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Title: The Youth of Goethe
Author: Brown, Peter Hume, 1849-1918
Language: English
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THE YOUTH OF GOETHE
BY P. HUME BROWN, LL.D., F.B.A.
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1913
TO
THE VISCOUNT HALDANE OF CLOAN, LORD CHANCELLOR OF GREAT BRITAIN.
MY DEAR CHANCELLOR,--AS THE "ONLY BEGETTER" OF THIS BOOK, IT SEEMS
ALMOST OBLIGATORY THAT IT SHOULD BE ASSOCIATED WITH YOUR NAME.
THE AUTHOR.
_GOETHE'S BIOGRAPHIE._
"Anfangs ist es ein Punkt der leise zum Kreise sich öffnet,
Aber, wachsend, umfasst dieser am Ende die Welt."
FRIEDRICH HEBBEL.
"In the beginning a point that soft to the circle expandeth,
But the circle at length, growing, enclaspeth the world."
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
EARLY YEARS IN FRANKFORT
1749--1765
PAGE
GOETHE'S BIRTHPLACE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON HIM 1
PERIOD OF HIS BIRTH 4
HIS FATHER 6
HIS MOTHER 8
HIS SISTER 10
FAMILY FRIENDS 11
HIS EDUCATION 12
RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES 14
THE _SEVEN YEARS' WAR_ 18
FRENCH OCCUPATION OF FRANKFORT 19
GOETHE'S FIRST LOVE 21
DESTINED FOR THE STUDY OF LAW 23
THE BOY THE FATHER OF THE MAN 25
HIS CHARACTER AND EARLY TASTES 27
CHAPTER II
STUDENT IN LEIPZIG
OCTOBER, 1765--SEPTEMBER, 1768
GOES TO LEIPZIG 29
HIS WILD LIFE THERE 29
SOCIETY OF LEIPZIG 31
HIS IRREGULAR STUDIES 33
ADOPTS LEIPZIG FASHIONS 35
FEMININE INFLUENCES 36
DANDYISM 37
FALLS IN LOVE WITH KÄTHCHEN SCHÖNKOPF 38
FRIENDSHIP WITH BEHRISCH 39
HIS RELATIONS TO KÄTHCHEN 40
MISCELLANEOUS INTERESTS 44
FRIENDSHIP WITH OESER 46
STATE OF GERMAN LITERATURE 48
POEMS OF THE PERIOD 49
_DIE LAUNE DES VERLIEBTEN_ 51
_DIE MITSCHULDIGEN_ 52
INSPIRATION 54
CHAPTER III
AT HOME IN FRANKFORT
SEPTEMBER, 1768--APRIL, 1770
RETURNS TO FRANKFORT 57
HIS BROKEN HEALTH 58
RELATIONS TO HIS FATHER 58
HIS SISTER 60
INTEREST IN RELIGION 61
FRIENDSHIP WITH FRÄULEIN VON KLETTENBERG 62
A MYSTERIOUS MEDICINE 63
EVOLVES A RELIGIOUS CREED 65
INFLUENCE OF FRÄULEIN VON KLETTENBERG 66
INTEREST IN LITERATURE AND ART 67
LESSING AND WIELAND 70
RIPENING POWERS 71
CHAPTER IV
GOETHE IN STRASSBURG
APRIL, 1770--AUGUST, 1771
SETTLEMENT IN STRASSBURG 75
INFLUENCES OF STRASSBURG 75
CHANGE IN HIS RELIGIOUS FEELINGS 76
MANNER OF LIFE IN STRASSBURG 78
FRIENDSHIP WITH DR. SALZMANN 79
RELATIONS TO JUNG STILLING 83
COMES UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF HERDER 84
YOUNG'S _CONJECTURES ON ORIGINAL COMPOSITION_ 90
ITS INFLUENCE ON GOETHE'S GENIUS 93
FRIEDERIKE BRION 95
HIS RELATIONS TO HER 96
PARTING FROM HER 101
MISCELLANEOUS STUDIES 102
SELF-DISCIPLINE 103
POEMS ADDRESSED TO FRIEDERIKE 105
CHAPTER V
FRANKFORT--_GÖTZ VON BERLICHINGEN_
AUGUST, 1771--DECEMBER, 1771
GOETHE'S RETURN TO FRANKFORT 108
CREATIVE PRODUCTIVENESS OF THE PERIOD 108
POET OR ARTIST? 111
MENTAL CONFLICT 112
EPOCHS IN HIS LAST FRANKFORT YEARS 113
HIS SISTER CORNELIA 116
GROWING DISTASTE FOR FRANKFORT 117
DEPRESSION 119
WORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE 120
_GÖTZ VON BERLICHINGEN_ 121
ITS INFLUENCE ON EUROPEAN LITERATURE 131
CHAPTER VI
INFLUENCE OF MERCK AND THE DARMSTADT CIRCLE
1772
FRIENDSHIP WITH MERCK 133
CHARACTER OF MERCK 133
HIS INFLUENCE ON GOETHE 135
THE DARMSTADT CIRCLE 136
ITS INFLUENCE ON GOETHE 136
CAROLINE FLACHSLAND AND GOETHE 137
POEMS OF GOETHE INSPIRED BY THE
DARMSTADT CIRCLE 138
_WANDERERS STURMLIED_ 139
_DER WANDERER_ 141
CHAPTER VII
WETZLAR AND CHARLOTTE BUFF
MAY--SEPTEMBER, 1772
DEPARTURE FROM WETZLAR 143
WETZLAR AND ITS SOCIETY 144
LOTTE BUFF 147
GOETHE'S RELATIONS TO HER 147
KESTNER, LOTTE'S BETROTHED 148
GOETHE, KESTNER, AND LOTTE 149
DEPARTURE FROM WETZLAR 150
KESTNER'S CHARACTERISATION OF GOETHE 151
CHAPTER VIII
AFTER WETZLAR
1772--1773
SUICIDE OF JERUSALEM 154
GOETHE VISITS THE FAMILY VON LA ROCHE 155
FRAU VON LA ROCHE 155
MAXIMILIANE VON LA ROCHE 157
UNREST 158
LETTERS TO KESTNER 159
ESTRANGEMENT FROM HIS FATHER 161
SOLITUDE 162
CHAPTER IX
SATIRICAL DRAMAS AND FRAGMENTS
POET OR ARTIST? 163
LITERARY ACTIVITY 164
_FRANKFURTER GELEHRTEN ANZEIGEN_ 165
_LETTER OF THE PASTOR_ 166
_TWO BIBLICAL QUESTIONS_ 167
RECASTS _GÖTZ VON BERLICHINGEN_ 167
SATIRICAL PLAYS 169
_PROMETHEUS_ 175
_MAHOMET_ 181
_ADLER UND TAUBE_ 183
_KÜNSTLERS ERDEWALLEN_ 184
CHAPTER X
_WERTHER_--_CLAVIGO_
1774
GOETHE'S NEED OF EXTERNAL STIMULUS 185
GOETHE AND THE BRENTANOS 186
ORIGIN OF _WERTHER_ 187
ENGLISH INFLUENCE ON _WERTHER_ 188
PUBLICATION OF _WERTHER_ 189
GOETHE AND WERTHER 190
SECOND PART OF _WERTHER_ 191
WERTHER AND GOETHE 193
INFLUENCE OF _WERTHER_ 196
THE KESTNERS AND _WERTHER_ 198
WERTHERISM 199
_CLAVIGO_ 200
DRAMATISED FROM BEAUMARCHAIS 200
ORIGIN OF _CLAVIGO_ 202
ITS PLOT 202
CONSTRUCTED ON CLASSICAL MODELS 205
_CLAVIGO_ AND GOETHE 206
CHAPTER XI
GOETHE AND SPINOZA--_DER EWIGE JUDE_
1773--1774
GOETHE'S DEBT TO SPINOZA 209
MISDATES SPINOZA'S INFLUENCE 210
_DER EWIGE JUDE_ 212
ORIGINAL PLAN OF IT 213
AS IT WAS ACTUALLY WRITTEN 216
ITS DIVISIONS 216
ITS CHARACTERISTICS 216
UNPUBLISHED TILL AFTER GOETHE'S DEATH 218
CHAPTER XII
GOETHE IN SOCIETY
1774
JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER 220
HIS CHARACTER 220
HIS INTEREST IN GOETHE 222
VISITS FRANKFORT 224
HIS INTERCOURSE WITH GOETHE 225
JOHANN BERNHARD BASEDOW 227
HIS CHARACTER AND CAREER 227
HIS VISIT TO FRANKFORT 228
GOETHE, LAVATER, AND BASEDOW AT EMS 228
THEIR VOYAGE DOWN THE RHINE 230
JUNG STILLING 231
SCENE AT ELBERFELDT 232
FRITZ JACOBI 233
GOETHE MAKES HIS ACQUAINTANCE 233
THEIR INTERCOURSE 234
JACOBI'S ESTIMATE OF GOETHE 237
KLOPSTOCK 238
GOETHE'S ADMIRATION OF HIM 238
THEIR MEETING IN FRANKFORT 239
_AN SCHWAGER KRONOS_ 240
BOIE AND WERTHES ON GOETHE 241
MAJOR VON KNEBEL AND GOETHE 242
GOETHE AND THE PRINCES OF WEIMAR 243
VON KNEBEL ON GOETHE 244
DEATH OF FRÄULEIN VON KLETTENBERG 245
CHAPTER XIII
LILI SCHÖNEMANN
1775
THE SCHÖNEMANN FAMILY 247
GOETHE'S INTRODUCTION TO LILI SCHÖNEMANN 248
HIS SUBSEQUENT MEMORY OF HER 249
LILI COMPARED WITH HIS PREVIOUS LOVES 250
GOETHE'S SONGS ADDRESSED TO HER 251
COUNTESS STOLBERG 253
GOETHE'S RELATIONS TO HER 253
_ERWIN UND ELMIRE_ 255
_STELLA_ 257
_CLAUDINE VON VILLA BELLA_ 263
A DISTRACTED LOVER 266
BETROTHED TO LILI 268
SHRINKS FROM MARRIAGE 269
COUNTS STOLBERG IN FRANKFORT 270
GOETHE STARTS WITH THEM FOR SWITZERLAND 271
VISITS HIS SISTER AT EMMENDINGEN 273
WITH LAVATER IN ZURICH 275
ACCOMPANIES PASSAVANT TO ST. GOTHARD 276
LYRICS TO LILI 276
RETURN TO FRANKFORT 278
CHAPTER XIV
LAST MONTHS IN FRANKFORT--THE _URFAUST_
1775
RELATIONS TO LILI ON HIS RETURN 279
A CRISIS IN THEIR RELATIONS 281
MISCELLANEOUS INTERESTS 282
ESTIMATES OF GOETHE BY SULZER AND ZIMMERMANN 283
INVITATION TO WEIMAR 284
PROPOSED JOURNEY TO ITALY 285
A DELAYED MESSENGER 286
DEPARTS FOR WEIMAR 287
_EGMONT_ AND THE _URFAUST_ 287
THE _URFAUST_ 288
CHARACTERISTICS 293
PREFACE
"Generally speaking," Goethe has himself said, "the most important
period in the life of an individual is that of his development--the
period which, in my case, breaks off with the detailed narrative of
_Dichtung und Wahrheit_." In reality, as we know, there is no complete
breach at any point in the lives of either nations or individuals. But
if in the life of Goethe we are to fix upon a dividing point, it is
his departure from Frankfort and his permanent settlement in Weimar in
his twenty-seventh year. Considered externally, that change of his
surroundings is the most obvious event in his career, and for the
world at large marks its division into two well-defined periods. In
relation to his inner development his removal from Frankfort to Weimar
may also be regarded as the most important fact in his life. From the
date of his settlement in Weimar he was subjected to influences which
equally affected his character and his genius; had he continued to
make his home in Frankfort, it is probable that, both as man and
literary artist, he would have developed characteristics essentially
different from those by which the world knows him. There were later
experiences--notably his Italian journey and his intercourse with
Schiller--which profoundly influenced him, but none of these
experiences penetrated his being so permanently as the atmosphere of
Weimar, which he daily breathed for more than half a century.
As Goethe himself has said, the first twenty-six years of his life are
essentially the period of his "development." During that period we see
him as he came from Nature's hand. His words, his actions have then a
stamp of spontaneity which they gradually lost with advancing years as
the result of his social and official relations in Weimar. He has told
us that it was one of the painful conditions of his position there
that it made impossible that frank and cordial relation with others
which it was his nature to seek, and from which he had previously
derived encouragement and stimulus; as a State official, he adds, he
could be on easy terms with nobody without running the risk of a
petition for some favour which he might or might not be able to
confer.
For the portrayal of the youthful Goethe materials are even
superabundant; of no other genius of the same order, indeed, have we a
record comparable in fulness of detail for the same period of life.
And it is this abundance of information and the extraordinary
individuality to whom it relates that give specific interest to any
study of Goethe's youth. From month to month, even at times from day
to day, we can trace the growth of his character, of his opinions, of
his genius. And the testimonies of his contemporaries are unanimous as
to the unique impression he made upon them. "He will always remain to
me one of the most extraordinary apparitions of my life," wrote one;
and he expressed the opinion of all who had the discernment to
appreciate originality of gifts and character. What they found unique
in him was inspiration, passion, a zest of life, at a pressure that
foreshadowed either a remarkable career or (at times his own dread)
disaster.
It was said of Goethe in his latest years that the world would come to
believe that there had been, not one, but many Goethes; and, as we
follow him through the various stages of his youth, we receive the
same impression. It results from this manifoldness of his nature that
he defies every attempt to formulate his characteristics at any period
of his life. In the present study of him the object has been to let
his own words and actions speak for themselves; any conclusions that
may be suggested, the reader will thus have it in his own power to
check.
After Goethe's own writings, the works to which I have been chiefly
indebted are _Goethes Gespräche, Gesamtausgabe von Freiherrn v.
Biedermann_, Leipzig, 1909-11 (5 vols.), in which are collected
references to Goethe by his contemporaries; and _Der junge Goethe:
Neue Ausgabe in sechs Bänden, besorgt von Max Morris_, Leipzig,
1910-12, containing the literary and artistic productions of Goethe
previous to his settlement in Weimar. The references throughout are to
the Weimar edition of Goethe's works. Except where otherwise
indicated, the author is responsible for the translations, both in
prose and verse.
I have cordially to express my gratitude to Dr. G. Schaaffs, Lecturer
in German in the University of St. Andrews, and to Mr. Frank C.
Nicholson, Librarian in the University of Edinburgh, for the trouble
they took in revising my proofs.
P.H.B.
Edinburgh.
THE YOUTH OF GOETHE
CHAPTER I
EARLY YEARS IN FRANKFORT
1749--1765
In his seventy-fifth year Goethe remarked to his secretary, Eckermann,
that he had always been regarded as one of fortune's chiefest
favourites, and he admitted the general truth of the impression,
though with significant reserves. "In truth," he added, "there has
been nothing but toil and trouble, and I can affirm that throughout my
seventy-five years I have not had a month's real freedom from
care."[1] Goethe's biographers are generally agreed that his good
fortune began with his birth, and that the circumstances of his
childhood and boyhood were eminently favourable for his future
development. Yet Goethe himself apparently did not, in his reserves,
make an exception even in favour of these early years; and, as we
shall see, we have other evidence from his own hand that these years
were not years of unmingled happiness and of entirely auspicious
augury.
[Footnote 1: _Gespräche mit Eckermann_, January 27th, 1824.]
In one circumstance, at least, Goethe appears to have considered
himself well treated by destiny. From the vivid and sympathetic
description he has given of his native city of Frankfort-on-the-Main
we may infer that he considered himself fortunate in the place of his
birth.[2] It is concurrent testimony that, at the date of Goethe's
birth, no German city could have offered greater advantages for the
early discipline of one who was to be Germany's national poet. Its
situation was central, standing as it did on the border line between
North and South Germany. No German city had a more impressive historic
past, the memorials of which were visible in imposing architectural
remains, in customs, and institutions. It was in Frankfort that for
generations the German Emperors had received their crowns; and the
spectacle of one of these ceremonies remained a vivid memory in
Goethe's mind throughout his long life. For the man Goethe the actual
present counted for more than the most venerable past;[3] and, as a
boy, he saw in Frankfort not only the reminders of former
generations, but the bustling activities of a modern society. The
spring and autumn fairs brought traders from all parts of Germany and
from the neighbouring countries; and ships from every part of the
globe deposited their miscellaneous cargoes on the banks of the river
Main. In the town itself there were sights fitted to stir youthful
imagination; and the surrounding country presented a prospect of
richness and variety in striking contrast to the tame environs of
Goethe's future home in Weimar. Dr. Arnold used to say that he knew
from his pupils' essays whether they had seen London or the sea,
because the sight of either of these objects seemed to suggest a new
measure of things. Frankfort, with its 30,000 inhabitants, with its
past memories and its bustling present, was at least on a sufficient
scale to suggest the conception of a great society developing its life
under modern conditions. For Goethe, who was to pass most of his days
in a town of some 7,000 inhabitants, and to whom no form of human
activity was indifferent, it was a fortunate destiny that he did not,
like Herder, pass his most receptive years in a petty village remote
from the movements of the great world.[4] In these years he was able
to accumulate a store of observations and experiences which laid a
solid foundation for all his future thinking.
[Footnote 2: In 1792, on the occasion of his being offered the honour
of _Rathsherr_ (town-councillor) in Frankfort, he wrote to his mother
that "it was an honour, not only in the eyes of Europe, but of the
whole world, to have been a citizen of Frankfort." (Goethe to his
mother, December 24th, 1792). So, in 1824, he told Bettina von Arnim
that, had he had the choice of his birthplace, he would have chosen
Frankfort. As we shall see, Goethe did not always speak so favourably
of Frankfort.]
[Footnote 3:
Die Abgeschiednen betracht' ich gern,
Stünd' ihr Verdienst auch noch so fern;
Doch mit den edlen lebendigen Neuen
Mag ich wetteifernd mich lieber freuen.]
[Footnote 4: In his later years Goethe preferred life in a small town.
"Zwar ist es meiner Natur gemäss, an einem kleinen Orte zu leben."
(Goethe to Zelter, December 16th, 1804.)]
If Goethe was fortunate in the place of his birth, was he equally
fortunate in its date (1749)? He has himself given the most explicit
of answers to the question. In a remarkable paper, written at the age
of forty-six, he has described the conditions under which he and his
contemporaries produced their works in the different departments of
literature. The paper had been called forth by a violent and coarse
attack, which he described as _literarischer Sansculottismus_, on the
writers of the period, and with a testiness unusual with him he took
up their defence. Under what conditions, he asks, do classical writers
appear? Only, he answers, when they are members of a great nation and
when great events are moving that nation at a period in its history
when a high state of culture has been reached by the body of its
people. Only then can the writer be adequately inspired and find to
his hand the materials requisite to the production of works of
permanent value. But, at the epoch when he and his contemporaries
entered on their career, none of these conditions existed. There was
no German nation, there was no standard of taste, no educated public
opinion, no recognised models for imitation; and in these
circumstances Goethe finds the explanation of the shortcomings of the
generation of writers to which he belonged.
On the truth of these conclusions Goethe's adventures as a literary
artist are the all-sufficient commentary. From first to last he was
in search of adequate literary forms and of worthy subjects; and, as
he himself admits, he not unfrequently went astray in the quest. On
his own word, therefore, we may take it that under other conditions he
might have produced more perfect works than he has actually given us.
Yet the world has had its compensations from those hampering
conditions under which his creative powers were exercised. In the very
attempt to grope his way to the most expressive forms of artistic
presentation all the resources of his mind found their fullest play.
It is in the variety of his literary product, unparalleled in the case
of any other poet, that lies its inexhaustible interest; between _Götz
von Berlichingen_ and the Second Part of _Faust_ what a range of
themes and forms does he present for his readers' appreciation! And to
the anarchy of taste and judgment that prevailed when Goethe began his
literary career we in great measure owe another product of his
manifold activities. He has been denied a place in the very first rank
of poets, but by the best judges he is regarded as the greatest master
of literary and artistic criticism. But, had he found fixed and
acknowledged standards in German national literature and art, there
would have been less occasion for his searching scrutiny of the
principles which determine all art and literature. As it was, he was
led from the first to direct his thoughts to the consideration of
these principles; and the result is a body of reflections, marking
every stage of his own development, on life, literature, and art,
which, in the opinion of critics like Edmond Scherer and Matthew
Arnold, gave him his highest claim to the consideration of posterity.
As human lot goes, Goethe was fortunate in his home and his home
relations, though in the case of both there were disadvantages which
left their mark on him throughout his later life. He was born in the
middle-class, the position which, according to Schiller, is most
favourable for viewing mankind as a whole, and, therefore,
advantageous for a poet who, like Goethe, was open to universal
impressions. Though his maternal grandfather was chief magistrate of
Frankfort, and his father was an Imperial Councillor, the family did
not belong to the _élite_ of the city; Goethe, brilliant youth of
genius though he was, was not regarded as an eligible match for the
daughter of a Frankfort banker. It was the father who was the
dominating figure in the home life of the family; and the relations
between father and son emphasise the fact that the early influences
under which the son grew up left something to be desired. Their
permanent mutual attitude was misunderstanding, resulting from
imperfect sympathy. "If"--so wrote Goethe in his sixty-fourth year
regarding his father and himself--"if, on his part as well as on the
son's, a suggestion of mutual understanding had entered into our
relationship, much might have been spared to us both. But that was not
to be!" It is with dutiful respect but with no touch of filial
affection that Goethe has drawn his father's portrait in _Dichtung und
Wahrheit_. As the father is there depicted, he is the embodiment of
Goethe's own definition of a Philistine--one naturally incapable of
entering into the views of other people.[5] Yet Goethe might have had
a worse parent; for, according to his lights, the father spared no
pains to make his son an ornament of his generation. Strictly
conscientious, methodical, with a genuine love of art and letters, he
did his best to furnish his son with every accomplishment requisite to
distinction in the walk of life for which he destined him--the
profession of law, in which he had himself failed through the defects
of his temperament. Directly and indirectly, he himself took in hand
his son's instruction, but without appreciation or consideration of
the affinities of a mind with precociously developed instincts. The
natural result of the father's pedantic solicitude was that his son
came to see in him the schoolmaster rather than the parent. Knowledge
in abundance was conveyed, but of the moulding influence of parental
sympathy there was none. What dubious consequences followed from these
relations of father and son we shall afterwards see.
[Footnote 5: To Chancellor von Müller Goethe said: "Mein Vater war ein
tüchtiger Mann, aber freilich fehlte ihm Gewandtheit und Beweglichkeit
des Geistes."]
Goethe's mother has found a place in German hearts which is partly due
to the portrait which her son has drawn of her, but still more to the
impression conveyed by her own recorded sayings and correspondence.
Goethe's tone, when he speaks of his father, is always cool and
critical; of his mother, on the other hand, he speaks with the
feelings of a grateful son, conscious of the deep debt he owed to
her.[6] His relations to her in his later years have exposed him to
severe animadversion, but their mutual relations in these early years
present the most attractive chapter in the record of his private life.
Married at the age of seventeen to a husband approaching forty, the
mother, as she herself said, stood rather as an elder sister than as a
parent to her children. And her own character made this relation a
natural one. An overflowing vitality, a lively and never-failing
interest in all the details of daily life, and a temperament
responsive to every call, kept her perennially young, and fitted her
to be the companion of her children rather than the sober helpmate of
such a husband as Herr Goethe.[7] How, by her faculty of
story-telling, she ministered to the side of her son's nature which he
had inherited from herself Goethe has related with grateful
appreciation. But he owed her a larger debt. It was her spirit
pervading the household that brought such happiness into his early
home life as fell to his lot. A commonplace mother and a prosaic
father would have created an atmosphere which, in the case of a child
with Goethe's impressionable nature, would permanently have affected
his outlook on life. For the future poet, the mother was the admirable
nurse; she fed his fancy with her own; she taught him the art of
making the most of life--a lesson which he never forgot; and she gave
him her own sane and cheerful view of the uncontrollable element in
human destiny. For the future man, however, we may doubt whether she
was the best of mothers. Her education was meagre--a defect which her
conscientious husband did his best to amend; and all her
characteristics were fitted rather to evoke affection than to inspire
respect. Though her son always speaks of her with tender regard, his
tone is that of an elder brother to a sister rather than of a son to a
parent. She was herself conscious of her incompetence to discharge all
the responsibilities of a mother which the character of the father
made specially onerous. "We were young together," she said of herself
and her son, and she confessed frankly that "she could educate no
child." Thus between an unsympathetic father and a mother incapable of
influencing the deeper springs of character, Goethe passed through
childhood and boyhood without the discipline of temper and will which
only the home can give. And the lack of this discipline is traceable
in all his actions till he had reached middle life. Wayward and
impulsive by nature, he yielded to every motive, whether prompted by
the intellect or the heart, with an abandonment which struck his
friends as the leading trait of his character. "Goethe," wrote one of
them, "only follows his last notion, without troubling himself as to
consequences," and of himself, when he was past his thirtieth year, he
said that he was "as much a child as ever."
[Footnote 6: Writing to her grandchild, Goethe's mother says: "Dein
lieber Vater hat mir nie Kummer oder Verdruss verursacht."]
[Footnote 7: When the son of Frau von Stein was about to visit her,
Goethe wrote: "Da sie nicht so ernsthaft ist wie ich, so wirst du dich
besser bei ihr befinden."]
There was another member of the family of whom Goethe speaks with even
warmer feeling than of his mother. This was his sister Cornelia, a
year younger than himself, and destined to an unhappy marriage and an
early death. Of the many portraits he has drawn in his Autobiography,
none is touched with a tenderer hand and with subtler sympathy than
that of Cornelia. Goethe does not imply that she permanently
influenced his future development; for such influence she possessed
neither the force of mind nor of character.[8] But to her even more
than to the mother he came to owe such home happiness as he enjoyed in
the hours of freedom from the father's pedagogic discipline. She was
his companion alike in his daily school tasks and his self-sought
pleasures--the confidant and sharer of all his boyish troubles. To no
other person throughout his long life did Goethe ever stand in
relations which give such a favourable impression of his heart as his
relation with Cornelia. The memory of her was the dearest which he
retained of his early days; and the words in which he recalls her in
his old age prove that she was an abiding memory to the end.
[Footnote 8: Goethe's letters addressed to Cornelia from Leipzig, when
he was in his eighteenth year, are in the tone at once of an
affectionate brother and of a schoolmaster. Their subsequent relations
to each other will appear in the sequel.]
It was an advantage on which Goethe lays special stress that, outside
his somewhat cramping home circle, he had a more or less intimate
acquaintance with a number of persons, who by their different
characters and accomplishments made lasting impressions on his
youthful mind. The impressions must have been deep, since, writing in
advanced age, he describes their personal appearance and their
different idiosyncrasies with a minuteness which is at the same time a
remarkable testimony to his precocious powers of observation. What is
interesting in these intimacies as throwing light on Goethe's early
characteristics is, that all these persons were of mature age, and all
of them more or less eccentric in their habits and ways of thinking.
"Even in God I discover defects," was the remark of one of them to his
youthful listener--to whom he had been communicating his views on the
world in general. In the company of these elders, with such or kindred
opinions, Goethe was early familiarised with the variability of human
judgments on fundamental questions. And he laid the experience to
heart, for on no point in the conduct of life does he insist with
greater emphasis than the folly of expecting others to think as
ourselves.
The method of Goethe's education was not such as to compensate for the
lack of moral discipline which has already been noted. With the
exception of a brief interval, he received instruction at home, either
directly from his father or from tutors under his superintendence.
Thus he missed both the steady drill of school life and the influence
of companions of his own age which might have made him more of a boy
and less of a premature man.[9] It is Goethe's own expressed opinion
that the object of education should be to foster tastes rather than to
communicate knowledge. In this object, at least, his own education was
perfectly successful; for the tastes which he acquired under his
father's roof remained with him to the end. What strikes us in his
course of study is its desultoriness and its comprehensiveness. At one
time and another he gained an acquaintance with English, French,
Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He read widely in history, secular
and sacred, and in the later stage of his early studies he took up law
at the express desire of his father. It was the aim of his father's
scheme of education that accomplishments should form an essential part
of it. So his son was taught music, drawing, dancing, riding, and
fencing. But there was another side to Goethe's early training which,
in his case, deserves to be specially emphasised. A striking
characteristic of Goethe's writings is the knowledge they display of
the whole range of the manual arts, and this knowledge he owed to the
circumstances of his home. His father, a virtuoso with the means of
gratifying his tastes, freely employed artists of all kinds to execute
designs of his own conception; and, as part of his son's education,
entrusted him with the superintendence of his commissions. Thus, in
accordance with modern ideas, were combined in Goethe's training the
practical and the theoretical--a combination which is the
distinguishing characteristic of his productive activity. Generally
considered, we see that the course of his studies was such as in any
circumstances he would himself have probably followed. Under no
conditions would Goethe have been content to restrict himself to a
narrow field of study and to give the necessary application for its
complete mastery. As it was, the multiplicity of his studies supplied
the foundation for the manifold productivity of his maturer years. In
no branch of knowledge was he ever a complete master; he devoted a
large part of his life to the study of Greek and Roman antiquity, yet
he never acquired a scholar's knowledge either of Greek or Roman
literature.[10] If on these subjects he has contributed many valuable
reflections, it was due to the insight of genius which apprehends what
passes the range of ordinary vision.
[Footnote 9: It was doubtless due to the absence of strict drill in
his youth that Goethe, as he himself tells us, never acquired the art
of punctuating his own writings.]
[Footnote 10: Goethe said of himself that he had no "grammatical
vein."]
A striking fact in Goethe's account of his early years is the emphasis
he lays on the religious side of his education. Judging from the
length at which he treats the subject, indeed, we are bound to assume
that in his own estimation religion was the most important element in
his early training, and in the case of one who came eventually to be
known as the "great Pagan" the fact is remarkable. Had he sat down to
write the narrative of these years at an earlier period of his
life--after his return, say, from his Italian journey--we may conceive
that in his then anti-Christian spirit he would have put these early
religious experiences in a somewhat different light, and would hardly
have assigned to them the same importance. But when he actually
addressed himself to tell the story of his development, he had passed
out of his anti-Christian phase, and was fully convinced of the
importance of religion in human culture. Regarding this portion of his
Autobiography, as regarding others, we may have our doubts as to how
far his record is coloured by his opinions when he wrote it. Yet,
after every reserve, there can be no question that religion engaged
both his intellect and his emotions as a boy; and the fact is
conclusive that religious instincts were not left out of his
nature.[11]
[Footnote 11: With reference to what he says of his Biblical studies
he wrote as follows to a correspondent (January 30th, 1812)
[Transcriber's Note: corrected error "1912"]: "Dass Sie meine
asiatischen Weltanfänge so freundlich aufnehmen, ist mir von grossem
Wert. Es schlingt sich die daher für mich gewonnene Kultur durch mein
ganzes Leben...."]
There was nothing in the influence of his home that was specially
fitted to awaken religious feeling or to occasion abnormal spiritual
experiences. In religion as in everything else the father was a
formalist, and such religious views as he held were those of the
_Aufklärung_, for which all forms of spiritual emotion were the folly
of unreason. Religion was a permanent and sustaining influence in the
life of Goethe's mother, but her religion consisted simply in a
cheerful acquiescence in the decrees of Providence. Of the soul's
trials and sorrows, as they are recorded in the annals of the
religious life, her nature was incapable, and she was always perfectly
at ease in Zion. By his mother, therefore, the son could not be deeply
moved to concern regarding his spiritual welfare, nor to make religion
the all-engrossing subject of his thoughts and affections. There was
one friend of the family, indeed, the Fräulein von Klettenberg (the
_Schöne Seele_ of _Wilhelm Meister_), in whom Goethe saw the exemplar
of the religious life in its more ecstatic manifestations, but her
special influence on him belongs to a later date. In accordance with
the family rule he regularly attended church, but the homilies to
which he listened were not of a nature to quicken his religious
feelings, while the doctrinal instruction he received at home he has
himself described as "nothing but a dry kind of morality." Against one
article of the creed taught him--the doctrine of original and
inherited sin--all his instincts rebelled; and the antipathy was so
compact with all his later thinking that we may readily believe that
it manifested itself thus early. If we may accept his own account of
his youthful religious experiences, he was already on the way to that
_Ur-religion_, which was his maturest profession of faith, and which
he held to be the faith of select minds in all stages of human
history. Now, as at all periods of his life, it was the beneficent
powers in nature that most deeply impressed him, and he records how in
crude childish fashion he secretly reared an altar to these powers,
though an unlucky accident in the oblation prevented him from
repeating his act of worship.
Like other children, he was quick to see the inconsistency of the
creed he was taught with the actual facts of experience. One event in
his childhood, the earthquake of Lisbon, especially struck him as a
confounding commentary on the accepted belief in the goodness of God;
and the impression was deepened when in the following summer a violent
thunder-storm played havoc with some of the most treasured books in
his father's library. In all his soul's troubles, however, Goethe,
according to his own account, found refuge in a world where
questionings of the ways of Providence had never found an entrance. In
the Old Testament, and specially in the Book of Genesis, with its
picture of patriarchal life, he found a world which by engaging his
feelings and imagination worked with tranquilising effect (_stille
Wirkung_) on his spirit, distracted by his miscellaneous studies and
his varied interests. Of all the elements that entered into his early
culture, indeed, Goethe gives the first place to the Bible. "To it,
almost alone," he expressly says, "did I owe my moral education." To
the Bible as an incomparable presentment of the national life and
development of a people, and the most precious of possessions for
human culture, Goethe bore undeviating testimony at every period of
his life. It need hardly be said that his attitude towards the Bible
was divided by an impassable gulf from the attitude of traditional
Christianity. For Goethe it was a purely human production, the
fortunate birth of a time and a race which in the nature of things can
never be paralleled. What the Churches have found in it was not for
him its inherent virtue. Even in his youth it was in its picturesque
presentation of a primitive life that he found what satisfied the
needs of his nature. The spiritual aspirations of the Psalms, the
moral indignation of the prophets, found no response in him either in
youth or manhood. His ideal of life was never that of the saints, but
it was an ideal, as his record of his early religious experience
shows, which had its roots in the nature which had been allotted him.
To certain events in his early life Goethe assigned a decisive
influence on his future development. To the gift of a set of puppets
by his grandmother he attributes his first awakened interest in the
drama; and the extraordinary detail with which Wilhelm Meister
describes his youthful absorption in the play of his puppets proves
that in his Autobiography Goethe does not lay undue stress on the
significance of the gift. To another event which occurred when he was
entering his seventh year, he ascribes the origin of an attitude of
mind which in his own opinion he did not overcome till his later
years. In 1756 broke out the Seven Years' War, in the course of which
there was a cleavage in German public opinion that disturbed the peace
of families and set the nearest relatives at bitter feud. Such was the
case in the Goethe circle--the father passionately sympathising with
Frederick; the maternal grandfather, Textor, the chief magistrate of
Frankfort, as passionately taking the side of Maria Theresa. In this
case the son's sympathies were those of his father, and in boyish
fashion he made a hero of the king of Prussia, though, as he himself
is careful to tell us, Prussia and its interests were nothing to him.
It was to the pain he felt when his hero was defamed by the supporters
of Austria that he traced that contempt of public opinion which he
notes as a characteristic of the greater part of his manhood, yet we
may doubt if any external event was needed to develop in him this
special turn of mind. As his whole manner of thinking proves, it was
neither in his character nor his genius to make a popular appeal like
a Burns or a Schiller.[12] In his old age Goethe said of himself that
he was conscious of an innate feeling of aristocracy which made him
regard himself as the peer of princes; and we need no further
explanation of his contempt of public opinion. Yet if the worship of
heroes has the moulding influence which Carlyle ascribed to it, in
Goethe's youthful admiration of Frederick this influence could not be
wanting. To the end Frederick appeared to him one of those "demonic"
personalities, who from time to time cross the world's stage, and
whose action is as incalculable as the phenomena of the natural world.
"When such an one passes to his rest, how gladly would we be silent,"
were his memorable words when the news of Frederick's death reached
him during his Italian travels, and the remark proves how deeply and
permanently Frederick's career had impressed him.
[Footnote 12: His remark to Eckermann (1828) is well known: "Meine
Sachen können nicht populär werden; wer daran denkt und dafür strebt,
ist in einem Irrthum."]
More easily realised is the direct influence on Goethe's youthful
development of another event of his boyhood. As a result of the Seven
Years' War, 7,000 French troops took possession of Frankfort in the
beginning of 1759, and occupied it for more than three years. In the
ways of a foreign soldiery at free quarters the Frankforters saw a
strange contrast to their own decorous habits of life, but the French
occupation was brought more directly home to the Goethe household. To
the disgust and indignation of the father, to whom as a worshipper of
Frederick the French were objects of detestation, their chief officer,
Count Thoranc, quartered in his own house. Goethe has told in detail
the history of this invasion of the quiet household--the never-failing
courtesy and considerateness of Thoranc, the abiding ill-humour of the
father, the reconciling offices of the mother, exercised in vain to
effect a mutual understanding between her husband and his unwelcome
guest. As for Goethe himself, devoted to Frederick though he was, the
presence of the French introduced him to a new world into which he
entered with boyish delight. With the insatiable curiosity which was
his characteristic throughout life, he threw himself into the
pleasures and avocations of the novel society. Thoranc was a
connoisseur in art, and gave frequent commissions to the artists of
the town; and Goethe, already interested in art through his father's
collections, found his opportunity in these tastes of Thoranc, who was
struck by the boy's precocity and even took hints from his
suggestions.
A theatre set up by the French was another source of pleasure and
stimulus. The sight of the pieces that were acted prompted him to
compose pieces of his own and led him to the study of the French
classical drama. In the _coulisses_, to which he was admitted by
special favour, he observed the ways of actors--an experience which
supplied the materials for the portraiture of the actor's life in
_Wilhelm Meister_. A remark which he makes in connection with the
French theatre is a significant commentary on his respective relations
to his father and mother, and indicates the atmosphere of evasion
which permanently pervaded the household. It was against the will of
his father, but with the connivance of his mother, that he paid his
visits to the theatre and cultivated the society of the actors, and it
was only by the consideration that his son's knowledge of French was
thus improved that the practical father was reconciled to the
delinquency. The direct results of his intercourse with the French
soldiery on Goethe's development were at once abiding and of high
importance. It extended his knowledge of men and the world, and, more
specifically, it gave him that interest in French culture and that
insight into the French mind which he possessed in a degree beyond any
of his contemporaries.
But the most notable experience of these early years under his
father's roof still remains to be mentioned. When he was in his
fourteenth year, Goethe fell in love--the first of the many similar
experiences which were to form the successive crises of his future
life. There can be little doubt that in his narrative of this his
first love there is to the full as much "poetry" as "truth"; but there
also can be as little doubt that all the circumstances attending it
made his first love a turning-point in his life. It is a peculiarity
of all Goethe's love adventures that between him and the successive
objects of his affections there was always some bar which made a
regular union impossible or undesirable. So it was in the case of the
girl whom he calls Gretchen, and of whom we know nothing except what
he chose to tell us. He made her acquaintance through his association
with a set of youths of questionable character whom we are surprised
to find as the chosen companions of the son of an Imperial Councillor.
Of all Goethe's loves this was the one that was accompanied by the
least pleasant complications and the most painful of disillusions.
Through his intercourse with Gretchen's intimates he was led to
recommend one of them for a municipal post in Frankfort--a post which
he did not hold long before he was found guilty of embezzlement and
defalcation. The discovery was disastrous to Goethe's relations with
Gretchen, and the disaster involved an experience of conflicting
emotions which produced a crisis in his inner life. He had been rudely
awakened to mistrust of mankind, and it was an awakening which, as he
has himself emphasised, influenced all his thinking and feeling for
many years to come. He had lived in a dream of phantasy and passion,
and he learned to the shock of his whole nature that the object of his
dreams had never at any moment regarded him otherwise than as an
interesting boy whose talents and connections made him a desirable
acquaintance. In the strained and morbid condition of his body and
mind, which was the result of his disillusion, we see an experience
which was often to be repeated in his maturer years, and which points
to elements in his nature which were ever ready to pass beyond his
control. As in the case of all his subsequent experiences of the same
nature, he finally regained self-mastery, but a revolution had been
accomplished in him as the result of the struggle. His boyhood was at
an end, and it is with the consciousness of awakened manhood that he
now looks out upon life. More than once in his future career a similar
transformation was to be repeated--a great passion followed by a new
direction of his activities, involving a saving breach with the past.
Goethe's father had determined from the beginning that his only son
should follow the profession of law, in which, as we have seen, he had
himself failed owing to his peculiarities of mind and temper. In this
determination there was no consideration of the predilections of his
son, and in this fact lay the permanent cause of their estrangement.
The father's choice of a university for his son was another
illustration of their divergent sympathies and interests. Left to his
own choice, the son would have preferred the university of Göttingen
as his place of study, but his father ruled that Leipzig, his own
university, was the proper school for the future civilian. In
connection with his departure for Leipzig Goethe makes two confessions
which are a striking commentary on the conditions of his home life in
Frankfort. He left Frankfort, he tells us, with joy as intense as that
of a prisoner who has broken through his gaol window, and finds
himself a free man. And this repugnance to his native city, as a place
where he could not expand freely, remained an abiding feeling with
him. The burgher life of Frankfort, he wrote to his mother during his
first years at Weimar, was intolerable to him, and to have made his
permanent home there would have been fatal to the fulfilment of every
ideal that gave life its value. His other confession is a still more
significant illustration of the vital lack of sympathy between father
and son. He left Frankfort, he says, with the deliberate intention of
following his own predilections and of disregarding the express wish
of his father that he should apply himself specifically to the study
of law. Only his sister Cornelia was made the confidant of his secret
intention, and apparently no attempt was made to effect even a
compromise between the aims of the father and those of the son. Plain
and direct dealing was a marked characteristic of Goethe at every
period of his life; that he should thus have deceived his father in a
matter that lay nearest his heart is therefore the final proof that
father and son were separated by a gulf which could not be bridged. As
it was, in the course of life which Goethe was to follow in Leipzig we
may detect a certain defiant heedlessness which points to an uneasy
consciousness of duty ignored.
We have it on Goethe's own word that with his departure for Leipzig
begins that self-directed development which he was to pursue with the
undeviating purpose and the wonderful result which make him the unique
figure he is in the history of the human spirit. What, we may inquire,
as he is now at the commencement of this career unparalleled, so far
as our knowledge goes, in the case of any other of the world's
greatest spirits--what were the specific characteristics, visible in
him from the first, which gave the pledge and promise of this
astonishing career? In his case, we can say with certainty, was fully
verified the adage, that the boy is father of the man. Alike in
internal and external traits we note in him as a boy characteristics
which were equally marked in the mature man. In his demeanour, he
himself tells us, there was a certain stiff dignity which excited the
ridicule of his companions. It was in his nature even as a boy, he
also tells us, to assume airs of command: one of his own acquaintance
and of his own years said of him, "We were all his lacqueys." Here we
have in anticipation the aged Goethe whose Jove-like presence put
Heine out of countenance; the god "cold, monosyllabic," of Jean Paul.
But behind the stiff demeanour, in youth as in age, there was the
mercurial temperament, the _etwas unendlich Rührendes_, which made him
a problem at all periods of his life even to those who knew him most
intimately. He has himself noted his youthful reputation for
eccentricity, "his lively, impetuous, and excitable temper"; and this
was the side of him that most impressed his associates till he was
past middle age. In boyhood, also, as even in his latest years, he was
subject to bursts of violence in which he lost all self-control. When
attacked by three of his schoolmates, he fell upon them with the fury
of a wild beast, and mastered all three. On the loss of Gretchen he
"wept and raved," and, as the result of his morbid sensibility, his
constitution, always abnormally influenced by his emotions, was
seriously impaired. Here we have the _Weiblichkeit_, the feminine
strain in his nature, which was noted by Schiller, and which explains
the shrinking from all forms of pain which he inherited from his
mother.
More than once these emotional elements in his nature were to bring
him near to moral shipwreck, and it was doubtless the consciousness of
such a possibility in his own case that explains his haunting interest
in the character and career of Byron. But underneath his "chameleon"
temperament (the expression is his own[13]) there was a solid
foundation, the lack of which was the ruin of Byron. Goethe has
himself told us what this saving element in him was. It was a
strenuousness and seriousness implanted in him by nature (_von der
Natur in mich gelegter Ernst_), which, he says, "exerted its influence
[on him] at an early age, and showed itself more distinctly in after
years." This side of his complex nature did not escape the notice even
of his youthful contemporaries. "Goethe," wrote one of them from
Leipzig, "is as great a philosopher as ever." Here again we see in the
boy the father of the man. Increasingly, as the years went on, his
innate tendency to reflection asserted itself, till at length in his
latest period it so completely dominated him that the sage proved too
much for the artist.
[Footnote 13: So Weislingen (in _Götz von Berlichingen_), whom Goethe
meant to be a double of himself, says: "_Ich bin ein Chamaeleon_."]
If the character of the boy foreshadowed that of the man, so did the
tendencies of his genius the lines they were afterwards to follow.
"Turn a man whither he will," he remarks in his Autobiography, "he
will always return to the path marked out for him by nature," and his
own development signally illustrates the truth of the remark. From his
earliest youth, he tells us, he had "a passion for investigating
natural things"; and towards middle life his interest in physical
science became so absorbing as for many years to stifle his creative
faculty. But in the retrospect of his life as a whole he had no doubt
as to the supreme bent of his genius. The "laurel crown of the poet"
was the goal of his youthful ambition, and the last bequest he made to
posterity was the Second Part of _Faust_. Among the miscellaneous
intellectual interests of his boyhood poetry evidently held the chief
place, and, partly out of his own inspiration and partly at the
suggestion of others, he diligently tried his hand at different forms
of poetical composition. Yet, if we may judge from his most notable
boyish piece--_Poetische Gedanken über die Höllenfahrt Jesu
Christi_--there have been more "timely-happy spirits" than Goethe.
Not, indeed, as we shall see, till his twentieth year, the age when,
according to Kant, the lyric poet is in fullest possession of his
genius, does his verse attain the distinctiveness of original creative
power.[14]
[Footnote 14: All Goethe's boyish productions that have been preserved
will be found in _Der junge Goethe, Neue Ausgabe in sechs Bänden
besorgt von Max Morris_, Leipzig, 1909.]
CHAPTER II
STUDENT IN LEIPZIG
OCTOBER, 1765--SEPTEMBER, 1768
As we follow the life of Byron, it has been said, we seem to hear the
gallop of horses,[15] and we are conscious of a similar tumult as we
follow the career of Goethe from the day he entered Leipzig till the
close of the "mad Weimar times," when he was approaching his thirtieth
year. _Jugend ist Trunkenheit ohne Wein_, he says in his
_West-Ostlicher Divan_, and, when he wrote the words, he may well have
had specially in view the three whirling years he spent in Leipzig.
"If one did not play some mad pranks in youth," he said on another
occasion, "what would one have to think of in old age?" Assuredly
during these Leipzig years Goethe played a sufficient number of pranks
to supply him with materials for edifying retrospection.
[Footnote 15: X. Doudan, _Mélanges et Lettres_, i. 524.]
Our difficulty in connection with these three years is to seize the
essential lineaments in a character so full of contradictions that it
eludes us at every turn, and has presented to each of his many
biographers a problem which each has sought to solve after his own
fashion. Of materials for forming our conclusions there is certainly
no lack. In his Autobiography he has related in detail, even to
tediousness, the events and experiences of his life in Leipzig.
Contemporary testimony, also, we have in abundance. We have the
letters of friends who freely wrote their impressions of him, and from
his own hand we have poems which record the passing feelings of the
hour; we have two plays which reveal moods and experiences more or
less permanent; and above all we have a considerable number of his own
letters addressed to his sister and different friends, all of which,
it may be said, appear to give genuine expression to the promptings of
the moment. The materials for forming our judgment, therefore, are
even superabundant, but in their very multiplicity lies our
difficulty. The narrative in the Autobiography doubtless gives a
correct general outline of his life in Leipzig and of its main results
for his general development, but its cool, detached tone leaves a
totally inadequate impression of the froward youth, torn to
distraction by conflicting passions and conflicting ideals. With the
contemporary testimonies our difficulties are of another kind. The
testimonies of his friends regarding his personal traits are often
contradictory, and equally so are his own self-revelations. On one and
the same day he writes a letter which exhibits him as the helpless
victim of his emotions, and another which shows him quite at his ease
and master of himself. And he himself has warned us against taking his
wild words too seriously. In a letter to his sister (September 27th,
1766), he expressly says: "As for my melancholy, it is not so deep as
I have pictured it; there are occasionally poetical licences in my
descriptions which exaggerate the facts."[16]
[Footnote 16: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i., 68-9.]
Fortunately or unfortunately, the town of Leipzig, which his father
had chosen for his first free contact with life, was of all German
towns the one where he could see life in its greatest variety. "In
accursed Leipzig," he wrote after his three years' experience of its
distractions, "one burns out as quickly as a bad torch." Even the
external appearance of the town was such as to suggest another world
from that of Frankfort. In Frankfort the past overshadowed the
present; while Leipzig, Goethe himself wrote, recording his first
impressions of the place, "evoked no memories of bygone times." And if
the exterior of the town suggested a new world, its social and
intellectual atmosphere intensified the impression. "Leipzig is the
place for me," says Frosch in the Auerbach Cellar Scene in _Faust_;
"it is a little Paris, and gives its folks a finish."[17] The
prevailing tone of Leipzig society was, in point of fact, deliberately
imitated from the pattern set to Europe by the Court of France. In
contrast to the old-fashioned formality of Frankfort, the Leipziger
aimed at a graceful _insouciance_ in social intercourse and light,
cynical banter in the interchange of his ideas on every subject,
trifling or serious. In such a society all free, spontaneous
expression of emotions or opinions was a mark of rusticity, as Goethe
was not long in discovering. The true Leipziger was, of course, a
Gallio in religion, and Goethe, who, on leaving his father's house,
had resolved to cut all connection with the Church, found no
difficulty in carrying out his intention during his residence in the
little Paris. But, so far as Goethe was concerned, the most notable
circumstance connected with Leipzig was that it had long been the
literary centre of Germany. There the most eminent representatives of
literature had made their residence, and thence had gone forth the
dominant influences which had given the rule to all forms of literary
production--poetry and criticism alike. At the time when Goethe took
up his residence in the town the two most prominent German men of
letters, Gellert and Gottsched (the latter dubbed the "Saxon Swan" by
Frederick the Great) were its most distinguished ornaments, though
the rising generation was beginning to question both the intrinsic
merit of their productions and the principles of taste which they had
proclaimed. What these principles were and how Goethe stood related to
them we shall presently see.
[Footnote 17: On the occasion of a visit he paid to Leipzig in 1783,
Goethe says: "Die Leipziger sind als eine kleine, moralische Republik
anzusehn. Jeder steht für sich, hat einige Freunde und geht in seinem
Wesen fort."]
Into this world Goethe was launched when he had just turned his
sixteenth year--"a little, odd, coddled boy," and, as he elsewhere
describes himself, with a tendency to morbid fancies. If he had come
to Leipzig with the resolve to fulfil his father's intentions, his
course was clearly marked out for him. He would diligently sit at the
feet of the professors of law in the university, and at the end of
three years he would return to Frankfort with the attainments
requisite to make him a future ornament of the legal profession. But,
as we have seen, he had other schemes in his head than the course
which his father had prescribed for him, and, if we are to accept his
own later testimony, in forming these schemes he was but following the
deepest instincts of his nature. "Anything," he exclaimed to his
secretary Riemer, when he was approaching his sixtieth year, "anything
but an enforced profession! That is contrary to all my instincts. So
far as I can, and so long as the humour lasts, I will carry out in a
playful fashion what comes in my way. So I unconsciously trifled in my
youth; so will I consciously continue to do to the end."[18] The step
he now took is a curious illustration of the solemn self-importance
which was one of his characteristics as a youth. To the professor of
history and law of all people he chose to announce his intention of
studying _belles lettres_ instead of jurisprudence. The professor
sensibly pointed out to him the folly and impropriety of his conduct
in view of his father's wishes; and his counsels, seconded by the
friendly advice of his wife, Frau Böhme, turned the youthful aspirant
from his purpose for a time. On his own testimony he now became a
model student, and was "as happy as a bird in a wood." He heard
lectures on German history from Böhme, though history was distasteful
to him at every period of his life; lectures on literature from the
popular Gellert, on style from Professor Clodius, and on physics,
logic, and philosophy from other professors.
[Footnote 18: _Gespräche mit Riemer_, Anfang 1807.]
But alike by temperament and previous training, Goethe was indisposed
to profit by professorial prelections, however admirable. He had
brought with him to the university a store of miscellaneous
information which deprived them of the novelty they might have for the
average listener. "Application," he says, moreover, "was not my
talent, since nothing gave me any pleasure except what came to me of
itself." So it was that by the close of his first semester his
attendance at lectures became a jest, and the professors the butt of
his wit. It was characteristic that he found the prelections on
philosophy and logic specially tedious and distasteful. Of God and the
world he thought he knew as much as his teacher, and the scholastic
analysis of the processes of thought seemed to him only the deadening
of the faculties which he had received from nature. Of these dreary
hours in the lecture-rooms the biting comments of Faust and
Mephistopheles on university studies in general are the lively
reminiscence.
But while he was putting in a perfunctory attendance at lectures, his
education was proceeding in another school--the school which, as in
his after years he so insistently testified, affords the only real
discipline for life--the world of real men and women.[19] And the
lessons of this school he took in with a zest that well illustrates
what he called his "chameleon" nature. Within a year the "little, odd,
coddled boy" who had left his father's house was transformed into a
fashionable Leipzig youth who went even beyond his models. His
home-made suit, which had passed muster in Frankfort, but which
excited ridicule in Leipzig, was exchanged for a costume which went to
the other extreme of dandyism. His inner man underwent a corresponding
transformation, and, as was so often to be the case with him, it was a
woman who was the efficacious instrument of the change. We have just
seen how Frau Böhme seconded her husband's attempts to dissuade him
from abandoning his legal studies, but her good offices did not end
there. A woman of cultivated mind and considerable literary
attainments, she evidently saw the promise of the raw Frankfort youth,
and, with a feminine tact, to which Goethe bore grateful testimony,
she set herself to correct his manners and his tastes. He had brought
with him his Frankfort habits of speech, and these under protest he
was forced to give up for the modish forms of the smooth-speaking
Leipzigers.[20] Before Frau Böhme took him in hand, he assures us, he
was not an ill-mannered lad, but she impressed on him the need of
cultivating the external graces of social intercourse and even of
acquiring a certain skill in the fashionable games of the day--an
accomplishment, however, which he never succeeded in attaining. More
important for his future development was Frau Böhme's influence on his
literary tastes. As was his habit among his friends, he would declaim
to her passages from his favourite poets, and she, "an enemy to all
that was trivial, feeble, and commonplace," would unsparingly point
out their essential inanity. When he ventured to recite his own
poetical attempts, her criticism was equally unsparing. The discipline
was sharp, but for the "coddled" boy, who had been regarded at home
as a youthful prodigy, it was entirely wholesome. Yet, if we may judge
from a description of him some ten months after his arrival in
Leipzig, the chastening does not appear to have lessened his buoyant
self-confidence. The description is from the hand of a comrade of his
own in Frankfort, Horn by name, the son of a former chief magistrate
of the city. Horn, like Goethe, had come to study in Leipzig, and on
his arrival there, 1766, he thus (August, 1766) records his
impressions of Goethe to a common friend: "If you only saw him, you
would be either furious with rage or burst with laughing. It is beyond
me to understand how anyone can change so quickly. Besides being
arrogant, he is also a dandy, and his clothes, though fine, are in
such ridiculous taste that they attract the attention of the whole
university.[21] But he does not mind that a bit, and it is useless to
tell him of his follies.... He has acquired a gait which is simply
intolerable. Could you only see him!" Such was Horn's first impression
of his former comrade, but it is right to say that a few months later
he could tell the same correspondent that they had not lost a friend
in Goethe, who had still the same good heart and was as much a
philosopher and a moralist as ever.
[Footnote 19:
Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,
Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt.]
[Footnote 20: In point of fact Goethe retained to the end the
intonation and the idioms of his native speech.]
[Footnote 21: In his Autobiography Goethe states as the reason for his
casting off the home-made suit he had brought with him from Frankfort,
that a person entering the Leipzig theatre in similar costume excited
the ridicule of the audience.]
In his second letter Horn gives a singular reason for the preposterous
airs which Goethe had lately put on. Goethe, wrote Horn, had fallen in
love with a girl "beneath him in rank," and his antics were assumed to
disguise the fact from his friends who might report it to his father.
Goethe's relations to this girl were to be his liveliest experience in
Leipzig, and an experience frequently to be repeated at different
periods of his life. Like his other adventures of the same nature, it
was to supply him with a fund of emotions and reflections which at a
future day were to serve him as literary capital. The tale of his
passion, if passion it was, is, therefore, an essential part of his
biography, both as a man and a literary artist.
The girl in question was Käthchen (or, as Goethe calls her in his
Autobiography, Ännchen) Schönkopf, the daughter of a wineseller and
lodging-house keeper in Leipzig, whose wife, we are informed, belonged
to a "patrician" family in Frankfort. As described by Horn, she was
"well-grown though not tall, with a round, pleasant face, though not
particularly pretty, and with an open, gentle, and engaging air"; and
in a letter to his sister Goethe gives the further information that
she had a "good heart, not bewildered with too much reading," and that
her spelling was dubious. And it may be noted in passing that Goethe
apparently had a preference for women who were not sophisticated with
letters, as was notably shown in the case of the woman whom he
eventually made his wife.
It was on April 26th, 1766, that he first made the declaration of his
passion, so that, when Horn wrote, we are to suppose that its course
was in full tide.[22] But now, as always, Goethe had room for two
objects in his affections. On October 1st, 1766, he wrote letters to
two friends, in the second of which he expressed his passion for
Käthchen, and in the first an equally ardent emotion for another
maiden who had crossed his path in Frankfort.[23] Goethe's confidant
throughout his relations with Käthchen was one of those peculiar
persons whom we meet with in following his career. He was one
Behrisch, now residing in Leipzig in the capacity of tutor to a young
German count. In his Autobiography Goethe has given a large place to
Behrisch, who, as there depicted, comes before us as an accomplished
man of the world, something of a _roué_, and a humorist in the old
English sense of the word. He never appeared without his periwig,
invariably wore a suit of grey, and was never seen in public without
his sword, hat under arm. Of a caustic wit, of considerable literary
attainments, and approaching his thirtieth year, he had evidently an
influence on Goethe which was not wholly for good. He took a genuine
interest in Goethe's literary efforts, gave him good advice on points
of style, and dissuaded him from hasty publication. On the other hand,
it was under his influence that Goethe began to assume the tone and
airs of a Don Juan, which are an unpleasant characteristic of his
recently published correspondence with Behrisch. It is in this
correspondence that we have the record of Goethe's dallyings with
Käthchen, and, take it as we may, the record is as vivid a presentment
as we could wish of a nature as complex in its emotions as it was
steadfast in its central bent.
[Footnote 22: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. 159.]
[Footnote 23: _Ib._ pp. 60-3.]
The letters to Behrisch begin in October, 1766, and present Goethe in
the light of a happy lover. There is an assiduous rival, but his
addresses are coldly received.[24] In an ecstasy of delight, after a
four hours' _tête-a-tête_ with Käthchen, he treats Behrisch to some
lines of English verse which may be produced here as exhibiting the
state of his feelings and the extent of his acquaintance with the
English language:--
What pleasure, God! of like a flame to born,
A virteous fire, that ne'er to vice kan turn.
What volupty! when trembling in my arms,
The bosom of my maid my bosom warmeth!
Perpetual kisses of her lips o'erflow,
In holy embrace mighty virtue show.
[Footnote 24: _Ib._ pp. 61-2.]
In letters written to his sister Cornelia about the same date,
however, we see another side of his life in Leipzig. He has been
excluded from the society in which he was formerly received, and he
assigns as reasons that he is following the counsels of his father in
refusing to engage in play, and that he cannot avoid showing a sense
of his superiority in taste which gives offence. But, as we learn that
Behrisch was also excluded from the same society, and that he was
dismissed from the charge of his pupils on the ground of his loose
life, we may infer that Goethe does not state all the reasons for his
own social ostracism.[25]
[Footnote 25: _Ib._ pp. 81-2.]
So things stood with him in October, 1766, and it is not till the
following May that we hear of him again through his correspondence. In
a letter to Cornelia written in that month he excuses himself for his
long neglect of her. He has been busy, he has been ill, and the spring
has come late. In this letter he writes of Käthchen as follows: "Among
my acquaintances who are alive (he has just mentioned the death of
Frau Böhme) the little Schönkopf does not deserve to be forgotten. She
is a very good girl, with an uprightness of heart joined to agreeable
_naïveté_, though her education has been more severe than good. She
looks after my linen and other things when it is necessary, for she
knows all about these matters, and is pleased to give me the benefit
of her knowledge; and I like her well for that. Am I not a bit of a
scamp, seeing I am in love with all these girls? Who could resist them
when they are good; for as for beauty, that does not touch me; and,
indeed, all my acquaintances are more good than beautiful."[26] This
is not the tone of an ardent lover speaking of his mistress, and it is
evident that Cornelia was not the confidant of his real relations to
Käthchen, which, indeed, would have been as distasteful to her as to
their father. In another letter, addressed to her in the following
August, he is not more frank. There he tells her that Annette is now
his muse, and that, as Herodotus names the books of his History after
the nine muses, so he has given the name of Annette to a collection of
twelve poetical pieces, magnificently copied in manuscript.[27] But,
he significantly adds, Annette had no more to do with his poetry than
the Muses had to do with the History of Herodotus.[28] To what extent
this statement expressed the truth we shall presently see.
[Footnote 26: _Ib._ p. 86. The passage is in French.]
[Footnote 27: This was the work of Behrisch, who was a virtuoso in
calligraphy.]
[Footnote 28: _Werke, Briefe_, i. 96-7.]
In October, 1767, Goethe resumed his correspondence with Behrisch, and
it is in this part of it that we have the fullest revelation of his
state of mind during the last year of his residence in Leipzig. With
the exception of occasional digressions these letters are solely
concerned with his relations to Käthchen, and their outpourings
afterwards received their faithful echo in the incoherences of
Werther. Here is the beginning of a letter to Behrisch (October 13th),
in which he described his feelings as evoked by the appearance of two
rivals for the favours of Käthchen. "Another night like this,
Behrisch, and, in spite of all my sins, I shan't have to go to hell.
You may have slept peacefully, but a jealous lover, who has drunk as
much champagne as is necessary to put his blood in a pleasant heat and
to inflame his imagination to the highest point! At first I could not
sleep, I tossed about in my bed, sprang up, raved; then I grew weary
and fell asleep." And he proceeds to relate a wild dream in which
Käthchen was the distracting image; and he concludes: "There you have
Annette. She is a cursed lass!"[29] Yet on the same day or the day
following he could thus describe his mode of life in a letter to his
sister: "It is very philosophical," he writes; "I have given up
concerts, comedies, riding and driving, and have abandoned all
societies of young folks who might lead me into more company. This
will be of great advantage to my purse."[30] Very different is the
picture of his mode of life in his subsequent letters to Behrisch at
the same period. If we are to take him literally, it was the life of a
veritable Don Juan who had learned all the lessons of his instructor.
"Do you recognise me in this tone, Behrisch?" he writes; "it is the
tone of a conquering young lord.... It is comic. Aber ohne zu schwören
ich unterstehe mich schon ein Mädgen zu verf--wie Teufel soll ich's
nennen. Enough, Monsieur, all this is but what you might have expected
from the aptest and most diligent of your scholars."[31] That all
this was not mere bravado is distinctly suggested even in _Dichtung
und Wahrheit_, where the wild doings of Leipzig are so decorously
draped.
[Footnote 29: _Ib._ p. 105.]
[Footnote 30: _Ib._ p. 116.]
[Footnote 31: _Ib._ p. 133.]
Goethe knew from the first that he could never make Käthchen his wife,
and that sooner or later his lovemaking must come to an end. The end
came in the spring of 1768 after two years' philandering which had not
been all happiness. In a letter to Behrisch he thus relates the
_dénouement_: "Oh, Behrisch," he writes, "I have begun to live! Could
I but tell you the whole story! I cannot; it would cost me too much.
Enough--we have separated, we are happy.... Behrisch, we are living in
the pleasantest, friendliest intercourse.... We began with love and we
end with friendship."[32] Goethe makes one of his characters say that
estranged lovers, if they only manage things well, may still remain
friends, and the remark was prompted by more than one experience of
his own.
[Footnote 32: _Ib._ pp. 158-9.]
When he was past his seventieth year, Goethe made a remark to his
friend, Chancellor von Müller, which is applicable to every period of
his life: "In the hundred things which interest me," he said, "there
is always one which, as chief planet, holds the central place, and
meanwhile the remaining Quodlibet of my life circles round it in
many-changing phases, till each and all succeed in reaching the
centre." Even in these distracted Leipzig years the mental process
thus described is clearly visible. Neither Goethe's loves nor his
other dissipations ever permanently dulled the intellectual side of
his nature. While he was writing morbid letters to Behrisch, he was
directing the studies of his sister with all the seriousness of a
youthful pedagogue. Though he neglected the lectures of his
professors, he was assimilating knowledge on every subject that
appealed to his natural instincts. In truth, all the manifold
activities of his later years were foreshadowed during his sojourn in
Leipzig, as, indeed, they had already been foreshadowed during his
boyhood in Frankfort.
As in Frankfort, he took in knowledge equally from men, books, and
things.[33] In the house of a Leipzig citizen, a physician and
botanist, he met a society of medical men, and he records how his
attention was directed to an entirely new field through listening to
their conversation. Now, apparently for the first time, he heard the
names of Haller, Buffon, and Linnæus, the last of whom he, in later
years, named with Spinoza and Shakespeare as one of the chief moulding
forces of his life. Through the influence and example of other men he
intermittently practised etching, drawing, and engraving--all arts in
which he retained a lifelong interest. But among all the persons in
Leipzig who influenced him Goethe gave the first place to Friedrich
Oeser, director of the academy of drawing in the city. Oeser was about
fifty years of age, jovial in disposition, and an experienced man of
the world. Though as an artist he is now held in little regard, his
reputation was great in his own day,[34] and he had a reflected glory
in being the friend of Winckelmann, who was reputed to have profited
by his teaching in art. Under the inspiration of Oeser Goethe's
interest in the plastic arts in general, which had received its first
impulse at home, became a permanent preoccupation for the remainder of
his life. He took regular lessons in drawing from Oeser, made
acquaintance with all the collections, public and private, to be found
in Leipzig, and even made a secret visit to the galleries in Dresden,
where, he tells us, he gave his exclusive attention to the works of
the great Dutch masters. As was always his habit, Goethe generously
acknowledged his obligations to Oeser. "Who among all my teachers,
except yourself," he afterwards wrote on his return to Frankfort,
"ever thought me worthy of encouragement? They either heaped all blame
or all praise upon me, and nothing can be so destructive of talent....
You know what I was when I came to you, and what when I left you: the
difference is your work ... you have taught me to be modest without
self-depreciation, and to be proud without presumption."[35] And
elsewhere he declares that the great lesson he had learned from Oeser
was that the ideal of beauty is to be found in "simplicity and
repose." But the main interest of Goethe's intercourse with Oeser in
connection with his general development is that it strengthened an
illusion from which he did not succeed in freeing himself till near
his fortieth year--the illusion that nature had given him equally the
gifts of the painter and the poet. Many hours of the best years of his
life were to be spent in laboriously practising an art in which he was
doomed to mediocrity; and it must remain a riddle that one, who like
Goethe was so curiously studious of his own self-development, should
so long and so blindly have misunderstood his own gifts.[36]
[Footnote 33: "Das Bedürfnis meiner Natur zwingt mich zu einer
vermannigfaltigten Thätigkeit," he wrote of himself in his
thirty-second year.]
[Footnote 34: When, in his thirty-sixth year, Goethe renewed his
acquaintance with Oeser, he wrote of him to Frau von Stein: "C'est
comme si cet homme ne devroit pas mourir, tant ses talents paroissent
toujours aller en s'augmentant."]
[Footnote 35: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. 179.]
[Footnote 36: In later years he consoled himself with the reflection
that the time he had spent on the technicalities of art was not wholly
lost, as he had thus acquired powers of observation which were
valuable to him both as a poet and as a man of science.]
It may partly explain his addiction to art that the poetical
productions which he had brought from Frankfort, and which had been
applauded by the circle of his friends there, did not meet with the
approval of the critics in Leipzig. We have seen how sharply Frau
Böhme commented on their shortcomings, but he was specially
disheartened by the severe criticism passed on one of his poems by
Clodius, the professor of literature. "I am cured of the folly of
thinking myself a poet,"[37] he wrote to his sister about a year after
his arrival in Leipzig. Some six months later he writes to her in a
more hopeful spirit: "Since I am wholly without pride, I may trust my
inner conviction, which tells me that I possess some of the qualities
required in a poet, and that by diligence I may even become one."[38]
In his Autobiography and elsewhere Goethe has spoken at length of the
disadvantages under which youthful geniuses laboured at the period
when he began his literary career.[39] As Germany then existed, there
was no national feeling to inspire great themes, no standard of taste,
and no worthy models for imitation. There was, indeed, no lack of
literature on all subjects; Kant speaks sarcastically of "the deluge
of books with which our part of the world is inundated every year."
But the fatal defects of the poetry then produced was triviality and
the "wateriness" of its style. Yet it was during the years that Goethe
spent in Leipzig that there appeared a succession of works which mark
a new departure in German literature. In 1766 Herder, who was
subsequently to exercise such a profound influence over Goethe,
published his _Fragments on Modern German Literature_; in the same
year appeared Lessing's _Laokoon_, which, in Goethe's own words,
transported himself and his contemporaries "out of the region of
pitifully contracted views into the domain of emancipated thought";
and in 1767 Lessing's _Minna von Barnhelm_, Germany's "first national
drama." Greatly as Goethe was impressed by both of these works of
Lessing, however, he was not mature enough to profit by them[40]; and,
in point of fact, all the work, poems and plays, which he produced
during his Leipzig period, is solely inspired by the French models
which had so long dominated German literature.
[Footnote 37: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. 67.]
[Footnote 38: _Ib._ p. 88.]
[Footnote 39: Notably in his paper, entitled _Literarischer
Sansculottismus_. See above, p. 4. Regarding Lessing he made this
remark to Eckermann (February 7th, 1827): "Bedauert doch den
ausserordentlichen Menschen, dass er in einer so erbärmlichen Zeit
leben musste, die ihm keine bessern Stoffe gab, als in seinen Stücken
verarbeitet sind!"]
[Footnote 40: "Lessing war der höchste Verstand, und nur ein ebenso
grosser konnte von ihm wahrhaft lernen. Dem Halbvermögen war er
gefährlich." (To Eckermann, January 18th, 1825.)]
Considering his other manifold preoccupations, the amount of Goethe's
literary output during his three years in Leipzig is sufficient
evidence that his poetic instincts remained the dominant impulses of
his nature. He sprinkled his letters to his friends with poems in
German, French, and English, and he composed twenty lyrics which were
subsequently published in the autumn of 1769 under the title of _Neue
Lieder_[41]; and two plays, entitled _Die Laune des Verliebten_ and
_Die Mitschuldigen_. The biographic interest of all these productions
is the light which they throw on the transformation which Goethe had
undergone during his residence in Leipzig. In the poems he had written
in Frankfort religion had been the predominant theme; in his Leipzig
effusions it was love, and love in a sufficiently Anacreontic sense.
Regarding the poetic merit of the _Neue Lieder_ German critics are for
the most part at one. With hardly an exception the love lyrics are
mere imitations of French models; their style is as artificial as
their feeling; and they give little promise of the work that was to
come from the same hand a few years later. As the expression of one of
his lover's moods, one of them, reckoned the best in the collection,
may here be given. It is entitled _Die schöne Nacht_.
[Footnote 41: Nine of these _Lieder_ Goethe thought worthy of a
permanent place in his collected works.]
DIE SCHÖNE NACHT.
Nun verlass' ich diese Hütte,
Meiner Liebsten Aufenthalt;
Wandle mit verhülltem Schritte
Durch den öden, finstern Wald.
Luna bricht durch Busch und Eichen,
Zephyr meldet ihren Lauf;
Und die Birken streun mit Neigen
Ihr den süssten Weihrauch auf.
Wie ergötz' ich mich im Kühlen
Dieser schönen Sommernacht!
O wie still ist hier zu fühlen
Was die Seele glücklich macht!
Lässt sich kaum die Wonne fassen,
Und doch wollt' ich, Himmel! dir
Tausend solcher Nächte lassen,
Gäb' mein Mädchen Eine mir.
THE BEAUTIFUL NIGHT.
Now I leave the cot behind me
Where my love hath her abode;
And I wander with veiled footsteps
Through the drear and darksome wood.
Luna's rays pierce oak and thicket
Zephyr heraldeth her way;
And for her its sweetest incense
Sheddeth every birchen spray.
How I revel in the coolness
Of this beauteous summer night!
Ah! how peaceful here the feeling
Of what makes the soul's delight,
Bliss wellnigh past comprehending!
Yet, O Heaven, I would to thee
Thousand nights like this surrender,
Gave my maiden one to me.
But it is in the two plays produced during this period that Goethe
most fully reveals both his literary ideals and the essential traits
of his own character. The first of the two, _Die Laune des Verliebten_
("The Lover's Caprices"), is based on his own relations to Käthchen
Schönkopf, and is cast in the form of a pastoral drama, written in
Alexandrines after the fashion of the time.[42] The theme is a satire
on his own wayward conduct towards Käthchen, as he has depicted it in
his Autobiography. The plot is of the simplest kind. Two pairs of
lovers, Egle and Lamon, and Amine and Eridon, the first pair happy in
their loves, the second unhappy, make up the characters of the piece.
The leading part is taken by Egle, who is distressed at the misery of
her friend Amine, occasioned by the jealous humours of her lover
Eridon. Complications there are none, and the sole interest of the
play consists in the vivacity of the dialogues and in the arch
mischief with which Egle eventually shames Eridon out of his foolish
jealousy of his maiden, who is only too fondly devoted to him. What
strikes us in the whole performance is that Goethe, if he was so
madly in love with Käthchen as his letters to Behrisch represent him,
should have been capable of writing it. From its playful humour and
entirely objective treatment it might have been written by a
good-natured onlooker amused at the spectacle of two young people
trifling with feelings which neither could take seriously.
[Footnote 42: This play was based on an earlier attempt made in
Frankfort.]
Equally objective is Goethe's handling of the very different theme of
the other play, _Die Mitschuldigen_ ("The Accomplices"),[43] and in
this case the objectivity is still more remarkable in a youth who had
not yet attained his twentieth year. This second piece belongs to the
class of low comedy, and is as simple in construction as its
companion. The scene is laid in an inn, and the characters are four in
number: the Host, whose leading trait is insatiable curiosity; his
daughter Sophia, represented as of easy virtue; Söller, her husband, a
graceless scamp; and Alcestes, a former lover of Sophia, and for the
time a guest in the inn. In the central scene of the play there come
in succession to Alcestes' room in the course of one night Söller, who
steals Alcestes' gold; the Host, to possess himself of a letter with
the contents of which he has a burning curiosity to become acquainted;
and Sophia by appointment with Alcestes. As father and daughter have
caught sight of each other on their respective errands, each suspects
the other of being the thief, and in a sorry scene the father, on the
condition of being permitted to read the letter, which turns out to be
a trivial note, informs Alcestes that Sophia is the delinquent.
Finally, Söller, under the threat of a prick from Alcestes' sword,
confesses to the theft, and the piece ends with a mutual agreement to
condone each other's delinquencies.[44] The play is not without
humour, and the different characters are vivaciously presented, but
the blindest admirers of the master may well regret, as they mostly
have regretted, that such a work should have come from his hands. The
most charitable construction we can put on the graceless production is
that Goethe, out of his abnormal impressionability, for the time being
deliberately assumed the tone of cynical indifference with which he
had become familiar in his intercourse with his friend Behrisch.
[Footnote 43: The exact time and place of its composition is
uncertain, but Goethe's own testimony seems to indicate that it was
mainly written in Leipzig, in 1769. It was first published in 1787,
with some modifications, which affect only the form.]
[Footnote 44: With a fatuity into which he occasionally fell, Goethe
in _Dichtung und Wahrheit_ remarks that his two plays are an
illustration of that most Christian text, "Let him who is without sin
among you cast the first stone."]
In direct connection with the shorter poems which Goethe wrote in
Leipzig, there is a passage in his Autobiography which has perhaps
been more frequently quoted than any other, and which, according as we
interpret it, must materially influence our judgment at once on his
character and his genius. The passage is as follows: "And thus began
that tendency of which, all my life through, I was never able to break
myself; the tendency to transmute into a picture or a poem whatever
gave me either pleasure or pain, or otherwise preoccupied me, and thus
to arrive at a judgment regarding it, with the object at once of
rectifying my ideas of things external to me and of calming my own
feelings. This gift was in truth perhaps necessary to no one more than
to me, whose temperament was continually tossing him from one extreme
to another. All my productions proceeding from this tendency that have
become known to the world are only fragments of a great confession
which it is the bold attempt of this book to complete."
From the context of this passage it is to be inferred that the habit
which Goethe describes applied only to the occasional short poems
which he threw off at the different periods of his life. But are we to
infer that the account here given of Goethe's occasional poems applies
to the passionate lyrics which a few years later he was to pour forth
in such abundance? To a very different purport is another passage in
the Autobiography, which is at the same time a striking commentary on
Wordsworth's remark that Goethe's poetry was "not inevitable enough."
"I had come," he there says, "to look upon my indwelling poetic talent
altogether as a force of nature; the more so as I had always been
compelled to regard outward nature as its proper object. The exercise
of this poetic faculty might indeed be excited and determined by
circumstances; but its most joyful and richest action was
spontaneous--even involuntary. In my nightly vigils the same thing
happened; so that I often wished, like one of my predecessors, to have
a leathern jerkin made, and to get accustomed to writing in the dark,
so as to be able to fix on paper all such unpremeditated effusions. It
had so often happened to me that, after composing some snatch of
poetry in my head, I could not recall it, that I would now hurry to my
desk and, without once breaking off, write off the poem from beginning
to end, not even taking time to straighten the paper, if it lay
crosswise, so that the verses often slanted across the page. In such a
mood I preferred to get hold of a lead pencil, because I could write
most readily with it; whereas the scratching and spluttering of a pen
would sometimes wake me from a poetic dream, confuse me, and so stifle
some trifling production in its birth."[45]
[Footnote 45: The translation of this passage is by Miss Minna Steele
Smith.--_Poetry and Truth from My Own Life_ (London, 1908.)]
Poetry produced as here described may certainly be regarded as part of
the poet's "confession," but in the circumstances of its origin it is
a world apart from the poetry composed in the fashion described in the
passage preceding. The poet here does not coolly say to himself: "Go
to, I will make a poem to relieve my feelings"; he sings, to quote
Goethe's own expression, "as the bird sings," out of the sheer
fulness of his heart, which insists on immediate expression.[46] True
it is that Goethe, like all other poets, frequently wrote under no
immediate pressure of inspiration, but to affirm this of the highest
efforts of his genius is at once to contradict his own testimony and
to misinterpret the conditions under which genius produces its
results.
[Footnote 46: In a letter to W. von Rumohr (September 28th, 1807),
Goethe calls "unaufhaltsame Natur, unüberwindliche Neigung, drängende
Leidenschaft" the "Haupterfordernisse der wahren Poesie." In two of
his _Zahme Xenien_ Goethe has expressed his opinion on the necessity
of inspiration in poetic production:--
Ja das ist das rechte Gleis,
Dass man nicht weiss,
Was man denkt,
Wenn man denkt:
Alles ist als wie geschenkt.
All unser redlichstes Bemühn
Glückt nur im unbewussten Momente.
Wie möchte denn die Rose blühn,
Wenn sie der Sonne Herrlichkeit erkennte!]
CHAPTER III
AT HOME IN FRANKFORT
SEPTEMBER, 1768--APRIL, 1770
On August 28th, 1768, Goethe left Leipzig after a residence of nearly
three years. He had gone to Leipzig in the spirit of a prisoner
released from his gaol; he left it in the spirit of one returning to
durance. In his Autobiography he has described the depressing
conditions under which he re-entered his father's house. In body and
mind he had found that in "accursed Leipzig one burns out as quickly
as a bad torch." In body he was a broken man. One night in the
beginning of August he had been seized with a violent hemorrhage, and
for some weeks his life hung by a thread. In his Autobiography he
assigns various reasons for his illness. As the result of an accident
on his journey from Frankfort to Leipzig he had strained the ligaments
of his chest, and the mischief was aggravated by a subsequent fall
from his horse; he had suffered from the fumes of the acids he had
inhaled in the process of etching; he had ruined his digestion by
drinking coffee and heavy beer; and, in accordance with the precepts
of Rousseau, he had adopted a _régime_ which proved too severe for his
enfeebled constitution. So he wrote in his old age, but his
contemporary letters leave us in little doubt regarding the cause of
his breakdown. He had, in fact, during the latter part of his sojourn
in Leipzig lived the life of the average German student of his day. He
had fought a duel, and had been wounded in the arm; he had drunk more
than was good for him, and we have seen that he had followed other
courses not conducive to his bodily health.
His mental condition was equally unsatisfactory. There was not a
friend, he tells us, whom at one time or another he had not annoyed by
his caprice, or offended by his "morbid spirit of contradiction" and
sullen avoidance of intercourse. All through his life Goethe seems to
have tried his friends by his variable humours,[47] but it was seldom
that he completely alienated them, and he gratefully records how in
his present stricken condition they rallied to his side, and put him
to shame by their assiduous attentions. One of these friends, Langer
by name, who had succeeded Behrisch as tutor to the young Count, he
specially mentions as helping to give a new turn to his thoughts.
Langer was religiously disposed, and found in Goethe, now in a mood to
receive them, a sympathetic listener to his theological views. Under
Langer's influence he resumed his youthful study of the Bible--not in
the Old Testament, however, but in the New, which he read, he tells
us, with "emotion and enthusiasm." It was the beginning of a new phase
in his life which was to last for about a year and a half, a phase in
which religion, if we are to accept the testimony of his
Autobiography, held the uppermost place in his thoughts.
[Footnote 47: When approaching his eightieth year, Goethe remarked to
Chancellor von Müller (March 6th, 1828): "Wer mit mir umgehen will,
muss zuweilen auch meine Grobianslaune zugeben, ertragen, wie eines
andern Schwachheit oder Steckenpferd."]
It was with the feelings of "a shipwrecked seaman," he tells us, that
he found himself again under his father's roof, though he
characteristically adds that "he had nothing specially to reproach
himself with." The atmosphere he found at home was not such as to put
him in better spirits. Father, mother and daughter had been living in
mutual misunderstanding during the whole period of the son's absence
in Leipzig. Cornelia had been made the sole victim of her father's
pedagogic discipline which had been partially alleviated when it was
shared with her brother, and she had come to regard her over-anxious
parent with a hardness which Goethe describes as having something
dreadful (_fürchterliches_) in it. The arrival of Goethe could not
improve the existing relations in the household. As in the time before
his going to Leipzig, Cornelia drew to him as the only member of the
family who sympathetically understood her, and she remained as
obdurate as ever in her sullen attitude towards her father. Between
Goethe himself and his father their former estrangement continued, and
we are given to understand that during the year and a half he now
spent under the paternal roof there was no cordial understanding
regarding the son's pursuits and his future career.[48] Dissatisfied
with his son, as from his point of view he had every reason to be,
Herr Goethe nevertheless cherished a secret pride in his genius. With
a paternal pride, which is even touching in the circumstances, he
carefully framed the drawings executed by his son, and collected and
stitched together his letters from Leipzig.
[Footnote 48: Referring to the time he now spent in Frankfort, Goethe
says in _Dichtung und Wahrheit_: "Mit dem Vater selbst konnte sich
kein angenehmes Verhältniss knüpfen."]
As in the case of his Leipzig period, Goethe's reminiscent account of
his present sojourn in Frankfort gives a somewhat different impression
of his main interests from that conveyed by his contemporary letters.
If we accept the testimony of his Autobiography, his attention was
mainly turned to religion and to chemical and cabbalistical studies;
from his correspondence, on the other hand, it would appear that his
thoughts at least occasionally ran on subjects that had little to do
with his spiritual welfare. At the same time, the apparent discrepancy
need not imply self-contradiction. The correspondents to whom his
letters were addressed were not persons specially interested in
religion or chemistry or the cabbala, and, of all men, Goethe was
least likely to be obsessed by any set of ideas to the exclusion of
all others. There can be little doubt, indeed, that during his year
and a half in Frankfort religion was a more predominant interest in
his life than at any other period; and the fact is sufficiently
explained by the circumstances in which he then found himself. From
the condition both of his mind and body he was disposed to
self-searching. Regret for the past was foreign to his nature; in his
mature judgment, indeed, such a feeling was resolutely to be checked
in the interest of healthy self-development. Yet in the retrospect of
his Leipzig days it seems to have crossed his mind that he might have
spent them more wisely. "O that I could recall the last two years and
a half,"[49] he wrote to Käthchen Schönkopf, and he warns a male
correspondent in Leipzig to "beware of dissoluteness."[50] And the
state of his health during the greater part of this time in Frankfort
was such as to strengthen this mood. Immediately after his return from
Leipzig he was threatened with pulmonary disease, and the state of his
digestion became such as to alarm himself and his friends. On December
7th he was attacked by a violent internal pain, and for some days
there were the gravest fears for his life. After two months'
confinement to his room there was a partial recovery, but it was not
till the spring of 1770 that his health was completely restored.
[Footnote 49: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. 215.]
[Footnote 50: _Ib._ p. 217.]
But the truth is that Goethe's temporary preoccupation with religion
is only another illustration of his "chameleon" temperament. In gay
Leipzig he had promptly taken on the ways of a man about town; now in
Frankfort he found himself in a very different society, and he as
promptly entered into the spirit of it. The circle of which he now
became a member was a company of religious persons, mostly women,
friends or acquaintances of his mother. Its most prominent member was
that Fräulein von Klettenberg, already mentioned, a woman of high
rank, culture, and refinement. To moral beauty of character in man or
woman, Goethe, at all periods of his life, was peculiarly
sensitive,[51] and in the Fräulein he saw a woman who combined at once
the most winning graces of her sex and the virtues of a saint. For
women of all ages and all types Goethe had always a singular
attraction, and, though the Fräulein must have discerned that he could
never be a son or brother in the spirit, she was profoundly interested
in the wayward youth in whom she saw a brand that deserved to be
plucked from the burning.
[Footnote 51: _Cf._ his beautiful characterisation of Louis Bonaparte,
King of Holland, in whom he found the embodiment at once of the
Christian graces and of _reine Menschlichkeit_.]
With a kind of half consent Goethe entered into the spirit of the
pious circle; he even attended communion in spite of his unhappy
memories of that sacrament, and was present at a Synod of the Herrnhut
Community to which Fräulein von Klettenberg belonged. Bound up with
the Fräulein's religion was a curious interest in the occult powers of
nature from the point of view of their relation to the human body. It
is with evident irony that Goethe relates how in his own case the
efficacy of these occult powers was tried. Among the members of the
religious community was a mysterious physician who was credited with
possessing certain medicines of peculiar virtue. He was believed to
have in store one drug--a powerful salt--which he reserved only for
the most dangerous cases, and regarding which, though they had never
seen the result of its operation, the community spoke with bated
breath. At the vehement request of his mother the mysterious medicine
was administered to Goethe at the crisis of his malady, at the hour of
midnight, and with all due solemnity. From that moment his illness
took a favourable turn, and he steadily progressed towards recovery.
"I need not say," is his comment, "how greatly this result
strengthened and heightened our faith in our physician and our efforts
to share such a treasure." Partly, therefore, out of his own
insatiable curiosity and partly out of sympathy with his new friends,
Goethe now betook himself to occult studies, and, in imitation of the
Fräulein von Klettenberg, had a room fitted up with the necessary
chemical apparatus. It was the first practical commencement of those
scientific studies which were subsequently to occupy such a large part
of his life. Along with his chemical experiments went the study of
such visionaries in science as Paracelsus, Van Helmont, and others,
but also of the great Boerhaave, whose _Institutes of Medicine and
Aphorisms_, containing all that was then known of medical theory, he
"gladly stamped on his mind and memory."
To what extent are we to infer that Goethe really shared the religious
views of the circle of pious persons with whom he was now living in
daily contact? His own account we can only regard as half jesting,
half serious. He would never have spiritual peace, Fräulein von
Klettenberg told him till he had a "reconciled God." Goethe's
rejoinder was that it should be put the other way. Considering his
recent sufferings and his own good intentions, it was God who was in
arrears to him and who had something to be forgiven. The Fräulein
charitably condoned the blasphemy, but she and her fellow-believers
were assuredly in the right when they denied the blasphemer the name
of _Christian_. Yet, as has been said, Goethe in his own way was
seriously in search of a faith that would satisfy both his intellect
and his heart, and he even attempted to construct one. A book that
fell into his hands, Gottfried Arnold's _Impartial History of the
Church and of Heretics_,[52] prompted the attempt. From this book, he
tells us, he received a favourable impression of heretics, and the
impression was comforting to one who, like himself, was looked on as a
heretic by all his friends. Moreover, he had often heard it said that
in the long run every man must have his own religion; why, therefore,
should he not essay to think out a creed that would at least satisfy
himself? In brief outline he has described the system which he evolved
from his miscellaneous historical and scientific studies. It is, as he
himself says, a strange composite of Neo-Platonism, and of hermetical,
mystical, and cabbalistical speculations, all leading by a necessary
logic to the dogmas of Redemption and the Incarnation--a conclusion
which at least points to the fact that for Goethe at this time
Christianity was a religion specifically predestined for man's
salvation. "We all become mystics in old age," is a remark of his own
at that period of life; and the conclusion of the Second Part of
Faust, as well as other indications, proves that the remark was at
least true of himself. But, as has often been pointed out, not only in
old age, but at every period of his life, there was a mystic strain in
him which was only kept in check by what was the strongest instinct of
his nature--the instinct that demanded the direct vision of the
concrete fact as the only condition on which he could build "the
pyramid of his life."
[Footnote 52: Probably Goethe had this book in his mind when he wrote
the sarcastic epigram:--
"Es ist die ganze Kirchengeschichte
Mischmasch von Irrthum und von Gewalt."]
Goethe's experience derived from his intercourse with Fräulein von
Klettenberg and her friends undoubtedly enriched his own nature and
enlarged his conceptions of the content of human life, of its possible
motives and ideals. It was not a circle into which his own affinities
would have led him, but being in it, he, as was his invariable habit,
drew from it to the full all that it could give for his own
building-up. And in enriching his own nature and widening his outlook,
the experience enlarged the scope of his creative productiveness. But
for his intercourse with these pious enthusiasts the Confessions of a
Beautiful Soul would not have found a place in _Wilhelm Meister_, and
from the general picture of human life and its activities which it is
the object of that book to present, there would have been lacking one
conception of life and its responsibilities, not the least interesting
in the history of the human spirit. Most specific and important of all
his gains from his association with the Frankfort community, however,
was that from it directly emerged what is universally regarded as his
greatest creative effort--the First Part of Faust. The conception of
that work was closely associated with the chemical experiments and
cabbalistic studies suggested by his intercourse with Fräulein von
Klettenberg and her circle, and not only suggested but carried out on
the foundation that had thus been laid.[53]
[Footnote 53: Yet at a later date he would seem to have regarded his
mystical studies as among the errors of his youth. In his _Tagebuch_,
under date August 7th, 1779, he writes as follows, and the passage may
be taken as a commentary on the whole period of his life with which we
are dealing: "Stiller Rückblick auf's Leben auf die Verworrenheit
Betriebsamkeit, Wissbegierde der Jugend, wie sie überall
herumschweift, um etwas Befriedigendes zu finden. Wie ich besonders in
[Transcriber's Note: corrected error "im"] Geheimnissen, dunklen
imaginativen Verhältissen eine Wollust gefunden habe."]
As has been said, Goethe's contemporary letters addressed from
Frankfort to his friends bring a different side of his life before us
from that presented in the Autobiography. From these letters we gather
that he was by no means wholly engrossed in religious or mystical
studies. "During this winter," he wrote to his friend Oeser, about two
months after his arrival in Frankfort, "the company of the muses and
correspondence with friends will bring pleasure into a sickly,
solitary life, which for a youth of twenty years would otherwise be
something of a martyrdom."[54] In spite of the affectionate solicitude
of Fräulein von Klettenberg and other friends, he found Frankfort a
depressing place after gay Leipzig. "I could go mad when I think of
Leipzig," wrote his sprightly friend Horn, who had also tasted the
pleasures of that place; and Goethe shared his opinion. Both also
agreed that the girls of Frankfort were vastly inferior creatures to
those of Leipzig. "I came here," Goethe wrote in a poetical epistle to
the daughter of Oeser, "and found the girls a little--one does not
quite like to speak it out--as they always were; enough, none has as
yet touched my heart."[55] It would appear, nevertheless, that he did
find certain Frankfort girls to his taste. "I get along tolerably
here," he wrote to another correspondent. "I am contented and quiet; I
have half-a-dozen angels of girls whom I often see, though I have lost
my heart to none of them. They are pleasant creatures, and make my
life uncommonly agreeable. He who has seen no Leipzig might be very
well off here."[56] His life in Frankfort was, in short, what he
himself called it, an exile (_Verbannung_).
[Footnote 54: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. 179, November 7th, 1768.]
[Footnote 55: _Ib._ p. 173.]
[Footnote 56: _Ib._ p. 217.]
Among his correspondents was Käthchen Schönkopf with whom, as we have
seen, he had come to what he thought a satisfactory arrangement before
leaving Leipzig. In this correspondence it is the Leipzig student, not
the associate of the Fräulein von Klettenberg, who is before us. There
is the same waywardness, there are the same irresponsible sallies
which made him such a difficult lover. If we are to take him
seriously, he still suffered from the pangs of rejected love and
regretted that his former relations to Käthchen had not continued. "A
lover to whom his love will not listen," he writes, "is by many
degrees not so unfortunate as one who has been cast off; the former
still retains hope and has at least no fear of being hated; the other,
yes, the other, who has once experienced what it is to be cast out of
a heart which once was his, gladly avoids thinking, not to say
speaking, of it."[57] When this passage was written (June, 1769) he
had received the news that Käthchen was betrothed to another. In a
final letter addressed to her (January 23rd, 1770) occur these
characteristic words: "You are still the same loveable girl, and you
will also be a loveable wife. And I, I shall remain Goethe. You know
what that means. When I mention my name, I mention all; and you know
that, as long as I have known you, I have lived only as part of
you."[58] So closed a relation of which it is difficult to say how
much there was in it of genuine passion, how much of artificial
sentiment. Serious intention in it there was none; from the first
Goethe perfectly realised the fact that he could never make Käthchen
his wife.[59]
[Footnote 57: _Ib._ p. 211.]
[Footnote 58: _Ib._ p. 224.]
[Footnote 59: Goethe saw Käthchen as a married woman in Leipzig in
1776, when he wrote to the lady who then held his affections (Frau von
Stein): "Mais ce n'est plus Julie."]
As at Leipzig, his other distractions did not divert him from his
interests in art and literature. When the state of his health
permitted, he assiduously practised drawing and etching. "Now as
formerly," he wrote to Oeser, "art is almost my chief occupation." But
he also found time for wide excursions into the fields of general
literature. Before leaving Leipzig he had exchanged with Langer "whole
baskets-full" of German poets and critics for Greek authors, and these
(though his knowledge of Greek remained to the end elementary) he
must have read in a fashion. Latin authors he read were Cicero,
Quintilian, Seneca, and Pliny. Among the moderns Shakespeare and
Molière already held the place in his estimation which they always
retained. Shakespeare he as yet knew only from the selections in
Dodd's _Beauties_ and Wieland's translation, but he already felt his
greatness, and, as we have seen, names him with Wieland and Oeser as
one of his masters. "Voltaire," he wrote to Oeser, "has been able to
do no harm to Shakespeare; no lesser spirit will prevail over a
greater one."[60] The German writers who now stood highest in his
esteem were Lessing and Wieland. Lessing's æsthetic teaching he
accepted with some reserves, but this did not abate the admiration
which he retained for him at every period of his life. "Lessing!
Lessing!" he wrote in the same letter to Oeser; "if he were not
Lessing, I might say something. Write against him I may not; he is a
conqueror.... He is a mental phenomenon, and, truly, such apparitions
are rare in Germany."[61] That Goethe, at this period, should have had
such an unbounded admiration for Wieland is an interesting commentary
on his pietistic leanings; for Wieland was now in his full pagan
phase, so distasteful to moral Germany, as Goethe himself indicates.
"I have already been annoyed on Wieland's account," he writes--"I
think with justice. Wieland has often the misfortune to be
misunderstood; frequently, perhaps, the fault is his own, but as
frequently it is not." At a later day Goethe clearly saw and marked in
Wieland that lack of "high seriousness" on which he himself came to
lay such stress as all-important in literature and life, but in the
meantime he freely acknowledged what Wieland had been to him.[62]
"After him (Oeser) and Shakespeare," he wrote in the letter just
quoted, "Wieland is still the only one whom I can hold as my true
master; others had shown me where I had gone astray; they showed me
how to do better."
[Footnote 60: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. 205.]
[Footnote 61: _Ib._ p. 230.]
[Footnote 62: Goethe has this entry in his _Tagebuch_ (April 2nd,
1780): "Wieland sieht ganz unglaublich alles, was man machen will,
macht, und was hangt und langt in einer Schrift."]
What is noteworthy in the serious passages of Goethe's Frankfort
letters is the advance in maturity and self-knowledge which they
reveal when compared with those written from Leipzig. Penetrative
remarks on men and things, such as give its value to his later
correspondence, now begin to fall from his pen by the way. He
consciously takes the measure of his own powers, and forms clear
judgments on the literary and artistic tastes of the time. The poems
which he had written in Leipzig now seemed to him "trifling, cold,
dry, and superficial," and, as in Leipzig he had made a holocaust of
his boyish poems, so he made a second holocaust of those produced in
Leipzig. In a long letter addressed (February 13th, 1769) to
Friederike Oeser he thus expounds the artistic ideals at which he had
then arrived: "A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher, and he
who has laboriously thumbed the pages of many books regards with
contempt the simple, easy book of nature; and yet nothing is true
except what is simple--certainly a sorry recommendation for true
wisdom. Let him who goes the way of simplicity go it in quiet. Modesty
and circumspection are the essential characteristics of him who would
tread this path, and every step will bring its reward. I have to thank
your dear father for these conceptions; he it was who prepared my mind
to receive them; time will give its blessing to my diligence which may
complete the work he began."[63] In point of fact, partly owing to the
depressing conditions in which he found himself, and partly, it may
be, out of his own deliberate purpose, Goethe produced no work of
importance during the year and a half he spent in Frankfort. It was a
period of incubation, and the stimulus to production was to come to
him in another environment.
[Footnote 63: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. 200.]
In the spring of 1770 Goethe recovered his normal health and spirits,
and, in accordance with his father's wish, he proceeded to Strassburg
to complete his legal studies. He left home with as intense a feeling
of relief as he had left it on the previous occasion. Between him and
his father there had been growing estrangement, and the estrangement
had ended in an open quarrel when he ventured to criticise the
architecture of the paternal house, which had been constructed under
his father's own directions. Thwarted though the father had been in
his hopes of his son, however, he was not turned from his purpose of
affording him every opportunity of laying a broad foundation of
general culture. It was his express wish that Wolfgang, after
completing his studies in Strassburg, should travel in France and
spend some time in Paris.
CHAPTER IV
GOETHE IN STRASSBURG
APRIL, 1770--AUGUST, 1771
Goethe was in his twenty-first year when he entered Strassburg in the
beginning of April, 1770. From his maturer age and the chastening
experience of the preceding eighteen months, therefore, it was to be
expected that his management of his life in his new home would be more
in accordance with his father's wishes than his wild ways in Leipzig.
In sending his son to Strassburg it was the father's intention that he
should complete those legal studies of which he had made a jest in
Leipzig, and qualify himself for the profession by which he was to
make his future living. During his residence of some sixteen months in
Strassburg Goethe did actually fulfil his father's wish, and returned
to Frankfort as a full-fledged Licenciate of Laws, but as little as at
Leipzig did the interests which engrossed him suggest future eminence
in his profession.
What again strikes us is the rapidity with which he caught the tone of
his new surroundings. In Strassburg he found a society whose ways of
living and thinking were equally different from those of Frankfort and
of Leipzig. Strassburg had not the bounded intellectual horizon which
made him feel himself an alien in his native town, nor, on the other
hand, did it offer the opportunities for frivolous distraction which
he found in the "little Paris." Strassburg had been a French town for
a hundred years, but there was no town in Germany more intensely
German in its sympathies and aspirations. The officials and the upper
classes in the town spoke French and were French in their tastes and
habits, but the great majority of its citizens clung to their national
traditions with the tenacity of the conquered. It is Goethe's own
testimony that his residence in Strassburg precisely at this period of
his life was a decisive circumstance for his future development. At
the moment of his arrival, he had not yet completely broken with
French models, and he would even appear to have had vague dreams that
he would eventually choose the French language as his literary
medium.[64] Ever responsive to the intellectual and spiritual
atmosphere in which he found himself, however, the intensely German
sympathies of his Strassburg circle definitely turned him from a
career which would have cut off his genius from its profoundest
sources.
[Footnote 64: So we are led to infer from what he says in Part iii.,
Book ii. of _Dichtung und Wahrheit_.]
His decisive rejection of French for German ideals was the governing
fact of his sojourn in Strassburg, but he had other experiences there
which show that he was the same variable being of the Leipzig days.
His first letters from his new home would seem to show that he had
brought with him something of the pious sentiments he had acquired
from his association with Fräulein von Klettenberg, though his
expression of them has a singular savour. About a fortnight after his
arrival in Strassburg he writes as follows to one Limprecht, a
theological student whose acquaintance he had made in Leipzig: "I am
now again _Studiosus_, and, thank God, have now as much health as I
need, and spirits in superabundance. As I was, so am I still; only
that I stand better with our Lord God and with his dear Son Jesus
Christ. It follows that I am a somewhat wiser man; and have learned by
experience the meaning of the saying, 'The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom.' To be sure, we first sing Hosanna to him who
cometh yonder; well and good! even that is joy and happiness; the King
must first enter before he ascends his throne." A week later he writes
again to the same correspondent in a similar strain[65]: "I am a
different man, very different: for that I thank my Saviour; and I am
thankful also that I am not what I pass for."[66]
[Footnote 65: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. 232.]
[Footnote 66: _Ib._ p. 234.]
Two months later (July 28th) he appears to be in the same pious frame
of mind. "I still live somewhat at random," he writes to another
correspondent, "and I thank God for it; and often, when I dare, I
thank His Son also that I am in circumstances which seem to enjoin
this random mode of life.... Reflections are very light wares, but
prayer is a profitable business; a single welling-up of the heart to
Him whom we call _a_ God till we can name Him _our_ God, and we are
overwhelmed by the multitude of our mercies."[67]
[Footnote 67: _Ib._ pp. 240, 241.]
This mood, we cannot help feeling, sits ill on Goethe; pious as are
his expressions, they have not the ring of the genuine believer. Yet
it would be unjust to charge him with deliberate hypocrisy. The truth
is that at this time, and indeed throughout all his sojourn in
Strassburg, he was in a state of nervous irritability of which both
himself and his friends were aware.[68] Other expressions in letters
of the same date reveal a variability of moods, the only explanation
of which is that he had not fully recovered from the depressed mental
condition consequent on his long illness in Frankfort. But his
unnatural mood of piety did not long withstand the new influences to
which he was now subjected, and it is in a letter to Fräulein von
Klettenberg herself, written towards the end of August, that he
intimates his growing distaste for the religious set to whom she had
introduced him in Strassburg. After telling her that he had been to
Holy Communion "to remind him of the sufferings and death of our
Lord," he proceeds: "My intercourse with the religious people here is
not quite hearty, though at first I did turn very heartily to them;
but it seems as if it were not to be. They are so deadly dull when
they begin that my natural vivacity cannot endure it." He goes on to
say that he has made the acquaintance of one who is of a different way
of thinking from these people--one "who from the coolness of blood
with which he has always regarded the world thinks he has discovered
that we are put in this world for the special purpose of being useful
in it; that we are capable of making ourselves so; that religion is of
some help in this; and that the most useful man is the best."[69]
[Footnote 68: Lerse, one of Goethe's friends in Strassburg, said: "Da
geriet Goethe oft in hohe Verzückung, sprach Worte der Prophezeiung
und machte Lerse Besorgnisse, er werde überschnappen." (Goethe's
_Gespräche_. Gesamtausgabe von Freiherrn v. Biedermann, Leipzig, 1909,
i. p. 19.)]
[Footnote 69: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. pp. 245-7.]
The acquaintance to whom Goethe thus refers was the most important
person in the circle with which he was mainly associated during his
residence in Strassburg. It was a circle widely different in tastes
and ways of thinking from that which he had left at Frankfort. Boarded
in one house, the persons who composed it, about ten in number, daily
met at a common table. Of different ages, and mostly medical students,
their talk, as Goethe tells us, mainly turned on their professional
studies. The talk of medical students is not favourable to the
cultivation of a mystical piety, and it need not surprise us that a
few weeks in this atmosphere were sufficient to give Goethe a growing
distaste for those religious sentiments which in his case were only a
morbid distortion of his natural instincts. Yet during these
Strassburg days there is no trace in him of that anti-Christian
attitude of mind which was to be one of his later phases. He
decisively dissociated himself from the Herrnhut society, and he
ceased to speak in their language, but, as we have seen, he was still
disposed to assign to religion a due place in the lives of reasonable
men.
In the president of the common table, Dr. Salzmann, the acquaintance
to whom he referred, Goethe found one who by his personal character
and general views of life appealed to what was deepest in his own
nature. Salzmann's belief that "the most useful man is the best," may
be said, indeed, to sum up Goethe's own maturest conviction regarding
the conduct of life. In his relations to Salzmann, therefore, so far
as Goethe's ethical and religious ideals are concerned, we have the
clearest light thrown on his Strassburg period. As described by Goethe
himself, Salzmann was a man of the world, characterised by a tact,
good sense, and personal dignity which gave him an undisputed
ascendancy over the miscellaneous company which met at the common
table. From another member of the circle[70] we have this additional
tribute to Salzmann's high character: "His place (at table) was the
uppermost, and that would have been his natural place, even had he sat
behind the door. His modesty does not permit me to pass a panegyric on
him.... Let my readers imagine a philosophy, based at once on feeling
and a thorough grasp of principles, conjoined with the most genuine
Christianity, and he will have an idea of a Salzmann." Goethe and he,
the same writer adds, were "the most cordial friends (_Herzensfreunde_)."
In Leipzig the cynical _roué_ Behrisch had been Goethe's mentor; in
Strassburg his mentor was Salzmann, and the fact emphasises all the
difference between Goethe's Leipzig and Strassburg days. That he chose
Salzmann as his chiefest friend and confidant at a period when
self-control was still far from his reach, is the proof that _des
Lebens ernstes Führen_--the strenuous conduct of life--was in reality,
as he himself claimed, an imperative instinct of his nature. Certainly
he did not regulate his life in Strassburg in accordance with the
maxim of his self-chosen counsellor, yet we may conjecture that but
for Salzmann's restraining influence he would have gone further and
faster than he actually did. In the extremity of what was to be his
most passionate experience in Strassburg, it was to Salzmann that he
poured forth all the tumult of his passion, and the very act of laying
bare his heart to such a counsellor was a suggestion of the necessity
of a certain measure of self-control. In connection with Goethe's
relations to Salzmann we have also to note what is true of his
relations to everyone at whose feet he chose for the time to sit. When
a youth of eighteen he had written to Behrisch, a man of thirty, on
terms of perfect equality. He was now a little over twenty, and
Salzmann was approaching fifty and a man of the stamp we have seen,
yet in Goethe's letters to him there is no trace of the modest
diffidence with which a youth usually addresses his seniors. A forward
self-confidence, which some found objectionable, was in fact a
characteristic of his youth and early manhood which is noticed by more
than one observer. He entered a room, we are told, with a bold and
confident air; and we have it from another witness that he was _d'une
suffisance insupportable_.[71] Be it remarked, however, that there is
equal testimony to the overpowering charm of his bearing and
conversation--a charm due, as we learn, to a spontaneity of feeling
and exuberance of youthful spirits which broke through all conventions
and gave the tone to every company in which he found himself.
[Footnote 70: Jung Stilling.]
[Footnote 71: Biedermann, _op. cit._, i. pp. 15, 19. At an earlier
period Goethe was thus described: "Er mag 15 oder 16 Jahr alt sein, im
übrigen hat er mehr ein gutes Plappermaul als Gründlichkeit." _Ib._ p.
6.]
Goethe's relations to another member of the circle, who joined it
somewhat later, show him in his most attractive light. This was Johann
Heinrich Jung, better known as Jung Stilling, now about thirty years
of age. Stilling was another of those originals who crossed Goethe's
path at different periods, and to whom he was at all times specially
attracted. Stilling had had a remarkable career; he had been
successively charcoal-burner, tailor, schoolmaster, and private tutor,
and he had come to Strassburg to qualify himself for the practice of
medicine. What attracted Goethe to him was a type of mind and
character at every point dissimilar from his own. With a simple
mystical piety, which led him to believe that he was a special child
of Providence, Stilling combined an intelligence and a zeal for
knowledge which gave his words and his actions an individual stamp. It
is from Stilling that we have the most vivid description of Goethe in
these Strassburg days. As he sat with a friend at the common table for
the first time, they saw a youth enter who, by his "large bright eyes,
magnificent forehead, handsome person, and confident air," arrested
their attention.[72] "That must be a fine fellow," remarked
Stilling's friend, but both agreed that they might look for trouble
with him, as he seemed _ein wilder Kamerad_. They were mistaken, and
Goethe was to prove one of Stilling's warmest friends. Stilling
himself relates how, when one at the table directed a gibe at him, it
was Goethe who rebuked the railer. When Stilling was in despair at the
news of the illness of his betrothed, it was to Goethe he flew for
comfort, and he found him a friend in need. At a later date Goethe
published Stilling's Autobiography without his knowledge, and
presented him with the copyright. It was with the lively recollection
of these and other acts of friendship that Stilling wrote the words
which are the finest tribute ever paid to Goethe: "Goethe's heart,
which few knew, was as great as his intellect, which all knew."[73]
[Footnote 72: Goethe's personal appearance made such a remarkable
impression on all who met him that it deserves to be more minutely
described. In stature he was slightly over the middle height, though
the poise of his head, both in youth and age, gave the impression of
greater tallness. Till past his thirtieth year he was notably slender
in figure, a defect in symmetry being the observable shortness of the
legs, and he walked with swift, elastic step. The foot was elegantly
shaped, but the hand was that of the descendant of ancestors who had
been engaged in manual labour. The head was of oval form, the chin
small and feminine, the height of the forehead remarkable. The face,
which (in youth) gave the impression of smallness, was brown in
complexion; the nose was delicately formed and slightly curved; the
hair brown, abundant, and usually dishevelled. The feature which
struck all who met him for the first time was the eyes, which were
brown in colour, large, and widely-opened, with the white conspicuous,
and piercingly bright.--An exhaustive study of the portraits and busts
of Goethe will be found in _Goethes Kopf und Gestalt von Karl Bauer_,
Berlin, 1908.]
[Footnote 73: Stilling elsewhere says: "Schade, dass so wenige diesen
vortrefflichen Menschen seinem Herzen nach kennen!" Others used
similar expressions regarding Goethe's mind and heart.]
Neither in Frankfort, nor in Leipzig, nor in Strassburg had Goethe as
yet met the man in whom he could recognise his intellectual peer. In
the beginning of September, 1770, however, there came to Strassburg
one who, for the first time, impressed him with a sense of
inferiority. This was Johann Gottfried Herder, who, some five years
Goethe's senior, had a career behind him widely different from that of
the fortunate son of the Imperial Councillor of Frankfort. Born of
poor parents, he had had to fight his way at every step to the
distinction which he had already attained. He had studied under Kant
at Königsberg, had been successively assistant teacher, assistant
pastor, and private tutor. In this last capacity he had travelled in
France, and visited Paris, where he had made the acquaintance, among
others, of Diderot and D'Alembert. In Hamburg he had for several weeks
been in intercourse with Lessing, whom Goethe in a moment of caprice
had neglected to visit in Leipzig. Already, moreover, he had produced
work in literary criticism which by its suggestiveness and originality
had attracted much attention, and notably among the youth of Germany.
In hard-won experience, in extent of knowledge and range of ideas,
therefore, Herder, as Goethe himself speedily saw and acknowledged,
was far ahead of him along those very paths where he himself was
ambitious of distinction.
The association of Herder and Goethe in these Strassburg days is one
of the interesting chapters in European literary history. Goethe
himself bears emphatic testimony to Herder's determining influence at
once on his mind and character. "The most significant event of that
time, he tells us, "and one which was to have the weightiest
consequences for me, was my acquaintance with Herder and the closer
bond that resulted from it." Bond there was between them, but it was
not the bond of genuine friendship. No two men, indeed, could be more
essentially antipathetic by nature than Herder and Goethe. Their
antagonism was clearly apparent during their intercourse in
Strassburg, and in the end, after many years of uneasy relations,
their alienation became complete. Be it said that the traits in Herder
which estranged Goethe from him were equally recognised and felt by
others. Naturally querulous, splenetic, and inconsiderate of others'
feelings, the adverse circumstances of his early life had made him
something of a Timon among his fellows.[74] His favourite author was
Swift, and from this preference and from the peculiarities of his own
temper he was known among his acquaintances as the "Dean." But there
were sides to his nature which certainly did not exist in the
"terrible" Dean. Herder was an enthusiast for his own ideas, and these
ideas were of a quality and range that marked him as one of the
pioneers of his time. Religion as a primary instinct in man and the
principal factor in his development was Herder's lifelong and
predominant interest. He identified himself with Christianity, but it
was a Christianity understood by him in the most liberal sense, a
Christianity free from dogma, a spirit rather than a creed. As
kindred to religion, poetry in his conception was inseparable from it
in the essential being of man--poetry not as expressed in conventional
forms but as the breath of the human spirit, and one of the most
precious gifts for the purifying and elevation of humanity. These
conceptions he owed, not to Kant, to whom he had listened in
Königsberg, but to a less systematic teacher, J.G. Hamann, whose
eccentric character and visionary speculations had gained for him the
designation of the "Magus of the North." Goethe came to be acquainted
with the writings of Hamann, and had a genuine admiration of him as a
seer struggling with visions to which he was unable to give adequate
utterance.[75] It was in his conversations with Herder, however, that
he was introduced to those deeper conceptions of man and his
possibilities which implied a complete emancipation from the
mechanical philosophy which he had hitherto been endeavouring to find
in a mystical religion.
[Footnote 74: R. Haym, Herder's biographer, says of him: "Einen
unbedingt erfreulichen, harmonischen Eindruck kann dieser Mann, der
selbst von den 'gräulichen Dissonanzen' redet, in die Äussererungen
zuweilen ausklingen möchten, auch auf den günstigst gestimmten
Betrachter nimmermehr machen." (_Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen
Werken_, Berlin, 1887, i. p. 396.)]
[Footnote 75: Goethe attached so much importance to many of Hamann's
utterances that, as late as 1806, he had thoughts of bringing out an
edition of Hamann's works.]
During the six months that Herder resided in Strassburg he was under
treatment for a serious ailment of his eyes, and Goethe was assiduous
in his attendance on him, often remaining with him for whole days.
Their intercourse was not an unmixed pleasure for either. Herder's
mordant humour and spirit of contradiction were a daily trial to
Goethe's temper, and he describes his feelings of alternating
attraction and repulsion as a wholly new experience in his life.
Herder, who had known Diderot and D'Alembert and Lessing, appears,
indeed, to have treated Goethe as an undisciplined boy, spoilt by
flattery, with no serious purpose in life, inconsequent and
irresponsible.[76] Nor does he seem to have been specially impressed
by any promise in the youth who was so completely to eclipse him in
the eyes of the world. In his letters from Strassburg he does not even
mention Goethe's name; and, when he subsequently referred to him, it
was in terms he might have applied to any clever and confident youth.
"Goethe," he wrote, "is at bottom a good fellow, only somewhat
superficial and sparrow-like,[77] faults with which I constantly taxed
him." If Herder's moods frequently jarred on Goethe, it is evident
that the experience was mutual. The physical and mental restlessness,
which is suggested by the epithet "sparrow-like," and which was noted
by others as characteristic of Goethe at this period, could not fail
to irritate one like Herder, naturally grave, sobered by hard
experience, and then suffering from a painful and serious ailment.
Equally distasteful to Herder were Goethe's explosive outbursts in
general conversation and his liking for practical jokes at the expense
of his friends. To Herder as to everyone else Goethe aired his
opinions with the "frank confidingness" which he notes as a trait of
his own character, and which gave Herder frequent opportunities for
scathing criticism. Herder gibed at his youthful tastes--at his
collection of seals, at his elegantly-bound volumes which stood unread
on his shelves, at his enthusiasms for Italian art, for the writings
of the Cabbalists, for the poetry of Ovid.[78]
[Footnote 76: Herder thought that Goethe was lacking in enthusiasm.]
[Footnote 77: Elsewhere Herder calls Goethe a _Specht_, a
wood-pecker.]
[Footnote 78: Writing to a correspondent in 1780, Goethe says: "Herder
fährt fort, sich und andern das Leben sauer zu machen."]
At bottom, as Herder said, Goethe was a "good fellow," slow to take
offence, and as little vindictive as is possible to human nature. This
easy temper doubtless stood him in good stead under the fire of
Herder's sarcasms, but he himself specifies another reason for his
docility which is equally characteristic: he endured all Herder's
satirical spleen because he had learned to attach a high value to
everything that contributed to his own culture. According to his own
account, he owed a double debt to Herder--a determining influence on
his character, and an equally determining influence on his
intellectual development. Till he met Herder he had been treated as a
youthful genius, as a "conquering lord," whose eccentricities were
only a proof of his originality. Very different was the measure he
received from Herder, who showed no mercy for "whatever of
self-complacency, egotism, vanity, pride and presumption was latent or
active" in him. Herder, he says elsewhere, "exercised such a
blighting influence on me that I began to doubt my own powers."
Whether or not Goethe learned from Herder the lesson of modesty
regarding his own gifts, it is the truth that of all the sons of
genius none has been freer than Goethe was in his maturer years from
every form of vanity and self-consciousness.
It is on his intellectual debt to Herder, however, that Goethe dwells
most emphatically in his account of their personal intercourse. Daily
and even hourly, he says, Herder's conversation was a summons to new
points of view. Poetry was the subject in which both had a common
interest, and from Herder Goethe learned to regard poetry "in another
sense" from that in which he had hitherto regarded it. He had hitherto
regarded poetry as an accomplishment; Herder taught him that it was a
gift of nature, of the essence of humanity, "the mother-speech of the
human race." This expression was Hamann's, who had been inspired to
utter it out of his revulsion against French literature and his study
of the literature of England. From England, indeed, came those
conceptions of the nature and function of poetry which, as expounded
and exemplified in the writings of Hamann, Herder, Goethe, and others,
were to effect a revolution in German literature. In a literary
manifesto, written by an Englishman, but apparently better known in
Germany than in England, German historians of their own literature
have found the main impulse that gave occasion to this revolution.
This manifesto was a pamphlet written by Edward Young, the author of
_Night Thoughts_, entitled _Conjectures on Original Composition, in a
Letter addressed to the Author of Sir Charles Grandison_. The
dithyrambic style of the Letter manifestly exercised a powerful
influence on the prose of Herder and Goethe--prose charged with
perfervid feeling, and hitherto unknown in German literature. Young's
main contention is that in literature genius must make rules for
itself, and that imitation is suicidal. "Genius," he says, "can set us
right in composition, without the rules of the learned; as conscience
sets us right in life, without the laws of the land." He lays it down
as a maxim that "the less we copy the renowned ancients, we shall
resemble them the more." The two golden rules in composition as in
ethics are: know thyself and reverence thyself. Such were the
"conjectures on original composition," expounded to him by Herder
which led Goethe to regard poetry in "another sense" from that in
which he had hitherto understood it. And in confirmation of his views
Herder directed him to the exemplars where he would find their
illustration--to the Bible, to Homer and Pindar, to Shakespeare and
Ossian, and, above all, to the primitive poetry of all peoples.
As we shall see, Goethe laid these counsels even too faithfully to
heart; the first composition[79] in which he attempted to realise them
drew upon him Herder's characteristic censure. And it is in this
connection that we have to note the reserves which Goethe makes in the
acknowledgment of his debt to Herder, "Had Herder been more methodical
in his mental habit," he says, "he would have afforded the most
valuable guidance for the permanent direction of my culture; but he
was more disposed to probe and to stimulate than to give guidance and
leading." So it was, as Goethe adds elsewhere, that the result of
Herder's influence on him was a mental confusion and tumult, plainly
visible in another of his early writings,[80] where "quite simple
thoughts and observations are veiled in a dust-cloud of unusual words
and phrases."
[Footnote 79: _Götz von Berlichingen._]
[Footnote 80: Von deutcher Baukunst.]
The homage which Goethe pays to Herder in the retrospect of his
Strassburg days is equally emphasised in his contemporary letters.
"Herder, Herder," he writes in one place, "remain to me what you are.
If I am destined to be your planet I will be it; be it willingly,
faithfully."[81] Yet we may doubt whether Herder's influence was, in
truth, so determining a factor in his life as Goethe himself
represents it. Herder, he tells us, first taught him a wise
self-distrust, but we have seen that one of the lessons he professes
to have learned from Oeser was "to be modest without self-depreciation,
and to be proud without presumption." Before he saw Herder, also, he
had already divined the greatness of Shakespeare and the futility of
Voltaire's criticisms of him. Herder's ideas regarding the human
spirit and its possibilities were in the air, and, had the two men
never met, the probability is that Goethe's development would not have
been different from what it actually was. Herder's general views were
already incipient in him; and what Herder did was to deepen and
intensify them.[82] Nevertheless the collision for the first time with
a mind that revealed to him his own immaturity was for Goethe, as for
every youth, a formative influence of the highest import and an epoch
in his mental history. Yet in his association with Herder one fact has
to be noted: Goethe was not subjugated by him. He frankly recognised
Herder's superiority to himself in knowledge and experience, but he
retained his mental independence. In his letters to Herder, as in
those to Salzmann, he writes in terms of equality. In such words as
the following, for example, we have not the attitude of the
unquestioning disciple to his master. "Pray let us try to see each
other oftener. You feel how you would embrace one who could be to you
what you are to me. Don't let us be frightened like weaklings because
we must often disagree: should our passions collide, can we not
endure the collision?"[83] Might we not infer from this passage that
not Herder but Goethe was the dominating spirit in their
intercourse?[84]
[Footnote 81: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. p. 264. He adds that he would
prefer to be Mercury, the least of the seven planets that revolve
round the sun, than first among the five that revolve round Saturn.]
[Footnote 82: Herder himself says of his influence on Goethe: "Ich
glaube ihm, ohne Lobrednerei, einige gute Eindrücke gegeben zu haben,
die einmal wirksam werden können."--Haym, _op. cit._ i. 392.]
[Footnote 83: _Ib._ Band ii. p. 18.]
[Footnote 84: Schiller, in a letter to C.G. Körner, the father of the
poet, writes (July, 1787): "He [Herder] said that Goethe had greatly
influenced his intellectual development."]
Goethe found another source of inspiration in Strassburg besides
Herder, and one which, as he describes it both in his Autobiography
and in a contemporary effusion, moved him even more powerfully. His
first act on his arrival in Strassburg, he tells us, was to visit its
cathedral whose towers had caught his eye long before he reached the
town. He had been taught by his old master Oeser, who only represented
the general opinion of the time in Germany, that Gothic architecture
was the product of a barbarous age and could be regarded only with
amazed disgust by every person of educated taste. But Goethe's
mystical studies and religious experiences in Frankfort had not left
him what he was in his Leipzig days, and had given him an insight into
movements of the human spirit which did not come within the cognizance
of Oeser. It was with predisposed sympathy, therefore, that he looked
for the first time on a specimen of Gothic architecture in its most
august form. His first impression was of "a wholly peculiar kind";
and, without seeking to analyse the impression, "he surrendered
himself to its silent working." Thenceforward, during his stay in
Strassburg, the cathedral exercised a fascination upon him that evoked
a new world of thought and feeling. It was his delight to ascend its
tower at sunset and gaze on the rich landscape of Alsace, whose beauty
made him bless the fate that had placed him for a time amid such
surroundings. He studied its structure with such minute care that he
correctly divined the additions to the great tower which the original
architect had contemplated, but which he had been unable to carry out.
Goethe has himself indicated how the impressions he received from the
cathedral influenced his first literary productions which bore the
stamp of his individuality. It formed a fitting background, he says,
for such poetical creations as _Götz von Berlichingen_ and _Faust_. To
the cathedral and its suggestions, even more than to Herder, perhaps,
we should trace the inspiration that produced these works--the former
of which met with Herder's questioning approval. To the full force of
that inspiration Goethe gave direct expression in a composition which
is the most characteristic product of his Strassburg period--a short
essay, entitled _Of German Architecture_. Probably sketched in
Strassburg, it was not published till his return to Frankfort. Its
rhapsodical style, as well as the conceptions of art and nature which
it embodies, directly recall Young's _Conjectures on Original
Composition_. Like Young he proclaims that genius is a law to itself,
that all imitation and subservience to rule is disastrous to
imaginative production. "Principles," he declares, "are even more
injurious to genius than examples." The burden of the Essay is the
glorification of the genius of the architect of Strassburg cathedral,
and of Gothic architecture in general, which, Goethe maintained,
should be correctly designated "German" architecture, as having had
its origin on German soil. With this youthful sally of Goethe, time
was to deal with its unkindest irony. Later research has proved that
Gothic architecture is of French and not of German origin, and Goethe
himself did not remain faithful to his youthful enthusiasm. On his way
home from Strassburg, he relates, the sight of some specimens of
ancient art in Mannheim "shook his faith in northern architecture,"
and the impression he thus received was to become a permanent
conviction. It was in the art of classical antiquity that he was to
find the expression of his maturest ideal; when in later years his
attention was temporarily turned to Gothic architecture, it was with
little of his youthful enthusiasm that he admitted its claim to our
regard.
"I cannot go on long without a passion," Goethe wrote in his
twenty-third year, and we have no difficulty in believing him. In
Strassburg he lived through a passion which was to be the occasion of
his giving the first clear proof to the world that he was to be among
its original poets. On the 14th of October, 1770, more than five
months after his arrival in Strassburg, he wrote these words to a
correspondent: "I have never so vividly experienced what it is to be
content with one's heart disengaged as now here in Strassburg."[85] In
the same letter in which these words occur he casually mentions that
he has just spent a few days in the country with some pleasant people.
These pleasant people were a pastor Brion and his family living at
Sesenheim, an Alsace village some twenty miles from Strassburg. These
few days spent with the Brion family were to be the beginning of a
history which, as Goethe relates it in his Autobiography, has the
character of an idyll, but, when stripped of the poetic haze which he
has thrown around it, is not far from tragedy. He himself is our sole
authority for its incidents, and he chose so to tell them that the
exact truth of the whole history can never be known.[86]
[Footnote 85: _Ib._ Band i. p. 250.]
[Footnote 86: Subsequent investigation has proved that Goethe has
committed several errors of fact in his narrative. For example, he
relates that on his first visit to the Sesenheim family he was vividly
reminded of the family of the Vicar of Wakefield. In point of fact, he
was introduced to Goldsmith's work by Herder, who came to Strassburg
subsequent to Goethe's first visit to Sesenheim.]
The day following the writing of the letter just quoted, Goethe wrote
another letter which proves that his heart was no longer "disengaged."
This letter is, in fact, a declaration of love to the youngest
daughter of the Sesenheim pastor, Friederike--name of pleasantest
suggestions in the long list of Goethe's loves. The letter, it may be
said, does not strike us as a happy introduction to the relations that
were to follow; it would not have been written had Friederike been the
daughter of a house of the same social standing as his own. All
through his relations to the Sesenheim family, indeed, there is an
unpleasant suggestion that it is the son of the Imperial Councillor
who is indulging a passion which he is fully aware must one day end in
a more or less bitter parting. "Dear new Friend," he begins, "Such I
do not hesitate to call you, for, if in other circumstances I have not
much insight into the language of the eyes, at the first glance I saw
in yours the hope of this friendship; and for our hearts I would
swear. How should you, tender and good as I know you to be, not be a
little partial to me in return?"[87] In this strain the letter
continues, and with a skill of approach that reminds us of his boast
to his former confidant Behrisch.
[Footnote 87: _Ib._ p. 251.]
Goethe's relations with Friederike lasted till the end of June,
1771--a period of some ten months. Of this period the first half would
seem to have been passed by both in idyllic oblivion of consequences;
during the second there came painful awakening to realities on the
part of one of the lovers. As they lived in his memory, those first
months that Goethe spent in intercourse with the Sesenheim circle were
a long dream of happiness; and nowhere in his Autobiography is he so
obviously moved by his recollection of the past.[88] The picture he
has drawn of that time is, indeed, an idyll in every sense. We have
the setting of a primitive home in a country Arcadian in its
bountifulness and beauty; in the centre of this home is the father,
whose simple piety is in perfect keeping with his office and his
surroundings; and the home is brightened by the presence of two
daughters,[89] the one of whom, Friederike, appears as a vision of
rustic grace and modest maidenhood. In the midst of this circle moves
the richly-gifted youth, laying under a spell father, daughters, and
all who come within the magnetism of his presence. In no other
situation, indeed, are the attractive sides of Goethe's character so
strikingly manifest as in his intercourse with the Sesenheim family
and the friendly group attached to them. It is without a touch of
egotism that he brings himself before us in all the buoyant spirits,
the quickness of sympathy, the diversity of interests, the splendour
of his gifts, which made Wieland speak of him as "a veritable ruler of
spirits." He humours the good father by drawing a plan for a new
parsonage and painting his coach, he charms the daughters by his
various accomplishments, and the neighbours who came about the
parsonage are carried away by his frolicsome humour. "When Goethe
came among us girls when we were at work in the barn," related one who
had seen him, "his jests and droll stories almost made work
impossible."[90]
[Footnote 88: It is recorded that his voice trembled as he dictated
the passages referring to Sesenheim and Friederike.]
[Footnote 89: In reality, there were four daughters, but Goethe omits
mention of the other two in order to make more striking the
resemblance between the family of the Vicar of Wakefield and that of
Sesenheim.]
[Footnote 90: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. pp. 16-17.]
The beginning of disillusion came on the occasion of a visit made by
the two sisters to Strassburg. In a world that was alien to her
Friederike lost something of the charm which was derived from her
perfect fitness to her native surroundings, and it was brought home to
Goethe that there must be a rude awakening from the dream of the last
few months. In May, 1771, he paid a visit to Sesenheim which lasted
several weeks, and the picture we have of his state of mind during his
visit shows that he felt that the time of reckoning had come. His mind
was already clear that he and Friederike must separate, but he was
fully conscious that he was playing a sorry part. Exaggerated language
was such an inveterate habit with him at this period of his life that
it is difficult to know with what exactness his words express his real
feelings.[91] That he was unhappy, however, we cannot doubt, make what
reserves we may for rhetorical excesses of style. Here are a few
passages from letters addressed to his friend Salzmann during his stay
at Sesenheim: "It rains without and within, and the hateful evening
winds rustle among the vine leaves before my window, and my _animula
vagula_ is like yonder weather-cock on the church tower." "For the
honour of God I am not leaving this place just at present.... I am now
certainly in tolerably good health; my cough, as the result of
treatment and exercise, is pretty nearly gone, and I hope it will soon
go altogether. Things about me, however, are not very bright; the
little one [Friederike] continues sadly ill, and that makes everything
look out of joint--not to speak of _conscia mens_, unfortunately not
_recti_, which I carry about with me." "It is now about time that I
should return [to Strassburg]; I will and will, but what avails
willing in the presence of the faces I see around me? The state of my
heart is strange, and my health is as variable as usual in the world,
which it is long since I have seen so beautiful. The most delightful
country, people who love me, a round of pleasures! Are not the dreams
of thy childhood all fulfilled?--I often ask myself when my eye feeds
on this circumambient bliss. Are not these the fairy gardens after
which thy heart yearned? They are! They are! I feel it, dear friend;
and feel that we are not a whit the happier when our desires are
realised. The make-weight! the make-weight! with which Fate balances
every bliss that we enjoy. Dear friend, there needs much courage not
to lose courage in this world of ours."[92]
[Footnote 91: In the recently discovered manuscript of _Wilhelm
Meisters Theatralische Sendung_ occurs this passage, evidently
self-descriptive: "Als Knabe hatte er zu grossen prächtigen Worten und
Sprüchen eine ausserordentliche Liebe, er schmückte seine Seele damit
aus wie mit einem köstlichen Kleide, und freute sich darüber, als wenn
sie zu ihm selbst gehörten kindlisch über diesen äussern Schmuck."]
[Footnote 92: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. p. 258 _ff._]
The day of parting came at the end of June; on August 6th he passed
the tests necessary for the Licentiate of Laws, and at the end of that
month he left Strassburg for home. He left Friederike, he tells us, at
a moment when their parting almost cost her her life[93]; did he do
her a greater wrong than his own narrative would imply? We cannot
tell; but one thing is certain, from the first he never intended
marriage. That he had pangs of self-reproach for the part he had
played, his words above quoted may be taken as sufficient evidence,
but alike from temperament and deliberate consideration of the facts
of life he was incapable of the contrition that troubles human nature
to its depths.[94] Yet in our judgment of him it is well to remember
the ideas then current in Germany regarding the relations between love
and marriage. In his seventy-fourth year Goethe himself said: "Love is
something ideal, marriage is something real; and never with impunity
do we exchange the ideal for the real." The severest of moralists,
Kant, was of the same opinion. "The word _conjugium_ itself," he says,
"implies that two married people are yoked together, and to be thus
yoked cannot be called bliss." And to the same purport Wilhelm von
Humboldt, one of the finest spirits of his time, declared that
"marriage was no bond of souls." It was in a world where such opinions
were entertained by men of the highest character and intelligence that
Goethe made his irresponsible addresses to the successive objects of
his passion.
[Footnote 93: Friederike died in 1815. She was still alive when Goethe
was writing the story of their love.]
[Footnote 94:
Nichts taugt Ungeduld,
Noch weniger Reue;
Jene vermehrt die Schuld,
Diese schafft neue.]
The distractions of Strassburg, no more than the distractions of
Leipzig, diverted Goethe from what were his ruling instincts from the
beginning--to know life and to be master of himself. As in Leipzig,
his professional studies in Strassburg held little place in his
thoughts; his law degree, he tells us, he regarded as a matter of
"secondary importance." The subject he chose as his thesis--the
obligation of magistrates to impose a State religion binding on all
their subjects--was of a nature that had no living interest for him at
any period of his life, and he wrote the thesis "only to satisfy his
father." If his law studies were neglected, however, it was almost
with feverish passion that he coursed through other fields of
knowledge. In the _Ephemerides_--a diary he kept in Strassburg and in
which he noted his random thoughts and the books that happened to be
engaging him--we can see the range of his reading and the scope of his
interests. Occultism, metaphysics, science in many departments,
literature ancient and modern, all in turn absorbed his attention and
suggest a mental state impatient of the limits of the human
faculties--the state of mind which he was afterwards so marvellously
to reproduce in his _Faust_.[95] Inspired by the conversation of the
medical students who met at the common table, as well as by his own
natural bent, he attended the university lectures on chemistry and
anatomy, and thus laid a solid foundation for his subsequent original
investigations in these sciences. Extensive travels in the surrounding
country were among the chief pleasures of his sojourn in Strassburg,
and these travels, as was the case with him always, were voyages of
discovery. Architecture, machinery, works of engineering, Roman
antiquities, the native ballads of the district--on all he turned an
equally curious eye, and with such vivid impressions that they
remained in his memory after the lapse of half a lifetime.
[Footnote 95: "I, too," Goethe wrote in _Dichtung und Wahrheit_, "had
trodden the path of knowledge, and had early been led to see the
vanity of it."]
In Goethe the instinct for self-mastery was as remarkable as his
instinct for knowledge. As the result of his illness in Frankfort, his
organs of sense were in a state of morbid susceptibility which "put
him out of harmony with himself, with objects around him, and even
with the elements." It throws a curious light on the nature of the man
that amid all the preoccupations of his mind and heart in Strassburg
he could deliberately turn his thoughts to the cure of his jarred
nerves. Loud sounds disturbed him, and to deaden the sensitiveness of
his ears he attended the evening tatoo; to cure himself of a tendency
to giddiness he practised climbing the cathedral; partly to rid
himself of a repugnance to repulsive sights he attended clinical
lectures; and by a similar course of discipline he so completely
delivered himself from "night fears" that he afterwards found it
difficult to realise them even in imagination.
In his old age Goethe said of himself: "I have that in me which, if I
allowed it to go unchecked, would ruin both myself and those about
me." Was it, as Goethe would have us believe, by sheer purposive will
that he kept this dangerous element in him under check and saved
himself at critical moments from disaster? When we regard his life as
a whole, the actual facts hardly justify such a conclusion. Nature had
given him two safeguards which, without any effort of will on his own
part, assured him deliverance where the risk of wreckage was
greatest--a consuming desire to _know_ which grew with every year of
his life, and a versatility of temperament which necessitated
ever-renewed sensations equally of the mind and heart. Of the working
of these two elements in him we have already had illustration; they
will receive further illustration as we proceed.
It would be within the truth to say that the period of Goethe's
sojourn in Strassburg was the most memorable epoch of his life. During
the eighteen months he spent there he received an intellectual
stimulus from which we may date his dedication to the unique career
before him, in which self-culture, the passion for knowledge, and the
impulse to produce were all commensurate ends. Moreover, as has
already been said, it was in Strassburg that his genius found its
first adequate expression. And, what is worth noting in the case of
one who was to range over so many fields, it was in lyric poetry that
his genius first expressed itself. The problem with Goethe is to
discover which among his various gifts was nature's special dowry to
him. What, at least, is true is that at different periods of his life
he produced numbers of lyrics which the world has recognised as among
the most perfect things of their kind. And among these perfect things
are the few songs and other pieces inspired by Friederike Brion.
Doubtless his genius would have flowered had he never seen Friederike,
but it was among the many kind offices that fortune did him that he
found the theme for his muse in one whose simple charm, while it
excited his passion, at the same time chastened and purified it, and
compelled a truthful simplicity of expression in keeping with her own
nature. It was to Friederike that Goethe owed the pure inspiration
which gives his verses to her a quality rare in lyric poetry, but to
the writing of them there went all the forces that were then working
in him. In these verses we have the conclusive proof that he now both
understood and felt poetry "in another sense" from that in which he
had hitherto understood and felt it. Through them we feel the breath
of another air than that which he had breathed when he strained his
invention to make poetic compliments to Käthchen Schönkopf. In the
intensity and directness of passion which they express we may trace
all the new poetic influences which he had come under in
Strassburg--Shakespeare, Ossian, the popular ballad, the inspiration
of Herder. What is remarkable in these early lyrics, however, is that
though they vibrate with the emotion of the poet, the emotion is under
strict restraint and never passes into the watery effusiveness which
is the inherent sin of so much German lyrical poetry. That "brevity
and precision" which was the ideal he now put before him he had
attained at one bound, and in none of his later work did he exemplify
it in greater perfection. As his countrymen have frequently pointed
out, these firstfruits of Goethe's genius mark a new departure in
lyrical poetry. In them we have the direct simplicity of the best
lyrics of the past, but combined with this simplicity a depth of
introspection and a fusion of nature with human feeling which is a new
content in the imaginative presentation of human experience. In
connection with Goethe's Leipzig period we gave a specimen of the best
work he was then capable of producing; when we place beside it such a
poem as the following, we are reminded of the saying of Emerson that
"the soul's advances are not made by gradation ... but rather by
ascension of state."
WILKOMMEN UND ABSCHIED.
Es schlug mein Herz; geschwind zu Pferde,
Und fort, wild, wie ein Held zur Schlacht!
Der Abend wiegte schon die Erde,
Und an den Bergen hing die Nacht;
Schon stund im Nebelkleid die Eiche,
Wie ein getürmter Riese da,
Wo Finsternis aus dem Gesträuche
Mit hundert schwarzen Augen sah.
Der Mond von einem Wolkenhügel
Sah kläglich aus dem Duft hervor;
Die Winde schwangen leise Flügel,
Umsausten schauerlich mein Ohr;
Die Nacht schuf tausend Ungeheuer;
Doch frisch und fröhlich war mein Mut;
In meinen Adern welches Feuer!
In meinem Herzen welche Glut!
Dich sah ich, und die milde Freude
Floss aus dem süssen Blick auf mich,
Ganz war mein Herz an deiner Seite,
Und jeder Athemzug für dich.
Ein rosenfarbnes Frühlingswetter
Umgab das liebliche Gesicht,
Und Zärtlichkeit für mich, ihr Götter!
Ich hofft' es, ich verdient' es nicht.
Doch ach, schon mit der Morgensonne
Verengt der Abschied mir das Herz:
In deinen Küssen, welche Wonne,
In deinem Auge, welcher Schmerz!
Ich ging, du standst und sahst zur Erden,
Und sahst mir nach mit nassem Blick;
Und doch, welch Glück geliebt zu werden!
Und lieben, Götter, welch ein Glück!
WELCOME AND PARTING.
Throbbed high my breast! To horse, to horse!
Raptured as hero for the fight;
Soft lay the earth in eve's embrace,
And on the mountain brooded night.
The oak, a dim-discovered shape,
Did, like a towering giant, rise--
There whence from forth the thicket glared
Black darkness with its myriad eyes.
From out a pile of cloud the moon
Peered sadly through the misty veil;
Softly the breezes waved their wings;
Sighed in my ears with plaintive wail.
Night shaped a thousand monstrous forms;
Yet fresh and frolicsome my breast;
And what a fire burned in my veins,
And what a glow my heart possessed!
I saw thee: in thine eye's soft gaze
A tender, calm delight I knew;
All motions of my heart were thine.
And thine was every breath I drew.
The freshest, richest hues of Spring
Enhaloëd thy lovely face,--
And tenderest thoughts for me!--my hope!
But, undeserved, ye Powers of Grace!
But, ah! too soon, with morning's dawn,
The hour of parting cramps my heart;
Then, in thy kisses, O what bliss!
And in thine eye, what poignant smart!
I went; thou stood'st and downward gazed,
Gazed after me with tearful eyes;
Yet, to be loved, what blessedness,
And, oh! to love, ye Gods, what bliss!
CHAPTER V
FRANKFORT--_GÖTZ VON BERLICHINGEN_
AUGUST, 1771--DECEMBER, 1771
Goethe returned to Frankfort at the end of August, 1771, and, with the
exception of two memorable intervals, he remained there till November,
1775, when he left it, never again to make it his permanent home. This
period of four years and two months is in creative productiveness
unparalleled in his own career, and is probably without a parallel in
literary history. During these years he produced _Götz von
Berlichingen_ and _Werther_, both of which works, whatever their
merits or demerits, are at least landmarks, not only in the history of
German, but of European literature. To the same period belong the
original scenes of _Faust_, in which he displayed a richness of
imagination with a spontaneity of passion, of thought and of feeling,
to which he never attained in the subsequent additions he made to the
poem. In these scenes are already clearly defined the two figures,
Faust and Mephistopheles, which have their place in the world's
gallery of imaginative creations beside Ulysses and Don Quixote,
Hamlet and Falstaff; and there, too, in all her essential lineaments,
we have Gretchen, the most moving of all the births of a poet's mind
and heart. And, besides these three works of universal interest, there
belong to the same period a series of productions--plays, lyrics,
essays--which, though at a lower level of inspiration, were sufficient
to mark their author as an original genius with a compass of thought
and imagination hitherto unexampled in the literature of his country.
Had Goethe died at the age of twenty-six, he would have left behind
him a legacy which would have assured him a place with the great
creative minds of all time.
This extraordinary productiveness of itself implies an intellectual
and spiritual ferment which receives further illustration from the
poet's letters written during the same period. In these letters we
have the expression of a mind distracted by contending emotions and
conflicting aims, now in sanguine hope, now paralysed with a sense of
impotence to adjust itself to the inexorable conditions under which
life had to be lived. Moods of thinking and feeling follow each other
with a rapidity of contrast which are bewildering to the reader and
hardly permit him to draw any certain inference as to the real import
of what is written. In one effusion we have lachrymose sentiment which
suggests morbid self-relaxation; in another, a bitter cynicism equally
suggestive of ill-regulated emotions. We have moods of piety and
moods in which the mental attitude towards all human aspirations can
only be described as Mephistophelian.
Goethe himself was well aware of a congenital morbid strain in him
which all through his life demanded careful control if he were to
avert bodily and mental collapse. And at no period of his life did
external conditions and inward experiences combine to put his
self-control to a severer test than during these last years in
Frankfort. Frankfort itself, as we shall see, had become more
distasteful to him than ever, and his abiding feeling towards it, now
as subsequently, was that he could not breathe freely in its
atmosphere. On his return from Strassburg his father received him with
greater cordiality than on his return from Leipzig, but the lack of
real sympathy between them remained, and was undoubtedly one of the
permanent sources of Goethe's discontent with his native town. With no
interest in his nominal profession, he had at the same time no clear
conception of the function to which his genius called him. Throughout
these years in Frankfort he continued uncertain whether Nature meant
him for a poet or an artist, and we receive the impression that his
ambition was to be artist rather than poet. From the varied literary
forms in which he expressed himself, also, we are led to infer that in
the domain of literature he was still only feeling his way.
If the diversity of his gifts thus distracted him, his emotional
experiences, it will appear, were not more favourable to a settled aim
and purpose. One paroxysm of passion succeeded another, with the
result that he was eventually, in self-preservation, driven to make a
complete breach with his past, and to seek deliverance in a new set of
conditions under which he might attain the self-control after which he
had hitherto vainly striven. This prolonged conflict with himself was
doubtless primarily due to his own inherited temperament, but it was
also in large measure owing to the character of the society and of the
time in which the period of his youth was passed. Had he been born
half a century earlier--that is to say, in a time when the current
speculation was bound up with a mechanical philosophy, and when the
limits of emotion were conditioned by strict conventional
standards--he might have been a youth of eccentric humours, but the
morbid fancies and wandering affections that consumed him could not
have come within his experience. But by the time when he began to
think and feel, Rousseau had written and opened the flood-gates of the
emotions, and Sterne had shown how accepted conventions might appear
in the light of a capricious wit and fancy which probed the surface of
things. In Goethe's letters, which are the most direct revelation of
his mental and moral condition during the period, the influence of
Rousseau and Sterne is visible on every page, and the fact has to be
remembered in drawing any conclusions as to the real state of his
mind from his language to his various correspondents. The fashion of
giving exaggerated expression to every emotion was, in fact, the
convention of the day, and we find it in all the correspondence, both
of the men and women of the time. That it was in large degree forced
and artificial and must be interpreted with due reserves, will appear
in the case of Goethe himself.
There are three critical epochs during these Frankfort years, each
marked by a central event which resulted in new developments of
Goethe's character and genius. In the period between his return to
Frankfort in August, 1771, and May, 1772, was written the first draft
of _Götz von Berlichingen_, the eventual publication of which made him
the most famous author in Germany. During these months the memories of
Strassburg are fresh in his mind, and the recollection of Friederike
and the teaching of Herder are his chief sources of inspiration. In
May, 1772, he went to Wetzlar, where, during a residence of three
months, he passed through another emotional experience which, two
years later, found expression in _Werther_, of still more resounding
notoriety than _Götz_. The opening of 1775 saw him entangled in a new
affair of the heart of another nature than those which had preceded
it, and resulting in a mental turmoil that drove him to seek
deliverance in a new field of life and action. There were other
incidents and other experiences that moved him less or more during
this period of his career, but it is in connection with these three
central events that his character and his genius are presented in
their fullest light, and are best known to the world.
We have it on Goethe's own testimony that, on his return from
Strassburg to Frankfort, he was healthier in body and more composed in
mind than on his return from Leipzig two years before. Still, he adds,
he was conscious of a sense of tension in his nature which implied
that his mind had not completely recovered its normal balance. So he
writes in his Autobiography, and his contemporary letters fully bear
out his memories of the period. He certainly returned from Strassburg
with a more satisfactory record than from Leipzig. He had actually
completed the necessary legal studies, and was now Licentiate of Laws.
His _Disputation_ had won the approval of his father, who was even
prepared to go to the expense of publishing it. In his son's purely
literary efforts during his Strassburg sojourn, also, he showed an
undisguised pleasure, and he would evidently have been quite content
to have seen him combine eminence in his profession with distinction
in literature. When Goethe, therefore, immediately on his arrival in
the paternal home, took the necessary steps to qualify himself for
legal practice, it seemed that the father's ambition for his wayward
son was at length about to be realised.[96] But the apparent
reconciliation of their respective aims was based on no cordial
understanding, and the son, it is evident, made no special effort to
adapt himself to his father's idiosyncrasies. An incident he himself
relates curiously illustrates his careless disregard of the
conventions of the family home. On his way from Strassburg he picked
up a boy-harper who had interested him, and seriously thought of
making him a member of the household. The reconciling mother realised
the absurdity of lodging in the mansion of an Imperial Rath a
strolling musician, who would have to earn his living by daily visits
to the taverns of the town, and she met her son's good-humoured whim
by finding a home for the boy in more fitting quarters. These noble
Bohemian humours of his son, which, as we shall see, displayed
themselves in other unconventional habits, were not likely to
propitiate a father who, as we are told, "leading a contented life
amid his ancient hobbies and pursuits, was comfortably at ease, like
one who has carried out his plans in spite of all hindrances and
delays." In point of fact, as during Goethe's former sojourn at home,
his estrangement from his father increased from year to year, and he
came to speak of him with a bitterness which proves that, for a time
at least, any kindly feeling that existed between them was effaced.
[Footnote 96: In point of fact, only two legal cases passed through
Goethe's hands during the first seven months after his return. During
the later period of his stay in Frankfort he was more busily engaged
with law.]
Again, as after his return from Leipzig, it was his sister Cornelia
who made home in any degree tolerable for the brother whom she alone
of the family was sufficiently sympathetic and sufficiently instructed
fully to understand. She had gathered round her a circle of attractive
and educated women, of whom she was the dominating spirit, and in
whose company her brother, always appreciative of feminine society,
now found a congenial atmosphere. Associated with the circle were
certain men with kindred interests, among whom Goethe specially names
the two brothers Schlosser as esteemed counsellors.[97] Both were
accomplished men of the world, the one a jurist, the other engaged in
the public service; and both were keenly interested in literature. It
was a peculiarity of Goethe, even into advanced life, that he seems
always to have required a mentor, whose counsels, however, he might or
might not choose to follow. At this time it was the elder of these two
brothers who played this part, and Goethe testifies that he received
from him the sagest of advice, which, however, he was prevented from
following by "a thousand varying distractions, moods, and passions."
[Footnote 97: The younger brother, Georg, subsequently married
Cornelia.]
What these distractions were is vividly revealed in his correspondence
of the time. First, his whole being was in disaccord with the social,
religious, and intellectual atmosphere of Frankfort; he felt himself
cribbed, cabined, and confined in all the aspirations of his nature;
and the future seemed to offer no prospect of more favouring
conditions. Two months after his return he communicates to his friend
Salzmann in Strassburg his sense of oppression in his present
surroundings. Arduous intellectual effort is necessary to him, he
writes, "for it is dreary to live in a place where one's whole
activity must simmer within itself.... For the rest, everything around
me is dead.... Frankfort remains the nest it was--_nidus_, if you
will. Good enough for hatching birds; to use another figure,
_spelunca_, a wretched hole. God help us out of this misery.
Amen."[98]
[Footnote 98: _Werke, Briefe_, Band 2, pp. 7-8.]
In himself, also, there was a turmoil of thoughts and emotions which,
apart from depressing surroundings, was sufficient to occasion
alternating moods of exaltation and despair. The upbraiding memory of
Friederike pursued him, and we may take it that in his Autobiography
he faithfully records his continued self-reproach for his abrupt
desertion of her. "Friederike's reply to a written adieu lacerated my
heart. It was the same hand, the same mind, the same feeling that had
been educed in her to me and through me. For the first time I now
realised the loss she suffered, and saw no way of redressing or even
of alleviating it. Her whole being was before me; I continually felt
the want of her; and, which is worse, I could not forgive myself my
own unhappiness." We may ascribe it either to delicacy of feeling or
to the consideration that their further intercourse was undesirable,
that he ceased to communicate directly with her. A drawing by his own
hand, which he thought would give her pleasure, he sends to her
through Salzmann, who is requested to accompany it with or without a
note, as he thinks best. Through the same hands he sends to her a play
(_Götz von Berlichingen_), in which a lover plays a sorry part, and
adds the comment that "Friederike will find herself to some extent
consoled if the faithless one is poisoned."
But the profoundest source of his unrest was neither the
distastefulness of Frankfort society nor his remorse for his conduct
to Friederike. It was his concern with his own life and what he was to
make of it. It is this concern that gives interest to his letters of
the period which otherwise possess little intrinsic value, either in
substance or form. What we find in them, and what is hardly to be
found elsewhere, is a mirror of one of the world's greatest spirits in
the process of attaining self-knowledge and self-mastery in the
direction of powers which are not yet fully revealed to him. At times,
it appears to him as if the task were hopeless of establishing any
harmony between his own nature and the nature of things. Now he is
filled with an exhilarating confidence in his own gifts and in his
destiny to bring them to full fruition; now he seems to be paralysed
with a sense of impotence in which we see all the perils attending his
peculiar temperament. In his letters to his Strassburg friend Salzmann
we have the frankest communications regarding his alternating moods of
depression and hopefulness. "What I am doing," he writes immediately
after his settlement in Frankfort, "is of no account. So much the
worse. As usual, more planned than done, and for that very reason
nothing much will come of me."[99] To a different purport are his
words in a later note (November 28th) to the same correspondent: "In
searching for your letter of October 5th, I came upon a multitude of
others requiring answers. Dear man, my friends must pardon me, my
_nisus_ forwards is so strong that I can seldom force myself to take
breath, and cast a look backwards."[100] In the opening of the year,
1772 (February 3rd), he is in the same sanguine temper: "Prospects
daily widen out before me, and obstacles give way, so that I may
confidently lay the blame on my own feet if I do not move on."[101]
[Footnote 99: _Ib._ p. 6.]
[Footnote 100: _Ib._ p. 8.]
[Footnote 101: _Ib._ p. 14.]
The "_nisus_ forwards," of which he speaks, had no connection with the
worldly ambition for success in his profession. What was consuming him
was the double desire of mastering himself and at the same time of
giving expression to the seething ideas and emotions which rendered
that self-mastery so hard of attainment. From the moment of his return
to Frankfort we see all the seeds fructifying which had taken root in
him during his residence in Strassburg. He sends to Herder the ballads
he had collected in Alsace, and sends him, also, translations from
what he considered the original of the adored Ossian. But the
overmastering influence in him at this time was the genius of
Shakespeare, as it had been interpreted for him by Herder. Goethe's
unbounded admiration for Shakespeare had already found expression in
the rhapsody composed in Strassburg to which reference has been made,
and to the circle of men and women who had gathered round his sister,
he communicated his enthusiasm. Their enthusiasm took a form perfectly
in keeping with the spirit of the time. Shakespeare's birthday
occurred on October 14th,[102] and it was resolved that, at once as a
tribute to their divinity and a challenge to all his gainsayers, the
auspicious day should be celebrated with due rites. At Cornelia's
instance, Herder, as high-priest of the object of their worship, was
invited to honour the occasion. If he could not be present in body, he
was at least to be present in spirit, and he was to send his essay on
Shakespeare that it might form part of the day's liturgy. So under the
roof of the precise Imperial Rath, to whom Klopstock's use of unrhymed
verse in his _Messias_ was an unpardonable innovation in German
literature, the memory of the "drunken barbarian," as with Voltaire he
must have regarded him, was celebrated--whether in his presence or
not, his son does not record.[103]
[Footnote 102: So it was then thought, but the exact date is
uncertain.]
[Footnote 103: The toast of the evening--"The Will of all Wills"--was
given by Goethe, who thereupon delivered the panegyric on Shakespeare
which he had composed in Strassburg. This toast was followed by one to
the health of Herder.]
But Goethe was about to pay more serious homage to the Master, as he
then understood him. On November 28th, he informed Salzmann that he
was engaged on a work which was absorbing him to the forgetfulness of
Homer, Shakespeare, and everything else. He was dramatising the
history of "one of the noblest of Germans," rescuing from oblivion the
memory of "an honest man." The "noblest of Germans" was Gottfried von
Berlichingen (1482-1562), one of those "knights of the cows," whose
predatory propensities were the terror of Germany throughout the
Middle Ages, and who appears to have been neither better nor worse
than the rest of his class. While still in Strassburg, Goethe had
noted Gottfried as an appropriate subject for dramatic treatment, but,
as he records in his Autobiography, it was immediately after his
return to Frankfort that he first put his hand to the work. Stimulated
to his task by his sister Cornelia, in the course of six weeks he had
completed the play which, on its publication two years later, was to
make him the most famous author in Germany.
Goethe's choice of Götz as a theme on which to try his powers is a
revelation of the motives that were now compelling him. Of the nature
of these motives he has himself given somewhat conflicting accounts.
He tells his contemporary correspondents that the play was written to
relieve his own bosom of its perilous stuff; to enable him "to forget
the sun, moon, and dear stars," and, again, that its primary object
was to do justice to the memory of a great man. Writing in old age, he
assigns still another motive as mainly prompting him to the production
of the play: it was written, he says, with the express object of
improving the German stage, of rescuing it from the pitiful condition
into which it had fallen during the first half of the eighteenth
century. What is entirely obvious, however, is that Shakespeare is the
beginning and end of the inspiration of the _Geschichte Gottfriedens
von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand_, as the play in its original
form was entitled. In its conception and in its details Shakespeare is
everywhere suggested, though it may be noted that the comic element
with which Shakespeare flavours his tragedies is absent from _Götz_.
But for Shakespeare the play could not have taken the shape in which
we have it. Given the model, however, Goethe had to infuse it with
motives which would have a living interest for his own time. One of
these motives was the admiration of great men which Goethe shared with
the generation to which he belonged. During this Frankfort period he
was successively attracted by such contrasted types of heroes as
Julius Cæsar, Socrates, and Mahomet as appropriate central figures for
dramatic representation. "It is a pleasure to behold a great man," one
of the characters in _Götz_ is made to say; and, if Goethe had any
determinate aim when he took his theme in hand, it was to present the
spectacle of a hero for admiration and inspiration. As it was, deeper
instincts of his nature asserted themselves as he proceeded with his
work, and Götz is overshadowed by other characters in the drama in
whom the poet himself, by his own admission, came to find a more
congenial interest.
The play exists in three forms--the first draft being recast for
publication in 1773, which second version was adapted for the Weimar
theatre in collaboration with Schiller in 1804. It is generally
admitted that in its first form we have the fullest manifestation of
its author's genius, and equally the fullest expression of the
original inspiration that led to its production. Like Shakespeare he
had a book for his text--the Memoirs of Gottfried, written by himself;
and like Shakespeare he took large liberties with his original--no
fewer than six characters in the play, two of whom are of the first
importance, being of Goethe's own invention. The plot may be briefly
told. Adelbert von Weislingen, a Knight of the Empire, had been the
early friend of Gottfried, but under the influence of the Bishop of
Bamberg and others he had taken a line which led him into direct
conflict with Gottfried. While the latter, identifying himself with
the lesser German nobles, was for supporting the power of the Emperor,
Weislingen had identified himself with the princes whose object was to
cripple it. Gottfried seizes Weislingen while on his way to the Bishop
of Bamberg, and bears him off to his castle at Jaxthausen. The
contrasted characters of the two chief personages in the play are now
brought before us--Gottfried the rough soldier, honest, resolute, and
Weislingen, more of a courtier than a soldier, weak and unstable.
Overborne by the stronger nature of Gottfried, Weislingen agrees to
break his alliance with the Bishop, and, as a pledge for his future
conduct, betroths himself to Gottfried's sister Marie, who, weakly
devout, is a counterpart to Gottfried's wife Elizabeth, who is
depicted as a Spartan mother.[104] To square accounts with the Bishop,
Weislingen finds it necessary to proceed to Bamberg, and the second
act tells the tale of his second apostacy. At Bamberg he comes under
the spell of an enchantress in the shape of a beautiful woman,
Adelheid von Walldorf, a widow, whose physical charms are represented
as irresistible. Weislingen becomes her creature, forswears his bond
with Gottfried, and rejoins the ranks of his enemies--news which
Gottfried is reluctantly brought to credit. In the third act we find
Gottfried in a coil of troubles. He has robbed a band of merchants on
their way from the Frankfort Fair, and, at the prompting of
Weislingen, the Emperor puts him under the ban of the Empire, and
dispatches an armed force against him. Beaten in the field and
besieged in his own castle, he is at length forced to surrender. In
the fourth act he is a prisoner in Heilbronn, but is rescued by Franz
von Sickingen, a knight of the same stamp and with the same political
sympathies as himself. Sickingen, who is on friendly terms with the
Emperor, does him the still further service of securing his relief
from the ban, whereupon Gottfried settles down to a peaceful life in
his own castle, and to relieve its monotony betakes himself to the
uncongenial task of writing his own memoirs. In the fifth act we sup
with horrors. The peasants rise in rebellion and wreak frightful
vengeance on their oppressors. In the hope of controlling them,
Gottfried, at their own request, puts himself at their head, but finds
himself powerless to check their excesses, and on their defeat he is
again taken prisoner. But the main interest of the last act is
concentrated in Adelheid, who now reveals all the depths of her
sensual nature and her unscrupulous ambition. Weislingen she has
discovered to be a despicable creature, and she attaches herself to
Sickingen, in whom she finds a man after her own heart, able to
satisfy all the cravings of her nature. She poisons Weislingen, who
dies as he has lived, the victim of weakness rather than of
wickedness. Her crimes are known to the judges of the Vehmgericht, who
in their mysterious tribunal adjudge her to death, which is effected
in a curious scene by one of their agents. The drama closes with the
death of Gottfried in prison, baffled in his dearest schemes, blasted
in reputation, and with gloomy forebodings for the future of his
country.
[Footnote 104: In the characters of Marie and Elizabeth we have traits
of Friederike and of Goethe's mother.]
Such is an outline of the production in which Goethe made his first
appeal to his countrymen at large,[105] and which is in such singular
contrast to the ideals of his maturity. That it was not the inevitable
birth of his whole heart and mind is proved by the fact that he never
repeated the experiment. Neither the incidents nor the hero of the
piece, indeed, were of a nature to elicit the full play of his genius.
Goethe had not, like Scott, an inborn interest in the scenes of the
camp and the field, and could not, like Scott, take a special delight
in describing them for their own sake. To the portrayal of a character
like Gottfried Scott could give his whole heart, but Goethe required
characters of a subtler type to enlist his full sympathies and to give
scope to his full powers. Goethe himself has told us how, as he
proceeded in the writing of the play, his interest in his hero
gradually flagged. In depicting the charms of Adelheid, he says, he
fell in love with her himself, and his interest in her fate gradually
overmastered him. In truth, it is in scenes where Gottfried is not the
principal actor that any originality in the play is to be found, for
in these scenes Goethe was drawing from his own experience and
recording emotions that had distracted himself. In the unstable
Weislingen he represents a weakness of his own nature of which he was
himself well aware. "You are a chameleon," Adelheid tells Weislingen;
and, as we have seen, Goethe so described himself. It is, therefore,
in the relations of Weislingen to Marie and Adelheid that we must look
for the spontaneous expression of the poet's genius, working on
material drawn from self-introspection. In Weislingen's hasty wooing
and equally hasty desertion of Marie we have an exaggerated
presentment of Goethe's own conduct to Friederike, to which objection
may be taken on the score of delicacy, though he himself suggests that
it is to be regarded as a public confession of his self-reproach. In
depicting Marie and Weislingen he had Friederike and himself before
him to restrain his imagination within the limits of nature and truth.
In the case of Adelheid he had no model before him, and the result is
that, with youthful exaggeration, he has made her a beautiful monster
with no redeeming touch, and, therefore, of little human interest.
Such a character was essentially alien to Goethe's own nature, and so
are the melodramatic scenes which depict her desperate attempts to
escape from her toils and the proceedings of the avenging tribunal
that had marked her for judgment.
[Footnote 105: As we have seen, the Leipzig book of verses did not
attract general attention.]
As in the case of all Goethe's longer productions, critical opinion
has been divided from the beginning regarding the intrinsic merits of
_Götz_. In the opinion of critics like Edmond Scherer it is a crude
imitation of Shakespeare with little promise of its author's future
achievement, while other critics, like Lewes, regard it as a "work of
daring power, of vigour, of originality." On one point Goethe himself
and all his critics are agreed: the play as a whole is only a
succession of scenes, loosely strung together, with no inner
development leading up to a determinate end. In his later life Goethe
characterised Shakespeare's plays as "highly interesting tales, only
told by more persons than one." Whatever truth there may be in this
judgment in the case of Shakespeare, it exactly describes _Götz_. It
is as a tale, a narrative, and not as a drama, that it is to be read
if it is to be enjoyed without the sense of artistic failure. The
anachronisms with which the piece abounds, and which Hegel caustically
noted, have been a further stumbling-block to the critics.[106] In
the second scene of the first Act, Luther is introduced for no other
purpose than to expound ideas which come strangely from his mouth,
but which were effervescing in the minds of Goethe and his
contemporaries--the ideas which they had learned from Rousseau
regarding the excellence of the natural man. Similarly, in the scene
following, educational problems are discussed which sound oddly in the
castle of a mediæval baron, but which were awakening interest in
Goethe's own day. In the supreme moments of his career--on the
occasion of the surrender of his castle and in his last
hour--Gottfried is made to utter the word _freedom_ as the watchword
of his aspirations, but in so doing he is expressing Goethe's own
passionate protest against the conventions of his age in religion, in
philosophy, and art, and not a sentiment in keeping with the class of
which he is a type.
[Footnote 106: Lessing strongly disapproved of _Götz_ as flouting the
doctrines laid down in his _Dramaturgie_. When his brother announced
to him that _Götz_ had been played with great applause in Berlin, his
cold comment was that no doubt the chief credit was due to the
decorator.]
These blemishes in the play as a work of art are apparent, yet it may
be said that it was mainly owing to these very blemishes that the
"beautiful monster," as Wieland called it, took contemporaries by
storm and retains its freshness of interest after the lapse of a
century and a half. The successive scenes are, indeed, without organic
connection, but each scene by itself has the vivacity and directness
of improvisation. Nor do the anachronisms to which criticism may
object really mar the interest of the work. Rather they constitute
its most characteristic elements, proceeding as they do from the
poet's own deepest intellectual interests, and, therefore, from his
most spontaneous inspiration.
But the most conclusive testimony to the essential power of the play
is the effect it produced not only in German but in European
literature. Its publication in its altered form in 1773 had the effect
of a bomb on the literary public of Germany. It sent a shudder of
horror through the sticklers for the rules of the classical drama
which it ignored with such contemptuous indifference; a shudder of
delight through the band of effervescing youths who shared Goethe's
revolutionary ideals, and to whom _Götz_ was a manifesto and a
challenge to all traditional conventions in literature and life. It
was the immediate parent of that truly German growth--the literature
of _Sturm und Drang_, whose exponents, says Kant, thought that they
could not more effectively show that they were budding geniuses than
by flinging all rules to the winds, and that one appears to better
advantage on a spavined hack than on a trained steed. The literature
of _Sturm und Drang_ was a passing phenomenon, but the influence of
_Götz_ did not end with its abortive life. But for _Götz_ Schiller's
early productions would have been differently inspired; and to _Götz_
also was due much of the inspiration of the subsequent German Romantic
School, though many of its developments were abhorrent to Goethe's
nature both in youth and maturity. It emancipated the drama from
conventional shackles, but it did more: it extended the range of
national thought, sentiment, and emotion, and for good and evil
introduced new elements into German literature which have maintained
their place there since its first portentous appearance. And German
critics are unanimous in assigning another result to the publication
of _Götz_: in its style as in its form it set convention at naught,
and thus marks an epoch in the development of German literary
language. Not since Luther, "whose words were battles," had German
been written so direct from the heart and with such elemental force as
makes words living things.
It has been a commonplace remark that 1773, the year of the
publication of _Götz_, corresponds in European literature to 1789 in
European political history. The remark may be exaggerated, but, if a
work is to be named which marks the advent of what is covered by the
vague name of romanticism, _Götz_ may fairly claim the honour. It had
precursors of more or less importance in other countries, but, by the
nature of its subject, by its audacious disregard of reigning models,
and by its resounding notoriety, it gave the signal for a fresh
reconstruction of art and life. It gave the decisive impulse to the
writer who is the European representative of the romantic movement,
and whose genius specifically fitted him to work the vein which was
opened in _Götz_--a task to which Goethe himself was not called. In
1799 Scott published his translation of _Götz_,[107] and followed it
up by his series of romantic poems in which the influence of Goethe's
work was the main inspiration. But it was in his prose romances,
dealing with the Middle Ages, that he found the appropriate form for
his inspiration--a form which ensured a popular appeal, impossible in
the case of the severer form of the drama. In the enchanter's sway
which Scott exercised over Europe during the greater part of the
nineteenth century, the memories of _Götz_ were not the least potent
of his spells.
[Footnote 107: Two of the scenes in _Götz_ were imitated by Scott in
his own work--the Vehmgericht scene in _Anne of Geierstein_ and the
description of the siege of Torquilstone by Rebecca to the wounded
Ivanhoe. Scott also borrowed from _Egmont_.]
CHAPTER VI
INFLUENCE OF MERCK AND THE DARMSTADT CIRCLE
1772
Specially associated with _Götz von Berlichingen_, but associated also
with Goethe's general development at this time, was another of those
mentors whose counsel and stimulus were necessary to him at all
periods of his life. This was Johann Heinrich Merck, the son of an
apothecary in Darmstadt and now Paymaster of the Forces there. Of
Merck Goethe says that "he had the greatest influence on my life," and
he makes him the subject of one of his elaborate character sketches in
his Autobiography. To men of original nature, however discordant with
his own, Goethe was always attracted. We have seen him in more or less
close relations with Behrisch, Jung Stilling, and Herder, from all of
whom he was divided by dissonances which made a perfect mutual
understanding impossible. So it was in the case of Merck, as Goethe's
references to him in his Autobiography and elsewhere clearly imply. In
Merck there was apparently a mixture of conflicting elements which
made him a mystery to his friends, and his suicide at the age of fifty
points to something morbid in his nature. Of his real goodness of
heart and of his genuine admiration for what he considered worthy of
it, his own reported sayings and the testimony of others leave us in
no doubt. Recording his impression of Goethe after a few interviews,
he wrote: "I begin to have a real affection for Goethe. He is a man
after my own heart, as I have found few." On the other hand, there
were traits in him which Goethe did not scruple to call
Mephistophelian--an opinion shared even by Goethe's mother, whose
nature it was to see the best side of men and things. His variable
humour and caustic tongue made him at once a terror and an attraction
in whatever society he moved, and it is evident from the tone of
Goethe's reminiscences of him that his intercourse with Merck was a
mixed pleasure. But, as we have seen, it was an abiding principle of
Goethe to be repelled by no one who had something to give him, and
Merck possessed qualities and accomplishments which were of the first
importance to him in the phase through which he was now passing. Merck
was keenly interested in literature, especially in English literature,
and had all Goethe's enthusiasm for Shakespeare. Though his own
original productions were of mediocre quality, he had an insight into
the character and genius of others which Goethe fully recognised and
to which he acknowledges his special obligation. His general attitude
in criticism was "negative and destructive," but this attitude was
entirely wholesome for Goethe at a period when instinct and passion
tended to overbear his judgment. With admirable penetration he saw how
Goethe during these Frankfort years occasionally wasted his powers in
attempts which were unworthy of his gifts and alien to his real
nature. It was in reference to these futile tendencies that Merck gave
him counsel in words which subsequent critics have recognised as the
most adequate definition of the essential characteristic of Goethe's
genius as a poet. "Your endeavour, your unswerving aim," he wrote, "is
to give poetic form to the real. Others seek to realise the so-called
poetic, the imaginative; and the result is nothing but stupid
nonsense." Like subsequent critics, also, Merck saw the superiority of
the first draft of _Götz_ to the second, but when the latter was
completed, he played a friend's part. "It is rubbish and of no
account," was his characteristic remark; "however, let the thing be
printed";[108] and published it was, Merck bearing the cost of
printing and Goethe supplying the paper.
[Footnote 108: Eckermann, _Gespräche mit Goethe_, November 9th, 1824.]
It was towards the close of 1771 that Goethe had made Merck's
acquaintance[109] on the occasion of a visit Merck had paid to
Frankfort; and in March of the following year, in company with the
younger Schlosser, they renewed their intercourse in Darmstadt, where
Merck was settled. The visit lasted a few days, and was of some
importance, as it introduced Goethe to a society of which he was to
see much during the remainder of his stay in Frankfort, and which,
according to his own testimony, "invigorated and widened his powers."
It was a society in which we are surprised to find the Mephistophelian
Merck the leading and most admired member. It consisted of a group of
men and women associated with the Court at Darmstadt, whose bond of
union was the cult of sensibility as the rising generation of Germany
had learned it from Rousseau, Richardson, and Sterne. They went by the
name of the _Gemeinschaft der Heiligen_, and the fervours of the
community were at least those of genuine votaries. So far as Goethe is
concerned, it was in three of the priestesses, one of them Caroline
Flachsland, the betrothed of Herder, that he found the attraction of
the society. For the youth who two years later was to give classic
expression to the cult of sensibility in his _Werther_, his
intercourse with these ladies of Darmstadt was an appropriate
schooling. For their sensibilities were boundless, and they did not
shrink from giving them expression. Caroline relates to her future
husband how one night in the woods she fell on her knees at sight of
the moon and arranged some glow-worms in her hair so that their loves
might not be disturbed. On one occasion when Merck and Goethe met two
of the coterie, one of them embraced Merck with kisses and the other
fell upon his breast. Goethe was not a youth to be indifferent to such
favours, and the attentions of Caroline were such as to disquiet
Herder and to occasion an estrangement between the two friends which
lasted for nearly two years.
[Footnote 109: It was Schlosser who had made Goethe and Merck
acquainted. Herder, to whom Merck was known, had been a previous
intermediary.]
From the effusive Caroline herself we learn the impression Goethe made
on the precious circle. "A few days ago" (in the beginning of March,
1772), she writes to Herder, "I made the acquaintance of your friend
Goethe and Herr Schlosser.... Goethe is such a good-hearted, lively
creature, without any parade of learning, and has made such a to-do
with Merck's children that my heart has quite gone out to him.... The
second afternoon we spent in a pleasant stroll and over a bowl of
punch in our house. We were not sentimental, but very merry, and
Goethe and I danced a minuette to the piano. Thereafter he recited an
excellent ballad of yours [the Scottish ballad _Edward_, translated by
Herder]." On the occasion of a later visit (April) of Goethe to
Darmstadt, she again writes to Herder: "Our Goethe has come on foot
from Frankfort[110] on a visit to Merck. We have been together every
day, and once, when we had gone together into the wood, we were soaked
to the skin. We took refuge under a tree, and Goethe sang a little
song, 'Under the Greenwood Tree,' which you translated from
Shakespeare. Our common plight made us very confidential. He read
aloud to us some of the best scenes from his _Gottfried von
Berlichingen_.... Goethe is choke-full of songs. One about a hut built
out of the ruins of a temple is excellent.[111] ... The poor fellow
told my sister and myself a day ago that he had already been once in
love, but that the girl had played with him for a whole year and then
deserted him.[112] He believed, however, that she really loved him,
but another had appeared on the scene, and he was made a goose of."
[Footnote 110: A six hours' walk.]
[Footnote 111: The poem, entitled _Der Wanderer_, noted below.]
[Footnote 112: The girl meant was no doubt Käthchen Schönkopf.]
Under the inspiration of these caressing attentions Goethe's muse
could not be silent, and in the course of the spring and autumn he
threw off a succession of pieces which are the classical expression of
the sentimentalism of the period. To the three ladies-in-chief, under
the pseudonyms of Urania, Lila, and Psyche (Caroline Flachsland), he
successively addressed odes in which he gave them back their own
emotions with interest. Their inspiration is sufficiently suggested by
these lines which conclude the lines entitled _Elysium, an Uranien_:--
Seligkeit! Seligkeit!
Eines Kusses Gefühl.
In all the three poems we have another illustration of Goethe's
susceptibility to immediate influences. Under the inspiration of
Friederike's simplicity he had written lyrics which were as pure in
form as direct in feeling. Now we have him indulging in a vein of
artificial sentiment, which, it might have been supposed, he had for
ever left behind as the result of his schooling in Strassburg.
In two pieces belonging to the same period, however, is revealed in
fullest measure the true self of the poet, with all the emotional and
intellectual preoccupations which he had brought with him from
Strassburg. Of the one, _Wanderers Sturmlied_, he has given in his
Autobiography an account which is fully borne out by the character of
the poem itself. It was composed, he tells us, in a terrific storm on
one of his restless journeys between Frankfort and Darmstadt, and at a
time when the memory of Friederike was still haunting him. Of
Friederike, however, there is no direct suggestion in the poem; from
first to last it is a pæan of the _Sturm und Drang_, composed in a
form directly imitated from Pindar, whom he had been ardently studying
since his return to Frankfort. The theme is the glorification of
genius--genius in its upwelling and original force as manifest in
Pindar, not as in poets like Anacreon and Theocritus. He who is in
possession of this genius is armed against all the powers of nature
and fate, and his end can only be crowned with victory. Goethe himself
calls the poem a _Halbunsinn_, and one of his most sympathetic
critics--Viktor Hehn--admits that to follow its drift requires some
labour and some creative phantasy on the part of the reader.[113] But
it is not its poetical merit that gives the poem its chief interest;
it is to be taken, as it was meant, as a profession of the poet's
literary faith at the period when it was written, and as such it is a
historic document of the _Sturm und Drang_--at once an illustration
and an exposition of its motives and ideals. "All this," is Goethe's
mature comment on this and other productions of the same period, "was
deeply and genuinely felt, but often expressed in a one-sided and
unbalanced way."
[Footnote 113: _Über Goethe's Gedichte_ (1911), p. 157.]
Of far higher poetic value is the second poem, _Der Wanderer_,[114] in
which Matthew Arnold found "the power of Greek radiance" which Goethe
could give to his handling of nature. The scene of the poem is in
southern Italy, near Cumæ. The Wanderer, wearied by his travel under
the noonday sun, comes upon a woman by the wayside whom he asks where
he may quench his thirst. She conducts him through the neighbouring
thicket, when an architrave, half-buried in the moss, and bearing an
effaced inscription, catches his eye. They reach the woman's hut,
which he finds to have been constructed from the stones of a ruined
temple. Asleep in the hut is the woman's infant son, whom she leaves
in the arms of the Wanderer, while she goes to fetch water from the
spring. She presses on him a piece of bread, the only food she has to
offer, and invites him to remain till the return of her husband to the
evening meal. He refuses her hospitality, and resumes his journey to
Cumæ, his destination. Such is the outline of the poem, which is in
the form of a dialogue, in the irregular measure common to the odes
above mentioned. But in the _Wanderer_ there is nothing dithyrambic;
rather its characteristic is a reflective repose, which is in strange
contrast to the tumultuous outpouring of the _Wanderers Sturmlied_,
and which might induce us to assign its production to a later day in
Goethe's life, to the period of his sojourn in Italy, when years had
somewhat chastened him, and when he was under the spell of the
artistic remains of classical antiquity. Of the finest inspiration is
the contrast between the remarks of the peasant woman wholly engrossed
in the immediate needs of the day, and the speculations of the
Wanderer as he comes upon the ruins that time has wrought upon the
choicest works of man's hand. Here we are far from all vapid and
artificial sentiment; we have philosophical meditation proceeding from
the profoundest source of the pathos of human life, the transitoriness
of man and his works. Completely in accord with the philosophy of his
ripest years, however, the poet finds no ground for melancholy regrets
in the spectacle of nature triumphing over man's handiwork. Even in
her work of corrosion she provides for the welfare of her children; in
a home reared out of a ruined temple happy human lives are spent. And
it is in the spirit of the broadest humanity--a spirit that marks him
off from the sentimentalists of the Darmstadt circle--that he regards
the "ruins of time."
[Footnote 114: On account of his constant travels between Frankfort
and Darmstadt, Goethe was known among his friends as the _Wanderer_.
The poem was written in the autumn, during Goethe's residence in
Wetzlar.]
Natur! du ewig keimende,
Schaffst jeden zum Genuss des Lebens,
Hast deine Kinder alle mütterlich
Mit Erbteil ausgestattet, einer Hütte.
Nature! eternal engenderer,
Thou bring'st forth thy children for the joy of living,
With care all maternal thou providest
Each with his portion, with his cottage.
In reading this poem we feel the force of the words of the younger
Schlosser in which he records his impression of Goethe at the moment
when both first made the acquaintance of the Darmstadt society. "I
shall be accompanied (to Darmstadt)," he wrote, "by a young friend of
the highest promise who, through his strenuous endeavours to purify
his soul, without unnerving it, is to me worthy of special
honour."[115] The purification had indeed begun, but Goethe had to
pass through many fires before the purification was complete. One such
fire was immediately awaiting him.
[Footnote 115: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 19-20.]
CHAPTER VII
WETZLAR AND CHARLOTTE BUFF
MAY--SEPTEMBER, 1772
During the summer and autumn of 1772 Goethe found himself in a society
and surroundings which were in curious contrast to those of Darmstadt;
and the next four months were to supply him with an experience which,
wrought into one book of transcendent literary effect, was to make his
name known, literally, to the ends of the earth,[116] and which may be
regarded as the most remarkable episode in his long life. It was as
"the author of _Werther_" that he was known to the reading world,
until after his death the publication of the completed _Faust_
gradually effaced the conception of Goethe as the master-sentimentalist
of European literature.
[Footnote 116: Werther, as Goethe reminds us in one of his Venetian
epigrams, was known in China:--
Doch was fördert es mich, dass auch sogar der Chinese
Malet mit ängstlicher Hand Werthern und Lotten auf Glas?]
It was mainly as a temporary escape from the tedium of Frankfort that,
towards the end of May, 1772, Goethe proceeded to Wetzlar, a little
town on the Lahn, a confluent of the Rhine. His settlement in Wetzlar
had the semblance of a serious professional purpose, since Wetzlar was
the historic legal capital of the Holy Roman Empire, and the seat of
the Imperial Court of Justice. If he had any such serious purpose, his
experience of the place speedily dispelled it. The place itself he
found distasteful; a "little, ill-built town," he calls it, though the
modern visitor finds it not unattractive, with its climbing, tortuous
streets, reminiscent of the Middle Age, and with its impressive
cathedral, one of the most interesting specimens of mediæval
architecture to be found in Germany, and still unfinished in Goethe's
day. Instead of the spectacle of an august tribunal administering
prompt and even justice, what he saw was a multitude of corrupt
officials, deluded litigants, and endless delays of law. Wetzlar, in
fact, he gives us to understand, destroyed any respect he may ever
have had alike for judges and the law they professed to administer. He
duly enrolled himself as a "Praktikant,"[117] but, as was the case
with the majority of that class who haunted the town, his legal
activity was confined to this step. "Solitary, depressed, aimless," so
he described himself to his friends during his first weeks in
Wetzlar.[118] Disgusted with law, he found refuge in the study of
literature. In a long and rhapsodical letter to Herder he depicts the
intellectual and spiritual experiences through which he was now
passing. The Greeks were his one preoccupation. Homer, Xenophon,
Plato, Theocritus, and Anacreon he had read in turn, but it was in
Pindar he was now revelling, and from Pindar he was learning the
lesson that only in laying firm hold of one's subject is the essence
of all mastery. A sentence of Herder to the effect that "thought and
feeling create the expression" had rejoiced his heart as expressing
his own deepest experience. Herder had said of _Götz_ that its author
had been spoilt by Shakespeare, and he modestly accepted the censure.
_Götz_, he admits, had been _thought_, not _felt_, and he would be
depressed by his failure, were he not occasionally conscious that some
day he would do better things.[119]
[Footnote 117: The _Praktikanten_ were voluntary attendants on the
Imperial Court, had little or no dependence on the authorities, and
lived on their own resources.]
[Footnote 118: Caroline Flachsland to Herder, May 25th, 1772.]
[Footnote 119: Goethe to Herder, _Werke, Briefe_, Band ii. 15.]
As in Strassburg, it was at a _table d'hôte_[120] that Goethe made the
acquaintance of the youths who, like himself, were idling away their
time in Wetzlar. To relieve the tedium of the place[121] they had
formed a fantastic society on a feudal model, with a Grand-master,
Chancellor, and all the other subordinate officials--the point of the
jest being that each associate bore the name and played the part of
his office and title. For frolic of all kinds Goethe was ever ready;
his taste for practical joking, indeed, as we shall see, occasionally
led him to play questionable pranks. Under the name of Götz von
Berlichingen he became a member of the brotherhood, and, according to
his own account, he contributed to the gaiety of the proceedings.
Among the company, however, there were a few serious persons with
tastes kindred to his own, and he specially names F.W. Gotter,
Secretary of the Gotha Legation at Wetzlar, as one who, like Salzmann
and Schlosser, impressed him by his character and talent. In English
literature they had a common interest, and, as a poem which both
admired, they each made a translation of Goldsmith's _Deserted
Village_--Gotter, according to Goethe, being the more successful in
the attempt. Gotter was thus still another of those grave counsellors
whom Goethe had the good fortune to discover and attach to himself
amid the distracting frivolities of every society he frequented.[122]
[Footnote 120: In the _Kronprinz_, the principal hotel in the town.]
[Footnote 121: Goethe's own lodging (still shown) was in the
_Gewandsgasse_, a narrow, dirty street, whence sun or moon could be
seen at no season of the year.]
[Footnote 122: In his contemporary letters, Goethe does not always
speak of Gotter so favourably as he does in his Autobiography.]
"What happened to me in Wetzlar," Goethe writes in his Autobiography,
"is of no great significance." But posterity has thought differently,
and, if we are to judge by the consequences of what, happened to him
in Wetzlar, both for himself and for the world, posterity is
right.[123] Be it said also, that contemporary testimony at first
hand leaves us in no doubt that, but for his Wetzlar experience, one
of the most remarkable phases in Goethe's development would not have
found expression, and one resounding note in European literature would
have been unheard.
[Footnote 123: An exhaustive account of Goethe's sojourn in Wetzlar
will be found in W. Herbst's _Goethe in Wetzlar_, 1772. _Vier Monate
aus des Dichters Jugendleben_, Gotha, 1881.]
In Leipzig and Strassburg Goethe had found objects to engage his
affections, and he was not to be without a similar experience in
Wetzlar. During his first weeks there he had seen no maiden to
interest him, and the fact may explain his dissatisfaction during that
period. After leaving in succession the circles of Sesenheim,
Frankfort, and Darmstadt, he tells us, he felt a void in his heart
which he could not fill. An accident at length came to fill the void.
On June 9th (the date is carefully recorded) he met a girl at a ball
in a neighbouring village (Garbenheim), who "made a complete conquest
of him."[124] Her name was Charlotte Buff, the second daughter of an
official of the Teutonic Order--a widower with twelve children.
Charlotte, or Lotte, as he calls her, was of a different type from any
of his previous loves, so that she possessed all the freshness of
novelty. Though only nineteen, she had taken upon her the care of the
numerous household, and discharged her duties with a motherly tact and
good sense which excited general admiration. Over Lotte's personal
appearance Goethe is not rapturous as in the case of Friederike; he
simply says that she had a light and graceful figure, and in the same
cool tone remarks that she was one of those women who do not inspire
ardent passion, but who give general pleasure. So he chose to say in
the retrospect, but neither his contemporary words nor actions permit
us to believe that his feeling to Lotte was merely a calm regard. In
the case of Lotte his situation was materially different from what it
had been in the case of Friederike. He had no rival in his relations
to Friederike; in his relations to Lotte he had one. Shortly after
their first meeting he learned that Lotte was already betrothed,
though the fact was not known to the world. The successful wooer was
Johann Christian Kestner, a native of Hanover, and a Secretary of
Legation settled in Wetzlar. Kestner was at every point the antithesis
of his intruding rival. He was calm, deliberate, unimaginative, yet
conspicuously a man of insight and character, with a fund of good
sense and good temper, on which the situation made a large draft.
"Kestner must be a very good man," was the frequent remark of Merck's
wife in view of the relations of the three parties to each other, and
Kestner's own words prove it. It is in his Letters and Diary that we
have the closest glimpse of all three, and all that he says of
himself, of Lotte, and of Goethe, shows a tact and good feeling that
inspire esteem.
[Footnote 124: This is the expression of Kestner, Lotte's betrothed.]
After their first meeting at the ball, according to Goethe's own
testimony, he became Lotte's constant attendant. "Soon he could not
endure her absence." In her home he made himself the idol of the
children; in the beautiful surrounding country they were inseparable
companions--Kestner, when his avocations permitted, occasionally
joining them. "So through the splendid summer," he records, "they
lived a true German idyll." But the testimony of Kestner shows that
the idyll was not without its discords. Goethe, he says, "with all his
philosophy and his natural pride, had not such self-control as wholly
to restrain his inclination.... His peace of mind suffered," and
"there were various notable scenes," though Lotte showed herself a
model of discretion. The situation was, in fact, an impossible one,
and Goethe came to see it. Several times he made the effort to break
his bonds and flee, but it was not till the beginning of September
that he took the decisive step. Equally from his own and Kestner's
account of the circumstances of his flight we receive the impression
that his relation to Lotte was such as to make their further
intercourse undesirable. The night before he went, according to
Kestner, all three were together in Lotte's home, and their
conversation, suggested by Lotte, turned upon the dead and the
possibility of holding intercourse with them. Whichever of the three
should die first, it was agreed, should, if possible, communicate with
the survivors. All through the evening Goethe was in deep dejection,
knowing, as he did, that it would be the last they would spend
together. The following morning he left Wetzlar without intimating his
intention to any of his friends--a proceeding which his grand-aunt,
resident in the town, characterised as "very ill-bred," declaring that
she would let the Frau Goethe know how her son had behaved.[125] In
three brief parting notes he addressed to Kestner and Lotte we have
the expression of the mental tumult which his passion for Lotte had
produced in him. On his return home, after the last evening he spent
with them, he wrote as follows to Kestner: "He is gone, Kestner; by
the time you receive this note, he is gone. Give Lotte the enclosed
note. I was quite calm, but your conversation has torn me to
distraction. At this moment I can say nothing more than farewell. Had
I remained a moment longer with you, I could not have restrained
myself. Now I am alone, and to-morrow I go. Oh, my poor head!" In the
lines enclosed for Lotte he has this outburst with reference to the
evening's conversation: "When I ventured to say all I felt, it was of
the present world I was thinking, of your hand which I kissed for the
last time."
[Footnote 125: Such abrupt departures were characteristic of Goethe.
We shall find him taking similar unceremonious leave of another of his
loves. Goethe, wrote Frau von Stein to her son (May, 1812), "kann das
Abschied nehmen nicht leiden, er ging ohne Abschied neulich von mir."]
From this record of the Wetzlar episode, directly reproducing the
relations of all the persons concerned, it is clear that Lotte was for
Goethe more than the pleasant companion he represents her in his
Autobiography. If his own words and those of Kestner have any meaning,
his feeling towards her amounted to a passion which only the singular
self-control of her and Kestner prevented from breaking bounds.
Strange as it may appear, neither Lotte nor Kestner regarded one whose
presence was a menace to their own peace with other feelings than
esteem, and apparently even affection. He parted from Lotte, he says,
"with a clearer conscience" than from Friederike, and the statement is
at least borne out by what we know of the sequel to the "splendid
idyll." As we shall see, he continued to remain on the most cordial
terms with the two lovers, and, though with mingled feelings, he gave
them his best blessing on the day which saw them united as husband and
wife.
In what has been said of Goethe's relations to Lotte Buff it is the
emotional side of his nature that has been before us, but from the
hand of the judicious Kestner we have a portrait of the whole man
which leaves nothing to be desired in its completeness and insight.
Kestner's description of his first meeting with his formidable rival
reminds us of the "conquering lord" whose self-assurance evoked
Herder's stinging criticism. Stretched on his back on the grass under
a tree, Goethe was carrying on a conversation with two acquaintances
who stood by. Kestner's first decided impression was that the
stranger was "no ordinary man," and that he had "genius and a lively
imagination." His final and complete impression, after Goethe had left
Wetzlar, he thus records:--
"He has very many gifts, is a real genius, and a man of character; he
has an extraordinarily lively imagination, and so, for the most part,
expresses himself in pictures and similes. He is himself in the habit
of saying that he always expresses himself in general terms, can never
express himself with precision; when he is older, however, he hopes to
think and express the thought as it is. He is violent in all his
emotions; yet often exercises great self-command. His manner of
thinking is noble; as free as possible from all prejudices, he acts on
the prompting of the moment without troubling whether it may please
other people, is in the fashion, or whether convention permits it. All
constraint is hateful to him. He is fond of children and can occupy
himself much with them. He is _bizarre_; in his conduct and manner
there are various peculiarities which might make him disagreeable. But
with children, with women, and many others he is nevertheless a
favourite. For the female sex he has great respect. _In principiis_ he
is not yet fixed, and is still only endeavouring after a sure system.
To say something on this point; he thinks highly of Rousseau, but is
not a blind worshipper of him. He is not what we call orthodox; yet
this is not from pride or caprice or from a desire to play a part. On
certain important matters, also, he expresses himself only to few, and
does not willingly disturb others in their ideas. He certainly hates
scepticism, and strives after truth and settled conviction on certain
subjects of the first importance; believes even that he has already
attained conviction on the most important; but, so far as I have
observed, this is not the case. He does not go to church; not even to
communion, and he prays seldom. For, says he, I am not hypocrite
enough for that. At times he seems at rest with regard to certain
subjects; at other times, however, very far from being so. He
reverences the Christian religion, but not as our theologians present
it. He believes in a future life and a better state of existence. He
strives after truth, and yet attaches more importance to feeling than
to demonstration as the test of it. He has already accomplished much;
has many acquirements and much reading, but has thought and reasoned
still more. He has mainly devoted himself to _belles lettres_ and the
fine arts, or rather to all branches of knowledge, only not to the
so-called bread-winning ones. I wished to describe him, but to do so I
should run to too great length, for he is one of whom there is a great
deal to be said. _In one word, he is a very remarkable man._"[126]
[Footnote 126: Kestner's characterisation of Goethe will be found in
Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. pp. 21-3.]
CHAPTER VIII
AFTER WETZLAR
1772--1773
In _Götz von Berlichingen_ Goethe had given expression to the ideals
and emotions he had brought with him from Strassburg; Shakespeare and
the memory of Friederike had been the main impulses to its production.
As the result of his experience at Wetzlar, he was filled with a new
inspiration, which, though it did not immediately find utterance, left
him no repose till it was embodied in a work in which the man and the
artist in him equally found deliverance. That the conception came to
him shortly after his leaving Wetzlar we have conclusive evidence. In
the beginning of November, 1772, after his return to Frankfort from
Wetzlar, he received the news that a youth named Jerusalem, a casual
acquaintance of his own,[127] had committed suicide as the result of
an unhappy love adventure. Instantly, Goethe tells us in his
Autobiography, the plan of _Werther_ shaped itself in his mind; and
his contemporary letters bear out the statement. Immediately on
receiving the news of Jerusalem's death, he wrote to Kestner for a
detailed account of all the circumstances, and he made a careful copy
of the information with which Kestner supplied him. In point of fact,
it was not till after more than a year that _Werther_ came to
fruition, but that he was in labour with the portentous birth all its
lineaments were to show.
[Footnote 127: Goethe had made Jerusalem's acquaintance in Leipzig.
Jerusalem called Goethe a _Geck_, a coxcomb, a description which, as
we have seen, was not inapplicable to him in his Leipzig days.
Jerusalem was a friend of Lessing, who highly esteemed him, and after
his death published his MSS.]
But before _Werther_ came to birth, Goethe went through another
experience which was to form an essential part of its tissue. Merck,
to whom Goethe attributes the chief influence over him during this
Frankfort period, was again the intermediary. Before Goethe left
Wetzlar, Merck had arranged that they should meet at Ehrenbreitstein,
where he would introduce Goethe to a family resident there.[128] The
family was that of Herr von la Roche, a Privy Councillor in the
service of the Elector of Trier, and it consisted of himself, his wife
and two daughters. The head of the house, a matter-of-fact man of the
world, plays no part in Goethe's relations to the family. It was Frau
von la Roche to whom, as a desirable acquaintance, Merck specially
wished to introduce his friend, and the sequel proved that he had
rightly divined their mutual affinities. The cousin of Wieland, with
whom she had had a _liaison_ before her marriage, she was now past
forty, but, according to Goethe's description of her, she possessed
all the charm of youth with the dignity and repose of maturity. What
is evident is, that Goethe saw in her the type of a high-bred woman
such as had not yet crossed his path. In his reminiscence of her, his
words have a warmth which is in notable contrast to the coldness of
his portrait of Lotte Buff. "She was a most wonderful woman," he
writes; "I knew no other to compare with her. Slight and delicately
formed, rather tall than short, she had contrived even in advanced
years to retain a certain elegance both of form and bearing which
pleasingly combined the manner of a Court lady with that of a
dignified burgess's wife."[129] In addition to these graces, Frau von
la Roche had precisely the temperament and the mental qualities that
appealed to Goethe in the emotional phase through which he was now
passing. She lived in the same world of sentiment as the ladies of the
Darmstadt circle, and she had the gift of effusive utterance, as she
had shown in a novel in the manner of Richardson which had brought her
some celebrity.
[Footnote 128: In point of fact, Goethe announced himself. Merck
arrived after him.]
[Footnote 129: In a letter to Schiller (July 24th, 1799) Goethe gives
a much less favourable estimate of Frau von la Roche, whom he had just
met: "Sie gehört zu den nivellierenden Naturen, sie hebt das Gemeine
herauf und zieht das Vorzügliche herunter...."]
With Frau von la Roche Goethe established a Platonic relation which he
assiduously cultivated during the remainder of his residence in
Frankfort, but there was another member of the household to whom he
was attracted by a livelier feeling. This was the elder of the two
daughters, Maximiliane by name, a girl of seventeen, whose charms were
subsequently to be given to the lady of Werther's infatuation. From
what we have seen of Goethe's inflammability, we are prepared for the
naïve remark in which he records his new sensation. "It is a very
pleasant sensation," he says, "when a new passion begins to stir in us
before the old one is quite extinct. So, as the sun sets, we gladly
behold the moon rise on the opposite horizon, and rejoice in the
double splendour of the two heavenly lights." Be it said that the
atmosphere of the household was provocative of relaxed feelings.
Goethe was not the only guest. Besides Merck there was a youth named
Leuchsenring whose special line of activity had endeared him to a wide
circle. Leuchsenring made it his business to enter into correspondence
with susceptible souls whose effusions he carried about with him in
dispatch-boxes and was in the habit of reading aloud to sympathetic
listeners. The reading of these precious documents was part of the
entertainment of the circle in which Goethe now found himself, and he
assures us that he enjoyed it. We see, therefore, the world in which
he was now moving--a world in which those who belonged to it made it
their first concern to titillate their sensibilities, and squandered
their emotions with a profusion and abandonment in which
self-respecting reserve was forgotten. It was a world wide as the
poles apart from that of Sesenheim, where human relations were founded
on natural feeling and only the language of the heart was spoken. Once
again Goethe had taken on the hue of his surroundings. In Leipzig he
had been what we have seen him; now under the influence of Darmstadt
he appears in still another phase--to be by no means the last.
From Goethe's connection with the family of von la Roche was to come
the occasion which immediately prompted the production of _Werther_,
but more than a year was to elapse before the occasion came, and in
the interval his own mental experiences were to supply him with
further materials which were to find expression in that work. In his
correspondence of the period we have the fullest revelation of these
experiences, and they leave us with the impression that he spoke only
the literal truth when he tells us in his Autobiography that, on being
delivered of _Werther_, he felt as if he had made a general
confession. The same period, moreover, is signalised by a succession
of minor productions which, though they did not attain to the
celebrity of _Götz_ and _Werther_, exhibit a range of intellectual
interests and a play of varied moods which materially enhance our
conceptions of his genius.
The circumstances in which Goethe had left Friederike had precluded
subsequent communications with her and her family; in the case of the
Wetzlar circle there was no such impediment to future epistolary
intercourse. He had left Lotte Buff, as he tells us, with a clearer
conscience than he had left Friederike, and on the part of Lotte and
Kestner there was apparently no feeling that prompted a breach of
their relations with him. For more than a year he kept up assiduous
communications with Wetzlar; then his letters became less frequent and
finally ceased when changes in the circumstances of both parties
effaced their mutual interests. While the correspondence was in full
flood, however, Goethe's letters leave us in no doubt as to the real
nature of his passion for Lotte; if words mean anything, his memories
of her were a cause of mental unrest to which other distractions of
the time gave a morbid direction, and which threatened to end in moral
collapse.
A few extracts from his letters to Wetzlar will reveal his state of
mind during the months that immediately followed his return to
Frankfort. Within a week after his return we have these hurried lines
addressed to Kestner: "God bless you, dear Kestner, and tell Lotte
that I sometimes imagine I could forget her; but then comes the
recitative, and I am worse than ever." In the same month (September)
he again addresses Kestner: "I would not desire to have spent my days
better than I did at Wetzlar, but God send me no more such days!...
This I have just said to Lotte's silhouette." In the beginning of
November he paid a flying visit to Wetzlar, and apparently had reason
to regret it. "Certainly, Kestner," he wrote the day after he left,
"it was time that I should go; yesterday evening, as I sat on the
sofa, I had thoughts for which I deserve hanging." On Christmas Day he
writes still at the same high pitch: "It is still night, dear Kestner,
and I have risen to write again by the morning light, which recalls
pleasant memories of past days.... Immediately on my arrival here I
had pinned up Lotte's silhouette; while I was in Darmstadt, they
placed my bed here, and there to my great joy hangs Lotte's picture at
its head." In April, 1773, Kestner and Lotte were married, and Goethe
insisted, against Kestner's wish, on sending the bride her
marriage-ring, which was accompanied by the following note: "May the
remembrance of me as of this ring be ever with you in your happiness.
Dear Lotte, after a long interval we shall see each other again, you
with the ring on your finger, and me always _yours_. I affix no name
nor surname. You know well who writes." A few days later we have the
following words in a letter to Kestner: "To part from Lotte, I do not
yet understand how it was possible.... It cost me little, and yet I
don't understand how it was possible. There is the rub." In the course
of the summer Kestner removed to Hanover, where he had received an
official appointment, and took his wife with him. The correspondence
then became less frequent, though on both sides it was maintained in
the same friendly spirit. Only for a time, on the publication of
_Werther_, as we shall see, was there the shadow of possible
estrangement. "Alienated lovers," is Goethe's remark, already quoted,
"become the best friends, if only they can be properly managed"; and
Goethe showed himself an adept in this art of management.
While Goethe was pouring forth his confessions to Kestner and Lotte,
his circumstances at home were not such as to conduce to calm of mind.
Frankfort remained as distasteful to him as ever. "The Frankforters,"
he wrote to Kestner, "are an accursed folk; they are so pig-headed
that nothing can be made of them." With his father his relations had
not become more cordial after his return from Wetzlar. "Lieber Gott,"
he wrote on receiving a letter from his father, "shall I then also
become like this when I am old? Shall my soul no longer attach itself
to what is good and amiable? Strange the belief that the older a man
becomes, the freer he becomes from what is worldly and petty. He
becomes increasingly more worldly and petty."[130] His father's
insistence on his attention to legal business was a permanent cause of
mutual misunderstanding. "I let my father do as he pleases; he daily
seeks to enmesh me more and more in the affairs of the town, and I
submit."[131]
[Footnote 130: Goethe to Kestner, November 10th, 1772. _Werke,
Briefe_, Band ii. 35.]
[Footnote 131: To the same, September 15th, 1773. _Ib._ p. 104.]
In his sister Cornelia, as formerly, he had a sympathetic confidant
equally in his affairs of the heart and in his literary and artistic
ambitions, but in the course of the year 1773 he was deprived of her
soothing and stimulating influence. In October she was betrothed to
J.G. Schlosser, who has already been noted as one of Goethe's sager
counsellors, and the marriage took place on November 1st. "I rejoice
in their joy," he wrote to Sophie von la Roche, "though, at the same
time, it is mostly to my own loss." Other friends, also, in the course
of the same year, he complains, were departing and leaving him in
dreary solitude. "My poor existence," he writes to Kestner, "is
becoming petrified. This summer everyone is going--Merck with the
Court to Berlin, his wife to Switzerland, my sister, and Fräulein
Flachsland, you, everybody. And I am alone. If I do not take a wife or
hang myself, say that life is right dear to me, or something, if you
like, which does me more honour."[132] So in May he describes himself
as alone and daily becoming more so; in October as "entirely alone,"
and as indescribably rejoiced at the return of Merck towards the close
of the year.
[Footnote 132: _Ib._ pp. 82-3.]
CHAPTER IX
SATIRICAL DRAMAS AND FRAGMENTS
If, during the year that followed his return from Wetzlar, Goethe was
distracted by his wandering affections, he was no less divided in mind
by his intellectual ambitions. The doubt which had possessed him since
boyhood as to whether nature meant him for an artist or a poet
remained still unsettled for him. In one of the best-known passages of
his Autobiography he has related how he sought to resolve his
difficulty. As he wandered down the banks of the Lahn, after he had
torn himself away from Wetzlar, the beauty of the scenery awoke in him
the artist's desire to transfer it worthily to canvas. The whim then
occurred to him to let fate decide whether this was the work for which
he was appointed. He would throw his knife into the river, and, if he
saw it reach the surface, he would take it as a sign that art was his
vocation. Unfortunately the oracle proved dubious. Owing to the
intervening bushes he did not see the knife enter the river, but only
the splash occasioned by its fall. As the result of the uncertainty
of the oracle, he adds, he gave himself less assiduously than hitherto
to the study of art. If this were indeed the case, it was only for a
time, since the contemporary testimony, both of himself and his
friends, shows that during the period that immediately followed his
leaving Wetzlar, art received more of his attention than literature.
Goethe, wrote Caroline Flachsland to Herder, "still thinks of becoming
a painter, and we strongly advise him to pursue that end."[133] "I am
now quite a draughtsman," he himself wrote to Herder in December of
the same year; and he tells another correspondent in the autumn of
1773 that "the plastic arts occupy him almost entirely."
[Footnote 133: November 27th, 1772.]
Yet, since his return from Strassburg to Frankfort in August, 1771,
his literary activity was never wholly intermitted. During the
remainder of that year he wrote the first draft of _Götz von
Berlichingen_, and in 1772, mainly under the inspiration of the
Darmstadt circle, he produced the poems to which attention has already
been drawn. In that year, also, he shared in an undertaking the main
object of which was to proclaim those revolutionary ideas in
literature, religion, and life that inspired the movement of the
_Sturm und Drang_. In cooperation with Herder, Merck, and Schlosser,
his future brother-in-law, and others, he conducted a journal which,
under the title of the _Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen_, expounded
these views to all who chose to read it. Merck, and afterwards
Schlosser, acted as editors during the year that it existed, but
Goethe was its principal contributor. In the preliminary announcement
to the first issue (January 1st, 1772) it is stated that the reviews
of books will range over science, philosophy, history, _belles-lettres_,
and the fine arts, and particularly that no English book worthy of
notice will escape attention. Of the successive reviews that appeared,
only three are certainly known to be by Goethe, though he must have
written or assisted in writing several others. With his usual
causticity Herder characterised the manner of the two chief
contributors. "You," he tells Merck, "are always Socrates-Addison; and
Goethe is for the most part a young, arrogant lord, with horribly
scraping cock's heels, and, if I come among you some day, I shall be
the Irish Dean with his whip." Goethe himself, reviewing these early
efforts in the light of his maturity, is sufficiently modest regarding
their intrinsic merit. He had then, he says, neither the knowledge nor
the discipline requisite for adequate criticism. On the other hand, he
claims to have given evidence in his notices of books of a gift, which
no reader of them can fail to perceive--the gift of instinctive
insight into the essentials of the subject in hand. In the business of
reviewing, however, he seems to have taken little pleasure. "The day
has begun festively," he wrote to Kestner on Christmas, 1772, "but,
unfortunately, I must spoil the beautiful hours with reviewing; but I
do so with good heart, as it is for the last issue."[134]
[Footnote 134: Goethe wrote the epilogue to the last number of the
Review, of which he says to Kestner, "hat ich das Publikum und den
Verleger turlipinirt."]
To the same year, 1772, belong two short productions of Goethe which
deserve a passing notice as exhibiting his strange blending of
interests at this period. The one is entitled _Brief des Pastors zu
... an den neuen Pastor zu ..._, and professes to have been translated
from the French. The Letter is another illustration of his interest in
religion and in the interpretation of the Bible which had begun with
his early reading of the Old Testament, and which his intercourse with
the Fräulein von Klettenberg and Herder had intermittently kept alive.
The theological teaching of the Letter is, in point of fact, a
compound of the teaching of these two. Its main object is to emphasise
the necessity of toleration in the interest of religion itself, and
nowhere was the monition more needed than in Frankfort, where the
antipathy between those of the Reformed and the Lutheran communions
was such as even to debar intermarriage. Rationalism and dogmatism are
equally reprobated, and the sum of all true religion is found to
consist in the love of God and of our neighbour. The strain of
mystical piety which runs through the whole production doubtless
proceeds from imaginative sympathy and not from personal experience,
and is to be regarded only as another illustration of Goethe's
facility in identifying himself with emotions essentially alien to his
own nature. The other piece, entitled _Zwo wichtige bisher unerörterte
biblische Fragen, zum erstenmal gründlich beantwortet_, professing to
be written by a Swabian pastor, is still more singular. In the first
of the two questions he inquires whether it was the Ten Commandments
or the prescriptions of ritual that were inscribed on the tables of
stone, and concludes that it was the latter; and in the second he
discusses the nature of the speaking with tongues that followed St.
Paul's laying of hands on the newly-baptised Christians, and resolves
the question in a purely mystical sense.
The year 1773 marks an epoch in Goethe's career, and an epoch also in
the literary history of Germany. In that year he made his first appeal
as a writer to the great German public which was to follow his
successive productions with varying degrees of admiration during the
next half-century. Dissatisfied with the first draft of _Götz von
Berlichingen_ as lacking in dramatic unity, in the beginning
(February--March) of 1773 he recast the whole play, which in its new
form was published in June.[135] As has already been said, the second
form of _Götz_ is generally recognised as inferior to the first, but,
such as it was, it made the sensation we have seen. With as much truth
as Byron, Goethe might have said that "he woke one morning and found
himself famous." In 1772 he could be spoken of by an intelligent
person in Leipzig as "one named Getté," and even in the circles he
frequented he had hitherto been known simply as a youth of
extraordinary promise from whom great things were to be expected.
Henceforth his name was on the tongue of all who were interested in
German literature, and whatever he was likely to produce in the future
was certain to command universal interest.
[Footnote 135: In its new form _Götz_ was no better adapted for the
stage. "Eine angeborne Unart ist schwierig zu meistern," is Goethe's
own remark on his attempt to make it a good acting play.]
According to Merck, Goethe's head was turned for a time by the success
of _Götz_. During the months that followed its publication, at all
events, he was possessed with a wanton humour which spared neither
friends nor foes, nor the society of which he had apparently caught
the contagion as completely as any of its members. At a later date,
Goethe speaks of his "considerate levity" and his "warm
coolness";[136] and in a succession of pieces which he threw off at
this time we have an interesting commentary on this characterisation
of himself. In these pieces we have an old vein reopened. We have seen
how in Leipzig he had burlesqued the professor of literature, Clodius,
but in the years that followed his departure from Leipzig--the
depressing period in Frankfort and the period of rapid development in
Strassburg--there was neither the occasion nor the prompting to
personal or general satire. Now, however, in the tumult of his own
feelings and in the follies of the society around him he found themes
for satirical comment which afforded scope for a side of his genius
rarely manifested in his later years. The short satirical dramas
produced at this time on the mere impulse of the moment have in
themselves only a local and temporary interest, but they derive
importance from the fact that they proceed from the same mental
attitude which was to find its definitive expression in the character
of Mephistopheles--essentially the creation of this period of Goethe's
development. In these trivial exercises he was practising the craft
which is so consummately displayed in the original fragments of
_Faust_.
[Footnote 136: Ich bin wie immer der nachdenkliche Leichtsinn und die
warme Kälte.--Goethe to Sophie von la Roche, September 1st, 1780.]
The first of these sallies--_Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern,
Ein Schönbartspiel_--was written in March, 1773, and was sent as a
birthday gift to Merck--an appropriate recipient. Written in doggerel
verse, which Goethe took over from the shoemaker poet Hans Sachs, the
piece brings before us the motley crowd of persons who frequented the
fairs of the time, each vociferating the cheapness and excellence of
his own wares. The humour of the spectacle, however, is that the
_dramatis personæ_ were individuals recognisable by contemporaries in
traits which now escape us. Goethe himself appears in the guise of a
doctor, Herder as a captain of the gipsies, and his bride, Caroline
Flachsland, as a milkmaid. The satire is directed equally against the
idiosyncrasies of individuals and against the follies of the time, the
sentimentalism which Goethe himself had not escaped, but of which he
saw the inanity, the petty jealousies of authors which had also come
within his personal experience. A mock tragedy on the subject of
Esther, which forms part of the burlesque, is a malicious parody of
the French models which he had begun by imitating, but which were now
the sport of the youths who led the _Sturm und Drang_.
The _Jahrmarktsfest_ is a genial explosion of madcap humour. Not so
another succession of scenes produced about the same time. The subject
of them is that Leuchsenring whose acquaintance, we have seen, Goethe
had made under the roof of Sophie von la Roche. Since then,
apparently, Leuchsenring's proceedings had provoked a repugnance in
Goethe which displays itself in a strain of bitterness hardly to be
found in any other of his works. It was Leuchsenring's habit to
ingratiate himself with households where his pseudo-sentiment made him
acceptable, and by questionable methods to make mischief between their
members, and especially between the two sexes.[137] Goethe had seen
the results of these intrigues in circles with which he was
acquainted, and it was to punish the sinner that he wrote _Ein
Fastnachtspiel, auch wohl zu tragieren nach Ostern, vom Pater Brey dem
falschen Propheten_. Pater Brey, the false prophet, is Leuchsenring,
and his sugared speech and shifty ways are the main object of the
satire, but other persons are introduced into the piece and exhibited
in lights which are a singular commentary on the taste of the time.
The victim on whom Pater Brey plies his arts is Caroline Flachsland,
who appears under the name of Leonora, and the injured lover is Herder
(Captain Velandrino).[138] The Captain, who has been informed of Pater
Brey's philanderings with his betrothed, appears on the scene, is
assured of her faithfulness, and in concert with another character in
the piece (Merck) plays a coarse trick on the Pater which makes him
the laughing-stock of the neighbourhood.
[Footnote 137: A quarrel had arisen between Merck and Leuchsenring,
and Goethe had warmly taken Merck's side.]
[Footnote 138: As we have seen, Herder was jealous of Goethe's own
attentions to Caroline.]
Herder had good reason to resent the licence with which his private
affairs had been obtruded on the public in _Pater Brey_,[139] but in
the same year Goethe made him the main subject of another production
which raises equally our astonishment at the manners of the time and
at the wanton audacity of its author. In _Pater Brey_ the prevailing
sentimentalism, as veiling dubious motives, had been the theme of
ridicule; in _Satyros, oder der vergötterte Waldteufel_, it was the
extravagancies of the followers of Rousseau in their idealisation of
the natural man. According to Kestner, as we have seen, Goethe himself
greatly admired Rousseau, but was not one of his blind worshippers,
and _Satyros_ is a sufficiently cogent proof of the fact. What is
astounding is the means he chose to give point to his ridicule. Herder
is Satyros, the Waldteufel,[140] who is represented as being humanely
received by a hermit (Merck) while suffering from a wounded leg.
Satyros requites his host with coarse abuse of himself and his
religion, flings his crucifix into the neighbouring stream, and steals
a valuable piece of linen cloth. Next by an enchanting melody he
cajoles two maidens, Arsinoë and Psyche (Caroline Flachsland), into
the belief that he is a superhuman being, and Psyche is so overcome
that she submits to his embraces. The people of the neighbourhood
flock to him, see in him a new god, and on his persuasion take to
eating chestnuts, as the natural food of man--the priest of the
community, Hermes, joining in their worship. The hermit appears on the
scene, and on his abusing Satyros for the theft of his crucifix, the
people decide to offer him as a sacrifice to their insulted divinity.
By a stratagem of the wife of Hermes, the hermit is rescued and the
bestiality of Satyros exposed. In no way disconcerted, Satyros leaves
the throng with flouts at their asinine attachment to their
conventional morality as opposed to the free life inculcated by
nature. Goethe's later comment on this remarkable production is that
it was "a document of the godlike insolence of our youth," and
certainly no document could bring more vividly before us the world in
which Goethe's genius came to fruition.[141]
[Footnote 139: It was published in the autumn of the following year,
1774.]
[Footnote 140: W. Scherer was the first to identify Herder with
Satyros.]
[Footnote 141: _Satyros_ was not published till 1814, after Herder's
death, but he was aware of its existence.]
Still another piece of the "godlike insolence of youth," though less
offensive in its implications, is the farce, _Götter, Helden, und
Wieland_, written in the autumn of the same year, 1773. At an earlier
period Wieland had been one of the gods of Goethe's idolatry, but
Wieland was now the most distinguished champion of those French models
against which Goethe and the youths associated with him had declared
irreconcilable war. Moreover, in a journal recently started by
Wieland, there had appeared an unfriendly review of _Götz von
Berlichingen_. By the publication of a play, _Alceste_, in which he
foolishly challenged comparison with Euripides' drama of the same
name, Wieland gave the enemy his opportunity. On a Sunday afternoon,
with a bottle of Burgundy beside him, as he tells us, Goethe tossed
off his skit at one sitting. As a piece of improvisation, it certainly
contains excellent fooling. We are introduced to the lower world,
where the four characters in Euripides' play, Admetus, Alcestis,
Hercules, and Mercury, as well as its author, are represented as in a
state of high indignation at the liberties which Wieland has taken
with them in his _Alcestes_. Summoned before them, Wieland appears in
his nightcap, and has to run the gauntlet of their several
reproaches--the purport of them all being that he has foolishly
misunderstood the Greek world which he had undertaken to portray.
Against Goethe's wish the satire was published in the following year,
and rapidly ran through four editions, but Wieland had a genteel
revenge. With that _Lebensweisheit_ which Goethe long afterwards
marked as his characteristic, he published in his review a notice of
the burlesque, in which it is recommended as "a masterpiece of
persiflage and of sophistical wit." "Wieland has turned the tables on
me," was Goethe's own admission; "Ich bin eben prostituiert."[142]
[Footnote 142: Max Morris, _op. cit._ iv. 81.]
These successive _jeux d'esprit_ were merely the crackling fireworks
of exuberant youth, and were regarded as such by their author himself.
At the very time he was writing them, he was planning and sketching
works, the scope of which reveals the true bent of his genius, and of
the ideals that were preoccupying him. "My ideals," he wrote to
Kestner (September 15th, 1773), "grow daily in beauty and grandeur";
and when he penned these words he was engaged on a production which,
though it remained a mere fragment, has justly been regarded as one of
the most striking manifestations of his powers. The subject, the myth
of Prometheus, he tells us, attracted him as one in which he could
embody his own deepest experience and the conclusions regarding the
individual life of man to which that experience had led him. In the
crises of his past life, he tells us, he had found that no aid had
been forthcoming either from man or any supernal power. "We must tread
the wine-press alone." Only in one source had he discovered a
stay and stimulus, which brought him the sense of individual
self-subsistence--in the exercise of such creative talent as nature
had bestowed upon him. Of this consciousness, no external power could
deprive him, and it is this consciousness that is the governing idea
of the fragment, and not the Titanism of the Prometheus of Æschylus.
It was, moreover, an idea which permanently accompanied Goethe
throughout life, and to which he frequently gave expression in his
later correspondence.[143]
[Footnote 143: The following passage from an article in the _Hibbert
Journal_, by M. Bergson (October, 1911, pp. 42-3), is an interesting
commentary on Goethe's conception: "If, then, in every province the
triumph of life is expressed by creation, might we not think that the
ultimate reason of human life is a creation which, in distinction from
that of the artist or man of science, can be pursued at every moment
and by all men alike; I mean the creation of self by self, the
continual enrichment of personality, by elements which it does not
draw from outside, but causes to spring forth from itself?"]
As, apart from its intrinsic power, _Prometheus_ has an incidental
interest in the history of philosophic thought, it may be worth while
to sketch briefly the development it attained. When Prometheus is
introduced to us, he is a rebel against Zeus and the other gods. He
had rendered them allegiance so long as he believed that "they saw the
past and the future in the present and were animated by
self-originated and disinterested wisdom," but, on the discovery of
his error, he had renounced their authority, and, as an independent
agent, he had fashioned images of human beings, to which, however, he
was powerless to give the breath of life. In the first Scene of the
first Act, Mercury appears as the messenger of the gods and reasons
with Prometheus on the folly of his contending with their omnipotence.
Prometheus denies their omnipotence either over nature or over
himself. "Can they separate me from myself?" he asks, and Mercury
admits that the gods are subject to a power stronger than their
own--the power of Fate. "Go, then," is the reply, "I do not serve
vassals." After a brief soliloquy, in which Prometheus expresses the
passionate wish that he might impart feeling to his lifeless images,
Epimetheus appears as a second representative of the gods. Their
offer, he tells Prometheus, is reasonable; let him but recognise their
supremacy, and he will be free of the heights of Olympus, from which
he would rule the earth. "Yes," is the reply, "to be their burggrave,
and defend their Heaven! My offer is more reasonable; their wish is to
be a partner with me, and my thought is to have nothing to
participate with them; they cannot rob me of what I have, and what
they have, let them guard. Here is mine, and here is thine, and so are
we apart." "But what is thine?" inquires Epimetheus; and the reply is,
"The circle which my activity fulfils--_Der Kreis, den meine
Wirklichkeit erfüllt_." And here follows one of the passages in the
dialogue which, as expressing the pantheistic conception of the
universe, gave occasion to the quarrel of the philosophers, to be
presently noted. "Thou standest alone," is the comment of Epimetheus
on the claim to independent self-subsistence asserted by Prometheus;
"thou standest alone; thy self-will fails to appreciate the bliss of
the gods--thou, thine, the world and heaven, all feel themselves one
intimate whole." Repelled like Mercury, Epimetheus departs, and
Minerva, in whom Prometheus acknowledges his sole inspirer and
instructress, appears. Minerva, who declares that she honours her
father Zeus and loves Prometheus, repeats the offer of Zeus to animate
the clay images if Prometheus will acknowledge his sovereignty; but
when Prometheus passionately refuses to accept the offer, she bursts
forth: "And they shall live! to fate and not to the gods it pertains
to bestow life and to take it. Come, I conduct thee to the source of
all life, which Jupiter may not close against us. They shall live, and
through thee!"
Of the second Act only two Scenes were written. In the first, Mercury,
proclaiming in Olympus that Minerva has given life to the clay images
of Prometheus, calls on Zeus to destroy the new creatures with his
thunder. Zeus calmly replies that they will only increase the number
of his servants, and Mercury, changing his tone, prays that he may be
sent to "the poor earthborn folk," to announce the goodness and wisdom
of the father of all. "Not yet," is the reply. "In the newborn rapture
of youth they dream that they are like unto the gods. Not till they
need thee will they listen to thy words. Leave them to their own
life!" In the second Scene, we see Prometheus in a valley at the base
of Olympus, surrounded by the new race of animated beings engaged in
business or pleasure. There follow three brief Scenes which are meant
to depict the dawnings of human consciousness and the conditions under
which life is to be lived. To one he shows how a hut to shelter him
may be constructed with the branches he has lopped with the aid of an
implement of stone. In a dispute between two men, one of whom wounds
the other and steals his goat, Prometheus pronounces the judgment that
the hand of the offender will be against every man, and every man's
hand against him. In the third and last Scene we have the most
remarkable passage in the poem. Pandora, Prometheus' favourite
creation, in dismay and bewilderment, describes the strange
experience she has witnessed in the case of a friend, another maiden,
and Prometheus tells her that what she had seen was death. What death
meant Prometheus explains in the following passage, charged with the
sensuous mysticism which was one of the elements of Goethe's own
experiences when he wrote it:--
Wenn aus dem innerst tiefsten Grunde
Du ganz erschüttert alles fühlst,
Was Freud' und Schmerzen jemals dir ergossen,
[Transcriber's Note: corrected error "and" for "und"]
Im Sturm dein Herz erschwillt,
In Tränen sich erleichtern will
Und seine Glut vermehrt,
Und alles klingt an dir und bebt und zittert,
Und all die Sinne dir vergehn,
Und du dir zu vergehen scheinst
Und sinkst,
Und alles um dich her versinkt in Nacht,
Und du, in inner eigenstem Gefühl,
Umfassest eine Welt;
Dann stirbt der Mensch.
When from thy inmost being's depths
Shattered to nought thou feelest all
Of joy and woe that e'er to thee hath flowed,
In storm thy heart hath swelled,
In tears doth find itself relief,
And doth its flow increase;
When all within thee thrills, and quakes, and quivers,
And all thy senses from thee part,
And from thyself thou seem'st to part,
And sink'st,
And all around thee sinketh deep in night,
And thou within thy inner very self
Encompassest a world;
Then dies the man.
To these two Acts Goethe subsequently added, as the opening of a third
Act, a soliloquy of Prometheus, written in the following year. In this
soliloquy Prometheus appears as the sheer Titan, the burden of his
defiance being that Zeus merits no worship from men to whose miseries
he is deaf, and that such worship as he receives proceeds only from
human folly and ignorance.[144] By its protest against the conception
of the mechanical god who "pushes the universe from without," and by
the Spinozistic pantheism which it implicitly proclaims, the ode
dismayed the more timid spirits of the time. To the horror of Fritz
Jacobi, Lessing, to whom he read it in manuscript in 1780, declared
that its conception of the [Greek: hen kai pan] was his own;[145] and
when, in 1785, Jacobi published the poem without Goethe's knowledge, a
controversy arose in which Lessing was charged with atheism and
pantheism, and which, as Goethe records, cost the life of one of the
combatants, Moses Mendelssohn.[146] Be it said that in his old age
Goethe himself came to regard the sentiments of the soliloquy as
_sansculottisch_, and in the time of reaction of the Holy Alliance
forbade the publication of the fragment as likely to be received as an
evangel by the revolutionary youth of Germany.[147]
[Footnote 144: Viktor Hehn pointed out that the drama and the ode are
inspired by different motives, and that it was in forgetfulness that
Goethe associated them.--_Über Goethe's Gedichte_, p. 160.
Bielschowsky (_Goethe, Sein Leben und Seine Werke_, i. 510) suggests
that the ode may have been intended as the opening of Act ii.]
[Footnote 145: Sir Frederick Pollock dates "modern Spinozism" from
this incident.--_Spinoza: His Life and Opinions_ (London, 1880), p.
390.]
[Footnote 146: While writing a defence of his friend Lessing against
the charge of atheism, Mendelssohn's mental agitation was such that it
was believed to have occasioned his death.]
[Footnote 147: Turgenieff relates that on translating passages from
_Satyros_ and _Prometheus_ to Flaubert, Edmond de Goncourt, and
Daudet, all three were profoundly impressed by the range and power
displayed in them.]
To the same period as _Prometheus_ belongs another fragment, inspired
by an equally grandiose conception, which, like so many others with
Goethe, was never to be realised. The theme of the projected drama was
to be the career of Mahomet, and in his Autobiography Goethe has
indicated the leading ideas it was to embody. Contrary to the
prevailing opinion, which had received brilliant expression in
Voltaire's play on the same subject, Mahomet was to be represented not
as an impostor but as a prophet sincerely convinced of the truth of
his message, and inflamed with a disinterested desire to give his
countrymen a purer religion--a view of Mahomet, it may be said in
passing, which Goethe's disciple, Carlyle, was among the first to
proclaim in this country.[148] The successive actions of the prophet
were to illustrate the influence which character and genius combined
have exercised on the destiny of men; but they were also to illustrate
how the idealist in his contact with actualities is forced, in spite
of himself, to compromise the purity of his original message, and, in
consequence, to deteriorate in his own personal character.[149] Of the
projected drama we have only two scenes, and a lyric in glorification
of Mahomet which was to be sung by two of the characters. In contrast
to _Prometheus_, not pantheism but monotheism, and not rebellion but
submission, were to be the animating creed and motive of the
protagonist. In the first of the two Scenes he addresses in succession
the great heavenly lights, but in their mutability he finds no stay or
solace for mind and heart, and he turns to the creator of them all.
"Uplift thee, loving heart, to the creating One! Be thou my Lord, my
God! Thou, all-loving One, Thou who didst create earth, heaven, and
me." In the second Scene we have a dialogue between Mahomet and his
foster-mother, Fatima, in which he communicates the religious
experiences which it was to be his mission to proclaim to his people;
and the manner in which Fatima receives them indicates the
difficulties he would have to encounter in his _rôle_ as prophet. "He
is changed; his nature is transformed; his understanding has suffered.
Better it is that I should restore him to his kinsfolk, than that I
should draw the responsibility of evil consequences upon myself." But,
as in the case of _Prometheus_, it is in the lyric that was to form
part of the drama that we have the most arresting expression of the
poet's genius--another proof of the fact that at this period it was in
the lyric that Goethe found the most adequate utterance for what was
deepest in his nature. In a rush of unrhymed, irregular measures it
describes the course of a river (the Rhine was in the poet's mind)
from its source on the mountain summit, its impetuous progress among
the obstacles that bar its passage, its gradually broadening current
as it sweeps through the plains, undelayed by shady valley or by the
flowers that adorn its banks; and finally losing itself in the ocean
with all its tributary streams.
[Footnote 148: It is one of the ironies of Goethe's literary career
that, in his later years, in the period of his reaction against the
formlessness that had invaded German literature, he, with the approval
of Schiller, translated Voltaire's _Mahomet_, and staged it in
Weimar.]
[Footnote 149: It is this conception, as he himself tells us, that
Renan applied to the life and teaching of Jesus.]
As sung by Ali and Fatima on the death of Mahomet, the ode was an
allegory of his life from its beginning to its triumphant close when
he passed from the present with the consciousness that he had won to
his faith the nation from which he had sprung. But it also undoubtedly
expressed the aspiration of the poet himself. The ambition to impress
himself on the world, and the consciousness of powers to give effect
to his ambition, were indeed the ruling impulses behind all his
distracted activities. But he was thwarted in his ambition alike by
external circumstances and by his own temperament, and there came
occasions when he was disposed to accept failure as his wisest choice.
In two poems of this period he gives expression to this mood, and the
necessity for overcoming it. In the one, _Adler und Taube_, a young
eagle is wounded by a fowler, but after three days recovers, though
with disabled wings. Two doves alight near the spot, and one of them
addresses soothing words to the crippled king of the birds. "Thou art
in sorrow," he coos; "be of good courage, friend! hast thou not here
all that peaceful bliss requires?... O friend, true happiness is
content, and everywhere content has enough." "O wise one," spoke the
eagle, and, moved to deep earnest, sinks more deeply into himself; "O
wisdom! thou speakest like a dove." In the other poem, _Künstlers
Erdewallen_ ("The Artist's Earthly Pilgrimage"), composed in the form
of a dialogue, we have equally a draft from Goethe's own experience.
To provide for his family needs, the artist is forced to prostitute
his genius by painting pictures for the vulgar _connoisseur_, and he
desponds at the prospect of a life spent under such conditions, but
the muse whispers consolation: "Thou hast time enough to take delight
in thyself, and in every creation which thy brush lovingly depicts."
It was a consolation which at this time and at other periods of his
life Goethe had to take home to himself.
CHAPTER X
_WERTHER_, _CLAVIGO_
1774
In his fortieth year Goethe wrote to Wieland: "Without compulsion,
there is in my case no hope."[150] So it was with him at every period
of his life; without some immediate impulse out of his own experience
or from the urgency of friends he was incapable of the sustained
inspiration requisite to the execution of a prolonged artistic whole.
We have seen how he dallied with the subject of _Götz von
Berlichingen_, and how it was only at the instance of his sister
Cornelia that he concentrated his energies in throwing it into
dramatic form. In the case of _Werther_ we have an illustration of the
same characteristic. Shortly after leaving Wetzlar, on hearing the
news of Jerusalem's death, there arose in him a pressing desire to
embody his late experience in some imaginative shape; and in the
course of the following year he actually addressed himself to the
task. But his inspiration flagged, and it was not till the beginning
of 1774 that a new experience supplied a fresh impulse constraining
him to complete the "prodigious little work" which was to take his
contemporaries by storm.
[Footnote 150: In his sixty-second year Goethe also said of himself:
"Denn gewöhnlich, was ich ausspreche, das tue ich nicht, und was ich
verspreche, das halte ich nicht."]
We have it from Goethe's own hand that it was a new and "painful
situation" that gave him the necessary stimulus to resume his work on
_Werther_ and to carry it to a conclusion. We have seen how on leaving
Wetzlar in the autumn of 1772 he had made the acquaintance of the
family von la Roche, and how he had been captivated by the elder
daughter, Maximiliane. Since then he had kept up a sentimental
correspondence with the mother in which we have occasional references
to his continued interest in the daughter. "Your Maxe," he wrote in
August, 1773, "I cannot do without so long as I live, and I shall
always venture to love her." This was, of course, in the current style
of the time, but a situation arose which made such amorous trifling
dangerous. On January 9th, 1774, the Fräulein von la Roche was married
to Peter Brentano, a dealer in herrings, oil, and cheese, a widower
with five children, with whom she settled in Frankfort. Goethe
immediately became an assiduous frequenter of the Brentano household,
where he was not unwelcome to the young wife, whose new surroundings
were in unpleasant contrast to those of the home she had left. But
Brentano was not so magnanimous as Kestner, and a fortnight had not
passed before there were "painful scenes" between him and Goethe. On
the 21st Goethe wrote as follows to the mother of Madame Brentano: "If
you knew what passed within me before I avoided the house, you would
not think, dear Mama, of luring me back to it again. I have in these
frightful moments suffered for all the future; I am now at peace, and
in peace let me remain."[151] He had now gone the round of all the
experiences embodied in _Werther_; on February 1st he resumed the
discontinued work, and, writing "almost in a state of somnambulism,"
finished it in a few weeks.
[Footnote 151: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 140.]
But besides his own immediate personal experience, there went other
influences to the production of _Werther_ which affected alike its
form and its contents. In his Autobiography Goethe has minutely
analysed these influences, and the most potent of them he traces to
the impression made by English literature on himself and his
contemporaries. What impressed them as the prevailing note of that
literature was a melancholy disillusion which regarded life as a sorry
business at the best, and Goethe specifies Young, Gray, and Ossian as
representative interpreters of this mood. In verses like these, he
says, we have the precise expression of the moral disease which he has
depicted in _Werther_:--
To griefs congenial prone,
More wounds than nature gave he knew;
While misery's form his fancy drew
In dark ideal hues and horrors not its own![152]
[Footnote 152: These lines are by the Earl of Rochester. On reading
the first English translation of _Werther_ (1783), Goethe wrote: "It
gave me much pleasure to read my thoughts in the language of my
instructors."]
If English literature contributed to the tone of feeling in _Werther_,
it also, though Goethe does not mention the fact, suggested the
literary form in which it is cast. In the case of his former loves,
his emotions had found vent in a succession of lyrics thrown off as
occasion prompted, but his later experiences had been of a more
complex nature, and demanded a larger canvas for their development. It
would appear that Goethe's original intention was to adopt the
dramatic form which had been so successful in the case of _Götz_, and
we are led to believe that, in accordance with this intention, he
actually made a beginning of his work. In the interval between his
discontinuing and resuming it, however, he changed his mind; and in
the form in which we have it _Werther_ is mainly composed of letters
addressed by its central character to an absent friend. There can be
little doubt that the epistolary form was suggested by a book with
which Goethe was familiar, and which had been received with enthusiasm
in Germany as in other continental countries--Richardson's _Clarissa
Harlowe_ (1747-8). Richardson's example, moreover, had been followed
in another work which had achieved as sensational as success as
_Clarissa_--Rousseau's _Nouvelle Héloïse_. In form and substance
_Werther_ was as much inspired by Richardson and Rousseau as _Götz_
had been by Shakespeare, yet in _Werther_, as in _Götz_, the world
recognised an original creation which bore a new message to every
heart capable of receiving it.
The portentous work was published in the autumn of 1774, but the form
in which we now have it belongs to a later date. In the first complete
edition of Goethe's Works (1787), _Werther_ appeared with certain
modifications, which did not, however, as in the case of _Götz_,
organically affect its original form.[153] Expressions which to
Goethe's maturer taste appeared objectionable were altered--not
always, German critics are disposed to think, in the direction of
improvement; the story of the unfortunate peasant in whose fate
Werther saw an image of his own, was introduced; and, in deference to
the feelings of Kestner and Lotte, the characters of the two persons
in the book with whom readers identified them were presented in a
somewhat more favourable light.[154]
[Footnote 153: In making these modifications Goethe was advised by
Herder and Wieland.]
[Footnote 154: Though to the satisfaction of neither Kestner nor
Lotte.]
With what degree of similitude Goethe has portrayed himself in the
character of Werther must necessarily be matter of opinion, but that
his work was essentially drawn from his own experience the merest
outline of it conclusively shows. Equally in the case of the two parts
of which the book is composed we have the presentment of successive
phases of emotion through which we know that he had himself passed
when he sat down to write it. The first part, the substance of which
was probably drafted in the year 1773, is all but an exact transcript
of Goethe's own experience from the day he settled in Wetzlar till the
day he left it. Like Goethe himself, Werther settles in the spring of
the year in a country town, unattractive like Wetzlar, but also, like
Wetzlar, situated in a charming neighbourhood. His first few weeks
there are spent as Goethe spent them--in daydreaming and vague
longings; finding distraction alternately in sketching, in reading
Homer, in intercourse with children and simple people, in
contemplations on nature and the life of man, inspired by Spinoza and
Rousseau. Then befalls the incident which also befell Goethe: he meets
a girl at a ball, and he is overmastered by a passion which changes
the current of his life and paralyses every other motive at its
source. At the first meeting Werther learns that Charlotte is
betrothed,[155] but her betrothed is absent, and, oblivious of the
future, he for a few weeks lives in a state of intoxicating bliss.
Albert, who, like Charlotte, has in the first part all the
characteristics of his original, at length appears on the scene, and
all three are gradually convinced that the situation is intolerable.
There are "painful scenes," such as, according to Kestner, actually
happened in Goethe's own case; and after an agonising struggle with
himself Werther succeeds in breaking away from the enchanted spot, the
last conversation between the three turning on the prospect of a
future life--a memory, as we have seen, of an actual talk between
Lotte, Kestner, and Goethe. So ends the first part, which, with
unimportant variations, is a close record of the circumstances of
Goethe's own sojourn in Wetzlar.
[Footnote 155: It was shortly after his meeting with Lotte Buff that
Goethe learned that she was engaged to Kestner.]
A tragic end to _Werther_ Goethe had before him from its first
conception, as is proved by his eagerness to ascertain the details of
Jerusalem's suicide. But to justify dramatically such an end to his
hero, certain modifications in the relations of all the three
characters were rendered necessary, and again his own experience
suggested the mode of treatment. In the uncomfortable relations that
had arisen between himself and the Brentanos, husband and wife, he
found a situation which would naturally involve a catastrophe in the
case of a character constituted like Werther. When in February, 1774,
therefore, he sat down to complete the tale of Werther's woes, it was
under a new inspiration that the characters of Albert and Charlotte
fashioned themselves in his mind. Not Kestner and Lotte Buff, but the
Brentanos, suggested their leading traits as well as the relations of
all parties, which involved the closing tragedy. Albert becomes a
jealous and somewhat morose husband, and Charlotte is depicted with
the characteristics of Maxe Brentano rather than of Lotte Buff--with a
more susceptible temperament and less self-control.[156]
[Footnote 156: Goethe gave the blue eyes of Maxe to Charlotte. Lotte
Buff's eyes were brown.]
In the opening of the second part the character of Werther is further
revealed in a new set of circumstances. Against his own inclinations
he accepts an official appointment under an ambassador at a petty
German Court, and his helpless unfitness in this situation for the
ordinary business of life may be regarded as a commentary on Goethe's
own invincible distaste for the practice of his profession. Werther
finds the ambassador intolerable; and a public insult to which, as a
commoner, he is subjected at a social gathering of petty nobility,
drives him to resign his post. After a few months' residence with a
prince, whose company in the end he finds uncongenial, he is
irresistibly drawn to the scenes of his former happiness and misery.
But in the interval an event happens which makes the renewal of old
relations impossible. Charlotte and Albert have married, and the sight
of Albert enjoying the privileges of a husband is a constant reminder
of the hopelessness of his passion. Blank despair gradually takes
possession of Werther's soul; in the hopeless wail of Ossian he finds
the only adequate expression of his fate.[157] In the commentary which
Goethe introduces to prepare readers for Werther's suicide, he
suggests another motive for the act besides Werther's infatuation for
Charlotte, which Napoleon as well as other critics have regarded as a
mistake in art. In his state of mental and moral paralysis, we are
told, Werther recalled all the misfortunes of his past life, and
specially the mortification he had received during his brief official
experience. But on the mind of the reader this incidental suggestion
of other motives makes little impression; he feels that Werther's
helpless abandonment to his passion for Charlotte is the central
interest of the author himself, as it is a wholly adequate cause of
the final catastrophe.
[Footnote 157: "Werther," Goethe remarked to Henry Crabb Robinson,
"praised Homer while he retained his senses, and Ossian when he was
going mad."]
By the fulness of its revelation of himself and by the impression it
made on the public mind _Werther_ holds a unique place among the
longer productions of Goethe. His own testimony, both at the time when
it was written and in his later years, is conclusive proof of the
degree to which it was a "general confession," as he himself calls it.
"I have lent my emotions to his (Werther's) history," he wrote shortly
after the completion of his work; "and so it makes a wonderful
whole."[158] In one of the best-known passages of his Autobiography he
tells how he morbidly dallied with the idea of suicide, and banished
the obsession only by convincing himself that he had not the courage
to plunge a dagger into his breast. In a remarkable passage, written
in his sixty-third year to his Berlin friend, Zelter, whose son had
committed suicide, he recalls with all seriousness the hypochondriacal
promptings which in his own case might have driven him to the fate of
Werther. "When the _tædium vitæ_ takes possession of a man," he wrote,
"he is to be pitied and not to be blamed. That all the symptoms of
this wonderful, equally natural and unnatural, disease at one time
also convulsed my inmost being, _Werther_, indeed, leaves no one in
doubt. I know right well what resolves and what efforts it cost me at
that time to escape the waves of death, as from many a later shipwreck
I painfully rescued myself and with painful struggles recovered my
health of mind." At a still later date (1824) Goethe expressed himself
with equal emphasis to the same purport. "That is a creation
(_Werther_)," he told Eckermann, "which I, like the pelican, fed with
the blood of my own heart. There is in it so much that was deepest in
my own experience, so much of my own thoughts and sensations, that, in
truth, a romance extending to ten such volumes might be made out of
it. Since its appearance, I have read it only once, and have refrained
from doing so again. It is nothing but a succession of rockets. I am
uneasy when I look at it, and dread the return of the psychological
condition out of which it sprang."
[Footnote 158: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 156.]
These repeated statements of Goethe, made at wide intervals of his
life, sufficiently prove what a large part of himself went to the
making of _Werther_. Yet Werther was not Goethe. From the fate of
Werther he was saved by two characteristics of which we have seen
frequent evidence in his previous history. It was not in his nature to
be dominated for any lengthened period by a single passion to the
exclusion of every other interest. No sooner had he left Wetzlar than
his heart was open to the charms of Maxe Brentano, and, during the
months that followed, her image and that of Lotte Buff alternately
distracted his susceptibilities. Byron declared that he was capable of
only one passion at a time, but Goethe was always capable of at least
two. The other characteristic equally distinguishes Goethe from
Werther. "I turn in upon myself," Werther writes, "and find a
world--but a world of presentiments and of dim desires, not a world of
definite outlines and of living force." Of a "living force" in himself
Goethe was never wholly unconscious; the record of his creative
efforts during the months that followed his leaving Wetzlar are
sufficient evidence of the fact. The intellectual side of his
nature--the impulse to know or to create--kept in check the emotional,
and proved his safeguard in more crises than the Wertherian period
during which, by his own testimony, he so narrowly escaped shipwreck.
The imprint of Goethe's character and genius which _Werther_ made on
the mind of his contemporaries was never effaced during his lifetime,
and was even a source of embarrassment to him in his future
development. For years after its appearance he found it necessary to
travel _incognito_ to avoid being pointed at as "the author of
_Werther_"; and in the case of each of his subsequent productions the
reading public had a feeling of disappointment that they were not
receiving what they expected from the writer who had once so
profoundly moved them. In truth, probably no book ever given to the
world has made such an instantaneous, profound, and general sensation
as _Werther_. The effect of _Götz von Berlichingen_ had as yet been
confined to Germany; on the publication of _Werther_ its author became
a European figure in the world of letters. In Germany _Werther_ was
hawked about as a chap-book; within three years three translations
appeared in France, and five years after its publication it was
translated into English. The dress worn by Werther (borrowed from
England), consisting of a blue coat, yellow vest, yellow hose, and
top-boots, became the fashion of the day and was sported even in
Paris.
Opinion in Germany had been divided on _Götz von Berlichingen_, but
the conflicting judgments on that work had turned only on questions of
dramatic propriety. The questions raised by _Werther_, on the other
hand, appeared to many to concern the very foundations of morality and
of human responsibility. Suicide, it was indignantly clamoured, was
sophistically justified in the person of Werther, and was clothed in
such specious hues as to present it in the light of a natural means
of escape from the troubles of life. On the ground of these supposed
sinister implications the sale of _Werther_ was prohibited in Leipzig
under a penalty of ten thalers, a translation of it was forbidden in
Denmark, and the Archbishop of Milan ordered it to be publicly burned
in that town. There was, of course, no thought in Goethe's mind of
recommending suicide by the example of Werther, but he felt the
reproach keenly, and indignantly repudiated it. Yet, when a few years
later, a young woman was found drowned in the Ilm at Weimar with a
copy of _Werther_ in her pocket, he was painfully reminded that the
book might be of dangerous consequence to a certain class of
minds.[159]
[Footnote 159: The judgment of Lessing, who had no sympathy with the
effeminate sentimentality of the time, was severe. "We cannot," he
said, "imagine a Greek or a Roman _Werther_; it was the Christian
ideal that had made such a character possible." Goethe, he thought,
should have added a cynical chapter (the more cynical the better) to
put _Werther's_ character in its true light. As the friend of
Jerusalem, Lessing naturally resented the liberty which Goethe had
taken with him.]
_Werther_ has been described as "the act of a conqueror and a
high-priest of art,"[160] and of the truth of this description we have
interesting proof from Goethe's own hand. In _Werther_ he had not only
given to the world a likeness of himself; in Albert and Charlotte he
had exhibited two figures who were at once identified as Kestner and
Lotte, now Kestner's wife. It was not only that domestic privacy was
thus invaded, but the characters assigned to Albert and Charlotte were
such as could not fail to give just offence to their originals. Yet
in the triumph of the artist it seems never to have occurred to Goethe
that Kestner and Lotte would resent the licence he had taken with
them. On the eve of the publication of _Werther_ he sent a copy of it
to Lotte, informing her at the same time that he had kissed it a
thousand times before sending it, and praying her not to make it
public till it was given to the world at the approaching Leipzig fair.
It came as a surprise to him, therefore, when he received a letter of
reproach from Kestner, protesting against the injurious presentment of
himself and his wife in the book. In a first reply, Goethe frankly
admitted his indiscretion, but in a second letter he took a bolder
tone. "Oh! ye unbelieving ones, I would proclaim ye of little faith,"
he wrote. "Could you but realise the thousandth part of what _Werther_
is to a thousand hearts, you would not reckon the cost it has been to
you."[161] Lotte and Kestner, from all we know of them, were both
persons of sound nature, not unduly sensitive, and, in their hearts,
they may not have been displeased at their association with the
brilliant youth of genius on whom the eyes of the world were now
turned. At all events, neither appears to have borne him a permanent
grudge for presenting them to the public in such a dubious light.
Though, as has already been said, correspondence between Goethe and
them gradually became more and more intermittent, mutual respect and
cordiality remained, and in later years we find Goethe in the capacity
of sage adviser to the prudent Kestner.[162]
[Footnote 160: By Sainte-Beuve.]
[Footnote 161: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 207.]
[Footnote 162: The family of Kestner eventually published the
correspondence of Goethe with their parents.--A. Kestner, _Goethe und
Werther, Briefe Goethes, meistens aus seiner Jugendheit, mit
erläuternden Documenten_ (Stuttgart und Tübingen, 1854).]
The subsequent influence of _Werther_ was at once more powerful and
more enduring than the influence of _Götz von Berlichingen_, and
Goethe himself has suggested the reason. The so-called _Werther_
"period," he says, belongs to no special age of the world's culture,
but to the life of every free spirit that chafes under obsolete
traditions, obstructed happiness, cramped activity, and unfulfilled
desires. "A sorry business it would be," he adds, "if once in his life
every one did not pass through an epoch when _Werther_ appeared to
have been specially written for him."[163] The long series of
imitations of Werther--_René_, _Obermann_, _Childe Harold_, _Adolphe_
(to mention only the best-known)--bears out Goethe's remark that
Wertherism belongs to no particular age of the world, though it may
assume various forms and be expressed in different tones.[164] But in
Goethe's little book the name and the thing Wertherism has received
its "immortal _cachet_." To the intrinsic power of _Werther_ it is the
supreme tribute that Napoleon, the first European man in the world of
action, as Goethe was the first in the world of thought, read it seven
times in the course of his life, that he carried it with him as his
companion in his Egyptian campaign, and that in his interview with
Goethe he made it the principal theme of their conversation. To the
literary youth of Germany, we are told, _Werther_ no longer appeals;
but such statements can be based only on conjecture, and we may be
certain that in all countries there are still to be found readers to
whom the record of Werther's woes seems to have been written for
themselves.[165]
[Footnote 163: Eckermann, _op. cit._, January 2nd, 1824.]
[Footnote 164: The _accidie_ of the Middle Ages was a form of
Wertherism. _Cf._ Chaucer's _Parson's Tale_.]
[Footnote 165: It may be recalled that _Werther_ was throughout his
life one of R.L. Stevenson's favourite books. See his Letter to Mrs.
Sitwell, September 6th, 1873, [Transcriber's Note: corrected error
"1773"] and ch. xix. of _The Wrecker_.]
By a curious coincidence Goethe had hardly made a "general confession"
in the writing of _Werther_ when he was led to make another
"confession" in a work of less resounding notoriety, but equally
interesting as a revelation of himself. In his Autobiography he has
related the origin of the piece. In the spring of 1774 there fell into
his hands the recently published _Mémoires_[166] of the French
playwright Beaumarchais, which told a story that reawakened painful
memories of his own past. Beaumarchais had two sisters in Madrid, one
married to an architect; the other, named Marie, betrothed to Clavigo,
a publicist of rising fame. On Clavigo's promotion to the post of
royal archivist he throws his betrothed over, and the news of his
faithlessness brings Beaumarchais to Madrid. In an interview with
Clavigo he compels him, under the threat of a duel, to write and
subscribe a confession of his unjustifiable treachery. To avert
exposure, however, Clavigo offers to renew his engagement to Marie,
and Beaumarchais accepts the condition. Clavigo again plays false, and
obtains from the authorities an order expelling Beaumarchais from
Madrid. Through the good offices of a retired Minister, however,
Beaumarchais succeeds in communicating the whole story to the king,
with the result that Clavigo is dismissed from his post.
[Footnote 166: _Fragment de mon voyage d'Espagne.--Mémoires de
Monsieur Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais_, tome ii.]
We see the points in the narrative of Beaumarchais which must have
touched Goethe to the quick. He also had played the false lover to
Friederike Brion, who, however, had no brother like Marie to call him
to account. It was characteristic of him that, on reading the
_Mémoire_, it at once struck him as affording an appropriate theme for
dramatic treatment, and it was further characteristic that he needed
an immediate stimulus to incite him to the task. He has told us how
the stimulus came. As a diversion to relieve the monotony of Frankfort
society, the youths and maidens of Goethe's circle had arranged for a
time to play at married couples, and, as it happened, the same maiden
fell thrice to Goethe's lot.[167] At one of the meetings of the
couples he read aloud the narrative of Beaumarchais, and his partner
suggested that he should turn it into a play. The suggestion, he
relates, supplied the needed stimulus, and a week later the completed
play was read to the reassembled circle.
[Footnote 167: Of all the women who came in her son's way, Frau Goethe
thought that this lady, Anna Sibylla Münch by name, would have made
him the most suitable partner in life.]
The first four Acts of the play, which Goethe entitled _Clavigo_, are
simply the narrative of Beaumarchais cut into scenes, and they contain
long passages directly translated from the original--a proceeding
which Goethe justifies by the example of "our progenitor Shakespeare."
In the first Scene of the first Act we are introduced to Clavigo and
Carlos discussing the prospects of the former. Clavigo, who is
represented as a publicist of genius, with a great career before him,
is distracted by the conflict between his ambition and the sense of
honour and gratitude which should bind him to his betrothed Marie, a
sickly girl, by position and character unsuited to be the helpmate of
an ambitious man of the world. Unstable and irresolute, he is as clay
in the hands of Carlos, who plays the part of the shrewd and cynical
adviser to his friend, in whose genius and brilliant future he has
unbounded confidence. As the result of their talk, Clavigo decides
with some compunction to abandon Marie, and, as his fortunes rise, to
find a more suitable mate. In the second Scene the other characters of
the play are brought before us--Marie Beaumarchais, her sister
Sophie, married to Guilbert, an architect, and Don Buenco, a
disappointed lover of Marie. The theme of their conversation is the
ingratitude and faithlessness of Clavigo, to whom, however, Marie,
dying of consumption, still clings with fond idolatry. At the close of
the Scene Beaumarchais appears, breathing vengeance on Clavigo if he
finds him without justification for his conduct. In the second Act,
which consists of only one Scene, Beaumarchais carries out his purpose
and compels Clavigo under threat of a duel to write with his own hand
an abject acknowledgment of his baseness. In consistency with his
fickle nature, however, Clavigo prays Beaumarchais to report to Marie
his unfeigned remorse and his desire to renew their former relations.
Beaumarchais agrees to convey the message, and departs under the
impression that he has saved the honour of his sister. In the third
Act Clavigo and Marie are reconciled, their marriage is arranged, and
Beaumarchais destroys the incriminating document. The fourth Act
consists of two Scenes. In the first, Carlos convinces Clavigo of his
folly in compromising his career by a foolish union, and persuades him
to break his pledge, undertaking at the same time to get Beaumarchais
out of the way. The second Scene represents the dismay of the Guilbert
household on the discovery of Clavigo's renewed treachery,
Beaumarchais vowing vengeance on the double-dyed traitor, and Marie in
a dying state attended by a hastily-summoned physician. In the fifth
Act the play breaks with the narrative of Beaumarchais, which does not
supply material for the necessary tragic conclusion, and is based on
an old German ballad, with an evident recollection of the scene of
Hamlet and Laertes at the grave of Ophelia. While stealing from his
house under cover of night, as had been arranged with Carlos, Clavigo
passes the Guilberts' door, where he sees three mourners standing with
torches in their hands. On inquiry he learns that Marie Beaumarchais
is dead; and presently the body is brought forth attended by Guilbert,
Don Buenco, and Beaumarchais. Then ensues a passionate scene in which
Beaumarchais slays Clavigo, and the Act closes with expressions of
tenderness and compunction on the part of all the chief persons
concerned.
In a letter to a friend[168] Goethe explained that in writing
_Clavigo_ he had blended the character and action of Beaumarchais with
characters and actions drawn from his own experience; and this
description strictly corresponds with the play as we have it. Though
in the first four Acts, as we have seen, the incidents are directly
taken from Beaumarchais and many passages in them are simply
translations, the characters of the leading personages--Clavigo,
Carlos, Marie, and Beaumarchais--are entirely of Goethe's own
creation. Moreover, in what is original in the dialogues there are
touches everywhere introduced which are not to be found in the
original, and which are precisely those that are of special interest
for the student of Goethe. Of the play as a work of art he was himself
complacently proud. It was written, as he tells us, with the express
intention of proving to the world that he could produce a piece in
strict accordance with the dramatic canons which he had flouted in
_Götz von Berlichingen_.[169] "I challenge the most critical knife,"
he proudly wrote to the same correspondent, "to separate the directly
translated passages from the whole without mangling it, without
inflicting deadly wounds, not to say only on the narrative, but on the
structure, the living organism of the piece." In _Clavigo_, at least,
he has achieved what he failed to achieve in any other in the long
series of his dramatic productions; it proved a successful acting
play, and is still produced with acceptance to the present time. Yet
from the beginning those who have admired Goethe's genius most have
shaken their heads over _Clavigo_. It was to be expected that the
youthful geniuses of the _Sturm und Drang_ would be wrathful at the
apostacy of their protagonist, who in _Götz von Berlichingen_ had set
at naught all the traditional rules of the drama. But more discerning
critics, then and since, have expressed their dissatisfaction on other
grounds. There are in _Clavigo_ no elements of greatness such as
appear even through the immaturities of _Götz_ and _Werther_. Clavigo
himself is so poor a creature as to leave the reader with no other
feeling for him than contempt; Marie is characterless; and the other
persons in the play have not sufficient scope to become well-defined
figures. And the last Act, the only original addition to Beaumarchais'
narrative, is in a style of cheap melodrama which, coming from the
hand of Goethe, can be regarded only as a weak concession to the
sentimentalism of the Darmstadt circle. "You must give us no more such
stuff; others can do that," was Merck's mordant comment on _Clavigo_.
Merck's opinion may have been influenced by the fact that in the
cynical Carlos there are unpleasing traits of himself, but succeeding
admirers of the Master have for the most part been in agreement with
him.[170]
[Footnote 168: To Fritz Jacobi, August 21st, 1774.]
[Footnote 169: In language, as well as in form, _Clavigo_ followed
traditional models. Wieland was naturally gratified by Goethe's return
to those models which he had set at defiance in _Götz_.]
[Footnote 170: In his Autobiography Goethe expresses the opinion that
Merck's advice was not sound, and that he might have done wisely in
producing a succession of plays like _Clavigo_, some of which, like
it, might have retained their place on the stage.]
But if _Clavigo_ is not to be ranked among the greater works of
Goethe, as a biographical document it is even more important than
_Werther_. In the Weislingen of _Götz_ he had drawn a portrait of
himself, and in _Clavigo_ he has drawn a similar portrait at fuller
length. "I have been working at a tragedy, _Clavigo_," he wrote to a
correspondent, "a modern anecdote dramatised with all possible
simplicity and sincerity; my hero, an irresolute, half-great,
half-little man, the pendant to Weislingen in _Götz_ or rather
Weislingen himself, developed into a leading character. In it," he
adds, "there are scenes which I could only indicate in _Götz_ for fear
of weakening the main interest." In _Clavigo_ we have at once a fuller
revelation of himself and of his own personal experience. He is here,
in a manner, holding a dialogue with himself regarding his own
character and his own past life. In the first Scene of the first Act
we must recognise a vivid presentment of the state of Goethe's own
feelings at the crisis when he abandoned Friederike. In such a passage
as the following Carlos only expresses what must then have passed
through Goethe's own mind: "And to marry! to marry just when life
ought to come into its first full swing; to settle down to humdrum
domestic life; to limit one's being, when one has not yet done with
half of one's roving; has not completed half of one's conquests!" Out
of Goethe's own heart, also, must have come these words of Clavigo:
"She [Marie] has vanished, clean vanished from my heart!... That man
is so fickle a being!" What was said of Werther as the counterpart of
Goethe applies, of course, equally in the case of Clavigo. Goethe was
not at any moment the feeble creature we have in Clavigo, yet in
Clavigo's inconstancy and ambition, in his womanish susceptibility and
the need of his nature for external stimulus and counsel, we have a
portrayal of Goethe of which every trait holds true at all periods of
his life. In the Maries of _Götz_ and _Clavigo_, both betrayed by
false lovers, Goethe tells us that we may find a penitent confession
of his own conduct towards Friederike. But assuredly it was not with
the primary intention of making this confession that either play was
written. Both plays, in truth, are evidence of what is borne out in
the long series of his imaginative productions from _Götz_ to the
Second Part of Faust: their conception, their informing spirit, their
essential tissue come immediately from Goethe's own intellectual and
emotional experience. Objective dramatic treatment of persons or
events was incompatible with that passionate interest in the problems
of nature and human life by which he was possessed at every stage of
his development.
CHAPTER XI
GOETHE AND SPINOZA--_DER EWIGE JUDE_
1773-4
If we are to accept Goethe's own statement, during the years
1773-4--the distracted period, that is to say, which followed his
experiences at Wetzlar, and of which _Werther_ and _Clavigo_ are the
characteristic products--he came under the influence of a thinker who
transformed his conceptions, equally of the conduct of life and of
man's relations to the universe--the Jewish thinker, Benedict Spinoza.
The passage in which he expresses his debt to Spinoza is one of the
best known in all his writings, and is, moreover, a _locus classicus_
in the histories of speculative philosophy. "After looking around me
in vain for a means of disciplining my peculiar nature, I at last
chanced upon the _Ethica_ of this man. To say exactly how much I
gained from that work was due to Spinoza or to my own reading of him
would be impossible; enough that I found in him a sedative for my
passions and that he appeared to me to open up a large and free
outlook on the material and moral world. But what specially attached
me to him was the boundless disinterestedness which shone forth from
every sentence. That marvellous saying, 'Whoso truly loves God must
not desire God to love him in return,' with all the premises on which
it rests and the consequences that flow from it, permeated my whole
thinking. To be disinterested in everything, and most of all in love
and friendship, was my highest desire, my maxim, my constant practice;
so that that bold saying of mine at a later date, 'If I love Thee,
what is that to Thee?' came directly from my heart."[171]
[Footnote 171: Saying of Philine in _Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre_, bk.
iv. ch. ix.]
What is surprising is that of this spiritual and intellectual
transformation which Goethe avouches that he underwent there should be
so little evidence either in his contemporary correspondence or in the
conduct of his own life. In his letters of the period to which he
refers he frequently names the authors with whom he happened to be
engaged, but Spinoza he mentions only once, and certainly not in terms
which confirm his later testimony. In a letter to a correspondent who
had lent him a work of Spinoza we have these casual words: "May I keep
it a little longer? I will only see how far I may follow the fellow
(_Menschen_) in his subterranean borings." Whether he actually carried
out his intention, or what impression the reading of the book made
upon him, we are nowhere told, though, if the impression had been as
profound as his Autobiography suggests, we should naturally have
expected some hint of it. In his _Prometheus_, indeed, as we have
seen, there are suggestions of Spinozistic pantheism, but these may
easily have been derived from other sources, and, moreover, in the
passage quoted, the pantheistic conceptions of Spinoza are not
specifically emphasised. We know, also, that in preparing his thesis
for the Doctorate of Laws he had consulted Spinoza's _Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus_, and the scathing criticism on the perversions
of the teaching of Christ in that treatise may have suggested certain
passages in a poem presently to be noted.[172] Yet, so far as his own
contemporary testimony goes, we are led to conclude that in his
retrospect he has assigned to an earlier period experiences which were
of gradual growth, and which only at a later date were realised with
the vividness he ascribes to them. If we turn to his actual life
during the same period, it is equally hard to trace in it the results
of the tranquillising influence which he ascribes to Spinoza. As we
have seen him, he was in mind distracted by uncertainty regarding the
special function for which nature intended him; and in his affections
the victim of emotions which by their very nature could not receive
their full gratification. Nor can we say that his relations to his
father, to Kestner, or Brentano were characterised by that
"disinterestedness" which he claims to have attained from his study of
Spinoza. As we shall presently see, Goethe was so far accurate in his
retrospect that at the period before us he was already attracted by
the figure of Spinoza, but it was not till many years later that a
close acquaintance with Spinoza's writings resulted in that
indebtedness to which he gave expression when he said that, with
Linnæus and Shakespeare, the Jewish thinker was one of the great
formative influences in his development.
[Footnote 172: An entry in his _Ephemerides_, the diary which he kept
in his 21st year (see above, p. 102), shows that Spinoza's philosophy,
as he conceived it, was then repugnant to him. The passage is as
follows: "Testimonio enim mihi est virorum tantorum sententia, rectae
rationi quam convenientissimum fuisse systema emanativum (he is
thinking specially of Giordano Bruno); licet nulli subscribere velim
sectae, valdeque doleam Spinozismum, teterrimis erroribus ex eodem
fonte manantibus, doctrinae huic purissimae, iniquissimum fratrem
natum esse."--Max Morris, _op. cit._ ii. 33.]
To the same period to which Goethe assigns his transformation by
Spinoza he also assigns the original conception of a work in which
Spinoza was, at least, to find a place. As has been said, there are
passages in the fragments of this poem that were actually written
which may have been suggested by the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_
of Spinoza, but the general tone and tendency of the fragments are
equally remote from the temper and the contemplations of the Spinoza
whom the world knows. The dominant note of _Der Ewige Jude_, as the
fragments are designated, is, indeed, suggestive, not of Spinoza,
but of him who may already have been in embryo in Goethe's
mind--Mephistopheles. Mephistophelian is the ironical presentment in
_Der Ewige Jude_ of the follies, the delusions of man in his highest
aspirations.
Near the close of his life it was said of Goethe that the world would
come to believe that there had been not one but many Goethes,[173] and
the contrast between the author of _Werther_ and the author of _Der
Ewige Jude_ is an interesting commentary on the remark. Yet the
subject of the abortive poem, as we have it--the perversions of
Christianity in its historical development--was not a new interest for
him. During his illness after his return from Leipzig he had, as we
saw, assiduously read Arnold's _History of Heretics_,[174] with the
result that he excogitated a religious system for himself. His two
contributions to the short-lived Review also show that religion,
doctrinal and historical, was still a living interest for him.
Moreover, as was usually the case with all his creative efforts, there
were external promptings to his choice of the subject which is the
main theme of the fragments in question. The religious world of
Germany at this period was distracted by the controversies of warring
theologians. There were the rationalists, who would bring all
religion, natural and revealed, to the bar of human reason; there were
the dogmatists, who thought religion could never rest on a secure
foundation except it were embodied in an array of definite formulas;
and, lastly, there were the pietists, or mystics, for whom religion
was a matter of pious feeling independent of all dogma. In the
spectacle of these Christians reprobating each others' creeds Goethe
saw a theme for a moral satire which, fragment as it is, takes its
place with the most powerful efforts of his genius.
[Footnote 173: By Felix Mendelssohn.]
[Footnote 174: See above, p. 65.]
Yet, as originally conceived, _Der Ewige Jude_ was apparently to have
been worked out along other lines. What this original conception was,
Goethe tells in some detail in his Autobiography; and, as it is there
expounded, we see the scope of a poem which, if the power apparent in
the existing fragments had gone to the making of it, would have taken
its place with _Faust_ among the great imaginative works of human
genius. The theme of the poem was to be the Wandering Jew, with whose
legend Goethe was familiar from chap-books he had read in childhood.
The poem was to open with an account of the circumstances in which the
curse of Cain was incurred by Ahasuerus, the name assigned in the
legend to the Wandering Jew. Ahasuerus was to be represented as a
shoemaker of the type of Hans Sachs--a kind of Jewish Socrates who
freely plied his wit in putting searching questions to the casual
passers-by. Recognised as an original, persons of all ranks and
opinions, even the Sadducees and Pharisees, would stop by the way and
engage in talk with him. He was to be specially interested in Jesus,
with whom he was to hold frequent conversations, but whose idealism
his matter-of-fact nature was incapable of understanding. When, in the
teeth of his protestations, Jesus pursued his mission and was finally
condemned to death, Ahasuerus would only have hard words for his
folly. Judas was then to be represented as entering the workshop and
explaining that his act of treachery had been intended to force Jesus
to become the national deliverer and declare himself king, but Judas
receives no comfort from Ahasuerus, and straightway takes his own
life. Then was to follow the scene retailed in the legend--Jesus
fainting at Ahasuerus's door on his way to death; Simon the Cyrenian
relieving him of the burden of the Cross; the reproaches of Ahasuerus
addressed to the Saviour for neglecting his counsel; the transfigured
features on the handkerchief of St. Veronica; and the words of the
Lord dooming his stiff-necked gainsayer to wander to and fro on earth
till his second coming. As the subsequent narrative was to be
developed, it was to illustrate the outstanding events in the history
of Christianity--one incident in the experience of the Wanderer marked
for treatment being an interview with Spinoza.
In concluding the sketch of the poem as he originally conceived it,
Goethe remarks that he found he had neither the knowledge nor the
concentration of purpose necessary for its adequate treatment; and in
point of fact, in the fragment as it exists there is little
suggestion of the original conception. The title which Goethe himself
gave it at a later date, _Gedicht der Ankunft des Herrn_, more fitly
describes it than the title _Der Ewige Jude_. Of the two main sections
into which the poem is divided, the first, extending to over seventy
lines, corresponds most closely to the original conception. In twenty
introductory lines the poet describes how the inspiration to sing the
wondrous experiences of the much-travelled man had come to him. The
note struck in these lines is maintained throughout the remainder of
the fragment. It is a note of ironic persiflage which is plainly
indicated to the reader. In lack of a better Pegasus, a broomstick
will serve the poet's purpose, and the reader is invited to take or
leave the gibberish as he pleases. Then follows a description of the
shoemaker, who is represented as half Essene, half Methodist or
Moravian, but still more of a Separatist--certainly not the type
originally conceived by Goethe as that of the Wandering Jew. The
shoemaker is, in fact, a sectary of Goethe's own time, discontented
with the religious world around him, and convinced that salvation is
only to be found in his own petty sect. Equally as a picture of
historical Christianity in all ages is meant the satirical presentment
of the religious condition of Judæa--of indolent and luxurious church
dignitaries, fanatics looking for signs and wonders, denouncing the
sins of their generation, and giving themselves up to the antics of
the spirit.
But it is in the last and longest segment of the poem that its real
power and interest are to be found. Its theme is the second coming of
Christ and his experiences in lands professing his religion. In a
scene, compared with which the Prologue in Heaven of Faust is
decorous, God the Father ironically suggests that the Son would find
scope for his friendly feeling to the human kind if he were to pay a
visit to the earth. Alighting on the mountain where Satan had tempted
him, the Son, filled with tender yearning for the race for whom he had
died, has already anxious forebodings of woe on earth. In a soliloquy,
which we may take as the expression of Goethe's own deepest feelings,
as it is the expression of his finest poetic gift, he gives utterance
to his boundless love for man, and his compassion for a world where
truth and error, happiness and misery, are inextricably linked.
Continuing his descent, he first visits the Catholic countries where
he finds that in the multitude of crosses Christ and the Cross are
forgotten. Passing into a land where Protestantism is the professed
religion, he sees a similar state of things. He meets by the way a
country parson who has a fat wife and many children, and "does not
disturb himself about God in Heaven." Next he requests to be conducted
to the Oberpfarrer of the neighbourhood, in whom he might expect to
find "a man of God," and the fragment ends with an account of his
interview with the Oberpfarrer's cook, Hogarthian in its broad humour,
but disquieting even to the reader who may hold with Jean Paul that
the test of one's faith is the capacity to laugh at its object.
Goethe forbade the publication of _Der Ewige Jude_, and we can
understand his reason for the prohibition.[175] To many persons for
whose religious feelings he had a genuine respect--to his mother among
others--the poem would have been a cause of offence of which Goethe
was not the man to be guilty. Moreover, a continuous work in such a
vein was alien to Goethe's own genius. As we have them, the fragments
are but another specimen of that "godlike insolence" which, in his
later years, he found in his satires on Herder, Wieland, and others.
[Footnote 175: It was first published in 1836, four years after his
death.]
CHAPTER XII
GOETHE IN SOCIETY
1774
The publication of _Götz von Berlichingen_ in the spring of 1773, we
have seen, had made Goethe known to the literary world of Germany, and
a figure of prime interest to its leading representatives. Hitherto,
nevertheless, with the exception of Herder, he had come into personal
contact with no men of outstanding note who might hold intercourse
with him on anything like equal terms. In the summer of 1774, however,
when _Clavigo_ and _Werther_ were on the eve of publication, he was
brought into contact with three men, all of whom had already achieved
reputation in their respective spheres; and all of whom had visions as
distinct from each other as they were distinct from Goethe's own. As
it happens, we have records of their intercourse from the hands of
three of the four, and, taken together, they present a picture of the
youthful Goethe which leaves little to be desired in its fidelity, in
its definiteness, in its vividness of colour. During the greater part
of two months (from the last week in June till the middle of August)
he comes before us in all the splendour of his youthful genius, with
all his wild humours, his audacities, his overflowing vitality.
The first of these three notabilities who came in Goethe's way was one
of whom he himself said, "that the world had never seen his like, and
will not see his like again." He was Johann Kaspar Lavater, born in
Zurich in 1741, and thus eight years older than Goethe. Lavater had
early drawn the attention of the world to himself. In his sixteenth
year he had published a volume of poems (_Schweizerlieder_) which
attained a wide circulation, and a later work (_Aussichten in die
Ewigkeit_) found such acceptance from its vein of mystical piety that
he was hailed as a religious teacher who had given a new savour to the
Christian life. At the time when he crossed Goethe's path he was
engaged on the work on Physiognomy with which his name is chiefly
associated, and it was partly with the object of collecting the
materials for that work that he was now visiting Germany. But the
personality of Lavater was more remarkable than his writings. By his
combination of the saint and the man of the world he made a unique
impression on all who met him, on Goethe notably among others. That
his religious feelings were sincere his lifelong preoccupation with
the character of Christ as the great exemplar of humanity may be
taken as sufficient proof. To impress the world with the conception he
had formed of the person of Christ was the mission of his life, and it
was in the carrying out of this mission that his remarkable
characteristics came into play. With a face and expression which
suggested the Apostle John, he exhibited in society a tact and address
which, at this period at least, did not compromise his religious
professions. Next to his interest in the Founder of Christianity was
his interest in human character, and his divination of the working of
men's minds was such that, according to Goethe, it produced an uneasy
feeling to be in his presence. Be it added that Lavater was in full
sympathy with the leaders of the _Sturm und Drang_ as emancipators
from dead formalism, and the champions of natural feeling as opposed
to cold intelligence. Such was the remarkable person with whom Goethe
was thrown into contact during a few notable weeks, and who has
recorded his impressions of him with the insight of a discerner of
spirits. As time was to show, they were divided in their essential
modes of thought and feeling by as wide a gulf as can separate man
from man, and in later years Lavater's compromises with the world in
the prosecution of his mission drew from Goethe more stinging comments
than he has used in the case of almost any other person.[176] In the
passages of his Autobiography, where he records his first intercourse
with Lavater, though his tone is distinctly critical, of bitterness
there is no trace, and there is the frankest testimony to Lavater's
personal fascination and the stimulating interest of his mind and
character.
[Footnote 176: In one of his _Xenien_ Goethe speaks thus of Lavater:--
"Schade, dass die Natur nur einen Menschen aus dir schuf,
Denn zum würdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff."]
Relations between the two had begun a year before their actual
meeting. Lavater had read Goethe's _Letter of the Pastor_, and his
interest in its general line of thought led him to open a
correspondence with its author. The reading of _Götz_, a copy of which
Goethe sent to him, convinced him that a portent had appeared in the
literary world. "I rejoice with trembling," he wrote to Herder; "among
all writers I know no greater genius." Before they met, indeed,
Lavater was already dominated by a force that brought home to him a
sense of his own weakness to which he gave artless expression. In some
lines he addressed to Goethe he takes the tone of a humble disciple,
and prays that out of his fulness he would communicate ardour to his
feelings and light to his intelligence. Yet in Lavater's eyes Goethe
was a brand to be plucked from the burning, and, born proselytiser as
he was, he even made the attempt to convert Goethe to his own views of
ultimate salvation. In response to his appeal Goethe wrote a letter
which should have convinced Lavater that he was dealing with a son of
Adam with the ineradicable instincts of the natural man.[177] "Thank
you, dear brother," he wrote, "for your ardour regarding your
brother's eternal happiness. Believe me, the time will come when we
shall understand each other. You hold converse with me as with an
unbeliever--one who insists on understanding, on having proofs, who
has not been schooled by experience. And the contrary of all this is
my real feeling. Am I not more resigned in the matter of understanding
and proving than yourself? Perhaps I am foolish in not giving you the
pleasure of expressing myself in your language, and in not showing to
you by laying bare my deepest experiences that I am a man and
therefore cannot feel otherwise than other men, and that all the
apparent contradiction between us is only strife of words which arises
from the fact that I realise things under other combinations than you,
and that in expressing their relativity I must call them by other
names; and this has from the beginning been the source of all
controversies, and will be to the end. And you will be for ever
plaguing me with evidences! And to what end? Do I require evidence
that I exist? evidence that I feel? I treasure, cherish, and revere
only such evidences as prove to me that thousands, or even one, have
felt that which strengthens and consoles me. And, therefore, the word
of man is for me the word of God, whether by parsons or prostitutes
it has been brought together, enrolled in the canon, or flung as
fragments to the winds. And with my innermost soul I fall as a brother
on the neck of Moses! Prophet! Evangelist! Apostle! Spinoza or
Machiavelli! But to each I am permitted to say: 'Dear friend, it is
with you as it is with me; in the particular you feel yourself grand
and mighty, but the whole goes as little into your head as into
mine.'"
[Footnote 177: The letter is addressed to Heinrich Pfenninger, an
engraver in Zurich, who engraved some of the plates in Lavater's book
on Physiognomy.--_Werke, Briefe_, Band ii. pp. 155-6.]
On June 23rd Lavater arrived in Frankfort, where during four days he
was entertained as a guest in the Goethe household. The news of his
coming had created a lively interest in all sections of the community,
and during his stay he was besieged by admiring crowds, especially of
women, who insisted even on seeing the bedchamber where the prophet
slept. "The pious souls," was Merck's sardonic comment, "wished to see
where they had laid the Lord"; but even Merck came under the prophet's
spell. The meeting of Lavater and Goethe was characteristic of the
time. "_Bist's?_" was Lavater's first exclamation. "_Ich bin's_," was
the reply; and they fell upon each other's necks. On Lavater's
indicating "by some singular exclamations" that Goethe was not exactly
what he expected, Goethe replied in the tone of banter which he
maintained throughout their personal intercourse, that he was as God
and nature had made him, and they must be content with their work.
"All spirit (_Geist_) and truth,"[178] is Lavater's comment on
Goethe's conversation at the close of their first day's meeting.
[Footnote 178: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 33.]
The following days were taken up with excursions and social gatherings
in which Lavater was the central figure, entrancing his hearers by his
social graces and his apostolic unction. In the Fräulein von
Klettenberg he found a kindred soul, and Goethe listened, as he tells
us, with profit as they discoursed on the high themes in which they
had a common interest. If he derived profit, it was not of a nature
that Lavater and the Fräulein would have desired. With the religious
opinions of neither was he in sympathy, and when they rejected his
own, he says, he would badger them with paradoxes and exaggerations,
and, if they became impatient, would leave them with a jest. What is
noteworthy in Lavater's record, indeed, is Goethe's communicativeness
and spontaneity in all that concerned himself. "So soon as we enter
society," is one of his remarks recorded by Lavater, "we take the key
out of our hearts and put it in our pockets. Those who allow it to
remain there are blockheads."[179]
[Footnote 179: _Ib._ p. 34.]
During his stay in Frankfort Lavater was so constantly surrounded by
his admirers that Goethe saw comparatively little of him. On June 28th
Lavater left for Ems, and it is a testimony to their mutual attraction
that Goethe accompanied him. The day's journey seems to have left an
abiding impression on Goethe's memory, as he makes special reference
to it in his record of Lavater's visit; and, as it happens, Lavater
noted in his Diary the principal topics of their conversation.
Travelling in a private carriage during the long summer day, they had
an opportunity for abundant talk such as did not occur again. One
theme on which Goethe spoke with enthusiasm, it is interesting to
note, was Spinoza and his writings, but, as his talk is reported by
Lavater, there was no hint in it of the profound change which the
study of Spinoza had effected in him. It was to the man and not the
thinker that he paid his reverential tribute--to the purity,
simplicity, and high wisdom of his life. But Goethe's own literary
preoccupations appear to have been the chief subject of their talk. He
spoke of a play on Julius Cæsar on which he was engaged, and which
remained one of his many abortive ambitions; he read passages from
_Der Ewige Jude_, "a singular thing in doggerel verse," Lavater calls
it; recited a romance translated from the Scots dialect; and narrated
for Lavater's benefit the whole story of the Iliad, reading passages
of the poem from a Latin translation. The memorable day was not to be
repeated. At Ems, as at Frankfort, Lavater was taken possession of by
a throng of worshippers, and the state of his own affairs at home
afforded Goethe an excuse for leaving him.
By a curious coincidence, shortly after Goethe's return, there arrived
another prophet in Frankfort--also, like Lavater, out on a mission of
his own. This was Johann Bernhard Basedow, whose character and career
had made him one of the remarkable figures of his time in Germany.
Born in Hamburg in 1723, the son of a peruke-maker there, in conduct
and opinions he had been at odds with society from the beginning. In
middle age he had come under the influence of Rousseau, and
thenceforth he made it his mission by word and deed to realise
Rousseau's ideals in education. He had expounded his theories in
voluminous publications which had attracted wide attention, and the
object of his present travels was to collect funds to establish a
school at Dessau in which his educational views should be carried into
effect.[180] Goethe, as he himself tells us, had as little sympathy
with the gospel of Basedow as with that of Lavater, but, always
attracted to originals, Basedow's personality amused and interested
him. What gave point to his curiosity was the piquancy of the contrast
between the two prophets. Lavater was all grace, purity, and
refinement; "in his presence one shrank like a maiden from hurting his
feelings." In appearance, voice, manner, on the other hand, Basedow
was the incarnation of a hectoring bully, as regardless of others'
feelings as he was impermeable in his own. His personal habits, also,
were a further trial, as he drank more than was good for him and lived
in an atmosphere of vile tobacco smoke. Such was the singular mortal
whose society Goethe deliberately sought and cultivated during the
next few weeks as opportunity offered.
[Footnote 180: The school was actually founded in 1774, but
subsequently, owing to quarrels with his colleagues, Basedow had to
leave it. It was closed in 1793.]
After spending some days in Frankfort, Basedow, on July 12th, set out
to join Lavater at Ems, whether at Goethe's suggestion or of his own
accord we are not told. Goethe had seen enough of Basedow to make him
wish to see more of him, and, moreover, it would be a piquant
experience to see the two incongruous apostles together. "Such a
splendid opportunity, if not of enlightenment, at least of mental
discipline," he says, "I could not, in short, let slip." Accordingly,
leaving some pressing business in the hands of his father and friends,
he followed Basedow to Ems on July 15th. Ems, then as now, was a gay
watering-place crowded with guests of all conditions, and therefore an
excellent field for the two proselytisers. Goethe did not spend his
days in the company of the two lights; while they were plying their
mission, he threw himself into the distractions of the town, as usual
making himself a conspicuous figure by his overflowing spirits and his
practical jokes. Only at night, when he did not happen to have a
dancing partner, did he snatch a moment to pay a visit to Basedow,
whom he found in a close, unventilated room, enveloped in tobacco
smoke, and dictating endlessly to his secretary from his couch; for it
was one of Basedow's peculiarities that he never went to bed. On one
occasion Goethe had an excellent opportunity of observing the
contrasted characters of the two prophets. The three had gone to
Nassau to visit the Frau von Stein, mother of the statesman, and a
numerous company had been brought together to meet them. All three had
the opportunity of displaying their special gifts; Lavater his skill
in physiognomy, Goethe the gift he had inherited from his mother of
story-telling to children; but in the end Basedow asserted himself in
his most characteristic style. With a power of reasoning and a
passionate eloquence, to which both Goethe and Lavater bear witness,
he proclaimed the conditions of the regeneration of society--the
improved education of youth and the necessity for the rich to open
their purses for its accomplishment. Then, his wanton spirit as usual
getting the better of him, he turned the torrent of his eloquence in
another direction. A thorough-going rationalist, his pet aversion was
the dogma of the Trinity, and on that dogma he now directed his
batteries, with the effect of horrifying his audience, most of whom
had come to be edified by the pious exhortations of Lavater. Lavater
mildly expostulated; Goethe endeavoured by jesting interruptions to
change the subject, and the ladies to break up the company. All their
efforts were in vain, and the apostle of Rousseau had the
satisfaction of completely unbosoming himself and at the same time
forfeiting some contributions to his educational scheme. As they drove
back to Ems, Goethe took a humorous revenge. The heat of a July day
and his recent vocal exertions had made the prophet thirsty, and as
they passed a tavern he ordered the driver to pull up. Goethe
imperiously countermanded the order, to the wrath of Basedow, which
Goethe turned aside, however, with one of his ever-ready quips.
The strangely-assorted trio were not yet tired of each other's
company, for, when on July 18th Lavater left Ems, both Goethe and
Basedow accompanied him. Their way lay down the Lahn and the Rhine,
and on the voyage Basedow and Goethe conducted themselves like German
students on holiday--the former discoursing on grammar and smoking
everlastingly, the latter improvising doggerel verses and the
beautiful lines beginning: _Hoch auf dem alten Turme steht_. On
landing at Coblenz the behaviour of the pair was so outrageous that
all three were apparently taken by the crowd for lunatics. At Coblenz
they dined, and the dinner has its place in literature, for both in
his Autobiography and in some sarcastic lines (_Diné zu Coblenz_)
Goethe has commemorated it. He sat between Lavater and Basedow, and
during the meal the former expounded the Revelation of St. John to a
country pastor, and the latter exerted himself to prove to a stolid
dancing-master that baptism was an anachronism.
On the 20th they continued their voyage down the Rhine as far as
Bonn--Goethe still in the same madcap humour. Lavater gives us a
picture of him at one moment on the voyage--with gray hat, adorned
with a bunch of flowers, with a brown silk necktie and gray collar,
gnawing a _Butterbrot_ like a wolf. From Bonn they drove to Cologne,
Goethe on the way inscribing in an album the concluding lines of the
_Diné zu Coblenz_:--
Und, wie nach Emmaus, weiter ging's
[Transcriber's Note: corrected error "Emaus"]
Mit Geist und Feuerschritten,
Prophete rechts, Prophete links,
Das Weltkind in der Mitten.
At Cologne they parted for the day, Lavater proceeding to Mülheim[181]
and Goethe to Düsseldorf. On the 21st Goethe was at Elberfeld, where
his former friend Jung Stilling was settled as a physician. Stilling
has related how Goethe made him aware of his presence. A message came
to him that a stranger, who had been taken ill at an inn, wished to
see him. He found the stranger in bed with head covered, and when at
his request he leant over to feel his pulse, the patient flung his
arms round his neck. On the evening of the same day there was a social
gathering at the house of a pious merchant in the town in honour of
Lavater, who had come to Elberfeld and was the merchant's guest. As
described by Stilling, the guests, chiefly consisting of persons of
the pietist persuasion, were as remarkable for their appearance as for
their opinions, and the artist who accompanied Lavater in his travels
busily sketched their heads throughout the evening. Goethe was in his
wildest mood, dancing round the table in a manner familiar to those
who knew him, but which led the strangers present to doubt his sanity.
It was apparently during the same evening that there occurred an
incident which, as recorded by Lavater, shows us another side of
Goethe. Among the guests was one Hasenkamp, a pietistic illuminist,
who suddenly, when the company was in the full flow of amicable
conversation, turned to Goethe and asked him if he were the Herr
Goethe, the author of _Werther_. "Yes," was the answer. "Then I feel
bound in my conscience to express to you my abhorrence of that
infamous book. Be it God's will to amend your perverted heart!" The
company did not know what to expect next, when Goethe quietly replied:
"I quite understand that from your point of view you could not judge
otherwise, and I honour you for your candour in thus taking me to
task. Pray for me!"[182]
[Footnote 181: Basedow remained for a time at Mülheim. As we shall
see, he and Goethe met again later in the month.]
[Footnote 182: As _Werther_ was not published till the autumn of 1774,
there must be some confusion in Lavater's narrative.]
Among the guests who were present at the same motley gathering was the
third distinguished personage whose acquaintance Goethe made during
these memorable weeks. This was Fritz Jacobi, one of the interesting
figures in the history of German thought, alike by his personal
character and the nature of his speculations. Goethe and he had common
friends before they met, but their relations had been such as to make
their meeting a matter of some delicacy. Goethe had satirised the
poetry of Jacobi's brother Georg, and in his correspondence even
vehemently expressed his dislike to the characters of both brothers as
he had been led to conceive them. Three women--Sophie von la Roche,
Johanna Fahlmer, the aunt of the Jacobis, and Betty Jacobi, their
sister, all of whom Goethe counted among his friends--had endeavoured
to effect a reconciliation between Goethe and the two brothers, but
eventually it was Goethe's own impulsive good nature that led to their
meeting. The Jacobis lived in Düsseldorf, and the morning after his
arrival in the town he called at their house, but found that Fritz had
gone to Pempelfort, a place in the neighbourhood where he had an
estate. Goethe at once set out for Pempelfort, and in a letter to the
wife of Fritz he characteristically describes the circumstances of the
meeting. "It was glorious that you did not happen to be in Düsseldorf
and that I did what my simple heart prompted me. Without introduction,
without being marshalled in, without excuses, just dropping straight
from heaven before Fritz Jacobi! And he and I, and I and he! And,
before a sisterly look had done the preliminaries, we were already
what we were bound to be and could be."[183]
[Footnote 183: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 180.]
Fritz Jacobi possessed a combination of qualities that were expressly
fitted to impress Goethe at the period when they met. Handsome in
person, and with the polished manners of a man of the world, he
conjoined a practical talent for business with a passionate interest
in all questions touching human destiny. About six years Goethe's
senior, he was, on Goethe's own testimony, far ahead of him in the
domain of philosophical thought. After Herder, Jacobi was indeed the
most stimulating personality Goethe had met. While his intercourse
with Lavater and Basedow had been only a source of entertainment, from
Jacobi he received a stimulus which opened up new depths of thought
and feeling.
Both Goethe and Jacobi have left records of their intercourse, and
both are equally enthusiastic regarding the profit they derived from
it. From the first moment of their meeting there was a spontaneous
interchange of their deepest thoughts and feelings, unique in the
experience of both. In Jacobi's company Goethe became another man from
what he had been in the company of Lavater and Basedow. "I was weary,"
he says, "of my previous follies and wantonness, which, in truth, only
concealed my dissatisfaction that this journey had brought so little
profit to my mind and heart. Now, therefore, my deepest feelings broke
forth with irrepressible force." After a few days spent at Pempelfort,
during which Georg Jacobi joined them, the two brothers accompanied
Goethe to Cologne on his homeward journey. It was during the hours
they were together at Cologne that the conversation of Fritz and
Goethe became most intimate, and these hours remained a moving memory
with both even when in after years divided aims and interests had
estranged them. A visit to the cathedral of Cologne recalled Goethe's
enthusiasm for the cathedral of Strassburg, but its unfinished
condition depressed him with the sense of a great idea unrealised, for
in his own words "an unfinished work is like one destroyed." The
emotions evoked by another spectacle in Düsseldorf, according to
Goethe's own testimony, had the instantaneous effect of his gaining
for life the confidence of both Jacobis. The sight which equally moved
all three was the unchanged interior of the mansion of a citizen of
Cologne named Jabach, who a century before had been distinguished as
an amateur of the fine arts. But what specially impressed them was a
picture by Le Brun representing Jabach and his family in all the
freshness of life, and the consequent reflection that this picture was
the sole memorial that they had ever lived. "This reflection," Georg
Jacobi comments, "made a profound impression on our stranger,"[184]
and the impression must have been abiding, since in no passage of his
Autobiography does he recall more vividly the emotions of a vanished
time.
[Footnote 184: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 45.]
The evening of the day they spent in Cologne is noted both by Goethe
and Fritz Jacobi as marking a point in their intellectual development.
The inn in which they were quartered overlooked the Rhine, the murmur
of whose moonlit waters was attuned to the sentiments that had been
evoked in the course of the day. In the prospect of their near parting
all three were disposed to confidential self-revelations, and the
conversation ran on themes regarding which they had all thought and
felt much--on poetry, religion, and philosophy. As usual with him when
he was in congenial company, Goethe freely declaimed such pieces of
verse as happened at the time to be interesting him--the verses on
this occasion being Scottish ballads and two poems of his own, _Der
König von Thule_, and _Der untreue Knabe_. In philosophy the talk
turned mainly on Spinoza, of whom Goethe spoke "unforgettably."[185]
"What hours! what days," wrote Fritz immediately after their parting,
"thou soughtest me about midnight in the darkness; it was as if a new
soul were born within me. From that moment I could not let thee
go."[186] Neither, in the ecstasy of these moments, dreamt that at a
later day Spinoza, who was now their strongest bond of union, was to
be the main cause of their estrangement. For Jacobi Spinoza became the
"atheist," to be reprobated as one of the world's false prophets;
while for Goethe he remained to the end the man to whom God had been
nearest and to whom He had been most fully revealed.
[Footnote 185: As Goethe at this time knew little of Spinoza's
philosophy, it was probably on Spinoza's personal character that he
enlarged. On this theme, we have seen, he had discoursed with
Lavater.]
[Footnote 186: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 45.]
Shortly after parting with Goethe, Fritz Jacobi communicated his
impression of him to Wieland in the following words: "The more I think
of it, the more intensely I realise the impossibility of conveying to
one who has not seen or heard Goethe any intelligible notion of this
extraordinary creation of God. As Heinse[187] expressed it, 'Goethe is
a genius from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot,' one
possessed, I may add, for whom it is impossible to act from mere
caprice. One has only to be with him for an hour to feel the utter
absurdity of desiring him to think and act otherwise than he thinks
and acts. By this I don't mean to suggest that he cannot grow in
beauty and goodness, but that in his case such growth must be that of
the unfolding flower, of the ripening seed, of the tree soaring aloft
and crowning itself with foliage."[188]
[Footnote 187: Johann J.W. Heinse, a minor poet of the time, and one
of Goethe's most fervent admirers.]
[Footnote 188: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 45-6.]
On leaving the Jacobis Goethe proceeded to Ems, where he again met
Lavater and Basedow. On the day following Lavater went home, and
Goethe and Basedow remained till the second week of August. On the
13th Goethe was in his father's house, and in a state of exaltation
after his late experiences, to which he gives lively expression in a
letter to Fritz Jacobi. "I dream of the moment, dear Fritz, I have
your letter and hover around you. You have felt what a rapture it is
to me to be the object of your love. Oh! the joy of believing that one
receives more from others than one gives. Oh, Love, Love! The poverty
of riches--what force works in me when I embrace in him all that is
wanting in myself, and yet give to him what I have.... Believe me, we
might henceforth be dumb to each other, and, meeting again after many
a day, we should feel as if we had all along been walking hand in
hand."[189]
[Footnote 189: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 182.]
In the first weeks of October Goethe made personal acquaintance with a
more distinguished personage than either Lavater or Basedow or
Jacobi--"the patriarch of German poetry," Klopstock, the author of the
_Messias_.[190] Since his childhood, the name of Klopstock had been
familiar to Goethe. To his conservative father, the _Messias_, as
written in unrhymed verse, was a monstrosity in German literature, and
he refused to give it a place in his library. Surreptitiously
introduced into the house, however, Goethe had read it with enthusiasm
and committed its most striking passages to memory. And he had
retained his admiration throughout all the successive changes in his
own literary ideals. Like all the youth of his generation, he saw in
Klopstock a great original genius to whom German poetry owed
emancipation from conventional forms and new elements of thought,
feeling, and imagination. Klopstock, on his part, had been interested
in the rising genius whose _Götz von Berlichingen_ had taken the world
by storm, and had signified through a common friend that he would be
gratified to see other works from his hand. Goethe had responded in
the spirit of a youthful adorer, conscious of the honour which the
request implied. "And why should I not write to Klopstock," he wrote,
"and send him anything of mine, anything in which he can take an
interest? May I not address the living, to whose grave I would make a
pilgrimage?"[191]
[Footnote 190: Klopstock came from Göttingen, where he was the idol of
a band of youthful poets.]
[Footnote 191: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 182.]
These communications took place in May, and in the beginning of
October Goethe received an invitation from Klopstock to meet him at
Friedberg. Owing to some delay on his journey, however, Klopstock did
not appear at the time appointed, but, gratified by Goethe's eagerness
to meet him, he shortly afterwards came to Frankfort and was for a few
days a guest in the Goethe household. From Goethe's account of their
intercourse we gather that their intercourse was not wholly
satisfactory to either. Klopstock was in his fiftieth year, and his
somewhat self-conscious and pedantic manner did not encourage
effusion.[192] Like certain other poets he affected the tone of a man
of the world and deliberately avoided topics relative to his own art.
The two themes on which he expanded were riding and skating--of which
latter pastime he had indeed made himself the laureate. Goethe himself
was passionately fond of both exercises, but from "the patriarch of
German poetry" he might have expected discourse on higher themes.
Apparently, however, their relations remained sufficiently cordial,
as, when Klopstock took his departure, Goethe accompanied him to
Mannheim. On his way home in the post-carriage Goethe gave utterance
to his feelings in some rhapsodical lines--_An Schwager Kronos_--(To
Time the Postillion)--which may be regarded as a commentary on his
impressions of the great man. Written in the unrhymed, irregular
measure which Klopstock had been the first to employ, and containing
phrases directly borrowed from Klopstock, they give passionate
expression to his desire for a life, brief it might be, but a life
alive to the end with the zest of living. It was the sentiment of the
youth of the _Sturm und Drang_, which the chilling impression he had
received from Klopstock doubtless evoked with rebounding force during
his solitary drive home in the post-carriage.[193]
[Footnote 192: Merck found in Klopstock "viel Weltkunde und
Weltkälte."]
[Footnote 193: Writing to Sophie von la Roche on November 20th, Goethe
calls Klopstock "a noble, great man, on whom the peace of God rests,"
_Werke, Briefe_ ii. 206.]
In the same month of October Goethe had other visitors less
distinguished, youths of his own age, who came to pay homage to him as
their acknowledged leader in the literary revolution of which _Götz_
had been the manifesto. We have seen the impressions Goethe made upon
his seniors like Lavater and Fritz Jacobi; how he struck his more
youthful acquaintances is recorded by two of them--both poets of some
promise who had attracted attention by their contempt of
conventionalities. It will be seen that their language shows that
Goethe's own exuberant style in his correspondence of the period was
not peculiar to himself. The first to come was H.C. Boie, an ardent
worshipper of Klopstock, and one of the heroes of the _Sturm und
Drang_. "I have had a superlative, delightful day," Boie records, "a
whole day spent alone and uninterrupted with Goethe--Goethe whose
heart is as great and noble as his mind! The day passes my
description." The other visitor, F.A. Werthes, who comprehensively
worshipped both Klopstock and Wieland, leaves Boie behind in the
exuberance of his impressions. "This Goethe," he wrote to Fritz
Jacobi, "of whom from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof
and from the going down thereof to its rising I should like to speak
and stammer and rhapsodise with you ... this Goethe has, as it were,
transcended all the ideals I had ever conceived of the direct feeling
and observation of a great genius. Never could I have so well
explained and sympathised with the feelings of the disciples on the
way to Emmaus when they said: 'Did not our heart burn within us while
He talked with us by the way?' Let us make of him our Lord Christ for
evermore, and let me be the least of His disciples. He has spoken so
much and so excellently with me; words of eternal life which, so long
as I live, shall be my articles of faith."[194] Apart from its
relation to Goethe, it will be seen that Werthes' letter is a document
of the time, bringing before us, as it does, the strained and
distorted sentiment, sufficiently apparent in Goethe himself, but
which he, almost alone of the youths of his generation, was strong
enough to hold in check.
[Footnote 194: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 46.]
In the following month (December) Goethe received still another
visit--a visit which was directly to lead to the most decisive event
in his life. As he was sitting one evening in his own room, a stranger
was ushered in, whom in the dusk he mistook for Fritz Jacobi. The
stranger was Major von Knebel, who had served in the Prussian army,
but was now on a tour with the young princes of Weimar, Carl August
and Constantin, to the latter of whom he was acting as tutor. Knebel
was keenly interested in literature, was a poet himself, and an ardent
admirer of Goethe. There followed congenial talk which was to be the
beginning of a friendship that, unlike most of Goethe's youthful
friendships, was to endure into the old age of both. But Knebel had
come on a special errand; the young princes had expressed the desire
to become acquainted with the man who had made merry with their
instructor Wieland, and whose name was in all men's mouths as the
author of the recently published _Werther_. Nothing loth, Goethe
accompanied Knebel to the princes, and in the interviews that followed
he displayed all the tact that characterised his subsequent
intercourse with the great. Studiously avoiding all reference to his
own productions, he turned the conversation on subjects of public
interest, on which he spoke with a fulness of knowledge that convinced
his hearers that the author of _Werther_ was not an effeminate
sentimentalist. So favourable was the impression he made on the
princes that they expressed a wish that he would follow them to Mainz
and spend a few days with them there. The proposal was highly
acceptable to Goethe, but there was a difficulty in the way. The Herr
Rath was a sturdy republican, and had an ingrained aversion to the
nobility as a class. In his opinion, for a commoner to seek
intercourse with that class was to compromise his self-respect and to
invite humiliation, and he roundly maintained that in seeking his
son's acquaintance the princes were only laying a train to pay him
back for his treatment of Wieland. When the Goethe household was
divided on important questions, it was their custom to refer to the
Fräulein von Klettenberg as arbiter. That sainted lady was now on a
sick-bed, but through the Frau Rath she conveyed her opinion that the
invitation of the princes should be accepted. To Mainz, therefore,
Goethe went in company with Knebel, who had remained behind to see
more of him, and his second meeting with the two boys completed his
conquest of them. Any resentment they may have entertained for his
attack on Wieland was removed by his explanation of its origin, and it
was with mutual attraction that both parties separated after a few
days' cordial intercourse. Thus were established the relations which
within a year were to result in Goethe's departure from "accursed
Frankfort," and his permanent settlement at the Court of Weimar.
As it happens, we have a record of Knebel's impression of Goethe
during their few days' intercourse, which as a characterisation comes
next in interest to that of Kestner already quoted. "From Wieland," he
writes, "you will have been able to learn that I have made the
acquaintance of Goethe, and that I think somewhat enthusiastically of
him. I cannot help myself, but I swear to you that all of you, all
who have heads and hearts, would think of him as I do if you came to
know him. He will always remain to me one of the most extraordinary
apparitions of my life. Perhaps the novelty of the impression has
struck me overmuch, but how can I help it if natural causes produce
natural workings in me?... Goethe lives in a state of constant inward
war and tumult, since on every subject he feels with the extreme of
vehemence. It is a need of his spirit to make enemies with whom he can
contend; moreover, it is not the most contemptible adversaries he will
single out. He has spoken to me of all those whom he has attacked with
special and genuinely felt esteem. But the fellow delights in battle;
he has the spirit of an athlete. As he is probably the most singular
being who ever existed, he began as follows one evening in Mainz in
quite melancholy tones: 'I am now good friends again with
everybody--with the Jacobis, with Wieland; and this is not as it
should be with me. It is the condition of my being that, as I must
have something which for the time being is for me the ideal of the
excellent, so also I must have an ideal against which I can direct my
wrath.'"[195]
[Footnote 195: Max Morris, _op. cit._ iv. 370-1. About the same date
as Knebel's letter, Goethe wrote to Sophie von la Roche: "Das ist was
Verfluchtes dass ich anfange mich mit niemand mehr misszuverstehen."
In his 49th year Goethe said of himself: "Opposition ist mir immer
nötig."]
On Goethe's return to Frankfort sad news awaited him; during his
absence the Fräulein von Klettenberg, whom he had left on her
sick-bed, had died. It was the severest personal loss he had yet
sustained by death. After his sister she had been the chief confidant
of all his troubles, his hopes, and ambitions, and he never left her
presence without feeling that for the time he had been lifted out of
himself. The relations between Goethe and her, indeed, show him in his
most attractive light. He had never disguised from her the fact that
he could not share the faith by which she lived; he was, as we have
seen, even in the habit of jesting at her most cherished beliefs; but
there was never a shade of alienation between them. "Bid him adieu,"
was her last message to him through his mother; "I have held him very
dear."[196] Take it as we may, it is the singular fact that by none
was Goethe regarded with more affectionate esteem than by the two
pious mystics, Jung Stilling and Fräulein von Klettenberg.
[Footnote 196: _Ib._ p. 370.]
CHAPTER XIII
LILI SCHÖNEMANN
1775
To the year 1775 belongs the third critical period of Goethe's last
years in Frankfort. The autumn of 1771 following his return from
Strassburg had been the first of these periods, and was signalised by
_Götz von Berlichingen_, the product of his contrition for Friederike
and of the inspiration of Shakespeare. In the summer and autumn of
1772 came the Wetzlar episode, which found expression in _Werther_;
and in the opening weeks of 1775 begins the third period of crisis,
the issue of which was to be his final leave-taking of Frankfort.
On an evening near the close of 1774 or at the beginning of 1775, a
friend introduced Goethe to a house in Frankfort which during the next
nine months was to be the centre of his thoughts and emotions. There
was a crowd of guests, but Goethe's attention became fixed on a girl
seated at a piano, and playing, as he informs us, with grace and
facility. The house was that of Frau Schönemann, the widow of a rich
banker, and the girl who had excited Goethe's interest was her only
daughter, Anna Elisabeth, known by the pet name of Lili--the name by
which she is designated in Goethe's own references to her. The
musician having risen, Goethe exchanged a few polite compliments with
her, and when he took his leave for the evening, the mother expressed
the wish that he would soon repeat his visit, the daughter at the same
time indicating that his presence would not be disagreeable to her.
The houses of the Goethes and the Schönemanns were only some hundred
paces apart, but there had hitherto been no intercourse between the
two families, and the reason for this isolation is a significant fact
in the relations between Goethe and Lili that were to follow. The
Schönemanns moved in a social circle which was rigidly closed to the
burgher element in the city, and, when Frau Schönemann gave Goethe the
_entrée_ to her house, it was because he was an exceptional member of
the class to which he belonged. In making the acquaintance of the
Schönemanns, therefore, he had already to a certain degree compromised
himself.[197] In his own account of his relations to Lili he does not
disguise the fact that her mother and the friends of the family hardly
concealed their feeling that the Goethes were not of their order. In
seeking further intercourse with the Schönemanns he was thus putting
himself in a delicate position, and the fact that he deliberately
chose to do so is proof that his first sight of Lili must have touched
his inflammable heart.
[Footnote 197: In a letter written to Johanna Fahlmer from Weimar
(April 10th, 1776) Goethe vehemently expresses his dislike of the
Schönemann kin. "I have long hated them," he says; "from the bottom of
my heart.... I pity the poor creature [Lili] that she was born into
such a race."]
During the month of January Goethe became a frequent visitor at the
Schönemanns, and there began those relations with Lili which,
according to his own later testimony, were to give a new direction to
his life, as being the immediate cause of his leaving Frankfort and
settling in Weimar. If we are to accept his own averment two years
before his death, Lili was the first whom he had really loved, all his
other affairs of the heart being "inclinations of no importance."[198]
So he spoke in the retrospect under the influence of an immediate
emotion, but his own contemporary testimony proves that his love for
Lili was at least not unmingled bliss. Make what reserves we may for
the artificial working up of sentiment which was the fashion of the
time, that testimony presents us with the picture of a lover who has
not only to contend with obstacles which circumstances put in his way,
but with the haunting conviction that his passion was leading him
astray and that its gratification involved the surrender of his
deepest self. As in the case of others of his love passages, his
relations with Lili evoked a series of literary productions of which
they are the inspiration and the commentary, and which exhibit new
developments of his genius. We have lyrics addressed to her which,
though differently inspired from those addressed to Friederike, take
their place with the choicest he has written; we have plays more or
less directly bearing on the situation in which he found himself; and,
finally, we have his letters to various correspondents in which every
phase of his passion is recorded at the moment.
[Footnote 198: Eckermann, March 5th, 1830. What has been said of
Chateaubriand, who made use of a similar expression, may probably be
said with greater truth of Goethe, "Il ment à ses propres souvenirs et
à son coeur." In a letter to Frau von Stein (May 24th, 1776) Goethe
describes his relation to Friederike Brion as "das reinste, schönste,
wahrste, das ich ausser meiner Schwester je zu einem Weibe gehabt."]
In Lili Schönemann Goethe had a different object from any of his
previous loves. Käthchen Schönkopf, Friederike, Lotte Buff had all
been socially his inferiors, and he could play "the conquering lord"
with them. Lili, on the other hand, was his superior socially--a fact
of which her relatives and friends seem to have made him fully
conscious. Moreover, though he was in his twenty-sixth year, and she
only in her sixteenth, her personal character and her upbringing had
given her a maturity beyond that of any of his previous loves. She was
clever and accomplished, and already, as a desirable _partie_, she had
a considerable experience of masculine arts. As she is represented in
her portraits, the firm poise of her head and her clear-cut features
suggest the dignity, decision, and self-control of which her
subsequent life was to give proof.[199]
[Footnote 199: She is described as a pretty blonde, with blue eyes and
fair hair. In a letter (March 30th, 1801) addressed to Lili, then a
widow, Goethe writes: "Sie haben in den vergangenen Jahren viel
ausgestanden und dabei, wie ich weiss, einen entschlossenen Mut
bewiesen, der Ihnen Ehre macht."]
The first two lyrics he addressed to Lili reveal all the difference
between his relations to her and to Friederike. Those addressed to
Friederike breathe the confidence of returned affection unalloyed by
any disturbing reserves; in the case of his effusions to Lili there is
always a cloud in his heaven which seems to menace a possible storm.
In the first of these two lyrics, _Neue Liebe, neues Leben_ ("New
Love, New Life"), there is even a suggestion of regret to find that he
is entangled in a new passion. What is noteworthy in connection with
all his poems inspired by Lili, however, is that they are completely
free from the sentimentality of those he had written under the
influence of the ladies of Darmstadt. Though differing in tone from
the lyrics addressed to Friederike, they have all their directness,
simplicity, and economy of expression. In his Autobiography he tells
us that there could be no doubt that Lili ruled him, and in _Neue
Liebe, neues Leben_, he acknowledges the spell she has laid upon him
with a highly-wrought art without previous example in German
literature.
Herz, mein Herz, was soll das geben?
Was bedränget dich so sehr?
Welch ein fremdes neues Leben!
Ich erkenne dich nicht mehr.
Weg ist alles, was du liebtest,
Weg, warum du dich betrübtest,
Weg dein Fleiss und deine Ruh'--
Ach, wie kamst du nur dazu!
Fesselt dich die Jugendblüte,
Diese liebliche Gestalt,
Dieser Blick voll Treu' und Güte
Mit unendlicher Gewalt?
Will ich rasch mich ihr entziehen,
Mich ermannen, ihr entfliehen,
Führet mich im Augenblick
Ach, mein Weg zu ihr zurück.
Und an diesem Zauberfädchen,
Das sich nicht zerreissen lässt,
Hält das liebe, lose Mädchen
Mich so wider Willen fest;
Muss in ihrem Zauberkreise
Leben nun auf ihre Weise.
Die Veränd'rung, ach, wie gross!
Liebe! Liebe, lass mich los!
Say, heart of me, what this importeth;
What distresseth thee so sore?
New and strange all life and living;
Thee I recognise no more.
Gone is everything thou loved'st;
All for which thyself thou troubled'st;
Gone thy toil, and gone thy peace;
Ah! how cam'st thou in such case?
Fetters thee that youthful freshness?
Fetters thee that lovely mien?
That glance so full of truth and goodness,
With an adamantine chain?
Vain the hardy wish to tear me
From those meshes that ensnare me;
For the moment I would flee,
Straight my path leads back to thee.
By these slender threads enchanted,
Which to rend no power avails,
That dear wanton maiden holds me
Thus relentless in her spells.
Thus within her charméd round
Must I live as one spellbound;
Heart! what mighty change in thee;
Love, O love, ah, set me free!
In the second lyric, _An Belinden_, he pictures in the same tone of
half regret the case in which he finds himself, and the picture has an
eloquent commentary in his letters of the time. He who had lately
spent his peaceful evenings in the solitude of his own chamber
dreaming of her image had through her been irresistibly drawn into an
alien and uncongenial world. Is he the same being who now sits at the
card-table amid the glaring lights of a fashionable drawing-room in
the presence of hateful faces? For her, however, he will gladly endure
what he loathes with his whole soul.
Reizender ist mir des Frühlings Blüte
Nun nicht auf der Flur;
Wo du, Engel, bist, ist Lieb' and Güte,
Wo du bist, Natur.
Now the blooms of springtide on the meadow
Touch no more my heart;
Where thou, angel, art, is truth and goodness;
Nature, where thou art.
So he sang in tones befitting the true lover, but, as it happens, we
have a prose commentary from his own hand which gives perhaps a truer
picture of his real state of mind. Towards the end of January, when he
was already deep in his passion for Lili, he received a letter which
opened a new channel for his emotions. The letter came from an
anonymous lady who, as she explained, had been so profoundly moved by
the tale of Werther that she could not resist the impulse to express
her gratitude to its author. The fair unknown, as he was subsequently
to discover, was no less distinguished a person than an Imperial
Countess--the Countess Stolberg, sister of two equally fervid youths,
of whom we shall presently hear in connection with Goethe. It was
quite in keeping with the spirit of the time that two persons of
different sexes, who had never seen each other, should proceed
mutually to unbosom themselves with a freedom of self-revelation
which an age, habituated to greater reticence, finds it difficult to
understand; and there began a correspondence between Goethe and his
adorer in which we have the astonishing spectacle of her becoming the
confidant of all his emotions with regard to another woman, while he
is using the language of passion towards herself.[200] Here is the
opening sentence of his first letter to her, and it strikes the note
of all that was to follow: "My dear, I will give you no name, for what
are the names--Friend, Sister, Beloved, Bride, Wife, or any word that
is a complex of all these, compared with the direct feeling--with
the---- I cannot write further. Your letter has taken possession of me
at a wonderful time."[201]
[Footnote 200: It may be regarded as significant that Goethe makes no
reference to the Countess in his Autobiography.]
[Footnote 201: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 230.]
In his second letter to her, while she was still unknown to him,
written about three weeks later (February 13th), he depicts the
condition in which we are to imagine him at the time it was penned. It
will be seen that it is a prose rendering of the lines _An Belinden_,
to which reference has just been made. "If, my dear one, you can
picture to yourself a Goethe who, in a laced coat, and otherwise clad
from head to foot with finery in tolerable keeping, in the idle glare
of sconces and lustres, amid a motley throng of people, is held a
prisoner at a card-table by a pair of beautiful eyes; who in
alternating distraction is driven from company to concert and from
concert to ball, and with all the interest of frivolity pays his court
to a pretty blonde, you have the present carnival-Goethe.... But there
is another Goethe--one in grey beaver coat with brown silk necktie and
boots--who already divines the approach of spring in the caressing
February breezes, to whom his dear wide world will again be shortly
opened up, who, ever living his own life, striving and working,
according to the measure of his powers, seeks to express now the
innocent feelings of youth in little poems, and the strong spice of
life in various dramas; now the images of his friends, of his
neighbourhood and his beloved household goods, with chalk upon grey
paper; never asking the question how much of what he has done will
endure, because in toiling he is always ascending a step higher,
because he will spring after no ideal, but, in play or strenuous
effort, will let his feelings spontaneously develop into
capacities."[202]
[Footnote 202: _Ib._ pp. 233-4.]
The plays to which Goethe refers in this letter form part of his
intellectual and emotional history during the period of his relations
to Lili. In themselves these plays have little merit, and, had they
come from the hand of some minor poet, they would deservedly have
passed into oblivion, but as part of his biography they call for some
notice. The first of them, _Erwin und Elmire_, is a sufficiently
trivial vaudeville, and appears to have been begun in the autumn of
1773.[203] He must have retouched it in January--February (1775),
however, as it contains distinct suggestions of his experiences with
the Schönemann family. As he himself tells us in his Autobiography,
the piece was suggested by Goldsmith's ballad, _Edwin and Angelina_,
and both the choice and handling of the subject illustrate his remark
in the foregoing letter regarding the fugitive nature of the various
things which he threw off at this time.[204] There are four
characters,--Olimpia and her daughter Elmire, Bernardo, a friend of
the family, and Erwin, Elmire's lover. Elmire plays the part of
capricious coquette with such effect that she drives her despairing
lover to hide himself from the world and to retreat to a hermitage
which he constructs for himself in the neighbouring wilds. Elmire now
realises her hard-heartedness, and exhibits such symptoms of distress
as to waken the concern of her mother and Bernardo. Bernardo, however,
is in Erwin's secret, and contrives to bring the two lovers together
and to effect a happy reconciliation, to the satisfaction of all
parties--the mother included. The play was dedicated to Lili in the
following lines:--
Den kleinen Strauss, den ich dir binde,
Pflückt' ich aus diesem Herzen hier;
Nimm ihn gefällig auf, Belinde!
Der kleine Strauss, er ist von mir.
This posy that I bind for thee
I cull'd it from my very heart;
This little posy, 'tis from me;
Take it, Belinda, in good part.
[Footnote 203: _Ib._ p. 113.]
[Footnote 204: He says of the piece that it cost him "little
expenditure of mind and feeling." _Ib._]
There was a sufficient reason for Goethe's praying Lili to take the
piece "in good part." In the cruel coquette Elmire Lili could not but
see a portrait of herself, and there are expressions in the play which
she could not but regard as home-thrusts. "To be entertained, to be
amused," says Erwin to Bernardo, "that is all they (the maidens)
desire. They value a man who spends an odious evening with them at
cards as highly as the man who gives his body and soul for them." In
another remark of Erwin's there is a reference to Goethe's own
relations to Lili and her family which she could not misunderstand. "I
loved her with an enduring love. To that love I gave my whole heart.
But because I am poor, I was scorned. And yet I hoped through my
diligence to make as suitable a provision for her as any of the
beplastered wind-bags." Trivial as the play is, it was acted in
Frankfort during Goethe's absence,[205] and at a later date he
considered it worth his while to recast it in another form.
[Footnote 205: Goethe was not known to be the author. In a letter to
Johanna Fahlmer, he expresses his curiosity to know if Lili was
present at its performance. _Erwin und Elmire_, it should be said,
contains two of Goethe's most beautiful songs, the one beginning "Ein
Veilchen auf der Wiese stand," and the other "Ihr verblühet, süsse
Rosen."]
_Erwin und Elmire_ was followed by another play, more remarkable from
its contents, but by general agreement of as little importance from a
literary point of view. This was _Stella_, significantly designated in
its original form as _A Play for Lovers_. Unlike _Erwin und Elmire_,
it was wholly the production of this period--the end of February and
the beginning of March being the probable date of its composition.
Though written at the height of his passion for Lili, however, it
contains fewer direct references to his experiences of the moment than
_Erwin und Elmire_. Any interest that attaches to _Stella_ lies in the
fact of its being a lively presentment of a phase of Goethe's own
experience and of the world of factitious sentiment which made that
experience possible. No other of Goethe's youthful productions,
indeed, better illustrates the literary emotionalism of the time when
it was written, and some notion of its character and scope is
desirable in view of all his relations to Lili.
The drama opens in a posting-house, where two travellers, Madame
Sommer (Cäcilie) and her daughter Lucie, have alighted. The object of
their journey is to place Lucie as a companion with a lady living on
an estate in the neighbourhood. From the conversation of the mother
and daughter we learn that Cäcilie had been deserted by her husband,
and was now in such reduced circumstances as to necessitate her
daughter's finding some employment. On inquiring of the postmistress
they gain some information regarding the lady they are in search of.
She also had been deserted by one who was her reputed husband, and
since then had spent her days in mournful solitude and good works.
Fatigued by her journey, Cäcilie retires to rest, and Lucie,
carefully instructed not to reveal the position of herself and her
mother, sets out to interview the strange lady. During her absence
there arrives at the posting-house a gentleman in military dress, who
presently falls into a tearful soliloquy, from which we learn that he
is no other than Fernando, the husband of Cäcilie, and that the
strange lady is Stella, whom he had also deserted and with whom he now
proposes to renew his former relations. Lucie returns delighted with
her visit to Stella, and there ensues a bantering conversation between
the father and daughter, both, of course, equally ignorant of their
relation to each other. So ends the first Act; with the second begin
the embarrassments of the difficult situation. Cäcilie and Lucie
repair to Stella, and, after an effusive exchange of memories between
the two deserted ones, Stella invites both mother and daughter to make
their home with her. Unfortunately Stella brings forth the portrait of
her former lover, in whom to her horror Cäcilie recognises her
husband, and Lucie to her surprise recognises the officer at the
posting-house--a fact which she makes known to Stella. In an ecstasy
of excited expectation Stella dispatches a servant with the order to
fetch the long-lost one, and Cäcilie, retiring to the garden,
communicates to Lucie the discovery of her father. In the rapidly
succeeding Scenes that follow the three chief persons experience
alternations of agony and bliss which find facile expression in many
sighs, tears, and embraces. Fernando and Stella, lost in the present
and oblivious of the past, melt in their new-found bliss, but are
interrupted in their raptures by the announcement that Cäcilie and
Lucie are preparing to take their departure. At Stella's request
Fernando finds Cäcilie, whom he at first does not recognise. Mutual
recognition follows, however, when Fernando vows that he will never
again leave her, and proposes that he and she and Lucie should make
off at once. Meanwhile, Stella is pouring forth her bliss over the
grave which, like one of the Darmstadt ladies, she has had dug for
herself in her garden. Here she is joined by Fernando, whose altered
mood fills her with a vague dread which is converted into horror when,
on the entrance of Cäcilie and Lucie, Fernando acknowledges them as
his wife and daughter. After paroxysms of emotion all the parties
separate, and Stella prepares to take her flight after a vain attempt
to cut Fernando's portrait out of its frame. She is interrupted in her
intention of flight by the appearance of Fernando, and there follows a
dialogue in which we are to look for the drift of the play. Cäcilie
insists on departing and leaving the two lovers to their happiness. "I
feel," she says, "that my love for thee is not selfish, is not the
passion of a lover, which would give up all to possess its longed-for
object ... it is the feeling of a wife, who out of love itself can
give up love." Fernando, however, passionately declares that he will
never abandon her, and Cäcilie makes a happy suggestion that will
solve all difficulties. Was it not recorded of a German Count that he
brought home a maiden from the Holy Land and that she and his wife
happily shared his affections between them? And such is the solution
which commends itself to all parties. Fernando impartially embraces
both ladies, and Cäcilie's concluding remark is: "We are thine!"[206]
[Footnote 206: In deference to the general opinion that this ending
was immoral, Goethe, in a later form of the play, makes Fernando shoot
himself.]
Such is the play which, in a bad English translation that did not
mitigate its absurdities, provoked the wit of the _Anti-Jacobin_.[207]
In Fernando, the central figure of the play, we are, of course, to
recognise Goethe himself,[208] and in no other of his dramas has he
presented a less attractive character. Weislingen, Clavigo, and
Werther have all their redeeming qualities, but Fernando is an
emotional egotist incapable of any worthy motive, and it is the most
serious blemish in the play, even in view of the factitious world in
which it moves, that he is made the adored idol of two such different
women as Cäcilie and Stella. The situation, as Goethe himself tells
us, was suggested by the relations of Swift to Stella and Vanessa, but
he did not need to go so far afield for a motive. In the world around
him he was familiar both with the creed and the practice which the
conclusion of the play approves. As we have seen, it was openly held
by enlightened and moral persons that marriage, as being a mere
contract, was incompatible with a true union of souls, and that such a
union was only to be found in irresponsible relations. In the case of
his friend Fritz Jacobi, whose character and talents had all his
admiration, he had a practical illustration of the creed; for Jacobi
had a wife and also a friend (his step-aunt Johanna Fahlmer) in whom
he found a more responsive recipient of his emotions. But it is rather
in Goethe's own character and experience that we are to look for the
origin of _Stella_; it is in truth an analytic presentment of what he
had himself known and felt. As we have seen, one object was incapable
of engrossing all his affections; while he was paying court to Lili,
his wandering desires went out to the fair correspondent who had
evinced such interest in his troubles and aspirations. It would seem
that he required two types of woman such as he has depicted in
_Stella_ to satisfy at once his mind and heart: a Cäcilie who inspired
him with respect as well as affection, and a Stella whose
self-abandonment left his passions their free course.
[Footnote 207: _Stella_ and other German plays are wittily parodied in
_The Rovers; or, The Double Arrangement_.]
[Footnote 208: Goethe gives Fernando his own brown eyes and black
hair.]
Nauseous as _Stella_ must appear to the modern reader, it found wide
acceptance at the period it was written, though its moral was
generally condemned. Herder was enthusiastic in its praise, and on its
publication at the end of January, 1776, it passed through four
editions in a single week. In 1805, with its altered _dénouement_, in
which the hero shoots himself, it was performed with applause in
Berlin, and was afterwards frequently produced. Goethe himself
continued to retain a singular affection for the most sickly
sentimental of all his literary offspring, and he subsequently sent a
copy of his work to Lili, accompanied by some lines which were worthy
of a better gift.[209]
[Footnote 209: After he had broken with her, and was settled in
Weimar.]
Im holden Thal, auf schneebedeckten Höhen
War stets dein Bild mir nah!
Ich sah's um mich in lichten Wolken wehen;
Im Herzen war mir's da.
Empfinde hier, wie mit allmächt'gem Triebe
Ein Herz das andre zieht,
Und dass vergebens Liebe
Vor Liebe flieht.
In the dear vale, on heights the snow had covered,
Still was thine image near;
I saw it round me in the bright clouds hover;
My heart beheld it there.
Here learn to feel with what resistless power
One heart the other ties;
That vain it is when lover
From lover flies.
Still another piece belongs to the first months of Goethe's relations
to Lili--_Claudine von Villa Bella_, which appears to have been
written intermittently in April and May. Like _Erwin und Elmire_ it is
in operatic form--the prose dialogue being diversified with outbursts
of song. Entirely trivial as a work of art, it calls for passing
notice only on account of certain characteristics which distinguish
it as a product of the period when it was written. The intention of
the play, Goethe wrote at a later time, was to exhibit "noble
sentiments in association with adventurous actions," and the conduct
of his hero and heroine is certainly unconventional, if their feelings
are exalted. Claudine is the only daughter of a fond and widowed
father, and her dreamy emotionalism would have made her a welcome
member of the Darmstadt circle of ladies. She is in love with Pedro,
but Pedro is not the hero of the piece. That place is assigned to his
eldest brother Crugantino, a scapegrace, with a noble heart, who,
finding the ordinary bonds of society too confined for him, has taken
to highway robbery. "Your burgher life," he says--and we know that he
is here uttering Goethe's own sentiments--"your burgher life is to me
intolerable. There, whether I give myself to work or enjoyment,
slavery is my lot. Is it not a better choice for one of decent merit
to plunge into the world? Pardon me! I don't give a ready ear to the
opinion of other people, but pardon me if I let you know mine. I will
grant you that if once one takes to a roving life, no goal and no
restraints exist for him; for our heart--ah! it is infinite in its
desires so long as its strength remains to it." Crugantino, who with
his band is housed at a wretched inn in the neighbourhood, catches
sight of Claudine, is bewitched by her beauty, and resolves to gain
possession of her. On a beautiful moonlight night, attended by only
one companion, he makes his adventurous attempt. Of the charivari that
follows it is only necessary to say that Pedro is wounded in a
hand-to-hand encounter by his unknown brother Crugantino, and is
conveyed to the inn where the band have their quarters. And now comes
the turn of Claudine to show her disregard of conventionalities. In
agonies for her wounded lover, she dons male attire, and in the middle
of the night sets out for the inn where he is lying. She encounters
Crugantino at the door, and their dialogue is overheard by the wounded
Pedro who rushes forth to rescue her. A duel ensues between Pedro and
Crugantino; the watch appears, and all parties are conveyed to the
village prison. Here they are found by the distracted father and his
friend Sebastian, and a general explanation follows--Pedro being made
secure of Claudine, and Crugantino showing himself a repentant sinner.
With this fantastic production, which, beginning in an atmosphere of
pure sentiment, ends in broad farce, Goethe was even in middle life so
satisfied that he recast it in verse, and made other alterations which
in the opinion of most critics did not improve the original.[210]
[Footnote 210: During his residence in Rome in 1787. He recast _Erwin
und Elmire_ at the same time.]
The triviality of these successive performances, so void of the mind
and heart displayed in the fragmentary _Prometheus_ and _Der Ewige
Jude_, have their commentary in his continued relations to Lili
Schönemann. They even raise the question whether his passion for her
were really so consuming as in his old age he declared it to have
been. They at least speak a very different language from that of the
simple lyrics in which he expressed his love for Friederike Brion. Yet
when we turn to his correspondence, written on the inspiration of the
moment, we find all the indications of a genuinely distracted lover.
During the month of March we are to believe that he underwent all the
pangs of a passionate wooer. Surrounded by numerous admirers, Lili was
difficult of access, and apparently took some pleasure in reminding
him that he was only one among others.[211] "Oh! if I did not compose
dramas," he wrote on the 6th to his confidant the Countess, "I should
be shipwrecked." A few days of unalloyed bliss he did enjoy, and the
length at which he records them in his Autobiography shows that they
remained a vivid memory with him. In the course of the month Lili
spent some time with an uncle at Offenbach on the Main, and, joining
her there, Goethe found her all that his heart could wish. "Take the
girl to your heart; it will be good for you both," he wrote out of his
bliss to his other female confidant, Johanna Fahlmer.[212]
[Footnote 211: To this period probably belongs _Lilis Park_, the most
playfully humorous of Goethe's poems, in which he banters Lili on her
capricious treatment of himself (represented as a bear) as one of her
menagerie--the motley crowd of her suitors.]
[Footnote 212: Certain pranks played by Goethe during his stay in
Offenbach show that he was not wholly given up to "lover's
melancholy." On a moonlight night, robed in a white sheet, and mounted
on stilts (a form of exercise to which he was addicted), he went
through the town and created a panic among the inhabitants by looking
into their windows. On another occasion, at a baptism, he secretly
deposited the baby in a dish, and covering it with a towel, placed the
dish on a table where the company were assembled. It was only after
some time that the contents of the dish were revealed.]
On their return to Frankfort, however, his former griefs were renewed,
and a new distraction was added to them. "I am delighted that you are
so enamoured of my _Stella_," he writes to Fritz Jacobi on March 21st,
immediately after his return; "my heart and mind are now turned in
such entirely different directions that my own flesh and blood is
almost indifferent to me. I can tell you nothing, for what is there
that can be said? I will not even think either of to-morrow or of the
day after to-morrow."[213] The truth is that, as he tells us in his
Autobiography, he was now in an embarrassing position. His relations
to Lili had become such that a decisive step was necessary in the
interests of both. During the last fortnight of March his mood was
certainly not that of a happy lover. To break with Lili was a step
which circumstances as well as his own attachment to her made a dire
alternative. On the other hand, from the bond of marriage, as we know,
he shrank with every instinct of his nature. Only a few weeks before,
doubtless with his own possible fate in front of him, he had put these
words in the mouth of Fernando in his _Stella_: "I would be a fool to
allow myself to be shackled. That state [marriage] smothers all my
powers; that state robs me of all my spirits, cramps my whole being. I
must forth into the free world."[214] Goethe did eventually take the
decision of Fernando, but not just yet. On March 25th he wrote to
Herder: "It seems as if the twisted threads on which my fate hangs,
and which I have so long shaken to and fro in oscillating rotation,
would at last unite."[215] On the 29th, Klopstock, who had come on a
few days' visit to Frankfort, found him in "strange agitation." As so
often happened in Goethe's life, it was an accident that determined
his wavering purpose. In the beginning of April there came to
Frankfort a Mademoiselle Delf, an old friend of the Schönemann family,
whom Goethe made acquainted with his father and mother. A person of
strenuous character, she took it upon her to bring matters to a point
between the two households. With the consent of Lili's mother, she
brought Lili one evening to the Goethe house. "Take each other by the
hand," she said in commanding tones; and the two lovers obeyed and
embraced. "It was a remarkable decree of the powers that rule us," is
the characteristic reflection of the aged Goethe, "that in the course
of my singular career I should also experience the feelings of one
betrothed."
[Footnote 213: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 246.]
[Footnote 214: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 249.]
[Footnote 215: _Ib._ p. 255.]
Goethe's feelings as a betrothed were from the first of a mingled
nature. No sooner had he given his pledge than all the complications
which must result from his union with Lili stared him in the face.
Even after the betrothal the relations between the two families did
not become more cordial. Not only were they divided by difference of
social standing; a deeper ground of mutual antagonism lay in their
religion. The Schönemanns belonged to the Reformed persuasion, the
Protestantism of the higher classes, while the Goethes were Lutheran,
as were the majority of the class to which they belonged; and
between the two denominations there was bitter and permanent
estrangement.[216] And there was still another stumbling-block in the
way of a probable happy union. Goethe was not earning an independent
income, and, in the event of his marriage, he and his bride would have
to take up their quarters under his parental roof. But, accustomed to
the gay pleasures of a fashionable circle, how would Lili accommodate
herself to the homely ways and surroundings of the Goethe household?
Moreover, we have it from Goethe himself that Lili was distasteful
equally to his father and mother--the former sarcastically speaking of
her as "Die Stadtdame." Such, he realised, was the future before him
as the husband of Lili; and he had no sooner bound himself to her than
he was reduced to distraction by conflicting desires. In some words
he wrote to Herder within a fortnight after his betrothal we have a
glimpse of his state of mind. "A short time ago," he wrote, "I was
under the delusion that I was approaching the haven of domestic bliss
and a sure footing in the realities of earthly joy and sorrow, but I
am again in unhappy wise cast forth on the wide sea."[217] He was
already, in fact, contemplating the desirability of bursting his bond;
and an opportunity came to assist him in his resolve.
[Footnote 216: Frau Schönemann is recorded to have said that the
different religion of the two families was the cause of the match
being broken off.]
[Footnote 217: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 261-2.]
In the second week of May there came to Frankfort three youths whose
rank and personal character created a flutter in the Goethe household.
Two of them were the brothers of the Countess Stolberg,[218] with whom
Goethe had been carrying on his platonic correspondence during the
previous months, and were on their way to a tour in Switzerland. All
were enthusiastic adherents of the _Sturm und Drang_ movement, and
Goethe had long been the object of their distant adoration. They were
not disappointed in their idol, and the first meeting, according to
both Stolbergs, sufficed to establish a general union of hearts.
"Goethe," wrote the elder, "is a delightful fellow. The fulness of
fervid sensibility streams out of his every word and feature."[219]
During the few days they spent in Frankfort the three scions of
nobility were frequent guests in the Goethe house, and their talk must
have been enlivening if we may judge from the specimen of it recorded
by Goethe himself. The conversation had turned on the ill-deeds of
tyrants, a favourite theme with the youth of the time, and, heated
with wine, the three youths expressed a vehement desire for the blood
of all such. The Herr Rath smiled and shook his head, but his helpmate
hastily ran to the wine-cellar and produced a bottle of her best,
exclaiming, "Here is the true tyrant's blood. Feast on it, but let no
murderous thoughts go forth from my house."
[Footnote 218: The third was Count Haugnitz, of more subdued temper
than his companions.]
[Footnote 219: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 55.]
In the company of these choice spirits Goethe decided to leave
Frankfort for a time, and with the set resolve, if possible, to efface
all thoughts of Lili. Characteristically he did not take a formal
leave of her, a proceeding which was naturally resented both by
herself and her relatives. The quartette started on May 14th, and from
the first they made it appear that they meant to travel as four
geniuses who set at naught all accepted conventions.[220] Before
departing they all procured Werther costume--blue coat, yellow
waistcoat and hose and round grey hat; and in this array they
disported themselves throughout their travels. Darmstadt was their
first halting-place, and at the Court there they conducted themselves
with some regard to decorum. Outside its precincts, however, they gave
full rein to their eccentricities, and so scandalised the Darmstadters
by publicly bathing in a pond in the neighbourhood that they found it
advisable to beat a hasty retreat from the town. In Darmstadt Goethe
had met his old mentor, Merck, who with his usual caustic frankness
told him that he was making a fool of himself in keeping company with
such madcaps.[221] At Mannheim, their next stage, the whole party
signalised themselves by smashing the wine-glasses from which they had
drunk to the ladylove of the younger Stolberg. The presence of
distinguished personages at Carlsruhe, their next stage, kept their
vivacity within bounds so long as they remained there. Just at this
moment the young Duke of Weimar had come to Carlsruhe to betroth
himself to the Princess Luise of Hesse-Darmstadt, and from both Goethe
received a cordial invitation to visit them at Weimar. Another
distinguished person then in the town was Klopstock, who received
Goethe with such undisguised kindness that he was induced to read
aloud to him the latest scenes of a work of which we shall hear
presently.[222] At Carlsruhe Goethe parted company from his
fellow-travellers with the intention of visiting his sister at
Emmendingen. On May 22nd he was at Strassburg, where he spent several
days, renewing old acquaintances, especially with his former monitor,
Salzmann, but, for reasons we can appreciate, did not present himself
at Sesenheim.
[Footnote 220: According to Goethe, Count Haugnitz was the only one of
the four who showed any sense of propriety.]
[Footnote 221: It was at this time that Merck gave his famous
definition of Goethe's genius. See above, p. 135.]
[Footnote 222: The _Urfaust_.]
From Strassburg he proceeded to Emmendingen, where he spent the first
week of June with his sister, whom he had not seen since her marriage
with Schlosser. For various reasons he had looked forward to their
meeting with painful feelings. He knew that she had been unhappy in
her marriage, and must expect to find her naturally depressed temper
soured by her conjugal experience. Their main theme of conversation
was his betrothal to Lili, and it was with a vehemence born of her own
bitter experience that Cornelia urged him to break off a connection
which the relations of all immediately concerned too surely foreboded
must end in disaster. The warning of Cornelia, we might have expected,
should have been welcome as confirming his own struggling attempts to
break loose from his bonds, but, if his later memories did not betray
him, it only laid a heavier load on his heart. His real state of mind
at the time we have in a letter to Johanna Fahlmer, written while he
was still with his sister. "I feel," he wrote, "that the chief aim of
my journey has failed, and when I return it will be worse for the
Bear[223] than before. I know well that I am a fool, but for that very
reason I am I."[224] The parting of the brother and sister--and the
parting was to be for ever[225]--must have been with heavy misgivings
for both. To her brother alone had Cornelia been bound by any tender
tie; he alone of her family had understood and sympathised with her
singular temperament, and her greatest happiness had been derived from
following his career of brilliant promise and achievement. It must,
therefore, have been with dark forebodings that she saw before him the
possibility of a union which in her eyes must be fatal alike to his
peace of mind and the development of his genius. On his side, also,
Goethe must have parted from his sister with the sad conviction that
the gloom that lay upon her life could never be lifted. She had been
the one never-failing confidant equally of the troubles of his heart
and of his intellectual ambitions, and it was from her that in his
present distraction he had naturally sought sympathy and counsel. It
is with the tenderest touch that in his reminiscent record of this
their last meeting he depicts her "problematical" nature, and pays his
tribute to all that she had been to him.[226]
[Footnote 223: Goethe was known as the "Bear" or the "Huron" among his
friends.]
[Footnote 224: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 266.]
[Footnote 225: Cornelia died in June, 1777, when Goethe was settled in
Weimar.]
[Footnote 226: On Cornelia's death he wrote to his mother: "Mit meiner
Schwester ist mir so eine starcke Wurzel die mich an der Erde hielt
abgehauen worden, dass die Aeste von oben, die davon Nahrung haben,
auch absterben müssen."]
It had been Goethe's original intention to end his travels with the
visit to his sister, but, as their main object was as far off as ever,
he decided to rejoin his late companions and to accompany them to
Switzerland. By way of Schaffhausen they proceeded to Zurich, where
Goethe's first act was to seek Lavater. Their talk during his stay in
Zurich mainly turned on Lavater's great work on Physiognomy, to which
Goethe had continuously contributed by help and counsel, though from
the first he was sceptical of its scientific value. Their intercourse
was as cordial as it had been in the previous year, and Lavater was
subjugated more than ever by the personality of Goethe. "Who can think
more differently than Goethe and I," he wrote to Wieland, who was
still suspicious of his youthful adversary, "and yet we are devoted to
each other.... You will be astonished at the man who unites the fury
of the lion with the gentleness of the lamb. I have seen no one at
once firmer in purpose and more easily led.... Goethe is the most
lovable, most affable, most charming of fellows."[227]
[Footnote 227: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 59. Goethe made Lavater the
victim of one of the practical jokes which he was in the habit of
playing on his friends. Seeing an unfinished sermon of Lavater on his
desk, he completed it during the absence of Lavater, who, in ignorance
of the addition, preached the whole sermon as his own.--_Ib._ p. 58.]
In Zurich happened what Merck had foreseen. Goethe had grown tired of
his over-exuberant fellow-travellers, whose ways, moreover, did not
commend them to the sensitive Lavater. Goethe himself indeed was
capable of wild enough pranks, but behind his wild humours lay ever
the "serious striving" which was the regulative force of his nature,
and which Lavater had recognised from the beginning of their
intercourse. A lucky accident gave Goethe the opportunity of escaping
from his late comrades without an open breach. In Zurich he found a
friend whom he had looked forward to meeting there. This was a native
of Frankfort, Passavant by name, who was settled in Switzerland as a
Reformed pastor. Passavant was a man of intelligence and attractive
character, and when he proposed that they should make a tour together
through the smaller Swiss Cantons, Goethe jumped at the suggestion.
From Goethe's own narrative of his tour with Passavant we are to infer
that the distracting image of Lili was never absent from his mind, and
that all the glories of the scenery through which they passed were
only its background seen through the haze of his wandering
imaginations. And the testimony of the prose narrative in his
Autobiography is confirmed by the successive lyrics, prompted by the
intrusive image of Lili, which fell from him by the way. In the
following lines, composed on the Lake of Zurich on the first morning
of their journey, he clothes in poetical form the confession he had
made to Johanna Fahlmer from Emmendingen:--
Und frische Nahrung, neues Blut
Saug' ich aus freier Welt;
Wie ist Natur so hold und gut,
Die mich am Busen hält!
Die Welle wieget unsern Kahn
Im Rudertakt hinauf,
Und Berge, wolkig himmelan,
Begegnen unserm Lauf.
Aug', mein Aug', was sinkst du nieder?
Goldne Träume, kommt ihr wieder?
Weg, du Traum! so Gold du bist;
Hier auch Lieb' und Leben ist.
Auf der Welle blinken
Tausend schwebende Sterne;
Weiche Nebel trinken
Rings die türmende Ferne;
Morgenwind umflügelt
Die beschattete Bucht,
Und im See bespiegelt
Sich die reifende Frucht.
Fresh cheer and quickened blood I suck
From this wide world and free;
How dear is Nature and how good!
A mother unto me!
Rocked by the wavelets speeds our skiff
To the oar's measured beat;
Cloudclapt, the heaven-aspiring hills
Appear our course to meet.
Why sink my eyelids as I gaze?
Ye golden dreams of other days,
Come ye again? Though ne'er so dear,
Begone! Are life and love not here?
The o'erhanging stars are twinkling
In myriads on the mere;
In floating mists enfolded
The far heights disappear.
The morning breeze is coursing
Round the deep-shadowed cove;
And in its depths are imaged
The ripening fruits above.
Looking down on the same lake from its southern ridge, he writes these
lines, the concentrated expression of distracted emotions:--
Wenn ich, liebe Lili, dich nicht liebte,
Welche Wonne gäb' mir dieser Blick!
Und doch, wenn ich, Lili, dich nicht liebte,
Fänd' ich hier und fänd' ich dort mein Glück?
If I, loved Lili, loved thee not,
In this prospect, ah! what bliss;
Yet, Lili, if I loved thee not,
Where should I find my happiness?
In the cloister of the church at Einsiedeln he saw a beautiful gold
crown, and his first thought was how it would become the brows of
Lili. On the night of June 21st the two travellers reached the hospice
in the pass of St. Gothard--the term of their journey. Next morning
they saw the path that led down to Italy, and, according to Goethe's
account, Passavant vehemently urged that they should make the descent
together. For a few moments he was undecided, but the memories of Lili
conquered. Drawing forth a golden heart, her gift, which he wore round
his neck, he kissed it, and his resolution was taken. Hastily turning
from the tempting path, he began his homeward descent, his companion
reluctantly following him.[228]
[Footnote 228: According to a tradition in the Passavant family, it
was Goethe, not Passavant, who was so eager to descend into
Italy.--Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 58.]
On July 22nd, after a leisurely journey homewards, he was again in
Frankfort, and in a state of mind as undecided as ever regarding his
future course. Fortunately or unfortunately for himself and the world,
circumstances independent of his own will were to decide between the
alternatives that lay before him.
CHAPTER XIV
LAST MONTHS IN FRANKFORT--THE _URFAUST_
1775
As he represents it in his Autobiography, this was the situation in
which Goethe found himself on his return to Frankfort. All his
personal friends warmly welcomed him back, though his father did not
conceal his disappointment that he had not continued his travels into
Italy. As for Lili, she had taken it for granted that the departure of
her betrothed without a word of leave-taking could only imply his
intention to break with her. Yet it was reported to him that in the
face of all obstacles to their union she had declared herself ready to
leave her past behind her and share his fortunes in America. Their
intercourse was resumed, but they avoided seeing each other alone, as
if conscious of some ground of mutual estrangement. "It was an
accursed state, in some ways resembling Hades, the meeting-place of
the sadly-happy dead." In view of these relations between Lili and
himself, he further adds, all their common friends were decidedly
opposed to their union.
Such is the account which, in his retrospect, Goethe gives of his
situation after his return to Frankfort, but his correspondence at the
time shows that it cannot be accepted as strictly accurate. During the
three remaining months he spent in Frankfort he on four different
occasions visited Offenbach, where he must often have seen her alone.
What his letters indeed prove is that he was characteristically
content to let each day bring its own happiness or misery, and to
leave events to decide the final issue. On August 1st, a few days
after his return, he writes to Knebel: "I am here again ... and find
myself a good deal better, quite content with the past and full of
hope for the future."[229] Two days later he was in Offenbach, and
from Lili's own room he writes as follows to the Countess: "Oh! that I
could tell you all. Here in the room of the girl who is the cause of
my misery--without her fault, with the soul of an angel, over whose
cheerful days I cast a gloom, I.... In vain that for three months I
have wandered under the open sky and drunk in a thousand new objects
at every pore."[230] To Lavater on the following day he writes that he
has been riding with Lili, and adds these words with an N.B.: "For
some time I have been pious again; my desire is for the Lord, and I
sing psalms to him, a vibration of which shall soon reach you. Adieu.
I am in a sore state of strain; I might say over-strain. Yet I wish
you were with me, for then it goes well in my surroundings."[231] A
letter addressed to Merck later in the same month would seem to show
that he had at least no intention of seeking an immediate union with
Lili. By the end of the year at the latest, he says, he must be off to
Italy, and he prays Merck to prevail with his father to grant his
consent.
[Footnote 229: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 272.]
[Footnote 230: _Ib._ p. 273.]
[Footnote 231: _Ib._ pp. 277-8.]
A crisis in the relations between the lovers came on the occasion of
the Frankfort fair in the second week of September. The fair brought a
crowd of males, young, middle-aged, and old, all on more or less
intimate terms with the Schönemann family, and their familiarities
with Lili were gall and wormwood to Goethe, though he testifies that,
as occasion offered, she did not fail to show who lay nearest her
heart. Even in his old age the experience of these days recalled
unpleasant memories. "But let us turn," he exclaims, "from this
torture, almost intolerable even in the recollection, to the poems
which brought some relief to my mind and heart."[232] A remarkable
contemporary document from his hand proves that his memory did not
exaggerate his state of mind at the time.[233] In the form of a
Diary, expressly meant for his Countess, he notes day by day the
alternating feelings which were distracting him. The Countess had
urged him once for all to break his bonds, and in these words we have
his reply: "I saw Lili after dinner, saw her at the play. I had not a
word to say to her, and said nothing! Would I were free! O Gustchen!
and yet I tremble for the moment when she could become indifferent to
me, and I become hopeless. But I abide true to myself, and let things
go as they will."[234]
[Footnote 232: The two poems, _Lilis Park_ and the song beginning "Ihr
verblühet, süsse Rosen," which Goethe refers to this period, were
really written at an earlier date. The latter, we have seen, appears
in _Erwin und Elmire_.]
[Footnote 233: It was at this time that he translated the Song of
Solomon, which he calls "the most glorious collection of love-songs
God ever made."]
[Footnote 234: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 294. In a letter to the Countess's
brothers about the same date, Goethe writes: "Gustchen [the Countess]
is an angel. The devil that she is an Imperial Countess."--_Ib._ p.
298.]
In all this tumultuous effusion we see the side of Goethe's nature
which he has depicted in Werther, in Clavigo, and Fernando. Yet all
the while he was completely master of his own genius. Throughout all
his alternating raptures and despairs he was assiduously practising
the arts to which his genius called him. He diligently contributed
both text and drawings to Lavater's _Physiognomy_; he worked at art on
his own account, making a special study of Rembrandt; and, as we shall
see, even at the time when his relations to Lili were at the
breaking-point he was producing poetical work which he never surpassed
at any period of his life. From two distinguished contemporaries, both
men of mature age, who visited him during this time of his intensest
preoccupation with Lili, we have interesting characterisations of him
which complement the impressions we receive from his own
self-portraiture. The one is from J.G. Sulzer, an author of repute on
matters of art. "This young scholar," Sulzer writes, "is a real
original genius, untrammelled in his manner of thinking, equally in
the sphere of politics and learning.... In intercourse I found him
pleasant and amiable.... I am greatly mistaken if this young man in
his ripe years will not turn out a man of integrity. At present he has
not as yet regarded man and human life from many sides. But his
insight is keen."[235] The other writer is J.G. Zimmermann, one of the
remarkable men of his time, whose book on _Solitude_, published in
1755, had brought him a European reputation. "I have been staying in
Frankfort with Monsieur Göthe," he writes, "one of the most
extraordinary and most powerful geniuses who has ever appeared in this
world.... Ah! my friend, if you had seen him in his paternal home, if
you had seen how this great man in the presence of his father and
mother is the best conducted and most amiable of sons, you would have
found it difficult not to regard him through the medium of love."[236]
[Footnote 235: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. p. 60.]
[Footnote 236: Max Morris, _op. cit._ v. 470.]
On October 12th, 1775, happened an event which was to be the decisive
turning-point in Goethe's life. On that day the young Duke of Weimar
and his bride arrived in Frankfort on their way home from Carlsruhe,
where they had just celebrated their marriage, and again both warmly
urged him to visit them at Weimar.[237] We have it on Goethe's own
word that he had decided on a second flight from Frankfort as the only
escape from his unendurable situation, but the invitation of the ducal
pair brought his decision to a point. He accepted the invitation,
announced his resolve to all his friends, and made the necessary
preparations for his journey. The arrangement was that a gentleman of
the Duke's suite, then at Carlsruhe, was to call for him on an
appointed day and convey him to Weimar. The appointed day came, but no
representative of the Duke appeared. To avoid the embarrassment of
meeting friends of whom he had formally taken leave, he kept within
doors, working off his impatience in the composition of a play which
the world was afterwards to know as _Egmont_. More than another week
passed, and, weary of his imprisonment, he stole out in the darkness
enveloped in a long cloak to avoid recognition by chance friends. In
his memory there lived one of these night-wanderings when he stood
beneath Lili's window, heard her sing the song, beginning _Warum
ziehst du mich unwiderstehlich_, in which, in the first freshness of
his love, he had described the witchery with which she had bound him,
and, the song ended, saw from her moving shadow that she paced up and
down the room, evidently deep in thoughts which he leaves us to
divine. Only his fixed resolve to renounce her, he adds in his
narrative of the incident, prevented him from making his presence
known to her.
[Footnote 237: The Duke had previously passed through Frankfort on his
way to Carlsruhe. On that occasion, also, Goethe had been in
intercourse with him.]
There was one member of the Goethe household who was not displeased at
the non-appearance of the ducal representative. The father had from
the first been strenuously opposed to his son's going to Weimar, and
in his opinion the apparent breach of the appointment was only an
illustration of what a commoner was to expect in his intercourse with
the great. His own desire was that his son should proceed to Italy
with the double object of breaking his connection with Lili, and of
enlarging his experience by an acquaintance with that country and its
treasures. The embarrassing predicament of his son offered the
opportunity of realising his desire, and he now proposed to him that
he should at once start for Italy and leave his cares behind him. In
the circumstances there appeared to be no other alternative, and on
October 30th Goethe left Frankfort with Italy as his intended goal.
Heidelberg was to be his first stage, and on the way thither he began
the Journal in which he meant to record the narrative of his travels.
The two pages he wrote are the intense expression of the mental strain
in which he set forth on a journey which was to have such a different
issue from what he dreamt. The parting from Lili was uppermost in his
thoughts. "Adieu, Lili," he wrote, "adieu for the second time! The
first time we parted I was full of hope that our lots should one day
be united.[238] Fate has decided that we must play our _rôles_ apart."
[Footnote 238: This, as we have seen, is not consistent with certain
of his former statements.--In June of 1776 Lili was betrothed to
another, but, owing to his bankruptcy, marriage did not follow. In
1778, however, she was married to a Strassburg banker. Like all
Goethe's loves, she retained a kindly memory of him. She is reported
to have said that she regarded herself as owing her best self to
him.--Max Morris, _op. cit._ v. 468.]
At Heidelberg he spent a few days in the house of a lady of whom we
have already heard--that Mademoiselle Delf who had so effectually
brought matters to a point between Goethe and Lili. She was now
convinced that the betrothal had been a mistake, but, undismayed, she
now suggested to him that there was a lady in Heidelberg who would be
a satisfactory substitute for the lost one. One night he had retired
to rest after listening to a protracted exposition of the Fräulein's
projects for his future, when he was roused by the sound of a
postilion's horn. The postilion brought a letter which cleared up the
mystery of the delayed messenger. Hastily dressing, Goethe ordered a
post-chaise, and, amid the vehement expostulations of his hostess,
began the first stage of the journey which was to lead him not to
Italy but to the Court of Weimar. It was the most momentous hour of
his life, and, as he took his place in the carriage, he called aloud,
in mock heroics, to the excited Fräulein words which he may have
recently written in _Egmont_, and which had even more significance as
bearing on his own future than he could have dreamed at the moment:
"Child! Child! Forbear! As if goaded by invisible spirits, the
sun-steeds of time bear onward the light car of our destiny; and
nothing remains for us but, with calm self-possession, firmly to grasp
the reins, and now right, now left, to steer the wheels here from the
precipice and there from the rock. Whither he is hasting, who knows?
Does anyone consider whence he came?"[239]
[Footnote 239: Miss Swanwick's translation. Goethe concludes his
Autobiography with these words.]
With him to Weimar Goethe bore two manuscripts to which, during his
last years in Frankfort, he had, at one time and another, committed
his deepest feelings as a man, his profoundest thoughts as a thinker,
and his finest imaginations as a poet. The one contained the first
draft of the drama which, as we have seen, was written in those days
of torturing suspense preceding his final departure from his paternal
home, and which, subsequently recast, was to take its place among the
best known of his works--the tragedy of _Egmont_. Of far higher moment
for the world, however, was the matter contained in the other of these
manuscripts. Therein were set down the original portions of a poem
which was eventually to fructify into one of the great imaginative
products of all time--the drama of _Faust_.
Beyond all other of Goethe's productions previous to his settling in
Weimar, these original scenes of _Faust_ bring before us his deepest
and truest self. In all the other longer works of that period, in
_Götz_, in _Werther_, in _Clavigo_, and the rest, one side--the
emotional side--of his nature had been predominantly represented; but
in what he wrote of _Faust_ we have all his mind and heart as he had
them from nature, and as they had been schooled by time. It is one of
the fortunate incidents in literary history that we now possess these
fragments in which the genius of Goethe expressed itself with an
intensity of imaginative force which he never again exemplified in the
same degree. The original text was unknown till 1887, when Erich
Schmidt found it in the possession of a grandnephew of a lady of the
Court of Weimar,[240] who had copied it from the manuscript received
by her from Goethe. It is uncertain whether the manuscript thus
discovered exactly corresponds to the manuscript which Goethe took
with him to Weimar, but the probability is that their contents are
virtually identical.
[Footnote 240: Fräulein Luise von Göchhausen.]
As in the case of _Der Ewige Jude_, _Prometheus_, and other fragments
of the Frankfort period, the successive scenes of the _Urfaust_ were
thrown off at different times on the inspiration of the moment, and
the exact date of their production can only be a matter of conjecture.
What we do know is that the figure of the legendary Faust had early
attracted his attention. As a boy he had read at least one of the
chap-books which recorded the wondrous history of the scholar who had
sold himself to the devil, and, as a common spectacle in Germany, he
must have seen the puppet-show in which the story of Faust was
dramatised for the people. According to his own statement, it was in
1769 that the conception of a poem, based on the Faust legend, first
suggested itself to him, but it was during the years 1774 and 1775
that most of the scenes of the _Urfaust_ were written. Both by himself
and others there are references during these years to his work on
_Faust_, and as late as the middle of September, 1775, he tells the
Countess Stolberg that, while at Offenbach with Lili, he had composed
another scene.
What attracted Goethe to the legend of Faust was that it presented a
framework into which he could dramatically work his own life's
experience, equally in the world of thought and feeling. The story
that depicted a passionate searcher for truth, rebelling against the
limits imposed by the place assigned to man in the nature of things,
who at all costs dared to burst these limits in order to enjoy life in
all its fulness--this story had a suggestiveness that appealed to
Goethe's profoundest consciousness. "I also," he says in his
Autobiography, "had wandered at large through all the fields of
knowledge, and its futility had early enough been shown to me. In life
also I had experimented in all manner of ways, and always returned
more dissatisfied and distracted than ever." Of this correspondence
which Goethe recognised between the legendary Faust and his own being,
the final proof is that on the basis of the legend he eventually
constructed the work in which he embodied all that life had taught him
of the conditions under which it has to be lived.
When Goethe first put his hand to the _Urfaust_, he had no definite
conception of an artistic whole in which the suggestions of the legend
should be focussed in view of a determinate end. As we have it, the
_Urfaust_ consists of twenty-two scenes--those that relate the
Gretchen tragedy alone having any necessary connection with each
other. All the successive parts, including the Gretchen tragedy,
suggest improvisation under a compelling immediate impulse with no
reference to what had gone before or what might come after. Apart from
its poetic value, therefore, the _Urfaust_ is the concentrated
expression of what had most intensely engaged Goethe's mind and heart
previous to the period when it was produced.
In the _Urfaust_ we have neither the Prologue in the Theatre nor the
Prologue in Heaven, but, with the exception of some verbal changes,
the opening scene which introduces us to Faust is identical with that
of the poem in its final form. Seated at his desk in a dusty Gothic
chamber, furnished with all the apparatus for scientific experiment,
Faust reviews his past life, and finds that he has been mocked from
the beginning. In every department of boasted knowledge he has made
himself a master, but it has brought satisfaction neither to his
intellect nor his heart, and he has turned to magic in the hope that
it would reveal to him the secrets that would make life worth living.
As in the completed _Faust_, he opens the book of Nostradamus and
finds the signs of the Macrocosmus and of the Earth-Spirit, by both of
which he is baffled in his attempt to enter the _arcana_ of being.
In the _Urfaust_, also, we have, with a few verbal alterations, the
Scene in which Faust communicates to his famulus Wagner his cynical
view of the value of human knowledge. In the _Urfaust_, however, are
lacking the Scenes that follow in the completed poem--Faust's
soliloquy and meditated suicide, the Easter walk, the appearance of
Mephistopheles in the shape of a poodle, and the compact that follows.
In place of these scenes we have but one, in which Mephistopheles,
without previous introduction, is represented as a professor giving
advice to a raw student who has come to consult him as to his future
course of conduct and study. Of all the Scenes in the _Urfaust_ this
is the feeblest, and its immaturity, as well as its evident references
to Goethe's own experiences at Leipzig, suggest that it was the
earliest written. This Scene is followed by another reminiscent of
Leipzig--the Scene in Auerbach's cellar, which mainly differs from
the later form in being written in prose and not in verse--Faust and
not Mephistopheles playing the conjuror in drawing wine from a table.
In the completed poem we are next introduced to the Witches' Kitchen,
where Faust is rejuvenated, and where he sees Margaret's image in a
mirror--the reader being thus prepared for the tragedy that is to
follow. In the _Urfaust_ we pass with no connecting link from the
Scene in Auerbach's Cellar to Faust's meeting with Margaret and the
successive Scenes which depict her self-abandonment to Faust and her
consequent misery and ruin. The content of these Scenes is virtually
the same in both forms--the most important difference being that,
while the concluding Prison Scene is in prose in the _Urfaust_, it is
in verse in the later form. Of the three songs which Margaret sings,
only the first, "There was a King in Thule," was retouched. In the
_Urfaust_ the duel between Valentin and Mephistopheles does not occur,
and we have only Valentin's soliloquy on the ruin of his sister; and
the scenes, _Wald und Höhle_, the _Walpurgis Nacht_, the
_Walpurgisnachtstraum_, generally condemned by critics as inartistic
irrelevancies, are likewise lacking.[241]
[Footnote 241: The words "[Sie] ist gerettet" are not in the
_Urfaust_.]
The _Urfaust_ is the crowning poetic achievement of the youthful
Goethe, and by general consent, as has already been said, he never
again achieved a similar intense fusion of thought, feeling, and
imagination. Apart from the opening Scenes, which have no dramatic
connection with it, the Gretchen tragedy constitutes an artistic whole
which by its perfection of detail and overwhelming tragic effect must
ever remain one of the marvels of creative genius. Not less
astonishing as a manifestation of Goethe's youthful power is the
creation in all their essential lineaments of the three figures,
Faust, Mephistopheles, and Margaret--figures stamped ineffaceably on
the imagination of educated humanity. Be it said also that from the
_Urfaust_ mainly come those single lines and passages which are among
the memorable words recorded in universal literature. Such, to specify
only a few, are the Song of the Earth-Spirit; the lines commenting on
man's vain endeavour to comprehend the past, and on the dreariness of
all theory,[242] contrasted with the freshness and colour of life;
Faust's confession of his religious faith, and Margaret's songs. To
have added in this measure to the intellectual inheritance of the race
assures the testator his rank among the great spirits of all time.
[Footnote 242:
Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.]
With the _Urfaust_, marking as it does the highest development which
Goethe attained in the years of his youth, this record of these years
may fitly close. His characteristics as they present themselves during
that period are certainly in strange contrast to the conception of
the matured Goethe which holds general possession of the public mind,
at least in this country. In that conception the world was for the
later Goethe "a palace of art," in which he moved--
"as God holding no form of creed
But contemplating all."[243]
[Footnote 243: Tennyson disclaimed having Goethe in his mind when he
wrote _The Palace of Art_.]
But such transformations of human character are not in the order of
nature, and, due allowance made for the numbing hand of time, the
youthful Goethe remained essentially the same Goethe to the end.
Behind the mask of impassivity which chilled the casually curious who
sought him in his last years there was ever that _etwas weibliches_
which Schiller noted in him in his middle age. In the critical moments
of life he was in his maturity as in his youth subject to emotions
which for the time seemed to be beyond his control. On the death of
his wife his behaviour was that of one distracted. He described
himself at the age of fifteen as "something of a chameleon," and, as
already remarked, Felix Mendelssohn, who saw him a year before his
death, declared that the world would one day come to believe that
there had not been one but many Goethes. We have seen that throughout
the period of his youth some external impulse to production was a
necessity of his nature, and so it was to the close. What Behrisch and
Merck and his sister Cornelia did for him in these early years, had
to be done for him in later life by similar friends and counsellors.
If, like Plato and Dante, he was "a great lover" in his youth, "a
great lover" he remained even into time-stricken age; when past his
seventieth year he was moved by a passion from which, as in youth, he
found deliverance by giving vent to it in passionate verse. It is in
the youthful Goethe, before time and circumstance had dulled the
spontaneous play of feeling, that we see the man as he came from
nature's hand, with all his manifold gifts, and with all his sensuous
impulses, tossing him from one object of desire to another, yet ever
held in check by the passion that was deepest in him--the passion to
know and to create.
* * * * *
GARDEN CITY PRESS LIMITED, LETCHWORTH, HERTS.
INDEX
_Adler und Taube_, poem by Goethe, 183, 184.
Æschylus, 175.
_An Belinden_, lyric addressed by Goethe to Lili Schönemann, 252.
_An Schwager Kronos_, poem by Goethe, 240.
Arnold, Gottfried, his _History of the Church and of Heretics_,
Goethe's study of it, 64, 65.
Arnold, Matthew, 6;
quoted, 140.
Basedow, Johann Bernhard, his character, 227, 228;
his intercourse with Goethe, 228-231.
Beaumarchais, his _Mémoires_ suggest Goethe's _Clavigo_, 200, 201.
Behrisch, friend of Goethe in Leipzig, his character and influence on
Goethe, 39-41, 43, 44.
Bergson, quoted, 175 note.
Berlichingen, Gottfried von, hero of Goethe's play _Götz von
Berlichingen_, 121;
his _Memoirs_, _ib._
Boerhaave, Goethe's study of him, 64.
Böhme, Professor of History in Leipzig, Goethe attends his lectures, 34.
Böhme, Frau, her influence on Goethe, 34, 36.
Boie, H.C., his description of Goethe, 241.
Bonn, 231.
Brentano, Peter, married to Maxe von la Roche, 186;
Goethe's relations to him, _ib._;
his traits assigned to Albert in _Werther_, 191.
Brion, Friederike, Goethe's relations to her, 96-101;
his poems inspired by her, 105-108;
Goethe's remorse for parting from her, 117, 118;
nature of Goethe's love for her, 249 note.
Brion, Pastor, father of Friederike Brion, 96.
Byron, Lord, resemblance of his career to Goethe's, 26, 27, 29;
referred to, 168.
Buff, Charlotte (Lotte), loved by Goethe, 147;
his relations to her, 147-151;
her displeasure with _Werther_, 198.
Carl August, Duke of Weimar, his intercourse with Goethe, 242;
meets Goethe at Carlsruhe, 272;
visits Frankfort and invites Goethe to Weimar, 283-284.
Carlsruhe, 272.
Carlyle, Thomas, 181.
Chateaubriand, 249 note.
_Claudine von Villa Bella_, play by Goethe, 263-265.
_Clavigo_, play by Goethe: its origin, 200, 201;
argument of it, 202-204;
its classical form, 205.
Clavigo, character of, compared with that of Goethe, 206-208.
Clodius, Professor in Leipzig; Goethe attends his lectures, 34.
Coblenz, 230.
Cologne, 235, 236.
Cologne cathedral, 235.
Constantin, brother of Carl August, 242.
Darmstadt, 272.
Darmstadt, Court of, the coterie associated with it, 136, 138;
its influence on Goethe, _ib._
_Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern_, satirical play by Goethe, 169,
170.
Daudet, Alphonse, 180 note.
Delf, Mademoiselle, effects the betrothal of Goethe and Lili
Schönemann, 268;
suggests to Goethe a substitute for Lili, 286.
_Der Ewige Jude_, poetic fragment by Goethe: its origin, 212-215;
account of it, 216-218.
_Der König von Thule_, poem by Goethe, 236.
_Der Untreue Knabe_, poem by Goethe, 236.
_Der Wanderer_, poem by Goethe, 140-142.
_Deserted Village_, translated by Goethe, 146.
_Die Laune des Verliebten_, play by Goethe: its argument, 51, 52.
_Die Mitschuldigen_, play by Goethe: its argument, 52, 53.
_Diné zu Coblenz_, poem by Goethe, 230, 231.
_Disputation_ of Goethe for the Licentiate of Laws, 114.
Dresden, Goethe's secret visit to, 46.
Düsseldorf, 231, 235, 236.
_Edwin and Angelina_, Goldsmith's ballad, suggested Goethe's _Erwin und
Elmire_, 256.
_Egmont_, play by Goethe, 284;
quoted by Goethe on his proceeding to Weimar, 287;
manuscript of, taken to Weimar by Goethe, 287.
Ehrenbreitstein, 155.
Einsiedeln, 278.
Elberfeld, 231.
_Elysium, an Uranien_, ode by Goethe, 138.
Emerson, quoted, 106, 107.
Emmendingen, 272.
Ems, 225.
English literature, its influence on _Werther_, 187, 188.
_Ephemerides_, Diary kept by Goethe, 102;
quoted, 211 note;
referred to, 212.
_Erwin und Elmire_, vaudeville by Goethe, 255-257.
Euripides, 173.
Fahlmer, Johanna, letter of Goethe to, 248 note.
Flachsland, Caroline, member of the _Gemeinschaft der Heiligen_, 136;
her letters describing Goethe, 137, 138;
his ode addressed to her as Psyche, 138;
on Goethe's ambition to be a painter, 164;
character in _Das Jahrmarktsfest_, 170;
in _Pater Brey_, 171;
in _Satyros_, 172.
Flaubert, 180 note.
Frankfort-on-the-Main, Goethe's birthplace, description of: its
influence on Goethe, 2, 3;
Goethe's return to, 109;
Goethe's distaste for, 111.
Frankforters, Goethe's description of, 161.
_Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen_, journal expounding the aims of the
_Sturm und Drang_ movement, 164, 165.
Frederick the Great, Goethe's admiration for, 18, 19.
French literature, its domination in Germany; imitated by Goethe, 49, 75.
French troops in Frankfort, 19-21.
Friedberg, 239.
_Gedicht der Ankunft des Herrn_, another title for _Der Ewige Jude_, 216.
Gellert, Professor, German poet resident in Leipzig, 32;
Goethe attends his lectures, 34.
_Gemeinschaft der Heiligen_ at the Court of Darmstadt, 136.
Göchhausen, Fräulein Luise von, and the manuscript of the _Urfaust_,
288 and note.
Goethe, Cornelia, Goethe's sister: her character, her influence on
Goethe, Goethe's affection for her, 10, 11;
his letters to her from Leipzig, 40, 41;
her father's hardness to, 59;
her home influence, 116;
stimulates Goethe to write _Götz von Berlichingen_, 121;
married to J.G. Schlosser, 162;
Goethe's last meeting with her, 273-274.
Goethe, Elizabeth, Goethe's mother: her character, her relations to her
son, 8-10;
her religion, 15.
Goethe, Johann Kaspar, Goethe's father: his character, not in sympathy
with his son, his method of education, 6-7;
determines, against his son's will, to send him to University of
Leipzig, 23, 24;
his severity towards his daughter, Cornelia, 59;
estrangement from his son, 60;
his pride in his genius, _ib._;
his son's characterisation of him, 161;
his republican opinions, 243;
objects to his son's intercourse with Carl August, Duke of Weimar, 244;
his opposition to his son's going to Weimar, 285;
wishes him to go to Italy, _ib._
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, his birth in Frankfort-on-the-Main, 4;
influence of his birthplace, 2, 3;
influence of the period on his development, 4-6;
his debt to his father, 6-7;
to his mother, 8-10;
relations to his sister, 10-11;
his education, 14;
religious influences, 14-17;
influence of the French theatre in Frankfort on him, 20, 21;
in love with Gretchen, 22, 23;
father resolves to send him to the University of Leipzig, 24;
his characteristics as a boy, 25-27;
his early devotion to poetry, 28;
his stormy career throughout his youth, 29;
goes to the University of Leipzig, 31;
his studies there, 33-35;
influence of Leipzig society on him, 35-38;
influence of Frau Böhme on his character and literary tastes, 36;
falls in love with Käthchen Schönkopf, 38;
friendship with Behrisch, 39, 40;
a jealous lover, 43, 44;
artistic studies, 45;
influence of Friedrich Oeser on his artistic ideals, 46, 47;
_Neue Lieder_, 49, 50;
_Die Laune des Verliebten_ and _Die Mitschuldigen_, 51-53;
his ideas of poetry, 54-57;
returns to Frankfort, 57;
his unsatisfactory condition of mind and body, 57, 58;
estrangement from his father, 60;
his interest in religion, 60-67;
influence of Fräulein von Klettenberg, 62-64;
his dangerous illness, 63, 64;
works out a creed of his own, 65, 66;
mystical and chemical studies, 66;
interests in art and literature, 69-71;
departs for the University of Strassburg, 74;
influence of Strassburg society, 76, 77;
finds a mentor in Dr. Salzmann, 79, 80;
acquaintance with Jung Stilling, 81-83;
influence of Herder, 83-93;
inspired by Strassburg Cathedral, 93-95;
his love experiences with Friederike Brion, 95-102;
his manifold interests in Strassburg, 102-104;
development of his poetic gift, 105;
lyrics to Friederike, 105-108;
returns to Frankfort, 108;
state of mind on his return, 110-113;
continued estrangement from his father, 114, 115;
his sister Cornelia, 116;
makes acquaintance with the brothers Schlosser, _ib._;
his distraction in Frankfort, 118-120;
admiration of Shakespeare, 121;
writes _Götz von Berlichingen_, 122;
makes acquaintance with Merck, 132;
comes under the influence of the Darmstadt circle, 136;
his poems inspired by that circle, 138;
his visit to Wetzlar, 143;
his mode of life there, 144;
marks the acquaintance of Charlotte Buff, 147;
and of Kestner, 148;
his subsequent relations to them, 149;
characterised by Kestner, 152;
returns to Frankfort, 154;
conceives _Werther_, 154;
makes acquaintance with the family von la Roche, 155;
his relations to Frau von la Roche and her daughter, 156;
his unrest after his experiences at Wetzlar, 158;
his dislike of Frankfort, 161;
his solitude, 162;
uncertain whether he should devote himself to literature or art, 163;
co-editor of the _Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen_, 164;
his _Letter of a Pastor_, 166;
paper on _Two Biblical Questions_, 167;
publishes the second draft of _Götz von Berlichingen_, 167;
writes a succession of satirical plays, 169;
his fragmentary drama, _Prometheus_, 175;
his fragment of a drama on Mahomet, 181;
produces _Werther_, 184;
his own character compared with that of Werther, 193;
his _Clavigo_, 200;
Goethe and Spinoza, 209;
his fragment, _Der Ewige Jude_, 212;
his intercourse with Lavater, 220;
with Basedow, 227;
with Fritz Jacobi, 233;
with Klopstock, 238;
characterised by Boie and Werthes, 241-2;
makes acquaintance with the Princes of Weimar, 243;
characterised by von Knebel, 244-5;
falls in love with Lili Schönemann, 247;
his songs addressed to her, 251;
relations with the Countess Stolberg, 253;
his infatuation for Lili, 254;
his succession of plays relative to her, 255-265;
shrinking from marriage, 267;
betrothed to Lili, 268;
persuaded of his mistake, 269;
sets out for Switzerland with the Counts Stolberg, 270;
his travels, 272;
visit to his sister, 273;
meets Lavater at Zurich, 275;
parts company with the Stolbergs, and accompanies Passavant to the
pass of St. Gothard, 276;
returns to Frankfort, 278;
his relations to Lili on his return, 279;
invited by the Duke of Weimar to visit Weimar, 284;
opposition of his father, 284;
decides to go to Italy as the Duke's messenger does not appear, 285;
goes to Heidelberg on the way to Italy, 285;
appearance of the Duke's messenger decides him to visit Weimar, 286;
the _Urfaust_, 287-293;
characteristics, 293.
Goncourt, Edmond de, 180 note.
_Götter, Holden, und Wieland_, satirical play on Wieland by Goethe, 173,
174.
Gotter, F.W., friend of Goethe in Wetzlar, 146.
Gottsched, German poet resident in Leipzig, 32.
_Götz von Berlichingen_, drama by Goethe, 109, 113;
its origin, 121;
its plot, 123-126;
its characteristics, 126-129;
second draft of, 167, 168.
Gray, Thomas, 187.
Gretchen, Goethe's first love, 22, 23.
Hamann, J.G., the "Magus of the North," teacher of Herder, 86;
Goethe's interest in him, _ib._
Hanover, 160.
Hasenkamp, rebukes Goethe for _Werther_, 232.
Haugnitz, Count, travels with Goethe to Switzerland, 270-275.
Heidelberg, 285, 286.
Hehn, Viktor, quoted, 139, 180 note.
Heine, Heinrich, 26.
Heinse, J.J.H., his opinion of Goethe, 237.
Herder, his _Fragments on Modern German Literature_, 48;
Johann Gottfried, 83-93;
his career, character and speculations, 84-86;
his admiration of Shakespeare, 120;
his opinion of _Götz von Berlichingen_, 145;
one of the editors of the _Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen_, 164, 165;
as captain of the gipsies in _Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern_,
170;
satirised in _Pater Brey_, 171;
and in _Satyros_, 172;
letters of Goethe to, 268, 270.
Herrnhut Community, Goethe attends a synod of, 63;
dissociates himself from the community, 79.
_Hoch auf dem alten Turme steht_, lines by Goethe, 230.
Holy Alliance, 180.
Homer, Goethe's study of him, 145.
Horn, a friend of Goethe: his description of Goethe in Leipzig, 37;
quoted, 38;
quoted, 67.
Humboldt, Wilhelm von, his opinion of marriage, 101, 102.
Jabach, family of, 235.
Jacobi, Fritz, his horror at Lessing's approval of Spinoza, 180, 233;
his character and attainments, 234;
his intercourse with Goethe, 234-238;
letter of Goethe to, 267.
Jacobi, Georg, 235, 236.
Jean Paul, 26.
Jerusalem: his suicide prompts Goethe to _Werther_, 154, 155;
Lessing's esteem for him, 154 note.
Jung, Johann Heinrich. (_See_ Stilling, Jung.)
Kant, Immanuel, quoted, 28;
quoted, 48;
his opinion of marriage, 101;
his judgment on the _Sturm und Drang_ movement, 130.
Kestner, Johann Christian, betrothed to Lotte Buff, 148;
his character, _ib._;
his relations to Goethe, 149-151;
his characterisation of Goethe, 151-153;
letters of Goethe to, 159, 160, 174;
his displeasure with _Werther_, 198.
Klettenberg, Fräulein von, the _Schöne Seele_ of _Wilhelm Meister_, 15;
Goethe's intimacy with, 62;
her influence on his religious opinions, 63, 64, 66, 67;
letter of Goethe to, 77, 78;
her intercourse with Lavater, 225;
adviser of the Goethe family, 244;
her death, 245-246;
her affection for Goethe, 246.
Klopstock, his _Messias_, 238;
admired by Goethe, 239;
his visit to Goethe's home, 239, 240;
Goethe accompanies him to Mannheim, 240;
Goethe's opinion of him, 241 note;
visits Frankfort, 268;
Goethe meets him at Carlsruhe, 272.
Knebel, Major von, his visit to Goethe, 242;
his characterisation of him, 244;
letter of Goethe to, 280.
_Künstlers Erdewallen_, poem by Goethe, 184.
La Roche, family, its influence on _Werther_, 158.
La Roche, Frau von, Goethe's relations to her 155, 156;
letters of Goethe to, 162, 186, 187, 245 note.
La Roche, Herr von, 155.
La Roche, Maximiliane von, Goethe's relations to her, 157;
married to Peter Brentano, 186;
her relation to _Werther_, 186, 191.
Langer, his influence on Goethe's religious opinions, 58, 59.
Lavater, Johann Kaspar, his character, 220;
his intercourse with Goethe, 222-232;
Goethe's intercourse with him at Zurich, 275 and note, 280;
his _Physiognomy_, Goethe's contributions to it, 282.
Leipzig, description of, 31, 32;
Goethe a student there, 31-56;
called "little Paris," 32.
Lessing, his _Laokoon_ and _Minna von Barnhelm_, 49;
Goethe's opinion of, 70;
his approval of Spinoza's philosophy, 180;
his opinion of _Werther_, 197 note.
_Letter of the Pastor_ written by Goethe, 166.
Leuchsenring, his sentimentalism, 157;
his meeting with Goethe, _ib._;
satirised in _Pater Brey_, 171.
_Lilis Park_, poem by Goethe addressed to Lili Schönemann, 266 note,
281 note.
Limprecht, Goethe's letter to, 76.
Lisbon, earthquake of, its influence on Goethe, 16.
Luise, Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, betrothed to Carl August, Duke of
Weimar, 272.
_Mahomet_, fragment of a drama by Goethe, 181-183.
Mainz, 244, 245.
Mannheim, 240, 272.
Maria Theresa, 18.
Mendelssohn, Moses, his relation to Spinoza, 180.
Mephistopheles, 109.
Merck, Johann Heinrich, friend of Goethe, 133;
his character and influence on Goethe, 133-135;
introduces Goethe to the family von la Roche, 155;
his visit to Berlin and return, 162;
one of the editors of the _Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen_, 164, 165;
in _Pater Brey_, 171;
in _Satyros_, 172;
his mordant comment on _Clavigo_, 206;
comes under the spell of Lavater, 224;
meeting with Goethe in Mannheim, 272.
Milan, Archbishop of, orders _Werther_ to be burned, 197.
Mülheim, 231.
Müller, Chancellor von, quoted, 44;
quoted, 58 note.
Münch, Anna Sibylla, suggests _Clavigo_, 201, 202.
Napoleon, and _Werther_, 192, 193, 199.
Neo-Platonism, 65.
_Neue Lieder_, collection of Goethe's poems written in Leipzig, 49.
_Neue Liebe, neues Leben_, poem of Goethe addressed to Lili Schönemann,
251.
New Testament, Goethe's study, 59.
Oeser, Friedrich, director of the academy of drawing in Leipzig: his
influence on Goethe, 46, 47;
letters of Goethe to him, 67, 69.
Offenbach on the Main, 266, and note.
Old Testament, Goethe's study of, 16, 17.
_Ossian_, 187, 192, and note.
_Palace of Art_, Tennyson's, 294.
Paracelsus, Goethe's study of him, 64.
Passavant, Reformed Pastor, travels with Goethe in Switzerland, 276;
tradition in his family regarding Goethe, 278 note.
_Pater Brey_, satirical piece by Goethe, 170, 171.
Pfenninger, Heinrich, letter of Goethe to, 223, 224.
Pindar, Goethe's study of, 139, 145.
Plato, Goethe's study of him, 145.
_Poetische Gedanken über die Höllenfahrt Jesu Christi_, early poem of
Goethe, 28.
Pollock, Sir Frederick, on "modern Spinozism," 180 note.
_Prometheus_, fragment of a play by Goethe, 174-180.
Rembrandt, Goethe's study of, 282.
Renan, Ernest, 181 note.
Richardson, Samuel, 156;
his _Clarissa Harlowe_, 188.
Riemer, Goethe's secretary, quoted, 33.
Robinson, Henry Crabb, quoted, 192 note.
Rousseau, 58, 112, 129;
Goethe's opinion of him, 152;
his _Nouvelle Héloïse_, 188.
Rumohr, W. von, letter of Goethe to him quoted, 56 note.
Sachs, Hans, Goethe's imitation of, 169, 214.
St. Gothard, pass of, 278.
Salzmann, Dr., Goethe's mentor in Strassburg: his character, 79-81;
letters of Goethe to, 99, 100, 119, 121.
_Satyros_, satirical play by Goethe, 171-173.
Schaffhausen, 275.
Scherer, Edmond, 6;
his estimate of _Götz von Berlichingen_, 128.
Schlosser, J.G., friend of Goethe, 116;
his impressions of Goethe, 142;
married to Goethe's sister, 162;
one of the editors of the _Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen_, 164, 165.
Schmidt, Erich, his discovery of the _Urfaust_, 288.
Schönemann, Anna Elisabeth (Lili): Goethe's first meeting with her, 248;
beginning of Goethe's attachment to her, 249;
Goethe's lyrics addressed to her, 251-253;
Goethe's tribute to her in later life, 251 note;
Goethe sends his _Stella_ to her, 263;
Goethe's strained relations with her, 267-270;
poems of Goethe addressed to, 276-278;
Goethe's relations to her after his return from Switzerland, 279-286;
her subsequent marriage, 286 note.
Schönemann family, 247;
their social position superior to that of the Goethes, 248;
intercourse of Goethe with them, 249.
Schönemann, Lili. (_See_ Schönemann, Anna Elisabeth.)
Schönkopf, Käthchen, Goethe's love in Leipzig: her appearance and
character, 38;
Goethe's philandering with her, 38-44;
Goethe's poems addressed to her, 42;
Goethe's letters to, 61, 68, 69, 138 note.
Scott, Sir Walter, his translation of _Götz von Berlichingen_, 131;
his writings influenced by it, 132.
Sesenheim, residence of the Brion family:
Goethe's visits there, 96-100.
_Seven Years' War_, its influence on the Goethe household, 18.
Shakespeare, Goethe's debt to, 45, 122.
_Song of Solomon_, translated by Goethe, 281 note.
Spinoza, Goethe's debt to, 45;
his influence on Goethe, 209-212;
Goethe and Lavater discuss his writings, 226;
discussed by Goethe and Fritz Jacobi, 237.
Stein, Frau von, quoted, 150 note.
_Stella_, play by Goethe, 257-263;
ridiculed in the _Anti-Jacobin_, 261 and note;
admired by Herder, 262;
its popularity, _ib._
Sterne, 112.
Stevenson, R.L., his admiration of _Werther_, 200 note.
Stilling, Jung, friend of Goethe in Strassburg:
his career and character, 81, 82;
Goethe's kindness to, 82-83;
prank played on him by Goethe, 231;
his affection for Goethe, 246.
Stolberg, Count Christian, comes to Frankfort and travels with Goethe
to Switzerland, 270-275.
Stolberg, Count Frederick Leopold, younger brother of Christian, 270-275.
Stolberg, Countess, beginning of Goethe's acquaintance with her, 253;
his letters to, 254, 255, 266, 280, 282 and note.
Strassburg, Goethe's residence in, 74-108;
description of its society, 75, 273.
Strassburg Cathedral, Goethe's interest in, and its influence on his
development, 93-95;
Goethe's essay on, 94.
_Sturm und Drang_ movement in German literature, inspired by _Götz von
Berlichingen_, 130, 139, 140;
its aims expounded in the _Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen_, 164, 165.
Sulzer, J.G., his characterisation of Goethe, 283.
Swift, his relations to Stella and Vanessa suggest Goethe's _Stella_, 261.
Tennyson, 294 and note.
Textor, J.W., Goethe's maternal grandfather, 18.
Theatre set up by the French in Frankfort, Goethe's interest in it, 20, 21.
Theocritus, Goethe's study of him, 145.
Thoranc, Count, commander of French forces in Frankfort, quartered in
Goethe's home: his interest in Goethe, 20-21.
Turgenieff, 180 note.
_Two Biblical Questions_, piece written by Goethe, 167.
_Urfaust_, The, 287;
account of it, 288-293.
Ur-Religion, Goethe's conception of, 16.
Van Helmont, Goethe's study of him, 64.
_Vicar of Wakefield_, 96 note.
Voltaire, his criticism of Shakespeare, 70, 181 and note.
_Wanderers Sturmlied_, poem by Goethe, 139, 140.
_Werther_, 109;
analysis of, 186-200;
its influence, 196, 199;
public opinion regarding it, 196, 197;
prohibited in Leipzig and Denmark, 197;
burned at Milan, _ib._
Werther, how far he resembled Goethe, 193-195.
Wertherism, 199.
Werthes, F.A., his description of Goethe, 241.
Wetzlar, Goethe's residence there, 143-153;
description of, 144;
its society, 145;
Goethe's flying visit to, 160.
Wieland, his translation of Shakespeare, 70;
one of Goethe's masters, 70, 71;
his description of Goethe, 98;
his opinion of _Götz von Berlichingen_, 129;
satirised by Goethe, 173, 174;
his _Alceste_, _ib._;
letter of Goethe to, 185;
his approval of _Clavigo_, 205 note.
_Wilhelm Meister_, 21.
Winckelmann, influenced by Oeser, 46.
_Wilkommen und Abschied_, lyric of Goethe addressed to Friederike Brion,
107, 108.
Wordsworth, his remark on Goethe's poetry, 54.
Xenophon, Goethe's study of him, 145.
Young, Edward, his _Conjectures on Original Composition_: its influence
on German literature, 90, 187.
Zelter, friend of Goethe, letter of Goethe to him, 193-194.
Zimmermann, J.G., his characterisation of Goethe, 283.
Zurich, 275;
lake of, 276.
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