Beacon Lights of History Volume Xiii Part 14

I have said that to Goethe, above all writers, belongs the distinction of having excelled, not experimented merely,--that, others have also done,--but excelled in many distinct kinds. To the lyrist he added the dramatist, to the dramatist the novelist, to the novelist the mystic seer, and to all these the naturalist and scientific discoverer. The history of literature exhibits no other instance in which a great poet has supplemented his proper orbit with so wide an epicyle.

In poetry, as in science, the ground of his activity was a pa.s.sionate love of Nature, which dates from his boyhood. At the age of fifteen, recovering from a sickness caused by disappointment in a boyish affair of the heart, he betook himself with his sketch-book to the woods. "In the farthest depth of the forest," he says, "I sought out a solemn spot, where ancient oaks and beeches formed a shady retreat. A slight declivity of the soil made the merit of the ancient boles more conspicuous. This s.p.a.ce was inclosed by a thicket of bushes, between which peeped moss-covered rocks, mighty and venerable, affording a rapid fall to an affluent brook."

The sketches made of these objects at that early age could have had no artistic value, although the methodical father was careful to mount and preserve them. But what the pencil, had it been the pencil of the greatest master, could never glean from scenes like these, what art could never grasp, what words can never formulate, the heart of the boy then imbibed, a.s.similated, resolved in his innermost being. There awoke in him then those mysterious feelings, those unutterable yearnings, that pensive joy in the contemplation of Nature, which leavened all his subsequent life, and the influence of which is so perceptible in his poetry, especially in his lyrics....

The first literary venture by which Goethe became widely known was "Gotz von Berlichingen," a dramatic picture of the sixteenth century, in which the princ.i.p.al figure is a predatory n.o.ble of that name. A dramatic picture, but not in any true sense a play, it owed its popularity at the time partly to the truth of its portraitures, partly to its choice of a native subject and the truly German feeling which pervades it. It was a new departure in German literature, and perplexed the critics as much as it delighted the general public. It antic.i.p.ated by a quarter of a century what is technically called the Romantic School.

"Gotz von Berlichingen" was soon followed by the "Sorrows of Werther,"--one of those books which, on their first appearance have taken the world by storm, and of which Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

is the latest example. It is a curious circ.u.mstance that a great poet should have won his first laurels by prose composition. Sir Walter Scott eclipsed the splendor of his poems by the popularity of the Waverley novels. Goethe eclipsed the world-wide popularity of his "Werther" by the splendor of his poems.

Of one who was great in so many kinds, it may seem difficult to decide in what department he most excelled. Without undertaking to measure and compare what is incommensurable, I hold that Goethe's genius is essentially lyrical. Whatever else may be claimed for him, he is, first of all, and chiefly, a singer. Deepest in his nature, the most innate of all his faculties, was the faculty of song, of rhythmical utterance. The first to manifest itself in childhood, it was still active at the age of fourscore. The lyrical portions of the second part of "Faust," some of which were written a short time before his death, are as spirited, the versification as easy, the rhythm as perfect, as the songs of his youth.

As a lyrist he is unsurpa.s.sed, I venture to say unequalled, if we take into view the whole wide range of his performance in this kind,--from the ballads, the best-known of his smaller poems, and those light fugitive pieces, those bursts of song which came to him without effort, and with such a rush that in order to arrest and preserve them he seized, as he tells us, the first sc.r.a.p of paper that came to hand and wrote upon it diagonally, if it happened so to lie on his table, lest, through the delay of selecting and placing, the inspiration should be checked and the poem evaporate,--from these to such stately compositions as the "Zueignung," or dedication of his poems, the "Weltseele" and the "Orphic Sayings,"--in short, from poetry that writes itself, that springs spontaneously in the mind, to poetry that is written with elaborate art. There is this distinction, and it is one of the most marked in lyric verse. Compare in English poetry, by way of ill.u.s.tration, the s.n.a.t.c.hes of song in Shakspeare's plays with Shakspeare's sonnets; compare Burns with Gray; compare Jean Ingelow with Browning.

Goethe's ballads have an undying popularity; they have been translated, and most of them are familiar to English readers....

In the Elegies written after his return from Italy, the author figures as a cla.s.sic poet inspired by the Latin Muse. The choicest of these elegies--the "Alexis and Dora"--is not so much an imitation of the ancients as it is the manifestation of a side of the poet's nature which he had in common with the ancients. He wrote as a Greek or Roman might write, because he felt his subject as a Greek or Roman might feel it.

"Hermann und Dorothea," which Schiller p.r.o.nounced the acme not only of Goethean but of all modern art, was written professedly as an attempt in the Homeric[7]

style, motived by Wolf's "Prolegomena" and Voss's "Luise." It is Homeric only in its circ.u.mstantiality, in the repet.i.tion of the same epithets applied to the same persons, and in the Greek realism of Goethe's nature. The theme is very un-Homeric; it is thoroughly modern and German,-- "Germans themselves I present, to the humbler dwelling I lead you, Where with Nature as guide man is natural still." [8]

[Footnote 7: "Doch Homeride zu sein, auch noch als letzter, ist schon."]

[Footnote 8: From the Elegy ent.i.tled "Hermann und Dorothea."]

This exquisite poem has been translated into English hexameters with great fidelity by Miss Ellen Frothingham.

"Iphigenie auf Tauris" handles a Greek theme, exhibits Greek characters, and was hailed on its first appearance as a genuine echo of the Greek drama. Mr. Lewes denies it that character; and certainly it is not Greek, but Christian, in sentiment. It differs from the extant drama of Euripides, who treats the same subject, in the Christian feeling which determines its _denouement_....

A large portion of Goethe's productions have taken the dramatic form; yet he cannot be said, theatrically speaking, to have been, like Schiller, a successful dramatist. His plays, with the exception of "Egmont" and the First Part of "Faust," have not commanded the stage; they form no part, I believe, of the stock of any German theatre. The characterizations are striking, but the positions are not dramatic.

Single scenes in some of them are exceptions,--like that in "Egmont,"

where Clara endeavors to rouse her fellow-citizens to the rescue of the Count, while Brackenburg seeks to restrain her, and several of the scenes in the First Part of "Faust." But, on the whole, the interest of Goethe's dramas is psychological rather than scenic. Especially is this the case with "Ta.s.so," one of the author's n.o.blest works, where the characters are not so much actors as metaphysical portraitures.

Schiller, in his plays, had always the stage in view. Goethe, on the contrary, wrote for readers, or cultivated, reflective hearers, not spectators.....

When I say, then, that Goethe, compared with Schiller, failed of dramatic success, I mean that his talent did not lie in the line of plays adapted to the stage as it is; or if the talent was not wanting, his taste did not incline to such performance. He was no playwright.

But there is another and higher sense of the word _dramatic_, where Goethe is supreme,--the sense in which Dante's great poem is called _Commedia_, a play. There is a drama whose scope is beyond the compa.s.s of any earthly stage,--a drama not for theatre-goers, to be seen on the boards, but for intellectual contemplation of men and angels. Such a drama is "Faust," of which I shall speak hereafter.

Of Goethe's prose works,--I mean works of prose fiction,--the most considerable are two philosophical novels, "Wilhelm Meister" and the "Elective Affinities."

In the first of these the various and complex motives which have shaped the composition may be comprehended in the one word _education_,--the education of life for the business of life. The main thread of the narrative traces through a labyrinth of loosely connected scenes and events the growth of the hero's character,--a progressive training by various influences, pa.s.sional, intellectual, social, moral, and religious. These are represented by the _personnel_ of the story. In accordance with this design, the hero himself, if so he may be called, has no p.r.o.nounced traits, is more negative than positive, but is brought into contact with many very positive characters. His life is the stage on which these characters perform. A ground is thus provided for the numerous portraits of which the author's large experience furnished the originals, and for lessons of practical wisdom derived from his close observation of men and things and his lifelong reflection thereon.

"Wilhelm Meister," if not the most artistic, is the most instructive, and in that view, next to "Faust," the most important, of Goethe's works. In it he has embodied his philosophy of life,--a philosophy far enough removed from the epicurean views which ignorance has ascribed to him,--a philosophy which is best described by the term _ascetic_. Its keynote is Renunciation. "With renunciation begins the true life," was the author's favorite maxim; and the second part of "Wilhelm Meister"--the _Wanderjahre_--bears the collateral t.i.tle _Die Entsagenden_; that is, the "Renouncing" or the "Self-denying." The characters that figure in this second part--most of whom have had their training in the first--form a society whose principle of union is self-renunciation and a life of beneficent activity....

The most fascinating character in "Wilhelm Meister"--the wonder and delight of the reader--is Mignon, the child-woman,--a pure creation of Goethe's genius, without a prototype in literature. Readers of Scott will remember Fenella, the elfish maiden in "Peveril of the Peak." Scott says in his Preface to that novel: "The character of Fenella, which from its peculiarity made a favorable impression on the public, was far from being original. The fine sketch of Mignon in Wilhelm Meister's _Lehrjahre_--a celebrated work from the pen of Goethe--gave the idea of such a being. But the copy will be found to be greatly different from my great prototype; nor can I be accused of borrowing anything save the general idea."

As I remember Fenella, the resemblance to Mignon is merely superficial.

A certain weirdness is all they have in common. The intensity of the inner life, the unspeakable longing, the cry of the unsatisfied heart, the devout aspiration, the presentiment of the heavenly life which characterize Mignon are peculiar to her; they const.i.tute her individuality. Wilhelm has found her a kidnapped child attached to a strolling circus company, and has rescued her from the cruel hands of the manager. Thenceforth she clings to him with a pa.s.sionate devotion, in which grat.i.tude for her deliverance, filial affection, and the love of a maiden for her hero are strangely blended. Afflicted with a disease of the heart, she is subject to terrible convulsions, which increase the tenderness of her protector for the doomed child. After one of these attacks, in which she had been suffering frightful pain, we read:--

"He held her fast. She wept; and no tongue can express the force of those tears. Her long hair had become unfastened and hung loose over her shoulders. Her whole being seemed to be melting away.... At last she raised herself up. A mild cheerfulness gleamed from her face. 'My father!' she cried, 'you will not leave me! You will be my father! I will be your child.' Softly, before the door, a harp began to sound. The old Harper was bringing his heartiest songs as an evening sacrifice to his friend."

Then bursts on the reader that world-famed song, in which the soul of Mignon, with its unconquerable yearnings, is forever embalmed,--"Kennst du das Land":--

"Know'st thou the land that bears the citron's bloom?

The golden orange glows 'mid verdant gloom, A gentle wind from heaven's deep azure blows, The myrtle low, and high the laurel grows,-- Know'st thou the land?[9]

Oh, there! oh, there!

Would I with thee, my best beloved, repair." ...

[Footnote 9: Literally, "Know'st thou it well?" But the word "well," in this case, does not answer to the German _wohl_.]

The "Elective Affinities" has been strangely misinterpreted as having an immoral tendency, as encouraging conjugal infidelity, and approving "free love." That any one who has read the work with attention to the end could so misjudge it seems incredible. Precisely the reverse of this, its aim is to enforce the sanct.i.ty of the nuptial bond by showing the tragic consequences resulting from its violation, though only in thought and feeling....

Here, a word concerning one merit of Goethe which seems to me not to have been sufficiently appreciated by even his admirers,--his loving skill in the delineation of female character; the commanding place he a.s.signs to woman in his writings; his full recognition of the importance of feminine influence in human destiny. The prophetic utterance, which forms the conclusion of "Faust,"--"The ever womanly draws us on,"--is the summing up of Goethe's own experience of life. Few men had ever such wide opportunities of acquaintance with women. If, on the one hand, his loves had revealed to him the pa.s.sional side of feminine nature, he had enjoyed, on the other, the friendship of some of the purest and n.o.blest of womankind. Conspicuous among these are Fraulein von Klettenberg and the d.u.c.h.ess Luise, whom no one, says Lewes, ever speaks of but in terms of veneration. No poet but Shakspeare, and scarcely Shakspeare, has set before the world so rich a gallery of female portraits. They range from the lowest to the highest,--from the wanton to the saint; they are drawn in firm lines, and limned in imperishable colors, ... each bearing the stamp of her own individuality, and each confessing a master's hand.

These may be considered as representing different phases of the poet's experience,--different _stadia_ in his view of life. "The ever womanly draws us on." So Goethe, of all men most susceptible of feminine influence, was led by it from weakness to strength, from dissipation to concentration, from doubt to clearness, from tumult to repose, from the earthly to the heavenly.

"FAUST."

Goethe appears to have derived his knowledge of the Faust legend partly from the work of Widmann, published in 1599,[10] partly from another more modern in its form, which appeared in 1728, and partly from the puppet plays exhibited in Frankfort and other cities of Germany, of which that legend was then a favorite theme. He was not the only writer of that day who made use of it. Some thirty of his contemporaries had produced their "Fausts" during the interval which elapsed between the inception and publication of his great work. Oblivion overtook them all, with the exception of Lessing's, of which a few fragments are left; the ma.n.u.script of the complete work was unaccountably lost on its way to the publisher, between Dresden and Leipsic.

[Footnote 10: The earlier work of Spiess (1588) was translated into English and furnished Marlowe with the subject-matter of his "Dr.

Faustus."]

The composition of "Faust," as we learn from Goethe's biography, proceeded spasmodically, with many and long interruptions between the inception and conclusion. Projected in 1769 at the age of twenty, it was not completed till the year 1831, at the age of eighty-two....

But the effect of the long arrest, which after Goethe's removal to Weimar delayed the completion of the "Faust," is most apparent in the wide gulf which separates, as to character and style, the Second Part from the First. So great, indeed, is the distance between the two that, without external historical proofs of ident.i.ty, it would seem from internal evidence altogether improbable, in spite of the slender thread of the fable which connects them, that both poems were the work of one and the same author. And really the author was not the same. The change which had come over Goethe on his return from Italy had gone down to the very springs of his intellectual life. The fervor and the rush, the sparkle and foam of his early productions, had been replaced by the stately calm and the luminous breadth of view that is born of experience. The torrent of the mountains had become the river of the plain; romantic impetuosity had changed to cla.s.sic repose. He could still, by occasional efforts of the will, cast himself back into the old moods, resume the old thread, and so complete the first "Faust." But we may confidently a.s.sert that he could not, after the age of forty, have originated the poem, any more than before his Italian tour he could have written the second "Faust," purporting to be a continuation of the first. The difference in spirit and style is enormous.

As to the question which of the two is the greater production, it is like asking which is the greater, Dante's "Commedia" or Shakspeare's "Macbeth"? They are incommensurable. As to which is the more generally interesting, no question can arise. There are thousands who enjoy and admire the First Part to one who even reads the Second. The interest of the former is poetic and thoroughly human; the interest of the other is partly poetic, but mostly philosophic and scientific....

The symbolical character of "Faust" is a.s.sumed by all the critics, and in part confessed by the author himself. Besides the general symbolism pervading and motiving the whole,--a symbolism of human destiny,--and here and there a shadowing forth of the poet's private experience, there are special allusions--local, personal, enigmatic conceits--which have furnished topics of learned discussion and taxed the ingenuity of numerous commentators. We need not trouble ourselves with these subtleties. But little exegesis is needed for a right comprehension of the true and substantial import of the work.

The key to the plot is given in the Prologue in Heaven. The devil, in the character of Mephistopheles, asks permission to tempt Faust; he boasts his ability to get entire possession of his soul and drag him down to h.e.l.l. The Lord grants the permission, and prophesies the failure of the attempt:--

"Be it allowed! Draw this spirit from its Source if you can lay hold of him; bear him with you on your downward path, and stand ashamed when you are forced to confess that a good man in his dark strivings has a consciousness of the right way."

Here we have a hint of the author's design. He does not intend that the devil shall succeed; he does not mean to adopt the conclusion of the legend and send Faust to h.e.l.l. He had the penetration to see, and he meant to show, that the notion implied in the old popular superst.i.tion of selling one's soul to the devil--the notion that evil can obtain the entire and final possession of the soul--is a fallacy; that the soul is not man's to dispose of, and cannot be so traded away. We are the soul's, not the soul ours. Evil is self-limited; the good in man must finally prevail. So long as he strives he is not lost; Heaven will come to the aid of his better nature. This is the doctrine, the philosophy, of "Faust." In the First Part, stung by disappointment in his search of knowledge, by failure to lay hold of the superhuman, and urged on by his baser propensities personified in Mephistopheles, Faust abandons himself to sensual pleasure,--seduces innocence, burdens his soul with heavy guilt, and seems to be entirely given over to evil. This Part ends with Mephistopheles' imperious call,--"Her zu mir,"--as if secure of his victim. Before the appearance of the Second Part, the reader was at liberty to accept that conclusion. But in the Second Part Faust gradually wakes from the intoxication of pa.s.sion, outgrows the dominion of appet.i.te, plans great and useful works, whereby Mephistopheles loses more and more his hold of him; and after his death is baffled in his attempt to appropriate Faust's immortal part, to which the heavenly Powers a.s.sert their right....

The character of Margaret is unique; its duplicate is not to be found in all the picture galleries of fiction. Shakspeare, in the wide range of his feminine _personnel_, has no portrait like this. A girl of low birth and vulgar circ.u.mstance, imbued with the ideas and habits of her cla.s.s, speaking the language of that cla.s.s from which she never for a moment deviates into finer phrase, takes on, through the magic handling of the poet, an ideal beauty. Externally common and prosaic in all her ways, she is yet thoroughly poetic, transfigured in our conception by her perfect love. To that love, unreasoning, unsuspecting,--to the excess of that which in itself is no fault, but beautiful and good,--her fall and ruin are due. Her story is the tragedy of her s.e.x in all time. As Schlegel said of the "Prometheus Bound,"--"It is not a single tragedy, but tragedy itself." ...

[The First Part ends with the prison scene, where poor Margaret, escaping by death, ascends to heaven, while Mephistopheles, shouting an imperious "Hither to me!" disappears with Faust.] The reader is allowed to suppose--and most readers did suppose--that the author meant it should be inferred that the devil had secured his victim, and that Faust, according to the legend, had paid the forfeit of his soul to the powers of h.e.l.l.

But Faust reappears in a new poem,--the Second Part. He is there introduced sleeping, as if burying in torpor the l.u.s.ts and crimes and sorrows of his past career. Pitying spirits are about him, to heal his woes and promote his return to a better life....

[At the end of his hundred years of earthly life,] Mephistopheles ...

fails to secure the immortal part of Faust, which the angels appropriate and bear aloft:

"This member of the upper spheres We rescue from the devil; For whoso strives and perseveres May be redeemed from evil."

The last two lines may be supposed to contain the author's justification of Mephistopheles' defeat and Faust's salvation. Though a man surrender himself to evil, if there is that in him which evil cannot satisfy, an impulse by which he outgrows the gratifications of vice, extends his horizon and lifts his desires, pursues an onward course until he learns to place his aims outside of himself, and to seek satisfaction in works of public utility,--he is beyond the power of Satan: he may be redeemed from evil.