of Goethe’s work was written in an impersonal and objective spirit, and sprang from what might be called a conscious artistic impulse; by far the larger—and the better—part is the immediate reflex of his feelings and experiences.
It is as a lyric poet that Goethe’s supremacy is least likely to be challenged; he has given his nation, whose highest literary expression has in all ages been essentially lyric, its greatest songs. No other German poet has succeeded in attuning feeling, sentiment and thought so perfectly to the music of words as he; none has expressed so fully that spirituality in which the quintessence of German lyrism lies. Goethe’s dramas, on the other hand, have not, in the eyes of his nation, succeeded in holding their own beside Schiller’s; but the reason is rather because Goethe, from what might be called a wilful obstinacy, refused to be bound by the conventions of the theatre, than because he was deficient in the cunning of the dramatist. For, as an interpreter of human character in the drama, Goethe is without a rival among modern poets, and there is not one of his plays that does not contain a few scenes or characters which bear indisputable testimony to his mastery. Faust is Germany’s most national drama, and it remains perhaps for the theatre of the future to prove itself capable of popularizing psychological masterpieces like Tasso and Iphigenie. It is as a novelist that Goethe has suffered most by the lapse of time. The Sorrows of Werther no longer moves us to tears, and even Wilhelm Meister and Die Wahlverwandtschaften require more understanding for the conditions under which they were written than do Faust or Egmont. Goethe could fill his prose with rich wisdom, but he was only the perfect artist in verse.
Little attention is nowadays paid to Goethe’s work in other fields, work which he himself in some cases prized more highly than his poetry. It is only as an illustration of his many-sidedness and his manifold activity that we now turn to his work as a statesman, as a theatre-director, as a practical political economist. His art-criticism is symptomatic of a phase of European taste which tried in vain to check the growing individualism of Romanticism. His scientific studies and discoveries awaken only an historical interest. We marvel at the obstinacy with which he, with inadequate mathematical knowledge, opposed the Newtonian theory of light and colour; and at his championship of “Neptunism,” the theory of aqueous origin, as opposed to “Vulcanism,” that of igneous origin of the earth’s crust. Of far-reaching importance was, on the other hand, his foreshadowing of the Darwinian theory in his works on the metamorphosis of plants and on animal morphology. Indeed, the deduction to be drawn from Goethe’s contributions to botany and anatomy is that he, as no other of his contemporaries, possessed that type of scientific mind which, in the 19th century, has made for progress; he was Darwin’s predecessor by virtue of his enunciation of what has now become one of the commonplaces of natural science—organic evolution. Modern, too, was the outlook of the aging poet on the changing social conditions of the age, wonderfully sympathetic his attitude towards modern industry, which steam was just beginning to establish on a new basis, and towards modern democracy. The Europe of his later years was very different from the idyllic and enlightened autocracy of the 18th century, in which he had spent his best years and to which he had devoted his energies; yet Goethe was at home in it.
From the philosophic movement, in which Schiller and the Romanticists were so deeply involved, Goethe stood apart. Comparatively early in life he had found in Spinoza the philosopher who responded to his needs; Spinoza taught him to see in nature the “living garment of God,” and more he did not seek or need to know. As a convinced realist he took his standpoint on nature and experience, and could afford to look on objectively at the controversies of the metaphysicians. Kant he by no means ignored, and under Schiller’s guidance he learned much from him; but of the younger thinkers, only Schelling, whose mystic nature-philosophy was a development of Spinoza’s ideas, touched a sympathetic chord in his nature. As a moralist and a guide to the conduct of life—an aspect of Goethe’s work which Carlyle, viewing him through the coloured glasses of Fichtean idealism, emphasized and interpreted not always justly—Goethe was a powerful force on German life in years of political and intellectual depression. It is difficult even still to get beyond the maxims of practical wisdom he scattered so liberally through his writings, the lessons to be learned from Meister and Faust, or even that calm, optimistic fatalism which never deserted Goethe, and was so completely justified by the tenor of his life. If the philosophy of Spinoza provided the poet with a religion which made individual creeds and dogmas unnecessary and impossible, so Leibnitz’s doctrine of predestinism supplied the foundations for his faith in the divine mission of human life.
This many-sided activity is a tribute to the greatness of Goethe’s mind and personality; we may regard him merely as the embodiment of his particular age, or as a poet “for all time”; but with one opinion all who have felt the power of Goethe’s genius are in agreement—the opinion which was condensed in Napoleon’s often cited words, uttered after the meeting at Erfurt: Voilà un homme! Of all modern men, Goethe is the most universal type of genius. It is the full, rich humanity of his life and personality—not the art behind which the artist disappears, or the definite pronouncements of the thinker or the teacher—that constitutes his claim to a place in the front rank of men of letters. His life was his greatest work.
Bibliography.—(a) Collected Works, Diaries, Correspondence, Conversations. The following authorized editions of Goethe’s writings appeared in the poet’s lifetime: Schriften (8 vols., Leipzig, 1787–1790); Neue Schriften (7 vols., Berlin, 1792–1800); Werke (13 vols., Stuttgart, 1806–1810); Werke (20 vols., Stuttgart, 1815–1819); to which six volumes were added in 1820–1822; Werke (Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand) (40 vols., Stuttgart, 1827–1830). Goethe’s Nachgelassene Werke appeared as a continuation of this edition in 15 volumes (Stuttgart, 1832–1834), to which five volumes were added in 1842. These were followed by several editions of Goethe’s Sämtliche Werke, mostly in forty volumes, published by Cotta of Stuttgart. The first critical edition with notes was published by Hempel, Berlin, in thirty-six volumes, 1868–1879; that in Kürschner’s Deutsche Nationalliteratur, vols. 82-117 (1882–1897) is also important. In 1887 the monumental Weimar edition, which is now approaching completion, began to appear; it is divided into four sections: I. Werke (c. 56 vols.); II. Naturwissenschaftliche Werke (12 vols.); III. Tagebücher (13 vols.); IV. Briefe (c. 45 vols.). Of other recent editions the most noteworthy are: Sämtliche Werke (Jubiläums-Ausgabe), edited by E. von der Hellen (40 vols., Stuttgart, 1902 ff.); Werke, edited by K. Heinemann (30 vols., Leipzig, 1900 ff.), and the cheap edition of the Sämtliche Werke, edited by L. Geiger (44 vols., Leipzig, 1901). There are also innumerable editions of selected works; reference need only be made here to the useful collection of the early writings and letters published by S. Hirzel with an introduction by M. Bernays, Der junge Goethe (3 vols., Leipzig, 1875, 2nd ed., 1887). A French translation of Goethe’s Œuvres complètes, by J. Porchat, appeared in 9 vols., at Paris, in 1860–1863. There is, as yet, no uniform English edition, but Goethe’s chief works have all been frequently translated and a number of them will be found in Bohn’s standard library.
The definitive edition of Goethe’s diaries and letters is that forming Sections III. and IV. of the Weimar edition. Collections of selected letters based on the Weimar edition have been published by E. von der Hellen (6 vols., 1901 ff.), and by P. Stein (8 vols., 1902 ff.). Of the many separate collections of Goethe’s correspondence mention may be made of the Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe, edited by Goethe himself (1828–1829; 4th ed., 1881; also several cheap reprints. English translation by L. D. Schmitz, 1877–1879); Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter (6 vols., 1833–1834; reprint in Reclam’s Universalbibliothek, 1904; English translation by A. D. Coleridge, 1887); Bettina von Arnim, Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (1835; 4th ed., 1890; English translation, 1838); Briefe von und an Goethe, edited by F. W. Riemer (1846); Goethes Briefe an Frau von Stein, edited by A. Schöll (1848–1851; 3rd ed. by J. Wahle, 1899–1900); Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und K. F. von Reinhard (1850); Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Knebel (2 vols., 1851); Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Staatsrat Schultz (1853); Briefwechsel des Herzogs Karl August mit Goethe (2 vols., 1863); Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Kaspar Graf von Sternberg (1866); Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Korrespondenz, and Goethes Briefwechsel mit den Gebrüdern von Humboldt, edited by F. T. Bratranek (1874–1876); Goethes und Carlyles Briefwechsel (1887), also in English; Goethe und die Romantik, edited by C. Schüddekopf and O. Walzel (2 vols., 1898–1899); Goethe und Lavater, edited by H. Funck (1901); Goethe und Österreich, edited by A. Sauer (2 vols., 1902–1903). Besides the correspondence with Schiller and Zelter, Bonn’s library contains a translation of Early and Miscellaneous
