Conversations with Goethe

I feel sort of guilty posting this because it’s not mine; however, I haven’t posted in quite some time and feel I need something to get me over the hump, so I’ve decided to lift some excerpts from one of my favorite short stories. “Conversations with Goethe” is one of the many jewels in Donald Barthelme’s 40 Stories. The story is composed of journal entries written by an imaginary companion (Eckermann) of the late 18^th, early 19^th century German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

So, in the vein of NPR’s Selected Shorts, here are a couple of my favorite entries from Barthelme’s “Conversations with Goethe”:

This is the 1^st entry of the story:

November 13, 1823

I was walking home from the theatre with Goethe this evening when we saw a small boy in a plum-colored waistcoat. Youth, Goethe said, is the silky apple butter on the good brown bread of possibility.

This is the 5^th:

April 7, 1824

When I entered Goethe’s house at noon, a wrapped parcel was standing in the foyer. “And what do you imagine this may be?” asked Goethe with a smile. I could not for the life of me fathom what the parcel might contain, for it was most oddly shaped. Goethe explained that it was a sculpture, a gift from his friend van den Broot, the Dutch artist. He unwrapped the package with the utmost care, and I was seized with admiration when the noble figure within was revealed: a representation, in bronze, of a young woman dressed as Diana, her bow bent and an arrow on the string. We marveled together at the perfection of form and fineness of detail, most of all at the indefinable aura of spirituality which radiated from the work. “Truly astonishing!” Goethe exclaimed, and I hastened to agree. Art, Goethe said, is the four-percent interest on the municipal bond of life. He was very pleased with this remark and repeated it several times.

This is the 7^th and final entry:

September 1, 1824

Today Goethe inveighed against certain critics who had, he said, completely misunderstood Lessing. He spoke movingly about how such obtuseness had partially embittered Lessing’s last years, and speculated that it was because Lessing was both critic and dramatist that the attacks had been of more than usual ferocity. Critics, Goethe said, are the cracked mirror in the grand ballroom of the creative spirit. No, I said, they were, rather, the extra baggage on the great cabriolet of conceptual progress. “Eckermann,” said Goethe, “shut up.”

I want to develop a mental storehouse of metaphoric axioms like this, so I will have at least one to recite in any given circumstance.