At the time of Schiller’s death, days of terrible public disaster were
swiftly approaching. In the summer of 1806 the Confederation of the
Rhine was formed, and the rickety Holy Roman Empire fell to pieces.
Shortly afterwards came the war in which Prussia, as an independent
kingdom, was all but annihilated. The decisive battle was fought near
Jena on October 14, 1806, and in the morning, standing with his family
in the garden behind his house, Goethe heard the distant boom of cannon.
Later in the day a skirmish was fought near the garden between some
French and Prussian troops. When all was over, the French broke into the
town, and plundered the inhabitants to their hearts’ content, for, as
the Duke of Weimar was an ally of the King of Prussia, his capital was
held by the victors to be fair game. Two wild French soldiers burst into
Goethe’s house, and his life would probably have been lost but for the
presence of mind of Christiane, who was able to secure help in time to
avert a calamity.
On the day after the battle Napoleon himself entered the town, and on
the 16th he ordered that the harrying should be brought to an end. He
would probably have deprived the Duke of his territory but for the
influence of the Duchess, for whom the French Emperor had high respect.
The Duke was allowed to retain sovereign power on condition that he
should at once withdraw from the Prussian army. Soon afterwards he was
compelled to join the Confederation of the Rhine, and he had also to pay
a huge indemnity.
Much energy had to be expended before the desolation due to these
fearful days could be made good. The people, however, set to work with a
will, and in the well-tried Minister, Goethe, they found the guidance
and support they needed. He was full of resource and courage, saw
exactly what had to be done, and the means of doing it, and stimulated
every one by the example of his own zeal and activity. At this great
testing-time, when Goethe’s character shone forth in all its radiance,
the inhabitants of the Duchy would have been much astonished if they had
heard what afterwards became the foolish parrot-cry about his being an
“egoist,” a “Pagan,” a man indifferent to the welfare of his neighbours,
and caring only for his own culture. They would have felt that, if the
cry was true, Goethe’s “egoism” had a strange resemblance to other
people’s unselfishness.
Meanwhile, a great event had happened in Goethe’s life. Christiane had
become his wife, not only in reality, but in name. Many a time he had
felt bitterly that he had committed a terrible mistake in defying, in
this matter, the ordinary customs of society. He had paid a heavy
penalty for the assertion of his independence; for the presence of
Christiane in his house in a position which--although perfectly
honourable, so far as his own feeling was concerned--was misunderstood
by the rest of the world, had been an occasion of much wretchedness both
to her and to him. Moreover, his ideas about the respect due from the
individual to great social rules had undergone a complete change. He
himself needed no ceremony to bind his conscience, but he felt, as he
had not felt eighteen years earlier, that a ceremony might be essential
in the interests of the community at large. So, anxious that in a time
of public confusion her true position should be put beyond doubt, he
wrote to the Court preacher of Weimar, saying that a purpose which had
often been in his mind had come to maturity--and might the formal union
be concluded on the following Sunday or earlier? On Sunday, October 19,
1806, Goethe and Christiane became, in the face of the world, what they
had all along been in their own esteem, husband and wife. The only
persons present were their son August and Goethe’s secretary, Riemer.
August was now a youth of seventeen, and had already been legitimated.
He was a handsome young fellow, with dark hair and dark eyes, and
endowed with good abilities. He was idolized by his father, and no one
could please Goethe better than by showing kindness to his boy. About
two years after the marriage August went to Heidelberg to study law, and
it was with a heavy heart that Goethe let him go.
About this time Weimar became the home of Johanna Schopenhauer, the
novelist, the mother of one of the most illustrious philosophers of the
modern world. She was very bright and clever, and had an intense
admiration for Goethe. “He is,” she wrote, “the most perfect being I
know, even in appearance. A tall, fine figure, which holds itself erect,
very carefully clad, always in black or quite dark blue, the hair
tastefully dressed and powdered, as becomes his age, and a splendid face
with two lustrous brown eyes, which are at once mild and penetrating.”
Goethe was grateful to Frau Schopenhauer for receiving his wife with the
respect that was her due. Not every woman of her standing was equally
considerate.
A few years after Goethe’s death a strange book took the world by
surprise--Bettina von Arnim’s “Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde”
(“Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child”). Bettina was the daughter of
Goethe’s old friend Maximiliane Brentano. While still a very young girl
she fancied that there was some resemblance between herself and Mignon;
and, as Mignon loved Wilhelm Meister, so she loved Goethe. In 1807, when
she was about twenty-two, she came to Weimar, and soon gave evidence of
her remarkable passion, which was, of course, an affair rather of the
fancy than of the heart. Goethe talked with her kindly, but took care
that her enthusiasm should be kept within reasonable bounds. Some years
afterwards (in 1811) Bettina married the poet Arnim. She had the bad
taste to insult Christiane, who very properly responded by forbidding
her to enter Goethe’s house again. To Bettina’s surprise, he
energetically supported his wife’s decision. There was nothing about
which he was so sensitive as the treatment accorded to his wife, and
Bettina had to reconcile herself to the discovery that in her relation
to Goethe she was, in comparison with the woman whom she had held in
such low esteem, of very little importance. The letters published after
his death, and attributed to him, are in reality as much Bettina’s work
as Goethe’s.
In 1808 he had to pass through a sorrow which he felt most keenly. Ever
since his father’s death his mother had continued to live at Frankfort.
She was a woman of a genial and expansive nature, with a deep vein of
poetry; and her real character was fully recognized only when she had to
confront the world, alone. Every one loved her, and she was adored by
young girls, whom she delighted to gather around her. To her great joy,
Goethe repeatedly visited her, and she was also able to welcome to her
home his wife and son. She was so generous that, after Schlosser’s
death, the trustees for his children by his first wife, Cornelia,
Goethe’s sister, wished to put some legal limit to her expenditure; and
Goethe was asked to sanction their proposal. Goethe, however, who had
inherited much of his mother’s disposition, replied that she had a right
to spend her fortune as she pleased, and so the good Frau Rath went on
living the life that best suited her kindly, happy temper. She
corresponded regularly with Goethe, and it would be impossible to
conceive a more beautiful relation than that which existed between
mother and son. She died on September 13, 1808, at the age of
seventy-seven, and Goethe mourned for her with a grief that cut deeply
into his inward life.
He sent his wife to Frankfort to make the necessary arrangements with
regard to the inheritance that was to be divided between him and his
sister’s children. Christiane showed on this occasion not only a
thorough faculty for business, but a liberal spirit that won golden
opinions from all whom the matter concerned.
In the autumn of 1808 took place the famous meeting of Napoleon and Czar
Alexander at Erfurt. Napoleon had read a French translation of
“Werther,” and expressed a wish to see the author. Accordingly, on the
morning of October 2nd, Goethe was presented. As the poet entered, the
Emperor looked searchingly at him, and, turning round, exclaimed, “Voilà
un homme!” Napoleon talked of “Werther,” and had also much to say about
the French drama, frequently stopping to ask, “Qu’en dit M. Göt?” A few
days afterwards Napoleon and his “pitful of kings” were present at a
representation of Voltaire’s “La mort de César” at the Weimar Theatre.
After the play there was a ball, in the course of which Napoleon
repeatedly took occasion to converse with Goethe. He condemned
Voltaire’s drama, and suggested that Goethe should write a better one on
the subject, showing how Cæsar, if he had been allowed to live, would
have done great things for Rome. The Emperor formed so high an opinion
of Goethe that he begged him to come to Paris, assuring him of a fitting
welcome.
Goethe had arranged with Cotta, in 1805, for the publication of a new
edition of his collected works. The appearance of this edition is
memorable, because one of the volumes, issued in 1808, contained the
First Part of “Faust,” as we now possess it.
There is no sound reason for supposing that when Goethe first thought
of making the Faust legend the subject of a drama he conceived the work
as a whole, including the Second Part. On the contrary, there is ample
evidence that the dominant idea of the Second Part was a later
development.[2] The Frankfort “Faust” contains not a line or a
suggestion which indicates that he intended the work to end otherwise
than as a tragedy. The whole scheme of the drama implies that the
conclusion is to be tragical.
Long before the First Part was completed, however, the conception had
taken another form. It was one of Goethe’s vital characteristics that
his mind often reverted, by an inward necessity, to the consideration of
the vast problems with which, at the earliest dawn of independent
thought, man finds himself confronted. He was especially fascinated by
the terrible problem of evil. What is its real nature? Is it an
essential element of the universe, and will it therefore abide for ever?
Or is it an appearance merely, a negation, which the human spirit may by
some means shake off, and so recover its true freedom? Goethe wrestled
with these questions long and earnestly, and at last he felt himself
able to answer them decisively.
No one who knows anything of Goethe will suppose that he was a thinker
of a light, optimistic temper. He realized as few can realize--for few
have his capacity for piercing intuition--how deep are the roots of evil
in man’s nature, and how profound the sources of his misery. It is
worthy of note that there is not one of Goethe’s works in which he tries
to present a flawless male character. Schiller loved to roam in an
imaginative world where men have no impulses except such as are high,
pure, and heroic. Goethe, on the contrary, held fast by reality. Both in
his dramas and his romances most of his leading male figures have some
radical defect that either leads, or might conceivably lead, to
disaster. Even in “Goetz,” the hero of which, if not perfect, is
thoroughly sound and good, he gives us Weislingen, whose weakness brings
him to a tragic doom. Kindred weaknesses appear in the heroes of
“Werther,” “Clavigo,” “Stella,” “Tasso,” “Wilhelm Meister.” This is not
an accident, it is an essential element of Goethe’s art, and it in part
explains why his work is so much more potent than Schiller’s. For, after
all, however pleasant it may be to dream of characters who float in an
ideal realm far above us, it is by characters in whom we find ourselves
reflected that we are most closely touched and most deeply moved. Some
of Goethe’s feminine characters are conceived in a different spirit. We
cannot imagine his Iphigenie, for instance, diverging from the straight
path. But he also presented Adelheid; and Lotte and Gretchen, warmly as
he loved them, are not prevented from making experience of evil--the
former by hovering on its verge, the latter by plunging into the abyss.
Goethe, then, was under no illusions as to the darker aspects of the
world. He knew and felt that an awful conflict goes on between two
mighty powers, the one fair and beneficent, the other hideous and
malign. But he convinced himself--or, perhaps, it would be truer to say,
the conviction grew in his mind--that this struggle is not necessarily
eternal; that in spirits which, in spite of failure and suffering, have
always an inward longing for light and freedom, the good power
ultimately triumphs, and crushes evil for ever under its feet.
To have a great conviction was in Goethe’s case to be conscious of an
urgent demand for its expression. Some time or other, therefore (perhaps
in 1788, when, at Rome, he wrote of “the plan” having been “made”), it
must have occurred to him that “Faust” provided him with precisely such
a medium of expression as he needed. Faust has turned from all the
highest influences to which his spirit in its inmost depths responds. In
a mood of despair he has abandoned his ideals, and is seeking through
the world for some rapture that will satisfy his cravings. So far, he is
a type of humanity in one aspect of its life. But--Goethe seems to have
asked himself--why should not Faust be a type of humanity in a larger,
greater sense? If it is the destiny of evil to be conquered and to pass
away, might not Faust become the representative of this sublime
world-process? In his deep, imaginative spirit might we not see the
entire course of the struggle, from the moment when evil seems to attain
supremacy until that in which it will have to give way to the ultimate
and absolute sway of good?
Nothing short of this was Goethe’s aim in his final conception of
“Faust.” The poem was to embody all that his thought and his experience
of life had taught him as to the spiritual history and the spiritual
destiny of man.
Hence, in the completed First Part, the work no longer begins, as it
began in its earliest form, with Faust’s monologue. The Prologue in
Heaven introduces us to a scene in which it is symbolically brought home
to us that Faust, whatever may be his errors or crimes, will not always
remain under their power, but will in the end recognize his true nature,
yield his will to its laws, and so attain to liberty and peace. And, in
accordance with this symbolic assurance, Goethe, in the body of the
poem, brings into clearer prominence those qualities of Faust’s
character which show that at heart he is a man capable of fine impulse
and generous aspiration. Every one knows how, after the second
monologue, when he is about to end his unhappiness by death, he is
affected by the chorus of angels and women on the morning of Easter Day.
We obtain the conviction that, however deeply a man who can be so
touched may fall, he can never place himself beyond hope of recovery.
This is suggested, too, by the form of his pact with Mephistopheles. He
is to yield himself wholly to Mephistopheles only if a moment shall come
when he will be disposed to say, “Oh, stay! thou art so fair!” We know
that to a man of Faust’s nature no such moment can ever come through
evil agency.
In other respects the poem is not vitally changed; it is merely extended
and developed in the sense in which it was originally conceived. The
working-out of the idea of Faust’s deliverance Goethe reserved for the
Second Part.
The “Fragment” published in 1790 had passed almost unnoticed. The
completed First Part, on the contrary, was received with general
astonishment and admiration. Most people had begun to think of Goethe as
one who had practically closed his literary career. He was now on the
border-land between middle life and old age, and it had been supposed
that no further work of importance was to be expected from him. Yet here
was a poem of a depth and range that surpassed anything he had yet
produced. For the first time his countrymen began to realize the true
extent of his power, and, during the rest of his life, all who were
capable of sound critical judgment regarded him as incomparably the
greatest figure in the literature of Germany.
Two years after the publication of “Faust” he issued the third of his
prose romances, “Die Wahlverwandtschaften” (“Elective Affinities”). The
idea of this book had been for a long time in his mind. He originally
intended to make it the subject only of a short study, but he ultimately
felt that its full significance could be brought out only in an
elaborate tale. The work displays high imaginative energy, and must be
classed among the finest of Goethe’s prose writings. Its most striking
characteristic is the power with which he convinces us that the
relations he calls “elective affinities,” although they lead in the
story to no outward wrong-doing, must necessarily, in such
circumstances as he presents, have a deeply tragic meaning.
Another work belonging chiefly to this period is “Aus Meinem Leben.
Dichtung und Wahrheit” (“From My Life. Poetry and Truth”), the first two
parts of which appeared in 1811, the third in 1814. The fourth he did
not finish until 1831. The narrative brings the story of Goethe’s life
down to the time when he quitted Frankfort for Weimar. His object was to
describe the influences under which his character both as a man and as a
writer was formed. Hence the stress he lays on his relations to
Gretchen, Annette, Frederika, and Lili. To have omitted these figures
from his picture, or to have sketched them only slightly, would have
been to convey a wholly wrong impression of the conditions under which
his peculiar powers were developed. The style in which the story is told
is light, pliant, and graceful, and it has an especially delicate charm
in the passages relating to the maidens whom he has loved. Some details
of the narrative are incorrect, but that his reminiscences are
substantially accurate we know from the fact that they accord in the
main with his early works and letters. Goethe’s intellectual relations
even in youth were so far-reaching that “Dichtung und Wahrheit” is much
more than a record of his personal experience. It contains a full and
most vivid account of all the great currents of thought and feeling in
Germany during an important transitional period in the history of her
literature.
During the time when he was writing his autobiography, Goethe studied
with much interest Von Hammer’s translation of the Persian poet Hafiz.
This led to the production of the “West-Oestlicher Divan”
(“West-Eastern Divan”). The work was not published until 1819, but the
greater part of it was written in 1815. It consists of several series of
short poems, and is remarkable chiefly for the deep practical wisdom of
many of its verses, for the variety and perfection of its metres, and
for the splendour of its diction. The “West-Oestlicher Divan” became a
source of inspiration to several poets of the new generation--among
others, to Rückert, Platen, and Bodenstedt.
Meanwhile, Germany had been passing through a great and stirring period
of her history, and Goethe, like other people, had been anxiously
watching the progress of events. It cannot, however, be said that he was
one of those who in any way aided the national cause. This was not due
to lack of patriotism, for although he could not share the hatred with
which most of his countrymen at this time regarded France, he realized
fully of what vital importance it was for Germany that French supremacy
should be brought to an end. But it did not seem to him, when the War of
Liberation began, that the time had come for a final struggle for
national independence. Napoleon, notwithstanding his disasters in
Russia, still had vast resources at his disposal, and Goethe was
convinced that his military genius made him all but invincible. On the
other hand, the German sovereigns, as he had known them, had generally
been self-seeking and untrustworthy, and it appeared incredible to
Goethe that they would be able to act harmoniously for a high common
object. Happily, his forebodings proved to be without foundation, and he
was heartily pleased when he had to admit that he had been mistaken.
One small result of the great national uprising was that the Duke of
Weimar became a Grand Duke and received an accession of territory. As he
proposed to establish a constitutional system of government, it was
necessary that the method of administration should be considerably
modified; and Goethe, who was not consulted about the measures which
were about to be taken, supposed that there might be some change in his
own position. The Grand Duke, however, knew too well what he owed to his
old and loyal friend to do anything to his disadvantage. Early in the
winter of 1815, Goethe was informed that he had been appointed the First
Minister of State.
A few months afterwards, he had to mourn the loss of his wife. She died
on the 6th of June, 1816. This was a bitter grief to Goethe, who had
never loved her more warmly than during the last years of her life.