The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume I Part 18

Surely a Greek dramatist of the first rank, come to life again in Goethe's age and entering into the heritage of this development, would have modernized both subject and form in the same way.

Most intimate is the relation of _Iphigenia_ to Goethe's inner life, and this relation best illumines the spiritual import of the drama.

Like his _Torquato Ta.s.so_, it springs entirely from conditions and experiences of the early Weimar years and those just preceding. It was conceived and the first prose version written early in 1779; it received its final metrical form December, 1786--in Rome indeed, but it owed to Italy only a higher artistic finish.

In his autobiography Goethe has revealed to us that his works are fragments of a great confession. Moods of his pre-Weimar storm and stress vibrate in his _Iphigenia_--feverish unrest, defiance of conventionality, t.i.tanic trust in his individual genius, self-reproach, and remorse for guilt toward those he loved,--Friederike and Lili. Thus feeling his inner conflicts to be like the sufferings of Orestes, he wrote in a letter, August, 1775, shortly after returning to Frankfurt from his first Swiss journey: "Perhaps the invisible scourge of the Eumenides will soon drive me out again from my fatherland."

In November, 1775, Goethe went to Weimar, and there he found redemption from his unrest and dejection in the friends.h.i.+p of Frau von Stein. Her beneficent influence effected his new-birth into calm self-control and harmony of spirit. On August 7, 1779, Goethe wrote in his diary: "May the idea of purity, extending even to the morsel I take into my mouth, become ever more luminous in me!" If Orestes is Goethe, Iphigenia is Frau von Stein; and in the personal sense the theme of the drama is the restoration of the poet to spiritual purity by the influence of n.o.ble womanhood.

But there is a larger, universally human sense. Such healing of Orestes is typically human; n.o.ble womanhood best realizes the ideal of the truly human (_Humanitat_). In a way that transcends understanding, one pure, strong human personality may by its influence restore moral vigor and bring peace and hope to other souls rent by remorse and sunk in despair. This Goethe himself expressed as the central thought of this drama in the lines:

Alle menschlichen Gebrechen Suhnet reine Menschlichkeit

(For each human fault and frailty Pure humanity atones).

The eighteenth century's conception of "humanity," the ideal of the truly human, found two-fold cla.s.sic, artistic expression in Germany at the same time; in Lessing's _Nathan the Wise_ and in Goethe's _Iphigenia in Tauris_, the former rationalistic, the latter broader, more subtle, mystical.

IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS (1787)[33]

A DRAMA IN FIVE ACTS

TRANSLATED BY ANNA SWANWICK

Like _Torquato Ta.s.so, Iphigenia_ was originally written in prose, and in that form was acted at the Weimar Court Theatre about 1779. Goethe himself took the part of Orestes.

DRAMATIS PERSONae

IPHIGENIA.

THOAS, _King of the Taurians_.

ORESTES.

PYLADES.

ARKAS.

ACT I

SCENE I. _A Grove before the Temple of Diana_.

IPHIGENIA

Beneath your leafy gloom, ye waving boughs Of this old, shady, consecrated grove, As in the G.o.ddess' silent sanctuary, With the same shuddering feeling forth I step, As when I trod it first, nor ever here Doth my unquiet spirit feel at home.

Long as a higher will, to which I bow, Hath kept me here conceal'd, still, as at first, I feel myself a stranger. For the sea Doth sever me, alas! from those I love, And day by day upon the sh.o.r.e I stand, The land of h.e.l.las seeking with my soul; But to my sighs, the hollow-sounding waves Bring, save their own hoa.r.s.e murmurs, no reply.

Alas for him! who friendless and alone, Remote from parents and from brethren dwells; From him grief s.n.a.t.c.hes every coming joy Ere it doth reach his lip. His yearning thoughts Throng back for ever to his father's halls, Where first to him the radiant sun unclosed The gates of heav'n; where closer, day by day, Brothers and sisters, leagued in pastime sweet, Around each other twin'd love's tender bonds.

I will not reckon with the G.o.ds; yet truly Deserving of lament is woman's lot.

Man rules alike at home and in the field, Nor is in foreign climes without resource; Him conquest crowneth, him possession gladdens, And him an honorable death awaits.

How circ.u.mscrib'd is woman's destiny!

Obedience to a harsh, imperious lord, Her duty, and her comfort; sad her fate, Whom hostile fortune drives to lands remote!

Thus Thoas holds me here, a n.o.ble man Bound with a heavy though a sacred chain.

O how it shames me, G.o.ddess, to confess That with repugnance I perform these rites For thee, divine protectress! unto whom I would in freedom dedicate my life.

In thee, Diana, I have always hoped, And still I hope in thee, who didst infold Within the holy shelter of thine arm The outcast daughter of the mighty king.

Daughter of Jove! hast thou from ruin'd Troy Led back in triumph to his native land The mighty man, whom thou didst sore afflict, His daughter's life in sacrifice demanding,-- Hast thou for him, the G.o.dlike Agamemnon, Who to thine altar led his darling child, Preserv'd his wife, Electra, and his son, His dearest treasures?--then at length restore Thy suppliant also to her friends and home, And save her, as thou once from death didst save, So now, from living here, a second death.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IPHIGENIA Anselm Feuerbach]

SCENE II

IPHIGENIA, ARKAS

ARKAS

The king hath sent me hither, bade me greet With hail, and fair salute, Diana's priestess.

For new and wondrous conquest, this the day, When to her G.o.ddess Tauris renders thanks.

I hasten on before the king and host, Himself to herald, and its near approach.

IPHIGENIA

We are prepar'd to give them worthy greeting; Our G.o.ddess doth behold with gracious eye The welcome sacrifice from Thoas' hand.

ARKAS

Would that I also found the priestess' eye, Much honor'd, much revered one, found thine eye, O consecrated maid, more calm, more bright, To all a happy omen! Still doth grief, With gloom mysterious, shroud thy inner mind; Vainly, through many a tedious year we wait For one confiding utterance from thy breast.

Long as I've known thee in this holy place, That look of thine hath ever made me shudder; And, as with iron bands, thy soul remains Lock'd in the deep recesses of thy breast.

IPHIGENIA

As doth become the exile and the orphan.

ARKAS

Dost thou then here seem exil'd and an orphan?

IPHIGENIA

Can foreign scenes our fatherland replace?

ARKAS

Thy fatherland is foreign now to thee.

IPHIGENIA