Moral Tendency of Goethe's Writings [pp. 180-188]

Moral Tendency of Goethe's Writings.
associates. In their orgies they drank
wine out of skulls, and in their ordinary
intercourse exhibited but a very mitigat ed respect for meum and tuum, borrowing
handkerchiefs and waistcoats which were
never returned."
Something of the last-named frailty
seems to have clung to Goethe much later in life. A bar of platinum sent through
him to Doebereiner by the emperor of
Russia never reached its destination, al though the cheamist repeatedly demanded
it. He also carried off from Knebel a
hundred valuable engravings which that
gentleman never saw in his own collection again.
At Weimar he formed another "grand
passion" for the Baronness von Stein, to
whom Mr. Lewes devotes a whole chapter. This connection continued for ten
,years until it was broken off by his intimacy with Christiane Vulpius, an intimacy which, according to our English
notions, was of the most disreputable
kind. This female, very young when he
first knew her, lived with him in his own
house for eighteen years as his concubine,
and at the end of that period (in 1806)
he married her. She was the daughter
of a sot, and herself a notorious drunkard, and given to other bad habits. Mr.
Lewes is very tender-footed on this part
of his subject; but it is not difficult to
conjecture what is left unsaid.
"Fond of gaiety, and especially of
dancing, she was often seen at the students' balls at Jena, and she accustomed
herself to an indulgence in wine which
rapidly destroyed her beauty, and which
was sometimes the cause of serious domestic troubles."
It is said that this person in her youth
inspired the composition of the IRoman a
Elegies, amatory poems which would
have delighted Catullus, but of which
Mr. Lewes says:
"I dare not quote many of the finest
passages for they are as antique in tzeir
directsess of expression as in other qualities."
That is —they are too gross to admit of
translation.
bue tulrn from thes e unpleasant details;
but let it rnot be said that they are trivial
or unimportant in an estimate of the influence of Goethe's writings. It mus t be
recollected that these writings, according
to his ownr avowal, are the confessions
and experie nces of his life; a nd alth ough
he has not pr e sen te d himself to the world
in the naked hideousness of Rousseau, yet
he has unveiled much that w,as debasing,
and many thoughts and feelings in the
mouths o f fictitious cha racter s may well
be ascribed to himself. It is not to be
supposed that he was worse than the society in which he lived; it is more than
probable that he was better, and his influence at home was salutary and restraining, just as Mahomet's restriction
of his followers to four wives was an improvemiient on the unlimited polygamy of
the Arabs. But the matter which concerns us is the effect of his life and writings on the moral tone and sentiments
of English and American readers and
admirers. We cannot hesitate to say that
his views of Truth, Virtue, Duty, and
even of the aims and purposes of poetry
and art fall far below the Anglo-Saxon
standard.
He was the voice and the mouth-piece
of the German intellect of his age. With
cunning art, and in clear and melodious
strains, whose very music dissolved all
hearts into ecstacies, he echoed back the
wishes, the aspirations, the dreams of the
German soul. Hence his great success
and popularity above the mere deserts of
his genius, great as that was. But it was
an age of pantheistic infidelity and refined Epicureanism, an age without God,
heroism or patriotism, an age when the
sentimentality of Wefrther, the skepticism of Faust, and the perverted moral
sense of the Elective Affinities found
many responsive and congenial readers.
We hope this state of things is passing
away. The Byron-mania once raged at
fever heat; but what a prodigious falling
off within the memory of living men. So
with Goethe. Time and a sounder tone
of moral sentiment have unlocked the
clasping charm and thawed the numbing
spell of the enchanter. He has bequeathed us much that deserves to live, and will
live; an artist of such transendant power could not fail to do so. But he has
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