The Divan is the last work of Goethe's long connubial life. Christiane had died in 1816. He felt the blow severely, and said that what remained of life to hint was but time granted "that lie might mourn her loss." His directorship of the Weimar Theatre he gave up in 1817. But the years that remained to him, "testamentary years," he called them, were to yield much of interest. Wilhelm Meister's Wan dcrjahrc may indeed seem dreary reading, though it contains many wise pedagogical observations and some episodes that recall the narrative power of Goethe's prime. To these years, also, we owe the Second Part of Faust, the necessary comple ment of the former, with its teaching that men rise by unselfish altruistic effort. Here, as Scherer noticed, Faust chooses, not wealth, but work, and finds in that choice his salvation. Mediately Gretchen brings him to the choice; im mediately, Helena, the incarnation of Greek ideals, as though to suggest that beauty is posi tive, creative, revealing the worth of life, and freeing Faust at last from the Mephistophelean spirit of negation. So the teaching is the same as that of Wilhelm Meister. The scholar, as the poet, passes, in Goethe's conception, from a grop ing, contemplative, searching esthetic existence under the spur of negative spirits and ideal models, to active, useful labor. Here is to be found Goethe's philosophy of life, which aims to realize the ideal by the idealization of the real, to correlate action with thought. "The rest of my life may be regarded as a free gift," he said as he sealed the manuscript of this Second Part of Faust. "It is now really indifferent what I do, or if I do anything at all." It was his philo sophic testament to Germany.
It is to this last period, too, that we owe the Conversations (Gespritche) with Eckermann, which have preserved to us much keen criticism of men and things, for during these declining years be continued to be in closest touch with the intellectual movement of his own country and of others. Weimar became a goal of pil grimage to men of many minds and nations. He seemed to Germans the survivor, almost the last, of a. heroic age. Some of these visitors give us glimpses of the old man's life, among them Heine, Thackeray, and his old friend Lottie Kestner. After his wife's death he traveled but little, seldom farther than Jena, lingering especially over places associated with his prime, and toward the last working intermittently, as health per mitted, on the annals of his Weimar life. In 1828 Karl August died, followed two years later by Goethe's son August, whose widow, Ottilie, cared for her father-in-law to the end. In the same year (1830) Grand Duchess Luise passed away. So Goethe was left, almost the last of his generation. He died in Weimar March 22, 1832, in his chair, so peacefully that men did not know the hour. Eckermann, who saw his body as it was prepared for burial, noted the deep peace and firmness of the features, the magnificence of the limbs, the broad, strong, and arched chest. No where on the body, he says, was there a trace of wasting. "A perfect man lay in great beauty before me." This body lies now, with that of Schiller, in the ducal mausoleum of Weimar in front of the bronze coffins of the two princely patrons of both, Luise and Karl August.
This is the most completely rounded literary life in history—a life of monumental proportion and yet of perfect symmetry, responsive to all intellectual impulses of art, philosophy, and sci ence, open to every light, yet self-poised and self controlled till its calm seems Olympian. Goethe is
at once the representative and the prophet of the modern spirit, reconciling the antinomies of the ideal and the real in the world-wisdom of his Faust.
The literature that has gathered around Goethe would fill a library—indeed, it does so in the Goethe archives at Weimar, whence issue the Goethe Annual and the great edition of his works, embracing, also, the Tagebilcher and Brief e, which is now drawing to completeness. Besides this edition may be named Heinemann's annotated edition of the Werke which began to appear in 1901 (Leipzig). Of the Bridle, there are an notated selections by E. von der Hellen (Stutt gart, 1901 et seq.) and Stein (Berlin, 1902 et seq.) , who has edited also the correspondence with Schiller (Leipzig, no date). The correspondence with Frau von Stein is best edited by Schell (3d ed., Frankfort, 1889-1900). Eckennann's Ge sprache are edited with an introduction and notes by Moldenhauer, and, better, by Bartels (Leipzig, 1902). Von Biederman has also edited Goethe's Gespiiiiche (10 vols., Leipzig, 1889-1896).
Of the lives of Goethe, Diintzer's (Leipzig, 1883), is the most. complete; Schkfer's, though old (Bremen, 1851, often reedited), not anti quated; Goedeke's Goethe's Leben und Schrif ten (Stuttgart, 1877) is shorter. Popular biogra phies are those by Heinemann (Leipzig, 1899), Prem (ib., 1900), Witkowski (ib., 1900), and Bielschowsky (Munich, 1902 et seq.): Among recent studies of Goethe the more sig nificant are: Biedermann, Goethe Forsehungen (1st series, Frankfort, 1879; 2d and 3d series, Leipzig, 1886, 1899) ; Richard M.Meyer,"Goethe," in Bettelheim, Geisteshelden (Berlin, 1898) ; Hermann Grimm, Goethe Vorlesungen (6th ed., Berlin, 1899) ; Mintzer, Zur Goetheforschung (1891) ; Zarncke, Goetheschrif ten (Leipzig,1897 ) ; Bernays, Der junge Goethe (Leipzig, 1875) ; Weissenfels, Der junge Goethe (Tubingen, 1899) ; Menzel, Der Frankfurter Goethe (Frankfurt, 1900) ; Diezmann, Goethe und die lustige Zeit in Weimar (2d ed., Weimar, 1901) ; Burkhardt, Goethe's Unterhaltungen mit dem Kanzler Muller (1879) ; Fischer, Goethe find Napoleon (Frauen feld, 1901) ; Funk, Goethe und Lavater (Weimar, 1901) ; Virchow, Goethe als Naturforscher (1861) ; Sell, Goethe's Stellung zu Religion unit •Christenthum (Freiburg, 1899) ; Vogel, Goethe's Selbstzeugnisse fiber seine Stellung zur Religion (Leipzig, 1899) ; Scherer, Aufsatze fiber Goethe (Berlin, 1900) ; Bode, Goethes Aesthetik (Berlin, 1901). To celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Goethe's birth there was issued Goethe, eine Biographie in Bildnissen (Leipzig, 1899), a folio with 166 portraits. See, also, for Goethe's descendants, Von Gerstenbergk, Ottilie von Goethe und ihre Sane (Stuttgart, 1891), Lewes's Life (London, 1855) is the best in Eng lish. Wilhelm Meister has been admirably trans lated by Carlyle, Faust by Bayard Taylor and many others. Some of the lyrics have been ren dered masterfully by Longfellow and others, but there is no worthy rendering of the poems or dramas as a whole.