GOETHE AND SPINOZA--_DER EWIGE JUDE_
1773-4
If we are to accept Goethe's own statement, during the years
1773-4--the distracted period, that is to say, which followed his
experiences at Wetzlar, and of which _Werther_ and _Clavigo_ are the
characteristic products--he came under the influence of a thinker who
transformed his conceptions, equally of the conduct of life and of
man's relations to the universe--the Jewish thinker, Benedict Spinoza.
The passage in which he expresses his debt to Spinoza is one of the
best known in all his writings, and is, moreover, a _locus classicus_
in the histories of speculative philosophy. "After looking around me
in vain for a means of disciplining my peculiar nature, I at last
chanced upon the _Ethica_ of this man. To say exactly how much I
gained from that work was due to Spinoza or to my own reading of him
would be impossible; enough that I found in him a sedative for my
passions and that he appeared to me to open up a large and free
outlook on the material and moral world. But what specially attached
me to him was the boundless disinterestedness which shone forth from
every sentence. That marvellous saying, 'Whoso truly loves God must
not desire God to love him in return,' with all the premises on which
it rests and the consequences that flow from it, permeated my whole
thinking. To be disinterested in everything, and most of all in love
and friendship, was my highest desire, my maxim, my constant practice;
so that that bold saying of mine at a later date, 'If I love Thee,
what is that to Thee?' came directly from my heart."[171]
[Footnote 171: Saying of Philine in _Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre_, bk.
iv. ch. ix.]
What is surprising is that of this spiritual and intellectual
transformation which Goethe avouches that he underwent there should be
so little evidence either in his contemporary correspondence or in the
conduct of his own life. In his letters of the period to which he
refers he frequently names the authors with whom he happened to be
engaged, but Spinoza he mentions only once, and certainly not in terms
which confirm his later testimony. In a letter to a correspondent who
had lent him a work of Spinoza we have these casual words: "May I keep
it a little longer? I will only see how far I may follow the fellow
(_Menschen_) in his subterranean borings." Whether he actually carried
out his intention, or what impression the reading of the book made
upon him, we are nowhere told, though, if the impression had been as
profound as his Autobiography suggests, we should naturally have
expected some hint of it. In his _Prometheus_, indeed, as we have
seen, there are suggestions of Spinozistic pantheism, but these may
easily have been derived from other sources, and, moreover, in the
passage quoted, the pantheistic conceptions of Spinoza are not
specifically emphasised. We know, also, that in preparing his thesis
for the Doctorate of Laws he had consulted Spinoza's _Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus_, and the scathing criticism on the perversions
of the teaching of Christ in that treatise may have suggested certain
passages in a poem presently to be noted.[172] Yet, so far as his own
contemporary testimony goes, we are led to conclude that in his
retrospect he has assigned to an earlier period experiences which were
of gradual growth, and which only at a later date were realised with
the vividness he ascribes to them. If we turn to his actual life
during the same period, it is equally hard to trace in it the results
of the tranquillising influence which he ascribes to Spinoza. As we
have seen him, he was in mind distracted by uncertainty regarding the
special function for which nature intended him; and in his affections
the victim of emotions which by their very nature could not receive
their full gratification. Nor can we say that his relations to his
father, to Kestner, or Brentano were characterised by that
"disinterestedness" which he claims to have attained from his study of
Spinoza. As we shall presently see, Goethe was so far accurate in his
retrospect that at the period before us he was already attracted by
the figure of Spinoza, but it was not till many years later that a
close acquaintance with Spinoza's writings resulted in that
indebtedness to which he gave expression when he said that, with
Linnæus and Shakespeare, the Jewish thinker was one of the great
formative influences in his development.
[Footnote 172: An entry in his _Ephemerides_, the diary which he kept
in his 21st year (see above, p. 102), shows that Spinoza's philosophy,
as he conceived it, was then repugnant to him. The passage is as
follows: "Testimonio enim mihi est virorum tantorum sententia, rectae
rationi quam convenientissimum fuisse systema emanativum (he is
thinking specially of Giordano Bruno); licet nulli subscribere velim
sectae, valdeque doleam Spinozismum, teterrimis erroribus ex eodem
fonte manantibus, doctrinae huic purissimae, iniquissimum fratrem
natum esse."--Max Morris, _op. cit._ ii. 33.]
To the same period to which Goethe assigns his transformation by
Spinoza he also assigns the original conception of a work in which
Spinoza was, at least, to find a place. As has been said, there are
passages in the fragments of this poem that were actually written
which may have been suggested by the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_
of Spinoza, but the general tone and tendency of the fragments are
equally remote from the temper and the contemplations of the Spinoza
whom the world knows. The dominant note of _Der Ewige Jude_, as the
fragments are designated, is, indeed, suggestive, not of Spinoza,
but of him who may already have been in embryo in Goethe's
mind--Mephistopheles. Mephistophelian is the ironical presentment in
_Der Ewige Jude_ of the follies, the delusions of man in his highest
aspirations.
Near the close of his life it was said of Goethe that the world would
come to believe that there had been not one but many Goethes,[173] and
the contrast between the author of _Werther_ and the author of _Der
Ewige Jude_ is an interesting commentary on the remark. Yet the
subject of the abortive poem, as we have it--the perversions of
Christianity in its historical development--was not a new interest for
him. During his illness after his return from Leipzig he had, as we
saw, assiduously read Arnold's _History of Heretics_,[174] with the
result that he excogitated a religious system for himself. His two
contributions to the short-lived Review also show that religion,
doctrinal and historical, was still a living interest for him.
Moreover, as was usually the case with all his creative efforts, there
were external promptings to his choice of the subject which is the
main theme of the fragments in question. The religious world of
Germany at this period was distracted by the controversies of warring
theologians. There were the rationalists, who would bring all
religion, natural and revealed, to the bar of human reason; there were
the dogmatists, who thought religion could never rest on a secure
foundation except it were embodied in an array of definite formulas;
and, lastly, there were the pietists, or mystics, for whom religion
was a matter of pious feeling independent of all dogma. In the
spectacle of these Christians reprobating each others' creeds Goethe
saw a theme for a moral satire which, fragment as it is, takes its
place with the most powerful efforts of his genius.
[Footnote 173: By Felix Mendelssohn.]
[Footnote 174: See above, p. 65.]
Yet, as originally conceived, _Der Ewige Jude_ was apparently to have
been worked out along other lines. What this original conception was,
Goethe tells in some detail in his Autobiography; and, as it is there
expounded, we see the scope of a poem which, if the power apparent in
the existing fragments had gone to the making of it, would have taken
its place with _Faust_ among the great imaginative works of human
genius. The theme of the poem was to be the Wandering Jew, with whose
legend Goethe was familiar from chap-books he had read in childhood.
The poem was to open with an account of the circumstances in which the
curse of Cain was incurred by Ahasuerus, the name assigned in the
legend to the Wandering Jew. Ahasuerus was to be represented as a
shoemaker of the type of Hans Sachs--a kind of Jewish Socrates who
freely plied his wit in putting searching questions to the casual
passers-by. Recognised as an original, persons of all ranks and
opinions, even the Sadducees and Pharisees, would stop by the way and
engage in talk with him. He was to be specially interested in Jesus,
with whom he was to hold frequent conversations, but whose idealism
his matter-of-fact nature was incapable of understanding. When, in the
teeth of his protestations, Jesus pursued his mission and was finally
condemned to death, Ahasuerus would only have hard words for his
folly. Judas was then to be represented as entering the workshop and
explaining that his act of treachery had been intended to force Jesus
to become the national deliverer and declare himself king, but Judas
receives no comfort from Ahasuerus, and straightway takes his own
life. Then was to follow the scene retailed in the legend--Jesus
fainting at Ahasuerus's door on his way to death; Simon the Cyrenian
relieving him of the burden of the Cross; the reproaches of Ahasuerus
addressed to the Saviour for neglecting his counsel; the transfigured
features on the handkerchief of St. Veronica; and the words of the
Lord dooming his stiff-necked gainsayer to wander to and fro on earth
till his second coming. As the subsequent narrative was to be
developed, it was to illustrate the outstanding events in the history
of Christianity--one incident in the experience of the Wanderer marked
for treatment being an interview with Spinoza.
In concluding the sketch of the poem as he originally conceived it,
Goethe remarks that he found he had neither the knowledge nor the
concentration of purpose necessary for its adequate treatment; and in
point of fact, in the fragment as it exists there is little
suggestion of the original conception. The title which Goethe himself
gave it at a later date, _Gedicht der Ankunft des Herrn_, more fitly
describes it than the title _Der Ewige Jude_. Of the two main sections
into which the poem is divided, the first, extending to over seventy
lines, corresponds most closely to the original conception. In twenty
introductory lines the poet describes how the inspiration to sing the
wondrous experiences of the much-travelled man had come to him. The
note struck in these lines is maintained throughout the remainder of
the fragment. It is a note of ironic persiflage which is plainly
indicated to the reader. In lack of a better Pegasus, a broomstick
will serve the poet's purpose, and the reader is invited to take or
leave the gibberish as he pleases. Then follows a description of the
shoemaker, who is represented as half Essene, half Methodist or
Moravian, but still more of a Separatist--certainly not the type
originally conceived by Goethe as that of the Wandering Jew. The
shoemaker is, in fact, a sectary of Goethe's own time, discontented
with the religious world around him, and convinced that salvation is
only to be found in his own petty sect. Equally as a picture of
historical Christianity in all ages is meant the satirical presentment
of the religious condition of Judæa--of indolent and luxurious church
dignitaries, fanatics looking for signs and wonders, denouncing the
sins of their generation, and giving themselves up to the antics of
the spirit.
But it is in the last and longest segment of the poem that its real
power and interest are to be found. Its theme is the second coming of
Christ and his experiences in lands professing his religion. In a
scene, compared with which the Prologue in Heaven of Faust is
decorous, God the Father ironically suggests that the Son would find
scope for his friendly feeling to the human kind if he were to pay a
visit to the earth. Alighting on the mountain where Satan had tempted
him, the Son, filled with tender yearning for the race for whom he had
died, has already anxious forebodings of woe on earth. In a soliloquy,
which we may take as the expression of Goethe's own deepest feelings,
as it is the expression of his finest poetic gift, he gives utterance
to his boundless love for man, and his compassion for a world where
truth and error, happiness and misery, are inextricably linked.
Continuing his descent, he first visits the Catholic countries where
he finds that in the multitude of crosses Christ and the Cross are
forgotten. Passing into a land where Protestantism is the professed
religion, he sees a similar state of things. He meets by the way a
country parson who has a fat wife and many children, and "does not
disturb himself about God in Heaven." Next he requests to be conducted
to the Oberpfarrer of the neighbourhood, in whom he might expect to
find "a man of God," and the fragment ends with an account of his
interview with the Oberpfarrer's cook, Hogarthian in its broad humour,
but disquieting even to the reader who may hold with Jean Paul that
the test of one's faith is the capacity to laugh at its object.
Goethe forbade the publication of _Der Ewige Jude_, and we can
understand his reason for the prohibition.[175] To many persons for
whose religious feelings he had a genuine respect--to his mother among
others--the poem would have been a cause of offence of which Goethe
was not the man to be guilty. Moreover, a continuous work in such a
vein was alien to Goethe's own genius. As we have them, the fragments
are but another specimen of that "godlike insolence" which, in his
later years, he found in his satires on Herder, Wieland, and others.
[Footnote 175: It was first published in 1836, four years after his
death.]