which weak."
Then before Gryphius could discharge his thunders, the kitchenmaid, perpetually smiling but only around the corners of her mouth, brought in a boiled codfish on a silver platter. And now Agnes spoke across the table. In God s name, she pleaded, the young gentleman should stop quarreling and let her dear master, whose stomach was easily unsettled, enjoy the fish-which she had boiled in milk and seasoned with dill-in peace. With a little jingle, which she recited with her broad country pronunciation and misplaced accents-"To fight over cod is displeasing to God"-she obtained silence, for before falling gently off the bone, the fish, too, looked white-eyed at no one.
That wasn't their only reason for eating in silence. There was no more offending to be done. Only half words were left dangling. Everything had been said. Young Gryphius stuffed himself ravenously, holding his left hand under his chin, while Opitz poked about rather listlessly with a fork, the new-fangled table tool he had brought back from Paris years before. Gryphius sucked the larger bones and lapped up the jelly from the eye sockets. The two sightless orbs lay off to one side. Opitz ate none of the honeysweet millet porridge with candied elderberry blossoms, which Agnes served when nothing was left of the codfish but the clean backbone, the well-licked tail and dorsal fins, and the plundered head bones; but so early fatherless, so young and despairing, so homeless and Silesianly starved was young Gryphius that he proceeded as though braving a stupendous task, as in the fairy tale, to eat his way through the steaming mountain of millet.
At first only the smacking lips of the poet, who would soon be famous for his eloquent death-yearning and renunciation of all earthly joys, could be heard, then other sounds, the bubbling, gurgling, belching of Opitz's nervous and acid stomach, upset no doubt by the guest's presence. Behind drooping eyelids Opitz bore his misery. Only from time to time did he pluck at the Swedish-style goatee designed to give strength to his weak chin.
When the millet mountain had at last been razed, the young man injected a question into the silence: what was the master doing, what planning, what great work had he conceived, and, now that he had translated Sophocles so ably, what hopes did he nourish for a German tragedy? Opitz smiled, or, rather, he allowed the morose wrinkles of his ugliness to unfold into a grimace, and assured his visitor that his inner fire was spent and that no dense smoke could be expected. No use poking about for embers in a cold stove. He doubted if he would ever produce a well-turned essay on ancient Dacia, for that idea, conceived in his youth, was by now choked with weeds. As for a German tragedy, only someone still in his prime like Gryphius could hope to write one. He was planning, however, to translate the Psalms of David with the utmost care, for which task he would have to
study the Hebrew scriptures under learned guidance. Then he thought he would render Greek and Latin epigrams "into our tongue and have them printed here." He further harbored the intention of bringing certain Breslau treasures to light and acquainting the world once more with the long-forgotten Annolied, in order that it might endure. No more.
As though to justify himself, Opitz waved a hand in the direction of the depleted table and said, "Surely no one will take it amiss if we devote the time that many spend in overeating, futile babbling, and bickering, to the charms of study, and close our minds to things that the poor often have and the rich cannot buy."
With these words he may have been tacitly enjoining the young man to say no more, but to go home and study in the quiet of his room. In any case Gryphius stood up, showing by the look of horror on his face how pitifully drained he had found the still-revered master. And when Opitz — no sooner had the strange kitchenmaid, now humming in a monotone, cleared away the empty dishes — confided with an ugly leer that Agnes's warm flesh, though he was obliged to share it with the local town painter, had revived his affections of late, given him new life, and, belatedly to be sure and with only partial success, rekindled his desires, Gryphius, quite revolted, buttoned his jacket. He would go now. He would disturb the master no longer. He thanked the master for his instruction. He had stayed too long.
Already in the doorway, the young poet nevertheless had a request to make. Without any hemming and hawing, he asked Opitz to find him a suitable publisher. Though well aware of the vanity of publishing books and striving for posthumous fame, he would nevertheless like to see the sonnets he had written in this city of false glitter and illusory happiness printed, precisely because they excoriated such vanity. Opitz listened, reflected for a moment, and then promised to do what he could to dispose a publisher in the young man's favor.
Suddenly Opitz switched to scholarly Latin and, with the help of quotations, moved into an area of humanistic remoteness (after which Gryphius, too, switched to Latin). Finally, after a Seneca quotation of some length, the older man explained that he knew an imperial councilor who for
reasons of ill health had retired into contemplative seclusion and took an interest in the arts. He hoped that the imperial title would not trouble Gryphius. Not everyone in the imperial party was evil. He would write a letter of introduction. (And so he soon did. Gryphius moved to the estate of a certain Herr Schonborner, won his favor, instructed his sons, and in the following year, financed by the imperial councilor, had his sonnets printed in Lissa, that they might live after him.)
When, full of fish and millet but also replete with sadness, young Gryphius had finally left, Agnes the kitchenmaid lit two candles, laid out paper, and placed a freshly cut goose quill beside it. Then, within easy reach, she put down a small dish of caraway seeds, which Opitz liked to nibble while writing letters. He picked them up with a moistened fingertip. Caraway seeds were his little vice.
He wrote to the Swedish chancellor, imploring him at long last to set Torstenson's troops and the Scottish regiments in motion. To judge by the information he, Opitz, had gathered in this seaport town—"for Dantzik is the meeting place of all manner of agents and couriers" — it was necessary to move quickly and defeat the Saxons in Brandenburg before they could join forces with the imperial army. Both the distress of Silesia and the military situation made a decision imperative.
(In response to which, a month later, on October 4, 1636, the imperial troops were cut off from those of Saxony, and on a battlefield between forest and marshland near Witt-stock on the Dosse, a tributary of the Havel, defeated by the Swedes under Marshal Baner, an engagement in which the Scottish regiments of Lesley and King played a decisive part. After uncounted losses on both sides, captured banners, cannon, and provender were counted. No more.)