[Footnote 173: By Felix Mendelssohn.]
[Footnote 174: See above, p. 65.]
Yet, as originally conceived, _Der Ewige Jude_ was apparently to have
been worked out along other lines. What this original conception was,
Goethe tells in some detail in his Autobiography; and, as it is there
expounded, we see the scope of a poem which, if the power apparent in
the existing fragments had gone to the making of it, would have taken
its place with _Faust_ among the great imaginative works of human
genius. The theme of the poem was to be the Wandering Jew, with whose
legend Goethe was familiar from chap-books he had read in childhood.
The poem was to open with an account of the circumstances in which the
curse of Cain was incurred by Ahasuerus, the name assigned in the
legend to the Wandering Jew. Ahasuerus was to be represented as a
shoemaker of the type of Hans Sachs--a kind of Jewish Socrates who
freely plied his wit in putting searching questions to the casual
passers-by. Recognised as an original, persons of all ranks and
opinions, even the Sadducees and Pharisees, would stop by the way and
engage in talk with him. He was to be specially interested in Jesus,
with whom he was to hold frequent conversations, but whose idealism
his matter-of-fact nature was incapable of understanding.
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