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LIFE WITHOUT
AND
LIFE WITHIN;
OR,
REVIEWS, NARRATIVES, ESSAYS, AND
POEMS.
BY
MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI,
AUTHOR OF "WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY," "AT HOME AND
ABROAD," "ART, LITERATURE, AND THE DRAMA," ETC.
EDITED BY HER BROTHER,
ARTHUR B. FULLER.
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by
ARTHUR B. FULLER,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts
[Illustration: colophon]
_Cambridge:
Presswork by John Wilson and Son._
PREFACE.
Every person, who can be said to really live at all, leads two lives
during this period of mortal existence. The one life is outward; it is
passed in reading the thoughts of others; in contemplating the
struggles, the defeats, the victories, the virtues, the sins, in fine,
all things which make the history of those who surround us; and in
gazing upon the structures which Art has reared, or paintings which she
hath inscribed on the canvas; or looking upon the grand temple of the
material universe, and beholding scenes painted by a hand more skilled,
more wondrous, in its creative power, than ever can be human hand. The
life passed in examining what other minds have produced, or living other
men's lives by looking at their deeds, or in any way discerning what
addresses the bodily eye or the physical ear,--this is often wise and
well; essential, indeed, to any inner life; but it is outward, not
self-centred, not the product of our own individual natures.
But the thought of others suggests or develops thought of our own--the
history of other men, as it is writing itself imperishably every day
upon their souls, or already has written itself in letters of living
light or lines of gloomy blackness--gives rise to internal sympathy or
abhorrence on the part of us who look on and read what is thus writing
and written. Our own spirits are stirred within us: our passions, which
have been sleeping lions, our affections and aspirations, before angels
with folded wings,--these are awakened by what others are doing, and
then we struggle with the bad or yield to it; we obey or disobey the
good, and our internal moral life begins; the outward universe or the
Great Spirit in our hearts speaks to our souls, leading first to inward
dissatisfaction, then to aspiration for and attainment of holiness, and
now the inner spiritual life, which shall transfigure all outward life,
and throw its own light and give its own hue to all the outward
universe, has begun. These two lives are parallel streams; often they
mingle their waters, and each imparts its own hue and characteristic to
the other. Sometimes the outer life is the main stream; men live only in
other men's thoughts and deeds--look only upon the material universe,
and retire but seldom within: the inner life is but a silver thread--a
little rill, scarce discoverable save by the eye of God. Again, with
many the outer life is but little; the passing scene, the din of the
battle which humanity is ever waging, the one scarce is gazed upon or
the other heard by those who retire much from the outward world, and
live almost exclusively upon their own thoughts, and in an ideal realm
of fancy, or a real one of internal conflict, which is hidden from the
outer vision. Better is it when the stream of outward and inner life are
both full and broad--when the glories of the material universe attract
the gaze, the realm of literature and learning invite the willing feet
to wander in paths where poetry has planted many flowers, philosophy
many a sturdy oak of truth, which centuries cannot overthrow--and when,
on the other hand, men do not forget to retire often within, and find
their own minds kingdoms, where many a noble thought spontaneously
grows; their own souls heavens, where, the busy world withdrawn, they
commune much with their own aspirations, fight many a noble battle with
whatever hinders their spiritual peace, and where they commune yet more
with that Comforter, the Divine Spirit, and Christ, that Friend and
Helper of all who are seeking to make the life of thought and desire, as
well as outward word and deed, high and holy.
It is not a brother's part to pass critical judgment upon a sister's
literary attainments, or mental and spiritual gifts, nor is it needful
in reference to Madame Ossoli. The world never has questioned her great
learning or rich and varied culture; these have been uniformly
acknowledged. As a keen and sagacious critic of literature, as an
admirer of whatever was noble, an abhorrer of all low and mean, this
she was early, and is, so far as we know, without any question regarded.
That her judgments have always been acquiesced in is far from true; but
the public has ever believed them alike sincere and fearless. The life
without,--that of culture and intelligent, careful observation,--all
know _that_ stream to have been full to overflowing.
More and more, too, every year, the public are beginning to recognize
and appreciate the richness and the beauty of her inner life. The very
keenness of her critical acumen,--the very boldness of her rebuke of all
she deemed petty and base--the very truthfulness of her conformity to
her own standard--her very abhorrence of all cant and mere conformity,
long prevented, and even yet somewhat hinder, many from adequately
recognizing the loving spirit, the sympathetic nature, the Christian
faith, and spiritual devoutness which made her domestic and social life,
her action amid her own kindred and nation, and in Rome, for those not
allied to her by birth and lineage, at once kindly, noble, and full of
holy self-sacrifice. Yet continually the world is learning these things:
the history of her life, as her memoirs reveal it, the testimony of so
many witnesses here and in other lands, a more careful study and a wider
reading of her works, are leading, perhaps rapidly enough, to a true
appreciation of the spiritual beauty of her soul, and men see that the
waters of her inner life form a stream at once clear and pure, deep and
broad.
In presenting to the public the last volume of Margaret Fuller's works,
the Editor is encouraged to hope for them a candid, cordial reception.
It has been a work of love on his part, for which he has ever felt
inadequate, and from it for a time shrunk. But each volume has had a
wider and more cordial welcome than its predecessor, and works received
by the great public almost with coldness when first published, have,
when republished, had a large and cheering circulation, and, what is far
better, a kindly appreciation not only by the few, but even by the many.
This is evidence enough that the progress of time has brought the public
and my sister into closer sympathy and agreement, and a better
understanding on its part of her true views and character.
The present volume is less than any of its predecessors a republication.
_Only one of its articles has ever appeared before in book form._ As a
book, it is, then, essentially new, though some of its reviews and
essays have appeared in the columns of the Tribune and Dial. A large
portion of it has never appeared at all in print, especially its
poetical portions. The work of collecting these essays, reviews, and
poems has been a difficult one, much more than attended the preparation
of the previous volumes. Unable, of course, to consult their author as
to any of them, the revision I have given is doubtless very imperfect,
and requires large allowance. It is even possible that among the poems
one or more written by friends and sent her, or copied from some other
author, may have crept in unawares; but this all possible pains have
been taken to prevent. Such as it is, the volume is now before the
public; it truly reveals her inner and outer life, and is doubtless the
last of the volumes containing the writings of MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI.
CONTENTS.
PART I.--REVIEWS.
Page.
MENZEL'S VIEW OF GOETHE 13
GOETHE 23
THOMAS HOOD 61
LETTERS FROM A LANDSCAPE PAINTER 69
BEETHOVEN 71
BROWN'S NOVELS 83
EDGAR A. POE 87
ALFIERI AND CELLINI 93
ITALY.--CARY'S DANTE 102
AMERICAN FACTS 108
NAPOLEON AND HIS MARSHALS 110
PHYSICAL EDUCATION 116
FREDERICK DOUGLASS 121
PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 127
UNITED STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION 141
STORY BOOKS FOR THE HOT WEATHER 143
SHELLEY'S POEMS 149
FESTUS 153
FRENCH NOVELISTS OF THE DAY 158
THE NEW SCIENCE, OR THE PHILOSOPHY OF MESMERISM OR ANIMAL MAGNETISM 168
DEUTSCHE SCHNELLPOST 174
OLIVER CROMWELL 179
EMERSON'S ESSAYS 191
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 199
PART II.--MISCELLANEOUS.
FIRST OF JANUARY 207
NEW YEAR'S DAY 219
ST. VALENTINE'S DAY 226
FOURTH OF JULY 232
FIRST OF AUGUST 236
THANKSGIVING 243
CHRISTMAS 250
MARIANA 258
SUNDAY MEDITATIONS ON VARIOUS TEXTS.--FIRST 277
" " " SECOND 280
APPEAL FOR AN ASYLUM FOR DISCHARGED FEMALE CONVICTS 283
THE RICH MAN.--AN IDEAL SKETCH 287
THE POOR MAN.--AN IDEAL SKETCH 297
THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE 304
KLOPSTOCK AND META 308
WHAT FITS A MAN TO BE A VOTER.--A FABLE 314
DISCOVERIES 319
POLITENESS TOO GREAT A LUXURY TO BE GIVEN TO THE POOR 322
CASSIUS M. CLAY 326
THE MAGNOLIA OF LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN 330
CONSECRATION OF GRACE CHURCH 337
LATE ASPIRATIONS 344
FRAGMENTARY THOUGHTS, FROM MARGARET FULLER'S JOURNAL 348
FAREWELL TO NEW YORK 354
PART III.--POEMS.
FREEDOM AND TRUTH 357
DESCRIPTION OF A PORTION OF THE JOURNEY TO TRENTON FALLS 357
JOURNEY TO TRENTON FALLS 361
SUE ROSA CRUX 365
THE DAHLIA, THE ROSE, AND THE HELIOTROPE 367
TO MY FRIENDS, (TRANSLATION.) 368
STANZAS WRITTEN AT THE AGE OF SEVENTEEN 370
FLAXMAN 371
THOUGHTS ON SUNDAY MORNING, WHEN PREVENTED BY A SNOWSTORM
FROM GOING TO CHURCH 371
TO A GOLDEN HEART WORN ROUND THE NECK 374
LINES ACCOMPANYING A BOUQUET OF WILD COLUMBINE 375
DISSATISFACTION, (TRANSLATION.) 377
MY SEAL-RING 378
THE CONSOLERS, (TRANSLATION.) 379
ABSENCE OF LOVE 380
MEDITATIONS 381
RICHTER 383
THE THANKFUL AND THE THANKLESS 384
PROPHECY AND FULFILMENT 385
VERSES GIVEN TO W. C., WITH A BLANK BOOK 385
EAGLES AND DOVES, (TRANSLATION.) 387
TO A FRIEND, WITH HEARTSEASE 388
ASPIRATION 389
THE ONE IN ALL 390
A GREETING 393
LINES TO EDITH, ON HER BIRTHDAY 394
LINES WRITTEN IN HER BROTHER R.F.F.'S JOURNAL 395
ON A PICTURE REPRESENTING THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS 396
THE CAPTURED WILD HORSE 397
EPILOGUE TO THE TRAGEDY OF ESSEX, (TRANSLATION.) 400
HYMN WRITTEN FOR A SUNDAY SCHOOL 404
DESERTION, (TRANSLATION.) 405
SONG WRITTEN FOR A MAY-DAY FESTIVAL 406
CARADORI SINGING 409
LINES IN ANSWER TO STANZAS CONTAINING SEVERAL PASSAGES OF
DISTINGUISHED BEAUTY 409
INFLUENCE OF THE OUTWARD 410
TO MISS R.B. 411
SISTRUM 413
IMPERFECT THOUGHTS 414
SADNESS 414
LINES WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM 416
TO S.C. 417
LINES WRITTEN IN BOSTON ON A BEAUTIFUL AUTUMNAL DAY 420
TO E.C., WITH HERBERT'S POEMS 422
Life without and Life within.
PART I.
REVIEWS.
MENZEL'S VIEW OF GOETHE.
Menzel's view of Goethe is that of a Philistine, in the least
opprobrious sense of the term. It is one which has long been applied in
Germany to petty cavillers and incompetent critics. I do not wish to
convey a sense so disrespectful in speaking of Menzel. He has a vigorous
and brilliant mind, and a wide, though imperfect, culture. He is a man
of talent, but talent cannot comprehend genius. He judges of Goethe as
a Philistine, inasmuch as he does not enter into Canaan, and read the
prophet by the light of his own law, but looks at him from without, and
tries him by a rule beneath which he never lived. That there _was_
something Menzel saw; what that something was _not_ he saw, but _what_
it _was_ he could not see; none could _see_; it was something to be felt
and known at the time of its apparition, but the clear sight of it was
reserved to a day far enough removed from its sphere to get a commanding
point of view. Has that day come? A little while ago it seemed so;
certain features of Goethe's personality, certain results of his
tendency, had become so manifest. But as the plants he planted mature,
they shed a new seed for a yet more noble growth. A wider experience, a
deeper insight, make rejected words come true, and bring a more refined
perception of meaning already discerned. Like all his elder brothers of
the elect band, the forlorn hope of humanity, he obliges us to live and
grow, that we may walk by his side; vainly we strive to leave him behind
in some niche of the hall of our ancestors; a few steps onward and we
find him again, of yet serener eye and more towering mien than on his
other pedestal. Former measurements of his size have, like the girdle
bound by the nymphs round the infant Apollo, only served to make him
outgrow the unworthy compass. The still rising sun, with its broader
light, shows us it is not yet noon. In him is soon perceived a prophet
of our own age, as well as a representative of his own; and we doubt
whether the revolutions of the century be not required to interpret the
quiet depths of his _Saga_.
Sure it is that none has yet found Goethe's place, as sure that none
can claim to be his peer, who has not some time, ay, and for a long
time, been his pupil!
Yet much truth has been spoken of him in detail, some by Menzel, but in
so superficial a spirit, and with so narrow a view of its bearings, as
to have all the effect of falsehood. Such denials of the crown can only
fix it more firmly on the head of the "Old Heathen." To such the best
answer may be given in the words of Bettina Brentan: "The others
criticise thy works; I only know that they lead us on and on till we
live in them." And thus will all criticism end in making more men and
women read these works, and "on and on," till they forget whether the
author be a patriot or a moralist, in the deep humanity of the thought,
the breathing nature of the scene. While words they have accepted with
immediate approval fade from memory, these oft-denied words of keen,
cold truth return with ever new force and significance.
Men should be true, wise, beautiful, pure, and aspiring. This man was
true and wise, capable of all things. Because he did not in one short
life complete his circle, can we afford to lose him out of sight? Can
we, in a world where so few men have in any degree redeemed their
inheritance, neglect a nature so rich and so manifestly progressive?
Historically considered, Goethe needs no apology. His so-called faults
fitted him all the better for the part he had to play. In cool
possession of his wide-ranging genius, he taught the imagination of
Germany, that the highest flight should be associated with the steady
sweep and undazzled eye of the eagle. Was he too much the connoisseur,
did he attach too great an importance to the cultivation of taste, where
just then German literature so much needed to be refined, polished, and
harmonized? Was he too sceptical, too much an experimentalist,--how else
could he have formed himself to be the keenest, and, at the same time,
most nearly universal of observers, teaching theologians, philosophers,
and patriots that nature comprehends them all, commands them all, and
that no one development of life must exclude the rest? Do you talk, in
the easy cant of the day, of German obscurity, extravagance, pedantry,
and bad taste,--and will you blame this man, whose Greek, English,
Italian, German mind steered so clear of these rocks and shoals,
clearing, adjusting, and calming on each side, wherever he turned his
prow? Was he not just enough of an idealist, just enough of a realist,
for his peculiar task? If you want a moral enthusiast, is not there
Schiller? If piety, of purest, mystic sweetness, who but Novalis?
Exuberant sentiment, that treasures each withered leaf in a tender
breast, look to your Richter. Would you have men to find plausible
meaning for the deepest enigma, or to hang up each map of literature,
well painted and dotted on its proper roller,--there are the Schlegels.
Men of ideas were numerous as migratory crows in autumn, and Jacobi
wrote the heart into philosophy, as well as he could. Who could fill
Goethe's place to Germany, and to the world, of which she is now the
teacher? His much-reviled aristocratic turn was at that time a
reconciling element. It is plain why he was what he was, for his country
and his age.
Whoever looks into the history of his youth, will be struck by a
peculiar force with which all things worked together to prepare him for
his office of artist-critic to the then chaotic world of thought in his
country. What an unusually varied scene of childhood and of youth! What
endless change and contrast of circumstances and influences! Father and
mother, life and literature, world and nature,--playing into one
another's hands, always by antagonism! Never was a child so carefully
guarded by fate against prejudice, against undue bias, against any
engrossing sentiment. Nature having given him power of poetical sympathy
to know every situation, would not permit him to make himself at home in
any. And how early what was most peculiar in his character manifested
itself, may be seen in these anecdotes related by his mother to Bettina.
Of Goethe's childhood.--"He was not willing to play with other little
children, unless they were very fair. In a circle he began suddenly to
weep, screaming, 'Take away the black, ugly child; I cannot bear to have
it here.' He could not be pacified; they were obliged to take him home,
and there the mother could hardly console him for the child's ugliness.
He was then only three years old."
"His mother was surprised, that when his brother Jacob died, who had
been his playmate, he shed no tear, but rather seemed annoyed by the
lamentations of those around him. But afterwards, when his mother asked
whether he had not loved his brother, he ran into his room and brought
from under his bed a bundle of papers, all written over, and said he had
done all this for Jacob."
Even so in later years, had he been asked if he had not loved his
country and his fellow-men, he would not have answered by tears and
vows, but pointed to his works.
In the first anecdote is observable that love of symmetry in external
relations which, in manhood, made him give up the woman he loved,
because she would not have been in place among the old-fashioned
furniture of his father's house; and dictated the course which, at the
crisis of his life, led him to choose an outward peace rather than an
inward joy. In the second, he displays, at the earliest age, a sense of
his vocation as a recorder, the same which drew him afterwards to write
his life into verse, rather than clothe it in action. His indirectness,
his aversion to the frankness of heroic meetings, is repulsive and
suspicious to generous and flowing natures; yet many of the more
delicate products of the mind seem to need these sheaths, lest bird and
insect rifle them in the bud.
And if this subtlety, isolation, and distance be the dictate of nature,
we submit, even as we are not vexed that the wild bee should hide its
honey in some old moss-grown tree, rather than in the glass hives of our
gardens. We believe it will repay the pains we take in seeking for it,
by some peculiar flavor from unknown flowers. Was Goethe the wild bee?
We see that even in his boyhood he showed himself a very Egyptian, in
his love for disguises; forever expressing his thought in roundabout
ways, which seem idle mummery to a mind of Spartan or Roman mould. Had
he some simple thing to tell his friend, he read it from the newspaper,
or wrote it into a parable. Did he make a visit, he put on the hat or
wig of some other man, and made his bow as Schmidt or Schlosser, that
they might stare, when he spoke as Goethe. He gives as the highest
instance of passionate grief, that he gave up for one day watching the
tedious ceremonies of the imperial coronation. In daily life many of
these carefully recorded passages have an air of platitude, at which no
wonder the Edinburgh Review laughed. Yet, on examination, they are full
of meaning. And when we see the same propensity writing itself into
Ganymede, Mahomet's song, the Bayadere, and Faust, telling all
Goethe's religion in Mignon and Makana, all his wisdom in the
Western-Eastern Divan, we respect it, accept, all but love it.
This theme is for a volume, and I must quit it now. A brief summary of
what Goethe was suffices to vindicate his existence, as an agent in
history and a part of nature, but will not meet the objections of those
who measure him, as they have a right to do, by the standard of ideal
manhood.
Most men, in judging another man, ask, Did he live up to our standard?
But to me it seems desirable to ask rather, Did he live up to his own?
So possible is it that our consciences may be more enlightened than that
of the Gentile under consideration. And if we can find out how much was
given him, we are told, in a pure evangelium, to judge thereby how much
shall be required.
Now, Goethe has given us both his own standard and the way to apply
it. "To appreciate any man, learn first what object he proposed to
himself; next, what degree of earnestness he showed with regard to
attaining that object."
And this is part of his hymn for man made in the divine image, "THE
GODLIKE."
"Hail to the Unknown, the
Higher Being
Felt within us!
"Unfeeling
As nature,
Still shineth the sun
Over good and evil;
And on the sinner,
Smile as on the best,
Moon and stars.
Fate too, &c.
"There can none but man
Perform the Impossible.
He understandeth,
Chooseth, and judgeth;
He can impart to the
Moment duration.
"He alone may
The good reward,
The guilty punish,
Mend and deliver;
All the wayward, anomalous
Bind in the useful.
"And the Immortals,
Them we reverence
As if they were men, and
Did, on a grand scale,
What the best man in little
Does, or fain would do.
"Let noble man
Be helpful and good;
Ever creating
The Right and the Useful;
Type of those loftier
Beings of whom the heart whispers."
This standard is high enough. It is what every man should express in
action, the poet in music!
And this office of a judge, who is of purer eyes than to behold
iniquity, and of a sacred oracle, to whom other men may go to ask when
they should choose a friend, when face a foe, this great genius does not
adequately fulfil. Too often has the priest left the shrine to go and
gather simples by the aid of spells whose might no pure power needs.
Glimpses are found in his works of the highest spirituality, but it is
blue sky seen through chinks in a roof which should never have been
builded. He has used life to excess. He is too rich for his nobleness,
too judicious for his inspiration, too humanly wise for his divine
mission. He might have been a priest; he is only a sage.
An Epicurean sage, say the multitude. This seems to me unjust. He is
also called a debauchee. There may be reason for such terms, but it is
partial, and received, as they will be, by the unthinking, they are as
false as Menzel's abuse, in the impression they convey. Did Goethe
value the present too much? It was not for the Epicurean aim of
pleasure, but for use. He, in this, was but an instance of reaction, in
an age of painful doubt and restless striving as to the future. Was his
private life stained by profligacy? That far largest portion of his
life, which is ours, and which is expressed in his works, is an unbroken
series of efforts to develop the higher elements of our being. I cannot
speak to private gossip on this subject, nor even to well-authenticated
versions of his private life. Here are sixty volumes, by himself and
others, which contain sufficient evidence of a life of severe labor,
steadfast forbearance, and an intellectual growth almost unparalleled.
That he has failed of the highest fulfilment of his high vocation is
certain, but he was neither Epicurean nor sensualist, if we consider his
life as a whole.
Yet he had failed to reach his highest development; and how was it that
he was so content with this incompleteness, nay, the serenest of men?
His serenity alone, in such a time of scepticism and sorrowful seeking,
gives him a claim to all our study. See how he rides at anchor, lordly,
rich in freight, every white sail ready to be unfurled at a moment's
warning! And it must be a very slight survey which can confound this
calm self-trust with selfish indifference of temperament. Indeed, he, in
various ways, lets us see how little he was helped in this respect by
temperament. But we need not his declaration,--the case speaks for
itself. Of all that perpetual accomplishment, that unwearied
constructiveness, the basis must be sunk deeper than in temperament. He
never halts, never repines, never is puzzled, like other men; that
tranquillity, full of life, that ceaseless but graceful motion, "without
haste, without rest," for which we all are striving, he has attained.
And is not his love of the noblest kind? Reverence the highest, have
patience with the lowest. Let this day's performance of the meanest duty
be thy religion. Are the stars too distant, pick up that pebble that
lies at thy foot, and from it learn the all. Go out like Saul, the son
of Kish, look earnestly after the meanest of thy father's goods, and a
kingdom shall be brought thee. The least act of pure self-renunciation
hallows, for the moment, all within its sphere. The philosopher may
mislead, the devil tempt, yet innocence, though wounded and bleeding as
it goes, must reach at last the holy city. The power of sustaining
himself and guiding others rewards man sufficiently for the longest
apprenticeship. Is not this lore the noblest?
Yes, yes, but still I doubt. 'Tis true, he says all this in a thousand
beautiful forms, but he does not warm, he does not inspire me. In his
certainty is no bliss, in his hope no love, in his faith no glow. How is
this?
A friend, of a delicate penetration, observed, "His atmosphere was so
calm, so full of light, that I hoped he would teach me his secret of
cheerfulness. But I found, after long search, that he had no better way,
if he wished to check emotion or clear thought, than to go to work. As
his mother tells us, 'My son, if he had a grief, made it into a poem,
and so got rid of it.' This mode is founded in truth, but does not
involve the whole truth. I want the method which is indicated by the
phrase, 'Perseverance of the saints.'"
This touched the very point. Goethe attained only the perseverance of
a man. He was true, for he knew that nothing can be false to him who is
true, and that to genius nature has pledged her protection. Had he but
seen a little farther, he would have given this covenant a higher
expression, and been more deeply true to a diviner nature.
In another article on Goethe, I shall give some account of that
period, when a too determined action of the intellect limited and
blinded him for the rest of his life; I mean only in comparison with
what he should have been. Had it been otherwise, what would he not have
attained, who, even thus self-enchained, rose to Ulyssean stature.
Connected with this is the fact, of which he spoke with such sarcastic
solemnity to Eckermann--"My works will never be popular."
I wish, also, to consider the Faust, Elective Affinities, Apprenticeship
and Pilgrimages of Wilhelm Meister, and Iphigenia, as affording
indications of the progress of his genius here, of its wants and
prospects in future spheres of activity. For the present I bid him
farewell, as his friends always have done, in hope and trust of a better
meeting.
GOETHE.
"Nemo contra Deum nisi Deus ipse."
"Wer Grosses will muss sich zusammen raffen;
In der Beschrankung zeigt sich erst der Meister,
Und der Gesetz nur Kann uns Freikeit geben."[1]
The first of these mottoes is that prefixed by Goethe to the last
books of "Dichtung und Wahrheit." These books record the hour of turning
tide in his life, the time when he was called on for a choice at the
"Parting of the Ways." From these months, which gave the sun of his
youth, the crisis of his manhood, date the birth of Egmont, and of Faust
too, though the latter was not published so early. They saw the rise and
decline of his love for Lili, apparently the truest love he ever knew.
That he was not himself dissatisfied with the results to which the
decisions of this era led him, we may infer from his choice of a motto,
and from the calm beauty with which he has invested the record.
The Parting of the Ways! The way he took led to court-favor, wealth,
celebrity, and an independence of celebrity. It led to large
performance, and a wonderful economical management of intellect. It led
Faust, the Seeker, from the heights of his own mind to the trodden ways
of the world. There, indeed, he did not lose sight of the mountains, but
he never breathed their keen air again.
After this period we find in him rather a wide and deep Wisdom, than the
inspiration of Genius. His faith, that all _must_ issue well, wants the
sweetness of piety, and the God he manifests to us is one of law or
necessity, rather than of intelligent love. As this God makes because he
must, so Goethe, his instrument, observes and re-creates because he
must, observing with minutest fidelity the outward exposition of Nature;
never blinded by a sham, or detained by a fear, he yet makes us feel
that he wants insight to her sacred secret. The calmest of writers does
not give us repose, because it is too difficult to find his centre.
Those flame-like natures, which he undervalues, give us more peace and
hope, through their restless aspirations, than he with his
hearth-enclosed fires of steady fulfilment. For, true as it is, that God
is every where, we must not only see him, but see him acknowledged.
Through the consciousness of man, "shall not Nature interpret God?" We
wander in diversity, and with each new turning of the path, long anew to
be referred to the One.
Of Goethe, as of other natures, where the intellect is too much
developed in proportion to the moral nature, it is difficult to speak
without seeming narrow, blind, and impertinent. For such men _see_ all
that others _live_, and, if you feel a want of a faculty in them, it is
hard to say they have it not, lest, next moment, they puzzle you by
giving some indication of it. Yet they are not, nay, _know_ not; they
only discern. The difference is that between sight and life, prescience
and being, wisdom and love. Thus with Goethe. Naturally of a deep mind
and shallow heart, he felt the sway of the affections enough to
appreciate their workings in other men, but never enough to receive
their inmost regenerating influence.
How this might have been had he ever once abandoned himself entirely to
a sentiment, it is impossible to say. But the education of his youth
seconded, rather than balanced, his natural tendency. His father was a
gentlemanly martinet; dull, sour, well-informed, and of great ambition
as to externals. His influence on the son was wholly artificial. He was
always turning his powerful mind from side to side in search of
information, for the attainment of what are called accomplishments. The
mother was a delightful person in her way; open, genial, playful, full
of lively talent, but without earnestness of soul. She was one of those
charming, but not noble persons, who take the day and the man as they
find them, seeing the best that is there already, but never making the
better grow in its stead. His sister, though of graver kind, was social
and intellectual, not religious or tender. The mortifying repulse of his
early love checked the few pale buds of faith and tenderness that his
heart put forth. His friends were friends of the intellect merely;
altogether, he seemed led by destiny to the place he was to fill.
Pardon him, World, that he was too worldly. Do not wonder, Heart, that
he was so heartless. Believe, Soul, that one so true, as far as he went,
must yet be initiated into the deeper mysteries of Soul. Perhaps even
now he sees that we must accept limitations only to transcend them; work
in processes only to detect the organizing power which supersedes them;
and that Sphinxes of fifty-five volumes might well be cast into the
abyss before the single word that solves them all.
Now, when I think of Goethe, I seem to see his soul, all the
variegated plumes of knowledge, artistic form "und so weiter," burnt
from it by the fires of divine love, wingless, motionless, unable to
hide from itself in any subterfuge of labor, saying again and again, the
simple words which he would never distinctly say on earth--God beyond
Nature--Faith beyond Sight--the Seeker nobler than the _Meister_.
For this mastery that Goethe prizes seems to consist rather in the
skilful use of means than in the clear manifestation of ends. His
Master, indeed, makes acknowledgment of a divine order, but the temporal
uses are always uppermost in the mind of the reader. But of this, more
at large in reference to his works.
Apart from this want felt in his works, there is a littleness in his
aspect as a character. Why waste his time in Weimar court
entertainments? His duties as minister were not unworthy of him, though
it would have been, perhaps, finer, if he had not spent so large a
portion of that prime of intellectual life, from five and twenty to
forty, upon them.
But granted that the exercise these gave his faculties, the various lore
they brought, and the good they did to the community, made them worth
his doing,--why that perpetual dangling after the royal family? Why all
that verse-making for the albums of serene highnesses, and those pretty
poetical entertainments for the young princesses, and that cold setting
himself apart from his true peers, the real sovereigns of
Weimar--Herder, Wieland, and the others? The excuse must be found in
circumstances of his time and temperament, which made the character of
man of the world and man of affairs more attractive to him than the
children of nature can conceive it to be in the eyes of one who is
capable of being a consecrated bard.
The man of genius feels that literature has become too much a craft by
itself. No man should live by or for his pen. Writing is worthless
except as the record of life; and no great man ever was satisfied thus
to express all his being. His book should be only an indication of
himself. The obelisk should point to a scene of conquest. In the present
state of division of labor, the literary man finds himself condemned to
be nothing else. Does he write a good book? it is not received as
evidence of his ability to live and act, but rather the reverse. Men do
not offer him the care of embassies, as an earlier age did to Petrarca;
they would be surprised if he left his study to go forth to battle like
Cervantes. We have the swordsman, and statesman, and penman, but it is
not considered that the same mind which can rule the destiny of a poem,
may as well that of an army or an empire.[2] Yet surely it should be so.
The scientific man may need seclusion from the common affairs of life,
for he has his materials before him; but the man of letters must seek
them in life, and he who cannot act will but imperfectly appreciate
action.
The literary man is impatient at being set apart. He feels that monks
and troubadours, though in a similar position, were brought into more
healthy connection with man and nature, than he who is supposed to look
at them merely to write them down. So he rebels; and Sir Walter Scott is
prouder of being a good sheriff and farmer, than of his reputation as
the Great Unknown. Byron piques himself on his skill in shooting and
swimming. Sir H. Davy and Schlegel would be admired as dandies, and
Goethe, who had received an order from a publisher "for a dozen more
dramas in the same style as Goetz von Berlichingen," and though (in
sadder sooth) he had already Faust in his head asking to be written out,
thought it no degradation to become premier in the little Duchy of
Weimar.
"Straws show which way the wind blows," and a comment may be drawn from
the popular novels, where the literary man is obliged to wash off the
ink in a violet bath, attest his courage in the duel, and hide his
idealism beneath the vulgar nonchalance and coxcombry of the man of
fashion.
If this tendency of his time had some influence in making Goethe find
pleasure in tangible power and decided relations with society, there
were other causes which worked deeper. The growth of genius in its
relations to men around must always be attended with daily pain. The
enchanted eye turns from the far-off star it has detected to the
short-sighted bystander, and the seer is mocked for pretending to see
what others cannot. The large and generalizing mind infers the whole
from a single circumstance, and is reproved by all around for its
presumptuous judgment. Its Ithuriel temper pierces shams, creeds,
covenants, and chases the phantoms which others embrace, till the lovers
of the false Florimels hurl the true knight to the ground. Little men
are indignant that Hercules, yet an infant, declares he has strangled
the serpent; they demand a proof; they send him out into scenes of labor
to bring thence the voucher that his father is a god. What the ancients
meant to express by Apollo's continual disappointment in his loves, is
felt daily in the youth of genius. The sympathy he seeks flies his
touch, the objects of his affection sneer at his sublime credulity, his
self-reliance is arrogance, his far sight infatuation, and his ready
detection of fallacy fickleness and inconsistency. Such is the youth of
genius, before the soul has given that sign of itself which an
unbelieving generation cannot controvert. Even then he is little
benefited by the transformation of the mockers into worshippers. For the
soul seeks not adorers, but peers; not blind worship, but intelligent
sympathy. The best consolation even then is that which Goethe puts
into the mouth of Tasso: "To me gave a God to tell what I suffer." In
"Tasso" Goethe has described the position of the poetical mind in its
prose relations with equal depth and fulness. We see what he felt must
be the result of entire abandonment to the highest nature. We see why he
valued himself on being able to understand the Alphonsos, and meet as an
equal the Antonios of every-day life.
But, you say, there is no likeness between Goethe and Tasso. Never
believe it; such pictures are not painted from observation merely. That
deep coloring which fills them with light and life is given by dipping
the brush in one's own life-blood. Goethe had not from nature that
character of self-reliance and self-control in which he so long appeared
to the world. It was wholly acquired, and so highly valued because he
was conscious of the opposite tendency. He was by nature as impetuous,
though not as tender, as Tasso, and the disadvantage at which this
constantly placed him was keenly felt by a mind made to appreciate the
subtlest harmonies in all relations. Therefore was it that when he at
last cast anchor, he was so reluctant again to trust himself to wave and
breeze.
I have before spoken of the antagonistic influences under which he was
educated. He was driven from the severity of study into the world, and
then again drawn back, many times in the course of his crowded youth.
Both the world and the study he used with unceasing ardor, but not with
the sweetness of a peaceful hope. Most of the traits which are
considered to mark his character at a later period were wanting to him
in youth. He was very social, and continually perturbed by his social
sympathies. He was deficient both in outward self-possession and mental
self-trust. "I was always," he says, "either _too volatile or too
infatuated_, so that those who looked kindly on me did by no means
always honor me with their esteem." He wrote much and with great
freedom. The pen came naturally to his hand, but he had no confidence in
the merit of what he wrote, and much inferior persons to Merck and
Herder might have induced him to throw aside as worthless what it had
given him sincere pleasure to compose. It was hard for him to isolate
himself, to console himself, and, though his mind was always busy with
important thoughts, they did not free him from the pressure of other
minds. His youth was as sympathetic and impetuous as any on record.
The effect of all this outward pressure on the poet is recorded in
Werther--a production that he afterwards under-valued, and to which he
even felt positive aversion. It was natural that this should be. In the
calm air of the cultivated plain he attained, the remembrance of the
miasma of sentimentality was odious to him. Yet sentimentality is but
sentiment diseased, which to be cured must be patiently observed by the
wise physician; so are the morbid desire and despair of Werther, the
sickness of a soul aspiring to a purer, freer state, but mistaking the
way.
The best or the worst occasion in man's life is precisely that misused
in Werther, when he longs for more love, more freedom, and a larger
development of genius than the limitations of this terrene sphere
permit. Sad is it indeed if, persisting to grasp too much at once, he
lose all, as Werther did. He must accept limitation, must consent to do
his work in time, must let his affections be baffled by the barriers of
convention. Tantalus-like, he makes this world a Tartarus, or, like
Hercules, rises in fires to heaven, according as he knows how to
interpret his lot. But he must only use, not adopt it. The boundaries of
the man must never be confounded with the destiny of the soul. If he
does not decline his destiny, as Werther did, it is his honor to have
felt its unfitness for his eternal scope. He was born for wings; he is
held to walk in leading-strings; nothing lower than faith must make him
resigned, and only in hope should he find content--a hope not of some
slight improvement in his own condition or that of other men, but a hope
justified by the divine justice, which is bound in due time to satisfy
every want of his nature.
Schiller's great command is, "Keep true to the dream of thy youth." The
great problem is how to make the dream real, through the exercise of the
waking will.
This was not exactly the problem Goethe tried to solve. To _do_
somewhat, became too important, as is indicated both by the second motto
to this essay, and by his maxim, "It is not the knowledge of what _might
be_, but what _is_, that forms us."
Werther, like his early essays now republished from the Frankfort
Journal, is characterized by a fervid eloquence of Italian glow, which
betrays a part of his character almost lost sight of in the quiet
transparency of his later productions, and may give us some idea of the
mental conflicts through which he passed to manhood.
The acting out the mystery into life, the calmness of survey, and the
passionateness of feeling, above all the ironical baffling at the end,
and want of point to a tale got up with such an eye to effect as he goes
along, mark well the man that was to be. Even so did he demand in
Werther; even so resolutely open the door in the first part of Faust;
even so seem to play with himself and his contemporaries in the second
part of Faust and Wilhelm Meister.
Yet was he deeply earnest in his play, not for men, but for himself. To
himself as a part of nature it was important to grow, to lift his head
to the light. In nature he had all confidence; for man, as a part of
nature, infinite hope; but in him as an individual will, seemingly, not
much trust at the earliest age.
The history of his intimacies marks his course; they were entered into
with passionate eagerness, but always ended in an observation of the
intellect, and he left them on his road, as the snake leaves his skin.
The first man he met of sufficient force to command a large share of his
attention was Herder, and the benefit of this intercourse was critical,
not genial. Of the good Lavater he soon perceived the weakness. Merck,
again, commanded his respect; but the force of Merck also was cold.
But in the Grand Duke of Weimar he seems to have met a character strong
enough to exercise a decisive influence upon his own. Goethe was not
so politic and worldly that a little man could ever have become his
Maecenas. In the Duchess Amelia and her son he found that practical
sagacity, large knowledge of things as they are, active force, and
genial feeling, which he had never before seen combined.
The wise mind of the duchess gave the first impulse to the noble course
of Weimar. But that her son should have availed himself of the
foundation she laid is praise enough, in a world where there is such a
rebound from parental influence that it generally seems that the child
makes use of the directions given by the parent only to avoid the
prescribed path. The duke availed himself of guidance, though with a
perfect independence in action. The duchess had the unusual wisdom to
know the right time for giving up the reins, and thus maintained her
authority as far as the weight of her character was calculated to give
it.
Of her Goethe was thinking when he wrote, "The admirable woman is she,
who, if the husband dies, can be a father to the children."
The duke seems to have been one of those characters which are best known
by the impression their personal presence makes on us, resembling an
elemental and pervasive force, rather than wearing the features of an
individuality. Goethe describes him as "_Daemonische_," that is, gifted
with an instinctive, spontaneous force, which at once, without
calculation or foresight, chooses the right means to an end. As these
beings do not calculate, so is their influence incalculable. Their
repose has as much influence over other beings as their action, even as
the thunder cloud, lying black and distant in the summer sky, is not
less imposing than when it bursts and gives forth its quick lightnings.
Such men were Mirabeau and Swift. They had also distinct talents, but
their influence was from a perception in the minds of men of this
spontaneous energy in their natures. Sometimes, though rarely, we see
such a man in an obscure position; circumstances have not led him to a
large sphere; he may not have expressed in words a single thought worth
recording; but by his eye and voice he rules all around him.
He stands upon his feet with a firmness and calm security which make
other men seem to halt and totter in their gait. In his deep eye is seen
an infinite comprehension, an infinite reserve of power. No accent of
his sonorous voice is lost on any ear within hearing; and, when he
speaks, men hate or fear perhaps the disturbing power they feel, but
never dream of disobeying. But hear Goethe himself.
"The boy believed in nature, in the animate and inanimate the
intelligent and unconscious, to discover somewhat which manifested
itself only through contradiction, and therefore could not be
comprehended by any conception, much less defined by a word. It was not
divine, for it seemed without reason; not human, because without
understanding; not devilish, because it worked to good; not angelic,
because it often betrayed a petulant love of mischief. It was like
chance, in that it proved no sequence; it suggested the thought of
Providence, because it indicated connection. To this all our limitations
seem penetrable; it seemed to play at will with all the elements of our
being; it compressed time and dilated space. Only in the impossible did
it seem to delight, and to cast the possible aside with disdain.
"This existence which seemed to mingle with others, sometimes to
separate, sometimes to unite, I called the Daemonische, after the example
of the ancients, and others who have observed somewhat similar."--_Dichtung
und Wahrheit._
"The Daemonische is that which cannot be explained by reason or
understanding; it lies not in my nature, but I am subject to it.
"Napoleon was a being of this class, and in so high a degree that scarce
any one is to be compared with him. Also our late grand duke was such a
nature, full of unlimited power of action and unrest, so that his own
dominion was too little for him, and the greatest would have been too
little. Demoniac beings of this sort the Greeks reckoned among their
demigods."--_Conversations with Eckermann._[3]
This great force of will, this instinctive directness of action, gave
the duke an immediate ascendency over Goethe which no other person had
ever possessed. It was by no means mere sycophancy that made him give up
the next ten years, the prime of his manhood, to accompanying the grand
duke in his revels, or aiding him in his schemes of practical utility,
or to contriving elegant amusements for the ladies of the court. It was
a real admiration for the character of the genial man of the world and
its environment.
Whoever is turned from his natural path may, if he will, gain in
largeness and depth what he loses in simple beauty; and so it was with
Goethe. Faust became a wiser if not a nobler being. Werther, who must
die because life was not wide enough and rich enough in love for him,
ends as the Meister of the Wanderjahre, well content to be one never
inadequate to the occasion, "help-full, comfort-full."
A great change was, during these years, perceptible to his friends in
the character of Goethe. From being always "either too volatile or
infatuated," he retreated into a self-collected state, which seemed at
first even icy to those around him. No longer he darted about him the
lightnings of his genius, but sat Jove-like and calm, with the
thunderbolts grasped in his hand, and the eagle gathered to his feet.
His freakish wit was subdued into a calm and even cold irony; his
multiplied relations no longer permitted him to abandon himself to any;
the minister and courtier could not expatiate in the free regions of
invention, and bring upon paper the signs of his higher life, without
subjecting himself to an artificial process of isolation. Obliged to
economy of time and means, he made of his intimates not objects of
devout tenderness, of disinterested care, but the crammers and feeders
of his intellect. The world was to him an arena or a studio, but not a
temple.
"Ye cannot serve God and Mammon."
Had Goethe entered upon practical life from the dictate of his spirit,
which bade him not be a mere author, but a living, loving man, that had
all been well. But he must also be a man of the world, and nothing can
be more unfavorable to true manhood than this ambition. The citizen, the
hero, the general, the poet, all these are in true relations; but what
is called being a man of the world is to truckle to it, not truly to
serve it.
Thus fettered in false relations, detained from retirement upon the
centre of his being, yet so relieved from the early pressure of his
great thoughts as to pity more pious souls for being restless seekers,
no wonder that he wrote,--
"Es ist dafuer gesorgt dass die Baeume nicht in den Himmel wachsen."
"Care is taken that the trees grow not up into the heavens." Ay, Goethe,
but in proportion to their force of aspiration is their height.
Yet never let him be confounded with those who sell all their
birthright. He became blind to the more generous virtues, the nobler
impulses, but ever in self-respect was busy to develop his nature. He
was kind, industrious, wise, gentlemanly, if not manly. If his genius
lost sight of the highest aim, he is the best instructor in the use of
means; ceasing to be a prophet poet, he was still a poetic artist. From
this time forward he seems a listener to nature, but not himself the
highest product of nature,--a priest to the soul of nature. His works
grow out of life, but are not instinct with the peculiar life of human
resolve, as are Shakspeare's or Dante's.
Faust contains the great idea of his life, as indeed there is but one
great poetic idea possible to man--the progress of a soul through the
various forms of existence.
All his other works, whatever their miraculous beauty of execution, are
mere chapters to this poem, illustrative of particular points. Faust,
had it been completed in the spirit in which it was begun, would have
been the Divina Commedia of its age.
But nothing can better show the difference of result between a stern and
earnest life, and one of partial accommodation, than a comparison
between the Paridiso and that of the second part of Faust. In both a
soul, gradually educated and led back to God, is received at last not
through merit, but grace. But O the difference between the grandly
humble reliance of old Catholicism, and the loophole redemption of
modern sagacity! Dante was a _man_, of vehement passions, many
prejudices, bitter as much as sweet. His knowledge was scanty, his
sphere of observation narrow, the objects of his active life petty,
compared with those of Goethe. But, constantly retiring to his deepest
self, clearsighted to the limitations of man, but no less so to the
illimitable energy of the soul, the sharpest details in his work convey
a largest sense, as his strongest and steadiest flights only direct the
eye to heavens yet beyond.
Yet perhaps he had not so hard a battle to wage, as this other great
poet. The fiercest passions are not so dangerous foes to the soul as the
cold scepticism of the understanding. The Jewish demon assailed the man
of Uz with physical ills, the Lucifer of the middle ages tempted his
passions; but the Mephistopheles of the eighteenth century bade the
finite strive to compass the infinite, and the intellect attempt to
solve all the problems of the soul.
This path Faust had taken: it is that of modern necromancy. Not willing
to grow into God by the steady worship of a life, men would enforce his
presence by a spell; not willing to learn his existence by the slow
processes of their own, they strive to bind it in a word, that they may
wear it about the neck as a talisman.
Faust, bent upon reaching the centre of the universe through the
intellect alone, naturally, after a length of trial, which has prevented
the harmonious unfolding of his nature, falls into despair. He has
striven for one object, and that object eludes him. Returning upon
himself, he finds large tracts of his nature lying waste and cheerless.
He is too noble for apathy, too wise for vulgar content with the animal
enjoyments of life. Yet the thirst he has been so many years increasing
is not to be borne. Give me, he cries, but a drop of water to cool my
burning tongue. Yet, in casting himself with a wild recklessness upon
the impulses of his nature yet untried, there is a disbelief that any
thing short of the All can satisfy the immortal spirit. His first
attempt was noble, though mistaken, and under the saving influence of
it, he makes the compact, whose condition cheats the fiend at last.
Kannst du mich schmeichelnd je beluegen
Dass ich mir selbst gefallen mag,
Kannst du mich mit Genuss betruegen:
Das sey fuer mich der letzte Tag.
Werd ich zum Augenblicke sagen:
Verweile doch! du bist so schoen!
Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen,
Dann will ich gern zu Grunde gehen.
Canst thou by falsehood or by flattery
Make me one moment with myself at peace,
Cheat me into tranquillity? Come then
And welcome, life's last day.
Make me but to the moment say,
O fly not yet, thou art so fair,
Then let me perish, &c.
But this condition is never fulfilled. Faust cannot be content with
sensuality, with the charlatanry of ambition, nor with riches. His heart
never becomes callous, nor his moral and intellectual perceptions
obtuse. He is saved at last.
With the progress of an individual soul is shadowed forth that of the
soul of the age; beginning in intellectual scepticism; sinking into
license; cheating itself with dreams of perfect bliss, to be at once
attained by means no surer than a spurious paper currency; longing
itself back from conflict between the spirit and the flesh, induced by
Christianity, to the Greek era with its harmonious development of body
and mind; striving to reembody the loved phantom of classical beauty in
the heroism of the middle age; flying from the Byron despair of those
who die because they cannot soar without wings, to schemes however
narrow, of practical utility,--redeemed at last through mercy alone.
The second part of Faust is full of meaning, resplendent with beauty;
but it is rather an appendix to the first part than a fulfilment of its
promise. The world, remembering the powerful stamp of individual
feeling, universal indeed in its application, but individual in its
life, which had conquered all its scruples in the first part, was vexed
to find, instead of the man Faust, the spirit of the age,--discontented
with the shadowy manifestation of truths it longed to embrace, and,
above all, disappointed that the author no longer met us face to face,
or riveted the ear by his deep tones of grief and resolve.
When the world shall have got rid of the still overpowering influence of
the first part, it will be seen that the fundamental idea is never lost
sight of in the second. The change is that Goethe, though the same
thinker, is no longer the same person.
The continuation of Faust in the practical sense of the education of a
man is to be found in Wilhelm Meister. Here we see the change by
strongest contrast. The mainspring of action is no longer the
impassioned and noble seeker, but a disciple of circumstance, whose most
marked characteristic is a taste for virtue and knowledge. Wilhelm
certainly prefers these conditions of existence to their opposites, but
there is nothing so decided in his character as to prevent his turning a
clear eye on every part of that variegated world-scene which the writer
wished to place before us.
To see all till he knows all sufficiently to put objects into their
relations, then to concentrate his powers and use his knowledge under
recognized conditions,--such is the progress of man from Apprentice to
Master.
'Tis pity that the volumes of the Wanderjahre have not been translated
entire, as well as those of the Lehrjahre, for many, who have read the
latter only, fancy that Wilhelm becomes a master in that work. Far from
it; he has but just become conscious of the higher powers that have
ceaselessly been weaving his fate. Far from being as yet a Master, he
but now begins to be a Knower. In the Wanderjahre we find him gradually
learning the duties of citizenship, and hardening into manhood, by
applying what he has learned for himself to the education of his child.
He converses on equal terms with the wise and beneficent; he is no
longer duped and played with for his good, but met directly mind to
mind.
Wilhelm is a master when he can command his actions, yet keep his mind
always open to new means of knowledge; when he has looked at various
ways of living, various forms of religion and of character, till he has
learned to be tolerant of all, discerning of good in all; when the
astronomer imparts to his equal ear his highest thoughts, and the poor
cottager seeks his aid as a patron and counsellor.
To be capable of all duties, limited by none, with an open eye, a
skilful and ready hand, an assured step, a mind deep, calm, foreseeing
without anxiety, hopeful without the aid of illusion,--such is the ripe
state of manhood. This attained, the great soul should still seek and
labor, but strive and battle never more.
The reason for Goethe's choosing so negative a character as Wilhelm,
and leading him through scenes of vulgarity and low vice, would be
obvious enough to a person of any depth of thought, even if he himself
had not announced it. He thus obtained room to paint life as it really
is, and bring forward those slides in the magic lantern which are always
known to exist, though they may not be spoken of to ears polite.
Wilhelm cannot abide in tradition, nor do as his fathers did before him,
merely for the sake of money or a standing in society. The stage, here
an emblem of the ideal life as it gleams before unpractised eyes,
offers, he fancies, opportunity for a life of thought as distinguished
from one of routine. Here, no longer the simple citizen, but Man, all
Men, he will rightly take upon himself the different aspects of life,
till poet-wise, he shall have learned them all.
No doubt the attraction of the stage to young persons of a vulgar
character is merely the brilliancy of its trappings; but to Wilhelm, as
to Goethe, it was this poetic freedom and daily suggestion which
seemed likely to offer such an agreeable studio in the greenroom.
But the ideal must be rooted in the real, else the poet's life
degenerates into buffoonery or vice. Wilhelm finds the characters formed
by this would-be ideal existence more despicable than those which grew
up on the track, dusty and bustling and dull as it had seemed, of common
life. He is prepared by disappointment for a higher ambition.
In the house of the count he finds genuine elegance, genuine sentiment,
but not sustained by wisdom, or a devotion to important objects. This
love, this life, is also inadequate.
Now, with Teresa he sees the blessings of domestic peace. He sees a mind
sufficient for itself, finding employment and education in the perfect
economy of a little world. The lesson is pertinent to the state of mind
in which his former experiences have left him, as indeed our deepest
lore is won from reaction. But a sudden change of scene introduces him
to the society of the sage and learned uncle, the sage and beneficent
Natalia. Here he finds the same virtues as with Teresa, and enlightened
by a larger wisdom.
A friend of mine says that his ideal of a friend is a worthy aunt, one
who has the tenderness without the blindness of a mother, and takes the
same charge of the child's mind as the mother of its body. I don't know
but this may have a foundation in truth, though, if so, auntism, like
other grand professions, has sadly degenerated. At any rate, Goethe
seems to be possessed with a similar feeling. The Count de Thorane, a
man of powerful character, who made a deep impression on his childhood,
was, he says, "reverenced by me as an uncle." And the ideal wise man of
this common life epic stands before us as "The Uncle."
After seeing the working of just views in the establishment of the
uncle, learning piety from the Confessions of a Beautiful Soul, and
religious beneficence from the beautiful life of Natalia, Wilhelm is
deemed worthy of admission to the society of the Illuminati, that is,
those who have pierced the secret of life, and know what it is to be and
to do.
Here he finds the scroll of his life "drawn with large, sharp strokes,"
that is, these truly wise read his character for him, and "mind and
destiny are but two names for one idea."
He now knows enough to enter on the Wanderjahre.
Goethe always represents the highest principle in the feminine form.
Woman is the Minerva, man the Mars. As in the Faust, the purity of
Gretchen, resisting the demon always, even after all her faults, is
announced to have saved her soul to heaven; and in the second part she
appears, not only redeemed herself, but by her innocence and forgiving
tenderness hallowed to redeem the being who had injured her.
So in the Meister, these women hover around the narrative, each
embodying the spirit of the scene. The frail Philina, graceful though
contemptible, represents the degradation incident to an attempt at
leading an exclusively poetic life. Mignon, gift divine as ever the Muse
bestowed on the passionate heart of man, with her soft, mysterious
inspiration, her pining for perpetual youth, represents the high desire
that leads to this mistake, as Aurelia, the desire for excitement;
Teresa, practical wisdom, gentle tranquillity, which seem most desirable
after the Aurelia glare. Of the beautiful soul and Natalia we have
already spoken. The former embodies what was suggested to Goethe by
the most spiritual person he knew in youth--Mademoiselle von
Klettenberg, over whom, as he said, in her invalid loneliness the Holy
Ghost brooded like a dove.
Entering on the Wanderjahre, Wilhelm becomes acquainted with another
woman, who seems the complement of all the former, and represents the
idea which is to guide and mould him in the realization of all the past
experience.
This person, long before we see her, is announced in various ways as a
ruling power. She is the last hope in cases of difficulty, and, though
an invalid, and living in absolute retirement, is consulted by her
connections and acquaintance as an unerring judge in all their affairs.
All things tend towards her as a centre; she knows all, governs all, but
never goes forth from herself.
Wilhelm at last visits her. He finds her infirm in body, but equal to
all she has to do. Charity and counsel to men who need her are her
business, astronomy her pleasure.
After a while, Wilhelm ascertains from the Astronomer, her companion,
what he had before suspected, that she really belongs to the solar
system, and only appears on earth to give men a feeling of the planetary
harmony. From her youth up, says the Astronomer, till she knew me,
though all recognized in her an unfolding of the highest moral and
intellectual qualities, she was supposed to be sick at her times of
clear vision. When her thoughts were not in the heavens, she returned
and acted in obedience to them on earth; she was then said to be well.
When the Astronomer had observed her long enough, he confirmed her
inward consciousness of a separate existence and peculiar union with the
heavenly bodies.
Her picture is painted with many delicate traits, and a gradual
preparation leads the reader to acknowledge the truth; but, even in the
slight indication here given, who does not recognize thee, divine
Philosophy, sure as the planetary orbits, and inexhaustible as the
fountain of light, crowning the faithful Seeker at last with the
privilege to possess his own soul.
In all that is said of Macaria,[4] we recognize that no thought is too
religious for the mind of Goethe. It was indeed so; you can deny him
nothing, but only feel that his works are not instinct and glowing with
the central fire, and, after catching a glimpse pf the highest truth,
are forced again to find him too much afraid of losing sight of the
limitations of nature to overflow you or himself with the creative
spirit.
While the apparition of the celestial Macaria seems to announce the
ultimate destiny of the soul of man, the practical application of all
Wilhelm has thus painfully acquired is not of pure Delphian strain.
Goethe draws, as he passes, a dart from the quiver of Phoebus, but
ends as AEsculapius or Mercury. Wilhelm, at the school of the Three
Reverences, thinks out what can be done for man in his temporal
relations. He learns to practise moderation, and even painful
renunciation. The book ends, simply indicating what the course of his
life will be, by making him perform an act of kindness, with good
judgment and at the right moment.
Surely the simple soberness of Goethe should please at least those who
style themselves, preeminently, people of common sense.
The following remarks are by the celebrated Rahel von Ense, whose
discernment as to his works was highly prized by Goethe.
"_Don Quixote and Wilhelm Meister_!
"Embrace one another, Cervantes and Goethe!
"Both, using their own clear eyes, vindicated human nature. They
saw the champions through their errors and follies, looking down
into the deepest soul, seeing there the true form. _Respectable_
people call the Don as well as Meister a fool, wandering hither and
thither, transacting no business of real life, bringing nothing to
pass, scarce even knowing what he ought to think on any subject,
very unfit for the hero of a romance. Yet has our sage known how to
paint the good and honest mind in perpetual toil and conflict with
the world, as it is embodied; never sharing one moment the impure
confusion; always striving to find fault with and improve itself,
always so innocent as to see others far better than they are, and
generally preferring them to itself, learning from all, indulging
all except the manifestly base; the more you understand, the more
you respect and love this character. Cervantes has painted the
knight, Goethe the culture of the entire man,--both their own
time."
But those who demand from him a life-long continuance of the early ardor
of Faust, who wish to see, throughout his works, not only such manifold
beauty and subtle wisdom, but the clear assurance of divinity, the pure
white light of Macaria, wish that he had not so variously unfolded his
nature, and concentred it more. They would see him slaying the serpent
with the divine wrath of Apollo, rather than taming it to his service,
like AEsculapius. They wish that he had never gone to Weimar, had never
become a universal connoisseur and dilettante in science, and courtier
as "graceful as a born nobleman," but had endured the burden of life
with the suffering crowd, and deepened his nature in loneliness and
privation, till Faust had conquered, rather than cheated the devil, and
the music of heavenly faith superseded the grave and mild eloquence of
human wisdom.
The expansive genius which moved so gracefully in its self imposed
fetters, is constantly surprising us by its content with a choice low,
in so far as it was not the highest of which the mind was capable. The
secret may be found in the second motto of this slight essay.
"He who would do great things must quickly draw together his forces. The
master can only show himself such through limitation, and the law alone
can give us freedom."
But there is a higher spiritual law always ready to supersede the
temporal laws at the call of the human soul. The soul that is too
content with usual limitations will never call forth this unusual
manifestation.
If there be a tide in the affairs of men, which must be taken at the
right moment to lead on to fortune, it is the same with inward as with
outward life. He who, in the crisis hour of youth, has stopped short of
himself, is not likely to find again what he has missed in one life, for
there are a great number of blanks to a prize in each lottery.
But the pang we feel that "those who are so much are not more," seems to
promise new spheres, new ages, new crises to enable these beings to
complete their circle.
Perhaps Goethe is even now sensible that he should not have stopped at
Weimar as his home, but made it one station on the way to Paradise; not
stopped at humanity, but regarded it as symbolical of the divine, and
given to others to feel more distinctly the centre of the universe, as
well as the harmony in its parts. It is great to be an Artist, a Master,
greater still to be a Seeker till the Man has found all himself.
What Goethe meant by self-collection was a collection of means for
work, rather than to divine the deepest truths of being. Thus are these
truths always indicated, never declared; and the religious hope awakened
by his subtle discernment of the workings of nature never gratified,
except through the intellect.
He whose prayer is only work will not leave his treasure in the secret
shrine.
One is ashamed when finding any fault with one like Goethe, who is so
great. It seems the only criticism should be to do all he omitted to do,
and that none who cannot is entitled to say a word. Let that one speak
who was all Goethe was not,--noble, true, virtuous, but neither wise
nor subtle in his generation, a divine ministrant, a baffled man, ruled
and imposed on by the pygmies whom he spurned, an heroic artist, a
democrat to the tune of Burns:
"The rank is but the guinea's stamp;
The man's the gowd for a' that."
Hear Beethoven speak of Goethe on an occasion which brought out the
two characters in strong contrast.
Extract from a letter of Beethoven to Bettina Brentano Toeplitz, 1812.
"Kings and princes can indeed make professors and privy councillors, and
hang upon them titles; but great men they cannot make; souls that rise
above the mud of the world, these they must let be made by other means
than theirs, and should therefore show them respect. When two such as I
and Goethe come together, then must great lords observe what is
esteemed great by one of us. Coming home yesterday we met the whole
imperial family. We saw them coming, and Goethe left me and insisted
on standing one side; let me say what I would, I could not make him come
on one step. I pressed my hat upon my head, buttoned my surtout, and
passed on through the thickest crowd. Princes and parasites made way;
the Archduke Rudolph took off his hat; the empress greeted me first.
Their highnesses KNOW ME. I was well amused to see the crowd pass by
Goethe. At the side stood he, hat in hand, low bowed in reverence till
all had gone by. Then I scolded him well; I gave no pardon, but
reproached him with all his sins, most of all those towards you, dearest
Bettina; we had just been talking of you."
If Beethoven appears, in this scene, somewhat arrogant and bearish, yet
how noble his extreme compared with the opposite! Goethe's friendship
with the grand duke we respect, for Karl August was a strong man. But we
regret to see at the command of any and all members of the ducal
family, and their connections, who had nothing but rank to recommend
them, his time and thoughts, of which he was so chary to private
friends. Beethoven could not endure to teach the Archduke Rudolph, who
had the soul duly to revere his genius, because he felt it to be
"hofdienst," court service. He received with perfect nonchalance the
homage of the sovereigns of Europe. Only the Empress of Russia and the
Archduke Karl, whom he esteemed as individuals, had power to gratify him
by their attentions. Compare with, Goethe's obsequious pleasure at
being able gracefully to compliment such high personages, Beethoven's
conduct with regard to the famous Heroic Symphony. This was composed at
the suggestion of Bernadotte, while Napoleon was still in his first
glory. He was then the hero of Beethoven's imagination, who hoped from
him the liberation of Europe. With delight the great artist expressed in
his eternal harmonies the progress of the Hero's soul. The symphony was
finished, and even dedicated to Bonaparte, when the news came of his
declaring himself Emperor of the French. The first act of the indignant
artist was to tear off his dedication and trample it under foot; nor
could he endure again even the mention of Napoleon until the time of his
fall.
Admit that Goethe had a natural taste for the trappings of rank and
wealth, from which the musician was quite free, yet we cannot doubt that
both saw through these externals to man as a nature; there can be no
doubt on whose side was the simple greatness, the noble truth. We pardon
thee, Goethe,--but thee, Beethoven, we revere, for thou hast
maintained the worship of the Manly, the Permanent, the True!
The clear perception which was in Goethe's better nature of the beauty
of that steadfastness, of that singleness and simple melody of soul,
which he too much sacrificed to become "the many-sided One," is shown
most distinctly in his two surpassingly beautiful works, The Elective
Affinities and Iphigenia.
Not Werther, not the Nouvelle Heloise, have been assailed with such a
storm of indignation as the first-named of these works, on the score of
gross immorality.
The reason probably is the subject; any discussion of the validity of
the marriage vow making society tremble to its foundation; and,
secondly, the cold manner in which it is done. All that is in the book
would be bearable to most minds if the writer had had less the air of a
spectator, and had larded his work here and there with ejaculations of
horror and surprise.
These declarations of sentiment on the part of the author seem to be
required by the majority of readers, in order to an interpretation of
his purpose, as sixthly, seventhly, and eighthly were, in an
old-fashioned sermon, to rouse the audience to a perception of the
method made use of by the preacher.
But it has always seemed to me that those who need not such helps to
their discriminating faculties, but read a work so thoroughly as to
apprehend its whole scope and tendency, rather than hear what the author
says it means, will regard the Elective Affinities as a work especially
what is called moral in its outward effect, and religious even to piety
in its spirit. The mental aberrations of the consorts from their
plighted faith, though in the one case never indulged, and though in the
other no veil of sophistry is cast over the weakness of passion, but all
that is felt expressed with the openness of one who desires to
legitimate what he feels, are punished by terrible griefs and a fatal
catastrophe. Ottilia, that being of exquisite purity, with intellect and
character so harmonized in feminine beauty, as they never before were
found in any portrait of woman painted by the hand of man, perishes, on
finding she has been breathed on by unhallowed passion, and led to err
even by her ignorant wishes against what is held sacred. The only
personage whom we do not pity is Edward, for he is the only one who
stifles the voice of conscience.
There is indeed a sadness, as of an irresistible fatality, brooding over
the whole. It seems as if only a ray of angelic truth could have enabled
these men to walk wisely in this twilight, at first so soft and
alluring, then deepening into blind horror.
But if no such ray came to prevent their earthly errors, it seems to
point heavenward in the saintly sweetness of Ottilia. Her nature, too
fair for vice, too finely wrought even for error, comes lonely, intense,
and pale, like the evening star on the cold, wintry night. It tells of
other worlds, where the meaning of such strange passages as this must be
read to those faithful and pure like her, victims perishing in the green
garlands of a spotless youth to atone for the unworthiness of others.
An unspeakable pathos is felt from the minutest trait of this character,
and deepens with every new study of it. Not even in Shakspeare have I so
felt the organizing power of genius. Through dead words I find the least
gestures of this person, stamping themselves on my memory, betraying to
the heart the secret of her life, which she herself, like all these
divine beings, knew not. I feel myself familiarized with all beings of
her order. I see not only what she was, but what she might have been,
and live with her in yet untrodden realms.
Here is the glorious privilege of a form known only in the world of
genius. There is on it no stain of usage or calculation to dull our
sense of its immeasurable life. What in our daily walk, mid common faces
and common places, fleets across us at moments from glances of the eye,
or tones of the voice, is felt from the whole being of one of these
children of genius.
This precious gem is set in a ring complete in its enamel. I cannot hope
to express my sense of the beauty of this book as a work of art. I
would not attempt it if I had elsewhere met any testimony to the same.
The perfect picture, always before the mind, of the chateau, the moss
hut, the park, the garden, the lake, with its boat and the landing
beneath the platan trees; the gradual manner in which both localities
and persons grow upon us, more living than life, inasmuch as we are,
unconsciously, kept at our best temperature by the atmosphere of genius,
and thereby more delicate in our perceptions than amid our customary
fogs; the gentle unfolding of the central thought, as a flower in the
morning sun; then the conclusion, rising like a cloud, first soft and
white, but darkening as it comes, till with a sudden wind it bursts
above our heads; the ease with which we every where find points of view
all different, yet all bearing on the same circle, for, though we feel
every hour new worlds, still before our eye lie the same objects, new,
yet the same, unchangeable, yet always changing their aspects as we
proceed, till at last we find we ourselves have traversed the circle,
and know all we overlooked at first,--these things are worthy of our
highest admiration.
For myself, I never felt so completely that very thing which genius
should always make us feel--that I was in its circle, and could not get
out till its spell was done, and its last spirit permitted to depart. I
was not carried away, instructed, delighted more than by other works,
but I was _there_, living there, whether as the platan tree, or the
architect, or any other observing part of the scene. The personages live
too intensely to let us live in them; they draw around themselves
circles within the circle; we can only see them close, not be
themselves.
Others, it would seem, on closing the book, exclaim, "What an immoral
book!" I well remember my own thought, "It is a work of art!" At last I
understood that world within a world, that ripest fruit of human nature,
which is called art. With each perusal of the book my surprise and
delight at this wonderful fulfilment of design grew. I understood why
Goethe was well content to be called Artist, and his works, works of
Art, rather than revelations. At this moment, remembering what I then
felt, I am inclined to class all my negations just written on this paper
as stuff, and to look upon myself, for thinking them, with as much
contempt as Mr. Carlyle, or Mrs. Austin, or Mrs. Jameson might do, to
say nothing of the German Goetheans.
Yet that they were not without foundation I feel again when I turn to
the Iphigenia--a work beyond the possibility of negation; a work where a
religious meaning not only pierces but enfolds the whole; a work as
admirable in art, still higher in significance, more single in
expression.
There is an English translation (I know not how good) of Goethe's
Iphigenia. But as it may not be generally known, I will give a sketch of
the drama. Iphigenia, saved, at the moment of the sacrifice made by
Agamemnon in behalf of the Greeks, by the goddess, and transferred to
the temple at Tauris, appears alone in the consecrated grove. Many years
have passed since she was severed from the home of such a tragic fate,
the palace of Mycenae. Troy had fallen, Agamemnon been murdered, Orestes
had grown up to avenge his death. All these events were unknown to the
exiled Iphigenia. The priestess of Diana in a barbarous land, she had
passed the years in the duties of the sanctuary, and in acts of
beneficence. She had acquired great power over the mind of Thoas, king
of Tauris, and used it to protect strangers, whom it had previously been
the custom of the country to sacrifice to the goddess.
She salutes us with a soliloquy, of which I give a rude translation:--
Beneath your shade, living summits
Of this ancient, holy, thick-leaved grove,
As in the silent sanctuary of the Goddess,
Still I walk with those same shuddering feelings,
As when I trod these walks for the first time.
My spirit cannot accustom itself to these places;
Many years now has kept me here concealed
A higher will, to which I am submissive;
Yet ever am I, as at first, the stranger;
For ah! the sea divides me from my beloved ones,
And on the shore whole days I stand,
Seeking with my soul the land of the Greeks,
And to my sighs brings the rushing wave only
Its hollow tones in answer.
Woe to him who, far from parents, and brothers, and sisters,
Drags on a lonely life. Grief consumes
The nearest happiness away from his lips;
His thoughts crowd downwards--
Seeking the hall of his fathers, where the Sun
First opened heaven to him, and kindred-born
In their first plays knit daily firmer and firmer
The bond from heart to heart--I question not the Gods,
Only the lot of woman is one of sorrow;
In the house and in the war man rules,
Knows how to help himself in foreign lands,
Possessions gladden and victory crowns him,
And an honorable death stands ready to end his days.
Within what narrow limits is bounded the luck of woman!
To obey a rude husband even is duty and comfort; how sad
When, instead, a hostile fate drives her out of her sphere!
So holds me Thoas, indeed a noble man, fast
In solemn, sacred, but slavish bonds.
O, with shame I confess that with secret reluctance
I serve thee, Goddess, thee, my deliverer.
My life should freely have been dedicate to thee,
But I have always been hoping in thee, O Diana,
Who didst take in thy soft arms me, the rejected daughter
Of the greatest king! Yes, daughter of Zeus,
I thought if thou gavest such anguish to him, the high hero,
The godlike Agamemnon;
Since he brought his dearest, a victim, to thy altar,
That, when he should return, crowned with glory, from Ilium,
At the same time thou would'st give to his arms his other treasures,
His spouse, Electra, and the princely son;
Me also, thou would'st restore to mine own,
Saving a second time me, whom from death thou didst save,
From this worse death,--the life of exile here.
These are the words and thoughts; but how give an idea of the sweet
simplicity of expression in the original, where every word has the grace
and softness of a flower petal?
She is interrupted by a messenger from the king, who prepares her for a
visit from himself of a sort she has dreaded. Thoas, who has always
loved her, now left childless by the calamities of war, can no longer
resist his desire to reanimate by her presence his desert house. He
begins by urging her to tell him the story of her race, which she does
in a way that makes us feel as if that most famous tragedy had never
before found a voice, so simple, so fresh in its naivete is the recital.
Thoas urges his suit undismayed by the fate that hangs over the race of
Tantalus.
THOAS.
Was it the same Tantalus,
Whom Jupiter called to his council and banquets,
In whose talk so deeply experienced, full of various learning,
The Gods delighted as in the speech of oracles?
IPHIGENIA.
It is the same, but the Gods should not
Converse with men, as with their equals.
The mortal race is much too weak
Not to turn giddy on unaccustomed heights.
He was not ignoble, neither a traitor,
But for a servant too great, and as a companion
Of the great Thunderer only a man. So was
His fault also that of a man, its penalty
Severe, and poets sing--Presumption
And faithlessness cast him down from the throne of Jove,
Into the anguish of ancient Tartarus;
Ah, and all his race bore their hate.
THOAS.
Bore it the blame of the ancestor, or its own?
IPHIGENIA.
Truly the vehement breast and powerful life of the Titan
Were the assured inheritance of son and grandchild;
But the Gods bound their brows with a brazen band,
Moderation, counsel, wisdom, and patience
Were hid from their wild, gloomy glance,
Each desire grew to fury,
And limitless ranged their passionate thoughts.
Iphigenia refuses with gentle firmness to give to gratitude what was not
due. Thoas leaves her in anger, and, to make her feel it, orders that
the old, barbarous custom be renewed, and two strangers just arrived be
immolated at Diana's altar.
Iphigenia, though distressed, is not shaken by this piece of tyranny.
She trusts her heavenly protectress will find some way for her to save
these unfortunates without violating her truth.
The strangers are Orestes and Pylades, sent thither by the oracle of
Apollo, who bade them go to Tauris and bring back "The Sister;" thus
shall the heaven-ordained parricide of Orestes be expiated, and the
Furies cease to pursue him.
The Sister they interpret to be Dian, Apollo's sister; but Iphigenia,
sister to Orestes, is really meant.
The next act contains scenes of most delicate workmanship, first between
the light-hearted Pylades, full of worldly resource and ready
tenderness, and the suffering Orestes, of far nobler, indeed heroic
nature, but less fit for the day and more for the ages. In the first
scene the characters of both are brought out with great skill, and the
nature of the bond between "the butterfly and the dark flower,"
distinctly shown in few words.
The next scene is between Iphigenia and Pylades. Pylades, though he
truly answers the questions of the priestess about the fate of Troy and
the house of Agamemnon, does not hesitate to conceal from her who
Orestes really is, and manufactures a tissue of useless falsehoods with
the same readiness that the wise Ulysses showed in exercising his
ingenuity on similar occasions.
It is said, I know not how truly, that the modern Greeks are Ulyssean in
this respect, never telling straightforward truth, when deceit will
answer the purpose; and if they tell any truth, practising the economy
of the King of Ithaca, in always reserving a part for their own use. The
character which this denotes is admirably hit off with few strokes in
Pylades, the fair side of whom Iphigenia thus paints in a later scene.
Bless, ye Gods, our Pylades,
And whatever he may undertake;
He is the arm of the youth in battle,
The light-giving eye of the aged man in the council.
For his soul is still; it preserves
The holy possession of Repose unexhausted,
And from its depths still reaches
Help and advice to those tossed to and fro.
Iphigenia leaves him in sudden agitation, when informed of the death of
Agamemnon. Returning, she finds in his place Orestes, whom she had not
before seen, and draws from him by her artless questions the sequel to
this terrible drama wrought by his hand. After he has concluded his
narrative, in the deep tones of cold anguish, she cries,--
Immortals, you who through your bright days
Live in bliss, throned on clouds ever renewed,
Only for this have you all these years
Kept me separate from men, and so near yourselves,
Given me the child-like employment to cherish the fires on your altars,
That my soul might, in like pious clearness,
Be ever aspiring towards your abodes,
That only later and deeper I might feel
The anguish and horror that have darkened my house.
O Stranger,
Speak to me of the unhappy one, tell me of Orestes.
ORESTES.
O, might I speak of his death!
Vehement flew up from the reeking blood
His Mother's Soul!
And called to the ancient daughters of Night,
Let not the parricide escape;
Pursue that man of crime; he is yours!
They obey, their hollow eyes
Darting about with vulture eagerness;
They stir themselves in their black dens,
From corners their companions
Doubt and Remorse steal out to join them.
Before them roll the mists of Acheron;
In its cloudy volumes rolls
The eternal contemplation of the irrevocable
Permitted now in their love of ruin they tread
The beautiful fields of a God-planted earth,
From which they had long been banished by an early curse,
Their swift feet follow the fugitive,
They pause never except to gather more power to dismay.
IPHIGENIA.
Unhappy man, thou art in like manner tortured,
And feelest truly what he, the poor fugitive, suffers!
ORESTES.
What sayest thou? what meanest by "like manner"?
IPHIGENIA.
Thee, too, the weight of a fratricide crushes to earth; the tale
I had from thy younger brother.
ORESTES.
I cannot suffer that thou, great soul,
Shouldst be deceived by a false tale;
A web of lies let stranger weave for stranger
Subtle with many thoughts, accustomed to craft,
Guarding his feet against a trap.
But between us
Be Truth;--
I am Orestes,--and this guilty head
Bent downward to the grave seeks death;
In any shape were he welcome.
Whoever thou art, I wish thou mightst be saved,
Thou and my friend; for myself I wish it not.
Thou seem'st against thy will here to remain;
Invent a way to fly and leave me here.
Like all pure productions of genius, this may be injured by the
slightest change, and I dare not flatter myself that the English words
give an idea of the heroic dignity expressed in the cadence of the
original, by the words
"Twischen uns
Seg Wahrheit!
Ich bin Orest!"
where the Greek seems to fold his robe around him in the full strength
of classic manhood, prepared for worst and best, not like a cold Stoic,
but a hero, who can feel all, know all, and endure all. The name of two
syllables in the German is much more forcible for the pause, than the
three-syllable Orestes.
"Between us
Be Truth,"
is fine to my ear, on which our word Truth also pauses with a large
dignity.
The scenes go on more and more full of breathing beauty. The lovely joy
of Iphigenia, the meditative softness with which the religiously
educated mind perpetually draws the inference from the most agitating
events, impress us more and more. At last the hour of trial comes. She
is to keep off Thoas by a cunningly devised tale, while her brother and
Pylades contrive their escape. Orestes has received to his heart the
sister long lost, divinely restored, and in the embrace the curse falls
from him, he is well, and Pylades more than happy. The ship waits to
carry her to the palace home she is to free from a century's weight of
pollution; and already the blue heavens of her adored Greece gleam
before her fancy.
But, O, the step before all this can be obtained;--to deceive Thoas, a
savage and a tyrant indeed, but long her protector,--in his barbarous
fashion, her benefactor! How can she buy life, happiness, or even the
safety of those dear ones at such a price?
"Woe,
O Woe upon the lie! It frees not the breast,
Like the true-spoken word; it comforts not, but tortures
Him who devised it, and returns,
An arrow once let fly, God-repelled, back,
On the bosom of the Archer!"
O, must I then resign the silent hope
Which gave a beauty to my loneliness?
Must the curse dwell forever, and our race
Never be raised to life by a new blessing?
All things decay, the fairest bliss is transient,
The powers most full of life grow faint at last;
And shall a curse alone boast an incessant life?
Then have I idly hoped that here kept pure,
So strangely severed from my kindred's lot,
I was designed to come at the right moment,
And with pure hand and heart to expiate
The many sins that stain my native home.
To lie, to steal the sacred image!
Olympians, let not these vulture talons
Seize on the tender breast. O, save me,
And save your image in my soul!
Within my ears resounds the ancient lay,--
I had forgotten it, and would so gladly,--
The lay of the Parcae, which they awful sung;
As Tantalus fell from his golden seat
They suffered with the noble friend. Wrathful
Was their heart, and fearful was the song.
In our childhood the nurse was wont to sing it
To me, and my brother and sister. I marked it well.
Then follows the sublime song of the Parcae, well known through
translations.
But Iphigenia is not a victim of fate, for she listens steadfastly to
the god in her breast. Her lips are incapable of subterfuge. She obeys
her own heart, tells all to the king, calls up his better nature, wins,
hallows, and purifies all around her, till the heaven-prepared way is
cleared by the obedient child of heaven, and the great trespass of
Tantalus cancelled by a woman's reliance on the voice of her innocent
soul.
If it be not possible to enhance the beauty with which such ideal
figures as the Iphigenia and the Antigone appeared to the Greek mind,
yet Goethe has unfolded a part of the life of this being, unknown
elsewhere in the records of literature. The character of the priestess,
the full beauty of virgin womanhood, solitary, but tender, wise and
innocent, sensitive and self-collected, sweet as spring, dignified as
becomes the chosen servant of God, each gesture and word of deep and
delicate significance,--where else is such a picture to be found?
It was not the courtier, nor the man of the world, nor the connoisseur,
nor the friend of Mephistopheles, nor Wilhelm the Master, nor Egmont the
generous, free liver, that saw Iphigenia in the world of spirits, but
Goethe, in his first-born glory; G[o]ethe, the poet; Goethe,
designed to be the brightest star in a new constellation. Let us not, in
surveying his works and life, abide with him too much in the suburbs and
outskirts of himself. Let us enter into his higher tendency, thank him
for such angels as Iphigenia, whose simple truth mocks at all his wise
"Beschrankungen," and hope the hour when, girt about with many such, he
will confess, contrary to his opinion, given in his latest days, that it
is well worth while to live seventy years, if only to find that they are
nothing in the sight of God.
THOMAS HOOD.
Now almost the last light has gone out of the galaxy that made the first
thirty years of this age so bright. And the dynasty that now reigns over
the world of wit and poetry is poor and pale, indeed, in comparison.
We are anxious to pour due libations to the departed; we need not
economize our wine; it will not be so often needed now.
Hood has closed the most fatiguing career in the world--that of a
professed wit; and we may say with deeper feeling than of others who
shuffle off the load of care, May he rest in peace! The fatigues of a
conqueror, a missionary preacher, even of an active philanthropist, like
Howard, are nothing to those of a professed wit. Bad enough is it when
he is only a man of society, by whom every one expects to be enlivened
and relieved; who can never talk gravely in a corner, without those
around observing that he must have heard some bad news to be so out of
spirits; who can never make a simple remark, while eating a peaceful
dinner, without the table being set in a roar of laughter, as when
Sheridan, on such an occasion, opened his lips for the first time to say
that "he liked currant jelly." For these unhappy men there are no
intervals of social repose, no long silences fed by the mere feeling of
sympathy or gently entertained by observation, no warm quietude in the
mild liveries of green or brown, for the world has made up its mind that
motley is their only wear, and teases them to jingle their bells
forever.
But far worse is it when the professed wit is also by profession a
writer, and finds himself obliged to coin for bread those jokes which,
in the frolic exuberance of youth, he so easily coined for fun. We can
conceive of no existence more cruel, so tormenting, and at the same time
so dull. We hear that Hood was forever behindhand with his promises to
publishers; no wonder! But when we hear that he, in consequence, lost a
great part of the gains of his hard life, and was, as a result, harassed
by other cares, we cannot mourn to lose him, if,
"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well;"
or if, as our deeper knowledge leads us to hope, he is now engaged in a
better life, where his fancies shall take their natural place, and
flicker like light on the surface of a profound and full stream flowing
betwixt rich and peaceful shores, such as, no less than the drawbacks
upon his earthly existence, are indicated in the following
SONNET.
The curse of Adam, the old curse of all,
Though I inherit in this feverish life
Of worldly toil, vain wishes, and hard strife,
And fruitless thought in care's eternal thrall,
Yet more sweet honey than of bitter gall
I taste through thee, my Eva, my sweet wife.
Then what was Man's lost Paradise? how rife
Of bliss, since love is with him in his fall!
Such as our own pure passion still might frame
Of this fair earth and its delightful bowers,
If no fell sorrow, like the serpent, came
To trail its venom o'er the sweetest flowers;
But, O! as many and such tears are ours
As only should be shed for guilt and shame.
In Hood, as in all true wits, the smile lightens on the verge of a tear.
True wit and humor show that exquisite sensibility to the relations of
life, that fine perception as to slight tokens of its fearful, hopeless
mysteries, which imply pathos to a still higher degree than mirth.
Hood knew and welcomed the dower which nature gave him at his birth,
when he wrote thus:--
All things are touched with melancholy
Born of the secret soul's mistrust,
To feel her fair ethereal wings
Weighed down with vile, degraded dust.
Even the bright extremes of joy
Bring on conclusions of disgust,
Like the sweet blossoms of the May,
Whose fragrance ends in must.
O, give her, then, her tribute just,
Her sighs and tears and musings holy;
There is no music in the life
That sounds with idiot laughter solely;
There's not a string attuned to mirth,
But has its chord in melancholy.
Hood was true to this vow of acceptance. He vowed to accept willingly
the pains as well as joys of life for what they could teach. Therefore,
years expanded and enlarged his sympathies, and gave to his lightest
jokes an obvious harmony with a great moral design, not obtrusively
obvious, but enough so to give a sweetness and permanent complacency to
our laughter. Indeed, what is written in his gayer mood has affected us
more, as spontaneous productions always do, than what he has written of
late with grave design, and which has been so much lauded by men too
obtuse to discern a latent meaning, or to believe in a good purpose
unless they are formally told that it exists.
The later serious poems of Hood are well known; so are his jest books
and novel. We have now in view to speak rather of a little volume of
poems published by him, some years since, republished here, but never
widely circulated.
When a book or a person comes to us in the best possible circumstances,
we judge--not too favorably, for all that the book or person can suggest
is a part of its fate, and what is not seen under the most favorable
circumstances is never quite truly seen either as to promise or
performance--but we form a judgment above what can be the average sense
of the world in general as to its merits, which may be esteemed, after
time enough has elapsed, a tolerably fair estimate of performance,
though not of promise or suggestion.
We became acquainted with these poems in one of those country towns
which would be called, abroad, the most provincial of the province. The
inhabitants had lost the simplicity of farmers' habits, without gaining
in its place the refinement, the variety, the enlargement of civic life.
Their industry had received little impulse from thought; their amusement
was gossip. All men find amusement from gossip--literary, artistic, or
social; but the degrees in it are almost infinite. They were at the
bottom of the scale; they scrutinized their neighbors' characters and
affairs incessantly, impertinently, and with minds unpurified by higher
knowledge; consequently the bitter fruits of envy and calumny abounded.
In this atmosphere I was detained two months, and among people very
uncongenial both to my tastes and notions of right. But I had a retreat
of great beauty. The town lay on the bank of a noble river; behind it
towered a high and rocky hill. Thither every afternoon went the lonely
stranger, to await the fall of the sunset light on the opposite bank of
the full and rapid stream. It fell like a smile of heavenly joy; the
white sails on the stream glided along like angel thoughts; the town
itself looked like a fair nest, whence virtue and happiness might soar
with sweetest song. So looked the scene _from above_; and that hill was
the scene of many an aspiration and many an effort to attain as high a
point of view for the mental prospect, in the hope that little
discrepancies, or what seemed so when on a level with them, might also,
from above, be softened into beauty and found subservient to a noble
design on the whole.
This town boasted few books, and the accident which threw Hood's poems
in the way of the watcher from the hill, was a very fortunate one. They
afforded a true companionship to hours which knew no other, and,
perhaps, have since been overrated from association with what they
answered to or suggested.
Yet there are surely passages in them which ought to be generally known
and highly prized. And if their highest value be for a few individuals
with whom they are especially in concord, unlike the really great poems
which bring something to all, yet those whom they please will be very
much pleased.
Hood never became corrupted into a hack writer. This shows great
strength under his circumstances. Dickens has fallen, and Sue is
falling; for few men can sell themselves by inches without losing a
cubit from their stature. But Hood resisted the danger. He never wrote
when he had nothing to say, he stopped when he had done, and never
hashed for a second meal old thoughts which had been drained of their
choicest juices. His heart is truly human, tender, and brave. From the
absurdities of human nature he argues the possibility of its perfection.
His black is admirably contrasted with his white, but his love has no
converse of hate. His descriptions of nature, if not accurately or
profoundly evidencing insight, are unstudied, fond, and reverential.
They are fine reveries about nature.
He has tried his powers on themes where he had great rivals--in the
"Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," and "Hero and Leander." The latter is
one of the finest subjects in the world, and one, too, which can never
wear out as long as each mind shall have its separate ideal of what a
meeting would be between two perfect lovers, in the full bloom of
beauty and youth, under circumstances the most exalting to passion,
because the most trying, and with the most romantic accompaniments of
scenery. There is room here for the finest expression of love and grief,
for the wildest remonstrance against fate. Why are they made so lovely
and so beloved? Why was a flower brought to such perfection, and then
culled for no use? One of the older English writers has written an
exquisite poem on this subject, painting a youthful pair, fitted to be
not only a heaven but a world to one another. Hood had not power to
paint or conceive such fulness of character; but, in a lesser style, he
has written a fine poem. The best part of it, however, is the innocent
cruelty and grief of the Sea Siren.
"Lycus the Centaur" is also a poem once read never to be forgotten. The
hasty trot of the versification, unfit for any other theme, on this
betokens well the frightened horse. Its mazy and bewildered imagery,
with its countless glancings and glimpses, expressed powerfully the
working of the Circean spell, while the note of human sadness, a
yearning and condemned human love, thrills through the whole and gives
it unity.
The Sonnets, "It is not death," &c., and that on Silence, are equally
admirable. Whoever reads these poems will regard Hood as something more
than a great wit,--as a great poet also.
To express this is our present aim, and therefore we shall leave to
others, or another time, the retrospect of his comic writings. But
having, on the late promptings of love for the departed, looked over
these, we have been especially amused with the "Schoolmistress Abroad,"
which was new to us. Miss Crane, a "she Mentor, stiff as starch, formal
as a Dutch ledge, sensitive as a daguerreotype, and so tall, thin, and
upright, that supposing the Tree of Knowledge to have been a poplar, she
was the very Dryad to have fitted it," was left, with a sister little
better endowed with the pliancy and power of adaptation which the
exigencies of this varied world-scene demand, in attendance upon a sick
father, in a foreign inn, where she cannot make herself understood,
because her French is not "French French, but English French," and no
two things in nature or art can be more unlike. Now look at the position
of the sisters.
"The younger, Miss Ruth, was somewhat less disconcerted. She had by her
position the greater share in the active duties of Lebanon House, and
under ordinary circumstances would not have been utterly at a loss what
to do for the comfort or relief of her parent. But in every direction in
which her instinct and habits would have prompted her to look, the
_materials_ she sought were deficient. There was no easy chair--no fire
to wheel it to--no cushion to shake up--no cupboard to go to--no female
friend to consult--no Miss Parfitt--no cook--no John to send for the
doctor--no English--no French--nothing but that dreadful 'Gefullig,' or
'Ja Wohl,' and the equally incomprehensible 'Gnadige Frau!'
"'Der herr,' said the German coachman, 'ist sehr krank,' (the gentleman
is very sick.)
"The last word had occurred so frequently on the organ of the
Schoolmistress, that it had acquired in her mind some important
significance.
"'Ruth, what is krank?'
"'How should I know?' retorted Ruth, with an asperity apt to accompany
intense excitement and perplexity. 'In English, it's a thing that helps
to pull the bell. But look at papa--do help to support him--you're good
for nothing.'
"'I am, indeed,' murmured poor Miss Priscilla, with a gentle shake of
her head, and a low, slow sigh of acquiescence. Alas! as she ran over
the catalogue of her accomplishments, the more she remembered what she
_could_ do for her sick parent, the more helpless and useless she
appeared. For instance, she could have embroidered him a night-cap--or
knitted him a silk purse--or plaited him a guard-chain--or cut him out a
watch-paper--or ornamented his braces with bead-work--or embroidered his
waistcoat--or worked him a pair of slippers--or openworked his pocket
handkerchief. She could even, if such an operation would have been
comforting or salutary, have roughcasted him with shell-work--or coated
him with red or black seals--or encrusted him with blue alum--or stuck
him all over with colored wafers--or festooned him.
"But alas! what would it have availed her poor dear papa in the
spasmodics, if she had even festooned him, from top to toe, with little
rice-paper roses?"
The comments of the female chorus, as the author reads aloud the sorrows
of Miss Crane, are droll as Hood's drollest. Who can say more?
So farewell, gentle, generous, inventive, genial, and most amusing
friend. We thank thee for both tears and laughter; tears which were not
heart-breaking, laughter which was never frivolous or unkind. In thy
satire was no gall, in the sting of thy winged wit no venom, in the
pathos of thy sorrow no enfeebling touch! Thou hadst faults as a writer,
we know not whether as a man; but who cares to name or even to note
them? Surely there is enough on the sunny side of the peach to feed us
and make us bless the tree from which it fell.
LETTERS FROM A LANDSCAPE PAINTER.[5]
This is a very pleasing book, and if the "Essays of Summer Hours"
resemble it, we are not surprised at the favor with which they have been
received, not only in this country, but in England.
The writer is, we believe, very young, and as these Essays have awakened
in us a friendly expectation which he has time and talent to fulfil, we
will, at this early hour, proffer our counsel on two points.
First. Avoid details, so directly personal, of emotion. A young and
generous mind, seeing the deceit and cold reserve which so often palsy
men who write, no less than those who act, may run into the opposite
extreme. But frankness must be tempered by delicacy, or elevated into
the region of poetry. You may tell the world at large what you please,
if you make it of universal importance by transporting it into the field
of general human interest. But your private griefs, merely _as_ yours,
belong to yourself, your nearest friends, to Heaven and to nature. There
is a limit set by good taste, or the sense of beauty, on such subjects,
which each, who seeks, may find for himself.
Second. Be more sparing of your praise: above all, of its highest terms.
We should have a sense of mental as well as moral honor, which, while it
makes us feel the baseness of uttering merely hasty and ignorant
censure, will also forbid that hasty and extravagant praise which strict
truth will not justify. A man of honor wishes to utter no word to which
he cannot adhere. The offices of Poet--of Hero-worship--are sacred, and
he who has a heart to appreciate the excellent should call nothing
excellent which falls short of being so. Leave yourself some incense
worthy of the _best_; do not lavish it on the merely _good_. It is
better to be too cool than extravagant in praise; and though mediocrity
may be elated if it can draw to itself undue honors, true greatness
shrinks from the least exaggeration of its claims. The truly great are
too well aware how difficult is the attainment of excellence, what
labors and sacrifices it requires, even from genius, either to flatter
themselves as to their works, or to be otherwise than grieved at
idolatry from others; and so, with best wishes, and a hope to meet
again, we bid farewell to the "Landscape Painter."
BEETHOVEN.[6]
This book bears on its outside the title, "Life of Beethoven, by
Moscheles." It is really only a translation of Schindler, and it seems
quite unfair to bring Moscheles so much into the foreground, merely
because his name is celebrated in England. He has only contributed a few
notes and a short introduction, giving a most pleasing account of his
own devotion to the Master. Schindler was the trusty friend of
Beethoven, and one whom he himself elected to write his biography.
Inadequate as it is, there is that fidelity in the collection of
materials which makes it serviceable to our knowledge of Beethoven, and
we wish it might be reprinted in America. Though there is little
knowledge of music here, yet so far as any exists in company with a free
development of mind, the music of Beethoven is _the_ music which
delights, which awakens, which inspires, an infinite hope.
This influence of these most profound, bold, original and singular
compositions, even upon the uninitiated, above those of a simpler
construction and more obvious charms, we have observed with great
pleasure. For we think its cause lies deep, far beneath fancy, taste,
fashion, or any accidental cause.
It is because there is a real and steady unfolding of certain thoughts
which pervade the civilized world. They strike their roots through to us
beneath the broad Atlantic; and these roots shoot stems upward to the
light wherever the soil allows them free course.
Our era, which permits of freer inquiry, of bolder experiment, than ever
before, and a firmer, broader, basis, may also, we sincerely trust, be
depended on for nobler discovery and a grander scope of thought.
Although we sympathize with the sadness of those who lament the decay of
forms and methods round which so many associations have wound their
tendrils, and understand the sufferings which gentle, tender natures
undergo from the forlorn homelessness of a period of doubt, speculation,
reconstruction in every way, yet we cannot disjoin ourselves, by one
moment's fear or regret, from the advance corps. That body, leagued by
an invisible tie, has received too deep an assurance that the spirit is
not dead nor sleeping, to look back to the past, even if they must
advance uniformly through scenes of decay and the rubbish of falling
edifices.
But how far it is from being so! How many developments, in various ways,
of truth! How manifold the aspirations of love! In the church the
attempt is now to reconstruct on the basis proposed by its
founder--"Love one another;" in the philosophy of mind, if completeness
of system is, as yet, far from being attained, yet mistakes and vain
dogmas are set aside, and examinations conducted with intelligence and
an enlarged discernment of what is due both to God and man. Science
advances, in some route with colossal strides; new glimpses are daily
gained into the arcana of natural history, and the mysteries attendant
on the modes of growth, are laid open to our observation; while in
chemistry, electricity, magnetism, we seem to be getting nearer to the
law of life which governs them, and in astronomy "fathoming the
heavens," to use the sublime expression of Herschel, daily to greater
depths, we find ourselves admitted to a perception of the universal laws
and causes, where harmony, permanence and perfection leave us no excuse
for a moment of despondency, while under the guidance of a Power who has
ordered all so well.
Then, if the other arts suffer a temporary paralysis, and
notwithstanding the many proofs of talent and genius, we consider that
is the case with architecture, painting, and sculpture, music is not
only thoroughly vital, but in a state of rapid development. The last
hundred years have witnessed a succession of triumphs in this art, the
removal of obstructions, the transcending of limits, and the opening new
realms of thought, to an extent that makes the infinity of promise and
hope very present with us. And take notice that the prominent means of
excellence now are not in those ways which give form to thought already
existent, but which open new realms to thought. Those who live most with
the life of their age, feel that it is one not only beautiful, positive,
full of suggestion, but vast, flowing, of infinite promise. It is
dynamics that interest us now, and from electricity and music we borrow
the best illustrations of what we know.
Let no one doubt that these grand efforts at synthesis are capable of as
strict analysis. Indeed, it is wonderful with what celerity and
precision the one process follows up the other.
Of this great life which has risen from the stalk and the leaf into bud,
and will in the course of this age be in full flower, Beethoven is the
last and greatest exponent. His music is felt, by every soul whom it
affects, to be the explanation of the past and the prophecy of the
future. It contains the thoughts of the time. A dynasty of great men
preceded him, each of whom made conquests and accumulated treasures
which prepared the way for his successor. Bach, Handel, Hadyn, Mozart,
were corner-stones of the glorious temple. Who shall succeed Beethoven?
A host of musicians, full of talent, even of genius, live now he is
dead; but the greatest among them is confessed by all men to be but of
Lilliputian size compared with this demigod. Indeed, it should be so! As
copious draughts of soul have been given to the earth, as she can quaff
for a century or more. Disciples and critics must follow, to gather up
the gleanings of the golden grain.
It is observable as an earnest of the great Future which opens for this
country, that such a genius is so easily and so much appreciated here,
by those who have not gone through the steps that prepared the way for
him in Europe. He is felt, because he expresses, in full tones, the
thoughts that lie at the heart of our own existence, though we have not
found means to stammer them as yet. To those who have obtained some clew
to all this,--and their number is daily on the increase,--this biography
of Beethoven will be very interesting. They will here find a picture of
the great man, as he looked and moved in actual life, though imperfectly
painted,--as by one who saw the figure from too low a stand-point.
It will require the united labors of a constellation of minds to paint
the portrait of Beethoven. That of his face, as seen in life, prefixed
to these volumes, is better than any we have seen. It bears tokens of
the force, the grandeur, the grotesqueness of his genius, and at the
same time shows the melancholy that came to him from the great
misfortune of his life--his deafness; and the affectionateness of his
deep heart.