THE APOTHEOSIS OF GOETHE
No less than three books on Goethe have been issued in the course of
the last few months, and the fact is sufficient evidence that the cult
of the Olympian Jupiter of Weimar, which was first inaugurated eighty
years ago by Carlyle, is in no danger of dying out in England.
Professor Hume Brown has given us a penetrating and judicious study of
Goethe's youth, such as one had a right to expect from the eminent
Scottish historian.[17] Mr. Joseph McCabe has given us a comprehensive
survey of Goethe's life, and an objective and critical appreciation of
his personality.[18] Both are in profound sympathy with their subject,
but neither is a blind hero-worshipper. In Mr. McCabe's life we are
not only introduced to the scientist who is ever in quest of new
worlds to conquer, we are also made acquainted with the pagan epicure
ever engaged in amorous experiments! We are not only introduced to the
sublime poet and prophet, we are also introduced to the incurable
egotist, who could only find time to visit his old mother once every
ten years, whilst, as boon companion of a petty German Prince, he
always found time for his pleasures. We are not only admitted to
contemplate the pomp and majesty of his world-wide fame, we are also
admitted to the sordid circumstances of Goethe's "home." And our awe
and reverence are turned into pity. We pity the miserable husband of a
drunken and epileptic wife rescued from the gutter; we pity even more
the unhappy father of a degraded son, who inherited all the vices of
one parent without inheriting the genius of the other.
[17] "The Youth of Goethe." By P. Hume Brown. 8s. net
(Murray.)
[18] "Goethe, the Man and his Character." By Joseph McCabe.
15s. net. (Eveleigh Nash.)
I.
The first quality which strikes us in Goethe, and which dazzled his
contemporaries, and continues to dazzle posterity, is his
universality. He appears to us as one of the most receptive, one of
the most encyclopædic intellects of modern times. A scientist and a
biologist, a pioneer of the theory of evolution, a physicist and
originator of a new theory of colour, a man of affairs, a man of the
world and a courtier, a philosopher, a lyrical poet, a tragic, comic,
satiric, epic, and didactic poet, a novelist and an historian, he has
attempted every form of literature, he has touched upon every chord of
the human soul.
It is true that, in considering this universality of Goethe, it
behoves us to make some qualifications. His human sympathies are by no
means as universal as his intellectual sympathies. He has no love for
the common people. He has the aloofness of the aristocrat. He has a
Nietzschean contempt for the herd. He takes little interest in the
religious aspirations of mankind or in the struggles of human
freedom. The French Revolution remains to him a sealed book, and his
history of the campaign in France is almost ludicrously disappointing.
With regard to what has been called his "intellectual universality,"
the elements which compose it cannot be reduced to unity and harmony.
It would be difficult to co-ordinate them into a higher synthesis, for
that _uni_versality is at the same time _di_versity and mutability.
Goethe is essentially changeable and elusive. In his works we find
combined the antipodes of human thought. There is little in common
between the poet of Goetz von Berlichingen and Werther on the one hand
and the poet of Tasso and Iphigenia on the other hand. The intellect
of Goethe is like a crystal with a thousand facets reflecting all the
colours of the rainbow.
And it may well be asked, therefore, whether this encyclopædic
diversity can aptly be called universality. Universality must
ultimately result in unity and harmony, and it is impossible to assert
that Goethe's mind ever achieved unity and harmony, that it was ever
controlled by one dominant thought.
At any rate, whether a defect or a quality, there can be no doubt that
this encyclopædic diversity has turned to the great advantage of his
glory. It is precisely because Goethe is an elusive Proteus that all
doctrines may equally claim him. Romanticists turn with predilection
to the creator of Werther or the first "Faust." Classicists admire the
plastic beauty of Tasso and Iphigenia. The cosmopolitan sees in Goethe
the _Weltbürger_, the citizen of the world, the incarnation of _die
Weltweisheit_. The patriot acclaims in him the poet who has sung the
myths and legends dear to the German race. The sensuous and voluptuous
libertine is enchanted by the eroticism of the "Roman Elegies." The
domesticated reader is drawn by that chaste idyll, Herman and
Dorothea. The Spinozist and Pantheist are attracted by the general
tendencies of his philosophy. The Christian is at liberty to interpret
"Faust" in a sense which is favourable to his religion. The Liberal
politician can point to the author of Goetz and Egmont. The
Conservative and Reactionary can claim all the works of Goethe's
maturity, when the poet had become the perfect courtier.
II.
There is a second quality which Goethe possesses in a supreme degree,
and by which he is distinguished from his contemporaries--namely,
mental sanity and serenity. Most of his fellow-poets reveal some
morbid characteristics, are afflicted with some _Weltschmerz_, with
some internal spiritual malady. They live in an atmosphere of strife
and discord. The marvellous vitality of Goethe has escaped from the
contagion. Like his fellow-poets, he passed through the crisis of the
_Sturm und Drang_. But it seems as if he had only known it in order to
give to his experiences a final artistic expression. He communicated
the "Wertherian malady" to a whole generation, but he himself emerged
triumphant and unscathed. The hurricane which wrecked so many powerful
intellects spared his own. After the Italian journey he never ceased
by example and precept to recommend harmony and balance, and he became
so completely the perfect type of intellectual and artistic sanity
that the world has forgotten the Bohemian days of Frankfurt and
Leipzig, the merry days of Weimar, the repulsive vulgarity of his
drunken mistress and wife, the degradation of his son, and has agreed
only to contemplate the Olympian majesty of Weimar. Whether the repose
and sanity of Goethe were unmixed virtues, or whether they were partly
the result of indifference, of impassivity or selfishness, is another
question. Certain it is that there is no other trait in Goethe's
personality which has done more to raise him in the esteem of
posterity. He has proved to the world that internal discord and
distraction and morbid exaltation are not the necessary appanage of
genius, and that, on the contrary, the most powerful genius is also
the most sane, the most balanced, the most self-possessed, the most
harmonious.
III.
Without going here into the purely formal and artistic qualities of
Goethe's works, there is one fact which, perhaps more than any other,
impressed itself on the imagination of the world, and that is the
realization of his own personality, the achievement of his own
destiny. Of all his poems, the rarest and most perfect is the poem of
his life. Hitherto no such life had ever been allotted to a favourite
of the Muses. He seemed to have received a bountiful abundance of all
the gifts of the fairies--superb health, comfort, and wealth, the love
of an adoring mother and sister, the loyalty of illustrious friends,
the favour of Princes, the homage of women, and the admiration of
men. To him was opened every province of human activity. He exhausted
every form of enjoyment. His life until the end was like the unfolding
of a glorious version of a happy dream. At eighty years of age he
remained the one surviving giant of the golden age of German
literature. In his lifetime he was considered by Europe, as well as by
Germany, as the most glorious exemplar of his race, and the city of
his adoption had become a pilgrimage attracting worshippers from all
parts of Europe. Death was merciful to him. The last act of his life
was as beautiful as the others. It was not preceded by the gradual
dissolution of his physical and intellectual strength; rather was it
like the burning out of a flame. He passed away in an apotheosis, and
the last words uttered by the dying poet, "_Mehr Licht, mehr Licht_"
(More light, more light), have become for all future generations the
final expression of his philosophy and the symbol of his personality.