Goethe in Weimar 1777

There is nothing like a Singspiel to take your mind off of unpleasant subjects and situations. I am referring to Lila, which, as mentioned in my previous post, Goethe was preparing for the duchess's birthday in January of 1777. This diversionary aspect must account for the popularity of this genre of entertainment. And consider this: who imagined that the courtly world would be coming to an end by the end of the century? Such questions are on my mind in connection with the corona virus. There is nothing like immersing oneself in Goethe to keep social distance from the obsession that people (myself included) are beginning to feel. No conversation escapes from discussing it. So, I turn anew to Goethe.

I apologize in advance for the TBC at the end of this post. I am trying to bring together various elements of Goethe's life in Weimar in 1777, of which Singspiel is part (and which Goethe's Tweets to some extent document). The present post is one of these elements.

While I mentioned in my last post that Goethe was becoming fully immersed in the court culture at Weimar, I referenced a letter to Lavater. In fact, there are several letters to Lavater at this time, in connection with the Physiognomische Fragmente, and also to Philip Reich, the Leipzig publisher of the project. As can be seen in the several letters from the early part of 1777, Goethe was apparently handling the transaction with Reich. The Goethe-Handbuch has two excellent contributions by Karl Pestalozzi, one on the Fragmente and Goethe's participation in the project, and the other on Lavater himself, detailing the relationship of Goethe with Lavater, both the early acquaintance and the later estrangement. The letter to Lavater I quoted in the preceding post ends with the following, which seems to indicate that the terms of the relationship are becoming hardened:

Dein Durst nach Christ. hat mich gejammert. Du bist übler daran als wir Heiden und erscheinen doch in der Noth unsre Götter.

TO BE CONTINUED