Autobiography: Truth and Fiction Relating to My Life. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
boy, who was compelled to put up with frequent repetitions of the whole matter, was not a little staggered. God, the Creator and Preserver of heaven and earth, whom the explanation of the first article of the creed declared so wise and benignant, having given both the just and the unjust a prey to the same destruction, had not manifested himself by any means in a fatherly character. In vain the young mind strove to resist these impressions. It was the more impossible, as the wise and scripture-learned could not themselves agree as to the light in which such a phenomenon should be regarded.
The next summer gave a closer opportunity of knowing directly that angry God, of whom the Old Testament records so much. A sudden hail-storm, accompanied by thunder and lightning, violently broke the new panes at the back of our house, which looked towards the west, damaged the new furniture, destroyed some valuable books and other things of worth, and was the more terrible to the children, as the whole household, quite beside themselves, dragged them into a dark passage, where, on their knees, with frightful groans and cries, they thought to conciliate the wrathful Deity. Meanwhile, my father, who was the only one self- possessed, forced open and unhinged the window-frames, by which we saved much glass, but made a broader inlet for the rain that followed the hail; so that, after we were finally quieted, we found ourselves in the rooms and on the stairs completely surrounded by floods and streams of water.
These events, startling as they were on the whole, did not greatly interrupt the course of instruction which my father himself had undertaken to give us children. He had passed his youth in the Coburg Gymnasium, which stood as one of the first among German educational institutions. He had there laid a good foundation in languages, and other matters reckoned part of a learned education, had subsequently applied himself to jurisprudence at Leipzig, and had at last taken his degree at Giessen. His dissertation, "Electa de aditione Hereditatis," which had been earnestly and carefully written, is still cited by jurists with approval.
It is a pious wish of all fathers to see what they have themselves failed to attain realized in their sons, as if in this way they could live their lives over again, and at last make a proper use of their early experience. Conscious of his acquirements, with the certainty of faithful perseverance, and distrusting the teachers of the day, my father undertook to instruct his own children, allowing them to take particular lessons from particular masters only so far as seemed absolutely necessary. A pedagogical /dilettantism/ was already beginning to show itself everywhere. The pedantry and heaviness of the masters appointed in the public schools had probably given rise to this evil. Something better was sought for, but it was forgotten how defective all instruction must be which is not given by persons who are teachers by profession.
My father had prospered in his own career tolerably according to his wishes: I was to follow the same course, only more easily, and much farther. He prized my natural endowments the more, because he was himself wanting in them; for he had acquired every thing only by means of unspeakable diligence, pertinacity, and repetition. He often assured me, early and late, both in jest and earnest, that with my talents he would have deported himself very differently, and would not have turned them to such small account.
By means of a ready apprehension, practice, and a good memory, I very soon outgrew the instructions which my father and the other teachers were able to give, without being thoroughly grounded in any thing. Grammar displeased me, because I regarded it as a mere arbitrary law: the rules seemed ridiculous, inasmuch as they were invalidated by so many exceptions, which had all to be learned by themselves. And if the first Latin work had not been in rhyme, I should have got on but badly in that; but, as it was, I hummed and sang it to myself readily enough. In the same way we had a geography in memory-verses, in which the most wretched doggerel best served to fix the recollection of that which was to be retained; e.g., —
"Upper-Yssel has many a fen, Which makes it hateful to all men."
The forms and inflections of language I caught with ease; and I also quickly unravelled what lay in the conception of a thing. In rhetoric, composition, and such matters, no one excelled me; although I was often put back for faults of grammar. Yet these were the attempts that gave my father particular pleasure, and for which he rewarded me with many presents of money, considerable for such a lad.
My father taught my sister Italian in the same room in which I had to commit Cellarius to memory. As I was soon ready with my task, and was yet obliged to sit quiet, I listened with my book before me, and very readily caught the Italian, which struck me as an agreeable softening of Latin.
Other precocities, with respect to memory and the power to combine, I possessed in common with those children who thus acquire an early reputation. For that reason, my father could scarcely wait for me to go to college. He very soon declared that I must study jurisprudence in Leipzig, for which he retained a strong predilection; and I was afterwards to visit some other university and take my degree. As for this second one he was indifferent as to which I might choose, except that he had for some reason or other a disinclination to Göttingen, to my disappointment, since it was precisely there that I had placed such confidence and high hopes.
He told me further, that I was to go to Wetzlar and Ratisbon, as well as to Vienna, and thence towards Italy; although he repeatedly mentioned that Paris should first be seen, because after coming out of Italy nothing else could be pleasing.
These tales of my future youthful travels, often as they were repeated, I listened to eagerly, the more so as they always led to accounts of Italy, and at last to a description of Naples. His otherwise serious and dry manner seemed on these occasions to relax and quicken, and thus a passionate wish awoke in us children to participate in the paradise he described.
Private lessons, which now gradually multiplied, were shared with the children of the neighbors. This learning in common did not advance me: the teachers followed their routine; and the rudeness, sometimes the ill nature, of my companions, interrupted the brief hours of study with tumult, vexation, and disturbance. Chrestomathies, by which learning is made pleasant and varied, had not yet reached us. Cornelius Nepos, so dry to young people; the New Testament, which was much too easy, and which by preaching and religious instructions had been rendered even common-place; Cellarius and Pasor, – could impart no kind of interest: on the other hand, a certain rage for rhyme and versification, a consequence of reading the prevalent German poets, took complete possession of us. Me it had seized much earlier, as I had found it agreeable to pass from the rhetorical to the poetical treatment of subjects.
We boys held a Sunday assembly where each of us was to produce original verses. And here I was struck by something strange, which long caused me uneasiness. My poems, whatever they might be, always seemed to me the best. But I soon remarked that my competitors, who brought forth very lame affairs, were in the same condition, and thought no less of themselves. Nay, what appeared yet more suspicious, a good lad (though in such matters altogether unskilful), whom I liked in other respects, but who had his rhymes made by his tutor, not only regarded these as the best, but was thoroughly persuaded they were his own, as he always maintained in our confidential intercourse. Now, as this illusion and error was obvious to me, the question one day forced itself upon me, whether I myself might not be in the same state, whether those poems were not really better than mine, and whether I might not justly appear to those boys as mad as they to me? This disturbed me much and long, for it was altogether impossible for me to find any external criterion of the truth: I even ceased from producing, until at length I was quieted by my own light temperament, and the feeling of my own powers, and lastly by a trial of skill, – started on the spur of the moment by our teachers and parents, who had noted our sport, – in which I came off well, and won general praise.
No libraries for children had at that time been established. The old had themselves still childish notions, and found it convenient to impart their own education to their successors. Except the "Orbis Pictus" of Amos Comenius, no book of the sort fell into our hands; but the large folio Bible, with copperplates by Merian, was diligently gone over leaf by leaf; Gottfried's "Chronicles," with plates by the same master, taught us the most notable events of universal history; the "Acerra Philologica" added thereto all sorts of fables, mythologies, and wonders; and, as I soon became familiar with Ovid's "Metamorphoses," the first books of which in particular I studied carefully, my young brain was rapidly furnished with a mass of images and events, of significant and wonderful shapes and occurrences; and