Nine years after the publication of the acclaimed first volume of his life of the great poet, thinker and near complete symbol of German national consciousness, Cambridge academic Nicholas Boyle continues with the middle years of Goethe's story, up to the age of 53. This time he places his hero firmly in a world which has changed, due to outside forces which had nothing to do with the poet and his friends. The impact of the French Revolution was impossible to ignore, and for Boyle, it is crucial. He stresses throughout that Germany was more of a passive victim of it than a player.
Whereas in the opening book, which covers the first 39 years of Goethe's life, the poet is seen as a pampered court pet, following the trend established by his father who loved his boy with an ambitiously driven intensity, now he is an outsider. Having some years earlier been elevated to the Court, his decision in 1789 to flout convention and live with, rather than marry, the loyal Christiana Vulpius, caused him to lose favour in the cosy Weimar he had settled in, by royal invitation, as the daring young writer and famous author of The Sorrows of Young Werther from 1775. "Goethe's `immorality' consisted," writes Boyle, "not in having a mistress, but in having one of the wrong class - his own." But on a far wider level, suddenly the security of life in Weimar with its tense domestic routine of lunch, conversation and increasing hostility from his former love object, Frau Von Stein, became petty in comparison with the turmoil threatening its borders.
As in the earlier book, much of Boyle's success lies in his detached tone as well as his determined overview and ability to create a sense of an entire society. At no time does he allow the singularity of his subject to cause the narrative to slide into defensive hero worship. This is a book about the people Goethe knew, such as Herder, Schiller, Hegel, Holderlin, Novalis, Schelling and others, as much as about him and his work. Nor does Boyle, a scholar of immense range, ever presume to read Goethe's mind. None of the irritating tactics so favoured by marauding biographers emerge here. Boyle succeeds in presenting Goethe as a credible individual; not always lovable, nor overly likable, and invariably self obsessed, as were most of the Weimar circle. But it is vivid. Goethe is a man of moods seen through the eyes of many. For some he is impressive, for others he is fat - with an ever-opening eye for the ladies - and in this volume, Frau Von Stein's nasty jibes gather momentum.
History, however, takes over. Indeed at times Goethe's endless travelling between Weimar and Jena seems rather minor compared with events going on elsewhere. From the outset, Boyle has demonstrated an awesome grasp of the complex political history of the self-contained states which made up the Germany of Goethe's time, a fragmented country rather than a nation, still recovering, or rather existing within the context of the aftermath of the Thirty Years War and subsequent conflicts. At the heart of German cultural life for much of Goethe's time was the development and dominance of German philosophy and theology over literature. Goethe certainly lived in a society of thinkers.
Here in Volume Two action becomes a factor. His personal life from the age of 39 onwards, when he belatedly became sexualised, set him far more apart from his society than his artistic status ever had. The wider awareness of the book now looks beyond him.
"In 1789 the world changed. The course of all things, seemingly laid down for a century or more, towards the improvement and enlightenment of the established order, was deflected, interrupted, or reversed by the explosion. Every life in Europe took on a new shape under the impact of the French Revolution, and Goethe's was no exception. But Goethe was not a citizen of France. . . He felt the shock waves not at once and unmediated, but already muffled and transformed by the counter movement of German reactions to them. As a literary and thinking man he was as sensitive to intellectual as to political reverberations."
Of the many interesting revelations in this meticulous study about an amazing individual is the fact that Goethe, although he was to observe war at close quarters in the company of his patron, the colourful Carl August, always remained more preoccupied by his own projects than by the world around him. Born into a conservative Frankfurt family, the son of a fussy, adoring mother, he was to remain throughout his life, a conservative. The Revolution may have interested him but it does not appear to have excited him. His response damaged him in some eyes.
But also remarkable is that despite this conservatism, his energy, anxieties, range of interests and flair for redefining himself kept him young in mind and attractive to a range of people. As Frau Von Stein was for him the central figure up to 1789, in this second part, the middle years, Schiller, 10 years his junior, became hugely important. Boyle's treatment of this relationship is fascinating. While Goethe lore has always conceded that the poet did not initially welcome the younger man into his circle - though they now lie side by side in a Weimar underground vault - this book presents an intense, mutually self-serving friendship which appears to be based on wary respect as much as fondness. But it is disappointing to discover that for years Schiller ignored Christiana Vulpius, even after she had minded his son while his wife recovered from a difficult childbirth.
Goethe's lengthy reluctance to marry his partner, on whom he was so dependent, subjected Christiana to ongoing insults, never mind the position it placed their son in. Even after the death of yet another of her babies, Schiller sent his sympathy to Goethe, while ignoring her. For all his domestic absences and musing about Italy, Goethe loved Christiana and his son August.
In truth the Weimar presented here is as bitchy and small-minded a place as any cultural centre could be. Boyle is superb on the work; while presenting a man moving from youth to middle age, he is also quite brilliantly exploring the development of a writer. Goethe's range and productivity was incredible. It is too easy to forget that Goethe is above all a lyric, romantic poet of genius. Equally astonishing is the way that he could keep projects on hand for years. Faust was his life's work, an ongoing, epic labour which Boyle charts as if it were a massive odyssey which of course it was - and is. Even more valuable is his reading of the Wilhelm Meister saga through its eight volumes.
FOR all the scholarship, there can be odd moments with Boyle. Take the way he ends a late chapter with Goethe becoming seriously ill in January 1801: "it was clear that Goethe's life was in danger", and then proceeds with a 13-page analysis of some major poems - all very fine, before returning to Goethe's sick bed with a cool opening sentence: "Erysipelas is not nowadays a common disease, but in the absence of antibiotics it can still be fatal." The poet was ill to an almost medieval extent: ". . .his left eye protrudes like a great walnut and blood and matter run out, he often hallucinates."
It is surprising, considering the glorious contribution of German composers to classical music at this time and also Goethe's subsequent influence and inspirational status, that music features so little.
This is a dense, scholarly book merging perceptive characterisation, textual analysis and culture as well as social and political history. But it is also humane and entertaining, very much a portrait of a life lived with equal measures of order and chaos. For all Goethe's intellectualism, he remained a romantic in every way. Lines written to a love object (Goethe tended not to consummate his obsessive loves) may well be directed to Lili whom he loved in his youth rather than to Frau Von Stein (to whom the lines are usually referred): "Yes, I loved you once, you, as I have still to love any woman, but we could not find our way to each other and cannot in all eternity find it now" are heartbreaking. Formidable presence or not, do not forget this lawyer and one time administrator is one of the great love poets.
Possibly the most complete, multi-faceted, intellectually insatiable of geniuses Goethe demands a sympathetic, unsentimental biographer of tenacity and flair. In Boyle he has it. Equally, Boyle deserves a mighty subject - and he certainly selected one worthy of his gifts. This volume ends in 1803. Napoleon is a force. Goethe has a further 29 years to live during which he finally marries Christiana, laments the death of Schiller, loses his beloved only surviving child in 1830 and further consolidates his place as an icon of Western civilisation. It can only be hoped that the concluding volume, possibly offering a greater awareness of German music, arrives a lot quicker than this, its lively and justifiably demanding predecessor.
Eileen Battersby is a critic and an Irish Times journalist
