I was walking home from the theatre with Goethe this evening when we saw a small boy in a plum-colored waistcoat. Youth, Goethe said, is the silky apple butter on the good brown bread of possibility.
December 9, 1823
When I entered Goethes house at noon, a wrapped parcel was standing in the foyer. "And what do you imagine this may be?" asked Goethe with a smile. I could not for the life of me fathom what the parcel might contain, for it was most oddly shaped. Goethe explained that it was a sculpture, a gift from his friend van den Broot, the Dutch artist. He unwrapped the package with the utmost care, and I was seized with admiration when the noble figure within was revealed: a representation, in bronze, of a young woman dressed as Diana, her bow bent and an arrow on the string. We marveled together at the perfection of form and fineness of detail, most of all at the indefinable aura of spirituality which radiated from the work. "Truly astonishing!" Goethe exclaimed, and I hastened to agree. Art, Goethe said, is the four per cent interest on the municipal bond of life. He was very pleased with this remark and repeated it several times.
March 22, 1824
Goethe had sent me an invitation to dinner. As I entered his sitting room I found him warming his hands before a cheerful fire. We discussed the meal to come at some length, for the planning of it had been an occasion of earnest thought to him and he was in quite good spirits about the anticipated results, which included sweetbreads prepared in the French manner with celery root and paprika. Food, said Goethe, is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
June 18, 1824
November 13, 1823
Goethe had been having great difficulties with a particular actress at the theatre, a person who conceived that her own notion of how her role was to be played was superior to Goethes. "It is not enough," he said, sighing, "that I have mimed every gesture for the poor creature, that nothing has been left unexplored in this character I myself have created, willed into being. She persists in what she terms her interpretation, which is ruining the play." He went on to discuss the sorrows of managing a theatre, even the finest, and the exhausting detail that must be attended to, every jot and tittle, if the performances are to be fit for a discriminating public. Actors, he said, are the Scotch weevils in the salt pork of honest effort. I loved him more than ever, and we parted with an affectionate handshake.
September 1, 1824
Today Goethe inveighed against certain critics who had, he said, completely misunderstood Lessing. He spoke movingly about how such obtuseness had partially embittered Lessings last years, and speculated that it was because Lessing was both critic and dramatist that the attacks had been of more than usual ferocity. Critics, Goethe said, are the cracked mirror in the grand ballroom of the creative spirit. No, I said, they were, rather, the extra baggage on the great cabriolet of conceptual progress. "Eckermann," said Goethe, "shut up."
Music, Goethe said, is the frozen tapioca in the ice chest of History.
April 7, 1824
Dinner alone with Goethe. Goethe said, "I will now confide to you some of my ideas about music, something I have been considering for many years. You will have noted that although certain members of the animal kingdom make a kind of music -- one speaks of the song of birds, does one not? -- no animal known to us takes part in what may be termed an organized musical performance. Man alone does that. I have wondered about crickets -- whether their evening cacophony might be considered in this light, as a species of performance, albeit one of little significance to our ears. I have asked Humboldt about it, and Humboldt replied that he thought not, that it is merely a sort of tic on the part of crickets. The great point here, the point that I may choose to enlarge upon in some future work, is not that the members of the animal kingdom do not unite wholeheartedly in this musical way but that man does, to the eternal comfort and glory of his soul."
Goethe had been desirous of making the acquaintance of a young Englishman, a Lieutenant Whitby, then in Weimar on business. I conducted this gentleman to Goethes house, where Goethe greeted us most cordially and offered us wine and biscuits. English, he said, was a wholly splendid language, which had given him the deepest pleasure over many years. He had mastered it early, he told us, in order to be able to savor the felicities and tragic depths of Shakespeare, with whom no author in the world, before or since, could rightfully be compared. We were in a most pleasant mood and continued to talk about the accomplishments of the young Englishmans countrymen until quite late. The English, Goethe said in parting, are the shining brown varnish on the sad chiffonier of civilization. Lieutenant Whitby blushed most noticeably.
January 11, 1824
