NIETZSCHE'S ‘SCHILLERBILD’: A RE-EVALUATION

Geman Life and Letters 48:4 October 1995 001W777

NIETZSCHE’S ‘SCHILLERBILD’: A RE-EVALUATION

NICHOLAS MARTIN

On the rare occasions when Nietzsche and Schiller are mentioned in the same breath, they are usually presented as antagonists. Received wisdom has it that these two writers are antipodes; that Nietzsche’s radical break with the Idealist tradition in German philosophy must reduce any comparison with Schiller to a black-and-white contrast. This is precisely what Nietzsche, or rather the later Nietzsche, would have us believe. This belief is widely held, but does not withstand close scrutiny. Nietzsche’s later tirades against Schiller have become a cliche in studies of both writers. The most explosive and memorable of these broadsides is his characterisation of Schiller as ‘der Moral-Trompeter von Sackingen’.’ Yet these later outbursts conceal an ambivalent attachment to Schiller’s character and work, which began early and was never fully resolved. They have tended, moreover, to obscure his close and productive engagement with Schiller’s writings in the early 1870s and the extent to which this engagement is reflected in Nietz- sche’s first published work, Die Geburt der Tragodie (1872). The aim of this analysis is not to make exaggerated claims for the importance of Schiller to Nietzsche’s thought, but rather to establish the nature and development of Nietzsche’s ‘Schillerbild’, both before and after but particularly during the gestation of Die Geburt &r Tragodie. The approach will be, first, to trace the oscillations of Nietzsche’s attitude to Schiller, in order to correct the impression that it was uniformly hostile, and, second, to show that the early Nietzsche established his own, positive image of Schiller in deliberate opposition to what he saw as the pernicious and complacent image of ‘unser Schiller’, held by many of his contemporaries.

Despite the vast secondary literature dealing with Schiller and Nietzsche as separate figures, studies comparing or contrasting them are few and far between and there is no consensus on Nietzsche’s view of Schiller.” The

’ Friedrich Nietzsche, GofZrn-Dammmmg, ‘Streifziige eines Unzeitgemassen’ 1, in Friedrich NLtzsche. Siimlliche Wcrke. Krilicche Studirnaurgabc /KSA], ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 2nd edition, 15 vols, Munich/Berlin/New York 1988, 6/11], References to Nietzsche’s works are to KSA and include the name of the work in an abbreviated form, followed by the section, chapter or aphorism number, and the KSA volume and page numbers, e.g. (GT 20: 1/131). Abbreviations used: BA - Uebn die Zukm~ wuern Bildungsarukaltm; DS - David Straws &r Beknvur und dn Schn#stcller; EH - Ecce Homo; CD - G&rn-Dcinrmnung; G T - D L Geburt der Tragodir; H L - Yon Nutzrn und Nachtheil dn Hirtoriejir dar Lebm; M - MorgmrOtk; N -Nachq; SE - Schopnhaur a l s Erzirher; VM - Vennischtc Mcinvngm wd Spkht; WA - D n Fall Wagner; WS - Dcr Wandrrtr und rein Schalln.

Paul Geyer, ‘Nietzsche und Schiller’, PrcuJische Johrbicher, 102 (IW), 400-1 1; Udo Gaede, Schiller und Nietzsche olr Vnkiindn d n tragischm Kuffur, Berlin 1908; August HomeKcr, ‘Schillcr und Nietzsche’, Dir Tat, I (1909-10), 527-35; Charles Andlcr, Nirtzscht, sa oic el ra pnrr;C, Paris 1920-31, I, pp. 43-67; Herbert Cysan, ‘Schiller und Nietzsche’, JFDH, 26 (1927), 12147; lngeborg Bcithan, Friedrich NL&che olr CJwuuerter dn drulschm Ltkrafur, Heidelberg 1933, pp. 147-57; Paul Schutze- Berghof, ‘Nictzschc und dcr Moraltrompeter von Sackingcn’, Die Pmjyliin, 33 (1936), 249-50;

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NIETZSCHE’S ‘SCHILLERBILD’: A RE-EVALUATION 517

few studies published in the first half of the twentieth century, with the exception of Andler’s and Beithan’s, tend to be partisan and of indifferent quality. A common characteristic of these early studies is that they do not deal with the detail of Nietzsche’s attitude to Schiller, presenting instead a broadbrush character comparison. The interpretation which follows is indebted to all of these discussions but does not agree with any of them.

Nietzsche’s earliest remarks on Schiller are thoroughly unexceptional and wholly in tune with the high-minded eulogies which accompanied the Schiller centenary celebrations in November 1859, when Nietzsche was fifteen. He took part in the celebrations at Schulpforta, describing them in a letter to his mother as ‘ein gronartiger A k t ~ s ’ . ~ To judge from the young Pfdrtner’s account, the commemoration seems to have been an elaborate affair spread over two days, with poetry readings, lieder recitals, and speeches, culminating in the ‘ausgezeichnete Rede’ given by the formidable headmaster, Professor Koberstein, ‘worin er besonders hervorhob, da8 es ein hoffnungsvolles Zeichen f i r Deutschlands Zukunft sei daB die Geburts- tage [sic] ihrer gro8en Manner immer mehr Nationalfeste wiirden, die Deutschland trotz seiner politischen Zerissenheit [sic] zu einem Ganzen verbanden’ (KSB 1/85). Peter Bergmann has recently remarked that ‘at Schulpforta the Schiller festival was celebrated with a particular seriousness; the school felt it was also honoring its own period of greatness, when Schulpforta disseminated the new classical pedagogy throughout Central Europe’.* Of the 1859 celebrations in general, he comments:

Of all nineteenth-century celebrations of genius, the Schiller Centennial came closest to a secular form of worship [. . .] The countless commemorative gatherings throughout the German cultural world assumed the character of a great revival meeting of the Schiller cult of yesteryear, ritually re-enacting the canonization of Schiller as the national saint.5

Helmut Rehder, ‘The Reluctant Disciple: Nietzsche and Schiller’, in Studim in Nutzsche and the Classical Tradition, ed. J. C. OFlaherty, T. F. Sellner and R. M. Helm, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 1976, pp. 156-64, Benjamin Bennett, ‘Nietzsche’s idea of myth: the birth of tragedy from the spirit of eighteenth-century aesthetics’, PMLA, 94 (1979), 420-33; Adrian Del Caro, ‘Ethical Aesthetic: Schiller and Nietzsche as Critics of the Eighteenth Century’, GR, 55 (1980), 55-63; Matthias Politycki, Dn friihc Nictache und die dcutsche Klnrsik: Studin zu Problmun litcrarischer Wertung, Straubingl Munich 1981, pp. 1167% Matthias Politycki, Umwntung u&r Werte? Dculschc Litcrutur im Urteil Nietaches, Berlin/New York 1989, pp. 364-77. ’ Letter to Franziska Nietzsche, mid-November 1859, in Friedrich Nietache. Siinrtliche Brie&. Kritirche Sfudinnurgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 8 vols, Munich/Berlin/New York 1986, I / 84. Subsequent references to this edition will be in the form KSB, followed by the volume and page numbers. ’ Peter Bergmann, Nictuche, the Lact Antiplitical German, Bloomington/Indianapolis 1987, p. 21.

Ibid.; the Schiller cult had grown in strength during the ‘Vormarz’ and reached its apotheosis during the 1859 centenary celebrations. A representative selection of speeches is reprinted in Schilln- Redm [18.59], ed. Heinrich Kerler, Ulm 1905. See also Siegbert Prawer, ‘The Schiller Centenary of 1859’, CLL, 3 (1949/50), 212-20, the same author’s ‘The Schiller Cult in “Biedermeier” Times’, MLR, 45 (1950), 18%94, and Rudolf Gottschall, Dis h c h e Nationallittcruhr &s ncunzchnfn J a h h - d n t s , 5th edition, 4 vols, Breslau 1881, i, 85n.

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518 NIETZSCHE’S ‘SCHILLERBILD’: A RE-EVALUATION

An impression of the cultic atmosphere surrounding the centenary can be gained from the following hyperbolic account:

Der hundertjahrige Geburtstag Schillen hatte bei allen Verehrern des groBen Deutschen den Wunsch einer allgemeinen GedachtniRfeier angeregt. Und nicht nur die Gebildeten, nein, auch die untern Stande des Volkes nahmen lebhaft an diesem Nationalfeste Antheil. Ueber die Grenzen Deutschlands hinaus war das Geriicht hievon gedrungen; fremde Lander, j a ferne Erdtheile trafen grol3artige Vorbereitungen zu diesem Tage, so daR man wohl behaupten kann, daR noch kein Schriftsteller ein allgemeineres Interesse hervorgerufen hat als Schiller.6

This is Nietzsche’s own recollection, written some four weeks after the Schulpforta celebrations. Its extravagant language mirrors, and to a large extent derives from, the idiom and tone of contemporary ‘Schillerverehrung’:

In Wahrheit, seit Homer hat kein Dichter auf die menschliche Gesellschaft eine so unermeflliche Wirkung gehabt wie Schiller. Der 10. November von 1859 hat dies herrlich bezeugt. Nie, so lange die Welt steht, ist die Sakularfeier des Geburtstages eines Menschen im Vaterlande wie in der Fremde so allge- mein, so dankbar und groRartig begangen worden, wie Schillers hundertjah- riger Geburtstag begangen wurde.’

The reasons for the young Nietzsche’s enthusiasm were entirely conventional. He shared the by now commonplace view of Schiller as the literary standard-bearer of liberal nationalism, and he had inherited the orthodox understanding of Schiller’s works, which accompanied that view. His private account continues: ‘Aber wodurch konnte man den Dichter wurdiger feiern, als durch die Auffihrung seiner hohen Werke? Was vermochte uns mehr an ihn [zu] erinnern, als seine eignen Geistesprodukte, der Spiegel seines groRen Geistes?’ (BA W i 186).

In the light of Nietzsche’s precocity as a classical scholar, it is easy to forget that his schooling equipped him with an equally formidable knowledge of the German classics: ‘Die Zeit stand still in diesen klosterlichen Eumen , die deutsche Wirklichkeit [. . .] drang nicht uber ihre dicken Mauern; die Jugend, die hier aufwuchs - eine erlesene Jugend -, ging auf in der Welt von Hellas und Rom und in der Welt Goethes und Schillers’.” Helmut Rehder has speculated that ‘it must have been at the “Pforte” that Schiller [. . .] ceased to be an object of mere “Bildung” for Nietzsche and became a challenge, a threat, a force, a desirability in his existence - a

Friedrich Nietzsche, Hutorirch-kntisch Ccsamfanrgabc, WmtC, 5 vols [1854-69], ed. Hans Joachim Mette, Karl Schlechta and Carl Koch, Munich 1933-40, reprinted Munich 1994, I, p. 186. Subsequent references to this edition will be in the form BAW, followed by the volume and page numbers. Johannes Scherr, Alfg& &chid& dn Lilnohr, 4th edition, 2 vols, Stuttgart 1872, 11, p. 24311.

‘Curt Paul Jam, Friedkh Nut-ck: Bwgraphu, 3 vols, MunichIVienna 1978-79, I, p. 67. @ Blrhreu PuMhbcn Lcd 1995.


kind of mythical mirror of his own intellectual s i t~a t ion’ .~ There is no evidence from Nietzsche’s correspondence and notes of the 1850s and 1860s to support this speculation. He seems to have done no more than imbibe his Schiller in the approved manner, that is to say he occasionally adorns a letter with a Schillerian quotation, and in his student days at Bonn and Leipzig he sometimes goes to see a Schiller play.” There is good evidence, however, that in the early 1870s, while mulling over the aesthetic and cultural problems which Die Geburl dcr Trugodie would attempt to solve, Nietzsche’s attitude to Schiller became subtler and more differentiated.

I t seems that, by the early 1870s, Nietzsche was able to separate Schiller’s character from his work. In general, his character is praised, and his work, with the exception of parts of his aesthetic theory, is damned. This separation of character and work is precisely what Nietzsche was able to do in his treatment of, among others, Schopenhauer. Even after rejecting the pessimistic ethical conclusions of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, Nietzsche could still write in glowing terms of Schopenhauer’s exemplary courage, discipline, and nobility of character.” These are the human qualities Nietz- sche is seeking to resuscitate, in order to regenerate contemporary German culture. While he looks back above all to pre-Socratic models in this enterprise, he also needs more recent, German precursors, both to provide precedent and authority for his project and to reassure himself that he is not, as he was to believe later, a voice crying in the wilderness.

The five figures in Nietzsche’s ‘Teutonic succession’ are Luther, Goethe, Schiller, Schopenhauer and Wagner (N Winter 1870-71 - Autumn 1872: 7/260).’* Luther’s contribution was to have begun to assert a German identity. Nietzsche viewed the music of the German Reformation as the first sign of a reawakening of the ‘Dionysian’ spirit: ‘Aus diesem [dionysischen] Abgrunde ist die deutsche Reformation hervorgewachsen: in deren Choral die Zukunftsweise der deutschen Musik zuerst erklang’ (GT 23: 1/147). Goethe’s and Schiller’s contribution was to have struggled towards a Ger- man culture. In Die Geburt der Tragodae there is a reference to their ‘edelster Bildungskampf ( G T 20: 1/129), and in a note of the same period Nietzsche praises the ‘ungeheure Arbeit Schillers [und] Goethes zu einem deutschen Stile zu kommen’ (N 1872-73: 7/505). This development was furthered by

Rehder, ‘The Reluctant Disciple’, p. 157. See, for example, his letters to Carl von GersdorfT of 15 August 1866 (KSB 2/154), and to his

mother and sister of 17 January 1869 (KSB 2/362). I ’ In Die Geburf dn Tragodie Schopenhauer is likened to ‘den [Diirerschen] Ritter mit Tod und Teufel, [. . .] mit dem enenen, harten Blicke, der seinen Schreckensweg, unbeirrt [. . .] und doch hoffnungslos, allein mit Ross und Hund zu nehmen weiss [. . .I: ihm fehlte jede Hoffnung, aber er wollte die Wahrheit’ (CT 20: 1/131). Nietzsche’s admiration for Schopenhauer’s character is set out at length in Sc+w als Erziehn 2-4 (1/341-375). For a critical examination of his philosophy, see ‘Zu Schopenhauer. Philosophische Notizen [1868]’ (BA W iii 352-60). I2 Beethoven is also included, as Wagner’s musical precursor, a claim Wagner himself had made in his panegyric Beerhorn, Leipzig 1870, to celebrate Beethoven’s hundredth birthday, a work much admind by Nietzsche, and which he cites in support of his metaphysics of music in Die Gcbnri &r Tragidie 16 (11104).

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Schopenhauer: ‘Stutzen der deutschwerdenden Kultur: Schopenhauer - vertieft die Weltbetrachtung der Goethe-Schiller-Kultur’ (N 1872-73: 7/ 504). The baton is then passed to Wagner: ‘Wagner vollendet, was Goethe und Schiller begonnen haben. Auf dem eigentlich deutschen Gebiet [i.e. the terrain of music]’ (N 1871: 7/280). As we shall see, it is Beethoven and, especially, Wagner who have made the decisive contributions, according to Nietzsche, by recreating ‘Dionysian’ music in a German context. Schiller, by contrast, is viewed as an exemplary character whose works, while hinting at the importance of music, fail to carry out their promise. In a draft outline of Die Gcburt dcr Tragodic Nietzsche planned to insert a chapter entitled ‘Shakespeare Schiller’ between the chapter ‘Tod der Tragdie’ and the concluding chapter ‘Richard Wagner’ (N 187 1 : 7/319). Julius Zeitler sum- marises the early Nietzsche’s attitude well:

Die Klassiker haben ja ihre Sache recht brav gemacht, meint Nietzsche, und er ist immer so giitig, ihnen gute Noten zu geben. Aber eins vermisste er doch schmerzlich an ihnen, die Musik. Dass ihre Wortdramen ‘Mangel an Musik’ zeigten, das konnte er ihnen nicht vergeben.13

Nietzsche views Schiller as a precursor of his own (and hence also of Wagner’s) cultural project, but only in a provisional sense; ‘Schiller weist auf die trugischc Kultur hin’, he notes in 1871 (N7/105). A second emphasis here, as in all of Nietzsche’s early comments on Schiller, is on the ‘hinweisen’. At the end of 1870 he noted: ‘Ziel: das Schillersche bedeutend erhoben: Erziehung durch die Kunst, aus dem germanischen Wesen abgeleitet’ (N7/ 1 15). There is further evidence that the early Nietzsche regarded Schiller as Wagner’s precursor in a letter of the same year, in which he praises ‘die idealistische Art Wagners, in der er mit Schiller am starksten verwandt ist: dies gluhende hochherzige Kampfen [. . .], kurz das Ritterliche, was unserm plebejisch politischen Tageslarm moglichst widerstrebend ist’ (to GersdorR, 11 March 1870: KSB 3/105). He stresses above all Schiller’s efforts in the direction of ‘Erziehung’ and ‘Bildung’ and the criticisms of contemporary culture that went with them; unsurprisingly, for these are precisely Nietz- sche’s own concerns. But he goes beyond establishing an affinity with Schiller, he uses him, in characteristically ‘untimely’ fashion, as a stick with which to beat nineteenth-century attitudes, in particular the prevailing attitude to Schiller himself.

Nietzsche is anxious to harness Schiller to his cultural bandwagon, a move which requires him to challenge the received view of Schiller. Only by re-evaluating him can he be rescued from the unwelcome attentions of those Nietzsche calls ‘Bildungsphilister’. This apparent oxymoron is intro- duced in the first lJn.&gnniissc Bctrachtung:

Julius Zeitler, Nicfzsches Asthetik, Leipzig 1900, p. 57; see also NaclrlqB September 1870 -January 1871 (7/961 ).

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NIETZSCHE’S ‘SCHILLERBILD’: A RE-EVALUATION 52 1

Das Wort Philister ist bekanntlich dem Studentenleben entnommen und bezeichnet in seinem weiteren, doch ganz popularen Sinne den Gegensatz des Musensohnes, des Kunstlers, des achten Kulturmenschen. Der Bildungsphili- ster aber [. . .] unterscheidet sich von der allgemeinen Idee der Gattung ‘Philister’ durch Einen Aberglauben: er wahnt selber Musensohn und Kultur- mensch zu sein; ein unbegreiflicher Wahn, aus dem hervorgeht, dass er gar nicht weiss, was der Philister und sein Gegensatz ist: weshalb wir uns nicht wundern werden, wenn er meistenses feierlich verschwort, Philister zu sein. Er fuhlt sich, bei diesem Mange1 jeder Selbsterkenntniss, fest ubeneugt, dass seine ‘Bildung’ gerade der satte Ausdruck der rechten deutschen Kultur sei (DS 2: 1/165).

Nietzsche claims that this new species of philistine is at once the self- appointed arbiter of German culture and, paradoxically, the group least well-equipped to understand, let alone judge, that culture. I n his words, ‘Bildungsphilister’ a re

das Hinderniss aller Kraftigen und Schaffenden, das Labyrinth aller Zwei- felnden und Verirrten [. . .] die Fussfessel aller nach hohen Zielen Laufenden [. . .] die ausdorrende Sandwiiste des suchenden und nach neuem Leben lechzenden deutschen Geistes. Denn er sucht, dieser deutsche Geist! und ihr hasst ihn deshalb, weil er sucht, und weil er euch nicht glauben will, dass ihr schon gefunden habt, wonach er sucht (N1/166).

This failure to appreciate the true, searching and striving nature of the German spirit is a theme of the public lectures Nietzsche gave a t Basle in early 1872, entitled Ucber die ZukunJ unsercr Bildungsanstaltcn. O n e who suffered as a result of this alleged failure was Schiller:

Ihr durftet gar Schiller’s Namen nennen und konnt nicht errothen? Seht sein Bild euch an! Das entziindet funkelnde Auge, das verachtlich iiber euch hinwegfliegt, diese tijdtlich gerothete Wange - das sagt euch nichts? Da hattet ihr so ein herrliches und gottliches Spielzeug, das durch euch zertrummert wurde. Und nehmt noch Goethes Freundschaft aus diesem schwermuthig hastigen, zu Tode gehetzten Leben hinweg - an euch hatte es dann gelegen, es noch schneller verloschen zu machen. Bei keinem unserer groRen Genien habt ihr mitgeholfen [. . .] Trotz euch schufen [sie] ihre Werke, gegen euch wandten sie ihre Angriffe, und Dank euch starben sie zu friih [. . .] dahin. Wer kann ausdenken, was diesen heroischen Mannern zu erreichen beschieden war, wenn jener wahre deutsche Geist in einer kraftigen Institution sein schutzendes Dach iiber sie ausgebreitet hatte (BA IV: 1/724).14

“ Nietzsche repeats this passage, almost verbatim, in the first Unzeitgnniicrc Bctruhtung [ 18731 (DS 4 1/183); compare the fifth lecture on the future of educational institutions (BA V: 1/848). The exhortation to contemplate Schiller’s portrait (probably Anton Graffs of 1786) indicates that Nietz- sche may have had his own ‘Schillerbild’ hanging on the wall of his study. i t recalls his comment on Schopenhauer in a letter written during his military service: ‘wenn ich erschopft und mit SchweiD bcdeckt nach Hause komrne, so beruhigt mich ein Blick auf das Bild an meinem Schreibtisch‘ (to Rohde, 3 November 1867: KSB 2/233). He needed to be surrounded by images of his heroes, which he could contemplate and draw inspiration from.

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522 NIETZSCHE’S ‘SCHILLERBILD: A RE-EVALUATION

Nietzsche’s campaign against the philistine Weimar cult was almost bound to fail, at least in his own day, so great was the hold of Weimar classicism on the ‘Bildungsburgertum’. No fewer than twenty-eight Goethe and seventeen Schiller editions were published between 1868 and 1874 a10ne.I~

Yet Nietzsche continues to lionise Schiller as a heroic, lonely figure out of step with his time, who struggled to overcome it yet ultimately failed to find the right formula for doing so. In the second Un.&nniissc Bctrachtung Schiller is presented as both an exponent and an example of ‘monumentali- sche Historie’:

Die Geschichte gehort vor Allern dern Thatigen und Machtigen, dern, der einen grossen Karnpf karnpft, der Vorbilder, Lehrer, Troster braucht und sie unter seinen Genossen und in der Gegenwart nicht zu finden verrnag. So gehorte sie Schillern: denn unsere Zeit ist so schlecht, sagte Goethe, dass dern Dichter irn urngebenden menschlichen Leben keine brauchbare Natur rnehr begegnet (HL 2: 1/258).16

Nietzsche was attempting to subvert the image of Schiller which had been constructed by the ‘Bildungsburgertum’ during the nineteenth century. This image had four distinct but related aspects. First, Schiller was seen as a heroic individual who had endured great physical and material hardship in pursuit of the ideal of ‘sittliche Freiheit’ manifested in his dramas. His tragic creations, it was thought, mirrored his own tragic character. Second, the moral example he had set was held up as a model for the educated middle classes to emulate. Third, Schiller’s achievement (along with Goethe’s) was viewed as the zenith of German culture; and, finally, his moral fibre was presented as the metaphorical binding of a politically disunited nation. Schiller was thus, above all, the great moral exemplar, even ‘der poetische Kant’.’’ These were the ideological underpinnings of terms such as ‘unser Schiller’ and ‘Nationaldichter’, and they are well illustrated by the following passage from a work of contemporary literary criticism:

Auf dieser Bahn zum Unendlichen finden wir unsern Schiller zu jeder Zeit, und zwar als einen riistigen Helden, der, sein hohes Ziel irn Auge, nicht ermudet und, obwohl hin und wieder der Venweiflung nahe, sich doch stets wieder aufram, urn sich sein Gliick durch seinen Willen zu erkarnpfen [. . .] Schiller erscheint uns in dieser sittlich-edlen Haltung als ein hochst tragischer

See Bergmann, N i e ~ c h c , Q. 96. l6 Nietzsche is here quoting a remark of Goethe’s to Eckermann of 23 July 1827 (Johann Peter Eckermann, Gaprich m’t Guh in dn kktm Jahrcn seines Ltbm, cd. Fritz Ekrgemann, Frankfurt a. M. 1981, I, p. 247); according to Niewche, Schiiller used history in a ‘monumental’ fashion: ‘Schiller gebnuchte die Historie im monumentalen Sinne, doch nicht ah handelnder Mensch, sondern ala zur That antrcibcnder [. . .] Dramatiker 1.. .] Schiller’s Ahnung war die rechte: das Wortdrama muas die Historic bezwingen, um die Wirkung hervonubringen, die unpringlich die Hitorie (monumentalich dargeatellt) hatte’ ( N 1873: 7/684). ” Cottschall, Die dents& Nalioncrllitholur, I, p. 69.

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Charakter, bei dessen Anschauung uns ein ideales Mitleid erftullt, das wohl geeignet ist, unsere Leidenschaften zu beschwichtigen und zu reinigen.’*

In opposition to this received wisdom Nietzsche regarded the Weimar achievement not as the pinnacle of German culture, but rather as a high plateau. Culture knows neither summits nor stasis, according to Nietzsche, and cultural climbing must be done for its own sake. According to this view, culture is an activity not a possession. His contemporaries, he claims, mistakenly regard Schiller and Goethe as the non plus ultra of culture, to whom they can point with misplaced pride, relieved of any obligation to think let alone create:

Um aber unsere Klassiker so falsch beurtheilen und so beschimpfend ehren zu konnen, muss man sie gar nicht mehr kennen: und dies ist die allgemeine Thatsache. Denn sonst musste man wissen, dass es nur Eine Art giebt, sie zu ehren, namlich dadurch, dass man fortfahrt, in ihrem Geiste und mit ihrem Muthe zu suchen und dabei nicht miide wird. Dagegen ihnen das so nachdenkliche Wort ‘Klassiker’ anzuhangen und sich von Zeit zu Zeit einmal an ihren Werken zu ‘erbauen’ [. . .] auch wohl Bildsaulen stiften und mit ihrem Namen Feste und VePeine bezeichnen - das alles sind nur klingende Abzahlungen, durch die der Bildungsphilister sich mit ihnen auseinandersetzt, urn im Uebrigen sie nicht mehr zu kennen, und um vor allem nicht nachfolgen und weiter suchen zu mussen. Denn: es d a d nicht mehr gesucht werden; das ist die Philisterlosung (DS 2: 1/168).”

In other words, far from representing the high point of German culture, as many nineteenth-century Germans believed, Weimar classicism represented instead a continuing exhortation to ever greater cultural achievement. He believed that only by continuing in the striving spirit of Weimar could one earn the right to celebrate its representatives and achievements.

Schiller was a model (‘Vorbild’) for Nietzsche, as he was for other nineteenth-century Germans, and, like them, Nietzsche was acting in the spirit of Goethe’s injunction:

So feiert ihn! Denn was dem Mann das Leben Nur halb erteilt, sol1 ganz die Nachwelt geben.M

But he had reshaped the model. In a scathing section of Der Wandcrer und sein Schuttm, entitled Gicbt es ‘deutsche Classiker’?, he makes it plain that he

Joseph Hillcbrand, Dii dcutsche Natianallikratur im XVIII, wd XIX. Jahrhudnt, 2 vols, Gotha 1875, 11, pp. 327f.

In a NuhlaJ note of 1872-3 he illustrates this indolent attitude with an appropriate metaphor: ‘die “Bildung” venuchte sich auf der Schiller-Goetheschen Basis, wie auf einem Ruhebctte, niedenu- lassen’ (7/506); for further variations on this theme, see NachlaJ Summer 1872 - Early 1873 (7/ 499f) and NachlaJ 1873 (7/602). mGoethe, ‘Epilog zu Schillen “Glocke”’, 95-6 (Cwths Woke, cd. Erich Trunz, 12th edition, I4 vols, Munich 1981, I, p. 258).

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has no quarrel with the ‘Klassiker’ themselves, only with the complacent, vain and jingoistic uses to which they have been put by nineteenth-century Germans. Nietzsche stands, he thinks, with Schiller and Goethe against their philistine admirers:

Nur f i r Wenige hat er [Goethe] gelebt und lebt er noch: fur die Meisten ist er Nichts, als eine Fanfare der Eitelkeit, welche man von Zeit zu Zeit iiber die deutsche Granze hiniiberblast. Goethe, nicht nur ein guter und grosser Mensch, sondern eine Cultur, Goethe ist in der Geschichte der Deutschen ein Zwischenfall ohne Folgen (WS 125: 2/607).

He remarks of Schiller, in the same section: ‘Und Schiller ist jetzt aus den Handen der Junglinge in die der Knaben, aller deutschen Knaben gerathen!’ (2/608). Nietzsche objects to the waxwork image Schiller and Goethe have acquired in the nineteenth century;2’ or, to put it another way, he believes that, in the eyes of most nineteenth-century Germans, Schiller and Goethe have become petrified cultural monuments.

Evidently, Nietzsche’s challenge to the dominant nineteenth-century view of Schiller had more to do with Nietzsche’s contemporaries than with Schiller. This very tactic, though, of employing models and exemplars from the past, because he feels his own age is too corrupt to regenerate itself from within, is a tactic Nietzsche shares with Schiller. As we have seen, Nietzsche believed that Schiller needed historical models, ‘denn unsere Zeit ist so schlecht, sagte Goethe, dass dem Dichter im umgebenden menschlichen Leben keine brauchbare Natur mehr begegnet’.22 Although Nietzsche does not make reference to it, Schiller himself had expressed the same opinion in a letter to Herder in 1795:

Daher weiB ich fir den poetischen Genius kein Heil, als daR er sich aus dem Gebiet der wirklichen Welt zuriickzieht und anstatt jener Coalition, die ihm gefahrlich seyn wiirde, auf die strengste Separation sein Bestreben richtet. Daher scheint es mir gerade ein Gewinn fir ihn zu seyn, daR er seine eigne Welt formiret und durch die Griechischen Mythen der Verwandte eines fernen, fremden und idealischen Zeitalters bleibt, da ihn die Wirklichkeit nur beschmutzen wiirde. Vielleicht gelingt es mir, in dem Aufsatze den ich jetzt schreibe, ‘iiber die sentimentalischen Dichter’, Ihnen meine Vorstellungsweise klarer und annehmlicher zu rnachen. Denn gerade in diesern Aufsatze suche ich die Frage zu erortern, ‘was der Dichtergeist in einem Zeitalter und unter den Umstanden wie die unsrigen fir einen Weg zu nehmen habe’.23

” In the first Llnzeitgmi.sse Betruchtung David StrauD is accused of placing them in a ‘Wachsfiguren- kabinet [sic]. Die Klassiker standen da, aus Wachs und Perlen nachgemacht’ (DS 4 1/181). *’ See above, note 16. ’’ Schiller to Herder, 4 November 1795 (Schillrrs Brie>. Kritisclv Cesmfuusgabe, ed. Fritz Jonas, 7 vols, Stuttgart/Lcipzig/Berlin/Vienna 18926, IV, p. 314). Subsequent references to this edition will be in the form J , followed by the volume and page numbers. 8 BlrLwell Pubiiskts Ltd 1995.

NIETZSCHES ‘SCHILLERBILD’: A RE-EVALUATION 525

He had already expressed this view, more poetically, in the Asthtische Briefc:

Der Kiinstler ist zwar der Sohn seiner Zeit, aber schlirnrn fir ihn, wenn er zugleich ihr Zogling oder gar noch ihr Giinstling ist. Eine wohltatige Gottheit reisse den Saugling bei Zeiten von seiner Mutter Brust, nahre ihn rnit der Milch eines bessern Alters und lasse ihn unter fernern griechischen Hirnrnel zur Miindigkeit reifen. Wenn er dann Mann geworden ist, so kehre er, eine frernde Gestalt, in sein Jahrhundert zuriick; aber nicht, urn es rnit seiner Erscheinung zu erfreuen, soridern furchtbar wie Agarnernnons Sohn, urn es zu reinigen.”

We do not have to share Andler’s view that Nietzsche owes ‘cette notion de “I’intempestivitC” du grand homme’ to SchillerZ5 to see that there is a direct parallel here with Nietzsche’s term ‘unzeitgemass’, which he defines as the use of appropriate models from the past ‘gegen die Zeit und dadurch auf die Zeit und hoffentlich zu Gunsten einer kommenden Zeit’ (HL ‘Vor- wort’: 1/247).

Turning to the use the early Nietzsche makes of Schiller’s works, rather than character, the picture admittedly becomes less clear. The insistent theme of the early Nietzsche’s handling of Schiller’s work is that it was on the right lines, but no more. Nevertheless, his interpretation of Schiller’s works gives him some much-needed theoretical support for his revolutionary reassessments of ancient Greece and its art forms, and of the relevance of these to contemporary Germany. This is the spirit in which Schiller is treated in Die Geburt der Tragodie. It is too much to claim, as Cysarz does, that the work celebrates in Schiller ‘einen Genius aller tragischen Kultur, den Meister eines wahrhaft groaen Stils, den Lehrer in den hochsten und tiefsten Fragen der Kunsterkenntnis’.26 Even so, of the eight references to Schiller, only two are critical, though, as we shall see, ominously so. The rest offer the curious and ironical spectacle of Nietzsche enlisting Schiller’s support for his radical reformulations of the psychology of the creative process, the function of the tragic chorus, and traditional aesthetic anti- theses.

We should now sketch briefly the argument of Die Geburt der Tragodie, before assessing to what extent it engages with Schiller and his aesthetic theory. The work hinges on a metaphysical conception of music, as the full title of the first edition (1872) suggests: Die Geburt der Tragodie aus dem Geiste der Musik. Following Schopenhauer, and to a lesser degree Kant, Nietzsche advances the view that reality is divided into a world of appearances (the

*’ Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesfhefic Education of Man in a Series .f Letters, ed. and transl. with an Introduction, Commentary and Glossary of Terms by Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby, Oxford 1967, pp. 54f. (Letter Nine, Paragraph Four). Subsequent references to this edition will be in the form AE, followed by the Letter number in large roman, and the paragraph number in arabic numerals, e.g. A E IX.4. 25 Andler, N i c t & e , sa vie et sa pensit, I, p. 48. 26 Cysan, ‘Schiller und Nietzsche’, 126.

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world we perceive and inhabit) and an underlying, timeless, undifferentiated ground of being (‘Urgrund’). Having ventured this speculative insight, Nietzsche then asserts, equally speculatively, that this two-tier reality has psychological correlatives which he terms the Apollinian and the Dionysian respectively. The Apollinian corresponds to the world of appearances. It is the state of calm, lightness and clarity we experience in certain lucid dream- states when we are most aware of ourselves as individuals ( G T 1: 1/27). The Dionysian, on the other hand, is the term Nietzsche gives to states of wild intoxication, in which the bonds of individuation are broken and we gain mystical insight into the unified source of all being: ‘Singend und tanzend aussert sich der Mensch als bfitglied einer hoheren Gemeinsamkeit: er hat das Gehen und das Sprechen verlernt und ist auf dem Wege, tanzend in die Lufte emporzufliegen’ ( G T I : 1 /30). These psychological impulses, according to Nietzsche, have aesthetic correlates. The Apollinian is exhibited in sculpture, epic poetry and Doric architecture, indeed in any art form that displays lightness of feeling allied to formal control. The Dionysian is manifest in lyric poetry and, supremely, in the dithyrambs of Aeschylean and Sophoclean tragedy. This Attic tragedy remains the highest possible art form, Nietzsche claims, because it combines, in perfect symbiosis, the Apollinian elements of dialogue and character with the Dionysian ‘Urgrund’ symbolised by the chorus and the destruction of the tragic hero. This binary opposition of the Apollinian and the Dionysian owes much to Schiller’s Uber naive und smtimentalische Dichtung of 1795 and Schopenhauer’s Die Welt als Willc und Vorstcllung of 1819. It has been argued that ‘both of these pairs can claim to be not only precursors, but formative influences on Nietzsche’s’.‘’ The debt to Schopenhauer’s antithesis of ‘Wille’ and ‘Vorstel- lung’ would seem to be greater, however, since it corresponds, on the metaphysical level at least, to Nietzsche’s Dionysus-Apollo antithesis. Yet Schiller’s concepts of the ‘naive’ and the ‘sentimental’ also played a signifi- cant role in shaping the aesthetic theory which underlies Die Geburt der Tragodie.

In an early NachlaJ note Nietzsche writes: ‘Begriff des Naiuen und Sentimen- t a l i s c h ist zu stcigern’ ( N 187CL71: 7/206), and in Die Gcburt der Tragodie he uses the term ‘naive’ as a way of explaining his own term ‘Apollinian’. They are, in fact, identical; after acknowledging Schiller as the originator of the term, he declares:

Wo uns das ‘Naive’ in der Kunst begegnet, haben wir die hochste Wirkung der apollinischen Cultur zu erkennen: welche immer erst ein Titanenreich zu stunen und Ungethume zu t a t e n hat und durch kraftige Wahnvorspiege- lungen und lustvolle Illusionen uber eine schreckliche Tiefe der Weltbetrach- tung und reizbarste Leidensfahigkeit Sieger geworden sein muss [. . .] Die

27 M. S. Silk and J . P. Stem, NutzscL on Tiage&, Cambridge 1981, p. 210.

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homerische ‘Naivetat’ ist nur als der vollkommene Sieg der apollinischen Illusion zu begreifen (GT 3: 1/37).

Nietzsche is less sure of how to deal with the ‘sentimental’ as an aesthetic category, however. He is convinced that the ‘naive’ can be interpreted as ‘rein apollinisch’ (N 1870-71: 7/183f.), and he would like to interpret the ‘sentimental’ as ‘unter dem Kampf der tragischen ErkenntniB und der Mystik geboren’ (loc. ci t .) . He recognises, though, that this attempt to equate the ‘sentimental’ with the Dionysian will not work, because he is ‘nicht im Stande, jene herrliche Schillersche Terminologie auf das ganze weiteste Bereich aller Kunst anzuwenden’ (loc. cit. - my emphasis). He is unable to apply the term ‘sentimentalisch’ to, for example, Greek or Shakespearean tragedy, or, more significantly, to music:

So gewiR in dem ‘Naiven’ das ewige Merkmal einer allerhochsten Kunstgat- tung erkannt ist, so gewiR reicht der Begriff ‘sentimentalisch’ nicht hin, urn die Merkmale aller nicht-naiven Kunst zusamrnenzufassen. Welche Verle- genheiten bereitet uns, falls wir das wollten, z.B. die griechische Tragoedie und Shakespeare! Und gar die Musik! Dagegen verstehe ich als den vollen Gegensatz dcs ‘Naiven’ und des Apollinischen das ‘Dionysische‘ d.h. alle Kunst, die nicht ‘Schein des Scheins’, sondern ‘Schein des Seins’ ist, Wiederspiegelung des ewigen Ur-Einen, somit unsere ganze empirische Welt, welche vom Stand- punkt des Ureinen aus, ein dionysisches Kunstwerk ist; oder von unserern Standpunkt aus, die Musik (loc. cit. - my emphasis).

This passage continues with the characteristically sovereign and sweeping judgment that, because it cannot be categorised as either Apollinian or Dionysian, the ‘sentimental’ is not a genuine aesthetic category or impulse; Schiller’s poetic works, on the other hand, can be viewed as an important precursor - “‘Johannes” der Vorlaufer’ - of Wagner’s cultural project, of which Nietzsche is the more immediate prophet and propagandiser:

Dem ‘Sentimentalisch’ rnuB ich sogar vorn hochsten Richterstuhle aus die Geltung eines reinen Kunstwerks versagen, weil es nicht wie jene hochste und dauernde Versohnung des Naiven und des Dionysischen entstanden ist, sondern unruhig zwischen beiden hin- und herschwankt [. . .] Es ist das Kunstwerk jenes noch unentschiedehen Karnpfes, den es zu entscheiden sich anschickt, ohne dies Ziel zu erreichen; wohl aber weist es uns, wie z.B. die Schillersche Dichtung, zu unsrer Ruhrung und Erhebung, auf neue Bahnen hin und ist somit ‘Johannes’ der Vorlaufer ‘all’ Volk der Welt zu taufen’ (loc. ci t . ) .

This is yet another instance where the early Nietzsche, who believes that, in alliance with Wagner, he has solved aesthetic questions once and for all, awards Schiller high marks for effort, but sees his aesthetic achievement as not much more than a step in the right direction.

There are, however, two fundamental differences between Schiller’s and @ Blackwell Publirhea Ltd 1995.


Nietzsche’s antithetical pairings, which go beyond Nietzsche’s difficulties with the term ‘sentimentalisch’. The first is that each writer has a different conception of aesthetic harmony. In Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung Schiller painstakingly outlines the differences between naive and sentimental ‘Empfindungsweisen’ but believes firmly that the two can nevertheless be synthesised, at least in principle, even though the two modes would seem to be mutually exclusive: ‘es giebt einen hohern Begriff, der beyde unter sich fafit, und es darf gar nicht befremden, wenn dieser Begriff mit der Idee der Menschheit in eins zusammentrifft’.** Nietzsche’s Apollinian and Dionysian impulses on the other hand, contrary to Kaufmann’s reading, do not operate as a perfect, synthetic sublation (‘Aufhebung’), even when they unite in tragedy.29 As Nietzsche makes clear in the opening paragraph of Die Geburt der Tragodie, their interaction is instead one of ‘Duplicitat’, analogous to the battle of the sexes: ‘die Fortentwickelung der Kunst [ist] an die Duplicitat des Apollinischen und des Dionysischen gebunden: in ahn- licher Weise, wie die Generation von der Zweiheit der Geschlechter, bei fortwahrendem Kampfe und nur periodisch eintretender Versohnung, abhangt’ (GT 1: 1/25). Nietzsche never refers to this interaction as a conceptual synthesis. In line with the anti-conceptual animus of the work, he tends to characterise the relation in metaphorical terms as, for example, a ‘geheimnissvolles Ehebundniss’ (GT 4: 1/42) or a ‘Bruderbund’ ( G T 21: 1/140; CT 24: 1/150).

The other difference between the two pairings concerns harmony in a more general sense. Whereas Schiller is invariably anxious to establish an ideal harmony in his aesthetic writings, Nietzsche actually prefers conflict (ugon), which he sees as productive and instinct-sharpening, to reconciliation, which is seen as sterile and instinct-deadening. The Apollinian and the Dionysian, as artistic impulses, are locked in a productive struggle with each other, but together are engaged in a fierce and uncompromising war with the unaesthetic impulse towards knowledge, symbolised by Socrates. Schiller, on the other hand, seems reluctant to admit that there are impulses or states of mind which cannot respond to the harmonising power of beauty. This need not, of course, be viewed as a criticism. Unlike Nietzsche, he regards the aesthetic as encompassing, rather than excluding, the moral, cognitive and scientific aspects of human a~tivity.~’

28 Schillns Wrrke. Naf~o~laurgabr , ed. Julius Petersen, Hermann Schneider et al., Weimar 1943ff, XX, p. 437. Subsequent references to this edition will be given in the form NA, followed by the volume and page numbers. 29 See Walter Kaufmann, Nicfzschr: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anfichrisf, 4th edition, Princeton 1974,

30 It should be noted that, in his writings on the aesthetics of the sublime, Schiller seems more sceptical of beauty’s harmonising power, to the extent that, on occasion, he seems to reject his own models of harmony. 1 am very grateful to Lesley Sharpc for drawing my attention to this nuance. Nietzsche, however, seems to have been unaware of it and consistently directs his attacks against the ‘harmonious’ Schiller, who may have been a man of straw. For his own polemical ends, Nietzsche was very skilled at constructing men of straw and then tearing them limb from limb. 0 Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1%

pp. 394f.


The reason why Nietzsche was unable to equate his pairing of the Apollinian and the Dionysian with Schiller’s naive-sentimental antithesis was because neither the Apollinian nor the Dionysian is a ‘sentimental’ (reflective) impulse. Both the Apollinian and the Dionysian are ‘naive’, that is to say unreflective aesthetic impulses. The unreflective harmony of both Schiller’s ‘naive’ and of Nietzsche’s Apollo-Dionysus pairing is broken by the advent of reflection and specialisation. Although the modern artist is aware of nature, he is no longer at one with it. Nietzsche’s division of Greek history into pre-Socratic ‘Mythos’ and Socratic ‘Logos’ stands comparison with Schiller’s distinction between ancient naivetk and modern reflec- tiveness. In section 12 of Die Geburt der Tragodie Nietzsche identifies the origin of this rift; quoting Anaxagoras, he writes, “‘im Anfang war alles beisammen; da kam der Verstand und schuf Ordnung”’ ( 1 /87).

This does not imply that Nietzsche shares Schiller’s view of Greek antiquity. Only the importance of antiquity is indisputably common to both writers. Nietzsche’s conception of ancient Greece was genuinely original and immediately establishes a gulf between him and Schiller. Like most German Hellenists before him, Nietzsche accepted the serenity (‘Heiterkeit’) of the Greek Golden Age. Unlike any of them, however, with the important exception of Holderlin, Nietzsche did not accept this serenity at face value. He does not doubt that the Greek character was serene, but disputes that this serenity was of untroubled origin. He emphatically rejects the received view of the ancient Greeks as a race of curejree Olympians. Their serenity, he claims, was in truth an Apollinian veil drawn over the dark Dionysian depths of the Greek soul. It was a hard-fought victory over despair and, in overlooking this storm before the calm, earlier Hellenists, Schiller among them, had failed ‘in den Kern des hellenischen Wesens einzudringen’ (GT 20: 1/129). This core or essence of the Hellenic experience, which Nietzsche believed had been distilled in Aeschylean and Sophoclean tragedy, was a stark and desperate pessimism, veiled and made bearable by Apollinian illusion. As he puts it in the ninth section of Die Geburt der Tragodie,

jene Lichtbilderscheinungen des sophokleischen Helden, kurz das Apollinische der Maske [sind] nothwendige Erzeugungen eines Blickes in’s Innere und Schreckliche der Natur, gleichsam leuchtende Flecken zur Heilung des von grausiger Nacht versehrten Blickes (1/65).

The Greek achievement, according to Nietzsche, had been to confront and then overcome the wisdom of Silenus. Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, had told King Midas: ‘“Das Allerbeste ist fur dich ganzlich unerreichbar: nicht geboren zu sein, nicht zu sein, nzchts zu sein. Das Zweitbeste aber ist fir dich - bald zu sterben”’ (GT 3: 1/35). By means of Apollinian art, Nietzsche asserts, the Greeks had been able to turn this wisdom on its feet, ‘so dass man jetzt von ihnen, mit Umkehrung der silenischen Weisheit, sagen konnte, ‘das Allerschlimmste sei fiir sie, bald zu sterben, das Zweitsch- limmste, iiberhaupt einmal zu sterben”’ (1/36). The failure to see that Greek

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serenity sprang from a deep pessimism meant that Hellas was necessarily misinterpreted by Winckelmann, Goethe, Schiller et al.:

Wenn es solchen Helden, wie Schiller und Goethe, nicht gelingen durfte, jene verzauberte Pforte zu erbrechen, die in den hellenischen Zauberberg fihrt, wenn es bei ihrem muthigsten Ringen nicht weiter gekommen ist als bis zu jenem sehnsiichtigen Blick, den die Goethische Iphigenie vom barbarischen Tauris aus nach der Heimat iiber das Meer hin sendet, was bliebe den Epigonen solcher Helden zu hoffen, wenn sich ihnen nicht plotzlich, an einer ganz anderen, von allen Bemiihungen der bisherigen Cultur unberiihrten Seite die Pforte von selbst aufthate - unter dem mystischen Klange der wiedererweckten Tragiidienmusik (CT 20: 1/131).

It is the mystical ring of Wagner’s ‘wiedererweckte Tragiidienmusik’ which has revealed the metaphysical core of true - ‘tragic’ - culture to Nietzsche, a culture he believes flourished in Greece before the arrival of ‘theoretical’ culture in the shape of Socrates. This conception of Greek culture is so at odds with Schiller’s that he would appear to have nothing more to contribute to Nietzsche’s argument. Curiously, though, Schiller does play a vital supporting role in the early sections of Dic Geburt der Tragodie, where Nietzsche argues for the primacy of music in the aesthetic hierarchy. Schiller is invoked on three separate occasions: to lend support to Nietzsche’s definition of the Dionysian ( G T l) , and to buttress his arguments for the primacy of music in lyric poetry ( G T 5) and genuine tragedy ( G T 7 ) . He encounters some problems with these attempted appropriations, as we shall see.

In the opening section of Dic Geburt &r Tragiidie he refers to Schiller’s ode An die Freude, in order to illustrate or ‘show’ the Dionysian: ‘Man verwandele das Beethoven’sche Jubellied der “Freude” in ein Gemalde und bleibe mit seiner Einbildungskraft nicht zuruck, wenn die Millionen schauervoll in den Staub sinken: so kann man sich dem Dionysischen nahern’ (1/29). In a preparatory note to Die Geburt der Tragodic he had sought to establish a more explicit connection between Schiller’s ode and the Dionysian:

Schiller’s Lied an die Freude bekommt insofern erst seinen tiefen, wahrhaft kiinstlerischen Hintergrund. Wir sehen, wie der Dichter sich seine gennanisch

dionysische Regung in Bildern zu deuten versucht: wie er aber, als moderner Mensch, nur schwesallig zu stammeln weiss. Wenn jetzt Beethoven uns dm cigmtluh Schillerschen Untcrgrund darstellt, so haben wir das unendlich-Hohere und Vollkommene (N 1871: 7/275 - my emphases).

The claim is that Schiller’s ode was essentially Dionysian, but that this essence could not find adequate expression in Apollinian words and images. It could only be unlocked, or transfigured, by (Beethoven’s) music. In common with many other claims Nietzsche makes at this time, it is surprising and deeply speculative. This kind of surprising reinterpretation is, however, wholly characteristic of the early Nietzsche’s attitude to Schiller. Q BlrhveU PuMisben Ltd 1995.

NIETZSCHE’S ‘SCHILLERBILD’: A RE-EVALUATION 53 1

Yet while attempting to appropriate Schiller as an authoritative precursor of his own aesthetic and cultural theory, he is simultaneously and painfully aware that, without music, Schiller the poet and theorist can scarcely be classed as Dionysian. The same is true, Nietzsche believes, of Schiller the dramatist. He compares Schiller’s plays favourably with Goethe’s, but with an important caveat: ‘Schiller hat vielleicht den noch starkeren musika- lischen Antrieb, aber seine Sprach- und Bilderwelt ist nicht adaquat’ (N 1871: 7/328). At best, therefore, Schiller remains a mild precursor and, at worst, Nietzsche can say:

DaB dem dithyrambischen Welterlosungsjubel [des letzten Satzes der neunten Symphonie Beethovens] das Schillersche Gedicht ‘an die Freude’ ganzlich incongruent ist, ja wie blasses Mondlicht von jenem Flammenmeere ubcrflu- thet wird, wer mlichte rnir dieses allersicherste Gefuhl rauben? Ja wer miichte mir iiberhaupt streitig machen konnen, daB jenes Gefihl beim Anhoren dieser Musik nur deshalb zum schreienden Ausdruck kommt, weil wir, durch die Musik fur Bild und Wort vollig depotenzirt, bereits gar nichts von dcm Ccdichtc Schiller’s hiirtn? Aller jener edle Schwung, ja die Erhabenheit der Schillerschen Verse wirkt schon neben der wahrhaft naiv-unschuldigen Volksmelodie der Freude storend, beunruhigend, selbst roh und beieidigend (N 187 1: 7/366f.)

The next attempt to enlist Schiller’s support comes in the discussion of the lyric in the fifth section, where Nietzsche is seeking to establish the primacy of (Dionysian) music over (Apollinian) words in the lyric poet’s creative act:

Ueber den Prozess seines Dichtens hat uns Schillcr durch eine ihrn selbst unerklarliche, doch nicht bedenklich scheinende psychologische Beobachtung Licht gebracht; er gesteht namlich als den vorbereitenden Zustand vor dem Actus des Dichtens nicht etwa eine Reihe von Bildern, mit geordneter Causali- tat der Gedanken, vor sich und in sich gehabt zu haben, sondern vielmehr eine musikalischc Stimmung ( 1/43).

He then quotes from one of Schiller’s letters to Goethe: “‘Die Empfindung ist bei mir anfangs ohne bestimmten und klaren Gegenstand; dieser bildet sich erst spater. Eine gewisse musikalische Gemuthsstimmung geht vorher, und auf diese folgt bei rnir erst die poetische Idee”’ (1/43).3’ This quotation suits Nietzsche’s purpose very well, but the suspicion that Schiller’s view of the relation between words and music is not the same as Nietzsche’s is confirmed in the discussion of the tragic chorus in the seventh section:

Freilich ist es ein ‘idealer’ Boden, auf dem, nach der richtigen Einsicht Schillers, der griechische Satyrchor, der Chor der ursprunglichen Tragdie,

” Schiller to Goethe, 18 March 1796 (J iv 430); cf. NachIq9 Winter 187&1 - Autumn 1872 (7/

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221E).


zu wandeln pflegt, ein Boden hoch emporgehoben iiber die wirkliche Wan- delbahn der Sterblichen ( 1/55).32

This is a reference to Schiller’s preface to Die Braut von Messina ( 1803).33 On closer inspection, however, the preface reveals few grounds for believing that Schiller had anticipated Nietzsche’s view of music as the indispensable core of authentic tragedy.

At least five differences of emphasis can be detected. The first is that, in the composition of drama rather than lyric poetry, Schiller regards the text as prior to the music: ‘Aber das tragische Dichterwerk wird erst durch die theatralische Vorstellung zu einem Ganzen: nur die Worte giebt der Dichter, Musik und Taw miissen hinzu kommen, sie zu beleben’ (NA x 7 - my emphasis). Secondly, Schiller distinguishes between the ancient chorus and his own, modern chorus. This is an acknowledgment of changed circum- stances. The modern poet must create the chorus, since it no longer springs naturally from the poetic shape of life around him:

Der Chor war folglich in der alten ’I’ragiidie mehr ein naturliches Organ, er folgte schon aus der poetischen Gestalt des wirklichen Lebens. In der neuen T r a g d i e wird er zu einem Kunstorgan, er hilft die Poesie hemorbringen. Der neuere Dichter findet den Chor nicht mehr in der Natur, er muR ihn poetisch erschaffen und einfuhren, das ist, er muB mit der Fabel, die er behandelt, eine solche Veranderung vornehmen, wodurch sie in jene kindliche Zeit und in jene einfache Form des Lebens zuriick versetzt wird (NA x 11) .

Schiller’s conception of the changed function of the chorus shows a greater awareness than Nietzsche displays that myth is no longer a potent force in the modern world, and his characterisation of ,ancient Greece as ‘jene kindliche Zeit’, as ‘jene einfache Form des Lebens’, contrasts sharply with Nietzsche’s. Thirdly, Schiller reiterates his view, outlined in the Asthetische BrieJe and Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, of the balancing and syn- thesising function of the aesthetic: ‘[das Poetische] liegt gerade in dem Indifferenzpunkt des Ideellen und Sinnlichen’ (NA x 12) .34 Nietzsche’s conception of aesthetic harmony is quite different, as we have already indicated. Fourthly, the peroration of Schiller’s preface appeals to the Enlightenment notion of a pure religion superior to the manifold manifes-

32 See also Nietzsche’s preparatory notes, in which he states that Schiller’s view of the Greek chorus was essentially correct (A’ 1871: 7/273f.). 33 ‘Ober den Gebrauch des Chors in der T ragd ie ’ (NA x 7-15). Schiller’s own words were: ‘Die Einfihrung des Chors ware der Iezte, der enccheidende Schritt - und wenn derselbe auch nur d a m diente, dem Naturalism in dcr Kunst omen und ehrlich den Krieg zu erklaren, so sollte er uns eine lebendige Mauer seyn, die die T r a g d i e urn sich herumzieht, urn sich von der wirklichen Welt rein abzuschlieRen, und sich ihren idealen Boden, ihre poetische Freiheit zu bcwahren’ (NA x 1 I ) . 3’Cf. AE XV.2: ‘Der Gegenstand des Spieltriebs [. . .] wird also l e 6 d Gestalt heiRen konnen; ein BegritT, der [. . .] mit einem Worte dem, was man in weitester Bedeutung Schiinhrif nennt, zur k e i c h n u n g dient’; in Libn mior und sdimentulirche D u h n g beauty is characterised as ‘das Produkt der Zusammenstimmung zwischen dem Geist und den Sinnen’ ( N A xx 487). 0 Blackwell Publishem Ltd 1995


tations of religion, and thus does not square with Nietzsche’s conception of the significance of artistic activity: ‘Unter der Hiille aller Religionen liegt die Religion selbst, die Idee eines Gottlichen, und es mu0 dem Dichter erlaubt seyn, dieses auszusprechen in welcher Form er jedesmal am bequemsten und am treffendsten findet’ (NA x 15). Finally, and most significantly, it seems surprising that Nietzsche should even have attempted to appropriate Schiller’s views of the chorus, given that their interpretations of the ancient chorus’s function are so at odds. To Nietzsche, the chorus is the symbolic expression of the Dionysian ‘Urgrund’, whereas Schiller accords it an altogether more conventional significance:

Der Chor verlaRt den engen Kreis der Handlung, urn sich iiber Vergangenes und Kiinftiges, iiber ferne Zeiten und Volker, iiber das Menschliche iiberhaupt zu verbreiten, urn die groRen Resultate des Lebens zu ziehen, und die Lehren der Weisheit auszusprechen (NA x 13).

Schiller’s interpretation here is a thoroughly unexceptional view of the chorus as either a wise narrator or shrewd observer of the action, and can scarcely be viewed as a ‘Dionysian’ conception, in Nietzsche’s sense.

It is clear that the early Nietzsche is not ill-disposed towards either Schiller’s character or certain aspects of his aesthetic theory. As part of a wider attempt to rewrite and reclaim German cultural history, he endeavours to enlist Schiller’s authority and example to bolster his own cultural project, But Die Geburt der Tragodie also reveals that the early Nietzsche had at least two serious misgivings about Schiller’s aesthetic theory. The first, which has already been outlined, was that, though Schiller had hinted at the importance of music in the creation of lyric poetry, he had failed to give it sufficient weight in his aesthetic theory and neglected to make it the basis of his dramas. The second misgiving was far more serious: that the ‘moral’ basis of Schiller’s dramas disquali- fied them as tragedies. This misgiving emerges, in a veiled fashion, in the course of Nietzsche’s summary of his own aesthetics of tragedy in section 22. Schiller is not referred to by name, nor are any of his dramas. Later in the section there is a seemingly casual reference to ‘die Tendenz, das Theater als Veranstaltung zur moralischen Volksbildung zu verwenden, die zu Schiller’s Zeit ernsthaft genommen wurde’ (1/144), but earlier Schiller’s theory of tragedy had been peremptorily dismissed, along with Aristotle’s, Lessing’s and Schelling’s (1/141f.). Using his own experience of Wagner’s Tristan und Zsolde as his first illustration, Nietzsche reiterates the claim, originally advanced in sections 8-10, that ‘der tragische Mythus ist nur zu verstehen als eine Verbildlichung dionysischer Weisheit durch apollinische Mittel’ (1/141). The only ‘wahrhaft aesthet- ischer Zuhorer’ is the person (presumably Nietzsche) who has grasped this truth. This speculative interpretation of tragedy’s nature and significance is taken as read. Previous theorists have failed to grasp it, Nietzsche writes, and hence their theories miss the point:

0 Blackwell PuMisbcrs Ltd 1995.

534 NIETZSCHES ‘SCHILLERBILD’: A RE-EVALUATION

Freilich wissen von dieser Ruckkehr zur Urheimat, von dem Bruderbunde der beiden Kunstgottheiten [Apollo und Dionysus] in der Tragdie und von der sowohl apollinischen als dionysischen Erregung des Zuhorers unsere Aesthetiker nichts zu berichten, wahrend sie nicht mude werden, den Kampf des Helden mit dem Schicksal [Schelling], den Sieg der sittlichen Weltordnung [Schiller] oder eine durch die Tragdie bewirkte Entladung von Affecten [Lessing and other neo-Aristotelians] als das eigentlich Tragische zu charak- terisieren. (1/141).

Earlier theorists had described the effects of tragedy in moral or pathologi- cal, rather than aesthetic terms and the effects they claim for it belong to ‘ausseraesthetische Spharen’ ( 1/143). In this circular argument, conducted entirely on his own terms, Nietzsche is, of course, the victor: ‘erst jetzt [ist] das Urphanomen des Tragischen mit einigem Erfolg zu beschreiben’ ( 1/ 143). His case against Schiller’s theory of tragedy is extremely weak. It amounts to the claim that ‘der Anruf der “sittlichen Weltordnung” trat vikarirend ein, wo eigentlich ein gewaltiger Kunstzauber den achten Zu- horer entzucken sollte’ (1/143). An ‘ethical world order’ is rejected in favour of a ‘Dionysian world order’, the truth of which we are meant to take on trust, on the strength of Nietzsche’s experience of Wagner’s ‘Ge- ~amtkunstwerke’ .~~ The weakness of Nietzsche’s case notwithstanding, this section of Die Gcburt dcr Tragodic provides clear evidence that he harboured deep reservations about Schiller, and it foreshadows his later diatribes against Schiller the ‘moralist’.

Schiller was undoubtedly an important ‘untimely’ weapon in Nietzsche’s cultural armoury in the early 1870s. We should not, however, exaggerate the importance of the role Schiller played in Nietzsche’s thought at that time. It was an ancillary role, one tactical device among many, in a strategy designed to promote the ‘pre-Socratic’ spirit of Wagner and his music at the expense of the ‘Socratic’ spirit of nineteenth-century Germany. The early Nietzsche reinterprets Schiller’s character in a manner which both promotes Wagner, by presenting Schiller as an authoritative precursor, and denigrates Nietzsche’s enemies, by attempting to distance Schiller from his conservative admirers. His attitude to Schiller’s works is more complex. While he had great respect for the theory of the naive and the sentimental, he had no patience with the supposed moral implications of Schiller’s dramas. Andler’s assertion that ‘l’idialisme de Schiller passe tout entier dans le Nietzsche de la premiZre pCriode’ cannot, therefore, be endorsed.36 On balance, however, and particularly in the discussion of the birth of tragedy in sections 1-10, it is clear that Nietzsche’s engagement with

35 ‘Ein Psychologe diirfte ndch hinzuliigen, dass was ich in jungen Jahren bei Wagnerischer Musik geh6rt habe, Nichts iiberhaupt mit Wagner zu thun hat; dass wenn ich die dionysische Musik beschrieb, ich das beschrieb, was ich geh6rt hatte’ ( E H ‘GT’ 4: 6/313); see also his letter to Rohde of 9 Dccember 1868, one month after first meeting Wagner, in which he describes the experience of hearing Wagner’s music as kin staunendcs Sichselbstfinden’ (KSBI2 353).

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Andler, Nict.&c, so vie el so pensic, I , p. 66.


Schiller helped to shape the argument of Dic Gcburt dcr Tragodic. His view of Schiller was soon to change. His ‘Schillerbild’ was closely tied to his ‘Wagnerbild’, and it is therefore unsurprising that his reassessment of Wagner entailed a corresponding change in attitude to Schiller.

In his writings after 1876 Nietzsche’s remarks about Schiller are usually, though not always, hostile. They arise in the context of two concerns which are not present in his earlier texts. The first is his growing antipathy to Wagner, and the second is his ‘Feldzug gegen die MoraP (EH ‘M’ 1: 61 329).37 In Nietzsche’s eyes these two phenomena are the aesthetic and the ethical sides of the same coin - cultural decadence - and Schiller comes to be linked with both. A common feature of Nietzsche’s later remarks is that they no longer engage with Schiller’s work in any detail, they tend instead to be sweeping, and often breathtakingly unjust, generalisations. The pillorying of Schiller as ‘der Moral-Trompeter von Sackingen’ is merely the pithiest - and the most amusing - in a long series of similar verbal swipes. As in Nietzsche’s earlier writings, Schiller serves a representative function as the tangible symbol of more widespread attitudes he wishes to draw his readers’ attention to, only now he is cast in the role of villain. This is wholly characteristic of the way Nietzsche handles historical figures in his writings: ‘ich greife nie Personen an, - ich bediene mich der Person nur wie eines starken Vergrosserungsglases, mit dem man einen allgemeinen, aber schleichenden, aber wenig greifbaren Nothstand sichtbar machen kann’ (EH ‘Warum ich so weise bin’ 7: 61274).

When reading Nietzsche’s works and notes of 1876-89, one is struck by the degree to which he diagnoses in Schiller the same symptoms of artistic and psychological decadence as he claimed to find in the ‘case’ of Wagner, who remains the real target of Nietzsche’s polemics. Schiller is only ever mentioned as a supporting example.38 Nietzsche now draws three new, disparaging, parallels between Wagner and Schiller. First, they are both accused of producing effect-seeking, intoxicating art that panders to philistine tastes: ‘Was auf jetzige Deutsche wie bcrauschend wirkt, das sehe man aus den Themata W[agner]s; was auf fruhere, aus Schillers Themata’ (N 1880: 9/167). Second, they are held up as frivolous, posturing ‘Theatermen- schen’. In a NachLg9 note of 1885 they are denigrated as mere ‘Schauspieler’ (111539)’ and in Dcr Fall Wagner (1888) we read: ‘Wagner rechnet nie als Musiker, von irgend einem Musiker-Gewissen aus: er will die Wirkung. . . . Und er kennt das, worauf er zu wirken hat! - Er hat darin die Unbedenklich- keit, die Schiller hatte, die jeder Theatermensch hat’ ( W A 8: 6/31). Third, he mocks their attempts to write about art; in a section of Dcr Wanderer und scin Schutten, entitled ‘Affectation der Wissenschaftlichkeit bei Kunstlern’, he writes:

” In this ‘review’ ofMorgmr6C Nietzsche claims that his campaign against Judaeo-Christian morality began with the publication of that book in 1881. Its subtitle is Cdukm iibm die mmulirch Vonrrtheile. 98 See Politycki, Umweiuag alk Wnir?, p. 361.

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Schiller glaubte, gleich anderen deutschen Kunstlern, wenn man Geist habe, diirfe man iiber allerlei schwierige Gegenstande auch wohl mit dcr Fedcr improvi- siren [. . .] das Lustige an solchen Kunstler-Schriften [ist], dass hier der Kunstler, ohne es zu wollen, doch thut was seines Amtes ist: die wissen- schaftlichen und unkiinstlerischen Naturen zu parodiren’ ( WS 123: 2/605).

Naming Schiller here as the prime exponent of this ‘affectation’, this uncon- scious parodying, deliberately obscures Nietzsche’s main target, Wagner, who is one of the ‘andere deutsche Kunstler’. Even at this stage (1880) Nietzsche was reluctant, at least in his published works, to reveal the extent of his break with his former mentor. Wagner himself did not become fully aware of it until early 1882.

The negative identification of Schiller with Wagner persists throughout Nietzsche’s later writings. A NachluJ note from the summer of 1878, for example, singles out Schiller’s reaction to Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, which Nietzsche takes to be disingenuous, jealous and hence ‘Wagnerian’:

Schiller’s Satz ‘gegen das Vortreffliche keine Rettung als Liebe’ recht wagne- risch. Tiefe Eifersucht gegen alles GroBe, dem er einc Seite abgewinnen kann - Hal3 gegen das, wo er nicht heran kann (Renaissance, franzosische und griechische Kunst des Stils) (8/547).3g

Ten years later the two are once again linked, in order to highlight alleged stylistic deficiencies in Wagner’s music-dramas: ‘das Schillersche an Wagner: er bringt “leidenschaftliche Beredsamkeit, Pracht der Worte, als Schwung edler Gesinnungen”’ (N 1888: 13/495); and in Ecce Homo Nietzsche notes with amused contempt: ‘Als ich das letzte Ma1 Deutschland besuchte, fand ich den deutschen Geschmack bemuht, Wagnern und dem Trompeter von Sackingen gleiche Rechte zuzugestehn’ ( E H ‘WA’ 1: 61358).

It would be misleading, however, to pretend that, after 1876, Nietzsche’s remarks about Schiller are exclusively negative. Although his comments are, on balance, unfavourable, there are traces, particularly in the period 1879-81, of the admiration he once had for Schiller. In July 1879, for example, he notes: ‘Ich muB weinen, wenn ich Goethes Worte auf Schiller “und hinter ihm in wesenlosem Scheine usw.” lese. Warum?’ (N: 81594).40 In the same year there is genuine sympathy with ‘der arme Schiller, der keine Zeit hatte und keine Zeit liess’ (VM 227: 21483); and in the winter of 1880-1 Nietzsche pays Schiller a backhanded compliment: ‘Jedenfalls ware man jetzt sehr ruckstandig, wenn man nach Schopenhauer noch wie Schiller empfinden wurde: aber freilich dem gegenwartigen Deutschen, wie er wirklich seitdem geworden ist, damit immer noch hundertfach uberlegen!’ (N: 9/411). I t would be equally misleading to maintain that Nietzsche’s

”The quotation is frum Gocthe’s M a r i m wrd Rcp..i.N., 1271 ( C w h s Wcrkc, xii, 536), which paraphrases Schiller’s enthusiastic response to Wilhelm M&fn (letter to Goethe, 2 July 1796: J v 2); cf. Vmnisch Mcinwlgcn wd Spriich 351 (2/52Of.). ui A reference to Gocthe’s ‘Epilog zu Schillen “Glocke”’, 31f. (Goellus Werkc, i, 257). Q BL.drvcll F’ublirhers Ud 1995

NIETZSCHE’S ‘SCHILLERBILD: A RE-EVALUATION 537

later remarks about Schiller are confined to his polemic against Wagner. His chief objection to Schiller is not that he was, allegedly, a Wagnerian avant la lettre, but that he represented a metaphysical and ethical idealism which had become repugnant to Nietzsche. He attempts to expose Schiller’s moral earnestness and philosophical idealism, so admired in the nineteenth century, as hollow, pusillanimous, effect-seeking rhetoric. In Morgenriith Schiller’s idealism is characterised as ‘ein weicher, gutartiger, silbern glit- zernder Idealismus, welcher vor Allem edel verstellte Gebarden und edel verstellte Stimmen haben will’ (M 190: 3/163). Any sympathy Nietzsche may have had (in Die Geburt der Trugodie) with Schiller’s view of Greece has now evaporated:

Das Ideale bei Schiller Humboldt - eine falsche Antike [. . .] etwas zu glasirt, weich, durchaus der harten und haBlichen Wahrheit nicht in’s Angesicht zu sehen wagend, tugendstolz, vornehmen Tones, affektvoller Gebarde, aber kein Leben, kein achtes Blut (N 1879: 815939.

Schiller the dramatist is dismissed out of hand as a moralising poseur. Nietzsche never mentions any of the plays by name, nor does he ever quote from them, he simply casts aspersions on Schiller’s motives and audience: ‘Schiller gehort zu jenen Deutschen, welche die groBen glanzenden Worte und Prunk-Gebarden der Tugend liebten (- selbst sein Geschmack an der Kantischen Moral und ihrem unbedingten Commando-Tone gehort hierhin -)’ (N 1885: 11/567).41 He found his audience, Nietzsche alleges,

irn deutschen Madchen und Jungling. Ihren hoheren, edleren, sturmischeren wenn auch unklareren Regungen, ihrer Lust am Klingklang sittlicher Worte (welche in den dreissiger Jahren des Lebens zu verschwinden pflegt) karn er mit seinen Dichtungen entgegen und errang sich dadurch, gernass der Leidenschaftlichkeit und Parteisucht jener Altersclasse, einen Erfolg, der allmahlich auch auf die reiferen Lebensalter mit Vortheil einwirkte (VM 170: 21448).

Nietzsche himself was in his thirties when he wrote this, and it is perhaps a confession that he too, as an adolescent, had enjoyed the ‘Klingklang sittlicher Worte’.

Even Schiller’s theoretical essays, with which he had had such a productive engagement in the early 1870s, are now rejected:

Und nun stehen seine Prosa-Aufsatze da, - in jeder Beziehung ein Muster, wie man wissenschaftliche Fragen der Aesthetik und Moral nicht angreifen diirfe, - und eine Gefahr &r junge Leser, welche in ihrer Bewunderung des

“ This accusation is, of course, grossly unfair. Schiller’s aesthetic arose, at least in part, fbm his distaste for Kant’s moral rigorism: ‘In der Kantischen Moralphilosophie ist die Idcc der P&ht mit einer Harte vorgetragen, die alle Grazien davon zurlckschreckt, und einen schwachcn Verstand leicht versuchen konnte, auf dern Wege einer finstern und monchischen Ascetik die moralische Vollkommenheit zu suchen’ (obn A m t und firdc: NA xx 284).

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Dichters Schiller, nicht den Muth haben, vom Denker und Schriftsteller Schiller gering zu denken (WS 123: 2/605).

There is perhaps an element of ‘self-overcoming’ here, a suggestion that he too was once one of these ‘junge Leser’, and also a sense of regret, or even shame, that he had once admired Schiller’s aesthetic theory. He is also suggesting that admiration of this kind is rooted in a lack of courage to think for oneself. As in his early writings, Nietzsche attacks nineteenth- century German attitudes to Schiller, but instead of defending Schiller against his admirers, he now tars him with the same brush: ‘Schiller, der “edle” Schiller, der ihnen [den Deutschen] mit grossen Worten urn die Ohren schlug, - dei war nach ihrem Herzen’ (WA 3: 6/18).

Nietzsche’s later attitude towards Schiller develops in inverse proportion to his estimation of Goethe. In the firmament of personalities Nietzsche uses and abuses throughout his career, Goethe’s star waxed as Schiller’s waned. One reason for this was that Nietzsche’s Goethe appeared to combine in one person many of the modes of thought and action which were compatible with his own, whereas his Schiller seemed to embody profoundly hostile aesthetic and ethical principles. To take just three examples, from the period 1884-5, Nietzsche praises Goethe’s ‘vornehme Isolirtheit’ (1 1/ 160), his ‘ Vergottlichung des Lkbes’ (1 1/680), and, perhaps most important, his ‘heidnische Frommigkeit’ untainted by Christianity (1 1/605). In his early writings Nietzsche had often mentioned Schiller and Goethe (in that order) in the same approving breath. Now he seeks to uncouple Schiller from Goethe and to reverse the order in which they are ranked. In 1881, for example, he endorses Grillparzer’s judgment that “‘Schiller geht nach oben, Goethe kommt von oben”. Unterscheidung der hoheren Naturen’ (A? 9/607). By 1888 he is no longer content to draw subtle distinctions, he wants to drive a wedge between the two names: ‘wenn man sagt Schiller und Goethe, meint man, der Erstere sei als Idealist der Hohere gewesen, der Achte: dieser Attituden-Held!’ (N: 13/502); and in the same year, he protests: ‘was ich nicht horen mag, ist ein beruchtigtes “und”: die Deutschen sagen “Goethe und Schiller” . . . Kmnt man noch nicht diesen Schiller?’ (GD ‘Streifzuge eines Unzeitgemassen’ 16: 6/ 122).

Nietzsche’s downgrading of Schiller after 1876 and the upgrading of Goethe which accompanied it had two important consequences. The first was that it helped to shape a more widespread change in attitude towards Schiller and Goethe. As Politycki has observed, Nietzsche’s denigration of Schiller in the 1880s was ‘der Hohe- und Scheitelpunkt der Abwertungs- welle, wie sie die zweite Halfte des Jahrhunderts d ~ r c h r o l l t ’ . ~ ~ As this implies, Nietzsche was not alone in promoting Goethe at the expense of Schiller. Viktor Hehn, for example, writing in 1887, also challenged the received nineteenth-century view that Schiller was the greater figure:

‘’ Politycki, Umwmtnng al ln Wmfe?, p. 368. (9 Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1995.


die Welt gewohnte sich, ja ist bis auf den heutigen Tag gewohnt, beide Dichter [Goethe und Schiller] als Eins zu fassen und das Gewicht beider Halften als gleich zu schatzen. [. . .] Schiller war ohne Zweifel der nachste, aber ein Zwischenraum blieb doch: proximus huic, long0 sed proximur intcruallo - wie das Silber ein edles Metal1 ist, aber dem Golde nachstehen muB. Das groRere Verdienst dieser ungetriibten Einheit und der dadurch gewonnenen Doppelmacht [. . .] gebuhrt sicherlich dem alteren Dichter, der zugleich der mildere, reifere war.43

The second consequence of Nietzsche’s ‘Umwertung’ is the more important. It has been to veil the extent of his earlier debt to Schiller. This account has sought to lift the veil and has revealed a ‘Schillerbild’ considerably more complex than the crude caricature drawn by the Nietzsche of Gotzen- Dammemng or Ecce homo. Perhaps, and this is a question for psychologists, the later Nietzsche did protest too much and unwittingly revealed that his attachment to Schiller was far closer than he was prepared to admit. In every one of his protracted and volatile ‘Auseinandersetzungen’ with historical figures, with Wagner, Socrates, Goethe, Christ, Schopenhauer and, I would suggest, Schiller, love and hate cannot be separated.

Speculations aside, it is clear that there is an important link between Nietzsche and Schiller. However, as this discussion has indicated, it would be foolish to claim that this link is one of measurable debt or tangible influence, even if we were to allow ourselves to work with these notoriously unreliable and slippery terms. A study of Nietzsche’s method of dealing with historical figures - of which his treatment of Schiller is a good example - is a strong antidote to naive theorising about direct influence. To talk of influences on Nietzsche is profoundly to misunderstand his eclectic and experimental method of thinking and writing. He is an inveterate and incorrigible borrower and rejecter of ideas. The criterion is whether the idea suits his purpose at a given moment. Accordingly, Nietzsche uses Schiller, as he does so many other historical figures, as both a sounding- board and a whipping-boy. Both before and after 1876 Nietzsche’s attitude to Schiller displays the same ruthlessly judgmental tendency to compart- mentalise and categorise representative figures, whether they are being appropriated as allies or enemies in his untimely campaigns against the values and institutions of modernity.&

43Viktor Hehn, Gedanken iibn Gocthc, Berlin 1887, pp. 92f; Nietzsche read the book and noted down some of Hehn’s unfavourable comments on Schiller; for example, “‘Hatte Schiller llnger gelebt, er ware der Abgott der Zeitgenossen, auch derer, die in Iffland und Kotzebue, in Nikolai und Merkcl ihr Fiihlen und Denken wiederfmden, geworden und auch Ehren und Reichthumer waren ihm in Fiille zugeflossen.” Victor Hehn, Ccdnrutnr iibn Gocrhc p 109’ (N 1888: 13/495).

My thanks to Andrea McTigue and Matthew Bell for their helpful comments on a draft version of this essay.

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NIETZSCHE'S ‘SCHILLERBILD’: A RE-EVALUATION