To such intense sympathy as this, all that had been sung ere now by German poets had to give place. Nature, which hitherto had played no _role_ at all in fiction, not even among the English, was Werther"s truest and most intimate friend.
Werther is sensitive and sentimental, though in a single-hearted way, with a sentimentality that reminds us more and more, as the story proceeds, of the gloomy tone of Ossian and Young. He is a thoroughly original character, who feels that he is right so to be; and although he falls a prey to his melancholy, yet there is much more force and thought in his outpourings than in all the moonshine tirades that preceded him. It is the work of a true poet, in the best days of a brilliant youth.
Werther, like Rousseau, was happiest in solitude. Solitude, in the "place like paradise," was precious balm to his feeling heart, which he considers "like a sick child"; and the "warm heavenly imagination of the heart" illuminates Nature round him--his "favourite valley,"
the "sweet spring morning," Nature"s "unspeakable beauty." He was absorbed in artistic feeling, though he could not draw; "I could not draw them, not a stroke, and have never been a greater artist than at that moment." His power lay in imbuing his whole subject with feeling; he felt the heart of Nature beating, and its echo in his own breast.
When the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, then I throw myself down in the tall gra.s.s by the trickling stream; and as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants discover themselves to me. When I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty who formed us in His own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the idea of a beloved mistress, then I often long and think: O that you could describe these conceptions, that you could impress upon paper all that lives so full and warm within you, that it might be the mirror of your soul, as your soul is the mirror of the infinite G.o.d!
O! my friend! but it is too much for my strength. I sink under the weight of the grandeur of these visions.
Werther could not express all his love for Nature, but the secret of it lay in the power to bring his own world of thought and feeling into communion with her, and so give her speech. He divined something immortal in her akin to himself. "The true feeling of Nature," he said, "is love." He poured "the stream of his genius" over her, and she became "dear and familiar" to him.... The simple homely scenery delighted him--the valley, the brook, the fine walnut trees.
When I go out at sunrise in the morning to Walheim, and with my own hands gather the peas in the garden, which are to serve for my dinner; when I sit down to sh.e.l.l them and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own b.u.t.ter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up....
Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life, which, thank heaven, I can imitate without affectation.
With the growth of his love-pa.s.sion his feeling for Nature increased; on July 24th he wrote:
I never felt happier, I never understood Nature better, even down to the veriest stem or smallest blade of gra.s.s.
Then Albert came on the scene, and love became a torment, and Nature a tormentor:
_August_ 18.--Must it ever be thus, that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of Nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a demon which perpetually pursues and hara.s.ses me. When in bye-gone days I gazed from these rocks upon yonder mountains across the river and upon the green flowery valley before me, and saw all nature budding and bursting around--the hills clothed from foot to peak with tall thick forest trees, the valleys in all their varied windings shaded with the loveliest woods, and the soft river gliding along amongst the lisping reeds, mirroring the beautiful clouds which the soft evening breeze wafted across the sky--when I heard the groves about me melodious with the music of birds, and saw the million swarms of insects dancing in the last golden beams of the sun, whose setting rays awoke the humming beetles from their gra.s.sy beds, whilst the subdued tumult around directed my attention to the ground, and I there observed the arid rock compelled to yield nutriment to the dry moss, whilst the heath flourished upon the barren sands below me--all this displayed to me the inner warmth which animates all Nature, and filled and glowed within my heart. I felt myself exalted by this overflowing fulness to the perception of the G.o.dhead, and the glorious forms of an infinite universe became visible to my soul.... From the inaccessible mountains across the desert, which no mortal foot has trod, far as the confines of the unknown ocean, breathes the spirit of the eternal Creator, and every atom to which He has given existence finds favour in His sight. Ah!
how often at that time has the flight of a bird soaring above my head inspired me with the desire of being transported to the sh.o.r.es of the immeasurable waters, there to quaff the pleasure of life from the foaming goblet of the infinite, and to partake, if but for a moment, even with the confined powers of my soul, the beat.i.tude of the Creator, who accomplishes all things in himself and through himself.... It is as if a curtain had been drawn from before my eyes.... My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal nature--Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself and every object near it; so that, surrounded by earth, and air, and all the active powers, I wander on my way with aching heart, and the universe is to me a fearful monster, for ever devouring its own offspring.... If in such moments I find no sympathy ... I either wander through the country, climb some precipitous cliff, or force a path through the trackless thicket, where I am lacerated and torn by thorns and briars, and thence I find relief.
Then, as he was going away, he felt how sympathetic the place had been to him:
I was walking up and down the very avenue which was so dear to me--a secret sympathy had frequently drawn me thither....
the moon rose from behind a hill, increasing his melancholy, and Charlotte put his feeling into words, saying (like Klopstock):
_September_ 10.--Whenever I walk by moonlight, it brings to my remembrance all my beloved and departed friends, and I am filled with thoughts of death and futurity.
Even in his misery he realises the [Greek: charisgoon] of Euripides, Petrarch"s _dolendi voluptas_--the _Wonne der Wehmuth_.
On September 4th he wrote:
It is even so! As Nature puts on her autumn tints, it becomes autumn with me and around me. My leaves are sere and yellow, and the neighbouring trees are divested of their foliage.
It was due to this autumn feeling that he could say:
Ossian has superseded Homer in my heart. To what a world does the ill.u.s.trious bard carry me! To wander over pathless wilds, surrounded by impetuous whirlwinds, where, by the feeble light of the moon, we see the spirits of our ancestors; to hear from the mountain tops, "mid the roar of torrents, their plaintive sounds issuing from deep caverns.... And this heart is now dead; no sentiment can revive it. My eyes are dry, and my senses, no more refreshed by the influence of soft tears, wither and consume my brain. I suffer much, for I have lost the only charm of life, that active sacred power which created worlds around me, and it is no more. When I look from my window at the distant hills and behold the morning sun breaking through the mists and illuminating the country round it which is still wrapt in silence, whilst the soft stream winds gently through the willows which have shed their leaves; when glorious Nature displays all her beauties before me, and her wondrous prospects are ineffectual to attract one tear of joy from my withered heart....
On November 30th he wrote: "About dinner-time I went to walk by the river side, for I had no appet.i.te," and goes on in the tone of Ossian:
Everything around me seemed gloomy: a cold and damp easterly wind blew from the mountains, and black heavy clouds spread over the plain.
and in the dreadful night of the flood:
Upon the stroke of twelve I hastened forth. I beheld a fearful sight. The foaming torrents rolled from the mountains in the moonlight; fields and meadows, trees and hedges, were confounded together, and the entire valley was converted into a deep lake which was agitated by the roaring wind. And when the moon shone forth and tinged the black clouds with silver, and the impetuous torrent at my feet foamed and resounded with awful and grand impetuosity, I was overcome by a mingled sensation of awe and delight. With extended arms I looked down into the yawning abyss, and cried "Plunge!" For a moment my senses forsook me, in the intense delight of ending my sorrows and my sufferings by a plunge into that gulf.
To his farewell letter he adds:
Yes, Nature! put on mourning. Your child, your friend, your lover, draws near his end.
The genuine poetic pantheism, which, for all his melancholy and sentimentality, was the spring of Werther"s feeling, is seen in loftier and more comprehensive form in the first part of _Faust_, when Faust opens the book and sees the sign of macrocosmos:
How all things live and work, and ever blending, Weave one vast whole from Being"s ample range!
How powers celestial, rising and descending, Their golden buckets ceaseless interchange.
Their flight on rapture-breathing pinions winging, From heaven to earth their genial influence bringing, Through the wide whole their chimes melodious ringing.
And the Earth spirit says:
In the currents of life, in action"s storm, I float and I wave With billowy motion,-- Birth and the grave A limitless ocean.
Not only of knowledge of, but of feeling for, Nature, it is said:
Inscrutable in broadest light, To be unveiled by force she doth refuse.
But Faust is in deep sympathy with her; witness:
Thou full-orbed moon! Would thou wert gazing now For the last time upon my troubled brow!
and
Loos"d from their icy fetters, streams and rills In spring"s effusive, quick"ning mildness flow, Hope"s budding promise every valley fills.
And winter, spent with age, and powerless now, Draws off his forces to the savage hills.
and the idyllic evening mood, which gives way to a burst of longing:
In the rich sunset see how brightly glow Yon cottage homes girt round with verdant green.
Slow sinks the orb, the day is now no more; Yonder he hastens to diffuse new light.
Oh! for a pinion from the earth to soar, And after, ever after him to strive!
Then should I see the world outspread below, Illumined by the deathless evening beams, The vales reposing, every height aglow, The silver brooklets meeting golden streams....
Alas! that when on Spirit wing we rise, No wing material lifts our mortal clay.
But "tis our inborn impulse, deep and strong, To rush aloft, to struggle still towards heaven, When far above us pours its thrilling song The skylark lost amid the purple even, When on extended pinion sweeps amain The lordly eagle o"er the pine-crowned height.
And when, still striving towards its home, the crane O"er moor and ocean wings its onward flight.
But the most complete expression of Goethe"s att.i.tude, not only in the period of _Werther_ and the first part of _Faust_, but generally, is contained in the _Monologue_, which was probably written not earlier than the spring of 1788:
Spirit sublime! Thou gav"st me, gav"st me all For which I prayed. Not vainly hast thou turn"d To me thy countenance in flaming fire; Thou gav"st me glorious Nature for my realm, And also power to feel her and enjoy; Not merely with a cold and wond"ring glance, Thou didst permit me in her depths profound, As in the bosom of a friend, to gaze; Before me thou dost lead her living tribes, And dost in silent grove, in air and stream, Teach me to know my kindred....
His feeling was not admiration alone, nor reverence alone, but the sympathy of _Childe Harold_:
Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part Of me and of my soul, as I of them?
Is not the love of these deep in my heart With a pure pa.s.sion? Should I not contemn All objects, if compared with these?
and the very confession of faith of such poetic pantheism is in Faust"s words: