Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 5.djvu/217

 RELATING TO MY LIFE 199

regard my work as if it had proceeded from another hand, I indeed perceived, that, in my attempt to renounce unity of time and place, I had also infringed upon that higher unity which is so much the more required. Since, without plan or sketch, I had merely abandoned myself to my imagination and to an internal impulse, I had not deviated much at the beginning, and the first acts could fairly pass for what they were intended to be. In the following acts, however, and especially toward the end, I was unconsciously carried along by a wonderful passion. While trying to describe Adelheid as amiable, I had fallen in love with her myself, — my pen was involuntarily devoted to her alone, — the interest in her fate gained the preponderance ; and as, apart from this consideration, Götz, toward the end, is without activity, and afterward only returns to an unlucky participation in the "Bauernkrieg," 1 nothing was more natural than that a charming woman should supplant him in the mind of the author, who, casting off the fetters of art, thought to try himself in a new field. This defect, or rather this culpable superfluity, I soon perceived ; since the nature of my poetry always impelled me to unity. I now, instead of the biography of Götz and German antiquities, kept my own work in mind, and sought to give it more and more historical and national substance, and to cancel that which was fabulous or merely proceeded from passion. In this I indeed sacrificed much, as the inclination of the man had to yield to the conviction of the artist. Thus, for instance, I had pleased myself highly by making Adelheid enter in a terrific nocturnal gypsy-scene, and perform wonders by her beautiful presence. A nearer examination banished her ; and the love-affair between Franz and his noble, gracious lady, which was very circumstantially carried on in the fourth and

1 The peasant war, answering to the Jaquerie in France. — Trans.