The Schopenhauer Cure(37)
Arthur was his father’s son, resembling him not only physically but temperamentally. When he was seventeen, his mother wrote him: “I know too well how little you had of a happy sense of youth, how large the disposition for melancholic brooding you received as a sad share of your inheritance from your father.”
Arthur also inherited his father’s deep sense of integrity, which played a decisive role in the dilemma that confronted him following his father’s death: should he stay in the apprenticeship even though he hated the world of commerce? Eventually, he decided to do what his father would have done: honor his pledge.
He wrote of his decision, “I continued to hold my position with my merchant patron, partly because my excessive grief had broken the energy of my spirit, partly because I would have had a guilty conscience were I to rescind my father’s decision so soon after his death.”
If Arthur felt immobilized and duty-bound after his father’s suicide, his mother had no such inclinations. With the speed of a whirlwind she changed her entire life. In a letter to the seventeen-year-old Arthur she wrote: “Your character is so completely different from mine: you are by nature undecided, I myself am too fast, too resolute.” After a few months of widowhood she sold the Schopenhauer mansion, liquidated the venerable family business, and moved away from Hamburg. She boasted to Arthur, “I will always choose the most exciting option. Consider my choice of residence: instead of moving to my hometown, back to my friends and relatives, like every other woman would have done in my stead, I chose Weimar, which was almost unknown to me.”
Why Weimar? Johanna was ambitious and yearned to be close to the epicenter of German culture. Supremely confident of her social abilities, she knew she could make good things happen, and, indeed, within months she had created an extraordinary new life for herself: she established the liveliest salon of Weimar and developed a close friendship with Goethe and many other leading writers and artists. Soon she began a career, first as a successful writer of travel journals chronicling the Schopenhauer family’s tour and a trip to southern France; then, with Goethe’s urging, she turned to fiction and wrote a series of romantic novels. She was one of the first truly liberated women and was Germany’s first woman to earn her living as a writer. For the next decade Johanna Schopenhauer became a renowned novelist, the Danielle Steel of nineteenth-century Germany, and for decades Arthur Schopenhauer was known only as “Johanna Schopenhauer’s son.” In the late 1820s Johanna’s complete works were published in a twenty-volume edition.
Though history (based greatly on Arthur’s scathing criticism of his mother) has generally presented Johanna as narcissistic and uncaring, there is no doubt that she, and only she, liberated Arthur from his servitude and started him on his way to philosophy. The instrument of delivery was a fateful letter she wrote to Arthur in April 1807, two years after his father’s suicide.
Dear Arthur,
The serious and calm tone of your March 28th letter, flowing from your mind into my mind, woke me up and revealed that you might be on your way to totally missing your vocation! That is why I have to do each and every thing to save you, however possible; I know what it means to live a life repugnant to one’s soul; and if it is possible, I will spare you, my dear son, this misery. Oh, dear dear Arthur, why was it that my voice counted so little; what you want now, was in fact then my warmest wish; how hard I strove to make it happen, despite everything one said against me…. if you do not wish to be taken into the honourable Philistine order, I, my dear Arthur, truly don’t want to put any obstacle into your way; it is just you who have to seek your own way and choose it. Then I will advise and help, where and how I can. First try to come to peace with yourself… remember you must choose studies that promise you a good salary, not only because it is the only way you can live, for you will never be rich enough to live from your inheritance alone. If you have made your choice, tell me so, but you have to take this decision on your own…. If you feel the strength and heart to do this, I will willingly give you my hand. But just don’t imagine life as a complete learned man to be too delightful. I now see it around me, dear Arthur. It is a tiring, troublesome life full of work; only the delight in doing it gives it its charm. One doesn’t get rich with it; as a writer, one acquires with difficulty what one needs for survival…. To make your life as a writer you have to be able to produce something excellent…. now, more than ever, there is a need of brilliant heads. Arthur, think about it carefully, and choose, but then stay firm; let your perseverance never fail, and you will safely achieve your goal. Choose what you want…but with tears in my eyes I implore you: do not cheat on yourself. Treat yourself seriously and honestly. The welfare of your life is at stake, as well as the happiness of my old days; because only you and Adele can hopefully replace my lost youth. I couldn’t bear it to know that you are unhappy, especially if I had to blame myself for having let this great misfortune happen to you out of my too large pliability. You see, dear Arthur, that I dearly love you, and that I want to help you in everything. Reward me by your confidence and by, having once made up your mind, following my advice in fulfilling your choice. And don’t hurt me by rebelliousness. You know that I am not stubborn. I know how to give way by arguments, and I will never demand anything from you I won’t be able to support by arguments….
Adieu, dear Arthur, the post is urgent and my fingers hurt. Bear in mind all I send and write to you, and answer soon.