MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IHAVE been reading during my spare moments Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe. It is a useful habit, in times of excitement, to have upon the table a book of sedative wisdom, and one which contains but few allusions to the perplexities with which this generation is faced. It is valuable also, at moments when the vibrations of Vergeltungswaffe No. i drill into one's brain a marked distaste for the more crude manifestations of German ingenuity, to return to the gentle groves of Athens by the Ilm and to recall the time when the German genius was governed by Reason and Under- standing. Not that any unbiassed person would for one moment agree with Nietzsche that Eckermann's collections of table-talk constitute "the best German book there is." Although a modest little man, Eckermann was so abysmally Stupid that he failed to understand one half of what Goethe either said or intended. It never occurred to him that there were moments when Goethe indulged in generalisations, not because he believed in their authen- ticity, but because he enjoyed watching upon the round blank face of Eckermann the extending circles of bewilderment which his remarks produced. There are moments again when the idol becomes obviously restless upon its pedestal and when the Rildesheim (" which some Frankfurt friends have kindly sent me ") was pro- duced. The mirror which Eckermann so devoutly held up to Goethe is at times clouded and at times subject to distortion ; but it will clear suddenly, and in a flash one sees the great old man, playing with his grandchildren, playing with bows and arrows in .the garden, turning over his albums of engravings, and the serenity of that magnificent sunset stills the nerves ,and eases fear and pain :— " Uber alien Gipfeln 1st Ruh. . . 7
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