In Strassburg under Herder’s[43] guidance, Goethe seems first to have read the works of Sterne. His life in Frankfurt during the interval between his two periods of university residence was not of a nature calculated to increase his acquaintance with current literature, and his studies did not lead to interest in literary novelty. This is his own statement in “Dichtung und Wahrheit.”[44] That Herder’s enthusiasm for Sterne was generous has already been shown by letters written in the few years previous to his sojourn in Strassburg. Letters written to Merck[45] (Strassburg, 1770–1771) would seem to show that then too Sterne still stood high in his esteem. Whatever the exact time of Goethe’s first acquaintance with Sterne, we know that he recommended the British writer to Jung-Stilling for the latter’s cultivation in letters.[46] Less than a year after Goethe’s departure from Strassburg, we find him reading aloud to the Darmstadt circle the story of poor Le Fevre from Tristram Shandy. This is reported in a letter, dated May 8, 1772, by Caroline Flachsland, Herder’s fiancée.[47] It is not evident whether they read Sterne in the original or in the translation of Zückert, the only one then available, unless possibly the reader gave a translation as he read. Later in the same letter, Caroline mentions the “Empfindsame Reisen,” possibly meaning Bode’s translation. She also records reading Shakespeare in Wieland’s rendering, but as she speaks later still of peeping into the English books which Herder had sent Merck, it is a hazardous thing to reason from her mastery of English at that time to the use of original or translation on the occasion of Goethe’s reading.
Contemporary criticism saw in the Martin of “Götz von Berlichingen” a likeness to Sterne’s creations;[48] and in the other great work of the pre-Weimarian period, in “Werther,” though no direct influence rewards one’s search, one must acknowledge the presence of a mental and emotional state to which Sterne was a contributor. Indeed Goethe himself suggests this relationship. Speaking of “Werther” in the “Campagne in Frankreich,”[49] he observes in a well-known passage that Werther did not cause the disease, only exposed it, and that Yorick shared in preparing the ground-work of sentimentalism on which “Werther” is built.
According to the quarto edition of 1837, the first series of letters from Switzerland dates from 1775, although they were not published till 1808, in the eleventh volume of the edition begun in 1806. Scherer, in his “History of German Literature,” asserts that these letters are written in imitation of Sterne, but it is difficult to see the occasion for such a statement. The letters are, in spite of all haziness concerning the time of their origin and Goethe’s exact purpose regarding them,[50] a “fragment of Werther’s travels” and are confessedly cast in a sentimental tone, which one might easily attribute to a Werther, in whom hyperesthesia has not yet developed to delirium, an earlier Werther. Yorick’s whim and sentiment are quite wanting, and the sensuousness, especially as pertains to corporeal beauty, is distinctly Goethean.
Goethe’s accounts of his own travels are quite free from the Sterne flavor; in fact he distinctly says that through the influence of the Sentimental Journey all records of journeys had been mostly given up to the feelings and opinions of the traveler, but that he, after his Italian journey, had endeavored to keep himself objective.[51]
Dr. Robert Riemann in his study of Goethe’s novels,[52] calls Friedrich in “Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre” a representative of Sterne’s humor, and he finds in Mittler in the “Wahlverwandtschaften” a union of seriousness and the comic of caricature, reminiscent of Sterne and Hippel. Friedrich is mercurial, petulant, utterly irresponsible, a creature of mirth and laughter, subject to unreasoning fits of passion. One might, in thinking of another character in fiction, designate Friedrich as faun-like. In all of this one can, however, find little if any demonstrable likeness to Sterne or Sterne’s creations. It is rather difficult also to see wherein the character of Mittler is reminiscent of Sterne. Mittler is introduced with the obvious purpose of representing certain opinions and of aiding the development of the story by his insistence upon them. He represents a brusque, practical kind of benevolence, and his eccentricity lies only in the extraordinary occupation which he has chosen for himself. Riemann also traces to Sterne, Fielding and their German followers, Goethe’s occasional use of the direct appeal to the reader. Doubtless Sterne’s example here was a force in extending this rhetorical convention.
It is claimed by Goebel[53] that Goethe’s “Homunculus,” suggested to the master partly by reading of Paracelsus and partly by Sterne’s mediation, is in some characteristics of his being dependent directly on Sterne’s creation. In a meeting of the “Gesellschaft für deutsche Litteratur,” November, 1896, Brandl expressed the opinion that Maria of Moulines was a prototype of Mignon in “Wilhelm Meister.”[54]
The references to Sterne in Goethe’s works, in his letters and conversations, are fairly numerous in the aggregate, but not especially striking relatively. In the conversations with Eckermann there are several other allusions besides those already mentioned. Goethe calls Eckermann a second Shandy for suffering illness without calling a physician, even as Walter Shandy failed to attend to the squeaking door-hinge.[55] Eckermann himself draws on Sterne for illustrations in Yorick’s description of Paris,[56] and on January 24, 1830, at a time when we know that Goethe was re-reading Sterne, Eckermann refers to Yorick’s (?) doctrine of the reasonable use of grief.[57] That Goethe near the end of his life turned again to Sterne’s masterpiece is proved by a letter to Zelter, October 5, 1830;[58] he adds here too that his admiration has increased with the years, speaking particularly of Sterne’s gay arraignment of pedantry and philistinism. But a few days before this, October 1, 1830, in a conversation reported by Riemer,[59] he expresses the same opinion and adds that Sterne was the first to raise himself and us from pedantry and philistinism. By these remarks Goethe commits himself in at least one respect to a favorable view of Sterne’s influence on German letters. A few other minor allusions to Sterne may be of interest. In an article in the Horen (1795, V. Stück,) entitled “Literarischer Sansculottismus,” Goethe mentions Smelfungus as a type of growler.[60] In the “Wanderjahre”[61] there is a reference to Yorick’s classification of travelers. Düntzer, in Schnorr’s Archiv,[62] explains a passage in a letter of Goethe’s to Johanna Fahlmer (August, 1775), “die Verworrenheiten des Diego und Juliens” as an allusion to the “Intricacies of Diego and Julia” in Slawkenbergius’s tale,[63] and to the traveler’s conversation with his beast. In a letter to Frau von Stein[64] five years later (September 18, 1780) Goethe used this same expression, and the editor of the letters avails himself of Düntzer’s explanation. Düntzer further explains the word θεοδοκος, used in Goethe’s Tagebuch with reference to the Duke, in connection with the term θεοδιδακτος applied to Walter Shandy. The word is, however, somewhat illegible in the manuscript. It was printed thus in the edition of the Tagebuch published by Robert Keil, but when Düntzer himself, nine years after the article in the Archiv, published an edition of the Tagebücher he accepted a reading θεοτατος,[65] meaning, as he says, “ein voller Gott,” thereby tacitly retracting his former theory of connection with Sterne.
The best known relationship between Goethe and Sterne is in connection with the so-called plagiarisms in the appendix to the third volume of the “Wanderjahre.” Here, in the second edition, were printed under the title “Aus Makariens Archiv” various maxims and sentiments. Among these were a number of sayings, reflections, axioms, which were later discovered to have been taken bodily from the second part of the Koran, the best known Sterne-forgery. Alfred Hédouin, in “Le Monde Maçonnique” (1863), in an article “Goethe plagiaire de Sterne,” first located the quotations.[66]
Mention has already been made of the account of Robert Springer, which is probably the last published essay on the subject. It is entitled “Ist Goethe ein Plagiarius Lorenz Sternes?” and is found in the volume “Essays zur Kritik und Philosophie und zur Goethe-Litteratur.”[67] Springer cites at some length the liberal opinions of Molière, La Bruyère, Wieland, Heine and others concerning the literary appropriation of another’s thought. He then proceeds to quote Goethe’s equally generous views on the subject, and adds the uncritical fling that if Goethe robbed Sterne, it was an honor to Sterne, a gain to his literary fame. Near the end of his paper, Springer arrives at the question in hand and states positively that these maxims, with their miscellaneous companions, were never published by Goethe, but were found by the editors of his literary remains among his miscellaneous papers, and then issued in the ninth volume of the posthumous works. Hédouin had suggested this possible explanation. Springer adds that the editors were unaware of the source of this material and supposed it to be original with Goethe.
The facts of the case are, however, as follows: “Wilhelm Meister’s Wanderjahre” was published first in 1821.[68] In 1829, a new and revised edition was issued in the “Ausgabe letzter Hand.” Eckermann in his conversations with Goethe[69] relates the circumstances under which the appendices were added to the earlier work. When the book was in press, the publisher discovered that of the three volumes planned, the last two were going to be too thin, and begged for more material to fill out their scantiness. In this perplexity Goethe brought to Eckermann two packets of miscellaneous notes to be edited and added to those two slender volumes. In this way arose the collection of sayings, scraps and quotations “Im Sinne der Wanderer” and “Aus Makariens Archiv.” It was later agreed that Eckermann, when Goethe’s literary remains should be published, should place the matter elsewhere, ordered into logical divisions of thought. All of the sentences here under special consideration were published in the twenty-third volume of the “Ausgabe letzter Hand,” which is dated 1830,[70] and are to be found there, on pages 271–275 and 278–281. They are reprinted in the identical order in the ninth volume of the “Nachgelassene Werke,” which also bore the title, Vol. XLIX of “Ausgabe letzter Hand,” there found on pages 121–125 and 127–131. Evidently Springer found them here in the posthumous works, and did not look for them in the previous volume, which was published two years or thereabouts before Goethe’s death.