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"We Germans are of yesterday," Goethe once said to Eckermann. "True, for the last hundred years we have diligently cultivated ourselves, but a few centuries may yet have to run their course before our fellow-countrymen become permeated with sufficient intellectuality and higher culture to have it said of them, it is a long time since they were barbarians."
Exhausted, the wisdom of Goethe? Ah, no! hardly fathomed yet, in its uppermost levels! If it were really possible to put into words the whole complex world of impressions and visions, of secrets and methods, which that name suggests, one would be a wiser disciple than Eckermann.
Eckermann, born at Winsen, in Hanover, was the son of a woollen draper. He received an excellent education, and studied art, under Ramber, in Hanover, but soon became enamoured of poetry through the influence of Körner and of Goethe. He became the intimate friend of Goethe, and lived with him for several years.
There is one important quality that enters into all first-class literary production and into all art, which is taken little account of in current criticism: I mean the quality of the manly, the pulse and pressure of manly virility and strength. Goethe spoke of it to Eckermann as a certain urgent power in which the art of his time was lacking.
The outstanding feature of the remarkable "Conversations with Eckermann" is this, that the compilation furnishes an altogether unique record of the working of Goethe's mature mind. For Goethe's age at the period when the "Conversations" begin is seventy-three, and eighty-two when they end. John Peter Eckermann published his work in 1836. In 1848 appeared an additional portion.
That man himself is not excluded from experiencing directly the super-spatial nature of seismic disturbances is shown by an event in Goethe's life, reported by his secretary Eckermann, who himself learnt the story from an old man who had been Goethe's valet at the time.7
The dog-like fidelity of Boswell and Eckermann was fitting to their attitude and capacity; but the spectacle of one great writer surrendering himself to another is a new testimony to the glamour of conversational genius. As regards the libels on Lamb, Dr. Carlyle was a great man, but a great man spoiled, that is, largely soured.
[Footnote 57: Eckermann, II, p. 19; Biedermann, VII, p.
Nor can we bid more fitting adieu to Lutetia than by translating Goethe's words to Eckermann: "Think of the city of Paris where all the best of the realms of nature and art in the whole earth are open to daily contemplation, a world-city where the crossing of every bridge or every square recalls a great past, and where at every street corner a piece of history has been unfolded."
It is a subject to paint, which has never been well treated; the passionate friendships of a Tattet for a Musset, of an Eckermann for a Goethe, of an Asselineau for a Beaudelaire, the total absorption of the admirer in the admired. Florent found that the genius of the great painter had need of a fortune, and he gave him his sister.
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