The Poems of Schiller - Third period Part 36

[17] The idea diffused by the translator through this and the preceding stanza is more forcibly condensed by Schiller in four lines.

[18] "And ere a man hath power to say, 'behold,'

The jaws of Darkness do devour it up, So quick bright things come to confusion."-- SHAKESPEARE.

[19] The three following ballads, in which Switzerland is the scene, betray their origin in Schiller's studies for the drama of William Tell.

[20] The avalanche--the equivoque of the original, turning on the Swiss word Lawine, it is impossible to render intelligible to the English reader. The giants in the preceding line are the rocks that overhang the pa.s.s which winds now to the right, now to the left, of a roaring stream.

[21] The Devil's Bridge. The Land of Delight (called in Tell "a serene valley of joy") to which the dreary portal (in Tell the black rock gate) leads, is the Urse Vale. The four rivers, in the next stanza, are the Reus, the Rhine, the Tessin, and the Rhone.

[22] The everlasting glacier. See William Tell, act v, scene 2.

[23] This has been paraphrased by Coleridge.

[24] Ajax the Less.

[25] Ulysses.

[26] Achilles.

[27] Diomed.

[28] Ca.s.sandra.

[29] It may be scarcely necessary to treat, however briefly, of the mythological legend on which this exquisite elegy is founded; yet we venture to do so rather than that the forgetfulness of the reader should militate against his enjoyment of the poem. Proserpine, according to the Homeride (for the story is not without variations), when gathering flowers with the Ocean-Nymphs, is carried off by Aidoneus, or Pluto. Her mother, Ceres, wanders over the earth for her in vain, and refuses to return to heaven till her daughter is restored to her. Finally, Jupiter commissions Hermes to persuade Pluto to render up his bride, who rejoins Ceres at Eleusis. Unfortunately she has swallowed a pomegranate seed in the Shades below, and is thus mysteriously doomed to spend one-third of the year with her husband in Hades, though for the remainder of the year she is permitted to dwell with Ceres and the G.o.ds. This is one of the very few mythological fables of Greece which can be safely interpreted into an allegory. Proserpine denotes the seed-corn one-third of the year below the earth; two-thirds (that is, dating from the appearance of the ear) above it. Schiller has treated this story with admirable and artistic beauty; and, by an alteration in its symbolical character has preserved the pathos of the external narrative, and heightened the beauty of the interior meaning--a.s.sociating the productive principle of the earth with the immortality of the soul. Proserpine here is not the symbol of the buried seed, but the buried seed is the symbol of her--that is, of the dead. The exquisite feeling of this poem consoled Schiller's friend, Sophia La Roche, in her grief for her son's death.

[30] What a beautiful vindication of the shortness of human life!

[31] The corn-flower.

[32] For this story, see Herodotus, book iii, sections 40-43.

[33] President of Council of Five Hundred.

[34] We have already seen in "The Ring of Polycrates," Schiller's mode of dealing with cla.s.sical subjects. In the poems that follow, derived from similar sources, the same spirit is maintained. In spite of Humboldt, we venture to think that Schiller certainly does not narrate Greek legends in the spirit of an ancient Greek. The Gothic sentiment, in its ethical depth and mournful tenderness, more or less pervades all that he translates from cla.s.sic fable into modern pathos. The grief of Hero in the ballad subjoined, touches closely on the lamentations of Thekla, in "Wallenstein." The Complaint of Ceres, embodies Christian grief and Christian hope. The Trojan Ca.s.sandra expresses the moral of the Northern Faust. Even the "Victory Feast" changes the whole spirit of Homer, on whom it is founded, by the introduction of the ethical sentiment at the close, borrowed, as a modern would apply what he so borrows from the moralizing Horace. Nothing can be more foreign to the h.e.l.lenic genius, (if we except the very disputable intention of the "Prometheus"), than the interior and typical design which usually exalts every conception in Schiller. But it is perfectly open to the modern poet to treat of ancient legends in the modern spirit. Though he selects a Greek story, he is still a modern who narrates--he can never make himself a Greek any more than Aeschylus in the "Persae" could make himself a Persian. But this is still more the privilege of the poet in narrative, or lyrical composition, than in the drama, for in the former he does not abandon his ident.i.ty, as in the latter he must--yet even this must has its limits. Shakspeare's wonderful power of self-transfusion has no doubt enabled him, in his plays from Roman history, to animate his characters with much of Roman life. But no one can maintain that a Roman would ever have written plays in the least resembling "Julius Caesar," or "Coriola.n.u.s," or "Antony and Cleopatra." The portraits may be Roman, but they are painted in the manner of the Gothic school. The spirit of antiquity is only in them, inasmuch as the representation of human nature, under certain circ.u.mstances, is accurately, though loosely outlined. When the poet raises the dead, it is not to restore, but to remodel.

[35] This notes the time of year--not the time of day--viz., about the 23d of September.--HOFFMEISTER.

[36] Hecate as the mysterious G.o.ddess of Nature.--HOFFMEISTER.

[37] This story, the heroes of which are more properly known to us under the names of Damon and Pythias (or Phintias), Schiller took from Hyginus in whom the friends are called Moerus and Selinuntius. Schiller has somewhat amplified the incidents in the original, in which the delay of Moerus is occasioned only by the swollen stream--the other hindrances are of Schiller's invention. The subject, like "The Ring of Polycrates,"

does not admit of that rich poetry of description with which our author usually adorns some single pa.s.sage in his narratives. The poetic spirit is rather shown in the terse brevity with which picture after picture is not only sketched but finished--and in the great thought at the close.

Still it is not one of Schiller's best ballads. His additions to the original story are not happy. The incident of the robbers is commonplace and poor. The delay occasioned by the thirst of Moerus is clearly open to Goethe's objection (an objection showing very nice perception of nature)--that extreme thirst was not likely to happen to a man who had lately pa.s.sed through a stream on a rainy day, and whose clothes must have been saturated with moisture--nor in the traveller's preoccupied state of mind, is it probable that he would have so much felt the mere physical want. With less reason has it been urged by other critics, that the sudden relenting of the tyrant is contrary to his character. The tyrant here has no individual character at all. He is the mere personation of disbelief in truth and love--which the spectacle of sublime self-abnegation at once converts. In this idea lies the deep philosophical truth, which redeems all the defects of the piece--for poetry, in its highest form, is merely this--"Truth made beautiful."

[38] The somewhat irregular metre of the original has been preserved in this ballad, as in other poems; although the perfect anapaestic metre is perhaps more familiar to the English ear.

[39] "Die Gestalt"--Form, the Platonic Archetype.

[40] More literally translated thus by the author of the article on Schiller in the Foreign and Colonial Review, July, 1843--

"Thence all witnesses forever banished Of poor human nakedness."

[41] The law, i. e., the Kantian ideal of truth and virtue. This stanza and the next embody, perhaps with some exaggeration, the Kantian doctrine of morality.

[42] "But in G.o.d's sight submission is command." "Jonah," by the Rev.

F. Hodgson. Quoted in Foreign and Colonial Review, July, 1843: Art.

Schiller, p. 21.

[43] It seems generally agreed that poetry is allegorized in these stanzas; though, with this interpretation, it is difficult to reconcile the sense of some of the lines--for instance, the last in the first stanza. How can poetry be said to leave no trace when she takes farewell?

[44] "I call the living--I mourn the dead--I break the lightning."

These words are inscribed on the great bell of the Minster of Schaffhausen--also on that of the Church of Art near Lucerne. There was an old belief in Switzerland that the undulation of air caused by the sound of a bell, broke the electric fluid of a thunder-cloud.

[45] A piece of clay pipe, which becomes vitrified if the metal is sufficiently heated.

[46] The translator adheres to the original, in forsaking the rhyme in these lines and some others.

[47] Written in the time of the French war.

[48] Literally, "the manners." The French word moeurs corresponds best with the German.

[49] The epithet in the first edition is ruhmlose.

[50] For this interesting story, see c.o.x's "House of Austria," vol i, pp. 87-98 (Bohn's Standard Library).

[51] See "Piccolomini," act ii., scene 6; and "The Death of Wallenstein," act v., scene 3.

[52] This poem is very characteristic of the n.o.ble ease with which Schiller often loves to surprise the reader, by the sudden introduction of matter for the loftiest reflection in the midst of the most familiar subjects. What can be more accurate and happy than the poet's description of the national dance, as if such description were his only object--the outpouring, as it were, of a young gallant intoxicated by the music, and dizzy with the waltz? Suddenly and imperceptibly the reader finds himself elevated from a trivial scene. He is borne upward to the harmony of the sphere. He bows before the great law of the universe--the young gallant is transformed into the mighty teacher; and this without one hard conceit --without one touch of pedantry. It is but a flash of light; and where glowed the playful picture s.h.i.+nes the solemn moral.

[53] The first five verses in the original of this poem are placed as a motto on Goethe's statue in the Library at Weimar. The poet does not here mean to extol what is vulgarly meant by the gifts of fortune; he but develops a favorite idea of his, that, whatever is really sublime and beautiful, comes freely down from heaven; and vindicates the seeming partiality of the G.o.ds, by implying that the beauty and the genius given, without labor, to some, but serve to the delight of those to whom they are denied.

[54] Achilles.

[55] "Nur ein Wunder kann dich tragen In das schoene Wunderland."--SCHILLER, Sehnsucht.

[56] This simile is n.o.bly conceived, but expressed somewhat obscurely.

As Hercules contended in vain against Antaeus, the Son of Earth--so long as the earth gave her giant offspring new strength in every fall,--so the soul contends in vain with evil--the natural earth-born enemy, while the very contact of the earth invigorates the enemy for the struggle.

And as Antaeus was slain at last, when Hercules lifted him from the earth, and strangled him while raised aloft, so can the soul slay the enemy (the desire, the pa.s.sion, the evil, the earth's offspring), when bearing it from earth itself, and stifling it in the higher air.

[57] By this Schiller informs us elsewhere that he does not mean death alone; but that the thought applies equally to every period of life when we can divest ourselves of the body and perceive or act as pure spirits; we are truly then under the influence of the sublime.

[58] Duke Bernard of Weimar, one of the heroes of the Thirty Years' war.

[59] These verses were sent by Schiller to the then Electoral High Chancellor, with a copy of his "William Tell."

[60] Addressed in the original to Mdlle. Slevoigt, on her marriage to Dr. Sturm.

[61] This was the t.i.tle of the publication in which many of the finest of Schiller's "Poems of the Third Period" originally appeared.