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.

II
GOETHE AND OPTIMISM

Goethe’s optimistic period—His mode of life in that period—Influence of love in artistic production—Inclinations towards the arts must be regarded as secondary sexual characters—Senile love of Goethe—Relation between genius and the sexual activities

The moral equilibrium of the great writer was not established once for all. In the course of his life, Goethe had several relapses into pessimism which, however, were ephemeral, and after which he became a man as complete and harmonious as was possible in the circumstances of his life. He reached a serene old age, and his activity did not relax until after his eightieth year, when he died.

As I have already said, Goethe realised the value of life in good time. Having become an optimist, he experienced the joy of existence and coveted as much of it as possible. When he was an old man, he declared that life, like the Sibylline books, became more valuable the fewer of them were left. There appeared in him a normal phase of human nature. The conditions under which he lived, however, were far from ideal. His health was indifferent. In his youth he suffered from severe hæmorrhage, probably tuberculous, and throughout his life he was subject to various more or less serious maladies, such as gout, colic, nephritis, and intestinal troubles. His habits were unwholesome. He was brought up in a region of vineyards, and in his youth he acquired the habit of drinking wine in quantities certainly harmful. This he himself realised, and when he was thirty-one years old, after he had acquired the instinct of life, he gave it serious attention. “I wish I could abstain from wine,” he wrote in his note-book. Some weeks later he wrote, “I now drink almost no wine.”[194]