But now she’s crying, just like you.
She:
Yes, he has left, it had to be!
My dear ones, do not mourn for me.
I may seem strange to you,
Yet it will not last long.
But now that he is gone,
I am weeping too.
He was happy. This kind of day was the kind for him: surrendered to a still unexpressed feeling which, however, unmistakably guided him in his search for words. Whatever did not correspond to the feeling did not remain on the paper. That was the most beautiful thing about writing, especially poems: utter confidence that they would come into being. No matter what anyone said about the results, for him the decisive happiness was that what he had written corresponded completely to the feeling that had guided him while he wrote. The utterly clear-cut progress of his feeling, as if the text already existed before he wrote it down and all he had to do was find it. And when he had found it, this experience of perfection. Not a single word could be changed or be placed somewhere else. Of course, experience taught that tomorrow or in a week, you can see or feel it differently, but today you are one with the perfect poem that is written there. The completeness of the text is enhanced by what needs to be expressed. At first, the feeling that guided him was a pain, an unspecified ache, a nasty imposition, a miserable feeling of abandonment, a lurid impossibility. That this degrading prostration found its way into a feeling that could lead you from word to word until the end—that was the miraculous happiness of writing. Listen to me, Ulrike! Can you hear me? If you could hear me now, you would be very close to me. An understanding would bind us together, an understanding whose name is inseparability. Ulrike.
Silently and out loud he read what he had written and was happier than happy because he knew from many visits that when Police Superintendent Grüner had read and unraveled this text he would participate in the feeling it expressed. It was unthinkable to have written these lines yet know of no one who would read them at once and sympathize with them. He wished he could leave for Eger on the spot. He knew this about himself, that for poems he needed the company of others sooner than for other kinds of writing. Poems were express mail. Express mail of the soul. It was a happy day to have handled his despair so that it would have to concede that as expressed despair, it was more beautiful than in its natural state. And he would see to it (he didn’t yet know how) that Ulrike would get to read what he had written today in exactly the same way as the police superintendent. He foresees not being able to survive a single day on which he doesn’t see Ulrike if he can’t apprehend that unreasonable demand in a poem. Today he had succeeded. Today—for today—he was saved.
And as if that weren’t enough already, in midafternoon came the news that Count Sternberg had returned and would be pleased to at least see his great friend. Isn’t one happiness enough? Apparently not. Ah, these weeks of emotional storms had drowned the fact that as the count was departing for Hungary, he had called out, “I shall be back soon, very soon I hope.” And then he entered, smiling. Goethe wanted to embrace this man in a thought-provoking way. Indeed, he wanted him to be touched. You can count on one hand the people anywhere in the world who are as well-disposed to you as he is. That feeling that permeates you: You can let yourself go. You don’t have to hold your breath and be prepared for whatever might come. And then you can tell that he feels exactly the same way. You haven’t seen much of each other. You’ve exchanged letters with a feeling of agreement in so-called scientific matters, but there was even more agreement in the tone than in the details. On July 11, on the promenade, the Levetzows. You recognized their group silhouette and, not wanting to interrupt the discussion of your beloved stones, you steered yourself and the count toward the squadron of Levetzows. Greetings, a meal together, and then the count, the only one who sensed it (how many others had remained seated on evenings last year and the year before, stupid and deaf, hadn’t noticed how their continued presence was destroying the mood)—the count with his fine manners had graciously taken his leave because he’d sensed that you needed the Levetzows all to yourself. Without embarrassment he could explain to the count the sticking plaster, the only one still on his forehead, and add an amusing account of Carl August’s quick-witted response to his injury. He couldn’t think of anything he would not talk about with Sternberg. That fact alone—that it doesn’t matter what you talk about—shows an alignment of your lives which all by itself can make you cheerful. And then the news that the count was also traveling to Eger.
The count, a patron of the arts and sciences who sees to it that Bohemia with all its treasures continues to live in the museums and university faculties of Prague, is of course also acquainted with Police Superintendent Grüner. The fact that they both love him equally is another indication of how close they are.
It was raining—no, pouring—as they departed. Along their route, large holes filled with water whose depth you couldn’t estimate because they were full of water. Goethe noticed how his friend leaned forward anxiously, watching Stadelmann. The count was not just a patron of museums and clubs devoted to preservation, he also made sure that the instruction in engineering skills in the secondary schools and universities was up to European standards. So Goethe began to praise his own carriage, which he considered the most well-designed and constructed conveyance in Saxony and Thuringia, if not beyond. There isn’t another in his country with comparable suspension and yet complete stability. No carriage is as light, fast, and safe as his. Goethe made every effort to assure his mobility since otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to stand it in Weimar. Whenever he wants to, he can quickly be in Frankfurt, Dresden, or any other town. To be sure, he admits that most of the time he doesn’t want to go far away, but he does at least want to get around the little duchy quickly.
The count said he was seeing a new side of Goethe.
And Goethe, almost boisterously, had to tell him about his maiden drive. He and Ottilie. She had insisted on being the only one sitting next to him on this maiden drive. Her husband, his son August, had to stay home. And in fact, that rushing, rocking, at times even risky-feeling drive had brought him and his daughter-in-law almost too close to each other. When they had returned to Weimar and rolled up the drive from the Frauenplan, he had handed Ottilie down from the carriage and said, “That was velocitanical.” And that’s how the word, which in the meantime had become known as one of his words, was born. He didn’t have to translate it for the count, but he did for Ottilie: velocity and satanical. Then she understood.
“A lovely word,” said the count, “which expresses what’s already happening. Has to happen.” But as long as he’s sitting in the very carriage, he said, he wouldn’t demonize it.
Goethe said that lacking a driver like Stadelmann, he wouldn’t want to be traveling in this featherlight four-wheeler. “You can see how he steers: directly through every puddle, even into the biggest depressions, so the carriage can never be tipped over?” Once he had told Stadelmann that if he’d wanted to do Napoleon a favor he would have given him Stadelmann as his personal coachman. And Stadelmann replied that he would rather string himself up from the nearest tree than be parted from Goethe.
And so they came to Eger. The weather improved, rooms had been reserved at the Sign of the Sun. Police Superintendent Grüner joined them there and they enjoyed a grief-free evening. As Grüner was leaving, Goethe gave him an envelope with the “Duet on the Pangs of Love” and said that the superintendent was so much a fellow poet that when he read it, he would not be overcome by pity but—he hoped—by the art.
The following morning, the police superintendent’s rather restrained embrace conveyed thanks for being admitted into Goethe’s innermost feelings. And since he could express it so simply, Goethe announced that his summer had blossomed in Eger, too.
Then for three days, they roamed the countryside. Goethe was all alert engagement, as if there was nothing but limestone quarries, marl, gneiss, granite, idocrase (around here they called it
egran), smoky topaz, wulfenite with visible crystals, and amethyst, all in the neighborhood. And as a precaution, Goethe ordered some of Grüner’s duplicate pieces for his collection in Weimar and promised to give him in exchange a big piece of granulite from Siberia, of which he had three. As they were driving along, Goethe suddenly asked to stop. He got down and went over to men who were mowing a field of grain and pausing to sharpen their scythes. He asked where they got their whetstones. All they knew was that you could buy them on the market square in Eger. When Goethe said they could use some like that in the fields around Weimar, the superintendent promised to have some sent.
Goethe was exaggerating his interest in everything. He needed to prove to himself that he could go for hours without thinking of Ulrike. Or, if not for hours, then for a few minutes at least.
As they sat together on the third evening, praising Eger’s beer and outdoing one another in telling all sorts of stories in the most congenial way, the police superintendent announced that, with his well-known insatiable nature—or rather, it had just become insatiable when he realized that no matter where you touch the world, it teems with stories, and, inspired not least by the beer, he declared that the world was a veritable story-teller—in his insatiable style, then, he was grafting a new branch of research onto his life’s green tree: folk songs. And at present, he was asking anyone interested to help him. No one could do it alone. Example: there’s a folk song, and he even has the melody in his head, but he only knows the beginning of the words.
“Let’s hear how it starts,” said Goethe, “and Count Sternberg and your humble servant will take care of the rest.”
The superintendent half hummed and half recited, “On the redoubt in Strasbourg, that’s where my heart grew sore …”
Goethe suddenly pressed his right hand against his left eye as if to protect it. When he realized Grüner was looking at him, he turned his head toward the count while still holding his left eye.
The count said, “Of course, it’s familiar” and also hummed the melody. “Yes,” he said, “that must be the song of the Swiss soldier in the service of a foreign army.” And he continued to sing, “Hark! Did I hear an alphorn playing…?” And both tried to remember more text.
Since the weather today was again quite raw and an east wind had occasionally really hissed in their faces, Goethe could now announce that defying the laws of symmetry, his left eye had taken a notion to be more sensitive than the right one; it must be inflamed and he found it necessary to excuse himself rather abruptly. And he left the room, still holding his right hand over his eye.
He knew his own mind pretty well and knew that tonight he would not be able to make any demands on himself. Especially no directional demands. Anything but toward Weimar. He couldn’t think further than that. All night long he was at the end of his tether. A night at the end of one’s tether is a long night. His head on the pillow was so heavy it felt like he was pressing it into the pillow with all his might. But his head was heavy all on its own. On the redoubt in Strasbourg, that’s where my heart grew sore …
He was calm when he came down to breakfast. Count Sternberg said he was going to continue on today, too. But Goethe had not yet said that he was leaving. Sternberg, however, was able to read his friend’s face. Grüner appeared, handed Goethe an envelope, and said it contained a copy of the duet in case His Excellency could use one. Grüner took his leave with the parting words, “To a joyful reunion!” When the count asked when the next coach left for Karlsbad, Goethe said, “In an hour,” without giving it a moment’s thought. “Stadelmann and I will expect you.”
In the carriage, Goethe at first covered his left eye with a cloth. The eye was inflamed. A bit inflamed; he had checked in the mirror. They left Eger at 1:00 and it was not yet 4:00 when they reached Karlsbad. As they pulled up in front of the Golden Ostrich, the eye was no longer inflamed. Goethe congratulated Stadelmann. Stadelmann laughed.
During the ride, the count had let Goethe know without saying so directly that the Levetzows had been informed of his—the count’s—arrival. He had mentioned it in a way that suggested he knew they were not informed of Goethe’s arrival. Goethe was in no mood to treat himself with as much discretion as the count did. He simply said how things stood. He did not say it in a way that would make the count feel obliged to be sympathetic and consoling. That was exactly what he sought to forestall by his cool account. He did not feel the least bit in need of sympathy. It was a miraculous and most beautiful dispensation that his dear friend Count Sternberg was traveling to Karlsbad with him, proof that he, Goethe, was a darling of fate. Unimaginable how it would be if he had to travel alone today from Eger to Karlsbad. It would have happened. He would have gone. Alone. He had to free Ulrike from the prison of her family. His life and Ulrike’s must not be sacrificed to maternal narrow-mindedness, however noble it might be. Ulrike expected it of him.
Since he arrived with the count, his arrival was a social matter. A surprise, of course. But in these circles and with an impulsive Goethe, completely understandable. It absolved him almost more than necessary. To arrive alone would be a lightning bolt of passion on a summer day with no warning of thunderstorms. He would have enjoyed serving that up to them. Them? Whom? All of them. The entire, ever-prying world.
In the Golden Ostrich in the Alte Wiesen Strasse they were both familiar guests. There were rooms for both and both were treated as if they had reserved the rooms. Goethe learned without asking that his rooms were where they had been last year: one floor above the rooms of the Levetzow family. Was that not touching! A hotelier treating you in a way that ought to teach the whole world how to treat a traveler! Travelers are always suffering from an injury. The hotelier knows. The hotelier is the emergency doctor of the soul. How awful it would be if you had to tell him, This is how things stand. Please give me a room on such and such a floor. Not in the Golden Ostrich, which couldn’t be more aptly named. And they were announced to the Levetzows and were admitted. Both halted at the door, each bidding the other enter first. The count sensed that his appearance here was more harmless than Goethe’s and he walked toward the family, who stood arrayed in front of armchairs and side tables, ready to be greeted. The count did so in perfect form. From his trip to Hungary, he brought back greetings from one or two castles and one or two cousins. His greetings were answered in high-pitched voices. Then the count stood beside the family as if he were one of the people Goethe needed to greet.
Because they stood there like that, Goethe began with the smallest one. First, after taking two steps toward the group and then halting once more, he said, “I have been yearning to see you again.”
Amalie responded at once, “Us or Ulrike?”
“All the Levetzows,” he said quite seriously. He feared that it sounded too solemn, so he said in a clearly more jocular tone and only to Amalie, “All of you.”
Amalie was unrelenting. “And how have you missed me?” she asked.
Goethe looked straight at her and her alone and said, “Like a rare stone longs to be picked up and examined by a girl because it knows that only this girl understands it, understands the language of stones.”
For the moment that seemed enough for her to chew on. But of course, now Bertha had to ask, “And how have you missed me?”
“Like a stag dying of thirst,” he said, “longs for the spring that will save his life.”
Bertha was speechless with astonishment. Now it was the mother’s turn. She said, “We won’t insist on knowing how the Privy Councilor has missed me.”
“That’s a shame,” said Goethe.
“Well then?” she said.
And Goethe said, “I have longed to be able to beg your pardon for an action born out of panic whose awkwardness is exceeded only by its ridiculousness.”
“Bravo,” said the baroness, went up to Goethe, and cried, “Napoleon was right: Voilà un homme!”
Now they all surrounded him. There were handshakes and embraces, but Ulrike had not budged. Wh
en everyone noticed that and turned toward her, Goethe walked over to her. She turned away and said, “I need to hear why Excellency missed me.”
No one moved or spoke.
Goethe said, “Because I love you.”
She extended her hand before he could extend his. Perhaps he could not have spoken as he did had Count Sternberg not been there. What he said in the presence of this man felt like a deed. The count pressed his hand.
Goethe said “Thank you” and left the way you leave when you know everyone is watching you.
Chapter Two
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE to misunderstand how Frau von Levetzow was going to manage his presence. He was welcome to take breakfast with the family. It began at seven and could extend to nine. So he was at the spring by six every day, where he had taken the water and permitted a Polish poetess to speak to him; in Karlsbad every September for years, she had waited to press her latest poems into his hand. Three days later, she would approach him again to learn whether she had made any progress. Or, she was already lying in wait by the second day to see if he was perhaps burning to say something about her poems. Nothing had changed. Many years ago, he had not been able to decline to read her poems, and if you read someone’s poems you cannot later pretend you haven’t read them. Luckily, by six there was already a lot of activity at the spring, so he never had to comment on her poems without being interrupted. And every time he said something about one of her lines, she would recite the line in Polish and say the translation was only a pale shadow of the original.
Count Sternberg was always at the spring by five-thirty. If Goethe was simply unable to end a conversation, he could give the count a signal and the count would come and liberate him in the politest possible way from the verbal snares of the person speaking to him. Julie von Hohenzollern, who always ended her season in Karlsbad, also seemed only to wait for his signal. In Karlsbad’s steeply notched valley there was no broad oval of meadow. You passed one another at closer range and so were more vulnerable to being addressed. But once Julie von Hohenzollern hastened to his rescue, nothing conversational could happen to him anymore.
A Man in Love Page 10
