10 - Wallenstein

Summary

Und jetzt an des Jahrhunderts ernstem Ende,

Wo selbst die Wirklichkeit zur Dichtung wird,

Wo wir den Kampf gewaltiger Naturen

Um ein bedeutend Ziel vor Augen sehn

Und um der Menschheit groß e Gegenstände,

Um Herrschaft und um Freiheit wird gerungen –

Jetzt darf die Kunst auf ihrer Schattenbühne

Auch höhern Flug versuchen, ja sie muß,

Soil nicht des Lebens Bühne sie beschämen. (61–9)

(And as our century so gravely ends,

When truth, it seems, would take the shape of art,

When we behold a struggle of great natures

For a momentous goal before our eyes,

And for those objects men hold most sublime

They fight, for power and for liberty –

So art upon its shadow-stage as well

May strive for higher flights, indeed it must,

Or yield in shame before the stage of life!) (pp. 166–7)

Schiller returned to dramatic work after more than a decade's silence as a playwright, a decade that had shaken the stability of Europe and the assumptions of its inhabitants. These words from the Prologue to Wallenstein, spoken on the occasion of the first performance of Wallensteins Lager (Wallenstein's Camp) on 12 October 1798, are a fitting prologue to the series of plays, all but one historical dramas, that flowed rapidly from Schiller's pen until his death in 1805. Though each marks another experiment in dramatic form, they all explore the realm of public action. All of them, with the possible exception of Die Braut von Messina, tackle through the historical subject-matter the vital themes of the decade – power, liberty, the relationship between morality and politics, the problem of legitimacy of government, the conflict between private idylls and public realities.