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Updated: May 8, 2025
It is what Goethe calls his Gewahrwerden der griechischen Kunst, his FINDING of Greek art. Through the tumultuous richness of Goethe's culture, the influence of Winckelmann is always discernible, as the strong, regulative under-current of a clear, antique motive. "One learns nothing from him," he says to Eckermann, "but one becomes something."
Even the young king, whose approaching marriage to the Russian princess, one would think, might soften his heart, did nothing to win our regard, or to show that he appreciated our residence "near" his court, and, so far as I know, never read with any sort of attention our advertisement, which was composed with as much care as Goethe's "Faust," and probably with the use of more dictionaries.
There has not been one but many a Petrarch, who, failing to have his love requited, has been obliged to drag through life as if his feet were either fettered or carried a leaden weight, and give vent to his sighs in a lonely forest; nevertheless there was only one Petrarch who possessed the true poetic instinct, so that Goethe's beautiful lines are true of him: "Und wenn der Mensch in seiner Quaal verstummt, Gab mir ein Gott, zu sagen, wie ich leide."
It was only in the seminaries that art was preserved from utter decay. One may trace the Schul-comödie until far down in the eighteenth century, and in the last mention of it I find appears an interesting figure. In 1780, at the military school in Stuttgart the birthday of the Duke of Würtemberg was celebrated by a performance of Goethe's Clavigo.
"It is a poem of Goethe's," she announced in her high, satisfied voice. "Kennst du das Land" "That will do," said the German assistant. "I fear we shall not have time for it to-day. The hour is up. You may go on with the translation for to-morrow." And as the class rose with a growing clamor she realized that though she had been thinking steadily in German, she had been talking in English.
By resignation, on the contrary, serene resignation, the human soul is purified; for thereby it becomes free of selfish passions and arrives at that intellectual superiority in which the contemplation and understanding of things give sufficient contentment, without making it needful for man to stretch out his hands to take possession of them; a thought which Goethe's friend, Schiller, has magnificently developed in his grand philosophical poems.
For instance, what declamation on the vanity of human existence could ever be more telling than the words of Job? Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. For the same reason Goethe's naïve poetry is incomparably greater than Schiller's rhetoric.
He chose his scenes from Goethe's poem, changed them at will, and interpolated an incident simply to account for the Hungarian march. Connection with each other the scenes have not, and some of the best music belongs wholly in the realm of the ideal. At the outset Berlioz conceived Faust alone on a vast field in Hungary in spring.
While Goethe represented the actual thoughts and feelings of his age, Schiller reflected its ideal yearnings; while the practical result of Goethe's influence was to develop the capacities of each individual to their utmost extent, Schiller's aim was to lead men to consecrate their gifts to the good, the beautiful, and the true, the ethical trinity of the ages.
It is curious to contrast this childhood, in the almost cloistered seclusion of the Fichtelgebirge, with Goethe's at cosmopolitan Frankfurt or even with Schiller's at Marbach. Much that came unsought, even to Schiller, Richter had a struggle to come by; much he could never get at all. The place of "Frau Aja" in the development of the child Goethe's fancy was taken at Joditz by the cow-girl.
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