The Youth of Goethe Part 14

298.]

In all this tumultuous effusion we see the side of Goethe's nature which he has depicted in Werther, in Clavigo, and Fernando. Yet all the while he was completely master of his own genius. Throughout all his alternating raptures and despairs he was a.s.siduously practising the arts to which his genius called him. He diligently contributed both text and drawings to Lavater's _Physiognomy_; he worked at art on his own account, making a special study of Rembrandt; and, as we shall see, even at the time when his relations to Lili were at the breaking-point he was producing poetical work which he never surpa.s.sed at any period of his life. From two distinguished contemporaries, both men of mature age, who visited him during this time of his intensest preoccupation with Lili, we have interesting characterisations of him which complement the impressions we receive from his own self-portraiture. The one is from J.G. Sulzer, an author of repute on matters of art. "This young scholar," Sulzer writes, "is a real original genius, untrammelled in his manner of thinking, equally in the sphere of politics and learning.... In intercourse I found him pleasant and amiable.... I am greatly mistaken if this young man in his ripe years will not turn out a man of integrity. At present he has not as yet regarded man and human life from many sides. But his insight is keen."[235] The other writer is J.G. Zimmermann, one of the remarkable men of his time, whose book on _Solitude_, published in 1755, had brought him a European reputation. "I have been staying in Frankfort with Monsieur Gothe," he writes, "one of the most extraordinary and most powerful geniuses who has ever appeared in this world.... Ah! my friend, if you had seen him in his paternal home, if you had seen how this great man in the presence of his father and mother is the best conducted and most amiable of sons, you would have found it difficult not to regard him through the medium of love."[236]

[Footnote 235: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. p. 60.]

[Footnote 236: Max Morris, _op. cit._ v. 470.]

On October 12th, 1775, happened an event which was to be the decisive turning-point in Goethe's life. On that day the young Duke of Weimar and his bride arrived in Frankfort on their way home from Carlsruhe, where they had just celebrated their marriage, and again both warmly urged him to visit them at Weimar.[237] We have it on Goethe's own word that he had decided on a second flight from Frankfort as the only escape from his unendurable situation, but the invitation of the ducal pair brought his decision to a point. He accepted the invitation, announced his resolve to all his friends, and made the necessary preparations for his journey. The arrangement was that a gentleman of the Duke's suite, then at Carlsruhe, was to call for him on an appointed day and convey him to Weimar. The appointed day came, but no representative of the Duke appeared. To avoid the embarra.s.sment of meeting friends of whom he had formally taken leave, he kept within doors, working off his impatience in the composition of a play which the world was afterwards to know as _Egmont_. More than another week pa.s.sed, and, weary of his imprisonment, he stole out in the darkness enveloped in a long cloak to avoid recognition by chance friends. In his memory there lived one of these night-wanderings when he stood beneath Lili's window, heard her sing the song, beginning _Warum ziehst du mich unwiderstehlich_, in which, in the first freshness of his love, he had described the witchery with which she had bound him, and, the song ended, saw from her moving shadow that she paced up and down the room, evidently deep in thoughts which he leaves us to divine. Only his fixed resolve to renounce her, he adds in his narrative of the incident, prevented him from making his presence known to her.

[Footnote 237: The Duke had previously pa.s.sed through Frankfort on his way to Carlsruhe. On that occasion, also, Goethe had been in intercourse with him.]

There was one member of the Goethe household who was not displeased at the non-appearance of the ducal representative. The father had from the first been strenuously opposed to his son's going to Weimar, and in his opinion the apparent breach of the appointment was only an ill.u.s.tration of what a commoner was to expect in his intercourse with the great. His own desire was that his son should proceed to Italy with the double object of breaking his connection with Lili, and of enlarging his experience by an acquaintance with that country and its treasures. The embarra.s.sing predicament of his son offered the opportunity of realising his desire, and he now proposed to him that he should at once start for Italy and leave his cares behind him. In the circ.u.mstances there appeared to be no other alternative, and on October 30th Goethe left Frankfort with Italy as his intended goal.

Heidelberg was to be his first stage, and on the way thither he began the Journal in which he meant to record the narrative of his travels.

The two pages he wrote are the intense expression of the mental strain in which he set forth on a journey which was to have such a different issue from what he dreamt. The parting from Lili was uppermost in his thoughts. "Adieu, Lili," he wrote, "adieu for the second time! The first time we parted I was full of hope that our lots should one day be united.[238] Fate has decided that we must play our _roles_ apart."

[Footnote 238: This, as we have seen, is not consistent with certain of his former statements.--In June of 1776 Lili was betrothed to another, but, owing to his bankruptcy, marriage did not follow. In 1778, however, she was married to a Stra.s.sburg banker. Like all Goethe's loves, she retained a kindly memory of him. She is reported to have said that she regarded herself as owing her best self to him.--Max Morris, _op. cit._ v. 468.]

At Heidelberg he spent a few days in the house of a lady of whom we have already heard--that Mademoiselle Delf who had so effectually brought matters to a point between Goethe and Lili. She was now convinced that the betrothal had been a mistake, but, undismayed, she now suggested to him that there was a lady in Heidelberg who would be a satisfactory subst.i.tute for the lost one. One night he had retired to rest after listening to a protracted exposition of the Fraulein's projects for his future, when he was roused by the sound of a postilion's horn. The postilion brought a letter which cleared up the mystery of the delayed messenger. Hastily dressing, Goethe ordered a post-chaise, and, amid the vehement expostulations of his hostess, began the first stage of the journey which was to lead him not to Italy but to the Court of Weimar. It was the most momentous hour of his life, and, as he took his place in the carriage, he called aloud, in mock heroics, to the excited Fraulein words which he may have recently written in _Egmont_, and which had even more significance as bearing on his own future than he could have dreamed at the moment: "Child! Child! Forbear! As if goaded by invisible spirits, the sun-steeds of time bear onward the light car of our destiny; and nothing remains for us but, with calm self-possession, firmly to grasp the reins, and now right, now left, to steer the wheels here from the precipice and there from the rock. Whither he is hasting, who knows?

Does anyone consider whence he came?"[239]

[Footnote 239: Miss Swanwick's translation. Goethe concludes his Autobiography with these words.]

With him to Weimar Goethe bore two ma.n.u.scripts to which, during his last years in Frankfort, he had, at one time and another, committed his deepest feelings as a man, his profoundest thoughts as a thinker, and his finest imaginations as a poet. The one contained the first draft of the drama which, as we have seen, was written in those days of torturing suspense preceding his final departure from his paternal home, and which, subsequently recast, was to take its place among the best known of his works--the tragedy of _Egmont_. Of far higher moment for the world, however, was the matter contained in the other of these ma.n.u.scripts. Therein were set down the original portions of a poem which was eventually to fructify into one of the great imaginative products of all time--the drama of _Faust_.

Beyond all other of Goethe's productions previous to his settling in Weimar, these original scenes of _Faust_ bring before us his deepest and truest self. In all the other longer works of that period, in _Gotz_, in _Werther_, in _Clavigo_, and the rest, one side--the emotional side--of his nature had been predominantly represented; but in what he wrote of _Faust_ we have all his mind and heart as he had them from nature, and as they had been schooled by time. It is one of the fortunate incidents in literary history that we now possess these fragments in which the genius of Goethe expressed itself with an intensity of imaginative force which he never again exemplified in the same degree. The original text was unknown till 1887, when Erich Schmidt found it in the possession of a grandnephew of a lady of the Court of Weimar,[240] who had copied it from the ma.n.u.script received by her from Goethe. It is uncertain whether the ma.n.u.script thus discovered exactly corresponds to the ma.n.u.script which Goethe took with him to Weimar, but the probability is that their contents are virtually identical.

[Footnote 240: Fraulein Luise von Gochhausen.]

As in the case of _Der Ewige Jude_, _Prometheus_, and other fragments of the Frankfort period, the successive scenes of the _Urfaust_ were thrown off at different times on the inspiration of the moment, and the exact date of their production can only be a matter of conjecture.

What we do know is that the figure of the legendary Faust had early attracted his attention. As a boy he had read at least one of the chap-books which recorded the wondrous history of the scholar who had sold himself to the devil, and, as a common spectacle in Germany, he must have seen the puppet-show in which the story of Faust was dramatised for the people. According to his own statement, it was in 1769 that the conception of a poem, based on the Faust legend, first suggested itself to him, but it was during the years 1774 and 1775 that most of the scenes of the _Urfaust_ were written. Both by himself and others there are references during these years to his work on _Faust_, and as late as the middle of September, 1775, he tells the Countess s...o...b..rg that, while at Offenbach with Lili, he had composed another scene.

What attracted Goethe to the legend of Faust was that it presented a framework into which he could dramatically work his own life's experience, equally in the world of thought and feeling. The story that depicted a pa.s.sionate searcher for truth, rebelling against the limits imposed by the place a.s.signed to man in the nature of things, who at all costs dared to burst these limits in order to enjoy life in all its fulness--this story had a suggestiveness that appealed to Goethe's profoundest consciousness. "I also," he says in his Autobiography, "had wandered at large through all the fields of knowledge, and its futility had early enough been shown to me. In life also I had experimented in all manner of ways, and always returned more dissatisfied and distracted than ever." Of this correspondence which Goethe recognised between the legendary Faust and his own being, the final proof is that on the basis of the legend he eventually constructed the work in which he embodied all that life had taught him of the conditions under which it has to be lived.

When Goethe first put his hand to the _Urfaust_, he had no definite conception of an artistic whole in which the suggestions of the legend should be focussed in view of a determinate end. As we have it, the _Urfaust_ consists of twenty-two scenes--those that relate the Gretchen tragedy alone having any necessary connection with each other. All the successive parts, including the Gretchen tragedy, suggest improvisation under a compelling immediate impulse with no reference to what had gone before or what might come after. Apart from its poetic value, therefore, the _Urfaust_ is the concentrated expression of what had most intensely engaged Goethe's mind and heart previous to the period when it was produced.

In the _Urfaust_ we have neither the Prologue in the Theatre nor the Prologue in Heaven, but, with the exception of some verbal changes, the opening scene which introduces us to Faust is identical with that of the poem in its final form. Seated at his desk in a dusty Gothic chamber, furnished with all the apparatus for scientific experiment, Faust reviews his past life, and finds that he has been mocked from the beginning. In every department of boasted knowledge he has made himself a master, but it has brought satisfaction neither to his intellect nor his heart, and he has turned to magic in the hope that it would reveal to him the secrets that would make life worth living.

As in the completed _Faust_, he opens the book of Nostradamus and finds the signs of the Macrocosmus and of the Earth-Spirit, by both of which he is baffled in his attempt to enter the _arcana_ of being.

In the _Urfaust_, also, we have, with a few verbal alterations, the Scene in which Faust communicates to his famulus Wagner his cynical view of the value of human knowledge. In the _Urfaust_, however, are lacking the Scenes that follow in the completed poem--Faust's soliloquy and meditated suicide, the Easter walk, the appearance of Mephistopheles in the shape of a poodle, and the compact that follows.

In place of these scenes we have but one, in which Mephistopheles, without previous introduction, is represented as a professor giving advice to a raw student who has come to consult him as to his future course of conduct and study. Of all the Scenes in the _Urfaust_ this is the feeblest, and its immaturity, as well as its evident references to Goethe's own experiences at Leipzig, suggest that it was the earliest written. This Scene is followed by another reminiscent of Leipzig--the Scene in Auerbach's cellar, which mainly differs from the later form in being written in prose and not in verse--Faust and not Mephistopheles playing the conjuror in drawing wine from a table.

In the completed poem we are next introduced to the Witches' Kitchen, where Faust is rejuvenated, and where he sees Margaret's image in a mirror--the reader being thus prepared for the tragedy that is to follow. In the _Urfaust_ we pa.s.s with no connecting link from the Scene in Auerbach's Cellar to Faust's meeting with Margaret and the successive Scenes which depict her self-abandonment to Faust and her consequent misery and ruin. The content of these Scenes is virtually the same in both forms--the most important difference being that, while the concluding Prison Scene is in prose in the _Urfaust_, it is in verse in the later form. Of the three songs which Margaret sings, only the first, "There was a King in Thule," was retouched. In the _Urfaust_ the duel between Valentin and Mephistopheles does not occur, and we have only Valentin's soliloquy on the ruin of his sister; and the scenes, _Wald und Hohle_, the _Walpurgis Nacht_, the _Walpurgisnachtstraum_, generally condemned by critics as inartistic irrelevancies, are likewise lacking.[241]

[Footnote 241: The words "[Sie] ist gerettet" are not in the _Urfaust_.]

The _Urfaust_ is the crowning poetic achievement of the youthful Goethe, and by general consent, as has already been said, he never again achieved a similar intense fusion of thought, feeling, and imagination. Apart from the opening Scenes, which have no dramatic connection with it, the Gretchen tragedy const.i.tutes an artistic whole which by its perfection of detail and overwhelming tragic effect must ever remain one of the marvels of creative genius. Not less astonis.h.i.+ng as a manifestation of Goethe's youthful power is the creation in all their essential lineaments of the three figures, Faust, Mephistopheles, and Margaret--figures stamped ineffaceably on the imagination of educated humanity. Be it said also that from the _Urfaust_ mainly come those single lines and pa.s.sages which are among the memorable words recorded in universal literature. Such, to specify only a few, are the Song of the Earth-Spirit; the lines commenting on man's vain endeavour to comprehend the past, and on the dreariness of all theory,[242] contrasted with the freshness and colour of life; Faust's confession of his religious faith, and Margaret's songs. To have added in this measure to the intellectual inheritance of the race a.s.sures the testator his rank among the great spirits of all time.

[Footnote 242:

Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, Und grun des Lebens goldner Baum.]

With the _Urfaust_, marking as it does the highest development which Goethe attained in the years of his youth, this record of these years may fitly close. His characteristics as they present themselves during that period are certainly in strange contrast to the conception of the matured Goethe which holds general possession of the public mind, at least in this country. In that conception the world was for the later Goethe "a palace of art," in which he moved--

"as G.o.d holding no form of creed But contemplating all."[243]

[Footnote 243: Tennyson disclaimed having Goethe in his mind when he wrote _The Palace of Art_.]

But such transformations of human character are not in the order of nature, and, due allowance made for the numbing hand of time, the youthful Goethe remained essentially the same Goethe to the end.

Behind the mask of impa.s.sivity which chilled the casually curious who sought him in his last years there was ever that _etwas weibliches_ which Schiller noted in him in his middle age. In the critical moments of life he was in his maturity as in his youth subject to emotions which for the time seemed to be beyond his control. On the death of his wife his behaviour was that of one distracted. He described himself at the age of fifteen as "something of a chameleon," and, as already remarked, Felix Mendelssohn, who saw him a year before his death, declared that the world would one day come to believe that there had not been one but many Goethes. We have seen that throughout the period of his youth some external impulse to production was a necessity of his nature, and so it was to the close. What Behrisch and Merck and his sister Cornelia did for him in these early years, had to be done for him in later life by similar friends and counsellors.

If, like Plato and Dante, he was "a great lover" in his youth, "a great lover" he remained even into time-stricken age; when past his seventieth year he was moved by a pa.s.sion from which, as in youth, he found deliverance by giving vent to it in pa.s.sionate verse. It is in the youthful Goethe, before time and circ.u.mstance had dulled the spontaneous play of feeling, that we see the man as he came from nature's hand, with all his manifold gifts, and with all his sensuous impulses, tossing him from one object of desire to another, yet ever held in check by the pa.s.sion that was deepest in him--the pa.s.sion to know and to create.

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