Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  EXTRACTS OF CORRESPONDENCE by Sir Walter Scott

  From Sir Walter Scott’s diary, 1827

  February 15. — Rheumatism returns with the snow. I had thoughts of going to Abbotsford on Saturday, but if this lasts, it will not do; and, sooth to speak, it ought not to do; though it would do me much pleasure if it would do.

  I have a letter from Baron Von Goethe, which I must have read to me; for though I know German, I have forgot their written hand. I make it a rule seldom to read, and never to answer, foreign letters from literary folks. It leads to nothing but the battle-dore and shuttle-cock intercourse of compliments, as light as cork and feathers. But Goethe is different, and a wonderful fellow, the Ariosto at once, and almost the Voltaire of Germany. Who could have told me thirty years ago I should correspond, and be on something like an equal footing, with the author of Goetz? Ay, and who could have told me fifty things else that have befallen me?

  Letter from Mr. Carlyle to Sir Walter Scott

  EDINBURGH, 21 COMELY BANK, 13th April 1828.

  SIR, — In February last I had the honour to receive a letter from Von Goethe, announcing the speedy departure, from Weimar, of a Packet for me, in which, among other valuables, should be found “two medals,” to be delivered “mit verbindlichsten Grüssen” to Sir Walter Scott. By a slow enough conveyance this Kästchen, with its medals in perfect safety, has at length yesterday come to hand, and now lays on me the enviable duty of addressing you.

  Among its multifarious contents, the Weimar Box failed not to include a long letter — considerable portion of which, as it virtually belongs to yourself, you will now allow me to transcribe. Perhaps it were thriftier in me to reserve this for another occasion; but considering how seldom such a Writer obtains such a Critic, I cannot but reckon it pity that this friendly intercourse between them should be anywise delayed.

  “Sehen Sie Herrn Walter Scott, so sagen Sie ihm auf das verbindlichste in meinem Namen Dank für den lieben heitern Brief, gerade in dem schönen Sinne geschrieben, dass der Mensch dem Menschen werth seyn müsse. So auch habe ich dessen Leben Napoleon’s erhalten und solches in diesen Winterabenden und Nächten von Anfang bis zu Ende mit Aufmerksamkeit durchgelesen.

  “Mir war höchst bedeutend zu sehen, wie sich der erste Erzähler des Jahrhunderts einem so ungemeinen Geschäft unterzieht und uns die überwichtigen Begebenheiten, deren Zeuge zu seyn wir gezwungen wurden, in fertigem Zuge vorüberführt. Die Abtheilung durch Capitel in grosse zusammengehörige Massen giebt den verschlungenen Ereignissen die reinste Fasslichkeit, und so wird dann auch der Vortrag des Einzelnen auf das unschätzbarste deutlich und anschaulich.

  “Ich las es im Original, und da wirkte es ganz eigentlich seiner Natur nach. Es ist ein patriotischer Britte der spricht, der die Handlungen des Feindes nicht wohl mit günstigen Augen ansehen kann, der als ein rechtlicher Staatsbürger zugleich mit den Unternehmungen der Politik auch die Forderungen der Sittlichkeit befriedigt wünscht, der den Gegner, im frechen Laufe des Glücks, mit unseligen Folgen bedroht, und auch im bittersten Verfall ihn kaum bedauern kann.

  “Und so war mir noch ausserdem das Werk von der grössten Bedeutung, indem es mich an das Miterlebte theils erinnerte, theils mir manches Uebersehene nun vorführte, mich auf einem unerwarteten Standpunkt versetzte, mir zu erwägen gab was ich für abgeschlossen hielt, und besonders auch mich befähigte die Gegner dieses wichtigen Werkes, an denen es nicht fehlen kann, zu beurtheilen und die Einwendungen, die sie von ihrer Seite vortragen, zu würdigen.

  Sie sehen hieraus dass zu Ende des Jahres keine höhere Gabe hätte zu mir gelangen können. Es ist dieses Werk mir zu einem goldenen Netz geworden, womit ich die Schattenbilder meines vergangenen Lebens aus den Lethes-Fluthen mit reichem Zuge herauszuforschen mich beschäftige.

  “Ungefähr dasselbige denke ich in dem nächsten Stücke von Kunst und Alterthum zu sagen.”

  With regard to the medals, which are, as I expected, the two well-known likenesses of Goethe himself, it could be no hard matter to dispose of them safely here, or transmit them to you, if you required it, without delay: but being in this curious fashion appointed as it were Ambassador between two Kings of Poetry, I would willingly discharge my mission with the solemnity that beseems such a business, and naturally it must flatter my vanity and love of the marvellous, to think that, by means of a Foreigner whom I have never seen, I might now have access to my native Sovereign, whom I have so often seen in public and so often wished that I had claim to see and know in private and near at hand. — Till Whitsunday I continue to reside here; and shall hope that some time before that period I may have opportunity to wait on you, and, as my commission bore, to hand you these memorials in person.

  Meanwhile I abide your further orders in this matter; and so, with all the regard which belongs to one to whom I in common with other millions owe so much, — I have the honour to be,

  Sir, most respectfully your servant,

  THOMAS CARLYLE.

  Besides the two medals specially intended for you, there have come four more, which I am requested generally to dispose of amongst “Wohlwollenden,” Perhaps Mr. Lockhart, whose merits in respect of German Literature, and just appreciation of this its Patriarch and Guide, are no secret, will do me the honour to accept of one and direct me through your means how I am to have it conveyed?

  Translation of the Letter from Goethe.

  “Should you see Sir Walter Scott, be so kind as return to him my most grateful thanks for his dear and cheerful letter, — a letter written in just that beautiful temper which makes one man feel himself to be worth something to another. Say, too, that I received his Life of Napoleon, and have read it this winter — in the evening and at night — with attention from beginning to end. To me it was full of meaning to observe how the first novelist of the century took upon himself a task and business, so apparently foreign to him, and passed under review with rapid stroke those important events of which it had been our fate to be eye-witnesses. The division into chapters, embracing masses of intimately connected events, gives a clearness to the historical sequence that otherwise might have been only too easily confused, while, at the same time, the individual events in each chapter are described with a clearness and a vividness quite invaluable.

  I read the work in the original, and the impression it made upon me was thus free from the disturbing influence of a foreign medium. I found myself listening to the words of a patriotic Briton, who finds it impossible to regard the actions of the enemy with a favourable eye, — an honest citizen this, whose desire is, that while political considerations shall always receive due weight, the demands of morality shall never be overlooked; one who, while the enemy is borne along in his wanton course of good fortune, cannot forbear to point with warning finger to the inevitable consequences, and in his bitterest disaster can with difficulty find him worthy of a tear.

  The book was in yet another respect of the greatest importance to me, in that it brought back to my remembrance events through which I had lived — now showing me much that I had overlooked, now transplanting me to some unexpected standpoint, thus forcing me to reconsider a question which I had looked upon as settled, and in a special manner putting me in a position to pass judgment upon the unfavourable critics of this book — for these cannot fail — and to estimate at their true value the objections which are sure to be made from their side. From all this you will understand how the end of last year could have brought with it no gift more welcome to me than this book. The work has become to me as it were a golden net, wherewith I can recover from out the waves of Lethe the shadowy pictures of my past life, and in that rich draught I am finding my present employment.

  I intend making a few remarks to the same purpose in the next number of Kunst und Alterthum.

  The Autobiography

  Goethe lived in this house in Weimar, Frauenplan, for 50 years until his death in 1832

  TRUTH AND FICTION RELATING TO MY LIFE

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION BY THOMAS CARLYLE.r />
  JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

  AUTOBIOGRAPHY TRUTH AND FICTION RELATING TO MY LIFE

  AUTHOR’S PREFACE.

  PART THE FIRST

  FIRST BOOK.

  SECOND BOOK.

  THE NEW PARIS.

  THIRD BOOK.

  FOURTH BOOK.

  FIFTH BOOK.

  PART THE SECOND: OF WHAT ONE WISHES IN YOUTH, WHEN OLD HE HAS IN ABUNDANCE.

  SIXTH BOOK.

  SEVENTH BOOK.

  EIGHTH BOOK.

  NINTH BOOK.

  ‘Goethe in the Roman Campagna’ by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, 1786

  INTRODUCTION BY THOMAS CARLYLE.

  It would appear that for inquirers into Foreign Literature, for all men anxious to see and understand the European world as it lies around them, a great problem is presented in this Goethe; a singular, highly significant phenomenon, and now also means more or less complete for ascertaining its significance. A man of wonderful, nay, unexampled reputation and intellectual influence among forty millions of reflective, serious and cultivated men, invites us to study him; and to determine for ourselves, whether and how far such influence has been salutary, such reputation merited. That this call will one day be answered, that Goethe will be seen and judged of in his real character among us, appears certain enough. His name, long familiar everywhere, has now awakened the attention of critics in all European countries to his works: he is studied wherever true study exists: eagerly studied even in France; nay, some considerable knowledge of his nature and spiritual importance seems already to prevail there.

  For ourselves, meanwhile, in giving all due weight to so curious an exhibition of opinion, it is doubtless our part, at the same time, to beware that we do not give it too much. This universal sentiment of admiration is wonderful, is interesting enough; but it must not lead us astray. We English stand as yet without the sphere of it; neither will we plunge blindly in, but enter considerately, or, if we see good, keep aloof from it altogether. Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such; it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given; often it is but a false glare, dazzling the eyes of the vulgar, lending by casual extrinsic splendour the brightness and manifold glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value. A man is in all cases simply the man, of the same intrinsic worth and weakness, whether his worth and weakness lie hidden in the depths of his own consciousness, or be betrumpeted and beshouted from end to end of the habitable globe. These are plain truths, which no one should lose sight of; though, whether in love or in anger, for praise or for condemnation, most of us are too apt to forget them. But least of all can it become the critic to ‘follow a multitude to do evil’ even when that evil is excess of admiration; on the contrary, it will behoove him to lift up his voice, how feeble soever, how unheeded soever, against the common delusion; from which, if he can save, or help to save any mortal, his endeavours will have been repaid.

  With these things in some measure before us, we must remind our readers of another influence at work in this affair, and one acting, as we think, in the contrary direction. That pitiful enough desire for ‘originality’ which lurks and acts in all minds, will rather, we imagine, lead the critic of Foreign Literature to adopt the negative than the affirmative with regard to Goethe. If a writer indeed feel that he is writing for England alone, invisibly and inaudibly to the rest of the Earth, the temptations may be pretty equally balanced; if he write for some small conclave, which he mistakenly thinks the representative of England, they may sway this way or that, as it chances. But writing in such isolated spirit is no longer possible. Traffic, with its swift ships, is uniting all nations into one; Europe at large is becoming more and more one public; and in this public, the voices for Goethe, compared with those against him, are in the proportion, as we reckon them, both as to the number and value, of perhaps a hundred to one. We take in, not Germany alone, but France and Italy; not the Schlegels and Schellings, but the Manzonis and De Staels. The bias of originality, therefore, may lie to the side of censure; and whoever among us shall step forward, with such knowledge as our common critics have of Goethe, to enlighten the European public, by contradiction in this matter, displays a heroism, which, in estimating his other merits, ought nowise to be forgotten.

  Our own view of the case coincides, we confess, in some degree with that of the majority. We reckon that Goethe’s fame has, to a considerable extent, been deserved; that his influence has been of high benefit to his own country; nay more, that it promises to be of benefit to us, and to all other nations. The essential grounds of this opinion, which to explain minutely were a long, indeed boundless task, we may state without many words. We find, then, in Goethe, an Artist, in the high and ancient meaning of that term; in the meaning which it may have borne long ago among the masters of Italian painting, and the fathers of Poetry in England; we say that we trace in the creations of this man, belonging in every sense to our own time, some touches of that old, divine spirit, which had long passed away from among us, nay which, as has often been laboriously demonstrated, was not to return to this world any more.

  Or perhaps we come nearer our meaning, if we say that in Goethe we discover by far the most striking instance, in our time, of a writer who is, in strict speech, what Philosophy can call a Man. He is neither noble nor plebeian, neither liberal nor servile, nor infidel nor devotee; but the best excellence of all these, joined in pure union; ‘a clear and universal Man.’ Goethe’s poetry is no separate faculty, no mental handicraft; but the voice of the whole harmonious manhood: nay it is the very harmony, the living and life-giving harmony of that rich manhood which forms his poetry. All good men may be called poets in act, or in word; all good poets are so in both. But Goethe besides appears to us as a person of that deep endowment, and gifted vision, of that experience also and sympathy in the ways of all men, which qualify him to stand forth, not only as the literary ornament, but in many respects too as the Teacher and exemplar of his age. For, to say nothing of his natural gifts, he has cultivated himself and his art, he has studied how to live and to write, with a fidelity, an unwearied earnestness, of which there is no other living instance; of which, among British poets especially, Wordsworth alone offers any resemblance. And this in our view is the result. To our minds, in these soft, melodious imaginations of his, there is embodied the Wisdom which is proper to this time; the beautiful, the religious Wisdom, which may still, with something of its old impressiveness, speak to the whole soul; still, in these hard, unbelieving utilitarian days, reveal to us glimpses of the Unseen but not unreal World, that so the Actual and the Ideal may again meet together, and clear Knowledge be again wedded to Religion, in the life and business of men.

  Such is our conviction or persuasion with regard to the poetry of Goethe. Could we demonstrate this opinion to be true, could we even exhibit it with that degree of clearness and consistency which it has attained in our own thoughts, Goethe were, on our part, sufficiently recommended to the best attention of all thinking men. But, unhappily, it is not a subject susceptible of demonstration: the merits and characteristics of a Poet are not to be set forth by logic; but to be gathered by personal, and as in this case it must be, by deep and careful inspection of his works. Nay Goethe’s world is everyway so different from ours; it costs us such effort, we have so much to remember, and so much to forget, before we can transfer ourselves in any measure into his peculiar point of vision, that a right study of him, for an Englishman, even of ingenuous, open, inquisitive mind, becomes unusually difficult; for a fixed, decided, contemptuous Englishman, next to impossible. To a reader of the first class, helps may be given, explanations will remove many a difficulty; beauties that lay hidden may be made apparent; and directions, adapted to his actual position, will at length guide him into the proper tract for such an inquiry. All this, however, must be a work of progression and detail. To do our part in it, from time to time, must rank am
ong the best duties of an English Foreign Review. Meanwhile, our present endeavour limits itself within far narrower bounds. We cannot aim to make Goethe known, but only to prove that he is worthy of being known; at most, to point out, as it were afar off, the path by which some knowledge of him may be obtained. A slight glance at his general literary character and procedure, and one or two of his chief productions which throw light on these, must for the present suffice. A French diplomatic personage, contemplating Goethe’s physiognomy, is said to have observed: /Voila un homme qui a eu beaucoup de chagrins./ A truer version of the matter, Goethe himself seems to think, would have been: Here is a man who has struggled toughly; who has /es sich recht sauer werden lassen./ Goethe’s life, whether as a writer and thinker, or as a living active man, has indeed been a life of effort, of earnest toilsome endeavour after all excellence. Accordingly, his intellectual progress, his spiritual and moral history, as it may be gathered from his successive Works, furnishes, with us, no small portion of the pleasure and profit we derive from perusing them. Participating deeply in all the influences of his age, he has from the first, at every new epoch, stood forth to elucidate the new circumstances of the time; to offer the instruction, the solace, which that time required. His literary life divides itself into two portions widely different in character: the products of the first, once so new and original, have long either directly or through the thousand thousand imitations of them, been familiar to us; with the products of the second, equally original, and in our day far more precious, we are yet little acquainted. These two classes of works stand curiously related with each other; at first view, in strong contradiction, yet, in truth, connected together by the strictest sequence. For Goethe has not only suffered and mourned in bitter agony under the spiritual perplexities of his time; but he has also mastered these, he is above them, and has shown others how to rise above them. At one time, we found him in darkness, and now he is in light; he was once an Unbeliever, and now he is a Believer; and he believes, moreover, not by denying his unbelief, but by following it out; not by stopping short, still less turning back, in his inquiries, but by resolutely prosecuting them. This, it appears to us, is a case of singular interest, and rarely exemplified, if at all elsewhere, in these our days. How has this man, to whom the world once offered nothing but blackness, denial and despair, attained to that better vision which now shows it to him, not tolerable only, but full of solemnity and loveliness? How has the belief of a Saint been united in this high and true mind with the clearness of a Sceptic; the devout spirit of a Fenelon made to blend in soft harmony with the gaiety, the sarcasm, the shrewdness of a Voltaire?