Life of Johann Wolfgang Goethe

by James Sime

In working out his conception Goethe did not consider it necessary to adhere strictly to the facts of history. He makes Goetz die immediately after the Peasants’ War, whereas in reality he lived nearly forty years afterwards, and distinguished himself in Charles V.’s wars with the French and the Turks. This, however, need not disturb any one in the enjoyment of the play, which is to be judged as a work of art without reference to the actual events which it in part reproduces.

“Goetz” is as far as possible from being a faultless play. Goethe tried to conceive it in the spirit of Shakespeare’s historical dramas, but at this early period he had not sufficient mastery of his intellectual resources to be able to give, as Shakespeare gives, unity of design to the representation of a complicated series of incidents. The forces called into exercise have in some instances only an accidental connection with one another; they are not combined so as to produce the impression of a complete and harmonious process of development. Nevertheless, the work is unmistakably a creation of genius. It brings before us in grandly sweeping outlines, and in bold, vivid colours all the leading elements of the national life of Germany in the early part of the sixteenth century. The characters live and breathe, and their language—fresh, vigorous, and animated—is that which we should expect to hear from them in real life. Goetz himself is an admirable type of a just and fearless warrior. He has not, indeed, any large conception of the issues towards which his age is moving, but in the midst of debasing influences he knows how to maintain the purity of his own impulses, and how to strike boldly and strongly in defence of ideas of which he makes himself a champion. Rough in manner, and a lover of plain speech, he is at heart tender and humane; and in the most difficult circumstances, when a character less simple and direct might be liable to gross misconstruction, there can be no doubt as to the honesty and dignity of his motives. Men of this noble mould—frank, unconventional, and true—were never more needed than in Goethe’s own day, and one of the objects of the play was to suggest that if they were possible in the sixteenth, they could not be impossible in the eighteenth century.

A love-story is interwoven with the presentation of Goetz’s activity; and from the point of view of art this is perhaps the best part of the drama. Weislingen, a young and brilliant statesman at the corrupt court of the Bishop of Bamberg, is taken prisoner by Goetz. He falls in love with the knight’s sister, Maria, and his love is returned. When, however, he goes back to the Bishop’s court, pledged to support no undertaking against Goetz or his friends, he is overcome by the wiles of Adelheid, a subtle, cruel, and fascinating woman, who understands thoroughly the essential weakness of his character. She professes to love him, and becomes his wife, and in the end he is poisoned by his servant, who acts as her agent. Weislingen and Adelheid are genuinely dramatic figures, and the character of Maria, simple, affectionate, and loyal, is not less finely conceived. It was Frederika Brion he was thinking of when he depicted Weislingen’s love for, and desertion of, Maria. When the play was published, he sent a copy to Salzmann, with a request that it should be forwarded to Sesenheim. “Poor Frederika,” he wrote, “will be to some extent consoled when the unfaithful one is poisoned.”

The play was printed by Merck, who had started a printing establishment of his own; and in the summer of 1773 it was published. The enthusiasm it awakened far surpassed Goethe’s anticipations. Hitherto the unities of the French classic drama had been rigidly respected in the drama of Germany. Lessing had fought hard to show that they are not essential to a great work of art, but in his own plays he had not cared to violate them. The author of “Goetz” had wholly ignored them, daring to think rather of the vitality of his characters than of the conditions of a well-rounded scheme. To some critics of the older generation the play seemed almost grotesquely extravagant, but the younger men hailed it as a glorious symptom of the uprising of a new and adventurous spirit of liberty. A man of genius, putting aside conventions and artificialities, had gone straight to reality for inspiration, and had uttered a word that delivered them, as they thought, from the necessity of submitting not only to the unities, but to any kind of artistic law. A school of writers was formed, all of whom looked to Goethe as their chief. Prominent among them was Klinger, a native of Frankfort, the title of one of whose plays, “Sturm und Drang,” was afterwards accepted as the name of the period in which it was produced. Lenz, whom Goethe had known at Strasburg, and who, after Goethe’s departure, had tried to win the affections of Frederika Brion, was another member of the group. These young writers had plenty of ambition and vigour, but they mistook eccentricity for originality, sentimentalism for passion, noisy declamation for poetry, and not a shred of interest now attaches to their productions, except as documents which throw light on a curious phase of literary history.

After the publication of his play, Goethe became one of the “lions” of Frankfort, and had to endure the visits of innumerable strangers who wished to make his acquaintance. He acquired confidence in his own genius, and did not doubt that he would be able to justify the highest expectations formed as to his future work. He was universally liked, for he had all the good qualities with which he had endowed Goetz, and his friends found that there was always something exhilarating in his frank and brilliant talk. Yet at this time he was passing through a period of deep depression. It was not connected with any particular misfortune, nor was it due to love for Lotte, for Kestner and she were now husband and wife, and Goethe thought of her only as a friend. His unhappiness sprang wholly from spiritual causes. He had longings which the actual world seemed to be incapable of satisfying, and the more he reflected on life, and sought to comprehend its meaning, the more he was oppressed by the old, old mysteries that have baffled and saddened so many a noble mind. Sometimes the idea of suicide suggested itself, and in his autobiography he has described how he laid a dagger by his bed-side, and before putting out the light tried whether he could not pierce his breast.

In the autumn of 1773, the marriage of Cornelia and Schlosser took place, and they quitted Frankfort, ultimately settling in Emmendingen. This was a severe blow to Goethe, for communion with his sister had been to him a constant source of consolation, and in her absence he was driven in, more than ever, upon himself. A little later in the year he heard with pleasure that he would soon have frequent opportunities of seeing Maximiliane Laroche, who, although still only a young girl, was about to be married to a Frankfort merchant, an Italian called Brentano. The marriage was not a happy one, and proved to be for Goethe a new cause of trouble. Feeling for Maximiliane, both for her own sake and for her mother’s (whom he always addressed as “Mamma”), a sincere brotherly affection, he often called upon her, and did what he could to make her life in Frankfort tolerable. Brentano was of a furiously jealous disposition, and, misunderstanding these visits, one day grossly insulted Goethe. Violently agitated, Goethe declined to enter the house again, and, for a long time, saw Maximiliane only when he met her at the play or elsewhere accidentally.

It was always Goethe’s habit, when burdened by any feeling, to liberate himself by means of some imaginative effort; and now he felt that the time had come for this mode of relief. He had not to choose a subject, for the plan of a romance had already taken firm possession of his mind. Towards the end of 1772 he had heard of the suicide of Jerusalem, a young secretary of legation at Wetzlar, with whom he had had a slight acquaintance both there and at Leipsic. Jerusalem had loved a married woman, and in a moment of despair had shot himself with a pistol borrowed from Kestner. Goethe, after the first shock of the tidings was past, decided to give an imaginative presentation of the tale, but in the early part to substitute for Jerusalem’s experiences, about which he had only general information, the story of his own love for Lotte. From time to time the execution of the scheme was put off, but when driven by an imperious impulse to give form to the conceptions by which he was haunted, he accomplished his task with almost feverish haste. The work was ended about the beginning of March, 1774, and the greater part of it was written during the preceding month. The figures of the romance stood out before him in sharply-cut outlines, and their story flowed freely from his pen, because in reality it was the story of his own inmost life. He called it “Die Leiden des jungen Werthers” (“The Sufferings of Young Werther”).

The work consists of a series of letters written by Werther, and some explanatory statements made by the editor. In his conception of the tale, and in his choice of form, Goethe was deeply indebted both to Richardson and to Rousseau, but especially to Rousseau, the spirit of whose “La Nouvelle Héloïse” breathes in every line of “Werther.” “La Nouvelle Héloïse,” however, is a book of the past, interesting only to students of literature and of the history of ideas, whereas “Werther” is still alive, and can never wholly lose its freshness.

Werther has many qualities that excite interest and sympathy. He has a deep vein of poetry; Nature appeals to him strongly; he is an enthusiast for the best literature; and he is always generous to the poor and the distressed. But he is incapable of manly decision, and on the slightest provocation he sheds floods of tears, secretly proud of his sensibility as a mark of a superior type of character. When the story opens, he is in a little provincial town, whither he has gone to see about a legacy left to his mother. He is not discontented, for in Homer and Ossian he has the kind of companionship he loves, and in the surrounding country there are exquisite views which he is never tired of admiring and sketching. Suddenly he meets Lotte, and his whole being is transformed. In her are realized all the dreams he has ever had of womanly loveliness and charm. She does not glide into his affections; the moment he sees her—with the children, for whom she cuts the “Abendbrod,” clamouring around her—she becomes the supreme object of his devotion. To be in her presence is ecstasy. It is of her that all things in Nature speak to him, and he has no thought, no wish but to serve her. She is already betrothed, but her lover is from home, and as long as he is absent Werther thinks little about him, and lives in a world all glowing with the light reflected from his own happiness.

By and by Albert, the accepted lover, returns, and now for the first time Werther realizes that Lotte is beyond his reach. He suffers unspeakable tortures, and knows not where to turn for relief. Deep in his heart, before he ever saw Lotte, the seeds of morbid growths had been implanted, and in his wretchedness they spring up in rank luxuriance. All life becomes hateful to him. Nowhere can he find anything that does not seem to bear the mark of some primæval curse. Even Nature, in communion with which he has so often felt bounding delight, takes on the aspect of a devouring monster. Her forces are pitiless; and he himself, full of tender compassion, cannot move without crushing some helpless creature under his feet. Against the very essence of things he rises in revolt. Thinking of what life may mean, he feels that he is standing on the edge of an abyss, and he looks with horror into its black depths.