Иоганн Вольфганг фон Гёте
The Autobiography of Goethe
It was, however, very polite of him not to press me on the spot. His arguments, and the weight with which he advanced them, had already convinced my pliant youth, and I now first saw the difficulties and doubtfulness of a matter which I had privately pictured to myself as so feasible. Frau Hofrath Böhme invited me to see her shortly afterwards. I found her alone. She was no longer young, and had very delicate health, was gentle and tender to an infinite degree, and formed a decided contrast to her husband, whose good-nature was even clustering. She spoke of the conversation her husband had lately had with me, and once more placed the subject before me, in all its bearings, in so cordial a manner, so affectionately and sensibly, that I could not help yielding; the few reservations on which I insisted were also agreed upon by the other side.
Thereupon her husband regulated my hours: for I was to hear lectures on philosophy, the history of law, the Institutes, and some other matters. I was content with this; but I carried my point so as to attend Gellert's history of literature (with Stockhausen for a text-book), and his Practicum besides.
The reverence and love with which Gellert was regarded by all young people was extraordinary. I had already visited him, and had been kindly received by him. Not of tall stature, elegant without being lean, soft and rather pensive eyes, a very fine forehead, a nose aquiline, but not too much so, a delicate mouth, a face of an agreeable oval, – all made his presence pleasing and desirable. It cost some trouble to reach him His two Famuli appeared like priests who guard a sanctuary, the access to which is not permitted to everybody, nor at every time; and such a precaution was very necessary: for he would have sacrificed his whole time, had he been willing to receive and satisfy all those who wished to become intimate with him.
At first I attended my lectures assiduously and faithfully: but the philosophy would not enlighten me at all. In the logic it seemed strange to me that I had so to tear asunder, isolate, and, as it were, destroy those operations of the mind which I had performed with the greatest ease from my youth upwards, and this in order to see into the right use of them. Of the thing itself, of the world, and of God, I thought I knew about as much as the professor himself, and in more places than one the affair seemed to me to come into a tremendous strait. Yet all went on in tolerable order till towards Shrovetide, when, in the neighbourhood of Professor Winkler's house on the Thomas-place, the most delicious fritters came hot out of the pan just at the hour of lecture, and these delayed us so long, that our note-books became disordered, and the conclusion of them, towards spring, melted away, together with the snow, and was lost.
It was soon quite as bad with the law lectures: for I already knew just as much as the professor thought good to communicate to us. My stubborn industry in writing down the lectures at first, was paralyzed by degrees, for I found it excessively tedious to pen down once more that which, partly by question, partly by answer, I had repeated with my father often enough to retain it for ever in my memory. The harm which is done when young people at school are advanced too far in many things, was afterwards manifested still more when time and attention were diverted from exercises in the languages, and a foundation in what are, properly speaking, preparatory studies, in order to be applied to what are called "Realities," which dissipate more than they cultivate, if they are not methodically and thoroughly taught.
I here mention, by the way, another evil by which students are much embarrassed. Professors, as well as other men in office, cannot all be of the same age; but when the younger ones teach, in fact, only that they may learn, and moreover, it they have talent, anticipate their age, they acquire their own cultivation altogether at the cost of their hearers, since these are not instructed in what they really need, but in that which the professor finds it necessary to elaborate for himself. Among the oldest professors, on the contrary, many are for a long time stationary; they deliver on the whole only fixed views, and, in the details, much that time has already condemned as useless and false. Between the two arises a sad conflict, in which young minds are dragged hither and thither, and which can scarcely be set right by the middle-aged professors, who, though sufficiently instructed and cultivated, always feel within themselves an active endeavour after knowledge and reflection.
Now as in this way I learned to know much more than I could digest, whereby a constantly increasing uncomfortableness was forced upon me, so also from life I experienced many disagreeable trifles, as indeed one must always pay one's footing when one changes one's place and comes into a new position. The first thing that the ladies blamed in me related to my dress; for I had come from home to the university rather oddly equipped.
Domestic Tailoring.
My father, who detested nothing so much as when something happened in vain, when any one did not know how to make use of his time, or found no opportunity for turning it to account, carried his economy of time and abilities so far, that nothing gave him greater pleasure than to kill two birds with one stone.20 He had therefore never engaged a servant who could not be useful to the house in something else. Now, as he had always written everything with his own hand, and had, latterly, the convenience of dictating to the young inmate of the house, he found it most advantageous to have tailors for his domestics, who were obliged to make good use of their time, as they not only had to make their own liveries, but the clothes for my father and the children, besides doing all the mending. My father himself took pains to have the best cloths and stuffs, by getting fine wares of the foreign merchants at the fair, and laying them up in store. I still remember well that he always visited the Herrn von Löwenicht, of Aix-la-Chapelle, and from my earliest youth made me acquainted with these and other eminent merchants.
Care was also taken for the fitness of the stuff, and there was a plentiful stock of different kinds of cloth, serge, and Götting stuff, besides the requisite lining, so that, as far as the materials were concerned, we might well venture to be seen. But the form spoiled almost everything. For if one of our home-tailors was anything of a clever hand at sewing and making up a coat which had been cut out for him in masterly fashion, he was now obliged also to cut out the dress for himself, which did not always succeed to perfection. In addition to this my father kept whatever belonged to his clothing in very good and neat order, and preserved more than used it for many years. Thus he had a predilection for certain old cuts and trimmings, by which our dress sometimes acquired a strange appearance.
In this same way had the wardrobe which I took with me to the university been furnished: it was very complete and handsome, and there was even a laced suit amongst the rest. Already accustomed to this kind of attire, I thought myself sufficiently well dressed; but it was not long before my female friends, first by gentle raillery, then by sensible remonstrances, convinced me that I looked as if I had dropped down out of another world. Much as I felt vexed at this, I did not at first see how I could help myself. But when Herr von Masuren, the favourite poetical country squire, once entered the theatre in a similar costume, and was heartily laughed at, more by reason of his external than his internal absurdity, I took courage, and ventured at once to exchange my whole wardrobe for a new-fashioned one, suited to the place, by which, however, it shrunk considerably.
After this trial was surmounted, a new one was to make its appearance, which proved to be far more unpleasant, because it concerned a matter which one does not so easily put off and exchange.
I had been born and bred in the Upper-German dialect, and although my father always laboured after a certain purity of language, and, from our youth upwards, had made us children attentive to what may be really called the defects of that idiom, and so prepared us for a better maimer of speaking, I retained nevertheless many deeper-seated peculiarities, which, because they pleased me by their naïveté, I was fond of making conspicuous, and thus every time I used them incurred a severe reprimand from my new fellow-townsmen. The Upper-German, and perhaps chiefly he who lives by the Rhine and Maine (for great rivers, like the sea-coast, always have something animating about them), expresses himself much in similes and allusions, and makes use of proverbial sayings with a native common-sense aptness. In both cases he is often blunt, but when one sees the drift of the expression, it is always appropriate; only something, to be sure, may often slip in, which proves offensive to a more delicate ear.
Provincial Dialect.
Every province loves its own dialect: for it is, properly speaking, the element in which the soul draws its breath. But every one knows with what obstinacy the Misnian dialect has contrived to domineer over the rest, and even, for a long time, to exclude them. We have suffered for many years under this pedantic tyranny, and only by reiterated struggles have all the provinces again established themselves in their ancient rights. What a lively young man had to endure from this continual tutoring, may be easily inferred by any one who reflects that modes of thought, imagination, feeling, native character, must be sacrificed with the pronunciation which one at last consents to alter. And this intolerable demand was made by men and women of education, whose convictions I could not adopt, whose injustice I believed I felt, though I was unable to make it plain to myself. Allusions to the pithy biblical texts were to be forbidden me, as well as the use of the honest-hearted expressions from the Chronicles. I had to forget that I had read the Kaiser von Geisersberg, and eschew the use of proverbs, which nevertheless, instead of much fiddle-faddle, just hit the nail upon the head; – all this, which I had appropriated to myself with youthful ardour, I was now to do without; I felt myself paralyzed to the core, and scarcely knew any more how I had to express myself on the commonest things. I was told, besides, that one should speak as one writes, and write as one speaks; while, to me, speaking and writing seemed once for all two different things, each of which might well maintain its own rights. And even in the Misnian dialect had I to hear many things which would have made no great figure on paper.
Every one who perceives in this the influence which men and women of education, the learned, and other persons who take pleasure in refined society, so decidedly exercise over a young student, would be immediately convinced that we were in Leipzig, even if it had not been mentioned. Each one of the German universities has a particular character: for, as no universal cultivation can pervade our fatherland, every place adheres to its own fashion, and carries out, even to the last, its own characteristic peculiarities; exactly the same thing holds good of the universities. In Jena and Halle roughness had been carried to the highest pitch: bodily strength, skill in fighting, the wildest self-help was there the order of the day; and such a state of affairs can only be maintained and propagated by the most universal riot. The relations of the students to the inhabitants of those cities, various as they might be, nevertheless agreed in this, that the wild stranger had no regard for the citizen, and looked upon himself as a peculiar being, privileged to all sorts of freedom and insolence. In Leipzig, on the contrary, a student could scarcely be anything else than polite, as soon as he wished to stand on any footing at all with the rich, well-bred, and punctilious inhabitants.
All politeness, indeed, when it does not present itself as the flowering of a great and comprehensive mode of life, must appear restrained, stationary, and from some points of view, perhaps, absurd; and so those wild huntsmen from the Saale21 thought they had a great superiority over the tame shepherds on the Pleisse.22 Zachariä's Renommist will always be a valuable document, from which the manner of life and thought at that time rises visibly forth; as in general his poems must be welcome to every one who wishes to form for himself a conception of the then prevailing state of social life and manners, which was indeed feeble, but amiable on account of its innocence and childlike simplicity.
All manners which result from the given relations of a common existence are indestructible, and, in my time, many things still reminded us of Zachariä's epic poem. Only one of our fellow-academicians thought himself rich and independent enough to snap his fingers at public opinion. He drank acquaintance with all the hackney-coachmen, whom he allowed to sit inside the coach as if they were gentlemen, while he drove them on the box, thought it a great joke to upset them now and then, and contrived to satisfy them for their smashed vehicles as well as for their occasional bruises; but otherwise he did no harm to any one, seeming only to make a mock of the public en masse. Once, on a most beautiful promenade-day, he and a comrade of his seized upon the donkeys of the miller in St. Thomas's-square; well-dressed, and in their shoes and stockings, they rode around the city with the greatest solemnity, stared at by all the promenaders, with whom the glacis was swarming. When some sensible persons remonstrated with him on the subject, he assured them, quite unembarrassed, that he only wanted to see how the Lord Christ might have looked in a like case. Yet he found no imitators, and few companions.
Student-life at Leipzig.
For the student of any wealth and standing had every reason to show himself attentive to the mercantile class, and to be the more solicitous about the proper external forms, as the colony23 exhibited a model of French manners. The professors, opulent both from their private property and from their liberal salaries, were not dependent upon their scholars, and many subjects of the state, educated at the Government schools or other gymnasia, and hoping for preferment, did not venture to throw off the traditional customs. The neighbourhood of Dresden, the attention paid to us from thence, and the true piety of the superintendent of the course of study, could not be without a moral, nay, a religious influence.
At first this kind of life was not repugnant to me; my letters of introduction had given me the entrée into good families, whose circle of relatives also received me well. But as I was soon forced to feel that the company had much to find fault with in me, and that after dressing myself in their fashion, I must now talk according to their tongue also, and as, moreover, I could plainly see that I was, on the other hand, but little benefited by the instruction and mental improvement I had promised myself from my academical residence, I began to be lazy, and to neglect the social duties of visiting, and other attentions, and indeed I should have sooner withdrawn from all such connexions, had not fear and esteem bound me fast to Hofrath Böhme, and confidence and affection to his wife. The husband, unfortunately, had not the happy gift of dealing with young people, of winning their confidence, and of guiding them, for the moment, as occasion might require. When I visited him I never got any good by it; his wife, on the contrary, showed a genuine interest in me. Her ill health kept her constantly at home. She invited me to spend many an evening with her, and knew how to direct and improve me in many little external particulars; for my manners were good, indeed, but I was not yet master of what is properly termed étiquette. Only one female friend spent the evenings with her; but she was more dictatorial and pedantic, for which reason she displeased me excessively, and, out of spite to her, I often resumed those unmannerly habits from which the other had already weaned me. Nevertheless she always had patience enough with me, taught me piquet, ombre, and similar games, the knowledge and practice of which is held indispensable in society.
But it was in the matter of taste that Madame Böhme had the greatest influence upon me; in a negative way truly, yet one in which she agreed perfectly with the critics. The Gottsched waters24 had inundated the German world with a true deluge, which threatened to rise up even over the highest mountains. It takes a long time for such a flood to subside again, for the mire to dry away; and as in any epoch there are numberless aping poets, so the imitation of the flat and watery produced a chaos, of which now scarcely a notion remains. To find out that trash was trash was hence the greatest sport, yea, the triumph of the critics of those days. Whoever had only a little common sense, was superficially acquainted with the ancients, and was somewhat more familiar with the moderns, thought himself provided with a standard scale which he could everywhere apply. Madame Böhme was an educated woman, who opposed the trivial, weak, and commonplace; she was, besides, the wife of a man who lived on bad terms with poetry in general, and would not even allow that of which she perhaps might have somewhat approved. She listened, indeed, for some time, with patience, when I ventured to recite to her the verse or prose of famous poets, who already stood in good repute, – for then, as always, I knew by heart everything that chanced in any degree to please me; but her complaisance was not of long duration. The first whom she outrageously abused were the poets of the Weisse school, who were just then often quoted with great applause, and had delighted me very particularly. If I looked more closely into the matter, I could not say she was wrong. I had sometimes even ventured to repeat to her, though anonymously, some of my own poems; but these fared no better than the rest of the set. And thus, in a short time, the beautiful variegated meadows at the foot of the German Parnassus, where I was fond of luxuriating, were mercilessly mowed down, and I was even compelled to toss about the drying hay myself, and to ridicule that as lifeless which, a short time before, had given me such lively joy.
German Poetry.
Without knowing it, Professor Morus came to strengthen her instructions. He was an uncommonly gentle and friendly man, with whom I became acquainted at the table of Hofrath Ludwig, and who received me very pleasantly when I begged the privilege of visiting him. Now while making inquiries of him concerning antiquity, I did not conceal from him what delighted me among the modems; when he spoke about such things with more calmness, but, what was still worse, with more profundity than Madame Böhme; and he thus opened my eyes, at first to my greatest chagrin, but afterwards to my surprise, and at last to my edification.
Besides this, there came the Jeremiads, with which Gellert, in his course, was wont to warn us against poetry. He wished only for prose essays, and always criticised these first. Verses he treated as a sorry addition, and what was the worst of all, even my prose found little favour in his eyes; for, after my old fashion, I used always to lay, as the foundation, a little romance, which I loved to work out in the epistolary form. The subjects were impassioned, the style went beyond ordinary prose, and the contents probably did not display any very deep knowledge of mankind in the author; and so I stood in very little favour with our professor, although he carefully looked over my labours as well as those of the others, corrected them with red ink, and here and there added a moral remark. Many leaves of this kind, which I kept for a long time with satisfaction, have unfortunately, in the course of years, at last disappeared from among my papers.
If elderly persons wish to play the pedagogue properly, they should neither prohibit nor render disagreeable to a young man anything which gives him pleasure, of whatever kind it may be, unless, at the same time, they have something else to put in its place, or can contrive a substitute. Everybody protested against my tastes and inclinations; and, on the other hand, what they commended to me, lay either so far from me that I could not perceive its excellencies, or stood so near me that I thought it not a whit better than what they inveighed against. I thus became thoroughly perplexed on the subject, and promised myself the best results from a lecture of Ernesti's on Cicero de Oratore. I learned something, indeed, from this lecture, but was not enlightened on the subject which particularly concerned me. I required a standard of opinion, and thought I perceived that nobody possessed it; for no one agreed with another, even when they brought forward examples; and where were we to get a settled judgment, when they managed to reckon up against a man like Wieland so many faults in his amiable writings, which so completely captivated us younger folks?
Amid this manifold distraction, this dismemberment of my existence and my studies, it happened that I took my dinners at Hofrath Ludwig's. He was a medical man, a botanist, and his company, with the exception of Morus, consisted of physicians just commencing or near the completion of their studies. Now during these hours I heard no other conversation than about medicine or natural history, and my imagination was drawn over into quite a new field. I heard the names of Haller, Linnæus, Buffon, mentioned with great respect; and even if disputes often arose about mistakes into which it was said they had fallen, all agreed in the end to honour the acknowledged abundance of their merits. The subjects were entertaining and important, and enchained my attention. By degrees I became familiar with many names and a copious terminology, which I caught up the more willingly as I was afraid to write down a rhyme, however spontaneously it presented itself, or to read a poem, for I was fearful that it might please me at the time, and that perhaps immediately afterwards, like so much else, I should be forced to pronounce it bad.
Destruction of Juvenile Poems.
This uncertainty of taste and judgment disquieted me more and more every day, so that at last I fell into despair. I had brought with me those of my youthful labours which I thought the best, partly because I hoped to get some credit by them, partly that I might be able to test my progress with greater certainty; but I found myself in the miserable situation in which one is placed when a complete change of mind is required, – a renunciation of all that one has hitherto loved and found good. However, after some time, and many struggles, I conceived so great a contempt for my labours, begun and ended, that one day I burnt up poetry and prose, plans, sketches, and projects all together on the kitchen hearth, and threw our good old landlady into no small fright and anxiety by the smoke which filled the whole house.
