MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
l'1' is a common experience that when the russet harmonies of middle-age turn to shape themselves in expectation of the closing chords of senility, we mortals become increasingly preoccupied with the passage of time, and seek by various rationing devices to economise, or at least to check, the wastage of our years. It seemed no sin, when one was young, to bask all afternoon upon a haystack or to crouch before the fire, tapping an idle poker on the bars of the grate. Were I today to climb a haystack and to deposit myself, panting slightly, on the top, I should be conscious both of physical ungainliness and spiritual delinquency. Were I to sit gazing at the coals, the sound of the winged chariot would echo immediately and I should rouse myself with a start of guilt. It is nonsense to contend that old age provides any compensations, unless it be that it creeps gradually on in soft felt slippers. All one can do is to diminish the worst effects of this irreparable outrage by keeping careful account of such time as may remain. It is thus with pain and pity that I observe my contemporaries toying with time, that I watch them sitting in arm-chairs gaping emptily into space or indulging in talk which is valueless to themselves and others, when they might be doing something profitable such as reading a book or playing bezique or dropping off to sleep. There are moments even when I feel that I do not really care for my contemporaries and when I am happy to still my own senile mumblings and listen to the starling chatter of the young. I have sometimes heard and read commendations of what is referred to as the " weight of experience ": I admit that it is pleasurable to have stored as many memories as oould fill a thousand years ; but I doubt whether any man or woman has in fact derived much pleasure from the weight of experience ; to me it seems a heavy thing indeed.
* * * * A great many articles will this week be written to commemorate the fact that Goethe was born two hundred years ago. I have but few regrets in life, but one of them is that my pea-hen brain has never enabled me fully to appreciate the works of that universal genius. I enjoy his autobiographical writings, I admire his letters, I find his diary fascinating, but his major works leave me stiff and cold. This may be due to the fact that when •I was a boy, between school and Oxford, I spent six months at Weimar which were Goethe-surfeited. I ploughed through his novels, I read his poetry (liking the short bits) and I spent many hours in the theatre which he had himself directed, listening with anxious attention to his plays. My teacher imposed upon me an admirable discipline, according to which I was made to read the plays twice over and thereafter to expend my season ticket on seeing them acted over and over again. This system did, I admit, do much to extend and fortify my know- ledge of the German language, but it left me with the wretched impression that no dramatist in any age ever wrote such dull plays as Goethe composed with such Olympian self-satisfaction. Again and again would I visit the Goethehaus and gaze with distaste at those coins and plaster-casts, those endless lumps of crystal and quartz. I would wander in the park above the Ilm—that quiet little park in which one could hear the castle clock striking solemn hours— and I would visit his Gartenhaus, reverently, enough I hope, but with a feeling that all this circumambient reverence was not for me. It is always a mistake to seek, to impose admiration on a boy of seventeen.
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My conversion occurred much later, and the missionary who terminated my disbelief was the agreeable, but wholly ridiculous, Eckermann. In the Conversations I found what I most needed, namely a medium through which I could appreciate the author of Gotz von Berlichingen as a vain, kindly, vigorous, formidable but delightful human being. Eckermann may or may not have written one of the most important books in the German language ; but he assuredly does make us understand the awe which Goethe inspired in his fellow-townsmen and the veneration with which, not merely reverent people such as Crabb Robinson and Carlyle, but also irreverent people such as Constant and Monckton Writs, came to regard him. The dominant impression left by Eckermann's Gesprache mit Goethe is that of a man who, unlike so many of my own contemporaries, had mastered the difficult art of growing old. It is true, I suppose, that Goethe much enjoyed becoming a legend in his own lifetime, and that there was a certain complacency about him which may alienate those who are irritated by the august. Yet in his declining years he did assuredly achieve a synthesis of all his many activities, and he was certainly able to look back with amused affection at the adventures and enthusiasms of his youth. It pleased him to recall, when picnicking on the Ettersberg, the distant day when he and Karl August cut their names on one of the trees in the Buchenwald ; he was prepared to smile even at the recollection of his own fury when Schiller, in a trenchant phrase, snubbed him about his plants. He was quite prepared to tease the garrulous Eckermann about the mating habits of sparrows or even to play at bows and arrows with him in the garden. The Olympian light which streamed from his tremendous eyes was softened as the sunset approached ; yet although the sun was sinking it remained " die selbige Sonnet' Goethe, although he relished the leisure of that slow-moving age, never toyed with time.
I recommend Eckermann's Conversations to all those of my con- temporaries who fiddle with their declining years. When he returned from his picnics and excursions in the surrounding country he would say a few kind words to the coachman, raise his hat to the little knot of tourists who clustered round the door, and with ever renewed expectation and delight open the correspondence which had come with the afternoon mail. There would be a parcel of engravings from Florence, letters from Gottingen or Konigsberg, a catalogue from Paris of some numismatist's collection, a packet of tea from the assiduous Crabb Robinson. When he had disposed of his parcels and correspondence, Goethe would light his green lamp and read the newspapers. One of the most charming secrets of this eternally youthful octogenarian was that he enjoyed fairs divers. I like to believe that Goethe, once he had recovered from the initial shock, would have appreciated our modern newspapers. He would much have relished the cunning combination of the serious and the incidental ; like all men of massive culture he was interested in unimportant as well as important things. It would be a stimulating if exhausting experience to sit with Goethe in his study and to translate for him the front page of a London newspaper, let us say, for August 27th, 1949. Some difficult explanations would of course he required if the old man were to understand the significance of the Strasbourg Assembly, of Mr. Hoffman's views on economics or of the reported bombing of Jugoslav airfields. It might occur even that a momentary look of bewilderment would cloud those eagle eyes when one explained to him how important it was for the English that Denis Compton should have scored 97 not out at Lord's. But he would certainly have insisted on one's reading to him the more human stories all over again.
* * * * And why not ? I do not agree with Andra Gide that no man of intellectual energy should waste time in reading the newspapers. Goethe, whose intelligence was dynamic, would much have liked the story of the young man who strayed into Russia after scribbling a message to his companions in the sand. He would have loved the story of the other young man who, in his ardent desire to join Alice in Vancouver, hid himself in an aeroplane and was carried all the way to Santa Maria in the Azores. The surest means by which to become dully old is to lose one's zest for human foolishness. Goethe was a very great man, who, like all great men, retained his simplicity. The dreadful thing about becoming wise is that extreme . wisdom is apt to produce intellectual sclerosis and to lead its possessors to sit in arm-chairs gaping into space. Goethe never gaped ; every hour of his day was planned and occupied ; and he retained the superb capacity of being amused by silly things.
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