The Sorrows of Young Gabreel

Goethe. The name sends shivers down my spine. He is one of those figures who represents just how much I still don't know. And it's not that I've been trying not to know. No, I've been trying to know for sometime now, but knowing is not that easy.

I have this picture of my horizon (now seeing the edge of your knowledge is a bit foolish, as we don't know what we don't know, but stay with me). In the picture Grover is running, first to me, giving me the near, and then he runs back, giving me the far. Near - Far, Near - Far. I'm reading Goethe and the template for my mind is populated with Sesame Street. Perhaps I'll forget about Sesame Street in forty years. Then I'll have Goethe, standing before me, looking all Enlightenment-aged, saying something like, "I believe, my dear friend, that this is the closest proximity to yourself that I can stand". Then I'll pause and let him run backwards, "dear soul, this is the extent of your inwardness". Near - Far. I'll be lucky if I can see my shoes. I'm pretty near blind. I'll soon have to tape a white cane on the bumper of my car.

But I'm reading The Sorrows of Young Werther, and I'm telling you about it because, while my horizon isn't too terribly large, I've begun to forget books that I've read. So this is about remembering. I'm quite impressed with Goethe's first novel. I'm excited about it because I think I've worked on another novel, Michael Winter's This All Happened, which used it as an intertext. And it is always fun to compare the rewritten classic, with the classic. Plus Goethe ain't that bad of a writer. Yes he gets a bit gushy at times, but he is able to get you all swept up in his emotional air, in his over-consciousness of unity in the world, in his idyllic descriptions of children, old-Germany, and "the Nature". He does go over the top sometimes though. This is one of his more unfortunate descriptions of nature I've found: "...I am very happy here. The solitude of this heavenly place is sweet balm to my soul, and the youthful time of the year warms with its abundance my often shuddering heart. Every tree, every hedge is a nosegay of blossoms; and one would wish to be turned into a cockchafer, to float about in the sea of fragrance and find in it all the nourishment one needs" (4).

One would like to lay the blame on his translators. I should let you have a few chuckles first. "Nosegay" means bouquet of flowers; "cockchafers" are something like June bugs. But who would think to use such words without a slight grin? Cockchafers ... sounds like our friends in Comparative Literature are participating in a bit of tomfoolery.

But Goethe does have some unspoilt sublime moments. Consider his description of Werther's desire for the future:

It is strange how, when I came here and looked down from the mountain into the lovely valley, everything attracted me. There was the grove! Ah, could I but mingle with its shades! There was the mountaintop! Ah, could I but overlook from there the wide landscape! The interlocked hills and familiar valleys! Ah, could I but lose myself in them! -- I hurried here and there and came back, not having found what I hoped to find. Oh, it is the same with the distance as with the future! A vast, twilit whole lies before our soul; our emotions lose themselves in it as do our eyes, and we long to surrender our entire being and let ourselves sink into one great well of blissful feeling. Alas, when we approach, when There has become Here, everything is as it was before, and we are left with our poverty, our narrowness, while our soul thirsts for comfort that slipped away.
So the most restless vagabond yearns in the end for his native land, and finds in his poor hut, in the arms of his wife, in the circle of his children, and in his labor to support them all, the happiness he searched the wide world for in vain (32-33).

Apparently vagabonds can only be male. Still, Goethe seems the wise soul in this passage. And yes, there are many more passages like this in The Sorrows. And I'll tell you, the book does take a dark turn. So be prepared. Remember, as much as I may kid, Goethe ain't Grover.