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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/19753-8.txt b/19753-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2752b9b --- /dev/null +++ b/19753-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8975 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Youth of Goethe, by Peter Hume Brown + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Youth of Goethe + +Author: Peter Hume Brown + +Release Date: November 11, 2006 [EBook #19753] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUTH OF GOETHE *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Linda Cantoni, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + + + + +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. + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Youth of Goethe, by Peter Hume Brown + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUTH OF GOETHE *** + +***** This file should be named 19753-8.txt or 19753-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/7/5/19753/ + +Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Linda Cantoni, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Hume Brown. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + + .blockquot{margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .footnotes {border: none;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {font-weight: bold; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Youth of Goethe, by Peter Hume Brown + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Youth of Goethe + +Author: Peter Hume Brown + +Release Date: November 11, 2006 [EBook #19753] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUTH OF GOETHE *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Linda Cantoni, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + +<h1>THE YOUTH OF GOETHE</h1> + +<h2>BY P. HUME BROWN, LL.D., F.B.A.</h2> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<p style="text-align: center"> +LONDON<br /> +JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.<br /> +1913<br /> +</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p style="text-align: center"><b>TO</b></p> + +<p style="text-align: center"><b>THE VISCOUNT HALDANE OF CLOAN,<br /> +LORD CHANCELLOR OF GREAT BRITAIN.</b></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><b>MY DEAR CHANCELLOR,—AS THE "ONLY BEGETTER" OF THIS BOOK, IT SEEMS +ALMOST OBLIGATORY THAT IT SHOULD BE ASSOCIATED WITH YOUR NAME.</b></p> + +<p style="text-align: right"><b>THE AUTHOR.</b></p> +</div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><i>GOETHE'S BIOGRAPHIE.</i></h2> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +"Anfangs ist es ein Punkt der leise zum Kreise sich öffnet,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Aber, wachsend, umfasst dieser am Ende die Welt."</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 15em"><span class="smcap">Friedrich Hebbel</span>.</span><br /> +<br /> +"In the beginning a point that soft to the circle expandeth,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But the circle at length, growing, enclaspeth the world."</span><br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<p style="text-align: center"><b><a href="#PREFACE">Preface</a></b></p> + +<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></h3> + +<h3>EARLY YEARS IN FRANKFORT</h3> + +<h3>1749—1765</h3> + +<table style="width: 75%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"> </td><td style="text-align: right">PAGE</td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE'S BIRTHPLACE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON HIM</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">PERIOD OF HIS BIRTH</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_4">4</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS FATHER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS MOTHER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_8">8</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS SISTER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">FAMILY FRIENDS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS EDUCATION</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_14">14</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">THE <i>SEVEN YEARS' WAR</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">FRENCH OCCUPATION OF FRANKFORT</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE'S FIRST LOVE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">DESTINED FOR THE STUDY OF LAW</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">THE BOY THE FATHER OF THE MAN</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS CHARACTER AND EARLY TASTES</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td></tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></h3> + +<h3>STUDENT IN LEIPZIG</h3> + +<h3>OCTOBER, 1765—SEPTEMBER, 1768</h3> + +<table style="width: 75%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOES TO LEIPZIG</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS WILD LIFE THERE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">SOCIETY OF LEIPZIG</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS IRREGULAR STUDIES</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">ADOPTS LEIPZIG FASHIONS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">FEMININE INFLUENCES</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">DANDYISM</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">FALLS IN LOVE WITH KÄTHCHEN SCHÖNKOPF</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_38">38</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">FRIENDSHIP WITH BEHRISCH</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS RELATIONS TO KÄTHCHEN</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">MISCELLANEOUS INTERESTS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">FRIENDSHIP WITH OESER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>STATE OF GERMAN LITERATURE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">POEMS OF THE PERIOD</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>DIE LAUNE DES VERLIEBTEN</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>DIE MITSCHULDIGEN</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">INSPIRATION</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td></tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></h3> + +<h3>AT HOME IN FRANKFORT</h3> + +<h3>SEPTEMBER, 1768—APRIL, 1770</h3> + +<table style="width: 75%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">RETURNS TO FRANKFORT</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS BROKEN HEALTH</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">RELATIONS TO HIS FATHER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS SISTER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">INTEREST IN RELIGION</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">FRIENDSHIP WITH FRÄULEIN VON KLETTENBERG</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">A MYSTERIOUS MEDICINE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">EVOLVES A RELIGIOUS CREED</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">INFLUENCE OF FRÄULEIN VON KLETTENBERG</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_66">66</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">INTEREST IN LITERATURE AND ART</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">LESSING AND WIELAND</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">RIPENING POWERS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_71">71</a></td></tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></h3> + +<h3>GOETHE IN STRASSBURG</h3> + +<h3>APRIL, 1770—AUGUST, 1771</h3> + +<table style="width: 75%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">SETTLEMENT IN STRASSBURG</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">INFLUENCES OF STRASSBURG</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">CHANGE IN HIS RELIGIOUS FEELINGS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">MANNER OF LIFE IN STRASSBURG</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">FRIENDSHIP WITH DR. SALZMANN</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">RELATIONS TO JUNG STILLING</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">COMES UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF HERDER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">YOUNG'S <i>CONJECTURES ON ORIGINAL COMPOSITION</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">ITS INFLUENCE ON GOETHE'S GENIUS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">FRIEDERIKE BRION</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS RELATIONS TO HER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">PARTING FROM HER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">MISCELLANEOUS STUDIES</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_102">102</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">SELF-DISCIPLINE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">POEMS ADDRESSED TO FRIEDERIKE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td></tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p> + +<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></h3> + +<h3>FRANKFORT—<i>GÖTZ VON BERLICHINGEN</i></h3> + +<h3>AUGUST, 1771—DECEMBER, 1771</h3> + +<table style="width: 75%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE'S RETURN TO FRANKFORT</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">CREATIVE PRODUCTIVENESS OF THE PERIOD</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">POET OR ARTIST?</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">MENTAL CONFLICT</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">EPOCHS IN HIS LAST FRANKFORT YEARS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_113">113</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS SISTER CORNELIA</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GROWING DISTASTE FOR FRANKFORT</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">DEPRESSION</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">WORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>GÖTZ VON BERLICHINGEN</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">ITS INFLUENCE ON EUROPEAN LITERATURE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td></tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></h3> + +<h3>INFLUENCE OF MERCK AND THE DARMSTADT CIRCLE</h3> + +<h3>1772</h3> + +<table style="width: 75%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">FRIENDSHIP WITH MERCK</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">CHARACTER OF MERCK</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS INFLUENCE ON GOETHE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">THE DARMSTADT CIRCLE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">ITS INFLUENCE ON GOETHE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">CAROLINE FLACHSLAND AND GOETHE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">POEMS OF GOETHE INSPIRED BY THE DARMSTADT CIRCLE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_138">138</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>WANDERERS STURMLIED</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_139">139</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>DER WANDERER</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td></tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></h3> + +<h3>WETZLAR AND CHARLOTTE BUFF</h3> + +<h3>MAY—SEPTEMBER, 1772</h3> + +<table style="width: 75%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">DEPARTURE FROM WETZLAR</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">WETZLAR AND ITS SOCIETY</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">LOTTE BUFF</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_147">147</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE'S RELATIONS TO HER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_147">147</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">KESTNER, LOTTE'S BETROTHED</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE, KESTNER, AND LOTTE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_149">149</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">DEPARTURE FROM WETZLAR</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">KESTNER'S CHARACTERISATION OF GOETHE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_151">151</a></td></tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span></p> + +<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></h3> + +<h3>AFTER WETZLAR</h3> + +<h3>1772—1773</h3> + +<table style="width: 75%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">SUICIDE OF JERUSALEM</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_154">154</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE VISITS THE FAMILY VON LA ROCHE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_155">155</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">FRAU VON LA ROCHE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_155">155</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">MAXIMILIANE VON LA ROCHE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">UNREST</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">LETTERS TO KESTNER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_159">159</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">ESTRANGEMENT FROM HIS FATHER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">SOLITUDE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_162">162</a></td></tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></h3> + +<h3>SATIRICAL DRAMAS AND FRAGMENTS</h3> + +<table style="width: 75%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">POET OR ARTIST?</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_163">163</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">LITERARY ACTIVITY</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_164">164</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>FRANKFURTER GELEHRTEN ANZEIGEN</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>LETTER OF THE PASTOR</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_166">166</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>TWO BIBLICAL QUESTIONS</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">RECASTS <i>GÖTZ VON BERLICHINGEN</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">SATIRICAL PLAYS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>PROMETHEUS</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>MAHOMET</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>ADLER UND TAUBE</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>KÜNSTLERS ERDEWALLEN</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_184">184</a></td></tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></h3> + +<h3><i>WERTHER</i>—<i>CLAVIGO</i></h3> + +<h3>1774</h3> + +<table style="width: 75%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE'S NEED OF EXTERNAL STIMULUS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_185">185</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE AND THE BRENTANOS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_186">186</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">ORIGIN OF <i>WERTHER</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">ENGLISH INFLUENCE ON <i>WERTHER</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">PUBLICATION OF <i>WERTHER</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_189">189</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE AND WERTHER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_190">190</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">SECOND PART OF <i>WERTHER</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_191">191</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">WERTHER AND GOETHE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">INFLUENCE OF <i>WERTHER</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_196">196</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">THE KESTNERS AND <i>WERTHER</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_198">198</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">WERTHERISM</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>CLAVIGO</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_200">200</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span>DRAMATISED FROM BEAUMARCHAIS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_200">200</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">ORIGIN OF <i>CLAVIGO</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_202">202</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">ITS PLOT</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_202">202</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">CONSTRUCTED ON CLASSICAL MODELS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_205">205</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>CLAVIGO</i> AND GOETHE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td></tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a></h3> + +<h3>GOETHE AND SPINOZA—<i>DER EWIGE JUDE</i></h3> + +<h3>1773—1774</h3> + +<table style="width: 75%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE'S DEBT TO SPINOZA</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_209">209</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">MISDATES SPINOZA'S INFLUENCE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_210">210</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>DER EWIGE JUDE</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">ORIGINAL PLAN OF IT</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_213">213</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">AS IT WAS ACTUALLY WRITTEN</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_216">216</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">ITS DIVISIONS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_216">216</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">ITS CHARACTERISTICS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_216">216</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">UNPUBLISHED TILL AFTER GOETHE'S DEATH</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_218">218</a></td></tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a></h3> + +<h3>GOETHE IN SOCIETY</h3> + +<h3>1774</h3> + +<table style="width: 75%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_220">220</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS CHARACTER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_220">220</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS INTEREST IN GOETHE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_222">222</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">VISITS FRANKFORT</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_224">224</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS INTERCOURSE WITH GOETHE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">JOHANN BERNHARD BASEDOW</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS CHARACTER AND CAREER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS VISIT TO FRANKFORT</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_228">228</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE, LAVATER, AND BASEDOW AT EMS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_228">228</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">THEIR VOYAGE DOWN THE RHINE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_230">230</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">JUNG STILLING</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_231">231</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">SCENE AT ELBERFELDT</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_232">232</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">FRITZ JACOBI</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE MAKES HIS ACQUAINTANCE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">THEIR INTERCOURSE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_234">234</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">JACOBI'S ESTIMATE OF GOETHE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_237">237</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">KLOPSTOCK</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_238">238</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE'S ADMIRATION OF HIM</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_238">238</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">THEIR MEETING IN FRANKFORT</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_239">239</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>AN SCHWAGER KRONOS</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_240">240</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">BOIE AND WERTHES ON GOETHE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_241">241</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span>MAJOR VON KNEBEL AND GOETHE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE AND THE PRINCES OF WEIMAR</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_243">243</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">VON KNEBEL ON GOETHE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_244">244</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">DEATH OF FRÄULEIN VON KLETTENBERG</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_245">245</a></td></tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a></h3> + +<h3>LILI SCHÖNEMANN</h3> + +<h3>1775</h3> + +<table style="width: 75%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">THE SCHÖNEMANN FAMILY</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE'S INTRODUCTION TO LILI SCHÖNEMANN</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_248">248</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">HIS SUBSEQUENT MEMORY OF HER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_249">249</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">LILI COMPARED WITH HIS PREVIOUS LOVES</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_250">250</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE'S SONGS ADDRESSED TO HER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_251">251</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">COUNTESS STOLBERG</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_253">253</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE'S RELATIONS TO HER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_253">253</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>ERWIN UND ELMIRE</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>STELLA</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>CLAUDINE VON VILLA BELLA</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_263">263</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">A DISTRACTED LOVER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">BETROTHED TO LILI</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_268">268</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">SHRINKS FROM MARRIAGE</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">COUNTS STOLBERG IN FRANKFORT</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_270">270</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">GOETHE STARTS WITH THEM FOR SWITZERLAND</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_271">271</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">VISITS HIS SISTER AT EMMENDINGEN</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_273">273</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">WITH LAVATER IN ZURICH</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_275">275</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">ACCOMPANIES PASSAVANT TO ST. GOTHARD</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_276">276</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">LYRICS TO LILI</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_276">276</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">RETURN TO FRANKFORT</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_278">278</a></td></tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a></h3> + +<h3>LAST MONTHS IN FRANKFORT—THE <i>URFAUST</i></h3> + +<h3>1775</h3> + +<table style="width: 75%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">RELATIONS TO LILI ON HIS RETURN</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_279">279</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">A CRISIS IN THEIR RELATIONS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_281">281</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">MISCELLANEOUS INTERESTS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_282">282</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">ESTIMATES OF GOETHE BY SULZER AND ZIMMERMANN</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_283">283</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">INVITATION TO WEIMAR</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_284">284</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">PROPOSED JOURNEY TO ITALY</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_285">285</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">A DELAYED MESSENGER</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_286">286</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">DEPARTS FOR WEIMAR</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_287">287</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left"><i>EGMONT</i> AND THE <i>URFAUST</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_287">287</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">THE <i>URFAUST</i></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_288">288</a></td></tr> +<tr><td style="text-align: left">CHARACTERISTICS</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_293">293</a></td></tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p style="text-align: center"><b><a href="#INDEX">Index</a></b></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Generally</span> 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 +<i>Dichtung und Wahrheit</i>." 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>After Goethe's own writings, the works to which I have been chiefly +indebted are <i>Goethes Gespräche, Gesamtausgabe von Freiherrn v. +Biedermann</i>, Leipzig, 1909-11 (5 vols.), in which are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span> collected +references to Goethe by his contemporaries; and <i>Der junge Goethe: +Neue Ausgabe in sechs Bänden, besorgt von Max Morris</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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> + +<p style="text-align: right">P.H.B.</p> + +<p>Edinburgh.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h1>THE YOUTH OF GOETHE</h1> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>EARLY YEARS IN FRANKFORT</h3> + +<h3>1749—1765</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> unmingled happiness and of entirely auspicious +augury.</p> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> 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;<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> and, as a +boy, he saw in Frankfort not only the reminders of former<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> +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.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> In these years he was able +to accumulate a store of observations and experiences which laid a +solid foundation for all his future thinking.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p><p>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 <i>literarischer Sansculottismus</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>On the truth of these conclusions Goethe's adventures as a literary +artist are the all-sufficient<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> 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 <i>Götz +von Berlichingen</i> and the Second Part of <i>Faust</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>élite</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> 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 <i>Dichtung und +Wahrheit</i>. 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.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> 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.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p> +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> 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.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> the conduct of life does he insist with +greater emphasis than the folly of expecting others to think as +ourselves.</p> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> 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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> If on these subjects he has contributed many valuable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> +reflections, it was due to the insight of genius which apprehends what +passes the range of ordinary vision.</p> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p> +<p>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 +<i>Aufklärung</i>, 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 +<i>Schöne Seele</i> of <i>Wilhelm Meister</i>), 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> 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 +<i>Ur-religion</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> 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 (<i>stille +Wirkung</i>) 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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> pieces of his own and led him to the study of the French +classical drama. In the <i>coulisses</i>, 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 +<i>Wilhelm Meister</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> 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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> 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 <i>etwas unendlich Rührendes</i>, 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 <i>Weiblichkeit</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> (the expression is his own<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>) 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 (<i>von der +Natur in mich gelegter Ernst</i>), 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> 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 <i>Faust</i>. 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—<i>Poetische Gedanken über die Höllenfahrt Jesu +Christi</i>—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.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>STUDENT IN LEIPZIG</h3> + +<h3>OCTOBER, 1765—SEPTEMBER, 1768</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">As</span> we follow the life of Byron, it has been said, we seem to hear the +gallop of horses,<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> 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. <i>Jugend ist Trunkenheit ohne Wein</i>, he says in his +<i>West-Ostlicher Divan</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>Our difficulty in connection with these three<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> 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 per<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>sonal 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."<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p> + +<p>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 <i>Faust</i>;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> +"it is a little Paris, and gives its folks a finish."<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> 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 <i>insouciance</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> to do to the end."<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> 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 <i>belles lettres</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> 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.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p><p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> in the case of the woman whom he +eventually made his wife.</p> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> 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.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> 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 <i>roué</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> In an ecstasy of delight, after a +four hours' <i>tête-a-tête</i> 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:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +What pleasure, God! of like a flame to born,<br /> +A virteous fire, that ne'er to vice kan turn.<br /> +What volupty! when trembling in my arms,<br /> +The bosom of my maid my bosom warmeth!<br /> +Perpetual kisses of her lips o'erflow,<br /> +In holy embrace mighty virtue show.<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p> + +<p>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 +<i>naïveté</i>, 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."<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> But, +he significantly adds, Annette had no more to do with his poetry than +the Muses had to do with the History of Herodotus.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> To what extent +this statement expressed the truth we shall presently see.</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> "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!"<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> 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."<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> of your scholars."<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> That all +this was not mere bravado is distinctly suggested even in <i>Dichtung +und Wahrheit</i>, where the wild doings of Leipzig are so decorously +draped.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>dénouement</i>: "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."<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>As in Frankfort, he took in knowledge equally from men, books, and +things.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> +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,<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> ... you have taught me to be modest without +self-depreciation, and to be proud without presumption."<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> 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.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> of the folly of +thinking myself a poet,"<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> 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."<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> +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.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> 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 <i>Fragments on Modern German Literature</i>; in the same +year appeared Lessing's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> <i>Laokoon</i>, 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 <i>Minna von Barnhelm</i>, 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<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a>; 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Neue +Lieder</i><a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a>; and two plays, entitled <i>Die Laune des Verliebten</i> and +<i>Die Mitschuldigen</i>. 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> theme; in his Leipzig +effusions it was love, and love in a sufficiently Anacreontic sense. +Regarding the poetic merit of the <i>Neue Lieder</i> 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 <i>Die schöne Nacht</i>.</p> + +<p style="text-align: center"><b><span class="smcap">Die schöne Nacht.</span></b></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Nun verlass' ich diese Hütte,<br /> +Meiner Liebsten Aufenthalt;<br /> +Wandle mit verhülltem Schritte<br /> +Durch den öden, finstern Wald.<br /> +Luna bricht durch Busch und Eichen,<br /> +Zephyr meldet ihren Lauf;<br /> +Und die Birken streun mit Neigen<br /> +Ihr den süssten Weihrauch auf.<br /> +<br /> +Wie ergötz' ich mich im Kühlen<br /> +Dieser schönen Sommernacht!<br /> +O wie still ist hier zu fühlen<br /> +Was die Seele glücklich macht!<br /> +Lässt sich kaum die Wonne fassen,<br /> +Und doch wollt' ich, Himmel! dir<br /> +Tausend solcher Nächte lassen,<br /> +Gäb' mein Mädchen Eine mir.<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p style="text-align: center"><b><span class="smcap">The Beautiful Night.</span></b></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Now I leave the cot behind me<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where my love hath her abode;</span><br /> +And I wander with veiled footsteps<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Through the drear and darksome wood.</span><br /> +Luna's rays pierce oak and thicket<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Zephyr heraldeth her way;</span><br /> +And for her its sweetest incense<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sheddeth every birchen spray.</span><br /> +<br /> +How I revel in the coolness<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of this beauteous summer night!</span><br /> +Ah! how peaceful here the feeling<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of what makes the soul's delight,</span><br /> +Bliss wellnigh past comprehending!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yet, O Heaven, I would to thee</span><br /> +Thousand nights like this surrender,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gave my maiden one to me.</span><br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p>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, <i>Die Laune des Verliebten</i> +("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.<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>Equally objective is Goethe's handling of the very different theme of +the other play, <i>Die Mitschuldigen</i> ("The Accomplices"),<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> sheer +fulness of his heart, which insists on immediate expression.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> 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.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>AT HOME IN FRANKFORT</h3> + +<h3>SEPTEMBER, 1768—APRIL, 1770</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">On</span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> 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 <i>régime</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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,<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 (<i>fürchterliches</i>) in it. The arrival of Goethe could not +improve the existing relations in the household. As in the time before +his going to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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-contra<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>diction. 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,"<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> he wrote to Käthchen Schönkopf, and he warns a male +correspondent in Leipzig to "beware of dissoluteness."<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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,<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>With a kind of half consent Goethe entered into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> 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 <i>Institutes of Medicine and +Aphorisms</i>, containing all that was then known of medical theory, he +"gladly stamped on his mind and memory."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Christian</i>. 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 <i>Impartial</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> <i>History of the +Church and of Heretics</i>,<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> demanded the direct vision of the +concrete fact as the only condition on which he could build "the +pyramid of his life."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Wilhelm Meister</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> not only suggested but carried out on +the foundation that had thus been laid.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p> + +<p>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."<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> always were; enough, none has as +yet touched my heart."<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> 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."<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> His life in Frankfort was, in short, what he +himself called it, an exile (<i>Verbannung</i>).</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> avoids thinking, not to say +speaking, of it."<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> 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."<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> 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.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> 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 <i>Beauties</i> 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."<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> 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."<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> +"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> +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."<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> 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.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>GOETHE IN STRASSBURG</h3> + +<h3>APRIL, 1770—AUGUST, 1771</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Goethe</span> 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.</p> + +<p>What again strikes us is the rapidity with which he caught the tone of +his new surroundings. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>His decisive rejection of French for German<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> 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 <i>Studiosus</i>, 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<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a>: "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."<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></p> + +<p>Two months later (July 28th) he appears to be in the same pious frame +of mind. "I still live<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> 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 <i>a</i> God till we can name Him <i>our</i> God, and we are +overwhelmed by the multitude of our mercies."<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> we have this addi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>tional +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 +(<i>Herzensfreunde</i>)." In Leipzig the cynical <i>roué</i> 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 <i>des Lebens ernstes Führen</i>—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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> 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 <i>d'une +suffisance insupportable</i>.<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> "That must be a fine fellow," re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>marked +Stilling's friend, but both agreed that they might look for trouble +with him, as he seemed <i>ein wilder Kamerad</i>. 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."<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> +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.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> 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,<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> +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.<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a></p> + +<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> 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 +<i>Night Thoughts</i>, entitled <i>Conjectures on Original Composition, in a +Letter addressed to the Author of Sir Charles Grandison</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>As we shall see, Goethe laid these counsels even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> too faithfully to +heart; the first composition<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> 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,<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> where "quite simple +thoughts and observations are veiled in a dust-cloud of unusual words +and phrases."</p> + +<p>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."<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> often disagree: should our passions collide, can we not +endure the collision?"<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> Might we not infer from this passage that +not Herder but Goethe was the dominating spirit in their +intercourse?<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i> and <i>Faust</i>. 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 <i>Of German Architecture</i>. 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 <i>Conjectures on Original +Composition</i>. Like Young he proclaims that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> 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.<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> 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?"<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> In this strain the letter +continues, and with a skill of approach that reminds us of his boast +to his former confidant Behrisch.</p> + +<p>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;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> and nowhere in his Autobiography is he so +obviously moved by his recollection of the past.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> 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,<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a></p> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> without and within, and the hateful evening +winds rustle among the vine leaves before my window, and my <i>animula +vagula</i> 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 <i>conscia mens</i>, unfortunately not +<i>recti</i>, 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."<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p><p>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<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a>; 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.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> 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 <i>conjugium</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Ephemerides</i>—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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> which he was afterwards so marvellously +to reproduce in his <i>Faust</i>.<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>know</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> 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 under<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>stood 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> are not made by gradation ... but rather by +ascension of state."</p> + +<p style="text-align: center"><b><span class="smcap">Wilkommen und Abschied.</span></b></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Es schlug mein Herz; geschwind zu Pferde,<br /> +Und fort, wild, wie ein Held zur Schlacht!<br /> +Der Abend wiegte schon die Erde,<br /> +Und an den Bergen hing die Nacht;<br /> +Schon stund im Nebelkleid die Eiche,<br /> +Wie ein getürmter Riese da,<br /> +Wo Finsternis aus dem Gesträuche<br /> +Mit hundert schwarzen Augen sah.<br /> +<br /> +Der Mond von einem Wolkenhügel<br /> +Sah kläglich aus dem Duft hervor;<br /> +Die Winde schwangen leise Flügel,<br /> +Umsausten schauerlich mein Ohr;<br /> +Die Nacht schuf tausend Ungeheuer;<br /> +Doch frisch und fröhlich war mein Mut;<br /> +In meinen Adern welches Feuer!<br /> +In meinem Herzen welche Glut!<br /> +<br /> +Dich sah ich, und die milde Freude<br /> +Floss aus dem süssen Blick auf mich,<br /> +Ganz war mein Herz an deiner Seite,<br /> +Und jeder Athemzug für dich.<br /> +Ein rosenfarbnes Frühlingswetter<br /> +Umgab das liebliche Gesicht,<br /> +Und Zärtlichkeit für mich, ihr Götter!<br /> +Ich hofft' es, ich verdient' es nicht.<br /> +<br /> +Doch ach, schon mit der Morgensonne<br /> +Verengt der Abschied mir das Herz:<br /> +In deinen Küssen, welche Wonne,<br /> +In deinem Auge, welcher Schmerz!<br /> +Ich ging, du standst und sahst zur Erden,<br /> +Und sahst mir nach mit nassem Blick;<br /> +Und doch, welch Glück geliebt zu werden!<br /> +Und lieben, Götter, welch ein Glück!<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p style="text-align: center"><b><span class="smcap">Welcome and Parting.</span></b></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Throbbed high my breast! To horse, to horse!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Raptured as hero for the fight;</span><br /> +Soft lay the earth in eve's embrace,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And on the mountain brooded night.</span><br /> +The oak, a dim-discovered shape,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Did, like a towering giant, rise—</span><br /> +There whence from forth the thicket glared<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Black darkness with its myriad eyes.</span><br /> +<br /> +From out a pile of cloud the moon<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Peered sadly through the misty veil;</span><br /> +Softly the breezes waved their wings;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sighed in my ears with plaintive wail.</span><br /> +Night shaped a thousand monstrous forms;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yet fresh and frolicsome my breast;</span><br /> +And what a fire burned in my veins,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And what a glow my heart possessed!</span><br /> +<br /> +I saw thee: in thine eye's soft gaze<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A tender, calm delight I knew;</span><br /> +All motions of my heart were thine.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And thine was every breath I drew.</span><br /> +The freshest, richest hues of Spring<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Enhaloëd thy lovely face,—</span><br /> +And tenderest thoughts for me!—my hope!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But, undeserved, ye Powers of Grace!</span><br /> +<br /> +But, ah! too soon, with morning's dawn,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The hour of parting cramps my heart;</span><br /> +Then, in thy kisses, O what bliss!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And in thine eye, what poignant smart!</span><br /> +I went; thou stood'st and downward gazed,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gazed after me with tearful eyes;</span><br /> +Yet, to be loved, what blessedness,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And, oh! to love, ye Gods, what bliss!</span><br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>FRANKFORT—<i>GÖTZ VON BERLICHINGEN</i></h3> + +<h3>AUGUST, 1771—DECEMBER, 1771</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Goethe</span> 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 <i>Götz von +Berlichingen</i> and <i>Werther</i>, 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 <i>Faust</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> emotions. We have moods of piety and +moods in which the mental attitude towards all human aspirations can +only be described as Mephistophelian.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>If the diversity of his gifts thus distracted him,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>, 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 <i>Werther</i>, of still more resounding +notoriety than <i>Götz</i>. 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Disputation</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> the father's ambition for his wayward +son was at length about to be realised.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> kindly feeling that existed between them was effaced.</p> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> 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."</p> + +<p>What these distractions were is vividly revealed in his correspondence +of the time. First, his whole<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> 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—<i>nidus</i>, if you +will. Good enough for hatching birds; to use another figure, +<i>spelunca</i>, a wretched hole. God help us out of this misery. +Amen."<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> 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 +(<i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>), 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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> 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 +<i>nisus</i> forwards is so strong that I can seldom force myself to take +breath, and cast a look backwards."<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> 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."<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a></p> + +<p>The "<i>nisus</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> 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,<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> 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 <i>Messias</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a></p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p> + +<p>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 <i>Geschichte Gottfriedens +von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand</i>, 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 <i>Götz</i>. +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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> 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 <i>Götz</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> +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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>Such is an outline of the production in which Goethe made his first +appeal to his countrymen at large,<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> +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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>As in the case of all Goethe's longer productions, critical opinion +has been divided from the beginning regarding the intrinsic merits of +<i>Götz</i>. 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 <i>Götz</i>. 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.<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a> In +the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> 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 <i>freedom</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> +its most characteristic elements, proceeding as they do from the +poet's own deepest intellectual interests, and, therefore, from his +most spontaneous inspiration.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Götz</i> 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 <i>Sturm und Drang</i>, 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 <i>Sturm und Drang</i> was a passing phenomenon, but the influence of +<i>Götz</i> did not end with its abortive life. But for <i>Götz</i> Schiller's +early productions would have been differently inspired; and to <i>Götz</i> +also was due much of the inspiration of the subsequent German Romantic +School, though many of its developments were abhorrent to Goethe's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> +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 <i>Götz</i>: 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.</p> + +<p>It has been a commonplace remark that 1773, the year of the +publication of <i>Götz</i>, 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, <i>Götz</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> vein which was +opened in <i>Götz</i>—a task to which Goethe himself was not called. In +1799 Scott published his translation of <i>Götz</i>,<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a> 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 <i>Götz</i> were not the least potent +of his spells.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>INFLUENCE OF MERCK AND THE DARMSTADT CIRCLE</h3> + +<h3>1772</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Specially</span> associated with <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> 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 <i>Götz</i> 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";<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> and published it was, Merck bearing the cost of +printing and Goethe supplying the paper.</p> + +<p>It was towards the close of 1771 that Goethe had made Merck's +acquaintance<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> on the occasion of a visit Merck had paid to +Frankfort; and in March<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> 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 <i>Gemeinschaft der Heiligen</i>, 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 <i>Werther</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Edward</i>, 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<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> 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 <i>Gottfried von +Berlichingen</i>.... Goethe is choke-full of songs. One about a hut built +out of the ruins of a temple is excellent.<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> ... 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.<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a> He believed, however, that she really loved him, +but another had appeared on the scene, and he was made a goose of."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Elysium, an Uranien</i>:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Seligkeit! Seligkeit!<br /> +Eines Kusses Gefühl.<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p>In all the three poems we have another illustration of Goethe's +susceptibility to immediate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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, <i>Wanderers Sturmlied</i>, 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 <i>Sturm und Drang</i>, 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 <i>Halbunsinn</i>, and one of his most sympathetic +critics—Viktor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> Hehn—admits that to follow its drift requires some +labour and some creative phantasy on the part of the reader.<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> 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 <i>Sturm und Drang</i>—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."</p> + +<p>Of far higher poetic value is the second poem, <i>Der Wanderer</i>,<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> 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 <i>Wanderer</i> there is nothing dithyrambic; +rather its characteristic is a reflective repose, which is in strange +contrast to the tumultuous outpouring of the <i>Wanderers Sturmlied</i>, +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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Natur! du ewig keimende,<br /> +Schaffst jeden zum Genuss des Lebens,<br /> +Hast deine Kinder alle mütterlich<br /> +Mit Erbteil ausgestattet, einer Hütte.<br /> +<br /> +Nature! eternal engenderer,<br /> +Thou bring'st forth thy children for the joy of living,<br /> +With care all maternal thou providest<br /> +Each with his portion, with his cottage.<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p>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."<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a> 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.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>WETZLAR AND CHARLOTTE BUFF</h3> + +<h3>MAY—SEPTEMBER, 1772</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">During</span> 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,<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a> and which may be +regarded as the most remarkable episode in his long life. It was as +"the author of <i>Werther</i>" that he was known to the reading world, +until after his death the publication of the completed <i>Faust</i> +gradually effaced the conception of Goethe as the +master-sentimentalist of European literature.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> 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,"<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> 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.<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> Disgusted with law, he found<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> 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 <i>Götz</i> that its author +had been spoilt by Shakespeare, and he modestly accepted the censure. +<i>Götz</i>, he admits, had been <i>thought</i>, not <i>felt</i>, and he would be +depressed by his failure, were he not occasionally conscious that some +day he would do better things.<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a></p> + +<p>As in Strassburg, it was at a <i>table d'hôte</i><a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> 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<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> 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 <i>Deserted +Village</i>—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.<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a></p> + +<p>"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.<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> Be it said also, that contemporary testimony at first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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."<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>After their first meeting at the ball, according to Goethe's own +testimony, he became Lotte's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> 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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> 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:—</p> + +<p>"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 <i>bizarre</i>; 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. <i>In principiis</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> 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 <i>belles lettres</i> 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. <i>In one word, he is a very remarkable man.</i>"<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>AFTER WETZLAR</h3> + +<h3>1772—1773</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i> 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,<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a> had committed suicide as the result of +an unhappy love adventure.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> Instantly, Goethe tells us in his +Autobiography, the plan of <i>Werther</i> 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 <i>Werther</i> came to +fruition, but that he was in labour with the portentous birth all its +lineaments were to show.</p> + +<p>But before <i>Werther</i> 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.<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> +whom she had had a <i>liaison</i> 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."<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>With Frau von la Roche Goethe established a Platonic relation which he +assiduously cultivated during the remainder of his residence in +Frankfort,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>From Goethe's connection with the family of von la Roche was to come +the occasion which immediately prompted the production of <i>Werther</i>, +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 <i>Werther</i>, 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 <i>Götz</i> and <i>Werther</i>, exhibit a range of intellectual +interests and a play of varied moods which materially enhance our +conceptions of his genius.</p> + +<p>The circumstances in which Goethe had left Friederike had precluded +subsequent communica<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>tions 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> 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 <i>yours</i>. 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> 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 +<i>Werther</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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."<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a> 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."<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p><p>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."<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> 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.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>SATIRICAL DRAMAS AND FRAGMENTS</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">If</span>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> "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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Götz von +Berlichingen</i>, 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 +<i>Sturm und Drang</i>. In cooperation with Herder, Merck, and Schlosser, +his future brother-in-law, and others, he conducted a journal which, +under the title of the <i>Frankfurter</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> <i>Gelehrten Anzeigen</i>, 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, +<i>belles-lettres</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a></p> + +<p>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 <i>Brief des Pastors zu +... an den neuen Pastor zu ...</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> +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 <i>Zwo wichtige bisher unerörterte +biblische Fragen, zum erstenmal gründlich beantwortet</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Götz von +Berlichingen</i> 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.<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a> As has already been said, the second +form of <i>Götz</i> is generally recognised as inferior to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>According to Merck, Goethe's head was turned for a time by the success +of <i>Götz</i>. 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";<a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> +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 +<i>Faust</i>.</p> + +<p>The first of these sallies—<i>Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern, +Ein Schönbartspiel</i>—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 +<i>dramatis personæ</i> were individuals recognisable by contemporaries in +traits which now escape us.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> 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 <i>Sturm und Drang</i>.</p> + +<p>The <i>Jahrmarktsfest</i> 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.<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a> Goethe had seen +the results of these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> intrigues in circles with which he was +acquainted, and it was to punish the sinner that he wrote <i>Ein +Fastnachtspiel, auch wohl zu tragieren nach Ostern, vom Pater Brey dem +falschen Propheten</i>. 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).<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>Herder had good reason to resent the licence with which his private +affairs had been obtruded on the public in <i>Pater Brey</i>,<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> 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 <i>Pater Brey</i> the prevailing +sentimentalism, as veiling dubious motives, had been the theme of +ridicule; in <i>Satyros, oder der</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> <i>vergötterte Waldteufel</i>, 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 <i>Satyros</i> 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,<a name="FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a></p> + +<p>Still another piece of the "godlike insolence of youth," though less +offensive in its implications, is the farce, <i>Götter, Helden, und +Wieland</i>, 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 <i>Götz von +Berlichingen</i>. By the publication of a play, <i>Alceste</i>, 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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> +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 <i>Alcestes</i>. 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 <i>Lebensweisheit</i> 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."<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id="FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a></p> + +<p>These successive <i>jeux d'esprit</i> 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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> +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.<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a></p> + +<p>As, apart from its intrinsic power, <i>Prometheus</i> has an incidental +interest in the history of philosophic thought, it may be worth while +to sketch<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> 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—<i>Der Kreis, den meine +Wirklichkeit erfüllt</i>." 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!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> 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:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Wenn aus dem innerst tiefsten Grunde<br /> +Du ganz erschüttert alles fühlst,<br /> +Was Freud' <span title="Transcriber's Note: corrected error "and"">und</span> Schmerzen jemals dir ergossen,<br /> +Im Sturm dein Herz erschwillt,<br /> +In Tränen sich erleichtern will<br /> +Und seine Glut vermehrt,<br /> +Und alles klingt an dir und bebt und zittert,<br /> +Und all die Sinne dir vergehn,<br /> +Und du dir zu vergehen scheinst<br /> +Und sinkst,<br /> +Und alles um dich her versinkt in Nacht,<br /> +Und du, in inner eigenstem Gefühl,<br /> +Umfassest eine Welt;<br /> +Dann stirbt der Mensch.<br /> +<br /> +When from thy inmost being's depths<br /> +Shattered to nought thou feelest all<br /> +Of joy and woe that e'er to thee hath flowed,<br /> +In storm thy heart hath swelled,<br /> +In tears doth find itself relief,<br /> +And doth its flow increase;<br /> +When all within thee thrills, and quakes, and quivers,<br /> +And all thy senses from thee part,<br /> +And from thyself thou seem'st to part,<br /> +And sink'st,<br /> +And all around thee sinketh deep in night,<br /> +And thou within thy inner very self<br /> +Encompassest a world;<br /> +Then dies the man.<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id="FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a> 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 <span title="Greek: hen kai pan; diacriticals omitted">'εν και παν</span> +was his own;<a name="FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a> 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.<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a> Be it said that in his old age +Goethe himself came to regard the sentiments of the soliloquy as +<i>sansculottisch</i>, 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.<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id="FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p><p>To the same period as <i>Prometheus</i> 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.<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id="FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a> 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.<a name="FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a> Of the +projected drama we have only two scenes, and a lyric in glorification +of Mahomet which was to be sung by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> two of the characters. In contrast +to <i>Prometheus</i>, 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 <i>rôle</i> 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 <i>Prometheus</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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, <i>Adler und Taube</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> 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, <i>Künstlers +Erdewallen</i> ("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 <i>connoisseur</i>, 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.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3><i>WERTHER</i>, <i>CLAVIGO</i></h3> + +<h3>1774</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> his fortieth year Goethe wrote to Wieland: "Without compulsion, +there is in my case no hope."<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id="FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a> 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 <i>Götz von +Berlichingen</i>, 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 <i>Werther</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> supplied a fresh impulse constraining +him to complete the "prodigious little work" which was to take his +contemporaries by storm.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Werther</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id="FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a> He had now gone the round of all the +experiences embodied in <i>Werther</i>; on February 1st he resumed the +discontinued work, and, writing "almost in a state of somnambulism," +finished it in a few weeks.</p> + +<p>But besides his own immediate personal experience, there went other +influences to the production of <i>Werther</i> 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 <i>Werther</i>:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +To griefs congenial prone,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">More wounds than nature gave he knew;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">While misery's form his fancy drew</span><br /> +In dark ideal hues and horrors not its own!<a name="FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a><br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p> + +<p>If English literature contributed to the tone of feeling in <i>Werther</i>, +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 <i>Götz</i>, 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 <i>Werther</i> 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 <i>Clarissa +Harlowe</i> (1747-8). Richardson's example, moreover, had been followed +in another work which had achieved as sensational as success as +<i>Clarissa</i>—Rousseau's <i>Nouvelle Héloïse</i>. In form and substance +<i>Werther</i> was as much inspired by Richardson and Rousseau as <i>Götz</i> +had been by Shakespeare, yet in <i>Werther</i>, as in <i>Götz</i>, the world +recognised an original creation which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> bore a new message to every +heart capable of receiving it.</p> + +<p>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), <i>Werther</i> appeared with certain +modifications, which did not, however, as in the case of <i>Götz</i>, +organically affect its original form.<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id="FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a> 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.<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id="FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> 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,<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>A tragic end to <i>Werther</i> 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.<a name="FNanchor_156_156" id="FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a></p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p> +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id="FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>By the fulness of its revelation of himself and by the impression it +made on the public mind <i>Werther</i> 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."<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id="FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> might have driven him to the fate of +Werther. "When the <i>tædium vitæ</i> 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, <i>Werther</i>, 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 +(<i>Werther</i>)," 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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Werther</i>. Yet Werther was not Goethe. From the fate of +Werther he was saved by two character<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>istics 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.</p> + +<p>The imprint of Goethe's character and genius which <i>Werther</i> 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 <i>incognito</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> to avoid being pointed at as "the author of +<i>Werther</i>"; 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 <i>Werther</i>. The effect of <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i> had as yet been +confined to Germany; on the publication of <i>Werther</i> its author became +a European figure in the world of letters. In Germany <i>Werther</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Opinion in Germany had been divided on <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>, but +the conflicting judgments on that work had turned only on questions of +dramatic propriety. The questions raised by <i>Werther</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> escape from the troubles of life. On the ground of these supposed +sinister implications the sale of <i>Werther</i> 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 <i>Werther</i> in her pocket, he was painfully reminded that the +book might be of dangerous consequence to a certain class of +minds.<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id="FNanchor_159_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a></p> + +<p><i>Werther</i> has been described as "the act of a conqueror and a +high-priest of art,"<a name="FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a> and of the truth of this description we have +interesting proof from Goethe's own hand. In <i>Werther</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> 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 <i>Werther</i> 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 <i>Werther</i> +is to a thousand hearts, you would not reckon the cost it has been to +you."<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id="FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id="FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a></p> + +<p>The subsequent influence of <i>Werther</i> was at once more powerful and +more enduring than the influence of <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>, and +Goethe himself has suggested the reason. The so-called <i>Werther</i> +"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 <i>Werther</i> appeared to +have been specially written for him."<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id="FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a> The long series of +imitations of Werther—<i>René</i>, <i>Obermann</i>, <i>Childe Harold</i>, <i>Adolphe</i> +(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.<a name="FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a> But in +Goethe's little book the name and the thing Wertherism has received +its "immortal <i>cachet</i>." To the intrinsic power of <i>Werther</i> it is the +supreme tribute that Napoleon, the first European man in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> 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, <i>Werther</i> 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.<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id="FNanchor_165_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a></p> + +<p>By a curious coincidence Goethe had hardly made a "general confession" +in the writing of <i>Werther</i> 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 <i>Mémoires</i><a name="FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Mémoire</i>, 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.<a name="FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a> At<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>The first four Acts of the play, which Goethe entitled <i>Clavigo</i>, 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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> 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-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>In a letter to a friend<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id="FNanchor_168_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a> Goethe explained that in writing +<i>Clavigo</i> 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 every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>where 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 +<i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>.<a name="FNanchor_169_169" id="FNanchor_169_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a> "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 <i>Clavigo</i>, 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 <i>Clavigo</i>. It was to be expected that the +youthful geniuses of the <i>Sturm und Drang</i> would be wrathful at the +apostacy of their protagonist, who in <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> <i>Clavigo</i> no elements of greatness such as +appear even through the immaturities of <i>Götz</i> and <i>Werther</i>. 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 <i>Clavigo</i>. +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.<a name="FNanchor_170_170" id="FNanchor_170_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a></p> + +<p>But if <i>Clavigo</i> is not to be ranked among the greater works of +Goethe, as a biographical document it is even more important than +<i>Werther</i>. In the Weislingen of <i>Götz</i> he had drawn a portrait of +himself, and in <i>Clavigo</i> he has drawn a similar portrait at fuller +length. "I have been working at a tragedy, <i>Clavigo</i>," he wrote to a +correspondent, "a modern anecdote dramatised with all possible +simplicity and sincerity; my hero, an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> irresolute, half-great, +half-little man, the pendant to Weislingen in <i>Götz</i> or rather +Weislingen himself, developed into a leading character. In it," he +adds, "there are scenes which I could only indicate in <i>Götz</i> for fear +of weakening the main interest." In <i>Clavigo</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> counsel, we have a +portrayal of Goethe of which every trait holds true at all periods of +his life. In the Maries of <i>Götz</i> and <i>Clavigo</i>, 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 <i>Götz</i> 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.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>GOETHE AND SPINOZA—<i>DER EWIGE JUDE</i></h3> + +<h3>1773-4</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">If</span> 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 <i>Werther</i> and <i>Clavigo</i> 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 <i>locus classicus</i> +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 <i>Ethica</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_171_171" id="FNanchor_171_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a></p> + +<p>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 +(<i>Menschen</i>) in his subterranean borings." Whether he actually carried +out his intention, or what impression the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> 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 <i>Prometheus</i>, 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 <i>Tractatus +Theologico-Politicus</i>, 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.<a name="FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Tractatus Theologico-Politicus</i> +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 <i>Der Ewige Jude</i>, as the +fragments are designated, is, indeed, suggestive, not of Spinoza, but +of him who may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> already have been in embryo in Goethe's +mind—Mephistopheles. Mephistophelian is the ironical presentment in +<i>Der Ewige Jude</i> of the follies, the delusions of man in his highest +aspirations.</p> + +<p>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,<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id="FNanchor_173_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a> and +the contrast between the author of <i>Werther</i> and the author of <i>Der +Ewige Jude</i> 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 <i>History of Heretics</i>,<a name="FNanchor_174_174" id="FNanchor_174_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>Yet, as originally conceived, <i>Der Ewige Jude</i> 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 <i>Faust</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> it exists there is little +suggestion of the original conception. The title which Goethe himself +gave it at a later date, <i>Gedicht der Ankunft des Herrn</i>, more fitly +describes it than the title <i>Der Ewige Jude</i>. 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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> and giving themselves up to the antics of +the spirit.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>Goethe forbade the publication of <i>Der Ewige Jude</i>, and we can +understand his reason for the prohibition.<a name="FNanchor_175_175" id="FNanchor_175_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a> 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.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<h3>GOETHE IN SOCIETY</h3> + +<h3>1774</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> publication of <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i> 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 <i>Clavigo</i> and <i>Werther</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 (<i>Schweizerlieder</i>) which +attained a wide circulation, and a later work (<i>Aussichten in die +Ewigkeit</i>) 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> 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 <i>Sturm und Drang</i> 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.<a name="FNanchor_176_176" id="FNanchor_176_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a> In the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>Relations between the two had begun a year before their actual +meeting. Lavater had read Goethe's <i>Letter of the Pastor</i>, and his +interest in its general line of thought led him to open a +correspondence with its author. The reading of <i>Götz</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> instincts of the natural man.<a name="FNanchor_177_177" id="FNanchor_177_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a> "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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> 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.'"</p> + +<p>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. "<i>Bist's?</i>" was Lavater's first exclamation. "<i>Ich bin's</i>," 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> work. +"All spirit (<i>Geist</i>) and truth,"<a name="FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a> is Lavater's comment on +Goethe's conversation at the close of their first day's meeting.</p> + +<p>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."<a name="FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a></p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> 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 +<i>Der Ewige Jude</i>, "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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_180_180" id="FNanchor_180_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> 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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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: <i>Hoch auf dem alten Turme steht</i>. 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 (<i>Diné zu Coblenz</i>) +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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> pastor, and the latter exerted himself to prove to a stolid +dancing-master that baptism was an anachronism.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Butterbrot</i> like a wolf. From Bonn they drove to Cologne, +Goethe on the way inscribing in an album the concluding lines of the +<i>Diné zu Coblenz</i>:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Und, wie nach <span title="Transcriber's Note: corrected error "Emaus"">Emmaus</span>, weiter ging's<br /> +Mit Geist und Feuerschritten,<br /> +Prophete rechts, Prophete links,<br /> +Das Weltkind in der Mitten.<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p>At Cologne they parted for the day, Lavater proceeding to Mülheim<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id="FNanchor_181_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a> +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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> 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 <i>Werther</i>. "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!"<a name="FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a></p> + +<p>Among the guests who were present at the same motley gathering was the +third distinguished<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_183_183" id="FNanchor_183_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> stranger,"<a name="FNanchor_184_184" id="FNanchor_184_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_184_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a> +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.</p> + +<p>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, <i>Der +König von Thule</i>, and <i>Der untreue Knabe</i>. In philosophy the talk +turned mainly on Spinoza, of whom Goethe spoke "unforgettably."<a name="FNanchor_185_185" id="FNanchor_185_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a> +"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."<a name="FNanchor_186_186" id="FNanchor_186_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_186_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<a name="FNanchor_187_187" id="FNanchor_187_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a> 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."<a name="FNanchor_188_188" id="FNanchor_188_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a></p> + +<p>On leaving the Jacobis Goethe proceeded to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_189_189" id="FNanchor_189_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a></p> + +<p>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 +<i>Messias</i>.<a name="FNanchor_190_190" id="FNanchor_190_190"></a><a href="#Footnote_190_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a> Since his childhood, the name of Klopstock had been +familiar to Goethe. To his conservative father, the <i>Messias</i>, as +written in unrhymed verse, was a monstrosity in German literature, and +he refused to give it a place in his library. Surreptitiously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> +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 <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i> 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?"<a name="FNanchor_191_191" id="FNanchor_191_191"></a><a href="#Footnote_191_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_192_192" id="FNanchor_192_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_192_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a> 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—<i>An Schwager Kronos</i>—(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 <i>Sturm und Drang</i>, which the chilling impression he had +received from Klopstock doubtless evoked with rebounding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> force during +his solitary drive home in the post-carriage.<a name="FNanchor_193_193" id="FNanchor_193_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_193_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a></p> + +<p>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 <i>Götz</i> +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 <i>Sturm und +Drang</i>. "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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_194_194" id="FNanchor_194_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_194_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> 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 <i>Werther</i>. 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 <i>Werther</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> 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.'"<a name="FNanchor_195_195" id="FNanchor_195_195"></a><a href="#Footnote_195_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_196_196" id="FNanchor_196_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a> 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.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<h3>LILI SCHÖNEMANN</h3> + +<h3>1775</h3> + +<p><span class="smcap">To</span> 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 +<i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>, 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 <i>Werther</i>; +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.</p> + +<p>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 Schöne<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>mann, 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>entrée</i> 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.<a name="FNanchor_197_197" id="FNanchor_197_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a> 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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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."<a name="FNanchor_198_198" id="FNanchor_198_198"></a><a href="#Footnote_198_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a> +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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>partie</i>, 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.<a name="FNanchor_199_199" id="FNanchor_199_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_199_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a></p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p> +<p>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, <i>Neue Liebe, neues Leben</i> ("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 <i>Neue +Liebe, neues Leben</i>, he acknowledges the spell she has laid upon him +with a highly-wrought art without previous example in German +literature.</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Herz, mein Herz, was soll das geben?<br /> +Was bedränget dich so sehr?<br /> +Welch ein fremdes neues Leben!<br /> +Ich erkenne dich nicht mehr.<br /> +Weg ist alles, was du liebtest,<br /> +Weg, warum du dich betrübtest,<br /> +Weg dein Fleiss und deine Ruh'—<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>Ach, wie kamst du nur dazu!<br /> +<br /> +Fesselt dich die Jugendblüte,<br /> +Diese liebliche Gestalt,<br /> +Dieser Blick voll Treu' und Güte<br /> +Mit unendlicher Gewalt?<br /> +Will ich rasch mich ihr entziehen,<br /> +Mich ermannen, ihr entfliehen,<br /> +Führet mich im Augenblick<br /> +Ach, mein Weg zu ihr zurück.<br /> +<br /> +Und an diesem Zauberfädchen,<br /> +Das sich nicht zerreissen lässt,<br /> +Hält das liebe, lose Mädchen<br /> +Mich so wider Willen fest;<br /> +Muss in ihrem Zauberkreise<br /> +Leben nun auf ihre Weise.<br /> +Die Veränd'rung, ach, wie gross!<br /> +Liebe! Liebe, lass mich los!<br /> +<br /> +Say, heart of me, what this importeth;<br /> +What distresseth thee so sore?<br /> +New and strange all life and living;<br /> +Thee I recognise no more.<br /> +Gone is everything thou loved'st;<br /> +All for which thyself thou troubled'st;<br /> +Gone thy toil, and gone thy peace;<br /> +Ah! how cam'st thou in such case?<br /> +<br /> +Fetters thee that youthful freshness?<br /> +Fetters thee that lovely mien?<br /> +That glance so full of truth and goodness,<br /> +With an adamantine chain?<br /> +Vain the hardy wish to tear me<br /> +From those meshes that ensnare me;<br /> +For the moment I would flee,<br /> +Straight my path leads back to thee.<br /> +<br /> +By these slender threads enchanted,<br /> +Which to rend no power avails,<br /> +That dear wanton maiden holds me<br /> +Thus relentless in her spells.<br /> +Thus within her charméd round<br /> +Must I live as one spellbound;<br /> +Heart! what mighty change in thee;<br /> +Love, O love, ah, set me free!<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p>In the second lyric, <i>An Belinden</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Reizender ist mir des Frühlings Blüte<br /> +Nun nicht auf der Flur;<br /> +Wo du, Engel, bist, ist Lieb' and Güte,<br /> +Wo du bist, Natur.<br /> +<br /> +Now the blooms of springtide on the meadow<br /> +Touch no more my heart;<br /> +Where thou, angel, art, is truth and goodness;<br /> +Nature, where thou art.<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_200_200" id="FNanchor_200_200"></a><a href="#Footnote_200_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a> 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."<a name="FNanchor_201_201" id="FNanchor_201_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_201_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a></p> + +<p>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 <i>An Belinden</i>, +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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_202_202" id="FNanchor_202_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_202_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a></p> + +<p>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, <i>Erwin und Elmire</i>, is a sufficiently +trivial vaudeville, and appears to have been begun in the autumn of +1773.<a name="FNanchor_203_203" id="FNanchor_203_203"></a><a href="#Footnote_203_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a> He must have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> 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, <i>Edwin and Angelina</i>, +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.<a name="FNanchor_204_204" id="FNanchor_204_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a> 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:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Den kleinen Strauss, den ich dir binde,<br /> +Pflückt' ich aus diesem Herzen hier;<br /> +Nimm ihn gefällig auf, Belinde!<br /> +Der kleine Strauss, er ist von mir.<br /> +<br /> +This posy that I bind for thee<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I cull'd it from my very heart;</span><br /> +This little posy, 'tis from me;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Take it, Belinda, in good part.</span><br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p><p>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,<a name="FNanchor_205_205" id="FNanchor_205_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a> and at a later date he +considered it worth his while to recast it in another form.</p> + +<p><i>Erwin und Elmire</i> 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 <i>Stella</i>, significantly designated in +its original form as <i>A Play for Lovers</i>. Unlike <i>Erwin und Elmire</i>, +it was wholly the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> 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 +<i>Erwin und Elmire</i>. Any interest that attaches to <i>Stella</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> 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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> 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!"<a name="FNanchor_206_206" id="FNanchor_206_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a></p> + +<p>Such is the play which, in a bad English translation that did not +mitigate its absurdities, provoked the wit of the <i>Anti-Jacobin</i>.<a name="FNanchor_207_207" id="FNanchor_207_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a> +In Fernando, the central figure of the play, we are, of course, to +recognise Goethe himself,<a name="FNanchor_208_208" id="FNanchor_208_208"></a><a href="#Footnote_208_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> 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 <i>Stella</i>; 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 +<i>Stella</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Nauseous as <i>Stella</i> 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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> it passed through four +editions in a single week. In 1805, with its altered <i>dénouement</i>, 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.<a name="FNanchor_209_209" id="FNanchor_209_209"></a><a href="#Footnote_209_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Im holden Thal, auf schneebedeckten Höhen<br /> +War stets dein Bild mir nah!<br /> +Ich sah's um mich in lichten Wolken wehen;<br /> +Im Herzen war mir's da.<br /> +Empfinde hier, wie mit allmächt'gem Triebe<br /> +Ein Herz das andre zieht,<br /> +Und dass vergebens Liebe<br /> +Vor Liebe flieht.<br /> +<br /> +In the dear vale, on heights the snow had covered,<br /> +Still was thine image near;<br /> +I saw it round me in the bright clouds hover;<br /> +My heart beheld it there.<br /> +Here learn to feel with what resistless power<br /> +One heart the other ties;<br /> +That vain it is when lover<br /> +From lover flies.<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p>Still another piece belongs to the first months of Goethe's relations +to Lili—<i>Claudine von Villa Bella</i>, which appears to have been +written intermittently in April and May. Like <i>Erwin und Elmire</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_210_210" id="FNanchor_210_210"></a><a href="#Footnote_210_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a></p> + +<p>The triviality of these successive performances, so void of the mind +and heart displayed in the fragmentary <i>Prometheus</i> and <i>Der Ewige +Jude</i>, have their commentary in his continued relations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_211_211" id="FNanchor_211_211"></a><a href="#Footnote_211_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a> "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.<a name="FNanchor_212_212" id="FNanchor_212_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_212_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p><p>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 <i>Stella</i>," 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."<a name="FNanchor_213_213" id="FNanchor_213_213"></a><a href="#Footnote_213_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a> 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 <i>Stella</i>: "I would be a fool to +allow myself to be shackled. That state [marriage]<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> smothers all my +powers; that state robs me of all my spirits, cramps my whole being. I +must forth into the free world."<a name="FNanchor_214_214" id="FNanchor_214_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_214_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a> 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."<a name="FNanchor_215_215" id="FNanchor_215_215"></a><a href="#Footnote_215_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a> 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."</p> + +<p>Goethe's feelings as a betrothed were from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_216_216" id="FNanchor_216_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_216_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_217_217" id="FNanchor_217_217"></a><a href="#Footnote_217_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a> He was +already, in fact, contemplating the desirability of bursting his bond; +and an opportunity came to assist him in his resolve.</p> + +<p>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,<a name="FNanchor_218_218" id="FNanchor_218_218"></a><a href="#Footnote_218_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a> 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 <i>Sturm und Drang</i> 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."<a name="FNanchor_219_219" id="FNanchor_219_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_219_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a> +During the few days they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_220_220" id="FNanchor_220_220"></a><a href="#Footnote_220_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_221_221" id="FNanchor_221_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_221_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a> 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.<a name="FNanchor_222_222" id="FNanchor_222_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_222_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a> At Carlsruhe Goethe parted company from his +fellow-travellers with the intention of visiting his sister at +Emmendingen. On May 22nd he was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<a name="FNanchor_223_223" id="FNanchor_223_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_223_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a> than before. I know well that I am a fool, but for that very +reason I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> am I."<a name="FNanchor_224_224" id="FNanchor_224_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_224_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a> The parting of the brother and sister—and the +parting was to be for ever<a name="FNanchor_225_225" id="FNanchor_225_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_225_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a>—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.<a name="FNanchor_226_226" id="FNanchor_226_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_226_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_227_227" id="FNanchor_227_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_227_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Und frische Nahrung, neues Blut<br /> +Saug' ich aus freier Welt;<br /> +Wie ist Natur so hold und gut,<br /> +Die mich am Busen hält!<br /> +<br /> +Die Welle wieget unsern Kahn<br /> +Im Rudertakt hinauf,<br /> +Und Berge, wolkig himmelan,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>Begegnen unserm Lauf.<br /> +<br /> +Aug', mein Aug', was sinkst du nieder?<br /> +Goldne Träume, kommt ihr wieder?<br /> +Weg, du Traum! so Gold du bist;<br /> +Hier auch Lieb' und Leben ist.<br /> +<br /> +Auf der Welle blinken<br /> +Tausend schwebende Sterne;<br /> +Weiche Nebel trinken<br /> +Rings die türmende Ferne;<br /> +<br /> +Morgenwind umflügelt<br /> +Die beschattete Bucht,<br /> +Und im See bespiegelt<br /> +Sich die reifende Frucht.<br /> +<br /> +Fresh cheer and quickened blood I suck<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From this wide world and free;</span><br /> +How dear is Nature and how good!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A mother unto me!</span><br /> +<br /> +Rocked by the wavelets speeds our skiff<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To the oar's measured beat;</span><br /> +Cloudclapt, the heaven-aspiring hills<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Appear our course to meet.</span><br /> +<br /> +Why sink my eyelids as I gaze?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ye golden dreams of other days,</span><br /> +Come ye again? Though ne'er so dear,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Begone! Are life and love not here?</span><br /> +<br /> +The o'erhanging stars are twinkling<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In myriads on the mere;</span><br /> +In floating mists enfolded<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The far heights disappear.</span><br /> +<br /> +The morning breeze is coursing<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Round the deep-shadowed cove;</span><br /> +And in its depths are imaged<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The ripening fruits above.</span><br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p>Looking down on the same lake from its southern ridge, he writes these +lines, the concentrated expression of distracted emotions:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Wenn ich, liebe Lili, dich nicht liebte,<br /> +Welche Wonne gäb' mir dieser Blick!<br /> +Und doch, wenn ich, Lili, dich nicht liebte,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>Fänd' ich hier und fänd' ich dort mein Glück?<br /> +<br /> +If I, loved Lili, loved thee not,<br /> +In this prospect, ah! what bliss;<br /> +Yet, Lili, if I loved thee not,<br /> +Where should I find my happiness?<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_228_228" id="FNanchor_228_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_228_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a></p> + +<p>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.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<h3>LAST MONTHS IN FRANKFORT—THE <i>URFAUST</i></h3> + +<h3>1775</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">As</span> 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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> he further adds, all their common friends were decidedly +opposed to their union.</p> + +<p>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."<a name="FNanchor_229_229" id="FNanchor_229_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_229_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a> 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."<a name="FNanchor_230_230" id="FNanchor_230_230"></a><a href="#Footnote_230_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_231_231" id="FNanchor_231_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_231_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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."<a name="FNanchor_232_232" id="FNanchor_232_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_232_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a> A remarkable +contemporary document from his hand proves that his memory did not +exaggerate his state of mind at the time.<a name="FNanchor_233_233" id="FNanchor_233_233"></a><a href="#Footnote_233_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a> In the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> 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."<a name="FNanchor_234_234" id="FNanchor_234_234"></a><a href="#Footnote_234_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a></p> + +<p>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 <i>Physiognomy</i>; 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 charac<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>terisations 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."<a name="FNanchor_235_235" id="FNanchor_235_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_235_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a> The other writer is J.G. Zimmermann, one of the +remarkable men of his time, whose book on <i>Solitude</i>, 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."<a name="FNanchor_236_236" id="FNanchor_236_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_236_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> way home from Carlsruhe, +where they had just celebrated their marriage, and again both warmly +urged him to visit them at Weimar.<a name="FNanchor_237_237" id="FNanchor_237_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_237_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a> 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 <i>Egmont</i>. 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 <i>Warum +ziehst du mich unwiderstehlich</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> 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.<a name="FNanchor_238_238" id="FNanchor_238_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_238_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a> Fate has decided that we must play our <i>rôles</i> apart."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> words which he may have +recently written in <i>Egmont</i>, 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?"<a name="FNanchor_239_239" id="FNanchor_239_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_239_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a></p> + +<p>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 <i>Egmont</i>. 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 <i>Faust</i>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p> + +<p>Beyond all other of Goethe's productions previous to his settling in +Weimar, these original scenes of <i>Faust</i> bring before us his deepest +and truest self. In all the other longer works of that period, in +<i>Götz</i>, in <i>Werther</i>, in <i>Clavigo</i>, and the rest, one side—the +emotional side—of his nature had been predominantly represented; but +in what he wrote of <i>Faust</i> 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,<a name="FNanchor_240_240" id="FNanchor_240_240"></a><a href="#Footnote_240_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>As in the case of <i>Der Ewige Jude</i>, <i>Prometheus</i>, and other fragments +of the Frankfort period, the successive scenes of the <i>Urfaust</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> +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 <i>Urfaust</i> were written. Both by himself +and others there are references during these years to his work on +<i>Faust</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>When Goethe first put his hand to the <i>Urfaust</i>, 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 +<i>Urfaust</i> 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 <i>Urfaust</i> is the concentrated +expression of what had most intensely engaged Goethe's mind and heart +previous to the period when it was produced.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Urfaust</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> 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 <i>Faust</i>, 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 <i>arcana</i> of being.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Urfaust</i>, 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 <i>Urfaust</i>, 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 <i>Urfaust</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> 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 <i>Urfaust</i> 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 <i>Urfaust</i>, 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 +<i>Urfaust</i> 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, <i>Wald und Höhle</i>, the <i>Walpurgis Nacht</i>, the +<i>Walpurgisnachtstraum</i>, generally condemned by critics as inartistic +irrelevancies, are likewise lacking.<a name="FNanchor_241_241" id="FNanchor_241_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_241_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a></p> + +<p>The <i>Urfaust</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> +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 +<i>Urfaust</i> 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,<a name="FNanchor_242_242" id="FNanchor_242_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_242_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>With the <i>Urfaust</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> 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—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"as God holding no form of creed</span><br /> +But contemplating all."<a name="FNanchor_243_243" id="FNanchor_243_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_243_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a><br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<p>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 <i>etwas weibliches</i> +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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Garden City Press Limited, Letchworth, Herts.</span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2> + + +<p> +<i>Adler und Taube</i>, poem by Goethe, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Æschylus, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>An Belinden</i>, lyric addressed by Goethe to Lili Schönemann, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>An Schwager Kronos</i>, poem by Goethe, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Arnold, Gottfried, his <i>History of the Church and of Heretics</i>, Goethe's study of it, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Arnold, Matthew, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">quoted, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Basedow, Johann Bernhard, his character, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his intercourse with Goethe, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>-231.</span><br /> +<br /> +Beaumarchais, his <i>Mémoires</i> suggest Goethe's <i>Clavigo</i>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Behrisch, friend of Goethe in Leipzig, his character and influence on Goethe, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>-41, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bergson, quoted, <a href="#Page_175">175</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +Berlichingen, Gottfried von, hero of Goethe's play <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his <i>Memoirs</i>, <i>ib.</i></span><br /> +<br /> +Boerhaave, Goethe's study of him, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Böhme, Professor of History in Leipzig, Goethe attends his lectures, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Böhme, Frau, her influence on Goethe, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Boie, H.C., his description of Goethe, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bonn, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Brentano, Peter, married to Maxe von la Roche, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's relations to him, <i>ib.</i>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his traits assigned to Albert in <i>Werther</i>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Brion, Friederike, Goethe's relations to her, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>-101;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his poems inspired by her, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>-108;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's remorse for parting from her, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">nature of Goethe's love for her, <a href="#Page_249">249</a> note.</span><br /> +<br /> +Brion, Pastor, father of Friederike Brion, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Byron, Lord, resemblance of his career to Goethe's, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">referred to, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Buff, Charlotte (Lotte), loved by Goethe, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his relations to her, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>-151;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">her displeasure with <i>Werther</i>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Carl August, Duke of Weimar, his intercourse with Goethe, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">meets Goethe at Carlsruhe, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">visits Frankfort and invites Goethe to Weimar, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>-284.</span><br /> +<br /> +Carlsruhe, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Carlyle, Thomas, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Chateaubriand, <a href="#Page_249">249</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Claudine von Villa Bella</i>, play by Goethe, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>-265.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Clavigo</i>, play by Goethe: its origin, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">argument of it, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>-204;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its classical form, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Clavigo, character of, compared with that of Goethe, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>-208.<br /> +<br /> +Clodius, Professor in Leipzig; Goethe attends his lectures, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Coblenz, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cologne, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cologne cathedral, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Constantin, brother of Carl August, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Darmstadt, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Darmstadt, Court of, the coterie associated with it, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its influence on Goethe, <i>ib.</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern</i>, satirical play by Goethe, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Daudet, Alphonse, <a href="#Page_180">180</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>Delf, Mademoiselle, effects the betrothal of Goethe and Lili Schönemann, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">suggests to Goethe a substitute for Lili, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Der Ewige Jude</i>, poetic fragment by Goethe: its origin, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>-215;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">account of it, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>-218.</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Der König von Thule</i>, poem by Goethe, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Der Untreue Knabe</i>, poem by Goethe, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Der Wanderer</i>, poem by Goethe, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>-142.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Deserted Village</i>, translated by Goethe, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Die Laune des Verliebten</i>, play by Goethe: its argument, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Die Mitschuldigen</i>, play by Goethe: its argument, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Diné zu Coblenz</i>, poem by Goethe, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Disputation</i> of Goethe for the Licentiate of Laws, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dresden, Goethe's secret visit to, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Düsseldorf, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Edwin and Angelina</i>, Goldsmith's ballad, suggested Goethe's <i>Erwin und Elmire</i>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Egmont</i>, play by Goethe, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">quoted by Goethe on his proceeding to Weimar, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">manuscript of, taken to Weimar by Goethe, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Ehrenbreitstein, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Einsiedeln, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Elberfeld, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Elysium, an Uranien</i>, ode by Goethe, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Emerson, quoted, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Emmendingen, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ems, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.<br /> +<br /> +English literature, its influence on <i>Werther</i>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Ephemerides</i>, Diary kept by Goethe, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">quoted, <a href="#Page_211">211</a> note;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">referred to, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Erwin und Elmire</i>, vaudeville by Goethe, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>-257.<br /> +<br /> +Euripides, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Fahlmer, Johanna, letter of Goethe to, <a href="#Page_248">248</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +Flachsland, Caroline, member of the <i>Gemeinschaft der Heiligen</i>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">her letters describing Goethe, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his ode addressed to her as Psyche, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on Goethe's ambition to be a painter, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character in <i>Das Jahrmarktsfest</i>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in <i>Pater Brey</i>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in <i>Satyros</i>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Flaubert, <a href="#Page_180">180</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +Frankfort-on-the-Main, Goethe's birthplace, description of: its influence on Goethe, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's return to, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's distaste for, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Frankforters, Goethe's description of, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen</i>, journal expounding the aims of the <i>Sturm und Drang</i> movement, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Frederick the Great, Goethe's admiration for, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.<br /> +<br /> +French literature, its domination in Germany; imitated by Goethe, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>.<br /> +<br /> +French troops in Frankfort, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>-21.<br /> +<br /> +Friedberg, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Gedicht der Ankunft des Herrn</i>, another title for <i>Der Ewige Jude</i>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Gellert, Professor, German poet resident in Leipzig, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe attends his lectures, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Gemeinschaft der Heiligen</i> at the Court of Darmstadt, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Göchhausen, Fräulein Luise von, and the manuscript of the <i>Urfaust</i>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a> and note.<br /> +<br /> +Goethe, Cornelia, Goethe's sister: her character, her influence on Goethe, Goethe's affection for her, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his letters to her from Leipzig, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">her father's hardness to, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">her home influence, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">stimulates Goethe to write <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">married to J.G. Schlosser, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's last meeting with her, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>-274.</span><br /> +<br /> +Goethe, Elizabeth, Goethe's mother: her character, her relations to her son, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>-10;<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">her religion, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Goethe, Johann Kaspar, Goethe's father: his character, not in sympathy with his son, his method of education, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>-7;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">determines, against his son's will, to send him to University of Leipzig, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his severity towards his daughter, Cornelia, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">estrangement from his son, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his pride in his genius, <i>ib.</i>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his son's characterisation of him, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his republican opinions, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">objects to his son's intercourse with Carl August, Duke of Weimar, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his opposition to his son's going to Weimar, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">wishes him to go to Italy, <i>ib.</i></span><br /> +<br /> +Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, his birth in Frankfort-on-the-Main, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence of his birthplace, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence of the period on his development, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>-6;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his debt to his father, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>-7;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">to his mother, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>-10;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">relations to his sister, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>-11;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his education, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">religious influences, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>-17;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence of the French theatre in Frankfort on him, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in love with Gretchen, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">father resolves to send him to the University of Leipzig, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his characteristics as a boy, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>-27;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his early devotion to poetry, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his stormy career throughout his youth, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">goes to the University of Leipzig, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his studies there, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>-35;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence of Leipzig society on him, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>-38;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence of Frau Böhme on his character and literary tastes, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">falls in love with Käthchen Schönkopf, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">friendship with Behrisch, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">a jealous lover, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">artistic studies, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence of Friedrich Oeser on his artistic ideals, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Neue Lieder</i>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Die Laune des Verliebten</i> and <i>Die Mitschuldigen</i>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>-53;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his ideas of poetry, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>-57;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">returns to Frankfort, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his unsatisfactory condition of mind and body, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">estrangement from his father, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his interest in religion, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>-67;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence of Fräulein von Klettenberg, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-64;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his dangerous illness, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">works out a creed of his own, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mystical and chemical studies, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">interests in art and literature, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>-71;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">departs for the University of Strassburg, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence of Strassburg society, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">finds a mentor in Dr. Salzmann, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">acquaintance with Jung Stilling, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>-83;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence of Herder, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>-93;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">inspired by Strassburg Cathedral, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>-95;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his love experiences with Friederike Brion, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>-102;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his manifold interests in Strassburg, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>-104;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">development of his poetic gift, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">lyrics to Friederike, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>-108;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">returns to Frankfort, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">state of mind on his return, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>-113;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">continued estrangement from his father, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his sister Cornelia, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">makes acquaintance with the brothers Schlosser, <i>ib.</i>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his distraction in Frankfort, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>-120;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">admiration of Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">writes <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">makes acquaintance with Merck, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">comes under the influence of the Darmstadt circle, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his poems inspired by that circle, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his visit to Wetzlar, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his mode of life there, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">marks the acquaintance of Charlotte Buff, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and of Kestner, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his subsequent relations to them, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">characterised by Kestner, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">returns to Frankfort, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">conceives <i>Werther</i>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">makes acquaintance with the family von la Roche, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his relations to Frau von la Roche and her daughter, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his unrest after his experiences at Wetzlar, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his dislike of Frankfort, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his solitude, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">uncertain whether he should devote himself to literature or art, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">co-editor of the <i>Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen</i>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his <i>Letter of a Pastor</i>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">paper on <i>Two Biblical Questions</i>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">publishes the second draft of <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">writes a succession of satirical plays, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his fragmentary drama, <i>Prometheus</i>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his fragment of a drama on Mahomet, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">produces <i>Werther</i>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his own character compared with that of Werther, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his <i>Clavigo</i>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe and Spinoza, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his fragment, <i>Der Ewige Jude</i>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his intercourse with Lavater, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">with Basedow, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">with Fritz Jacobi, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">with Klopstock, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">characterised by Boie and Werthes, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>-2;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">makes acquaintance with the Princes of Weimar, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">characterised by von Knebel, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>-5;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">falls in love with Lili Schönemann, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his songs addressed to her, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">relations with the Countess Stolberg, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his infatuation for Lili, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his succession of plays relative to her, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>-265;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">shrinking from marriage, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">betrothed to Lili, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">persuaded of his mistake, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sets out for Switzerland with the Counts Stolberg, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his travels, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">visit to his sister, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">meets Lavater at Zurich, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">parts company with the Stolbergs, and accompanies Passavant to the pass of St. Gothard, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">returns to Frankfort, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his relations to Lili on his return, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">invited by the Duke of Weimar to visit Weimar, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">opposition of his father, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">decides to go to Italy as the Duke's messenger does not appear, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">goes to Heidelberg on the way to Italy, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">appearance of the Duke's messenger decides him to visit Weimar, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the <i>Urfaust</i>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>-293;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">characteristics, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Goncourt, Edmond de, <a href="#Page_180">180</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Götter, Holden, und Wieland</i>, satirical play on Wieland by Goethe, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Gotter, F.W., friend of Goethe in Wetzlar, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Gottsched, German poet resident in Leipzig, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>, drama by Goethe, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its origin, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its plot, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>-126;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its characteristics, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>-129;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">second draft of, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Gray, Thomas, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Gretchen, Goethe's first love, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Hamann, J.G., the "Magus of the North," teacher of Herder, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's interest in him, <i>ib.</i></span><br /> +<br /> +Hanover, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hasenkamp, rebukes Goethe for <i>Werther</i>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Haugnitz, Count, travels with Goethe to Switzerland, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>-275.<br /> +<br /> +Heidelberg, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hehn, Viktor, quoted, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +Heine, Heinrich, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Heinse, J.J.H., his opinion of Goethe, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Herder, his <i>Fragments on Modern German Literature</i>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Johann Gottfried, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>-93;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his career, character and speculations, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>-86;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his admiration of Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his opinion of <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">one of the editors of the <i>Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen</i>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">as captain of the gipsies in <i>Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern</i>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">satirised in <i>Pater Brey</i>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and in <i>Satyros</i>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">letters of Goethe to, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Herrnhut Community, Goethe attends a synod of, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">dissociates himself from the community, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Hoch auf dem alten Turme steht</i>, lines by Goethe, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Holy Alliance, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Homer, Goethe's study of him, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Horn, a friend of Goethe: his description of Goethe in Leipzig, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">quoted, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">quoted, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Humboldt, Wilhelm von, his opinion of marriage, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Jabach, family of, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Jacobi, Fritz, his horror at Lessing's approval of Spinoza, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his character and attainments, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">his intercourse with Goethe, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>-238;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">letter of Goethe to, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Jacobi, Georg, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Jean Paul, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Jerusalem: his suicide prompts Goethe to <i>Werther</i>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lessing's esteem for him, <a href="#Page_154">154</a> note.</span><br /> +<br /> +Jung, Johann Heinrich. (<i>See</i> <a href="#Stilling">Stilling, Jung</a>.)<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Kant, Immanuel, quoted, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">quoted, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his opinion of marriage, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his judgment on the <i>Sturm und Drang</i> movement, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Kestner, Johann Christian, betrothed to Lotte Buff, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his character, <i>ib.</i>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his relations to Goethe, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>-151;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his characterisation of Goethe, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>-153;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">letters of Goethe to, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his displeasure with <i>Werther</i>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Klettenberg, Fräulein von, the <i>Schöne Seele</i> of <i>Wilhelm Meister</i>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's intimacy with, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">her influence on his religious opinions, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">letter of Goethe to, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">her intercourse with Lavater, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">adviser of the Goethe family, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">her death, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>-246;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">her affection for Goethe, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Klopstock, his <i>Messias</i>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">admired by Goethe, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his visit to Goethe's home, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe accompanies him to Mannheim, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's opinion of him, <a href="#Page_241">241</a> note;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">visits Frankfort, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe meets him at Carlsruhe, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Knebel, Major von, his visit to Goethe, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his characterisation of him, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">letter of Goethe to, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Künstlers Erdewallen</i>, poem by Goethe, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +La Roche, family, its influence on <i>Werther</i>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>.<br /> +<br /> +La Roche, Frau von, Goethe's relations to her <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">letters of Goethe to, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a> note.</span><br /> +<br /> +La Roche, Herr von, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.<br /> +<br /> +La Roche, Maximiliane von, Goethe's relations to her, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">married to Peter Brentano, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">her relation to <i>Werther</i>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Langer, his influence on Goethe's religious opinions, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lavater, Johann Kaspar, his character, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his intercourse with Goethe, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>-232;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's intercourse with him at Zurich, <a href="#Page_275">275</a> and note, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his <i>Physiognomy</i>, Goethe's contributions to it, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Leipzig, description of, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe a student there, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>-56;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">called "little Paris," <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Lessing, his <i>Laokoon</i> and <i>Minna von Barnhelm</i>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's opinion of, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his approval of Spinoza's philosophy, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his opinion of <i>Werther</i>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a> note.</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Letter of the Pastor</i> written by Goethe, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Leuchsenring, his sentimentalism, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his meeting with Goethe, <i>ib.</i>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">satirised in <i>Pater Brey</i>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Lilis Park</i>, poem by Goethe addressed to Lili Schönemann, <a href="#Page_266">266</a> note, <a href="#Page_281">281</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +Limprecht, Goethe's letter to, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lisbon, earthquake of, its influence on Goethe, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Luise, Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, betrothed to Carl August, Duke of Weimar, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Mahomet</i>, fragment of a drama by Goethe, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>-183.<br /> +<br /> +Mainz, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mannheim, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Maria Theresa, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mendelssohn, Moses, his relation to Spinoza, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mephistopheles, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Merck, Johann Heinrich, friend of Goethe, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his character and influence on Goethe, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>-135;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">introduces Goethe to the family von la Roche, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his visit to Berlin and return, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">one of the editors of the <i>Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen</i>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in <i>Pater Brey</i>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in <i>Satyros</i>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his mordant comment on <i>Clavigo</i>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">comes under the spell of Lavater, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>;</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">meeting with Goethe in Mannheim, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Milan, Archbishop of, orders <i>Werther</i> to be burned, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mülheim, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Müller, Chancellor von, quoted, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">quoted, <a href="#Page_58">58</a> note.</span><br /> +<br /> +Münch, Anna Sibylla, suggests <i>Clavigo</i>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Napoleon, and <i>Werther</i>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Neo-Platonism, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Neue Lieder</i>, collection of Goethe's poems written in Leipzig, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Neue Liebe, neues Leben</i>, poem of Goethe addressed to Lili Schönemann, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>.<br /> +<br /> +New Testament, Goethe's study, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Oeser, Friedrich, director of the academy of drawing in Leipzig: his influence on Goethe, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">letters of Goethe to him, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Offenbach on the Main, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, and note.<br /> +<br /> +Old Testament, Goethe's study of, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Ossian</i>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, and note.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Palace of Art</i>, Tennyson's, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Paracelsus, Goethe's study of him, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Passavant, Reformed Pastor, travels with Goethe in Switzerland, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">tradition in his family regarding Goethe, <a href="#Page_278">278</a> note.</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Pater Brey</i>, satirical piece by Goethe, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pfenninger, Heinrich, letter of Goethe to, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pindar, Goethe's study of, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Plato, Goethe's study of him, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Poetische Gedanken über die Höllenfahrt Jesu Christi</i>, early poem of Goethe, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pollock, Sir Frederick, on "modern Spinozism," <a href="#Page_180">180</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Prometheus</i>, fragment of a play by Goethe, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>-180.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Rembrandt, Goethe's study of, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Renan, Ernest, <a href="#Page_181">181</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +Richardson, Samuel, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Riemer, Goethe's secretary, quoted, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Robinson, Henry Crabb, quoted, <a href="#Page_192">192</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +Rousseau, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's opinion of him, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his <i>Nouvelle Héloïse</i>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Rumohr, W. von, letter of Goethe to him quoted, <a href="#Page_56">56</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Sachs, Hans, Goethe's imitation of, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.<br /> +<br /> +St. Gothard, pass of, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Salzmann, Dr., Goethe's mentor in Strassburg: his character, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>-81;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">letters of Goethe to, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Satyros</i>, satirical play by Goethe, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>-173.<br /> +<br /> +Schaffhausen, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Scherer, Edmond, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his estimate of <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Schlosser, J.G., friend of Goethe, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his impressions of Goethe, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">married to Goethe's sister, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">one of the editors of the <i>Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen</i>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Schmidt, Erich, his discovery of the <i>Urfaust</i>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<a name="Schonemann" id="Schonemann"></a>Schönemann, Anna Elisabeth (Lili): Goethe's first meeting with her, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">beginning of Goethe's attachment to her, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's lyrics addressed to her, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>-253;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's tribute to her in later life, <a href="#Page_251">251</a> note;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe sends his <i>Stella</i> to her, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's strained relations with her, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>-270;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">poems of Goethe addressed to, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>-278;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's relations to her after his return from Switzerland, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>-286;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">her subsequent marriage, <a href="#Page_286">286</a> note.</span><br /> +<br /> +Schönemann family, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">their social position superior to that of the Goethes, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">intercourse of Goethe with them, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Schönemann, Lili. (<i>See</i> <a href="#Schonemann">Schönemann, Anna Elisabeth</a>.)<br /> +<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>Schönkopf, Käthchen, Goethe's love in Leipzig: her appearance and character, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's philandering with her, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>-44;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's poems addressed to her, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's letters to, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a> note.</span><br /> +<br /> +Scott, Sir Walter, his translation of <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his writings influenced by it, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Sesenheim, residence of the Brion family:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's visits there, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>-100.</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Seven Years' War</i>, its influence on the Goethe household, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Shakespeare, Goethe's debt to, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Song of Solomon</i>, translated by Goethe, <a href="#Page_281">281</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +Spinoza, Goethe's debt to, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his influence on Goethe, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>-212;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe and Lavater discuss his writings, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">discussed by Goethe and Fritz Jacobi, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Stein, Frau von, quoted, <a href="#Page_150">150</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Stella</i>, play by Goethe, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>-263;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ridiculed in the <i>Anti-Jacobin</i>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a> and note;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">admired by Herder, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its popularity, <i>ib.</i></span><br /> +<br /> +Sterne, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Stevenson, R.L., his admiration of <i>Werther</i>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +<a name="Stilling" id="Stilling"></a>Stilling, Jung, friend of Goethe in Strassburg:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his career and character, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's kindness to, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>-83;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">prank played on him by Goethe, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his affection for Goethe, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Stolberg, Count Christian, comes to Frankfort and travels with Goethe to Switzerland, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>-275.<br /> +<br /> +Stolberg, Count Frederick Leopold, younger brother of Christian, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>-275.<br /> +<br /> +Stolberg, Countess, beginning of Goethe's acquaintance with her, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his letters to, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a> and note.</span><br /> +<br /> +Strassburg, Goethe's residence in, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>-108;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">description of its society, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Strassburg Cathedral, Goethe's interest in, and its influence on his development, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>-95;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's essay on, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Sturm und Drang</i> movement in German literature, inspired by <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its aims expounded in the <i>Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen</i>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Sulzer, J.G., his characterisation of Goethe, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Swift, his relations to Stella and Vanessa suggest Goethe's <i>Stella</i>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Tennyson, <a href="#Page_294">294</a> and note.<br /> +<br /> +Textor, J.W., Goethe's maternal grandfather, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Theatre set up by the French in Frankfort, Goethe's interest in it, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Theocritus, Goethe's study of him, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Thoranc, Count, commander of French forces in Frankfort, quartered in Goethe's home: his interest in Goethe, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>-21.<br /> +<br /> +Turgenieff, <a href="#Page_180">180</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Two Biblical Questions</i>, piece written by Goethe, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Urfaust</i>, The, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">account of it, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>-293.</span><br /> +<br /> +Ur-Religion, Goethe's conception of, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Van Helmont, Goethe's study of him, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Vicar of Wakefield</i>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a> note.<br /> +<br /> +Voltaire, his criticism of Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a> and note.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Wanderers Sturmlied</i>, poem by Goethe, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Werther</i>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">analysis of, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>-200;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its influence, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">public opinion regarding it, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">prohibited in Leipzig and Denmark, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">burned at Milan, <i>ib.</i></span><br /> +<br /> +Werther, how far he resembled Goethe, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>-195.<br /> +<br /> +Wertherism, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Werthes, F.A., his description of Goethe, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wetzlar, Goethe's residence there, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>-153;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">description of, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its society, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goethe's flying visit to, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>Wieland, his translation of Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">one of Goethe's masters, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his description of Goethe, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his opinion of <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">satirised by Goethe, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his <i>Alceste</i>, <i>ib.</i>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">letter of Goethe to, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his approval of <i>Clavigo</i>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a> note.</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Wilhelm Meister</i>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Winckelmann, influenced by Oeser, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Wilkommen und Abschied</i>, lyric of Goethe addressed to Friederike Brion, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wordsworth, his remark on Goethe's poetry, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Xenophon, Goethe's study of him, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Young, Edward, his <i>Conjectures on Original Composition</i>: its influence on German literature, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Zelter, friend of Goethe, letter of Goethe to him, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>-194.<br /> +<br /> +Zimmermann, J.G., his characterisation of Goethe, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Zurich, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">lake of, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>.</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Gespräche mit Eckermann</i>, January 27th, 1824.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> In 1792, on the occasion of his being offered the honour +of <i>Rathsherr</i> (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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> +</p> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Die Abgeschiednen betracht' ich gern,<br /> +Stünd' ihr Verdienst auch noch so fern;<br /> +Doch mit den edlen lebendigen Neuen<br /> +Mag ich wetteifernd mich lieber freuen.<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> 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.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> To Chancellor von Müller Goethe said: "Mein Vater war ein +tüchtiger Mann, aber freilich fehlte ihm Gewandtheit und Beweglichkeit +des Geistes."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Writing to her grandchild, Goethe's mother says: "Dein +lieber Vater hat mir nie Kummer oder Verdruss verursacht."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Goethe said of himself that he had no "grammatical +vein."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> With reference to what he says of his Biblical studies +he wrote as follows to a correspondent (January 30th, <span title="Transcriber's Note: corrected error "1912"">1812</span>): "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...."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> His remark to Eckermann (1828) is well known: "Meine +Sachen können nicht populär werden; wer daran denkt und dafür strebt, +ist in einem Irrthum."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> So Weislingen (in <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i>), whom Goethe +meant to be a double of himself, says: "<i>Ich bin ein Chamaeleon</i>."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> All Goethe's boyish productions that have been preserved +will be found in <i>Der junge Goethe, Neue Ausgabe in sechs Bänden +besorgt von Max Morris</i>, Leipzig, 1909.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> X. Doudan, <i>Mélanges et Lettres</i>, i. 524.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, Band i., 68-9.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> <i>Gespräche mit Riemer</i>, Anfang 1807.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> +</p> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,<br /> +Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt.<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> In point of fact Goethe retained to the end the +intonation and the idioms of his native speech.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, Band i. 159.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> pp. 60-3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> pp. 61-2.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> pp. 81-2.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 86. The passage is in French.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> This was the work of Behrisch, who was a virtuoso in +calligraphy.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, i. 96-7.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 105.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 116.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 133.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> pp. 158-9.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> "Das Bedürfnis meiner Natur zwingt mich zu einer +vermannigfaltigten Thätigkeit," he wrote of himself in his +thirty-second year.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, Band i. 179.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, Band i. 67.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 88.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Notably in his paper, entitled <i>Literarischer +Sansculottismus</i>. See above, p. <a href="#Page_4">4</a>. 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!"</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> "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.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Nine of these <i>Lieder</i> Goethe thought worthy of a +permanent place in his collected works.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> This play was based on an earlier attempt made in +Frankfort.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> With a fatuity into which he occasionally fell, Goethe +in <i>Dichtung und Wahrheit</i> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> The translation of this passage is by Miss Minna Steele +Smith.—<i>Poetry and Truth from My Own Life</i> (London, 1908.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> 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 <i>Zahme Xenien</i> Goethe has expressed his opinion on the necessity +of inspiration in poetic production:— +</p> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Ja das ist das rechte Gleis,<br /> +Dass man nicht weiss,<br /> +Was man denkt,<br /> +Wenn man denkt:<br /> +Alles ist als wie geschenkt.<br /> +<br /> +All unser redlichstes Bemühn<br /> +Glückt nur im unbewussten Momente.<br /> +Wie möchte denn die Rose blühn,<br /> +Wenn sie der Sonne Herrlichkeit erkennte!<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> Referring to the time he now spent in Frankfort, Goethe +says in <i>Dichtung und Wahrheit</i>: "Mit dem Vater selbst konnte sich +kein angenehmes Verhältniss knüpfen."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, Band i. 215.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 217.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> <i>Cf.</i> his beautiful characterisation of Louis Bonaparte, +King of Holland, in whom he found the embodiment at once of the +Christian graces and of <i>reine Menschlichkeit</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> Probably Goethe had this book in his mind when he wrote +the sarcastic epigram:— +</p> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +"Es ist die ganze Kirchengeschichte<br /> +Mischmasch von Irrthum und von Gewalt."<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Yet at a later date he would seem to have regarded his +mystical studies as among the errors of his youth. In his <i>Tagebuch</i>, +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 <span title="Transcriber's Note: corrected error "im"">in</span> +Geheimnissen, dunklen +imaginativen Verhältissen eine Wollust gefunden habe."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, Band i. 179, November 7th, 1768.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 173.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 217.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 211.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 224.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, Band i. 205.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 230.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> Goethe has this entry in his <i>Tagebuch</i> (April 2nd, +1780): "Wieland sieht ganz unglaublich alles, was man machen will, +macht, und was hangt und langt in einer Schrift."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, Band i. 200.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> So we are led to infer from what he says in Part iii., +Book ii. of <i>Dichtung und Wahrheit</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, Band i. 232.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 234.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> pp. 240, 241.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> 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 +<i>Gespräche</i>. Gesamtausgabe von Freiherrn v. Biedermann, Leipzig, 1909, +i. p. 19.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, Band i. pp. 245-7.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> Jung Stilling.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> Biedermann, <i>op. cit.</i>, 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." <i>Ib.</i> p. +6.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> 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 <i>Goethes Kopf und Gestalt von Karl Bauer</i>, +Berlin, 1908.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> Stilling elsewhere says: "Schade, dass so wenige diesen +vortrefflichen Menschen seinem Herzen nach kennen!" Others used +similar expressions regarding Goethe's mind and heart.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> 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." (<i>Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen +Werken</i>, Berlin, 1887, i. p. 396.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> Herder thought that Goethe was lacking in enthusiasm.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> Elsewhere Herder calls Goethe a <i>Specht</i>, a +wood-pecker.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> Writing to a correspondent in 1780, Goethe says: "Herder +fährt fort, sich und andern das Leben sauer zu machen."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> <i>Götz von Berlichingen.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> Von deutcher Baukunst.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> 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, <i>op. cit.</i> i. 392.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> Band ii. p. 18.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> Band i. p. 250.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 251.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> It is recorded that his voice trembled as he dictated +the passages referring to Sesenheim and Friederike.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> Biedermann, <i>op. cit.</i> i. pp. 16-17.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> In the recently discovered manuscript of <i>Wilhelm +Meisters Theatralische Sendung</i> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, Band i. p. 258 <i>ff.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> Friederike died in 1815. She was still alive when Goethe +was writing the story of their love.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> +</p> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Nichts taugt Ungeduld,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Noch weniger Reue;</span><br /> +Jene vermehrt die Schuld,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Diese schafft neue.</span><br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> "I, too," Goethe wrote in <i>Dichtung und Wahrheit</i>, "had +trodden the path of knowledge, and had early been led to see the +vanity of it."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> The younger brother, Georg, subsequently married +Cornelia.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, Band 2, pp. 7-8.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 6.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 8.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 14.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> So it was then thought, but the exact date is +uncertain.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> In the characters of Marie and Elizabeth we have traits +of Friederike and of Goethe's mother.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> As we have seen, the Leipzig book of verses did not +attract general attention.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> Lessing strongly disapproved of <i>Götz</i> as flouting the +doctrines laid down in his <i>Dramaturgie</i>. When his brother announced +to him that <i>Götz</i> had been played with great applause in Berlin, his +cold comment was that no doubt the chief credit was due to the +decorator.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> Two of the scenes in <i>Götz</i> were imitated by Scott in +his own work—the Vehmgericht scene in <i>Anne of Geierstein</i> and the +description of the siege of Torquilstone by Rebecca to the wounded +Ivanhoe. Scott also borrowed from <i>Egmont</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> Eckermann, <i>Gespräche mit Goethe</i>, November 9th, 1824.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> It was Schlosser who had made Goethe and Merck +acquainted. Herder, to whom Merck was known, had been a previous +intermediary.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> A six hours' walk.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> The poem, entitled <i>Der Wanderer</i>, noted below.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> The girl meant was no doubt Käthchen Schönkopf.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> <i>Über Goethe's Gedichte</i> (1911), p. 157.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> On account of his constant travels between Frankfort +and Darmstadt, Goethe was known among his friends as the <i>Wanderer</i>. +The poem was written in the autumn, during Goethe's residence in +Wetzlar.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> Biedermann, <i>op. cit.</i> i. 19-20.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> Werther, as Goethe reminds us in one of his Venetian +epigrams, was known in China:— +</p> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Doch was fördert es mich, dass auch sogar der Chinese<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Malet mit ängstlicher Hand Werthern und Lotten auf Glas?</span><br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> The <i>Praktikanten</i> were voluntary attendants on the +Imperial Court, had little or no dependence on the authorities, and +lived on their own resources.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> Caroline Flachsland to Herder, May 25th, 1772.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> Goethe to Herder, <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, Band ii. 15.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> In the <i>Kronprinz</i>, the principal hotel in the town.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> Goethe's own lodging (still shown) was in the +<i>Gewandsgasse</i>, a narrow, dirty street, whence sun or moon could be +seen at no season of the year.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> In his contemporary letters, Goethe does not always +speak of Gotter so favourably as he does in his Autobiography.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a> An exhaustive account of Goethe's sojourn in Wetzlar +will be found in W. Herbst's <i>Goethe in Wetzlar</i>, 1772. <i>Vier Monate +aus des Dichters Jugendleben</i>, Gotha, 1881.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> This is the expression of Kestner, Lotte's betrothed.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> Kestner's characterisation of Goethe will be found in +Biedermann, <i>op. cit.</i> i. pp. 21-3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a> Goethe had made Jerusalem's acquaintance in Leipzig. +Jerusalem called Goethe a <i>Geck</i>, 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a> In point of fact, Goethe announced himself. Merck +arrived after him.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a> 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...."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> Goethe to Kestner, November 10th, 1772. <i>Werke, +Briefe</i>, Band ii. 35.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a> To the same, September 15th, 1773. <i>Ib.</i> p. 104.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> pp. 82-3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> November 27th, 1772.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> In its new form <i>Götz</i> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a> Ich bin wie immer der nachdenkliche Leichtsinn und die +warme Kälte.—Goethe to Sophie von la Roche, September 1st, 1780.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> A quarrel had arisen between Merck and Leuchsenring, +and Goethe had warmly taken Merck's side.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> As we have seen, Herder was jealous of Goethe's own +attentions to Caroline.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a> It was published in the autumn of the following year, +1774.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a> W. Scherer was the first to identify Herder with +Satyros.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a> <i>Satyros</i> was not published till 1814, after Herder's +death, but he was aware of its existence.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a> Max Morris, <i>op. cit.</i> iv. 81.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a> The following passage from an article in the <i>Hibbert +Journal</i>, 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?"</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a> 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.—<i>Über Goethe's Gedichte</i>, p. 160. +Bielschowsky (<i>Goethe, Sein Leben und Seine Werke</i>, i. 510) suggests +that the ode may have been intended as the opening of Act ii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a> Sir Frederick Pollock dates "modern Spinozism" from +this incident.—<i>Spinoza: His Life and Opinions</i> (London, 1880), p. +390.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a> Turgenieff relates that on translating passages from +<i>Satyros</i> and <i>Prometheus</i> to Flaubert, Edmond de Goncourt, and +Daudet, all three were profoundly impressed by the range and power +displayed in them.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a> 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 <i>Mahomet</i>, and staged it in +Weimar.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a> It is this conception, as he himself tells us, that +Renan applied to the life and teaching of Jesus.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, ii. 140.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a> These lines are by the Earl of Rochester. On reading +the first English translation of <i>Werther</i> (1783), Goethe wrote: "It +gave me much pleasure to read my thoughts in the language of my +instructors."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a> In making these modifications Goethe was advised by +Herder and Wieland.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a> Though to the satisfaction of neither Kestner nor +Lotte.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a> It was shortly after his meeting with Lotte Buff that +Goethe learned that she was engaged to Kestner.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a> Goethe gave the blue eyes of Maxe to Charlotte. Lotte +Buff's eyes were brown.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a> "Werther," Goethe remarked to Henry Crabb Robinson, +"praised Homer while he retained his senses, and Ossian when he was +going mad."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, ii. 156.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a> 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 <i>Werther</i>; 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 <i>Werther's</i> character in its true light. As the friend of +Jerusalem, Lessing naturally resented the liberty which Goethe had +taken with him.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a> By Sainte-Beuve.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, ii. 207.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a> The family of Kestner eventually published the +correspondence of Goethe with their parents.—A. Kestner, <i>Goethe und +Werther, Briefe Goethes, meistens aus seiner Jugendheit, mit +erläuternden Documenten</i> (Stuttgart und Tübingen, 1854).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a> Eckermann, <i>op. cit.</i>, January 2nd, 1824.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a> The <i>accidie</i> of the Middle Ages was a form of +Wertherism. <i>Cf.</i> Chaucer's <i>Parson's Tale</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a> It may be recalled that <i>Werther</i> was throughout his +life one of R.L. Stevenson's favourite books. See his Letter to Mrs. +Sitwell, September 6th, <span title="Transcriber's Note: corrected error "1773"">1873</span>, +and ch. xix. of <i>The Wrecker</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a> <i>Fragment de mon voyage d'Espagne.—Mémoires de +Monsieur Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais</i>, tome ii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_168_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a> To Fritz Jacobi, August 21st, 1774.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a> In language, as well as in form, <i>Clavigo</i> followed +traditional models. Wieland was naturally gratified by Goethe's return +to those models which he had set at defiance in <i>Götz</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_170_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a> 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 <i>Clavigo</i>, some of which, like +it, might have retained their place on the stage.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_171_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a> Saying of Philine in <i>Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre</i>, bk. +iv. ch. ix.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_172_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a> An entry in his <i>Ephemerides</i>, the diary which he kept +in his 21st year (see above, p. <a href="#Page_102">102</a>), 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, <i>op. cit.</i> ii. 33.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a> By Felix Mendelssohn.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_174_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a> See above, p. <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_175_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a> It was first published in 1836, four years after his +death.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_176_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a> In one of his <i>Xenien</i> Goethe speaks thus of Lavater:— +</p> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +"Schade, dass die Natur nur einen Menschen aus dir schuf,<br /> +Denn zum würdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff."<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_177_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a> The letter is addressed to Heinrich Pfenninger, an +engraver in Zurich, who engraved some of the plates in Lavater's book +on Physiognomy.—<i>Werke, Briefe</i>, Band ii. pp. 155-6.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_178_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a> Biedermann, <i>op. cit.</i> i. 33.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 34.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_180_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_181_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a> Basedow remained for a time at Mülheim. As we shall +see, he and Goethe met again later in the month.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_182_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a> As <i>Werther</i> was not published till the autumn of 1774, +there must be some confusion in Lavater's narrative.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_183_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, ii. 180.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_184_184" id="Footnote_184_184"></a><a href="#FNanchor_184_184"><span class="label">[184]</span></a> Biedermann, <i>op. cit.</i> i. 45.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_185_185" id="Footnote_185_185"></a><a href="#FNanchor_185_185"><span class="label">[185]</span></a> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_186_186" id="Footnote_186_186"></a><a href="#FNanchor_186_186"><span class="label">[186]</span></a> Biedermann, <i>op. cit.</i> i. 45.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_187_187" id="Footnote_187_187"></a><a href="#FNanchor_187_187"><span class="label">[187]</span></a> Johann J.W. Heinse, a minor poet of the time, and one +of Goethe's most fervent admirers.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_188_188" id="Footnote_188_188"></a><a href="#FNanchor_188_188"><span class="label">[188]</span></a> Biedermann, <i>op. cit.</i> i. 45-6.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_189_189" id="Footnote_189_189"></a><a href="#FNanchor_189_189"><span class="label">[189]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, ii. 182.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_190_190" id="Footnote_190_190"></a><a href="#FNanchor_190_190"><span class="label">[190]</span></a> Klopstock came from Göttingen, where he was the idol of +a band of youthful poets.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_191_191" id="Footnote_191_191"></a><a href="#FNanchor_191_191"><span class="label">[191]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, ii. 182.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_192_192" id="Footnote_192_192"></a><a href="#FNanchor_192_192"><span class="label">[192]</span></a> Merck found in Klopstock "viel Weltkunde und +Weltkälte."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_193_193" id="Footnote_193_193"></a><a href="#FNanchor_193_193"><span class="label">[193]</span></a> Writing to Sophie von la Roche on November 20th, Goethe +calls Klopstock "a noble, great man, on whom the peace of God rests," +<i>Werke, Briefe</i> ii. 206.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_194_194" id="Footnote_194_194"></a><a href="#FNanchor_194_194"><span class="label">[194]</span></a> Biedermann, <i>op. cit.</i> i. 46.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_195_195" id="Footnote_195_195"></a><a href="#FNanchor_195_195"><span class="label">[195]</span></a> Max Morris, <i>op. cit.</i> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_196_196" id="Footnote_196_196"></a><a href="#FNanchor_196_196"><span class="label">[196]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 370.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_197_197" id="Footnote_197_197"></a><a href="#FNanchor_197_197"><span class="label">[197]</span></a> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_198_198" id="Footnote_198_198"></a><a href="#FNanchor_198_198"><span class="label">[198]</span></a> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_199_199" id="Footnote_199_199"></a><a href="#FNanchor_199_199"><span class="label">[199]</span></a> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_200_200" id="Footnote_200_200"></a><a href="#FNanchor_200_200"><span class="label">[200]</span></a> It may be regarded as significant that Goethe makes no +reference to the Countess in his Autobiography.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_201_201" id="Footnote_201_201"></a><a href="#FNanchor_201_201"><span class="label">[201]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, ii. 230.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_202_202" id="Footnote_202_202"></a><a href="#FNanchor_202_202"><span class="label">[202]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> pp. 233-4.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_203_203" id="Footnote_203_203"></a><a href="#FNanchor_203_203"><span class="label">[203]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 113.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_204_204" id="Footnote_204_204"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204_204"><span class="label">[204]</span></a> He says of the piece that it cost him "little +expenditure of mind and feeling." <i>Ib.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_205_205" id="Footnote_205_205"></a><a href="#FNanchor_205_205"><span class="label">[205]</span></a> 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. <i>Erwin und Elmire</i>, 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_206_206" id="Footnote_206_206"></a><a href="#FNanchor_206_206"><span class="label">[206]</span></a> In deference to the general opinion that this ending +was immoral, Goethe, in a later form of the play, makes Fernando shoot +himself.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_207_207" id="Footnote_207_207"></a><a href="#FNanchor_207_207"><span class="label">[207]</span></a> <i>Stella</i> and other German plays are wittily parodied in +<i>The Rovers; or, The Double Arrangement</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_208_208" id="Footnote_208_208"></a><a href="#FNanchor_208_208"><span class="label">[208]</span></a> Goethe gives Fernando his own brown eyes and black +hair.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_209_209" id="Footnote_209_209"></a><a href="#FNanchor_209_209"><span class="label">[209]</span></a> After he had broken with her, and was settled in +Weimar.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_210_210" id="Footnote_210_210"></a><a href="#FNanchor_210_210"><span class="label">[210]</span></a> During his residence in Rome in 1787. He recast <i>Erwin +und Elmire</i> at the same time.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_211_211" id="Footnote_211_211"></a><a href="#FNanchor_211_211"><span class="label">[211]</span></a> To this period probably belongs <i>Lilis Park</i>, 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_212_212" id="Footnote_212_212"></a><a href="#FNanchor_212_212"><span class="label">[212]</span></a> 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.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_213_213" id="Footnote_213_213"></a><a href="#FNanchor_213_213"><span class="label">[213]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, ii. 246.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_214_214" id="Footnote_214_214"></a><a href="#FNanchor_214_214"><span class="label">[214]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, ii. 249.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_215_215" id="Footnote_215_215"></a><a href="#FNanchor_215_215"><span class="label">[215]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 255.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_216_216" id="Footnote_216_216"></a><a href="#FNanchor_216_216"><span class="label">[216]</span></a> Frau Schönemann is recorded to have said that the +different religion of the two families was the cause of the match +being broken off.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_217_217" id="Footnote_217_217"></a><a href="#FNanchor_217_217"><span class="label">[217]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, ii. 261-2.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_218_218" id="Footnote_218_218"></a><a href="#FNanchor_218_218"><span class="label">[218]</span></a> The third was Count Haugnitz, of more subdued temper +than his companions.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_219_219" id="Footnote_219_219"></a><a href="#FNanchor_219_219"><span class="label">[219]</span></a> Biedermann, <i>op. cit.</i> i. 55.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_220_220" id="Footnote_220_220"></a><a href="#FNanchor_220_220"><span class="label">[220]</span></a> According to Goethe, Count Haugnitz was the only one of +the four who showed any sense of propriety.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_221_221" id="Footnote_221_221"></a><a href="#FNanchor_221_221"><span class="label">[221]</span></a> It was at this time that Merck gave his famous +definition of Goethe's genius. See above, p. <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_222_222" id="Footnote_222_222"></a><a href="#FNanchor_222_222"><span class="label">[222]</span></a> The <i>Urfaust</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_223_223" id="Footnote_223_223"></a><a href="#FNanchor_223_223"><span class="label">[223]</span></a> Goethe was known as the "Bear" or the "Huron" among his +friends.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_224_224" id="Footnote_224_224"></a><a href="#FNanchor_224_224"><span class="label">[224]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, ii. 266.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_225_225" id="Footnote_225_225"></a><a href="#FNanchor_225_225"><span class="label">[225]</span></a> Cornelia died in June, 1777, when Goethe was settled in +Weimar.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_226_226" id="Footnote_226_226"></a><a href="#FNanchor_226_226"><span class="label">[226]</span></a> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_227_227" id="Footnote_227_227"></a><a href="#FNanchor_227_227"><span class="label">[227]</span></a> Biedermann, <i>op. cit.</i> 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.—<i>Ib.</i> p. 58.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_228_228" id="Footnote_228_228"></a><a href="#FNanchor_228_228"><span class="label">[228]</span></a> According to a tradition in the Passavant family, it +was Goethe, not Passavant, who was so eager to descend into +Italy.—Biedermann, <i>op. cit.</i> i. 58.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_229_229" id="Footnote_229_229"></a><a href="#FNanchor_229_229"><span class="label">[229]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, ii. 272.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_230_230" id="Footnote_230_230"></a><a href="#FNanchor_230_230"><span class="label">[230]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 273.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_231_231" id="Footnote_231_231"></a><a href="#FNanchor_231_231"><span class="label">[231]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> pp. 277-8.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_232_232" id="Footnote_232_232"></a><a href="#FNanchor_232_232"><span class="label">[232]</span></a> The two poems, <i>Lilis Park</i> 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 <i>Erwin und Elmire</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_233_233" id="Footnote_233_233"></a><a href="#FNanchor_233_233"><span class="label">[233]</span></a> 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."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_234_234" id="Footnote_234_234"></a><a href="#FNanchor_234_234"><span class="label">[234]</span></a> <i>Werke, Briefe</i>, 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."—<i>Ib.</i> p. +298.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_235_235" id="Footnote_235_235"></a><a href="#FNanchor_235_235"><span class="label">[235]</span></a> Biedermann, <i>op. cit.</i> i. p. 60.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_236_236" id="Footnote_236_236"></a><a href="#FNanchor_236_236"><span class="label">[236]</span></a> Max Morris, <i>op. cit.</i> v. 470.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_237_237" id="Footnote_237_237"></a><a href="#FNanchor_237_237"><span class="label">[237]</span></a> The Duke had previously passed through Frankfort on his +way to Carlsruhe. On that occasion, also, Goethe had been in +intercourse with him.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_238_238" id="Footnote_238_238"></a><a href="#FNanchor_238_238"><span class="label">[238]</span></a> 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, <i>op. cit.</i> v. 468.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_239_239" id="Footnote_239_239"></a><a href="#FNanchor_239_239"><span class="label">[239]</span></a> Miss Swanwick's translation. Goethe concludes his +Autobiography with these words.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_240_240" id="Footnote_240_240"></a><a href="#FNanchor_240_240"><span class="label">[240]</span></a> Fräulein Luise von Göchhausen.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_241_241" id="Footnote_241_241"></a><a href="#FNanchor_241_241"><span class="label">[241]</span></a> The words "[Sie] ist gerettet" are not in the +<i>Urfaust</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_242_242" id="Footnote_242_242"></a><a href="#FNanchor_242_242"><span class="label">[242]</span></a> +</p> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> +Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,<br /> +Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.<br /> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_243_243" id="Footnote_243_243"></a><a href="#FNanchor_243_243"><span class="label">[243]</span></a> Tennyson disclaimed having Goethe in his mind when he +wrote <i>The Palace of Art</i>.</p></div> + + + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Youth of Goethe, by Peter Hume Brown + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUTH OF GOETHE *** + +***** This file should be named 19753-h.htm or 19753-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/7/5/19753/ + +Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Linda Cantoni, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Youth of Goethe + +Author: Peter Hume Brown + +Release Date: November 11, 2006 [EBook #19753] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUTH OF GOETHE *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Linda Cantoni, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + + + + +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 oeffnet, + 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 KAeTHCHEN SCHOeNKOPF 38 +FRIENDSHIP WITH BEHRISCH 39 +HIS RELATIONS TO KAeTHCHEN 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 FRAeULEIN VON KLETTENBERG 62 +A MYSTERIOUS MEDICINE 63 +EVOLVES A RELIGIOUS CREED 65 +INFLUENCE OF FRAeULEIN 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--_GOeTZ 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 +_GOeTZ 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 _GOeTZ VON BERLICHINGEN_ 167 +SATIRICAL PLAYS 169 +_PROMETHEUS_ 175 +_MAHOMET_ 181 +_ADLER UND TAUBE_ 183 +_KUeNSTLERS 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 FRAeULEIN VON KLETTENBERG 245 + + +CHAPTER XIII + +LILI SCHOeNEMANN + +1775 + +THE SCHOeNEMANN FAMILY 247 +GOETHE'S INTRODUCTION TO LILI SCHOeNEMANN 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 Gespraeche, 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 Baenden, 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: _Gespraeche 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, + Stuend' 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 gemaess, 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 _Goetz +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 _elite_ 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 Mueller Goethe said: "Mein Vater war ein +tuechtiger 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 Weltanfaenge so freundlich aufnehmen, ist mir von grossem +Wert. Es schlingt sich die daher fuer 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 +_Aufklaerung_, 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 Fraeulein von Klettenberg (the +_Schoene 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 koennen nicht populaer werden; wer daran denkt und dafuer 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 Goettingen +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 Ruehrendes_, 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 _Goetz 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 ueber die Hoellenfahrt 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 Baenden +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, _Melanges 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 fuer 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 Boehme, 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 Boehme, 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: _Gespraeche 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 Boehme 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 Boehme 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 Boehme'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 Kaethchen (or, as Goethe calls her in his +Autobiography, Aennchen) Schoenkopf, 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 +Kaethchen, 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 Kaethchen 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 _roue_, 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 +Kaethchen, 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' _tete-a-tete_ with Kaethchen, 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 Kaethchen as follows: "Among +my acquaintances who are alive (he has just mentioned the death of +Frau Boehme) the little Schoenkopf does not deserve to be forgotten. She +is a very good girl, with an uprightness of heart joined to agreeable +_naivete_, 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 +Kaethchen, 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 Kaethchen, 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 Kaethchen. "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 +Kaethchen 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 schwoeren +ich unterstehe mich schon ein Maedgen 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 Kaethchen 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 +_denouement_: "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 Mueller, 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 Linnaeus, 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 Beduerfnis meiner Natur zwingt mich zu einer +vermannigfaltigten Thaetigkeit," 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 +Boehme 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 erbaermlichen Zeit +leben musste, die ihm keine bessern Stoffe gab, als in seinen Stuecken +verarbeitet sind!"] + +[Footnote 40: "Lessing war der hoechste Verstand, und nur ein ebenso +grosser konnte von ihm wahrhaft lernen. Dem Halbvermoegen war er +gefaehrlich." (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 schoene Nacht_. + +[Footnote 41: Nine of these _Lieder_ Goethe thought worthy of a +permanent place in his collected works.] + + DIE SCHOeNE NACHT. + + Nun verlass' ich diese Huette, + Meiner Liebsten Aufenthalt; + Wandle mit verhuelltem Schritte + Durch den oeden, finstern Wald. + Luna bricht durch Busch und Eichen, + Zephyr meldet ihren Lauf; + Und die Birken streun mit Neigen + Ihr den suessten Weihrauch auf. + + Wie ergoetz' ich mich im Kuehlen + Dieser schoenen Sommernacht! + O wie still ist hier zu fuehlen + Was die Seele gluecklich macht! + Laesst sich kaum die Wonne fassen, + Und doch wollt' ich, Himmel! dir + Tausend solcher Naechte lassen, + Gaeb' mein Maedchen 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 Kaethchen +Schoenkopf, 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 Kaethchen, 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 Kaethchen 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; Soeller, 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 Soeller, 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, Soeller, 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, unueberwindliche Neigung, draengende +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 Bemuehn + Glueckt nur im unbewussten Momente. + Wie moechte denn die Rose bluehn, + 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 _regime_ 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 Mueller (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 (_fuerchterliches_) 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 Verhaeltniss knuepfen."] + +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 Kaethchen Schoenkopf, 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 Fraeulein 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 Fraeulein 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 Fraeulein 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 Fraeulein von Klettenberg belonged. Bound up with +the Fraeulein'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 +Fraeulein 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, Fraeulein 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 Fraeulein +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 Fraeulein 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 Fraeulein 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 Rueckblick auf's Leben auf die Verworrenheit +Betriebsamkeit, Wissbegierde der Jugend, wie sie ueberall +herumschweift, um etwas Befriedigendes zu finden. Wie ich besonders in +[Transcriber's Note: corrected error "im"] Geheimnissen, dunklen +imaginativen Verhaeltissen 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 Fraeulein 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 Kaethchen Schoenkopf 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 Fraeulein 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 Kaethchen 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 Kaethchen 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 Kaethchen +his wife.[59] + +[Footnote 57: _Ib._ p. 211.] + +[Footnote 58: _Ib._ p. 224.] + +[Footnote 59: Goethe saw Kaethchen 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 +Moliere 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 aesthetic 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 Fraeulein 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 Fraeulein 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 Verzueckung, sprach Worte der Prophezeiung +und machte Lerse Besorgnisse, er werde ueberschnappen." (Goethe's +_Gespraeche_. 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 _roue_ 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 Fuehren_--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 +uebrigen hat er mehr ein gutes Plappermaul als Gruendlichkeit." _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 Koenigsberg, 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 +Koenigsberg, 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 'graeulichen Dissonanzen' redet, in die Aeussererungen +zuweilen ausklingen moechten, auch auf den guenstigst 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 +faehrt 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: _Goetz 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 Eindruecke gegeben zu haben, +die einmal wirksam werden koennen."--Haym, _op. cit._ i. 392.] + +[Footnote 83: _Ib._ Band ii. p. 18.] + +[Footnote 84: Schiller, in a letter to C.G. Koerner, 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 _Goetz 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 praechtigen Worten und +Spruechen eine ausserordentliche Liebe, er schmueckte seine Seele damit +aus wie mit einem koestlichen Kleide, und freute sich darueber, als wenn +sie zu ihm selbst gehoerten kindlisch ueber diesen aeussern 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 Kaethchen Schoenkopf. 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 getuermter Riese da, + Wo Finsternis aus dem Gestraeuche + Mit hundert schwarzen Augen sah. + + Der Mond von einem Wolkenhuegel + Sah klaeglich aus dem Duft hervor; + Die Winde schwangen leise Fluegel, + Umsausten schauerlich mein Ohr; + Die Nacht schuf tausend Ungeheuer; + Doch frisch und froehlich war mein Mut; + In meinen Adern welches Feuer! + In meinem Herzen welche Glut! + + Dich sah ich, und die milde Freude + Floss aus dem suessen Blick auf mich, + Ganz war mein Herz an deiner Seite, + Und jeder Athemzug fuer dich. + Ein rosenfarbnes Fruehlingswetter + Umgab das liebliche Gesicht, + Und Zaertlichkeit fuer mich, ihr Goetter! + Ich hofft' es, ich verdient' es nicht. + + Doch ach, schon mit der Morgensonne + Verengt der Abschied mir das Herz: + In deinen Kuessen, 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 Glueck geliebt zu werden! + Und lieben, Goetter, welch ein Glueck! + + 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 + Enhaloed 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--_GOeTZ 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 _Goetz 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 _Goetz 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 _Goetz_. 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 +(_Goetz 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 Goetz 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 _Goetz_. +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 Caesar, Socrates, and Mahomet as appropriate central figures for +dramatic representation. "It is a pleasure to behold a great man," one +of the characters in _Goetz_ 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 Goetz 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 +_Goetz_. 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 _Goetz_. 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 mediaeval 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 _Goetz_ as flouting the +doctrines laid down in his _Dramaturgie_. When his brother announced +to him that _Goetz_ 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 _Goetz_ 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 +_Goetz_ did not end with its abortive life. But for _Goetz_ Schiller's +early productions would have been differently inspired; and to _Goetz_ +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 _Goetz_: 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 _Goetz_, 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, _Goetz_ 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 _Goetz_--a task to which Goethe himself was not called. In +1799 Scott published his translation of _Goetz_,[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 _Goetz_ were not the least potent +of his spells. + +[Footnote 107: Two of the scenes in _Goetz_ 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 _Goetz 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 _Goetz_ 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, _Gespraeche 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 Kaethchen Schoenkopf.] + +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 Gefuehl. + +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 paean 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: _Ueber 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 Cumae. 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 +Cumae, 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 muetterlich + Mit Erbteil ausgestattet, einer Huette. + + 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 foerdert es mich, dass auch sogar der Chinese + Malet mit aengstlicher 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 mediaeval +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 _Goetz_ that its author +had been spoilt by Shakespeare, and he modestly accepted the censure. +_Goetz_, 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'hote_[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 Goetz 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 _Goetz 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 gehoert zu den nivellierenden Naturen, sie hebt das Gemeine +herauf und zieht das Vorzuegliche 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 +naive 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 _Goetz_ 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 Fraeulein +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 _Goetz 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 Fraeulein 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 uneroerterte +biblische Fragen, zum erstenmal gruendlich 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 _Goetz 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 _Goetz_ 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 Gette," 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 _Goetz_ 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 _Goetz_. 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 Kaelte.--Goethe to Sophie von la Roche, September 1st, 1780.] + +The first of these sallies--_Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern, +Ein Schoenbartspiel_--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 personae_ 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 vergoetterte 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, Arsinoe 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, _Goetter, 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 _Goetz 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 AEschylus. +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 erfuellt_." 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 erschuettert alles fuehlst, + Was Freud' und Schmerzen jemals dir ergossen, + [Transcriber's Note: corrected error "and" for "und"] + Im Sturm dein Herz erschwillt, + In Traenen 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 Gefuehl, + 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.--_Ueber 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 _role_ 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, _Kuenstlers +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 _Goetz 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 gewoehnlich, 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 Fraeulein 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 _Goetz_, 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 Heloise_. In form and substance +_Werther_ was as much inspired by Richardson and Rousseau as _Goetz_ +had been by Shakespeare, yet in _Werther_, as in _Goetz_, 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 _Goetz_, +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 _taedium vitae_ 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 _Goetz 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 _Goetz 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 +erlaeuternden Documenten_ (Stuttgart und Tuebingen, 1854).] + +The subsequent influence of _Werther_ was at once more powerful and +more enduring than the influence of _Goetz 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--_Rene_, _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 _Memoires_[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.--Memoires 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 +_Memoire_, 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 Muench 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 +_Goetz 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 _Goetz 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 _Goetz_ 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 _Goetz_.] + +[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 _Goetz_ 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 _Goetz_ or rather +Weislingen himself, developed into a leading character. In it," he +adds, "there are scenes which I could only indicate in _Goetz_ 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 _Goetz_ 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 _Goetz_ 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 +Linnaeus 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 Judaea--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 _Goetz 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 wuerdigen 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 _Goetz_, 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 Fraeulein 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 Fraeulein 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 Caesar 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 (_Dine 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 +_Dine 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 Muelheim[181] +and Goethe to Duesseldorf. 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 Muelheim. 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 Duesseldorf, 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 Duesseldorf +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 Duesseldorf, 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 +Koenig 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 _Goetz 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 Goettingen, 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 +Weltkaelte."] + +[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 _Goetz_ +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 +Fraeulein 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 +noetig."] + +On Goethe's return to Frankfort sad news awaited him; during his +absence the Fraeulein 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 Fraeulein von Klettenberg. + +[Footnote 196: _Ib._ p. 370.] + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +LILI SCHOeNEMANN + +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 +_Goetz 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 Schoenemann, 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 Schoenemanns 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 +Schoenemanns moved in a social circle which was rigidly closed to the +burgher element in the city, and, when Frau Schoenemann gave Goethe the +_entree_ to her house, it was because he was an exceptional member of +the class to which he belonged. In making the acquaintance of the +Schoenemanns, 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 Schoenemanns 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 +Schoenemann 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 +Schoenemanns, 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 a ses propres souvenirs et +a son coeur." In a letter to Frau von Stein (May 24th, 1776) Goethe +describes his relation to Friederike Brion as "das reinste, schoenste, +wahrste, das ich ausser meiner Schwester je zu einem Weibe gehabt."] + +In Lili Schoenemann Goethe had a different object from any of his +previous loves. Kaethchen Schoenkopf, 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 bedraenget dich so sehr? + Welch ein fremdes neues Leben! + Ich erkenne dich nicht mehr. + Weg ist alles, was du liebtest, + Weg, warum du dich betruebtest, + Weg dein Fleiss und deine Ruh'-- + Ach, wie kamst du nur dazu! + + Fesselt dich die Jugendbluete, + Diese liebliche Gestalt, + Dieser Blick voll Treu' und Guete + Mit unendlicher Gewalt? + Will ich rasch mich ihr entziehen, + Mich ermannen, ihr entfliehen, + Fuehret mich im Augenblick + Ach, mein Weg zu ihr zurueck. + + Und an diesem Zauberfaedchen, + Das sich nicht zerreissen laesst, + Haelt das liebe, lose Maedchen + Mich so wider Willen fest; + Muss in ihrem Zauberkreise + Leben nun auf ihre Weise. + Die Veraend'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 charmed 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 Fruehlings Bluete + Nun nicht auf der Flur; + Wo du, Engel, bist, ist Lieb' and Guete, + 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 Schoenemann 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, + Pflueckt' ich aus diesem Herzen hier; + Nimm ihn gefaellig 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 verbluehet, suesse +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 (Caecilie) 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 Caecilie 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, Caecilie 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 Caecilie, 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. Caecilie 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 Caecilie 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 Caecilie, 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 Caecilie and +Lucie are preparing to take their departure. At Stella's request +Fernando finds Caecilie, 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 Caecilie 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. Caecilie +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 Caecilie 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 Caecilie'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 Caecilie 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 Caecilie 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 _denouement_, 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 Hoehen + 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 allmaecht'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 +Schoenemann. 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 Schoenemann 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 Schoenemanns 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 Schoenemann 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 muessen."] + +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 haelt! + + Die Welle wieget unsern Kahn + Im Rudertakt hinauf, + Und Berge, wolkig himmelan, + Begegnen unserm Lauf. + + Aug', mein Aug', was sinkst du nieder? + Goldne Traeume, 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 tuermende Ferne; + + Morgenwind umfluegelt + 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 gaeb' mir dieser Blick! + Und doch, wenn ich, Lili, dich nicht liebte, + Faend' ich hier und faend' ich dort mein Glueck? + + 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 Schoenemann 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 +verbluehet, suesse 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 Goethe," 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 _roles_ 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 Fraeulein'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 Fraeulein 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 +_Goetz_, 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: Fraeulein Luise von Goechhausen.] + +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 Hoehle_, 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 gruen 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. + +AEschylus, 175. + +_An Belinden_, lyric addressed by Goethe to Lili Schoenemann, 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 _Memoires_ 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 _Goetz von + Berlichingen_, 121; + his _Memoirs_, _ib._ + +Boerhaave, Goethe's study of him, 64. + +Boehme, Professor of History in Leipzig, Goethe attends his lectures, 34. + +Boehme, 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 + Schoenemann, 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 Koenig 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. + +_Dine zu Coblenz_, poem by Goethe, 230, 231. + +_Disputation_ of Goethe for the Licentiate of Laws, 114. + +Dresden, Goethe's secret visit to, 46. + +Duesseldorf, 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. + +Goechhausen, Fraeulein 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 _Goetz 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 Boehme on his character and literary tastes, 36; + falls in love with Kaethchen Schoenkopf, 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 Fraeulein 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 _Goetz 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 _Goetz 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 Schoenemann, 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. + +_Goetter, 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. + +_Goetz 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 _Goetz 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, Fraeulein von, the _Schoene 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. + +_Kuenstlers 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 Schoenemann, 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. + +Muelheim, 231. + +Mueller, Chancellor von, quoted, 44; + quoted, 58 note. + +Muench, 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 Schoenemann, +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 ueber die Hoellenfahrt 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 Heloise_, 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 _Goetz 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. + +Schoenemann, 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. + +Schoenemann family, 247; + their social position superior to that of the Goethes, 248; + intercourse of Goethe with them, 249. + +Schoenemann, Lili. (_See_ Schoenemann, Anna Elisabeth.) + +Schoenkopf, Kaethchen, 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 _Goetz 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 _Goetz 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 _Goetz 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. + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Youth of Goethe, by Peter Hume Brown + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUTH OF GOETHE *** + +***** This file should be named 19753.txt or 19753.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/7/5/19753/ + +Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Linda Cantoni, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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