Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/461

Rh proofs of his valour; while the women remain, and give full scope to their likings, their hopes, and all other tender emotions. The high favour in which the stranger stands with all, makes it impossible for Nausicaa to restrain her own feelings, and she thus becomes irreparably compromised with her own people, Ulysses, who, partly innocent, partly to blame, is the cause of all this, now announces his intention to depart; and nothing remains for the unhappy Nausicaa, but in the fifth act to seek for an end of existence.

In this composition there was nothing but what I would have been able to depict from nature after my own experience. Even while travelling—even in peril—to excite favourable feelings, which, although they did not end tragically, might yet prove painful enough, and perhaps dangerous, and would, at all events, leave deep wounds behind; even the supposed accidents of describing in lively colours, for the entertainment of others, objects observed at a great distance from home, travelling adventures and chances of life; to be looked upon by the young as a demigod, but by the more sedate as a talker of rhodomontade, and to meet now with unexpected favour, and now with unexpected rebuffs,—all this caused me to feel so great an attachment to this plan, that, in thinking of it, I dreamed away all the time of my stay at Palermo, and, indeed, of all the rest of my Sicilian tour. It was this that made me care little for all the inconvenience and discomfort I met with; for, on this classic ground, a poetic vein had taken possession of me, causing all I saw, experienced, or observed, to be taken and regarded in a joyous mood.

After my usual habit, good or bad, I wrote down little or nothing of the play; but worked in my mind most of it with all the minutest detail. And there, in my mind, pushed out of thought by many subsequent distractions, it has remained until this moment,