Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/760

Rh 736 G O E symmetrical in their structure. The ﬁrst moves with de- liberate swiftness from heaven through the world to hell; the second returns therefrom through the world to heaven. Between the two lies the emancipation of Faust from the torment of his conscious guilt, lies his Lethe, his assimi- lation of the past. In regard to substance, the ﬁrst part begins religiously, becomes metaphysical, and terminates ethically; the second part begins ethically, becomes zesthetic, and terminates religiously. In one, love and knowledge are confronted with each other ; in the other, practical activity and art, the ideal of the beautiful. In regard to form, the ﬁrst part advances from the hymnal shout to monologue and dialogue ; the second part from monologue and dialogue to the dithyrambic, closing with the hymn, which here gloriﬁes not alone the Lord and His uncomprehended lofty works, but the human in the process of its union with the divine, through redemption and atonement.” The ﬁrst act, with its varied scenes of country, castle, garden, galleries, and halls, answers to the two prologues of the ﬁrst part ; the second act introduces us again to Faust’s study and his familiar Wagner. The classical Walpurgis Night has its prototype in the ﬁrst part. The third act is devoted to Helena, who is the heroine of the second part as Gretchen is of the ﬁrst. The marriage of Faust and Helena typiﬁes the union of the classical and romantic schools, and their child is Euphorion, who is symbolical of Byron. In the fourth act Faust is raised instead of being degraded by his union with Helena. He wishes for a sphere of beneﬁcent activity, and obtains it by war. The ﬁfth act is devoted to the complete regeneration of the soul of Faust. Even the sight of all that he has accomplished does not satisfy him. It is not until he is blind to outward objects that one moment of divine rapture reveals to him the continuance of his work in coming generations, and convinces him that he has not lived in vain. In this one moment of supreme happiness he dies. The struggle for the possession of Faust's soul, indicated in the first part, is fully elaborated in the second. Mephistopheles is shown to have worked out the good in spite of himself, and Margaret appears transﬁgured as the revelation to man of the divine love. With the completion of Faust, Goethe felt that the work of his life was accomplished. He still continued to work with regularity. He ordered and arranged his writings, he laboured at his Tages- and Ja/ares/u:fte7z, an autobiographical journal of his life. He bated not one jot of heart or hope, and took the liveliest interest in every movement of litera- ture and science. When the news of the July Revolution of 1830 reached Weimar, Goethe was excited beyond his wont, not on account of the triumph of liberal principles, but because the controversy between Cuvier and Geoffrey St llilaire had been decided in favour of the latter. Still he had much to darken his latter days. His old friends were falling fast around him. His wife had dierl in 1816, after a union of thirty years. He felt her loss bitterly. The duchess Amalia had died eight years before, not long after the death of his own mother. He now had to undergo bitterer experiences when he was less able to bear them. l"rau von Stein, with whom he had renewed his friendship if not his love, died in January 1927 ; and in June 1828 he lost the companion of his youth, the grand-duke Karl August, who died suddenly, away from Weimar, on his return from a journey. Goethe received the news with outward calmness, but said forebodingly, “ N ow it is all over,” and went to mourn and labour at the castle of Dornburg, where everything reminded him of the days of their early friend- ship. The duchess Louise survived her husbanzl till February 1830. When Goethe died in 1832 none of the old Veimar set were left except Knebel, who lived two years longer. A greater blow than these was the death of his only son, whom, in spite of his moral weakness, his father deeply loved. 'r H 1«: IIe died at Rome in October 1830, and is buried close by the pyramid of Cains Cestius, where Goethe himself once desired to be laid. We have afull account of the last nine years of Goethe’s life from the writings of Eckermann, who became his secretary in 18:23, lived with him till his death, and has noted down his conversations and his habits with the minuteness and ﬁdelity of a Boswell. We nmst pass on to the closing scene. On Thursday, March 15, 1832, he spent his last cheerful and happy da.y. He was visited by the grand-dnchess and other friends. He awoke the next morning with a chill. From this he gradually recovered, and on Monday was so n1uch better that he designed to begin his regular work on the next day. But in the middle of the night he woke up with a deathly coldness, which extended from his hands over his body, and which it took many hours to subdue. It then appeared that the lungs were attacked, and that there was no hope of his recovery. Goethe did not anticipate death. He sat fully clothed in his arm-chair, made attempts to reach his study, spoke conﬁdently of his recovery, and of the walks he would take in the ﬁne April days. His daughter-in—law Ottilio tended him faithfully. On the morning of the 22d his strength gradually left him. He sat slumbering in his arm- chair holding Ottilie’s hand. Her name was constantly on his lips. His mind occasionally wandered, at one time to his beloved Schiller, at another to a fair female head with black curls, some passion of his youth. His last words were an order to his servant to open the second shutter to let in more light. After this he traced with his foreﬁnger letters in the air. At half—past eleven in the day he drew himself, with- out any sign of pain, into the left corner of his arm-chair, and went so peacefullyto sleepthat it was long before the watchers knew that his spirit was really gone. He is buried in the gr-and-ducal vault, where the bones of Schiller are also laid. Goethe differs from all other great writers, except per- haps Hilton, in this respect, that his works cannot be under- stood without a knowledge of his life, and that his life is in itself a work of art, greater than any work which it created. I This renders along and circumstantial biography a necessity to all who would study the poet seriously. At the same time he is so great that we are even now scarcely suﬁiciently removed from him to be able to form a correct judgment of his place in literary history. He is not only the greatest poet of Germany; he is one of the greatest poets of all ages. Posterity must decide his exact preced- ence in that small and chosen company which contains the names of Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare. He was the apostle of self-culture. Always striving after objective truth, and sometimes attaining to it, he exhibited to the world every phase of his plastic mind in turn. and taught both by precept and example the husbandry of the soul. The charge of selﬁshness so often brought against him cannot be maintained. His nature responded to every influence of passing emotion. Like a delicate harp, it was silent if not touched, and yet gave its music to every woo- ing of the wilful wind. The charge of unsympathetic coldness roused the deep indignation of those who knew him best. He learned by sad experience that the lesson of life is to renounce. Rather than cavil at his statuesque repose, we should learn to admire the self-conﬁiet and self- command which moulded the exuberance of his impulsive nature into monumental synnnetry and proportion. His autobiography has done him wrong. It is the story not of his life, but of his recollections. Ile needs no defence, nothing but sympathetic study. As Homer concentrated in himself the spirit of antiquity, Dante of the Middle Ages, and Shakespeare of the Renaissance, so Goethe is the representative of the modern spirit, the prophet of man- kind undcr new circumstances and new conditions, the appointed teacher of ages yet unbern. llis (leatl