The Development Of The Feeling For Nature In The Middle Ages And Modern Times Part 41

Or bathes like the moon in the ocean.

The parting glance of Mother Sun broods on the grapes.

'Morning came frightening away light sleep with its footsteps.'

'The young day arose with delight.'

The moon: 'Thou spreadest thy glance soothingly over my abode.'

On a cloudy night: 'Evening already rocked earth, and night hung on the mountains; from a hill of clouds the moon looked mournfully out of the mist.'

'The lofty stars turn their clear eyes down to me.'

Even the rock lives: 'The hard rock opens its bosom, not envying earth its deep springs.'

The stream: 'Thou hurriest on with joyful light mood; see the rock spring bright with the glance of the stars, yet no shady valley, no flowers make him tarry ... his course winds downwards to the plain, then he scatters in delightful spray, in cloud waves ... foams gloomily to the abyss.'

With gradual step from out the far-off grey, Self-heralded draws on the storm.

Birds on the wing fly low across the water, weighted down, And seamen hasten to reef in the sail Before its stubborn wrath.

His flowers are alive:

The beauteous snowdrops Droop o'er the plain, The crocus opens Its glowing bud ...

With saucy gesture Primroses flare, And roguish violets Hidden with care.

But these are only examples. To obtain a clear idea of Goethe's att.i.tude, we must take a more general survey of his work, for his poetic relationship to Nature, like his mental development in general, pa.s.sed through various stages of growth. That it was a warm one even in youth is shewn by the letter in 1766 from Leipzig[9]:

You live contented in M. I even so here. Lonely, lonely, altogether lonely. Dearest Riese, this loneliness has impressed my soul with a certain sadness.

This solitary joy is mine, When far apart from all mankind, By shady brook-side to recline.

And keep my loved ones in my mind....

He goes on with these lines:

Then is my heart with sorrow filled, Sad is mine eye.

The flooded brook now rages by, That heretofore so gently rilled.

No bird sings in the bushes now, The tree so green is dry, The zephyr which on me did blow So cheering, now storms northerly, And scattered blossoms bears on high.

He was already in full sympathy with Nature. A few of his earlier poems[10] shew prevalent taste, the allusions to Zephyr and Lima, for instance, in _Night_; but they are followed by lines which are all his own.

He had an incomparable way of striking the chords of love and Nature together.

Where his lady-love dwells, 'there is love, and goodness is Nature.'

He thinks of her

When the bright sunlight shimmers Across the sea, When the clear fountain in the moonbeam glimmers.

Thou art seductive and charming; flowers, Sun, moon, and stars only worship thee.

There is pa.s.sionate feeling for Nature in the _May Song_ of his Sesenheimer period:

How gloriously gleameth All Nature to me!

How bright the sun beameth, How fresh is the lea!

White blossoms are bursting The thickets among, And all the gay greenwood Is ringing with song!

There's radiance and rapture That nought can destroy, Oh earth, in thy sunshine, Oh heart, in thy joy.

Oh love! thou enchanter So golden and bright, Like the red clouds of morning That rest on yon height, It is them that art clothing The fields and the bowers, And everywhere breathing The incense of flowers.

Looking back in old age to those happy days of youth, he saw in memory not only Frederica but the scenery around her. He said (_Wahrheit und Dichtung_): 'Her figure never looked more charming than when she was moving along a raised footpath; the charm of her bearing seemed to vie with the flowering ground, and the indestructible cheerfulness of her face with the blue sky.' In Alsace he wrote:

One has only to abandon oneself to the present in order to enjoy the charms of the sky, the glow of the rich earth, the mild evenings, the warm nights, at the side of one's love, or near her.

and one of the poems to Frederica says:

The world lies round me buried deep in mist, but In one glance of thine lies sunshine and happiness.

There is a strong pulse of life--life that overflows into Nature--in _The Departure_:

To horse! Away, o'er hill and steep, Into the saddle blithe I spring; The eve was cradling earth to sleep, And night upon the mountains hung.

With robes of mist around him set, The oak like some huge giant stood, While, with its hundred eyes of jet, Peer'd darkness from the tangled wood.

Amid a bank of clouds the moon A sad and troubled glimmer shed; The wind its chilly wings unclosed, And whistled wildly round my head.

Night framed a thousand phantoms dire, Yet did I never droop nor start; Within my veins what living fire!

What quenchless glow within my heart!

And very like it, though in a minor key, is the Elegy which begins, 'A tender, youthful trouble.'

He tells in _Wahrheit und Dichtung_ how he found comfort for his love troubles in Frankfort:

They were accustomed to call me, on account of wandering about the district, the 'wanderer.' In producing that calm for the mind, which I felt under the open sky, in the valleys, on the heights, in the fields, and in the woods, the situation of Frankfort was serviceable.... On the setting in of winter a new world was revealed to us, since I at once determined to skate....

For this new joyous activity we were also indebted to Klopstock, to his enthusiasm for this happy species of motion.... To pa.s.s a splendid Sunday thus on the ice did not satisfy us, we continued in movement late into the night.... The full moon rising from the clouds, over the wide nocturnal meadows which were frozen into fields of ice, the night breeze which rustled towards us on our course, the solemn thunder of the ice which sunk as the water decreased, the strange echo of our own movements, rendered the scenes of Ossian just present to our minds.

His attachment, to Lotte, stirred far deeper feelings than the earlier ones to Frederica and Lilli:

(If I, my own dear Lilli, loved thee not, How should I joy to view this scene so fair! And yet if I, sweet Lilli, loved thee not, Should I be happy here or anywhere?)

and drew him correspondingly nearer to Nature.

There is no book in any language which so lives and moves and has its being in Nature as _Werther_.[11] In _Wahrheit und Dichtung_ Goethe said of the 'strange element' in which _Werther_ was designed and written:

I sought to free myself internally from all that was foreign to me, to regard the external with love, and to allow all beings, from man downwards, as low as they were comprehensible, to act upon me, each after its own kind. Thus arose a wonderful affinity with the single objects of Nature, and a hearty concord, a harmony with the whole, so that every change, whether of place or region, or of the times of the day and year, or whatever else could happen, affected me in the deepest manner. The glance of the painter a.s.sociated itself with that of the poet; the beautiful rural landscape, animated by the pleasant river, increased my love of solitude and favoured my silent observations as they extended on all sides.

The strong influence of _La Nouvelle Heloise_ upon _Werther_ was very evident, but there was a marked difference between Goethe's feeling for Nature and Rousseau's. Rousseau had the painter's eye, but not the keen poetic vision.

Goethe's romances are pervaded by the penetrating quality peculiar to his nation, and by virtue of which in _Werther_, the outer world, the scenery, was not used as framework, but was always interwoven with the hero's mood. The contrast between culture and Nature is always marked in Rousseau, and his religion was deism; Goethe resolves Nature into feeling, and his religion was a growing pantheism. As a work of art, _Werther_ is excellent, _La Nouvelle Heloise_ is not.

Goethe used his hero's bearing towards Nature with marvellous effect to indicate the turns and changes of his moods, just as he indicated the threatening calamity and the growing apprehension of it by skilful stress laid upon some of her little traits--a faculty which only Theodore Storm among later poets has caught from him.

The growth of amorous pa.s.sion is portrayed as an elementary force, and the revolutionary element in the book really consists in the strength of this pa.s.sion and the a.s.sertion of its natural rights.

Everything artificial, forced, conventional, in thought, act, and feeling--and what at that time was not?--was repugnant to Werther; what he liked most of all was the simplicity of children and uneducated people.

Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it.