“You have written tragedies?” demanded Napoleon; and a courtier hastened to mention that the poet had written several—also he had translated Voltaire’s tragedy, “Mahomet.” “It is not a good piece,” said Napoleon, and went on to disapprove of dramas in which fate played a part, “What are they talking about with their fate? La politique est la fatalité.” Here was an utterance that Goethe might well have applied through all the rest of his life. I could take it as a motto for this book. “Politics is fate!” Hardly could one pack more wisdom into five words of French or three of English!
But Goethe chose to keep his salary and position in the court, and to overlook the power of organized society over the individual soul. When the time came for the German people to revolt against Napoleon he had no word of encouragement—quite the contrary, he pronounced it folly. Nor had he any word of protest against the cruelties of the Holy Alliance.
Yet, see the inconsistency! His greatest work is “Faust,” a study of the problem of duty and happiness. Faust tries pleasure, he tries learning for learning’s sake, and it brings him nothing. In the end he accepts useful service as the only ideal, and the draining of swamps and cultivating of land as a moral occupation. But what is the use of such work, if statesmen are permitted to make war, and to destroy in a few hours all that generations have built up? You may believe in aristocratic politics or in democratic politics; but how can you believe in the possibility of human happiness without wisdom in statesmen?
There is a better side to Goethe, which must not be overlooked. He was magnanimous, open-minded, and a friend to all men of genius. He met the poet Schiller, ten years younger than himself, ill in health and struggling with cruel poverty. Schiller was a poet of freedom, and stayed that to the end of his life. His first successful drama was “The Robbers,” a glorification of revolt against medieval tyranny; his last was “William Tell,” whose hero set Switzerland free from the Austrian yoke. The fact that Schiller was of humble origin made no difference to Goethe; he brought the young poet to Weimar, and got him a pension from the duke, and became his intimate friend.
And that was the best thing that happened in Goethe’s life, for Schiller with his fine sincerity and idealism drove the older man to work. We are accustomed to see these two great names coupled together, and the critics point out that Schiller was the enthusiast, the “propagandist,” while Goethe, the serene Olympian temperament, was the greater poet. The critics do not mention that Schiller had to waste most of his life doing wretched hack work, and died of tuberculosis at the age of forty-six. If Goethe, with all his leisure and independence, had died at that age, his greatest work would have been lost.
Can anyone deny that we get a world view from the writings of Goethe; that he has definite conclusions as to every aspect of human life? Can anyone deny that his dramas and his novels, even his lyric poems, are saturated with philosophy? It so happens that his point of view is that which has been accepted by tradition and critical authority through all the ages; therefore it slides down easily, it does not taste like medicine, and we do not think of it as propaganda.
What is this point of view? The world is a place of blind and generally aimless strife, and scholars and men of genius are powerless to control it, and can only keep out of its way. “Renounce,” said Goethe; and what is the first of all things you must renounce? Manifestly, the dream that you can manage your own time. Live simply, develop your highest faculties, leave a message and an example to the world; and somehow, at some future date—you do not attempt to say when or how—this message and this example may take effect, and truth and justice and mercy may prevail. Meantime, since you must live, and since the ruling classes own all the means of life, you must be polite to them, you must fit yourself into their ways, you must be a gentleman, a courtier, a man of property.
Thus by your example and daily practice you become a prop to the established order; and by the automatic operation of economic forces you become less and less tolerant of all rebels and disturbers of the peace. Because you know only the wealthy and the noble, you come to deal with them exclusively in your art works, you interpret their feelings, and behold life from their point of view. All critics unite in declaring that this is Reality, this is Nature, this is Art; while to object to this, and voice any other point of view, is Idealism, Preaching, and Propaganda.
CHAPTER LII
BEHIND THE HEDGE-ROWS
Spreading the magic carpet of the imagination, we take flight from the free and easy court of Weimar to the home of an English rector, where impropriety is scarcely whispered, and where a little old maid of genius lives amid tea-parties and the embroidering of linen and the visiting of the poor, interrupted at intervals by the major crises of births, marriages and deaths.