CI Bk. 
 
 Trinity College Library 
 
 Durham, N. C. 
 
 Rec’d u 31, \ c l..'2v_3 
 
 ’ Obrary Fund 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/lifeofgoethe31biel 
 
The LIFE OF GOETHE 
 
 B y 
 
 Jtlbert Bielschoivsky, Ph.D. 
 
 Three volumes, 8vo, Illvistrated 
 
 1. From Birth to the Return from Italy, 
 
 1749-1788 
 
 2. From the Italian Journey to the Wars of 
 
 Liberation, 1788-1815 
 
 3. From the Congress of Vienna to the Poet’s 
 
 Death, 1815-1832 
 
 G.P. Putnam’s Sons 
 
 New York 
 
 London 
 
LIFE OF GOETHE 
 
 BY 
 
 ,, t-, \ . V. THE TT ’.iAN 
 
 ■ VS'-: - , A.vl. 
 
 Goethe, Aetat. 79 
 
 (From Life and Times of Goschen, by permissian of John Murray) 
 
 THRES VOLUME • 
 
 VOLUME ID 
 .. S 5-1832 
 
 FROM i : CONGRESS OF VIEN '■ V 
 
 TO THE POET’S DEATH 
 
 ILLUSTRAT F ’ ! 
 
 , . := : r • ■ 
 
 0 ■ « • r >‘ s 
 
 Zbü ftrsi-;: . : - '• *3 
 
THE 
 
 LIFE OF GOETHE 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT BIELSCHOWSKY, Ph.D. 
 
 AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN 
 
 WILLIAM A. COOPER, A.M. 
 
 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF GERMAN, STANFORD UNIVERSITY 
 
 THREE VOLUMES 
 
 VOLUME III 
 
 i 8 i 5-1832 
 
 FROM THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 
 TO THE POET’S DEATH 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 (^Z.5Z.O 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 Ube fmicfcerbocfter lpress 
 
 1912 
 
Copyright, 1908 
 
 BY 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 
 
 tTbe Vtnfcfeerbocker pn», *ew Bork 
 
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE 
 
 lo 
 
 -< .1 
 
 I N theprefaceto the first volume I proraised to insert here a 
 Statement of what was added to Bielschowsky’s un- 
 finished manuscript to make his biography of Goethe 
 complete. Long before it became probable that he might 
 not be spared to complete his great task he had cherished the 
 wish that a special discussion of Goethe as a scientist might 
 be contributed by some one especially well versed in that 
 phase of the poet’s activity. This wish is fulfilled in the 
 chapter entitled “The Naturalist” (iii., 81-134), which was 
 written by Professor S. Kalischer of Berlin. Professor Max 
 Friedländer of Berlin added the note bearing the heading 
 “Goethe’s Poems Set to Music” (pp. 374-376). The most 
 extensive additions were made by Professor Theobald 
 Ziegler of Strasburg, who finished the chapter on Faust 
 (beginning in the middle of p. 271) and wrote the concluding 
 chapter (pp. 359-369), beside inserting an account of 
 Goethe’s attitude toward romanticism (pp. 1 43-1 49), and 
 his relation to the philosophers Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel 
 (ii., 179-181). The notes signed “Z” are also by him. 
 Professors Imelmann and Roethe of Berlin revised Biel- 
 schowsky’s manuscript from the point of view of style, 
 and Dr. Franz Leppmann of Berlin lent the German publisher 
 other assistance in bringing out the finished work. 
 
 In the preparation of the index of the translation it has 
 seemed best to work independently of that of the original. 
 I have included among the topics the various subjects in 
 which Goethe was interested and the first line of each pas- 
 sage of German verse cited in the text, except extracts 
 from a work under consideration. In case the source of the 
 
 iii 
 
 G2.5ZO 
 
iv Granölator's ipteface 
 
 quotation is not given in the context I have indicated it in 
 the index. 
 
 In verifying references, so far as the books were accessible 
 to me, I found it necessary to correct a number of misprinted 
 names, dates, titles, and editions. A few errors of the 
 kind that escaped me at first, together with some misprints 
 which were not corrected in the first two volumes of the 
 translation, may be found in a list of errata at the end of 
 this volume. 
 
 I wish to acknowledge here my indebtedness and grati- 
 tude to Professor B. O. Foster for his valuable criticism 
 of the manuscript of the second and third volumes and for 
 his help in reading the proof; also to Professor G. J. Peirce 
 for helpful suggestions on certain portions of the two volumes. 
 
 To know Goethe well is an education in itself. An 
 intimate acquaintance with his inner life and his conception 
 of the mission of the poet in the world cannot fail to broaden 
 and deepen the spiritual life of the serious-minded man of 
 to-day. This biography, with its rare insight into the poet’s 
 true nature, is accordingly sent forth in its new form with 
 the hope that it may bear to an otherwise inaccessible public 
 its story of a great genius devoted to the higher ideals of 
 human culture. 
 
 W. A. C. 
 
 Stanford University. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PACK 
 
 I. — Marianne von Willemer .... i 
 Goethe’s mental flight to the Orient — Hafiz’s Divan and 
 Goethe ’s West-östlicher Divan — Journey to the Rhine — 
 
 Sankt Rochus-Fest zu Bingen — Goethe designs a painting 
 for the altar of the restored chapel — Guest of the Bren- 
 tanos on the Rhine — And of the Schlossers in Frank- 
 fort — Sulpiz Boisseree interests him in old Dutch paint- 
 ing and in the movement for the completion of the 
 Cologne cathedral — Goethe his guest in Heidelberg — 
 
 Return to Frankfort — The Willemers — Goethe and 
 Marianne, Hatem and Suleika— Goethe returns to the 
 Rhine the following summer — Guest of Minister vom 
 Stein — They journey together to Cologne — Goethe the 
 guest of the Willemers at the Gerbermühle— Love be- 
 tween the poet and Marianne — Their poetical epistles — 
 
 Later meeting in Heidelberg — Memories of Lili and 
 Friederike — Goethe’s sudden departure for home — 
 
 Death of Christiane — A return to the Rhine prevented 
 by an accident — Marianne’s poems incorporated in 
 West-östlicher Divan. 
 
 II. — The Lyric Poet ...... 30 
 
 Goethe the inspired poet — The mystery of his power — 
 
 His talent an irresistible natural force — Spinozistic ex- 
 planation of the poet’s twofold nature — Goethe’s object 
 in writing poetry— His poetic vision and creation — His 
 normality and superiority — Comparison with Heine — 
 Goethe’s poems are like painted window-panes — The 
 genetic method of interpreting them — Harzreise im Win- 
 ter — Various ways in which poems originated — Trans- 
 formations through which they passed — An den Mond 
 and Der Fischer — Goethe’s reasons for making altera- 
 tions — His advance beyond his predecessors — Influence 
 of Herder and folk-poetry — Subject matter of his poems 
 true and genuine — They reflect typical truth — Their 
 deep significance and symbolism — Wonne der Wehmut — 
 v 
 
VI 
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Social songs — Ballads — Subjects from religious history — 
 
 Die Braut von Korinth — Die erste Walpurgisnacht — Pa- 
 ria — Der Gott und die Bajadere — Hochzeitlied — Ballade 
 vom vertriebenen und zurückkehrenden Grafen — Symbolic 
 meaning of these ballads — Der getreue Eckart— Erlkönig 
 — Der König in Thule — Inwardness in Goethe’s ballads — 
 
 His own experiences embodied in them — Goethe’s ein- 
 ployment of contrast in his poems — His resolution of 
 apparent discords into harmonies — His serenity — His 
 mastery of the art of representation — Objectivity — 
 Inclination to symbolism — Vivid word-pictures, espe- 
 cially of nature and human beings — Auf dem See — Music 
 in his verse and prose, even letters — Sources of his word- 
 xnusic — Verse forms which he employed — Tones lacking 
 in his lyre — Place of Goethe’s poetry in the spiritual life 
 of Germany. 
 
 III. — The Naturalist ...... 81 
 
 Harmony between Goethe’s Science and his art — His 
 natural inclination toward Science — Anatomy and oste- 
 ology — Spinoza’s influence on Goethe — Consistency of 
 nature — Discovery of the intermaxillary in man — The 
 discovery rejected by most of the leading anatomists of 
 the day — Not fully recognised tili forty years later — 
 
 Botany — Discovery of the metamorphosis of plants — 
 
 Its significance — Long denied recognition — Idea of evo- 
 lution contained in it — The genetic method — Mastery 
 of art by study of nature — Beauty the manifestation of 
 secret laws of nature — Goethe’s rejection of teleology — 
 Discovery of the new Science of morphology — The orig- 
 inal type — Goethe and Linne — Theory of descent — Fun- 
 damental principle of continuity — Struggle for existence 
 — Formative impulse — Mutual influence of parts — Ver- 
 tebral theory of the skull — Geology— Paleontology — 
 
 The ice age — Meteorology — Meteorological stations — 
 
 Theory of colours — The law of visual processes — Ab- 
 klingen — Translucent media — Goethe’s rejection of New- 
 ton ’s theory — Antagonistic colours — Fundamental law 
 of colour harmony — Polarity — Goethe’s history of the 
 theory of colours — His scientific lectures — Museums of 
 Science — Goethe’s influence on later scientists— His 
 method — His study of nature and his reügion — The 
 poet and the investigator. 
 
 IV . — After the Wars of Liberation . . . 135 
 
 Weimar becomes a grand duchy — Goethe’s position in 
 the new ministry — Karl August grants a Constitution — 
 Goethe’s attitude toward it — His displeasure with free- 
 dom of the press — The Wartburg celebration and its 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 Contents 
 
 Vll 
 
 consequences — Murder of Kotzebue agitates Germany — 
 Goethe’s attitude toward the reaction — He objects to 
 romanticism in the tercentenary of the reformation— His 
 relation to the older romanticists — To the younger gen- 
 eration — Bettina Brentano — Romanticism in Goethe’s 
 writings — Contrasts between his theory of art and that 
 of the new school — His pronounced Protestantism — 
 
 His self-liberation as compared with political freedom — 
 
 His resignation as theatre director in reality a dismissal 
 — Causes leading up to it — Effect on him — His seventieth 
 birthday — Interview with Metternich — Sojourn at Ma- 
 rienbad — The Levetzows — Goethe’s relation to Ulrike — 
 
 His desire to marry her — His misunderstanding of her 
 veiled refusal — Conditions in his home since August’s 
 marriage — The Marienbad Elegie — August’s reception 
 of the news of his father’s matrimonial project — Goethe 
 wavers between resignation and hope, but finally resigns 
 himself — Ulrike ’s further history. 
 
 V. — From 1824 TO 1830. ..... 162 
 
 Goethe’s house his monastery — Description of it — His 
 way of working — His assistants — Eckermann and his 
 Gespräche mit Goethe — Great stream of visitors at Goe- 
 the’s home — Distinguished guests — Goethe a grand- 
 father — His youthfulness, in spite of his years — Typ- 
 ical extracts from his conversations — His humour — His 
 angry moods — Novelle — Biographical writings — New 
 complete edition of his works — His many-sided inter- 
 ests — His thirst for knowledge — His attitude toward 
 new literary tendencies — His reading of newspapers and 
 periodicals — His habit of viewing things in their broad, 
 general relations — His recognition of his own place in 
 history — His striving after goodness and purity — His 
 spiritual transformation — The springtime of his soul — 
 
 His humility — His power over his contemporaries due 
 to his great humanity — The jubilees of Karl August’s 
 coming to the throne and Goethe’s arrival in Weimar — 
 
 Death of Karl August — Goethe’s sojourn at the Castle 
 of Dornburg — Dem auf gehenden Vollmonde — Zwischen 
 beiden Welten — Death of Frau von Stein — Death of 
 Grand Duchess Luise — Death of Goethe’s son August — 
 
 The poet’s power of recuperation. 
 
 VI. — Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre . . . 189 
 
 Die Lehrjahre implies a sequel — Composition of the new 
 novel — General plan — Die Wahlverwandtschaften — Pub- 
 lication of “First Part” — The novel gains by holding 
 back of “Second Part” — New sociological theories — 
 
 The work finally published — Additions to second and 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 third volumes eliminated in later editions — The novel 
 an aggregation — Carelessness in redaction — Work and 
 resignation the fundamental ideas — Wilhelm com- 
 manded to travel — His instructions — Aimless wander- 
 ings — Visit with a handicraftsman — Sankt Joseph der 
 Zweite — The handicraftsman a Symbol of the working 
 world — Reasons for this choice — Wilhelm visits Jarno — 
 
 His inclination to become a surgeon — The age of special- 
 ties — The giant’s cave — Visit to the uncle — The uncle’s 
 work — Contrast with the uncle of Die Lehrjahre — Die pil- 
 gernde Törin — Wer ist der Verräter? — Visit to Makarie — 
 Contrast with the Beautiful Soul — Wilhelm’s introduc- 
 tion to astronomy — The starry heavens and the moral 
 law — Das nussbraune Mädchen — Felix in the pedagogical 
 province— Der Mann von fünfzig Jahren — Wilhelm finds 
 Nachodine — Visit to Mignon’s old home — Journey to 
 Lago Maggiore — Lenardo — Wilhelm studies surgery — 
 
 Tour of the “ pedagogical province” — The social Com- 
 munity and the democratic community — The “ Bond ” — 
 Economic revolution foreshadowed — Nachodine and 
 Lenardo — Work of the “ Bond” — Die neue Melusine — 
 
 Goethe and emigration — Odoard’s colonisation scheme 
 — The “ Bond” divided — Purification of Philine and 
 Lydie — Felix’s suit for Hersilie — Rejected, he rides into 
 a river, but is rescued by his father — Natalie and Frau 
 von Stein — The emigrants in the New World — Their 
 government— -Valuation of time — World piety — Need of 
 new men — New educational theories — Goethe’s System, 
 as seen in the “pedagogical province” — Subjects and 
 methods — Prominence of music — Reverence for the di- 
 vine in one’s seif — Three picture galleries — Three styles 
 of greeting — Impression of the novel as a whole — The 
 gospel of labour — The educated dass of the day — Goe- 
 the’s plea for less theory and more practice — General 
 lack of interest in public afiairs — The brotherhood of 
 man — World piety. 
 
 .. VII. — Faust ........ 247 
 
 Faust Goethe’s life-work — The theme — Unconscious 
 work on the drama — Seeking after God — The puppet 
 play of Doktor Faust — Correspondences between its mo- 
 tives and Goethe’s experiences — Beginning of conscious 
 work on the drama — Scenes probably written first and 
 probable order in whicli they wete written — Goethe’s 
 willingness to read portions of the work to friends — The 
 Urfaust — Further work on the drama — The Fragment 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 of 1 790 — Comparison between it and ths Urfaust — 
 Composition again resumed at Schiller’s urging — Com- 
 pleted First Part published in 1808 — Influence of By- 
 ron’s death on composition of Second Part — The Helena 
 published in 1827 — Further work lightened by enthusi- 
 asm over idea of completing Second Part — Fragment of 
 the first act published in 1828 — The drama finished July 
 22, 1831, but not published tili after the poet’s death — 
 The historical Faust — The first Faust book — Marlowe’s 
 Faustus — Faust motives in the sixteenth Century — Sim- 
 ilar motives in the period of Goethe’s youth — Analysis 
 and criticism of the Fragment of 1 790 : Faust’s first mono- 
 logue, the macrocosm, the Earth-Spirit, conversation 
 with Wagner, Mephistopheles, his relation to the Earth- 
 Spirit, the humorous devil and his function in the 
 drama, Mephistopheles and the Student, “Auerbach’s 
 Cellar,” “ Witches’ Kitchen,” first scenes of the Gretchen 
 tragedy, Faust’s confession of faith, the closing scene in 
 the cathedral — The Gretchen tragedy not finished in the 
 Fragment — Analysis and criticism of what the complete 
 edition of 1808 contained more than the Fragment: the 
 close of the Gretchen tragedy, Valentine, “ Walpurgis 
 Night,” “ Walpurgis Night’s Dream,” “ Dismal Day,” 
 
 “ Night — Open Field,” “Prison,” end of the First Part, 
 Goethe’s change of style, Faust now a symbolical char- 
 acter, distinction between the symbolical and the alle- 
 gorical, the philosophical element in Faust and the 
 difficulty it gave Goethe, “ Prelude on the Stage,” “ Pro- 
 logue in Heaven,” the mystery of evil in the world, the 
 wager between the Lord and the devil, the problem of 
 Faust’s salvation, Faust’s second monologue, Easter 
 chimes, youthful remembrances, “ Before the City Gate,” 
 Faust’s third monologue, the exorcism of Mephistophe- 
 les, the devil goes away and then comes again, Faust’s 
 curses, chorus of spirits, compact and wager between 
 Faust and Mephistopheles — From the little world to the * 
 great — Difficulty of the transition for Goethe — Analysis 
 and criticism of the Second Part: Opening scene, the 
 Emperor’s Court, the paper money scheme, the masquer- 
 ade, the “mothers,” Helena conjured up, the second act, 
 Homunculus, the Baccalaureus, “ Classical Walpurgis 
 Night,” the Helena act, its significance, the fourth act, 
 the fifth act, Care, Faust learns self-limitation, the su- 
 preme moment, Faust’s death, the contest over his soul 
 at the grave, he is saved, his ascension, unsatisfactori- 
 ness of the ending — Closing criticism of the Second Part 
 and the whole drama — Faust a universal human type — 
 What the drama may mean to us. 
 
 ix 
 
 PAGE 
 
X 
 
 Contents 
 
 VIII. — Last Days . .... 359 
 
 Goethe warned by illness to set his house in order — The 
 last works he finished — Interests and occupations of his 
 last days — His last distinguished guests — His last birth- 
 day — Visit to Ilmenau — Wanderers Nachtlied — Goethe 
 sets his house in Order — His religion — Last illness and 
 death — The funeral — Goethe’s significance to Germany 
 and the whole world. 
 
 Notes . ........ 373 
 
 Index . ........ 387 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGS 
 
 Goethe, Aetat. 79 ... Frontispiece 
 
 (From Life and Times of Goschen, by permission of John Murray) 
 
 Marianne ......... 3 
 
 (From Könnecke’s Bilderatlas) 
 
 Goethe by Kolbe ....... 94 
 
 (From Heinemann’s Goethe) 
 
 The Goethe Monument at Rome . . . . 320 
 
 (Designed by Gustav Eberlein) 
 
ERRATA 
 
 Read as follows: 
 
 Vol. I., p. 3, 1 . 25, Die erste Walpurgisnacht. 
 
 p. 76, 1 . 17, Hamburgische Dramaturgie. 
 
 p. 76, 1 . 29, The Literaturbriefe . 
 
 p. 95, 1 . 4, Lorraine. 
 
 p. 100, 1 . 1, Lorraine. 
 
 p. 118, 1 . 3, Mailied and Heidenröslein. 
 
 p. 133, 1. 33, Weislingen. 
 
 p. 157, 1 . 10 ff., Wilhelm Jerusalem (born in 1747), son of 
 the famous Brunswick abbot, and a 
 friend of Lessing, Eschenburg, and 
 the crown prince of Brunswick, etc. 
 p. 204, 1 . 32, Brief des Pastors etc. 
 p. 210, 1 . 10/., Es war ein Bule frech genung. 
 p. 211,1. 20, ode An Schwager Kronos. 
 p. 226, 1. 19, SBonne. 
 p. 232, 1 . 7, Weimar, 
 p. 248, 1. 34, irreguliers. 
 p. 249, 11. 6, 9, Satyros. 
 p. 252, 1 . 12, Satyros. 
 p. 258, 1. 10, ©tter§burg§. 
 p. 258, 1 . 35, Ettersburg, 
 p. 269, 1. 11, 1781. 
 p. 297, 1. 28, 9 J?onbe be§. 
 p. 318, 1 . 23, Ettersburg, 
 p. 406, 1 . 12, Elegien. 
 p. 418, 1 . 1, Im neuen Reich. 
 p. 424, 1 . 11, Ettersburg, 
 p. 430, 1 . 26, Frauenbilder etc. 
 p. 433, 1 . 46, Knebels literarischer Nachlass. 
 p. 434, 1. 26, do. 
 
 Vol. II., p. 31, 1 . 30, drama, Egmont. 
 p. 103, 1. 19, reineren Wulfen, 
 p. 157, 1. 17, constant. 
 p. 188, 1 . 19, Schiller’s. 
 p. 290, 1. 31, ftd). 
 p. 426, 1 . 12, Weimar. 
 
The Life of Goethe 
 
 i 
 
 MARIANNE VON WILLEMER 
 
 Goethe’s mental flight to the Orient — Hafiz’s Divan and Goethe’s West- 
 östlicher Divan — Journey to the Rhine — Sankt Rochus-Fest zu 
 Bingen — Goethe designs a painting for the altar of the restored 
 chapel — Guest of the Brentanos on the Rhine — And of the Schlos- 
 sers in Frankfort — Sulpiz Boisseree interests him in old Dutch 
 painting and in the movement for the completion of the Cologne 
 cathedral — Goethe his guest in Heidelberg — Return to Frank- 
 fort — The Willemers — Goethe and Marianne, Hatem and Suleika 
 — Goethe returns to the Rhine the following summer — -Guest of 
 Minister vom Stein — They journey together to Cologne — Goethe 
 the guest of the Willemers at the Gerbermühle — Love between 
 the poet and Marianne — Their poetical epistles — Later meeting in 
 Heidelberg — Memories of Lili and Friederike— Goethe’s sudden 
 departure for home — Death of Christiane — A return to the Rhine 
 prevented by an accident — Marianne ’s poems incorporated in 
 West-östlicher Divan. 
 
 D XJRING the storms of war Goethe had more and 
 more withdrawn, in spirit, from the European 
 world and taken refuge in the original abode of 
 man in Asia, in Order in those far-off regions to restore 
 that serene harmony of his being which had been disturbed 
 by the discordant notes of the restless age. It was only 
 natural that the trend of events should tum the eyes of 
 all to the Orient. As in the days of the crusades, the 
 West, under the banner of Napoleon, had invaded the East, 
 and the Syrian highlands were drenched with Occidental 
 
 VOL. III.— I 
 
 I 
 
2 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 blood. And again almost all the Western nations advanced 
 united, if not directly on Asia, at least on a city which lay 
 close to its portals, the ancient Capital Moscow. Then, as 
 after the crusades, though much more quickly, great floods 
 of Orientais came sweeping over Western Europe. Mo- 
 hammedan troopers watered their steeds in the Seine, 
 and a Mohammedan religious Service was held in the Weimar 
 Gymnasium. This close touch of Orient and Occident, 
 which the war had brought about, was paralleled by peace- 
 ful developments. A general spiritual drift toward the 
 East had made itself feit. Scientific striving after knowledge 
 was accompanied by a fantastic longing for the sensuous 
 charms of the Orient and for a long, peaceful dream in 
 its spiritual atmosphere, in which poetry, philosophy, re- 
 ligion, and life were inseparably intermingled. 
 
 Goethe participated in this general movement, though 
 in a different sense, and for a different immediate reason, 
 than that which actuated most people. Such a course of 
 investigation had long been one of the recognised necessities 
 of his education. Of the European countries and their 
 intellectual life he had formed clear conceptions; Asia, 
 with the exception of the small comer into which the 
 Bible had given him an insight, had been wholly, or at 
 least half, veiled from his view. And yet there was so much 
 in religion and history, in art and poetry, that pointed 
 to those remarkable regions, which had early risen to a 
 high state of civilisation and then sunk into a silent lethargy. 
 
 Goethe undertook the investigation on a comprehensive 
 scale. He carried his studies eastward to the shores of the 
 Pacific Ocean, in order to get a full grasp of the peculiarities 
 of the neighbouring continent. China and India could not 
 hold his attention ; China was too barren, India too monstrous 
 a jumble. Persia, on the other hand, tempted him to 
 linger. He became acquainted with the culture of this 
 country through its most congenial representative, Hafiz, 
 the celebrated poet of the fourteenth Century. Hammer’s 
 translation of Hafiz’s collection of songs, the Divan, had 
 appeared in 1812 and 1813, and Goethe needed but to read 
 
flDarianne von WiUemer 
 
 3 
 
 the introduction to this work to be most strongly attracted 
 by the life and writings of his Oriental brother. The 
 bard of Shiraz seemed the very image of himself. Had he 
 himself, perchance, lived once before upon the earth in 
 the form of the Persian? Here was the same joy of earth 
 and love of heaven, the same simplicity and depth, truth- 
 fulness and straightforwardness, warmth and passionate- 
 ness, and, finally, the same openness of heart toward every 
 thing human and the same receptive mind, free from 
 institutional limitations. Did not the same thing apply to 
 him that the Persians said of their poet, when they called him 
 “the mystic tongue” and “the interpreter of mysteries, ”* 
 and when they said of his poems that to outward appearance 
 they were simple and unadomed, but that they had a deep, 
 truth-fathoming significance and highest perf ection of form ? 
 And had not Hafiz, like him, enjoyed the favour of 
 the humble and the great? Had he not also conquered a 
 conqueror, the mighty Timur? And had he not out of 
 the destruction and ruin saved his own serenity, and con- 
 tinued to sing peacefully as before under the old accustomed 
 conditions ? 
 
 Thus Goethe found in Hafiz a beloved brother of a 
 former age, and, gladly treading in the footsteps of his 
 Oriental kinsman, produced, to compete with the Eastem 
 Divan , one in the West, which had to be styled West-Eastern, 
 as the Western poet blended the ideas and forms of the 
 East with those of the West, and boldly assumed the 
 mask of the Persian singer without sacrificing an iota of 
 his own pronounced personality. Behind this inwardly as- 
 sumed mask Goethe joumeyed in July, 1814, to the re- 
 gions of the Rhine and the Main. The first laconic word 
 in the journal of his travels is “ Hafiz.” 
 
 For many years he had longed to see again the beloved 
 region of his native country, with its greater wealth of pro- 
 ducts and its more gaily coloured dress. But physicians 
 and politics had always compelled him eastward. Now 
 
 * Goethe applies these names to himself in Offenbar Geheimnis ( W ., 
 vi., 41). 
 
4 
 
 ftfoe Xife of Goetbe 
 
 that benign peace reigned over Europe and Germany he 
 could no longer be restrained. He persuaded his physicians 
 to send him to Wiesbaden and, on the 251dl of July, set 
 out for the Rhine. 
 
 It gave him infinite pleasure; he was as happy as on the 
 day when he first set out for the classic scenes of Italy. 
 His divining spirit anticipated new life and new love, and as 
 a corroboration of his anticipations he saw through the fog, 
 as he drove out from Weimar, the heavens spanned with 
 a rainbow. “ It is white, to be sure, but still it is a rainbow.” 
 
 ©0 follft bu, muntrer ©reiö, 
 
 Tüd) nicht betrüben, 
 
 ©inb gleich bie £aare roeijj, 
 
 ®od) rauft bu lieben.*' 
 
 He did not have as many white hairs as his rhyme would 
 lead us to believe ; they had hardly begun to appear among 
 the brown, with which his head was still thickly crowned. 
 
 The poet continued his joumey, passing through Erfurt, 
 where his old acquaintances the shop-women nodded him 
 friendly greetings — “and I still seemed, after many years, 
 to be well received and well liked.” On the following day 
 he gazed up at the Wartburg and the forests which envelop 
 it. Memories of the days when he had here spent his rage 
 as he followed the chase, the days when he had experi- 
 enced the joys and the sorrows of love, arose again within his 
 breast : 
 
 Unb ba buftet ’3 raie nor alterS, 
 
 T>a rair nod) Don Siebe litten, 
 
 Unb bie ©aiten meinet ^JfalterS 
 9 Tit bem 9 Äorgenftral)l fid) ftritten; 
 
 ba§ Sagblieb au§ beu ©üfdjen 
 güUe runben £onä entbaudjte, 
 
 * On thee the years sit light, 
 
 Let hope elate thee; 
 
 E’en though thy hair be white, 
 Love ’s joys await thee. 
 
flDarianne von TKHUlemer 
 
 5 
 
 5lngufeuern, 31t etfrifdjett, 
 
 2 öie’$ ber SBufett rooHf unb brauste.* 
 
 In Hünfeld he mingled with the visitors at the fair, 
 and as he had become young again, and it seemed to him 
 as though he were once more Lavater’s disciple, he revived 
 his physiognomic skill and examined the faces of soldiers 
 and maids, civilians and peasants, after the fashion humor- 
 ously described in his Jahrmarkt zu Hünfeld. The restora- 
 tion of his youthful powers is shown in the way in which 
 every little event shaped itself in his mind into a poem. 
 
 On the fourth day of his joumey he arrived in his native 
 city, from which for seventeen years he had been separated 
 by apparently insuperable hindrances. Recently, while 
 engaged in writing the history of his youth, he had feit 
 in his heart a great yeaming to visit once more the scenes 
 of those early years. Hence he announced his entry 
 into the city in words almost as solemn as he had used of 
 his first arrival in Venice.f “And so I drove into Frank- 
 fort, Friday evening, the 28th,” is the opening sentence 
 of his Frankfort letter to his wife. For the present, how- 
 ever, he remained only a short time. He wished first to 
 take the eure at Wiesbaden and then to look about leisurely 
 in his old home surroundings. So he continued his joumey 
 on the second day. 
 
 How happy he was to view again this beautiful, more 
 southem landscape, with its “highly favoured fields, with 
 its meadows reflected in the river, with its vine-clad hills 
 in the distance”! Even the dust of the fatherland, as a 
 sign of the south, made him as happy as it had on the way 
 from Bozen to Trent. 
 
 * Then ’t is fragrant as the pleasures 
 And the woes of love long gone, 
 
 When my lyre’s soft-swelling measures 
 Vied with brightly beaming dawn; 
 
 When the huntsman’s merry singing, 
 
 Echoing through copse and mead, 
 
 Soul-refreshing, spirit -bringing, 
 
 Filled our heart’s desire and need. 
 f Vol. i., p. 373. 
 
6 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 ©taub, bcn l)ab’ tdj längjf entbehret 
 3n bem ftetö umhüllten 9forben, 
 
 9lber in bem beiden ©üben 
 3ft er mir genugfam morbcn.* 
 
 A rain-storm approaches, and “the wind-tossed dust is 
 driven by the rain-drops to the earth” — 
 
 Unb fogieibb entfpringt ein Öeben, 
 
 ©cbmillt ein f)dlig bdmlid) Söirfen, 
 
 Unb e§ grnnelt unb es grünet 
 3n ben irbifc£)en iBejirfen.f 
 
 Under these good omens Goethe arrived in Wiesbaden. 
 He met there his noble friend Zelter and spent with him 
 and Councillor of Mines Cramer, an able mineralogist and 
 an agreeable companion, five beautiful weeks. Numerous 
 excursions to the Rhine, whose majestic waters and beautiful, 
 fertile banks never lost their charm for him, afforded 
 a most welcome variety in the midst of the monotonous 
 eure at the baths. One such excursion was to St. Rochus’ s 
 chapel above Bingen. The injuries which the chapel 
 had suffered during the war had been repaired and the 
 sacred edifice was now rededicated. As the dedicatory 
 Service assumed somewhat the nature of a peace-celebration, 
 in which, after a long period of sorrowful Separation, the 
 dwellers on the right bank of the Rhine were once more able 
 to unite joyously with those on the left shore, many thou- 
 sands of people poured in from all sides. The unfolding of 
 the spectacle on a most perfect day and in a most glorious 
 setting gave Goethe great joy, and the pious naivete of 
 the countrymen, no less than the history of the chapel and 
 its saint, aroused his interest so deeply that he began at 
 
 * Dust I long have been deprived of 
 In the northem cloud-veiled clime, 
 
 But this sunny Southern region 
 Hath the dearth supplied betime. 
 
 | Straightway then new life upspringeth, 
 
 Swelled by sacred powers unseen, 
 
 And the buds and blooms of springtime 
 Fill the earth with grateful sheen. 
 
Marianne von MiUemer 
 
 7 
 
 once an enthusiastic description of the celebration, which 
 he greatly enriched by historical observations, as well as 
 by comments on the people and their physical environment. 
 After his retum home he also designed an altar picture, 
 which was executed by Heinrich Meyer and Luise Seidler 
 and in 1816 was presented to the chapel. 
 
 The röle of a painter of pictures of saints was a tone 
 that had hitherto been lacking in Goethe’s register. But even 
 here he remained true to his nature, painting neither the 
 agonies of martyrdom nor the raptures of a saint, neither 
 an emaciated body nor a corpse. He portrayed, rather, 
 a pleasing, sympathetic scene, in which a handsorne youth 
 (St. Rochus) with amiable, gentle features leaves the 
 palace of his fathers as a joyous pilgrim, who takes cordial 
 delight in distributing his gold and valuables among the 
 children. 
 
 On the ist of September Goethe accepted an invitation 
 from the Brentanos to visit them at their country-seat in 
 Winkel on the Rhine. He had known the husband, Franz 
 Brentano, from childhood, he being one of the five mother- 
 less littie ones of whom Maximiliane [La Roche] assumed 
 Charge upon her marriage with their father, Peter Brentano. 
 At the death of his father, Franz became the owner of the 
 business establishment and the head of the great family. 
 He was an excellent man and enjoyed Goethe’s highest es- 
 teem. His wife, Antonie, the daughter of the Austrian 
 statesman and art-collector von Birkenstock, was amiable 
 and liberally educated and had made Goethe’s acquaintance 
 in Karlsbad in 1812. Goethe spent eight glorious days 
 at their country-seat and while there visited again every 
 nook and comer of the Rheingau. In memory of the 
 visit Frau Brentano wrote in his album, in imitation of a 
 Klopstockian stanza: “Here Nature paused, with lingering 
 tread, and from a lavish hand poured abounding life over 
 hill and dale — here you, too, were pleased to linger eight 
 beautiful days, and the sunshine of your presence seemed to 
 me the perfection of grace.” 
 
 Retuming to Wiesbaden for a few days Goethe left 
 
8 
 
 Gbe Xife of ßoetbe 
 
 on the i2th of September for Frankfort. On this occasion 
 he was able to observe that the prophet had begun to enjoy 
 some honour even in his own country. Die Oberpostamts- 
 zeitung took respectful notice of his arrival in the following 
 announcement : “His Excellency, the Ducal Saxe-Wei- 
 
 marian Privy Councillor Herr von Goethe, the greatest 
 and oldest living hero of our literature, arrived yesterday, 
 en route from Wiesbaden, in his native city, which had been 
 deprived of his enjoyable presence for twenty years.” 
 
 In Frankfort Goethe enjoyed, as he had in Winkel, the 
 hospitality of the second generation. He was the guest 
 of Fritz Schlosser, the son of Hieronymus, and the nephew 
 of his brother-in-law Georg Schlosser. The elder generation 
 had passed away. The sons of Hieronymus, Fritz, and 
 Christian, were respected among the citizens of Frankfort 
 and had inherited their admiration for Goethe from their 
 parents. “From the days of our childhood,” said Fritz 
 later, “ Goethe’s star had shone above us with unwavering 
 splendour.” Fritz’s wife, likewise a native of Frankfort, 
 now became well acquainted with Goethe for the first time, 
 and thereafter so fully shared the feeling of her husband 
 that, whenever strangers said anything against the poet 
 after his death, she was likely to end the dispute with an 
 abrupt “ You did not know him.” 
 
 Goethe was extremely happy in Schlosser’s home, in 
 spite of the fact that a broad chasm yawned between him 
 and his hosts. The two brothers, deeply emotional natures, 
 having fallen in with the romantic tendency of the times, 
 worshipped the unity and beauty of the Middle Ages and 
 showed a preference for the Catholic Church. Christian 
 had already taken the full consequences of his attitude and 
 had retumed to the bosom of the old Church; Fritz and his 
 wife were just on the point of taking the same step. Their 
 sentiments could not remain a secret to Goethe, but how 
 could he, who recently, in his Dichtung und Wahrheit, had 
 ascribed so much good to the seven sacraments, and, in 
 his Wahlverwandtschaften, had with unmistakable personal 
 delight carried Catholic omamentation and belief in miracles 
 
Marianne 
 
 (From Könnecke’s Bilderatlas) 
 
 '■■'l 
 
flDarianne von TOüemer 
 
 9 
 
 into a Protestant church and region, and who had himself 
 promised an altar picture for St. Rochus ’s chapel, — how 
 could he find fault with the Schlosser family for taking such 
 a step, when they did it out of the purest motives? And 
 yet, little as he may have expected such a thing of this 
 family, living in Frankfort, a stronghold of Lutheranism, 
 he had long before known that pietism had there assumed 
 a form which led, almost inevitably, to Catholicism. Even 
 his dear Christian friend Fräulein von Klettenberg is hardly, 
 in his characterisation of her, to be distinguished from a 
 Catholic believer. 
 
 Goethe’s Frankfort circle of Catholic and Catholicising 
 friends was further enlarged by the arrival of Sulpiz Bois- 
 seree. This young man from Cologne was no stranger to 
 him. He had made his acquaintance in 1811 in Weimar 
 and had found him very congenial. Sulpiz and his brother 
 Melchior had inherited a large commercial establishment. 
 They applied the means which came to them from this 
 source to a most worthy purpose. Through the current 
 of the age, which their faith supported, they were drawn 
 into that enthusiasm for the Middle Ages which with them 
 found expression in a most lively interest in mediseval, 
 particularly Lower-Rhenish, architecture and painting. 
 Out of pure devotion Sulpiz, the better known of the two, 
 became absorbed in the ruins of the Cologne cathedral 
 and portrayed its beauty and grandeur in a series of careful 
 drawings as a contribution toward the Propaganda of 
 Gothic art and the completion of the sublime structure. 
 He feit that the cause would be certain of a mighty advance- 
 ment if Goethe could be persuaded to take a kindly interest 
 in it. To be sure, this seemed impossible, in view of the 
 pronounced declaration of adherence to the principles of 
 antique art which Goethe had made to the world ten years 
 before, in his introduction to the Winckelmann letters. But 
 Sulpiz made the attempt. He sent Goethe a part of his 
 drawings and then went to visit him in person. Through 
 the fine, deep understanding with which he explained his 
 drawings he succeeded in curing the reluctant poet, who 
 
IO 
 
 Zbc Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 at first growled like a wounded bear, of his aversion for 
 Gothic art, to such an extent that he admitted that this 
 art is an historically important phenomenon in which 
 one ought to take due interest. Along with the gain for 
 the cause he succeeded in winning the Olympian’s interest 
 in his own personality through the genuine cordiality and 
 the modest independence of his bearing. The privy 
 councillor, at first stiff and reserved, dismissed him as a 
 fiiend with a hearty embrace, and soon afterward, when 
 he came to deal, in Dichtung und Wahrheit, with the Stras- 
 burg cathedral, he made cordial recognition of Boisseree’s en- 
 deavours. Boisseree had now no more ardent wish than 
 that Goethe should visit the gallery of old Lower-Rhenish 
 and old Dutch masters, collected by himself, his brother, 
 and his friend Bertram, which they had taken with them 
 when they moved to Heidelberg in 1810. 
 
 This wish seemed at last near fulfilment and Sulpiz 
 came to Frankfort to escort the great patron to his and 
 his brother’s home in Heidelberg. Goethe arrived there on 
 the 2 4th of September and was the guest of the Boisserees 
 for fourteen days. The aftemoons and evenings were spent 
 in social intercourse with the many Heidelberg friends, 
 among others Voss, Paulus, Thibaut, and Frau von Hum- 
 boldt. The mornings were given up entirely to the study 
 of the Boisseree collection. Goethe devoted himself to 
 it with astonishing perseverance, being determined to obtain 
 a clear and firm grasp of this field of art heretofore unknown 
 to him. Every morning he was in the hall by eight o’clock 
 and remained there tili noon. He had every picture taken 
 down separately and placed on an easel in Order that he 
 might enjoy it to the full, without being disturbed by its 
 neighbours on the wall. His admiration increased from day 
 to day. “O children,” he exclaimed several times, “how 
 stupid we are! We fancy that our grandmother was not 
 beautiful also. They were entirely different people from 
 us, you see. Let us take them for what they were, let us 
 praise them, let us praise them again and again!” The 
 Boisserdes were quite rejoiced over their success, and 
 
Marianne von Mlüemer 
 
 ii 
 
 Sulpiz announced with beaming countenance that he had 
 converted the old heathen king to the adoration of the Ger- 
 man Christ child . But if he meant by this that Goethe 
 leamed to value old German art, if not above, at least as 
 highly as, Greek, he deceived himself. 
 
 On his retum journey to Frankfort, when, in Darmstadt, 
 Goethe wandered about among the plaster casts of antique 
 sculptures, including some of the figures of the Parthenon 
 frieze, old German art again receded far into the back- 
 ground, and when he reached home he remarked to Knebel : 
 “ I have feasted at the Homeric and at the Nibelungen 
 tables, but have found nothing better suited to my personal 
 taste than the broad, deep, ever-living nature in the works 
 of the Greek poets and sculptors.” 
 
 On the nth of October Goethe was again in Frankfort. 
 Although the season was far advanced, and he had already 
 made one long sojoum in his native city, he nevertheless 
 remained nine days within its walls. It took a strong 
 magnet to hold him there. The magnet in question was 
 the young wife of the banker Privy Councillor Jakob Wille- 
 mer, who later received a patent of nobility. Willemer 
 was only eleven years younger than Goethe, and had long 
 been acquainted with him — was in fact his friend. He 
 fully deserved the poet’s respect and friendship, for in 
 talent and character he towered far above the average 
 man. Being unhampered by his calling, he cultivated a 
 surprising number of fields of study and endeavour, and 
 his influence was feit in all of them. He was a writer, 
 a philanthropist, a pedagogist, a political economist, a 
 statesman, a critic, and a member of the board of directors 
 of the Frankfort Theatre. In the year 1800 he had taken 
 into his house the charming actress and ballet-dancer 
 Marianne Jung, a native of Linz, Austria, in order to pro- 
 tect her from the dangers of the stage. He could not offer 
 the sixteen -year- old girl a mother, for he was a widower; 
 but he did provide her with sisters in the persons of his 
 two younger daughters, with whom she was to live and 
 acquire an education. With her charming open face, 
 
Gbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 I 2 
 
 about which hung a wealth of brown curls, and with her 
 rieh spiritual gifts, she soon became the star of the home. 
 She was of a very naive and most delicate nature. There 
 was no artificiality, no calculation, in her conduct, and 
 with all her cordiality, vivacity, and gaiety, there was some- 
 thing thoroughly reserved and modest, which gave her 
 whole being an air of happy harmony. The depth of her 
 emotions and thoughts was made particularly beautiful 
 by the wonderful graciousness with which they were ex- 
 pressed. As her perceptions were clear and distinct, the 
 great poetical talent which the gods had bestowed upon her, 
 in addition to her other good qualities, enabled her to 
 compose stanzas not to be distinguished from Goethe ’s 
 on the same occasion; indeed, some of them shone as real 
 pearls among his own. 
 
 It was a by no means unimportant factor in the hospi- 
 tality of the Willemer household that Marianne possessed 
 rare social talents. By virtue of an agreeable resoluteness, 
 which won for her from Goethe the nickname of “little 
 Blücher,” she knew how to guide and control every social 
 gathering; and by her expressive singing she contributed 
 a very refreshing share of the entertainment. Since, after 
 the marriage of her younger foster-sister, she was Wille- 
 mer’s only companion in the home it was inevitable that her 
 f oster-f ather should become her lo ver and soon after (1814) 
 her husband. 
 
 When Goethe arrived in Frankfort in September she 
 was not yet married. He met her, not in the city itself, 
 but out at the Gerbermühle, Willemer’s charming country- 
 seat on the upper Main. She seems to have made a deep 
 impression on him at first sight. He found in her much 
 that recalled his former sweethearts, Lotte, Lili, and Frau 
 von Stein. By her name, her character, and to some 
 extent by her life history, she reminded him also of two of 
 the characters in his writings of which he was most fond, 
 the Mariannes of Die Geschwister and Wilhelm Meister, and, 
 to a less degree, of Mignon and the bayadere. Doubtless 
 the sight of her often caused him to lose himself in medita- 
 
fIDarianne von Millemet 
 
 13 
 
 tion and in secret wonderment at the retum of those van- 
 ished figures. And how could her soul have remained un- 
 affected by his presence? Willemer’s oldest daughter, the 
 widow Rosette Städel, wrote in her diary after her first 
 meeting with Goethe: “ He is a man whom one cannot help 
 loving like a child and to whom one would gladly intrust 
 one ’s seif entirely.” Do we not hear the same confession 
 in a poem which Marianne sent to Goethe in Weimar, “ If 
 one sees thee one must love thee” ? 
 
 Thus when Goethe came from Heidelberg he entered 
 the Willemer house as a lover and one beloved. Meanwhile 
 the expected change in Marianne’s position had taken 
 place. On the 27th of September she had become Willemer’s 
 wife, but remained, as Goethe diplomatically expressed 
 himself to Christiane, “as friendly and kind as before,” 
 which means, when translated into clearer language: she 
 gave him the same love as before her marriage, and this 
 fact made him uncommonly happy. After having visited 
 her on the i2th of October, the next day after his arrival, 
 he was there again on the 14Ü1 for the greater part of the 
 day. “We were very merry and remained a long time 
 together, so that I have no further events to record of this 
 day” (letter to Christiane, October i6th). On the evening 
 of the i8th they all went together up to Willemer’s tower 
 on the Mühlberg to watch the bonfires wdiich were every- 
 where kindled in commemoration of the first anniversary 
 of the battle of Leipsic. This evening must also have had 
 its special charms, as Goethe often recalled it in later years. 
 On the following day they were together again, and on the 
 next moming, the last that Goethe spent in Frankfort, 
 he paid his farewell visit.* In the aftemoon he retumed 
 to “the northem cloud-veiled clime. ” The premonition, 
 “ Love’s joys await thee, ” which had come over his spirit 
 as he set out from Weimar, had come true. 
 
 Düring the winter Goethe’s dearest thought was that 
 of visiting again the following summer these glorious regions 
 
 * The passage in Tb., v., 135, “Visited Marianne R.,” I interpret a 
 meaning Marianne Rosette Städel. 
 
tTbe Xi fe of (Boetbe 
 
 H 
 
 of the Rhine and the Main and the many dear friends who 
 inhabited them, and who had cried out to him, “Come 
 back! Come back!” Marianne sang to him: 
 
 3u bcn flehten gäl)l’ id) mid), 
 
 ,, Siebe f leine " nennft bn mid). 
 
 SBidft bu immer mid) |o beiden, 
 
 2Berb’ id) ftetö mid) glitcflid) preifen.* 
 
 In her his West-östlicher Divan had for the first timegained 
 a love-nucleus, from which it grew vigorously in all direc- 
 tions. Marianne became the Suleika whom he had sought, 
 and, rejecting the “little dear” as too “little” for his 
 poetry and too German for the Orient, he answered: 
 
 bn, bie fo lange mir erharrt mar, 
 geurige Sugenbblicfe mir fdjicfft, 
 
 3e^t mid) licbft, mid) [pater beglüefft, 
 
 ®ab [ollen meine Sieber preifen, 
 
 ©oll ft mir emig ©uleifa ^ei^en.f 
 
 For her he himself assumes the name Hatem, the one who 
 gives and receives most bountifully, for as a lover he desires 
 to give and receive. 
 
 While Goethe was making his plans for a beautiful Sum- 
 mer Timur (Napoleon) suddenly rose again and seemed 
 to dash them to pieces. For, even if the war should be 
 kept within French territory, it was certain to drive away 
 his mood and to bring swarms of troops to the Rhine. 
 Hence Goethe began to be undecided in his mind as to 
 whether it would not be better for him to retum to the 
 baths of Bohemia, which he had been accustomed to visit. 
 
 * I belong among the small, 
 
 Me thou “little dear” dost call. 
 
 If this title ne’er forsake me, 
 
 It will ever happy make me. 
 f That thou, whom I have so long awaited, 
 
 Me with thine eyes’ youthful fire dost bless, 
 
 Lovest me now, wilt later caress, — 
 
 This shall my numbers proudly proclaim, 
 
 Thee shall I ever Suleika name. 
 
flDarianne von ‘MUlemer 
 
 15 
 
 Finally, however, the hope that a friendly spirit would come 
 to the aid of the lovers gained the victory, and he set out 
 on another pilgrimage to the Rhine. His faith in the god 
 of love did not deceive him. Düring his sojoum at Wies- 
 baden, which extended from the end of May tili past the 
 middle of July, the storm of war spent its rage, and he was 
 able to enjoy the rest of the summer on the Rhine under 
 a perfectly serene political sky. 
 
 At the beginning of July Goethe had met Minister vom 
 Stein at the court table of Nassau, and had received from 
 him an invitation to visit him at Nassau Castle, his ances- 
 tral seat. As Goethe wished to study more thoroughly 
 the geological relations of the Taunus Mountains, and 
 later to go to Cologne, this seemed to fit into his plans very 
 well. So he spent from the 2 ist to the 23h of July in Cross- 
 ing the mountain ränge and arrived at Nassau Castle on the 
 2 4th. When Stein heard that Cologne was Goethe’s ul- 
 timate goal he decided immediately to accompany him 
 on the joumey. The two travelled down the Rhine, partly 
 by carriage, partly by boat, and, as we know from Arndt, 
 each found the other an exceedingly agreeable companion. 
 Cross-grained, fiery Stein was more gentle and mild than 
 anybody had ever before seen him. What a contrast with 
 1774, when the child of the world followed the same route 
 with the two prophets, and what a greater one still with 
 1792, when, all alone, in a leaky boat, and very early in the 
 morning, he had rowed indifferently past Cologne and its 
 cathedral ! 
 
 This time he came expressly on account of the cathedral, 
 to examine with his own eyes what Boisseree’s drawings 
 had disclosed to him, and to see if he could do anything 
 to aid in the completion of the structure. He studied it 
 very carefully outside and inside, from the top and from 
 the base, and formed a high opinion of it. He gave an 
 account of his observations in his Reise am Rhein , Main 
 und Neckar. It is to be noted, however, that the strong 
 accents in which he here speaks of the cathedral as a won- 
 derful work, designed with equal genius and understanding, 
 
i6 
 
 £be Xi fe of ßoetbe 
 
 and executed with perfect art and workmanship, are chosen 
 essentially with reference to his ulterior purpose of agitating 
 for the completion of the cathedral. 
 
 Apart from the cathedral, his eyes were open to the 
 mediaeval paintings, to which he had paid no attention 
 in 1774, and the picture of the Jabach family by Lebrun 
 was again warmly praised, although he was scarcely able 
 to recall the extravagant enthusiasm with which it had in- 
 spired him forty years before. 
 
 After a two days’ sojoum Goethe and Stein set out on 
 the retum joumey, making short stays in Bonn, Neuwied, 
 and Coblenz. They were favoured with good weather and 
 Goethe viewed the wonderful landscape with great delight. 
 He may have feit the beauty of nature more keenly than in 
 his youth, for his companion got the impression that the 
 Rhine and the Main were not only Goethe’s birthplace 
 but also his real home. The feeling led Stein during the 
 following winter to join Antonie Brentano in the plans which 
 she was spinning to transplant him thither for the rest of 
 his life. In Coblenz Goethe met Görres, who at that time 
 was the Champion of romantic democracy, but not yet of 
 German ultramontanism. It was through the medium of 
 his organ, Rheinischer Merkur , that Stein brought his con- 
 stitutional plans before the public. 
 
 Stein invited Goethe to Nassau Castle again for several 
 days. It is a pity that the poet gave no good account of 
 this visit either in letters or anywhere eise. Judging by 
 the scanty notes in his diary, it must have been very ani- 
 mated and unique. Many men of prominent position and 
 distinguished ability came to the castle, among others 
 Eichhorn and Motz, both later Prussian ministers and joint 
 founders of the Zollverein. In a certain sense it was a 
 congress of the chief representatives of German constitu- 
 tional unity. What attitude Goethe, with his political 
 pessimism, assumed toward them is hard to say. There 
 seem to have been conflicts with Stein in which the sparks 
 flew, in spite of the moderation which the statesman took 
 pains to observe. In a passage in Goethe’s diary we read, 
 
flßarianne vonMlUemer 
 
 17 
 
 after the words, “In the garden with Herr vom Stein and 
 the ladies,” the unusual remark, which teils a great deal 
 more than it says, “Talking and contradicting.” It did 
 not diminish their friendship, however, for the two great 
 men had leamed to understand each other. 
 
 Retuming to Wiesbaden on the 3 ist of July, Goethe 
 remained there tili the ioth of August, then spent a day 
 viewing the Roman antiquities in Mainz, and finally, on the 
 1 2th of August, in Company with his dear friend Boisseree, 
 who had joined him during the last week in Wiesbaden, 
 tumed to Frankfort, or let us say, rather, to the Gerber- 
 mühle. This time he came as the guest of the Willemers, 
 which is an indication how intimate the relation was into 
 which he had entered with them the previous year. He 
 doubtless accepted their friendly invitation without hesita- 
 tion. He feit himself firm in his resignation and expected 
 the same firmness on the part of Marianne. Assuming 
 that such was the case, why should they not enjoy the 
 charm and the exaltation of soul which arises from the har- 
 monious intercourse of great kindred spirits ? 
 
 Those were delightful days, matchless weeks, that Goethe 
 spent out there in the rural quiet along the broad Main, 
 which glowed with beautiful colours in the evening sunshine. 
 Just forty years before, very near this spot, but a little 
 farther down the stream, he had lingered by Lili’s side in 
 the gardens and terraces of the Bemards and the d’Orvilles. 
 He was now almost a greybeard, and yet he was happier 
 than he had been then; he was no longer one moment in 
 heaven and the next in hell; an undisturbed serenity had 
 filled his soul and secured for him the full enjoyment of 
 the rarest happiness. 
 
 He surveyed the intervening years with profound sat- 
 isfaction. Forty years before, in the midst of his sorrows, 
 he had taken a vow that his inmost being should for ever 
 be devoted to sacred love, because he hoped more and more 
 through the spirit of purity, which is sacred love, to re- 
 fine the dross out of his soul. This hope had been realised. 
 And with this spirit of purity he embraced the new love 
 
 VOL. III. 2 
 
i8 
 
 Gbe Xife of Goetbe 
 
 and sought through it to rise to higher purifi cation. The 
 love of a noble woman was to him a symbol of the love of 
 God. In this lofty conception of love he had something 
 in common with the Oriental and Occidental mystics. It 
 was because of it that he said of the Book of Suleika: “ The 
 veil of earthly love seems to infold higher relations.” 
 
 There is no good ground for supposing that Marianne 
 was not animated by the same spirit, and her husband 
 must have been in sympathy with both of them. He 
 knew very well that the fiery kisses and embraces which 
 the two exchanged in their love-songs existed only in 
 fancy, and that in reality the emotional basis of the poems 
 was nothing more than innocent delight in each other’s 
 Company. Willemer had reason to be proud that his 
 wife aroused such feelings in Goethe’s breast. And how 
 could he blame her if she feit so toward the poet? Were 
 they not all, men and women, old and young, in love with 
 the great, good man ? Did not he himself love him ? Hence 
 not only did he not look askance on the intercourse of the 
 two, in many ways he encouraged it. It required an ex- 
 ceptionally noble soul to do such a thing, and Goethe 
 recognised this with feeling and admiration. After a visit 
 from Willemer in Weimar he wrote to Marianne: “The 
 sight of his true nature brought vividly to my mind all 
 the Privileges which he so willingly and nobly grants 
 
 US.” 
 
 While the locality may have conjured up Lili’s image, 
 the peculiarity of this love reminded Goethe of Lotte. 
 
 He had come to the Gerbermühle for a visit of about a 
 week, but life was so engaging there that he was unable 
 to depart after so short a stay. The airy balcony, the 
 shady garden, the neighbouring forest, the outlooks upon 
 water and mountains, the most generous and most informal 
 hospitality, and, above all, the amiable society, forced 
 him again and again to postpone his departure. Especially 
 beautiful were the evenings when there was a gentle ? 
 spicy breeze blowing through the house and garden and 
 when Goethe read aloud and Marianne sang. Whether 
 
flDarianne von THMllemer 
 
 
 consciously or not, she always chose songs that were rieh in 
 allusions, such as Mignon (Sehnsuchtslied), Füllest wieder 
 Busch und Tal, and the bailad Der Gott und die Bajadere. 
 The first time she sang this bailad Goethe wished she 
 might never sing it again. His inmost being was stirred 
 at the thought that her own life’s history had come so near 
 being identical with the story of the poem. She, on the 
 other hand, may in her innocence have interpreted the poem 
 to mean that her soul was bome aloft by Mahadeva 
 (Goethe) from the earthly depths in which it had lain to 
 the heavenly heights above. This may account for the 
 amount of expression which she put into the singing of this 
 particular song, of which Goethe months afterward spoke 
 to Zelter with great enthusiasm. 
 
 Five weeks of this mildly passionate, enchanted existence 
 had passed by before Goethe was aware, and he was now 
 forced to think of parting. It was not, however, to be 
 the final Separation. He wished to go to Heidelberg for 
 a time in Order to make a more thorough study of Boisseree’s 
 collection of paintings, and planned to pass through 
 Frankfort again on his homeward way. Nevertheless 
 it was a Separation, the end of a glorious state, of which 
 he was not certain whether it would ever be realised again. 
 The previous winter words had risen to song at the moment 
 of parting; now the exaltation came with the approach 
 of the time of Separation. On the i2th of September 
 began the long series of individual songs and amoebean 
 verses which the lovers exchanged with one another. 
 Goethe composed the clever, impassioned song about the 
 thief “ Opportunity,” who had stolen from him his last 
 remnant of love, to which Marianne replied, with roguish 
 ardour, that, being herseif greatly rejoiced by his love, 
 she would not scold “ Opportunity.” On the evening of the 
 i7th, the last that Goethe was to spend at the Gerbermühle, 
 the song of love swelled to more solemn tones. Suleika 
 had dreamed that a ring which Hatem had given her had 
 fallen into the Euphrates. “ What doth this dream signify ? ’ ’ 
 she asked Hatem. 
 
20 
 
 Gfoe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 Die$ gu beuten bin erbötig! 
 
 $ab’ idj bir nid)t oft ergabt, 
 
 2Bie ber Doge non SSenebig, 
 
 9J?it bem Sfteere ft et) Dermalst ? . . . 
 
 W\i) oermäf)lft bu beinern gluffe, 
 
 Der Derraffe, biefern §ain, 
 
 §ier foll bi$ gum lebten Äuffe 
 Dir mein ©eift getuibmet fein.* 
 
 The beautiful moonlight held them together tili late 
 in the night, and the poet read aloud songs to Suleika, 
 which added still more fervour to their feelings. The fol- 
 lowing day the little wife begged him urgently to leave. 
 The ardency had grown too intense for her in Goethe’s 
 presence. At a distance they could allow each other 
 harmless liberties. For this purpose they had invented 
 the charming new plan of communicating their sentiments 
 to each other by means of references to pages and verses 
 in Hammer’s translation of Hafiz. As they wrote nothing 
 but numerals they had the courage to express themselves 
 even more freely than they had done in their songs. On 
 the 2 ist Goethe received such a letter in cipher, to which 
 he answered the same day with two songs, one of which, 
 a most sublime hymn in unrhymed vers irreguliers, is a 
 veritable torrent of emotions and images. 
 
 A few of the verses run : 
 
 SBenn bu, ©uleifa, 
 
 fÖiid) übcrfdjtDenglid) beglücfft, 
 
 Deine Seibenfdjaft mir gutoirfft, 
 
 211$ roär'8 ein 2M . . . 
 
 Da$ ift ein 21ugenblidf! — — 
 
 * This I can interpret clearly. 
 
 Have I not recounted thee 
 How the Doge of Venice yearly 
 With a ring doth wed the sea ? 
 
 Me dost thou to thy river marry, 
 
 To thy terrace, to this grove; 
 
 Near thee shall my spirit tarry 
 Till the parting kiss of love. 
 
flDarianrte von Millemev 
 
 21 
 
 $ier nun bagegen 
 ®id)trifcbe perlen, 
 
 ®ie mir beiner Seibenfdjaft 
 ©eroaltige öranbung 
 Sßarf an beg ßebeng 
 S^eröbeten ©tranb aug.* 
 
 Every day now brought new songs. “From Suleika 
 to Suleika is my coming and my going.” Their feelings 
 were fanned to a new glow by the surprise of meeting again. 
 On the 2$d Willemer and Marianne came to Heidelberg. 
 On the way Marianne had quieted her heart’s beating for 
 her friend by the most beautiful stanzas that ever flowed 
 from the pen of a German poetess : 
 
 SBag bebeutet bie Söetuegung? 
 
 Springt ber Oftroinb fro^e $unbe? 
 
 ©einer ©cbroingen frifdje Regung 
 Äü^It beg ^erjeng tiefe Söunbe. 
 
 Äofenb fpielt er mit bem ©taube, 
 
 Sagt ibn auf in leisten Sßöifd^en, 
 treibt gur fiebern 0flebenIaube 
 ®er Snfeften fro^eö Slölfcben. 
 
 fiinbert fanft ber ©onne ©lüben, 
 
 Äübit auch mir bie beifsen SBanget^ 
 
 Äüfit bie Dieben noch im glieben, 
 
 ®ie auf gelb unb $ügel prangen. 
 
 Unb mich foH fein leifeg glüftern 
 $on bem greunbe lieblich grüfen; 
 
 * When thou, Suleika, 
 
 Makest me boundlessly glad, 
 
 Dost toss to me thy passion, 
 
 As ’t were a ball. . . 
 
 Oh, what a moment! 
 
 Here now return I 
 Pearl-strings poetic, 
 
 Which the surging billows 
 Of thy bosom’s passion 
 Tossed on the desolate 
 Shore of my life. 
 
22 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 (51) nodj biefe |>ngel büftern 
 ©i|’ id) (tili ju (einen güfien.* 
 
 The poet extended to his Suleika the enthusiastic 
 greeting : 
 
 3(t e$ möglich! Stern ber ©terne, 
 
 T>rücf id) rcieber bich anö §erj! 
 
 Sich, tuaö ift bie Slacht ber gerne 
 giir ein Stbgrnnb, (ür ein ©djtnerj! 
 
 3a bn bi(t e6 ! meiner greuben 
 ©iiper, lieber SBiberpart; 
 
 (5ingebenf nergangner öeiben 
 ©chanbr’ id) öor ber ©egenroart.f 
 
 That evening the moon was full and they promised to 
 think of each other at every full moon thereafter. The 
 following evening was another evening of parting, and it 
 seems to have passed like the one on Lago Maggiore de- 
 scribed in the Wanderjahre, “breath for breath and bliss 
 
 * What doth all this stir reveal ? 
 
 Tidings glad the east wind brings? 
 
 In my heart’s hot wound I feel 
 Coolness wafting from his wings. 
 
 Fondly he the dust doth greet, 
 
 And in filmy cloudlets chase; 
 
 To the vineyard’s safe retreat 
 Frights the merry insect-race. 
 
 Lenifies the sun’s fierce glow, 
 
 Rids my cheeks of burning pain, 
 
 Kisses, flying, vines that grow 
 Flaunting over hill and plain. 
 
 And his whispers soft convey 
 
 From my friend a message sweet, 
 
 Ere the hills own night’s dark sway 
 I shall nestle at his feet. 
 
 f Do I truly, star of stars, 
 
 Press thee to my heart again? 
 
 How the night of distance bars! 
 
 Whatabyss! What flood of pain! 
 
 Yes, ’t is thou art come at last, 
 
 Of my joys sweet fountain head, 
 
 But the thought of sorrows past 
 Fills the present hour with dread. 
 
flDarianne von Millemer 
 
 23 
 
 for bliss.” On the moming of the 2Öth the Willemers de- 
 parted, and while Marianne composed out of the depths 
 of her heart that song, “ West wind, for thy humid wings, 
 oh, how much I envy thee!” which is a worthy companion 
 to her song to the east wind, Goethe brooded over the 
 question whether he still possessed himself or was lost 
 in Marianne, shaping his doubts into the profound dialogue 
 in verse between Suleika and Hatem, of which the first 
 stanzas spoken by Suleika — 
 
 SSolf unb Änedjt unb Überrotnber, 
 
 Sie geftebn ju jeber Seit: 
 
 $öd}fteS ©li'nf ber ©rbenfinber 
 Sei nur bie Sßerfönltdjfeit. 
 
 SebeS ßeben fei 31t führen, 
 
 Sßenn man fidj nid)t felbft bermifit; 
 
 Silles fönne man berlieren, 
 
 Söenn man bliebe, roaS man ift * — 
 
 are often taken as the confession of his own deepest faith. 
 This interpretation is only half correct. True, it was his 
 opinion that we can be happy only when we preserve the 
 innermost kemel, the really valuable part, and hence that 
 which alone is essential, of our personality; not, however, 
 by clinging stubbomly to our personality and falling back 
 upon it, but by giving it to others and for others. We enjoy 
 ourselves most in others and through them. Hence Hatem 
 replies to Suleika: 
 
 tarnt !bof)l fein! fo tbirb gemcinct; 
 
 $od) idj bin auf anbrer ©pur: 
 
 SlUeS ©rbenglikf bereinet 
 ginb’ itf) in ©uleifa nur. 
 
 * Peoples, slaves, and lords of earth 
 All this testimony bear: 
 
 Personality of worth 
 
 Highest bliss brings everywhere. 
 
 He who rightly heeds life’s call 
 In the end may guerdon win; 
 
 He, in turn, may lose his all 
 
 Who remains what he has been. 
 
24 
 
 £be Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 Sßie fie fid) an mid) oerfdjroenbet, 
 
 SBin id) mir ein roerteg Set); 
 
 §ätte fie fid) roeggemenbet, 
 
 Slugenblicfö berlör’ td) mid).* 
 
 On the following day Goethe took up the theme once 
 more and in a leaf of the gingo biloba, which is one and yet 
 divided, “gave her hidden sense to taste what the knowing 
 edifies.” 
 
 The more ardent his passion grew under the glamour of 
 Marianne’s love, as it revealed itself more and more in 
 her exquisite poetical epistles, the more he feit the weight 
 of years lifted from his shoulders, — a glorious renewal of 
 youth! Tobesure, he has, as he sings, nothing to compare 
 with the brown locks of his beloved — 
 
 91ur bieö §erg, e§ ift bon 35aner, 
 
 ©djroillt in jugenblicfjftem §lor; 
 
 Unter ©djnce unb 9ZebeIfd)auer 
 9taft ein Stetna bir fjeroor. 
 
 $>u befd)ämft roie Morgenröte 
 Sener ©ipfet ernfte SSanb, 
 
 Unb nod) einmal fühlet §atem [©oetlje] 
 grüt)[ing§t)uud) unb ©ommerbranb.f 
 
 * That may be, for those inclined; 
 
 But I choose another course: 
 
 Ev’ry earthly bliss I find 
 Has Suleika for its source. 
 
 Loving me so lavishly 
 
 She my worth to me hath shown; 
 
 Had she spurned me haughtily, 
 
 I had straightway been undone. 
 
 f Save this heart which, never aging, 
 
 Swells with wärmest youthful glow, 
 
 Like the fire of AStna raging 
 
 Neath its veil of mist and snow. 
 
 Yonder summit’s solemn splendour 
 Thou like rosy dawn dost shame, 
 
 And in Hatem’s breast engender 
 
 Spring’s sweet breath and summer’s flame. 
 
HDarlanne von Millemer 
 
 25 
 
 Otherwise the sojoum in Heidelberg was characterised 
 by the same associations and the same occupations as that 
 of the preceding year, except that, in addition to the 
 Willemers, Goethe received a two days’ visit from the Duke, 
 who had been for a long time in the valley of the Rhine. 
 At the request of his prince Goethe was obliged to ex- 
 tend his joumey to Karlsruhe, in order to view Gmelin’s 
 cabinet of minerals and the specimens selected for the 
 Duke. He planned to join the Duke later in Frankfort. 
 
 Goethe spent only two days in Karlsruhe. He derived no 
 pleasure from a visit with his old friend Jung-Stilling, who 
 resided there. Jung-Stilling had grown rigid in spiritless 
 piety, and his manner of life had made him vain. The 
 two friends, between whom there had once existed such 
 cordial ties, had lost all sympathy with each other. Goethe 
 was much more favourably impressed with Hebel, for 
 whose Alemannische Gedichte he had long cherished a 
 fondness. 
 
 His sojoum in Karlsruhe would have brought the 
 keenest delight if he had met Lili there, as he had hoped. 
 She doubtless often came thither from Alsatia to visit her 
 relatives. Through the Gerbermühle, and later through 
 Heidelberg, the memory of her had become extraordinarily 
 fresh in his mind, and on the way to Karlsruhe he had told 
 Boisseree all the details of his betrothal with her, of which 
 he had hitherto said very little and to few people. But 
 in his expectation to find her in Karlsruhe he was dis- 
 appointed. In fact he was never again to see the betrothed 
 of his youth. On the 6th of May, 1817, she died in Alsatia, 
 in the full enjoyment of the highest esteem of her husband 
 and children, and of the friends and acquaintance of the 
 family. “The etemal Father,” wrote her husband to her 
 brother, “who, in his mercy, gave me this beautiful spirit 
 for my companion and through her caused so great a blessing 
 to descend upon me, has summoned fair Lili hence.” 
 
 We wonder whether Goethe, while in Karlsruhe, may 
 not have thought of another loved one of his youth — 
 Friederike, whose home beyond the Rhine was not very 
 
26 
 
 £be Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 far away. If he had sought to find her he would have 
 been obliged to make a pilgrimage to a grave. And this 
 grave was very near, in Baden, in German soil. After 
 many hard experiences in the home of her brother-in-law, 
 Parson Marx, she had found a place of refuge, first in 
 Diersburg, then in Meisenheim (between Lahr and Offen- 
 burg), where she died on the 3d of April, 1813. Throughout 
 her life she had enjoyed the love and respect of all who 
 knew her. 
 
 Through these memories many things had been re- 
 freshed in Goethe’s mind, and his conversation on the re- 
 tum joumey touched only upon his experiences in the 
 past. Among those remembered was Minna, the original 
 of Ottilie. 
 
 On the following moming he declared to Boisseree that 
 he was not going to Frankfort, but wxxild joumey home- 
 ward by way of Würzburg, and that he intended to set 
 out at once. He said that he did not feel well. 1 He spoke 
 occasionally of his disinclination to meet the Duke and 
 the latter’s mistress, the Opera singer Karoline Jagemann. 
 It was only with difficulty that his young friends were able 
 to persuade him to take one more day of rest. Then he 
 parted from Heidelberg — “a sad, hard farewell.” Sulpiz 
 accompanied him to Würzburg. The farther Goethe 
 joumeyed from Heidelberg and from the road to Frank- 
 fort, the better he feit. Boisseree says it was because he 
 gained in assurance that he would not be overtaken by 
 the Duke and Karoline Jagemann. We shall assign another 
 reason when we have read the following letter which he 
 sent Willemer from Heidelberg : 
 
 “Dear, esteemed Friend: That I am constantly oc- 
 cupied with you and your happy surroundings, that I see the 
 groves which you yourself planted and the lightly built, yet 
 substantial, house more vividly than in their presence, and 
 that I go over in memory again and again all the pleasure, 
 consideration, kindness, and love, which I enjoyed by your 
 side, you yourself doubtless feel, as I certainly cannot be 
 banished from those shady Spots, and must often meet you 
 
flDarianne von TKHUlemer 
 
 2 7 
 
 there. I have had a hundred fancies as to when, how, 
 and where I should see you again, as until yesterday I had 
 the duty assigned me of spending some charming days with 
 my prince on the Rhine and the Main, perhaps even of 
 joining in that brilliant anniversary celebration on the 
 Mühlberg. Now these plans are upset and I am hastening 
 home via Würzburg. My only consolation is the fact that 
 without caprice and without resistance I am wandering 
 the prescribed way and hence may all the more innocently 
 direct my longing toward those whom I leave behind.” 
 
 He wished to depart before there should be any occasion 
 to regret anything he had done. The shades of Lili and 
 Friederike had given him the quick, firm determination. 
 This is our explanation of his sudden change between 
 evening and moming. On the road he regained his freedom 
 more and more and became more and more happy. In 
 Meiningen, where he arrived on the ioth of October, he 
 was again able to jest in poems with the dear mistress of 
 the Gerbermühle. In one of them he makes the maidens 
 to whom Hatem has formerly paid court call Hatem to 
 account for remaining true to Suleika alone, protesting 
 that they too are pretty. Hatem admits that they are 
 and praises the particular beauty of each of them. We 
 begin to divine their flattered expressions when suddenly 
 he makes the astounding declaration that Suleika possesses 
 all these beauties combined. When the maidens, as a last 
 resort, ask him whether Suleika is as powerful in song as 
 they are, he answers haughtily: 
 
 Semit U)r folcfjer Tiefe ©runb f 
 ©elbftgefüf)lte$ ßieb entqniüet, 
 
 ©elbftgebichtcteg bem 9Jtnnb. 
 
 S5ott euch ‘Dichterinnen allen 
 3ft il)r eben feine gleich . • .* 
 
 * Do ye such profoundness know? 
 
 Songs self-felt in her own bosom, 
 
 Self-composed from her lips flow. 
 
 Of your number, poetesses, 
 
 There is none with her compares. 
 
28 
 
 tCbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 With these songs, and further numbers added in Weimar, 
 he sought to help himself and his friends bear the sorrow 
 of longing. 
 
 The new year brought Goethe a great bereavement. 
 On the 6th of June, 1816, his wife died after a period of 
 severe suffering. In her he lost much. In hard days, 
 in times of illness and distress, she had proved true and 
 brave, and she had at all times relieved him of many of 
 the petty burdens of everyday life. Furthermore she was 
 a life companion whose happy naturalness imparted an 
 agreeable atmosphere to his home, even though she was 
 able to show but little appreciation of his higher spirit- 
 ual life. Sorrow over her loss, deep gratitude, memo, 
 ries of the indignities which she had been forced to endure 
 from the outer world for his sake, together with the natural 
 desire to show most forcibly to this outer world what she 
 had been to him, inspired the sentimental verses on the day 
 of her death : 
 
 üerfucfjft, o Sonne, DcrgebenS, 
 iDurcf) bie biiftern Sßolfen jn fdjeinen! 
 
 ®er ganje ©cttrinn meinet 2eben$ 
 
 3 ft, ihren SSerluft ju beroeinen.* 
 
 As the summer advanced the question arose as to 
 what watering place he should visit. So far as the effect 
 was concemed it was immaterial whether he went to Wies- 
 baden, Teplitz, or some other thermal springs. Love for 
 the Rhine and for his friends in that region, especially 
 Marianne, attracted him strongly toward the west. But 
 dared he go in that direction? Zelter seemed to bring him 
 to a decision. Zelter was going to Wiesbaden and ob- 
 tained a promise from Goethe to accompany him thither. 
 But Goethe soon changed his plan. He did not wish to 
 traverse again the dangerous route, which would take him 
 
 * Thou, O sun, dost labour in vain 
 The obscuring clouds to divide; 
 
 My life’s one ineffable gain 
 
 Is grief o’er her loss from my side. 
 
flDarianne von Willemer 
 
 2 9 
 
 through Frankfort and into the vicinity of his beloved 
 Marianne. He clung to his determination to go to the 
 Rhine, but changed the goal of his joumey to Baden-Baden, 
 which he planned to reach via Würzburg, instead of via 
 Frankfort. 
 
 On the 2oth of July he entered upon the joumey in 
 Company with Meyer. Two hours after they left Weimar 
 the carriage was upset and Meyer received a wound in the 
 forehead. Goethe took him back to Weimar and gave up 
 the joumey. The accident seemed to him an ill omen. 
 In spite of hundreds of most alluring temptations from 
 within and without he never again visited the Rhine, his 
 German Italy. 2 And as Marianne did not come to Thur- 
 ingia he never saw her again. But he kept up his tender 
 correspondence with her as long as he lived, and his letters 
 were occasionally adomed with verses which surprise us 
 with their fervour. Upon Marianne’s songs he bestowed 
 the highest honour by including them among his own in 
 West- östlicher Divan. To ward the end of 1818, when he 
 sent her the proof sheets containing the Buch Suleika, 
 she replied, “ I was surprised and deeply affected, and wept 
 over the remembrances of a happy past.” 
 
THE LYRIC POET 
 
 Goethe the inspired poet — The mystery of his power — His talent an irre- 
 sistible natural force — Spinozistic explanation of the poet’s twofold 
 nature — Goethe’s object in writing poetry — His poetic vision and 
 creation — His normality and superiority — Comparison with Heine 
 — Goethe’s poems are like painted window-panes — The genetic 
 method of interpreting them — Harzreise im Winter — Various ways 
 in which poems originated — Transformations through which they 
 passed — An den Mond and Der Fischer — Goethe’s reasons for mak- 
 ing alterations — His advance beyond his predecessors — Influence of 
 Herder and folk-poetry — Subject-matter of his poems true and 
 genuine — They refiect typical truth — Their deep significance and 
 symbolism — Wonne der Wehmut — Social songs — Ballads — Subjects 
 from religious history — Die Braut von Korinth — Die erste Walpur- 
 gisnacht — Paria — Der Gott und die Bajadere — Hochzeitlied — Bal- 
 lade vom vertriebenen und zurückkehrenden Grafen — Symbolic mean- 
 ing of these ballads — Der getreue Eckart — Erlkönig — Der König 
 in Thule — Inwardness in Goethe’s ballads — His own experiences 
 embodied in them — Goethe’s employment of contrast in his poems 
 — His resolution of apparent discords into harmonies — His serenity 
 — His mastery of the art of representation — Objectivity — Inclina- 
 tion to symbolism — Vivid word-pictures, especially of nature and 
 human beings — Auf dem See — Music in his verse and prose, even let- 
 ters — Sources of his word-music- — Verse forms which he employed 
 — Tones lacking in his lyre — Place of Goethe’s poetry in the spirit- 
 ual life of Germany. 
 
 T HE discussion of Goethe’s lyric poetry brings us to 
 the heart of all his poetic activity. In the origin 
 and completion of his songs he himself recognised 
 the best proof of his poetic talent. Early in life it seemed 
 to him something wonderful and enigmatic. The songs 
 sprang forth of themselves, without previous meditation 
 or volition, at times even against his will; offen in finished 
 form, offen merely the beginnings or outlines, but with an 
 
3i 
 
 Gbe X^ric fl>oet 
 
 irresistible impulse to finish them. Even in the middle of 
 the night the poetic visions would come to him and would 
 vanish again as they had come, if he did not quickly hold 
 them fast. 
 
 A subject might repose in his soul for years and decades 
 and then suddenly shape itself into a poem. One experience 
 would sink in the sand and be lost for ever, while another, 
 perhaps a less important one, would spring forth as a song into 
 a new and etemal existence. His involuntary poetic creation 
 went so far that even things which he had not experienced, 
 or read, or wrought out in his fancy, suddenly presented 
 themselves to him as songs. They were inspirations in 
 the füllest sense of the word. Hence he was justified in 
 saying: “The songs made me, not I them,” “The songs 
 
 had me in their power,” “ It sang within me,” and it would 
 have been no meaningless phrase if he had applied to 
 himself the words of his minstrel, “ I sing myself as carols 
 the bird.” 
 
 What kind of a mysterious power was this, of which 
 he had become the instrument? Out of it grew, not merely 
 rhymes and rhythms, but highly artistic structures, which 
 revealed life with the transparency of crystal and rocked 
 the poet on the waves of harmony. 
 
 Goethe himself was fond of studying this question, but, 
 with his modest fear of appearing guilty of self-deification, he 
 confined himself to describing his poetic power, instead of 
 pointing out its original source. When he was writing the last 
 part of his biography he feit the need of giving others an 
 account of his thoughts; but again he did not go beyond 
 certain fragmentary indications, which are very difficult to 
 interpret. He gave a detailed account of how Spinoza’s 
 philosophy had taught him to grasp the All as a necessary 
 whole, how he had received from it peace and enlighten- 
 ment, how it had made him capable of resignation; and 
 then, to our surprise, added the Statement that he had 
 brought all this forward for the sole purpose of making 
 comprehensible what he was about to say conceming his 
 poetic talent. He described this talent, however, only 
 
32 
 
 Gbe %\te of (Soetbe 
 
 from the point of view of the compulsion which it exercised, 
 obliging him to look upon it as a force of nature. But he 
 says that this force of nature was not always active, for 
 which reason he considered it proper for him, during the 
 pauses, to make use of his other powers and to devote 
 them to the affairs of the world . He left it for his readers 
 to find the connection between this utterance and the 
 teachings of Spinoza. Let us seek to find it by explaining 
 Goethe’s conception of the philosopher. 
 
 Spinoza sees in the world an embodiment of God. But, 
 though all the parts of this body are necessary members 
 of the divine whole, they are not equally permeated by 
 God. Only the fully divine are essential, etemal, and 
 harmonious; those less divine are changeable, fleeting 
 phenomena, ripplings of the waves crowding and dashing 
 against each other at the surface of the sea, which in its 
 depths is not moved.* 
 
 In this picture of the world Goethe recognised his own 
 twofold nature. t The fully divine, the essential, in him 
 was the poet; the confused earthly, the accidental, was the 
 everyday man, the man of affairs and society. It was for 
 this reason that the world lay so clear and harmonious 
 before him, and that such profound repose came over him, 
 when he looked out into the world as a poet, a part of the 
 pure essence of God, with the eye of God; it was for this 
 same reason that the world seemed so confused and con- 
 tradictory when he moved about in it with the blurred 
 vision of an ordinary son of earth. Hence it was that his 
 poetic talent asserted itself as a force which acted of itself 
 and found its way with sovereign certainty, whereas the 
 other things which he attempted in the world were charac- 
 terised by uncertainty, doubt, and error. 
 
 It was for this reason that he was able to practise 
 resignation more easily than others. Resignation gave him 
 pleasure, if not immediately, at least through the after 
 effects, both in the specific instance and in general. He 
 
 * The Earth-Spirit, in Faust, characterises itself as an “etemal sea.” 
 
 t Cf. W., xxix., 9, 8, and 17, 5; xxviii., 311, 6 and 22. 
 
33 
 
 Zhc X^rlc poet 
 
 resigned only what was ephemeral and apparent, whereas 
 he saved his own peculiar nature, his poetic genius, so 
 much the more fully. But this resignation must not be 
 a renunciation of the worid, for as God needs the world 
 in order to perfect himself, so does the poet. It is his 
 food and his task. 
 
 Seeing things in their distinctness and harmony, the 
 poet perceives them in their true light. It was an astounding 
 new discovery that Goethe made in his own soul. So soon 
 as an experience transformed itself in his soul into a poem, 
 it became clarified and purified, and its real substance 
 appeared then in its true relations. In the temporal he 
 saw the etemal, in the small the great, in the narrow the 
 broad, in the accidental the necessary. In this way that 
 which was specific lost its empty, meaningless isolation. 
 He himself declared on one occasion that “the lively poetic 
 perception of a limited state raises a specific phenomenon 
 to a circumscribed and yet unlimited universal, so that 
 in the small space we believe we see the whole world.” The 
 specific instance became the model of a thousand similar 
 things and cases and a Symbol for a thousand analogous 
 ones. It became typical and symbolical. Bearing in 
 mind this grasping of truth by means of poetic perception, 
 we can understand Goethe’s confession, which at first 
 blush is so perplexing, and sounds so like a disciple of Gott- 
 sched, that he wrote poetry not merely for the sake of 
 pacifying himself, but also for the purpose of correcting 
 his conceptions of things. 
 
 Poetical enthusiasm, in the original sense of a state 
 of being filled with God , 3 fumished him with prophetic 
 power, raised him to a lofty point of Observation, from 
 which the labyrinths of the world lay before him in perfect 
 order. “ How could I behold the world so clearly as now 
 when I have nothing further to seek in it?” he once 
 wrote. This is supposed to be a token of homage to Frau 
 von Stein, but the words might also have been addressed 
 to the muse of poetry, who, as we well know, appeared 
 to him in the form of his beloved. Thus he receives the 
 
 VOL. III. — 3 
 
34 £be Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 veil of poetry from the hand of truth, and says to 
 her: 
 
 3ld), ba id) irrte, Ejatt’ id) Diel ©efptelen; 
 
 ®a id) bicf) fettne, bin id) faft allein.* 
 
 In the realm of truth one is usually very much alone. In 
 the “Prelude” to Faust the poet requires the “longing for 
 truth,” if he is to write poetry . 4 This point of view gives 
 us the full meaning of the words, “The poems made me, 
 not I them.” By revealing to him the truth, they developed 
 his higher being. 
 
 When with his divine soul Goethe sees, feels, recognises, 
 and experiences the world as a poet, he expresses not 
 only himself, but also the world in its normality, so that 
 every man finds himself reflected in the poet ’s world. 
 The mysterious peculiarity which great geniuses possess, 
 of uniting in a wonderful way marked spiritual superiority 
 with normality, the extraordinary with the common, man- 
 ifests itself in Goethe as in almost no other man. High as 
 he Stands above the average man, there is something 
 thoroughly normal about his nature. An emotion may 
 rise higher and grow more ardent in his soul than in the 
 soul of another man, and yet this emotion is aroused only 
 in conditions in which it is aroused in men of smaller calibre. 
 Likewise his thoughts are, as a rule, deeper than those 
 of other men, but they move in a direction which does not 
 depart from the normal line. Hence, as a matter of course, 
 he experiences only what any normal man experiences or 
 might experience. This normality of the man is not 
 lessened by the poet; it is increased, rather, both by the 
 selection and the purification of the features of the experience 
 or the picture which he portrays, and by the moderation 
 
 of the expression of them. This is especially important 
 
 in the expression of his passion; for, although we know 
 
 that his passion is aroused only by a normal occasion, 
 
 nevertheless it rises to such a height that it might become 
 
 * Alas! while erring I had comrades many; 
 
 Since thee I ’ve known I ’ve lost them almost all. 
 
35 
 
 Gbe %yv \ c fl>oet 
 
 somewhat abnormal because of its intensity. At this 
 point, however, the muse steps in and with her heavenly 
 hand “ calms every wave of life.” 
 
 The contrary is true of many other poets, especially 
 of “ demi-geniuses.” There is something about them that 
 is eccentric, awry, unwholesome, and extreme. Because 
 of this temperament they either experience or fancy things 
 which are not likely to happen to other mortals, or eise 
 they accompany their experiences and fancies with emotions 
 and thoughts such as very rarely, if ever, occur to others. 
 The act of writing poetry does not exercise a pacifying 
 influence on them; it inflames them, rather, so that even 
 normal subjects, thoughts, and feelings are expressed by 
 them in a way indicating an overheated imagination. In 
 order to gain a clear consciousness of this let us take a 
 single example. Heine’s love passion was certainly never 
 greater, and was hardly ever as great as Goethe’s. And 
 yet the expression of his passion surpassed anything that 
 Goethe’s love-fire inspired him to sing. Take for example 
 these lines : 
 
 $lu§ 9tortocg$ äßälbern 
 9ki}3’ id) bie bödjfte £anne, 
 
 Unb taudje fie ein 
 
 3n be$ ttnag glii^enben §d)lunb, unb mit folc^er 
 
 geucrgctrönften 9tiefenfeber 
 
 ©djreib' id) an bie bttnfle §immel$bedfe: 
 
 ,,51gne§, id) liebe bid)!" 
 
 Sebroebe 91ad)t lobert alöbann 
 ®ort oben bie einige gtammenfdjrift, 
 
 Unb alle nad)iuad)fenben @nfelgefd)led)ter 
 fiefen jaud^enb bie ^immelömorte: 
 
 ,, StgneS, id) liebe bicb!".* 
 
 * From Norway’s forests 
 I snatch their tallest pine tree 
 And plunge it deep 
 Into the glowing crater of JE tna, 
 
 And with this gigantic, fire-filled pen 
 I write on the dark dome of heaven : 
 
 “Agnes, I love thee!” 
 
 And then each night the sky will blaze 
 
36 
 
 Zbe Xi fe of Goetbe 
 
 Such poems, with their half-true, cleverly exaggerated 
 thoughts, and their beautiful violence of expression, may 
 excite our admiration, they may delight us and hold our 
 attention, but our deepest inner seif is not wedded to them, 
 and they do not become active factors in our soul-life, 
 emerging at the proper moment with their grateful in- 
 fluence to enlighten, or to confirm and strengthen, our 
 own being. They never give us that feeling which we all 
 have, and which Felix Mendelssohn once expressed, when 
 he said that it had often seemed to him as though the same 
 thing must have occurred to himself under similar circum- 
 stances, and that Goethe had merely chanced to say it. 
 How far this general human character and this beneficent 
 effect extends, every one can give abundant testimony from 
 his own experience. However, it may not be out of place 
 to eite here a remarkable example — the verses which the 
 poet addressed to Heaven from the slope of the Ettersberg 
 on the i2th of February, 1776 — 
 
 ®er bu tum bem §immel bift, 
 
 2IUe$ 2eib unb Scbmerjen ftiHeft, 
 
 ‘©en, ber hoppelt elenb ift, 
 doppelt mit ßtquicFung fiiHeft, 
 
 3Id), id) bin be8 Treibens mübel 
 22a§ foH all ber ©djmerg unb 2uft? 
 
 @über griebe, 
 
 Äomm, ach lomrn in meine Söruft 1* * 
 
 had their most special occasion, and yet Pestalozzi makes 
 a Swiss peasant woman sing them with her children at 
 evening prayers, and they suit the Situation so excellently 
 that one cannot read them there without being affected. 
 
 This general human character would stand out more 
 vividly and oftener if Goethe had not had the habit of keep- 
 ing close to personal experience in his poems. With him 
 
 With the etemal flaming legend, 
 
 And all coming generations of men 
 Will joyfully read the heavenly words: 
 
 “Agnes, I love thee!” 
 
 * The original form in which Goethe sent this poem to Frau von Stein 
 is quoted on p. 287 f. of vol. i., where a translation is given. — C. 
 
37 
 
 Zbe X^ric poet 
 
 this habit was a necessity, as we already know. In the 
 epic and the drama, where the author must represent an 
 experience in a picture that is consistent in itself, where, 
 that is, he must sever his personal connection with it, 
 this method of procedure has its advantages. It is different 
 with lyric poetry, where the experience passes directly into 
 the poem, without being transformed into a picture. In 
 addition to the distinct advantages arising therefrom, 
 which we shall discuss later, there is a disadvantage which 
 not infrequently makes itself feit. Poems bom of a par- 
 ticular Situation are permeated with such specifically per- 
 sonal, local, and Contemporary allusions, that they are 
 obscure to the uninformed reader. This fault was found, 
 even while Goethe was still alive, and so he took up his 
 pen in his own defence and wrote: 
 
 ©ebicfjte fittb gemalte genfterfd) eiben ! 
 
 ©iel)t man öom Warft in bie tird)e Ijinera, 
 
 35a ift alles bnnfel unb büfter; 
 «•••••• 
 
 Äommt aber nur einmal herein! 
 
 Söegriifit bie heilige Äapeüel 
 ®a ift’ö auf einmal farbig IjeHe, 
 
 ©efcf)icf)t’ unb Bierrat glänjt in ©cfmeHe, 
 
 SBebeutenb mirft ein ebler ©cljein. . . .* 
 
 That is the secret. We must work our way into the 
 interior of Goethe’s poems and view them from within, 
 must seek to discover their process of crystallisation und er 
 the combined influence of experience in life and philosophy 
 of the world, if they are to reveal themselves to us in their 
 full blaze of splendour. This is true even of those which 
 seem clear and transparent the first time we meet them. 
 
 * The poet’s lines are painted window-panes. 
 
 If into the church from the market we look, 
 
 All within is dark and obscure; 
 
 But when we once within repair 
 To see the chapel’s sacred light, 
 
 A colour-splendour greets the sight, 
 
 The words and Ornaments grow bright, 
 
 And we the poet’s rapture share. 
 
38 
 
 Zbe %ifc of (Boetbe 
 
 They, too, have their hidden special roots, the laying bare 
 of which will enhance their charm and worth. 
 
 To many people this may seem a rather toilsome road 
 to the enjoyment of a poem; but they must not forget that 
 a truly great work of art — and such the smallest of Goethe’s 
 poems offen are — does not reveal its full value without some 
 effort on the part of the observer, however strong a first 
 impression it may make. 
 
 We shall obtain, then, the best grasp of the substance 
 and import of a poem by Goethe if we acquaint ourselves 
 with its history. At the same time that we are doing this 
 we shall catch most interesting glimpses of the inferior 
 of the poet’s workshop, even though but through a cranny. 
 We shall see a large part of his songs spring up quickly and 
 develop to full flower out of a simple occasion. We shall 
 see a smaller part also shoot up quickly, and then stand 
 still, until new occasions come to force them to maturity. 
 We shall see a third part pass through several transforma- 
 tions; at times only the outward form being affected, at 
 other times the whole tendency undergoing a change. 
 The most instructive of these three groups is the second. 
 Let us trace the development of a few of them. First the 
 Harzreise im Winter. 
 
 On the moming of the 2 9th of November, 1777, the 
 poet is riding all alone toward the Harz. He sees a vulture 
 soaring among the dark snow clouds above him. So shall 
 the impressions made upon his liberated soul on this lonely 
 journey soar as a song high above the turmoil of earthly 
 life. The first stanza of the poem has taken shape. On 
 this journey the poet is to visit a self-torturing youth.* 
 Involuntarily he paints to himself the contrast between 
 his own condition and that of Plessing. This comparison 
 is crystallised in the second stanza. He rides on and the 
 following day beholds a comfortably situated city ; the sight 
 of it brings another stanza to life. Thus the song keeps 
 on growing in sections, always following his experiences, 
 with an occasional secondary thought which suddenly 
 flashes through his mind, until in the ascent of the Brocken, 
 
 * Vol. i., p. 338. 
 
Gbe Xpric fl>oet 39 
 
 on the twelfth day of the joumey, it reaches its culmination 
 and end. 
 
 If the composition itself did not teach us that the poem 
 is not a subsequent grouping of the experiences and emotions 
 of the joumey, Goethe’s diary and other accounts of those 
 days would prove it. It was conceived and its various 
 parts written down under immediate impressions. Never- 
 theless, thanks to Goethe’s instinctive artistic power, it 
 received a unity, which is disturbed only by the little 
 digression to call down a blessing upon his friends who have 
 gone out to the chase. It is of the great theme of the 
 happiness in the love of men and the unhappiness in the 
 hatred of men that it treats, and the Brocken, which at 
 the end looks down out of the clouds “on the kingdoms 
 and glory of the world,” Stands as a symbol of God, who 
 bestows his treasures upon the happy and the unhappy 
 in equal measure. 
 
 We must think of the composition of Willkommen und 
 Abschied as having taken place in exactly the same way, 
 except that the chain of many links in the Harzreise is here 
 shortened to one of three. In this poem likewüse each 
 link took shape under the excitement of the moment. This 
 is shown by the atmosphere of the poem and by the outward 
 circumstance that among Friederike’s posthumous papers 
 were found only the first ten lines of the poem, and they 
 were not set off in stanzas. 
 
 Another peculiar example is found in Ilmenau. The 
 great central part, the vision, which brings back to the 
 poet the Duke and his companions in camp in the forest at 
 night, was very probably composed in 1776, likewise under 
 the fresh impression of the scene, and was then put aside 
 for seven years, until it was woven into a second composition 
 which Goethe dedicated to the Duke. 
 
 Whereas the growth of these songs along with a chain 
 of impressions extends over a series of days or even years, 
 in other cases the process lasts but a few hours. But the 
 development is the same. We are not to think of the 
 poet as sitting down at his desk afterward and making a 
 combination of a variety of impressions; we must think 
 
40 
 
 Zbe Xife of ßoetbe 
 
 of an immediate conception, creation, and arrangement. 
 The same is true of Wanderers Sturmlied, which he sang 
 to himself as an accompaniment to his different impulses 
 on a walk; An Schwager Kronos, which he chanted to him- 
 self during a ride in the post chaise; Auf dem See, in which 
 he immediately gave poetic form to the pictures and feelings 
 that greeted his eyes and stirred his heart on a boat ride, 
 entering the lines afterward in his diary; and, near the end 
 of his life, Dem auf gehenden Vollmonde, in which the quickly 
 changing views of the moon in a lightly overcast sky are 
 brought into harmony with his own feelings. 
 
 There is still another way in which he incorporated in 
 one song several motives which were not all present in his 
 breast at the beginning, but came to him afterwards one 
 by one. The first motive by itself would give no signs of 
 poetic life until a second was added, and a third and a 
 fourth, and then they would all gain life at once and unite, 
 and from their union would issue a poetic fruit. In that 
 case we have outwardly but one, or perhaps two, acts of 
 creation; but inwardly more such acts have taken place. 
 Such was the case with the song An den Mond, which 
 brings us back again to the joumey to the Harz Mountains. 
 
 On the iöth of January, 1778, a young woman of the 
 Weimar Court circle, Christel von Lasberg, drowned her- 
 seif in the Ilm, near Goethe’s Gartenhaus, out of unhappy 
 love — and, it was said, with a copy of Werther in her pocket. 
 Goethe was deeply affected by the tragedy and “lingered 
 for several days about the scene of the death in quiet moum- 
 ing.” His usually mobile, glowing heart was fixed on the 
 river by his thoughts, as by a ghost. He was greatly 
 depressed for weeks. His depression grew worse when 
 Frau von Stein shut herseif off from him. At the beginning 
 of the new month his beloved tumed to him again, and, 
 happy in her possession, he was glad to observe his “con- 
 tinued, absolute estrangement from men.” A walk with 
 her in the moonlight perfected this beautiful, pure mood, 
 and his soul feit at last entirely free from the depression 
 and the suspense of the past weeks. The first four stanzas 
 
4i 
 
 Zhe H^ric ipoet 
 
 of the song An den Mond were crystallised in their original 
 form. A few days more passed and on the 226. of February 
 he visited Plessing, who “drank hatred of men out of 
 fulness of love,” and lived a secluded life in bitter estrange- 
 ment. This fumished the last stanzas, which the poet 
 directed to Plessing, to Frau von Stein, and to himself. 
 At the same time they take us back to Christel von Lasberg, 
 to whom it was not granted to enjoy with a husband the 
 best things of life. The poem in its original form runs: 
 
 g-üUeft triebet’ g liebe £al 
 ©tili mit Slebelglanj, 
 ßöfeft enblidj aucf) einmal 
 SD^eine Seele ganj ; 
 
 ÜBreiteft über mein ©efilb 
 ßinbernb b einen SBlitf, 
 
 SBie ber ßiebften Sluge milb 
 Über mein ©efdjicf. 
 
 Sag bu [o betoeglicE) fennft, 
 
 Siefeg §erj im ÜBranb, 
 
 . galtet iljr trie ein ©efpenff 
 Sin ben gluf gebannt. 
 
 SBenn in ober SBinternacfjt 
 ©r öomSobefcf)triEt, 
 
 Unb bet grüblingglebeng ipracljt 
 Sin ben Änofpen quillt. 
 
 Selig tner fic^ ttor berSBelt 
 Oljne $afi öerfdjlie^t, 
 
 ©inen Sttamt am SBufen Ijält 
 Unb mit bem geniest, 
 
 SSSaö bem Sttenfcfyen unberouftt 
 Ober tnof)l oeradjt 
 Surcf) bag ßabtirintf) ber SBruft 
 SBanbelt in ber Slacbt.* 
 
 * Fill’st the Iovely vale again 
 Still with misty light, 
 
 And dissolvest all the strain 
 From my soul to-night. 
 
42 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 Whereas one root of this song rests in the sorrowful end 
 of Fräulein von Lasberg, there is a bailad which sends down 
 all its roots to the tragedy. It is Der Fischer, which de- 
 scribes the natural fascinating power of water. Düring 
 the days when Goethe was busy with pickaxe and spade, 
 Converting a comer of the park into a monument to the 
 dead girl, he wrote to Frau von Stein, “We worked tili 
 after nightfall, and finally I alone tili the hour of her death.” 
 He wamed Frau von Stein, whose melancholy moods he 
 knew, not to go down to the river; for “this inviting grief 
 has a dangerous attraction, like the water itself, and the 
 reflection of the stars of heaven, which shines out of both, 
 entices us.” 
 
 ßocft bid) ber tiefe Fimmel nid)t, 
 feucfjtöerflärte iBlau ? 
 
 ßocft bid) beiit eigen Slngefidjt 
 9hd)t her tn ero’gcntiau? * 
 
 O’er my meadows from on high 
 Send’st thy soothing gaze, 
 
 Like my sweetheart’s gentle eye 
 O’er my fortune’s ways. 
 
 And this heart, thou know’st it well, 
 
 Mobile and agleam. 
 
 Hold ye by a ghostly spell 
 To the silent stream, 
 
 When in winter’s cheerless night 
 Deadly swell its floods, 
 
 And in spring’s new-born delight 
 Mirror bursting buds. 
 
 Happy he who, free from hate, 
 
 Leaves the world’s vain noise, 
 
 To his bosom clasps a mate, 
 
 And with him enjoys 
 
 What, by common folk unguessed, 
 
 Or esteemed but light, 
 
 Through the mazes of the breast 
 Softly steals by night. 
 
 * Doth it not Iure thee — heaven’s deep, 
 
 The lustrous, limpid blue ? 
 
 Doth not thine own face bid thee leap 
 Within th’ etemal dew? 
 
£b e Xipric Ipoet 
 
 43 
 
 Here we have an example of one occasion giving rise to 
 two poems, which tend in opposite directions, not merely 
 because the experience was rieh enough in content to 
 arouse different thoughts, pictures, and moods, but also 
 because in Goethe’s harmonious soul the one demanded 
 the other as a counterpoise. With the dangerous natural 
 fascination of the water, in whose floods glistens a deceptive 
 image of the moon, is contrasted the healing charm of the 
 real heavenly sphere, which sheds its light over bush and 
 vale. 
 
 The song An den Mond may serve as an example of the 
 dass of poems which experienced a more or less thorough- 
 going transformation. Goethe did not publish it in the 
 original form. It doubtless seemed to him too harsh 
 and obscure. It appeared in print for the first time in 1789 
 in a new Version. The beginning and the end were changed 
 but little — the most important alteration was the Substi- 
 tution in the second stanza of “ des Freundes ” for “ der 
 Liebsten ” (“friend” for “ sweetheart ”) . The middle of 
 the poem, however, was considerably lengthened, and all 
 reference to the death of the young lady of the Court was 
 expunged. A new motive was introduced into the poem, 
 which became the fundamental motive, and with it the mo- 
 tives which were retained were most artistically blended. 
 The song became the lament of a woman whose lover 
 has forsaken her, and whose soul experiences an alleviation 
 of its sorrow as she strolls forth by the glorifying light 
 of the moon to the scenes of her bittersweet memories. 
 The last stanzas mark the culmination of these remem- 
 brances. Their seriousness has previously been referred to 
 in the lines, “Once, alas, this treasure rare I myself did 
 own.” 
 
 We may assume that this new song was composed in 
 Italy, as an expression of Frau von Stein’s sorrow at the 
 time when she interpreted Goethe’s secret flight and stub- 
 bom silence as a sign that he had forsaken her faithlessly 
 and for ever. Through this song he liberated himself 
 from the pain which the sorrow of his beloved caused him, 
 
44 
 
 Zhc Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 and he thought he was also alleviating her pain by sending 
 her this complaint against himself, which gives evidence 
 of such keen appreciation of her suffering. But the un- 
 believing, sorely disappointed woman found it an inade- 
 quate expression of her emotions. She intensified the 
 lamentation and the accusation, and in this changed form 
 it was found among her papers. 
 
 An example of a more gentle, and yet significant, trans- 
 formation is the famous poem to Friederike, Kleine Blumen, 
 kleine Blätter , which the poet never published in its original 
 form. He erased the stanza, 
 
 8cßicffal, fegnc biefe Triebe, 
 
 Saß mid) ißt unb laß fie mein, 
 
 Saß baS Seben linfrer Siebe 
 ®od) fein Olofenleben fein.* 
 
 He also changed the second line of the last stanza from 
 “ Reich mir deine liebe Hand ” (“Place thy darling hand 
 in mine”) to “ Reiche frei mir deine Hand ” (“Freely place 
 thy hand in mine”), and substituted “Blick” (“glance”) 
 for “Kuss” (“kiss”) in another verse, thus lowering the 
 tone of the love song, in which the lover longs for etemal 
 union with his sweetheart, to that of a poem of warm 
 homage, which, after the fashion of the eighteenth Century, 
 desires nothing but lasting friendship. He had two reasons 
 for making these alterations: his spiritual desire to bring 
 the earlier document into harmony with the later course 
 of his youthful love, and his artistic taste, which sought 
 to avoid the repetition of similar thoughts and comparisons 
 in the last two stanzas. 
 
 With the alterations which are not, as in the case of 
 An den Mond, determined by new personal motives, there 
 is usually introduced into the composition something less 
 individual and farther removed from the impressions of 
 the moment. As a result the poem is made easier to under- 
 
 * Fortune, bless this pure emotion, 
 
 Keep me hers and keep her mine, 
 
 Let the life of our devotion 
 Never !ike the rose decline. 
 
45 
 
 Gbe %yv\c poet 
 
 stand, but is robbed of some of its personal charm. In 
 Willkommen und Abschied, for example, the second line, 
 “ Und fort, wild, wie ein Held zur Schlacht ” (“Swift as a 
 warrior to the fight”), — so characteristic of young Goethe 
 dashing away at mad speed toward Sesenheim — is changed 
 to the tamer reading, “ Es war getan, fast eh gedacht ” (’T was 
 done almost as soon as thought”). In the poem Jägers 
 Abendlied, a Weimar echo of his former relation to Lili, 
 the poet replaces the stanza which reminds one so much 
 of Orestes and Faust — 
 
 35eS 9ttett|d)en, ber in aller ©eit 
 9hc finöet 9tuf) nod) 9taft; 
 
 §5em roie 3 U §aufe, [0 im gelb 
 ©ein §erse fcfyttuUt jur Saft * — 
 
 by a new one, which suggests nothing but the unhappy 
 lover: 
 
 £)e$ 5 D^enfcben, ber bie ©eit burdjftreift, 
 
 ©oll Unmut unb ©erbrufo 
 Often unb nad) ©eften fdjroeift, 
 
 ©eil er bid) taffen raup.t 
 
 In his effort to make his poetry intelligible to all he has 
 effaced many a beautiful and interesting feature, character- 
 istic of his former seif, by the changing of a single word. 
 In Wonne der Wehmut, which he composed in 1775 out of 
 sorrow over his Separation from Lili, we read in the origi- 
 nal Version: “ Trocknet nicht, trocknet nicht, Tränen der 
 heiligen Liebe!” (“Dry ye not, dry ye not, tears of a love 
 that is holy”)- We find the same adjective applied to love 
 in a letter to Auguste Stolberg of the same period. Out 
 of fear that the reader might not fully understand why he 
 characterised love as holy, he later erased the word “ heili- 
 gen ” and substituted for it “ewigen” (“ everlasting ”) . In 
 the Wanderers Nachtlied of February 12, 1776, he changed 
 
 * Cf. vol. ii-, p. 2. 
 t The man of trouble and unrest, 
 
 Who roameth far and wide, 
 
 Now tow’rd the east, now tow’rd the west, 
 
 Since forced to leave thy side. 
 
46 
 
 JZbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 “ Alle Freud' und Schmerzen stillest" (“ Every joy and sorrow 
 stillest”) to “Alles Leid und Schmerzen stillest" (“Every 
 pain and sorrow stillest”). In the poem Einschränkung 
 (August 3, 1776), one of the most exquisite documents of 
 the beginning of his career in Weimar, he made many altera- 
 tions out of consideration for Karl August ; there were other 
 changes which he made without being constrained by this 
 motive. The phrase, “ In reine Dumpfheit gehüllt" (“Wrapped 
 in a pure dream-veil”*), which characterises so aptly 
 young Goethe’s and the Duke’s striving, a striving that was 
 a groping about in the dark, and yet pure, was reduced to 
 the simple, but hardly more intelligible, expression “einge- 
 hüllt" (“ inwrapped ”). 
 
 We have put forward prominently the inward and out- 
 ward truth of Goethe’s poems. Outward truth, in that 
 they portray experiences; inward truth, in that the ex- 
 periences are of a normal and typical character and their 
 typical value is further enhanced by artistic elaboration. 
 In this element of truth they show a very great advance 
 over Goethe’s predecessors. If we except, perhaps, the un- 
 fortunate poet Johann Christian Günther, and Klopstock, 
 whose productions in this field were essentially intellectual 
 lyrics, the lyric poetry before Goethe, in so far as it made 
 any literary pretensions, was, like all the poetry of the time, 
 nothing but “polite leaming, ” as it aptly styled itself. 
 Poets read the lyric models, both good and bad, among 
 the ancients and among the Freneh, they leamed their 
 modes of expression and their artificial manner, and with 
 this knowledge patched together tender, gallant songs. 
 Young Goethe said with reference to this state of affairs: 
 “We are actuated by an artificial feeling; our imagination 
 composes its poetry with a cold heart.” The worthy 
 Anacreontic poet Christian Felix Weisse had no idea at 
 all to what extent he was mocking himself when he affirmed, 
 in the consciousness of his innocence : 
 
 * The word Dumpfheit, as here employed by Goethe, connotes so 
 much that it defi.es translation. For a scholarly and most interesting dis- 
 cussion of the semasiology of the word see Boueke, Wort und Bedeutung 
 in Goethes Sprache, pp. 1 56 ff., 297 ff., and 306. — C. 
 
Gbe X\>ric poet 
 
 47 
 
 3d) träumte ftetö in fRofenlaubert, 
 
 Unb tuarb am ©d)reibetifd)e ttmd). 
 
 Sd) träumte 9J?oft aug $od)l)cim3 Trauben, 
 
 Unb fd)öpfte meinen aus bem iBad).* 
 
 The fundamental truthfulness of his nature had led 
 Goethe, even while a Student at Leipsic , 5 to break away from 
 this empty, vapid dalliance in verse, even though he may 
 later, now and then, have paid homage to the fashionable 
 gods and donned the wig and sword of gallantry. But the 
 bursting of the last bits of the shell which still clung to his 
 genius and cramped it was accomplished by his contact with 
 the teachings of Herder and folk-poetry. When, a short 
 time after his return from Strasburg, he begged the genius 
 of his fatherland to cause to rise up a youth in whose songs 
 there should be truth and living beauty, not gay, soap- 
 bubble ideals, such as were floating about in hundreds of 
 German songs, he knew very well that this youth had 
 already arisen in his own person. He had already sung 
 Willkommen und Abschied, Mailied, Heidenröslein, Der 
 Wandrer , Wanderers Sturmlied, Felsweihe-Gesang, Elysium, 
 and Pilgers Morgenlied, which were soon followed by Adler 
 und Taube, Mahomets Gesang, Prometheus, Ganymed, An 
 Schwager Kronos, Künstlers Abendlied, and the many other 
 effusions of his youth, some breathing Storm and Stress, 
 others enveloped in the aura of peaceful repose. 
 
 Before this virile afflatus the old fictitious world of 
 namby-pamby shepherds and shepherdesses disappeared 
 on every hand, the Chloes and Phyllises, the Damoetases 
 and Philintes vanished, and made way for true existence 
 and for living human beings, grasped by a vigorous hand 
 from the jangling confusion of the world. Here there was 
 no imaginary lover, no imaginary sweetheart — he hardly 
 ever drew on the old stock of properties for a name to 
 cloak his Originals; nor was there any imaginary circum- 
 
 * I ever dreamed in rosy bowers, 
 
 And at my writing desk awoke; 
 
 I dreamed new hock of wondrous powers, 
 
 And dipped my own from out the brook. 
 
48 
 
 £be Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 stance — except perchance a real circumstance transformed 
 into a symbolic picture — or any “pretended emotions.” 
 In Goethe, the mortal enemy of empty words, we shall seek 
 in vain for meaningless phrases. Strike where one will 
 the many hundred statues, large or small, of his lyric 
 Pantheon, they will no where sound hollow. On the con- 
 trary, one may say of the most of them that their metal is 
 of too compact a nature. The lyric moulds were too small 
 to contain comfortably the abundance of material which 
 he poured into them. This quality of compactness became 
 more and more marked as he grew older. The over-abun- 
 dance of material caused the meaning of many of the poet’s 
 songs to be shrouded in darkness, or at least in a kind of 
 crepuscular light, such as we have previously seen resulting 
 from the individual nature of the experiences to which they 
 owed their origin. Again we are reminded of his com- 
 parison of his poetry to painted window-panes. 
 
 When we say that Goethe’s poems reflect typical truth, 
 we at the same time declare that their thought-content is 
 true and genuine. It is not necessary that every true 
 thought should be distinguished by depth. The truth 
 contained in Goethe’s poems, however, causes our eyes to 
 penetrate to their utmost depths the human breast and 
 the riddles of the universe. 
 
 Let us choose as examples of his lyrics of feeling very 
 short poems, because in them the significant content will 
 be most clearly revealed. 
 
 Wonne der Wehmut is a poem of only six lines : 
 
 Urocfnet nicht, trocfnet nicht, 
 tränen ber einigen Siebe! 
 
 Steh ! nur bem halb getroefneten Sluge 
 SBic öbe, mic tot bie SBelt iljrn erfefjeint! 
 trocfnet nidjt, trocfnet nicht, 
 
 Urüncn nnglMIicfyer Siebe ! * 
 
 * Dry ye not, dry ye not, 
 
 Tears of a love everlasting! 
 
 Ah! to the eye still half dimmed with weeping 
 How dreary, how dead the world doth appear! 
 
Gbe X^ric poet 
 
 49 
 
 Yet how deep an insight these few lines give us! There 
 is no great, true happiness without pain. Hence even the 
 happiness of true love must be accompanied by pain and 
 tears. True love is of God, a part of the divine love per- 
 meating the universe. Hence it is everlasting, or, as we 
 read in the original Version, holy. If the tears of this love 
 were to dry up, it would be a sign that the love itself had 
 withered. Without love the world appears dreary and 
 dead, a soulless, jangling mechanism. And, as Goethe, 
 late in life, in one of the most beautiful songs of his West- 
 östlicher Divan, distinctly pointed out, God seemed lonely to 
 himself before he had sent love into the world. To this 
 philosophy of the world unhappy love is a thing unknown; 
 and in the original Version the last line spoke only of “tears 
 of a love everlasting.” For even the tears of unhappy 
 love have something blessed about them. Indeed, they 
 enable us to feel our intimate relation to the world more 
 clearly than do the tears of happy love. With the Situation 
 in mind in which he had composed the little song, when 
 his love for Lili had proved to be an unhappy love, he 
 wrote, “Through the most glowing tears of love I gazed 
 on the moon and the world, and everything about me was 
 soulful.” In so far the last line now appears as a climax, 
 and it is an evidence of Goethe’s good judgment that he 
 gave “ unhappy” love a place in the poem, instead of merely 
 repeating the first two lines as a refrain. 
 
 True love is a fructifying influence which radiates in all 
 directions. Not only does it unite us more closely with the 
 world, in general it makes man nobler and purer. It casts 
 out all that is ignoble, crude, and harsh, melts selfishness 
 hidden away in deep “wintry caves,” and, because it is 
 “the spirit of purity itself,” it helps the good in man to 
 attain to a free and happy growth. Out of this feeling 
 Goethe composed Herbstgefühl, about the same time. The 
 vine outside his window is bedewed with the tears of ever- 
 animating love, and so the song begins : 
 
 Dry ye not, dry ye not, 
 
 Tears of a love all unhappy! 
 
 VOL. III. — 4 
 
5o 
 
 abe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 getter grüne, bu 2aub, 
 
 9lm Siebengdänber 
 §icr mein genfter herauf! 
 
 ©ebrängter quellet, 
 
 SroiUingöbeeren, nnb reifet 
 Schneller unb gtäiqenb Dotier! * 
 
 Then from this little glimpse of Autumn we are carried 
 by a quick tum to the most fmitful foundation of the 
 moral world . 
 
 In this connection we must recall the concluding stanzas 
 of the song entitled An den Mond, in which the poet says, 
 “ Happy he who leaves the world’s vain noise and to his 
 bosom clasps a friend.” But not for weak self-enjoyment. 
 Hence the condition, “ without hate.” This is not meant to 
 convey the idea of indifference ; the poet means, rather, with 
 love toward the world and with the determination to con- 
 tinue to exert an influence in the world, as we see more 
 clearly from the further lines, “And with him enjoys, 
 what, by common folk unguessed, or esteemed but light, 
 through the mazes of the breast softly steals by night.” t 
 In order to gain the best things in the life of man, and 
 in this way to strengthen himself for active participation 
 in the work of the world, the individual not only has the 
 right, but it is his duty at times, to withdraw from the 
 world. For the world, with its noise and superficiality, 
 prevents the awakening of the best that is in man, which 
 can be drawn from the depths of the soul only by a like- 
 minded friend and when all around is still. Unknown to 
 men, or not taken into account by them, it passes through 
 the labyrinth of the breast in the night. This is not obscure 
 rhetoric, such as is so frequently employed by shallow 
 minds to give confused thought the semblance of pro- 
 fundity; like the “ labyrinthian cavems” of the original 
 
 * Green more richly, ye leaves, 
 
 That up o’er the trellis 
 Past my window do rise! 
 
 More densely swell ye, 
 
 Berries twin, and more quickly 
 Ripen to fuller splendour! 
 
 f See page 42. 
 
Gbe %yx\c fl>oet 
 
 51 
 
 Version of the Marienbad Elegie, it is an impressive Symbol 
 of the labyrinthian intricacies of our soul-powers, which 
 psychology only with difficulty is able to unravel. 
 
 To these examples may be added one more little song. 
 It numbers four lines and is placed in the mouth of Suleika. 
 
 ®er Spiegel fagt mir: id) bin fd)ön ! 
 
 3l)r fagt: 311 altern fei and) mein ©efdficf. 
 fßor ©ott muß aüeö etnig ftebn, 
 
 3n mir liebt 3f)ti, für biefen SIttgenblicf. 
 
 It begins with outward things. Suleika is standing 
 before a mirror and admires her reflection — "The mirror 
 teils me I am fair!” She hears mocking voices: “Ye say, 
 to age my certain fate will be.” True, but: “To God all 
 things etemal are.” Even though ye, like this mirror, 
 look upon my beauty as something ephemeral, before 
 God it Stands etemal ; for, like everything eise, it is an ema- 
 nation from Hirn. “For this one moment, then, love 
 Hirn in me.” At least for the moment that my beauty 
 endures. Thus the diminutive song leads us from a look 
 into the mirror to the Etemal, to the Most High ; and while 
 the poet, in these narrow limits, is developing the quickly 
 rising thought, he at the same time has space enough to 
 show us Suleika in her beauty, her depth, and her humility. 
 
 The social song is looked upon as a lower Order of emo- 
 tional lyric. Yet what inspiring eamestness Goethe has suc- 
 ceeded in imparting to his cheery symposiac compositions ! 
 To his faithful friends who share the cup with him he grants 
 absolution only on condition that they shall strive unceas- 
 ingly to break themselves of their habit of half-doing 
 things, and to live resolutely whole lives of goodness and 
 beauty ( Generalbeichte , 1804). He advises one to count on 
 the vanity of the world, by which he means to declare 
 one’s complete resignation in order the more surely to make 
 the world one’s own possession ( Vanitas ! Vanitatum Vani- 
 tas! 1806). For him who takes people just as they are, 
 with toleration, he prophesies their willing co-operation 
 (Offne Tafel, 1813). He lauds honest, joyful, determined 
 
5 2 
 
 Zbe %\fc of (Boctbe 
 
 action and condemns etemal sighing and groaning, and, 
 above all eise, affected sorrow over the wickedness and 
 miserableness of the world ( Rechenschaft , 1810). To the 
 good and strong, who always keep up their courage, he prom- 
 ises not only happy hours when a bibamus shall rejoice their 
 ears, but even happier ones when the clouds hanging over 
 the world shall part and through the rift the Deity shall 
 appear in splendour ( Ergo Bibamus, 1810). Indeed, the 
 happy couples belonging to the Wednesday Club go out 
 from the sacred feast and scatter throughout the broad 
 universe, as social monads creating new worlds ( Weltseele , 
 1803). The serious appeals and the profound interpre- 
 tations of this worldly wisdom are not delivered in an awk- 
 ward, obtrusive, and pedantic way; they are presented 
 gracefully, fluently, humorously, even perkily, so that the 
 peculiar character of the social song is preserved. Goethe 
 knew how to transform the old saying, Pro patria est, 
 dum ludere videmur, into a Pro deo est. 
 
 In a lyric of feeling we demand a certain depth of 
 thought, but not in a narrative poem. We are satisfied, 
 may even be moved and delighted, if the event which the 
 poet relates to us is presented in an effective way. Thus 
 we have ballads, under which name we include here all 
 narrative poems, which have little or no thought-content 
 and yet are valued highly as works of art; such as Bürger’s 
 Lenore, Schiller’s Der Taucher, Uhland’s Des Sängers Fluch, 
 Heine’s Belsazar, or Goethe’s own Alexis und Dora. 
 
 The highest artistic value, however, attaches to those 
 poems which unite significant content and the portrayal 
 of a very interesting action. Goethe wrote more such 
 ballads than any other poet. And these poems have such 
 a magic charm for us because the thought in them is either 
 entirely, or most forcibly, expressed through the picture, and 
 the effect of the picture is like that of an enveloping veil 
 through which it is possible to divine the thought. The 
 charm is further enhanced by the fact that Goethe has 
 woven the veil out of wonderful material. Realising with 
 fine discrimination that the deepest things that stir the 
 
Gbe %vxic poet 
 
 53 
 
 human heart are deposited in populär myths and legends 
 in which supermundane and inframundane powers and 
 forces are real factors in ordinary life, he drew his material 
 from these sources. To this category belongs Die Braut von 
 Korinth (1797). 
 
 We see in this poem the consummation of the effects 
 of an event of world-wide significance, the clash between 
 Christianity and heathenism, in the smallest, and yet most 
 important, circle of mankind, the family. This clash, 
 furthermore, may be looked upon as a symbol of all conflicts 
 arising from differences in faith, views, and convictions, 
 whether in matters pertaining to God, the state, society, 
 rank, family, or to the single individual with whom one is 
 associated by choice or by accident in a common life. We 
 see how egoism (here that of the sick mother) is only too 
 willing to take faith into its Service, with the pleasing self- 
 delusion that the sacrifices which one demands in one ’s 
 behalf will serve the good cause, the generality of mankind. 
 We see the conflict between the ever-justifiable Claims 
 of nature and the bigoted laws and fancies of men; we see 
 the infinite power of love, which unites the lovers beyond 
 the grave, and how the one person draws the other to himself , 
 first the living youth the dead maiden, by imparting to 
 her life-blood, then the dead maiden the living youth, by 
 drawing from him his life-blood. But this common death is 
 only an awakening to new life, an awakening again with 
 the kind old gods, who have remained alive and will continue 
 to live, because in them are incorporated the laws of nature. 
 
 Whereas in Die Braut von Korinth Goethe described the 
 conflict between Christianity and heathenism on Greek 
 soil, in Die erste Walpurgisnacht (1799) the scene is on Ger- 
 man soil, and here the poet’s sole purpose is to bring out 
 the contrast. Hence the two forms of belief are set off 
 against each other with characteristic distinctness. 
 
 It is a very lively night scene. The heathen have gath- 
 ered on the mountain top for their May festival, and as they 
 approach All-father with noctumal fire and song, Christian 
 warriors pursue them, as though they were dangerous wild 
 
54 
 
 Zbe Xife of ßoetbe 
 
 animals. They frighten away the Christians with the 
 devil, whom the Christians fable, and then finish their 
 exalted festival in peace. 
 
 Goethe throws all the light on heathenism and leaves 
 all the shade for Christianity. To be sure, he did not 
 mean Christianity as Jesus taught it; he meant, rather, 
 that borne, erroneous view of the world which considers 
 nature hostile to God, a domain of the devil, whereas his 
 heathenism sees in nature the self-revelation of God. The 
 Christians appear in the ballad as cruel persecutors of those 
 of different belief, because they feel themselves hindered in 
 their belief by these creatures of the devil; at the same 
 time they are cowardly and are filled with terror in the 
 presence of nature, which they look upon as a work of the 
 devil. The heathen, on the contrary, are gentle; they con- 
 sider every being a creature of God, which may well impair 
 the existence, but not the belief, of another. Hence they 
 only ward off those who attack them, while the Christians 
 slay even the peaceful. Nor are they afraid of anything 
 that is natural. No devil can fill them with terror, because 
 they find him nowhere in nature. The Christians consider 
 their faith a faith fully revealed to them by God, and 
 hence perfect; the heathen consider theirs a faith true in 
 itself, but as yet imperfect, because God-Nature is only 
 gradually revealed to man. But as the fire is purified 
 of the smoke, so they hope that in time their faith will also 
 be purified of all obscuritv. 
 
 Unb raubt man uns bcn alten ©raud), 
 
 ‘Dein Äicf)t, roer fann es rauben!* 
 
 A third time Goethe treated the theme of dogmatic and 
 natural religion, this time limiting himself to a short pre- 
 sentation of the final conflicts between the two, in the legend 
 of the Ephesian goldsmith ( Gross ist die Diana der EpJieser, 
 1812), who prefers to picture God according to his likenesses 
 in nature, rather than according to the conceptions “back 
 of the silly forehead of man.” 
 
 * Rob us they may of customs old ; 
 
 Who can thy light deny us? 
 
£be X^ric poet 
 
 55 
 
 We have wandered far with the poet in order to assure 
 ourselves of the depth of his ballads, — from Greece to 
 Germany, and thence to the soil of Asia Minor. Let us 
 make a somewhat broader search and go with him now to 
 the waters of the Indus and the Ganges. There is to be 
 found the outward home of the songs Paria and Der Gott 
 und die Bajadere. He laid the scene of the most profound 
 pictures of his conception of God in the original home of 
 the Indo-Europeans. We find this conception most elabo- 
 rately expressed in the Paria, which accounts for the fact 
 that he carried the material about in his mind for forty 
 years 6 and only in 1824 finally determined “to remove 
 it from his inmost soul by means of w'ords.” 
 
 Its fundamental idea may perhaps be expressed in this 
 way: The great masses long for God, but cannot find him of 
 themselves ; they need a mediator. Such mediators are the 
 geniuses of mankind. They have a double nature: “dwell- 
 ing with their heads in heaven, they feel the earth’s down- 
 drawing power.” This double nature is a necessity willed 
 by God (“Thus hath Brahma this decreed”) ; for it is only 
 because of their earthly part that they are able to make 
 known to God the frailties of mankind and to move him to 
 have mercy on the weary and heavy-laden. This idea is ex- 
 plained by the fiery words of the Indian mediator, the Brah- 
 mani, to whose noble head is joined the body of a sinful 
 woman. Her closing words, “ What I think and what I feel, 
 May that a secret e’er remain,” are very surprising. We 
 had thought that she had expressed all her thoughts and 
 feelings concerning her position as a mediator, and now we 
 learn that her final, inmost thoughts and feelings have re- 
 mained a secret. Can it be that it is impossible to reveal 
 this secret ? 
 
 The Brahmani has spoken of God as something outside 
 herseif; but her secret thought is that it is only within her 
 that God lives, lives in the highest sense of the word. And 
 she not only thinks this, she feels it; indeed, she thinks it 
 because she feels it. Nevertheless it seems best to her to 
 keep these thoughts and feelings silent, because the crowd 
 
56 
 
 Zbe %ifc of ßoetbe 
 
 would shudder at them, as at a display of blasphemous pre- 
 sumption, and would see in her a destroyer of God, in- 
 stead of a helper before God. It is easy to see why Goethe 
 cherished and guarded this “ most significant fable” as a 
 “silent treasure” for decades. 
 
 Der Gott und die Bajadere (1797) is, in a certain sense, a 
 prelude in which these fundamental motives of the Paria are 
 clearly anticipated. Mahadeva, the lord of the earth, be- 
 comes man in order that he may be God. “ If he is to spare 
 or punish he as man must men observe.” It is the sinners, 
 not the pure, who need him. Therefore he associates with 
 a sinful woman, inspires her with love for him so strong that 
 while his dead body is being burned on a funeral pile she leaps 
 into the fire and thus is purified from the filth into which she 
 had sunk. She is now permitted to ascend with him to 
 heaven. 
 
 In some of these examples which we have chosen the 
 poet himself has now and then lifted the symbolic veil, in 
 others he has woven it light enough to enable us to recognise 
 the meaning which it covers. There are other of his ballads, 
 however, in which the veil is so heavy that we are unable to 
 see through it ; indeed we may well believe that it is here not 
 a question of a veil at all, but that what we see is all that the 
 poet desired to say to us. The Ballade vom vertriebenen und 
 zurückkehrenden Grafen ( 1816 ) and the Hochzeitlied ( 1802 ) 
 seem to belong to this category. But we begin to waver in 
 this opinion so soon as we hear that Goethe placed these two 
 ballads in a group with Die Braut von Korinth, Der Gott und 
 die Bajadere, and the Paria, and said of them all that he had 
 carried the subjects in his mind for decades and had kept 
 them alive and effective in his inner seif. “ It seemed to 
 me the most beautiful possession,” he continues, “to see 
 such worthy pictures often renewed in the fancy.” 
 
 After this confession there is no room to doubt that these 
 two ballads were also Symbols of deeper-lying thoughts, 
 which were constantly refreshed in Goethe’s mind by all 
 sorts of experiences, and became effective means of pacifica- 
 tion and enlightenment. The very fact that he tenderly 
 
Zbe %$ric jpoet 
 
 57 
 
 guarded the subjects for such a long time would speak in 
 favour of this view. If they had had no deeper significance to 
 him he would have yielded to some momentary impulse and 
 would have elaborated them quickly, or, what is more proba- 
 ble, would have dropped them. For this reason we must 
 seek to grasp their meaning. 
 
 What do we see in the Hochzeitlied? 
 
 A count, who returns to his castle after a long absence, 
 finds it entirely empty and deserted. Servants and posses- 
 sions have vanished, the wind sweeps through the Windows. 
 This does not disturb him in the least; he preserves his 
 happy spirit, goes cheerfully to bed, and, like a good-natured, 
 great lord, allows the dwarfs, who visit him in his slumbers, 
 to take possession of the castle and do in it what they will. 
 They celebrate a wedding, during which the castle is filled 
 with wealth and splendour. “ And what he had seen on a 
 scale neat and small, He after enjoyed on a large scale.” The 
 count is one of those strong personalities whom Goethe loved 
 and whose example he sought to emulate. If one will not 
 weep, not lament over past misfortune, but with fresh, joy- 
 ous courage will build up again what has been destroyed,and, 
 if possible, give to others from the little that one has left, 
 then one can count upon receiving, in addition to one’s own 
 strong arms, the aid of the mighty arms of one’s compan- 
 ions, and what was lost will be restored in greater beauty 
 than before. “ Thus it was, and thus it is to-day.” 
 
 This is the meaning of the poem and is one of the poet’s 
 favourite themes.* 
 
 The Ballade vom vertriebenen und zurückkehrenden Grafen f 
 may be called a hymn to the great benefactors, the “high 
 nobility ” of mankind. The count belongs to this dass. He 
 is a returning Christ, a returning Mahadeva. He is best un- 
 derstood by children. “ 0 thou good one,” they address him 
 as soon as they see him, in spite of his beggar’s garb. His 
 love and his kindness are not to be disturbed by anything; 
 
 *Cf. Türck, Eine neue Faust-Erklärung, p. 66. 
 
 t Goethe planned to treat the theme of this bailad dramatically in his 
 projected opera, Der Löwenstuhl {cf. H., i., 287; W ., xii., 294 ff.). — C. 
 
58 
 
 Gbe Olife of (Soetbe 
 
 neither by the injustices of harsh fate, nor by the injustices 
 of harsh men, whom we here see in the picture of the princely 
 son-in-law. In fact, misfortune, suffering, and want always 
 seem only to make him better and gentler. He gives away 
 his daughter, his most precious treasure, without hesitation, 
 and does not even desire that he be given a home with her 
 by his princely son-in-law, preferring to remain in his beg- 
 gar’s misery, because he feels that it will be best so for his 
 daughter; he “beareth his sorrow with gladness.” Long 
 years he avoids them and his grandchildren, then appears at 
 their castle, but does not make himself known until he is in 
 a position to make them all happy — both the just and the 
 unjust. “ Blissful stars” shine down upon his entrance. He 
 is a herald of “ gentle laws,” he breaks “ the seals of the treas- 
 ures” and thereby identifies himself as the rightful lord. 
 
 Is it still necessary to point out the “ moral” of the fable ? 
 It has a parallel in the seven sleepers {Siebenschläfer, in the 
 West-östlicher Divan), who are buried alive and come back 
 to live again. Their chosen representative, Jamblika, also 
 “ establishes his personality ” by opening for the new genera- 
 tion the treasures which had been walled in like the seven 
 sleepers. “As an ancestor resplendent Stands Jamblika 
 in prime of youth.” Such benefactors of mankind remain 
 for ever young. 
 
 Der getreue Eckart (1813) appears to be nothing but a 
 versified children’s fable with the moral, “ Silence is golden,” 
 added by the poet himself. Yet there is more in it than the 
 poet calls upon us to believe, for he did not dare bürden the 
 innocent song addressed to children with too heavy and too 
 broad a moral. The pith of the story is not in the silence, 
 but in the entertainment of the unfriendly spirits, which 
 become friendly because of the kind hospitality shown them. 
 The gold of silence may be more closely interpreted to mean 
 that one should keep silent about the visit of the good spirits ; 
 otherwise they are frightened away and the mugs go dry. 
 There is a dangerous diminution of the good in the mere 
 speaking of it. This is true not only of ethics, but also of 
 poetry, as Goethe had very often learned by experience. So 
 
59 
 
 Gbe Xpric fl>oet 
 
 soon as he talked about inspirations of good spirits, about 
 his plans and projects, they ceased to grow and were in 
 danger of drying up. 
 
 Let us further consider the deep symbolism which he has 
 embodied in two more of his most famous ballads, namely, 
 Erlkönig and Der König in Thule. 
 
 The symbolism of the Erlkönig (written in 1781, pub- 
 lished in 1782) paints the power of the lower gods over weak 
 spirits, whom they approach in alluring garb. The weak 
 spirits are brought before us in the character of the sick 
 child . Werther had treated his own heart like a sick child 
 and had fallen a victim to suicide. In 1776 Goethe had writ- 
 ten of Lenz that he acted in their Company like a sick child, 
 and two years later Lenz tried more than once to commit 
 suicide. Christel von Lasberg, who found her death in a 
 region reminding one strongly of the scene in the Erlkönig, 
 may also have made upon Goethe the impression of a sick 
 child. When Erlkönigs Tochter appeared in 1779, in the 
 second volume of Herder’s Volkslieder, Goethe doubtless 
 recognised in the Danish ballad a picture which could be 
 made to suit the motive reposing in his mind, by changing 
 Herr Olaf into a sick child and the Erl-King’s daughter, who 
 may have seemed to him too tender to represent the dark 
 spirits of the earth, into the Erl-King himself. The whole 
 thus became a companion piece to Der Fischer, by the side 
 of which Goethe placed it in the collection of his poems, cer- 
 tainly not without his reasons for so doing. Moreover, the 
 consciousness of this parallel may have determined him to 
 have it sung by the heroine of his operetta, Die Fischerin , 7 
 who out of vexation over her betrothed has no little desire to 
 throw herseif into the water. To be sure, she is no sick 
 child — is, on the contrary, very healthy — and this very fact 
 gives us an indication that Goethe wished the symbolic Con- 
 tent of the ballad to be given a still broader Interpretation. 
 
 In order to make our meaning clear from the beginning 
 we have spoken somewhat arbitrarily of sick children. The 
 ballad itself speaks of the child only in a general way, but we 
 may very well imagine it to be ill, without doing violence to 
 
6o 
 
 ZEbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 Goethe’s meaning. Behind the sick child, however, are 
 children in general. Most people are like such children, 
 except that they are well. They see things not as they are, 
 but as their fancy, free from any restraint of strict morality 
 or objectivity, paints them. This fancy is especially excit- 
 able when people are under the strain of any anxiety. Then 
 they see ghosts and evil spirits everywhere. In Die Fisch- 
 erin, for example, Niklas, the fisherman, a sturdy fellow, 
 wholly free from sickly sentimentality, consumes his bread 
 and brandy, and yet in his anxiety about his Dortchen he 
 hears screams where all is still and allows himself to be tor- 
 tured by premonitions and by evil spirits, who soon flutter 
 away as creatures of his delusion. Men are just such Nik- 
 lases. Through their imagination they lose their lives with- 
 out dying. Thus the inward truth of the song is found to 
 have a quite general application to the children among men. 
 
 Der König in Thule was written between 1771 and 1774. 
 The nucleus of the explanation of this bailad lies in the sacred 
 golden goblet. The goblet is the sweet, yet painful, mem- 
 ory which a great experience leaves behind. Goethe, draw- 
 ing from his own life, employs here as the symbol of a great 
 experience an ardent love of deep significance. It is now a 
 thing of the past. The beloved one is dead. His remem- 
 brance of her is still sweet and golden ; for it recalls precious 
 pictures, and brings him to a consciousness of the great 
 moral advancement which he has experienced through her, 
 both at the time and under her enduring influence. Hence 
 the goblet is valued by the king above all eise. His remem- 
 brance is also full of pain and is sacred, for it reminds him of 
 days long gone, and of the dear departed, a noble personality, 
 sanctified by her purity and her sufferings. The king’s eyes 
 fill with tears as oft as he drinks from the goblet. Such 
 remembrances cannot be bequeathed. They sink with us 
 into the ocean that engulfs our lives. 
 
 In addition to truth and genuineness, intrinsic merit and 
 depth, Goethe’s poems have the further precious quality of 
 inwardness. “Inward warmth, spirit-warmth — central 
 point!” was the sententious demand which the fiery youth 
 
£be X^ric poet 61 
 
 had made of his cold-hearted Century. His genius was 
 Phoebus Apollo, the sun which fills man with natural 
 warmth, not Father Bromius, Bacchus, through whom others 
 sought to give themselves artificial warmth. “ Whom thou 
 ne’er forsakest, Genius, him wilt thou wrap warmly in 
 the snow-storm!” (Wanderers Sturmlied). “Thou, omni- 
 present Love, glow’st in me !” (Pilgers Morgenlied) . “I feel 
 what makes the poet, a full heart, filled entirely with one 
 emotion” (Franz, in Götz von Berlichingen ) . It was out of 
 his full, glowing heart that Goethe wrote his poetry, for 
 which reason all his poems breathe refreshing warmth and 
 inwardness. With this inwardness is saturated not only 
 his lyric poetry in the narrow sense, his poetry of feeling, but, 
 what surprises us more, even his poetry of thought and his 
 ballads. 
 
 It is true that other poets have sung their thoughts with 
 lofty inspiration. We think first of all of Klopstock and 
 Schiller. Nevertheless, in comparison with Goethe, there is 
 something cold about their poems. How shall we account 
 for this? In inspired flights Goethe is inferior to them. 
 When Klopstock and Schiller speak to us we feel as though 
 we were listening to preachers or philosophers, who wish to 
 exert an influence and have lent poetic form to their thoughts 
 in Order to achieve the noblest effect. It is different with 
 Goethe; it is not his desire to make an impression, and he 
 does not think of others. 
 
 We feel that these poems of thought are not the products, 
 or at least not merely the products, of a speculative mind, 
 as is the case with Schiller, nor of a somewhat confused 
 ecstasy, as is the case with Klopstock ; they are, rather, the 
 results of a life grasped by the whole soul, with understanding 
 and reason, with heart and eyes, and dearly paid for with 
 joys and sorrows. Hence the deep, inward warmth which 
 they radiate, and the passionate symbolism which animates 
 them. We feel that the poet has not withdrawn from 
 them after they were bom. We feel his immediate presen ce 
 in them with his loving heart. There is a permanent rela- 
 tion between him and them. This feature is characteristic 
 
62 
 
 Gbe Xi fe of (Soetbe 
 
 of his thought poems in every period of his life : Wanderers 
 
 Sturmlied , Mahomets Gesang, Grenzen der Menschheit, Das 
 Göttliche, Proömion, Weltseele, Eins und Alles, Vermächtnis , 
 Wiederfinden , and Selige Sehnsucht, the crown and type of all. 
 
 Less striking is the inwardness which we observe in his 
 narrative poems. When the poet rises above the common 
 bailad monger, he cannot avoid taking an interest in the 
 events portrayed, and this interest must show itself. As 
 a matter of fact most poets make a point of telling how they 
 themselves are affected. Yet how few of them communicate 
 to us the feeling of warmth that Goethe’s ballads radiate! 
 Where is the ballad that could be compared, even in inward- 
 ness, with Die Braut von Korinth or Der Gott und die Bajadere ? 
 
 But, let us add, what other poet has his w T armth and his 
 felicity in expressing it? He did not look upon his subjects 
 as mere fables that could be told effectively in stanzas; 
 he considered them, rather, vessels to carry heart-stirring 
 experiences. 
 
 Heidenröslein and Der untreue Knabe , 8 for example, — both 
 imitations of folk-songs which he had collected for Herder 
 in Alsatia — are faithful reflections of his feelings at his parting 
 from Friederike; Der Fischer (1778) is the reflection of a 
 genuine Wertherian longing, which he had certainly more 
 than once feit, to seek in the cool water, mirroring the sky, a 
 way of escape from a suffocating earthly existence to true 
 life. Gefunden (August 26, 1813) clothes his first meeting with 
 Christiane in the intimate charm of an innocent allegory; 
 Alexis und Dora (1796) brings to us a stränge echo of the 
 tender reciprocal affection between him and the beautiful 
 Milanese, which, as in the poem, first revealed itself at the 
 moment of parting. Der Sänger (1783), which paints a min- 
 strel at the court of a king, lends typical form to the author’s 
 own most peculiar feelings and experiences. 
 
 There was a twofold element of personal experience in 
 the background of Die Braut von Korinth. The more im- 
 mediate background was drawn from the contrast between 
 the poet and the pious circles “on the coast of the Baltic 
 Sea” — the Stolbergs in Eutin, the Reimarus “tea circle" 
 
£be X^ric poet 
 
 63 
 
 in Hamburg, and their following, among whom were num- 
 bered Fritz Jacobi and Schlosser. These circles included, 
 as we see, some of the poet’s closest friends and relatives. 
 Not long before the writing of the poem Goethe had been 
 characterised by them as a heathen, and, besides, in Eutin 
 his Wilhelm Meister had been bumed as an immoral book. 
 The other element of personal experience which he had feit 
 keenly in recent years was the result of that most narrow- 
 minded and destructive of all delusions, infectious misbelief. 
 A wrong understanding of him had sprung up with the 
 Herders and Frau von Stein, and the thousand-fold “ love 
 and fidelity” which he had shown them “was tom up by 
 the roots like a noisome weed.” 
 
 The general contrast between his belief and that of the 
 “Christians” who engaged in the feud against him bore 
 further fruit in Die erste Walpurgisnacht. He himself is 
 that “ one of the Druids ” who regrets that he is forced to sing 
 the praises of the All-father by night, and who speaks to 
 himself the consoling words : 
 
 ®odj ift eg Jag, 
 
 ©obalb man mag 
 
 ©in retneg ^erg Dir bringen.* 
 
 The third poem that treats of this contrast, Gross ist die 
 Diana der Epheser, grew out of his defence against Jacobi’s 
 essay Von den göttlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung 
 (1811). 
 
 It is easy to see what personal experiences occasioned the 
 writing of Der Gott und die Bajadere. Behind the poetic 
 veil is Goethe’s relation to Christiane, who was considered 
 the baj adere by Weimar society, the “ chorus without mercy 
 which increased her heart’s distress.” Another poem based 
 on Indian legends and conceptions, the Paria, finished for the 
 most part in the summer of 1816, seems intended to por- 
 tray a possible tragic climax in the fate of Marianne von 
 
 * So soon ’t is day 
 As thee we may 
 A heart unsullied offer. 
 
64 
 
 $be Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 Willemer,* who, like the wife of the Brahman, at the sight 
 of the divine youth, feit in Goethe’ s presence, for the first 
 time in her life, her “inner being stirred to its deepest 
 depths. ’ ’ Goethe wrote the poem for the purpose of strength- 
 ening himself in his determination not to see her again, just 
 as on a previous occasion he had allowed himself to be 
 affected by the downfall of Egmont. 
 
 In addition to its Observation of the world, Der Zauber- 
 lehrling (1797) has more than one personal experience as a 
 basis. In this poem Goethe is just as much the apprentice, 
 who thoughtlessly calls up the spirits, as the master, who 
 by his power over them forces them to retire into a comer. 
 He himself had let loose the Storm and Stress in Strasburg, 
 Frankfort, and Weimar, and even now observed how from 
 the same seed the rampant growth of romanticism was 
 shooting up with the unrestraint of insolent youth. As 
 twenty years before, so now he was obliged to summon all 
 his powers as a master in order to free himself from these 
 spirits encamped about him and to drive them back into 
 their proper bounds. As indicated in Die Lehrjahre, the 
 poem is in still another sense a symbolic picture of his own 
 experiences. Reading, reflection, and life created in the 
 fancy of the apprentice Goethe a thousand forms which sur- 
 rounded him, alluring and urging him, and awakened “ a thou- 
 sand emotions and capabilities ” — individual spirits in his 
 great spirit, which longed passionately for deliverance and 
 manifestation. His only means of rescuing himself from this 
 overcrowded state w r as by his magic word, “ limitation.” 
 He was apprentice and master in one person. 
 
 We shall not seek further to point out the personal ele- 
 ments contained in Goethe’ s ballads. They are not always 
 clearly distinguishable. But from the indications which the 
 poet has given us there can be but few of his ballads which 
 do not embody some of his experiences. W T e do not doubt, 
 for example, that even Der König in Thule has some Connec- 
 tion with Goethe’s life, or, to speak more specifically, with 
 the tragic idyll of Sesenheim. This will help us to under- 
 
 * Cf. Burdach, in G ]., xvii., 28. 
 
65 
 
 ftbe Xpric poet 
 
 stand how, in his autobiography, he was able to say of this 
 poem and of Der untreue Knabe that at the time when he 
 recited them to Fritz Jacobi, in the summer of 1774, they 
 were still bound to his heart and rarely crossed his lips, and 
 then only to very congenial friends. 
 
 If we inquire further into the elements of the beauty of 
 Goethe’s poems we discover his many charms in the field of 
 contrast. We have in mind here only the contrast in subject- 
 matter, not the contrast which has its source in the art of 
 presentation. This contrast in subject-matter is frequently 
 lacking in other poets, and even in folk-songs. As a usual 
 thing only one tone is strack, such as sorrow, joy, repose, 
 comfort, longing, hope, and the like, and that tone runs with 
 varying strength through the whole poem. In Goethe, 
 on the other hand, the most diverse tones swell in glorious 
 contrast with one another: repose and passion, joy and sor- 
 row, happiness and unhappiness, hate and love, renunciation 
 and desire, guilt and innocence, guilt and atonement, dismay 
 and courage, indolence and energetic action, dream and 
 reality, reason and fancy, impulse toward life and the power 
 of fate, art and life, mastership and dilettanteism, ingenuous- 
 ness and sentimentality, nature and civilisation, narrowness 
 and world-broadness, youth and old age, life and death, the 
 present and the past, Christianity and heathenism, God and 
 man, God and the world, and all the other contrasts that stir 
 the breast of man. 
 
 Very often several contrasts are introduced, giving the 
 poem a stronger pulse and a deeper significance. To men- 
 tion but a few instances, in Die Braut von Korinth, for ex- 
 ample, we find Christianity and heathenism, the happiness of 
 love and the sorrow of love, renunciation and desire, life and 
 death ; in Der Wandrer, nature and civilisation, ingenuousness 
 and sentimentality, contentment in narrow surroundings and 
 longing to go out into the wide world ; and in number fifteen 
 of the Römische Elegien, North and South, past and present 
 individual fate and world history, — wonderfully combined 
 into symphonies, at times thrilling, at times exalting, and 
 at other times charming, serious, and merry. Even in 
 
 VOL. III. — 5. 
 
66 
 
 Zbe OLife of (Boetbe 
 
 the smallest poem there is not infrequently more than one 
 effektive contrast. In the above-mentioned short quatrain, 
 which is supposed to be spoken by Suleika, we have a mo- 
 ment and etemity, an individual and God, youth and old 
 age. At times the contrast is only suggested, as in the song 
 Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh (September 6, 1780), the next to 
 the last line of which, in the words “ wait” and “ ere long, ” 
 gives us the first intimation that it is an agitated heart that 
 is singing itself to rest. 
 
 These contrasts stand out with especial beauty and 
 clearness when they find parallels in the natural scenery 
 of the background. Such is the case in Schweizer alpe, in 
 which the counterpart of youth appears as the brown summit 
 of the mountain, and that of old age as the snow-capped 
 peak. It is also true of Euphrosyne, in which the night ac- 
 companies the lamentation for the dead, and the moming 
 announces new life ; and of Dem auf gehenden V ollmonde (Dom- 
 burg, 1828), in which grief and bliss altemate with the cloud- 
 obscured and the brightly shining moon. 
 
 We have chosen the word “symphonies” to characterise 
 the manner in which these contrasts are treated, because 
 the poet does not leave us in the midst of contrasts, nor 
 does he allow the contrasting elements to exclude each other ; 
 on the contrary, he makes them Supplement each other. In 
 a word, he resolves the apparent discords of the w T orld and 
 his own personality into harmony. He views things from 
 a standpoint that is high enough to enable him to recognise 
 the innocence in guilt, the happiness in sorrow, the pain in 
 happiness, the plenty in solitude, the wealth in simplicity, 
 the gain in renunciation, the Salvation in sin, and to see the 
 harmony of hate and love, Separation and reunion, life and 
 death, God and the world, and of a thousand other opposites. 
 So he speaks from the bottom of his heart when he says, 
 in Die Lehrjahre, that the poet has received from nature the 
 gift of keeping in harmony with many, often incompatible, 
 things ; that while the man of the world either drags out his 
 days in life-sapping melancholyover some great loss, or meets 
 his fate with unrestrained joy, that is to say, always moves 
 
Gbe X^ric poet 6 ; 
 
 at one of the opposing extremes, the poet’s soul, like the 
 revolving sun, advances from night to day and with easy 
 transitions attunes his harp to joy and sorrow, that is, 
 combines opposites in harmony. In the “ Prelude ” to Faust 
 it is said still more clearly of the poet : 
 
 Sßoburd) befiegt et jebeg Element? 
 
 3ft es ber Gsinflang tiidjt, bet au£ bem 93ufen bringt, 
 
 Unb in fein^erg bie SBelt guriicfe fdjlingt ? 
 
 2öeun bie 91atur be$ habend ero’ge Sänge, 
 
 ©Icidjgültig breljenb, auf bie Spinbci groingt, 
 
 SBenn aller Sßefen unl)armon’fd)e 2J?enge 
 S5erbrieplid) burdjeinanber füngtj 
 äßet teilt bie fliejienb immer gleiche Steife 
 SBelebenb ab, bafifie fid) rl)t)tf)mifd) regt? 
 
 3Ber ruft baS ©ingelne gur allgemeinen SSBeilfe, 
 
 2Bo eö in tjerrlic^en 2Iccorben fdjlägt?* 
 
 If we make search for the deepest foundation of this lofty 
 gift of the poet, let us say at once, of the poet Goethe, it is the 
 same foundation upon which the pure truth of his poetry 
 rests, that sacred power of viewing the world as a uniform, 
 divine whole, in which every tone, every colour is a necessary 
 element, an element which needs only to be grasped in its 
 general significance, in its in ward relation to the other ele- 
 ments, in order to blend in glorious consonance. By means 
 of this point of view the poet transforms the desolation and 
 confusion of chaos into a living, beautifully ordered cosmos. 
 Hence the great serenity and mild, warm splendour which 
 rest upon his poems. And at the same time that in these 
 poems he conquers grief, sorrow, and pain, by means of the 
 
 * Whereby doth he each element subdue? 
 
 Is ’t not the harmony which from his bosom wells 
 And into his embrace the world compels ? 
 
 When nature’s spindle with unchecked gyration 
 Takes up her even thread through weary years, 
 
 When the discordant tones of all creation 
 With fretting jangle fill the spirit’s ears, 
 
 Who gives this changeless order animation, 
 
 Transforming it into a rhythmic dance? 
 
 Who calls particulars to general ordination, 
 
 Where they may blend in glorious consonance? 
 
68 
 
 £be Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 sun which shines for him, he achieves a like victory in our 
 hearts. Heine, who is so unlike him and who very often 
 dismisses us with harsh discords, has beautifully and aptly 
 declared, in Atta Troll, that serenity is the most genuine 
 characteristic of our poet : 
 
 3d) erfannte unfern Sßolfgang 
 Sin bem beitem ©lang ber Slugen.* 
 
 But for his art of representation, much of the beauty, 
 sublimity, and depth of Goethe’s poems would not be fully 
 realised. Apart from minor matters, this art shows itself 
 in his cleverness in laying bare the emotions of the human 
 heart, in the atmosphere of feeling with which he surrounds 
 the whole and all the parts, in the delicacy of his lines and 
 colours, which are free from angularity and harshness, in 
 his skill in drawing contrasts so as to bring out each indi- 
 vidual colour more forcibly, in the animated brevity with 
 which situations open and develop, and in the sure object - 
 ivity of the pictures unfolding before us. 
 
 Let us tarry a moment to consider this last point. There 
 is a twofold objectivity. The one öfters us plain, solid 
 facts which our understanding can easily comprehend in 
 their outward connection; this characterises, for example, 
 all the poems of Uhland. The other brings these facts 
 before us at the same time in bodily form, so that our eye can 
 grasp them. Goethe’s poems possess both kinds, although 
 he was in danger of losing the second along with the first. In 
 danger, not on account of too great brevity, as in the Ballade 
 vom vertriebenen und zurückkehrenden Grafen, or on account 
 of too close a connection with the actual experience, as in the 
 Harzreise im Winter, but on account of his inclination to 
 symbolism. Among the poets Goethe is perhaps the great- 
 est Symbolist that ever lived. Inasmuch as every detail in 
 his life, in nature, in history, appeared to him symbolical. 
 standing for something eise, broader, higher, and more gen- 
 eral, he gave a symbolic significance even to those of his 
 poems which were only a mirror of his inner seif. Indeed 
 
 * By his eyes’ serenest splendour 
 I our Wolfgang recognised. 
 
6 9 
 
 Gbe X^ric fl>oet 
 
 it may be said that he was not moved to transform material 
 into poetry until it was found to be capable of a deeper, 
 symbolical significance. This is true even of his subjective 
 poems, which apparently express only a definite inner 
 state. He was justified in saying of them that there dwelt 
 within each of them the kernel of a more or less significant 
 fruit. This inclination to symbolise found, however, a 
 most happy counterpoise in his need of definite, clear visu- 
 alisation ; and whereas with other symbolists a modest sym- 
 bolic content dissolves all their poetry into pale, wavering, 
 airy visions, his poetry, even that of most profound sig- 
 nificance, is marked by lustrous colours and most firm 
 proportions. 
 
 While with other symbolists the action pales away to 
 allegory, and without an understanding of the allegory is 
 devoid of interest, with Goethe it has a wholly independent 
 significance and stirs our minds and spirits in a high degree, 
 even though we may not grasp the symbolic meaning. The 
 reason for this difference is easy to discover. Others acquire 
 their ideas in an abstract, deductive way, Goethe acquires 
 his in a concrete, inductive way. The more clearly he saw 
 the thing itself, the more clearly was revealed to him the 
 spiritual significance contained in it; and as the writing of 
 poetry was to him an act in which he strove after elucida- 
 tion, he sought all the more earnestly to represent things in 
 his poetry as clearly as possible. The older he grew the 
 more he became convinced of the inadequacy of words as a 
 means of clear expression. “ I should like to give up en- 
 tirely the habit of speaking,” he once said in later years. 
 “ There is something about it that is useless, idle, foppish. 
 
 I should like to speak like nature, altogether in 
 drawings.” But he underestimated the power of his words. 
 The word under his hand is marvellously transformed into 
 line, colour, body, and picture, so that many a painter and 
 sculptor might envy him such “words” as are contained, for 
 example, in Mignon. The demand which he makes of the 
 poet, “ Speak not, artist, paint: be thy poem but a breath!” 
 he knew how gloriously to fulfil. This was most conspic- 
 
7 o 
 
 Zbe %if e of (Boetbe 
 
 uously true in the realm of nature, whose son, friend, lover he 
 early called himself, and whose characteristic features, whose 
 most secret life and activity, he saw and feit. He was able to 
 commune with her understandingly, whether he drew near 
 to her in field or garden, in forest or cave, in the fair valley or 
 on snow-capped peaks. “ All nature, every blade of grass, 
 speaks to him.” 
 
 We have often had occasion to admire his nature pictures, 
 but they are most deserving of admiration in his lyrics, 
 where the narrowness of the space challenged him to achieve 
 the highest results with the most limited means. With a 
 few strokes, often with a single stroke (“Fillest bush and 
 vale again, still with misty light ”) , he sketches sky and earth, 
 sea and mountains, brook and river, meadow and forest, in 
 the many moods of the atmosphere, the day, and the season, 
 so clearly that they stand in palpable form before us. We 
 shall not conjure up these pictures here; they stand out 
 vividly before the eyes of everybody who knows Goethe. 
 Let us eite only a few examples of descriptions of the human 
 body, to which less attention is ordinarily paid. In Hans 
 Sachsens poetische Sendung he gives this description of the 
 “fair maiden”: 
 
 Sftit abgefenftem $aupt unb 2tug’ 
 
 ©ijjf $ unter einem Apfelbaum 
 Unb [pikt bie üBelt ringe. um fid) faum, 
 
 $at 9to[en in ibr’n Scfjop geppüdft 
 
 ©o [int fie in [ich felbj't geneigt. 
 
 3n ^offnungbfüH’ ibr Su[en [teigt.* 
 
 Who eise ever painted such a speaking picture of the quiet 
 dreaming of a budding maiden? 
 
 In Der Besuch we have a realistic portrait-, that of the 
 
 * With stooping head and downeast eye 
 She sits beneath an apple tree, 
 
 Doth scarce the worid about her see, 
 
 Hath roses plucked into her lap. 
 
 Thus sits she in herseif retired, 
 
 Her bosom heaves with hope inspired. 
 
ftbe %£üc fl>oet 71 
 
 beloved who has fallen asleep on the sofa in the midst of her 
 work: 
 
 ©eftridfte mit ben fabeln ritzte 
 Bmifchen ben gefaltnen garten §änben; 
 
 ‘Sa betrachtet' id) ben frönen grieben, 
 
 ®er auf ifyren Slugenlibern rut)te : 
 
 tlnb bie Unfdjulb eines guten £ergen§ 
 
 Siegte fid) imSttfen l)in unb roieber. 
 
 Sebeö ihrer ©lieber lag gefällig 
 Slufgelöft bont fußen ©ötterbalfam.* 
 
 In Der Wandrer he says of the sleeping child : 
 
 2Bie’§ in l)immli|cl)er ©efunbljeit 
 ©djroimmenb ruljig atmet! f 
 
 In Vollmondnacht he paints the moving of lips which 
 long for a kiss and yet only in secret, and half-consciously, 
 breathe their longing : 
 
 §errin, fag’, n>a§ Ijeifit ba§ f^tiiftern ? 
 
 2Baö beroegt bir leiö bie Sippen? 
 
 ßifpelft immer bor bid) l)in, 
 ßieblidfer alä 3B eineö Stippen! 
 
 ‘Senfftbu beincn 99tunbgefd)tthftern 
 9loch ein s f}ärd)cn Ijerjugieljn ? t 
 
 * And the knitting, with the needles, rested 
 ’Twixt her tender hands together folded; 
 
 Then T mused upon the peace so lovely 
 Which upon her slumb’ring eyelids rested: 
 
 And her good heart’s innocence unspotted 
 Now and then did stir within her bosom. 
 
 All her limbs most gracefully reposing 
 Lay relaxed with heaven’s sweetest balsam. 
 t Swimming in heaven-showered health, 
 
 How calmly he breathes! 
 t In thy whispers, pray, what meaning? 
 
 What so softly art thou lipping? 
 
 Thy half-uttered lispings are 
 Lovelier than nectar sipping! 
 
72 
 
 Zbe %if e of (Soetbe 
 
 In Die Braut von Korinth he characterises a most fervent 
 embrace of the lovers with the three words : 
 
 3Bed)fcl hauch unb Äujj! 
 ßiebesöberflup ! * * 
 
 We shall get a better conception of the various powers of 
 Goethe’s art of representation if, instead of considering them 
 one at a time and apart from the organic Connections in 
 which they belong, we study the living impression of the 
 Operation of all combined. Let us choose for this purpose 
 the poem Auf dem See, which, like Mignon’s Kennst du das 
 Land, is only a song of moods, and offers but little in the 
 way of thought or action: 
 
 Unb frifdje iRahrung, neues Slut 
 ©aug' id) aus freier SBelt: 
 
 SBSie ift Dlatur fo Ijolb unb gut, 
 
 Die mid) am Sufen halt! 
 
 Die Sßelle roieget unfern Äa^n 
 3m IRubertaft hinauf, 
 
 Unb Serge, roolfig himmelan, 
 begegnen unferm Sauf. 
 
 Slug’, mein 2Iug’, tuaS finfft bu nieber? 
 
 ©olbnc Dräurne, fommt ihr trnebcr? 
 
 SBeg, bu Jraum ! fo golb bu bift: 
 
 §ier and) Sieb’ itnb Beben ift. 
 
 Stuf ber 2BeHe blinfen 
 Daufenb fcbroebenbe ©terne, 
 
 SBeidje Diebel trinfen 
 ÜRingS bie türmenbe gerne; 
 
 Slorgenroinb umflügelt 
 ‘Die befd)attete Sucht, 
 
 Unb im ©ee befpiegelt 
 ©id) bie reifenbe grud)t. 
 
 To thy pair of lips art weening 
 To attract a kindred pair? 
 
 * Mingled breath and kiss ! 
 Flood of lovers’ bliss ! 
 
Gbe Xpric poet 
 
 73 
 
 It begins in a very lively and striking way with the word 
 “and.” “And I fresh nurture and new blood Draw from the 
 free world blest.” By this “ and ” we are transported imme- 
 diately into the middle of the Situation. From a chain of 
 emotions one of the chief emotions is selected. The poet is 
 in a blessed free world. He is drawing from nature new 
 blood. A contrasting motive is suggested. His life’s nur- 
 ture had ceased to flow. “ How dear is nature and how good ! 
 Who holds me to her breast.” We discover in silent contrast 
 with nature the people on whose bosoms he has suffered, and 
 feel that the free world Stands here as the contrast, not only 
 of the narrowness of the city, but also of some inward con- 
 straint. The “free world” in which he now finds himself is 
 more closely indicated. “ Upstream our boat by waves is 
 tossed To oar blades’ rhythmic beat, And cloud-capped 
 peaks, in heaven lost, Our onward voyage meet.” He is on the 
 water, the water is bordered by mountains, the unusual height 
 of which is shown by the word “cloud-capped,” and still more 
 by “in heaven lost.” There is hardly need of anything 
 more to teil us that we are at the foot of the Alps. The 
 landscape is painted in its main outlines. But we receive 
 a further bit of detail. The boat is tossed by waves, we are 
 told. So the water must be agitated. Its agitation strength- 
 ens our impression of the freshness of nature which affects 
 the poet. The boat is rocked up-stream. The word “up- 
 stream” is not chosen capriciously, but as a pregnant form 
 of expression. We must be on a river or on a lake through 
 which a river flows, and we must be rowing up-stream. Fur- 
 thermore the boat is called “ our boat.” So the poet is not 
 alone. By means of the description of the landscape new 
 points of contrast are interspersed, which arouse our fancy 
 in a pleasing way. In external nature we find water and 
 mountains, the lowland and the height, agitation and repose. 
 Then comes a dramatic interruption. The journey is no 
 longer the thing described. The eye of the poet is absorbed 
 with introspection. The change finds its resonance in a 
 change of rhythm. “ Eye, mine eye, art backward yeaming? 
 Golden dreams, are ye returning?” What kind of dreams 
 
74 
 
 £be Xife of 0oetbe 
 
 are they? As they are golden, and as they come over him 
 with great power in the midst of a merry boating party, they 
 can hardly be anything but love dreams. Yet, in spite of 
 their golden gleam, they must pain him, for he tums them 
 away. “Out! thou dream, though gold thou be.” Our 
 suspicion that he has been suffering from moral constraint 
 is now confirmed, “Here are love and life forme.” What 
 the “our” above suggested is now more definitely shown. 
 The poet is in Company, in the Company of some one dear to 
 him. But it can hardly be a new sweetheart. The dreams 
 of his forsaken beloved would not have been so golden, and 
 his thoughts of a new love would not have expressed them- 
 selves so briefly, in this single word. It is only a Company 
 of friends. A new turn, and we come back again to outward 
 things, to nature; but, as the word “life” affords a transi- 
 tion, the metre is only slightly varied. Over against the 
 golden dream is set golden friendship, and now a further con- 
 trast is drawn with the golden landscape, which greets his 
 eyes. “ On the wave are blinking Myriad starry lights.” The 
 landscape glistens in the bright sunshine, which could not 
 be pictured to us in a more exquisite and more impressive 
 way than by this short stroke. “ Myriad starry lights.” It 
 must be a broad body of water, a lake, upon which the poet 
 is rocking. Once more the great mountain-background is 
 painted in a daring way. It is not quite the same now 
 as a while ago; the clouds are no longer so dense. “Soft 
 white mists are drinking Distant towering heights.” “Tow- 
 ering heights.” The impression of loftiness is supplemented 
 by a conception of the form of the mountains. “Moming 
 breeze is flying Through the bay’s encircling wood.” The 
 tone of the picture suggests the moming. The breeze blows 
 gently over the bay, softly stirring the trees along its rim. 
 The mention of the bay indicates that we have come near the 
 shore and announces the approaching end of our journey 
 and of the song, which closes with a detail of the picture of 
 the bay: “ Ripening grain is lying Mirrored in the flood.” 
 
 The composition of the whole third part of the poem is 
 perfectly objective, being accompanied by no expression of 
 
£be %\>ric Jpoet 
 
 75 
 
 mood, and yet we can feel the author’s mood clearly. By 
 merely returning to the landscape he quiets the inward com- 
 motion which the second part had aroused, and the last stroke 
 in the picture, by a most happy turn, brings even the out- 
 ward movement to complete repose. In the sheltered bay 
 the waves smooth down to a clear mirror, in which we see a 
 most hopeful reflection, the ripening grain. In this manner 
 deep symbolism is woven into the fugitive song. 
 
 We have sought to point out the beauties of this little 
 song; yet, w r hen we take these all together, they do not ex- 
 plain entirely the magical attraction which it exerts upon 
 us. There must be something eise that we have not men- 
 tioned. It is the music of the song. Whence does this 
 arise? From the rhythm? That has much to do with it, 
 to be sure, for it suits itself aptly, in cadence and tempo, to 
 every change in the content. The rhyme also contributes 
 its share. But that here, as elsewhere in Goethe’s poems 
 where the music captivates us, it is neither the rhyme nor the 
 rhythm that is the deciding factor, may easily be proved 
 by his prose, in which we find passages of almost equal mu- 
 sical charm. As it might be said of the prose of his finished 
 literary Creations that it is purposely composed in a form 
 approximating verse, we refer the reader to his letters, in 
 which artistic effect was the thing furthest from his mind. 
 They have a higher right to be included here than would 
 at first appear; for, as a matter of fact, a large number of 
 Goethe’s lyrics are to be found in his letters. Such letters 
 and passages from letters, which might be called poems in 
 prose, we have frequently interwoven in the course of our 
 presentation. Here we may insert another letter from a 
 period to which we shall soon come, because its substance 
 throws accidental lights upon many of the heights of Goethe’s 
 Spirit, of which we have caught a glimpse in our consideration 
 of his lyrics. 
 
 The letter was written in 1823 to the far-away friend of 
 his youth, Countess Auguste Stolberg, who now, an old wo- 
 man with snow- white hair, was the widow of Count Bern- 
 storff. After a silence of decades, being anxious about the 
 
;6 
 
 Zbe %ife of Goetbe 
 
 Salvation of Goethe’s soul, she had again taken up her pen 
 and, in a letter full of touching sentiment, but showing a sad 
 rnisunderstanding of his works and his influence, had begged 
 him to desist from earthly striving and to “ tum his eves and 
 his heart to the eternal.” To this he answered : 
 
 “To receive again after so many years a written token 
 of most cordial memory from my earliest dear friend, whom 
 in my heart I have well known, though with my eyes I have 
 never seen, was for me a most pleasing and most touching 
 experience. . . . Long life means outliving very many 
 things: beloved, hated, indifferent people, kingdoms, Capital 
 cities, yea, forests and trees which we have sown and planted 
 in our youth. We outlive ourselves, and yet are altogether 
 thankful if we still retain but a few of our gifts of body and 
 spirit. All these ephemeral things we bear with patience, 
 and, if we are but conscious every moment of the eternal, 
 we do not suffer from the transitoriness of time. All my 
 life long I have been honest with myself and others, and in 
 all my earthly striving I have always had my eyes fixed 
 upon the highest things. You and yours have done the 
 same. Then let us ever continue to work while the da}" lasts 
 for us. For others a sun will also shine; they will rise in its 
 strength, and a brighter light will meanwhile illumine our 
 way. So let us look into the future undisturbed. In our 
 Father’s kingdom are many provinces, and, as he has pre- 
 pared for us such a happy dwelling in this country, we shall 
 both surely be provided for over there. Perhaps we shall then 
 be vouchsafed w-hat we have hitherto been denied, to know 
 each other face to face and the more thoroughly to love one 
 another. Remember me in tranquil fidelity.” 
 
 It will not be denied that this letter breathes soft music. 
 As it has neither metre nor rhyme we ask again, whence flow 
 the wonderful, mysterious melodies •which ring through 
 Goethe’s poetry and so many passages of his prose? Is it 
 perhaps the sound of the words chosen? One is likely to be 
 greatly deceived on this point. How few combinations of 
 sound make a pleasing impression upon our ears! The 
 greater number are indifferent, not a few are discordant. 
 
Gbe X^ric poet 
 
 77 
 
 Let one pronounce to one’s seif one word after another of 
 the letter cited, and ask one’s seif which word has a pleasing 
 sound. Or let one examine the words of most musical verses 
 from this point of view. Has “ Welle , ” has “ blinken , ” has 
 “tausend,” “ schwebende ,” “Sterne,” or has “füllest,” “wie- 
 der,” “Busch,” “ Tal,” “still,” “ Bi ebelglanz” in and of itself 
 musical charm? Certainly not. If then it is not the sound 
 of the words that is melodious to us, it is their significance, 
 the significance of the individual words and still more of 
 the combinations of words. They produce conceptions, 
 awaken pictures and thoughts in us which fall upon our ears 
 like lovely harmonies. This is the chief source of Goethe’s 
 word-music. 
 
 If we ask ourselves why it is that Goethe’s poetry and 
 prose possess this music in such marked measure, we can 
 only repeat what has already been said : because he possessed 
 the greatest harmony of spirit, which arranged everything in 
 consonance. This harmony of spirit is especially conspic- 
 uous in his lyric poetry, as harmony of eye and soul. As the 
 essential element of Goethe’s language-music is of a purely 
 spiritual or, we may say, metaphysical nature, we can un- 
 derstand why it is so hard for musical composers to translate 
 it into physical sounds. Either they must put like harmony 
 into their work or they are doomed to failure. Goethe’s 
 spiritual harmony creates fitting expression for itself in its 
 language dress by means of his choice of words (strength 
 and gentleness, sensuous power of expression) and word 
 cadences, which appear in his prose in the rhythmical sen- 
 tence structure. In his poetry we find the auxiliary factors 
 of verse and stanza structure, frequently also rhyme, but 
 seldom alliteration. 
 
 The great variety of forms of verse and stanzas which 
 Goethe employs almost equals the great variety of motives 
 and moods which his lyrics reveal. He tried the most cur- 
 rent forms which the German literature from the sixteenth 
 to the eighteenth Century had produced, then went back to 
 the ancients, and from these to the Romance literatures,* 
 
 * Ottava rima, sonnet, terza rima. 
 
73 
 
 Gbe %ifc of (Boetbe 
 
 finally exacting tribute of Oriental rhythms. But he modi- 
 fied freely all traditional and all newly invented forms to suit 
 the genius of the language and the needs of the poem. He 
 could not bear the thought of allowing himself to be fettered 
 by mechanical forms and would rather make what prosodists 
 would call bad verses and imperfect stanzas and strophes 
 than do violence to language, substance, or mood. To him 
 the form was not a thing that could be applied to the song ex- 
 temally ; it was, rather, an inner necessity, something that 
 had grown out of the nature of the song. Little as a tree 
 grows without bark did a song growfor him without rhythm. 
 “ The measure comes as though unconsciously from the 
 poetic mood. If one were to think about it when one com- 
 poses a poem one would go mad and would produce nothing 
 worth mentioning” (to Eckermann, April, 1829). Indeed, 
 it sometimes happened that the rhythm was in existence 
 before the text had assumed form. In Die Wander fahre he 
 says, through the mask of Wilhelm: “ It often seems to me 
 
 as though an invisible genius were whispering something 
 rhythmical to me, so that on my walks I always keep step 
 to it, and at the same time fancy I hear soft tones accom- 
 panying some song, which then comes to me in one way or 
 another and delights me. ” 
 
 For this very reason his most genuine lyric poems can 
 be thought of only in the form in which he has given them to 
 us. We should think we were destroying their substance 
 if we were to put them into any other form. 
 
 Great as is the wealth of forms and the variety of motives 
 — and there are whole large groups, such as the humorous- 
 satirical, that we have not been able to touch upon — never- 
 theless we have the feeling that both might have been greater, 
 might even have been infinite. We have the feeling that gaps 
 exist only because of the limitation of human life and human 
 strength. The limitations are due partly to outward neces- 
 sity, partly to chance. With the moods it is different. 
 Here we recognise certain gaps as an inward necessity, as the 
 result of Goethe’s spiritual Organisation. His lyric poetry 
 is lacking in genial intimacy, pious humility, and the specifi- 
 
£be Xpric poet 
 
 79 
 
 cally national element, — the latter in a twofold sense. We 
 miss the most familiär atmosphere of the German landscape 
 and of the modest life of the common folk, as well as political 
 and patriotic enthusiasm. These are moods that have been 
 cultivated by Voss, Hölty, the younger Stolberg, Uhland, 
 Eichendorff, Schenkendorf, Mörike, and others, and have 
 been mirrored in the pictures of Ludwig Richter and Schwind. 
 These deficiencies arise from the reverse of Goethe’s super- 
 iorities. He was too thorough a cosmopolitan to become 
 very much at home in the poetry of the nooks and comers 
 of the German house, apart from all Connection with the world 
 at large, as is plainly seen even in Hermann und Dorothea; 
 his nature was too thoroughly filled with God as a pro- 
 ductive energy for him to find consolation and piety else- 
 where than in himself and in influential activity; he was a 
 power moving with too fiery impulses for him to sink into 
 quiet dreams and fashion the genial musings of the small 
 circle and the narrow individual into the actuating motives 
 of a poetic whole. Hence nowhere in his songs do we find 
 the perfect, profound repose which permeates the folk-song. 
 There is always some conflict present, as we have seen ; and 
 we know that his chief aim in writing poetry is to resolve 
 discords into harmony. 
 
 As in the folk-song we feel as though the tree standing 
 in the grain field, the brook gliding through the meadow, 
 the placid pond with its border of rushes, and the dreamy, 
 motley heath were singing to us their real emotions, so in 
 Goethe we have the feeling that the rustling forest, the surg- 
 ing lake, the rushing river, and the field glistening with sun- 
 beams and echoing with the song of the lark are pouring 
 forth their own true melodies. 
 
 To many individuals and many moods the more reposeful 
 lyrics in the style of the folk-song will make the stronger 
 appeal, while others will evince a greater liking for an art 
 which carries them through a powerful suspense and stirs 
 their deeper emotions. And not onlythemajority — even the 
 most capable and the most mature, in the hours when they 
 feel driven to rise above the perplexing confusion of every- 
 
8o 
 
 <Ibe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 day life into the pure higher regions, will tum with a feeling 
 of longing to Goethe’s poems, and when they lay them down 
 it will be with a consciousness of deep composure, of recon- 
 ciliation with the world, and of fresh courage for the strug- 
 gle of life. On retuming to them again and again one will 
 discover that they always strike new chords, open new out- 
 looks, reveal new depths. Thus as one advances in years 
 they grow in significance. And what they are to the indi- 
 vidual they are to all. Goethe’s lyrics are to-day an incom- 
 parably greater power in the spiritual life of the German 
 nation than they were a hundred years ago,* and it may 
 safely be predicted that the hope of the poet will yet be 
 realised, which he once expressed in an eamest hour: 
 
 SBiffet nur, bap :Did)terroorte 
 Utn be§ ^JarabiefeS Pforte 
 Stnmer leife flopfettb fcbroeben, 
 
 ©id) erbittenb ero’geg ßeben.* 
 
 * Softly words of poet mortal 
 Knock at Paradise’s portal, 
 
 Hov’ring round that boume superaal. 
 
 Still imploring life eternal. 
 
III 
 
 THE NATURALIST 
 
 Harmony between Goethe’s Science and his art — His natural inclination 
 toward Science — Anatomy and osteology — Spinoza’s influence on 
 Goethe — Consistency of nature — Discovery of the intermaxillary 
 in man — The discovery rejected by most of the leading anatomists 
 of the day — Not fully recognised tili forty years later — Botany — - 
 Discovery of the metamorphosis of plants — Its significance — Long 
 denied recognition — Idea of evolution contained in it— The genetic 
 method — Mastery of art by study of nature — Beauty the manifes- 
 tation of secret laws of nature — Goethe’s rejection of teleology — 
 Discovery of the new Science of morphology — The original type — 
 Goethe and Linne — Theory of descent — Fundamental principle of 
 continuity — Struggle for existence — Formative impulse — Mutual 
 influence of parts — Vertebral theory of the skull — Geology — Pale- 
 ontology — The ice age — Meteorology — Meteorological stations — 
 Theory of colours — The law of visual processes — Abklingen — 
 Translucent media — Goethe’s rejection of Newton’s theory — An- 
 tagonistic colours — Fundamental law of colour harmony — Polar- 
 ity — Goethe’s history of the theory of colours — His scientific 
 lectures — Museums of Science — Goethe’s influence on later scien- 
 tists — His method — His study of nature and his religion — The 
 poet and the investigator. 
 
 T HE peculiarity of Goethe’s personality rests, in the 
 final analysis, upon the inward harmony between his 
 study of nature and his artistic life. The two direc- 
 tions of his Creative activity, the artistic and scientific, 
 sprang from the same source, and each permeated and deeply 
 affected the other. It is only from this point of view that 
 we can understand why he should have devoted more than 
 fifty years of his precious life, with hardly an interruption, 
 to the science of nature. 
 
 Goethe himself has told us what occasioned him to take 
 up his various studies of nature, but we may assert with 
 
 81 
 
 VOL. III. 6 
 
82 
 
 ftbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 confidence that the occasions were merely accidental, and not 
 in themselves determining factors ; that, rather, he would have 
 become a naturalist under any circumstances, for he had 
 been led to nature in a most individual way and by his own 
 most characteristic impulses.* As he teils us in Dichtung 
 und Wahrheit ,f he had from his earliest years feit an impulse 
 to investigate natural things. That this is truth and not 
 poetry we know from the fact that the young friend of the 
 liberal arts and belles-lettres and the Student of law evi- 
 dently took the greatest interest in his scientific lectures while 
 at Leipsic, and still more so while at Strasburg, where he 
 studied anatomy and even attended a course of lectures 
 and the clinic on midwifery. Animated by an insatiable 
 desire for knowledge, he was further encouraged in these 
 efforts by his associates, both in Leipsic and in Stras- 
 burg, who for the most part were students of medicine; 
 and he pursued these studies with the greater industry 
 since he thought thereby to retain the respect and confi- 
 dence of his Strasburg “society” which he had immediately 
 won by his “stränge rudimentary leaming or, rather, his 
 overleamedness. ” 
 
 These* studies prepared him for collaboration on Lavater’s 
 Physiognomische Fragmente , which became a great determin- 
 ing influence in his life in so far as it introduced him again to 
 that field of knowledge in which he was destined to make dis- 
 coveries of most fundamental importance, viz., anatomy, 
 and more especially osteology. In physiognomy Lavater 
 urged the necessity of giving special consideration to the solid 
 parts of the Organisation, the bone formations, and in his con- 
 tributions on animal skulls J (1776) Goethe expressed his con- 
 viction that one can see most plainly by the difference between 
 skulls “ how the bones are the foundations of formation, and 
 embrace the qualities of a creature. The movable parts are 
 formed according to them, or, to be more exact, with them, 
 and perform their functions only in so far as the solid parts 
 permit them.” 
 
 * Cf. Campagne in Frankreich (W., xxxiii., 189). 
 
 t First Part, fourth Book (TF., xxvi., 187). 
 
 J Physiognomische Fragmente (TF., xxxvii., 347 /.). 
 
Gbe IRaturalist 
 
 83 
 
 @5 ift nid)i6 in ber $aut, 
 
 2Ba$ nicfyt im Änocfjen ift. * 
 
 Without these preliminary studies how would it have 
 been possible for Goethe, even though he was able to “ grasp 
 much in a few days,” to gain in a week such a mastery 
 of osteology and myology — Loder began to demonstrate 
 the subject to him in Jena at the end of October, 1781 — that 
 shortly afterward from a pupil he developed into a teacher, 
 able to deliver lectures on the human skeleton at the Acad- 
 emy of Drawingif This fact leads us to surmise that he 
 may have been guided in these studies chiefly by artistic 
 interests and aims. But the more profoundly he grasped 
 the subject, and the more familiär the knowledge became 
 to him through conversation and correspondence with the 
 most leamed anatomists of his day, the more absorbing 
 became his interest in osteology from the scientific side. In 
 his understanding of this branch of anatomy he was aided 
 particularly by Merck, who, though but an amateur, possessed 
 a rare knowledge of the subject, stood high in the estima- 
 tion of specialists, and, like Goethe, was an enthusiastic and 
 fortunate collector of specimens. In the spring of 1784, 
 probably on the 27th of March, J Goethe discovered a little 
 bone in the upper jaw of a human skull which scholars 
 asserted did not exist there, and this successful outcome 
 of his investigations gave him so great joy that “it sent a 
 thrill through every fibre of his being.” He wrote to Herder : 
 “ In accordance with the teaching of the Gospel I must hasten 
 as quickly as possible to inform thee of the good fortune that 
 has come to me. I have discovered — neither gold nor silver, 
 but something that gives me unspeakable joy— the os inter- 
 maxillare in man!” 
 
 Was the little bone deserving of such enthusiastic joy? 
 
 * There is naught in the skin 
 But in the bone exists. 
 
 The quotation is from the beginning of the poem Typus ( W ., iii., 1 19). 
 
 f According to his diary the course of lectures was finished on the iöth 
 of January, 1782. 
 
 X Letter to Frau von Stein. 
 
8 4 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 The ans wer to the question can be given, the real value which 
 the discovery had in Goethe’ s mind can be understood, only 
 when it is considered in the light of his whole philosophy 
 of nature. 
 
 Back in his Strasburg days, or perhaps even earlier, 
 Goethe had come under the influence of Spinoza’s genius, 
 not as exerted directly by that philosopher himself, but 
 through the medium of his spiritual kinsman Giordano 
 Bruno. It was his desire, as he says in Ephemerides* not 
 to separate God from nature, but rather to connect God with 
 nature. For everything that is belongs necessarily to the 
 essence of God, as God is the only reality and embraces 
 everything. Such pantheistic inclinations were betrayed 
 by him even when a boy,| in the manner in which he sought 
 to approach directly “the great God of nature” and to wor- 
 ship him in nature and through nature. The youthful 
 priest built to him an altar of the best specimens of a Collec- 
 tion of minerals, “ the representatives of nature,” and, after 
 sunrise, kindled by means of a buming glass the sacrificial 
 flames of sweet-smelling incense tapers. 
 
 When Goethe, in later years, gave an account of his first 
 acquaintance w r ith Spinoza’s Ethicsl he was unable to distin- 
 guish between what he had gotten out of the work and what 
 he had read into it; but after his statement just referred 
 to there can be no doubt that it was the unity of the All, 
 which he here found expressed with most luminous penetra- 
 tion, united with endless unselfishness and pure humanity, 
 that from the very first brought him under the spell of the 
 philosopher who had “risen to the summit of human 
 thought.” Goethe’s whole being was filled with the idea, so 
 that he here found himself again in a “necessary elective 
 affinity,” and here discovered the reason of his inclination to 
 fix his attention on the thought of unity in the whole of na- 
 ture, in the All ; here he gained the assurance of scientific 
 consciousness for his own conception of nature: 
 
 * W., xxxvii., 90 f. 
 
 t Cf. DW., first Part, first Book ( W ., xxvi., 63 ff.). 
 
 t Ibid., third Part, fourteenth Book (W., xxviii., 288). 
 
Gbe IflaturaUst 
 
 S5 
 
 Unb eg ift ba$ einig ©ine, 
 
 Id) oielfad) offenbart.* 
 
 With reference to the unity of the universe the unity of 
 the organic world is but a specific case. It is one thing, 
 however, to grasp this idea in its general application, and an 
 entirely different thing to hold it fast, with the consistency 
 of nature herseif, in every individual phenomenon; to follow 
 out, as it were, the thought of nature everyvvhere, and to be- 
 hold in every individual phenomenon the manifestation of 
 her inherent law. Goethe’s sublime observations of nature 
 were due to the fact that, by virtue of his spiritual Constitu- 
 tion, it was impossible for him not to behold the general prin- 
 ciple in the individual case . 10 Each of nature’s works, we 
 read in the wonderful hymn Die Natur, has its own peculiar 
 being, each of her phenomena a most isolated conception, 
 and yet they all together form a unit. Hence Goethe every- 
 where sought reality in the highest sense of the word, not 
 reality of phenomena alone, but reality as the fulfilment of 
 law. This method of observing nature sprang from his in- 
 nermost being. In this Connection it is always necessary to 
 go back to Heinroth’s felicitous Statement, that Goethe’s 
 mind worked objectively,f which means that his thought 
 did not separate itself from objects. but that “the elements 
 of objects, the observations, enter into it and are most inti- 
 mately amalgamated with it.” They become, as it were, a 
 light within him, which by reflection casts its rays out upon 
 objects and illuminates them. 
 
 Slnfdjamt, tnenn eö bir gelingt, 
 eö erft ins Snnre bringt, 
 
 $)ann nad) aufjen tnieberfebrt, 
 
 SBift ant fjerrlidjften belehrt, t 
 
 * And it is the One eternal, 
 
 Which so multiform appears. 
 
 Quoted from the poem Parabase (W., iii., 84), which, without this title, 
 of course, formed the motto to his Erster Entwurf einer allgemeinen Ein- 
 leitung in die vergleichende Anatomie, ausgehend von der Osteologie. 
 
 t NS., xi., 58 ( Bedeutende Fordernis durch ein einziges geistreiches 
 
 Wort). 
 
 % Observation, made aright, 
 
 Floods at first the soul with light; 
 
86 
 
 Zhe Xife of Goetbe 
 
 As Goethe, on the basis of experience, has risen to the 
 view that the higher animal world up to man was formed 
 according to a uniform type, it must have seemed to him 
 impossible that nature should have been untrue to herseif 
 in one point. He could not be satisfied with the outward 
 impression which forces itself on every man ; he had to take 
 seriously the idea that man is most closely related to the 
 animal world.* * * * § It was only from such a commanding point 
 of observation that it was possible for his poetic eye to dis- 
 cover what men who all their lives had been practised and 
 experienced in such observations and investigations failed 
 to see. How inconceivable it is that man, who, as we know, 
 has incisor teeth, should lack the bone in which the roots of 
 the incisors are fixed! And yet the anatomists and distin- 
 guished investigators of that day not only stubbomly denied 
 the existence of the intermaxillary bone in man; their bias 
 even went so far that, although they were not conscious of 
 the general law involved, they proved the consistency of the 
 skeleton in animals which had no incisors in their upper jaws 
 and yet had the intermaxillary bone. Still they would have 
 us believe that man, w T ho possesses incisors, lacks the bone 
 which bears them ! 1 1 
 
 Goethe, on the other hand, had gained too deep an in- 
 sight into the framework of the animal world and into the 
 workings of nature to have any doubts in his mind as to the 
 fact that nature never disregards her great maximsj; he 
 recognised and admired the clevemess 1 with which she, 
 although limited to a small number of fundamental max- 
 ims, is able to produce the greatest variety. To him “the 
 great self-activity of nature § consists in the fact that she 
 
 Then if this be outward tumed 
 Thou hast glorious wisdom leamed. 
 
 The above is the last of the three stanzas of the poem Genius, die 
 Büste der Natur enthüllend, which since 1833 has appeared also among 
 the Zahme Xenien (VI). 
 
 * Letter to Knebel, Nov. 17, 1784. 
 
 t Zur Morphologie (NS., viii., 122). 
 
 t NS., xi., 165. 
 
 § NS., vi„ 327 f. 
 
£be IRaturaltet 
 
 3 / 
 
 can conceal certain Organs and bring others into greater evi- 
 dence, and in the same way can do just the opposite with 
 the one as well as the other. ’ ’ The intermaxillary bone was 
 a brilliant example by which Goethe was first able to illus- 
 trate the great self-activity of nature, as he was again, a few 
 years later, by the metamorphosis of plants. In his “speci- 
 men,” as he called the little artiele on the intermaxillary, 
 in a letter to Merck of the i9th of December, 1784, — and in- 
 deed it is a specimen, a model, of scientific presentation — 
 he not only proves the existence of this bone in man : he also 
 shows how its shape varies according to the shape of the ani- 
 mal, the formation of the teeth, and the kind of food, extend- 
 ing forwards in some and backwards in others, and finallv 
 in the noblest creature, man, “ modestly hiding itself for fear 
 of betraving animal voracity.” * 
 
 Sllfo beftimmt bie ©eftalt bie üebeneroeife beg £iere$, 
 
 Unb bie SBeifejtt leben, fie tüirft auf alle ©eftalten 
 3 Jfäd)tig gurücf. t 
 
 The discovery was not an easy one to make; otherwise 
 it would not have remained a moot question for centuries. 
 The difficulty of recognising the real truth lay in the fact 
 that in full-grown skulls the bone is completely grown to- 
 gether with adjacent bones, and it is only in young speci- 
 mens that the attentive observer is able to see sutures along 
 the side. Goethe arrived at his discovery by the comparison 
 of animal and human skulls of different ages, and this 
 method of comparison, which, instead of confining itself to 
 the exterior, enters into the structure and contexture of the 
 forms under investigation, is a further feature of the dis- 
 covery that is of fundamental importance. The bone could 
 not be wanting; it had to be present; it was required to 
 
 * NS., viii., 94 and 120. 
 
 t Thus by the animal’s form is its manner of living determined; 
 Likewise the manner of life affecteth everv creature, 
 
 Moulding its form. 
 
 The above lines are quoted from the poem Metamorphose der Tiere 
 (W., iii., 90); the poem also appears under the title A 0 POI 2 MO 2 (NS., 
 
 viii., 58 ff.). 
 
88 
 
 tTbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 complete the harmony of the whole. A similar method of 
 reasoning, based on his contemplation of the great Stras- 
 burg cathedral, had revealed to the young Student Goethe 
 the original plan of the architect that the tower of the edifice 
 should end with a five-pointed crown.* 
 
 Goethe was fully conscious of the fact that his investiga- 
 tion prefigured the future development of Science, that it 
 gave expression to a great principle, the idea of the consist- 
 ency of the osteological type through all forms; that, at the 
 same time, the way was pointed out to deeper insight inte 
 the formation of the animal world and to a broader Outlook 
 upon the great whole of nature. “ How natural it will be 
 to proceed from this one little bone to the rest of compara- 
 tive osteology thou canst doubtless see, and later it will be 
 even more apparent” (letter to Merck, December 19, 1784), 
 “ One could then go more into detail and, by careful compar. 
 ison, Step by step, of several animals, advance from tlx. 
 simplest to the more complex, from the small and cramped to 
 the huge and extended.” t 
 
 Goethe’s interest in this subject was stimulated from 
 another quarter. The most celebrated anatomists of his 
 time, Blumenbach, Camper, and Sömmering, saw in the sup- 
 posed lack of the intermaxillary bone the only mark of dis- 
 tinction between man and the ape, and so the old moot 
 question again engaged the leading minds in a spirited 
 controversy. As opposed to this view Goethe expressed the 
 conviction that the difference between man and the animals 
 could not be found in any particular part of the body. 1 “ The 
 harmony of the whole makes every creature what it is, and 
 man is man by the form and nature of his upper jaw as well 
 as by the form and nature of the last phalanx of his little toe. 
 Then again every creature is but a tone, a modulation, of a 
 great harmony, which must be studied as a whole and in all 
 its grandeur; otherwise each individual part is but a lifeless 
 letter. This little work is written from this point of view 
 
 * Cf. vol. i., p. 105. — C. 
 
 t NS., viii., 102. 
 
 t Letter to Knebel, November 17, 1784. 
 
e IRaturaltet 
 
 89 
 
 and that is really the interest that lies concealed in it.” 
 Goethe was so fortunate as to show that even in apes cases 
 occur in which the intermaxillary bone is so grown together 
 with the adjacent bones that the outer suture is scarcely 
 visible. 
 
 All his efforts to obtain the recognition of his discovery 
 among specialists failed, except in the case of his teacher, 
 Loder. For the present it was not given the poet to “ legit- 
 imate ” himself in the “ leamed body ” of anatomists by means 
 of his “inaugural disputation.” It was sent first, on the 
 i9th of December, 1784, to Darmstadt, to Merck, then to 
 Cassel, to Sömmering, and finally to Stavoren, Holland, to 
 Camper, the most celebrated anatomist of the time, who did 
 not receive it tili the middle of September, 1785, nine months 
 after it had been started on its round. It took the work so 
 long to make the joumey because it was not despatched tili 
 suitable opportunities offered. Most carefully prepared 
 and very distinct drawings of the skulls investigated by 
 Goethe were intended to demonstrate the difference in form 
 in different animals of the bone wedged in between the two 
 halves of the upper jaw, and to show its existence in man. 
 They also contained among their number different animal 
 skulls in which the bone was either partly or wholly grown 
 together with adjacent bones. The author’s name was not 
 mentioned, and Camper in all honesty subjected the treatise 
 to a thorough test, making a new investigation of skulls of 
 various ages ; but he held fast his old view that man has no 
 intermaxillary bone. In other respects he confirmed all of 
 Goethe’s observations, even that conceming the walrus, in 
 which the bone had not been recognised because of its com- 
 pressed, misshapen, form, and of which it had also been said 
 that it had no incisor teeth. Goethe remarked that, judg- 
 ing by the form of the intermaxillary, one must ascribe to 
 the walrus four incisors. Camper considered this remark 
 likewise correct and wrote to Merck conceming the inter- 
 maxillary: “Votre ami, je suppose Mr. Goethe, nous a mis 
 en train et ä l’examen d’ un os, qui serait reste inconnu 
 dans le morse, si nous n’avions pas eu ces 6claircisse- 
 
90 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 ments”*; but he continued to deny the very thing about 
 which Goethe cared most : “ L’os intermaxillaire n’existe pas 
 dans 1 ’ homme.” f From Sömmering Goethe received, as he 
 wrote to Merck, “a very light letter. He even wants to 
 talk me out of it. Humph!” % 
 
 With such Opposition on the part of specialists Goethe 
 lost all desire to publish the treatise. Loder announced the 
 discovery to the scientific world in 1788 in his Anatomisches 
 Handbuch. Sömmering and Blumenbach gradually became 
 converted, but it was almost forty years before Goethe’s 
 discovery attained full recognition. He himself did not pub- 
 lish the little work tili 1820, when it appeared with important 
 additions in one of the numbers of his periodical Zur Natur- 
 wissenschaft, 12 and it was not until a year before his death 
 that he experienced the joy of seeing it reprinted, together 
 with the drawings, in the Verhandlungen der Kaiserlich Leo- 
 poldinisch-Karolinischen Akademie der Naturforscher. 
 
 Goethe was, however, not disconcerted ; he knew before- 
 hand that he was on the right path,§ or, as Herder put it, on 
 the true path of nature, fl and that from now on he would 
 lose nothing. His scientific activity broadened from day 
 to day, but the vegetable kingdom especially engrossed his 
 attention. 
 
 Immediately on his arrival in Weimar his interest was 
 aroused in the plant world, partly because his official duties 
 tumed his attention in that direction. In nature’s open 
 workshop, in meadow and field, in forest and game preserve, 
 began his studies, which found rieh nourishment in the lay- 
 ing out of gardens for the Duke and in the desire to beautify 
 his own garden out of his own resources. Even as early as 
 1788 we find him occupied with observations on mosses; not 
 until later did he tum to books, for it was not in his nature to 
 
 * Your friend— Herr Goethe, I presume — has set us to seeking and 
 examining a bone which would have remained unknown in the walrus, 
 if we had not had these explanations ( Briefe an Merck, 470). 
 
 t The intermaxillary bone does not exist in man ( ibid ., 481). 
 
 % Letter to Merck, February 13, 1785. 
 
 § Letter to Frau von Stein, Oct. 2, 1783. 
 
 | Knebels literarischer Nachlass, ii., 236. 
 
Zf) e Iftaturaltet 
 
 91 
 
 learn any thing from them,* and it was only after he had 
 looked about him for a long time in nature and had discov- 
 ered some of the secrets of her workings that he knew how 
 to use books. From 1785 on he was wholly absorbed in the 
 plant world, and “in botany he had soon made very fine 
 discoveries and combinations which corrected many errors 
 and threw light on many points.” f But he was not seeking 
 to find out isolated facts; it was his aim here as everywhere 
 to discover a general, fundamental law to which individual 
 phenomena can be reduced. f Upon this was centred the 
 “ productive passion ” which he had conceived for the natural 
 Sciences. The gay bustle of the “ children of nature with 
 their quiet charms” crowded itself upon him with irresistible 
 power, and whereas it had hitherto rejoiced only his senses 
 it now took possession of his mind and soul. Indeed, every- 
 thing that he observed in nature assumed for him the char- 
 acter of experience, as he declared in numerous utterances. 13 
 In his mind outer w T orld and inner w T orld are most intimately 
 connected ; “ he had never separated the two.” In this one- 
 ness, and in the manner in which he was able to “ unite the 
 productive with the historical,” lies the inexhaustible charm 
 of his presentations of his knowledge of nature, of which he 
 might have said, as he did of his poems: “I did not make 
 them; they made me.” On the 9th of July, 1786, he wrote 
 to Frau von Stein: “The vegetable kingdom is raging 
 again in my soul; I cannot rid myself of it for a single mo- 
 ment; am, however, making fine progress.” On the follow- 
 ing day he wrote: “ What rejoices me most at present is the 
 nature of plants, which is pursuing me, and that is really 
 the way a thing becomes one’s own. Everything is forcing 
 itself upon me, I no longer reflect upon it, everything comes 
 to me, and the vast kingdom is simplifying itself in my soul, 
 so that I shall soon be able to accomplish with ease the most 
 difficult task.” 
 
 This anticipation of his discovery of plant metamorpho- 
 
 * Letter to Merck, Oct. n, 1780. 
 
 t Letter to Merck, April 8, 1785. 
 
 } Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe , i., 232. 
 
92 
 
 ftbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 sis, which at that time hovered before his mind under the 
 sensual form of a supersensual Ur pflanze, accompanied him 
 across the Alps. In Italy, so rieh in form, he saw fresh and 
 happy, side by side, beneath the open sky, a fulness and 
 variety of thronging life such as was hardly to be found, 
 scattered, in the narrow hot-houses of his northem home; 
 he found here everything more unfolded and further devel- 
 oped, and many thingswhich he had previously only surmised, 
 and had sought with the microscope, he here saw with his 
 naked eye as an indubitable certainty. The plant world 
 had taken such a mighty hold upon him that it more than 
 once crowded out his poetic dreams. In Palermo he went 
 to the public gardens to think over the plot of Nausikaa 
 more fully, but the thoughts which the wealth of plants sug- 
 gested to his mind disturbed his poetic plan : “ The garden 
 of Alcinous had vanished and a world garden had appeared 
 before me.” He had seen and reflected enough in the world 
 garden; he was now able to pluck the ripened fruit. To be 
 sure, it did not fall into his hands without some effort on his 
 part ; in fact, in later years he insisted that the same was 
 true of his works in general. Of this particular fruit of 
 his labour he said: “What a long chain of observations 
 and reflections I had to carry out before the idea of plant 
 metamorphosis dawned upon me!” * But now everything 
 developed from within,f and in Sicily, at the goal of his 
 “flight,” the idea of the metamorphosis of plants stood out 
 clearly before his soul and mind and “gave spiritual con- 
 tent” to his sojoum in Naples and Sicily. 
 
 In this epic of the coming into being of higher plants, as 
 Alfred Kirchhoff aptly calls the little treatise which appeared 
 in 1790 under the title Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pflan- 
 zen zu erklären, Goethe revealed to the scientific world an idea 
 of Creative power continuing in Operation. He sought in 
 this way to reduce “ the manifold specific phenomena of the 
 glorious world garden to a simple, general principle,” % and 
 
 * Bedeutende Fordernis durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort {NS., xi., 62). 
 
 t SGG., ii., 1 14. 
 
 J Schicksal der Handschrift {NS., vi., 132). 
 
ftbe Naturalist 
 
 93 
 
 it may be said that our poet was the first man to raise botany, 
 and at the same time zoölogy, to the rank of a real Science- 
 Hitherto these disciplines had consisted solely in empirical 
 description, in collecting and arranging, and in distinguish- 
 ing and separating. To draw an illustration from botany, 
 the plant in its totality, and each organ of it, was considered 
 only as a finished thing distinguished from all other things. 
 Now Goethe had studied comparative anatomy and com- 
 parative osteology, and in this way had had the good fortune 
 to make fine discoveries ; what could have been more logical 
 than that, so soon as he tumed to this field, he should study 
 comparative botany — that he should observe the relations 
 of different plants to one another, and those existing between 
 the organs of a single plant? Hence it was necessary for him 
 to watch the plant in its germination and growth, in “ its de- 
 velopment out of the seed and all the way to the formation 
 of new seed” (§ 84) ; and with the eye of a genius he recog- 
 nised that cotyledon, stem, leaf, sepal, petal, filament, in 
 short, — to borrow a common expression of modern Science — 
 all appendages, or lateral Organs, of the plant axis are only 
 transformed or metamorphosed leaves; that is to say, that 
 all those organs of a higher plant — for it is only with such 
 that Goethe’s doctrine of metamorphosis deals — may be 
 reduced to a primordial organ, which he calls leaf. Accus- 
 tomed to view every manifestation of nature in its relation to 
 her other phenomena, in the conviction that only in this way 
 is it possible to entice from her her secrets, he directed his 
 attention to formations deviating from the norm, to certain 
 monstrosities, as, for example, double flowers, in which 
 “are developed petals instead of filaments and anthers, ” — 
 that is to say, a petal is formed where under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances a filament appears — and from these facts he 
 deduced the inward relationship of these organs, their simi- 
 lar origin, and their predisposition to assume the same form. 
 Such phenomena of abnormal or retrogressive metamor- 
 phosis aided him in his investigation of the normal course 
 of plant development. 14 
 
 It is worthy of note in this connection that Goethe did not 
 
94 
 
 £be %\tc of (Soetbe 
 
 see in the leaf as the fundamental organ the final simple ele- 
 ment to which the plant form may be reduced. He chose 
 this designation for lack of a b etter. Modem science em- 
 ploys the term leaf-organ. In Order to have gone back to 
 the beginnings of plant growth he would have had to have 
 a knowledge of the elementary organism, the cell, which 
 was impossible before the perfection of the microscope. 
 But that Goethe’s genius had divined the truth clearly and 
 with surprising accuracy is apparent from his words : “ Every 
 living thing is a multiple, not a single, being; even in so far 
 as it seems to us an individual it remains nevertheless an 
 aggregation of independent living beings, which in idea or 
 plan are homogeneous, but in appearance may be homo- 
 geneous, or similar, heterogeneous, or dissimilar. In part 
 these beings are united from their origin, in part they find 
 each other and unite. They separate and then enter into 
 new unions, thus securing an endless production in every 
 way and in every direction.” * 
 
 In his doctrine of vegetable metamorphosis Goethe had a 
 predecessor in the person of Kaspar Friedrich Wolff, who 
 expressed the same idea, that all lateral organs of a higher 
 plant are modified leav^es, but he observed with the micro- 
 scope what the poet saw with the eyes of his spirit. Wolff’s 
 work, however, had remained entirely unknown to him, as 
 it had to Germany in general, and Goethe was one of the 
 first to point out its merits. He called him with joyful recog- 
 nition an “excellent predecessor.” Wolff’s method of rea- 
 soning was altogether unacceptable in so far as he ascribed 
 the course of development of a plant to maturity to a stunt- 
 ing of its growth — an idea which Goethe characterised 
 as absurd. 
 
 As a matter of fact, science acquired the doctrine of met- 
 amorphosis from Goethe ; but it was decades before the new 
 conception was really adopted by scientists as a working 
 prineiple. Disregard, indifference, rejection, misinterpreta- 
 tion, misunderstanding, — such was the fate which the “lit- 
 tle botanical work” experienced, so that Reichenbach was 
 * Zur Morphologie (A 'S., vi., io). 
 
Goethe by Kolbe 
 (From Heinemann’s Goethe) 
 
ftbe IRaturaltet 
 
 95 
 
 justified in saying of the poet, in 1828: “Back in his youth 
 he discovered the dryad’s secret, but he had to become a 
 greybeard before the world understood him.” It was a 
 tragic feature of our poet’s life that the recognition for which 
 he yeamed, especially in his scientific work, was so long 
 denied him. It may well have been this fact that prevented 
 his writing “the second essay on the metamorphosis of 
 plants,” * of which only a short fragment has been preserved. 
 When Goethe, in the summer of 1831, through the mediation 
 of his spiritual kinsman Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, sent the 
 French translation of his Metamorphose der Pflanzen, for 
 which Soret had arranged under his direction, to the Acad- 
 emie Franyaise, de Saint-Hilaire said in his report: “When 
 Goethe came out with his work in 1790 it was little noticed; 
 indeed, scientists came near considering it an aberration. 
 To be sure, there was an error at the bottom of it, but such 
 a one as only genius can commit. Goethe’s only error con- 
 sisted in allowing his treatise to be published almost half a 
 Century too soon, before there were any botanists who were 
 able to study it and understand it.” | 
 
 It would be giving to this little work but the smallest 
 part of the recognition due it, if one were to see in it nothing 
 more than the proof of the identity of all the parts which we 
 have characterised as the lateral Organs of the plant axis. It 
 is based, in fact, on an infinitely greater, higher, and more 
 comprehensive, idea, the idea of evolution, the germ of which 
 is thus seen to be contained in Goethe’s first scientific writ- 
 ing. Never before had the Sciences of the organic world 
 received such a mighty impulse as through this idea, which 
 was destined to awaken them, as though with a magic wand, 
 out of their long lethargy, to a new flourishing existence. 
 
 In his essay on Joachim Jungius, in the passage in which 
 he speaks of Francis Bacon, who, he says, considered “ dif- 
 ferentiation and exact representation of differences as true 
 natural philosophy,” Goethe says: “The conviction that 
 everything must be in existence in a finished state, if one 
 
 * Letter to Knebel, July 9, 1790; NS., vi., 279. 
 
 t Müller, Goethes letzte literarische Tätigkeit , 54. 
 
9 6 
 
 £be Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 is to bestow upon it proper attention, had completely be- 
 fogged the Century . . . and so this way of thinking has come 
 down as the most natural and most convenient from the 
 seventeenth to the eighteenth, and from the eighteenth to 
 the nineteenth Century. ...” In Linne this method of in- 
 terpreting nature had found a perfect, incomparable system- 
 atist, who showed no desire to seek the inward Connection 
 of the whole, and hardly betrayed the faintest conception 
 of the fact that Science rises to its full dignity only when it 
 has investigated the origin of Organisation. The school of 
 Linne, which, thanks to the sovereign talent of its founder, 
 ruled the scientific world for a time, considered its task 
 limited to the elaboration, completion, and explanation, of 
 this System, and became more and more fixed in the idea 
 that “ nothing can come into being but w r hat is already in exis- 
 ence,”* a conception wdfich had gained complete control 
 over all minds. 
 
 According to this view the whole plant, for example, 
 was said to be incased in the seed, entirely preformed on a 
 small scale. Hence there was no evolution, there was only 
 an unfolding, and this doctrine of emboitement, or preforma- 
 tion, was held fast, in spite of the fact that it led, by logical 
 necessity, to the absurd conclusion that in the plant germ 
 of any particular species all future generations were from 
 the very beginning inclosed one within another. The idea 
 found its pregnant expression in Haller’s “nil noviter gene- 
 rari.” To this apparent death Goethe opposed real life in 
 his conception of evolution. Evolution means the continual 
 development of the diverse and manifold out of the single and 
 simple, and he knows that in the organic world endurance, 
 rest, and final state are nowhere to be found, f rather, that 
 everything varies with constant motion. That which is 
 formed is immediately transformed, and, if we desire to 
 arrive in some measure at a living conception of nature, we 
 must follow the example which she sets and keep ourselves 
 in a live and formative state. 
 
 * Campagne in Frankreich ( W xxxiii., 197). 
 
 t NS., vi., 9 f. 
 
£be IHaturalist 
 
 97 
 
 The idea of evolution was a lightning flash that rifted 
 the clouds of the Century and shed a flood of light upon the 
 world of life. The metamorphosis of plants is but a special 
 application of this idea. It shows the progressive formation 
 and transformation of the fundamental organ into more and 
 more perfect and efficient Organs, until in the end it reaches 
 the highest point of organic activity, the setting apart and 
 Separation of individuals from the organic whole by the 
 process of procreation and birth.* 
 
 Finally Goethe identified the idea of metamorphosis with 
 the idea of evolution in general. In this sense he called the 
 former a IV Kal näv, and it was this idea, which embraces 
 the whole organic world, that guided him through the laby- 
 rinth of the world before he had worked out that special 
 application of the idea. Nothing eise can be meant by the 
 Statement in his letter of July 6, 1786, to Frau von Stein, “ I 
 have again been able to observe very beautiful qualities in 
 flowers, and before long all life will appear to my mind in a 
 bright and clear light”; and he cannot have been thinking 
 of anything but the idea of evolution underlying his concep- 
 tion of metamorphosis when he wrote from Naples, on the 
 i7th of May, 1787 : “ It will be found that the same law can 
 be applied to every other form of life.” 
 
 Only when he had before him a magnificent visible cor- 
 robation of his idea of evolution, in the discovery of the met- 
 amorphosis of plants ; only when he knew the true history of 
 the plant, its successive stages of growth from small begin- 
 nings to maturity — “just as true history does not recount 
 occurrences, but events, as they appear in the various stages 
 of their development” f — only then was he able, as a true 
 investigator, to proclaim the idea of evolution as a supreme 
 scientific principle. From that time on Goethe knew no 
 higher, indeed, no other, method of viewing nature, and no 
 other way of dealing with natural phenomena, than the 
 genetic method, % and one of our greatest naturalists § says 
 
 * NS., vi., 305. t NS., ix., 275 f. t NS., vi., 303. 
 
 § Virchow, in Lexis, Die deutschen Universitäten (1893), «•> 250. 
 vol. in. — 7. 
 
9 8 
 
 Z \) e Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 without qualification that Goethe established the universal- 
 ity of the genetic method. Even his mode of thinking was 
 genetic. 
 
 We have now reached a point where it is possible to 
 bring the poet-naturalist nearer to our understanding. In 
 attempting to do so we shall give our reasons for the open- 
 ing Statement of this chapter. 
 
 In a fragment of manuscript containing an early Version 
 of a part of his Geschichte seiner botanischen Studien Goethe 
 introduced his study of plants in Italy in the following sen- 
 tence, which, however, did not appear in the same form in 
 the final redaction: “ In the year referred to I ventured on a 
 journey to Italy, with the hard task of solving more than 
 one riddle which was a bürden upon my life. The study of 
 plants forced itself upon me.” * Viewed aright, the riddles 
 which Goethe went forth to solve may be reduced to a single 
 one. He sought to find the crowning piece for his structure 
 of nature, to gain under the Italian sky the final insight into 
 nature, and to see what he had divined demonstrated as a 
 certainty. For it does not seem for a moment to have been 
 concealed from him that he thereby would have gained the 
 deepest insight into art ; that by the completion of his know- 
 ledge of nature he would have attained to full artistic con- 
 sciousness, just as in the knowledge of nature he had for the 
 first time found a key to unlock the door to the knowledge of 
 art. Hence we can understand why he should have written 
 to Frau von Stein as early as the 24Ü1 of November. 1786: 
 ‘‘Thou knowest my old manner. I am treating Rome as I 
 treat nature, and it is already beginning to rise to meet me.” 
 And on the 2oth of December: “As I have hitherto viewed 
 
 nature I now view art, and I am gaining what I have so long 
 sought, a more complete idea of the highest things that men 
 have accomplished, and my soul is expanding more in this 
 direction and looks out upon a freer field.” Finally, on the 
 2 9th of December, to Herder: “ My dear old friend : — Archi- 
 tecture and sculpture and painting are now to me like min- 
 eralogy, botany, and zoölogy. Furthermore, I have now 
 
 * NS., vi., 386. 
 
XTbe IRaturallöt 
 
 99 
 
 grasped these, the arts, aright, and I shall not let them go, 
 and I know for certain that I am not catching at a phantom. ”* 
 Thus to Goethe ’s mind it was from the outset clear, not 
 only that the deepest knowledge of nature is none too good 
 for the highest perfection of art, but also that the road to the 
 mastery of art is the same that he had travelled in Order 
 to master nature; “that finally in the practice of art 
 we can compete with nature only when we have leamed 
 from her, to some extent at least, the manner in which she 
 proceeds in the production of her works.” f Now how does 
 nature proceed? How eise than by the way of evolution 
 does she go about the production of a “ living creature as the 
 model for all artistic Creations? ” Therefore, in the highest 
 sphere it is not really what has come into being, what is, as 
 such, that is a subject for art; but in so far as in it a trace of 
 growth, evolution, and living motion, is observed, and the 
 relation of the parts to one another and to the whole is visi- 
 ble. “ The human figure cannot be comprehended by merely 
 looking at its surface ; one must lay bare its interior, separate 
 its parts, note the Connections, know the differences, study 
 action and reaction, and keep clearly in mind the hidden, 
 the fixed, and the fundamental, elements of appearance, if 
 one would really see and imitate that which moves before our 
 eyes in living waves as a beautiful, undivided whole.” J Not 
 only is this true of the human figure, “the non plus ultra of 
 all human knowledge and activity,” § “ the alpha and omega 
 of all things known to us”; || even the artist, for example, 
 who desires to represent flowers and fruits will only “be- 
 come the greater and more thorough if, in addition to his 
 talent, he is a well informed botanist : if from the root up he 
 knows the influence of the different parts on the growth 
 and prosperity of the plant, knows their various functions and 
 their effects upon one another, and if he comprehends and 
 
 * SGG., ii., pp. 223, 240, and 333. 
 t Einleitung in die Propyläen ( W ., xlvii., 14 /.). 
 %Ibid., ( W ., xlvii., 13). 
 
 % Italienische Reise, Rome, Jan. 10, 1788. 
 
 11 Ibid., Rome, Äugt. 23, 1787. 
 
IOO 
 
 Zbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 reflects upon the successive evolution of leaves, flowers, fer- 
 tilisation, fruit, and the new germ.” * 
 
 At the time when these words were written the revelation 
 of the metamorphosis of plants had already come to the poet ; 
 he had given himself up to the idea with joy and delight, 
 had applied it everywhere, even in art ; and yet with respect 
 to the highest art, antique art, it was more than a year before 
 his conjecture gave way to certainty, of the correctness of 
 the view that nature and art are but manifestations of one 
 and the same reality — a view which later dominated and 
 satisfied his artistic and scientific consciousness. At that 
 time he was still engaged in “ investigating how those incom- 
 parable artists went about it to evolve out of the human 
 figure the circle of divine formation, in which neither a single 
 chief character nor the transitions and agencies are lacking. 
 I surmise that they proceeded according to the laws which 
 guide nature and of which I am on the track. But there is 
 something eise about them that I am unable to express in 
 words.” t 
 
 After he had gone to Sicily and retumed to Rome it was 
 no longer a surmise, it had become with him a “Colum- 
 bus’s egg;”J he had not only found the clue, he had the 
 “ master key,” and was in a position to declare that “these 
 great works of art are at the same time the highest works of 
 nature, produced by man in accordance with true and nat- 
 ural laws; everything capricious and imaginary falls to the 
 ground ; here is necessity, here is God.” He was able to look 
 into the depths of art with all the greater joy as he had 
 accustomed his sight to the depths of nature. § 
 
 Goethe’s philosophy ,of art, then, is based on the laws 
 which he read in the open book of nature. The great prin- 
 ciples underlying the realm of nature, the conception of unity 
 and the idea of evolution, when applied to art, become the 
 tvpical in art and individual freedom in the development 
 
 * Einfache Nachahmung der Natur, Manier, Stil (TV., xlvii., S2). 
 t Italienische Reise, Rome, Jan. 28, 1787. Cf. also Anhang zur 
 Lebensbeschreibung des Benvenuto Cellini, XVI (IV., xliv., 384 /.). 
 
 J Italienische Reise, Rome, Sept. 6, 1787. 
 
 § Letter to Karl August, Jan. 25, 1788. 
 
Ube IRaturalist 
 
 ior 
 
 and assertion of personality, the highest bliss of the sons of 
 earth. Their union represents that inward unity, that true- 
 to-nature character, of the Creations of his muse, which lends 
 them the stamp of etemity. And art was by no means one 
 of the least potent factors in prompting him always to take 
 “very seriously everything that concems the great etemal 
 relations of nature.” * Even the supreme revelation of art, 
 the beautiful, comes to us “when we behold life in accord- 
 ance with law in its highest activity and perfection, by which 
 we are stimulated to reproduce and are made to feel our- 
 selves animated and transported to highest activity.” f 
 Thus art reproduces whatever it may have received from 
 nature; for art is not an imitator of nature, but her “wor- 
 thiest interpreter, ” J and an irresistible longing for art is 
 feit by all to whom nature begins to disclose her open 
 secret. Hence art becomes, so to speak, a touchstone for 
 the discovered laws of nature, and, on the other hand, is able 
 to reveal natural laws. This divine spark is the beautiful; 
 for “ the beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws of nature, 
 which but for this phenomenon would have remained hidden 
 from us for ever.” § 
 
 Goethe found the philosophical justification and confirm- 
 ation of his conception of the relations between nature and 
 art in Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft, to which he owed, for 
 this reason, one of the most joyous periods of his life. || It 
 pleased him to leam in this work that poetry and the com- 
 parative science of nature are so closely related, in that both 
 are subject to the same power of judgment. He found here 
 the fulfilment of his own demand that a work of art should 
 be treated like a work of nature, and a work of nature like 
 a work of art, and that the value of each should be derived 
 from itself and considered by itself.T And as, in every work 
 
 * Letter to Knebel, Jan. 28, 1789. 
 
 t Campagne in Frankreich (W., xxxiii., 234). 
 
 X Maximen und Reflexionen über Kunst (W., xlviii., 179); Sprüche in 
 Prosa , No. 214. 
 
 § Sprüche in Prosa , No. 197. 
 
 |j Einwirkung der neueren Philosophie (NS., xi., 47 ff.). 
 
 TT Campagne in Frankreich (W., xxxiii., 154). 
 
102 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 of art, art should always be represented as a whole, Goethe 
 desired also that in every single being the workings and the 
 design of nature should be viewed as a whole, and every 
 single part in its relation to the whole. 
 
 äßtllft bu bid) am ©atpen erquicfen, 
 
 ©o mupt bu bag ©anje im Äleinfteti etbltcfen.* 
 
 Here again we have to do with a point of view at which 
 Goethe had arrived far ahead of his age. For if the value of 
 each being is to be derived from that being itself and to be 
 eonsidered by itself, then every creature must have its pur- 
 pose in itself, and cannot be explained by external purposes ; 
 much less by Subordination to the purposes of man, — who, 
 in spite of Copemicus, still eonsidered himself the centre of 
 the universe. This teleological way of thinking, however, 
 still held sway over the investigators of nature and prevented 
 the scientific comprehension of organic nature and the pro- 
 gress of investigation. In his energetic rejection of teleologv 
 our poet stood almost alone. His philosophical teacher had, 
 with his usual acumen, long ago discovered the anthropo- 
 morphism of final purposes and had declared that “ all final 
 causes are human inventions.” In this particular Goethe 
 followed him unconditionally. His utterances conceming 
 the scientific inadmissibility of teleology as an explaining 
 principle are extraordinarily numerous, and he left among 
 his papers a little essay, Einleitung zu einer allgemeinen 
 Vergleichungslehre ,f which is devoted exclusively to this 
 subject. One cause of the happy period of his life which 
 Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft was chiefly instrumental in 
 bringing about was the fact that his disinclination toward 
 final causes was now explained and justified. 
 
 Closely related to this attitude was his unwillingness to 
 tolerate the view that every Variation from the norm is 
 pathological, and in his Observation of nature he carried his 
 objectivity so far that he repeatedly referred to the rela- 
 tivity of such conceptions as “ defect,” “ abnormal develop- 
 
 * If in the All thou thy soul wouldst regale, 
 
 The All thou must see in the smallest detail, 
 t NS., vii., 215 ff. 
 
Sbe IRaturaliöt 
 
 103 
 
 ment,” “ malformation,” “deformity,” and “stunt,” and 
 advised caution in the use of these terms, inasmuch as 
 everything takes place in accordance with the simple law of 
 metamorphosis, “ which by its efficacy brings before our eyes 
 both the symmetrical and the bizarre, the fertile and the 
 barren, the comprehensible and the incomprehensible.” 15 
 He desired that one should become thoroughly permeated 
 with the truth that one can by no means obtain a compre- 
 hensive view unless one always considers normal and abnor- 
 mal at the same time, in their variations and effects. This 
 insight had led him, as we know, to the discovery of the 
 metamorphosis of plants. 
 
 The perfecting of the ideas conceming formation and 
 transformation of organic nature, which Goethe brought 
 back from Italy in far more finished form than when he set 
 out on his joumey to the south, occupied his mind cease- 
 lessly, even in the midst of the distractions into which he 
 was drawn during the succeeding years. The first fruit 
 was Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen. Called soon afterward 
 to the seat of war in Silesia, during his sojoum in Breslau he 
 devoted himself chiefly to comparative anatomy. On the 
 3 ist of August, 1790, he wrote from Landshut to Friedrich 
 von Stein, “In the midst of all this turmoil I have begun 
 to write my treatise on animals.” 
 
 His plans were far-reaching. The works which he him- 
 self published, together with the many preparatory studies 
 in the fields of botany and comparative anatomy, which 
 have been brought to light from among the archives, show 
 that it was his intention to write a general theory of the Sci- 
 ence of organic nature, in which no branch should be left 
 unconsidered. The little “treatise” seems to have been 
 preserved in the Versuch über die Gestalt der Tiere* of which 
 Goethe speaks in several letters of the years 1790 and 1791, 
 and the ideas of which he seems to have incorporated in 
 later works; but what his “youthful assurance dreamed of 
 as a comprehensive work” came out into the world as a 
 mere outline, a fragmentary collection of material. 
 
 * NS., viii., 261. 
 
104 
 
 £be Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 He often thought that he was about ready to publish it. 
 In 1807 everything was prepared for publication and he 
 wrote introductions and prefaces to these “ sketches of many 
 years,” but they were again laid away, and not until 1820 
 did he begin the publication of his anatomical writings, 
 together with the reprinting of the Metamorphose and other 
 botanical essays, under the common title Zur Morphologie. 
 
 Goethe created not merely a name for the Science, but 
 the science itself. He was the founder of scientific morphol- 
 ogy. He said unequivocally that in morphology he was 
 setting up a new science, not in subject-matter, it is true, 
 but in point of view and in method.* What he means by 
 this needs no further explanation after what has already 
 been said. Morphology is to include the theory of forms, 
 the formation and transformation of organic bodies. Form 
 is variable, coming into being and passing away. The theory 
 of forms is the theory of metamorphosis. The theory of 
 metamorphosis, he adds to these aphoristic utterances, is 
 the key to all the signs of nature. Hence morphology is the 
 focus to which the other Sciences of organic nature tend, 
 like the radii of a concave mirror. By this high conception 
 Goethe made morphology both the foundation and the end 
 of all biological Sciences. It finally developed into the 
 science of evolution. 
 
 The fund of particular knowledge which had been grad- 
 ually collecting could not fail to bring about a state of confu- 
 sion in these Sciences, — especially in comparative anatomy — 
 as there was no one common line of reasoning according to 
 which they could be considered both extemally and with 
 respect to their inward substance and their mutual relations, 
 — no leading idea to which they had to be subordinated. In 
 his Erster Entwurf einer allgemeinen Einleitung in die ver- 
 gleichende Anatomie, ausgehend von der Osteologie, which he 
 wrote in 1795, Goethe proposed “ an anatomical type, a gen- 
 eral composite pattem in which so far as possible the fomis 
 of all animals should be contained. In its universality the 
 type embraces the whole animal world, and in the same way 
 
 * NS., vi., 293 and 446. 
 
Gbe TOaturaltet 
 
 io 5 
 
 the plant world is reduced to a “vegetative” type. More 
 particularly the type belongs to the higher animals, or to a 
 single dass. This type is found by process of abstraction 
 from empirical knowledge of the parts which in appearance 
 are different, but in plan are alike. Goethe repeatedly calls 
 the type a Proteus, whom we “ must be skilled to follow in 
 all his versatility ” ; forfrom the versatility of this type are 
 “ to be derived without exception the manygenera and species 
 known to us.” Nevertheless, the type is an element that 
 persists and endures through all the change and transforma- 
 tion of forms. In a fragment published for the first time in 
 the Weimar edition of Goethe’s writings we read : “ Great 
 
 difficulty of establishing the type of a whole dass in general, 
 so that it will fit every genus and every species; nature 
 can produce her genera and species only because the type 
 which is prescribed for her by etemal necessity is such a 
 Proteus; and this Protean type escapes even a very keen 
 comparative sense and can be caught only piecemeal and, as 
 it were, only and always in contradictions. ” * 
 
 Now what is the type? There has been a great deal of 
 controversy about whether it represents merely a general 
 image, a pattem, an ideal character, or includes the concep- 
 tion of the ancestral form. 16 The settling of this question 
 has been considered a matter of importance because upon it 
 seemed to depend the question of whether Goethe assumed 
 the permanence of species or was a believer in the theory of 
 descent. It is impossible for us, in the brief space here allot- 
 ted to us, to enter upon a discussion of the former question, 
 but it is our opinion that from the whole spirit of Goethe’s 
 philosophy of nature a perfectly clear conception may be 
 gained of his position with respect to the theory of descent. 
 
 Goethe once said that after Shakespeare and Spinoza 
 the greatest influence was exerted upon him by Linne, not 
 because he feit himself related to him as he did to those two 
 spirits, but because of the very Opposition to which Linne 
 challenged him, because of the discord which the scientist 
 produced in his breast. What he “ sought with violence to 
 
 * NS., vi., 312 f. 
 
io6 
 
 Tlbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 keep apart had to strive after union to satisfy the inner- 
 most requirements of my being.” * Then in Linne’s Funda- 
 menta Botanica, as well as in Philosophia Botanica, which 
 was his “ daily study,” the dogma of the permanence of spe- 
 cies confronted him with unbending rigidity: “ Species tot 
 
 sunt quot diversas formas ab initio produxit Infinitum Ens; 
 quae formae, secundum generationi inditas leges, produxere 
 plures at sibi semper similes.” In contrast with systematis- 
 ing, registering Linne, who separated genus from genus, 
 species from species, as a thing that had “ existed since the 
 days of Adam” and was unchangeable, our poet confesses: 
 “ It seemed to me a task that defied solution to charac- 
 terise genera with certainty and to arrange the species un- 
 der them.” f He thought that it would be possible truly to 
 determine genera and species only by developing all plant 
 forms out of one. J He was convinced that the plant forms 
 all about us were not originally determined and established : 
 that, rather, together with a stubbom generic and specific 
 persistence, they w T ere given a happy mobility and flexibility, 
 in order that they might accommodate themselves to the 
 many varying conditions influencing them throughout the 
 earth, and form and transform themselves accordingly, so 
 that “ genus can change to species, species to variety, and 
 under other conditions varieties can change ad infinitum; 
 .... and yet those farthest separated from each other 
 have a pronounced relationship.” § 
 
 Unb mnjufdjaffen baö ©cfd^affne, 
 
 ®amit i'icf)’$ nidjt jum Starren roaffne, 
 
 SBirft eroigeö, lebenb’ges &nn. 
 
 @3 foll fid^ regen, fcfjaffenb l)anbdn, 
 
 @rft fic^ geftalten, bann nermanbeln; 
 
 9htr [djeinbar ftef;t’ö Momente [tiH. fl 
 
 * Geschichte meines botanischen Studiums (NS., vi., 390 /.)• 
 f NS., vi., 117. 
 
 t Italienische Reise, Padua, Sept. 27, 17S6. 
 
 § NS., vi., 120 f. 
 
 || To metamorphose the creation, 
 
 Lest rest become complete Stagnation, 
 
Gbe IRaturalist 
 
 107 
 
 In this respect it was naturally impossible for Goethe, 
 the unitary thinker, to make any distinction between plants 
 and animals. He had recognised, rather, that “when one 
 eonsiders plants and animals in their most rudimentary stage 
 they are hardly to be distinguished. A nucleus, stationary, 
 locomotive, or semi-locomotive, is what our senses are able 
 to perceive, and that with difficulty. ... But thus much 
 may be said, that the creatures gradually evolving as 
 plants and animals out of a relation in which it is scarcely 
 possible to draw a separating line between them develop 
 toward perfection in two opposite directions, so that in the 
 end the plant culminates in a tree, enduring and stationary, 
 while the animal reaches its highest degree of locomotion 
 and freedom in its crowning representative, man.” * * More- 
 over Goethe did not consider that in man the process of Cre- 
 ation had been definitely finished. “ Who knows,” he once 
 said, “but that, after all, the complete man only indicates 
 an aim at a still higher mark? ”f On the other hand, he 
 often refers to the common origin of man and the animals, as, 
 for example, after mentioning the hollow spaces in the 
 human skull, the frontal sinuses, he continues: “In this 
 
 case the question Why? would not lead very far, whereas 
 the question How? teaches me that these cavities are the 
 remnants of the animal skull, whieh are found larger in pro- 
 portion in rudimentary organisations, but in man, in spite 
 of his high development, have not been entirely lost.” J 
 If we compare Goethe’s general Statements conceming 
 the transformation of organic natures with his observations 
 on individual genera of animals, such as are found, for exam- 
 ple, in his essays Die Faultiere und die Dickhäutigen and Die 
 Skelette der Nagetiere , we find that they will admit of no 
 
 Eternal, living motion works. 
 
 This endless force, itself exerting, 
 
 Creating forms and these Converting, 
 
 Doth only seem at times to rest. 
 
 — From Eins und Alles (W., iii., 81). 
 
 * NS., vi., 13. 
 
 t Biedermann, Goethes Gespräche , ii. , 263. 
 
 t Eckermann, Gespräche, ii., 19 1. 
 
io8 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 other interpretation than that he assumed a real blood and 
 ancestral relationship of genera and species. An interesting 
 passage bearing on this point is a remark which he made 
 in his essay Fossiler Stier conceming some discovered fossil 
 bones, out of which it was possible to reconstruct the skele- 
 ton of an extinct species of gigantic ox: “ In any case this 
 
 ancient creature may be considered a widely distributed 
 extinct parent stock of which the common ox and the zebu 
 may be looked upon as descendants.” If we but follow out 
 Goethe’s discovery of the intermaxillary, the idea which led 
 him to it, and his frequent utterances conceming it, to the 
 logical conclusion, we are forcibly convinced that his work- 
 ing hypothesis was essentially that embodied in the theory 
 of descent. His philosophy of the world in general allowed 
 him no choice. In this respect there are but two possible 
 hypotheses : either the species originated essentially as they 
 are through an act of creation, or they have developed out 
 of one or a few archetypes to the diversity now filling the 
 earth. But one act of creation would not suffice; for the 
 palaeontological remains, which Goethe knew and valued at 
 their true worth, teach us that innumerable genera of former 
 periods became extinct, “were unable to perpetuate them- 
 selves by vital propagation.” * Then, as it is practically 
 certain that the now living species did not then exist, one 
 who does not assume a repetition of Creative acts is forced 
 to the logical conclusion that the living species are descend- 
 ants of extinct species. 
 
 There is still another great principle which plays an im- 
 portant röle in Goethe’s thought, and which makes him 
 appear to us a believer in the theory of descent, and hence 
 a forerunner of Darwin. Natura non facit saltum is a very 
 old saying, which is offen quoted, but was formerly little 
 considered, as is shown, for example, by the theorv of cata- 
 clysms. Goethe was the first to raise it to a principle of 
 research, and to apply it on a grand scale to the question 
 here under consideration. “ Nature can achieve everything 
 that she desires to make onlv by a continuous series of 
 
 * NS., vi., 185. 
 
£be Iftaturalist 
 
 109 
 
 gradations. She never breaks the continuity of the series. 
 For example, she could not make a horse, if all other ani- 
 mals did not precede, upon which she mounts, as by a lad- 
 der, to the structure of the horse.” * 
 
 Goethe carried this idea over to the positive and in this 
 form calls it the fundamental principle of continuity. This 
 principle is the foundation of all his scientific research. He 
 knows no other norm of action in nature than that charac- 
 terised by continuity, and even his geological views are 
 based entirely on the principle of continuity. “ I have con- 
 tinued my observations on plants and insects,” he wrote to 
 Schiller, on the 3oth of July, 1796, “and have been very 
 happy in them. I find that if one has rightly grasped the 
 fundamental principle of continuity and can use it with ease 
 one needs nothing further to make discoveries and to present 
 one’s views on organic nature.” On the ioth of August he 
 wrote : “I am more than ever convinced that one can arrive 
 
 at an excellent understanding of organic nature by means 
 of the conception of continuity.” 
 
 In this Goethe show r ed a truly mathematical sense, and 
 it is only a different expression of the same trend of mind 
 that he everywhere seeks after transitions. Indeed, as he 
 says, his natural tum of mind forces him to consider all 
 natural phenomena in a certain sequence of development, 
 and to follow attentively the transitional stages forward 
 and backward. Likewise we have heard him say, in praise 
 of the plastic works of antique art, that even in them the 
 transitions are not lacking (p. 100). “What a chasm,” he 
 exclaims in his first scientific treatise, “ between the os inter- 
 maxillare of the tortoise and that of the elephant ! And yet 
 it is possible to imagine a series of intermediate forms con- 
 necting the two.” Judging by what has thus far been said, 
 is it likely that Goethe, who could not make the application 
 of the conception of development broad enough, should, 
 with respect to the existence of the whole of the plant and 
 animal world, have found satisf action in the hypothesis of 
 isolated processes? 
 
 * Riemer, Briefe von und an Goethe, 311. 
 
HO 
 
 JLbc Xite of (Soetbe 
 
 It is admitted in many quarters that at least near the 
 end of his life Goethe arrived at a clear conception of the 
 idea of descent, and that in the last scientific work of his 
 life, his review of the remarkable controversy between 
 Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, he gave expression 
 to the idea by placing himself uncompromisingly on the side 
 of the latter. But if that is true it is no less true that these 
 ideas had long been his own, for we have his testimony: 
 “ This event is for me one of altogether incredible value, and 
 I have a right to rejoice that I have finally lived to witness 
 the general victory of a cause to which I have devoted my 
 whole life, and which is pre-eminently my cause.” In speak- 
 ing with reference to Herder’s Ideen zur Geschichte der 
 Menschheit , which as we know was in part the product of his 
 own mind, he said: “Our daily conversation was occupied 
 
 with the very beginnings of the water-earth and the organic 
 creatures that have been developing upon it since the earliest 
 times. The very beginning and the ceaseless continuation 
 through development were always talked about and our sci- 
 entific knowledge w r as daily clarified and enriched by mutual 
 Communications and oppositions.” 
 
 For the Variation and transformation of species Goethe 
 assigns the same reasons as those set forth by the modern 
 theory of evolution, viz., adaptation, use and disuse of Or- 
 gans, and inheritance; and ecen for the catchword “struggle 
 for existence” — not only in the sense of a struggle of organ- 
 isms with their environment, but also in the sense of a com- 
 petition of organisms among themselves for the conditions 
 of existence, and the resulting victory of one and defeat of 
 the other — he finds an excellent equivalent: “ Everything 
 that comes into being seeks room for itself and desires dura- 
 tion; hence it crowds another out of its place and shortens 
 its duration.” * So the poet also makes Prometheus, the 
 fashioner of men, who must have known about it, say : 
 
 ©enn foldjeg ßo$> bem Sftenfdjen nhe bcn iicreti roarb, 
 üftad) bercn Urbilb id) mir ÜBeffreö bilbcte, 
 
 ©afi ein£ bcm artbcnt, einzeln ober aud) gefdjart, 
 
 * NS., xi., 156; Sprüche in Prosa, No. 981. 
 
Gbe IRaturaliöt 
 
 in 
 
 <&id) roiberfe^t, jidj Ijaffenb aneinanbcr brängt, 
 eins betn anbern Übermacht betätigte. * 
 
 The forces of formation and transformation do not reside 
 alone in environment ; they are to be found first of all in the 
 organisms themselves. That the laws which reign and ope- 
 rate in inorganic nature do not off er an adequate explanation 
 of organic nature could be denied only by an age which was 
 forced to assume the röle of most extreme reaction from the 
 extravagances and vagaries of a recent past. Since that 
 time Science has approached more and more the point of 
 view of Goethe in the tendency to recognise laws of forma- 
 tion. The “formative impulse” reigning in organic nature 
 is, however, limited in its operations by the counterpoise 
 given to it in the mutual influence of parts. 
 
 ©odj im Snncrn fefjeint ein ©eift gewaltig 31t ringen, 
 
 SGSie er burd)bräd)c ben &rei$, SBillfitr 311 fdjaffen ben gönnen, f 
 
 But these are the limitations of organic nature, and in 
 the principle of mutual influence of parts Goethe again pro- 
 pounded a leading idea, to which he continually referred, 
 and which Science has completely adopted as its own. 
 Through its limitation of modification the mutual influence 
 of parts itself represents in turn a factor of formation and 
 transformation, since “ the formation itself must be brought 
 forth and determined by a mutual influence, both in its con- 
 forming to the unity of type and in its variations from the 
 type.” | Economic nature has prescribed for her use a cer- 
 tain budget, according to which, in all her modifications of 
 form, nothing can be given to one part that is not taken 
 from another. Such is the gist of Goethe’s many utterances 
 on this point. Is this not the highest manifestation of the 
 principle of Conservation of energy? 
 
 * The lot vouchsafed to man is that bestowed on beasts, 
 
 Upon whose archetype I have myself improved: 
 
 It is that one oppose the other, all alone, 
 
 Or eise in troops, and foe press foe with grinding hate, 
 
 Till stronger over weaker brutal triumph gain. 
 t Cf. vol. ii., p. 160, where a translation is given. 
 
 X N S-> viii., 75. 
 
112 
 
 Zhe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 From the wealth of material in Goethe’s Morphologie we 
 must mention here one more discovery, the so-called verte- 
 bral theory of the skull. As a result of his faithful and dili- 
 gent study of vegetable metamorphosis, says Goethe, the 
 year 1790 had in störe for him a new view conceming the 
 animal Organisation which pleased and satisfied him. It 
 was an idea, analagous to the metamorphosis of plants, that 
 in the higher animal world the skull is a modified section of 
 the vertebral column. He had earlier recognised the verte- 
 bral form of the occipital bones, but it was not until 1790, 
 during his sojoum in Venice, that, as a result of a happy 
 accident, he thought he perceived that the bones of the face 
 are likewise to be derived from vertebrae. In spite of the 
 fact that the latter inference has proved to be erroneous, and 
 that Goethe did not go more deeply into the question of the 
 vertebral nature of the occipital bones, which is accepted as 
 a fact, nevertheless the idea itself has been extraordinarily 
 fruitful in its influence on the investigation of the skeleton of 
 the head. 
 
 Goethe’s earliest scientific activity was in the field of 
 mineralogy and geology. Soon after his arrival in Weimar 
 he prepared himself, on his wanderings through Thuringia, 
 while “living in chasms, caves, and forests, in ponds and 
 under waterfalls, with the subterrestrials,” for serious scien- 
 tific work, to which was added a practical interest when the 
 plan arose of improving the old Ilmenau mines, and he was 
 officially entrusted with the undertaking, to which he de- 
 voted such faithful efforts. To these Sciences he had soon 
 “yielded himself with a perfect passion.” Mineralogy was 
 for him, however, but an auxiliary Science to geology, which 
 he called the skeleton of the earth. To Count Stemberg he 
 wrote, “ My whole Salvation comes from the geological side,” 
 adding that he had already been travelling this road for 
 many years. The investigation of the earth’s crust in the 
 region of his beloved Karlsbad and Bohemia was, from the 
 beginning of his acquaintance with that part of the world 
 tili the end of his life, very dear to his heart. In general he 
 always held the view which he had early formed that granite 
 
Gbe maturaltet 113 
 
 is the solid foundation of the earth, as he asserts in his highly 
 poetic essay Uber den Granit * 
 
 At the time when Goethe became absorbed in this Science 
 geologists were divided into two hostile camps, the Nep- 
 tunists and the Vulcanists. Against the latter’s “abomi- 
 nable lumber-room of the new creation of the world,” which 
 was irreconcilable w r ith his sense of continuity, he hurled 
 most violent invectives and a great many biting lampoons, 
 especially in the Second Part of Faust. This, together with 
 his many confessions that anything in the nature of violence 
 or an interruption of continuity was odious to him, — for it 
 is not according to nature — and that he “ held in abomina- 
 nation all explanations by violence,” has led men to consider 
 him a Neptunist. But in doing this they confuse the Vul- 
 canists with volcanism. His declaration of war was not a 
 general one against the co-operation of volcanic forces in 
 the formation of the earth’s surface — for example, he him- 
 self declared that at least in its origin the Kammerberg, near 
 Eger, about which he wrote several articles, was volcanic; 
 it was directed, rather, against the extreme Vulcanists, who 
 asserted that great mountain chains, such as the Pyrenees 
 and the Apennines, arose suddenly and all at once out of the 
 depths of the fiery, molten interior of the earth. 
 
 Goethe was by no means an out-and-out Neptunist. 
 There was nothing that he abhorred more than the dogmas 
 of a “ school,” when they begin to become firmly established. 
 “ The view of the world of all such theorists, whose whole 
 thought is in one single direction exclusively, has lost its 
 innocence, and objects no longer appear to it in their 
 purity.” | Goethe was hardly more of an advocate of the 
 teachings of the Neptunists than are most geologists of 
 to-day, in so far as they ascribe to water a more profound 
 and a more comprehensive effect upon the formation of the 
 earth’s surface than to fire. It may be said, rather, that 
 even in geology Goethe’s leading principles are those at 
 which more recent Science has arrived, that in an explana- 
 
 * NS., ix., 171 ff. 
 t Eckermann, Gespräche , iii., 37. 
 
 8 
 
£be Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 114 
 
 tion of the formation of the earth’s surface all forces known 
 to us and all causes still active are to be considered accord- 
 ing to their nature and the degree to which they are involved. 
 “One of the greatest rights and prerogatives of nature,” he 
 says, “is to be able to achieve the same ends by different 
 means and to occasion the same phenomena by many kinds 
 of relations.” The same forces that were active in the past 
 are constantly at work now. He believes that “ it is possi- 
 ble even to-day for nature to form precious stones of a kind 
 unknown to us.” * This follows from the principle that 
 nature, “working slowly and quietly, may well produce the 
 extraordinary ” ; and the fancy of our poet grants “a free- 
 working nature,” even for her local transformations, the 
 countless thousands of years which geology requires to ex- 
 plain them. He has given us an example of such a theory 
 of quiet processes in Die Luisenburg bei Alexandersbad. It 
 is in accordance with his view of nature as working quietly 
 that his theory inclines more to the Chemical than to the 
 mechanical, that he deduces the heat of the interior of the 
 earth from Chemical and electrical action, and ascribes even 
 the temperature of hot Springs to Chemical causes. In this 
 regard he Stands by no means alone. In this instance, for 
 example, he agrees with Charles Lyell, the reformer of 
 modern geology. 
 
 What broad and unobstructed views Goethe revealed in 
 geology is shown by the significance which he prophesied 
 geology would some day attach to fossils, which were then 
 just beginning to be studied. On the 2yth of October, 1782, 
 he wrote to Merck: “ All the remains of bones of which you 
 
 speak, and which are found everywhere in the upper sand 
 of the earth, are, as I am fully convinced, from the most 
 recent age, which, however, in comparison with our usual 
 method of reckoning time, is exceedingly old. In that age 
 the sea had already receded, but the rivers were still very 
 broad. ... At that time elephants and rhinoceroses were 
 at home with us on the exposed mountains and hills, and 
 their remains could very easily be washed down by forest 
 
 * NS., x.. 87. 
 
£be IRaturalist 
 
 JI 5 
 
 streams into those great river valleys or sea-levels where, 
 more or less impregnated with stony matter, they were pre- 
 served, and where we now tum them out with the plow or 
 bring them to light in some other accidental way. . . . The 
 time will soon come when fossils will no longer be a mass of 
 confusion, but will be arranged to correspond in general to 
 the ages of the world.” 
 
 These are truly prophetic words, which have found their 
 complete fulfilment in Science. Petrifactions afford geolo- 
 gists the best means of distinguishing and determining rock 
 strata and of systematising the geological ages. Hence we 
 may say that, judging by the historical documents wdiich we 
 possess, Goethe was actually the first man who recognised 
 the great importance to geology of those petrified remains 
 of former ages, while the Wernerian sehool, on the other 
 hand, failed to see any significance in them. According to 
 all appearances Goethe was also the first man who, in ex- 
 planation of the long stone drifts, the moraines, such as, for 
 example, the group near Thonon, which “ fill us with amaze- 
 ment,” expressed the view that in a former age the Swiss gla- 
 ciers extended down to Lake Geneva; 17 and he was certainly 
 the first man who, with perfect definiteness and full confi- 
 dence in its reality, repeatedly promulgated the idea that 
 there was once an “ age of great cold,” that is to say an ice 
 age, which, as we know, plays a great röle in geology and 
 palasontology. Hence our poet deserves a prominent place 
 in the history of geology. 
 
 What Goethe wrote on geology is little when compared 
 with what he planned. Apart from a few articles that ap- 
 peared in the years 1807-1809, it was not until 1820 that he 
 began to publish what he wrote. Geology was not his ulti- 
 mate aim in the study of the earth ; it was merely a starting- 
 point. He entertained in his mind no less a project than 
 the writing of a general history of nature, a kind of cosmos. 
 The disposition * of the material, which has been preserved , 
 shows, in spite of the gaps in it, how magnificently he had 
 planned the work. It may be that he referred to this plan 
 * Bildung der Erde (NS., ix., 268 ff.). 
 
Zbc %\fc of (Soetbe 
 
 1 16 
 
 in several early utterances, as, for example, in his letter to 
 Frau von Stein on the 5th of October, 1784, “I explained 
 to him [Fritz] according to my new System the first two 
 epochs in the formation of the world,” and in his letter from 
 the top of the Brenner on the 8th of September, 1786, “For 
 my creation of the world I have conquered many things, 
 but not altogether new and unexpected things.” 
 
 In meteorology Goethe was not so felicitous as in his 
 ideas and works on the three kingdoms of nature. His inter- 
 est in this Science, whieh was at that time still in the rudi- 
 mentary stage, was profound and was probably affected 
 by his sensitiveness to the changes in the condition of the 
 atmosphere. He suffered to an unusual degree under the 
 inclemencies of the weather and belonged, finally, to “the 
 few men who have an immediate feeling of the state of the 
 barometer.” He provided himself with barometer and 
 thermometer and evidently began early the study of com- 
 parative meteorology. For example, he wrote from Rome 
 requesting that the record of the weather in Weimar during 
 his absence be copied for him from the “ Weather Observa- 
 tion Museum” of Dr. Siewer in Upper Weimar.* But, as 
 he says himself, it was impossible for his nature to grasp, or 
 be interested in any way in, the whole complex of meteor- 
 ological data as they are represented in tables by means of 
 figures and signs.f Only after he had become acquainted 
 with Howard’s scientific nomenclature for the cloud forma- 
 tions whieh had earliest interested him did he feel that he 
 had a fixed point of departure, and he gladly grasped the 
 offered thread. He now compared the cloud forms with 
 the readings of the thermometer and from the latter was 
 able to guess the former. As a matter of fact, as Science 
 has progressed, it has paid more and more attention to 
 these ephemeral forms in Connection with atmospheric 
 phenomena, and has attributed more and more significanee 
 to them. To the terminology of Howard, whieh has been 
 retained up to the present time, Goethe added a new member, 
 
 * SGG., ii. , 230. 
 
 t Wolkengestalt nach Howard {NS., xii., 7). 
 
Gbe IRaturalist 
 
 ii 7 
 
 which he calls paries, wall, which was adopted by Kämtz 
 in his voluminous Lehrbuch der Meteorologie (1831), but has 
 not found its way into the more recent text-books on the 
 subject. It was entirely out of the question to accept with 
 approval the hypothesis which Goethe set up in explanation 
 of the variations of the atmospheric pressure, upon which, 
 as we know, meteorological conditions essentially depend. 
 He assumed that the gravitation of the earth is not constant, 
 but changeable and pulsating, as a result of which the at- 
 traction on the atmosphere, and hence the pressure of the 
 latter, increases at times and at times diminishes. This 
 hypothesis, which Goethe first published in his Italienische 
 Reise in 1816, and then often repeated in his meteorological 
 essays from 1820 on, cannot well be made to harmonise with 
 our physical conceptions. 
 
 Nevertheless Goethe’s work in this field was not in vain. 
 If meteorology has since his time advanced extraordinarily 
 this advance is due in no slight measure to the network of 
 meteorological stations reaching out farther and farther 
 over the earth ; and so it is no more than just to mention 
 the co-operation of our poet in the erection of a number of 
 meteorological stations in the Grand Duchy of Weimar, 
 and the fact that he himself wrote out the instructions for 
 the observers placed in Charge of them.* When the Berlin 
 Academy in 1823 introduced the taking of meteorological 
 observations an invitation was sent to the Weimar institu- 
 tions to take part in the undertaking, and Goethe at that 
 time expressed in a letter the idea that corresponding ob- 
 servations should be taken at certain distances out on the 
 North and Baltic seas.j 
 
 Of Goethe’s theory of colours it must be said that it was 
 with him a life work in the highest sense. His writings 
 on this subject fill not a few pages more than what he wrote 
 on all other scientific subjects taken together. No one of 
 the products of his genius has he enveloped with warmer 
 love and, if we are rightly informed, he ranked this work 
 
 * NS., xii., 203. 
 
 t Goethes Briefwechsel mit Schultz, p. 275; Br., xxxvii., 69. 
 
1 1 8 
 
 £be Xife of ßoetbe 
 
 far higher than his poetic writings.* To no work did he 
 apply himself with greater pains and in none did he show 
 greater perseverance. After his Beiträge zur Optik, Erstes 
 Stück and Zweites Stück had appeared in 1791 and 1792, 
 respectively, it took no less than eighteen years of untiring, 
 painstaking application, during part of which time he en- 
 joyed the most devoted interest and encouragement of 
 Schiller, the “ unreplaceable,” before his chief work, the 
 two- volume treatise, was finally finished and in print. Even 
 to his last years he followed every new phenomenon with 
 the energy and freshness of youth and sought to bring it 
 into harmony with his earlier work. 
 
 When he finally held in his hands the work which had 
 weighed upon him like an “insolvable debt,” he wrote to 
 Frau von Stein (May 11, 1810): “I am not sorry that I 
 have sacrificed so much time to these studies. They have 
 been the means of my attaining to a culture which I could 
 hardly have achieved in any other way.” 
 
 In spite of the error contained in it, this work has created 
 a new culture, not alone for the author himself, but for the 
 scientific and artistic world as well. The Opposition it met 
 with was not because of the experiments recorded in it, 
 which were never questioned as to their correctness and 
 are unparalleled in their variety, but because of the physical 
 interpretation of them. The error in the work has not re- 
 tarded Science; the truth in it has not only advanced Science, 
 it has even become the foundation of a new Science, that of 
 physiological optics, of which our poet must be looked upon 
 as the originator. He has opened our minds to a sphere of 
 human observations hitherto but little considered. Scien- 
 tists before him had hardly attempted to discover the laws 
 of visual processes in their relation to light and colour. 
 Goethe was the first man to reduce to a scientific formula the 
 phenomena of colourless and coloured after-images, of sue- 
 cessive and simultaneous contrast. The description of 
 these delicate phenomena, their origin and gradual sub- 
 sidence, — for which he coined the suggestive expression 
 * Eckermann, Gespräche, ii. , 59. 
 
Gbe IRaturaliet 
 
 119 
 
 Abklingen (colour reverberation*) — the theory of coloured 
 shadows, about which he wrote a separate treatise,t and 
 many other details which throw a great deal of light on 
 visual phenomena, form the first part of the Didaktischer 
 Teil of the work, to which he gave the subtitle Physiolo- 
 gische Farben. 
 
 The fundamental idea of this part of the work is that 
 it is the nature of the eye to demand brightness when dark- 
 ness is offered it, and to demand darkness when it is con- 
 fronted by light (§38). Likewise when a colour is offered 
 it it demands the opposite colour. For example, yellow 
 demands violet, orange blue, purple green, and vice versa 
 (§50). These demanded colours are a product of the eye 
 and belong to it entirely; there is nothing like them cor- 
 responding to them in the outer world . The discovery of 
 this law of visual processes has macle Goethe’s name one of 
 the most prominent in connection with the latest develop- 
 ment of the physiology of colours, which is more and more 
 taking the place of the Young-Helmholtz theory. The new 
 theory is based on the law of antagonistic colours, according 
 to which there are four fundamental colour sensations, 
 which go together in pairs: yellow and blue, red and green. 
 In addition to these there is a black-white Sensation, as 
 Goethe had also maintained. To be sure, the colours are 
 here and there differently designated, as a natural conse- 
 quence of a certain difference of conception, but in essence 
 Goethe’s theory and the new one are the same, as will be 
 apparent later on. 
 
 Goethe was perfectly conscious of the importance of 
 “ physiological ” colours. He teils us in the first paragraph 
 that they “form the foundation of the whole theory.” At 
 the same time they give us an insight into the cause of the 
 error into which he feil in the field of physical colours. 
 
 His Classification included a third group, the Chemical 
 colours. 
 
 * Professor Frank Angell has suggested to me this translation of Ab- 
 klingen. — C. 
 
 t Von den farbigen Schatten (NS., vi., 101 ff.). 
 
I 20 
 
 Gbe Xi fe of (Boetbe 
 
 The world of colours had not captivated him solely by 
 virtue of the charms with whieh they envelop nature. As 
 he offen confessed, his point of departure was picturesque 
 colouring. He desired to find the law of artistic harmony, 
 colour harmony, and in the colour splendour of nature in Italy 
 and of the temples of art in Rome this desire grew to be a pas- 
 sion. Now we know that it is not the province of the painter, 
 and that it by no means lies within his power, to imitate the 
 colour of objects in nature, either in quality or in degree. 
 It is his task to produce the impression which these objects 
 make upon the eye of the observer. It is well known what 
 a röle the distribution of light and shade plays in the works 
 of painters, in that it not only helps to accomplish the Illu- 
 sion of corporeal form, but also helps to determine the 
 tone given to the whole picture. The reproduction of 
 the relation of brightnesses is one of the chief tasks of the 
 painter. Limited by the colour materials at his command 
 and by the illumination in wdiich paintings are usually seen, 
 it is necessary, for example, in the case of simple landscape 
 subjects, where the relation Stands out most clearly, to use 
 the yellow and yellowish red for the light, as Goethe says, 
 and the blue and bluish red for the shade.* Parallel with 
 this contrast of light and shade runs, then, the contrast of 
 warm and cold colours — a technical term coined by painters 
 to indicate the effect of colours on the observer — and hence 
 one is tempted to think that Goethe may have gained from 
 his Observation of works of art his fundamental view that, 
 physically considered, colour arises from the reciprocal 
 action of light and shade, of brightness and darkness, of 
 light and the absence of light, and that there are only two 
 pure colours, yellow and blue. But as light and the absence 
 of light are nothing but light, it follows, in the Goethian 
 sense, that colour arises from the weakening or softening 
 of light (§312). And for this he found a confirmation in 
 turn in a physiological phenomenon which he describes very 
 vividly, namely, that the Abklingen of a dazzling, colourless 
 image, when the eye, after observing it, is tumed to a dark 
 
 * Campagne in Frankreich (W., xxxiii., 260). 
 
Ebe IRaturalist 
 
 I 2 I 
 
 place in the room, is accompanied by colour phenomena. 
 For here the eye produces colours of itself, merely by a 
 weakening of the impression which it has received through 
 a strong illumination. 
 
 Since, however, in the outer world shade or gray arises 
 merely by the cutting off or the softening of light, another 
 specific cause must enter into the production of colours, 
 and this Goethe finds in translucent media. If one looks 
 at a bright, colourless light through a translucent medium 
 the light appears yellow, and as the opacity of the medium 
 increases the colour changes to yellowish red and then to 
 ruby. “ If, on the other hand, one looks at darkness 
 through a translucent medium illuminated by a light falling 
 on it, one sees a blue colour, which becomes brighter and 
 paler as the opacity of the medium increases, but darker 
 and more saturated as the medium becomes more trans- 
 parent. With the smallest degree of opacity short of perfect 
 transparency the most beautiful violet becomes perceptible 
 to the eye” (§150/.). The most magnificent example of the 
 effect of translucent media presented itself to him in the 
 atmosphere and the blue of the sky, and Goethe was probably 
 the only man of his time who held the view of this phe- 
 nomenon which has recently been confirmed as the correct 
 one. 
 
 What an important factor in painting is aerial perspec- 
 tive, the artistic representation of aerial light, which shows 
 such a variety of gradations, according to the degree of 
 opacity of the air, and causes objects themselves to appear 
 in such finely shaded tones! In Italy Goethe did not fail 
 “to observe the splendour of atmospheric colours, which 
 afforded striking examples of most distinct gradation of 
 aerial perspective, and of the blueness of distance, as well 
 as of near shadows.”* In his Farbenlehre he repeatedly 
 makes the assertion that aerial perspective is based on the 
 theory of translucent media. The sky, distant objects, 
 even near shadows appear to us blue. At the same time, 
 the illuminating object and the object illuminated appear 
 * Confession des Verfassers {NS., iv., 291). 
 
122 
 
 Gbe Xife of ßoetbe 
 
 to us in shades varying all the way from yellow to purple 
 (§872). He recognised also the relation between the action 
 of the ground of paintings on the painter’s colours and the 
 laws of colours of translucent media (§172), and it requires 
 but a generalisation to characterise the phenomena in 
 Connection with translucent media as the “primitive phe- 
 nomenon” ( Urphänomen ) of the theory of colours. It is 
 perfectly obvious that we may call all media translucent, 
 since no absolutely transparent medium is known. “ Em- 
 pirically considered, even the most transparent medium 
 contains the slightest degree of opacity” (§148). And so 
 Goethe teils us on every page that “the whole theory of 
 colours rests on the pure conception of the translucent,” 
 and this “primitive phenomenon” is the very comer stone 
 of the theory. Even though we are unable to perceive 
 herein the finality of experience, or to ascribe to it the 
 character of the “ inscrutable,” nevertheless Goethe has 
 caused more attention to be paid to these phenomena and 
 has provoked more careful investigation of them, and his 
 own observations in the field have permanent value in 
 themselves. 
 
 It is only natural that Goethe should have employed 
 the same principle to explain the spectral colours, those 
 colours which appear when white or colourless light is re- 
 fracted by a prism; and herein lies the secret of the difference 
 between his theory and the Newtonian theory, which he 
 combated all his life, with a passion which at times vented 
 itself in very unjust accusations. The Polemischer Teil 
 of the Farbenlehre is devoted to this controversy. 
 
 Newton believed that he was forced to draw from his 
 experiments the conclusion that these colours are not pro- 
 duced by a particular quality of the prism, but arise from 
 light itself, which consists of different kinds of light, per- 
 ceived by us as so many different colours and distinguished 
 only by their refrangibility. Goethe, on the other hand, 
 ascribes to the substance of the prism, in so far as it is a 
 translucent medium, a specific effect, but in order to explain 
 the phenomenon of the spectrum he is forced to bolster up 
 
Zbe IRaturalist 
 
 123 
 
 his theory by resorting to many other hypotheses which are 
 physically difficult to comprehend. According to Newton, 
 then, colours come from light, they are contained in it, 
 and hence white light is composed of different kinds of 
 light, each of which, as a part of the whole, is darker than 
 light. In reply to this Goethe would ask the question, 
 Can there be a more awkward error than the assertion that 
 pure, clear, unclouded light is composed of dark lights ? * 
 Light is, rather, “the most simple, most indivisible, most 
 homogeneous thing we know.” This corresponds to our 
 Sensation; diverse refrangibility is a delusion. 
 
 Newton shows that if any separate part, that is, any one 
 of the kinds of light composing the spectrum, is made to 
 pass through a second prism, it is again refracted, that is, 
 it appears in a higher or lower position; but its colour re- 
 mains unchanged. Goethe questions this; after repeated 
 refraction he finds rims or borders of different colours. But 
 he evidently never saw a pure spectrum, and it was only at 
 the middle of the last Century that Helmholtz finally suc- 
 ceeded in separating entirely the colours of the spectrum, 
 and in demonstrating their unchangeableness when re- 
 fracted. This Separation can be achieved only by a com- 
 bination of prisms and lenses. Experiments of this kind 
 were to have been communicated in a Supplementärer Teil 
 of the Farbenlehre , which, however, was never published, 
 though Goethe wrote something on the subject and, in 
 1822, sent an essay dealing with it to von Henning. What 
 became of the essay is not known. 
 
 This lack of a pure spectrum doubtless accounts for the 
 fact that Goethe considered green not a simple, but a 
 mixed, colour, composed of yellow and blue in their purest 
 condition. As a matter of fact, however, it is not possible 
 to produce green by combining these pure prismatic colours. 
 
 If the coloured lights which the spectrum of sunlight 
 reveals to us really exist in sunlight then the recombination 
 of them must in tum produce a white image. Goethe does 
 not question the fact that, if a spectrum thrown on a screen 
 * Cf. Sprüche in Prosa, No. 994; NS., xi., 96. 
 
124 
 
 Gbe Xifc of öoetbe 
 
 is looked at through a prism at a certain distance, the eye 
 perceives a “quite white” or colourless image, nor the fact 
 that the same phenomenon appears when the yellow and 
 the bluish red, or the blue and the yellowish red, of the 
 Spectrum are thrown on the same spot; but he does not see 
 the reason for it in the mixing or combining of these colours ; 
 on the contrary, he sees the reason in the fact, which he 
 repeatedly emphasises, that they counteract or neutralise 
 each other. Here again Goethe expresses an idea that is 
 one of the fundamental principles of the most recent theorv 
 of the physiology of colours, according to which yellow' and 
 blue, red and green, that is to say, the antagonistic, or, as 
 Goethe would say, the opposite or complementary, colours 
 do not mix in the human eye, but rather destroy each other. 
 Indeed one can only understand Goethe’s Farbenlehre 
 when one has leamed to read it throughout, from beginning 
 to end, from the physiological point of view. 
 
 According to Newdon’s theory the colours of the pris- 
 matic Spectrum follow each other in the Order of their refran- 
 gibility; according to Goethe the prism show's the colours 
 antagonistic to each other. “ On this fundamental principle 
 rests everything,” we read in Goethe’s early w T ork, Beiträge 
 zur Optik (§55). Hence not only the physiological part of 
 his theory of colours, but the whole of it, is built up on the 
 idea of antagonistic colours. 18 And in the treatise Von 
 den farbigen Schatten, written in 1792, in a w'av clearly 
 indicating his point of view, Goethe refers to the “agree- 
 ment with those prismatic experiments” in the Beiträge 
 and expresses the hope that “ the theory of coloured shadows 
 would join itself immediately” to the wdiole mass of the 
 theory of colours and “would contribute much toward the 
 explanation and elucidation of the subject.”* From his 
 remark in this connection, that in coloured shadows we 
 find the idea of antagonistic colours productively realised, 
 in that these colours “produce each other altemately,” 
 one might be inclined to draw the conclusion that he con- 
 ceived the idea of antagonistic colours of the Spectrum before 
 
 * NS., v 1 ., 115. 
 
Zbe IRaturalist 
 
 125 
 
 he did the idea of antagonistic physiological colours. But 
 if one considers the way in which Goethe came to take up 
 the theory of colours, what aim he was pursuing, and if one 
 remembers that in his early youth his attention had been 
 attracted by a phenomenon of coloured shadows which he 
 had occasion again to admire in Italy — where, during the 
 sirocco and the purple sunsets incident to it, the most beau- 
 tiful sea-green shadows were to be seen * — one will be in- 
 clinea to concede priority to the discovery of the antagonistic 
 quality of physiological colours, and to admit that Goethe 
 objectified, so to speak, this antagonistic quality and in this 
 way came upon the idea of referring to it physical colours 
 as well. Hence we do not feel inclined to believe the story 
 that Goethe looked through impatient Büttner’s prism at 
 an extended white surface and when he saw what, according 
 to Newton’s theory, he could not help seeing — namely, that 
 where a dark surface joined a bright one only the borders 
 were coloured, yellowish red on the one hand.bluish red 
 on the other — he immediately, “as though by instinct,” 
 declared to himself, but loud enough to be heard, that the 
 Newtonian theory is wrong. We incline rather to the 
 belief that his view of the nature and origin of colour was 
 already on the very verge of consciousness and he saw he re 
 the physiological antagonism objectively before him. It 
 was now too late for him to be further influenced by the 
 observation that a narrow white surface seen through a 
 prism seems really dissolved into colours. 
 
 The point of view here taken throws a surprising light 
 upon a passage in Goethe’s letter to Schiller of the i5th of 
 November, 1796: “The observations of nature please me 
 very much. It seems peculiar, and yet it is natural, that 
 they should result in a kind of subjective whole. It is 
 really becoming, if you will, the world of the eye, which is 
 exhausted by form and colour. For when I pay close at- 
 tention I need make but sparing use of the aid of the other 
 senses, and all reasoning is converted into a kind of repre- 
 sentation.” Thus the world of the eye is rounded out in the 
 
 * Confession des Verfassers (NS., iv., 291). 
 
126 
 
 £be Xife of Goetbe 
 
 theory of colours, in that the beginning and the end blend 
 together to form a circle. Here the foundation is laid for 
 the discovery of the fundamental law of all harmony of 
 colours, as is suggested in the Farbenlehre (§61). In the 
 splendid chapter entitled Sinnlich-sittliche Wirkung der 
 Farbe, the esthetic content of which is still far from being 
 duly appreciated, the subject is explained and followed 
 through all its ramifications. Here we are referred again 
 to the beginning, and hence it cannot be otherwise than 
 that harmony is to be sought in the eye of man. 19 Thus 
 he happily found the way back to art through physio- 
 logical colours and their general ethical and esthetic effect.* 
 
 AVhen Goethe’s essay Die Natur was rescued from 
 oblivion, in 1828, he confessed that the observations it con- 
 tained agreed very well with the conceptions which he had 
 formed at the time of writing it, but that he had then 
 lacked a “ clear notion of the two great driving wheels of 
 all nature, the conceptions of polarity and intensification.” 
 His theory of colours is subordinated to these principles, 
 which were very familiär to the discoverer of the inter- 
 maxillary and the metamorphosis of plants. 
 
 He is fond of considering all the workings of nature 
 under the conception of polarity. Times without number 
 and in an infinite variety of ways he gives expression to this 
 idea everywhere, and especially in the theory of colours, 
 where it appears under the form of active and passive, plus 
 and minus. No figure does he employ more frequently than 
 that of inhalation and exhalation, systole and diastole, under 
 which the polar contrasts are represented. “ It is the 
 eternal formula of life which here finds another expression 
 (§38). Together they form the totality, the unitv. Even 
 as early as his Beiträge zur Optik he called the two funda- 
 mental colours, yellow and blue, poles. By increasing the 
 opacity of the medium, which brings out the former, the 
 latter is intensified tili it finally becomes a ruby red; by 
 increasing the transparency blue is intensified to violet.t 
 
 * Confession des Verfassers (NS., iv., 308). 
 
 t Cf. p. 121. 
 
Gbe IRaturaUet 
 
 127 
 
 Yellow and blue mixed in their purest state give green; 
 united in their intensified state as yellowish red and bluish 
 red, they produce purple. With that the Goethian circle 
 of colours is closed. 
 
 Goethe had planned to treat the historical part of the 
 Farbenlehre as a symbol of the history of all Sciences, and 
 although he finally gave it the modest title of “ Materials 
 for the History of the Theory of Colours,” his contemporaries 
 and succeeding generations have declared with delight, and 
 even with enthusiasm, that he did full justice to the exalted 
 task which he set for himself. Even in the “ hasty sketch 
 of the history of the theory of colours,” which Goethe sent 
 to Schiller on the 2oth of January, 1798, Schiller found many 
 important fundamental features of a general history of 
 Science and human thought. A light-bearer, Goethe leads 
 us through thousands of years and lets us listen to the con- 
 versations which a sovereign genius holds with the great 
 men of the long past. He usually shows us the personalities 
 on the historical background of their times, in Order to give 
 us a clearer understanding of them. How felicitous the 
 master is in conjuring up before our mind’s eye with a few 
 strokes a picture of the intellectual nature of a Plato and an 
 Aristotle! With what deep, wisdom-laden observations 
 on the philosophy of history he fills up the “gaps”! And 
 who has ever said truer and more beautiful things about the 
 Bible than Goethe in his history of the theory of colours? 
 “The spirit of true, deep humanity reigns throughout the 
 work,” wrote Knebel (August 10, 1810). Everything in 
 it is there because of its substance; there is nothing in it 
 for the sake of appearance, and nothing for any other such 
 motive. And thus in the end it leaves upon us the impres- 
 sion of reconciliation with the shades of Newton. 
 
 Goethe’s scientific activity was by no means limited to 
 these finished works. He also aroused and nurtured love 
 for science and the dissemination of scientific knowledge 
 as a “volunteer” teacher. In the Weimar Court circle 
 and among his friends he repeatedly delivered lectures in 
 almost all fields of natural science, even on the physical 
 
128 
 
 Zbc Xife of <3oetbe 
 
 disciplines, and the outlines of some of the lectures have 
 been preserved. These may not have been wholly without 
 effect upon his finished works, for he once said : “ I never 
 delivered a lecture without gaining something by it. Usu- 
 ally while I was speaking new light dawned upon me, and 
 in the flow of Speech I was most certain in my invention.”* 
 The impetus which Goethe gave to the foundation of 
 scientific museums and collections has not yet been fully 
 appreciated. His efforts in the little country of Weimar 
 to enlarge and enrich in every w r ay the museums already in 
 existence and to establish new ones were crowned with 
 success. But that was not all. He made his influence feit 
 more widely by referring in his conversations and in his 
 writings to the importance of such collections as aids to 
 study and teaching. If nowadays it is a matter of course 
 that every institution devoted to the teaching of natural 
 Science should have its museum, it is no more than right to 
 remember that the idea originated with Goethe. And if 
 at present academies and leamed bodies unite for common 
 activity, herein is likewise to be found the realisation of an 
 idea and desire offen expressed by him. He deserves credit 
 for an infinite number of things beside the scientific dis- 
 coveries which he made and which laid such deep foun- 
 dations for further development. His way of presenting 
 things and the suggestions which he threw out in every Con- 
 nection formed ferments that have gone on inspiring new 
 conceptions and gaining an ever widening sphere of in- 
 fluence. We shall content ourselves with referring only to 
 the testimony of Johannes Müller, that but for several years 
 of study devoted to Goethe’s Farbenlehre, in Connection with 
 observation of the phenomena, his work. Zur vergleichenden 
 Physiologie des Gesichtsinnes, would probably not have 
 been written. In this work is contained the very important 
 discovery of the law of specific sense energies, the founda- 
 tion of all physiology. As a matter of fact the germ of this 
 law is unmistakably contained in the physiological part of 
 the Farbenlehre. 
 
 * Campagne in Frankreich (IF.. xxxiii., 197). 
 
£foe IRaturalist 
 
 129 
 
 In ways unknown to us ideas of no less vital power 
 have passed from Goethe’s conversations into Science. In 
 speaking of ideas suggested during Herder’ s composition 
 of his Ideen zur Geschickte der Menschheit Goethe remarks: 
 “ It may perhaps not seem presumptuous if we fancy that 
 many things which sprang therefrom and were propagated 
 in the scientific world bv tradition are now bearing fruit 
 in which we rejoice, although the garden is not always 
 named from which the scions were obtained.”* It was 
 certainly his conversations with Goethe that Alexander 
 von Humboldt had in mind in his testimony, on return- 
 ing from his American joumey: “Everywhere I was pos- 
 sessed with the feeling . . . of how, exalted by Goethe’s 
 views of nature, I had, as it were, been provided with new 
 organs. ”t 
 
 Thus Goethe’s genius lives on. Not alone in the Sciences 
 with which he was best acquainted; for, if we were always 
 conscious of the culture which radiates from his spirit, we 
 should find its trace in all the Sciences. It is here particu- 
 larly a question of that method wdiich alone in the long run 
 can lead to great results, the method based on a combination 
 of induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis, ex- 
 perience and idea, or whatever other technical terms of the 
 theory of knowledge we may employ to express the anti- 
 theses. We take it for granted that we should use these 
 opposite functions of the understanding, that in investigation 
 we should proceed in both ways, in Order to arrive at the 
 same goal. But if this had always been true, or if it had 
 been true in Goethe’s day, he certainly would not have 
 pointed out in hundreds of different ways the necessity of 
 such a combination and would not have dwelt so constantly 
 upon the importance of it. We know, as a matter of fact, 
 how the progress of Science was retarded by the preponder- 
 ance of first one and then the other function of the intellect. 
 Hence Goethe repeats time and again : “ Only both together, 
 
 * Zur Morphologie (NS., vi., 20 /.). 
 
 t Alexander von Humboldt, eine wissenschaftliche Biographie, heraus- 
 gegeben von Karl Bruhns, i., 417 f. 
 
 VOL. III — 9 
 
i 3 o 
 
 Hhe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 like inhalation and exhalation, make the life of Science.”* 
 “Time is ruied by the oscillations of the pendulum; the 
 moral and scientific world, by the altemation of idea and 
 experience.”f He wams the investigator against “clinging 
 stubbornly to one mode of explanation.”f He demands 
 “ thoroughness in Observation, versatility in method of re- 
 presentation.” § 
 
 These are rules that have become the common property 
 of investigators and their great value is constantly observed, 
 especially at the present day, in the progress of the natural 
 Sciences. We are daily forced to leam our subjects over 
 again ; ideas which to-day seem firmly established must give 
 way to others to-morrow. To us it sounds almost trivial in 
 Goethe to teach that in the pursuit of scientific aims it is 
 equally harmful to rely upon experience exclusively and to 
 follow an idea absolutely; that a conception, an idea, may 
 well lie at the bottom of an observation, may aid an ex- 
 perience, may even favour discovery and invention. Where 
 is the man to-day who doubts that, without a guiding idea, 
 investigation is likely to degenerate into uncertain groping 
 and to end in dabbling? At the time when Goethe wrote 
 the above words, however, the state of the Sciences of organic 
 nature showed signs of Stagnation on the one hand, and of 
 fantastic speculation on the other. We have already seen 
 how he aroused Science from its torpor and substituted for 
 the fantastic the ideal, ideas gained by contemplation on the 
 basis of experience. For idea and experience are not op- 
 posites which invalidate each other; an idea, according to 
 Goethe, is the result of experience, and he characterises a 
 conception as the sum of experience. || 
 
 Thus Goethe, whom many, half-ignorant as to his true 
 nature, count among the discredited natural philosophers, 
 far though his head may tower into the ethereal region of 
 ideas, never forsakes the firm ground of the real — an 
 
 * Analyse und Synthese (NS., xi., 70). 
 
 f NS., vi., 354. J NS., vi., 349. 
 
 § NS., xi., 44. 
 
 || NS., xi., 158; Sprüche in Prosa, No. 1016. 
 
$be IRaturaliöt 
 
 I 3 I 
 
 unconquerable Antseus. Hence in the famous conversation 
 with Schiller conceming the metamorphosis of plants, which 
 marked the beginning of their unique friendship, when 
 Goethe, with a few strokes of his pen, drew a “symbolic 
 plant” for Schiller, and Schiller remarked conceming it, 
 ‘‘That is not an experience, it is an idea,” Goethe had good 
 reasons for his answer that he was very glad to have ideas 
 that he could even see with his eyes. He saw the ideal in 
 the real. While the “symbolic plant” makes a stränge 
 Impression upon us, and while Goethe often confessed that 
 he was able to express himself only in symbols, still he does 
 not leave us in doubt as to how we are to understand him. 
 “ That is true symbolism in which the particular represents 
 the general, not as a dream and a shade, but as a living, 
 momentary revelation of the inscrutable.”* To stand in 
 the forefront of science one “ must develop all the manifesta- 
 tions of the human being — sensuousness and reason, imagina- 
 tion and understanding — to a distinct unity.”f Nowadays 
 there can hardly be any one who would question the asser- 
 tion that, without imagination, as Goethe says, a great natur- 
 alist is inconceivable.J Not an imagination that wanders 
 vaguely and pictures to itself things which do not exist ; but 
 one that never forsakes the ground of earthly reality, and, 
 guided by the Standard of the real and the known, advances 
 to things that it has surmised and divined to be true. 
 
 Goethe’s is the ideal mode of thinking, which causes him 
 to see the etemal in the transitory,§ as Spinoza saw things 
 sub specie ceterni. Hence with him study of nature was in 
 more than one sense a matter of the heart, his devotion 
 to her a natural necessity, the outgrowth of his religious 
 longing. In Spinoza’s deus sive natura he found only his 
 own natural, clear, profound view of the world, which had 
 taught him ineradicably to see God in nature and nature in 
 God. || True, it is becoming in man to concede that there 
 * Sprüche in Prosa, No. 273. 
 t Stiedenroths Psychologie (NS., xi., 75). 
 t Eckermann, Gespräche, iii. , 196. 
 
 , § Leben und Verdienste des Doktor Joachim Jungius (NS., vii., 120). 
 
 ]| Tag- und Jahreshefte, 1S11 (W., xxxvi., 72). 
 
132 
 
 ftbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 are inscrutable things, but he must set no limit to his inves- 
 tigation. He must pursue the inscrutable Step by step to 
 its final retreat, until he may be satisfied and willingly give 
 himself up as defeated. Goethe once wrote to Frau von 
 Stein that the book of nature was becoming so legible to 
 him because he had no system and desired nothing but 
 the truth for its own sake. The true is identical with the 
 divine,* and he who makes the epitome of the true a part of 
 himself, in so far as it is given to man to know it, 
 
 ®er 28 iffettfcE)aft unb -Sutrit beiitjt, 
 
 |>at and) Steligion.f 
 
 From the storms of passion, from the depression of 
 spirit into which he was thrown in his contact with men and 
 things, he fled for refuge to scientific investigation. Here 
 he sought and found “ Salvation and comfort,” and, thanks 
 to his ideal mode of thought, he was able “ to overcome his 
 temporary displeasure with the finite by rising to the in- 
 finite. Two years after his retum from Italy he wrote 
 to Knebel that his soul was driving him to natural Science 
 more than ever before and that in the consistency of nature 
 he was finding beautiful consolation for the inconsistency of 
 men. To him nature was ‘‘the great, good mother,” and 
 the reason that he for so long a time feit repulsed by Schiller 
 was because the latter had treated her with such harsh ex- 
 pressions, as, for example, in his essay, Über Anmut und 
 Würde. To be sure, she had provided him himself with all 
 the organs of sense and faculties of soul with which to grasp 
 her, and he feit drawn to her as to a friend, as we read in 
 Faust’s hymn of gratitude : 
 
 (Erhabner ©eift, bu gabjtmir, gabft mir alles, 
 
 SGBarum id) bat. ®u fjaft mir nid)t umfonft 
 S5ein 3 Ingefid)t im g-eucr jugeroenbet. 
 
 ©abft mir bie berrlidje Statur 311m ^önigrcidj, 
 
 Äraft, fte 31t fufilcn, 31t genießen. Stiebt 
 
 * Versuch einer Witterungsichre (NS., xii., 74). 
 
 flf art and Science one possess, 
 
 One hath religion too. 
 
 t NS., vi., 348. 
 
Gbe IRaturaltet 
 
 i 
 
 -> i 
 
 OJ 
 
 Äalt (taunenben Sßefud) erlaubft bu nur, 
 
 Sergönneft mir, in ifjre tiefe SBruft, 
 
 2Bie in ben Stufen eineö greunbS, ju flauen.* 
 
 In his love-inspired absorption in nature Goethe has 
 left to the world a beautiful legacy from which we derive 
 great benefit. His descriptions of his travels, his poetic 
 glorifications of nature, have aroused in us for the first time 
 a genuine feeling for nature and have opened our minds to 
 the majestic beauties of high mountains and to the magic 
 charms of the world of glaciers, and we wander in his foot- 
 steps when we feel ourselves driven out into these regions. 
 
 In a fragment published for the first time in the Weimar 
 edition of his writings Goethe speaks of four kinds of in- 
 vestigators, the last of which he calls the comprehensive. 
 These, “ whom one might call in a proud sense the Creative, 
 are productive in the highest degree. By the mere fact 
 that they make ideas their starting-point they assert the 
 unity of the whole, and after that it is, so to speak, nature’s 
 business to accommodate herseif to this idea.”f A few 
 lines further on we read, “Productive imagination with 
 greatest possible reality.” Thus Goethe, in his relation to 
 nature, is at the same time an artist and an investigator, an 
 “ after-creator,” as it were. With the eye of an investigator 
 he seeks to grasp her works as an artist. Nowadays the 
 person of the poet scarcely Stands any longer in the way of 
 the recognition of the naturalist. “Scientific imagination” 
 has become a proverbial expression. It is even becoming 
 populär to draw a parallel between Creative talent in Science 
 and artistic creation, and mathematicians like to designate 
 themselves artists. The investigator must possess some of 
 
 * Exalted Spirit, thou hast heard my prayer 
 And granted all. ’T was truly not in vain 
 That in the fire thou turn’dst thy face to me. 
 
 Thou gav’st me for my kingdom nature grand. 
 
 And power with her communion to enjoy. 
 
 Not distant, awed acquaintance grant’st thou me; 
 
 Thou dost allow me in her deepest breast, 
 
 As in the bosom of a friend, to gaze. 
 
 t NS., vi., 302. 
 
i34 
 
 Zbc Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 the Intuition of the poet, says Helmholtz.* The “ manifesta- 
 tions of the human being,” which blended into a harmonious 
 unity in Goethe, composed his greatness and his uniqueness. 
 His “goddess,” the ever active, ever new, stränge, daughter 
 of Jove, was not fantastic, but “exact, sensuous fancy.”f 
 Hence it was possible for him to become the poet-naturalist, 
 as a supreme living evidence that poetry and science must 
 not be looked upon as “the greatest adversaries,” that, as 
 “science has developed out of poetry,” “science and poetry 
 may be combined.”J It will ever remain a matter of un- 
 failing interest, a constant source of inspiration to new 
 investigation, and a phenomenon of incomparable sig- 
 nificance to the knowledge of human nature, that in one of 
 its highest embodiments the two manifestations of the 
 spirit have been united in such perfection. 
 
 * Leo Koenigsberger, Hermann von Helmholtz, ii., 339. 
 
 t Stiedenroths Psychologie (NS., xi., 75). 
 
 1 Zur Morphologie (NS., vi., 139 and 167.) 
 
IV 
 
 AFTER THE WARS OF LIBERATION 
 
 Weimar becomes a grand duchy — Goethe’s Position in the new ministry — 
 Karl August grants a Constitution — Goethe’s attitude toward it — 
 His displeasure with freedom of the press — The Wartburg celebra- 
 tion and its consequences — Murder of Kotzebue agitates Germany 
 — Goethe’s attitude toward the reaction — He objects to romanti- 
 cism in the tercentenary of the reformation — His relation to the old- 
 er romanticists — To the younger generation — Bettina Brentano — - 
 Romanticism in Goethe’s writings — Contrasts between his theory 
 of art and that of the new school— His pronounced Protestantism — ■ 
 His self-liberation as compared with political freedom — His resig- 
 nation as theatre director in reality a dismissal — Causes leading up 
 to it — Effect on him — His seventieth birthday— Interview with 
 Metternich — Sojourn at Marienbad— The Levetzows — Goethe’s 
 relation to Ulrike — His desire to marry her — His misunderstand- 
 ing of her veiled refusal — Conditions in his home since August’s 
 marriage — The Marienbad Elegie — August’s reception of the news 
 of his father’s matrimonial project — Goethe wavers between 
 resignation and hope, but finally resigns himself — Ulrike’s further 
 history. 
 
 P EACE and quiet reigned throughout Germany and 
 Europe after more than twenty years of struggles 
 and upheavals. Germany came out of the age of 
 revolution with an entirely new body politic. With thor- 
 oughgoing internal changes were United equally great 
 transformations in extemal form. Several hundred small 
 territories were absorbed by larger ones. What the Prin- 
 cipal Decree of the Imperial Deputation (1803), earlier 
 and later treaties, and Napoleonic edicts had not yet 
 brought about was accomplished by the Congress of Vienna 
 in 1815. 
 
 135 
 
i3 6 
 
 Zbe üLife of (Soetbe 
 
 In the new distribution of lands the Duchy of Weimar 
 did not come off empty-handed. As a reward for the Ger- 
 man spirit of the Duke, and the heavy sacrifices which his 
 country had made during the wars, it was increased in size 
 by twice its area and was raised to a grand duchy. Karl 
 August, ready as ever to share his good fortune, allowed his 
 most distinguished councillors to benefit by the elevation 
 and enlargement of the state. In the new Ministry of 
 State, into which the old Privy Council was converted, 
 Goethe was appointed prime minister, although the only 
 official responsibility he retained was the superintendence 
 of the immediate institutions of Science and art. His salary 
 was fixed at three thousand thalers, a very large sum for 
 that day and for Weimar. Since, through the favour of 
 his prince, Goethe possessed, in addition, two houses with 
 large gardens, Karl August may be said to have offered the 
 aged poet as comfortable an existence as possible. 
 
 The Grand Duke did not assume his new dignity and 
 his new possessions without redeeming loyally the promise 
 of a Constitution which the “Vienna agreements” had 
 made each German state. The Constitution which he gave 
 his country was thoroughly modern and liberal. Repre- 
 sentatives chosen by free bailot from all the estates, burgher 
 and peasant included, were from that time on to have a 
 share in public legislation and administration. 
 
 On the 7th of April, 1816, when the new legislature paid 
 its solemn homage to the Grand Duke, Goethe stood next 
 to the throne. He must have had very stränge sensations 
 during the ceremony. He was taking part in an act which 
 he inwardly condemned. He had stubbomly held fast 
 his conviction that politics is an art which, like every other, 
 has to be leamed, and for this reason a large majority of 
 the so-called representatives of the people know practically 
 nothing of this art; that, indeed, as a rule, nothing reason- 
 able is to be expected of a many-headed assembly in which 
 the majority rules. Personally he must have feit in addition 
 a shudder of indignation when he thought how in the 
 future he should be held to give account to a stocking manu- 
 
Hfter tbe Maxe of Xiberation 
 
 137 
 
 facturer of Apolda, or the burgomaster of Bürgel, or the 
 village mayor of Stützerbach, for any measures he might 
 take for the advancement of the University of Jena, or the 
 School of Art in Weimar. In spite of the new constitu- 
 tional conditions he may still have found consolation in the 
 hope that the old tried authorities would be able to make 
 their influence count, just as he himself continued, so far 
 as the state diet was concemed, to exercise his powers auto- 
 cratically; but he could not get over the fact that complete 
 freedom of the press was assured by the Constitution. This 
 sharp instrument in the hands of alert and clever writers, 
 as a rule politically inexperienced, short-sighted, and ex- 
 citable, such as Weimar and Jena possessed in great numbers, 
 could not fail to work mischief and bring the country into 
 confusion intemally and into danger extemally, especially 
 at a time when in the rest of Germany the freedom of speech 
 was either limited or wholly suppressed. 
 
 Journals shot up like mushrooms in the little country. 
 Fiveappeared in Jena alone: the Nemesis and the Staatsver- 
 fassungsarchiv, edited by Professor Luden ; the Isis, by Pro- 
 fessor Oken; Des teutschen Burschen fliegende Blätter, by 
 Professor Fries; and the Volksfreund, by Ludwig Wieland, a 
 son of the poet. One appeared in Weimar, the Oppositions- 
 blatt.* Goethe would have liked best of all to tum his eyes 
 away from these paper horrors. When the first evil products 
 were laid before him he remarked angrily to his colleague 
 Voigt that with so much liberty of the press he must 
 certainly be allowed to retain the liberty of not reading . 
 
 With a certain irony the liberty of the press was tumed 
 first of all against the Constitution which had introduced it. 
 Oken criticised in his Isis the fundamental law of the Weimar 
 State, which was otherwise received in the grand duchy, and 
 in fact in all Germany, with joyous enthusiasm. His very 
 adverse criticisms thoroughly aroused the anger of the Grand 
 Duke, who begged Goethe to advise him what steps should 
 be taken against Oken. Goethe’s advice agreed entirely with 
 
 * Concerning the fate of Bertuch’s journal, cf. Düntzer, Goethe und 
 Karl August, 2ded., p. 792. — C. 
 
138 
 
 Zhe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 his general attitude of mind : severity toward the thing, gen- 
 tleness toward the person; the joumal should be suppressed, 
 but Oken should in no wise be persecuted. Even a dis- 
 ciplinary reproof he considered out of keeping with the 
 dignity of a Scholar and a university teacher. The Grand 
 Duke would not agree to the suppression of the joumal 
 when six months had hardly elapsed since his proclamation 
 of the freedom of the press, and, as he wished to heed 
 Goethe’s advice not to inflict any personal injury, he pre- 
 ferred to suppress his own anger and let the matter go. 
 But things developed rapidly to a crisis. 
 
 After the wars of liberation a deep sense of dissatis- 
 faction came over all aggressive patriots who were not, like 
 Goethe, willing to await the calm progress of history. The 
 most active fermentation was going on in the breasts of the 
 younger men who had fought in the war, or had lived 
 through it, with enthusiastic hopes for the future. It had 
 been their dream that the fairest flower springing up from 
 the soil enriched with the blood of fallen heroes would 
 be a Germany united in liberty, a mighty and independent 
 state. But that all proved a vain delusion. In the in- 
 dividual States there was narrow-minded tutelage and op- 
 pression, and the whole country was bowed beneath the 
 sovereignty of half foreign Austria and wholly foreign, 
 barbaric Russia. Things had come to pass as Goethe had 
 prophesied, and he sympathised fully with the young 
 men’s vexation at foreign suzerainty. As though to vex 
 him personally, the execrable wretch Kotzebue had taken 
 up his abode before Goethe’s door in Weimar, as a Russian 
 agent and spy. Kotzebue had been labouring for years to 
 debase Goethe and his high art. 
 
 The third anniversary of the battle of Leipsic and the 
 three hundredth of the reformation were approaching. 
 The students of all Germany, at the Suggestion of those in 
 Jena, prepared to celebrate the two occasions together at 
 the Wartburg. About five hundred Burschen met there, 
 under the leadership of the most populär Jena professors, 
 and celebrated the great memorial days with inspiring. 
 
Hfter tbe Mars of Xiberation 
 
 139 
 
 devout orations, in Order to lift themselves up to a higher 
 existence and to gather strength for the continuation of 
 their struggles for liberty, honour, virtue, and native coun- 
 try. The celebration closed with an auto-da-fe — arranged, 
 to be sure, by only a part of the assembled crowd, — which 
 delivered to the flames a number of writings whose contents 
 or authors the young men hated. This celebration, to- 
 gether with garbled and exaggerated reports of the orations, 
 and especially the heaven-licking flames of the punitive 
 fire, called forth a storm of horror and indignation in 
 conservative circles. 
 
 Although Goethe was at that time as conservative as 
 anybody, nevertheless he was unable to see anything in- 
 herently harmful either in the orations or in the funeral pile. 
 The latter may have reminded him how, in his early years, 
 he had destroyed whatever picture or book was odious to 
 him by shooting or knocking it to pieces, or by nailing it up, 
 with the raging cry, “That shall not survive!” And he 
 doubtless allowed himself to believe that the writings bumed 
 were calculated to arouse a similar repugnance in the minds 
 of the young. Even he, old as he was, took special delight 
 in the fact that on the buming pyre Kotzebue’s Geschichte 
 des deutschen Reiches had atoned for its sinful existence. 
 He could not refrain from giving vent to his satisfaction 
 in a few verses : 
 
 ©u f)d|t e$ lange genug getrieben, 
 
 9heberträd)tig üom £>ot)en getrieben, 
 
 §ätte[t gern bte tieffte 9ticbertrad)t 
 ©etn 2 lllerl)öcf)ften gleich gebracht. 
 
 ©ie Sugenb hat eS ©ir bergolten: 
 
 SlEer @nb’ her tarnen fte gufammen, 
 
 ©ich haufenroeife 31 t öerbantmen; 
 
 @anft ^eter freut [ich ©einer flammen.* 
 
 * Quite long enough hast thou been borne, 
 Heaping on higher things thy scorn; 
 
 Thou hadst gladly placed the deepest malignity 
 On equal plane with highest dignity. 
 
140 
 
 £be Xtfe of (Boetbe 
 
 As for the orations, the spirit which pervaded them was 
 wholly in accord with his own feelings. “ What could be 
 more beautiful,” he asked Frau Frommann, “than that the 
 youth should assemble from all parts of the world to league 
 themselves more firmly together for the promotion of 
 good?” Likewise the general idealistic movement which 
 had Sprung up in the Student world and was leading them 
 to give up boisterous drinking and fighting, and still worse 
 things, met with his heartiest approval. But he held that 
 because of their ignorance of affairs young people should 
 hold themselves aloof from politics and not seek to exert 
 an influence in practical life. When one of their spokes- 
 men with flashing eyes set forth to him his political views he 
 would fain have fallen on his neck, and said, “ But, my dear 
 boy, don’t be so stupid!” 
 
 By the side of all the good and noble things springing 
 up around him on all sides the one thing that caused him 
 anxiety was the political short-sightedness with which, in 
 his opinion, the Grand Duke and his ministers were no less 
 afflicted than were the professors and students of Jena. He 
 was the only man in Weimar who had foreseen the conse- 
 quences of the Wartburg celebration, and had expressed 
 deep regret when permission was granted to hold it. Com- 
 plaints now poured in from all sides. There were visions 
 of conspiracy and rebellion, and the Weimar govemment, 
 which had permitted the celebration, which had even 
 favoured it by allowing it to be held in the Wartburg, was 
 looked upon as an accomplice. The Prussian chancellor 
 von Hardenberg and the Austrian ambassador in Berlin, 
 Count Zichy, came in person to Weimar to make expostu- 
 lations against the revolutionary manifestations there. 
 Behind Prussia and Austria were the remonstrances and 
 complaints of Russia and France. Affairs in the grand 
 duchy seemed to have reached a crisis. Karl August bore 
 it with grim humour. He wrote to Goethe: “The thing 
 
 On thee hath Youth its vengeance wreaked: 
 
 From every quarter of the nation 
 
 Came hordes demanding thy condemnation; 
 
 Saint Peter delights in thy conflagration. 
 
Hfter tbe TÄHar$ of Liberation 
 
 141 
 
 which one cannot so readily rid one’s seif of is the feeling 
 of disgust at the insipidities, which by frequent repetition 
 and much rumination become in the end positively bad 
 taste.” Goethe took the matter more seriously: “Present 
 conditions disturb me to such an extent that I avoid all 
 society.” 
 
 Before he had gone any farther than Weimar Harden- 
 berg became convinced of the good intentions of the govem- 
 ment and of the comparative harmlessness of the movement 
 among Professors and students; but Zichy went on to Jena 
 in Order to look into the volcano’s crater. After Goethe 
 had there administered to him some soothing powders, he 
 too departed with quieted feelings. However, the mis- 
 trust and anxiety of the govemments had been too much 
 aroused, and the academic hotspurs were no longer to be 
 cooled ; indeed, they grew even hotter under the prohibitions, 
 reprimands, and punishments which it was deemed neces- 
 sary to deal out to them in the interest of public peace. 
 And as though the most evil forebodings of the pessimists 
 were to be proved well founded, in March, 1819, the Jena 
 Student Sand, an eamest, industrious man, but a political 
 fanatic, murdered Kotzebue as a calumniator, a seditionary, 
 and a traitor to his country. The German Confederation, 
 which had superseded the former Empire, now passed a 
 series of strict measures against all Professors and students 
 who should endanger public peace and Order, established in 
 Mainz a central Commission for the investigation of dem- 
 agogical machinations, and introduced a censorship of all 
 publications of less than twenty signatures. Even before 
 the Confederation had taken these measures Weimar had 
 taken the most necessary step to meet the present emer- 
 gency by prohibiting the publication of Oken’s Isis, which 
 was most diligent in agitating the fire, and by dismissing 
 the editor himself. This accomplished but little, to be sure, 
 so far as the Great Powers were concemed. Prussia and 
 Russia put Jena under the ban and forbade their subjects 
 to attend the university. 
 
 How Goethe was affected by the political events, which 
 
142 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 everywhere brought in their train so many terrors, animosi- 
 ties, and indignities, and dealt especially heavy blows to his 
 beloved university, which after the war had blossomed forth 
 to new life, may best be seen from the fact that he called 
 Minister von Voigt, who died on the 226. of March, 1819, 
 a happy man because he had not lived to witness the murder 
 of Kotzebue and to be disturbed by the violent commotion 
 with which Germany was thereafter agitated. It is also 
 worthy of note that Goethe in tum now used greater pre- 
 caution than before in the publication of his own writings. 
 When that same year his Prometheus drama, which he 
 thought had been lost, came into his hands in a stränge, 
 roundabout way, he sent a copy of it to Zelter, with the 
 strict waming not to let it become too public, lest perchance 
 the drama might appear in print. “ It would come as a 
 very welcome gospel to our revolutionary youth, and the 
 high commissions in Berlin and Mainz might make wrv 
 faces in disapprobation of my youthful whims.” He used 
 this precaution in spite of the fact that the objectionable 
 part of it, the monologue, in which Prometheus rebels against 
 the Olympian authorities, had already been printed in 1785. 
 
 Goethe speaks here of his youthful whims; but even the 
 man of advanced years was not so very much out of sym- 
 pathy with the spirit which the poem breathes. Not onlv 
 had his philosophy of the world retained essentially its 
 old pantheistic character, although it now sought other 
 forms of expression; but even the desire for combat, which 
 led him to throw down his gage to the Opposition, had not 
 abated in any appreciable degree. He was not a reaction- 
 ary. “ In their principle of conserving existing conditions 
 and anticipating revolutionary movements I am entirely in 
 accord with them [the monarchists], but not in their choice 
 of means to that end. They call to their aid stupidity and 
 darkness; I, understanding and light.” And just as little 
 was he the quietist, the man looking about anxiouslv for 
 peace and dwelling in the comforts of peace, that many of 
 his contemporaries, especially the younger ones, considered 
 him to be. Within him there was the same boiling and bub- 
 
Hfter tbe Mars of ^Liberation 
 
 r 43 
 
 bling as before, and he was daily tempted to enter the lists 
 against the low, the harmful, the untrue, and the unhealthy, 
 as is proved by the unbroken chain of his sarcastic and 
 serious attacks in verse and prose, as well as by his con- 
 versations and letters. The considerations of self-preserva- 
 tion and public Order prescribed for him certain narrow 
 limits which he dared not exceed in the outward expression 
 of his sentiments. 
 
 The approach of the tercentenary of the reformation, 
 for example, aroused within him a strong desire for combat.* 
 In a poem entitled Dem ji. Oktober 1817 he declared his 
 intention “ not to lose his God-given power by failure to use 
 it,” but rather “as always to protest in art and Science.” 
 To be sure, only in art and Science. But he may have said to 
 himself that these are the highest emanations of the human 
 mind, and that if one keeps his mind sound in these fields 
 it must of itself bring forth sound and helpful products in 
 other fields. In the celebration of the three-hundredth 
 anniversary of the reformation the harmful feature which 
 he attacked, because it was the source of the much lamented 
 reaction in Germany and Europe, was romanticism, with 
 its return to the Middle Ages, in which it thought could be 
 found the most genuine and most profound type of Chris- 
 tianity, religion, and German patriotism. Hence he pub- 
 lished at that time, in common with his friend Meyer, a 
 determined manifesto — in the essay Neudeutsche religiös- 
 patriotische Kunst. 
 
 Goethe ’s attitude toward romanticism was not always 
 the same throughout the various periods of his long life . 20 
 At first the relation was a friendly one and for a moment it 
 looked like a brotherhood in arms. In the nineties the 
 two Schlegels stood on the same ground with him of en- 
 thusiasm for the Greek, and on his Wilhelm Meister was 
 based the romantic theory of the truly “poetical.” “The 
 French revolution, Fichte’s Grundlage der gesammten Wis- 
 senschajtslehre, and Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister are the 
 
 * Cf. the draught of a letter (never sent) to von Leonhard, Br., xxvii., 
 420 f . — C. 
 
144 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 greatest tendencies of the age.” “If any one were to give 
 a thorough characterisation of Meister, he would in so doing 
 really say what are the demands of the time in poetry; he 
 might then rest on his laureis, so far as poetical criticism is 
 concerned,” declared Friedrich Schlegel. His brother Au- 
 gust Wilhelm called Goethe the “ restorer of poetry, by whom 
 she has for the first time been aroused from her long slum- 
 ber.” Novalis heralded him as “ the true stadtholder of the 
 poetic spirit on earth.” The most appreciative admirer and 
 prophet of Goethe’s genius was very early found in Karoline 
 Schlegel, the clever Egeria of the romantic circle in Jena, 
 but also the dangerous Dame Lucifer, as Schiller called 
 this most intimate enemy of his among women. Schiller’ s 
 relation to the circle soon grew cold, and then the roman- 
 ticists were more than ever inclined to draw comparisons 
 between him and Goethe and to make Goethe their idol. 
 Goethe in turn clung to them for a long time and sought so 
 far as possible to make peace between them and Schiller. 
 He enjoyed as a continuation of the Xenien the fight of the 
 romantic Athenäum against the platitude of the age, and 
 put the two dramatic failures, August Wilhelm Schlegel’s 
 Ion and Friedrich Schlegel’s Alarkos, on the Weimar stage. 
 He shared with lively interest their universalistic literary 
 tendencies, which reached from Calderon in the West to 
 India in the East. For himself he added a further province 
 in China; for the world, Persia, — in his West-östlicher 
 Divan. 
 
 Tieck’s relation to him was cooler than that of the two 
 Schlegels, and yet he found grace in Goethe’s sight with 
 Genoveva, the very one of his dramas which was most ro- 
 mantic of all and which conjured up the whole colour splen- 
 dour and magic charm of the Middle Ages. Goethe “ became 
 intoxicated,” as he himself confessed, “with the wealth of 
 tones in this missa solemnis, in which all the nations of 
 Europe off er their homage to St. Genevieve.” The poetic 
 tone of Tieck’s fairy world was not so very different from 
 that of his own lyric creations, especially his ballads. His 
 friendly attitude toward Schelling, the philosopher of 
 
Hfter tbe Mars of Xiberation 
 
 145 
 
 romanticism, ;was due entirely to the deep intimate relation 
 of their pantheistic conceptions of nature. 
 
 The second generation of romanticists stood in an en- 
 tirely different relation to Goethe and their admiration for 
 him was different from that of the Schlegels, Schelling, and 
 Tieck, and yet even with them he found all sorts of common 
 interests and many points of contact. Des Knaben Wunder- 
 horn, the collection of folk -songs published by Arnim and 
 Brentano, he greeted with joy and gladly accepted their 
 dedication of the work to him. This, as we know, was like 
 the beginnings of his own lyric writing, which had its roots 
 in the folk-song, and it reminded him pleasantly of Herder’s 
 collection, which, however, was of a more cosmopolitan 
 character. For a moment he allowed himself to be dazzled 
 even by Zacharias Werner, had two of the latter’s dramas 
 presented in Weimar, and in the Frommann home vied with 
 him in the writing of sonnets, a poetical form with which he 
 had hitherto been little familiär.* 
 
 Bettina Brentano won his specially close friendship. As 
 the granddaughter of Sophie La Roche, as the daughter of 
 his once loved Maxe, as the young friend of Frau Aja, she 
 brought with her many pictures of happy days and caused 
 very many dear shades of early love and friendship to rise 
 before him, when she came on her pilgrimage to Weimar to 
 see him in June, 1807. In her book dedicated to the glori- 
 fication of his memory, Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde 
 (published in 1835), she has portrayed her relations to him 
 in a light certainly all too favourable to herseif. She even 
 interpreted the last of those seventeen sonnets, Charade, as 
 referring to her, whereas we know that the true solution of 
 the charade is the name Herzlieb. But the enthusiastic 
 admiration with which she approached him, in her genuine 
 womanly manner, though outwardly often with very youth- 
 ful boldness, did not fail to make an impression upon him. 
 Bettina became really his good child, his dear little friend, 
 whose letters and pleasing picture accompanied him for 
 a time and even found their way into his writings. 
 
 * See vol. ii., p. 350 ff. 
 
 VOL. III. — io 
 
146 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 To these many personal relations of a friendly nature 
 were added finally the manifold influences which roman- 
 ticism exerted upon him as a poet. That he was converted 
 by it to the sonnet has already been mentioned; also that 
 the origin of the West-östlicher Divan is to be referred to 
 this movement, though it soon went far beyond the source 
 of its inspiration. Directly romantic is the close of Die 
 Wahlverwandtschaften and, unfortunately, likewise that of 
 Faust, in the Second Part of which in general all sorts of 
 Strange and foreign things point to the manner, both good 
 and bad, of romanticism. 
 
 And yet, in spite of all these things, the differences were 
 greater than the common interests and the agreements. 
 Even in outward things it is a significant fact that, with the 
 one possible exception of Schelling, these friendly personal 
 relations of Goethe to the representatives of romanticism 
 all ended in discord, ill feeling, and rupture. This, how- 
 ever, but revealed the deep-seateh, essential differences. 
 Their overwrought subjectivity made him all the more 
 conscious of his classical objectivity, and their capricious 
 formlessness of his finely developed feeling for style. The 
 industrious man could have no pleasure in their glorification 
 of “divine idleness.” To their frivolous dallying with a 
 mariage ä quatre he opposed, in Die Wahlverwandtschaften, 
 almost pathetically and with premeditated harshness, the 
 sacredness and indissolubility of this moral bond.* And 
 the “ pathological element” which he thought to recognise 
 in Heinrich von Kleist made it to his mind once for all clear 
 that, as he later briefly and trenchantly put it, “ the classical 
 is the wholesome and the romantic is the unwholesome.” 
 Even Uhland, as is well known, had to suft'er under this 
 pronouncement of condemnation. 
 
 The way for the rupture was early prepared by the 
 theories of art set forth by Tieck and Wackenroder in Franz 
 Sternhaids Wanderungen and Herzensergiessungen eines kunst- 
 liebenden Klosterbruders, to which the two Schlegels very 
 soon professed their allegiance. It is true that in his youth 
 * See vol. ii., p. 385 f. 
 
Hfter tbe Mars of ‘Hiberation 
 
 147 
 
 Goethe had evinced a thorough understanding of German 
 nature and art and an exultant enthusiasm for the wonderful 
 Gothic structure of Ervinus in Strasburg. But meanwhile 
 he had been in Italy and had taken that decided tum of 
 aff ecting the antique ; in the theory of art especially he had 
 become a “heathen,” and fragments from Greek temples 
 were to him “ sacred relics.” 
 
 Roman ticism took the opposite direction. It had begun 
 by aff ecting the antique; but in its flaunted “rage for ob- 
 jectivity ” there was from the beginning an element of over- 
 passionateness and distinct subjectivity; their enthusiasm 
 for things Greek was a pathological “ Grecomania.” And 
 so after a sudden change, which soon took place, they no 
 longer found their ideal among the Greeks : they now saw 
 in the Middle Ages the source of renewal, not only for 
 the life of the nation and for art, but also for Church and 
 State, for politics and religion. Taking Dürer as a starting- 
 point, the movement was at first rather Protestant in tone, 
 but on going back to the pre-Raphaelites the leaders very 
 soon began to complain of the dry, rational hollowness of 
 the reformation, and in the end praised the period of the 
 thirteenth Century as the only genuinely Christian age. In 
 the pictures of the Middle Ages they lauded the severe, 
 spare figures, the naive costumes, the genial, childlike sim- 
 plicity and narrowness of thefaces; and in medieval reli- 
 gion, the love of the wonderfully beautiful woman, the 
 holy mother of Christendom, who with her divine power 
 was ready to save every believer from the most terrible 
 dangers. Thus in art Nazarenism was proclaimed, and in 
 life Friedrich Schlegel, and after him many other fellow- 
 romanticists, became Catholics. 
 
 This was just as objectionable to Goethe’s artistic taste 
 as to his “pronounced heathenism.” So, after many signs 
 pointing to the approaching rupture, he wrote, in 1805 : 
 “So soon as ever I find anything like the necessary time 
 and mood I shall portray once for all the nature of these 
 neo-Catholic artists”; for “a treaty of peace with such 
 people accomplishes nothing; they only seek the more 
 
148 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 shamelessly to extend their influence.” He protested pub- 
 licly against “the verbiage of neo-Catholic sentimentality 
 and against the unctuous nonsense of the disciples of the 
 Klosterbruder and Franz Stembald,” and, in his Winckel- 
 mann, expressly declared his adherence to the opposing 
 school of classicism. Yet even then he was not blind to the 
 merits of medieval poetry and art. He found enjoyment 
 both in the folk-songs of Des Knaben Wunderhorn and in 
 the strong, healthy characters of the Nibelungenlied, and 
 finally, through the influence of the Boisseree brothers, even 
 became, as we have already seen, deeply interested in the 
 Cologne cathedral and old German painters. To be sure, 
 the rejoicing which this conversion of the “old heathen” 
 produced among the romanticists was of but short duration. 
 In his joumal, Kunst und Altertum, he immediately after- 
 ward turned his back again on the Middle Ages and in 1818 
 proclaimed once more his educational ideal and artistic 
 creed, “ Let every man be a Greek in his own way, but let 
 him be a Greek.” 
 
 It was not only his classicism, but just as much, if not 
 more, his Protestantism that revolted and protested against 
 the Catholicising tendencies of the romanticists, and their 
 fondness for the Middle Ages. Even in books which ap- 
 parently had nothing to do with these things, as, for ex- 
 ample, Friedrich Schlegel’s book Uber die Sprache und 
 Weisheit der Indier (1808), he now discovered the despisöd 
 features: “All the subjects which he [Schlegel, in this book] 
 treats are, as a matter of fact, used only as vehicles to bring 
 certain sentiments gradually to public notice and with a 
 certain honourable appearance to set himself up as an 
 apostle of an obsolete doctrine.” He expresses himself 
 still more vigorously. He sees in it “ a very clever way of 
 smuggling back into good society the miserable devil, to- 
 gether with his grandmother and all their everlasting, 
 malodorous retinue.” He condemned most decidedly Fried- 
 rich Schlegel’s conversion to the Catholic faith, “ because 
 at no time has such a remarkable case occurred, of a superior 
 and most highly educated talent, which, in the highest light 
 
Hfter tbe Mars of Xiberatton 
 
 149 
 
 of reason, understanding, and knowledge of the world, has 
 been inveigled into dressing itself up and playing the buga- 
 boo.” He declared boldly, on the other hand, that “to 
 draw nearer to Protestantism is the tendency of all those 
 who would differentiate themselves from the populace.” 
 We now understand how, on the occasion of the tercentenary 
 of the reformation, he could declare himself so decidedly 
 opposed, as a Protestant, to this neo-Catholic movement 
 and how he could maintain that “we cannot honour our 
 Luther more highly than by publicly declaring with serious- 
 ness and with force, and by repeating often, what we consider 
 right and what we hold to be advantageous for the nation 
 and the times.” 
 
 In the winter of 1816-1817 he even feit called upon to 
 assert his Protestant views in Opposition to Schelling, when 
 the question arose of calling this scholar back to Jena. No- 
 body had a better appreciation than he of the importance 
 of this great thinker. But the philosopher’s views, with 
 which his own had once so well harmonised, had meanwhile 
 assumed a mystic, plainly Catholicising trend. Hence 
 Goethe declared with determination that there was no place 
 for such a man in Jena. To Minister von Voigt, who w r as in 
 favour of issuing the call, he wrote that it would seem to 
 him comical if, at the tercentenary of “our truly great 
 Protestant victory, one should see the old out-of-date stuff 
 again introduced under a renewed mystico-pantheistic 
 form.” To him the truly great Protestant victory meant, 
 above all, the emancipation of reason, the “ Christian man’s” 
 regained freedom of thought and belief. Hence in a cantata 
 for the celebration of the reformation he would glorify 
 Luther’s memorable deed in no other way than by drawing 
 a pregnant contrast between the Old Testament and the 
 New, between law and freedom, which, as he adds by way 
 of explanation, becomes law through faith and love. He 
 would let it be known that the Catholic Church still stood 
 on the ground of the Old Testament and had departed from 
 it only in so far as it had added to this ground heathenism 
 and polytheism. Hence in the poem Dem 31. Oktober 1817 
 
i 5 o 
 
 TTbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 he could well consider himself and those like him as “ preach- 
 ers,” as the real successors of Luther, who continue the 
 reformer’s battle against obscurants and Romanists : 
 
 and) bcr Pfaffe finnt unb fd)(eicf)t, 
 
 £)er ^rebtger fte^t gur SBadje.* 
 
 We now see why, after a conversation with Goethe, so 
 much misunderstood as to his German sentiments and en- 
 thusiasm for liberty, Vamhagen von Ense, who had fought 
 in the wars of liberation and now stood on the liberal side, 
 should have written, full of astonishment, to his friend the 
 Prussian Privy Councillor Stägemann: “Goethe no German 
 patriot? In his breast was early gathered all the freedom 
 of Germania, and there it became, to the never fully ap- 
 preciated benefit of us all, the model, the example, the main 
 trunk of the national tree of edueation. We all walk in 
 the shade of this tree. Never have roots taken a firmer 
 hold and penetrated deeper into the soil of our native coun- 
 try, and never have they drawn more powerfully and more 
 constantly from her vital sources. Our warlike youth and 
 the loftier sentiments which inspired them have truly 
 more in common with this spirit than with manv another 
 who boasts of having been parti cularly active at the time.’’ 
 These words of Vamhagen show correctly Goethe’s Op- 
 position to the reactionary political tendencies which ro- 
 manticism had assumed through the work of Novalis and 
 Gentz. They also prove that as a man of liberal thought 
 and patriotic sentiments Vamhagen was in no sense offended 
 at Goethe for holding himself aloof from the national pathos 
 of romanticism. Indeed, at that very time Goethe was 
 himself one of the greatest national possessions of the German 
 people. As Vamhagen correctly observed, Goethe took 
 liberty in that high sense of the self-emancipation of man 
 to a life of reason. He saw herein the German’s most 
 peculiar and most sublime task and worked at it himself 
 with all his strength throughout the whole of his life. Thus 
 
 * Whate’er the sneaking priest may plan, 
 
 The preacher Stands on guard. 
 
Hfter tbe Mara of Liberation 
 
 151 
 
 he fought in his own way for the cause of Germanic freedom, 
 and his efforts are deserving of recognition. Everything 
 in Opposition to his labours, whether tyranny, narrowness, 
 or stupidity, he either designated by the general term 
 “ priestcraft,” or called it “ Philistinism,”- — the word which 
 he employed more frequently and for which he showed the 
 greater preference. With reference to his activity in this 
 field he placed himself, in righteous self-consciousness, by 
 the side of the greatest German liberators, Blücher and 
 Luther. 
 
 3Ijr fönnt mir immer ungefdjeut 
 SBie ölüdjern Denimai fegen; 
 fßon fransen fjat (Sr (Sud) befreit, 
 
 3d)öon fßtjififternegen.* 
 
 As a liberator Goethe could hope to exert an influence 
 only because he himself was free and because he made him- 
 self more and more free from the thousand bonds which 
 fettered others. This spiritual self-liberation gave him also 
 that extraordinary equanimity toward everything that 
 came to him from without. True, he occasionally lost his 
 equanimity for a moment, but he regained it the next 
 moment, especially in the later years of his life. And that 
 was an inestimable blessing, both for him and for the world . 
 Without this liberating equilibrium of soul, his high degree 
 of sensitiveness, a necessary qualification of the great poet, 
 would have brought his power and influence to an untimelv 
 end. 
 
 Düring the year 1817 he had more than one specially 
 hard trial to undergo. We have already heard of the storm 
 of reaction which, toward the end of the year, caused heavy 
 waves to break over the deck of the Weimar ship of state. 
 The beginning of the year, however, had brought him per- 
 sonally still worse experiences. The loving care with which 
 he had fostered the Weimar Theatre did not save him from 
 
 * As well to me as Blücher ye 
 A monument may raise; 
 
 From Frenchmen he has made you free, 
 
 I from Philistine ways. 
 
l S 2 
 
 ftbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 grating ingratitude. In the long years that he had superin- 
 tended the stage it had caused him many a hard hour. But 
 in so far as actors, musicians, authors, audiences, financial 
 distress, and disfavour of the times were the cause of his 
 vexation, his innermost being had not been affected. He 
 overcame these things as one overcomes bad weather. 
 
 In the case of the conflicts with the Duke, into which he 
 was from time to time drawn on account of the theatre, it 
 was different. These were particularly sharp from the time 
 that the beautiful and distinguished actress and singer Karo- 
 line Jagemann became the object of the Duke’s love, and 
 desired to see the theatre conducted according to her own 
 ideas. As far back as 1808 the opposing forces had come to 
 such a violent clash that Goethe asked for his dismissal. 
 The difference was temporarily adjusted, but strained 
 relations continued, owing to the secret influence of the 
 actress Jagemann. In April, 1817, the gathering storm 
 broke. 
 
 An actor by the name of Karsten was at that time trav- 
 elling about with a trained poodle which he was exhibiting 
 to the theatre-going public in a melodrama adapted from 
 the French, entitled Der Hund des Aubry de Montdidier. 
 He directed to Goethe a request for permission to produce 
 this piece in Weimar, with his dog in the title röle. Goethe 
 flatly refused the request as a lowering of the dignity of the 
 stage. The actor then applied to the Grand Duke, and 
 the latter, a passionate lover of dogs, signified his desire 
 that the request be granted. As Goethe persisted in his re- 
 fusal the Grand Duke issued a command that the perform- 
 ance be given. Sorely offended at the disregard of his 
 objections, Goethe left home and went to Jena, leaving the 
 staging of the piece to the other members of the board of 
 directors. 
 
 He may at that time have made known his intention to 
 retire from the directorship. 21 But he still lived in hopes 
 that an amicable ad justment would be possible and that 
 the Grand Duke would abandon the performance. The 
 futility of his hopes was demonstrated on the 1 2th of April, 
 
Sfter tbe Mars of Xiberation 
 
 153 
 
 when the performance actually took place. And even before 
 Goethe had taken a decisive step, the Grand Duke, espe- 
 cially prompted, as is said, by the actress, wrote to Goethe 
 on the i3th of April, granting his dismissal, alleging as the 
 reason for his action that various utterances which had 
 come to his notice had convinced him that Goethe wished 
 to be relieved of his duties as director of the Court Theatre. 
 By reporting at once to the board of directors his disposition 
 of the case, he made his decision irrevocable. Thus Goethe 
 was tumed out of the office. 
 
 As a sage and a seer he was prepared for many things, 
 but that his imperishable achievements of twenty-six years 
 at the head of the Weimar Theatre should come to such a 
 humiliating and offensive end had certainly never entered 
 the realm of his faintest suspicions. Very soon Karl August 
 in his natural goodness of heart feit to what an injustice he 
 had allowed himself, in the heat of passion, to be carried 
 away. He went to Jena, where Goethe was still staying, 
 and there appeased the poet’s anger and sealed their re- 
 conciliation with a hearty embrace. Even though the dis- 
 missal could no longer be recalled, nevertheless Goethe was 
 able to continue with honour to perform his other ofhcial 
 duties, and — what is of more importance — it was possible 
 for the friendly relation between prince and minister to 
 continue. 
 
 Though the circumstances under which his Separation 
 from the theatre had been brought about may have affected 
 him very painfully — years afterward the wound still bumed 
 so that there is not a word about the event in his Annalen — 
 nevertheless he could but welcome the fact itself. He had 
 found less and less pleasure in the institution. It was a 
 perpetual source of trouble to be able no longer to meet the 
 competition of the large theatres. The previous year he 
 had lost his best actors, Herr and Frau Wolf, who had gone 
 to Berlin, and he was too old to train others to take their 
 places. Furthermore his mission was now fulfilled. He 
 had created in Weimar a style suited to the higher type of 
 dramatical production, and this style had been adopted 
 
^54 
 
 £be Xife of ßoetbe 
 
 and was still cultivated by the best theatres of Germany. 
 He could now leave the Weimar stage to work out its own 
 destiny, and could devote the valuable time and the peace 
 of mind of which it was robbing him to the great problems 
 that it was still incumbent upon him to solve. By a very 
 peculiar, but most happy, dispensation of fate, the dismissal 
 in 1817 and the decrees of the German Confederation in 
 1819 gave him the rest which he most ardently desired. 
 From that time on neither public affairs nor his official Posi- 
 tion caused him any further disturbances. The fruits still 
 hanging on his tree of life had a warm serene autumn in 
 which to attain a perfect maturity. 
 
 On the 28Ü1 of August, 1819, Goethe reached his seven- 
 tieth birthday. On this occasion, as usual, he himself with- 
 drew from the birthday celebration. He spent the day 
 quietly on the way to Karlsbad. Throughout Germany, 
 with the exception of Frankfort-on-the-Main, the important 
 epoch in the great poet’s life was celebrated only in a quiet 
 manner. Political dissatisfaction lay like a mountain of 
 lead on the spirits of all. The representatives of the German 
 States, assembled in Karlsbad, were just in the act of clipping 
 the wings of the German national Spirit shorter than before. 
 They called it suppressing the revolutionary Spirit. The 
 Conferences were ruled by the all-powerful Austrian minister, 
 Prince Metternich. He was the first person in Karlsbad to 
 whom Goethe paid a visit. The poet’s motive for haste in 
 making this visit was probably not merely a desire to dis- 
 charge a duty of politeness toward a prince whom he had 
 known for some time: he doubtless recognised the oppor- 
 tunity to dispose Metternich more kindly both toward 
 Weimar, which the statesman would gladlv have erased 
 from the list of German States, and toward the Grand Duke, 
 whom he scomfully referred to as the “old buck.” Goethe 
 says in his Annalen: “ As usual, I found in him a gracious 
 lord.” This means that the poet succeeded in accomplish- 
 ing his purposes. 
 
 After Goethe had again taken the eure in Karlsbad the 
 
Bfter tbe IKflare of Xiberation 
 
 T 55 
 
 following year, but, as it seems, without being entirely 
 satisfied with the results, he decided the next year (1821) 
 to try the mineral springs of the newly established Marien- 
 bad. He met there the beautiful widow Frau von Levetzow 
 and her three charming daughters, Ulrike, Amalie, and 
 Bertha. Just as he had formerly been so fascinated with 
 the mother that he compared her to Pandora, so he now y 
 discovered an unusual attraction in her oldest daughter. 
 She was only seventeen years old, to be sure, but it was 
 younger women that the aged poet particularly liked. He 
 joked concerning himself at the time as follows: 
 
 Slltcr, l)ör[t bu ttüdj nid)t auf? 
 
 Stntner 9)LibcE)cn! 
 
 3n bem jungen SebenSlauf 
 2Bat’$ ein Äätdjen. 
 
 2öe(cf)e jeht ben Jag üerfn^t, 
 
 ©ag’3 mit Älarbeit ! * 
 
 Whether because of the benefit derived from the waters 
 of Marienbad, or because of his longing to see Ulrike’s dear 
 face once more, suffice it to say, we find him again the 
 following summer at the springs in Company with the 
 Levetzow family. What a twelvemonth before had been 
 a pleasant pastime became now a deeper, more serious 
 feeling, which developed into love. A third long sojourn 
 together the following summer (1823), and the fire of love 
 flamed forth in full force from the heart of the aged poet. 
 The brown hair and blue eyes, the nineteen years, the in- 
 genuous assurance, the serenity, cheerfulness, goodness, 
 and cordiality of the young girl, who had received her 
 education in Strasburg and hence, in a sense, was an 
 Alsatian, — these things taken together may have caused 
 Ulrike to appear to the poet as a Friederike brought back 
 to life. “Repeated reflection” is an optical phenomenon 
 
 * Greybeard, still no end in view? 
 
 Maidens ever? 
 
 In thy youth thou soughtst to woo 
 Kätchen’s favour. 
 
 Who doth now thy day delight? 
 
 Teil me frankly. 
 
Gbe %\f e of (Boetbe 
 
 i5 6 
 
 that he had observed more than once in the course of his 
 life. And did he not now awake to a new existence under 
 the magic influence of this budding maiden? Did he not 
 experience a new youth? He even found pleasure again 
 in dancing! He attended the dancing parties and, this 
 summer, finished his seventy-third and entered his seventy- 
 fourth year dancing. Who could have told by his ap- 
 pearance that this man with delicately flushed face, fiery 
 eyes, a full head of brown hair with hardly a trace of gray, 
 an elastic step, and an erect bearing, who chatted graciously 
 and with animation, and moved about upon the floor with 
 one of the youngest ladies, was really a man of seventy-four? 
 And had he not reason to hope that, if he should enter into 
 a permanent union with youth, this rejuvenation would 
 continue, in defiance of nature, tili the demon death should 
 drag him into his grave? Why should Ulrike not be pre- 
 pared to enter the bond? Why should she not retum his 
 love? He saw how all the young girls were attached to him, 
 how their faces lighted up when he approached, how tenderly 
 they treated him, how eager they were to caress him and be 
 caressed by him. 
 
 ©el)’ icf) l)ier, fie fontmt [jetan, 
 
 ÜJiiemanb fieljt unS beiben an, 
 
 2Sic mir lieben! * 
 
 r What a rosy hue would be imparted to his home if this 
 rising sun should enter it! To be sure, it had not been 
 desolated by the death of Christiane. Soon after her decease 
 his own son had married Ottilie von Pogwisch, the dowerless 
 daughter of a divorced lady at the Court. Ottilie had 
 married the son more for the sake of the father, to whom 
 she looked up with tender admiration. She was a cheerfuh 
 intelligent, original woman of fine temperament, and 
 Goethe had in her the best partner imaginable for his con- 
 versations, no matter what they might concem. She had 
 meanwhile brought into the world two sons, whom Goethe 
 
 * Where I go she comes to me; 
 
 No one in our looks can see 
 How we love. 
 
Hfter tbe UQars of Xiberation 
 
 157 
 
 loved dearly and who afforded him great joy. There was 
 now more life and variety in the house than before Chris- 
 tiane’s death. But the married life of August and Ottilie 
 quickly became very unhappy. Their two natures were 
 incompatible. Being each endowed with a strong spirit 
 of liberty, they followed their own ways, August the pre- 
 cipitous paths from which his father had hoped to turn him 
 aside by means of marriage. There were many moments of 
 ill-humour over which the husband and wife were unable 
 to gain control, even in the presence of the father. In a 
 letter from Marienbad, in which he wished gently to prepare 
 the children for a knowledge of his future intentions, Goethe 
 referred very mildly and delicately to the Situation at home 
 in these words: “The days we have spent together, good 
 
 and sensible people though we be, have often been extremely 
 dull, to my despair. We lack a third or fourth member to 
 complete the circle.” He signed himself a “ ‘loving’ father 
 in the most beautiful sense of the word.” 
 
 Hopeful as the aged poet was of receiving from Ulrike 
 a favourable reply, he himself was neither able nor willing 
 to make a proposal to her. But a distinguished mediator 
 was found in the person of the Grand Duke, who happened 
 to be present. He acquainted the mother with Goethe’s 
 desire. She was certainly not in doubt as to Ulrike’s Senti- 
 ments, but, as it was her duty to inquire, she did so and 
 received an unfavourable, or at least an evasive, answer, 
 which was equivalent to a refusal . 22 There was a world- 
 wide difference between caressing in her proud happiness 
 the glorious man of fame who showed so plainly his affection 
 for her, between giving free expression to her tender feeling 
 for him while allowing him the same liberty towards her, 
 and marrying him. Youth demands youth, and even the 
 most clever, most amiable, most celebrated old man can 
 not equal the simple, bashful youth, unknown to fame, who 
 beholds in his beloved his all, who becomes one with her in 
 heart and mind and goes through life exulting and lamenting 
 with her, and sharing with her his pleasure and his pain. 
 
 Out of consideration for the distinguished suitor and for 
 
Zlbe %\f e of (Soetbe 
 
 i5 8 
 
 his highbom wooer, as well as for the undisturbeb contin- 
 uation of the so valued, beautiful intercourse, Frau von 
 Levetzow probably gave, instead of Ulrike’s frank or veiled 
 refusal, an answer which postponed the final decision and 
 left some room for hope. Thus the days in Marienbad, 
 which were followed by another series of days spent together 
 in Karlsbad, came to an harmonious end. 
 
 The moment of Separation w T as a hard one for Goethe. 
 Every parting from a beloved person is painful. He must 
 have feared that a future meeting would be denied him, 
 either by fate — his age may have caused a vision of death 
 to rise before his eyes — or by the enigmatical will of the 
 beloved maiden, for his pain rose to an excruciating in- 
 tensity. He journeyed toward home filled with painfully 
 bitter feelings. But while man by misery is rendered dumb 
 a god gave him the gift to teil his woe. He poured his 
 sorrow into the soulful stanzas which later became known 
 as the Marienbad Elegie (second number of the Trilogie der 
 Leidenschaft), and alleviated his pain by lending it words. 
 Along with his lamentation of sorrow he sought also to 
 recall as closely as possible the picture of his beloved, to- 
 gether with the happiness of the vanished weeks, and this, 
 too, helped to reconcile him. 
 
 2Bte gum (Empfang fie an bcn Pforten ineilte 
 Unb mid) non bannauf ftufenroeiö beglfnfte, 
 
 0elbft nad) bem lebten &n$ mid) nod) ereilte, 
 
 Den lejjteften mir auf bie Sippen brfnfte: 
 
 0o flar berneglid) bleibt bas s 3ilb ber Sieben 
 90?it glammenfd)rift ins treue $erg getrieben. 
 
 9hm bin id) fern! 'Der jetzigen Minute, 
 
 2BaS giemt betm ber? 3d) ttnifsf eS nidjt gu fagetu 
 0ie bietet mir gum 0d)ötten manches ©ute; 
 
 DaS laftet nur, id) tnu| mid) ibm ent[d)lagen. 
 
 9Wid) treibt innbcr ein unbegtuinglid) ©ebnen, 
 
 Da bleibt fein Diät als grengenlofe Dränen.* 
 
 * As at the door she waited with a greeting 
 
 And then each step upon the stairs would bless; 
 
 The last kiss giv’n, would run, my leave entreating 
 
Hfter tbe Wars of Xiberation 
 
 I 59 
 
 When he arrived at home on the i7th of September there 
 was another hard ordeal awaiting him. He had to speak 
 frankly to his children about the intentions which he cher- 
 ished. Ottilie was ill and had nothing to say. August 
 expressed himself all the more plainly. While he had the 
 highest respect for his father, he could not understand how, 
 with his usual wisdom and discretion, his father, at his 
 advanced age, and after he had come so perilously near 
 dying the previous spring, should want to marry such a very 
 young girl. The idea may have seemed to him a crazy 
 whim, a fantastic aberration, which would have to be dealt 
 with without any consideration. Furthermore the thought 
 that his present existence, and still more his future, was 
 jeopardised by the proposed marriage, must unconsciously 
 have intensified his excited Opposition to it. Ottilie’s sister, 
 who lived in the house with them and thought as he did 
 about the matter, eontributed nothing toward his pacifica- 
 tion. So a harsher clash could not have been imagined. 
 In a letter written at the time (September 25, 1823) Chan- 
 cellor von Müller, one of Goethe’s dearest and most intimate 
 friends in the last fifteen years of his life, characterised 
 August’s bearing as rüde and loveless. He spoke of him as 
 a crazy fellow, who played toward his father the part of one 
 piqued. He referred also to Ulrike’s (the sister-in-law’s) 
 gruff one-sidedness and shallow naivete, adding that such 
 companions were ill suited to guide the poet gently and 
 tenderly through such a crisis. Charlotte von Schiller’s 
 report of the affair is similar. One can fancy how the old 
 man’s tender heart, still bleeding from the wound of parting, 
 suffered under the cudgellings of his closest environment. 
 
 A “lastest” kiss upon my lips to press. — 
 
 These flame-traced scenes of her I dearly cherish 
 From out my faithful heart shall never perish. 
 
 I now am far away. What is the duty 
 
 Confronts me here? No answer I can find. 
 
 The present offers much of good and beauty; 
 
 Yet of its weight I fain would rid my mind. 
 
 A ceaseless longing hath of hope bereft me, 
 
 No counsel save unbounded tears is left me. 
 
i6o 
 
 ftbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 Chancellor von Müller said in the same letter: “He is at 
 times extremely ill-humoured and depressed.” 
 
 The stubborn Opposition led him to reflect. Becoming 
 doubtful whether the realisation of his dream would mean 
 happiness for himself and his beloved, he decided to renounce 
 the plan. A week later he said to Müller: “I shall get 
 
 over my affection for Fräulein von Levetzow, I know; but 
 it will mean a long, hard struggle.” Such a resolution was 
 more easily formed than carried out. A revulsion of feel- 
 ing came. The Opposition wdiich the renunciation en- 
 countered in his own inner being caused him to reconsider 
 the matter from all points of view. For example, such 
 questions arose as whether the sacrifice was after all neces- 
 sary, and whether it was not too costly, seeing that it was 
 exhausting his strength. These hard struggles with himself 
 and with those about him were certainly contributory causes 
 to another serious illness in November. In this illness 
 the remedy which gave him most strength, and to which he 
 had recourse time and again, was the Elegie, that painful, 
 yet sweet, reflection of the wonderfully beautiful summer 
 days. Was not its effect upon him a clear indication of the 
 direction in which he should tum for self-preservation ? 
 Thus at the close of the year we find him free from all 
 thoughts of renunciation and looking forward to the new 
 year, with anxious, but happy, expectation. 
 
 On New Year’s eve he wrote to Frau von Levetzow the 
 significant words: “The new calendar for 1824 is standing 
 before me. The twelve months look neat and distinct, to 
 be sure, but also perfectly indifferent. In vain do I seek 
 to discover which days will be red-letter days for me, and 
 which will be black. The wdiole table is still a blank, while 
 wishes and hopes fly hither and thither. May mine meet 
 yours. May nothing, nothing oppose their success and 
 fulfilment! Talk over everything together in an intimate 
 hour, as you would do more extensively, perhaps, while 
 walking back and forth on the terrace.*” 
 
 Inspired by this hopeful expectation, he savs, in the 
 
 * In front of the house in Marienbad. 
 
Hfter tbe TKflars of Xiberation 
 
 161 
 
 poem An Werther (first number of the Trilogie der Lei- 
 denschaft), which he composed in March, 1824, for the jubi- 
 lee edition of the novel, that Werther’s shade meets him 
 on newly flower-clothed meadows. In an April letter to 
 Frau von Levetzow we hear how his heart beats in anti- 
 cipation of their being together again. “ Think of me with 
 the dear children and grant me the hope that, arriving with 
 the same feelings, I shall be welcome to the dear ones in the 
 old place. Meanwhile the neat goblet remains the confidant 
 of my thoughts; the sweet monograms approach my lips, 
 and, if it were not so far off, the 28th of August should 
 afford me the most pleasing prospect. A cosy clink of 
 glasses and so forth. Ever yours. — Goethe.” 
 
 Summer came, and this year the Levetzow family went 
 to Dresden. Goethe received a most friendly invitation to 
 come there. He could have gone to the Bohemian baths 
 very conveniently by way of the Saxon Capital; but he 
 stayed at home — in spite of all the longing letters. His 
 resignation was final. Whether it had meanwhile been 
 forced upon him by an unequivocal refusal from Ulrike — 
 it was said that the Grand Duke had presented Goethe’s 
 suit once more to Frau von Levetzow' — , or whether it came 
 from his own voluntary reconsideration, is uncertain. In 
 any case any further meetings after a final renunciation 
 would have been inadvisable. Goethe never again saw 
 Frau von Levetzow or her daughters; but he kept himself in 
 touch with the dear family by means of the friendly letters 
 which they now and then exchanged. 
 
 Like Friederike, Ulrike remained unmarried. She lived to 
 be a very old woman and died only a few years ago, on the 
 ißth of November, 1899, on her estate Trziblitz, in Bohe- 
 mia. E very one who approached her went away ref reshed . 
 
 As Goethe was forced to tum his thoughts away from 
 Ulrike, the remembrance of the beautiful mistress of the 
 Gerbermühle came forward again more prominently, and in 
 lingering with her in the spirit and in his cordial corre- 
 spondence with her his love-craving heart found satisfaction 
 and repose. 
 
V 
 
 FROM 1824 TO 1830 
 
 Goethe’s house his monastery — Description of it — His way of working — 
 His assistants — Eckermann and his Gespräche mit Goethe — Great 
 stream of visitors at Goethe’s home — Distinguished guests — Goethe 
 a grandfather — His youthfulness, in spite of his years — Typical 
 extracts from his conversations— His humour — His angry moods — 
 Novelle — Biographical writings — New complete edition of his 
 works — His many-sided interests — His thirst for knowledge — His 
 attitude toward new literary tendencies — His reading of news- 
 papers and periodicals — His habit of viewing things in their broad, 
 general relations — His recognition of his own place in history — His 
 striving after goodness and purity — His spiritual transformation — 
 The springtime of his soul — His humility — His power over his con- 
 temporaries due to his great humanity — The jubilees of Karl Au- 
 gust’s coming to the throne and Goethe’s arrival in Weimar — Death 
 of Karl August — Goethe’s sojourn at the Castle of Dornburg — Dem 
 auf gehenden Vollmonde — Zwischen beiden Welten — Death of Frau 
 von Stein — Death of Grand Duchess Luise — Death of Goethe’s son 
 August — The poet’s power of recuperation. 
 
 T HE ways toward the east and toward the west had 
 become dangerous paths, upon which the poet feared 
 to enter. Consequently he avoided all travelling for 
 the present. Indeed for a long time he somewhat stub- 
 bomly refused to go even beyond the limits of the city of 
 Weimar. There were four years, for example, when he did 
 not visit even Jena, where he had formerly been accustomed 
 to spend weeks and months every year; and yet the institu- 
 tions under his supervision must often have demanded his 
 attention. To be sure, Weimar had now become a more 
 quiet place for him since he had severed his Connection with 
 the theatre and no longer went to Court, except on extra or- 
 dinary occasions. # 
 
 162 
 
front 1824 to 1830 
 
 163 
 
 As he made no other visits either, and took part in no 
 gatherings outside his own home, his house became his world, 
 his castle in which he held court. He himself preferred to 
 call it his monastery, though there was little aptness in the 
 term; for behind the walls of this monastery was unfolded 
 a scene of most abundant life. In these rooms there was 
 nothing dead. Everything spoke to him in its own language, 
 whether it was kept in portfolios, in cases, or in drawers, or 
 was fastened on the walls as an Ornament. There was a 
 very large Collection of engravings, etchings, drawings, 
 autographs, coins, medals, plaques, majolicas, plaster casts, 
 minerals, plants, fossils (about 4000), skeletons, — a small 
 museum of art and natural history, which he had gradually 
 collected and to which his fiery zeal was still constantly 
 making additions. A good drawing or an interesting fossil 
 could make him happy for days. 
 
 The many objects of art gave his rooms a very dis- 
 tinguished stamp. They made one forget entirely the plain 
 furniture and the poor architectural proportions. But 
 there was one room which was kept free from all artistic 
 omamentation, namely, his study. In fact he had this 
 room furnished even more plainly than the rest of the 
 house. No curtains, no sofa, no carpet, no easy chair, — 
 nothing but hard, stiff, clumsy oak furniture, and bare 
 walls. He did not wish to let any object of art distract his 
 attention or any luxury, or even comfort, make him careless 
 or lazy. In this scantily furnished room he spent the fore- 
 noon, beginning at five or six o’clock, in continuous hard 
 work. He usually walked about the large table and dictated 
 to his amanuensis. He covered the greatest variety of 
 subjects, such as novels, biographical writings, essays, and 
 letters, and spoke with such fluency that the amanuensis 
 had difficulty in following him. To be sure, it had all been 
 thought over and sketched in the afternoon or evening of 
 the preceding day, or before eight o’clock in the moming, 
 the hour at which one of his amanuenses arrived. He 
 employed no fewer than four amanuenses. The chief bürden 
 rested upon John and Schuchardt, the latter a man of uni- 
 
164 
 
 Zbe Xife of Goethe 
 
 versity training and in later years the director of the Wei- 
 mar collections of art. Goethe’s servant Friedrich and the 
 library secretary Kräuter also did some work for him as 
 copyists. Riemer and Eckermann served as assistants of 
 a higher order. The former, as we already know, had begun 
 with the new Century ; the latter,not until the summer of 1823. 
 
 Johann Peter Eckermann, bom on the northem border 
 of the Lüneburg Heath, of very poor parents, had spent 
 his youth in peddling, herding cattle, and gathering wood ; 
 had then gradually awakened to a grasp of the higher world 
 and, with a warm interest in art and literature, had tried 
 his skill in drawing, writing, and criticism, until, at the age 
 of thirty, feeling himself irresistibly drawn toward Goethe, 
 he had joumeyed on foot from Hanover to Weimar, where 
 he was given an audience by the man whom he worshipped, 
 and who had accorded his poems afavourable reception. Rec- 
 ognising immediately the usefulness of this man, who was 
 endowed with fine feeling and a rare gift of hearing, and who, 
 as a musing, pliant child of nature, could happily Supple- 
 ment Riemer’s iron-clad book-leaming, Goethe decided to 
 retain him in his employ. He found in Eckermann a sym- 
 pathetic appreciator of his half-finished writings and even 
 of those which had barely been sketched. The young adept 
 could divine the master’s plans, and knew how, by means 
 of coaxing and flattery, to induce him to execute them. He 
 also had the gift of engaging his great sovereign in animated 
 conversation, and of leading him in this way to bring out 
 from the rieh treasure-chamber of his soul the sparkling 
 jeweis which he had not been able to set in written words. 
 With absolute devotion to Goethe, to whose words he 
 listened as to the revelations of a god, he grasped everything 
 with great distinetness and reproduced it in his diary with 
 such fidelity that not only we of later generations, who have 
 familiarised ourselves with Goethe’s peculiar ways of think- 
 ing, feel that his subsequently published Gespräche mit 
 Goethe 23 are thoroughly genuine, but even those who had 
 known the poet personally have assured us that in these 
 conversations they could hear Goethe speaking. 
 
Jfrotn 1824 to 1830 
 
 165 
 
 Beside Eckermann and Riemer Goethe had other helpers : 
 in the science-of-art department, his old friend Meyer; in 
 the official supervision of the state institutions of art and 
 Science, his son, who assisted him also in many other things; 
 and in scientific studies and collections he not infrequently 
 was aided by Soret, who was called from Geneva in 1822 to 
 be the govemor of Karl Alexander, who later became Grand 
 Duke. 
 
 And still this staff of amanuenses, assistants, and advis- 
 ers who read him reports on special topics, does not exhaust 
 the list of those who were constantly about him. There 
 were further Chancellor von Müller, Chief Architect Coudray, 
 and, from the middle of 1826 on, his family physician Dr. 
 Vogel. One or more members of this circle were usually 
 his guests at meals. Eckermann came ordinarily at noon 
 and Riemer in the evening and, after eating, continued 
 their work w T ith him. 
 
 Moreover, though the many-headed College of helpers and 
 family friends made all monastic seclusion an impossibility, 
 such a thing was further prevented by the large number of 
 visitors who, day in and day out, streamed into the famous 
 house. On a fixed day in the week appeared the Grand 
 Duchess Luise; on another day the Hereditary Grand 
 Duchess Maria Paulowna; together with them, or at other 
 times, the Princesses Auguste (who later became the Ger- 
 man Empress) and Marie (who later married Prince Karl of 
 Prussia), to be instructed by Goethe in all that was new 
 in art and literature. At unfixed times came the Grand 
 Duke, the Hereditary Grand Duke (the latter very fre- 
 quently), and his younger brother, Duke Bernhard. Then 
 came the great train of his acquaintance and that of inter- 
 ested people of Weimar and Jena, and, finally, the endless 
 procession of foreign guests from the whole civilised world, 
 among whom the great were not without representation. 
 Even for his contemporaries he was no longer the author of 
 Werther or of Faust, but the supreme representative and 
 patron of spiritual life in general. Men entered upon the 
 worldly, and yet sacred, pilgrimage to Goethe with heart- 
 
i66 
 
 Zbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 stirring expectation. The consciousness of having gazed 
 into his eyes cast on many a life a splendour which shone 
 out brightly in memory ever after. 
 
 First of all the young generation feit drawn to show him 
 their reverence and enthusiasm. Even their most gifted 
 representative, Byron, had not refused to pay literary 
 homage to his “liege lord.” Although Goethe did not 
 receive every nameless writer or immature Student, or the 
 Berlin butcher’s wife who wished to express to him her 
 deep-felt admiration for him as the author of Das Lied von 
 der Glocke , ( !) nevertheless his liberality was extraordinarily 
 broad. If he had dared follow the promptings of his heart 
 he would have admitted every curious person who waited 
 patiently outside for an opportunity to catch a glimpse of the 
 famous man. 
 
 SBarum fte^en fie bator? 
 
 3|t nicfjt £ftre ba unb £or ? 
 
 Äätnen fie getroft herein, 
 
 SBürben rooifl empfangen fein.* 
 
 The sacrifices of time and strength were still greater when 
 people of importance from abroad prolonged their sojoum 
 in Weimar and engrossed his attention on more than one 
 day. He himself held back not a few when they were on 
 the point of departing; especially if they were artists, such 
 as Madame Szymanowska, who was the inspiration of one 
 of his most soulful poems, and Felix Mendelssohn, or if they 
 were friends such as Zelter, Boisseree, Wilhelm von Hum- 
 boldt, Count Reinhard, and Privy Councillor Schultz. For 
 a man less robust, less receptive, and less productive than 
 he was this life would have been too noisy, too irregulär, 
 and would have taxed his strength in too many ways; but 
 him it kept young. To go through his collections with 
 connoisseurs, to sit at a well-filled table and talk with peo- 
 ple of deep thought and feeling about art, Science, and life, 
 
 * Outside the house why do they stand 
 Are there.pray, no doors at hand? 
 
 If they bravely came within 
 They would hearty welcome win. 
 
jfrom 1824 to 1830 
 
 167 
 
 to listen to a private concert in a select circle of ladies and 
 gentlemen, — these to him were sources of rarest enjoyment 
 and refreshment. 
 
 Beside this he had his quiet, idyllic pleasures. Not in 
 solitude, absorbed in his collections or in some book that 
 he was reading — that always afforded some excitement for 
 his mind, which immediately wandered far afield — but in 
 his intercourse with his grandsons, Walther 24 and Wolf- 
 gang, 23 bom in 1818 and 1820 respectively. His special 
 favourite was the younger of the two, his namesake, to 
 whom he gave the same nickname, Wölfehen, that he him- 
 self had once been accustomed to hear from his father. At 
 the age of eight and thereafter Wölfehen was a chief per- 
 sonage in his diary. “ In the evening Wölfehen. Very 
 engaging and fawning in Order to accomplish his purposes.” 
 “Later Wölfehen, who sat down by me and read. I went 
 over the pictures of his child ’s book with him.” “In the 
 evening Wölfehen, who cleared several drawers neatly and 
 was entirely well-behaved in all his play.” The words 
 “entirely well-behaved” lead us to surmise that he was 
 capable of being something eise. Indeed we even have a 
 suspicion that the elder Wolfgang was not free from blame 
 in the matter, and when we have read the following scene 
 described by Soret we may perhaps complain, with the 
 doctor in Werther, that he spoiled the children : 
 
 “At Goethe’s house for a few moments in the evening. 
 I found in his Company his grandson Wolf and his intimate 
 friend the Countess Karoline Egloffstein. Wolf gave his 
 dear grandfather a great deal to do, climbing about over 
 him and sitting now on the one shoulder and now on the 
 other. Goethe endured it all with the greatest tenderness, 
 uncomfortable as the weight of the ten-year-old boy must 
 have been for one of his age. ‘ O dear Wolf,’ said the Coun- 
 tess, ‘ don’t worry your good grandfather so terribly! Why ! 
 you are so heavy he must be quite weary.’ ‘That 
 makes no difference,’ replied Wolf, ‘we are going to bed 
 soon and then grandfather will have time to become 
 completely rested from this exertion.’ ‘You see,’ said 
 
i68 £be Xife of 6oetbc 
 
 Goethe, ‘that love is always of a somewhat impertinent 
 nature. ’ ” 
 
 The children’s mother, Ottilie, 26 understood how to give 
 the house an attractive, homelike, and comfortable ap- 
 pearance and to add to this an element of splendour. Her 
 graciousness and amiableness, her cheerfulness and her 
 sprightliness, gave the whole just such an air as Goethe 
 desired. And when, in addition, “the dear daughter” 
 would fondle him and kiss him it made him all the more 
 happy. The moments of ill-humour, produced by the lack 
 of mutual understanding between her and her husband, 
 were less and less frequently observed by Goethe. They 
 were more and more crowded out of the field of vision by 
 the growing grandsons, who now hardly ever left his 
 presence. 
 
 We have here spoken of Goethe as an old man and a 
 grandfather. And yet, though his cheeks were gradually 
 fading and his hair growing grey, he remained ever young. 
 This youthfulness was time and again a source of aston- 
 ishment to strangers, and, what signifies more, even to those 
 intimately associated with him. “ His whole expression 
 was cheerfulness, vigour, youth,” wrote Eckermann in 1823. 
 “ He stood there like Apollo, with never-fading inward 
 youth,” said the same man in May, 1825. Schuchardt says: 
 “ He spoke with strong voice, with dramatic expression, 
 and while he was dictating Die Wanderjahre to me I was 
 often startled when he gave a drastic or pathetic impersona- 
 tion of the characters.” But more clearly than in these 
 general descriptions, which lay peculiar stress on outward 
 things, his youthfulness is revealed in his conversations 
 which have been preserved and handed down. How mer- 
 rily he joked, and how he could mingle seriousness with 
 playful humour! How he could disguise himself, and tease, 
 or put on a tragic air, like Mephistopheles! How he could 
 rant and rave, and that too, if in the presence of intimate 
 friends, in a style as vigorous as though he were still the 
 Leipsic Student or the wild original genius of the Storm 
 and Stress period. Let us listen to him for a few moments. 
 
front 1824 to 1830 169 
 
 In doing so we shall recognise something more than his 
 youthfulness. 
 
 “Now Sömmering has died,” he remarked to Soret in 
 March, 1830, “ scarcely a miserable seventy-five years of age. 
 What beggars men are, that they have not the courage to 
 hold out longer than that! I think better of my friend 
 Bentham, this most radical fool. He is still well preserved, 
 and yet he is a few weeks older even than I am.” Soret 
 sought to defend Bentham against the reproach of radicalism, 
 declaring that in England Goethe also would have been 
 somewhat of a radical and would have inveighed against 
 the abuses of the administrative government. “ What 
 do you take me for?” replied Goethe. “Do you mean 
 to imply that I should have spied about for abuses, and, 
 what is more, should have discovered them and called them 
 by their right names, I, who should have lived on abuses in 
 England? Born in England, I should have been a rieh 
 duke, or, rather, a bishop with a yearly income of thirty 
 thousand pounds sterling.” Soret ventured the opinion 
 that it might, however, have been different if he had drawn 
 a blank in the lottery of life. “ Do you think that I should 
 have committed the folly of hitting upon a blank? . . . 
 
 I should have lied and played the hypocrite so much and so 
 long, in verse and in prose, that my thirty thousand a year 
 should not have escaped me.” 
 
 On one occasion Chancellor von Müller quoted an ut- 
 terance of a certain author to the effect that “ humour is 
 nothing eise than wit of the heart.” Goethe flew into a 
 most violent passion over the expression “nothing eise,” 
 and exclaimed : “ Cicero once said that friendship is nothing 
 eise than etc. Oh ! thou ass, thou silly fellow, thou abomi- 
 nable whippersnapper, to go to Greece to get wisdom and 
 then to produce nothing more clever than that nonsensical 
 phrase ! ’ ’ 
 
 On another occasion (in June, 1830) Müller talked with 
 him about biblical criticism and faith. “Mankind,” re- 
 marked Goethe, “ is still involved in a religious crisis. Since 
 men have learned to see how much stupid stuff has been 
 
170 
 
 ZTfce Xlfe of (3oetbe 
 
 foisted upon them, and since they have begun to believe 
 that the apostles and saints were no better men than such 
 fellows as Klopstock, Lessing, and we other poor rascals, it 
 is only natural that there should be some stränge clashes 
 in men’s heads.” 
 
 Gentle, peaceable Boisseree visited Goethe in 1826. 
 Their conversation turned to the then prevailing symbolism 
 in art. “I am a believer in plastic art,” snapped Goethe; 
 “ I have sought to make the world and nature clear to my 
 mind, and now come these fellows, cast a mist before my 
 eyes, show me things now at a distance, now oppressively 
 near, like ombres chinoises. The devil take ’em!” 
 
 On the following day Boisseree w r as again at the home 
 of his revered patron. “The reviling began again,” he 
 noted in his diary. Paris, German and French partisanship, 
 whims of princes, decadence of taste, follies of all kinds, 
 priestcraft in France and rationalistic zealotism in Germany t 
 Philhellenism as a cloak to hide other partisanship, and 
 such things, were severely satirised by Goethe. “With all 
 these mocking words,” continues Boisseree, “it seemed to 
 me in the end as though I were on the Brocken! I said so 
 to the old man and he replied: ‘ Why! we are not yet ready 
 to descend. So long as we have not thoroughly discussed 
 the whole world we must continue with this clean conversa- 
 tion about society.’ ” 
 
 He gave a conversation with Chancellor von Müller a 
 somewhat similar bright tum : “ Whoever desires to associate 
 with me must occasionally put up with my churlish whims.” 
 As Meyer was present during the conversation and kept 
 silent, Goethe added roguishly: “Old Meyer is wise, very 
 wise; but he does n’t speak out, does n’t contradict me, and 
 that is vexatious. I am certain that down in his heart he 
 is ten times more inclined to scold than I am, and that he 
 considers me a weak light besides.” 
 
 Humour did not always smooth the excited waves- 
 He was not in a mood for humour when his moral feelings 
 were wounded, not even when the man with whom he was 
 talking was the offending person. For example, on one 
 
jfrom 1824 to 1830 
 
 171 
 
 occasion Müller showed him with a certain degree of pleasure 
 a mischievous epigram on a member of Weimar society. He 
 burst into a passion and exclaimed: “ By such hostile and 
 indiscreet rhymery one only makes enemies and imbitters 
 one’s own mood and existence. Why! I would sooner hang 
 myself than be everlastingly denying, everlastingly on the 
 side of the Opposition, everlastingly lying in wait for a chance 
 to cast a venomed dart at the faults and failings of my 
 neighbours and fellow-creatures. You are still mighty 
 young and frivolous, if you can justify such a thing.” If 
 in such cases humour could not overcome the discord of the 
 moment, love could, love for man and for the particular 
 child of man who stood before him. And so, even in the 
 course of this conversation, he became more and more 
 friendly, and in the closing sentence of his account of the 
 evening Müller says he was very glad that his communica- 
 tion had provoked the explosion. 
 
 Such stormy, hot-blooded, moody, satirical, angry effu- 
 sions were just as much a necessity of his full heart as they 
 had been in his youth. The Chancellor once wrote down 
 the observation (March, 1823): “Like a storm cloud, he 
 sought to unburden himself of his over-abundance of 
 energy by means of spiritual lightning and thunder.” In 
 comparison with what it had been in his youth, the over- 
 abundance seemed to have increased, 27 as much because 
 of his broader knowledge and insight as because of his 
 greater receptivity and activity. In 1828, when he was in 
 his seventy-ninth year, he characterised his activity as 
 boundless, indeed, almost ridiculous. 
 
 If we seek to get some conception of this activity we 
 shall fittingly begin with the fact that he was first and last 
 a poet. To be sure, the poetic stream no longer flowed so 
 freelv and abundantly as in his younger years, but the 
 amount of literary work undertaken was as great as ever 
 and it required more energetic application, inasmuch as 
 hand in hand with the decrease of his facility of creation 
 had gone an increase of the difficulty of the subjects, es- 
 pecially Die Wanderjahre and the Second Part of Faust. 
 
172 
 
 £be Xife of ©oetbe 
 
 After tirelessly recasting and filing, he finally succeeded in 
 1828, in his Novelle, in finding a finished form for an old epic 
 plan to which he had given the provisional title Die Jagd. 
 Now with epic breadth, now with courtly elegance, here 
 with touching tendemess, there with most solemn dignity, 
 he develops with deep penetration the rieh symbolic content 
 of this court and animal story, so that we can foresee the 
 victory of pious, courageous love over wild force, and 
 believe in it, not as a stränge miracle, but as the manifesta- 
 tion of an eternal law. 
 
 In addition to these works of pure fiction, he was con- 
 stantly occupied by his biographical writings. True, he no 
 longer allowed himself the time for the artistic elaboration 
 which he had given the first volumes of his autobiography. 
 It is the original freshness of the letters and the unfailing 
 clearness of the diaries out of which he composed his Italie- 
 nische Reise (at which he had been working since 1816) and 
 his descriptions of the wars of the revolution, not his recon- 
 structive power of presentation, that gives these works 
 their permanent value. Even the fourth part of Dichtung 
 lind Wahrheit hardly attempts to combine the biographical 
 details into a unified picture. The loosely compiled Annalen, 
 which he brought down to 1822, and his Briefwechsel 
 zwischen Schiller und Goethe, are, and pretend to be, nothing 
 but collections of material. It was a question of recording 
 quickly, in the time still left at his disposal, as much as 
 possible of his remarkable life. 
 
 In addition to all this he assumed in 1826 the bürden of 
 a new complete edition of his works. Then, too, the serial 
 publieation Kunst und Altertum, which he continued to edit 
 in collaboration with Meyer, gave him so much more to do 
 as in it he now devoted his critical attention to the world’s 
 literature. These undertakings alone would have exhausted 
 the strength of even younger people. For him a few mom- 
 ing hours sufficed to accomplish this part of his dailv task. 
 Then came official business to claim his attention. 
 
 He was now relieved of most of the administrative 
 branches which had earlier weighed upon him, but the direc- 
 
Jfrom 1824 to 1830 
 
 173 
 
 tion of the educational institutions, which he retained, had 
 assumed incomparably greater dimensions. To still other 
 things he devoted himself voluntarily, simply because he 
 had once for all acquired an interest in them. Eversince 
 the days when he had directed the construction of highways 
 and had superintended the building of the castle he had 
 considered himself the Superintendent of all Weimar con- 
 structions, both above the ground and beneath the ground, 
 and no causeway, no church or school, indeed, no gate- 
 keeper’s lodge, could be built in the grand duchy without 
 the plans first having been laid before him. 
 
 After the poet and state official the scholar demanded his 
 rights. Here his burdens had greatly increased with the 
 rapid advance of the Sciences. As this process is going on 
 almost all the time we usually see scholars, as they grow 
 older, limiting themselves more and more, even in the 
 special field which they cultivate. Goethe never thought 
 of such a thing. On the contrary, he broadened in his old 
 age the great circle in which as an independent investigator 
 he had promoted the development of Science by the ad- 
 dition of a new field, that of meteorology. 
 
 Furthermore there were the art acquisitions, the artistic 
 productions, and the theories of art, in the most important 
 European countries which demanded consideration. Even 
 in the fields in which he himself did no work he kept himself 
 informed as to the progress of Science, in order to satisfy his 
 requirements as a far-seeing scholar no less than those as 
 an educated man. Philosophy, theology, history, geography, 
 and political economy came constantly within his ränge of 
 study. In the same way as the Sciences, polite literature 
 had broadened its scope to an unusual degree. There was 
 an unheard-of productivity in all civilised countries, and 
 there existed such an intimate relation between the various 
 literatures that it was indeed possible to speak of a world 
 literature. To keep himself informed in the chief phenomena 
 of this world literature was for Goethe as much a source of 
 great delight as it was a cotnmand of duty. Byron, Man- 
 zoni, Beranger, Victor Hugo, Carlyle, and Walter Scott, to 
 
174 
 
 £be %\f e of (Boetbe 
 
 mention but a few of the foreign writers, received from him 
 attentive consideration, and though he may have crossed 
 himself ten times before Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris, 
 nevertheless he read his works to the end. We find a 
 further indication of Goethe’s youthfulness in the fact that 
 he did not assume an unsympathetic attitude toward the 
 newer tendencies. 
 
 With calm composure, as though he were saving nothing 
 of special importance, he wrote in July, 1830, to Boisseree: 
 “ I am now keeping my eyes on the main centres of life 
 in the fields of art, literature, and the Sciences. Berlin, 
 Vienna, Munich, and Milan occupy me especially; Paris, 
 London, and Edinburgh, in their way.” But art, litera- 
 ture and Science, were not the only things included within 
 the ränge of his interests; it embraced also matters per- 
 taining directly to practical life. He was most intensely 
 interested in the building of canals, harbours, and tunnels, 
 which were being more and more urgently demanded by the 
 development of local and foreign commerce and by the 
 growing desire of man to shorten distances. Of the Thames 
 tunnel, the Erie canal, and the new Bremen harbour, he 
 sought, by means of most accurate drawings, outlines, and 
 descriptions, to obtain as clear conceptions as possible of 
 the structures themselves and of the difficulties encountered 
 and the means of overcoming them. Other great com- 
 mercial projects, such as the Panama, Nicaragua, Suez, and 
 Rhine-Danube canals, aroused in him such lively, indeed, 
 passionate, interest that he said he would like to live about 
 fifty years longer just on their account. 
 
 In the realm of politics he followed with close attention 
 the Greek war of liberty, the partisan fights in France 
 and England, and the movements in Germany. German, 
 French, English, and Italian newspapers and periodicals 
 came regularly to his house. Even though out of pressure 
 of work, or out of vexation at the mass of worthless stuff 
 in the journals that covered up what was worth knowing, 
 and with the consciousness that he would leam about im- 
 portant things through his personal relations, he often gave 
 
tfrom 1824 to 1830 
 
 i75 
 
 up the reading of journals for weeks, even months, at a 
 time, nevertheless he always came back to it again and read 
 then, if possible, what he had skipped. He realised that, 
 if he wished to understand foreign countries, he must study 
 them, even in their seemingly unimportant phenomena of 
 life. 
 
 With his stupendous thirst for knowledge — “ He desires 
 always to be advancing, always to be advancing, always to 
 be leaming, always to be learning!” Eckermann once ex- 
 claimed, astonished — and with all the variety of his interests, 
 it was an almost daily experience that between moming 
 and evening he ran through thousands of years. When 
 perchance in the moming he read in the newspapers the 
 debates of the Chamber in Paris, then turned to Walter 
 Scott’s or Bourienne’s descriptions of the life of Napoleon, 
 then studied a drawing by Rembrandt, became absorbed 
 further in the consideration of a medal of Mohammed II., 
 read an essay by Villemain on the dramas of Hrotswitha 
 or a chapter from Niebuhr’s Römische Geschichte, made a 
 critical examination of plaster casts of Greek statuary, and 
 then in addition investigated an elephant’s tooth which had 
 been found in the calcareous tufa of Weimar, it may be 
 said that thousands, yes, myriads of years had marched by 
 before his eyes. Hence he could say of himself that he 
 lived in millenaries, and because of this existence of seons 
 it seemed stränge to him when he heard men talk of statues 
 and monurnents, because, in the spirit, he already saw them 
 destroyed and wiped out. 
 
 As his eyes surveyed the restless surgings and the violent 
 upheavals of history it was within his power to recognise 
 the broad general relation of things and the small significance 
 of the day, and in the presence of the most important con- 
 temporaneous events he was able to preserve his composure, 
 or, in case it was shaken for a moment, to regain it quickly. 
 Events which left long-lingering impressions on other people 
 were to him, in the end, but “ phantasmagorial clouds” 
 hastening by, and in every case, even though they had a 
 rather substantial nucleus, were but natural phenomena 
 
176 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 which often occur in history and which in their origin and 
 development need cause the man of understanding no ex- 
 citement or fear. He also studied himself and his work from 
 this broad point of view, and succeeded in forming “the 
 conception ” of himself as a link in the chain of historical 
 developments. Thus he became to himself an historical 
 phenomenon, as he frankly confessed to Wilhelm von Hum- 
 boldt. This attitude of mind became a source of deep paci- 
 fication, of which, with his continual overwhelming youthful 
 responsiveness and sensitiveness, he was in greater need 
 than any other man in the world . 
 
 Through this comprehension of himself in his great 
 world-relations he gained something more than repose. 
 He saw that his way of influencing the world must be based 
 on goodness and purity. The ruler, the statesman, the 
 general, the party leader, who under definite, temporary con- 
 ditions exert an influence in the Service of definite, practical 
 purposes, may achieve great things, even out of impure 
 motives. He, the poet, who wished to develop the minds 
 of men to a higher grasp of life, independent of time and 
 place, dared labour only with a good and pure soul. “ One 
 must be something in order to do something,” he once said 
 of the poet, taking “do” in the highest sense. Hence we 
 see him more consciously, more steadfastly, more surely than 
 in early life, making of himself a good and pure man. This 
 rising to the ideal was so obvious that when Bettina saw him 
 in 1824, the first time in thirteen years, she declared that 
 his genius had resolved itself partly into goodness. Through 
 this goodness and purity he possessed now far more than 
 ever before the power of lifting men up and ennobling them 
 both morally and spiritually. He redeems the highest and 
 the best that is in them and frees them from the dark and 
 the low. He consecrates them, as Iphigenia consecrated 
 Orestes. A touching example is afforded by a letter from 
 Privy Councillor Schultz, written in 1824, in which he said 
 of the sculptor Rauch, who had just retumed from Weimar: 
 “ Rauch came to see me one evening. He was in a certain 
 exalted state of feeling which I have noticed in others who 
 
1 77 
 
 tftrom 1824 to 1830 
 
 came away from your presence, o£ which, indeed, I myself 
 have been personally conscious. It is a kind of transfigura- 
 tion or, rather, sanctification.” Young Grillparzer, who 
 approached him as a stranger, said of their meeting: “At 
 first he seemed to me like a Jupiter, then like a father.” 
 
 To Goethe the transfigured state of being to which he 
 had attained was the highest happiness of his old age. 
 When he now looked back the sun of his knowledge of the 
 world and himself seemed earlier to have stood at a low 
 altitude. It had been winter then, or merely the promise 
 of spring. If in those past years he had accomplished any 
 permanent good or had manifested pure sentiments, it was 
 because of his happy instinct through which shone his in- 
 bom reason, or it was done under the benign influence of 
 others who loved him or were loved by him. When in- 
 stinct had slumbered and good influence had been lacking 
 he had stumbled. But now, when the sun stood at a high 
 altitude, his reason was freed from its crust of ice,* and it 
 was able to work out the divine, the essential, in his nature, 
 his truly genuine and etemal personality, and to attain the 
 goal of his longing, by “ making his microcosm revolve about 
 a pure centre and bringing him into a worthy relation 
 toward the Infinite.” Hence he now ventured for the first 
 time to speak with touching accent of the “ springtime of 
 his soul.” The beauty and splendour of this springtime 
 could no longer be disturbed by anything. Not even by the 
 sorest temptation, by the clouds of incense which arose 
 to him from the fires of innumerable sacrifices. Though 
 his fame was sung from the Mississippi 28 to the Volga, in a 
 glorious symphony whose mighty accords made the croaking 
 of uncomprehending or malcontent individuals indistin- 
 guishable, though he was lauded a hundred times, in word 
 and writing, as a god whose existence made the world 
 happy, he remained the same simple man. Not as though 
 he were not conscious of his worth and looked upon all the 
 
 * “I presume I was late in becoming reasonable, but I have become so 
 at last,” he remarked to Chancellor von Müller, half in jest, half in eamest, 
 injune, 1830. 
 
 VOL.III 12 
 
17 » 
 
 ftbe %\tc of Goetbe 
 
 pseans chanted in his honour as idle sound ; but in the know- 
 ledge that he owed what was praised in him to a favour of 
 fate, which had formed his nature as it was and not other- 
 wise, even to his ardent striving after the ideal. And as he 
 said, in 1830, that he was perhaps the only Christian then 
 living, in the sense in which Christ would use the word, he 
 could also call himself, with humility and pride, “ the hum- 
 blest” of all. 
 
 It is in this high human quality, not in his works, that 
 we must seek an explanation of the conquering, beatific 
 power which he exerted over his contemporaries. If, after 
 all that has been said, there should still be need of testimonv, 
 let us listen to the w T ords of Wilhelm von Humboldt, who 
 was himself one of the best and most enlightened men of 
 the time. Nine days after Goethe’s death he said that 
 Goethe had exercised the mighty influence for which he 
 was distinguished by his mere existence, unconsciously as it 
 were, and without any inten tion. “ This is entirely distinct 
 from his spiritual Creations as a thinker and a poet; it lies 
 in his great and unique personality.” 
 
 If we now take up again the chronicle of Goethe’s life 
 there is not much more to be recorded in the way of outward 
 events. As is usually the case with old people, he did noth- 
 ing but celebrate jubilees and bear other people to the 
 grave. Both these things were to him sources of deep 
 agitation and we can understand why, at the age of eighty, 
 he should have prayed to the gods for endurable sorrow 
 and moderate enjoyment (letter to Wilhelm von Humboldt, 
 March 1, 1829). 
 
 First came the jubilees. On the 3d of September, 1825, 
 fifty years had passed since Karl August had come to the 
 throne, and on the 7th of November fifty years since Goethe 
 had come to Weimar. By these important periods both 
 fully realised how infinitely much that was good, great, and 
 beautiful had grown out of their life and work together. 
 By the side of this all temporary clashes, ill feelings, and 
 misunderstandings sank into the sea of forgetfulness. They 
 had been fugitive shadow r s which clouds in sailing by had 
 
jfrom 1824 to 1830 
 
 179 
 
 cast over the sunlit earth. At the jubilee of Karl August’s 
 reign Goethe called himself the most favoured servant of 
 his ruler. And as he was the one most blessed he wished 
 also to be the first to congratulate his Sovereign. At six 
 o’ clock on the moming of the jubilee he went to call on the 
 Grand Duke in the Roman House, which was situated in 
 the solitude of the Park. As Goethe entered, Karl August 
 stretched out both hands toward the beloved friend of his 
 youth, his teacher, confidant, minister, and poet. Goethe 
 grasped his hands and, overcome with emotion, could utter 
 but the words: “Together tili the last breath.” The 
 thoughts of both flew back to the days when they had en- 
 tered into the bond with youthful, overflowing enj oyment 
 of life. The few who witnessed the scene heard the Grand 
 Duke exclaim : “ 0 for eighteen years and Ilmenau!” Af- 
 ter many remembrances of those days, he added with great 
 animation: “But let us also remember with gratitude that 
 even to-day we still enjoy the fulfilment of what was once 
 sung to us in Tiefurt : 
 
 9tur £uft unb ßidjt 
 Unb greunbeelieb’ — 
 
 (Srmübe rticfit, 
 
 Süßem bieg noch blieb.* 
 
 He embraced Goethe and they continued the conversation 
 in a low voice which the others present could not hear. 
 
 Now came the 7th of November. According to Karl 
 August’s will it was to be celebrated not alone as the fiftieth 
 anniversary of Goethe’ s arrival in Weimar, but also as that 
 of his entrance into the Service of the state — a most glorious 
 honour to confer upon his Frankfort guest after the lapse of 
 half a Century. “For,” remarked the Grand Duke in an 
 Order issued to Chancellor von Müller, “it was with the first 
 moment of his sojoum here, and not later, with the taking 
 of the corporal oath [at his entrance into office on the nth 
 
 * Pure light and air 
 
 And love of friend — 
 
 Against all wear 
 
 These boons defend. 
 
i8o 
 
 Zhe %\fc of 6oetbe 
 
 of June, 1776], that Goethe began to work and labour for 
 the welfare and fame of Weimar.” After repeating this 
 testimony in his letter of congratulation to Goethe he con- 
 tinued : “ Accordingly it is with the keenest pleasure that I 
 recognise the fiftieth retum of this day as the jubilee of my 
 first servant of the state, the friend of my youth, who has 
 hitherto accompanied me through all the changing fortunes 
 of my life with unwavering fidelity, affection, and stead- 
 fastness ; to whose prudent counsel, lively interest, and ever- 
 pleasing Services I owe the success of most important 
 undertakings ; and the winning of whom for ever I consider 
 as one of the highest embellishments of my reign.” In Order 
 to make known to the whole population the recognition 
 which he had expressed in his letter of congratulation he 
 had it posted in public. When Goethe found it out he ex- 
 claimed, with tears in his eyes : “ That is just like him! ” In 
 addition Karl August sent him a medal which was to stand 
 for all time as a memento of the jubilee. F inally he arranged 
 for the publication of an edition de luxe of Iphigenie, which 
 he doubtless considered the poet’s most finished creation 
 and, at the same time, the noblest impress of his spirit. 
 He also had the play presented in the evening.* It was 
 preceded by a prologue, during which a bust of Goethe was 
 crowned on the stage. 
 
 9 htn roirb, 3 f)tn felbft auf§ berrlicbfte 311 lofjnen, 
 
 ®ie eble ©tirnmit cro’gcm ©cbmiuf belaubt. | 
 
 The deep inward feeling of gratitude and the admiration 
 and reverence of the grand ducal pair may have been less 
 apparent in the facts just related than in their countenances 
 and words, especially during the long visit which they paid 
 the celebrated man. Chancellor von Müller said to Fritz 
 Schlosser: “The graciousness of the Grand Duke and his 
 exalted wife was overwhelming.” The citizens of Weimar 
 
 * Goethe was present at the performance up to the third act ( Goethes 
 goldner Jubeltag, p. 40). 
 
 f And now is placed a laurel wreath unfading 
 Upon his brow, reward most glorious. 
 
tfrom 1824 to 1830 
 
 1 8 1 
 
 and the University of Jena also celebrated the day in a 
 way befitting Goethe’s great Services to the world. 
 
 The entry which the poet himself made in his diary con- 
 sisted of these few very suggestive words, “Most solemn 
 day.” 
 
 It was the evening glow, casting a most gorgeous purple 
 light upon the bond between Karl August and Goethe. The 
 night was approaching, — for the younger of the two more 
 quickly than for the older. 
 
 About two and a half years had passed since Goethe’s 
 golden jubilee, when, on the i4th of June, 1828, death 
 came softly, but suddenly, to summon hence his princely 
 friend and ruler. The end was in keeping with his life. 
 The brave, determined man died standing at an open 
 window. It was a hard blow for Goethe. He said to Ecker- 
 mann: “On the whole there was nobody who understood 
 him through and through, as I did.” “He was one of the 
 greatest rulers that Germany ever possessed.” “Only a 
 paltry Century later, and how he, in such a high position, 
 would have advanced his age!” “There was much of the 
 divine in him. He was animated by most noble graciousness 
 and purest love of man. He would gladly have made all 
 mankind happy.” With thoughts such as these Goethe 
 wrote to Sulpiz Boisseree: “The surviving members who 
 truly belong to the family of the noble Prince now recog- 
 nise no other duty and cherish no other hope than to con- 
 tinue to live in accordance with his glorious purposes in 
 their broad, general application.” 
 
 It was hard indeed for Goethe to overcome his grief. It 
 made no small gap in his life to feel no longer the presence 
 of this distinguished, energetic, benign ruler by his side, 
 and to look about in vain for the friendly patron of his 
 literary works, his scientific investigations, and his other 
 favourite pursuits, and a fellow guardian of a thousand 
 precious memories. In his great sorrow during the first 
 days he did not feel capable of going to the Grand Duchess 
 Luise with a message of condolence, nor even of sending her 
 a letter. Not until a week had passed did he succeed in 
 
182 
 
 Zbc Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 writing her a few lines. To Soret, who was among those 
 near the Grand Duchess, he wrote : “ Even this little has 
 cost me much; for I shrink from touching with words that 
 which is unbearable to the feelings.” 
 
 The saddest act, the funeral of Karl August, was still 
 before him. It was to occur on the 9th of July. “ In order 
 in the most painful state of his inner being to spare at least 
 his outward senses,” he begged permission to retire to the 
 Castle of Domburg, which was very willingly granted him. 
 So he left his Weimar hermitage, from which he had not 
 departed for several years, and went to the Domburg for 
 a long stay. The castle, surrounded by flowers and vine- 
 yards and situated upon a height affording a broad, serene 
 outlook upon the Saale valley and the mountains, pleased 
 him so much that he prolonged his sojoum to more than 
 two months. This place, which charms every visitor, ap- 
 peared to him, after his sorrowful impressions in Weimar, 
 “in intensified colours, like the rainbow on a dark grey 
 background.” 
 
 He often awoke before daybreak and lay in the open 
 window, feasting his eyes on the glory of the three planets 
 just then in conjunction and refreshing his soul in the grow- 
 ing splendour of the dawn. When the world in this solemn 
 beauty lay before him so still and pure, he realised viv- 
 idly the significance of the Homeric words, “holy morn.” 
 Spending then almost the whole day in the open air he 
 directed his attention chiefly to plants and the atmosphere; 
 for here botany and meteorology were his favourite occu- 
 pations. Out of interest in a new theory of viticulture he 
 “ conversed familiarly with the branches and tendrils of 
 the grape-vines, which gave him good ideas.” In this re- 
 juvenating intercourse with nature, in his cheerful moun- 
 tain lookout, and in the wann summer air, his lyric fountain 
 began again to flow. The man of seventy-nine wrote songs, 
 even a love song, and one of which he might have been 
 proud in the days of his youth. The soft light of the moon 
 united him with the last loved one whom he still tenderlv 
 cherished, Marianne von Willemer. They had agreed to 
 
jfrom 1824 to 1830 
 
 183 
 
 think of each other at every full moon. On the evening of 
 the 25th of August, when he saw the moon rise in wonderful 
 splendour out of dark clouds into the blue nocturnal sky he 
 greeted it joyfully as a strong assurance that Marianne re- 
 turned his love: 
 
 Beugel mir, bap idj geliebt bin, 
 
 ©ei baö Siebten nueg fo fern. 
 
 ©0 l)inan benn, f)cU ltnb geller, 
 deiner fBabn, in Holler fpradjt ! 
 
 ©cfjfägt mein §erj nitef) fdjmerglid) fd^neQer, 
 
 Überfelig ift bie ÜHadjt.* 
 
 In the copy which he sent to Marianne he was wise and 
 considerate enough to change “ schmerzlich schneller ” to the 
 unpoetical but less exciting “ schneller , schneller .” 
 
 On the nth of September he returned to Weimar with 
 his mind pacified and his strength renewed. A happy sur- 
 prise was avvaiting him there. In the antechamber to his 
 study he found Standing the great clock which had once 
 marked for him the hours in his father’s house. After the 
 death of his mother it had passed into the hands of stran- 
 gers. from whom the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz 
 had bought it for the purpose of doing the poet a pleasure. 
 
 “To live long means to outlive many,” Goethe once said. 
 He might have said, “To live long means to bury many.” 
 In this his experience was only too rieh in the course of his 
 long life. Even before the death of Karl August, Charlotte 
 von Stein, the ardently loved companion of an important 
 period of his life, had passed away — on the 6th of January, 
 1827. Of late years the relation of the two had been as 
 serene and harmonious as possible, free from reminiscences 
 of all the bitterness which they had experienced. 29 The 
 
 * That I am loved dost thou assure me, 
 
 Though my love be far away. 
 
 Higher soar soft-pinioned greeting, 
 
 Clear thy path, thy splendour bright ! 
 
 Though my heart’s pain haste its beating, 
 
 Overblissful is the night. 
 
184 
 
 £be %\fc of Goetbe 
 
 death of Goethe’s wife removed the first and last hindrance, 
 inward as well as outward, that had ever separated them. 
 The period of life from 1776 to 1786 arose again in its old 
 splendour before his eyes, and in 1820 he paid to Frau von 
 Stein the highest and most beautiful homage in memory of 
 the past. He praised her under her former poetical name 
 “Lida,” placing her sideby side with Shakespeare: 
 
 ©iner (findigen angeboren, 
 
 ©inen ©innigen Dereljren, 
 
 2Bie öercint eg unb Sinn! 
 ßiba ! ©Iftcf ber nädjften 9läl)e, 
 
 SSBilltam! ©fern ber fcfyönftcn $öljc, 
 
 @ud) nerbanf id), tnag icfy bin. 
 
 Jag’ unb 3al)re finb Derfcfirounben, 
 
 Unb bod) ruljt auf jenen ©tunben 
 Weinet 2Berte§ S^oHacminn.* 
 
 And to her last letter of congratulation on his birthday, 
 in the year 1826, he had answered, his heart plainly trembling 
 with emotion: “To see preserved through so many years 
 
 the mutual inclination and love of those living in the imme- 
 diate neighbourhood of one another is the highest blessing 
 that ean be bestowed upon man.” 
 
 The news of her death cannot have come to Goethe unex- 
 pectedly; for she was considerably past eighty years of age 
 and had grown weak and decrepit. When the end really 
 came, it was doubtless a great shock to him. For that very 
 reason he took good care to make no reference to it to any- 
 body, either in conversation or in writing. 
 
 The year 1830 brought the aged poet two more heavy 
 losses. The first came through the death of the Grand 
 
 * Only one loved idol owning, 
 
 Only one ideal enthroning, 
 
 How it quickens heart and brain! 
 
 Lida, nearest joy and rarest, 
 
 William, star on high the fairest, 
 
 For my all I thank ye twain. 
 
 Days and years the past have entered, 
 
 Yet within those hours is centred 
 All my life’s substantial gain. 
 
3from 1824 to 1830 
 
 185 
 
 Duchess Luise. Düring the second half of her life in 
 Weimar he had stood nearer to her than in the first half. 
 He admired her noble attitude of resignation, which made 
 petty vexations and oppositions, such as had been fre- 
 quent in the beginning, no longer possible; he admired the 
 courage and tact which she had shown during the terrible 
 days of October, 1806; he reverenced her as his protectress, 
 who sought by means of compromise to ad just the dissen- 
 sions and differences between him and Karl August, as well 
 as the other powers of the grand duchv — for example, the 
 diet; he loved her for her lofty human sentiments, evidence 
 of which she had given in her attitude toward his marriage ; 
 and, finally, he loved her as his faithful, devoted spiritual 
 pupil. And now this eminent woman was called away from 
 this life, leaving another place vacant in his more intimate 
 circle. Those about him were apprehensive as to how he 
 would receive the news of her death, which occurred on the 
 i4th of February. Eckermann gives the following account : 
 “ I said to myself : for more than fifty years he has been asso- 
 ciated with this princess; he has enjoyed her special grace 
 and favour; her death must move him deeply. With such 
 thoughts I entered his room. . . . Already informed 
 
 of the death, he was sitting at the table with his daughter- 
 in-law and grandchildren ... all the bells of the city 
 began to toll, Frau von Goethe looked at me and we began to 
 speak louder, in Order that the tones of the death knell 
 might not rouse and agitate his inner being. For we thought 
 that he feit as we did. But he did not feel as we feit; the 
 state of his inner being was entirely different. He sat 
 before us like a being of a higher world, inaccessible to 
 earthly sorrows. ” 
 
 He was having his divine hour. 
 
 The hardest hour which his powers of soul were called 
 upon to undergo came in the late autumn of the same year, 
 when he was bereft of his only son. With all the love and 
 veneration which August cherished for his father, he had. 
 as time went on, become a source of ever-increasing annoy- 
 ance and ever-diminishing pleasure. When Goethe wrote of 
 
i86 
 
 Gbe Xife of öoetbe 
 
 himself, in the year 1827, that with the highest pleasure, 
 which he was enjoying and which might raise him above 
 himself, there was still combined much that reduced this 
 pleasure, the most prominent moderating factor which he 
 had in mind was doubtless his son’s condition. Though 
 not wanting in talents, August was not gifted enough to ac- 
 complish great things, and, on the other hand, was not un- 
 aspiring enough to be satisfied with small things — as, for 
 example, his office as councillor of the board of domains, or 
 his Services as an assistant to his father. He thirsted for 
 more important achievements, the more so as he was chafed 
 by the feeling that he was everywhere esteemed only as the 
 son of his father. The deep dissatisfaction arising from 
 this source was further intensified by his unhappy, loveless 
 marriage, and by his own irascible and eccentric nature. By 
 virtue of this nature he resorted to a most dangerous remedy 
 to benumb his sense of inward disruption : he gave the rein to 
 his natural inclination toward sensual enjoyment. Under 
 the combined influence of such hostile powers he went to ruin, 
 body and soul. He saw and feit his decline and longed for 
 an event that would snatch him from his accustomed path of 
 life. A journey to Italy had left a trail of light throughout 
 the whole gloomy life of his grandfather, and had been the 
 means whereby his father had experieneed a regeneration of 
 body and spirit. Such a journey seemed to him the event 
 for which he yearned. 
 
 Goethe gave his consent, but with little hope of beneficial 
 results. He knew that his son’s condition was entirely dif- 
 ferent from his own and his father’s. To Eckermann, who 
 was to accompany August, he said by way of instruction 
 for the journey, “ The chief thing is that one leam to control 
 one’s seif.” On the 2d of April the two set out on the way. 
 They went first to Frankfort, then up the Rhine to Switzer- 
 land, over the Simplon to northem Italy, of which they 
 made a thorough tour, and thence on to Genoa. Here Ecker- 
 mann, who had been ill for some time, was forced to remain 
 behind. August went on alone to Florence, then to Leghorn , 
 and, as a sign that a new era had dawned, joumeyed thence 
 
3from 1824 to 1830 
 
 187 
 
 by steamboat to Naples. According to his father’s State- 
 ment, his letters from Naples began to indicate an un- 
 healthy exaltation. He finally turned his Steps to Rome, 
 and had been there but a few days when, under the strain of 
 an attack of scarlet fever, his shattered Constitution gave 
 way. He died in the night of the 2Öth to the 2 7th of Octo- 
 ber, “ patri antevertens ,” as the touching, laconic epitaph on 
 his tomb teils us. 
 
 On the ioth of November the news of his death arrived 
 in Weimar. Outwardly Goethe preserved his composure 
 perfectly ; but inwardly his grief raged all the more violently. 
 We know this from his own words, from the testimony 
 which he bore in confidential letters. Even though he had 
 not confessed it we should have been able to recognise it from 
 many signs. One of the most remar kable of these was the 
 timidity with which he avoided the words “death” and 
 “die” whenever the conversation turned upon August. To 
 his daughter-in-law he broke the news of the death in these 
 words: “August is not coming back.” To Zelter he spoke 
 
 twice of his son’s “staying aw r ay,”* and on a third occasion 
 veiled the terrible fact in the mild words, “He set out on 
 the way in order to rest by the Pyramid of Cestius.” Even 
 in his own house no one dared mention the death of August. 
 
 The important thing was not merely to keep the wound 
 from being touched, but to heal it. “ Here it is the great 
 conception of duty alone that can keep one up ; the spirit is 
 willing and the body must,” was one of his utterances dur- 
 ing the first days of mourning. So he gathered together 
 all his strength and sought to forget his sorrow by keeping 
 his mind more intent on his w r ork. The pain v r as alleviated 
 in this way, it is true, but for the violent Suppression of 
 natural feelings he had to pay the penalty, as usual. This 
 
 * The passages are so remarkable that we quote them here: “The 
 
 staying away of my son oppressed me very violently and disagreeably, in 
 more than one way, and so I took up a piece of work that, I hoped, would 
 entirely absorb my attention.” 
 
 “I now have to become gradually reconciled to the staying away o £ 
 my son. In the attempt, which I am forced to make, to become once 
 more a householder I am meeting with no little success.” 
 
1 88 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 time the penalty was so much the heavier because it had 
 cost the man of advanced age so much more exertion to con- 
 trol his emotions. On the 2Öth day of November he 
 suffered an uncommonly severe hemorrhage, which for any 
 other man at his age would have been fatal. But his good 
 Constitution, supported by the mighty spiritual fire, which 
 was fed by his unfinished Faust , overcame even this attack 
 most completely and in a wonderfully short space of time. 
 Faust and his life were not to remain fragments. 
 
 Two years before he put the last hand to Faust he had 
 finished Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. This was not an 
 accident, but an inward necessity. Die Wanderjahre is both 
 a preparatory work to Faust, and runs parallel with it. It 
 is Faust in the pupal stage. Hence we shall prepare the way 
 for Faust by studying first Die Wanderjahre. 
 
VI 
 
 WILHELM MEISTERS WANDERJAHRE 
 
 Die Lehrjahre implies a sequel— Composition of the new novel — General 
 plan — Die Wahlverwandtschaften — Publication of “First Part” — 
 The novel gains by holding back of “ Second Part New sociolog- 
 ical theories — The work finally published — Additions to second and 
 third volumes eliminated in later editions — The novel an aggrega- 
 tion — Carelessness in redaction — Work and resignation the funda- 
 mental ideas— Wilhelm commanded to travel — His instructions — 
 Aimless wanderings — Visit with a handicraftsman — Sankt Joseph 
 der Zweite — The handicraftsman a Symbol of the working world — 
 Reasons for this choice — Wilhelm visits Jarno — His inclination to 
 become a surgeon — The age of specialties — The giant’s cave — 
 Visit to the uncle — The uncle’s work — Contrast with the uncle of 
 Die Lehrjahre — Die pilgernde Törin — Wer ist der Verräter? — Visit 
 to Makarie — Contrast with the Beautiful Soul — Wilhelm ’s intro- 
 duction to astronomy — The starry heavens and the moral law — 
 Das nussbraune Mädchen — Felix in the pedagogical province — Der 
 Mann von fünfzig Jahren — Wilhelm finds Nachodine — Visit to 
 Mignon’s old home — Journey to Lago Maggiore — Lenardo— Wil- 
 helm studies surgery — Tour of the “pedagogical province” — The 
 social Community and the democratic community — The “Bond ” — 
 Economic revolution foreshadowed — ■ — Nachodine and Lenardo — 
 Work of the “ Bond ” — Die neue Melusine — Goethe and emigra- 
 tion — Odoard’s colonisation scheme — The “ Bond” divided — Puri- 
 fication of Philine and Lydie — Felix’s suit for Hersilie — Rejected, 
 heridesinto a river, but is rescued by hisfather — Natalie and Frau 
 von Stein — The emigrants in the New World — Their government — 
 Valuation of time — World piety — Need of new men — New educa- 
 tional theories — Goethe’s System, as seen in the “pedagogical pro- 
 vince” — Subjects and methods — Prominence of music — Reverence 
 for the divine in one’s seif — Three picture galleries — Three styles of 
 greeting — Impression of the novel as a whole- — The gospel of labour 
 — The educated dass of the day — Goethe’s plea for less theory and 
 more practice — General lack of interest in public affairs — The 
 brotherhood of man — World piety. 
 
 O N the i2th day of July, 1796, Goethe announced 
 to Schiller his determination to write a sequel to 
 Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Inäsmuch as, at the 
 completion of his apprenticeship, the German journeyman 
 
 189 
 
£be Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 190 
 
 enters upon his travels, it was obvious what title should be 
 chosen for the new work. Tn order to prepare the way for 
 a continuation of the novel, and to suggest to his readers 
 the possibility of one, Goethe had left the structure of Die 
 Lehrjahre in such a state that additions could easily be 
 made. They are almost exclusively of an internal charac- 
 ter — that is to say, they point to the continuation of certain 
 chains of thought. The only one of an external nature is the 
 journey which Wilhelm plans to the home of Mignon, a 
 motive which is later treated only in an episodical way. 
 The internal motives are partly pedagogical : the contradic- 
 tions between the abbe’s liberal principles of education and 
 the stricter principles of Natalie have not been reconciled, 
 and a more detailed account of Natalie’s method of educa- 
 tion has been promised for a future chapter. They are 
 partly ethical and sociological, as, for example, the trans- 
 formation of the tow T er society into a world federation, an 
 Organisation for philanthropic work in the world. From 
 these signs pointing to the distant future we recognise that 
 it was originally Goethe’s intention to give the contents of 
 Die Wander jahre that general character which he actually 
 did give it more than thirty years later. 
 
 He also seems rather early to have had clear ideas as to 
 the manner of treatment. It was to be entirely different 
 from that of Die Lehrjahre. What he planned to paint was 
 not one comprehensive, self-consistent picture, but a frieze- 
 like series, joined together by luxuriant didactic foliage. 
 This style of composition is evident in what he wrote in 
 1807, when he began serious work on the novel. On the iyth 
 of May he made the solemn note in his diary : “ At half past 
 
 six in the morning began to dictate the first chapter of Wil- 
 helm Meisters Wanderjahre.” Then in the second half of 
 May, in June, and later in August, he put into final form, 
 in quick succession, the story of Sankt Joseph der Zweite, 
 which runs through the first four chapters; then Die neue 
 Melusine, Die gefährliche Wette, Der Mann von fünf zig Jahren, 
 Das nussbraune Mädchen (who was called Nachodine even 
 at that early date), and Die pilgernde Törin, — all more or 
 
Wilbelm HDeisterö Mant>er]abre 1 9 1 
 
 less independent stories. He finished these on the 5th of 
 August, and during the following days “thought over” 
 further the “ novelistic motives for Die W ander jahre." 
 
 The fact that he speaks of novelistic motives is an indica- 
 tion that, even at that time, he had also some purely didac- 
 tic motives in mind. Meditation on the novelistic portions, 
 as we prefer to call them, produced at the moment no new 
 results. But at the end of the year his tree of life dropped 
 a glorious full fruitage into his lap. His heart was then 
 aglow with unhappy love for Minna Herzlieb, and resigna- 
 tion was forced upon him. His experience transformed 
 into poetry, together with the motive of resignation, was 
 eminently suited for Die Wander jahre, and he decided to in- 
 troduce the passionate composition into the novel. But it 
 sprang up with such vigour that its magnitude soon burst the 
 framework of Die W ander jahre ; and its blcod was so hot 
 that its glow would have killed the colder-blooded daughters 
 of fancy and worldly wisdom, with which it was to be asso- 
 ciated. So he set it apart as an independent work and gave 
 it the title Die Wahlverwandtschaften. 
 
 In April, 1810, he made another serious attempt to con- 
 tinue Die Wanderjahre. In May he wrote to Frau von 
 Schiller that at Michaelmas his friends would be forced to 
 accompany the same old Wilhelm on a joumey, on which 
 they should meet many different earthly and heavenly 
 saints. He worked at it with considerable diligence during 
 the summer, but then laid it aside. Apparently he came 
 upon difficulties which, for the moment, he was unable to 
 surmount. Perhaps the interruption was not unwelcome to 
 him. The work was such a convenient repository for the 
 many problems of life and other topics of the time which 
 agitated him that it seemed to him advisable to continue 
 to use it for that purpose as much longer as possible. In 
 this way ten long years were allowed to go by. He had 
 meanwhile reached the age of seventy and it was now time 
 to gather the harvest into the bam. 
 
 So he took up the refractory material once more and 
 got together a volume which he sent into the world in 1821 
 
Zb e Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 192 
 
 as the “First Part” of Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. In 
 addition to the Makarie episode, the important ending of 
 the story entitled Das nussbraune Mädchen , and many other 
 features later to become prominent, the “ First Part” lacked 
 almost entirely the sociological element contained in the 
 subsequent complete edition. Hence we may infer that this 
 element was reserved for the “Second Part.” Goethe was 
 guided by wonderful instinct in deciding what to publish 
 and what to lay aside for the time being. 
 
 The next decade abounded with new sociological theories 
 and movements which enabled him to test his own ideas and 
 extend them. The bookkeeper Fourier published in 1822 
 his Traite de V Association Domestique et Agricole; Count de 
 Saint-Simon published the same year his Systeme Industriell 
 in 1824 his Catechisme des Industriels and in 1825 his Nouveau 
 Christianisme ; in 1824 the Scotch manufacturer and philan- 
 thropist Robert Owen established in Indiana his communistic 
 colony New Harmony; the Genevan Sismondi’s Nouveaux 
 Principes d’ Economie Politique, which had appeared in 1819, 
 was now received with favour and experienced a second 
 edition in 1827; and, lastly, in 1824 The Westminster Review 
 was established in London for the stronger advocacy and 
 better dissemination of Bentham’s utilitarianism. It was 
 doubtless in view of these rapidly multiplying sociological 
 discussions and experiments that Goethe said to Sulpiz 
 Boisseree, on the iyth of February, 1827, that he now under- 
 stood why this work could not be finished sooner. 
 
 In 1825 he had again taken it in hand. It advanced 
 slowly and at intervals, but not until the autumn of 1828 
 did a more rapid progress begin. The poet gave up the plan 
 of Publishing a “ Second Part” to follow the already existing 
 “First Part.” He preferred to pull to pieces what was 
 already done and w T eave it into an entirely new texture. 
 Finally in February, 1829, in his eightieth year, after many 
 pains and sighs, the great work was finished, — and yet not 
 finished. It was still to experience a stränge fate while 
 being printed. In the new form it appeared so voluminous 
 that Goethe reserved for it three volumes in the complete 
 
Wilhelm flDeisters Wanherjabre 193 
 
 edition of his works then being published. But when the 
 second volume was printed it was found that both this and 
 the third would be too small in comparison with the others 
 of the series. What was to be done? 
 
 As a minister and a poet he had always been a man of 
 determination, and so this Situation could not embarrass 
 him. To his faithful Eckermann he gave two bundles of 
 manuscripts, containing aphorisms on art, nature, and life, 
 and commissioned him to select from them as many as 
 would be necessary to fall up the required number of pages. 
 As a matter of fact these aphorisms were just as much in 
 place in the novel, perhaps even more, than the story Wer ist 
 der Verräter ? or Der Mann von fünfzig Jahren. Eckermann 
 accepted the task and compiled two large groups, which were 
 inserted at the close of the second and third volumes under 
 the respective titles Betrachtungen im Sinne der Wandern 
 and Aus Makariens Archiv. To make the stränge additions 
 still more stränge, each group closed with a poem — the first 
 with Vermächtnis , the second with Bei Betrachtung von Schil- 
 lers Schädel — and the whole work ended with an enigmatical 
 “ To be continued.” When the public shook their decidedly 
 puzzled heads at these foreign scions ingrafted upon the 
 original stock, Goethe laughed and said that in a future 
 edition Eckermann might remove them. This was done, 
 and so we now have before us the work as it was to appear 
 according to the poet’s last will, but not in the final form in 
 which he himself published it. 
 
 This closing phase of the composition of the work shows 
 plainly enough what liberty the poet allowed himself in his 
 last novel. He had gradually extended this liberty farther 
 and farther. We are justified in supposing that originally 
 it was his intention to incorporate in the work a series of 
 stories which in content were foreign to the real body of the 
 novel, but in their teaching were in close affinity with it. 
 They were to illustrate the chief ideas of the novel in the hope 
 that the pictures would enhance the effect of the ideas. It 
 was certainly also a part of Goethe’s plan to make each 
 
 individual story a complete whole in itself . As he proceeded 
 13 
 
i 9 4 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 with the work he forsook this high artistic ground and intro- 
 duced some chapters which serve no other purpose than to 
 afford agreeable interruptions of the long didactic portions. 
 Other stories he broke off abruptly and left the ruins Stand- 
 ing exposed, or concealed them beneath a scant temporary 
 covering. 
 
 He himself did not fail to recognise the piecemeal char- 
 acter of this stränge creation, and so he designated it an 
 aggregate, a complex, a collectivum. But he was not dis- 
 satisfied with it. Like everything eise, he had come to look 
 npon even this form as a Symbol, and that too an apt one. 
 On the 23h of November, 1829, he wrote to Rochlitz: “It 
 
 is with such a booklet as with life itself : in the complex of 
 the whole are to be found necessary and incidental elements, 
 projected and unfinished portions, plans now successfully 
 wrought out and now frustrated, and all this, taken together, 
 gives it a kind of infinitude, which cannot be expressed or 
 comprehended in reasonable and sensible words.” 
 
 As we are unable to reconcile ourselves to any such sym- 
 bolism we naturally feel vexed at the poet’s capricious 
 insertion and patching together of heterogeneous and frag- 
 mentary bodies, and our vexation is increased by the incred- 
 ible carelessness of the redaction. When Olympians are 
 careless they are careless with Olympic greatness. Once the 
 author had given up the plan of making the novel a work 
 of art, he ceased to exercise care in its structure. He 
 repeated himself, he contradicted himself, confused names, 
 passed, in the midst of a personal narrative, directh 7 from 
 the first person to the third and back again from the third 
 to the first, showed no regard for the relations of time and 
 place, erased now too much, now too little, made promises 
 without fulfilling them, and so on. But the less attention he 
 paid to the exterior, the more he bestowed on the interior; 
 and no caprice of composition, no sin of redaction must keep 
 us from penetrating this interior and bringing out the treas- 
 ures which lie concealed therein. The way will be consider- 
 ably easier for us if we are prepared in advance for its 
 deviations and unevennesses, and if we seek the goal not in 
 
THUUbelm Leisters TÄUanberjabte 195 
 
 the development of events, but in that of ideas. Then the iso- 
 lated poetic portions will shine out as stars, and we shall 
 not ask what part they play in the System of worlds. 
 
 The two great fundamental ideas running through Die 
 Wanderjahre are work and resignation. Resignation means 
 much. It means limitation, concentration. It is man’s 
 duty to limit his striving and to concentrate all his powers 
 on the limited field. Resignation means the conquering of 
 passions, means the giving up of many inherited and eamed 
 advantages, rights, and possessions. It transforms the man 
 of impulses into a man of reason, the selfish man into a 
 public-spirited man, the egoist into an altruist. It exerts 
 such a profound influence on man’s nature and development 
 that Goethe considered it, next to work, the most important 
 principle of life. Hence he gave the novel, which was to 
 show forth the foundations of a prosperous individual and 
 public life, the sub title The Resigned. 
 
 In Order that he may treat these great fundamental 
 ideas in their full depth and breadth Goethe ignores what 
 has been accomplished in Die Lehrjahre, namely, that Wil- 
 helm has already attained to limitation and definite, pro- 
 ductive work. He still presents him to us as the same old 
 Wilhelm, striving after an indefinite, very general idea of 
 education, without any fixed occupation, without any 
 definite aim, except perchance that of being happy in belle- 
 tristic comfort by the side of Natalie. And because he still 
 is the same old Wilhelm the secret society of the tower which, 
 under the guidance of Lothario and the abbe, is about to 
 convert itself into a world federation, has sent him out to 
 travel. It tears him from Natalie at the moment of his 
 highest happiness in order that he may leam resignation. 
 He must not stay anywhere more than three days, in order 
 that through etemal change he may leam perseverance. He 
 must not complain — wise Natalie herseif had forbidden him 
 that — -as he might destroy his powers by fruitlessly dwelling 
 on his pain. And wherever he may meet the members of 
 the federation he must speak to them neither of the past 
 
196 
 
 ftbe Xife of ßoetbe 
 
 nor of the future, but always of the present, so that he 
 may be kept free from penitence and from dreams, and 
 may concentrate the full cleamess of his thought and 
 the unbroken strength of his will upon the demand of the 
 day. 
 
 Wilhelm roams about with Felix through the Alps and 
 descends now on this, now on that, side of the mountains. 
 As his life, so his wanderings have no fixed goal. In a pass 
 he meets the family of a handicraftsman ; the mother, with a 
 nursing child, riding on an ass, the father, with two strik- 
 ingly beautiful boys, on foot. Wilhelm fancies he sees the 
 holy family. He visits the family, who live in what was 
 formerly a convent in the valley below, and is charmed with 
 the idyl which reveals itself to him there, and which Goethe 
 has painted with the delicate, soft, warm colours of a Fra 
 Angelico. It is a picture of peaceful, busy, contented, 
 healthy, moral life, — an overture to Die Wanderjahre, signifi- 
 cant in that it suggests all the motives to appear in the whole 
 work, yet even more significant in its contrast with Die 
 Lehrjahre. 
 
 Whither had Goethe taken Wilhelm in Die Lehrjahre ? 
 To inns and castles, among actors and nobles. Some lived on 
 appearance and in appearance. Others lived on inheritance, 
 and those most distinguished among them, the Count and 
 the Countess, lived also in appearance. Nowhere was there 
 any happy family life; indeed, marriage was looked upon 
 almost with indifference. In Die Wanderjahre Wilhelm is 
 taken to the home of a handicraftsman, where everything 
 is thoroughly real and of the family’s own making, and 
 where pure, deep satisfaction and strict morality spring 
 from marriage and work. 
 
 Here, as farther on, Goethe has chosen the handicrafts- 
 man as a representative of the working world . Not as 
 though he placed a lower value on intellectual work — 
 such a thing would have been out of the question with him — 
 but because work with the hands is a plainer and more 
 suggestive symbol. Both the work itself and the fruit of it 
 stand out before us in more tangible form. The handi- 
 
Wilhelm flßeisters Wanberjabre 197 
 
 craftsman is a little god.* He brings forth daily new Crea- 
 tions, almost independent of nature, dependent only upon 
 his own hands. In this respect he has an advantage over 
 the peasant, whose activity is useful, but not Creative. By 
 his industry, care, and cleverness the peasant merely makes 
 it possible for nature to bestow her gifts richly and with 
 regularity. Often, however, she fails to respond to his la- 
 bours and then all his work seems fruitless. Goethe may 
 have left the peasant out of consideration for the further 
 reason that in his day the peasant was too bowed down by 
 the consequences of the feudal yoke, was too dull and dead, 
 to be of any use for higher poetical tendencies. 
 
 Furth ermore the man who works with his hands, espe- 
 cially the handicraftsman, has another great and real advan- 
 tage over the man who works with his head. The activity 
 of the brain-worker always has extensible, and hence vari- 
 able, limits; that of the handicraftsman, on the other hand, 
 has absolutely fixed limits. Goethe early gazed with envy 
 and longing upon this happiness of the handicraftsman. 
 We hear the Sentiment reflected in the words of the divine, 
 original handicraftsman, Prometheus, who preferred a 
 small kingdom which he could fill with his activity to a 
 boundless one exceeding and dissipating his powers. We 
 hear it more definitely in Werther’s letters from Switzerland, 
 where Goethe, through Werther, exclaims: “I have never 
 
 so clearly realised as during these last days that I could be 
 happy in a state of limitation, . . . if I only knew some 
 
 * Der du an dem Weberstuhle sitzest, 
 
 Unterrichtet, mit behenden Gliedern 
 Fäden durch die Fäden schlingest, alle 
 Durch den Taktschlag aneinander drängest, 
 
 Du bist Schöpfer, dass die Gottheit lächeln 
 Deiner Arbeit muss und deinem Fleisse. 
 
 [Thou who sittest at the weaver’s loom, 
 
 Know’st thy trade, with nimble hands and feet 
 Hast’nest threads a hundred threads between, 
 
 Binding all in one with rhythmic beat, 
 
 Thou art a creator ; on thy work, 
 
 On thine industry, must God e’er smile.] 
 
 Vorspiel zu Eröffnung d. Weim. Theaters (1807). 
 
I9S 
 
 Zhe Xtfe of (Boetbe 
 
 stirring occupation . . . that demanded of the moment 
 both industry and decision. . . . Every handicraftsman 
 seems to me the happiest of men. What he has to do 
 is known to him, what he can accomplish has already been 
 decided. . . . He works . . . with application and love, 
 as the bee constructs her cells. . . . How I envy the pot- 
 ter at his wheel, the cabinetmaker at his workbench! ” 
 
 Finally Goethe had a third motive for bringing the handi- 
 craftsman into the foreground. He foresaw more distinctly 
 than others the extraordinary importance of this dass in 
 coming years. To make society feel this importance seemed 
 to him a Service of the highest value. 
 
 On the third day Wilhelm leaves the happy carpenter’s 
 family and climbs back up into the mountains, where he 
 meets Jarno. In the spirit of the federation and out of per- 
 sonal conviction Jarno has resigned the great world and a 
 half-idle life, and has limited himself by becoming a miner . 30 
 In order to have some outward sign of the new life which he 
 has begun he has assumed a new name, Montan. He has 
 become somewhat quicker, rüder, and more realistic than he 
 was in Die Lehrjahre. He is a true son of the nineteenth Cen- 
 tury, and that too, as we are surprised to see, more of the end 
 than of the beginning of the Century. “ Fools’ nonsense,” 
 he exclaims to Wilhelm, “ your general education. . . We 
 are now living in an age of one-sidednesses. The essential 
 thing is for a man to understand something thoroughly and 
 completely, or do something excellently. . . . Make an 
 organ out of yourself and then wait to see what position 
 mankind will generously assign to you! . . . The best 
 thing is to limit one’s seif to one handicraft.” Under the 
 weight of Jarno’s words Wilhelm confesses timidly that he 
 is inclined to devote himself to a “special occupation,” a 
 particularly useful art, namely, surgery. 
 
 His chosen calling, then, was not to be that of a physician 
 practising in all branches of the Held. Apparently this 
 seemed to Goethe too general, too theoretical, and left too 
 much room for fancies and opinions, which make one uncer- 
 tain and dissatisfied. It had to be a specialty, and that, too, 
 
TKHUbelm flDeisters Wanberjabre 199 
 
 one which particularly requires manual skill ; in fact, the word 
 surgery means literally handicraft. Wilhelm attaches to 
 this change to surgery but one condition, viz., that he shall be 
 freed, through Jarno’s intervention, from his Obligation to 
 remain nowhere longer than three days. 
 
 Wilhelm took leave of Jarno and on his wanderings came 
 to a basaltic cave, which, in his ignorance of nature, he took 
 to be a black castle of giants. Felix explored the interior 
 and found there a splendid little golden casket, which was 
 locked. We may interpret the casket as a symbol of life. 
 It seemed golden to Felix, for whom it was still locked, so 
 that he could see it only from without. The Wanderers 
 proceeded farther and came to a large estate. 
 
 With “St. Joseph” all had been good and excellent, 
 but the influence of the goodness and excellence had been 
 confined to a narrow sphere. It was beautiful home piety. 
 Modern life demands the higher stage of world piety, labour 
 for the common good on a broad scale, a transformation of 
 work for seif into work for all. There is nothing in this in 
 contradiction with limitation. The tendency is to be widely 
 extended. Lothario had already made a small begin- 
 ning toward the carrying out of this high aim. We see it 
 realised on a grander scale on the extensive estate of the 
 uncle of Die Wanderjahre, into whose castle Wilhelm now 
 enters. Lothario was a European, but had been in America. 
 The uncle was an American, but had settled in Europe. Ac- 
 cording to Goethe ’s idea the new social Organisation of the 
 world needed men from the new world, unhampered by old 
 customs and prejudices, but saturated with old culture, 
 practical men in the highest sense, but not egoists, utilita- 
 rians and at the same time devoted philanthropists. 
 
 The uncle’s grandfather was such a man. Born in 
 Germany, he had lived for a long time in England and had 
 been influenced by the thorough, noble work of Penn to 
 emigrate to America. He had there acquired a large amount 
 of landed property, which his son considerably increased. 
 But this great estate did not hold the grandson fast. When 
 he visited Europe and became acquainted with its high 
 
200 
 
 ZTbe Xife of ßoetbe 
 
 culture the unfolding of a worthy social activity seemed to 
 him more attractive in the midst of this culture than among 
 the mosquitoes and the Iroquois. 
 
 So he obtained possession of the old family estate, over 
 which he ruled, according to the author’s conception, about 
 like a free baron. But in addition to being ruler and owner 
 he was also a most industrious and most faithful worker 
 and official. He gradually put his lands into excellent 
 condition, but allowed the profits of the undertaking to 
 inure so far as possible to his servants, his peasants, and to 
 the needy, even far beyond the boundaries of his possessions. 
 On his estate was to be seen the motto, “ Possessions and 
 common property.” He considered his possessions common 
 property which he merely managed for the others. Hence 
 it was his duty to make these possessions as useful as pos- 
 sible. He held together that he might give ; he was an egoist 
 for others. The reduction in his income owing to his public 
 spirit he characterised with humorous, one might almost 
 say American, graciousness, as an expense which gave him 
 pleasure, and in which he did not even have the trouble of 
 letting the money pass through his hands. 
 
 He considered it one of the most important tasks of his 
 administrative office, a labour of charity in the higher sense, 
 not only to give to others, but to help others to advance, to 
 inspire them, by means of gifts, to productive work. For 
 example, to the industrious and careful farmers he pre- 
 sented young trees from his nurseries free of Charge, whereas 
 he made the careless ones pay for all they received. He 
 was inexorably strict with lazy workmen and ejected a 
 farmer who neither paid his rent nor kept his farm in good 
 condition. Toleration of such people would have had a 
 demoralising effect on the general community and would, at 
 the same time, have been robbing the public. 
 
 As every man must be useful, so must everything. On 
 the uncle’s possessions there is no park, no flower garden; 
 even certain parts of the castle are turned to a practical 
 use not ordinarily found. Vestibüle, staircase, and main 
 drawing-room are hung with maps and charts of all parts 
 
TWUlbelm fIDeteters Manöerjabre 201 
 
 of the world, and pictures and plans of the most important 
 cities and their environs. 
 
 What a contrast with the uncle of Die Lehrjahre, who 
 made of his castle a temple of all the plastic and graphic arts, 
 including music, who spent a fortune in building a burial 
 hall and decorating it in most exquisite taste ! He is a man 
 full of worldly wisdom and human kindness, and he places 
 the highest value on activity, but he limits himself to the 
 cultivation of the beautiful and is satisfied with inciting 
 others to activity, though only such as accidentally come in 
 contact with him. Who would deny that this uncle is a 
 very congenial personality, perhaps to many people the 
 more congenial of the two? But who would deny, on the 
 other hand, that the other uncle is the more necessary mem- 
 ber of society? Here again is fully shown the contrast 
 between the eighteenth Century and the nineteenth. In the 
 rush and struggle, in the seriousness, of the times, the beau- 
 tiful personality perishes, but the useful, public-spirited 
 personality, demanded by the times and by struggling, 
 suffering humanity, arises to take his place. The uncle of 
 Die Wanderjahre does not fail to recognise the great import- 
 ance of the beautiful ; on the contrary it is to him the crown 
 of human existence and striving. But what is necessary — 
 that is, the useful — must be done first. Only then will it be 
 possible to rise to the beautiful. Hence his motto, posted 
 conspicuously on his estates: “From the useful through 
 
 the true to the beautiful.” 
 
 In Die Wanderjahre Wilhelm is less the hero than the 
 patient factotum who is made to do everything, read every- 
 thing, and connect the wdiole. Düring his stay at the castle 
 of the uncle he is made to read, in addition to various cor- 
 respondences, two stories. Die pilgernde T örin and Wer ist der 
 Verräter? The former is a translation from the French and 
 contains the history of a beautiful young lady of good 
 family, who has been deceived by a lover. She wanders 
 about in the world, engages herseif as a servant where she 
 has the opportunity, and as she herseif gives up home, 
 comfort, and security, and in this sacrifice and in her w T ork 
 
202 
 
 <Ibe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 finds peace of soul, so she everywhere teaches resignation 
 and leads others to resignation, in fact, by her conduct 
 forces them to it. To fools she appears foolish, to the wise 
 wise. 
 
 What moved Goethe to insert this story in Die Wander- 
 jahre is easy to recognise. But it is useless to attempt to 
 discover any Connection between the other story (apparently 
 not written tili 1810) and the novel. In the first edition, 
 where it appears very near the close of the work, it is read 
 aloud to Wilhelm by Friedrich under the pretext that Wil- 
 helm will thereby be made acquainted with other excellent 
 members of the confederation. But as these excellent mem- 
 bers are nowhere eise mentioned, this Connection with the 
 novel seemed to the author, when he was recasting the work, 
 too loose and arbitrary. So he preferred to give up the Con- 
 nection entirely and to make an official of the uncle hand 
 the story to Wilhelm simply as a literary counterpart to 
 Die pilgernde Törin. Wilhelm was to see in a charming 
 picture, in contrast with the “ pleasantness of rieh, aristo- 
 cratic, French confusion” — for the official was but a narrow- 
 minded judge of Die pilgernde Törin — “the simple, honest 
 righteousness of German conditions.” 
 
 We are transported to the rural dwelling of a chief farm- 
 bailiff . Here he lives with his two daughters, the quiet, soulful 
 Lucinde, and the vivacious, teasing Julie. Since early life 
 Julie has been looked upon as the future wife of Lucidor, 
 the son of an old friend of the farm-bailiff, and it has been 
 expected that Lucidor would become his father-in-law’s suc- 
 cessor in office. But when, after completing his studies at the 
 university, Lucidor becomes better acquainted with the two 
 sisters, he likes Lucinde much the better. To his despair, 
 however, she shows no signs of retuming his affection, but, 
 as it seems, is about to become engaged to another guest by 
 the name of Antoni. Shall he now marry the one he does 
 not love, thus fulfilling his father’s most cherished plans 
 and securing for himself a comfortable and respectable 
 Position, or shall he sever the bonds already woven and 
 throw himself on his own resources, with a deep wound 
 
IKHUbelm flDeisters Manberjabre 203 
 
 in his heart? He decides in favour of the second alterna- 
 tive and is about to flee from the house f which has seemed 
 to him so cheery and yet so dismal, without telling any one 
 of his sorrows. Meanwhile he has betrayed himself by his 
 passionate soliloquies and has thus revealed all his secret 
 feelings and relations. Julie loves Antoni far more than 
 Lucidor, and Lucinde gladly releases Antoni in order to 
 be united with Lucidor. Two happy pairs greet us at the 
 close of this charming, dramatic story. That this counter- 
 part to Die pilgernde T örin has nothing to do with the ideas 
 of the novel is perfectly obvious. It is thrown in merely 
 for the entertainment of the great mass of readers . 31 In a 
 work of pure fiction Goethe scomed such devices ; in a didac- 
 tic work it was possible to resort to them. 
 
 Wilhelm betook himself from his uncle’s castle to Mak- 
 arie’s country-seat. The uncle’s nieces, Juliette and Hersilie, 
 the very images of the two daughters of the farm-bailiff, 
 had told him so many remarkable things about their aunt 
 Makarie that he was glad to direct his steps thither. 
 
 Makarie, the blissful, as her name implies, is a height- 
 ened Natalie and hence the heightened reverse of the Beau- 
 tiful Soul. The contrast comes out more distinctly, and the 
 author’s purpose is easier to discover, because of the fact 
 that, like the Beautiful Soul, Makarie has from her youth 
 up been very ill. She is a heavenly being in both the lit- 
 eral and the figurative sense of the term. She is a heavenly 
 body in a human frame; she lives the life of the solar System, 
 feels the motions of her heavenly sisters, but she also gazes 
 into the innermost nature of man and resembles an ancient 
 sibyl, uttering purely divine words on things human. But 
 all her wonderful gifts do not serve the purpose of enabling 
 her to retire into herseif in blissful repose ; she employs them 
 to bring happiness to all men whom she can reach. Every- 
 body receives her counsel and her help. She acts as a 
 peacemaker and an alleviator; she unites men, guides them, 
 discovers their possibilities, purifies them, and restores each 
 to his better seif, to a new and purer existence. In her 
 feeble body there dwells a restless spirit. Its eyes sweep 
 
204 
 
 XTbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 the whole horizon and its influence extends in all directions. 
 Whoever is about her must be active as she herseif is. Her 
 housekeeper, Angela, is “untiringly industrious,” day and 
 night alike, so that the friend of the house, the astronomer, 
 suggests that she might be called Vigilie, the night watch. 
 Like Natalie, Makarie always has in her home a number 
 of young girls whom she is educating. Not city girls, nor 
 girls from the upper classes, but peasant girls, who work 
 hard in field and garden. The education which Makarie 
 gives is considered so excellent that peasant youths prefer 
 to choose their wives from among her pupils. The less 
 Makarie is able to check the decline of her body, the more 
 she preserves everythmg around her from decay — not alone 
 in the moral and spiritual realm, but also in the purely ma- 
 terial. She lives in an old house, but to Wilhelm’s astonish- 
 ment it seems as new, complete, and neat in its joints and 
 elaborate omamentations as though mason and stonecutter 
 had just gone away. 
 
 And thus, mystical and supersensuous though the real 
 centre of her nature may be, nevertheless she everywhere 
 keeps within the clear, practical limits of the novel. She 
 knows how to unite the highest things and the most general 
 with the lowest and the most particular. 
 
 How different the Beautiful Soul was! She kept within 
 herseif and enioyed her peace by herseif. She devoted all 
 her free time to “ investigating her soul” and communing 
 with her in visible Friend in prayer and in fancy. She did 
 did not even feel in her soul that charity was a necessary part 
 of her life. She gave money to the poor, gave it gladly and 
 abundantly, but, as she confesses, only for the purpose of 
 redeeming herseif. “Any one who wished to win my care 
 had to be a relative of mine by birth.” She did not trouble 
 herseif at all about others. One had to experience acciden- 
 tally the pleasing influence emanating from her blissful, 
 peaceful being, for one would never experience it as the 
 result of any effort or purpose on her part. Her life in God 
 was centred wholly in existence beyond the grave; Maka- 
 rie’s had interests both this side the grave and beyond. 
 
Milbelm flDeieters Mant>er]abre 205 
 
 Makarie was like the sun, which describes its circle in the 
 heavens, but is constantly sending its animating rays to 
 the earth. The belief that one can please God, can approach 
 him, by being inactively devoted to him, merely by purity 
 of heart, would have seemed to Makarie a misunderstanding 
 of religion, a failure to comprehend God. 
 
 It was an emanation of her starry nature that she was 
 deeply interested in astronomy. Accordingly there was to 
 be seen on her estate an observatory, presided over by an 
 astronomer. After a serious conversation in the evening 
 with Makarie Wilhelm is considered by the astronomer 
 worthy to share completely in the wonders of the starry 
 heavens. “ A most serene night, with all the stars gleaming 
 and sparkling, unfolded before his gaze, and he seemed for 
 the first time to see the high dorne of heaven in its full splen- 
 dour.” For in ordinary life it was not only roofs and gables, 
 forests and rocks, but also his inward commotions, that kept 
 him from seeing the sublime glory of the sky. Here he is 
 freed from these inward fogs by Makarie, and the sight over- 
 whelms him. Blinded and subdued, he holds his eyes closed. 
 “ What am I compared with the All? How can I stand be- 
 fore him, in his midst? How eise can man see his position 
 with respect to the Infinite, than when he gathers together 
 in the innermost depths of his soul all his spiritual powers, 
 which are drawn toward many sides ; when he asks himself : 
 Dost thou even dare fancy thyself in the centre of this ever- 
 living Order, unless there likewise arises within thee a con- 
 stantly moving something, circling about a pure central 
 point ? ’ ’ 
 
 Involuntarily we think of the closing section of Kant’s 
 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft , where we read: “Two 
 
 things fill the soul with ever new and increasing wonder and 
 awe, the oftener and longer the mind reflects upon them: 
 the starry heaven above and the moral law within. . . . 
 
 The first sight of an innumerable host of worlds destroys, 
 so to speak, my importance as an animal creature. . . . 
 The second, on the contrary, enhances my value as an in- 
 telligence, infinite through my personality, in which the 
 
206 
 
 XTbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality 
 and even of the whole world of sense.” 
 
 Both Goethe and Kant make the spiritual in man pre- 
 serve his equilibrium with respect to the sublimity of the 
 physical world. But Kant Starts with reflection, Goethe 
 with objective vision. Kant speaks only of the moral law, 
 Goethe of the whole of human activity, which has unselfish 
 love more than the categorical imperative at its centre. 
 Kant places the moral law and the dome of heaven side by 
 side, without any effect upon each other. Goethe, on the 
 contrary, makes the starry heaven arouse the consciousness 
 of the inner universe (“There is a universe within thee, 
 too”), and sets this world in rapid motion around the pure 
 sun of human love. In other words, he makes the move- 
 ments of the macrocosm call forth analogous ones in the 
 microscosm. This gives us a characteristic picture of 
 the difference between the pantheist and monist Goethe and 
 the theist and dualist Kant. 
 
 Wilhelm departs from Makarie’s circle, which is related 
 to that of the uncle as heaven is to earth. The two circles 
 overlap, inasmuch as Makarie strives to descend from 
 heaven to earth and the uncle to rise from earth to heaven. 
 Both uncle and niece are represented as childless, so that the 
 simple love of children may not draw them away from the 
 great love of humanity. At the moment of Wilhelm’s de- 
 parture Makarie expresses to him the desire that he may go in 
 quest of her nephew Lenardo, who has been away on a jour- 
 ney for three years, and calm his mind conceming the fate 
 of a certain girl in whom he is interested, so that he may 
 retum home with liberated heart. This girl is the daughter 
 of a farmer, whom the uncle ejected from his farm on account 
 of unpaid rent and careless management. When the Order of 
 ejection was issued the daughter went to Lenardo and 
 suppliantly begged him to intercede for them. He promised 
 to do so and redeemed his promise, but not as eamestly as, 
 in his opinion, the occasion demanded. Hence he ascribed to 
 himself the blame of the ejection of the farmer and his 
 daughter, and feit all the more downcast as he feared that 
 
XÄIUIbelm flDeisters Manberjabre 
 
 207 
 
 they had since been living in want, and the charming form 
 of the daughter, as she knelt pleading before him, had left 
 an indelible impression upon him. On account of her 
 brownish complexion she was jestingly called the nut-brown 
 maiden, while her real name was Nachodine. Goethe doubt- 
 less attached some mysterious meaning to this name, but in 
 the course of the narrative he abandoned the name and there- 
 after always referred to her as “ the beautiful, good girl.” Be- 
 hind her we may see his old friend Barbara Schulthess. 
 
 Wilhelm meets Lenardo, but, as the result of a confusion 
 of names in one of Lenardo’s letters to Makarie, the pacifica- 
 tion which Wilhelm brings proves futile. The fate of Nacho- 
 dine remains as much a mystery as ever, and in this exigency 
 Wilhelm, following his usual custom, steps in as a helper 
 and undertakes to find her. Lenardo teils him to go to an 
 old friend of his in a neighbouring city, a collector of antiqui- 
 ties who enjoys an extensive acquaintance, and perhaps he 
 may there find a trace of the vanished maiden. Wilhelm 
 takes leave of Lenardo without having won him for Lotha- 
 rio’s world federation. 
 
 Wilhelm leams nothing at all about Nachodine from the 
 collector of antiquities. Rather, the only purpose this man 
 serves is to impress upon him anew certain truths that he has 
 already heard and observed ; with this difference, that he ex- 
 tends the conception of handieraft to include all practical 
 and proper laying hold upon things. “All life, all activity, 
 all art,” the old man teils him, “ must be preceded by handi- 
 craft, whieh is acquired only in limitation.” “ Knowing one 
 thing well and practising it gives higher education than half- 
 ness in a hundred things.” For this reason he recommends 
 to Wilhelm as an educational Institution for his son Felix, 
 who certainly cannot travel about for ever with his father, 
 “the pedagogical province,” where these principles are ob- 
 served. He arouses in Wilhelm further the hope that the 
 directors of that extensive educational Institution may put 
 him on the track of Nachodine. After depositing with the 
 collector the golden casket found by Felix, Wilhelm sets out 
 thither. 
 
208 
 
 Zbe Xtf e of (Soetbe 
 
 We shall leave aside for the present the description of 
 the pedagogical province, which opens the second book of 
 Die W ander jahre, and remark in passing that Wilhelm leaves 
 the province without even asking after Nachodine. In the 
 great seriousness of the pedagogical chapters Goethe evi- 
 dently forgot that this was one of the purposes for which he 
 had made his hero enter the pedagogical province. In Order 
 to cheer the reader somewhat after the long didactic presen- 
 tation of the regulations and fundamental principles of the 
 pedagogical Utopia, he leaves Wilhelm to his fate for a time 
 and inserts a long story, Der Mann von fünfzig Jahren , a 
 unique cabine t-piece. Humour, depth of thought, objec- 
 tivity, tenderness of feeling, drawing-room tone, and atmos- 
 phere of nature all unite in a charming harmony, which 
 even the peculiar little interruptions interspersed by the 
 poet cannot disturb. 
 
 The story is a treatment of the theme of elective affinity, 
 without tragic outcome. The beautiful Hilarie has fallen 
 in love with her uncle, the major, who is fifty years old and 
 already retired. She has been promised to the major’s 
 son Flavio, who is away from home, serving as a lieutenant 
 in a garrison. The major is not displeased at the discovery 
 of his niece’s warm affection for him, and by beautifying 
 arts takes all pains to give his well-preserved appearance a 
 still further semblance of youth. The painful feeling that 
 he is robbing his son of his betrothed is soon ccmpletely 
 obliterated by a visit at the garrison, where Flavio confesses 
 to him that he is in love with a young widow, a glorious 
 creature, whom the father must see. The father consents 
 and no sooner do the two see each other than a mutual 
 attraction begins to develop between them. With the widow 
 the feeling is stronger than with the major. The major 
 departs and the picture of Hilarie comes again victoriously 
 into the foreground. Business reasons compel him to be 
 away for several months from the country-seat of his sister, 
 and from the presence of Hilarie. 
 
 Meanwhile a sudden rupture has taken place between 
 Flavio and the beautiful widow, by which Flavio is most 
 
Wüftelm flDeiötera Wanfcerjabre 209 
 
 deeply affected. Troubled in mind and broken in body, he 
 flees one dark November night to the castle of his aunt. 
 A long illness confines him to his bed, and when he has fully 
 recovered he finds himself unexpectedly in love with Hilarie. 
 The cousin whom she had not seen for a long time, and who 
 had meanwhile developed to full manly beauty, had also, 
 at the first moment of his arrival, exerted a magic power 
 over Hilarie. The two do not confess their feelings to each 
 other; indeed, they hardly confess them to themselves, 
 though many excursions in each other’s Company bind them 
 closer and closer together. A skating party leads them to 
 a wonderfully vivid realisation of the irresistible force which 
 draws them to one another, and at the same time brings 
 about the catastrophe. The glorious passage may here be 
 quoted in full, if only to show what shining poetic pearls 
 are to be found in the rough shell of Die Wanderjahre. 
 
 “ Now to-day our young couple could not tear themselves 
 away from the smooth ice. Every time they skated toward 
 the illuminated castle, where many guests had already 
 assembled, they must turn suddenly around and glide far 
 away in the opposite direction. They did not wish to sepa- 
 rate, out of fear of losing each other; so they clasped hands in 
 Order to be entirely certain of each other’s presence. They 
 seemed to enjoy the motion most when their arms were 
 crossed and resting on each other’s shoulders and their dainty 
 fingers were unconsciously playing with each other’s hair. 
 
 “In the heaven aglow with stars rose the full moon, which 
 completed the magic of the surroundings. They could see 
 each other again clearly and, as was their custom, each 
 sought to read an answer in the shaded eyes of the other. 
 But the answer seemed to be a new one. From the depths 
 of those orbs a light seemed to shine forth and indicate some- 
 thing which the mouth wisely refused to utter. 
 
 “All the tall willows and alders along the ditches, all the 
 low bushes on the hills and hummocks had become distinct ; 
 the stars flamed, the cold had increased, but they did not 
 feel it; and they skated up the long glistening reflection of 
 the moon directly toward that heavenly body itself. Then 
 
210 
 
 £be Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 they looked up and saw in the glitter of the reflection the 
 forai of a man swaying to and fro, who seemed to be pursuing 
 his shadow, and who, though himself dark, was surrounded 
 by a splendour of light. He came toward them and invol- 
 untarily they tumed aside. It would have been disagree- 
 able to meet any one. They avoided the form which moved 
 continually toward them. It did not seem to have noticed 
 them and was following its straight path toward the castle. 
 But suddenly it changed its direction and circled around 
 the almost frightened pair several times. They sought with 
 some discretion to gain the shady side for themselves, and 
 in the full light of the moon the man came toward them, 
 stopped near them and stood still. It was impossible not to 
 recognise Flavio’s father.” 
 
 The major saw clearly what changes had taken place 
 during his absence. He was ready immediately to give up 
 Hilarie, for the hope of a sweet compensation in the person 
 of the beautiful widow beckoned to him in the distance. 
 But the happiness of the men was thwarted by the resistance 
 of Hilarie. In a flush of moral austerity she declared it 
 would be improper, even criminal, to pass from the father to 
 the son, and so we see at the close of this part of the story 
 four people who resign themselves. 
 
 But the resignation is only temporary. After a certain 
 length of time Hilarie’s austerity is relaxed and the two pairs 
 are found together as nature had intended they should be. 
 Hence the story, in its meaning, is hardly connected by a 
 thin thread with the great whole. In a remark preceding 
 the narrative Goethe says that the characters of “this ap- 
 parently isolated incident will be most intimately inter- 
 woven with those whom w r e already know”; but we cannot 
 agree with him. On the contrary, the Connection, which we 
 shall later leam, is so arbitrary, so superficial, so superfluous, 
 that we are of the opinion that Goethe’s only purpose in 
 making the prefatory remark was to Iure the reader on and 
 give him to expect that the charming love affair would wind 
 along through the whole novel. 
 
 After the breaking off of the story we hear of Wilhelm 
 
THUilbelm fIDeiöterö Manberiabre 21 1 
 
 again. He has found Nachodine and she is in a most satis- 
 factory position. But he conceals her whereabouts from 
 Lenardo in order to hinder the latter from going in quest 
 of her and endangering her peace of mind. Then he decides 
 to enter upon a pilgrimage to the home of Mignon. On 
 the way he meets a painter who has read Wilhelm Meisters 
 Lehrjahre and now intends to paint for German readers the 
 places where Mignon lived as a child . In spite of the fact 
 that a considerable space of time must have elapsed since 
 the close of Die Lehrjahre , Marchese Cipriani, it seems, has not 
 yet retumed from his travels. Consequently Wilhelm does 
 not need to take possession of Mignon’s inheritance, which 
 was promised him, but is at bottom a very unpleasant thing 
 for him to think about. 
 
 There is, however, a gain awaiting him at the lake. The 
 painter opens his eyes to the surrounding world as the as- 
 tronomer had opened them to the starry world. Then the 
 author brings to him the two beautiful women who have 
 resigned themselves, Hilarie and the widow, who have become 
 friends and have undertaken for their consolation a joumey 
 to Lago Maggiore. The four travellers experience together 
 several weeks of romantic bliss, the main elements of which 
 are painting, boating, singing, and sentimentalising, ending 
 with a moonlight evening which is the exact counterpart 
 of the evening when Weither was with Lotte for the last 
 time before his flight. Here, however, the ones to flee are 
 the women, who leave behind a letter in which they forbid the 
 men to follow them. The painter, who has meanwhile 
 conceived a serious affection for Hilarie, is made worthy 
 by this experience to be received into the Order of the 
 resigned. 
 
 Lenardo has received Wilhelm’s news and manfully gives 
 up the nut-brown maiden. “ Doing without speaking must 
 now be our watchword. . . . Longing disappears in do- 
 ing and working.” He has been joyfully welcomed as a com- 
 rade by the members of the federation. His enj oyment of 
 technical affairs, his inclination to begin at the beginning, 
 his longing to go to America, and his possessions there, 
 
212 
 
 Zbe Xife of ßoetbe 
 
 have especially recommended him. His property joins that 
 of the federation. The plan is to construct through both 
 a canal, which will increase their value beyond calculation. 
 As the abbe explains to Wilhelm, it will be possible for 
 Lenardo to carry out his own ideas and colonise the two 
 banks of the canal with Spinners and weavers, masons, car- 
 penters, and smiths.* At the same time the abbe informs 
 Wilhelm that he is now liberated from the Obligation to stay 
 no longer than three days in one place. Wilhelm is thus 
 in a position to study surgery as a profession. In Order to 
 give him the necessary time for study the poet makes a pause 
 of a few years. 
 
 The time passes by. Whlhelm has become a surgeon 
 and now feels it his duty to look after Felix. Because of 
 his fondness for horses Felix has been sent to the horse- 
 rearing region and is being educated in horsemanship. It 
 is apparent that the romantic ideals of calling and education 
 set forth in Die Lehrjahre have been thoroughly lost sight 
 of. Wilhelm leaves Felix still longer with the pedagogues, 
 as he himself has not yet entirely finished his travels. Dür- 
 ing his visit to the pedagogical province he also takes part in 
 a miners’ festival, at which he meets Jarno again, and where 
 a spirited debate on the Vulcanist and the Neptunist theories 
 takes place. The eontroversy over the two geological 
 theories filled the poet with such a passionate interest that 
 neither here nor in Faust could he refrain from unburdening 
 his heart on the subject. An accident gives Wilhelm an 
 opportunity to exhibit the skill that he has acquired as a 
 surgeon. 
 
 The second book closes with a long letter from Wilhelm 
 to Natalie, in which he explains to her how he came to study 
 surgery, and, recalling in that Connection an experience of 
 his youth, he teils the story of the drowned fisher-boy, a 
 tragic idyll of simple, touching beauty. Wilhelm is proud 
 that he is now a useful, indeed necessary member of society; 
 happy to be practising a calling which Jarno has called the 
 
 * Plainly enough we here see in Die Wanderjahre the shadow of the end 
 of Faust. 
 
Milbelm flDeteters Manber]abre 213 
 
 most divine of all, because it permits him to heal without 
 the aid of miracles and to perform miracles without using 
 words. 
 
 With the third and last book we enter the third and last 
 stage of the social community. In the first stage we found 
 a patriarchical relation: St. Joseph provides for his house 
 
 as the father of a family. Natural, inbom love binds the 
 members together. In the second stage we found the re- 
 lation one of enlightened absolutism: well-to-do persons 
 devote their possessions, their thought, and their labour to the 
 welfare of a wide circle of people to whom they are not 
 bound by the natural ties of birth. Still, with all their 
 love of man, they stand in the relation to their neighbours 
 of a ruler to his subjects. What they give them bears 
 the character of support and those supported bear the char- 
 acter of dependents. We now come to the third stage, the 
 democratic community. 
 
 Lenardo has enlisted for the future colony in America 
 more than a hundred handicraftsmen of all kinds, who are 
 meanwhile working under his direction at home. But he is 
 not their lord ; he is the chosen leader, the first among equals. 
 Not even his title bears any indication of leadership. In 
 fact, it does not indicate a person at all, it means only a 
 thing. He is called “the bond.” Lenardo’s only honour 
 and duty is that of being the bond of union. Although he is 
 a baron and belongs to a very old family, he puts himself so- 
 cially on a perfect equality with the workmen, in order to 
 carry out the Spirit in which the union is conceived, after 
 the model of the future world federation. He eats at the 
 same table with them and after the day’s work is done spends 
 the evening with them. He considers even the carrier Chris- 
 toph his equal, whereas in Die Lehrjahre the Count and the 
 Countess consider people who in themselves are benevolent 
 and kind, or even like the actors are educated and socially 
 clever, as persons far below their rank, whom, according to 
 the feudal habit, they address in the third person, as though 
 they were chattels. And the actors recognise the relation 
 as justified and vie with each other in unworthy servility. 
 
214 
 
 Zh e %itc of ßoetbe 
 
 Here, on the other hand, the labourer has awakened to a 
 consciousness of his worth. There is not the slightest thing 
 to indicate that he does not feel the equal in all things of 
 the titled leader. True, he is not indebted to him for any- 
 thing. What he has he eams by his own labour. Materi- 
 ally and socially he is a thoroughly independent man. Far 
 from expecting any sense of inferiority on the part of the 
 labouring men, Lenardo seeks, rather, in every way to in- 
 crease their self-consciousness. In a significant address he 
 gives them to understand that they are more fortunate 
 than many an exiled prince who is unable to support himself 
 by the labour of his hands, and that personal property which 
 is the product of labour is far more valuable than real pro- 
 perty, which has for thousands of years been considered the 
 true source of national prosperity. 
 
 In the “Bond,” as the whole society is called, after the 
 leader, exemplary discipline prevails, in spite of all the 
 liberty enjoyed. The members are ruled by the rhythmic 
 Order of the songs which they strike up at every exalted 
 moment, at every important period of the day’s course. 
 There is a voluntary ad justment of themselves to a beau- 
 tiful harmonious whole. From their songs we catch the 
 practical moral foundation of the “ Bond,” in these words: 
 
 Unb bein Streben fei’s in Siebe, 
 
 Unb bein Seben fei bie £at.* 
 
 Thus the “Bond” appears to us as a most beautiful so- 
 cial picture of the future. In his delineation of the picture 
 Goethe has not only taken account of the full consequences of 
 the French revolution : he has also, with wonderful pre- 
 vision, drawn on the approaching economic revolution. It is 
 especially worthy of note that the transition of the old civi- 
 lised countries from agricultural to industrial States, which 
 Lenardo prophesied, has already become a reality. 
 
 Even the crises which that machine-and-steam-incited 
 revolution brought in its train were not to be left unre- 
 
 * And let love control thy striving, 
 
 And thy life be one of deeds. 
 
MUbelm flDeisters Manberjabre 215 
 
 flected, and could not be, in the sociological novel. We are 
 introduced to them by the experiences of Lenardo while 
 enlisting handicraftsmen for the new colony in America. 
 For the industrial undertaking across the sea he seeks to 
 obtain, among others, Spinners and weavers, and goes for 
 this purpose to the mountains. We recognise Switzerland 
 as the country which he visits. The spinning machine 
 invented by Hargreaves and Arkwright in 1768, and the 
 power loom, invented by Cartwright in 1784, have already 
 been in use for some time in England, and at the opening of 
 the new Century begin to be introduced on the continent. 
 Their use is gradually extended tili they approach the Alps 
 and threaten to throw hand-labour out of employment. 
 Care stalks about in the industrious mountain villages. And 
 not care alone. Severe conflicts, which strike deep into the 
 emotional life of the individual and the tenderest relations 
 of the community, are brought on by the approach of terror- 
 inspiring machinery. 
 
 We see an example in a family with which Lenardo Stands 
 in a specially close relation. It is the family of the ejected 
 farmer, whom he unexpectedly meets in his wanderings, 
 evidently in the neighbourhood of the Lake of Zürich. The 
 farmer had retired to that industrial region, and his daughter 
 Nachodine, by her clevemess, cordiality, and beauty, had 
 won the heart of the son of a manufacturer, who employed 
 a large number of Spinners and weavers. After the early 
 death of her husband and his parents she assumes the man- 
 agement of the business, which she conducts successfully, 
 with the aid of a foreman. The foreman soon falls in love 
 with her and makes her a proposal of marriage. She is not 
 indisposed to accept him, but she cannot agree with him con- 
 ceming proposed changes in the factory. He considers it 
 an unavoidable necessity to introduce new machinery, as 
 otherwise their competitors will get ahead of them and take 
 away their market ; but Nachodine, while she recognises the 
 force of his arguments, cannot find it in her heart to share in 
 an enterprise which, by the employment of machines, would 
 rob the poor Spinners and weavers of their daily bread and 
 
2IÖ 
 
 Zbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 cause the populated valleys to be deserted. Rather than 
 do that she will seil her home and go to America, where, 
 free from such considerations, she can apply herseif to the 
 new mode of manufacture. The foreman considers the idea 
 of emigration a foolish fancy, and so both are depressed 
 in spirit and their relations to one another are disturbed. 
 
 Lenardo finds them in this unharmonious state. The 
 sight of “the beautiful, good girl” not only arouses in him 
 the old feelings, it increases them to such an extent that he 
 can hardly refrain from offering her his hand at once. Nach- 
 odine also feels a genuine affection for the junker, now ma- 
 tured to noble manhood, to whom she had once looked up 
 from her oppressed position; whereas her feelings toward 
 the foreman had not gone beyond intellectual admiration 
 inspired by her appreciation of his worth. The foreman 
 notices the change that has taken place and sorrowfully 
 relinquishes his suit. Lenardo also leaves Nachodine with- 
 out making her a definite proposal, as he does not know 
 how it would be received. 
 
 So we again have threp who resign themselves. Le- 
 nardo overcomes his pain by determined activity. Wil- 
 helm finds him at the head of the “ Bond,” and by his side 
 Baron Friedrich, the wild, frivolous brother of Natalie, who, 
 never afflicted with haughtiness, is now filled with the seri- 
 ousness of the time and of the aims of the federation, and 
 gladly joins the rank and file of the handicraftsmen, busying 
 himself in many w r ays as a zealous workman, even as a scribe. 
 
 The “Bond” is occupied with the rebuilding of a 
 burned town. The farm-bailiff has placed at their disposal 
 as a residence the old, dilapidated castle of a count in an 
 adjacent village, and as he has also granted them other 
 Privileges the labourers feel called upon in tum to repair 
 the castle, which soon affords the “ happy sight of a dwelling 
 inhabited by living beings,” and, as the author adds, gives 
 evidence that “ life creates life, and he who makes himself 
 useful to others puts them under the necessity of making 
 themselves useful to him.” According to this ethics kind- 
 ness is viewed from the standpoint of egoism. 
 
MUfoelm flDcisters Manber]abre 21 7 
 
 The evenings, which assemble the companions for social 
 entertainment, afford the author an opportunity to institute 
 a kind of Decamerone. The different ones take part by 
 telling various experiences of their past lives. One evening 
 the barber’s turn comes and his experience is a fairy tale, 
 Die neue Melusine. 
 
 This brings us back again from work to the other great 
 motive of Die Wanderjahre, resignation. In no other part 
 of the novel has Goethe laid so much emphasis upon this 
 principle of life, or thrown light upon it from so many differ- 
 ent sides. It must be admitted that the tale, with its serious 
 tendency and its significant ending, is painfully out of place 
 in the mouth of the barber. Originally it was to have been 
 told by a stranger of strong character. But Goethe had his 
 secret reasons for the change and we shall later discover 
 them. 
 
 The barber once met at an inn an unusually charming, 
 rieh lady of high Station, w T ho immediately aroused in him 
 a passionate desire to possess her. His desire was so great 
 that he unceremoniously transgressed all bounds of pro- 
 priety and clasped the beautiful lady in his arms. She 
 pushed him back and wamed him that through his passion- 
 ateness he was in danger of forfeiting a good fortune, which 
 was very near him, but could be seized only after he had 
 undergone certain trials. “ Demand what thou wilt, angelic 
 spirit,” he exclaimed fervently, he, the untried. The lady 
 gave him the Commission to journey on alone with a casket 
 which she was carefully guarding, and to wait at a certain 
 place until she appeared. She gave him a purse filled with 
 gold to defray the expenses of his journey. Hardly had he 
 arrived in another town when the frivolous fellow yielded 
 to the allurements of the gambling table and lost all his 
 money. In his despair he threw himself on the floor of his 
 room and tore his hair. Then the beautiful lady appeared, 
 granted him forgiveness, and gave him more money, but 
 declared that he must once more go out into the world all 
 alone and that he should there be on his guard especially 
 against wine and women. He continued his journey with 
 
2 I 8 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 the firm determination to obey his beloved. But in the 
 next large city he feil in with pretty women and soon became 
 engaged in a bloody combat with a rival, from which he was 
 carried home severely wounded. In the night the beautiful 
 stränge lady suddenly entered his room and sympathetically 
 applied a healing balsam to his wounds. Instead of thanking 
 her and showing contrition, he heaped reproaches upon 
 her, saying that she was to blame for it all, because she had 
 left him alone. She bore his reproaches with composure and 
 promised to remain with him from that time on. They had 
 not long been together when he caught a glimpse of a beam of 
 light issuing from the casket. Being unable to control his 
 curiosity, he peeped in through a crack and there saw his 
 beloved as a neat little dwarf. She regretted his invasion 
 of her secret, but expressed her willingness nevertheless to 
 live with him and care for him if he would promise her to 
 guard himself against wine and anger and never to reproach 
 her with her dwarf’s condition. He promised, and sealed his 
 promise with an oath. But in one single evening he broke all 
 three promises. Then she told him she must leave him for 
 ever and retum to her people. In the despair of parting 
 he asked whether there were no means whereby they could 
 further remain together. She answered that there was in- 
 deed a means, if he could make up his mind to become as 
 small as she was. He consented and through the power of 
 a ring, which she placed on his finger, he became a dwarf. 
 
 The rest we know from the Friederike chapter. Well 
 as it went w r ith him in the kingdom of the dwarfs, he re- 
 tained the Standard of his former size, an ideal for himself, 
 which tortured him and made him unhappy. He filed the 
 ring off and regained his former stature. He now stood in 
 the world of men as poor and lonel.y as ever before. What a 
 fool ! He had thought he needed but to reach out his hand 
 for the treasures of this world and they would be his. To 
 obtain beauty, love, wealth, enjoyment, in a word, happy 
 fortune and greatness, he had thought he needed to make no 
 sacrifices ; either of liberty or of independence, either of good 
 or bad habits, of passionate impulses, or of pams, labour or 
 
HGUlbelm flDeiöters THUanberiabre 219 
 
 patience. He wished to be master of one and all these things, 
 and was not even master of himself. He desired love, fidel- 
 ity, and devotion, and yet for the sake of his own enjoyment 
 and his anger he broke the most solemn oaths and violated 
 the nearest and most natural considerations. He fancied 
 there was a way to attain happiness without resignation. 
 
 No painful experience teaches him anything. He always 
 seeks to lay the blame on others, or on circumstances, in- 
 stead of on himself. It is only when the final stage has been 
 reached, when a whole period of his life has vanished into 
 nothingness, that he is made wiser and is forced to recognise 
 the necessity of resignation. And so at his reception into the 
 “ Bond,” through a dash of humour on the part of the author, 
 which gives way immediately to a most charming and most 
 profound seriousness, the barber allows to be imposed upon 
 him the hardest of all resignations, silence. Only with the 
 permission of Lenardo does he dare speak. But by the very 
 fact that he forgoes speaking he develops a far greater skill 
 in speaking than before. Since he is forced to carry about 
 in silence all that he experiences, has heard, and has seen, 
 there takes place within him a process of sifting, arranging, 
 and shaping, so that when his tongue is loosened his expe- 
 riences burst forth as works of art. His loss is converted 
 into gain, his punishment into a reward. Resignation brings 
 about concentration. Concentration increases power. Thus 
 the fundamental ideas of Die Wanderjahre are most cleverly 
 interwoven with the moral of the tale. It was doubtless 
 for the sake of this moral that the author made the barber 
 the narrator and hero of the tale. 
 
 The day soon approaches on which the “ Bond” is to set 
 out for America. Formerly Goethe would not have had any 
 patience with such an emigration. He had energetically con- 
 troverted the belief that, in Order to be of use in the world 
 and find suitable employment for one’s powers one must 
 seek out a peculiar and entirely new and unworked field of 
 activity, and had made Lothario return from America cured 
 of this delusion and exclaim on his old home estate, “ Here 
 or nowhere is America!” In 1821, a quarter of a Century 
 
220 
 
 £be Xife of ßoetbe 
 
 after the publication of Die Lehrjahre , the author still 
 maintained the same point of view in the first edition of 
 Die W ander jahre. Here he called the idea of emigration 
 a whim and said that people left their own country in the 
 hope of a better condition, but that their hope was verg- 
 otten deceptive. No matter where men go they will always 
 find themselves in a world of limitations. Hence the 
 members of the “Bond” have entered into an agreement 
 to forgo all thought of emigration. But a few years later 
 the poet’s views had materially changed. In 1827 he sang: 
 
 Slmerifa, bit fiaft e$ beffcr 
 311$ unfer Kontinent, ba$ alte, 
 
 §a[t feine nerfallcne ©djlöffer 
 Unb feine Safalte. 
 
 ®id) ftört nic^t im Snnern 
 Bu lebenbiger Beit 
 UnmUc$ (Erinnern 
 Unb Dcrgcblicfjcr ©trcit.* 
 
 And in the new edition of Die Wanderjahre he assumed 
 a thoroughly revolutionary attitude toward the old conti- 
 nent. “ In the Old World,” he makes Wilhelm say, “ every- 
 thing moves at a jog trot; people always want to treat 
 new things in the old way and growing institutions after 
 a dead fashion.” 
 
 For this reason the “ Bond ” and the federation will estab- 
 lish their new state nowhere but on new soil, and the Amer- 
 ican possessions of Lothario and Lenardo fulfil this 
 condition perfectly. But the author does not entirely 
 forsake his old point of view. It was not possible for him 
 simply to throw overboard the idea which he had earlier de- 
 fended so vigorously, and which in itself is correct, that an 
 
 * America, with thee life ’s better, 
 
 Thou ’rt free from our old Europe’s faults; 
 
 Thee no ruined castles fetter, 
 
 Cumber no basalts. 
 
 No useless tradition. 
 
 No purposeless strife, 
 
 Hinder the fruition 
 Of thy pulsing life. 
 
XÄTIilbelm fIDeisters Wanber]afore 221 
 
 honest man, if he strives, can achieve much that is good and 
 beautiful even in the Old World. It will be remembered 
 that he had had the correctness of this idea confirmed by 
 the American uncle. Hence he makes only a part of the 
 “Bond” emigrate to America, while the others come to the 
 determination to remain in Europe. They owe this deter- 
 mination to an energetic man who is engaged in great 
 colonisation projects in Europe, Odoard, the stadtholder 
 of a detached province of a great empire. 
 
 Odoard has had some painful experiences. In order to 
 suppress his hopeless love for a daughter of the reigning 
 prince of his country he married the daughter of the prime 
 minister. They lived together for several years at a distance 
 from the Capital and were apparently happy. One day the 
 husband discovered the faithlessness of his wife, and about 
 the same time the appearance of the princess fanned the 
 almost extinct embers of his love for her to a bright flame. 
 The narrative is interrupted at this point and we can only 
 surmise that, in order to still the double pain brought upon 
 him, Odoard has taken up with all his energy his plans for 
 the colonisation of the province put under his Charge. He 
 is apparently guided by the conviction which permeates 
 the federation, and which Jarno once expressed in these 
 words: “Toward the healing of the sufferings of the soul 
 
 the understanding can do nothing, the reason little, time 
 much, determined activity everything.” In a clear and 
 convincing address before the members of the “Bond” — 
 such addresses before large crowds are a very modern 
 feature of Die W ander jahre — he sets forth his plans and the 
 prospects which they open, and in this way enlists a group 
 of labourers for his province. Staying at home is shown in 
 a still narrower sense to be both possible and advantageous. 
 Some of the labourers had entered into relations with the 
 fair daughters of the village in which they were staying. 
 The discovery of this fact led the shrewd farm-bailiff im- 
 mediately to found a business enterprise. He formed among 
 the peasants and their future sons-in-law, who were skilled 
 workmen, an association for the erection of a furniture 
 
222 
 
 TIbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 factory, for which he provided the wood from the crown 
 forests. What was to his advantage was to the advantage 
 of all the others. In the very place where they were, and, 
 in a certain sense, in the midst of the divided-up land, 
 his happy idea created for those who were ready to emigrate 
 some arable land on which they could settle and which they 
 could cultivate. From none of the settlers was anything 
 taken. They kept what was their own and new earnings 
 came to them besides. All these blessings flowed from the 
 wonderful power of labour rightly organised and guided. 
 
 For the great majority of the “Bond” permanent work 
 is not to begin tili they have crossed the sea. As the uncle 
 demands of his people that they put aside on Sunday 
 everything that weighs them down, in Order that they may 
 begin the work of the new week fresh and free, so the feder- 
 ation, if we understand Goethe aright, demands of its mem- 
 bers that they enter unfettered into the new community 
 life in America. Of the most of the members, especially 
 of the men, this is taken for granted, but we have been 
 witnesses of the liberating process in the case of the more 
 prominent among them, Lothario, Lenardo, Friedrich, 
 Wilhelm, and Jarno. Through resignation and labour they 
 have become new men. This process of transformation 
 is not yet complete in the case of two of the women, two 
 former sinners, Philine and Lydie, the one the beloved of 
 Lothario and the other later the wife of Jarno. Both have, 
 it is true, honestly endeavoured to atone for their wrongs. 
 Philine has become a conscientious wife and mother and an 
 industrious dressmaker, Lydie a zealous and careful seam- 
 stress. But they are unable with their own strength to 
 take the final step of the process ; they require the help of a 
 pure human being. So they go to Makarie, the “divine,” 
 who through the blessing of her hands completes in them 
 the process of purification. Now for the first time they 
 look forward with joyous hope to the New World. And 
 what do these former worshippers of the idol Frivolity look 
 forward to w T ith pleasure? In harmony with the serious 
 spirit of Die Wanderjahre, with which they have become 
 
TOUlbelm flDeisters TCHanfceriabre 223 
 
 imbued, they anticipate with pleasure the unlimited work 
 awaiting them across the sea. Philine’s scissors begin au- 
 tomatically to cut the air when she thinks of providing 
 the new colony with garments. Lydie sees in fancy the 
 number of her sewing pupils already growing into the 
 hundreds and a whole nation of housewives taught by her 
 to sew accurately and neatly. 
 
 At Makarie’s castle appear further the major and the 
 beautiful widow, and Flavio and Hilarie, but only for the 
 purpose of introducing themselves to us as happy pairs. We 
 are also told that Nachodine will soon arrive at the castle. 
 She is to take the place of Angela, who is soon to be married. 
 Nachodine has transferred her business to the foreman, and 
 he has installed the new machinery, but without causing the 
 harm that had been feared. On the contrary, “the inhab- 
 itants of the industrious valley are occupied in a different 
 and more lively way.” In this point Goethe was better able 
 to see beyond the immediate future than were many of his 
 contemporaries, better even than such a distinguished po- 
 litical economist as Sismondi. He saw not merely the 
 wounds which the new machine strikes ; he saw also the new 
 productive powers which it elicits. 
 
 When the “Bond” set out for the harbour Wilhelm 
 separated from them to go to visit Felix before starting 
 across the sea. He sailed up a river toward the pedagog- 
 ical province. 
 
 Felix’s education had meanwhile been finished, and 
 hardly had he been dismissed from the institution when he 
 hastened to Hersilie, whose picture had accompanied him 
 constantly since the first time he had seen her. He dis- 
 covered in her keeping the casket which he had found in 
 the black cave of giants and which after the death of the col- 
 lector had been brought to her. She had also received the 
 key to it. Felix wrested it from her by storm and was 
 eager to open the casket, but in his attempt he broke the 
 key in the lock. As the casket is a Symbol of life, which 
 cannot be taken by storm, so is it also a symbol of Felix’s 
 relation to Hersilie. He embraces her and kisses her. Al- 
 
224 
 
 Zbe Xifc ot Goetbe 
 
 though she cannot help feeling for him a strong love in 
 return, she pushes him angrily away and teils him never 
 again to appear before her. “Then I shall ride into the 
 world tili I die.” He dashes away on horseback, gallops 
 across the plain, fails to see the banks of the river, they 
 crumble away and he falls into the water. 
 
 This happens just at the moment when his father’s boat 
 is passing the spot. Felix is drawn out of the water, appar- 
 ently dead ; but a letting of his blood brings him back to life. 
 As Jarno had prophesied, the father’s art of healing has 
 performed a miracle without words, has brought back the 
 dead to life. And the one dead is his own son. Father 
 and son, overjoyed, glide down the stream to join the other 
 emigrants for the voyage together across the ocean. 
 
 But they do not meet Natalie, Lothario, Therese, and 
 the abbe. These have gone to America in advance of the 
 rest. Why Goethe should have made these persons go 
 ahead of the others seems at first past finding out. It is 
 most striking in the case of Natalie. After years of Separa- 
 tion from Wilhelm the thing most natural, most obvious, 
 and most imperative, would have been for her to await his 
 return and then go with him to the New T World. The novel 
 öfters no explanation of her conduct. Perhaps one may be 
 found in life, as it is reflected in the novel. 
 
 In the case of Natalie, as is evidenced by her poetical 
 sisters, Iphigenia and Leonora of Este, the poet had no other 
 model than Frau von Stein. So long as she lived she and 
 Goethe, with all their natural affmity for each other, were 
 kept apart by an impassable chasm. And it is in this way 
 that the first edition of Die Wanderjahre treats their relation. 
 Wilhelm has an endless longing for Natalie. On his wander- 
 ings he sees her on a mountain peak and on the edge of a 
 deep gorge. Through his field glass he sees her fair, pure 
 figure and her slender arms which had once embraced him 
 so sympathetically after his unfortunate trials of sorrow 
 and confusion. “And in thine angelic, fond caresses found 
 my troubled bosom blessed peace.” She beckons to him 
 with her handkerchief. He reaches out toward her, but he 
 
Milbelm flDeiöterö Manberjabre 225 
 
 cannot, he dare not cross over. We wonder what grey- 
 haired Frau von Stein may have feit when she read this pas- 
 sage. Goethe sent her the edition on the 2 5th of July, 1821, 
 when he was getting ready for the journey to Marienbad. 
 He accompanied the gift with a few lines in which we can 
 feel the emotion of his heart: “Dear, esteemed friend: 
 
 While the Wanderer again goes far away, I beg you to keep 
 his picture and likeness with kind sympathy.” In the 
 second edition he erased the peculiar passage and excluded 
 a meeting before they had crossed the sea; for meanwhile 
 Frau von Stein had died. Goethe could now be United with 
 her only after they had both passed into the beyond. And 
 so Wilhelm is not allowed to see his Natalie again tili he has 
 crossed the ocean. Lothario and the abbe are her necessary 
 companions. One other thing shows us the mutual relation 
 between Frau von Stein and the novel. Makarie, as we 
 have been convinced, is a heightened Natalie. She was 
 lacking in the novel of 1821; she appeared in the edition of 
 1829. Makarie is “ the sainted one . ” 
 
 Let us accompany the emigrants across the water and 
 examine the Constitution in accordance with which they 
 intend to live in the new state. It is conceived in the spirit 
 of Germanic individualism 32 and Germanic religion, but 
 contains apergus of a Constitution, rather than a clearly for- 
 mulated regime. The foundation is Christianity, because it 
 teaches faith, love, and hope, out of which comes forth 
 patience. Morals arise from reverence for one’s seif and are 
 practically embraced in the two commandments, “ Be mod- 
 erate in what is arbitrary” and “Be diligent in what is 
 necessary.” All citizens have equal rights. They have a 
 share in the administration of authority and in legislation, 
 either by their votes or through representatives. They 
 choose a supreme authority, which seems to be thought of as 
 vested in a group of colleagues. 33 These move about every- 
 where, because the people do not desire a Capital city and 
 because in this way needs are better recognised and equality 
 is preserved in administration and in public life. Equality 
 is striven after only in things of chief importance, in secon- 
 
226 
 
 £be Xlfe of (Boetbe 
 
 dary matters each man is to retain his liberty. A police 
 department is established, but no judiciary, for the present. 
 The members of the federation may have foreseen that for a 
 long time to come there would be no lawsuits. The punish- 
 ment of crimes rests with the police, but only with the co-op- 
 eration of a jury. 34 Brandy shops and circulating libraries 
 are not endured. Goethe looked upon both as poisonous 
 institutions. Every man who desired to be received into 
 the federation must have some specialty in which he is 
 thorough. Mere Sentiment, as in the case of other organisa- 
 tions, is not sufhcient, especially as it cannot be tested. All 
 are to be impressed with the greatest respect for time “as 
 the highest gift of God and nature.” To remind the people 
 constantly of the importance of this gift clocks are set up 
 everywhere, which by the aid of the optical telegraph indi- 
 cate the hours and quarter-hours throughout the day and 
 night. Again in this point Goethe showed a wonderful 
 knowledge of the modern world, the world of labour. It 
 was he who told the disinherited that time was their great 
 inheritance : 
 
 Wein (Erbteil roie fyerrlid), roeit unb breit! 
 
 Tie 3eit ift mein ÜBefijj, mein Slcfer ift bic Seit.* 
 
 This couplet appeared as a motto to the first edition of the 
 novel. “It is better to do the idlest thing in the world 
 than to sit idle for half an hour,” is one of the morals that 
 Goethe copied from Sterne in the Betrachtungen im Sinne 
 der Wanderer, f But greater than making the most of time 
 is the blessing of time. Odoard sings loud the praise of 
 time as the mightiest lever of progress. What all his per- 
 suasion was unable to do, time accomplished. “ Time 
 makes spirits free and gives them a wider Outlook. In a 
 
 * How lordly my heritage, how great! 
 
 For time is my possession, time my vast estate. 
 
 “ Mein Acker ist die Zeit ” was one of Goethe’s old maxims. In a let- 
 ter of the 2öth of April, 1797, to Fritz von Stein he says: “I confess 
 that my old Symbol is becoming more and more important to me : * tem- 
 pus divitiae meae, tempus ager meus.’ ” 
 t Cf. Sprüche in Prosa, No. 500. — C. 
 
Milbe Im HDeisters Manfcerjabre 227 
 
 broadened heart the higher advantage crowds out the lower. 
 Time takes the place of reason.” Cronos steps again into 
 the place of Zeus. Or, better still, they are united. Reason 
 lies in development. By organising itself into a state 
 according to these fundamental ideas and laws, at the same 
 time attracting to itself and assisting on both sides of the 
 water all who are like-minded with them, and further by 
 making its state a model, an inspiring example for other 
 States and communities embracing millions of inhabitants, 
 the federation comes nearer and nearer to its aim of broaden- 
 ing itself to a world federation and practising world piety. 
 “We do not wish to withdraw from home piety the praise 
 that is due it . . . , but it is no longer sufficient. We 
 must grasp the idea of a world piety, must bring our honest 
 human sentiments into a practical relation with a wider 
 sphere, and not only help our neighbours to make progress, 
 but include at the same time the whole of humanity.” 
 
 The poet took one more thing into consideration. For 
 the new society and the new state new men were needed. In 
 his own ministerial office he had observed with great sorrow 
 how hard it is to carry out reforms, to say nothing of reor- 
 ganisations, without new men. On the 2 ist of September, 
 1780, he wrote complainingly to Frau von Stein: “In civil 
 
 matters, where everything goes on in a settled order, it is 
 impossible either to hasten especially the good or to remove 
 any particular evil; they all have to go together, just as the 
 black and white sheep of one flock go into the fold and out 
 again together. And even for the little that could be done 
 there is a lack of men, new men, who would do what is 
 proper without making mistakes.” Nothing but a new 
 education can provide these new men. 
 
 Ever since Rousseau’s Emile (1762) a great many of the 
 leading minds everywhere, and especially in Germany, had 
 studied the problem of creating new men by means of a new 
 education. Rousseau’s command, back to nature and let 
 nature have her way, a good thing in itself, had kindled a 
 mighty flame. But it indicated a way rather than an aim. 
 And there was room for difference of opinion concerning 
 
228 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 the way, even though one approved his point of departure. 
 Nevertheless men believed they had a method that would 
 answer the purpose in his direction back to nature. So 
 they devoted their chief attention to the working out of the 
 aim. The enthusiasm for things Greek newly awakened 
 by Winckelmann set up as the aim of all education the 
 Greek ideal of the creation of a man morally good and beau- 
 tifully developed physically and spiritually. This ideal 
 was defended in manifold ways by Wieland, Herder, young 
 Goethe, Schiller, Friedrich August Wolf, Jean Paul, and 
 many other prominent men of the classical period. But of 
 the triangulär pyramid of the ideal education it was in 
 reality almost always the spiritual side alone, the general, 
 comprehensive education, that attracted attention. This 
 resulted in partial atrophy of virtue, will power, and body, 
 and in inadequate preparation for the special calling which 
 one had to fulfil. What was gained amounted to little 
 more than beautiful dilettanteism in all possible arts and 
 Sciences. Even men of such rieh spiritual and material 
 endowments as Goethe could strive toward the Winckel- 
 mannian ideal of education only temporarily and that not 
 without danger. And who was to help the overwhelm- 
 ing majority? 
 
 For them there arose another teacher, the greatest of 
 modern times, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. His educational 
 plan for the regeneration of mankind was based neither on 
 theories, nor on enthusiasm for a dreamed-of natural condi- 
 tion or a dreamed-of ideal Greek condition, nor on Observa- 
 tion of the corrupt, artificial upper dass of society, but on 
 just the opposite of these things. It was based on life, on 
 reality, on observation of the distress, the misery, and the 
 generally neglected condition of the great mass of the people. 
 Education for work by means of work was the watchword 
 of his pedagogy, which has justly been called social peda- 
 gogy. Man must be made capable of bettering his own 
 condition. To this end he must be properly prepared for 
 his future calling. Hence serious, strict training for a 
 calling must precede word instruction or at least accompany 
 
nailbelm ffteiöters “Manberlabre 229 
 
 it. The calling in life of most men consists in practical work. 
 While one is preparing man for such work by means of dili- 
 gent activity in agriculture, housekeeping, or some com- 
 mercial industry, one is training not only his hands, but 
 also his head and character. One is leading him to “ a clear, 
 firm knowledge of his nearest and most essential relations 
 and to a firm realisation of his power.” One is teaching 
 him to be public-spirited and submissive, for he learns to 
 work with others. Beside making him true, simple, and 
 strong, one is leaving him innocent, because one shields him 
 from such evils as “ the humbugs and presumptions, the 
 idle pretentions and thousandfold confusions, of verbal 
 teachings and opinions.” In this way one can achieve, 
 along with an education for a calling, a general human edu- 
 cation, and one can promote virtue by paving the way for 
 prosperity. 
 
 Düring the mature years of his life Goethe stood on the 
 ground of this program, the details of which Pestalozzi him- 
 self had neither fully nor clearly worked out, and the main 
 principles of which Fichte in 1807 sought with fiery zeal 
 to apply to German conditions, in order by means of national 
 education to save Germany from destruction under foreign 
 rule. Guided by experience and observation, both of him- 
 self and others, men of age and minors, among the latter 
 Fritz von Stein, whose education had been left to him, Goethe 
 had gradually receded from the Winckelmannian ideal in 
 the form which it assumed in edueational practice; he had 
 given up, as Pestalozzi harshly expressed it, “the delusion 
 of creating a golden age by means of boasted muchness of 
 knowledge.” Pestalozzi, with whom he had become per- 
 sonally acquainted in 1775, had made a powerful appeal to 
 him, the more powerful since to the reformer it seemed as 
 though the poet’s tremendous power were tuming in a 
 selfish Promethean direction, away from filial-mindedness 
 toward God and hence from fatherly-mindedness toward 
 suffering humanity. In his first .writing, Abendstunde eines 
 Einsiedlers (May, 1780), he had called out to Goethe: “Out- 
 ward and inward majesty of man, achieved along the pure 
 
230 
 
 Gbe %\U of Goetbe 
 
 path of nature, is understanding and fatherly-mindedness 
 toward lower powers and talents. Man, in thy majesty, 
 weigh the use of thy powers according to this Standard: 
 fatherly-mindedness of high powers toward the weak, un- 
 developed herd of humanity. 0 prince in thy majesty! 
 0 Goethe in thy power! Is that not thy duty, 0 Goethe, 
 since thy path is not wholly nature? Forbearance toward 
 weakness, fatherly-mindedness, fatherly purpose, fatherly 
 sacrifice, in the use of one’s powers, — that is pure majesty of 
 mankind. O Goethe, in thy majesty, I look up to thee from 
 my lowliness, I tremble, keep silent, and sigh. Thy power 
 is like the impulse of great rulers, who sacrifice the national 
 blessing of millions to the glory of the empire.” 
 
 How Pestalozzi was deceived in Goethe! What he at 
 that time desired was already active in Goethe’s soul, or 
 was prepared for active employment and waited only for 
 an opportunity to manifest itself, though the manifestation 
 was different from that which Pestalozzi had in mind. 
 Even in the special field of education Goethe had come very 
 near the Swiss reformer, and came still nearer him during 
 the succeeding years. In Die Lehrjahre we have seen the 
 completion of the process of his turning away from the 
 educational ideal of Winckelmann to that of Pestalozzi. 
 
 Having once taken up these pedagogical ideas in Die 
 Lehrjahre, Goethe continued to elaborate them in his mind 
 and, after they had made their way through Die Wahlver- 
 wandtschaften, they found their full symbolic and direct 
 expression in Die Wanderjahre. Goethe has not made it 
 easy for us to obtain a clear picture of all the details of his 
 educational plan as it is represented in “the pedagogical 
 province.” He perhaps did not think it over hirnseif in all 
 its parts, in all directions, and in all its consequences. 
 And so, speaking through the mouth of Lenardo, he says 
 that it is a series of ideas, reflections, proposals, and pur- 
 poses, which would go well together, it is true, but might 
 hardly ever be found together in the ordinary course of 
 events. He was satisfied with throwing out suggestions, 
 but these suggestions are characterised by such depth that 
 
XÄßUbelm fIDeteters THIlanfcetjabre 231 
 
 men will be able to draw on them for a long time to come. 
 His educational System, like those of Pestalozzi and Fichte, 
 is intended for all, poor and rieh, indeed more for the former 
 than the latter. As the majority of the population belong 
 in the country the callings of the inhabitants of the country 
 must be cultivated above all, and, moreover, as the power 
 of the educational System can be unfolded only outside the 
 parental home, the boys are taken — Goethe says nothing 
 about the girls — to the great public educational institution 
 which, as in Fichte’s plan, embraces a wide territory: low- 
 land, highland, hilly country, cultivated land, meadow 
 land, and forest. To this territory Goethe gives the name 
 “ pedagogical province.” To the pedagogues of Die Wander- 
 jahre natural education means first of all individual educa- 
 tion. For this reason the development of the individuality 
 is allowed as much liberty as possible, in fact it is lent as- 
 sistance. Not even in matters of dress does the individual 
 need to conceal his peculiarities — quite a contrast to the 
 principles of Die Wahlverwandtschaften. The pupils are 
 carefully observed in order that their individualities may 
 be studied. When a decided inclination toward a certain 
 calling has been discovered the pupil is educated in ac- 
 cordance with this inclination. But whereas in the choice 
 of a calling heed is paid to his inclination, in his education 
 for the chosen calling the pupil is obliged to obey fixed laws. 
 This is particularly true where one would least expect it, 
 viz., in the education for an artistic calling. In this Con- 
 nection the remarkable observation is made that genius 
 is most willing to show obedience, because it quickly grasps 
 the use of it. “ It is only the mediocre who would like to 
 put their limited peculiarities in the place of the unlimited 
 whole, and to excuse their blunders under the plea of 
 insuperable originality and independence. But we do not 
 accept any such excuses. On the contrary, we guard our 
 pupils against all missteps whereby a large part of life, 
 in fact often the whole life, is thrown into confusion and 
 disruption.” As in Fichte’s System, all pupils seem to have 
 to take one course, that of farming. At least Felix is sent 
 
232 
 
 Zbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 to this department without question. It was doubtless 
 because of the healthfulness of the occupation, the oppor- 
 tunities of instruction which it affords — here a large part 
 of the descriptive Sciences is leamed incidentally — and 
 because of the pleasure which young people as a rule take 
 in such work, that Goethe introduced this arrangement. 
 It corresponds also to the view of Pestalozzi, that “the 
 cultivation of the fields is the most general, the most com- 
 prehensive, and the purest foundation for the education of 
 the people.” After the agricultural course the pupils are 
 given special training according to their various callings. 
 In the instruction offered them this specialisation is carried 
 out as far as possible, out of consideration for the individu- 
 ality as well as for the principle that the best results are 
 obtained by limitation, whereas a multiplicity of subjects 
 may lead to distraction and dabbling. 
 
 This principle is not carried out as rigidly as with the 
 uncle, whose watchword is “ Always but one thing.” Other- 
 wise an education would require too long a time. Further- 
 more the point of view that variety stimulates must not be 
 lost sight of. They seek accordingly to combine with a 
 practical subject one or two that are theoretical. For 
 example, with instruction in herding and breaking horses 
 is grouped instruction in the living languages. Whether 
 any instruction in the dead languages is offered we are not 
 told. The living languages are taught in a living way, in 
 accordance with the principle that one leams nothing out- 
 side the element which is to be mastered. This living 
 method of teaching is made possible by the fact that pupils 
 of the chief nations are brought together in the horse-rearing 
 region, where each of their languages in tum is spoken ex- 
 elusively for a whole month. The pupil receives at the 
 same time grammatical instruction in the particular language 
 which he desires to learn more thoroughly. There are 
 special teachers for this purpose and they live with their 
 pupils all the time, so that, though pedants are not wholly 
 wanting among their number, these “riding grammarians” 
 are not to be distinguished from their centaur pupils. 
 
Wilhelm freiste vs Wanberjabre 233 
 
 The scientific instruction is given in immediate Connection 
 with practice in the particular calling, for “activity of 
 life and efficiency are far more compatible with satisfactory 
 instruction than is commonly supposed.” Here it is given 
 during the quiet hours of herding. 
 
 Instruction in the elementary subjects is necessarily 
 co-ordinated with the course in agriculture, which all the 
 pupils are obliged to take. These subjects are singing, 
 writing, reading, and arithmetic, and one must think of 
 them as taught not simultaneously, but in echelons. The 
 greatest importance is attached to singing by note, which 
 is considered the best means of refreshment, discipline, and 
 instruction. Instruction is imparted, by making the pu- 
 pils write their own notes. As the children are taught to 
 write on the blackboard the signs representing the tones 
 which they produce, and to reproduce the tones according 
 to these signs, then to add the words below, they practise 
 hand, ear, and eye at the same time and learn more quickly 
 to write accurately and neatly. Then, as everything has 
 to be executed and copied according to definitely fixed 
 numbers, they learn much more rapidly the value of the 
 art of measurement and computation. Singing is also made 
 the means of impressing upon the pupils the moral and 
 religious teaching which they receive. In addition to this 
 every activity and every amusement is accompanied by song. 
 
 While vocal music is taught with the elementary sub- 
 jects, and hence is included in the agricultural group, in- 
 strumental music is accorded special attention and placed 
 in a separate department. It is a Professional study and 
 with it is grouped instruction in lyric poetry and dancing. 
 A further department is devoted to the plastic and graphic 
 arts, with which is combined instruction in epic poetry. 
 Dramatic art, on the other hand, to our surprise is placed 
 on an equality with theatrical art, and is wanting in the 
 curriculum of the pedagogical province. There is a lack 
 both of actors, because the inhabitants of the province have 
 become through education too true to represent anything 
 which they themselves are not, and of an audience, because 
 
234 
 
 £be Xife of Goetbe 
 
 in the province there is no idle crowd. Besides, the ped- 
 agogues think that the theatre ruins the sister arts. Hence 
 it is excluded, as it is from Plato’s state. Along with the 
 students of the plastic arts are educated the apprentices 
 of the building trades. This association is supposed to 
 honour them and edify them. In his province Odoard 
 intends to declare at the outset that the handicrafts are 
 strictly arts. Whereas everywhere eise singing is heard 
 while the pupils are at work, in this region deep silence pre- 
 vails. The work occupies the whole man. Songs are 
 heard only during the intervals of rest. Even the feasts 
 which are celebrated in the other departments are wanting 
 here. The disciples of art have no need of them. “ To the 
 plastic artist the whole year is a feast,” is the beautiful and 
 profound reason assigned. 
 
 Of the other callings for which the pedagogical province 
 prepares the only one mentioned is mining, so that not a 
 few practical and theoretical branches of instruction are 
 wanting. But it is easy to make the practical application 
 of what is given to what is wanting. We know the System: 
 it combines training for a particular calling with scientific 
 instruction, takes individual inclination into consideration, 
 lays special stress on the laws underlying everything done 
 and everything learned, beside paying attention to many 
 smaller details. And that is enough. Although one can 
 see how this System might be differently carried out, still 
 we may say in its favour that it develops hand, eye, and 
 head of the pupils in a way that is natural and answers 
 the purpose, and that it gives a good preparation for the 
 place they are to fill in life. 
 
 But is this all? Will it make the new men whom the 
 new age demands? Is there not also need of the elevation 
 of the moral powers? The casually mentioned instruction 
 in certain religious and moral doctrines is something, but 
 not enough. History has fully demonstrated that. A 
 peculiar supplementary training must be given, which will 
 consecrate man to a new higher existence, which will rid 
 him entirely of his animality and make him truly a man of 
 
Wilhelm flDeisters Wanberjabre 235 
 
 reason, a homo sapiens, and which will make him conscious 
 of his exalted godlikeness. 
 
 This need of supplementary training is met by the Crea- 
 tion of an invisible church, in which the pupil constantly 
 moves about. This invisible church arises from the awaken- 
 ing of reverence. All higher religions have endeavoured to 
 solve this problem, but none has solved it completely. 
 Therefore the pupil must pass through them all. On the 
 lowest stage stand the heathen or ethnic religions, the 
 highest type of which is the Jewish, which is based on 
 reverence for what is above us. The second is based on 
 reverence for what is on an equality with us. It is called 
 philosophical religion, because the philosopher draws every- 
 thing higher down to his plane and elevates everything lower 
 to his plane, that is, he puts everything on an equal plane 
 with himself. The third is the Christian religion, which is 
 based on reverence for what is below us, that is, reverence 
 for misery, dishonour, suffering, and death. It is the last 
 stage to which mankind has been able to attain. It takes all 
 three of these stages of reverence together to produce the 
 highest stage, reverence for one’s seif, just as they in tum 
 have developed out of this . 3 5 That is to say, reverence for 
 ourselves is reverence for the divine in us. At first we per- 
 ceive the divine in us only as an indistinct feeling, which 
 impels us to seek a divine something outside ourselves, 
 recognise it, and adore it. If, however, by rising one Step at 
 a time through the various religions of reverence, we have 
 recognised that everything outside ourselves, the high as 
 well as the low, is permeated by God, we have in so doing 
 recognised the divine in ourselves and are thus led to adore 
 it. The indistinct feeling of the divine in us has developed 
 into clear consciousness. According to this method of 
 reasoning, as the author says, man may consider himself 
 the best creature that God and nature have brought forth 
 and may continue to occupy this high standpoint without 
 being drawn down again to the common level by vanity 
 and selfishness. 
 
 It is in this way that Goethe makes his pantheism lend 
 
ftbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 236 
 
 itself to the production of the highest moral effects. It 
 makes no particular difference if his graduated System is 
 artificial, and is neither historically nor logically above 
 criticism. If, for example, philosophical religion produces 
 reverence for everything on an equality with us, and puts 
 the lower things on an equality with us by raising them to 
 our plane, it thereby awakens reverence for what is below 
 us and its scope is made to include the scope of the Christian 
 religion. Goethe himself falls into this and other in- 
 consistencies in the pedagogical application of his religious 
 philosophy, as we shall soon see. 
 
 How are the pupils introduced to this religion of rever- 
 ence? Are the history, so far as any exists, and the sig- 
 nificance, of this religion impressed upon them by direct 
 instruction ? The history probably is, but the significance 
 is not. Such a thing would be inadvisable both because 
 of the pupils’ undeveloped power of comprehension and 
 because of the fact that when the significance of anything 
 profound is revealed to people clearly and frankly they 
 believe that there is nothing behind it. Hence the “peda- 
 gogues” employ the method of teaching by Suggestion and 
 use symbolic object lessons as the means best adapted to their 
 purpose. These lessons are enveloped with a solemn at- 
 mosphere. They are given only in the “ sanctuaries,” which 
 are erected in a valley forest surrounded by high walls. 
 About an octagonal hall are arranged three galleries adomed 
 with pictures. In the chief pictures of the first gallery are 
 represented events from the history of the Israelites, and 
 in the less important ones events of like significance from 
 the history of other nations, particularly the Greeks. To 
 this gallery the pupils are admitted from their first year 
 on. For the paintings of the second gallery the subject 
 chosen is the life of Christ, exclusive of his passion. The 
 representation is limited to miracles and parables, as it is 
 only through these that the deep significance of his life 
 can be shown. This series of pictures is made to serve as an 
 illustration of philosophical religion by asserting of Christ 
 that he appeared in his life as a philosopher, putting the 
 
TKHilbelm fIDeteters HÜlanfcerjabte 23 7 
 
 lowest and highest things on an equality with himself, apo- 
 theosising the lowest things and humanising the highest. 
 To this gallery only the more mature pupils are admitted. 
 The last gallery, which is devoted to the passion and death 
 of Christ, and hence to the Christian religion in the nar- 
 rower sense, is opened but once a year, and then only for 
 the pupils who are graduated. It is the sanctuary of pain, 
 the too early or too frequent sight of which might fail 
 to produce, or might deaden, the awe-inspiring impression 
 it is intended to leave. An introduction to the fourth 
 religion, that of reverence for one’s seif, is superfluous, as it 
 grows out of the others of itself. 
 
 The “pedagogues” do not yet consider their full duty 
 performed. They have a second and third way of elevating 
 their pupils to the different stages of reverence. The second 
 is mentioned but briefly. Düring the instruction in the for- 
 mative arts, we are told, the three stages of reverence are 
 introduced and emphasised, as everywhere eise, though 
 with some Variation in the method to suit the nature of the 
 work in hand. The third way is, like the first, symbolic 
 and suggestive, but with this difference, that it is intended to 
 imbue the minds of youth daily and hourly, instead of now 
 and then, with the principles and practical workings of the 
 religion of reverence. It is applied in their Salutes. The 
 youngest pupils salute their superiors by Crossing their arms 
 over their breasts and looking up at the sky, as a sign that 
 above them is a God, who is reflected and revealed to them 
 in parents, teachers, and those in authority. The inter- 
 mediate pupils salute by folding their hands, as though 
 bound, behind their backs and looking down at the ground 
 with a smile, as a sign that the earth is for us a source of 
 inexpressible joys and sorrows. Here, in contradiction 
 with the fundamental philosophy of religion, but with 
 logical correctness, the Christian religion is put second, 
 which leads to a further contradiction, in that veneration 
 of joy is made its substance. This style of salute is not 
 imposed upon the pupil for very long. Then he is called 
 upon to man himself. He is to come into the fold of philo- 
 
238 
 
 £be Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 sophical religion. He now salutes by taking his place in the 
 rank and file of his comrades and keeping his eyes on them. 
 Selfish Segregation has ceased. His companions are con- 
 stantly before his eyes and he is determined from now on 
 to act only with his eyes fixed on the others or in union with 
 them. He has become a social nature. He is worthy to 
 enter life. Since as a sacred mystery the meaning of the 
 gestures is only partially revealed to the pupils the youths 
 themselves attach to them a most profound significance, 
 which bears good fruit. 
 
 Two great advantages that accrue to the pupils from 
 their education in the pedagogical province are not specially 
 mentioned. Through much work in the open air and with 
 their hands they become and remain healthy, and through 
 their extensive occupation with real things they become 
 objective. Both these aims seemed to Goethe of the utmost 
 importance. He complained bitterly that the young people 
 were being ruined both spiritually and physically by too 
 much theoretical instruction. And if they did not feel 
 well themselves how could they be expected to feel and act 
 kindly toward others? In the education of young Fritz 
 von Stein his chief aim was, as he confessed to Schiller, to 
 make the boy “very objective.” 
 
 Since the pupil is being specially trained for his calling 
 he acquires early in life a feeling of assurance and the 
 ability to do things. The consciousness of this ability to 
 do things, together with a feeling of healthiness, an appro- 
 priate freedom of life, the beautification of each day’s course 
 by songs and games, all this must afford the pupil a high 
 degree of happiness, one of the fairest gifts of life. Thus 
 education in the pedagogical province is designed to make 
 full, whole, harmonious men in a way entirely different from 
 any ever dreamed of by the neo-humanists. If we assume 
 that the results correspond to the aims, we see issuing from 
 this province young men who are clear-headed, well-prepared 
 and know what they want to do, and who in addition are 
 healthy, truthful, respectful, and happy, — men who are able 
 in useful activity, in truth and beauty, to usher in a new life. 
 
HttUlbelm ffl>eiöters Wanberjabre 239 
 
 Die Wanderjahre leaves with us about such an impression 
 as would a great factory in a most romantic mountain glen. 
 We hear the whir of spinnin g wheel and the rattle of loom, 
 we see the motion of trowel and hatchet, plane and spade, 
 and at the same time we look up to the stars and the divine, 
 down to the broad fruitful valleys of the earth, and into 
 the depths of the human heart — a wonderful mixture of 
 the matter-of-fact, the practical, and the earthly, with the 
 ideal, the prophetic, and the superhuman. The novel reflects 
 life as it should be, but rarely is, paying heed to the demands 
 of the day and those of etemity, usefulness and morality, 
 individuality and mankind in general. Taken as a whole 
 it is a call to sensible, active life, a glorification of labour. 
 “ A fiery spirit breathed upon me, awakening me to activity,” 
 said one of the few who perceived some of the rustling 
 among the leaves of the novel. Upon the foundation laid 
 in Die Lehrjahre is built the superstructure in Die Wander- 
 jahre. Activity was restricted in meaning by the poet, 
 as it is by us in ordinary usage, to productive, useful work. 
 In Order to perform such work man needs thorough know- 
 ledge of a special subject. This special knowledge is gained 
 by limitation to a small field. Limitation is demanded also 
 by our powers. We are not gods. “Unlimited activity 
 leads in the end to bankruptcy.” He who would limit 
 himself must practise resignation. Useful work demands, 
 further, thoughtfulness, and perseverance. Again these 
 qualities are acquired only by resignation, by conquering 
 our passions, which obscure our vision and lead us astray. 
 Finally we need to unite with others in order to perform 
 most kinds of work. If this union is to be realised and 
 maintained we must adapt ourselves to others by limiting 
 ourselves and practising resignation. 
 
 The working man is the man who fits his action to his 
 purpose. Only by such action do we win a place for our- 
 selves in life. For this reason Goethe considered entrance 
 into real life inconceivable without resignation in the exalted 
 sense in which he employed the term. For fruitful labour 
 each of the above-mentioned kinds of resignation is of the 
 
240 
 
 £be Xlfe of (Boetbe 
 
 highest importance. But the coming age demanded one 
 kind of resignation above all others, — that which lies in 
 limitation. The farther progress was made by economic 
 development toward the division of labour, the more it 
 became impossible to perform profitable labour except by 
 specialisation. And more than that: the more time hast- 
 ened forward on the wings of steam, the greater became the 
 need of quick, vigorous action. 
 
 Superior performances and energetic action were there- 
 fore the first prerequisites of the new age. But where were 
 the people who satisfied these demands? In the great 
 masses? There necessity had brought about limitation and 
 had called forth skill and perseverance. But with their 
 thoroughness and energy they lacke d the education to lead 
 their skill and vigour to higher aims and keep them abreast 
 of the mighty progress of modern times. Hence the working 
 people had to look to the educated classes for leaders. Here 
 the prospect was not hopeful. These classes were still as 
 Goethe had known them in his youth and in later years. 
 The spirits of a lower order were easy-going, egoistic, and 
 diffident, while those of a higher order, not without serious 
 fault on the part of the state, still delighted to swim about 
 in the shoreless waters of philosophy and esthetics. The 
 man of this dass applied neither diligence nor energy to the 
 special calling which he pursued. He looked upon his work 
 as a necessary evil which hindered the flight of his thoughts, 
 disturbed the tendemess of his feelings, and detracted from 
 the beauty of his personality. From this living in thoughts 
 and feelings, from this cult of beautiful personality, there 
 resulted a serious weakening of the power of the will, which 
 was not cured by the wars of liberation, because the state 
 quickly drove the individual back to his narrow, quiet, 
 private sphere. The educated men of Germany at the 
 time when this novel assumed its final form were very well 
 able, as they had been in former days, to obtain a clever 
 grasp of things, to ponder over, rave over, sigh over, or 
 deride, the affairs of this world, but it was not in their power 
 to act aggressively or force their way forward with stubbom 
 
Wilhelm flDeisterö Wanfcerjabre 241 
 
 tenacity in a definite calling along a definite path. Gustav 
 Freytag, a faithful and thorough observer of the various 
 phases of development among the German people, has well 
 said of the educated of the period from 1815 to 1830: “ Even 
 the better dass among them found it easy to talk with clev- 
 emess conceming the greatest variety of things, but very 
 hard to limit themselves to consistent action.” And Hegel, 
 who could see deep into the soul of this better dass, speaking 
 as a Contemporary, said, in his Grundlinien der Philosophie 
 des Rechts (1820) : “The reason of this hesitation [in decision 
 and action] lies also in a tendemess of the soul, which knows 
 that in the definite it is dealing with the finite, is putting a 
 limit upon itself, and is giving up the infinite; but it is un- 
 willing to forgo the totality at which it aims.” Between 
 his own frame of mind and such a state of indolence Goethe 
 feit that there was a very sharp contrast. Nothing could 
 show this contrast more drastically than two entries side 
 by side in his grandson Walther’s album. Somebody had 
 copied into the album that tarne, blase, supposedly witty 
 utterance in which Jean Paul had made a casual attempt 
 to sum up his view of life : “ Man has two minutes and a half : 
 one minute to smile in, one to sigh in, and a half minute 
 to love in; for in the middle of the third minute he dies.” 
 On the following page Goethe wrote the stanch reply : 
 
 3f)rer fed^ig f)at bie Stunbe, 
 
 Über tau[enb f)at ber £ag; 
 
 @öf)nd)en, trerbe T)ir bie $utibe, 
 
 2Ba§ man aHe§ leiffen mag ! * 
 
 In addition to their shrinking from concentration and 
 determined action the educated classes were wanting in a 
 third essential. While on general principles they were 
 disinclined to work in a fixed calling, they feit a special 
 aversion for practical work, particularly the trades. They 
 looked down upon these with the same superciliousness 
 
 * Sixty minutes hath the hour, 
 
 O’er a thousand hath the day; 
 
 Think, my son, with time’s vast power 
 All that one accomplish may! 
 
 VOL. III. — 16 
 
242 
 
 £be Xife of ßoetbe 
 
 that the ruling classes had in ancient Greece. The edu- 
 cated middle dass shared this feeling of contempt with the 
 nobles, who otherwise performed their share of work in the 
 practical callings of agriculture, administrative government, 
 and Service in the army. Nobody saw more clearly than 
 Goethe that the reigning star of the Corning age would 
 be industrial labour. Hence if the men of the nobility 
 and the middle dass did not tum to the industrial arts they 
 were certain to lose the leadership of the common people, and 
 Germany was certain to be left behind in the competition 
 of nations, especially by England and America, where con- 
 ditions were different. And more than this. Industrial 
 labour was congregating more and more in factories, which 
 naturally resulted in the Organisation of the labouring 
 classes. If, as was inevitable, these organised masses went 
 one step further and became conscious of their importance 
 in the modern world, it was certain that the hitherto un- 
 seen chasm between the upper classes and the lower would 
 burst upon the sight with all its threatening dangers. 
 
 Goethe sought in Die Wanderjahre to anticipate the 
 many dangers arising from a want of limitation, energy, 
 and appreciation of labour with the hands. Through the 
 picture in which he made aristocratic noblemen and finely 
 educated men of the middle dass join the society of handi- 
 craftsmen, he sounded a serious waming; and he sounded a 
 still more serious one in his words, written with Propagandist 
 emphasis and exaggeration, in praise of one-sidedness, 
 specialisation, handicraft, and action. Everything said by 
 the individual characters in Die Wanderjahre, that shows a 
 leaning in this direction, is Goethe’s own private view. 
 We have already pointed this out in not a few passages. 
 Let us here Supplement the list with a few r more utterances : 
 “ Nowadays the world forces a general education on us, so 
 that we do not need to trouble ourselves about that; it is 
 the special education that we must acquire.” “Whoever 
 from now on does not apply himself to one art or one handi- 
 craft will be in a sad plight. Leaming no longer succeeds 
 in the swift progress of the w r orld ; by the time one has taken 
 
TKHUbelm flDeisters Manfcerjabre 243 
 
 notice of everything one is completely lost ” (Aus Makariens 
 Archiv). “ If one could teach the Germans to acquire less 
 philosophy and more energy, less theory and more practice, 
 after the model of the English, it would go a long way toward 
 our salvation” (to Eckermann, March 12, 1828). It is in 
 accordance with these views that education is shaped in 
 the pedagogical province. Goethe has been accused of 
 being a quietist, but nobody has ever made a stronger plea 
 for activity than he did. He has been suspected of being 
 an aristocrat, but nobody was more democratic than he at 
 the very time when the complaints were loudest. He has 
 been criticised as wanting in patriotism, but nobody was 
 more solicitous than he of the welfare and prosperity of the 
 fatherland. 
 
 With the division of labour, with the bringing about of 
 closer relations between nations through the agency of 
 steam, and with the gigantic growth of the demand for 
 raw materials and manufactures from every nation on 
 the globe, men were made to feel their dependence on one 
 another more than ever before. No labourer could help 
 realising that the individual was no longer sufficient unto 
 himself, and that he needed others for the success of his 
 labour. Goethe rejoiced in this knowledge, but he desired 
 that with purely intellectual knowledge of the economic 
 organism, with insight into the benefit to be derived from 
 it, should be combined a moral need, so that where the 
 understanding no longer sufficed to compel the individual 
 to look beyond himself, moral need should enter in as an 
 auxiliary force. For it was with him a life task to lead 
 the German out of his individual life, his egoistic existence, 
 out of his self-satisfaction and self-enjoyment, into a public, 
 social life, into work for others. In this regard the German 
 had retrograded considerably in the seventeenth and eight- 
 eenth centuries, because he had been excluded from public 
 life by absolutism. We to-day have hardly any conception 
 how conscious men were of themselves as individuals and 
 private persons, and we are astonished when we read what 
 Wilhelm says of his father, “ He was at that time one of 
 
244 
 
 ftbe Xife of 0oetbe 
 
 the first men who was led by broad public-spiritedness to 
 exercise any thought or care beyond his family and the 
 city in which he resided.” And yet that is a faithful and 
 acctirate reflection of the time. Even at the end of the third 
 decade of the nineteenth Century conditions were but little 
 better. The causes had not yet been removed, and so the 
 results still continued. In January, 1831, Hitzig wrote from 
 the greatest city of Germany to Carlyle, “ The German has 
 always lived more for his family than for the public, and 
 still continues unalterably so to live, in spite of the events 
 of 1830.” The esthetic tea was the public into which the 
 educated classes ventured forth to spend their energy. In 
 this absorption in private life we find the explanation of 
 the fact that men looked upon the state as something hostile, 
 and that Wilhelm von Humboldt, in 1792 and 1819, desired 
 to confine the ränge of governmental activity to the nar- 
 rowest limits, the affording of security. 
 
 This view was combated in the new Century 7 by Fichte 
 and Hegel with special cleamess, directness, and power. 
 Both supported the thesis that the reasonable will of man- 
 kind is fully objectified only in the state ; that the state, in 
 so far as it is “ reasonable,” instead of hindering the develop- 
 ment of the individual, is the very means that makes it 
 possible for the individual to develop his true nature ; that 
 it is not the intention that freedom shall be coerced by the 
 state, but that “the violence of an unruly nature shall be 
 subjugated by freedom.” This corresponded entirely to 
 Goethe’s views, and hence in his pedagogy he made respect 
 for the law and adaptation to the whole important elements 
 of education. He would have the individual early broken of 
 the habit of Consulting only himself, his own will, and his 
 own comfort. But while the aim of Fichte and Hegel, in 
 their fight against individualism, was chiefly political, 
 Goethe’s aim was chiefly social. That an individual was 
 interested in the welfare of the state did not necessarily 
 mean that he was interested in the social well-being of 
 others. A recognition of the importance of public authority 
 did not help to alleviate the condition of those who were 
 
Mtlbelm flDeisters Wlanberlabre 245 
 
 without property. Nor was it enough that the importancc 
 of labour was appreciated and that men of means joined 
 with labourers in common activity. There was further 
 need of moral impulses forcing the man of large property to 
 resignation, prompting him to make sacrifices from his 
 possessions for the benefit of those who were without pos- 
 sessions, and to consider his property common property, 
 the conscientious management of which had been intrusted 
 to him. But for the man without property there arises 
 also the duty of making himself a social man. No man is 
 so small and weak that he cannot help another. Each man 
 should consider the larger and smaller Community in which 
 he lives not only as a political and an economic community, 
 but also as a moral community. Out of such a community 
 grow demands which include far more than the material 
 condition of the individual. The whole moral and spiritual 
 existence of our fellow-men, which is not satisfied by daily 
 bread, is laid upon our consciences. 
 
 In order to enter into this relation it is necessary for 
 man, according to the wise poet’s advice, to seek the divine 
 in himself. Whoever finds it in himself finds it in every 
 other man, and as he thereby makes himself a sacred being, 
 becomes for himself an object of reverence, so every other 
 man becomes for him a sacred being, an object of reverence, 
 even the sinner. He avoids wounding the sinner, strives 
 to extend to him a gentle, loving hand of help, and is willing 
 to make personal sacrifices to assist him, even to overcome 
 the sin which weighs him down. The man with such Senti- 
 ments is the truly pious and pure man, the social and broth- 
 erly man in the highest sense. The fundamental motive 
 of Iphigenie is thus seen to be repeated in the novel, as 
 the character of Iphigenia herseif is in the figure of Makarie. 
 This social man in the highest sense is the only man worthy 
 of the title “beautiful personality,” which the eighteenth 
 Century sought to produce by means of a general education 
 in Science and art, and at times even in the ways of the 
 World. This ideal of personality based on moral action 
 shows pleasing lines, in the limitations of reality, much more 
 
246 
 
 £be Xlfe of Goetbe 
 
 rarely than does the old ideal, but it is a higher ideal, it is 
 truer, and it is infinitely nr re fruitful. In view of the 
 stupendous increase of the material powers of man there was 
 need of an elevation of the moral nature, if this increase 
 was to prove a blessing. The elevation is achieved by 
 means of public spirit arising out of reverence. 
 
 For this heightened humanity there is no longer any 
 world dulness, which makes men live, labour, and enjoy 
 for themselves alone ; no longer any world w T oe, wdiich makes 
 them consume their strength in lamentations and sadness; 
 nor is there any more fleeing from the world, that striving 
 to gain peace by devotional contemplation and the giving 
 of alms ; there is only world piety, which calls men to endless, 
 joyous work for the world. “And let love control thy 
 striving, and thy life be one of deeds.” 
 
 We hear the ringing of the bells in Faust. 
 
FAUST 
 
 Faust Goethe’s life-work — The theme — Unconscious work on the drama — 
 Seeking after God — The puppet play of Doktor Faust — Correspond- 
 ences between its motives and Goethe’s experiences — Beginning 
 of conscious work on the drama — Scenes probably written first 
 and probable Order in which they were written — Goethe’s willing- 
 ness to read portions of the work to friends — The Urfaust — Further 
 work on the drama — The Fragment of 1790 — Comparison between 
 it and the Urfaust — Composition again resumed at Schiller ’s 
 urging — Completed First Part published in 1808 — Influence of 
 Byron’s death on composition of Second Part — The Helena pub- 
 lished in 1827 — Further work lightened by enthusiasm over idea 
 of completing Second Part — Fragment of the first act published 
 in 1828 — The drama finished July 22, 1831, but not published 
 tili after the poet’s death — The historical Faust — The first 
 Faust book — Marlowe’s Faustus — Faust motives in the sixteenth 
 Century — Similar motives in the period of Goethe’s youth — 
 Analysis and criticism of the Fragment of 1790: Faust’s first mono- 
 logue, the macrocosm, the Earth-Spirit, conversation with Wagner, 
 Mephistopheles, his relation to the Earth-Spirit, the humorous 
 devil and his function in the drama, Mephistopheles and the 
 Student, “Auerbach’s Cellar,” “Witches’ Kitchen,” first scenes 
 of the Gretchen tragedy, Faust’s confession of faith, the closing 
 scene in the cathedral — The Gretchen tragedy not finished in the 
 Fragment — Analysis and criticism of what the complete edition of 
 1808 contained more than the Fragment: the close of the Gretchen 
 tragedy, Valentine, “Walpurgis Night,” “Walpurgis Night’s 
 Dream,” “Dismal Day,” “Night, Open Field,” “Prison,” end 
 of the First Part, Goethe’s change of style, Faust now a symbolical 
 character, distinction between the symbolical and the allegorical, 
 the philosophical element in Faust and the difficulty it gave 
 Goethe, “Prelude on the Stage,” “Prologue in Heaven,” the 
 mystery of evil in the world, the wager between the Lord and 
 the devil, the problem of Faust’s Salvation, Faust’s second mono- 
 logue, Easter chimes, youthful remembrances, “Before the City 
 Gate,” Faust’s third monologue, the exorcism of Mephistopheles, 
 
 247 
 
248 
 
 £be %\f c of (Soetbe 
 
 the devil goes away and then comes again, Faust’s curses, chorus 
 of spirits, compact and wager between Faust and Mephistopheles — 
 From the little world to the great — Difficulty of the transition for 
 Goethe — Analysis and criticism of the Second Part : Opening scene, 
 the Emperor’s Court, the paper money scheme, the masquerade, 
 the “mothers,” Helena conjured up, the second act, Homuncu- 
 lus, the Baccalaureus, “ Classical Walpurgis Night,” the Helena act, 
 its significance, the fourth act, the fifth act, Care, Faust leams 
 self-limitation, the supreme moment, Faust’s death, the contest 
 over his soul at the grave, he is saved, his ascension, unsatisfactori- 
 ness of the ending — Closing criticism of the Second Part and the 
 whole drama — Faust a universal human type — What the drama 
 may mean to us. 
 
 F AUST was the life-work of the poet, extending from 
 the first mutterings of the storm that raged through 
 the breast of the youth to the serene days of old 
 age, when hardly a gentle zephyr was wafted through the 
 peaceful world of his spirit. Conscious work on the poem 
 began in the days of the seething fermentation of the Stras- 
 burg Storm and Stress, but the unconscious had begun with 
 the sprouting and growth of the germinal idea in the dream- 
 like gropings and longings of childhood. If w T e were to 
 state the original, fundamental theme of Faust , we should 
 say that it is the attempt of the great man to comprehend 
 God and by means of this comprehension to know the world 
 and lead in it a life worth living, a life filled with God and 
 pleasing to God in the highest sense. 
 
 Out of the most beautiful specimens of his father’s Col- 
 lection of minerals the child builds an altar, and makes 
 the first rays of the moming sun ignite the incense tapers 
 upon it, in Order, through the symbol of the rising smoke, 
 to show how his “soul longs to mount up to the Creator/’ 
 The boy flees into the darkness of the forest, and desires 
 to inclose with a hedge a solemn glade surrounded by old 
 beeches and oaks, and set it apart as a sacred grove, where 
 he may devote himself to God, undisturbed by the noise 
 of the day and the restless bustle of men. Indeed, through- 
 out his whole life “an incomprehensible longing“ offen 
 drives him out into pure, free nature, where, “while a 
 thousand tears are burning, ” a new, divine world is awak- 
 
249 
 
 faust 
 
 ened within him. And if the setting sun again and again 
 draws him with magic power, and he cannot behold the 
 spectacle often enough to satisfy him, this is but the feebly 
 conscious yearning of the musing child’s soul for the high 
 ancestral spheres. 
 
 The innocent years of childhood pass. Reflection asserts 
 itself, and the understanding subjects the world to its 
 overwise criticism. The dissolution of naive belief, sup- 
 ported by the rationalistic light of Leipsic, drives away 
 the beautiful darkness in which the boy had feit himself 
 one with God. Thus for the youth God vanishes from the 
 world. Outside, beyond the borde rs of the world, there 
 may be enthroned an inaccessible God, but he is not in the 
 world. He may at some time in the past have built it as 
 an ingenious machine, but he left it then to its own works 
 and wheels. The world is as one sees it, and the young 
 Student takes it as it is. Like others of the time, he is 
 tossed back and forth by pleasures, deprivations, and dis- 
 appointments, and has many bad hours and many moods. 
 Not until his last Semester, when he is confined to his bed 
 with illness, is there again aroused within him, under the 
 guidance of his theological friend Langer, a yearning and 
 seeking after God ; and this is continued in his Frankfort 
 sick-room under the influence of his physician and the 
 pious friend of the family Fräulein von Klettenberg. He 
 begins to divine that God is not outside the world, but, 
 rather, wholly within it. 
 
 This gives him a new foundation. If God is wholly in 
 this world it must be possible to grasp him somewhere. 
 It must be possible for one to get on the track of his nature 
 and reign and to find the w 7 ay from faith to knowledge and 
 from knowledge to the bliss of sharing in his secrets. Now 
 God is certainly, above everything eise, the original source 
 of life. Hence one will most quickly learn to know T him 
 by knowing the “sources of life.” The youth’s Faustian 
 desire is therefore centred on these springs, these “ mothers ” 
 of life. He works zealously at his wind furnace with alem- 
 bics and retorts, in order to produce a virgin earth and 
 
250 
 
 Gbe Xife of 0oetbe 
 
 watch its progress to motherhood. In harmony with this 
 ardent striving he writes (September 17, 1769) these lines 
 frcm Wieland in his friend Langer’s album: 
 
 3 a, ©ötterluft fann einen Dürft nicfjt fcfyroädjen, 
 
 Den mtr bie Duelle ftiüt.* 
 
 To which he adds, “ So feels in all seriousness your friend 
 Goethe. ” 
 
 In this frame of mind he goes in April, 1770, to Stras- 
 burg, where by accumulation of leaming and by experi- 
 ments — alchemy is still his beloved — he seeks to get a 
 comprehensive grasp of God. Here through the medi- 
 ation of Herder the clouds vanish before his eyes. His 
 clarified vision discovers that nature does not allow her 
 secrets to be forced from her by levers and screws, but that 
 for the open mind they are everywhere visible, and most 
 plainly where he has hitherto least sought them, in art. 
 Shakespeare, Ervinus a Steinbach, Raphael, Moses, Homer, 
 and Ossian are illuminated by the light of God and mirror 
 his light in their works — Shakespeare even more than the 
 others; “He is the confidant of God”; he sees the secrets 
 of the human world with the eyes of God and utters them 
 with divine mouth. Hence the God-seeking youth Stands 
 before his works as “before the open book of fate.” In 
 their presence he feels “his existence infinitely broadened,” 
 his own “seif broadened into the seif of the world.” Be- 
 yond all doubt it was a god who wrote these signs. 
 
 How did it happen that Shakespeare and those like 
 him could see through the secrets of the world ? The divine 
 is revealed to nobody directly. Thus much the youth had 
 also learned. True, a specially gifted, receptive eye is 
 necessary, but the eye must seek the light that it is to re- 
 ceive. In no hiding-place, in no book, in no magic formula, 
 in no alchemist’s retort is the light to be found; it is only 
 in the life of the world, which, rightly grasped and under- 
 stood, is the life of God himself. By experiencing the 
 
 * E’en joy of gods cannot a thirst diminish 
 The source alone will still. 
 
25 1 
 
 jfaust 
 
 world the poet and the artist experience the etemal, the 
 genuine, the typical, the divine fundamental lines and 
 fundamental forms of the seeming confusion of the world. 
 And thus from knowledge and art, from reflection, Obser- 
 vation, and bewilderment he comes back to life. He forms 
 the determination to “mingle in the floods of fate,” or, as 
 w'e read in the Ur jaust, to “ venture into the world to bear 
 all the woes of earth and all its joys.” Even during his 
 Leipsic days he had shared in the activities of the w r orld, 
 but with blurred vision and immature mind, so that the 
 divine in the world was hidden from his sight and divine 
 creation was accordingly denied him. Now he glowed with 
 the desire to experience the world with a new spirit. With 
 him this desire was so passionate that, if it had not been 
 possible in any other way, he would even have consigned 
 himself to the devil, in order through him to find the way 
 to God. He forsook study, laboratory, and clinic, and 
 fled into the wide country. The first experience through 
 which he had to pass on his new journey through life was a 
 bright-flaming love fire. 
 
 In the midst of his musings, strivings, and experiences 
 an old puppet play that he had often seen in his childhood, 
 Doktor Faust, came back to his memory. It was an old 
 populär play, the subject and hero of which went back 
 to the Renaissance and the Reformation. Its simplicity 
 and depth being no longer appreciated by the enlightened 
 and educated men of a matter-of-fact age, it had been 
 obliged to seek a refuge on the puppet stage. 
 
 An investigator, unsatisfied by all his learning and 
 deep meditation, consigns himself to the devil, in order 
 through him to acquire all Sciences and arts, all treasures 
 and enjoyments of the world, and for a space of time to 
 feel like God. This he does, so far as lies within the devil’s 
 power. Faust travels with the devil through the world, 
 becomes a magician, who has power over the living and 
 the dead, and tastes every kind of pleasure, even that of 
 living at a ducal court, where he calls up the dead and wins 
 the heart of the prineess, until finally, sated w r ith every- 
 
£foe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 252 
 
 thing, though not satisfied, he repents and tums in eamest 
 prayer to God. At this critical moment the devil brings 
 him Helena. Captivated by her beauty, Faust gives up 
 all pious thoughts of repentance, rushes toward her, and 
 embraces her. In his arms she is transformed into a Fury, 
 and, robbed of earthly enjoyment and heavenly bliss, he 
 is dragged away to hell. 
 
 It was a remarkable subject. And how wonderfully 
 the motives of this drama of unsatisfied study and investi- 
 gation, of longing for divine existence, of the attempted 
 tour of the world, the embrace of Helena, and the so- 
 journ at the ducal court coincided with the motives 
 of the life drama of Goethe’s own experiences and 
 dreams ! 
 
 The Helena motive echoed and re-echoed many times 
 in his life. At the moment Helena was that lovely Al- 
 satian maiden who had dawned on his soul in Sesenheim 
 and flooded it with light. And for him, through the qualms 
 of his own conscience, this beautiful, innocent maiden was 
 quickly enough transformed into a Fury, who lashed him 
 cruelly and seemed to be driving him to hell. To be sure, 
 it only seemed so; for it was pure love that he had given 
 and had received in return. Such a love was a reflection 
 of omnipresent, divine love. If his philosophy of the world 
 had not taught him this, he would have leamed it from its 
 effects, for it had “poured eternal flames into his soul and 
 twofold life into his early withering heart” (April. 1772). 
 The tortures proved but purging flames, a part of those 
 eternal flames which, by a special favour of fate, were 
 destined to cast all the dross out of his heart and make it 
 pure as gold. 
 
 Secondly, Helena became to him necessarily a symbol 
 of everything beautiful in art, which he had embraced with 
 just as much fervour, a symbol of his own artistic ideal 
 to which he desired to rise and to which he even at that 
 time often feit that he had risen : “ Ye Muses, and ye Graces, 
 ye hover round me and I hover o’er the water, o’er the 
 earth, godlike” (' Wanderers Sturmlied, April, 1772). He 
 
Jfaust 253 
 
 fought his way up to this high, true art along the path 
 through life which love pointed out to him. 
 
 Love for an individual could mean to him but the point 
 of transition to love striving toward the universal. With 
 him it was a question more of making mankind happy than 
 one individual. Here the aims of the poet and the states- 
 man coincided. Hence he was held fast by no flowers, 
 even though they entwined themselves about his knees and 
 fondled him with the eyes of love. Hence he prayed in 
 those early days that “when he was tired of earthly beauty 
 heavenly beauty might receive him, so that he might bring 
 the bliss of the gods down to the earth more than Prome- 
 theus” (Von deutscher Baukunst, 1772). From Gretchen 
 he longed to rise to Helena. 
 
 And now the motive of the sojourn at the ducal court. 
 This coincided in a remarkable way with a motive of the 
 future career in life which he hoped and dreamed he should 
 realise. With his talents a large public activity as a jurist 
 seemed to beckon to him from the very beginning. His 
 father wished to pave the way for him by sending him to 
 Wetzlar, Ratisbon, and Vienna. Then in Strasburg Koch, 
 Oberlin, and Salzmann sought very earnestly to win him 
 for a statesman’s career. But greater than all this was 
 his own desire and longing to be an active factor of great 
 moment in the fates of nations. Such a longing to bring 
 about the happiness of the people was at that time char- 
 acteristic of the upward-striving youth, to whom Herder 
 gave the awakening and guiding signal. Herder dreamed 
 of stepping to the side of Catharine II. and, with her help, 
 making Livonia, Ukraine, Russia, the world, happy. And 
 as Herder led Goethe to become absorbed in Möser’s Pa- 
 triotische Phantasien, which began at that time to appear 
 in the Osnabrücker Intelligenzblatt, it was doubtless due also 
 to Herder indirectly that, at the end of 1771 and the be- 
 ginning of 1772, our poet became deeply interested in the 
 governmental ideals set forth by Haller in his Usong , and 
 that he chose from this work the motto for his Geschichte 
 Gottfriedens von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand dra- 
 
254 
 
 £be %\tc of ßoetbe 
 
 matisiert, “The misfortune has happened, the heart of 
 the people is trampled in the mud and is no longer capable 
 of any noble desire.” Hence his first two great works, 
 which were occupying him at this time, Cäsar and Götz, were 
 political. The thought of working for political reforms 
 pursued him further. Besides Möser, he studied Wieland’s 
 Der goldne Spiegel and Machiavelli’s II Principe. In the 
 summer of 1774 Lavater found his political ideas so fully 
 developed and resting on a foundation of such energy that 
 he exclaimed, “Goethe would be a splendid man for a 
 prince to place in a position of authority!” This desire 
 had long been hovering before Goethe’s mind and must 
 have made him admire the motive of Faust at the ducal 
 court and see in it a Symbol of his own future, long before 
 he entered into any relation with the reigning house of 
 Weimar. Thus the most important motives fixed his 
 attention on the naive fable and engendered in him the 
 irresistible impulse to recast the old puppet play and make 
 it a poetic vessel into wdiich he could pour all his pain and 
 sorrow, all his thoughts and desires, and by so doing gain 
 relative peace of soul in the midst of the whirl of storms 
 and dreams eddying round him. 
 
 Not only at that moment, but even during the following 
 years, he clung all the more tenaciously to the plan, be- 
 cause all the motives which it involved, seeking after God, 
 nearness to God and farness from God, belief and unbelief, 
 desire for activity and experience in the world, joys and 
 sorrows of love, sensuousness and ideality, were still strong 
 factors in his life ; indeed some of them had become stronger 
 than before, and other new motives which had entered 
 in could conveniently be made to accommodate themselves 
 to the pliable subject-matter. Prominent among the new 
 motives was the thought of forcing an entrance into com- 
 munion with God by terminating his earthly existence. 
 
 And so the great work of his life w T as conceived. He 
 elaborated it in his mind for a long time without writing 
 any of it down. This was his usual habit with other works, 
 but here he feit a special hesitation to put anything on 
 
Jfaust 
 
 2 55 
 
 paper. As though it would have desecrated the precious 
 subject, or the written words would have been unalterable, 
 he took care not to write down anything, at least any part 
 of the chief scenes, except what was good enough to stand 
 permanently. This made it possible for him later to boast 
 that, so far as he finished the play up to 1775, the chief 
 scenes of it, or, better, the parts which were dearest to him 
 and seemed to him most important, had been written down 
 at once, without any rough draught. Though he hesi- 
 tated to put it on paper, he made no secret of his project. 
 For example, as early as the summer of 1772 he told about 
 it in Wetzlar, so that the following year Götter asked the 
 poet to send him a copy of Faust so soon as his head should 
 have “stormed it out.”* Düring this year, as he himself 
 teils us, he finally ventured to intrust to cold paper the 
 poem which he had cherished so fondly in his breast. It is 
 easier to say in what Order the scenes had previously been 
 worked out in his mind than to conjecture the order of 
 their writing down. There can be no doubt that the quiet 
 work of head and heart had begun with the shaping of the 
 first monologue, 36 which he may have muttered to himself 
 in Strasburg. It is probable that the dialogue with the 
 Earth-Spirit was soon added, and then the first part of the 
 interview between Mephistopheles and the Student, as it 
 appears in the Urfaust (discovered in 1887), with its cheap 
 witticisms on students’ lodgings, intercourse with pro- 
 fessors, payment of labourers, etc. It is not very probable 
 that, if he had been somewhat longer away from the uni- 
 versity, the youth, who was maturing with tropical swift- 
 ness, would have found any pleasure in these common 
 students’ jokes. All that lay between, especially the meet- 
 ing and compact with Mephistopheles, was harder to put 
 into finished form and was not so urgent. So he willingly 
 left it for the time being and, as we believe, preferred to 
 
 * Schick mir dafür den Doktor Faust, 
 
 Sobald Dein Kopf ihn ausgebraust. 
 
 Gotter’s poetical epistle, which ends with these two lines, may be 
 found in H., iii., 141 /. C. 
 
256 
 
 Zhc Xife of Goethe 
 
 hasten on at once to the Gretchen tragedy — this still in 
 the early months of the year 1772, immediately after the 
 completion of Götz. The conception of this tragedy dates 
 back, however, still earlier. It doubtless occurred at the 
 moment, say, in September, 1771, when, in reply to his 
 declaration to Friederike that he could not enter into any 
 binding relation with her, he received an answer which 
 “lacerated his heart” and began a “period of gloomy 
 remorse.” In order to alleviate the “ unbearableness ” 
 of his sense of blame, he had recourse immediately to severe 
 penance, through the castigation which he administered 
 to himself in Götz, in the figure of Weislingen. But this 
 did not suffice and could not be expected to. The thing 
 that carries Weislingen off is not torturing memories of 
 his forsaken Marie, who, moreover, receives a worthy com- 
 pensation for her loss, but the poison of his mistress, a 
 Helena in the sense of the puppet play, to whom he has 
 given himself in his infatuation. The poetic conscience 
 would have an entirely different bürden, and the relief 
 from that bürden would be entirely different, if the loved 
 one were brought down to the worst misfortune conceiv- 
 able, to inconsolable ruin, and the soul of the desperate, 
 sensuous-supersensuous suitor were overwhehned by the 
 consciousness of being to blame for this awful fate. 
 
 So in his fancy he spun out the Sesenheim experience 
 to a most dismal end. The story thus invented was just 
 as dear to him in its dark, terrifying, and excruciating 
 moments as in its beautiful, bright, and winsome portions, 
 and, as he did not dare sacrifice the one to the other, that 
 which, according to the original plan of the poem, was to be 
 but an episode in Faust’s experience, grew to be a great 
 independent composition, which, however, could not be 
 severed from the union of the whole, as Die Wahlverwandt- 
 schaften later was from Wilhelm Meister. The poet was 
 early forced to entertain the idea of extending his drama 
 to a work of two parts. How far he may have progressed 
 in 1773 with the writing down of what had hitherto been 
 “dialogued in his brain,” we do not know. The only thing 
 
Jfaust 
 
 25 7 
 
 certam is that in the years 1773 and 1774, especially after 
 the completion of Werther in Februar y of the latter year, 
 he put the beginning and by far the larger part of the 
 Gretchen tragedy on paper. 
 
 Otherwise Boie, to whom he read the manuscript on 
 the i5th of October, 1774, could not have reported, “His 
 Doktor Faust is almost finished. ” Boie was most profoundly 
 impressed by the work, as Merck had been before and 
 Knebel was two months later. His criticism was : “ His 
 Doktor Faust seems to me the greatest and most peculiar 
 of all” (that Goethe had read to him). Knebel’s: “ In Dok- 
 tor Faust there are scenes of most exceptional splendour.” 
 Merck, in whom the poet had meanwhile found the best, 
 though not the only, model for his Mephistopheles, followed 
 the growth of the work with true admiration: “It is 
 
 stolen from nature with the greatest fidelity. ... So 
 often as I see a new part I am astonished how percepti- 
 bly the fellow grows. ” 
 
 Goethe gradually became very generous with the poem. 
 Almost every one of his visitors and friends was permitted 
 to hear it. As early as 1775 its existence was known far 
 and wide. In April Nicolai even heard that “he was to 
 be portrayed in it exactly as he lived and moved,” which 
 refers undoubtedly to the figure of Wagner. And when 
 Goethe was in Zürich, in June, Bodmer asserted that he 
 had been informed that he was going to work on the play 
 there. 
 
 Goethe did not do much at it, however, in Switzerland, 
 either before that time or afterward. There was at the 
 time no urgent experience to be incorporated in it. For 
 his life’s content at that period other avenues of expression 
 were opened in Stella and Egmont. Work on these plays, 
 his experience as a betrothed, and the long journey oc- 
 cupied the largest share of his time. From the documents 
 that have been preserved all that we are able to discover 
 is that he worked some at Faust in September and October, 
 including probably not more than three or four scenes, 
 among them the one in Auerbach’ s Cellar in Leipsic (“ I 
 
2 5 8 
 
 übe %itc of ßoetbe 
 
 wrote a scene of my Faust. ... In all this I feit like 
 a rat that has eaten poison” — September 17, 1775). 
 
 Then followed the great change of fortune. Goethe 
 came to Weimar. He was now at the court of a duke. 
 The vision that he had beheld in his dreams and again in 
 the mirror of the puppet play was fulfilled. Important 
 parts of the great work could be filled with the blood of life 
 from real experience: Court life, financial distress, the 
 masquerade, and, most significant of all, Faust’s efforts 
 to create a worthy existence for an active people on free 
 soil. But what he experienced here stood squarely in the 
 way of his writing. His final aim, especially that of making 
 the people of Weimar happy, the “daily work” which he 
 had laid upon himself, “demanded his presence whether 
 he was awake or dreaming. ” No admiration could move 
 him to continue the poetical work. For in his so wholly 
 different circle here the admiration which Faust excited 
 was of the very highest. He soon read the remarkable 
 work to his friends, in the form, we must assume, in which 
 Fräulein Luise von Göchhausen copied it, the so-called 
 Urfaust , 37 “The Duchesses were profoundly affected by 
 some of the scenes,” reported Fritz Stolberg on the 6th of 
 December, 1775. Einsiedel wrote in January, 1776: 
 
 iparobiert fid) brnuf als T>oftor gauft, 
 
 Dafs’m Teufel fclber nor ihm grauft* 
 
 In jesting recognition of his mighty poetic gift he was 
 honoured by his fellow-poets of Weimar with the title 
 “magician,” as is the hero of the puppet play at the ducal 
 court. “ Magician would I have him styled ! ” sang Wieland. 
 “The magician wishes but a small circle,” wrote Herder in 
 an invitation to a reading of Faust. In a festal play in 
 commemoration of the 2 8th of August, 1781, he is already 
 heralded as the author of Faust. But neither these tokens 
 of homage nor the quip of Karl August, that “ Faust was 
 a piece of a piece, which the public feared, alas! would 
 
 * Then burlesqued himself as Faust in the play 
 So that e’en the devil must feel dismay. 
 
Jfaust 
 
 2 59 
 
 never be anything more than a piece, ” were able to turn 
 the poet from his detemiination to sacrifice his strength 
 to his sacred “ daily work. ” Only gradually did the know- 
 ledge begin to dawn upon him that he was on the wrong 
 path, that he was destined to portray moral and political 
 ideals rather than to realise them, or, let us say, that he 
 could do far more toward the realisation of these ideals — - 
 toward the bringing down to earth of the heavenly jeweis, 
 as he once called them — if, by his poetical and symbolical 
 glorification, he should kindle a desire for them in the hearts 
 of men, than if he should attempt in a small state to deliver 
 a few cut stones for the gigantic edifice. And then his 
 longing for Helena returned. In an ecstasy of early youth 
 he had fancied he had embraced her, but he had only kissed 
 the hem of her cloak. Meanwhile his longing for life had 
 been quieted and subdued, and his longing for beauty had 
 been increased. The truth that he had discovered in life 
 had to be permeated with beauty, if it was to appear divine 
 before the outer world. Where was Helena more visible, 
 where was there a greater possibility of seeing her blissfully 
 near, and, if he should win her favour, of being wedded to 
 her, than in the Hesperides beyond the Alps? And so he 
 set out for Italy as a pious pilgrim. His hopes, his desires 
 were fulfilled. Helena was joined with him in sacred 
 Union. Through the possession of her he experienced a 
 transformation, a higher existence. 
 
 Goethe now had all the elements gathered together to 
 continue and complete his Faust. He had become ac- 
 quainted with human society in all its strata, had passed 
 through all the moods, struggles, passions, and ambitions 
 of his hero, had gained deep insight into all the periods 
 of history, had acquired a settled philosophy of the world, 
 which enabled him to fix the goal with assurance, and, 
 finally, had reached the highest stage of his art. Here and 
 there he still lacked personal observation, it is true, as for 
 example for the war in the fourth act of the Second Part. 
 But that could be supplied from fancy, while for the recla- 
 mation of the swamp along the foot of the mountains Italy 
 
2ÖO 
 
 £be Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 with its Maremme afforded him more than one real basis. 
 Then since his poetic power, thanks to his rejuvenation 
 in Italy, returned in its original freshness, he could now 
 take up the work with good spirit. 
 
 And he did. His eye scanned the broad expanses still 
 to be travelled with such cleamess and certainty, and he 
 feit so much strength for the undertaking, that in August, 
 1787, he expressed the hope that he should be able to finish 
 Faust between New Year’s and Easter of the following 
 year. In the meantime Tasso was to be completed. But 
 Rome continued to offer him too much for him to sit quietly 
 at his writing table, and so, in spite of the best resolutions, 
 Faust was put to one side. The only progress made was 
 the addition of the “Witches’ Kitchen” scene, which he 
 wrote in the Borghese gardens, and a part of the scene 
 “Forest and Cavern,” beside sketching the outline of the 
 Second Part. In June, 1788, he returned to Weimar. 
 Relieved almost entirely of official duties, and uninterrupted 
 by other distractions, he was now able to work industriously, 
 and by June of the followdng year Tasso was finished. 
 Faust was now the next work in tum, if for no other rea- 
 son, because the poet had promised it for the seventh 
 volume of the first collected edition of his works, and the 
 publication of this volume was eagerly awaited. Judging 
 by the poet’s letters from Italy we should say that he 
 must have been extremely eager to bring now to a close 
 the work which had been so long delayed. But instead 
 of that he gave up further work on Faust before he had 
 even taken it up. He teils of his determination in a letter 
 to Karl August of the 5th of July, 1789. Whence this 
 surprisingly sudden change? In the month of June a 
 deeply painful experience, his rupture with Frau von Stein, 
 had cast a blight upon his desire for poetic creation. So, 
 as it was unavoidably necessary for the seventh volume 
 to be published, he contented himself with sending Faust 
 out into the world as a Fragment. It appeared in 1790. It 
 was more and less than he had brought with him to Weimar 
 in 1775. The additions to the Urfaust were the two scenes 
 
Jfaust 
 
 261 
 
 finished in Italy, “Witches’ Kitchen” and “Forest and 
 Cavern, ” a few verses leading up to the “Student” scene, 
 and the insertion in this scene of a few vigorous words on 
 theology and jurisprudence, after it had been rid of the 
 vulgär Student jokes. These additions contributed little 
 toward the artistic effect of the work and were by no means 
 able to compensate for the loss which the Fragment suffered 
 through the omission of other important portions. Goethe 
 left out the monologue of Valentine, whose existence is 
 nowhere mentioned in the Fragment of 1790, beside the 
 scenes “Dreary Day — A Field,” “Night — Open Field,” 
 and “Prison,” so that even the Gretchen tragedy stood 
 like the shaft of a pillar without a Capital. He made these 
 omissions because the monologue of Valentine was too 
 isolated to suit him and because the “Prison” scene and 
 “Dreary Day” were written in overpassionate, naturalistic 
 prose. His newly formed idealistic views of art were of 
 greater moment to him than the applause of the public. 
 As is well known, he took a more moderate view of the 
 subject in later years, and left at least the scene “ Dreary 
 Day” standing as in the old prose version. 
 
 The breaking out of the French revolution, observa- 
 tions during the campaign in France and the siege of Mainz, 
 and the political fermentation in Germany were unable to 
 restore his lamed poetical power to its pristine vigour. 
 Then a lucky star brought Schiller to his side. Under his 
 friend’s electric touch the lameness vanished and the power 
 of poetic creation was as great as ever. But another work 
 which had also been begun a long time ago, Wilhelm Meister, 
 and a second, Hermann und Dorothea, which was crowding 
 him because of the events of the time, were the first to 
 benefit by his desire to write. Not until June, 1796, was 
 the way clear for Faust. Then the mood was wanting. It 
 was no easy task to find the way from the bright, realistic 
 light of Wilhelm Meister and Hermann und Dorothea to the 
 metaphysical twilight of Faust. The transition became 
 possible only when the chasm had been bridged over by 
 the timely awakening of his inclination for bailad subjects. 
 
2Ö2 
 
 Gbe %\f e of (Soetbe 
 
 The old familiär forms then came crowding in upon him 
 out of the misty vapour and this time he had the courage 
 tohold them fast. In the “ Dedication, ” composed on the 
 24th of June, 1797, he says: 
 
 9kcin ÜBufen fühlt fid) jugenblidh er [füttert 
 
 Slom 3auberE)aiich, ber euren 3ug umroittert.* 
 
 We now see him, even more than in Italy, in the full 
 consciousness of his sovereignty over the gigantic masses of 
 material still to be subdued. “The plan is enormous,” 
 said Wilhelm von Humboldt, when Schiller told him about 
 it. On the ist of July. 1797, Goethe himself made the 
 astonishing Statement, “ If I only had now a quiet month 
 at my disposal the work should shoot up like a great family 
 of mushrooms out of the earth, to the wonder and terror 
 of many. ” But the quiet month was less than ever a possi- 
 bility. At that very time he was on the point of departing 
 again for Italy. Even his memories of Italy, specially 
 revived by the presence of his old artist friend in Rome, 
 Hirt, destroyed his interest in Faust. And so we hear him 
 confessing on the 5Ü1 of July, only four days later: “Faust 
 has been put aside ; the northern phantoms have been 
 crowded back for a time by southem reminiscences. ” The 
 Italian journey was given up, but his visit with Meyer on 
 the Lake of Zürich, and his study of the treasures which 
 his friend had brought home with him, had the same effect 
 upon him as though he had been again in Italy and had 
 lost himself there in contemplation of antique and Renais- 
 sance art. After his return home he took up Faust again 
 immediately, but with what in view? “In order thereby 
 to bid farewell to all northern barbarism. ” That was not 
 a mood in which the work could grow rapidly. And during 
 the next two years there was but one month (April, 1798) 
 in which we find him busily at work, so that, in spite of 
 Schiller’ s much urging, the poem made hardly anv ap- 
 preciable advance. Schiller began to despair. On the 
 
 * Within my breast I feel a youthful bounding 
 
 Beneath the magic spell your train surrounding. 
 
Jfauöt 263 
 
 24Ü1 of March, 1800, he wrote to Cotta, “ I fear that Goethe 
 will let his Faust lie unfinished for ever. ” 
 
 Then, contrary to all expectations, the poet’s turning 
 to antique art paved the way for his retum to Faust. Out 
 of his renewed ardent love for antiquity he planned a great 
 sequel to the Iliad, to which he gave the title Achilleis, 
 and wrote a part of it in the years 1797-1799. Achilleis 
 very naturally called his attention to Helena and there 
 awoke in him the desire and courage to undertake that part 
 of Faust in which the beautiful heroine was to be the central 
 figure. That was in September, 1800. Once the way to 
 Faust had been reopened, all the other parts of the drama 
 profited at the same time. In November he took up the 
 “Romantic Walpurgis Night,” and even the serious illness 
 from which he suffered in January, 1801, could not destroy 
 his interest in Faust. On the contrary, after a narrow 
 escape from death he diligently spun out the threads already 
 begun, in some cases writing out in full what “had long 
 lain before him in sketch and outline,” among other things, 
 we may assume, the “Walpurgis Night” and the greater 
 part of the “gap,” and then, as we may further assume, 
 made use of his own approach “to the very border of the 
 kingdom of the dead” (letter to Reichardt, February 5, 
 1801) for the representation of Faust’s death. Between 
 that time and the middle of April he succeeded in finishing 
 the First Part as we know it, beside adding several frag- 
 ments to the Second Part. Then heavy stones were rolled 
 upon the poem: frequent illnesses and journeys to watering 
 places, devotion to the editorial management of the Je- 
 naische Allgemeine Literaturzeitung , and, above all, Schiller’s 
 death. The latter event, together with his own continued 
 state of ill-health, discouraged him so completely that he 
 gave up for the time being all thought of continuing the 
 work, and in June, 1805, decided definitely to send it out 
 again into the world as a fragment, though this time one 
 consistent with itself. 38 The breaking out of the war 
 strengthened his decision and at the same time postponed 
 the appearance of the First Part tili Easter, 1808. 
 
2Ö4 
 
 Cbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 The hindrances had meanwhile been removed. He had 
 regained his health, the editorial management had been 
 given up, and peace reigned in the land. The desire to 
 write returned also, but Faust was not the work to be bene- 
 fited. Pandora and Die Wahlverwandtschaften sprang up 
 quickly, side by side, Dichtung und Wahrheit and West- 
 östlicher Divan were brought into being, but Faust lay as 
 though in a burial vault. Whence this stränge phenomenon? 
 Certainly Faust was the work of his life, the greatest and 
 most characteristic of all, and its roots were intertwined 
 with all the fibres of his being. 
 
 The reason is not hard to discover. In what was still 
 to be done it was far more a question of giving corporeal 
 form to ideas, to Goethian metaphysics and ethics, than 
 of converting real experiences into Symbols. If, as in Die 
 Wanderjahre, it had been a question of a loose prose com- 
 position, it would have been possible to persuade him to 
 finish it ; and the task would have been easier for him, as the 
 main outline of the whole work had long ago been sketched 
 and written down. But with a poem of such high worth 
 as Faust, the finished parts of wdiich were so full of the warm 
 blood of life, it seemed impossible for him to assume the 
 röle of a merely philosophising poet and bring to a close a 
 definite theme according to a fixed programme. As he 
 expressed himself in February, 1825, it was necessary, 
 and was his desire to leave the elaboration to an involuntary 
 impulse of which he could not say when he might feel it. 
 The impulse failed to make itself feit, because the experi- 
 ences which might have excited it were wanting. Not until 
 the year 1824 did such an experience come to him. 
 
 Whereas the death of Schiller had buried the poem for 
 a long time, the death of Byron called it back to life. By- 
 ron’s life and writings had attracted Goethe’s interest in an 
 ever-increasing measure. 39 In the gifted Briton had ap- 
 peared a younger Faust, who showed the same dissatis- 
 faction, the same longing for the absolute and the unlimited, 
 the same stormy assaults upon himself and the world, the 
 same excess of enjoyment and striving, with all their con- 
 
265 
 
 jfaust 
 
 sequences. In spite of these excesses Goethe did not fail 
 to recognise the great, noble Spirit which lived in the Eng- 
 lish poet. He sympathised with Byron’s hard struggle 
 with himself and began to love him, as one loves a highly 
 gifted son, who at bottom is good, but errs and strays under 
 the compulsion of an imperious nature, and of whom one 
 hope s and knows that he will gradually work his way out 
 of the enveloping darkness into purity, enlightenment, and 
 repose, especially if love takes an interest in him. Since, 
 on the other hand, Byron loved Goethe and admired him 
 with his whole soul, and had expressed his feeling in the 
 dedication of his Werner, which he had just published, 
 the Weimar poet thought that it was time (it was the year 
 1823) for him to address to his youthful poet comrade, the 
 only one of the young generation whom he considered his 
 peer, a few cordial words, assuring him of the “ inexhaustible 
 admiration and love” which he himself and his people 
 cherished for him. That was saying a great deal, and 
 hardly without some pedagogical purpose. But the young 
 poet’s life had taken a turn which showed him worthy of 
 the master’s love and veneration. From the arms of his 
 beloved and, one may say, from his poetry, from all the 
 enjoyments of life, from spiritual and sensuous reveries, 
 he had tom himself away in order to devote his whole 
 strength, his property, and his life to the cause of Greek 
 liberty. “Yet the highest thought has given thy pure 
 courage proper weight. ” He had risen from enjoyment 
 to unselfish action, just as the German poet had intended 
 his Faust should do. But this beautiful rise was soon 
 followed by the catastrophe. “Thou for glorious things 
 hast striven, but to win was not thy fate.” We should 
 like to add that it was not his fate in the world of deeds. 
 In the midst of the struggle to defend the fortified town 
 of Missolonghi against the superior numbers of the Turks 
 he was carried off by death, on the igth of April, 1824. 
 
 Goethe was filled with deep mourning. A letter from 
 Byron had aroused in him the hope that after the war was 
 won he himself should be able to greet at his home in 
 
266 
 
 ftbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 Weimar “the most distinguished spirit, the happily won 
 friend, and at the same time the most humane victor.”* 
 Now both for him and the world this brilliant star had set 
 for ever. In June he wrote for Medwin’s Conversations with 
 Lord Byron a little essay, in which he set forth his relations 
 to Byron and his position with reference to him. Otherwise 
 he was rather silent during this year, as though he could not 
 speak of the loss with the necessary composure. But the 
 following year he spoke of it on all occasions; “out of the 
 abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. ” On the 24th 
 of February he had a long conversation with Eckermann 
 about Byron. Several times a change of topics seemed to 
 have been made, but each time Goethe came back to his 
 hero. “ He seemed inexhaustible on the subject of Byron,” 
 remarks Eckermann. The following day we see him sitting 
 over Faust again, after a long, long intervening pause. The 
 same thing had happened earlier now and then, but nothing 
 had come of it. At most he merely made a “plan.” This 
 time it was different. The poem made progress, after a 
 Stagnation of more than twenty years. And at what point 
 did he pick up the thread to spin it further? In the last 
 act. From Faust’s death he passed on to the burial and 
 ascension. Plainly enough, while he was bearing Faust to 
 the grave he was also bearing his English favourite to the 
 tomb. This must have flowed from a warm heart. 
 
 After he had secured peace and heavenly bliss for the 
 Briton in the picture of Faust he was able to tum his at- 
 tention to the last days of his hero’s life. These left a more 
 profound trace on the growth of the other part, the Helena, 
 which had been laid aside in 1801. Goethe had thought out 
 more than one sketch for the close of this act. We know 
 one Version. Faust is married to Helena as in the finished 
 drama. “From this union springs a son who, as soon as 
 he comes into the world, begins to dance, sing, and rend 
 the air with fencing strokes. . . . The ever-growing boy 
 gives the mother much delight. He is allowed to do 
 
 *Byron had made immediate use of his influential position to induce 
 the Turks to adopt a more humane method of conducting war. 
 
jfaust 
 
 267 
 
 anything but cross a certain brook. One holiday he hears 
 music on the other side and sees the country people and 
 the soldiers dancing. He crosses the line, mingles among 
 thern, gets into a fight. wounds many people, but is finally 
 slain by a consecrated sword.” 40 This was a very good 
 ending, to borrow Goethe’s words. But what did it sig- 
 nify to him, especially Euphorion? It was a fancy picture 
 that aroused no lively emotions in his soul. Then “time 
 brought me this about Lord Byron and Missolonghi and I 
 very gladly let everything eise go” (to Eckermann, July 
 5, 1827). 
 
 . In Byron he could see two things: a Faust, the husband 
 of Helena, defending the Peloponnesus, the country of his 
 wife, against barbarism, and their common progeny, who 
 was neither purely antique nor purely modern, but a most 
 attractive mixture of the two, a peculiar new creation. 
 He was a genuine son of Faust, but superior to him in 
 desire for activity, was restless, high-aspiring, and never 
 satisfied with his attainments. “ Higher must I climb, 
 and higher, broader still must be my view. ” With that 
 the second part of the Helena received the warm life- 
 blood that it had hitherto lacked. Düring his further 
 work the events of the war kept Goethe’s eyes constantly 
 fixed on the Peloponnesus, and by the aid of many works 
 of travel he became so familiär with those Southern valleys 
 and chasms that he was as much at home in them as in his 
 own native country, and could well fancy himself living 
 in “Europe’s southmost mountain ränge,” as the husband 
 of Helena and the lord of the land. On the 5th of April, 
 in Order to gain this familiarity with the landscape, he 
 interrupted for several months the work which he had begun 
 on the i4th of March. Then further postponements were 
 caused by Karl August’s jubilee and his own. In February 
 of the following year (1826) he took up the work again, and 
 continued at it uninterruptedly tili the 6th of June, when 
 he finished the Helena act. The touching elegiac tone 
 was given to the last songs by the fall of Missolonghi, on 
 
268 
 
 Zbe %\fe of (Boetbe 
 
 the 2 2d of April, at which “all the peoples of westem 
 Europe were hushed, bleeding with the Greeks. ” 
 
 After announcing to Wilhelm von Humboldt and Sulpiz 
 Boisseree the completion of the act he added : “ It is one 
 of my oldest conceptions. ... I have continued to 
 work at it from time to time, but the piece could be brought 
 to a close onlv in the fulness of time, since its actionnow 
 spans full three thousand years, from the fall of Troy to the 
 capture of Missolonghi. ” 
 
 He gave the Helena to the public immediatelv, in 
 the fourth volume of the last edition of his works, as He- 
 lena, klassisch-romantische Phantasmagor ie— Zwischenspiel 
 zu Faust. The volume was published at Easter, 1827. 
 
 The happy completion of the stränge central piece of 
 Faust, with its depth of thought and wealth of most ar- 
 tistic rhythms, transported him to a state of high exaltation. 
 When he told Boisseree of his ecstasy he feit the necessity 
 of explaining it : “ Pardon me, dearest friend, if I seem 
 exalted. But since God and his nature have let me enjoy 
 myself for so many years, I know nothing better to do than 
 to express my grateful recognition through youthful ac- 
 tivity. I shall show myself worthy of the happiness be- 
 stowed on me so long as it shall be granted me, and I shall 
 apply day and night to thought and work to make it 
 possible.” 
 
 This exaltation was extraordinarily advantageous for 
 the further progress of the work. Whereas formerly 
 Goethe had always needed an experience to lift his poetic 
 conceptions from the depths of his soul where they rested, 
 they were now carried up to the realm of creation by his 
 enthusiasm, by his elation at the idea of the whole work, 
 and the joyful anticipation of completing it. For the first 
 time in his life he was able to command his poetry and did 
 not need to wait like a somnambulist for the “ involuntarv 
 impulse.” Whether this be looked upon as a rising or a 
 sinking, it was at all events an endless gain for Faust. To 
 Goethe himself this new way of writing seemed very 
 remarkable, and after he had completed the work he 
 
269 
 
 Jfaust 
 
 expressed himself in these words: “By a mysterious psy- 
 chological tum, which deserves perhaps to be studied, I 
 believe that I have risen to a method of writing that has 
 produced during full consciousness things of which I myself 
 still approve, though I may perhaps never again be able 
 to swim in this river. Aristotle and other prosaists would 
 ascribe it to a kind of insanity” (letter to Wilhelm von 
 Humboldt, December 1, 1831). 
 
 In the sunlight of this transport, with which clear re- 
 flection was peacefully combined, Faust matured as rapidly 
 as possible in view of the poet’s advanced age and other 
 hindering circumstances. From now on it was character- 
 ised in his diary as “chief busmess,” “chief work,” or 
 “chief purpose.” Starting from the act Helena, he first 
 worked back toward the beginning. Between March, 
 
 1827, and February, 1828, he wrote the introductory scenes 
 of the second act and the larger part of the first. At Easter, 
 
 1828, he published what he had finished of the first act: 
 Faust’ s regeneration, the appearance at court, the mas- 
 querade, and the beginning of the “ Pleasure-Garden ” 
 scene. For the fourth time a piece of a piece. The 
 prophecy of Karl August seemed fulfilled. But Goethe 
 roguishly put himself under obligations to the public by 
 the closing words, “To be continued. ” The autumn and 
 early winter of the years 1828 and 1829 produced the scenes 
 which lead up to the “Classical Walpurgis Night.” This 
 scene ltself, with its fifteen hundred lines, was dashed off 
 quickly between January and the end of June, 1830. All 
 that now remained to be done to complete the mighty arch 
 was the setting of the keystone, the fourth act. It threat- 
 ened to fall out of the master workman’s hands. In Order 
 to rest in his usual way the aged poet had turned his at- 
 tention to other work for a few months. Then came the 
 prostrating news of August’ s death, which was soon fol- 
 lowed by the severe hemorrhage (November 2Öth). Hardly 
 had he revived from it when he made the comforting note 
 in his diary, under the date of December 2d, “At night 
 thought of Faust and made some advance.” 
 
270 
 
 Zb e Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 In the new year he made more lively progress, and under 
 the 2 2nd of July, 1831, appears the significant remark 
 “The chief business finished.” Beside the fourth act he 
 had at last mastered the hitherto refractory first scene of the 
 fifth act, “ Philemon and Baucis, ” and thus the whole great 
 work was finished down to the last line. 
 
 One would think that, in order to satisfy the impatience 
 of the public and the requests of his friends, and to enjoy 
 during the remaining days of his life the applause of the 
 best men of the time and those nearest him, of which he 
 might have been certain, the poet would have published 
 the new creation at once. Far from it. He had allowed 
 the fragments to appear in print; the whole was sacred to 
 him. The fault-finding, the misunderstanding, and a rüde 
 invasion of his sanctuary would have vexed him more than 
 the applause would have pleased him. He declared that 
 the day was too absurd and confused, and that he would not 
 allow his work on the stränge structure to be buried under 
 the drifting sand of the hours (letter to Wilhelm von Hum- 
 boldt, March 17, 1832). 
 
 So he held back the work, preferring, as he had in early 
 youth, to enjoy himself, in secret what he had created. 
 But in order to guard against any possible temptation to 
 take it to pieces, recast the parts, and weld it together 
 anew, he sealed it up. This precautionary measure availed 
 nothing. Ten weeks before his death he liberated the 
 manuscript from its imprisonment in order to read it at 
 least to his daughter-in-law. The result may be seen from 
 an entry in his diary under the date of January 24, 1832: 
 “ New excitement over Faust, in consideration of a more 
 extensive elaboration of the chief motives, which I had 
 treated altogether too laconically in order to finish. ” “ And 
 
 if he had not died, . . . ” we might say, with the fairv tale, 
 in closing the history of the marvellous work. 
 
 More than six decades had worked at it. The Strasburg 
 cathedral and the Sesenheim parsonage, the Frankfort 
 attic room and the Wetzlar meadows, the Offenbach 
 gardens and the Swiss Alps, the Villa Borghese and the 
 
Jfauöt 
 
 271 
 
 Sistine Chapel, the Weimar and Jena valleys and moun- 
 tains, the Thuringian Forest, and a thousand other places 
 and retreats, beside many of his dearest friends and many 
 world-moving events, had witnessed its growth, either as 
 on-lookers or assistants. Out of the old Roman Empire, 
 which it had an opportunity to deride, it had grown into 
 the new German Federation; it was old at the time of the 
 first French revolution, and was not yet finished at the 
 time of the second. 
 
 And thus in the end it was like those great mediaeval 
 cathedrals on which whole ages have toiled and moiled. 
 Beginning as Romanesque structures, they were continued 
 as Gothic, and their final ornamentations and additions 
 were Renaissance and baroque. Their noble interioris here 
 enveloped in the shades of dusk and there shines with magic 
 brilliancy; and their dark winding stairs lead us up to high 
 towers, where we see the bright light of day and our sight 
 is lost in the endless distance. 
 
 Faust was an historical person, perhaps a Swabian 
 from Rundling (Knittlingen) near Bretten, the home of 
 Melanchthon, whose Contemporary he was and who has 
 left us the relatively most reliable account of him. He was 
 a stränge original, a combination of an arrant swindler 
 and braggart on the one hand and a clever natural phi- 
 losopher, such as Theophrastus Paracelsus or Agrippe von 
 Nettesheim, on the other. His age believed in such con- 
 jurers and magicians and took great interest in them, so 
 that forty or fifty years after his death the first Faust book, 
 Historia von D. Johann Fausten dem weitbeschreyten Zau- 
 berer und Schwärt zkünstlerj 1 was printed by Johann Spies 
 in Frankfort-on-the-Main, in the year 1587. Hardly had 
 the folk-book been published when the material it contained 
 was eagerly seized by a dramatist. The Englishman Mar- 
 lowe, a forerunner of Shakespeare, wrote the first Faust 
 tragedy in 1589. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, 
 as his drama is called, was the source and model of all later 
 Faust dramas, was itself put on the populär stage in Ger- 
 
272 
 
 Zbc Xife of Goetbe 
 
 many in a great variety of forms, and there soon degene- 
 rated to a puppet play. It was in this latter form that 
 Goethe first became acquainted with it. 
 
 What was it that made the figure of Doctor Faust appear 
 to the Germans and to their cousins the English so in- 
 teresting that they wove a cycle of legends about him and 
 made him a populär hero of folk-books and dramas? As 
 it was in the sixteenth Century that Faust lived and was 
 “ widely decried, ” it is there that the motives of the tragedy 
 must be sought. 
 
 The Century was stirred and dominated by two mighty 
 tendencies, the Renaissance and the Reformation. In the 
 folk-book it is the relation to the religious movement of 
 the Century that Stands in the foreground. Faust sug- 
 gests Luther, and moreover he is said to have lived in 
 Wittenberg. While there he had to do with the devil, but 
 in the opposite sense from Luther. Luther warded off the 
 devil in the Wartburg by throwing an inkstand at him, and 
 would not have been afraid if the whole world had been 
 full of devils, whereas Faust summoned the devil into his 
 cell in order to enter into a compact with him. He feil 
 into the devil’s clutches, but Luther came off victorious. 
 There is another contrast between the two characters. 
 Faust was a magician. Such an anti Christian magician 
 had been encountered by the apostles Peter and John in 
 the person of Simon Magus, of whom an account is given 
 in the eighth chapter of The Acts of the Apostles The 
 Christianity of the Middle Ages set up in Opposition to this 
 heathen, Neoplatonic magic the divine magic of the sac- 
 rament. Luther was more radical, and condemned all 
 magic as diabolical. Whoever gave himself over to magic 
 was lost; he feil into the power of the devil. Hence in the 
 sixteenth Century there was no salvation for Faust. 
 
 The other side began also to appear. It was a period 
 of fermentations and upheavals, of mighty struggle and 
 violent rebellion, and a gigantic wave of Storm and Stress 
 swept through the world. Luther shows something of the 
 movement, has something of the demonic in him. But 
 
Jfaust 
 
 273 
 
 he recognised certain bounds and confined his reason to the 
 linnts of the Bible, whereas others knew no bounds. They 
 demanded full satisfaction for their reason through their 
 reason; they desired to know everything, and in their 
 impatient haste sought after a magic key that should unlock 
 for them the interior of nature. Such a man is Faust. 
 Even in the oldest folk-book he appears as a representative 
 of this thirst for knowledge, where it is said of him : “ He 
 took unto himself the wings of an eagle and resolved to 
 search into all the deep things of heaven and earth. ” He 
 desired of the devil an explanation of theological matters 
 and of the things of natural Science. The doctor theologice 
 became a doctor medicinaz et rerum naturalium, an astrologer 
 and an astronomer, a mathematician and a natural phi- 
 losopher. It is an example of that revolt and Separation 
 from theology and the Church, that knowledge of the worid, 
 which soon became as fatal to Lutheranism as to the me- 
 diaeval Church. One need but think of Hutten and Reuch- 
 lin, of Copernicus and Kepler, of Giordano Bruno and 
 Campanella, remembering at the same time that America 
 was discovered in the period of the Renaissance. With the 
 struggle for knowledge was combined a mysticism which 
 desired not only to enter into a direct religious union with 
 God, but also, with its regained enjoyment of nature, to 
 penetrate philosophically the interior of nature and com- 
 prehend her from within. This mysticism was closely re- 
 lated to magic, from which in its impatience it expected 
 and sought help. Along with this we find early, particularly 
 in Marlowe, a longing for power, the desire to know how 
 to do everything. As we know, Bacon, the English phi- 
 losopher of the Renaissance, considered knowledge power. 
 To this desire to know all things and to be able to do all 
 things was added the third, to enjoy all things, or, as the 
 Faust book puts it, “to lead an Epicurean life.” 
 
 The desire for knowledge, the desire for power, and the 
 desire to live absolutely free from restraint were, then, the 
 three great tendencies of the sixteenth Century. A further 
 element of importance in the folk-book is the fact that 
 
 VOL. III. — 18 
 
274 
 
 £be %\tc of 6oetbe 
 
 Faust conjures up the shades of Alexander the Great and 
 Helena, the representatives of the Greek world . They are 
 called back to life from the oblivion of death, just as at that 
 time the beautiful statues of the Greek gods, which had 
 been drawn forth from their hiding-places under the ground, 
 were celebrating a true resurrection. Thus the calling 
 back to life of classical antiquity, and the longing for beauty 
 which it enkindled in the breasts of men who had outgrown 
 the Middle Ages, became intimately connected with the 
 desire of the period for knowledge and true life. All these 
 tendencies and motives were incorporated in the legend 
 of Doctor Faust. 
 
 Between that period and the period of Goethe’s youth 
 there is a striking similarity. Goethe’s early manhood 
 was also a time of fermentation, full of Titanic defiance 
 and Promethean impatience, full of impulse toward self- 
 power and self-glory, filled with the desire to live and a 
 yearning for nature, except that in the place of knowledge 
 of nature we find feeling for nature, combining the sense 
 of Rousseau with the ideas of Spinoza. This period also 
 drew nearer and nearer, step by step, to classical education 
 until, in neo-humanism, it attained a higher and fuller 
 grasp of the classical ideal. 
 
 Hence in the eighteenth Century it was possible for the 
 old Faust legend to arouse new interest and exert a new 
 attraction, and at the same time to become a vessel in 
 which the movements of the age could be gathered and 
 given plastic form. After Lessing, Goethe laid hold upon 
 the material, almost by inward necessity, for he was the 
 greatest son of his Century and the boldest Champion of the 
 new Storni and Stress. But the age was different from 
 that in which Faust had lived and become the hero of the 
 legend and the drama; hence the tragedy of Faust had to be 
 different. And above all w T e must not forget that Goethe 
 did not finish it in the eighteenth Century, but that when 
 he put the last hand to it the nineteenth Century was already 
 far advanced. In these two facts, one might almost say, lies 
 the whole problem of Goethe’s Faust, which is now to engage 
 
jfauöt 
 
 2 75 
 
 our attention. This brings us back again to the history 
 of the composition and reminds us that Faust appeared 
 in public in three different stages — the first time in 1790, 
 as a Fragment among the poet’s collected writings; the 
 second time in 1808, the First Part as we have it to-day; 
 finally, in 1832, after Goethe’s death, the whole drama 
 in its finished form, including both the First Part and the 
 larger Second Part. We shall base our presentation on 
 this historical Order, taking up first the Fragment of 1790. 
 
 It consisted of the following sixteen scenes: (1) Faust’s 
 monologue, his conjuring up of the Earth-Spirit, and his 
 conversation with his famulus Wagner. Then, after a 
 great “gap, ” (2) Faust and Mephistopheles, beginning, 
 as it were, in the middle of a sentence, with the words, 
 “And all that to humanity is portioned will I within mine 
 own heart leam to know, ” and followed by the “Student” 
 scene. (3) Auerbach’s Cellar in Leipsic. (4) The Witches’ 
 Kitchen. (5) Street — Faust — Margaret passing by — Me- 
 phistopheles. (6) In Margaret’s Chamber. (7) Prome- 
 nade — Faust and Mephistopheles. (8) The Neighbour’s 
 House. (9) Street — Faust and Mephistopheles. (10) Gar- 
 den and Garden- Arbour. (n) Gretchen at the Spin- 
 ning Wheel. (12) Martha’s Garden — Faust’s Confession of 
 Faith. (13) At the Fountain. (14) Forest and Cavern. 
 (15) Zwinger — “Incline, O Maiden, thou sorrow-laden,” 
 etc. (16) Cathedral — Margaret and the Evil Spirit. With 
 this the Fragment closes, whereas the Urfaust had carried 
 the Gretchen tragedy through the Prison scene — but in 
 prose — to the end. 
 
 As in the case of Marlowe ’s Doctor Faustus, Goethe’s 
 drama begins with a long monologue by Faust. It contains 
 the exposition and represents Faust in the Situation and 
 mood which lead him to advance to the unusual and the 
 superhuman, and which give us a clue to the understanding 
 of the whole tragic element of his life. Even in the oldest 
 versions of the legend we have found various motives for 
 Faust’s giving himself to the devil: longing for knowledge, 
 the desire to know all things, and the longing for life, the 
 
276 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 desire to be able to do all things, to have all things, and to 
 enjoy all things. The first thing mentioned in Goethe’s 
 drama is the desire for knowledge. Faust is full of all 
 knowledge and all wisdom. He has acquired all the leam- 
 ing of all the schools, is cleverer than all the fops, and is 
 tormented neither by scruples nor by doubts. But his 
 knowledge has not satisfied him, has not made him happy. 
 Therefore he has applied himself to magic in the hope that 
 through the power and voice of spirits many a secret may 
 be revealed to him, that he may recognise what binds the 
 world together in its inmost parts, may explore all pro- 
 ductive powers and embryos and no longer deal in empty 
 words. So speaks the leamed man. It is the impatience 
 of the scholar who would like to brush aside all mediateness 
 of knowledge and force his way directly into the deepest 
 secrets of the world. He desires to behold objectively, just 
 as Goethe himself was a man of objective thought. Magic 
 serves as an expression and a symbol for this. But there 
 is also a third element, longing to exert an influence — “I 
 do not pretend I could be a teacher To help or convert a 
 fellow-creature ” — and dissatisfaction with his whole out- 
 ward existence — “ Then, too, I ’ve neither lands nor gold, 
 Nor the world’s least pomp or honour hold.” This is fol- 
 lowed immediately by the angry ejaculation, “ No dog 
 would endure such a cursed existence!” Bittemess and 
 sullen anger, joylessness, solitariness, and emptiness are 
 the emotions that fill the breast of this leamed and es- 
 teemed university professor. 
 
 Then suddenly a different and a fuller tone, beginning 
 with the words, “ 0 full-orbed moon, would that thy glow 
 For the last time beheld my woe!” No more solitariness 
 and emptiness ; there is a note of longing, approaching hope ; 
 there is a strain of tendemess, bordering on sentimentality 
 and reminding one of Ossian and Werther. The source 
 of his dissatisfaction is now different. He no longer de- 
 sires to know everything — it is the unnaturalness of his life 
 as a scholar, of his whole existence in fact, that is the bürden 
 of his lamentation. What I know does not satisfy me, 
 
3fauöt 
 
 277 
 
 said Faust the leamed man ; Knowledge and investigation 
 alone do not satisfy me, says this Faust. Hence even out- 
 wardly the tone and style are different. Whereas before 
 he was angry and sullen, and his words were brief, dry, 
 and spiritless, he now glows with passion, and his language 
 becomes tender, poetical, and elegiac; or, to express it 
 philosophically, before everything was negative, now all is 
 positive. 
 
 And so we now have a new motive for his determination 
 to devote himself to magic. With him it is no longer a 
 question, or at least only in a slight degree, of adding to and 
 broadening his knowledge ; he feels more like saying, Away 
 with all knowledge and investigation! For knowledge is 
 mere words, is smoke and mould, skeletons of brutes and 
 dead men’s bones. What he now seeks, on the contrary, 
 is bliss, is young and sacred happiness of life, is courage 
 and strength, daring and bearing, is satisfaction of soul 
 and feeling, of nerve and vein, of heart and breast : is, in 
 a word, life — not knowledge alone, but feeling as well, 
 feeling with heart and soul; not knowledge alone, but also 
 will and -action, enjoyment and deeds. Then away with 
 the unnaturalness of the one-sided life of a scholar! Na- 
 ture, nature! cries this Faust, who would fain be a man, a 
 full and complete man. 
 
 The presence of these two moods, two motives, and two 
 styles, has been unfavourably criticised, but the criticism 
 is entirely wrong . 42 The moment that Faust the scholar 
 suffers shipwreck, Faust the man begins to speak. The 
 angry, bitter mood of the first lines is followed by the tender, 
 glowing, longing mood, which is fundamental; and, whereas 
 the former is expressed in a few brief words, the latter gives 
 rise to a broad stream of words bearing a wealth of inspired 
 poetic imagery. The scholar is conscious of but one im- 
 pulse, but in Faust two souls have dwelt from the beginning. 
 Was it different with Goethe? The professor becomes a 
 man. Is that inconceivable ? Besides, there is another 
 more general element. The Faust who, out of desire for 
 knowledge, devotes himself to magic is first of all a son of 
 
278 
 
 ftbe Xi tc of (Boetbe 
 
 the sixteenth Century. The one soul in Goethe is thor- 
 oughly in sympathy with him. The Faust who desires 
 and seeks fulness of life is at the same time the Faust of 
 the eighteenth Century, with his Werther mood and his 
 Rousseauian longing for nature. Goethe ’s nature is en- 
 tirely at one with his. The former Faust, then, is but the 
 springboard by the help of which Goethe mounts to the 
 height of the latter, in order to get from the sixteenth 
 to the eighteenth Century, from Faust and the world of the 
 Renaissance to his own seif and his world of Storm and 
 Stress. Hence the monologue is thoroughly harmonious, 
 even though the first mood be followed by a seemingly 
 conflicting one. Instead of being mutually exclusive, 
 they are essential to each other ; the one fumishes the mo- 
 tive for the other and Supplements and explains it, and in 
 what might be termed mysticism they find the bond which 
 binds them into a unity in the breast of a man. 
 
 Now let us consider Faust’s execution of his determina- 
 tion to devote himself to magic. First the sign of the 
 macrocosm, the All, the Whole, with its three parts, the 
 divine, the stellar world, and the sublunar region of our 
 planet, the sign of Creative nature, the natura naturans of 
 Spinoza, “ Where each the Whole its substance gives, Each 
 in the other works and lives, And powers celestial, rising 
 and descending, From heaven to earth their genial influence 
 bringing, Through the All their chimes melodious ringing. “ 
 “ But alas ! ’t is but a spectacle ! ” Why? “Am I a God?” 
 he asked himself at first, when he saw this sight. As he 
 later discovers, this Whole is, in reality, made only for a 
 God. By man it is to be grasped only in the picture and 
 sign, as a spectacle; for him it is only a matter of contem- 
 plation, at best satisfying for one who could be content 
 with knowledge and find peace in it. The Scholar Faust 
 might perhaps have been satisfied with it, for the man 
 aroused in him it is no longer possible. 
 
 So he turns away angrily and opens the book at the 
 sign of the Earth-Spirit. “Thou, Spirit of the Earth. to 
 me art nearer!” In order to understand this transition 
 
Jfaust 
 
 2/9 
 
 from the macrocosm to the Earth-Spirit let us bear in 
 mind the lines of Grenzen der Menschheit, written somewhat 
 later : 
 
 2)enn mit ©öttern 
 Soll fid) nicht mcffcn 
 Srgcnb ein SDfenfdj. 
 
 §ebt er fid) anfroärtS 
 Unb berührt 
 
 9)lit bem Scheitet bie Sterne, 
 fftirgenbS fjaften bann 
 ®ie unfidjern Sollen, 
 llnb mit if)m fpielen 
 SBolfen nnb ©inbe. 
 
 Stefjt er mit feften, 
 
 SHarfigen ^nodjen 
 SInf ber roofjigegrimbeten 
 ®atiernben (Erbe, 
 
 Dleicht er nid)t auf, 
 
 9lur mit ber (Eidje 
 £)ber ber Diebe 
 Sief) gtt Dergleichen. * 
 
 The poem ends with a tone of resignation, but Faust 
 
 * For with immortals 
 Mortal should never 
 Measure his strength. 
 
 If he, aspiring, 
 
 Rise to such height 
 
 That his crown touch the stars, 
 
 His soles unsteady 
 Have nowhere to stand, 
 
 And he is the Sport 
 Of clouds and winds. 
 
 If he with sturdy, 
 Sinewy frame 
 Tread the enduring, 
 Firm-standing earth, 
 He will not venture 
 E’en with the oak 
 Or with the vine 
 Himself to compare. 
 
28 o 
 
 ftbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 does not resign himself. “Thou must! thou must! and 
 though my life it cost me ! ” he cries out with Titanic courage 
 and Promethean boldness. And the Earth-Spirit appears 
 to him. Not the All, not the Whole, not heaven and not 
 hell, not a beyond above or below, but the earth, the en- 
 during, firm-standing earth is the place where Faust seeks 
 and hopes to find satisfaction. This is the through and 
 through earth-centred spirit of modern man ; it is the Spino- 
 zistic standpoint of the immanence of God, which Goethe 
 about that time assumed for the rest of his life. For the 
 earth is also God’s. This spirit is first of all the personified 
 epitome of the life of nature, the force of nature and life 
 upon this earth, including human nature and its sensuous 
 side. But since it says of itself that even “in the storm of 
 deeds” it works and labours at the humming loom of time, 
 and since Goethe calls it the “genius of the world and 
 action, ” there is something still higher involved in it. Hu- 
 man life, history, the world of deeds and actions, with their 
 storms and passions, belong to its realm. In Faust’s heart 
 a longing for action is combined with his longing for nature, 
 and both are embodied in the Earth-Spirit, but for a time 
 the longing for nature occupies the foreground. 
 
 The whole of nature, the whole of human life, appears 
 in bodily form before Faust, and the latter exclaims : “ Woe’s 
 me! I cannot bear thee.” Yet it is only for a moment 
 that this Übermensch is a prey to pitiful fear. He quickly 
 collects himself and exclaims, “’Tis I, ’t is Faust, who 
 am thine equal!” But he is hurled from this proud height 
 by the answer of the Spirit, “ Thou ’rt like the spirit thou 
 dost comprehend, not me!” “Not thee? Whom then?” 
 we ask with Faust. Can it be that the man who has his 
 feet solidly planted on the enduring, firm-standing earth 
 is not like the Earth-Spirit? Why should he not be? If 
 he is not like this Spirit, what does he resemble? Cer- 
 tainly he, the son of earth, is like the Spirit of the Earth. 
 And yet he is not the Spint’s equal; for he is only a part, 
 whereas the Spirit is a whole ; he is small, whereas the Spirit 
 is great; he is limited, whereas the Spirit is comparatively 
 
Ifauöt 
 
 281 
 
 unlimited. Here we find in Faust both the guilt and the 
 tragedy of the finite — guilt, in that man desires to be an 
 Übermensch and presumes to be the equal of the infinite; 
 tragedy, in that he must recognise that he is not the whole 
 and not infinite. Faust has drawn the Earth-Spirit with 
 mighty force, because his strivmg toward the whole is 
 natural and justified, but he fails to comprehend the Spirit 
 because he himself is finite. With the recognition of this 
 fact, with this answer, this annihilation of his highest hopes 
 and desires, the apparition of the Earth-Spirit comes to 
 an end and the famulus Wagner enters. 
 
 Just the opposite of Faust, a dry bookworm and pedant, 
 really conscious of but one impulse, eager to know every- 
 thing — but for what purpose! — a Philistine of education, 
 a prosaic, spiritless apostle of enlightenment after the style 
 of Nicolai, insipid, vain, and empty, and yet, in his rev- 
 erence for Faust, his complete self-satisfaction, and in- 
 tellectual assurance, he is harmless and naive, a comic 
 figure by the side of the tragic hero. Hence at the present 
 moment it is entirely in place for Faust, in the conversation 
 with him, to oppose heart and feeling to empty knowledge, 
 the living to the dead, the natural to the artificial. But, 
 much as he may be in the right, Faust here becomes bitter 
 and pessimistic again, as in his first monologue, and appears 
 more hopeless than before. He speaks harshly, especially 
 conceming history. To him it is an offal-barrel and a 
 lumber-garret, and men are always the same; the few who 
 have revealed their true thoughts and feelings have always 
 been crucified or burned at the stäke. Schopenhauer later 
 expressed approximately the same opinion of history, 
 and if we think further of Nietzsche’s antagonism to the 
 historical tendency of our day, we see how Creative minds 
 must indeed feel something like a hindrance or fetters in 
 the “critical endeavour” of the historian to go back to the 
 sources. It is in this sense that Goethe’s aversion for 
 history is to be explained. 
 
 With this the first scene comes to a close. In the Frag- 
 ment of 1790 we next find Faust in conversation with 
 
282 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 Mephistopheles. Who is this Mephistopheles and whence 
 does he come? He is the devil, for he teils us so himself, 
 in this very first scene in which he appears. And it is so 
 simple, too. Nothing was gained by communion with the 
 Earth-Spirit ; that attempt came to a tragic end. In his 
 despair and the pessimistic embitterment resulting from it 
 Faust conjured up the devil and gave himself up to him. 
 
 Here we come upon difficulties. Before Wagner’s 
 entrance we heard Faust utter things that cannot be har- 
 monised with such an act of despair. “My fairest fortune 
 brought to naught! Oh, that this moment vision-fraught 
 The grovelling pedant should disturb!” “My fairest for- 
 tune.” What does this mean in the mouth of a man who 
 is broken-spirited, humble, and full of despair? We must 
 consider it in connection with the fourteenth scene of the 
 Fragment, the one entitled “Forest and Cavem. ” “Ex- 
 alted spirit, thou hast heard my prayer and granted all. 
 ’T was not in vain that in the fire thou tum’dst thy face 
 to me,” Faust there says of the appearance of the Earth- 
 Spirit; and he continues in the same tone. But then he 
 adds, “ With this ecstasy, which brings me near and nearer 
 to the gods, thou gav’st this comrade.” Here, too, he 
 speaks of his great happiness, adding the new fact that the 
 Spirit has given him Mephistopheles, who, therefore, is 
 not the devil, but a messenger, an emissary of the Earth- 
 Spirit . 43 And so the attempt has been made to establish 
 the view that in all the old part of the drama, excepting at 
 most the “ Witches’ Kitchen, ” Mephistopheles is an earthly 
 demon, one of those elflike elementary spirits, such as the 
 Earth-Spirit has at its disposal, but not a spirit of hell and 
 evil, not the devil in whom the populär myth believes or 
 whom a higher conception takes as a symbol. But this 
 interpretation, in spite of its acceptance by many, is un- 
 tenable, if for no other reason, because of the legend, in 
 which the compact with the devil is from the very beginning 
 absolutely indispensable, is in fact the essential feature. 
 Even in Goethe’s drama there are a number of passages 
 which speak against it, and they are found, too, in the 
 
Jfaust 
 
 283 
 
 oldest Version, the Urfaust, in the “Student” scene, in 
 “Auerbach’s Cellar, ” and in the Gretchen tragedy, where 
 we read explicitly of the devil and of hell. The only scene 
 which apparently represents a different view is the one in 
 prose entitled “Dismal Day — A field. ” There it really 
 sounds as though Mephistopheles were an emissary of the 
 Earth-Spirit. But even if Goethe may have had this view 
 at one time in the early stage of the composition — and even 
 here a different interpretation is possible — he certainly 
 discarded it shortly afterward. However, that fourteenth 
 scene, “Forest and Cavern, ” at least the first part of it, 
 cannot be made to harmonise with our conception of the 
 diabolical nature of Mephistopheles. 
 
 Goethe composed the scene in Italy, and on the ist of 
 March, 1788, he wrote: “It was a full week, which Stands 
 out in my memory like a month. First the plan of Faust 
 was made, and I hope I have been successful in this Opera- 
 tion. Of course writing the piece out now is a different 
 thing from what it would have been fifteen years ago. I 
 think it will lose nothing thereby, especially as I believe 
 I have now found the thread again.” He believes he has 
 found the thread again, and in the “Witches’ Kitchen,” 
 which was also written in Italy, he really did find it. But 
 not in this soliloquy. Here a foreign element enters in. 
 One can see it even in the majestic style of the unrhymed 
 iambics and in the conception of nature with which Goethe 
 first became familiär on his Italian journey. So Mephis- 
 topheles does not appear the same in this scene as elsewhere ; 
 he is here really the emissary of the Earth-Spirit. Further- 
 more we are told that in Italy the Earth-Spirit gave Goethe 
 every thing for which he prayed, whereas to Faust it did 
 not give everything — did not give him, in fact, the very thing 
 for which he had prayed. Finallv, that this scene, with its 
 classical colouring, is a foreign element in the Northern 
 composition of Faust is shown clearly by the fact that, 
 having no true resting-place, it had to wander about. In 
 the Fragment of 1790 it came after the scene “ At the Foun- 
 tain. ” According to this arrangement Gretchen has 
 
284 
 
 ftbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 already fallen. With what purpose then is Mephistopheles 
 made to urge Faust to return to her in the second part of 
 the scene? In the edition of 1808, on the other hand, the 
 scene is thought of as occurring at the same time as Gretch- 
 en’s song “At the Spinning Wheel,” that is, before her 
 seduction and fall. It fits better there, but only in part; 
 and so the scene, above all the soliloquy with which it be- 
 gins, is both in language and in content a foreign element 
 that can nowhere find its true resting-place. 
 
 After all do not the words of Faust at the entrance of 
 Wagner, after his disappointment with the Earth-Spirit, 
 justify the other interpretation ? They would, if the words 
 had been the same originally. But in the Urfaust we read: 
 “Ihn low and lower brought to naught! Oh, that this 
 moment vision-fraught The humdrum dreamer must dis- 
 turb!” The “moment vision-fraught” is retained. That 
 fits the facts. But the “fairest fortune,” and with it the 
 stumbling-block, has vanished. Faust is annihilated by 
 the plenitude of visions, and instead of his having an oppor- 
 tunity to recover himself Wagner comes and completes 
 his annihilation by reminding him of his intolerable ex- 
 istence and forcing him back to the complete emptiness 
 of the commonplace life of the scholar. Thus the old plan 
 of the poem remains, and with it the old interpretation 
 of Mephistopheles. Faust’s union with the Earth-Spirit 
 has failed. In his despair on account of it he gives himself 
 to the devil, who steps up to his side as Mephistopheles. 
 The scene, on the other hand, in which Faust boasts of the 
 gifts of the Earth-Spirit, and characterises Mephistopheles 
 as a messenger and emissary of this Spirit, is out of har- 
 mony with that plan. The monologue, beginning “Ex- 
 alted Spirit,” is an expression of Goethe’s satisfied feeling 
 in Italy, but is out of place in Fatist. 
 
 So Mephistopheles is the devil. True, he is not the 
 devil of the folk-book, and not at all the devil of the six- 
 teenth Century. In the Fragment he does not yet define 
 himself and the Lord does not yet characterise him as the 
 wag whom he finds least troublesome of all the spirits that 
 
tfaust 
 
 285 
 
 deny. As a matter of fact, however, he is such a wag in the 
 Fragment, a wag indeed in a twofold sense. He plays with 
 himself, speaks ironically of himself, and he has humour. 
 What Goethe gained thereby is clear. At a time when men 
 no longer believed in the devil of the sixteenth Century 
 the shrewd, enlightened devil must no longer believe in 
 himself. But what Goethe lost in reality he gained in 
 depth of symbolism, in significance and importance. He 
 enhanced also his art as a poet. The devil jokes himself 
 out of existence and yet he Stands before us. Such a devil 
 we can endure. In the second place the uncanny atmo- 
 sphere of hell is removed, or is at least perceptible only to 
 divining spirits, and we have instead a comfortable at- 
 mosphere of humour, which makes it possible for us to 
 understand how Faust can endure the society of his un- 
 canny comrade. The fact that the devil is humorous is 
 also a gain for Faust. Finally Goethe ’s whole optimism 
 lies therein, closely related to which are his natural gentle- 
 ness, that later became Olympic repose, and his pantheistic, 
 Spinozistic view of the world sub specie ceternitatis , which 
 sees things from a standpoint above good and evil. This 
 conception of the evil one certainly has its justification, 
 especially if the other darker and deeper point of view is 
 not wanting; and that this is not wanting is soon made 
 certain by the Gretchen tragedy. 
 
 Goethe later makes Mephistopheles say of himself that 
 he is “ A part o’ that power, but little understood, Which 
 e’er designs the bad and e’er creates the good.” He does 
 not say that in the Fragment, but it is true of him, as is 
 shown by his influence on Faust. He tries to lead Faust 
 to ruin, and yet the result of his endeavours is something 
 entirely different. In a word, we may characterise his 
 influence as pedagogical. Mephistopheles, with his clear, 
 brilliant understanding, becomes Faust’s tutor. What does 
 he say to him in their very first conversation ? Truths, and 
 nothing eise, introducing his statements with ‘‘Oh, believe 
 me.” To be sure, he would like to draw down this lofty 
 spirit from his ideal height, from his striving toward the 
 
286 
 
 Zhe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 absolute, would like to turn him away from his original 
 source; and so to Faust, the visionary and idealist, full of 
 illusions, he opposes with inexorable logic the real world in 
 all its nakedness and reality, without illusions; to his lofty 
 aspiration to the absolute, the bounds and limitations of 
 such striving ; to his mind fixed on the highest things, the 
 whole lowness and commonness of life, and to his super- 
 sensuous spirit the degrading power of sensuousness. “ Un- 
 derstanding against reason, ” says Schiller aptly, in his 
 Kantian language. The effect may be, though it is not 
 necessarily, different from what he desires and expects. 
 Faust is cured of his unsound idealism; he recognises that 
 the real side has also its just rights, and hence gives up his 
 too lofty aims ; and he gradually becomes reconciled to the 
 bounds and limitations which have been set for finite man. 
 In this connection Goethe was doubtless thinking of Herder 
 and Merck and their influence on him. They must offen 
 have seemed to him devilish, when they jeered at his am- 
 bitions and ruthlessly broke his idols over his head. And 
 yet they were right. Thus false, devilish realism may be- 
 come for Faust a school of sound, true realism. 
 
 A Student enters and gives Mephistopheles, masked as 
 Faust, an opportunity for that delicious bit of persiflage 
 at the four faculties and the whole System of university 
 instruction of the time. This scene furnishes a supple- 
 mentary, detailed justification of Faust’s disgust at phi- 
 losophy, jurisprudence, medicine, and alas! also theology. 
 His scoffing at collegium logicum and his mockery at meta- 
 physics, unfortunately very superficial; his revolutionär)', 
 Rousseauesque distinction between Statute laws and natural 
 rights, the latter of which, alas ! are never considered ; his 
 thoughtful words concerning the hidden poison of theology, 
 and his frivolous prattle about the spirit of medicine, are 
 so enjoyable that we are glad to miss in the Fragment the 
 student-jokes about board and lodging at Frau Sprizbier- 
 lein’s, which had found their way into the Urfaust from 
 vivid memories of Leipsic. This scene took the place of a 
 great disputation which Goethe had originally planned and 
 
tfaust 
 
 287 
 
 during which Faust was doubtless to say things which 
 could not fail to bring him, the freethinker, into conflict 
 with the orthodox pedants of the university, so that he 
 would have feit forced to leave his office and the city. 44 
 At any rate it affords an explanation of the first appearance 
 of Mephistopheles in the form of a travelling scholar. 
 
 And now up ! and out into the wide world ! or, with less 
 pathos, “Then quick, from all reflection free, Come, plunge 
 into the world with me!” “The little world and then the 
 great we ’ll see. ” First the little world, or as Mephistopheles 
 formulates it to himself, “ Him will I drag through revels 
 gay, His lust with vapid trifles feed. ” Vapid and trifling, 
 indeed, are the merry fellows in Auerbach’s Cellar, and we 
 feel certain that Faust can take no pleasure in their society. 
 And yet for the university professor, leaving his position 
 behind for the pleasures of life, the most natural thing to 
 do first is to see what he may find in students’ merriment. 
 The scene is depicted in the spirit of the old Faust legend. 
 The causing of different wines to flow is a magic trick which 
 in the Urfaust is not performed by Mephistopheles, but by 
 Faust, so that there at least Faust is not condemned to 
 complete passivity. 
 
 Then follows the “Witches’ Kitchen. ” This scene, as 
 we have already heard, was composed by Goethe in Rome, 
 in 1788. It is remarkable how surely he was able to strike 
 the Northern, barbaric tone in the midst of the classic 
 world of Italy, and at the moment when he was recasting 
 Iphigenie into iambic pentameters beautifully modelled 
 after the classic style. And yet on the other hand it is 
 natural. His wild revelries in Weimar and his whole 
 Storm-and-Stress period lie behind him and must seem to 
 him, here in Italy, especially wild and senseless. At the 
 same time we notice here the beginning of a tendency which 
 was to become more and more detrimental to the drama 
 as time went on, namely, the inclination to weave into the 
 poem all sorts of literary, political, and dogmatic allusions, 
 the number of which in this scene was still further increased 
 in the later Version. 
 
288 
 
 Zbe Xife of <3oetbe 
 
 But what is the purpose, in the midst of the drama, 
 of all this hocus-pocus? Faust is to be rejuvenated by 
 means of the witch’s magic potion; the filthy mess is to 
 take thirty years from his body. Is that necessary? The 
 Faust who in the monologue looks up so longingly at the 
 moon, and strives after nature with such ardent desire, 
 has a young heart and youthful senses. Study makes one 
 prematurely old, but we are now no longer dealing with this 
 over-educated man; we have to do with the human being, 
 the youth, the man, who is to open his heart to sensuous 
 love for woman, with all its power and passion, and this 
 is symbolised by his visit to the Witches’ Kitchen. “ Is ’t 
 possible ? Hath woman such charms ? ” he asks, accordingly, 
 as he Stands before the picture in the magic mirror. So it is 
 woman, not Gretchen or Helena, but the Etemal-Womanly, 
 that appears to him here, though at present only in a form 
 that charms the senses, allures, and seduces. The devil 
 thinks that he will catch him with this Iure, but perhaps 
 woman — first Gretchen, then Helena — will serve to free 
 Faust from the devil and thus to prepare the way for the 
 Eternal-Womanly in that higher sense according to which 
 it is to draw him upward and redeem him. In that case 
 Mephistopheles is already the power which e’er designs 
 the bad and yet perhaps creates the good — is already the 
 deceived devil. 
 
 And now the Gretchen tragedy, a new Variation of the 
 favourite Storm-and-Stress theme of “the infanticide. ” 
 But what has Goethe made of it? These Gretchen scenes, 
 taken together, form probably the greatest masterpiece of 
 poetry ever written. Infinite in their beauty and tender- 
 ness, they are at the same time so profoundly tragical that 
 all the woes of mankind appear in the most narrow limits 
 of the life of a girl of the common people. 
 
 First Faust’s senses are inflamed at the sight of Gretchen. 
 In the Urfaust we read, “A wondrous pretty maid is she, 
 And something she ’s inflamed in me. ” Hardly has he seen 
 her when he says to Mephistopheles, “Hear! Thou must 
 the girl for me procure.” The potion has had its effect; 
 
289 
 
 Jfaust 
 
 he speaks like Jack Profligate, speaks almost like a French- 
 man. Mephistopheles leads him to her chamber, into the 
 atmosphere in which she moves, in Order to arouse his 
 appetite still more. But how differently Faust is affected 
 by the scene! How ashamed he is of his sensuous desire, 
 how vile he seems to himself in this earthly sanctuary of 
 innocence and purity! Yet it is just as natural that his 
 determination, expressed in the words “Away! I ’ll ne’er 
 return again,” should be sacrificed to his stronger sensuous 
 impulse, especially as it is soon supported by the deeper 
 feeling of love, which begins to spring up in his heart. 
 
 To Gretchen, the divining angel, after her return home, 
 the air of her room feels sultry and close. As though 
 prophesying her own future, she sings Der König in Thule, 
 that ballad of fidelity and parting. Then she finds the 
 casket. “ What the dickens is in this thing?” exclaims the 
 child of the common people, and she cannot take her eyes 
 off its contents, for “ Gold all doth Iure, And gold procure 
 All gladly! Alas, we poor!” A good deal of the social 
 problem, with all its terrible, world-stirring consequences, 
 is crowded into these few words, and they affect us imme- 
 diately and deeply, though it is not obvious that such is 
 their purpose. Even the Church is powerless here. “Just 
 think, the gems for Gretchen got, they say, A priest hath 
 slyly snatched away!’’ But she “the jeweis day and night 
 thinks o’er, On him who brought them dwells still more.” 
 
 And now the two go-betweens, the devil and Frau 
 Martha, the latter almost more diabolical than the former. 
 We are astonished that Gretchen should make a confidante 
 of this woman. She very soon sees through Mephistopheles; 
 why not Frau Martha? “Alas, we poor!” again explains 
 everything. The poor have not the liberty to choose whom 
 they will for their friends. In this sharply defined circle 
 the relation betw r een Gretchen and Martha is that of neigh- 
 bours. In contrast to the exacting, bigoted mother, Martha 
 is indulgent and friendly, and as Gretchen is accustomed 
 to the go-between neighbour’s face she accepts her friend- 
 liness as genuine, without a sign of mistrust. 
 
 VOL. III.-19. 
 
290 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 The first meeting in the garden is arranged; but ap- 
 parently there is an obstacle in the way. Faust is expected 
 to testify that Frau Martha’s husband’s remains repose in 
 holy ground in Padua, and yet he knows nothing about it. 
 So he is expected to swear falsely. Although his objections 
 to such an act are soon overcome, it is apparent even at 
 this early stage that Mephistopheles has made a mistake 
 in his reckoning with regard to Faust. “ Liar, sophist,” 
 Faust calls him, as though, apart from this, he were not 
 ready at any moment to swear falsely of his “ etemal truth 
 and love, That power unique, all other powers above. ” 
 Faust assures Mephistopheles, however, that the vow will 
 really come from his heart. “ If passion sways me, And 
 I the glow wdierewith I burn Call quenchless, endless, yea, 
 eterne, Is that a devilish, lying game?” Mephistopheles 
 is right, to be sure; Faust’s purpose is deception and se- 
 duction. And yet Faust is also right. Love is etemal; 
 not in the common sense of temporal endlessness, but in 
 the much higher sense that here the common, the sensuous, 
 the finite is raised above its limitations, is ennobled, spir- 
 itualised, idealised to the qualitatively infinite, that in the 
 idealism of true love the realism of sensuousness does not 
 in the end prevail; and against these illusions Mephisto- 
 pheles is powerless. 
 
 The next scene is the promenade of the two pairs in the 
 garden. The picture of Gretchen is charming in every line 
 and feature: in her naive simplicity, her sweet innocence, 
 her confiding humility, in the description of her little joys 
 and sorrows and of her simple performance of the duties 
 of her narrow existence, and, finally, in her playful pluck- 
 ing off of the leaves of the star flower in her new budding 
 love. And then on the following day her longing for her 
 beloved, as she sits at the spinning w r heel. The flower of 
 love is full-blown. One may justly say that her words are 
 too high-sounding in the mouth of a “poor, ignorant 
 child,” but who would desire to have a single one of them 
 changed ? 
 
 In the next scene we find her again with Faust. Trou- 
 
Jfauöt 
 
 291 
 
 bled about the salvation of her beloved’s soul, she asks, 
 “Howis’t with thy religion, pray?” and Faust declares 
 his confession of faith, which even externally is a master - 
 piece, conceived in the highly poetic style of Ganymed, 
 Grenzen der Menschheit, and Das Göttliche. It is an in- 
 imitably beautiful clothing of philosophic thought in ques- 
 tions full of spiritual intuition and feeling. Like Schiller's 
 philosophic poems, it is crowded with ideas, yet is purest 
 poetry. The thought-content is the confession of faith 
 of a pantheist, which Goethe, as we know, always was. 
 And this pantheism is nature-pantheism and nature-mys- 
 ticism, not as philosophy, but as real religion. “ Call it 
 Bliss! Heart! Love! God! Feeling is all in all. ” Heart 
 and Love, it well may be; but how does it come, then, that 
 a man so full of heart and full of love can endure the society 
 of a Mephistopheles, when it is so clear that naught on earth 
 his sympathy can draw, that to his heart no soul is dear? 
 Herein lies the difference between Gretchen and Faust. 
 She is really all heart and love, whereas in his breast two 
 souls dwell. He has the egoistic, scofhng companion at his 
 side because he himself is not all heart, not all pure, eter- 
 nal love, because as a man he is at once feeling and 
 understanding. 
 
 Is there any indication of this lack in the confession of 
 faith itself? Yes and no. This pantheistic confession is 
 Goethe’s own creed. Then he certainly did not intend to 
 represent it as in any way imperfect or condemnable. And 
 yet it is not a mere accident that immediately after it the 
 seduction is attempted and accomplished. Psychologically 
 the observation is perfectly correct that such moments of 
 spiritual exaltation, especially if they are so largely a pro- 
 duct of feeling, are followed by a relapse into sensuousness, 
 and the supersensuous wooer very quickly becomes a 
 sensuous lover. Religious mysticism is particularly often 
 endangered by this lapse into sensuousness. 
 
 There is one thing more. “Thou hast no Christian- 
 ity,” says Gretchen. In these words she points out a gap 
 in Faust’s creed. She misses in it the dogmatic side of 
 
292 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 Christianity. We may translate her words into our own 
 language and say that Faust’s emotional pantheism lacks 
 moral force and energy, moral self-discipline, the recog- 
 nition of the moral law and its sacredness. The fault does 
 not lie in pantheism as such, but in the element of nature 
 in this particular pantheism — in the fact that it is merely 
 a matter of the feelings, a mere nature-pantheism, and not 
 an ethical pantheism ; that belief in love-bestowing nature 
 does not imply belief in a moral Constitution of the world . 
 This explains Faust’s weak moral surrender, the victory 
 of his natural impulses, the sensuous element in his love. 
 The danger of such revelling in natural impulses Goethe 
 doubtless knew from experience, and in his own life he 
 opposed to it more and more as the years went by the hard 
 command of moral resignation. At the present moment 
 Faust has no conception of resignation; hence the Gretchen 
 drama develops into a horrible tragedy. 
 
 Just here lies another difference between Faust and 
 Gretchen, a difference of education. To this is due the fact 
 that from the beginning there was no thought of a perma- 
 nent relation between the two. That the end would be 
 despair Faust well knew, and he knew, too, that there must 
 be an end. Gretchen, on the other hand, simply believed 
 and gave herseif to him. She, too, has that natural side; 
 she is a child of nature and is at the same time all love and 
 all belief; wherefore downfall is for her entirely natural, 
 a natural necessity. She must give herseif, for her be- 
 loved is her world. To be sure, this involves guilt, which 
 is avenged cruelly enough; but the more guilty of the two 
 is Faust. Gretchen is both guilty and innocent; she is a 
 blind victim. 
 
 The devil has his “delight” in the whole affair. His 
 sneering announcement of the fact is extremely painful 
 to us, who are appalled at the course things are taking. 
 We foresee what is coming, especially after Gretchen, in her 
 ignorance and blissful confidence, has accepted from Faust 
 a sleeping potion for her mother. 
 
 Gretchen has fallen, and in what Lieschen says of 
 
295 
 
 Ifaust 
 
 Bärbelchen at the fountain she now sees the judgment of 
 the world pronounced upon herseif. It is the judgment 
 of morals on the rights which passion and heart believe 
 they may take in defiance of the world. Even now 
 Gretchen recognises this judgment as just when applied 
 to herseif: “And now I, too, am stained with sin.” 
 
 We have already spoken of the fourteenth scene, “Forest 
 and Cavern.” In the monologue we find again the nature- 
 pantheism of the confession of faith, expressed in language 
 full of force and beauty, and with its thought-content deep- 
 ened by the view of nature acquired by Goethe in Italy. 
 The second part of the scene, in which Mephistopheles, as 
 a go-between, calls Faust back to his forsaken Gretchen, 
 who Stands at the window and sees the clouds float over 
 the old city wall — and we see them with her — is out of 
 place here, although the outburst of wild remorse at the 
 close is in place here and here alone. Hence Goethe only 
 half improved matters when he later made the scene par- 
 allel with Gretchen’s song at the spinning wheel. 
 
 Gretchen goes with her trouble to the mater dolorosa 
 in the Zwinger and begs her help in this time of need. The 
 scene in the cathedral, which the Urfaust characterises 
 more specifically as the exequies of her mother, closes the 
 Fragment. We learn here that the mother has been killed 
 by Gretchen, but do not learn in what way the deed was 
 done. In any case it was not done intentionally ; it was 
 merely a fatal accident, due to the awkwardness of the 
 girl. And yet she was to blame for the sinful deed. The 
 hellish pangs of remorse are embodied in the voice of the 
 evil spirit, and so she sinks in a swoon. “ Neighbour, 
 your smelling bottle!” With these words the powerful 
 tragedy comes to an end. 
 
 It is first of all the tragedy of Gretchen. She is the 
 heroine, her fate is tragical, her innocence is wrecked, and 
 with it she herseif goes to ruin in accordance with the in- 
 exorable law of tragic necessity. 
 
 What significance has this tragedy for Faust? We do 
 not know as yet; the Fragment of 1790 has not even followed 
 
294 
 
 £be Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 Gretchen’s fate to the end, and it leaves us entirely in the 
 dark concerning Faust. And yet not entirely either. In 
 the fourteenth scene, repeatedly referred to, we read : 
 
 93m id) ber glücf)tling nicht, ber Unbetjaufte, 
 
 ®et Unmenfd) ohne Btüecf unb 9lub, 
 
 ®er roie ein SBafferfturg non gel$ gu gelfen braufte, 
 begierig nnitenb, nach bem 3lbgrunb gu ? 
 
 Unb feitroärtö fie, mit finblid) bumpfen ©innen, 
 
 3m tfmttdjen auf bem fleinen SUpenfelb, 
 
 Unb all ibr bäuölidjeö beginnen 
 Umfangen in ber fleinen SBelt. 
 
 Unb ich, ber ©ottberhajite, 
 
 $attc nicht genug, 
 
 ®afi id) bie Reifen fafite 
 Unb fie gu Krümmern fdjlug ! 
 
 ©ie, ihren ^rieben mufit’ ich untergraben! 
 
 9ttag ihr ©efcfjicf auf mich gufammenftürgen 
 Unb fie mit mir gu ©runbe gehn! * 
 
 The description here given of the love of the man of high 
 intellectual standing could not be improved upon. For 
 him such a love is but an episode, an idyll; he drags the 
 simple maiden into the Whirlpool of his life and she goes 
 under. And he? Goethe knew how he had wronged 
 Friederike of Sesenheim. To be sure, it was not a wrong 
 such as that perpetrated on Gretchen; but her peace was 
 
 * And am I not an outcast, homeless roaming, 
 
 A monster without aim and rest, 
 
 Who, like a torrent, sweep down cliffs and gorges, foaming, 
 Tow’rd the abyss by raging passion pressed? 
 
 Alongside.she, with childhood’s dormant senses, 
 
 Doth in her little sheltered cot appear. 
 
 For her each thought and task commences 
 And ends within this little sphere. 
 
 And I, God’s hate hung o’er me, 
 
 Cannot assuage my lust 
 By grasping rocks before me 
 And dashing them to dust! 
 
 Her and her peace I yet must undermine! 
 
 Then may her doom fall crushing on my head, 
 
 And she to ruin plunge with me! 
 
Jfaust 
 
 295 
 
 destroyed, her happiness undermined, and her heart broken, 
 or at least it seemed so to him. His pangs of remorse on 
 account of it, the hellish torments of his accusing conscience, 
 are here objectified. In this mood it seemed to him as 
 though his sun-chariot might also plunge into the abyss, 
 as though he might rush to ruin and fall into the clutches 
 of the devil. For the Faust of the sixteenth Century this 
 question was decided unfavourably as a matter of course; 
 the magician belonged in hell. With Lessing’s Faust, in 
 the age of optimistic enlightenment, the opposite was true. 
 There Heaven cried to the devils, Ye shall not gain the 
 victory! With Goethe’s hero, however, the question was 
 for the moment not so simple. It was possible for him to 
 go to ruin with Gretchen, to be lost in the end as she was . 45 
 And yet the power which e’er designs the bad and e’er 
 creates the good, the conscienceless devil, helps Faust 
 overcome this mood and finds the frtting words for him : 
 “Where such a head as thine no outcome sees, it fancies 
 straight the end has come. Hail him who never loses 
 heart!” That is the important point. Remorse is an 
 illusion, thinks Mephistopheles; right is on the side of the 
 living. Hence, as he has already involved Faust in blackest 
 guilt, he plans further to drag him into new episodes, into 
 new distractions. But Faust has illusions and will keep 
 them; he is now, and will remain, an idealist; and so he 
 knows the value of remorse and must put a different inter- 
 pretation upon the words “ Hail him who never loses 
 heart!” He sees in them a teaching which also helps one 
 to overcome remorse, namely, that while life strikes wounds 
 it also heals wounds, and that not to lose heart in life is the 
 only way to atone for guilt. Thus even here a way is 
 opened leading from a life of passive enjoyment to one of 
 action, from the little world to the great. Faust may draw 
 this teaching from the words, but he is not obliged to. He 
 may be saved, but he is not forced to be. Hence at the 
 end of the Fragment we are left in uncertainty and sus- 
 pense as to the outcome. At the same time there are here 
 moral elements in abundance, whereas in the confession 
 
296 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 of faith and, one might perhaps say, in the whole of the 
 Ur jaust they were lacking. Here they may at least be found. 
 
 We do not come to the hardest problems tili we proceed 
 from the Fragment of 1790 to the additions of the version 
 of 1808. The three most important of these are: (1) the 
 beginning, including the “ Dedication, ” the “ Prelude on 
 the Stage, ” and the “ Prologue in Heaven” ; (2) the portions 
 filling up the great “gap,” namely, Faust’s second mono- 
 logue, the Easter chimes, the promenade before the city- 
 gate, the exorcism of Mephistopheles, the latter’s return 
 and his compact with Faust; and, finallv, (3) the close of 
 the Gretchen tragedy, the Valentine scene, “ Walpurgis 
 Night,” Faust’s return after he has learned Gretchen’s 
 fate, and the “ Prison” scene. We shall best begin with the 
 third, in Order that we may continue the subject we have 
 just been discussing, and thus follow the Gretchen tragedy 
 to its close. 
 
 In the Valentine scene Goethe has merely completed 
 what was planned from the beginning and for the most part 
 worked out in the Ur jaust. Its outward purpose is to give 
 rise to an occasion making it necessary for Faust to leave 
 the city, which he must do as the murderer of Valentine. 
 In substance it is intended to deepen the tragicalness of 
 the drama. The whole family is brought to ruin; even 
 Gretchen’s good, innocent brother becomes a victim of her 
 unholy love. Besides, Faust himself becomes more deeply 
 involved in guilt. He is the seducer of Gretchen, who in 
 turn kills her mother and her child ; while he himself slays 
 her brother with his sword, though half in self-defence. 
 Finally, the scene is a companion piece to that between 
 Gretchen and Lieschen at the fountain. First the judg- 
 ment of evil tongues, the conventionally judging world; 
 now the judgment of good people conceming the poor 
 innocent, and yet guilty, maiden, the curse of the upright, 
 which makes Gretchen’s dishonour complete. A tre- 
 mendous effect is achieved by the lightning flashes and 
 sledge-hammer blows of this intensely dramatic scene. 
 The figure of the honest, true-hearted lansquenet shows 
 
jfauöt 
 
 297 
 
 a degree of realistic and true-to-nature portrayal of na- 
 tional traits not often found in Goethe’s characters. The 
 analogy to Clavigo is worthy of note. In each case there 
 is a brother who fights for the honour of his sister; but in 
 Clavigo Beaumarchais comes off victor, whereas in Faust 
 Valentine is slain by the seducer. 
 
 While Gretchen’s fate is being realised Faust hastens 
 with Mephistopheles to the Brocken for Walpurgis Night. 
 The scene fills out the pause entertainingly, and we must 
 not hold the poet to too strict an account of the number 
 of months and days. Gretchen vanishes from the sight 
 of the audience throughout a long scene. Meanwhile that 
 which must happen may take place. It is the purpose of 
 Mephistopheles that as she passes out of Faust’s sight she 
 shall also pass out of his mind. The devil’s desire to ruin 
 Faust is the reason for involving him in the affair with 
 Gretchen, which has led to murder and homicide. But it 
 is not his intention that Faust shall witness the disastrous 
 end of Gretchen. That would only produce remorse in 
 his breast and arouse his better nature. So he must spirit 
 him away. It will suit his purpose best to lead him into 
 new complications, above all into coarse pleasures, drag- 
 ging him deeper and deeper into guilt and sin, into sen- 
 suality and vulgarity. Such being the reasoning of 
 Mephistopheles he takes Faust with him to the witches’ 
 rendezvous with Satan. 
 
 Again he makes a mistake in his reckoning, and this 
 time a double one. Faust is expected to forget Gretchen 
 and yet in this very place he is reminded of her by an ap- 
 parition, that eidolon of which, it is true, Mephistopheles 
 says lightly, “To every man she seems his own beloved.” 
 And not only does she remind him theo.retically, so to speak, 
 of his beloved; he even sees her fate embodied in this un- 
 canny creature, or at least suggested by it: “How strangely 
 round this loveliest of throats A single crimson band is 
 gleaming, No broader than a knife’s back seeming. ” The 
 bloody mark of the headsman’s axe — how terrible, how 
 awful! What a presentiment for the soul of Faust! That 
 
298 
 
 TLbe üLife of (Soetbe 
 
 it was really Goethe’s intention to make Faust here leam 
 Gretchen’s fate is shown more plainly by a passage in the 
 paralipomena, where we read, “ Prattle of changelings 
 whereby Faust is informed.” Immediately afterward, in 
 the scene “Dismal Day — A Field, ” he knows her whole 
 terrible fate. 
 
 The second mistake in Mephistopheles’s reckoning is 
 his plan to drag Faust, while on the Brocken, into vulgarity 
 and sin and to let him sink in this swamp. True, it does 
 seem for a moment as though Faust, in his dance with the 
 young witch, were allowing himself to be dragged down to 
 the lowest sensuality; but when a little red mouse jumps 
 out of her mouth he is naturally disgusted, and lets the 
 fair damsel go. At this moment his thoughts go back to 
 Gretchen, and how could he find pleasure in the young 
 witch any more? Thus he is saved by Gretchen, his good 
 angel, the Etemal-Womanly, and he is saved by his own 
 better nature, from sinking into common sensuality, as 
 Mephistopheles has planned. 
 
 So far everything is in Order; but this cannot be said of 
 the final elaboration of the whole scene. On the way up 
 the Brocken Mephistopheles invites Faust to avoid the 
 worst throng, to let the great world rave and riot, and to 
 retire to the quiet of a valley to one side and there join an 
 isolated club. Faust replies : “ I ’d rather scale yon towering 
 peak, Where fire and whirling smoke I see. The Evil One 
 by throngs is pressed ; There many a riddle must be guessed.” 
 What does he expect to find there? Revelations concem- 
 ing evil, the solution of the mystery of evil. The old thirst 
 for knowledge awakes in him; he desires not only to ex- 
 perience and enjoy the evil, but also to understand it and 
 find a philosophical reason for its existence. The answer 
 by means of which Mephistopheles turns him aside from 
 his purpose, “ But riddles new will offered be, ” is no answer 
 at all. For a reflective mind such a thing goes without 
 saying. Instead of frightening him away it should Iure 
 him on. It was not Goethe’s original intention to dismiss 
 us with this subterfuge, but really to take Faust to the 
 
jfauöt 
 
 299 
 
 summit, where a revelation of the evil was to be delivered 
 by Satan himself, a diabolical parallel to the röle of Christ 
 at the last judgment. We have parts of the address by 
 Satan in the paralipomena ; but the whole scene is worked out 
 with such “impious daring,” is so vulgär — Goethe here 
 vies with Aristophanes in obscenities — that he rightly 
 hesitated to insert it in the text of the drama ; and so it was 
 dropped. 
 
 There is another point to be considered in this Con- 
 nection. Goethe here paints the evil almost exclusively 
 as base sensuality, which is proper, so long as, at the mo- 
 ment, it is a question only of Faust, whom Mephistopheles 
 is seeking to drag down into these very depths of sensual 
 evil. But this conception would have been one-sided and 
 inadequate in the mouth of Satan, if he had attempted to 
 make us understand evil as such, and to give us a revela- 
 tion of hell in contrast to the “ Prologue in Heaven.” 
 That would have been no solution of the great enigma and 
 would have given rise to no new problems. More than 
 that: Base sensuality is not a devilish evil at all, it is only 
 
 a human evil; for which reason it is not ineradicable and 
 not unpardonable, and therein lies the possibility of Sal- 
 vation for Faust. Still less, of course, is it the evil which 
 is represented in that valley to one side as the reactionary 
 and, in comparison with aspiring youth, the antiquated, 
 and which is intended to symbolise the evil in state and 
 society. Thus the riddle was really left unsolved, and the 
 “Walpurgis Night” remained a fragment. This, of course, 
 is to a certain extent unsatisfactory.* 
 
 There is another objectionable feature of the scene. 
 Apart from a few allusions in the “Witches’ Kitchen” we 
 have here the first plain example of that symbolising, 
 allegorising tendency which we are to meet much more 
 frequently in the Second Part, that tendency to make of 
 the drama a convenient depository for extraneous thoughts 
 and allusions and mar it by the uncalled-for insertion of 
 
 * Georg Witkowski’s Die Walpurgisnacht im esten Teile von Goethes 
 Faust is an excellent monograph on the sources of this scene. — C. 
 
3 °° 
 
 Zhe Xi fe of Goetbe 
 
 all sorts of mysteries. As it was not a question of a revela- 
 tion of evil in general, the various parts of the scene must 
 either have reference to Faust or be left out. Hence we 
 have no cause to regret the dropping of that scene on the 
 summit ; we regret f ar more that many other parts were not 
 expunged or were not left out in the first place. 
 
 The worst of all is the intermezzo, “ Walpurgis Night’s 
 Dream — Oberon and Titania’s Golden Wedding,” which 
 is nothing but a lot of Xenien that were left over fromthe 
 great Xenien war of 1796. They are literary and political 
 satires on contemporaries and the phenomena of the day, 
 and have nothing to do with Faust. On account of their 
 temporary tendency they are throughout of an ephemeral 
 nature, and we need a commentary to-day in order to 
 understand them. This is a serious fault which we must 
 not seek to cover up or factitiously explain away. Rather 
 we should admit frankly that it is a fault and as such 
 condemn it. 
 
 For these reasons the impression left by the “ Walpurgis 
 Night” as a whole is not pleasant throughout and not 
 esthetically pure, in spite of the grandeur and beauty of 
 certain portions. Faust’s ascent of the Brocken, the 
 feverish, frantic commotion of all nature, the disorderly 
 flight of the witches, the fantastic twilight of the scenery 
 — these are genuine poetry. But the flight of fancv grows 
 gradually more languid and ends at last in the swamp of 
 satirical allusions. Even in the matter of style Goethe is 
 not uniformly successful in retaining the old force and 
 richness. When Faust says of the eidolon, “ It seems to 
 me, I must confess, She Gretchen’s features doth possess,” 
 this does not seem to be discovered by Faust himself, but 
 by the poet, who has grown cool and reserved and Stands 
 high and far above the scene, in perfect composure of soul. 
 
 We soon return, however, to the sacred ground of 
 purest poetry and deepest tragedy. First in that unique 
 prose scene, one of the oldest portions of Faust. It dates 
 back to Goethe’s Storm-and-Stress period and breathes 
 the colossal genius of a Shakespeare. The poet very 
 
Jfaust 
 
 301 
 
 properly retained for it the prose form of the TJrfaust. The 
 harsh tones in which Faust gives expression to hishorror 
 at Gretchen’s fate and his loathing of Mephistopheles must 
 not be softened by the modulating power of verse. The 
 next scene is a brief one, full of feeling and dire forebod- 
 ing, in which Faust and Mephistopheles, on black steeds, 
 rush by the uncanny conclave of witches on the place of 
 execution. 
 
 Finally we come to the “Prison” scene, and here all 
 the woe of mankind overwhelms us. It is tragical and 
 poetical through and through. Goethe recast it from the 
 original prose form into verse in the year 1798. He wrote 
 concerning it to Schiller : “ Some tragical scenes were written 
 in prose, and, in comparison with the rest, they are made 
 quite intolerable by their naturalness and strength. So 
 I am now seeking to put them into rhyme, in order that 
 the idea may appear as through a veil and the immediate 
 effect of the monstrous subject-matter be softened.” It 
 was indeed a subduing, veiling, idealising process, but of 
 the objectionable padding, which critics have pretended 
 to find even in this scene, there is not a trace. How cor- 
 rectly Goethe was able to calculate the effect will be shown 
 more clearly by an example than in any other way: 
 
 ftfet meine SJtutter auf einem ©tem, 
 
 @8 fafjtmid) falt beim ©cfjopfe! 
 
 £)a fijjt meine 8Jiutter auf einem ©tein 
 Unb roacfelt mit bem Äopfe. * 
 
 The picture is comical, and yet who dares to laugh at it ? 
 Who does not feel how the grew'some element is increased 
 by the seemingly comical, until it is physically almost 
 intolerable? But the singing, ballad nature of the lines 
 makes it endurable, because it is entirely fitting in the 
 mouth of this child of the common people. 
 
 The scene is an excellent illustration of the correctness 
 
 * My mother is sitting on yonder stone, — 
 
 My brain is cold with dread! 
 
 My mother is sitting on yonder stone, 
 
 And see! she wags her head! 
 
302 
 
 ZTbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 of Lessing’s law of the most fruitful moment, which he 
 says the artist must choose. Preceding it is the grewsome- 
 ness of the double murder, following it the grewsome- 
 ness of the execution. We witness neither act, and vet 
 the scene makes us divine both with most awful vividness, 
 as though we actually saw everything with our own eyes. 
 
 The effect is heightened by Gretchen’s visionary, hal- 
 lucinatory state. She is not insane, as actresses usually 
 make her out to be, for the sake of their convenience, as 
 though she were an Ophelia. What she once sang at the 
 spinning wheel is now more true than ever : “ My poor, 
 poor head is lost and crazed ; My poor, poor mind is wrecked 
 and dazed. ” Drawn out of her whole outward and inward 
 existence, in love, betrayed, forsaken, led into deepest 
 guilt, in remorse and despair, in mortal terror and hellish 
 torment, it is quite natural that her poor head should be 
 lost and crazed and her poor mind be wrecked and dazed. 
 She hardly knows where she is, what has happened to her, 
 and what she herseif has done. In her beloved, who desires 
 to liberate her, she sees now her friend, now a stranger 
 whom she fears. She sees her mother, and the child that 
 she has drowned, and she sees hell yawning at her feet. 
 One moment happy, she believes it is all an ugly dream; 
 the next moment, terrified, she recognises the awful reality. 
 She did not commit the crime of infanticide as one irre- 
 sponsible, but, if we may be allowed the phrase, in a moment 
 of impaired responsibility. And so even now she is not 
 insane; she dare not be, for what she does now is counted 
 toward her penance, atonement, purification, salvation, 
 and redemption. Man can perform a moral act only when 
 he is responsible. To be sure, it is almost a ph)’sical ne- 
 cessity that she should not follow Faust out of the prison. 
 But why? Merely because her pure, innocent nature as- 
 serts itself, because her purity and innocence are stronger 
 even than her love; or because her love, in spite of all her 
 guilt, has remained pure and innocent. As at the fountain 
 she took the judgment of the world upon herseif as just, 
 so now she, who is so fond of life and has such a wholesome 
 
tfaust 
 
 303 
 
 fear of death, willingly takes upon herseif as a necessity 
 the condemnation of earthly justice, and submits herseif 
 to the judgment of God in order to save her soul. Thus 
 she is a figure at once pathetic and exalted. Pathetic in her 
 childlike subjection to physical necessity; exalted in her 
 moral Submission to the headsman’s axe. In her own way 
 she is almost as great as Socrates, who, in order to avoid 
 doing wrong, refused to escape from prison. 
 
 Finally, when Mephistopheles, who has always been to 
 her an uncanny creature, emerges from the ground, she 
 cries to heaven, calls upon her Father in heaven to save 
 his child, and then turns away from Faust, with the words 
 ‘ ‘ Heinrich ! I shudder to think of thee . ” “ She is j udged ! ’ ’ 
 says Mephistopheles; “ Is saved,” comes a voice from 
 above. “Is saved,” say we also, saved because she does 
 not seek to escape judgment, so that from being guilty she 
 has again become innocent. “Hither to me!” says Me- 
 phistopheles to Faust and vanishes with him. 
 
 Thus ends the Gretchen tragedy and the First Part of 
 Faust. But is it really the end? Is Faust lost and fallen 
 into the power of the devil, as Gretchen is saved? So it 
 seems, and yet we cannot, we will not believe it. The 
 voice of the Eternal-Womanly calls after him. “Heinrich, 
 Heinrich!” sounds a voice from within, dying away. Love 
 has seized his soul and will not let him go. Will it be strong 
 enough to hold him, or will there be other means of saving 
 him? Or, to put the question differently: Here in the 
 prison, where all the woe of mankind overwhelms Faust, 
 where out of his pangs of grief and pain he cries, “Oh, that 
 I had never been born!” is he more firmly bound to the 
 infamous companion, who has no words for Gretchen’s 
 misery except the utterly diabolical, though painfully true, 
 “She is not the first one” ; or has he not, rather, become 
 inwardly estranged from him and drawn far away from him ? 
 Will he remain in the power of the devil, or has he here 
 gained the strength to tear himself away? Must Faust go 
 to perdition, or can he be saved? This question of his 
 destiny now becomes the fundamental question of the First 
 
304 
 
 Gbe Ulfe of (Boetbe 
 
 Part. It does not lead us on to the Second Part, but back 
 to the beginning of the drama, especially the “Prologue 
 in Heaven. ” 
 
 We must go somewhat farther back . 46 When Goethe 
 began to write Faust and to attempt to objectify in the hero 
 the struggles of his own spirit, he did not know whether 
 the sun-chariot of his life, rushing on at stormy speed, 
 should reach the height or plunge into the abyss and be 
 dashed to pieces; that is, in terms of the poem, he did not 
 know whether Faust should fall into the power of the devil 
 or should be torn away from him and be saved, though 
 final salvation was the more natural thing for him to think 
 of and the thing he hoped for, both for himself and Faust. 
 When he again took up his work on Faust in the nineties 
 the darkness had been illuminated, the question had been 
 decided, so far as he himself was concemed. His sun- 
 chariot had borne him up to the shining heights of life, the 
 Storm and Stress had spent its rage, the new wine had 
 passed through its fermentation and become generous and 
 mellow. Goethe was saved. Shall we say that the ques- 
 tion was then settled for Faust also? For the poet the 
 problem was not so simple as that. He had meantime out- 
 grown the Faust of the seventies, but Faust had also out- 
 grown him. This means two great difficulties in the way 
 of the continuation and completion of the work. 
 
 Düring this period had taken place the well-known 
 great change in Goethe’s style, that is, the transition from 
 Shakespearian realism and naturalism to classical idealism. 
 This, of course, was not an arbitrary act on the part of 
 Goethe, but as is the man so is his style. He himself had 
 changed, had grown more reposeful, more moderate, and 
 more and more wise. Hence in the Olvmpic repose of 
 classical antiquity, with its well-proportioned beauty and 
 its typical figures, he now found his model and his ideal, 
 because in it he found himself again. And however much 
 we may regret the fact, we must admit that this classicist 
 Goethe had outgrown Faust. 
 
 The form of the Faust fragment is the Hans Sachsian 
 
Jfaust 
 
 305 
 
 Knittelvers; the manner of expression is natural, often even 
 coarse; the rhymes are effective, though not always pure, 
 are at times even dialectically very impure. But who has 
 time to pay heed to such things? And do not these bold 
 Knittelverse impress us Germans as flesh of our own flesh 
 and blood of our own blood, as though this were the genuine 
 Germanic verse, cut out to measure to fit this very body? 
 The coarse in them is coarse, as the best pictures of Rubens 
 are coarse, vigorous, robust, natural, and genuine through 
 and through, with no artificiality apparent, and for that 
 very reason works of the highest art, “common” in that 
 best sense of the word in which Conrad Ferdinand Meyer 
 once used it in speaking of Luther: 
 
 ©emetn raie fiteb unb 3orn unb Sßflidjt, 
 
 2Bie unfrer Äinber Slngeficfjt, 
 
 9Bie §of unb §eim, roie ©alj unb 33rot, 
 
 SSBie bie ©eburt unb rate ber £ob. * 
 
 The verses, in spite of their imperfections, which we 
 do not notice, are especially effective because they are so 
 full of sparkling wit, and always bear the stamp of genius, 
 and because the moment the heart speaks instead of the 
 intellect the language assumes such an inward and cordial 
 sound, such a full, deep tone, and suits itself so aptly and 
 completely to the finest and most delicate shades of feeling, 
 that we cannot imagine content and form more perfectly 
 blended together. 
 
 Such is our feeling to-day concerning the First Part of 
 Faust, but it was not the feeling of the poet himself in the 
 last decade of the Century. Even the “Dedication” shows 
 that. “Wavering figures, ” “clouded vision,” “fantastic 
 idea, ” “foggy mist” — such are the terms in which he 
 referred to it. And in his correspondence with Schiller 
 he spoke also of this “ foggy, misty path, ” on which he had 
 for a time feit forced to “ stray about. ” He called the 
 
 * Common as love and hate and duty, 
 
 Common as childhood’s tender beauty, 
 
 As house and home, as salt and bread, 
 
 As birth’s proud joy and death’s cold dread. 
 
 VOL. III, — 20. 
 
3°6 
 
 ftbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 whole a “barbaric composition, ” and designated as “buf- 
 foonery” and “ caricatures ” the scenes and figures which 
 appear to us to-day so serious and true to nature, not to 
 say, sacred. Schiller, who was just as classical as his friend, 
 agreed with him as to the “ barbaric nature of his treatment 
 of the subject” and himself called the fable “harsh and 
 formless. ” This disdainful attitude toward Faust at that 
 time is perhaps the simplest explanation of the factthat 
 Goethe could treat the work so inconsiderately, could insert 
 so thoughtlessly all sorts of irrelevant things in the “ bar- 
 baric composition,” and make of it a depositorv for a 
 number of Xenien, for which he could find no other place. 
 
 What was it that helped to overcome this hindrance, 
 this difficulty of style ? What was it that simply compelled 
 Goethe to overcome it, and brought him back to Faust time 
 after time? Goethe had outgrown Faust, it is true; but 
 Faust had also outgrown Goethe. Goethe himself was 
 Faust as he conceived him. In his hero he objectified 
 himself, and laid down, so to speak, a general confession. 
 First of all, Faust was animated by the spirit of the eigh- 
 teenth Century; he bore the features of Goethe’s time and 
 embodied in himself the best there was in that period. 
 Every important man is a representative of universal hu- 
 man characteristics ; but of Goethe, the most universal 
 of men, this was pre-eminently true. Hence the more 
 subjectively and more profoundly he painted himself in 
 Faust, the more typical and objective his picture must be. 
 Faust thus became a picture of humanity striving, strug- 
 gling, erring, and yet ever finding the way back to the right 
 path. He became symbolical. And herein lies the key 
 to the Second Part. 
 
 Let us not misunderstand this point. Symbolical does 
 not mean allegorical. The allegorical lacks life, lacks 
 flesh and blood, and independent existence. It exists only 
 as a sign. The picture itself is of minor importance; what 
 it signifies is everything. Hence allegor)’ is a matter of 
 reflection, is not real poetry. True poetry, on the other 
 hand, is symbolical. First the objective picture, some- 
 
307 
 
 tfaust 
 
 thing in itself, a full, round, complete, independent whole. 
 Then there is, besides, something that lies in this and towers 
 above it, something higher and more general, not added to 
 it artificially, by reflection, but growing out of it naturally 
 and necessarily. In this sense Faust is symbolical. He 
 is himself, and beyond this is a representative of mankind 
 in general. He is the two in one and inseparable. 
 
 The more profound the fancy of the poet, the richer 
 is his work in ideas. Richer in ideas, but not as the result 
 of reflection alone. And so, we may say frankly, there is 
 necessarily a philosophical element in Faust. The reason 
 that Goethe, in his classic period, was able and eager to 
 return to the drama, was because the classic is typical, not 
 merely individual and characteristic. It was for the same 
 reason that his philosophical friend Schiller urged him so 
 energetically to return to Faust and would not let him 
 give it up. Both considered the typical an especially im- 
 portant feature of the antique tragedy; and Faust was also 
 typical and symbolical, however individual and charac- 
 teristic it may have been. Hence we find in Schiller’ s in- 
 fluence the bond between the first conception of the drama 
 and the renewed work on it in the period when Goethe 
 affected the antique. 
 
 In the thing which brought Goethe back to Faust there 
 lay a new difficulty, which made it again impossible for 
 him to finish the work. Schiller saw the difficulty at once 
 when Goethe announced to him his determination to resume 
 work on the drama. On the 236. of June, 1797, he wrote: 
 “All that I shall say at present is that Faust, with all its 
 poetic individuality, cannot entirely ignore the requirement 
 of a symbolic significance, as you w r ill probably agree with 
 me. One never loses sight of the duplicity of human nature 
 and the abortive attempt to unite the divine and the physical 
 in man; and as the fable has harsh and formless features 
 one does not desire to stop with the subject -matter itself, 
 but to be led by it to ideas. In short the requirements 
 of Faust are both philosophical and poetical, and, seek as 
 you may to avoid the philosophical treatment, the nature 
 
3o 8 £be Xifc of (Soetbe 
 
 of the subject will force it upon you, and the Imagination 
 will have to accommodate itself to the Service of an idea 
 of the reason. ” 
 
 These thoughts were nothing new to Goethe. As a 
 matter of fact he had already begun to do what, according 
 to Schiller, he should do in the future continuation of the 
 work. And yet there was something new. What Goethe 
 had hitherto done unconsciously and involuntarily he was 
 now to do with full consciousness, and it was not in him as 
 a poet to do it. He was to become a philosopher, but he 
 was no philosopher. The real Situation was once very 
 aptly put in these words : “ And Schiller’s answer wakened 
 this somnambulist. He was frightened, stood amazed, and 
 for the moment knew less than ever how to proceed. ” Thus 
 through Schiller’s influence Goethe resumed work on Faust, 
 and through his influence the drama was once more put 
 aside as a fragment. Glorious and natural as are on the 
 whole the scenes that Goethe composed under this influ- 
 ence, the “ Prologue in Heaven” especially, Faust’s second 
 monologue, and the compact with the devil, nevertheless 
 it must be said that in certain details they bear traces of 
 the combination of the philosophical and the poetical. 
 
 The “Prologue” is an overture and a prelude, but at 
 the same time it points to the outcome and the end. It 
 begins in heaven. Can that which is begun in heaven end 
 in hell, especially if the Lord pledges his word that the 
 outcome shall be exactly the opposite? No, such a thing 
 would not be possible. But does not the immediately 
 preceding “Prelude on the Stage,” the humorous apology 
 with which Goethe in 1808 sent Faust out into the world 
 a second time as a fragment, say expressly that it does? 
 
 ©0 fdjreitet in bem engen ÜBrctterfyaue 
 ®cn gangen £tei3 bcr ©djöpfttng au$, 
 
 Unb raanbelt mit bebädit’ger ©cfmclle 
 S5om $immel burdj bie SBelt gnr §5He.* 
 
 *Then let upon our narrow boards appear 
 Creation’s whole unbounded sphere, 
 
 And journey, under fancy’s spell, 
 
 From heaven through the world to hell. 
 
309 
 
 tfaust 
 
 Does not the last line say plainly that the play is to 
 begin in heaven and end in hell? It seems so, and yet it 
 cannot be. Goethe’s optimism could not permit mankind 
 to end in hell, and according to the “Prologue” Faust was 
 not to fall completely into the power of the devil. Hence 
 we are justified in saying that it is the manager who speaks 
 these words. He knows only the legend, not the plot of 
 the play, knows only the scenes, which he arranges to suit 
 himself, according to the usual custom of beginning at the 
 top and ending at the bottom. It is not his place to teil 
 us where the journey shall end; that is reserved for the 
 poet in the “Prologue.” 
 
 The “Prologue” begins with the glorious song of the 
 archangels, a hymn to the cosmic order and wonderful har- 
 mony of the world . Some critics have wrongly found fault 
 with it as having no Connection with human morality. 
 The moral world is expressly described as chaotic and 
 wavering, in contrast with the reign of eternal law in nature. 
 Its representative is Mephistopheles, as opposed to the 
 Lord and his uncomprehended, lofty w r orks. But the 
 Lord knows that the moral world bears some relation to 
 the natural and has laws of its own, for he says of it: 
 
 SBcifs bod) ber ©ärtner, roenn ba$ ÜBäumdjen grünt, 
 
 ®aj3 ÜBlüt’ unb grudjt bie fiinft’gen Sa^rc gieren.* 
 
 He thus applies the natural law of organic development to 
 the moral world, and, in his divine wisdom, fits it into that 
 harmony of the world of which the angels sing. 
 
 Along with the archangels Mephistopheles appears 
 “among the servants.” The devil in heaven! That, it 
 would seem, teils the whole story. The evil one is not free 
 and independent, not separate and apart from the All- 
 embracer; on the contrary, he is in the Service of God and 
 forms a factor in his world plan. But why is he given to 
 man for a companion ? To this question the Lord answers : 
 
 s Dfenfd)en Jütigfcit fann aüju leidjt er(d)!affcn, 
 
 Sr liebt fid) halb bic nnbebingte 3tnb; 
 
 * Well knows the gardener, when the green appears, 
 
 That flower and fruit will crown the coming years. 
 
3io 
 
 Gbe %\fc of (Boetbe 
 
 Trum geb' id) gern iljm ben ©efeHen gu, 
 
 ^er reigt unb mirft unb muji als Teufel fdjaffen.* 
 
 Thus Goethe considers the evil the goad of negation, which 
 stimulates and influences, actually producing in its own 
 way positive results. Viewed sub specie ceternitatis, it is 
 not an evil, but a remedy, a good fortune, at least a 
 necessity for the development of mankind, a means of 
 education for the human race.f Of course the finite un- 
 derstanding of Mephistopheles cannot comprehend this. 
 Compared with the infinitely optimistic Lord, he is the 
 pessimist, who not only considers everything extremely 
 bad, but fails utterly to recognise growth, development, 
 and progress. “ The little god of the world still lives the 
 same old way, And is as singulär as on creation ’s day, ” 
 is his opinion. 
 
 The Lord himself singles out Faust, whom he calls his 
 servant. To the devil’s scoffmg remark, that this servant 
 serves his master in an odd way, the Lord answers : “ Though 
 now he serve me in confusion’s dark, I shall ere long con- 
 duct him to the light.” Mephistopheles doubts this and, 
 being noted for his impertinence, öfters the Lord the wager, 
 “ Him thou yet shalt lose, If leave to me thou wilt but give 
 Gently to lead him as I choose. ” The Lord accepts the 
 wager, granting the devil leave to seek to carry out his 
 designs. A wager between God and the devil, and the 
 subject of it the soul and etemal happiness of a human 
 being! Is that not blasphemy? Goethe is not open to 
 this reproof, for the bold idea did not originate with him. 
 It is the introduction to the book of Job, which served him 
 as a model and a justification. The only question that 
 might be raised, if question there be, which we doubt, is: 
 Which prologue is more profound and more sublime, the 
 one to the Germanic Faust, or the one to the Hebraic Job f 
 
 * Too quick doth man’s activity degenerate, 
 
 He soon would fain in perfect quiet live; 
 
 Hence I to him this comrade gladly give, 
 
 Who, spurring on, as devil must create. 
 t An illuminating discussion of the mystery of evil in the world may 
 be found in Fiske’s Through Nature to God. — C. 
 
ffauet 
 
 3 ” 
 
 What do the two wager? Mephistopheles says: God 
 will lose Faust, I shall bring him to the point where he 
 sha.11 eat dust and that with delight, I shall draw him away 
 from his original source, I shall lead him down along my 
 way and ruin him. The Lord says, on the other hand : 
 Thou, Mephistopheles, must in the end confess, ashamed, 
 that “A good man, though his strivings be ill-guided, Doth 
 still retain a consciousness of right.” This is the sub- 
 stance of the wager; and who doubts that God will win? 
 — in spite of the answ-er of Mephistopheles, “Agreed! But 
 soon ’t will be decided.” We do not yet know how the 
 wager will be won; but that it must be decided in favour 
 of the Lord, that Faust will be saved, is from now on certain. 
 Only one thing Stands in the way of this interpretation, and 
 it has been pointed out with special acuteness, with too 
 much, perhaps, in a philosophical explanation of Faust, 
 which goes deeply into the ideas underlying the drama. 
 The Lord leaves Faust in the devil’s Charge with these 
 words : “ As long as he on earth shall live, So long be ’t not 
 forbidden thee; Man errs as long as he doth strive. ” If 
 such be the case — and it js — the wager cannot possibly be 
 decided in favour of Faust as an individual; an immanent 
 salvation is impossible here on earth, and the only thing 
 left is a powerful deus ex machina, an arbitrary admission 
 of Faust to the heaven beyond. To be sure, in that case 
 the devil would have all his trouble for naught; but we are 
 not convinced of the rightness and justice of such a salvation. 
 
 Faust is also a representative of mankind, which is in 
 truth the object of the contest between heaven and hell, 
 between good and evil; and the admission into heaven is 
 only a mythical, a poetical picture, a visible symbol of the 
 conviction of the Optimist that a good man, though his 
 strivings be ill-guided, doth still retain a consciousness of 
 right: a picture of the rationalistic belief that humanity 
 is God’s and not the devil’s: that is to say, that in spite 
 of all apparent triumphs of the evil the good in the world 
 will finally prevail, because the original source of man is 
 good and not evil, the daemon in his breast is the daemon 
 
312 
 
 Zbe Xife of ßoetbe 
 
 of good and not the devil. There would then be perfect 
 harmony between the philosophical idea and the poetical 
 picture, if only those words of the Lord did not disturb the 
 illusion. So long as he lives on earth man not only strives, 
 he also errs. This is a philosophical truth, which cannot 
 be controverted by any picture of any symbolical admission 
 into heaven. The only answer to it is the philosophical 
 conviction that in the end the good will ever triumph on 
 earth. The arbitrary act of an ascension cannot decide 
 the matter; the only possible way of deciding it would be 
 for Faust to be led into the very greatest temptation con- 
 ceivable and to come out of it triumphant. But even then 
 the words of Mephistopheles would still remain in force, 
 “Agreed! But soon ’t will be decided. ” There would still 
 be left the question, is there a virtue secure against every 
 defeat and every fall? To put it differently, the Lord 
 relies upon striving, the devil upon erring. We believe, 
 with the Lord, that in striving itself lies the possibility of 
 redemption for erring, sinful mankind, because there is a 
 growth, a development, and a progress, in which only the 
 reactionary devil does not believe. But we are disturbed 
 in this belief when the Lord himself speaks of never-ending 
 erring and leaves us to hope for salvation in the next world, 
 when we demand and expect it in this world. This pro- 
 duces discord between the philosophical contents and the 
 poetical picture. Most people are conscious of it only 
 through the feeling that the wager smacks somewhat 
 of the old logical devices of the sophists — is an insolv- 
 able dilemma. And that is a pity. Otherwise the whole 
 scene is so glorious — the highly poetic pathos of the song 
 of the archangels, the scintillating conversation between 
 the Lord and the devil, the humorous biending of the finite 
 and the infinite, which produces and harmonises the sharpest 
 contrasts, and finds characteristic expression in the closing 
 words, “ ’ T is very handsome in so great a Lord so humanly 
 to parley with the devil. ” 
 
 The “Prologue” is followed by the exposition, which 
 we already know — Faust’s first monologue, the conjuring 
 
jfaust 
 
 313 
 
 up of the Earth-Spirit, and the conversation with the 
 famulus Wagner. Then came a great gap in the Fragment 
 of 1790, and even greater in the Urfaust. How did Me- 
 phistopheles come to Faust? This question had to be 
 answered. The beginning of the answer is a new monologue 
 of Faust, which reaches its climax in his determination to 
 commit suicide. From a purely dramatical point of view 
 it is proper to ask whether a second monologue was per- 
 missible so soon after the first long one. And yet this 
 question would hardly have been raised if this second mono- 
 logue had not had a certain similarity in contents with the 
 first one, and if its style — Goethe’s change of style had 
 meanwhile taken place — had not turned out too elegant and 
 reposeful, too lyrically tender, a shade too weak, perhaps, 
 for the determination which it is to motivate. For the 
 former we may refer to the renewed complaints about the 
 household furnishings of his ancestors; for the latter, to 
 the closing lines of these complaints : ‘ 1 The legacy thy f athers 
 left, essay, By use, to win and make thine own. What we 
 do not employ impedes our way ; The moment can but use 
 what it creates alone. ” One who can speak in such general 
 and such abstract terms is not ready for suicide; he is still 
 able to fight the battle of life. Especially lyrical are the 
 words with which Faust takes down the phial ; young 
 Goethe would have spoken more realistically, with greater 
 passion and despair. But they are beautiful and afford 
 another pleasing example of form and content blended into 
 a unity. 
 
 What does Faust hope to accomplish by suicide? Not 
 to escape from life, like one in despair, but to resort to this 
 last bold mean and thus to gain by one stroke what was 
 denied him when he conjured up the Earth-Spirit, to “dare 
 to open wide those portals past which each mortal fain 
 would steal. ” He desires everything or nothing, and 
 death will lead to one or the other. He is once more the old 
 heaven-storming, Titanic Faust; there is here no lack of 
 force, as he desires to prove his manly dignity by this deed. 
 
 Just as he places the cup to his lips the sound of bells 
 
3H 
 
 Gbe %iic of 6oetbe 
 
 is heard and the singing of a chorus, proclaiming the first 
 solemn hour of the Easter festival. Faust is saved, re- 
 stored to life and earth. A criticism which might be made 
 at this point demands an answer. It might be said that 
 chance plays here the chief röle, and that is undramatical ; 
 that a moment later the poison would have been drunk, 
 in spite of Easter morning and Easter celebration. To 
 strengthen this criticism one might refer again to that 
 scene which seems to clash with all the others, “Forest and 
 Cavern,” where Mephistopheles says to Faust, “And but 
 for me not long ago thou hadst walked off this earthly 
 sphere. ” It may be that in 1788, the time when this scene 
 originated, Goethe was thinking of an attempt on the part 
 of Faust to commit suicide, and that it was his intention 
 to have him hindered in the act by the intervention of 
 Mephistopheles. That would have eliminated the element 
 of chance in the ringing of the Easter bells, but it would 
 also have robbed the scene of a great deal of its beauty. 
 So Goethe preferred the element of chance, which, moreover, 
 is objectionable in a drama only when it takes the place 
 of a motive, not when it serves to develop a motive, as here. 
 The important thing is not the fact that the Easter bells 
 ring, but the way in which they affect Faust at the moment. 
 Furthermore Goethe has made Wagner announce this 
 “chance” (“to-morrow being Easter day”) and the way 
 has been prepared for the dawn of the morning in Faust’s 
 preceding monologue. His heart goes out with svmbolic 
 longing toward the dawn of a new day, as the real new day 
 begins to break about him. Finally, one might say that 
 it must be the Easter season, must be spring, as it is only 
 in such a season that the first monologue can be understood, 
 with its newly awakened love of nature and its spring long- 
 ing to go out into the broad country and enter real life. 
 Thus even the chance occurrence is after all well motivated. 
 
 The other question is more important: How does this 
 
 chance occurrence affect Faust? By what is he held back 
 from suicide? Apparently the first answer to suggest itself 
 is that it marks the beginning of a return to the faith of his 
 
Jfauat 
 
 315 
 
 childhood, that the man who no longer receives any support 
 from knowledge is for the moment in the grasp of religion. 
 But Goethe has protested in a most unmistakable fashion 
 against such an interpretation, in the passage in which he 
 makes Faust say: 
 
 •Sic ÜSotfdjaft l)ör’ icf) moljl, allein mir fehlt ber ©laube ; 
 
 SBunber ift be$ ©lautend liebfteS $inb. 
 
 3u jenen ©paaren trag’ idj nicht ju [heben, 
 
 2Bof)cr bie bolbe 9iad)rid)t tönt.* 
 
 So it is not faith that binds him fast to life, for he lacks 
 faith. It is the sweet, blissful remembrances of his youth: 
 “And yet, with this sweet strain familiär as a boy, I now 
 am summoned back to life once more. ” “Remembrance 
 now, with childlike feeling, forbiddeth me to take the final, 
 solemn step. ” We have been prepared for this also by a 
 passage in the preceding monologue, where Faust was re- 
 minded, by the pictures on the crystal goblet, of many a 
 night in his youth. True, Goethe has chosen the contents 
 of the Easter songs so that they have some reference to 
 Faust, and has put in them a deep, symbolic meaning, which 
 is more readily comprehended by the reader than by the 
 hearer in the theatre. Faust himself, however, sees in 
 them nothing but the echoes of youthful remembrances. 
 The power of memory to make life dear, the moral support, 
 the permanent value, in thoughts of home and childhood, 
 we have all feit and been grateful for, though we may 
 meanwhile have advanced far beyond everything recalled, 
 even the faith of our childhood’s years. 
 
 Life has Faust again, and so he goes out into life as it 
 is unfolded on Easter day outside the gates of the city. 
 Masterful is the way in which, with but few strokes, this 
 world of Philistines and students, soldiers and journeymen, 
 servant girls and citizens’ daughters, is pictured with such 
 vividness in their innocent or insidious pleasures and joys, 
 and in their little wiles and intrigues : 
 
 * The message well I hear, but I in faith am wanting; 
 
 And miracle is faith’s own dearest child. 
 
 I dare not soar to yonder heavenly spheres 
 Whence üoat these tidings of great joy. 
 
316 
 
 Zhe %\fc of ßoetbe 
 
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 ®enn fie finb fdber auferftanben, 
 
 2lu3 niebriger Raufer bumpfen ©emäcfyem, 
 
 9lus$ $anbroerf§> unb ©eroerbes=95anben, 
 
 QluS bem Trudf non ©iebcln unb §>äcf)ern, 
 
 2hi3 ber ©tragen quetfebenber Ginge, 
 
 5lu3 ber Äirdjcn cfjrnnirbiger 91a d)t 
 ©inb fie alle an$ ßidjt gebracht.* 
 
 To Faust all these things are so stränge; he is so far 
 above all their joys, and yet he sympathises with them so 
 humanly, so tolerantly, and so understandingly. Echoes 
 of the tender emotions of the past night and of the rieh 
 experiences of the morning are still reverberating in his 
 soul. And he is further moved by the crowds of people 
 gathering about him in the village to express their gratitude 
 for what he did for them as a physician during the dark 
 days of the plague. While Wagner thinks that his own 
 bosom would be swelled by the “veneration of this crowd,” 
 Faust feels ashamed and humiliated. During those sad 
 days he had proved his love by his deeds, and yet he says, 
 “We with our infernal medicines raged far more fiercely 
 than the plague.” “Alas! the deeds we do, as well as 
 sufferings, impede the progress of our lives.” In this mood 
 he gazes at the sinking sun, and in his deeply stirred heart 
 are awakened again all the recently quelled spirits of dis- 
 couragement and dissatisfaction, of longing and unmeasured 
 striving. “Oh, that pinions lifted me from earth!” The 
 life to which he has returned to-day is not life to him. While 
 all about him are conscious of but one single impulse, there 
 dwell in his breast two souls, which are at variance with 
 each other. In this mood he is seized anew with longing 
 for the aid of spirits, that they might lead him out of the 
 
 * The Lord’s resurrection they celebrate, 
 
 For they themselves again have risen 
 
 From low-crouching house, from ill-smelling room, 
 
 From bonds of toil, from tradesman’s prison, 
 
 From o’erhanging gables’ deep gloom, 
 
 From the streets oppressively narrow, 
 
 From the churches’ awe-breathing night 
 They have all emerged to the light. 
 
3fau0t 
 
 317 
 
 narrowness of his knowledge and his whole existence into 
 a richer and gayer life ; longing for a magic cloak, which at 
 this moment he would not exchange for a king’s mantle. 
 The proper moment has now arrived for hell to approach 
 him, to tempt him and lead him astray. It has long been 
 softly spreading magic coils about his feet to weave a future 
 snare, and now it approaches him. A poodle joins him, 
 and Mephistopheles crosses with Faust the threshold of his 
 study. 
 
 A new monologue of Faust, the third of the series, is 
 decidedly too much of a good thing, and its climax, the 
 longing for “revelation, the highest, most noble ever sent, 
 As found in the New Testament,” is impossible. How 
 Goethe came upon this idea is easy to see. The effect of 
 the contrast between the New Testament and the exorcism 
 of the devil, between heaven and hell, suited his purpose 
 perfectly. But for Faust an attempt to translate the Bible 
 is impossible, for he lacks faith. The words are not spoken, 
 then, by Faust, the man of feeling; they are the clear ut- 
 terance of the investigator, the philosopher, the Scholar, of 
 the preceding monologues. It is possible for him to seek to 
 find out whether study and knowledge may not be able once 
 more to quiet his excited passion, his thirst for enjoyment; 
 but it cannot be his desire to return to faith and revelation. 
 True, one might say that the prologue of the Gospel of 
 John, the biblical passage in question, is itself knowledge, 
 a bit of Alexandrian philosophy of religion, and not faith; 
 but that could hardly be taken seriously. Besides, the 
 interpretation which Faust attempts, the contrast between 
 word and thought, power and act, is, in spite of the reminis- 
 cence of Fichte, neither philosophically clear nor purely 
 poetical ; it is one of those passages in which the philosophi- 
 cal and poetical elements cannot be blended into a perfect 
 unity. 
 
 Now follows the exorcism of Mephistopheles. He ap- 
 pears in the form of a dog, but the “Key of Solomon,” is 
 ineffective when applied to him. None of the four elements 
 is disguised in the beast, and so he is not an emissary of the 
 
<Xbe Uife of (Boetbe 
 
 318 
 
 Earth-Spirit. He is really a fugitive from hell and must 
 make himself known to Faust as such, so that Faust may 
 do what he does with full consciousness. The second form 
 which he assumes is that of a travelling scholar. This is in 
 harmony with that above-mentioned plan of a great dis- 
 putation scene, according to which it was doubtless intended 
 that Mephistopheles should approach Faust, tempting him 
 and leading him into indiscreet utterances. But apart from 
 this, the devil comes to Professor Faust in a form fitting 
 Faust’s sphere. The third time he appears, when he is 
 about to take Faust out and introduce him to a new life, 
 he comes dressed as a gay cavalier. 
 
 And now Mephistopheles defines himself as “A part o’ 
 that power, but little understood, Which e’er designs the 
 bad, and e’er creates the good.” A part? He Stands 
 before us in his entirety, and as a whole. By this tum 
 Goethe achieves at once a realistic contrast to the un- 
 measured, hyperidealistic striving of Faust toward the All 
 and the Whole. How cleverly the ambiguous “creates the 
 good” is put! The devil himself thinks of the denial and 
 annihilation of everything that exists, which as such deserves 
 to go to ruin and thus receive its due punishment; while 
 we think of that stimulating, influencing, positively Creative 
 side of evil, of wdiich the Lord spoke in the “Prologue.” 
 Thus the devil teils everything, and yet not everything; 
 he says neither too much nor too little. He will assert 
 himself still further and will explain himself more clearly. 
 Faust is to become acquainted with entirely different phases 
 of his nature: “We’ll talk about it more anon.” 
 
 Why does Mephistopheles not enter into a compact 
 with Faust immediately? Why does he go away, when 
 Faust desires to hold him back? As though a man like 
 Faust were to be won without further ceremony, and as 
 though the devil did not have to bring many arts into play 
 to catch him! This retarding and delaying of the action 
 is philosophically fully justified. Hell first lures a man on 
 and stimulates his desires before it leads him astray and 
 causes him to fall, and it gains more by refusing requests 
 
jfaust 
 
 319 
 
 than by granting them at once. The drama also gains 
 by the delay. What a fine stroke that Mephistopheles is 
 unable to escape from the room because of the “druid’s 
 foot” on the threshold ! It teaches Faust that even hell has 
 its laws and that a compact may be entered into with its 
 representatives. The devil himself may be caught and 
 hence the venture may be made. A dangerous step, to be 
 sure, but why not risk it? If he gets into the trap once, 
 why not a second time? Finally this feature furnishes the 
 occasion for that dream vision, which conjures up before 
 Faust a picture of a glorious region in which a godlike race 
 leads a blissful life. These fields of the blest and the de- 
 lights there enjoyed are painted as by the brush of a Böcklin. 
 The song of the spirits has both an exciting and a lulling 
 effect, like certain parts of Wagner’s operas; it captivates 
 all the senses by its sweet charm, and causes Faust to sink 
 into a sea of illusions. Sensuous desire is aroused and un- 
 chained within him, and when he awakes with thirst-parched 
 lips Mephistopheles has vanished. Is that not a truly 
 Satanic idea, carried out in a truly poetic way? 
 
 Of course the devil returns to close the compact desired 
 by Faust. It was no easy task for Goethe so to shape the 
 scene that the end of it, which had already been published 
 in the Fragment of 1790, could be joined to the newly com- 
 posed beginning without leaving the joint exposed. For 
 this reason it was one of the last portions of the First Part 
 to be written. How is the task performed ? So far as tone, 
 harmony, and style are concerned, it is unquestionably one 
 of the most powerful and most magnificent scenes of the 
 whole drama. All the registers of pathos and passion, 
 thought and wit, irony and acumen, are drawn, and in style 
 it reaches the very acme of dramatic power and passion. 
 In short it is a masterpiece in every respect. 
 
 There is but one thing in it that can be criticised un- 
 favourably, the chorus of invisible spirits after Faust has 
 pronounced his curse. Nobody will question its beauty, 
 nor the propriety of ha ein g Faust’s passionate outburst 
 followed by such a musical intermezzo, which in its quieting, 
 
320 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 soothmg effect is almost like a Greek chorus. But it is 
 with these choruses as with the three monologues — they 
 are too numerous. There are the chorus of the archangels 
 in the “Prologue,” the Easter chorus, the chorus of the 
 spirits at the exorcism, then another that lulls Faust to 
 sleep, and now this new chorus of spirits. Critics have 
 spoken, and not unjustly, of the operatic elements of these 
 portions of the drama. To be sure, there is singing also in 
 the Ur jaust and the Fragment , but there it belongs to the 
 realistic, populär tone of Faust, and is in no way different 
 from the singing in real life. Here, however, songs take 
 the place of dialogue, and thus, as in the opera, music takes 
 the place of poetry. In any case this operatic element was 
 not found in the original style of Faust. It is a clear sign 
 of Goethe’s change of style, of which we have already spoken. 
 If it were to go on increasing here, as will really be the case 
 in the Second Part, the tendency would be very hazardous. 
 
 What shall we say of the contents of the scene? Here 
 at least there is nothing to find fault with, is there? The 
 old and the new are joined together without discord or clash? 
 This has been questioned, and one critic has even ventured 
 the daring assertion that here “ almost every word is a 
 contradiction.” 47 So it is incumbent upon us to examine 
 the scene narrowly. 
 
 Mephistopheles finds Faust completely discouraged. 
 He has experienced nothing but disappointments, has failed 
 in everything, has not even been able to hold fast the devil. 
 Now the devil is standing before him again and desires to 
 take him out into life, “in Order that, untrammelled, free, 
 Life be at last revealed to thee.” That, of course, would be 
 the fulfilment of Faust’s desire. He has wished to fly, he 
 has longed for a magic cloak, and now he is to have it. 
 But he cannot rejoice; it is even beyond the power of his 
 fancy to conceive how such a thing could be possible as 
 that his wishes should be granted and he should ever be 
 satisfied. He is so sober and disenchanted that he sees 
 through all illusions and declares life to be absolutelv worth- 
 less because it is full of illusions. But does Faust know life? 
 
The Goethe Monument at Rome 
 
 Designed by Gustav Eberlein 
 
 ( Reproduced by permission of the Sculptor, and of D. Anderson , Photographer) 
 

fauöt 
 
 321 
 
 No, he knows only one part of it, let us say a third, know- 
 ledge and understanding. What he has experienced on this 
 side of life — “ But I am bereft of all joy on earth” — he now 
 ignorantly applies to life as a whole, and speaks of it like 
 a pessimist. Yet he knows life neither on the side of en- 
 joyment (the second third) nor on that of action and in- 
 fluence (the third third ) , for which reason these sides remain 
 at the periphery of his field of observation. He approaches 
 life as a man of leaming and believes he comprehends and 
 knows it through and through, and he discovers everywhere 
 deception, illusion, disappointment. Hence there is no 
 joy in knowledge, because we can know nothing. From 
 this he concludes that there is no joy in life either, because 
 every anticipated pleasure is diminished by peevish cavilling, 
 and even the creations of his ever-active breast are hindered 
 by the thousand goblins of life, and because he everywhere 
 meets with disillusionments and limitations, hindrances 
 and imperfections. Knowledge has not satisfied him, 
 therefore enjoyment will not satisfy him either. Death in 
 the midst of enjoyment is the only thing worth while, because 
 life proves only that every new enjoyment but leads to a 
 new dissatisf action. Then comes the devil’s thrust, “And 
 yet one certain night some one refrained from quaffing off a 
 brownish potion.” Faust still has some illusions and these 
 illusions have held him fast in life ; but now he breaks away 
 from them : 
 
 Sßcnn au$ bem fd)rcdlid)en ©ett)iif)Ie 
 ©in t'iifs befannter ®on mid) 509, 
 
 ®en 9 teft öon finblid)em ©efitfjle 
 Mit Anhang froher Seit betrog, 
 
 @0 find)’ id) allem, roa§ bie ©eele 
 Mit Socb ttnb ©aufetoerf umfpannt 
 Unb fie in biefe ®rauerf)öt)le 
 Mit Sölcnb- nnb ©cfimcicbelfräftcn bannt.* 
 
 * E’en though sweet memories, o’er me stealing, 
 
 Once saved me from that maddening maze, 
 
 Charmed what was left of childlike feeling 
 With echoes soft of happy days, 
 
 I now curse all that e’er entices 
 
 VOL. III. — 21. 
 
3 22 
 
 Gbe Xtfe of ßoetbe 
 
 Iie curses, one after another, everything that is ordinarily 
 considered a source of joy and pleasure, everything that 
 appears valuable as happiness or a blessing of life, and finally 
 ends with the terrible words : 
 
 glucf) fei ber Hoffnung! glud) betn ©lauben, 
 
 llnb glucf) öor allem ber ©ebulb ! * * 
 
 Accurst be hope! which lures us on with its illusions from 
 one Station of life to another ; and curst be f aith ! which gives 
 us courage and strength to take up the battle of life and 
 live; and most of all be patience curst! Faust has no 
 patience in the world of knowledge, for he would like to 
 know everything immediately and penetrate with one effort 
 the innermost secrets of nature ; nor has he in life the patience 
 to thrust aside the goblins of life, with their hindrances, and 
 strive after one thing and then another. In a word, he has 
 not the patience to be a realist. 
 
 It is everything or nothing again, and since he cannot 
 have everything, and all at once, he will have nothing at 
 all. Such is not the thought and feeling of a pessimist, but 
 of an idealist who knows no metes and bounds. We recog- 
 nise this idealist in the elemental violence of his curses, 
 and in his attempt to tear down the prison bars of real life, 
 by which he is fretted and chafed, and the metes and bounds 
 of which he considers an attentat upon his ideal striving. 
 He is not yet able to forgo his desires, and he is still unwilling 
 to resign himself. Hence “the small dependents, my at- 
 tendants,” as Mephistopheles calls the intervening spirits, 
 direct their song not to the pessimist, but to the idealist. 
 They have rightly recognised his want of moderation and 
 his restlessness, have clearly feit his Titanesque, heaven- 
 storming nature, and so seek to Iure him to begin a new 
 
 And cheats the soul with fancies vain, 
 All honeyed wiles, all sly devices, 
 
 That bind it to this world of pain. 
 
 * Accurst be hope! and curst be faith! 
 And most of all be patience curst! 
 
tfaust 
 
 3 2 3 
 
 course of life. Through their words, which are nothing but 
 Faust’s inner voice objectified, there runs for this very reason 
 an ideal strain, and also the Suggestion that it may not be 
 so easy for Mephistopheles to master this mighty son of 
 earth. 
 
 As though nothing had happened, as though Faust had 
 not just cursed all illusion, Mephistopheles now comes for- 
 ward with the proposal that they enter into a compact, and 
 Faust expresses his willingness to do so. How is this 
 possible, especially at the present moment? “ Accurst be 
 faith!” is one thing. The beyond can cause him little 
 worry; he does not care to hear anything further about 
 whether or not there is such a thing as an above and a below 
 in those spheres. He has no illusions on this subject, and 
 hence he may make the venture. To be sure, we ourselves 
 are confronted by the impending danger of being torn out 
 of our illusion. If there is no beyond, then Faust may well 
 make the venture, for Mephistopheles will be deceived in 
 any event. In any event? Must hell be in the beyond? Is 
 there not a hell here on earth, and will Faust not experience 
 it in his own life, for example, in the prison with Gretchen, 
 where all the woe of mankind will overwhelm him? Yes, but 
 is that what Goethe means? Perhaps not. But who has 
 time to think about it at such a moment, when the action 
 is advancing so breathlessly, and we, in our eagerness to 
 hear the compact, are for the present happily carried beyond 
 the possibility of losing the illusion ? 
 
 If Faust no longer has any illusions, he has none con- 
 cerning the devil’s offer, and hence he asks: “What wilt 
 thou, sorry devil, give?” Still he enters into the compact. 
 What does he expect to gain by his league with Mephisto- 
 pheles ? In reality nothing, and it is for this reason that he 
 feels at liberty to enter into it. “ Was human soul, in its 
 exalted striving, by thee and thine e’er understood?” 
 Mephistopheles will never gain the mastery over him, for, 
 like the Lord, in the “Prologue,” Faust relies on his striving, 
 and his striving is so exalted that the sorry devil will never 
 be able to satisfy it. He can close the contract with proud 
 
3 2 4 
 
 Gbe Xlfe of 0oetbe 
 
 defiance, because he is certain of the endlessness of his 
 strength and the duration of his striving. But if the latter 
 is endless it can never be satisfied. Wherefore then the 
 compact ? Must he not now consider it worthless and 
 superfluous, and decline to become a party to it? He 
 desires to dull his senses; he longs for intoxication, that he 
 may forget himself and his pain, may forget his heart’s dis- 
 satisfaction, by silencing it in a wild chase after enjoyment. 
 He needs this wild chase. It is his nature to strive, and 
 striving means employment of one’s powers in action. So 
 he needs something to occupy him, needs this restlessness ; 
 therefore “ Into the tumult of time let us hence, And stem 
 the rolling tide of events! Restless striving is man’s true 
 sphere.” In this restless striving Mephistopheles is to be 
 Faust’s servant, and Faust thinks that he will fall the place 
 satisfactorily. And what is to be the object of the striving? 
 Pleasure? Yes; but also its opposite, pain. “But list ! no 
 word of joy hath crossed my lips. I fain would drunken 
 reel with pleasure’s maddest pain.” Here again it is every- 
 thing or nothing. “And all the weal and woe on man 
 bestowed I ’ll gladly in my inmost soul enjoy.” We have 
 made the transition from the newer portion of the scene 
 to the older, naturally and imperceptibly, and the keenest 
 eye cannot discern any joint or gap. 
 
 However, we have not reached the end of the scene. 
 We now pass from Faust to Mephistopheles. Even in the 
 enjoyment of the world and the activities of life Faust de- 
 mands the acme, the whole; his desires embrace everything, 
 even the infinite. Hence even here he must remain unsatis- 
 fied. Since this does not fit into Mephistopheles’s plan, 
 he must now r exert a sobering, moderating, subduing in- 
 fluence, whereas in the beginning his influence had to be 
 stimulating and luring. This involves no contradiction. 
 Faust’s pessimism was from the beginning idealism, which 
 accounts for the boundless passion of the curses he pro- 
 nounced. Then it was Mephistopheles’s task to counteract 
 his inordinate lack of illusions, by presenting the attractive 
 side of life and luring him out into this life. Now this im- 
 
3 2 5 
 
 faust 
 
 moderateness reveals itself in its true light, as immoderate- 
 ness of striving and willing; and Mephistopheles must seek 
 to subdue it, must pour out upon the idealist vials of vitriolic 
 mockery and cold, realistic reason, and recommend to him 
 self-limitation. To the devil self-limitation means the for- 
 going of everything high and ideal, means limitation to the 
 sphere of the low and common. What is the devil’s aim? 
 To draw this lofty Spirit away from his original source, to 
 make him eat dust, and with pleasure; in a word, to stifle 
 the idealism in him. Mephistopheles teils us himself what 
 he considers the best means to this end : 
 
 ®en fdflepp’ idj burdf baS roilbe Geben, 
 
 ®urcf) flatfje UnbebeutcnE)eit, 
 
 (Er foU mir päppeln, ftarren, heben, 
 
 Unb feiner Unerfättltdjfeit 
 
 ©oH ©peif nnb £ranf Dor giet’gen Sippen fcfyroeben; 
 
 (Er roirb (Erquicfung fid) umfonfterfIeE)n.* 
 
 Mephistopheles is wise enough to know that such a spirit 
 is not easily ruined, that its mainspring is not to be weakened 
 all at once. So he must first seek to overcome Faust’ s 
 restless striving. The feasts which he sets before him must 
 be prepared with this in view; they must be wild, insipid, 
 insignificant, common. He hopes in this way to wean 
 Faust from his accustomed fare, to degrade him and ruin 
 him spiritually, so that in the end, languid, weak, and blase, 
 he will really find pleasure in eating dust. So it is not a 
 question of how long Faust tarries here or there in his pursuit 
 of happiness, but whether he will ever become weary of this 
 pursuit, this restless activity of spirit, and whether he will 
 ever come to a halt, surfeited and exhausted, and cease 
 entirely to strive forward. For being blase is a mortal sin 
 against the holy ghost of life and striving. 
 
 * Him will I drag through revels gay, 
 
 His lust with vapid trifles feed, 
 
 Till he shall struggle, stiften, stay; 
 
 And to excite his boundless greed 
 Viands shall near his lips and float away. 
 
 In vain shall he refreshment then implore. 
 
326 Gbe Xife o t (Boetbe 
 
 So they close the wager, the compact, each interpreting 
 it in his own mind in his own way, Faust, “in a sudden 
 flight of impassioned oratory,” clothing the terms in these 
 words : 
 
 SBBerb’ id) beruhigt je mid) auf ein gaulbett legen, 
 
 ©o fei e$ gleich um mid) getan! 
 
 Äannft btt mid) fd)tneid)dnb je belügen, 
 
 Safj icf) mir felbft gefallen mag, 
 
 Sannft btt mid) mit ©emifj betrügen, 
 
 Sa$ fei für mich ber lcf)te Sag! 
 
 Sie SBette biet’ id)! . . . 
 
 Uttb ©d)lag auf ©d)lag! 
 
 SSerb’ icf) gttm Slugenblicfe fagen: 
 
 Skrtneile boc^ ! bu bift fo fdjön! 
 
 Sann magft bu mid) in geffeln fd)lagen, 
 
 Sann tnill icf) gern 31t ©runbe gef)n ! 
 
 Sann mag bie Sotenglocfe fcfyaUen, 
 
 Sann bift bu beitteä Sienfteb frei, 
 
 Sie Ufjr mag ftcbn, ber Seiger faßen, 
 
 ©e> fei bie Seit für micf) üorbei! * 
 
 Let us now ask ourselves the question, Has Mephis- 
 topheles won this wager at any moment of the Gretchen 
 tragedy, not to speak of the vapid revelries in Auerbach’s 
 Cellar, during which Faust could not possibly have viewed 
 himself complacently ? Through sensuous lovethe devil hoped 
 
 * When calmed I Stretch myself upon a bed of ease, 
 
 That moment be the victory thine! 
 
 Canst thou me Iure with flattery’s wile 
 To view myself complacently, 
 
 Canst thou with pleasure me beguile, 
 
 Let that day be the last f or me ! 
 
 Be this our wager! . . . 
 
 Then we agree! 
 
 When to the moment I shall say: 
 
 “Oh, prithee, stay! Thou art so fair!” 
 
 Then mayst thou fetters on me lay, 
 
 The ruin of my soul declare! 
 
 Then let the death bell sound its call, 
 
 Then from thy Service thou ait free, 
 
 The clock may stop, the index fall. 
 
 And time no more exist for me ! 
 
Jfaust 
 
 3 2 7 
 
 to drag Faust down into the mire of guilt. Instead there 
 awakens in Faust that eternal love which will not permit the 
 soul to remain in sin and perish in guilt. He is filled with the 
 idealism of love. There is awakened in him also the con- 
 sciousness of metes and bounds, and of the necessity of 
 moderation and self-limitation. He once desired to be 
 able to fly, to be free and untrammelled, untrammelled im- 
 plying freedom from all restraints of morality. He is soon 
 to leam by bitter experience whither such unrestrained 
 freedom leads, and also to experience the full significance of 
 his desire to heap the woes of all mankind upon his own 
 bosom. He has really feit the weight of all the misery of 
 mankind, but at what a price! In the Gretchen tragedy he 
 has again become conscious of the two souls within his 
 breast, the inward discord between the vulgär realism of 
 sensuousness and the ideal height of an endless love. In 
 view of this discord can it be possible that Mephistopheles 
 has won the wager, the condition of which Faust formulated 
 in these words, “ Canst thou me Iure with flattery’s wile to 
 view myself complacently ” ? Was Faust satisfied with 
 himself there in the prison? If, instead of clinging to a 
 pedantic and purely superficial interpretation of the words, 
 “ When to the moment I shall say : ‘ Oh, prithee, stay ! Thou 
 art so fair!”’ one takes into consideration the spirit and 
 significance of the whole passage, there is no trace here of 
 a contradiction such as has been confidently pointed out. 
 So correctly is the wager formulated that we are forced to 
 admit that in it Faust’s nature is for the first time fully 
 unfolded, without any incoherencies or evidences of patch- 
 work, and without any other contradiction than that which 
 lies in the nature of Faust, and of mankind in general. 
 
 And another thing has hereby been made clear within 
 the tragedy itself, as it was outside of it, in the “ Prologue 
 in Heaven,” namely, that the devil’s words, “ Hither to 
 me!” at the close of the First Part, cannot be the end. The 
 First Part leads us to expect a sequel, such as really lies 
 before us in the Second Part. 
 
 Mephistopheles had taken Faust to Auerbach’ s Cellar, 
 
3 28 
 
 £be %lfe of (Boetbe 
 
 to Gretchen’s chamber, and to the witches’ conclave on the 
 Brocken. It was insipid enough at the latter place, but 
 for that very reason Faust could not be satisfied with him- 
 self there. He learned there whither being “ untrammelled, 
 free” leads when it means freedom from the moral law, 
 when man casts off the restraints of duty and morality. 
 Though he falls a victim to sensuousness, he finds in his 
 love for Gretchen something eise that is higher and purer 
 and corresponds entirely to his idealistic original source. 
 Thus he begins inwardly to free himself from the base com- 
 panion, with whose society he has hitherto been pleased. 
 Through the fate of Gretchen he learns that unlimited, 
 unrestrained willing and striving lead man to the abyss. 
 He has learned to know mankind’s highest pleasure and 
 deepest pain, but has at the same time experienced the 
 truthfulness of the words, which he himself later utters, 
 “ Passive enjoyment makes one common.” 
 
 Much as he has learned, his education is not yet finished. 
 He has completed another third of the course, but the last 
 third is still before him. Since he desires the whole, he 
 “considers the possession of the highest knowledge, the 
 enjoyment of the fairest blessings insufficient,” so long as 
 he has not yet completed this last third. He believes in 
 the motto, “Restless striving is man’s true sphere,” so he 
 says : “ Into the tumult of time let us hence, And stem the 
 rolling tide of events!” After knowledge and enjoyment 
 must come action and deeds; after the little world, the great 
 world. Or, as Goethe himself says, the hero must now be 
 led out of his present “sorrowful sphere through worthier 
 relations in higher regions.” The poet also puts it in this 
 way : ‘ ‘ The treatment must now pass more from the specific 
 to the generic.”* Schiller makes the very positive Sugges- 
 tion, “ It would be eminently proper, in my judgment, for 
 Faust to be led into active life.” What success will Faust 
 have in the great world, and how will it go with him there? 
 And, above all, what success wäll Goethe have, and how 
 will it go with the material which swells to such propor- 
 * Cf. Riemer, Mitteilungen über Goethe , ii. , 569. — C. 
 
Jfaußt 329 
 
 tions? Will he find the “poetical hoop” that can hold it 
 together ? 
 
 Goethe was Faust, Faust was Goethe; and even though, 
 as we have seen, each had outgrown the other, at bottom 
 their natures always remained the same. For the continua- 
 tion of the work this fact was both favourable and unfavour- 
 able. Favourable, in that Goethe, having attained to a high 
 Position among men, was able to labour in the great world 
 and exert an influence upon it, at the side of a prince, as 
 statesman and minister, as theatre director and whatever 
 other function it feil to his lot to perform. Unfavourable, in 
 so far as his whole nature, which inclined more and more, 
 as time went on, to calm, contemplative, exclusive activity 
 and to work with himself and on his own harmonious de- 
 velopment, made him desire to hold himself aloof from 
 the excitement and unrest of political life, and from 
 mingling with the great mass. Besides, he took little 
 interest in the storms and passions, to some extent 
 even in the most important phenomena and questions, of 
 politics. 
 
 At the time of Götz and Egmont he to whom nothing 
 human was stränge did not know this lack. Tf he had 
 finished Faust then it would probably have been easier for 
 him to guide his hero through even this sphere of life. 
 Hence it has been thought that Faust might have been 
 made to take part in the Peasants’ War of the sixteenth 
 Century, and to-day one might be specially tempted to 
 represent him as a Champion of such social aims and strug- 
 gles. For the Goethe of later years it was above all this 
 very “difficulty of the political task” that made him hesi- 
 tate and postpone the work time after time. He had 
 gotten out of sympathy with things political, especially since 
 the French revolution, and this side of life was for him almost 
 a closed book, when he took up the task of completing the 
 Second Part of the drama. On the other hand, the thing 
 that interested him during the first years of the new Century, 
 when he went to work under Schiller’s stimulating influence, 
 was the working out of the idea of pure man, the realisation 
 
33 ° 
 
 ftbe %\fc of (Soetbe 
 
 of a definite educational ideal, which we characterise only 
 approximately with the nowadays so threadbare word hu- 
 manity, and much too one-sidedly as neo-humanism. With 
 the progress of years surrounding conditions also contri- 
 buted their share toward turning his filterest away. The 
 War of Liberation failed to bring the Germans unity of 
 spirit and redemption from the division of the fatherland 
 into petty States. The reaction soon made its laming in- 
 fluence feit everywhere. Goethe had already assumed a 
 cool, antagonistic attitude toward the youthful attempts 
 at Opposition on the part of the Burschenschaft and South 
 German liberalism. The esthetic-literary war, on the con- 
 trary, between classicism and romanticism, between the 
 antique and the mediaeval, was not yet fought out, and, 
 strongly as Goethe was attached to the classical, he sought 
 to form out of the two opposing aims a third aim, higher 
 than either of them, the modern educational ideal, and to 
 realise this ideal in his own person. He also took a most 
 lively interest in natural Science, which was coming more 
 and more to the front. Even social developments, par- 
 ticularly the building up of the civilisation of the new era 
 on the foundation of machinery and technical skill, on 
 canals and ocean commerce, did not escape his far-seeing 
 eye. How deeply he was interested in these matters 
 we know from Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 Faust had outgrown Goethe also by virtue of the fact 
 that he had become a “generic” character, a representative 
 type of striving, struggling humanity. This humanity was 
 not different from that of Goethe’s own time, except that 
 he saw more distinctly than others what was lying in the 
 seed and was yet gradually to grow beyond that period. 
 Hence he feit it his duty to embody in Faust, as a repre- 
 sentative type, the interests of the day, as they came to his 
 attention and affected him. But even the most universal 
 spirit can take but one step and reach but one span beyond 
 the limitations of his age. So the Faust of the second decade 
 of the nineteenth Century will hardly be able to advance 
 to political activitv, because there was no political activity 
 
faust 331 
 
 at that time. Herein lies the temporary limitation of the 
 Second Part. 
 
 What we have just said reveals still another danger. 
 To the symbolic, “generic” significance of Faust Goethe 
 sacrificed the necessity of limiting him to a definite time, 
 say, the sixteenth Century. He makes him come into touch 
 with the past and the future, with the Middle Ages and the 
 nineteenth Century; in a certain sense he makes him inde- 
 pendent of time, through which process the personal and 
 dramatic elements lose what is gained by the universal 
 human and symbolic. 
 
 Now let us pass to the contents of this Second Part. It 
 falls into two cliief divisions, the union of Faust with Helena 
 and the end of Faust, after he has become the prince of the 
 Strand. The former of these divisions embraces the first 
 three acts ; the latter, the fourth and fifth acts. 
 
 After Faust’ s soul has passed through the hellish tor- 
 ments of guilt and remorse, in the “Prison” scene, we see 
 him at the beginning of the Second Part seeking and finding 
 sleep under the influence of the songs of Ariel and his chorus 
 of elves, for “ be he holy, be he evil, they th’ unhappy 
 creature pity. ” That is to say, the homeless outcast, the 
 monster without aim and rest, finds again in the solitude, 
 on the bosom of nature, his lost repose, finds new life and 
 new power “to strive henceforth tow’rd being’s sovereign 
 height. ” In the beautiful monologue at the sight of the 
 rising sun we see him more mature and, above all, limiting 
 himself, forgoing the whole. The way is paved for a resig- 
 nation of exaggerated idealism. He cannot bear the full 
 light of the sun, he must be satisfied with its picture in the 
 rainbow of a waterfall. “ In these refracted colours we 
 have life.” 
 
 The purpose of the scene is obvious. But one will have 
 to ask one’s seif whether it is enough to represent in this 
 short scene and in such an operatic way Faust’s liberation 
 from remorse and a guilty conscience and his resolution to 
 begin a new life on the basis of a past bitter experience, 
 and whether it is enough to let him recover so simply in 
 
33 2 
 
 ftbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 communion with nature that, bathed in the dew of Lethe’s 
 flood, he hardly thinks of Gretchen any more. The ethical 
 element is wanting, and yet the effect of the Gretchen 
 tragedy on Faust ought to be ethical. In the third third of 
 Faust’s ränge of experience, in active life, it would seem ab- 
 solutely essential that the ethical relations be not wanting. 
 
 No motive at all is assigned for Faust’s determination 
 to go to the Emperor’s Court, where we find him with 
 Mephistopheles in the second scene. Here three things 
 happen. I Mephistopheles, who introduces himself as a 
 court fool, opens the prospect of untold treasures for the 
 Emperor, who is financially ruined and whose whole empire 
 is on the point of dissolution, but who, undisturbed by 
 these things, cares for nothing save to amuse himself. The 
 promise is redeemed by the manufacture of paper money, 
 which, it is true, is soon discovered to be the devil’s money, 
 and brings no blessing to its possessors. 2. The second is the 
 masquerade, which Faust seems to direct from the back- 
 ground, like Goethe, who had arranged many such festivities 
 at the Court of Weimar, especially during the first years 
 of his residence there. It is full of allusions and allegories, 
 which are not to be understood without a commentary, 
 but it is constructed with much artistic beauty and the- 
 atrical observation, just such a court festival as Goethe’s 
 fancy doubtless dreamed might some day be realised. 
 There is also a connection with the action of the first part 
 of the scene.jJ The third event of the scene is the conjuring 
 up of Helena. 
 
 Goethe’s sources for the paper-money scene were doubt- 
 less John Law’s schemes and the assignat swindle in France. 
 But what is the purpose of the scene in the drama ? To 
 give Faust an occasion to become an active factor in po- 
 litical life, at a time when the state is in distress. But does 
 Faust really do anything? Mephistopheles invents the 
 plan and executes it; Faust is his passive assistant and at 
 most adds a few pathetic words, which show that not even 
 he sees through the swindle. There is another thing in 
 the scene that gives it interest beyond that due to its po- 
 
Ifaust 
 
 333 
 
 sition in Faust. It is a picture of the time of the transition 
 from the Middle Ages to modern times, perhaps not without 
 a slight polemical thrust at the romantic glorification of 
 the period and the romantic manipulation of historical facts 
 to make them seem to support the theory that throne and 
 altar belong together. The luxurious festivals of the Court 
 are a striking contrast to the distress of the country. The 
 spirit of the government is feudal, mediasval, unenlightened, 
 and reactionary, as is shown by the drastic expressions of 
 the Chancellor: 
 
 Statur unb ©eift — fo fpridjtman nid)t 31t Cffriften. 
 
 3)e$f)alb Derbrennt man 5ltljeiften, 
 
 SSB eil folrfje Sieben Ejöcfjft gefciljrlid) finb. 
 
 Statur ift ©i'tnbe, ©eift ift Teufel, 
 
 ©ie Ijegen 3tt)ifct)en fid) ben 3toeifeI, 
 
 3 f)r mifigeftaltet 3 tuitterfinb. 
 
 Unä nicfjt fo ! — Äaiferö alten Sanben 
 ©inb groei ©efdjledjter neu entftanben, 
 
 ©ie ftitijen roi'irbig feinen £l)ron: 
 
 T>ie ^eiligen finb e§ unb bie Stifter; 
 
 ©ic fteljen jebcm Ungemitter 
 
 Unb nehmen tird)’ unb ©taat 311m fiol)n.* 
 
 As opposed to him, Faust and Mephistopheles repre- 
 sent the modern spirit. Wherever Mephistopheles discovers 
 that anything is old and corrupt his immediate influence 
 leads to further dissolution and destruction, as, for ex- 
 ample, in the masquerade, where the gold works ruin and 
 adventurers and swindlers gain the upper hand. Hence 
 
 * To words like “nature,” “mind,” no Christian lists. 
 
 The ground for burning atheists 
 
 Is that such words bring souls in jeopardy. 
 
 Nature is sin, and mind is devil; 
 
 They doubt beget, in shameless revel, 
 
 A monstrous, mongrel progeny. 
 
 Not so with us! The empire old 
 Brought forth two races, new and bold, 
 
 To-day the throne’s most worthy stay, 
 
 The knights and clergy, who together 
 The emperor help each storm to weather, 
 
 And take both church and state for pay. 
 
334 
 
 £be üüfe of (Boetbe 
 
 progress is not so quickly made after all. The ground must 
 first be prepared; the spirits must first be formed, men 
 must first be educated, and that esthetically. Schiller 
 also thought that education for the true state should be 
 esthetic. Therefore the time, and Faust, who represents 
 the time, must pass through this course of training. The 
 road of progress from the Middle Ages to modern times 
 passes through humanism and the Renaissance, that is, 
 through the return to life of classical antiquity and its 
 beauty. Helena must be conjured up. 
 
 It is here a question chiefly of the amusement of the 
 Emperor; the beautiful is to entertain him. This is the 
 first form in which it manifests itself at the masquerade, 
 and it is for this purpose only that Helena and Paris are 
 to be produced. But it is not easy to conjure up Helena. 
 Mephistopheles cannot do it; the Spirit of annihilation 
 is not a Spirit of reanimation, and, besides, the northern 
 devil is the principle of ugliness, to whom the figures of 
 antiquity, “an obnoxious folk, ” afford no attraction. So 
 Faust must this time take a hand himself. Mephistopheles 
 can only show him the way and give him the kev. He 
 himself must go down to the “ Mothers. ” 
 
 ®te 9J?ütter! 9J?ütter! — ’§ hingt fo nnmberlid)! * 
 
 Here we have really one of the mysteries of the Second 
 Part. Who are these Mothers? The conception is to be 
 traced back to a passage in Plutarch . 48 Plutarch was a 
 Platonist, and the realm of the Mothers is essentially the 
 realm of the ideas of Plato, or, as Schiller has called it, 
 the realm of forms, the realm of shades. These ideas are the 
 eternal, original forms of all things, or, as was later held, 
 the original forms of all individual things. Though these 
 individual things may have disappeared from our world, 
 their ideal, original forms still endure. Over this realm of 
 forms stand guard certain divinities, who give them 
 motherly protection. These divinities are, then, so to 
 *The Mothers! Mothers! — it sounds so curious! 
 
tfauet 
 
 335 
 
 speak, the womb from which issue all individual things, 
 and theirs is the function of mediating the process of life, 
 and, naturally, also that of reanimation, whether things 
 are called to the light naturally in the fair course of life, or 
 miraculously by the magician’s power. So Faust must go 
 to the Mothers if he desires, as a magician, to bring Helena 
 to the light ; for her original form is in their keeping. It 
 must be admitted that this is all far-fetched and artificial ; 
 and it is not very clear what the journey to the Mothers, 
 into those “solitudes, ” into the eternal, empty distance 
 of void, signifies to Faust, or whether his hope to find the 
 all in this nothing is realised in Helena. 
 
 At any rate Faust brings up with him the embodiment 
 of classical beauty, Helena, in her original form, most beauti- 
 ful and perfect, and produces her before the Court. While 
 the Court, not knowing what to make of the ideal, indulges 
 in insipid witticisms and scandalous gossip, Faust’s soul 
 is deeply moved by the sight of this beauty, which was 
 conjured up primarily only for the sake of amusement. 
 She it is to. whom he will henceforth devote the employment 
 of his every power, the whole of his passion, inclination, 
 love, adoration, frenzy. So here in the presence of beauty 
 he is still the same old immoderate, unrestrained idealist, 
 with his all or nothing. He seeks to hold Helena fast, 
 but the spirit-like being dissolves in vapour as he is about 
 to seize her. It is with her as with the Earth-Spirit, and 
 here again Faust sinks in a swoon. He has shown that he 
 is still the same Faust in that he has not the patience to 
 await the results of slow work; he must take beauty by 
 storm, and that immediately. But beauty and the classical 
 ideal cannot be gained in that way. It is necessary to 
 travel by a longer way in order to arrive at the goal. To 
 show this is the purpose of the second act. 
 
 Of all the five acts this is the strängest, with Homun- 
 culus and the Classical Walpurgis Night. Mephistopheles 
 has taken swooning Faust back to his old quarters, the 
 realm of knowledge, or, let us say, the realm of learning, 
 since Wagner now dwells there as a shining light of Science. 
 
336 
 
 Gbe %if e of (Boetbe 
 
 This man of learning is just now at work on a stupendous 
 project, the original conception of which goes back to the 
 Renaissance, to Paracelsus. It is bis desire to produce an 
 artificial man in a retort, and the moment that Mephisto- 
 pheles enters his laboratory, and, as it seems, by his Inter- 
 vention hastens the Chemical process, the great work is 
 consummated, the Chemical manikin is finished, a little 
 spirit man without flesh and blood, almost without a body, 
 who, as a product of learning, is spiritual through and 
 through, is clever, intelligent, and even leamed from the 
 beginning, and, as a representative of the learning of the 
 Renaissance, shows from the outset a “tendency toward 
 the beautiful and toward serviceable action. ” As a poly- 
 histor he knows of course about Greece and is quite at home 
 there. Hence he is able to interpret Faust’s classical dreams, 
 which have to do with Leda and the swan, that is, with the 
 procreation of Helena, and can show him the way to Greece 
 and serve as his guide there. He is the right man for Faust 
 at the present moment. From his hand, “ the hand of 
 truth, ” will Faust receive the veil of poetry and beauty. 
 
 Such approximately must be the conception which we 
 form of the nature and purpose of Homunculus, and the 
 whole conception would have been quite clever if it had 
 not had a tinge of the comical. It is not Faust who makes 
 him, but Wagner. The idea that this famulus-nature, this 
 learned impotence, should make a human being without 
 procreation, provokes a smile, whether we will or no; it 
 necessarily makes the creature ridiculous. Matters are 
 made worse, rather than improved, when we hear that the 
 conception was suggested to Goethe by the assertion of a 
 Schellingian natural philosopher, who happened also to 
 be called Wagner, that chemistry would certainly yet 
 succeed in creating men by means of crystallisation . 49 
 
 Ordinarily there is but a short Step from the sublime to 
 the ridiculous; here we are to realise the shortness of the 
 distance in the opposite direction. Homunculus f ulfils his 
 task and leads Faust to the classic land of beauty, just 
 as philological learning has in reality led the peoples of 
 
ffauet 
 
 337 
 
 Western Europe, the men of modern times, to the classical 
 ideal. But he himself meets with his end there, and this 
 end is tragically beautiful. He is dashed to pieces on the 
 shell chariot of Galatea, the goddess of beauty, presumably 
 because he is now no longer necessary, just as the leaming 
 of humanism seems necessary only until the beauty of 
 humane and humanised mankind shall be realised. In 
 certain particulars the fate and end of this stränge little 
 dwarf are not clear, and it is easy to understand how others 
 should have hit upon other interpretations, as, for example, 
 to mention but one, which is wholly impossible, the Inter- 
 pretation of Homunculus as the embodiment of life energy 
 and a heroic longing for formation . 50 We have already 
 spoken of the Cleverness of the idea, that the way to beauty 
 passes through learning, the ridiculous aspects of which 
 one must in the end accept as unavoidable; but such ob- 
 scurities as those just referred to, and the law that what has 
 once been made ridiculous can never again produce a sublime 
 and tragical effect, detract materially from this Cleverness. 
 
 The most objective figure of the whole scene is the Stu- 
 dent of the First Part, who has meanwhile advanced to the 
 bachelor’s degree. Though even he is made to utter all 
 sorts of insinuations, for example, against the Burschen- 
 schafters and their bearing, w T ith which Goethe had little 
 sympathy, but, above all, against Fichte and his subjective 
 idealism. In his youthful sauciness and impertinence this 
 young man is most charmingly characterised. The one 
 humour-saturated sentence of Mephistopheles, “ Perhaps 
 thou knowest not, my friend, how rüde thou art,” richly 
 compensates for a great deal of tiresome allegory. 
 
 Homunculus and Mephistopheles take Faust, who is still 
 lying unconscious, to Greece for the Classical Walpurgis 
 Night on the Held of Pharsalus. It is the anniversary of 
 the battle in which the freedom of the antique world came 
 to an end and the victory was won by that empire which 
 was destined finally to carry classical antiquity over into 
 the new Christian world. Therefore the Classical Walpurgis 
 Night is republican, as its counter part in the north was 
 
 VOL. III. 2 2 
 
33 § 
 
 Zhc Xif e of (Soetbe 
 
 monarchic. Furthermore the ghostly life and actions on 
 this very ground and in this very night are excellently 
 motivated. But, on the other hand, it seems to us a ques- 
 tionable undertaking, which savours strongly of learned- 
 ness, to attempt to represent in the sequence of the figures 
 introduced something like the historical development of 
 the grotesque civilisations, brought from Egypt and the 
 Orient into the free Hellenic beauty of classical civili- 
 sation, which is revealed upon and about the shell 
 chariot of Galatea. The most questionable feature about 
 it is the fact that Goethe introduced in satirical form 
 certain scientific disputes which happened to interest him, 
 such as the mythological controversy concerning the Cabiri, 
 provoked by Schelling, but, above all, the scientific war 
 between the Vulcanist and the Neptunist factions in geology, 
 which he finally brought to a close in favour of the Nep- 
 tunist standpoint, after subjecting the Vulcanists to a 
 volley of derision. What has this to do wdth Faust ? Apart 
 from this we lose sight of him altogether too much. 
 Mephistopheles goes in quest of the ugly and the lustful; 
 Homunculus seeks corporeality, which he either finds or 
 loses, we do not know for certain which, but probably the 
 latter, when he bursts his glass on the shell chariot of 
 Galatea. 
 
 Faust has but one thought, one aim. In the throng 
 of antique forms and ghosts he seeks Helena, but cannot 
 find her. Chiron, who, as an educator, 1ms put heroes on 
 the right path, and has carried Helena herseif on his back, 
 takes him to Manto, his dearest friend among the sibylline 
 guild. As she loves “him who desires the impossible,” 
 she leads Faust down to Proserpine, as she had once “ smug- 
 gled Orpheus in,” in Order that he may bring up Helena — 
 this time from the lower world . But here the thing of 
 chief importance is wanting. Goethe intended to develop 
 a scene at the court of Proserpine. He had in mind es- 
 pecially a grand rhetorical appeal by Manto, or by Faust 
 himself, by which Proserpine should be moved to let Helena 
 go back up to life. “ What an oration it must be, ” he said 
 
Jfauöt 
 
 339 
 
 to Eckermann, “when even Proserpine is moved by it to 
 tears!” Unfortunately this scene was left unwritten. The 
 assertion that everything presupposed by the return to life 
 is given, and hence the occurrence itself may, without loss 
 to the play, remain behind the scene and be supplied raen- 
 tally, as a logical certainty, by those who have witnessed 
 what has preceded, is not a satisfactory excuse. As is 
 proved by a sketch of the year 1826, it was Goethe’s original 
 intention to write out the scene. As he did not do it, this 
 portion of the Second Part turned out truly “ too laconical. ” 
 There is here a very perceptible gap. At the opening of 
 the third act Helena Stands suddenly before the surprised 
 spectator, who as yet has had nothing to prepare him for 
 her appearance. 
 
 ^ Helena, this “ Classico-Romantic Phantasmagoria, ” was 
 first thought of as an interlude, but now “the piece” forms 
 the important third act, the “ culmination and axis” of the 
 Second Part. So far as form is concerned, it is a Greek 
 tragedy in the luxurious garb of the antique trimeter, with 
 a chorus of Trojan maidens, a leader of the chorus, and 
 choral song. But is the substance also Greek? Let us see. 
 
 Helena and her attendants are on Spartan soil. Having 
 just returned from Troy, she is waiting before her palace for 
 Menelaus, who has sent her ahead of the army. Mephis- 
 topheles appears as the Stewardess of the royal castle, 
 in the form of a Phorcyd, the ugliest figure of classical 
 mythology, which he borrowed during the Walpurgis Night. 
 By means of a warning that Menelaus has chosen her for 
 a sacrificial victim, as a punishment for her infidelity, he 
 terrifies the princess and drives her into the arms of Faust, 
 who has settled in the northern part of Sparta, as the leader 
 of Germanic hordes. Faust receives the fugitives in his 
 castle and protects them against an attack of Menelaus. 
 As a reward for the rescue he wins the love of Helena and 
 enjoys with her in Arcadia the highest bliss of love. From 
 their union, soon after it is formed, there springs a son, 
 Euphorion, -who, soon after his birth, grows up and talks, 
 sings and jumps. But as he kno-ws no danger, no limita- 
 
340 
 
 £be Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 tions, no moderation, he falls down all too soon, a second 
 Icarus, from the quickly scaled rocky height, and from the 
 depths below we hear a voice: “ Leave me in the realm of 
 shades, mother, not all alone!” The son draws the mother 
 after him. With the words, “ Proserpine, receive the boy 
 and me,” she embraces Faust, “her corporeal part disap- 
 pears, her garment and veil remain in his arms. ” The 
 garment bears Faust “swiftly through the ether above every- 
 thing common,” he floats away on a bank of clouds. The 
 attendants, the maidens of the chorus, with their genuine 
 antique enjoyment of life and nature, prefer, instead of 
 following the queen back to Hades, to return to ever-living 
 nature and transform themselves into dryads, echo-nymphs, 
 brook-nymphs, and spirits of the vine. Thus ends the 
 phantasmagoria. What does it signify? 
 
 First let us ask: What is Helena? A living creature, a 
 human being with flesh and blood, or a shade, a spirit, a 
 phantasm ? Does she experience everything awake and 
 with consciousness, or as in a dream? Perhaps neither, 
 perhaps both. She says herseif: “ I to myself become an 
 eidolon, ” and “which I am I do not know. ” Faust, the 
 Faust of the sixteenth Century, is a man of the Middle Ages 
 — the settlement of knights in Greece occurred, as is well 
 known, in the year 1204 — and at the same time an entirely 
 modern man. Thus three ages are intermingled. But 
 the question of chief interest is, how does he come to be with 
 the Spartan queen ? Is it a spectral apparition ; is it reality? 
 We do not know. All that is clear is that their union signi- 
 fies the union of classical and mediaeval poetry. Faust 
 teaches the Greek queen the Germanic rhyme form, and 
 teaches her the principle that in poetry only what comes 
 from the heart can affect the heart. He himself receives 
 from her as his permanent possession her garment and veil, 
 the clothing of beauty, which bears him through the ether 
 above everything common. From their union springs 
 Euphorion, the representative of modern poetry, in whom 
 the principle above referred to is verified, to which even 
 the Phorcyd Mephistopheles ascribes: 
 
tfaust 
 
 341 
 
 ®ettn e§ muji non |>ergen geijen, 
 
 52a6 ouf bergen rotrfen foÜ.* 
 
 It is the superiority of modern art, in its inwardness of 
 feeüng, even over antique art, of which it borrows but the 
 forms : 
 
 ßaf? ber ©ottne ©lang berfdjtoinben, 
 
 SGScnn eS in ber ©edc tagt, 
 
 3Bir im eignen bergen finben, 
 
 SßaS bie gange SSelt nerfagt.f 
 
 Is Euphorion really the representative of modern poetry? 
 Is not Goethe himself that? We have already heard that 
 Euphorion is Lor d Byro n, who, furthermore, is supposed to 
 be portrayed in the Boy Charioteer of the first aet. Goethe 
 said of him : “ For a representative of the most recent poetical 
 age I could use nobody but him, who, without question, is 
 to be considered the greatest talent of the Century. And 
 then Byron is not classical, and he is not romantic; he is 
 like the present dav itself. Such a one I had to have.” So 
 we shall have to be satisfied with this and make the best 
 of it. While Euphorion (Byron), the half-visionary, Stands 
 upon his eminence and watches the battle of the Greeks 
 against the Turks, even hears the thunder of cannon during 
 a sea battle, and as a Philhellene strives to help the New 
 Hellenes, he forms a new connecting link between the 
 antique and the modern world . 
 
 Thus Faust really spans the three thousand years from 
 the capture of Troy to the fall of Missolonghi. But it is a 
 composite picture showing a great confusion of qualities: 
 poetry and objectivity, with symbolism and allegory; per- 
 sonality and individuality, with universal humanity; unhis- 
 torical and marvellous incidents, with history of the world 
 
 * From the heart must needs arise 
 What aspires the heart to reach. 
 t Let the sun forsake the sky, 
 
 If the soul is bright with morn; 
 
 What the whole world doth deny 
 Is within our bosoms born. 
 
342 
 
 ftbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 on the one hand and history of philosophy on the other; 
 time and space, versification and style, poetry and truth, all 
 in gay confusion, really forming a daring phantasmagoria. 
 If it had remained, as was originally planned, a mere inter- 
 lude, like “ Oberon’s and Titania’s Golden Wedding,” say, 
 in the first “ Walpurgis Night,” one might well have endured 
 the marvellous element. But it was finally made an in- 
 tegrant part of the drama, toward which the whole Second 
 Part points and in which it culminates, and so we are forced 
 to ask what significance and what value it has for Faust. 
 
 How his marriage with the Greek heroine is to affect 
 him is clear. The Eternal-Womanly draws him upward, 
 antique beauty liberates him more and more from the me- 
 diseval ugliness of the spectral form of the Phorcyd Mephis- 
 topheles, ideal beauty frees him from sensuousness. Thus 
 he is to emerge from this union exalted, purified, liberated, 
 and, finally, by the death of immoderate, unrestrained Eu- 
 phorion, he is to have his attention directed to moderation 
 and self-restraint, as they are embodied in most beautiful 
 harmony in Hellenism. Hence he calls out to his un- 
 tamed boy: “Gently! son, gently! Curb thine over-im- 
 portunate, passionate strivings!” In a word, he is to 
 acquire moral culture through the medium of esthetic edu- 
 cation, and to be led through esthetic harmony to moral self- 
 restraint. But is this in any way revealed in the drama? 
 What does Faust do? He saves Helena. In that Con- 
 nection we read: 
 
 ÜJhir ber Derbtettf btc ©unft ber grauen, 
 
 ®cr fräftigft fte gu fctiii^cn rceifs.* 
 
 It that necessary? Is not the news of Menelaus’s 
 approach pure deception? Even if it be not, he leaves the 
 battle to the leaders of his troops, after they have received 
 his Orders; he himself takes no part in it. The only thing 
 to his credit is the procreation of Euphorion, but even that 
 
 * No man deserveth woman’s grace, 
 
 Unless with mighty arm he shield her. 
 
ffaust 343 
 
 is symbolic-allegorical ; it has at best esthetic, but no moral, 
 significance. The love-dallying in its antique naivete — 
 
 9lid)t öcrfngt firf) bic SÜcajeftcit 
 §cimlid)cr gfrcuben 
 $or bcn Singen bes QMfeS 
 Übermütige^ Offenbarfein* — 
 
 is rather morally offensive to us. Or is the effect of this 
 harmonising edu cation perhaps revealed as an after-effect ? 
 A single utterance of Mephistopheles points that way : 
 
 Wan merft’S, bit fommft non Heroinen. t 
 
 That is all and it is decidedly too little. Hence the Helena 
 tragedy does not produce the effect that it should, especiallv 
 the effect that it ought to produce on Faust within the 
 drama. And this dramatic deficiency is not compensated 
 for by the wealth of beauty and splendour which the act 
 unquestionably contains. 
 
 We are approaching the end. The fourth act brings 
 Faust back to the Emperor’s Court. But first comes a 
 prelude, which finally contains a reference to the events of 
 the First Part. Faust, alone in lonelv nature, in the high 
 mountains, is reminded by the vanishing cloud-garments of 
 Helena, which have borne him hither, of “ youth’s first, now 
 long-withholden, highest good,” by which Gretchen is 
 doubtless meant. We are threatened with a conversation 
 between Faust and Mephistopheles about Vulcanism, but it 
 is warded off just in the nick of time by an off er of the devil 
 which reminds us of the temptation of Jesus. We are even 
 referred expressly to the fourth chapter of Matthew. Meph- 
 istopheles öfters Faust for his enjoyment one of the lands 
 over which he has been flying. But Faust, who feels within 
 himself the “power for bold industry,” declares that “the 
 
 * Majesty doth not hesitate 
 Raptures most secret 
 To the eyes of the crowd 
 Boldly, shamelessly, thus to reveal, 
 fl see, thou com’st from heroines. 
 
344 
 
 Gbe %ife of Goetbe 
 
 act is everything, fame nothing.” He desires nothing that 
 is already finished, but prefers something that he has worked 
 and struggled for himself. He will gain from the sea a 
 Stretch of land along the shore, will subject the aimless ele- 
 ments to his power, will broaden the room for the work 
 of human civilisation. Thinking of this work, which lures 
 him, he utters, in the proud consciousness of a ruler, the 
 proud motto, “Passive enjoyment makes man common!” 
 We have finally reached the last third of the Second Part. 
 After knowledge and enjoyment we have come to activity. 
 
 There is still another motive behind Faust’s determina- 
 tion. He desires to create a country and a people for him- 
 self, because the political world, as it exists, the States as 
 they are, deserve to go to ruin. This is shown by conditions 
 in the Emperor’s realm, which has fallen into a state of 
 anarchy. Goethe had in mind the conditions in the old 
 German Empire, but also in France at the time of Louis XV., 
 and at the beginning of the revolution. The description is 
 therefore a composite picture of the times, made up of freelv 
 chosen details. Against the Emperor, who has derived no 
 benefit from the devil’s money, a rival Emperor has risen, 
 so that he finds it difhcult to defend his throne. This is a 
 welcome opportunity for Faust to win the desired Stretch of 
 land along the shore as a feud, in reward for assistance given. 
 It is for this reason and no other that he interferes, or 
 rather, Mephistopheles interferes in his stead; for the latter 
 again does everything. Faust definitely declines to “ be the 
 commander of an undertaking of which he understands 
 nothing.” And yet a while ago he was a knight and through 
 his leaders gained the victory over Menelaus, who, to be 
 sure, may not have been real. With the help of the three 
 “allegorical scoundrels,” Bully, Havequick, and Holdfast, 
 and, when they prove insufficient, with the aid of an optical 
 illusion of fountains and flooded rivers and brooks, Faust 
 again helps the Emperor out of a dilemma, for which he 
 receives little thanks, however, as the Church condemns the 
 devil’s magic and, as with the jewel casket for Gretchen, 
 shows that it and it alone can digest unrighteous goods. 
 
345 
 
 jfaust 
 
 Faust receives the desired strand, nevertheless. Unfortu- 
 nately the scene of the enfeoffment, which Goethe had 
 originally planned and partly written, was finally left out. 
 It would have proved a much more essential part of the 
 scene than the appointment of five electoral princes, after 
 the model of the Golden Bull of Charles IV. 
 
 In the fifth act we see Faust as a prince of the strand 
 and ruler of the land won from the sea, a great merchant, 
 and a daring engineer. The first part of the act is full of 
 very modern atmosphere. What Faust does here is good, 
 what he has accomplished is great. This work, which 
 Stands as the victory crowning his struggle with the ele- 
 ments, is an Illustration of the words of Sophocles, “There 
 is much that is mighty, but nothing is mightier than man.” 
 The fact that magic and human sacrifices were required to 
 carry it out, as Baucis teils us, shows that as human ac- 
 complishments even these deeds and works are imperfect, 
 that the mark of the evil one is branded upon them. To 
 view the matter in a broader light, we may say that the 
 victories of civilisation are not won without violence, destruc- 
 tion, and guilt; their way passes ruthlessly over the happi- 
 ness of men. Piracy marks the trail of the expanding 
 power, and the territory on which Stands the little hut of 
 Philemon and Baucis in the midst of Faust’s possessions, 
 thus hindering his rounding out of his property to include 
 the whole area, and limiting his power, is finally annexed 
 to his territory, not in a kindly way, as he desires, but by 
 means of fire and murder. For the piracy Faust has only a 
 serious countenance and a gloomy look — “ He makes a face 
 that shows disgust.” Upon the crime against the innocent 
 old couple he pronounces his curse — “This thoughtless, 
 savage blow I curse!” But it is too late. By his impa- 
 tience he has provoked the deed of violence. That it was 
 more violent and more cruel than he wished is his own fault. 
 That things may turn out so, and usually do, ought to be 
 well known to a man of years, above all to a man who is 
 ‘accustomed to ruling and giving Orders. 
 
 Out of the smoke and vapour of the burnt hut arise four 
 
346 
 
 Zbc Xife of <5oet be 
 
 spirits of torture, Want, Debt, Care, Distress. But only 
 one of them may enter his palace, “Care through the keyhole 
 an entrance may win.” Before she leaves him she breathes 
 upon him and he goes blind. Here everything ought to be 
 clear, and yet it is all obscure. Hence it was possible to 
 propose the odd, but ingenious and suggestive, interpreta- 
 tion, that Faust, having grown old, has lost the magic gift 
 of genius, and now, as a common mortal and dull Philistine, 
 falls a prey to Care, who lames the productive activity of 
 genius and prepares man for hell. Thus Faust has lost his 
 wager and has fallen into the power of the devil. It will 
 still be possible, however, for him to be saved, because the 
 blinding of his soul is “due to senile weakness .” 51 
 
 Almost every point of this Interpretation is contradicted 
 by the wording of this and the following scenes. One thing 
 above all is clear, namely, that Faust’s withdrawal from 
 magic is not a lapse into the ways of the Philistine, but a 
 step upward toward better and purer things. To be sure, 
 he has not yet fought his way to freedom, but he wishes he 
 had, and it is at least his intention to do it . 52 
 
 Sonnt’ icf) Wagie non meinem ^fab entfernen, 
 
 Die 3anberfpnid)c ganj unb gar nerlernen; 
 
 ©tünb’ icf), 9iatnr! nor bir ein Wann allein, 
 
 Da incir’S ber Wül)e inert, ein Wenfcf) gu fein.* 
 
 May it be that Care has been sent with her “ miserable litany ” 
 by Mephistopheles? In any case she is unable to subdue 
 Faust or check him in his onward progress. 
 
 Dod) beinc Wadjt, o ©orge, fd)leid)enb grop, 
 
 3d) roerbe fie nidjt anerfennen.t 
 
 True, she does brand him outwardly with the sign of her 
 power, when she breathes upon him and he goes blind. 
 
 * Could I my pathway rid of magic feil, 
 
 And totally unleam its secret spell; 
 
 Stood I, O Nature, man alone with thee, 
 
 ’T were then well worth the while a man to be. 
 f And yet, O Care, think not that I shall e’er 
 Thy stealthy, crushing power own. 
 
jfaust 
 
 347 
 
 “ But in my spirit shines a radiant light.” Strangely enough 
 it is only after Faust has been blinded that he works his 
 way through to the light. He now hastens to accomplish 
 what he has designed. Rid of magic, he seems on the point 
 of freeing himself permanently from the devil also, who of 
 late has been only his servant in all sorts of witchery and 
 jugglery. In the end he no longer has to do with the devil, 
 but only with the “overseer” of' his working men. The 
 chief thing, the highest gain, so far as his relation to Care 
 is concerned, is that he now knows himself and his limi- 
 tations; he has seen the immoderateness of his striving 
 and thus has been enabled to overcome it. 
 
 3d) bin nur burd) bie SBclt gerannt. 
 
 (Sin jcb’ ©eliift ergriff id) bei ben paaren, 
 
 5Ba 6 nicht genügte, lieft id) fahren, 
 mir entroifd)tc, liefs id) giel)n. 
 
 3d) bnbe nur begehrt unb nur Dollbradjt, 
 
 Unb abermald genniufdjt unb fo mit fÖiad)t 
 föiein ßeben burdjgeftürmt; erft graf) unb mächtig ; 
 
 9hm aber geht eö meife, gebt bebädjtig.* 
 
 Self-knowledge is self-liberation and self-limitation. But 
 wise self-limitation is the opposite of what Mephistopheles 
 has planned for him. The moment that Faust declares, 
 
 3m Sßeiterfd) reiten finb’ er Qual unb ©liüf, 
 
 (Sr! unbefriebigt jeben 2tugenbli<f,f 
 
 Mephistopheles has unconditionally lost the wager. He has 
 not brought Faust to the point where he would Stretch him- 
 self, calmed, upon a bed of ease, and at no time has he been 
 
 * I have but hurried through the world. 
 
 I by the hair each appetite have seized, 
 
 Discarding what no longer pleased. 
 
 And what escaped me, letting go. 
 
 ’I have but craved and pampered appetite, 
 
 Then craved a second time, and thus with might 
 I ’ve stormed through life. At first I raged unmeetly, 
 
 But now I move more wisely and discreetly. 
 t Let progress him with bliss and pain supply, 
 
 And every moment fail to satisfy. 
 
348 
 
 Gbe Ulfe of (Boetbe 
 
 able to deceive him with enjoyment. In his contest with 
 the devil Faust relied on his striving, and his striving never 
 ceased. 
 
 Lemures dig Faust’s grave, while he still hopes to win 
 fertile soil from the swamp and again to provide roomfor 
 many millions of colonists. In this task as a task he 
 beholds joyfully a supreme undertaking. As in Wilhelm 
 Meister, individual ethics now gives way to social ethics . 53 
 He sees himself with a free people on a free soil, and thus 
 enjoys really the highest moment, as only a man of his 
 stamp can enjoy it. Poetry and philosophy are again 
 combined in füllest unity, when he says: 
 
 3a! bicfem ©inne bin id) gang ergeben, 
 
 3)aS ift ber SBeiSljeit letzter ©cfjlufj: 
 
 9hir ber nerbient ftd) greibeit tnie bas ßeben, 
 
 ®er täglid) fie erobern map. 
 
 Unb fo Derbringt, nmrnngen Don ©cfabr, 
 
 $ier tinbbeit, 9J?atm nnb ©rei3 fein tüchtig 3a§r. 
 
 ©old) ein ©croimmel möd)t’ id) febn, 
 
 5htf freiem ©rnnb mit freiem fßolfe fteljn. 
 
 3nm Slugenb liefe bitrft’ ic£) fagen: 
 
 SSerroeile bod), bn bift fo fd)ön! 
 
 ©S fantt bie ©pttr Don meinen ©rbentagen 
 91id)t in $oncn nntergdjn. — 
 
 3m ©orgefübl Don fokbem hoben ©lücf 
 ©eniefi id) fett ben f)öd)ften Slugenblicf.* 
 
 * Yea, all my thought upon this pivot tums, 
 
 ’T is wisdom’s rule, profound and true: 
 
 He only life and füllest freedom earns, 
 
 Who daily them must win anew. 
 
 Thus childhood, manhood, age, all dwelling here, 
 By dangers girt, may well fill out the year. 
 
 Such busy throngs I fain would see, 
 
 On free soil stand amid a people free. 
 
 Then might I to the moment say: 
 
 Oh! prithee, stay! Thou art so fair! 
 
 The living traces of my earthly day 
 This region must through aeons bear. 
 
 A vision of such happiness as this 
 Gives me a foretaste of the highest bliss. 
 
Jfaust 
 
 349 
 
 From these words it is clear that Mephistopheles has lost 
 the wager and Faust is saved. It is a question only of a 
 wish, not of something really attained — “ I fain would see,“ 
 “then might I say ; ” — it is not a real enjoyment, but only a 
 foretaste of one. The devil has failed to gain possession of 
 this lofty spirit, because of his inability to comprehend Faust 
 and bring his ideal striving to a standstill; because every- 
 thing he did to make Faust a common, blase pleasure-seeker 
 served only to give new impetus to his striving and make 
 him inwardly free from the evil one. Mephistopheles, with 
 his evil wisdom, has become for Faust a real teacher of 
 genuine, good wisdom. To be sure, the Lord is seen to have 
 been right, when he said : “ Man errs as long as he -doth 
 
 strive.” The saying has proved true in Faust’s life up to 
 the last. 
 
 It was a “ staying,” nevertheless, even though but hypo- 
 thetical; it was an enjoyment of “bliss,” too, even though 
 but in a “foretaste“; and so “The clock Stands still.“ 
 “The index falls.” “It falls, and all is past.“ “ ’T is 
 finished.” Faust is dead. 
 
 It is therefore necessary that there be some public docu- 
 ment, some outward, visible sign, to show that, in spite of 
 appearances, which now speak in his favour, Mephistopheles 
 has no right to the soul of Faust, and that Faust is really 
 saved. This need is supplied in the last two scenes depicting 
 the burial and ascension. The question, whether the way 
 in which the heavenly hosts gain the victory over Mephisto- 
 pheles and his devils — Mephistopheles is inflamed with 
 pathological, sensuous love for the beautiful angels — is 
 entirely in good taste, is at least open to doubt. What 
 Goethe means by it is clear. Love conquers, it overcomes 
 everything, even hell, the latter, we must admit, in hell’s 
 own way. Mephistopheles, true to his part, recognises the 
 7act7 speaks ironically of himself, and complains in these 
 words : 
 
 Du bift getauft in beinctt alten Dagen, 
 
 Du baft’S oerbient, eb gebt bir grimmig fd)lecf)t. 
 
 3dj habe fd)impflid) mifsgebanbelt, 
 
35° 
 
 Ebe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 ©in großer Slufroanb, fc^mä^Iid) ! ift nertan; 
 
 ©ernein ©elüft, abfnrbe öiebfetjaft roatibelt 
 Den ausgepichten Teufel an.* 
 
 Are we fully convinced that Mephistopheles has deserved 
 to lose, and that Faust has deserved to be saved? The 
 last scene must decide. Faust is borne aloft by angels and 
 is received by heavenly hosts. 
 
 ©erettet ift bas eble ©lieb 
 Der ©ciftermclt nom Böfen. 
 
 „ 9Ber immer ftrebenb fid) bemüht, 
 
 Den fönnen mir erlöfen." 
 
 Unb hat an ibm bic Siebe gar 
 9hm oben teilgcnommen, 
 begegnet if)m bie felige 8d)ar 
 9J?it berjlidbem 9Biüfommen.t 
 
 Gretchen intercedes for him, and the Chorus Mysticus sums 
 up the whole in the closing lines, 
 
 9llteS Vergängliche 
 3 ft nur ein ©leidmiS, 
 
 Das Ungulänglidje, 
 
 §icr roirb’S ©rcigtiiS; 
 
 DaS llnbcfchreibliche, 
 
 §ier ift’S getan; 
 
 DaS ©roig-9BcibIid)e 
 3iel)t unS t)iuan. % 
 
 * In my old days I thus am sore deceived; 
 
 This sorry plight I truly do deserve. 
 
 I ’ve acted in disgraceful fashion, 
 
 An outlay vast I ’ve scandalously lost. 
 
 To think that common lust and senseless passion 
 The calloused devil’s plans have crossed! 
 fThis noble soul deservingly 
 Hath found from hell exemption. 
 
 “Whoever strives unswervingly 
 Can gain through us redemption.” 
 
 And if celestial love 
 
 With grace and favour treat him, 
 
 The blessed angels from above 
 With hearty welcome greet him. 
 t All things ephemeral 
 As Symbols remain; 
 
Faust 
 
 351 
 
 Is this ending satisf actory ? That is the last question. 
 In Order to answer it we must cast a backward glance over 
 the whole Second Part, including its form and style, and our 
 answer will serve as a closing criticism of the whole. 
 
 The fault that has been found with the close of Goethe’ s 
 Faust is that it is too Gothico-romantic, that the fable of 
 the drama, born of the spirit of Protestantism and taken 
 over and treated as Protestant by Goethe, is here at the 
 close turned round into Catholicism. And it is true; the 
 whole Christian world of the Middle Ages, legends, cult of 
 the Virgin Mary, purgatory, scholasticism, — all are here . 54 
 That is indeed a departure from the original spirit and style. 
 But the criticism goes still deeper. 
 
 In the first place the character of the closing scene leads 
 to an inconsisteney in the last act itself. Faust has just 
 declared, with firmness and determination, his belief in the 
 life this side of the grave. 
 
 9tad) bri'tben ift bie Slnäficht un§ oerrannt; 
 
 £or! toer bortbin bie Singen blinjelnb richtet, 
 
 «Sich über SBolfen feineögleichen bittet! 
 
 (Sr ftefie feft nnb fefie hier ficfi um; 
 
 ®em Süchtigen ift biefe SB eit nicht ftutnm; 
 
 SBae braucht er in bie (Sroigfeit ju [chtneifen! * * 
 
 After this fresh, happy declaration, by a modern man, 
 of his faith in the present life, we cannot possibly become 
 reconciled to that close, incense-laden atmosphere of the 
 mediaeval forecourt of heaven. Philosophy and poetry are 
 
 Things there impossible 
 Here we attain ; 
 
 Things there a mystery 
 Here wisdom prove; 
 
 Th’ Eternal-Womanly 
 Draws us above. 
 
 * The great beyond is barred from mortal ken; 
 
 A fool, who thither turns his blinking eyes 
 And fancies humankind above the skies! 
 
 Firm let him stand, the world about him Scan, 
 
 This life ’s not mute to the all-active man; 
 
 What need hath he through the beyond to roam ? 
 
352 
 
 £be Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 again far from being harmoniously blended. But, some one 
 will say, such a scene leading to the future life was necessary 
 to corroborate and objectify Faust’s Salvation, just as the 
 scene of the “Prologue” at the beginning was laid in heaven. 
 Certainly; but who thinks of the beyond during that ma- 
 jestic overture? We may say of it with Mephistopheles, 
 though in another sense, “ How handsome it is of the Lord 
 to speak so humanly here!” If it had been portrayed in 
 the style of the “Prologue,” Faust’s admission into heaven 
 would have been beautiful, grand, glorious, whereas this 
 legendary heaven, with its Mater Gloriosa, its penitent wo- 
 men, its angel choruses, its Pater Profundus, and Doctor 
 Marianus, not only does not lead us into the illusion, it 
 actually disturbs the illusion, and, instead of impressing us 
 as a symbol, appeals to us only as an allegory, and thus 
 leaves us cold. Goethe himself seems to have feit this and 
 to have thought originally of a great judgment scene, in the 
 style of Michael Angelo, in which Faust’s salvation should be 
 proclaimed by Christ, as the vice-regent, or by the Lord him- 
 self. It is a pity that he did not write the scene, for now we 
 miss especially the words declaring that Faust has been 
 justly saved. The “Prologue” pointed forward to them 
 and we have a right to expect them. 
 
 This again takes us deeper. Faust’ s admission to heaven 
 is intended as a mere symbol, it is thought of as such from 
 the beginning, and the Chorus Mysticus says so expressiv, 
 “All things ephemeral as symbols remain.” It is a symbol 
 for the idea of self-redemption by means of moral striving, 
 that is, Faust must be redeemed before he can gain admis- 
 sion into heaven. What are the facts? “ Whoever strives 
 unswervingly, can gain through us redemption.” Has Faust 
 striven unswervingly, in the moral sense, the sense concerned 
 in the world of action ? Has he redeemed himself in this sense ? 
 Such was necessarily Goethe’s intention and he so presents 
 Faust’s course of education and development. It was on 
 this account that Faust had to enter the great world, had to 
 be active, and in his actions manifest his character and 
 prove his worth. Where did he do these things? At the 
 
353 
 
 Jfaust 
 
 Imperial Court he made paper money, directed festivals, 
 conjured up Helena ; but the most even of this he did not 
 do himself, Mephistopheles did it for him. In the Classical 
 Walpurgis Night, to which he is guided by Homunculus, 
 whom another has made, the opportunity to make him at 
 least deliver a great oration before Proserpine is allowed to 
 pass by, so to speak, at the last hour. By Helena, whom he 
 hardly has to protect seriously, he has a son Euphorion. 
 This is meant allegorically, but even behind the allegory there 
 is no moral significance, at most the idea of an esthetical 
 education of mankind, which must precede everything, 
 even morality. But, as it Stands, this latter Supplement 
 is wanting; the whole is an esthetical, not an ethical, 
 allegory. In the fourth act Faust overcomes a temptation 
 which comes to him, but it is not a very great one. Then, 
 as a matter of fact, the victory over the rival Emperor is won 
 by Mephistopheles with the aid of the three “ allegorical 
 scoundrels,” and all kinds of hellish illusions; but Faust is 
 rewarded for the deed and receives the strand as a fief. 
 He now has at last an opportunity for moral activity, and in 
 the fifth act he has really arrived at the conclusion that 
 passive enjoyment makes one common, and that moral 
 activity with others and for others, public spirit, has the 
 highest value and is the highest achievement. Thus we see 
 him as a ruler carrying on the work of civilisation on a 
 grand scale and in a liberal spirit. Yet in view of the cir- 
 cumstance that Goethe brings forward prominently the 
 “ generically ” correct principle, that civilisation does not 
 progress without some acts of violence, and that he here 
 again, as always, places the use of magic powers at Faust’s 
 disposal, and does not make his renunciation of magic ad- 
 vance beyond the stage of mere desire, the moral side of his 
 activity retires again to the background. We see indeed 
 that he has become moral, but the process of his becoming 
 so we have not witnessed. Hence there is no motive for 
 Faust’s redemption, at least no sufficient motive. 
 
 Faust, who has become moral, is redeemed; but moral 
 deeds have been almost wholly wanting, and so the final act 
 
354 
 
 Zbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 must leave us unsatisfied. It does not make it clear to our 
 minds that the Lord has won the wager, and why He has 
 won. The devil is taken unawares, if not deceived, and 
 Faust goes to heaven undeservedly, out of sheer grace. So 
 it must appear, at least, to one who looks, not at the will, 
 but at the accomplishment, and in a drama the latter point 
 of view is the only one admissible. Of course, like every 
 other man, Faust needs the grace, the pardoning love, 
 that is here bestowed upon him. But a pardon without 
 moral grounds, an act of mercy with only an outward, and 
 no in ward, moral motive, is characteristic of mediaeval 
 ecclesiasticism, not of modern ethics. And Goethe’s point 
 of view was, of course, the latter, not the former. Hence the 
 criticism is justified that the close of Faust is too Catholic, 
 or better, too ecclesiastical, where it should be purely 
 human and purely ethical. That Goethe intended that it 
 should be human and ethical is shown by the wonderful 
 words, “ Whoever strives unswervingly can gain through us 
 redemption”; but in the midst of the scenic and operatic 
 effects of the closing scene these words are lost on the stage. 
 
 The impression of the undeservedness of Faust’s redemp- 
 tion is further strengthened by another feature. As though 
 the poet had feit that everything was not in order, that 
 Faust’s education and purification were not yet finished, 
 we find the supplementary remarks, the esthetically repul- 
 sive one about the earthly remains — “ They are not cleanly ” 
 — and the one of the Blessed Boys, 
 
 35ocf) biefer Ijat gelernt, 
 
 @r roirb un§ lehren.* 
 
 The scoffing reference to Faust asa“ heavenly schoolmaster 
 for boys” is not at all needed to make us see that in the 
 above words the end is again postponed. Now at last, to 
 make up for lost time and opportunity, as it were, Faust is 
 really to do something! 
 
 * But he is leamed in life 
 And he will teach us. 
 
jfaust 
 
 355 
 
 In what has been said we have already referred to the 
 form and style of the closing scene and of the Second Part 
 in general, or at least large portions of it. The operatic 
 elements, which are found at the very beginning and are 
 heaped up and crowded in at the end, need be referred to 
 but once more. It is particularly these elements that make 
 this heaven Catholic, whereas in the Protestant heaven of 
 the “Prologue” spoken words and freer language are the 
 rule. We have already said, too, that in the Second Part 
 much has been left obscure and incomprehensible. This is 
 due in a measure to the heaping up of the allegorical. But 
 allegory is not poetry, and the necessity of a commentary 
 enhances our pleasure and enjoyment just as little as it does 
 in the case of Dante. 
 
 This tendency to allegorise has also influenced the 
 language of the Second Part. With all the beauty of in- 
 dividual passages, a certain grandiloquence has crowded out 
 the simplicity ; the language is often stilted and over-adorned ; 
 there are evident traces of Goethe’s much decried “old-age 
 style.” For example, a decidedly comical effect is produced 
 by the passage in the first act, where Faust receives from 
 Mephistopheles the key and the instructions for his journey 
 to the Mothers: {Faust strikes a decidedly commanding 
 attitude with the key) . Mephistopheles {observing him) : 
 
 “There, that is right! ’T will join and slave-like follow 
 thee to light.” Or, let us listen to the chorus of rose- 
 strewing angels at the burial of Faust in the fif th act : 
 
 Sftofen, iljr blenbenben, 
 
 ÜBalfam üerfenbcnben ! 
 glatternbe, fdjroebenbe, 
 
 §dmlid) bclebenbe, 
 
 Stodgldn beflügelte, 
 
 Änofpen entfiegelte, 
 
 @ilet 3U blüfjn. 
 
 grüfjling entfpriefje, 
 Purpur imb ©riin! 
 
35 6 
 
 Gbe %ite of (Soetbe 
 
 £ragt ^ßarabiefe 
 ®em üftuljenbcn Ijin.* 
 
 Is that simple? Is it beautiful? Perhaps the objection 
 may be raised that it is not worth while to dispute about 
 matters of taste. Let us admit it. We might perhaps say, 
 then : Whoever considers the style of the First Part beautiful 
 cannot be pleased with the pompous, often intricate, style 
 of the Second Part. And one who likes the latter cannot 
 possibly have a right appreciation of the strength and simple 
 beauty, the matchless sturdiness and purely human tender- 
 ness, of the former. Hence whoever considers the First 
 Part a supreme achievement, an unsurpassed masterpiece 
 of poetry, must not allow his veneration for Goethe to 
 prevent him from confessing that neither in the substance 
 or form of the Second Part, as a whole, can he find the 
 same unmixed pleasure. That it is rieh in beautiful in- 
 dividual passages is beyond question. Indeed one who 
 assumes a critical and skeptical attitude toward the whole 
 will rejoice all the more over the individual passages in 
 which he finds beauty and an occasion to recognise it as 
 such. 
 
 But we dare not close here. In order to do justice to 
 the Second Part we must cast one more glance at the whole 
 drama. Faust is not the embodiment of an abstract idea; 
 he is a man, an individual, and hence, as the hero of the 
 drama, has human feelings and human strivings, and be- 
 cause, in his impatient idealism, he runs into hindrances, 
 he is deeply wounded, imbitter ed, and driven to despair. 
 
 * Roses, ye glowing ones, 
 
 Balsam -bestowing ones! 
 
 Fluttering, hovering, 
 
 Life-founts still covering, 
 
 Branchlets with plumy wing, 
 
 Buds ripe for opening, 
 
 Haste your full sheen ! 
 
 Spring show its splendour, 
 
 Purple and green, 
 
 Paradise tender 
 The sleeper serene. 
 
tfauöt 
 
 357 
 
 Grasping violently after the enjoyment of life and activity 
 denied him, after the All and the Absolute, he remains un- 
 satisfied, because he storms through his life so immoderately 
 and unrestrainedly, tili, in harmonious esthetical education 
 and ethical social activity, he finds moderation and self- 
 limitation and learns to keep within bounds. Such is Faust 
 and such was Goethe. Hence Faust was the life-work of the 
 poet. Herein alone lies the unity of this “ incommensurable ” 
 work , 55 which, after the manner of Götz, dramatises the 
 history of Faust, and, like an epic, makes him pass through 
 a whole human life before our eyes. But in the process the 
 poet allows the drama to grow beyond the fate of this one 
 individual and become a picture of the time, nay more, a 
 picture of the world and mankind. Faust, this great in- 
 dividual, this gifted man, now becomes man in general, 
 the representative of mankind. His tragedy becomes the 
 human tragedy, his drama the drama of the human race, 
 his salvation and admission to heaven a symbol of the 
 victory of the good in history. Thus the individual is 
 widened out to the universal human. Therein lies the 
 greatness of the play. But therein lay also for the poet the 
 difficulty of completing and binding together the whole to a 
 well-rounded dramatic unity. Whereas in the Urfaust the 
 dramatic bore a deep lyric tinge, in the Second Part it 
 assumes a marked epic form. 
 
 The fact that Faust never fails to produce a deep im- 
 pression is due to this widening out to the universal human. 
 Since in this single play we all find portrayed one side or 
 another of ourselves, our strivings and experiences, it seems 
 flesh of our own flesh and bone of our own bone and always 
 arouses our interest. This interest never fades; it cannot 
 fade. The longer we live, the more we advance in know- 
 ledge and activity, in victory and defeat, in good and evil, 
 the higher we climb toward the summits of humanity, and the 
 deeper we see down into the depths of human life and the 
 human breast, with its dark shadows of evil and sorrow, 
 and its triumphant core of goodness and power, the more 
 we become inwardly attached to Goethe’s Faust, the more it 
 
35 8 
 
 £be Xife of Goetbe 
 
 becomes to us a revelation of our own lives and strivings, 
 and the more it must win our love. 
 
 We may count ourselves happy if it is, above all, these 
 two principles which we derive from it and understand, the 
 proud declaration, “ Passive enjoyment makes one common,” 
 and the precious assurance, “ Whoever strives unswervingly 
 can find through us redemption.” Thus in the final analysis 
 Faust is after all a deeply ethical work. It protects us 
 against all sorts of evil spirits and holds up before us that 
 ethical idealism, which learns, and must learn, to seize a 
 firm foothold on the real ground of this present world and 
 to find in it our tasks and duties, our sorrows and joys, the 
 gospel of the reconciliation of the modern man with life on 
 the earth and with the divine revealed in it, the optimistic 
 confession of faith in the triumph of the Kingdom of God 
 on earth. 
 
VIII 
 
 LAST DAYS 
 
 Goethe wamed by illness to set his house in Order — The last works he 
 finished — Interests and occupations of his last days — His last 
 distinguished guests — His last birthday — Visit to Ilmenau — 
 Wanderers Nachtlied — Goethe sets his house in order — His 
 religion — Last illness and death — The funeral — Goethe’s sig- 
 nificance to Germany and the whole world . 
 
 I N November, 1830, a hemorrhage brought Goethe near 
 death ; but it was wonderful how quickly, for a man of 
 eighty-one, he recovered from the severe attack. It 
 was but a warning that he should make the most of the 
 short spaee of time, which, according to human calculation, 
 he might still expect to live, and that he should in every 
 respect set his house in order. With this in mind he wrote 
 to Knebel: “My dearest friend, since we have had the good 
 fortune to recover from this attack, we intend to enjoy the 
 days which may still be granted us and see to it that there 
 be for us no lack of activity for ourselves and others.” 
 
 And he really did see to it that there was no lack of such 
 activity, as is proved by his work on the fourth part of Dich- 
 tung und Wahrheit, which he had not finished until now, 
 and which continued the narrative of his life up to his ar- 
 rival in Weimar. It is proved above all by the completion 
 of Faust, of which we have had a detailed account. Only 
 when this “chief business” was done could he say to Ecker- 
 mann : “ My further life I can now look upon as a pure gift, 
 and it is now at bottom immaterial what I do, and whether 
 I do anything at all or not.” But in reality that was only 
 
 359 
 
Zhe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 36° 
 
 his “chief business.” Along with it he continued his 
 “ supervisory ” duties, that is, his share of the administrative 
 government, so far as he had kept any such duties. His old 
 interests still remained ; he still retained, as he himself says, 
 “the faculty of recognising with enthusiasm the good, the 
 beautiful, and the excellent.” In the foreground stood, as 
 always, art and nature. By the many things that came to 
 him and were laid before him from all sides his interest was 
 kept alive, and he in turn endeavoured to stimulate others 
 and help them. He was interested far less in the July 
 revolution than in the controversy between Cuvier and 
 Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. He was pleased to see that through 
 the efforts of the latter the “synthetic” method of dealing 
 with nature was gaining recognition in France, and he hoped 
 that in the investigations of nature in that country mind 
 would now rule victoriously over matter. He saw therein 
 the triumph of his own cause, the recognition of his labours 
 in the field of natural science. He sent a French translation 
 of his Metamorphose der Pflanzen to the Academy of Sciences 
 at Paris, and was grateful for the favourable reception with 
 which it met. Along with his continued work and study 
 in metamorphosis, the theory of colours, geology, and 
 meteorology, he read “for recreation and invigoration ” 
 Galileo’s Dialogues, and found them “most edifying” 
 reading; for here lies “the Christmas feast of our more 
 modern times.” 
 
 Added to all this was his never-ending inclination to 
 make himself acquainted with the works of foreign litera- 
 tures, and, as might have been expected, he did not always 
 come upon things that were edifying. His criticism of 
 Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris was unusually adverse: 
 “ A literature of despair out of which step by Step every- 
 thing true and esthetical is being self-banished.” On the 
 other hand he enjoyed reading Plutarch’s Lives and Euripi- 
 des. He was Glied with admiration for Euripides because 
 of his great, unique talent, as well as the wide field that he 
 covered and the powerful emotions that he portrayed. 
 
 Thus his life remained a life full of activity and work. 
 
Xast 
 
 361 
 
 And since, after the death of August, the “ duties of a house- 
 father” had again devolved upon him, there was no lack 
 of all sorts of petty cares and annoyances, as though he were 
 destined not to remain a stranger to anything human. At 
 the dismissal of a cook he breathed the sigh of relief , “ Freed 
 from this bürden I was able to take up important work.” 
 
 He had time for all these things, both great and small, 
 because outwardly his life went along without disturbance, 
 “calm and composed,” as he himself says. And yet very 
 many stränge eyes peered into the garden of his monastery. 
 The number of visitors who wished to see the famous man 
 and pay him their homage did not grow smaller during his 
 last days. Beside the acquaintances and friends in Weimar 
 and Jena, who were seen at his home, there came the curious 
 and the admiring from all Germany, indeed from the whole 
 civilised world . The guest of highest rank in his last year 
 was the King of Württemberg, a thoroughly clever man, 
 but wholly lacking in poetry. Goethe was all the more 
 pleased that the King “seemed to have enjoyed his visit.” 
 The most illustrious of his guests was Alexander von Hum- 
 boldt, to whom he was “highly grateful for a few hours of 
 frank, friendly conversation,” and whose enormous störe of 
 knowledge he admired as much as his “incredible social 
 influence.” Those whose society he loved most were those 
 nearest him, his daughter-in-law Ottilie, in whose praise he 
 said that she was always entertaining and always had some- 
 thing new to öfter, and his grandsons, particularly Wölfehen, 
 who won an especially warm place in his grandfather’s 
 heart. It is touching to see how much the great man was 
 wrapped up in this little world of human beings and what 
 importance he attached to whatever they thought, said, or 
 did. 
 
 So he preferred to spend all his last days in his own house. 
 He did not even drive out regularly. Only once did he go 
 away from Weimar. It was at the time of his last birthday, 
 in August, 1831, when he spent a few days in Ilmenau. Here 
 he visited once more the old familiär places full of memories 
 of youthful days and was especially glad to be able to show 
 
3 62 
 
 Zbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 them to his grandsons, whom he had taken with him. On 
 the wall of the lonely little wood hut on the Gickelhahn he 
 read the verses which he had written there on the 6th of 
 September, 1780: 
 
 Über allen ©ipfeln 
 3ft 9tul), 
 
 3n allen SBipfdn 
 Spiireft bu 
 
 tanm einen §>aucf); 
 
 £)ie SSögelein fcbroetgen im Sßalbe. 
 
 SSBarte nnr, halbe 
 
 Stu^eft bn auch.* 
 
 ‘ Yes, wait, and ere long thou, too, shalt rest,” he repeated 
 in a soft, melancholy tone, and wiped away the tears which 
 flowed down over his cheeks. Even in this rural quiet he 
 did not entirely escape ovations; but here they were more 
 spontaneous and were therefore less burdensome to him. 
 
 Feeling that he was rapidly approaching the boundary 
 drawn for human life, he set his house in order, even in out- 
 ward things. His “ testamentary troubles” extend through 
 many of his letters and show how tenderly and faithfully he 
 remembered those who had stood near him in life. For 
 example, he set apart the income from his Briefwechsel 
 mit Zelter, which he himself prepared for publication, for 
 Zelter’s unmarried daughters. He did not like to speak of 
 dying. He was too healthy a nature for that, and life still 
 had too much to offer him for him to care to lose himself in 
 thoughts of death. We know that, as he never grew tired of 
 life, he clung firmly to the belief in immortality. His prac- 
 tical thought on the subject was this : “ A man of character 
 
 * On every mountain brow 
 Is peace, 
 
 No tree but now 
 
 The winds fast cease 
 To wave its crest; 
 
 The little birds hush their song. 
 
 Then wait — ere long 
 
 Thou. too, shalt rest. 
 
363 
 
 Xaßt Bass 
 
 and energy, who expects to be something worth while in this 
 life, and hence has to labour, strive, and struggle daily, 
 leaves the future worid to take care of itself, and is active 
 and useful in this worid.” Having long ago become a sage 
 there were no longer any essential changes to be made in 
 his philosophy of the worid. He remained the pious pan- 
 theist that he had been since the days of his youth. But in 
 his relation to Christianity he still had some things to atone 
 for. Not as though he had feit a desire to change his per- 
 sonal attitude toward it. The revelation of the divine in the 
 human and the ethical remained to him, as ever, no higher 
 than the revelation of the Supreme Being in the sun, in 
 light, and the generative power of God, before which he 
 bowed, just as he gladly showed worshipful reverence for 
 Christ, the divine revelation of the highest principle of 
 morality. Even his aversion for the Cross, from which he 
 derived no comfort, either esthetic or religious, remained 
 unchanged. In the Church he now saw as before something 
 “feeble and changeable,” and in its decrees he found a 
 “great dealof stupidity.” But historically, in certain peri- 
 ods of his life, particularly during the years after his return 
 from Italy, he had been far from just toward Christianity. 
 Now, eleven days before his death, Eckermann gave him an 
 opportunity to testify concerning the gospels that “they 
 are permeated with the reflection of a majesty, which pro- 
 ceeds from the person of Christ, and is of as divine a nature 
 as any manifestation of the divine that has ever appeared 
 on the earth.” “The human mind will never advance be- 
 yond the majesty and moral culture of Christianity, as it 
 glistens and shines in the gospels.” What is meant by this 
 is shown by what he said of that story of the New Testament 
 which teils that one day when Christ was walking on the sea 
 Peter came out on the waves to meet him and began to 
 sink: “This is one of the most beautiful legends, and I love 
 it best of all. In it is contained the great lesson that man 
 through faith and fresh courage will come off victorious in 
 the most difhcult undertaking, but he is straightway lost 
 when the least doubt comes over him.” Himself, in his 
 
£be Xlfe of 6oetbe 
 
 3 6 4 
 
 own way, a man of “faith,” he could thus, with liberality 
 and pure humanity, admit even a miracle, the dearest child 
 of faith. This recognition of the moral majesty and power of 
 Christianity is at the same time a proof that his pantheism 
 had long ago become more comprehensive, and richer in 
 content, and that along with the natural it had conceded 
 equal rights to the moral. “ For the independent conscience 
 is the sun of thy moral day.” Then for the first time Goethe 
 was wholly pious and could say: Everything is God’s. 
 
 The last gap was now filled and death could come. And 
 it came at the right time, before age, which had not quite 
 passed by him without leaving a trace, broke down his 
 strong body and destroyed his triumphant spirit. In the 
 rough March days of the year 1832 he took a cold; on the 
 iöth he was obliged to take to his bed. The last entry in his 
 diary runs: “Spent the whole day in bed on account of ill- 
 ness.” It was a catarrhal fever, which his physician, Privy 
 Councillor Vogel of Weimar, immediately considered dan- 
 gerous. But at first Goethe got better again and had already 
 resumed his usual occupations, when during the night of the 
 i9th chills and violent pains in the ehest set in. Oppression 
 of the lungs filled him with anxiety and torturing unrest, 
 the features of his face contracted, his colour faded to an 
 ashy grey, his eyes receded into their sockets and looked 
 blurred and weak. His senses began to fail him and he was 
 at times unconscious; the intervals of clear consciousness 
 came farther and farther apart and grew shorter and shorter. 
 It became hard for him to speak and his words grew indis- 
 tinct. Death might come at any moment. It cannot be 
 established with certainty what were his last words. He is 
 reported to have said to his daughter-in-law : “Now, little 
 woman, give me your good hand.” To the servant he called 
 out: “Open also the second shutter in the room, so that 
 more light may come in.” From this command the words 
 “More light!” have been chosen as symbolical and are 
 often quoted as Goethe’s last utterance. When his tongue 
 completely failed him he drew signs in the air with the 
 index finger of his right hand. Those who were present 
 
3 6 5 
 
 Xaöt 2)a^ö 
 
 assert with positiveness that they recognised the letter W. 
 At half past eleven — it was the 22d of March, 1832 — “the 
 dying man settled back comfortably in the left corner of 
 the easy chair, and it was long before those standing about 
 him could realise that Goethe had been taken away. Thus 
 an uncommonly peaceful death made full the measure of 
 happiness of a richly endowed existence.” With these 
 words his physician closes the account of Goethe’s last 
 illness. 56 
 
 The news of his death aroused universal sympathy in 
 Weimar and the whole surrounding region, and it was 
 natural that many should desire once more to behold the 
 face of the great departed. Their request was acceded to, 
 though it was not in keeping with Goethe’s views. So he 
 lay in state on the ground floor of his house, dressed in a 
 garment of white satin in the old Florentine style, his head 
 crowned with laurel. 57 A black velvet cloth, set with 
 silver, covered the lower part of his body up to his breast. 
 In the hall hung Goethe’s coat of arms, a six-pointed silver 
 star in the blue field. The opening of the door was draped 
 in black and above it were placed, in letters of gold, the 
 words from Hermann und Dorothea, 
 
 ®eS TobeS tül)renbeS ÜBilb ftet)t 
 
 91 id)t als ©rfjrecfen bem SBeifen, unb nid)t als (Üinbe bem grommen. 
 
 Seiten brängt eS inS Geben jnri'uf unb lehret it)n fabeln; 
 
 Diefetn ftcirfteS, gu fünftigem £eil, im Srübfal bie Hoffnung: 
 
 Reiben tnirbgum Geben ber £ob.* 
 
 The funeral occurred at five o’clock in the aftemoon of 
 the 2Öth of March, and the sarcophagus was placed beside 
 that containing the remains of Schiller, in the grand-ducal 
 burial vault. Many thousands of people filled the streets; 
 the windows, even the roofs and the trees, along the avenue 
 
 * The picture of death, though affecting, 
 
 Fills not the wise man with terror, is not the end to the pious. 
 
 Back it urges the former to life, and teaches him action; 
 
 Thus for the latter in sorrow it strengthens the hope of salvation ; 
 
 So to both of them death becomes life. 
 
3 66 
 
 Gbe Xtfe of (Boetbe 
 
 through which the procession passed, were occupied. In the 
 chapel a chorus sang the words, written by Goethe and set 
 to music by Zelter, 
 
 Saft fafjren E)in ba$ 9lHgupd)tige ! 
 
 3f)r fudjt bei ibm nergebeng Ölat; 
 
 3n bem Vergangenen lebt bas lüdjtige, 
 
 Verewigt ftd) in fdiöner lat. 
 
 Unb fo gewinnt fid) baö ßebenbige 
 Dnrd) golg’ auf golge neue traft; 
 
 Denn bie ©efinnung, bie beftänbige, 
 
 ©ie madjt allein ben Vfenfcfyen bauerljaft. 
 
 ©o löft fidf jene grojie grage 
 Vad) unferm gweiten Vaterlanb. 
 
 Denn ba£ Veftänbige bcr irb’fdjen läge 
 Verbürgt une ewigen Veftanb.* 
 
 The funeral oration was delivered by Röhr, the Superin- 
 tendent general and chief chaplain in ordinary to the Grand 
 Duke. According to our feeling it was not entirely equal 
 to the significance of the hour. Chancellor von Müller, in 
 words of gratitude, gave the sarcophagus into the keeping of 
 the Lord Marshai. A short time afterward the tomb was 
 closed over all that was mortal of Goethe. 
 
 What he himself had said, a few days before his death, 
 of the setting sun, “Great, even in its departure,” may be 
 
 * Bid all too fleeting things adieu. 
 
 They know no counsel for your needs; 
 
 The past eterne lives, stanch and true, 
 
 Immortalised in noble deeds. 
 
 And thus the living gathers force 
 
 Through age on age in endless chain; 
 
 The heart ne’er swerving from its course 
 Alone makes man for aye remain. 
 
 And so that weighty question ’s solved 
 Of what our future state shall be; 
 
 For lasting things, on earth evolved, 
 
 Assure our souls eternity. 
 
Xast 2)as$ 
 
 3 6 7 
 
 hung as a fitting motto over our picture of the whole last 
 period of his earthly life, including the final hour and the 
 end. Great and noble as he had been in life, he continued 
 to be in death. 
 
 At the moment of his death his country was far from 
 realising the full significance of the loss. It was not possible 
 for the people to measure what they had once possessed 
 in him, but now possessed no more. Even we of to-day 
 have had to learn this for ourselves, have had to conquer 
 and drive away all sorts of prejudices which existed at 
 that time. That Goethe was immoral and egoistic, that 
 he was un-German and ungodly, — such reproaches, showing 
 utter ignorance of his nature and character, were heard 
 even during his lifetime, but oftener immediately after his 
 death. We know to-day how unjust and unfounded these 
 accusations were. On this point we need waste no further 
 words. 
 
 Nor do we need to sum up in a few sentences what Goethe 
 was and what he achieved. This whole book is an endeavour 
 to make that clear. But we may at least, in closing, em- 
 phasise the fact that, as a poet, an artist, and a man, he was 
 to Germany a possession of inestimable value, because he 
 created and assured for his people their position of spiritual 
 power in the nineteenth Century. The poet Goethe and the 
 philosopher Goethe may divide between them whatever of 
 soul-stirring tragedy and wealth of thought is contained in 
 Faust; his lyric poetry remains as young, fresh, and beautiful, 
 as on the day when it was written, and opens our eyes to 
 a world of beauty ; through Prometheus, Iphigenie, and Her- 
 mann und Dorothea, he made accessible to us classical an- 
 tiquity; in West-östlicher Divan he blended two worlds into 
 one, in the universalistic Spirit of Herder; he leads us back to 
 Spinoza, like whom he was full of religion; and leads us 
 forward to Darwin, and, in the realmsof nature and history, 
 opens for us a view of the whole as well as of the origin and 
 development of the parts. Above all this hovers the idea of 
 pure humanity, like a sun, which we must not seek pedantic- 
 ally in the form of a systematic philosophy of the world, 
 
3 68 
 
 £be %itc of ßoetbe 
 
 but in its reflected colour splendour, which shines out of all 
 his poetical works, and, what is more, out of his whole 
 personality. 
 
 Thus he, who was not devoted to politics, extends his 
 hand for common activity to the other great man of the 
 nation in the nineteenth Century. Without Goethe, no 
 Bismarck; without Goethe no German Empire. In order 
 that the Germans might become politically one nation, they 
 must first become spiritually one nation and feel themselves 
 one nation, with a common language, a common education, 
 and, we should like to add, a common faith. Such a united 
 people has been created by its poets and thinkers, above all 
 by Goethe, the most perfect representative of German art 
 and the German nature as a whole. For the faith of his 
 people he has left the legacy of recognising everywhere a 
 divine power, and of showing just and pious reverence for 
 everything human, wherever it be found; for man belongs 
 also to God. 
 
 Therefore Goethe’s “pure humanity ” is the goal toward 
 which all Germans must strive. In this sense he was the 
 first stadtholder in the realm of the German spirit, the 
 first imperial chancellor in spiritually united Germany, as 
 through him Weimar became the first spiritual Capital of the 
 Empire. 
 
 But Goethe belongs not alone to his people; he belongs 
 to the whole world . By the side of Homer and Shakespeare 
 he is the only world poet who speaks his own peculiar 
 national language and yet to all nations and, we may now 
 add, to all times is comprehensible. 
 
 What distinguishes him above all others, even the great - 
 est representatives, of his nation is the universal character of 
 his writings and activities, the complete harmony of his 
 own human nature, which does not represent merely one 
 side of our being, even though it be the deepest, as was the 
 case with Luther, or the most comprehensive, with Bis- 
 marck, but reveals the human possibilities in a degree of 
 richness, fulness, and completeness that was never known 
 before and has not existed since. He was really the “ most 
 
Xast 2>a£0 
 
 3 6 9 
 
 human of men,” and he considered that he should have 
 attained the highest title of fame if it should some day be 
 said of him: “For I too have been a human being.” On 
 this he based his claim that the doors of Paradise should be 
 opened for him. It is for this reason that he Stands so near 
 us all, and yet so high above us. He was what we all are, 
 and yet what we all have still to become; taking all in all, 
 he was a human being. 
 
 Goethe lives on among us; immortal, as everything great 
 is immortal; a living influence and creating life; ever his 
 own individual seif and ever more and more our possession, 
 the more we desire and learn to make him ours. 
 
 ©d)on Iärtgft oerbreitet fid)’§ in ganje @cf)aren, 
 
 (Sigenfte, roa$ itjm allein gehört. 
 
 (Sr glanzt un3 nor, toie ein dornet entfcf)tt)inben&, 
 
 Unenblicf) 2id)t mit feinem ßid)t Derbinbenb ! * 
 
 * Long since hath gone to yearning souls unnumbered 
 That treasure most peculiarly his own. 
 
 Departing, comet-like, our path he lighteth 
 And countless shining orbs with his uniteth. 
 
 VOL. — III. 24 
 
NOTES 
 
 371 
 
NOTES 
 
 ABBREVIATIONS 
 
 W. — The Weimar edition of Goethe’s Werke, erste Abteilung, poetical, 
 biographical, and esthetical writings. 
 
 NS. — do., zweite Abteilung, Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften. 
 
 Tb. — do., dritte Abteilung, Tagebücher. 
 
 Br. — do., vierte Abteilung, Briefe. 
 
 H. — The Hempel edition of Goethe’s Werke. 
 
 DW .—Dichtung und Wahrheit, Weimar edition. 
 
 G J. — Goethejahrbuch. 
 
 SGG. — Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft. 
 
 1. That this was a mere excuse is proved by his letter to the Duke, 
 in which he gives as the reason for his haste the urgency of the memorial 
 which he had promised Herr vom Stein. 
 
 2. Here is one of many instances: In July, 1819, Goethe wrote 
 
 to Willemer: “ What bliss it would be for me to see once more on the 
 
 charming, serene Main the dear friends whom I truly love, and to pledge 
 anew the rest of life.” It may be noted in this connection that during 
 the first years after their Separation Goethe directed his letters, with 
 very few exceptions, to both husband and wife, or to Willemer alone, 
 whereas, on the other side, Marianne was the one who carried on the 
 correspondence. 
 
 3. In the same sense Goethe defines lyric poetry as that poetry which 
 shows enthusiastic excitement. The connection in which he gives this 
 definition is worthy of note. He is seeking to distinguish between the 
 three kinds of poetry. While in the case of dramatic and epic poetry 
 he applies the objective test, asking whether an event is told as past or 
 takes place before our eyes in the present, in the case of lyric poetry he 
 uses the subjective test of the mental state of the poet. Hence he dis- 
 covers lyric poetry everywhere where the mental state of the poet is 
 apparent. 
 
 4. Goethe avoided abnormal subjects in his poetry, because they were 
 too far removed from the truth, toward which his soul was constantly 
 striving (W., xxviii., 144)- 
 
 5. The poems of the Leipziger Liederbuch which were given a place 
 among Goethe’s collected writings, some of them with new titles and 
 with slight alterations, are eleven in number, namely: Die schöne 
 Nacht, Glück und Traum, Lebendiges Andenken, Glück der Entfernung, 
 
 373 
 
374 
 
 Zhe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 An Luna, Brautnacht, Schadenfreude, Unschuld, Scheintod, Am Flusse, 
 and Die Freuden. Although the poet inserted them among the pro- 
 ducts of later periods, when he prepared his collected poems for publica- 
 tion, it is nevertheless an easy matter to recognise them as mementos 
 of those Leipsic years. 
 
 6. Cf. Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe, Nov. io, 1823. The Paria, 
 however, must have been in existence, at least in part, as early as 1811 
 (cf. Br., xxii., 44). 
 
 7. Arias belonging to the operetta are mentioned in Goethe’s diary 
 as early as the 5th of August, 1781. Die Fischerin was performed on the 
 28th of July, 1782. Concerning the source of Erlkönig cf. G J ., xxi., 263. 
 
 8. The very probable supposition that Der untreue Knabe was com- 
 posed as early as 1771 finds support in the fact that, like Heidenröslein. 
 it is a remodelled Version of a folk-song, such as Goethe collected for 
 Herder in Alsatia, and that in the Summer of 1774 it is mentioned as 
 having been in existence for some time; “it had only rarely crossed his 
 lips.” 
 
 9. Goethe’s Poems set to music. Poems by Goethe were very 
 early set to music. When the lyric attempts of the young man of twenty, 
 now known as the Leipziger Liederbuch, were first published in 1769, 
 they appeared set to music by Bernhard Theodor Breitkopf (cf. vol. i., 
 p. 86. In this Breitkopf publication Goethe’s name is not mentioned 
 either on the title page or in connection with the songs), and two months 
 later Georg Simon Löhlein’s melody to the Neujahrslied was printed. 
 After that there were rather longer intervals during which there were 
 no settings, which finds its explanation in the fact that Goethe usually 
 published his songs separately in various periodicals. Thus from 1770 
 to 1774 there are no musical compositions to his words, from 1775 to the 
 end of the eighties comparatively few, among others those of the not 
 very important composers Andre, Kayser, von Seckendorff, and J. F. 
 Reichardt, to whom the poet showed the honour of sending them his 
 songs to be set to music before they were printed. Matters took an 
 entirely different turn when the larger collections of his poems appeared 
 in 1789, 1800, and 1806. From that time on there were few musicians 
 who did not recognise the value of these treasures, and by masters as well 
 as by amateurs Goethe’s admonition, “Never read them, always sing 
 them,” has been well heeded. Apart from Shakespeare no poet of any 
 country has so generally and profoundly inspired composers as Goethe, 
 and through the compositions of Mozart and Beethoven, Reichardt and 
 Zelter, Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn, Loewe, Robert Franz, 
 and Brahms, they have gained a wide-spread popularity, which, without 
 the aid of this music, they would certainly never have achieved in equal 
 measure. There are some great masters, to be sure, whom we are sur- 
 prised not to find in the list of composers. Gluck could no longer be 
 moved by Goethe’s poems to any new creation, although in the evening of 
 his life he composedthe music* to seven of the most beautiful of Klopstock’s 
 
 * Betonte, the Word which the writer o£ the above note uses. quoting Goethe, who 
 employed it in speaking o£ Gluck’s Iphigenie, conveys the double meaning of “ provide 
 with tones ” and “ emphasise." — C. 
 
Bot es 
 
 375 
 
 ödes. Philipp Emanuel Bach also allowed Goethe’s lyrics to escape him, 
 and J. A. P. Schulz, the author of Lieder im Volkston, confined himself to 
 the music to Gotz, of which he published only one piece, and that one of 
 little importance. Nobody would suspect from Joseph Haydn’s songs 
 that he had for six decades the good fortune to be Goethe’s Contemporary; 
 and it is a very stränge thing that Karl Maria von Weber, who was a man 
 of literary culture, in the choice of texts for his musical compositions, 
 should have neglected completely the classic German writers for Müchler. 
 Gubitz, Castelli, and others of their kind. It was a happy decree of fate 
 that at least one of Goethe’s poems was brought to Mozart’s notice, 
 Das Veilchen, which under his hand became one of the fairest fiowers 
 of lyric-dramatic music. The first great musician to come under Goethe’s 
 spell and to penetrate his works deeply was Beethoven. In addition to his 
 music to Egmont, he composed, or at least sketched, the music to three 
 selections from Faust, one each from Claudine and Das J ahrmarktsfest zu 
 Plundersweilern, and nineteen songs. Among these compositions are 
 such masterpieces as Freudvoll und leidvoll. Kennst du das Land, Wie 
 herrlich leuchtet mir die Natur, and Wonne der Wehmut. Schubert entered 
 more fully than even Beethoven into the spirit of Goethe, “to whose 
 glorious poems he virtually owed the education which made of him the 
 German singer,” as Schubert’s most intimate friend Spaun said in 1817, 
 in a letter directed to Goethe. Schubert wrote not less than eighty 
 compositions to Goethe’s texts. We need mention here only Gretchen 
 am Spinnrad and Schäfers Klagelied (composed at the age of seventeen), 
 Erlkönig, Nähe des Geliebten, Wandrers Nachtlied, Rastlose Liebe, Jägers 
 Abendlied, An den Mond, Der Fischer, Der König in Thule (all of these, 
 together with thirty-seven other Goethian texts, composed at the age of 
 eighteen), and, further, Geheimes, and the songs of the Harpist, Mignon, 
 Suleika, etc. It will always remain a source of the highest astonishment 
 that the young master should have possessed the commanding genius to 
 force into the mould of musical composition such powerful blocks of 
 refractory material as the poems, Grenzen der Menschheit, Prometheus, 
 Gesang der Geister über den Wassern, and An Schwager Kronos. Robert 
 Schumann was not quite so felicitous in his twenty-six compositions, 
 though it must be said that his scenes from Faust contain by far the most 
 beautiful music that has yet been written to the Second Part of the 
 drama. Of Mendelssohn’s fourteen works Die erste Walpurgisnacht 
 deserves special praise, as it is one of the best oratorio compositions of the 
 nineteenth Century; further, the overture Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt, 
 the sonnet Die Liebende schreibt, and the quartettes Auf dem See, Früh- 
 zeitiger Frühling, and Die Nachtigal, sie war entfernt. Spohr’s eleven 
 songs are almost all insignificant, and even Karl Loewe, who wrote com- 
 positions to forty-three of Goethe’s poems, failed in the most of them 
 to rise to the height of his best creations; still there are some master- 
 pieces among them, such as Erlkönig, Der getreue Eckart, and Hochzeitlied . 
 Robert Franz’s seven and Franz Liszt’s nine songs are unfortunately 
 very uneven, whereas Johannes Brahms, in his fourteen works, is at his 
 very best. Deserving of special mention are the glorious fragment 
 Harzreise im Winter, Der Gesang der Parzen, Wechsellied zum T anze, the 
 
3 7 6 
 
 Zbc Xife of (Boetbc 
 
 verses from Jery und Bätely, and Alexis und Dora. As Faust has already 
 been referred to we may mention further the compositions of Prince 
 Radziwill, Karl Eberwein, C. G. Reissiger, Julius Rietz, Eduard Lassen, 
 P. J. von Lindpaintner, L. Schlösser, H. H. Pierson, H. Litolff, H. Zöllner, 
 and A. Bungert; further, Hector Berlioz’s dramatic legend La Damnation 
 de Faust (un-Goethian, but full of great musical beauties, and the char- 
 acter of Mephisto cleverly conceived), Gounod’s melodious, extraordinarily 
 populär Opera Faust, Liszt’s Faust-Symphonie, Rubinstein’s Faust, ein 
 musikalisches Charakterbild jür Orchester, Arrigo Boito’s opera Mefistofele, 
 and finally Richard Wagner’s Sieben Kompositionen zu Goethes Faust 
 (manuscript in Wahnfried) and his very Superior work Eine Faustouvertüre. 
 
 How strong an influence Goethe has exerted upon other composers 
 may be seen from the following statistics, which, be it remembered, take 
 into account only compositions to the poems, and not the music to his 
 numerous operettas, dramas, etc. The numbers of printed compositions 
 to his songs are as follows: Die schöne Nacht, 9; Tischlied, 9; Es war ein 
 
 fauler Schäfer, 10; Der Musensohn, 12; Der Junggesell und der Mühlbach, 
 12; Der Rattenfänger, 12; Ergo Bibamus, 13; An die Erwählte, 13; Heiss 
 mich nicht reden, heiss mich schweigen, 14; Es war eine Ratt’ im Kellernest, 
 15; Auf dem See, 16; Mit einem gemalten Band, 16; Geistesgruss, 16; So 
 lasst mich scheinen, 16; An die Türen will ich schleichen, 16; Wer sich der 
 Einsamkeit ergibt, 17; Nachgefühl, 17; Die Bekehrte, 17; Es war einmal 
 ein König, 18; Sehnsucht, 18; Ach neige, du Schmerzensreiche , 19; Vanitas, 
 19; März, 20 (?); Der Sänger, 21; Trost in Tränen, 22; Neue Liebe, rieues 
 Leben, 23; An Mignon, 23; Die Spröde, 26; Freudvoll und leidvoll, 27; 
 Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt, 30; Wonne der Wehmut, 30; Frühzeitiger 
 Frühling, 30 'Schäfers Klagelied, 30; Ihr verblühet, süsse Rosen, 30; Bundes- 
 lied, 31; Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen ass, 32 ; An die Entfernte, 32; Das 
 Veilchen, 35; Blumengruss, 37; Schweizerlied, 38; Jägers Abendlied, 40; 
 Meine Ruh ist hin, 43; Nachtgesang, 43; An den Mond, 45; Erster Verlust, 
 48; Erlkönig, 48: Mailied ( Zwischen Weizen und Korn), 30; Mailied (Wie 
 herrlich leuchtet mir die Natur), 54; Heidenröslein, 56; Der Fischer, 58; 
 Der Königin Thule, 58; N ur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, 64; Rastlose Liebe, 66; 
 Mignon (Kennst du das Land), 75 ; Gefunden, 79; Nähe des Geliebten, 85; 
 Wandrers Nachtlied (Uber allen Gipfeln), 107 ; Wandrers Nachtlied (Der du 
 von dem Himmel bist), 117. 
 
 The very large number of Goethe’s poems that have been set to music 
 less than nine times have not been considered in the above Hst. 
 
 What an influence the poet has been exerting on musicians in recent 
 years is apparent from the fact that Richard Strauss has set to music 
 Wandrers Sturmlied and Pilgers Morgenlied, while Hugo Wolf has written 
 compositions to no less than fifty-three of Goethe’s longer and shorter 
 poems. — M. F. 
 
 10. “What is the general? The individual case.” NS., xi., 127; 
 H., xix., 195 (Sprüche in Prosa, No. 899). 
 
 11. See the letter from Sömmering to Merck of the 8th of October, 
 1782, in Briefe an Merck, herausg. von Wagner, p. 354 /. 
 
 12. Goethe’s various scientific writings appeared in the years 1817 to 
 1824 in a periodical which he published under the title, Zur Naturwissen- 
 
IRotes 
 
 377 
 
 Schaft überhaupt, besonders zur Morphologie, Erfahrung, Betrachtung, 
 Folgerung, durch Lebensereignisse verbunden, to which were further given 
 two separate titles, one of them, Zur Morphologie, embracing chiefly 
 botanical and osteological articles, while the other, Zur Naturwissen- 
 schaft überhaupt, included geological, meteorological, and optical con- 
 tributions. Each group fills two volumes. 
 
 13. Cf. Zur Morphologie (NS., vi., 207), Einwirkung der neueren 
 Philosophie (NS., xi., 49), Campagne in Frankreich (W., xxxiii., 31). 
 
 14. Goethe’s doctrine of vegetable metamorphosis has been misin- 
 terpreted by some to mean that he assumed a transformation of full- 
 grown organs into other organs; others questioned the admissibility 
 of the conception of metamorphosis unless that assumption were made. 
 In view of this it is interesting to know that transformations of perfectly 
 mature organs of a plant into organs of an entirely different structure 
 and function, namely from petals to foliage leaves, really occur. Cf. 
 Winkler, Berichte der deutschen botanischen Gesellschaft (1902), xx., 494-501. 
 
 15. Cf. NS., vi., 173 and 277. It is not without interest to compare 
 the latter of these two passages with the following passage from Spinoza : 
 “Nothing occurs in nature that could be counted against her as a mis- 
 take; for nature is always the same and everywhere one, and her force 
 and her power of activity are the same, i. e., the rules and laws of nature, 
 according to which everything takes place and is metamorphosed out of 
 one form into another, are always and everywhere the same, and hence 
 there must be one and the same way of understanding the nature 
 of things, whatever they may be, namely, by means of general rules 
 and laws of nature ” (Ethica, third part, p. 89 of Berthold Auerbach’s 
 translation) . 
 
 16. The term Ur pflanze, which Goethe used a fewtimes, has been the 
 
 subject of a similar controversy. On page 92 we referred to the fact that 
 “at that time,” — i. e., shortly before the Italian journey, and also while 
 in Italy — the conception of metamorphosis “hovered before his mind 
 under the sensual form of a supersensual Urpflanze.” But this Statement 
 is hard to bring into complete accord with utterances of that period 
 concerning the Urpflanze, which will admit of no other Interpretation 
 than that Goethe understood by the term a concrete formation. This 
 is confirmed by a letter — written, but never posted — to Nees von Esen- 
 beck, which was published in Br., xxvii., No. 7486, and was written prob- 
 ably in the middle of August, 1816 : “In the diaries of my Italian journey 
 
 you will observe, not without a smile, in what stränge ways I followed 
 the traces of vegetable metamorphosis. I was at that time seeking the 
 Urpflanze, unconscious that I was seeking the idea, the conception, in 
 accordance with which we could develop it for ourselves.” I [Kalischer] 
 find herein a confirmation of my view of the Urpflanze set forth in my 
 contributions to the Hempel edition of Goethe’s writings (vol. xxxiii., p. 
 LXVI ff.,), of which I have here and there taken the liberty to make free 
 use. According to what I there said, and the above passage from a letter 
 verifies my Statement, Goethe originally meant by the Urpflanze the 
 ancestral form of the plant world, but he soon saw that he would never 
 realise his idea of being able to discover the Urpflanze “among this 
 
37 § 
 
 ftbe Xife of (Soetbe 
 
 host” of forms which he met for the first time in Italy, as he said in a 
 letter from Palermo on the iyth of April, 1787 ; and he had to content him- 
 self with constructing as his own creature the Urpflanze, which he had 
 vainly sought in nature (Naples, May 17, 1787). The question of the 
 conception of the Urpflanze, which had evidently undergone a metamor- 
 phosis in Goethe’s chain of reasoning, is altogether subordinate to the 
 related question of his position with respect to the general doctrine of 
 descent, which must be decided according to other points of view. 
 
 Goethe used just once the term Urtier: “As I had formerly sought 
 
 the Urpflanze I now longed also to find the Urtier, which means in the 
 end the conception, the idea of animal ” (NS., vi., 20). The utter- 
 ance does not contradict in any sense the view here presented. It in no 
 wise precludes the assumption of common, real ancestral forms out of 
 which the different species have developed. Darwin himself, in his 
 Origin of Species, speaks of the “archetype of all mammals,” and of the 
 “general plan ” upon which they are constructed. 
 
 17. NS., x., 52 /. Goethe often expressed himself conceming the 
 ice age. Cf. Geologische Probleme und Versuch ihrer Auflösung (NS., 
 ix., 253 ff.): Herrn von Hoffs geologisches Werk (NS., ix., 280 ff.): NS., x., 
 pp. 93, 95, and 267; Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, book ii., Chapter IX 
 (W., xxv., 1 28). 
 
 18. Goethe finds antagonistic colours everywhere in nature, even 
 
 in the plant world, and a characteristic feature which Supports our con- 
 ception of his theory is the fact that, in speaking of plant colours, he 
 refers to the subjective demand of the complementary colours. For 
 example, in an essay on this subject, recently published for the first time 
 in NS., v.,2 p. 160, we read: “The antagonistic relation of red and green 
 
 is most remarkable in monströus tulips. One part of the strangely 
 indented leaf, which is even provided with spores, remains longest green, 
 and these parts then tum immediately to the most beautiful, most brilliant 
 red, a phenomenon like that to be observed in all Chemical conversions, 
 and also like that which takes place in the subjective demand of the eye. 
 So intimately are the workings of nature connected.” 
 
 In this connection we may refer also to the discovery which Goethe 
 recorded in §678, that phosphorescence is produced only by blue and 
 violet light, or, as we say, only by the refrangible part of the spectrum. 
 He made this discovery as early as 1792, as is shown by his letter of July 
 2d to Sömmering. Several written references to it have been preserved, 
 particularly the outline of a lecture on the subject, recently published for 
 the first time in NS., v., * p. 165 ff. 
 
 19. Cf. Diderots Versuch über die Malerei (W., xlv., 293/.). Sprüche 
 
 ■tn Prosa, No. 719, should also be considered in this connection: “The 
 
 first man to develop the harmony of colours out of the systole and diastole, 
 for which the retina is formed, or, to speak with Plato, out of this syn- 
 crisis and diacrisis, will be the discoverer of the principles of colouring.” 
 Goethe himself is this discoverer. 
 
 20. The chief work on romanticism, which contains also an exhaustive 
 treatment of Goethe’s relations to the older generation of the school, is 
 Die romantische Schule, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Geistes, by 
 
IRotcs 
 
 3 79 
 
 R. Haym, published in 1870. [A new edition has very recently been 
 issued. — C.] Beside this there is the more recent work, Goethe und die 
 Romantik: Briefe mit Erläuterungen ( SGG ., xiii., and xiv.), edited by 
 Karl Schüddekopf and Oskar Walzel, and published in 1898 and 1899. 
 In the two introductions to this valuable collection the personal element 
 is naturally brought into the foreground, but the objective agreements 
 and differences are also given consideration. It is hardly necessary to 
 state that this Life of Goethe does not accept the summing up Statement 
 of the editors, “Instead of rejoicing in the harmony and its fruitful 
 results, evidences of discord and estrangement are shoved into the fore- 
 ground, and the far richer and more pleasing proofs of unanimity are 
 rejected or forgotten.” Goethe’s position with reference to romanticism 
 is defined, rather, in the words with which Luther parted from Zwingli: 
 “We have a different spirit.” It is the spirit of wholesomeness, as 
 Goethe so classically formulated it. In comparison with it the romantic 
 is really “the unwholesome ” (Eckermann, Gespräche, April 2, 1829.) — Z. 
 
 21. That Goethe did not hand in a formal resignation is proved by 
 the Grand Duke’s expression, “utterances,” and by Goethe’s “antici- 
 pated.” [Cf. Briefwechsel des Grossherzogs Karl August mit Goethe, ii., 
 105 f. — C.] The real clash came on the 2oth of March {Cf. Dembowsky, 
 Mitteilungen über Goethe und seinen Freundeskreis, in Wiss. Beil. z. Pro- 
 gramm des Kgl. Gymnasiums zu Lyck, 1888-1889, P- &)• The perform- 
 ance took place on the i2th of April. Goethe’s letter of March 3 ist to 
 Frau von Stein shows that he still hoped for an agreement. 
 
 22. According to a Statement made by Ulrike in her old age to 
 Herr von Loeper, her answer had been : if her mother desired it. Cf. G J ., 
 viii., 182. 
 
 23. Nobody dared speak with Goethe except about the thing which 
 concerned him personally, tili Goethe of his own accord passed to other 
 themes. When any one desired to turn him aside by means of inoppor- 
 tune or awkward questions he would Surround himself with a mysterious 
 air (“ ou mystifiait impitoyablement le malheureux questionneur ” — 
 Soret, p. 46). 
 
 24. Walther, Baron von Goethe, devoted himself to music and pub- 
 lished several vocal compositions. He lived unmarried as a chamberlain 
 in Weimar and died in Leipsic, in 1885, after having made a will bequeath- 
 ing his grandfather’s posthumous papers to the care of the Grand Duchess 
 Sophie of Saxony, who, as a result, founded the Goethe and Schiller 
 Archives in Weimar, which were opened in 1896. With his death the 
 Goethe family became extinct. 
 
 25. Wolfgang was a doctor juris and was known as a philosopher 
 and a writer. He died in 1883 as a Prussian councillor of legation and a 
 Weimar chamberlain. 
 
 26. “Madame de Goethe avait fini par renoncer presqu’ entierement 
 ä la societe, pour consacrer toutes ses soirees k son beau-pere et pour 
 l’accompagner dans ses promenades” (Soret, p. 47). He praises very 
 highly her devotion in times of illness, as well as her clever and original 
 conversation. 
 
 27. On the 4th of July, 1824, Müller asserted that Goethe’s ability 
 
3 8 ° 
 
 £be Xifc of (Boetbe 
 
 and desire to communicate his thoughts and feelings had been increased 
 tenfold. Cf. Dembowsky, l. c., p. 25. 
 
 28. Duke Bernhard found a copy of Faust in the possession of an 
 American Indian in North Carolina (Goethe to Zelter, March 28, 1829). A ■ ‘ 
 
 29. Frau von Stein’s last utterance conceming Goethe is interesting 
 in this connection. Toward the end of the year 1829 she had made 
 for Comelia’s grandson, Alfred Nicolovius, a copy of the picture of young 
 Goethe which hung in her house, referring to Goethe as “your dear grand- 
 uncle, whom we so highly esteem ” ; and she said she was glad to have 
 made the acquaintance of the grandnephew of her old friend Goethe 
 “before the salto mortale confronted her.” 
 
 30. There is a remarkable similarity between this fact and an inci- 
 dent in the life of Karl von Raumer. In his Geschichte der Pädagogik, ii., 
 
 340, Raumer says. speaking of himself: “The sad time of 1806 had 
 
 affected me violently, had made me unsociable and entirely determined 
 to devote myself to the most solitary study of mountains.” 
 
 31. In the first edition the two stories stood at the end of the first 
 volume, that is, in the middle of the work. They were intended to create 
 a desire for the second volume [which was never published in that edition 
 — C.]. When the sociological element and the Makarie episode were 
 inserted the stories were placed near the beginning of the work. 
 
 32. For the beginning it was indeed somewhat socialistic, as the 
 ground was divided up, etc. But the Germanic individualism is proved 
 by the dislike of the Capital city and by the fact that equality is demanded 
 only in matters of chief importance ( W . xxv.p 213, 22). Harnack’s 
 remark that, on the basis of the stanzas at the close of the twelfth chapter 
 of the third book, he considers it a strictly socialistic state, is due to mis- 
 interpretation. The state referred to there is an old one. The correct 
 interpretation is : It is through you that we shall obtain wives. 
 
 33. Even the leadership of the “Bond” is intrusted to a group of 
 colleagues : 
 
 Du verteilest Kraft und Bürde 
 Und erwägst es ganz genau, 
 
 Gibst dem Alter Ruh und Würde, 
 
 Jünglingen Geschäft und Frau. 
 
 34. There seems to be a little contradiction between W., xxv.,> 213, 
 
 10 and 214, 15. The first passage says of the right of the police to ad- 
 monish, scold, and punish, that when they find it necessary they call 
 together a jury of a size befitting the case. The second says that punish- 
 ment can be dealt out only by a number of men called together. 
 
 35. The verb “ sich entwickeln” ( W .. xxiv., 244, 15) must be taken 
 as a perfect, as though it were “ sich entwickelt haben” ; otherwise it makes 
 no sense. If we read, on the other hand, that nobody brings reverence 
 with him into the world (TU., xxiv., 240, 2), this can be interpreted only 
 to mean reverence as a power which is easily developed, or may even 
 develop of itself. The germ of it must be present, otherwise it could not 
 be developed by the religions of reverence. Goethe offen said : “ What is 
 not in man will never come out of him.” This harmonises with his state- 
 
1Rote0 
 
 381 
 
 ment in another place (H., xxix., 721), that he is forced to recognise in. 
 man an inborn inclination to reverence; likewise with his indorsement of 
 the motto, “Ilya une fibre adorative dans le coeur humain” (H., xxix., 
 312); and with the fact that he makes a distinction between “the specially 
 favoured ones” ( W ., xxiv., 242, 14) and the rest only in so far as with 
 the former reverence develops of itself. Cf. also Trilogie der Leiden- 
 schaft , lines 79 /. 
 
 36. He may even have muttered to himself lines 86 ff. of the Urfaust, 
 which, it has been asserted, were based on Herder’s Älteste Urkunde des 
 Menschengeschlechts. Herder undoubtedly called out to him more than 
 once lines 90-94. 
 
 37. Urfaust is the title commonly given to the oldest Version of the 
 Faust fragment, that in which Goethe brought the play with him to 
 Weimar in November, 1775, and in which it has been preserved in a copy 
 made by a lady at the Court of Weimar, Fräulein Luise von Göchhausen. 
 This manuscript, important alike for the history and the understanding of 
 Faust , was found in 1887, in Dresden, at the residence of the Fräulein’s 
 grand-nephew, Major von Göchhausen. The discovery was made by 
 Erich Schmidt, who published it that same year under the title Goethes 
 Faust in ursprünglicher Gestalt nach der Göchhausenschen Abschrift. 
 
 The same Scholar gives a detailed account of the manuscripts and 
 first editions of Faust in the great Weimar edition (W., xiv. and xv. 2 ) 
 of Goethe’s works. The most important facts about the editions are 
 given in the text of the above chapter on Faust. It may here be stated, 
 by way of Supplement, that the first complete edition of the tragedy 
 appeared in the year of Goethe’s death in the forty-first volume of the 
 Cotta pocket edition ( Goethes nachgelassene Werke. Erster Band, 1832). 
 — Z. 
 
 38. The letter to Cotta in which he offers Faust as a fragment is dated 
 the ist of May, 1805, with a postscript dated the i4th of June. Hence 
 his definite decision was not made tili the latter date. In a letter to 
 Zelter of the 3d of June, 1826, he connects the giving up of his work on 
 Faust with the death of Schiller. 
 
 39. Goethe’s relation to Byron is treated in an essay by A. Brandl 
 in G J ., xx. (1899). Cf. also E. Köppel’s biography of Lord Byron in the 
 series Geisteshelden, vol. xliv. (1903). — Z. 
 
 40. I accept the interpretation of Pniower ( Goethes Faust. Zeugnisse 
 und Excurse zu seiner Entstehungsgeschichte, p. 191), that Goethe meant 
 the ending of the “Helena,” which has been preserved (WL.xv., 2 176 ff.). 
 
 41. Kuno Fischer, in his Goethes Faust, 4th ed. (1902), vol. i., gives 
 a detailed account of the folk-books, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, the Ger- 
 man populär plays, and Lessing’s Faust fragment. Cf. also W. Creizenach, 
 Versuch einer Geschichte des Volksschauspiels vom Dr. Faust (1878). — Z. 
 
 42. On the basis of differences in style, contradictions, and different 
 presuppositions, Wilhelm Scherer, in his Aufsätze über Goethe (1886), 
 desired to separate Faust’s first soliloquy into two parts, the first of 
 which he considered older than the second. The text of the above 
 chapter on Faust seeks to controvert this hypercriticism. — Z. 
 
 43. Kuno Fischer has set forth this view of Mephistopheles as an 
 
3 82 
 
 Gbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 emissary of the Earth-Spirit in the second volume of his above cited work 
 on Goethe’s Faust (see Note 41), a work which in many respects is 
 thoroughgoing and sound. I consider the view incorrect, since Fischer 
 has to do violence to a great many passages, particularly in the “original 
 version,” in Order to maintain it for a single moment. Minor, in his 
 Goethes Faust (1901), i., 225, asserts, withmore clearness, tobe sure, than 
 politeness, that “all the airy hypotheses, according to which Mephisto- 
 pheles was originally introduced, not as the devil, but as a servant of the 
 Earth-Spirit, are thus seen to fall to the ground. A Faust without a 
 compact with the devil is a monstrosity, a bit of nonsense, that never 
 occurred to Goethe and never could occur to a poet. It is an insipid 
 subtlety of philological leaming.” I myself do not go quite so far. In 
 the scene “Forest and Cavern” it really did occur to the poet, perhaps 
 with reference to an older plan, but it was only in this one scene. In the 
 whole of the original Version, as it lies before us in the Urfaust, Mephisto- 
 pheles is really the devil. The long articles on Mephistopheles in GJ., 
 xxii., and xxiii. (1901 and 1902), by Max Morris are very excellent, but 
 unfortunately he too, as has long been known, considers Mephistopheles 
 the emissary and servant of the Earth-Spirit. — Z. 
 
 44. The outline of the disputation*may be found in the paralipomena 
 11 to 20 ( W ., xiv.). The above conjecture as to the purpose of the scene 
 rests, to be sure, only on the uncertain ground of the closing words 
 (paralipomenon 11), “Majority. Minority of the audience as a chorus.” 
 — Z. 
 
 45. In an address on Goethes Faust, published in Strassburger Goethe - 
 vorträge (1899) Th. Ziegler discusses in detail the question whether it was 
 Goethe’s original intention that Faust should be saved, or should fall into 
 the power of hell. The fact that this question was still undecided in the 
 Urfaust and in the Fragment added to the dramatic suspense. — Z. 
 
 46. Cf. Fr. Vischer, Goethes Faust. Neue Beiträge zur Kritik des 
 Gedichts (1875), p. 151. This book, together with Vischer's defence of 
 it in Altes und Neues (1881), is doubtless the most profound work ever 
 written on Faust. Vischer’s influence will be observed in many parts of 
 the above chapter, for which reason I refer to it here especially as a 
 “source.” — Z. 
 
 47. So says Johannes Niejahr in his article entitled Die Oster- 
 szenen und die Vertragsszene in Goethes Faust {GJ., xx., p. 190). His 
 article begins with the striking Statement, ‘ ‘ Hitherto critics have paid 
 but little attention to those portions of the First Part of Faust which 
 belong to the closing period of the composition.” As though it had not 
 been known since the work of Fr. Vischer what difficult problems lie here! 
 But it is not necessary on that account to find a contradiction in every 
 difhculty. — Z. 
 
 48. In Plutarch’s biography of Marcellus (cap. 20) we read of the 
 “mothers,” whom the Greeks worshipped as goddesses. It was doubt- 
 less this passage that Goethe had in mind when he “betrayed ’’ to Ecker- 
 mann {Gespräche mit Goethe, ii., Jan. 10, 1830), “that he had found in 
 Plutarch that in the days of ancient Greece the mothers were spoken 
 of as divinities.” — Z. 
 
IRotes 
 
 3 8 3 
 
 49. Johann Jakob Wagner (1775-1841) of Ulm, professor in the 
 University of Würzburg, is said to have presented this view in his lectures. 
 Cf. Düntzer, Goethes Faust. Zweiter Theil (1851), p. 119. — Z. 
 
 50. Veit Valentin, in his Goethes Faustdichtung in ihrer künstler- 
 ischen Einheit dargestellt (1894), p. 154 ff., asserts that Goethe thought 
 of the “Homunculus as an embodiment of life energy that was only 
 temporary and hence bound to the glass, and that he made it strive after 
 a real union with material elements and after a state in which it could 
 develop a real form.” The same view is set forth in his posthumous 
 work Die klassische Walpurgisnacht (1901), p. 82 ff. The end of the 
 Homunculus he interprets as a“ marriage of the Homunculus with the 
 sea,” and he gives as the fundamental motive of the “Classical Wal- 
 purgis Night” “a reanimation which is to lead to a real existence.” — Z. 
 
 51. The Strange Interpretation of Care was presented by Hermann 
 Türck in his Eine neue Fausterklärung. See also his article entitled Die 
 Bedeutung der Magie und Sorge in Goethes Faust ( GJ ., xxi.). The merit 
 of this cleverly presented, but untenable, interpretation lies in the fact 
 that from now on interpreters of Faust will be forced to pay more serious 
 attention to the figure of Care than has hitherto been the case ; and they 
 will also need to solve the problem which Türck has pointed out. — Z. 
 
 52. That it was Goethe’s original intention to make Faust not only 
 
 wish to dismiss magic from his life, but actually do it, is shown by a 
 variety of Sketches [See W., xv.p 153 ff . — C.], one of which runs: “I long 
 
 ago to magic said farewell, and gladly rid my mind of every spell.” 
 Another in prose runs: ‘‘I endeavour to put aside every thing that is 
 magical.” But in the final redaction Goethe left merely the desire on 
 the part of Faust to give up magic. — Z. 
 
 53. This altruistic, social side of the work of civilisation is only 
 suggested in Faust. It is expressed far more energetically and positively 
 in Die Wanderjahre. Faust was altogether too firmly rooted in the 
 eighteenth Century. Hence it is all the more pleasing that social ethics, 
 as a most modern tendency, is at least not wholly lacking in the drama. 
 In the emphasis which he places on freedom (‘‘ upon free soil ’mid a people 
 free”) Goethe, in a certain sense, retums to the spirit of his early works 
 Götz and Egmont. — Z. 
 
 54. The conception of heaven in the last scene goes back to the 
 Campo Santo pictures in Pisa, which Goethe knew from Carlo Lasinio’s 
 Pitture al Fresco del Campo Santo (see Annalen, 1818, last paragraph). 
 Cf. G. Dehio, Alt-Italienische Gemälde als Quelle zu Goethes Faust (GJ., 
 vii.). — Z. 
 
 55. The unity of this incommensurable work lies only in the person 
 
 of the poet, and in the course of the development which he makes his 
 hero pass through, as he himself has done. Veit Valentin, the defender 
 of the ‘‘artistic” unity of Faust, virtually admits this when he says, in 
 his above quoted work (see Note 50): ‘‘The extravagant employment 
 
 of the epic in the so-called Second Part, together with the frequent em- 
 ployment of the lyric — retained from the Urfaust — in the so-called First 
 Part, and the genuinely dramatic and epic motivation, as it appears 
 in many individual scenes in both Parts and in the general plot of the 
 
3 8 4 
 
 ftbe Xife of (Boetbe 
 
 whole drama, doubtless justify one in speaking of a lack of unity in the 
 poetic style.” Then immediately afterward he well says : ‘‘Just as in 
 the Urfaust climax succeeds climax, without any necessity being feit of 
 explaining the motivation of the connecting parts which bring all the 
 individual parts into a causal relation, so in the Second Part motive 
 follows motive without bringing out the climaxes strongly by means 
 of more extensive treatment, and without marking them plainly, to show 
 that they are climaxes, for the sake of the immediate impression.” 
 
 Herein lies the difficulty of a performance of the Second Part, which 
 is considerably increased by the necessity of making omissions. One 
 receives more the impression of a stränge spectacle, difficult to com- 
 prehend, than of a great and powerful drama. And so the theatre never 
 does full justice to Faust. In the First Part the players are seldom able to 
 represent the whole depth and fulness of Goethe ’s figures; the portrayer 
 of Faust, especially, finds himself confronted by a problem which simply 
 defies solution. Even Goethe himself feit concerning the First Part that it 
 was not suited to the stage, and hence his own attempts to have it per- 
 formed in Weimar were brought to naught by the difficulty of the under- 
 taking. The first attempt by others was made by Prince Radziwill in 
 Berlin, in 1819, when he gave a private performance before the Court. 
 The first public performance occurred in Breslau in 1820. Both these 
 performances included only fragments of the First Part. It was pro- 
 duced for the first time in its entirety by Theatre Director August Klinge- 
 mann, in 1829, in Brunswick. That same year, in honour of Goethe’s 
 eightieth birthday, a number of other theatres followed his example, 
 notably the theatre of Weimar, where, of course, the poet had something 
 to say while the play was being rehearsed. Thus the First Part was 
 gained permanently for the German stage. 
 
 The Second Part had from the beginning been arranged by the poet 
 with reference to “the spectators’ enjoyment of appearances,” that is, 
 with a view to its effectiveness on the stage. In 1849 the Helena tragedy 
 was performed for the first time, under Gutzkow’s direction in Dresden, 
 in celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Goethe’s birth. The 
 whole Second Part was produced live years later by Wollheim da Fonseca 
 in Hamburg. The entire work, with its two Parts, had to wait twenty 
 years more before it was performed. Otto Devrient produced it in 1875 
 in Weimar on a mystery stage, divided into three parts. It was his pur- 
 pose and hope to make clear to the public the plot of the whole work as a 
 unity. Nowadays Faust is presented on all the larger stages of Ger- 
 many, the First Part frequently, the Second rarely, but Devrient’s hope 
 has not been realised. As a usual thing those who really know the First 
 Part go home from a performance not fully satisfied, because theatrical 
 art is so hopelessly inadequate to cope with the mighty poem. The 
 audience listens to the Second Part as something not comprehended 
 and in many respects incomprehensible, and is at most eager to see 
 how successfully theatrical technique can cope with the task here set. 
 Cf. W. Creizenach, Die Bühnengeschichte des Goetheschen Faust (1881). 
 — Z. 
 
 56. Die letzte Krankheit Goethes, beschrieben und nebst einigen andern 
 
IRoteö 
 
 385 
 
 Bemerkungen über denselben , mitgeteilt von Dr. Carl Vogel , Grossherzogi. 
 Sächsischem Hofrate und Leibarzte zu Weimar. Nebst einer Nachschrift 
 von C. W. Hufeland. Berlin. 1833. — Z. 
 
 57. We have a detailed account of this by Chief Architect Coudray, 
 who made the arrangements for the lying in state and the burial, in 
 Goethes drei letzte Lebenstage. Die Handschrift eines Augenzeugen heraus- 
 gegeben von Karl Holsten. Heidelberg. 1889. Cf. also Dr. Karl Wil- 
 helm Müller, Goethes letzte literarische Tätigkeit, Verhältnis zum Ausland 
 und Scheiden, nach den Mitteilungen seiner Freunde dargestellt. Jena. 
 1832. — Z. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abendstunde eines Einsiedlers (Pes- 
 talozzi), iii., 229 
 
 Abhandlungen zu Goethes Leben 
 (Düntzer), ii., 445 
 “Abklingen,” iii., 119, 120 
 Absolutism, Goethe’s belief in, i., 
 3 1 4 
 
 “Ach, da ich irrte, hatt’ ich viel 
 Gespielen” (from Zueignung), 
 üi-, 34 
 
 “Ach neige, du Schmerzensreiche’-’ 
 (from Faust), iii., 376 
 “Ach, um deine feuchten Schwing- 
 en” (from Buch Suleika), iii., 23 
 Achard, ii., 450/. 
 
 Achilleis, ii., 273, 332; iii., 263 
 Achilles, ii., 332 
 Adelbert vonWeislingen, i., 429 
 Adelheid, character in Götz, i., 168, 
 171, 172, 179/., 428; ii., 136 
 Adersbacher Felsen, ii., 92 
 Adler und Taube, iii., 47 
 Adoration of the Cross (Calderon), 
 i-> 379 
 
 Adriatic, the, i., 373; ii., 190 
 Advocate, see law 
 JEneid, the, i., 13 1 
 ASschylos, i., 114; ii., 391 
 -«Etna., i., 399; iii., 24, 35 
 “Affaire du collier, ” i., 366 
 Africa, i., 264, 397 
 Agamemnon, ii., 3 
 Agathon (Wieland), ii., 259 
 Agnes, iii., 35, 36 
 Agrippe von Nettesheim, iii., 271 
 Aja, Frau, nickname of Goethe’s 
 mother, i., 222, 296, 344/., 354; 
 
 ii. , 2 10 ; iii., 145 
 
 Aktenstücke zur Geschichte, etc., 
 (Scheibler), ii., 451 
 Alarkos (Fr. Schlegel), iii., 144 
 Alba, character in Egmont, i., 33 off. 
 Albert, character in Werther, i., 
 160, 191 ff., 196, 199 
 Albrecht, Rector, i. , 17 
 Alcest, character in Die Mitschul- 
 digen, i., 83/., 425 
 
 Alchemy, Goethe’s study of, i., 93, 
 103 
 
 Alcinous, palace of, i., 162 ; iii., 92 
 Aldobrandini Wedding, the, an an- 
 tique fresco, ii., 318 
 Alemannische Gedichte (Hebel), iii., 
 25 
 
 Alexander, Czarof Russia, ii., 408 ff., 
 413/., 418, 432 
 
 Alexander the Great, i., 201; iii., 
 274 
 
 Alexandria, i., 170 
 Alexandrine, the, Goethe’s use of, 
 i-, 85 
 
 Alexis (Karl von Schweitzer), i., 35/ 
 Alexis und Dora, ii., 319; iii., 52, 
 62, 376 
 
 “Alle Freiheitsapostel,” etc. (from 
 Venezianische Epigramme, No. 
 50), ii., 149 
 
 Allegory, distinction between sym- 
 bolism and, iii., 30 6f. 
 
 Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (Jena) , 
 the, ii., 150, 423; Goethe’s con- 
 tributions to, 325, 332, 335, 425 
 Allleben, quotations from, iii., 6 
 Alphonso, Duke of Ferrara, ii., 41 
 Alphonso, character in Tasso, ii., 
 35 - 38, 41, 4 3 ff-> 44 i 
 Alpin, character in Ossian, i., 193 
 Alps, the, i., 212, 226, 228, 229, 
 348/., 353 . 3 6 9 . 372, 384, 402, 
 407; 11., 79, 215, 314; in-, 92, i9 6 - 
 215, 259, 270 
 
 “Als eine Blume zeigt sie sich der 
 Welt” (from Auf Miedings Tod), 
 
 1., 265 
 
 Alsatia, i., 95 /., 98, 99; Goethe 
 makes collection of folk-songs in, 
 117,238; 139, 311, 343, 345; 
 
 11., 126, 421, 432; iii., 25, 62,374 
 Altdorf, i., 227, 431 
 
 Altenberg, ii., 417 
 Altenstein, ii., 451 
 “Alter, hörst du noch nicht auf” 
 (from “ Wenn ich auf dem 
 Markte geh’ ”), iii., 155 
 
 387 
 
3 88 
 
 Infcei 
 
 Altes und Neues (Vischer), iii., 382 
 Älteste Urkunde des Menschenge- 
 schlechts (Herder), iii., 381 
 Alt-Italienische Gemälde als Quelle 
 zu Goethes Faust (Dehio), iii., 383 
 Altmühl, ii. , 270 
 Am Flusse, iii., 374 
 Amanuenses, Goethe’s, iii., 16 3/. 
 Amateur Theatre, the, in Weimar, 
 
 1., 258; ii., 32, 93 
 
 America, i., 230, 241, 360; ii., 249; 
 
 111., 199, 211,213,215,216; Goe- 
 the’s attitude toward, 219 ff. 1224, 
 225 f., 242, 273 
 
 “Amerika, du hast es besser” 
 (from Den vereinigten Staaten), 
 
 iii., 220 
 
 Amine, character in Die Laune des 
 Verliebten, i., 81/. 
 
 Amine, original title of Die Laune 
 des Verliebten, i., 39, 81, 423/. 
 Amor, i., 167, 411; ii., 81 
 Amor and Psyche (Raphael), i., 386 
 Ampere, i., 417; ii., 443 
 Amphion, i., 43 
 Amyntas, ii., 445 
 
 An Beiinden, quotations from, i., 
 218, 219/. ; 232 
 
 An Cidli (Klopstock), quotation 
 from, i., 149 
 
 An den Herzog Karl August, quota- 
 tion from, i., 283 
 
 An den Kuchenbäcker Hendel, i., 
 
 65/- 
 
 An den Mond {An Luna), i., 425 
 An den Mond (“Füllest wieder 
 Busch und Tal”), i., 343; iii., 19, 
 40/f., 43/., 50, 375, 376 
 An die Entfernte, iii., 376 
 An die Erwählte, iii., 376 
 “An die Türen will ich schleichen,” 
 
 iii., 376 
 
 An ein goldenes Herz, das er am 
 Halse trug, i., 228 
 An eine Freundin, i., 425/. 
 
 An Frau von Stein {W., iv., 210), 
 quotation from, i., 297 
 An Frau von Stein ( W ., v 1 ., 66), i., 
 
 363 
 
 An Lida, quotation from, i., 306 
 An Lili, quoted, i., 245 
 An'Luna, i., 425; iii., 374 
 An Merck, quotation from, i., 175; 
 428 f. 
 
 An Mignon, ii., 314; iii., 376 
 An Psychen (Wieland), quotation 
 from, i., 275 ff. 
 
 An Schwager Kronos, i., 211; iii., 
 ^ 40, 47 . 375 
 
 An Weither (first number of 
 Trilogie der Leidenschaft), iii., 
 161 
 
 Analyse und Synthese, quotation 
 from, iii., 129 f. 
 
 Anatomisches Handbuch (Loder), 
 
 111., 90 
 
 Anatomy, Goethe’s study of, i., 2, 
 308, 361, 362; ii., 323, 432; iii., 
 82, 86/?., 93, 103 
 Anderlind, ii., 450 
 Andermatt, i., 227 
 Andre, i., 230; iii., 374 
 “Angedenken du verklungner 
 Freude” (from An ein goldenes 
 Herz, das er am Halse trug), i., 228 
 Angela, character in Wilhelm Meis- 
 ters Wanderfahre, iii., 204, 223 
 Angelico, Fra, iii., 196 
 Angelo, Michael, i., 329, 385 /., 404; 
 
 11., 2 1 ; iii., 352 
 
 Anger, Goethe’s fits of, i., 417/. 
 Anhang zur Lebensbeschreibung des 
 Benvenuto Cellini, iii., 100 
 Anmerkungen übers Theater (Lenz), 
 
 1., 121 
 
 Anmerkungen zu Rameaus Neffe, i., 
 379 
 
 Anna Amalia, i., 144, 255 ff., 261, 
 263, 264, 266, 271, 273, 293 f., 
 312/., 344/-; ü-, 85 ff., 94, 112, 
 348, 442; 111., 258 
 
 Annalen, ii., 158, 338, 354: iii-, 153, 
 154, 172, 383; see Tag- und 
 
 .. Jahreshefte 
 
 Annchen (Annette), see Anna Kath- 
 arina Schönkopf 
 
 Annette, i., 56, 86, 87, 264, 424, 425 
 Ansbach, i., 259; ii., 341 
 “Anschaun, wenn es dir gelingt” 
 (from Genius, die Büste der Natur 
 enthüllend), iii., 85 
 Antaeus, iii., 131 
 Antigone, ii., 22 
 
 Antigone (Sophocles), quotation 
 from, i., 199 
 Antinoüs, i., 438 
 
 Antiope, character in Elpenor, ii., 
 440 
 
 Antique, the, i., 3; ii., 338 
 Antique art, Goethe disregards, i., 
 72; his study of, 100, 122, 1S3, 
 Sfiff-, and ii., 87, and iii., 11; 
 his adherence to, ii., 81, and iii., 
 9, 100, 263 
 
 Antoni, character in Wer ist der 
 Verräter? iii., 202/. 
 
 Antonio, character in Tasso, ii., 35, 
 38, 41. 4 3 /?-> 44 i/- 
 Antwerp, i., iii, 434 
 Apel’s garden in Leipsic, i., 45 
 Apennines, the, i., 382 ; iii., 113 
 Apolda, ii., 450; iii., 137 
 Apollo, ii., 4, 11, 23, 25, 33 ; iii., 16S 
 Apollo Belvedere, i., 3S5, 43S 
 
1 nfc>ei 389 
 
 Apology (Plato), i., 421 
 Appian Way, the, i., 387 
 Arcadia, iii., 339 
 Arcadian society, i. , 3 5 
 Architecture, Goethe ’s study of, i., 
 104/., 372 ff.\ Von deutscher Bau- 
 kunst, 105, 142; Dritte Wallfahrt 
 nach Erwins Grabe , 228/. ; iii., 98; 
 see antique art 
 
 Architettura (Palladio), i., 377 /. 
 Ardennes, the, ii. , 142 
 Argonne, Forest of, ii., iii 
 Arianne an Wetty, i., 425 f. 
 
 Ariel, character in Faust, iii., 331 
 Ariosto, ii., 42, 46, 47, 67, 69, 442 
 Aristocrat, Goethe an, ii., 77, 193 
 Aristophanes, i., 253, 259; ii., 209; 
 
 iii., 299 
 
 Aristotle, i., 29, 178, 363, 423; ii., 
 171/. ; iii., 127, 269 
 Arkas, character in Iphigenie, ii., 6 ff 
 Arkwright, iii., 215 
 Arlon, ii., 113 
 
 Arndt, Ernst Moritz, ii., 429, 431/., 
 454; iii-, 15 
 
 Arnim, Achim von, iii., 145 
 Ars Poetica (Horace), quotation 
 from, i., 74 
 
 Arsinoe, character in Satyros, i., 249 
 Art, Goethe’s study of, i., 21/., 
 70 ff., 73. I02 > I 59 > i6 7 - i8 3 > i8 5 , 
 279, and ii., 77, 87, 160, 317/-, 
 325 ff., and iii., 10, 11, 100 ff.\ he 
 supervises the institutes of, in 
 Weimar, ii., 76; he plans a work 
 on the development of, 311/.; 
 his labour for the advancement 
 of, 322; his lectures on, 331; 
 harmony between his Science and, 
 
 iii., 81 ff., 98 ff.' see also drawing, 
 engraving, etching, painting, and 
 wood-engraving 
 
 Arthur, character in Shakespeare ’s 
 King John, ii., 96 f. 
 
 Arve, the, i., 351 
 Asia, i., 373, 397; iii., 1 ff. 
 
 Asia Minor, iii., 55 
 Assisi, i., 382 
 
 Assunta, the, (Titian), i., 438 
 Astronomy, Goethe’s study of, ii., 
 323 
 
 “ At the Fountain,” scene in Faust, 
 
 iii., 275, 283 
 
 “At the Spinning Wheel,” scene in 
 Faust, iii., 275, 284, 375 
 Athena, ii., 5 
 
 Athenäum (the Schlegels), ii., 263, 
 385; iii., 144 
 Athens, ii., 202 
 Athroismos, iii., 87 
 Atmospheric pressure, Goethe’s 
 theory of, iii., 117 
 
 Atta Troll (Heine), quotation from, 
 
 111., 68 
 
 Atzbach, i., 163 
 
 Auerbach, Berthold, iii., 377 
 
 “ Auerbach’s Cellar,” scene in Faust, 
 
 1., 41, 342 ; iii., 257, 275, 283, 287, 
 3 26 - 327 
 
 Auerbachs Hof, i., 45, 64 
 Auerstädt, i., 41 
 
 Auf dem See, quotation from, i., 
 226 ; iii., 40 ; quoted, 72 ff. 1375,3 76 
 Auf Miedings Tod, quotations from, 
 
 1., 258, 265, 273 
 
 Aufsätze über Goethe (Scherer), iii., 
 381 
 
 “Aug\ mein Aug’, was sinkst du 
 nieder, ” see Auf dem See 
 Augereau, Marshai, ii., 343 
 Augsburg, i., 174, 408, 432; ii., 105 
 Auguste, Princess, iii. 165 
 Aulis, ii., 3, 17 
 Aurea Catena Homeri, i., 93 
 Aurelie, character in Wilhelm Meis- 
 ter), ii., 238, 242, 248 ff., 266, 
 Aus dem Goethehause (Heitmüller) , 
 
 i- , 434 
 
 Aus Friedrich L. v. Stolbergs Ju- 
 gendjahren (Hermes), i., 430 
 Aus Goethes Frühzeit (Scherer), i., 
 425 
 
 Aus Goethes Leben (Ludecus), ii., 
 444 
 
 Aus Herders Nachlass, i., 429 
 Aus Makariens Archiv (in Wilhelm 
 Meisters W ander jahre), iii., 193, 
 242/. 
 
 Aus Weimars Glanzzeit (Diezmann), 
 
 ii- , 444 
 
 Aussöhnung (third number of Trilo- 
 gie der Leidenschaft) , inspired by 
 Mme. Szymanowska, iii., 166 
 Austerlitz, ii., 340 
 Austria, i., 11, 24, 321, 322, 
 
 324 / 7 -, 437 ; ü- 89,104,340,415; 
 Goethe meets Empress of, 415, 
 419; he meets Emperor of, 418; 
 424, 426, 427; iii., 11, 138, 140 
 Autographen-Katalog (Cohen), ii., 
 453 
 
 Autographs, Goethe’s Collection of, 
 
 iii- , 163 
 
 Bacchus, iii., 61 
 Bach, P. E., iii., 375 
 Bächtold, ii., 440, 441 
 Bacon, Francis, ii., 162; iii., 95, 
 273 
 
 Baden, i., 182, 310, 325; ii., 341; 
 
 111., 26 
 
 Baden-Baden, iii., 29 
 Bahrdt, i., 152 
 Bailleu, i., 437 
 
390 
 
 Infcei 
 
 Ballade vom vertriebenen und zu- 
 rückkehrenden Grafen, iii., 56, 
 57 68 
 
 Baltic Sea, the, iii., 62, 117 
 Bamberg, i., 171, 172, 174, 179 
 Barbara, character in Wilhelm 
 Meister, ii. , 218, 250/., 266 
 Bardolino, i., 270 
 Bärenthal, the, i., 100 
 Bartheldmy, i., iii 
 B asedow, i., 205 ff., 210, 246, 251; 
 
 11., 1 14 ; iii., 15 
 
 Basel, i., 228, 347; ii., 128, 441 
 Bastberg, the, i., roo 
 Bastille, the, ii., 103, 145 
 Bätsch, ii., 203 
 Batteux, i., 412; ii., 325 
 Battista Pigna, character in the 
 original Tasso, ii., 35 
 Baucis, character in Faust, iii., 345 
 Baumannshöhle, the, i., 338 
 Bavaria, i., 322; ii., 341 
 Bayle, i., 30, 42 x ; ii., T57 
 Bayreuth, ii., 119, 341 
 Bear, Goethe’s nickname, i., 220, 
 225 
 
 Beaumarchais, source for Clavigo, i., 
 235//. ; concerning Clavigo, 432/. 
 Beaumarchais, character in Clavigo, 
 i-, 237, 238, 432; iii., 297 
 Beaumarchais (Bettelheim), i., 433 
 Beauties of Shakespeare (Dodd), i., 
 79 
 
 Beautiful, the, Goethe’s conception 
 of, i., 75, 77, 106, 423; ii., 196/., 
 389; symbolised in Pandora, 
 39 i# ; 453 
 
 Beautiful soul, i., 92; ii., 116; char- 
 acter in Wilhelm Meister, 238 ff, 
 265, and iii., 203^. 
 
 Beck, actor, ii., 124 
 Beckenried, ii., 318 
 Bedeutende Fordernis durch ein 
 einziges geistreiches Wort, iii., 85, 
 92 
 
 Beethoven, ii., 420; iii., 3747. 
 “Before the City Gate,” scene in 
 Faust, iii., 315 /. 
 
 Behrisch, i., 54^., 64 ff., 79, 81, 86, 
 88, 425 
 
 Bei Betrachtung von Schillers Schä- 
 del, iii., 193 
 
 Beiträge zur Optik, ii., 100, 104, 323 ; 
 
 111., 118, 124, 126 
 
 Belagerung von Mainz, ii., 118/. ; 
 
 111., 172 
 
 Belles-lettres, Goethe’s interest in, 
 
 1., 40, 46, 73, 79, 159 
 Bellomo, ii., 93/., 96, 99 
 Belriguardo, ii., 42, 43, 60 
 Belsazar, i., 39, 86 
 Belsazar (Heine), iii., 52 
 
 Bentham, iii., 169, 192 
 Benvenuto Cellini, ii., 330 
 B6ranger, iii., 173 
 Bergamo, i., 373 
 Bergen, battle of, i., 21 
 Bergstrasse, the, i., 233 
 Berlichingen, Götz von, see Götz 
 Berlin, i., 177, 259, 260, 272, 323, 
 429. 433 . 437 - 439 ; ü-. 73 . 9 °. 
 205, 208, 346, 416, 425, 426, 434, 
 441, 45 °: üi-. 117. 140. 142, 153, 
 166, 174, 384 
 Berlioz, Hector, iii., 376 
 Bemard, Lili betrothed to, ii., 301 
 Bemard, Nikolaus (Lili’s uncle), i., 
 220; iii., 17 
 
 Berne, i., 212, 347/., 350, 375 
 Bernhard, Duke, iii., 165, 380 
 Bemstorff, Count, iii., 75 
 Bertram, iii., 10 
 
 Bertuch, i., 262 f . ; concerning' Goe- 
 the, 297; 320/., 435, 436; ii., 82, 
 124, 334, 442: iii., 137 
 Beschreibung der Stadt Leipzig 
 (Leonhardi), i., 423 
 Bessungen, Forest of, i., 147 
 Bethlehem-Judah, i., 273 
 Betrachtungen im Sinne der Wan- 
 derer (in Wilhelm Meisters W an- 
 der fahre), iii., 193, 226 
 Bettelheim, i., 433 
 Bettina, see Brentano 
 Bialystok, ii., 424 
 Bible, the, i., 13, 17, 48, 69, 79, 
 91, 96, 109, 115, 119, 173, 28 3/., 
 340ff., 422; ii., 158; iii., 2, 127, 
 149. 3 J 7 
 
 Biedermann, ii., 174, 444. 453 : ui., 
 107 
 
 Biel, i., 347 
 Biester, ii., 453 
 
 Bilderbuch für Kinder (Bertuch), 
 
 i., 263 
 
 Bildung der Erde, iii., 115 
 Bingen, ii., 109; iii., 6 
 Birkenstock, von, iii., 7 
 Birs, the, i., 347 
 Bismarck, iii., 368 
 Bitsch, i., 100 
 
 Black Eagle, the, i., 325; ii., 426 
 Black Forest, the, i., 225 
 Blanckenburg, ii., 260 
 Blessig, i., 212 
 Blücher, ii., 408; iii., 12, 151 
 Blume, i., 434/. 
 
 Blumenbach, Adele, ii., 451 
 Blumenbach, anatomist, iii., 88, 
 9 ° 
 
 Blumengruss, 111., 376 
 Boccaccio, ii., 439 
 Böcklin, iii., 319 
 Bode, i., 266 
 
Inöer 
 
 Bodmer, i., 74, 107, 225, 246; ii. , 
 440; iii., 257 
 Boehmer, i., 437 
 Boerhave, i., 93 
 
 Bohemia, ii., 92, 445, 449; iii., 14, 
 112, 161 
 Böhm, i., 433 
 
 Böhme, Frau, i., 46 /., 65, 68, 80, 
 101 
 
 Böhme, Councillor, i., 46, 68 
 Bohn, i., 233 
 
 Boie, i., 175, 176, 211, 259; iii., 
 257 
 
 Boisserde, Melchior, iii., 9, 148 
 Boisser6e, Sulpiz, i., 380, 417, 438; 
 ü-, 354 , 414; iü-, 9 ff-, 15 /■> * 7 , 
 19, 25/., 148, 166, 170, 174, 181, 
 192, 268 
 
 Boito, Arrigo, iii., 376 
 Bologna, i., 381, 386, 438; ii., 440 
 Bonaparte, Napoleon, see Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, Jerome, ii., 421/. 
 Bonaparte, Louis, ii., 415/. 
 
 “Bond,” the, in Die Wanderjahre, 
 
 iii., 214 ff., 380 
 Bondeli, Julie, i., 146 
 Bonn, i., 207 ; iii., 16 
 Borchardt, i., 233 
 Borghese gardens, i., 3; iii., 260 
 Borkenhäuschen, the, i., 271 
 Born, i., 157, 162, 166 
 Bosporus, the, ii., 340 
 Botany, Goethe’s study of, i., 308, 
 361, 396, 398, 405; ii., 85, 323; 
 in., 90 ff-, 98, 103, 182, 377/. 
 Böttiger, i., 297, 436; ii., 272, 309, 
 
 334 , 45 . J, 453 
 Boucke, iii., 46 
 Bourienne, iii., 175 
 Bower, i., 15, 419 
 Bozen, i., 369; iii., 5 
 Brackenburg, character in Egmont, 
 i-> 335 
 
 Braggadocio, see Der Renommist 
 Brahm, i., 429 
 Brahms, iii., 374 f. 
 
 Brandenburg, i., 24 
 Brandl, A., iii., 381 
 Braunfels, i., 166 
 Brautnacht, iii., 374 
 Breitinger, i., 107 
 
 Breitkopf, Bernhard, composer of 
 music to Goethe’s Neue Lieder, i., 
 68, 86, 89; iii., 374 
 Breitkopf, Constanze, i., 59, 68, 77, 
 81, 89 
 
 Breitkopf, Gottlob, i., 68, 89 
 Breitkopf, Wilhelmine, i., 59, 68, 
 77- 89 
 
 Bremen, i., 89, 153, 157; 111., 174 
 Brenner, the, i., 369, 384; iii., 116 
 Brenta, the, i., 373 
 
 391 
 
 Brentano, Antonie, ii., 449; iii., 7, 
 16 
 
 Brentano, Bettina, i., 15, 419/.; ii., 
 407; iii., 145, 176 
 Brentano, Franz, iii., 7 
 Brentano, Klemens, ii.,.202 ; iii., 145 
 Brentano, Maximiliane, see La 
 Roche 
 
 Brentano, Peter Anton, i., 188/. ; iii., 
 „ 7 
 
 Brentano, Sophie, ii., 444 
 Brescia, i., 373 
 
 Breslau, i., 429; ii., 90 ff., 191; iii., 
 103, 384 
 
 Bretten, iii., 271 
 
 Brief des Pastors zu — ,an den neuen 
 Pastor zu — , i., 204 
 Briefe an Merck (Wagner), iii., 90, 
 376 
 
 Briefe aus der Schweiz, i., 412/., 43 1 f. 
 Briefe der Frau Rath Goethe (Kös- 
 ter), ii., 449 
 
 Briefe die neueste Literatur betref- 
 fend, see Literaturbriefe 
 Briefe und Aufsätze von Goethe 
 (Schöll), i., 425, 430 
 Briefe von Goethe und dessen Mutter 
 an Friedrich Freiherrn von Stein 
 (Ebers and Kahlert), ii., 444 
 Briefe von Heinrich Voss (Abr. 
 Voss), i., 418 
 
 Briefe von und an Goethe (Riemer), 
 
 11., 453 ; iii., 108/. 
 
 Briefwechsel des Grossherzogs Karl 
 August mit Goethe, iii., 379 
 Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und 
 Zelter, ii., 451; iii., 362 
 Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und 
 Goethe, iii., 172 
 Brienz, i., 348 
 Brienzer See, i., 348 
 Brion, Christian, i., 124 
 Brion, Frau, i., 124, 127, 241 
 Brion, Friederike, i., 85, 122, 123/7., 
 137, 146, 173, 218, 222, 234, 236 f., 
 240, 241, 345/., 424, 426, 427; 
 
 111., 25/., 27, 39, 44, 62, 155, 161, 
 218, 252, 2947. 
 
 Brion, Marie Salomea i., 124, 131 
 Brion Pastor, i., 124 
 Brion, Sophie, i., 124, 237, 427 
 Brizzi, ii., 417 
 
 Brocken, the, i., 339 ff., 352; iii., 
 38 7-, 297 ff., 328 
 Bromius, iii., 61 
 Bruhns, K., iii., 129 
 Brunnen, ii., 318 
 
 Bruno, Giordano, i., 248; iii., 84, 
 273 
 
 Brunswick, i., 156, 157, 256, 271I 
 
 11., 1 1 r, 1 12, 342 ; iii., 384 
 Brussels, i., iii, 330, 333, 335 
 
39 2 
 
 Infcex 
 
 Brutus, i., 246; ii., 187 
 Buch Suleika (in West-östlicher 
 Divan), iii., 18; quotations from, 
 19/. 1 29 
 
 Buchsweiler, i., 98, 100 
 Buenco, character in Clavigo, i., 237 
 Buff, Charlotte (Lotte, Lottchen), 
 i-, 159 ff-, 183/., 185, 199, 218, 227 ; 
 ii., 212/.; iii., 12, 18 
 Buff, Hans, i., 166 
 Buff, Karoline, i., 159 
 Buff, Steward, i., 159, 161, 165 
 Buffon, i., 308 
 Bully, see Raufbold 
 Bully, character in Faust, iii., 343 
 Bünau, Count von, i., 261 
 Bundeslied, ii., 207; iii., 376 
 Bungert, iii., 376 
 Burckhardt, Jacob, i., 378 
 Burdach, iii., 64 
 Bürgel, iii., 137 
 Bürger, i., 175/., 296; iii., 52 
 Buri, von, i., 35/. 
 
 Burkhardt, i., 435, 436; ii., 445 
 Burschenschaft, the, iii., 330, 337 
 Bury, Fritz, i., 387 ,407 ; ii., 88, 314, 
 406 
 
 Büsching, i., 418/. 
 
 Büttner, iii., 125 
 Buttstädt, ii., 321 
 Byron, iii., 166, 173, 26 4/J., 341 /., 
 3 Sl 
 
 Cabiri, the, iii., 338 
 Cäcilie, character in Stella, i., 2 40 ff. 
 Caesar, i., 170, 183; hero of the 
 dramatic fragment, 24 5/.; ii., 
 184, 187, 413 
 
 Cagliostro, i., 398/.; ii., 122 
 Calderon, i., 5; ii., 417; iii., 144 
 Campagna, the, i., 387, 395 
 Campagne in Frankreich, see Kam- 
 pagne, etc. 
 
 Campanella, iii., 273 
 Camper, iii., 88, 89/. 
 
 Campetti, ii., 368 
 Campo Santo, iii., 383 
 Canals, Goethe interested in, iii., 
 i74 
 
 Capitol, the, in Rome, i., 388, 406 
 Capri, i., 401, 438/. 
 
 Capua, i., 395 
 
 Card-playing, Goethe’s attitude 
 toward, i., 50, 68, 101 
 Care, character in Faust, iii., 346/., 
 „ 3 8 3 
 
 Carle tta (Antonio Valeri), i., 439 
 Carlos, character in Clavigo, i., 236 ff. 
 Carlyle, i., 366; iii., 173, 244 
 Cartwright, iii., 215 
 Cäsar, i., 142, 204, 210, 239, 245/., 
 365; ii., 273; iii., 254 
 
 Cassel, ii., 421; iii., 89 
 Cassius, ii., 187 
 Castel Gandolfo, i., 405 
 Castelli, iii., 375 
 
 Cataclysms, the theory of, iii., 108 
 Catania, i., 399/. 
 
 Catechisme des Industriell (Saint- 
 Simon), iii., 192 
 
 Categorical imperative, Kant’s, ii., 
 176 
 
 Catharine II., iii., 253 
 Catholicism, iii., 8/., 351 ff. 
 
 Causes, final, ii., 16 if. 
 
 Cecilia Metella, Tomb of, i., 387. 
 Cellini, Benvenuto, ii., 330 
 Cento, i., 381, 418 
 Cestius, Pyramid of, iii., 187 
 Chalons, ii., 190 
 
 Chamber of Finance, Goethe Presi- 
 dent of, i., 317, 320 ff., 359, 360, 
 361, 363, 435/. ; 11., 36, 76 
 Chamouni, i., 350 f. 
 
 Champagne, ii., iii 
 C hancellor, the, character in Faust, 
 iü-. 333 
 
 Characteristic, the, in art, ii., 326 ff. 
 Charade, iii., 145 
 Charles I., ii., 118 
 Charles IV., iii., 345 
 Charlotte, character in Die Wahl- 
 verwandtschaften, ii., 355/7., 386 
 Charlotte von Stein (Düntzer), ii., 
 444 
 
 Chefs-d'ceuvre des Theätres Etran- 
 gers, i., 430 
 
 Chemistry, Goethe’s study of, i., 93, 
 103 ; ii., 323 
 Chemnitz, ii., 416/. 
 
 China, iii., 2, 144 
 
 Chiron, character in Faust, iii., 338 
 Chloe, iii., 47 
 Cholevius, ii., 450 
 Chorus Mysticus, in Faust, iii., 350, 
 352 
 
 Chriemhilde, ii., 440 
 Christ, i., 212; ii., 158; iii., 57, 178, 
 236/., 299, 352, 363/. 
 Christianity, Goethe’s attitude 
 toward, iii., 363/. 
 
 Christoph, character in Die W an- 
 der fahre, iii., 213 
 
 Clironicles (Gottfried), i., 16, 222, 
 420 
 
 Church, the, Goethe’s attitude 
 toward, i., 17/., 158/., and iii., 
 363 ; see religion 
 Cicero, i., 48; iii., 169 
 Cipriani, character in Wilhelm 
 Meister, ii., 256/.; iii., 211 
 “ Classical Walpurgis Night,” scenes 
 in Faust, iii., 269, 335 ff., 353, 
 
 383 
 
Infcei 
 
 393 
 
 Claudine von Villa Bella, i., 245, 
 404, 410; iii., 375 
 Claustal, i., 339 
 
 Clavigo, hero of the draraa, i., 133, 
 235 ff-> 242 432 
 
 Clavigo, i., 136; discussion of, 235- 
 239» 43 2 /- ; ii-, 272 ; iii., 297 
 Clock, Goethe ’s father’s, iii., 183 
 Clodius, i., 46, 50, 65 f., 80 
 Coblenz, i., 166, 206; ii. , 114; iii., 16 
 Coburg Gymnasium, i., 11 
 Cohen, ii., 453 
 
 Coins, Goethe’s Collection of, iii., 
 163 
 
 Col de Balme, i., 351 
 Colberg, ii., 349 
 Collections, Goethe’s, iii., 163 
 Colleoni, statue of, i., 438; ii., 87 
 Colloquies, German-Latin, i., 31^. 
 Colma, character in Ossian, i., 193 
 Cologne, i., 207, 209/., 325 ; ii., 119; 
 
 111., 15/. 
 
 Cologne cathedral, the, i., 209; iii., 
 9 . iS. 148 
 
 Colosseum, the, in Rome, i., 387, 
 
 406 
 
 Colour, theory of, Goethe’s study 
 of, i., 50, and ii., 99, 110, 118, 
 323/.; reception of Goethe’s, 201, 
 204, 207 ; Goethe’s attack on 
 Newton’s, 208; his lectures on, 
 331; discussion of his, iii., 117- 
 
 127, 378 
 
 Columbus, i., 32; iii., roo 
 Comenius, i., 16, 420 
 Confession of faith, Faust’s, iii., 
 291/. 
 
 Confession des Verfassers, iii., 121, 
 125, 126 
 
 Confessions of a Beautifnl Soul, ii., 
 217, 238 ff., 254, 267, 448 
 Constance, i., 408, 439; ii., 105 
 Constantin, Grand Duke, ii., 409 
 Constitution, Weimar, iii., 136/. 
 Continuity, Goethe’s theory of, iii., 
 109 
 
 Contrat Social (Rousseau), i., 138 
 Conversations with Lord Byron 
 (Medwin), iii., 266 
 Copernicus, iii., 102, 273 
 Corneille, i., 22, 79 
 Cornelia, sister of Tasso, ii., 34 
 Corpus Juris, the, i., 29 
 Correggio, i., 268, 407 
 Correspondance Litteraire (Grimm), 
 
 11., 115 
 
 Cotta, publisher, ii., 317, 332, 354, 
 414/; iii., 263, 381 
 Coudenhoven, Frau von, ii., 115 
 Coudray, architect, iii., 165, 385 
 Courland, Duchess of, ii., 4x7 
 Cousin, Victor, ii., 174 
 
 Cracow, ii., 92, 190 
 Cramer, Councillor, iii., 6 
 Creizenach, W., iii., 381, 384] 
 
 Crell, J. C. (Iccander), i., 41 
 Crete, ii., 11 
 Cronos, iii., 227 
 Custine, ii., 114, 449 
 Cuvier, iii., 110, 360 
 Czenstochau, ii., 92 
 
 Dalberg, ii., 192, 410 
 d’Alembert, i., iii 
 D amasippus, i., 32 
 Damoetas, iii., 47 
 Dannecker, ii., 317 
 Dante, iii., 355 
 Danube, the, ii., 340 
 Darmstadt, i., 21; Goethe in, 143, 
 167/., 184, 211,223, 228, 229, 354; 
 the, saints, 145 ff., 168, 182; 
 
 Goethe’s ödes to them, 147; 239, 
 252, 310, 421; ii., 184, 241; iii., 
 
 89 
 
 Darmstadt, Landgrave of, ii., 128 
 Daru, ii., 411, 412 
 Darwin, iii., 108 ff., 367, 378 
 Das Büchlein von Goethe, ii., 444 
 Das Glück (Schiller), quotation 
 from, i., 167 
 
 Das Glück der Liehe, i., 425 
 Das Göttliche, quotation from, ii., 
 167 ; iii., 62, 291 
 
 Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plunders- 
 weilern, i., 146, 204, 422; iii., 375 
 Das Kreuz an der Ostsee (Werner), 
 ü-. 35 ° 
 
 Das Lied von der Glocke (Schiller), 
 iii., 166 
 
 Das Mädchen von Oberkirch, ii., 
 12 6/., 145. i 55 . 273 . 445 f- 
 Das Märchen, ii., 128-132, 446 
 Das Nibelungenlied, i., 137; iii. 
 148 
 
 Das nussbraune Mädchen (in Wil- 
 helm Meisters W ander fahre'), iii., 
 190, 192, 206/. 
 
 Das Pathologische bei Goethe (Mö- 
 bius), ii., 452 
 
 Das Repertoire des Weimarischen 
 Theaters, etc. (Burkhardt), ii., 
 445 
 
 Das römische Karneval, ii., 85 
 Das Schreyen, i., 425 
 Das Unglück der Jacobis, i., 204 
 Das Veilchen, iii., 375, 376 
 
 “ . . . dass du, die so lange mir 
 reharrt war” (from Buch Sulei- 
 ka), iii., 14. 
 
 David und Goliath, puppet play, i.,38 
 De V Allemagne (Madame de Stael), 
 i-, 417. 434 ; ü-, 443 
 De Oratore (Cicero), i., 48/. 
 
394 
 
 Anbei 
 
 Death, Goethe expects an early, i., 
 
 35 6 - 35 8 .. 3 6o > 4°8 
 Dechent, ii. , 448 
 
 “Dedication” {Faust), ii., 278; iii., 
 296. 3°5 ... 
 
 Dehio, G., iii., 383 
 Deinet, Councillor. i., 147 
 Delph (Delf), Demoiselle, i., 221, 
 233/'. ü-. 274, 275, 276 
 Delphi, ii., 19 
 
 Dem auf gehenden Vollmonde, iii., 
 40, 66, 182^. ; quotation from, 183 
 Dem 31. Oktober 1817, iii., 143, 
 i 49 f- 
 
 Dem Menschen wie den Tieren ist 
 ein Zwischenknochen der obern 
 Kinnlade zuzuschreiben, iii., 87 ff., 
 109 
 
 Dem Schauspieler Krüger, quotation 
 from, ii., 18; quoted, 28 
 “Dem Wolf, dem tu’ ich Esel boh- 
 ren,” i., 225 
 
 Dembowsky, iii., 379, 380 
 Demetrius (Schiller), ii., 193, 338 
 Demonic, the, i., 3, 54, 135. 327 ff- 
 Den 6. Juni 1816, quoted, iii., 28 
 Den vereinigten Staaten, quotation 
 from, iii., 220 
 
 Denkwürdigkeiten (Varnhagen), i., 
 428 
 
 Denmark, i., 321; ii., 421 
 “ Denn solches Los dem Menschen 
 wie den Tieren ward” (from 
 Pandora), iii., 110 /. 
 
 Denon, ii., 344 
 Der Besuch, iii., 70/. 
 
 Der Bürgergeneral, ii., 123//., 154, 
 
 155. 273 
 
 Der deutsche Merkur, (Wieland), i., 
 176, 178, 420, 432; ii., 85 
 “ Der du an dem Weberstuhle 
 sitzest,” iii., 197 
 
 “Der du von dem Himmel bist,” 
 see Wandrers Nachtlied 
 Der ewige Jude, i., 210, 365, 410; 
 ü., 273 
 
 Der Falke, i., 365; ii., x, 439/. 
 
 Der Fischer, iii., 42/., 59, 62, 375, 
 376 
 
 Der Freimütige (Kotzebue and 
 Merkel), ii., 425 
 
 Der Fuchs ohne Schwanz (Hagedorn), 
 
 1., 92 
 
 Der getreue Eckart, iii., 58/., 375 
 Der Goldene Spiegel (Wieland), i., 
 258, 311, 312; iii., 254 
 Der Gott und die Bajadere, ii., 314; 
 
 111., 12, 19, 55, 56, 62, 63 
 
 Der griechische Genius (Schiller), 
 quoted, ii., 313 
 
 Der Gross-Cophta, i., 404, 410; ii., 
 I2iff., 154, 155, 273 
 
 Der Herr und der Diener (Moser), 
 
 i., 310 
 
 Der Herr und die Magd (folk-song), 
 
 1., 238 
 
 Der Hund des Aubry de Montdidier 
 (French melodrama), iii., 152 f. 
 Der Junggesell und der Mühlbach, 
 
 111., 376 
 
 Der König in Thule, i., 210; iii., 59, 
 60, 64/., 289, 375, 376 
 Der Löwenstuhl, iii., 57 
 Der Mann von fünfzig Jahren (in 
 Wilhelm Meisters W ander fahre), 
 ii-, 35 3; iü-, 19°. * 93 , 2oSff. 
 
 Der Messias (Klopstock), i., 19, 27, 
 211, 285 
 
 Der Musensohn, iii., 376 
 Der neue Pausias und sein Blumen- 
 mädchen, ii., 314 
 Der Rattenfänger, iii., 376 
 Der Renommist (Zachariä), i., 42 
 Der Sammler und die S einigen, ii., 
 327, 328, 331 
 Der Sänger, iii., 62, 376 
 Der Schatzgräber, ii., 314 
 “Der Spiegel sagt mir: ich bin 
 schön” (from Buch der Betrach- 
 tungen in West-östlicher Divan), 
 
 iii., 31 
 
 Der Taucher (Schiller), iii., 52 
 Der Totentanz, i., 3 
 Der untreue Knabe, i., 3, 210; iii., 
 62,65,374 
 
 Der Wandrer, i., 100; iii., 47, 65, 71 
 Der Zauberflöte zweiter Teil, ii., 
 321 
 
 Der Zauberlehrling, ii., 314; iü-, 64 
 Derones, i., 22 f., 39, 421 
 Des Epimenides Erwachen, ii., 434/., 
 454 
 
 Des Kiuiben Wunderhorn (Arnim 
 and Brentano), iii., 145, 148 
 Des Künstlers Vergötterung, i., 206 
 “Des Menschen, der in aller Welt” 
 (from original Version of Jägers 
 Abendlied), ii., 2; iii., 45 
 Des Sängers Fluch (Uhland), iii.. 52 
 Des teut sehen Burschen fliegende 
 Blätter (Fries), iii., 137 
 Descent, the theory of, iii., 105 ff., 
 
 Deutsche Geschickte, etc. (Häusser), 
 ü-, 445 
 
 Deutsche Schaubühne (Gottsched), 
 
 i., 3 8 
 
 Deutschordenshof (Das deutsche 
 Haus), i., 160, 161, 162, 166 
 Devrient, O., iii., 384 
 Dialect, Goethe’s, i., 44 
 Dialogues (Galileo), iii., 360 
 Dialogues (Plato), ii., 206 
 
Anbei 395 
 
 Diamond Necklace, The (Carlyle), i., 
 366 
 
 Diamond necklace intrigue, the, i., 
 366, 404 ; ii. , 121 /. 
 
 Diana, ii., 3/., 6, 7, 17, 19, 25, 159 
 Dichtung und Wahrheit, i., 39, 77, 
 80, 133, 139, 216/., 221, 222 f., 
 232/., 251, 25t, 327; ii., 161, 167, 
 272, 280, 415, 417/, 432, 446, 
 448; iii. , 8, 10, 31 ff., 82, 84, 172, 
 264, 359 
 
 Dictionnaire Historique et Critique 
 (Bayle), i., 421; ii., 157 
 Diderot, i., in, 120 
 Diderots Versuch über die Malerei, 
 
 111., 378 
 
 Die Aufgeregten, ii., 125 f., 147, 155, 
 273 
 
 Die Bedeutung der Magie und Sorge 
 in Goethes Faust (Türck), iii., 383 
 Die Befreiung des Prometheus, ii., 
 39 1 
 
 Die Bekehrte, iii., 376 
 Die Braut von Korinth, ii., 314; iii-, 
 53, 56. 62 /., 65; quotation from, 
 72 
 
 Die Braut von Messina (Schiller), 
 
 1., 400 
 
 Die Bühnengeschichte des Goethesch- 
 en Faust (Creizenach), iii., 384 
 Die Bürgschaft (Schiller), i., 400 
 Die deutschen Mächte und der 
 Fürstenbund (Ranke), i., 436 
 Die deutschen Universitäten (Lexis), 
 
 111., 97 
 
 Die drei ältesten Bearbeitungen von 
 Goethes Iphigenie (Düntzer), ii., 
 
 441 
 
 Die erste Walpurgisnacht, i., 3; 
 hi., 53 /-. 63. 375 
 
 Die Faultiere und die Dickhäutigen, 
 
 iii., 107 
 
 Die Fischerin, i., 265; iii., 59, 374 
 Die Freuden, iii., 374 
 Die gefährliche Wette (in Wilhelm 
 Meisters Wanderfahre), ii., 353; 
 
 111., 190 
 
 Die Geheimnisse, i., 307, 364, 410; 
 
 quotation from, ii., 165; 273 
 Die geistigen und sozialen Strö- 
 mungen des 19. Jahrhunderts 
 (Ziegler), ii., 447 
 
 Die Geschwister, i., 302 ; ii., 1, 2, 213, 
 272 ; iii., 12 
 
 Die glücklichen Gatten, ii., 452 
 Die Götter Griechenlands (Schiller), 
 
 11., 206 
 
 Die Hexenküche, see “Witches’ 
 Kitchen” 
 
 Die Höllenfahrt Christi, i. , 3 7 
 Die Horen (Schiller), ii., 206, 207, 
 3 i 7 
 
 Die Huldigung der Künste (Schiller), 
 ü-> 337 
 
 Die Jagd, iii., 172 
 Die Jäger (Iffland), ii., 98 
 Die Kindermörderin (Wagner), i., 
 122 
 
 Die klassische Walpurgisnacht (Val- 
 entin), iii., 383 
 
 Die Kritik der praktischen Vernunft 
 
 (Kant), ii., 172; iii., 205/. 
 
 Die Kritik der reinen Vernunft 
 (Kant), ii., 1 72, 1 73 
 Die Kritik der Urteilskraft (Kant), 
 
 11., 172, 177, 180, 196; iii., 101, 
 102 
 
 Die Laune des Verliebten, i., 39, 54, 
 57, 81/., 85, 244, 423/. ; ii., 272 
 Die Lehrjahre, see Wilhelm Meisters 
 Lehrjahre 
 
 Die Leiden des jungen Werther, i., 
 55, 78, 152, 155, 156, 157, 160/., 
 182-202, 203, 204, 214, 237, 238, 
 252, 260, 312, 338, 340, 350, 366, 
 412, 429/., 430, 431/.; ii., 61, 62 
 140, 162, 184, 211/., 214, 259, 
 264, 267, 272, 309, 380, 383, 41 if., 
 453 ! iü-. 4 °. 161, 165, 257 
 Die letzte Krankheit Goethes (Vogel), 
 
 111., 384/. 
 
 Die Liebe des Vaterlands (Sonnen- 
 fels), i., 150 
 
 Die Liebende schreibt, iii., 375 
 Die Luisenburg bei Alexandersbad, 
 
 iii., 114 
 
 Die Metamorphose, etc., see Ver- 
 such, die Metamorphose, etc. 
 
 Die Mitschuldigen, i., 77, 80, 81, 
 82 ff., 424/. ; ii., 272 
 “Die Nachtigal, sie war entfernt” 
 {Ländlich), iii., 375 
 Die Natur, see Fragment über die 
 Natur 
 
 Die -natürliche Tochter, ii., 132-146, 
 154 , 273, 332, 446, 452 
 Die neue Melusine (in Wilhelm 
 Meisters Wanderjahre), i., 125, 
 i 34 /-; ü-. 35 3 ; iü-. 19°. 217 ff- 
 Die Noachide (Bodmer), i., 74 
 Die Oster Szenen und die Vertrags- 
 szene in Faust (Niejahr), iii., 382 
 Die pilgernde Törin (in Wilhelm 
 Meisters Wanderjahre), ii., 353; 
 
 iii., 190, 201/., 203 
 Die politische Korrespondenz Karl 
 Friedrichs von Baden (Erdmanns- 
 dörffer), i., 436 
 
 Die Räuber (Schiller), ii., 31, 183, 
 185, 191 
 
 Die Reliquie, i., 425 
 Die romantische Schule (Haym), iii., 
 378 /. 
 
 Die schäm Nacht, iii., 373, 376 
 
396 
 
 Unfrei 
 
 Die Skelette der Nagetiere , iii. , 107 
 Die Söhne des Tals (Werner), ii., 
 35° 
 
 Die Spröde , iii., 376 
 Die vier Haimonskinder (populär 
 tale), i., 222 
 
 Die Vögel, i., 325; ii., 426 
 Die Wahlverwandtschaften, ii., 272, 
 347-387, 3 88 - 39°. 404, 415- 
 
 451, 452; ui., 8, 146, 191, 230, 
 231, 256, 264 
 
 Die Walpurgisnacht im ersten Teile 
 von Goethes Faust (Witkowski), 
 
 111., 299 
 
 Die Wanderjahre, see Wilhelm 
 Meisters W ander jahre 
 Die Wette, ii., 419 
 Die Zauberflöte (Mozart), ii., 286, 
 321 
 
 Dieburg, i., 310 
 Diede, ii., 451 
 Diersburg, iii., 26 
 “Dies zu deuten bin erbötig” 
 (from Buch Suleikaj, iii., 20 
 “Dieses ist das Bild der Welt,” i., 
 .37 
 
 Diezmann, 1., 434; 11., 444 
 Diner zu Koblenz, i., 206 
 Dionysus, ii., 398 
 
 “Directeur des plaisirs,” Goethe a, 
 
 1., 316 
 
 “Dismal Day — A Field, ” scene in 
 Faust, see “Dreary Day — A 
 Field” 
 
 Dissertation, Goethe’s doctor’s, i., 
 102, 138/., 141 
 Divan (Hafiz), iii., 2 
 “ Doch im Innern scheint ein Geist 
 gewaltig zu ringen” (from Meta- 
 morphose der Tiere), ii. 160; 
 
 111., in 
 
 Doctor, Goethe a licentiate in law 
 instead of a, i., 138 
 Doctor Faust (folk-book), i., 76; 
 see Doktor Faust 
 
 Doctor Faustus, The Tragical His- 
 tory of (Marlowe), iii., 271/., 273, 
 275. 381 
 
 Doctor Marianus, in Faust, iii., 332 
 Dodd, i., 79 
 
 Doge, the, of Venice, i., 374; iii., 20 
 
 Dohm, i., 437; ii., 115 
 
 Doktor Faust (puppet play), iii., 
 
 25 iff- 
 
 Dole, the, i., 349 
 Dölitz, i , 70 
 Dolmetsch, i., 21 
 
 Don Carlos (Schiller), ii., 185, 191, 
 192 
 
 Don Juan, i., 242 
 
 Don Quixote (Cervantes), i., 263 
 
 Donatello, i., 373 
 
 Doric style, i., 396 
 Domburg, iii., 66, 182 
 Dorothea, heroine of Hermann und 
 Dorothea, ii., 280 ff., 449, 450 
 Dörfchen, character in Die Fisch- 
 erin, iii., 60 
 
 D’Orville, J. G., i., 220; ii., 279; iii., 
 
 17 
 
 Drakendorf, ii., 387 
 Dramatischer Nachlass von Lenz 
 (Weinhold), i., 435 
 Drawing, Goethe’s study of, i., 16, 
 30, 70/., 167; his collection of 
 drawings, iii., 163 
 
 “Dreary Day — A Field,” scene in 
 Faust, iii., 261, 283, 298, 300/. 
 Dresden, i., 41, 65; Goethe in, 71 f., 
 122, 162, and ii., 93, 416, 432; 
 
 1., 268, 424; ii., 183, 385, 431, 445; 
 
 111., 161, 384 
 
 Dritte Wallfahrt nach Erwins Grabe, 
 
 1., 228 
 
 Drollinger, i., 33 
 Drusenheim, i., 124 
 “ Du hast es lange genug getrieben ” 
 ( W ., v 1 ., 182), iii., 139 
 “ Du versuchst, o Sonne, vergebens” 
 ( Den 6. Juni 1816), iii., 28 
 Dumouriez, ii., 116 
 “Dumpfheit,” Goethe’s, i., 3, 6, 
 344, 418; iii., 46 
 
 Düntzer, i., 421, 430, 435; ii., 441, 
 444. 445- 448, 449: ii*-. I 37. 3 8 3 
 Dürckheim see Türckheim 
 Dürer, ii., 327, 450; iii., 147 
 Düsseldorf, i., 207/., 310; ii., 114/-. 
 116, 326 
 
 Dutch art, i., 71, 75, 162 ; ii.,115 
 Dyk, ii., 433 
 
 Earth-Spirit, the, in Faust, iii., 32, 
 255. 275, 278 ff., 284, 313, 335, 
 382 
 
 Ebers, ii., 444 
 Eberwein, iii., 376 
 Eckermann, i., 272, 434; ii., 35, 272, 
 277. 379. 44i. 447. 452; iü-. 78. 
 91, 107, 113, 117 /., 131, 164/., 
 168, 175, 181, 185, 186, 193, 243. 
 266/., 338/., 359, 363, 374. 379. 
 382 
 
 Eckhof, i., 257 
 Edda, the, i., 115 
 
 “Edel sei der Mensch” (from Das 
 Göttliche), ii., 167 
 Edelsheim, von, i, 310. 437 
 Edgar, character in Shakespeare ’s 
 King Lear, i., 13 1 
 Edinburg, iii., 174 
 Eduard, character in Die Wahlver- 
 wandtschaften, i., 192; ii., 355^., 
 452 
 
Infcei 
 
 397 
 
 Eger, iii., 113 
 Egeria, ii., 115; iii., 144 
 Egle, character in Die Laune des 
 Verliebten , i., 81/. 
 
 Egloiistein, Henriette von, ii., 276, 
 278, 331, 444 
 
 Egloffstein, Karoline, iii., 167 
 Egmont, hero of the drama, i., 231, 
 234 , 3 2 7 ff-'- üi-. 64 
 Egmont , i., 232, 245, 270, 327-336, 
 364, 403, 4°4. 4io, 437; ii., 6, 31, 
 37 . I 54 , 159 . 2 72 ; iii-, 257, 329, 
 375 , 383 
 
 Egoist, Goethe not an, 11., 106, 108, 
 187, 200 
 
 Egypt, i., 394; iii., 338 
 Ehrenbreitstein, i., 188, 310 
 Ehrlen, Dean, i., 138 
 “ Ehrlicher Mann ” (from Drei Oden 
 an meinen Freund Behrisch), i., 
 66 /. 
 
 Eichendorff, iii., 79 
 Eichhorn, iii., 16 
 Eichstädt, ii., 336 
 Ein Jahrhundert chemischer For- 
 schung ■, etc. (Hofmann), ii., 451 
 Eine Faustouvertüre (Wagner), iii., 
 376 
 
 “Eine Liebe hatt ich,” etc., 
 Venezianische Epigramme, No. 
 7), ii., 81 
 
 Eine neue Faust-Erklärung (Türck), 
 
 111., 57, 383 
 
 “Einer einzigen angehören” ( Zwis- 
 chen beiden Welten), iii., 184 
 Einfache Nachahmung der Natur, 
 Manier, Stil, ii., 85, 100 
 Einlass, quotation from, ii., 387 
 Einleitung in die Propyläen, iii., 99 
 Einleitung und Erläuterung zu 
 Goethes Hermann und Dorothea 
 (Cholevius), ii., 450 
 Einleitung zu einer allgemeinen 
 Vergleichungslehre, iii., 102 
 Einleitung zur Naturphilosophie 
 (Schelling), ii., 324 
 Eins und Alles, quotation from, 
 
 11., 164; iii., 62; quotation from, 
 106 
 
 Einschränkung, iii., 46 
 Einsiedel, Hildebrand von, i., 261/., 
 264, 266, 281, 435; ii-, 85, 444; 
 
 111., 258 
 
 Einsiedel, Lieutenant von, i., 264 
 Einsiedeln, i., 266/., 430; ii., 317 
 Einwirkung der neueren Philosophie, 
 
 iii., 101, 377 
 
 Eisenach, i., 261, 313, 342, 360, 
 389, 435 
 
 Elbe, the, ii., 416, 425 
 Elberfeld, i., 209 
 Elbingerode, i., 338 
 
 Elective affinities, ii., 355#. 
 
 Electra, ii., 15 
 Elegie, see Marienbad Elegie 
 Elfriede (Bertuch), i., 263 
 Eliezer, i., 96 
 
 Elizabeth, character in Götz, i., 
 W 9 
 
 Elpenor, i., 364; ii., 1, 273, 440 
 Elsheimer, i., 267 
 Elvira, i., 243 
 
 Elysium, i., 26, 45, 146, 147 
 Elysium, i., 147; iii., 47 
 Emerson, i., 417 
 Emile (Rousseau), iii., 227 
 Emilia Galotti, ii., 376 
 Emilia Galotti (Lessing), i., 178, 
 238 
 
 Emmaus, i., 212 
 Emmendingen, i., 182, 224, 347 
 Emperor, the, character in Faust, 
 iü-, 33 2 ff-> 343 /?-. 353 
 Empiricism, Goethe’s, i., 94, 151 
 Ems, i., 204 ff., 210; ii., 79 
 Encyclopedists, the, i., 119 
 Engelbach, i., 98, 100 
 England, i., 110; ii., 340, 421, 4241 
 
 iii., 169, 174, 199, 215, 242 
 English, Goethe’s study of, i., 16, 
 30, 79, 115#. . 
 
 Engraving, Goethe s study of, 1., 
 167; his collection of engra vings, 
 
 iii., 163 
 
 Ense, see Vamhagen 
 Ensisheim, i., 139 
 
 Entelechy, Goethe’s use of, ii., 
 171/. 
 
 Eos, ii., 398, 401, 402 
 Ephemerides, i., 423 ; quotation from, 
 
 111., 84 
 
 Epictetus, i., 29 
 Epicurus, ii., 386 
 
 EpikurischGlaubensbekenntnis Heinz 
 Widerporstens (Schelling), ii., 447 
 Epilog zu Schillers “ Glocke ,” quo- 
 tations from, ii., 194, 337; 338; 
 last lines of, iii., 369 
 Epilog zum Trauerspiele Essex, ii., 
 433 
 
 Epimeleia, character in Pandora, 
 
 11., 394 ff. 
 
 Epimenides, hero of Des Epimenides 
 Erwachen, ii., 434 /-. 454 
 Epimetheus, character in Pandora, 
 ^ ü-, 39 Q#. 
 
 Epoche, ii., 351 /. 
 
 Epoques de la Nature (Buffon), i., 
 3°8 
 
 Erdbeschreibung, etc. (Leonhard i), 
 
 1., 435 
 
 Erdkühlein (Erdkülin, Erdtulin), 
 
 i., 279 
 
 Erdmannsdörffer, 1., 436 
 
398 
 
 Inber 
 
 Erfurt, i., 41, 273, 280, 418; ii., 
 99, 150; Congress of, i., 201, and 
 
 11., 408-414, 420, 428, 433; iii. , 4 
 Ergo Bibamus, iii., 52, 376 
 “Erhabne Grossmama,” etc., i.,422 
 “ Erhabner Geist,” etc. (from “For- 
 est and Cavern” in Faust), iii., 
 132 /• 
 
 “ Erhabner Grosspapa,” etc., i., 422 
 Erich, polyhistor, ii., 335 
 Eridon, character in Die Laune des 
 Verliebten, i., 57, 81/., 244, 424 
 Erie Canal, the, iii., 174 
 Erlangen, ii., 276 
 
 Erläuterungen zu Hermann und 
 Dorothea (Düntzer), ii., 449 
 Erl-King, the, iii., 59 
 Erlkönig, i., 3, 265; iii., 59/., 374, 
 375 . 376 
 
 Erlkönigs Tochter (in Herder’s 
 Volkslieder), iii., 59 
 Ernesti, branch of the Saxon dy- 
 nasty, i., 314, 322 
 Ernesti, professor, i., 48/., 164 
 Eros, ii., 399 
 
 Erster Entwurf einer allgemeinen 
 Einleitung in die vergleichende 
 Anatomie, etc., iii., 85, 104/. 
 Erster Verlust, iii., 376 
 Ervinus ä Steinbach, i., 104 ff.\ ii., 
 446 ; iii., 147, 250 
 
 Erwin und Elmire, i., 207, 245, 404, 
 410 
 
 Erzbischof Ernst (Vischer), ii., 327 
 Erzgebirge, the, i., 367 
 “Es ist nichts in der Haut,” iii., 83 
 “Es schlug mein Herz — geschwind 
 zu Pferde” (from Willkommen 
 und Abschied), i., 127/. 
 
 “Es war ein Bule frech genung,” 
 see Der untreue Knabe 
 “Es war ein fauler Schäfer,” iii., 
 
 376 
 
 “Es war eine Ratt’ im Kellemest” 
 (from Faust), iii., 376 
 “Es war einmal ein König” (from 
 Faust), iii., 376 
 Eschenburg, i., 157, 199 
 Esenbeck, Nees von, iii., 377 
 Etain, ii., 1 13 
 
 Etching, Goethe’s study of, i., 68/., 
 88, 167 ; bis Collection of etchings, 
 
 111., 163 
 
 Etemal-Womanly, the, in Faust, 
 
 iii., 288, 297, 303, 342 
 Ethica (Spinoza), i., 208, 308; ii., 
 158, 168, 169, 170, 447; iii., 84, 
 
 377 
 
 Ettersberg, the, i., 338; iii., 36 
 Ettersburg, i., 258, 318, 417, 424 
 Eudemonism, ii., 176 
 Eudora, character in Satyros, i., 250 
 
 Eugenie, character in Die natürliche 
 Tochter, ii., 133#-. 137 /•. 446 
 Eulengebirge, the, ii., 90 
 Euphorion, character in Faust, iii., 
 267 /■. 339 ff-> 353 
 Euphrates, the, iii., 19 
 Euphrosyne, ii., 96 ff., 318; iii., 66 
 Euripides, ii., 3, 5, 12, 16, 19, 22, 
 440; iii., 360 
 
 Europe, i., 310, 366, 373; ii., 27, 
 92, 103, 105, 112, 113, 132, 151, 
 172, 190, 316, 340, 410, 411, 414, 
 424; iii., 2, 4, 135 /-. J 43 . 144 . 199. 
 221, 267, 268, 337 
 Eutin, iii., 62/. 
 
 Evolution, Goethe’s idea of, iii., 
 95 ff-, 100/., 104 
 
 Eybenberg, Marianne von, ii., 416 
 Eyes, colour of Goethe’s, i., 15, 420 
 
 Fahlmer, Johanna, i., 187, 207, 221, 
 224, 240, 241, 285, 296, 347, 431 
 Fair, in Frankfort, i., 20, 141, 221, 
 231 ; in Leipsic, 45. 57 
 Falcke, i., 157 
 Falk, i., 420; ii., 408/. 
 
 Fatime, amoebseum between Ali 
 and, i., 247 
 
 Faust, the historical and legendary, 
 
 1., 45, 142, 170, 183, 420; iii., 
 271 /■, 295 
 
 Faust, hero of the folk-book, iii., 
 2 73 /- 
 
 Faust, hero of the puppet play, iii., 
 
 251/- 
 
 Faust, hero of Goethe’s drama, i., 
 2, 6, 80, 342 ; ii., 253 ; iii., 45, 132, 
 248 ff., 382, 383, 384 
 Faust, i., 3; Goethe’s experiences 
 reflectedin., 18, 93, 118, 136, and 
 
 11., 278, and iii., 247 ff.; history of 
 the composition of, i., 142, 202, 
 204, 210, 211, 239, 245, 3 6 4. 403. 
 410, and ii., 85, 333, and iii., 
 247 ff.\ verse form of, ii., 29, and 
 
 111., 304/., 339; reception of, ii., 
 203, 309, and iii., 257//., 270, 
 357/;. discussion of, 247-358; 
 music to, 375, 376; notes on, 
 381//. ; on the stage, 384; other 
 references, i., 144, 438, and ii., 
 2, 128, 147, 158, 272, 360, 392, 
 452, and iii., 32, 34, 67, 132/., 
 146, 165, 171, 246, 359, 367, 380; 
 see also Faust, ein Fragment and 
 Urfaust 
 
 Faust (Gounod), iii., 376 
 Faust, ein Fragment, ii., 85; iii., 
 260/., 275-296, 313, 319, 320, 382 
 Faust, ein musikalisches Charak- 
 terbild für Orchester (Rubinstein), 
 
 iii., 376 
 
Unfrei 
 
 399 
 
 Faust-Symphonie (Liszt), iii., 376 
 Faustina, i., 406, 439 
 Faustina, antique bust of, i., 438 
 Fayel.character in Goue’s Masuren, 
 
 1., 187 
 
 Federigo, character in Der Falke, 
 ii-, 439 
 
 Felix, character in Wilhelm Meister, 
 
 11 . , 242, 249, 250^., 261, 394, 
 
 448/.; iii., 196, 199, 207, 212, 
 
 223/., 231/. 
 
 Felsweihegesang, i., 147; iii., 47 
 Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, ii., 
 in, 1 1 2, 342 
 
 Ferdinand, character in Egmont, i., 
 33 1 , 33s 
 
 Ferdinand (Fritz Stolberg [?] ), i., 
 43 1 
 
 Fernando, character in Stella, i., 
 192, 222, 240, 242 ff., 433; ii., 378 
 Fernow, ii., 453 
 
 Ferrara, i., 381; ii., 34/., 38 ff., 442, 
 443 
 
 Festschrift des Hochstifts, ii., 451 
 Festschrift zum Neuphilologentage 
 (1892), i., 430 
 Feti, Domenico, i., 423 
 “Fetter grüne, du Laub” (from 
 Herbstgefühl) , iii., 49/. 
 Feuerkugel, the, in Leipsic, i., 45 
 Fichte, ii., 140, 150, 179/., 202, 
 423; iii., 143/., 229, 231, 244, 317, 
 337 
 
 Fielding, ii., 259 
 Fielitz, i., 434/. 
 
 Fiesco (Schiller), ii., 185 
 
 Final causes, iii., 102 
 
 Fischer, Kuno, ii., 18, 442; iii., 
 
 381/ 
 
 Fiske, John, iii., 310 
 Flachsland, Karoline, see Herder 
 Flavio, character in Der Mann von 
 fünfzig Jahren, iii., 208 ff., 223 
 Fleischer, i, 40 
 
 Florence, i., 381 402, 407, 437; 
 
 ii., 37, 42/if., 416; iii., 186 
 Flüelen, i., 22 7 ; ii., 318 
 Foligno, i., 382 
 
 Folk-poetry, Goethe’s study of, i., 
 16, 109, 114/., 117/.; iii., 47 
 Fonseca, Wollheim da, iii., 384 
 “Forest and Cavern,” scene in 
 Faust, iii., 132 /., 260, 261, 275, 
 282 ff., 293, 294, 314, 382 
 Förster, Friedrich, i., 69 
 Förster, Georg, ii., 109, 119 
 Fossiler Stier, iii., 108 
 Fossils, Goethe appreciates the 
 significance of, iii., 114/. ; his 
 collection of, 163 
 Fouque, ii., 429 
 Fourier, iii., 192 
 
 Fragment, see Faust, ein Fragment 
 Fragment über die Natur, ii., 447; 
 quotations from, 158, 159, 160, 
 and iii., 85 ; 126 
 
 Fragmente über die neuere deutsche 
 Literatur (Herder), i., 112 
 France, i., 11, 24, 94, 97, 110, iii, 
 119/., 122, 137/., 140, 311, 419, 
 43°; 11-, 102 ff., 109 ff., 126, 132, 
 142, 145, 146, 147, 151, 190, 
 191/., 199, 217, 275, 302, 318/., 
 34off., 408, 41 5 ; Empress of, 418; 
 421, 423, 428; iii., 140, 170; 
 174, 261, 332, 344, 360 
 Frangois de Theas, Comte de Tho- 
 ranc (Schubart), i., 420 
 Franconia, i., 9, 314 
 Franken zur griechischen Literatur, 
 Goethe’s review of, i., 150 
 Frankenberg, i., 393 
 Frankfort-on-the-Main, i., 8 ff., 14, 
 2iff., 40, 43, 45, 52, 70, 81, 82, 
 89, 90, 91, 94, 96, 102, 103, 122, 
 J 33 . i 38, 140, 141. i 43 . 152 /-, 
 161, 167, 168, 171, 182, 183, 
 
 185, 188, 200, 204, 205, 207, 
 
 211 ff., 216 ff., 221 ff., 229, 230, 
 232, 234, 235 ff., 241, 254, 255, 
 273/., 276, 296, 309, 329, 344, 
 354 , 3 6 °, 37 6 > 389, 4io, 418/., 
 421, 423, 424, 428, 429, 430, 
 
 432; ii., 85, 89, 93, 105 ff., 114, 
 
 118, 119, 212, 213, 241, 276, 281, 
 3 ° 8 , 314 ff-, 320, 4 io; üi-, 5 - 8 ff-, 
 11, 13, 17, 19, 25, 26, 29, 64, 
 154, 179, 186, 248, 249, 270, 271 
 Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, i., 
 147 ff., 163, 176, 180, 204, 423 
 Franz I., Emperor of Austria, ii., 
 418 
 
 Franz I., Emperor of Holy Roman 
 Empire, i., 24 
 Franz, Robert, iii., 374/. 
 
 Franz, character in Götz. i., 171,172, 
 179, 180; iii., 61 
 
 Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen 
 (Tieck), iii., 146 
 
 “Franztum drängt in diesen ver- 
 worrenen Tagen” (from Herbst), 
 ü-, 153 
 
 Frascati, i., 438 
 
 Frauenbilder aus Goethes Jugend- 
 zeit (Düntzer), i., 430 
 Frauenplan, the, in Weimar, i., 
 359; ii., 318; iii., 136 
 Frauenstein, house of, i., 8 
 Frederick II., the Great, i., 9, 20, 
 107, 177, 256, 259, 267, 323, 324, 
 325, 437; ii., 348, 422, 425 
 Frederick William II., ii., 425 
 Frederick William III., ii., 425, 426, 
 432, 434 
 
400 
 
 Undex 
 
 Freedom of the press, in Weimar, 
 iii-. x 37 
 
 Freiberg, ii. , 416 
 Freiburg, ii., 90 
 
 Freie Deutsche Hochstift, das, i., 421 
 French, Goethe’s study of, i., 16, 
 19, 22/., 30, 39, 55, 79 
 French revolution, the, ii., 102/f., 
 118, 120, 121-155, 193, 204, 208, 
 217 ; iii. , 214, 261, 271 
 “Freudvoll und leidvoll,” (song 
 in Egmont), iii., 375, 376 
 Freundschaft und Liehe auf der 
 Probe (Wieland), ii., 451 
 Freytag, Gustav, iii., 241 
 Friedberg, ii., 308 
 Friedeberg, ii., 93 
 Friederike, see Friederike Brion 
 Friederikens Ruhe, i., 125 
 Friedrich, Goethe’s servant, iii., 164 
 Friedrich, character in Wilhelm 
 Meister, ii., 247; iii., 202, 216, 
 222 
 
 Friedrich Eugen, Duke of Würtem- 
 berg, i., 52 
 
 Friedrich L. Graf zu Stoiber g (Jans- 
 sen), i., 430, 431 
 Fries, Professor, iii., 137 
 Fritsch, Minister von, of Saxony, 
 
 i., 261, 289 
 
 Fritsch, Minister von, of Weimar, 
 
 i., 259, 260/., 280, 289 ff., 312/., 
 3 1 7 » 435 ; ü-. 35 . 442 
 Fritz, i., 426 
 Fritz, Old, ii., 125 
 Froitzheim, i., 419, 426/. 
 Frommann, bookseller, ii., 349/., 
 416; iii., 145 
 
 Frommann, Frau, ii., 349 /., 416, 
 451; iii., 140 
 
 Frühzeitiger Frühling, iii., 375, 376 
 Fulda, i., 41 ; Abbot of, in Götz, 179 
 “Füllest wieder Busch und Tal,” 
 see An den Mond 
 
 Fundamenta Botanica (Linne), iii., 
 106 
 
 Furca, the, i., 352 ii., 318 
 Fürstenberg, Baron von, ii., 117 
 Fürstenhaus, the, in Weimar, i., 271 
 
 Gagem, Baron von, ii., 120 
 
 Galatea, character in Faust, iii., 
 
 „ 337 . 33.8 
 
 Galicia, ii., 92 
 
 Galilee, Sea of, i., 401 
 
 Galileo, iii., 360 
 
 Gallitzin, Princess, ii., r 167. 
 
 Ganges, the, iii., 55 
 
 Ganymed, iii., 47, 291 
 
 “Ganz,” i., 409, 439 
 
 “Gap,” the, in Faust, iii., 296, 31 zff. 
 
 Garbenheim, i., 155, 156, 157, 162 
 
 Gartenhaus, Goethe’s, i., 279, 297, 
 359; ii., 182; iii., 40, 136 
 Garve, ii., 91, 445 
 Gattamelata, statue of, i., 373 
 “Geb’ Euch Gott allen guten Se- 
 gen,” (from An den Herzog Karl 
 August), i., 283 
 
 “Gedichte sind gemalte Fenster- 
 scheiben,” iii., 37 
 
 Gedichte voneinem polnischen Juden, 
 Goethe’s review of, i., 148/., 163 
 Gefunden, iii., 62, 376 
 “Geh’ ich hier, sie kommt heran” 
 (from “Wenn ich auf dem 
 Markte geh’ ”), iii., 156 
 Geheimes, iii., 375 
 Geistesgruss, i., 206; iii., 376 
 Geliert, i., 49, 50, 67, 77, 88, 425/. 
 Generalbeichte, iii., 51 
 Geneva, i., 349/., 431; iii-, 165, 
 192 
 
 Genius, die Büste der Natur enthül- 
 lend, iii., 8 sf. 
 
 Genius, in Wanderers Sturmlied, 
 
 111., 61; see also i., 106, 108, 122, 
 
 136, 292 
 Genoa, iii., 186 
 
 Genoveva, Leben und Tod der 
 heiligen (Tieck), iii., 144 
 Gentz, iii., 150 
 
 Geographisch-historische Beschrei- 
 bung merkwürdiger Städte, i., 433 
 Geography, Goethe’s study of, i., 
 16, and iii., 173 
 
 Geologische Probleme und Versuch 
 ihrer Auflösung, iii., 378 
 Geology, Goethe’s study of, i., 308, 
 361, 382, 396, 408, and iii., 15, 
 109, 112/f., 175, 378; see Neptun- 
 ist and Vulcanist. 
 
 Georg, character in Götz, i., 179, 180 
 George, landlord’s son at Drusen- 
 heim, i., 124 
 
 Gerbermühle, the, iii., 12, 17 ff., 25, 
 27, 161 
 
 German, Goethe’s study of, i., 18, 
 19, 30, 49/., 7 3#., 137 
 German Confederation, the, i., 272; 
 
 11., 434; iii., 141, 154 
 Germany, i., 24, 30, 106/., 255, 267, 
 
 272. 273. 3 0I > 3 I0 > 322, 324. 326, 
 366, 369, 374, 418, 433, 437 ; 
 
 ii., 27, 77, 87, 94, 104, 122, 124, 
 128, 149, 152, 172, 204, 208, 274, 
 304, 314, 3 i 5 > 339 . 34 i. 393 . 408/., 
 410, 421, 423, 427, 428, 429, 430, 
 432, 434 . 449 5 iü-. 4 . 55 - 94 . 135 - 
 
 137, 138, 142, 143. I 54 , 170. W 4 . 
 181, 199, 227, 229, 240 ff., 244, 
 361, 367/., 384 
 
 Gerock, Antoinette, i., 167, 183 
 Gerstenberg, i., 49, 431 
 
Hnöei 
 
 401 
 
 Gesang der Geister über den Wassern, 
 i-, 348; iii-, 375 
 
 Gesang der Parzen (from Iphigenie), 
 iü-» 375 
 
 Geschichte der Königl. Preuss. Akad. 
 
 d. Wiss. (Harnack), ii., 453 
 Geschichte der Pädagogik (Raumer), 
 iii., 380 
 
 Geschichte des Abfalls der Nieder- 
 lande (Schiller), ii., 185 
 Geschichte des deutschen Reiches 
 (Kotzebue), iii., 139 
 Geschichte des Eisass (Lorenz-Sche- 
 rer), ii., 453 
 
 Geschichte Gottfriedens von Berli- 
 chingen mit der eisernen Hand 
 dramatisiert, i., 142, 170; iii., 253 /. 
 Geschichte meines botanischen Studi- 
 ums, iii., 105/. 
 
 Geschichte seiner ( meiner ) bota- 
 nischen Studien, iii., 98 
 Gesellige Lieder, ii., 331; iii., 51/. 
 Gesellschaft der schönen Wissen- 
 schaften in Strasburg, i., 426 
 Gesner, i., 30, 421 
 Gespräche mit Goethe (Eckermann), 
 quotations from, ii., 441, and 
 iii., 107, 113, 168, 382; character 
 of, 164; ii., 452; iii., 91, 118, 131, 
 
 374 , 379 
 Gessler, ii., 318 
 Gessner, i., 49 
 
 “Gewiss, ich wäre schon so ferne” 
 ( An Frau von Stein), i., 363 
 Gianini, Countess, i., 266 
 Gickelhahn, the, iii., 362 
 Giessen, i., 11, 152, 164 
 Gilbert, i., 259 
 
 Gingo biloba J (in Buch Suleika), 
 iii.. 24 
 
 Giotto, i., 373; ii., 88 
 Giovanna, character in Der Falke, 
 ü-, 439 /- 
 Girgenti, i., 399 
 
 Glaciers, Goethe’s theory of, iii., 
 115 
 
 Glatz, county of, ii., 92 
 Gleim, i., 49, 78, 259, 420; ii., 208 
 Gluck, i., 303, 435; iii., 374 
 Glückliche Fahrt, iii., 375, 376 
 Glück der Entfernung, i., 425; iii., 
 „ 373 
 
 Glück und Traum, iii., 373 
 Gmelin, iii., 25 
 
 Göchhausen, Luise von, i., 264; 
 saves the Urfaust, 264, and iii., 
 258, 381; saves Annette, i., 264, 
 425; 281, 435; ii., 85 
 Göchhausen, Major von, iii., 381 
 Göcking, ii., 270, 449 
 Gödeke, ii., 445 
 Goebel, J., i., 78, 427, 435 
 
 VOL. III — 26 
 
 Goecke, i., 428 
 
 Goertz, see Görtz 
 
 Goethe, August von, ii., 82, 83, 86, 
 314/-, 3 I 9, 329, 333 , 345 , 354 , 433 : 
 iü-, 156, 157 , 159 , 165, 185#., 
 269, 361 
 
 Goethe, Christiane von ( nee Vul- 
 pius), i., 439; ii., 79/., 81 ff., 86, 
 110, 114, 115, 117, 314/., 319, 
 332 , 333 , 343 , 345 /-, 348, 354, 385, 
 418, 431, 444/-; in-, 5- J 3> 28 » 62 > 
 
 63, 156 /-, 184 
 
 Goethe, Cornelia, i., 15, 27, 40, 45, 
 52, 56, 58, 68, 80, 81, 90/., 142, 
 182, 186, 189, 224, 237, 347, 393, 
 421, 425, 43 1 : ü- 1; iü-, 380 
 
 Goethe, Friedrich Georg, i., 11, 50 
 
 Goethe, Hermann Jacob (the poet’s 
 step-uncle), i., 419 
 
 Goethe, Hermann Jacob (the poet’s 
 brother), i., 15 
 
 Goethe, Johann Caspar, i., ziff., 14, 
 16, 18, 2iff., 34, 40, 43, 45, 69, 
 79, 90, 94, 103, 138, 141/., 152, 
 153, 186, 213, 214, 215, 221, 223, 
 230, 233 , 309, 343 - 344 . 4 i 9 , 
 430; ii., 105, 280; iii., 183, 186, 
 253 
 
 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 
 birth, i., 8; native city, 8 ff.; 
 family tree, ioff.; early life at 
 home, 14 ff.; influences outside 
 the home, 20 ff.; first love, 24 ff.; 
 the youth of seventeen, 30^.; 
 earliest productions, 31 ff.; youth- 
 ful ambition, 40; Student at 
 Leipsic, 41 ff.; love affair with 
 Kätchen, 53 ff. 4 , journey to Dres- 
 den, 71/.; illness in Leipsic, 88/.; 
 return home, 89 ; recovery of 
 health, 90 ff.; departure for Stras- 
 burg, 94; Student at Strasburg, 
 95/jf. ; tour of Lower Alsatia and 
 northern Lorraine, 99/.; Storm 
 and Stress, 106 ff . ; love affair with 
 Friederike, 123 ff.; university ed- 
 ucation completed, 137/f. ; tour 
 of Upper Alsatia, 139; return 
 home, 140; activity as an advo- 
 cate, 141; Darmstadt associa- 
 tions, 143#. ; activity as a Journal- 
 ist, 147 ff.] experience at the 
 Imperial Chamber, 152 ff.; love 
 affair with Lotte, 159 ff.', return 
 home, 166; friends scatter, 182/.; 
 thoughts of suicide, 187/.; inter- 
 course with Maxe La Roche, 
 188/.; his fame spreads, 201; 
 literary lion of the day, 20 3//.; 
 journey to the Lower Rhine, 
 206 ff.; intercourse with Anna 
 Sibylla Münch, 213/.; acquaint- 
 
402 
 
 1nt>ei 
 
 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von; 
 
 (continued) 
 
 ance of Karl August, 214/.; 
 betrothal to Lili, 216 ff.-, joumey 
 to Switzerland, 22 3 ff.; engage- 
 ment to Lili broken, 232; invita- 
 tion to visit Weimar, 232; arrival 
 in Weimar, 275 / 7 - ; the Duke’s 
 Mentor, 282 ff.; member of the 
 Privy Council, 289 ff.; residence 
 in his Gartenhaus, 297; love 
 affair with Frau von Stein, 299 ff . ; 
 official activities, 309/7.; joumey 
 to Berlin, 323; journey to the 
 Harz, 337 ff.\ second journey to 
 Switzerland, 343/7.; official bur- 
 dens, 355 / 7 -', house in Weimar, 
 359; second Werther crisis, 365/.; 
 flight to Italy, 367; first sojourn 
 in Italy, 368/7.; tour of Sicily, 
 397/7. ; love affair with the beauti- 
 ful Milanese, 405/.; return to 
 Weimar, 408; a changedman, ii. , 
 77; rupture with Frau von Stein, 
 78/7.; conscience marriage to 
 Christiane, 81/7.; second journey 
 to Italy, 86/7.; journey to Silesia, 
 89/7.; director of Court Theatre, 
 93; campaign in France, 104/7.; 
 visit to his mother after thirteen 
 years of Separation, 105/7.; siege 
 of Longwy, 109/.; battle of Val- 
 my, in /.; retreat with the 
 Germans, 112/7.; journey to 
 Düsseldorf, 114/7.; visit in Mün- 
 ster, 11 6/.; return to Weimar, 
 11 7/.; siege of Mainz, 118/. ; 
 travels on the Rhine, 119; again 
 in Weimar, 119; friendship with 
 Schiller, 182/7.; rupture with 
 Herder, 198/.; relation to the 
 Duke cooled, 199/.; friends in 
 Jena, 202 /. ; the Xenien war, 
 208/7.; prepares for a third 
 journey to Italy, 31 1; makes 
 a will and bums correspondence, 
 314; takes Christiane and her son 
 to Frankfort, 315; last tour of 
 Switzerland, 316 ff.; nine quiet 
 years (1797-1806) at home, 
 321/7.; interested in the theatre, 
 architecture, art, and the Uni- 
 versity of Jena, 321 ff.; new 
 friends, Knebel, Meyer, Riemer, 
 Zelter, 329/7.; serious illness, 333; 
 irritating experiences, 334/7.; an- 
 other serious illness, 336; death 
 of Schiller, 337 /. ; friendship with 
 Wolf, 338; battle of Jena, 343; 
 French soldiers in his house, 
 344/- ; legal marriage, 345 /- 1 rela- 
 tion to Minna Herzlieb, 349/7.; 
 
 death of his mother, 406 ff . ; Con- 
 gress of Erfurt, 409/7.; interview 
 with Napoleon, 411/7.; acquaint- 
 ance with Louis Bonaparte, 415/.; 
 acquaintance with the Emperor 
 of Austria and the Empress of 
 France, 418/7.; acquaintance with 
 Beethoven, 420; Prussian up- 
 rising, 423/7.; battle of Leipsic, 
 431/7.; siege of Erfurt, 433; cele- 
 bration of peace, 434; again on 
 the Rhine, iii., 3/7.; friendship 
 with Boisseree, gff.; relation to 
 Marianne von Willemer, 11/7., 
 17 ff.; visit with Minister vom 
 Stein, 1 5//'. ; death of Christiane, 
 28; the lyric poet, 30-80; the 
 naturalist, 81-134; after the war 
 of liberation, 135/7.; prime minis- 
 ter, 136; attitude toward freedom 
 of the press, 137/7.; relation to 
 romanticism, 143/j. ; end of ac- 
 tivity as theatre director, 151 ff.; 
 relation to Ulrike von Levetzow, 
 155 ff.\ August’s marriage, 156/.; 
 activities of old age, 162 ff.; assist- 
 ants, 1647.; distinguished visit- 
 ors, 165/7.; grandchildren, 167 f.\ 
 youthfulness preserved, 168/7.; 
 other characteristics as an old 
 man, 169 ff . ; jubilees, 1 78 ff . ; death 
 of Karl August, 181; death of 
 Frau von Stein, 18 3/.; death of 
 August, 185/7.; last days, 359/7.; 
 death, 364/.; funeral, 365/7.; 
 significance to the world, 367 ff. 
 
 Relatives : — Patemal grand- 
 father, see Georg Friedrich Goe- 
 the; paternal grandmother, see 
 Cornelia Schellhorn; matemal 
 great-grandfather, see Attorney 
 Lindheimer; matemal grand- 
 father, see Johann Wolfgang Tex- 
 tor; maternal grandmother, see 
 Anna Margaretha Lindheimer; 
 father, see Johann Caspar Goethe; 
 mother, see Katharina Elizabeth 
 Goethe 
 
 Goethe, Katharina Elisabeth (n£e 
 Textor), i., 13, 15, 17, 86, 91, 93, 
 94, 141, 161, 169, 210, 213, 221, 
 222, 296, 311, 343 ff •. 354. 357/-. 
 360, 418, 419/.; ii-, 105/7., ii 8 //-. 
 210, 280, 314/7-. 334, 406/7., 
 
 444. 449; iii., 183; see Frau Aja 
 Goethe, Ottilie von, iii., 156/., 168, 
 185,187,270,361,364,379 
 Goethe, Walther von, iii., 156, 167/., 
 185, 241, 362, 379 
 Goethe, W T olfgang von, iii., 156, 
 167/., 185, 361, 362, 379 
 Goethe a Roma (Carletta), i., 439 
 
Anbei 
 
 403 
 
 Goethe aus näherm persönlichen 
 Umgang (Falk), i., 420; ii., 408/. 
 Goethe im Sturm und Drang (Weis- 
 senfels), i., 424 
 
 Goethe in der Epoche seiner Vollen- 
 dung (Harnack), ii., 447 
 Goethe in Hauptzügen seines Lebens 
 (Schöll), i., 436 
 
 Goethe in seiner praktischen Wirk- 
 samkeit (Fr. von Müller), ii., 444 
 Goethe und die Romantik (Schüd- 
 dekopf and Walzel), iii. , 379 
 Goethe und Frankfort am Main 
 (Stricker), i., 418 
 
 Goethe und Karl August (Düntzer), 
 
 in-, 137 
 
 Goethe und Schiller (Gräf), ii., 444 
 Goethefestschrift , etc., ii., 451 
 Goethehaus, the, in Frankfort, i., 
 421; in Weimar, i., 359; ii., 318; 
 
 111., 136, 163 
 
 Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde 
 (Bettina Brentano), iii., 145 
 Goethes Briefwechsel mit Schultz, iii., 
 117 
 
 Goethes Charakter (Saitschick) , ii., 
 444 
 
 Goethes drei letzte Lebenstage (Hol- 
 sten), iii., 385 
 
 Goethes Eintritt in Weimar (Dünt- 
 zer), i., 435 
 
 Goethes Faust (Düntzer), iii., 383 
 Goethes Faust (Fischer), iii., 381,382 
 Goethes Faust (Minor), iii., 382 
 Goethes Faust (Vischer), iii., 382 
 Goethes Faust (Ziegler), iii., 382 
 Goethes Faust in ursprünglicher 
 Gestalt (Schmidt), iii., 381 
 Goethes Faust, Zeugnisse und Ex- 
 curse (Pniower), ii., 449; iii., 381 
 Goethes Faustdichtung in ihrer künst- 
 lerischen Einheit dar gestellt (Val- 
 entin), iii., 383 
 
 Goethes Gartenhaus , quotation from, 
 i-, 279 
 
 Goethes Gespräche (Biedermann), 
 ü-, 174 , 444 , 4 S 3 i iü-, io 7 
 Goethes Goldner Jubeltag, iii., 180 
 Goethes Götz auf der Bühne (Nöllen), 
 
 1., 428, 429 
 
 Goethes Hermann und Dorothea 
 (Keck), ii., 450 
 
 Goethes Iphigenie (Fischer), ii., 18 
 Goethes Iphigenie auf Tauris in 
 vierfacher Gestalt (Bächtold), ii., 
 44 °, 44 1 
 
 Goethes Leben (Viehoff), i., 420 
 Goethes letzte literarische T ätigkeit 
 (K. W. Müller), iii., 95, 385 
 Goethes lyrische Dichtungen der 
 ersten Weimarischen Jahre (Koe- 
 gel), i-, 435 
 
 Goethe' s Poems (Goebel), i., 78, 435 
 Goethes schöne Seele (Dechent), ii., 
 ^ 448 
 
 Goethes Tagebücher (Düntzer), i., 
 435 
 
 Goethes Tasso (Fischer), ii., 442 
 Goethes Theaterleitung in Weimar 
 (Pasque), ii., 445 
 
 Goethes Unterhaltungen mit dem 
 Kanzler von Müller (Burkhardt), 
 ii., 448 
 
 Goethes Verhältnis zu Kant (Vorlän- 
 der), ii., 447 
 
 Goethes Verhältnis zu Klopstock 
 (Lyon), i., 78, 147 
 Goethes W erke , vollständige Ausgabe 
 letzter Hand, iii., 172 
 Goethes Wohnhaus in Weimar, 
 quoted, iii., 166 
 
 Golden Bull, the, i., 19; iii., 345 
 Goldoni, i., 79 
 Goldsmith, i., 115; ii., 259 
 Görres, iii., 16 
 
 Görtz, Count, i., 214, 260, 435; 
 
 ü-, 35 , 44 i/- 
 Göschenen, i., 227 
 Goslar, i., 339 
 
 Gotha, i., 157, 273, 418; ii., 130, 441 
 Gotha, Duke of, i., 268 
 Gothaischer Hofkalender, i., 423, 
 
 Gothic art,Goethe’s attitude toward , 
 i., 104, 122, 376/., 379 /., 3 8 4 . 
 407, 438; ii., 328; iii., 10 
 Gott, Gemüt und Welt, quotation 
 from, iii., 102 
 
 Götter, i., 157, 187; iii., 255 
 Götter, Helden und Wieland, i., 204, 
 
 214t. 
 
 Gottfried, i., 16, 222, 420 
 Göttingen, i., 21 1, 259 
 Göttinger Hain, the, i., 222 
 Göttling, ii., 331, 451 
 Gottsched, i., 38, 49, 73/., 77, 113; 
 iü-, 33 
 
 Götz, character in Goue’s Masuren, 
 i-, 187 
 
 Götz, the historical, i., 142, 169, 
 1 70, 428 
 
 Götz, hero of the drama, i., 156, 
 169 ff., 247, 327, 432 
 Götz von Berlichingen, i., 3, 98, 136, 
 142, 156, 167/., 169-181, 185, 
 186, 201, 236, 238, 245, 260, 327, 
 33 °, 356, 376, 428/.; ii., 31, 184, 
 272, 425; iii., 61, 254, 256, 329, 
 
 357 , 375 , 383 r 
 Gou6, von, i., 156/., 187 
 Gounod, iii., 376 
 Gräf, ii., 444 
 
 Graf von Essex (Dyk), ii., 433 
 Grandison, i., 430 
 
404 
 
 llnfcei 
 
 Grandison der Zweite (Musäus), i., 
 262 
 
 Granite, Goethe’s theory of, iii., 
 11 2/. 
 
 Grasse, i., 22, 420 
 Gratz, ii., 94 
 Graz, i., 1 1 
 
 Grecomania, the romantic, iii., 147 
 Greece, i., 110; ii., 25, 33; iii., 55, 
 169, 174, 242, 336, 337, 340, 382 
 Greek, Goethe’s study of, i., 16, 19, 
 29, 30, 79, 11 7; see also various 
 Greek authors 
 Greenland, i., 370, 372 
 Grenzen der Menschheit, iii., 62; 
 
 quotation from, 279; 291, 375 
 Gretchen, Goethe’s early love, i., 
 24 ff-, 3 6 - r 33 
 
 Gretchen, character in Faust, i., 
 136, 144; iii., 253, 256, 283/., 
 288 ff., 343, 344, 350 
 Gries, ii., 444 
 Griesbach, ii., 203 
 Grillparzer, iii., 177 
 Grimm, Baron, ii., 115 
 Grimm, Jacob, ii., 422 
 Grindbrunnen, the, i., 20 
 Grindelwald, i., 348 
 Gröning, i., 89 
 Groschlag, von, i., 310 
 Gross ist die Diana der Epkeser, ii., 
 159; iii., 54/., 63 
 Gross-Brembach, i., 318 
 Grosse Scheideck, i., 348 
 Grosser Hirschgraben, in Frank- 
 fort, i., 14 
 
 Grossglockner, the, i., 339 
 Grossman, i., 169 
 Grotta Azzurra, i., 439 
 Grotthus, Sara von, i., 429; ii., 416 
 Grundlage der gesammten Wissen- 
 schaftslehre (Fichte), iii., 143 
 Grundlinien der Philosophie des 
 Rechts (Hegel), iii., 241 
 Grundriss, etc. (Gödeke), ii., 445 
 Guarini, ii., 50 
 Gubitz, iii., 375 
 Guise, Duke of, ii., 336 
 Günderode, von, i., 100 
 Günther, Councillor, ii., 343 
 Günther, J. C., iii., 46 
 Gutzkow, iii., 384 
 
 Hackert, Georg, i., 395 
 Hackert, Philipp, i., 395; Goethe’s 
 biography of, ii., 417 
 Hadrian, i., 3 
 
 Haemon, character in Antigone, i., 
 *99 
 
 Haffner, i., 426 
 Hafiz, iii., 2 ff., 20 
 Hagedorn, poet, i., 92 
 
 Hagedorn, von, art collector, i., 71 
 
 Hagenau, i., 100, 123 
 
 Hahn, i., 21 1 
 
 Halberstadt, i., 259 
 
 Hall, i., 369 
 
 Halle, ii., 330, 335, 338, 425, 445 
 Haller, 1., 31 1; iii., 96, 253 
 Hamann, i., 107, 110, iii, 113, 
 115, 248; ii., 116 
 
 Hamburg, i., iii, 151, 429, 432; 
 
 ii., 445, iii., 63, 384 
 Hamburgische Dramaturgie (Less- 
 ing), i., 76, 423 
 Hamilton, Sir William, i., 395 
 Hamlet (Shakespeare), i., 177, 196, 
 379; ii., 236 
 Hammer, iii., 2, 20 
 Hanau, i., 41, 354 
 Handhook of Proverbs (Bohn), i., 
 T 233 
 
 Händel, pastry-cook, i., 65 
 Handicraftsman, the, in Wilhelm 
 Meisters Wanderjahre, iii., 196 ff., 
 
 21 zff- 
 
 Hanover, the state, i., 437; ii., 341, 
 421 
 
 Hanover, the city, i., 156, 157, 
 183, 295; iii., 164 
 
 Hans Sachsens poetische Sendung, 
 
 11., 214; quotation from, iii., 70 
 Hanswurst, i., 76 
 
 Hanswurst (Wurstel), character in 
 Hanswursts Hochzeit, i., 252 f. 
 Hanswursts Hochzeit, i., 249, 252/. 
 Happiness, Goethe’s theory of, ii., 
 162 ff. 
 
 Harbours, Goethe interested in, iii., 
 174 
 
 Hardenberg, Chancellor von, iii., 
 140/. 
 
 Hargreaves, iii., 215 
 Harmony, of Goethe’s nature and 
 work, i., 1, S8, 103, 409, 439; ii., 
 117; iii., 66#., 77/., 81 ff., 98#., 
 368 
 
 Hamack, Otto, ii., 447, 450, 453; 
 
 111., 380 
 
 Harpist, the, character in Wilhelm 
 Meister, i., 141; ii., 230 ff., 256, 
 264, 265, 448; iii., 375, 376 
 Harte, Emma, i., 395 
 Harz Mountains, i., 3, 337 #-, 351, 
 356, 361, 436; ii., 338; iii., 38, 40 
 Harzreise im Winter, quotations 
 from, i., 33S, 342; iii., 38, 68, 375 
 Hatem, character in West-östlicher 
 Divan, iii., 14, 19, 23, 24, 27 
 Haugwitz, von, i., 222, 225 
 Häusser, ii., 445 
 
 Havequick, character in Faust, iii., 
 344 
 
 Haydn, Joseph, iii., 375 
 
Infcex 
 
 405 
 
 Haym, R., iii., 37 Sf. 
 
 Heathenism, Goethe’s, iii., 147/. 
 Hebel, iii., 25 
 
 Hebrew, Goethe’s study of, i., 16/., 
 3 ° 
 
 Hegel, ii., 148. i8of., 202, 317; 
 
 111., 241, 244 
 
 Hegire, quotation from, iii., 80 
 Heidelberg, i., 221; Goethe in, 
 
 233/., and ii., 119, 275, 316/., 354, 
 and iii., 10/., 13, 19, 21 ff., 25, 26; 
 
 1., 418; ii., 274, 276, 281 
 Heidenröslein, i., 1 1 8 ; iii. , 47, 62, 
 
 374 . 376 
 
 Heilbronn, i., 172, 174; ii., 317 
 Heine, iii., 35/., 52, 68 
 Heinrich, Prince, i., 323 
 Heinroth, iii., 85 
 
 Heinse, i., 199, 208, 209, 251; ii., 
 34, 114, 115, 264 
 
 “Heiss mich nicht reden,” etc., 
 
 111., 376 
 
 Heitmüller, i., 434 
 Helen, ii., 4 
 
 Helena, character in the puppet 
 play Doktor Faust, iii., 252; in 
 the folk-book, 274; in Goethe’s 
 Faust, 253, 256, 259, 263, 266 ff., 
 288, 331#. 
 
 Helena, episode in Faust, ii., 333, 
 360 ;iii., 263, 266#., 339#- . 381 ,3 8 4 
 Helios, ii., 394, 402 
 Helmholtz, iii., 119, 123, 134 
 Helmholtz, Hermann von (Koenigs- 
 berger), iii., 134 
 Helmont, van, i., 93 
 Hempel, ii., 441 
 Henderich, von, ii., 350 
 Henneberg, i., 313/., 435 
 Hennes, i., 430 
 Henning, von, iii., 123 
 Hennings, von, i., 157 
 Henry III., ii., 336 
 Hensel, Frau, i., 257 
 Hephaestus, ii., 391 
 Heraclitus, ii., 229 
 Herbarium, Goethe’s, iii., 163 
 Herbst ( Vier Jahreszeiten), No. 62 
 quoted, ii., 153 
 Herbstgefühl, iii., 49/. 
 
 Herculaneum, i., 396 
 Hercules, i., 64 
 
 Herder, i., 1, 107, noff., 144, 147, 
 152, 170, 182/., 221, 222, 229, 
 251/., 266, 288/., 291, 367, 409, 
 425, 427, 433; ii-, 82/., 86, 124, 
 I 5°. W3, 198 200, 205, 326, 
 
 329,336,446,447; iü.. 59 . 62, 6 3 . 
 83, 98, 110, 129, 145. 22 8> 2 53 > 
 286, 367, 374, 381; concerning 
 Goethe, i., 3,4, n8, 148, 167, 176. 
 326, 418, 423, 43 6 > 439 . an< 4 
 
 11., 448, and iii., 90, 250, 258; 
 his influence on Goethe, i., 112 ff., 
 121, 123, 143, 145, 248, and 
 
 111., 47, 250; i., 167, 176; ii., 35, 
 138, 140, 218, 272 
 
 Herder, Karoline ( nee Flachsland), 
 
 1., 118, 144, 145, 146, 168, 176, 
 182, 229, 289, 439; ii., 78, 83, 
 88, 185, 198/. 
 
 Herders Reise nach Italien, i., 439 
 Hering, Robert, ii., 446 
 Hermann, hero of Hermann und 
 Dorothea, i., 192; ii., 280 ff. 
 Hermann, Assessor, i., 53, 59, 69, 
 
 89 
 
 Hermann, Gottfried, ii., 440 
 Hermann und Dorothea, i., 3, 412; 
 
 11., 85, 103, 127, 264, 269-310, 
 3 1 1 > 34 G 3 8 3 , 446 , 449 /-; iü-. 
 79 , 261, 365, 367 
 
 Hermann und Dorothea (Elegie), ii., 
 45 ° 
 
 Hermes, ii., 264 
 
 Hermes, character in Satyros, i., 
 249/. 
 
 “Herrin, sag’, was heisst das 
 Flüstern” (from Vollmondnacht), 
 
 111., 71 
 
 Herrmann, Max, i., 422 
 Herrn von Hoffs geologisches Werk, 
 iü-, 378 
 
 Hersilie, character in Wilhelm 
 Meisters Wanderjahre, iii., 203, 
 22 3 /- 
 
 Herz, Henriette, ii., 416 
 Herzensergiessungen eines kunstlie- 
 benden Klosterbruders (Wacken- 
 roder), iii., 146 
 
 Herzlieb, Wilhelmine (Minchen, 
 Minna), ii., 349 ff-, 355 , 386/, 389, 
 405, 416, 451; iii., 26, 145, 191 
 Hesiodic poems, i., 29 
 Hesperides, iii., 259 
 Hesse, Councillor, i., 145, 310 
 Hesse-Darmstadt, ii., 341 
 Hesse-Homburg, i., 145 
 Heuer, O., i., 421 
 Heuscheuer, the, ii., 92 
 Heyden, i., 419 
 Heyse, Paul, ii., 440 
 “Hier befolg’ ich den Rat,” etc. 
 (from Römische Elegien, No. 5), i., 
 
 385 
 
 Highways and Canals, Goethe 
 director of, i., 317 
 Hilarie, character in Der Mann 
 von fünfzig Jahren, iii., 208 ff., 
 223 
 
 Hirt, archseologist, i., 388; iii., 262 
 Hirt, esthetician, ii., 327 
 Historia von D. Johann Fausten, 
 etc. (Spies), iii., 271 
 
406 
 
 Unfcei 
 
 Historisch-kritische Nachrichten von 
 Italien (Volkmann), i., 438 
 Historisches Taschenbuch (1814), 
 
 11. , 429 
 
 History, Goethe’s study of, i., 16, 
 30, 94, and ii., 77, and iii., 173; 
 his attitude toward, ii., 152, 187, 
 and iii., 281; he understands his 
 place in, 176 
 
 History of Gottfried von Berlich- 
 ingen Dramatised, see Geschichte 
 Gottfriedens von Berlichingen dra- 
 matisiert 
 
 History of the Popes (Bower), i., 
 15, 420 
 
 Hither Pomerania, ii., 421 
 Hitzig, iii., 244 
 
 “ Hoch auf dem alten Turme steht,” 
 see Geistesgruss 
 Höchst, i., 26 
 
 Hochzeitlied, iii., 56, 57, 375 
 Hof, ii., 342 
 
 Hofmann, A. W., ii., 451 
 Hofmann, stuccoer, ii., 332 
 Hohe Karlsschule, the, i., 354 
 Holbach, i., 119 
 
 Holdfast, character in Faust, iii., 
 344 
 
 Holland, i., 24, 419; ii., 340, 415/.; 
 
 111., 89 
 
 Holstein, ii., 119 
 Holstein-Eutin, Prince of, i., 110 
 Holsten, Karl, iii., 385 
 Hölty, iii., 79 
 
 Holy Roman Empire, the, ii., 342 
 Homburg, i., 354 
 
 Homer, Goethe interested in, i., 
 19. IX 5> II 7. n8 /., 122, 143, 150, 
 1 53> *55, 162, 164, 197, 376, and 
 
 111., 250; i., 109, 114, 190, 192, 
 197, 201 ; ii., 34, 42, 430; iii., 182, 
 368 
 
 Homunculus, character in Faust, 
 iü-. 335 ff-, 353. 383 
 Hoppe, i., 29 
 
 Horace, i., 32, 33, 74, 208, 259 
 Horgen, ii., 318 
 
 Horn, i„ 43, 52, 53, 65/., 81, 89, 
 183, 426 
 
 Hospental, i., 353 
 
 Hospice, the, i., 228 
 
 Howard, meteorologist, iii., 116 
 
 Hrotswitha, iii., 175 
 
 Huber, i., 69, 70; ii., 109, 183 
 
 Huber, Therese, ii. , 451 
 
 Hufeland, jurist, ii., 150, 203, 335 
 
 Hufeland, professor of medicine, 
 
 11., 203, 335 ; iii., 385 
 Hugo, Victor, iii., 173/., 360 
 Humanity, Goethe’s i., 1, 3, and 
 
 ii., 119, 216, and iii., 178, 
 
 3 6 7ff- 
 
 Humboldt, Alexander von, i., 267; 
 
 11., 202; iii., 129, 361 
 Humboldt, Alexander von (Karl 
 
 Bruhns), iii., 129 
 Humboldt, Frau von, iii., 10 
 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, i., 353; ii., 
 202, 262, 309, 321, 329, 448; 
 
 111., 166, 176, 178, 244, 262, 268, 
 269, 270 
 
 Hünfeld, iii., 5 
 Hungary, ii., 445 
 Hunter, i., 420 
 
 Huron, Goethe’s nickname, i., 220 
 Hüsgen, Councillor, i., 19, 309 
 Hutten, iii., 273 
 
 Icarus, iii., 340 
 Iccander (J. C. Crell), i., 41 
 Ice age, Goethe’s idea of an, iii., 115 
 ‘‘Ich geh’ meinen alten Gang” 
 (An Frau von Stein), i., 297 
 “Ich komme bald, ihr goldnen 
 Kinder,” i., 127 
 
 Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit 
 (Herder), iii., 110, 129 
 IfHand, ii., 98, 434 
 Igel Monument, ii., 109 113 
 “Ihr Gedanken fliehet mich ”(Frau 
 von Stein), i., 389/. 
 
 “ Ihr könnt mir immer ungescheut” 
 (from Zahme Xenien), iii., 151 
 “Ihr verblühet, süsse Rosen” 
 (from Erwin und Elmire), iii., 376 
 “Ihrer sechzig hat die Stunde” 
 (In das Stammbuch des Enkels, 
 Walter von Goethe), iii., 241 
 Ihro der Kaiserin von Frankreich 
 Majestät, ii., 418 
 
 Ihro der Kaiserin von Österreich 
 Majestät, ii., 418 
 
 Ihro des Kaisers von Österreich 
 Majestät, ii., 418 
 Iken, ii., 449 
 
 II Principe (Machiavelli) , iii., 254 
 II Principe (konstante (Calderon), i., 
 5- 3791 ü-. 4i7 
 Ilfeld, i., 338 
 Iliad, the, iii., 263 
 
 lll, the, i., 119 
 
 l lm, the, i., 3, 255, 274, 297, 4°8; 
 
 ii., 349; iü-, 40 
 
 Ilmenau, i., 322, 339; ii-, 92, 108, 
 329; iii., 112, 179, 361 
 Ilmenau, i., 262, 315, 434; iü-, 391 
 quotations from, i., 2S4, 2S7 
 Im Gegenwärtigen Vergangnes, quo- 
 tation from, iii., 4 
 “Im Grenzenlosen sich zu finden” 
 (from Eins und Alles), ii., 164 
 “Im holden Tal, auf schneebedeck- 
 ten Höhen” (An Lili), i.. 245 
 Imbaumgarten, Peter, i., 348 
 
Unfcei 
 
 407 
 
 Immermann, ii. , 445 
 Immermann , Karl (Putlitz), ii., 445 
 Imperial Chamber, the, i., 10, 11, 
 152- 1 53f -, !S6. 160, 30g, 428 
 “In allen guten Stunden’’ ( Bundes- 
 lied ), ii., 207 
 
 In das Stammbuch des Enkels , 
 Walter von Goethe , quoted, iii., 
 241 
 
 /n das Stammblich von Friedrich 
 Maximilian Moors , quoted, i., 
 37 
 
 “In engen Hütten und im reichen 
 Saal” (from Auf Miedings Tod), 
 
 1., 258 
 
 India, iii., 2, 144 
 
 Indian, Goethe’s nickname, i., 220 
 Indiana, iii., 192 
 
 Individuality, Goethe’s apprecia- 
 tion of, ii., 171 /. 
 
 Indus, the, iii., 55 
 
 Industries, Goethe’s interest in, i. 
 
 100, 339, and ii., 90, 92 
 Innsbruck, i., 369 
 Institutes (Hoppe), i., 29 
 Interlaken, i., 348 
 Intermaxillary, Goethe’s discovery 
 of the, in man, i., 362, and ii., 
 169, and iii., 83/f., 108, 109 
 Ion (Schlegel), ii., 334; iii., 144 
 Ionian Islands, i., 373 
 Iphigenia, character in Euripides, 
 
 11., 3/., 16 
 
 Iphigenia, heroine of the drama, 
 
 1., 82, 265, 300, 334, 438; ii., 1 ff., 
 48, 138, 247, 255, 276, 277, 386, 
 440; iii., 176, 224, 245 
 
 Iphigenie, i., 308, 329, 365, 373, 
 376, 410; ii., 1-32, 34, 37, 38, 
 41, 73 . 1 1 5 > I 2 3 > J 34 , 183, 191, 
 192, 203, 272, 277, 280, 298, 
 332 , 383. 44i, 444 . 446 ; iii., 180, 
 245, 287, 367 
 
 Iphigenie (Gluck), iii., 374 
 Iphigenie auf Delphos, i., 418 
 Iphigenie in Delphi, i., 410, 418, 440 
 I phigenie in ihrer ersten Gestalt 
 (Stahr), ii., 441 
 Iris, the, ii., 34 
 Isabel, i., 39 
 Isergebirge, the, ii., 93 
 Isis (Oken), iii., 137, 141 
 Isolation, Goethe’s, i., 360; ii., 19 8 / 7 . 
 “Ist auf deinem Psalter” (from 
 Harzreise im Winter), i., 338 
 “ Ist es möglich! Stern der Sterne ” 
 (from Buch Suleika), iii., 22 
 Istria, i., 373 
 
 Italian, Goethe’s study of, i., 16, 
 
 3 °, 39 /-, 79 , 37 1 : 79 
 
 Italienische Reise , experiences upon 
 which, is based, i., 368-413, 438, 
 
 439; ii., 85, 440; iii., 99, 100, 
 106, 117, 172 
 
 Italy, i., 3, 11, 64, 213, 223, 228, 
 233, 234, 264, 329, 353, 365, 
 
 366, 367, 368-413, 418, 419, 
 
 43 °, 437 /-: ü-, 3 , 3 1 , 33 - 37 , 5 °, 
 7i, 75 ff-, 85, 86-88, 91, 99, 105, 
 106, 107, 114/., 122, 136, 152, 
 163, 172, 182, 184, 185, 190, 
 
 191, 192, 200, 216, 226, 278, 
 
 3 ii ff-, 3 X 5 > 3 i6 > 3 i8 > 3 i 9 /-, 34 °, 
 344 , 4 i 7 , 440 , 443 , 444; in-, 4 , 29, 
 43, 92, 98, i°3, 1 20, 125, 132, 
 147, 174, 186/., 259 ff., 262, 283, 
 284, 287, 377, 378 
 
 Ixion, i., 364, 382 
 
 “Ja, Götterlust kann einen Durst 
 nicht schwächen” (Wieland), iii., 
 250 
 
 Jabach house in Cologne, i., 209; 
 
 iii., 16 
 
 Jacob, i., 112 
 
 Jacobi, Betty, i., 207/.; ii., 115 
 Jacobi, Fritz, i., 6., 20 yff., 212, 215, 
 236, 240, 248, 259, 310, 417, 
 433 ; ü-, IX 4 7 -, 119, ! 24 , 159 - 
 160, 168, 171, 174/., 177, 394; 
 
 111., 63, 65 
 
 Jacobi, Georg, i., 145, 148, 207 ff., 
 21 1 
 
 Jacobi, Lenchen, ii., 115 
 Jacobi, Lottchen, i., 207; ii., 115 
 Jacobins, the, ii., 104, 110, 119, 
 123, 149, 1 5 ° 
 
 Jagemann, Karoline, iii., 26, 152 f. 
 Jägers Abendlied, quotation from, 
 
 11., 2; iii., 45, 375, 376 
 
 Jahn, ii., 429 
 
 J ahrmarkt zu Hünfeld, iii., 5 
 Jamaica, ii., 301 
 Jamblika, iii., 58 
 Janssen, i., 430, 431 
 Jarno, character in Wilhelm Meis- 
 ter, ii., 2327J., 231, 267; (Montan), 
 
 111., 198/., 212, 221, 222, 224 
 Jaxthausen, i., 174, 179 
 Jean Paul, iii., 228, 241 
 “Jeglichen Schwärmer schlagt mir 
 
 ans Kreuz” ( Venez . Epigr., No. 
 52), ii., 148 
 
 Jena, i-, 42, 273, 313, 319, 362, 433, 
 435', ü-, 32, 84, 150, 172, 185, 
 187, 193, 195, 198, 202, 203, 
 205, 262, 274, 281, 317, 321, 322, 
 329, 33 1 , 333 ,' 334 , 335 #-; battle 
 of, 343 /-: 348, 349 ff-, 352, 353 - 
 354, 386, 390, 413/., 415, 416, 
 423, 425, 426, 428, 451; 111., 
 83, x 37 - i 38 , 140, 141, 144 , 152/-. 
 162, 1Ö5, 271, 361 
 
408 
 
 Anbei 
 
 Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur Zei- 
 tung (founded by Goethe), ii. , 
 336, 337; üi., 263 
 
 “Jene Menschen sind toll” ( Venez . 
 
 Epigr., No. 57), ii., 147 
 Jentzel, General, ii., 343/. 
 Jerusalem, ii., 151 
 J erusalem Delivered (Tasso), i., 39; 
 
 ü-. 33 . 4 i, 44 , 57 , 64 
 Jerusalem, Wilhelm, i., 157, 185, 
 187, 188 
 
 Jery und Bätely, i., 353; ii., 308; 
 
 üi-, 3 76 
 Jesus, lii. , 343 
 Jew, the wandering, i., 210 
 Job, i., 29; iii. , 310 
 Johann, ii., 409 
 
 John, Goethe’s amanuensis, ii., 433; 
 
 iii., 163 
 Jonas, ii., 448 
 Joseph, i., 38, 421 
 Joseph, Archduke, i., 23^., 154; ii., 
 89 
 
 Jourdain, character in Moliere, ii., 
 420 
 
 Journal des Luxus und der Moden 
 (Bertuch), ii., 334 
 Journal von Tiefurt, ii., 447 
 Journals, Goethe’s reading of, iii., 
 1 74 /• 
 
 Jubilee, of Karl August’s corona- 
 tion, iii., 178 ; of Goethe’s 
 arrival in Weimar, 179 ff. 
 
 Julie, character in Wer ist der 
 Verräter?, iii., 202/. 
 
 Juliette, character in Wilhelm Meis- 
 ters W ander fahre, iii., 203 
 Jung, Marianne, see Willemer 
 Jung-Stilling, i., 88, 98 /., 120, 209, 
 211, 426; ii., 207; iii., 25 
 Jungius, Joachim, Goethe’s essay 
 on, iii., 95/. 
 
 Juno, Goethe’s bust of, i., 393, 
 438; ii., 81 
 
 Juno Ludovisi, i., 385 
 Jupiter, Goethe’s bust of, i., 438; 
 
 iii., 177 
 
 Jupiter d’Otricoli, i., 385 
 Jura Mountains, i., 347, 349 
 Jurisprudence, jurist, see law 
 Just, character in Minna von 
 Barnhelm, i., 174 
 
 Kabale und Liebe (Schiller), ii., 185 
 Kahlert, ii., 444 
 
 Kalb, Chamberlain von, i., 232 ff., 
 262, 279, 290/., 295, 320 
 Kalb, Frau von, i., 266; ii., 35 
 Kalte Küche, the, i., 268 
 Kammerberg, the, iii., 113 
 Kampagne in Frankreich, Goethe’s 
 experiences upon which, isbased, 
 
 11., 102-118; 274; iii., 82, 96, 101 , 
 120, 128, 172, 377 
 
 Kämtz, iii., 117 
 
 “ Kann wohl sein! so wird gemeinet 
 (from Buch Suleika), iii., 237. 
 Kanne, Doctor, i., 64 
 “Kanntest jeden Zug in meinem 
 Wesen” (from “Warum gabst 
 du uns die tiefen Blicke ”), i., 300 
 Kant, i., iii .; ii., 160, 172 ff., 179, 
 181, 190, 195/., 208, 283, 383,423, 
 447, 448 ; iii., 101, 102, 205 ff. 
 Karl, Prince of Prussia, iii., 165 
 Karl, character in Das Mädchen 
 von Oberkirch, ii., 127 
 Karl, character in Götz, i., 172 
 Karl, Archduke, ii., 316 
 Karl Alexander, iii., 165 
 Karl August, i., 144, 255, 256, 258, 
 260, 261, 262, 265, 266, 267#'., 
 280 ff., 312/., 318, 320, 325, 338, 
 357. 359. 364. 366, 367, 383, 413, 
 4347 -, 436 , 437 ; ii-, 35 . 37 . 86, 
 89 ff., 94, 104 ff., 128, 140, 149, 
 i8$f., 198/., 314, 323, 330, 332, 
 335 . 342 , 344 , 345 . 346 , 408 ff., 
 412 ff., 428, 433, 434, 440, 441, 
 442, 444; iii., 25, 26, 90, 100, 
 136, 137 /-, I 4 °f-, 154 , 178/., 181/., 
 183, 185, 258/., 260, 267, 269, 
 373 . 379! Goethe’s relation to, 
 
 1., 214, 223, 232, 279, 282 ff., 295/., 
 297. 3 I2 > 3 I 4 /f-, 3 2 °. 3 22 #-. 343 - 
 354 , 3 6o > and u-> 75 /-, 77 . “ 3 , 
 199/-. 333/-, and 111., 39, 46, 136, 
 152 /., 157 /-, 161, 165, 179/-; 
 concerning Goethe, i., 292 /., 295, 
 and ii., 420 
 
 Karl Friedrich, iii., 165 
 Karl Theodor von Pfalz-Sulzbach, 
 i-, 3 22 
 
 Karlsbad, i., 367, 389; ii., 339, 342, 
 348 , 353 . 39 °. 405/-. 407, 415. 
 418, 420; iii., 7, 112, 150, 158 
 Karlsruhe, i., 182, 223, 263, 310, 
 354 ; ü-, 354 ; in-, 25 
 Karoline, Landgravine, i., 144/., 183 
 Karsch, Anna Luise, i., 259 
 Karsten, actor, iii., 152/. 
 
 Kassel, i., 387 
 
 Kätchen, see Anna Katharina 
 Schönkopf 
 Kaufmann, i., 251 
 Kaufmann, Angelika, i., 388, 407, 
 439 
 
 Kaunitz, Count, 1., 24 
 Kayser, i., 225, 402, 404, 408; iii., 
 374 .. 
 
 Keck, 11., 450 
 Keller, Frau von, i., 275 
 “ Kennst du das Land,’’ see Mig- 
 non 
 
Unfrei 
 
 409 
 
 “Kennt ihr solcher Tiefe Grund” 
 (from Buch Suleika), iii., 27 
 Kepler, iii., 273 
 
 Kestner, Charlotte, see Charlotte 
 Buff 
 
 Kestner, J. C., i., 153, 157-167, 
 183, 184/., 187, 199, 295, 422; 
 ii-, 212/. 
 
 Kielmannsegge, von, i., 156/. 
 Kilian, i., 429 
 
 Kilian Brustfleck, character in 
 Hanswursts Hochzeit, i., 253 
 King John (Shakespeare), ii., 96 
 King Lear (Shakespeare), i., 131, 
 
 379 „ , . 
 
 Kirchhoff, Alfred, iii., 92 
 Kirms, ii., 94, 200, 332 
 Klärchen, character in Egmont, i., 
 33 I ff- 
 
 Klassische Ästhetik der Deutschen 
 (Hamack), ii., 450 
 “Kleine Blumen, kleine Blätter, ” 
 see Mit einem gemalten Band 
 Kleine Schriften (Böttiger), ii., 451 
 Kleiner Hirschgraben, in Frankfort, 
 
 i., 26 
 
 Kleist, i., 49 
 
 Kleist, the Courland Barons von, 
 
 1., 120 
 
 Kleist, Heinrich von, iii., 146 
 Klettenberg, Fräulein von, i., 92/., 
 96, 100, 103, 183, 214, 215, 
 
 311; ii., 116, 170, 241, 448; iii., 
 9 . 2 49 
 
 Klingemann, iii., 384 
 Klinger, i., 251, 291 
 Klinkowström, von, i., 263 
 Klopstock, i., 1, 18, 19, 49, 78, 
 87, 107, 110, 145, 147, 149, 208, 
 211, 212, 266, 285 ff., 430; ii., 
 208; iii., 46, 61, 170, 374 
 Kloster, the, i., 271 
 Klosterbruder, the (Wackenroder), 
 
 111., 146, 148 
 Knebel, Hans, i., 434 
 
 Knebel, i., 3, 214, 239, 259 f., 264, 
 266, 268, 269, 271, 301, 321, 
 360, 364, 418, 434 , 435 ; ü-, io 3 > 
 150, 182, 200, 202, 320, 323, 329, 
 349, 350, 351, 429, 453; iii., 11, 
 86, 88, 95, 101, 132, 359; con- 
 cerning Goethe, i., 4, 215, 326, 
 337, and ii., 429, and iii., 127, 
 257 
 
 Knebels literarischer Nachlass, i., 
 433 , 434 ; iü-, 9 ° 
 
 Kniep, i., 395 ff., 402 
 “Knittelvers,” Goethe’s employ- 
 ment of, ii., 29, and iii., 304/. 
 Knittlingen, iii., 271 
 Koblenz, see Coblenz 
 Koch, Max, ii., 441 
 
 Koch, actor, i., 257 
 Koch, Professor, i., 137; iii., 253 
 Kochberg, i., 283, 301; ii., 79, 185 
 Kochendörffer, i., 426 
 Koegel, i., 435 
 Koenigsberger, L., iii., 134 
 Kohlrausch, ii., 453 
 Kolmar, i., 139 
 König, Dr., i., 157 
 Königsberg, i., iii; ii., 172 
 Königsthal, von, i., 23 
 Konstantin, Karl August’s father, 
 i-, 256 
 
 Konstantin, Karl August’s brother, 
 i-, 214, 258, 259 
 Kopp, ii., 33 
 Koppel, E., iii., 381 
 Koran, the, ii., 151 
 Körner, Gottfried, i., 69; ii., 78, 
 93, 182, 183, 184, 186, 187, 191, 
 196, 263, 431, 448, 454 
 Körner, Minna ( nee Stock), i., 69; 
 ü-. 93 
 
 Körner, Theodor, ii., 431, 454 
 Körner, Theodor, und die Seinen 
 (Peschei- Wildenow), ii., 454 
 Köster, ii., 449 
 Kotzebue, Amalie, i., 266 
 Kotzebue, i., 266; ii., 335, 425, 
 453 ! iü-» 138, 139. I 4 I > 142 
 Kranz, i., 263 
 Kraus, i., 263; ii., 346 
 Kräuter, i., 427; iii., 164 
 Krebel, i., 53 
 Kreon, ii., 22 
 Krespel, i., 183, 213 
 Kreuchauf, i., 70 
 Kriegk, i., 419 
 
 Kritische Wälder (Herder), i., 112 
 Krone, die (Corona Schröter), i., 
 266 
 
 Krüger, ii., 18, 32 
 Kruse, Heinrich, i., 427 
 Kundling, iii., 171 
 Kunst und Altertum, i., 417; iii., 
 148, 172 
 
 Künstlers Abendlied ( Lied des physi- 
 ognomischen Zeichners ) , quota- 
 tion from, i., 403; iii., 47 
 Künstlers Vergötterung, ii., 448 
 Küssnacht, i., 228; ii., 318 
 “Kypsele,” in Pandora, ii., 401/. 
 
 La Damnation de Faust (Berlioz), 
 
 iii., 376 
 
 La Mort de Cesar (Voltaire), ii., 413 
 La Nouvelle Heloise (Rousseau), i., 
 201, 349 
 
 La Roche, Chancellor von, i., 310, 
 3 12 
 
 La Roche, Maximiliane (Maxe), i., 
 188/.; ii., 114; iii., 7, 145 
 
4io 
 
 1nfc>ex 
 
 La Roche, Sophie, i., 146, 187, 215; 
 
 hi-, 145 
 
 La Sposa Rapita, i., 40 
 Labor es Juveniles, i., 422 
 Laertes, character in Wilhelm Meis- 
 ter, ii., 229, 234 
 
 Lago di Gar da, see Lake Gar da 
 Lago Maggiore, i., 408; ii., 257; 
 iii., 22, 21 1 
 
 Lahn, the, i., 152, 155, 206; ii., 114 
 Lahnberg, the, i., 155 
 Lahneck castle, i., 206 
 Lahr, iii., 26 
 Laibach, i., 11 
 Laidion (Heinse), i., 208 
 Lake Como, i., 373 
 Lake Constance, i., 408; ii., 105 
 Lake Garda, i., 370, 408 
 Lake Geneva, i., 349; iii-, 115 
 Lake of the Four Forest Cantons, 
 h-, 3i7 
 
 Lake Zürich, i., 225, 226; ii., 314, 
 318; iii., 215, 262 
 
 Lamon, character in Die Laune 
 des Verliebten, i., 81/. 
 
 Landau, ii., 114 
 
 Ländlich, iii., 375 
 
 Landolt, i., 420 
 
 Landshut, ii., 92; iii., 103 
 
 Lange, Councillor, i., 154 
 
 Lange, Frau, i., 154, 166 
 
 Lange, Fräulein, i., 160 
 
 Langensalza, ii., 119 
 
 Langer, i., 79, 89; iii., 249, 250 
 
 Langguth, ii., 451 
 
 Langmesser, ii., 441 
 
 Lannes, Marshai, ii., 343 
 
 Laokoon (Lessing), i., 71, 74/., 106, 
 
 423 
 
 Lasberg, Christel von, iii., 40 ff., 59 
 Lasinio, Carlo, iii., 383 
 Lassen, iii., 376 
 
 “Lasst fahren hin das Allzuflüch- 
 tige ” ( Zwischengesang of Zur 
 Logenfeier des Dritten Septembers 
 1825), iii., 366 
 
 Last Supper, The (Leonardo da 
 Vinci), i., 407 
 
 Latin, Goethe’s study of, i., 16, 30, 
 39 /-- 48 ff. 
 
 Lauchstädt, ii., 99, 322, 338, 445 
 Lausanne, i., 349 
 Lauterbrunnen, i., 347/. 
 
 Lauth, the Misses, i., 97, 98 
 Lavater, i., 1, 3, 204 ff., 210, 211, 
 225, 228, 246, 296, 316, 353, 
 355 , 35 6 - 3 6 °, 4 i 7 , 420, 426, 430, 
 432; ii., 114, 117, 122, 158, 159, 
 207, 320, 441; iii., 5, 15, 82, 254 
 Law, the, Goethe’s study of, i., 29/., 
 40, 50, 79, 94, 102; his father 
 destines him for, 31, 40, 153, and 
 
 ii., 33/.; his lack of love for, i., 
 40, 46, 73, and iii., 82; his ex- 
 amination in, i., 102; his disser- 
 tation, 102, 138; hispractice, 141, 
 296; his knowledge of, 2, 309/. 
 Law, John, iii., 332 
 Le Bourgeois Gentilliomme (Moliere) , 
 
 11., 420 
 
 Leben Blessigs (Fritz), i., 426 
 Leben und T od der heiligen Genoveva 
 (Tieck), iii., 144 
 
 Leben und Verdienste des Joachim 
 Jungius (H., xxxiv., 208 ff.), 
 
 111., 95/., 131 
 
 Lebendiges Andenken, iii., 373 
 Lebens ge schichte (Jung-StiUing), i., 
 211 
 
 Lebrun, i., 209; iii., 16 
 Lecturer, Goethe a, iii., 127/. 
 
 Leda, iii., 336 
 Leghorn, iii., 186 
 
 Lehrbuch der Meteorologie (Kämtz), 
 
 iii., 117 
 
 Leibnitz, ii., 171/. 
 
 Leipsic, i., 1 1 , 31 , 40, 41-89, 91, 94, 
 102, 103, 157, 254, 265, 421, 423, 
 424, 425/-. 429; ü-, 73 > 93 - I2 3 > 
 183; battle of, 432/-; 445- 4541 
 
 111., 13, 47, 82, 138/., 168, 249, 
 251, 257, 286/., 379 
 
 Leipziger Liederbuch ( Neue Lieder) , 
 
 1., 68, 86, 87, 425; iii., 373/. 
 Lemures, in Faust, iii., 348 
 Lenardo, character in Wilhelm 
 
 Meisters Wanderjahre, iii., 206 /., 
 211 ff-, 230 
 
 Lengefeld, Charlotte von, see Schil- 
 ler 
 
 Lengefeld, Karoline, ii., 184/. 
 Lenore (Bürger), iii., 52 
 Lenz, i., 120/., 170, 211, 215, 224, 
 237, 291, 426, 427, 435 ', iü-, 59 
 Leonardo da Vinci, i., 407 
 Leonhard, von, iii., 143 
 Leonhardi, i., 423, 435 
 Leonora d’Este, character in Tasso, 
 i-, 334 ; ü-, 35 ff-y I 3 8 , 386, 441, 
 443; iii., 224 
 
 Leonora of Este, Princess, ii., 34 
 Leonora San vitale, character in 
 Tasso, ii., 35 ff., 441, 442 
 Leopold II., ii., 89 
 Lerse, Franz, i., 98, 119, 120, 139 
 Lersner, i., 419 
 
 Lessing, i., 41, 49, 68, 71, 74 ff-, 
 79, 106, 107, 110, iii, 157, 174, 
 177/., 199/., 248, 266, 423, 429 /•> 
 433 ; ü-, 27 ff-, I 7 1 - 205, 208, 259, 
 325, 327; iii., 1 70 ; his Faust, 274, 
 
 295, 381 : 3 02 
 
 Leuchsenring, i., 145/. 
 
 Levetzow, Amalie von, iii., 155 
 
1nfcei 
 
 Levetzow, Bertha von, iii., 155 
 Levetzow, Frau von, iii., 155, 158, 
 160, 161 
 
 Levetzow, Ulrike von, iii., 155-161, 
 379 
 
 Lewes, i., 160; ii. , 14, 440 
 Lexis, iii., 97 
 Leyden, i., iii 
 
 Licentiate, Goethe a, instead of 
 doctor, i., 138 
 
 Lida (Frau von Stein), iii., 184 
 Liebetraut, character in Götz, i. , 
 172 
 
 Lieder im Volkston (Schulz), iii., 
 375 
 
 Lieschen, character in Faust, iii., 
 292, 296 
 
 Lila (Fräulein von Ziegler), i., 
 146 
 
 Lili, see Elisabeth Schönemann 
 Lilis Park, i., 231 
 Limmat, the, i., 353; ii., 320 
 Limprecht, i., 71, 96 
 Limpurg, house of, i., 8 
 Lindau, Baron von, i., 348 
 Lindau, Meyer von, i., 98 
 Lindenau, Count von, i., 64 ff. 
 Lindheimer, attorney, i., 10 
 Lindheimer, Anna Margaretha, i., 
 10 
 
 Lindpaintner, iii., 376 
 
 Linne (Linnaeus), ii., 157; iii., 96, 
 
 . r ° 5 / : . 
 
 Linz, iii., 1 1 
 Lisbon, i., 20 
 Liszt, iii., 376 
 
 Literarische Zustände und Zeitge- 
 nossen (Böttiger), i., 436; ii,. 
 
 272, 453 
 
 Literarischer Sanskulottismus, ii., 
 205 
 
 Literaturbriefe (Lessing), i., 76 
 LitolfT, iii., 376 
 Litorale di Lido, ii., 88 
 Lives (Plutarch), iii., 360 
 Livonia, iii., 253 
 Lobeda, ii., 331 
 Löbichau, ii., 417 
 
 Loder, i., 362; ii., 203, 335; iii., 83, 
 89, 90 
 
 Loeper, i., 78, 420, 423; ii., 441, 
 454 ; iü-, 379 
 Loewe, iii., 374/. 
 
 Löhlen, iii., 374 
 
 London, i., 264, 311; iii., 174, 192 
 Longuyon, ii., 113 
 Longwy, ii., 109/., 113 
 Lord’s Supper, the, i., 67, 138 
 Lorraine, i., 100; ii., 273 
 Lothario, character in Wilhelm 
 Meister, ii., 247/7, 261, 267; iii., 
 195, 199, 207, 219/., 222,224 
 
 411 
 
 Lotte, character in Werther, i., 
 igoff.', ii., 250, 297; iii., 211 
 Louis XV., iii., 344 
 Louis XVI., ii., 10 3/., 118, 193 
 Lower Alsatia, i., 99 
 Lower Bavaria, i., 322 
 Lower Saxony, i., 312 
 Lübeck, ii., 408 
 Luceme, i., 353 
 
 Luciane, character in Die Wahlver - 
 wa-ndtschaften, ii., 356 ff. 
 
 Lucidor, character in Wer ist der 
 Verräter?, iii., 202/. 
 
 Lucinde, character in Wer ist der 
 Verräter? , iii., 202/. 
 
 Ludecus, i., 263; ii., 444 
 Luden, ii., 154, 424, 426, 430; iii., 
 I 37 
 
 Ludwig, i., 45, 49, 103 
 Luise, Queen of Prussia, ii., 426 
 Luise (Voss), ii., 208, 282, 304, 
 3 ° 8 , 3 ° 9 > 385 
 
 Luise, Grand Duchess, i., 223, 232, 
 260, 263/., 266, 273, 285 ff.; ii., 
 35 . 343 /-. 414.440; in., 165, 180, 
 i 8 if. 184 /., 258 
 Lüneberg Heath, iii., 164 
 Luther, i., 418, 428; ii., 153; iii., 
 149, 150, 151, 272, 305, 368, 379 
 Lützelstein, i., 100 
 Lützow, ii., 431 
 Luxemburg, ii., 109, 113, 449 
 Lycurgus, i., 150 
 
 Lydie, character in Wilhelm Meis- 
 ter, iii., 222/. 
 
 Lyell, Charles, iii., 114 
 Lyon, i., 78, 147 
 
 Machiavelli,_ii., 27; iii., 254 
 Mächtiges Überraschen, quotation 
 from, ii., 404 
 
 Macpherson, i., 115; see Ossian 
 Macrocosm, the, in Faust, iii., 278 
 Magdeburg, ii., 327 
 Magic, Goethe’s study of, i., 93; 
 see Faust 
 
 Magic Flute, The (Mozart), ii., 286 
 Mahadeva, iii., 19, 56, 57 
 Mahomet, i., 170, 183 
 Mahomet, i., 204, 210, 246/.; ii., 273 
 Mahomet (Voltaire), ii., 321, 41 1 
 Mahomets Gesang, i., 247; iii., 47, 
 62 
 
 Mahr, ii., 108 
 
 Mailied ("Wie herrlich leuchtet mir 
 die Natur”), i., 118, 130; iii., 
 47 , 375, 376 
 
 Mailied (‘ Zwischen Weizen und 
 Korn”), iii., 376 
 
 Main, the, i., 14, 96, 143, 180, 273, 
 279; ii., 128; iii., 3, 12, 14, 16, 
 17, 27 
 
412 
 
 Anbei 
 
 Mainz, i., 141, 214/., 310, 311; ii. , 
 109, 114, 118/., 199, 217, 449; 
 
 iii., 17, 141 , 142, 261 
 Mainz, Elector of, ii. , 115, 128 
 Majolicas, Goethe’s collection of, 
 
 111. , 163 
 
 Makarie, character in Wilhelm 
 Meisters Wanderjahre), iii., 192, 
 2 03/jF., 222/., 225, 245, 380 
 Malcolmi, ii., 124 
 Malcolmi, Amalie, ii., 445 
 Mannheim, i., 122, 223, 376, 429; 
 
 11., 119, 183, 281, 450 
 Manso, ii., 34 
 Mantegna, i., 373; ii., 88 
 
 Manto, character in Faust, iii., 338 
 Mantua, ii., 88 
 Manzoni, iii., 173 
 Marcellus, iii., 382 
 Märchen vom neuen Paris, i., 35 
 Maremme, in Italy, iii., 260 
 Maret, Minister, ii., 411 
 Margaret, character in Faust, iii., 
 273; see Gretchen 
 
 Margaret of Parma, character in 
 Egmont, i., 330, 335 
 Marggraf, ii., 450 
 Maria Luise, ii., 418 
 Maria Paulowna, ii., 337, 349, 409; 
 
 111., 165 
 
 “Mariagespiel,” the, i., 213, 235 
 Marianne, character in Die Ge- 
 schwister, ii., 213; iii., 12 
 Marianne, character in Wilhelm 
 Meister, ii., 218 ff., 250/., 266, 362, 
 448; iii., 12 
 
 Marie, character in Clavigo, i., 136, 
 236/., 242 
 
 Marie, character in Das Mädchen 
 von Oberkirch, ii., 127 
 Marie, character in Götz, i., 136, 
 I 7 1 ff-< 237; iii., 256 
 Marie, Princess, iii., 165 
 Marie Antoinette, i., 122; ii., 104 
 Marienbad, iii., 155 ff., 225 
 '*■ Marienbad Elegie, ii., 71; iii., 51; 
 quotation from, 158; 160 
 Marlowe, iii., 271, 273, 275, 381 
 Märten, character in Der Burger - 
 general, ii., 123 
 
 Martha, character in Faust, iii., 275, 
 289 ff. 
 
 Martial, ii., 208 
 Martigny, i., 351 
 
 Martin, Brother, character in Götz, 
 i- 173 . 1 79 
 
 Martin Luther, oder die Weihe der 
 Kraft (Werner), ii., 350 
 Marx, Parson, iii., 26 
 Mary, Virgin, in Faust, iii., 351 
 März, iii., 376 
 
 Masuren (von Gou6), i., 157, 187 
 
 Mater Gloriosa, in Faust, iii., 352 
 Mathematics, Goethe’s study of, i., 
 16, 19, 308 
 
 Maximen und Reflexionen über 
 Kunst, quotation from, iii., 101 
 Maximilian, character in German- 
 Latin colloquy, i., 32 
 Maximilian, Emperor, i., 33 
 Meckelsburg, the, i., 155 
 Mecklenburg, i., 156 
 Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Grand Duke 
 of, iii., 183 
 
 Medals, Goethe’s collection of, iii., 
 163, 180 
 Medea, ii., 440 
 
 Medicine, Goethe’s study of, i., 79, 
 93 . io 3 > * 3 7 ! iü- » 82 
 Medicis, the, ii., 56 
 Mediterranean Sea, the, i., 373; ii., 
 190 
 
 Medon (Clodius), i., 65 
 Medwin, iii., 266 
 Meeresstille, iii., 373, 376 
 Mefistofele (Boito), iii., 376 
 “Mein Erbteil wie herrlich,!’ etc. 
 (from West-östlicher Divan), iii., 
 226 
 
 “Meine Ruh ist hin” (from Fatist), 
 iü-. 375 . 376 
 
 Meiningen, i., 224; iii., 27 
 Meiringen, i., 348 
 Meisenheim, iii., 26 
 Melanchthon, iii., 271 
 Melina, character in Wilhelm Meis- 
 ter, ii., 220 ff., 265, 266 
 Melina, Frau, character in Wilhelm 
 Meister, ii., 220 ff. 
 
 Melusine, i., 153 
 
 Memoire (Beaumarchais), i., 235 ff. 
 Memoires historiques de Stephanie- 
 Louise de Bourbon-Conti, ii., 
 132 
 
 Mendelssohn, Felix, iii., 36, 166, 
 374 /- 
 
 Mendelssohn, Moses, i., 429 
 Menelaus, ii., 4; iii., 339, 342, 344 
 Mengs, ii., 325 
 
 Mephisto, character in Berlioz’s 
 Damnation de Faust, iii., 376 
 Mephistopheles, character in Faust, 
 i-, 2, 144, 345; ii-. 123, 209; iii., 
 168, 257, 275, 2&2ff., 381/.; in the 
 puppet play, 251/. 
 
 Mer de Glace, the, i., 351 
 Merck, Johann Heinrich, i., 64, 
 143 ff-, 152, 155 . I 57 . 164, 16677., 
 i75. i 8 3. 188, 189,205, 2x2, 223, 
 229, 236/., 239, 251, 267 /., 300, 
 3 IO > 3*6, 319, 345 . 357 . 359 . 361. 
 365, 423, 427/-, 429. 43 Ü n -. 
 168, 211, 442; iii., 83, 87 ff., 91, 
 1x4, 257, 2S6, 376 
 
Unfrei 
 
 413 
 
 Merckbriefe [vol. i . — Briefe an J. 
 H. Merck ; vol. ii . — Briefe an und 
 von J. H. Merck; vol. iii . — Briefe 
 aus dem Freundeskreise von 
 Goethe, Herder und Merck ] (Wag- 
 ner), i., 423 
 Mercury, ii., 331 
 Mereau, Sophie, ii., 203 
 Merian, ii., 453 
 Merkel, ii., 423 
 
 Merkur, see Der deutsche Merkur 
 Merseburg, i., 88; ii., 99 
 Mesmer, ii., 368 
 Messina, i., 400 
 
 Metamorphose der Pflanzen, see 
 Versuch die Metamorphose, etc. 
 Metamorphose der Tiere, quota- 
 tions from, ii., 160, 161, and iii., 
 
 87 
 
 Metamorphosis of plants, Goethe’s 
 discovery of, i., 362; ii., 169, 
 195; iii., 87, 91 ff., 112, 377 
 Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der 
 Naturwissenschaft (Kant), ii., 177 
 Meteorology, Goethe’s study of, iii., 
 116/., 173, 182 
 
 Method, Goethe’s scientific, iii., 
 izgff. 
 
 Metternich, iii., 154 
 Metz, Dr., i., 93 
 Meuse, the, ii., 1x2 
 Meyer, C. F., iii., 305 
 Meyer, Heinrich, i., 388, 403, 407; 
 
 ii., 88, 93, 120, 306, 310, 312 ff., 
 3 1 7> 3 r 9> 3 2 °> 3 22 > 325 ff-, 329, 
 
 330 , 332, 344, 346, 351, 353, 
 
 450; iii., 7, 29, 165, 170, 172, 262 
 Meyer von Lindau, i., 98/. 
 Meyer-Cohn, i., 433 
 Michels, Viktor, ii., 441 
 Mignon, character in Wilhelm Meis- 
 ter, i., 141, 228, 366, 372, 408; 
 
 11., 230 ff., 250, 253 ff., 264, 265, 
 448; in., 12, 190, 211, 375, 376 
 
 Mignon (“Kennst du das Land”), 
 
 1., 227/; iii., 19, 69, 72, 375, 376 
 Milan, i., 255, 271, 402, 407, 437; 
 
 111., 174 
 
 Milky Way, the, i., 351 
 Milton, ii., 446 
 
 Mineralogy, Goethe’s study of, i., 
 361, 396, 398; iii., 98, 112 
 Minerals, Goethe’s collection of, 
 
 iii., 163 
 
 Minerva, i., 247 
 Minerva, Cape, i., 401 
 Minna von Barnhelm (Lessing), i., 
 59, 62, 68, 76/., 174/., 178 
 Minnesingers, the, i., 137 
 Minor, i., 425; iii., 382 
 Mirabeau, ii., 142 
 “Misel,” i., 279 
 
 Miss Sarah Sampson (Lessing), i., 
 61, 62 
 
 Mississippi, the, iii., 177 
 Missolonghi, iii., 265, 267/., 341 
 Mit einem gemalten Band, i., 130; 
 
 iii., 44, 376 
 
 “Mit Flammenschrift war innigst 
 eingeschrieben,” see Epoche 
 Mitteilungen des Vereins f. Gesch., 
 etc., i., 419 
 
 Mitteilungen über Goethe (Riemer), 
 “•> 377 . 444 ; üi-, 328 
 Mitteilungen über Goethe und seinen 
 Freundeskreis (Dembowsky), iii., 
 379 
 
 Mittler, character in Die Wahlver- 
 wandtschaften, ii., 360 ff. 
 
 Möbius, ii., 452 
 Modern Philology, i., 427 
 Mohammed II., iii., 175 
 Moliere, i., 22; ii., 420 
 Möller, Goethe’s assumed name on 
 his Italian journey, i., 369 
 Molsheim, i., 139 
 Monad, ii., 171 
 Monastery, Goethe’s, iii., 163 
 Monbrisson, Maria von, ii., 450 
 Mont Blanc, i., 350 
 Montan (Jarno), character in Wil- 
 helm Meister, iii., 198 
 Montan vert, i., 351 
 Monte Rosa, i., 339 
 Monte Rosso, i., 399 
 Moors, Max, i., 19/., 37, 40, 43, 53, 
 54 
 
 Moralische Abhandlungen (Salz- 
 mann), i., 211 
 Moravianism, i., 92 
 Morhof, i., 30, 421 
 Mörilce, iii., 79 
 
 Moritz, director of the Chancery, i., 
 2 3 
 
 Moritz, legation councillor, i., 19, 
 
 96 
 
 Moritz, K. P., i., 388, 407; ii., 186 
 Morphology, Goethe’s contribu- 
 tions to, iii., 104 ff. 
 
 Morris, Max, ii., 451; iii., 382 
 Morus, i., 46, 49, 65, 80 
 Moscow, ii., 420; iii., 2 
 Moser, i., 310; ii., 241 
 Möser, i., 214, 311/.; iii., 253, 254 
 Moses, i., 114, 115; ii. , 27; iii., 250 
 Moses (Christian Brion), i., 124 
 Moses (Michael Angelo), i., 386 
 Mothers, the, in Faust, iii., 334/., 
 355. 382 
 Motz, iii., 16 
 
 Mouan, Castle of, i., 420/. 
 
 Moutier, i., 347 
 Mozart, iii., 374 /. 
 
 Müchler, iii., 375 
 
414 
 
 Unfcer 
 
 Mühlberg, the, iii., 13, 27 
 Mühlhausen, i., 357 
 Mühlheim, i., 207 
 
 Müller, Chancellor Friedrich von, 
 
 ii. , 410/., 428, 444, 448, 453; iii., 
 159/., 165, 169 ff., 177, 179/., 
 
 366, 379/. 
 
 Müller, Johannes (scientist), iii., 128 
 Müller, Johannes von (historian), 
 
 11., 330, 422 
 
 Müller, K. W., iii., 93, 385 
 Münch, Anna Sibylla, i.,Ji 83 , 213 /., 
 23S. 240, 43° 
 
 Münchhausen, Min ster von, i., 264 
 Münchow, i., 420 
 
 Munich, i., 369, 433; ii., 445; iii., 
 174 
 
 Münster, i., 325; ii., 116/. 
 
 Münster (Switzerland), i., 347 
 Münstertal, the, i., 347 
 Münter, ii., 444 
 Musarion (Wieland), i., 78 
 Musäus, i., 262 
 
 Musenalmanach (Boie), i., 21 1 
 Musenalmanach (Schiller), ii., 208, 
 209 
 
 Music, i., 16, 30, 55, 68, 189, 216, 
 404/. ; iii., 166; in Goethe’s poetry, 
 
 111., 76 ff. 
 
 Mycenae, ii., 4 
 
 Myology, Goethe’s study of, iii., 83 
 Mysticism, i., 3, 93, 108; iii., 273 
 Mythenstöcke, the, i., 227 
 
 Nach Falkonet und über Falkonet, i., 
 43 1 
 
 “Nachahmung der Natur” ( Stu- 
 dien, ), i., 412 
 Nachgefühl, iii., 376 
 Nachodine, heroine of Das nuss- 
 braune Mädchen, iii., 190, 206 ff., 
 211, 215/., 223 
 Nachtgesang, iii., 376 
 Nahe, the, ii., 109, 118 
 Nähe des Geliebten, iii., 375, 376 
 Nanny, character in Die Wahlver- 
 wandtschaften, ii., 373 
 Naples, i., 11, 395 ff-, 400 ff., 405, 
 408, 413, 437; ii., 37, 424; iii., 
 92, 97, 187, 378 
 
 Napoleon, i., 3, 201, 264; ii., 132, 
 
 3 i6 > 3 i8 , 34 off., 34 3 ff-, 3 88 . 395. 
 401, 408-414, 418/f., 428, 432, 
 453 , 454; in-, 1 /-, 14, 135. I 75 
 Narciss, character in Confessions of 
 a Beautiful Soul, ii., 239, 241 
 Nassau, ii., 341; iii., 15 
 Nassau Castle, iii., 15, 16 
 Natalie, character in Wilhelm Meis- 
 ter, ii., 247/., 254/. ,265, 386, 448/. ; 
 
 iii., 190, 195, 203/., 212, 2i6, 
 224/. 
 
 Nathan der Weise (Lessing), ii., 
 2 7 ff- 
 
 National Assembly, the, of France, 
 
 11., 102, 104 
 
 Naturalist, Goethe the, iii., 81 ff. 
 Nature, Goethe’s attitude toward, 
 
 1., 70, 94, 108, 116, 118, 119, 
 154^-, 167, 279/., 297; ii., 77; iii., 
 81 ff- 
 
 Naturalism, i., 279 
 Nauheim, ii., 451 
 Naumburg, i., 41, 302 
 Nausicaa, i., 162 
 
 Nausikaa, i., 397, 399, 406, 410; iii., 
 92 
 
 Nazarenism, iii., 147 
 Necessity, i., 135; ii., 159/7., 189 
 Neckar, the, ii., 183, 281 
 Necker, i., 145 
 Nemesis (Luden), iii., 137 
 Neoplatonism, i., 93 
 Neptunists, the, iii., 113/7., 212, 338 
 Netherlands, the, i., 207 
 Nette, see Anna Katharina Schön - 
 köpf 
 
 Nettesheim, Agrippe von, iii., 271 
 N eudeutsche religiös - patriotische 
 
 Kunst, iii., 143 
 
 Neue Erdbeschreibung (Büsching), 
 
 1., 418/. 
 
 Neue Götter ge spräche (Wieland), 
 
 11., 1 12 
 
 Neue Liebe, neues Leben, quotation 
 from, i., 218; iii., 376 
 Neue Lieder, see Leipziger Lieder- 
 buch 
 
 Neuhauss, Demoiselle, i., 266 
 Neuhof, i., 35 
 
 Neujahrslied, i., 425; iii., 374 
 Neumann, Christiane, ii., 96/., 318 
 Neuwied, i., 206/.; iii., 16 
 New Harmony, iii., 192 
 Newspapers, Goethe’s reading of, 
 
 111., 174/. 
 
 Newton, ii., ggf., 208, 323; iii., 
 122 ff., 127 
 
 Ney, Marshai, ii., 343 
 Nicaragua Canal, the, iii., 174 
 Nicknames, Goethe’s, see Wolf, 
 Wölfehen, Bear, Huron, Indian 
 Nicolai, i., 259; ii., 208, 264, 425, 
 453; iii., 257, 281 
 Nicolovius, Alfred, iii., 380 
 Niebuhr, iii., 175 
 Niederbronn, i., 100, 122, 376 
 Niederrossla, ii., 342 
 Niejahr, J., iii., 382 
 Niethammer, ii., 203 
 Nietzsche, iii., 2S1 
 “Night — Open Field,” scene in 
 Faust, iii., 261 
 
 Night Thoughts (Young), i., 259 
 
Unfrei 
 
 415 
 
 Niklas, character in Die Fischerin, 
 
 iii., 60 
 
 Niobe, group, ii., 383 
 Nobility, Goethe’s patent of, i., 317 
 Nöllen, J. S., i., 428, 429 
 Norberg, character in Wilhelm. 
 
 Meister, ii., 218 ff., 251 
 Nord und Süd, i., 431 
 Nordhausen, i., 338 
 Nördlingen, i., 433 
 Normality, in Goethe’s poetry, iii., 
 34 ff- 
 
 North Carolina, iii., 380 
 North Sea, the, iii., 117 
 Norway, iii., 35 
 Nöthnitz, i., 261 
 
 Notre Dame de Paris (Hugo), iii., 
 174, 360 
 
 Nouveau Christianisme (Saint-Si- 
 mon), iii., 192 
 
 Nouveaux Principes d’ Economie 
 Politique (Sismondi), iii., 192 
 Novalis, ii., 263/.; iii., 144, 150 
 Novelle, iii., 172 
 Numa, i., 150 
 
 “ Nun du mir lässiger dienst ” (from 
 Römische Elegien), i., 41 1 
 “Nun glühte seine Wange rot und 
 röter ” (from Epilog zu Schillers 
 “ Glocke ”), ii., 194 
 “Nun wird, Ihm selbst aufs herr- 
 lichste zu lohnen,” iii., 180 
 “Nur dies Herz, es ist von Dauer” 
 (from Buch Suleikd), iii., 24 
 “ Nur Luft und Licht ” ( cf . Düntzer, 
 Goethes Eintritt in Weimar, 71), 
 
 iii. , 179 
 
 “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt,” 
 
 111., 376 
 
 Nuremberg, i., 169, 171, 172, 408; 
 
 11., 105, 320, 450 
 
 “O, dass die innre Schöpfungs- 
 kraft” (from Künstlers Abend- 
 lied), i., 403 
 
 O’Donnell, Countess, ii., 4x9, 432 
 “Ob’s Unrecht ist, was ich emp- 
 finde” (Frau von Stein), i., 302 f. 
 Oberkirch, Frau von, i., 428 
 Oberland, the, in Weimar, i., 314 
 Oberlin, i., 137; iii., 253 
 Obermann, Fräulein, i., 59/., 62, 68, 
 77 
 
 “Oberon and Titania’s Golden 
 Wedding” (in Faust), ii., 209 
 Ober postamts zeitung (Frankfort), iii. 
 8 
 
 Oberrossla, ii., 323, 450 
 Ober-Steinberg, i., 348 
 Oberwald, i., 352 
 
 Ode an Herrn Professor Zachariä, i., 
 425 
 
 Oden (Klopstock), i., 21 1 
 Odilienberg, ii., 355 
 Odoard, character in Wilhelm Meis- 
 ters Wanderjahre, iii., 221, 226, 
 234 
 
 Odysseus, i., 398 
 
 Oeser, Friederike, i., 68, 70, 76, 77, 
 79, 89, 116, 376 
 
 Oeser, Friederike, i., 68, 70, 89, 93 
 Ottenbach, i., 220/., 230/., 241; 
 
 11., 279; iii., 270 
 Offenbar Geheimnis, iii., 3 
 Offenburg, iii., 26 
 
 Offne Tafel, iii., 51 
 ‘ ‘ Ohne Wein kann ’s uns auf Er den , ” 
 
 1., 225 
 
 Oken, iii., 137 f., 141 
 Olaf, Herr, in Erlkönigs Tochter, 
 üh, 59 
 
 Oldenburg, ii., 441 
 Olearius, character in Götz, i., 179 
 Olenschlager, von, i., 19, 309; ii., 
 241 
 
 Oliva, character in Egmont, i., 333 
 Olivia (Marie Salomea Brion) i., 
 124, 128 
 
 Olympian, Goethe the, i., 413; iii., 
 
 194 
 
 Olympus, i., 344; ii., 18, 21 
 Ophelia, iii., 302 
 
 Oppositionsblatt (Bertuch), iii., 137 
 Optics, see theory of colour 
 Optische Beiträge, see Beiträge zur 
 Optik 
 
 Orange, character in Egmont, i., 
 3 3°ff- 
 
 Orator (Cicero), i., 48 
 Orbis Picius (Comenius), i., 16, 420 
 Orestes, character in Iphigenie, i., 
 300, 385; ii., 1 ff., 48, 247, 440,452; 
 iii., 45, 176 
 
 Orestes, character in Euripides, 
 
 11., 4 
 
 Orient, the, ii., 432 
 Origin of Species (Darwin), iii., 378 
 Orology, Goethe’s theory of, i., 361 
 Orpheus, iii., 338 
 Orphic poems, i., 29 
 “Os intermaxillare,” see inter- 
 maxillary 
 Osnabrück, i., 31 1 
 Osnabrücker Intelligenzblatt, iii., 253 
 Ossian, i., 109, 114, 115, 117, 118, 
 119, 122, 142, 193, 384; iii., 250, 
 
 276 
 
 Ostade, i., 162 
 
 Osteology, Goethe’s study of, iii., 
 82/., 93 
 
 Ottilie, character in Die Wahlver- 
 wandtschaften, ii., 354 ff-, 374 ff-, 
 452 ; iii., 26 
 
 Ottilienberg, the, i., 139 
 
4i6 
 
 Anbei 
 
 Ottingen, ii. , 270 
 
 Ovid, i., 406 
 
 Owen, Robert, iii., 192 
 
 Pacific Ocean, ii., 265; iii., 2 
 Padua, i., 373, 377, 391 ; ii., 88; iii., 
 290 
 
 Paestum, i., 396, 399 
 Painting, Goethe’s study of and 
 interest in, i., 70 ff., 167, 209/., 
 37 3#-. 40 3/., 409; ii., 87, 216; iii., 
 7, 98, ggf., 120 ff. 
 
 Palace, the, of Weimar, i., 255, 271; 
 ü-, 3 22 > 33 2 
 
 Palaeontology, Goethe’s interest in, 
 
 1., 100; iii., 108, 115 
 Paläophron und Neoterpe, ii., 333 
 Palatinate, the, i., 234, 310, 345; 
 
 ü-, 343 
 
 Palermo, i., 397#., 437 i io 5 : 
 iü-, 9 2 - 378 
 
 Palladio, i., 372, 375 ff.; ii., 87 
 Palma di Goethe, in Padua, i., 373 
 Panama Canal, the, iii., 174 
 Pandora, heroine of the drama, i., 
 247; ii., 388 ff.; iii., 155 
 Pandora, ii., 128, 273, 353, 388- 
 404, 452/.; quotation from, iii., 
 110 264 
 
 Pandorens Wiederkunft, ii., 388 
 Pantheism, Goethe’s, i., 93, 208; ii., 
 156 ff.; iii., 235/., 291/., 363/. 
 Pantheon, the, in Rome, i., 385,387, 
 438 
 
 Paolo Veronese, ii., 87 
 Parabase, quotation from, iii., 85 
 Paracelsus, i., 93; iii., 271, 336 
 Paradise Lost (Milton), ii., 446 
 Paria, iii., 55/., 63/., 374 
 “Paries,” iii., 117 
 Paris, i., 94, iii, 120, 139, 232, 263, 
 311; ii., 102/., 110, 119, 120, 151, 
 x 93 > 2 75 > 2 93 . 344 , 413» 422, 427, 
 434 ; in-, 17°. i 74 , i 75 » 3 6 ° 
 
 Paris, hero, iii., 334 
 Parma, i., 402, 407 
 “Parodiert sich drauf als Doktor 
 Faust” (Einsiedel), iii., 258 
 Parthenon, the, i., 396, 404; iii., 11 
 Parthenope, i., 396 
 Parzenlied (in Iphigenie ), ii., 21, 31; 
 
 see Gesang der Parzen 
 Parzival, ii., 262 
 Pasqu6, ii., 445 
 
 Passavant, i., 225, 227, 228; ii., 317 
 Pater Brey, i., 146, 204 
 Pater Profundus, in Faust, iii., 
 35 ? 
 
 Patriotische Phantasien (Möser), i., 
 214, 311 iii., 253 
 Patriotism, Goethe’s, i., 104/., 120; 
 
 11., 428 ff.; iii., 150 
 
 Paulus, ii., 172, 203, 317, 335; iii., 
 10 
 
 Paulus, Karoline, ii., 203 
 Paulus (Reichlin-Meldegg), ii., 
 
 150 
 
 Peasants’ War, the, i., 171; iii., 329 
 “Pedagogical province,” the, in 
 Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, 
 
 111., 207/., 223, 230/f. 
 Peloponnesus, the, iii., 267 
 Pempelfort, i., 208, 209, 212; ii., 114 
 Penelope, i., 162 
 
 Penn, William, iii., 199 
 Perfection, Goethe’s doctrine of, 
 
 11., 160 
 
 Pericles, ii., 202 
 Persia, iii., 2 ff., 144 
 Perugia, i., 382 
 Peschei, ii., 454 
 Pestalozzi, iii., 36, 228 ff. 
 
 Peter, iii., 272, 363 
 Peter the Martyr (Titian), i., 438 
 Petrarch, ii., 42, 351, 352 
 Pfeil, Councillor, i., 53 
 Pfenninger, i., 225; ii., 158 
 Pfingstweide, the, i., 20 
 PhaecLrus (Plato), i., 421 
 Phanias, character in Musarion, i., 
 7 8 
 
 Phänomen, quotation from, iii., 4 
 Pharsalus, iii., 337 
 Philemon, character in Faust, iii., 
 345 
 
 “Philemon and Baucis,” scene in 
 Faust, iii., 270 
 
 Phileros, character in Pandora, ii., 
 394 #- 
 
 Philhellenism, iii., 170 
 Philine, character in Wilhelm Meis- 
 ter, ii., 170, 229, 265/.; iii., 222/. 
 Philinte, iii., 47 
 Philipp, Goethe’s valet, i., 297 
 Philipp Hackert, ii., 417 
 Philo, character in Confessions of 
 a Beautiful Soul, ii., 240/. 
 Philology, Goethe’s study of, i., 94 
 Philosophia Botanica (Linne), iii., 
 106 
 
 Philosophie der Geschickte (Hegel), 
 
 ii., 148 
 
 Philosophy, Goethe’s, i., 29, 50, 79, 
 92/.; ii-, 156-181, 187/., 324, 446/. ; 
 in-, 173 
 
 Phoebus, i., 167 
 Phoebus Apollo, iii., 61 
 Phorcyd, Mephistopheles a, iii., 
 339 V- 
 
 Phyllis, character in Wilhelm Meis- 
 ter, ii., 239 ff. 
 
 Phyllis, iii., 47 
 
 Physics, Goethe’s study of, i., 50; 
 
 ii., 99, 323; see colour 
 
Anbei 
 
 417 
 
 Physiognomische Fragmente (Lava- 
 ter), i., 204, 211, 225, 228, 246, 
 420; iii. , 82 
 
 Physiognomische Fragmente, iii., 82 
 Physiognomische Reisen (Musäus), 
 
 1., 262 
 
 Physiognomische Reisen, quotation 
 from, i., 262 
 
 Physiognomy, Goethe’s study of, i., 
 204, 225, 228, 246, 420; iii., 5, 
 82 
 
 Pierson, iii., 376 
 Pieta (Michael Angelo), i., 386 
 Pietism, in Frankfort, i., 200 
 Pilgers Morgenlied, i., 147; iii., 47, 
 61, 376 
 
 Pindar, i., 115, 142, 143, 147, 153, 
 376 
 
 Pisa, iii., 383 
 
 Pitture al Fresco del Campo Santo 
 (Lasinio), iii., 383 
 
 Plaques, Goethe’s collection of, iii., 
 163 
 
 Piaster casts, Goethe’s collection 
 of, iii., 163 
 
 Plato, i., 29, 421; ii., 42, 206, 399; 
 
 111., 127, 234, 334, 378 
 
 “ Pleasure-Garden,” scene in Faust, 
 
 iii., 269 
 
 Pleiades, the, i., 351 
 Pleisse, the, i., 41, 91, 425 
 Pleissenburg, the, i., 70 
 Pless, i., 434 
 
 Plessing, i., 338; iii., 38, 41 
 Plotho, Baron von, i., 24 
 Plutarch, iii., 334, 360, 382 
 Pniower, ii., 449; iii., 381 
 Po, the, ii., 86 
 
 Poems of a Polish Jew, see Gedichte 
 eines polnischen Juden 
 Poet, Goethe the, i., 6, 24 ff., 31, 38, 
 47 /-. 52 f-, 54 /-, 80, 86, 11 3#., 
 I 43 > I 53 > l68 , 357 . 3 63, 4 ° 9 I Ü-, 
 33/., 84, 216, 227, 271 ff., 332/., 
 441 ; iii., 30-80, 1 76; see poetry 
 Poetics (Aristotle), i., 423 
 Poetry, theory of, i.,74^., 109, 113/., 
 188, 231, 328/.; ii., 70 f., 73, 167/., 
 169/., 389, 449; iii., 33#., 368/., 
 373. 374 ff-', see poet 
 Pogwisch, Ottilie von, see Goethe 
 Poland, ii., 92, 424 
 Polarity, Goethe’s theory of, ii., 
 177; iii., 126 f. 
 
 Political economy, Goethe’s study 
 of, iii., 173 
 
 Politics, Goethe’s study of, i., 19, 
 309#.; iii., 174/. 
 
 Polyhistor, etc. (Morhof), i., 421 
 Pomerania, i., 52 
 Pompeii, i., 396 
 Pontine Swamps, the, i., 395 
 
 Pope, the, i., 394 
 Portici Museum, i., 396 
 Porto del Popolo, Rome, i., 407 
 Portugal, i., 24, 321 
 Posdorf, ii., 275 
 Potsdam, i., 259 
 
 Prayer, Goethe’s attitude toward, 
 
 i., 18, 158, 287/.; ii., 170 
 “Prelude,” the, to Faust, iii., 34, 
 67, 296, 308/. 
 
 Pre-Raphaelites, the, iii., 147 
 Primce Linece Isagoges, etc. (Gesner) , 
 
 1., 421 
 
 Prime minister, Goethe the, iii., 136 
 Primrose, family in The Vicar of 
 Wakefield, i., 124 
 
 Principal Decree of the Imperial 
 Deputation, iii., 135 
 Principes de Philosophie Zoologique 
 par Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, 
 Goethe’s review of, iii., 110 
 Prinzesschen, the, i., 395 
 “Prison,” scene in Faust, i., 334; 
 
 111., 261, 275, 296, 301 ff., 331 
 Privy Council, the, of Weimar, i., 
 
 289-295, 313, 317, 322, 337; ii., 
 76; iii., 136 
 
 Professor, Goethe’s desire to be a, 
 
 1., 40, 45/.; urged by friends to 
 be a, 137/. 
 
 Prolog, 7. Mai, 1791, ii., 98 
 Prolog zu den neusten Offenbarungen 
 Gottes , verdeutscht durch Dr. Carl 
 Friedrich Bahrdt, i., 204 
 “Prologue in Heaven,” scene in 
 Faust, iii., 296, 299, 304, 308, 
 309 ff-, 3 i8 > 320, 323, 327, 352, 
 355 
 
 Prometheus, iii., 253 
 Prometheus, character in Pandora, 
 
 11., 389 ff.; iii., 110 
 
 Prometheus, hero of dramatic frag- 
 ment, i., 183, 247/.; iii., 142, 197 
 Prometheus, dramatic fragment, i., 
 187, 204, 210, 239, 247/., 252, 365; 
 
 ii., 29, 158, 159; iii., 142, 367 
 Prometheus, poem, i., 248, 433; iii., 
 47, 142, 375 
 
 Prometheus (Seckendorf and Stoll), 
 
 ii., 389 
 
 Prometheus Bound and Unbound, 
 ü-, 39i 
 
 Proömion, iii., 62 
 Prophet, Goethe the, ii., 189 
 Propyläen, ii., 325, 328 
 Proserpina, i., 303; ii., 1 
 Proserpine, in Faust, iii., 338/., 340, 
 353 
 
 Protestantism, Goethe’s, iii., 148 ff., 
 35 i ff- 
 
 Proteus, iii., 105 
 
 Prussia, i., 107, 322, 326, 437; 
 
4iS 
 
 Unfrei 
 
 Prussia ( continued ) 
 
 ü., 73 . 89, 128, 150, 335, 340/., 
 342/., 348/., 408, 421 ff., 427. 449 ; 
 iii. , 140, 141 
 
 Psyche, character in Satyros, i., 
 
 249 ff- 
 
 Psyche (Karoline Flachsland), i., 
 146 
 
 Psyche (Fräulein von Keller), i., 
 275 ff- 
 
 Punta della Campanella, i., 401 
 Puppet show, i., 38/. 
 
 Purity, Goethe’s, i., 4, 5, 19; iii., 
 1 76 
 
 Purpose, ultimate, ii., 16 ijF.; adapt- 
 ability to, 178 
 
 Pylades, character in Iphigenie, ii., 
 uff. 
 
 Pylades, character in Euripides, ii., 
 4 
 
 Pylades, Goethe’s friend, i., 24 ff. 
 Pyramid of Cestius, iii., 187 
 Pyramids, the, i., 201 
 Pyrenees, the, ii., 142; iii., 113 
 Pyrmont, ii., 334 
 
 Quietist, Goethe no, iii., 142 
 
 Raab, ii., 316 
 Racine, i., 22 
 
 Radical evil, Kant’s, ii., 175/. 
 Radziwill, Prince, iii., 376, 384 
 Ramler, i., 78, 259, 260 
 Rammeisberg, i., 339 
 Ranke, i., 436 
 
 Raphael, i., 122, 183, 268, 376, 381, 
 382, 386, 404, 438; iii., 250 
 Rapp, i., 264; ii. , 317 
 Rastlose Liehe, iii., 375, 376 
 Rationalism, Goethe’s, i., 79, 92 
 Ratisbon, L, 31, 369; iii., 253 
 Rauch, iii., 176 f. 
 
 Raufbold, character in Der Renom- 
 mist, i., 42 
 
 Raumer, Karl von, iii., 380 
 Realist, Goethe a, ii., 151, 188 
 Realp, i„ 353 
 Rechenschaft, iii., 51/. 
 
 Recke, Elisa von der, ii., 444 
 Reden, Count, ii., 92 
 Reden an die deutsche Nation 
 (Fichte), ii., 180 
 
 Reforms introduced by Goethe, i., 
 
 319 ff- 
 
 Reformation, the, i., 173; iii., 138/., 
 251, 272/. 
 
 Rega, the, i., 52 
 Reich, i., 77 
 Reichard i., 423 
 
 Reichardt, ii., 90, 208, 334; iii., 
 263, 374 
 
 Reichenbach, iii., 94 f. 
 
 Reichenbach, treaty of, ii., 90 
 Reichlin-Meldegg, ii., 150 
 Reichshofen, i., 100 
 Reiffenstein, i., 387, 407 
 Reimarus, iii., 62 
 Reineck, Herr von, i., 19, 309 
 Reineke Fuchs, ii., 118, 204 
 Reinhard, ii., 151, 385, 419, 422; 
 iii., 166 
 
 Reinhold, ii., 172 
 
 Reise am Rhein, Main und Neckar, 
 
 111., 15 
 
 Reise nach Italien (Herder), i., 439 
 Reissiger, iii., 376 
 
 “Reizender ist mir des Frühlings 
 Blüte (from An Beiinden), i., 218 
 ileligion, Goethe’s, i., 17, 20, 92, 
 * 96, 158/., 183, 248, 294, 340/.; 
 
 ii-, 11 7 . 446 /.; 111., 84, 234 ff., 363/. 
 Rembrandt, iii., 175 
 Renaissance, the, iii., 251, 272/., 
 334 , 336 
 
 Renaissance art, i., 380, 382, 384; 
 
 11., 326; iii., 262 
 
 Renunciation, Goethe’s, ii., 16 sff. 
 Representative Men (Emerson), i., 
 
 417 
 
 Reschwoog, von, i., 131 
 Resignation, Goethe’s, ii., 165 ff., 
 387; iii., 32/., 239/. 
 
 Reuchlin, iii., 273 
 Reuss, Prince, ii., 110 
 Revolutions-Almanach für 1795, ii., 
 445 
 
 Rheingau, the, iii., 7 
 Rheinischer Merkur, iii., 16 
 Rhenish Confederation, the, ii., 
 
 341 , 342 , 345,408 
 
 Rhine, the, i., 9, 96, 143, 206 ff., 210, 
 229, 273, 343, 354, 3 68 , 43 °, 43 6 : 
 ii., 105, 114, 118, 119, 124, 126, 
 204, 274, 281, 282, 284,316, 317,. 
 340, 341, 432, 434 , 449 ! hi., 3/., 6, 
 14, 15/., 25, 27, 28, 29, 186 
 Rhine-Danube Canal, the, iii., 174 
 Rhön, the, i., 361 
 Rhone, the, i., 350, 352 
 Rhone Glacier, i., 352 
 Richardson, i., 188; ii., 259 
 Richter, art collector, i., 71 
 Richter, Jean Paul, see Jean Paul 
 Richter, Ludwig, iii., 79 
 Richterswyl, i., 226; ii., 317 
 “ Richtetest den wilden, irren Lauf’’ 
 (from Warum gabst du uns die 
 tiefen Blicke), ii., 3 
 Riemer, i., 418, 433; ii., 3 2 9 > 34.8, 
 35 i, 377 , 39 °, 433 , 444 , 45 3 i iü- 
 108, 164/., 328 
 
 Riese, i., 44, 45 , 47 , 48, 49 , 51, 86, 
 i8 3 
 
 Riesengebirge, the, 11., 90, 93 
 
Anbei 419 
 
 Rietz, iii., 376 
 Riga, i., in 
 
 Riggi, Maddalena, i., 405/., 439; 
 
 111., 62 
 
 Rigi, the, i., 227, 349; ii., 318 
 Rinaldo Rinaldini (Vulpius), ii., 445 
 Rino (Frau von Stein), i., 279 
 Rippach, i., 41 
 Rochlitz, i., 424; iii., 194 
 Röderer, i., 187, 426 
 Roetteken, i., 423 
 Röhr, iii., 366 
 Rolle, i., 349 
 
 Roman Empire, the, ii., 430 
 Roman House, the, iii., 179 
 Roman über das Weltall, i., 365, 
 410 
 
 Romanticism, ii., 202 f., 373; iii., 
 
 143 ff. 
 
 Rome, 1., 11, 14, 57, x 7°> 329, 379, 
 381-395, 400, 402-407, 409, 418, 
 432, 437, 438, 439; ii-, 37, 4 3ff-> 
 7 1 , 75, 76, 77, 81, 105, 117, 182, 
 203, 314, 329, 406, 441; iii., 98, 
 99, 100, 116, 120, 187, 262, 287 
 Rome, King of, see Archduke 
 Joseph 
 
 Römische Elegien, i., 78, 406, 439; 
 quotations from, 385, 41 1, and 
 
 11., 81; 88; iii., 65 
 
 Römische Geschichte (Niebuhr), iii., 
 175 , 
 
 Rosne, de, see Derones 
 Rousseau, i., 17, 79, 88, 120, 138, 
 146, 150, 158, 188, 198, 201, 205, 
 251, 271, 349; ii., 166, 175, 267; 
 
 111., 227, 274, 278 
 
 Roussillon, Fräulein von, i., 145, 
 146, 182 
 
 Roveredo, i., 370, 371 
 Rubens, i., 207; ii., 327; iii., 305 
 Rubinstein, iii., 376 
 Rudolstadt, ii., 184, 185 
 Rudorfi, Fräulein von (“die Ru- 
 del”), i., 266; ii., 329, 444 
 Ruhnken, i., iii 
 Ruprechtsau, the, i., 119 
 Russia, i., 53; ii., 340, 421, 423, 
 424, 426, 427; iii., 138, 140, 141, 
 253 
 
 Ruth, i., 39 
 Ryden, i., 58, 60 
 
 Saale, the, iii., 182 
 Saalfeld, battle of, ii., 343 
 Saar, the, i., 100 
 Saarbrücken, i., 100; ii., 275 
 Sachs, Hans, i., 121, 210; iii., 304/. 
 “Sag’ ich’s euch, geliebte Bäume,” 
 i-, 3°4/- 
 
 “Sag’, wie band das Schicksal uns 
 so rein genau” (from “Warum 
 
 gabst du uns die tiefen Blicke ”), 
 
 1., 300 
 
 St. Agatha (not by Raphael), i., 438 
 St. Cecilia (Raphael), i., 381, 386 
 St. Claude, i., 349 
 St. Genevieve, character in Tieck’s 
 Genoveva, iii., 144 
 
 St. Gothard, the, i., 227, 229, 268, 
 352/., 384; ii., 317/. 
 
 Saint-Hilaire, Geoffroy de, iii., 95, 
 1 10, 360 
 
 St. Joseph, character in Wilhelm 
 Meisters Wanderjahre, ii., 452; 
 
 111., 199, 213 
 
 St. Louis, Knight of, i., 98 
 St. Mark in the Mud (Venice), ii., 
 86 
 
 St. Mark’s, in Venice, i., 380 
 St. Ottilia, ii., 355, 376, 452 
 St. Peter, iii., 139, 140 
 St. Peter’s, in Rome, i., 383, 385 
 St. Petersburg, i., 183; ii., 442 
 St. Rochus, iii., 6/., 9 
 Saint-Simon, iii., 192 
 Saints, Darmstadt, see Darmstadt 
 Saitschick, ii., 444 
 Salis, von, i., 212 
 Salzburg, i., 369; ii., 269, 270, 279 
 Salzmann, i., 64, 97, 99, 101, 122, 
 13 1/-. 137. 1 43> x 52, 167, 169, 170, 
 173, 211, 224, 426, 428; 111., 253 
 Samaria, i., 91, 343; ii., 407 
 Sand, iii., 141 
 
 Sankt Joseph der Zweite (in Die 
 Wanderjahre), ii., 452; iii., 190, 
 196 
 
 Sankt Rochusfest zu Bingen, iii., 6/. 
 Sarasin (Langmesser), ii., 441 
 Sardinia, i., 262 
 Sartoux, Count, i., 420/. 
 
 Satan, iii., 297, 299 
 
 Satyros, hero of the drama, i., 249 ff. 
 
 Satyros, i., 249 ff. 
 
 Sauer, i., 425 
 Saussure, de, i., 351/. 
 
 Savoy, ii., 190 
 
 Saxony, i., 261, 309, 311, 437; ii., 
 93. I 5 °> i8 3 > i 9°> 341, 445’. iü-> 
 379 
 
 Scaligers, the, tombs of, i., 371 
 Scepticism, Goethe’s attitude tow- 
 ard, i., 92, 158; see religion 
 Schadenfreude, iii., 374 
 Schäfers Klagelied, iii., 375, 376 
 Schaffhausen, i., 225, 353; ii., 317 
 Schardt, Frau, i., 266, 435; ii., 185 
 Schardt, Councillor von, i., 266 
 “Schärfe deine kräft’gen Blicke” 
 (from Einlass), ii., 387 
 “Schau, Liebchen, hin!” (from 
 Sonnette, No. 15), ii., 331 
 Scheibler, ii., 451 
 
420 
 
 llnbex 
 
 Scheidemantel, ii. , 443/. 
 
 Scheintod , iii., 374 
 Schellhorn, Cornelia, i., 11, 38 
 Schelling, ii., 180/., 202, 317, 324, 
 327 . 335 . 390, 429, 447 . 452/.; 
 in-, 144/., 146, 149. 338 
 
 Schenkendorf, iii., 79 
 Scherer, Wilhelm, i., 231, 423: ii., 
 453 ; iü-. 381 
 
 Scherz, List und Rache , i., 404 
 Schicksal der Handschrift, iii., 92 
 Schiller, i., 3, 258, 270, 273, 280, 
 33 °. 334 . 354 , 365, 367. 400, 418, 
 433 . 437 ; ii-> 5 . 3 r > 32, 78, 81, 
 84, 93. 95, I 24, 128, 138, 140, 151, 
 160, 182—210, 217, 260, 262/., 
 268, 274, 281, 290, 296,. 306, 309 f., 
 3 r 3 > 3 M. 3 : 7 , 3 ' 9 . 3 2 i, 3 2 4 , 3 2 5 . 
 327. 329 , 33 °, 33 1 , 333 , 335 . 337 , 
 422, 426, 444, 446, 447, 448, 449, 
 45 °. 453 ; iü-, 52, 61, 109, 118, 
 125, 127, 131, 132, 144, 189, 228, 
 238, 261/., 263/., 286, 291, 301, 
 3 ° 5 . 3 o6 > 3 ° 7 328, 329, 334, 
 
 365, 381 
 
 Schiller, Charlotte von ( nee Lenge- 
 feld), ii., 80, 184/., 187, 333, 
 
 444; iü-, i 59 , I 9 I 
 Schiller (Weltrich), ii., 447 
 Schillers Briefe (Jonas), i., 433; ii., 
 448 
 
 Schinkel, i., 438 
 
 Schlegel, A. W., i., 430; ii., 202, 262, 
 3 ° 9 > 334 , 450; iü-, * 4 3ff- 
 Schlegel, Dorothea, ii., 203 
 Schlegel, Friedrich, ii., 202, 262, 
 263, 385, 452; iii., 143 ff-, i47, 
 148/. 
 
 Schlegel, Karoline, ii., 203; iii., 
 144 
 
 Schleiermacher, ii., 416 
 Schleswig-Holstein, ii., 421 
 Schlettstadt, i., 139 
 Schlosser, Christian, iii., 8/. 
 Schlosser, Fritz, iii., 8/., 180 
 Schlosser, Georg, i., 49, 52/., 86, 
 147, 152, 167, 182, 184, 224, 310, 
 347; ii., 119, 206; iii., 8, 63 
 Schlosser, Hieronymus, i., 183; iii., 
 8 
 
 Schlösser, L., iii., 376 
 Schmid, C. H., i., 176 
 Schmidt, Erich, i., 425, 430, 435, 
 438; ü-, 352, 444 ; iü-, 381 
 Schnaps, character in Der Bürger- 
 general, ii., 123, 125 
 Schneeberg, i., 367 
 Schneekoppe, the, ii., 93 
 Schneider, i., 19, 27/., 419 
 Schöll, i., 425, 430, 436 
 Schöllenen, the, i., 227 
 “Schon längst verbreitet sich’s in 
 
 ganze Scharen ” (from Epilog zu 
 Schillers “Glocke"), iii., 369 
 Schönbom, i., 236, 246 
 Schönemann, Elisabeth (Lili), i., 
 216, 2x9-234, 239, 240, 241, 245, 
 300, 328/., 346, 384; ii., 2, 274 ff., 
 289, 293, 301, 307/., 362, 440, 
 449, 45°; m., 12, 17, 18, 25, 27, 
 45 , 49 
 
 Schönemann, Frau ( nee D’Orville), 
 i., 216, 221 
 
 Schönkopf, Anna Katharina (Kät- 
 chen), i., 53 ff., 68, 78, 81, 91, 133, 
 134, 425; iii., 155 
 
 Schönkopf, C. G., i., 53, 55, 68, 69, 
 89, 218 
 
 Schönkopf, Peter, i., 60 
 Schopenhauer, iii., 281 
 Schopenhauer, Johanna, ii., 416, 
 444 , 445 
 Schröer, ii., 448 
 
 Schröter, Corona, i., 265 /., 314, 435 
 Schubart, i., 176, 198/.; ii., 423 
 Schubart, Martin, i., 420 
 Schubarth, ii., 165, 385 
 Schubert, iii., 374 /. 
 
 Schuchardt, iii., 16 3/., 168 
 Schuckmann, von, ii., 90, 445 
 Schüddekopf, iii., 379 
 Schuft, character in Hanswursts 
 Hochzeit, i., 232 
 
 Schulthess, Barbara (Bäbe), i., 225, 
 408, 432; ii., 105, 273, 276/., 278, 
 320; iii., 207 
 Schultz, iii., 166, 176/. 
 
 Schulz, Fräulein, i., 61 
 Schulz, J. A. P., iii., 375 
 Schumann, iii., 374/. 
 
 Schurke, character in Hanswursts 
 Hochzeit, i., 252 
 Schütz, i., 387 
 Schütz, Professor, ii., 335 
 Schwalbach, ii., 119 
 Schwaz, i., 369 
 Schweidnitz, ii., 90 
 Schweighäuser, ii., 450 
 Schweitzer, i., 35 
 Schweizeralpe, iii., 66 
 Schweizerlied, iii., 376 
 Schwind, iii., 79 
 Schwyz, i., 227; ii., 317 
 Schwyzer Haken, the, ii., 317 
 Science, Goethe’s internst in, i., 16, 
 30, 102, 361 ff.', ii., 76; see the 
 various Sciences 
 
 Scientist, Goethe the, iii., 81/jF., 173 
 Scott, Walter, iii., 173, 175 
 Sculpture, Goethe’s study of, i., 100, 
 122, 371/J.; iii., 98 
 Seckendorf!', Chamberlain von, 1.. 
 262, 295, 434, 435 ; ü-. 442; iii-, 
 374 
 
Unfrei 
 
 421 
 
 Seckendorf, Leo von, ii., 389 
 
 Seebeck, ii., 416 
 
 Seekatz, i., 21, 30 
 
 Segesta, i., 399 
 
 Sehnsucht, iii. , 376 
 
 Seidel, i., 369, 418, 433; ii., 213 
 
 Seidler, Luise, ii., 416; iii., 7 
 
 Seine, the, iii., 2 
 
 “Seit ich von Dir bin” (from An 
 Lida), i., 306 
 
 Selige Sehnsucht, quotations from, 
 
 11., 72, 165 ; iii., 62 
 Selima, i. , 39 
 Senckenberg, i., 419 
 Senckenberg (Kriegk), i., 419 
 Serlo, character in Wilhelm Meis- 
 ter, ii., 235 ff. 
 
 Sesenheim, i., 100, 123 ff., 240, 345/., 
 426; iii., 45, 64, 252, 256, 270, 
 294 
 
 Seuffert, ii., 451 
 Seven Mountains, the, i., 210 
 Seven Years’ War, the, i., 20 ff., 
 256, 310, 322, 420 
 Seydlitz, ii., 91 
 Seyler, i., 257 
 
 Shakespeare, i., 62, 76, 77 ff., 109, 
 114, 115, 116 ff., 121, 131, 142, 
 143, 167, 170, 175, 176, 177, 179, 
 246, 33°. 426; 11., 96/., 135, 157, 
 208, 214, 233, 234, 235, 238, 268, 
 448; iii., 105, 184, 250, 271, 300, 
 304, 368, 374 
 Shiraz, iii., 3 
 
 Sicily, i., 95, 397 ff-, 4 ° 5 ; “•> 3 731 
 
 111., 92, 100 
 
 Sickingen, character in Götz, i., 172 
 “Sie schwankt und ruht, zum See 
 zurückgedeichet (from Mächtiges 
 Überraschen), ii., 404 
 Sieben Kompositionen zu Goethes 
 Faust (Wagner), iii., 376 
 Siebenschläfer, iii., 58 
 Siewer, Dr., iii., 116 
 Sieyes, ii., 142 
 
 Silesia, i., 323; ii., 89 - 93 , 199, 217 ; 
 
 iii., 103 
 
 Silesian wars, i., 20 
 Simon Magus, iii., 272 
 Simplicissimus, ii., 262 
 Simplon, the, iii., 186 
 Sinuses, frontal, iii., 107 
 Sismondi, iii., 192, 223 
 Sistine Chapel, i., 385, 386, 404,438; 
 
 iii., 271 
 
 Sistine Madonna, the, i., 268 
 Skeletons, Goethe’s collection of, 
 
 iii., 163 
 
 Skull, the, vertebral origin of, ii., 
 88; iii., 1 12 
 Smolensk, ii., 420 
 “So lasst mich scheinen,” iii., 376 
 
 “ So sollst du, muntrer Greis ” (from 
 Phänomen), iii., 4 
 Socrates, i., 131, 170; iii., 303 
 Sokrates, i., 142; ii., 273 
 Solger, i., 418 
 
 Söller, character in Die Mitschuldi- 
 gen, i., 83/. 
 
 Solomon, Key of, iii., 317 
 Solomon’s Song, i., 29 
 Solon, i., 1 50 
 Solothurn, i., 349 
 
 Sömmering, ii., 109, 119, 316; iii., 
 88 ff., 169, 376, 378 
 Sondershausen, i., 338 
 Sonette, ii., 351/.; quotation from 
 No. r., 404 
 
 Song, A, over the Unconfidence 
 toward Myself, i., 86 
 Sonnenfels, i., 150 
 Sophie, of Saxony, iii., 379 
 Sophie, character in Clavigo, i., 237 
 Sophie, character in Die Mitschuldi- 
 gen, i., 83/. 
 
 Sophocles, i., 114, 199; ii., 115 
 Soret, ii., 277; iii., 95, 165 , 167/., 
 169, 182, 379 
 Sorrento, i., 438 
 Soult, ii., 412 
 
 Southern Dwina, the, ii., 420 
 Spain, i., 24; ii., 413 
 Sparta, iii., 339 
 Spartianus, i., 132 
 Spaun, iii., 375 
 Speyer, ii., 114 
 Spessart, the, i., 174 
 Spiegel, Chamberlain von, ii., 428 
 Spielhagen, ii., 452 
 Spielhagen- A Zfrww(Schmidt) , ii. , 3 52 
 Spies, Johann, iii., 271 
 Spina, Abbate, i., 407 
 Spincourt, ii., 113 
 Spinoza, i., 208, 248, 308, 421; 
 
 ii., 27, 156-181, 186, 188, 38 3/., 
 446, 447; iii., 31 ff., 84, 102, 105, 
 1 3 1 /-, 274 , 278, 367, 377 
 Spinoza im jungen Goethe (Hering) , 
 
 11., 446 
 
 Splügen Pass, the, i., 408; ii., 105 
 Spohr, iii., 375 
 Spoleto, i., 387 
 
 Sprichwörtliche Redensarten (Bor- 
 chardt), i., 233 
 
 Sprizbierlein, Frau, in the Urfaust, 
 
 111., 286 
 
 Sprüche in Prosa ( H ., xix), quota- 
 tions from, ii., 453 and iii., 101, 
 110, 123, 130, 131, 226, 376, 378 
 Staatsverfassungsarchiv (Luden), iii. 
 137 
 
 Städel, Rosette, iii., 13 
 Stael, Madame de, i., 417, 434; ii-, 
 33 °. 336 , 443 
 
 O. 
 
422 
 
 Unfcei 
 
 Stäfa, ii., 314, 3 1 lff- 
 Stägemann, iii., 130 
 Stahr, ii., 441 
 Stans, ii., 318 
 Stark, Professor, ii., 334 
 Stark, Pastor, i., 19 
 Statesman, Goethe’s ambition to 
 be a, iii., 253/., 258 
 “ Staub, den hab’ ich längst entbeh- 
 ret” (from Allleben), iii., 6 
 Staubbach waterfall, i., 348 
 Stavoren, ii., 89 
 
 Stein, Minister vom, iii., 15 ff., 373 
 Stein, von, reformer of Prussia, i., 
 265 
 
 Stein, Frau von, i., 64, 133, 229, 
 264, 266, 279, 280, 298, 299-308, 
 318, 321, 323, 339/., 353, 357, 
 3 6 °, 3 6 4 , 3 6 5 . 3 6 7 . 369. 372 . 
 3 88#., 392/., 409, 43 °. 433 . 435 . 
 436, 439; 11., 1 ff., 18, 32, 34, 35/-, 
 38. 71, 73, 78#., 81, 82, 106, 107, 
 184, 185, 230, 232, 278, 309, 333, 
 349 . 355 . 386, 43 1 . 440 , 44 i. 443 . 
 445 - 452 ; ui., 12, 33, 40 ff., 43/., 
 63. 83, 90, 91, 97, 98, 116, 118, 
 132, 183/., 224/., 227, 260, 379, 
 380 
 
 Stein, Fritz von, i., 302, 360; ii., 79, 
 !°7. 333. 444; iü-, 103, 116, 226, 
 229, 238 
 
 Stein, Master of the Horse von, i., 
 214, 229, 263, 264, 301, 321, 364, 
 
 365 
 
 Steinbach, Ervinus ä, see Ervinus 
 Steinhardt, Frau, i., 266 
 Stella, heroine of the drama, i., 
 240 ff., 433 ; ü-. 277 
 Stella, i., 85, 222, 239 ff., 433; ii., 
 272, 279, 378; iii., 257 
 Stella, wife of Swift, i., 240 
 Stern, A., i., 439 
 
 Sternbald, Franz, character in 
 Tieck’s Franz Sternbalds Wan- 
 derungen, iii., 148 
 Stemberg, Count, iii., 112 
 Sterne, i., 429; iii., 226 
 Sternheim (Sophie La Roche), i., 
 146 
 
 Stetten, i., 275 
 
 Stiedenroths Psychologie, iii., 131, 
 x 34 
 
 Stock, Dora (Dorchen), i., 69 
 Stock, Frau, i., 69 
 Stock, J. M., i., 68/., 155; ii., 183 
 Stock, Minna, see Minna Körner 
 Stoics, the, i., 29 
 
 Stolberg, Christian zu, i., 222 ff., 
 225; ii., 207 
 
 Stolberg, Friedrich zu (Fritz), i., 
 222 ff., 225, 291, 430/.; ii., 206, 
 207; iii., 62, 79, 258 
 
 Stolberg, Auguste zu (Gustchen), 
 
 1., 229/., 231, 240; iii., 45, 75/. 
 Stolberg, Katharina, i., 430/. 
 
 Stoll, Dr., ii., 389 
 
 Storm and Stress, i., 106 #., 110, 
 
 118, 122, 145, 150, 173, 174, 177, 
 189, 201, 22 T,ff., 238, 240, 248, 
 279 , 282, 316, 329, 356, 376; 
 
 11., 157, 162, 176, 191, 203, 213, 
 432; iii., 47, 64, 168, 248, 272/., 
 
 274, 278, 287, 288, 300, 304 
 Strasburg, i., 88, 94, 95-140, 141/., 
 
 158, 201, 209, 223/., 228, 229, 243, 
 246, 346/., 376, 419, 423, 426, 
 428, 430; ii., 146, 275, 281, 323, 
 355 . 441 , 446; iii-, 64, 82, 84, 
 155, 248, 250, 233, 255 
 Strasburg cathedral, i., 95, 103/7., 
 
 119, 228, 376; ii., 446; iii., 10, 
 88, 147, 270 
 
 Strassburger Goethevorträge (Ziegler 
 et al.), iii., 382 
 Straube, Frau, i., 47 
 Strauss, Richard, iii., 376 
 Stricker, i., 418 
 
 “Student” scene in the Urfaust, 
 
 111., 255; in the Fragment, 261, 
 
 275, 283, 286/. 
 
 Studien, quoted, i., 412 
 
 Studien zur Goethe Philologie (Minor 
 and Sauer), i., 425 
 “Study,” scenes in Faust, iii., 
 318 ff. 
 
 Stuttgart, 1., 353; 11., 105, 183, 317, 
 320 
 
 Stützerbach, iii., 137 
 Style, Goethe’s, i., 85 ff., 117/., 143, 
 i 47 ff-, 168, 174//., 197 //-. 237#., 
 244, 252, 334//-, 34 i. 4 n/-; H-. 
 29 #-, 73 /-. IO °. I 34/f-, 197 . 266, 
 3°4 ff-, 380//.. 402 ff.; 111., 76 #., 
 192 #-, 3 ° 4 ff-, 355 38 3 # 
 
 Styria, ii., 94 
 Suez Canal, the, iii., 174 
 Suicide, Goethe's thoughts of, i., 
 184, 187 
 
 Suleika, character in West-östlicher 
 Divan, iii., 14, 19, 20, 21, 22, 
 23. 27, 5 /. 66, 375 
 Sulpiz Boisseröe, (Mathilde Bois- 
 ser6e) i., 417, 438 
 Swabia, i., 9; ii., 190, 195, 317 
 Sweden, ii., 421 
 Swift, i., 115, 240 
 
 Switzerland, i., 3, 139, 143, 183, 
 212, 225#., 315/., 329, 337, 
 
 34 3 #-, 355 /-. 43 °/-. 436; u-, 190. 
 314 ff-, 325. 34 o; ui-, 186, 197, 
 215. 257 
 
 Symbolical, the, in Goethe’s poetry, 
 
 iii., 33, 56 ff., 68/. ; distinction be- 
 tween, and the allegorical, 306/. 
 
Unfcei 
 
 423 
 
 Symbolism, Goethe’s definition of, 
 
 iii., 131 
 
 Symposium. (Plato), i., 421 
 Syracuse, i., 399 
 Syria, iii., 1 
 
 Systeme de la Nature (Holbach), i., 
 1 1 9 
 
 Systeme Industriel (Saint-Simon), 
 
 iii., 192 
 
 Szymanowska, Mme., iii., x66 
 
 Tacitus, ii. , 413 
 
 Tag- und Jahreshefte, iii., 131; see 
 Annalen 
 Talma, ii., 409 
 Tancred (Voltaire), ii., 321 
 Taormina, i., 400 
 Tamowitz, ii., 92, 93 
 Tartarus, ii., 17 
 
 Tasso, hero of the drama, ii., 35 ff., 
 76, 441, 443 
 
 Tasso, i., 308, 364, 403, 407, 410; 
 
 11., i., 6, 33-74, 80, 84, 85, 123, 
 i34. 138, 191, 203, 272, 280, 
 381, 383- 44i ff-, 446; 111., 260 
 
 Tasso, the poet, i., 374, 438; ii., 
 33/., 50 
 
 Taunus Mountains, the, i., 14, 143; 
 
 111., 15 
 
 Tauris, ii., 3 ff. 
 
 “Tausend andern verstummt,’’ etc. 
 (Schiller’s Der griechische Genius) , 
 ü-, 3*3 „ 
 
 Teleology, Goethe’s rejection of, iii., 
 102 
 
 Teil, i., 431 ; ii. ,3 x 8 
 Tempe, i., 147 
 
 Teplitz, ii., 415/., 419/., 431, 432; 
 
 iii., 28 
 
 Terence, i., 40; ii., 321 
 
 Terni, i., 391 
 
 Terracina, i., 395 
 
 Teufelsaltar, the, i., 342 
 
 Teufelsbrücke, the, i., 227 
 
 Textor, J. W., i., 10, 20, 26, 38, 
 
 309, 422 
 
 Textor, Katharina Elisabeth, see 
 Katharina Elisabeth Goethe 
 Thames, the, iii., 174 
 The Hague, ii., 116 
 Theatre, the, Goethe’s interest in, 
 i., 22, 39, 45, 257/., 394; ii., 
 94 ff-, 3 2I > 349, 411, 417; in-, 
 151 ff-, XÖ2 
 
 Theatre Franjais, ii., 409 ff. 
 Theology, Goethe’s study of, i., 
 29/., 79; iii., 173; see religion 
 Therese, character in Wilhelm 
 Meister, ii., 250 ff., 265; iii., 224 
 Thibaut, iii., 10 
 Thiele, i. , 68 
 
 Thirty Years’ War, i., 106; ii., 113 
 
 Thoas, character in Iphigenie, ii., 6 ff 
 Thoas, character in Euripides, ii., 
 3 
 
 Thonon, iii., 115 
 Thoranc, Count, i., 21 ff., 420 
 Thouret, architect, ii., 317 
 Thousand and one Nights, ii., 451 
 Through Nature to God (Fiske), iii., 
 3 xo 
 
 Thun, i., 347 
 
 Thurmgia, 1., 11, 157, 273, 322, 
 361; 11., 184, 190, 204, 339, 341, 
 444, 445, 449; iii., 29, 112, 271 
 Thusnelda (Luise von Göchhausen), 
 
 1., 264 
 
 Tiber, the, ii., 76 
 Tiberius, i., 439 
 
 Tieck, i., 239 ; ii. , 202 ; iii., 144/., 146 
 Tiefurt, i., 258; iii., 179 
 Tilsit, ii., 425 
 
 Timur, character in West-östlicher 
 Divan, iii., 3, 14 
 Tintoretto, ii., 87 
 
 Tischbein, i., 383, 387, 394, 395/7. 
 Tischlied, iii., 376 
 Titian, i., 197, 376, 438; ii., 87 
 Trägodie aus der Christenheit, ii.,417 
 Traite de V Association Domestique 
 et Agricole (Fourier), iii., 192 
 Transfiguraiion (Raphael), i., 386 
 Translucent media, Goethe’s theory 
 of, iii., 121)7. 
 
 Trapp, i., 96/. 
 
 Trebra, i., 420 
 Treitschke, ii., 454 
 Trent, i., 369/.; iii., 5 
 Treptow, i., 52 
 
 Treves, i., 310; ii., 109, 113, 114 
 Trilogie der Leidenschaft, iii., 158, 
 161 , 166, 381 
 Trippei, i., 388 
 
 “Trocknet nicht, trocknet nicht,” 
 see Wonne der Wehmut 
 Troost, i., 987. 
 
 Trost in Tränen, iii., 376 
 Troy, ii., 12; iii., 268, 339, 341 
 Trziblitz, iii., 161 
 Tschingel Glacier, i., 348 
 Tübingen, ii., 317 
 
 Tunnels, Goethe’s interest in, iii., 
 174 
 
 Türck, 111., 57, 383 
 
 Türckheim, Bernhard von, i., 346; 
 
 11., 275, 301 ; iii., 25 
 Turkey, ii., 89, 424 
 
 Type, Goethe’s hypothesis of an 
 anatomical and vegetative, iii., 
 104/. 
 
 Typical, the, i., 412; ii., 136, 3067.; 
 
 111., 33, loof. 
 
 Typus, quotation from, iii., 83 
 Tyrol, ii., 190 
 
424 
 
 Anbei 
 
 “Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh,” 
 ..iii., 66; quoted, 362; 376 
 Über Anmut und Würde (Schiller), 
 , . iii., 132 
 
 Uber das Verhältnis der bildenden 
 Künste zu der Natur (Schelling), 
 .. ii. , 180 
 
 Uber das Weltall , see Roman über 
 ..das Weltall 
 
 Uber den Granit, quotation from, i., 
 .. 34o/.; 362; iii., 113 
 Uber die ästhetische Erziehung des 
 .. Menschen (Schiller), ii., 193 
 Uber die Lehre des Spinoza (Jac- 
 .. obi), ii., 159 
 
 Über die Sprache und Weisheit 
 .. der Indier (Fr. Schlegel), iii., 148 
 Über Wahrheit und Wahrschein- 
 lichkeit der Kunstwerke, ii., 328 
 “Übermensch,” i., 4; ii., 137; iii., 
 280/. 
 
 XJhland, iii., 52, 68, 79, 146 
 Ukraine, iii., 253 
 Ulm, iii., 383 
 
 “Und da duftet’s wie vor alters” 
 (from Im Gegenwärtigen Vergang- 
 nes), iii., 4 
 
 “Und es ist das ewig Eine” (from 
 Parabase), iii., 85 
 
 “ Und frische Nahrung, neues Blut,” 
 see Auf dem See 
 
 “Und so geschah’s!” etc., see 
 Epilog zu Schillers “ Glocke ” 
 “Und so lang du das nicht hast” 
 (from Selige Sehnsucht) , ii., 165 
 “Und sogleich entspringt ein Le- 
 ben” (from Allleben), iii., 6 
 “Und umzuschaffen das Geschaffne ” 
 (from Eins und Alles), iii., 106 
 Unger, ii., 217 
 
 Universality, Goethe’s, i., 4, 79; 
 iii., 368 
 
 University of Erfurt, ii., 150 
 University of Giessen, i., 11, 152, 
 419 
 
 University of Halle, ii., 346 
 University of Heidelberg, i., 429; 
 ü-. 354 
 
 University of Jena, i., 237, 314, 318, 
 321; ii., 76, 150, 185, 191, 317, 
 322, 335/., 344, 346; iii., 137, 
 I4i/-, 149, 181 
 
 University of Leipsic, i., 11, 41 ff., 
 419. 4 2 4 
 
 University of Leyden, i., 260 
 University of Strasburg, i., 88, 94, 
 95 ff-, 260 
 
 University of Tübingen, ii., 317 
 University of Würzburg, iii., 383 
 Unschuld, iii., 374 
 Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausge- 
 wanderten, ii., 128, 446 
 
 Unterseen, i., 348 
 Upper Palatinate, i., 322 
 Upper Saxony, i., 312 
 Upper Silesia, ii., 92, 93 190, 
 
 Upper Weimar, i., 269 
 Ural, the, ii., 340 
 
 Uranie, see Fräulein von Roussillon 
 Urfaust, the, i., 245, 264; ii., 85, 
 159; iii., 251, 255, 258, 260/., 275, 
 283, 284, 286, 287, 288, 293, 
 296, 313, 320, 357, 381, 382, 383, 
 
 384 
 
 Urner Loch, the, i., 227, 268 
 Urner See, ii., 318 
 “Urpflanze,” the, i., 398; ii., 178, 
 197, 448; iii., 92, 377/. 
 
 Ursel Blondine, character in Hans- 
 wursts Hochzeit, i., 252 
 Urseren Tal, i., 268, 353 
 “Urtier,” Goethe’s term, iii., 378 
 Usong (Haller), i., 31 1; iii., 253/. 
 Uz, i., 259 
 
 Val Moutier, the, i., 347 
 Valentin, Veit, i., 422; ii., 451; iii., 
 
 383 
 
 Valentine, character in Faust, iii., 
 261, 296/. 
 
 Valentinus, Basilius, i., 93 
 Valeri, Antonio, i., 439 
 Vallee de Joux, the, i., 349 
 Valmy, ii., inj., 153 
 Vanessa, wife of Swift, i., 240 
 Vanitas! Vanitatum vanitas, iii., 
 51,' 376 
 
 Vamhagen von Ense, i., 428; ii., 
 108, 420 ; iii., 1 50 
 Velasquez, i., 197 
 Velletri, i., 395 
 
 Venezianische Epigramme, No. 7 
 quoted, ii., 81; quotation from 
 Ko. 4, 86; 88; No. 57 quoted, 
 147; No. 52 quoted, 148; quo- 
 tation from No. 50, 149; 204, 207 
 Venice, i., 373 ff., 382, 391, 408, 
 437. 438; ü-, 82, 86 ff., 89, 91, 
 105, 217; iii., 5, 20, 112 
 Venus of Medici, i., 407 
 Verdun, ii., 110 /., 113 
 Verhandlungen der Kaiserlich Leop. 
 
 Karol. Akad. d. Wiss., iii., 90 
 Vermächtnis, quotation from, ii., 
 166; iii., 62, 193 
 
 Verona, i., 370 ff., 382, 387; ii.. 88 
 Verrocchio, i., 438; ii., 87 
 Vers irreguliers, i., 248; ii., 29. 440, 
 441 ; iii., 20 
 Versailles, ii., 102 
 Verschaffelt, i., 407 
 Versuch, die Metanwrphose der 
 Pflanzen zu erklären, ii., 85; iii., 
 92 ff-, 95 . io 3. I0 4. 3 6 ° 
 
Infcei 
 
 425 
 
 Versuch einer Geschichte des Volks- 
 schauspiels vom Dr. Faust (Creiz- 
 enach), iii., 381 
 
 Versuch einer Witterungslehre , iii., 
 r 3 2 
 
 Versuch über den Roman (Blancken- 
 burg), ii. , 260 
 
 Versuch über die Gestalt der Tiere, 
 
 iii., 103 
 
 Vesuvius, i., 395, 396 
 Vevay, i., 349 
 
 Vicar of Wakefield (Goldsmith), i., 
 115, 123, 124 
 
 Vicenza, i., 372 /., 377, 408; ii., 
 88 
 
 Victor, General, ii., 343 
 Viehoff, i., 420 
 
 Vienna, i., 31, 272, 429; 441; 
 
 Congress of, iii., 135; 174, 253 
 Vier Jahreszeiten , Herbst, No. 62 
 quoted, ii., 153 
 
 Villa Borghese, iii., 270; see Bor- 
 ghese gardens 
 Villemain, iii., 175 
 Virchow, iii., 97/. 
 
 Virgil, i., 131, 259; ii., 34, 42, 44 
 Vischer, Fr., iii., 382 
 Vischer, Peter, ii., 327 
 Vistula, the, ii., 424 
 Viticuiture, Goethe interested in, 
 
 iii., 182 
 
 Vitznau, i., 227, 228 
 Vogel, Dr., iii., 165, 364/., 384/. 
 Voigt, Minister von, ii., 149, 331, 
 33 2 - 349 . 4 M. 433 ; iü-. r 37 > 142, 
 149 
 
 Voigt, Councillor von, ii., 428 
 Volga, the, iii., 177 
 “Volk und Knecht und Überwin- 
 der” (from Buch Suleika) , iii., 23 
 Volkmann, i., 438 
 Volks und andere Lieder (Secken- 
 dorff), i., 434 
 
 Volksfreund (Ludwig Wieland), iii., 
 i37 
 
 Volkslieder (Herder), iii., 59, 62, 
 
 145 . 374 
 
 V olksmärchen der Deutschen (Mu- 
 säus), i., 262 
 Volkstädt, ii., 185 
 V ollkommene Emigrationsgeschichte 
 (Göcking), ii., 270/., 449 
 Vollmondnacht, quotation from, iii., 
 7i 
 
 Volpato, i., 439 
 Volpertshausen, i., 160 
 Voltaire, i., 9, 37, 119, 177; ii., 321, 
 
 411, 413 
 
 Vom Berge, quoted, i., 226 
 Von den farbigen Schatten, iii., 119, 
 124 
 
 Von den göttlichen Dingen und 
 
 ihrer Offenbarung (Jacobi), iii., 
 6 3 
 
 V on der Einsamkeit (Zimmermann), 
 
 1., 229 
 
 “Von der Gewalt, die alle Wesen 
 bindet” (from Die Geheimnisse), 
 
 11., 165 
 
 Von deutscher Art und Kunst (Her- 
 der), i., 176 
 
 Von deutscher Baukunst, i., 105, 142 J 
 
 ii., 45 °; iü-, 253 
 
 “Vor dem Glücklichen her tritt 
 Phöbus” (from Schiller’s Das 
 Glück), i., 167 
 Vorländer, Karl, ii., 447 
 Vorspiel zu Eröffnung des Weimar- 
 ischen Theaters, ii., 349; quota- 
 tion from, iii., 197 
 Vosges, the, i., 95; ii., 432 
 Voss, Abr., i 418 
 Voss, Heinrich, i., 418; ii., 385, 
 444 
 
 Voss, J. H., ii., 202, 208, 282, 304, 
 308, 309; iii., 10, 79 
 Vulcanists, the, iii., 113/?., 212, 338, 
 343 
 
 Vulpius, C. A., ii., 406, 444/. 
 Vulpius, Christiane, see Christiane 
 von Goethe 
 
 Vulpius, Ernestine, ii., 445 
 Vulpius, Juliane Auguste, ii., 445 
 Vulpius, Ulrike, iii., 159 
 
 Wackenroder, iii., 146 
 Wagner, character in Faust, iii., 
 257-275, 280, 282, 284, 313, 3 I 4, 
 3 l6 , 335 /- 
 
 Wagner, Heinrich Leopold, i., 122, 
 212, 291 
 
 Wagner, J. J., iii., 336, 383 
 Wagner, Richard, iii., 319, 376 
 Wahle, ii., 445 
 
 Wahlheim, in Werther, i., 155, 196 
 Wahnfried, iii., 376 
 Waldberg von Wien, i., 99 
 Waldeck, i., 283/. 
 
 Waldner, Henriette von, i., 428 
 Waldner, Luise Adelaide von, i., 
 266 
 
 Wallensteins Lager (Schiller), ii., 
 
 “Walpurgis Night,” scene in Faust, 
 
 iii., 263, 296, 297 ff. 
 
 “ Walpurgis-Night’s Dream,” scene 
 in Faust, ii., 209; iii., 300, 342 
 Walzel, i., 431; iii., 379 
 Wanderers Sturmlied, i., 143; iii., 
 40, 47, 61, 62; quotation from, 
 
 252; 376 
 
 Wandrers Nachtlied (“Der du von 
 dem Himmel bist”), quoted, i. 
 287/., and iii., 36; 45/-. ..375- 376 
 
42Ö 
 
 Intel 
 
 Wandrers Nachtlied (“Uber allen 
 Gipfeln ist Ruh”), quoted, iii., 
 362:376 
 
 War, Goethe at the scene of, 11., 
 102-120 
 
 War Commission, i., 317, 319/., 324, 
 359 
 
 Warsaw, ii., 346, 424 
 Wartburg, the, iii., 4, 138 ff., 272 
 “Warum gabst du uns die tiefen 
 Blicke,” quotations from, i., 300, 
 and ii., 3 
 
 “ Warum stehen sie davor ” ( Goethes 
 Wohnhaus in Weimar ), iii., 166 
 “Warum ziehst du mich unwider- 
 stehlich” (from An Beiinden), i., 
 219/. 
 
 “Was bedeutet die Bewegung” 
 (from Buch Suleika ), iii., 21 
 “Was der Dichter diesem Bande” 
 {Dem Schauspieler Krüger), ii., 
 28 
 
 Wasen, i., 227 
 
 Weber, Karl Maria von, iii., 375 
 Wechsellied zum Tanze, iii., 375 
 Weckelsdorfer Felsenstadt, ii., 92 
 Wedel, von, i., 262, 269, 343#., 
 351, 434, 435 
 
 “Weg ist alles, was du liebtest” 
 (from Neue Liehe, neues Lehen), 
 
 i., 218 
 
 Weidenhof, the, i., n 
 Weimar, i., 69, 100, 119, 158, 214, 
 223, 232, 234, 235, 251, 254-326, 
 329, 342, 348, 354 , 355-367, 3 6 8 . 
 373, 376 , 377 . 386, 388, 389, 391, 
 392, 408, 409, 410, 424, 425, 429, 
 43 2 , 433 /-. 435 . 437 ; ü-, 2, 31, 
 32, 33 , 35 , 37 . 73 , 75 , 77 , 78, 79 , 
 83, 85/., 88, 89, 93, 95, 99, 103, 
 105/jf., 114, 118, 120, 124, 128, 
 149, I 5 °, * 72 , 183 ff-, 198 ff-, 
 202/., 205, 212, 215, 274, 276, 278, 
 3 J 3 > 3 I 4 , 3 r 5 > 3 1 7< 3 2 °, 321, 
 329, 33 °/?-. 337 , 339 , 342 ff., 352, 
 354 , 388, 408 ff., 413/-, 417, 420, 
 423, 425, 426, 427, 43 I / 7 -> 44 i/-, 
 443 , 445 , 452, 453 ; lü-, 2, 4, 9 , 
 13, 18, 28, 29, 40, 46, 63, 64, 90, 
 112, 116, 117, 127, 136 ff., 140/., 
 144, 145, 151, 152, 162, 164, 
 
 165/7., 175, i 76, 178 ff., 182, 183, 
 
 185, 187, 254, 258, 260, 265, 266, 
 271, 287, 332, 359, 361 ff., 368, 
 379 , 381, 384 
 
 Weimar- Album (Diezmann), i., 434 
 Weimar Gymnasium, i., 262, 2717. 
 Weimars Album, i., 5 
 Weinhold, i., 435 
 
 Weinhold, Karl, zum 26. Okt., 1893 
 (Schmidt), ii., 444 
 Weisbach, Werner, i., 439 
 
 Weislingen.character in Götz, i., 133, 
 171/iF., 236, 432; iii., 256 
 Weismann, i., 422 
 Weisse, C. F., i., 77, 79; ii., 445; 
 
 111., 46/. 
 
 Weissenfels, i., 424 
 Weissenstein, the, i., 387 
 “ Weit und schön ist die Welt” etc. 
 (from letter to Frau Herder, May 
 4, 1790), ii., 89 
 Wekhrlin, W. L., ii., 423 
 Wekhrlin, Ludwig (Böhm), i., 433 
 Welling, Georg von, i., 93 
 Weltgeisterei, the, i., 281 
 Weltrich, ii., 447 
 Weltseele, ii., 324; iii., 52, 62 
 “ Weltseele, komm, uns zu durch- 
 dringen” (from Eins und Alles), 
 
 11., 164 
 
 Wengemalp, the, i., 348 
 “Wenn du, Suleika” (from Buch 
 Suleika), iii., 20 
 
 “Wenn ich auf dem Markte geh’,’’ 
 quotations from, iii., 155, 156 
 “Wenn ich, liebe Lili, dich nicht 
 liebte” {Vom Berge), i., 226 
 Wer ist der Verräter? (in Wilhelm 
 Meisters Wanderjahre), iii., 193, 
 201, 202/. 
 
 “Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen 
 ass,” ii., 230; iii., 376 
 “Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergibt,” 
 
 111., 376 
 
 “Wer Wissenschaft und Kunst 
 besitzt” (from Zahme Xenien), 
 
 111., 132 
 
 Werner, geologist, iii., 115 
 Werner, character in Wilhelm Meis- 
 ter, ii., 223, 227/., 236, 245, 249, 
 252/., 265 
 
 Werner, R. M., i., 429 
 Werner, Zacharias, ii., 350/., 390; 
 iii-, 145 
 
 Werner (Byron), iii., 265 
 Wernigerode, i., 338 
 Werther, hero of the novel, i., 28, 
 155, l6 o, 189 ff., 247, 253, 366, 
 430, 432; ii., 72, 214, 226, 250, 
 297 , 336, 412, 443; iü-, 59 , 62, 
 161, 197, 211, 276, 278; Werther 
 costume, i., 200, 223, 279 
 Werther, or Werthers Leiden, see 
 Die Leiden des jungen Werther 
 Werthem, Chamberlain von, i., 
 263, 264 
 
 Werthem auf Neunheiligen, Jean- 
 nette Luise von, i., 265, 435 
 Werthem-Beichlingen, Emilie von, 
 
 1., 264, 435 
 Werthes, i., 208, 212 
 Wesselhöft, Betty, ii., 416 
 Westminster Review, The, iii., 199 
 
Unfrei 
 
 427 
 
 West-östlicher Divan, quotations 
 from, ii., 387, 405/., and iii., 4/., 
 6, 14, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 226; 
 3 ff-, I 4, 29, 49, 58, 144, 146, 264, 
 
 367 
 
 Westphalia, 1., 9; 11., 421 
 Wettstein, i., 164 
 
 Wetzlar, i., ri, 31, 152, 153-168,183, 
 184, 185, 187, 189, 218, 295, 310, 
 372, 405, 428, 431; ii., 114, 3085 
 
 iii., 253, 255, 270 
 Weyland, i., 98, 100, 124, 126 
 “Wie des Goldschmieds Bazarläd- 
 chen” (from Buch Suleika), ii., 
 
 405 
 
 “Wie herrlich leuchtet mir die 
 Natur,” see Mailied 
 “Wie zum Empfang sie an den 
 Pforten weilte ” (from Marienbad 
 Elegie), iii., 158 
 Wieder finden, iii., 62 
 Wiegenlieder (Bertuch), i., 262 
 Wieland, i., 1,49, 77 /., 79, 116, 144, 
 146, 176, 178, 179, 204, 208, 21 1, 
 214/., 237, 256, 257, 258/., 260, 
 265, 267, 273, 275 ff., 280, 296, 
 311, 312, 365, 420, 435; ii., 85, 
 112, 150, 172, 205, 208, 259, 264, 
 272, 329, 344, 413, 414, 442, 45 1 • 
 
 111., 228, 250, 254, 258 
 Wieland, Ludwig, iii., 137 
 Wieliczka, ii., 92, 105 
 Wien, Waldberg von, i., 99 
 Wiesbaden, ii., 119; iii., 4 ff., 15, 17, 
 
 28 
 
 W ilhelm, character in Die Geschwis- 
 ter, ii., 2, 213 
 
 Wilhelm, character in Werther, i., 
 191 
 
 Wilhelm Meister, hero of the novel, 
 
 1., 141, 153, 410; ii., 214-268, 
 362, 393, 394, 448/.; iii., 78, 190- 
 246 
 
 Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, i., 22, 
 39, 78, 116, 1767, 265, 360, 363, 
 364, 410, 418, 436; ii., 72, 128, 
 211-268, 269, 272, 274, 281, 313, 
 450; iii., 12, 63, 64, 66/., 143/-. 
 189/., 195, 196, 198, 201, 2X1, 
 
 212, 213, 220, 23O, 239, 2ÖI 
 
 Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, i., 
 125, 342; ii., 128, 180, 241, 259, 
 3 X 3 . 333 . 348 , 353 /-; iii-. 22, 78 , 
 168, 171, 188, 189-246, 256, 264, 
 330, 348, 378, 380/., 383 
 
 Wilhelm Teil (Schiller), ii., 193 
 Wilhelmshöhe Castle, i., 387 
 Wilhelmstal, ii., 451 
 Will, freedom of, ii., 159/. 
 Willemer, Jacob von, iii., 11 ff., 373 
 Willemer, Marianne von ( nee Jung), 
 i., 3; iii., uff., 63/., 161, 182, 373 
 
 Willkommen und Abschied, i., ii8‘ 
 127 #■; iü., 39 , 44 . 47 
 “Willst du dich am ganzen er- 
 quicken ” (from Gott, Gemüt und 
 Welt), iii., 102 
 
 Winckelmann, i., 17, 70, 76, 79, 
 107, 110, 261, 376, 384, 394; ii., 
 3 2 5 . 3 2 7; iü-. 228, 229/. 
 Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert, 
 ü-, 417, 45 2 ; iü-. 9 . I 48 
 Winckler, i., 50 
 Winkel, iii., 7, 8 
 Winkler, i., 71 
 Winter, i., 429 
 Winterkasten, the, i., 387 
 “Wisset nur, dass Dichterworte” 
 (from Hegire), iii., 80 
 “ Witches’ Kitchen,” scene in Faust, 
 
 iii., 260, 261, 275, 282, 283, 287/., 
 299 
 
 Witkowski, iii., 299 
 Wittelsbach line, i., 322 
 Wittenberg, iii., 271 
 Woldemar (Jacobi), i., 417 
 Wolf, Wilhelmine, ii., 338 
 Wolf, F. A., ii., 330, 338, 451; iii., 
 228 
 
 Wolf, Goethe’s nickname, i., 161, 
 418; ii., 407 
 Wolf, actor, iii., 153 
 Wolf, Frau, actress, iii., 153 
 Wolf, composer, iii., 376 
 Wölfehen, Goethe’s nickname, iii., 
 167, 361 
 
 Wolfenbüttel, ii., 27 
 Wolff, orchestra director, i., 263 
 Wolff, Frau, i., 266 
 Wolff, K. F„ iii., 94 
 Wolfgang, character in German- 
 Latin colloquy, i., 32 
 Wolkengestalt nach Howard, iii., 
 1 16 
 
 Wollheim, iii., 384 
 Wöllwart, Frau von, i., 266 
 Wolzogen, Karoline, ii., 203 
 Wonne der Wehmut, iii., 45, 48/., 
 375 . 376 
 
 Wood-engraving, Goethe’s study 
 of, i., 69 
 
 World-woe, i., 190, 198, 201 
 Worms, i., 96; ii., 114 
 Wort und Bedeutung in Goethes 
 Sprache (Boucke), iii., 46 
 Wrede, Councillor, i., 234 
 Würtemberg, i., 52, 353; ii., 34; iii., 
 361 
 
 Würzburg, iii., 26, 27, 29, 383 
 Wustmann, i., 423 
 
 Xenien, ii., 203 ff., 217, 262, 309, 
 334, 448 ; iii., 144, 3 °°- 306 
 
428 
 
 Infcei 
 
 Young, poet, i., 259 
 Young, scientist, iii., 119 
 
 Zabern, i., 100 
 Zaberner Steige, i., 100 
 Zachariä, the poet, i., 42 
 Zachariä, brother of the poet, i., 53 
 Zahme Xenien, quotations from, 
 
 ii. , 158, and iii., 85/., 132, 151 
 1 Zelter, i., 188; ii., 32, 162, 330 /., 
 1 337. 35°. 420, 426, 453; iii., 
 
 6, 19, 28, 142, 166, 187, 362, 
 366, 374/-, 38°. 381 
 Zermatt, i., 353 
 
 “Zeugest mir, dass ich geliebt bin ” 
 (from Dem auf gehenden Voll- 
 monde), iii., 183 
 Zeus, ii., 391; iii., 227 
 Zichy, von, iii., 140/. 
 
 Ziegenberg Castle, ii., 451 
 Ziegesar, Silvie von, ii., 387 
 Ziegler, Th., ii., 447; iii., 382 
 Ziegler, Fräulein von, i., 145, 146, 
 241 
 
 Ziller, the, i., 369 
 
 Zimmermann, i., 229, 279, 417; ii., 
 309 
 
 Zöllner, iii., 376 
 
 Zollverein, the, iii., 16 
 
 Zoölogy, Goethe’s study of, i., 396; 
 
 ii., 323; iii., 93, 98, 378 
 “Zu den Kleinen zähl’ ich mich” 
 (cf. Creizenach, Briefwechsel zwi- 
 schen Goethe und Marianne von 
 Willemer, 2d ed., p. 38), iii., 14 
 Zu Strassburgs Sturm- und Drang- 
 periode (Froitzheim), i., 426 
 
 Zucchi, i., 388, 407 
 Zueignung (“Da sind sie nun!”), 
 i-, 425 
 
 Zueignung (“Der Morgen kam”), 
 
 1., 307; quotation from, iii., 34 
 Zueignung (Faust), quotation from, 
 
 11., 278/.; 314; iii., 262 
 Zug, i., 228; ii., 318 
 Züllichau, ii., 387 
 
 Zum Shakespeares Tag, i., 116, 142; 
 ü-, i59 
 
 Zumsteeg, ii., 317 
 
 Zur Bühnengeschichte des Götz (Win- 
 ter and Kilian), i., 429 
 Zur Farbenlehre, ii., 100, 166, 323 /., 
 353- 4i5, 452, 453; iü-, 118-128; 
 see colour, theory of 
 Zur Leichenfeier des dritten Septem- 
 bers 1825, quotation from, iii., 
 366 
 
 Zur Morphologie, iii., 86, 94, 104, 
 112, 129, 134, 377 
 Zur Naturwissenschaft, iii., 90, 376/. 
 Zur vergleichenden Physiologie des 
 Gesichtsinnes (Müller), iii., 128 
 Zürich, i., 151, 204, 225, 228, 353, 
 408, 432; ii., 273, 276, 317, 320; 
 iii-, 257 
 
 Zweibrücken, i., 100 
 Zweilütschinen, i., 348 
 “Zwinger,” scene in Faust, iii., 275, 
 293 
 
 Zwingli, iii., 379 
 
 Zwischen beiden Welten, quoted, iii., 
 184 
 
 “Zwischen Weizen und Korn” 
 (Mailied), iii., 376 
 
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 the littleness of man. The greatest names seem to lose their lustre upon his 
 pages ; he shows us the ignorance of the wise, the weakness of the strong, the 
 folly of the prudent, the helplessness of the well-meaning ; the rest is darkness and 
 fate.” — London Spcctator. 
 
 “ His largeness of vision, his sound scholarship, his sense of proportion, hi» 
 power to measure life that has been by his observation of life that is — his posses- 
 sion of the true historical sense. . . . He is a bold, not to say audacious, 
 
 proponent of new theories and conclusions wholly at variance from those of hi» 
 innumerable predecessors in this most industriously cultivated of all historic fields. 
 The translation is competent and more than that, and the history is good reading 
 throughout. There are no dry pages.” — N. Y. Times. 
 
 Send for complete descriptive circular 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 
 
 New York 
 
 London 
 
The Works and Letters 
 
 of 
 
 Charles and Mary Lamb 
 
 Edited by E. V. LUCAS 
 
 7 Volumes. Octavo. Very Fully Hlustrated. Each, net, $2.25 
 
 The Works are divided as follows: 
 
 I. — Miscellaneous Prose. 
 
 II. — The Essays of Elia and the Last Essays of Elia. 
 
 III. — Books for Children. 
 
 IV. — Dramatic Specimens. 
 
 V. — Poems and Plays. 
 
 VI. and VII. — The Letters. 
 
 The Lucas edition of the works of Charles and Mary Lamb 
 is now complete in seven octavo volumes, the sixth and 
 seventh being devoted to the letters of the Lambs. Mr. E. 
 V. Lucas is recognized as the authority on the Lambs, and 
 his skilful arrangement and illuminating notes make this set 0 
 certain of acceptance as the Standard library edition. The 
 last two volumes, covering the correspondence, contain many 
 hitherto unpublished letters written by Charles Lamb and his 
 sister Mary, whose letters are now for the first time included 
 with those of her brother. Charles Lamb was a ready and 
 brilliant letter-writer, and his letters to his close friends, such 
 as Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, with the editor’s con- 
 necting notes form almost a complete record of some of the 
 most interesting portions of his life. For their intimacy and 
 frankness Lamb’s letters may be likened to those of Steven^ 
 son in our own time, and they deserve equal popularity. 
 
 Send for Illustrated Descriptive Circular 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 
 
 New York London 
 
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