Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von

GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG von. - Poet, b. in Frankfurt am Main on 28 Aug. 1749, d. in Weimar on 22 March 1832. He owed his first education to the lively and loving intelligence of his mother (Frau Rath), who softened the severity of his father, a doctor of law and imperial councillor. He studied in Leipzig and then in Strasbourg, where he completed his studies in jurisprudence and where he met Herder, who revealed to his inquiring spirit and his thirst for knowledge a vaster world, in which, alongside the problems of nature and the enthusiasm for art, the problems of history found a place. In the warmth of Herder's revelatory words, for whom he had an unconditional admiration, the designs of his first true theatrical work, Goetz von Berlichingen, germinated, just as from the circumstances of life he had occasion to conceive Werther, whose success immediately crossed the borders of Germany. A worthy crowning of his youthful activity are other dramatic works and a group of lyrics, now graceful, now stirred by strong passion, now impetuous. In 1775 G. moved to Weimar, to the court of Prince Charles Augustus, where he occupied himself with the cares of the small State, was showered with honours and lived for many years in affectionate intimacy with Herder, Schiller and Wieland, until his death. His stay in Weimar was interrupted only in 1786, when the poet went to Italy, where, in two visits, he spent almost two years and where he poured himself out wholeheartedly into our cities, sated his eyes with our natural and artistic beauties and where his genius as a poet matured.

The fruit of this stay were, several years later, the Italienische Reise and Die römischen Elegien and, to a great extent, the completeness and the new form of his dramatic masterpieces, such as Tasso and Iphigenie auf Tauris, wholly pervaded by classical spirits, similarly to the gentle idyll, in epic lines, Hermann und Dorothea, one of the most brilliant gems in his poet's crown. Meanwhile, to the long series of lyrics, of exquisite workmanship, he added two novels, Wilhelm Meister, in two parts, rich in stupendous pages and unforgettable scenes, and Die Wahlverwandtschaften, and the dramatic poem Faust, which is considered not only his masterpiece, but one of the most elevated works that honour human thought.

The life and poetry of G. are characterized by an unceasing yearning toward the highest, which in itself contradicts the common and erroneous opinion of an Olympian G., imperturbable above all the storms of life. To the last years, on the contrary, he preserved the Faustian longing to ascend, in an uninterrupted struggle of surpassing and perfecting himself. Nevertheless, between the titanism of the young G. and the Faustism of the mature man there is a difference, and it is the one that runs between a « Streben » made of impulses and reactions and an activism founded upon a new conception of life; two positions that are expressed in the damnation of Prometheus and in the salvation of Faust. Similarly, while the young G. rushes to catastrophe in the drama of Margaret, the man, having become wise, thinks even of a transcendental catharsis; just as the trosa inventiveness of Prometheus, hurled against Jupiter, will be followed by the humble act of contrition of the sage who recognizes the impossibility for man to measure himself against the gods.

But what is, for G., the limit of human activity? To limit this activity a priori, which gives the possession of things, is impossible. Creative activity stretches out and dilates to infinity, and G. thus translates this absence of the limit: « if I labour tirelessly to the end, nature is obliged to assign me another form of existence, where that activity no longer suffices for my spirit ». The inspiring idea of the Faust of the Sturm und Drang therefore continues to unfold and to dominate also in the second Faust, and from it germinates, coherently, the faith in the transmigration of souls: « our monad - the old man said to Eckermann - must pass from activity to activity in order to preserve itself and, assuming another nature, it will not lack an occupation in the eternal cycles of time ». Thus G., with his unceasing activity, places himself within the very flow of life. But whence does he draw this faith in the perpetuity of human existence, which is also his faith in the eternal? Brilliant intuitions had opened up to him the mystery of the profound laws of nature. Strong in such conquests, he affirms unlimited possibilities of conquest also for the spirit. He believes that, just as in nature the higher monad ascends, availing itself of the lower, so man avails himself, in order to rise, of the natural forces known to him; and, just as nature, labouring tirelessly, is obliged at last to assign itself another form of life, the same thing happens for the spirit in its unlimited possibility of conquest, inasmuch as the evolution of the life of nature and that of the spirit are governed by the same laws.

But acting is for G., above all, the source of knowing and the foundation of living in the manner that is adequate and proportionate to each. We cannot know ourselves except when and insofar as we are active: here is another fundamental thought that will become for him a norm of life. And when he affirms that every action, directed toward knowledge, is in itself moral, or that between the man who carries out such activity and the collectivity to which he belongs there exists nor can exist any contrast, or again that « the sum of individual activities, provided it is directed to this same end, leads to a universal harmony », it is clear that he intends to express thoughts dense with ideal content, which presuppose in men, always, a good nature and also the possibility, in each, of a progressive perfecting, provided only that he follow the impulse and the voice of his own nature. And such a conviction is so deeply rooted in his thought that, with a greater detachment from reality, it suggests to him to transfer his ideal into the metaphysical realm, in order to make of it an immutable truth, inherent in the very life of the cosmos. "No essence," he affirms, "can dissolve into nothingness. No epoch, no power is capable of breaking the form that evolves." It is the destiny of Faust, whose yearning for a knowing passion transforms his life into struggle and whose activity leads to salvation. G. thus completes the vision of the Romantics, also giving a moral seal to their inexhaustible longing to know and to go further. But since, precisely, Goethean thought intends to enclose a moral value as well, it is not without dismay that one hears the sinister word of Mephistopheles, whispered into Faust's ear, tempted to destroy, without pity, the peaceful dwelling and even the happy life of two innocent old people: Philemon and Baucis. And the dismay that the word of the devil might be accepted as a norm of individual or associated life. Certainly, not even when he came into direct contact with the Latin world, happy to feel "his eyes and mind free of the last Nordic mists," did G. have entirely clear awareness that man's creative activity can never equal that of nature, creature of God, and of God himself. Without accepting this dualistic conception, he continued to feel the divinity as the supreme term of human becoming and therefore to pursue the mirage of transforming becoming into being, in which mirage is to be seen the deepest tragedy of German thought. On the other hand, his own intellectual evolution had guided him to the knowledge of hidden mysteries of life, and with this knowledge his spirit was at last able to be satisfied, contributing to create that inner equilibrium and that harmony which are precisely the most evident gifts of his personality: an equilibrium and a harmony that he ardently desired for all men. A desire for human brotherhood also inspired in him the apostolate aimed at an intimate and broad collaboration in the field of science and culture; and the same dream of a Weltliteratur has its deepest roots in this sentiment of human solidarity that makes peoples brothers, breaking all the barriers that divide them and too often make them enemies.

Rodolfo Bottacchiari