MY JOURNEY TO WEIMAR[64]
TRANSLATED BY ALFRED REMY, A.M.
Professor of Modern Languages. Brooklyn Commercial High School.
A journey is an excellent remedy for a perplexed state of mind. This time the goal of my journey was to be Germany. The German geniuses had, indeed, almost all departed from this life, but there was still one living, Goethe, and the idea of speaking with him or even of merely seeing him made me happy in anticipation. I never was, as was the fashion at that time, a blind worshipper of Goethe, any more than I was of any other one poet. True poetry seemed to me to lie where they met on common ground; their individual characteristics lent them, on the one hand, the charm of individuality, while, on the other hand, they shared the general propensity of mankind to err. Goethe, in particular, had, since the death of Schiller, turned his attention from poetry to science. By distributing his talents over too many fields, he deteriorated in each; his latest poetic productions were tepid or cool, and when, for the sake of pose, he turned to the classical, his poetry became affected. The impassiveness which he imparted to that period contributed perhaps more than anything else to the decadence of poetry, inasmuch as it opened the door to the subsequent coarseness of Young Germany, of popular poetry, and of the Middle-high German trash. The public was only too glad to have once again something substantial to feed upon. Nevertheless, Goethe is one of the greatest poets of all time, and the father of our poetry. Klopstock gave the first impulse, Lessing blazed the trail, Goethe followed it. Perhaps Schiller means more to the German nation, for a people needs strong, sweeping impressions; Goethe, however, appears to be the greater poet. He fills an entire page in the development of the human mind, while Schiller stands midway between Racine and Shakespeare. Little as I sympathized with Goethe's most recent activity, and little as I could expect him to consider the author of The Ancestress and The Golden Fleece worthy of any consideration, in view of the dispassionate quietism which he affected at the time, I nevertheless felt that the mere sight of him would be sufficient to inspire me with new courage. Dormit puer, non mortuus est. (The boy sleeps, he is not dead.)
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At last I arrived in Weimar and took quarters in "The Elephant," a hostelry at that time famous throughout Germany and the ante-room, as it were, to the living Valhalla of Weimar. From there I dispatched the waiter with my card to Goethe, inquiring whether he would receive me. The waiter returned with the answer that His Excellency, the Privy-councilor, was entertaining some guests and could not, therefore, receive me at the moment. He would expect me in the evening for tea.
I dined at the hotel. My name had become known through my card and the report of my presence spread through the town, so that I made many acquaintances.
Toward evening I called on Goethe. In the reception-room I found quite a large assemblage waiting for His Excellency, the Privy-councilor, who had not yet made his appearance. Among these there was a court councilor, Jacob or Jacobs, with his daughter, whom Goethe had entertained at dinner. The daughter, who later won a literary reputation under the pseudonym of Talvj, was as young as she was beautiful, and as beautiful as she was cultured, and so I soon lost my timidity and in my conversation with the charming young lady almost forgot that I was in Goethe's house. At last a side door opened, and he himself entered. Dressed in black, the star[65] on his breast, with erect, almost stiff bearing, he stepped among us with the air of a monarch granting an audience. He exchanged a few words with one and another of his guests, and finally crossed the room and addressed me. He inquired whether Italian literature was cultivated to any great extent in our country. I told him, which was a fact, that the Italian language was, indeed, widely known, since all officials were required to learn it; Italian literature, on the other hand, was completely neglected; the fashion was rather to turn to English literature, which, despite its excellence, had an admixture of coarseness that seemed to me to be anything but advantageous to the present state of German culture, especially of poetry. Whether my opinion pleased him or not, I have no means of knowing; I am almost inclined to believe it did not, inasmuch as he was at that very time in correspondence with Lord Byron. He left me, talked with others, returned, conversed I no longer remember on what subjects, finally withdrew, and we were dismissed.
I confess that I returned to the hostelry in a most unpleasant frame of mind. It was not that my vanity had been offended—on the contrary, Goethe had treated me more kindly and more attentively than I had anticipated—but to see the ideal of my youth, the author of Faust, Clavigo, and Egmont, in the rôle of a formal minister presiding at tea brought me down from my celestial heights. Had his manner been rude or had he shown me the door, it would have pleased me better. I almost repented having gone to Weimar.
Consequently I determined to devote the following day to sightseeing, and ordered horses at the inn for the day following. On the morning of the next day visitors of all sorts put in an appearance, among them the amiable and respected Chancellor Müller, and, above all, my fellow-countryman Hummel, who for many years had been occupying the position of musical director in Weimar. He had left Vienna before my poetry had attracted attention, so that we had not become acquainted with each other. It was almost touching to witness the joy with which this ordinarily unsociable man greeted me and took possession of me. In the first place I probably revived in him memories of his native city, which he had left with reluctance; then, too, it probably gave him satisfaction to find his literary countryman honored and respected in Weimar, where he heard nothing but disparaging opinions regarding the intellectual standing of Austria. And, finally, he had an opportunity of conversing with a Viennese in his home dialect, which he had preserved pure and unadulterated while living among people who spoke quite differently. I do not know whether it was the contrast, or whether this really was the worst German I had ever heard in my life. While we were planning to visit some points of interest in Weimar, and while Chancellor Müller, who had probably noticed my depression, was assuring me that Goethe's formality was nothing but the embarrassment always displayed by him on meeting a stranger for the first time, the waiter entered and handed me a card containing an invitation from Goethe to dine with him the next day. I therefore had to prolong my stay and to countermand the order for the horses. The morning was passed in visiting the places that had become famous through their literary associations. Schiller's house interested me most of all, and I was especially delighted to find in the poet's study, really an attic-room in the second story, an old man who is said to have acted as prompter at the theatre in Schiller's time, teaching his grandson to read. The little boy's open and intelligently animated expression prompted the illusion that out of Schiller's study a new Schiller might some day emerge—an illusion which, to be sure, has not been realized.
The exact order of events is now confused in my mind. I believe it was on this first day that I dined with Hummel en famille. There I found his wife, formerly the pretty singer, Miss Röckel, whom I could well remember in page's attire and close-fitting silk tights. Now she was an efficient, respected housewife, who vied with her husband in amiability. I felt myself strongly drawn to the whole family and, in spite of his rather mechanical disposition, I honored and venerated Hummel as the last genuine pupil of Mozart.
In the evening I attended the theatre with Chancellor Müller, where an unimportant play was being given, in which, however, Graff, Schiller's first Wallenstein, had a rôle. I saw nothing particularly remarkable in him, and when I was told that, after the first performance, Schiller had rushed upon the stage, embraced Graff, and exclaimed that now for the first time did he understand his Wallenstein, I thought to myself—how much greater might the great poet have become had he ever known a public and real actors! It is remarkable, by the way, that Schiller, who is not at bottom very objective, lends himself so perfectly to an objective representation. He became figurative, while believing himself to be only eloquent—one more proof of his incomparable genius. In Goethe we find the exact opposite. While he is ordinarily called objective and is so to a great extent, his characters lose in the actual representation. His figurativeness is only for the imagination; in the representation the delicate, poetic tinge is necessarily lost. However, these are reflections for another time; they do not belong here.
At last the momentous day with its dinner-hour arrived, and I went to Goethe. The other guests, all of them men, were already assembled, the charming Talvj having departed with her father the morning after the tea-party and Goethe's daughter-in-law being absent from Weimar at the time. To the latter and to her daughter, who died when quite young, I later became very much attached. As I advanced into the room Goethe came toward me, and was now as amiable and cordial as he had recently been formal and cold. I was deeply moved. When we went in to dinner, and Goethe, who had become for me the embodiment of German Poetry and, because of the immeasurable distance between us, almost a mythological being, took my hand to lead me into the dining-room, the boy in me manifested itself once again and I burst into tears. Goethe took great pains to conceal my foolish emotion. I sat next to him at dinner and he was more cheerful and talkative than he had been for a long time, as the guests asserted later. The conversation, enlivened by him, became general, but Goethe frequently turned to me individually. However, I cannot recall what he said, except a good joke regarding Müllner's Midnight Journal. Unfortunately I made no notes concerning this journey, or, rather, I did begin a diary, but as the accident I had in Berlin made it at first impossible for me to write and later difficult, a great gap ensued. This deterred me from continuing it, and, besides, the difficulty of writing remained, even in Weimar. I therefore determined to fill in what was lacking immediately after my return to Vienna, while the events were still fresh in my memory. But when I arrived there some other work demanded immediate attention, and the matter soon escaped my mind; and therefore I retained in my memory nothing but general impressions of what I had almost called the most important moment of my life. Only one occurrence at dinner stands out in my memory—namely, in the ardor of the conversation I yielded to an old habit of breaking up the piece of bread beside me into unsightly crumbs. Goethe lightly touched each individual crumb with his finger and arranged them in a little symmetrical heap. Only after the lapse of some time did I notice this, and then I discontinued my handiwork.
As I was taking my leave, Goethe requested me to come the next morning and have myself sketched, for he was in the habit of having drawings made of those of his visitors who interested him. They were done in black crayon by an artist especially engaged for the work, and the pictures were then put into a frame which hung in the reception-room for this purpose, being changed in regular rotation every week. This honor was also bestowed upon me.
When I arrived the next morning the artist had not yet appeared; I was therefore directed to Goethe, who was walking up and down in his little garden. The cause of his stiff bearing before strangers now became clear to me. The years had not passed without leaving some traces. As he walked about in the garden, one could see that the upper part of his body, his head and shoulders, were bent slightly forward. This he wished to hide from strangers, and hence that forced straightening-up which produced an unpleasant impression. The sight of him in this unaffected carriage, wearing a long dressing-gown, a small skull-cap on his white hair, had something infinitely touching about it. He looked like a king, and again like a father. We walked up and down, engaged in conversation. He mentioned my Sappho and seemed to think well of it, thus in a way praising himself, for I had followed fairly closely in his footsteps. When I complained of my isolated position in Vienna he remarked what we have since read in his printed works, that man can do efficient work only in the company of likeminded or congenial spirits. If he and Schiller had attained universal recognition, they owed it largely to this stimulating and supplementing reciprocal influence.
In the meantime the artist had arrived. We entered the house and I was sketched. Goethe had gone into his room, whence he emerged from time to time to satisfy himself as to the progress of the picture, which pleased him when completed. When the artist had departed Goethe had his son bring in some of his choicest treasures. There was his correspondence with Lord Byron; everything relating to his acquaintance with the Empress and the Emperor of Austria at Karlsbad; and finally the imperial Austrian copyright of his collected works. This latter he seemed to value very highly, either because he liked the conservative attitude of Austria, or because he regarded it as an oddity in contradistinction to the usual policy pursued in literary matters by this country. These treasures were wrapped separately in half-oriental fashion in pieces of silk, Goethe handling them with reverence. At last I was most graciously dismissed.
In the course of the day Chancellor Müller suggested my visiting Goethe toward evening; he would be alone, and my visit would by no means be unwelcome to him. Not until later did it occur to me that Müller could not have made the suggestion without Goethe's knowledge.
Now I committed my second blunder in Weimar. I was afraid to be alone with Goethe for an entire evening, and after considerable vacillation decided not to go. Several elements combined to produce this fear. In the first place, it seemed to me that there was nothing within the whole range of my intellect worthy of being displayed before Goethe. Secondly, it was not until later that I learned to place the proper value upon my own works by comparing them with those of my contemporaries, the former appearing exceedingly crude and insignificant in contrast with the works of my predecessors, especially here in the home of German poetry. Finally, as I stated before, I had left Vienna with the feeling that my poetic talent had completely exhausted itself, a feeling which was intensified in Weimar to the point of actual depression. It seemed to me an utterly unworthy proceeding to fill Goethe's ears with lamentations and to listen to words of encouragement for which there seemed to be no guarantee of fulfilment.
Yet there was some method in this madness after all. Goethe's aversion at that time for anything violent and forced was well known to me. Now I was of the opinion that calmness and deliberation are appropriate only to one who is capable of introducing such a wealth of thought into his works as Goethe has done in his Iphigenia and Tasso. At the same time I held the opinion that every one must emphasize those qualities with which he is most strongly endowed, and these in my case were at that time warmth of feeling and vividness of imagination. Occupying, as I then did, the viewpoint of impartial observation, I felt that I was far too weak to defend against Goethe the causes of such divergence from his own views, and I had far too much reverence for him to accept his exposition with pretended approval or in hypocritical silence.
At all events I did not go, and that displeased Goethe. He had good cause to feel astonished that I should display such indifference to the proffered opportunity of enlightening him concerning my works and myself; or else he came nearer to the truth, and imagined that The Ancestress and my predilection for similar effusions, which were repugnant to him, were not entirely quenched within me; or perhaps he divined my entire mood, and concluded that an unmanly character was bound to ruin even a great talent. From that time on he was much colder toward me.
But as far as this unmanliness is concerned, I confess, as I have previously done, to falling a prey to this weakness whenever I find myself confronted with a confused mass of sensations of lesser importance, especially with goodwill, reverence, and gratitude. Whenever I was able to define the opposing factors sharply to myself in the rejection of the bad as well as in the perseverance in a conviction, I displayed both before and after this period a firmness which, indeed, might even be called obstinacy. But in general it may safely be asserted: Only the union of character and talent produces what is called genius.
On one of these days I was also commanded to appear before the grand duke, whom I met in all his simplicity and unaffectedness in the so-called Roman House. He conversed with me for over an hour, and my description of Austrian conditions seemed to interest him. Not he, but most of the others, hinted at the desire of acquiring my services for the Weimar theatre—a desire that did not coincide with my own inclination.
When on the fourth day of my stay I paid my farewell visit to Goethe, he was friendly, but somewhat reserved. He expressed astonishment at my leaving Weimar so soon, and added that they would all be glad to hear from me occasionally. "They," then, would be glad, not he. Even in later years he did not do me justice, for I do consider myself the best poet that has appeared after him and Schiller, in spite of the gulf that separates me from them. That all this did not lessen my love and reverence for him, I need scarcely say.
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