"Dichter" and "Geschichte": Goethe's Campagne in Frankreich

RICHARD FISHER "Dichter" and "Geschichte": Goethe's Campagne in Frankreich ι Ich bin ein Kind des Friedens und will Friede halten für und für, mit der ganzen Welt, da ich ihn einmal mit mir selbst geschlossen habe. {Italienische Reise, 12. Oktober 1787) Goethe knew that the decisive events of the early nineteenth century, affecting not only Germany but the entire Continent—the disaster of 1806, Napoleon's wars, the Congress of Vienna, the Carlsbad Decrees—were aftershocks of the epochal French Revolution. The Revolution was the world-historical event of his lifetime and it exerted an utter, and utterly negative fascination on Goethe. It obtrudes itself into his work—mingling among other aUegories from world history in the "Klassische Walpurgisnacht" of Faust II, for example—long after its outward signs had disappeared from the political stage. Ironically, Goethe kept returning to the very event he also tried to evade for so many decades, as if for him too "Politik" were tantamount to "Schicksal," although in a different sense than the pronouncement attributed to Napoleon. He felt hounded, even persecuted, by political issues , "Zeitfieber," newspapers and other organs of discord: "[ihr] wiederholet, politisch und zwecklos, jegliche Meinung/ die den Wandrer mit Wut über Europa verfolgt."1 Yet he repeatedly confronted the Revolution in an attempt at "Gewältigung," an effort to surmount inwardly and artistically "dieses schrecklichste aller Ereignisse"—a judgment he formulated as late as 18232 And this makes for a further irony, in the ultimate disposition of Goethe's autobiographical efforts: for if Dichtung und Wahr- 236 GOETHE SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA heit seeks a kind of solace for the despairing national spirit under foreign occupation, by portraying an eminently and reassuringly German IUe and invoking a past generation of peace, the Campagne in Frankreich 1792? written during the uneasy peace of the Restoration, recalls Goethe's experience of a world sundered by both revolution and war. It may surprise us to discover the generally high regard contemporaries expressed for the Campagne, which recounts Goethe's participation in the invasion of allied Prussian, Austrian and émigré troops into revolutionary France and was completed in 1822 as part of the projected autobiographical cycle Aus meinem Leben. This self-contained fragment remains the most neglected of Goethe's non-fiction prose narratives, but at the time of publication acclaim was widespread. Many readers delighted in the picaresque aspect of Goethe's adventures and in the portrayal of a turbulent world at war, whUe others relished an initiate's depiction of such figures as Fritz Jacobi and Princess Gallitzin. A few, notably Charlotte von Schiller and Sulpiz Boisserée,4 found most compelling the revelation of Goethe as an exponent of "eine höhere Leidenschaft" (p. 219), the impassioned pursuit of science and art, even amidst a hail of cannon baUs and the belUcose excitements of military Ufe. Yet the ambivalence which the Campagne stiU occasions was also aroused immediately. If an exclamation by Friedrich Perthes typifies enthusiasm for the work—"Welche Schätze für die künftige Geschichte des geistigen, sittlichen und wissenschaftlichen Zustandes unserer Zeit sind auch in diesem Bande niedergelegt!"—a reply by Count Cajus Reventlow is rather deprecatory—"Wie dürftig ... ist die Erzählung des Feldzuges, des unglücklichen, in der Champagne. Hatte ein Mann, wie Goethe, dort nichts zu sehen, zu erfahren, zu fühlen, als die in einer solchen Zeit höchst gleichgültigen Gegenstände, die er dem Leser mittheilt? An Größe hat Goethe, wie mir scheint, durch die Bekanntmachung dieses Lebensabschnittes nicht gewonnen."5 Modern criticism of the Campagne generally concentrates on two points: the degree of Goethe's insight into the campaign and, more broadly, his attitude toward the French Revolution, and the accuracy—or styUzation —of his narrative.6 The problem of tendentiousness in the memoire is complicated by Goethe's reliance, while writing in 1820-1822, on sources varying from published accounts of the revolutionary era (such as those of Massenbach and Dumouriez) to the—often extensive—notes and diaries of subaltern participants, notably the Weimar chamberlain Johann Conrad Wagner and a personal servant, Paul Goetze. Goethe was certainly not always in the midst of things during...