FRANKFORT--_GÖTZ VON BERLICHINGEN_
AUGUST, 1771--DECEMBER, 1771
Goethe returned to Frankfort at the end of August, 1771, and, with the
exception of two memorable intervals, he remained there till November,
1775, when he left it, never again to make it his permanent home. This
period of four years and two months is in creative productiveness
unparalleled in his own career, and is probably without a parallel in
literary history. During these years he produced _Götz von
Berlichingen_ and _Werther_, both of which works, whatever their
merits or demerits, are at least landmarks, not only in the history of
German, but of European literature. To the same period belong the
original scenes of _Faust_, in which he displayed a richness of
imagination with a spontaneity of passion, of thought and of feeling,
to which he never attained in the subsequent additions he made to the
poem. In these scenes are already clearly defined the two figures,
Faust and Mephistopheles, which have their place in the world's
gallery of imaginative creations beside Ulysses and Don Quixote,
Hamlet and Falstaff; and there, too, in all her essential lineaments,
we have Gretchen, the most moving of all the births of a poet's mind
and heart. And, besides these three works of universal interest, there
belong to the same period a series of productions--plays, lyrics,
essays--which, though at a lower level of inspiration, were sufficient
to mark their author as an original genius with a compass of thought
and imagination hitherto unexampled in the literature of his country.
Had Goethe died at the age of twenty-six, he would have left behind
him a legacy which would have assured him a place with the great
creative minds of all time.
This extraordinary productiveness of itself implies an intellectual
and spiritual ferment which receives further illustration from the
poet's letters written during the same period. In these letters we
have the expression of a mind distracted by contending emotions and
conflicting aims, now in sanguine hope, now paralysed with a sense of
impotence to adjust itself to the inexorable conditions under which
life had to be lived. Moods of thinking and feeling follow each other
with a rapidity of contrast which are bewildering to the reader and
hardly permit him to draw any certain inference as to the real import
of what is written. In one effusion we have lachrymose sentiment which
suggests morbid self-relaxation; in another, a bitter cynicism equally
suggestive of ill-regulated emotions. We have moods of piety and
moods in which the mental attitude towards all human aspirations can
only be described as Mephistophelian.
Goethe himself was well aware of a congenital morbid strain in him
which all through his life demanded careful control if he were to
avert bodily and mental collapse. And at no period of his life did
external conditions and inward experiences combine to put his
self-control to a severer test than during these last years in
Frankfort. Frankfort itself, as we shall see, had become more
distasteful to him than ever, and his abiding feeling towards it, now
as subsequently, was that he could not breathe freely in its
atmosphere. On his return from Strassburg his father received him with
greater cordiality than on his return from Leipzig, but the lack of
real sympathy between them remained, and was undoubtedly one of the
permanent sources of Goethe's discontent with his native town. With no
interest in his nominal profession, he had at the same time no clear
conception of the function to which his genius called him. Throughout
these years in Frankfort he continued uncertain whether Nature meant
him for a poet or an artist, and we receive the impression that his
ambition was to be artist rather than poet. From the varied literary
forms in which he expressed himself, also, we are led to infer that in
the domain of literature he was still only feeling his way.
If the diversity of his gifts thus distracted him, his emotional
experiences, it will appear, were not more favourable to a settled aim
and purpose. One paroxysm of passion succeeded another, with the
result that he was eventually, in self-preservation, driven to make a
complete breach with his past, and to seek deliverance in a new set of
conditions under which he might attain the self-control after which he
had hitherto vainly striven. This prolonged conflict with himself was
doubtless primarily due to his own inherited temperament, but it was
also in large measure owing to the character of the society and of the
time in which the period of his youth was passed. Had he been born
half a century earlier--that is to say, in a time when the current
speculation was bound up with a mechanical philosophy, and when the
limits of emotion were conditioned by strict conventional
standards--he might have been a youth of eccentric humours, but the
morbid fancies and wandering affections that consumed him could not
have come within his experience. But by the time when he began to
think and feel, Rousseau had written and opened the flood-gates of the
emotions, and Sterne had shown how accepted conventions might appear
in the light of a capricious wit and fancy which probed the surface of
things. In Goethe's letters, which are the most direct revelation of
his mental and moral condition during the period, the influence of
Rousseau and Sterne is visible on every page, and the fact has to be
remembered in drawing any conclusions as to the real state of his
mind from his language to his various correspondents. The fashion of
giving exaggerated expression to every emotion was, in fact, the
convention of the day, and we find it in all the correspondence, both
of the men and women of the time. That it was in large degree forced
and artificial and must be interpreted with due reserves, will appear
in the case of Goethe himself.
There are three critical epochs during these Frankfort years, each
marked by a central event which resulted in new developments of
Goethe's character and genius. In the period between his return to
Frankfort in August, 1771, and May, 1772, was written the first draft
of _Götz von Berlichingen_, the eventual publication of which made him
the most famous author in Germany. During these months the memories of
Strassburg are fresh in his mind, and the recollection of Friederike
and the teaching of Herder are his chief sources of inspiration. In
May, 1772, he went to Wetzlar, where, during a residence of three
months, he passed through another emotional experience which, two
years later, found expression in _Werther_, of still more resounding
notoriety than _Götz_. The opening of 1775 saw him entangled in a new
affair of the heart of another nature than those which had preceded
it, and resulting in a mental turmoil that drove him to seek
deliverance in a new field of life and action. There were other
incidents and other experiences that moved him less or more during
this period of his career, but it is in connection with these three
central events that his character and his genius are presented in
their fullest light, and are best known to the world.
We have it on Goethe's own testimony that, on his return from
Strassburg to Frankfort, he was healthier in body and more composed in
mind than on his return from Leipzig two years before. Still, he adds,
he was conscious of a sense of tension in his nature which implied
that his mind had not completely recovered its normal balance. So he
writes in his Autobiography, and his contemporary letters fully bear
out his memories of the period. He certainly returned from Strassburg
with a more satisfactory record than from Leipzig. He had actually
completed the necessary legal studies, and was now Licentiate of Laws.
His _Disputation_ had won the approval of his father, who was even
prepared to go to the expense of publishing it. In his son's purely
literary efforts during his Strassburg sojourn, also, he showed an
undisguised pleasure, and he would evidently have been quite content
to have seen him combine eminence in his profession with distinction
in literature. When Goethe, therefore, immediately on his arrival in
the paternal home, took the necessary steps to qualify himself for
legal practice, it seemed that the father's ambition for his wayward
son was at length about to be realised.[96] But the apparent
reconciliation of their respective aims was based on no cordial
understanding, and the son, it is evident, made no special effort to
adapt himself to his father's idiosyncrasies. An incident he himself
relates curiously illustrates his careless disregard of the
conventions of the family home. On his way from Strassburg he picked
up a boy-harper who had interested him, and seriously thought of
making him a member of the household. The reconciling mother realised
the absurdity of lodging in the mansion of an Imperial Rath a
strolling musician, who would have to earn his living by daily visits
to the taverns of the town, and she met her son's good-humoured whim
by finding a home for the boy in more fitting quarters. These noble
Bohemian humours of his son, which, as we shall see, displayed
themselves in other unconventional habits, were not likely to
propitiate a father who, as we are told, "leading a contented life
amid his ancient hobbies and pursuits, was comfortably at ease, like
one who has carried out his plans in spite of all hindrances and
delays." In point of fact, as during Goethe's former sojourn at home,
his estrangement from his father increased from year to year, and he
came to speak of him with a bitterness which proves that, for a time
at least, any kindly feeling that existed between them was effaced.
[Footnote 96: In point of fact, only two legal cases passed through
Goethe's hands during the first seven months after his return. During
the later period of his stay in Frankfort he was more busily engaged
with law.]
Again, as after his return from Leipzig, it was his sister Cornelia
who made home in any degree tolerable for the brother whom she alone
of the family was sufficiently sympathetic and sufficiently instructed
fully to understand. She had gathered round her a circle of attractive
and educated women, of whom she was the dominating spirit, and in
whose company her brother, always appreciative of feminine society,
now found a congenial atmosphere. Associated with the circle were
certain men with kindred interests, among whom Goethe specially names
the two brothers Schlosser as esteemed counsellors.[97] Both were
accomplished men of the world, the one a jurist, the other engaged in
the public service; and both were keenly interested in literature. It
was a peculiarity of Goethe, even into advanced life, that he seems
always to have required a mentor, whose counsels, however, he might or
might not choose to follow. At this time it was the elder of these two
brothers who played this part, and Goethe testifies that he received
from him the sagest of advice, which, however, he was prevented from
following by "a thousand varying distractions, moods, and passions."
[Footnote 97: The younger brother, Georg, subsequently married
Cornelia.]
What these distractions were is vividly revealed in his correspondence
of the time. First, his whole being was in disaccord with the social,
religious, and intellectual atmosphere of Frankfort; he felt himself
cribbed, cabined, and confined in all the aspirations of his nature;
and the future seemed to offer no prospect of more favouring
conditions. Two months after his return he communicates to his friend
Salzmann in Strassburg his sense of oppression in his present
surroundings. Arduous intellectual effort is necessary to him, he
writes, "for it is dreary to live in a place where one's whole
activity must simmer within itself.... For the rest, everything around
me is dead.... Frankfort remains the nest it was--_nidus_, if you
will. Good enough for hatching birds; to use another figure,
_spelunca_, a wretched hole. God help us out of this misery.
Amen."[98]
[Footnote 98: _Werke, Briefe_, Band 2, pp. 7-8.]
In himself, also, there was a turmoil of thoughts and emotions which,
apart from depressing surroundings, was sufficient to occasion
alternating moods of exaltation and despair. The upbraiding memory of
Friederike pursued him, and we may take it that in his Autobiography
he faithfully records his continued self-reproach for his abrupt
desertion of her. "Friederike's reply to a written adieu lacerated my
heart. It was the same hand, the same mind, the same feeling that had
been educed in her to me and through me. For the first time I now
realised the loss she suffered, and saw no way of redressing or even
of alleviating it. Her whole being was before me; I continually felt
the want of her; and, which is worse, I could not forgive myself my
own unhappiness." We may ascribe it either to delicacy of feeling or
to the consideration that their further intercourse was undesirable,
that he ceased to communicate directly with her. A drawing by his own
hand, which he thought would give her pleasure, he sends to her
through Salzmann, who is requested to accompany it with or without a
note, as he thinks best. Through the same hands he sends to her a play
(_Götz von Berlichingen_), in which a lover plays a sorry part, and
adds the comment that "Friederike will find herself to some extent
consoled if the faithless one is poisoned."
But the profoundest source of his unrest was neither the
distastefulness of Frankfort society nor his remorse for his conduct
to Friederike. It was his concern with his own life and what he was to
make of it. It is this concern that gives interest to his letters of
the period which otherwise possess little intrinsic value, either in
substance or form. What we find in them, and what is hardly to be
found elsewhere, is a mirror of one of the world's greatest spirits in
the process of attaining self-knowledge and self-mastery in the
direction of powers which are not yet fully revealed to him. At times,
it appears to him as if the task were hopeless of establishing any
harmony between his own nature and the nature of things. Now he is
filled with an exhilarating confidence in his own gifts and in his
destiny to bring them to full fruition; now he seems to be paralysed
with a sense of impotence in which we see all the perils attending his
peculiar temperament. In his letters to his Strassburg friend Salzmann
we have the frankest communications regarding his alternating moods of
depression and hopefulness. "What I am doing," he writes immediately
after his settlement in Frankfort, "is of no account. So much the
worse. As usual, more planned than done, and for that very reason
nothing much will come of me."[99] To a different purport are his
words in a later note (November 28th) to the same correspondent: "In
searching for your letter of October 5th, I came upon a multitude of
others requiring answers. Dear man, my friends must pardon me, my
_nisus_ forwards is so strong that I can seldom force myself to take
breath, and cast a look backwards."[100] In the opening of the year,
1772 (February 3rd), he is in the same sanguine temper: "Prospects
daily widen out before me, and obstacles give way, so that I may
confidently lay the blame on my own feet if I do not move on."[101]
[Footnote 99: _Ib._ p. 6.]
[Footnote 100: _Ib._ p. 8.]
[Footnote 101: _Ib._ p. 14.]
The "_nisus_ forwards," of which he speaks, had no connection with the
worldly ambition for success in his profession. What was consuming him
was the double desire of mastering himself and at the same time of
giving expression to the seething ideas and emotions which rendered
that self-mastery so hard of attainment. From the moment of his return
to Frankfort we see all the seeds fructifying which had taken root in
him during his residence in Strassburg. He sends to Herder the ballads
he had collected in Alsace, and sends him, also, translations from
what he considered the original of the adored Ossian. But the
overmastering influence in him at this time was the genius of
Shakespeare, as it had been interpreted for him by Herder. Goethe's
unbounded admiration for Shakespeare had already found expression in
the rhapsody composed in Strassburg to which reference has been made,
and to the circle of men and women who had gathered round his sister,
he communicated his enthusiasm. Their enthusiasm took a form perfectly
in keeping with the spirit of the time. Shakespeare's birthday
occurred on October 14th,[102] and it was resolved that, at once as a
tribute to their divinity and a challenge to all his gainsayers, the
auspicious day should be celebrated with due rites. At Cornelia's
instance, Herder, as high-priest of the object of their worship, was
invited to honour the occasion. If he could not be present in body, he
was at least to be present in spirit, and he was to send his essay on
Shakespeare that it might form part of the day's liturgy. So under the
roof of the precise Imperial Rath, to whom Klopstock's use of unrhymed
verse in his _Messias_ was an unpardonable innovation in German
literature, the memory of the "drunken barbarian," as with Voltaire he
must have regarded him, was celebrated--whether in his presence or
not, his son does not record.[103]
[Footnote 102: So it was then thought, but the exact date is
uncertain.]
[Footnote 103: The toast of the evening--"The Will of all Wills"--was
given by Goethe, who thereupon delivered the panegyric on Shakespeare
which he had composed in Strassburg. This toast was followed by one to
the health of Herder.]
But Goethe was about to pay more serious homage to the Master, as he
then understood him. On November 28th, he informed Salzmann that he
was engaged on a work which was absorbing him to the forgetfulness of
Homer, Shakespeare, and everything else. He was dramatising the
history of "one of the noblest of Germans," rescuing from oblivion the
memory of "an honest man." The "noblest of Germans" was Gottfried von
Berlichingen (1482-1562), one of those "knights of the cows," whose
predatory propensities were the terror of Germany throughout the
Middle Ages, and who appears to have been neither better nor worse
than the rest of his class. While still in Strassburg, Goethe had
noted Gottfried as an appropriate subject for dramatic treatment, but,
as he records in his Autobiography, it was immediately after his
return to Frankfort that he first put his hand to the work. Stimulated
to his task by his sister Cornelia, in the course of six weeks he had
completed the play which, on its publication two years later, was to
make him the most famous author in Germany.
Goethe's choice of Götz as a theme on which to try his powers is a
revelation of the motives that were now compelling him. Of the nature
of these motives he has himself given somewhat conflicting accounts.
He tells his contemporary correspondents that the play was written to
relieve his own bosom of its perilous stuff; to enable him "to forget
the sun, moon, and dear stars," and, again, that its primary object
was to do justice to the memory of a great man. Writing in old age, he
assigns still another motive as mainly prompting him to the production
of the play: it was written, he says, with the express object of
improving the German stage, of rescuing it from the pitiful condition
into which it had fallen during the first half of the eighteenth
century. What is entirely obvious, however, is that Shakespeare is the
beginning and end of the inspiration of the _Geschichte Gottfriedens
von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand_, as the play in its original
form was entitled. In its conception and in its details Shakespeare is
everywhere suggested, though it may be noted that the comic element
with which Shakespeare flavours his tragedies is absent from _Götz_.
But for Shakespeare the play could not have taken the shape in which
we have it. Given the model, however, Goethe had to infuse it with
motives which would have a living interest for his own time. One of
these motives was the admiration of great men which Goethe shared with
the generation to which he belonged. During this Frankfort period he
was successively attracted by such contrasted types of heroes as
Julius Cæsar, Socrates, and Mahomet as appropriate central figures for
dramatic representation. "It is a pleasure to behold a great man," one
of the characters in _Götz_ is made to say; and, if Goethe had any
determinate aim when he took his theme in hand, it was to present the
spectacle of a hero for admiration and inspiration. As it was, deeper
instincts of his nature asserted themselves as he proceeded with his
work, and Götz is overshadowed by other characters in the drama in
whom the poet himself, by his own admission, came to find a more
congenial interest.
The play exists in three forms--the first draft being recast for
publication in 1773, which second version was adapted for the Weimar
theatre in collaboration with Schiller in 1804. It is generally
admitted that in its first form we have the fullest manifestation of
its author's genius, and equally the fullest expression of the
original inspiration that led to its production. Like Shakespeare he
had a book for his text--the Memoirs of Gottfried, written by himself;
and like Shakespeare he took large liberties with his original--no
fewer than six characters in the play, two of whom are of the first
importance, being of Goethe's own invention. The plot may be briefly
told. Adelbert von Weislingen, a Knight of the Empire, had been the
early friend of Gottfried, but under the influence of the Bishop of
Bamberg and others he had taken a line which led him into direct
conflict with Gottfried. While the latter, identifying himself with
the lesser German nobles, was for supporting the power of the Emperor,
Weislingen had identified himself with the princes whose object was to
cripple it. Gottfried seizes Weislingen while on his way to the Bishop
of Bamberg, and bears him off to his castle at Jaxthausen. The
contrasted characters of the two chief personages in the play are now
brought before us--Gottfried the rough soldier, honest, resolute, and
Weislingen, more of a courtier than a soldier, weak and unstable.
Overborne by the stronger nature of Gottfried, Weislingen agrees to
break his alliance with the Bishop, and, as a pledge for his future
conduct, betroths himself to Gottfried's sister Marie, who, weakly
devout, is a counterpart to Gottfried's wife Elizabeth, who is
depicted as a Spartan mother.[104] To square accounts with the Bishop,
Weislingen finds it necessary to proceed to Bamberg, and the second
act tells the tale of his second apostacy. At Bamberg he comes under
the spell of an enchantress in the shape of a beautiful woman,
Adelheid von Walldorf, a widow, whose physical charms are represented
as irresistible. Weislingen becomes her creature, forswears his bond
with Gottfried, and rejoins the ranks of his enemies--news which
Gottfried is reluctantly brought to credit. In the third act we find
Gottfried in a coil of troubles. He has robbed a band of merchants on
their way from the Frankfort Fair, and, at the prompting of
Weislingen, the Emperor puts him under the ban of the Empire, and
dispatches an armed force against him. Beaten in the field and
besieged in his own castle, he is at length forced to surrender. In
the fourth act he is a prisoner in Heilbronn, but is rescued by Franz
von Sickingen, a knight of the same stamp and with the same political
sympathies as himself. Sickingen, who is on friendly terms with the
Emperor, does him the still further service of securing his relief
from the ban, whereupon Gottfried settles down to a peaceful life in
his own castle, and to relieve its monotony betakes himself to the
uncongenial task of writing his own memoirs. In the fifth act we sup
with horrors. The peasants rise in rebellion and wreak frightful
vengeance on their oppressors. In the hope of controlling them,
Gottfried, at their own request, puts himself at their head, but finds
himself powerless to check their excesses, and on their defeat he is
again taken prisoner. But the main interest of the last act is
concentrated in Adelheid, who now reveals all the depths of her
sensual nature and her unscrupulous ambition. Weislingen she has
discovered to be a despicable creature, and she attaches herself to
Sickingen, in whom she finds a man after her own heart, able to
satisfy all the cravings of her nature. She poisons Weislingen, who
dies as he has lived, the victim of weakness rather than of
wickedness. Her crimes are known to the judges of the Vehmgericht, who
in their mysterious tribunal adjudge her to death, which is effected
in a curious scene by one of their agents. The drama closes with the
death of Gottfried in prison, baffled in his dearest schemes, blasted
in reputation, and with gloomy forebodings for the future of his
country.
[Footnote 104: In the characters of Marie and Elizabeth we have traits
of Friederike and of Goethe's mother.]
Such is an outline of the production in which Goethe made his first
appeal to his countrymen at large,[105] and which is in such singular
contrast to the ideals of his maturity. That it was not the inevitable
birth of his whole heart and mind is proved by the fact that he never
repeated the experiment. Neither the incidents nor the hero of the
piece, indeed, were of a nature to elicit the full play of his genius.
Goethe had not, like Scott, an inborn interest in the scenes of the
camp and the field, and could not, like Scott, take a special delight
in describing them for their own sake. To the portrayal of a character
like Gottfried Scott could give his whole heart, but Goethe required
characters of a subtler type to enlist his full sympathies and to give
scope to his full powers. Goethe himself has told us how, as he
proceeded in the writing of the play, his interest in his hero
gradually flagged. In depicting the charms of Adelheid, he says, he
fell in love with her himself, and his interest in her fate gradually
overmastered him. In truth, it is in scenes where Gottfried is not the
principal actor that any originality in the play is to be found, for
in these scenes Goethe was drawing from his own experience and
recording emotions that had distracted himself. In the unstable
Weislingen he represents a weakness of his own nature of which he was
himself well aware. "You are a chameleon," Adelheid tells Weislingen;
and, as we have seen, Goethe so described himself. It is, therefore,
in the relations of Weislingen to Marie and Adelheid that we must look
for the spontaneous expression of the poet's genius, working on
material drawn from self-introspection. In Weislingen's hasty wooing
and equally hasty desertion of Marie we have an exaggerated
presentment of Goethe's own conduct to Friederike, to which objection
may be taken on the score of delicacy, though he himself suggests that
it is to be regarded as a public confession of his self-reproach. In
depicting Marie and Weislingen he had Friederike and himself before
him to restrain his imagination within the limits of nature and truth.
In the case of Adelheid he had no model before him, and the result is
that, with youthful exaggeration, he has made her a beautiful monster
with no redeeming touch, and, therefore, of little human interest.
Such a character was essentially alien to Goethe's own nature, and so
are the melodramatic scenes which depict her desperate attempts to
escape from her toils and the proceedings of the avenging tribunal
that had marked her for judgment.
[Footnote 105: As we have seen, the Leipzig book of verses did not
attract general attention.]
As in the case of all Goethe's longer productions, critical opinion
has been divided from the beginning regarding the intrinsic merits of
_Götz_. In the opinion of critics like Edmond Scherer it is a crude
imitation of Shakespeare with little promise of its author's future
achievement, while other critics, like Lewes, regard it as a "work of
daring power, of vigour, of originality." On one point Goethe himself
and all his critics are agreed: the play as a whole is only a
succession of scenes, loosely strung together, with no inner
development leading up to a determinate end. In his later life Goethe
characterised Shakespeare's plays as "highly interesting tales, only
told by more persons than one." Whatever truth there may be in this
judgment in the case of Shakespeare, it exactly describes _Götz_. It
is as a tale, a narrative, and not as a drama, that it is to be read
if it is to be enjoyed without the sense of artistic failure. The
anachronisms with which the piece abounds, and which Hegel caustically
noted, have been a further stumbling-block to the critics.[106] In
the second scene of the first Act, Luther is introduced for no other
purpose than to expound ideas which come strangely from his mouth,
but which were effervescing in the minds of Goethe and his
contemporaries--the ideas which they had learned from Rousseau
regarding the excellence of the natural man. Similarly, in the scene
following, educational problems are discussed which sound oddly in the
castle of a mediæval baron, but which were awakening interest in
Goethe's own day. In the supreme moments of his career--on the
occasion of the surrender of his castle and in his last
hour--Gottfried is made to utter the word _freedom_ as the watchword
of his aspirations, but in so doing he is expressing Goethe's own
passionate protest against the conventions of his age in religion, in
philosophy, and art, and not a sentiment in keeping with the class of
which he is a type.
[Footnote 106: Lessing strongly disapproved of _Götz_ as flouting the
doctrines laid down in his _Dramaturgie_. When his brother announced
to him that _Götz_ had been played with great applause in Berlin, his
cold comment was that no doubt the chief credit was due to the
decorator.]
These blemishes in the play as a work of art are apparent, yet it may
be said that it was mainly owing to these very blemishes that the
"beautiful monster," as Wieland called it, took contemporaries by
storm and retains its freshness of interest after the lapse of a
century and a half. The successive scenes are, indeed, without organic
connection, but each scene by itself has the vivacity and directness
of improvisation. Nor do the anachronisms to which criticism may
object really mar the interest of the work. Rather they constitute
its most characteristic elements, proceeding as they do from the
poet's own deepest intellectual interests, and, therefore, from his
most spontaneous inspiration.
But the most conclusive testimony to the essential power of the play
is the effect it produced not only in German but in European
literature. Its publication in its altered form in 1773 had the effect
of a bomb on the literary public of Germany. It sent a shudder of
horror through the sticklers for the rules of the classical drama
which it ignored with such contemptuous indifference; a shudder of
delight through the band of effervescing youths who shared Goethe's
revolutionary ideals, and to whom _Götz_ was a manifesto and a
challenge to all traditional conventions in literature and life. It
was the immediate parent of that truly German growth--the literature
of _Sturm und Drang_, whose exponents, says Kant, thought that they
could not more effectively show that they were budding geniuses than
by flinging all rules to the winds, and that one appears to better
advantage on a spavined hack than on a trained steed. The literature
of _Sturm und Drang_ was a passing phenomenon, but the influence of
_Götz_ did not end with its abortive life. But for _Götz_ Schiller's
early productions would have been differently inspired; and to _Götz_
also was due much of the inspiration of the subsequent German Romantic
School, though many of its developments were abhorrent to Goethe's
nature both in youth and maturity. It emancipated the drama from
conventional shackles, but it did more: it extended the range of
national thought, sentiment, and emotion, and for good and evil
introduced new elements into German literature which have maintained
their place there since its first portentous appearance. And German
critics are unanimous in assigning another result to the publication
of _Götz_: in its style as in its form it set convention at naught,
and thus marks an epoch in the development of German literary
language. Not since Luther, "whose words were battles," had German
been written so direct from the heart and with such elemental force as
makes words living things.
It has been a commonplace remark that 1773, the year of the
publication of _Götz_, corresponds in European literature to 1789 in
European political history. The remark may be exaggerated, but, if a
work is to be named which marks the advent of what is covered by the
vague name of romanticism, _Götz_ may fairly claim the honour. It had
precursors of more or less importance in other countries, but, by the
nature of its subject, by its audacious disregard of reigning models,
and by its resounding notoriety, it gave the signal for a fresh
reconstruction of art and life. It gave the decisive impulse to the
writer who is the European representative of the romantic movement,
and whose genius specifically fitted him to work the vein which was
opened in _Götz_--a task to which Goethe himself was not called. In
1799 Scott published his translation of _Götz_,[107] and followed it
up by his series of romantic poems in which the influence of Goethe's
work was the main inspiration. But it was in his prose romances,
dealing with the Middle Ages, that he found the appropriate form for
his inspiration--a form which ensured a popular appeal, impossible in
the case of the severer form of the drama. In the enchanter's sway
which Scott exercised over Europe during the greater part of the
nineteenth century, the memories of _Götz_ were not the least potent
of his spells.
[Footnote 107: Two of the scenes in _Götz_ were imitated by Scott in
his own work--the Vehmgericht scene in _Anne of Geierstein_ and the
description of the siege of Torquilstone by Rebecca to the wounded
Ivanhoe. Scott also borrowed from _Egmont_.]