Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) is associated to Goethe in popular culture, and suffers from the association, as if Goethe’s shadow kept him in a relative darkness. The truth is that Schiller’s life was a lot shorter than Goethe’s (1749-1832) and that he thus did not have the time to write as much as Goethe did in his more mature years. Their “friendship” (they exchanged more than a thousand letters) also masks the fact that they interacted with each other more on the basis of mutual respect for each other’s intellectual calibre than out of any similarity of views or opinions. And where reading Goethe is a discreet intellectual pleasure, comparable to leaning back on a comfortable armchair to savour little sips of ambrosia, contact with Schiller’s works is more like
diving head first into the intensity of undiluted passion without knowing when or if one will be able to catch one’s breath. This often leads readers to admire Goethe’s measure and sense of balance and sneer at Schiller’s perceived hybris. I shall leave you judge of that…
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