Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/750

Rh Setlres. Cla 1'.'_r/0. 726 GOE it produced a national courage founded on the recollection of an illustrious past, which overthrew the might of the con- queror at the moment when he seemed about to dominate the world. ll'er(/zer is the echo of 1-Lousseau, the lamentation of a suffering world ; (fat: is the prototype of Stein, the cornerstone of a renovated empire. Gi}t.:, in its short, sharp dialogue, recalls the pregnant tcrsencss of mediucval German before it was spoilt by the imitators of Ciccronian Latinity. Wart/zer, as soft and melodious as Plato, was the ﬁrst revela- tion to the world of that marvellous style which, in the lnnds of a master, compels a language which is as rich as G reek to be also as musical. These two great works were not the only occupations of Goethe at this time. In Wctzlar he had translated Gold- s:nith's 1)c8LI‘fcLl l'illa_r/e, and had written a number of small poems addressed to Lotte. The spring of 1773, which wit- nessed the publication of 061:, saw him actively employed as an advocate. His relations with his fatherbecame easier. His literary success brought him a number of fricnds,——thc young Counts Stolbcrg, and You Schtinborn, afriend of Klopstock’s. He also began to correspond with Lavater the physiognomist and with Klopstock himself. To the latter half of this year are to be referred a number of satirical poems, aimed at prevailing follies of the time, clever and amusing, but of little permanent value. In Peter L’/'e_y he satirized the meddler Leuchseuring, who, with soft tread and lamblike manners, interfered with the family relations of Herder. ;S'al_1/ros is directed against the prophets of the school of nature, who bid us return to nature without remembering how coarse and repellent some aspects of nature are. Bahrdt had trans- lated the Bible into modern cultivated German; Goethe wrote a prologue to this newest of divine revelations, in which the four evangelists appear each with his attendant animal. Of yet another kind is the Fair of I’! undcrsweilcrn, in which the hucksters and booth-keepers represent the motley variety of human life and the characteristics of modern littérateurs. It is a foretaste of the second part of Faust. IItu'lcqm'n’s Jlurriugc is only preserved in fragments; it was perhaps too coarse and personal to be published. The most important of these writings is Gods, Heroes, and Wiclcuul, a dialogue in the style of Lucian written at a sitting over a bottle of Burgundy, in which Alcestis, Mercury, Hercules, Euripides, and other ancient worthies appear to Wieland in all their original greatness, and upbraid him with the mean and paltry representation of them which he had given to the world. Wieland was the apostle of an emasculated antiquity. Goethe would make the gods speak in their own, large utterance if they spoke at all. Wieland revenged himself by recommending the satire in his paper, the Deutsclw .l[e;-It-ur, as a delicate piece of persiflage worthy of the study of his readers. In November Goethe’s sister Cornelia was married to Schlosser and left Strasburg. Goethe felt the loss deeply. She lived but a short time. Her married life was tortured with perpetual suffering, and she died in 1777. The beginning of 1774 is marked by a new passion and a new work. Crespel had invented a plan for cnlivening their social meetings; each man was to draw lots for a partner, and for the time to consider her as his wife. Three times Goethe drew the name of Anna Sibylla Munch, a pleasant girl of sixteen, daughter of a merchant. One of the favourite topics of the day was the trial of Beaumar- chais, which ended on February 16, 1774. Immediately afterwards his Jléznoires or pleadings were published, and from the fourth of these the play of Clavigo was arranged. It represents a young writer of ambition deserting the woman to whom he is engaged and breaking her heart. The ﬁfth act, in which Clavigo kills himself, is Goethe’s own. The real Clavigo died, a distinguished man of letters, in 1806. The piece was written in eight days, and published T H E on J unc 1. It had a great success, and still keeps the stage. But Goethe’s best friends were disappointed with it. Merck told him not to write such trash, as others could do that as well. In reality there is no period of Goethe’s life in which his literary activity was so prodigious, or when he was more fully occupied with literary plans which had reference to the deepest problems of human nature. To this time belong the conceptions of C'wsar, Faust, Jfu/aonzel, the ll'umIerz'n_:/ Jew, and Prometheus. The first was soon given up ; of the second the first monologue, the dialogue between Faust and Mephistopheles, and part of the scenes with Gretchen, were now written. He has told us in his .Iu{oIu'ng/r«:[:/z_I/ what he intended to make of Jlalwnzct. In ﬁve acts he was to show us how the purity of prophetic zeal is 1'ccognize(l by love, rejected by env ', sullied by human weakness, spiritu- alized by death. To write this drama he had studied the Koran through and through ; only a few fragments were completed. Of the Wmzclcring Jew very little remains to us. The design, conceived in Italy, of making a great work on the subject was never carried out. The 1’romdIu us was completed in two acts. The monologue of I’rome(/was included in the Lg/r-ical Poems, was written at the same time; but it is doubtful whether it was intended to form part of the drama. These works are to be referred to the study of the ethics of Spinoza, for whom he now began to feel a deep reverence, which continued throughout his life. The calm repose of Spinoza’s mind spread over his own like a breath of peace; his systematic and well-ordered reasoning was the best antidote to Goethe's passionate waywardness. Goethe now acquired a wider view of all the relations of the moral and natural world; he felt that he had never seen the world so clearly. IIis time at Frankfort was also largely occupied with art. His room was covered with the works of his pencil, and a number of poems on the subject of the artist's life arose from the same inﬂuence. The summer of 1774 was spent in a journey to the Rhine. Ilhin On J nly 12 Basedow, the educational reformer, came toJ0l11'!1 Frankfort; three days afterwards Goethe went with him to Ems, where he found Lavater, who had been with him in the previous month. The three went down the Lahn together, and reached Coblentz on July 18. Here the famous dinner took place at which Lavater explained the secrets of the A po- calypse to a clergyman, Basedow demonstrated the useless- ncss of baptism to a dancing master, while Goethe, the worldling between the two prophets, made the best of his time with the ﬁsh and the chicken. They then went down the Rhine to Elberfeld, where Goethe found his old Stras- burg friend Jung-Sltilling, and back to Pempclforl, near Dusseldorf, the house of Fritz Jacobi, where Goethe also met Jacobi’swifeBetty,his sisterC'harlottc, his aunt Johanna Fahhncr, and his friend W. Hcinse. Their letters are full of the effect which he produced upon them. Hcinse says- “ I know of no man in the whole history of learning who, at such an age, was so completely full of original genius.” Jacobi writcs—“Goethc is the man whom my heart re- quired; my character will now gain its proper stability; the man is complete from head to foot.” Again he says that you could not be an hour with him, without seeing that it would be ridiculous to suppose that he could think or act otherwise than he really thinks and acts. N o change could make him fairer or better; his nature has followed its own development, as the growth of a seed, or of a flower on a tree. Nor were these impressions evanescent. Forty years after- wards he writes of these times —“ What hours ! what days! I seemed to have a new soul. From that moment forth I would never leave you.” Goethe returned to Frankfort at the beginning of Frank The autumn brought new friends, drawn tof°1‘t- August. him by the fame of the newly published Wcrt/acr. Among thc-sc was Klopstock, twenty-ﬁve years older than Goethe,