Part 43 (2/2)
Trusted heart and tender look Left me even so!
Richer treasure earth has none Than I once possessed-- Ah! so rich, that when 'twas gone Worthless was the rest.
Little brook! adown the vale Rush and take my song: Give it pa.s.sion, give it wail, As thou leap'st along!
Sound it in the winter night When thy streams are full, Murmur it when skies are bright Mirror'd in the pool.
Happiest he of all created Who the world can shun, Not in hate, and yet unhated, Sharing thought with none, Save one faithful friend, revealing To his kindly ear Thoughts like these, which o'er me stealing, Make the night so drear.
In January 1778, he wrote to Frau von Stein about the fate of the unhappy Chr. von La.s.sberg, who had drowned himself in the Ilm:
This inviting grief has something dangerously attractive about it, like the water itself; and the reflections of the stars, which gleam from above and below at once, are alluring.
To the same year belongs _The Fisher_, which gave such melodious voice to the magic effect of a s.h.i.+mmering expanse of water, 'the moist yet radiant blue,' upon the mood; just as, later on, _The Erlking_, with the grey of an autumn evening woven ghostlike round tree and shrub, made the mind thrill with foreboding.
Goethe was always an industrious traveller. In his seventieth year he went to Frankfort, Stra.s.sburg, the Rhine, Thuringia, and the Harz Mountains (Harzreise, 1777): 'We went up to the peaks, and down to the depths of the earth, and hammered at all the rocks.' His love for Nature increased with his science; but, at the same time, poetic expression of it took a more objective form; the pa.s.sionate vehemence, the really revolutionary att.i.tude of the _Werther_ period, gave way to one equally spiritual and intellectual, but more temperate.
This transition is clearly seen in the Swiss letters. In his first Swiss travels, 1775, he was only just free from _Werther_, and his mind was too agitated for quiet observation:
Hasten thee, Kronos!...
Over stock and stone let thy trot Into life straightway lead....
Wide, high, glorious the view Gazing round upon life, While from mount unto mount Hovers the spirit eterne, Life eternal foreboding....
Far more significant and ripe--in fact, mature--are the letters in 1779, shewing, as they do, the att.i.tude of a man of profound mind, in the prime of his life and time. He was the first German poet to fall under the spell of the mountains--the strongest spell, as he held, which Nature wields in our lat.i.tudes. 'These sublime, incomparable scenes will remain for ever in my mind'; and of one view in particular, over the mountains of Savoy and Valais, the Lake of Geneva, and Mont Blanc, he said: 'The view was so great, man's eye could not grasp it.'
He wrote of his feelings with perfect openness to Frau von Stein, and these letters extended farther back than those from Switzerland, and were partly mixed with them.
From Selz:
An uncommonly fine day, a happy country--still all green, only here and there a yellow beech or oak leaf. Meadows still in their silver beauty--a soft welcome breeze everywhere. Grapes improving with every step and every day. Every peasant's house has a vine up to the roof, and every courtyard a great overhanging arbour.
The air of heaven soft, warm, and moist. The Rhine and the clear mountains near at hand, the changing woods, meadows, fields like gardens, do men good, and give me a kind of comfort which I have long lacked.
The pen remains as ever the pen of a poet, but he looks at Switzerland now with a mature, settled taste, a.n.a.lyzing his impressions, and studying mountains, glaciers, boulders, scientifically.
Of the Staubbach Fall, near Lauterbrunnen (Oct. 9th, 1779):
The clouds broke in the upper air, and the blue sky came through.
Clouds clung to the steep sides of the rocks; even the top where the Staubbach falls over, was lightly covered. It was a very n.o.ble sight ... then the clouds came down into the valley and covered all the foreground. The great wall over which the water falls, still stood out on the right. Night came on.... In the Munsterthal, through which we came, everything was lofty, but more within the mind's power of comprehension than these. In comparison with the immensities, one is, and must remain, too small.
And after visiting the Berne glacier from Thun (Oct. 14):
It is difficult to write after all this ... the first glance from the mountain is striking, the district is surprisingly extensive and pleasant ... the road indescribably beautiful ... the view from the Lake of Brienz towards the snow mountains at sunset is great.
More eloquent is the letter of October 3rd, from the Munsterthal:
The pa.s.sage through this defile roused in me a grand but calm emotion. The sublime produces a beautiful calmness in the soul, which, entirely possessed by it, feels as great as it ever can feel. How glorious is such a pure feeling, when it rises to the very highest without overflowing. My eye and my soul were both able to take in the objects before me, and as I was preoccupied by nothing, and had no false tastes to counteract their impression, they had on me their full and natural effect. When we compare such a feeling with that we are sensible of, when we laboriously hara.s.s ourselves with some trifle, and strain every nerve to gain as much as possible for it, and, as it were, to patch it out, striving to furnish joy and aliment to the mind from its own creation; we then feel sensibly what a poor expedient, after all, the latter is....
When we see such objects as these for the first time, the unaccustomed soul has to expand itself, and this gives rise to a sort of painful joy, an overflowing of emotion which agitates the mind and draws from us the most delicious tears.... If only destiny had bidden me to dwell in the midst of some grand scenery, then would I every morning have imbibed greatness from its grandeur, as from a lonely valley I would extract patience and repose.
One guesses in the dark about the origin and existence of these singular forms.... These ma.s.ses must have been formed grandly and simply by aggregation. Whatever revolutions may subsequently have up-heaved, rent, and divided them ... the idea of such nightly commotions gives one a deep feeling of the eternal stability of the ma.s.ses.... One feels deeply convinced that here there is nothing accidental, that here there is working an eternal law which, however slowly, yet surely governs the universe.
By the Lake of Geneva, where he thought of Rousseau, he went up the Dole:
The whole of the Pays de Vaux and de Gex lay like a plan before us ... we kept watching the mist, which gradually retired ... one by one we distinctly saw Lausanne ... Vevey.... There are no words to express the beauty and grandeur of this view ... the line of glittering glaciers was continually drawing the eye back again to the mountains.
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