Eckermann's Goethe

"Mit Goethe spazieren gefahren"

I first posted on the Conversations back in December of 2018, planning a series on the topic, and it has taken me this long  to return to it. I brought with me to British Columbia this book and one other on Goethe that I am due to review. My reading of the Conversations has now taken me through 1823 and into 1824, and a few things suggest themselves to me as worth mentioning. At the same time, I confess that I am not familiar with the scholarship on the Conversations, although I do know that they were not composed as such on the dates attributed to them. To what extent the "Goethe" before us, often quoted at length, is factual is thus uncertain.

Most entries open with time and date of encounter with Goethe (e.g., "Um ein Uhr mit Goethe spazieren gefahren"), which suggest that Eckermann kept a diary in which he recorded that information at the end of the day, which might also have been accompanied by notations concerning subjects discussed and also Goethe's personal appearance and state of health. The latter was of concern to the inhabitants of Weimar. Eckermann visited Goethe on November 16, 1823, and described an illness for which "Pflaster" was applied to his chest on the side of the heart. The next day's entry, November 17, notes as follow: "Als ich diesen Abend ins Theater kam, drängten viele Personen mir entgegen und erkundigten sich sehr ängstlich nach Goethes Befinden."

One other aspect that seems authentic to me is a decided pedagogical impulse on Goethe's part vis à vis Eckermann. This aspect is on view in Goethe's letters to his sister Cornelia when he was a student in Leipzig. His letters to her are full of recommendations for improvement of her mind. As we know, the Leipzig letters were written by Goethe himself, not dictated to a secretary, and, one suspects, were sent off to Frankfurt without being edited.

In my next post on the Conversations I will discuss some of the life lessons dished up by Goethe for Eckermann.