Two styles: Schiller and Shakespeare

Abstract

This article focuses on the development and transformation of the ideas and images of Shakespeare’s tragedies in the works of Friedrich Schiller. Based on the theoretical statements of the German poet (“On Naive and Sentimental Poetry”, correspondence with Goethe and A. Schlegel), I discuss the principles and means of idealistic recoding of Shakespeare’s motifs in Schiller’s dramas (“The Robbers”, “Fiesco”, “Intrigue and Love”, Wallenstein trilogy, “The Bride of Messins”) and, in particular, in his translation of Macbeth (1800). The latter is considered to be the most vivid example of how the original is transformed when it is placed into the aesthetic and dramatic framework of Weimar classicism. Where in Shakespeare’s works passion and wilfulness reign, and one feels the dynamism and tension of dramatic intonation, the emotional expressiveness of words and sentences, in Schiller’s works his moralistic reflection prevails, with the dominance of the rhetorical, abstract and generalized wording, the logical completeness of polished rhythm and syntax as well as aphoristic speech. All of it tunes down the semantic richness of the verse. In German philological science, the reception of Shakespeare in Germany is a traditional subject of study, but in Russian literature on the issue, this interest was poorly reflected. Meanwhile, Schiller’s transcription of Shakespeare has a theoretical significance that goes beyond the 19th century. It largely determined the international discussion about realism, which was revived in the middle of the twentieth century, and marked the transition to modern intellectual drama, in which the idea as a principle of the image merges with the form, and the reality of the “characters’ world” takes on meaning only in the light of the philosophical reflection of the author. Although the subject of S. Sontag’s influential article “Against Interpretation” (1964) was criticism and hermeneutics, allegedly replacing the polysemy of a sensually concrete image with its abstract “meaning”, Sontag indirectly actualized the whole problem of delimiting artistic styles, which goes back to the “Shakespeare — Schiller” opposition.