At Whitsuntide he went again to her home, intending to return to his studies after a short visit. But she was not very well, and day after day, week after week passed, and he was still at Sesenheim. During this visit he made himself highly popular in the village, and occupied himself in all sorts of ways, learning how to make basket work, painting the pastor’s carriage, and planning the reconstruction of the parsonage. He went on, too, with his study of Homer, and read to Frederika a translation he had made of “The Songs of Selma.” And all the time the passion of the lovers grew and struck its roots deeper in their hearts.
At last, when June was far advanced, he was forced to drag himself away, for it was time that he should proceed to his degree, the taking of which had been too long delayed. The university authorities were scandalized by some of the opinions advanced in his dissertation, but admitted his ability, and directed him to take part in a public disputation. The order was obeyed, and he afterwards received a licentiate’s degree.
In company with some friends, Goethe now enjoyed a short tour in Upper Alsace. On his return he paid a farewell visit to Sesenheim, and in August he was once more at home in Frankfort.
In the last interview with Frederika nothing was said to indicate that the parting was final. Nevertheless, Goethe knew that it was so; and eight years passed before they saw one another again, and then they met simply as old friends. Frederika had never doubted that he proposed to make her his wife, and this had also been assumed by her family. At first the idea of marriage did not occur to Goethe. He thought only of the rapture he felt in her presence, of her sweetness, her grace, and her beauty. When at last he could not avoid reflecting on the consequences of having won a maiden’s affections, a prolonged and bitter struggle went on in his mind. That Frederika, if he had been prepared to marry, would have made him truly happy, he loved her too well to question; and he can hardly have supposed that it would have been very difficult to induce his father to welcome her as a daughter-in-law. But the thought of marriage was repugnant to him. What! bind himself for life at the very time when he was becoming conscious of his destiny—when it was essential to the unfolding of his genius that his individuality should have free play! Deeply as he loved Frederika, strongly as he felt the duty he owed her, this consideration gained the day. He must have freedom, let it cost what it might.
Goethe never sought to justify his treatment of Frederika. For many a day he suffered the pang of a wounded conscience. His ultimate decision was right, for he had not reached a stage at which a happy marriage would have been possible; but he well knew that in a matter of such vast importance he ought not to have created an expectation that, from the nature of the case, was doomed to be disappointed. It can only be said that to a poet of his ardent temperament the power which had cast its spell over him was all but irresistible. Frederika herself, although she seemed to lose all in losing her lover, did not permanently resent the severance of the bond that connected them. She seems to have felt that deep causes had led to their separation. All her life she had a vivid remembrance of the beautiful romantic world in which they had for a while wandered together; and when attempts were made by new wooers to win her hand, her answer is said to have been, “The heart that Goethe has loved cannot belong to another.”
His love for Frederika exercised as powerful an influence over him in one direction as contact with Herder had exercised in another. In his meeting with her, and in his parting from her, he had sounded some of the profoundest depths of joy and suffering; and he had passed through a conflict in which his strongest feelings had been arrayed against one another. And in response to the touch of love his genius had sprung into free activity. He had written various lyrics giving utterance to his passion, and to this period also belongs “Heidenröslein,” in which he presented in a new form an old popular song. These perfect lyrics, slight as they are, are the earliest of his achievements in which we find the really characteristic qualities of his poetry. They do not, like his first efforts, bear the stamp of traditional rules, but are the direct expression of his own inward life. For five centuries—from the time when, at mediæval courts, Walther von der Vogelweide had sung his splendid verses—no poetic note of such mingled power and sweetness had been struck in Germany. In these early poems we feel the stirring of the forces of a new spring-time. They are full of a passionate delight in the beauty of the earth and the sky; in every line breathing of love they have the accent of sincerity; and they produce the impression of having flowed without effort from a mind which found the most natural outlet for its feelings in stanzas of noble and flawless melody.
CHAPTER III.
ON his twenty-second birthday (August 28, 1771), the day after his arrival at home, Goethe applied to be admitted as one of the advocates of Frankfort. A few days afterwards he took the oath as an advocate and citizen; and he soon received his first case—an extraordinary one, in which he had to defend a son against a father. Judgment was given in favour of Goethe’s client, but both he and the advocate on the other side were rebuked for the bitterness with which they had presented their arguments. In the course of the winter Goethe had only one other case. Law had little interest for him, and he accepted professional work merely to please his father, who was bent on seeing him an eminent pleader.
Of all the studies carried on at this time the one that moved him most profoundly was the study of Shakespeare, and at last he felt that he must find some means of expressing the thoughts and feelings kindled within him by the poet whom he adored. Accordingly he decided that on the 14th of October a Shakespeare festival should be held in his father’s house; and it was arranged that there should be a like festival at the same time in Strasburg. The plan was carried out, and Goethe, in language of glowing enthusiasm, poured forth his admiration of the dramas in which, as he said, “the history of the world sweeps on before our eyes on the invisible thread of time.”
At Strasburg he had lighted upon the autobiography of Goetz von Berlichingen, the knight with the iron hand, who had played so great a part in the Peasants’ War in the sixteenth century. Goetz (born in 1480) was one of the manliest of the warriors who, in the age which formed the border-line between the mediæval and the modern world, fought valiantly for the causes they conceived to be those of justice and freedom. His autobiography is a frank and simple record of his adventures, written with a view to prevent his descendants from misunderstanding him. As Goethe read it, it seems to have flashed upon him that, notwithstanding external differences, there was much inward resemblance between the influences with which Goetz contended and those which in his own day choked up the springs of thought and natural feeling. Goetz had not allowed his spirit to be broken by the tyrannical forces of his period; he had asserted his individuality, and had been loyal to his own loftiest aims. Here, then, was a figure which might be made the medium for the expression of Goethe’s own aspirations; and he forthwith decided that Goetz should be the hero of his first drama.