GOETHE IN STRASSBURG
APRIL, 1770--AUGUST, 1771
Goethe was in his twenty-first year when he entered Strassburg in the
beginning of April, 1770. From his maturer age and the chastening
experience of the preceding eighteen months, therefore, it was to be
expected that his management of his life in his new home would be more
in accordance with his father's wishes than his wild ways in Leipzig.
In sending his son to Strassburg it was the father's intention that he
should complete those legal studies of which he had made a jest in
Leipzig, and qualify himself for the profession by which he was to
make his future living. During his residence of some sixteen months in
Strassburg Goethe did actually fulfil his father's wish, and returned
to Frankfort as a full-fledged Licenciate of Laws, but as little as at
Leipzig did the interests which engrossed him suggest future eminence
in his profession.
What again strikes us is the rapidity with which he caught the tone of
his new surroundings. In Strassburg he found a society whose ways of
living and thinking were equally different from those of Frankfort and
of Leipzig. Strassburg had not the bounded intellectual horizon which
made him feel himself an alien in his native town, nor, on the other
hand, did it offer the opportunities for frivolous distraction which
he found in the "little Paris." Strassburg had been a French town for
a hundred years, but there was no town in Germany more intensely
German in its sympathies and aspirations. The officials and the upper
classes in the town spoke French and were French in their tastes and
habits, but the great majority of its citizens clung to their national
traditions with the tenacity of the conquered. It is Goethe's own
testimony that his residence in Strassburg precisely at this period of
his life was a decisive circumstance for his future development. At
the moment of his arrival, he had not yet completely broken with
French models, and he would even appear to have had vague dreams that
he would eventually choose the French language as his literary
medium.[64] Ever responsive to the intellectual and spiritual
atmosphere in which he found himself, however, the intensely German
sympathies of his Strassburg circle definitely turned him from a
career which would have cut off his genius from its profoundest
sources.
[Footnote 64: So we are led to infer from what he says in Part iii.,
Book ii. of _Dichtung und Wahrheit_.]
His decisive rejection of French for German ideals was the governing
fact of his sojourn in Strassburg, but he had other experiences there
which show that he was the same variable being of the Leipzig days.
His first letters from his new home would seem to show that he had
brought with him something of the pious sentiments he had acquired
from his association with Fräulein von Klettenberg, though his
expression of them has a singular savour. About a fortnight after his
arrival in Strassburg he writes as follows to one Limprecht, a
theological student whose acquaintance he had made in Leipzig: "I am
now again _Studiosus_, and, thank God, have now as much health as I
need, and spirits in superabundance. As I was, so am I still; only
that I stand better with our Lord God and with his dear Son Jesus
Christ. It follows that I am a somewhat wiser man; and have learned by
experience the meaning of the saying, 'The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom.' To be sure, we first sing Hosanna to him who
cometh yonder; well and good! even that is joy and happiness; the King
must first enter before he ascends his throne." A week later he writes
again to the same correspondent in a similar strain[65]: "I am a
different man, very different: for that I thank my Saviour; and I am
thankful also that I am not what I pass for."[66]
[Footnote 65: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. 232.]
[Footnote 66: _Ib._ p. 234.]
Two months later (July 28th) he appears to be in the same pious frame
of mind. "I still live somewhat at random," he writes to another
correspondent, "and I thank God for it; and often, when I dare, I
thank His Son also that I am in circumstances which seem to enjoin
this random mode of life.... Reflections are very light wares, but
prayer is a profitable business; a single welling-up of the heart to
Him whom we call _a_ God till we can name Him _our_ God, and we are
overwhelmed by the multitude of our mercies."[67]
[Footnote 67: _Ib._ pp. 240, 241.]
This mood, we cannot help feeling, sits ill on Goethe; pious as are
his expressions, they have not the ring of the genuine believer. Yet
it would be unjust to charge him with deliberate hypocrisy. The truth
is that at this time, and indeed throughout all his sojourn in
Strassburg, he was in a state of nervous irritability of which both
himself and his friends were aware.[68] Other expressions in letters
of the same date reveal a variability of moods, the only explanation
of which is that he had not fully recovered from the depressed mental
condition consequent on his long illness in Frankfort. But his
unnatural mood of piety did not long withstand the new influences to
which he was now subjected, and it is in a letter to Fräulein von
Klettenberg herself, written towards the end of August, that he
intimates his growing distaste for the religious set to whom she had
introduced him in Strassburg. After telling her that he had been to
Holy Communion "to remind him of the sufferings and death of our
Lord," he proceeds: "My intercourse with the religious people here is
not quite hearty, though at first I did turn very heartily to them;
but it seems as if it were not to be. They are so deadly dull when
they begin that my natural vivacity cannot endure it." He goes on to
say that he has made the acquaintance of one who is of a different way
of thinking from these people--one "who from the coolness of blood
with which he has always regarded the world thinks he has discovered
that we are put in this world for the special purpose of being useful
in it; that we are capable of making ourselves so; that religion is of
some help in this; and that the most useful man is the best."[69]
[Footnote 68: Lerse, one of Goethe's friends in Strassburg, said: "Da
geriet Goethe oft in hohe Verzückung, sprach Worte der Prophezeiung
und machte Lerse Besorgnisse, er werde überschnappen." (Goethe's
_Gespräche_. Gesamtausgabe von Freiherrn v. Biedermann, Leipzig, 1909,
i. p. 19.)]
[Footnote 69: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. pp. 245-7.]
The acquaintance to whom Goethe thus refers was the most important
person in the circle with which he was mainly associated during his
residence in Strassburg. It was a circle widely different in tastes
and ways of thinking from that which he had left at Frankfort. Boarded
in one house, the persons who composed it, about ten in number, daily
met at a common table. Of different ages, and mostly medical students,
their talk, as Goethe tells us, mainly turned on their professional
studies. The talk of medical students is not favourable to the
cultivation of a mystical piety, and it need not surprise us that a
few weeks in this atmosphere were sufficient to give Goethe a growing
distaste for those religious sentiments which in his case were only a
morbid distortion of his natural instincts. Yet during these
Strassburg days there is no trace in him of that anti-Christian
attitude of mind which was to be one of his later phases. He
decisively dissociated himself from the Herrnhut society, and he
ceased to speak in their language, but, as we have seen, he was still
disposed to assign to religion a due place in the lives of reasonable
men.
In the president of the common table, Dr. Salzmann, the acquaintance
to whom he referred, Goethe found one who by his personal character
and general views of life appealed to what was deepest in his own
nature. Salzmann's belief that "the most useful man is the best," may
be said, indeed, to sum up Goethe's own maturest conviction regarding
the conduct of life. In his relations to Salzmann, therefore, so far
as Goethe's ethical and religious ideals are concerned, we have the
clearest light thrown on his Strassburg period. As described by Goethe
himself, Salzmann was a man of the world, characterised by a tact,
good sense, and personal dignity which gave him an undisputed
ascendancy over the miscellaneous company which met at the common
table. From another member of the circle[70] we have this additional
tribute to Salzmann's high character: "His place (at table) was the
uppermost, and that would have been his natural place, even had he sat
behind the door. His modesty does not permit me to pass a panegyric on
him.... Let my readers imagine a philosophy, based at once on feeling
and a thorough grasp of principles, conjoined with the most genuine
Christianity, and he will have an idea of a Salzmann." Goethe and he,
the same writer adds, were "the most cordial friends (_Herzensfreunde_)."
In Leipzig the cynical _roué_ Behrisch had been Goethe's mentor; in
Strassburg his mentor was Salzmann, and the fact emphasises all the
difference between Goethe's Leipzig and Strassburg days. That he chose
Salzmann as his chiefest friend and confidant at a period when
self-control was still far from his reach, is the proof that _des
Lebens ernstes Führen_--the strenuous conduct of life--was in reality,
as he himself claimed, an imperative instinct of his nature. Certainly
he did not regulate his life in Strassburg in accordance with the
maxim of his self-chosen counsellor, yet we may conjecture that but
for Salzmann's restraining influence he would have gone further and
faster than he actually did. In the extremity of what was to be his
most passionate experience in Strassburg, it was to Salzmann that he
poured forth all the tumult of his passion, and the very act of laying
bare his heart to such a counsellor was a suggestion of the necessity
of a certain measure of self-control. In connection with Goethe's
relations to Salzmann we have also to note what is true of his
relations to everyone at whose feet he chose for the time to sit. When
a youth of eighteen he had written to Behrisch, a man of thirty, on
terms of perfect equality. He was now a little over twenty, and
Salzmann was approaching fifty and a man of the stamp we have seen,
yet in Goethe's letters to him there is no trace of the modest
diffidence with which a youth usually addresses his seniors. A forward
self-confidence, which some found objectionable, was in fact a
characteristic of his youth and early manhood which is noticed by more
than one observer. He entered a room, we are told, with a bold and
confident air; and we have it from another witness that he was _d'une
suffisance insupportable_.[71] Be it remarked, however, that there is
equal testimony to the overpowering charm of his bearing and
conversation--a charm due, as we learn, to a spontaneity of feeling
and exuberance of youthful spirits which broke through all conventions
and gave the tone to every company in which he found himself.
[Footnote 70: Jung Stilling.]
[Footnote 71: Biedermann, _op. cit._, i. pp. 15, 19. At an earlier
period Goethe was thus described: "Er mag 15 oder 16 Jahr alt sein, im
übrigen hat er mehr ein gutes Plappermaul als Gründlichkeit." _Ib._ p.
6.]
Goethe's relations to another member of the circle, who joined it
somewhat later, show him in his most attractive light. This was Johann
Heinrich Jung, better known as Jung Stilling, now about thirty years
of age. Stilling was another of those originals who crossed Goethe's
path at different periods, and to whom he was at all times specially
attracted. Stilling had had a remarkable career; he had been
successively charcoal-burner, tailor, schoolmaster, and private tutor,
and he had come to Strassburg to qualify himself for the practice of
medicine. What attracted Goethe to him was a type of mind and
character at every point dissimilar from his own. With a simple
mystical piety, which led him to believe that he was a special child
of Providence, Stilling combined an intelligence and a zeal for
knowledge which gave his words and his actions an individual stamp. It
is from Stilling that we have the most vivid description of Goethe in
these Strassburg days. As he sat with a friend at the common table for
the first time, they saw a youth enter who, by his "large bright eyes,
magnificent forehead, handsome person, and confident air," arrested
their attention.[72] "That must be a fine fellow," remarked
Stilling's friend, but both agreed that they might look for trouble
with him, as he seemed _ein wilder Kamerad_. They were mistaken, and
Goethe was to prove one of Stilling's warmest friends. Stilling
himself relates how, when one at the table directed a gibe at him, it
was Goethe who rebuked the railer. When Stilling was in despair at the
news of the illness of his betrothed, it was to Goethe he flew for
comfort, and he found him a friend in need. At a later date Goethe
published Stilling's Autobiography without his knowledge, and
presented him with the copyright. It was with the lively recollection
of these and other acts of friendship that Stilling wrote the words
which are the finest tribute ever paid to Goethe: "Goethe's heart,
which few knew, was as great as his intellect, which all knew."[73]
[Footnote 72: Goethe's personal appearance made such a remarkable
impression on all who met him that it deserves to be more minutely
described. In stature he was slightly over the middle height, though
the poise of his head, both in youth and age, gave the impression of
greater tallness. Till past his thirtieth year he was notably slender
in figure, a defect in symmetry being the observable shortness of the
legs, and he walked with swift, elastic step. The foot was elegantly
shaped, but the hand was that of the descendant of ancestors who had
been engaged in manual labour. The head was of oval form, the chin
small and feminine, the height of the forehead remarkable. The face,
which (in youth) gave the impression of smallness, was brown in
complexion; the nose was delicately formed and slightly curved; the
hair brown, abundant, and usually dishevelled. The feature which
struck all who met him for the first time was the eyes, which were
brown in colour, large, and widely-opened, with the white conspicuous,
and piercingly bright.--An exhaustive study of the portraits and busts
of Goethe will be found in _Goethes Kopf und Gestalt von Karl Bauer_,
Berlin, 1908.]
[Footnote 73: Stilling elsewhere says: "Schade, dass so wenige diesen
vortrefflichen Menschen seinem Herzen nach kennen!" Others used
similar expressions regarding Goethe's mind and heart.]
Neither in Frankfort, nor in Leipzig, nor in Strassburg had Goethe as
yet met the man in whom he could recognise his intellectual peer. In
the beginning of September, 1770, however, there came to Strassburg
one who, for the first time, impressed him with a sense of
inferiority. This was Johann Gottfried Herder, who, some five years
Goethe's senior, had a career behind him widely different from that of
the fortunate son of the Imperial Councillor of Frankfort. Born of
poor parents, he had had to fight his way at every step to the
distinction which he had already attained. He had studied under Kant
at Königsberg, had been successively assistant teacher, assistant
pastor, and private tutor. In this last capacity he had travelled in
France, and visited Paris, where he had made the acquaintance, among
others, of Diderot and D'Alembert. In Hamburg he had for several weeks
been in intercourse with Lessing, whom Goethe in a moment of caprice
had neglected to visit in Leipzig. Already, moreover, he had produced
work in literary criticism which by its suggestiveness and originality
had attracted much attention, and notably among the youth of Germany.
In hard-won experience, in extent of knowledge and range of ideas,
therefore, Herder, as Goethe himself speedily saw and acknowledged,
was far ahead of him along those very paths where he himself was
ambitious of distinction.
The association of Herder and Goethe in these Strassburg days is one
of the interesting chapters in European literary history. Goethe
himself bears emphatic testimony to Herder's determining influence at
once on his mind and character. "The most significant event of that
time, he tells us, "and one which was to have the weightiest
consequences for me, was my acquaintance with Herder and the closer
bond that resulted from it." Bond there was between them, but it was
not the bond of genuine friendship. No two men, indeed, could be more
essentially antipathetic by nature than Herder and Goethe. Their
antagonism was clearly apparent during their intercourse in
Strassburg, and in the end, after many years of uneasy relations,
their alienation became complete. Be it said that the traits in Herder
which estranged Goethe from him were equally recognised and felt by
others. Naturally querulous, splenetic, and inconsiderate of others'
feelings, the adverse circumstances of his early life had made him
something of a Timon among his fellows.[74] His favourite author was
Swift, and from this preference and from the peculiarities of his own
temper he was known among his acquaintances as the "Dean." But there
were sides to his nature which certainly did not exist in the
"terrible" Dean. Herder was an enthusiast for his own ideas, and these
ideas were of a quality and range that marked him as one of the
pioneers of his time. Religion as a primary instinct in man and the
principal factor in his development was Herder's lifelong and
predominant interest. He identified himself with Christianity, but it
was a Christianity understood by him in the most liberal sense, a
Christianity free from dogma, a spirit rather than a creed. As
kindred to religion, poetry in his conception was inseparable from it
in the essential being of man--poetry not as expressed in conventional
forms but as the breath of the human spirit, and one of the most
precious gifts for the purifying and elevation of humanity. These
conceptions he owed, not to Kant, to whom he had listened in
Königsberg, but to a less systematic teacher, J.G. Hamann, whose
eccentric character and visionary speculations had gained for him the
designation of the "Magus of the North." Goethe came to be acquainted
with the writings of Hamann, and had a genuine admiration of him as a
seer struggling with visions to which he was unable to give adequate
utterance.[75] It was in his conversations with Herder, however, that
he was introduced to those deeper conceptions of man and his
possibilities which implied a complete emancipation from the
mechanical philosophy which he had hitherto been endeavouring to find
in a mystical religion.
[Footnote 74: R. Haym, Herder's biographer, says of him: "Einen
unbedingt erfreulichen, harmonischen Eindruck kann dieser Mann, der
selbst von den 'gräulichen Dissonanzen' redet, in die Äussererungen
zuweilen ausklingen möchten, auch auf den günstigst gestimmten
Betrachter nimmermehr machen." (_Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen
Werken_, Berlin, 1887, i. p. 396.)]
[Footnote 75: Goethe attached so much importance to many of Hamann's
utterances that, as late as 1806, he had thoughts of bringing out an
edition of Hamann's works.]
During the six months that Herder resided in Strassburg he was under
treatment for a serious ailment of his eyes, and Goethe was assiduous
in his attendance on him, often remaining with him for whole days.
Their intercourse was not an unmixed pleasure for either. Herder's
mordant humour and spirit of contradiction were a daily trial to
Goethe's temper, and he describes his feelings of alternating
attraction and repulsion as a wholly new experience in his life.
Herder, who had known Diderot and D'Alembert and Lessing, appears,
indeed, to have treated Goethe as an undisciplined boy, spoilt by
flattery, with no serious purpose in life, inconsequent and
irresponsible.[76] Nor does he seem to have been specially impressed
by any promise in the youth who was so completely to eclipse him in
the eyes of the world. In his letters from Strassburg he does not even
mention Goethe's name; and, when he subsequently referred to him, it
was in terms he might have applied to any clever and confident youth.
"Goethe," he wrote, "is at bottom a good fellow, only somewhat
superficial and sparrow-like,[77] faults with which I constantly taxed
him." If Herder's moods frequently jarred on Goethe, it is evident
that the experience was mutual. The physical and mental restlessness,
which is suggested by the epithet "sparrow-like," and which was noted
by others as characteristic of Goethe at this period, could not fail
to irritate one like Herder, naturally grave, sobered by hard
experience, and then suffering from a painful and serious ailment.
Equally distasteful to Herder were Goethe's explosive outbursts in
general conversation and his liking for practical jokes at the expense
of his friends. To Herder as to everyone else Goethe aired his
opinions with the "frank confidingness" which he notes as a trait of
his own character, and which gave Herder frequent opportunities for
scathing criticism. Herder gibed at his youthful tastes--at his
collection of seals, at his elegantly-bound volumes which stood unread
on his shelves, at his enthusiasms for Italian art, for the writings
of the Cabbalists, for the poetry of Ovid.[78]
[Footnote 76: Herder thought that Goethe was lacking in enthusiasm.]
[Footnote 77: Elsewhere Herder calls Goethe a _Specht_, a
wood-pecker.]
[Footnote 78: Writing to a correspondent in 1780, Goethe says: "Herder
fährt fort, sich und andern das Leben sauer zu machen."]
At bottom, as Herder said, Goethe was a "good fellow," slow to take
offence, and as little vindictive as is possible to human nature. This
easy temper doubtless stood him in good stead under the fire of
Herder's sarcasms, but he himself specifies another reason for his
docility which is equally characteristic: he endured all Herder's
satirical spleen because he had learned to attach a high value to
everything that contributed to his own culture. According to his own
account, he owed a double debt to Herder--a determining influence on
his character, and an equally determining influence on his
intellectual development. Till he met Herder he had been treated as a
youthful genius, as a "conquering lord," whose eccentricities were
only a proof of his originality. Very different was the measure he
received from Herder, who showed no mercy for "whatever of
self-complacency, egotism, vanity, pride and presumption was latent or
active" in him. Herder, he says elsewhere, "exercised such a
blighting influence on me that I began to doubt my own powers."
Whether or not Goethe learned from Herder the lesson of modesty
regarding his own gifts, it is the truth that of all the sons of
genius none has been freer than Goethe was in his maturer years from
every form of vanity and self-consciousness.
It is on his intellectual debt to Herder, however, that Goethe dwells
most emphatically in his account of their personal intercourse. Daily
and even hourly, he says, Herder's conversation was a summons to new
points of view. Poetry was the subject in which both had a common
interest, and from Herder Goethe learned to regard poetry "in another
sense" from that in which he had hitherto regarded it. He had hitherto
regarded poetry as an accomplishment; Herder taught him that it was a
gift of nature, of the essence of humanity, "the mother-speech of the
human race." This expression was Hamann's, who had been inspired to
utter it out of his revulsion against French literature and his study
of the literature of England. From England, indeed, came those
conceptions of the nature and function of poetry which, as expounded
and exemplified in the writings of Hamann, Herder, Goethe, and others,
were to effect a revolution in German literature. In a literary
manifesto, written by an Englishman, but apparently better known in
Germany than in England, German historians of their own literature
have found the main impulse that gave occasion to this revolution.
This manifesto was a pamphlet written by Edward Young, the author of
_Night Thoughts_, entitled _Conjectures on Original Composition, in a
Letter addressed to the Author of Sir Charles Grandison_. The
dithyrambic style of the Letter manifestly exercised a powerful
influence on the prose of Herder and Goethe--prose charged with
perfervid feeling, and hitherto unknown in German literature. Young's
main contention is that in literature genius must make rules for
itself, and that imitation is suicidal. "Genius," he says, "can set us
right in composition, without the rules of the learned; as conscience
sets us right in life, without the laws of the land." He lays it down
as a maxim that "the less we copy the renowned ancients, we shall
resemble them the more." The two golden rules in composition as in
ethics are: know thyself and reverence thyself. Such were the
"conjectures on original composition," expounded to him by Herder
which led Goethe to regard poetry in "another sense" from that in
which he had hitherto understood it. And in confirmation of his views
Herder directed him to the exemplars where he would find their
illustration--to the Bible, to Homer and Pindar, to Shakespeare and
Ossian, and, above all, to the primitive poetry of all peoples.
As we shall see, Goethe laid these counsels even too faithfully to
heart; the first composition[79] in which he attempted to realise them
drew upon him Herder's characteristic censure. And it is in this
connection that we have to note the reserves which Goethe makes in the
acknowledgment of his debt to Herder, "Had Herder been more methodical
in his mental habit," he says, "he would have afforded the most
valuable guidance for the permanent direction of my culture; but he
was more disposed to probe and to stimulate than to give guidance and
leading." So it was, as Goethe adds elsewhere, that the result of
Herder's influence on him was a mental confusion and tumult, plainly
visible in another of his early writings,[80] where "quite simple
thoughts and observations are veiled in a dust-cloud of unusual words
and phrases."
[Footnote 79: _Götz von Berlichingen._]
[Footnote 80: Von deutcher Baukunst.]
The homage which Goethe pays to Herder in the retrospect of his
Strassburg days is equally emphasised in his contemporary letters.
"Herder, Herder," he writes in one place, "remain to me what you are.
If I am destined to be your planet I will be it; be it willingly,
faithfully."[81] Yet we may doubt whether Herder's influence was, in
truth, so determining a factor in his life as Goethe himself
represents it. Herder, he tells us, first taught him a wise
self-distrust, but we have seen that one of the lessons he professes
to have learned from Oeser was "to be modest without self-depreciation,
and to be proud without presumption." Before he saw Herder, also, he
had already divined the greatness of Shakespeare and the futility of
Voltaire's criticisms of him. Herder's ideas regarding the human
spirit and its possibilities were in the air, and, had the two men
never met, the probability is that Goethe's development would not have
been different from what it actually was. Herder's general views were
already incipient in him; and what Herder did was to deepen and
intensify them.[82] Nevertheless the collision for the first time with
a mind that revealed to him his own immaturity was for Goethe, as for
every youth, a formative influence of the highest import and an epoch
in his mental history. Yet in his association with Herder one fact has
to be noted: Goethe was not subjugated by him. He frankly recognised
Herder's superiority to himself in knowledge and experience, but he
retained his mental independence. In his letters to Herder, as in
those to Salzmann, he writes in terms of equality. In such words as
the following, for example, we have not the attitude of the
unquestioning disciple to his master. "Pray let us try to see each
other oftener. You feel how you would embrace one who could be to you
what you are to me. Don't let us be frightened like weaklings because
we must often disagree: should our passions collide, can we not
endure the collision?"[83] Might we not infer from this passage that
not Herder but Goethe was the dominating spirit in their
intercourse?[84]
[Footnote 81: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. p. 264. He adds that he would
prefer to be Mercury, the least of the seven planets that revolve
round the sun, than first among the five that revolve round Saturn.]
[Footnote 82: Herder himself says of his influence on Goethe: "Ich
glaube ihm, ohne Lobrednerei, einige gute Eindrücke gegeben zu haben,
die einmal wirksam werden können."--Haym, _op. cit._ i. 392.]
[Footnote 83: _Ib._ Band ii. p. 18.]
[Footnote 84: Schiller, in a letter to C.G. Körner, the father of the
poet, writes (July, 1787): "He [Herder] said that Goethe had greatly
influenced his intellectual development."]
Goethe found another source of inspiration in Strassburg besides
Herder, and one which, as he describes it both in his Autobiography
and in a contemporary effusion, moved him even more powerfully. His
first act on his arrival in Strassburg, he tells us, was to visit its
cathedral whose towers had caught his eye long before he reached the
town. He had been taught by his old master Oeser, who only represented
the general opinion of the time in Germany, that Gothic architecture
was the product of a barbarous age and could be regarded only with
amazed disgust by every person of educated taste. But Goethe's
mystical studies and religious experiences in Frankfort had not left
him what he was in his Leipzig days, and had given him an insight into
movements of the human spirit which did not come within the cognizance
of Oeser. It was with predisposed sympathy, therefore, that he looked
for the first time on a specimen of Gothic architecture in its most
august form. His first impression was of "a wholly peculiar kind";
and, without seeking to analyse the impression, "he surrendered
himself to its silent working." Thenceforward, during his stay in
Strassburg, the cathedral exercised a fascination upon him that evoked
a new world of thought and feeling. It was his delight to ascend its
tower at sunset and gaze on the rich landscape of Alsace, whose beauty
made him bless the fate that had placed him for a time amid such
surroundings. He studied its structure with such minute care that he
correctly divined the additions to the great tower which the original
architect had contemplated, but which he had been unable to carry out.
Goethe has himself indicated how the impressions he received from the
cathedral influenced his first literary productions which bore the
stamp of his individuality. It formed a fitting background, he says,
for such poetical creations as _Götz von Berlichingen_ and _Faust_. To
the cathedral and its suggestions, even more than to Herder, perhaps,
we should trace the inspiration that produced these works--the former
of which met with Herder's questioning approval. To the full force of
that inspiration Goethe gave direct expression in a composition which
is the most characteristic product of his Strassburg period--a short
essay, entitled _Of German Architecture_. Probably sketched in
Strassburg, it was not published till his return to Frankfort. Its
rhapsodical style, as well as the conceptions of art and nature which
it embodies, directly recall Young's _Conjectures on Original
Composition_. Like Young he proclaims that genius is a law to itself,
that all imitation and subservience to rule is disastrous to
imaginative production. "Principles," he declares, "are even more
injurious to genius than examples." The burden of the Essay is the
glorification of the genius of the architect of Strassburg cathedral,
and of Gothic architecture in general, which, Goethe maintained,
should be correctly designated "German" architecture, as having had
its origin on German soil. With this youthful sally of Goethe, time
was to deal with its unkindest irony. Later research has proved that
Gothic architecture is of French and not of German origin, and Goethe
himself did not remain faithful to his youthful enthusiasm. On his way
home from Strassburg, he relates, the sight of some specimens of
ancient art in Mannheim "shook his faith in northern architecture,"
and the impression he thus received was to become a permanent
conviction. It was in the art of classical antiquity that he was to
find the expression of his maturest ideal; when in later years his
attention was temporarily turned to Gothic architecture, it was with
little of his youthful enthusiasm that he admitted its claim to our
regard.
"I cannot go on long without a passion," Goethe wrote in his
twenty-third year, and we have no difficulty in believing him. In
Strassburg he lived through a passion which was to be the occasion of
his giving the first clear proof to the world that he was to be among
its original poets. On the 14th of October, 1770, more than five
months after his arrival in Strassburg, he wrote these words to a
correspondent: "I have never so vividly experienced what it is to be
content with one's heart disengaged as now here in Strassburg."[85] In
the same letter in which these words occur he casually mentions that
he has just spent a few days in the country with some pleasant people.
These pleasant people were a pastor Brion and his family living at
Sesenheim, an Alsace village some twenty miles from Strassburg. These
few days spent with the Brion family were to be the beginning of a
history which, as Goethe relates it in his Autobiography, has the
character of an idyll, but, when stripped of the poetic haze which he
has thrown around it, is not far from tragedy. He himself is our sole
authority for its incidents, and he chose so to tell them that the
exact truth of the whole history can never be known.[86]
[Footnote 85: _Ib._ Band i. p. 250.]
[Footnote 86: Subsequent investigation has proved that Goethe has
committed several errors of fact in his narrative. For example, he
relates that on his first visit to the Sesenheim family he was vividly
reminded of the family of the Vicar of Wakefield. In point of fact, he
was introduced to Goldsmith's work by Herder, who came to Strassburg
subsequent to Goethe's first visit to Sesenheim.]
The day following the writing of the letter just quoted, Goethe wrote
another letter which proves that his heart was no longer "disengaged."
This letter is, in fact, a declaration of love to the youngest
daughter of the Sesenheim pastor, Friederike--name of pleasantest
suggestions in the long list of Goethe's loves. The letter, it may be
said, does not strike us as a happy introduction to the relations that
were to follow; it would not have been written had Friederike been the
daughter of a house of the same social standing as his own. All
through his relations to the Sesenheim family, indeed, there is an
unpleasant suggestion that it is the son of the Imperial Councillor
who is indulging a passion which he is fully aware must one day end in
a more or less bitter parting. "Dear new Friend," he begins, "Such I
do not hesitate to call you, for, if in other circumstances I have not
much insight into the language of the eyes, at the first glance I saw
in yours the hope of this friendship; and for our hearts I would
swear. How should you, tender and good as I know you to be, not be a
little partial to me in return?"[87] In this strain the letter
continues, and with a skill of approach that reminds us of his boast
to his former confidant Behrisch.
[Footnote 87: _Ib._ p. 251.]
Goethe's relations with Friederike lasted till the end of June,
1771--a period of some ten months. Of this period the first half would
seem to have been passed by both in idyllic oblivion of consequences;
during the second there came painful awakening to realities on the
part of one of the lovers. As they lived in his memory, those first
months that Goethe spent in intercourse with the Sesenheim circle were
a long dream of happiness; and nowhere in his Autobiography is he so
obviously moved by his recollection of the past.[88] The picture he
has drawn of that time is, indeed, an idyll in every sense. We have
the setting of a primitive home in a country Arcadian in its
bountifulness and beauty; in the centre of this home is the father,
whose simple piety is in perfect keeping with his office and his
surroundings; and the home is brightened by the presence of two
daughters,[89] the one of whom, Friederike, appears as a vision of
rustic grace and modest maidenhood. In the midst of this circle moves
the richly-gifted youth, laying under a spell father, daughters, and
all who come within the magnetism of his presence. In no other
situation, indeed, are the attractive sides of Goethe's character so
strikingly manifest as in his intercourse with the Sesenheim family
and the friendly group attached to them. It is without a touch of
egotism that he brings himself before us in all the buoyant spirits,
the quickness of sympathy, the diversity of interests, the splendour
of his gifts, which made Wieland speak of him as "a veritable ruler of
spirits." He humours the good father by drawing a plan for a new
parsonage and painting his coach, he charms the daughters by his
various accomplishments, and the neighbours who came about the
parsonage are carried away by his frolicsome humour. "When Goethe
came among us girls when we were at work in the barn," related one who
had seen him, "his jests and droll stories almost made work
impossible."[90]
[Footnote 88: It is recorded that his voice trembled as he dictated
the passages referring to Sesenheim and Friederike.]
[Footnote 89: In reality, there were four daughters, but Goethe omits
mention of the other two in order to make more striking the
resemblance between the family of the Vicar of Wakefield and that of
Sesenheim.]
[Footnote 90: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. pp. 16-17.]
The beginning of disillusion came on the occasion of a visit made by
the two sisters to Strassburg. In a world that was alien to her
Friederike lost something of the charm which was derived from her
perfect fitness to her native surroundings, and it was brought home to
Goethe that there must be a rude awakening from the dream of the last
few months. In May, 1771, he paid a visit to Sesenheim which lasted
several weeks, and the picture we have of his state of mind during his
visit shows that he felt that the time of reckoning had come. His mind
was already clear that he and Friederike must separate, but he was
fully conscious that he was playing a sorry part. Exaggerated language
was such an inveterate habit with him at this period of his life that
it is difficult to know with what exactness his words express his real
feelings.[91] That he was unhappy, however, we cannot doubt, make what
reserves we may for rhetorical excesses of style. Here are a few
passages from letters addressed to his friend Salzmann during his stay
at Sesenheim: "It rains without and within, and the hateful evening
winds rustle among the vine leaves before my window, and my _animula
vagula_ is like yonder weather-cock on the church tower." "For the
honour of God I am not leaving this place just at present.... I am now
certainly in tolerably good health; my cough, as the result of
treatment and exercise, is pretty nearly gone, and I hope it will soon
go altogether. Things about me, however, are not very bright; the
little one [Friederike] continues sadly ill, and that makes everything
look out of joint--not to speak of _conscia mens_, unfortunately not
_recti_, which I carry about with me." "It is now about time that I
should return [to Strassburg]; I will and will, but what avails
willing in the presence of the faces I see around me? The state of my
heart is strange, and my health is as variable as usual in the world,
which it is long since I have seen so beautiful. The most delightful
country, people who love me, a round of pleasures! Are not the dreams
of thy childhood all fulfilled?--I often ask myself when my eye feeds
on this circumambient bliss. Are not these the fairy gardens after
which thy heart yearned? They are! They are! I feel it, dear friend;
and feel that we are not a whit the happier when our desires are
realised. The make-weight! the make-weight! with which Fate balances
every bliss that we enjoy. Dear friend, there needs much courage not
to lose courage in this world of ours."[92]
[Footnote 91: In the recently discovered manuscript of _Wilhelm
Meisters Theatralische Sendung_ occurs this passage, evidently
self-descriptive: "Als Knabe hatte er zu grossen prächtigen Worten und
Sprüchen eine ausserordentliche Liebe, er schmückte seine Seele damit
aus wie mit einem köstlichen Kleide, und freute sich darüber, als wenn
sie zu ihm selbst gehörten kindlisch über diesen äussern Schmuck."]
[Footnote 92: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. p. 258 _ff._]
The day of parting came at the end of June; on August 6th he passed
the tests necessary for the Licentiate of Laws, and at the end of that
month he left Strassburg for home. He left Friederike, he tells us, at
a moment when their parting almost cost her her life[93]; did he do
her a greater wrong than his own narrative would imply? We cannot
tell; but one thing is certain, from the first he never intended
marriage. That he had pangs of self-reproach for the part he had
played, his words above quoted may be taken as sufficient evidence,
but alike from temperament and deliberate consideration of the facts
of life he was incapable of the contrition that troubles human nature
to its depths.[94] Yet in our judgment of him it is well to remember
the ideas then current in Germany regarding the relations between love
and marriage. In his seventy-fourth year Goethe himself said: "Love is
something ideal, marriage is something real; and never with impunity
do we exchange the ideal for the real." The severest of moralists,
Kant, was of the same opinion. "The word _conjugium_ itself," he says,
"implies that two married people are yoked together, and to be thus
yoked cannot be called bliss." And to the same purport Wilhelm von
Humboldt, one of the finest spirits of his time, declared that
"marriage was no bond of souls." It was in a world where such opinions
were entertained by men of the highest character and intelligence that
Goethe made his irresponsible addresses to the successive objects of
his passion.
[Footnote 93: Friederike died in 1815. She was still alive when Goethe
was writing the story of their love.]
[Footnote 94:
Nichts taugt Ungeduld,
Noch weniger Reue;
Jene vermehrt die Schuld,
Diese schafft neue.]
The distractions of Strassburg, no more than the distractions of
Leipzig, diverted Goethe from what were his ruling instincts from the
beginning--to know life and to be master of himself. As in Leipzig,
his professional studies in Strassburg held little place in his
thoughts; his law degree, he tells us, he regarded as a matter of
"secondary importance." The subject he chose as his thesis--the
obligation of magistrates to impose a State religion binding on all
their subjects--was of a nature that had no living interest for him at
any period of his life, and he wrote the thesis "only to satisfy his
father." If his law studies were neglected, however, it was almost
with feverish passion that he coursed through other fields of
knowledge. In the _Ephemerides_--a diary he kept in Strassburg and in
which he noted his random thoughts and the books that happened to be
engaging him--we can see the range of his reading and the scope of his
interests. Occultism, metaphysics, science in many departments,
literature ancient and modern, all in turn absorbed his attention and
suggest a mental state impatient of the limits of the human
faculties--the state of mind which he was afterwards so marvellously
to reproduce in his _Faust_.[95] Inspired by the conversation of the
medical students who met at the common table, as well as by his own
natural bent, he attended the university lectures on chemistry and
anatomy, and thus laid a solid foundation for his subsequent original
investigations in these sciences. Extensive travels in the surrounding
country were among the chief pleasures of his sojourn in Strassburg,
and these travels, as was the case with him always, were voyages of
discovery. Architecture, machinery, works of engineering, Roman
antiquities, the native ballads of the district--on all he turned an
equally curious eye, and with such vivid impressions that they
remained in his memory after the lapse of half a lifetime.
[Footnote 95: "I, too," Goethe wrote in _Dichtung und Wahrheit_, "had
trodden the path of knowledge, and had early been led to see the
vanity of it."]
In Goethe the instinct for self-mastery was as remarkable as his
instinct for knowledge. As the result of his illness in Frankfort, his
organs of sense were in a state of morbid susceptibility which "put
him out of harmony with himself, with objects around him, and even
with the elements." It throws a curious light on the nature of the man
that amid all the preoccupations of his mind and heart in Strassburg
he could deliberately turn his thoughts to the cure of his jarred
nerves. Loud sounds disturbed him, and to deaden the sensitiveness of
his ears he attended the evening tatoo; to cure himself of a tendency
to giddiness he practised climbing the cathedral; partly to rid
himself of a repugnance to repulsive sights he attended clinical
lectures; and by a similar course of discipline he so completely
delivered himself from "night fears" that he afterwards found it
difficult to realise them even in imagination.
In his old age Goethe said of himself: "I have that in me which, if I
allowed it to go unchecked, would ruin both myself and those about
me." Was it, as Goethe would have us believe, by sheer purposive will
that he kept this dangerous element in him under check and saved
himself at critical moments from disaster? When we regard his life as
a whole, the actual facts hardly justify such a conclusion. Nature had
given him two safeguards which, without any effort of will on his own
part, assured him deliverance where the risk of wreckage was
greatest--a consuming desire to _know_ which grew with every year of
his life, and a versatility of temperament which necessitated
ever-renewed sensations equally of the mind and heart. Of the working
of these two elements in him we have already had illustration; they
will receive further illustration as we proceed.
It would be within the truth to say that the period of Goethe's
sojourn in Strassburg was the most memorable epoch of his life. During
the eighteen months he spent there he received an intellectual
stimulus from which we may date his dedication to the unique career
before him, in which self-culture, the passion for knowledge, and the
impulse to produce were all commensurate ends. Moreover, as has
already been said, it was in Strassburg that his genius found its
first adequate expression. And, what is worth noting in the case of
one who was to range over so many fields, it was in lyric poetry that
his genius first expressed itself. The problem with Goethe is to
discover which among his various gifts was nature's special dowry to
him. What, at least, is true is that at different periods of his life
he produced numbers of lyrics which the world has recognised as among
the most perfect things of their kind. And among these perfect things
are the few songs and other pieces inspired by Friederike Brion.
Doubtless his genius would have flowered had he never seen Friederike,
but it was among the many kind offices that fortune did him that he
found the theme for his muse in one whose simple charm, while it
excited his passion, at the same time chastened and purified it, and
compelled a truthful simplicity of expression in keeping with her own
nature. It was to Friederike that Goethe owed the pure inspiration
which gives his verses to her a quality rare in lyric poetry, but to
the writing of them there went all the forces that were then working
in him. In these verses we have the conclusive proof that he now both
understood and felt poetry "in another sense" from that in which he
had hitherto understood and felt it. Through them we feel the breath
of another air than that which he had breathed when he strained his
invention to make poetic compliments to Käthchen Schönkopf. In the
intensity and directness of passion which they express we may trace
all the new poetic influences which he had come under in
Strassburg--Shakespeare, Ossian, the popular ballad, the inspiration
of Herder. What is remarkable in these early lyrics, however, is that
though they vibrate with the emotion of the poet, the emotion is under
strict restraint and never passes into the watery effusiveness which
is the inherent sin of so much German lyrical poetry. That "brevity
and precision" which was the ideal he now put before him he had
attained at one bound, and in none of his later work did he exemplify
it in greater perfection. As his countrymen have frequently pointed
out, these firstfruits of Goethe's genius mark a new departure in
lyrical poetry. In them we have the direct simplicity of the best
lyrics of the past, but combined with this simplicity a depth of
introspection and a fusion of nature with human feeling which is a new
content in the imaginative presentation of human experience. In
connection with Goethe's Leipzig period we gave a specimen of the best
work he was then capable of producing; when we place beside it such a
poem as the following, we are reminded of the saying of Emerson that
"the soul's advances are not made by gradation ... but rather by
ascension of state."
WILKOMMEN UND ABSCHIED.
Es schlug mein Herz; geschwind zu Pferde,
Und fort, wild, wie ein Held zur Schlacht!
Der Abend wiegte schon die Erde,
Und an den Bergen hing die Nacht;
Schon stund im Nebelkleid die Eiche,
Wie ein getürmter Riese da,
Wo Finsternis aus dem Gesträuche
Mit hundert schwarzen Augen sah.
Der Mond von einem Wolkenhügel
Sah kläglich aus dem Duft hervor;
Die Winde schwangen leise Flügel,
Umsausten schauerlich mein Ohr;
Die Nacht schuf tausend Ungeheuer;
Doch frisch und fröhlich war mein Mut;
In meinen Adern welches Feuer!
In meinem Herzen welche Glut!
Dich sah ich, und die milde Freude
Floss aus dem süssen Blick auf mich,
Ganz war mein Herz an deiner Seite,
Und jeder Athemzug für dich.
Ein rosenfarbnes Frühlingswetter
Umgab das liebliche Gesicht,
Und Zärtlichkeit für mich, ihr Götter!
Ich hofft' es, ich verdient' es nicht.
Doch ach, schon mit der Morgensonne
Verengt der Abschied mir das Herz:
In deinen Küssen, welche Wonne,
In deinem Auge, welcher Schmerz!
Ich ging, du standst und sahst zur Erden,
Und sahst mir nach mit nassem Blick;
Und doch, welch Glück geliebt zu werden!
Und lieben, Götter, welch ein Glück!
WELCOME AND PARTING.
Throbbed high my breast! To horse, to horse!
Raptured as hero for the fight;
Soft lay the earth in eve's embrace,
And on the mountain brooded night.
The oak, a dim-discovered shape,
Did, like a towering giant, rise--
There whence from forth the thicket glared
Black darkness with its myriad eyes.
From out a pile of cloud the moon
Peered sadly through the misty veil;
Softly the breezes waved their wings;
Sighed in my ears with plaintive wail.
Night shaped a thousand monstrous forms;
Yet fresh and frolicsome my breast;
And what a fire burned in my veins,
And what a glow my heart possessed!
I saw thee: in thine eye's soft gaze
A tender, calm delight I knew;
All motions of my heart were thine.
And thine was every breath I drew.
The freshest, richest hues of Spring
Enhaloëd thy lovely face,--
And tenderest thoughts for me!--my hope!
But, undeserved, ye Powers of Grace!
But, ah! too soon, with morning's dawn,
The hour of parting cramps my heart;
Then, in thy kisses, O what bliss!
And in thine eye, what poignant smart!
I went; thou stood'st and downward gazed,
Gazed after me with tearful eyes;
Yet, to be loved, what blessedness,
And, oh! to love, ye Gods, what bliss!