active. His sympathy, instead of growing cold with age, seems every year to become more active. Every discovery in Science, every new appearance in Literature, every promise in Art finds him eager as a child to be instructed, and ready with aid or applause to further it. Goethe at seventy was younger Old indeed is a relative term. age than many men at fifty; and at eighty-two he wrote a scientific review of the great discussion between Cuvier and Geoffroy St. Hilaire on Philosophic Zoology, a review which few men in their prime could write. But there are Physiologists who deny that seventy is old age. M. Flourens, for example, maintains that from fifty-five to seventy, man is at his most virile period; and M. Reveillé Parisse, in his work La Vieillesse, declares that between fifty-five and seventyfive, and sometimes beyond, the mind acquires an extension, a consistence, and a solidity truly remarkable,—"c'est véritablement l'homme ayant atteint toute la hauteur de ses facultés." And the history of Science and Literature furnishes several striking examples of intellectual activity in old age—the activity being doubtless a cause of this prolongation of power. Sophocles, who is said. to have written his masterpiece at eighty, is an example of great poetic capacity thus prolonged. The reflective powers often retain their capacity, and by increase of material seem to increase it; but not so the productive powers. Yet in Goethe we see extraordinary fertility, even in the latest years; the Second Part of Faust was completed in his eighty-first year, and the west-östliche Divan was written in his sixty-fifth. Although we cannot by any means consider these works as equal to the works of his earlier days, we must still consider them as marvellous productions to issue under the sunset of a poet. The west-östliche Divan was a refuge from the troubles of the time. Instead of making himself unhappy with the politics of Europe, he made himself happy studying the history and poetry of the East. He even began to study the Oriental languages, and was delighted to be able to copy the Arabic manuscripts in their peculiar characters. Von Hammer, De Sacy, and other Orientalists had given him abundant material; his poetic activity soon gave that material shape. But while donning the Turban, and throwing the Caftan over his shoulders, he remained a true German. He smoked opium, and drank Foukah; but his dreams were German and his songs were German. This forms the peculiarity of the Divan—it is WestEastern; the images are Eastern; the feeling is Western. Precisely as in the Roman Elegies he had thrown himself into the classical past, reproducing its forms with unsurpassed ease and witchery, yet never for a moment ceasing to be original, never ceasing to be German; so also in this Eastern world we recognise the Western poet. He follows the Caravan slowly across the desert; he hears the melancholy chant of the Bulbul singing on the borders of sparkling fountains; he listens devoutly to the precepts of Mohammed, and rejoices in the strains of Hafis. The combination is most felicitous. It produced an epoch in German Literature. The Lyrists, according to Gervinus, suddenly following this example, at once relinquished their warlike and contemporary tone to sing the songs of the East. Rückert and Platen, following the trace of the German Hafis, wandered among Roses and Ghazels; other poets gladly imitated them. Does it not seem as if there were a natural tendency in the German character to turn the back upon active political life, when we see that in the two great crises of history, in the Crusades and in the War of Independence, the poets fled from the stormy contemplation of their time, seeking inspiration in an order of ideas completely opposed to the time? The Minnesingers, amid the clang of knightly achievements, could only sing of Love and Pleasure; the modern poets, amid the storms of an European struggle, could find no inspiration but in Romanticism, or in Orientalism! This is the more noticeable because Goethe has been angrily reproached for his flight into the East; although surely the aged poet might find an excuse when the young poets were applauded? The west-östliche Divan is divided into twelve Books: the Singer, Hafis, Love, Contemplation, Sadness, Proverbs, Timour, Suleika, Wine-house, Parables, Persians, and Paradise; very various in contents, and of various excellence. Truly may be applied to Goethe the epigraph he applies to Hafis: "Let us call the Word the Bride, and the Spirit will be the Bridegroom; he who has known Hafis has seen this marriage :" Sey das Wort die Braut genannt Diese Hochzeit hat gekannt How much of his own experience he has clothed in these Eastern forms we cannot know; but in one case, in the Buch Suleika, he has placed the name of Hatem where the rhyme plainly tells us to read. Goethe: Du beschämst, wie Morgenröthe Jener Gipfel ernste Wand, Und noch einmal fühlet Hatem The grace with which many of these poems are lightly touched; the admirable wisdom which smiles so serenely under them; the calm, hot, noonday stillness, interchanging with the careless gaiety of the Wine-house mirth, cannot be indicated by translation; nor will I attempt it. For the sake of the German reader, however, here is one brief specimen: Trunken müssen wir alle seyn ! Jugend ist Trunkenheit ohne Wein; So ist es wundervolle Tugend. Für Sorgen sorgt das liebe Leben Und Sorgenbrecher sind die Reben. To these poems is added a volume of Historical Notes, which show indeed a conscientious study of the East, but which also show how immeasurably inferior he was in prose to poetry. Age is visible in every page. In the early chapters of his Autobiography he had presented a picture of Frankfurt, which was very gratifying to the people of that city; and when, in the year 1814, he passed through the city he was received with an ovation which recalls the last visit of Voltaire to Paris. Tasso was performed at the theatre with great pomp. No sooner did he make his appearance in the box which had been prepared for him, and which was hung with flowers and laurel-crowns, than Haydn's symphony struck up, and the whole house rose with a burst of enthusiastic cheering. The symphony continued, and the shouts rose tumultuously above it. At length the curtain rolled up, and gradually a solemn stillness settled through the house. A prologue greeted the great poet, and was the signal for more shouting. After Tasso came an epilogue, during which the laurel-crowns were taken from the busts of Ariosto and Tasso, and handed to Goethe. And when all was over, the corridors and staircases of the theatre were crowded with admirers, through whom he passed smiling his thanks. CHAPTER VI. THE ACTIVITY OF AGE. In the year 1816 he began to publish an Art Journal, Kunst und Alterthum, which continued till 1828, a curious monument of the old man's studies and activity. It is curious, moreover, as indicating a change in the direction of his ideas. We have seen what his relation was to the Romantic School, and how the tendencies of his nature and education led him to oppose to the characteristics of that School the characteristics of Greek Art. The Propylaen represents the Greek tendency: Kunst und Alterthum represents a certain leaning towards the Romantic. Gothic Art, the old German and Netherland painters, no longer seemed to him objectionable; but the discovery of the Elgin marbles once more awakened his enthusiasm for that perfection of form which was the ideal of Greek Art ;* and I have heard Rauch, the sculptor, humorously narrate Goethe's whimsical outbreaks when the young sculptor Rietschl seemed in danger of perverting his talent by executing designs in the spirit of the Romantic School. Strong, however, as the opposition was which he felt to the vagagaries of the so-called Christian Art, he had too much of the Faust spirit to keep entirely aloof from the Romanticists. In his old age the tendency to substitute Reflection for Inspiration naturally assumed greater force; and his love of mystification was now wearing a serious aspect, duping himself perhaps as much as it duped others. The German nation had persisted in discovering profound meanings in passages which he had written without any recondite meaning at all; finding himself a prophet when he meant only to be a poet, he gradually fell into the snare, and tried to be a prophet now he could no longer be so great a poet as before. Every incident was to be typical. Every phrase was of importance. Whether the lion should roar at a particular time (in the Novelle), or whether he should be silent, were subjects of long deliberation. The Wanderjahre was one great arsenal of symbols, the Second Part of Faust another. * See his letter to Haydon in the Life of Haydon, vol. 11, p. 295. He delighted in seeing the philosophic critics outdoing each other in farfetched ingenuity, "explaining" his Faust and Meister; and very astutely he refused to come to their aid. He saw libraries filled with discussions as to what he had intended; but no one ever seduced him into an explanation which would have silenced these discussions. Instead of doing so, he seemed disposed to furnish the world with more riddles. In a word, he mystified the public; but he did so in a grave, unconscious way, with a certain belief in his own mystification. In the year 1816, Saxe Weimar was made a Grand Duchy; and he received the Falcon Order, together with an increase of salary, which now became three thousand thalers, with extra allowance for his equipage. Two other events made this year memorable. Lotte— Werther's Lotte—now a widow in her sixtieth year, and mother of twelve children, pays him a visit at Weimar. They had not met since her marriage, and what a meeting this must have been for both! how strange a mingling of feelings recurrent to a pleasantly-agitated past, and of feelings perplexed by the surprise at finding each other so much changed! The second and far more serious event of the year, is the death of his wife. Many affected to consider this "a happy release." People are fond of arranging the lives of others according to their own conceptions, interpreting afflictions like these without regard to the feelings of the afflicted. The blow was heavy to bear. She who for eight-and-twenty years had loved and aided him, who—whatever her faults—had been to him what no other woman was, could not be taken from him without making him deeply feel the loss. His self-mastery was utterly shaken. He kneeled at her bedside, seizing her cold hands, and exclaiming: "Thou wilt not forsake me! No, no; thou must not forsake me!" He has expressed his feelings in two passages only; in the exquisite lines he wrote on the day of her death, and in a letter to Zelter. These are the lines:— Du versuchst, O Sonne, vergebens Durch die düstern Wolken zu scheinen! Der ganze Gewinn meines Lebens Ist, ihren Verlust zu beweinen.* And to Zelter the words were these: "When I tell thee, thou rough and sorely-tried son of earth, that my dear little wife has left me, thou wilt know what that means." "In vain, O Sun, you struggle to shine through the dark clouds; the whole gain of my life is to bewail her loss." |