Part 23 (1/2)
Goethe shoved aside the breakfast-table, straightened his delicate form, with his n.o.ble head proudly erect, and one foot in advance, extended his right arm, giving one loud hurrah! ”Now, for once, a tumult and noise, that thought may turn about like a weatherc.o.c.k. This savage noise has already wrought its own benefit. I begin to feel a little better. Rage and expand, mad heart, quicken yourself in hurly-burly-burly-burly!”
[Footnote: From Klinger's tragedy ”Sturm und Drang.”]
”Bravo! bravo!” laughed the duke. ”Is that Klinger, or who is it that refreshes himself in hurly-burly?”
”It is I who am every thing,” replied Goethe, striding and swaggering up and down. ”I was an a.s.sistant, in order to be something--lived upon the Alps, tended the goats, lay under the vault of heaven day and night, refreshed by the cool pastures, and burned with the inward fire. No peace, no rest anywhere. See, I swell with power and health! I cannot waste myself away. I would take part in the campaign here; then can my soul expand, and if they do me the service to shoot me down, well and good!” [Footnote: From Klinger's tragedy ”Sturm und Drang.”]
”Bravo! Wild, bravo!” cried the duke. ”Hei! that thundered and rolled, and struck fire! It does me good to hear such vigorous words from an able rare genius in the midst of this miserable, starched elegance. The powerful Germans are healthy fellows. Something of the Promethean fire blazes forth in them. They were forced to come, those jolly, uproarious boys, after the affected cue period; they were the full, luxurious plants, and my Wolfgang, the favorite of my heart, my poet and teacher, is the divine blossom of this plant. Let them prevail, these 'Sturmer und Dranger,' for they are the fathers and brothers of my Wolfgang.
Do me the sole pleasure not to refine yourself too much, but let this divine fire burst forth in volcanic flames, and leave the thundering crater uncovered. Sometimes when I see you so simpering, so modest and ceremonious, I ask myself, with anxiety, if it is the same Wolfgang Goethe, who used to drink 'Smollis' with me at merry baccha.n.a.ls out of death-skulls?--the same with whom I used to practise whip-cracking upon the market-place hours long, to the terror of the good citizens?--the same who used to dance so nimbly the two-steps, and was inexhaustible in mad pranks. Now tell me, Herr Wolfgang, are you yourself, or are you another?”
”I am myself, and not myself,” answered Goethe, smiling. ”There still remains a good portion of folly in me, and it must sometimes thunder and flash, but I hope the atmosphere of my soul will become clearer, and over the crater a more lovely garden will spread out, in which beautiful, fragrant flowers will bloom, useful and profitable for my friends and myself. Sometimes I long for this as for the promised land; then again it foams and thunders in me like fermenting must, which, defying all covers and hoops, would froth up to heaven in an immense source of mad excitement!”
”Let it froth and foam, and spring the covers, and burst the old casks,”
cried the duke; ”I delight in it, and every infernal noise you make, the prouder I am to recognize that from this foaming must will clear itself a marvellous wine, a delicious beverage for G.o.ds and men, with which the world will yet refresh itself, when we are long gone to the kingdom of shades--to the something or nothing. You know, Wolf, I love you, and I am proud that I have you! It is true that I possess only a little duchy, but it is large enough to lead an agreeable and comfortable existence--large enough for a little earthly duke, and the great king of intellects, Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Let us return to our dear home, for I acknowledge to you I sigh for Weimar. I long for the dear little place, where every one knows me and greets me, and even for my dogs and horses.”
”And I,” said Goethe, ”I really mourn for my Tusculum, which I owe to the generous, kind duke; for the balcony of my little cottage, where, canopied by the blue, starry vault of heaven, I dream away the lonely May nights.”
”Is there nothing else you sigh for but the summer-house at Weimar?”
”No!” cried Goethe, and an indescribable expression of rapture and delight was manifest in his whole manner.
”No, why should I deny it, how could I? It would be treason to the Highest and most Glorious. No, I long for my muse, my mistress, my--”
”Beloved!” interrupted the duke. ”I pray you not to be so prudish, so reserved. Have the courage to snap your fingers at this infamously deceitful moral code, and proud and distinguished as you are, elevate yourself above what these miserable earthworms call morality. For the eagle there is a different law than for the pigeon. If the eagle soars aloft through the ether to his eyry, bearing a lamb in his powerful claws, has he not a right to it--the right of superiority and power by G.o.d's grace? Has he not as much right to the lamb as the pigeon to the pea which she finds in the dust? If the pigeon by chance sees the eagle with his lamb, she cries, 'Zeter! mordio!' with the pea in her own bill, as if she were in a position to judge the eagle.”
”A beautiful picture,” cried Goethe, joyfully--”a picture that would inspire me to indite a poem.”
”Write one, and call it for a souvenir 'The Eagle and the Dove.' Make it a reality, my eagle youth, bear off the white lamb to your eyry, and let the world, with its affected morality, say what it likes. How can you bear to see the one you love at the side of another man? Tell me, confess to me, is not the beautiful Charlotte von Stein your beloved?”
”Not in the sense you mean, duke, not in the vulgar sense of the word. I love her, I adore her, with a pure and holy sentiment. I would not that Charlotte should have cause to blush before her children on my account.
She would be desecrated to me if I, in my inmost soul, could imagine the blush of shame upon her cheek, or that her eye could brighten at other than great, beautiful, and n.o.ble acts. I adore her, and to me she is the ideal of the purest and sweetest womanhood. I rejoice that she is as she is, like clear mountain crystal--transparent and so brightly pure, that one could mirror himself therein. She stands above all other women, and to her belong all my thoughts, and would, even if I were wedded to another. To me she is the most beautiful of the beautiful, the purest of the pure, the most graceful of the graceful, and all my thoughts are in perfect harmony with hers. Now, duke, if it is agreeable to you, knowing my feelings, to call Charlotte von Stein my beloved, she is so in the most elevated sense of the word.”
”Ah! you poets, you poets,” sighed the duke, smiling.
”A streak of madness in you all, though I will grant that it is divine.”
”Say rather that Whit-Sunday comes to us every day, and the divine Spirit descends daily upon us poets, and causes us to speak in unknown tongues.”
”I will say that you are the G.o.d Apollo descended from heaven, and with G.o.ds one may not dare to dispute. They act differently in their sphere than we mortals upon earth. I will be contented if our ways cross from time to time, and we can once in a while walk on together a good piece the way of life in friends.h.i.+p and harmony. If it would please my Wolf, I propose to turn toward beloved Weimar, the dear place, half village, half city. For my part I am finished here, my business with General von Mollendorf is accomplished. As I told you previously, I have had made known to the king my refusal to allow recruiting in my duchy. I could not consent for the present. In short, I have spoken as my secretary Wolfgang Goethe has recorded.[Footnote: This memorial upon recruiting is found. ”Correspondence of the Grand Duke Carl August and Goethe,” part, i., p. 4.] General Mollendorf has waived his demand for the present--and to-day we have had the concluding conference, and if it is agreeable to my secretary, we might set off this afternoon and pa.s.s a day at Dessau, and then on to Weimar.”
”Oh, gladly will I do it; it seems as if a star from heaven had twinkled to me to follow it, for at Weimar is centred all my happiness! I prefer a lowly cabin there to all the splendor and palaces of a city.”
”Then you agree with me, that this magnificently vile Berlin does not enchain you in her magic net?”
”No, she holds me not, though it has been pleasant to take a peep into it (like a child into a curiosity-box). I have seen 'Old Fritz.' His character, his gold, and his silver, his marbles, his apes and parrots, and even his town curtains please me. It is pleasant to be at the seat of war at the very moment that it threatens to break forth. It has gratified me to witness the splendor of the royal city, the life, order, and abundance, that would be nothing if thousands of men were not ready to be sacrificed; the medley of men, carriages, horses, artillery, and all the arrangements. All are mere pins in the great clock-work, only puppets whose motion is received from the great cylinder, Fredericus Rex, who indicates to each one the melody they must play, according to one of the thousand pins in the rotary beam.”[Footnote: Goethe's own words.--See Goethe's ”Correspondence with Frau von Stein,” part i., p.
168. Riemer, ”Communications about Goethe,” part ii., p. 60.]
”You are right to compare the great man to the chief cylinder in the machine of state,” nodded the duke ”He rules and sets all in motion, and cares not whether the rabble are suited or not. It has enraged me sometimes to hear the fellows curse him, and yet I acted as if I heard them not. Let us return to Weimar--mankind seems better there, Wolf.”