Secret Code or Language of the Heart

This time, freed by the Hessians, he fell into the-hands of Prussian recruiters, where a Vergilian hexameter saved him from punishment for an attempt at flight. On the wall of his prison cell he had written, Tu ne cede inalis, sed contra audentius ito [Aen. VI, 95], the words of the Cumaean Sibyl to Aeneas, which in the course of the court martial sufficiently impressed the commandant to commute his sentence. Eventually by the ruse of a sizeable bail bond advanced by a friend with the intention that he should forfeit it, he secured a leave of absence, never to return.

In Leipzig he was able to resume his studies advancing to the M.A. with a thesis entitled Anna veterum cum nostris breviter comparata, which combines his interest in military history with that in classical literature. This brought with it the venia legendi, i.e. the license to hold university seminars and lectures, but much like our degrees today it was more of a hunting license, since it provided him with no academic position. Instead he became first a private tutor in the household of a Baron Igelstrdm, and later adjutant and secretary to the Baron's brother, a Russian general, which ironically led this ardent republican and advocate of human equality and freedom into the occupation of Warsaw after the defeat of Kosziuszko, remembered for his part in the American Revolution, and the third and final Polish Partition. Out of this experience grew several commentaries such as 'Some News of the Events in Poland in 1794' and "On the Life and Character of Catherine II, Empress of Russia" which he published together under the modest classical title of Obolen. For the next few years he worked as a corrector for the notable publishing house of Göschen.

From December 1801 to August 1802 he undertook the 'Stroll to Syracuse' mentioned at the beginning, taking him on foot by way of Trieste, Venice, Bologna, Rome and Naples to Syracuse, and back again by way of Milan, Zurich, Basel, Paris, Strasbourg, Frankfurt and Weimar to Leipzig. This is - unfortunately - not the place to characterize the journey and its account as different as is imaginable from that of the great Italian traveler Goethe just fifteen years earlier. What is of consequence for our theme is that Seume traveled only with what he could carry in his backpack, which included as a travel library: an old Homer, a well worn Theocritus (he replied to a border guard who asked him why he was on his way to Syracuse that he wanted to see where Theocritus had lived and written), a brand-new Anacreon, an old Plautus, a Horace, a Vergil, a Tacitus, a Suetonius, a Terence, a Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius in minima (probably a 16mo, such as I love to collect myself). A Frontinus, who did not especially interest him, he dismantled page by page as he read him to lighten his baggage, the same also with others, but he brought back his Homer, Vergil and Horace and gave them to his friends when he returned in the same boots in which he had started out. In 1805 he undertook a similar journey on foot through Poland, Russia, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, recorded in another travel book. But while A Stroll to Syracuse had been a moderate success and along with two editions of his collected poems had provided him with the beginnings of a literary reputation, the account of the Northern journey, My Summer of 1805, so bristled with social wand political criticism of the regions he had encountered that it was immediately prohibited, depriving him of any likelihood of further publication.

One other work of Seume's did, however, see the light of day during his soon to end lifetime, the tragedy of Miltiades, a dramatic profession of his faith in the highest ideals of Antiquity. At least it was published, most likely because its ancient guise carried it past the censorship, but it was never performed and fared badly in the hands of the few critics who took note of it. This is a highly stylized and utterly idealized image of the Victor of Marathon, as Seume not only freely admits but candidly explains in the preface. Since regrettably the day of Marathon is missing from Diodorus Siculus and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (he points out), Herodotus (VI, 133-140) is his principal source with some additional material from Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos. But he had to emend the death of Miltiades as resulting from his wounds, which, as Seume says, would have been monotonous and disgusting, to have him drink the hemlock in obedience to the sentence against him - a fairly obvious allusion to the death of Socrates - even when that sentence is commuted to a monetary fine, which he has Miltiades declare he is unable to raise. He even allows that he is not altogether certain of Miltiades's innocence in the matter of the expedition against the Parians, which had been the immediate cause of the prosecution. For Seume Miltiades is the model of the towering military hero who seeks no personal advantage from his feat but only to serve his country to whose adverse judgment he then freely submits as an example of republican spirit and conscience. His hero thereby also became a decidedly anti-Napoleonic figure, a role underscored by the contrast of Miltiades with Napoleon in the Apocrypha. A few verses from the drama illustrate its essential tendency: