The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Ii Part 50

Weimar, February 28, 1811.

I have read somewhere that the celebrated first secretary of the London Society, Oldenburg, never opened a letter until he had placed pen, ink, and paper before him, and that he then and there, immediately after the first reading, wrote down his answer. Thus he was able to meet comfortably the demands of an immense correspondence. If I could have imitated this virtue, so many people would not now be complaining of my silence. But this time your dear letter just received has roused in me such a desire to answer, by recalling to my mind all the fullness of our life during the summer, that I am writing these lines, if not immediately after the first reading, at least on awaking the next morning.

I think I antic.i.p.ated that the good _Pandora_ would slow down somewhat when she reached home again. Life in Toplitz was really too favorable to this sort of work, and your meditations and efforts were so steadily and undividedly centred upon it, that an interruption could not help calling forth a pause. But leave it alone; there is so much done on it already that, at the right moment, the remainder will, in all likelihood, come of its own accord.

I cannot blame you for declining to compose the music to _Faust_. My proposition was somewhat ill-considered, like the undertaking itself.

It can very well rest in peace for another year; for the trouble which I had in working over the _Resolute Prince_[34] has about exhausted the inclination which we must feel when we set about things of that sort.

This piece has indeed turned out beyond all expectation, and it has given much pleasure to me and to others. It is no small undertaking to conjure up a work written almost two hundred years ago, for an entirely different clime, for a people of entirely different customs, religion, and culture, and to make it appear fresh and new to the eyes of a spectator. For nowhere is anything antiquated and without direct appeal more out of place than on the stage.

Touching my works you shall, before everything else, receive the thirteenth volume. It is very kind of you not to neglect the _Theory of Color_; and the fact that you absorb it in small doses will have its good effect too. I know very well that my way of handling the matter, natural as it is, differs very widely from the usual way, and I cannot demand that every one should immediately perceive and appropriate its advantages. The mathematicians are foolish people, and are so far from having the least idea what my work means that one really must overlook their presumption. I am very curious about the first one who gets an insight into the matter and behaves honestly about it; for not all of them are blindfolded or malicious. But, at any rate, I now see more clearly than ever what I have long held in secret, that the training which mathematics give to the mind is extremely one-sided and narrow.

Yes, Voltaire is bold enough to say somewhere: "I have always remarked that geometry leaves the mind just where it found it." Franklin also has clearly and plainly expressed a special aversion to mathematicians, in respect to their social qualities, and finds their petty contradictory spirit unbearable.

As concerns the real Newtonians, they are in the same case as the old Prussians in October, 1806. The latter believed that they were winning tactically, when they had long since been conquered strategically. When once their eyes are opened they will be startled to find me already in Naumburg and Leipzig, while they are still creeping along near Weimar and Blankenheim. That battle was lost in advance; and so is this. The Newtonian Theory is already annihilated, while the gentlemen still think their adversary despicable. Forgive my boasting; I am just as little ashamed of it as those gentlemen are of their pettiness. I am going through a strange experience with Kugelchen, as I have done with many others. I thought I was making him the nicest compliment possible; for really the picture and the frame had turned out most acceptably, and now the good man takes offence at a superficial act of politeness, which one really ought not to neglect, since many persons' feelings are hurt if we omit it. A certain lack of etiquette on my part in such matters has often been taken amiss, and now here I am troubling some excellent people with my formality. Never get rid of an old fault, my dear friend; you will either fall into a new one, or else people will look upon your newly acquired virtue as a fault; and no matter how you behave, you will never satisfy either yourself or others. In the meantime I am glad that I know what the matter is; for I wish to be on good terms with this excellent man.

Regarding the antique bull, I should propose to have him carefully packed in a strong case, and sent to me for inspection. In ancient times these things were often made in replica, and the specimens differ greatly in value. To give any good bronze in exchange for another would be a bad bargain, as there are scarcely ever duplicates of them, and those that we do find are doubly interesting on account of their resemblances and dissimilarities. The offer I could make at present is as follows: I have a very fine collection of medals, mostly in bronze, from the middle of the fifteenth century up to our day. It was collected princ.i.p.ally in order to ill.u.s.trate to amateurs and experts the progress of plastic art, which is always reflected in the medals. Among these medals I have some very beautiful and valuable duplicates, so that I could probably get together a most instructive series of them to give away. An art lover, who as yet possessed nothing of this description, would in them get a good foundation for a collection, and a sufficient inducement to continue. Further, such a collection, like a set of Greek and Roman coins, affords opportunity for very interesting observations; indeed it completes the conception furnished us by the coins, and brings it up to present times. I may also say that the bull would have to be very perfect, if I am not to have a balance to my credit in the bargain above indicated.

Something very pleasing has occurred to me in the last few days; it was the presentation to me, from the Empress of Austria, of a beautiful gold snuff-box with a diamond wreath, and the name Louisa engraved in full.

I know you too will take an interest in this event, as it is not often that we meet with such unexpected and refres.h.i.+ng good fortune.

LETTER 665

Weimar, December 3, 1812.

Your letter telling me of the great misfortune which has befallen your house,[35] depressed me very much, indeed quite bowed me down; for it reached me in the midst of very serious reflections on life, and it is owing to you alone that I have been able to pluck up courage. You have proved yourself to be pure refined gold when tried by the black touchstone of death. How beautiful is a character when it is so compact of mind and soul, and how beautiful must be a talent that rests on such a foundation.

Of the deed or the misdeed itself, I know of nothing to say. When the _toedium vitoe_ lays hold on a man, he is to be pitied, not to be blamed. That all the symptoms of this strange, natural, as well as unnatural, disease have raged within me--of that _Werther_ leaves no one in doubt. I know right well what amount of resolution and effort it cost me then to escape from the waves of death, with what difficulty I saved myself from many a later s.h.i.+pwreck, and how hard it was for me to recover. And all the stories of mariners and fishermen are the same.

After the night of storm the sh.o.r.e is reached again; he who was wet through dries himself, and the next morning when the beautiful sun s.h.i.+nes once more on the sparkling waves "the sea has regained its appet.i.te for new victims."

When we see not only that the world in general, and especially the younger generation, are given over to their l.u.s.ts and pa.s.sions, but also that what is best and highest in them is misplaced and distorted through the serious follies of the age; when we see that what should lead them to salvation really contributes to their d.a.m.nation--to say nothing of the unspeakable stress brought to bear upon them from without--then we cease to wonder at the misdeeds which a man performs in rage against himself and others. I believe I am capable of writing another _Werther_, which would make people's hair stand on end, even more than the first did. Let me add one remark. Most young people, who feel themselves possessed of merit, demand of themselves more than is right. They are, however, pressed and forced into it by their gigantic surroundings. I know half a dozen of that kind who will certainly perish, and whom it would be impossible to help, even if one could make clear to them where their real advantage lies. n.o.body realizes that reason, courage, and will-power are given to us so that we shall refrain, not only from evil, but from excess of goodness.

I thank you for your comments on the pages of my autobiography. I had already heard much that was good and kind about them in a general way.

You are the first and only one who has gone into the heart of the matter.

I am glad that the description of my father impressed you favorably. I will not deny that I am heartily tired of the German bourgeois, these _Lorenz Starks_, or whatever they may be called, who, in humorous gloom, give free play to their pedantic temperament, and by standing dubiously in the way of their good-natured desires, destroy them, as well as the happiness of other people. In the two following volumes the figure of my father is completely developed, and if on his side as well as on the side of his son, a grain of mutual understanding had entered into this precious family relations.h.i.+p, both would have been spared much. But it was not to be; and indeed such is life. The best laid plan for a journey is upset by the stupidest kind of accident, and a man goes farthest when he does not know where he is going.

Do have the goodness to continue your comments; for I go slowly, as the subject demands, and keep much _in petto_ (on which account many readers grow impatient who would be quite satisfied to have the whole meal from beginning to end, well braised and roasted, served up at one sitting, so that they could the sooner swallow it, and on the morrow seek better or worse cheer at random, in a different eating-house or cook's-shop). But I, as I have already said, remain in ambush, in order to let my lancers and troopers rush forward at the right moment. It is, therefore, very interesting for me to learn what you, as an experienced Field-Marshal, have already noticed about the vanguard. I have as yet read no criticisms of this little work; I will read them all at once after the next two volumes are printed. For many years I have observed that those who should and would speak of me in public, be their intentions good or bad, seem to find themselves in a painful position, and I have hardly ever come face to face with a critic who did not sooner or later show the famous countenance of Vespasian, and a _faciem duram_.

If you could sometime give me a pleasant surprise by sending the _Rinaldo_, I should consider it a great favor.

It is only through you that I can keep in touch with music. We are really living here absolutely songless and soundless. The opera, with its old standbys, and its novelties dressed up to suit a little theatre, and produced at pretty long intervals, is no consolation. At the same time I am glad that the court and the city can delude themselves into thinking that they have a species of enjoyment handy. The inhabitant of a large city is to be accounted happy in this respect, because so much that is of importance in other lands is attracted thither.

You have made a point-blank shot at Alfieri. He is more remarkable than enjoyable. His works are explained by his life. He torments his readers and listeners, just as he torments himself as an author. He had the true nature of a count and was therefore blindly aristocratic. He hated tyranny, because he was aware of a tyrannical vein in himself, and fate had meted out to him a fitting tribulation, when it punished him, moderately enough, at the hands of the Sansculottes. The essential patrician and courtly nature of the man comes at last very laughably into evidence, when he can think of no better way to reward himself for his services than by having an order of knighthood manufactured for himself. Could he have showed more plainly how ingrained these formalities were in his nature? In the same way I must agree to what you say of Rousseau's _Pygmalion_. This production certainly belongs among the monstrosities, and is most remarkable as a symptom of the chief malady of that period, when State and custom, art and talent were destined to be stirred into a porridge with a nameless substance--which was, however, called nature--yes, when they were indeed thus stirred and beaten up together. I hope that my next volume will bring this operation to light; for was not I, too, attacked by this epidemic, and was it not beneficently responsible for the development of my being, which I cannot now picture to myself as growing in any other fas.h.i.+on?

Now I must answer your question about the first Walpurgis-night. The state of the case is as follows: Among historians there are some, and they are men to whom one cannot refuse one's esteem, who try to find a foundation in reality for every fable, every tradition, let it be as fantastic and absurd as it will, and, inside the envelope of the fairy-tale, believe they can always find a kernel of fact.

We owe much that is good to this method of treatment. For in order to go into the matter great knowledge is required; yes, intelligence, wit, and imagination are necessary to turn poetry into prose in this way. So now, in this case, one of our German antiquarians has tried to vindicate the ride of the witches and devils in the Hartz mountains, which has been well known to us in Germany for untold ages, and to place it upon a firm foundation, by the discovery of an historical origin. Which is, namely, that the German heathen priests and forefathers, after they had been driven from their sacred groves, and Christianity had been forced upon the people, betook themselves with their faithful followers, at the beginning of Spring, to the wild inaccessible mountains of the Hartz; and there, according to their old custom, they offered prayers and fire to the incorporeal G.o.d of Heaven and earth. In order to secure themselves against the spying, armed converters, they hit upon the idea of masking a number of their party, so as to keep their superst.i.tious opponents at a distance, and thus, protected by caricatures of devils, to finish in peace the pure wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d.

I found this explanation somewhere, but cannot put my finger on the author; the idea pleased me and I have turned this fabulous history into a poetical fable again.

LETTER 433

Weimar, October 30, 1824.

It had long been my wish that you might be invited to take a trip, because I was certain that I should then hear something from you; for, of course, I am convinced that in over-lively Berlin no one is likely to remember to write letters to those who are far away. Now a perilous and hazardous journey gives my worthy friend an opportunity for a very characteristic and pleasing description; a crowded family party furnishes material for a sketch that would certainly find a place in any English novel. For my part, I will reply with a couple of matters from my quiet sphere.

In the first place, then, my sojourn at home has this time been quite successful; yet we must not boast of it, only quietly and modestly continue our activities.

Langermann has probably communicated to you what I sent him. The introductory poem to _Werther_ I lately resurrected and read to myself, quietly and thoughtfully, and immediately afterward the _Elegie_ which harmonizes with it very well; only I missed in them the direct effect of your pleasing melody, although it gradually revived and rose out of my inner consciousness.

I am now also concluding the instalment on natural science, which was inconveniently delayed this year, and am editing my _Correspondence with Schiller from 1794_ to 1805. A great boon will be offered to the Germans, yes, I might even say to humanity in general, revealing the intimacy between two friends, of the kind who keep contributing to each other's development in the very act of pouring out their hearts to each other. I have a strange feeling at my task, for I am learning what I once was. However, it is most instructive of all to see how two people who mutually further their purposes _par force_, fritter away their time through inner over-activity and outer excitement and disturbance; so that there is, after all, no result fully worthy of their capacities, tendencies, aims. The effect will be extremely edifying; for every thoughtful man will be able to find in it consolation for himself.

Moreover, it contributes to various other things which are revived by the excited life of that period. If what you recognized a year ago as the cause of my illness now proves itself the apparent element of my good health, everything will be running smoothly and you will hear pleasant news from time to time.

In order that I may, however, hear from you soon, I wish to inform you that it would give me especial pleasure to receive a concise, forceful description of the Konigstadter theatricals. From what they are playing and rehearsing and from the notices and criticisms that reach me in the newspapers, I can form some notion for myself, to be sure; but, in any case, you will correct and strengthen my ideas. At your suggestion the architect sent me a plan which I found very acceptable, because, from it I can see for myself that the theatre is situated in a large residential section. This probably makes it very nice and cheerful, just as setting back the various rows of boxes is a very convenient arrangement for the audience who wish to be seen while they themselves see. This much I already know, and you, with a few strokes, will a.s.sist me to picture the most vivid actuality.

J. A. Stumpff, of London, Harp Maker to his Majesty, is just leaving me.

A native of Ruhl, he was sent at an early age to England, where he is now working as an able mechanic, a st.u.r.dy man of good stature in which you would take delight; at the same time he manifests the most patriotic sentiments for our language and literature. Through Schiller and myself he has been awakened to all that is good, and he is highly pleased to see our literary products become gradually known and appreciated. He revealed a remarkable personality.

Our sonorous bells are just announcing the celebration of the anniversary of the Reformation. It resounds with a ring that must not leave us indifferent. Keep us, Lord, in Thy word, and guide.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _Morgenblatt_ 1815. Nr. 113 12. Mai.]

[Footnote 2: (King Henry IV, Part II, Act 4, Scene 4.)]

[Footnote 3: The works referred to are the nine volumes of A. W.

Schlegel's translation, which appeared 1797-1810, and were subsequently (since 1826) supplemented by the missing dramas, translated under Tieck's direction.]

[Footnote 4: Delivered before the Amalia Lodge of Freemasons in Weimar, February 1813.]

[Footnote 5: Permission The Macmillan Co., New York.]

[Footnote 6: Permission The Macmillan Co., New York, and G. Bell & Sons, London.]

[Footnote 7: It is almost needless to observe that the word "demon" is her reference to its Greek origin, and implies nothing evil.--_Trans._]

[Footnote 8: This is the first day in Eckermann's first book, and the first time in which he speaks in this book, as distinguished from Soret.--_Trans._]

[Footnote 9: The word "Gelegenheitsgedicht" (occasional poem) properly applies to poems written for special occasions, such as birthdays, weddings, etc., but Goethe here extends the meaning, as he himself explains. As the English word "occasional" often implies no more than "occurrence now and then," the phrase "occasional poem" is not very happy, and is only used for want of a better. The reader must conceive the word in the limited sense, produced on some special event.--_Trans._]

[Footnote 10: Goethe's "West-ostliche (west-eastern) Divan," one of the twelve divisions of which is ent.i.tled "Das Buch des Unmuths" (The Book of Ill-Humor).--Trans.]

[Footnote 11: _Die Aufgeregten_ (the Agitated, in a political sense) is an unfinished drama by Goethe.--Trans.]