Of far higher moment
for the world, however, was the matter contained in the other of these
manuscripts. Therein were set down the original portions of a poem
which was eventually to fructify into one of the great imaginative
products of all time--the drama of _Faust_.
Beyond all other of Goethe's productions previous to his settling in
Weimar, these original scenes of _Faust_ bring before us his deepest
and truest self. In all the other longer works of that period, in
_Goetz_, in _Werther_, in _Clavigo_, and the rest, one side--the
emotional side--of his nature had been predominantly represented; but
in what he wrote of _Faust_ we have all his mind and heart as he had
them from nature, and as they had been schooled by time. It is one of
the fortunate incidents in literary history that we now possess these
fragments in which the genius of Goethe expressed itself with an
intensity of imaginative force which he never again exemplified in the
same degree. The original text was unknown till 1887, when Erich
Schmidt found it in the possession of a grandnephew of a lady of the
Court of Weimar,[240] who had copied it from the manuscript received
by her from Goethe.
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