The Autobiography of Goethe Truth and Poetry · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
SIXTH BOOK.
Amid this manifold distraction, this dismemberment of my existence and my studies, it happened that I took my dinners at Hofrath Ludwig's. He was a medical man, a botanist, and his company, with the exception of Morus, consisted of physicians just commencing or near the completion of their studies. Now during these hours I heard no other conversation than about medicine or natural history, and my imagination was drawn over into quite a new field. I heard the names of Haller, Linnæus, Buffon, mentioned with great respect; and even if disputes often arose about mistakes into which it was said they had fallen, all agreed in the end to honour the acknowledged abundance of their merits. The subjects were entertaining and important, and enchained my attention. By degrees I became familiar with many names and a copious terminology, which I caught up the more willingly as I was afraid to write down a rhyme, however spontaneously it presented itself, or to read a poem, for I was fearful that it might please me at the time, and that perhaps immediately afterwards, like so much else, I should be forced to pronounce it bad. [Side-note: Destruction of Juvenile Poems.]
This uncertainty of taste and judgment disquieted me more and more every day, so that at last I fell into despair. I had brought with me those of my youthful labours which I thought the best, partly because I hoped to get some credit by them, partly that I might be able to test my progress with greater certainty; but I found myself in the miserable situation in which one is placed when a complete change of mind is required,--a renunciation of all that one has hitherto loved and found good. However, after some time, and many struggles, I conceived so great a contempt for my labours, begun and ended, that one day I burnt up poetry and prose, plans, sketches, and projects all together on the kitchen hearth, and threw our good old landlady into no small fright and anxiety by the smoke which filled the whole house. [1] This word, which signifies something like our "bully," is specially used to designate a fighting student.--_Trans._ [2] Literally: "to strike two flies with one flapper."--_Trans._ [3] The river on which Halle is built.--_Trans._ [4] The river that flows by Leipzig.--_Trans._ [5] Leipzig was so called, because a large and influential portion of its citizens were sprung from a colony of Huguenots, who settled there after the revocation of the edict of Nantes_.--American Note._ [6] That is to say, the influence of Gottsched on German literature, of which more is said in the next book.--_Trans._
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.