CHAPTER VIII. THE LITERARY LION. ANNA SYBILLA MÜNCH was not a little flattered by the homage of Clavigo, and smiled more tenderly on her admirer. Hopes of a marriage rose not only in her breast, but in the breasts of his parents, who, having lost by marriage their daughter, Cornelia, greatly wished to see a daughter-in-law in their house. the matter; seem to have alluded to it They talked over also to Anna her self; and frequently joked their son at table on the expected event. It was thought that he might first make his long-talked-of journey to Italy, and marry on his return. At no time prone to marriage, he had not in this instance the impulse of passion. He admired Anna, but he felt no passion for her; and even Italy, so long desired, was now less attractive to him than Germany, where he was beginning to feel himself a man of consequence, and where the notable men of the day eagerly sought his acquaintance. Among these men we must note Klopstock, Lavater, Basedow, Jacobi and the Stolbergs. Correspondence led to personal intercourse. Klopstock arrived in Frankfurt in this October 1774, just before Werther appeared. Goethe saw him, read the fragments of Faust to him, and discussed skating with him. But the great religious poet was too far removed from the strivings of his young rival to conceive that attachment for him which he felt for men like the Stolbergs, or to inspire Goethe with any keen sympathy. In June, Lavater also came to Frankfurt. This was a few months before Klopstock's visit. He had commenced a correspondence with Goethe on the occasion of the Briefe des Pastors. Those were great days of correspondence. Letters were written to be read in circles, and were shown about like the last new poem. Lavater pestered his friends for their portraits and for ideal portraits (according to their conception) of our Saviour, all of which were destined for the work on Physiognomy on which Lavater was then engaged. The artist who took Goethe's portrait sent Lavater the portrait of Bahrdt instead, to see what he would make of it; the physiognomist was not taken in; he stoutly denied the possibility of such a resemblance. Yet when he saw the actual Goethe he was not satisfied. He gazed in astonishment, exclaiming Bist's? Art thou he?" Ich bin's. I am he,' was the answer; and the two fell on each other's necks. Still the physiognomist was dissatisfied. I answered him with my native and acquired Realism, that as God had willed to make me what I was, he, Lavater, must even so accept me.’ 6 The first surprise over, they began to converse on the weightiest topics. Their sympathy was much greater than appears in Goethe's narrative, written many years after the real characters of both had developed themselves: Goethe's into what we shall subsequently see; Lavater's into that superstitious dogmatism and priestly sophistication which exasperated and alienated so many. Lavater forms a curious figure in the history of those days: a compound of the intolerant priest, and the factitious sentimentalist. He had fine talents, and a streak of genius, but he was ruined by vanity and hypocrisy. Born Sæ heuroestreder aus Si Leben for Levally in Zurich 1741, he was eight years Goethe's senior. In his autobiographic sketch* he has represented himself indicating as a child the part he was to play as a man. Like many other children, he formed for himself a peculiar and intimate relation with God, which made him look upon his playfellows with scorn and pity, because they did. not share his need and use of God.' He prayed for wonders, and the wonders came. God corrected his school exercises. God concealed his many faults, and brought to light his virtuous deeds. In fact, Lavater was a born hypocrite; and Goethe rightly named him from the beginning the friend of Lies, who stooped to the basest flatteries to gain influence.' To this flattering cringing softness he united the spirit of priestly domination. His first works made a great sensation. In 1769 he translated Bonnet's Palingénésie, adding notes in a strain of religious sentimentalism then very acceptable. At a time when the critics were rehabilitating Homer and the early singers, it was natural that the religious world should attempt a restoration of the early Apostolic spirit. At a time when belief in poetic inspiration was a first article of the creed, belief in prophetic inspiration found eager followers. I have already touched on the sentimental extravagance of the time; and for those whom a reasonable repugnance will keep from Lavater's letters and writings, one sentence may be quoted sufficiently significant. To the lovely Countess Branconi he wrote: O toi chéri pour la vie, l'âme de mon âme! Ton mouchoir, tes cheveux, sont pour moi ce que mes jarretières sont pour toi!' &c., which from a priest to a married woman is somewhat unctuous, but which is surpassed by what he allowed to be addressed by an admirer to himself, * See Gessner's Biographie Lavaters. LIFE AND WORKS OF GOETHE. [Book III. e. g.: 'Oh that I could lie on thy breast in Sabbath holy evening stillness-oh thou angel!' One sees that this rhodomontade went all round. They wept, and were wept on. to have all demonstrated · -- At the time of his arrival in Frankfurt, Lavater was in the first flush of renown. Goethe was peculiarly attracted to him, not only by the singularity of his character, but by a certain community of religious sentiment. Community of creed there was not, and could not be. What Goethe felt we may gather from his attachment to Fräulein von Klettenberg; what he thought may be seen in such letters as this to Pfenninger, a friend of Lavater's: 'Believe me, dear brother, the time will come when we shall understand each other. You talk to me as a sceptic, who wishes to understand who has had no experience. The contrary of all this is the fact. Am I not more resigned in matters of Understanding and Demonstration than you are? I am, perhaps, a fool to express myself in your language to please you. I ought, by a purely experimental psychology, to place my inmost being before you to show that I am a man, and hence can only feel as other men feel, and that all which appears contradiction between us is only dispute about words, arising from my inability to feel things under other combinations than those actually felt by me, and hence, in expressing their relation to me, I name them differently, which has been the eternal source of controversy, and will And yet you always want to oppress Wherefore? Do I need evidence of Evidence that I feel? sure, love, and demand evidences which convince me that I only treathousands (or even one) have felt before me that which strengthens and invigorates me. And thus to me the word of man becomes like unto the word of God. With my for ever remain so. me with evidences. my own existence ? whole soul, I throw myself upon the neck of my brother: Moses, Prophet, Evangelist, Apostle, Spinoza, or Machiavelli! To each, however, I would say: Dear friend, it is with you as it is with me. Certain details you apprehend clearly and powerfully, but the whole can no more be conceived by you than by me.' He names Spinoza in this very remarkable passage; and the whole letter seems like a reproduction of the passage in the Ethics, where that great thinker, anticipating modern psychology, shows that each person judges of things according to the disposition of his brain, or rather accepts the affections of his imagination as real things. It is no wonder therefore (as we may note in passing) that so many controversies have arisen among men, and that these controversies have at last given birth to scepticism. For although human bodies are alike in many things, there are more in which they differ, and thus what to one appears good, to another appears evil; what to one appears order, to another appears confusion; what to one is pleasant, to another is unpleasant.” * It is unnecessary to interrupt the narrative here by more closely scrutinizing his studies of Spinoza; enough, if the foregoing citation have made present to our minds the probable parentage of Goethe's opinions. The contrast between Lavater's Christianity and the Christianity of . *Ethices: Pars i. Append. The Latin of this passage is so energetic, that it must here be given: Quæ omnia satis ostendunt, unumquemque pro dispositione cerebri de rebus judicasse, vel potius imaginationis affectiones pro rebus accepisse. Quare non mirum est (ut hoc etiam obiter notemus) quod inter homines tot, quot experimur, controversiæ ortæ sint ex quibus tandem Scepticismus. Nam quamvis humana corpora in multis conveniunt, in plurimis tamen discrepant, et ideo id quod uni bonum alteri malum videtur; quod uni ordinatum, alteri confusum; quod uni gratum, alteri ingratum est.' |