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Updated: May 23, 2025
He once told Eckermann and Soret that the Italian playwright, Gozzi, had asserted the existence of only thirty-six possible tragic situations, and that Schiller had taken much trouble in trying to prove that there were more, only in the end to find himself unable to gather even so many as Gozzi had collected.
M. Soret states that he has not absolute confidence in his thermometrical observations, but as he had more time than I to devote to such details, inasmuch as he did not pass down into the lowest part of the cave, I give his results rather than my own, which were carelessly made on this occasion: On a stone near the first column of ice, 0°·37 C.; on a stick propped against the column on the edge of the great ice-fall, 2°·37 C.; in a hole in the ice, filled with water by drops from the roof, 0° C. approximately.
I will not send my Metamorphosis of Plants, translated, with an appendix, by M. Soret, unless certain confessions of life would satisfy your friendship. Recently I have become more and more entangled in these phenomena of nature; they have enticed me to continue my labors in my original field, and have finally compelled me to remain in it.
The day was externally very foggy, and the fog had penetrated into the cavern; but as soon as M. Soret began to descend to the glacière itself, properly so called, he passed down out of the fog, and found the air for the rest of the way perfectly clear.
Having squeezed ourselves out again through the narrow hole, we now passed between the two gigantic columns, and found that the sea of ice became still broader and bolder. I much regret that I neglected to take any measurements in this part of the cave; but farther down, where it was certainly not so broad, I found the width of the ice to be 75 feet. It was throughout of the crystalline character which prevails in all the large masses in the glacières I have visited. For some distance beyond the columns, we found neither stalactites nor stalagmites indeed, I forgot to look at the roof until we came to the edge of a glorious ice-fall, down which Christian said it was impossible to go no one had ever been farther than where we now stood. I have seen no subterranean ice-fall so grand as this, round and smooth, and perfectly unbroken, passing down, like the rapids of some river too deep for its surface to be disturbed, into darkness against which two candles prevailed nothing. The fall in the Upper Glacière of the Pré de S. Livres was strange enough, but it was very small, and led to a confined corner of the cavern; whereas this of the Schafloch rolls down majestically, cold and grey, into a dark gulf of which we could see neither the roof nor the end, while the pieces of ice which we despatched down the steep slope could be heard going on and on, as M. Soret says,
M. Soret, who saw the cave in 1860, determined that cords were then absolutely necessary for the descent, which he did not attempt; and the only Englishman I have met who has seen this cave, tells me that he and his party went no farther than the edge of the fall.
In the evening at Goethe's; he was still sitting in his elbow-chair, and seemed rather weak. His first question was about Wallenstein. I gave him an account of the impression the piece had made upon me as represented on the stage, and he heard me with visible satisfaction. M. Soret came in, led in by Frau von Goethe, and remained about an hour.
He brought from the duke some gold medals, and by showing and talking about these seemed to entertain Goethe very pleasantly. Frau von Goethe and M. Soret went to court, and I was left alone with Goethe. Remembering his promise to show me again his Marienbad Elegy at a fitting opportunity, Goethe arose, put a light on the table, and gave me the poem. I was delighted to have it once more before me.
M. Soret was fortunate enough to witness a curious phenomenon, at the time of his visit to the Schafloch, in September 1860, which throws some light upon the atmospheric state of the cave.
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