(/Aennchen/), of whom I can say nothing more than that she was
young, handsome, sprightly, loving, and so agreeable that she well
deserved to be set up for a time in the shrine of the heart as a little
saint, that she might receive all that reverence which it often causes
more pleasure to bestow than to receive. I saw her daily without
hinderance; she helped to prepare the meals I enjoyed; she brought, in
the evening at least, the wine I drank; and indeed our select club of
noon-day boarders was a warranty that the little house, which was
visited by few guests except during the fair, well merited its good
reputation. Opportunity and inclination were found for various kinds of
amusement. But, as she neither could nor dared go much out of the house,
the pastime was somewhat limited. We sang the songs of Zachariä; played
the "Duke Michael" of Krüger, in which a knotted handkerchief had to
take the place of the nightingale; and so, for a while, it went on quite
tolerably. But since such connections, the more innocent they are,
afford the less variety in the long run, I was seized with that wicked
distemper which seduces us to derive amusement from the torment of a
beloved one, and to domineer over a girl's devotedness with wanton and
tyrannical caprice. My ill humor at the failure of my poetical attempts,
at the apparent impossibility of coming to a clear understanding about
them, and at every thing else that might pinch me here and there, I
thought I might vent on her, because she truly loved me with all her
heart, and did whatever she could to please me. By unfounded and absurd
fits of jealousy, I destroyed our most delightful days, both for myself
and her. She endured it for a time with incredible patience, which I was
cruel enough to try to the uttermost. But, to my shame and despair, I
was at last forced to remark that her heart was alienated from me, and
that I might now have good ground for the madness in which I had
indulged without necessity and without cause. There were also terrible
scenes between us, in which I gained nothing; and I then first felt that
I had truly loved her, and could not bear to lose her. My passion grew,
and assumed all the forms of which it is capable under such
circumstances; nay, at last I even took up the /rôle/ which the
girl had hitherto played. I sought every thing possible in order to be
agreeable to her, even to procure her pleasure by means of others; for I
could not renounce the hope of winning her again. But it was too late! I
had lost her really; and the frenzy with which I revenged my fault upon
myself, by assaulting in various frantic ways my physical nature, in
order to inflict some hurt on my moral nature, contributed very much to
the bodily maladies under which I lost some of the best years of my
life: indeed, I should perchance have been completely ruined by this
loss, had not my poetic talent here shown itself particularly helpful
with its healing power.
Already, at many intervals before, I had clearly enough perceived my ill
conduct. I really pitied the poor child, when I saw her so thoroughly
wounded by me, without necessity. I pictured to myself so often and so
circumstantially her condition and my own, and, as a contrast, the
contented state of another couple in our company, that at last I could
not forbear treating this situation dramatically, as a painful and
instructive penance. Hence arose the oldest of my extant dramatic
labors, the little piece entitled, "Die Laune des Verliebten" ("The
Lover's Caprice"), in the simple nature of which one may at the same
time perceive the impetus of a boiling passion.
But, before this, a deep, significant, impulsive world had already
interested me. Through my adventure with Gretchen and its consequences,
I had early looked into the strange labyrinths by which civil society is
undermined. Religion, morals, law, rank, connections, custom, all rule
only the surface of city existence. The streets, bordered by splendid
houses, are kept neat; and every one behaves himself there properly
enough: but, indoors, it often seems only so much the more disordered;
and a smooth exterior, like a thin coat of mortar, plasters over many a
rotten wall that tumbles together overnight, and produces an effect the
more frightful, as it comes into the midst of a condition of repose. A
great many families, far and near, I had seen already, either
overwhelmed in ruin or kept miserably hanging on the brink of it, by
means of bankruptcies, divorces, seduced daughters, murders, house-
robberies, poisonings; and, young as I was, I had often, in such cases,
lent a hand for help and preservation. For as my frankness awakened
confidence; as my secrecy was proved; as my activity feared no
sacrifice, and loved best to exert itself in the most dangerous
affairs,--I had often enough found opportunity to mediate, to hush up,
to divert the lightning-flash, with every other assistance of the kind;
in the course of which, as well in my own person as through others, I
could not fail to come to the knowledge of many afflicting and
humiliating facts. To relieve myself I designed several plays, and wrote
the arguments [Footnote: "/Exposition/," in a dramatic sense,
properly means a statement of the events which take place before the
action of the play commences.--TRANS.] of most of them. But since the
intrigues were always obliged to be painful, and almost all these pieces
threatened a tragical conclusion, I let them drop one after another.
"Die Mitschuldigen" ("The Accomplices") is the only one that was
finished, the cheerful and burlesque tone of which upon the gloomy
family-ground appears as if accompanied by something causing anxiety; so
that, on the whole, it is painful in representation, although it pleases
in detached passages. The illegal deeds, harshly expressed, wound the
aesthetic and moral feeling, and the piece could therefore find no favor
on the German stage; although the imitations of it, which steered clear
of those rocks, were received with applause.
Both the above-mentioned pieces were, however, written from a more
elevated point of view, without my having been aware of it. They direct
us to a considerate forbearance in casting moral imputations, and in
somewhat harsh and coarse touches sportively express that most Christian
maxim, /Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone/.
Through this earnestness, which cast a gloom over my first pieces, I
committed the mistake of neglecting very favorable materials which lay
quite decidedly in my natural disposition. In the midst of these
serious, and, for a young man, fearful, experiences, was developed in me
a reckless humor, which feels itself superior to the moment, and not
only fears no danger, but rather wantonly courts it. The reason of this
lay in the exuberance of spirits in which the vigorous time of life so
much delights, and which, if it manifests itself in a frolicsome way,
causes much pleasure, both at the moment and in remembrance. These
things are so usual, that, in the vocabulary of our young university
friends, they are called /Suites/; and, on account of the close
similarity of signification, to say "play /suites/," means just the
same as to "play pranks." [Footnote: The real meaning of the passage is,
that the idiom "Possen reissen" is used also with the university word
"Suite," so that one can say "Suiten reissen."--TRANS.]
Such humorous acts of daring, brought on the theatre with wit and sense,
are of the greatest effect. They are distinguished from intrigue,
inasmuch as they are momentary, and that their aim, whenever they are to
have one, must not be remote. Beaumarchais has seized their full value,
and the effects of his "Figaro" spring pre-eminently from this. Whereas
such good-humored roguish and half-knavish pranks are practised with
personal risk for noble ends, the situations which arise from them are
aesthetically and morally considered of the greatest value for the
theatre; as, for instance, the opera of "The Water-Carrier" treats
perhaps the happiest subject which we have ever yet seen upon the stage.
To enliven the extreme tedium of daily life, I played off numberless
tricks of the sort, partly without any aim at all, partly in the service
of my friends, whom I liked to please. For myself, I could not say that
I had once acted in this designedly, nor did I ever happen to consider a
feat of the kind as a subject for art. Had I, however, seized upon and
elaborated such materials, which were so close at hand, my earliest
labors would have been more cheerful and available. Some incidents of
this kind occur indeed later, but isolated and without design. For since
the heart always lies nearer to us than the head, and gives us trouble,
whereas the latter knows how to set matters to rights, the affairs of
the heart had always appeared to me as the most important. I was never
weary of reflecting upon the transient nature of attachments, the
mutability of human character, moral sensuality, and all the heights and
depths, the combination of which in our nature may be considered as the
riddle of human life. Here, too, I sought to get rid of that which
troubled me, in a song, an epigram, in some kind of rhyme; which, since
they referred to the most private feelings and the most peculiar
circumstances, could scarcely interest any one but myself.
In the mean time, my external position had very much changed after the
lapse of a short time. Madame Böhme, after a long and melancholy
illness, had at last died: she had latterly ceased to admit me to her
presence. Her husband could not be very much satisfied with me: I seemed
to him not sufficiently industrious, and too frivolous. He especially
took it very ill of me, when it was told him, that at the lectures on
German Public Law, instead of taking proper notes, I had been drawing on
the margin of my note-book the personages presented to our notice in
them, such as the President of the Chamber, the Moderators and
Assessors, in strange wigs; and by this drollery had disturbed my
attentive neighbors and set them laughing. After the loss of his wife he
lived still more retired than before, and at last I shunned him in order
to avoid his reproaches. But it was peculiarly unfortunate that Gellert
would not use the power which he might have exercised over us. Indeed,
he had not time to play the father-confessor, and to inquire after the
character and faults of everybody: he therefore took the matter very
much in the lump, and thought to curb us by means of the church forms.
For this reason he commonly, when he admitted us to his presence, used
to lower his little head, and, in his weeping, winning voice, to ask us
whether we went regularly to church, who was our confessor, and whether
we took the holy communion? If we came off badly at this examination, we
were dismissed with lamentations: we were more vexed than edified, yet
could not help loving the man heartily.
On this occasion I cannot forbear recalling somewhat of my earlier
youth, in order to make it obvious that the great affairs of the
ecclesiastical religion must be carried on with order and coherence, if
they are to prove as fruitful as is expected. The Protestant service has
too little fulness and consistency to be able to hold the congregation
together; hence it easily happens that members secede from it, and
either form little congregations of their own, or, without
ecclesiastical connection, quietly carry on their citizen-life side by
side. Thus for a considerable time complaints were made that church-
goers were diminishing from year to year, and, just in the same ratio,
the persons who partook of the Lord's Supper. With respect to both, but
especially the latter, the cause lies close at hand; but who dares to
speak it out? We will make the attempt.
In moral and religious, as well as in physical and civil, matters, man
does not like to do any thing on the spur of the moment; he needs a
sequence from which results habit; what he is to love and to perform, he
cannot represent to himself as single or isolated; and, if he is to
repeat any thing willingly, it must not have become strange to him. If
the Protestant worship lacks fulness in general, so let it be
investigated in detail, and it will be found that the Protestant has too
few sacraments,--nay, indeed, he has only one in which he is himself an
actor,--the Lord's Supper; for baptism he sees only when it is performed
on others, and is not greatly edified by it. The sacraments are the
highest part of religion, the symbols to our senses of an extraordinary
divine favor and grace. In the Lord's Supper earthly lips are to receive
a divine Being embodied, and partake of a heavenly under the form of an
earthly nourishment. This import is the same in all kinds of Christian
churches: whether the sacrament is taken with more or less submission to
the mystery, with more or less accommodation as to that which is
intelligible, it always remains a great, holy thing, which in reality
takes the place of the possible or the impossible, the place of that
which man can neither attain nor do without. But such a sacrament should
not stand alone: no Christian can partake of it with the true joy for
which it is given, if the symbolical or sacramental sense is not
fostered within him. He must be accustomed to regard the inner religion
of the heart and that of the external church as perfectly one, as the
great universal sacrament, which again divides itself into so many
others, and communicates to these parts its holiness,
indestructibleness, and eternity.
Here a youthful pair join hands, not for a passing salutation or for the
dance: the priest pronounces his blessing upon them, and the bond is
indissoluble. It is not long before this wedded pair bring a likeness to
the threshold of the altar: it is purified with holy water, and so
incorporated into the church, that it cannot forfeit this benefit but
through the most monstrous apostasy. The child in the course of life
goes on progressing in earthly things of his own accord, in heavenly
things he must be instructed. Does it prove on examination that this has
been fully done, he is now received into the bosom of the church as an
actual citizen, as a true and voluntary professor, not without outward
tokens of the weightiness of this act. Now, only, he is decidedly a
Christian, now for the first time he knows his advantages and also his
duties. But, in the mean time, a great deal that is strange has happened
to him as a man: through instruction and affliction he has come to know
how critical appears the state of his inner self, and there will
constantly be a question of doctrines and of transgressions; but
punishment shall no longer take place. For here, in the infinite
confusion in which he must entangle himself, amid the conflict of
natural and religious claims, an admirable expedient is given him, in
confiding his deeds and misdeeds, his infirmities and doubts, to a
worthy man, appointed expressly for that purpose, who knows how to calm,
to warn, to strengthen him, to chasten him likewise by symbolical
punishments, and at last, by a complete washing away of his guilt, to
render him happy, and to give him back, pure and cleansed, the tablet of
his manhood. Thus prepared, and purely set at rest by several
sacramental acts, which on closer examination branch forth again into
minuter sacramental traits, he kneels down to receive the host; and,
that the mystery of this high act may be still enhanced, he sees the
chalice only in the distance: it is no common eating and drinking that
satisfies, it is a heavenly feast, which makes him thirst after heavenly
drink.
Yet let not the youth believe that this is all he has to do; let not
even the man believe it. In earthly relations we are at last accustomed
to depend on ourselves; and, even there, knowledge, understanding, and
character will not always suffice: in heavenly things, on the contrary,
we have never finished learning. The higher feeling within us, which
often finds itself not even truly at home, is, besides, oppressed by so
much from without, that our own power hardly administers all that is
necessary for counsel, consolation, and help. But, to this end, that
remedy is instituted for our whole life; and an intelligent, pious man
is continually waiting to show the right way to the wanderers, and to
relieve the distressed.
And what has been so well tried through the whole life, is now to show
forth all its healing power with tenfold activity at the gate of Death.
According to a trustful custom, inculcated from youth upwards, the dying
man receives with fervor those symbolical, significant assurances; and
there, where every earthly warranty fails, he is assured, by a heavenly
one, of a blessed existence for all eternity. He feels perfectly
convinced that neither a hostile element nor a malignant spirit can
hinder him from clothing himself with a glorified body, so that, in
immediate relation with the Godhead, he may partake of the boundless
happiness which flows forth from him.
Then, in conclusion, that the whole may be made holy, the feet also are
anointed and blessed. They are to feel, even in the event of possible
recovery, a repugnance to touching this earthly, hard, impenetrable
soil. A wonderful elasticity is to be imparted to them, by which they
spurn from under them the clod of earth which hitherto attracted them.
And so, through a brilliant cycle of equally holy acts, the beauty of
which we have only briefly hinted at, the cradle and the grave, however
far asunder they may chance to be, are joined in one continuous circle.
But all these spiritual wonders spring not, like other fruits, from the
natural soil, where they can neither be sown nor planted nor cherished.
We must supplicate for them from another region,--a thing which cannot
be done by all persons nor at all times. Here we meet the highest of
these symbols, derived from pious tradition. We are told that one man
may be more favored, blessed, and sanctified from above than another.
But, that this may not appear as a natural gift, this great boon, bound
up with a heavy duty, must be communicated to others by one authorized
person to another; and the greatest good that a man can attain, without
his having to obtain it by his own wrestling or grasping, must be
preserved and perpetuated on earth by spiritual inheritance. In the very
ordination of the priest is comprehended all that is necessary for the
effectual solemnizing of those holy acts by which the multitude receive
grace, without any other activity being needful on their part than that
of faith and implicit confidence. And thus the priest joins the line of
his predecessors and successors, in the circle of those anointed with
him, representing the highest source of blessings, so much the more
gloriously, as it is not he, the priest, whom we reverence, but his
office: it is not his nod to which we bow the knee, but the blessing
which he imparts, and which seems the more holy, and to come the more
immediately from heaven, because the earthly instrument cannot at all
weaken or invalidate it by its own sinful, nay, wicked, nature.
How is this truly spiritual connection shattered to pieces in
Protestantism, by part of the above-mentioned symbols being declared
apocryphal, and only a few canonical!--and how, by their indifference to
one of these, will they prepare us for the high dignity of the others?
In my time I had been confided to the religious instruction of a good
old infirm clergyman, who had been confessor of the family for many
years. The "Catechism," a "Paraphrase" of it, and the "Scheme of
Salvation," I had at my finger's ends: I lacked not one of the strongly
proving biblical texts, but from all this I reaped no fruit; for, as
they assured me that the honest old man arranged his chief examimation
according to an old set form, I lost all pleasure and inclination for
the business, spent the last week in all sorts of diversions, laid in my
hat the loose leaves borrowed from an older friend, who had gotten them
from the clergyman, and unfeelingly and senselessly read aloud all that
I should have known how to utter with feeling and conviction.
But I found my good intention and my aspirations in this important
matter still more paralyzed by a dry, spiritless routine, when I was now
to approach the confessional. I was indeed conscious of having many
failings, but no great faults; and that very consciousness diminished
them, since it directed me to the moral strength which lay within me,
and which, with resolution and perseverance, was at last to become
master over the old Adam. We were taught that we were much better than
the Catholics for the very reason, that we were not obliged to confess
any thing in particular in the confessional,--nay, that this would not
be at all proper, even if we wished to do it. I did not like this at
all; for I had the strangest religious doubts, which I would readily
have had cleared up on such an occasion. Now, as this was not to be
done, I composed a confession for myself, which, while it well expressed
my state of mind, was to confess to an intelligent man, in general
terms, that which I was forbidden to tell him in detail. But when I
entered the old choir of the Barefoot Friars, when I approached the
strange latticed closets in which the reverend gentlemen used to be
found for that purpose, when the sexton opened the door for me, when I
now saw myself shut up in the narrow place face to face with my
spiritual grandsire, and he bade me welcome with his weak, nasal voice,
all the light of my mind and heart was extinguished at once, the well-
conned confession-speech would not cross my lips: in my embarrassment I
opened the book I had in my hand, and read from it the first short form
I saw, which was so general, that anybody might have spoken it with
quite a safe conscience. I received absolution, and withdrew neither
warm nor cold; went the next day with my parents to the Table of the
Lord, and, for a few days, behaved myself as was becoming after so holy
an act.
In the sequel, however, there came over me that evil, which, from the
fact of our religion being complicated by various dogmas, and founded on
texts of scripture which admit of several interpretations, attacks
scrupulous men in such a manner, that it brings on a hypochondriacal
condition, and raises this to its highest point, to fixed ideas. I have
known several men, who, though their manner of thinking and living was
perfectly rational, could not free themselves from thinking about the
sin against the Holy Ghost, and from the fear that they had committed
it. A similar trouble threatened me on the subject of the communion; for
the text, that one who unworthily partakes of the sacrament /eateth
and drinketh damnation to himself/, had, very early, already made a
monstrous impression upon me. Every fearful thing that I had read in the
histories of the Middle Ages, of the judgments of God, of those most
strange ordeals, by red-hot iron, flaming fire, swelling water, and even
what the Bible tells us of the draught which agrees well with the
innocent, but puffs up and bursts the guilty,--all this pictured itself
to my imagination, and formed itself into the most frightful
combinations; since false vows, hypocrisy, perjury, blasphemy, all
seemed to weigh down the unworthy person at this most holy act, which
was so much the more horrible, as no one could dare to pronounce himself
worthy: and the forgiveness of sins, by which every thing was to be at
last; done away, was found limited by so many conditions, that one could
not with certainty dare appropriate it to one's self.
This gloomy scruple troubled me to such a degree, and the expedient
which they would represent to me as sufficient seemed so bald and
feeble, that it gave the bugbear only a more fearful aspect; and, as
soon as I had reached Leipzig, I tried to free myself altogether from my
connection with the church. How oppressive, then, must have been to me
the exhortations of Gellert, whom, considering the generally laconic
style with which he was obliged to repel our obtrusiveness, I was
unwilling to trouble with such singular questions, and the less so as in
my more cheerful hours I was myself ashamed of them, and at last left
completely behind me this strange anguish of conscience, together with
church and altar.