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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In one of those bursts of candor, for which he was famous, Merck once told the German poet: “Was du lebst, ist beßer, als was du schreibst. ”Late in life Goethe was to confirm this half-truth when he remarked to the faithful Eckermann: “Ich habe in meiner Poesie nie affektiert. Was ich nicht erlebte und was mir nicht auf die Nägel brannte und zu schaffen machte, habe ich auch nicht gedichtet und ausgesprochen. Liebesgedichte habe ich nur gemacht, wenn ich liebte. ”The very naturalism—in the Goethean sense—which, during the Strassburg period, he and his youthful friends proclaimed, partly out of the fervor of their own revolutionary souls and partly out of enthusiasm for Rousseau's Pygmalion (Dickt, u. Wahr., iii, 51) is anchored in this conviction:
With the exception of Rousseau, Diderot, and of course Voltaire, what appeal had French literature (bejahrt und vornehm) for them to whom life was a thing to be experienced and not remembered?
1 It is not necessary to enter into the Lenz-Goethe controversy; on this see Goedecke, Grundriss, iv, 91 ff. I assume that Edward Schröder, Nachrichten der K. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, philol.-histor. Klasse, 1905, has established the Goethean authorship of our poem. But it may be useful to repeat here the strophic form used by Hagedorn:
2 My copy of the standard Kolsen edition is defective for this poem. On Giraut, see further Jeanroy, Poésie lyrique des troubadours, ii, 51 ff. On the sonnet by Ronsard see also Morris Bishop, Ronsard, p. 117.
3 Later on Goethe gives evidence of his acquaintance with the German Minnesang, which of course included the Tagelied. Apropos of the appearance in 1806 of Des Knabens Wunderhorn it did not escape him (see his review, Jubiläums-Ausgabe, xxxvi, 247 ff.) that No. 386, Schwere Wacht, of the Wunderharn is akin to the “sangreiche Minnesängerwesen. ”See the 1874 ed. which reproduces (i, 554) the 1549 Nürnberg print of one of the versions, preserved in better form in a sixteenth century MS of the Darmstadt Library. For us the interesting stanza of the same is the following :
Archer Taylor, who has been kind enough to read my article in manuscript and offer various valuable suggestions, includes a bibliography on the survival of the aube as the Tagelied in his Literary History of Meistergesang (New York, 1937), p. 121, note 92.
4 “Die französische Sprache war mir von Jugend auf lieb; ich hatte sie in einem bewegterem Leben, und ein bewegteres Leben durch sie kennen gelernt… . Nun wünschte ich mich derselben mit größerer Leichtigkeit zu bedienen, und zog deswegen Straßburg zum abermaligen akademischen Aufenthalt andern hohen Schulen vor; aber leider sollte ich dort gerade das umgekehrte von meinen Hoffnungen erfahren und von dieser Sprache, diesen Sitten eher ab-als ihnen zugewendet werden.”
5 As Gustav Arlt points out to me. For those who did not know Meyer I add here George Moore's (Salve, Carra edition, p. 189) sketch of him: “He was prompting Hyde, who was not sure of his words, when I came into the room, and my surprise was great for it is not usual to meet the Irish language in a light brown overcoat and a large, soft, brown hat; beards are uncommon among Gaelic speakers, and long, flowing moustaches unknown. A Gaelic Leaguer's eyes are not clear and quiet, and he does not speak with a smooth even voice; his mind is not a comfortable mind; and by these contraries, in defiance of Aristotle, I am describing Kuno Meyer, the great scholar artist, the pleasure of whose life has been to disinter the literature of the ancient Celt, and to translate it so faithfully that when we read we seem to see those early times as in a mirror.”