The Autobiography of Goethe Truth and Poetry · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
TENTH BOOK.
The German poets, since they, as members of a corporation, no longer stood as one man, did not enjoy the smallest advantages in the citizen-world. They had neither support, standing, nor respectability, except in so far as their other position was favourable to them, and therefore it was a matter of mere chance whether talent was born to honour or to disgrace. A poor son of earth, with a consciousness of mind and faculties, was forced to crawl along painfully through life, and, from the pressure of momentary necessities, to squander the gifts which perchance he had received from the Muses. Occasional poems, the first and most genuine of all kinds of poetry, had become despicable to such a degree, that the nation even now cannot attain a conception of their high value; and a poet, if he did not strike altogether into Günther's** path, appeared in the world in the most melancholy state of subserviency, as a jester and parasite, so that both on the theatre and on the stage of life he represented a character which any one and every one could abuse at pleasure. If, on the contrary, the Muse associated herself with men of respectability, these received thereby a lustre which was reflected back to the donor. Noblemen well versed in life, like Hagedorn, dignified citizens, like Brockes, distinguished men of science, like Haller, appeared among the first in the nation, to be equal with the most eminent and the most prized. Those persons, too, were specially honoured, who, together with this pleasing talent, distinguished themselves as active, faithful men of business. In this way Uz, Rabener, and Weisse enjoyed a respect of quite a peculiar kind; people had here to value, when combined, those most heterogeneous qualities which are seldom found united.
The dignity of the subject elevated in the poet the feeling of his own personality. That he himself would enter hereafter into those choirs, that the God-Man would distinguish him, nay, give him face to face the reward for his labours, which even here every feeling, pious heart had fondly paid in many a pure tear--these were such innocent, childlike thoughts and hopes, as only a well-constituted mind can conceive and cherish. Thus Klopstock gained the perfect right to regard himself as a consecrated person, and thus in his actions he studied the most scrupulous purity. Even in his old age it troubled him exceedingly that he had given his earliest love to a lady who, by marrying another, left him in uncertainty whether she had really loved him or been worthy of him. The sentiments which bound him to Meta, their hearty, tranquil affection, their short sacred married life, the aversion of the surviving husband from a second union, all is of that kind which may well be remembered hereafter in the circle of the blessed.
This honourable conduct towards himself was still further enhanced by his being favourably received for a long time in well-minded Denmark, in the house of a great, and, humanly speaking, excellent statesman. Here, in a higher circle, which was exclusive indeed, but, at the same time, devoted to external manners and attention towards the world, his tendency became still more decided. A composed demeanour, a measured speech, and a laconism even when he spoke openly and decidedly, gave him, through his whole life, a certain diplomatic ministerial consequence, which seemed to be at variance with his tender natural feelings, although both sprang from one source. Of all this, his first works give a clear transcript and type, and they thus could not but gain an incredible influence. That, however, he personally assisted others who were struggling in life and poetry, has scarcely been mentioned, as one of his most decided characteristics. [Side-note: Klopstock and Gleim.]
But just such a furtherance of young people in literary action and pursuit, a hopeful pleasure in bringing forward men not favoured by fortune, and making the way easy to them, has rendered illustrious one German, who, in respect to the dignity which he gave himself, may be named as the second, but, in regard to his living influence, as the first. It will escape no one that GLEIM is here meant. In possession of an obscure, indeed, but lucrative office, residing in a pleasantly situated spot, not too large, and enlivened by military, civic, and literary activity, whence proceeded the revenues of a great and wealthy institution, not without a part of them remaining behind for the advantage of the place, he felt within himself also a lively productive impulse, which, however, with all its strength, was not quite enough for him, and therefore he gave himself up to another, perhaps stronger impulse, namely, that of making others produce something. Both these activities were intertwined incessantly during his whole long life. He could as easily have lived without taking breath, as without writing poetry and making presents, and by helping needy talents of all kinds through earlier or later embarrassments, contributing to the honour of literature, he gained so many friends, debtors, and dependents, that they willingly allowed his diffuse verses to pass, since they could give him nothing in return for his rich benefits but endurance of his poetry.
Now, the high idea which these two men might well form of their own worth, and by which others were induced also to think themselves somebody, has produced very great and beautiful results, both in public and private, But this consciousness, honourable as it is, called a peculiar evil down for themselves, for those around them, and for their time. If, judging from their intellectual effects, both these men may without hesitation be called great, with respect to the world they remained but small, and considered in comparison with a more stirring life, their external position was nought. The day is long, and so is the night: one cannot be always writing poetry, or doing, or giving; their time could not be filled up like that of people of the world, and men of rank and wealth; they therefore set too high a value on their particular limited situations, attached an importance to their daily affairs which they should only have allowed themselves amongst each other, and took more than reasonable delight in their own jokes, which, though they made the moment agreeable, could be of no consequence in the end.
They received praise and honour from others, as they deserved; they gave it back, with measure indeed, but always too profusely; and because they felt that their friendship was worth much, they were pleased to express it repeatedly, and in this spared neither paper nor ink. Thus arose those correspondences, at the deficiency of which in solid contents the modern world wonders, nor can it be blamed, when it hardly sees the possibility of eminent men delighting themselves in such an interchange of nothing, or when it expresses the wish that such leaves might have remained unprinted. But we may suffer these few volumes always to stand along with so many others upon our bookshelves, if we have learned from them the fact that even the most eminent man lives only by the day, and enjoys but a sorry entertainment, when he throws himself too much back upon himself, and neglects to grasp into the fulness of the external world, where alone he can find nourishment for his growth, and at the same time a standard for its measurement. The activity of these men was in its finest bloom, when we young folks began also to bestir ourselves in our own circle, and with my younger friends, if not with older persons too. I was pretty much in the way of falling into this sort of mutual flattery, forbearance, raising and supporting. In my immediate sphere, whatever I produced could always be reckoned good. Ladies, friends, and patrons will not consider bad that which is undertaken and written out of affection for them. From such obligations at last arises the expression of an empty satisfaction with each other, in the phrases of which a character is easily lost, if it is not from time to time steeled to higher excellence.
And thus I had the happiness to say that, by means of an unexpected acquaintance, all the self-complacency, love of the looking-glass, vanity, pride, and haughtiness that might have been resting or working within me, were exposed to a very severe trial, which was unique in its kind, by no means in accordance with the time, and therefore so much the more searching and more sorely felt. [Side-note: Herder.] For the most important event, one that was to have the weightiest consequences for me, was my acquaintance with HERDER, and the nearer connexion with him which sprung from it. He accompanied the travels of the Prince of Holstein-Eutin, who was in a melancholy state of mind, and had come with him to Strasburg. Our society, as soon as it knew of his arrival, was seized with a great longing to approach him, and this good fortune happened to me first, quite unexpectedly and by chance. I had gone to the Ghost tavern to inquire after some distinguished stranger or other. Just at the bottom of the staircase I found a man who was on the point of ascending, and whom I might have taken for a clergyman. His powdered hair was put up in a queue, his black clothes likewise distinguished him, but still more a long black silk mantle, the skirts of which he had gathered up and stuck into his pocket. This somewhat striking, but yet, on the whole, polite and pleasing figure, of which I had already been told, left me not the least doubt that he was the celebrated newcomer, and my address was to convince him at once that I knew him.
He asked my name, which could be of no consequence to him; but my frankness seemed to please him, since he returned it with great friendliness, and as we mounted the stairs, showed himself ready immediately for animated communication. I have forgotten whom we visited then; it is sufficient to say, that at parting I begged permission to wait on him at his own residence, which he granted me kindly enough. I did not neglect to avail myself repeatedly of this favour, and was more and more attracted by him. He had somewhat of softness in his manner, which was very suitable and becoming, without being exactly easy. A round face, an imposing forehead, a somewhat puggish nose, a mouth somewhat prominent, but highly characteristic, pleasing, and amiable; a pair of coal-black eyes under black eye-brows, which did not fail of their effect, although one of them used to be red and inflamed. By various questions he tried to make himself acquainted with me and my situation, and his power of attraction operated on me with growing strength. I was, generally speaking, of a very confiding disposition, and with him especially I had no secrets. It was not long, however, before the repelling pulse of his nature began to appear, and placed me in no small uneasiness.
I related to him many things of my youthful occupations and taste, and among others, of a collection of seals, which I had principally gotten together through the assistance of our family friend, who had an extensive correspondence. I had arranged them according to the _State Calendar_, and by this means had become well acquainted with the whole of the potentates, the greater and lesser mightinesses and powers, even down to the nobility under them. These heraldic insignia had often, and in particular at the ceremonies of the coronation, been of use to my memory. I spoke of these things with some complacency; but he was of another opinion, and not only stripped the subject of all interest, but also contrived to make it ridiculous and nearly disgusting. From this his spirit of contradiction I had much to endure; for he had resolved, partly because he wished to separate from the prince, partly on account of a complaint in his eye, to remain in Strasburg. This complaint is one of the most inconvenient and unpleasant, and the more troublesome since it can be cured only by a painful, highly irritating and uncertain operation. The tear-bag is closed below, so that the moisture contained in it cannot flow off to the nose, and so much the less as the adjacent bone is deficient in the aperture by which this secretion should naturally take place. The bottom of the tear-bag must therefore be cut open, and the bone bored through, when a horse-hair is drawn through the lachrymal point, then down through the opened bag, and the new canal thus put into connexion with it, and this hair is moved backwards and forwards every day, in order to restore the communication between the two parts;--all which cannot be done or attained, if an incision is not first made externally in that place.
Herder was now separated from the prince, was moved into lodgings of his own, and resolved to have himself operated upon by Lobstein. Here those exercises by which I had sought to blunt my sensibility did me good service; I was able to be present at the operation, and to be serviceable and helpful in many ways to so worthy a man. I found here every reason to admire his great firmness and endurance: for neither during the numerous surgical operations, nor at the oft-repeated painful dressings, did he show himself in any degree irritable, and of all of us he seemed to be the one who suffered least. But in the intervals, indeed, we had to endure the changes of his temper in many ways. I say _we_ for besides myself, a pleasant Russian, named PEGLOW, was mostly with him. This man had been an early acquaintance of Herder's in Riga, and though no longer a youth, was trying to perfect himself in surgery under Lobstein's guidance. Herder could be charmingly prepossessing and brilliant, but he could just as easily turn an ill-humoured side foremost. All men, indeed, have this attraction and repulsion, according to their nature, some more, some less, some in longer, some in shorter pulsations; few can really control their peculiarities in this respect, many in appearance. As for Herder, the preponderance of his contradictory, bitter, biting humour was certainly derived from his disease and the sufferings arising from it. This case often occurs in life; one does not sufficiently take into consideration the moral effect of sickly conditions, and one therefore judges many characters very unjustly, because it is assumed that all men are healthy, and required of them that they shall conduct themselves accordingly.
Since his conversations were at all times important, whether he asked, answered, or communicated his opinions in any other manner, he could not but advance me daily, nay hourly, to new views. At Leipzig, I had accustomed myself to a narrow and circumscribed existence, and my general knowledge of German literature could not be extended by my situation in Frankfort; nay, those mystico-religio-chemical occupations had led me into obscure regions, and what had been passing for some years back in the wide literary world, had for the most part remained unknown to me. Now I was at once made acquainted by Herder with all the new aspiration, and all the tendencies which it seemed to be taking. He had already made himself sufficiently known, and by his _Fragments_, his _Kritische Wälder_ (_Critical Woods_), and other works, had immediately placed himself by the side of the most eminent men who had for a long time drawn towards them the eyes of their country. What an agitation there must have been in such a mind--what a fermentation there must have been in such a nature--can neither be conceived nor described. But great was certainly the concealed effort, as will be easily admitted, when one reflects for how many years afterwards and how much he has done and produced.
We had not lived together long in this manner when he confided to me that he meant to be a competitor for the prize which was offered, at Berlin, for the best treatise on the origin of language. His work was already nearly completed, and, as he wrote a very neat hand, he could soon communicate to me, in parts, a legible manuscript. I had never reflected on such subjects, for I was yet too deeply involved in the midst of things to have thought about their beginning and end. The question, too, seemed to me in some measure an idle one; for if God had created man as man, language was just as innate in him as walking erect; he must have just as well perceived that he could sing with his throat, and modify the tones in various ways with tongue, palate, and lips, as he must have remarked that he could walk and take hold of things. If man was of divine origin, so was also language itself; and if man, considered in the circle of nature, was a natural being, language was likewise natural. These two things, like soul and body, I could never separate.
"If those letters of Brutus thou hast in thy Cicero's letters, Thou, whom consolers of schools, deck'd out in magnificent bindings, Soothe from their well plan'd shelves--yet more by the outside than inside, Thou, who from gods art descended, or Goths, or from origin filthy,[1] Goethe, send them to me." It was not polite, indeed, that he should allow himself this jest on my name; for a man's name is not like a mantle, which merely hangs about him, and which, perchance, may be safely twitched and pulled; but is a perfectly fitting garment, which has grown over and over him like his very skin, at which one cannot scratch and scrape without wounding the man himself. The first reproach, on the contrary, was better founded. I had brought with me to Strasburg the authors I had obtained, by exchange, from Langer, with various fine editions from my father's collection besides, and had set them up on a neat book-case, with the best intentions of using them. But how should my time, which I split up into an hundred different activities, suffice for that? Herder, who was most attentive to books, since he had need of them every moment, perceived my fine collection at his first visit, but soon saw, too, that I made no use of them. He, therefore, as the greatest enemy to all false appearances and ostentation, was accustomed, on occasion, to rally me upon the subject.
Another sarcastic poem occurs to me, which he sent me one evening, when I had been telling him a great deal about the Dresden gallery. I had, indeed, not penetrated into the higher meaning of the Italian school; but Dominico Feti, an excellent artist, although a humorist, and therefore not of the first rank, had interested me much. Scripture subjects had to be painted. He confined himself to the New Testament parables, and was fond of representing them with much originality, taste, and good-humour. He brought them altogether into every-day life, and the spirited and _naïve_ details of his compositions, recommended by a free pencil, had made a vivid impression upon me. At this, my childish enthusiasm for art, Herder sneered in the following fashion:-- "From sympathy, The master I like best of all Dominico Feti they call. A parable from Scripture he is able Neatly to turn into a crazy fable From sympathy:--thou crazy parable!" I could mention many jokes of the kind, more or less clear or abstruse, cheerful or bitter. They did not vex me, but made me feel uncomfortable. Yet since I knew how to value highly everything that contributed to my own cultivation, and as I had often given up former opinions and inclinations, I soon accommodated myself, and only sought, as far as it was possible for me from my point of view, to distinguish just blame from unjust invectives. And thus no day passed over that had not been, in the most fruitful manner, instructive to me.
I was made acquainted by him with poetry from quite a different side, in another light than heretofore, and one, too, which suited me well. The poetic art of the Hebrews, which he treated ingeniously after his predecessor Lowth--popular poetry, the traditions of which in Alsace he urged us to search after; and the oldest records existing as poetry--all bore witness that poetry in general was a gift to the world and to nations, and not the private inheritance of a few refined, cultivated men. I swallowed all this, and the more eager I was in receiving, the more liberal was he in giving, so that we spent the most interesting hours together. The other natural studies which I had begun, I endeavoured to continue, and as one always has time enough, if one will apply it well, so amongst them all I succeeded in doing twice or thrice as much as usual. As to the fulness of those few weeks during which we lived together, I can well say that all which Herder has gradually produced since, was then announced in the germ, and that I thereby fell into the fortunate condition that I could completely attach to something higher, and expand all that I had hitherto thought, learned, and made my own. Had Herder been methodical, I should have found the most precious guide for giving a durable tendency to my cultivation; but he was more inclined to examine and stimulate, than to lead and conduct. Thus he at first made me acquainted with Hamann's writings, upon which he set a very great value. But instead of instructing me as to these, and making the bias and drift of his extraordinary mind intelligible to me, it generally only served him for amusement when I behaved strangely enough, in trying to get at the meaning of such sibylline leaves. However, I could well feel that something in Hamann's writings appealed to me; and to this I gave myself up, without knowing whence it came or whither it was leading me.
This disease, which disfigured so expressive a countenance, must have been so much the more afflicting to him, as he had become acquainted with an excellent lady in Darmstadt, and had gained her affections. It may have been for this cause principally that he submitted to the cure, in order, on his return, to appear more free, more cheerful, and more handsome in the eyes of his half-betrothed, and to unite himself more certainly and indissolubly with her. However, he hastened away from Strasburg as soon as possible, and since his stay had hitherto been as expensive as it was unpleasant, I borrowed a sum of money for him, which he promised to refund by an appointed day. The time passed without the arrival of the money. My creditor, indeed, did not dun me; but I was for several weeks in embarrassment. At last the letter and the money came, and even here he did not act unlike himself; for, instead of thanks or an apology, his letter contained nothing but satirical things in doggerel verse, which would have puzzled, if not alienated, another; but it did not move me at all, for I had conceived so great and powerful an idea of his worth that it absorbed everything of an opposite nature which could have injured it. One should never speak, publicly at least, of one's own faults, or those of others, if one does not hope to effect some useful purpose by it; on this account I will here insert certain remarks which force themselves upon me.
Gratitude and ingratitude belong to those events which appear every moment in the moral world, and about which men can never agree among themselves. I usually distinguish between non-thankfulness, ingratitude, and aversion from gratitude. The first is innate with men, nay, created with them; for it arises from a happy volatile forgetfulness of the repulsive as well as of the delightful, by which alone the continuation of life is possible. Man needs such an infinite quantity of previous and concurrent assistances for a tolerable existence, that if he would always pay to the sun and the earth, to God and nature, to ancestors and parents, to friends and companions, the thanks due to them, he would have neither time nor feeling left to receive and enjoy new benefits. But if the natural man suffers this volatility to get the control in and over him, a cold indifference gains more and more the ascendancy, and one at last regards one's benefactor as a stranger, to whose injury, perhaps, anything may be undertaken, provided it be advantageous to ourselves. This alone can properly be called ingratitude, which results from the rudeness into which the uncultivated nature must necessarily lose itself at last.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.