Rousseau and Revolution by Durant Will & Durant Ariel

Author:Durant, Will & Durant, Ariel [Durant, Ariel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2011-06-03T20:00:00+00:00

On June 9, 1772, at a country dance, Goethe met Kestner’s betrothed, Charlotte Buff. The next day he visited her, and found a new charm in womanhood. “Lotte,” then twenty, was the eldest sister in a family of eleven. The mother was dead, the father was busy earning a living; Lotte served as mother to the brood. She not only had the bright gaiety of a healthy girl, she had also the attractiveness of a young woman who, simply but neatly dressed, performed the duties of her place with competence, affection, and good cheer. Goethe soon fell in love with her, for he could not remain long without some feminine image warming his imagination. Kestner saw the situation, but, sure of his possession, showed an amiable tolerance. Goethe allowed himself almost the privileges of a rival wooer, but Lotte always checked him, and reminded him that she was engaged. Finally he asked her to choose between them; she did, and Goethe, his pride only momentarily shaken, left Wetzlar the next day (September 11). Kestner remained his loyal friend till death.

Before returning to Frankfurt Goethe stopped at Ehrenbreitstein on the Rhine, the home of Georg and Sophie von La Roche. Sophie had two daughters, “of whom the eldest,” Maximiliane, “soon particularly attracted me.... It is a very pleasant sensation when a new passion begins to stir in us before the old one is quite extinct. Thus, when the sun is setting, one likes to see the moon rise on the opposite side.”41 Maximiliane, however, married Peter Brentano, and bore a lively daughter Bettina, who fell in love with Goethe thirty-five years later. Goethe resigned himself to Frankfurt and law. Not quite, for at times he thought of suicide.

Among a considerable collection of weapons I possessed a handsome, well-polished dagger. This I laid every night by my bed, and before extinguishing the candle I tried whether I could succeed in plunging the sharp point a couple of inches deep into my heart. Since I could never succeed in this, I at last laughed myself out of the notion, threw off all hypochondriacal fancies, and resolved to live.

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