The Youth of Goethe | Page 4

a sufficient scale
to suggest the conception of a great society developing its life under
modern conditions. For Goethe, who was to pass most of his days in a
town of some 7,000 inhabitants, and to whom no form of human
activity was indifferent, it was a fortunate destiny that he did not, like
Herder, pass his most receptive years in a petty village remote from the

movements of the great world.[4] In these years he was able to
accumulate a store of observations and experiences which laid a solid
foundation for all his future thinking.
[Footnote 2: In 1792, on the occasion of his being offered the honour of
Rathsherr (town-councillor) in Frankfort, he wrote to his mother that
"it was an honour, not only in the eyes of Europe, but of the whole
world, to have been a citizen of Frankfort." (Goethe to his mother,
December 24th, 1792). So, in 1824, he told Bettina von Arnim that, had
he had the choice of his birthplace, he would have chosen Frankfort. As
we shall see, Goethe did not always speak so favourably of Frankfort.]
[Footnote 3:
Die Abgeschiednen betracht' ich gern, Stünd' ihr Verdienst auch noch
so fern; Doch mit den edlen lebendigen Neuen Mag ich wetteifernd
mich lieber freuen.]
[Footnote 4: In his later years Goethe preferred life in a small town.
"Zwar ist es meiner Natur gemäss, an einem kleinen Orte zu leben."
(Goethe to Zelter, December 16th, 1804.)]
If Goethe was fortunate in the place of his birth, was he equally
fortunate in its date (1749)? He has himself given the most explicit of
answers to the question. In a remarkable paper, written at the age of
forty-six, he has described the conditions under which he and his
contemporaries produced their works in the different departments of
literature. The paper had been called forth by a violent and coarse
attack, which he described as literarischer Sansculottismus, on the
writers of the period, and with a testiness unusual with him he took up
their defence. Under what conditions, he asks, do classical writers
appear? Only, he answers, when they are members of a great nation and
when great events are moving that nation at a period in its history when
a high state of culture has been reached by the body of its people. Only
then can the writer be adequately inspired and find to his hand the
materials requisite to the production of works of permanent value. But,
at the epoch when he and his contemporaries entered on their career,
none of these conditions existed. There was no German nation, there

was no standard of taste, no educated public opinion, no recognised
models for imitation; and in these circumstances Goethe finds the
explanation of the shortcomings of the generation of writers to which
he belonged.
On the truth of these conclusions Goethe's adventures as a literary artist
are the all-sufficient commentary. From first to last he was in search of
adequate literary forms and of worthy subjects; and, as he himself
admits, he not unfrequently went astray in the quest. On his own word,
therefore, we may take it that under other conditions he might have
produced more perfect works than he has actually given us. Yet the
world has had its compensations from those hampering conditions
under which his creative powers were exercised. In the very attempt to
grope his way to the most expressive forms of artistic presentation all
the resources of his mind found their fullest play. It is in the variety of
his literary product, unparalleled in the case of any other poet, that lies
its inexhaustible interest; between Götz von Berlichingen and the
Second Part of Faust what a range of themes and forms does he present
for his readers' appreciation! And to the anarchy of taste and judgment
that prevailed when Goethe began his literary career we in great
measure owe another product of his manifold activities. He has been
denied a place in the very first rank of poets, but by the best judges he
is regarded as the greatest master of literary and artistic criticism. But,
had he found fixed and acknowledged standards in German national
literature and art, there would have been less occasion for his searching
scrutiny of the principles which determine all art and literature. As it
was, he was led from the first to direct his thoughts to the consideration
of these principles; and the result is a body of reflections, marking
every stage of his own development, on life, literature, and art, which,
in the opinion of critics like Edmond Scherer and Matthew Arnold,
gave him his highest claim to the consideration of posterity.
As human lot goes, Goethe was fortunate in his home and his home
relations, though in the case of both there