The Youth of Goethe Part 12

Fetters thee that youthful freshness?

Fetters thee that lovely mien?

That glance so full of truth and goodness, With an adamantine chain?

Vain the hardy wish to tear me From those meshes that ensnare me; For the moment I would flee, Straight my path leads back to thee.

By these slender threads enchanted, Which to rend no power avails, That dear wanton maiden holds me Thus relentless in her spells.

Thus within her charmed round Must I live as one spellbound; Heart! what mighty change in thee; Love, O love, ah, set me free!

In the second lyric, _An Belinden_, he pictures in the same tone of half regret the case in which he finds himself, and the picture has an eloquent commentary in his letters of the time. He who had lately spent his peaceful evenings in the solitude of his own chamber dreaming of her image had through her been irresistibly drawn into an alien and uncongenial world. Is he the same being who now sits at the card-table amid the glaring lights of a fas.h.i.+onable drawing-room in the presence of hateful faces? For her, however, he will gladly endure what he loathes with his whole soul.

Reizender ist mir des Fruhlings Blute Nun nicht auf der Flur; Wo du, Engel, bist, ist Lieb' and Gute, Wo du bist, Natur.

Now the blooms of springtide on the meadow Touch no more my heart; Where thou, angel, art, is truth and goodness; Nature, where thou art.

So he sang in tones befitting the true lover, but, as it happens, we have a prose commentary from his own hand which gives perhaps a truer picture of his real state of mind. Towards the end of January, when he was already deep in his pa.s.sion for Lili, he received a letter which opened a new channel for his emotions. The letter came from an anonymous lady who, as she explained, had been so profoundly moved by the tale of Werther that she could not resist the impulse to express her grat.i.tude to its author. The fair unknown, as he was subsequently to discover, was no less distinguished a person than an Imperial Countess--the Countess s...o...b..rg, sister of two equally fervid youths, of whom we shall presently hear in connection with Goethe. It was quite in keeping with the spirit of the time that two persons of different s.e.xes, who had never seen each other, should proceed mutually to unbosom themselves with a freedom of self-revelation which an age, habituated to greater reticence, finds it difficult to understand; and there began a correspondence between Goethe and his adorer in which we have the astonis.h.i.+ng spectacle of her becoming the confidant of all his emotions with regard to another woman, while he is using the language of pa.s.sion towards herself.[200] Here is the opening sentence of his first letter to her, and it strikes the note of all that was to follow: "My dear, I will give you no name, for what are the names--Friend, Sister, Beloved, Bride, Wife, or any word that is a complex of all these, compared with the direct feeling--with the---- I cannot write further. Your letter has taken possession of me at a wonderful time."[201]

[Footnote 200: It may be regarded as significant that Goethe makes no reference to the Countess in his Autobiography.]

[Footnote 201: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 230.]

In his second letter to her, while she was still unknown to him, written about three weeks later (February 13th), he depicts the condition in which we are to imagine him at the time it was penned. It will be seen that it is a prose rendering of the lines _An Belinden_, to which reference has just been made. "If, my dear one, you can picture to yourself a Goethe who, in a laced coat, and otherwise clad from head to foot with finery in tolerable keeping, in the idle glare of sconces and l.u.s.tres, amid a motley throng of people, is held a prisoner at a card-table by a pair of beautiful eyes; who in alternating distraction is driven from company to concert and from concert to ball, and with all the interest of frivolity pays his court to a pretty blonde, you have the present carnival-Goethe.... But there is another Goethe--one in grey beaver coat with brown silk necktie and boots--who already divines the approach of spring in the caressing February breezes, to whom his dear wide world will again be shortly opened up, who, ever living his own life, striving and working, according to the measure of his powers, seeks to express now the innocent feelings of youth in little poems, and the strong spice of life in various dramas; now the images of his friends, of his neighbourhood and his beloved household goods, with chalk upon grey paper; never asking the question how much of what he has done will endure, because in toiling he is always ascending a step higher, because he will spring after no ideal, but, in play or strenuous effort, will let his feelings spontaneously develop into capacities."[202]

[Footnote 202: _Ib._ pp. 233-4.]

The plays to which Goethe refers in this letter form part of his intellectual and emotional history during the period of his relations to Lili. In themselves these plays have little merit, and, had they come from the hand of some minor poet, they would deservedly have pa.s.sed into oblivion, but as part of his biography they call for some notice. The first of them, _Erwin und Elmire_, is a sufficiently trivial vaudeville, and appears to have been begun in the autumn of 1773.[203] He must have retouched it in January--February (1775), however, as it contains distinct suggestions of his experiences with the Schonemann family. As he himself tells us in his Autobiography, the piece was suggested by Goldsmith's ballad, _Edwin and Angelina_, and both the choice and handling of the subject ill.u.s.trate his remark in the foregoing letter regarding the fugitive nature of the various things which he threw off at this time.[204] There are four characters,--Olimpia and her daughter Elmire, Bernardo, a friend of the family, and Erwin, Elmire's lover. Elmire plays the part of capricious coquette with such effect that she drives her despairing lover to hide himself from the world and to retreat to a hermitage which he constructs for himself in the neighbouring wilds. Elmire now realises her hard-heartedness, and exhibits such symptoms of distress as to waken the concern of her mother and Bernardo. Bernardo, however, is in Erwin's secret, and contrives to bring the two lovers together and to effect a happy reconciliation, to the satisfaction of all parties--the mother included. The play was dedicated to Lili in the following lines:--

Den kleinen Strauss, den ich dir binde, Pfluckt' ich aus diesem Herzen hier; Nimm ihn gefallig auf, Belinde!

Der kleine Strauss, er ist von mir.

This posy that I bind for thee I cull'd it from my very heart; This little posy, 'tis from me; Take it, Belinda, in good part.

[Footnote 203: _Ib._ p. 113.]

[Footnote 204: He says of the piece that it cost him "little expenditure of mind and feeling." _Ib._]

There was a sufficient reason for Goethe's praying Lili to take the piece "in good part." In the cruel coquette Elmire Lili could not but see a portrait of herself, and there are expressions in the play which she could not but regard as home-thrusts. "To be entertained, to be amused," says Erwin to Bernardo, "that is all they (the maidens) desire. They value a man who spends an odious evening with them at cards as highly as the man who gives his body and soul for them." In another remark of Erwin's there is a reference to Goethe's own relations to Lili and her family which she could not misunderstand. "I loved her with an enduring love. To that love I gave my whole heart.

But because I am poor, I was scorned. And yet I hoped through my diligence to make as suitable a provision for her as any of the beplastered wind-bags." Trivial as the play is, it was acted in Frankfort during Goethe's absence,[205] and at a later date he considered it worth his while to recast it in another form.

[Footnote 205: Goethe was not known to be the author. In a letter to Johanna Fahlmer, he expresses his curiosity to know if Lili was present at its performance. _Erwin und Elmire_, it should be said, contains two of Goethe's most beautiful songs, the one beginning "Ein Veilchen auf der Wiese stand," and the other "Ihr verbluhet, susse Rosen."]

_Erwin und Elmire_ was followed by another play, more remarkable from its contents, but by general agreement of as little importance from a literary point of view. This was _Stella_, significantly designated in its original form as _A Play for Lovers_. Unlike _Erwin und Elmire_, it was wholly the production of this period--the end of February and the beginning of March being the probable date of its composition.

Though written at the height of his pa.s.sion for Lili, however, it contains fewer direct references to his experiences of the moment than _Erwin und Elmire_. Any interest that attaches to _Stella_ lies in the fact of its being a lively presentment of a phase of Goethe's own experience and of the world of fact.i.tious sentiment which made that experience possible. No other of Goethe's youthful productions, indeed, better ill.u.s.trates the literary emotionalism of the time when it was written, and some notion of its character and scope is desirable in view of all his relations to Lili.

The drama opens in a posting-house, where two travellers, Madame Sommer (Cacilie) and her daughter Lucie, have alighted. The object of their journey is to place Lucie as a companion with a lady living on an estate in the neighbourhood. From the conversation of the mother and daughter we learn that Cacilie had been deserted by her husband, and was now in such reduced circ.u.mstances as to necessitate her daughter's finding some employment. On inquiring of the postmistress they gain some information regarding the lady they are in search of.

She also had been deserted by one who was her reputed husband, and since then had spent her days in mournful solitude and good works.

Fatigued by her journey, Cacilie retires to rest, and Lucie, carefully instructed not to reveal the position of herself and her mother, sets out to interview the strange lady. During her absence there arrives at the posting-house a gentleman in military dress, who presently falls into a tearful soliloquy, from which we learn that he is no other than Fernando, the husband of Cacilie, and that the strange lady is Stella, whom he had also deserted and with whom he now proposes to renew his former relations. Lucie returns delighted with her visit to Stella, and there ensues a bantering conversation between the father and daughter, both, of course, equally ignorant of their relation to each other. So ends the first Act; with the second begin the embarra.s.sments of the difficult situation. Cacilie and Lucie repair to Stella, and, after an effusive exchange of memories between the two deserted ones, Stella invites both mother and daughter to make their home with her. Unfortunately Stella brings forth the portrait of her former lover, in whom to her horror Cacilie recognises her husband, and Lucie to her surprise recognises the officer at the posting-house--a fact which she makes known to Stella. In an ecstasy of excited expectation Stella dispatches a servant with the order to fetch the long-lost one, and Cacilie, retiring to the garden, communicates to Lucie the discovery of her father. In the rapidly succeeding Scenes that follow the three chief persons experience alternations of agony and bliss which find facile expression in many sighs, tears, and embraces. Fernando and Stella, lost in the present and oblivious of the past, melt in their new-found bliss, but are interrupted in their raptures by the announcement that Cacilie and Lucie are preparing to take their departure. At Stella's request Fernando finds Cacilie, whom he at first does not recognise. Mutual recognition follows, however, when Fernando vows that he will never again leave her, and proposes that he and she and Lucie should make off at once. Meanwhile, Stella is pouring forth her bliss over the grave which, like one of the Darmstadt ladies, she has had dug for herself in her garden. Here she is joined by Fernando, whose altered mood fills her with a vague dread which is converted into horror when, on the entrance of Cacilie and Lucie, Fernando acknowledges them as his wife and daughter. After paroxysms of emotion all the parties separate, and Stella prepares to take her flight after a vain attempt to cut Fernando's portrait out of its frame. She is interrupted in her intention of flight by the appearance of Fernando, and there follows a dialogue in which we are to look for the drift of the play. Cacilie insists on departing and leaving the two lovers to their happiness. "I feel," she says, "that my love for thee is not selfish, is not the pa.s.sion of a lover, which would give up all to possess its longed-for object ... it is the feeling of a wife, who out of love itself can give up love." Fernando, however, pa.s.sionately declares that he will never abandon her, and Cacilie makes a happy suggestion that will solve all difficulties. Was it not recorded of a German Count that he brought home a maiden from the Holy Land and that she and his wife happily shared his affections between them? And such is the solution which commends itself to all parties. Fernando impartially embraces both ladies, and Cacilie's concluding remark is: "We are thine!"[206]

[Footnote 206: In deference to the general opinion that this ending was immoral, Goethe, in a later form of the play, makes Fernando shoot himself.]

Such is the play which, in a bad English translation that did not mitigate its absurdities, provoked the wit of the _Anti-Jacobin_.[207]

In Fernando, the central figure of the play, we are, of course, to recognise Goethe himself,[208] and in no other of his dramas has he presented a less attractive character. Weislingen, Clavigo, and Werther have all their redeeming qualities, but Fernando is an emotional egotist incapable of any worthy motive, and it is the most serious blemish in the play, even in view of the fact.i.tious world in which it moves, that he is made the adored idol of two such different women as Cacilie and Stella. The situation, as Goethe himself tells us, was suggested by the relations of Swift to Stella and Vanessa, but he did not need to go so far afield for a motive. In the world around him he was familiar both with the creed and the practice which the conclusion of the play approves. As we have seen, it was openly held by enlightened and moral persons that marriage, as being a mere contract, was incompatible with a true union of souls, and that such a union was only to be found in irresponsible relations. In the case of his friend Fritz Jacobi, whose character and talents had all his admiration, he had a practical ill.u.s.tration of the creed; for Jacobi had a wife and also a friend (his step-aunt Johanna Fahlmer) in whom he found a more responsive recipient of his emotions. But it is rather in Goethe's own character and experience that we are to look for the origin of _Stella_; it is in truth an a.n.a.lytic presentment of what he had himself known and felt. As we have seen, one object was incapable of engrossing all his affections; while he was paying court to Lili, his wandering desires went out to the fair correspondent who had evinced such interest in his troubles and aspirations. It would seem that he required two types of woman such as he has depicted in _Stella_ to satisfy at once his mind and heart: a Cacilie who inspired him with respect as well as affection, and a Stella whose self-abandonment left his pa.s.sions their free course.

[Footnote 207: _Stella_ and other German plays are wittily parodied in _The Rovers; or, The Double Arrangement_.]

[Footnote 208: Goethe gives Fernando his own brown eyes and black hair.]

Nauseous as _Stella_ must appear to the modern reader, it found wide acceptance at the period it was written, though its moral was generally condemned. Herder was enthusiastic in its praise, and on its publication at the end of January, 1776, it pa.s.sed through four editions in a single week. In 1805, with its altered _denouement_, in which the hero shoots himself, it was performed with applause in Berlin, and was afterwards frequently produced. Goethe himself continued to retain a singular affection for the most sickly sentimental of all his literary offspring, and he subsequently sent a copy of his work to Lili, accompanied by some lines which were worthy of a better gift.[209]

[Footnote 209: After he had broken with her, and was settled in Weimar.]

Im holden Thal, auf schneebedeckten Hohen War stets dein Bild mir nah!

Ich sah's um mich in lichten Wolken wehen; Im Herzen war mir's da.

Empfinde hier, wie mit allmacht'gem Triebe Ein Herz das andre zieht, Und da.s.s vergebens Liebe Vor Liebe flieht.

In the dear vale, on heights the snow had covered, Still was thine image near; I saw it round me in the bright clouds hover; My heart beheld it there.

Here learn to feel with what resistless power One heart the other ties; That vain it is when lover From lover flies.

Still another piece belongs to the first months of Goethe's relations to Lili--_Claudine von Villa Bella_, which appears to have been written intermittently in April and May. Like _Erwin und Elmire_ it is in operatic form--the prose dialogue being diversified with outbursts of song. Entirely trivial as a work of art, it calls for pa.s.sing notice only on account of certain characteristics which distinguish it as a product of the period when it was written. The intention of the play, Goethe wrote at a later time, was to exhibit "n.o.ble sentiments in a.s.sociation with adventurous actions," and the conduct of his hero and heroine is certainly unconventional, if their feelings are exalted. Claudine is the only daughter of a fond and widowed father, and her dreamy emotionalism would have made her a welcome member of the Darmstadt circle of ladies. She is in love with Pedro, but Pedro is not the hero of the piece. That place is a.s.signed to his eldest brother Crugantino, a scapegrace, with a n.o.ble heart, who, finding the ordinary bonds of society too confined for him, has taken to highway robbery. "Your burgher life," he says--and we know that he is here uttering Goethe's own sentiments--"your burgher life is to me intolerable. There, whether I give myself to work or enjoyment, slavery is my lot. Is it not a better choice for one of decent merit to plunge into the world? Pardon me! I don't give a ready ear to the opinion of other people, but pardon me if I let you know mine. I will grant you that if once one takes to a roving life, no goal and no restraints exist for him; for our heart--ah! it is infinite in its desires so long as its strength remains to it." Crugantino, who with his band is housed at a wretched inn in the neighbourhood, catches sight of Claudine, is bewitched by her beauty, and resolves to gain possession of her. On a beautiful moonlight night, attended by only one companion, he makes his adventurous attempt. Of the charivari that follows it is only necessary to say that Pedro is wounded in a hand-to-hand encounter by his unknown brother Crugantino, and is conveyed to the inn where the band have their quarters. And now comes the turn of Claudine to show her disregard of conventionalities. In agonies for her wounded lover, she dons male attire, and in the middle of the night sets out for the inn where he is lying. She encounters Crugantino at the door, and their dialogue is overheard by the wounded Pedro who rushes forth to rescue her. A duel ensues between Pedro and Crugantino; the watch appears, and all parties are conveyed to the village prison. Here they are found by the distracted father and his friend Sebastian, and a general explanation follows--Pedro being made secure of Claudine, and Crugantino showing himself a repentant sinner.

With this fantastic production, which, beginning in an atmosphere of pure sentiment, ends in broad farce, Goethe was even in middle life so satisfied that he recast it in verse, and made other alterations which in the opinion of most critics did not improve the original.[210]

[Footnote 210: During his residence in Rome in 1787. He recast _Erwin und Elmire_ at the same time.]

The triviality of these successive performances, so void of the mind and heart displayed in the fragmentary _Prometheus_ and _Der Ewige Jude_, have their commentary in his continued relations to Lili Schonemann. They even raise the question whether his pa.s.sion for her were really so consuming as in his old age he declared it to have been. They at least speak a very different language from that of the simple lyrics in which he expressed his love for Friederike Brion. Yet when we turn to his correspondence, written on the inspiration of the moment, we find all the indications of a genuinely distracted lover.

During the month of March we are to believe that he underwent all the pangs of a pa.s.sionate wooer. Surrounded by numerous admirers, Lili was difficult of access, and apparently took some pleasure in reminding him that he was only one among others.[211] "Oh! if I did not compose dramas," he wrote on the 6th to his confidant the Countess, "I should be s.h.i.+pwrecked." A few days of unalloyed bliss he did enjoy, and the length at which he records them in his Autobiography shows that they remained a vivid memory with him. In the course of the month Lili spent some time with an uncle at Offenbach on the Main, and, joining her there, Goethe found her all that his heart could wish. "Take the girl to your heart; it will be good for you both," he wrote out of his bliss to his other female confidant, Johanna Fahlmer.[212]

[Footnote 211: To this period probably belongs _Lilis Park_, the most playfully humorous of Goethe's poems, in which he banters Lili on her capricious treatment of himself (represented as a bear) as one of her menagerie--the motley crowd of her suitors.]

[Footnote 212: Certain pranks played by Goethe during his stay in Offenbach show that he was not wholly given up to "lover's melancholy." On a moonlight night, robed in a white sheet, and mounted on stilts (a form of exercise to which he was addicted), he went through the town and created a panic among the inhabitants by looking into their windows. On another occasion, at a baptism, he secretly deposited the baby in a dish, and covering it with a towel, placed the dish on a table where the company were a.s.sembled. It was only after some time that the contents of the dish were revealed.]

On their return to Frankfort, however, his former griefs were renewed, and a new distraction was added to them. "I am delighted that you are so enamoured of my _Stella_," he writes to Fritz Jacobi on March 21st, immediately after his return; "my heart and mind are now turned in such entirely different directions that my own flesh and blood is almost indifferent to me. I can tell you nothing, for what is there that can be said? I will not even think either of to-morrow or of the day after to-morrow."[213] The truth is that, as he tells us in his Autobiography, he was now in an embarra.s.sing position. His relations to Lili had become such that a decisive step was necessary in the interests of both. During the last fortnight of March his mood was certainly not that of a happy lover. To break with Lili was a step which circ.u.mstances as well as his own attachment to her made a dire alternative. On the other hand, from the bond of marriage, as we know, he shrank with every instinct of his nature. Only a few weeks before, doubtless with his own possible fate in front of him, he had put these words in the mouth of Fernando in his _Stella_: "I would be a fool to allow myself to be shackled. That state [marriage] smothers all my powers; that state robs me of all my spirits, cramps my whole being. I must forth into the free world."[214] Goethe did eventually take the decision of Fernando, but not just yet. On March 25th he wrote to Herder: "It seems as if the twisted threads on which my fate hangs, and which I have so long shaken to and fro in oscillating rotation, would at last unite."[215] On the 29th, Klopstock, who had come on a few days' visit to Frankfort, found him in "strange agitation." As so often happened in Goethe's life, it was an accident that determined his wavering purpose. In the beginning of April there came to Frankfort a Mademoiselle Delf, an old friend of the Schonemann family, whom Goethe made acquainted with his father and mother. A person of strenuous character, she took it upon her to bring matters to a point between the two households. With the consent of Lili's mother, she brought Lili one evening to the Goethe house. "Take each other by the hand," she said in commanding tones; and the two lovers obeyed and embraced. "It was a remarkable decree of the powers that rule us," is the characteristic reflection of the aged Goethe, "that in the course of my singular career I should also experience the feelings of one betrothed."

[Footnote 213: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 246.]

[Footnote 214: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 249.]

[Footnote 215: _Ib._ p. 255.]

Goethe's feelings as a betrothed were from the first of a mingled nature. No sooner had he given his pledge than all the complications which must result from his union with Lili stared him in the face.

Even after the betrothal the relations between the two families did not become more cordial. Not only were they divided by difference of social standing; a deeper ground of mutual antagonism lay in their religion. The Schonemanns belonged to the Reformed persuasion, the Protestantism of the higher cla.s.ses, while the Goethes were Lutheran, as were the majority of the cla.s.s to which they belonged; and between the two denominations there was bitter and permanent estrangement.[216] And there was still another stumbling-block in the way of a probable happy union. Goethe was not earning an independent income, and, in the event of his marriage, he and his bride would have to take up their quarters under his parental roof. But, accustomed to the gay pleasures of a fas.h.i.+onable circle, how would Lili accommodate herself to the homely ways and surroundings of the Goethe household?

Moreover, we have it from Goethe himself that Lili was distasteful equally to his father and mother--the former sarcastically speaking of her as "Die Stadtdame." Such, he realised, was the future before him as the husband of Lili; and he had no sooner bound himself to her than he was reduced to distraction by conflicting desires. In some words he wrote to Herder within a fortnight after his betrothal we have a glimpse of his state of mind. "A short time ago," he wrote, "I was under the delusion that I was approaching the haven of domestic bliss and a sure footing in the realities of earthly joy and sorrow, but I am again in unhappy wise cast forth on the wide sea."[217] He was already, in fact, contemplating the desirability of bursting his bond; and an opportunity came to a.s.sist him in his resolve.

[Footnote 216: Frau Schonemann is recorded to have said that the different religion of the two families was the cause of the match being broken off.]

[Footnote 217: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 261-2.]

In the second week of May there came to Frankfort three youths whose rank and personal character created a flutter in the Goethe household.

Two of them were the brothers of the Countess s...o...b..rg,[218] with whom Goethe had been carrying on his platonic correspondence during the previous months, and were on their way to a tour in Switzerland. All were enthusiastic adherents of the _Sturm und Drang_ movement, and Goethe had long been the object of their distant adoration. They were not disappointed in their idol, and the first meeting, according to both s...o...b..rgs, sufficed to establish a general union of hearts.

"Goethe," wrote the elder, "is a delightful fellow. The fulness of fervid sensibility streams out of his every word and feature."[219]