Yet another great conception stirred Goethe’s imagination at
Frankfort--the conception of “Faust.” With the Faust legend he had long
been familiar, and in “Die Mitschuldigen” he had made one of the
characters compare himself with Dr. Faust. During his residence at
Leipsic, however, he was too inexperienced to have even a faint
conception of the deep meanings that lay hid beneath the surface of the
story. It was at Strasburg that he began to realize the vast
possibilities of the subject. There he thought of it often and
profoundly, and it continued to fascinate him after his return to
Frankfort. In 1774--or perhaps 1773--he began to write the drama with
which, of all his works, his name is most intimately associated. He
worked at it, at intervals, until he quitted Frankfort; he made several
references to it in his letters; and to some of his friends he read
passages in which he thought they might be interested.
The original “Faust”--the “Faust” written at Frankfort--contains all
that is most essential in the First Part as ultimately published.[1] The
Faust legend served only as a suggestion for Goethe’s drama. From being
little more than a tale of magical wonders, it became, in passing
through the alembic of his imagination, a conception pregnant with
thought and passion--a conception in which were embodied all the most
vital elements of the intellectual life of his century. Faust, as Goethe
presents him, is a man of magnificent intellect, endowed originally with
the purest and loftiest aspirations of humanity. When the drama opens,
he has devoted many a year to study; but, sitting alone in his Gothic
chamber at midnight, he feels sadly and bitterly that his labour has
been in vain. Dry, abstract knowledge he has in abundance, but it does
not satisfy him; it seems to him but a mockery of the knowledge for
which he has always yearned. He pants for something infinitely grander
than his books can tell him of. A Titan of the spirit, he would mount
the very heavens, and snatch from the universe its inmost secrets. And
so, despairing of finding truth by ordinary means, he has recourse to
supernatural methods. Opening his book of magic, he sees the symbol of
the Macrocosmos; and at once the scales fall from his eyes; he is
confronted directly by the secret forces of nature working together in
glorious harmony. At last, for a moment, joy wells up in his heart; he
asks himself whether he has not become a god. But suddenly it flashes
upon him that he is but a spectator, and he longs for so much more than
can come to him by mere vision! To drink at the infinite sources of
existence, to feel his soul quickened by contact with the very essence
of life--nothing short of this can give him a rapture corresponding to
his needs. Looking again into his book, he finds the symbol of the
earth-spirit; and through all his being thrills a consciousness of
energy and courage. There is no achievement of which he does not feel
himself capable; he has an impulse to go out into the world, to
experience all its delights and woes, and even in the crash of shipwreck
to exult in his strength and freedom. The earth-spirit itself he must
see, and it responds to his summons. But it scoffs at his claim of
equality, and, as it disappears, leaves him once more in despair.
Baffled in his ideal aspirations, Faust gives himself up to the
enjoyment of such pleasures as may be accessible through the senses.
After the first monologue, and before the introduction of Gretchen, we
find in the original “Faust” only Faust’s first dialogue with Wagner;
the scene, afterwards considerably modified, in which Mephistopheles
mystifies the ingenuous student; a draft, chiefly in prose, of the scene
in Auerbach’s cellar; and a few lines, ultimately struck out, indicating
the perplexity of Mephistopheles as he passes a cross by the wayside.
Goethe was apparently in haste to reach the tale of love and sorrow, in
which the destiny of Faust was to be interwoven with that of Gretchen,
and the full meaning of his repudiation of the law of his spiritual
being was to be disclosed in its tragic consequences.
After the accidental meeting of Faust and Gretchen in the street--when,
struck by her beauty, he offers her his arm, and she escapes from
him--there are wanting “Wald und Höble” and “Walpurgisnacht;” the part
to be played by Gretchen’s brother, Valentin, is only indicated;
immediately before “Trüber Tag” there is a dialogue between Faust and
Mephistopheles which was afterwards omitted; and the last scene of all,
the scene in the prison, is in prose. In other respects this part of the
drama received at Frankfort what was essentially its final form. When
the work was to be published, some lines and expressions were altered;
but these changes did not vitally affect the conception as it had
originally taken shape in Goethe’s mind.
Of all the products of Goethe’s genius, his presentation of the story of
Gretchen is the finest; and, if we exclude Shakespeare, it would be hard
to find anywhere in modern dramatic literature an equally noble
achievement. The original of Gretchen, as a fresh, simple, happy maiden,
with a heart overflowing with love and confidence, was Frederika Brion;
and it may be that in depicting the early scenes in which she talks with
Faust Goethe was recalling what had actually happened at Sesenheim.
Frederika, for instance, must often have been astonished and rather
dismayed by strange opinions expressed by her lover, and it is likely
enough that she questioned him about religion, and that his answer was
in spirit akin to the matchless lines in which Faust makes confession of
his faith. But Goethe never seeks in his poetry simply to reproduce his
personal experience. He transports us into an ideal world in which all
that he has to show us stands out clearly, stripped of the accidental
qualities which in actual life so often obscure our vision and disturb
our judgment. Gretchen is not merely Frederika; she is the living
representative of an enduring type of character and feeling.
Unlike Frederika, Gretchen is tempted to stain the purity of her spirit,
and is brought within the sweep of forces that work her destruction; but
she is never allowed to pass beyond the range of our sympathies, and in
the end we are made to feel that in a deeper sense than that of
theological dogmas she is “saved.” The last scene, as afterwards
rendered in verse, has a more ideal character than it possesses in the
original prose, yet in the process of transformation it lost some
elements of tragic depth and force. In this great scene Goethe
concentrates, with absolute truth to nature, all that is saddest and
most terrible in human destiny.
Faust, as Goethe conceives the character, retains our interest through
all the phases of his development; for we are often reminded that his
was originally a noble nature, and that at the bottom of his heart there
are still many survivals of humane and generous impulse. He is never a
merely vulgar sensualist; he is an idealist who, having demanded of the
universe more than it is capable of yielding, has given way to a mood of
bitter and reckless spiritual despair. Mephistopheles is a creation not
less remarkable in his own way than Faust, and upon the stage he is by
far the more effective of the two, the outlines of his character being
more distinct than those of his restless, wavering, unhappy comrade. In
the Second Part, written long afterwards, his name is little more than a
symbol for an abstract principle; but in the First Part, and especially
in the scenes conceived at Frankfort, Mephistopheles has all the
freshness and vigour of thorough individuality. It would be impossible
to imagine a more striking contrast to the struggle incessantly going on
in Faust’s mind than the settled purpose, the frank cynicism, and the
grim humour of Mephistopheles. The character was suggested to Goethe by
some qualities of his friend Merck. Merck, although honourable and good,
had moods in which he took anything but an amiable or cheerful view of
life; and his scoffs and sneers (as we may see from the description of
him in “Dichtung und Wahrheit”) produced a more lasting impression on
Goethe than his better characteristics. Although suggested by Merck’s
cynical outbursts, Mephistopheles is not the less, of course, to be
regarded as in the main a free creation of the imagination.
In “Faust” Goethe’s art reached the highest level it was capable of
attaining during the early part of his career; and from a biographical
point of view it is even more deeply interesting than “Goetz von
Berlichingen” and “Die Leiden des jungen Werthers.” Goetz and Werther
each represented a particular phase of his character in the course of
its development. Faust represented his character as a whole just as it
was about to enter upon a new stage of its growth. Goethe had not,
indeed, allowed his will to be subdued by passion; but he had all the
vehement cravings, all the restless aspirations, the disappointment of
which is the secret cause of Faust’s gnawing misery. Goethe at this time
enjoyed many a hearty laugh with his friends, and wrote many a bright
and genial letter; but beneath the surface he suffered from a profound
agitation of spirit, often longing for he knew not what, and feeling
that there was no anodyne for the pain of a yearning that the world, as
he conceived it, could not still. In this respect also Goethe may be
taken as a representative of his period. For the men of the “Sturm und
Drang” nothing in the actual universe seemed to be good enough. Not
institutions, not social conventions only, but the very conditions of
life itself appeared to them to be unjust and injurious limitations of
free individuality; and with all their might they kicked against the
pricks, and cried out angrily against the tyrannous order that would not
bend or break at their bidding. It was inevitable that Goethe should
feel the full power of the dominant influences of his epoch, and to the
fact that he felt it, was due, in the springtime of his life, the
splendid efflorescence of his genius.
It so happened that at the time when Goethe was striving to relieve his
overburdened spirit in “Werther” and “Faust,” the “Ethics” of Spinoza
came into his hands. This was an event of great importance in his life,
for Spinoza introduced him to a higher order of thought than he had yet
known. He never accepted Spinoza’s system of doctrine as a whole, yet
the “Ethics” exercised a powerful influence over him, and for many years
he returned to it again and again, always finding in it something that
came home to him, and that he could make his own. Indeed, Spinoza was
the only purely philosophical writer by whose teaching he ever largely
and permanently benefited.
Apart altogether from the particular truths he learned from Spinoza, it
was almost inevitable that in his restless and unhappy mood the “Ethics”
should have for him a strong fascination. He, whose poetic temperament
led him always to think with feeling and through the imagination, could
not but be impressed by the calm and stately progress of an argument
presented in passionless, abstract terms, and by means of an unswerving
logical method. Again, it consoled Goethe to find that the philosopher
who, of all others, had most completely stripped his mind of prejudice,
could look at life steadily, and yet think of it, not in a spirit of
resignation merely, but with hope, cheerfulness, and courage. Most
earnestly, too, did he respond to the idea that while the ultimate
powers of the universe reveal themselves in a vast and inexorable order,
the individual mind can bring itself into harmony with that order only
by remaining for ever true to the laws of its own being. The noble
generosity of Spinoza’s temper also, as Goethe himself explains, was one
of the sources of his charm. “Whoso rightly loves God must not ask that
God shall love him in return.” That was a saying after Goethe’s own
heart. Did not he himself afterwards write, “If I love you, how does
that concern you?”
During his residence at Frankfort Goethe did not attain, or nearly
attain, to a position at which he could say that he was reconciled to
himself and to the world. But Spinoza’s teaching was to him like cool
water to parched lips. Communion with this serene and lofty spirit put
him on the track that was to lead to inward self-control and to the
harmonious development of his powers.
While Goethe was working with inexhaustible energy, he did not neglect
his friends, and he had many opportunities of adding to their number.
Lavater, who was making active preparations for his much-talked-of book
on Physiognomy, wrote to Goethe from Zürich, and in 1774 spent a week as
a guest in his father’s house. Years afterwards, Lavater, although
always one of the most popular clergymen of his time, repelled many of
those who had known him intimately by mingled fanaticism and vanity; but
now Goethe was strongly attracted by his enthusiasm, and took an
extraordinary interest in his notions as to the possibility of
understanding the mind through its expression in the body, and
especially in the face. With Lavater’s friend Basedow, the ardent
upholder of Rousseau’s ideas on education, Goethe was also on friendly
terms. He was often, however, irritated by Basedow’s boorish talk; for,
notwithstanding his zeal for “nature” in social intercourse, Goethe
detested rude and arrogant assumption. He himself was the brightest and
pleasantest of companions, with a manner made all the more attractive by
a touch of lively Bohemianism. It may be worth noting that there was no
trace of Bohemianism in his appearance. He dressed well--so well,
indeed, that it was often hard for him (his father being by no means
generous) to pay his tailor’s bills.
Another of his intimate friends was Johanna Fahlmer, the aunt of the
brothers Jacobi, both of whom were beginning to make a mark in
literature. She settled at Frankfort with her mother in 1772, and
Goethe, who made her acquaintance soon after his return from Wetzlar,
valued few of his friends so highly as the young, genial, and clever
“Aunt Fahlmer.” She was anxious that he should enter into close
relations with her nephews, but their writings did not quite please him,
and for a long time he made no attempt to approach them. In 1774,
however, he felt that it might be pleasant for him to know them, and in
the summer, having spent some weeks with Lavater and Basedow at Ems, he
made his way with these friends up the Rhine to Cologne--“a prophet to
the right, a prophet to the left, the child of the world in the midst,”
as he wrote in a humorous little poem describing their dinner at
Coblenz. At Cologne the party broke up, and Goethe went on to
Düsseldorf, where the Jacobis lived. As it happened, they were at
Elberfeld, and thither Goethe followed them. The younger of the two
brothers, Frederick Jacobi, who was Goethe’s senior by about six years,
made a most agreeable impression on him, and at Pempelfort, Jacobi’s
country house near Düsseldorf, they became fast friends. They visited
Cologne together, and had so happy a day there that at night, when each
had retired to his room in the inn, Goethe could not resist the impulse
to renew their talk. So he went to Jacobi’s room, and sitting at the
open window, looking out on the moonlit Rhine, they enjoyed an hour of
unalloyed happiness in the free communion of mind with mind and heart
with heart. Goethe had never before given to a friend so deep a love,
and the attraction was mutual. Jacobi, who was a man of high
intellectual power and fine character, knew well the real nature of the
treasure he had won in winning Goethe’s friendship. One of the most
absorbing subjects of discussion between them was the philosophy of
Spinoza, with which Jacobi also had been making himself familiar. Their
opinions on the subject did not agree, but that in no way lessened the
cordiality or the pleasure of their intercourse.
In 1775 Goethe had pleasant intercourse with the Counts Stolberg, who
afterwards achieved distinction in literature. They were about his own
age. During their stay at Frankfort they often dined with Goethe, whom
they intensely admired; and one day, when the wine had circulated, there
was much poetic talk about an unquenchable thirst for tyrants’ blood.
Goethe’s father shook his head and smiled, but Frau Aja, as they called
his mother, knew nothing of tyrants, and was dismayed by the ferocious
outcries of the young poets. Going to her wine-cellar, she brought up a
bottle of her oldest and best wine. “There!” she said, “that is the true
tyrants’ blood. Delight yourselves with that, and let there be an end of
murderous thoughts.”
In the history of Goethe’s last year at Frankfort, 1775, the central
name is that of Lili Schönemann. Lili (Anna Elizabeth) and her two
brothers lived with their mother, the widow of a wealthy banker. They
belonged to what was considered the highest rank of Frankfort society,
and every evening kept open house for their friends. Early in the year,
probably in the evening of New Year’s Day, Goethe was present at one of
their parties, and saw Lili for the first time. She was then in her
seventeenth year, a beautiful fair-haired girl with blue eyes, graceful
in all her movements, and with the ease and self-possession that came of
constant association with people of her own class. She was as different
as possible from Frederika Brion and Charlotte Buff, but Goethe was
fascinated by her beauty, and she in her turn could not resist the
handsome young poet, whose work had made his name familiar to all
educated Germans. After some misunderstandings they became engaged, and
Lili gave Goethe a little golden heart which was fastened round his neck
with a ribbon.
Notwithstanding his love for Lili, the engagement brought with it no
happiness to Goethe. Her relatives, whom he disliked, thought he was not
socially her equal, and he, to whom free expression was so essential,
could not bear the restraints imposed upon him at Frau Schönemann’s
fashionable parties. It embittered him, too, to see the readiness with
which Lili responded to the courtesies of men who would gladly have
supplanted him. He had a suspicion that she could never belong to him
absolutely, and that if they became husband and wife her ideas would go
on diverging more and more widely from his own.
Torn by conflicting motives, Goethe felt at last that he must shake
himself free for a while from the circumstances that caused him so much
perplexity; and in the middle of May he started with the Counts Stolberg
for Strasburg--all three, by the way, dressed in Werther’s style. From
Strasburg he visited his sister at Emmendingen, who urged him to break
off an engagement that seemed to her wholly unsuitable. He then
travelled to Zürich, where he was cordially welcomed by Lavater; and
afterwards he went southwards, thinking that he might perhaps go on to
Italy. But, now that he was far away from Lili, she became dearer to him
than ever. On her seventeenth birthday he was at the Pass of St.
Gotthard, and, as he kissed the golden heart she had given him, he was
seized by so ardent a longing to be with her again that he immediately
turned back and began his homeward journey.
On his return all the old difficulties presented themselves, and in the
end, to the relief of Lili’s mother and Goethe’s parents, and not much
apparently to the regret of the lovers themselves, the engagement was
allowed to lapse. His relation to Lili had not moved him as he had been
moved by his relation to Frederika and Lotte; nor did it become a source
of inspiration in his later work. But to his love for her we owe two
exquisite lyrics, “Neue Liebe, Neues Leben” (“New Love, New Life”), and
“An Belinden” (“To Belinda”), and the finely humorous poem, “Lili’s
Park.”
The time had now almost come when Frankfort, on which Goethe had shed so
much lustre, was to lose him, and he was to surround himself with an
entirely new set of conditions. Towards the end of 1774 he was presented
at Frankfort to the Hereditary Prince of Weimar, who was then seventeen
years of age, and to his younger brother, Prince Constantine. The
meeting gave the Hereditary Prince so much pleasure that Goethe had to
visit him at Mainz--a visit made memorable by the fact that during
Goethe’s absence from Frankfort, Fräulein von Klettenberg, for whom he
had all his old affection and reverence, died. In the autumn of 1775 the
Hereditary Prince became Duke of Weimar; and shortly afterwards, on his
way to Stuttgart, where he was to be married, he begged that when he
returned with his bride Goethe would visit them at Weimar. Goethe gladly
accepted the invitation, and in October, when the young Duke and
Duchess came to Frankfort, it was arranged that within a few days he
should follow them.
Geheimerath Kalb, the official with whom he was to travel, had been left
behind at Stuttgart, and his coming was so long delayed that Goethe
finally became impatient, gave up the idea of visiting Weimar, and set
off for Italy. At Heidelberg he was aroused during the night by a
messenger, who arrived with a letter announcing that Kalb was awaiting
him at Frankfort. He hurried back, and on November 7, 1775, entered
Weimar. He thought he was merely about to pay a short visit to a
friendly prince; in reality he had come to a new home, and had formed
relations which were to alter the whole complexion of his life.