HEINZMANN: You know that by heart?
IFFLAND: I’m not ashamed of it.
HEINZMANN: “In fact, it is almost nothing at all.” You see, it is these turns of phrase that spoil Jean Paul for me. We already have enough whimsical minds with us in Switzerland. I don’t need to tell you about Lavater.
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: To utter the name of a poet and a charlatan in the same breath.
HEINZMANN: I already told you, I speak as a Swiss. We are a sober people, but we are also an old democracy. We feel how the countless small courts have duped you Germans and deprived you of your independence. Precisely in the case of Jean Paul we feel that. A stunted subaltern intellect has sucked the marrow from his characters’ bones. Even in contrast to the lowliest serf, they appear dishonorable.
IFFLAND: No, there I cannot agree with you. For I know better than anyone how little cause the author has to think differently than you concerning the bourgeoisie and the nobility. I have known his misery and I am proud that it was my friend Moritz in Berlin — my friend and classmate, I should have said — who found the publisher for Jean Paul’s first book.
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: Classmate, you say?
IFFLAND: Yes, and you will never have guessed that Moritz’s consuming desire when we were together in school was to become a great actor. Indeed, there was a time when we were rivals.
We hear a commotion. Voices, etc.
IFFLAND: But what is all this uproar?
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: Young people from the Museum Club, who, as I heard, are holding a rehearsal.
HEINZMANN: I am sorry to be tiresome, but if we don’t use the book fair, Mr. Businessman, to speak out concerning our profession, then I don’t know when we ever will. So let me tell you that we have an excess of novels, of belles lettres, of political hot air. What are we in need of? Natural science and history, history and geography, travel diaries. But the works of natural science should not be metaphysical. Nor should they be pedantic. Enough books on minerals and insects. What we need are popular writings. They should awaken thoughts of the Creator, the order and omnipotence of the natural world, they should show us the great, the beautiful, and the sublime, and the more closely they unite that with everyday life, with practical economics and work, with mathematics and mechanics, the better.
UNGER: Your ideal, if I understand correctly, is Defoe, who besides his Robinson and 200 other books created the first fire and hail insurance companies, and the first savings bank.
HEINZMANN: And we are proud to have such a Robinson-writer in Switzerland. That is Pastor Wyss with his Swiss Family Robinson.53 But I didn’t mean to speak of that. For I openly concede to you, my gentlemen, I did have an ulterior motive. I have my ideal of an author in my coat pocket and I would like very much to share it with you. It is the book of a poor and uneducated man. But just as the travel account of an itinerant journeyman is ten times more valuable than a scholarly treatise, so too something truly special emerges today when a poor, uneducated man sits down to narrate his life.
IFFLAND: You are making us exceedingly curious.
HEINZMANN: That was my intention. And now, I ask that precisely you, Mr. Iffland, read this page for us. Such prose you will have seldom have recited. With the exception of your own, I’m quite sure.
UNGER: But aren’t you going to tell us who wrote it? The folder doesn’t betray anything.
HEINZMANN: The author’s name is Bräker. The book came out with Füßli and is entitled Life Story and Real Adventures of the Poor Man of Toggenburg.
IFFLAND: Not that the shepherd’s life is all fun and games. Not a bit of it! There are hardships enough. The worst for me by far was leaving my warm little bed so early in the morning, and tramping poorly clad and barefoot out into the cold fields, especially if there’s been a really harsh hoar-frost or a thick mist hung over the mountains. When the latter lay so high that I couldn’t surmount it by climbing with my flock up the mountainside, and couldn’t reach the sunshine, then I cursed the mist and told it to go to Jericho and hurried as fast as my legs could carry me out of the gloom into a dell. If, however, I did win the field and gained sunlight and the bright sky above me, with that great sea of mist under my feet and here and there a mountain jutting up like an island — why, what joy, the glory and the gladness of it! Then I wouldn’t leave the mountains for the whole day, and my eye could never see its fill of the sun’s rays playing on this ocean, and waves of vapor in the strangest of shapes swaying about over it, until towards evening they threatened to rise over me again. Then I wished I had Jacob’s ladder, but it was no use, I had to go. I’d grow sad and everything would blend into my sadness. Lonely birds flapped around overhead, dull and sullen, and great autumn flies buzzed so dismally about my ears that I couldn’t help weeping. Then I’d freeze even worse almost than early on and feel pains in my feet, even though they were as hard as shoe-leather.
Most of the time I also had injuries or bruises somewhere or other on me; and when one wound was healed then I went and got myself another, either by landing on a sharp stone and losing a nail or a piece of flesh from a toe, or else giving my hand a gash with one of my tools. There was seldom any question of getting them bound up; and yet they were usually soon better. Added to this, the goats, as I’ve said, caused me a great deal of trouble at the outset because I didn’t know how to handle them properly.54
An uproar of voices drowns out the final words, until the following becomes audible again:
IFFLAND: My god, has Hell been unleashed in there? To resume: “If you want to run a decent home, be sure to leave pigeons and goats alone,” writes our poor man. “So you see: the shepherd’s life also has its share of troubles. But the bad times are richly compensated by the good, when I’m sure there’s never a king so happy. In Kohl Wood stood a beech …”55
We hear again, this time more intense, an uproar of voices.
IFFLAND: This is completely intolerable. Just a moment, we will soon have some peace. That would be even better.
The creaking of a door is heard, followed by two unknown voices.
PASTOR: It pleases me to find you in such a good mood. Once again, I have one or two favors to ask of you.
HEAD FORESTER: Of me? How so — why — how so?
PASTOR: You should be well used the fact that I’m always begging on someone’s behalf when I stop by.56
UNGER: But my dear Iffland, that’s … those are…
IFFLAND: Yes, I can’t believe my ears.
UNGER: The Hunters.
IFFLAND: Act Two, Scene Seven. And how hard these good people are trying.
UNGER: But still they are amateurs? A small private society, perhaps?
IFFLAND: Shhh. Listen.
PASTOR: The poor old man has a sick wife, many children. It’s a horrible fate. — In his youth — a hussar, beaten almost to a cripple and no pension — discarded in his old age — he is left to wander in despair.
HEAD FORESTER: Poor fellow.
PASTOR: If we could just get him through the winter — I have taken up a small collection.
HEAD FORESTER: May God make it worth your while. I would like to make my contribution. He who gives right away, gives twice as much.