Goethe's "Belsazar" Fragment

 

As mentioned in my last post, I am on a small island in British Columbia, concentrating as usual on “der junge Goethe.” All the documentation of that era is to be found in the five-volume edition of that title by Hanna Fischer-Lamberg, which I own, but which I did not bring with me this summer. Instead, for my review of this early period, I carted along Karl Eibl’s two-volume set Der junge Goethe in seiner Zeit, which is hefty enough at 700-plus pages per volume. Unlike Fischer-Lamberg, which is chronological, vol. 1 of Eibl’s edition contains the plays, diaries and legal writings; vol. 2 the poetry, prose, and bibliography. I started with the poetry and have worked my way up to the “Iris” poems of 1774, but have decided to take a break and turn to the plays. The first two items in Eibl are fragments. One concerns the drama "Belsazar," the action of which seems to have been on Goethe’s mind already before he went to study in Leipzig in 1765. The second is a monologue entitled “Die königliche Einsiedlerin.” From there, Eibl continues with “Der Lügner,” “Tugendspiegel,” and then, coming to more familiar territory, Die Laune des Verliebten. These three were also Leipzig products.

Willilam Blake, Nebuchedensar loses his mind

Among my reading on this subject has been the Old Testament Book of Daniel, which begins with the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. It is the era of what is called the Babylonian Captivity, which included the deportation from Judah to Babylon of the smartest Jews, who become court favorites. Daniel was one of Nebuchadnazzar’s favorite soothsayers and was called to interpret  a dream that presaged his loss of royal authority. As the Book of Daniel has it: “You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals. You will eat grass like the ox” (Dan. IV, 31–32). This episode (recounted in Dan. V, 21) was the subject of the above painting by William Blake. Belsazar seems to have been more favored as a subject by later artists, and the OT account describes several episodes, including Daniel’s reading of the inscription on the Wall that so terrified Belzasar, the casting of Daniel’s friends into the blazing furnace, and Daniel’s sojourn in the lions’ den.

Rembrandt, Belzasar sees the writing on the wall

Goethe was what Germans call “bibelfest,” and the language of his oeuvre shows the influence of that acquaintance. As Roger Paulin writes in a very good article on the influence of Klopstock on Goethe, it was via Klopstock that the persons of the Old and New Testaments had achieved “ein zartes und gefühlvolles Wesen,” one that spoke to the young Goethe and many of his contemporaries. Thus Klopstock’s epic poem Der Messias (1748–1773). There were also other German-speaking writers who wrote such epics, e.g., Bodmer. (See my earlier post on Bodmer.) So it was that Goethe, as Paulin writes, for a time planned several works on Biblical themes. Besides the Belazar drama, there was to be an epic poem about Joseph and a tragedy on the successor of the Pharoah, the subject of which was the killing of the first born. Those drafts as well as of Ruth and Jezabel were destroyed in one of Goethe's auto da fés, excepting the two fragments mentioned here.

The two fragments of “Belsazar” are pretty strong stuff, even if they are written in the Baroque-favored alexandrine meter at which Goethe was so adept. In the first Pherat, a confident of the Persian king Cyrus, describes how the tyrant Belsazar will be killed. The death will be brutal, and blood will flow. Pherat views Belsazar as a tyrant, and the coup will free the city from its hard yoke and allow Cyrus to conquer Babylon (ca. 7th century B.C.). It is the feast day of “Sesach, the Babylonian god of wine,” when “rauchend Blut” will replace the wine that flows in Belsazar’s body and when “our sword will enter the darkness and spear him and transport him to death.”

Der König, und den Hof, mag erst der Wein erfüllen,
Dann wollen wir den Durst in seinem Blute stillen

Swords out for Belsazar

The second fragment is from Belsazar’s point of view and take place after the feast and his tired spirit is being lulled to sleep with sweet dreams. It begins with his feeling of contentment. Feeling himself equal to the gods (den Göttern gleich), he wishes only that “ungetrübtes Glück” continues to be his lot. But, like all these pagan rulers, he has a vision. A cloud approaches, and it is not a good omen. Belsazar foresees the end of his plan to enlarge his kingdom, of marching through the world “mit hohem Siegerschritt.” He seems suddenly to perceive the existence of a more destructive power. It is unclear to me whether Cyrus is meant here or the higher God that is the message of the Book of Daniel.

Im wetter eigehüllt, tritt er mit Macht hervor,
Der Donner bring sein wort in men betäubtes ohr.

Since Goethe worked pretty assiduously on the drama in Leipzig, I couldn’t help thinking that the two fragments also show his reading of Shakespeare during his early student days. In a letter to Cornelia, dated May 11, 1767, he reported that he finished the five-act Belsazar drama, with the fifth act composed in iambic meter, the standard meter of “Der Britte,” meaning Shakespeare. To my ears the content of the two fragments also seems to draw on plays concerning conspiracies to overthrow a tyrannical ruler (e.g., Julius Caesar, Macbeth).