On the day after the battle Napoleon himself entered the town, and on the 16th he ordered that the harrying{157} should be brought to an end. He would probably have deprived the Duke of his territory but for the influence of the Duchess, for whom the French Emperor had high respect. The Duke was allowed to retain sovereign power on condition that he should at once withdraw from the Prussian army. Soon afterwards he was compelled to join the Confederation of the Rhine, and he had also to pay a huge indemnity.
Much energy had to be expended before the desolation due to these fearful days could be made good. The people, however, set to work with a will, and in the well-tried Minister, Goethe, they found the guidance and support they needed. He was full of resource and courage, saw exactly what had to be done, and the means of doing it, and stimulated every one by the example of his own zeal and activity. At this great testing-time, when Goethe’s character shone forth in all its radiance, the inhabitants of the Duchy would have been much astonished if they had heard what afterwards became the foolish parrot-cry about his being an “egoist,” a “Pagan,” a man indifferent to the welfare of his neighbours, and caring only for his own culture. They would have felt that, if the cry was true, Goethe’s “egoism” had a strange resemblance to other people’s unselfishness.
Meanwhile, a great event had happened in Goethe’s life. Christiane had become his wife, not only in reality, but in name. Many a time he had felt bitterly that he had committed a terrible mistake in defying, in this matter, the ordinary customs of society. He had paid a heavy penalty for the assertion of his independence; for the presence of Christiane in his house in a position{158} which—although perfectly honourable, so far as his own feeling was concerned—was misunderstood by the rest of the world, had been an occasion of much wretchedness both to her and to him. Moreover, his ideas about the respect due from the individual to great social rules had undergone a complete change. He himself needed no ceremony to bind his conscience, but he felt, as he had not felt eighteen years earlier, that a ceremony might be essential in the interests of the community at large. So, anxious that in a time of public confusion her true position should be put beyond doubt, he wrote to the Court preacher of Weimar, saying that a purpose which had often been in his mind had come to maturity—and might the formal union be concluded on the following Sunday or earlier? On Sunday, October 19, 1806, Goethe and Christiane became, in the face of the world, what they had all along been in their own esteem, husband and wife. The only persons present were their son August and Goethe’s secretary, Riemer.
August was now a youth of seventeen, and had already been legitimated. He was a handsome young fellow, with dark hair and dark eyes, and endowed with good abilities. He was idolized by his father, and no one could please Goethe better than by showing kindness to his boy. About two years after the marriage August went to Heidelberg to study law, and it was with a heavy heart that Goethe let him go.
About this time Weimar became the home of Johanna Schopenhauer, the novelist, the mother of one of the most illustrious philosophers of the modern world. She was very bright and clever, and had an intense ad{159}miration for Goethe. “He is,” she wrote, “the most perfect being I know, even in appearance. A tall, fine figure, which holds itself erect, very carefully clad, always in black or quite dark blue, the hair tastefully dressed and powdered, as becomes his age, and a splendid face with two lustrous brown eyes, which are at once mild and penetrating.” Goethe was grateful to Frau Schopenhauer for receiving his wife with the respect that was her due. Not every woman of her standing was equally considerate.
A few years after Goethe’s death a strange book took the world by surprise—Bettina von Arnim’s “Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde” (“Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child”). Bettina was the daughter of Goethe’s old friend Maximiliane Brentano. While still a very young girl she fancied that there was some resemblance between herself and Mignon; and, as Mignon loved Wilhelm Meister, so she loved Goethe. In 1807, when she was about twenty-two, she came to Weimar, and soon gave evidence of her remarkable passion, which was, of course, an affair rather of the fancy than of the heart. Goethe talked with her kindly, but took care that her enthusiasm should be kept within reasonable bounds. Some years afterwards (in 1811) Bettina married the poet Arnim. She had the bad taste to insult Christiane, who very properly responded by forbidding her to enter Goethe’s house again. To Bettina’s surprise, he energetically supported his wife’s decision. There was nothing about which he was so sensitive as the treatment accorded to his wife, and Bettina had to reconcile herself to the discovery that in her relation to{160} Goethe she was, in comparison with the woman whom she had held in such low esteem, of very little importance. The letters published after his death, and attributed to him, are in reality as much Bettina’s work as Goethe’s.
In 1808 he had to pass through a sorrow which he felt most keenly. Ever since his father’s death his mother had continued to live at Frankfort. She was a woman of a genial and expansive nature, with a deep vein of poetry; and her real character was fully recognized only when she had to confront the world, alone. Every one loved her, and she was adored by young girls, whom she delighted to gather around her. To her great joy, Goethe repeatedly visited her, and she was also able to welcome to her home his wife and son. She was so generous that, after Schlosser’s death, the trustees for his children by his first wife, Cornelia, Goethe’s sister, wished to put some legal limit to her expenditure; and Goethe was asked to sanction their proposal. Goethe, however, who had inherited much of his mother’s disposition, replied that she had a right to spend her fortune as she pleased, and so the good Frau Rath went on living the life that best suited her kindly, happy temper. She corresponded regularly with Goethe, and it would be impossible to conceive a more beautiful relation than that which existed between mother and son. She died on September 13, 1808, at the age of seventy-seven, and Goethe mourned for her with a grief that cut deeply into his inward life.
He sent his wife to Frankfort to make the necessary arrangements with regard to the inheritance that was to{161} be divided between him and his sister’s children. Christiane showed on this occasion not only a thorough faculty for business, but a liberal spirit that won golden opinions from all whom the matter concerned.
In the autumn of 1808 took place the famous meeting of Napoleon and Czar Alexander at Erfurt. Napoleon had read a French translation of “Werther,” and expressed a wish to see the author. Accordingly, on the morning of October 2nd, Goethe was presented. As the poet entered, the Emperor looked searchingly at him, and, turning round, exclaimed, “Voilà un homme!” Napoleon talked of “Werther,” and had also much to say about the French drama, frequently stopping to ask, “Qu’en dit M. G?t?” A few days afterwards Napoleon and his “pitful of kings” were present at a representation of Voltaire’s “La mort de César” at the Weimar Theatre. After the play there was a ball, in the course of which Napoleon repeatedly took occasion to converse with Goethe. He condemned Voltaire’s drama, and suggested that Goethe should write a better one on the subject, showing how C?sar, if he had been allowed to live, would have done great things for Rome. The Emperor formed so high an opinion of Goethe that he begged him to come to Paris, assuring him of a fitting welcome.
Goethe had arranged with Cotta, in 1805, for the publication of a new edition of his collected works. The appearance of this edition is memorable, because one of the volumes, issued in 1808, contained the First Part of “Faust,” as we now possess it.
There is no sound reason for supposing that when{162} Goethe first thought of making the Faust legend the subject of a drama he conceived the work as a whole, including the Second Part. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that the dominant idea of the Second Part was a later development.[2] The Frankfort “Faust” contains not a line or a suggestion which indicates that he intended the work to end otherwise than as a tragedy. The whole scheme of the drama implies that the conclusion is to be tragical.
Long before the First Part was completed, however, the conception had taken another form. It was one of Goethe’s vital characteristics that his mind often reverted, by an inward necessity, to the consideration of the vast problems with which, at the earliest dawn of independent thought, man finds himself confronted. He was especially fascinated by the terrible problem of evil. What is its real nature? Is it an essential element of the universe, and will it therefore abide for ever? Or is it an appearance merely, a negation, which the human spirit may by some means shake off, and so recover its true freedom? Goethe wrestled with these questions long and earnestly,{163} and at last he felt himself able to answer them decisively.
No one who knows anything of Goethe will suppose that he was a thinker of a light, optimistic temper. He realized as few can realize—for few have his capacity for piercing intuition—how deep are the roots of evil in man’s nature, and how profound the sources of his misery. It is worthy of note that there is not one of Goethe’s works in which he tries to present a flawless male character. Schiller loved to roam in an imaginative world where men have no impulses except such as are high, pure, and heroic. Goethe, on the contrary, held fast by reality. Both in his dramas and his romances most of his leading male figures have some radical defect that either leads, or might conceivably lead, to disaster. Even in “Goetz,” the hero of which, if not perfect, is thoroughly sound and good, he gives us Weislingen, whose weakness brings him to a tragic doom. Kindred weaknesses appear in the heroes of “Werther,” “Clavigo,” “Stella,” “Tasso,” “Wilhelm Meister.” This is not an accident, it is an essential element of Goethe’s art, and it in part explains why his work is so much more potent than Schiller’s. For, after all, however pleasant it may be to dream of characters who float in an ideal realm far above us, it is by characters in whom we find ourselves reflected that we are most closely touched and most deeply moved. Some of Goethe’s feminine characters are conceived in a different spirit. We cannot imagine his Iphigenie, for instance, diverging from the straight path. But he also presented Adelheid; and Lotte and Gretchen, warmly as he loved them, are not prevented{164} from making experience of evil—the former by hovering on its verge, the latter by plunging into the abyss.
Goethe, then, was under no illusions as to the darker aspects of the world. He knew and felt that an awful conflict goes on between two mighty powers, the one fair and beneficent, the other hideous and malign. But he convinced himself—or, perhaps, it would be truer to say, the conviction grew in his mind—that this struggle is not necessarily eternal; that in spirits which, in spite of failure and suffering, have always an inward longing for light and freedom, the good power ultimately triumphs, and crushes evil for ever under its feet.
To have a great conviction was in Goethe’s case to be conscious of an urgent demand for its expression. Some time or other, therefore (perhaps in 1788, when, at Rome, he wrote of “the plan” having been “made”), it must have occurred to him that “Faust” provided him with precisely such a medium of expression as he needed. Faust has turned from all the highest influences to which his spirit in its inmost depths responds. In a mood of despair he has abandoned his ideals, and is seeking through the world for some rapture that will satisfy his cravings. So far, he is a type of humanity in one aspect of its life. But—Goethe seems to have asked himself—why should not Faust be a type of humanity in a larger, greater sense? If it is the destiny of evil to be conquered and to pass away, might not Faust become the representative of this sublime world-process? In his deep, imaginative spirit might we not see the entire course of the struggle, from the moment when evil seems to attain supremacy until{165} that in which it will have to give way to the ultimate and absolute sway of good?
Nothing short of this was Goethe’s aim in his final conception of “Faust.” The poem was to embody all that his thought and his experience of life had taught him as to the spiritual history and the spiritual destiny of man.
Hence, in the completed First Part, the work no longer begins, as it began in its earliest form, with Faust’s monologue. The Prologue in Heaven introduces us to a scene in which it is symbolically brought home to us that Faust, whatever may be his errors or crimes, will not always remain under their power, but will in the end recognize his true nature, yield his will to its laws, and so attain to liberty and peace. And, in accordance with this symbolic assurance, Goethe, in the body of the poem, brings into clearer prominence those qualities of Faust’s character which show that at heart he is a man capable of fine impulse and generous aspiration. Every one knows how, after the second monologue, when he is about to end his unhappiness by death, he is affected by the chorus of angels and women on the morning of Easter Day. We obtain the conviction that, however deeply a man who can be so touched may fall, he can never place himself beyond hope of recovery. This is suggested, too, by the form of his pact with Mephistopheles. He is to yield himself wholly to Mephistopheles only if a moment shall come when he will be disposed to say, “Oh, stay! thou art so fair!” We know that to a man of Faust’s nature no such moment can ever come through evil agency.{166}
In other respects the poem is not vitally changed; it is merely extended and developed in the sense in which it was originally conceived. The working-out of the idea of Faust’s deliverance Goethe reserved for the Second Part.
The “Fragment” published in 1790 had passed almost unnoticed. The completed First Part, on the contrary, was received with general astonishment and admiration. Most people had begun to think of Goethe as one who had practically closed his literary career. He was now on the border-land between middle life and old age, and it had been supposed that no further work of importance was to be expected from him. Yet here was a poem of a depth and range that surpassed anything he had yet produced. For the first time his countrymen began to realize the true extent of his power, and, during the rest of his life, all who were capable of sound critical judgment regarded him as incomparably the greatest figure in the literature of Germany.
Two years after the publication of “Faust” he issued the third of his prose romances, “Die Wahlverwandtschaften” (“Elective Affinities”). The idea of this book had been for a long time in his mind. He originally intended to make it the subject only of a short study, but he ultimately felt that its full significance could be brought out only in an elaborate tale. The work displays high imaginative energy, and must be classed among the finest of Goethe’s prose writings. Its most striking characteristic is the power with which he convinces us that the relations he calls “elective affinities,” although they lead in the story to no outward wrong-doing, must neces{167}sarily, in such circumstances as he presents, have a deeply tragic meaning.
Another work belonging chiefly to this period is “Aus Meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit” (“From My Life. Poetry and Truth”), the first two parts of which appeared in 1811, the third in 1814. The fourth he did not finish until 1831. The narrative brings the story of Goethe’s life down to the time when he quitted Frankfort for Weimar. His object was to describe the influences under which his character both as a man and as a writer was formed. Hence the stress he lays on his relations to Gretchen, Annette, Frederika, and Lili. To have omitted these figures from his picture, or to have sketched them only slightly, would have been to convey a wholly wrong impression of the conditions under which his peculiar powers were developed. The style in which the story is told is light, pliant, and graceful, and it has an especially delicate charm in the passages relating to the maidens whom he has loved. Some details of the narrative are incorrect, but that his reminiscences are substantially accurate we know from the fact that they accord in the main with his early works and letters. Goethe’s intellectual relations even in youth were so far-reaching that “Dichtung und Wahrheit” is much more than a record of his personal experience. It contains a full and most vivid account of all the great currents of thought and feeling in Germany during an important transitional period in the history of her literature.
During the time when he was writing his autobiography, Goethe studied with much interest Von Hammer’s translation of the Persian poet Hafiz. This led to the pro{168}duction of the “West-Oestlicher Divan” (“West-Eastern Divan”). The work was not published until 1819, but the greater part of it was written in 1815. It consists of several series of short poems, and is remarkable chiefly for the deep practical wisdom of many of its verses, for the variety and perfection of its metres, and for the splendour of its diction. The “West-Oestlicher Divan” became a source of inspiration to several poets of the new generation—among others, to Rückert, Platen, and Bodenstedt.
Meanwhile, Germany had been passing through a great and stirring period of her history, and Goethe, like other people, had been anxiously watching the progress of events. It cannot, however, be said that he was one of those who in any way aided the national cause. This was not due to lack of patriotism, for although he could not share the hatred with which most of his countrymen at this time regarded France, he realized fully of what vital importance it was for Germany that French supremacy should be brought to an end. But it did not seem to him, when the War of Liberation began, that the time had come for a final struggle for national independence. Napoleon, notwithstanding his disasters in Russia, still had vast resources at his disposal, and Goethe was convinced that his military genius made him all but invincible. On the other hand, the German sovereigns, as he had known them, had generally been self-seeking and untrustworthy, and it appeared incredible to Goethe that they would be able to act harmoniously for a high common object. Happily, his forebodings proved to be without foundation, and he was heartily pleased when he had to admit that he had been mistaken.{169}
One small result of the great national uprising was that the Duke of Weimar became a Grand Duke and received an accession of territory. As he proposed to establish a constitutional system of government, it was necessary that the method of administration should be considerably modified; and Goethe, who was not consulted about the measures which were about to be taken, supposed that there might be some change in his own position. The Grand Duke, however, knew too well what he owed to his old and loyal friend to do anything to his disadvantage. Early in the winter of 1815, Goethe was informed that he had been appointed the First Minister of State.
A few months afterwards, he had to mourn the loss of his wife. She died on the 6th of June, 1816. This was a bitter grief to Goethe, who had never loved her more warmly than during the last years of her life.