Shilling for Schiller

Julian Sanchez | February 1, 2005

The Guardian notes renewed interest in the work of liberal playwright Friedrich Schiller. He's most familiar to modern audiences through music—Beethoven borrwed the text of his "Ode to Joy" for the Ninth symphony, and his plays provided source material for several lesser Verdi operas as well as one of Rossini's better ones, Guillame Tell.

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|2.1.05 @ 7:46PM|#

Speaking of Schilling...

13 days 17 hours 28 minutes til pitchers and catchers report

and

30 days til Schilling-Johnson at Yankee stadium!!

Get 'em Randy!!

|2.1.05 @ 7:48PM|#

make it 60 days! mybad!

ooh somebody turned on the "you can't post twice in x minutes" feature. bummer.

|2.1.05 @ 10:26PM|#

Thanks Julian,

The Friedrich Schiller link is fascinating. I bought that volume: "The Triumph of Liberty" A 2000 year history told through the lives of
freedom's greatest champions a couple months ago but didn't get around to reading it yet. Based on the Schiller chapter, I'm going to read it right away. From the link and the book:

Thomas Mann wrote, "It is not easy to stop, once I have begun to speak of Schiller's special greatness -- a generous, lofty, flaming, inspiring grandeur.... his libertarian sentiments...he is a poet who knows how to bring tears to our eyes while at the same time rousing us to indignation against despotism."

The Guardian link addresses the ebb and flow of Schiller's popularity in Britain. The extent of the residual antipathy toward, and fear of, things German in Britain really hit home for me after the wall, along with communism, crumbled. I remember Margaret Thatcher's reaction to speculation of German re-unification. Margaret Thatcher, that wonderfully unabashed anti-communist cold warrior, fan of individual liberty and Reagan's steadfast allay against the Soviet empire. When she was asked about reunification, she said something like, "let's not be hasty here, we shan't want to do anything rash, we should go slow..."

|2.1.05 @ 11:36PM|#

Whatever you do, don't mention The War!

|2.2.05 @ 6:17AM|#

Wasn't this guy one of the 'Immortals' in Hermann Hesse's weirdo book Steppenwolf?

|2.2.05 @ 9:16AM|#

Douglas Fletcher,

Steppenwolf is one of the better pieces of 20th century litertature. :)

gaius marius|2.2.05 @ 9:39AM|#

one thing we have come to grasp in the past 20 years is the close kinship between German romanticism and our own dramatic tradition.

what has done most of the work in rehabilitating the english romantics, imo, is the resurgence in (infection of?) romanticism in the anglophone world in the last 30 years. what we see transpiring politically -- a heroic and noble global crusade of naked utopian idealism marked by tragedy and solitude in search of promethean ecstasy -- is not isolated from the rest of angloamerican culture. that it is now popularly acceptable by so many when it so clearly (imo) would have been rejected a century ago is evidence of that profound cultural change.

all of the noble moralizing and ostentation of schiller was revolting to british pragmatism for centuries for the same reason hegelian german idealism was found dangerous. that his plays are experiencing a revival can come as a real surprise only to the extent that one doesn't see the growth and pervasiveness of romantic idealism in the anglophone world.

it is also, quite frankly, more good reason to be concerned about that world's fall into hero-cultism and fascism.

this turn may well mark the end of the extremely constructive materialist/empiricist tradition that has marked british and american philosophy, politics and culture going back to hobbes. that is a very sad advent for western civilization.