]
But if _Clavigo_ is not to be ranked among the greater works of
Goethe, as a biographical document it is even more important than
_Werther_. In the Weislingen of _Goetz_ he had drawn a portrait of
himself, and in _Clavigo_ he has drawn a similar portrait at fuller
length. "I have been working at a tragedy, _Clavigo_," he wrote to a
correspondent, "a modern anecdote dramatised with all possible
simplicity and sincerity; my hero, an irresolute, half-great,
half-little man, the pendant to Weislingen in _Goetz_ or rather
Weislingen himself, developed into a leading character. In it," he
adds, "there are scenes which I could only indicate in _Goetz_ for fear
of weakening the main interest." In _Clavigo_ we have at once a fuller
revelation of himself and of his own personal experience. He is here,
in a manner, holding a dialogue with himself regarding his own
character and his own past life. In the first Scene of the first Act
we must recognise a vivid presentment of the state of Goethe's own
feelings at the crisis when he abandoned Friederike. In such a passage
as the following Carlos only expresses what must then have passed
through Goethe's own mind: "And to marry! to marry just when life
ought to come into its first full swing; to settle down to humdrum
domestic life; to limit one's being, when one has not yet done with
half of one's roving; has not completed half of one's conquests!" Out
of Goethe's own heart, also, must have come these words of Clavigo:
"She [Marie] has vanished, clean vanished from my heart!.
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