Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
limitations of nature to overflow you or himself with the creative
spirit.
While the apparition of the celestial Macaria seems to announce the
ultimate destiny of the soul of man, the practical application of all
Wilhelm has thus painfully acquired is not of pure Delphian strain.
Goethe draws, as he passes, a dart from the quiver of Phoebus, but
ends as AEsculapius or Mercury. Wilhelm, at the school of the Three
Reverences, thinks out what can be done for man in his temporal
relations. He learns to practise moderation, and even painful
renunciation. The book ends, simply indicating what the course of his
life will be, by making him perform an act of kindness, with good
judgment and at the right moment.
Surely the simple soberness of Goethe should please at least those who
style themselves, preeminently, people of common sense.
The following remarks are by the celebrated Rahel von Ense, whose
discernment as to his works was highly prized by Goethe.
"_Don Quixote and Wilhelm Meister_!
"Embrace one another, Cervantes and Goethe!
"Both, using their own clear eyes, vindicated human nature. They
saw the champions through their errors and follies, looking down
into the deepest soul, seeing there the true form. _Respectable_
people call the Don as well as Meister a fool, wandering hither and
thither, transacting no business of real life, bringing nothing to
pass, scarce even knowing what he ought to think on any subject,
very unfit for the hero of a romance. Yet has our sage known how to
paint the good and honest mind in perpetual toil and conflict with
the world, as it is embodied; never sharing one moment the impure
confusion; always striving to find fault with and improve itself,
always so innocent as to see others far better than they are, and
generally preferring them to itself, learning from all, indulging
all except the manifestly base; the more you understand, the more
you respect and love this character. Cervantes has painted the
knight, Goethe the culture of the entire man,--both their own
time."
But those who demand from him a life-long continuance of the early ardor
of Faust, who wish to see, throughout his works, not only such manifold
beauty and subtle wisdom, but the clear assurance of divinity, the pure
white light of Macaria, wish that he had not so variously unfolded his
nature, and concentred it more. They would see him slaying the serpent
with the divine wrath of Apollo, rather than taming it to his service,
like AEsculapius. They wish that he had never gone to Weimar, had never
become a universal connoisseur and dilettante in science, and courtier
as "graceful as a born nobleman," but had endured the burden of life
with the suffering crowd, and deepened his nature in loneliness and
privation, till Faust had conquered, rather than cheated the devil, and
the music of heavenly faith superseded the grave and mild eloquence of
human wisdom.
The expansive genius which moved so gracefully in its self imposed
fetters, is constantly surprising us by its content with a choice low,
in so far as it was not the highest of which the mind was capable. The
secret may be found in the second motto of this slight essay.
"He who would do great things must quickly draw together his forces. The
master can only show himself such through limitation, and the law alone
can give us freedom."
But there is a higher spiritual law always ready to supersede the
temporal laws at the call of the human soul. The soul that is too
content with usual limitations will never call forth this unusual
manifestation.
If there be a tide in the affairs of men, which must be taken at the
right moment to lead on to fortune, it is the same with inward as with
outward life. He who, in the crisis hour of youth, has stopped short of
himself, is not likely to find again what he has missed in one life, for
there are a great number of blanks to a prize in each lottery.
But the pang we feel that "those who are so much are not more," seems to
promise new spheres, new ages, new crises to enable these beings to
complete their circle.
Perhaps Goethe is even now sensible that he should not have stopped at
Weimar as his home, but made it one station on the way to Paradise; not
stopped at humanity, but regarded it as symbolical of the divine, and
given to others to feel more distinctly the centre of the universe, as
well as the harmony in its parts. It is great to be an Artist, a Master,
greater still to be a Seeker till the Man has found all himself.
What Goethe meant by self-collection was a collection of means for
work, rather than to divine the deepest truths of being. Thus are these
truths always indicated, never declared; and the religious hope awakened
by his subtle discernment of the workings of nature never gratified,
except through the intellect.
He whose prayer is only work will not leave his treasure in the secret
shrine.
One is ashamed when finding any fault with one like Goethe, who is so
great. It seems the only criticism should be to do all he omitted to do,
and that none who cannot is entitled to say a word. Let that one speak
who was all Goethe was not,--noble, true, virtuous, but neither wise
nor subtle in his generation, a divine ministrant, a baffled man, ruled
and imposed on by the pygmies whom he spurned, an heroic artist, a
democrat to the tune of Burns:
"The rank is but the guinea's stamp;
The man's the gowd for a' that."
Hear Beethoven speak of Goethe on an occasion which brought out the
two characters in strong contrast.
Extract from a letter of Beethoven to Bettina Brentano Toeplitz, 1812.
"Kings and princes can indeed make professors and privy councillors, and
hang upon them titles; but great men they cannot make; souls that rise
above the mud of the world, these they must let be made by other means
than theirs, and should therefore show them respect. When two such as I
and Goethe come together, then must great lords observe what is
esteemed great by one of us. Coming home yesterday we met the whole
imperial family. We saw them coming, and Goethe left me and insisted
on standing one side; let me say what I would, I could not make him come
on one step. I pressed my hat upon my head, buttoned my surtout, and
passed on through the thickest crowd. Princes and parasites made way;
the Archduke Rudolph took off his hat; the empress greeted me first.
Their highnesses KNOW ME. I was well amused to see the crowd pass by
Goethe. At the side stood he, hat in hand, low bowed in reverence till
all had gone by. Then I scolded him well; I gave no pardon, but
reproached him with all his sins, most of all those towards you, dearest
Bettina; we had just been talking of you."
If Beethoven appears, in this scene, somewhat arrogant and bearish, yet
how noble his extreme compared with the opposite! Goethe's friendship
with the grand duke we respect, for Karl August was a strong man. But we
regret to see at the command of any and all members of the ducal
family, and their connections, who had nothing but rank to recommend
them, his time and thoughts, of which he was so chary to private
friends. Beethoven could not endure to teach the Archduke Rudolph, who
had the soul duly to revere his genius, because he felt it to be
"hofdienst," court service. He received with perfect nonchalance the
homage of the sovereigns of Europe. Only the Empress of Russia and the
Archduke Karl, whom he esteemed as individuals, had power to gratify him
by their attentions. Compare with, Goethe's obsequious pleasure at
being able gracefully to compliment such high personages, Beethoven's
conduct with regard to the famous Heroic Symphony. This was composed at
the suggestion of Bernadotte, while Napoleon was still in his first
glory. He was then the hero of Beethoven's imagination, who hoped from
him the liberation of Europe. With delight the great artist expressed in
his eternal harmonies the progress of the Hero's soul. The symphony was
finished, and even dedicated to Bonaparte, when the news came of his
declaring himself Emperor of the French. The first act of the indignant
artist was to tear off his dedication and trample it under foot; nor
could he endure again even the mention of Napoleon until the time of his
fall.
Admit that Goethe had a natural taste for the trappings of rank and
wealth, from which the musician was quite free, yet we cannot doubt that
both saw through these externals to man as a nature; there can be no
doubt on whose side was the simple greatness, the noble truth. We pardon
thee, Goethe,--but thee, Beethoven, we revere, for thou hast
maintained the worship of the Manly, the Permanent, the True!
The clear perception which was in Goethe's better nature of the beauty
of that steadfastness, of that singleness and simple melody of soul,
which he too much sacrificed to become "the many-sided One," is shown
most distinctly in his two surpassingly beautiful works, The Elective
Affinities and Iphigenia.
Not Werther, not the Nouvelle Heloise, have been assailed with such a
storm of indignation as the first-named of these works, on the score of
gross immorality.
The reason probably is the subject; any discussion of the validity of
the marriage vow making society tremble to its foundation; and,
secondly, the cold manner in which it is done. All that is in the book
would be bearable to most minds if the writer had had less the air of a
spectator, and had larded his work here and there with ejaculations of
horror and surprise.
These declarations of sentiment on the part of the author seem to be
required by the majority of readers, in order to an interpretation of
his purpose, as sixthly, seventhly, and eighthly were, in an
old-fashioned sermon, to rouse the audience to a perception of the
method made use of by the preacher.
But it has always seemed to me that those who need not such helps to
their discriminating faculties, but read a work so thoroughly as to
apprehend its whole scope and tendency, rather than hear what the author
says it means, will regard the Elective Affinities as a work especially
what is called moral in its outward effect, and religious even to piety
in its spirit. The mental aberrations of the consorts from their
plighted faith, though in the one case never indulged, and though in the
other no veil of sophistry is cast over the weakness of passion, but all
that is felt expressed with the openness of one who desires to
legitimate what he feels, are punished by terrible griefs and a fatal
catastrophe. Ottilia, that being of exquisite purity, with intellect and
character so harmonized in feminine beauty, as they never before were
found in any portrait of woman painted by the hand of man, perishes, on
finding she has been breathed on by unhallowed passion, and led to err
even by her ignorant wishes against what is held sacred. The only
personage whom we do not pity is Edward, for he is the only one who
stifles the voice of conscience.
There is indeed a sadness, as of an irresistible fatality, brooding over
the whole. It seems as if only a ray of angelic truth could have enabled
these men to walk wisely in this twilight, at first so soft and
alluring, then deepening into blind horror.
But if no such ray came to prevent their earthly errors, it seems to
point heavenward in the saintly sweetness of Ottilia. Her nature, too
fair for vice, too finely wrought even for error, comes lonely, intense,
and pale, like the evening star on the cold, wintry night. It tells of
other worlds, where the meaning of such strange passages as this must be
read to those faithful and pure like her, victims perishing in the green
garlands of a spotless youth to atone for the unworthiness of others.