The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III | Page 4

was a man of some means and was able to help not only with
words but with cash. So it came about that in the spring of 1785
Schiller forsook Mannheim, which had become as a prison to him, and
went to Leipzig. Thence, after a short sojourn, he followed Körner to
Dresden. The relation between the two men developed into a warm and
mutually inspiring friendship. A feeling of jubilant happiness took
possession of Schiller and soon found expression in the Song to Joy,
wherein a kiss of love and sympathy is offered to all mankind.
[Illustration: 1. SCHILLER'S HOUSE IN WEIMAR]
[Illustration: 2. SCHILLER'S BIRTHPLACE IN MARBACH]
During his two years' sojourn in Dresden Schiller was mainly occupied
with the editing of a magazine, the Thalia, and with the completion of
Don Carlos, the first of his plays in blank verse. Hitherto he had
written with his eye on the stage, and in the savage spirit of the Storm
and Stress. Now, however, the higher ambition of the dramatic poet
began to assert itself. His views of life were changing, and his nature
craved a freer and nobler self-expression than was possible in the "three
hours' traffic of the stage." He had begun Don Carlos at Bauerbach,
intending to make it a love-tragedy in a royal household and

incidentally to scourge the Spanish inquisition. Little by little, however,
the centre of his interest shifted from the lovesick Carlos to the quixotic
dreamer Posa, and the result was that the love-tragedy gradually grew
into a tragedy of political idealism with Posa for its hero. As finally
completed in the summer of 1787, Don Carlos had twice the length of
an ordinary stage-play and, withal, a certain lack of artistic unity. But
its sonorous verse, its fine phrasing of large ideas, and its noble dignity
of style settled forever the question of Schiller's power as a dramatic
poet. The third act especially is instinct with the best idealism of the
eighteenth century.
After Don Carlos Schiller wrote no more plays for some nine years,
being occupied in the interval chiefly with history and philosophy. His
dramatic work had interested him more especially in the sixteenth
century. At Dresden he began to read history with great avidity and
found it very appetizing. What he most cared for, evidently, was not the
annals of warfare or the growth of institutions, but the psychology of
the great man. He was an ardent lover of freedom, both political and
intellectual, and took keen delight in tracing its progress. On the other
hand, play-writing had its disadvantages. Thus far it had brought him
more of notoriety than of solid fame, and his income was so small that
he was dependent on Körner's generosity. To escape from this irksome
position he decided to try his fortune in Thuringia. Going over to
Weimar, in the summer of 1787, he was well received by Herder and
Wieland--Goethe was just then in Italy--and presently he settled down
to write a history of the Dutch Rebellion. His plan looked forward to
six volumes, but only one was ever written. It was published in 1788
under the title of The Defection of the Netherlands and led to its
author's appointment as unsalaried professor of history at the
University of Jena. He began to lecture in the spring of 1789.
Meanwhile he had taken up the study of the Greek poets and found
them very edifying and sanative--just the influence that he needed to
clarify his judgment and correct his earlier vagaries of taste. He was
fascinated by the Odyssey and in a mood of fleeting enthusiasm he
resolved to read nothing but the ancients for the next two years. He
translated the Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides and a part of The
Phenician Women. Out of this newborn ardor grew two important
poems, The Gods of Greece and _The Artists_; the former an elegy on

the decay of Greek polytheism conceived as a loss of beauty to the
world, the latter a philosophic retrospect of human history wherein the
evolutionary function of art is glorified. At the same time he revived
the dormant Thalia and used its columns for the continued publication
of _The Ghost-seer_, a pot-boiling novel which he had begun at
Dresden. It is Schiller's one serious attempt at prose fiction. His initial
purpose was to describe an elaborate and fine-spun intrigue, devised by
mysterious agents of the Church of Rome, for the winning over of a
Protestant German prince. The story begins in a promising way, and the
later portions contain fine passages of narrative and character-drawing.
But its author presently began to feel that it was unworthy of him and
left it unfinished.
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO SCHILLER (Berlin) _Sculptor,
Reinhold Begas_]
On the 22d of February, 1790, Schiller was