prejudices; they were also for the most part of mediocre ability; to say they were mostly stupid, is to say that they were men and women. And as they formed the predominating element of Weimar, we see at once how, in spite of the influence of Karl August, and the remarkable men he assembled round him, no real public for Art could be found there. Some of the courtiers played more or less with Art, some had real feeling for it; but the majority set decided faces against all the beaux esprits. When the Duchess Amalia travelled with Merck in 1778, Weimar was loud in anticipatory grumblings: She will doubtless bring back some bel esprit picked up en route!' was the common cry. And really when one comes to consider the habits of these beaux esprits, and their way of making life' genial' (as a future chapter will reveal), impartiality confesses that this imperfect sympathy on the part of the Vons was not without its reason. 6 Not without profound significance is this fact that in Weimar the poet found a Circle, but no Public. To welcome his productions there were friends and admirers; there was no Nation. Germany had no public; nor has it to this day. It was, and is, a collection of cities, not a Nation. To appreciate by contrast the full significance of such a condition, we must look at Greece and Rome. There the history of Art tells the same story as is everywhere told by the history of human effort. It tells us that to reach the height of perfection there must be the cooperation of the Nation with individual Genius. Thus it is necessary for the development of science that science should cease to be the speculation of a few, and become the minister of the many; from the constant pressure of unsatisfied wants science receives its energetic stimulus and its highest reward. In Art the same law holds. In Athens the whole Nation co-operated with the Artists, and this is one cause why Athenian Art rose into unsurpassed splendor. Art was not the occupation of a few, ministering to the luxury of a few. It was the luxury of all. Its triumphs were not hidden in galleries and museums; they blazed in the noonday sun, they were admired and criticized by the whole people, and, as Aristotle expressly says, every free citizen was from youth upwards a critic of Art. Sophocles wrote for all Athens, and by all Athens was applauded. The theatre was open to all free citizens. Phidias and Praxiteles, Scopas and Myron, wrought their marvels in brass and marble as expressions of a national faith, and as delights of a national mind. Temples and market-places, public groves and public walks, were the galleries wherein these sculptors placed their works. The public treasury was liberal in its rewards, and the rivalry of private munificence was not displayed to secure works for private galleries, but to enrich the public possessions. The citizens of Gnidos chose to continue the payment of an onerous tribute rather than suffer their statue of Venus to quit their city. And when some murmurs rose against the expense which Pericles was incurring in the building of the Parthenon, he silenced those murmurs by the threat of furnishing the money from his private purse and then placing his name on the majestic work. Stahr, who has eloquently exhibited the effects of such national co-operation in Art, compares the similar influence of publicity during the Middle Ages, when the great painters and sculptors placed their works in cathedrals, open all day long, in council-houses and market-places, whither the people thronged, with the fact that in our day Art finds refuge in the galleries of private persons, or in museums closed on Sundays and holidays.* *See his Torso, pp. 147-151. Nor is this all. The effect of Art upon the Nation is visible in the striking fact that in Greece and Rome the truly great men were crowned by the public, not ignored in favor of one who pandered to the fashion and the tastes of a Few, or who flattered the first impressions of the Many. It was young Phidias whom the Athenians chose to carve the statue of Pallas Athene and to build the Parthenon. Suppose Phidias had been an Englishman, would he have been selected by government to give the nation a statue of Wellington or to build the Houses of Parliament ? The names most reverenced by contemporaries in Greece and in Italy are the names which posterity has declared to be the highest. Necessarily so. The verdict of the public, when that public includes the whole intelligence of the nation, must be the correct verdict in Art. That Goethe felt the necesity of a Nation to co-operate with the Artist is clearly seen in many passages; the following from Tasso may suffice: In a contracted sphere a noble man On him his country and the world must work. Lulls him delusively with flattering dreams. CHAPTER II. THE NOTABILITIES OF WEIMAR. The Dowager Duchess Amalia - Mlle. Göchhausen — Wieland Einsiedel Corona Schröter Bertuch - Musæus - Seckendorf- The Duchess Luise Karl August-Gräfin Werther Frau von Stein - Knebel-Herder. HAVING endeavored to reconstruct some image of Weimar and its people, we may now descend from generals to particulars, and sketch rapidly the principal figures which will move across that scene during the first Goethe's residence. years of The Dowager Duchess Amalia is a very interesting figure. She had the Brunswick blood, with its capriciousness, love of pleasure and frivolity; but she had also a mind well cultivated, not poorly gifted, and ready in appreciating men of talent. Although a niece of Frederick the Great, she did not follow the princely fashion of the day, and turn her eyes away from German Literature to fix them only upon France. She chose Wieland as the tutor of her son, and made him her own dear friend. Schiller, a rash judge of persons, and not very keen in his perception of woman's character, wrote to Körner, after his first interview with the Duchess: She has made no conquest of me. I cannot like her physiognomy. Her intellect is extremely limited, nothing interests her but what is based on the sensuous: hence the taste she has, or affects to have, for music, painting, and the rest. She is a composer herself, and has set Goethe's Erwin und Elmire to music. She speaks little; but has, at any rate, the merit of throwing aside all the stiffness of ceremony.' Schiller's verdict cannot be accepted by any one who reflects, that, besides her appreciation of men of talent, who found delight in her society, she learned Greek from Wieland, read Aristophanes and translated Propertius, was a musical composer, a tolerable judge of art, discussed politics with the Abbé Raynal, and Greek and Italian Literature with Villoison; that, moreover, with all her multifarious reading and enjoyments, she contrived to superintend the education of her sons, and manage her kingdom with unusual success. This is not to be done by an 'extremely limited intellect.' The sensuous basis' alluded to by Schiller was certainly there. One sees it in her portraits. One sees it also in the glimpses of her joyous, pleasure-loving existence. Biographers and eulogists omit such details; for in general the biographical mind moves only through periods of rhetoric, which may be applied with equal felicity to every prince or princess of whom it is the cue to speak. But it is by such details that the image of the Duchess can alone be made a living one. Here, for example, is a sketch of her, given by an anonymous traveller.* She is small in stature, good-looking, with a very spirituelle phyiognomy; she has the Brunswick nose, lovely hands and feet, a light yet princely gait, speaks well but rapidly, and has something amiable and fascinating in her nature. . . This evening there was a Redoute, tickets one gulden (two francs) each. The Court arrived *Quoted from Bernouilli by Vehse: Geschichte der Deutschen Höfe, vol. xxviii. p. 60. |