GOETHE AND CARLYLE

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25935, 15 October 1949, Page 3

GOETHE AND CARLYLE

(By Dr. C. Rosenberg, Glasgow) Genius and his work are the connecting links between nations. Goethe, whose 200th anniversary is being commemorated, was the greatest German thinker and poet, and he above all Germans may serve as such a connecting link between Britain and Germany, when some new relationship between the two nations has to be established.

Goethe always had a deep sympathy for Britain and British literature. His youth was strongly influenced by Shakespeare, and he admits himself freely that his first dramatic work was created under Shakespearean auspices. In his old age there was no author he valued higher * than Byron, and he took Byron as the model of one of the main characters in his last and greatest work. “Faust.” The ageing Goethe read and admired Scott’s novels. But most of all he was intimately connected with another Scotsman: Thomas Carlyle. Goethe and Carlyle never met personally. But they were in continuous correspondence from 1824 to the year of Goethe’s death: 1832.

The fate of Goethe’s correspondence with Carlyle is a curious one: the letters received by Carlyle were put by him in a parcel and stowed away carefully in a box afterwards used exclusively for papers connected with Cromwell. Carlyle forgot where he had put them, and it was only after his death that they were found when his executors went through some old papers. These letters were published by an American scholar in 1887 and give some of Goethe’s finest ideas on a world literature and its importance for humanity. Most interesting of these letters is, perhaps, a letter from 1827 which starts with Goethe’s criticism of Carlyle’s ‘‘Life of Schiller.’’ In this letter Goethe first says that love helps to perfect knowledge, and he means that Carlyle, the Scot, can appreciate Schiller, the German, because he regards him with kindliness and honours and loves him. Thus Carlyle could rise to a clearness of view to which even the great man’s compatriots could not attain. Goethe adds some general considerations on the tendency of the time towards what is universal in humanity and to put it above the merely personal and national. This tendency of Goethe’s time, though not leading immediately to universal peace, he thought, might contribute to make the strife between nations gradually milder and more human. The nations should communicate to each other all that would help towards reaching this aim. Besides they had to learn to understand their peculiarities and make allowances for them; by such means only a real and fertile intercourse between them would become possible.

These are thoughts, similar to those uttered by him in the Conversations with Eckermann. that on a certain high- point of culture, man stands above the nations and feels happiness and woe of other nations like that of his own. He concludes with words which it is worthwhile to take to heart: “A general universal tolerance is most surely attained, if we do not quarrel with the peculiar characteristics of individual men and races, but only hold fast the conviction that what is truly excellent is distinguished by its belonging to all mankind.” Here lies the great fundamental idea of the letters, and the activities of Carlyle and many other writers of his time prove that Goethe sowed on fertile ground. Carlyle was a loyal friend who tried to spread the knowledge of the works of Goethe and of other masters of German literature among their countrymen. The “Edinburgh Review” and “Foreign Review” were full of essays on this subject. Goethe in his letters was advising and directing Carlyle and he took the greatest interest in these periodicals. In 1828 Goethe wrote to Carlyle: “Four numbers of your two journals which are devoted to foreign interests are lying before me, and I must repeat that never before did one nation take such pains to understand another and show so much sympathy with another. as Scotland does now in respect to Germany.” Early in 1828, Carlyle was a candidate for the Chair of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews. Carlyle asked Goethe for a testimonial and Goethe complied “with true conviction which proceeds from the heart.” He pointed out that Carlyle’s profound study of German literature would contribute much to his qualification for teaching Moral Philosophy “since a moral-psychological tendency pervades it, introducing not ascetic timidity, but a free culture in accordance with nature and in cheerful obedience to the law.” The words of Germany’s old sage, however, seem not to have impressed the stern Scottish professors on the electoral Court of St. Andrews. and Carlyle was not appointed Carlyle then retired to Craigenputtock. where he continued his work as a free author.

Goethe's last birthday, on August 28, 1831, proved once more the impression which he had made on English thought and life. Fifteen Britisn friends sent him as a gift a beautifully wrought seal. Among them were, besides Carlyle, Walter Scott, Southey, Wordsworth and Lord Francis Leveson-Gower, younger son of the Duke of Sutherland, who had produced the first English translation of G °®J he ’ s “ Faus t” published in 1823 The seal had a star surrounded by a serpent signifying eternitv. And to eternity the great poet soon had to pass.