Part VIII — Goethe and Faust
I Goethe’s Youth
Goethe’s youth—Pessimism of youth—Werther—Tendency to suicide—Work and love—Goethe’s conception of life in his maturity
There can be drawn from analysis of the lives of great men information that is very important in the study of the constitution of man. I have chosen Goethe for several reasons. He was a man of genius distinguished by the comprehensive character of his ability. He was a poet and dramatist of the highest rank, his mind was stored with the most varied knowledge, and he contributed to the advancement of natural science. As minister of state and as the director of a theatre, he was occupied with practical affairs. He reached the age of eighty-three years, and he passed through the phases of life in relatively normal circumstances; in his many writings there are most valuable facts which throw a keen light on his life and nature. The Goethe cult in Germany has brought about the existence of fuller biographical details than exist regarding any other great man. He aspired to lead “the higher life,” and, throughout his existence, he occupied himself with the most serious problems of humanity.
It is not surprising that Goethe became a subject of investigation for me, but as the main facts as to his history are widely known I need not elaborate them here.
Goethe was reared in circumstances that were favourable in every respect, and from his earliest years showed remarkable traits. As his memory was good and his imagination vast, the study of ancient and modern languages and the routine curriculum of a classical education were little more than an amusement to him. The rich library of his father placed all sorts of books at his disposal, and whilst he was still young he devoted himself to reading with the enthusiasm and passion that were the chief qualities of his character. When he was fifteen years old he began to write verses, although he was still unconscious of his destiny as a poet. He intended to be a learned man, and looked forward to the career of a professor.
At the age of sixteen, he entered the University of Leipzig with the intention of studying natural science seriously. Law and philosophy interested him but little; he turned to natural science and medicine, although his actual study was rather superficial. His disposition was lively and restless; he made many friends, frequented the theatre and plunged into all kinds of gaiety. Extracts from letters he wrote during this period show the kind of life he led. When he was a student, eighteen years old, he wrote to a friend, “And so good-night; I am drunk as a hog.” A month later, to the same friend, he summed up his life as a “delirium in the arms of Jetty.”
He graduated in law at Strassburg, and became a barrister, but realising that such a career was unsuitable, he became a man of letters, encouraged by the success of his first literary efforts.
From the point of view of a writer, he sought all kinds of experiences. He devoted himself to literature and science, including even the occult sciences, and frequented the theatre and society. He was specially attracted by the imaginative side and gave little thought to the problems of science. “I must have movement,” he wrote in one of his note-books.
When he was young, his temper was violent and he fell into fits of passionate rage. His contemporaries have related that when he was in such a condition he would destroy the illustrations and tear up the books on his work-table. These experiences have been vividly described in his famous romance, The Sorrows of Werther. I shall give a few extracts to show the exact state of mind of the young pessimist. “It is the fate of some men not to be understood.” “Human life is a dream; I am not the first to say that, but the idea haunts me. When I reflect on the narrow limits which circumscribe the powers of man, his activities and intelligence; when I see how we exhaust our forces in satisfying our wants and that these wants are for no more than the prolongation of a miserable existence; that our acquiescence in so much is merely resignation engendered by dreams, like that of a prisoner who has covered the walls of his cell with pictures and new landscapes; such things, my friend, plunge me into silence.” “Our learned teachers all agree that children do not know why they have desires; but that grown men should move on the earth like children, and, like these, be ignorant whence they have come and whither they go, like these strive little for real things, but be ruled by cakes and sweets and rods; no one will believe such things, though their truth is patent. I admit readily (for I know what you will say) that they are the happiest men who live from day to day like children, who play with their dolls, dress them and undress them, who reverence the cupboard where mamma keeps the gingerbread, and who, when they have got what they wish, cry, with their mouths full, ‘How happy we are!’”
Werther proclaimed his pessimism before his romance with Charlotte, and it was his view of life that made his love-affair turn out unhappily. But the fame of Goethe’s Werther was due, not to the tragic fate of the young lover, but to the general views which were in harmony with the conception of the world held by the best minds of the time. Byronism was born before Byron.
Werther affords a good illustration of the disharmonies in the development of man’s psychical nature. Inclination and desires develop extremely strongly and before will. Just as in the development of the reproductive functions, as I showed in The Nature of Man, the different factors develop unequally and unharmoniously, so there is inequality and disharmony in the order of the appearance of the higher psychical faculties. Sexual appreciation and a vague attraction to the other sex appear at a time when there can be no possibility of the normal physical side of sex, with the result that many evils come about in the long period of youth. The precocious development of sensibility brings about a kind of diffused hyperæsthesia which may lead to trouble. The infant wishes to lay hold of everything he sees before him; he stretches out his arms to grasp the moon and suffers from his inability to gratify his desires. In youth there is still well-marked disharmony. Young people cannot realise the true relations of things, and formulate their desires before they understand that their will-power is not strong enough to gratify them, as will is the latest of the human powers to develop.
Werther fell in love with a kindred spirit and gave way to his passion without consideration of the difficulties, Charlotte being already betrothed to another. This is the plot of the tragedy of the young man, who committed suicide, having given way to pessimism. He had not the will-power to conquer his sentiments and so fell into a state of lassitude, until, weary of life, he could see no other end than to blow out his brains.
I need not linger over the last phase of the story of Werther, for it is the character of Goethe himself that is of interest. Goethe was able to subdue his passion for Lotte, and, after many amorous woes, consoled himself with another woman. Notwithstanding this difference, it is certain that in Werther, Goethe was telling part of the story of his own youth. Goethe himself is a witness to this, for in a letter to Kestner he wrote that “he was at work on the artistic reproduction of his own case.” The letter was written in July, 1773, whilst Goethe, then a writer twenty-four years old, was relating the sorrows of young Werther.
The general tendency of Werther has been described excellently by Carlyle.190 “Werther,” he wrote, “is but the cry of that dim, rooted pain, under which all thoughtful men of a certain age were languishing; it paints the misery, it passionately utters the complaint; and heart and voice, all over Europe, loudly and at once responded to it.” Werther was “the first thrilling peal of that impassioned dirge which, in country after country, men’s ears have listened to, till they were deaf to all else.”
In the pessimistic period of his life, Goethe often cherished the idea of suicide. In his biography he relates that at this time he used to have, by his bedside, a poisoned dagger, and that he had repeatedly tried to plunge it in his bosom. Of these times he wrote to his friend Zelter191—“I know what it has cost me in effort to resist the waves of death.” The suicide which was the subject of the end of his romance made a deep impression upon him. Although he overcame his passion for Charlotte, his view of life remained tinged with pessimism for many years; in a note-book of 1773, for instance, he wrote “I am not made for this world.”192 These words are the more striking as they date from a period when exact ideas regarding the adaptation of the organism and the character to the environment did not exist. Goethe, with his too delicate sensibility, felt himself out of harmony with his environment.
It is very interesting to trace Goethe’s subsequent development and the transformation of a youthful pessimist into a convinced optimist. Goethe found a remedy for his crises of grief in work, poetical creation and love. He declared that the mere describing his woes on paper brought assuagement. The tears that they shed console women and children; and the poetry in which he expresses his suffering consoles the poet. Goethe’s romance with Charlotte was not quite at an end when he found himself ready to love her sister Helen. He wrote to Kestner in December, 1772:—“I was about to ask you if Helen had arrived, when I got the letter telling me of her return.” “To judge from her portrait she must be charming, even more charming than Charlotte. Well, I am free and I am thirsting for love.” “I am here at Frankfort again with new plans and new dreams, and all will be well if I find someone to love.” Soon afterwards, in another letter to Kestner, he wrote:—“Tell Charlotte that I have found here a girl whom I love with all my heart; if I wanted to marry, I should choose her before anyone else.”
As he had not yet realised his true vocation, Goethe became a court minister at Weimar. He devoted himself to his duties with an enthusiasm that carried him far beyond the usual affairs of state. He wished to deepen his knowledge of such administrative problems as the construction of roads and the management of mines, and he studied geology and mineralogy with a real zest. Forest administration and agriculture led him seriously into botany, and as he had the direction of a school of design, he thought it necessary to learn anatomy. Such varied work gave him a real taste for science. It was no longer the superficial interest that characterised his work at Leipzig and Strassburg but a true devotion which led him to important discoveries, some of which have become classic.
Even such varied occupations did not absorb his prodigious genius. In his leisure he wrote poetry and prose. Engrossed in so much work, he was happy. His discovery of the human intermaxillary bone suffused him with joy. His intense activity was strengthened by his love for Madame von Stein, a love that he declared was “a life-belt supporting him in the sea.” A few hours with her in the evenings set free his soul.
The powerful influence of love on the life of Goethe was specially prominent in this period when he was passing from pessimistic youth to optimistic maturity. Being forced to separate from Madame von Stein, he gave way to grief that plunged him again in the worst hours of his life. At the age of thirty-seven he fell back into a crisis like that of the days of Werther. “I have discovered,” he said in 1786, “that the author of Werther would have done well to blow out his brains when he had finished his work.” Soon afterwards he wrote that “death would have been better than the last years of his life.”
This relapse into pessimism was shorter and less acute than his first experience. He began to find that frequently his delight in existence and sense of life were proved by his fear of death. When he was little more than thirty years old, he began to take precautions against the chance of his death. He wrote to Lavater:—“I have no time to lose; I am already getting on in years, and it may be that fate will destroy me in the midst of my life.” On all sides his wish to live and his shrinking from death reveal themselves. It was at this time, a few days after his thirty-first birthday, that he wrote those famous lines, counted amongst the finest of his poetry, on the summit of the Gickelhahn, on the wall of a small room, and which end with the presentiment of his own death, “Before long, you also will be at rest.”
The crisis through which he passed at the age of thirty-seven, as the immediate result of his separation from Madame von Stein, but perhaps also partly due to brain fatigue, brought about his sudden departure from Weimar and his long sojourn in Italy. There he came to life again, and everything interested him, archæology, art and nature. The joy of life came back to him, and he soon consoled himself for the lost love of the blue-stocking Baroness in the arms of a pretty, blue-eyed girl of Milan. This girl, whose name was Maddalena Riggi, like Charlotte, was already betrothed, a circumstance, however, that had a different result. Even after she had given up the man to whom she had been engaged, Goethe avoided any permanent bond and soon abandoned her definitely. He chose to associate with Faustine, another Italian girl, with whom he lived during the last period of his stay at Rome. This affair, which was less ideal and much simpler than his love for Madame von Stein, he has described in his Roman Elegies, which throw a vivid light on his temperament. I shall give some characteristic extracts.
“A sacred enthusiasm inspires me on this classic soil; the old world and the world around me raise their voices and draw me to them. Here I follow the ideas and turn over the pages of the ancient writers, giving myself no rest whilst day lasts and ever reaching new delights. By night love calls me to other cares; and if I am only half a philosopher, I am twice happy. But may I not say that I am also learning when my eye follows the contours of a loving breast, when with my hand I trace the lines of her form? It is then that I understand marble, I think and compare, I see with an eye that touches and touch with a hand that sees.” “Often I have made verses in her arms; often my playful finger has softly beaten out my hexameters on her back. As she breathes in her sweet sleep, her breath burns me to my innermost soul.”193
His stay in Italy brought Goethe definitely to maturity. On this important stage in his life let us hear his biographer, Bielschowsky. “The voyage to Italy made a new man of him. His sickliness and nervousness disappeared. The melancholy which led him to think of early death and made him regard death as better than the former conditions of his life was replaced by a sublime serenity and joy in living. The taciturn and preoccupied man who in no society abandoned his grave thoughts had become happy as a child” (vol. i, p. 412). “From this time on, in calm and enviable security, he passed through the cycle of life which seemed so mysterious to others. Goethe became the serene Olympian, the wonder of posterity, whilst many of his contemporaries no longer saw in him the passionate pilgrim” (ibid., p. 417).
It was after reaching the age of forty years that Goethe entered on the optimistic phase of his life.