Goethe`s Development of the Wanderer Theme from 1771 to 1789 By Julian Scutts A discussion of "Der Wandrer," "Wandrers Sturmlied"

and the "Rmische Elegien"A FO CUS ON "THE WANDERER" IN GOETHE'S POETRY with Special Reference to "Der Wandrer, " "Wandrer's Sturmlied" and the Rmische Elegien ("Roman Elegies") The section "Wandrers Sturmlied" was originally a term paper in a tutorial on Go ethe's poetry held by the noted scholar, translator and poet Dr. Christopher Mi ddleton at the University of Texas in Austin. My interest in the motif of the Wa nderer in Goethe's poetry led to my composing a study of considerable length tha t is to be found in the PDF DOWNLOAD section of this website.

Introduction Professor Willoughby, when commenting on the nature of the relationship between "Der Wandrer" and "Wandrers Sturmlied" made this observation: "Both belong to th e early period in Goethe's literary career between his student years in Leipzig and his move to Weimar. In this period Goethe first expressed basic concerns abo ut the nature of the poet and the poetic imagination in poems associated by titl e or otherwise with the word 'Wanderer.'" According to Professor Willoughby Goet he achieved a balance between the demands of self-expression and objectivity in giving the figure of the Wanderer a dramatic voice in the dialogue between the s o-named speaker and a young peasant woman in "Der Wandrer." During the same peri od of experimentation Goethe revealed a more personal and confessional aspect of "the Wanderer" in "Wandrers Sturmlied," a poem which Goethe long concealed from public attention, ostensibly because it appeared to Goethe to be little more th an a poetic rambling, in fact "half-nonsense." The true reasons for Goethe's reticence lie in the sensitive nature of the issue s raised by the word "Wanderer" and its implications. To consider this is to rec ognise that the word "Wanderer" is no mere conventional label or means of defini ng a persona. The poetic work entitled Rmische Elegien ('Roman Elegies') was composed when Goet he concluded his two periods of residence in Italy from 1786 to 1789. Their conn ection with the "Der Wandrer" and "Wandrers Nachtlied" lies in the contrast betw een the mentality of the restless searcher striving for self-fulfilment presente d in both early poems and that of the the mature observer and connoisseur of Rom e's cultural and artistic heritage. "Der Wandrer" anticipates this development. A passage belonging to the Rmische Elegien Goethe - in what seems to be an allusi on to "Wandrers Sturmlied" - recalls those earlier days when he braved the eleme nts during wandering excursions in his northern homeland. A: "DER WANDRER" There follow excerpts from William Taylor of Norwich's translation of "Der Wandr er," which evidently exerted a considerable influence on William Wordsworth's de velopment (I have place certain lines in bold letter for a reason that will beco me clear later): THE WANDERER Wanderer: God bless you, woman, and the sucking child Upon your bosom! Here I'll sit awhile Against the rock, and at the elm-tree's Foot Lay down the burden that has wearied me.

Woman What business brings you up these sandy paths During the heat of day ? Have you brought toys, Or other ware, from town to sell i'th'country ? You seem to smile, good stranger, at my question. Wanderer I bring no city-wares about for sale. The evening's very sultry. I'm athirst. Show me, good woman, where you draw your water. Woman Here, up these steps of rock, athwart thc thicket. Do you go first: you'll soon be at the hut That I inhabit. We've a spring hard by it. Wanderer Traces of man's arranging hand are these! Thine--'twas not liberal Nature, to unite These blocks of marble thus--' 30. Woman Ere long my husband will return from labor, 112 Stay and partake with us our evening loaf. Wanderer 'Tis here you dwell ? Woman Yes, in these very walls. My father built our cottage up himself, Of tiles and stones he found among the ruins; Here we all dwelt. He gave me to a ploughman, And died within our arms. Hope of my life, My darling, see how playful 'tis; he smiles. Wanderer All bounteous Nature, ever teeming mother, Thou hast created all unto enjoyment; Like a good furnish'd all thy children With one inheritance--a hut a home. High on the architrave the swallow builds, Unconscious of the beauties she beclays; The golden bud with webs the grub surrounds, To form a winter dwelling for her offspring: And thou, O Man, between antiquity's Sublimest remnants patchest up a cot-Art happy among tombs. Farewell, kind woman Woman You will not stay ? Wanderer God bless you and your child ! Woman

Good journey to you. Wanderer Whither leads the road Across yon mountain ? Woman That's the way to Cuma. Wanderer How far may't be ? Woman About three miles. Farewell ! Wanderer Nature, be thou conductress of my way, Guide the unusual path that I have chosen Among the hallow'd graves of mighty dead, And mouldering monuments of ages gone; Then to a home direct thy wanderer's step, < so To some asylum, from the north wind safe, And with a platane grove to shade the noon, Where, when his evening steps the hut revisit, A wife like this may clasp him in her arms, The nursling smiling at her happy breast.

"Der Wandrer," a poetic dialogue that originally belonged to a collection of poe ms belonging to te genre of Knstlergedicht (Poetry on the Theme of Artists), desc ribes an encounter between a young peasant woman and a wandering traveller engag ed in a walking tour through mountainous terrain near the town of Cuma in southe rn Italy. The poem uncannily anticipates Goethe's Italian travels, which then la y more than ten years in the future. Towards the end of his life Goethe cited "Der Wandrer" as a poem demonstrating t hat phenomenon of allowing poets an insight at times runs ahead of real events. 1 In other respect, the poem also heralds motifs that would assume great signifi cance in Goethe's poetry, notably one to which Professor Willoughby has drawn at tention - the encounter of a wanderer with a young woman who epitomises humble l ife and domestic virtues. The image of a young woman accompanied by a child in " Der Wandrer", as elsewhere, evokes strong religious connotations, pre-eminent am ong them that of the Madonna and Child. In "Der Wandrer" this topos merges with biblical images associated with stories telling of travellers' encounters with g irls or young woman drawing water from a well. The traveller in "Der Wandrer" im plicitly represents the poet as one in whom divine power resides. In requesting the young woman to give him a drink of water water the traveller recalls events described in the Pentateuch and the Gospels, such as the the well-known occasion s when a servant of Abraham asks Rebecca for a drink of water, and when Jesus ma kes such a request to a Samaritan woman (John 4). This poem anticipates the expl icit associations of the poet with the figure of Christ made later by Goethe him self, Jean Paul, Blake and others. The dialogue between the Wanderer and the you ng woman acquires an almost comic dimension in that it reveals a tension between the Wanderer's transports of the spirit and the young woman's concern with the immediate practicalities of life. As the young woman leads him along the upward path toward a well and her cottage, the Wanderer, stimulated by the sight of anc ient stones that were once part of classical buildings, indulges in a monologue of praise and poetic utterance.

The interpolations of the young woman as she gives directions about the path the y should follow or imparts factual information, serve to keep the Wanderer in to uch with physical reality and counterbalance his proclivities to wander off in h igh self- communion. Taken to the extreme, such contrast might lead to the almos t farcical scenarios depicted in Goethe's Knstlergedichte, in which the artist is held back from full devotion to his vocation by the necessity of contending wit h bawling nfants and a shrewish wife. "Der Wandrer" evinces no crude Irony but r ather a touch of gentle irony illuminating the necessary inter-relationship betw een two planes of reality, those represented by the young woman and the Wanderer respectively. It is also possible to find in the contrasting attitudes and mode s of speech of the young woman and the Wanderer a dichotomy that Schiller would focus on his essay "ber naive und sentimentale Dichtung." The woman is a child of nature living in the present. The traveller seeks to find a means of transcendi ng the barrier between the present and the past, the world he perceives physical ly and the world his mind imaginatively apprehends. The traveller in "Der Wandre r" reveals traits of a certain kind of 18th- century tourist, the would-be Rouss eau or travelling "culture vulture", who imbibed impressions of ancient ruins in Italy and France. If the Wanderer is a poet in his mode of expression, he is al so, like Werther, one endowed with an artist's special perception, if not with t he ability to transpose his vision onto the physical medium of canvas or paper. Der "Wandrer" furnishes an early example of Goethe's frequently applied stratage m of establishing a set of antitheses before showing how their differences and c ontradictions are capable of being resolved. Goethe did not claim to be able to solve the contradictions of life and existence in purely logical terms, but he w as able to accommodate seemingly irreconcilable differences within a world-view based on experience as well as philosophical thought. Goethe was helped in this by a sense of humour (and therefore of perspective), shared perhaps only by Lord Byron among the English Romantics. As L.A. Willoughby and Elizabeth M. Wilkinso n have noted, this sense of humour allowed Goethe to make fun even of his own hi gh-flown aspirations. 2 "Der Wandrer" treats two sets of interlocking antitheses. The restless progress of the traveller is set against the fixedness of the young woman's home and esta blished way of life. The woman, contending with the every day needs of her famil y, lives in the present, while the traveller allows his mind to wander into the distant past. On seeing the remains of an ancient temple, the Wanderer reproache s Nature for having destroyed and deformed great works of art with the words: Schtzest Du so, Natur / Deines Meisters Meisterstck? Dost thou so esteem , O Nature, the masterpiece of thy Master

He is painfully aware of the discrepancy between the ruins he sees and the glory of what they represented in antiquity. For the young woman the ancient remains have direct practical value as building material for her home. Her attitude to t he stones that were once part of a temple poses a stark contrast with the Wander er's aesthetic and imaginative raptures, though in Goethe's poem no criticism of the young woman's utilitarianism is voiced or even implied. In Goldsmith's The Traveller, which Goethe probably held in mind when composing "Der Wandrer", the author censured what he saw as the disrespect that his contem poraries evinced towards ancient monuments. 3 In Goldsmith's poem the travelogue

still retains an element of social satire that typified the famous descriptions of journeys in the heyday of the classical or Augustan period. In Goldsmith's e yes the cannibalisation of ancient monuments for the purpose of building homes f or the poor was a symptom of cultural decline and disrespect for the achievement s of classical antiquity. Goethe, in this poem as elsewhere, does not disparage what is practical and useful as something belonging to a category inferior to th at of art and spirituality. The turning-point of the poem coincides with the juncture at which the Wanderer and the young woman reach the well situated near the latter's cottage. Then, sig nificantly, the child in her arms wakes up. The Wanderer experiences an aestheti c and spiritual awakening which allows him to recognise unity where earlier he h as seen division. The apparent antagonism between the demands of nature and art, between living in the present and the Wanderer's self-immersion in a vision of the past, gives way to the recognition that a universal process is evident both in natural forces and human activity, be this artistic or mundane. In the follow ing lines the wanderer expresses a vision in which past and present merge. Art a nd nature, far from negating each other, express the same vital principle. All n ature's "children" from the caterpillar to the human being are seen to be engage d in the same collective enterprise of constructing, weaving, and home-building. We note one of the first appearances of the Wanderer-Htte duality in Goethe's po etry. Natur, du ewig keimende! Schaffst jeden Genu des Lebens; Deine Kinder all hast mtterlich mit einem Erbteil ausgestattet, Einer Htte. Hoch baut die Schwalb' am Architrav, Unfhlend, welchen Zierat, Sie verklebt, Die Raup' umspinnt den goldnen Zweig Zum Winterhaus fr ihre Brut, Und du flickst zwischen der Vergangenheit Erhabne Trmmer Fr dein Bedrfnis Eine Htt', o Mensch, (line 127 - 142) (See translation of these lines by William of Norwich shown in bold lettering) In "Der Wandrer" the domains of nature, society and poetry meet pre-eminently in the person of the young woman. She represents the figure of an archetypal mothe r, perhaps Mother Nature herself, in the image of a young woman with her child i n her arms at the beginning of the poem. She is the epitome of the industrious w ife and mother, who sustains the basic unit of society, the family. The final li nes of the poem associate her with the poet's muse. At the literal level of mean ing the poem concludes by expressing the hope that the Wanderer should one day b e married to a woman, like the one he meets near Cuma, with whom he will enjoy t he consolations and bliss of domestic life. The Wanderer looks forward to a day when he perhaps might return to his wife at the close of day. The close of day h as in religious and poetic Metaphor a wider sense. In this context, the referenc e to a grove of poplar trees recalls the association of poplars with the entranc e of the underworld in classical mythology.4 The Wanderer imagines returning hom e when the evening sun sheds its last golden light; hitherto the sun has carried negative associations throughout the poem when the thirsty and weary traveller sought refuge from the sun's oppressive rays in the shade of trees. The image of the oppressive mid-day sun, present not only in this poem but in The Rime of th e Ancient Mariner, Wordsworth's The Evening Walk and other treatments of the the me of walking in the country, is not only rooted metaphor but doubtless also in

the experience of seasoned ramblers, a class to which the poets in question all belonged. The image of a woman awaiting the traveller at nightfall associates a female with night and death, with the Passion and the return of the soul to its final resting place. As we have noted, in earlier discussions, poets in the Roma ntic age used religious imagery to express the experience of a poet in the proce ss of discovering the true self. The ancient Gnostic belief that the Passion was founded on a purely spiritual truth rather than a historical fact involving phy sical death seems to anticipate Hartman's concept of a poetic death and resurrec tion. At another level, the association of night and a female figure mirrors the paradigm of the libidinal quest for union with the female principle in the self . The proposition that the same figure finds a framework or contexts different p lanes of reference might seem confusing or contradictory to those defending cert ain ideological positions regarding the relation of poetry to life beyond litera ture, ideas concerning religious truth and fundamental psychology. However, the power of words in literary texts, and probably in common language, to simultaneo usly acquire significance from different, though intersecting planes of signific ance, defies reduction to any one theory, such as that which rules that symbolis m in poetry concerns only poetical aims and effects. ANNOTATIONS: "DER WANDRER" 1. In answer to Karl Friedrich Zelter, who had sent Goethe a letter from Felix M endelsohn, in which the writer claimed that he had identified the location provi ding the setting of "Der Wandrer", Goethe wrote in a letter dated 28th June 1831 : "Das Gedicht "Der Wandrer" ist im Jahre 1771 geschrieben, also viele Jahre vor meiner italienischen Reise. Aber es ist der Vorteil des Dichters, da er das vora us ahnet und wert hlt, was der die Wirklichkeit suchende, wenn er es im Dasein fi ndet und erkennt, doppelt 1ieben und hchlich daran sich freuen mu." ("The poem 'De r Wandrer' was written in 1771, that is to say many years before my Italian jour ney. But it is the advantage of the poet that he intuitively foresees and esteem s what the seeker after reality , having found and recognized it in the real wor ld, doubly loves and enjoys with highest delight)". 2. L.A. Willoughby and Elizabeth M. Wilkinson, "'Wandrers Sturmlied' A Study in poetic Vagrancy", in: German Life and Letters, 1948, I, 102-116. The authors com ment Without destroying his rapture, the poet can smile at it, playing upon the incon gruity between uplifting and the down-to-earth aspects of his fantasy." P. 105. Also: "The whole movement of the poem's form inevitably grows out of the mood an d the theme, a serious subject treated with sense of humour. Humour springs from a profound impulse of self-protection. It is a means of preserving inner securi ty; but it is also a sign of it." P. 113 3. Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller, 1764, 159-162. Richard J. Jaarsma, commentin g on these lines in his article "Satire, Theme, and Structure in The Traveller" in: Tennessee Studies in Literature, Vol. XXV (Knoxville,1979) sees evidence of Goldsmith's belief in "the progressive decline of the human spirit." P. 52. 4. Robert Graves notes the symbolic associations of black poplars with death and the underworld in The Greek Myths I & 2. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Book: 1955, re v. 60): Black poplars were sacred to the Death-goddess...; and white poplars, or aspens, either to Persephone as goddess of regeneration, or to Heracles..(32.4) . Also: "Persephone's black poplar grove lay in the far-western Tartarus, and Od ysseus did not descend' into it - like Heracles.... Aeneas, and Dante - though C irce assumed that he had done so. 170.6. 5. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson: 1980), p. 95. Referring to The Gospel Truth attributed to Valentius, the author writes: "Contrary to orthodox sources, which interpret Christ's death as a sacrifice re

deeming humanity from guilt and sin, this Gnostic gospel sees the Crucifixion as an occasion for discovering the divine self within. B: " WANDRERS STURMLIED" 1. The Problem of the Original Text

"Wandrers Sturmlied" confronts the interpreter with a number of problems relatin g to the origins of the poem. These problems are not merely of "academic interes t,"as different conclusions on this point entail significant differences of inte rpretation. The poem was composed some time between March 1772 and September 177 3, when Goethe sent a manuscript version to Betty Jacobi. This version differs s omewhat from the revised one which Goethe felt obliged to publish almost forty y ears later in 1810 (shortly after the poem had appeared in print without his per mission). The first version of the poem differed from that published by Goethe i n 1810 in the organisation of the strophes addressed to the Wanderer's "Genius." This opening section comprised three strophes of almost equal length, suggestin g the beginning of a poem with a regular formal structure, indicative perhaps of Goethe's original intention to imitate Pindar's organisation of strophes in tri adic groups.1 One critic, Klaus Weimar, goes so far as to doubt that the last st rophe of the poem was included in the version sent to Betty Jacobi in 1773.2 Weimar argues that Goethe must have composed the fourteen lines beginning "Wenn die Raeder rasselten" ("when the wheels rattle") later and sent in a letter them to Friedrich Jacobi in 1774. This conclusion leads Weimar to believe that "the original version''. ending according to Weimar with the word "Theokrit," was con ceived by Goethe as a hymn dedicated to Zeus after the manner of Pindar, in whic h there is evidence of a close self- identification with Zeus on the part of the Wanderer and the poet. After sending this version to Betty Jacobi, Weimar's the ory goes, Goethe retracted from what he now held to be a presumptuous, well-nigh blasphemous, self-over-evaluation and wrote an additional strophe to redress ma tters. There is, however, the internal evidence provided by the text of the poem to consider, and this does not appear to vindicate Weimar's contention.

2. Mythological Figures and Tropes The mythological landscape of the poems derives much of its imagery from Greek l egends associated with mountains - particularly Olympus, the home of the gods an d Parnassus, sacred both to Apollo and the Muses. In the Greek version of the De luge story, Deucalion (Gk. "new-wine sailor"), son of Prometheus, and Pyrrha, hi s wife, reached terra firma on Mount Parnassus. It was also in the region of thi s mountain that Apollo slew the serpent Python. Apollo, the Muses, and Deucalion ' Flood enter as motifs into the texture of "Wandrers Sturmlied" and help to de marcate the main elements of the poem's structure. The Flood legend underlies th e associations of water, earth and mud. Mud has great symbolic value in this poe m, at least representing as it does a merging or confusion of the elements earth and water. The first person speaker praises water as the Jovian element of utmo st purity against wine, a delectable though inferior liquid attributable to the demigod Dionysus. 3 When composing the poem, Goethe may well have had Pindar's O de Olympian 1 in mind, for this begins with a eulogy of water:

Water is the best thing of all, and gold Shines like flaming fire at night

More than all a great man's wealth. 4 3. Motifs: e.g. Ascent/ Descent, evoking Spirits and Gods and "the Elements"

The mythological topography of "Wandrers Sturmlied" has both a vertical and a ho rizontal axis. In terms of poetic imagery, the Wanderer ascends through the oper ation of a spiritual levitating force, only to descend, as though down a slipper y slope, to a low level at which he must wade through mud in order to reach a re fuge perched on a hill ahead of him. Climbing the hill pose in an ascent of a ki nd, though hardly on the grand scale envisioned earlier. While the motif of elev ation, or ascent is common to many of Goethe's poems (e.g. "Zueignung"), "Wandre rs Sturmlied" is uncharacteristic of Goethe's typical treatment of analogous the mes in its disarmingly frank exposure of the sense of inadequacy the poet feels in meeting the challenge imposed on him by his ambition of becoming at one with the gods. The Wanderer displays no open defiance of Jupiter, as in "Prometheus", nor sustained confidence in attaining unity with him, as in "Ganymed." Feelings of inadequacy well up within him even at the contemplation of "the fiery black peasant" that appears in the seventh strophe, who possesses that firm resolution of spirit the Wanderer feels to be lacking in himself despite help received fro m Muses, graces and gods. Wafting precariously between earth and sky, the Wander er feels himself to be missing out - both as a human being, who should share the concerns and enjoyments of ordinary mortals, and as an aspirant to the spiritua l realm. The desire to extricate himself from his muddy path motivates the Wanderer's app eal for help addressed to his "Genius" or guardian spirit. Den du nicht verlssest, Genius,Wirst ihn heben bern Schlammpfad Mit den Feuerflgeln . Him, whom thou dost not not forsake, Genius, shalt raise from the mud path with fiery wings The image of mud as the child of water and earth produces a humourous element in keeping with the mock Heroic spirit that suffuses the poem, and we should not f orget that humour and self-irony serve as a defence against the discomforts of s elf- exposure. For all the real or apparent humour in the poem, the fact that it treats highly sensitive issues is evident in the long delay of its publication. The section of the poem which traces the Wanderer's ascent towards Jupiter is d ivisible into three subsections, in which the Poet-Wanderer addresses first his genius, second the graces (Charites) and muses, and third the gods. The fact tha t Apollo alone among the denizens of Olympus is not apostrophized need not surpr ise us in view of his aloof and threateningly vindictive aspect. In the second p hase of ascent, the Wanderer, now escorted by Muses and graces, wafts or hovers over the muddy terrain with which he was contending when he addressed his "geniu s." We note the change of tense from the future in the second strophe: Wandeln wird er / Wie mit Blumenfssen / ber Deukalions Flutschlamm, He shall waft as though with flowery feet above Deucalion's muddy deluge to the present in the sixth: Ihr umschwebt mich, und ich schwebe / ber Wasser, ber Erde, / Gttergleich. Ye hover round me, I hover ) Over water, Over earth / God-like

At the same juncture, the Wanderer becomes aware of a separation of earth and wa ter into distinguishable bodies or masses, for he exclaims: Das ist Wasser, das ist Erde. That is water, that is earth.

It is interesting to note in passing that the emergence of earth, water and air from an undifferentiated mass constitutes a central element of the various creat ion (and related deluge myths) belonging to many cultural traditions. Perhaps re ferences to the opposites of fire and water allude to contemporary rival theorie s about the Creation (viz. Vulcanism and Neptunism). In the second phase of asce nt, the Wanderer perceives the little black (swarthy) fiery peasant, whose dark colour suggests his affinity to the earth. In the third phase of ascent, and then only in the presence of the third and hig hest of the deities to which reference is made, the Wanderer finds the pure wate r he longs for at its Castalian source. At this level of heightened awareness, t he Wanderer speaks of his song as that which flows to the god who is himself the source of water in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Dich, dich strmt mein Lied" (l 0th strophe). Thee, thee, my song flows The transitive use of an intransitive verb shows the trace of Klopstock's influe nce in breaking the bounds of ordinary grammatically regulated utterances in ord er to achieve a higher language more fitted to be the vehicle of rapturous emoti on Klopstock anticipated Goethe in favouring the image of the flowing stream to inculcate a feeling of the essential qualities of poetry or inspired language. E ven at the apex of his spiritual elevation, the Wanderer is still mindful of his responsibilities towards common humanity. Not only should his song flow back to divinity; from the Castalian fount a rivulet flows down to happy mortals below. Pindar occupies a position of pre-eminence among the poets analogous to Jupiter' s pre-eminence among the gods, as a parallel between the gods and poets is evide nt in the very structure of the poem. The eighth, ninth and tenth strophes of th e poem refer in turn to Dionysus, Apolloand Jupiter. The importance of this orde ring is emphasized in the rhetorical question: "Warum nennt mein Lied dich zuletzt?" ("Why doth my song name thee last") in the first line of the tenth strophe).

The final three strophes refer in turn to Anacreon famed for poetry about the jo ys of wine; Theocritus, generally considered to be the originator of idyllic poe try (the words "Sonnebeglaenzte Stirn" ("sun-illumined brow") suggest a connecti on with Apollo); and finally Pindar. The last strophe is introduced by the image of turning wheels and racing chariots, a fitting evocation of Pindar's celebrat ion of the events and achievements of those competing in the Olympic and similar festive games. The dust thrown up by the chariots is likened to a flurry of gri t, hail or sleet sweeping down a mountain-side. "Kieselwetter" ("sleet") incorpo rates meanings that pertain to the mineralogical.and to meteorological domains, and in the context of the poems furnishes an image that fittingly marks the tran sition from one scene to another. 6 The vision of an Olympian and Olympic past y ields to the dreary reality of a traveller contending with the meteorological co nditions of winter in a more northerly clime.

4. Elements in the Poem which do not Conform to its Macro-Structure: A Discussion of their Implications The Wanderer's ascent was not achieved without the experience of a trauma -that namely which resulted from his encounter with Apollo, that most implacable of Gr eek deities, whom the Wanderer may have offended by his very choice of the dithy rambic mode, customarily dedicated to Dionysus, a mere demigod. Though he felt a ble to enter into a reciprocal relation with Jupiter, he was totally overawed by Apollo's brilliant sun-like radiance as well as perplexed by his own inability to reciprocate in like manner - to "glow back." The following lines from the nin th strophe express the Wanderer's sense of crisis in urgent tone: Weh! Weh! Innere Wrme, Seelenwrme, Mittelpunkt! Glh entgegen Phoeb Apollen. Woe, woe, inner warmth, Soul warmth, The centre! Glow against Phoebus Apollo These lines find an echo in the last strophe: "Mut.--Glhte?--/Armes Herz!" ("Courage - glowed - Poor heart") Scaling down his ambition, the Wanderer declares himself content with just enoug h self-generated heat to enable him to get through the mud that separates him fr om his goal, a mountain hut. Though the Wanderer may be perplexed by his inabili ty to produce or sustain inner fire, not all references to fire, or heat at leas t, carry negative or fear-engendering associations. Different qualities of heat are referenced in the poem. The wings of Jove, metamorphosed into a birdlike cre ature generate a comforting, protective warmth. There is the inner warmth produc ed by wine. There is the inborn ardour of the fiery peasant. One reason why Goethe entertained misgivings about this poem has arguably less t o do with the poem's apparent formlessness than with the tensions and unresolved conflicts to which it gives expression. The stage-by-stage ascent from earth to the heights of Parnassus might be graphically represented as stairs leading upw ard. However, various cross-connecting links between the lower and upper levels break the clean lines of the poem's tectonic structure. The genius, the personal guardian spirit assigned to each mortal from birth to death (lower in the hiera rchy of spiritual beings than muses or gods), is identified in the eighth stroph e with Dionysus. Vater Bromius! Du bist Genius, Jahrhunderts Genius , Bist, was innre Glut Pindarn war, Was der Welt Phoebus Apoll ist. Father Bromius! Thou art genius, century's genius. Art what was inner warmth to Pindar,

and what the world is to Phoebus Apollo. An intimate association between the poet's "Genius" and Jupiter is intimated by the lines at the beginning of the tenth strophe: Warum nennt mein Lied dich zuletzt? Dich, von dem es begann, Why doth my song name thee last, thou from whom it began, An underlying fear of being unable to distinguish the subjective consciousness f rom the Universal Mind belies all attempts to enter the state of harmony and uni ty. To judge by the outline of its structure, "Wanders Sturmlied" constitutes an affirmation of the traditional Olympian order, with Jupiter stationed at its ap ex and Pindar occupying an analogous position among poets. Other indications in the poem, however, point to trends that work against the official hierarchy. The reason for the structural and emotional collapse revealed by the last strophe r esult not from Goethe's sudden change of heart after the writing of the poem, bu t from the inner conflicts that he experienced when writing it. On the one hand, Dionysus is linked in the structural context of the poem with Anacreon and Anac reontic poetry of the kind Goethe had grown out of; on the other, we find in the eighth strophe evidence of a close association of Dionysus (and Apollo) with mo dernity (viz. "Jahrhundertsgenius") and the suggestion that Pindar is "pass " (viz . "Bist, was innre Glut / Pindarn war" - "(Thou art what to Pindar was inner war mth"). What seems to be called for here is not a downgrading of Dionysus but his re-evaluation in modern terms. 5.The Poem's Inner Tensions The reasons for arguing that the poem as we have it is not substantially differe nt from the poem as originally composed can be summarised as follows: Considerin g the recurrent triadic structures in the poem, we would expect that a third str ophe referring to Pindar would complete the triad of strophes dedicated to the p oets. Recognising this, Weimar argues that Goethe originally considered referenc e to Pindar superfluous as so much had been said about him in the poem earlier. 7 Second, the metaphysical doubt. which, according to Weimar, suddenly beset Goeth e after the completion of the poem (i.e., without the final strophe) manifests i tself throughout the poem. There is no need to consult the final strophe to reco gnise in it the signs of deep metaphysical anxiety, self-doubt and tension. The formal structure of the poem notwithstanding, a eading of "Wandrers Sturmlied" ( with or without the final strophe) not only reveals a close identification of th e Wanderer with Jupiter but also with Vater Bromius, or Dionysus. The wanderer a t last follows the peasant's footsteps to the security of an enclosed building. The Wanderer, Goethe himself, will never return to the easy ways celebrated by A nacreon. His understanding of Dionysus has deepened. This is not to say, either, that he has given up any hope of approaching Jupiter thereafter. Many later poe ms prove the contrary. But he had learnt to tread (or waft) more warily in the u pper regions of Olympus. ANNOTATIONS: "WANDRERS STURMLIED" 1. As C. M. Bowra explains in his introduction to The Odes of Pindar in Penguin Classics, Pindar often uses a series of triads, each of which consists of stroph e, antistrophe, and epode. See "Introduction," p. xiii, in: The Odes of Pindar, translated and edited by C. M. Bowra, Harmondsworth, 1969. 2. Klaus Weimar, Goethes Gedichte 1769-1775: Interpretationen zu einem Anfang , (Paderborn Schoeningh, 1982), pp. 66-68.

3. In this connection it is interesting to note that Robert Graves concludes fro m his research into the evolution of the Greek version of the Deluge story that Deucalion, as his name suggests, was originally a Noachic figure responsible for the invention of wine. Reference to his importance in such a rle was subsequent ly suppressed in deference to Dionysian claims. 4. C. M. Bowra, The Odes of Pindar (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 64. 5. Greek philosophers before Plato were much concerned with identifying the prim ordial essence of the universe in terms of one of, or a combination of "the elem ents". For Thales this was water, for Anaximenes air (pneuma), for later philoso phers a combination of the so-called "four elements" - earth, water, fire and ai r. 6. While "Kies" in standard German means gravel or grit, "Kiesel" and "kieseln" have much the same meaning as "hail" or "to hail" in Grimm's dictionary. See foo tnote 73 in: Weimar, Goethes Gedichte, p. 150. 7. Ibid., p. 83 C: GOETHE'S RMISCHE ELEGIEN THE "WANDERER" MOTIF BEFORE AND AFTER 1789

Goethe's Elegien (later termed Elegien, rmische (1806) before finally receiving t he present title), were written during or shortly after the poet's second period of residence in Italy and published by Schiller in the Horen in 1795-6 without a declaration of their author's identity. It was in the Neue Schriften of 1800 t hat Goethe officially acclaimed the Elegien as his own works. As the first forma l cycle of poems Goethe wrote, the collection of elegies poses a striking contra st to the apparently rambling poems about "The Wanderer" written by Goethe in hi s pre-Weimar days. First, and most obviously, in writing them Goethe subjected h imself to the discipline of conforming to rules laid down by ancient classical t raditions, at least to the extent that this was appropriate to poetry written in German. The Rmische Elegien themselves contain two references to the metrical pa ttern which Goethe followed during their composition. The basic metric unit of t he Elegien is the distich, a pair of lines consisting of a hexameter followed by a pentameter. Goethe's commitment to metrical regularity, which stands in complete contrast to the metrical variations in "Wandrers Sturmlied", marks the arrival of Goethe's high classical period. This had its beginnings in his first Weimar years and wou ld last beyond the end of the eighteenth century. Poems composed in his early ye ars in Weimar still express the spirit of restlessness so characteristic of Goet he's poems in the early 1770s. However, in poems describing walks and journeys, such as "Harzreise" and "Ilmenau", the Wanderer, though still betraying signs of restlessness, has become an acute observer of his surroundings. Goethe's classi cism involved more than adherence to a regular metre. Schiller, when alluding to the Rmische Elegien in his essay "ber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung" - (con trasting the intuitive and unselfconscious Greek poet with the sharply critical and self-conscious modern poet), referred to Goethe as "the Roman and German Pro pertius" 1 Propertius had indeed served Goethe as a mode and source of inspiration. Like Pr opertius, Goethe promoted love, erotic love in particular, to a major theme of h is poetry, and, when so doing, adopted the standpoint of a first person speaker. His choice of traditional model brought a special advantage. In conforming to a

classical precedent, Goethe could forestall comments that the Rmische Elegien pr ovided a record of his amorous adventures in Rome. On the other hand, there coul d be very little doubt that the joi de vivre expressed in the Elegien correspond ed closely to Goethe's elevated mood at a time when he enjoyed fulfilment in his personal relationships. Though "Faustina", the figure who represents the poet's lover in the Elegien, is a fictional character, she incorporates characteristic s and aspects of a real woman in Goethe's life. At least Frau von Stein as one o f the first readers of the Elegien on their publication was quick to identify Fa ustina, mentioned by name only once in the work (XVIII,9) as Christiane Vulpius, Goethe's life companion and later wife. Faustina may also incorporate traits of an Italian woman with whom Goethe had a brief affair during his residence in Ro me. 2 However, the spirit of exuberance that pervades the Elegien did not result only from personal fulfilment in love relationships. In Rome itself Goethe discovered a spiritual and cultural home that far surpassed any Northern city in its wealt h of historical monuments and works of art. Goethe exulted in the brightness of colour and the clarity of form that the Italian climate bestowed on his Italian environment. For him, Rome meant primarily an aesthetic experience as he himself observed in a letter dated 8th June 1787 to Charlotte von Stein: Wo ich nun sitze. hier oder in Frankfurt, das ist eins und Rom ist der einzige O rt in der Welt fr den Knstler und ich bin einmal nichts anders. Where I am now located, here or in Frankfurt, makes no difference, and Rome is t he only place in the world for artists, and I am no different from others. In the Rmische Elegien Goethe presents love as a power not only manifested in a p ersonal relationship but in Rome, its history and present life. In mythological terms the god of Love exerted an influence on Rome no less great than that of Ma rs. Indeed, Rome, as the offspring of Mars and Rhea Silvia, is revealed in the E legien as a city owing its existence to an amourous impulse. Feeling himself to be in direct spiritual communion with the spirit of Rome, the poet perceives no division between the classical past and the immediate present. The poet sees mor e than the material record of a past age; he senses here the creative energy tha t found expression in it. In Goethe's view the products of artistic creation, su ch as paintings or sculptures, though static in one sense, are both the product of and the producers of dynamic and creative mental and emotional powers., wheth er acting on the artist or the beholder of artistic creation.

It may seem on the surface that the Rmische Elegien have little in common with "W andrers Sturmlied". However, there is evidence (shortly to be considered) that G oethe had the latter in mind during the composition of the Elegies. The word "Wa ndrer" appears only twice in the Rmische Elegien, which in such a long work hardl y seems noteworthy on the basis of a statistical word count. However, the contex tual setting of the word in the second and seventh elegies is significant in the following respect: only in the case of these elegies are there significant vari ations between the published version in the Horen and one appearing in an unpubl ished manuscript.3 In the case of the second elegy these divergences are particu lary marked .The speaker complains that the "Wanderer" is dogged wherever he goe s by politically motivated and arbitrary tittle-tattle in much the same way that contemporary British tourists excited by their presence a then popular ditty en titled "Marlborough."This reference corresponds to lines in the unpublished manu script in which Goethe expresses relief that he was shielded from the celebrity of Werther and Lotte, characters in his sensationally popular novel Die Leiden d es jungen Werther ('The Sorrows of young Werther'), simply because he was not re cognised as the author of that work.

A question arises. Why did Goethe expunge any reference to Werther in the publis hed version of the Rmische Elegien? Most probably because he wished to divest the lyrical "I" of any explicit reference to himself after he had come to realise t hat his very choice of poetic genre precluded an explicit identification of the speaker with himself as a private individual. Any desire to avoid personal embar rassment could hardly have been a decisive factor, as there was no disguising th e fact that the events and experiences described in the Elegien were drawn from real occurrences in Goethe's life before and during his residence in Italy. By i nserting the word Wandrer" in the second elegy Goethe could both allude to his o wn person and cast the speaker as a universal traveller and poet. Set in the con text of the second elegy the "Wanderer" is in the first place a traveller, touri st or ex-patriot. In that of the seventh elegy the Wanderer is to be identified with the poet and artist in a mythological setting, as the following lines make clear: Wie ich hereingekommen, ich kann's nicht sagen; es fate Hebe den Wandrer und zog mich in die Hallen heran. How it came about that I entered I cannot tell. Hebe clasped the Wanderer and drew me into the halls. VII, 15, An explicit association of the "Wanderer" with "the poet" follows a few lines fu rther on: addressing Jupiter Xenius, the protector of travellers, the speaker pl eads: Bist du der wirtliche Gott? O dann so verstoe den Gastfreund Nicht von deinem Olymp wieder zur Erde hinab! Art thou the hospitable god. O do not therefore cast thy guest down from Olympus to earth again These words call forth the reprimand: "Dichter" wohin versteigest du dich? "Poet", whither dost thou raise thyself high? The speaker makes an important discovery: to enjoy the presence and companionshi p of Jupiter, he need not attempt a hazardous mountain climb. Having asked Jupit er's forgiveness for such a foolish assumption, he avers: der hohe / KapitolinischeBerg ist dir ein zweiter Olymp. the high Capitoline hill is a second Olympus" It is almost as if the Wanderer is still smarting from the memory of an earlier traumatic attempt to scale the abode of the gods before plunging into rivers of mud. In the light of the feelings expressed in the opening lines of the seventh elegy we are probably justified in assuming that Goethe did have "Wandrers Sturm lied" in mind when treating the theme of encountering Jupiter, for they recall h is earlier days of wandering under a grey northern sky. However, even if we conc ede that Goethe here mockingly belittles all that he once associated with the Wa nderer as a figure in his early poetry, the very use of the word "Wandrer" impli es that a continuous development embraces the contradictions that emerge from a comparison of "Wandrers Sturmlied" and the Rmische Elegien. The poet's original a ttempt to reach Zeus finds its inverted corollary in the removal from Olympus to the Capitoline Hill. Far from being a remote and unapproachable deity, Jupiter Xenius seeks and finds the poet in his earthy urban environs.

In his classical period Goethe discarded his earlier notion that his ruling deit y, whatever called, could be approached directly, without the help of a mediatin g power or influence. This Goethe found in art. The image of Jupiter Xenius, the god who condescends to move among mortals as an unrecognised stranger, was grea tly favoured by the Augustan poets of Rome, and of these, by Ovid in particular. His Metamorphoses contains the story of Philemon and Baucis, who entertained Jo ve and Mercury unawares. Faust and Jupiter merge into the figure of the Wanderer , who enters the cottage of Philemon and Baucis shortly before Faust's apotheosi s. In the Rmische Elegien Jupiter is closely associated with artistic creativity, either as a figure represented by sculptors and other artists, or as the power of art itself. Plotinus, we recall, identified Zeus as the source of artistic cr eativity (cf. Hlderlin; "Jupiter und Saturn"). In the Rmische Elegien a similar co nnection between the ancient gods of Rome and artistic creativity is implied rat her that stated. According to the fifteenth and sixteenth lines of the seventh e legy, Hebe takes the Wanderer to an inner space or room ("Raum" connotes both). In later elegies the word "Raum" is closely associated with the artist's "Werkst att", his studio or atelier. The close juxtaposition of the words in the followi ng lines and the parallelism they imply are hardly coincidental: Du betrachtest mit Staunen die Trmmern alter Gebude Und durchwandelst mit Sinn diesen heiligen Raum. Du verehrst noch mehr die werten Reste des Bildens Einziger Knstler, die stets ich in der Werkstatt besucht. (XIII, 9-12) Thou contemplatest amazed the ruins of ancient buildings and wander about this holy place with purpose. Thou admirest still more the noble remains of the creations of particular artist s whom I constantly visit in the artist's workshop. Words in the final strophe of the poem associate the poet's pen, and by implicat ion the written poem, with "the reed" and by extension with the pastoral music o ften associated with the pipes of Pan. Goethe did not develop so deep an appreci ation of music - the music of Beethoven at least - as he evinced in the sphere o f the visual and plastic arts, yet few poets have succeeded in achieving the qua lity and diversity of the sonorous or "musical" effects of which poetry is capab le. The analogy between his songs and he reeds or rushes swaying in the wind fur ther imply an affinity between the processes of artistic creation and the growth of plants. ANNOTATIONS: THE RMISCHE ELEGIEN 1. Friedrich Schiller, as the editor of the Horen, however, evidently contended with the objections and misgivings of certain readers of the Elegien. A.W. Schle gel doubted that they could be classified as "sentimental" in the sense of bespe aking the sensibility of medieval or modern poets. Despite, the appeal of the El egien to tradition, their impact was revolutionary, even shocking. The theme of erotic love itself had many precedents in Roman classical poetry, but the very s uggestion that this had some connection with a modern poet's life was evidently disturbing, for Frau von Stein among a good number of other people. 2. Goethe's amorous relationship with an Italian woman seems to have been of sho rt duration, lasting from January to April 1787. 3. Apart from the elegies which never appeared in the Horen, for being considere d too explicit for public taste (see: Weimar Ausgabe von Goethes Werken ,143 vol umes, 1887-1919, vol. 53, p.3-7), the second elegy as rendered in a manuscript e ntitled Erotica Romana, explicitly attributes the poet's unwanted celebrity to t

he fame of his novelle Die Lieden des Jungen Werther, adding that if the hero in this work, had been his own brother, he would have readily beaten him to death!