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Shortly afterward his clothes and his carpet-bag were sent downstairs, and were searched, on the chance of finding a clew by which to communicate with his friends, in the magistrate's presence. The carpet-bag contained nothing but a change of clothing, and two books the Plays of Sophocles, in the original Greek, and the "Faust" of Goethe, in the original German.
But apparently it was a zeal without knowledge. Many things were taught imperfectly, but all casually, and as chance suggested them. Italian was studied a little, because the elder Goethe had made an Italian tour, and had collected some Italian books, and engravings by Italian masters.
Carlyle against himself, reminding him of a saying in Goethe once bepraised by him in print, "we must take care of the beautiful for the useful will take care of itself."
"Goethe, I beg you to loosen your hold; you hurt my arms." "Do you not also hurt me? With your cold indifference do you not pierce my heart with red-hot daggers, and then smile and rejoice at my torture, which is a proof to you of my unbounded love?
"Sir," said I, rubbing my hands, "you are very kind, and so is our mutual friend; I shall be happy to make myself useful in German; and if you think a good translation from Goethe his 'Sorrows' for example, or more particularly his 'Faust' "
Is it possible for any nationality to make such a defense of its isolation? If not, let us read Goethe, Balzac, Tolstoi, men so much greater than any we can show, try to absorb their universal wisdom, and no longer confine ourselves to local traditions. But nationality was never so strong in Ireland as at the present time.
And in Marlowe's Faust there is a scene that is worth the whole of the second part of the Faust of Goethe. Faust says to Helen: "Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss" and he kisses her Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies! Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for Helen is in these lips, And all is dross that is not Helena.
Indeed, to an observer who trains himself on the lines indicated in this book, even the quantitative secrets of nature will become objects of intuitive judgment, just as Goethe, by developing this organ of understanding, first found access to nature's qualitative secrets.
By the side of what dazzling shrewdness, what deep knowledge of those holes and corners in the human system of which Goethe must have spoken when he said somewhere, if I recollect right, and don't misquote him, which I'll not answer for "There is something in every man's heart which, if we could know, would make us hate him," by the side of all this, and of much more that showed prodigious boldness and energy of intellect, what strange exaggeration; what mock nobility of sentiment; what inconceivable perversion of reasoning; what damnable demoralization!
It is the Jew afraid to die because he has never really lived himself out. It is the Jew as he is when he wants most to cease being a Jew. Mahler could have seemed no more the Jew had he expressed himself in all his Hebraic fervor instead of singing about Saint Peter in Heaven and seeking to reconcile Rhabanus Maurus and Goethe in a "higher synthesis."
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