The Life of Friedrich Schiller

Gessler. Say what you like, I am the Kaiser's servant,And must think of pleasing him. He sent meNot to caress these hinds, to soothe or nurse them:Obedience is the word! The point at issue isShall Boor or Kaiser here be lord o' th' land.Armgart. Now is the moment! Now for my petition![Approaches timidly.Gessler. This Hat at Aldorf, mark you, I set upNot for the joke's sake, or to try the heartsO' th' people; these I know of old: but thatThey might be taught to bend their necks to me,Which are too straight and stiff: and in the wayWhere they are hourly passing, I have plantedThis offence, that so their eyes may fall on't,And remind them of their lord, whom they forget.Rudolph. But yet the people have some rights—Gessler.Which nowIs not a time for settling or admitting.Mighty things are on the anvil. The houseOf Hapsburg must wax powerful; what the FatherGloriously began, the Son must forward:This people is a stone of stumbling, whichOne way or t'other must be put aside.

[They are about to pass along. The Woman throws herself before the Landvogt.

Armgart. Mercy, gracious Landvogt! Justice! Justice!Gessler. Why do you plague me here, and stop my way,I' th' open road? Off! Let me pass!Armgart.My husbandIs in prison; these orphans cry for bread.Have pity, good your Grace, have pity on us!Rudolph. Who or what are you, then? Who is your husband?Armgart. A poor wild-hay-man of the Rigiberg,Whose trade is, on the brow of the abyss,To mow the common grass from craggy shelvesAnd nooks to which the cattle dare not climb.Rudolph [to Gessler]. By Heaven, a wild and miserable life!Do now! do let the poor drudge free, I pray you!Whatever be his crime, that horrid tradeIs punishment enough.[To the Woman] You shall have justice:In the Castle there, make your petition;This is not the place.Armgart.No, no! I stir notFrom the spot till you give up my husband!'Tis the sixth month he has lain i' th' dungeon,Waiting for the sentence of some judge, in vain.Gessler. Woman! Wouldst' lay hands on me? Begone!Armgart. Justice, Landvogt! thou art judge o' th' land here,I' th' Kaiser's stead and God's. Perform thy duty!As thou expectest justice from above,Show it to us.Gessler. Off! Take the mutinous rabbleFrom my sight.Armgart [catches the bridle of the horse].No, no! I now have nothingMore to lose. Thou shalt not move a step, Vogt,Till thou hast done me right. Ay, knit thy brows,And roll thy eyes as sternly as thou wilt;We are so wretched, wretched now, we care notAught more for thy anger.Gessler.Woman, make way!Or else my horse shall crush thee.Armgart.Let it! there—

[She pulls her children to the ground, and throws herself along with them in his way.

Here am I with my children: let the orphansBe trodden underneath thy horse's hoofs!'Tis not the worst that thou hast done.Rudolph. Woman! Art' mad?Armgart [with still greater violence].'Tis long that thou hast trodden.The Kaiser's people under foot. Too long!O, I am but a woman; were I a man,I should find something else to do than lieHere crying in the dust.

[The music of the Wedding is heard again, at the top of the Pass, but softened by distance.

Gessler.Where are my servants?Quick! Take her hence! I may forget myself,And do the thing I shall repent.Rudolph.My lord,The servants cannot pass; the place aboveIs crowded by a bridal company.Gessler. I've been too mild a ruler to this people;They are not tamed as they should be; their tonguesAre still at liberty. This shall be alter'd!I will break that stubborn humour; FreedomWith its pert vauntings shall no more be heard of:I will enforce a new law in these lands;There shall not—

[An arrow pierces him; he claps his hand upon his heart, and is about to sink. With a faint voice

God be merciful to me!Rudolph. Herr Landvogt—God! What is it? Whence came it?Armgart [springing up].Dead! dead! He totters, sinks! 'T has hit him!Rudolph [springs from his horse].Horrible!—O God of Heaven!—Herr Ritter,Cry to God for mercy! You are dying.Gessler. 'Tis Tell's arrow.

[Has slid down from his horse into Rudolph's arms, who sets him on the stone bench.

Tell [appears above, on the point of the rock].Thou hast found the archer;Seek no other. Free are the cottages,Secure is innocence from thee; thou wiltTorment the land no more.[Disappears from the height. The people rush in.Stüssi [foremost].What? What has happen'd?Armgart. The Landvogt shot, kill'd by an arrow.People [rushing in].Who?Who is shot?

[Whilst the foremost of the wedding company enter on the Scene, the hindmost are still on the height, and the music continues.

Rudolph. He's bleeding, bleeding to death.Away! Seek help; pursue the murderer!Lost man! Must it so end with thee? Thou wouldst notHear my warning!Stüssi.Sure enough! There lies hePale and going fast.Many Voices.Who was it killed him?Rudolph. Are the people mad, that they make musicOver murder? Stop it, I say!

[The music ceases suddenly; more people come crowding round.

Herr Landvogt,Can you not speak to me? Is there nothingYou would entrust me with?

[Gessler makes signs with his hand, and vehemently repeats them, as they are not understood.

Where shall I run?To Küssnacht! I cannot understand you:O, grow not angry! Leave the things of Earth,And think how you shall make your peace with Heaven!

[The whole bridal company surround the dying man with an expression of unsympathising horror.

Stüssi. Look there! How pale he grows! Now! Death is comingRound his heart: his eyes grow dim and fixed.Armgart [lifts up one of her children].See, children, how a miscreant departs!Rudolph. Out on you, crazy hags! Have ye no touchOf feeling in you, that ye feast your eyesOn such an object? Help me, lend your hands!Will no one help to pull the tort'ring arrowFrom his breast?Women [start back]. We touch him whom God has smote!Rudolph. My curse upon you![Draws his sword.Stüssi [lays his hand on Rudolph's arm].Softly, my good Sir!Your government is at an end. The TyrantIs fallen: we will endure no farther violence:We are free.All [tumultuously]. The land is free!Rudolph.Ha! runs it so?Are rev'rence and obedience gone already?

[To the armed Attendants, who press in.

You see the murd'rous deed that has been done.Our help is vain, vain to pursue the murd'rer;Other cares demand us. On! To Küssnacht!To save the Kaiser's fortress! For at presentAll bonds of order, duty, are unloosed,No man's fidelity is to be trusted.

[Whilst he departs with the Attendants, appear six Fratres Misericordiæ.

Armgart. Room! Room! Here come the Friars of Mercy.Stüssi. The victim slain, the ravens are assembling!Fratres Misericordiæ [form a half-circle round the dead body, and sing in a deep tone].With noiseless tread death comes on man,No plea, no prayer delivers him;From midst of busy life's unfinished plan,With sudden hand, it severs him:And ready or not ready,—no delay,Forth to his Judge's bar he must away!

The death of Gessler, which forms the leading object of the plot, happens at the end of the fourth act; the fifth, occupied with representing the expulsion of his satellites, and the final triumph and liberation of the Swiss, though diversified with occurrences and spectacles, moves on with inferior animation. A certain want of unity is, indeed, distinctly felt throughout all the piece; the incidents do not point one way; there is no connexion, or a very slight one, between the enterprise of Tell and that of the men of Rütli. This is the principal, or rather sole, deficiency of the present work; a deficiency inseparable from the faithful display of the historical event, and far more than compensated by the deeper interest and the wider range of action and delineation, which a strict adherence to the facts allows. By the present mode of management, Alpine life in all its length and breadth is placed before us: from the feudal halls of Attinghausen to Ruodi the Fisher of the Luzern Lake, and Armgart,—

The poor wild-hay-man of the Rigiberg,Whose trade is, on the brow of the abyss,To mow the common grass from craggy shelvesAnd nooks to which the cattle dare not climb,—

we stand as if in presence of the Swiss, beholding the achievement of their freedom in its minutest circumstances, with all its simplicity and unaffected greatness. The light of the poet's genius is upon the Four Forest Cantons, at the opening of the Fourteenth Century: the whole time and scene shine as with the brightness, the truth, and more than the beauty, of reality.

The tragedy of Tell wants unity of interest and of action; but in spite of this, it may justly claim the high dignity of ranking with the very best of Schiller's plays. Less comprehensive and ambitious than Wallenstein, less ethereal than the Jungfrau, it has a look of nature and substantial truth, which neither of its rivals can boast of. The feelings it inculcates and appeals to are those of universal human nature, and presented in their purest, most unpretending form. There is no high-wrought sentiment, no poetic love. Tell loves his wife as honest men love their wives; and the episode of Bertha and Rudenz, though beautiful, is very brief, and without effect on the general result. It is delightful and salutary to the heart to wander among the scenes of Tell: all is lovely, yet all is real. Physical and moral grandeur are united; yet both are the unadorned grandeur of Nature. There are the lakes and green valleys beside us, the Schreckhorn, the Jungfrau, and their sister peaks, with their avalanches and their palaces of ice, all glowing in the southern sun; and dwelling among them are a race of manly husbandmen, heroic without ceasing to be homely, poetical without ceasing to be genuine.

We have dwelt the longer on this play, not only on account of its peculiar fascinations, but also—as it is our last! Schiller's faculties had never been more brilliant than at present: strong in mature age, in rare and varied accomplishments, he was now reaping the full fruit of his studious vigils; the rapidity with which he wrote such noble poems, at once betokened the exuberant riches of his mind and the prompt command which he enjoyed of them. Still all that he had done seemed but a fraction of his appointed task: a bold imagination was carrying him forward into distant untouched fields of thought and poetry, where triumphs yet more glorious were to be gained. Schemes of new writings, new kinds of writing, were budding in his fancy; he was yet, as he had ever been, surrounded by a multitude of projects, and full of ardour to labour in fulfilling them. But Schiller's labours and triumphs were drawing to a close. The invisible Messenger was already near, which overtakes alike the busy and the idle, which arrests man in the midst of his pleasures or his occupations, and changes his countenance and sends him away.

In 1804, having been at Berlin witnessing the exhibition of his Wilhelm Tell, he was seized, while returning, with a paroxysm of that malady which for many years had never wholly left him. The attack was fierce and violent; it brought him to the verge of the grave; but he escaped once more; was considered out of danger, and again resumed his poetical employments. Besides various translations from the French and Italian, he had sketched a tragedy on the history of Perkin Warbeck, and finished two acts of one on that of a kindred but more fortunate impostor, Dimitri of Russia. His mind, it would appear, was also frequently engaged with more solemn and sublime ideas. The universe of human thought he had now explored and enjoyed; but he seems to have found no permanent contentment in any of its provinces. Many of his later poems indicate an incessant and increasing longing for some solution of the mystery of life; at times it is a gloomy resignation to the want and the despair of any. His ardent spirit could not satisfy itself with things seen, though gilded with all the glories of intellect and imagination; it soared away in search of other lands, looking with unutterable desire for some surer and brighter home beyond the horizon of this world. Death he had no reason to regard as probably a near event; but we easily perceive that the awful secrets connected with it had long been familiar to his contemplation. The veil which hid them from his eyes was now shortly, when he looked not for it, to be rent asunder.

The spring of 1805, which Schiller had anticipated with no ordinary hopes of enjoyment and activity, came on in its course, cold, bleak, and stormy; and along with it his sickness returned. The help of physicians was vain; the unwearied services of trembling affection were vain: his disorder kept increasing; on the 9th of May it reached a crisis. Early in the morning of that day, he grew insensible, and by degrees delirious. Among his expressions, the word Lichtenberg was frequently noticed; a word of no import; indicating, as some thought, the writer of that name, whose works he had lately been reading; according to others, the castle of Leuchtenberg, which, a few days before his sickness, he had been proposing to visit. The poet and the sage was soon to lie low; but his friends were spared the farther pain of seeing him depart in madness. The fiery canopy of physical suffering, which had bewildered and blinded his thinking faculties, was drawn aside; and the spirit of Schiller looked forth in its wonted serenity, once again before it passed away forever. After noon his delirium abated; about four o'clock he fell into a soft sleep, from which he ere long awoke in full possession of his senses. Restored to consciousness in that hour, when the soul is cut off from human help, and man must front the King of Terrors on his own strength, Schiller did not faint or fail in this his last and sharpest trial. Feeling that his end was come, he addressed himself to meet it as became him; not with affected carelessness or superstitious fear, but with the quiet unpretending manliness which had marked the tenor of his life. Of his friends and family he took a touching but a tranquil farewell: he ordered that his funeral should be private, without pomp or parade. Some one inquiring how he felt, he said "Calmer and calmer;" simple but memorable words, expressive of the mild heroism of the man. About six he sank into a deep sleep; once for a moment he looked up with a lively air, and said, "Many things were growing plain and clear to him!" Again he closed his eyes; and his sleep deepened and deepened, till it changed into the sleep from which there is no awakening; and all that remained of Schiller was a lifeless form, soon to be mingled with the clods of the valley.

The news of Schiller's death fell cold on many a heart: not in Germany alone, but over Europe, it was regarded as a public loss, by all who understood its meaning. In Weimar especially, the scene of his noblest efforts, the abode of his chosen friends, the sensation it produced was deep and universal. The public places of amusement were shut; all ranks made haste to testify their feelings, to honour themselves and the deceased by tributes to his memory. It was Friday when Schiller died; his funeral was meant to be on Sunday; but the state of his remains made it necessary to proceed before. Doering thus describes the ceremony:

'According to his own directions, the bier was to be borne by private burghers of the city; but several young artists and students, out of reverence for the deceased, took it from them. It was between midnight and one in the morning, when they approached the churchyard. The overclouded heaven threatened rain. But as the bier was set down beside the grave, the clouds suddenly split asunder, and the moon, coming forth in peaceful clearness, threw her first rays on the coffin of the Departed. They lowered him into the grave; and the moon again retired behind her clouds. A fierce tempest of wind began to howl, as if it were reminding the bystanders of their great, irreparable loss. At this moment who could have applied without emotion the poet's own words:

Alas, the ruddy morning tingesA silent, cold, sepulchral stone;And evening throws her crimson fringesBut round his slumber dark and lone!'

So lived and so died Friedrich Schiller; a man on whose history other men will long dwell with a mingled feeling of reverence and love. Our humble record of his life and writings is drawing to an end: yet we still linger, loth to part with a spirit so dear to us. From the scanty and too much neglected field of his biography, a few slight facts and indications may still be gleaned; slight, but distinctive of him as an individual, and not to be despised in a penury so great and so unmerited.

Schiller's age was forty-five years and a few months when he died.38 Sickness had long wasted his form, which at no time could boast of faultless symmetry. He was tall and strongly boned; but unmuscular and lean: his body, it might be perceived, was wasting under the energy of a spirit too keen for it. His face was pale, the cheeks and temples rather hollow, the chin somewhat deep and slightly projecting, the nose irregularly aquiline, his hair inclined to auburn. Withal his countenance was attractive, and had a certain manly beauty. The lips were curved together in a line, expressing delicate and honest sensibility; a silent enthusiasm, impetuosity not unchecked by melancholy, gleamed in his softly kindled eyes and pale cheeks, and the brow was high and thoughtful. To judge from his portraits, Schiller's face expressed well the features of his mind: it is mildness tempering strength; fiery ardour shining through the clouds of suffering and disappointment, deep but patiently endured. Pale was its proper tint; the cheeks and temples were best hollow. There are few faces that affect us more than Schiller's; it is at once meek, tender, unpretending, and heroic.

In his dress and manner, as in all things, he was plain and unaffected. Among strangers, something shy and retiring might occasionally be observed in him: in his own family, or among his select friends, he was kind-hearted, free, and gay as a little child. In public, his external appearance had nothing in it to strike or attract. Of an unpresuming aspect, wearing plain apparel, his looks as he walked were constantly bent on the ground; so that frequently, as we are told, 'he failed to notice the salutation of a passing acquaintance; but if he heard it, he would catch hastily at his hat, and give his cordial "Guten Tag."' Modesty, simplicity, a total want of all parade or affectation were conspicuous in him. These are the usual concomitants of true greatness, and serve to mitigate its splendour. Common things he did as a common man. His conduct in such matters was uncalculated, spontaneous; and therefore natural and pleasing.

Concerning his mental character, the greater part of what we had to say has been already said, in speaking of his works. The most cursory perusal of these will satisfy us that he had a mind of the highest order; grand by nature, and cultivated by the assiduous study of a lifetime. It is not the predominating force of any one faculty that impresses us in Schiller; but the general force of all. Every page of his writings bears the stamp of internal vigour; new truths, new aspects of known truth, bold thought, happy imagery, lofty emotion. Schiller would have been no common man, though he had altogether wanted the qualities peculiar to poets. His intellect is clear, deep, and comprehensive; its deductions, frequently elicited from numerous and distant premises, are presented under a magnificent aspect, in the shape of theorems, embracing an immense multitude of minor propositions. Yet it seems powerful and vast, rather than quick or keen; for Schiller is not notable for wit, though his fancy is ever prompt with its metaphors, illustrations, comparisons, to decorate and point the perceptions of his reason. The earnestness of his temper farther disqualified him for this: his tendency was rather to adore the grand and the lofty than to despise the little and the mean. Perhaps his greatest faculty was a half-poetical, half-philosophical imagination: a faculty teeming with magnificence and brilliancy; now adorning, or aiding to erect, a stately pyramid of scientific speculation; now brooding over the abysses of thought and feeling, till thoughts and feelings, else unutterable, were embodied in expressive forms, and palaces and landscapes glowing in ethereal beauty rose like exhalations from the bosom of the deep.

Combined and partly of kindred with these intellectual faculties was that vehemence of temperament which is necessary for their full development. Schiller's heart was at once fiery and tender; impetuous, soft, affectionate, his enthusiasm clothed the universe with grandeur, and sent his spirit forth to explore its secrets and mingle warmly in its interests. Thus poetry in Schiller was not one but many gifts. It was not the 'lean and flashy song' of an ear apt for harmony, combined with a maudlin sensibility, or a mere animal ferocity of passion, and an imagination creative chiefly because unbridled: it was, what true poetry is always, the quintessence of general mental riches, the purified result of strong thought and conception, and of refined as well as powerful emotion. In his writings, we behold him a moralist, a philosopher, a man of universal knowledge: in each of these capacities he is great, but also in more; for all that he achieves in these is brightened and gilded with the touch of another quality; his maxims, his feelings, his opinions are transformed from the lifeless shape of didactic truths, into living shapes that address faculties far finer than the understanding.

The gifts by which such transformation is effected, the gift of pure, ardent, tender sensibility, joined to those of fancy and imagination, are perhaps not wholly denied to any man endowed with the power of reason; possessed in various degrees of strength, they add to the products of mere intellect corresponding tints of new attractiveness; in a degree great enough to be remarkable they constitute a poet. Of this peculiar faculty how much had fallen to Schiller's lot, we need not attempt too minutely to explain. Without injuring his reputation, it may be admitted that, in general, his works exhibit rather extraordinary strength than extraordinary fineness or versatility. His power of dramatic imitation is perhaps never of the very highest, the Shakspearean kind; and in its best state, it is farther limited to a certain range of characters. It is with the grave, the earnest, the exalted, the affectionate, the mournful, that he succeeds: he is not destitute of humour, as his Wallenstein's Camp will show, but neither is he rich in it; and for sprightly ridicule in any of its forms he has seldom shown either taste or talent. Chance principally made the drama his department; he might have shone equally in many others. The vigorous and copious invention, the knowledge of life, of men and things, displayed in his theatrical pieces, might have been available in very different pursuits; frequently the charm of his works has little to distinguish it from the charm of intellectual and moral force in general; it is often the capacious thought, the vivid imagery, the impetuous feeling of the orator, rather than the wild pathos and capricious enchantment of the poet. Yet that he was capable of rising to the loftiest regions of poetry, no reader of his Maid of Orleans, his character of Thekla, or many other of his pieces, will hesitate to grant. Sometimes we suspect that it is the very grandeur of his general powers which prevents us from exclusively admiring his poetic genius. We are not lulled by the syren song of poetry, because her melodies are blended with the clearer, manlier tones of serious reason, and of honest though exalted feeling.

Much laborious discussion has been wasted in defining genius, particularly by the countrymen of Schiller, some of whom have narrowed the conditions of the term so far, as to find but three men of genius since the world was created: Homer, Shakspeare, and Goethe! From such rigid precision, applied to a matter in itself indefinite, there may be an apparent, but there is no real, increase of accuracy. The creative power, the faculty not only of imitating given forms of being, but of imagining and representing new ones, which is here attributed with such distinctness and so sparingly, has been given by nature in complete perfection to no man, nor entirely denied to any. The shades of it cannot be distinguished by so loose a scale as language. A definition of genius which excludes such a mind as Schiller's will scarcely be agreeable to philosophical correctness, and it will tend rather to lower than to exalt the dignity of the word. Possessing all the general mental faculties in their highest degree of strength, an intellect ever active, vast, powerful, far-sighted; an imagination never weary of producing grand or beautiful forms; a heart of the noblest temper, sympathies comprehensive yet ardent, feelings vehement, impetuous, yet full of love and kindliness and tender pity; conscious of the rapid and fervid exercise of all these powers within him, and able farther to present their products refined and harmonised, and 'married to immortal verse,' Schiller may or may not be called a man of genius by his critics; but his mind in either case will remain one of the most enviable which can fall to the share of a mortal.