Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 1523

October 22, 1826.

Your letter and package, most honored friend, gave me a very welcome token of your continuous remembrance and friendly sympathy. I wish, however, that I might have received an equal assurance of your good health. For my own part, I cannot complain; a ship that is no longer a deep-sea sailer may perhaps still be useful as a coaster.

I have passed the entire summer at home, laboring undisturbed at editing my works. Possibly you still remember, my dearest friend, a dramatic Helena, which was to appear in the second part of Faust. From Schiller's letters at the beginning of the century I see that I showed him the commencement of it, and also that he, with true friendship, counseled me to continue it. It is one of my oldest conceptions, resting on the marionette tradition that Faust compelled Mephistopheles to produce Helen of Troy for his nuptials. From time to time I have continued to work on it, but the piece could not be completed except in the fulness of time, for its action has now covered three thousand years, from the fall of Troy to the capture of Missolonghi. This can, therefore, also be regarded as a unity of time in the higher sense of the term; the unities of place and action are, however, likewise most carefully regarded in the usual acceptation of the word. It appears under the title:

Helena

Classico-Romantic Phantasmagoria.

Interlude to Faust.

This says little indeed, and yet enough, I hope, to direct your attention more vividly to the first instalment of my works which I hope to present at Easter.

I next ask, with more confidence, whether perchance you still remember an epic poem which I had in mind immediately after the completion of Hermann and Dorothea—in a modern hunt a tiger and a lion were concerned. At the time you dissuaded me from elaborating the idea, and I abandoned it; now, in searching through old papers, I find the plot again, and cannot refrain from executing it in prose; for it may then pass as a tale, a rubric under which an extremely large amount of remarkable stuff circulates.

Very recently there has reached my hermitage the portrayal of the very active life of a man of the world, which highly entertains me—the journal of Duke Bernhard of Weimar, who left Ghent in April, 1825, and who returned to us only a short time past. It is written uninterruptedly, and since his station, his mode of thought, and his demeanor introduced him to the highest circles of society, and since he was at ease among the middle classes and did not disdain the most humble, his reader is very agreeably conducted through most diverse situations, which, for me at least, it was highly important to survey directly.

Now, however, I must assure you that the outline which you have sent is extremely profitable to Riemer and myself, and has given a most admirable opportunity for discussions on linguistics and philosophy. I am by no means averse to the literature of India, but I am afraid of it; for it draws my imaginative power towards the formless and the deformed, against which I am forced to guard myself more than ever; but if it comes over the signature of a valued friend, it will always be welcome, for it gives me the desired opportunity to converse with him on what interests him, and what must certainly be of importance.

Now, as I prepare to close, I simply say that I am engaged in combining and uniting the scattered Wanderings of Wilhelm Meister, in its old and new portions, as two volumes. While engaged in which task nothing could give me greater delight than to welcome the chief of wanderers, your highly esteemed brother, to our house, and to learn directly of his ceaseless activity; nor do I fail to express my hearty wishes to your dear wife for the best results from the cure which she is seeking in such lofty regions.

And so, for ever and ever, in truest sympathy, GOETHE.

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