The Autobiography of Goethe Truth and Poetry · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
EIGHTH BOOK.
With such a ringing echo of university exploits, I left Leipzig in the September of 1768, in a comfortable hired coach, and in the company of some respectable persons of my acquaintance. In the neighbourhood of Auerstädt I thought of that previous accident; but I could not forebode that which many years afterwards would threaten me from thence with still greater danger; just as little as in Gotha, where we had the castle shown to us, I could think in the great hall adorned with stucco figures, that so much favour and affection would befall me on that very spot. The nearer I approached my native city, the more I recalled to myself doubtingly the circumstances, prospects, and hopes with which I had left home, and it was a very disheartening feeling that I now returned, as it were, like one shipwrecked. Yet since I had not very much with which to reproach myself, I contrived to compose myself tolerably well; however, the welcome was not without emotion. The great vivacity of my nature, excited and heightened by sickness, caused an impassioned scene. I might have looked worse than I myself knew, since for a long time I had not consulted a looking-glass; and who does not become used to himself? Enough, they silently resolved to communicate many things to me only by degrees, and before all things to let me have some repose both bodily and mental.
Thus she had, in a manner which seemed to me fearful, turned the hardness of her character against her father, whom she did not forgive for having hindered or embittered to her so many innocent joys for these three years, and of his good and excellent qualities she would not acknowledge even one. She did all that he commanded and arranged, but in the most unamiable manner in the world. She did it in the established routine, but nothing more and nothing less. From love or a desire to please she accommodated herself to nothing, so that this was one of the first things about which my mother complained in a private conversation with me. But since love was as essential to my sister as to any human being, she turned her affection wholly on me. Her care in nursing and entertaining me absorbed all her time; her female companions, who were swayed by her without her intending it, had likewise to contrive all sorts of things to be pleasing and consolatory to me. She was inventive in cheering me up, and even developed some germs of comical humour which I had never known in her, and which became her very well. There soon arose between us a coterie-language, by which we could converse before all people without their understanding us, and she often used this gibberish with great pertness in the presence of our parents.
My father was personally in tolerable comfort. He was in good health, spent a great part of the day in the instruction of my sister, wrote at the description of his travels, and was longer in tuning his lute than in playing on it. He concealed at the same time, as well as he could, his vexation at finding instead of a stout active son, who ought now to take his degree and run through the prescribed course of life, an invalid who seemed to suffer still more in soul than in body. He did not conceal his wish that they would be expeditious with my cure; but one was forced to be specially on one's guard in his presence against hypochondriacal expressions, because he could then become passionate and bitter. [Side-note: Fräulein von Klettenberg.] My mother, by nature very lively and cheerful, spent under these circumstances very tedious days. Her little housekeeping was soon provided for. The mind of the good lady, internally never unoccupied, wished to find an interest in something, and that which was nearest at hand was religion, which she embraced the more fondly as her most eminent female friends were cultivated and hearty worshippers of God. At the head of these stood Fräulein von Klettenberg. She is the same person from whose conversations and letters arose the "Confessions of a Beautiful Soul," which are found inserted in "Wilhelm Meister." She was slenderly formed, of the middle size; a hearty natural demeanour had been made still more pleasing by the manners of the world and the court. Her very neat attire reminded of the dress of the Hernhutt ladies. Her serenity and peace of mind never left her. She looked upon her sickness as a necessary element of her transient earthly existence; she suffered with the greatest patience, and, in painless intervals, was lively and talkative.
Her favourite, nay, indeed, perhaps her only conversation, was on the moral experiences which a man who observes himself can form in himself; to which was added the religious views which, in a very graceful manner, nay, with genius, came under her consideration as natural and supernatural. It scarcely needs more to recall back to the friends of such representations, that complete delineation composed from the very depths of her soul. Owing to the very peculiar course which she had taken from her youth upwards, the distinguished rank in which she had been born and educated, and the liveliness and originality of her mind, she did not agree very well with the other ladies who had set out on the same road to salvation. Frau Griesbach, the chief of them, seemed too severe, too dry, too learned; she knew, thought, comprehended more than the others, who contented themselves with the development of their feelings, and she was therefore burdensome to them, because every one neither could nor would carry with her so great an apparatus on the road to bliss. But for this reason the most of them were indeed somewhat monotonous, since they confined themselves to a certain terminology which might well have been compared to that of the later sentimentalists.
Fräulein von Klettenberg led her way between both extremes, and seemed, with some self-complacency, to see her own reflection in the image of Count Zinzendorf, whose opinions and actions bore witness to a higher birth and more distinguished rank. Now she found in me what she needed, a lively young creature, striving after an unknown happiness, who, although he could not think himself an extraordinary sinner, yet found himself in no comfortable condition, and was perfectly healthy neither in body nor soul. She was delighted with what nature had given me, as well as with much which I had gained for myself. And if she conceded to me many advantages, this was by no means humiliating to her: for, in the first place, she never thought of emulating one of the male sex, and secondly, she believed that in regard to religious culture she was very much in advance of me. My disquiet, my impatience, my striving, my seeking, investigating, musing, and wavering, she interpreted in her own way, and did not conceal from me her conviction, but assured me in plain terms that all this proceeded from my having no reconciled God. Now I had believed from my youth upwards that I stood on very good terms with my God, nay, I even fancied to myself, according to various experiences, that He might even be in arrears to me; and I was daring enough to think that I had something to forgive Him. This presumption was grounded on my infinite good-will, to which, as it seemed to me, He should have given better assistance. It may be imagined how often I and my female friend fell into disputes on this subject, which, however, always terminated in the friendliest way, and often, like my conversations with the old rector, with the remark: "that I was a foolish fellow, for whom many allowances must be made."
I was much troubled with the tumour in my neck, as the physician and surgeon wished first to disperse this excrescence, afterwards, as they said, to draw it to a head, and at last thought good to open it; so for a long time I had to sutler more from inconvenience than pain, although towards the end of the cure, the continual touching with lunar caustic and other corrosive substances could not but give me very disagreeable prospects for every fresh day. The physician and surgeon both belonged to the Pious Separatists, although both were of highly different natural characters. The surgeon, a slender, well-built man, of easy and skilful hand, was unfortunately somewhat hectic, but endured his condition with truly Christian patience, and did not suffer his disease to perplex him in his profession. The physician was an inexplicable, sly-looking, friendly-speaking, and, moreover, abstruse man, who had gained himself quite a peculiar confidence in the pious circle. Active and attentive, he was consoling to the sick; but, more than by all this, he extended his practice by the gift of showing in the background some mysterious medicines prepared by himself, of which no one could speak, since, with us, the physicians were strictly prohibited from making up their own prescriptions.
With certain powders, which may have been some kind of digestive, he was not so reserved; but that powerful salt, which could only be applied in the greatest danger, was only mentioned among believers, although no one had yet seen it or traced its effects. To excite and strengthen our faith in the possibility of such an universal remedy, the physician, wherever he found any susceptibility, had recommended certain chemico-alchemical books to his patients, and given them to understand that by one's own study of them, one could well attain this treasure for oneself; which was the more necessary, as the mode of its preparation, both for physical and especially for moral reasons, could not be well communicated; nay, that in order to comprehend, produce and use this great work, one must know the secrets of nature in connexion, since it was not a particular but an universal remedy, and could indeed be produced under different forms and shapes. My friend had listened to these enticing words. The health of the body was too nearly allied to the health of the soul; and could a greater benefit, a greater mercy be shown towards others, than by appropriating to oneself a remedy by which so many sufferings could be assuaged, so many a danger averted?
She had already secretly studied Welling's _Opus mago-cabalisticum_, for which, however, as the author himself immediately darkens and removes the light he imparts, she was looking about for a friend who, in this alternation of glare and gloom, might bear her company. It needed small incitement to inoculate me also with this disease. I procured the work, which, like all writings of this kind, could trace its pedigree in a direct line up to the Neo-Platonic school. My chief labour in this book was most accurately to notice the dark hints by which the author refers from one passage to another, and thus promises to reveal what he conceals; and to mark down on the margin the number of the page where such passages as should explain each other were to be found. But even thus the book still remained dark and unintelligible enough; except that one at last studied oneself into a certain terminology, and, by using it according to one's own fancy, believed that one was at any rate saying, if not understanding, something. The before-mentioned work makes very honourable mention of its predecessors, and we were incited to investigate those original sources themselves. We turned to the works of Theophrastus, Paracelsus and Basilius Valentinus; as well as to those of Helmont, Starkey, and others whose doctrines and directions, resting more or less on nature and imagination, we endeavoured to see into and follow out. I was particularly pleased with the _Aurea Catena Homeri_, in which nature, though perhaps in fantastical fashion, is represented in a beautiful combination; and thus sometimes by ourselves, sometimes together, we employed much time on these singularities, and spent the evenings of a long winter, during which I was compelled to keep my chamber, very agreeably, since we three, my mother being included, were more delighted with these secrets than we could have been at their elucidation.
Scarcely was I in some measure recovered, and, favoured by the change in the season, able once more to occupy my old gable-chamber, than I also began to provide myself with a little apparatus. A small air-furnace with a sand-bath was prepared, and I very soon learned to change the glass alembics, with a piece of burning match-cord, into vessels in which the different mixtures were to be evaporated. Now were the strange ingredients of the macrocosm and microcosm handled in an odd, mysterious manner, and before all I attempted to produce neutral salts in an unheard-of way. But what busied me most, for a long time, was the so-called _Liquor Silicum_ (flint-juice), which is made by melting down pure quartz-flint with a proper proportion of alkali, whence results a transparent glass, which melts away on exposure to the air, and exhibits a beautiful clear fluidity. Whoever has once prepared this himself, and seen it with his own eyes, will not blame those who believe in a maiden earth, and in the possibility of producing further effects upon it by means of it. I had acquired a peculiar dexterity in preparing this _Liquor Silicum_; the fine white flints which are found in the Maine furnished a perfect material for it; and I was not wanting in the other requisites, nor in diligence. But I became weary at last, because I could not but remark that the flinty substance was by no means so closely combined with the salt as I had philosophically imagined; for it very easily separated itself again, and this most beautiful mineral fluidity, which, to my greatest astonishment, had sometimes appeared in the form of an animal jelly, always deposited a powder, which I was forced to pronounce the finest flint dust, but which gave not the least sign of anything productive in its nature, from which one could have hoped to see this maiden earth pass into the maternal state.
Strange and unconnected as these operations were, I yet learned many things from them. I paid strict attention to all the crystallizations that might occur, and became acquainted with the external forms of many natural things, and inasmuch as I well knew that in modern times chemical subjects were treated more methodically, I wished to get a general conception of them, although, as a half-adept, I had very little respect for the apothecaries and all those who operated with common fire. However, the chemical _Compendium_ of Boerhaave attracted me powerfully, and led me on to read several of his writings, in which (since, moreover, my tedious illness had inclined me towards medical subjects,) I found an inducement to study also the _Aphorisms_ of this excellent man, which I was glad to stamp upon my mind and in my memory. [Side-note: Character of the Letters from Leipzig.]
Another employment, somewhat more human, and by far more useful for my cultivation at the moment, was reading through the letters which I had written home from Leipzig. Nothing reveals more with respect to ourselves, than when we again see before us that which has proceeded from us years before, so that we can now consider ourselves as an object of contemplation. Only, in truth, I was then too young, and the epoch which was represented by those papers was still too near. As in our younger years we do not in general easily cast off a certain self-complacent conceit, this especially shows itself in despising what we have been but a little time before; for while, indeed, we perceive, as we advance from step to step, that those things which we regard as good and excellent in ourselves and others do not stand their ground, we think we can best extricate ourselves from this dilemma by ourselves throwing away what we cannot preserve. So it was with me also. For as in Leipzig I had gradually learned to set little value on my childish labours, so now my academical course seemed to me likewise of small account, and I did not understand that for this very reason it must be of great value to me, as it elevated me to a higher degree of observation and insight. My father had carefully collected and sewed together my letters to him, as well as those to my sister; nay, he had even corrected them with attention, and improved the mistakes both in writing and in grammar.
What first struck me in these letters was their exterior; I was shocked at an incredible carelessness in the handwriting, which extended from October, 1765, to the middle of the following January. But, in the middle of March, there appeared all at once a quite compressed, orderly hand, such as I used formerly to employ in writing for a prize. My astonishment at this resolved itself into gratitude towards the good Gellert, who, as I now well remembered, whenever we handed in our essays to him, represented to us, in his hearty tone of voice, that it was our sacred duty to practise our hand as much, nay, more than our style. He repeated this as often as any scrawled, careless writing came into his sight; on which occasion he often said that he would much like to make a good hand of his pupils the principal end in his instructions; the more so as he had often remarked that a good hand led the way to a good style. I could further notice that the French and English passages in my letters, although not free from blunders, were nevertheless written with facility and freedom. These languages I had likewise continued to practise in my correspondence with George Schlosser, who was still at Treptow, and I had remained in constant communication with him, by which I was instructed in many secular affairs (for things did not always turn out with him quite as he had hoped), and acquired an ever increasing confidence in his earnest, noble way of thinking.
Another consideration which could not escape me in reading through these letters, was that my good hither, with the best intentions, had done me a special mischief, and had led me into that odd way of life into which I had fallen at last. He had, namely, repeatedly warned me against card-playing; but Frau Hofrath Böhme, as long as she lived, contrived to persuade me, after her own fashion, by declaring that my father's warnings were only against the abuse. Now as I likewise saw the advantages of it in society, I easily suffered myself to be led by her. I had indeed the sense of play, but not the spirit of play; I learned all games easily and rapidly, but I could never keep up the proper attention for a whole evening. Therefore, when I began very well, I invariably failed at the end, and made myself and others lose; through which I went off, always out of humour, either to the supper-table or out of the company.
Scarcely was Madame Böhme dead, who, moreover, had no longer kept me in practice during her tedious illness, than my father's doctrine gained force; I at first excused myself from the card-tables, and as they now did not know what else to do with me, I became even more of a burden to myself than to others, and declined the imitations, which then became more rare, and at last ceased altogether. Play, which is much to be recommended to young people, especially to those who have a practical sense, and wish to look about in the world for themselves, could never, indeed, become a passion with me; for I never got further, though I might play as long as I would. Had any one given me a general view of the subject, and made me observe how here certain signs and more or less of chance form a kind of material on which judgment and activity can exercise themselves--had any one made me see several games at once, I might sooner have become reconciled. With all this, at the time of which I am now speaking, I had come to the conviction, from the above considerations, that one should not avoid social games, but should rather strive after a certain dexterity in them. Time is infinitely long, and each day is a vessel into which a great deal may be poured, if one will actually fill it up.
In this manner he thought constantly to compel me to greater accuracy, and, to please him, I drew various objects of still life, in which, since the originals stood as patterns before me, I could work with more distinctness and precision. At last I took it into my head to etch once more. I had composed a tolerably interesting landscape, and felt myself very happy when I could look out for the old receipts given me by Stock, and could, at my work, call to mind those pleasant times. I soon bit the plate and had a proof taken. Unluckily the composition was without light and shade, and I now tormented myself to bring in both; but as it was not quite clear** to me what was really the essential point, I could not finish. Up to this time I had been quite well, after my own fashion; but now a disease attacked me which had never troubled me before. My throat, namely, had become completely sore, and particularly what is called the _uvula_ very much inflamed; I could only swallow with great pain, and the physicians did not know what to make of it. They tormented me with gargles and hair-pencils, but could not free me from my misery.
At last it struck me that I had not been careful enough in the biting of my plates, and that by often and passionately repeating it, I had contracted this disease, and had always revived and increased it. To the physicians this cause was plausible and very soon certain on my leaving my etching and biting, and that so much the more readily as the attempt had by no means turned out well, and I had more reason to conceal than to exhibit my labours; for which I consoled myself the more easily, as I very soon saw myself free from the troublesome disease. Upon this I could not refrain from the reflection that my similar occupations at Leipzig might have greatly contributed to those diseases from which I had suffered so much. It is, indeed, a tedious, and withal a melancholy business to take too much care of ourselves, and of what injures and benefits us; but there is no question but that with the wonderful idiosyncrasy of human nature on the one side, and the infinite variety in the mode of life and pleasure on the other, it is a wonder that the human race has not worn itself out long ago.
Human nature appears to possess a peculiar kind of toughness and many-sidedness, since it subdues everything which approaches it, or which it takes into itself, and if it cannot assimilate, at least makes it indifferent. In case of any great excess, indeed, it must yield to the elements in spite of all resistance, as the many endemic diseases and the effects of brandy convince us. Could we, without being morbidly anxious, keep watch over ourselves as to what operates favourably or unfavourably upon us in our complicated civil and social life, and would we leave off what is actually pleasant to us as an enjoyment, for the sake of the evil consequences, we should thus know how to remove with ease many an inconvenience which, with a constitution otherwise sound, often troubles us more than even a disease. Unfortunately, it is in dietetics as in morals; we cannot see into a fault till we have got rid of it; by which nothing is gained, for the next fault is not like the preceding one, and therefore cannot be recognised under the same form. [Side-note: Survey of Works Written at Leipzig.]
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.