it was a man whom I loved and valued. He had held the place of tutor
in the family of one of our friends; and his former pupil had gone
alone to the university. He often visited me in my sad condition, and
they at last found nothing more natural than to give him a chamber
next to mine, as he was then to employ me, pacify me, and, as I
marked, keep his eye upon me. Still, as I esteemed him from my heart,
and had already confided many things to him, though not my affection
for Gretchen, I determined so much the more to be perfectly candid
and straightforward with him, as it was intolerable to me to live in
daily intercourse with any one, and at the same time to stand on an
uncertain, constrained footing with him. It was not long, then, before
I spoke to him about the affair, refreshed myself by the relation and
repetition of the minutest circumstances of my past happiness, and
thus gained so much, that he, like a sensible man, saw it would be
better to make me acquainted with the issue of the story, and that
too in its details and particulars, so that I might be clear as to
the whole, and that with earnestness and zeal, I might be persuaded
of the necessity of composing myself, throwing the past behind me,
and beginning a new life. First he confided to me who the other young
people of quality were who had allowed themselves to be seduced, at
the outset, into daring hoaxes, then into sportive breaches of police,
afterwards into frolicsome impositions on others, and other such
dangerous matters. Thus actually had arisen a little conspiracy, which
unprincipled men had joined, who, by forging papers and counterfeiting
signatures, had perpetrated many criminal acts, and had still more
criminal matters in preparation. The cousins, after whom I at last
impatiently inquired, had been found to be quite innocent, only very
generally acquainted with those others, and not at all implicated with
them. My client, by recommending whom to my grandfather I had in fact
put people on the scent, was one of the worst, and bad sued for that
office chiefly that he might undertake or conceal certain villanies.
After all this, I could at last contain myself no longer, and asked
what had become of Gretchen, for whom I, once for all, confessed the
strongest attachment. My friend shook his head and smiled,--"Make
yourself easy," replied he; "this girl has passed her examination very
well, and has borne off honourable testimony to that effect. They could
discover nothing in her but what was good and amiable, the examiners
themselves were well-disposed to her, and could not refuse her desire
of removing from the city. Even what she has confessed in respect to
you, too, my friend, does her honour; I have read her deposition in
the secret reports myself, and seen her signature." "The signature!"
exclaimed I, "which makes me so happy and so miserable. "What has she
confessed, then? What has she subscribed?" My friend delayed answering;
but the cheerfulness of his face showed me that he concealed nothing
dangerous. "If you must know, then," replied he at last, "when she
was interrogated concerning you, and her intercourse with you, she
said quite frankly, 'I cannot deny that I have seen him often and with
pleasure; but I have always treated him as a child, and my affection
for him was truly that of a sister. In many cases I have given him
good advice, and instead of instigating him to any equivocal action, I
have hindered him from taking part in wanton tricks, which might have
brought him into trouble.'"
[Side-note: Change of Feeling Towards Gretchen.]
My friend still went on making Gretchen speak like a governess; but I
bad already for some time ceased to listen to him; for I was terribly
affronted that she had set me down in the reports as a child, and
believed myself at once cured of all passion for her. I even hastily
assured my friend that all was now over. I also spoke no more of her,
named her no more; but I could not leave off the bad habit of thinking
about her, and of recalling her form, her air, her demeanour, though
now, in fact, all appeared to me in quite another light. I felt it
intolerable that a girl, at the most only a couple of years older than
me, should regard me as a child, while I conceived I passed with her
for a very sensible and clever youth. Her cold and repelling manner,
which had before so charmed me, now seemed to me quite repugnant; the
familiarities which she had allowed herself to take with me, but had
not permitted me to return, were altogether odious. Yet all would have
been well enough for me, if by subscribing that poetical love-letter,
in which she had confessed a formal attachment to me, she had not
given me a right to regard her as a sly and selfish coquette. Her
masquerading it at the milliner's, too, no longer seemed to me so
innocent; and I turned these annoying reflections over and over within
myself until I had entirely stripped her of all her amiable qualities.
My judgment was convinced, and I thought I must cast her away; but her
image!--her image gave me the lie as often as it again hovered before
me, which indeed happened often enough.
Nevertheless, this arrow with its barbed hooks was torn out of my
heart, and the question then was, how the inward sanative power of
youth could be brought to one's aid? I really put on the man; and the
first thing instantly laid aside was the weeping and raving, which I
now regarded as childish in the highest degree. A great stride for the
better! For I had often, half the night through, given myself up to
this grief, with the greatest violence, so that at last, from my tears
and sobbing, I came to such a point that I could scarce swallow any
more, the pleasure of eating and drinking became painful to me, and my
breast, which was so nearly concerned, seemed to suffer. The vexation
which I had constantly felt since the discovery, made me banish every
weakness. I found it frightful that I had sacrificed sleep, repose and
health, for the sake of a girl who was pleased to consider me a babe,
and to imagine herself, with respect to me, something very much like a
nurse.
These depressing reflections, as I was soon convinced, were only to be
banished by activity; but of what was I to take hold? I had, indeed,
much to make up for in many things, and to prepare myself, in more
than one sense, for the university, which I was now to attend; but I
relished and accomplished nothing. Much appeared to me familiar and
trivial; for grounding myself, in several respects, I found neither
strength within nor opportunity without; and I therefore suffered
myself to be moved by the taste of my good room-neighbour, to a study
which was altogether new and strange to me, and which for a long time
offered me a wide field of information and thought. My friend began,
namely, to make me acquainted with the secrets of philosophy. He
had studied in Jena, under Daries, and, possessing a well-regulated
mind, had acutely seized the relations of that doctrine, which he now
sought to impart to me. But, unfortunately, these things would not
hang together in such a fashion in my brain. I put questions, which he
promised to answer afterwards; I made demands, which he promised to
satisfy in future. But our most important difference was this, that I
maintained a separate philosophy was not necessary, as the whole of it
was already contained in religion and poetry. This he would by no means
allow, but rather tried to prove to me that these must first be founded
on philosophy; which I stubbornly denied, and at every step in the
progress of our discussions, found arguments for my opinion. For, as
in poetry a certain faith in the impossible, and as in religion a like
faith in the inscrutable, must have a place, the philosophers appeared
to me to be in a very false position who would demonstrate and explain
both of them from their own field of vision. Besides, it was very
quickly proved, from the history of philosophy, that one always sought
a ground different from that of the other, and that the sceptic, in the
end, pronounced everything groundless and useless.
[Side-note: History of Philosophy.]
However, this very history of philosophy, which my friend was compelled
to go over with me, because I could learn nothing from dogmatical
discourse, amused me very much, but only on this account, that one
doctrine or opinion seemed to me as good as another, so far, at least,
as I was capable of penetrating into it. With the most ancient men and
schools I was best pleased, because poetry, religion, and philosophy
were completely combined into one; and I only maintained that first
opinion of mine with the more animation, when the book of Job and
the Song and Proverbs of Solomon, as well as the lays of Orpheus and
Hesiod, seemed to bear valid witness in its favour. My friend had taken
the smaller work of Brucker as the foundation of his discourse; and the
further we went on, the less I could make of it. I could not clearly
see what the first Greek philosophers would have. Socrates I esteemed
as an excellent, wise man, who in his life and death might well be
compared with Christ. His disciples, on the other hand, seemed to me to
bear a strong resemblance to the Apostles, who disagreed immediately
after their Master's death, when each manifestly recognised only a
limited view as the right one. Neither the keenness of Aristotle nor
the fulness of Plato produced the least fruit in me. For the Stoics, on
the contrary, I had already conceived some affection, and even procured
Epictetus, whom I studied with much interest. My friend unwillingly
let me have my way in this one-sidedness, from which he could not draw
me; for, in spite of his varied studies, he did not know how to bring
the leading question into a narrow compass. He need only have said to
me that in life action is everything, and that joy and sorrow come of
themselves. However, youth should be allowed its own course; it does
not stick to false maxims very long; life soon tears or charms it away
again.
The season had become fine; we often went together into the open air,
and visited the places of amusement which surrounded the city in great
numbers. But it was precisely here that matters went worse with me; for
I still saw the ghosts of the cousins everywhere, and feared, now here,
now there, to see one of them step forward. Even the most indifferent
glances of men annoyed me. I had lost that unconscious happiness of
wandering about unknown and unblamed, and of thinking of no observer,
even in the greatest crowds. Now hypochondriacal fancies began to
torment me, as if I attracted the attention of the people, as if their
eyes were turned on my demeanour, to fix it on their memories, to scan
and to find fault.
I therefore drew my friend into the woods, and while I shunned the
monotonous firs, I sought those fine leafy groves, which do not indeed
spread far in the district, but are yet of sufficient compass for a
poor wounded heart to hide itself. In the remotest depth of the forest
I sought out a solemn spot, where the oldest oaks and beeches formed a
large, noble shaded space. The ground was somewhat sloping, and made
the worth of the old trunks only the more perceptible. Round this open
circle closed the densest thickets, from which the mossy rocks mightily
and venerably peered forth, and made a rapid fall for a copious brook.
Scarcely had I compelled my friend hither, who would rather have
been in the open country by the stream, among men, than he playfully
assured me that I showed myself a true German, he related to me
circumstantially, out of Tacitus, how our ancestors found pleasure
in the feelings which nature so provides for us, in such solitudes,
with her inartificial architecture. He had not been long discoursing
of this, when I exclaimed, "Oh! why did not this precious spot lie
in a deeper wilderness! why may we not train a hedge around it, to
hallow and separate from the world both it and ourselves! Surely there
is no more beautiful adoration of the Deity than that which needs no
image, but which springs up in our bosom merely from the intercourse
with nature!" What I then felt, is still present to me; what I said,
I know not how to recall. Thus much, however, is certain, that the
undetermined, widely-expanding feelings of youth and of uncultivated
nations are alone adapted to the sublime, which, if it is to be
excited in us through external objects, formless, or moulded into
incomprehensible forms, must surround us with a greatness to which we
are not equal.
All men, more or less, feel such a disposition of the soul, and seek
to satisfy this noble necessity in various ways. But as the sublime
is easily produced by twilight and night, when objects are blended,
it is, on the other hand, scared away by the day, which separates and
sunders everything, and so must it also be destroyed by every increase
of cultivation, if it be not fortunate enough to take refuge with the
beautiful, and unite itself closely with it, by which both become
equally undying and indestructible.
The brief moments of such enjoyments were still more shortened by my
meditative friend; but when I turned back into the world, it was
altogether in vain that I sought, among the bright and barren objects
around, again to arouse such feelings within me; nay, I could scarce
retain even the remembrance of them. My heart, however, was too far
spoiled to be able to compose itself; it had loved, and the object was
snatched away from it; it had lived, and life to it was embittered.
A friend who makes it too perceptible that he designs to form you,
excites no feeling of comfort; while a woman who is forming you, while
she seems to spoil you, is adored as a heavenly, joy-bringing being.
But that form in which the idea of beauty manifested itself to me, had
vanished far away; it often visited me under the shade of my oak trees,
but I could not hold it fast, and I felt a powerful impulse to seek
something similar in the distance.
[Side-note: Drawing From Nature.]
I had imperceptibly accustomed, nay, compelled my friend and overseer
to leave me alone; for even in my sacred grove, those undefined,
gigantic feelings were not sufficient for me. The eye was, above all
others, the organ by which I seized the world. I had, from childhood,
lived among painters, and had accustomed myself to look at objects,
as they did, with reference to art. Now I was left to myself and to
solitude, this gift, half natural, half acquired, made its appearance.
Wherever I looked, I saw a picture, and whatever struck me, whatever
gave me delight, I washed to fix, and began, in the most awkward
manner, to draw after nature. In this I lacked nothing less than
everything; yet, though without any technical means, I obstinately
persisted in trying to imitate the most magnificent things that offered
themselves to my sight. Thus, to be sure, I acquired a great attention
to objects; but I only seized them as a whole, so far as they produced
an effect; and, little as nature had meant me for a descriptive poet,
just as little would she grant me the capacity of a draughtsman for
details. Since, however, this was the only way left me of expressing
myself, I stuck to it with so much stubbornness, nay, even with
melancholy, that I always continued my labours the more zealously, the
less I saw they produced.
But I will not deny that there was a certain mixture of roguery; for
I had remarked that if I chose for an irksome study a half-shaded
old trunk, to the hugely curved roots of which clung well-lit fern,
combined with twinkling maidenhair, my friend, who knew from experience
that I should not be disengaged in less than an hour commonly resolved
to seek, with his books, some other pleasant little spot. Now nothing
disturbed me in prosecuting my taste, which was so much the more
active, since my paper was endeared to me by the circumstance that I
had accustomed myself to see in it, not so much what stood upon it,
as what I had been thinking of at any time and hour when I drew. Thus
plants and flowers of the commonest kind may form a charming diary for
us, because nothing that calls back the remembrance of a happy moment
can be insignificant; and even now it would be hard for me to destroy
as worthless many things of the kind that have remained to me from
different epochs, because they transport me immediately to those times
which I remember with melancholy indeed, but not unwillingly.
But if such drawings may have had anything of interest in themselves,
they were indebted for this advantage to the sympathy and attention
of my father. He, informed by my overseer that I had become gradually
reconciled to my condition, and, in particular, had applied myself
passionately to drawing from nature, was very well satisfied--partly
because he himself set a high value on drawing and painting, partly
because gossip Seekatz had once said to him, that it was a pity I was
not destined for a painter. But here again the peculiarities of the
father and son came into conflict; for it was almost impossible for
me to make use of a good, white, perfectly clean sheet of paper; grey
old leaves, even if scribbled over on one side already, charmed me
most, just as if my awkwardness had feared the touchstone of a white
ground. Nor were any of my drawings quite finished; and how should I
have executed a whole, which indeed I saw with my eyes, but did not
comprehend, and how an individual object, which I had neither skill
nor patience to follow out? The pedagogism of my father on this point,
too, was really to be admired. He kindly asked for my attempts, and
drew lines round every imperfect sketch. He wished, by this means, to
compel me to completeness and fulness of detail. The irregular leaves
he cut straight, and thus made the beginning of a collection, in which
he wished, at some future time, to rejoice at the progress of his son.
It was therefore by no means disagreeable to him when my wild, restless
disposition sent me roving about the country; he rather seemed pleased
when I brought back a parcel of drawings on which he could exercise his
patience, and in some measure strengthen his hopes.
They no longer said that I might relapse into my former attachments
and connexions; they left me by degrees perfect liberty. By accidental
inducements and in accidental society I undertook many journeys to
the mountain-range which, from my childhood, had stood so distant and
solemn before me. Thus we visited Homburg, Kroneburg, ascended the
Feldberg, from which the prospect invited us still further and further
into the distance. Königstein, too, was not left unvisited; Wiesbaden,
Schwalbach, with its environs, occupied us many days; we reached the
Rhine, which, from the heights, we had seen winding along far off.
Mentz astonished us, but could not chain a youthful mind, which was
running into the open country; we were delighted with the situation of
Biberich; and, contented and happy, we resumed our journey home.
This whole tour, from which my father had promised himself many a
drawing, might have been almost without fruit; for what taste, what
talent, what experience does it not require to seize an extensive
landscape as a picture! I was again imperceptibly drawn into a narrow
compass, from which I derived some profit; for I met no ruined castle,
no piece of wall which pointed to antiquity, that I did not think an
object worthy of my pencil, and imitate as well as I could. Even the
stone of Drusus, on the ramparts of Mentz, I copied at some risk,
and with inconveniences which every one must experience who wishes
to carry home with him some pictorial reminiscences of his travels.
Unfortunately I had again taken with me nothing but the most miserable
common paper, and had clumsily crowded several objects into one sheet.
But my paternal teacher was not perplexed at this; he cut the sheets
apart, had the parts which belonged to each other put together by the
bookbinder, surrounded the single leaves with lines, and thus actually
compelled me to draw the outline of different mountains up to the
margin, and to fill up the foreground with some weeds and stones.
If his faithful endeavours could not increase my talent, nevertheless
this mark of his love of order had upon me a secret influence, which
afterwards manifested itself vigorously in more ways than one.
[Side-note: Goethe's Sister.]
From such rambling excursions, undertaken partly for pleasure, partly
for art, and which could be performed in a short time and often
repeated, I was again drawn home, and that by a magnet which always
acted upon me strongly: this was my sister. She, only a year younger
than I, had lived my whole conscious period of life with me, and was
thus bound to me by the closest ties. To these natural causes was
added a forcible motive, which proceeded from our domestic position; a
father certainly affectionate and well-meaning, but grave, who, because
he cherished within a very tender heart, externally, with incredible
consistency, maintained a brazen sternness, that he might attain the
end of giving his children the best education, and of building up,
regulating, and preserving his well-founded house; a mother, on the
other hand, as yet almost a child, who first grew up to consciousness
with and in her two eldest children; these three, as they looked at
the world with healthy eyes, capable of life, and desiring present
enjoyment. This contradiction floating in the family increased with
years. My father followed out his views unshaken and uninterrupted; the
mother and children could not give up their feelings, their claims,
their wishes.
Under these circumstances it was natural that brother and sister should
attach themselves close to each other, and adhere to their mother, that
they might singly snatch the pleasures forbidden as a whole. But since
the hours of solitude and toil were very long compared to the moments
of recreation and enjoyment, especially for my sister, who could never
leave the house for so long a time as I could, the necessity she felt
for entertaining herself with me was still sharpened by the sense of
longing with which she accompanied me to a distance.
And as, in our first years, playing and learning, growth and education,
had been quite common to both of us, so that we might well have been
taken for twins, so did this community, this confidence, remain during
the development of our physical and moral powers. That interest of
youth, that amazement at the awakening of sensual impulses which
clothe themselves in mental forms, of mental necessities which clothe
themselves in sensual images, all the reflections upon these, which
obscure rather than enlighten us, as the fog covers over and does not
illumine the vale from which it is about to rise, the many errors and
aberrations springing therefrom,--all these the brother and sister
shared and endured hand in hand, and were the less enlightened as to
their strange condition, as the nearer they wished to approach each
other, to clear up their minds, the more forcibly did the sacred awe
of their close relationship keep them apart.
Reluctantly do I mention, in general terms, what I undertook to set
forth, years ago, without being able to accomplish it. As I lost this
beloved, incomprehensible being, but too soon, I felt inducement enough
to make, her worth present to me, and thus arose in me the conception
of a poetic whole, in which it might be possible to exhibit her
individuality: but for this no other form could be devised than that
of the Richardsonian novels. Only by the minutest detail, by endless
particularities which bear vividly all the character of the whole,
and as they spring up from a wonderful depth give some feeling of
that depth;--only in such a manner would it have been in some degree
possible to give a representation of this remarkable personality: for
the spring can be apprehended only while it is flowing. But from this
beautiful and pious design, as from so many others, the tumult of the
world drew me back, and nothing now remains for me but to call up for a
moment that blessed spirit, as if by the aid of a magic mirror.
[Side-note: Goethe's Sister.]
She was tall, well and delicately formed, and had something naturally
dignified in her demeanour, which melted away into a pleasing mildness.
The lineaments of her face, neither striking nor beautiful, indicated
a character which was not and could not be at union with itself. Her
eyes were not the finest I have ever seen, but the deepest, behind
which you expected the most; and when they expressed any affection, any
love, their brilliancy was unequalled. And yet, properly speaking, this
expression was not tender, like that which comes from the heart, and
at the same time carries with it something of longing and desire; this
expression came from the soul, it was full and rich, it seemed as if it
would only give, without needing to receive.
But what in a manner quite peculiar disfigured her face, so that she
would often appear positively ugly, was the fashion of those times,
which not only bared the forehead, but, either accidentally or on
purpose, did everything apparently or really to enlarge it. Now, as
she had the most feminine, most neatly arched forehead, and moreover a
pair of strong black eyebrows, and prominent eyes, these circumstances
occasioned a contrast, which, if it did not repel every stranger at the
first glance, at least did not attract him. She early felt it, and this
feeling became constantly the more painful to her, the further she
advanced into the years when both sexes find an innocent pleasure in
being mutually agreeable.
To nobody can his own form be repugnant; the ugliest as well as the
most beautiful has a right to enjoy his own presence; and as favour
beautifies, and every one regards himself in the looking-glass with
favour, it may be asserted that every one must see himself with
complacency, even if he would struggle against the feeling. Yet my
sister had such a decided foundation of good sense, that she could
not possibly be blind and silly in this respect; on the contrary, she
perhaps knew more clearly than she ought, that she stood far behind her
female playfellows in external beauty, without feeling consoled by the
fact that she infinitely surpassed them in internal advantages.