_WERTHER_, _CLAVIGO_
1774
In his fortieth year Goethe wrote to Wieland: "Without compulsion,
there is in my case no hope."[150] So it was with him at every period
of his life; without some immediate impulse out of his own experience
or from the urgency of friends he was incapable of the sustained
inspiration requisite to the execution of a prolonged artistic whole.
We have seen how he dallied with the subject of _Götz von
Berlichingen_, and how it was only at the instance of his sister
Cornelia that he concentrated his energies in throwing it into
dramatic form. In the case of _Werther_ we have an illustration of the
same characteristic. Shortly after leaving Wetzlar, on hearing the
news of Jerusalem's death, there arose in him a pressing desire to
embody his late experience in some imaginative shape; and in the
course of the following year he actually addressed himself to the
task. But his inspiration flagged, and it was not till the beginning
of 1774 that a new experience supplied a fresh impulse constraining
him to complete the "prodigious little work" which was to take his
contemporaries by storm.
[Footnote 150: In his sixty-second year Goethe also said of himself:
"Denn gewöhnlich, was ich ausspreche, das tue ich nicht, und was ich
verspreche, das halte ich nicht."]
We have it from Goethe's own hand that it was a new and "painful
situation" that gave him the necessary stimulus to resume his work on
_Werther_ and to carry it to a conclusion. We have seen how on leaving
Wetzlar in the autumn of 1772 he had made the acquaintance of the
family von la Roche, and how he had been captivated by the elder
daughter, Maximiliane. Since then he had kept up a sentimental
correspondence with the mother in which we have occasional references
to his continued interest in the daughter. "Your Maxe," he wrote in
August, 1773, "I cannot do without so long as I live, and I shall
always venture to love her." This was, of course, in the current style
of the time, but a situation arose which made such amorous trifling
dangerous. On January 9th, 1774, the Fräulein von la Roche was married
to Peter Brentano, a dealer in herrings, oil, and cheese, a widower
with five children, with whom she settled in Frankfort. Goethe
immediately became an assiduous frequenter of the Brentano household,
where he was not unwelcome to the young wife, whose new surroundings
were in unpleasant contrast to those of the home she had left. But
Brentano was not so magnanimous as Kestner, and a fortnight had not
passed before there were "painful scenes" between him and Goethe. On
the 21st Goethe wrote as follows to the mother of Madame Brentano: "If
you knew what passed within me before I avoided the house, you would
not think, dear Mama, of luring me back to it again. I have in these
frightful moments suffered for all the future; I am now at peace, and
in peace let me remain."[151] He had now gone the round of all the
experiences embodied in _Werther_; on February 1st he resumed the
discontinued work, and, writing "almost in a state of somnambulism,"
finished it in a few weeks.
[Footnote 151: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 140.]
But besides his own immediate personal experience, there went other
influences to the production of _Werther_ which affected alike its
form and its contents. In his Autobiography Goethe has minutely
analysed these influences, and the most potent of them he traces to
the impression made by English literature on himself and his
contemporaries. What impressed them as the prevailing note of that
literature was a melancholy disillusion which regarded life as a sorry
business at the best, and Goethe specifies Young, Gray, and Ossian as
representative interpreters of this mood. In verses like these, he
says, we have the precise expression of the moral disease which he has
depicted in _Werther_:--
To griefs congenial prone,
More wounds than nature gave he knew;
While misery's form his fancy drew
In dark ideal hues and horrors not its own![152]
[Footnote 152: These lines are by the Earl of Rochester. On reading
the first English translation of _Werther_ (1783), Goethe wrote: "It
gave me much pleasure to read my thoughts in the language of my
instructors."]
If English literature contributed to the tone of feeling in _Werther_,
it also, though Goethe does not mention the fact, suggested the
literary form in which it is cast. In the case of his former loves,
his emotions had found vent in a succession of lyrics thrown off as
occasion prompted, but his later experiences had been of a more
complex nature, and demanded a larger canvas for their development. It
would appear that Goethe's original intention was to adopt the
dramatic form which had been so successful in the case of _Götz_, and
we are led to believe that, in accordance with this intention, he
actually made a beginning of his work. In the interval between his
discontinuing and resuming it, however, he changed his mind; and in
the form in which we have it _Werther_ is mainly composed of letters
addressed by its central character to an absent friend. There can be
little doubt that the epistolary form was suggested by a book with
which Goethe was familiar, and which had been received with enthusiasm
in Germany as in other continental countries--Richardson's _Clarissa
Harlowe_ (1747-8). Richardson's example, moreover, had been followed
in another work which had achieved as sensational as success as
_Clarissa_--Rousseau's _Nouvelle Héloïse_. In form and substance
_Werther_ was as much inspired by Richardson and Rousseau as _Götz_
had been by Shakespeare, yet in _Werther_, as in _Götz_, the world
recognised an original creation which bore a new message to every
heart capable of receiving it.
The portentous work was published in the autumn of 1774, but the form
in which we now have it belongs to a later date. In the first complete
edition of Goethe's Works (1787), _Werther_ appeared with certain
modifications, which did not, however, as in the case of _Götz_,
organically affect its original form.[153] Expressions which to
Goethe's maturer taste appeared objectionable were altered--not
always, German critics are disposed to think, in the direction of
improvement; the story of the unfortunate peasant in whose fate
Werther saw an image of his own, was introduced; and, in deference to
the feelings of Kestner and Lotte, the characters of the two persons
in the book with whom readers identified them were presented in a
somewhat more favourable light.[154]
[Footnote 153: In making these modifications Goethe was advised by
Herder and Wieland.]
[Footnote 154: Though to the satisfaction of neither Kestner nor
Lotte.]
With what degree of similitude Goethe has portrayed himself in the
character of Werther must necessarily be matter of opinion, but that
his work was essentially drawn from his own experience the merest
outline of it conclusively shows. Equally in the case of the two parts
of which the book is composed we have the presentment of successive
phases of emotion through which we know that he had himself passed
when he sat down to write it. The first part, the substance of which
was probably drafted in the year 1773, is all but an exact transcript
of Goethe's own experience from the day he settled in Wetzlar till the
day he left it. Like Goethe himself, Werther settles in the spring of
the year in a country town, unattractive like Wetzlar, but also, like
Wetzlar, situated in a charming neighbourhood. His first few weeks
there are spent as Goethe spent them--in daydreaming and vague
longings; finding distraction alternately in sketching, in reading
Homer, in intercourse with children and simple people, in
contemplations on nature and the life of man, inspired by Spinoza and
Rousseau. Then befalls the incident which also befell Goethe: he meets
a girl at a ball, and he is overmastered by a passion which changes
the current of his life and paralyses every other motive at its
source. At the first meeting Werther learns that Charlotte is
betrothed,[155] but her betrothed is absent, and, oblivious of the
future, he for a few weeks lives in a state of intoxicating bliss.
Albert, who, like Charlotte, has in the first part all the
characteristics of his original, at length appears on the scene, and
all three are gradually convinced that the situation is intolerable.
There are "painful scenes," such as, according to Kestner, actually
happened in Goethe's own case; and after an agonising struggle with
himself Werther succeeds in breaking away from the enchanted spot, the
last conversation between the three turning on the prospect of a
future life--a memory, as we have seen, of an actual talk between
Lotte, Kestner, and Goethe. So ends the first part, which, with
unimportant variations, is a close record of the circumstances of
Goethe's own sojourn in Wetzlar.
[Footnote 155: It was shortly after his meeting with Lotte Buff that
Goethe learned that she was engaged to Kestner.]
A tragic end to _Werther_ Goethe had before him from its first
conception, as is proved by his eagerness to ascertain the details of
Jerusalem's suicide. But to justify dramatically such an end to his
hero, certain modifications in the relations of all the three
characters were rendered necessary, and again his own experience
suggested the mode of treatment. In the uncomfortable relations that
had arisen between himself and the Brentanos, husband and wife, he
found a situation which would naturally involve a catastrophe in the
case of a character constituted like Werther. When in February, 1774,
therefore, he sat down to complete the tale of Werther's woes, it was
under a new inspiration that the characters of Albert and Charlotte
fashioned themselves in his mind. Not Kestner and Lotte Buff, but the
Brentanos, suggested their leading traits as well as the relations of
all parties, which involved the closing tragedy. Albert becomes a
jealous and somewhat morose husband, and Charlotte is depicted with
the characteristics of Maxe Brentano rather than of Lotte Buff--with a
more susceptible temperament and less self-control.[156]
[Footnote 156: Goethe gave the blue eyes of Maxe to Charlotte. Lotte
Buff's eyes were brown.]
In the opening of the second part the character of Werther is further
revealed in a new set of circumstances. Against his own inclinations
he accepts an official appointment under an ambassador at a petty
German Court, and his helpless unfitness in this situation for the
ordinary business of life may be regarded as a commentary on Goethe's
own invincible distaste for the practice of his profession. Werther
finds the ambassador intolerable; and a public insult to which, as a
commoner, he is subjected at a social gathering of petty nobility,
drives him to resign his post. After a few months' residence with a
prince, whose company in the end he finds uncongenial, he is
irresistibly drawn to the scenes of his former happiness and misery.
But in the interval an event happens which makes the renewal of old
relations impossible. Charlotte and Albert have married, and the sight
of Albert enjoying the privileges of a husband is a constant reminder
of the hopelessness of his passion. Blank despair gradually takes
possession of Werther's soul; in the hopeless wail of Ossian he finds
the only adequate expression of his fate.[157] In the commentary which
Goethe introduces to prepare readers for Werther's suicide, he
suggests another motive for the act besides Werther's infatuation for
Charlotte, which Napoleon as well as other critics have regarded as a
mistake in art. In his state of mental and moral paralysis, we are
told, Werther recalled all the misfortunes of his past life, and
specially the mortification he had received during his brief official
experience. But on the mind of the reader this incidental suggestion
of other motives makes little impression; he feels that Werther's
helpless abandonment to his passion for Charlotte is the central
interest of the author himself, as it is a wholly adequate cause of
the final catastrophe.
[Footnote 157: "Werther," Goethe remarked to Henry Crabb Robinson,
"praised Homer while he retained his senses, and Ossian when he was
going mad."]
By the fulness of its revelation of himself and by the impression it
made on the public mind _Werther_ holds a unique place among the
longer productions of Goethe. His own testimony, both at the time when
it was written and in his later years, is conclusive proof of the
degree to which it was a "general confession," as he himself calls it.
"I have lent my emotions to his (Werther's) history," he wrote shortly
after the completion of his work; "and so it makes a wonderful
whole."[158] In one of the best-known passages of his Autobiography he
tells how he morbidly dallied with the idea of suicide, and banished
the obsession only by convincing himself that he had not the courage
to plunge a dagger into his breast. In a remarkable passage, written
in his sixty-third year to his Berlin friend, Zelter, whose son had
committed suicide, he recalls with all seriousness the hypochondriacal
promptings which in his own case might have driven him to the fate of
Werther. "When the _tædium vitæ_ takes possession of a man," he wrote,
"he is to be pitied and not to be blamed. That all the symptoms of
this wonderful, equally natural and unnatural, disease at one time
also convulsed my inmost being, _Werther_, indeed, leaves no one in
doubt. I know right well what resolves and what efforts it cost me at
that time to escape the waves of death, as from many a later shipwreck
I painfully rescued myself and with painful struggles recovered my
health of mind." At a still later date (1824) Goethe expressed himself
with equal emphasis to the same purport. "That is a creation
(_Werther_)," he told Eckermann, "which I, like the pelican, fed with
the blood of my own heart. There is in it so much that was deepest in
my own experience, so much of my own thoughts and sensations, that, in
truth, a romance extending to ten such volumes might be made out of
it. Since its appearance, I have read it only once, and have refrained
from doing so again. It is nothing but a succession of rockets. I am
uneasy when I look at it, and dread the return of the psychological
condition out of which it sprang."
[Footnote 158: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 156.]
These repeated statements of Goethe, made at wide intervals of his
life, sufficiently prove what a large part of himself went to the
making of _Werther_. Yet Werther was not Goethe. From the fate of
Werther he was saved by two characteristics of which we have seen
frequent evidence in his previous history. It was not in his nature to
be dominated for any lengthened period by a single passion to the
exclusion of every other interest. No sooner had he left Wetzlar than
his heart was open to the charms of Maxe Brentano, and, during the
months that followed, her image and that of Lotte Buff alternately
distracted his susceptibilities. Byron declared that he was capable of
only one passion at a time, but Goethe was always capable of at least
two. The other characteristic equally distinguishes Goethe from
Werther. "I turn in upon myself," Werther writes, "and find a
world--but a world of presentiments and of dim desires, not a world of
definite outlines and of living force." Of a "living force" in himself
Goethe was never wholly unconscious; the record of his creative
efforts during the months that followed his leaving Wetzlar are
sufficient evidence of the fact. The intellectual side of his
nature--the impulse to know or to create--kept in check the emotional,
and proved his safeguard in more crises than the Wertherian period
during which, by his own testimony, he so narrowly escaped shipwreck.
The imprint of Goethe's character and genius which _Werther_ made on
the mind of his contemporaries was never effaced during his lifetime,
and was even a source of embarrassment to him in his future
development. For years after its appearance he found it necessary to
travel _incognito_ to avoid being pointed at as "the author of
_Werther_"; and in the case of each of his subsequent productions the
reading public had a feeling of disappointment that they were not
receiving what they expected from the writer who had once so
profoundly moved them. In truth, probably no book ever given to the
world has made such an instantaneous, profound, and general sensation
as _Werther_. The effect of _Götz von Berlichingen_ had as yet been
confined to Germany; on the publication of _Werther_ its author became
a European figure in the world of letters. In Germany _Werther_ was
hawked about as a chap-book; within three years three translations
appeared in France, and five years after its publication it was
translated into English. The dress worn by Werther (borrowed from
England), consisting of a blue coat, yellow vest, yellow hose, and
top-boots, became the fashion of the day and was sported even in
Paris.
Opinion in Germany had been divided on _Götz von Berlichingen_, but
the conflicting judgments on that work had turned only on questions of
dramatic propriety. The questions raised by _Werther_, on the other
hand, appeared to many to concern the very foundations of morality and
of human responsibility. Suicide, it was indignantly clamoured, was
sophistically justified in the person of Werther, and was clothed in
such specious hues as to present it in the light of a natural means
of escape from the troubles of life. On the ground of these supposed
sinister implications the sale of _Werther_ was prohibited in Leipzig
under a penalty of ten thalers, a translation of it was forbidden in
Denmark, and the Archbishop of Milan ordered it to be publicly burned
in that town. There was, of course, no thought in Goethe's mind of
recommending suicide by the example of Werther, but he felt the
reproach keenly, and indignantly repudiated it. Yet, when a few years
later, a young woman was found drowned in the Ilm at Weimar with a
copy of _Werther_ in her pocket, he was painfully reminded that the
book might be of dangerous consequence to a certain class of
minds.[159]
[Footnote 159: The judgment of Lessing, who had no sympathy with the
effeminate sentimentality of the time, was severe. "We cannot," he
said, "imagine a Greek or a Roman _Werther_; it was the Christian
ideal that had made such a character possible." Goethe, he thought,
should have added a cynical chapter (the more cynical the better) to
put _Werther's_ character in its true light. As the friend of
Jerusalem, Lessing naturally resented the liberty which Goethe had
taken with him.]
_Werther_ has been described as "the act of a conqueror and a
high-priest of art,"[160] and of the truth of this description we have
interesting proof from Goethe's own hand. In _Werther_ he had not only
given to the world a likeness of himself; in Albert and Charlotte he
had exhibited two figures who were at once identified as Kestner and
Lotte, now Kestner's wife. It was not only that domestic privacy was
thus invaded, but the characters assigned to Albert and Charlotte were
such as could not fail to give just offence to their originals. Yet
in the triumph of the artist it seems never to have occurred to Goethe
that Kestner and Lotte would resent the licence he had taken with
them. On the eve of the publication of _Werther_ he sent a copy of it
to Lotte, informing her at the same time that he had kissed it a
thousand times before sending it, and praying her not to make it
public till it was given to the world at the approaching Leipzig fair.
It came as a surprise to him, therefore, when he received a letter of
reproach from Kestner, protesting against the injurious presentment of
himself and his wife in the book. In a first reply, Goethe frankly
admitted his indiscretion, but in a second letter he took a bolder
tone. "Oh! ye unbelieving ones, I would proclaim ye of little faith,"
he wrote. "Could you but realise the thousandth part of what _Werther_
is to a thousand hearts, you would not reckon the cost it has been to
you."[161] Lotte and Kestner, from all we know of them, were both
persons of sound nature, not unduly sensitive, and, in their hearts,
they may not have been displeased at their association with the
brilliant youth of genius on whom the eyes of the world were now
turned. At all events, neither appears to have borne him a permanent
grudge for presenting them to the public in such a dubious light.
Though, as has already been said, correspondence between Goethe and
them gradually became more and more intermittent, mutual respect and
cordiality remained, and in later years we find Goethe in the capacity
of sage adviser to the prudent Kestner.[162]
[Footnote 160: By Sainte-Beuve.]
[Footnote 161: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 207.]
[Footnote 162: The family of Kestner eventually published the
correspondence of Goethe with their parents.--A. Kestner, _Goethe und
Werther, Briefe Goethes, meistens aus seiner Jugendheit, mit
erläuternden Documenten_ (Stuttgart und Tübingen, 1854).]
The subsequent influence of _Werther_ was at once more powerful and
more enduring than the influence of _Götz von Berlichingen_, and
Goethe himself has suggested the reason. The so-called _Werther_
"period," he says, belongs to no special age of the world's culture,
but to the life of every free spirit that chafes under obsolete
traditions, obstructed happiness, cramped activity, and unfulfilled
desires. "A sorry business it would be," he adds, "if once in his life
every one did not pass through an epoch when _Werther_ appeared to
have been specially written for him."[163] The long series of
imitations of Werther--_René_, _Obermann_, _Childe Harold_, _Adolphe_
(to mention only the best-known)--bears out Goethe's remark that
Wertherism belongs to no particular age of the world, though it may
assume various forms and be expressed in different tones.[164] But in
Goethe's little book the name and the thing Wertherism has received
its "immortal _cachet_." To the intrinsic power of _Werther_ it is the
supreme tribute that Napoleon, the first European man in the world of
action, as Goethe was the first in the world of thought, read it seven
times in the course of his life, that he carried it with him as his
companion in his Egyptian campaign, and that in his interview with
Goethe he made it the principal theme of their conversation. To the
literary youth of Germany, we are told, _Werther_ no longer appeals;
but such statements can be based only on conjecture, and we may be
certain that in all countries there are still to be found readers to
whom the record of Werther's woes seems to have been written for
themselves.[165]
[Footnote 163: Eckermann, _op. cit._, January 2nd, 1824.]
[Footnote 164: The _accidie_ of the Middle Ages was a form of
Wertherism. _Cf._ Chaucer's _Parson's Tale_.]
[Footnote 165: It may be recalled that _Werther_ was throughout his
life one of R.L. Stevenson's favourite books. See his Letter to Mrs.
Sitwell, September 6th, 1873, [Transcriber's Note: corrected error
"1773"] and ch. xix. of _The Wrecker_.]
By a curious coincidence Goethe had hardly made a "general confession"
in the writing of _Werther_ when he was led to make another
"confession" in a work of less resounding notoriety, but equally
interesting as a revelation of himself. In his Autobiography he has
related the origin of the piece. In the spring of 1774 there fell into
his hands the recently published _Mémoires_[166] of the French
playwright Beaumarchais, which told a story that reawakened painful
memories of his own past. Beaumarchais had two sisters in Madrid, one
married to an architect; the other, named Marie, betrothed to Clavigo,
a publicist of rising fame. On Clavigo's promotion to the post of
royal archivist he throws his betrothed over, and the news of his
faithlessness brings Beaumarchais to Madrid. In an interview with
Clavigo he compels him, under the threat of a duel, to write and
subscribe a confession of his unjustifiable treachery. To avert
exposure, however, Clavigo offers to renew his engagement to Marie,
and Beaumarchais accepts the condition. Clavigo again plays false, and
obtains from the authorities an order expelling Beaumarchais from
Madrid. Through the good offices of a retired Minister, however,
Beaumarchais succeeds in communicating the whole story to the king,
with the result that Clavigo is dismissed from his post.
[Footnote 166: _Fragment de mon voyage d'Espagne.--Mémoires de
Monsieur Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais_, tome ii.]
We see the points in the narrative of Beaumarchais which must have
touched Goethe to the quick. He also had played the false lover to
Friederike Brion, who, however, had no brother like Marie to call him
to account. It was characteristic of him that, on reading the
_Mémoire_, it at once struck him as affording an appropriate theme for
dramatic treatment, and it was further characteristic that he needed
an immediate stimulus to incite him to the task. He has told us how
the stimulus came. As a diversion to relieve the monotony of Frankfort
society, the youths and maidens of Goethe's circle had arranged for a
time to play at married couples, and, as it happened, the same maiden
fell thrice to Goethe's lot.[167] At one of the meetings of the
couples he read aloud the narrative of Beaumarchais, and his partner
suggested that he should turn it into a play. The suggestion, he
relates, supplied the needed stimulus, and a week later the completed
play was read to the reassembled circle.
[Footnote 167: Of all the women who came in her son's way, Frau Goethe
thought that this lady, Anna Sibylla Münch by name, would have made
him the most suitable partner in life.]
The first four Acts of the play, which Goethe entitled _Clavigo_, are
simply the narrative of Beaumarchais cut into scenes, and they contain
long passages directly translated from the original--a proceeding
which Goethe justifies by the example of "our progenitor Shakespeare."
In the first Scene of the first Act we are introduced to Clavigo and
Carlos discussing the prospects of the former. Clavigo, who is
represented as a publicist of genius, with a great career before him,
is distracted by the conflict between his ambition and the sense of
honour and gratitude which should bind him to his betrothed Marie, a
sickly girl, by position and character unsuited to be the helpmate of
an ambitious man of the world. Unstable and irresolute, he is as clay
in the hands of Carlos, who plays the part of the shrewd and cynical
adviser to his friend, in whose genius and brilliant future he has
unbounded confidence. As the result of their talk, Clavigo decides
with some compunction to abandon Marie, and, as his fortunes rise, to
find a more suitable mate. In the second Scene the other characters of
the play are brought before us--Marie Beaumarchais, her sister
Sophie, married to Guilbert, an architect, and Don Buenco, a
disappointed lover of Marie. The theme of their conversation is the
ingratitude and faithlessness of Clavigo, to whom, however, Marie,
dying of consumption, still clings with fond idolatry. At the close of
the Scene Beaumarchais appears, breathing vengeance on Clavigo if he
finds him without justification for his conduct. In the second Act,
which consists of only one Scene, Beaumarchais carries out his purpose
and compels Clavigo under threat of a duel to write with his own hand
an abject acknowledgment of his baseness. In consistency with his
fickle nature, however, Clavigo prays Beaumarchais to report to Marie
his unfeigned remorse and his desire to renew their former relations.
Beaumarchais agrees to convey the message, and departs under the
impression that he has saved the honour of his sister. In the third
Act Clavigo and Marie are reconciled, their marriage is arranged, and
Beaumarchais destroys the incriminating document. The fourth Act
consists of two Scenes. In the first, Carlos convinces Clavigo of his
folly in compromising his career by a foolish union, and persuades him
to break his pledge, undertaking at the same time to get Beaumarchais
out of the way. The second Scene represents the dismay of the Guilbert
household on the discovery of Clavigo's renewed treachery,
Beaumarchais vowing vengeance on the double-dyed traitor, and Marie in
a dying state attended by a hastily-summoned physician. In the fifth
Act the play breaks with the narrative of Beaumarchais, which does not
supply material for the necessary tragic conclusion, and is based on
an old German ballad, with an evident recollection of the scene of
Hamlet and Laertes at the grave of Ophelia. While stealing from his
house under cover of night, as had been arranged with Carlos, Clavigo
passes the Guilberts' door, where he sees three mourners standing with
torches in their hands. On inquiry he learns that Marie Beaumarchais
is dead; and presently the body is brought forth attended by Guilbert,
Don Buenco, and Beaumarchais. Then ensues a passionate scene in which
Beaumarchais slays Clavigo, and the Act closes with expressions of
tenderness and compunction on the part of all the chief persons
concerned.
In a letter to a friend[168] Goethe explained that in writing
_Clavigo_ he had blended the character and action of Beaumarchais with
characters and actions drawn from his own experience; and this
description strictly corresponds with the play as we have it. Though
in the first four Acts, as we have seen, the incidents are directly
taken from Beaumarchais and many passages in them are simply
translations, the characters of the leading personages--Clavigo,
Carlos, Marie, and Beaumarchais--are entirely of Goethe's own
creation. Moreover, in what is original in the dialogues there are
touches everywhere introduced which are not to be found in the
original, and which are precisely those that are of special interest
for the student of Goethe. Of the play as a work of art he was himself
complacently proud. It was written, as he tells us, with the express
intention of proving to the world that he could produce a piece in
strict accordance with the dramatic canons which he had flouted in
_Götz von Berlichingen_.[169] "I challenge the most critical knife,"
he proudly wrote to the same correspondent, "to separate the directly
translated passages from the whole without mangling it, without
inflicting deadly wounds, not to say only on the narrative, but on the
structure, the living organism of the piece." In _Clavigo_, at least,
he has achieved what he failed to achieve in any other in the long
series of his dramatic productions; it proved a successful acting
play, and is still produced with acceptance to the present time. Yet
from the beginning those who have admired Goethe's genius most have
shaken their heads over _Clavigo_. It was to be expected that the
youthful geniuses of the _Sturm und Drang_ would be wrathful at the
apostacy of their protagonist, who in _Götz von Berlichingen_ had set
at naught all the traditional rules of the drama. But more discerning
critics, then and since, have expressed their dissatisfaction on other
grounds. There are in _Clavigo_ no elements of greatness such as
appear even through the immaturities of _Götz_ and _Werther_. Clavigo
himself is so poor a creature as to leave the reader with no other
feeling for him than contempt; Marie is characterless; and the other
persons in the play have not sufficient scope to become well-defined
figures. And the last Act, the only original addition to Beaumarchais'
narrative, is in a style of cheap melodrama which, coming from the
hand of Goethe, can be regarded only as a weak concession to the
sentimentalism of the Darmstadt circle. "You must give us no more such
stuff; others can do that," was Merck's mordant comment on _Clavigo_.
Merck's opinion may have been influenced by the fact that in the
cynical Carlos there are unpleasing traits of himself, but succeeding
admirers of the Master have for the most part been in agreement with
him.[170]
[Footnote 168: To Fritz Jacobi, August 21st, 1774.]
[Footnote 169: In language, as well as in form, _Clavigo_ followed
traditional models. Wieland was naturally gratified by Goethe's return
to those models which he had set at defiance in _Götz_.]
[Footnote 170: In his Autobiography Goethe expresses the opinion that
Merck's advice was not sound, and that he might have done wisely in
producing a succession of plays like _Clavigo_, some of which, like
it, might have retained their place on the stage.]
But if _Clavigo_ is not to be ranked among the greater works of
Goethe, as a biographical document it is even more important than
_Werther_. In the Weislingen of _Götz_ he had drawn a portrait of
himself, and in _Clavigo_ he has drawn a similar portrait at fuller
length. "I have been working at a tragedy, _Clavigo_," he wrote to a
correspondent, "a modern anecdote dramatised with all possible
simplicity and sincerity; my hero, an irresolute, half-great,
half-little man, the pendant to Weislingen in _Götz_ or rather
Weislingen himself, developed into a leading character. In it," he
adds, "there are scenes which I could only indicate in _Götz_ for fear
of weakening the main interest." In _Clavigo_ we have at once a fuller
revelation of himself and of his own personal experience. He is here,
in a manner, holding a dialogue with himself regarding his own
character and his own past life. In the first Scene of the first Act
we must recognise a vivid presentment of the state of Goethe's own
feelings at the crisis when he abandoned Friederike. In such a passage
as the following Carlos only expresses what must then have passed
through Goethe's own mind: "And to marry! to marry just when life
ought to come into its first full swing; to settle down to humdrum
domestic life; to limit one's being, when one has not yet done with
half of one's roving; has not completed half of one's conquests!" Out
of Goethe's own heart, also, must have come these words of Clavigo:
"She [Marie] has vanished, clean vanished from my heart!... That man
is so fickle a being!" What was said of Werther as the counterpart of
Goethe applies, of course, equally in the case of Clavigo. Goethe was
not at any moment the feeble creature we have in Clavigo, yet in
Clavigo's inconstancy and ambition, in his womanish susceptibility and
the need of his nature for external stimulus and counsel, we have a
portrayal of Goethe of which every trait holds true at all periods of
his life. In the Maries of _Götz_ and _Clavigo_, both betrayed by
false lovers, Goethe tells us that we may find a penitent confession
of his own conduct towards Friederike. But assuredly it was not with
the primary intention of making this confession that either play was
written. Both plays, in truth, are evidence of what is borne out in
the long series of his imaginative productions from _Götz_ to the
Second Part of Faust: their conception, their informing spirit, their
essential tissue come immediately from Goethe's own intellectual and
emotional experience. Objective dramatic treatment of persons or
events was incompatible with that passionate interest in the problems
of nature and human life by which he was possessed at every stage of
his development.