Part 3 (1/2)
While the apparition of the celestial Macaria seems to announce the ultimate destiny of the soul of man, the practical application of all Wilhelm has thus painfully acquired is not of pure Delphian strain.
Goethe draws, as he pa.s.ses, a dart from the quiver of Phoebus, but ends as aesculapius or Mercury. Wilhelm, at the school of the Three Reverences, thinks out what can be done for man in his temporal relations. He learns to practise moderation, and even painful renunciation. The book ends, simply indicating what the course of his life will be, by making him perform an act of kindness, with good judgment and at the right moment.
Surely the simple soberness of Goethe should please at least those who style themselves, preeminently, people of common sense.
The following remarks are by the celebrated Rahel von Ense, whose discernment as to his works was highly prized by Goethe.
”_Don Quixote and Wilhelm Meister_!
”Embrace one another, Cervantes and Goethe!
”Both, using their own clear eyes, vindicated human nature. They saw the champions through their errors and follies, looking down into the deepest soul, seeing there the true form. _Respectable_ people call the Don as well as Meister a fool, wandering hither and thither, transacting no business of real life, bringing nothing to pa.s.s, scarce even knowing what he ought to think on any subject, very unfit for the hero of a romance. Yet has our sage known how to paint the good and honest mind in perpetual toil and conflict with the world, as it is embodied; never sharing one moment the impure confusion; always striving to find fault with and improve itself, always so innocent as to see others far better than they are, and generally preferring them to itself, learning from all, indulging all except the manifestly base; the more you understand, the more you respect and love this character. Cervantes has painted the knight, Goethe the culture of the entire man,--both their own time.”
But those who demand from him a life-long continuance of the early ardor of Faust, who wish to see, throughout his works, not only such manifold beauty and subtle wisdom, but the clear a.s.surance of divinity, the pure white light of Macaria, wish that he had not so variously unfolded his nature, and concentred it more. They would see him slaying the serpent with the divine wrath of Apollo, rather than taming it to his service, like aesculapius. They wish that he had never gone to Weimar, had never become a universal connoisseur and dilettante in science, and courtier as ”graceful as a born n.o.bleman,” but had endured the burden of life with the suffering crowd, and deepened his nature in loneliness and privation, till Faust had conquered, rather than cheated the devil, and the music of heavenly faith superseded the grave and mild eloquence of human wisdom.
The expansive genius which moved so gracefully in its self imposed fetters, is constantly surprising us by its content with a choice low, in so far as it was not the highest of which the mind was capable. The secret may be found in the second motto of this slight essay.
”He who would do great things must quickly draw together his forces. The master can only show himself such through limitation, and the law alone can give us freedom.”
But there is a higher spiritual law always ready to supersede the temporal laws at the call of the human soul. The soul that is too content with usual limitations will never call forth this unusual manifestation.
If there be a tide in the affairs of men, which must be taken at the right moment to lead on to fortune, it is the same with inward as with outward life. He who, in the crisis hour of youth, has stopped short of himself, is not likely to find again what he has missed in one life, for there are a great number of blanks to a prize in each lottery.
But the pang we feel that ”those who are so much are not more,” seems to promise new spheres, new ages, new crises to enable these beings to complete their circle.
Perhaps Goethe is even now sensible that he should not have stopped at Weimar as his home, but made it one station on the way to Paradise; not stopped at humanity, but regarded it as symbolical of the divine, and given to others to feel more distinctly the centre of the universe, as well as the harmony in its parts. It is great to be an Artist, a Master, greater still to be a Seeker till the Man has found all himself.
What Goethe meant by self-collection was a collection of means for work, rather than to divine the deepest truths of being. Thus are these truths always indicated, never declared; and the religious hope awakened by his subtle discernment of the workings of nature never gratified, except through the intellect.
He whose prayer is only work will not leave his treasure in the secret shrine.
One is ashamed when finding any fault with one like Goethe, who is so great. It seems the only criticism should be to do all he omitted to do, and that none who cannot is ent.i.tled to say a word. Let that one speak who was all Goethe was not,--n.o.ble, true, virtuous, but neither wise nor subtle in his generation, a divine ministrant, a baffled man, ruled and imposed on by the pygmies whom he spurned, an heroic artist, a democrat to the tune of Burns:
”The rank is but the guinea's stamp; The man's the gowd for a' that.”
Hear Beethoven speak of Goethe on an occasion which brought out the two characters in strong contrast.
Extract from a letter of Beethoven to Bettina Brentano Toplitz, 1812.
”Kings and princes can indeed make professors and privy councillors, and hang upon them t.i.tles; but great men they cannot make; souls that rise above the mud of the world, these they must let be made by other means than theirs, and should therefore show them respect. When two such as I and Goethe come together, then must great lords observe what is esteemed great by one of us. Coming home yesterday we met the whole imperial family. We saw them coming, and Goethe left me and insisted on standing one side; let me say what I would, I could not make him come on one step. I pressed my hat upon my head, b.u.t.toned my surtout, and pa.s.sed on through the thickest crowd. Princes and parasites made way; the Archduke Rudolph took off his hat; the empress greeted me first.
Their highnesses KNOW ME. I was well amused to see the crowd pa.s.s by Goethe. At the side stood he, hat in hand, low bowed in reverence till all had gone by. Then I scolded him well; I gave no pardon, but reproached him with all his sins, most of all those towards you, dearest Bettina; we had just been talking of you.”
If Beethoven appears, in this scene, somewhat arrogant and bearish, yet how n.o.ble his extreme compared with the opposite! Goethe's friends.h.i.+p with the grand duke we respect, for Karl August was a strong man. But we regret to see at the command of any and all members of the ducal family, and their connections, who had nothing but rank to recommend them, his time and thoughts, of which he was so chary to private friends. Beethoven could not endure to teach the Archduke Rudolph, who had the soul duly to revere his genius, because he felt it to be ”hofdienst,” court service. He received with perfect nonchalance the homage of the sovereigns of Europe. Only the Empress of Russia and the Archduke Karl, whom he esteemed as individuals, had power to gratify him by their attentions. Compare with, Goethe's obsequious pleasure at being able gracefully to compliment such high personages, Beethoven's conduct with regard to the famous Heroic Symphony. This was composed at the suggestion of Bernadotte, while Napoleon was still in his first glory. He was then the hero of Beethoven's imagination, who hoped from him the liberation of Europe. With delight the great artist expressed in his eternal harmonies the progress of the Hero's soul. The symphony was finished, and even dedicated to Bonaparte, when the news came of his declaring himself Emperor of the French. The first act of the indignant artist was to tear off his dedication and trample it under foot; nor could he endure again even the mention of Napoleon until the time of his fall.
Admit that Goethe had a natural taste for the trappings of rank and wealth, from which the musician was quite free, yet we cannot doubt that both saw through these externals to man as a nature; there can be no doubt on whose side was the simple greatness, the n.o.ble truth. We pardon thee, Goethe,--but thee, Beethoven, we revere, for thou hast maintained the wors.h.i.+p of the Manly, the Permanent, the True!
The clear perception which was in Goethe's better nature of the beauty of that steadfastness, of that singleness and simple melody of soul, which he too much sacrificed to become ”the many-sided One,” is shown most distinctly in his two surpa.s.singly beautiful works, The Elective Affinities and Iphigenia.
Not Werther, not the Nouvelle Heloise, have been a.s.sailed with such a storm of indignation as the first-named of these works, on the score of gross immorality.
The reason probably is the subject; any discussion of the validity of the marriage vow making society tremble to its foundation; and, secondly, the cold manner in which it is done. All that is in the book would be bearable to most minds if the writer had had less the air of a spectator, and had larded his work here and there with e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of horror and surprise.
These declarations of sentiment on the part of the author seem to be required by the majority of readers, in order to an interpretation of his purpose, as sixthly, seventhly, and eighthly were, in an old-fas.h.i.+oned sermon, to rouse the audience to a perception of the method made use of by the preacher.