GOETHE

As the enigmatic wisdom of Goethe been exhausted--after these

years--and after the sudden transits across our sky of more flashing

meteors? Ah! I deem not yet. Still he holds the entrance to the

mysterious Gate, over the portals of which is written, not "Lasciate

ogni speranza!" but "Think of Living!" A thunder-rifted heart he

bears, but victory, not defeat, looks forth from his wide, outward-gazing

eyes! One hand holds the skull, engraved with all the secret

symbols of man's ascent out of the bosom of Nature; engraved,

yes!--by all the cunningest tools of Science and her unwearied research;

but the other, raised aloft, noble and welcoming, carries the laurel

crown of the triumph of Imagination!

So, between Truth and Poetry--"im ganzen guten, schonen,"--stands

our Lord of Life!

Exhausted, the wisdom of Goethe? Ah, no!--hardly fathomed yet, in

its uppermost levels! If it were really possible to put into words the

whole complex world of impressions and visions, of secrets and

methods, which that name suggests, one would be a wiser disciple

than Eckermann. Fragment by fragment, morsel by morsel, the great

Figure limns itself against the shadow of the years.

Is it too presumptuous a task to seek to evoke--taking first one

impression of him and then another, first one reaction and then

another--what this mysterious Name has come to mean for us? One

hears the word "cosmic" whispered. It is whispered too often in

these days. But "cosmic," with its Whitmanesque, modern

connotation, does not exactly fit Goethe. Goethe did not often

abandon himself in Dionysian fury to the ultimate Elements. When

he did--in his earlier youth--before the hardening process of his

Italian Journey had sealed his protection from such romantic lapses--it

was not quite in the strained, desperate, modern manner. One feels

certain, thinking of what he was, at Frankfurt, at Leipsig, at

Strassburg, at Weimar, that he always kept a clear, cool, Apollonian

head, mad and amorous though his escapades may seem!

I do not fancy that ever once did Goethe really "give himself away,"

or lose the foursquare solidity of his balance in any wild staggering

to left or right. No; the Goethean temper, the Goethean attitude,

cannot be described as "cosmic," while that word implies a certain

complete yielding to a vague earth-worship. There was nothing

vague about Goethe's _intimacy,_ if I may put it so, with the Earth.

He and It seemed destined to understand one another most

_serenely,_ in a shrewd and deliberate conspiracy!

The Goethean attitude to the Universe is too self-poised and

self-centered to be adequately rendered by any word that suggests

complete abandonment. It is too--what shall I say?--too sly and

_demonic_--too much _inside_ the little secrets of the great Mother--to

be summed up in a word that suggests a sort of Titanic whirlwind

of embraces. And yet, on the other hand, it is quite as easy to

exaggerate the Olympian aspect of Goethe. When this is carried too

far, something in him, something extraordinarily characteristic,

evaporates, like a thin stream of Parnassian smoke.

How shall I express what this is? Perhaps it is the _German_ in him.

For, in spite of all Nietzsche's Mediterraneanizing of this Superman,

Goethe was profoundly and inveterately German. The Rhine-Maidens

rocked him in his cradle and, though he might journey to

Rome or Troy or Carthage, it was to the Rhine-Maidens that he

returned. Yes, I do not think that those understand him best who

keep bowing to the ground and muttering "Olympian"!

Am I carrying this particular taper-light of discrimination too far

when I say that there is, to the Celtic mind at least, something

humorously naive and childlike in Goethe, mixed in, queerly enough,

with all his rich, mellow, and even worldly, wisdom? One overtakes

him, now and then, and catches him, as it were, off his guard, in

little pathetic lapses into a curious simplicity--a simplicity grave-eyed,

portentious and solemn--almost like that of some great Infant-Faun,

trying very seriously to learn the difficult syllables of our

human "Categorical Imperative"! World-child, as he was, the magic

of the universe pouring through him, one sometimes feels a strange,

dim hope with regard to that dubious general Issue, when we find

him so confident about the presence of the mysterious Being he

worshipped; and so transparently certain of his personal survival

after Death!

There is no one, except Leonardo Da Vinci, in the whole history of

our Planet, who gives us quite that sense of a person possessed of

some secret illumination not granted to the rest of the world. There

is much reassurance in this. More than has been, perhaps, realized.

For it is probable that "in his caves of ice," Leonardo also felt

himself indestructible by the Arch-Enemy. One thinks of those

Cabalistic words of old Glanville, "Man does not yield himself to

Death--save by the weakness of his mortal Will."

Goethe collecting fossils and crystals and specimens of rock-strata;

Goethe visiting Botanical Gardens and pondering on the Metamorphosis

of Plants; Goethe climbing Strassburg Cathedral-Spire; Goethe

meeting the Phantom of Himself as he returned from the arms

of Frederika; Goethe "experiencing the sensation" of crossing

the "Firing-Line"; Goethe "announcing" to Eckermann that

that worthy man had better avoid undertaking any "great" literary

work; Goethe sending Frau von Stein sausages from his breakfast-table;

Goethe consoling himself in the Storm by observing his birth-star

Lucifer, and thinking of the Lake of Galilee, are pictures of

noble and humorous memory which reconcile one to the Comedy of

Living!

How vividly returns to me--your pardon, reader!--the first time I

read "The Sorrows of Werter" in that little "Three-penny" edition

published by Messrs. Cassell! It was in a Barge, towed by three

Horses, on the River, between Langport and Bridgewater, in the

County of Somerset! The majority of the company were as rowdy a

set of good-humored Bean-Feasters as ever drank thin beer in a

ramshackle tavern. But there was one of them--this is twenty-five

years ago, reader!--a girl as fragile as a peeled Willow-wand--and

teased by the rude badinage of our companions we sheltered--as the

friendly mists rose--under a great Tarpaulin at the barge's stern.

Where is that girl now, I wonder? Is she alive? Will she ever blush

with anger at being thus gently lifted up, from beneath the kind

Somersetshire mists, into an hour's publicity? Who can tell? We are

all passing one another, in mist-darkened barges, swift or slow. She

is a wraith, a shadow, a receding phantom; but I wave my hand to

her over the years! I shall always associate her with Lotte; and I

never smell the peculiar smell of Tarpaulin without thinking of "the

Sorrows of Werter."

"Werter" has certainly the very droop and bewilderment of youth's

first passion. It is good to plunge one's hands, when one has grown

cynical and old, into that innocent, if somewhat turbid, fountain.

When we pass to "Wilhelm Meister," we are in quite a different

world. The earlier part of this book has the very stamp of the

Goethean "truth and poetry." One can read it side by side with the

great "Autobiography" and find the shrewd insight and oracular

wisdom quite equally convincing in the invention and the reality.

What an unmistakable and unique character all these imaginary

persons of Goethe's stories have! They are so different from any

other persons in fiction! Wherein does the difference lie? It is hard

to say. In a sense, they are more life-like and real. In another sense,

they are more fantastic. Sometimes they seem mere dolls--like the

figures in his own puppet-show--and we can literally "see the

puppets dallying."

Jarno is a queer companion for a man to have. And what of the lady

who, when she was asked whether she had ever loved, answered,

"never or always"? Phillina is a very loving and an extremely

vivacious wench. Goethe's sublime unconsciousness of ordinary

moral qualms is never better observed than in the story of this

extravagant young minx. Then, in the midst of it all, the arresting,

ambiguous little figure of poor Mignon! What does she do--a child

of pure lyrical poetry--a thing out of the old ballads--in this queer,

grave, indecent company? That elaborate description of Mignon's

funeral so carefully arranged by the Aesthetic "Uncle," has it not all

the curious qualities of the Goethean vein--its clairvoyant insight

into the under-truth of Nature--its cold-blooded pre-occupation with

"Art"--its gentle irony--its mania for exact detail? The "gentle irony"

of which I speak has its opportunity in the account of the "Beautiful

Soul" or "Fair Saint." It reads, in places, like the tender dissection of

a lovely corpse by a genial, elderly Doctor.

But the passage which, for me, is most precious is that Apprentice's

"Indenture." I suppose in no other single paragraph of human prose

is there so much concentrated wisdom. "To act is easy--to think is

hard!" How extraordinarily true that is! But it is not the precise tune

of the strenuous preachers of our time! The whole idea of the

"Pedagogic Province," ruled over by that admirable Abbé, is so

exquisitely in Goethe's most wise and yet most simple manner! The

passage about the "Three Reverences" and the "Creed" is as good an

instance of that sublime Spinozistic way of dealing with the current

religion as that amazing remark he made once to Eckerman about

his own faith: "When I want scientific unity, I am a Pantheist. When

I desire poetical multifariousness, I am a Polytheist. And when my

moral nature requires a Personal God--_there is room for That

also?"_

When one comes to speak of Faust, it is necessary for us to

remember the words the great man himself used to his follower

in speaking of this masterpiece. Eckermann teased him for

interpretations. "What," said he to Goethe, "is the leading Idea in the

Poem?" "Do you suppose," answered the Sage, "that a thing into

which I have put the Life-Blood of all my days is able to be

summoned up in anything so narrow and limited as an Idea?"

Personally, I do not hesitate to say that I think Faust is the most

permanently _interesting_ of all the works that have proceeded from

the human brain.

Its attitude to life is one which ultimately has more to strengthen and

sustain and put courage--if not the Devil--into us than anything I

know. When I meet a man who shall tell me that the Philosophy of

his life is the Philosophy of Faust, I bow down humbly before him. I

did meet such a man once. I think he was a Commercial Traveller

from Buffalo.

How wisely Goethe deals in Faust with the problem--if it be a

problem--of Evil! His suggestion seems to be that the spirit of Evil

in the world--"part of that Nothing out of which came the All"--plays

an absolutely essential role. "By means of it God fulfils his

most cherished purposes." Had Faust not seduced poor little

Gretchen, he would never have passed as far as he did along the

road of Initiation, and the spirit of his Victim--in her translunar

Apotheosis--would not have been _there_ to lift him Heavenwards

at the last. And yet no one could say that Goethe disparages the

enormity of Faust's crime. That ineffable retort of Mephistopheles,

when, on those "black horses," they are whirled through the night to

her dungeon, "She is not the first," has the essence of all pity and

wrath in its cruel sting. Mephistopheles himself is the most

interesting of all Devils. And he is so because, although he knows

perfectly well--queer Son of Chaos as he is--that he is bound to be

defeated, he yet goes on upon his evil way, and continues to resist

the great stream of Life which, according to his view, had better

never have broken loose from primeval Nothingness.

That is ultimately Goethe's contribution to the disputes about what

we call "God." The name does not matter. "Feeling is all in all. The

name is sound and smoke." "God," or "the Good," is to Goethe

simply the eternal stream of life, working slowly upwards, onwards,

to unknown goals. All that opposes itself to this Life-stream is evil.

Morality, a man-made local convention, is our present blundering

method of assisting this great Force, and preventing its sterility, or

dissipation. In his conception of the nature of this Life-stream

Goethe is more Catholic and more subtle than Nietzsche.

_Self-realization?_ Certainly! That is an aspect of it which was not

likely to be forgotten by the great Egoist whose sole object, as he

confessed, was to "build up the Pyramid of his Existence" from the

broadest possible base. But not only self-realization. The "dying to

live" of the Christian, as well as "the rising above one's body" of the

Platonist, have their part there. Ascetism itself, with all its degrees

of passionate or philosophical purity, is as much an evocation of the

world-spirit--of the essential nature of the System of Things--as is

the other.

It is, of course, ultimately, quite a mad hope to desire to _convert_

"the Spirit that Denies." He, too, under the Lord, is an accomplice of

the Life-stream. He helps it forward, even while he opposes himself

to it, just as a bulwark of submerged rocks make the tide leap

landward with more foaming fury!

Goethe's idea of the "Eternal Feminine" leading us "upward and on"

is not at all the sentimental nonsense which Nietzsche fancied it. In a

profound sense it is absolutely true. Nor need the more anti-feminist

among us be troubled by such a Truth. We have just seen that the

Devil himself is a means, and a very essential means, for leading us

"upward and on."

Goethe is perfectly right. The "love of women," though a destructive

force, and a frightful force as far as certain kinds of "art" and

"philosophy" are concerned, cannot be looked upon as anything but

"a provocation to creation," when the whole large scheme of

existence is taken into account.

I think myself that it is easy to make too much of Goethe's

Pantheism. The Being he worshipped was simply "Whatever

Mystery" lies behind the ocean of Life. And if no "mystery" lies

behind the ocean of life,--very well! A Goethean disciple is able,

then, to worship Life, with no mystery behind it! It is rather the

custom among clever, tiresome people to disparage that _second

part of Faust,_ with its world-panoramic procession of all the gods

and demi-gods and angels and demons that have ever visited this

earth. I do not disparage it. I have never found it dull. Dull would he

be, as "the fat weed that rots itself in case on Lethe's wharf," who

found nothing curious and provocative about these Sirens and

Centaurs and Lemures and Larvae and Cabiri and Phorkyads! I can

myself endure very pleasantly even the society of those "Blessed

Boys" which some have found so distressing. As for the Devil, in

the end, making "indecent overtures" to the little Heavenly

Butterflies, who pelt him with roses--even that does not confuse my

mind or distract my senses. It is the "other side of the Moon"--the

under-mask of the world-comedy, and the incidental "saving" of Dr.

Faust is not more essential in the great mad game!

Read Faust, both portions of it, dear reader, and see if you do not

feel, with me, that, in the last resort, one leaves this rich, strange

poem with a nobler courage to endure life, and a larger view of its

amazing possibilities!

I wonder if that curious novel of Goethe's called the "Elective

Affinities" is perused as widely as it deserves? That extraordinary

company of people! And the patient, portentious interest Goethe

compels us to take in the laying out of gardens and the beautifying

of church-yards! "The Captain," "the Architect"--not to speak of the

two bewildering women--do they not suggest fantastic figures out of

one's memories of remotest childhood? I suppose to a world-child

like Goethe, watching, with grave super-human interest, all our little

pre-occupations, we have all of us something of the sweet pedantry

of these people--we are all of us "Captains" and "Architects" with

some odd twist in our quiet heads.

The solemn immorality, amounting to outrageous indecency, of

those scenes between the assorted lovers when they make "double"

love, and behind the mask of their legitimate attachments follow

their "elective affinities," is a thing that may well stagger the puritan

reader. The puritan reader will, indeed, like old Carlyle, be tempted

more than once to fling these grave, unblushing chronicles, with

their deep, oracular wisdom and their shameless details, into the

dust-heap. But it were wiser to refrain. After all, one cannot conceal

from one's self that things are _like that_--and if the hyaena's howl,

from the filthy marshes of earth's weird edge and the thick saliva on

his oozing jaws, nauseates our preciosity, and besmirches our

self-esteem, we must remember that this is the way the Lord of "the

Prologue in Heaven" has willed that the scavengers of life's

cesspools go about their work!

Probably it will not be the "indecency" of certain things in Goethe

that will most offend our modern taste; it will be that curious, grave

pre-occupation of his, so objective and stiff, with artistic details, and

architectural details, and theatrical details!

One must remember his noble saying, "Earnestness alone makes life

Eternity" and that other "saying" about Art having, as its main

purpose, the turning of the "Transitory" into the "Permanent"! If the

Transitory is really to be turned into the Permanent, we must take

ourselves and our work very seriously indeed!

And such "seriousness," such high, patient, unwearied seriousness,

is, after all, Goethe's bequest to our flippant and fanciful generation.

He knows well enough our deepest doubt, our most harrowing

scepticism. He has long ago "been through all that." But he has

"returned"--not exactly like Nietzsche, with a fierce, scornful,

dramatic cry, to a contemptuous "superficiality"--he has returned to

the actual possibilities that the world offers, "superficial" and

otherwise, of turning the whole strange business into a solid,

four-square "work of art." We must reject "evil," quietly and ironically;

not because it is condemned by human morality, but because "we

have our work to do"! We must live in "the good" and "the true," not

because it is our "duty" so to do, but because only along this

particular line does the "energy without agitation" of the "abysmal

mothers" communicate itself to our labour.

And so we come back, like the grief-stricken children over Mignon's

grave, to Life and Life's toil. There only, in the inflexible

development of what taste, of what discernment, of what power, of

what method, of what demonic genius, we may have been granted

by the gods, lies "the cosmic secret." That is all we have in our

human hands, that malleable stuff out of which Fate made us--and

only in the shrewd, unwearied use of that shall we prove our love to

the Being "who cannot love us in return" and make our illusion of

Free-Will part of his universal Purpose!