Conversations With Eckermann

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“THIS collection of Conversations with Goethe took its rise chiefly from an impulse, natural to my mind, to appropriate to myself by writing any part of my experience which strikes me as valuable or remarkable. Moreover, I felt constantly the need of instruction, not only when I first met with that extraordinary man, but also after I had lived with him for years; and I loved to seize on the import of his words, and to note it down, that I might possess them for the rest of my life. When I think how rich and full were the communications by which he made me so happy for a period of nine years, and now observe how small a part I have retained in writing, I seem to myself like a child who, endeavouring to catch the refreshing spring shower with open hands, finds that the greater part of it runs through his fingers. But, as the saying is that books have their destiny, and as this applies no less to the origin of a book than to its subsequent appearance in the broad wide world, so we may use it with regard to the origin of this present book. Whole months often passed away, while the stars were unpropitious, and ill health, business, or various toils needful to daily existence, prevented me from writing a single line; but then again kindly stars arose, and health, leisure, and the desire to write, combined to help me a good step forwards. And then, where persons are long domesticated together, where will there not be intervals of indifference; and where is he who knows always how to prize the present at its due rate? I mention these things to excuse the frequent and important gaps which the reader will find, if he is inclined to read the book in chronological order. To such gaps belong much that is good, but is now lost, especially many favourable words spoken by Goethe of his widely scattered friends, as well as of the works of various living German authors, while other remarks of a similar kind have been noted down. But, as I said before, books have their destinies even at the time of their origin. For the rest, I consider that which I have succeeded in making my own in these two volumes, and which I have some title to regard as the ornament of my own existence, with deep-felt gratitude as the gift of Providence, and I have a certain confidence that the world with which I share it will also feel gratitude towards me. I think that these conversations not only contain many valuable explanations and instructions on science, art, and practical life, but that these sketches of Goethe, taken directly from life, will be especially serviceable in completing the portrait which each reader may have formed of Goethe from his manifold works. Still, I am far from imagining that the whole internal Goethe is here adequately portrayed. We may, with propriety, compare this extraordinary mind and man to a many-sided diamond, which in each direction shines with a different hue. And as, under different circumstances and with different persons, he became another being, so I, too, can only say, in a very modest sense, this is my Goethe. And this applies not merely to his manner of presenting himself to me, but to my capacity for apprehending and re-producing him. In such cases a reflection takes place, as in a mirror; and it is very seldom that, in passing through another individuality, nothing of the original is lost, and nothing foreign is blended. The representations of the person of Goethe by Rauch, Dawe, Stieler, and David have all a high degree of truth, and yet each bears more or less the stamp of the individuality which produced it. If this can be said of bodily things, how much more does it apply to the fleeting, intangible objects of the mind! However it may be in my case, I trust that all those who, from mental power or personal acquaintance with Goethe, are fitted to judge, will not misinterpret my exertions to attain the greatest possible fidelity.”

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Avital Ronell, author of Crack Wars and The Telephone Book, defies the undefiable. In Dictations she looks at Goethe, the dictator. A figure whose every word is treated with reverence by Germanists, Goethe is exemplary. But of what? As if teetering between life and death, Goethe was born in a legendary way: thought to be stillborn, he was brought to life by extraordinary efforts. Eighty-three years later he died, or seemed to, and was praised as an immortal spirit. His spirit immediately began to haunt. Four years later Johann Peter Eckermann published two volumes recounting his conversations with Goethe. Goethe quickly got the best of him. He spoke eerily through Eckermann to a world eager to hear his latest words. Eckermann's books are usually considered to be by Goethe, and Eckermann himself has become another of Goethe's creations. The master of Faust and Wilhelm Meister keeps coming back. He visited the dreams and anxieties of persons as sensitive as Kafka, Nietzsche, and Freud, speaking up in quotations or casting his shadow over poems, stories, and the birth pangs of psychoanalysis. He is a difficult case. Avita Ronell has never shied from the difficult. In Dictations, her first book, originally published in 1986, she starts at the edge of an abyss—the question of spirit, as exemplified by an author whose writings transcended even himself. Often invoked but never seen, spirit has been a matter literary scholars have declined to look at or look for. Here, though restless, it comes into view. In a new preface, Ronell describes the circumstances surrounding the writing and reception of the book.