Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/747

Rh )escr. ehen GOETHE were found in Merck, who exercised at a later period an important influence over Goethe’s career. His friendship with Goethe was not at ﬁrst of advantage to him. He was deprived of his tutorship from a suspicion that he did not always keep the most select society, and his successor was for- bidden to allow his charge to associate with the young poet. This is supposed to have been caused by Goethe’s disrespect- ful behaviour to Professor Clodius. Gellert obtained for Behrisch an educational post at the court of Dcssau, and Goethe kept up a constant correspondence with him till his death in 1809. Behrisch would not allow Goethe to print his poems, but copied them out instead i11 a beautiful hand. He probably had a considerable effect in producing the simplicity and 11aturalness of Goethe’s early style. But the person who had the strongest effect on Goethe’s mental development was Adam Frederick Oeser, at this time director of the academy of arts in Leipsic. Goethe took lessons from him in drawing, a11d, not content with this, tried his hand at etching. A little device of his fora book—plate or a bill-head is extant, in which a slab with the name C. G. Schiinkopf is represented with three bottles above and a wreath of ﬂowers below. Oeser had been afriend of Vinckel- mann’s, and exercised great influence over his views of art. This was a source of considerable reputation to him, and Winckelmann’s tragic death, the news of which reached Leipsic whilst Goethe was there, must have brought the relation between- them into stronger relief. Goethe always spoke of Oeser’s inﬂuence with the greatest affection and respect. He writes—“ Oeser’s discoveries have given me a 1 fresh opportunity of blessing myself that I had him for my '- instructor. He entered into our very souls, and we must indeed have been without souls not to have derived beneﬁt from him. His lessons will produce their effects through all the rest of my existence. He taught me that the ideal of beauty is simplicity and repose.” Ve ﬁnd Goethe at Weimar continually consulting Oeser for designs for furni- ture and for theatrical entertainments. Goethe from his earliest years was never without a passion, and at Leipsic his passion was Kitty Schiinkopf, the Aennchen of the autobiography, the daughter of the host at whose house he dined. She often teased him with her inconstant ways, and to this experience is due his ﬁrst drama Die Lama «[63 lrerlicbten, “ Lovers’ Quarrels,” as it may be styled. It is a mere triﬂe, a pastoral in one act, written in alexandrines in the French style. Two happy and two unhappy lovers are contrasted. The only interest of the piece is that it is a fragment from Goethe’s own life. A deeper chord is struck in Die .l[z'tscImltlz',r/en (The Fellow Sinners), which forms a dis- mal and forbidding picture both of the time and of the ex- periences of the youth who wrote it. The daughter of an innkeeper has made an unhappy marriage, and is visited by a former lover who is in good circumstances. An assignation is arranged, and the interview is witnessed by the husband, who has come to steal the stranger’s purse. The father comes in to read one of the stranger’s letters. He is sur- prised, and is with his daughter suspected of the theft. The real culprit is discovered, but defends himself by accus- ing the stranger of his conduct to his wife. So they are all guilty. This play was ﬁrst written in one act. It was afterwards enlarged to three acts, and published in l787. The manuscript, which still exists, was given to Frederike Brion of Sesenheim. Besides these plays Goethe wrote at Leipsic twenty little songs of an erotic chararacter, which were set to music by his young friend Breitkopf. He de- scribes them as moral-sensuous, but they are more sensuous than moral. They have the merit of a musical easy ﬂow of expression, various moods of passion, with a happy readi- ness and elegance. Only a few of them were included in his collected works, and those very much altered. Tl1ey show the inﬂuence of Wieland, but by one side of Wiel-and Goethe was never affected. He was never led to mingle classical ideas and emblems with the unrestrained and sensual frivelity which was disseminated from France. He never imitated Agathon or Musarion. Whatever may have been the bitterness of his experience of life, or the vaywardness of his excited fancy, he conceived a true idea of the real nature of classical art. In this V'inck- elmann and Lessing were his -teachers, and he was never untrue to the lessons which they inculcated. This was the n1ost valuable possession he brought back from Leipsic. He had an opportunity of establishing his principles of taste during a short visit to Dresden, in which he devoted him- self to the pictures and the antiques. The end of Goethe’s stay at Leipsic was saddened by illness. One morning at the beginning of the summer he was awakened by a violent hemorrhage. For several days he hung between life and death, and after that his recovery was slow, although he was tended with the greatest anxiety by his friends. He ﬁnally left Leipsic far from well on August 28, 1768, his nineteenth birthday. Goethe n1ade an enforced stay of a year and aFnu.k- It was perhaps the least happy fort. half in his native town. part of his life. He was in bad health. His cure pro- ceeded slowly, and he had several relapses, and the weak- ness of the lungs, which was his ﬁrst complaint, was suc- ceeded by a weakness of the digestion, which was yet more troublesome and painful. The society of Frankfort seemed to him far less agreeable than that of Leipsic; he con- trasted the cold, stiff, formal, old—fashioned life of the imperial city with the freshness, geniality, and intellectual activity of the Saxon university. His family relations were not pleasant. His grandfather Textor was struck with paralysis; his father showed but little sympathy with his aspirations for universal culture, and could imagine no career for him but that of a successful jurist. His sister had grown somewhat harsh and cold during his absence, and was possessed byamorbid self—consciousness, which she committed to the conﬁdential pages of a secret diary. The tone of this diary, partly the result of family temperament, partly of the character of the age, throws an interesting light on the despair of Verther. Goethe’s mother was always the same to him, a brigl1t_, genial, sympathetic friend. But her love could not ward off the pressure of circumstances, or supply a substitute for a wider and more unfettered life. Goethe, during his illness, received great attention from Fraulein von Klettenberg, a friend of his mother’s, a pietist of the Moravian school. She initiated him into the mystical writings of those abstracted saints, and she engaged him in the study of_alchemy, which served at once to prepare him for the conception of Faust a11d for the scientiﬁc researches of his later days. During his stay at Frankfort he wrote very little. It may be that the two Leipsic dramas received here their completed form. A farce in memory of his Leipsic life, a poetical letter to Frederike Oeser, the daughter of his teacher, a few songs, some of them religious, make up the tale of his produc- tions, as far as we know them. He arrived at Strasburg April 2, 1770. It was intended Stras- that after a sojourn in the university of that place he should WYS- visit Paris, the centre of reﬁnement. Goethe stayed in Stras- burg till August 28, 1771, his twenty-seeond birthday, and these sixteen months are perhaps the most important of his life. During them he came into active contact with most of those impulses of which his after life was a development. If we would u11derstand his mental growth, we must ask who were his friends. He took his meals at the house of the Friiulcin Lauth in the Kriimergasse. The table was mainly ﬁlled with medical students. At the head of it sat Salz- mann, a grave man of ﬁfty years of age. His experience and his reﬁned taste were very attractive to Goethe, who