The Youth of Goethe

by P. Hume Brown

Both Goethe and Jacobi have left records of their intercourse, and both are equally enthusiastic regarding the profit they derived from it. From the first moment of their meeting there was a spontaneous interchange of their deepest thoughts and feelings, unique in the experience of both. In Jacobi's company Goethe became another man from what he had been in the company of Lavater and Basedow. "I was weary," he says, "of my previous follies and wantonness, which, in truth, only concealed my dissatisfaction that this journey had brought so little profit to my mind and heart. Now, therefore, my deepest feelings broke forth with irrepressible force." After a few days spent at Pempelfort, during which Georg Jacobi joined them, the two brothers accompanied Goethe to Cologne on his homeward journey. It was during the hours they were together at Cologne that the conversation of Fritz and Goethe became most intimate, and these hours remained a moving memory with both even when in after years divided aims and interests had estranged them. A visit to the cathedral of Cologne recalled Goethe's enthusiasm for the cathedral of Strassburg, but its unfinished condition depressed him with the sense of a great idea unrealised, for in his own words "an unfinished work is like one destroyed." The emotions evoked by another spectacle in Düsseldorf, according to Goethe's own testimony, had the instantaneous effect of his gaining for life the confidence of both Jacobis. The sight which equally moved all three was the unchanged interior of the mansion of a citizen of Cologne named Jabach, who a century before had been distinguished as an amateur of the fine arts. But what specially impressed them was a picture by Le Brun representing Jabach and his family in all the freshness of life, and the consequent reflection that this picture was the sole memorial that they had ever lived. "This reflection," Georg Jacobi comments, "made a profound impression on our stranger,"[184] and the impression must have been abiding, since in no passage of his Autobiography does he recall more vividly the emotions of a vanished time.

The evening of the day they spent in Cologne is noted both by Goethe and Fritz Jacobi as marking a point in their intellectual development. The inn in which they were quartered overlooked the Rhine, the murmur of whose moonlit waters was attuned to the sentiments that had been evoked in the course of the day. In the prospect of their near parting all three were disposed to confidential self-revelations, and the conversation ran on themes regarding which they had all thought and felt much—on poetry, religion, and philosophy. As usual with him when he was in congenial company, Goethe freely declaimed such pieces of verse as happened at the time to be interesting him—the verses on this occasion being Scottish ballads and two poems of his own, Der König von Thule, and Der untreue Knabe. In philosophy the talk turned mainly on Spinoza, of whom Goethe spoke "unforgettably."[185] "What hours! what days," wrote Fritz immediately after their parting, "thou soughtest me about midnight in the darkness; it was as if a new soul were born within me. From that moment I could not let thee go."[186] Neither, in the ecstasy of these moments, dreamt that at a later day Spinoza, who was now their strongest bond of union, was to be the main cause of their estrangement. For Jacobi Spinoza became the "atheist," to be reprobated as one of the world's false prophets; while for Goethe he remained to the end the man to whom God had been nearest and to whom He had been most fully revealed.

Shortly after parting with Goethe, Fritz Jacobi communicated his impression of him to Wieland in the following words: "The more I think of it, the more intensely I realise the impossibility of conveying to one who has not seen or heard Goethe any intelligible notion of this extraordinary creation of God. As Heinse[187] expressed it, 'Goethe is a genius from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot,' one possessed, I may add, for whom it is impossible to act from mere caprice. One has only to be with him for an hour to feel the utter absurdity of desiring him to think and act otherwise than he thinks and acts. By this I don't mean to suggest that he cannot grow in beauty and goodness, but that in his case such growth must be that of the unfolding flower, of the ripening seed, of the tree soaring aloft and crowning itself with foliage."[188]

On leaving the Jacobis Goethe proceeded to Ems, where he again met Lavater and Basedow. On the day following Lavater went home, and Goethe and Basedow remained till the second week of August. On the 13th Goethe was in his father's house, and in a state of exaltation after his late experiences, to which he gives lively expression in a letter to Fritz Jacobi. "I dream of the moment, dear Fritz, I have your letter and hover around you. You have felt what a rapture it is to me to be the object of your love. Oh! the joy of believing that one receives more from others than one gives. Oh, Love, Love! The poverty of riches—what force works in me when I embrace in him all that is wanting in myself, and yet give to him what I have.... Believe me, we might henceforth be dumb to each other, and, meeting again after many a day, we should feel as if we had all along been walking hand in hand."[189]

In the first weeks of October Goethe made personal acquaintance with a more distinguished personage than either Lavater or Basedow or Jacobi—"the patriarch of German poetry," Klopstock, the author of the Messias.[190] Since his childhood, the name of Klopstock had been familiar to Goethe. To his conservative father, the Messias, as written in unrhymed verse, was a monstrosity in German literature, and he refused to give it a place in his library. Surreptitiously introduced into the house, however, Goethe had read it with enthusiasm and committed its most striking passages to memory. And he had retained his admiration throughout all the successive changes in his own literary ideals. Like all the youth of his generation, he saw in Klopstock a great original genius to whom German poetry owed emancipation from conventional forms and new elements of thought, feeling, and imagination. Klopstock, on his part, had been interested in the rising genius whose Götz von Berlichingen had taken the world by storm, and had signified through a common friend that he would be gratified to see other works from his hand. Goethe had responded in the spirit of a youthful adorer, conscious of the honour which the request implied. "And why should I not write to Klopstock," he wrote, "and send him anything of mine, anything in which he can take an interest? May I not address the living, to whose grave I would make a pilgrimage?"[191]

These communications took place in May, and in the beginning of October Goethe received an invitation from Klopstock to meet him at Friedberg. Owing to some delay on his journey, however, Klopstock did not appear at the time appointed, but, gratified by Goethe's eagerness to meet him, he shortly afterwards came to Frankfort and was for a few days a guest in the Goethe household. From Goethe's account of their intercourse we gather that their intercourse was not wholly satisfactory to either. Klopstock was in his fiftieth year, and his somewhat self-conscious and pedantic manner did not encourage effusion.[192] Like certain other poets he affected the tone of a man of the world and deliberately avoided topics relative to his own art. The two themes on which he expanded were riding and skating—of which latter pastime he had indeed made himself the laureate. Goethe himself was passionately fond of both exercises, but from "the patriarch of German poetry" he might have expected discourse on higher themes. Apparently, however, their relations remained sufficiently cordial, as, when Klopstock took his departure, Goethe accompanied him to Mannheim. On his way home in the post-carriage Goethe gave utterance to his feelings in some rhapsodical lines—An Schwager Kronos—(To Time the Postillion)—which may be regarded as a commentary on his impressions of the great man. Written in the unrhymed, irregular measure which Klopstock had been the first to employ, and containing phrases directly borrowed from Klopstock, they give passionate expression to his desire for a life, brief it might be, but a life alive to the end with the zest of living. It was the sentiment of the youth of the Sturm und Drang, which the chilling impression he had received from Klopstock doubtless evoked with rebounding force during his solitary drive home in the post-carriage.[193]

In the same month of October Goethe had other visitors less distinguished, youths of his own age, who came to pay homage to him as their acknowledged leader in the literary revolution of which Götz had been the manifesto. We have seen the impressions Goethe made upon his seniors like Lavater and Fritz Jacobi; how he struck his more youthful acquaintances is recorded by two of them—both poets of some promise who had attracted attention by their contempt of conventionalities. It will be seen that their language shows that Goethe's own exuberant style in his correspondence of the period was not peculiar to himself. The first to come was H.C. Boie, an ardent worshipper of Klopstock, and one of the heroes of the Sturm und Drang. "I have had a superlative, delightful day," Boie records, "a whole day spent alone and uninterrupted with Goethe—Goethe whose heart is as great and noble as his mind! The day passes my description." The other visitor, F.A. Werthes, who comprehensively worshipped both Klopstock and Wieland, leaves Boie behind in the exuberance of his impressions. "This Goethe," he wrote to Fritz Jacobi, "of whom from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof and from the going down thereof to its rising I should like to speak and stammer and rhapsodise with you ... this Goethe has, as it were, transcended all the ideals I had ever conceived of the direct feeling and observation of a great genius. Never could I have so well explained and sympathised with the feelings of the disciples on the way to Emmaus when they said: 'Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us by the way?' Let us make of him our Lord Christ for evermore, and let me be the least of His disciples. He has spoken so much and so excellently with me; words of eternal life which, so long as I live, shall be my articles of faith."[194] Apart from its relation to Goethe, it will be seen that Werthes' letter is a document of the time, bringing before us, as it does, the strained and distorted sentiment, sufficiently apparent in Goethe himself, but which he, almost alone of the youths of his generation, was strong enough to hold in check.

In the following month (December) Goethe received still another visit—a visit which was directly to lead to the most decisive event in his life. As he was sitting one evening in his own room, a stranger was ushered in, whom in the dusk he mistook for Fritz Jacobi. The stranger was Major von Knebel, who had served in the Prussian army, but was now on a tour with the young princes of Weimar, Carl August and Constantin, to the latter of whom he was acting as tutor. Knebel was keenly interested in literature, was a poet himself, and an ardent admirer of Goethe. There followed congenial talk which was to be the beginning of a friendship that, unlike most of Goethe's youthful friendships, was to endure into the old age of both. But Knebel had come on a special errand; the young princes had expressed the desire to become acquainted with the man who had made merry with their instructor Wieland, and whose name was in all men's mouths as the author of the recently published Werther. Nothing loth, Goethe accompanied Knebel to the princes, and in the interviews that followed he displayed all the tact that characterised his subsequent intercourse with the great. Studiously avoiding all reference to his own productions, he turned the conversation on subjects of public interest, on which he spoke with a fulness of knowledge that convinced his hearers that the author of Werther was not an effeminate sentimentalist. So favourable was the impression he made on the princes that they expressed a wish that he would follow them to Mainz and spend a few days with them there. The proposal was highly acceptable to Goethe, but there was a difficulty in the way. The Herr Rath was a sturdy republican, and had an ingrained aversion to the nobility as a class. In his opinion, for a commoner to seek intercourse with that class was to compromise his self-respect and to invite humiliation, and he roundly maintained that in seeking his son's acquaintance the princes were only laying a train to pay him back for his treatment of Wieland. When the Goethe household was divided on important questions, it was their custom to refer to the Fräulein von Klettenberg as arbiter. That sainted lady was now on a sick-bed, but through the Frau Rath she conveyed her opinion that the invitation of the princes should be accepted. To Mainz, therefore, Goethe went in company with Knebel, who had remained behind to see more of him, and his second meeting with the two boys completed his conquest of them. Any resentment they may have entertained for his attack on Wieland was removed by his explanation of its origin, and it was with mutual attraction that both parties separated after a few days' cordial intercourse. Thus were established the relations which within a year were to result in Goethe's departure from "accursed Frankfort," and his permanent settlement at the Court of Weimar.

As it happens, we have a record of Knebel's impression of Goethe during their few days' intercourse, which as a characterisation comes next in interest to that of Kestner already quoted. "From Wieland," he writes, "you will have been able to learn that I have made the acquaintance of Goethe, and that I think somewhat enthusiastically of him. I cannot help myself, but I swear to you that all of you, all who have heads and hearts, would think of him as I do if you came to know him. He will always remain to me one of the most extraordinary apparitions of my life. Perhaps the novelty of the impression has struck me overmuch, but how can I help it if natural causes produce natural workings in me?... Goethe lives in a state of constant inward war and tumult, since on every subject he feels with the extreme of vehemence. It is a need of his spirit to make enemies with whom he can contend; moreover, it is not the most contemptible adversaries he will single out. He has spoken to me of all those whom he has attacked with special and genuinely felt esteem. But the fellow delights in battle; he has the spirit of an athlete. As he is probably the most singular being who ever existed, he began as follows one evening in Mainz in quite melancholy tones: 'I am now good friends again with everybody—with the Jacobis, with Wieland; and this is not as it should be with me. It is the condition of my being that, as I must have something which for the time being is for me the ideal of the excellent, so also I must have an ideal against which I can direct my wrath.'"[195]

On Goethe's return to Frankfort sad news awaited him; during his absence the Fräulein von Klettenberg, whom he had left on her sick-bed, had died. It was the severest personal loss he had yet sustained by death. After his sister she had been the chief confidant of all his troubles, his hopes, and ambitions, and he never left her presence without feeling that for the time he had been lifted out of himself. The relations between Goethe and her, indeed, show him in his most attractive light. He had never disguised from her the fact that he could not share the faith by which she lived; he was, as we have seen, even in the habit of jesting at her most cherished beliefs; but there was never a shade of alienation between them. "Bid him adieu," was her last message to him through his mother; "I have held him very dear."[196] Take it as we may, it is the singular fact that by none was Goethe regarded with more affectionate esteem than by the two pious mystics, Jung Stilling and Fräulein von Klettenberg.