Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 5.djvu/160

142 do this on a large scale. Learned men and publishers were here, by a close compact, to enjoy, both in a certain proportion, the hoped-for advantage. The necessity, so long painfully felt, again awakened a great confidence; but this could not last long: and, after a brief endeavour, the parties separated, with a loss on both sides.

However, a speedy communication among the friends of literature was already introduced. The Musenalmanache united all the young poets with each other: the journals united the poet with other authors. The pleasure I found in production was boundless; to what I had produced I remained indifferent; only when, in social circles, I made it present to myself and others, my affection for it was renewed. Moreover, many persons took an interest in both my larger and smaller works, because I urgently pressed every one who felt in any degree inclined and adapted to production, to produce something independently, after his own fashion, and was, in turn, challenged by all to new poetising and writing. These mutual impulses, which were carried even to an extreme, gave every one a happy influence in his own fashion: and from this whirling and working, this living and letting-live, this taking and giving, which was carried on by so many youths, from their own free hearts, without any theoretical guiding-star, according to the innate character of each, and without any special design, arose that famed, extolled, and decried epoch in literature, when a mass of young, genial men, with all that audacity and assumption such as are peculiar to their own period of youth, produced, by the application of their powers, much that was good, and, by the abuse of these, much ill-feeling and mischief; and it is, indeed, the action and reaction which proceeded from this source, that form the chief theme of this volume.