Remembering his promise to show me again his Marienbad Elegy at a fitting opportunity, Goethe arose, put a light on the table, and gave me the poem. I was delighted to have it once more before me. He quietly seated himself again, and left me to an undisturbed perusal of the piece.
After I had been reading a while, I turned to say something to him, but he seemed to be asleep. I therefore used the favorable moment, and read the poem again and again with a rare delight. The most youthful glow of love, tempered by the moral elevation of the mind, seemed to me its pervading characteristic. Then I thought that the feelings were more strongly expressed than we are accustomed to find in Goethe’s other poems, and imputed this to the influence of Byron–which Goethe did not deny.
“You see the product of a highly impassioned mood,” said he. “While I was in it I would not for the world have been without it, and now I would not for any consideration fall into it again.
“I wrote that poem immediately after leaving Marienbad, while the feeling of all I had experienced there was fresh. At eight in the morning, when we stopped at the first stage, I wrote down the first strophe; and thus I went on composing in the carriage, and writing down at every stage what I had just composed in my head, so that by the evening the whole was on paper. Thence it has a certain directness, and is, as I may say, poured out at once, which may be an advantage to it as a whole.”
“It is,” said I, “quite peculiar in its kind, and recalls no other poem of yours.”
“That,” said he, I “may be, because I staked upon the present moment as a man stakes a considerable sum upon a card, and sought to enhance its value as much as I could without exaggeration.”
These words struck me as very important, inasmuch as they threw a light on Goethe’s method so as to explain that many-sidedness which has excited so much admiration.
1824
_Friday, January 2._–Dined at Goethe’s, and enjoyed some cheerful conversation. Mention was made of a young beauty belonging to the Weimar society, when one of the guests remarked that he was on the point of falling in love with her, although her understanding could not exactly be called brilliant.
“Pshaw,” said Goethe, laughing, “as if love had anything to do with the understanding. The things that we love in a young lady are something very different from the understanding. We love in her beauty, youthfulness, playfulness, trustingness, her character, her faults, her caprices, and God knows what _’je ne sais quoi’_ besides; but we do not _love_ her understanding. We respect her understanding when it is brilliant, and by it the worth of a girl can be infinitely enhanced in our eyes. Understanding may also serve to fix our affections when we already love; but the understanding is not that which is capable of firing our hearts, and awakening a passion.”
We found much that was true and convincing in Goethe’s words, and were very willing to consider the subject in that light. After dinner, and when the rest of the party had departed, I remained sitting with Goethe, and conversed with him on various interesting topics.
We discoursed upon English literature, on the greatness of Shakespeare, and on the unfavorable position held by all English dramatic authors who had appeared after that poetical giant.
“A dramatic talent of any importance,” said Goethe, “could not forbear to notice Shakespeare’s works, nay, could not forbear to study them. Having studied them, he must be aware that Shakespeare has already exhausted the whole of human nature in all its tendencies, in all its heights and depths, and that, in fact, there remains for him, the aftercomer, nothing more to do. And how could one get courage only to put pen to paper, if one were conscious in an earnest, appreciating spirit, that such unfathomable and unattainable excellences were already in existence!
“It fared better with me fifty years ago in my own dear Germany. I could soon come to an end with all that then existed; it could not long awe me, or occupy my attention. I soon left behind me German literature, and the study of it, and turned my thoughts to life and to production. So on and on I went in my own natural development, and on and on I fashioned the productions of epoch after epoch. And at every step of life and development, my standard of excellence was not much higher than what at such step I was able to attain. But had I been born an Englishman, and had all those numerous masterpieces been brought before me in all their power, at my first dawn of youthful consciousness, they would have overpowered me, and I should not have known what to do. I could not have gone on with such fresh light-heartedness, but should have had to bethink myself, and look about for a long time, to find some new outlet.”
I turned the conversation back to Shakespeare. “When one, to some degree, disengages him from English literature,” said I, “and considers him transformed into a German, one cannot fail to look upon his gigantic greatness as a miracle. But if one seeks him in his home, transplants oneself to the soil of his country, and to the atmosphere of the century in which he lived; further, if one studies his contemporaries, and his immediate successors, and inhales the force wafted to us from Ben Jonson, Massinger, Marlowe, and Beaumont and Fletcher, Shakespeare still, indeed, appears a being of the most exalted magnitude; but still, one arrives at the conviction that many of the wonders of his genius are, in some measure, accessible, and that much is due to the powerfully productive atmosphere of his age and time.”
“You are perfectly right,” returned Goethe. “It is with Shakespeare as with the mountains of Switzerland. Transplant Mont Blanc at once into the large plain of Lueneburg Heath, and we should find no words to express our wonder at its magnitude. Seek it, however, in its gigantic home, go to it over its immense neighbors, the Jungfrau, the Finsteraarhorn, the Eiger, the Wetterhorn, St. Gotthard, and Monte Rosa; Mont Blanc will, indeed, still remain a giant, but it will no longer produce in us such amazement.”
“Besides, let him who will not believe,” continued Goethe, “that much of Shakespeare’s greatness appertains to his great vigorous time, only ask himself the question, whether a phenomenon so astounding would be possible in the present England of 1824, in these evil days of criticising and hair-splitting journals?”
“That undisturbed, innocent, somnambulatory production, by which alone anything great can thrive, is no longer possible. Our talents at present lie before the public. The daily criticisms which appear in fifty different places, and the gossip that is caused by them amongst the public, prevent the appearance of any sound production. In the present day, he who does not keep aloof from all this, and isolate himself by main force, is lost. Through the bad, chiefly negative, aesthetical and critical tone of the journals, a sort of half culture finds its way into the masses; but to productive talent it is a noxious mist, a dropping poison, which destroys the tree of creative power, from the ornamental green leaves, to the deepest pith and the most hidden fibres.
“And then how tame and weak has life itself become during the last two shabby centuries. Where do we now meet an original nature? and where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is? This, however, affects the poet, who must find all within himself, while he is left in the lurch by all without.”
The conversation now turned on _Werthe_. “That,” said Goethe, “is a creation which I, like the pelican, fed with the blood of my own heart. It contains so much from the innermost recesses of my breast–so much feeling and thought, that it might easily be spread into a novel of ten such volumes. Besides, as I have often said, I have only read the book once since its appearance, and have taken good care not to read it again. It is a mass of congreve-rockets. I am uncomfortable when I look at it; and I dread lest I should once more experience the peculiar mental state from which it was produced.”
I reminded him of his conversation with Napoleon, of which I knew by the sketch amongst his unpublished papers, which I had repeatedly urged him to give more in detail. “Napoleon,” said I, “pointed out to you a passage in _Werther_, which, it appeared to him, would not stand a strict examination; and this you allowed. I should much like to know what passage he meant.”
“Guess!” said Goethe, with a mysterious smile.
“Now,” said I, “I almost think it is where Charlotte sends the pistols to Werther, without saying a word to Albert, and without imparting to him her misgivings and apprehensions. You have given yourself great trouble to find a motive for this silence, but it does not appear to hold good against the urgent necessity where the life of the friend was at stake.”
“Your remark,” returned Goethe, “is really not bad; but I do not think it right to reveal whether Napoleon meant this passage or another. However, be that as it may, your observation is quite as correct as his.”
I asked the question, whether the great effect produced by the appearance of _Werther_ was really to be attributed to the period. “I cannot,” said I, “reconcile to myself this view, though it is so extensively spread. _Werther_ made an epoch because it appeared–not because it appeared at a certain time. There is in every period so much unexpressed sorrow–so much secret discontent and disgust for life, and, in single individuals, there are so many disagreements with the world–so many conflicts between their natures and civil regulations, that _Werther_ would make an epoch even if it appeared today for the first time.”
“You are quite right,” said Goethe; “it is on that account that the book to this day influences youth of a certain age, as it did formerly. It was scarcely necessary for me to deduce my own youthful dejection from the general influence of my time, and from the reading of a few English authors. Rather was it owing to individual and immediate circumstances which touched me to the quick, and gave me a great deal of trouble, and indeed brought me into that frame of mind which produced _Werther_. I had lived, loved, and suffered much–that was it.”
“On considering more closely the much-talked-of _Werther_ period, we discover that it does not belong to the course of universal culture, but to the career of life in every individual, who, with an innate free natural instinct, must accommodate himself to the narrow limits of an antiquated world. Obstructed fortune, restrained activity, unfulfilled wishes, are not the calamities of any particular time, but those of every individual man; and it would be bad, indeed, if every one had not, once in his life, known a time when Werther seemed as if it had been written for him alone.”
_Sunday, January_ 4.–Today, after dinner, Goethe went through a portfolio, containing some works of Raphael, with me. He often busies himself with Raphael, in order to keep up a constant intercourse with that which is best, and to accustom himself to muse upon the thoughts of a great man. At the same time, it gives him pleasure to introduce me to such things.
We afterwards spoke about the _Divan_[10]–especially about the “book of ill-humor,” in which much is poured forth that he carried in his heart against his enemies.
“If I have, however,” continued he, “been very moderate: if I had uttered all that vexed me or gave me trouble, the few pages would soon have swelled to a volume.
“People were never thoroughly contented with me, but always wished me otherwise than it has pleased God to make me. They were also seldom contented with my productions. When I had long exerted my whole soul to favor the world with a new work, it still desired that I should thank it into the bargain for considering the work endurable. If any one praised me, I was not allowed, in self-congratulation, to receive it as a well-merited tribute; but people expected from me some modest expression, humbly setting forth the total unworthiness of my person and my work. However, my nature opposed this; and I should have been a miserable hypocrite, if I had so tried to lie and dissemble. Since I was strong enough to show myself in my whole truth, just as I felt, I was deemed proud, and am considered so to the present day.
“In religious, scientific, and political matters, I generally brought trouble upon myself, because I was no hypocrite, and had the courage to express what I felt.
“I believed in God and in Nature, and in the triumphs of good over evil; but this was not enough for pious souls; I was also required to believe other points, which were opposed to the feeling of my soul for truth; besides, I did not see that these would be of the slightest service to me.
“It was also prejudicial to me that I discovered Newton’s theory of light and color to be an error, and that I had the courage to contradict the universal creed. I discovered light in its purity and truth, and I considered it my duty to fight for it. The opposite party, however, did their utmost to darken the light; for they maintained that _shade is a part of light_. It sounds absurd when I express it; but so it is: for they said that _colors_, which are shadow and the result of shade, _are light itself_, or, which amounts to the same thing, _are the beams of light, broken now in one way, now in another_.”
Goethe was silent, whilst an ironical smile spread over his expressive countenance. He continued–
“And now for political matters. What trouble I have taken, and what I have suffered, on that account, I cannot tell you. Do you know my ‘Aufgeregten?'”[11]
“Yesterday, for the first time,” returned I, “I read the piece, in consequence of the new edition of your works; and I regret from my heart that it remains unfinished. But, even as it is, every right-thinking person must coincide with your sentiments.”
“I wrote it at the time of the French Revolution,” continued Goethe, “and it may be regarded, in some measure, as my political confession of faith at that time. I have taken the countess as a type of the nobility; and, with the words which I put into her mouth, I have expressed how the nobility really ought to think. The countess has just returned from Paris; she has there been an eye-witness of the revolutionary events, and has drawn, therefore, for herself, no bad doctrine. She has convinced herself that the people may be ruled, but not oppressed, and that the revolutionary outbreaks of the lower classes are the consequence of the injustice of the higher classes. ‘I will for the future,’ says she, ‘strenuously avoid every action that appears to me unjust, and will, both in society and at court, loudly express my opinion concerning such actions in others. In no case of injustice will I be silent, even though I should be cried down as a democrat.’
“I should have thought this sentiment perfectly respectable,” continued Goethe; “it was mine at that time, and it is so still; but as a reward for it, I was endowed with all sorts of titles, which I do not care to repeat.”
“One need only read _Egmont_,” answered I, “to discover what you think. I know no German piece in which the freedom of the people is more advocated than in this.”
“Sometimes,” said Goethe, “people do not like to look on me as I am, but turn their glances from everything which could show me in my true light. Schiller, on the contrary–who, between ourselves, was much more of an aristocrat than I am, but who considered what he said more than I–had the wonderful fortune to be looked upon as a particular friend of the people. I give it up to him with all my heart, and console myself with the thought that others before me had fared no better.
“It is true that I could be no friend to the French Revolution; for its horrors were too near me, and shocked me daily and hourly, whilst its beneficial results were not then to be discovered. Neither could I be indifferent to the fact that the Germans were endeavoring, artificially, to bring about such scenes here, as were, in France, the consequence of a great necessity.
“But I was as little a friend to arbitrary rule. Indeed, I was perfectly convinced that a great revolution is never a fault of the people, but of the government. Revolutions are utterly impossible as long as governments are constantly just and constantly vigilant, so that they may anticipate them by improvements at the right time, and not hold out until they are forced to yield by the pressure from beneath.
“Because I hated the Revolution, the name of the ‘_Friend of the powers that be_’ was bestowed upon me. That is, however, a very ambiguous title, which I would beg to decline. If the ‘powers that be’ were all that is excellent, good, and just, I should have no objection to the title; but, since with much that is good there is also much that is bad, unjust, and imperfect, a friend of the ‘powers that be’ means often little less than the friend of the obsolete and bad.[12]
“But time is constantly progressing, and human affairs wear every fifty years a different aspect; so that an arrangement which, in the year 1800, was perfection, may, perhaps, in the year 1850, be a defect.
“And, furthermore, nothing is good for a nation but that which arises from its own core and its own general wants, without apish imitation of another; since what to one race of people, of a certain age, is a wholesome nutriment, may perhaps prove a poison for another. All endeavors to introduce any foreign innovation, the necessity for which is not rooted in the core of the nation itself, are therefore foolish; and all premeditated revolutions of the kind are I unsuccessful, _for they are without God, who keeps aloof from such bungling_. If, however, there exists an actual necessity for a great reform amongst a people, God is with it, and it prospers. He was visibly with Christ and his first adherents; for the appearance of the new doctrine of love was a necessity to the people. He was also visibly with Luther; for the purification of the doctrine corrupted by the priests was no less a necessity. Neither of the great powers whom I have named was, however, a friend of the permanent; much more were both of them convinced that the old leaven must be got rid of, and that it would be impossible to go on and remain in the untrue, unjust, and defective way.”
_Tuesday, January 27._–Goethe talked with me about the continuation of his memoirs, with which he is now busy. He observed that this later period of his life would not be narrated with such minuteness as the youthful epoch of _Dichtung and Wahrheit_.[13] “I must,” said he, “treat this later period more in the fashion of annals: my outward actions must appear rather than my inward life. Altogether, the most important part of an individual’s life is that of development, and mine is concluded in the detailed volumes of _Dichtung and Wahrheit_. Afterwards begins the conflict with the world, and that is interesting only in its results.
“And then the life of a learned German–what is it? What may have been really good in my case cannot be communicated, and what can be communicated is not worth the trouble. Besides, where are the hearers whom one could entertain with any satisfaction?
“When I look back to the earlier and middle periods of my life, and now in my old age think how few are left of those who were young with me, I always think of a summer residence at a bathing-place. When you arrive, you make acquaintance and friends of those who have already been there some time, and who leave in a few weeks. The loss is painful. Then you turn to the second generation, with which you live a good while, and become most intimate. But this goes also, and leaves us alone with the third, which comes just as we are going away, and with which we have, properly, nothing to do.
“I have ever been esteemed one of Fortune’s chiefest favorites; nor will I complain or find fault with the course my life has taken. Yet, truly, there has been nothing but toil and care; and I may say that, in all my seventy-five years, I have never had a month of genuine comfort. It has been the perpetual rolling of a stone, which I have always had to raise anew. My annals will render clear what I now say. The claims upon my activity, both from within and without, were too numerous.
“My real happiness was my poetic meditation and production. But how was this disturbed, limited, and hindered by my external position! Had I been able to abstain more from public business, and to live more in solitude, I should have been happier, and should have accomplished much more as a poet. But, soon after my _Goetz and Werther_, that saying of a sage was verified for me–‘If you do anything for the sake of the world, it will take good care that you shall not do it a second time.’
“A wide-spread celebrity, an elevated position in life, are good things. But, for all my rank and celebrity, I am still obliged to be silent as to the opinion of others, that I may not give offense. This would be but poor sport, if by this means I had not the advantage of learning the thoughts of others without their being able to learn mine.”
* * * * *
Wednesday, February 25.–Today, Goethe showed me two very remarkable poems, both highly moral in their tendency, but in their several motives so unreservedly natural and true, that they are of the kind which the world styles immoral. On this account he keeps them to himself, and does not intend to publish them.
“Could intellect and high cultivation,” said he, “become the property of all, the poet would have fair play; he could be always thoroughly true, and would not be compelled to fear uttering his best thoughts. But, as it is, he must always keep on a certain level; must remember that his works will fall into the hands of a mixed society; and must, therefore, take care lest by over-great openness he may give offense to the majority of good men. Then Time is a strange thing. It is a whimsical tyrant, which in every century has a different face for all that one says and does. We cannot, with propriety, say things which were permitted to the ancient Greeks; and the Englishmen of 1820 cannot endure what suited the vigorous contemporaries of Shakespeare; so that, at the present day, it is found necessary to have a Family Shakespeare.”
“Then,” said I, “there is much in the form also. The one of these two poems, which is composed in the style and metre of the ancients, would be far less offensive than the other. Isolated parts would displease, but the treatment throws so much grandeur and dignity over the whole, that we seem to hear a strong ancient, and to be carried back to the age of the Greek heroes. But the other, being in the style and metre of Messer Ariosto, is far more hazardous. It relates an event of our day, in the language of our day, and as it thus comes quite unveiled into our presence, the particular features of boldness seem far more audacious.”
“You are right,” said he; “mysterious and great effects are produced by different poetical forms. If the import of my Romish elegies were put into the measure and style of Byron’s _Don Juan_, the whole would be found infamous.”
The French newspapers were brought. The campaign of the French in Spain under the Duke d’Angouleme, which was just ended, had great interest for Goethe. “I must praise the Bourbons for this measure,” said he; “they had not really gained the throne till they had gained the army, and that is now accomplished. The soldier returns with loyalty, to his king; for he has, from his own victories, and the discomfitures of the many-headed Spanish host, learned the difference between obeying one and many. The army has sustained its ancient fame, and shown that it is brave in itself, and can conquer without Napoleon.”
Goethe then turned his thoughts backward into history, and talked much of the Prussian army in the Seven Years’ War, which, accustomed by Frederic the Great to constant victory, grew careless, so that, in after days, it lost many battles from over-confidence. All the minutest details were present to his mind, and I had reason to admire his excellent memory.
“I had the great advantage,” said he, “of being born at a time when the greatest events which agitated the world occurred, and such have continued to occur during my long life; so that I am a living witness of the Seven Years’ War, of the separation of America from England, of the French Revolution, and of the whole Napoleon era, with the downfall of that hero, and the events which followed. Thus I have attained results and insight impossible to those who are born now and must learn all these things from books which they will not understand.
“What the next years will bring I cannot predict; but I fear we shall not soon have repose. It is not given to the world to be contented; the great are not such that there will be no abuse of power; the masses not such that, in hope of gradual improvement, they will be contented with a moderate condition. Could we perfect human nature, we might also expect a perfect state of things; but, as it is, there will always be a wavering hither and thither; one part must suffer while the other is at ease, envy and egotism will be always at work like bad demons, and party strife will be without end.
“The most reasonable way is for every one to follow his own vocation to which he has been born, and which he has learned, and to avoid hindering others from following theirs. Let the shoemaker abide by his last, the peasant by his plough, and let the king know how to govern; for, this is also a business which must be learned, and with which no one should meddle who does not understand it.”
Returning to the French papers, Goethe said: “The liberals may speak, for when they are reasonable we like to hear them; but with the royalists, who have the executive power in their hands, talking comes amiss–they should act. They may march troops, and behead and hang–that is all right; but attacking opinions, and justifying their measures in public prints, does not become them. If there were a public of kings, they might talk.
“For myself,” he continued, “I have always been a royalist. I have let others babble, and have done as I saw fit. I understood my course, and knew my own object. If I committed a fault as a single individual, I could make it good again; but if I committed it jointly with three or four others, it would be impossible to make it good, for among many there are many opinions.”
Goethe was in excellent spirits today. He showed me Frau von Spiegel’s album, in which he had written some very beautiful verses. A place had been left open for him for two years, and he rejoiced at having been able to perform at last an old promise. After I had read the “Poem to Frau von Spiegel,” I turned over the leaves of the book, in which I found many distinguished names. On the very next page was a poem by Tiedge, written in the very spirit and style of his _Urania_. “In a saucy mood,” said Goethe, “I was on the point of writing some verses beneath those; but I am glad I did not. It would not have been the first time that, by rash expressions, I had repelled good people, and spoiled the effect of my best works.
“However,” continued Goethe, “I have had to endure not a little from Tiedge’s _Urania_; for, at one time, nothing was sung and nothing was declaimed but this same Urania. Wherever you went, you found _Urania_ on the table. _Urania_ and immortality were the topics of every conversation. I would by no means dispense with the happiness of believing in a future existence, and, indeed, would say, with Lorenzo de’ Medici, that those are dead even for this life who hope for no other. But such incomprehensible matters lie too far off to be a theme of daily meditation and thought-distracting speculation. Let him who believes in immortality enjoy his happiness in silence, he has no reason to give himself airs about it. The occasion of Tiedge’s _Urania_ led me to observe that piety, like nobility, has its aristocracy. I met stupid women, who plumed themselves on believing, with Tiedge, in immortality, and I was forced to bear much dark examination on this point. They were vexed by my saying I should be well pleased if, after the close of this life, we were blessed with another, only I hoped I should hereafter meet none of those who had believed in it here. For how should I be tormented! The pious would throng around me, and say, ‘Were we not right? Did we not predict it? Has not it happened just as we said?’ And so there would be ennui without end, even in the other world.
“This occupation with the ideas of immortality,” he continued, “is for people of rank, and especially ladies, who have nothing to do. But an able man, who has some thing regular to do here, and must toil and struggle and produce day by day, leaves the future world to itself, and is active and useful in this. Thoughts about immortality are also good for those who have not been very successful here; and I would wager that, if the good Tiedge had enjoyed a better lot, he would also have had better thoughts.”
* * * * *
_Tuesday, November 9_.–I passed this evening with Goethe. We talked of Klopstock and Herder; and I liked to listen to him, as he explained to me the merits of those men.
“Without those powerful precursors,” said Goethe, “our literature could not have become what it now is. When they appeared, they were before their age, and were obliged, as it were, to drag it after them; but now the age has far outrun them, and they who were once so necessary and important have now ceased to be _means to an end_. A young man who would take Klopstock and Herder for his teachers nowadays would be far behindhand.”
We talked over Klopstock’s _Messiah_ and his Odes, touching on their merits and their defects. We agreed that he had no faculty for observing and apprehending the visible world, or for drawing characters; and that he therefore wanted the qualities most essential to the epic and dramatic poet, or, perhaps it might be said, to the poet generally.
“An ode occurs to me,” said Goethe, “where he makes the German Muse run a race with the British; and, indeed, when one thinks what a picture it is, where the two girls run one against the other, throwing about their legs and kicking up the dust, one must assume that the good Klopstock did not really have before his eyes such pictures as he wrote, else he could not possibly have made such mistakes.”
I asked how he had felt towards Klopstock in his youth. “I venerated him,” said Goethe, “with the devotion which was peculiar to me; I looked upon him as my uncle. I revered whatever he had done, and never thought of reflecting upon it, or finding fault with it. I let his fine qualities work upon me; for the rest, I went my own way.”
We came back to Herder, and I asked Goethe which of his works he thought the best. “_His Idea for the History of Mankind” (Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit)_, replied Goethe, “are undoubtedly the best. In after days, he took the negative side, and was not so agreeable.”
“Considering the great weight of Herder,” said I, “I cannot understand how he had so little judgment on some subjects. For instance, I cannot forgive him, especially at that period of German literature, for sending back the manuscript of _Goetz von Berlichingen_ without any praise of its merits, and with taunting remarks. He must have utterly wanted organs to perceive some objects.”
“Yes, Herder was unfortunate in this respect,” replied Goethe; “nay,” added he, with vivacity, “if his spirit were present at this conversation, it would not understand us.”
“On the other hand,” said I, “I must praise Merck, who urged you to print _Goetz_.”
“He was indeed an odd but important man,” said Goethe. “‘Print the thing,’ quoth he, ‘it is worth nothing, but print it.’ He did not wish me to make any alteration in it, and he was right; for it would have been different, but not better.”
_Wednesday, November 24_.–I went to see Goethe this evening, before going to the theatre, and found him very well and cheerful. He inquired about the young Englishmen who are here. I told him that I proposed reading with Mr. Doolan a German translation of Plutarch. This led the conversation to Roman and Grecian history; and Goethe expressed himself as follows:
“The Roman history,” said he, “is no longer suited to us. We have become too humane for the triumphs of Caesar not to be repugnant to our feelings. Neither are we much charmed by the history of Greece. When this people turns against a foreign foe, it is, indeed, great and glorious; but the division of the states, and their eternal wars with one another, where Greek fights against Greek, are insufferable. Besides, the history of our own time is thoroughly great and important; the battles of Leipsic and Waterloo stand out with such prominence that that of Marathon and others like it are gradually eclipsed. Neither are our individual heroes inferior to theirs; the French Marshals, Bluecher, and Wellington, vie with any of the heroes of antiquity.”
We then talked of the late French literature, and the daily increasing interest in German works manifested by the French.
“The French,” said Goethe, “do well to study and translate our writers; for, limited as they are both in form and motives, they can only look without for means. We Germans may be reproached for a certain formlessness; but in matter we are their superiors. The theatrical productions of Kotzebue and Iffland are so rich in motives that they may pluck them a long time before all is used up. But, especially, our philosophical Ideality is welcome to them; for every Ideal is serviceable to revolutionary aims.
“The French have understanding and _esprit_, but neither a solid basis nor piety. What serves the moment, what helps his party, seems right to the Frenchman. Hence they praise us, never from an acknowledgment of our merits, but only when they can strengthen their party by our views.”
We then talked about our own literature, and of the obstacles in the way of some of our latest young poets.
“The majority of our young poets,” said Goethe, “have no fault but this, that their subjectivity is not important, and that they cannot find matter in the objective. At best, they only find a material, which is similar to themselves, which corresponds to their own subjectivity; but as for taking the material on its own account, when it is repugnant to the subjectivity, merely because it is poetical, such a thing is never thought of.
“Still, as I have said, if we only had important personages, formed by great studies and situations in life, it might still go well with us, at least as far as our young lyric poets are concerned.”
1825
_Monday, January 10._–Goethe, consistently with his great interest for the English, has desired me to introduce to him the young Englishmen who are here at present.
After we had waited a few minutes, Goethe came in, and greeted us cordially. He said to Mr. H., “I presume I may address you in German, as I hear you are already well versed in our language.” Mr. H. answered with a few polite words, and Goethe requested us to be seated.
Mr. H.’s manners and appearance must have made a good impression on Goethe; for his sweetness and mild serenity were manifested towards the stranger in their real beauty. “You did well,” said he “to come hither to learn German; for here you will quickly and easily acquire, not only a knowledge of the language, but also of the elements on which it rests, our soil, climate, mode of life, manners, social habits, and constitution, and carry it away with you to England.”
Mr. H. replied, “The interest taken in the German language is now great, so that there is now scarcely a young Englishman of good family who does not learn German.”
“We Germans,” said Goethe, good-humoredly, “have, however, been half a century before your nation in this respect. For fifty years I have been busy with the English language and literature; so that I am well acquainted with your writers, your ways of living, and the administration of your country. If I went over to England, I should be no stranger there.
“But, as I said before, your young men do well to come to us and learn our language; for, not only does our literature merit attention on its own account, but no one can deny that he who now knows German well can dispense with many other languages. Of the French, I do not speak; it is the language of conversation, and is indispensable in traveling, because everybody understands it, and in all countries we can get on with it instead of a good interpreter. But as for Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish, we can read the best works of those nations in such excellent German translations, that, unless we have some particular object in view, we need not spend much time upon the toilsome study of those languages. It is in the German nature duly to honor, after its kind, everything produced by other nations, and to accommodate itself to foreign peculiarities. This, with the great flexibility of our language, makes German translations thoroughly faithful and complete. And it is not to be denied that, in general, you get on very far with a good translation. Frederick the Great did not know Latin, but he read Cicero in the French translation with as much profit as we who read him in the original.”
Then, turning the conversation on the theatre, he asked Mr. H. whether he went frequently thither. “Every evening,” he replied, “and find that I thus gain much towards the understanding of the language.”
“It is remarkable,” said Goethe, “that the ear, and generally the understanding, gets the start of speaking; so that a man may very soon comprehend all he hears, but by no means express it all.”
“I experience daily,” said Mr. H., “the truth of that remark. I understand very well whatever I hear or read; I even feel when an incorrect expression is made use of in German. But when I speak, nothing will flow, and I cannot express myself as I wish. In light conversation at court, jests with the ladies, a chat at balls, and the like, I succeed pretty well. But, if I try to express an opinion on any important topic, to say anything peculiar or luminous, I cannot get on.”
“Be not discouraged by that,” said Goethe, “since it is hard enough to express such uncommon matters in one’s own mother tongue.”
He then asked what Mr. H. read in German literature. “I have read _Egmont_,” he replied, “and found so much pleasure in the perusal that I returned to it three times. _Torquato Tasso_, too, has afforded me much enjoyment. Now I am reading _Faust_, but find that it is somewhat difficult.”
Goethe laughed at these last words. “Really,” said he, “I would not have advised you to undertake _Faust_. It is mad stuff, and goes quite beyond all ordinary feeling. But since you have done it of your own accord, without asking my advice, you will see how you will get through. Faust is so strange an individual that only few can sympathize with his internal condition. Then the character of Mephistopheles is, on account of his irony, and also because he is a living result of an extensive acquaintance with the world, also very difficult. But you will see what lights open upon you. _Tasso_, on the other hand, lies far nearer the common feelings of mankind, and the elaboration of its form is favorable to an easy comprehension of it.”
“Yet,” said Mr. H., “_Tasso_ is thought difficult in Germany, and people have wondered to hear me say that I was reading it.”
“What is chiefly needed for _Tasso_,” replied Goethe, “is that one should be no longer a child, and should have been in good society. A young man of good family, with sufficient mind and delicacy, and also with enough outward culture, such as will be produced by intercourse with accomplished men of the higher class, will not find’ Tasso difficult.”
The conversation turning upon _Egmont_, he said, “I wrote _Egmont_ in 1775–fifty years ago. I adhered closely to history, and strove to be as accurate as possible. Ten years afterwards, when I was in Rome, I read in the newspapers that the revolutionary scenes in the Nether lands there described were exactly repeated. I saw from this that the world remains ever the same, and that my picture must have some life in it.”
Amid this and similar conversation, the hour for the theatre had come. We arose, and Goethe dismissed us in a friendly manner.
As we went homeward, I asked Mr. H. how he was pleased with Goethe. “I have never,” said he, “seen a man who, with all his attractive gentleness, had so much native dignity. However he may condescend, he is always the great man.”
Professor Riemer was announced, Rehbein took leave, and Riemer sat down with us. The conversation still turned on the _motives_ of the Servian love-poems. Riemer was acquainted with the topic, and made the remark that, according to the table of contents given above, not only could poems be made, but that the same motives had been already used by the Germans, without any knowledge that they had been treated in Servia. He mentioned some poems of his own, and I mentioned some poems by Goethe, which had occurred to me during the reading.
“The world,” said Goethe, “remains always the same; situations are repeated; one people lives, loves, and feels like another; why should not one poet write like another? The situations of life are alike; why, then, should those of poems be unlike?”
“This very similarity in life and sensation,” said Riemer, “makes us all able to appreciate the poetry of other nations. If this were not the case, we should never know what foreign poems were about.”
“I am, therefore,” said I, “always surprised at the learned, who seem to suppose that poetizing proceeds not from life to the poem, but from the book to the poem. They are always saying, ‘He got this here; he got that there.’ If, for instance, they find passages in Shakespeare which are also to be found in the ancients, they say he must have taken them from the ancients. Thus there is a situation in Shakespeare, where, on the sight of a beautiful girl, the parents are congratulated who call her daughter, and the youth who will lead her home as his bride. And because the same thing occurs in Homer, Shakespeare, forsooth, has taken it from Homer. How odd! As if one had to go so far for such things, and did not have them before one’s eyes, feel them and utter them every day.” “Ah, yes,” said Goethe, “it is very ridiculous.”
“Lord Byron, too,” said I, “is no wiser, when he takes _Faust_ to pieces, and thinks you found one thing here, the other there.”
“The greater part of those fine things cited by Lord Byron,” said Goethe, “I have never even read, much less did I think of them, when I was writing _Faust_. But Lord Byron is great only as a poet; as soon as he reflects, he is a child. He knows not how to help himself against the stupid attacks of the same kind made upon him by his own countrymen. He ought to have expressed himself more strongly against them. ‘What is there is mine,’ he should have said, ‘and whether I got it from a book or from life, is of no consequence; the only point is, whether I have made a right use of it.’ Walter Scott used a scene from my _Egmont_, and he had a right to do so; and because he did it well, he deserves praise. He has also copied the character of my Mignon in one of his romances; but whether with equal judgment, is another question. Lord Byron’s transformed Devil[14] is a continuation of Mephistopheles, and quite right too. If, from the whim of originality, he had departed from the model, he would certainly have fared worse. Thus, my Mephistopheles sings a song from Shakespeare, and why should he not? Why should I give myself the trouble of inventing one of my own, when this said just what was wanted. If, too, the prologue to my _Faust_ is something like the beginning of Job, that is again quite right, and I am rather to be praised than censured.”
Goethe was in the best humor. He sent for a bottle of wine, and filled for Riemer and me; he himself drank Marienbad water. He seemed to have appointed this evening for looking over, with Riemer, the manuscript of the continuation of his autobiography, perhaps in order to improve it here and there, in point of expression. “Let Eckermann stay and hear it too,” said Goethe; which words I was very glad to hear, and he then laid the manuscript before Riemer, who began to read, commencing with the year 1795.
I had already, in the course of the summer, had the pleasure of repeatedly reading and reflecting on the still unpublished record of those years, down to the latest time. But now to hear them read aloud in Goethe’s presence, afforded quite a new enjoyment. Riemer paid especial attention to the mode of expression; and I had occasion to admire his great dexterity, and his affluence of words and phrases. But in Goethe’s mind the epoch of life described was revived; he revelled in recollections, and on the mention of single persons and events, filled out the written narrative by the details he orally gave us. That was a precious evening! The most distinguished of his contemporaries were talked over; but the conversation always came back to Schiller, who was so interwoven with this period, from 1795 to 1800. The theatre had been the object of their united efforts, and Goethe’s best works belong to this time. _Wilhelm Meister_ was completed; _Hermann and Dorothea_ planned and written; _Cellini_ translated for the “Horen;” the “Xenien” written by both for Schiller’s _Musenalmanach_; every day brought with it points of contact. Of all this we talked this evening, and Goethe had full opportunity for the most interesting communications.
“_Hermann and Dorothea_,” said he, “is almost the only one of my larger poems which still satisfies me; I can never read it without strong interest. I love it best in the Latin translation; there it seems to me nobler, and as if it had returned to its original form.”
_Wilhelm Meister_ was often a subject of discourse. “Schiller blamed me for interweaving tragic elements which do not belong to the novel. Yet he was wrong, as we all know. In his letters to me, there are most important views and opinions with respect to _Wilhelm Meister_. But this work is one of the most incalculable productions; I myself can scarcely be said to have the key to it. People seek a central point, and that is hard, and not even right. I should think a rich, manifold life, brought close to our eyes, would be enough in itself, without any express tendency, which, after all, is only for the intellect. But if anything of the sort is insisted upon, it will perhaps be found in the words which Frederic, at the end, addresses to the hero, when he says–‘Thou seem’st to me like Saul, the son of Kish, who went out to seek his father’s asses, and found a kingdom.’ Keep only to this; for, in fact, the whole work seems to say nothing more than that man, despite all his follies and errors, being led by a higher hand, reaches some happy goal at last.”
We then talked of the high degree of culture which, during the last fifty years, had become general among the middle classes of Germany, and Goethe ascribed the merit of this not so much to Lessing as to Herder and Wieland. “Lessing,” said he, “was of the very highest understanding, and only one equally great could truly learn of him. To a half faculty he was dangerous.” He mentioned a journalist who had formed himself on Lessing, and at the end of the last century had played a part indeed, but far from a noble one, because he was so inferior to his great predecessor.
“All Upper Germany,” said he, “is indebted to Wieland for its style. It has learned much from him; and the capability of expressing itself correctly is not the least.”
On mentioning the _Xenien_,[15] he especially praised those of Schiller, which he called sharp and biting, while he called his own innocent and trivial.
“The _Thierkreis_ (Zodiac), which is by Schiller,” said he, “I always read with admiration. The good effects which the _Xenien_ had upon the German literature of their time are beyond calculation.” Many persons against whom the _Xenien_ were directed, were mentioned on this occasion, but their names have escaped my memory.
After we had read and talked over the manuscript to the end of the year 1800, interrupted by these and innumerable other observations from Goethe, he put aside the papers, and had a little supper placed at one end of the table at which we were sitting. We partook of it, but Goethe did not touch a morsel; indeed, I have never seen him eat in the evening. He sat down with us, filled our glasses, snuffed the candles, and intellectually regaled us with the most agreeable conversation. His remembrance of Schiller was so lively, that the conversation during the latter part of the evening was devoted to him alone.
Riemer spoke of Schiller’s personal appearance. “The build of his limbs, his gait in the street, all his motions,” said he, “were proud; his eyes only were soft.”
“Yes,” said Goethe, “everything else about him was proud and majestic, only the eyes were soft. And his talent was like his outward form. He seized boldly on a great subject, and turned it this way and that, and handled it this way and that. But he saw his object, as it were, only in the outside; a quiet development from its interior was not within his province. His talent was desultory. Thus he was never decided–could never have done. He often changed a part just before a rehearsal.
“And, as he went so boldly to work, he did not take sufficient pains about _motives_. I recollect what trouble I had with him, when he wanted to make Gessler, in Tell, abruptly break an apple from the tree, and have it shot from the boy’s head. This was quite against my nature, and I urged him to give at least some motive to this barbarity, by making the boy boast to Gessler of his father’s dexterity, and say that he could shoot an apple from a tree at a hundred paces. Schiller, at first, would have nothing of the sort: but at last he yielded to my arguments and intentions, and did as I advised him. I, on the other hand, by too great attention to _motives_, kept my pieces from the theatre. My _Eugenie_[16] is nothing but a chain of _motives_, and this cannot succeed on the stage.
“Schiller’s genius was really made for the theatre. With every piece he progressed, and became more finished; but, strange to say, a certain love for the horrible adhered to him from the time of _The Robbers_, which never quite left him even in his prime. I still recollect perfectly well, that in the prison scene in my ‘Egmont,’ where the sentence is read to him, Schiller would have made Alva appear in the background, masked and muffled in a cloak, enjoying the effect which the sentence would produce on Egmont. Thus Alva was to show himself insatiable in revenge and malice. I, however, protested, and prevented the apparition. He was a great, odd man.
“Every week he became different and more finished; each time that I saw him, he seemed to me to have advanced in learning and judgment. His letters are the fairest memorials of him which I possess, and they are also among the most excellent of his writings. His last letter I preserve as a sacred relic, among my treasures.” He rose and fetched it. “See and read it,” said he; giving it to me.
It was a very fine letter, written in a bold hand. It contained an opinion of Goethe’s notes to “Rameau’s Nephew,” which exhibit French literature at that time, and which he had given Schiller to look over. I read the letter aloud to Riemer.
“You see,” said Goethe, “how apt and consistent is his judgment, and that the handwriting nowhere betrays any trace of weakness. He was a splendid man, and went from us in all the fulness of his strength. This letter is dated the 24th of April, 1805. Schiller died on the 9th of May.”
We looked at the letter by turns, and were pleased both with the clear style and the fine handwriting. Goethe bestowed several other words of affectionate reminiscence upon his friend, until it was nearly eleven o’clock, and we departed.
* * * * *
_Wednesday, October_ 15.–I found Goethe in a very elevated mood this evening, and had the pleasure of hearing from him many significant remarks. We talked about the state of the newest literature, when Goethe expressed himself as follows:
“Deficiency of character in individual investigators and writers is,” he said, “the source of all the evils of our newest literature.
“In criticism, especially, this defect produces mischief to the world, for it either diffuses the false instead of the true, or by a pitiful truth deprives us of something great, that would be better.
“Till lately, the world believed in the heroism of a Lucretia–of a Mucius Scaevola–and suffered itself, by this belief, to be warmed and inspired. But now comes your historical criticism, and says that those persons never lived, but are to be regarded as fables and fictions, divined by the great mind of the Romans. What are we to do with so pitiful a truth? If the Romans were great enough to invent such stories, we should at least be great enough to believe them.
“Till lately, I was always pleased with a great fact in the thirteenth century, when the Emperor Frederic the Second was at variance with the Pope, and the north of Germany was open to all sorts of hostile attacks. Asiatic hordes had actually penetrated as far as Silesia, when the Duke of Liegnitz terrified them by one great defeat. They then turned to Moravia, but were here defeated by Count Sternberg. These valiant men had on this account been living in my heart as the great saviors of the German nation. But now comes historical criticism, and says that these heroes sacrificed themselves quite uselessly, as the Asiatic army was already recalled, and would have returned of its own accord. Thus is a great national fact crippled and destroyed, which seems to me most abominable.”
After these remarks on historical critics, Goethe spoke of another class of seekers and literary men.
“I could never,” said he, “have known so well how paltry men are, and how little they care for really high aims, if I had not tested them by my scientific researches. Thus I saw that most men care for science only so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.
“In _belles lettres_ it is no better. There, too, high aims and genuine love for the true and sound, and for their diffusion, are very rare phenomena. One man cherishes and tolerates another, because he is by him cherished and tolerated in return. True greatness is hateful to them; they would fain drive it from the world, so that only such as they might be of importance in it. Such are the masses; and the prominent individuals are not better.
“—- ‘s great talents and world-embracing learning might have done much for his country. But his want of character has deprived the world of such great results, and himself of the esteem of the country.
“We want a man like Lessing. For how was he great, except in character–in firmness? There are many men as clever and as cultivated, but where is such character?
“Many are full of _esprit_ and knowledge, but they are also full of vanity; and that they may shine as wits before the short-sighted multitude, they have no shame or delicacy–nothing is sacred to them.
“Madame de Genlis was therefore perfectly right when she declaimed against the freedoms and profanities of Voltaire. Clever as they all may be, the world has derived no profit from them; they afford a foundation for nothing. Nay, they have been of the greatest injury, since they have confused men and robbed them of their needful support.
“After all, what do we know, and how far can we go with all our wit?
“Man is born not to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out where the problem begins, and then to restrain himself within the limits of the comprehensible.
“His faculties are not sufficient to measure the actions of the universe; and an attempt to explain the outer world by reason is, with his narrow point of view, but a vain endeavor. The reason of man and the reason of the Deity are two very different things.
“If we grant freedom to man, there is an end to the omniscience of God; for if the Divinity knows how I shall act, I must act so perforce. I give this merely as a sign how little we know, and to show that it is not good to meddle with divine mysteries.
“Moreover, we should only utter higher maxims so far as they can benefit the world. The rest we should keep within ourselves, and they will diffuse over our actions a lustre like the mild radiance of a hidden sun.”
_Sunday, December_ 25.–“I have of late made an observation, which I will impart to you.
“Everything we do has a result. But that which is right and prudent does not always lead to good, nor the contrary to what is bad; frequently the reverse takes place. Some time since, I made a mistake in one of these transactions with booksellers, and was sorry that I had done so. But now circumstances have so altered, that, if I had not made that very mistake, I should have made a greater one. Such instances occur frequently in life, and hence we see men of the world, who know this, going to work with great freedom and boldness.”
I was struck by this remark, which was new to me.
I then turned the conversation to some of his works, and we came to the elegy _Alexis and Dora_.
“In this poem,” said Goethe, “people have blamed the strong, passionate conclusion, and would have liked the elegy to end gently and peacefully, without that outbreak of jealousy; but I could not see that they were right. Jealousy is so manifestly an ingredient of the affair, that the poem would be incomplete if it were not introduced at all. I myself knew a young man who, in the midst of his impassioned love for an easily-won maiden, cried out, ‘But would she not act to another as she has acted to me?'”
I agreed entirely with Goethe, and then mentioned the peculiar situations in this elegy, where, with so few strokes and in so narrow a space, all is so well delineated that we think we see the whole life and domestic environment of the persons engaged in the action. “What you have described,” said I, “appears as true as if you had worked from actual experience.”
“I am glad it seems so to you,” said Goethe. “There are, however, few men who have imagination for the truth of reality; most prefer strange countries and circumstances, of which they know nothing, and by which their imagination may be cultivated, oddly enough.
“Then there are others who cling altogether to reality, and, as they wholly want the poetic spirit, are too severe in their requisitions. For instance, in this elegy, some would have had me give Alexis a servant to carry his bundle, never thinking that all that was poetic and idyllic in the situation would thus have been destroyed.”
From _Alexis and Dora_, the conversation then turned to _Wilhelm Meister_. “There are odd critics in this world,” said Goethe; “they blamed me for letting the hero of this novel live so much in bad company; but by this very circumstance that I considered this so-called bad company as a vase into which I could put everything I had to say about good society, I gained a poetical body, and a varied one into the bargain. Had I, on the contrary, delineated good society by the so-called good society, nobody would have read the book.
“In the seeming trivialities of _Wilhelm Meister_, there is always something higher at bottom, and nothing is required but eyes, knowledge of the world, and power of comprehension to perceive the great in the small. For those who are without such qualities, let it suffice to receive the picture of life as real life.”
Goethe then showed me a very interesting English work, which illustrated all Shakespeare in copper plates. Each page embraced, in six small designs, one piece with some verses written beneath, so that the leading idea and the most important situations of each work were brought before the eyes. All these immortal tragedies and comedies thus passed before the mind like processions of masks.
“It is even terrifying,” said Goethe, “to look through these little pictures. Thus are we first made to feel the infinite wealth and grandeur of Shakespeare. There is no motive in human life which he has not exhibited and expressed! And all with what ease and freedom!
“But we cannot talk about Shakespeare; everything is inadequate. I have touched upon the subject in my _Wilhelm Meister_ but that is not saying much. He is not a theatrical poet; he never thought of the stage; it was far too narrow for his great mind: nay, the whole visible world was too narrow.
“He is even too rich and too powerful. A productive _nature_[17] ought not to read more than one of his dramas in a year if it would not be wrecked entirely. I did well to get rid of him by writing _Goetz_, and _Egmont_,[18] and Byron did well by not having too much respect and admiration for him, but going his own way. How many excellent Germans have been ruined by him and Calderon!
“Shakespeare gives us golden apples in silver dishes. We get, indeed, the silver dishes by studying his works; but, unfortunately, we have only potatoes to put into them.”
I laughed, and was delighted with this admirable simile.
Goethe then read me a letter from Zelter, describing a representation of Macbeth at Berlin, where the music could not keep pace with the grand spirit and character of the piece, as Zelter set forth by various intimations. By Goethe’s reading, the letter gained its full effect, and he often paused to admire with me the point of some single passage.
“_Macbeth_,” said Goethe, “is Shakespeare’s best acting play, the one in which he shows most understanding with respect to the stage. But would you see his mind unfettered, read _Troilus and Cressida_, where he treats the materials of the _Iliad_ in his own fashion.”
The conversation turned upon Byron–the disadvantage in which he appears when placed beside the innocent cheerfulness of Shakespeare, and the frequent and generally not unjust blame which he drew upon himself by his manifold works of negation.
“If Lord Byron,” said Goethe, “had had an opportunity of working off all the opposition in his character, by a number of strong parliamentary speeches, he would have been much more pure as a poet. But, as he scarcely ever spoke in parliament, he kept within himself all his feelings against his nation, and to free himself from them, he had no other means than to express them in poetical form. I could, therefore, call a great part of Byron’s works of negation ‘suppressed parliamentary speeches,’ and think this would be no bad name for them.”
We then mentioned one of our most modern German poets, Platen, who had lately gained a great name, and whose negative tendency was likewise disapproved. “We cannot deny,” said Goethe, “that he has many brilliant qualities, but he is wanting in–love. He loves his readers and his fellow-poets as little as he loves himself, and thus we may apply to him the maxim of the apostle–‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not love (charity), I am become as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.’ I have lately read the poems of Platen, and cannot deny his great talent. But, as I said, he is deficient in _love_, and thus he will never produce the effect which he ought. He will be feared, and will be the idol of those who would like to be as negative as himself, but have not his talent.”
* * * * *
1827
_Thursday evening, January_ 18.–The conversation now turned wholly on Schiller, and Goethe proceeded thus: “Schiller’s proper productive talent lay in the ideal; and it may be said he has not his equal in German or any other literature. He has almost everything that Lord Byron has; but Lord Byron is his superior in knowledge of the world. I wish Schiller had lived to know Lord Byron’s works, and wonder what he would have said to so congenial a mind. Did Byron publish anything during Schiller’s life?”
I could not say with certainty. Goethe took down the Conversations Lexicon, and read the article on Byron, making many hasty remarks as he proceeded. It appeared that Byron had published nothing before 1807, and that therefore Schiller could have seen nothing of his.
“Through all Schiller’s works,” continued Goethe, “goes the idea of freedom; though this idea assumed a new shape as Schiller advanced in his culture and became another man. In his youth it was physical freedom which occupied him, and influenced his poems; in his later life it was ideal freedom.
“Freedom is an odd thing, and every man has enough of it, if he can only satisfy himself. What avails a superfluity of freedom which we cannot use? Look at this chamber and the next, in which, through the open door, you see my bed. Neither of them is large; and they are rendered still narrower by necessary furniture, books, manuscripts, and works of art; but they are enough for me. I have lived in them all the winter, scarcely entering my front rooms. What have I done with my spacious house, and the liberty of going from one room to another, when I have not found it requisite to make use of them?
“If a man has freedom enough to live healthy, and work at his craft, he has enough; and so much all can easily obtain. Then all of us are only free under certain conditions, which we must fulfil. The citizen is as free as the nobleman, when he restrains himself within the limits which God appointed by placing him in that rank. The nobleman is as free as the prince; for, if he will but observe a few ceremonies at court, he may feel himself his equal. Freedom consists not in refusing to recognize anything above us, but in respecting something which is above us; for, by respecting it, we raise ourselves to it, and by our very acknowledgment make manifest that we bear within ourselves what is higher, and are worthy to be on a level with it.
“I have, on my journeys, often met merchants from the north of Germany, who fancied they were my equals, if they rudely seated themselves next me at table. They were, by this method, nothing of the kind; but they would have been so if they had known how to value and treat me.
“That this physical freedom gave Schiller so much trouble in his youthful years, was caused partly by the nature of his mind, but still more by the restraint which he endured at the military school. In later days, when he had enough physical freedom, he passed over to the ideal; and I would almost say that this idea killed him, since it led him to make demands on his physical nature which were too much for his strength.
“The Grand Duke fixed on Schiller, when he was established here, an income of one thousand dollars yearly, and offered to give him twice as much in case he should be hindered by sickness from working. Schiller declined this last offer, and never availed himself of it. ‘I have talent,’ said he, ‘and must help myself.’ But as his family enlarged of late years, he was obliged, for a livelihood, to write two dramas annually; and to accomplish this, he forced himself to write days and weeks when he was not well. He would have his talent obey him at any hour. He never drank much; he was very temperate; but, in such hours of bodily weakness, he was obliged to stimulate his powers by the use of spirituous liquors. This habit impaired his health, and was likewise injurious to his productions. The faults which some wiseacres find in his works I deduce from this source. All the passages which they say are not what they ought to be, I would call pathological passages; for he wrote them on those days when he had not strength to find the right and true motives. I have every respect for the categorical imperative. I know how much good may proceed from it; but one must not carry it too far, for then this idea of ideal freedom certainly leads to no good.”
Amid these interesting remarks, and similar discourse on Lord Byron and the celebrated German authors, of whom Schiller had said that he liked Kotzebue best, for he, at any rate, produced something, the hours of evening passed swiftly along, and Goethe gave me the novel, that I might study it quietly at home.
* * * * *
_Wednesday, February 21_.–Dined with Goethe. He spoke much, and with admiration, of Alexander von Humboldt, whose work on Cuba and Colombia he had begun to read and whose views as to the project for making a passage through the Isthmus of Panama appeared to have a particular interest for him. “Humboldt,” said Goethe, “has, with a great knowledge of his subject, given other points where, by making use of some streams which flow into the Gulf of Mexico, the end may be perhaps better attained than at Panama. All this is reserved for the future, and for an enterprising spirit. So much, however, is certain, that, if they succeed in cutting such a canal that ships of any burden and size can be navigated through it from the Mexican Gulf to the Pacific Ocean, innumerable benefits would result to the whole human race, civilized and uncivilized. But I should wonder if the United States were to let an opportunity escape of getting such work into their own hands. It may be foreseen that this young state, with its decided predilection to the West, will, in thirty or forty years, have occupied and peopled the large tract of land beyond the Rocky Mountains. It may, furthermore, be foreseen that along the whole coast of the Pacific Ocean, where nature has already formed the most capacious and secure harbors, important commercial towns will gradually arise, for the furtherance of a great intercourse between China and the East Indies and the United States. In such a case, it would not only be desirable, but almost necessary, that a more rapid communication should be maintained between the eastern and western shores of North America, both by merchant-ships and men-of-war, than has hitherto been possible with the tedious, disagreeable, and expensive voyage round Cape Horn. I therefore repeat, that it is absolutely indispensable for the United States to effect a passage from the Mexican Gulf to the Pacific Ocean; and I am certain that they will do it.
“Would that I might live to see it!–but I shall not. I should like to see another thing–a junction of the Danube and the Rhine. But this undertaking is so gigantic that I have doubts of its completion, particularly when I consider our German resources. And thirdly, and lastly, I should wish to see England in possession of a canal through the Isthmus of Suez. Would I could live to see these three great works! it would be well worth the trouble to last some fifty years more for the very purpose.”
* * * * *
_Thursday, May 3_.–The highly successful translation of Goethe’s dramatic works, by Stapfer, was noticed by Monsieur J. J. Ampere in the _Parisian Globe_ of last year, in a manner no less excellent, and this affected Goethe so agreeably that he very often recurred to it, and expressed his great obligations to it.
“Ampere’s point of view is a very high one,” said he.
“When German critics on similar occasions start from philosophy, and in the consideration and discussion of a poetical production proceed in a manner that what they intend as an elucidation is only intelligible to philosophers of their own school, while for other people it is far more obscure than the work upon which they intended to throw a light, M. Ampere, on the contrary, shows himself quite practical and popular. Like one who knows his profession thoroughly, he shows the relation between the production and the producer, and judges the different poetical productions as different fruits of different epochs of the poet’s life.
“He has studied most profoundly the changing course of my earthly career, and of the condition of my mind, and has had the faculty of seeing what I have not expressed, and what, so to speak, could only be read between the lines. How truly has he remarked that, during the first ten years of my official and court life at Weimar, I scarcely did anything; that despair drove me to Italy; and that I there, with new delight in producing, seized upon the history of Tasso, in order to free myself, by the treatment of this agreeable subject, from the painful and troublesome impressions and recollections of my life at Weimar. He therefore very happily calls Tasso an elevated Werther.
“Then, concerning Faust, his remarks are no less clever, since he not only notes, as part of myself, the gloomy, discontented striving of the principal character, but also the scorn and the bitter irony of Mephistopheles.”
In this, and a similar spirit of acknowledgment, Goethe often spoke of M. Ampere. We took a decided interest in him; we endeavored to picture to ourselves his personal appearance, and, if we could not succeed in this, we at least agreed that he must be a man of middle age to understand the reciprocal action of life and poetry on each other. We were, therefore, extremely surprised when M. Ampere arrived in Weimar a few days ago, and proved to be a lively youth, some twenty years old; and we were no less surprised when, in the course of further intercourse, he told us that the whole of the contributors of the. _Globe_, whose wisdom, moderation, and high degree of cultivation we had often admired, were only young people like himself.
“I can well comprehend,” said I, “that a person may be young and may still produce something of importance–like Merimee, for instance, who wrote excellent pieces in his twentieth year; but that any one at so early an age should have at his command such a comprehensive view, and such deep insight, as to attain such mature judgment as the gentlemen of the _Globe_, is to me something entirely new.”
“To you, in your Heath,”[19] returned Goethe, “it has not been so easy; and we others also, in Central Germany, have been forced to buy our little wisdom dearly enough. Then we all lead a very isolated miserable sort of life! From the people, properly so called, we derive very little culture. Our talents and men of brains are scattered over the whole of Germany. One is in Vienna, another in Berlin, another in Koenigsberg, another in Bonn or Dueseldorf–all about a hundred miles apart from one another, so that personal contact and personal exchange of thought may be considered as rarities. I feel what this must be, when such men as Alexander von Humboldt come here, and in one single day lead me nearer to what I am seeking and what I require to know than I should have done for years in my own solitary way.”
“But now conceive a city like Paris, where the highest talents of a great kingdom are all assembled in a single spot, and by daily intercourse, strife, and emulation, mutually instruct and advance each other; where the best works, both of nature and art, from all the kingdoms of the earth, are open to daily inspection; conceive this metropolis of the world, I say, where every walk over a bridge or across a square recalls some mighty past, and where some historical event is connected with every corner of a street. In addition to all this, conceive not the Paris of a dull, spiritless time, but the Paris of the nineteenth century, in which, during three generations, such men as Moliere, Voltaire, Diderot, and the like, have kept up such a current of intellect as cannot be found twice in a single spot in the whole world, and you will comprehend that a man of talent like Ampere, who has grown up amid such abundance, can easily be something in his four-and-twentieth year.
“You said just now,” said Goethe, “that you could well understand how any one in his twentieth year could write pieces as good as those of Merimee. I have nothing to oppose to this; and I am, on the whole, quite of your opinion that good productiveness is easier than good judgment in a youthful man. But, in Germany, one had better not, when so young as Merimee, attempt to produce anything so mature as he has done in his pieces of _Clara Gazul_. It is true, Schiller was very young when he wrote his _Robbers_, his _Love and Intrigue_, his _Fiesco_; but, to speak the truth, all three pieces are rather the utterances of an extraordinary talent than signs of mature cultivation in the author. This, however, is not Schiller’s fault, but rather the result of the state of culture of his nation, and the great difficulty which we all experience in assisting ourselves on our solitary way.
“On the other hand, take up Beranger. He is the son of poor parents, the descendant of a poor tailor; at one time a poor printer’s apprentice, then placed in some office with a small salary; he has never been to a classical school or university; and yet his songs are so full of mature cultivation, so full of wit and the most refined irony, and there is such artistic perfection and masterly handling of the language that he is the admiration, not only of France, but of all civilized Europe.
“But imagine this same Beranger–instead of being born in Paris, and brought up in this metropolis of the world–the son of a poor tailor in Jena or Weimar, and let him commence his career, in an equally miserable manner, in such small places–then ask yourself what fruit would have been produced by this same tree grown in such a soil and in such an atmosphere.
“Therefore, my good friend, I repeat that, if a talent is to be speedily and happily developed, the great point is that a great deal of intellect and sound culture should be current in a nation.
“We admire the tragedies of the ancient Greeks; but, to take a correct view of the case, we ought rather to admire the period and the nation in which their production was possible than the individual authors; for though each of these pieces differs a little from every other, and though one of these poets appears somewhat greater and more finished than the other, still, taking all things together, only one decided character runs through the whole.
“This is the character of grandeur, fitness, soundness, human perfection, elevated wisdom, sublime thought, pure, strong intuition, and whatever other qualities one might enumerate. But when we find all these qualities, not only in the dramatic works that have come down to us but also in lyrical and epic works, in the philosophers, the orators, and the historians, and in an equally high degree in the works of plastic art that have come down to us, we must feel convinced that such qualities did not merely belong to individuals, but were the current property of the nation and the whole period.
“Now, take up Burns. How is he great, except through the circumstance that the whole songs of his predecessors lived in the mouth of the people–that they were, so to speak, sung at his cradle; that, as a boy, he grew up amongst them, and the high excellence of these models so pervaded him that he had therein a living basis on which he could proceed further? Again, why is he great, but from this, that his own songs at once found susceptible ears amongst his compatriots; that, sung by reapers and sheaf-binders, they at once greeted him in the field; and that his boon-companions sang them to welcome him at the ale-house? Something was certainly to be done in this way.
“On the other hand, what a pitiful figure is made by us Germans! Of our old songs–no less important than those of Scotland–how many lived among the people in the days of my youth? Herder and his successors first began to collect them and rescue them from oblivion; then they were at least printed in the libraries. Then, more lately, what songs have not Buerger and Voss composed! Who can say that they are more insignificant or less popular than those of the excellent Burns? but which of them so lives among us that it greets us from the mouth of the people? They are written and printed, and they remain in the libraries, quite in accordance with the general fate of German poets. Of my own songs, how many live? Perhaps one or another of them may be sung by a pretty girl to the piano; but among the people, properly so called, they have no sound. With what sensations must I remember the time when passages from Tasso were sung to me by Italian fishermen!
“We Germans are of yesterday. We have indeed been properly cultivated for a century; but a few centuries more must still elapse before so much mind and elevated culture will become universal amongst our people that they will appreciate beauty like the Greeks, that they will be inspired by a beautiful song, and that it will be said of them ‘it is long since they were barbarians.'”
_Tuesday, December 16_.–I dined today with Goethe alone, in his work-room. We talked on various literary topics.
“The Germans,” said he, “cannot cease to be Philistines. They are now squabbling about some verses, which are printed both in Schiller’s works and mine, and fancy it is important to ascertain which really belong to Schiller and which to me; as if anything could be gained by such investigation–as if the existence of such things were not enough. Friends, such as Schiller and I, intimate for years, with the same interests, in habits of daily intercourse, and under reciprocal obligations, live so completely in each other that it is hardly possible to decide to which of the two the particular thoughts belong.
“We have made many distiches together; sometimes I gave the thought, and Schiller made the verse; sometimes the contrary was the case; sometimes he made one line, and I the other. What matters the mine and thine? One must be a thorough Philistine, indeed, to attach the slightest importance to the solution of such questions.”
“Something similar,” said I, “often happens in the literary world, when people, for instance, doubt the originality of this or that celebrated man, and seek to trace out the sources from whence he obtained his cultivation.”
“That is very ridiculous,” said Goethe; “we might as well question a strong man about the oxen, sheep, and swine, which he has eaten, and which have given him strength.
“We are indeed born with faculties; but we owe our development to a thousand influences of the great world, from which we appropriate to ourselves what we can, and what is suitable to us. I owe much to the Greeks and French; I am infinitely indebted to Shakespeare, Sterne, and Goldsmith; but in saying this I do not show the sources of my culture; that would be an endless as well as an unnecessary task. What is important is to have a soul which loves truth, and receives it wherever it finds it.
“Besides, the world is now so old, so many eminent men have lived and thought for thousands of years, that there is little new to be discovered or expressed. Even my theory of colors is not entirely new. Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, any many other excellent men, have before me found and expressed the same thing in a detached form: my merit is, that I have found it also, that I have said it again, and that I have striven to bring the truth once more into a confused world.
“The truth must be repeated over and over again, because error is repeatedly preached among us, not only by individuals, but by the masses. In periodicals and cyclopaedias, in schools and universities; everywhere, in fact, error prevails, and is quite easy in the feeling that it has a decided majority on its side.
“Often, too, people teach truth and error together, and stick to the latter. Thus, a short time ago, I read in an English cyclopaedia the doctrine of the origin of Blue. First came the correct view of Leonardo da Vinci, but then followed, as quietly as possible, the error of Newton, coupled with remarks that this was to be adhered to because it was the view generally adopted.”
I could not help laughing with surprise when I heard this. “Every wax-taper,” I said, “every illuminated cloud of smoke from the kitchen, that has anything dark behind it, every morning mist, when it lies before a steady spot, daily convinces me of the origin of blue color, and makes me comprehend the blueness of the sky. What the Newtonians mean when they say that the air has the property of absorbing other colors, and of repelling blue alone, I cannot at all understand, nor do I see what use or pleasure is to be derived from a doctrine in which all thought stands still, and all sound observation completely vanishes.”
“My good innocent friend,” said Goethe, “these people do not care a jot about thoughts and observations. They are satisfied if they have only words which they can pass as current, as was well shown and not ill-expressed by my own Mephistopheles:
“Mind, above all, you stick to words, Thus through the safe gate you will go
Into the fane of certainty;
For when ideas begin to fail
A word will aptly serve your turn,” etc.
Goethe recited this passage laughing, and seemed altogether in the best humor. “It is a good thing,” said he, “that all is already in print, and I shall go on printing as long as I have anything to say against false doctrine, and those who disseminate it.
“We have now excellent men rising up in natural science,” he continued, after a pause, “and I am glad to see them. Others begin well, but afterwards fall off; their predominating subjectivity leads them astray. Others, again, set too much value on facts, and collect an infinite number, by which nothing is proved. On the whole, there is a want of originating mind to penetrate back to the original phenomena, and master the particulars that make their appearance.”
A short visit interrupted our discourse, but when we were again alone the conversation returned to poetry, and I told Goethe that I had of late been once more studying his little poems, and had dwelt especially upon two of them, viz., the ballad[20] about the children and the old man, and the “Happy Couple” (_die gluecklichen Gatten_).
“I myself set some value on these two poems,” said Goethe, “although the German public have hitherto not been able to make much out of them.”
“In the ballad,” I said, “a very copious subject is brought into a very limited compass, by means of all sorts of poetical forms and artifices, among which I especially praise the expedient of making the old man tell the children’s past history down to the point where the present moment comes in, and the rest is developed before our eyes.”
“I carried the ballad a long time about in my head,” said Goethe, “before I wrote it down. Whole years of reflection are comprised in it, and I made three or four trials before I could reduce it to its present shape.”
“The poem of the ‘Happy Couple,'” continued Goethe, “is likewise rich in _motives_; whole landscapes and passages of human life appear in it, warmed by the sunlight of a charming spring sky, which is diffused over the whole.”
“I have always liked that poem,” said Goethe, “and I am glad that you have regarded it with particular interest. The ending of the whole pleasantry with a double christening is, I think, pretty enough.”
We then came to the _Buergergeneral_ (Citizengeneral); with respect to which I said that I had been lately reading this piece with an Englishman, and that we had both felt the strongest desire to see it represented on the stage. “As far as the spirit of the work is concerned,” said I, “there is nothing antiquated about it; and with respect to the details of dramatic development, there is not a touch that does not seem designed for the stage.”
“It was a very good piece in its time,” said Goethe, “and caused us many a pleasant evening. It was, indeed, excellently cast, and had been so admirably studied that the dialogue moved along as glibly as possible. Malcolmi played Maerten, and nothing could be more perfect.
“The part of Schnaps,” said I, “seems to me no less felicitous. Indeed, I should not think there were many better or more thankful parts in the repertoire. There is in this personage, as in the whole piece, a clearness, an actual presence, to the utmost extent that can be desired for a theatre. The scene where he comes in with the knapsack, and produces the things one after another, where he puts the _moustache_ on Maerten, and decks himself with the cap of liberty, uniform, and sword, is among the best.” “This scene,” said Goethe, “used always to be very successful on our stage. Then the knapsack, with the articles in it, had really an historical existence. I found it in the time of the Revolution, on my travels along the French border, when the emigrants, on their flight, had passed through, and one of them might have lost it or thrown it away. The articles it contained were just the same as in the piece. I wrote the scene upon it, and the knapsack, with all its appurtenances, was always introduced, to the no small delight of our actors.”
The question whether the _Buergergeneral_ could still be played with any interest or profit, was for a while the subject of our conversation.
Goethe then asked about my progress in French literature, and I told him that I still took up Voltaire from time to time, and that the great talent of this man gave me the purest delight.
“I still know but little of him,” said I; “I keep to his short poems addressed to persons, which I read over and over again, and which I cannot lay aside.”
“Indeed,” said Goethe, “all is good which is written by so great a genius as Voltaire, though I cannot excuse all his profanity. But you are right to give so much time to those little poems addressed to persons; they are unquestionably among the most charming of his works. There is not a line which is not full of thought, clear, bright, and graceful.”
“And we see,” said I, “his relations to all the great and mighty of the world, and remark with pleasure the distinguished position taken by himself, inasmuch as he seems to feel himself equal to the highest, and we never find that any majesty can embarrass his free mind even for a moment.”
“Yes,” said Goethe, “he bore himself like a man of rank. And with all his freedom and audacity, he ever kept within the limits of strict propriety, which is, perhaps, saying still more. I may cite the Empress of Austria as an authority in such matters; she has repeatedly assured me, that in those poems of Voltaire’s, there is no trace of crossing the line of _convenance_.”
“Does your excellency,” said I, “remember the short poem in which he makes to the Princess of Prussia, afterwards Queen of Sweden, a pretty declaration of love, by saying that he dreamed of being elevated to the royal dignity?”
“It is one of his best,” said Goethe, and he recited the lines–
“Je vous aimais, princesse, et j’osais vous le dire; Les Dieux et mon reveil ne m’ont pas tout ote, Je n’ai perdu que mon empire.”
“How pretty that is! And never did poet have his talent so completely at command every moment as Voltaire. I remember an anecdote, when he had been for some time on a visit to Madame du Chatelet. Just as he was going away, and the carriage was standing at the door, he received a letter from a great number of young girls in a neighboring convent, who wished to play the ‘Death of Julius Caesar’ on the birthday of their abbess, and begged him to write them a prologue. The case was too delicate for a refusal; so Voltaire at once called for pen and paper, and wrote the desired prologue, standing, upon the mantlepiece. It is a poem of perhaps twenty lines, thoroughly digested, finished, perfectly suited to the occasion, and, in short, of the very best class.”
“I am very desirous to read it,” said I.
“I doubt,” said Goethe, “whether you will find it in your collection. It has only lately come to light, and, indeed, he wrote hundreds of such poems, of which many may still be scattered about among private persons.”
“I found of late a passage in Lord Byron,” said I, “from which I perceived with delight that even Byron had an extraordinary esteem for Voltaire. We may see in his works how much he liked to read, study, and make use of Voltaire.
“Byron,” said Goethe, “knew too well where anything was to be got, and was too clever not to draw from this universal source of light.”
The conversation then turned entirely upon Byron and several of his works, and Goethe found occasion to repeat many of his former expressions of admiration for that great genius.
“To all that your excellency says of Byron,” said I, “I agree from the bottom of my heart; but, however great and remarkable that poet may be as a genius, I very much doubt whether a decided gain for pure human culture is to be derived from his writings.”
“There I must contradict you,” said Goethe; “the audacity and grandeur of Byron must certainly tend towards culture. We should take care not to be always looking for it in the decidedly pure and moral. Everything that is great promotes cultivation as soon as we are aware of it.”
* * * * *
_Thursday, February 12_.–Goethe read me the thoroughly noble poem, “Kein Wesen kann zu nichts zerfallen” (No being can dissolve to nothing), which he had lately written.
“I wrote this poem,” said he, “in contradiction to my lines–
‘Denn alles muss zu nichts zerfallen Wenn es im Seyn beharren will,’ etc.
(‘For all must melt away to nothing Would it continue still to be’)–
which are stupid, and which my Berlin friends, on the occasion of the late assembly of natural philosophers, set up in golden letters, to my annoyance.”
The conversation turned on the great mathematician, Lagrange, whose excellent character Goethe highly extolled.
“He was a good man,” said he, “and on that very account, a great man. For when a good man is gifted with talent, he always works morally for the salvation of the world, as poet, philosopher, artist, or in whatever way it may be.
“I am glad,” continued Goethe, “that you had an opportunity yesterday of knowing Coudray better. He says little in general society, but, here among ourselves, you have seen what an excellent mind and character reside in the man. He had, at first, much opposition to encounter, but he has now fought through it all and enjoys the entire confidence and favor of the court. Coudray is one of the most skilful architects of our time. He has adhered to me and I to him, and this has been of service to us both. If I had but known him fifty years ago!”
We then talked about Goethe’s own architectural knowledge. I remarked that he must have acquired much in Italy.
“Italy gave me an idea of earnestness and greatness,” said he, “but no practical skill. The building of the castle here in Weimar advanced me more than anything. I was obliged to assist, and even to make drawings of entablatures. I had a certain advantage over the professional people, because I was superior to them in intention.”
We talked of Zelter.
“I have a letter from him,” said Goethe, “in which he complains that the performance of the oratorio of the Messiah was spoiled for him by one of his female scholars, who sang an aria too weakly and sentimentally. Weakness is a characteristic of our age. My hypothesis is, that it is a consequence of the efforts made in Germany to get rid of the French. Painters, natural philosophers, sculptors, musicians, poets, with but few exceptions, all are weak, and the general mass is no better.”
“Yet I do not give up the hope,” said I, “of seeing suitable music composed for _Faust_.”
“Quite impossible!” said Goethe. “The awful and repulsive passages which must occasionally occur, are not in the style of the time. The music should be like that of Don Juan. Mozart should have composed for _Faust_. Meyerbeer would, perhaps, be capable; but he would not touch anything of the kind;[21] he is too much engaged with the Italian theatres.”
Afterwards–I do not recollect in connection to what–Goethe made the following important remark:
“All that is great and skilful exists with the minority. There have been ministers who have had both king and people against them, and have carried out their great plans alone. It is not to be imagined that reason can ever be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular; but reason always remains the sole property of a few eminent individuals.”
_Sunday, December_ 6.–Today, after dinner, Goethe read me the first scene of the second act of _Faust_.[22] The effect was great, and gave me a high satisfaction. We are once more transported into Faust’s study, where Mephistopheles finds all just as he had left it. He takes from the hook Faust’s old study-gown, and a thousand moths and insects flutter out from it. By the directions of Mephistopheles as to where these are to settle down, the locality is brought very clearly before our eyes. He puts on the gown, while Faust lies behind a curtain in a state of paralysis, intending to play the doctor’s part once more. He pulls the bell, which gives such an awful tone among the old solitary convent halls, that the doors spring open and the walls tremble. The servant rushes in, and finds in Faust’s seat Mephistopheles, whom he does not recognize, but for whom he has respect. In answer to inquiries he gives news of Wagner, who has now become a celebrated man, and is hoping for the return of his master. He is, we hear, at this moment deeply occupied in his laboratory, seeking to produce a Homunculus. The servant retires, and the bachelor enters–the same whom we knew some years before as a shy young student, when Mephistopheles (in Faust’s gown) made game of him. He is now become a man, and is so full of conceit that even Mephistopheles can do nothing with him, but moves his chair further and further, and at last addresses the pit.
Goethe read the scene quite to the end. I was pleased with his youthful productive strength, and with the closeness of the whole. “As the conception,” said Goethe, “is so old–for I have had it in my mind for fifty years–the materials have accumulated to such a degree, that the difficult operation is to separate and reject. The invention of the whole second part is really as old as I say; but it may be an advantage that I have not written it down till now, when my knowledge of the world is so much clearer. I am like one who in his youth has a great deal of small silver and copper money, which in the course of his life he constantly changes for the better, so that at last the property of his youth stands before him in pieces of pure gold.”
We spoke about the character of the Bachelor. “Is he not meant,” said I, “to represent a certain class of ideal philosophers?”
“No,” said Goethe, “the arrogance which is peculiar to youth, and of which we had such striking examples after our war for freedom, is personified in him. Indeed, every one believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exists for his sake.
“Thus, in the East, there was actually a man who every morning collected his people about him, and would not go to work till he had commanded the sun to rise. But he was wise enough not to speak his command till the sun of its own accord was really on the point of appearing.”
Goethe remained a while absorbed in silent thought; then he began as follows: “When one is old one thinks of worldly matters otherwise than when one is young. Thus I cannot but think that the demons, to teaze and make sport with men, have placed among them single figures, which are so alluring that every one strives after them, and so great that nobody reaches them. Thus they set up Raffael, with whom thought and act were equally perfect; some distinguished followers have approached him, but none have equalled him. Thus, too, they set up Mozart as something unattainable in music; and thus Shakespeare in poetry. I know what you can say against this thought; but I only mean natural character, the great innate qualities. Thus, too, Napoleon is unattainable. That the Russians were so moderate as not to go to Constantinople is indeed very great; but we find a similar trait in Napoleon, for he had the moderation not to go to Rome.”
Much was associated with this copious theme; I thought to myself in silence that the demons had intended something of the kind with Goethe, inasmuch as he is a form too alluring not to be striven after, and too great to be reached.
_Wednesday, December 16._–Today, after dinner, Goethe read me the second scene of the second act of “Faust,” where Mephistopheles visits Wagner, who is on the point of making a human being by chemical means. The work succeeds; the Homunculus appears in the phial, as a shining being, and is at once active. He repels Wagner’s questions upon incomprehensible subjects; reasoning is not his business; he wishes to act, and begins with our hero, Faust, who, in his paralyzed condition, needs a higher aid. As a being to whom the present is perfectly clear and transparent, the Homunculus sees into the soul of the sleeping Faust, who, enraptured by a lovely dream, beholds Leda visited by swans, while she is bathing in a pleasant spot. The Homunculus, by describing this dream, brings a most charming picture before our eyes. Mephistopheles sees nothing of it, and the Homunculus taunts him with his northern nature.
“Generally,” said Goethe, “you will perceive that Mephistopheles appears to disadvantage beside the Homunculus, who is like him in clearness of intellect, and so much superior to him in his tendency to the beautiful and to a useful activity. He styles him cousin; for such spiritual beings as this Homunculus, not yet saddened and limited by a thorough assumption of humanity, were classed with the demons, and thus there is a sort of relationship between the two.”
“Certainly,” said I, “Mephistopheles appears here in a subordinate situation; yet I cannot help thinking that he has had a secret influence on the production of the Homunculus. We have known him in this way before; and, indeed, in the ‘Helena’ he always appears as a being secretly working. Thus he again elevates himself with regard to the whole, and in his lofty repose he can well afford to put up with a little in particulars.”
“Your feeling of the position is very correct,” said Goethe; “indeed, I have doubted whether I ought not to put some verses into the mouth of Mephistopheles as he goes to Wagner, and the Homunculus is still in a state of formation, so that his cooperation may be expressed and rendered plain to the reader.
“It would do no harm,” said I. “Yet this is intimated by the words with which Mephistopheles closes the scene–
Am Ende hangen wir doch ab
Von Creaturen die wir machten.
We are dependent after all,
On creatures that we make.”
“True,” said Goethe, “that would be almost enough for the attentive; but I will think about some additional verses.”
“But,” said I, “those concluding words are very great, and will not easily be penetrated to their full extent.”
“I think,” said Goethe, “I have given them a bone to pick. A father who has six sons is a lost man, let him do what he may. Kings and ministers, too, who have raised many persons to high places, may have something to think about from their own experience.”
Faust’s dream about Leda again came into my head, and I regarded this as a most important feature in the composition.
“It is wonderful to me,” said I, “how the several parts of such a work bear upon, perfect, and sustain one another! By this dream of Leda, _Helena_ gains its proper foundation. There we have a constant allusion to swans and the child of a swan; but here we have the act itself, and when we come afterwards to Helena, with the sensible impression of such a situation, how much more clear and perfect does all appear!”
Goethe said I was right, and was pleased that I remarked this.
“Thus you will see,” said he, “that in these earlier acts the chords of the classic and romantic are constantly struck, so that, as on a rising ground, where both forms of poetry are brought out, and in some sort balance each other, we may ascend to ‘Helena.’
“The French,” continued Goethe, “now begin to think justly of these matters. Both classic and romantic, say they, are equally good. The only point is to use these forms with judgment, and to be capable of excellence. You can be absurd in both, and then one is as worthless as the other. This, I think, is rational enough, and may content us for a while.”
* * * * *
1830.
_Sunday, March 14._–This evening at Goethe’s. He showed me all the treasures, now put in order, from the chest which he had received from David, and with the unpacking of which I had found him occupied some days ago. The plaster medallions, with the profiles of the principal young poets of France, he had laid in order side by side upon tables. On this occasion, he spoke once more of the extraordinary talent of David, which was as great in conception as in execution. He also showed me a number of the newest works, which had been presented to him, through the medium of David, as gifts from the most distinguished men of the romantic school. I saw works by St. Veuve, Ballanche, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Alfred de Vigny, Jules Janin, and others.
“David,” said he, “has prepared happy days for me by this present. The young poets have already occupied me the whole week, and afford me new life by the fresh impressions which I receive from them. I shall make a separate catalogue of these much esteemed portraits and books, and shall give them both a special place in my collection of works of art and my library.”
One could see from Goethe’s manner that this homage from the young poets of France afforded him the heartiest delight.
He then read something from the _Studies_, by Emile Deschamps. He praised the translation of the _Bride of Corinth_, as faithful, and very successful.
“I possess,” said he, “the manuscript of an Italian translation of this poem, which gives the original, even to the rhymes.”
_The Bride of Corinth_ induced Goethe to speak of the rest of his ballads. “I owe them, in a great measure, to Schiller,” said he, “who impelled me to them, because he always wanted something new for his _Horen_. I had already carried them in my head for many years; they occupied my mind as pleasant images, as beautiful dreams, which came and went, and by playing with which my fancy made me happy. I unwillingly resolved to bid farewell to these brilliant visions, which had so long been my solace, by embodying them in poor, inadequate words. When I saw them on paper, I regarded them with a mixture of sadness. I felt as if I were about to be separated for ever from a beloved friend.”
“At other times,” continued Goethe, “it has been totally different with my poems. They have been preceded by no impressions or forebodings, but have come suddenly upon me, and have insisted on being composed immediately, so that I have felt an instinctive and dreamy impulse to write them down on the spot. In such a somnambulistic condition, it has often happened that I have had a sheet of paper lying before me all on one side, and I have not discovered it till all has been written, or I have found no room to write any more. I have possessed many such sheets written crossways, but they have been lost one after another, and I regret that I can no longer show any proofs of such poetic abstraction.”
The conversation then returned to the French literature, and the modern ultra-romantic tendency of some not unimportant men of genius. Goethe was of opinion that this poetic revolution, which was still in its infancy, would be very favorable to literature, but very prejudicial to the individual authors who effect it.
“Extremes are never to be avoided in any revolution,” said he. “In a political one, nothing is generally desired in the beginning but the abolition of abuses; but before people are aware, they are deep in bloodshed and horror. Thus the French, in their present literary revolution, desired nothing at first but a freer form; however, they will not stop there, but will reject the traditional contents together with the form. They begin to declare the representation of noble sentiments and deeds as tedious, and attempt to treat of all sorts of abominations. Instead of the beautiful subjects from Grecian mythology, there are devils, witches, and vampires, and the lofty heroes of antiquity must give place to jugglers and galley slaves. This is piquant! This is effective! But after the public has once tasted this highly seasoned food, and has become accustomed to it, it will always long for more, and that stronger. A young man of talent, who would produce an effect and be acknowledged, and who is great enough to go his own way, must accommodate himself to the taste of the day–nay, must seek to outdo his predecessors in the horrible and frightful. But in this chase after outward means of effect, all profound study, and all gradual and thorough development of the talent and the man from within, is entirely neglected. And this is the greatest injury which can befall a talent, although literature in general will gain by this tendency of the moment.”
“But,” added I, “how can an attempt which destroys individual talents be favorable to literature in general?”
“The extremes and excrescences which I have described,” returned Goethe, “will gradually disappear; but at last this great advantage will remain–besides a freer form, richer and more diversified subjects will have been attained, and no object of the broadest world and the most manifold life will be any longer excluded as unpoetical. I compare the present literary epoch to a state of violent fever, which is not in itself good and desirable, but of which improved health is the happy consequence. That abomination which now often constitutes the whole subject of a poetical work, will in future only appear as an useful