Friedrich Schiller's

Click here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 14, Number 1-2, Spring-Summer 2005 ‘Nun kommt die Schillerzeit!’ A Celebration on the 200th Anniversary of the Poet’s Death Friedrich Schiller’s ‘The Song of the Bell’ by Marianna Wertz Marianna Wertz was vice-president of the Schiller Institute in the United States until her untimely death in January 2003. Of her many translations of Schiller’s poetry, two philosophical poems, “The Song of the Bell” and “The Artists,” are included in this issue of Fidelio. This introductory essay to “The Song of the Bell” first appeared in The New Federalist in December 1987. ovember 10, 1987 was the the Swiss-Venetian banking crowd, 228th anniversary of the which, under French Finance Min- Nbirth of the “Poet of Free- ister Jacques Neckar, led to the hor- dom” Friedrich Schiller, the great rors of the French Revolution, and German poet and playwright, who under “Reaganomics” is leading the should also be known as the “Poet United States, and the rest of the of the American Revolution.” world, rapidly to an even worse hell. In this bicentennial year of the Ten years after the French Revo- U.S. Constitution, it is only fitting lution began, in 1799, Friedrich and just that a new translation be Schiller composed “The Song of the made of Schiller’s great tribute to Bell,” to draw the lessons of the the American Revolution, “The failed French Revolution for his Song of the Bell,” to reawaken in native Germany. Germany, then still Americans a love for this great a series of feudal principalities, was republican poem, as we reawaken in the throes of the Napoleonic Wars our commitment to the principles and seeking a republican revolution of the Revolution which inspired it. clipart.com of its own. Schiller, whose reputa- In a July 1987 essay, “The U.S. Liberty Bell, Philadelphia tion as “the Poet of Freedom” had Government Is in Chaos,” Lyndon been established with his earliest LaRouche drew the parallel between the crisis in Wash- play The Robbers, written while a student at the ington and developments of the French Revolution of Karlschule Military Academy, sought in “The Song of 1789. LaRouche’s purpose in making this comparison the Bell” to educate a republican leadership in funda- was to warn against following the economic policies of mental lessons of statecraft. 36 © 2005 Schiller Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. Schiller’s poem is particularly cogent for Americans today, as it addresses, with biting sarcasm, those who have all but lost the principles of their own Revolution, in their object fixation and quest for immediate sensual gratification, and under the influence of a brainwashing media. In this poem, Mr. and Mrs. Babbitt will see themselves mirrored as Sinclair Lewis himself could never have done. By holding up this mirror to the soul of his compatriots, Schiller sought, as Lyndon and Helga LaRouche seek today, to bring about a fundamental change in the culture of the nation, as the sine qua non and necessary precondition for a successful republican transformation. Friedrich Schiller’s sympathies for the American Rev- olution were those of a German republican, who longed to see the same transformation in his country. As early as 1783, in a letter to his good friend Henriette von Wolzo- gen, Schiller writes, “. so great a desire I have, to see the New World. If North America will be free, as it is certain, then I might go there. In my arteries boils some- thing—I would so like in this rough world to make some fissures, about which one should report.” Schiller composed “The Song of the Bell” over a peri- od of at least two years. In a letter to the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, dated July 7, 1797, Schiller remarks that he has just begun his “Bell Founder’s Song,” and had been studying the technology since the day before in Kreinitz’s Encyclopedia, “where I very much Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Wharton Sinkler profited. This poem lies very close to my heart,” he con- Schiller’s metaphorical use of lightning—as both creative power tinues, though it will “cost me many weeks,” because “I and destructive natural force—drew on familiarity with the need for it so many different voices (Stimmungen) and it republican scientist Benjamin Franklin. Above: Benjamin West, “Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky,” 1816. is a great mass (Masse) to work up (verarbeiten).” It was not fully completed until September of 1799. the American Revolution in Schiller’s time was the great A Fugue in Four Voices Liberty Bell of Philadelphia, which pealed in 1776 to pro- claim the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The poem is a fugue in four principal parts, which inter- And Benjamin Franklin, known throughout Europe as act and jointly develop, much as voices do in a fugal com- the man who “broke the lightning”—the American position by Bach or Mozart. The first voice is the techno- Prometheus—was the living symbol of that Revolution logical process of forging a great bell. The second voice, for all European republicans. for which the bell is also a metaphor, deals with the Franklin was the single most important link between development and life of the individual. The third voice the American Revolution and those French republicans, concerns questions of statecraft and the French Revolu- like Lafayette, Turgot, Carnot, and Lavoisier, who tion, in which the subjects of the first and second voices attempted to bring into being a constitutional monarchy are placed in the larger, universal context. The fourth in France, as the mediation for a constitutional republic. voice, which enters for the first time in the person of the Turgot wrote of Franklin, in words which echo Schiller’s, poet, introduces Schiller’s method to ensure the success of “Eripiut coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis” (“He has republican revolutions. snatched the lightning from the heavens, and the sceptre Schiller’s choice of a great bell as his subject could from tyrants”). hardly have been accidental. The opening Latin invoca- But the bell is more than a metaphor for the American tion betrays Schiller’s thinking: “I call the living, I mourn Revolution. The reader is struck from the outset of the the dead, I break the lightning.” The leading symbol of poem with Schiller’s meticulous description of the actual 37 technology of bell-founding. Was his purpose to educate two lines of the fifth stanza, the Bell is introduced as a his readers about how to forge a bell? Hardly! His pur- metaphor for the voice of the newborn child, whose birth pose was to forge a republican citizenry. is greeted, in the sixth stanza, by the Bell’s ringing. This Schiller points to the underlying purpose of the bell- is the first irregular stanza—i.e., we’ve had three regular founding metaphor in the second stanza: Bell stanzas and two intertwining introductory 12-line stanzas of even length and meter. This it is, what all mankind graceth, Here in the sixth stanza, Schiller captures with one And to this end to understand masterful stroke the entire process of youthful develop- That he in inner heart so traceth, What he createth with his hand. ment and young love. He captures also the sharp break in that development process between childhood and adoles- For Schiller, man is the creator of his own destiny, cence with the most economical means possible: a sharp “though the blessing comes from higher.” The forging of break in the meter and an unrhymed line, “The years a bell, like the forging of a republic, will succeed only they fly like arrows fleet.” The original German, “Die when man uses his “understanding” to be like the Cre- Jahre fliehen pfeilgeschwind,” actually conveys, ono- ator. The bell itself, therefore, is not just a poetic matopoetically, the sound of fleeting years. metaphor for the American Revolution. Much more fun- This break jars the reader from the romantic spell damentally, Schiller uses the bell as a metaphor to Schiller has been craftily casting. Schiller uses this trick demonstrate that a republican revolution is only possible throughout. One can almost hear him laughing as he through the application of the same noetic processes that catches his reader, time and again, in a romantic setting go into the creation of new technologies. of what might be called “earthly paradise,” only to be jarred out of reverie by harsh reality. Schiller’s Meter This jarring, biting sarcasm, directed at the “fair delusion” of complacent “burghers” who seek an earthly Schiller employs meter in this poem perhaps more skill- paradise yet refuse to see the coming storm clouds of fully than in any other composition. While he demon- war and revolt, is fully unleashed in the next stanza. strates his great skill with meter in a poem like “The Using a sing-song meter, to ridicule the immorality of Worth of Women,” where he uses two contrasting the man out to “ensnare” his fortune, Schiller mocks the meters—a mellifluous meter for the woman’s voice, a shortsightedness of the family whose only concern is martial meter for the man’s—here the meter is not only their earthly possessions. This stanza might fairly be varied by voice, but carries the reader from one mood to dedicated to all the lovers of “free enterprise” who still another, as integral a part of conveying Schiller’s meaning believe the United States is in the “59th straight month as the words themselves.

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