PASTOR: But no — it’s too much.
HEAD FORESTER: It’s a hard winter.
PASTOR: That is really a lot. Please, less money, but a little wood.
HEAD FORESTER: The wood belongs to the Prince — the money is mine.57—Tonight I will sleep soundly, and, God willing, just as soundly when I must depart for good.
PASTOR: Well, God willing, we are still far from that. But yes. Why not bear it in mind. Truly, one must have lived well, and what great joy not to be disturbed by that thought. All the same, life has no less worth.
HEAD FORESTER: It always pains me to the soul when people try so hard to paint the world and life in black and white.
PASTOR: Human life contains much happiness. But we should be taught early on not to think it of it as glorious and uninterrupted. Within the circle of a well-maintained household there are a thousand joys, and tribulations well borne are also a happiness. The dignity of the father is the first and most noble I know. A philanthropist, a good citizen, a loving spouse and father, in the midst of…58
The voice suddenly breaks off.
HEINZMANN: You could see it didn’t hold his attention. He went inside.
UNGER: The good man, now he will teach these well-behaved Leipzig children to perform The Hunters, and in the ceremonial performance they will be able to say: directed by Iffland.
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: I know, Mr. Unger, that you are on good terms with Iffland. But, just between us, may I ask you, can that be endured? Can one still listen to these tirades concerning humanity and this love of man? Are you not sometimes overcome with disgust at a virtue that is nothing but instinctive goodness of heart without content? Sometimes I catch myself feeling the way I do when I read in the newspaper yet again of a murderer who was good to his dog or his horse.
HEINZMANN: You are right about one thing. The ostentation of these pieces about do-gooding pains any finer sensibility.
UNGER: You could well say that of Kotzebue. But it’s unkind of you to lump my friend Iffland together with that scribbler.
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: Let’s put Iffland to one side. And I’d even venture to say I am indebted to Kotzebue. Have you seen his unpalatable The Indians in England?59 If one really wants to understand what Kant meant by the categorical imperative, with this iron “should” that annihilates every contingency, not just as a moral law, but as the inner stay of every poetic character, then one need only take a look at the mollusks with which our most celebrated playwright has populated the German stage.
UNGER: At any rate, we might sometimes wonder who we are actually working for in Germany, if it is still possible today to publish a rag such as the one Clas peddles in Berlin.
HEINZMANN: I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Unger.
UNGER: Sells for twelve groschen. You haven’t seen it? A literary magazine in which he brings Goethe and Schiller together with Kotzebue and Iffland.
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: Outrageous. You are right about that. But there is another side to the story that is perhaps even sadder It shows that the likes of Kotzebue have come to think of Goethe and Schiller as competitors at best, but never as real, dangerous, enemies to the death.
UNGER: You are forgetting the Xenien.60
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: The Xenien? The Xenien? You know as well as I how they foundered. And that’s putting it mildly.
HEINZMANN: I cannot share your outrage. In the end, you must take the public as it is. You know that in the last twenty years, I haven’t missed a single book fair. You speak with all kinds of people there, and you hear things they don’t shout from the rooftops. Do you know how many subscriptions Göschen got for the Goethe edition he published between 1787 and 1790? I have the figure from the man himself: six hundred. As for the individual volumes, the sales were even worse. For Iphigenie and Egmont, 300—not to speak of Clavigo and Götz.
UNGER: My dear man, you can’t blame that on the public. You know how much we suffer from pirate editions. For every legal exemplar there are ten, twenty illegal copies.
HEINZMANN: Well then, let me tell you something else. On my return journey this time, I spent an evening in Kreuznach. The previous year, my friend Kehr made a name for himself by establishing a lending library: Schiller, Goethe, Lessing, Klopstock, Wieland, Gellert, Wagner, Kleist, Hölty, Matthisson, and more.61 Nobody wanted to read any of it. In the neat phrase of Bürger, there’s a difference between an audience and a crowd.62
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: We will not be able to breathe freely until we have ended the stubborn, pretentious reign of Nicolai, Garve, Biester, Gedike, and whatever else this Berlin riffraff calls itself, and put Schlegel and Novalis in their rightful place.63
HEINZMANN: You love a good joke.
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: There is no victory without a fight. If Schiller and Goethe don’t want to fight, then we must place our hopes on a younger generation.
HEINZMANN: I can give you a taste of the tricks of these young people. Friedrich Schlegel considered increasing the sales of the Athenaeum by offering free spice cakes with each issue.
UNGER: A very modern idea. But in this, Schiller is even more Machiavellian. When Die Horen was failing due to poor sales, he wanted Cotta to insert an article threatening the state in the final volume, so that they would go down in glory.64
HEINZMANN: I cannot say, my good gentlemen, that any of this sits well with us. At any rate, I can still feel my bones from the trip in the postal coach. And we cannot assume that Breitkopf will be arriving before noon. How about a short stroll to the Café Richter?
We hear a drum, a horn (or the like) accompanied by the voice of a
CRIER: All ye honorable guests of the book fair, especially our esteemed book venders, publishers, collectors of rare books, also scholars, pastors, and all other persons of high standing — we announce that the great sale of rare books organized by Mr. Haude and Mr. Spener in Berlin, collections of the King and of the Academy of Scholarly Booksellers, has begun at the Silver Bears.
UNGER: As for me, I’ll be having my breakfast at the Silver Bears.
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: That would be the first book sale you missed, Mr. Businessman … Don’t inconvenience yourself, Mr. Heinzmann. We will meet again.
THE AUCTIONEER: Political and moral discourses on Marci Annaei Pharsalia, by Mr. Veit Ludwigs von Seckendorf, Privy Advisor and Chancellor to the Elector of Brandenburg and Councilor of the University of Halle in Saxony, presented in a special new edition in German with facing translations in Latin on each page and accompanying annotations of obscure and difficult figures of speech as well as an indispensable index, Leipzig 1695…
VOICE OF A BIDDER: Eighteen groschen.
UNGER: One would no longer dare print such a title. Here, neither publisher nor author wishes to puff himself up in the title.
The sound of the gavel.
THE AUCTIONEER: Number 211. “Mirror for the Prince, Anti-Machiavelli, or the Art of Governance,” Strasbourg 1624.
VOICE OF ANOTHER BIDDER: One thaler.
UNGER: The Latin edition of 1577 would be considered rare, but the German far more and only a few are aware of it … Two thalers.
VOICE OF THE OTHER BIDDER: Two thalers and ten groschen.
UNGER: Three thalers.
THE AUCTIONEER: Going once, going twice … Sold.