The Autobiography of Goethe Truth and Poetry · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
EIGHTH BOOK.
The first apartment was adorned with pictures from the later Italian school, by masters whose grace he used highly to commend. As I, with some noblemen, had taken private lessons of him, we were permitted to draw here, and we often penetrated into his adjoining private cabinet, which contained at the same time his few books, collections of art and natural curiosities, and whatever else might have most interested him. Everything was arranged with taste, simply, and in such a manner that the little space held a great deal. The furniture, presses, and portfolios were elegant, without affectation or superfluity. Thus also the first thing which he recommended to us, and to which he always recurred, was simplicity in everything that art and manual labour united are called upon to produce. As a sworn foe of the scroll-and-shell style, and of the whole taste for quaintness, he showed us in copper-plates and drawings old patterns of the sort, contrasted with better decorations and simpler forms of furniture, as well as with other appurtenances of a room; and, because everything about him corresponded with these maxims, his words and instructions made a good and lasting impression on us.
Besides this, he had an opportunity to let us see his opinions in practice, since he stood in good consideration both with private and with official persons, and was asked for advice when there were new buildings and alterations. He seemed in general to be more fond of preparing anything on occasion, for a certain end and use, than of undertaking and completing things which exist for themselves and require a greater perfection; he was therefore always ready and at hand when the publishers needed larger and smaller copper-plates for any work; thus the vignettes to Winckelmann's first writings were etched by him. But he often made only very sketchy drawings, to which Geyser knew very well how to adapt himself. His figures had throughout something general, not to say ideal. His women were pleasing and agreeable, his children _naïve_ enough; only he could not succeed with the men, who, in his spirited but always cloudy and at the same time foreshortening manner, had for the most part the look of _Lazzaroni._ Since he designed his composition less with regard to form than to light, shade, and masses, the general effect was good; as indeed all that he did and produced was attended by a peculiar grace.
As he at the same time neither could nor would control a deep-rooted propensity to the significant and the allegorical--to that which excites a secondary thought, so his works always furnished something to reflect upon, and were complete through a conception, even where they could not be so from art and execution. This bias, which is always dangerous, frequently led him to the very bounds of good taste, if not beyond them. He often sought to attain his views by the oddest notions, and by whimsical jests; nay, his best works always have a touch of humour. If the public were not always satisfied with such things, he revenged himself by a new and even stranger drollery. Thus he afterwards exhibited in the ante-room of the great concert-hall, an ideal female figure, in his own style, who was raising a pair of snuffers to a taper, and he was extraordinarily delighted when he was able to cause a dispute on the question: whether this singular muse meant to snuff the light or to extinguish it? when he roguishly allowed all sorts of bantering by-thoughts to peep forth.
But the building of the new theatre, in my time, made the greatest noise; in which his curtain, when it was still quite new, had certainly an uncommonly charming effect. Oeser had taken the Muses out of the clouds, upon which they usually hover on such occasions, and set them upon the earth. The statues of Sophocles and Aristophanes, around whom all the modern dramatic writers were assembled, adorned a vestibule to the Temple of Fame. Here, too, the goddesses of the arts were likewise present, and all was dignified and beautiful. But now comes the oddity! Through the open centre was seen the portal of the distant temple, and a man in a light jerkin was passing between the two above-mentioned groups, and without troubling himself about them, directly up to the temple; he was seen from behind, and was not particularly distinguished. Now this man was to represent Shakspeare, who, without predecessors or followers, without concerning himself about models, went to meet immortality in his own way. This work was executed on the great floor over the new theatre. We often assembled round him there, and in that place I read aloud to him the proof-sheets of _Musarion._ [Side-note: Influence of Oeser.]
As to myself, I by no means advanced in the practice of the art. His instructions worked upon our mind and our taste; but his own drawing was too undefined to guide me, who had only glimmered along by the objects of art and of nature, to a severe and decided practice. Of the faces and bodies he gave us rather the aspect than the forms, rather the postures than the proportions. He gave us the conceptions of the figures, and desired that we should impress them vividly upon our minds. That might have been beautifully and properly done, if he had not had mere beginners before him. If, on this account, a pre-eminent talent for instruction may be well denied him, it must, on the other hand, be acknowledged that he was very discreet and politic, and that a happy adroitness of mind qualified him very peculiarly for a teacher in a higher sense. The deficiencies under which each one laboured he clearly saw; but he disdained to reprove them directly, and rather hinted his praise and censure indirectly and very laconically. One was now compelled to think over the matter, and soon came to a far deeper insight.
Thus, for instance, I had very carefully executed, after a pattern, a nosegay on blue paper, with white and black crayon, and partly with the stump, partly by hatching it up, had tried to give effect to the little picture. After I had been long labouring in this way, he once came behind me and said: "More paper!" upon which he immediately withdrew. My neighbour and I puzzled our heads as to what this could mean: for my bouquet, on a large half-sheet, had plenty of space around it. After we had reflected a long while, we thought, at last, that we had hit his meaning, when we remarked that, by working together the black and the white, I had quite covered up the blue ground, had destroyed the middle tint, and, in fact, with great industry, had produced a disagreeable drawing. As to the rest, he did not fail to instruct us in perspective, and in light and shade, sufficiently indeed, but always so that we had to exert and torment ourselves to find the application of the principles communicated. Probably his view with regard to us who did not intend to become artists, was only to form the judgment and taste, and to make us acquainted with the requisites of a work of art, without precisely requiring that we should produce one. Since, moreover, patient industry was not my talent, for nothing gave me pleasure except what came to me at once, so by degrees I became discouraged, if not lazy, and as knowledge is more comfortable than doing, I was quite content to follow wherever he chose, after his own fashion, to lead us.
At this time the _Lives of the Painters_, by D'Argenville, was translated into German; I obtained it quite fresh, and studied it assiduously enough. This seemed to please Oeser, and he procured us an opportunity of seeing many a portfolio out of the great Leipzig collections, and thus introduced us to the history of the art. But even these exercises produced in me an effect different from that which he probably had in mind. The manifold subjects which I saw treated by artists awakened the poetic talent in me, and as one easily makes an engraving for a poem, so did I now make poems to the engravings and drawings, by contriving to present to myself the personages introduced in them, in their previous and subsequent condition, and sometimes to compose a little song which might have suited them; and thus accustomed myself to consider the arts in connexion with each other. Even the mistakes which I made, so that my poems were often descriptive, were useful to me in the sequel, when I came to more reflection, by making me attentive to the differences between the arts. Of the little things many were in the collection which Behrisch had arranged; but there is nothing left of them now. The atmosphere of art and taste in which Oeser lived, and into which one was drawn, provided one visited him frequently, was the more and more worthy and delightful, because he was fond of remembering departed or absent persons, with whom he had been, or still continued to be, on good terms; for if he had once given any one his esteem, he remained unalterable in his conduct towards him, and always showed himself equally friendly.
After we had heard CAYLUS pre-eminently extolled among the French, he made us also acquainted with Germans of activity in this department. Thus we learned that Professor CHRIST, as an amateur, a collector, a connoisseur, a fellow-labourer, had done good service for art; and had applied his learning to its true improvement. HEINECKEN**, on the contrary, could not be honourably mentioned, partly because he devoted himself too assiduously to the ever-childish beginnings of German art, which Oeser little valued, partly because he had once treated Winckelmann shabbily, which could never be forgiven him. Our attention, however, was strongly drawn to the labours of LIPPERT, since our instructor knew how to set forth his merits sufficiently. "For," he said, "although single statues and larger groups of sculpture remain the foundation and the summit of all knowledge of art, yet either as originals or as casts they are seldom to be seen; on the contrary, by Lippert, a little world of gems is made known, in which the more comprehensible merit of the ancients, their happy invention, judicious composition, tasteful treatment, are made more striking and intelligible, while, from the great number of them, comparison is much more possible." While now we were busying ourselves with these as much as was allowed, WINCKELMANN'S lofty life of art in Italy was pointed out, and we took his first writings in hand with devotion: for Oeser had a passionate reverence for him, which he was able easily to instil into us. The problematical part of those little treatises, which are, besides, confused even from their irony, and from their referring to opinions and events altogether peculiar, we were, indeed, unable to decipher; but as Oeser had great influence over us, and incessantly gave them out to us as the gospel of the beautiful, and still more of the tasteful and the pleasing, we found out the general sense, and fancied that with such interpretations we should go on the more securely, as we regarded it no small happiness to draw from the same fountain from which Winckelmann had allayed his earliest thirst.
Now although from their situation, mode of thought, abilities, and opportunities, these amateurs and collectors inclined more to the Dutch school, yet, while the eye was practised on the endless merits of the north-western artist, a look of reverential longing was always turned towards the south-east. And so the university, where I neglected the ends both of my family and myself, was to ground me in that in which I afterwards found the greatest satisfaction of my life; the impression of those localities, too, in which I received such important incitements, has always remained to me most dear and precious. The old Pleissenburg, the rooms of the Academy, but, above all, the abode of Oeser, and no less the collections of Winkler and Richter, I have always vividly present before me. But a young man who, while older persons are conversing with each other on subjects already familiar to them, is instructed only incidentally, and for whom the most difficult part of the business, that of rightly arranging all, yet remains, must find himself in a very painful situation. I therefore, as well as others, looked about with longing for some new light, which was indeed to come to us from a man to whom we owed so much already. [Side-note: Lessing's Laocoön.]
The mind can be highly delighted in two ways, by perception and conception. But the former demands a worthy object, which is not always at hand, and a proportionate culture, which one does not immediately attain. Conception, on the other hand, requires only susceptibility; it brings its subject-matter with it, and is itself the instrument of culture. Hence that beam of light was most welcome to us which that most excellent thinker brought down to us through dark clouds. One must be a young man to render present to oneself the effect which Lessing's _Laocoön_ produced upon us, by transporting us out of the region of scanty perceptions into the open fields of thought. The so long misunderstood _ut pictura poesis_ was at once laid aside, the difference between plastic and speaking art[1] was made clear, the summits of the two now appeared sundered, however near their bases might border on each other. The plastic artist was to keep himself within the bounds of the beautiful, if the artist of language, who cannot dispense with the significant in any kind, is permitted to ramble abroad beyond them. The former labours for the outer sense, which is satisfied only by the beautiful; the latter for the imagination, which may even reconcile itself to the ugly. All the consequences of this splendid thought were illumined to us as by a lightning flash; all the criticism which had hitherto guided and judged was thrown away like a worn-out coat; we considered ourselves freed from all evil, and fancied we might venture to look down with some compassion upon the otherwise so splendid sixteenth century, when, in German sculptures and poems, they knew how to represent life only under the form of a fool hung with bells, death under the misformed shape of a rattling skeleton, and the necessary and accidental evils of the world under the image of the caricatured devil.
We were the most enchanted with the beauty of that thought, that the ancients had recognised death as the brother of sleep, and had represented them similar even to confusion, as becomes Menæchmi. Here we could first do high honour to the triumph of the beautiful, and banish the ugly of every kind into the low sphere of the ridiculous in the kingdom of art, since it could not be utterly driven out of the world. The splendour of such leading and fundamental conceptions appears only to the mind upon which they exercise their infinite activity--appears only to the age in which, after being longed for, they come forth at the right moment. Then do those at whose disposal such nourishment is placed, fondly occupy whole periods of their lives with it, and rejoice in a superabundant growth; while men are not wanting, meanwhile, who resist such an effect on the spot, nor others who afterwards haggle and cavil at its high meaning. But as conception and perception mutually require each other, I could not long work up these new thoughts, without an infinite desire arising within me to see important works of art, once and away, in great number. I therefore determined to visit Dresden without delay. I was not in want of the necessary cash; but there were other difficulties to overcome, which I needlessly increased still further, through my whimsical disposition; for I kept my purpose a secret from every one, because I wished to contemplate the treasures of art there quite after my own way, and, as I thought, to allow no one to perplex me. Besides this, so simple a matter became more complicated by still another eccentricity.
We have weaknesses, both by birth and by education, and it may be questioned which of the two gives us the most trouble. Willingly as I made myself familiar with all sorts of conditions, and many as had been my inducements to do so, an excessive aversion from all inns had nevertheless been instilled into me by my father. This feeling had rooted itself firmly in him on his travels through Italy, France, and Germany. Although he seldom spoke in images, and only called them to his aid when he was very cheerful, yet he used often to repeat that he always fancied he saw a great cobweb spun across the gate of an inn, so ingeniously that the insects could indeed fly in, but that even the privileged wasps could not fly out again unplucked. It seemed to him something horrible, that one should be obliged to pay immoderately for renouncing one's habits and all that was dear to one in life, and living after the manner of publicans and waiters.
He praised the hospitality of the olden time, and reluctantly as he otherwise endured even anything unusual in the house, he yet practised hospitality, especially towards artists and virtuosi; thus gossip Seekatz always had his quarters with us, and Abel, the last musician who handled the _viol di gamba_ with success and applause, was well received and entertained. With such youthful impressions, which nothing had as yet rubbed off, how could I have resolved to set foot in an inn in a strange city? Nothing would have been easier than to find quarters with good friends. Hofrath Krebel, Assessor Hermann, and others had often spoken to me about it already; but even to these my trip was to remain a secret, and I hit upon a most singular notion. My next-room neighbour, the industrious theologian, whose eyes unfortunately constantly grew weaker and weaker, had a relation in Dresden, a shoemaker, with whom from time to time he corresponded. For a long while already this man had been highly remarkable to me on account of his expressions, and the arrival of one of his letters was always celebrated by us as a holiday.
The mode in which he replied to the complaints of his cousin, who feared blindness, was quite peculiar; for he did not trouble himself about grounds of consolation, which are always hard to find; but the cheerful way in which he looked upon his own narrow, poor, toilsome life, the merriment which he drew even from evils and inconveniences, the indestructible conviction that life is in itself and on its own account a blessing, communicated itself to him who read the letter, and, for the moment at least, transposed him into a like mood. Enthusiastic as I was, I had often sent my compliments to this man, extolled his happy natural gift, and expressed the wish to become acquainted with him. All this being premised, nothing seemed to me more natural than to seek him out, to converse with him, nay, to lodge with him, and to learn to know him intimately. My good candidate, after some opposition, gave me a letter, written with difficulty, to carry with me, and, full of longing, I went to Dresden in the yellow coach, with my matriculation in my pocket. [Side-note: The Dresden Shoemaker.]
I looked for my shoemaker, and soon found him in the suburb (_Vorstadt_). He received me in a friendly manner, sitting upon his stool, and said smiling, after he had read the letter, "I see from this, young Sir, that you are a whimsical Christian." "How so, master?" replied I. "No offence meant by '_whimsical_,'" he continued; "one calls every one so who is not consistent with himself; and I call you a whimsical Christian because you acknowledge yourself a follower of our Lord in one thing, but not in another." On my requesting him to enlighten me, he said further: "It seems that your view is to announce glad tidings to the poor and lowly; that is good, and this imitation of the Lord is praiseworthy; but you should reflect besides, that he rather sat down to table with prosperous rich folks, where there was good fare, and that he himself did not despise the sweet scent of the ointment, of which you will find the opposite in my house."
This pleasant beginning put me at once in good-humour, and we rallied each other for some time. His wife stood doubting how she should board and lodge such a guest. On this point, too, he had notions which referred not only to the Bible, but also to _Gottfried's Chronicle_, and when we were agreed that I was to stay, I gave my purse, such as it was, into the charge of my hostess, and requested her to furnish herself from it, if anything should be necessary. When he would have declined it, and somewhat waggishly gave me to understand that he was not so burnt out as he might appear, I disarmed him by saying, "Even if it were only to change water into wine, such a well-tried domestic resource would not be out of place, since there are no more miracles now-a-days." The hostess seemed to find my conduct less and less strange; we had soon accommodated ourselves to each other, and spent a very merry evening. He remained always the same, because all flowed from one source. His peculiarity was an apt common-sense, which rested upon a cheerful disposition, and took delight in uniform habitual activity. That he should labour incessantly was his first and most necessary care; that he regarded everything else as secondary,--this kept up his comfortable state of mind; and I must reckon him before many others in the class of those who are called practical unconscious philosophers.[2]
The hour when the gallery was to open, after being expected with impatience, appeared. I entered into this sanctuary, and my astonishment surpassed every conception which I had formed. This saloon, returning into itself, in which splendour and neatness reigned, together with the deepest stillness, the dazzling frames, all nearer to the time in which they had been gilded, the floor polished with bees'-wax, the spaces more trodden by spectators than used by copyists, imparted a feeling of solemnity, unique of its kind, which so much the more resembled the sensation with which one treads a church, as the adornments of so many a temple, the objects of so much adoration, seemed here again set up only for the sacred purposes of art. I readily put up with the cursory description of my conductor; only I requested that I might be allowed to remain in the outer gallery. Here, to my comfort, I found myself really at home. I had already seen the works of several artists, others I knew from engravings, others by name. I did not conceal this, and I thus inspired my conductor with some confidence; nay, the rapture which I expressed at pieces where the pencil had gained the victory over nature, delighted him; for such were the things which principally attracted me, where the comparison with known nature must necessarily enhance the value of art.
When I again entered my shoemaker's house to dinner, I scarcely believed my eyes; for I fancied I saw before me a picture by Ostade, so perfect that one could only hang it up in the gallery. The position of the objects, the light, the shadow, the brownish tint of the whole, the magical harmony, everything that one admires in those pictures, I here saw in reality. It was the first time that I perceived, in so high a degree, the faculty which I afterwards exercised with more consciousness, namely, that of seeing nature with the eyes of this or that artist, to whose works I had devoted a particular attention. This faculty has afforded me much enjoyment, but has also increased the desire zealously to abandon myself, from time to time, to the exercise of a talent which nature seemed to have denied me. [Side-note: Counsellor Riedel.] I visited the gallery at all permitted hours, and continued to express too loudly my ecstasy at many precious works. I thus frustrated my laudable purpose of remaining unknown and unnoticed; and whereas only one of the under-keepers had hitherto had intercourse with me, the gallery-inspector, Counsellor Riedel, now also took notice of me, and made me attentive to many things which seemed chiefly to lie within my sphere. I found this excellent man just as active and obliging then, as when I afterwards saw him during many years, and as he shows himself to this day. His image has, for me, interwoven itself so closely with those treasures of art, that I can never regard the two apart; the remembrance of him has even accompanied me to Italy, where, in many large and rich collections, his presence would have been very desirable.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.