MY JOURNEY TO WEIMAR[64]
TRANSLATED BY ALFRED REMY, A.M.
Professor of Modern Languages. Brooklyn Commercial High School.
A journey is an excellent remedy for a perplexed state of mind. This time the goal of my journey was to be Germany. The German geniuses had, indeed, almost all departed from this life, but there was still one living, Goethe, and the idea of speaking with him or even of merely seeing him made me happy in anticipation. I never was, as was the fashion at that time, a blind worshipper of Goethe, any more than I was of any other one poet. True poetry seemed to me to lie where they met on common ground; their individual characteristics lent them, on the one hand, the charm of individuality, while, on the other hand, they shared the general propensity of mankind to err. Goethe, in particular, had, since the death of Schiller, turned his attention from poetry to science. By distributing his talents over too many fields, he deteriorated in each; his latest poetic productions were tepid or cool, and when, for the sake of pose, he turned to the classical, his poetry became affected. The impassiveness which he imparted to that period contributed perhaps more than anything else to the decadence of poetry, inasmuch as it opened the door to the subsequent coarseness of Young Germany, of popular poetry, and of the Middle-high German trash. The public was only too glad to have once again something substantial to feed upon. Nevertheless, Goethe is one of the greatest poets of all time, and the father of our poetry. Klopstock gave the first impulse, Lessing blazed the trail, Goethe followed it. Perhaps Schiller means more to the German nation, for a people needs strong, sweeping impressions; Goethe, however, appears to be the greater poet. He fills an entire page in the development of the human mind, while Schiller stands midway between Racine and Shakespeare. Little as I sympathized with Goethe's most recent activity, and little as I could expect him to consider the author of The Ancestress and The Golden Fleece worthy of any consideration, in view of the dispassionate quietism which he affected at the time, I nevertheless felt that the mere sight of him would be sufficient to inspire me with new courage. Dormit puer, non mortuus est. (The boy sleeps, he is not dead.)
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At last I arrived in Weimar and took quarters in "The Elephant," a hostelry at that time famous throughout Germany and the ante-room, as it were, to the living Valhalla of Weimar. From there I dispatched the waiter with my card to Goethe, inquiring whether he would receive me. The waiter returned with the answer that His Excellency, the Privy-councilor, was entertaining some guests and could not, therefore, receive me at the moment. He would expect me in the evening for tea.
I dined at the hotel. My name had become known through my card and the report of my presence spread through the town, so that I made many acquaintances.
Toward evening I called on Goethe. In the reception-room I found quite a large assemblage waiting for His Excellency, the Privy-councilor, who had not yet made his appearance. Among these there was a court councilor, Jacob or Jacobs, with his daughter, whom Goethe had entertained at dinner. The daughter, who later won a literary reputation under the pseudonym of Talvj, was as young as she was beautiful, and as beautiful as she was cultured, and so I soon lost my timidity and in my conversation with the charming young lady almost forgot that I was in Goethe's house. At last a side door opened, and he himself entered. Dressed in black, the star[65] on his breast, with erect, almost stiff bearing, he stepped among us with the air of a monarch granting an audience. He exchanged a few words with one and another of his guests, and finally crossed the room and addressed me. He inquired whether Italian literature was cultivated to any great extent in our country. I told him, which was a fact, that the Italian language was, indeed, widely known, since all officials were required to learn it; Italian literature, on the other hand, was completely neglected; the fashion was rather to turn to English literature, which, despite its excellence, had an admixture of coarseness that seemed to me to be anything but advantageous to the present state of German culture, especially of poetry. Whether my opinion pleased him or not, I have no means of knowing; I am almost inclined to believe it did not, inasmuch as he was at that very time in correspondence with Lord Byron. He left me, talked with others, returned, conversed I no longer remember on what subjects, finally withdrew, and we were dismissed.
I confess that I returned to the hostelry in a most unpleasant frame of mind. It was not that my vanity had been offended—on the contrary, Goethe had treated me more kindly and more attentively than I had anticipated—but to see the ideal of my youth, the author of Faust, Clavigo, and Egmont, in the rôle of a formal minister presiding at tea brought me down from my celestial heights. Had his manner been rude or had he shown me the door, it would have pleased me better. I almost repented having gone to Weimar.
Consequently I determined to devote the following day to sightseeing, and ordered horses at the inn for the day following. On the morning of the next day visitors of all sorts put in an appearance, among them the amiable and respected Chancellor Müller, and, above all, my fellow-countryman Hummel, who for many years had been occupying the position of musical director in Weimar. He had left Vienna before my poetry had attracted attention, so that we had not become acquainted with each other. It was almost touching to witness the joy with which this ordinarily unsociable man greeted me and took possession of me. In the first place I probably revived in him memories of his native city, which he had left with reluctance; then, too, it probably gave him satisfaction to find his literary countryman honored and respected in Weimar, where he heard nothing but disparaging opinions regarding the intellectual standing of Austria. And, finally, he had an opportunity of conversing with a Viennese in his home dialect, which he had preserved pure and unadulterated while living among people who spoke quite differently. I do not know whether it was the contrast, or whether this really was the worst German I had ever heard in my life. While we were planning to visit some points of interest in Weimar, and while Chancellor Müller, who had probably noticed my depression, was assuring me that Goethe's formality was nothing but the embarrassment always displayed by him on meeting a stranger for the first time, the waiter entered and handed me a card containing an invitation from Goethe to dine with him the next day. I therefore had to prolong my stay and to countermand the order for the horses. The morning was passed in visiting the places that had become famous through their literary associations. Schiller's house interested me most of all, and I was especially delighted to find in the poet's study, really an attic-room in the second story, an old man who is said to have acted as prompter at the theatre in Schiller's time, teaching his grandson to read. The little boy's open and intelligently animated expression prompted the illusion that out of Schiller's study a new Schiller might some day emerge—an illusion which, to be sure, has not been realized.