The Autobiography of Goethe

"Most worthy friends of both sexes, paired and unpaired!" – It was already evident, from this address, how necessary it was that a preacher of repentance should arise and sharpen the conscience of the company. "One part of my noble friends is paired, and they may find themselves quite happy; another unpaired, and these find themselves in the highest degree miserable, as I can assure you from my own experience; and although the loving couples are here in the majority, yet I would have them consider whether it is not a social duty to take thought for the whole? Why do so many of us unite together but to take a mutual interest in each other? and how can that be done when so many little secessions are to be seen in our circle? Far be it from me to insinuate any thing against such sweet connexions, or even to wish to disturb them; but 'there is a time for all things!' an excellent great saying, of which, indeed, nobody thinks when his own amusement is sufficiently provided for."

He then went on with constantly increasing liveliness and gaiety to compare the social virtues with the tender sentiments. "The latter," said he, "can never fail us; we always carry them about with us, and every one becomes a master in them without practice; but we must go in quest of the former, we must take some trouble about them, and though we progress in them as much as we will, we have never done learning them." Now he went into particulars. Many felt themselves hit off, and they could not help casting glances at each other; yet our friend had this privilege, that nothing he did was taken ill, and so he could proceed without interruption.

Humorous Oration.

"It is not enough to discover deficiencies; indeed, it is unjust to do so, if at the same time one cannot contrive to give the means for bettering the state of affairs. I will not, therefore, my friends, something like a preacher in Passion-week, exhort you in general terms to repentance and amendment; I rather wish all amiable couples the longest and most enduring happiness, and to contribute to it myself in the surest manner, I propose to sever and abolish these most charming little segregations during our social hours. I have," he continued, "already provided for the execution of my project, if it should meet your approbation. Here is a bag in which are the names of the gentlemen; now draw, my fair ones, and be pleased to favour as your servant, for a week, him whom fate shall send you. This is binding only within our circle; as soon as that is broken up, these connexions are also abolished, and the heart may decide who shall attend you home."

A large part of the company had been delighted with this address, and the manner in which he delivered it, and seemed to approve of the notion; yet some couples looked at each other as if they thought that it would not answer their purpose: he therefore cried with humorous vehemence: —

"Truly! it surprises me that some one does not spring up, and, though others hesitate, extol my plan, explain its advantages, and spare me the pain of being my own encomiast. I am the oldest among you; may God forgive me for that! Already have I a bald pate, which is owing to my great meditation," —

Here he took off his hat —

"But I would expose it to view with joy and honour if my lucubrations, which dry up my skin, and rob me of my finest adornment, could only be in some measure beneficial to myself and others. We are young, my friends, – that is good; we shall grow older, – that is bad; we take little offence at each other, – that is right, and in accordance with the season. But soon, my friends, the days will come when we shall have much to be displeased at in ourselves; then let every one see that he makes all right with himself; but, at the same time, others will take things ill of us, and on what account we shall not understand; for this we must prepare ourselves; this shall now be done."

He had delivered the whole speech, but especially the last part, with the tone and gesture of a Capuchin; for as he was a catholic, he might have had abundant opportunity to study the oratory of these fathers. He now appeared out of breath, wiped his youthful bald head, which really gave him the look of a priest, and by these drolleries put the light-hearted company in such good humour that every one was eager to hear him longer. But instead of proceeding, he drew open the bag, and turned to the nearest lady – "Now for a trial of it!" exclaimed he; "the work will do credit to the master. If in a week's time we do not like it, we will give it up, and stick to the old plan."

Half willingly, half on compulsion, the ladies drew their tickets, and it was easy to see that various passions were in play during this little affair. Fortunately it happened that the merry-minded were separated, while the more serious remained together; and so, too, my sister kept her Englishman, which, on both sides, they took very kindly of the god of Love and Luck. The new chance-couples were immediately united by the Antistes, their healths were drank, and to all the more joy was wished, as its duration was to be but short. This was certainly the merriest moment that our company had enjoyed for a long time. The young men to whose share no lady had fallen, held, for this week, the office of providing for the mind, the soul, and the body, as our orator expressed himself, but especially, he hinted, for the soul, since both the others already knew how to help themselves.

These masters of ceremonies, who wished at once to do themselves credit, brought into play some very pretty new games, prepared at some distance a supper, which we had not reckoned on, and illuminated the yacht on our return at night, although there was no necessity for it in the bright moonlight; but they excused themselves by saying that it was quite conformable to the new social regulation to outshine the tender glances of the heavenly moon by earthly candles. The moment we touched the shore, our Solon cried, "Ite, missa est!" Each one now handed out of the vessel the lady who had fallen to him by lot, and then surrendered her to her proper partner, on receiving his own in exchange.

At our next meeting this weekly regulation was established for the summer, and the lots were drawn once more. There was no question but that this pleasantry gave a new and unexpected turn to the company, and every one was stimulated to display whatever of wit and grace was in him, and to pay court to his temporary fair one in the most obliging manner, since he might depend on having a sufficient store of complaisance for one week at least.

Second Oration.

We had scarcely settled ourselves, than, instead of thanking our orator, we reproached him for having kept to himself the best part of his speech – the conclusion. He thereupon protested that the best part of a speech was persuasion; and that he who did not aim at persuasion should make no speech; for, as to conviction, that was a ticklish business. As, however, they gave him no peace, he began a Capuchinade on the spot, more comical than ever, perhaps, for the very reason that he took it into his head to speak on the most serious subjects. For, with texts out of the Bible which had nothing to do with the business – with similes which did not fit – with allusions which illustrated nothing – he carried out the proposition, that whosoever does not know how to conceal his passions, inclinations, wishes, purposes and plans, will come to no good in the world, but will be disturbed and made a butt in every end and corner; and that especially if one would be happy in love, one must take pains to keep it a most profound secret.

This thought ran through the whole, without, properly speaking, a single word of it being said. If you would form a conception of this singular man, let it be considered that, being born with a good foundation, he had cultivated his talents, and especially his acuteness, in Jesuit schools, and had amassed an extensive knowledge of the world and of men, but only on the bad side. He was some two-and-twenty years old, and would gladly have made me a proselyte to his contempt for mankind: but this would not take with me, as I always had a great desire to be good myself, and to find good in others. Meanwhile I was by him made attentive to many things.

To complete the dramatis personæ of every merry company, an actor is necessary, who feels pleasure when the others, to enliven many an indifferent moment, point the arrows of their wit at him. If he is not merely a stuffed Saracen, like those on whom the knights used to practise their lances in mock battles, but understands himself how to skirmish, to rally and to challenge, how to wound lightly, and recover himself again, and, while he seems to expose himself, to give others a thrust home, nothing more agreeable can be found. Such a man we possessed in our friend Horn, whose name, to begin with, gave occasion for all sorts of jokes, and who, on account of his small figure, was called nothing but Hörnchen (little Horn). He was, in fact, the smallest in the company, of a stout, but pleasing form; a pug-nose, a mouth somewhat pouting, little sparkling eyes, made up a swarthy countenance, which always seemed to invite laughter. His little compact skull was thickly covered with curly black hair; his beard was prematurely blue, and he would have liked to let it grow, that, as a comic mask, he might always keep the company laughing. For the rest, he was neat and nimble, but insisted that he had bandy legs, which everybody granted, since he was bent on having it so, but about which many a joke arose; for since he was in request as a very good dancer he reckoned it among the peculiarities of the fair sex, that they always liked to see bandy legs on the floor. His cheerfulness was indestructible, and his presence at every meeting indispensable. We two kept more together because he was to follow me to the university; and he well deserves that I should mention him with all honour, as he adhered to me for many years with infinite love, faithfulness, and patience.

By my ease in rhyming, and in winning from common objects a poetical side, he had allowed himself to be seduced into similar labours. Our little social excursions, parties of pleasure, and the contingencies that occurred in them, we decked out poetically, and thus by the description of an event, a new event always arose. But as such social jests commonly degenerate into personal ridicule, and my friend Horn, with his burlesque representations, did not always keep within proper bounds, many a misunderstanding arose, which, however, could soon be softened down and effaced.

Thus, also, he tried his skill in a species of poetry which was then very much the order of the day – the comic heroical poem. Pope's Rape of the Lock had called forth many imitations; Zachariä cultivated this branch of poetry on German soil, and it pleased every one, because the ordinary subject of it was some awkward fellow, of whom the genii made game, while they favoured the better one.

It is not wonderful, but yet it excites wonder, when, in contemplating a literature, especially the German, one observes how a whole nation cannot get free from a subject which has been once given, and happily treated in a certain form, but will have it repeated in every manner, until, at last, the original itself is covered up, and stifled by the heaps of imitations.

Comic Heroical Poetry.

The heroic poem of my friend was a voucher for this remark. At a great sledging party, an awkward man has assigned to him a lady who does not like him; comically enough there befalls him, one after another, every accident that can happen on such an occasion, until at last, as he is entreating for the sledge-driver's right (a kiss), he falls from the back seat; for just then, as was natural, the fates tripped him up. The fair one seizes the reins, and drives home alone, where a favoured friend receives her, and triumphs over his presumptuous rival. As to the rest, it was very prettily contrived that the four different kinds of spirits should worry him in turn, till at the end the gnomes hoist him completely out of the saddle. The poem, written in Alexandrines, and founded on a true story, highly delighted our little public, and we were convinced that it could well be compared with the Walpurgisnight of Löwen, or the Renommist of Zachariä.19

While, now, our social pleasures required but an evening, and the preparations for them only a few hours, I had enough time to read, and, as I thought, to study. To please my father, I diligently repeated the smaller work of Hopp, and could stand an examination in it forwards and backwards, by which means I made myself complete master of the chief contents of the Institutes. But a restless eagerness for knowledge urged me further; I lit upon the history of ancient literature, and from that fell into an encyclopedism, in which I read through Gessner's Isagoge and Morhov's Polyhistor, and thus gained a general notion of how many strange things might have happened in learning and life. By this persevering and rapid industry, continued day and night, I more confused than instructed myself; but I lost myself in a still greater labyrinth when I found Bayle in my father's library, and plunged deep into him.

But a leading conviction, which was continually revived within me, was that of the importance of the ancient tongues; since from amidst this literary hurly-burly, thus much continually forced itself upon me, that in them were preserved all the models of oratory, and at the same time everything else of worth that the world has ever possessed. Hebrew, together with biblical studies, had retired into the background, and Greek likewise, since my acquaintance with it did not extend beyond the New Testament. I therefore the more zealously kept to Latin, the master-pieces in which lie nearer to us, and which, besides its splendid original productions, offers us the other wealth of all ages in translations, and the works of the greatest scholars. I consequently read much in this language, with great ease, and was bold enough to believe I understood the authors, because I missed nothing of the literal sense. Indeed I was very indignant when I heard that Grotius had insolently declared, "he did not read Terence as boys do." Happy narrow-mindedness of youth! – nay, of men in general, that they can, at every moment of their existence, fancy themselves finished, and inquire after neither the true nor the false, after neither the high nor the deep, but merely after that which is suited to them.

I had thus learned Latin, like German, French, and English, merely by practice, without rules, and without conception. Whoever knows the condition of school instruction then, will not think it strange that I skipped grammar as well as rhetoric; all seemed to me to come together naturally; I retained the words, their forms and inflexions, in my ear and mind, and used the language with case in writing and in chattering.

Disgust at Frankfort.

Michaelmas, the time when I was to go to the university, was approaching, and my mind was excited quite as much about my life as about my learning. I grew more and more clearly conscious of an aversion to my native city. By Gretchen's removal, the heart had been broken out of the boyish and youthful plant; it needed time to bud forth again from its sides, and surmount the first injury by a new growth. My ramblings through the streets had ceased; I now, like others, only went such ways as were necessary. I never went again into Gretchen's quarter of the city, not even into its vicinity; and as my old walls and towers became gradually disagreeable to me, so also was I displeased at the constitution of the city; all that hitherto seemed so worthy of honour, now appeared to me in distorted shapes. As grandson of the Schultheiss, the secret defects of such a republic had not remained unknown to me; the less so, as children feel quite a peculiar surprise, and are excited to busy researches, as soon as something which they have hitherto implicitly revered becomes in any degree suspicious to them. The fruitless indignation of upright men, in opposition to those who are to be gained and even bribed by factions, had become but too plain to me; I hated every injustice beyond measure; for children are all moral rigorists. My father, who was concerned in the affairs of the city only as a private citizen, expressed himself with very lively indignation about much that had failed. And did I not see him, after so many studies, endeavours, pains, travels, and so much varied cultivation, between his four walls, leading a solitary life, such as I could never desire for myself? All this put together, lay as a horrible load on my mind, from which I could only free myself by trying to contrive a plan of life altogether different from that which had been marked out for me. In thought, I threw away my legal studies, and devoted myself solely to the languages, to antiquities, to history, and to all that flows from them.

Indeed, at all times, the poetic imitation of what I had perceived in myself, in others, and in nature, afforded me the greatest pleasure. I did it with ever-increasing facility, because it came by instinct, and no criticism had led me astray; and if I did not feel full confidence in my productions, I could certainly regard them as defective, but not such as to be utterly rejected. Was this or that censured in them, I still retained in private my conviction that I could not but gradually improve, and that some time I might be honourably named along with Hagedorn, Gellert, and other such men. But such a distinction alone seemed to me too empty and inadequate; I wished to devote myself professionally and with zeal to those aforesaid fundamental studies, and while I thought to advance myself more rapidly in my own works by a more thorough insight into antiquity, to qualify myself for a university professorship, which seemed to me the most desirable thing for a young man who intended to cultivate himself and to contribute to the cultivation of others.

With these intentions, I always had my eye upon Göttingen. My whole confidence rested upon men like Heyne, Michaelis, and so many others; my most ardent wish was to sit at their feet, and attend to their instructions. But my father remained inflexible. Howsoever some family friends, who were of my opinion, tried to influence him he persisted that I must go to Leipzig. I was now resolved, contrary to his views and wishes, to choose a line of studies and of life for myself, by way of self-defence. The obstinacy of my father, who, without knowing it, opposed himself to my plans, strengthened me in my impiety, so that I made no scruple to listen to him by the hour, while he described and repeated to me the course of study and of life which I should pursue at the universities and in the world.

Since all hopes of Göttingen were cut off, I now turned my eyes towards Leipzig. There Ernesti appeared to me as a brilliant light; Morus, too, already awakened much confidence*. I planned for myself in secret an opposition-course, or rather I built a castle in the air, on a tolerably solid foundation; and it seemed to me quite romantically honourable to mark out my own path of life, which appeared the less visionary, as Griesbach had already made great progress in a similar way, and was commended for it by every one. The secret joy of a prisoner, when he has unbound the fetters and rapidly filed through the bars of his gaol-window, cannot be greater than was mine as I saw day after day disappear, and October draw nigh. The inclement season and the bad roads, of which everybody had something to tell, did not frighten me. The thought of making good my footing in a strange place, and in winter, did not make me sad; suffice it to say, that I only saw my present situation was gloomy, and represented to myself the other unknown world as light and cheerful. Thus I formed my dreams, to which I gave myself up exclusively, and promised myself nothing but happiness and content in the distance.

Closely as I kept these projects a secret from every one else, I could not hide them from my sister, who, after being very much alarmed about them at first, was finally consoled when I promised to send after her, so that she could enjoy with me the brilliant station I was to obtain, and share my comfort with me.

Michaelmas, so longingly expected, came at last, when I set out with delight, in company with the bookseller Fleischer and his wife (whose maiden name was Triller, and who was going to visit her father in Wittemberg); and I left behind me the worthy city in which I had been born and bred, with indifference, as if I wished never to set foot in it again.

Thus, at certain epochs, children part from parents, servants from masters, protégés from their patrons; and whether it succeed or not, such an attempt to stand on one's own feet, to make one's self independent, to live for one's self, is always in accordance with the will of nature.

Departure for Leipzig.

We had driven out through the Allerheiligen (All Saints) gate, and had soon left Hanau behind us, after which we reached scenes which aroused my attention by their novelty, if, at this season of the year, they offered little that was pleasing. A continual rain had completely spoiled the roads, which, generally speaking, were not then in such good order as we find them now; and our journey "was thus neither pleasant nor happy. Yet I was indebted to this damp weather for the sight of a natural phenomenon which must be exceedingly rare, for I have seen nothing like it since, nor have I heard of its being observed by others. At night, namely, we were driving up a rising ground between Hanau and Gelhausen, and, although it was dark, we preferred walking to exposing ourselves to the danger and difficulty of that part of the road. All at once, in a ravine on the right-hand side of the way, I saw a sort of amphitheatre, wonderfully illuminated. In a funnel-shaped space there were innumerable little lights gleaming, ranged step-fashion over one another, and they shone so brilliantly that the eye was dazzled. But what stiff more confused the sight was, that they did not keep still, but jumped about here and there, as well downwards from above as vice versâ, and in every direction. The most of them, however, remained stationary, and beamed on. It was only with the greatest reluctance that I suffered myself to be called away from this spectacle, which I could have wished to examine more closely. On interrogating the postillion, he indeed knew nothing about such a phenomenon, but said that there was in the neighbourhood an old stone-quarry, the excavation of which was filled with water. Now whether this was a pandemonium of will-o'-the-wisps, or a company of shining creatures, I will not decide.

The roads through Thuringia were yet worse, and unfortunately, at night-fall, our coach stuck fast in the vicinity of Auerstädt. We were far removed from all mankind, and did everything possible to work ourselves out. I failed not to exert myself zealously, and might thereby have overstrained the ligaments of my chest; for soon afterwards I felt a pain, which went off and returned, and did not leave me entirely until after many years.

Yet on that same night, as if it had been destined for alternate good and bad luck, I was forced, after an unexpectedly fortunate incident, to experience a teazing vexation. We met, in Auerstädt, a genteel married couple, who had also just arrived, having been delayed by a similar accident; a pleasing, dignified man, in his best years, with a very handsome wife. They politely persuaded us to sup in their company, and I felt very happy when the excellent lady addressed a friendly word to me. But when I was sent out to accelerate the soup which had been ordered, not having been accustomed to the loss of rest and the fatigues of travelling, such an unconquerable drowsiness overtook me, that actually I fell asleep while walking, returned into the room with my hat on my head, and without remarking that the others were saying grace, placed myself with quiet unconsciousness behind the chair, and never dreamed that by my conduct I had come to disturb their devotions in a very droll way. Madame Fleischer, who lacked neither spirit nor wit, nor tongue, entreated the strangers, before they had seated themselves, not to be surprised at anything they might see here; for that their young fellow-traveller had in his nature much of the peculiarity of the Quakers, who believe that they cannot honour God and the king better than with covered heads. The handsome lady, who could not restrain her laughter, looked prettier than ever in consequence, and I would have given everything in the world not to have been the cause of a merriment which was so beautifully becoming in her countenance. I had, however, scarcely laid aside my hat, than these persons, in accordance with their polished manners, immediately dropped the joke, and with the best wine from their bottle-case completely extinguished sleep, chagrin, and the memory of all past troubles.