of higher rank were to be saved, a veil must also be cast over the
faults of the more lowly. All this was of no avail. She had scarcely
left than I again abandoned myself to my grief, and ever recalled
alternately the images, both of my affection and passion, and of the
present and possible misfortune. I repeated to myself tale after tale,
saw only unhappiness following unhappiness, and did not fail in
particular to make Gretchen and myself truly wretched.
The family friend had ordered me to remain in my room, and have nothing
to do with any one but the family. This was just what I wanted, for I
found myself best alone. My mother and sister came to see me from time
to time, and did not fail to assist me vigorously with all sorts of good
consolation; nay, even on the second day they came in the name of my
father, who was now better informed, to offer me a perfect amnesty,
which indeed I gratefully accepted: but the proposal that I should go
out with him and look at the insignia of the empire, which were now
exposed to the curious, I stubbornly rejected; and I asserted that I
wanted to know nothing, either of the world or of the Roman Empire, till
I was informed how that distressing affair, which for me could have no
further consequences, had turned out for my poor acquaintance. They had
nothing to say on this head, and left me alone. Yet the next day some
further attempts were made to get me out of the house, and excite in me
a sympathy for the public ceremonies. In vain! neither the great
galaday, nor what happened on the occasion of so many elevations of
rank, nor the public table of the emperor and king,--in short, nothing
could move me. The Elector of the Palatinate might come and wait on both
their majesties; these might visit the electors; the last electoral
sitting might be attended for the despatch of business in arrear, and
the renewal of the electoral union,--nothing could call me forth from my
passionate solitude. I let the bells ring for the rejoicings, the
emperor repair to the Capuchin Church, the electors and emperor depart,
without on that account moving one step from my chamber. The final
cannonading, immoderate as it might be, did not arouse me; and as the
smoke of the powder dispersed, and the sound died away, so had all this
glory vanished from my soul.
I now experienced no satisfaction except in ruminating on my misery, and
in a thousand-fold imaginary multiplication of it. My whole inventive
faculty, my poetry and rhetoric, had pitched on this diseased spot, and
threatened, precisely by means of this vitality, to involve body and
soul into an incurable disorder. In this melancholy condition nothing
more seemed to me worth a desire, nothing worth a wish. An infinite
yearning, indeed, seized me at times to know how it had gone with my
poor friends and my beloved, what had been the result of a stricter
scrutiny, how far they were implicated in those crimes, or had been
found guiltless. This also I circumstantially painted to myself in the
most various ways, and did not fail to hold them as innocent and truly
unfortunate. Sometimes I longed to see myself freed from this
uncertainty, and wrote vehemently threatening letters to the family
friend, insisting that he should not withhold from me the further
progress of the affair. Sometimes I tore them up again, from the fear of
learning my unhappiness quite distinctly, and of losing the principal
consolation with which hitherto I had alternately tormented and
supported myself.
Thus I passed both day and night in great disquiet, in raving and
lassitude; so that I felt happy at last when a bodily illness seized me
with considerable violence, when they had to call in the help of a
physician, and think of every way to quiet me. They supposed that they
could do it generally by the sacred assurance that all who were more or
less involved in the guilt had been treated with the greatest
forbearance; that my nearest friends, being as good as innocent, had
been dismissed with a slight reprimand; and that Gretchen had retired
from the city, and had returned to her own home. They lingered the most
over this last point, and I did not take it in the best part; for I
could discover in it, not a voluntary departure, but only a shameful
banishment. My bodily and mental condition was not improved by this: my
distress now only augmented; and I had time enough to torment myself by
picturing the strangest romance of sad events, and an inevitably
tragical catastrophe.
PART THE SECOND.
OF WHAT ONE WISHES IN YOUTH, WHEN OLD HE HAS IN ABUNDANCE.
SIXTH BOOK.
Thus I felt urged alternately to promote and to retard my recovery; and
a certain secret chagrin was now added to my other sensations, for I
plainly perceived that I was watched, that they were loath to hand me
any sealed paper without taking notice what effect it produced, whether
I kept it secret, whether I laid it down open and the like. I therefore
conjectured that Pylades, or one of the cousins, or even Gretchen
herself, might have attempted to write to me, either to give or to
obtain information. In addition to my sorrow, I was now more cross than
hitherto, and had again fresh opportunities to exercise my conjectures,
and to mislead myself into the strangest combinations.
It was not long before they gave me a special overseer. Fortunately it
was a man whom I loved and valued. He had held the place of tutor in the
family of one of our friends, and his former pupil had gone alone to the
university. He often visited me in my sad condition; and they at last
found nothing more natural than to give him a chamber next to mine, as
he was then to provide me with employment, pacify me, and, as I was well
aware, keep his eye on me. Still, as I esteemed him from my heart, and
had already confided many things to him, though not my affection for
Gretchen, I determined so much the more to be perfectly candid and
straightforward with him; as it was intolerable to me to live in daily
intercourse with any one, and at the same time to stand on an uncertain,
constrained footing with him. It was not long, then, before I spoke to
him about the matter, refreshed myself by the relation and repetition of
the minutest circumstances of my past happiness, and thus gained so
much, that he, like a sensible man, saw it would be better to make me
acquainted with the issue of the story, and that, too, in its details
and particulars, so that I might be clear as to the whole, and that,
with earnestness and zeal, I might be persuaded of the necessity of
composing myself, throwing the past behind me, and beginning a new life.
First he confided to me who the other young people of quality were who
had allowed themselves to be seduced, at the outset, into daring hoaxes,
then into sportive breaches of police, afterwards into frolicsome
impositions on others, and other such dangerous matters. Thus actually
had arisen a little conspiracy, which unprincipled men had joined, who,
by forging papers and counterfeiting signatures, had perpetrated many
criminal acts, and had still more criminal matters in preparation. The
cousins, for whom I at last impatiently inquired, had been found to be
quite innocent, only very generally acquainted with those others, and
not at all implicated with them. My client, owing to my recommendation
of whom I had been tracked, was one of the worst, and had sued for that
office chiefly that he might undertake or conceal certain villanies.
After all this, I could at last contain myself no longer, and asked what
had become of Gretchen, for whom I, once for all, confessed the
strongest attachment. My friend shook his head and smiled. "Make
yourself easy," replied he: "this girl has passed her examination very
well, and has borne off honorable testimony to that effect. They could
discover nothing in her but what was good and amiable: she even won the
favor of those who questioned her, and could not refuse her desire of
removing from the city. Even what she has confessed regarding you, my
friend, does her honor: I have read her deposition in the secret reports
myself, and seen her signature."--"The signature!" exclaimed I, "which
makes me so happy and so miserable. What has she confessed, then? What
has she signed?" My friend delayed answering, but the cheerfulness of
his face showed me that he concealed nothing dangerous." If you must
know, then," replied he at last, "when she was asked about you, and her
intercourse with you, she said quite frankly, 'I cannot deny that I have
seen him often and with pleasure; but I have always treated him as a
child, and my affection for him was truly that of a sister. In many
cases I have given him good advice; and, instead of instigating him to
any equivocal action, I have hindered him from taking part in wanton
tricks, which might have brought him into trouble.'"
My friend still went on making Gretchen speak like a governess; but I
had already for some time ceased to listen to him, for I was terribly
affronted that she had set me down in the reports as a child, and
believed myself at once cured of all passion for her. I even hastily
assured my friend that all was now over. I also spoke no more of her,
named her no more: but I could not leave off the bad habit of thinking
about her, and of recalling her form, her air, her demeanor; though now,
in fact, all appeared to me in quite another light. I felt it
intolerable that a girl, at the most only a couple of years older than
me, should regard me as a child; while I conceived I passed with her for
a very sensible and clever youth. Her cold and repelling manner, which
had before so charmed me, now seemed to me quite repugnant: the
familiarities which she had allowed herself to take with me, but had not
permitted me to return, were altogether odious. Yet all would have been
well enough, if by signing that poetical love-letter, in which she had
confessed a formal attachment to me, she had not given me a right to
regard her as a sly and selfish coquette. Her masquerading it at the
milliner's, too, no longer seemed to me so innocent; and I turned these
annoying reflections over and over within myself until I had entirely
stripped her of all her amiable qualities. My judgment was convinced,
and I thought I must cast her away; but her image!--her image gave me
the lie as often as it again hovered before me, which indeed happened
often enough.
Nevertheless, this arrow with its barbed hooks was torn out of my heart;
and the question then was, how the inward sanative power of youth could
be brought to one's aid? I really put on the man; and the first thing
instantly laid aside was the weeping and raving, which I now regarded as
childish in the highest degree. A great stride for the better! For I had
often, half the night through, given myself up to this grief with the
greatest violence; so that at last, from my tears and sobbing, I came to
such a point that I could scarcely swallow any longer; eating and
drinking became painful to me; and my chest, which was so nearly
concerned, seemed to suffer. The vexation I had constantly felt since
the discovery made me banish every weakness. It seemed to me something
frightful that I had sacrificed sleep, repose, and health for the sake
of a girl who was pleased to consider me a babe, and to imagine herself,
with respect to me, something very much like a nurse.
These depressing reflections, as I was soon convinced, were only to be
banished by activity; but of what was I to take hold? I had, indeed,
much to make up for in many things, and to prepare myself, in more than
one sense, for the university, which I was now to attend; but I relished
and accomplished nothing. Much appeared to me familiar and trivial: for
grounding myself, in several respects, I found neither strength within
nor opportunity without; and I therefore suffered myself to be moved by
the taste of my good room-neighbor, to a study which was altogether new
and strange to me, and which for a long time offered me a wide field of
information and thought. For my friend began to make me acquainted with
the secrets of philosophy. He had studied in Jena, under Daries, and,
possessing a well-regulated mind, had acutely seized the relations of
that doctrine, which he now sought to impart to me. But, unfortunately,
these things would not hang together in such a fashion in my brain. I
put questions, which he promised to answer afterwards: I made demands,
which he promised to satisfy in future. But our most important
difference was this: that I maintained a separate philosophy was not
necessary, as the whole of it was already contained in religion and
poetry. This he would by no means allow, but rather tried to prove to me
that these must first be founded on philosophy; which I stubbornly
denied, and, at every step in the progress of our discussions, found
arguments for my opinion. For as in poetry a certain faith in the
impossible, and as in religion a like faith in the inscrutable, must
have a place, the philosophers appeared to me to be in a very false
position who would demonstrate and explain both of them from their own
field of vision. Besides, it was very quickly proved, from the history
of philosophy, that one always sought a ground different from that of
the other, and that the sceptic, in the end, pronounced every thing
groundless and useless.
However, this very history of philosophy, which my friend was compelled
to go over with me, because I could learn nothing from dogmatical
discourse, amused me very much, but only on this account, that one
doctrine or opinion seemed to me as good as another, so far, at least,
as I was capable of penetrating into it. With the most ancient men and
schools I was best pleased, because poetry, religion, and philosophy
were completely combined into one; and I only maintained that first
opinion of mine with the more animation, when the Book of Job and the
Song and Proverbs of Solomon, as well as the lays of Orpheus and Hesiod,
seemed to bear valid witness in its favor. My friend had taken the
smaller work of Brucker as the foundation of his discourse; and, the
farther we went on, the less I could make of it. I could not clearly see
what the first Greek philosophers would have. Socrates I esteemed as an
excellent, wise man, who in his life and death might well be compared
with Christ. His disciples, on the other hand, seemed to me to bear a
strong resemblance to the apostles, who disagreed immediately after
their Master's death, when each manifestly recognized only a limited
view as the right one. Neither the keenness of Aristotle nor the fulness
of Plato produced the least fruit in me. For the Stoics, on the
contrary, I had already conceived some affection, and even procured
Epictetus, whom I studied with much interest. My friend unwillingly let
me have my way in this one-sidedness, from which he could not draw me;
for, in spite of his varied studies, he did not know how to bring the
leading question into a narrow compass. He need only have said to me
that in life action is every thing, and that joy and sorrow come of
themselves. However, youth should be allowed its own course: it does not
stick to false maxims very long; life soon tears or charms it away
again.
The season had become fine: we often went together into the open air,
and visited the places of amusement which surrounded the city in great
numbers. But it was precisely here that matters went worse with me; for
I still saw the ghosts of the cousins everywhere, and feared, now here,
now there, to see one of them step forward. Even the most indifferent
glances of men annoyed me. I had lost that unconscious happiness of
wandering about unknown and unblamed, and of thinking of no observer,
even in the greatest crowds. Now hypochondriacal fancies began to
torment me, as if I attracted the attention of the people, as if their
eyes were turned on my demeanor, to fix it on their memories, to scan
and to find fault.
I therefore drew my friend into the woods; and, while I shunned the
monotonous firs, I sought those fine leafy groves, which do not indeed
spread far in the district, but are yet of sufficient compass for a poor
wounded heart to hide itself. In the remotest depth of the forest I
sought out a solemn spot, where the oldest oaks and beeches formed a
large, noble, shaded space. The ground was somewhat sloping, and made
the worth of the old trunks only the more perceptible. Round this open
circle closed the densest thickets, from which the mossy rocks mightily
and venerably peered forth, and made a rapid fall for a copious brook.
Scarcely had I dragged hither my friend, who would rather have been in
the open country by the stream, among men, when he playfully assured me
that I showed myself a true German. He related to me circumstantially,
out of Tacitus, how our ancestors found pleasure in the feelings which
Nature so provides for us, in such solitudes, with her inartificial
architecture. He had not been long discoursing of this, when I
exclaimed, "Oh! why did not this precious spot lie in a deeper
wilderness! why may we not train a hedge around it, to hallow and
separate from the world both it and ourselves! Surely there is no more
beautiful adoration of the Deity than that which needs no image, but
which springs up in our bosom merely from the intercourse with nature!"
What I then felt is still present to my mind: what I said I know not how
to recall. Thus much, however, is certain, that the undetermined, widely
expanding feelings of youth and of uncultivated nations are alone
adapted to the sublime, which, if it is to be excited in us through
external objects, formless, or moulded into incomprehensible forms, must
surround us with a greatness to which we are not equal.
All men, more or less, have such a disposition, and seek to satisfy this
noble want in various ways. But as the sublime is easily produced by
twilight and night, when objects are blended, it is, on the other hand,
scared away by the day, which separates and sunders every thing; and so
must it also be destroyed by every increase of cultivation, if it be not
fortunate enough to take refuge with the beautiful, and unite itself
closely with it, whereby both become equally undying and indestructible.
The brief moments of such enjoyments were still more shortened by my
meditative friend: but, when I turned back into the world, it was
altogether in vain that I sought, among the bright and barren objects
around, again to arouse such feelings within me; nay, I could scarcely
retain even the remembrance of them. My heart, however, was too far
spoiled to be able to compose itself: it had loved, and the object was
snatched away from it; it had lived, and life to it was embittered. A
friend who makes it too perceptible that he designs to improve you,
excites no feeling of comfort; while a woman who is forming you, while
she seems to spoil you, is adored as a heavenly, joy-bringing being. But
that form in which the idea of beauty manifested itself to me had
vanished into distance; it often visited me under the shade of my oak-
trees, but I could not hold it fast: and I felt a powerful impulse to
seek something similar in the distance.
I had imperceptibly accustomed, nay, compelled, my friend and overseer
to leave me alone; for, even in my sacred grove, those undefined,
gigantic feelings were not sufficient for me. The eye was, above all
others, the organ by which I seized the world. I had, from childhood,
lived among painters, and had accustomed myself to look at objects, as
they did, with reference to art. Now I was left to myself and to
solitude, this gift, half natural, half acquired, made its appearance.
Wherever I looked, I saw a picture; and whatever struck me, whatever
gave me delight, I wished to fix, and began, in the most awkward manner,
to draw after nature. To this end I lacked nothing less than every
thing; yet, though without any technical means, I obstinately persisted
in trying to imitate the most magnificent things that offered themselves
to my sight. Thus, to be sure, I acquired the faculty of paying a great
attention to objects; but I only seized them as a whole, so far as they
produced an effect: and, little as Nature had meant me for a descriptive
poet, just as little would she grant me the capacity of a draughtsman
for details. This, however, being the only way left me of uttering my
thoughts, I stuck to it with so much stubbornness, nay, even with
melancholy, that I always continued my labors the more zealously the
less I saw they produced.
But I will not deny that there was a certain mixture of roguery; for I
had remarked, that if I chose for an irksome study a half-shaded old
trunk, to the hugely curved roots of which clung well-lit fern, combined
with twinkling maiden-hair, my friend, who knew from experience that I
should not be disengaged in less than an hour, commonly resolved to
seek, with his books, some other pleasant little spot. Now nothing
disturbed me in prosecuting my taste, which was so much the more active,
as my paper was endeared to me by the circumstance that I had accustomed
myself to see in it, not so much what stood upon it, as what I had been
thinking of at any time and hour when I drew. Thus plants and flowers of
the commonest kind may form a charming diary for us, because nothing
that calls back the remembrance of a happy moment can be insignificant;
and even now it would be hard for me to destroy as worthless many things
of the kind that have remained to me from different epochs, because they
transport me immediately to those times which I like to remember,
although not without melancholy.
But, if such drawings may have had any thing of interest in themselves,
they were indebted for this advantage to the sympathy and attention of
my father. He, informed by my overseer that I had become gradually
reconciled to my condition, and, in particular, had applied myself
passionately to drawing from nature, was very well satisfied,--partly
because he himself set a high value on drawing and painting, partly
because gossip Seekatz had once said to him, that it was a pity I was
not destined for a painter. But here again the peculiarities of father
and son came into conflict: for it was almost impossible for me to make
use of a good, white, perfectly clean sheet of paper; gray old leaves,
even if scribbled over on one side already, charmed me most, just as if
my awkwardness had feared the touchstone of a white ground. Nor were any
of my drawings quite finished; and how should I have executed a whole,
which indeed I saw with my eyes, but did not comprehend, and how an
individual object, which I had neither skill nor patience to follow out?
My father's mode of training me in this respect was really to be
admired. He kindly asked for my attempts, and drew lines round every
imperfect sketch. He wished, by this means, to compel me to completeness
and fulness of detail. The irregular leaves he cut straight, and thus
made the beginning of a collection, in which he wished, at some future
time, to rejoice at the progress of his son. It was, therefore, by no
means disagreeable to him when my wild, restless disposition sent me
roving about the country: he rather seemed pleased when I brought back a
parcel of drawings on which he could exercise his patience, and in some
measure strengthen his hopes.
They no longer said that I might relapse into my former attachments and
connections: they left me by degrees perfect liberty. By accidental
inducements and in accidental society I undertook many journeys to the
mountain-range, which, from my childhood, had stood so distant and
solemn before me. Thus we visited Homburg, Kroneburg, ascended the
Feldberg, from which the prospect invited us still farther and farther
into the distance. Königstein, too, was not left unvisited; Wiesbaden,
Schwalbach, with its environs, occupied us many days; we reached the
Rhine, which, from the heights, we had seen winding along far off. Mentz
astonished us, but could not chain a youthful mind which was running
into the open country; we were delighted with the situation of Biberich;
and, contented and happy, we resumed our journey home.