verify every term in popular use. The Devil had played an important
part in mythology in all times. Goethe would have no word that does
not cover a thing. The same measure will still serve: "I have never
heard of any crime which I might not have committed." So he flies at
the throat of this imp. He shall be real; he shall be modern; he shall
be European; he shall dress like a gentleman, and accept the manner,
and walk in the streets, and be well initiated in the life of Vienna,
and of Heidelberg, in 1820,--or he shall not exist. Accordingly, he
stripped him of mythologic gear, of horns, cloven foot, harpoon tail,
brimstone, and blue-fire, and, instead of looking in books and pictures,
looked for him in his own mind, in every shade of coldness, selfishness,
and unbelief that, in crowds, or in solitude, darkens over the human
thought,--and found that the portrait gained reality and terror by
everything he added, and by everything he took away. He found that the
essence of this hobgoblin, which had hovered in shadow about the
habitations of men, ever since they were men, was pure intellect,
applied,--as always there is a tendency,--to the service of the senses:
and he flung into literature, in his Mephistopheles, the first organic
figure that has been added for some ages, and which will remain as
long as the Prometheus. I have no design to enter into any analysis
of his numerous works. They consist of translations, criticisms, dramas,
lyric and every other description of poems, literary journals, and
portraits of distinguished men. Yet I cannot omit to specify the Wilhelm
Meister.
Wilhelm Meister is a novel in every sense, the first of its kind,
called by its admirers the only delineation of modern society,--as if
other novels, those of Scott, for example, dealt with costume and
condition, this with the spirit of life. It is a book over which some
veil is still drawn. It is read by very intelligent persons with wonder
and delight. It is preferred by some such to Hamlet, as a work of
genius. I suppose no book of this century can compare with it in its
delicious sweetness, so new, so provoking to the mind, gratifying it
with so many and so solid thoughts, just insights into life, and
manners, and characters; so many good hints for the conduct of life,
so many unexpected glimpses into a higher sphere, and never a trace
of rhetoric or dullness. A very provoking book to the curiosity of
young men of genius, but a very unsatisfactory one. Lovers of light
reading, those who look in it for the entertainment they find in a
romance, are disappointed. On the other hand, those who begin it with
the higher hope to read in it a worthy history of genius, and the just
award of the laurels to its toils and denials, have also reason to
complain. We had an English romance here, not long ago, professing to
embody the hope of a new age, and to unfold the political hope of the
party called "Young England," in which the only reward of virtue is
a seat in parliament, and a peerage. Goethe's romance has a conclusion
as lame and immoral. George Sand, in Consuelo and its continuation,
has sketched a truer and more dignified picture. In the progress of
the story, the characters of the hero and heroine expand at a rate
that shivers the porcelain chess-table of aristocratic convention:
they quit the society and habits of their rank; they lose their wealth;
they become the servants of great ideas, and of the most generous
social ends; until, at last, the hero, who is the center and fountain
of an association for the rendering of the noblest benefits to the
human race, no longer answers to his own titled name: it sounds foreign
and remote in his ear.
"I am only man," he says; "I breathe and work for man," and this in
poverty and extreme sacrifices. Goethe's hero, on the contrary, has
so many weaknesses and impurities, and keeps such bad company, that
the sober English public, when the book was translated, were disgusted.
And yet it is so crammed with wisdom, with knowledge of the world, and
with knowledge of laws; the persons so truly and subtly drawn, and
with such few strokes, and not a word too much, the book remains ever
so new and unexhausted, that we must even let it go its way, and be
willing to get what good from it we can, assured that it has only begun
its office, and has millions of readers yet to serve.
The argument is the passage of a democrat to the aristocracy, using
both words in their best sense. And this passage is not made in any
mean or creeping way, but through the hall door. Nature and character
assist, and the rank is made real by sense and probity in the nobles.
No generous youth can escape this charm of reality in the book, so
that it is highly stimulating to intellect and courage. The ardent and
holy Novalis characterized the book as "thoroughly modern and prosaic;
the romantic is completely leveled in it; so is the poetry of nature;
the wonderful. The book treats only of the ordinary affairs of men:
it is a poeticized civic and domestic story. The wonderful in it is
expressly treated as fiction and enthusiastic dreaming:"--and yet,
what is also characteristic, Novalis soon returned to this book, and
it remained his favorite reading to the end of his life.
What distinguishes Goethe for French and English readers, is a property
which he shares with his nation,--a habitual reference to interior
truth. In England and in America there is a respect for talent; and,
if it is exerted in support of any ascertained or intelligible interest
or party, or in regular opposition to any, the public is satisfied.
In France, there is even a greater delight in intellectual brilliancy,
for its own sake. And, in all these countries, men of talent write
from talent. It is enough if the understanding is occupied, the taste
propitiated,--so many columns so many hours, filled in a lively and
creditable way. The German intellect wants the French sprightliness,
the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American
adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a
superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German
public asks for a controlling sincerity. Here is activity of thought;
but what is it for? What does the man mean? Whence, whence, all these
thoughts?
Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book;
a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines
there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not
otherwise; holding things because they are things. If he cannot rightly
express himself to-day, the same things subsist, and will open
themselves to-morrow. There lies the burden on his mind--the burden
of truth to be declared,--more or less understood; and it constitutes
his business and calling in the world, to see those facts through, and
to make them known. What signifies that he trips and stammers; that
his voice is harsh or hissing; that this method or his tropes are
inadequate? That message will find method and imagery, articulation
and melody. Though he were dumb, it would speak. If not,--if there be
no such God's word in the man,--what care we how adroit, how fluent,
how brilliant he is?
It makes a great difference to the force of any sentence, whether there
be a man behind it, or no. In the learned journal, in the influential
newspaper, I discern no form; only some irresponsible shadow; oftener
some monied corporation, or some dangler, who hopes, in the mask and
robes of his paragraph, to pass for somebody. But, through every clause
and part of speech of a right book, I meet the eyes of the most
determined of men: his force and terror inundate every word: the commas
and dashes are alive; so that the writing is athletic and nimble,--can
go far and live long.
In England and America, one may be an adept in the writing of a Greek
or Latin poet, without any poetic taste or fire. That a man has spent
years on Plato and Proclus, does not afford a presumption that he holds
heroic opinions, or undervalues the fashions of his town. But the
German nation have the most ridiculous good faith on these subjects:
the student, out of the lecture-room, still broods on the lessons; and
the professor cannot divest himself of the fancy, that the truths of
philosophy have some application to Berlin and Munich. This earnestness
enables them to out-see men of much more talent. Hence, almost all the
valuable distinctions which are current in higher conversation, have
been derived to us from Germany. But, whilst men distinguished for wit
and learning, in England and France, adopt their study and their side
with a certain levity, and are not understood to be very deeply engaged,
from grounds of character, to the topic or the part they
espouse,--Goethe, the head and body of the German nation, does not
speak from talent, but the truth shines through: he is very wise,
though his talent often veils his wisdom. However excellent his sentence
is, he has somewhat better in view. It awakens my curiosity. He has
the formidable independence which converse with truth gives: hear you,
or forbear, his fact abides; and your interest in the writer is not
confined to his story, and he dismissed from memory, when he has
performed his task creditably, as a baker when he has left his loaf;
but his work is the least part of him. The old Eternal Genius who built
the world has confided himself more to this man than to any other. I
dare not say that Goethe ascended to the highest grounds from which
genius has spoken. He has not worshipped the highest unity; he is
incapable of a self-surrender to the moral sentiment. There are nobler
strains in poetry than any he has sounded. There are writers poorer
in talent, whose tone is purer, and more touches the heart. Goethe can
never be dear to men. His is not even the devotion to pure truth; but
to truth for the sake of culture. He has no aims less large than the
conquest of universal nature, of universal truth, to be his portion;
a man not to be bribed, nor deceived, nor overawed; of a stoical self-
command and self-denial, and having one test for all men,--What can
you teach me? All possessions are valued by him for that only; rank,
privileges, health, time, being itself.
He is the type of culture, the amateur of all arts, and sciences, and
events; artistic, but not artist; spiritual, but not spiritualist.
There is nothing he had not right to know; there is no weapon in the
army of universal genius he did not take into his hand, but with
peremptory heed that he should not be for a moment prejudiced by his
instruments. He lays a ray of light under every fact, and between
himself and his dearest property. From him nothing was hid, nothing
withholden. The lurking daemons sat to him, and the saint who saw the
daemons; and the metaphysical elements took form. "Piety itself is no
aim, but only a means whereby, through purest inward peace, we may
attain to highest culture." And his penetration of every secret of the
fine arts will make Goethe still more statuesque. His affections help
him, like women employed by Cicero to worm out the secret of
conspirators. Enmities he has none. Enemy of him you may be,--if so
you shall teach him aught which your good-will cannot,--were it only
what experience will accrue from your ruin. Enemy and welcome, but
enemy on high terms. He cannot hate anybody; his time is worth too
much. Temperamental antagonisms may be suffered, but like feuds of
emperors, who fight dignifiedly across kingdoms.
His autobiography, under the title of "Poetry and Truth Out of My
Life," is the expression of the idea,--now familiar to the world through
the German mind, but a novelty to England, Old and New, when that book
appeared,--that a man exists for culture; not for what he can
accomplish, but for what can be accomplished in him. The reaction of
things on the man is the only noteworthy result. An intellectual man
can see himself as a third person; therefore his faults and delusions
interest him equally with his successes. Though he wishes to prosper
in affairs, he wishes more to know the history and destiny of man;
whilst the clouds of egotists drifting about him are only interested
in a low success. This idea reigns in the _Dichtung und Wahrheit_,
and directs the selection of the incidents; and nowise the external
importance of events, the rank of the personages, or the bulk of
incomes. Of course, the book affords slender materials for what would
be reckoned with us a "Life of Goethe;"--few dates; no correspondence;
no details of offices or employments; no light on his marriage; and,
a period of ten years, that should be the most active in his life,
after his settlement at Weimar, is sunk in silence. Meantime, certain
love-affairs, that came to nothing, as people say, have the strangest
importance: he crowds us with detail:--certain whimsical opinions,
cosmogonies, and religions of his own invention, and, especially his
relations to remarkable minds, and to critical epochs of thought:--these
he magnifies. His "Daily and Yearly Journal," his "Italian Travels,"
his "Campaign in France" and the historical part of his "Theory of
Colors," have the same interest. In the last, he rapidly notices Kepler,
Roger Bacon, Galileo, Newton, Voltaire, etc.; and the charm of this
portion of the book consists in the simplest statement of the relation
betwixt these grandees of European scientific history and himself; the
mere drawing of the lines from Goethe to Kepler, from Goethe to Bacon,
from Goethe to Newton. The drawing of the line is for the time and
person, a solution of the formidable problem, and gives pleasure when
Iphigenia and Faust do not, without any cost of invention comparable
to that of Iphigenia and Faust. This law giver of art is not an artist.
Was it that he knew too much, that his sight was microscopic, and
interfered with the just perspective, the seeing of the whole? He is
fragmentary; a writer of occasional poems, and of an encyclopaedia of
sentences. When he sits down to write a drama or a tale, he collects
and sorts his observations from a hundred sides, and combines them
into the body as fitly as he can. A great deal refuses to incorporate:
this he adds loosely, as letters, of the parties, leaves from their
journals, or the like. A great deal still is left that will not find
any place. This the bookbinder alone can give any cohesion to: and,
hence, notwithstanding the looseness of many of his works, we have
volumes of detached paragraphs, aphorisms, xenien, etc.
I suppose the worldly tone of his tales grew out of the calculations
of self-culture. It was the infirmity of an admirable scholar, who
loved the world out of gratitude; who knew where libraries, galleries,
architecture, laboratories, savants, and leisure, were to be had, and
who did not quite trust the compensations of poverty and nakedness.
Socrates loved Athens; Montaigne, Paris; and Madame de Stael said, she
was only vulnerable on that side (namely, of Paris). It has its
favorable aspect. All the geniuses are usually so ill-assorted and
sickly, that one is ever wishing them somewhere else. We seldom see
anybody who is not uneasy or afraid to live. There is a slight blush
of shame on the cheek of good men and aspiring men, and a spice of
caricature. But this man was entirely at home and happy in his century
and the world. None was so fit to live, or more heartily enjoyed the
game. In this aim of culture, which is the genius of his works, is
their power. The idea of absolute, eternal truth, without reference
to my own enlargement by it, is higher. The surrender to the torrent,
of poetic inspiration is higher; but compared with any motives on which
books are written in England and America, this is very truth, and has
the power to inspire which belongs to truth. Thus has he brought back
to a book some of its ancient might and dignity.
Goethe, coming into an over-civilized time and country, when original
talent was oppressed under the load of books, and mechanical
auxiliaries, and the distracting variety of claims, taught men how to
dispose of this mountainous miscellany, and make it subservient. I
join Napoleon with him, as being both representatives of the impatience
and reaction of nature against the morgue of conventions,--two stern
realists, who, with their scholars, have severally set the axe at the
root of the tree of cant and seeming, for this time, and for all time.
This cheerful laborer, with no external popularity or provocation,
drawing his motive and his plan from his own breast, tasked himself
with stints for a giant, and, without relaxation or rest, except by
alternating his pursuits, worked on for eighty years with the steadiness
of his first zeal.
It is the last lesson of modern science, that the highest simplicity
of structure is produced, not by few elements, but by the highest
complexity. Man is the most composite of all creatures: the
wheel-insect, volvox globator, is at the other extreme. We shall learn
to draw rents and revenues from the immense patrimony of the old and
recent ages. Goethe teaches courage, and the equivalence of all times:
that the disadvantages of any epoch exist only to the faint-hearted.
Genius hovers with his sunshine and music close by the darkest and
deafest eras. No mortgage, no attainder, will hold on men or hours.
The world is young; the former great men call to us affectionately.
We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavens and the earthly
world. The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us;
to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life,
in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality,
and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every
truth by use.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Representative Men, by Ralph Waldo Emerson