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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The study of the reception and the rejection of Goethe in America has attracted many investigators and has yielded a wealth of factual and significant material—the gist of which has recently been set forth in comprehensive perspective by Camillo von Klenze. However, the well has not been exhausted. So far the history of what may be called the integration of Goethean literature and thought in America has been told largely in terms of individual leadership. To be sure, in the first half of the nineteenth century, perhaps up to the appearance of Taylor's Faust (1870), the attitude of a few score outstanding personages tells the better part of the story of Goethe in America. But as time advances the leadership of individuals becomes more and more involved in a complexity of forces, an expansion of fields, and a ramification and crossing of lines of influence and tradition. Toward the close of the century the material—in the American popular magazines, for instance—presents such endlessly involved cross-considerations and such masses of detail that it would seem as if nothing short of the much overstrained statistical method could lead to any desirable perspicuity.
1 Klenze, Camillo von, “Das amerikanische Goethebild,” Mitteilungen, Deutsche Akademie (München, 1933).
2 There is for example in American journalism a vast body of scattered material touching Goethe still awaiting a methodical survey and categorization.
3 In the first quarter of the century there are the Staël-influenced, Göttingen-trained scholars, Ticknor, Everett, and Bancroft, over against the hostile older Unitarians and Congregationalists such as William Ware and Andrews Norton; then there appear the progressively appreciative Transcendentalists, Emerson, Longfellow, and Margaret Fuller and the younger Unitarians and Concord “philosophers,” Clarke, Parker, Hedge, Sanborn, and associates. In Haertel's list (Haertel, M. H., German Literature in American Magazines 1846–1880, Univ. Wisconsin, Bul. No. 263, 1908) of promulgators of German literature and of Goethean admirers and critics, the New England group is still conspicuously prominent. There are a number of Unitarian pastors and college presidents of the caliber of Peabody of Harvard and Carter of Williams College, but to the Peabodys, the Carters, the Lowells, and the Algers, come the Searses, the Evanses, the Rosengartens, and the Boyesens from Ireland, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Norway, adding to the momentum of changing conceptions proceeding from the more or less traditionally homogeneous New England the impact of heterogeneous forces.
4 Grueningen, John Paul von, Goethe in American Periodicals from 1860 to 1900. Ph.D. Thesis, Wisconsin, 1931, to be published. The year 1860, a somewhat arbitrarily chosen terminus a quo, was suggested by the circumstance of its having served other investigators as a period-limiting date, for example: Simmons, Lucretia Van Tuyl, Goethe's Lyric Poems in English Translation Prior to 1860, Univ. Wisconsin, Studies in Lang. and Lit. (1919); Hinz, Stella M., Goethe's Lyric Poems in English Translation after 1860, Univ. Wisconsin, Studies in Lang. and Lit. (1928); Nicolai, Martha, German Literature in British Magazines 1836–1860, in preparation. The year 1899 marking the sesqui-centennial anniversary of the birth of the poet and turn of the century seemed to be a convenient if not an organic terminating point of a period sufficiently long to furnish some perspective.
5 In every decade there are magazines that cease publication while others come into being; many are rather short-lived. Thus there are in issuance of the periodicals considered here (not counting a dozen academic journals that indeed touch our subject) the following number of sets: in 1860, 17 sets; in 1870, 32 sets; in 1880, 29 sets; in 1890, 38 sets; in 1900, 41 sets. Only six appear continuously throughout our period. They are: the Atlantic Monthly, the Eclectic Magazine, Harper's (Magazine and Weekly), the Living Age, and the North American Review.
6 The Nation has 330 references, 56 in the first decade of its existence, 1865–75, and 130 in the eighties; the Atlantic has 167, there are 33 in the sixties and 45 in the eighties; the Literary World, founded in 1872, has 29 in the eight years before 1880 and 99 in the next decade; and the Critic, founded in 1881, has 273 before the close of the century. The average number of references per year volume for the entire period and for all the volumes actually having references is less than three.
7 The Living Age has 237 in 40 years; Literature, 16 in three years, 1897–99; the Review of Reviews, 80 in nine years, 1891–99; and the Eclectic, 186 in 40 years.
8 Morgan, B. Q., A Bibliography of German Literature in English Translation, Univ. Wisconsin (1922), shows that the English translations of Goethe number twenty in the decade ending at 1800, rising almost steadily in number to 148 in the decade 1880–90, followed by a drop to 66 in the nineties. In the last three decades there appear 21 editions of Taylor's Faust; in 1889 Hayward's prose translation had reached its eleventh, Martin's and Swanwick's each their ninth, and Brooks' its fifteenth edition, to mention only some of the most important ones. Anster's “distorted” translation that in five decades, after 1835, had seen only four new editions, burst forth in 12 new editions in the decade ending 1885. Among the biographies reviewed are editions of Lewes, Calvert, Bernays, Grimm, Boyesen, Düntzer, Prem, Heinemann, Bielschowsky, and Ehrlich.
9 These figures are based on a normalized rather than a mechanical count to obviate any misleading accretions because of mere formal repetitions. Although they may be subject to some revision, owing to occasional difficulties in interpreting a “unit” reference, the ratio is probably essentially correct. Articles in the technically scholarly journals, to be interpreted as pure isolated contributions addressed to specialists, are omitted in this connection regardless of their intrinsic value, on the ground that they cannot be considered as any reflex or component of popular American journalism.
10 Loc. cit., p. 201.
11 Sanborn, F. B., The Life and Genius of Goethe (Boston, 1886).
12 A reviewer in Harper's, lxxiii, 153, says characteristically: “we have liked Mrs. Howe (Julia Ward, lecturing on Goethe's Women) almost the best … she does not blink the fact that whatever Goethe's ideal women were, his treatment of real women was not ideal.” Compare also Catholic World, xliii, 128; American, xi, 300; Chautauquan, vi, 546; and Literary News, vii, 102.
13 The Literary World, xvii, (1886), 129, finds fault with the fanatical eulogizing of Goethe in his own land, notes a distressing lack of real criticism in Sanborn's volume, and cites Matthew Arnold to the effect that the letters, journals, and conversations reveal the truly significant Goethe. The Critic, viii (1886), 115, calls the lectures superficial, explaining that Goethe's genius lies in the breadth of his interests and culture and in the fact that he touches human nature at all points.
14 The Catholic World, that in 1883 (xxxvi, 770), had accused Goethe of leading his countrymen “and multitudes of mankind … to befoul whatever was decent among men and profane whatever was sacred before God” in a serial article on the study of modern religion, by William Berry, in 1889, not only makes a serious and creditable if dissenting approach to Goethean religious concepts, but concludes with the statement that there is represented in Goethe's concept of the Religion of Sorrow a height from which mankind will never descend (l, 72–80). In the Andover Review, xv (1891), 583 ff., Hamilton Wright Mabie understandingly estimates the greatness of Goethe, and Julia H. Gulliver (xvi, 133), in a thirteen-page generally appreciative treatise on the value of Goethe's thought of God, pleads for an ear to his “great and noble utterances” despite any blemishes of his character.
15 During the presentation by Irving and Terry of Will's version at the Lyceum Theater, London booksellers are reported to have sold 100,000 copies of Faust (Public Opinion, i [1886], 339). The production was subsequently brought to Broadway. For the history of the Bayle-Bernard, and Haas versions with Lewis Morrison as Mephistopheles who “delighted” packed houses for twenty seasons, within a circuit of 5000 miles including large cities and small towns, see Raschen, J. F. L., “Lewis Morrison's Production of Goethe's Faust,” Germanic Review, iv (1929), 107.
16 Thus W. T. Harris, purposeful Goethe student and editor of the J. Spec. Philos., and later U. S. Commissioner of Education, belongs indeed to St. Louis, to New England, and to the nation; James MacAlister, Scotch immigrant, and enthusiastic Goethe lecturer,—is to be identified with the Wisconsin normal school system, the school superintendencies of Milwaukee and Philadelphia, and the Drexel institute; Josiah Royce, forceful champion of Goethean idealism is of California and of Harvard; Calvin Thomas of Michigan contributes to the rather elementary Chautauquan, to the semi-scholarly Nation, to the Monistic Open Court, and to other journals; Bayard Taylor, of South-German and Quaker descent is to be variously classified, as journalist, as traveler, as diplomat, as poet of note, and as foremost translator of Faust.
17 Julian Hawthorne names Goethe among the giants that had tempered his father. Century, x (1886), 83.
18 Compare v. Klenze, loc. cit., p. 203.
19 John Burroughs sees in the “modern movement” a movement of individualism “which Goethe did more to forward than any other man,” Century Mag., xiv (1888), 185.