periodicals, and in a new, very much enlarged, edition of his work
on German literature. He convicts Goethe of three distinct kinds of
personal vanity and six kinds of voluptuousness ("dreierlei Eitelkeiten
und sechserlei Wollüsteleien"). He analyses his works, great and small,
one by one, measures them by his own patriotic standard, and declares
them to be despicable. _Clavigo_ he condemns, because Goethe makes
Clavigo desert Marie. That he afterwards makes him die by the hand
of her brother goes for nothing, in fact is only an additional cause
of offence to Menzel, who knows that in real life Clavigo lived on
happily, which make his death on the stage a mere _coup de théâtre._[4]
To find sufficient immorality in the play, the critic must,
we observe, take advantage of his knowledge of circumstances that
do not concern it. _Tasso_ is to him Goethe's _Höflingsbekenntniss_
("Confessions of a Courtier"), in which he betrays the vanity of
the _parvenu_, to whom the high rank of a woman is an irresistible
attraction.[5] The reader will have no difficulty in imagining
for himself all the moral reflections for which Menzel finds occasion
in _Die Mitschuldigen_, in _Die Geschwister_, where "voluptuousness
casts sidelong glances at the pretty sister," in _Stella_, where it
craves the excitement of bigamy ("nach dem Reiz der Bigamie gelüstet")
and in the _Mann von fünfzig Jahren_, which is the special object of
his indignation. Even _Wilhelm Meister_ is to Menzel only an expression
of the shamefully light esteem in which Goethe held true virtue, and
the strong attraction which the outward conditions of rank possessed
for him.[6] _Die Wahlverwandschaften_ he regards as the type
of "the novel of adultery," which takes for its theme the desire of
voluptuousness after untried sensations ("die Wollüstelei, die das
Fremde begehrt"). _Die Braut von Korinth_ is simply the expression of
the voluptuousness whose desire is set on corpses, "die sogar noch in
den Schauern des Grabes, in der Buhlerei mit schönen Gespenstern einen
_haut goût_ des Genusses findet"--(which even amidst the horrors of
the grave finds a _haut goût_ of sensual enjoyment in intercourse with
beautiful spectres).
Where it is impossible to bring an accusation of immorality, Menzel
returns to his accusation of want of originality. It is not only its
glorification of middle-class Philistinism that stamps _Hermann und
Dorothea_ as an inferior work, but also the direct imitation of Voss's
_Luise_. According to Menzel, Goethe showed real originality only in
_Faust_ and _Wilhelm Meister_, because in these two works he copied
himself. In his youth he borrowed from Moliere and Beaumarchais, from
Shakespeare and Lessing, and his later iambic tragedies are "the fruits
of his rivalry with Schiller." Added to all this, he was, God knows, no
patriot.
Let us compare Börne's attacks on Goethe with Menzel's, and we shall
find, in spite of similar extravagance of expression, this great
difference, that Börne does not attempt to judge, still less to condemn
Goethe's great works, nor does he condescend to accusations of sexual
immorality; he invariably confines himself to attacking Goethe in his
political relations. Saint-René Taillandier correctly observes that
Börne gave expression to everything that was rankling in his heart when
he took as motto for his review of Bettina's _Goethe's Briefwechsel mit
einem Kinde_ ("Goethe's Correspondence with a Child"), these words from
_Prometheus_:
"Ich dich ehren? Wofür?
Hast du die Schmerzen gelindert
Je des Beladenen?
Hast du die Thränen gestillet
Je des Geängsteten?"[7]
Though he could only appreciate those of Goethe's works in which the
fire of youth was perceptible, his attacks are not based on contempt
for the other works, but on the fact that Goethe, so highly favoured in
the matter of ability and of social position, never thought of devoting
that ability, that position, to the improvement of the existing
conditions of life in Germany. It is easy to cull foolish passages
conceived in Menzel's strain from Börne's works. In his Journal of
1830, for instance, he writes of Goethe's luck in having succeeded in
imitating with his talent the handwriting of genius for sixty years
without being detected; and in another place he calls Goethe the
rhyming, Hegel the rhymeless, thrall.[8] But to understand these wild and
regrettable outbursts, we must make ourselves acquainted with Börne's
bill of accusation against both Goethe and Schiller.
He started from the premise (in all probability quite a false one) that
Goethe, by making timely and energetic protest, could have prevented
the Resolutions of Karlsbad, could have secured the liberty of the
press and the other spiritual rights of which the reaction had deprived
the German nation. In any case, whatever the results might have been,
he was firmly convinced that it was Goethe's duty to have protested.
Instead of this, what happens? "Geheimrath von Goethe, the Karlsbad
poet," as Börne, knowing that he goes there every year to drink the
waters, satirically nicknames him, subscribes himself _servant_ among
other servants of his Prince ("wir sämmtlichen Diener"); confesses
in his _Tag- und Jahres-Hefte_ that he wrote his stupid little play
_Der Bürgergeneral_ (the whole plot of which hinges on the stealing
of a pail of milk from the peasant Martin), with the intention of
ridiculing the French Revolution; also confesses that, far from taking
Fichte's part when that philosopher was accused of teaching atheism
in the University of Jena, he was much annoyed at the vexation caused
to the court by the outside interference which Fichte's utterances
provoked.[9] Another cause of offence was the way in which,
when Oken's _Isis_ was published, Goethe bewailed the peaceful times
brought to an end by the establishment of the liberty of the press in
Weimar, "the further consequences of which every right-thinking man
with any knowledge of the world foresees with alarm and regret."[10]
And the same feeling of disappointment and mortification was aroused in
Börne when he read that Schiller, whom he highly esteemed, had at the
very crisis of the French Revolution declared in his announcement of
the new periodical _Die Horen_, that from this publication everything
in the nature of criticism of the government, of religion, or of
the political questions of the day, would be expressly and strictly
excluded.[11]
We must bear all this in mind when we read Börne's flaming
denunciations--ablaze with a passion for liberty that forgets
to be just--of Schiller and of Goethe, his lament that in their
correspondence these two greatest minds of Germany show themselves
so small that nothing at all would be better ("so Nichts sind--nein
weniger als Nichts, so wenig"), and that they actually are what he,
the confirmed democrat, considers the worst thing possible, a pair of
confirmed aristocrats. He sees in Schiller a worse aristocrat than
Goethe, for Goethe's partiality is merely for the upper classes of
society, whereas Schiller will associate with none but the _élite_ of
humanity. It is Börne's belief that Goethe might have been the Hercules
who should cleanse the Augean stables of his country; but he rather
elected to fetch the golden apples of the Hesperides, and to keep
them for himself.[12] He compares him in his own mind with the great
productive spirits of other countries; with Dante, who championed the
cause of justice; with Alfieri, who preached liberty; with Montesquieu,
who wrote the _Lettres Persanes_; with Voltaire, who dared everything
and gave up all his other occupations to assist a persecuted man, or to
vindicate the memory of one who had been unjustly condemned to death;
with the republican Milton; with Byron, whose life was one struggle
against tyranny, intelligent or unintelligent--and he summons him
before the judgment seat of posterity. "That terrible, incorruptible
judge will say to Goethe: A mighty mind was given to thee, didst thou
ever employ it to oppose baseness? Heaven gave thee a tongue of fire,
didst thou ever champion justice? Thou hadst a good sword, but it was
drawn to defend thyself alone."[13]
We cannot deny that Börne has pointed to real flaws in Goethe's
greatness, and to real limitations in his nature, even though we know
that some of his qualities were bought at the price of these defects,
and that a certain limitation was inevitable if the many-sidedness of
his genius was not to be its bane. It was not for him to do what Börne
required of him. Still we must understand the proportion of justice
there is in Börne's attacks, to be able to forgive him this violent
and foolish expression of resentment against Goethe during those years
when the hopes of the Liberals in the results of the Revolution of July
were receiving their double death-blow, from the subjection of the
French Government to the power of the great financiers, and from the
suppression of the Polish revolt. He is now more bitter and violent
than ever. He calls Goethe a prodigious _obstructive_ power, compares
him to a cataract on the eye of Germany, and expresses the opinion that
not until the old man of Weimar dies will German liberty be born. (Nov.
20, 1830.)[14]
It was on the 1st of October 1831, after whole days spent in despair
over events which conveyed the impression, specially painful to
this obstinately hopeful man, that France was lost and the reaction
victorious, that his anger reached boiling-point. He took up Goethe's
_Tag- und Jahres-hefte_, and was horrified by its author's "apathy."
Goethe tells how, when he was with the army in Silesia in 1790, he
wrote one or two epigrams, and how later, at the royal headquarters in
Breslau, he lived the life of a hermit, completely engrossed in the
study of comparative anatomy. He adds that what originally led to his
taking up this study was his finding a half-cloven sheep's skull one
evening in Venice on the sand-hills of the Lido.
"What!" writes Börne, "Goethe, a highly gifted man, a poet, in the best
years of his manhood ... to be in the council of war, in the camp of
the Titans, on the very spot where, forty years before, the audacious
yet sublime war of kings against their peoples began, and to find no
inspiration in these surroundings, to be moved to neither love nor
hatred, neither prayer nor curse, to nothing but a few epigrams, which
he himself does not consider worth offering the reader. And with the
finest of regiments, the handsomest of officers passing in review
before him, he finds nothing better to turn his attention to than
comparative anatomy! And walking by the sea-shore in Venice--Venice,
that _Arabian Night_ in stone and mortar, where everything is melody
and colour, both nature and art, man and state, past and present,
liberty and despotism; where even tyranny and murder merely clank like
the chains in some gruesome ballad (the Bridge of Sighs and the Council
of Ten are scenes from Tartarus)--Venice, towards which I turn my
longing eyes, but cannot turn my steps, because the Austrian police
lies in wait like a serpent at the city gates and repels with the
terror of its poisonous gaze--there, after sunset, when the red glow
of evening was spread over sea and land, and the waves of crimson light
broke upon the man of stone, and imparted their colour to his eternal
greyness; when, perhaps, the spirit of Werther came upon him, and he
felt that he still had a heart, that there were human beings around
him and a God above him; and the beat of his heart, the apparition
of his dead youth terrified him, and he felt the hair standing up on
his head--he behaved as usual, escaped from his terrors, avoided all
disagreeable reflection, by creeping into a cloven sheep's skull and
hiding there till night and coldness once more descended upon his
heart! And I am to honour that man! to love that man! I would sooner
throw myself in the dust at the feet of Vitzli-Putzli, sooner lick the
spittle of the Dalai Lama!"
Certainly Börne ought to have honoured this man, and for the very
reason for which he despises him. For perhaps at no time was he more
clearly worthy of all honour. Börne, by his own showing, would, like
the ordinary tourist in Venice, have spent himself in vague moonlight
and sunset romancings on the subject of the Bridge of Sighs, the
terrors of tyranny, the blessings of liberty, and all the melody and
colour--Goethe gazed at his sheep's skull. What was there remarkable
about it? It was split; and with his naked eye, that seeing eye which
pierced into the deepest recesses of nature, into the innermost
workshop of life, whence issue all its various forms, Goethe _saw_ the
great truth, which he had already suspected, that all the bones of the
skull were in reality metamorphosed vertebræ, thus making a discovery
in the science of osteology that was closely connected with one he
had already given to the world in his work on the _Metamorphosis of
Plants_, and founding philosophic anatomy, as he had already founded
philosophic botany. Börne did not perceive that this man, whose
life-work is one of the foundation-stones in the edifice of the modern
world, in this particular instance, with his intuition of the unity
underlying all variety of form, in his divine simplicity, resembles one
of the fathers of ancient science, a Thales or a Heraclitus.
Börne's attacks on Goethe do not come under the same category as
Menzel's. They are never malicious, much less base. Though they
certainly now and again hit some vulnerable spot in the great man, they
throw more light on Börne's own nature than they do on Goethe's; and,
even where they most clearly show the limitation of his intelligence,
they witness to the purity of his character. They have been powerless
to affect men's admiration for Goethe's genius. It would be as foolish
to judge Goethe by the false political standard set up by Börne in 1830
as to judge Börne himself by the false German standard of 1870, which
those do, who say of him, what he said of Goethe, that he was no true
patriot. It was natural, nay inevitable, that Börne should undervalue
Goethe. It is possible to understand his want of understanding without
sharing his dislike. And it is possible to do full justice to the rush
of his pathos, to the elasticity and keen sparkle of his wit, without
forgetting, as our eyes light on the seething, flashing cascades of his
prose, that there is a deep, calm, wide ocean, called Goethe.
[1] "Allerheiligen geht vor Allerseelen, die Propheten haben den Himmel
eher als das Volk.--Die Religion des Alterthums war die Cristalmutter
vieler glänzenden Götter, die christliche ist die Perlemutter
eines einzigen aber unschätzbaren Gottes.--Das Erdenleben ist eine
Bastonade.--Jede Kirchenglocke ist eine Taucherglocke, unter welcher
man die Perle der Religion findet."
[2] Menzel: _Die deutsche Litteratur_, ii. pp. 205-222.
[3] Heine: _Sämmtliche Werke._ xiii. 265.
[4] "Der Dichter ... fühlt zwar, dass das Schicksal in's Mittel treten
müsse, und lässt den Verräther durch eine rächende Bruderhand fallen;
wie vielmehr muss uns dieser Theaterstreich indigniren, wenn wir
wissen, dass der berühmte Liebhaber in der Wirklichkeit fortgelebt, um
das Unglück zu beschreiben, welches er angerichtet."
The poet ... it is true, feels that destiny ought to intervene, and
therefore the betrayer falls by the brother's avenging hand; but
this _coup de théâtre_ only arouses more indignation in us, who know
that in real life the famous lover lived on happily, to describe the
misfortunes of which he had been the author.
[5] "Die Eitelkeit des Emporkömmlings, die in den Frauen zugleich das
Vornehme, das Königliche, begehrt." _Translation_: The vanity of the
_parvenu_, who is not attracted simply by women, but also by their
position, their royal birth.
[6] "Geadelt zu werden, im Reichthum zugleich den _haut goût_ de
Vornehmigkeit in behaglicher Sicherkeit zu geniessen, war ihm für
dieses Leben das Höchste."
[7] _I_ honour thee? Wherefore? Hast thou ever lightened the burden of
the heavy laden? ever stayed the tears of the distressed?
[8] "Welch ein beispielloses Glück musste sich zu dem seltenen Talent
dieses Mannes gesellen, dass er sechzig Jahre lang die Handschrift des
Genies nachahmen konnte und unentdeckt geblieben!... Goethe ist der
gereimte Knecht, wie Hegel der ungereimte."
[9] "Fichtes Äusserungen über Gott und göttliche Dinge, über die man
freilich besser ein tiefes Stillschweigen beobachtet." _Translation:_
Fichte's utterances on the subject of God and things divine, on which
it is undoubtedly better to preserve unbroken silence.
[10] L. Börne: _Gesamm. Schriften_, iii. 216, 217, 222.
[11] "Vorzüglich aber und unbedingt wird sich die Zeitschrift Alles
verbieten, was sich auf Staatsreligion und politische Verfassung
bezieht."
[12] Börne: iii. 536, 572.
[13] Ibid. 573.
[14] "Dieser Mann eines Jahrhunderts, hat eine ungeheure, _hindernde_
Kraft! er ist ein grauer Staar im deutschen Auge.... Seit ich fühle,
habe ich Goethe gehasst; seit ich denke, weiss ich warum. (20 November
1830.) Es ist mir als würde mit Goethe die alte deutsche Zeit begraben;
ich meine an dem Tage müsse die Freiheit geboren werden."
This man of a century possesses a prodigious _obstructive_ power! he is
a cataract on the eye of Germany.... Ever since I could feel, I have
hated Goethe; ever since I could think, I have known why. (20 November
1830.) I feel as if the old German era will be buried with Goethe, as
if liberty must be born on that day.
IX
BÖRNE
It is in the first volumes of the _Letters from Paris_ that Börne
reaches his high-water mark as an author. He was not capable of writing
books, not even of writing essays and dissertations; for his explosions
of emotion or thought there was no form so suitable as that of a
letter. And these are real letters, not newspaper-articles, nor even
newspaper correspondence, but letters written to a friend, without
thought of publication until that friend took the initiative, and asked
Börne's permission to make an experimental selection of passages which
might be of interest to the general public.
The friend in question was Frau Jeannette Wohl, a lady who plays an
important part in Börne's life, though perhaps not so important a part
as he plays in hers. For upwards of twenty years, from 1816, when he
made her acquaintance, till his death in 1837, he gave her his entire
confidence, and rarely took any step without consulting her; and to
her, during the same period, his career as an author, his health, his
circumstances generally, were of more importance than all else.
When they saw each other for the first time, he was thirty and she
thirty-three. She had been married to a rich man, with whom she had
lived unhappily. After nursing him through a long illness, she got a
divorce from him, refusing to accept any share of his fortune or to
retain his name. When Börne and she lived in the same town, he read
aloud to her everything that he wrote; when they were separated, she
would at one time urge him to work, eager that he should win fame and
independence; at another, fearing that he was too diligent, and that
his health, at all times precarious, might suffer, she would beg him
not to be too conscientious in the fulfilment of his engagements to the
publishers, but to allow himself sufficient leisure and recreation.
Jealous of his honour, she underwent long periods of anxiety and
irritation when it seemed to her that he was neglecting his duty to
the public. Börne had taken payment in advance from the subscribers to
_Die Wage_ for the second volume of that periodical, and then, after
bringing out only five numbers, made a lengthy pause, partly because
he was tired of the work, and partly because, being in pecuniary
difficulties, he was anxious to find more remunerative employment. Her
letters, which he always looked for with almost feverish eagerness,
at this time keep _Die Wage_ before his eyes by every device which
the ingenuity and perseverance of an anxious woman can suggest. She
entreats and threatens, she scolds and teases, she sends him four long
pages with nothing upon them except _Die Wage, Die Wage._
But she is often quite as anxious to distract and amuse him, to prevent
him from over-exerting himself and to keep up his spirits. When he is
taken seriously ill at a distance from her, she grieves that she is not
able to look after him, has once actually made up her mind to hazard
her reputation by going to him; she knows very well that if she does,
people will no longer believe that what unites them is only friendship.
It was in reality a feeling midway between friendship and love, for
which no name exists. After Jeannette's death there was found among her
papers an ordinary _Gesindebüchlein der freien Stadt Frankfurt_,[1]
on the cover of which Börne had written his name, with the usual
particulars. On its first page stands:
Took service With whom? For how In what Left service
long capacity? when?
15. Jan. 1818 Frau Wohl. For ever. As friend. On the day of
his death.
There could be no more laconic expression of a voluntary lifelong
devotion. And the last words were literally fulfilled, for it was on
Jeannette's face that the dying man's last look rested, and to her that
he spoke his last words: "You have given me much happiness."
Jeannette Wohl's portrait, which Börne declared to be a good one, shows
us a woman with a longish face, regular, pleasing features, a high
forehead, an expressive, beautifully formed mouth, and bright, kindly
eyes; the firm chin indicates energy. Her voice is said to have been
remarkably sweet. Hers was not a particularly original, and still less
was it a productive mind; she was one of those women who can merge
their own individuality in that of the man to whom they are devoted. To
Börne, the author, her natural feminine capacity for inspiring a man
with confidence in himself was invaluable; she was as much offended
by any disparaging remark he made on the subject of his own ability
or deserts, as if it had been made by another. She was comfort and
consolation to him in human form. In her he had a being on whom he
could place absolute reliance, to whom he could confide everything
without the slightest fear of ever being misunderstood, far less
betrayed, and to whom he could address all his literary efforts. She
was to him an epitome of the ideal public for whom he wrote.
In one of his confidential letters he writes that his feeling for
Jeannette is described in the following passage from _La Nouvelle
Heloïse_: "C'est cette union touchante d'une sensibilité si vive et
d'une inaltérable douceur; c'est cette pitié si tendre à tous les
maux d'autrui; c'est cet esprit juste et ce goût exquis qui tirent
leur pureté de celle de l'âme; ce sont, en un mot, les charmes des
sentiments, bien plus que ceux de la personne, que j'adore en vous."
And we learn, from a letter of Jeannette's written in 1833, after this
friendship had lasted seventeen years, that the attraction he exercised
was at least equal to that which he experienced. She describes as a
sort of _idée fixe_, or chronic ailment, the excitement that takes
possession of her about the time when the mail may be expected. The day
she writes, she had been obliged to give up her usual occupations and
lie on the sofa, and when at last the letter arrives, she weeps for joy.
She looks after his money matters, calculates the payments due to him,
draws his police pension for him; at one time, when he has a great
longing to travel in Italy, but cannot do it for want of means, she
takes a lottery ticket, in the hope of winning the necessary sum, and
when she is disappointed in this, wishes to sell her piano, but finds
she cannot raise the required amount in this way either.[2] And
all this without the incentive of love, in the narrower sense of the
word. Her friends believed her to be capable of doing even more for
him. At the time that it first occurred to her that Börne ought to
publish his letters to her, she expressed to a cousin the naïve doubt
if it were possible to publish letters before the death of the person
to whom they were addressed, to which the cousin replied that she had
not the least doubt that Jeannette was quite ready to let herself be
buried if it would do any good to Dr. Börne.
They often travelled together, and sometimes, it would seem, lived
together; but the nature of their relation to each other never
altered. It is probable that at one time, in the first stage of their
friendship, Börne tried to persuade Jeannette to marry him, but her
fear lest the relation existing between them might lose its charm
by being turned into an ordinary, everyday marriage, a fear which
Börne himself afterwards shared, proved an insurmountable obstacle.
Considering that they were both free to dispose of themselves as
they would, it seems hardly possible that their relation could have
remained what it was for all these years without the existence of some
slight, it might be almost unconscious, physical antipathy on her side,
or on both sides. An outward hindrance to their union undoubtedly
existed in the difference of their creeds. Börne belonged to the
Christian, Jeannette to the Jewish confession; her orthodox mother
was strongly opposed to her becoming a Christian, and in those days
great difficulties were placed in the way of mixed marriages. But this
was not the main difficulty. Jeannette herself writes that to marry
Börne would require "more courage and more self-confidence" than she
possesses. And in this instance we see the man whom we knew in his
youth as the passionate lover, and who all his life long suffered from
a jealous disposition, quickly rise to the height of pure devotion; he
constantly urges Jeannette, for her own sake, to marry a man worthy of
her, and make a happy home.