Chapter 28: The veiled statue in Sais

 

Novalis

 

It was late in the evening. The whole house is already silent, and all its inhabitants have gone to sleep, when Schiller would leave it in order to take his quarters for the night in his garden house. The night was not particularly clear, but he did not need to light his lamp, in order to find his way to the garden. The garden was all silent, neither the sounds of the night birds, nor the barking of the neighboring dogs could be heard throughout, only the soft sound of his footsteps on the gravel. And ever more the calm and musical flow of the river Leuttra, which could be heard from afar. It was November, and although plants and animals have all gotten into their resting pace, into a long hibernation from which they would only come out fully in April, the river Leuttra was not totally frozen yet.. On the soil, there was only snow, a completely white snow which early in the morning has fallen upon Jena. Only the conifers in and all around the property would still keep their leaves and give to the garden a futile appearance of greenery.

 

A cold breeze blew on Schiller’s face as he reached the stairs before the garden house. He loves this little house particularly, because it was the place where he would retreat from the busy social and academic life in Jena, because it was the island where he could always land and give himself fully to his writing spree without the constant supervision of a university rector or the severity of any protocol.

 

As he has lighted the candles in his working room, he suddenly remembers, that he must change something in the lecture that he would deliver the next day at the University. His profession as academic was particularly interesting to him, not only because it provides him with many occasions to interact with many brilliant and sharp minds, but also, naturally, because it gives him the occasion to teach young men with excellent standing, and hence provides him with hopes to turn them with his lessons and convictions, into future excellent human beings.

 

In truth, he has expected to land the chair of philosophy at Jena University, but finally, the history chair turned out to be also profitable as a writer. To write about History has allowed him to seize the development of humanity through the centuries, through the many different courses and erring which it has taken.

 

Among these excellent students, one has presented himself to him voluntarily: a young and rather not strongly built man with dark eyes in which the clarity of intelligence, has made fascinating. Despite his fine physical constitution, people could guess in him an intensive and concentrated energy for life.