Goethe from a new Angle
German Studies. Presented to L. A. Willoughby by pupils, colleagues and friends on his retirement. '(Blackwell. 42s.) THE enigmatic figure of Frilulein von Klettenberg dominates a large tract of .Goethe's early life. A sickly woman and a friend of his mother, she began to influence the young poet on his return home from Leipzig University, and her influence—if we accept Mr. Gray's most scholarly argument—continued to work on him till the end of his days. " Her favourite, perhaps indeed her only, subject of con- versation was the moral development which any introspective person can observe in him or herself ; and linked with this were the religious ideas in which she saw—in a very attractive, even brilliant, way—the unity of the natural and the supernatural." So he described her in his autobiography, adding, perhaps rather puzzlingly, that under her guidance he undertook certain experiments in alchemy.
The nature of this science and of the instruction she gave him in it is the principal subject of Mr. Gray's book. For alchemy existed on many levels, from that of crude chemical dabbling to that of a cryptic symbolism for those psychological changes which would today be known as a change of heart : a process which has been -described in different terminology by each of the great religions. There is no doubt that Goethe ceased before long to study alchemy in its laboratory form. His scientific theories are coloured through- out, however, by ideas derived ultimately, no doubt through Fraulein von Klettenberg. from Boehme, Paracelsus and various little-known alchemical writers, whose works Mr. Gray has examined. The essentially non-scientific nature of his botanical speculations, of his theory of colour, of his geology and his study of cloudy has all the idea of transformation from lower to higher that is a constant theme of alchemical writings. Furthermore, in some of his poems, in the second Faust, in the curious Miirchen, and even in Wilhelm Meister, this same type of symbolism recurs.
Goethe was, throughout his life, concerned with the process of self- change, with the developing of that psychological insight which enabled the unbalanced author of Werther to return from Italy in middle life master of himself, even though subject to emotional crises that recurred to the very- last. The knowledge which helped him thus, almost at a fixed moment, to work this metamorphosis in himself was, as Mr. Gray succeeds in proving, derived from these alchemical theories as he understood them. That a part of himself stood out- side them and, being scientific in outlook, caused him to attempt a translation of these psychological ideas into material terms, explains the puzzling nature of his scientific writings. For it is difficult to decide whether his Urpflanze. the primaeval plant, was a platonic idea, the heavenly blue-print on which all plant-life was modelled, or whether he really expected to find it growing or believed that he had actually discovered it in the fields of Sicily. Like the philo- sopher's stone, it will appear to be more or less substantial according to the insight of the person seeking it. About Goethe's own degree of insight it is difficult, despite the enormous bulk of his writings, to be sure. But here we see him from a new angle. This book, there-
. fore, though on a subject of such apparently restricted interest, will appeal to more readers than might appear from its title.
The collection of essays by distinguished scholars, a tribute to Professor Willoughby on his retirement from the Chair of German at University College. contains several pieces. that will interest specialists, but little for the general reader. Most entertaining is Professor Butler on the subject of Goethe's use of Hindu mythology and the reactions of a learned Brahmin to it. Professor Barclay Fairley fails, despite his usual persuasiveness, to convince one that the novels of Wilhelm Raabe are worth a -re-examination, and Professor Rose hardly succeeds better in his attempt to evaluate present-day psychological criticism of literature in a bare twenty pages. Pleasant though it is to find so many at one in their gratitude to Professor Willoughby, it is impossible to suggest that thi; book offers value commen.:urate with its high price. J. M. COHEN.
Previous page
