Well, nearly half-way through Schiller Year and the celebration seems to be running out of steam. Why – despite universal acclaim for Schiller’s genius – is our enthusiasm begining to flag? The great literary historian George Steiner has the answer – I think – in his essay on Schiller that was recently published on the Sign and Sight Web site. The problem lies in Schiller’s ornate claissical rhetoric, which no longer resonates with our post-modern sensibilities:
The second obstacle to reception
is Schiller’s language: these goddesses with their rosy cheeks, these
chalices, the never-ending apotheoses that so resemble Tiepolo’s
mythological murals. These "raised wings" and the "rapture" amidst the
"rose-coloured veil". For almost 2000 years, the rhetoric of Antiquity
dominated the literature of the West. And Schiller’s mastery of every
rhetorical trick is superb: "See you the rainbow yonder in the air? / Its golden portals heaven
doth wide unfold, / Amid the angel choir she radiant stands, / The
eternal Son she claspeth to her breast, / Her arms she stretcheth forth
to me in love. / How is it with me? Light clouds bear me up– / My
ponderous mail becomes a winged robe."
("Seht ihr den Regenbogen in der Luft? / Der
Himmel öffnet seine goldnen Tore, / Im Chor der Engel steht sie
glänzend da, / Sie hält den ewgen Sohn an ihrer Brust, / Die Arme
streckt sie lächelnd mir entgegen. / Wie wird mir – Leichte Wolken
heben mich – / Der schwere Panzer wird zum Flügelkleide.")In this effusive celebration of language,
Homer and Virgil shine through, as well as Luther’s version of the
psalms. The only problem is that we now live in a radically
anti-rhetorical climate, and the "winged robes" of language arouse our
suspicion. It is the stutterer Woyzeck who we believe. We trust those
voices that speak in short, naked sentences as in Kafka or Beckett, or
who, like Wittgenstein, advise us to keep quiet.
Schiller as a dramatist is suffering the same fate that one critic sees happening to Bertolt Brecht
The playwright [Brecht] has suffered the fate of being taught in German schools
and staged in student and provincial productions in the United States.
He has become "the sort of dramatist who has absolutely no relevance to
the contemporary theater." For whatever reason, "Brecht has simply
vanished as a player." And in North America and elsewhere, "the last 10
years in Brecht studies have been incredibly sad, incredibly sad."
What is it that Brecht and Schiller might have in common? The Schiller of Weimar classcism and the Brecht of the Berliner Ensemble were both using the stage to illustrate history. There is a didactic component to their stagecraft: the characters in Brechts classical plays are not of flesh and blood. Rather they embody some aspect of the Leninist dialectic – intellectually interesting, perhaps, but without any true dramatic presence (alien to the V-Effekt).
It is the Schiller of the Sturm und Drang that still speaks to us today . More than 220 years after it was written, Die Räuber still impresses with the vitality and pathos that captivated audiences across Europe. Likewise it is the early plays of Brecht, Baal, Trommeln in der Nacht,
Im Dickicht
der Städte, that have a dramatic power lacking in his later, better known, works. The great stage director Robert Woodruf spoke about his attraction to these works in an interview.
My attraction
to Brecht’s first attempts at playwriting is the same as it would be to a young
poet. At that point, Brecht was searching for a voice. For that reason, plays
like Jungle have a raw energy to them, a sense of space between the lines
that suggest a young writer looking for a way to communicate. This "space" is
an invitation to other artists to stage his plays. When thinking of this "space
between the lines," I compare In the Jungle of Cities
or Baal, for example, to Galileo, The Caucasian Chalk Circle,
or Mother Courage. In the case of Galileo, the text leaves little
room for interpretation. In addition, each character in Galileo possesses
a definite agenda. This is true of Brecht’s more mature works because by that
time, he knew how to cement his ideas in place. But in Jungle, Brecht
is a young artist; he shouts at his audience. This results from his raw artistic
energy. Brecht’s early drama excites me for that reason – a director can shape
that kind of energy, and one yearns to find a shape for it. At this point in
his career, Brecht leans on the art that influences him. In Jungle, he
adapts Rimbaud’s poetic style. I like that Brecht pays homage to poets who came
before him, that they were the inspiration for his dramatic works. We then in
turn become poets of a sort, each of us finding how to express Brecht’s ideas
to our own audience. Brecht hands us the baton as it were. This is what is very
exciting for me.
In George Steiner’s Schiller essay he mentions the power of Büchner’s Woyzeck with contemporary audiences. Büchner died too young to leave behind an aesthetic treatise. We can surmise his views, however, from a passage in his short story Lenz – about the Sturm und Drang playwright. In one his lucid moments the main character discusses art (original German text can be found here):
They spoke of literature; he was in his proper sphere. The period of Idealism was then in fashiion, and Kaufmann was its disciple. Lenz spoke violently against it. He said that those poets who claimed to represent reality hadn’t even a conception of it; nonetheless they are more bearable than those who want to glorify it. (…) "I demand of art that it be life and the possibility that it might exist – nothing else matters; we then have no need to ask whether it is beautiful or ugly. The sense that what has been created has life stands above the othertwo precepts and is the only criterion of art. Furthermore, we find it only very seldom: we find it in Shakespeare, we are always confronted with it in folk songs and sometimes in Goethe; whatever else there is we can toss out as worthless."
Was Lenz (Büchner) implicitly criticizing Schiller in this passage?
