The Poems of Schiller — Third period

FOOTNOTES:

     In Schiller the eight long lines that conclude each stanza of
   this charming love-poem, instead of rhyming alternately as in the
   translation, chime somewhat to the tune of Byron's Don Juan—six lines
   rhyming with each other, and the two last forming a separate couplet.
   In other respects the translation, it is hoped, is sufficiently close
   and literal.

     The peach.

     Sung in "The Parasite," a comedy which Schiller translated from
   Picard—much the best comedy, by the way, that Picard ever wrote.

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

     "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.

    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
   pass which winds now to the right, now to the left, of a roaring stream.

     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.

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

     This has been paraphrased by Coleridge.

     Ajax the Less.

     Ulysses.

     Achilles.

     Diomed.

     Cassandra.

     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 gods.  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—associating 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.
     What a beautiful vindication of the shortness of human life!

     The corn-flower.

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

     President of Council of Five Hundred.

     We have already seen in "The Ring of Polycrates," Schiller's mode
   of dealing with classical 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 classic 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 Cassandra 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
   Hellenic 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 identity, 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
   "Coriolanus," 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 circumstances, is accurately, though loosely
   outlined. When the poet raises the dead, it is not to restore, but to
   remodel.

     This notes the time of year—not the time of day—viz., about the
   23d of September.—HOFFMEISTER.

     Hecate as the mysterious goddess of Nature.—HOFFMEISTER.

     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 passage 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 passed 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."

     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.

     "Die Gestalt"—Form, the Platonic Archetype.

     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."

     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.

     "But in God's sight submission is command."  "Jonah," by the Rev.
   F. Hodgson.  Quoted in Foreign and Colonial Review, July, 1843: Art.
   Schiller, p. 21.

     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?

     "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.

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

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

     Written in the time of the French war.

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

     The epithet in the first edition is ruhmlose.

     For this interesting story, see Cox'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.

     This poem is very characteristic of the noble 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 shines the solemn moral.

     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 gods, 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.

     Achilles.

     "Nur ein Wunder kann dich tragen
         In das schoene Wunderland."—SCHILLER, Sehnsucht.

     This simile is nobly 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 passion, the evil, the earth's offspring), when bearing it
   from earth itself, and stifling it in the higher air.

     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.

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

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

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

     This was the title of the publication in which many of the finest
   of Schiller's "Poems of the Third Period" originally appeared.