Goethe travels

The travels in the title of this post do not refer to Goethe's own travels, a subject I will write about at some point. It concerns the travel of "Goethe," the person, the concept. I have posted on various occasions concerning the many places outside of literature or German letters that Goethe pops up (including in Korea), but today I would like to consider his presence in Japan. Goethe, it seems represents an icon of style, to judge by the life style magazine, launched in 2006, entitled GOETHE.

Make that ゲーテ

As I glean from the "About Us" function on the webpage of the magazine (with helpful assistance from Google Translate), the market niche is "the positive and motivated business person." Why Goethe? Here again, only slightly edited, I let the magazine speak for itself:

"Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -- The world writer who everyone knows.
Actually it has a variety of faces such as politicians, natural scientists, theater director.
In addition, travelers and those who love women (broken hearted at the age of seventy-eight years old at the age of 73 was also broken heart!).
Ideal for such a way of life like Goethe, a magazine to enrich life."

Lionel Messi

Indeed, who else better exemplifies such ideals as Goethe? And the aim of a person influenced by Goethe:

"Desire to become acquainted with business persons like themselves.
It is a Salon where "knowledge," "learning" and "experience" will help one's ambition for success.
At the Goethe "Salon," acquire the necessary knowledge, interact with many people, a place full of intellectual curiosity and vibrancy."

The Langen Foundation

The issues of the magazines include portraits of very successful men and women, including Lionel Messi, who is the richest soccer player in the world, with a net worth of $400 million. But also the architect Anda Tadao, whose Wikipedia entry is extremely impressive. Above is an image of one of Ando's commissions, the Oriental Art Museum at the Langen Foundation in North Rhein-Westfalia.

Delacroix's "Faust" lithographs

Auerbachs Keller

Today I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with friend Philippe from Reutlingen. He comes every year at Thanksgiving, and we spend at least one day at the Met. I spend a lot of time at the Met, as I continue to do editorial work there, but when I accompany a friennd I really pause and look at the works of art. In this season the Met has outdone itself. But that is nothing new. Besides the Masterpieces of Dutch Art in the Robert Lehman wing, there is a spectacular show of Armenian art, focusing on the Christian influence, with manuscripts from as early as the eleventh century. I will post some pictures later. Also in the Lehman wing is a small exhibit of Tintoretto portraits.

Faust and Mephisto in the Harz Mountains.

The Delacroix exhibition is one of the blockbusters for which the Met is famous and handles so well, even if lots of paintings by Delacroix in European collections did not travel, as they are too fragile. Still, an interesting selection. What most struck me is that Delacroix, despite being consider a Romantic artist, is so thematic in his choice of subjects. Most of the themes are historical or biblical/mythological. Although he came of age after the fall of Napoleon, there is no painting commemorating that period, not even the French Revolution. I am not a student of his oeuvre, however, and it could be that the Louvre, which is a co-producer of this exhibition, has some "contemporary" works.

Ich bitt' Euch, nehmt Euch meiner an!

An entire room was devoted to the Faust lithographs by Delacroix. I post photos of a three here, one only in detail: a scene featuring Mephisto as he and Faust travel in the Harz Mountains. I particularly like the scene of  Mephisto giving the student ("was man schwarz auf weiß besitzt/ kann man getrost nach Hause nehmen") some bad advice. The Goethezeitportal has a good piece on the series, with the Delacroix series seen in postcard format. (As always, click on images to enlarge.)

Gingko in the snow

This is becoming an annual thing, if a post last year on the subject constitutes the beginning of a series. Really cold weather causes leaves to fall practically overnight. The first snow fell on Manhattan two days ago. Entering Central Park, I captured the fate of the gingko again. Click to enlarge.

Dark falls so early now. I walked home shortly after 5 p.m. Manhattan looks at its best at night, with all the electric illumination, but the resulting photo from my little Nikon camera offers an eerie prospect.

The representational Goethe

Bouguereau, The Shepherdess (1889)

I have been neglectful about posting in recent months, as most of my waking thoughts are given over to the novel I am writing. For those who do not know Goethe Girl, it may be of interest to learn that, before Goethe came into her life, she published two novels. That occurred ages ago, after which, for reasons not to be gone into here, she went to graduate school and wrote her dissertation on Goethe. The dissertation concerned the pre-Weimar Goethe, before Goethe betook himself to Weimar and never looked back. My focus was on the poetic genre known as the idyll -- alternately, pastoral -- which appears throughout Goethe's oeuvre, from the Rococo lyrics of the Leipzig student years to the Philomen and Baucis episode in the last scenes of Faust. Like other traditional genres, the idyll is set in a communal world and displays reverence for the order of that world as well as for the regular movements of the heavens, the changing seasons, the regularity of festivals and harvests. Any ripples that disturb the regularity of the pastoral world -- a lost ribbon, a lost sheep -- are part of a larger wave of time in which everyone and everything are merged in a continuous human cycle.

Hermann Ramberg, Hermann and Dorothea

Such a conception of life was being undermined already by Goethe's time, a breakdown that also undermined traditional poetic genres. Who writes an epic in the style of Milton anymore? Goethe had a great fondness for traditional genres, however, and thus he often drew on the idyll, but in doing so the idyll is always portrayed as endangered. One example is Hermann und Dorothea. in which the French Revolution casts its shadow over the loving interlude of wooing a wife And, of course, Philomen and Baucis must be destroyed in order to make way for progress, the most modern of modern conceptions.

While this theme of the destruction of the idyll runs through Goethe's oeuvre, the move to Weimar brought about a departure in his poetic production. Goethe gradually left behind the "Genius" mentality that characterizes the production of the pre-Weimar works. Indeed, I have often thought about what Goethe might have been like had he not secluded himself for another fifty-plus years in the backwater of Weimar. Evidently, Goethe thought he had a lot to learn there, but what he produced was eigenartig: exclusive to himself. Goethe was of course familiar with the works of contemporaries, but one only has to consider his novels after The Sorrows of Young Werther to understand that he was not working the vein that has played such an important role in the conceptualization of the modern novel. I am thinking in particular of the British tradition.

I was again looking through Hermann Hesse's essay "Dank an Goethe" (1932), in which Hesse also refers to the split, if one can call it that, between the pre-Weimar poetry and what came thereafter. Hesse writes that he came to know Goethe as a boy, when it was easy to succumb to the power of the early lyrics and to Werther. That Goethe was "der Sänger, der ewig junge und naive," who brought "samt dem Duft von Wald, Wiese und Kornfeld, und in seiner Sprache, von der Frau Rat her, die ganze Tiefe und die ganze Spielerei der Volksweisheit, die Klänge von Natur und Handwerk, und dazu einen hohen Grad von Musik" (the scent of the forest, of meadow and cornfield, and, in a language inherited from his mother, the entire playfulness of folk wisdom, the sounds of nature and of craftsmanship and, in addition, a high degree of musicality).

Goethe and Carl August on Swiss journey, 1779

Yet in time Hesse also began to encounter a different Goethe: the great writer, the humanist, the ideologue and educator, the critic and the literary man, the friend of Schiller, the collector of art, the journal founder, the author of countless essays, the correspondent. This is not the fresh, youthful poet we know from his Sesenheim lyrics. Indeed, his appearance (attested in contemporary portraits, but even more so in contemporary accounts) is bourgeois, somewhat stuffy, official, miles distant from the wildness of Werther. Hesse doesn't say so, but this was Goethe "becoming Goethe," a transformation that took place only after he went to Weimar. This Goethe was what has been called "suprapersonal" ("überpersönlich). He became a representational person, somewhat like in Habermas's use of that term.  Though this be madness, according to Hesse, yet there was method in it: "die Ermöglichung und Begründung eines vom Geist regierten Lebens, für ihn selbst nicht nur, sondern für seine Nation und Zeit" (the facilitation and justification of a life dominated by Spirit, not simply for himself, but for his nation and his era).

Image credit: Goethezeitportal; Die Weltwoche (AKG Images, Keystone)

Goethe and Music

Schubert's autograph of a simplified accompaniment to his "Erlkönig"

One of my favorite German radio programs is HR2's "Doppelkopf." A recent program featured the well-known Goetheaner Dieter Borchmeyer. Doppelkopf's mandate, according to the website, is "Interessante Zeitgenossen –– Menschen, die etwas zu sagen haben, unterhalten sich 50 Minuten lang mit einem Gastgeber über ihre Arbeit und ihr Leben." Each program also includes musical selections chosen by the guest. The Borchmeyer program began with the sounds of Schubert's setting of "Erlkönig," featuring the "Getrammel" that Goethe noted when the piece was performed for him by Maria Szymanowska in the early 1820s. As was noted, the 18-year-old Schubert had sent the piece to Goethe in 1815. It is usually reported that Goethe sent the package back unopened, but Borchmeyer contends that this should not be interpreted as rejection of the work by Goethe so much as by the fact that Goethe was simply overburdened by the large number of such requests that daily arrived in his mailbox.

Goethe heard Wilhelmina Schröder sing "Gretchen am Spinnrad," but Borchmeyer contends that Goethe was a "musical lay person" who could scarcely have got the point of a composition simply by reading the notes. And in any case he adhered to a "Liedaesthetik" that was dominant until at least the 1860s, according to which "es wurde ganz klar gesagt, daß das Lied ein Strophenform hat, die besagt, daß die Form musikalisch abgebildet werden muss." Goethe was an opponent of naturalistic imitation in music and held that the composer should develop a “Symbolik für das Ohr."

Mendelssohn serenades Goethe

Any impression that Weimar was a backwater and that Goethe lacked understanding of developments in the world of music beyond its confines was dismantled by Borchmeyer, who noted, among other things, the different musicians who arrived at Goethe's door. These included Paginini, the young Mendelssohn (as portrayed, opposite, by Moritz Oppenheim) and the young Clara Wieck, and Spontini. Goethe's contribution to productions of opera was also noted. Borchmeyer called Goethe "ein Pioneer in der Bühnenwirkung von Mozart." As for the story about Beethoven and Goethe, Borchmeyer calls Bettina “eine geniale Lügnerin” who invented a meeting that did not take place. If Beethoven was not 100 percent to Goethe's taste as a person, he recognized his artistic greatness: “Energischer, zusammengefasster, innerlicher habe er keinen Menschen erlebt.”

There was of course a discussion of the rendering of Goethe's poems and other writings, especially from Faust II, but I was particularly intrigued by what Borchmeyer said of Goethe's contribution to "Entstehung der Liebe" in literary form in the 18th century, especially on the example of Gretchen at the spinning wheel. In this connection, Borchmeyer mentioned Goethe's self-censorship concerning the wording in Faust I of the famous line: "Mein Busen drangt sich nach ihm hin." In the Urfaust, it reads, “Mein Schoss, Gott! drängt sich nach ihm hin.” Unfortunately, Schubert could not do anything about this, as he only knew Faust I, and the  “körperliche Erweckung der Leidenschaft des jungen Mädchens, das immer steigert” is weakened.

There is an excellent entry in the Goethe-Handbuch, by Günter Hartung, on Goethe and music, which covers in more detail the symbiosis between Goethe's poetry and its musicality, but Hartung dismisses the influence of Catholic church music on Goethe. Borchmeyer, however, finds that the Italian Journey is just as much a discovery of music as it was of art. He mentions in particular the effect of a piece of Renaissance music, Allegri's Miserere, a setting of Psalm 51, that Goethe heard during Holy Week in the Sistine Chapel. Whatever Goethe may have thought about Catholicism, its liturgical music fascinated him.

I recommend going to the podcast itself for other topics covered in the discussion, including Goethe's "Tonlehre," and also reading Hartung's more detailed description. This was a project that arose, according to Hartung, in connection with increasing scientific interests on Goethe's part by the beginning of the 19th century.

Goethe's aura

I return here to Goethe and Bettina, the subject of a 1924 essay by Hermann Hesse that I have come across in my research for my book review. Hesse begins the essay by alluding to the earlier legends surrounding  Goethe's relationship with Bettina, which have ceased with the appearance a few years earlier of the edition of the original correspondence underlying Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kind.

In a previous post, I discussed Milan Kundera’s account of the relationship between Goethe and Bettina. Hesse likewise notes the practically one-sided nature of the correspondence, but he is more sympathetic to Bettina. He contrasts the numerous, long, and loving letters she wrote, which received only short, terse, and scarcely cordial replies from Goethe, often no reply at all. There is in Bettina’s letters much that is beautiful, heartfelt, effusive, while in Goethe’s there is hardly anything worth reading. Not only did Goethe not reciprocate the touching, abiding, soulful love that Bettina felt for him until her death, but he also seems not to have completely recognized or understood it. Indeed her long letters, full of verbose enthusiasm, annoyed him, with his occasional responses lending a chilly note. Had she not come recommended by Goethe’s aged mother, he probably would have dismissed her at first encounter. Goethe’s error was that he could not say no, but also not yes, with the result that the “relationship” dragged on for years as a brittle affair. If there is any blame to be ascribed, it is Goethe’s.

And yet, Hesse writes, the edition is important for documenting two lives over two decades. We see Bettina transformed from a cheeky young woman to a wife and mother. As for Goethe, we witness his aging, his dismantlement, his increasing stiffening and isolation (Altwerden, Abbauen, zunehmende Versteifung und Vereinsamung), indeed his total dying out (Absterben), which is itself a poignant and sublime spectacle. For Hesse, the “aged Goethe” is illuminated here. Bettina's letters embrace him in a cloud of adoration and love, urge him to forget how old he is, and dare him to be infected with affectionate youthfulness. Initially such wooing is met with a few friendly words, even a smile or two, but soon there arrives the slow, inexorable distancing, so that one is not surprised, after the contretemps with Christiane, that Goethe had not a word to say about Christiane’s lack of self-control and simply cut off Bettina and her husband.

After Christiane’s death, Bettina resumed her letters to Goethe, with a new, affecting tone, which the “young Goethe” would not have withstood, but the present Goethe is unresponsive. No more letters from his side, though he did receive her in Weimar.

This new series of one-sided series of professions of love, of wooing, of “seelische” tributes is, however, eloquent negative testimony to a process in Goethe that might be ascribed to aging, but that really represents weariness (Müdewerden). While Bettina’s youthful voice continues to sing extravagantly, the other voice is absent. Goethe as such no longer exists. He has become a secretive (geheimnnisvoll) old man in the process of depersonalizing himself and disappearing completely into anonymity. This is not the effect of decrepitude, as is clear from his continuing studies and other attainments in these final decades. But he is no longer a person (er ist kein Person mehr); he is not one to whom one can direct songs of love or worship. One has the feeling that the voice of the world no longer reach his ears.

Bettina's last encounter with Goethe was in Weimar, in 1824. The great one, as Hesse writes, is a physically small and peevish old man who, in the course of the evening, keeps repairing to an adjacent room from which one can hear the sounds of him pouring himself a glass of wine. But it is not Goethe who speaks on this occasion, not the lips of an old man wet with wine; he is now a Nameless one, a no longer Personal one (der Namenlose, nicht mehr Persönliche, in den er sich verwandelt hat).

What seems to interest Hesse is the fatal, uncanny, indeed unearthly effect of an outsized Genius like Goethe. The letters reveal the tendency of the aged Goethe to die to the imprisonment of an almost totally over-cultivated personality (aus der Haft einer nahezu überkultivierten Persönlichkeit zu sterben) and to grow into a super personal and anonymous being (ins Überpersönliche, ins Anonyme hinüber zu wachsen) And while we sense that Goethe is no longer a person, not the lover or recipient of her letters and of her adoration, we see that she is a creation, an emanation of him. Consider, for instance, the beginning of the correspondence, in which she appears as a small, spirited boat striving to reach a far mountain: it is the boat that is active, the mountain is passive. But if we recognize that the mountain is magnetic, then the relationship is reversed. It is Goethe who generates the atmosphere in which everyone else participates. This quality of sucking up everyone else (Aufgesogensein) is clear if we consider those person less active (than Bettina) and less important who cluster around Goethe: Riemer, Eckermann, Meyer, even Zelter. Why do they live on? Why are their letters published, why do we read them? Why, after a century, does this “Gespensterlicht” still flicker around their marginal existences? Because, from each of them, a small bit of Goethe’s radiance emanates.

I render the last part of the essay in Hesse’s lovely prose. After considering that everything that Bettina wrote may have been a fib, a lie, Hesse writes:

Ist es nicht ganz einerlei, was Bettina sagt, ist denn nicht sie selbst, ihre ganze Beziehung zu Goethe, ihr Weinen und Knien in einem Zimmer neben jener Weinflasche, ist dies alles zusammen denn eine Eigenwelt, mit eigenen Gesetzen, mit freiem Willen zu Lüge oder Wahrheit, ist es nicht vielmehr ein Luftkreis um Goethe, ein Faden seines Geistesnetzes, eine Ausstrahlung seines Zentrums?

Picture credits: Getty Images

Artists monumentalized

The neglect of Goethe on this blog this summer is due to my summer reading of Hermann Hesse in connection with a review I am writing of the English translation of a German biography of Hesse. Goethe comes across over and over in Hesse's writings, and hundreds of times in the biography. I estimate that the figures most frequently referred to by Hesse and that serve as touchstones for him are Goethe, Novalis, Nietzsche, and Mozart. This past day I have been reading "Klingsor's Last Summer," which Hesse wrote in 1919, when he had moved to Ticino. Hesse was apparently subject to frequent mood swings, and this story captures the volatility of the character of the artist Klingsor. In one scene, he and his friend, a fellow artist named Louis the Cruel (Louis der Grausame), have gone on an outing that leads them to the garden of an inn where they enjoy fish, rice with mushrooms, and peaches with maraschino cherries. (Hesse is big on the details of food and drink.) Naturally, lots of wine is drunk. The subject, as is often the case with Hesse, is civilizational decline. Goethe and Schiller come up in the discussion. (I quote here the German, as the English translation of the new biography has not yet appeared.)

Es fällt mir ein, daß jetzt da die zwei Maler sitzen, die unser gutes Vaterland hat, und dann habe ich ein scheußliches Gefühl in den Knieen, wie wenn wir beide aus Bronze wären und Hand und Hand auf einem Denkmal stehen müßten, weißt du, so wie der Goethe und der Schiller. Die können schließlich auch nichts dafäur, daß sie ewig dastehen und einander an der Bronzehand halten müssen, und daß sie uns allmählich so fatal und verhaßt geworden sind ...

He goes on to curse all the professors who periodize and transform great artists and writers into monuments.

The Goethe and Schiller monument in the above photo is in Syracuse, New York. It was produced in 1911, based on the original by Ernst Rietschel.