(1826)

My mind has been stimulated in many ways by this noteworthy book.

As a dramatic poet, as a writer who by extensive travels and by personal observation and study of foreign theatres has qualified himself as a critic of insight and knowledge in connection with our native theatre, and as one who by scholarly study has fitted himself to be a historian of past and present times, the author has an assured position with the German public, which is here especially evident and notable. In him, criticism rests upon pleasure, pleasure upon knowledge, and these criteria, which are usually thought of as distinct, are here fused into a satisfying whole.

His reverence for Kleist is highly praiseworthy. As far as I am personally concerned, in spite of the sincerest desire to appreciate him justly, Kleist always arouses in me horror and aversion, as of a body intended by nature to be beautiful, but seized by an incurable illness. Tieck is the very reverse; he dwells rather upon the good that has been left by nature; the deformity he puts aside, excusing much more than he blames. For, after all, this man of genius deserves only our pity; on this point we do reach agreement.

I also agree with him willingly when, as champion for the unity, indivisibility and inviolability of Shakespeare’s plays, he wants to have them put on the stage without revision or modification from beginning to end.

When ten years ago I was of the contrary opinion, and made more than one attempt to select only the particularly effective parts of Shakespeare’s plays, rejecting the disturbing and the diffuse, I was quite right, as director of the theatre, in doing so. For I had had experience in tormenting myself and the actors for the space of a month, and of finally putting on a production which indeed entertained and aroused admiration, but which on account of conditions hardly possible to fulfil more than once, could not maintain its place in the repertory. Still I am perfectly willing that such attempts should here and there be made, for, on the whole, failure does no harm.

Since men are not to get rid of longing and aspiration, it is salutary for them to direct their unsatisfied idealism towards some definite object, to work, for instance, towards depicting a mighty though vanished past seriously and worthily in the present. Now actors as well as poets and readers have the opportunity to study and see Shakespeare, and, through their endeavors to attain the unattainable, disclose the true inner capabilities and potentialities of their own nature.

Though in these respects I completely approve of the valuable efforts of my old co-worker, I must confess that I differ from him in some of his utterances; as, for instance, that “Lady Macbeth is a tender, loving soul, and as such should be played.” I do not consider such remarks to be really the author’s opinion, but rather paradoxes, which in view of the weighty authority of our author can only work great harm.

It is in the nature of the case, and Tieck himself has presented significant illustrations of the fact, that an actor who does not feel himself to be quite in agreement with the conventional portrayal, may in clever fashion modify and adjust it to himself and his own nature, and fit the new interpretation so well as to provide, as it were, a new and brilliant creation, and indemnify us for the clever fiction with unexpected and delightful new grounds of comparison and contrast.

This we must admit as valid; but we cannot approve the case where the theorist makes certain intimations to the actor, whereby the latter is led astray to portray the rôle in a new manner and style against the obvious intention of the poet.

From many viewpoints such an undertaking is questionable. The public is looking for authority always; and it is right. For do we not act similarly in taking counsel in joy and sorrow with those who are well versed in the wisdom of art and of life? Whoever then has acquired any legitimate authority in any field should strive, by continual assiduity in holding close to the line of the true and the right, to preserve that authority in inviolable sanctity.

An important paper is Tieck’s explanation of the Piccolomini and the Wallenstein. I saw these plays develop from beginning to end, and I am filled with admiration at the degree of penetration which he shows in treating a work which, although one of the most excellent not only on the German stage but on all stages, yet in itself is unequal, and for that reason often fails to satisfy the critic, although the crowd, which does not take the separate parts with such strictness, is necessarily charmed with it as a whole.

Most of the places where Tieck finds something to criticize, I find reason to consider as pathological. If Schiller had not been suffering from a long wasting disease, which finally killed him, the whole thing would have been different. Our correspondence, which relates in the clearest way the circumstances under which Wallenstein was written, will stimulate thoughtful people to much profitable reflection, and persuade them to think ever more seriously how closely our æsthetics is connected with physiology, pathology, and physics: in this way they may realize the light which these sciences throw upon the conditions to which individuals as well as whole nations, the most extensive world-epochs as well as daily affairs, are subjected.