The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 01

On his return to Weimar, in June, 1788, Goethe made it his first task to finish the remaining works that were called for by his contract with Göschen. Egmont and Tasso were soon disposed of, but Faust proved intractable. While in Rome he had taken out the old manuscript and written a scene or two, and had then somehow lost touch with the subject. So he decided to revise what he had on hand and to publish a part of the scenes as a fragment. This fragmentary Faust came out in 1790. It attracted little attention, nor was any other of the new works received with much warmth by the public of that day. They expected something like Götz and Werther, and did not understand the new Goethe, who showed in many ways that his heart was still in Italy and that he found Weimar a little dull and provincial. Thus the greatest of German poets had for the time being lost touch with the German public; he saw that he must wait for the growth of the taste by which he was to be understood and enjoyed. Matters were hardly made better by his taking Christiane Vulpius into his house as his unwedded wife. This step, which shocked Weimar society—except the duke and Herder—had the effect of ending his unwholesome relation to Frau von Stein, who was getting old and peevish. The character of Christiane has often been pictured too harshly. She was certainly not her husband's intellectual peer—he would have looked long for a wife of that grade—and she became a little too fond of wine. On the other hand, she was affectionate, devoted, true, and by no means lacking in mental gifts. She and Goethe were happy together and faithful to each other.

For several years after his return from Italy Goethe wrote nothing that is of much importance in the history of his literary life. He devoted himself largely to scientific studies in plant and animal morphology and the theory of color. His discovery of the intermaxillary bone in the human skull, and his theory that the lateral organs of a plant are but successive phases of the leaf, have given him an assured if modest place in the history of the development hypothesis. On the other hand, his long and laborious effort to refute Newton's theory of the composition of white light is now generally regarded as a misdirection of energy. In his Roman Elegies (1790) he struck a note of pagan sensuality. The pensive distichs, telling of the wanton doings of Amor amid the grandeur that was Rome, were a little shocking in their frank portraiture of the emancipated flesh. The outbreak of violence in France seemed to him nothing but madness and folly, since he did not see the real Revolution, but only the Paris Terror.

He wrote two or three very ordinary plays to satirize various phases of the revolutionary excitement—phases that now seem as insignificant as the plays themselves. In 1792 he accompanied the Duke of Weimar on the inglorious Austro-Prussian invasion of France, heard the cannonade at Valmy, and was an interested observer as the allies tumbled back over the Rhine. Perhaps the best literary achievement of these years is the fine hexameter version of the medieval Reynard the Fox.

The year 1794 marks the beginning of more intimate relations between Goethe and Schiller. Their memorable friendship lasted until Schiller's death, in 1805—the richest decade in the whole history of German letters. The two men became in a sense allies and stood together in the championship of good taste and humane idealism. Goethe's literary occupations during this period were very multifarious; a list of his writings in the various fields of poetry, drama, prose fiction, criticism, biography, art and art-history, literary scholarship, and half a dozen sciences, would show a many-sidedness to which there is no modern parallel. Of all this mass of writing only a few works of major importance can even be mentioned here.

In 1796 appeared Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, a novel which captivated the literary class, if not the general public, and was destined to exert great influence on German fiction for a generation to come. It had been some twenty years in the making. In its earlier form it was called Wilhelm Meister's Theatrical Mission.3 This tells the story of a Werther-like youth who is to be saved from Werther's fate by finding a work to do. His "mission," apparently, is to become a good actor and to promote high ideals of the histrionic art. Incidentally he is ambitious to be a dramatic poet, and his childhood is simply that of Wolfgang Goethe. For reasons intimately connected with his own development Goethe finally decided to change his plan and his title, and to present Wilhelm's variegated experiences as an apprenticeship in the school of life. In the final version Wilhelm comes to the conclusion that the theatre is not his mission—all that was a mistaken ambition. Just what use he will make of his well-disciplined energy does not clearly appear at the end of the story, since Goethe bundles him off to Italy. He was already planning a continuation of the story under the title of Wilhelm Meister's Journeymanship. In this second part the hero becomes interested in questions of social uplift and thinks of becoming a surgeon. Taken as a whole Wilhelm Meister moves with a slowness which is quite out of tune with later ideals of prose fiction. It also lacks concentration and artistic finality. But it is replete with Goethe's ripe and mellow wisdom, and it contains more of his intimate self than any other work of his except Faust.

During this high noon of his life Goethe again took up his long neglected Faust, decided to make two parts of it, completed the First Part, and thought out much that was to go into the Second Part. By this time he had become somewhat alienated from the spirit of his youth, when he had envisaged life in a mist of vague and stormy emotionalism. His present passion was for clearness. So he boldly decided to convert the old tragedy of sin and suffering into a drama of mental clearing-up. The early Faust—the pessimist, murderer, seducer—was to be presented as temporarily wandering in the dark; as a man who had gone grievously wrong in passionate error, but was essentially "good" by virtue of his aspiring nature, and hence, in the Lord's fulness of time, was to be led out into the light and saved. The First Part, ending with the heart-rending death of Margaret in her prison-cell, and leaving Faust in an agony of remorse, was published in 1808. Faust's redemption, by enlarged experience of life and especially by his symbolic union with the Greek Queen of Beauty, was reserved for the Second Part.

The other more notable works of this period are Hermann and Dorothea, a delightful poem in dactylic hexameters, picturing a bit of German still life against the sinister background of the French Revolution, and the Natural Daughter, which was planned to body forth, in the form of a dramatic trilogy in blank verse, certain phases of Goethe's thinking about the upheaval in France. In the former he appears once more as a poet of the plain people, with an eye and a heart for their ways and their outlook upon life. Everybody likes Hermann and Dorothea. On the other hand, the Natural Daughter is disappointing, and not merely because it is a fragment. (Only the first part of the intended trilogy was written.) Goethe had now convinced himself that the function of art is to present the typical. Accordingly the characters appear as types of humanity divested of all that is accidental or peculiar to the individual. The most of them have not even a name. The consequence is that, notwithstanding the splendid verse and the abounding wisdom of the speeches, the personages do not seem to be made of genuine human stuff. As a great thinker's comment on the Revolution the Natural Daughter is almost negligible.

The decade that followed the death of Schiller was for Germany a time of terrible trial, during which Goethe pursued the even tenor of his way as a poet and man of science. He had little sympathy with the national uprising against Napoleon, whom he looked on as the invincible subduer of the hated Revolution. From the point of view of our modern nationalism, which was just then entering on its world-transforming career, his conduct was unpatriotic. But let him at least be rightly understood. It was not that he lacked sympathy for the German people, but he misjudged and underestimated the new forces that were coming into play. As the son of an earlier age he could only conceive a people's welfare as the gift of a wise ruler. He thought of politics as the affair of the great. He hated war and all eruptive violence, being convinced that good would come, not by such means, but by enlightenment, self-control and attending to one's work in one's sphere. To the historian Luden he said in 1813:

"Do not believe that I am indifferent to the great ideas of freedom, people, fatherland. No! These ideas are in us, they are a part of our being, and no one can cast them from him. I too have a warm heart for Germany. I have often felt bitter pain in thinking of the German people, so worthy of respect in some ways, so miserable on the whole. A comparison of the German people with other peoples arouses painful emotions which I try in every way to surmount; and in science and art I have found the wings whereby I rise above them. But the comfort which these afford is after all a poor comfort that does not compensate for the proud consciousness of belonging to a great and strong people that is honored and feared."

In 1808 he published The Elective Affinities, a novel in which the tragic effects of lawless passion invading the marriage relation were set forth with telling art. Soon after this he began to write a memoir of his life. He was now a European celebrity, the dream of his youth had come true, and he purposed to show in detail how everything had happened; that is, how his literary personality had evolved amid the environing conditions. He conceived himself as a phenomenon to be explained. That he called his memoir Poetry and Truth was perhaps an error of judgment, since the title has been widely misunderstood. For Goethe poetry was not the antithesis of truth, but a higher species of truth—the actuality as seen by the selecting, combining, and harmonizing imagination. In themselves, he would have said, the facts of a man's life are meaningless, chaotic, discordant: it is the poet's office to put them into the crucible of his spirit and give them forth as a significant and harmonious whole. The "poetry" of Goethe's autobiography—by far the best of autobiographies in the German language—must not be taken to imply concealment, perversion, substitution, or anything of that gross kind.

It lies in the very style of the book and is a part of its author's method of self-revelation. That he devotes so much space to the seemingly transient and unimportant love-affairs of his youth is only his way of recognizing that the poet-soul is born of love and nourished by love. He felt that these fleeting amorosities were a part of the natural history of his inner being.

And even in the serene afternoon of his life lovely woman often disturbed his soul, just as in the days of his youth. But the poetic expression of his feeling gradually became less simple and direct: he liked to embroider it with musing reflections and exotic fancies gathered from everywhere. Just as he endeavored with indefatigable eagerness of mind to keep abreast of scientific research, so he tried to assimilate the poetry of all nations. The Greeks and Romans no longer sufficed his omnivorous appetite and his "panoramic ability." When Hammer-Purgstall's German version of the D[=i]w[=a]n of H[=a]f[=i]z came into his hands he at once set about making himself at home in the mental world of the Persian and Arabic poets. Thus arose his Divan (1819), in which he imitated the oriental costume, but not the form. His aim was to reproduce in German verse the peculiar savor of the Orientals, with their unique blend of sensuality, wit, and mystic philosophy. But the feeling—the inner experience—was all his own. The best book of the Divan, the one called Suleika, was inspired by a very real liking for Marianne Willemer, a talented lady who played the love-game with him and actually wrote some of the poems long ascribed to Goethe himself.

At last, in 1824, when he was seventy-five years old, he came back once more to his Faust, the completion of which had long floated before his mind as a duty that he owed to himself and to the world. There was no longer any doubt as to what his great life-work was to be. With admirable energy and with perfect clarity of vision he addressed himself to the gigantic task, the general plan of which and many of the details had been thought out long before. It was finished in the summer of 1831. About sixty years after he had penned the first words of Faust, the disgruntled pessimist at war with life, he took leave of him as a purified soul mounting upward among the saints toward the Ineffable Light, under the mystic guidance of the Eternal-Womanly.

Goethe died March 18, 1832. The story that his last words were "more light" is probably nothing more than a happy invention.

Admirers of the great German see more in him than the author of the various works which have been all too briefly characterized in the preceding sketch. His is a case where, in very truth, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Goethe is the representative of an epoch. He stands for certain ideals which are not those of the present hour, but which it was of inestimable value to the modern man to have thus nobly worked out and exemplified in practice. Behind and beneath his writings, informing them and giving them their value for posterity, is a wonderful personality which it is a delight and an education to study in the whole process of its evolution. By way of struggle, pain and error, like his own Faust, he arrived at a view of life, in which he found inspiration and inner peace. It is outlined in the verses which he placed before his short poems as a sort of motto:

  Wide horizon, eager life,  Busy years of honest strife,  Ever seeking, ever founding,  Never ending, ever rounding,  Guarding tenderly the old,  Taking of the new glad hold,  Pure in purpose, light of heart,  Thus we gain—at least a start.

POEMS

GREETING AND DEPARTURE4 (1771)

  My heart throbbed high: to horse, away then!    Swift as a hero to the fight!  Earth in the arms of evening lay then,    And o'er the mountains hung the night,  Now could I see like some huge giant    The haze-enveloped oak-tree rise,  While from the thicket stared defiant    The darkness with its hundred eyes.  The cloud-throned moon from his dominion    Peered drowsily through veils of mist.  The wind with gently-wafting pinion    Gave forth a rustling strange and whist.  With shapes of fear the night was thronging    But all the more my courage glowed;  My soul flamed up in passionate longing    And hot my heart with rapture flowed.  I saw thee; melting rays of pleasure    Streamed o'er me from thy tender glance,  My heart beat only to thy measure,    I drew my breath as in a trance.  The radiant hue of spring caressing    Lay rosy on thy upturned face,  And love—ye gods, how rich the blessing!    I dared not hope to win such grace.  To part—alas what grief in this is!—    In every look thy heart spoke plain.  What ecstasy was in thy kisses!    What changing thrill of joy and pain!    I went. One solace yet to capture,    Thine eyes pursued in sweet distress.  But to be loved, what holy rapture!    To love, ah gods, what happiness!

THE HEATHROSE5 (1771)

  Once a boy a Rosebud spied,    Heathrose fair and tender,  All array'd in youthful pride,—  Quickly to the spot he hied,    Ravished by her splendor.  Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red,    Heathrose fair and tender!  Said the boy, "I'll now pick thee    Heathrose fair and tender!"  Rosebud cried "And I'll prick thee,  So thou shalt remember me,    Ne'er will I surrender!"  Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red,    Heathrose fair and tender!  But the wanton plucked the rose,    Heathrose fair and tender;  Thorns the cruel theft oppose,  Brief the struggle and vain the woes,    She must needs surrender.  Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red,    Heathrose fair and tender!

MAHOMET'S SONG6 (1773)

[This song was intended to be introduced in a dramatic poem entitled Mahomet, the plan of which was not carried out by Goethe. He mentions that it was to have been sung by Ali toward the end of the piece, in honor of his master, Mahomet, shortly before his death, and when at the height of his glory, of which it is typical.]

  See the rock-born stream!  Like the gleam  Of a star so bright!  Kindly spirits  High above the clouds  Nourished him while youthful  In the copse between the cliffs.  Young and fresh,  From the clouds he danceth  Down upon the marble rocks;  Then tow'rd heaven  Leaps exulting.  Through the mountain-passes  Chaseth he the color'd pebbles,  And, advancing like a chief,  Draws his brother streamlets with him  In his course.  In the vale below  'Neath his footsteps spring the flowers,  And the meadow  In his breath finds life.  Yet no shady vale can stay him,  Nor can flowers,  Round his knees all softly twining  With their loving eyes detain him;  To the plain his course he taketh,  Serpent-winding.  Eager streamlets  Join his waters. And now moves he  O'er the plain in silv'ry glory,  And the plain in him exults,  And the rivers from the plain,  And the streamlets from the mountain,  Shout with joy, exclaiming: "Brother,  Brother, take thy brethren with thee.  With thee to thine agèd father,  To the everlasting ocean,  Who, with arms outstretching far,  Waiteth for us;  Ah, in vain those arms lie open  To embrace his yearning children;  For the thirsty sand consumes us  In the desert waste; the sunbeams  Drink our life-blood; hills around us  Into lakes would dam us! Brother,  Take thy brethren of the plain,  Take thy brethren of the mountain  With thee, to thy father's arms!"—  Let all come, then!—  And now swells he  Lordlier still; yea, e'en a people  Bears his regal flood on high!  And in triumph onward rolling,  Names to countries gives he,—cities  Spring to light beneath his foot.  Ever, ever, on he rushes,  Leaves the towers' flame-tipp'd summits,  Marble palaces, the offspring  Of his fulness, far behind.  Cedar-houses bears the Atlas  On his giant shoulders; flutt'ring  In the breeze far, far above him  Thousand flags are gaily floating,  Bearing witness to his might.  And so beareth he his brethren,  All his treasures, all his children,  Wildly shouting, to the bosom  Of his long-expectant sire.

PROMETHEUS7 (1774)

  Cover thy spacious heavens, Zeus,  With clouds of mist,  And, like the boy who lops  The thistles' heads,  Disport with oaks and mountain-peaks;  Yet thou must leave  My earth still standing;  My cottage too, which was not raised by thee,  Leave me my hearth,  Whose kindly glow  By thee is envied.  I know nought poorer  Under the sun, than ye gods!  Ye nourish painfully,  With sacrifices  And votive prayers,  Your majesty;  Ye would e'en starve,  If children and beggars  Were not trusting fools.  While yet a child,  And ignorant of life,  I turned my wandering gaze  Up tow'rd the sun, as if with him  There were an ear to hear my wailing,  A heart, like mine  To feel compassion for distress.  Who help'd me  Against the Titans' insolence?  Who rescued me from certain death,  From slavery?  Didst thou not do all this thyself,  My sacred glowing heart?  And glowedst, young and good,  Deceived with grateful thanks  To yonder slumbering one?  I honor thee! and why?  Hast thou e'er lighten'd the sorrows  Of the heavy laden?  Hast thou e'er dried up the tears  Of the anguish-stricken?  Was I not fashion'd to be a man  By omnipotent Time,  And by eternal Fate,  Masters of me and thee?  Didst thou e'er fancy  That life I should learn to hate,  And fly to deserts,  Because not all  My blossoming dreams grew ripe?  Here sit I, forming mortals  After my image;  A race resembling me,  To suffer, to weep,  To enjoy, to be glad,  And thee to scorn,  As I!

THE WANDERER'S NIGHT-SONG8 (1776)

  Thou who comest from on high,    Who all woes and sorrows stillest,  Who, for two-fold misery,    Hearts with twofold balsam fillest,  Would this constant strife would cease!    What avails the joy and pain?  Blissful Peace,    To my bosom come again!

THE SEA-VOYAGE9 (1776)

  Many a day and night my bark stood ready laden;  Waiting fav'ring winds, I sat with true friends round me,  Pledging me to patience and to courage,  In the haven.  And they spoke thus with impatience twofold:  "Gladly pray we for thy rapid passage,  Gladly for thy happy voyage; fortune  In the distant world is waiting for thee,  In our arms thou'lt find thy prize, and love too,  When returning."  And when morning came, arose an uproar  And the sailors' joyous shouts awoke us;  All was stirring, all was living, moving,  Bent on sailing with the first kind zephyr.  And the sails soon in the breeze are swelling,  And the sun with fiery love invites us;  Fill'd the sails are, clouds on high are floating,  On the shore each friend exulting raises  Songs of hope, in giddy joy expecting  Joy the voyage through, as on the morn of sailing,  And the earliest starry nights so radiant.  But by God-sent changing winds ere long he's driven  Sideways from the course he had intended,  And he feigns as though he would surrender,  While he gently striveth to outwit them,  To his goal, e'en when thus press'd, still faithful.  But from out the damp gray distance rising,  Softly now the storm proclaims its advent,  Presseth down each bird upon the waters,  Presseth down the throbbing hearts of mortals.  And it cometh. At its stubborn fury,  Wisely ev'ry sail the seaman striketh;  With the anguish-laden ball are sporting  Wind and water.  And on yonder shore are gather'd standing,  Friends and lovers, trembling for the bold one:  "Why, alas, remain'd he here not with us!  Ah, the tempest I Cast away by fortune!  Must the good one perish in this fashion?  Might not he perchance * * *. Ye great immortals!"  Yet he, like a man, stands by his rudder;  With the bark are sporting wind and water,  Wind and water sport not with his bosom:  On the fierce deep looks he, as a master,—  In his gods, or shipwreck'd, or safe landed,  Trusting ever.

TO THE MOON10 (1778)

  Bush and vale thou fill'st again    With thy misty ray,  And my spirit's heavy chain    Casteth far away.  Thou dost o'er my fields extend    Thy sweet soothing eye,  Watching like a gentle friend,    O'er my destiny.  Vanish'd days of bliss and woe    Haunt me with their tone,  Joy and grief in turns I know,    As I stray alone.  Stream beloved, flow on! Flow on!    Ne'er can I be gay!  Thus have sport and kisses gone,    Truth thus pass'd away.  Once I seem'd the lord to be    Of that prize so fair!  Now, to our deep sorrow, we    Can forget it ne'er.  Murmur, stream, the vale along,    Never cease thy sighs;  Murmur, whisper to my song    Answering melodies!  When thou in the winter's night    Overflow'st in wrath,  Or in spring-time sparklest bright,    As the buds shoot forth.  He who from the world retires,    Void of hate, is blest;  Who a friend's true love inspires,    Leaning on his breast!  That which heedless man ne'er knew,    Or ne'er thought aright,  Roams the bosom's labyrinth through,    Boldly into night.

THE FISHERMAN11 (1778)

  The waters rush'd, the waters rose,    A fisherman sat by,  While on his line in calm repose    He cast his patient eye.  And as he sat, and hearken'd there,    The flood was cleft in twain,  And, lo! a dripping mermaid fair    Sprang from the troubled main.  She sang to him, and spake the while    "Why lurest thou my brood,  With human wit and human guile    From out their native flood?  Oh, couldst thou know how gladly dart    The fish across the sea,  Thou wouldst descend, e'en as thou art,    And truly happy be!  Do not the sun and moon with grace    Their forms in ocean lave?  Shines not with twofold charms their face,    When rising from the wave?  The deep, deep heavens, then lure thee not,—    The moist yet radiant blue,—  Not thine own form,—to tempt thy lot    'Midst this eternal dew?"  The waters rush'd, the waters rose,    Wetting his naked feet;  As if his true love's words were those,    His heart with longing beat.  She sang to him, to him spake she,    His doom was fix'd, I ween;  Half drew she him, and half sank he,    And ne'er again was seen.