In Dresden
"For twelve years I had not seen Dresden"
"For twelve years I had not seen Dresden"
Twelve years had passed since I had last seen Dresden. On that earlier occasion I had walked up from Leipzig to look for several passages in Guichard’s Mémoires militaires,(1) which I had been unable to locate. I did not find them in Dresden either, because the work had been sent to a general in Lusatia. After my return I came upon the freebooter Quintus Icilius(2) at the theologian Morus’s(3) house, and found in him nothing that served my purpose. Thus, in this world as in war, many a march is made in vain.
Whenever I approached a court capital, a cold, heavy and very unfriendly atmosphere often blew towards me; and I cannot say that Dresden proved an exception on this occasion, friendly though the weather had been at Meissen. One encounters so many gloomy, unhappy, dehumanised faces that every five minutes one meets somebody who seems either to deserve a public flogging or to be ready to administer one. You can imagine that neither sight is comforting.(SN4) Many seem in one way or another to belong to the court, or to be minor officials of the government boards. They tug at the rope of poverty, then sullenly lash its loose end at anyone who ventures too close to their misery. Bad manners and insolence are notoriously most at home among the great men’s court servants, who often try in this way to compensate themselves for the ill-treatment they endure from their masters’ none-too-delicate whims.
Courtesy ought to come from court;(7) but the word, like many others in life, seems to be the opposite of its meaning, and “court” often denotes only a place where no courtesy is to be found—just as law is often the opposite of justice. Woe to anyone condemned to the antechamber! It is a great stroke of luck if his spirit does not become servile or despotic; and it takes more than ordinary strength of character to preserve the proper standpoint of human dignity there.
I have just come from the theatre, where they were performing Großmann’s old play No More than Six Dishes(4). You know the company. On the whole, they performed quite well. The play itself had been cut, and as usual I expected a thorough mutilation; but on closer comparison I found that the author had been relieved of a great many empty and commonplace passages, whose removal was an improvement. Several touches that now seem too glaring—though perhaps they did not when the play first appeared twenty-five years ago—had been struck out. Yet, with the usual Dresden timidity, some things had also been omitted that would better have remained, to the credit of liberal tolerance. I cannot see why the prince had been turned into a king. This arbitrary coronation gave the whole affair such stiffness and constraint that it was very noticeable in several scenes. If the kings in royal capitals were turned into mere princes, would anything be improved? Are not both liable to faults?
The fear was quite needless; and the character of the truly excellent Elector(5) is more likely to be insulted by such petty evasions. In his whole life, perhaps only one or two rash acts have ever been laid to his charge, and neither is touched upon in the play. There are moral and aesthetic grounds for removing the crudities of the past twenty years; but I cannot see why the still conspicuous follies and failings of the noble caste should not be frankly named, rebuked and chastised with the lash of ridicule, so that they may be corrected. If the criticism no longer strikes home, it is no longer needed. That it is still needed, however, is shown by the anxious care with which they avoid touching even the absurdity of the most junior chamberlain(6).
Christ, in the role of the court councillor, spoke throughout with precision and assurance, and his acting was exact and measured without appearing so. You know his subtle touch. Madame Hartwig played his daughter with her customary theatrical grace, and in places with unusual and very successful artistry. Madame Ochsenheimer is beginning to become a quite accomplished soubrette and, under her husband’s instruction, shows great promise in that line. Ochsenheimer himself was not seen to advantage as Herr von Wilsdorf. You know Thering and Bösenberg: the first as Philipp and the second as Wunderlich, each had a fairly rewarding role. Thering performed with his usual eccentric humour and was bound to please; but Bösenberg made an offensive blunder, for which he may not have been entirely to blame. Wunderlich wanted to be paid stante bene for the carriage he had supplied. Now add Bösenberg’s Upper Saxon pronunciation, which so readily makes soft consonants hard and hard ones soft, and which seemed especially marked here. The half-Latinate part of the audience laughed uproariously, and it struck me as ill-breeding of the first order. The remaining roles were tolerably filled. Even Drewitz did not play Fritz badly, because he played him badly. But Henke was a major like a stable-hand and performed—or rather, bungled—to the great amusement of all the military men sitting around me in the stalls. The fault was less his own than the management’s for having made him a major. Non omnia possumus omnes—we cannot all do everything; he plays the baker Ehlers in a piece by Iffland quite well.
Grimma to Dresden, via Meissen.