Part 10 (2/2)
With Lessing the case is similar: a striking statement of personal regard has been recorded, but Lessing's literary work of the following years does not betray a significant influence from Yorick. To be sure, allusion is made to Sterne a few times in letters[40] and elsewhere, but no direct manifestation of devotion is discoverable. The compelling consciousness of his own message, his vigorous interest in deeper problems of religion and philosophy, the then increasing worth of native German literature, may well have overshadowed the influence of the volatile Briton.
Goethe's expressions of admiration for Sterne and indebtedness to him are familiar. Near the end of his life (December 16, 1828), when the poet was interested in observing the history and sources of his own culture, and was intent upon recording his own experience for the edification and clarification of the people, he says in conversation with Eckermann: ”I am infinitely indebted to Shakespeare, Sterne and Goldsmith.”[41] And a year later in a letter to Zelter,[42] (Weimar, December 25, 1829), ”The influence Goldsmith and Sterne exercised upon me, just at the chief point of my development, cannot be estimated. This high, benevolent irony, this just and comprehensive way of viewing things, this gentleness to all opposition, this equanimity under every change, and whatever else all the kindred virtues may be termed--such things were a most admirable training for me, and surely, these are the sentiments which in the end lead us back from all the mistaken paths of life.”
In the same conversation with Eckermann from which the first quotation is made, Goethe seems to defy the investigator who would endeavor to define his indebtedness to Sterne, its nature and its measure. The occasion was an attempt on the part of certain writers to determine the authors.h.i.+p of certain distichs printed in both Schiller's and Goethe's works. Upon a remark of Eckermann's that this effort to hunt down a man's originality and to trace sources is very common in the literary world, Goethe says: ”Das ist sehr lacherlich, man konnte ebenso gut einen wohlgenahrten Mann nach den Ochsen, Schafen und Schweinen fragen, die er gegessen und die ihm Krafte gegeben.” An investigation such as Goethe seems to warn us against here would be one of tremendous difficulty, a theme for a separate work. It is purposed here to gather only information with reference to Goethe's expressed or implied att.i.tude toward Sterne, his opinion of the British master, and to note certain connections between Goethe's work and that of Sterne, connections which are obvious or have been already a matter of comment and discussion.
In Stra.s.sburg under Herder's[43] guidance, Goethe seems first to have read the works of Sterne. His life in Frankfurt during the interval between his two periods of university residence was not of a nature calculated to increase his acquaintance with current literature, and his studies did not lead to interest in literary novelty. This is his own statement in ”Dichtung und Wahrheit.”[44] That Herder's enthusiasm for Sterne was generous has already been shown by letters written in the few years previous to his sojourn in Stra.s.sburg. Letters written to Merck[45] (Stra.s.sburg, 1770-1771) would seem to show that then too Sterne still stood high in his esteem. Whatever the exact time of Goethe's first acquaintance with Sterne, we know that he recommended the British writer to Jung-Stilling for the latter's cultivation in letters.[46] Less than a year after Goethe's departure from Stra.s.sburg, we find him reading aloud to the Darmstadt circle the story of poor Le Fevre from Tristram Shandy. This is reported in a letter, dated May 8, 1772, by Caroline Flachsland, Herder's fiancee.[47] It is not evident whether they read Sterne in the original or in the translation of Zuckert, the only one then available, unless possibly the reader gave a translation as he read. Later in the same letter, Caroline mentions the ”Empfindsame Reisen,” possibly meaning Bode's translation. She also records reading Shakespeare in Wieland's rendering, but as she speaks later still of peeping into the English books which Herder had sent Merck, it is a hazardous thing to reason from her mastery of English at that time to the use of original or translation on the occasion of Goethe's reading.
Contemporary criticism saw in the Martin of ”Gotz von Berlichingen”
a likeness to Sterne's creations;[48] and in the other great work of the pre-Weimarian period, in ”Werther,” though no direct influence rewards one's search, one must acknowledge the presence of a mental and emotional state to which Sterne was a contributor. Indeed Goethe himself suggests this relations.h.i.+p. Speaking of ”Werther” in the ”Campagne in Frankreich,”[49] he observes in a well-known pa.s.sage that Werther did not cause the disease, only exposed it, and that Yorick shared in preparing the ground-work of sentimentalism on which ”Werther” is built.
According to the quarto edition of 1837, the first series of letters from Switzerland dates from 1775, although they were not published till 1808, in the eleventh volume of the edition begun in 1806. Scherer, in his ”History of German Literature,” a.s.serts that these letters are written in imitation of Sterne, but it is difficult to see the occasion for such a statement. The letters are, in spite of all haziness concerning the time of their origin and Goethe's exact purpose regarding them,[50] a ”fragment of Werther's travels” and are confessedly cast in a sentimental tone, which one might easily attribute to a Werther, in whom hyperesthesia has not yet developed to delirium, an earlier Werther. Yorick's whim and sentiment are quite wanting, and the sensuousness, especially as pertains to corporeal beauty, is distinctly Goethean.
Goethe's accounts of his own travels are quite free from the Sterne flavor; in fact he distinctly says that through the influence of the Sentimental Journey all records of journeys had been mostly given up to the feelings and opinions of the traveler, but that he, after his Italian journey, had endeavored to keep himself objective.[51]
Dr. Robert Riemann in his study of Goethe's novels,[52] calls Friedrich in ”Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre” a representative of Sterne's humor, and he finds in Mittler in the ”Wahlverwandtschaften” a union of seriousness and the comic of caricature, reminiscent of Sterne and Hippel. Friedrich is mercurial, petulant, utterly irresponsible, a creature of mirth and laughter, subject to unreasoning fits of pa.s.sion. One might, in thinking of another character in fiction, designate Friedrich as faun-like. In all of this one can, however, find little if any demonstrable likeness to Sterne or Sterne's creations. It is rather difficult also to see wherein the character of Mittler is reminiscent of Sterne. Mittler is introduced with the obvious purpose of representing certain opinions and of aiding the development of the story by his insistence upon them. He represents a brusque, practical kind of benevolence, and his eccentricity lies only in the extraordinary occupation which he has chosen for himself. Riemann also traces to Sterne, Fielding and their German followers, Goethe's occasional use of the direct appeal to the reader. Doubtless Sterne's example here was a force in extending this rhetorical convention.
It is claimed by Goebel[53] that Goethe's ”Homunculus,” suggested to the master partly by reading of Paracelsus and partly by Sterne's mediation, is in some characteristics of his being dependent directly on Sterne's creation. In a meeting of the ”Gesellschaft fur deutsche Litteratur,”
November, 1896, Brandl expressed the opinion that Maria of Moulines was a prototype of Mignon in ”Wilhelm Meister.”[54]
The references to Sterne in Goethe's works, in his letters and conversations, are fairly numerous in the aggregate, but not especially striking relatively. In the conversations with Eckermann there are several other allusions besides those already mentioned. Goethe calls Eckermann a second Shandy for suffering illness without calling a physician, even as Walter Shandy failed to attend to the squeaking door-hinge.[55] Eckermann himself draws on Sterne for ill.u.s.trations in Yorick's description of Paris,[56] and on January 24, 1830, at a time when we know that Goethe was re-reading Sterne, Eckermann refers to Yorick's (?) doctrine of the reasonable use of grief.[57] That Goethe near the end of his life turned again to Sterne's masterpiece is proved by a letter to Zelter, October 5, 1830;[58] he adds here too that his admiration has increased with the years, speaking particularly of Sterne's gay arraignment of pedantry and philistinism. But a few days before this, October 1, 1830, in a conversation reported by Riemer,[59]
he expresses the same opinion and adds that Sterne was the first to raise himself and us from pedantry and philistinism. By these remarks Goethe commits himself in at least one respect to a favorable view of Sterne's influence on German letters. A few other minor allusions to Sterne may be of interest. In an article in the _h.o.r.en_ (1795, V. Stuck,) ent.i.tled ”Literarischer Sansculottismus,” Goethe mentions Smelfungus as a type of growler.[60] In the ”Wanderjahre”[61] there is a reference to Yorick's cla.s.sification of travelers. Duntzer, in Schnorr's _Archiv_,[62] explains a pa.s.sage in a letter of Goethe's to Johanna Fahlmer (August, 1775), ”die Verworrenheiten des Diego und Juliens” as an allusion to the ”Intricacies of Diego and Julia” in Slawkenbergius's tale,[63] and to the traveler's conversation with his beast. In a letter to Frau von Stein[64] five years later (September 18, 1780) Goethe used this same expression, and the editor of the letters avails himself of Duntzer's explanation. Duntzer further explains the word ?e?d????, used in Goethe's Tagebuch with reference to the Duke, in connection with the term ?e?d?da?t?? applied to Walter Shandy. The word is, however, somewhat illegible in the ma.n.u.script. It was printed thus in the edition of the Tagebuch published by Robert Keil, but when Duntzer himself, nine years after the article in the _Archiv_, published an edition of the Tagebucher he accepted a reading ?e?tat??,[65] meaning, as he says, ”ein voller Gott,” thereby tacitly retracting his former theory of connection with Sterne.
The best known relations.h.i.+p between Goethe and Sterne is in connection with the so-called plagiarisms in the appendix to the third volume of the ”Wanderjahre.” Here, in the second edition, were printed under the t.i.tle ”Aus Makariens Archiv” various maxims and sentiments. Among these were a number of sayings, reflections, axioms, which were later discovered to have been taken bodily from the second part of the Koran, the best known Sterne-forgery. Alfred Hedouin, in ”Le Monde Maconnique”
(1863), in an article ”Goethe plagiaire de Sterne,” first located the quotations.[66]
Mention has already been made of the account of Robert Springer, which is probably the last published essay on the subject. It is ent.i.tled ”Ist Goethe ein Plagiarius Lorenz Sternes?” and is found in the volume ”Essays zur Kritik und Philosophie und zur Goethe-Litteratur.”[67]
Springer cites at some length the liberal opinions of Moliere, La Bruyere, Wieland, Heine and others concerning the literary appropriation of another's thought. He then proceeds to quote Goethe's equally generous views on the subject, and adds the uncritical fling that if Goethe robbed Sterne, it was an honor to Sterne, a gain to his literary fame. Near the end of his paper, Springer arrives at the question in hand and states positively that these maxims, with their miscellaneous companions, were never published by Goethe, but were found by the editors of his literary remains among his miscellaneous papers, and then issued in the ninth volume of the posthumous works. Hedouin had suggested this possible explanation. Springer adds that the editors were unaware of the source of this material and supposed it to be original with Goethe.
The facts of the case are, however, as follows: ”Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre” was published first in 1821.[68] In 1829, a new and revised edition was issued in the ”Ausgabe letzter Hand.” Eckermann in his conversations with Goethe[69] relates the circ.u.mstances under which the appendices were added to the earlier work. When the book was in press, the publisher discovered that of the three volumes planned, the last two were going to be too thin, and begged for more material to fill out their scantiness. In this perplexity Goethe brought to Eckermann two packets of miscellaneous notes to be edited and added to those two slender volumes. In this way arose the collection of sayings, sc.r.a.ps and quotations ”Im Sinne der Wanderer” and ”Aus Makariens Archiv.” It was later agreed that Eckermann, when Goethe's literary remains should be published, should place the matter elsewhere, ordered into logical divisions of thought. All of the sentences here under special consideration were published in the twenty-third volume of the ”Ausgabe letzter Hand,” which is dated 1830,[70] and are to be found there, on pages 271-275 and 278-281. They are reprinted in the identical order in the ninth volume of the ”Nachgela.s.sene Werke,” which also bore the t.i.tle, Vol. XLIX of ”Ausgabe letzter Hand,” there found on pages 121-125 and 127-131. Evidently Springer found them here in the posthumous works, and did not look for them in the previous volume, which was published two years or thereabouts before Goethe's death.
Of the sentiments, sentences and quotations dealing with Sterne, there are twenty which are translations from the Koran, in Loeper's edition of ”Spruche in Prosa,”[71] Nos. 491-507 and 543-544; seventeen others (Nos.
490, 508-509, 521-533, 535) contain direct appreciative criticism of Sterne; No. 538 is a comment upon a Latin quotation in the Koran and No.
545 is a translation of another quotation in the same work. No. 532 gives a quotation from Sterne, ”Ich habe mein Elend nicht wie ein weiser Mann benutzt,” which Loeper says he has been unable to find in any of Sterne's works. It is, however, in a letter[72] to John Hall Stevenson, written probably in August, 1761. The translation here is inexact.
Loeper did not succeed in finding Nos. 534, 536, 537, although their position indicates that they were quotations from Sterne, but No. 534 is in a letter to Garrick from Paris, March 19, 1762. The German translation however conveys a different impression from the original English. The other two are not located; in spite of their position, the way in which the book was put together would certainly allow for the possibility of extraneous material creeping in. At their first appearance in the ”Ausgabe letzter Hand,” five Spruche, Nos. 491, 543, 534, 536, 537, were supplied with quotation marks, though the source was not indicated. Thus it is seen that the most of the quotations were published as original during Goethe's lifetime, but he probably never considered it of sufficient consequence to disavow their authors.h.i.+p in public. It is quite possible that the way in which they were forced into ”Wilhelm Meister” was distasteful to him afterwards, and he did not care to call attention to them.
Goethe's opinion of Sterne as expressed in the sentiments which accompany the quotations from the Koran is significant. ”Yorick Sterne,”
he says, ”war der schonste Geist, der je gewirkt hat; wer ihn liest, fuhlet sich sogleich frei und schon; sein Humor ist unnachahmlich, und nicht jeder Humor befreit die Seele” (490). ”Sagacitat und Penetration sind bei ihm grenzenlos” (528). Goethe a.s.serts here that every person of culture should at that very time read Sterne's works, so that the nineteenth century might learn ”what we owed him and perceive what we might owe him.” Goethe took Sterne's narrative of his journey as a representation of an actual trip, or else he is speaking of Sterne's letters in the following:
”Seine Heiterkeit, Genugsamkeit, Duldsamkeit auf der Reise, wo diese Eigenschaften am meisten gepruft werden, finden nicht leicht Ihresgleichen” (No. 529), and Goethe's opinion of Sterne's indecency is characteristic of Goethe's att.i.tude. He says: ”Das Element der l.u.s.ternheit, in dem er sich so zierlich und sinnig benimmt, wurde vielen Andern zum Verderben gereichen.”
The juxtaposition of these quotations and this appreciation of Sterne is proof sufficient that Goethe considered Sterne the author of the Koran at the time when the notes were made. At precisely what time this occurred it is now impossible to determine, but the drift of the comment, combined with our knowledge from sources already mentioned, that Goethe turned again to Sterne in the latter years of his life, would indicate that the quotations were made in the latter part of the twenties, and that the re-reading of Sterne included the Koran. Since the translations which Goethe gives are not identical with those in the rendering ascribed to Bode (1778), Loeper suggests Goethe himself as the translator of the individual quotations. Loeper is ignorant of the earlier translation of Gellius, which Goethe may have used.[73]
There is yet another possibility of connection between Goethe and the Koran. This work contained the story of the Graf von Gleichen, which is acknowledged to have been a precursor of Goethe's ”Stella.” Duntzer in his ”Erlauterungen zu den deutschen Kla.s.sikern” says it is impossible to determine whence Goethe took the story for ”Stella.” He mentions that it was contained in Bayle's Dictionary, which is known to have been in Goethe's father's library, and two other books, both dating from the sixteenth century, are noted as possible sources. It seems rather more probable that Goethe found the story in the Koran, which was published but a few years before ”Stella” was written and translated but a year later, 1771, that is, but four years, or even less, before the appearance of ”Stella” (1775).[74]
Precisely in the spirit of the opinions quoted above is the little essay[75] on Sterne which was published in the sixth volume of ”Ueber Kunst und Alterthum,” in which Goethe designates Sterne as a man ”who first stimulated and propagated the great epoch of purer knowledge of humanity, n.o.ble toleration and tender love, in the second half of the last century.” Goethe further calls attenion to Sterne's disclosure of human peculiarities (Eigenheiten), and the importance and interest of these native, governing idiosyncrasies.
These are, in general, superficial relations.h.i.+ps. A thorough consideration of these problems, especially as concerns the cultural indebtedness of Goethe to the English master would be a task demanding a separate work. Goethe was an a.s.similator and summed up in himself the spirit of a century, the att.i.tude of predecessors and contemporaries.
C. F. D. Schubart wrote a poem ent.i.tled ”Yorick,”[76] beginning
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