Volume 3 / Act 5 — SCENE XII
Reading edition
To these enter the COUNTESS TERZKY, pale and disordered. Her utterance is slow and feeble, and unimpassioned.
OCTAVIO (meeting her).
O, Countess Terzky! These are the results Of luckless unblest deeds.
COUNTESS.
They are the fruits Of your contrivances. The Duke is dead, My husband too is dead, the Duchess struggles In the pangs of death, my niece has disappear'd, This house of splendor, and of princely glory, Doth now stand desolated: the affrighted servants Rush forth through all its doors. I am the last Therein; I shut it up, and here deliver The keys.
OCTAVIO (with a deep anguish).
O Countess! my house, too, is desolate.
COUNTESS.
Who next is to be murder'd? Who is next To be maltreated? Lo! the Duke is dead, The Emperor's vengeance may be pacified! Spare the old servants; let not their fidelity Be imputed to the faithful as a crime— The evil destiny surprised my brother Too suddenly: he could not think on them.
OCTAVIO.
Speak not of vengeance! Speak not of maltreatment! The Emperor is appeased; the heavy fault Hath heavily been expiated—nothing Descended from the father to the daughter, Except his glory and his services. The Empress honors your adversity, Takes part in your afflictions, opens to you Her motherly arms! Therefore, no farther fears; Yield yourself up in hope and confidence To the Imperial Grace!
COUNTESS. (with her eye raised to heaven).
To the grace and mercy of a greater Master Do I yield up myself. Where shall the body Of the Duke have its place of final rest? In the Chartreuse, which he himself did found At Gitschin, rests the Countess Wallenstein; And by her side, to whom he was indebted For his first fortunes, gratefully he wish'd He might sometime repose in death! O let him Be buried there. And likewise, for my husband's Remains, I ask the like grace. The Emperor Is now the proprietor of all our castles. This sure may well be granted us—one sepulchre Beside the sepulchres of our forefathers!
OCTAVIO.
Countess, you tremble, you turn pale!
COUNTESS (re-assembles all her powers, and speaks with energy and dignity).
You think More worthily of me than to believe I would survive the downfall of my house. We did not hold ourselves too mean to grasp After a monarch's crown—the crown did fate Deny, but not the feeling and the spirit That to the crown belong! We deem a Courageous death more worthy of our free station Than a dishonor'd life.—I have taken poison.
OCTAVIO.
Help! Help! Support her!
COUNTESS.
Nay, it is too late, In a few moments is my fate accomplish'd.
[Exit COUNTESS.]
GORDON.
O house of death and horrors!
[An OFFICER enters, and brings a letter with the great seal. GORDON steps forward and meets him.]
What is this? It is the Imperial Seal.
[He reads the address, and delivers the letter to OCTAVIO with a look of reproach, and with an emphasis on the word.]
To the Prince Piccolomini.
[OCTAVIO, with his whole frame expressive of sudden anguish, raises his eyes to heaven.]
[The Curtain drops.]
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FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 22: Thomas: The Life and Works of Schiller, p. 330.]
[Footnote 23: Permission The Macmillan Co., New York, and G. Bell & Sons, London.]
[Footnote 24: A great stone near Lützen, since called the Swede's Stone, the body of their great king having been found at the foot of it, after the battle in which he lost his life.]
[Footnote 25: Could I have hazarded such a Germanism as the use of the word after-world, for posterity—"Es spreche Welt und Nachwelt meinen Namen" might have been rendered with more literal fidelity:—Let world and after-world speak out my name, etc.]
[Footnote 26: I have not ventured to affront the fastidious delicacy of our age with a literal translation of this line,
werth Die Eingeweide schaudernd aufzureger.]
[Footnote 27: Anspessade, in German Gefreiter, a soldier inferior to a corporal, but above the sentinels. The German name implies that he is exempt from mounting guard.]
[Footnote 28: I have here ventured to omit a considerable number of lines. I fear that I should not have done amiss, had I taken this liberty more frequently. It is, however, incumbent on me to give the original, with a literal translation.
Weh denen, die auf Dich vertraun, an Dich Die sichre Hütte illres Glückes lehnen, Gelockt von deiner geistlichen Gestalt. Schnell unverhofft, bei nächtlich stiller Weile Gährts in dem tückschen Feuerschlunde, ladet Sich aus mit tobender Gewalt, und weg Treibt über alle Pflanzungen der Menschen Der Wilde Strom in grausender Zerstörung.
WALLENSTEIN.
Du schilderst deines Vaters Herz. Wie Du's Beschreibst, so ist's in seinem Eingeweide, In dieser schwarzen Heuchlers Brust gestaltet. O, mich hat Höllenkunst getäuscht! Mir sandte Der Abgrund den verflecktesten der Geister, Den Lügenkundigsten herauf, and stellt' ihn Als Freund an meiner Seite. Wer vermag Der Hölle Macht zu widerstehn! Ich zog Den Basilisken auf an meinem Busen, Mit meinem Herzblut nährt ich ihn, er sog Sich schwelgend voll an meiner Liebe Brüsten, Ich hatte nimmer Arges gegen ihn, Weit offen liess ich des Gedankens Thore, Und warf die Schlüssel weiser Vorsicht weg, Am Sternenhimmel, etc.
LITERAL TRANSLATION
Alas! for those who place their confidence on thee, against thee lean the secure hut of their happiness, allured by thy hospitable form. Suddenly, unexpectedly, in a moment still as night, there is a fermentation in the treacherous gulf of fire; it discharges itself with raging force, and away over all the plantations of men drives the wild stream in frightful devastation.—WALLENSTEIN. Thou art portraying thy father's heart; as thou describest, even so is it shaped in his entrails, in this black hypocrite's breast. O, the art of hell has deceived me! The Abyss sent up to me the most spotted of the spirits, the most skilful in lies, and placed him as a friend by my side. Who may withstand the power of hell? I took the basilisk to my bosom, with my heart's blood I nourished him; he sucked himself glutfull at the breasts of my love. I never harbored evil toward him; wide open did I leave the door of my thoughts; I threw away the key of wise foresight. In the starry heaven, etc.—We find a difficulty in believing this to have been written by Schiller.]
[Footnote 29: This is a poor and inadequate translation of the affectionate simplicity of the original—
Sie alle waren Fremdlinge; Du warst Das Kind des Hauses.
Indeed the whole speech is in the best style of Massinger. O si sic omnia!]
[Footnote 30: It appears that the account of his conversion being caused by such a fall, and other stories of his juvenile character, are not well authenticated.]
[Footnote 31: We doubt the propriety of putting so blasphemous a statement in the mouth of any character.—T.]
[Footnote 32: This soliloquy, which, according to the former arrangement; constituted the whole of Scene IX., and concluded the Fourth Act, is omitted in all the printed German editions. It seems probable that it existed in the original manuscript from which Mr. Coleridge translated.—Ed.]
[Footnote 33: The soliloquy of Thekla consists in the original of six-and-twenty lines, twenty of which are in rhymes of irregular recurrence. I thought it prudent to abridge it. Indeed the whole scene between Thekla and Lady Neubrunn might, perhaps have been omitted without injury to the play.—C.]
[Footnote 34: These four lines are expressed in the original with exquisite felicity—
Am Himmel ist geschäftige Bewegung. Des Thurmes Fahne jagt der Wind, schnell geht Der Wolken Zug, die Mondessichel wankt, Und durch die Nacht zuckt ungewisse Helle.
The word "moon-sickle," reminds me of a passage in Harris, as quoted by Johnson, under the word "falcated." "The enlightened part of the moon appears in the form of a sickle or reaping-hook, which is while she is moving from the conjunction to the opposition, or from the new moon to the full: but from full to a new again, the enlightened part appears gibbous, and the dark falcated."
The words "wanken" and "schweben" are not easily translated. The English words, by which we attempt to render them, are either vulgar or pedantic, or not of sufficiently general application. So "der Wolken Zug"—literally, The Draft, the Procession of clouds; freely—The Masses of the Clouds sweep onward in swift stream.]
[Footnote 35: A very inadequate translation of the original—
Verschmerzen werd' ich diesen Schlag, das weiss ich, Denn was verschmerzte nicht der Mensch!
LITERALLY.
I shall grieve down this blow, of that I'm conscious: What does not man grieve down?]
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