Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/755

Rh eturn to feimar. 'hris— ane 'ulpin <. aigns. GOETHE experience. He wrote some scenes of Faust : especially the scene in tlie witches’ kitchen was composed in the Borghese gardens. At the end of April he took a sad farewell of Italy, and arrived at Veimar in the middle of June. From tl1is time his life takes a new colour. He had learned in Italy not only new principles of art,——not only that a work of art, whatever of Gothic ornament it may possess, must be solid, ﬁrm, and simple in its con- struction as a Grecian temple,—but he had also learned that life itself should be a work of art. He was deter- mined henceforth to be himself, to break the bonds which had conﬁned him and the distractions which had confused him, to possess his soul sacred and inviol- able for the purposes of his life. He was relieved of the presidency of the chamber and of the war commission, but in a manner which did hi111 the greatest honour. His relations with Frau von Stein, which had been one reason of his leaving Vcimar, began to cool. One of their last friendly meetings was in a journey to ltudolstadt, where Goethe met Schiller. Neither knew the inﬂuence which the other would have upon his life. Their relations were those of shyness, and partly even of dislike. Goethe’s friendship with Frau Von Stein was to receive a ﬁnal blow. In the autumn of 1788, walking aimlessly through the park, he met Christiane Yulpius, ayoung girl who presented him with a petition in favour of her brother. She had golden curling locks, round cheeks, laughing eyes, a neatly rounded ﬁgure ; she looked, as has been said, “like a young Dionysus.” Goethe took her into his house, and she became his wife in conscience, and the mother of his children. He did not marry her till 1806, when the terrors of the French occupation made him anxious for the position of his eldest son. She had but little education, and he could not take her into society; but she made him a good and loving wife, and her quick mother-wit made her available as an intellectual companion. To these days of early married life belong the Roman elegies, which, although Italian and pagan in form, in colour, and in sensuality, were writte11 in Germany from home experiences. “'9 must pass rapidly over the next six years, until Goethe’s genius received a new impulse and direction by his friendship with Schiller. In the spring of l79O he travelled to Venice to meet the duchess Amalia. The Venetian epigrams, still more outspoken in sensuality than the Roman, were the fruit of this journey. In the autumn of the same year he accompanied the duke to Silesia, the first of those military journeys which strike so discordant a note in the harmonious tenor of his existence. The year 1791 offered a quiet contrast to the increment of the year before. He began to take a more special interest in the university at Jena, in which his young friend Fritz Von Stein had now entered as a student, and his time was more and more occupied with the study of colour.s, the least happy and successful of his scientiﬁc labours. In the autumn of 1791 Goethe was able to devote himself regularly to a task which had informally occupied his ﬁrst years in Weimar. The new theatre was completed, and Goethe was made director of it. It was in this capacity that he was best known to the citizens of Veimar. He had the ﬁnal decision on every detail of piece, scenery, and acting; in later years his seat was in a large arn1—chair in the middle of the pit, and applause was scarcely permitted until he gave the signal for it. The German stage owes perhaps as much to Goethe as to Lessing. The répertoim of the Veimar theatre was stocked with pieces of solid merit which long held their place. Shakespeare was seriously performed, and the actors were instructed in the delivery of blank verse. Stress was laid on the excellence of the cnse-mb/.3 as against the predominance of particular stars. The theatre was considered as a school not only of elevating 731 amusement but of national culture. Goethe wrote the Gross Cophta for the Weimar stage, a piece founded on the history of Cagliostro and the diamond necklace. He was fascinated by the story as a foreboding of the coming horrors of the Revolution. In these events he was destined to take a more active part than he expected. In August 1792 he accompanied the duke to the campaign in the Ardennes. Passing by Frankfort, where he visited his mother, he joined the allied armies at Longwy. He beguiled the tedious siege of Verdun by writing an account of his theory of colours in a leaky tent ; and on the disas- trous day of Valmy, which he recognized as the birth of a new era, he sought the thickest of the ﬁght that he might experience the dangerous rapture of the cannon-fever He retreated with the Prussian army, spent ﬁve weeks with his friend Jacobi at Pempelfort, and on his return to Weimar at the end of the year found that the duke had built him a spacious house in the square where the joint statues of Goethe and Schiller now stand, in eternal memory of their friendship. In 1793 he Went with his master to the siege of Mainz. He continued his optical studies d11ring the bombardment, witnessed the marching out of the garrison, and was one of the ﬁrst to enter the conquered town. He received leave to withdraw, and went to his mother at Frankfort, and persuaded her to sell the old house and its contents, and to provide a more convenient home for her old age. There was some talk of her coming to Weimar. In the autumn of this year the duke left the Prussian service, and Goethe could look forward to a period of peace. He was chieﬂy occupied with the management of the theatre, and for this he wrote two pieces, both of which had reference to the politics of the time. The Ilttrgergerzeral is a satire on the Revolution, and was long a stone of offence to Goethe’s friends, who thought that he should have hailed with delight the birth of a new era. The A u_f}]eregtcn, left unfinished, sketched the outbreak of the Revolution in a country town, and would have declared the author’s views with greater distinctness. But the feel- ings of scorn and contempt which he felt for the cowardice, cunning, and perﬁdy of mankind were expressed i11 a work of greater magnitude. He had good reason to deplore the misery of the time. His mother’s home in Frankfort was broken up; Schlosser, his brother-in—law, had retired to Auerbach ; Jacobi was ﬂying to Holstein. Goethe took the old German epic of Iteynarcl the Fox, with which he had long been familiar, and which, under the guise of animals, represents the conflicting passions of men, and rewrote it in ﬂowing German hexameters. Thus far he had produced but little since his return Friend- He was now to undergo the most powerful Shil§“'itl' inﬂuence which had as yet affected his life. His friendship S°1““"' from Italy. with Schiller was now to begin, an alliance which, in the closeness of its intimacy and its deep effect 011 the character of both friends, has scarcely a parallel in literary history. If Schiller was not at this time at the height of his reputation, he had written many of the works which have made his name famous. He was ten years younger than Goethe. The II‘c'iuber plays the same part i11 his literary history as Gtitz plays in that of Goethe. This had been followed by F-icsco and Kabale eutrl Liebe. The second period of Schiller’s life had begun with his friendship with Korner, and his residence in Saxony. Here he wrote the II_z/ma ofJo_2/, and completed Don Carlos. In 1787 he settled at Weimar. He found the place deserted, the duke in the Prussian camp, Goethe in Italy. He applied himself to history, wrote the Revel t of the 1'ctIzerl(mds, and studied the literature and art of Greece. In 1789, mainly upon Goethe’s recommendation, he was made professor of history at the university of Jena, although he was afraid lest the scholars should discover that they knew more history than the teacher.