LILI SCHÖNEMANN
1775
To the year 1775 belongs the third critical period of Goethe's last
years in Frankfort. The autumn of 1771 following his return from
Strassburg had been the first of these periods, and was signalised by
_Götz von Berlichingen_, the product of his contrition for Friederike
and of the inspiration of Shakespeare. In the summer and autumn of
1772 came the Wetzlar episode, which found expression in _Werther_;
and in the opening weeks of 1775 begins the third period of crisis,
the issue of which was to be his final leave-taking of Frankfort.
On an evening near the close of 1774 or at the beginning of 1775, a
friend introduced Goethe to a house in Frankfort which during the next
nine months was to be the centre of his thoughts and emotions. There
was a crowd of guests, but Goethe's attention became fixed on a girl
seated at a piano, and playing, as he informs us, with grace and
facility. The house was that of Frau Schönemann, the widow of a rich
banker, and the girl who had excited Goethe's interest was her only
daughter, Anna Elisabeth, known by the pet name of Lili--the name by
which she is designated in Goethe's own references to her. The
musician having risen, Goethe exchanged a few polite compliments with
her, and when he took his leave for the evening, the mother expressed
the wish that he would soon repeat his visit, the daughter at the same
time indicating that his presence would not be disagreeable to her.
The houses of the Goethes and the Schönemanns were only some hundred
paces apart, but there had hitherto been no intercourse between the
two families, and the reason for this isolation is a significant fact
in the relations between Goethe and Lili that were to follow. The
Schönemanns moved in a social circle which was rigidly closed to the
burgher element in the city, and, when Frau Schönemann gave Goethe the
_entrée_ to her house, it was because he was an exceptional member of
the class to which he belonged. In making the acquaintance of the
Schönemanns, therefore, he had already to a certain degree compromised
himself.[197] In his own account of his relations to Lili he does not
disguise the fact that her mother and the friends of the family hardly
concealed their feeling that the Goethes were not of their order. In
seeking further intercourse with the Schönemanns he was thus putting
himself in a delicate position, and the fact that he deliberately
chose to do so is proof that his first sight of Lili must have touched
his inflammable heart.
[Footnote 197: In a letter written to Johanna Fahlmer from Weimar
(April 10th, 1776) Goethe vehemently expresses his dislike of the
Schönemann kin. "I have long hated them," he says; "from the bottom of
my heart.... I pity the poor creature [Lili] that she was born into
such a race."]
During the month of January Goethe became a frequent visitor at the
Schönemanns, and there began those relations with Lili which,
according to his own later testimony, were to give a new direction to
his life, as being the immediate cause of his leaving Frankfort and
settling in Weimar. If we are to accept his own averment two years
before his death, Lili was the first whom he had really loved, all his
other affairs of the heart being "inclinations of no importance."[198]
So he spoke in the retrospect under the influence of an immediate
emotion, but his own contemporary testimony proves that his love for
Lili was at least not unmingled bliss. Make what reserves we may for
the artificial working up of sentiment which was the fashion of the
time, that testimony presents us with the picture of a lover who has
not only to contend with obstacles which circumstances put in his way,
but with the haunting conviction that his passion was leading him
astray and that its gratification involved the surrender of his
deepest self. As in the case of others of his love passages, his
relations with Lili evoked a series of literary productions of which
they are the inspiration and the commentary, and which exhibit new
developments of his genius. We have lyrics addressed to her which,
though differently inspired from those addressed to Friederike, take
their place with the choicest he has written; we have plays more or
less directly bearing on the situation in which he found himself; and,
finally, we have his letters to various correspondents in which every
phase of his passion is recorded at the moment.
[Footnote 198: Eckermann, March 5th, 1830. What has been said of
Chateaubriand, who made use of a similar expression, may probably be
said with greater truth of Goethe, "Il ment à ses propres souvenirs et
à son coeur." In a letter to Frau von Stein (May 24th, 1776) Goethe
describes his relation to Friederike Brion as "das reinste, schönste,
wahrste, das ich ausser meiner Schwester je zu einem Weibe gehabt."]
In Lili Schönemann Goethe had a different object from any of his
previous loves. Käthchen Schönkopf, Friederike, Lotte Buff had all
been socially his inferiors, and he could play "the conquering lord"
with them. Lili, on the other hand, was his superior socially--a fact
of which her relatives and friends seem to have made him fully
conscious. Moreover, though he was in his twenty-sixth year, and she
only in her sixteenth, her personal character and her upbringing had
given her a maturity beyond that of any of his previous loves. She was
clever and accomplished, and already, as a desirable _partie_, she had
a considerable experience of masculine arts. As she is represented in
her portraits, the firm poise of her head and her clear-cut features
suggest the dignity, decision, and self-control of which her
subsequent life was to give proof.[199]
[Footnote 199: She is described as a pretty blonde, with blue eyes and
fair hair. In a letter (March 30th, 1801) addressed to Lili, then a
widow, Goethe writes: "Sie haben in den vergangenen Jahren viel
ausgestanden und dabei, wie ich weiss, einen entschlossenen Mut
bewiesen, der Ihnen Ehre macht."]
The first two lyrics he addressed to Lili reveal all the difference
between his relations to her and to Friederike. Those addressed to
Friederike breathe the confidence of returned affection unalloyed by
any disturbing reserves; in the case of his effusions to Lili there is
always a cloud in his heaven which seems to menace a possible storm.
In the first of these two lyrics, _Neue Liebe, neues Leben_ ("New
Love, New Life"), there is even a suggestion of regret to find that he
is entangled in a new passion. What is noteworthy in connection with
all his poems inspired by Lili, however, is that they are completely
free from the sentimentality of those he had written under the
influence of the ladies of Darmstadt. Though differing in tone from
the lyrics addressed to Friederike, they have all their directness,
simplicity, and economy of expression. In his Autobiography he tells
us that there could be no doubt that Lili ruled him, and in _Neue
Liebe, neues Leben_, he acknowledges the spell she has laid upon him
with a highly-wrought art without previous example in German
literature.
Herz, mein Herz, was soll das geben?
Was bedränget dich so sehr?
Welch ein fremdes neues Leben!
Ich erkenne dich nicht mehr.
Weg ist alles, was du liebtest,
Weg, warum du dich betrübtest,
Weg dein Fleiss und deine Ruh'--
Ach, wie kamst du nur dazu!
Fesselt dich die Jugendblüte,
Diese liebliche Gestalt,
Dieser Blick voll Treu' und Güte
Mit unendlicher Gewalt?
Will ich rasch mich ihr entziehen,
Mich ermannen, ihr entfliehen,
Führet mich im Augenblick
Ach, mein Weg zu ihr zurück.
Und an diesem Zauberfädchen,
Das sich nicht zerreissen lässt,
Hält das liebe, lose Mädchen
Mich so wider Willen fest;
Muss in ihrem Zauberkreise
Leben nun auf ihre Weise.
Die Veränd'rung, ach, wie gross!
Liebe! Liebe, lass mich los!
Say, heart of me, what this importeth;
What distresseth thee so sore?
New and strange all life and living;
Thee I recognise no more.
Gone is everything thou loved'st;
All for which thyself thou troubled'st;
Gone thy toil, and gone thy peace;
Ah! how cam'st thou in such case?
Fetters thee that youthful freshness?
Fetters thee that lovely mien?
That glance so full of truth and goodness,
With an adamantine chain?
Vain the hardy wish to tear me
From those meshes that ensnare me;
For the moment I would flee,
Straight my path leads back to thee.
By these slender threads enchanted,
Which to rend no power avails,
That dear wanton maiden holds me
Thus relentless in her spells.
Thus within her charméd round
Must I live as one spellbound;
Heart! what mighty change in thee;
Love, O love, ah, set me free!
In the second lyric, _An Belinden_, he pictures in the same tone of
half regret the case in which he finds himself, and the picture has an
eloquent commentary in his letters of the time. He who had lately
spent his peaceful evenings in the solitude of his own chamber
dreaming of her image had through her been irresistibly drawn into an
alien and uncongenial world. Is he the same being who now sits at the
card-table amid the glaring lights of a fashionable drawing-room in
the presence of hateful faces? For her, however, he will gladly endure
what he loathes with his whole soul.
Reizender ist mir des Frühlings Blüte
Nun nicht auf der Flur;
Wo du, Engel, bist, ist Lieb' and Güte,
Wo du bist, Natur.
Now the blooms of springtide on the meadow
Touch no more my heart;
Where thou, angel, art, is truth and goodness;
Nature, where thou art.
So he sang in tones befitting the true lover, but, as it happens, we
have a prose commentary from his own hand which gives perhaps a truer
picture of his real state of mind. Towards the end of January, when he
was already deep in his passion for Lili, he received a letter which
opened a new channel for his emotions. The letter came from an
anonymous lady who, as she explained, had been so profoundly moved by
the tale of Werther that she could not resist the impulse to express
her gratitude to its author. The fair unknown, as he was subsequently
to discover, was no less distinguished a person than an Imperial
Countess--the Countess Stolberg, sister of two equally fervid youths,
of whom we shall presently hear in connection with Goethe. It was
quite in keeping with the spirit of the time that two persons of
different sexes, who had never seen each other, should proceed
mutually to unbosom themselves with a freedom of self-revelation
which an age, habituated to greater reticence, finds it difficult to
understand; and there began a correspondence between Goethe and his
adorer in which we have the astonishing spectacle of her becoming the
confidant of all his emotions with regard to another woman, while he
is using the language of passion towards herself.[200] Here is the
opening sentence of his first letter to her, and it strikes the note
of all that was to follow: "My dear, I will give you no name, for what
are the names--Friend, Sister, Beloved, Bride, Wife, or any word that
is a complex of all these, compared with the direct feeling--with
the---- I cannot write further. Your letter has taken possession of me
at a wonderful time."[201]
[Footnote 200: It may be regarded as significant that Goethe makes no
reference to the Countess in his Autobiography.]
[Footnote 201: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 230.]
In his second letter to her, while she was still unknown to him,
written about three weeks later (February 13th), he depicts the
condition in which we are to imagine him at the time it was penned. It
will be seen that it is a prose rendering of the lines _An Belinden_,
to which reference has just been made. "If, my dear one, you can
picture to yourself a Goethe who, in a laced coat, and otherwise clad
from head to foot with finery in tolerable keeping, in the idle glare
of sconces and lustres, amid a motley throng of people, is held a
prisoner at a card-table by a pair of beautiful eyes; who in
alternating distraction is driven from company to concert and from
concert to ball, and with all the interest of frivolity pays his court
to a pretty blonde, you have the present carnival-Goethe.... But there
is another Goethe--one in grey beaver coat with brown silk necktie and
boots--who already divines the approach of spring in the caressing
February breezes, to whom his dear wide world will again be shortly
opened up, who, ever living his own life, striving and working,
according to the measure of his powers, seeks to express now the
innocent feelings of youth in little poems, and the strong spice of
life in various dramas; now the images of his friends, of his
neighbourhood and his beloved household goods, with chalk upon grey
paper; never asking the question how much of what he has done will
endure, because in toiling he is always ascending a step higher,
because he will spring after no ideal, but, in play or strenuous
effort, will let his feelings spontaneously develop into
capacities."[202]
[Footnote 202: _Ib._ pp. 233-4.]
The plays to which Goethe refers in this letter form part of his
intellectual and emotional history during the period of his relations
to Lili. In themselves these plays have little merit, and, had they
come from the hand of some minor poet, they would deservedly have
passed into oblivion, but as part of his biography they call for some
notice. The first of them, _Erwin und Elmire_, is a sufficiently
trivial vaudeville, and appears to have been begun in the autumn of
1773.[203] He must have retouched it in January--February (1775),
however, as it contains distinct suggestions of his experiences with
the Schönemann family. As he himself tells us in his Autobiography,
the piece was suggested by Goldsmith's ballad, _Edwin and Angelina_,
and both the choice and handling of the subject illustrate his remark
in the foregoing letter regarding the fugitive nature of the various
things which he threw off at this time.[204] There are four
characters,--Olimpia and her daughter Elmire, Bernardo, a friend of
the family, and Erwin, Elmire's lover. Elmire plays the part of
capricious coquette with such effect that she drives her despairing
lover to hide himself from the world and to retreat to a hermitage
which he constructs for himself in the neighbouring wilds. Elmire now
realises her hard-heartedness, and exhibits such symptoms of distress
as to waken the concern of her mother and Bernardo. Bernardo, however,
is in Erwin's secret, and contrives to bring the two lovers together
and to effect a happy reconciliation, to the satisfaction of all
parties--the mother included. The play was dedicated to Lili in the
following lines:--
Den kleinen Strauss, den ich dir binde,
Pflückt' ich aus diesem Herzen hier;
Nimm ihn gefällig auf, Belinde!
Der kleine Strauss, er ist von mir.
This posy that I bind for thee
I cull'd it from my very heart;
This little posy, 'tis from me;
Take it, Belinda, in good part.
[Footnote 203: _Ib._ p. 113.]
[Footnote 204: He says of the piece that it cost him "little
expenditure of mind and feeling." _Ib._]
There was a sufficient reason for Goethe's praying Lili to take the
piece "in good part." In the cruel coquette Elmire Lili could not but
see a portrait of herself, and there are expressions in the play which
she could not but regard as home-thrusts. "To be entertained, to be
amused," says Erwin to Bernardo, "that is all they (the maidens)
desire. They value a man who spends an odious evening with them at
cards as highly as the man who gives his body and soul for them." In
another remark of Erwin's there is a reference to Goethe's own
relations to Lili and her family which she could not misunderstand. "I
loved her with an enduring love. To that love I gave my whole heart.
But because I am poor, I was scorned. And yet I hoped through my
diligence to make as suitable a provision for her as any of the
beplastered wind-bags." Trivial as the play is, it was acted in
Frankfort during Goethe's absence,[205] and at a later date he
considered it worth his while to recast it in another form.
[Footnote 205: Goethe was not known to be the author. In a letter to
Johanna Fahlmer, he expresses his curiosity to know if Lili was
present at its performance. _Erwin und Elmire_, it should be said,
contains two of Goethe's most beautiful songs, the one beginning "Ein
Veilchen auf der Wiese stand," and the other "Ihr verblühet, süsse
Rosen."]
_Erwin und Elmire_ was followed by another play, more remarkable from
its contents, but by general agreement of as little importance from a
literary point of view. This was _Stella_, significantly designated in
its original form as _A Play for Lovers_. Unlike _Erwin und Elmire_,
it was wholly the production of this period--the end of February and
the beginning of March being the probable date of its composition.
Though written at the height of his passion for Lili, however, it
contains fewer direct references to his experiences of the moment than
_Erwin und Elmire_. Any interest that attaches to _Stella_ lies in the
fact of its being a lively presentment of a phase of Goethe's own
experience and of the world of factitious sentiment which made that
experience possible. No other of Goethe's youthful productions,
indeed, better illustrates the literary emotionalism of the time when
it was written, and some notion of its character and scope is
desirable in view of all his relations to Lili.
The drama opens in a posting-house, where two travellers, Madame
Sommer (Cäcilie) and her daughter Lucie, have alighted. The object of
their journey is to place Lucie as a companion with a lady living on
an estate in the neighbourhood. From the conversation of the mother
and daughter we learn that Cäcilie had been deserted by her husband,
and was now in such reduced circumstances as to necessitate her
daughter's finding some employment. On inquiring of the postmistress
they gain some information regarding the lady they are in search of.
She also had been deserted by one who was her reputed husband, and
since then had spent her days in mournful solitude and good works.
Fatigued by her journey, Cäcilie retires to rest, and Lucie,
carefully instructed not to reveal the position of herself and her
mother, sets out to interview the strange lady. During her absence
there arrives at the posting-house a gentleman in military dress, who
presently falls into a tearful soliloquy, from which we learn that he
is no other than Fernando, the husband of Cäcilie, and that the
strange lady is Stella, whom he had also deserted and with whom he now
proposes to renew his former relations. Lucie returns delighted with
her visit to Stella, and there ensues a bantering conversation between
the father and daughter, both, of course, equally ignorant of their
relation to each other. So ends the first Act; with the second begin
the embarrassments of the difficult situation. Cäcilie and Lucie
repair to Stella, and, after an effusive exchange of memories between
the two deserted ones, Stella invites both mother and daughter to make
their home with her. Unfortunately Stella brings forth the portrait of
her former lover, in whom to her horror Cäcilie recognises her
husband, and Lucie to her surprise recognises the officer at the
posting-house--a fact which she makes known to Stella. In an ecstasy
of excited expectation Stella dispatches a servant with the order to
fetch the long-lost one, and Cäcilie, retiring to the garden,
communicates to Lucie the discovery of her father. In the rapidly
succeeding Scenes that follow the three chief persons experience
alternations of agony and bliss which find facile expression in many
sighs, tears, and embraces. Fernando and Stella, lost in the present
and oblivious of the past, melt in their new-found bliss, but are
interrupted in their raptures by the announcement that Cäcilie and
Lucie are preparing to take their departure. At Stella's request
Fernando finds Cäcilie, whom he at first does not recognise. Mutual
recognition follows, however, when Fernando vows that he will never
again leave her, and proposes that he and she and Lucie should make
off at once. Meanwhile, Stella is pouring forth her bliss over the
grave which, like one of the Darmstadt ladies, she has had dug for
herself in her garden. Here she is joined by Fernando, whose altered
mood fills her with a vague dread which is converted into horror when,
on the entrance of Cäcilie and Lucie, Fernando acknowledges them as
his wife and daughter. After paroxysms of emotion all the parties
separate, and Stella prepares to take her flight after a vain attempt
to cut Fernando's portrait out of its frame. She is interrupted in her
intention of flight by the appearance of Fernando, and there follows a
dialogue in which we are to look for the drift of the play. Cäcilie
insists on departing and leaving the two lovers to their happiness. "I
feel," she says, "that my love for thee is not selfish, is not the
passion of a lover, which would give up all to possess its longed-for
object ... it is the feeling of a wife, who out of love itself can
give up love." Fernando, however, passionately declares that he will
never abandon her, and Cäcilie makes a happy suggestion that will
solve all difficulties. Was it not recorded of a German Count that he
brought home a maiden from the Holy Land and that she and his wife
happily shared his affections between them? And such is the solution
which commends itself to all parties. Fernando impartially embraces
both ladies, and Cäcilie's concluding remark is: "We are thine!"[206]
[Footnote 206: In deference to the general opinion that this ending
was immoral, Goethe, in a later form of the play, makes Fernando shoot
himself.]
Such is the play which, in a bad English translation that did not
mitigate its absurdities, provoked the wit of the _Anti-Jacobin_.[207]
In Fernando, the central figure of the play, we are, of course, to
recognise Goethe himself,[208] and in no other of his dramas has he
presented a less attractive character. Weislingen, Clavigo, and
Werther have all their redeeming qualities, but Fernando is an
emotional egotist incapable of any worthy motive, and it is the most
serious blemish in the play, even in view of the factitious world in
which it moves, that he is made the adored idol of two such different
women as Cäcilie and Stella. The situation, as Goethe himself tells
us, was suggested by the relations of Swift to Stella and Vanessa, but
he did not need to go so far afield for a motive. In the world around
him he was familiar both with the creed and the practice which the
conclusion of the play approves. As we have seen, it was openly held
by enlightened and moral persons that marriage, as being a mere
contract, was incompatible with a true union of souls, and that such a
union was only to be found in irresponsible relations. In the case of
his friend Fritz Jacobi, whose character and talents had all his
admiration, he had a practical illustration of the creed; for Jacobi
had a wife and also a friend (his step-aunt Johanna Fahlmer) in whom
he found a more responsive recipient of his emotions. But it is rather
in Goethe's own character and experience that we are to look for the
origin of _Stella_; it is in truth an analytic presentment of what he
had himself known and felt. As we have seen, one object was incapable
of engrossing all his affections; while he was paying court to Lili,
his wandering desires went out to the fair correspondent who had
evinced such interest in his troubles and aspirations. It would seem
that he required two types of woman such as he has depicted in
_Stella_ to satisfy at once his mind and heart: a Cäcilie who inspired
him with respect as well as affection, and a Stella whose
self-abandonment left his passions their free course.
[Footnote 207: _Stella_ and other German plays are wittily parodied in
_The Rovers; or, The Double Arrangement_.]
[Footnote 208: Goethe gives Fernando his own brown eyes and black
hair.]
Nauseous as _Stella_ must appear to the modern reader, it found wide
acceptance at the period it was written, though its moral was
generally condemned. Herder was enthusiastic in its praise, and on its
publication at the end of January, 1776, it passed through four
editions in a single week. In 1805, with its altered _dénouement_, in
which the hero shoots himself, it was performed with applause in
Berlin, and was afterwards frequently produced. Goethe himself
continued to retain a singular affection for the most sickly
sentimental of all his literary offspring, and he subsequently sent a
copy of his work to Lili, accompanied by some lines which were worthy
of a better gift.[209]
[Footnote 209: After he had broken with her, and was settled in
Weimar.]
Im holden Thal, auf schneebedeckten Höhen
War stets dein Bild mir nah!
Ich sah's um mich in lichten Wolken wehen;
Im Herzen war mir's da.
Empfinde hier, wie mit allmächt'gem Triebe
Ein Herz das andre zieht,
Und dass vergebens Liebe
Vor Liebe flieht.
In the dear vale, on heights the snow had covered,
Still was thine image near;
I saw it round me in the bright clouds hover;
My heart beheld it there.
Here learn to feel with what resistless power
One heart the other ties;
That vain it is when lover
From lover flies.
Still another piece belongs to the first months of Goethe's relations
to Lili--_Claudine von Villa Bella_, which appears to have been
written intermittently in April and May. Like _Erwin und Elmire_ it is
in operatic form--the prose dialogue being diversified with outbursts
of song. Entirely trivial as a work of art, it calls for passing
notice only on account of certain characteristics which distinguish
it as a product of the period when it was written. The intention of
the play, Goethe wrote at a later time, was to exhibit "noble
sentiments in association with adventurous actions," and the conduct
of his hero and heroine is certainly unconventional, if their feelings
are exalted. Claudine is the only daughter of a fond and widowed
father, and her dreamy emotionalism would have made her a welcome
member of the Darmstadt circle of ladies. She is in love with Pedro,
but Pedro is not the hero of the piece. That place is assigned to his
eldest brother Crugantino, a scapegrace, with a noble heart, who,
finding the ordinary bonds of society too confined for him, has taken
to highway robbery. "Your burgher life," he says--and we know that he
is here uttering Goethe's own sentiments--"your burgher life is to me
intolerable. There, whether I give myself to work or enjoyment,
slavery is my lot. Is it not a better choice for one of decent merit
to plunge into the world? Pardon me! I don't give a ready ear to the
opinion of other people, but pardon me if I let you know mine. I will
grant you that if once one takes to a roving life, no goal and no
restraints exist for him; for our heart--ah! it is infinite in its
desires so long as its strength remains to it." Crugantino, who with
his band is housed at a wretched inn in the neighbourhood, catches
sight of Claudine, is bewitched by her beauty, and resolves to gain
possession of her. On a beautiful moonlight night, attended by only
one companion, he makes his adventurous attempt. Of the charivari that
follows it is only necessary to say that Pedro is wounded in a
hand-to-hand encounter by his unknown brother Crugantino, and is
conveyed to the inn where the band have their quarters. And now comes
the turn of Claudine to show her disregard of conventionalities. In
agonies for her wounded lover, she dons male attire, and in the middle
of the night sets out for the inn where he is lying. She encounters
Crugantino at the door, and their dialogue is overheard by the wounded
Pedro who rushes forth to rescue her. A duel ensues between Pedro and
Crugantino; the watch appears, and all parties are conveyed to the
village prison. Here they are found by the distracted father and his
friend Sebastian, and a general explanation follows--Pedro being made
secure of Claudine, and Crugantino showing himself a repentant sinner.
With this fantastic production, which, beginning in an atmosphere of
pure sentiment, ends in broad farce, Goethe was even in middle life so
satisfied that he recast it in verse, and made other alterations which
in the opinion of most critics did not improve the original.[210]
[Footnote 210: During his residence in Rome in 1787. He recast _Erwin
und Elmire_ at the same time.]
The triviality of these successive performances, so void of the mind
and heart displayed in the fragmentary _Prometheus_ and _Der Ewige
Jude_, have their commentary in his continued relations to Lili
Schönemann. They even raise the question whether his passion for her
were really so consuming as in his old age he declared it to have
been. They at least speak a very different language from that of the
simple lyrics in which he expressed his love for Friederike Brion. Yet
when we turn to his correspondence, written on the inspiration of the
moment, we find all the indications of a genuinely distracted lover.
During the month of March we are to believe that he underwent all the
pangs of a passionate wooer. Surrounded by numerous admirers, Lili was
difficult of access, and apparently took some pleasure in reminding
him that he was only one among others.[211] "Oh! if I did not compose
dramas," he wrote on the 6th to his confidant the Countess, "I should
be shipwrecked." A few days of unalloyed bliss he did enjoy, and the
length at which he records them in his Autobiography shows that they
remained a vivid memory with him. In the course of the month Lili
spent some time with an uncle at Offenbach on the Main, and, joining
her there, Goethe found her all that his heart could wish. "Take the
girl to your heart; it will be good for you both," he wrote out of his
bliss to his other female confidant, Johanna Fahlmer.[212]
[Footnote 211: To this period probably belongs _Lilis Park_, the most
playfully humorous of Goethe's poems, in which he banters Lili on her
capricious treatment of himself (represented as a bear) as one of her
menagerie--the motley crowd of her suitors.]
[Footnote 212: Certain pranks played by Goethe during his stay in
Offenbach show that he was not wholly given up to "lover's
melancholy." On a moonlight night, robed in a white sheet, and mounted
on stilts (a form of exercise to which he was addicted), he went
through the town and created a panic among the inhabitants by looking
into their windows. On another occasion, at a baptism, he secretly
deposited the baby in a dish, and covering it with a towel, placed the
dish on a table where the company were assembled. It was only after
some time that the contents of the dish were revealed.]
On their return to Frankfort, however, his former griefs were renewed,
and a new distraction was added to them. "I am delighted that you are
so enamoured of my _Stella_," he writes to Fritz Jacobi on March 21st,
immediately after his return; "my heart and mind are now turned in
such entirely different directions that my own flesh and blood is
almost indifferent to me. I can tell you nothing, for what is there
that can be said? I will not even think either of to-morrow or of the
day after to-morrow."[213] The truth is that, as he tells us in his
Autobiography, he was now in an embarrassing position. His relations
to Lili had become such that a decisive step was necessary in the
interests of both. During the last fortnight of March his mood was
certainly not that of a happy lover. To break with Lili was a step
which circumstances as well as his own attachment to her made a dire
alternative. On the other hand, from the bond of marriage, as we know,
he shrank with every instinct of his nature. Only a few weeks before,
doubtless with his own possible fate in front of him, he had put these
words in the mouth of Fernando in his _Stella_: "I would be a fool to
allow myself to be shackled. That state [marriage] smothers all my
powers; that state robs me of all my spirits, cramps my whole being. I
must forth into the free world."[214] Goethe did eventually take the
decision of Fernando, but not just yet. On March 25th he wrote to
Herder: "It seems as if the twisted threads on which my fate hangs,
and which I have so long shaken to and fro in oscillating rotation,
would at last unite."[215] On the 29th, Klopstock, who had come on a
few days' visit to Frankfort, found him in "strange agitation." As so
often happened in Goethe's life, it was an accident that determined
his wavering purpose. In the beginning of April there came to
Frankfort a Mademoiselle Delf, an old friend of the Schönemann family,
whom Goethe made acquainted with his father and mother. A person of
strenuous character, she took it upon her to bring matters to a point
between the two households. With the consent of Lili's mother, she
brought Lili one evening to the Goethe house. "Take each other by the
hand," she said in commanding tones; and the two lovers obeyed and
embraced. "It was a remarkable decree of the powers that rule us," is
the characteristic reflection of the aged Goethe, "that in the course
of my singular career I should also experience the feelings of one
betrothed."
[Footnote 213: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 246.]
[Footnote 214: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 249.]
[Footnote 215: _Ib._ p. 255.]
Goethe's feelings as a betrothed were from the first of a mingled
nature. No sooner had he given his pledge than all the complications
which must result from his union with Lili stared him in the face.
Even after the betrothal the relations between the two families did
not become more cordial. Not only were they divided by difference of
social standing; a deeper ground of mutual antagonism lay in their
religion. The Schönemanns belonged to the Reformed persuasion, the
Protestantism of the higher classes, while the Goethes were Lutheran,
as were the majority of the class to which they belonged; and
between the two denominations there was bitter and permanent
estrangement.[216] And there was still another stumbling-block in the
way of a probable happy union. Goethe was not earning an independent
income, and, in the event of his marriage, he and his bride would have
to take up their quarters under his parental roof. But, accustomed to
the gay pleasures of a fashionable circle, how would Lili accommodate
herself to the homely ways and surroundings of the Goethe household?
Moreover, we have it from Goethe himself that Lili was distasteful
equally to his father and mother--the former sarcastically speaking of
her as "Die Stadtdame." Such, he realised, was the future before him
as the husband of Lili; and he had no sooner bound himself to her than
he was reduced to distraction by conflicting desires. In some words
he wrote to Herder within a fortnight after his betrothal we have a
glimpse of his state of mind. "A short time ago," he wrote, "I was
under the delusion that I was approaching the haven of domestic bliss
and a sure footing in the realities of earthly joy and sorrow, but I
am again in unhappy wise cast forth on the wide sea."[217] He was
already, in fact, contemplating the desirability of bursting his bond;
and an opportunity came to assist him in his resolve.
[Footnote 216: Frau Schönemann is recorded to have said that the
different religion of the two families was the cause of the match
being broken off.]
[Footnote 217: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 261-2.]
In the second week of May there came to Frankfort three youths whose
rank and personal character created a flutter in the Goethe household.
Two of them were the brothers of the Countess Stolberg,[218] with whom
Goethe had been carrying on his platonic correspondence during the
previous months, and were on their way to a tour in Switzerland. All
were enthusiastic adherents of the _Sturm und Drang_ movement, and
Goethe had long been the object of their distant adoration. They were
not disappointed in their idol, and the first meeting, according to
both Stolbergs, sufficed to establish a general union of hearts.
"Goethe," wrote the elder, "is a delightful fellow. The fulness of
fervid sensibility streams out of his every word and feature."[219]
During the few days they spent in Frankfort the three scions of
nobility were frequent guests in the Goethe house, and their talk must
have been enlivening if we may judge from the specimen of it recorded
by Goethe himself. The conversation had turned on the ill-deeds of
tyrants, a favourite theme with the youth of the time, and, heated
with wine, the three youths expressed a vehement desire for the blood
of all such. The Herr Rath smiled and shook his head, but his helpmate
hastily ran to the wine-cellar and produced a bottle of her best,
exclaiming, "Here is the true tyrant's blood. Feast on it, but let no
murderous thoughts go forth from my house."
[Footnote 218: The third was Count Haugnitz, of more subdued temper
than his companions.]
[Footnote 219: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 55.]
In the company of these choice spirits Goethe decided to leave
Frankfort for a time, and with the set resolve, if possible, to efface
all thoughts of Lili. Characteristically he did not take a formal
leave of her, a proceeding which was naturally resented both by
herself and her relatives. The quartette started on May 14th, and from
the first they made it appear that they meant to travel as four
geniuses who set at naught all accepted conventions.[220] Before
departing they all procured Werther costume--blue coat, yellow
waistcoat and hose and round grey hat; and in this array they
disported themselves throughout their travels. Darmstadt was their
first halting-place, and at the Court there they conducted themselves
with some regard to decorum. Outside its precincts, however, they gave
full rein to their eccentricities, and so scandalised the Darmstadters
by publicly bathing in a pond in the neighbourhood that they found it
advisable to beat a hasty retreat from the town. In Darmstadt Goethe
had met his old mentor, Merck, who with his usual caustic frankness
told him that he was making a fool of himself in keeping company with
such madcaps.[221] At Mannheim, their next stage, the whole party
signalised themselves by smashing the wine-glasses from which they had
drunk to the ladylove of the younger Stolberg. The presence of
distinguished personages at Carlsruhe, their next stage, kept their
vivacity within bounds so long as they remained there. Just at this
moment the young Duke of Weimar had come to Carlsruhe to betroth
himself to the Princess Luise of Hesse-Darmstadt, and from both Goethe
received a cordial invitation to visit them at Weimar. Another
distinguished person then in the town was Klopstock, who received
Goethe with such undisguised kindness that he was induced to read
aloud to him the latest scenes of a work of which we shall hear
presently.[222] At Carlsruhe Goethe parted company from his
fellow-travellers with the intention of visiting his sister at
Emmendingen. On May 22nd he was at Strassburg, where he spent several
days, renewing old acquaintances, especially with his former monitor,
Salzmann, but, for reasons we can appreciate, did not present himself
at Sesenheim.
[Footnote 220: According to Goethe, Count Haugnitz was the only one of
the four who showed any sense of propriety.]
[Footnote 221: It was at this time that Merck gave his famous
definition of Goethe's genius. See above, p. 135.]
[Footnote 222: The _Urfaust_.]
From Strassburg he proceeded to Emmendingen, where he spent the first
week of June with his sister, whom he had not seen since her marriage
with Schlosser. For various reasons he had looked forward to their
meeting with painful feelings. He knew that she had been unhappy in
her marriage, and must expect to find her naturally depressed temper
soured by her conjugal experience. Their main theme of conversation
was his betrothal to Lili, and it was with a vehemence born of her own
bitter experience that Cornelia urged him to break off a connection
which the relations of all immediately concerned too surely foreboded
must end in disaster. The warning of Cornelia, we might have expected,
should have been welcome as confirming his own struggling attempts to
break loose from his bonds, but, if his later memories did not betray
him, it only laid a heavier load on his heart. His real state of mind
at the time we have in a letter to Johanna Fahlmer, written while he
was still with his sister. "I feel," he wrote, "that the chief aim of
my journey has failed, and when I return it will be worse for the
Bear[223] than before. I know well that I am a fool, but for that very
reason I am I."[224] The parting of the brother and sister--and the
parting was to be for ever[225]--must have been with heavy misgivings
for both. To her brother alone had Cornelia been bound by any tender
tie; he alone of her family had understood and sympathised with her
singular temperament, and her greatest happiness had been derived from
following his career of brilliant promise and achievement. It must,
therefore, have been with dark forebodings that she saw before him the
possibility of a union which in her eyes must be fatal alike to his
peace of mind and the development of his genius. On his side, also,
Goethe must have parted from his sister with the sad conviction that
the gloom that lay upon her life could never be lifted. She had been
the one never-failing confidant equally of the troubles of his heart
and of his intellectual ambitions, and it was from her that in his
present distraction he had naturally sought sympathy and counsel. It
is with the tenderest touch that in his reminiscent record of this
their last meeting he depicts her "problematical" nature, and pays his
tribute to all that she had been to him.[226]
[Footnote 223: Goethe was known as the "Bear" or the "Huron" among his
friends.]
[Footnote 224: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 266.]
[Footnote 225: Cornelia died in June, 1777, when Goethe was settled in
Weimar.]
[Footnote 226: On Cornelia's death he wrote to his mother: "Mit meiner
Schwester ist mir so eine starcke Wurzel die mich an der Erde hielt
abgehauen worden, dass die Aeste von oben, die davon Nahrung haben,
auch absterben müssen."]
It had been Goethe's original intention to end his travels with the
visit to his sister, but, as their main object was as far off as ever,
he decided to rejoin his late companions and to accompany them to
Switzerland. By way of Schaffhausen they proceeded to Zurich, where
Goethe's first act was to seek Lavater. Their talk during his stay in
Zurich mainly turned on Lavater's great work on Physiognomy, to which
Goethe had continuously contributed by help and counsel, though from
the first he was sceptical of its scientific value. Their intercourse
was as cordial as it had been in the previous year, and Lavater was
subjugated more than ever by the personality of Goethe. "Who can think
more differently than Goethe and I," he wrote to Wieland, who was
still suspicious of his youthful adversary, "and yet we are devoted to
each other.... You will be astonished at the man who unites the fury
of the lion with the gentleness of the lamb. I have seen no one at
once firmer in purpose and more easily led.... Goethe is the most
lovable, most affable, most charming of fellows."[227]
[Footnote 227: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 59. Goethe made Lavater the
victim of one of the practical jokes which he was in the habit of
playing on his friends. Seeing an unfinished sermon of Lavater on his
desk, he completed it during the absence of Lavater, who, in ignorance
of the addition, preached the whole sermon as his own.--_Ib._ p. 58.]
In Zurich happened what Merck had foreseen. Goethe had grown tired of
his over-exuberant fellow-travellers, whose ways, moreover, did not
commend them to the sensitive Lavater. Goethe himself indeed was
capable of wild enough pranks, but behind his wild humours lay ever
the "serious striving" which was the regulative force of his nature,
and which Lavater had recognised from the beginning of their
intercourse. A lucky accident gave Goethe the opportunity of escaping
from his late comrades without an open breach. In Zurich he found a
friend whom he had looked forward to meeting there. This was a native
of Frankfort, Passavant by name, who was settled in Switzerland as a
Reformed pastor. Passavant was a man of intelligence and attractive
character, and when he proposed that they should make a tour together
through the smaller Swiss Cantons, Goethe jumped at the suggestion.
From Goethe's own narrative of his tour with Passavant we are to infer
that the distracting image of Lili was never absent from his mind, and
that all the glories of the scenery through which they passed were
only its background seen through the haze of his wandering
imaginations. And the testimony of the prose narrative in his
Autobiography is confirmed by the successive lyrics, prompted by the
intrusive image of Lili, which fell from him by the way. In the
following lines, composed on the Lake of Zurich on the first morning
of their journey, he clothes in poetical form the confession he had
made to Johanna Fahlmer from Emmendingen:--
Und frische Nahrung, neues Blut
Saug' ich aus freier Welt;
Wie ist Natur so hold und gut,
Die mich am Busen hält!
Die Welle wieget unsern Kahn
Im Rudertakt hinauf,
Und Berge, wolkig himmelan,
Begegnen unserm Lauf.
Aug', mein Aug', was sinkst du nieder?
Goldne Träume, kommt ihr wieder?
Weg, du Traum! so Gold du bist;
Hier auch Lieb' und Leben ist.
Auf der Welle blinken
Tausend schwebende Sterne;
Weiche Nebel trinken
Rings die türmende Ferne;
Morgenwind umflügelt
Die beschattete Bucht,
Und im See bespiegelt
Sich die reifende Frucht.
Fresh cheer and quickened blood I suck
From this wide world and free;
How dear is Nature and how good!
A mother unto me!
Rocked by the wavelets speeds our skiff
To the oar's measured beat;
Cloudclapt, the heaven-aspiring hills
Appear our course to meet.
Why sink my eyelids as I gaze?
Ye golden dreams of other days,
Come ye again? Though ne'er so dear,
Begone! Are life and love not here?
The o'erhanging stars are twinkling
In myriads on the mere;
In floating mists enfolded
The far heights disappear.
The morning breeze is coursing
Round the deep-shadowed cove;
And in its depths are imaged
The ripening fruits above.
Looking down on the same lake from its southern ridge, he writes these
lines, the concentrated expression of distracted emotions:--
Wenn ich, liebe Lili, dich nicht liebte,
Welche Wonne gäb' mir dieser Blick!
Und doch, wenn ich, Lili, dich nicht liebte,
Fänd' ich hier und fänd' ich dort mein Glück?
If I, loved Lili, loved thee not,
In this prospect, ah! what bliss;
Yet, Lili, if I loved thee not,
Where should I find my happiness?
In the cloister of the church at Einsiedeln he saw a beautiful gold
crown, and his first thought was how it would become the brows of
Lili. On the night of June 21st the two travellers reached the hospice
in the pass of St. Gothard--the term of their journey. Next morning
they saw the path that led down to Italy, and, according to Goethe's
account, Passavant vehemently urged that they should make the descent
together. For a few moments he was undecided, but the memories of Lili
conquered. Drawing forth a golden heart, her gift, which he wore round
his neck, he kissed it, and his resolution was taken. Hastily turning
from the tempting path, he began his homeward descent, his companion
reluctantly following him.[228]
[Footnote 228: According to a tradition in the Passavant family, it
was Goethe, not Passavant, who was so eager to descend into
Italy.--Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 58.]
On July 22nd, after a leisurely journey homewards, he was again in
Frankfort, and in a state of mind as undecided as ever regarding his
future course. Fortunately or unfortunately for himself and the world,
circumstances independent of his own will were to decide between the
alternatives that lay before him.