Jena 1800 by Peter Neumann

Author:Peter Neumann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Goethe would get far more work done if he were not constantly besieged by requests. In Jena, as elsewhere, everyone was always seeking his advice about one matter or another. Writers and scholars revolved around him like satellites, as if he were their fixed star, their sun, until he grew dizzy from the unwanted attention. The situation became even more dire when a whole swarm of comets closed in on him, as had happened the previous month. He could no longer dodge that whole group, particularly Moses Mendelssohn’s daughter, who had evidently also arrived in Jena a few weeks earlier. In his diary he opted not to mention the encounter with Dorothea: “Went for a walk around noon. The weather was again quite lovely.”

And now he was being asked to judge whether two texts that were the subject of heated discussions in the circle—a speech by Novalis about the crumbled unity of Europe and the future of Christianity, and a lyrical parody of that speech by Schelling—ought to find publication in the Athenaeum, possibly even side by side. That, in any case, was what Wilhelm’s brother proposed, since, Fritz had argued, controversy was a component of thinking and conflict and the very element that fueled all of life. Dorothea Veit seemed firmly opposed to running the pieces together. Wilhelm did not want to include the poem without adding explanatory notes, but Schelling took strong exception to this option. Tieck stayed out of the conflict; he tended to stand apart from the rest of the group and form his own judgments.

Because they were unable to reach consensus, he, Goethe, would have to adjudicate the matter. In cases of serious disagreement, he was invariably asked to mediate. He simply could not bear to listen to their ongoing choruses of “Long live Goethe.”

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