespeare, containing The Life of King Henry V and The First Part of King Henry VI as König Heinrich der Fünfte, König Heinrich der Sechste: Erster Theil (1801). Wilhelm mentions his work on these pieces in his letter to Ludwig Tieck on 14 September 1800 (letter 267e). Back.
[3] The Jahrbücher (“yearbooks”) was the journal the Jena Romantics, together at least nominally with Fichte, were at this point feverishly planning to replace the forum they had lost after their departure from the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung and now that the final issue of Athenaeum had appeared, though now they were playing off competing projects with competing publishers one against the other. See Rudolf Haym’s summary in the supplementary appendix on the Romantics’ Jahrbücher project. Back.
[4] Concerning this piece, see Wilhelm’s letter to Goethe on 30 May 1800 (letter 260c), note 2. Back.
[5] Wilhelm did not return to Jena until August 1801, nor did Schleiermacher make the anticipated trip to Jena himself.
On 5 September 1800, Friedrich wrote from Jena to Schleiermacher in Berlin (KGA V/4 245; KFSA 25:173): “Wilhelm is taking Caroline to Braunschweig. Hopefully she will not be returning here. If only Wilhelm would just get free.”
Wilhelm and Caroline left Bamberg around 1 October 1800 (Schelling apparently left the same day for Jena with Johann Diederich Gries) (Post Karte Durch ganz Deutschland, ed. J. Walch [Augsburg 1795])
[6] The first specification of Wilhelm’s plans with respect to Berlin, though he would not make it to Berlin until late February 1801. Back.
Translation © 2014 Doug Stott