*Goethe pondering history and historians. This is "Weimar Classicism" talking to history, making the case for itself.
*We're posterity, so we can hear this. There's something sad and touching about it. It reads more or less like this: "Here in Weimar, we're high-minded and noble. We have a great opinion of ourselves and our virtuous accomplishments. So let's bend an effort for Enlightenment by concealing the true extent of the darkness. We'll tactfully obscure the actual historical squalor, so that lesser people will presume that the proper life is necessarily like us."
*How much self-serving special pleading are historians allowed to do in historical writing? About as much as the Duchy of Weimar does in its diplomacy, I guess. It's a politicized and regionalized history. Nobody particularly desires to abandon the truth in a haze of courtly deception – they don't want to deceive for deception's sake – but a small state in turbulent Europe has to lie somewhat, in order to survive.
*It interests me that Goethe, a guy as incandescently intelligent as Leonardo, would need to button himself up inside "Weimar Classicism." Even though he's nicely advantaged in Weimar – the local duke is indulgent, the court ladies listen politely, he gets to make lots of executive decisions within the tiny government – Weimar is too small a town for a guy of Goethe's extensive talents.
*Goethe wasn't happy there, and often says so. He wasn't even particularly safe there, because, eventually, the French under Napoleon conquered and looted Weimar. One could surmise that Goethe had a regular, sober lifestyle in Weimar and was able to buckle down and get work done, but it's not true, either. Goethe got spectacular creative work accomplished when he was aimlessly wandering around Italy, being a dropout from Weimar court life.
*In fact, after Goethe packed and scrammed from Weimar to adventure to Italy, practically everybody Goethe knew in Weimar wanted to do the same thing as him. All the Weimar Germans that Goethe knew wanted to kick their high-and-noble Classicist lifestyle in the head, and go live very dolce-far-niente among the olive trees. One can tell that this irritated Goethe. It was okay for him to live freely elsewhere, but he thought they should stay where they were.
*Other poets of the era, Byron and Shelley in particular, were very into the permanent vacation lifestyle that Goethe was pioneering, but he himself had to go back to Weimar Classicism. He died in harness there. Somehow Weimar was the proper place for him, and although I respect his decision and wouldn't second-guess him, I don't fully understand how he justified that decision to himself.
*He drops broad hints every once in a while, but I've never seen him directly justify his decision to live the Weimar life to his last day. So, why? What is the historical causation here? Why is Goethe the cultural pillar of Weimar Classicism, when he's a well-to-do, brilliant guy from Frankfurt, who doesn't have to serve that role?
These are my current theories as a Goethe historian. They may be slightly far-fetched.
A. It's the Protestant work ethic. Goethe's not a dreamy, feckless poet by his nature. He's keen on playing the alert, muscular, seasoned man of action who takes responsible decisions and carries them out for the world's greater good. In Weimar he's got his own desk and many employees, so Weimar is Goethe's workplace, and that's where he goes, and he stays. Sure, he suffers there, but hard work is morally good in itself. When he claims he's "suffering," he's actually just boasting about the rigors of his hard work.
B. He's loyal to the regime. The enlightened-despotism of Weimar is cramped and eccentric, yes, but it's also the best government in balkanized Germany. They're kind to him, they adopted him, they need his help. His prestige and public-relations skills are of use to Weimar. Everybody in town, in every class and walk-of-life, looks up to him, and knows he's Germany's greatest poet. He should do his duty to the Weimar government for patriotic reasons. Future Germans will admire his sense of public duty.
C. Goethe's a sell-out. He's flattered by the cozy creature-comforts and his prestigious court position. As the lion of Weimar he's the biggest frog in a small pond. Why bother to go anywhere else? They've bought his loyalty, the terms are decent, so what the hell. He's acquired his own Voltaire garden, and that's good enough for him.
D. As an artist, he's loyal to his Weimar colleagues. His presence in Weimar has brought the great Schiller, and many lesser talents, to the town. The people in his creative milieu would surely take it badly if he insulted them by abandoning them. As a cultural entrepreneur, Goethe has to pretend that things are grand, noble and high-flown in Weimar Classicism, even if he secretly knows that conditions are rather stifling and he himself is often miserable.
E. Cherchez la femme. It's actually the women of Weimar who keep Goethe there. His actual anchor in Weimar is Charlotte von Stein, a comely and refined Weimar aristocrat who has become his emotional confidante. Charlotte is a classic muse figure who totally gets it about Goethe's ambitions; Charlotte is the true fan that every poet needs. Charlotte spends a lot of her extensive time and energy smoothing Goethe's way into the palace halls and getting Goethe not to rock the Weimar boat. Goethe's in love with Charlotte, but eventually the snarls of their platonic relationship get on his nerves. She's why he stays, but she is also why he leaves.
In distant Rome, Goethe hires an arty demimondaine he names "Faustina." Faustina's quite direct and understanding when it comes to the stark needs of the Goethe libido, but unfortunately she's Italian and a hooker. The Faustina relationship has no long-term potential. So Goethe goes back to Weimar, breaks off with Charlotte, and boldly takes up with a local girl, Christiane, a complaisant lower-class woman who's proud to become the mistress of the great Goethe.
This pretty German girl makes no impossible demands like the fancy Charlotte, she just keeps the house and supplies children. Christiane is very Weimar, but she has what he needs to get by in life. To stay in her arms he has to remain in Weimar, and so, instead of ever leaving, he should marry her and commit. Which he does, and that's her happy ending. It's because the "mystery of Goethe in Weimar" is actually Christiane's romance story, not Goethe's ponderous history.
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From Goethe's MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS:
438
Various maxims of the ancients, which we are wont to repeat again and again, had a meaning quite different from that which is apt to attach to them in later times. (((That's for sure. History is words, and semantics are slippery. For instance, guys within "Weimar Classicism" never went around calling themselves "Weimar Classicism.")))
443
Let us remember how great the ancients were; and especially how the Socratic school holds up to us the source and standard of all life and action, and bids us not indulge in empty speculation, but live and do. (((I don't recall Diogenes, a drop-out who lived in a tub, being keen on a work ethic.)))
444
So long as our scholastic education takes us back to antiquity and furthers the study of the Greek and Latin languages, we may congratulate ourselves that these studies, so necessary for the higher culture, will never disappear. (((Language studies probably shouldn't have the word "never" in them. Languages are very time-contingent, they're not bigger than time. Even if you think that the inerrant, revealed Word of God is beyond time, there's still the issue that Jesus spoke Aramaic.)))
445
If we set our gaze on antiquity and earnestly study it, in the desire to form ourselves thereon, we get the feeling as if it were only then that we really became men. (((That's an extremely Weimar Classicist thing to say. Its value-system is truly alien now. But maybe it will return. It's easy to imagine a post human society where men earnestly study the classics because they have no other workable method to understand what being a man once was.)))
446
The pedagogue, in trying to write and speak Latin, has a higher and grander idea of himself than would be permissible in ordinary life. (((This probably made more sense in the original German, but I wonder a lot about that word "permissible." Permissible by whom? Who was making sure that high school teachers didn't get exaggerated ideas of themselves by reading Homer?)))
447
In the presence of antiquity, the mind that is susceptible to poetry and art feels itself placed in the most pleasing ideal state of nature; and even to this day the Homeric hymns have the power of freeing us, at any rate, for moments, from the frightful burden which the tradition of several thousand years has rolled upon us. (((What's interesting about this frightful burden is that it always gets bigger for the next epoch. Unless you're lucky enough to live as an illiterate in the Dark Ages. There must have been a lot of Rousseauvian noble-savage freedom going on then.)))
448
There is no such thing as patriotic art and patriotic science. Both art and science belong, like all things great and good, to the whole world, and can be furthered only by a free and general interchange of ideas among contemporaries, with continual reference to the heritage of the past as it is known to us. (((An interesting declaration from the sage of a small city.)))
450
An historic sense means a sense so cultured that, in valuing the deserts and merits of its own time, it takes account also of the past.
451
The best that history gives us is the enthusiasm it arouses. (((The enthusiasm about the frightful burden of Maxim 447, presumably.)))
452
The historian's duty is twofold: first towards himself, then towards his readers. As regards himself, he must carefully examine into the things that could have happened; and, for the reader's sake, he must determine what actually did happen. His action towards himself is a matter between himself and his colleagues; but the public must not see into the secret that there is little in history which can be said to be positively determined. (((Why is that a "duty"? Job number one as a historian is pacifying the public, so they don't catch on that events are more or less random and contingent. Okay, fine, but how stupid is "the public" supposed to get? Aren't all readers, and even other historians, eventually "the public"? Future historians are gonna catch on that your Weimar Classicist version of history is actually ideological special-pleading, which ignores actual causation in order to make you look inevitable. Then what's left of your history?)))
453
The historian's duty is to separate the true from the false, the certain from the uncertain, and the doubtful from that which cannot be accepted. (((Where are the undutiful historians? They must make interesting reading.)))
454
It is seldom that any one of great age becomes historical to himself, and finds his contemporaries become historical to him, so that he neither cares nor is able to argue with any one. (((That's called "being dead," that exalted condition where you no longer argue with your peers. Rather common in history.)))
455
On a closer examination of the matter, it will be found that the historian does not easily grasp history as something historical. In whatever age he may live, the historian always writes as though he
himself had been present at the time of which he treats, instead of simply narrating the facts and movements of that time. Even the mere chronicler only points more or less to his own limitations, or the
peculiarities of his town or monastery or age. (((Well, no. Try reading Herodotus. That's pretty much exactly what the "Father of History" doesn't do. Herodotus is not at all Weimar Classicist, he's very "cosmo-politan." For instance, Herodotus says that the Etruscans were from Lydia, skeptics are like, "no way, Lydia is in distant Turkey and Etruscans live in Tuscany." Turns out it's true. Herodotus doesn't gain anything by this, it's not like it's some special favor to Greek guys that Etruscans are migrant Lydians. It's just: history is events, he wrote one down, kind of a good thing to know.)))
456
We really learn only from those books which we cannot criticise. The author of a book which we could criticise would have to learn from us. (((Yeah, well….time heals all wounds!)))
