" "Wieland has turned the tables on
me," was Goethe's own admission; "Ich bin eben prostituiert."[142]
[Footnote 142: Max Morris, _op. cit._ iv. 81.]
These successive _jeux d'esprit_ were merely the crackling fireworks
of exuberant youth, and were regarded as such by their author himself.
At the very time he was writing them, he was planning and sketching
works, the scope of which reveals the true bent of his genius, and of
the ideals that were preoccupying him. "My ideals," he wrote to
Kestner (September 15th, 1773), "grow daily in beauty and grandeur";
and when he penned these words he was engaged on a production which,
though it remained a mere fragment, has justly been regarded as one of
the most striking manifestations of his powers. The subject, the myth
of Prometheus, he tells us, attracted him as one in which he could
embody his own deepest experience and the conclusions regarding the
individual life of man to which that experience had led him. In the
crises of his past life, he tells us, he had found that no aid had
been forthcoming either from man or any supernal power. "We must tread
the wine-press alone." Only in one source had he discovered a
stay and stimulus, which brought him the sense of individual
self-subsistence--in the exercise of such creative talent as nature
had bestowed upon him.
Pages:
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222