Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  “I have had occasion to notice,” continued the master, “how you have given thorough attention to the subject of the ligaments, and very properly, for with them the lifeless heap of bones first begins to live again for us. Ezekiel had first to see his field of bones join and unite themselves in this fashion before the limbs could move, the arms feel about and the feet stand up. Here is pliable material, small rods, and aught else that may be required; now try your luck!”

  The new pupil collected his thoughts, and when he began to examine the portions of bone more closely, he saw that they were carved artificially from wood.

  “I have,” remarked the teacher, “an expert man, whose art was going in quest of bread, when the saints and martyrs whom he had been accustomed to carve no longer found a sale. I therefore induced him to master the art of skeleton-making, and to practise in life-size and on a smaller scale after nature.”

  Our friend now did his best, and earned the approbation of his adviser. It was a pleasure to him to test how strong or weak his recollection was, and he found to his satisfaction and astonishment that it was called up again by action. He conceived a passion for this work, and begged of the master to be admitted into his house. Here he worked incessantly; and the bones, large and small, of the arm, were very quickly united. But from here were to proceed the sinews and muscles, and it seemed a complete impossibility to readjust in this way the whole body similarly in all its parts. But on this point the teacher consoled him by showing him the process of multiplication by casting, since otherwise the imitation, and the perfection of the models, required a fresh effort again and fresh attention.

  Everything to which man applies himself in earnest is a constant toil; it is only by emulous industry that he contrives to make head against it. Wilhelm too soon got over the condition of feeling his inability, which is always a kind of despair, and felt himself at home in the work.

  “I am glad,” said the master, “that you are able to adapt yourself to this mode of proceeding, and that you give me evidence of how fruitful such a method is, even if it is not recognized by the masters of the faculty. A school there must be, and this will chiefly occupy itself with tradition: what has taken place heretofore must continue to take place in the future: this is good, and must and shall be. But the point where the school stops short must be marked and understood; what is living must be grasped and made use of, but quietly, or otherwise one is hindered, and hinders others. You have felt in a living way, and show it practically. Joining is more than separating, imitation more than inspection.”

  Wilhelm now learned that such models were, privately, already widely distributed, but to his greatest astonishment he heard that the stock in hand was to be packed up to go abroad. This sterling artist had already established relations with Lothario and those friends of his: the establishment of such a school in those self-developing provinces was considered to be especially fitting, nay, necessary in the highest degree, especially amongst naturally moral and right-thinking people, for whom actual dissection has always something cannibal-like.

  “If you grant that the greater number of physicians and surgeons retain in their minds, and believe that they will get on with, only a general impression of the dissected human body, then such models will assuredly avail to revive in their minds the gradually vanishing forms, and to keep alive in them just what is necessary. Nay, if it comes to inclination for and love of the subject, the most delicate results of the science of dissection may be imitated. Pencil, brush and graver already accomplish this.”

  Here he opened a side cupboard, and displayed to view the facial nerves, imitated in the most wonderful manner. “This, alas,” he said, “is the last achievement of a young assistant who died, who inspired me with the best hopes of carrying out my ideas, and usefully promoting my aims.”

  A great deal was said between the two on the influence of this mode of treatment in many directions: its relations, too, towards plastic art were the subject of noteworthy discussion. A strikingly beautiful example of how to work forwards and backwards in this way was supplied by this conversation. The master had cast, in a shapely mass, a beautiful torso of an antique youth, and was now skilfully trying to divest the ideal form of the epidermis, to change the beautiful shapes of life into a veritable preparation of muscular tissue.

  “Here, too, means and end are too close together, and I am free to confess that for the sake of the means I have neglected the end, yet not altogether through my own fault. Properly speaking, man is man without covering: the sculptor stands directly at the side of the Elohim, when they changed the shapeless repulsive clay into the most glorious of forms: such divine thoughts must he cherish. To the pure all things are pure; why not the direct design of God in nature? But one cannot ask this from this age; fig-leaves and skins of beasts cannot be dispensed with, and this is still much too little. I had scarcely learned anything when worthy men in dressing-gowns and wide sleeves and innumerable folds were required of me. So I withdrew, and since I dared not apply what I knew to the expression of the beautiful, I chose to be useful; and this too is a matter of importance. If my wish is fulfilled, if it is recognized as practicable that, as in so many other things, imitating and the imitation assist imagination and memory in those cases where the human mind loses a certain freshness: then assuredly many a plastic artist will turn round as I have done, and rather join you in working than carry on a repulsive trade against conviction and feeling.”

  And on this followed the observation that it was beautiful to observe how art and handicraft were always, as it were, in equilibrium, and so closely connected and always related to each other, that art cannot sink without passing into praiseworthy handiwork, nor handiwork elevate itself without becoming artistic.

  These two persons adapted and accustomed themselves to each other so completely, that they parted with regret only when it was necessary to pursue their own several important aims.

  “But that it may not be thought,” said the master, “that we shut ourselves out from nature, and propose to deny her, we are developing fresh views. Across the sea there, where certain humane theories are ever on the increase, it is at length found necessary, on the abolition of capital punishment, to build extensive castles, walled enclosures, to protect the peaceful citizen against crime, and to prevent crime from prevailing and doing its work with impunity. There, my friend, in these melancholy precincts, let us reserve a chapel for Æsculapius. There, isolated as the punishment itself, our knowledge of such subjects will be continually refreshed; for the dissection of them does not injure our human feeling, nor does the sight of them — as happened to you with that beautiful and innocent arm — stay the knife in the hand whilst all eagerness for knowledge is extinguished in the feeling of humanity.”

  “This,” said Wilhelm, “was our last conversation. I saw the well-filled cases sail down the river, wishing them a prosperous journey, and ourselves a happy meeting at their unpacking.”

  Our friend had ended this narrative as he had related it, with spirit and enthusiasm, and particularly with a certain vivacity of voice and speech that he had not been prone to of late. But when at the end of his tale he thought he noticed that Lenardo, preoccupied and absent, did not seem to follow his remarks, while on the other hand Friedrich had smiled, and sometimes almost shaken his head, such scanty sympathy with a matter that seemed to him so important so struck this sensitive scrutinizer of gestures that he could not refrain from taxing his friends with it.

  Friedrich explained himself quite simply and straightforwardly: he could allow that the scheme was praiseworthy and good, but could by no means consider it so important; and least of all as practicable. This opinion he tried to support with reasons of a sort that always strike a person who is taken up with a subject, and counts, perhaps more than one may think, on carrying it through, as offensive; consequently then our plastic anatomist, after seeming to listen patiently for a time, answered with vivacity:

  “You have advantages, my good
Friedrich, which no one will deny — I least of any; but now you talk like ordinary people in an ordinary way. In what is new we see only the strangeness, but to discern at once in the strangeness what is important, needs something more. For you, everything must first come to pass in deed; it must happen in order to be possible; must come before the eyes to be real: and then you let it pass like anything else. What you bring forward I already hear beforehand as repeated by the initiated and by laymen; by the former from prejudice and indolence, by the latter from indifference. A scheme like the above-mentioned can, perhaps, only be carried out in a new world, where the mind must gather courage to seek out new remedies for an inevitable need, for of available ones there is a total absence. To that end is invention awakened, to that end intrepidity and steadfastness combine with necessity.

  “Every medical man, whether he goes to work with medicines or with his hand, is nothing without the most precise knowledge of the outward and the inner members of man; and it by no means suffices to have acquired a transitory knowledge of this in schools, and to have got a superficial idea of the shape, position and connection of the innumerable portions of his inscrutable organism. Day by day, the physician who is in earnest ought to practise himself in the repetition of this knowledge, of this contemplation; to seek all opportunities constantly to renew to his mind and eye the interdependence of this living miracle. If he knew his own interest, he would, if he lacked time for such labors, take an anatomist into his pay, who under his instructions, quietly working for him in the presence as it were of all the intricacies of the most complicated life, would at once be able to answer the most difficult questions.

  “The more one gets to see this, the more vividly, energetically and passionately will the study of dissection be pursued. But the means will diminish in just the same proportion; the subjects, the bodies on which such studies must be based, will fail, and become scarcer and dearer, and there will arise a veritable conflict between living and dead.

  “In the old world it is all routine, where they will always want to treat the new after the old fashion, and what is growing in a method that is rigid. This conflict which I proclaim between the dead and living will be for life and death; there will be panic, there will be investigation, making of laws and nothing effected. Foresight and prohibition in such cases are of no avail — one must begin from the beginning. And this it is that my master and I in the new circumstances hope to achieve: nothing new indeed, for there it is already: but what is now art must become handicraft; what happens in special cases must become possible in general, and nothing can be diffused abroad that is not recognized. Our doing and achieving must be recognized as the only remedy in a definite crisis which especially threatens large towns. I will quote the words of my master, but pay attention! He said one day in the greatest confidence:

  “ ‘The newspaper-reader finds the article interesting and almost amusing when he reads about ‘Resurrection-men.’ At first they stole the bodies in profound secrecy; watchers were placed to provide against this: they came in an armed band in order to gain possession of their prey by force. And the worst will ensue from what is bad: I dare not speak it aloud; or I should be implicated, not, it is true, as an accomplice, but still as one accidentally cognizant in an investigation of the greatest danger, in which in any case I must be punished for not having reported the crime to the authorities as soon as I had discovered it. I confess to you, my friend, that murder has been committed in this town in order to supply the importunate highly-paying anatomist with a subject. The soulless corpse lay before us — I dare not depict the scene: he detected the crime, but so did I: we looked at one another, and both were silent; we looked straight before us, said nothing, and went to work. And it is this, my friend, that has confined me between wax and plaster; this it is that assuredly will keep you, too, steadfast to the art that sooner or later will be prized above all others.’ “

  Friedrich sprang up, clapped his hands, and would not leave off shouting his applause, so that Wilhelm at last was angry in earnest.

  “Bravo!” he cried; “now I recognize you again; it is the first time for a long while that you have spoken like one who really has something at heart, the first time that the flow of speech has again carried you away; you have shown yourself as one who is in a position to do something, and to estimate it properly.”

  Lenardo hereupon struck in, and adjusted this little misunderstanding completely.

  “I seemed to be absent,” he said, “but only because I was more than present; that is to say, I was thinking of the large museum of this sort that I had seen on my travels, and which interested me to such a degree that the custodian, who, in order to get done according to custom, began to offer his mechanically learned jabber, very soon — for he himself was the artificer — forgot his part, and proved himself to be a highly-informed demonstrator.

  “The extraordinary contrast, to see before one in the height of summer, in cool rooms with sultry heat outside, the same objects which one scarcely trusts one’s self to approach in the severest winter! Here everything conveniently served the craving for knowledge. With the greatest composure, and in the fairest order, he showed me the marvels of the human frame, and was glad to be able to convince me that for the first commencement, and for after assistance to memory, an institution of this sort was fully sufficient; while it remained free to everyone to have recourse to nature during the middle period, and at convenient opportunities to educate himself in this or that special department. He begged me to recommend him, for he had made a similar collection for only one large foreign museum, but the universities were thoroughly opposed to the scheme, because the masters of the science were able to educate proficients in dissection well enough, but not teachers of the constructive method.

  “After this I regarded this able man as the only one in the world, and now we hear that there is another occupied in the same way: who can tell whereabouts even a third and a fourth may come to light? We wish on our part to give an impulse to this subject. The recommendation must come from without, and in our new relations this useful enterprise must certainly be furthered.”

  CHAPTER IV.

  The next morning Friedrich came betimes into Wilhelm’s room, with a pamphlet in his hand, and handing it to him he said, “Yesterday evening, what with all your virtues — which you were circumstantial enough in recounting — I had no opportunity of speaking of myself and my good qualities, of which I have good enough cause to boast, and which stamp me as a worthy member of this neat caravan. Look here at this book, and you will recognize a masterpiece.”

  Wilhelm ran over the sheets with hasty glances, and saw written, in an agreeably legible though hurried style, the yesterday’s narrative of his anatomical studies, almost word for word as he had given it, so that he could not conceal his astonishment.

  “You know,” replied Friedrich, “the fundamental law of our association: each must be perfect in some one department or other, if he wish to claim membership. Well, I cudgelled my brains as to how I could manage this, and could not hit upon anything, though I knew well enough that no one surpassed me in memory, nor in a swift, easy and legible handwriting. You will recollect these agreeable accomplishments from the days of our theatrical career, when we shot away our powder upon sparrows, without reflecting that a shot prudently utilized would perhaps procure a hare for the kitchen. How often have I prompted without a book, how often have I, after a few hours, written out my part from memory! It was a matter of course to you at that time: you thought it must needs be so: so did I, and it never occurred to me how much it might avail me. The abbé made the discovery first: he found that it brought grist to his mill: he tried exercising me, and I was glad to do what was so easy for me, and gave pleasure to an earnest man. And now I, when there is need, am a whole office in myself; besides we thus carry with us a two-legged calculating machine, and no prince, however numerous his officials, is better provided than our superiors.”

  A lively discussion about
occupations of this sort led their minds to other members of the society.

  “Would you have thought,” said Friedrich, “that the most useless creature in the world, as it seemed, my Philina, would become the most useful member of the long chain? Give her a bit of cloth; set men, set women before her: without taking a measurement she cuts out for the whole lot, and contrives to use up all the patches and gores in such a way, that a great saving is the result — and all without any paper-pattern. A happy inspired glance informs her of everything; she looks at the man, and cuts; he may go where he likes; she cuts away, and makes him a coat that seems to be moulded upon his body. Yet this would not be possible if she had not got a seamstress to aid her, Montan’s Lydia, who has at last become quiet, and remains quiet, but sews too like no one else, stitch after stitch just like pearls, like embroidery. That is what people may come to! In point of fact a great deal that is useless hangs about us from habit, liking, carelessness, or wilfulness — a bundled-up cloak of rags. What nature has intended us for, the best of what she has stored within us, we consequently can neither discover nor make use of.”

  General reflections on the advantages of the social club which had so fortunately found itself assembled together, gave an opening for the fairest expectations.

  When Lenardo, presently, joined them, he was requested by Wilhelm to speak of himself too: of the life he had hitherto led, and kindly to give them information on the way in which he had helped on himself and others.

  “You no doubt remember, my good friend,” replied Lenardo, “in what an extraordinarily excited condition you found me at the first moment of our new acquaintanceship. I was sunk, absorbed in the most wonderful desire, in an irresistible longing: the question then could only be of the ensuing hour, of the deep suffering that was awaiting me, which I showed myself so active in making keener. I could not make known to you the earlier circumstances of my youth, as I now must do in order to take you along the way which has brought me hither.