Goethe's diaries again

Lenz, ca. 1776

This post is going to engage in nit-picking and revisit a recent post concerning Friedrich Hildebrand von Einsiedel, part of Carl August's circle of male friends and one of Goethe's closest associates in the early Weimar years. In that post I mentioned a letter of mid-November from Goethe to von Einsiedel (WA IV, 120).

As I interpreted the letter, Goethe was having a hard time getting Einsiedel into doing his part for his role in Die Mitschuldigen. I repeat here what Goethe wrote:

Du mußt in einer verfluchteten Hypochondrie stecken. Ich wollte schwören, dir wärs gut, wenn du dich nur ein bissel angriffst. ... Die Andern spielen brav und ich weis absolut keinen Söller. Und weis, daß du ihn gewiss gut spielen würdest.

Today I was reviewing Goethe's diaries for the last few days of November 1776, which touch on Lenz's departure from Weimar. On November 29, Goethe wrote the following in his diary:

Dumme Briefe von L[enz]. Kalb abgeschickt.

The commentary volume to the diaries has this to say:

"Wohl in Goethes Auftrag versuchte Johann August von Kalb, Lenz von der Notwendigkeit zu überzeugen, Weimar zu verlassen."

As if to verify that von Kalb was the bearer of the bad news, the commentary is as follows:

"Siehe Lenz an Kalb, 29. November 1775 (LB 2, 55): Ich danke Ihnen mein verehrungswürdiger Freund und Gönner für die unangenehme Bemühung die Sie meinethalben übernommen und versichere daß mir eine Ordre wie die auch wenn ich sie verdienet durch die Hand die sie mir überbrachte, versüßt worden wäre."

So far so good. But the above diary entry from November 29 continues as follows:

Einsid. hartes Betragen.

Citing a letter of November 28 (WA IV, 123) from Goethe to Einsiedel, the commentary on this passage connects this mention of Einsiedel to Lenz's departure from Weimar:

"Friedrich Hildebrand von Einsiedels Verhaltensweise erklärte sich wohl aus Carl Augusts und Goethes Entscheidung, Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz aus Weimar auszuweisen."

It may be that Einsiedel was upset about Lenz's departure, but that letter, which I also quoted in my earlier post, may simply refer to Goethe's continuing difficulty with Einsiedel's participation in Die Mitschuldigen. Indeed, Goethe uses the same words in the November 28 letter as in the mid-November letter:

Einsiedel, ich bitte dich, strecke deinen Stumpfsinn an die Rolle! Die Andern machen's brav ...

Note the repetition in the two letters of "Die Andern machen's/spielen brav." Of course, it depends on the interpretation of the word "Stumpfsinn." I read it to mean that Goethe was saying that Einsiedel was not putting his heart into his role in the play. Or was he instead saying that Einsiedel was upset about the treatment of Lenz and should get over it? Any suggestions?

What happened with Lenz in Weimar is one of the unsolved mysteries.

Goethe wisdom

 The Goethe Society of North America has a list serve, and requests frequently appear on it for sources of Goethe's writings, thinking, life, and so on, and, in particular, quotations that are said to have been uttered by our great poet. John Noyes, colleague of mine in the GSNA, posted today a request from a colleague of his for assistance in finding the source of a line attributed to Goethe. I am posting the request, quoted below, in part.

“I’m working on a project on energy at the *** this year, and I’ve been searching in vain for a Goethe citation that Vaclav Smil uses as an epigraph: Energy will do anything that can be done in the world. The full citation in English, which appears thousands of times online, seems to be Energy will do anything that can be done in the world: and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged animal a man without it.  I have been unable to track down a source in German or English. I had a similar problem with a line from Benjamin Franklin & concluded that the Franklin citation must be apocryphal.  My other friend, who wrote his dissertation on German Classicism, says that pithy Goethean sayings (like Franklin’s maxims) are as common as bratwurst in Teutonic circles and one loses track of origins. If you have any idea about how to track down this one, I would be most grateful.”

Interestingly, Google Translate offers a very good translation of the English. In fact, it sounds very much like Goethe to me:

Energie wird alles tun, was auf der Welt getan werden kann: und ohne Talente, ohne Umstände und ohne Möglichkeiten wird ein Zweibeiner ein Mensch ohne sie sein.

I am not sure, however, about the quote in the image at the top of this post, which, as Googled Translated, sounds a little too corny to me: "Jeden Tag sollten wir mindestens ein kleines Lied hören, ein gutes Gedicht lesen, ein exquisites Bild sehen und, wenn möglich, ein paar vernünftige Worte sprechen."

Just for fun, here is the result of Google Translating into German two quotes from Donald Barthelme's Eckermann pastiche that I posted on earlier. I like the second one a lot:

Ich bin heute Abend mit Goethe vom Theater nach Hause gegangen, als wir einen kleinen Jungen in einer pflaumenfarbenen Weste sahen. Jugend, sagte Goethe, ist die seidige Apfelbutter auf dem guten Schwarzbrot der Möglichkeit.

Kunst, so Goethe, sei die 4-prozentige Verzinsung der kommunalen Lebensbindung.

If anyone has an answer to the GSNA request, please let me know.

Goethe's diaries

I have been tweeting from Goethe's diaries for the year 1776. Interesting, that this is the year that the United States had its birth, on July 4, with the Declaration of Independence. Goethe's diary shows no awareness of this event, nor do his letters. He had barely been six months in Weimar on that date. I have the Metzler edition of the diaries for the years 1775 until 1787, along with the commentary volume, which offers information concerning people and places that Goethe reduced to abbreviations. For instance, in my last Tweet is the abbreviation "Eins," which represents Friederich Hildebrand von Einsiedel, one of Carl August's close associates (along with Wedel, who is also mentioned in that Tweet). There was what might be called a "Männerkreis" around the young duke, of which Goethe quickly became an integral member.

Einsiedel seems to have been an aesthete: a "Schöngeist." He played the violincello in the Liebhaberorchester, and took on many roles in the Liebhabertheater. He played the role of Söller in Goethe's play Die Mitschuldigen, which had its premier at the Liebhabertheater in Weimar in January 1777. The play opens with Söller breaking into the room of one of the guests at an inn. He is dressed as a "Domino" (he has told his father-in-law, the owner of the inn, that he was going to attend a masked ball).

According to the entry on Einsiedel in Effi Biedrzynski's Goethes Weimar, Einsiedel had a somewhat labile personality, which is suggested in Goethe's correspondence's with him about his part in the play. In mid-November he wrote to Einsiedel as follows:

Du mußt in einer verfluchteten Hypochondrie stecken. Ich wollte schwören, dir wärs gut, wenn du dich nur ein bissel angriffst. ... Die Andern spielen brav und ich weis absolut keinen Söller. Und weis, daß du ihn gewiss gut spielen würdest.

Toward the end of November, he wrote him again about his concerns:

Einsiedel, ich bitte dich, strecke deinen Stumpfsinn an die Rolle! Die Andern machen's brav ...

In investigating such individuals, one gets some insight into what Goethe's life was like in these early Weimar years, in which he underwent an immense transformation, personally and poetically. I try to imagine how he "managed" such aristocrats, people who could be genial, but also rather hidebound, like the society described by Proust in Swann's Way.

Picture credit: Berlin Programm

Goethe and Charlotte von Stein

Slip-covered edition of Lotte meine Lotte by Die Andere Bbliothek

I have been Tweeting various entries from Goethe’s diaries, beginning with the Weimar era. Goethe started a Weimar diary on March 11, 1776, as follows: “Herzog und H.D. die verwittibte Herzogin die nach Gotha ging biß Erfurt begleit’. Beim Herzog geschlafen.” Since I started posting Tweets on September 5, illustrating them with images of people or subjects mentioned, all the Tweets reflect the day they were written in 1776. Occasionally I throw in a passage from Goethe’s letters, especially those to Charlotte von Stein. Which has led me to reread the letters, in the edition from the Andere Bibliothek (Lotte meine Lotte: Die Briefe von Goethe an Charlotte von Stein), which I reviewed in the Goethe Yearbook (vol. 23, 2016), alongside Der Briefschreiber Goethe by Albrecht Schöne.

The letters, upward of 1,700, are often only notes that were transmitted by a servant during the day or in the evening, accompanying an exchange of food (Feldhühner, Wildpratsbraten, Phasen) or of flowers and fruit. On an almost daily basis they mention concerts, plays, excursions. Goethe passes on gossip, tells her how he slept and of his tooth aches, and is much concerned for her health and sleep as well. According to my edition of his correspondence in the Weimar edition (WA IV,3), she is the recipient of the vast majority of letters he wrote between 1775 and 1778, beginning in early January of 1776, in other words within days of his arrival in Weimar. Johanna Falmer, with whom he had been corresponding before he left Frankfurt, gradually falls out of the picture.

My edition of Lotte meine Lotte is papered with post-its on which I express my astonishment at his importuning of her. By the end of January, he is addressing her per “Du”:

Liebe Frau, leide dass ich dich so liebe habe. Wenn ich iemand lieber haben kann, will ich dir's sagen. Will dich ungeplagt lassen. Adieu Gold, du begreiffst nicht wie ich dich liebe hab.

The contemporary German poet Jans Volker Röhnert, who wrote the afterword to the Andere Bibliothek edition, speculates that the letters represent a “gesteigerter Werther.” Rather than expressing his ardor for a beloved Lotte via William, Goethe now addresses himself directly to a similarly-named, likewise unavailable lady of much higher station. How many ways can one say “I love you”? It can be hard reading: “Ja liebe Lotte ietzt wird es mir erst deutlich wie du meine eigne Hälfte bist und bleibst. Ich bin kein einzelnes kein selbständiges Wesen.”

I hazard that there is another epistolary precedent to these letters, aside from The Sorrows of Young Werther, namely, the Leipzig letters of November 1767 to Ernst Wolfgang Behrisch. Those letters, ecstatic professions of love for Katharina Schönkopf scenically dramatized over several days, were clearly a case of literary role-playing. In the case of Charlotte von Stein, the role playing went on for a long time.

Interestingly, when Goethe was on the road, when he lacked the opportunity for the daily “conversation,” his need for communication is more objectively rendered. whether it concerns climbing the Brocken or exploring the Harz; the second Swiss journey in 1779, with Carl August; the diplomatic mission to Brunswick in 1784, also with Carl August (letters in French, nicely translated); or excursions to mines and in pursuit of his geological interests. They are evidence that Goethe had many registers in which he was able to express himself.

Rereading these letters led me to look at Nicholas Boyle’s Goethe bio anew, in which Boyle offers a cogent discussion of why Goethe stayed in Weimar and of the liaison with CvS. Regarding the former, it had in part to do with Goethe’s “pedagogical” tendency, which I noted in an earlier post in regard to the Conversations with Eckermann. That tendency was also on view in Goethe’s letters to Cornelia from Leipzig, and the duke was of course Goethe’s most important student. Boyle doesn’t mention Rousseau’s Emile, although much has been written of the influence of Rousseau on Goethe’s literary works. At a certain point, however, even after the duke was “educated” sufficiently, Goethe may simply have got used to the place. Boyle quotes from a letter Goethe wrote in which he is reflecting on his situation and which includes the following sentiment: “A man who changes his situation always loses his travel and removal expenses, both morally and economically.” Boyle gives the reference  (HABr i,414), but does not mention the date or the recipient. (I don't have that edition of the letters at home.)

"Sichtung und Klarheit"

The title of this post concerns a volume of journalistic pieces so titled by Jörg Drews that I’ve been making my way through. The pieces originally appeared in the Suddeutsche Zeitung from 1984 to 1999. I was drawn to look at the book because of the subtitle (Kritische Streifzüge durch die Goethe-Ausgaben und die Goethe-Literatur der letzten Fünfzehn Jahre). Drews was a literary critic for the SDZ and later a professor of literature and literary criticism at the university in Bielefeld, and his compass and judgments are an indication of the different nature of German journalism from that in the U.S. Drews' remit was to evaluate the publication of new editions of Goethe’s works as well as scholarly literature. So far, the volume has introduced me to works with which I was not familiar (Isabella Kuhn’s Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften und das sogenannte Böse) and reintroduced me to familiar names, especially in early Goethe scholarship (e.g., Viktor Hehn).

Like all of us involved in Goethe scholarship, Drews sounds a note that is all too familiar. I quote here the entire German passage (please copy and paste to Google translate, if necessary):

"Eine der unbestreitbaren Erfahrungen intensiver Goethe-Lektüre ist, daß dieser Autor immer für eine Überraschung gut ist, daß er viel schwieriger auf einen Nenner zu bringen ist als andere .— auch bedeutende — Autoren, daß man zwar vertrauter werden kann mit seinem Werk, aber eigentlich nicht zu einem konsistenten ‘Bild’ kommen kann: dazu ist das ‘bunte Gemisch der Phänomene’ einfach zu groß, das Werk, Person und Lebensvollzug bieten."

Yes, one does feel overwhelmed. At times, I would like to revert to and remain with my earliest area of Goethe research, namely, the pre-Weimar works. In my dissertation and early essays, I traced his literary coming of age in the Anacreontic and pastoral/idyll idioms. The “young Goethe” is very likable, especially in his enthusiasms, and this trait began to be effaced in the years following his establishment in Weimar. Maybe it had something to do with encountering a young noble, a duke, who shared his enthusiasms, but on whose decisions would rest the future of the duchy, that made Goethe serious about the effect of his writing and behavior on others. (And which may, later, have turned him against his early tendencies among the Romantic generation.) The turn — and it was not immediate — must have been the result not only of considerable soul searching and evaluation of the new circumstances of life at a court but also of the conviction that his early life represented a false path. He appears to have begun to remold himself, at the age of twenty-six, at considerable personal cost, made himself into a person that was not foreseeable while still in Frankfurt. I wonder if the physical distance he kept between himself and his mother after he went to Weimar indicated his awareness that he had become a different person. The "Schattenriss" at the top of the post seems to speak to an indeterminate Goethe.

I have begun to read his diaries, especially of his first years in Weimar, for some insight into this change. Some research on my part is required before I can say anything about my reading, but I am in possession of the J.B. Metzler edition of the “historical-critical” edition of the diaries and the companion volume of Commentary edited by Wolfgang Albrecht and Andreas Döhler. In the meantime, I have started re-tweeting about Goethe, with entries from these early diaries. For those interested, go here for my Goethe Twitter feed. I am following him day by day beginning in 1776.

Eckermann pastiche

It is typical: when I do research on a given Goethe subject, I also come across something else of interest, and often far removed from actual Goethe scholarship. Case in question, a "story" in The New Yorker magazine, back on October 20, 1980, by Donald Barthelme. Taking up one full page of the magazine, the content mirrors the entries in Eckermann's Conversations, with all the pedantry and adulation that Eckermann brings to the job, while lathering it with Barthelme's irreverence. It begins with the date of an actual Eckermann's entry, November 13, 1823. Eckermann had recounted meeting a valet of Goethe's, who related an anecdote about Goethe, lying abed at night, having a premonition of an earthquake in the year 1783. No one at court believed him. "Höre! Goethe schwärmt!" said one of the court ladies. A few weeks later, however, they all learned that an earthquake had occurred in Messina on that date. Here is Barthelme's entry for the same date:

I was walking home from the theater with Goethe this evening when we saw a small boy in a plum-colored waistcoat. Youth, Goethe said, is the silky apple butter on the good brown bread of possibility.

Barthelme, who died in 1989 and did not have the wealth of Goethe "quotes" to be found on the internet today (see above picture), was obviously working avant la lettre in this genre of wisdom attribution to Goethe. Here is another good one from The New Yorker piece:

Art, Goethe said, is the 4 percent interest on the municipal bond of life.

Continentalization

Theoretical Model of Cosmopolitanism

I have just returned to New York City after an absence of two and a half months. In that time, spent on a small island in British Columbia, it was a period of working on my novel, and I had very little Goethe material on hand, aside from Eckermann's Conversations and a book on Goethe's use of the superlative, the subject of a small volume by Mathias Mayer that I have just finished writing a review of. The return home has prompted me to undertake some housecleaning, which means thinning out files. Since the publication in the spring of my essay on Fritz Strich and world literature, it is high time to attack my copious files on that subject. This morning an article by Paul Michael Lützeler fell out of an overstuffed folder, to which was attached my handwritten notes. The title was "Europäischer Kosmopolitismus und Weltlteratur -- Goethe und Euorpa -- Europa and Goethe." It appeared in a volume called Kontinentalisierung. Das Europa der Schriftsteller, published in 2007 by De Gruyter. "Cosmopolitanism" is one of those terms that gets on my nerves, so here goes.

The first of my handwritten notes was a question: Did Edward Said really believe, as he is quoted by Lützeler,  that Goethe's "underlying and perhaps unrealizable rationale [for world literature] was [a] vast synthesis of the world's literary production transcending borders and languages, but not in any way effacing the individuality and historical concreteness of its constituent parts"? (My italics.) Whatever one thinks about the "vast synthesis" part of that statement, it is evident that non-European national languages have little viability in the literary marketplace today. Whether it is true, as John Noyes has written that “the mother tongue preprograms an individual’s thought with an entire cultural history of interpreting the world,” most people in the world today, even when they are literate, do not speak or write in a language that has a well-developed written tradition that reflects the history contained in such a tradition. Thus, despite the establishment of “official” languages in former colonial lands, when non-Europeans enter the public sphere today, they tend to write in a “universal” language, if not English, then French, Spanish, Chinese, or Arabic, all reflecting earlier colonial or imperial domination. That sounds to me like the effacement of "the individuality and historical concreteness" of the constituent parts of which Said was speaking.

Lützeler does not seem aware of this irony in his praise of cosmopolitanism and in anointing Goethe its spiritual father. Writers of the various countries of Europe, after all, enjoy large "native" publics and, no matter the extent of their "Europeanness" or their cosmopolitanism, continue to write in their own languages. For them, there has been no effacement of individuality, and indeed, one only has to consider the major writers of the Enlightenment -- proponents of universal values -- all of whom wrote in their mother tongue. "Europe" only began in the early 19th century, and it arose through through trade and commerce, which also included literary and cultural products.

Science is a different matter, While David Damrosch contends that a work of world literature “has an exceptional ability to transcend the boundaries of the culture that produces it," in truth it is that other European idiom, the language of science, that has transcended the boundaries of the culture that produced it. This idiom, to use Friedrich Schlegel’s formulation, is universal and progressive. All peoples of the earth today, whatever their national origin, can learn to speak it or apply its precepts without knowledge of the history of science. (This claim is not to deny the historical contributions of non-Europeans to this product, but it was in Europe, precisely because of the sharing of discoveries among the various European nations, in their own vernaculars, that the scientific and industrial revolutions took off.) Interestingly, while the universality of science can be seen in the status of English today as its quasi-universal language, French and German, which in the nineteenth century were competitive with English in the production of scientific texts, are today becoming marginal (the same goes more so for Hungarian, Danish, Polish, and so on). The earlier contributions of French and German scientists, written in their respective languages, are of interest primarily to historians of science.

Damrosch's claim, that certain literary works are so “culture-bound that they can only be meaningful to a home-grown audience or to specialists in the area," points up the problem with "the European canon." For those who don't grow up reading works of European literature, the cultural history contained in those works is to a great extent inaccessible. Thus, the postcolonial criticism of Eurocentrism and of the role of the humanities in perpetuating it. Is cosmopolitanism, which Lützeler privileges, simply a happy term for wiping out real difference? For making us all alike? And European "continentalization" the first step in that process?

Image credit: ResearchGate