Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/759

Rh LC '{11' liber- on. 'est- tlichc z'z'an. GOE took pains to ascertain facts which he had forgotten. But he was so conscious that imagination would play a large ' part in the composition that in the title he gave poetry the precedence before truth. The indefatigable industry of German investigation has laid open before 11s every detail of the poet’s life and every phase of his feeling. Dichtzmg and Wahr/ceit, if it has lost its rank as a history, still keeps its place as a classic. The simple loving delineation of the childhood of genius is as fresh as ever, and is of more 11ni- versal interest from being less particular. The ﬁrst five books of this autobiography appeared in 1811, the next ﬁve in 1812, the third instalment at Easter 1814, and the conclusion after Goethe’s death. The period during which this was his principal work witnessed the greatest political event of the ﬁrst half of our century, the rising of the Ger- man people against the power of Napoleon. In this Goethe took no share, and with it he apparently felt little sympathy. He made no impassioned orations to his countrymen like Fichte; he wrote no inspiring lays like Korner. The ballads which he composed in 1813 are harmless enough,—Der wanclelncle Glockr’, Der getreue Ecle- /zart, Der Tocltentanz. He saw Stein and Arndt at Dres- den in 1813, but disappointed them by his impassive manner. He said to Korner’s father at the same time, “ Yes, shake your chains ! The man is too great for you. You will not break them, but only drive them deeper into your flesh.” The reasons for this apparent coldncss are perhaps more simple than they appear at ﬁrst sight. Goethe was a man of thought rather than of action. Al- though a fair portion of his long life was given to the practical business of his adopted country, his heart was always in speculation or artistic production. While in- specting mines he was spinning theories of geological for- mation ; while working for the war commission he gladly ran away to the castle of Dornburg to bury himself amongst his deserted papers. The pressure of court business at Veimar drove him to the solitude of Italy. In the deﬁles of the Argonne, and in the trenches before Mainz, he was scheming and arranging his theory of colours. A bombard- ment was valued by him less as an attack upon the enemy than as a series of interesting experiments in optics. Added to this natural indifference to the details of human affairs was his belief in the predominance of force, and in the necessary evolution of the history of the world. Na- poleon was to him the greatest living depository of power. Nations, whether conquered or victorious, separated or united, obeyed a common law against which individual will strove in vain. Goethe was thus incapacitated for politics, both by his qualities and his defects. This habit of abstract contemplation grew upon him in later life. Those who condemn him on this ground should remember that he hailed in no grudging spirit the formation of aunited Ger- many, and that his works have been the most potent agency in making all Germans feel that they are one. Few would wish to exchange the self-conﬂict of Faust, or even the wayward wanderings of M eister, for the hectic extrava- gance of Kiirner or the unsubstantial rhetoric of Posa. It was hardly to be expected that at the age of sixty-ﬁve Goethe should strike out new lines of poetical activity. However, in the West-6stlz'c/w Divan, he made the ﬁrst attempt to transplant Eastern poetry to a German soil, and set an example which has been followed by Heine and Mirza Schaffy. In 1811 he ﬁrst became acquainted with the works of Haﬁz in Hammer’s translation. At a time when North and South and -West were splitting in s11nder, when thrones Were breaking up and empires trembling, he sought a willing refuge in the restoring fountain of the Eastern poet. The book T2'.7nm- has an obvious reference to the expedition of Napoleon in Russia, but the large majority of the poems are amatory, and are addressed to an imaginary Suleika, THE 735 whose name is given to one of the books. Once more in his old age Goethe came under the sovereignty of a woman. She was Marianne von Willemer, the newly married wife of a Frankfort banker, Jacob von Willemer, who was an old friend of Goethe’s and of his brother-in-law Schlosser. Goethe made her acquaintance in a journey which he took in the Rhine country with Sulpiz Boiserée, who had suc- ceeded in interesting Goethe in early German art, a sub- ject to which he was himself devoted. The correspondence between Goethe and Marianne was published in 1877. It extends almost to the day of his death, and includes letters from Eckermann giving an account of his last moments. Not only were most of the Divan poems addressed to Suleika, but several of those included in the collection are by Marianne herself, and will bear comparison with those of Goethe. In these poems the Oriental form is not very strictly observed. The fondness of the Orientals for the re- petition of single rhymes is not attended to, and if some- times remembered is soon forgotten. Their Eastern colour depends rather on the suggestion of Eastern scenery and the introduction of Eastern names. This, however, gives the poet a greater licence to lcvity, to fatalism, and to passion than would have been possible in poems of a purely German character. The last twelve years of Goethe’s life, when he had passed his seventieth birthday, were occupied by his criti- cisms on the literature of foreign countries, by the ll'amler- ja/are, and the second part of Faust. He was the literary dictator of Germany and of Europe. He took but little interest in the direction in which the younger German school was moving, and was driven to turn his eyes abroad. He conceived an intense admiration for Byron, which was increased by his early death. Byron appears as Euphorion in the second part of Faust. He also recognized the great- ness of Scott, and was one of the ﬁrst to send a greeting to the Italian Mazzini. He conceived the idea of a world- literature transcending the narrow limits of race and country. which should unite all nations in harmony of feeling and aspiration. German writers claim that his design has been realized, and the literature of every age and country can be studied in a tongue which Goethe had made rich, ﬂexible, and serviceable for the purpose. The ll’ande2;7'a/are, al- though it contains some of Goethe’s most beautiful concep- The clos- ing years. J1 eio-tcr's I V and cr- tions, The Flight into Egypt, The Description of the Perla--7-"hr" gogic Province, The Parable of the Three Reverences, is yet an ill-assorted collection of all kinds of writings, old and new. Its author never succeeded in giving it forn1 or coherency, and his later style, beautiful as it is, becomes in these years vague and abstract. - Still without this work we should not be acquainted with the full richness and power of his mind. The second part of Faust has ‘been a battleﬁeld of Second part of controversy since its publication, and demands fuller attention. Its fate may be compared with that of the latest works of Beethoven. For a long time it was regarded as impossible to understand, and as not worth understanding, the production of a great artist whose faculties had been impaired by age. By degrees it has, by careful labour, be- come intelligible to us, and the conviction is growing that it is the deepest and most important work of the author’s life. Its composition cannot be called an after-thought. There is no doubt that the poet ﬁnished at the age of eighty the plan which he had conceived sixty years before. The work in its entirety may be described as the ﬁrst part of Faust “ writ large.” This is a picture of the macrocosm of society as that was of the microcosm of the individual The parallelism between the two dramas is not perfect, but it reveals itself more and more clearly to a patient study. Some points of this similarity have been well expressed by Rosenkranz (quoted by Bayard Taylor) :—“ Both parts are Fr! list.