Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 5.djvu/35

Rh der, in communicating those things which had hitherto contributed to my culture, but especially such as still seriously occupied my attention at the moment. He had destroyed my enjoyment of so much that I had loved before, and had especially blamed me in the strongest manner for the pleasure I took in "Ovid's Metamorphoses." I might defend my favourite as I would; I might say, that, for a youthful fancy, nothing could be more delightful than to linger in those cheerful and glorious regions with gods and demi-gods, and to be a witness of their deeds and passions; I might circumstantially quote that previously mentioned opinion of a sober-minded man, and corroborate it by my own experience,—all this, according to Herder, went for nothing; there was no immediate truth, properly so called, to be found in these poems: here was neither Greece nor Italy, neither a primitive world nor a cultivated one; everything was rather an imitation of what had already existed, and a mannerised representation, such as could be expected only from an over-cultivated man. And if at last I would maintain, that whatever an eminent individual produces is also nature, and that always, in all nations, ancient and modern, the poet alone has been the maker, this was not allowed to pass, and I had to endure much on this account, nay, I was almost disgusted with my Ovid by it; for there is no affection, no habit so strong, that it can hold out in the long run against the animadversions of eminent men in whom one places confidence. Something always cleaves to us; and, if one cannot love unconditionally, love is already in a critical condition.

I most carefully concealed from him my interest in certain subjects which had rooted themselves within me, and were, by little and little, moulding themselves into poetic form. These were "Götz von Berlichingen" and "Faust." The biography of the former had seized