In his literary work his progress was less rapid than he had expected. He was able, however, to achieve some important results. Among his papers was an unfinished prose drama, “Egmont,” which dated from about the time when he had written “Stella.” He had often thought of completing it at Weimar, but had never accomplished his purpose. Now he gave the play its final form, partly re-casting it; but re-writing it, as originally planned, in prose. He also improved the less important works, “Erwin and Elmire” and “Claudine von Villa Bella.”
Another of his papers, frayed at the edges and grey with age, was “Faust,” in the form in which he had taken it from Frankfort to Weimar. It was hard for him, after so long an interval, to take up this work at the point at which he had left it. On the 1st of March, 1788, however, he wrote that he had “found the thread again,” and that “the plan for ‘Faust’ was made.” At Rome he wrote “Die Hexenküche” (“The Witches’ Kitchen”), one of the most striking scenes in “Faust,” a scene at which, no doubt, his imagination worked all the more freely from the strange contrast it presented to the actual world in the midst of which it was conceived. In this scene there is one slight indication of the difficulty he must have experienced in carrying on the work in the spirit in which it had been begun. Faust in the first monologue says he has had pupils for ten years. This means that he cannot be much more than thirty years old. In the “Hexenküche” he is presented as a man over fifty, for he speaks of the possibility of his youth being renewed by thirty years being struck out of his life. Goethe never detected this curious contradiction.
At last it became necessary for him to drag himself away from the city he now knew and loved so well. On the evening of the 21st of April, 1788, he strolled with some friends along the Corso in the moonlight, and visited for the last time the Capitol and the Colosseum. Next day he was travelling towards the North. On the way he spent some time at Florence and Milan, and on the 18th of June he re-entered Weimar.
CHAPTER VII.
GOETHE was in his thirty-ninth year when he returned to the little capital from which he was never again to be so long absent. His visit to Italy had done for him all, and more than all, he had hoped for. It had stilled a great longing; it had enriched his mental life by bringing him into contact with nature in some of her most alluring aspects and with many of the loftiest creations of human genius; it had renewed his consciousness of strength as a poet, and filled him with an ardent desire to exercise it in the achievement of higher results than any to which he had yet attained.
He knew well that if he allowed himself again to be absorbed by business he would necessarily be turned aside from his true destiny. This he had, in effect, communicated to the Duke in letters from Italy; and as the Duke not only had a sincere love for Goethe, but felt that he himself was now fitted to undertake, in reality as well as in name, the supreme control of affairs, he was willing to assent to any arrangement his friend might propose. It was therefore decided that Goethe should be relieved of most of the duties he had discharged before going to Italy. He retained, however, the position of a Minister of State, and continued for some years to take an active part in the direction of the Ilmenau mines, a work in which he was genuinely interested. To him was also intrusted the authority which belonged to the Duchy of Weimar in the government of the University of Jena.
Goethe had returned with the full intention of maintaining his friendship with Frau von Stein. It was, however, impossible that their old relations should be renewed. Her sympathy could not now be to him what it had been, for during nearly two years he had accustomed himself to live without the relief that had formerly come from confidential talk with her about his inmost thoughts and cares. Moreover, while he had come back with a world of new ideas in his mind, she had no interests with which he had not long been familiar; and as she was now a delicate woman of forty-four, it was improbable that she would be accessible to fresh influences. With a woman’s instinct, Frau von Stein at once detected the change in Goethe, of which he himself was only half conscious; and she could not help showing that she resented it. He, on the other hand, was repelled by her coldness. Thus misunderstandings at once sprang up, and both knew that they could never be wholly removed.
A few weeks after his arrival at Weimar, Goethe was walking one day in the Park when he was approached by a girl of about twenty-three, of a humble position in life. Her name was Christiane Vulpius. She had brought with her a petition from her brother, who, after studying at Jena, had betaken himself to literature, and thought that Goethe might be willing to help him. Goethe read the paper, but was far more interested in the messenger than in the message. Christiane, although not tall, had a good figure and a fresh pretty face, with an honest, frank, lively expression in her fine blue eyes. Goethe was charmed with her, and the result was that she became his wife. At this stage their hands were not formally joined in a church, but from the beginning he never thought of their union as other than a true marriage. Much idle gossip has been printed to Christiane’s disadvantage—for the most part an echo of the tittle-tattle of the Weimar Court, the ladies of which could not bear to think of Goethe as the husband of a woman who did not belong to their own class. In reality she was a good and most loyal wife, and retained to the last the warm love of her husband, who was never happier than in her presence. When he was from home he sent her long letters, all of which she kept as her most sacred possessions. He talked to her freely about his great botanical discovery, and did not find that the subject was beyond her intelligence; and when he intrusted her with important private business, she displayed, in attending to it, decision, good sense, and good feeling. She ruled his household, too, as he liked it to be ruled, firmly, yet with kindness and discretion. His mother received Christiane cordially as her “dear daughter.”
For some time Goethe and Christiane lived in seclusion in his house in the Park, but their union could not long be kept secret. When it became known, Frau von Stein was furious. She was about to visit the Rhenish baths, and before starting she addressed to him a letter so bitter in its tone that he could not answer it for some weeks. For the time the break between them was complete. Afterwards they became good friends again, but never, of course, on the old intimate terms. Frau von Stein had the sympathy of all the Court ladies, with, however, one notable exception, the Duchess, who understood Goethe too well to speak of him harshly or uncharitably.
No longer harassed by incessant business, and enjoying to the full his life with Christiane, Goethe had resumed his literary work with enthusiasm. Its first-fruits were his “Römische Elegien” (“Roman Elegies”), in which he gave utterance to the delight he had experienced at Rome. Side by side with the poet stands a beautiful girl, his love for whom is intimately connected with all the other influences under which his heart expands in the great city. In sketching this figure, Goethe was no doubt thinking chiefly of Christiane, whom in imagination he transported to the land where life had seemed to him so full of glory. In these poems there is an occasional warmth of expression that has sometimes given offence, but, judged simply as works of art, they are as near perfection as anything Goethe ever wrote. The passion expressed in them is deep and ardent, yet the forms and scenes with which it is associated stand out as clearly as a landscape under the bright Italian sky. The “Elegies” would have taken an enduring place in literature if they had had nothing to commend them but the splendour of their diction and melody.