Goethe in His First Love

Among the artists who bore along to immortality a number of women lost in love is the genius of Germany, the great poet, Goethe! Goethe — or "the flashing gleam that joins eternity past to eternity to come in the moment of artistic creation; or say, human thought itself, admitting no division and no partition!"

Goethe understood, as no other understands, that love alone is the law of morals, and that there is no law besides it — for all the bohemianism in the nature of this emotion, and its preference of chaos over every order. And here is one story of this genius at the hour his heart beat its first beat.

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Goethe was fourteen years old at the time. The whisper of womanhood had not yet been poured into his soul to course through his being as song and poetry, that he might understand what makes the sun blaze with heat, what stirs the wave, what wakes the moan in the brook and the dream in the red rose!

Goethe says of that period, in effect:

"The sight of the French actresses taking off their costumes in the recesses of the theater aroused in me no strange feeling at that time; I thought the scene purely ordinary."

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Then a faint fragrance drifted to his senses... With it he looked out upon the first of spring, and his heart beat its first beat.

That fragrance was the breath of a girl in the dawn of her years!

But who could she be, this girl who wakened in his heart a love at once boyish and deep — a love that troubled his soul and was nonetheless his abiding happiness in his boyhood, and the most beautiful thing he possessed on earth?!

The name "Gretchen" echoes forever in the immortal masterpiece "Faust." And despite the composite quality we find in the personages of that great book, which Goethe nourishes with the images of the many women he loved in his past, there is nothing to deny the complete likeness between the heroine of the greatest of dramas and the gentle girl of Frankfurt who inspired our poet's first emotion!

By chance, at fourteen, Goethe found himself enrolled in a commercial-industrial club gathering a crowd of the rich young men of Frankfurt. With these, only chance had joined Goethe, as we said. They were ordinary, empty people who had set up this club of theirs for certain commercial interests — and he was who he was!!

Among them was a young man well pleased with himself despite his small portion of intelligence. And when he became attached to a girl of ravishing beauty among the girls of Frankfurt, his companions chose to toy with his passion and "amuse themselves at his expense": they asked Goethe to compose some verses of love poetry and attribute them to this girl, singing the praises of her illustrious "beloved"!! He did. And no sooner had our friend received these verses, in which Goethe conveyed to him the girl's "feelings" toward him... than he grew still more vain and self-admiring. But being short of mind and barren of feeling, how was he to answer these verses in kind? Goethe stepped in... and announced that he was at his "service..." And behold, the same emotion that gave life to the fair one's verses gave life also to the "lover's" reply — for Goethe's genius is hindered by no difference of the sexes!

In the course of these pleasantries, Goethe made the acquaintance of the being who would turn him from jest to earnest... Woman had entered his life.

He says in one of his memoirs:

"The table was laid, clean and neat, and on it were set some bottles of wine. We sat down to it, I and my companions, with no need of anyone to serve us. But no sooner had the wine run out than one of us called the serving-maid. The maid did not come; instead there came toward us a young girl of a beauty the like of which no human eye has ever fallen upon — if indeed I do not declare it impossible to believe that any beauty like it exists...

"'What do you wish?' The girl put this question to us after wishing us, with lightness and grace, a good evening. And she went on:

"'The maid is lying in her bed; she is ill. But can I serve you in anything?' One of us answered her, saying:

"'The wine has run out; would you be so kind as to bring us a few bottles of it?'

"And another said:

"'Hand us some of the wine, Gretchen — it is here, beside us.' She answered, as she took the empty bottles from the table — Why not? Then she vanished with briskness and speed!

"Her figure as a whole, when she turned her back to us, appeared more wonderful still than at the moment she came toward us: for the little cap with which she covered her lovely head was set on in a fashion than which nothing could be more graceful, more bewitching, or more striking to the heart..."

The poet's account runs long; then he says:

"The image of this girl pursued me, from that moment, forever and everywhere. It was the deep, first influence that a feminine being exerted over me...

"And when it became impossible for me to find a pretext to see her in her house, I took to making my way to the church — there where I quickly discovered the seat she was accustomed to occupy. And so I came to feast myself with gazing at her, freely, through the whole time of the prayers."

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The place Goethe speaks of at the opening of his account was a country house standing in one of the suburbs of Frankfurt — something of house, inn, and shop all at once, in that quiet, shaded retreat of earth.

And Gretchen, the gentle creature who had poured this emotion into his soul, was none other than a daughter of the owner of this house, linked by some tie of kinship to certain members of the club, her eyes wearied by nights of vigil spent in ornamenting and embroidering.

How keenly she felt the weight of the artificial social distinctions that set her apart from the rich, and the trace of this feeling would show in her talk with those she liked. Whenever she addressed Goethe in those days, she would repeat to him this phrase: "... I, who am nothing but a poor girl!"

As for this social gap between her and the boy Goethe, it was, in the eyes of the small poet-lover, nothing but a shadow of crime and one of the manifestations of men's folly.

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And Goethe came to feel warm, soft waves flooding over him, engulfing his being and firing his creative powers. His poetry began to pour forth straight from the heart. The deep springs had opened in his soul, and behold, he burst out in song that will live as long as time endures!

One day, as Goethe sat at a table in Gretchen's country house, holding in his hand a pen with which he was tracing a letter in the voice of an imaginary girl addressing an imaginary sweetheart of hers, Gretchen dropped the embroidery frame from her hands onto the window ledge, came toward the boy poet, drew near him, and made him a pledge — none was ever more piercing to his heart, nor more exalted! Then she showed him that such trifling was unworthy of a prodigy like him. Goethe says, in summary:

"... And she drew toward her the scrap of paper on which I had written the love letter, and began to read it in a voice of sweet, enchanting melody. Then she said:

"'It is wonderful, this letter! But what a loss it is that this feeling should not travel a better road — that is, a natural road... so that you would express what lies hidden in your own soul... and not amuse yourself with playing the lover's part, writing love letters in his voice?!' I answered, saying:

"'That is what I hope for from the depths of my soul!' And Gretchen went on:

"'For achieving that there are many possibilities.' I said: 'If, for example, there came to you a young man who knows you, respects you, and worships you, and he laid before your hands a letter like this one, begging you with all his heart to sign your name at its close — what would you do?'

"And I approached her with the paper she had dropped at my side; her face lit up, she smiled, she thought a little, then she took up the pen and signed her name with it. I could no longer master myself for the flood of rapture... I leaped high into the air, and then I made to kiss her, whereupon she said, with a wondrous elegance and sweetness:

"'We have no need of kisses now... but of love, if love is possible!'

"Quickly I took the letter and slipped it into my pocket, and I said to Gretchen:

"'No creature on earth shall see this letter after today. You have delivered me from what was tormenting my soul!' And she said, looking at me with a look of tenderness, love, and truth all at once:

"'Then you must go to the very end along this road — the road of deliverance you speak of!'

"I could not bring myself to leave her at that moment. But she begged it of me with a softness and a gentleness I know no equal to, pressing my right hand with both her hands. Then she hastened out of my sight! Never in all my life have I felt an agitation like the agitation that seized me then!"

Then the great poet continues, saying:

"My love for this girl revealed to my soul, then, a new world of beauty and goodness. And I fell upon that letter, reading it; I read it over a hundred times, gazing at Gretchen's signature and kissing it, and tasting the savor of her beloved avowal!"

Thus did Goethe's heart beat its first beat, and thus did he understand for the first time that the road to beauty, and to great creation, is love — love, and love alone!