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selenakOkay, one of my christmas presents was a Schiller biography. And being utterly corrupted by fandom, I found myself thinking that if German universities were more like lj world, Goethe/Schiller would so be the OTP of all OTPs.
Behold, English-speaking world in ignorance of the saga: When they first met, they were profoundly irritated by one another. Goethe was ten years older and had left the Sturm und Drang behind which Schiller was just embarking on, and was busy trying to be respectable in Weimar. Schiller was all youthful rebellion and thought Goethe had sold out and most of all was angry that Goethe ignored him. Which resulted in him writing to a friend that "Goethe was like a proud bitch one had to get pregnant in order to humiliate her in front of the world", I kid you not. (The original German is "eine stolze Prüde, der man ein Kind machen muß, um sie vor der Welt zu demütigen".)
Then Goethe went to Italy for two years, found himself again as a poet (and had lots of sex), and when he returned to Weimar, Schiller had settled into married stability and the bourgeois life. He also had just founded a new literary paper for which he needed well-known names as co-workers. Which led to a meeting with guess whom and a letter. This time, they hit it off. Even in his very old age Goethe got misty eyed when speaking of the "happy event" (das glückliche Ereignis) when they had their very first friendly argument, resulting in Schiller saying, re: one of Goethe's points, "but that's not an experience, that's an idea!". The next day, Schiller wrote a rather long wooing letter, and the result was German classicism, i.e. intense correspondance, lots of meetings, and the poems and plays these two literary giants are most famous for. The relationship also kept being compared to a love affair. Quoth August Schlegel (he who co-wrote the most famous Shakespeare translation) and had something of a feud going with Schiller:
"In any case, Goethe tried to mediate between us rather charmingly. His delicate concern for Schiller, which resembled the care a tender husband takes with his hysterical wife, did not stop him from being friends with us." ("Us" being the Schlegel brothers, the Coen brothers of their day. In the German original: "Überhaupt trat Goethe auf eine sehr liebenswürdige Weise vermittelnd ein. Seine sorgsame Schonung für Schiller, welche der eines zärtlichen Ehemannes für seine nervenschwache Frau glich, hielt ihn nicht ab, mit uns auf dem freundschaftlichstem Fuße fortzuleben." )
And here's Schiller's most famous summing-up of the relationship, in one of the letters:
"...it has become a kind of religion for me to make your cause to mine, to form all which is reality in me to the purest mirror of the mind which lives in this form, and so to deserve being called your friend. How vividly did I find out on this occasion that the sublime is a power, that it can only be felt as a power even in a selfish heart, for there is no freedom against him who is sublime but love."
(Sounds better in German: "....und das schöne Verhältnis, das unter uns ist, macht es mir zu einer gewissen Religion, Ihre Sache hierin zu der meinigen zu machen, alles was in mir Realität ist, zu dem reinsten Spiegel des Geistes auszubilden, der in dieser Hülle lebt, und so, in einem höheren Sinn des Worts, den Namen Ihres Freundes zu verdienen. Wie lebhaft habe ich bei dieser Gelegenheit erfahren, daß das Vortreffliche eine Macht ist, daß es auf selbstsüchtige Gemüter auch nur als eine Macht wirken kann, daß es, dem Vortrefflichem gegenüber keine Freiheit gibt als die Liebe.")
As for Goethe, years later after Schiller's death, the recitation of a Schillerian ballad was enough to let him burst into tears and tell the actress who was doing the reciting: "I cannot, cannot forget this man!" (And Goethe was avowedly not the bursting into tears type, especially not in his old age.) They got sick at the same time, only Schiller died of it and Goethe lived. Now if this was a film or a tv show or a novel, you can bet the slashers would have been salviating eons ago. True, both men had their canon love interests as well. Schiller was married, and Goethe was living, scandalously for the time, with his mistress Christiane Vulpius whom he married years later. Which didn't stop the Weimar society from cutting poor Christiane, both for the long living together unmarried thing and because of her working class origins. I must say Schiller wasn't behaving well at all in this regard - in Goethe's letters, there are always greetings for Mrs Schiller, but Schiller managed to spend weeks at Goethe's house where Christiane was the hostess without even mentioning her in his thank you note. However, if you take the slash explanation, then everything is clear - he was jealous!
Anyway, canon relationships never stopped 'shippers of any calibre. So, if German literature were a fandom, you'd have the initial enemies state, then the meeting of minds state, and then the two-of-us-against-the-world state (they even got into flame wars with other writers; brush up the Xenien). And then the heartrendering death plus post-mortem angst and grief on the part of the survivor.
Am I glad I got my doctorate years ago. They'd never take me seriously now. This is fandom. Fandom did this to me...
...but I still wonder why there are no G/S 'shippers around...
Behold, English-speaking world in ignorance of the saga: When they first met, they were profoundly irritated by one another. Goethe was ten years older and had left the Sturm und Drang behind which Schiller was just embarking on, and was busy trying to be respectable in Weimar. Schiller was all youthful rebellion and thought Goethe had sold out and most of all was angry that Goethe ignored him. Which resulted in him writing to a friend that "Goethe was like a proud bitch one had to get pregnant in order to humiliate her in front of the world", I kid you not. (The original German is "eine stolze Prüde, der man ein Kind machen muß, um sie vor der Welt zu demütigen".)
Then Goethe went to Italy for two years, found himself again as a poet (and had lots of sex), and when he returned to Weimar, Schiller had settled into married stability and the bourgeois life. He also had just founded a new literary paper for which he needed well-known names as co-workers. Which led to a meeting with guess whom and a letter. This time, they hit it off. Even in his very old age Goethe got misty eyed when speaking of the "happy event" (das glückliche Ereignis) when they had their very first friendly argument, resulting in Schiller saying, re: one of Goethe's points, "but that's not an experience, that's an idea!". The next day, Schiller wrote a rather long wooing letter, and the result was German classicism, i.e. intense correspondance, lots of meetings, and the poems and plays these two literary giants are most famous for. The relationship also kept being compared to a love affair. Quoth August Schlegel (he who co-wrote the most famous Shakespeare translation) and had something of a feud going with Schiller:
"In any case, Goethe tried to mediate between us rather charmingly. His delicate concern for Schiller, which resembled the care a tender husband takes with his hysterical wife, did not stop him from being friends with us." ("Us" being the Schlegel brothers, the Coen brothers of their day. In the German original: "Überhaupt trat Goethe auf eine sehr liebenswürdige Weise vermittelnd ein. Seine sorgsame Schonung für Schiller, welche der eines zärtlichen Ehemannes für seine nervenschwache Frau glich, hielt ihn nicht ab, mit uns auf dem freundschaftlichstem Fuße fortzuleben." )
And here's Schiller's most famous summing-up of the relationship, in one of the letters:
"...it has become a kind of religion for me to make your cause to mine, to form all which is reality in me to the purest mirror of the mind which lives in this form, and so to deserve being called your friend. How vividly did I find out on this occasion that the sublime is a power, that it can only be felt as a power even in a selfish heart, for there is no freedom against him who is sublime but love."
(Sounds better in German: "....und das schöne Verhältnis, das unter uns ist, macht es mir zu einer gewissen Religion, Ihre Sache hierin zu der meinigen zu machen, alles was in mir Realität ist, zu dem reinsten Spiegel des Geistes auszubilden, der in dieser Hülle lebt, und so, in einem höheren Sinn des Worts, den Namen Ihres Freundes zu verdienen. Wie lebhaft habe ich bei dieser Gelegenheit erfahren, daß das Vortreffliche eine Macht ist, daß es auf selbstsüchtige Gemüter auch nur als eine Macht wirken kann, daß es, dem Vortrefflichem gegenüber keine Freiheit gibt als die Liebe.")
As for Goethe, years later after Schiller's death, the recitation of a Schillerian ballad was enough to let him burst into tears and tell the actress who was doing the reciting: "I cannot, cannot forget this man!" (And Goethe was avowedly not the bursting into tears type, especially not in his old age.) They got sick at the same time, only Schiller died of it and Goethe lived. Now if this was a film or a tv show or a novel, you can bet the slashers would have been salviating eons ago. True, both men had their canon love interests as well. Schiller was married, and Goethe was living, scandalously for the time, with his mistress Christiane Vulpius whom he married years later. Which didn't stop the Weimar society from cutting poor Christiane, both for the long living together unmarried thing and because of her working class origins. I must say Schiller wasn't behaving well at all in this regard - in Goethe's letters, there are always greetings for Mrs Schiller, but Schiller managed to spend weeks at Goethe's house where Christiane was the hostess without even mentioning her in his thank you note. However, if you take the slash explanation, then everything is clear - he was jealous!
Anyway, canon relationships never stopped 'shippers of any calibre. So, if German literature were a fandom, you'd have the initial enemies state, then the meeting of minds state, and then the two-of-us-against-the-world state (they even got into flame wars with other writers; brush up the Xenien). And then the heartrendering death plus post-mortem angst and grief on the part of the survivor.
Am I glad I got my doctorate years ago. They'd never take me seriously now. This is fandom. Fandom did this to me...
...but I still wonder why there are no G/S 'shippers around...
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-26 04:55 pm (UTC)Otherwise, very entertaining post, as always.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-26 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-26 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-26 05:27 pm (UTC)Squeee!
Date: 2004-12-26 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-26 05:40 pm (UTC)Lovely post, Selena. And a belated merry Christmas. :-)
no subject
Date: 2004-12-26 05:43 pm (UTC)One interesting thing, btw: though Vulpius had this big bestseller going with Rinaldo Rinaldini - which btw was of course inspired by Schiller's Die Räuber - he didn't make much money from it and hence kept needing financial help. This was in the days before copyright was a given, and there were many illegal reprints in the other German states. Goethe was the first writer who due to his political position had the power to ask for a copyright respected in other German states outside of the one where he was living as well, and who actually got that copyright, for the most part.
(He still couldn't have lived from his work as a writer, for all the acknowledged genius of the age thing. There is a rather ironic verse about it, to the effect of "was nützt es mir, daß selbst der Chinese/malt mit fliegender Hand/ Werther und Lotten auf Glas" (what's the use to me that even the Chinese paint/ Werther and Charlotte on glass) if one didn't get a living out of it, and how hence the Duke of Weimar was to be praised for providing said living.)
isn't it, thank you, and...
Date: 2004-12-26 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-26 06:46 pm (UTC)damn, you don't know how often I've thought this. OK, I've never thought this, but now I will. I fall at the feet of your constant ability to teach me something and make me laugh at once!
and thanks for the heads-up on the German version of the Trapp story. I'm gonna have to see what I can find. Somehow I had gotten the impression that the Trapps weren't actually well known in the German-speaking world and Rodgers & Hammerstein . There was a radio story a few years ago about some Austrian teachers who went to work at schools in New York City, and were very perplexed that the first Austrian and only Austrian most Americans would mention was Maria von Trapp. My mother lived in Salzburg as a child, though she doesn't remember it. Her father (who was in the US military, and was a bit of an unreformed Captain von Trapp himself) would always watch the movie with us and point out. I do think the American film is worth it for Christopher Plummer and Charmian Carr, but if Julie Andrews doesn't appall you, Julie Andrews and the bad Austrian history just might.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-26 06:50 pm (UTC)glad to amuse *g*
Date: 2004-12-26 07:07 pm (UTC)Betcha there was at least one other Austrian most Americans mention far more ofthen - Hitler. Though of course as we say in Germany, the Austrians have managed to let the world assume Hitler was German and Beethoven was Austrian, when it was actually the other way around.*g*
The von Trapp story: used to be well known. Less so know. But my grandmothers were all agog about Ruth Leuwerik as Maria von Trapp.
Julie Andrews: I liked her in Victor/Victoria, though Mary Poppins was overdoing it a bit. Bad Austrian history: see above.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-26 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-26 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-26 08:57 pm (UTC)Re: glad to amuse *g*
Date: 2004-12-26 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-26 10:07 pm (UTC)Re: glad to amuse *g*
Date: 2004-12-26 10:19 pm (UTC)Btw, here are some movie trivia: Fritz Lang, called "a typical Prussian" by every American who ever worked with him, wasn't just Austrian, he was from Vienna. Billy Wilder, whom Humphrey Bogart was a complete jerk to during the shooting of Sabrina (he didn't just call him a Prussian task master, he did a lot of Hitler salutes and Heils, which considering that Wilder lost most of his family in concentration camps was beyond the pale), was Austrian as well. Erich von Stroheim, playing "the Hun" in dozens of WWI movies? Austrian.
Your Slovakan bloke probably had some leftover k.u.k resentments. Here, we're just miffed they get the Edelweiss and Viennese waltz image while we're stuck with everyone's favourite all purpose villains.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-26 10:59 pm (UTC)And for Germanista slash, how about Hegel and Hoelderlin? I don't know very much about either of them, but I've always loved the fact that they were college roommates.
Historical ignoramus here
Date: 2004-12-26 11:05 pm (UTC)Re: Historical ignoramus here
Date: 2004-12-27 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-27 07:44 am (UTC)Hegel/Hölderlin would at the very least be very angsty, considering that one H ends up mad.*g*
Re: Historical ignoramus here
Date: 2004-12-27 09:13 pm (UTC)... and let's not forget Sissi. Arté recently showed Visconti's Ludwig, and among many, many gems was Viconti's brilliant idea of casting Romy Schneider as the middle-aged, infinitely poised Empress Elisabeth - she had this complete believability as the Empress; we remembered her young. (She also knew, or Visconti taught her, how to wear a robe à tournure complete with demi-train, veil and parasol, in ways that make 99% of actresses in period films look costumed.)
Re: Historical ignoramus here
Date: 2004-12-28 08:26 am (UTC)It also makes me sorry they didn't make more films together...
Re: Historical ignoramus here
Date: 2004-12-28 10:20 am (UTC)Re: Historical ignoramus here
Date: 2004-12-28 12:06 pm (UTC)Just to round it off, what's your take on Ava Gardner as (middle-aged) Elisabeth in Mayerling? (Starring Deneuve as Mary Vetsera and Omar Sharif as Rudolf.)
no subject
Date: 2004-12-28 10:35 pm (UTC)Oh, and: happy belated Christmas :)
Frohe Weihnachten to you, too, and...
Date: 2004-12-28 10:50 pm (UTC)And hey, Goethe & Schiller (and any combination thereof) are fun, so whaddaya mean, fortunate? Also, considering that Schiller was big on Kant, you might not escape the Red Haired One altogether.
Re: Frohe Weihnachten to you, too, and...
Date: 2004-12-28 11:29 pm (UTC)Well, fortunately on the sense that we'll be having Philosophical Antropology by a teacher.. well, he's supposed to be the most scary man to walk the planet, according to older-years. In part they tell us that to spook us, of course, but from what I've heard there's a lot of truth in the stories as well, and I don't think I'd like to see my self babbling on about fandom in front of him. I mean, fandom talk with my APh teacher, or my Metahpysics teacher isn't so bad, bu with him? I want to survive another day.
Though it might be a nice distraction at times, too..
Great to read this
Date: 2012-04-03 10:04 am (UTC)However,the most famous German couple in my country is definitely Marx/Engels,due to the propaganda machine even little kids here know many of the rather moving details in their relationship,and there is a lot of gossip about them...
Re: Great to read this
Date: 2012-04-03 12:53 pm (UTC)And yes, I can see Mark/Engels offering all the potential in the world.
Re: Great to read this
Date: 2012-04-09 08:59 am (UTC)http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=1250302797
http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=1483719&chapterid=1
Long fiction:
http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=495125
Poem/Prose
http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=380713
http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=310958
I suppose there will be more in Japanese,as Japan is the birthplace of slash culture,and more developed as well as "western" than China. Personally, I think slash is one of the few things we Asians could be really proud of, it is also a great contribution to human equality career.
Surely the Germans have created a lot of slash works of their national heroes? This affair is such a public one.
Re: Great to read this
Date: 2012-04-09 09:08 am (UTC)Local members of China Communist Party often come there to take a photo together with the same gestureXD The Party is generally considered as the church in theocratic China^^
no subject
Date: 2018-07-16 04:58 am (UTC)