Schiller and Our Times
GA 51
25 February 1905, Berlin
VI. Schiller's Later Plays
We have seen how Schiller tried, in each one of his later plays, to solve the problem of the dramatic. There is something sublime in observing how, after every success—and the success was considerable (he was recognised by the best men of his time, even though there was not a complete absence of hostility)—he tried with each new play to climb to greater heights. All the later plays, Tell, the Bride of Messina, the Maid of Orleans, Demetrius, are simply efforts to attain to the problem of the dramatic and the tragic in a new form. He never rested satisfied in a belief that he had exhausted psychology. In Maria Stuart we have seen him treating the problem of destiny, creating a situation complete in itself in which only the characters have to unfold themselves. In the Maid of Orleans, he dug still deeper into the human soul. He plunged into the depths of human psychology and set out the problem, in the sense that Hebbel meant, when he said that tragedy must have some relation to the irrational. Thus, in the Maid of Orleans we have the effects of dark soul forces: the Maid is almost like a sleep-walker, under the influence of what we may call the demonic and is carried forward by it. She is to stand far above humanity, and only because she is a maid, has she the right to pass through the ranks of her enemies, for her country's sake, like a destroying angel.
In the Bride of Messina, Schiller tries to get a still higher conception of the drama and to reach back to the primal drama—that drama, which came even before Aeschylus and was not merely art but also an integral constituent of a truth which included religion, science and art; that Dionysos-drama which put the suffering, dying and resurgent god on the stage as representative of all humanity. In such cases the action was not what we should nowadays call poetry. It was the world-drama that was set before man's eyes, the truth in beautiful and artistic form; it was meant to elevate man and fortify him religiously. Thus the Mystery drama contained, for the spectators, what developed later, in separate form, as religion, art and philosophy.
This line of thought which Friedrich Nietzsche developed in his Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, in which he regarded the primal drama as the higher form, was already alive in Schiller. Schiller's idea of raising the beautiful to higher levels by re-introducing the musical element, was taken up again by Wagner and received monumental expression in his musical dramas: Wagner harked back to the myth and chose music, so as to express himself, not in everyday but in elevated language. The direction which art followed in the Wagner circle was indicated by Schiller. In his short introduction to the Bride of Messina he gives it plastic and pregnant expression. True art must give a freedom of the spirit in the living play of all its forces. That shows what there was in Schiller.
We have seen how Schiller's spirit climbed upward by help of Goethe. He himself called Goethe's mind intuitive, his own symbolical; and this a significant saying.
Schiller always thought of men fundamentally as representatives of a type; he thought of them in a sort of symphony. We can see the drama growing out of a sort of musical mood, and hence comes that symphony of human characters, acting and suffering. So it became necessary to make single traits into symbols of great human experience. Hence Schiller became the poet of idealism: he used experience to bring the ideals to earth and to clothe them in his characters. The problem of the human I, the question how man works in his environment, was, for him, the central point.
In the Bride of Messina, he wanted to produce the Greek tragedy of destiny in a new form. There must be something in the human soul which makes men take their decisions not reasonably—else they would act more intelligently—there must be something dark in them, something like the “daimon” of Socrates. That must be working from the spiritual world. It is this something which the reason cannot grasp, which Schiller allows to play into his tragedy; and the way in which he does it shows him as quite a modern. The action begins with two dreams: The Duke of Messina dreams of a flame which destroys two laurel bushes. The dream is interpreted by an Arabian astrologist as meaning that the daughter, born to him, will bring destruction on his sons; and he orders her death. But the Duchess has dreamed at the same time of a child by whose side an eagle and a lion lie nestled together; her dream also is interpreted; a Christian monk tells her that her daughter will unite the two disputing brothers in love for herself; and so she saves the child.
In this way the dark and undetermined enters at the very beginning of the action. It is a fine point that the first dream should be interpreted by an Arabian, the second by a Christian; but Schiller does not take sides. If we take out all that is mystical and dreamlike, there remains only the quarrel of the brothers; and this rational action is still dramatic. The stroke of genius and of special art is that each element is a whole; even without the mystical the action is a unity. Thus Schiller has put into this with skill and art something which goes beyond human consciousness.—In this way he had reached a still higher answer to his question.
He uses the same human psychology in Tell. I am not going to analyse the drama, only to show what Schiller was to the Nineteenth Century and what he will still be to us. It is not to no purpose that he sets Tell apart from the general structure of the drama:
“Yet, what you do—leave me apart from your councils. I cannot ponder long, or choose. But if you need my too-determined deed, then summon Tell and he will not fail you.” He acts, not like the others, under the impulse of the idea of freedom, but from purely personal feeling, offended paternal sense. Two lines run together, the one which concerns Tell alone, the other felt by the whole Swiss people. Schiller wanted to show how things do not run, in man, always along the one line. We can see the same thing in Hebbel's Judith where her country's needs fall together with her wounded woman's feelings; the poet requires something which grows immediately from out of the human heart.
Schiller has no use for the merely moral or the merely material; the moral must descend and become a personal passion. Man only becomes free when he controls his personal feeling in such a way that it unites with the universal. He worked, step by step, on the completion of his psychology, and his idealism becomes more and more clarified. That is the magic which lives in Schiller's plays. His deep aesthetic studies were not in vain; not in vain his absorption in these problems.
Now all the writings in the Nineteenth Century of men like Vischer, Hartmann, Fechner, etc., important and true as they may be, always put the beautiful outside man. But Schiller always studied what went on within the human soul, how the beautiful acts upon it. For that reason, we are moved so deeply and intimately by what he says, and we can read his prose works with delight again and again. It would be a worthy way of celebrating the Schiller anniversary if these writings were published and read far and wide; they would contribute much to deepening the human spirit in an artistic and moral direction. We might also make a selection for purposes of education from his Aesthetic Letters; and a wholly new attitude would come into our pedagogic system. If we are to understand Schiller's plays, we must breathe the fine air of real education that lies in his aesthetic works.
If we want further insight into the way in which Schiller penetrated deeper and deeper into the human heart, we can get in by a study of the—unfortunately uncompleted—Demetrius. This might have become a play than which even Shakespeare could not have written anything more powerful and affecting. Many attempts have been made to complete the work but no one has proved equal to the task.
The wholly tragic conflict—though there is plenty of action, such as that for instance in the Polish Parliament—is centred entirely in the ego; that is the significant thing. We cannot say that our senses, perceptions and feelings are our ego; we are what we are, because the thinking and feeling of the world around us, press upon us. This Demetrius has grown up without himself knowing what his ego is. During a significant action for which he is to be executed, a certain token is found on his person. It appears that the inheritance of the throne of the Czars is his. Everything points in this one direction, and he cannot but believe that he is the heir to the Russian throne. He is thus driven to a definite configuration of the ego; threads, spun without, drive him onward. The movement is victorious; Demetrius develops the character of a Czar. But then, when his ego is concordant with the world around him, he learns that he has been mistaken; he is not the true heir. He is no longer the person as which he had found himself. He stands in the presence of his mother, who honours him; but so strong is the voice of nature that she cannot recognise him as son—while he has become that which he had imagined to himself. He can no longer throw it from himself; yet the preconditions of this ego fall from him.
Here is an infinitely tragic conflict. All is centred on a personality which is drawn with infinite art, and which we may believe “will not lord it over slaves.” The external also was added with all the skill of which only Schiller was capable. Thus Sapieha, Demetrius' opponent, indicates prophetically the character of Demetrius. Here also the symmetry is striven after which is achieved in the Wallenstein. The drama was never finished; death intervened. There is something tragic in Schiller's death; all the hopes that were centred on him found expression in the letters and words of his contemporaries. Deeply affected by the loss of one from whom so much more was hoped, men like W. v. Humboldt, for instance, allowed their feelings to find utterance:
“He was snatched from the world in the ripe maturity of his spiritual powers; there is infinitely much more he might have accomplished. For many years more he might have enjoyed the bliss of poetic creation.”
That is the tone which makes his death tragic—for in the ordinary course of things death does not bear this irrational quality. In such mood Goethe found for his dead friend the following words in his Epilogue to Schiller's Glocke:
Und hinter ihm in wesenlosem Scheme
Lag, was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine.
Behind him lay in unessential feint
What holds us all in bondage, the common trivial.
This mighty strain of idealism can be seen continuing through the Nineteenth Century. Men began to realise that Schiller's spirit was sublime enough to work as consolation and example to his people in all their struggles.
This continued activity of Schiller's idealism in the spiritual quality of Germany was described effectively by C. Gutzkow in his speech during the Schiller celebrations at Dresden on 10th November 1859:
“Here lies the secret of our love for Schiller. He lifts up our hearts; he gives us courage for action, a never-failing help which the nation finds in every circumstance of its life. Our memories of Schiller arouse in us courage and gladness. Deep, rich, intimate and delightful Goethe may charm us all in his creation which reminds us of home manners and custom, is like ivy which welds itself to the past, sadly and dreamily. But in Schiller everything lies in the future, the waving of flags or crowning with the laurel. For this reason, it is that we celebrate the hundredth anniversary of his name, ringing and echoing like a blow on a shield of bronze. All honour to the poet of action, the bulwark of the German fatherland.”
VI. Schillers spätere Dramen
Wir haben gesehen, wie Schiller bei jedem seiner späteren Dramen immer von neuem versucht hat, das Problem des Dramatischen zu lösen. Es hat etwas Erhebendes, zu sehen, wie Schiller nach jedem neuen großen Erfolge — und es waren außerordentliche Erfolge, Anerkennungen der Besten seiner Zeit, wenn es auch an Anfeindungen nicht fehlte —, es hat etwas besonders Erhebendes, zu sehen, sagte ich, wie er versucht, mit jedem neuen Drama eine höhere Etappe zu erklimmen.
Alle seine späteren Dramen, «Tell», die «Braut von Messina», die «Jungfrau von Orleans», «Demetrius», sie sind lauter Versuche, dem Problem des Dramatischen und Tragischen in einer neuen Form beizukommen. Niemals hätte er sich zufrieden gegeben in dem Glauben, die Psychologie ausgeschöpft zu haben. In der «Maria Stuart» haben wir ihn das Problem des Schicksals behandeln sehen, eine vollendete Situation schaffend, in der nur die Charaktere sich abrollen. Noch tiefer stieg er in der «Jungfrau von Orleans» hinunter in die Menschenseele. Er wußte einen tiefen Griff zu tun in die Menschheitspsychologie, das Problem in der Art begründend, wie Hebbel es dargestellt hat, als er sagte, daß das Tragische auf etwas sich beziehen muß, das in einer gewissen Weise irrationell ist. So haben wir in der «Jungfrau» das Hineinspielen von dunklen Seelenkräften: sie ist eine Art von Somnambule, steht unter dem Einflusse dessen, was man dämonisch nennen kann, wird dadurch weitergetragen. Hoch über dem Menschlichen soll sie stehen, nur dadurch, daß sie Jungfrau ist, hat sie das Recht, wie ein Würgeengel durch die Reihen der Feinde zu gehen, im Dienste des Vaterlandes. In der «Braut von Messina» versucht Schiller das Drama höher zu fassen dadurch, daß er einen Griff in das Urdrama tut. Auf jenes Urdrama griff er zurück, das noch dem Äschylos voranging, das nicht nur Kunst war, sondern ein integrierender Bestandteil der die Religion, die Wissenschaft und die Kunst umfassenden Wahrheit: auf jenes Dionysosdrama, das den leidenden, sterbenden, auferstehenden Gott auf die Bühne brachte, als Repräsentanten der ganzen Menschheit. Die Handlung trug da nicht den Charakter dessen, was man heute Dichtung nennt. Das Weltendrama sollte vorgeführt werden, die Wahrheit in schöner, künstlerischer Form. Erhebung, religiöse Erbauung sollte es dem Menschen bringen. So enthielt für den Zuschauer das Mysteriendrama zugleich, was später sich getrennt als Religion, Kunst und Philosophie entwickelte.
Dieser Gedankengang, den Friedrich Nietzsche in seiner Schrift «Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik» entwickelt, in der er das Urdrama als das höhere hinstellt, diese Grundidee lebte schon in Schiller. Schillers Idee, das Schöne dadurch in höhere Sphären zu heben, daß er das musikalische Element wieder einführte, wurde von Wagner in großem Stil wieder aufgenommen und fand in dem Musikdrama monumentalen Ausdruck. Wagner griff zum Mythos und wählte die Musik, um nicht in der täglichen, sondern in gehobener Sprache das Bedeutende auszudrücken. Die Richtung, welche die Kunst im Wagnerkreis genommen hat, wurde von Schiller intendiert. In seiner kurzen Einleitung zur «Braut von Messina» findet er dafür einen so plastischen wie prägnanten Ausdruck, Freiheit des Gemüts in dem lebendigen Spiel aller seiner Kräfte soll die rechte Kunst verschaffen. Daraus erkennen wir, was in Schiller lebte. Wir haben gesehen, wie Schillers Geist sich an Goethe hinaufrankte. Er selbst nannte Goethes Geist den intuitiven, seinen eigenen den symbolisierenden. Es ist dies ein bedeutsamer Ausspruch.
Schiller dachte im Grunde genommen die Menschen immer als Repräsentanten der Gattung, er dachte sie in einer Art Symphonie. Wir sehen bei ihm das Drama aus einer musikalischen Stimmung herauswachsen: daraus ergibt sich diese Symphonie von Menschencharakteren, von handelnden und leidenden Charakteren. Das bewirkte, daß er nötig hatte, die einzelnen Züge zu Symbolen großer Menschenerfahrung zu machen. Dadurch ist Schiller der Dichter des Idealismus geworden: er hat durch die Erfahrung die Ideale heruntergeholt, um sie im Charakter zu gestalten. Im Mittelpunkt stand ihm das Problem des menschlichen Ich, die Frage: wie wirkt der Mensch innerhalb seiner Umgebung?
In der «Braut von Messina» hat er in einer neuen Form die griechische Schicksalstragödie geben wollen. Es muß etwas in der Menschenseele sein, welches bewirkt, daß der Mensch nicht in verstandesmäßiger Art seine Entschlüsse ausführt — er würde sonst klüger handeln —, etwas Dunkles muß in ihm leben, was dem Dämon des Sokrates ähnlich ist. Das muß aus der geistigen Welt in ihn hineinwirken. Dieses mit dem Verstande nicht zu Erfassende läßt Schiller in die Tragödie hineinspielen. In der Art, wie er das tut, zeigt sich Schiller als ganz moderner Charakter. Von zwei Träumen geht bei ihm die Handlung aus: Der Fürst von Messina träumt von einer Flamme, die zwei Lorbeerbäume verzehrt, Dieser Traum wird ihm von einem arabischen Sterndeuter dahin ausgelegt, daß die Tochter, die ihm geboren ist, seinen Söhnen Unheil bringen würde, und er gibt Befehl, sie zu töten. Zugleich aber hat die Fürstin geträumt von einem Kinde, dem Adler und Löwe sich friedlich anschmiegen. Auch ihr wird der Traum gedeutet: ein christlicher Mönch verheißt ihr, daß die Tochter die beiden streitenden Brüder in Liebe zu sich vereinen werde. Da rettet sie das Kind.
So ist das Dunkle, Unbestimmte, in den Ausgangspunkt der Handlung hineingelegt. Sehr fein erscheint, daß der erste Traum von einem Araber, der zweite von einem Christen gedeutet wird; Schiller aber entscheidet sich für keinen. Hebt man alles, was mystisch, traumhaft ist, hinweg, so bleibt nur der Kampf der Brüder, und diese rationelle Handlung bleibt noch immer dramatisch. Das Geistvolle und ganz besonders Künstlerische ist, daß jedes Element etwas Ganzes ist; auch ohne das Mystische ist die Handlung eine ganze. Es ist von Schiller in dieser Richtung mit Feinheit und Kunst etwas in dieses Drama gelegt, das über das menschliche Bewußtsein hinausgeht. So war er zu noch höherer Beantwortung seiner Frage gekommen.
An derselben Menschheitspsychologie arbeitet er im «Tell». Ich will das Drama nicht analysieren, nur zeigen, was Schiller dem 19. Jahrhundert war und was er uns noch sein wird. Nicht umsonst stellt Schiller den «Tell» heraus aus dem übrigen Gefüge des Dramas:
Doch was ihr tut, laßt mich aus euerm Rat.
Ich mag nicht lange prüfen oder wählen!
Bedürft ihr meiner zu bestimmter Tat,
Dann ruft den Tell, es soll an mir nicht fehlen.
Nicht wie die anderen unter dem Eindruck der Freiheitsidee handelt er, sondern aus rein persönlichem Gefühl, dem gekränkten Vaterempfinden. Zwei Linien läßt Schiller zusammenlaufen, etwas, was Tell allein angeht, und das, was das schweizerische Volk empfindet.
Schiller wollte zeigen, wie beim Menschen nicht alles so gradlinig sich abspielt. Wir können gleiches bei Hebbels «Judich» wiederfinden, wo die Not des Vaterlandes zusammenfällt mit dem gekränkten Weibempfinden; der Dichter braucht etwas, was unmittelbar herauswächst aus der menschlichen Brust. Nicht das bloß Moralische, nicht das bloß Sinnliche will Schiller, sondern das Moralische soll herabsteigen und zur persönlichen Leidenschaft werden. Der Mensch wird nur dadurch frei, daß er sein Persönliches in der Art zu verrichten vermag, daß es mit dem allgemeinen zusammentrifft. So arbeitete Schiller Stück für Stück an dem Ausbau seiner Psychologie, so sehen wir seinen Idealismus in einer fortwährenden Klärung. Das ist der Zauber, der in Schillers Dramen lebt. Er hat seine tiefgründigen, ästhetischen Schriften nicht umsonst verfaßt, in diese Probleme sich nicht umsonst versenkt.
Alles, was im 19. Jahrhundert über Ästhetik geschrieben worden ist von Vischer, Hartmann, Fechner und so weiter, so bedeutend und treffend vieles ist, wir sehen bei allen das Schöne aus dem Menschen herausverlegt. Schiller aber hat immer studiert, was in der Seele des Menschen vorgeht, wie das Schöne auf die Menschenseele wirkt. Darum berührt uns, was er sagt, so traulich, so heimisch, darum können immer wieder Schillers Prosaschriften mit Entzücken gelesen werden. Es wäre eine würdige Schillerfeier, wenn diese Schriften weit verbreitet und gelesen würden, sie könnten weitgehend beitragen zur Vertiefung des menschlichen Geistes in künstlerischer und moralischer Beziehung. Eine pädagogische Ausbeute müßte aus Schillers ästhetischen Briefen gezogen werden; es würde in unser ganzes Unterrichtswesen dadurch ein neuer Zug kommen.
Wer Schillers Dramen verstehen will, muß die feine Bildungsluft aus seinen ästhetischen Schriften hervorholen. Wie Schiller in immer tiefere Schächte des Menschenherzens hineingraben wollte, wird der sehen, der sich mit dem leider nicht vollendeten «Demetrius» beschäftigt. Ein Drama hätte der «Demetrius» werden können, wie es erschütternder und gewaltiger kaum hätte ein Shakespearesches sein können. Viele Versuche sind unternommen worden, den «Demetrius» zu vollenden, doch der Größe der Aufgabe war niemand gewachsen. Der durchaus tragische Konflikt, bei reichster Handlung, beispielsweise der polnische Reichstag, ist — und das ist das Bedeutende — ganz in das Ich verlegt. Wir können nicht sagen, daß unser Sinnen, Empfinden und Fühlen unser Ich ist. Wir sind, was wir sind, weil das Denken und Fühlen der Umwelt zu uns hereindringt. Dieser Demetrius ist so aufgewachsen, daß er selbst nicht weiß, was sein Ich ist. Es findet sich bei ihm, bei einer bedeutungsvollen Tat, für die er hingerichtet werden soll, ein Kleinod. Es scheint sich herauszustellen, daß ihm die Anwartschaft auf den Zarenthron gebührt. Alles trifft zusammen, er kann nicht anders glauben, als daß er der echte russische Thronerbe sei. So wird er hineingetrieben in eine bestimmte Konfiguration seines Ich. Fäden, die von außen gesponnen werden, treiben ihn weiter. Die Bewegung ist siegreich; Demetrius aber entwickelt sich zum Zarencharakter. Jetzt, wo das Ich zusammenstimmt mit der Welt um ihn her, erfährt er, daß er im Irrtum war: er ist nicht der echte Thronerbe. Er ist nicht mehr derjenige, als der er sich selbst gefunden hat. Er steht der Mutter gegenüber: sie verehrt ihn, aber die Stimme der Natur ist so stark in ihr, daß sie ihn als Sohn nicht anerkennen kann. Er jedoch ist selbst zu dem geworden, was er vorstellte. Er kann es nicht mehr von sich werfen, aber die Voraussetzungen dieses Ich fallen von ihm ab. Dies ist ein unendlich tragischer Konflikt, ihn können wir glauben. Alles ist auf die Spitze der Persönlichkeit gestellt, einer Persönlichkeit, die mit unendlicher Kunst gezeichnet ist, der wir glauben, daß sie «nicht über Sklaven herrschen wolle».
Auch das Äußere war mit all der Kunst gefügt, zu der nur Schiller imstande war. So wird in Sapieha, dem Opponenten des Demetrius, vorahnend der Charakter des Demetrius angezeigt. Auch hier wird die Symmetrie angestrebt, die im Wallenstein erreicht ist. Das Drama wurde nicht vollendet; der Tod trat dazwischen. So erhält der Tod Schillers etwas Tragisches; alle die Hoffnungen, die auf Schiller gesetzt wurden, sie kamen in den Briefen und Äußerungen seiner Zeitgenossen zum Ausdruck. Tief erschüttert von dem Verlust dessen, von dem man noch so vieles erwartete, klingt es uns aus den Briefen der Besten entgegen, wie bei Wilhelm von Humboldt:
«Er wurde der Welt in der vollendetsten Reife seiner geistigen Kraft entrissen, und hätte noch Unendliches leisten können. Sein Ziel war so gesteckt, daß er nie an einen Endpunkt gelangen konnte, und die immer fortschreitende Tätigkeit seines Geistes hätte keinen Stillstand besorgen lassen; noch sehr lange hätte er die Freude, das Entzücken, ja, wie er es in einem Briefe bei Gelegenheit des Plans zu einer Idylle so unnachahmlich beschreibt, die Seligkeit des dichterischen Schaffens genießen können.»
Das ist der Ton, der den Tod Schillers erst zum Tragischen erhebt, denn im gewöhnlichen Verlauf der Dinge hat der Tod nicht jenes Irrationelle. Aus dieser Stimmung heraus fand Goethe für den toten Freund in dem «Epilog zu Schillers Glocke» die Worte:
Und hinter ihm in wesenlosem Scheine
Lag, was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine.
Diesen großen idealistischen Zug, den können wir fortströmen sehen im 19. Jahrhundert. Man wurde sich bewußt, daß Schillers Geist erhebend sei, um fortan in allen Kämpfen seinem Volke Trost und Vorbild zu sein.
Das Fortwirkende von Schillers Idealismus in der deutschen Geistessubstanz sprach K. Gutzkow in seiner Rede zur Schillerfeier in der Harmonie in Dresden am 10. November 1859 aus, in den treffenden Worten:
«Das ist das Geheimnis unserer Liebe zu Schiller: Die Erhebung unserer Herzen! Der Mut zur Tat! Der treue Beistand, den die Nation in all ihren Lagen bei ihrem Liebling findet! Mut und Freudigkeit weckt, was uns an Schiller erinnert. So lieblich, so reich, so tief anheimelnd wie Goethe uns anmutet, was in seinen Schöpfungen an deutsche Art und Sitte erinnert, es ist wie Efeu, der sich trauernd träumerisch an das Vergangene schmiegt. Aber bei Schiller ist alles Zukunft, Fahnenwinken oder Lorbeer. Deshalb, deshalb feiern wir das hundertjährige Gedächtnis seines Namens so klingend und weithinschallend, wie das Schlagen an einen ehernen Schild. Hoch der Dichter der Tat, ein Hort des deutschen Vaterlandes.»
VI. Schiller's later dramas
We have seen how Schiller tried again and again in each of his later dramas to solve the problem of drama. There is something uplifting about seeing how Schiller, after each new great success—and these were extraordinary successes, recognized by the best of his time, even if there was no shortage of hostility—there is something particularly uplifting, I said, about seeing how he tried to climb to a higher stage with each new drama.
All his later dramas, “Tell,” “The Bride of Messina,” “The Maid of Orleans,” “Demetrius,” are all attempts to tackle the problem of the dramatic and the tragic in a new form. He would never have been satisfied with the belief that he had exhausted psychology. In “Maria Stuart,” we saw him deal with the problem of fate, creating a perfect situation in which only the characters unfold. In The Maid of Orleans, he delved even deeper into the human soul. He knew how to delve deeply into human psychology, establishing the problem in the way Hebbel described it when he said that the tragic must refer to something that is irrational in a certain way. Thus, in “The Maid,” we see the interplay of dark forces of the soul: she is a kind of somnambulist, under the influence of what can be called demonic, carried along by it. She is supposed to stand above humanity; only because she is a virgin does she have the right to go through the ranks of the enemy like a strangling angel in the service of her fatherland. In The Bride of Messina, Schiller attempts to raise the drama to a higher level by drawing on the original drama. He drew on the primal drama that preceded Aeschylus, which was not only art but an integral part of the truth encompassing religion, science, and art: the Dionysian drama that brought the suffering, dying, and resurrecting god to the stage as the representative of all humanity. The plot did not have the character of what we today call poetry. The drama of the world was to be presented, the truth in a beautiful, artistic form. It was intended to bring elevation and religious edification to mankind. Thus, for the audience, the mystery drama contained at the same time what later developed separately as religion, art, and philosophy.
This line of thought, developed by Friedrich Nietzsche in his work “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music,” in which he presents the primal drama as the higher form, was already present in Schiller's fundamental idea. Schiller's idea of elevating beauty to higher spheres by reintroducing the musical element was taken up again by Wagner on a grand scale and found monumental expression in musical drama. Wagner drew on myth and chose music to express the significant not in everyday language but in elevated language. The direction that art took in Wagner's circle was intended by Schiller. In his short introduction to “The Bride of Messina,” he finds a vivid and concise expression for this: true art should be achieved through freedom of mind in the lively interplay of all its powers. From this we can see what lived in Schiller. We have seen how Schiller's spirit climbed up to Goethe. He himself called Goethe's spirit intuitive, his own symbolic. This is a significant statement.
Schiller basically always thought of people as representatives of the species; he thought of them in a kind of symphony. We see drama growing out of a musical mood in his work: this results in a symphony of human characters, of acting and suffering characters. This meant that he needed to turn individual traits into symbols of great human experience. This is how Schiller became the poet of idealism: he drew on experience to bring down ideals and shape them into characters. His focus was on the problem of the human ego, the question of how people act within their environment.
In “The Bride of Messina,” he wanted to present the Greek tragedy of fate in a new form. There must be something in the human soul that causes people not to carry out their decisions in a rational manner—otherwise they would act more wisely—something dark must live within them, similar to Socrates' demon. This must influence them from the spiritual world. Schiller allows this incomprehensible force to play into the tragedy. In the way he does this, Schiller shows himself to be a thoroughly modern character. The plot is based on two dreams: the Prince of Messina dreams of a flame consuming two laurel trees. An Arab astrologer interprets this dream to mean that the daughter born to him will bring disaster to his sons, and he gives orders for her to be killed. At the same time, however, the princess has dreamed of a child with an eagle and a lion peacefully nestling around it. Her dream is also interpreted: a Christian monk promises her that her daughter will unite the two quarreling brothers in love for her. So she saves the child.
Thus, the dark and uncertain elements are woven into the starting point of the plot. It seems very subtle that the first dream is interpreted by an Arab and the second by a Christian; but Schiller does not decide in favor of either. If one removes everything that is mystical and dreamlike, only the struggle between the brothers remains, and this rational plot still remains dramatic. What is spiritual and particularly artistic is that each element is a whole; even without the mystical, the plot is complete. In this direction, Schiller has subtly and artfully placed something in this drama that transcends human consciousness. In this way, he arrived at an even higher answer to his question.
He works on the same psychology of humanity in “Tell.” I do not want to analyze the drama, only to show what Schiller was to the 19th century and what he will still be to us. It is not for nothing that Schiller sets “Tell” apart from the rest of the drama:
But whatever you do, leave me out of your council.
I do not want to deliberate or choose for long!
If you need me to take decisive action,
Then call on Tell, I will not fail you.
Unlike the others, he does not act under the influence of the idea of freedom, but out of purely personal feelings, the hurt feelings of a father. Schiller brings two lines together, something that concerns Tell alone and what the Swiss people feel.
Schiller wanted to show how things are not always so straightforward in human beings. We find the same thing in Hebbel's “Judich,” where the plight of the fatherland coincides with the wounded feelings of a woman; the poet needs something that springs directly from the human heart. Schiller does not want merely the moral, merely the sensual, but rather the moral should descend and become personal passion. Man becomes free only by being able to carry out his personal affairs in such a way that they coincide with the general. Thus Schiller worked piece by piece on the development of his psychology, and we see his idealism in a process of continuous clarification. This is the magic that lives in Schiller's dramas. He did not write his profound aesthetic writings in vain, nor did he immerse himself in these problems in vain.
Everything that was written about aesthetics in the 19th century by Vischer, Hartmann, Fechner, and so on, as significant and apt as much of it is, we see in all of them beauty being removed from human beings. Schiller, however, always studied what goes on in the human soul, how beauty affects the human soul. That is why what he says touches us so intimately, so familiarly, and why Schiller's prose writings can be read with delight again and again. It would be a worthy celebration of Schiller if these writings were widely distributed and read; they could contribute greatly to the deepening of the human spirit in artistic and moral terms. An educational yield should be drawn from Schiller's aesthetic letters; this would bring a new dimension to our entire education system.
Anyone who wants to understand Schiller's dramas must draw on the refined intellectual atmosphere of his aesthetic writings. Anyone who studies the unfortunately unfinished “Demetrius” will see how Schiller wanted to delve ever deeper into the human heart. “Demetrius” could have been a drama as moving and powerful as any of Shakespeare's. Many attempts have been made to complete “Demetrius,” but no one has been able to rise to the magnitude of the task. The thoroughly tragic conflict, with its rich plot, for example the Polish Reichstag, is—and this is the significant point—entirely transferred to the ego. We cannot say that our thoughts, perceptions, and feelings are our ego. We are what we are because the thoughts and feelings of our environment penetrate us. This Demetrius grew up in such a way that he himself does not know what his ego is. In a significant act, for which he is to be executed, he finds a treasure. It seems to turn out that he is entitled to the tsar's throne. Everything comes together, and he cannot help but believe that he is the true heir to the Russian throne. Thus, he is driven into a certain configuration of his self. Threads spun from outside drive him forward. The movement is victorious, but Demetrius develops into a tsarist character. Now that his ego is in harmony with the world around him, he learns that he was mistaken: he is not the true heir to the throne. He is no longer the person he thought he was. He stands before his mother: she reveres him, but the voice of nature is so strong in her that she cannot recognize him as her son. He, however, has become what he presented to himself as. He can no longer cast it off, but the prerequisites of this self fall away from him. This is an infinitely tragic conflict, and we can believe it. Everything is placed on the tip of his personality, a personality drawn with infinite artistry, which we believe “did not want to rule over slaves.”
Even his appearance was crafted with all the artistry that only Schiller was capable of. Thus, in Sapieha, Demetrius's opponent, the character of Demetrius is foreshadowed. Here, too, the symmetry achieved in Wallenstein is sought. The drama was not completed; death intervened. Thus, Schiller's death takes on something tragic; all the hopes that were placed on Schiller were expressed in the letters and statements of his contemporaries. Deeply shaken by the loss of someone from whom so much was still expected, we hear this echoed in the letters of the best, such as Wilhelm von Humboldt:
"He was taken from the world at the height of his intellectual powers, and could have achieved so much more. His goal was set in such a way that he could never reach an end point, and the ever-progressing activity of his mind would have prevented any standstill; he would have been able to enjoy the joy, the delight, indeed, as he so inimitably describes in a letter on the occasion of his plan for an idyll, the bliss of poetic creation for a very long time to come."
It is this tone that elevates Schiller's death to something tragic, for in the ordinary course of events, death does not have that irrational quality. It was in this mood that Goethe found the words for his dead friend in the “Epilogue to Schiller's Bell”:
And behind him, in an insubstantial glow,
Lay what binds us all, the commonplace.
We can see this great idealistic trait continuing into the 19th century. People became aware that Schiller's spirit was uplifting, and that it would henceforth be a source of comfort and an example to his people in all their struggles.
The continuing influence of Schiller's idealism on the German spirit was expressed by K. Gutzkow in his speech at the Schiller celebration in the Harmonie in Dresden on November 10, 1859, in the apt words:
"That is the secret of our love for Schiller: the uplifting of our hearts! The courage to act! The loyal support that the nation finds in its favorite in all its situations! Courage and joy are awakened by what reminds us of Schiller. As lovely, as rich, as deeply familiar as Goethe seems to us, what reminds us of German customs and traditions in his creations is like ivy that clings mournfully and dreamily to the past. But with Schiller, everything is future, flag-waving or laurels. That is why we celebrate the centenary of his name as resoundingly and loudly as the beating of a bronze shield. Long live the poet of action, a refuge of the German fatherland."