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Tieck's Russian Friends
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
During his Dresden days Tieck had reached the height of his fame. Not only was he the acknowledged head of the German Romantic movement but he was sought far and wide on account of his very talented dramatic readings. Foreign writers—such as H. C. Robinson, Coleridge, and Carlyle from England; Ticknor, Irving, and Cooper from America; Ampère, Marmier, and Montalembert from France—came to visit and pay homage to the famous German poet. Tieck also maintained cordial relations with Scandinavians, particularly with the Swedish poet Bernhard von Beskow, the Swedish diplomat Brinkman, and the Danish poet Oehlenschläger. It is not surprising then that such an attractive personality should receive his share of respect and attention from Germany's most important neighbor to the East, namely, Russia.
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References
1 Ludwig Tieck, The German Romanticist, A Critical Study, by Edwin H. Zeydel (Princeton Univ. Press, 1935), pp. 228 f.; 230 f.
2 Very little space seems to be devoted to this problem in the standard biographies of Tieck, possibly because of the fact that a large part of the source material is available only in Russian. R. Köpke, in his biography of Tieck, Ludwig Tieck, Erinnerungen aus dem Leben des Dichters (Leipzig, 1855), ii, 72, has merely the following brief comment to make: “Auch besuchten ihn die Russen Schukowski, Uwarow und Stackelberg.” Cf. also E. H. Zeydel, op. cit., p. 230. The Russian and other sources will be acknowledged wherever the discussion warrants it. The writer would also like to express his sincere gratitude to Professor Ernest J. Simmons of the English and Slavic Departments of Harvard University for his many valuable suggestions during the production of this article.
3 Christoph August Tiedge (1752–1841) was a minor German poet. His main work, the Urania (Halle, 1801), is a rationalistic treatment in poetic form of the philosophy of Kant. He was an intimate friend of Elisabeth von der Recke, accompanied her on her Italian journey from 1804 to 1806, and was her constant neighbor and companion after she moved to Dresden in 1819.
4 Charlotte Elisabeth (Konstantia) von der Recke (1754–1833) was a German poetess and authoress, and a half sister of Dorothea, the wife of Peter Biron, the last duke of Courland. She maintained an important literary salon in Dresden.
5 The archeologist Karl August Böttiger (1760–1835) was from 1814 to 1821 a supervisor, and from 1821 to 1835 the curator, of the Dresden Museum. He cultivated relations with many literary personalities of his time and was a distinguished member of the Dresden “Liederkreis,” a club of poetasters who dominated the literary scene in Dresden during Tieck's stay there (Zeydel, op. cit., pp. 234 f., 304, 307).
6 The “sculptor” was Ludwig's brother, Christian Friedrich Tieck (1776–1851).
7 Mnemozina (Moscow, 1824), part ii, p. 56. See also “Dnevnik V. K. Kyukhelbekera, Materiali k Istorii russkoi literaturnoi i obshchestvennoi zhizni 10–40 godov xix veka” (Diary of V. K. Küchelbecker, Materials for the History of Russian Literary and Social Life from 1810 to 1840), preface by Y. N. Tynyanov, edited with introduction and notes by V. N. Orlov, and I. S. I. Chmelnitski (Leningrad, 1929), pp. 336 f. This work will henceforth be referred to as Dnevnik. Cf. also A. N. Veselovski, “V. A. Zhukovski, poeziya chuvstva i serdechnago voobrazheniya” V. A. Zhukovski, Poetry of Feeling and Imagination of the Heart (Petrograd, 1918), p. 27. This work will henceforth be referred to as Veselovski.
8 Mnemozina, ibid., pp. 60–62.
9 The novel has had a second edition in Moscow, Leningrad 1927, and a third edition in Leningrad 1929.
10 Ibid., 79–80. The date of the interview as given on p. 78, is: “Dresden, October 20/November 1.” That it must have occurred in 1820 is clear from the fact that the date of the preceding section of the novel is given as “October 15/27, 1820” (p. 77).
11 Zeydel, op. cit., pp. 126 f., 241, 378.
12 Ostafevskiy Arkhiv knyazey Vyazemskikh perepiska knyazya P. A. Vyazemskago s A. I. Turgenevim 1824–1836 (Ostafevo Archives of Prince Vyazemski, ed. by V. I. Saitov, Correspondence of P. A. Vyazemski with A. I. Turgenev, 1824–1836 (St. Petersburg, 1899), iii, 62. Ostafevo, July 26, 1824. Cf. also Dnevnik, p. 352.
13 Op. cit., p. 69, August 5, 1824 (“Black River”) in the morning.
14 K. W. F. Solger's Vorlesungen über Aesthetik, hrsg. von K. W. L. Heyse (Leipzig, 1829), pp. 243 ff.
15 Tieck and Solger, The Complete Correspondence with Introduction, Commentary and Notes, by Percy Matenko (New York-Berlin, 1933), pp. 465, 469, 485 f. This work will henceforth be referred to as Tieck and Solger.
16 Zeydel, p. 253.
17 Otto P. Peterson, Schiller in Russland, 1785–1805 (New York, 1934), pp. 233–234: “Das Wesentliche der für die Schillerforschung wichtigen Ausführungen und Bekenntnisse Bjelinskys und Dostojewskys gipfelt in folgendem. Sowohl sie als auch die anderen russischen Dichter und Denker haben immer von neuem (u. a. Herzen und Tolstoi) darauf hingewiesen, dass der Einfluss Schillers auf die russische Literatur keineswegs erst in ihrem ‘klassischen Zeitalter,’ in den 30er Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts, sondern, wie das Dostojewsky in unvergleichlicher Kürze und scharfer Umrissenheit ausspricht, bereits in der vom Zeitalter Dostojewskys aus gerechneten ‘vorvergangenen Generation,’ d. h. im 18. Jahrhundert und am Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts einsetzt. Wie Dostojewsky ferner hervorhebt ist dieser Einfluss Schillers durch die von Dostojewsky aus gerechnete ‘vergangene Generation’: vom Anfang bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts hindurch bis hinauf in sein literarisches Zeitalter, von der Mitte dieses Jahrhunderts bis zu den 80er Jahren, ununterbrochen in den ‘Blutkreislauf der russischen Gesellschaft eingedrungen’ und hat in vielem die literarische Entwicklung sowohl Dostojewskys als auch der anderen Dichter und den Werdegang der russischen Dichtung wesentlich beeinflusst.”
18 Dnevnik, p. 326.
19 Dnevnik, pp. 326–328.
20 Prince Sergei Alexandrovich Shirinsky-Shikmatov (1785–1837), poet and prose-writer, an active member of the Academy of Sciences and of the “Association of the Lovers of the Russian Word.” Küchelbecker gave an unusually high rating to Shikhmatov, allowing him a place directly after Derzhavin whom he considered to be the first Russian poet (Dnevnik, pp. 331 f.).
21 Nikolai Alexandrovich Bestuzhev (1791–1855), brother of A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinski, seaman, artist, Decembrist, and member of the Northern Society. He was sentenced to hard labor for life; after thirteen years of penal servitude he was deported in 1839 to Selenginsk, in the Province of Irkutsk, together with his brother Michael Alexandrovich. Küchelbecker was on familiar terms with the two brothers and sent them his diaries from Barguzin (Dnevnik, pp. 131 f.).
22 Ostafevskiy Arkhiv, op. cit., p. 69; Dnevnik, p. 352.
23 Tieck and Solger, op. cit., pp. 315 f.
24 R. Köpke, op. cit., ii, 181 ff.
25 R. Köpke, op. cit., ii, 193 ff.
26 Tieck and Solger, op. cit. “Tieck's Attitude to Philosophy,” pp. 64 f.
27 Tieck and Solger, op. cit., p. 570, Tieck to Solger, Dresden den 22t Sptbr. 19: “den Macbeth hab' ich zu übersetzen angefangen.”
28 Heinrich Lüdeke, Ludwig Tieck und das alte englische Theater, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Romantik (Frankfurt am Main, 1922), p. 244.
29 Dnevnik, p. 313.
30 Ludwig Tieck's nachgelassene Schriften. Auswahl und Nachlese hrsg. von Rudolf Köpke (Leipzig, 1855), ii, “Lady Macbeth, 1825,” p. 158.—Cf. also his criticism of Mlle. Georg's portrayal of this scene in an adaptation by Ducis which Tieck witnessed during his inspection, with Lüttichau, of the German theaters in May and June, 1825: “Als Nachtwandlerin und in der letzten Scene erschien sie ohne Schminke und selbst weiβ gefärbt, starr, ohne Blick, gespenstisch, oder wie ein fratzenhaftes, bewegliches Bild des Entsetzens aus Stein geformt. Der Anblick war im Grausenhaften fast unerträglich.” Kritische Schriften. Zum erstenmale gesammelt und mit einer Vorrede herausgegeben von Ludwig Tieck (Leipzig, 1848–52), iii, 62 f.
31 L. Kobilinski-Ellis, W. A. Joukowski Seine Persönlichkeit, sein Leben und sein Werk (Paderborn, 1933), pp. 183–192, 223 f., for the translations of Die Jungfrau and the Undine respectively. This work will henceforth be referred to as K. E. It might be of interest to list some of these translations. Thus he translated Schiller's Des Mädchens Klage (K. E. 72), his Kassandra (K. E. 88), Die Kraniche des Ibykus (K. E. 93), Ritter Toggenburg (K. E. 145), Thekla, eine Geisterstimme (K. E. 152), Dithyrambe (K. E. 153), Der Graf von Habsburg, Berglied (K. E. 153, 154), Das Siegesfest (K. E. 203), Der Ring des Polykrates, Klage des Ceres, Der Taucher, Der Handschuh (K. E. 214), Der Kampf mit dem Drachen, Der Gang nach dem Eisenhammer, Das Mädchen aus der Fremde (K. E. 219), Das Eleusische Fest (K. E. 222), Goethe's Meine Göttin (K. E. 72), Erlkönig (K. E. 145, 154). Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen aβ (K. E. 153), An den Mond, Trost in Tränen (K. E. 153), Schäfers Klagelied, Neue Liebe, neues Leben, Der Fischer, Mignon (K. E. 154), Der Wanderer (K. E. 185), Adler und Taube (K. E. 222); Zhukovski translated 184 hexameters from the second canto of Klopstock's Messias (K. E. 152); Uhland is represented by translations of his Sängers Vorüberziehen, Lied eines Armen, Der Traum, Die Rache, Harald, Die drei Lieder (K. E. 153), Die Nonne (K. E. 154), Der Überwinder (K. E. 185), Alonso (K. E. 214), Lob des Frühlings, Das Schloβ am Meere (K. E. 219), Roland Schildträger, Der alte Ritter, Junker Rechberger (Zhukovski called it Der Ritter Rollon), König Karls Meerfahrt, Der Pilger, Normännischer Brauch (K. E. 222). Of Hebel he translated Habermus, Der Karfunkel, Dorfwächter, Vergänglichkeit (K. E. 153), Der Morgenstern, Der Sommerabend (K. E. 154); of Th. Körner, Treu bis ins Grab (K. E. 154). He translated Burger's Lenore twice, in 1808 and 1829 respectively (K. E. 72, 214), Dr. Zedlitz's Die Nächtliche Heerschau (K. E. 233), and also translated Friedrich Halm's drama Kamoens (K. E. 233). He leaned heavily on Rückert's translation of Nal und Damajanti and Rustem und Sohrab in writing his own poems of the same name (K. E. 249, 250, 266, 268) and composed several fairy tales adapted from the Grimm collection: Der Tulpenbaum, Der Gestiefelte Kater (K. E. 218, 259) whereas his fairy tale Froschmäusekrieg is based on Georg Rollenhagen's animal epic Froschmäuseier (K. E. 217). It is also interesting to note that according to Veselovski, p. 21, Zhukovski had planned to publish a journal about 1817 under the title of Aonid or Mnemozina, and had intended to include in its German section, besides selections from Goethe and Schiller, Herder, Jacobi and others, translations from Tieck's Phantasm of Die Elfen and Der Pokal, Liebeszauber, and Der blonde Eckbert, selections from Sternbald, Fouqué‘s Erzählungen of which he thought very highly, several fragments of Jean Paul's Geist, Novalis’ Der Poet, Erzählung, and fragments from Schlegel's Dramaturgie. The journal did not materialize. J. Paul's verses on the death of Queen Luise were placed at the end of the article “Recollection” 1842 but appeared in the Moscow Telegraph already in 1827 (part xv, No. 11) without the signature of the translator. In his old age Zhukovski had also undertaken a translation of Werner's Der 24. Februar of which the beginning is preserved.
32 Russkaya Starina, cx (April-June, 1902), 395, dated March 10 (new style), 1849, Bade-Bade, Maison Kleinman: “The only external reward of my work will be the sweet thought that I (in my time the father in Russia of German romanticism and the poetic uncle of German and English devils and witches) have expiated my sins in my old age and opened for national poetry the door of the Eden which was not lost for it but was closed for it until our time.” Cf. also K. E. 280.
33 K. E. 165 f., 174 f. Cf. also Veselovski, pp. 25–26.
34 Russkaya Starina, cviii (October-December, 1901), 391 ff., “Letters of V. A. Zhukovski to the Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna from his first journey abroad in the year 1821,” Karlsbad, June 23 (July 5), 1821. Cf. also K. E., 175 ff., where a large part of this account is given in German translation and in Veselovski, 24 ff.
35 Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) was a professor at the Dresden academy of art. He was one of the outstanding representatives of the romantic school in art and was noted particularly for his landscape paintings. Zhukovski had also met him in Dresden. Cf. also K. E. 174.
36 A friend of Zhukovski, Alexander Alexeevich Pleshcheev (1775–1827). He possessed theatrical gifts, remarkable mimicry, and excellent diction. Maria Feodorovna was interested in him and invited him to her home as reader (Russkaya Starina, loc. cit., p. 392).
37 Unfortunately Zhukovski's surface impression of the domestic bliss existing in Tieck's family circle was erroneous. Tieck did not live happily with his wife. Though devoted to him and her children, she was a plain housewife who showed no interest in his poetry nor sympathy for his unstable mode of living. Countess Henriette Finckenstein (1774–1847) the oldest daughter of Count Ludwig Karl Finck von Finckenstein and Tieck's patron at Ziebingen, who became a permanent member of Tieck's household after his departure for Dresden in 1819, was the real manager of his home and of his social functions, and, according to some, even Tieck's mistress. Moreover, from 1820 Tieck made use of the work of his older daughter Dorothea (1799–1841) in numerous projects of translation without letting her collaboration become publicly known, probably, as Zeydel says, because he feared a loss of prestige if it became known that a person lacking in systematic linguistic or critical training had a hand in them. The difficult situation of the family weighed heavily upon her mind. Not much is known about the attitude of Tieck to his younger daughter Agnes, but it may be assumed, since her character resembled that of her mother, that he was not particularly interested in her (Zeydel, op. cit., pp. 224 f., 245).
38 Veselovski, pp. 25–26, points out, however, that according to a note in Zhukovski's diary of November 3, 1821, Tieck read Hamlet to Zhukovski, when he revisited Dresden on his return trip to Berlin.
39 A note in the Russkaya Starina explains that Zhukovski called Pleshcheev a “negro” on account of his dark complexion and black hair, and that for the same reason he received, in the literary society “Arzamas” of which he was a member, the nickname, “Black Crow” (Russkaya Starino, cviii, 392–393).
40 As Veselovski points out (op. cit., p. 26) Zhukovski did meet Tieck during the course of his stay in Dresden in the autumn and winter of the years 1826–27, since he mentions his name in the list of persons he met there at that time (Dnevniki V. A. Zhukovskago (Diaries of V. A. Zhukovski), Russkaya Starina, cviii, 192). The Russian poet—a point which Veselovski apparently missed—also succeeded in seeing Tieck during a further visit to Dresden, on March 20, 1840, at the home of General Lenzer in the company of Ammon and Raumer (Dnevniki V. A. Zhukovskago, Russkaya Starino, cxii, 520: “20 (March) (1840) Thursday: ‘To general Lenzer: Tieck, Ammon, Raumer’ ”).
41 Veselovski, pp. 26–27.
42 Zeydel, op. cit., pp. 238, 269 f.; E. K. Bennett, A History of the German Novelle from Goethe to Thomas Mann (Cambridge, Eng., 1934), pp. 77 f., 85 f.
43 Veselovski, op. cit., pp. 24–25.
44 Veselovski, op. cit., p. 27.
45 Ibid., p. 27. A similar thought is expressed by Veselovski in his “Western Influences in Modern Russian Literature,” where he points out that “in the years of the languid or mysterious songs and tales of Fouqué, Novalis, Tieck he (Zhukovski) found an echo of his early broken soul, and not having the strength to shake off the diffuseness of feeling and of finding any sort of manly energetic notes he saw in the romantic storehouse of poetry the sweet and salubrious support of suffering and thinking humanity—a continuation and development of the old-fashioned ‘sentimentality’ which met him on the threshold of life, an influence of the soulfulness of such venerable idealists as his tutor Iv. P. Turgenev or Lopukhin, of the boarding school of the ‘Friendly Literary Society,‘ the circle of Kaisarov and the Turgenev youths” (Aleksei Veselovski, Zapadnoe Vliyanie v novoi russkoi Literature (Western Influences in Modern Russian Literature) (Moscow, 1910), 139.
46 Thus Kobilinski-Ellis explains Zhukovski's peculiar attitude to Hamlet as an effort to counterbalance the Shakespearomania of the Schlegels who at the same time underestimated Die Jungfrau von Orleans upon a translation of which Zhukovski was engaged at this time (K. E. 176–177).
47 K. E. 176–177.
48 Ernest J. Simmons, English Literature and Culture in Russia (1553–1840) (Cambridge, 1935), p. 239 (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, xii). Cf. also Simmons' opinion of Pushkin in his monograph on that author: “Pushkin saw correctly that Russia had come to a parting of the ways in literature; that it was time to shuffle off the sterile influence of French neo-classicism and strike out along the new paths indicated by the fresh romanticism of England and Germany. But he had his own conception of romanticism, which was quite different from that of contemporary critics. Pushkin saw in romanticism simply a negation of the old school and its rules, and a medium that permitted complete freedom of creation and the full expression of the individual. His own works were to pass through the romantic stage and beyond into the broad region of artistic realism.” Ernest J. Simmons, Pushkin (Cambridge, 1937), p. 161.
49 Baltische Monatsschrift (Riga, 1863), vii, 513–514, 525, C. Hoheisel, “Otto Magnus Freiherr von Stackelberg als Mensch, Künstler und Gelehrter.”
50 Hermann Freiherr von Friesen, Ludwig Tieck. Erinnerungen eines alten Freundes aus den Jahren 1825–1842 (Wien, 1871), i, 9–10. Tieck's confidence in him as a friend is shown by the fact that upon moving to new quarters in Dresden, in 1841, he entrusted him along with Frau Solger and Bülow with the task of arranging his library there. See Letters of Ludwig Tieck Hitherto Unpublished 1702–1853, Collected and edited by Edwin H. Zeydel, Percy Matenko, Robert Herndon Fife (New York, 1937), pp. 449–451; Zeydel, op. cit., p. 325.
51 Russische Reime, Vierteljahrsschrift für die Kunde Russlands (St. Petersburg, 1888) xxviii, 173, 181. Cf. also the letter from Uvarov to Pogodin, Warsaw, September 21, 1840, Russkiy Arkhiv (1871), 2080: “Finally on the shores of the Elbe I was enraptured by the Madonna, by the charms of nature, the wittiness of Tieck, who read Shakespeare to me every evening, in Leipzig I conversed with Hermann; saw everything, was everywhere not forgetting the music of Meyerbeer, which was excellently sung by Madame Devrient inspected the schools . . .” (The rest of the paragraph quoted is irrelevant.)
52 Zeydel, op. cit., pp. 173, 179 f.
53 Letters of Ludwig Tieck, op. cit., p. 164, Ludwig Tieck to Friedrich Tieck, Ziebingen, den 9tn April, 1818.
54 Letters of Ludwig Tieck, op. cit., pp. 555–556. While there is a great deal of truth in the above indictment, it should be said, in Sophie's defence, that Friedrich's unhappy state was probably due as much to his own weakness of character as to his sister's irresponsibility, since even after her death in 1833 he continued to be in financial difficulties (Letters of Ludwig Tieck, op. cit., p. 554).
55 Letters of Ludwig Tieck, op. cit., p. 566.