Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 1525

Weimar, December 1, 1831.

Already informed by the public press, honored friend, that the beating waves of that wild Baltic have exercised so happy an influence on the constitution of my dearest friend, I have rejoiced in a high degree, and have done all honor and reverence to the waters which so often wreak destruction. Your welcome note gave the fairest and the best of all substantiation to these good tidings, so that with comfort I could look forth from my hermitage over the monastery gardens veiled in snow, since I could fancy to myself my dearest friend in his four-towered castle, amid roomy surroundings, surveying a landscape over which winter had spread far and wide, and at the same time with good courage pursuing to the minutest detail his deep-founded tasks.

Generally speaking, I can perhaps say that the apperception of great productive maxims of nature absolutely compels us to continue our investigations to the minutest possible details, just as the final ramifications of the arteries meet, at the extreme finger-tips, the nerves to which they are linked. In particular I might perhaps say that I have often been brought more closely to you than you probably know; for conversations with Riemer very often turn on a word, its etymological signification, formation and mutation, relationship, and strangeness.

I have been highly grateful to your brother, for whom I find no epithet, for several hours of frank, friendly conversation; for although assimilation of his theory of geology, and practical work in accordance with it, are impossible for my mental process, yet I have seen with true sympathy and admiration how that of which I cannot convince myself in him obtains a logical coherence and is amalgamated with the tremendous mass of his knowledge, where it is then held together by his priceless character.

If I may express myself with my old frankness, my most honored friend, I gladly admit that in my advanced years everything becomes more and more historical to me. Whether a thing has happened in days gone by, in distant realms, or very close to myself, is quite immaterial; I even seem to become more and more historical to myself; and when, in the evening, Plutarch is read to me, I often appear ridiculous to myself, should I narrate my biography in this way.

Forgive me expressions of this character! In old age men become garrulous, and since I dictate, it is very easy for this natural tendency to get the better of me.

Of my Faust there is much and little to say; at a peculiarly happy time the apothegm occurred to me:

"If bards ye are, as ye maintain;

Now let your inspiration show it."

And through a mysterious psychological turn, which probably deserves investigation, I believe that I have risen to a type of production which with entire consciousness has brought forth that which I myself still approve of—though perhaps without being able ever again to swim in this current—but which Aristotle and other prose-writers would even ascribe to a sort of madness. The difficulty of succeeding consisted in the fact that the second part of Faust—to whose printed portions you have possibly devoted some attention—has been pondered for fifty years in its ends and aims, and has been elaborated in fragmentary fashion, as one or the other situation occurred to me; but the whole has remained incomplete.

Now, the second part of Faust demands more of the understanding than the first does, and therefore it was necessary to prepare the reader, even though he must still supply bridges. The filling of certain gaps was obligatory both for historical and for æsthetic unity, and this I continued until at last I deemed it advisable to cry:

"Close ye the wat'ring canal; to their fill have the meadows now drunken."

And now I had to take heart to seal the stitched copy in which printed and unprinted are thrust side by side, lest I might possibly be led into temptation to elaborate it here and there; at the same time I regret that I cannot communicate it to, my most valued friends, as the poet so gladly does.

I will not send my Metamorphosis of Plants, translated, with an appendix, by M. Soret, unless certain confessions of life would satisfy your friendship. Recently I have become more and more entangled in these phenomena of nature; they have enticed me to continue my labors in my original field, and have finally compelled me to remain in it. We shall see what is to be done there likewise, and shall trust the rest to the future, which, between ourselves, we burden with a heavier task than would be supposed.

From time to time let us not miss on either side an echo of continued existence.