April 16, 2026
When verse becomes a knife
"Wretches, Speak Evil of Me": Goethe and Schiller's Xenions (1896 Edition)
Poets go full petty: 18th‑century subtweets spark jokes about duels and aging tastes
TLDR: Goethe and Schiller dropped Xenions in 1797—hundreds of poetic burns at critics—and the backlash was instant, even echoed later in Faust. Today’s commenters joke it beats dueling, while others confess they’re oddly siding against the Romantics, wondering if age is showing; proof that elite shade is timeless
Turns out the “Great Men” of old were messy, too — and the comments are living for it. Readers are howling that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller basically invented the subtweet in 1797 with the Xenions, a pile of zesty two‑line poems dragging their enemies. The top vibe? Shocked delight that the icons of German letters could throw shade this hard — and relief that, as one commenter quipped, at least no one settled it with pointy sticks.
The article lays out the tea: 675 distichs (tiny couplets) inspired by Roman roast‑master Martial, direct shots at Enlightenment defender Christoph Friedrich Nicolai, and even a cheeky parody of philosopher Johann Fichte’s “Me vs Not‑Me.” Enemies clapped back with counter‑Xenions, and Goethe later slipped a dunk (“Proktophantasmist,” literally “Ass‑Phantom Seer”) into Faust. Cue the comment section dubbing it 18th‑century Twitter.
Strongest takes? One camp cheers the “classy shade” of poetic clapbacks; another camp sheepishly admits they’re… siding against the Romantic burns. “Am I getting older?” one commenter wonders, capturing the existential cringe. Jokes are everywhere: “subtweeting in hexameter,” “kabob‑stick diplomacy,” and memes riffing on Me/Not‑Me. Even Goethe’s pious “we’ll be noble now” pivot gets roasted as the 1797 version of a PR cleanup. High culture, low blows — chef’s kiss.
Key Points
- •Goethe and Schiller co-published the Xenions in 1797 in Schiller’s Musen-Almanach as a series of epigrams mixing praise and pointed attacks on critics.
- •The Xenions comprise 675 distichs using alternating dactylic hexameter and pentameter, inspired by Martial’s epigrammatic tradition.
- •Christoph Friedrich Nicolai, an Enlightenment advocate and editor, was a principal target due to his prior satire of Goethe’s Werther.
- •Contemporaries issued counter-Xenions, including Johann Heinrich Voss (meter critiques) and Gottlob Nathanael Fischer (criticisms of Schiller’s translations of Ovid and the Aeneid).
- •Goethe later parodied Nicolai in Faust (1806), and 1797 is remembered as the Balladenjahr, when both poets produced many famous ballads.