The Rudolf Steiner Archive

22. Schiller, Greek Drama, and Nietzsche

[ 1 ] This was the period when Schiller wrote Wallenstein—a time of transition for him, a time of purification, during which he sought to rise above his former worldview and grasp what he called the “purely artistic.” We have seen how Schiller sought to perceive in beauty and art something capable of elevating the powers of the human soul and bringing them into harmony, so that it is artistic creation that grants human beings freedom. Thus, as he wrote to Goethe on the occasion of Wilhelm Meister, the artist was for him the only truly genuine human being, and the philosopher merely a caricature in comparison. This was a radical shift that reflected what Schiller had felt at the time.

[ 2 ] In Fiesco, in Intrigue and Love, and in Don Carlos, the characters are to be understood in such a way that some are sympathetic to him, while others are unsympathetic. He wanted to set aside this moral judgment, this moral evaluation, at the height of his artistic mastery. Now he wanted to treat the criminal with the same love and care as the hero; the work of art was no longer to be tied to what he himself felt as sympathy or antipathy.

[ 3 ] When Wilhelm Meister was criticized for having several characters who violated moral sensibilities, he wrote to Goethe, saying something to the effect of: “If one could show you that what is immoral stems from you and not from the characters, then one could reproach you.” For him, Wilhelm Meister is a school of aesthetics.

[ 4 ] Schiller, who had viewed the human personality in terms of its autonomy, sought to rise to the lofty heights of true artistry. This gave rise to a new way for the artist to engage with his creations. We can already see this in Wallenstein. He was no longer to take a personal stake; he no longer wished to pass moral judgment or make moral assessments, but only to act as an artist.

[ 5 ] This view brings to mind a conversation between Schiller and Goethe in which they discussed architecture. In that conversation, Goethe uttered a profoundly meaningful statement that might sound somewhat paradoxical at first. Goethe demanded that a beautiful building make a harmonious impression not only on the eye, but also on someone who were led through it blindfolded. When all sensory perception is eliminated, it becomes possible to immerse oneself in it with the mind.

[ 6 ] Not practicality: what was called for here was the ideal nature of the spirit. At first glance, this demand seems paradoxical: it was derived from the lofty artistic philosophy of Goethe and Schiller. A circle of artists who shared this view formed around them. Among them was Wilhelm von Humboldt, a refined connoisseur of art, whose aesthetic treatises are significant for the intellectual milieu. This led Schiller into a conflict with his earlier artistic views and with Kantianism, which, in essence, sought to allow the supernatural to apply only where moral issues were at stake. But no artist can see things that way; upon returning to the artistic realm, Kant was no longer sufficient for Schiller. Schiller’s conception of the tragic conflict was the one later formulated by Hebbel, who said that only that which is unalterable is tragic. That was how Schiller felt; that was how he had attempted to carry it out in Wallenstein; that was how he wanted to portray the tragic. In Shakespeare’s Richard III, he saw fate descending with such inevitability. Yet he had already developed a preference for Greek drama. In Shakespeare’s plays, the hero stands at the center; the necessity of the character’s development arises from the hero’s character.

[ 7 ] The situation is quite different in Greek drama. There, everything is already predetermined; everything is set in stone. Human beings are placed within a higher spiritual order, but at the same time—because they are sensual beings—they are crushed by it. It is not character or personality, but rather a superhuman fate that determines their course. Thus, the Erinyes of Greek tragedy were not originally goddesses of vengeance, but actually symbolize the twilight—that which cannot be fully dissolved, that which creeps into human fate. Upon returning to his artistic practice, Schiller arrived at this conception of the tragic. Anyone who wishes to perceive the tragic in this way must eliminate the personal, separating it from what is merely human. Only then can one truly understand Wallenstein. Transcending the personal, something supra-personal hovers over Wallenstein. For Schiller, the fact that human beings belong to a higher order, to a higher spiritual world, is the significance of the stars that guide human destiny. It is there, in the stars, that Wallenstein is to read his destiny.

[ 8 ] Carlyle alludes to this transcendent personality when, in Wallenstein’s Camp, he finds a parallelism in the characters of the individual figures that extends beyond them to the personalities of the leaders: thus, the Irish dragoon, who trusts in the vagaries of war, points to his commander Buttler; the first cuirassier, who embodies the nobler side of military life, points to Max Piccolomini; the trumpeter, in his unconditional devotion, to Terczky; while the sergeant, who pedantically quotes his commander’s sayings, appears as a caricature of Wallenstein.

[ 9 ] Here, then, we see a broad pattern that transcends the merely personal. The entire composition of the poem demonstrates the perspective that Schiller believed he had attained. First, there is the camp scene, where Wallenstein does not appear at all; second, the Piccolomini scene, where Wallenstein does not actually intervene—he learns what has happened from Max Piccolomini, and from his wife he hears what is going on at the Viennese court. He allows his generals to unite and sign the famous document. The action unfolds around him. Thus, the idea of betrayal is also grasped by him almost casually, only to then take hold of his soul. Third, Wallenstein’s death. Now Wallenstein is thrust into the events by his own thoughts, which have taken on a life of their own, thrust into a fate that transcends the personal. Monumental language characterizes this situation. He is placed within an ironclad necessity; the personal—which, in the grand scheme of things, has nothing special to do with it—is pushed into the background. Yet it also finds harrowing expressions, as in the conversation with Max Piccolomini.

[ 10 ] Wallenstein (who has been silently staring at him and is now approaching him):

[ 11 ] Max, stay with me. — Don’t leave me, Max!
Look, when they brought you to me in the tent
at the Prague winter encampment, a delicate boy,
Unaccustomed to the German winter, your hand
Had frozen to the heavy flag,
You refused to let go of it like a man; back then I
Took you in, covered you with my cloak,
I myself was your caretaker; I was not ashamed
Of these small acts of service; I tended to you
With a woman’s caring diligence,
Until you, warmed by me, felt once more
The joy of young life in my heart.
When have I changed my mind since then?
I have made many thousands rich,
Bestowed lands upon them, rewarded them
With positions of honor—I have loved you,
My heart, I gave myself to you.
They were all strangers; you were
The child of this house—Max, you cannot leave me!
It cannot be; I do not want to and will not believe
That Max could ever leave me.

[ 12 ] But it does not actually interfere with the plot. Distinguishing between the great tragedy and the personal, as is done here—showing how Wallenstein has no choice but to take action after allowing his thoughts to run free—that is what makes this drama by Schiller so great. Here he shows us how freedom becomes a kind of sun of necessity. Underlying this entire line of thought are contemporary concepts that need only be kindled to bear fruit.

[ 13 ] The next drama, Mary Stuart, is conceived in the same way. Essentially, everything has already happened at the beginning, and nothing unfolds except what has long since been set in motion. Only the character—the inner life—unfolds before us, and this inner life, in turn, appears as a necessity.

[ 14 ] In his later plays, Schiller sought to develop the element of fate more and more. Thus, in The Maid of Orleans, something transcendent is expressed in the visions where she is confronted by a demonic force that calls her to her mission and opposes her when she has been unfaithful to the commandment, until she is reconciled with it through penance.

[ 15 ] In The Bride of Messina, he actively seeks to reintroduce Greek tragedy into modern life. Here, he expresses the transpersonal through the introduction of the chorus. What was Schiller’s intention with the chorus? He looked back to the origins of tragedy, which arose from religion. The primordial drama depicted how Dionysus, the suffering god, is redeemed once more through humanity. — Later research has confirmed this truth. — When the Greek mystery drama became secularized, the earliest beginnings of dramatic art emerged. Thus, in Aeschylus, we still encounter an echo of that from which the art emerged—the mystery cults in which the cosmic drama of the world’s redemption was portrayed. Edouard Schuré depicted these Eleusinian Mysteries in his Sanctuaires d’Orient, a first form of religious-artistic resolution of the mystery of the world. The all-encompassing plots of this primordial drama did not find a suitable medium in language; language is the expression of personal relationships. When drama shifted to the spoken word, it dealt with more personal relationships, as in the works of Sophocles and Euripides. One had moved from the typical to the depiction of the personal. Ancient drama therefore employed a transpersonal language, something akin to music. It originated with the chorus, which accompanied the action depicted through mime. Thus, the later spoken drama developed from musical drama. Friedrich Nietzsche elaborated on this idea in his work The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. To him, spoken drama was a form of decadent art. Hence his admiration for Wagner, who sought to create a new religious art born of the mythical world. Richard Wagner was not inspired by the personal, but by the transpersonal. He therefore bases his dramas not on historical but on mythical plots, and where the transpersonal is to be depicted, he uses not ordinary language but a musically elevated form.

[ 16 ] Schiller had a premonition of what would later be explored, and developed Greek tragedy in this spirit. He wanted to introduce a lyrical element in order, as he mentions in the preface, to elevate art to a special height through atmosphere. Thus, what unfolded in a radical form within the circles of Wagner and Nietzsche is already present in Schiller; it is simply not treated there with the same serenity as it is by him.

[ 17 ] The great idea of leading humanity back to the source from which the spiritual sprang—of returning art to the native foundation from which religion, art, and science emerged—already lives within Schiller. For him, beauty could be the dawn of truth. Even today, we still find in Schiller what points us toward the best we can hope for in the present and the future. Thus, Schiller can lead the way for us today as a prophet of a better future.