2. Karl Grün, Über Göthe vom menschlichen Standpunkte. Darmstadt, 1846
[Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung No. 93, November 21, 1847]
Herr Grün relaxes after the exertions of his "Soziale Bewegung in Frankreich und Belgien" by glancing at the lack o/social movement in his native land. For the sake of variety, he decides to take a look at "the human aspect" of the elderly Goethe. He has exchanged his seven-league boots for carpet-slippers, donned his dressing-gown and stretches himself, full of self-satisfaction, in his arm-chair:
"We are not writing a commentary, we are only picking out what is there for all to see'' (p. 244).
He has made things really snug for himself:
"I had put some roses and camellias in my room, and mignonette and violets by the open window" (p. III). "And above all, no commentaries! ...But here, the complete works on the table and a faint scent of roses and mignonette in the room! Let us just see where we get to.... Only a rogue offers more than he has!" (pp. IV, V).
For all his nonchalance, Herr Grün nevertheless performs deeds of the stoutest heroism in this book. But this will not surprise us when we have heard him himself say that he is the man who "was on the point of despairing at the triviality of public and private affairs" (p. Ill), who "felt Goethe's restraining hand whenever he was in danger of being submerged by extravagance and lack of form" (ibid.), whose heart is "full with the sense of human destiny", "who has listened to the soul of man — though it should mean descending into hell!" (p. IV). Nothing will surprise us any more after learning that previously he had "once addressed a question to Feuerbachiart man" which was indeed "easy to answer" but which nevertheless appears to have been too difficult for the man in question (p. 277); and when we see how Herr Grün on p. 198 "leads self-awareness out of a cul de sac", on p. 102 even plans to visit "the court of the Russian Emperor" and on p. 305 cries out to the world with a voice of thunder: "Anathema upon any man who would proclaim new and permanent social relations by law!" We are prepared for anything when Herr Grün undertakes on p. 187 "to take a closer look at idealism" and "show it up for the guttersnipe it is", when he speculates on "becoming a man of property",
a "rich, rich man of property, to be able to pay the property tax, to obtain a seat in the Chamber of Representatives of mankind, to be included in the list of jurymen who judge between what is human and what is not".
How could he fail to achieve this, standing as he does, "on the nameless ground of the universally human"? (p. 182). He does not even tremble before "the night and its horrors'''' (p. 312), such as mur-der, adultery, robbery, whoring, licentiousness and puffed-up pride. It is true that on p. 99 he confesses he has also "known the infinite pang of man as he discovers himself at the very point of his own insignificance", it is true he "discovers" himself before the public eye at this "point" on the occasion of the lines:
You compare but with the spirit in your mind, Not me(1)
to be precise, as follows:
"These words are as when thunder and lightning occur together, with the earth opening up at the same time. These words are like the veil of the temple being rent in twain and the graves being opened ... the twilight of the Gods is upon us and the chaos of old is come again ... the stars collide, in an instant a single comet tail incinerates our little earth, and all that exists is henceforth but billowing smoke and vapour. And if one imagines the most atrocious destruction, ... it is all but as nothing against the annihilation contained in these eleven words!" (pp. 235, 236).
It is true, "at the furthermost frontier of theory", namely on p. 295, Herr Grün has a sensation "of icy water running down his back, real terror quivers through his limbs"—but he overcomes all this with ease, for after all he is a member of the "great order of freemasons of mankind"! (p. 317).
Take it all in all,(2) with such qualities Herr Grün will perform valiantly on any field of battle. Before we proceed to his productive examination of Goethe, let us accompany him to some of the secondary areas of his activity.
Firstly to the field of the natural sciences, for according to p. 247 "the understanding of nature" is "the sole positive science" and at the same time "nonetheless the fulfilment of humanistic" (vulgo: human) "man". Let us carefully collate the positive pronouncements
Herr Grün makes concerning this sole positive science. He does not actually go into the subject at all extensively, he merely lets fall a few remarks while pacing his room, so to speak, in the interval between daylight and darkness, but the miracles he performs are "nonetheless" the "most positive" for that.
In connection with the Systeme de la Nature[106] ascribed to Holbach, he reveals:
"We cannot here expound how the System of Nature breaks off half-way, how it breaks off at the point where freedom and self-determination had to break out from the necessity of the cerebral system" (p. 70).
Herr Grün could indicate the precise point at which this or that "breaks out" "from the necessity of the cerebral system" and man would thus be slapped on the inside of his skull as well. Herr Grün could give the most certain and most detailed information on a point which has hitherto escaped all observation, in other words the productive processes of consciousness in the brain. But alas! In a book on the human aspect of Goethe we "cannot expound this in detail".
Dumas, Playfair, Faraday and Liebig have hitherto innocently subscribed to the view that oxygen is a gas which has neither taste nor smell. Herr Grün, however, who of course knows that the prefix "oxy-" means sharp to the taste, declares on p. 75 that "oxygen" is "sharp-tasting". In the same way, on p. 229 he contributes new facts to acoustics and optics; by postulating a "purifying uproar and brightness", he places the purificatory power of sound and light beyond all doubt.
Not content with such dazzling contributions to the "sole positive science", not content with the theory of inward slaps, on p. 94 Herr Grün discovers a new bone:
"Werther is the man who has no vertebra, who has not yet developed as subject."
Until now it had been mistakenly thought that man had some two dozen vertebrae. Herr Grün reduces these numerous bones not just to the normal singular form but goes on to discover that this one and only vertebra has the remarkable property of making man "subject". The "subject" Herr Grün deserves an extra vertebra for this discovery.
Finally our casual naturalist summarises his "sole positive science" of nature as follows:
"Is not the core of nature Mankind at heart?[3]
"The core of nature is mankind at heart. At the heart of mankind is the core of nature. Nature has its core at mankind's heart" (p. 250).
To which we would add, with Herr Grün's permission: Mankind at heart is the core of nature. At heart the core of nature is mankind. At the heart of mankind nature has its core.
With this eminently "positive" piece of enlightenment we leave the field of natural science, and turn to economics, which unfortunately, according to the above, is not a "positive science". Regardless of this, Herr Grün, hoping for the best, proceeds extremely "positively" here too.
"Individual set himself against individual, and thus universal competition arose" (p. 211).
In other words, that obscure and mysterious conception German socialists have of "universal competition" came into being, "and thus competition arose". No reasons are indicated, no doubt, because economics is not a positive science.
"In the Middle Ages base metal was still bound by fealty, courtly love and piety; the sixteenth century burst this fetter, and money was set free" (p. 241).
MacCulloch and Blanqui, who have hitherto been under the misapprehension that money was "bound in the Middle Ages" by deficient communications with America and the granite masses that covered the veins of "base metal" in the Andes,(3) MacCulloch and Blanqui will be addressing a vote of thanks to Herr Grün for this revelation.
Herr Grün seeks to give a positive character to History, which is likewise not a "positive science", by juxtaposing the traditional facts and a series of facts of his imagination.
On p. 91, "Addison's Cato stabbed himself on the English stage a century before Werther", thereby testifying to a remarkable weariness of life. For by this account, he "stabbed" himself when his author, who was born in 1672, was still a babe in arms.[107]
On p. 175 Herr Grün corrects Goethe's Tag- und Jahreshefte to the effect that the freedom of the press was by no means "declared" by the German governments in 1815 but only "promised". So the horrors retailed to us by the philistines of the Sauerland and elsewhere concerning the four years of press freedom from 1815 to 1819, are all just a dream: how at that time the press exposed all their dirty linen and petty scandals to the light of day and how finally the Federal Decrees of 1819[108] put an end to this reign of terror by public opinion.
Herr Grün goes on to tell us that the Free Imperial City of Frankfurt was not a state at all but "no more than a piece of civil society" (p. 19). Germany, he says, has no states of any kind, and people are at last beginning "to realise increasingly the peculiar advantages of this stateless condition of Germany" (p. 257), which advantages consist especially in the cheapness of flogging. The German autocrats will thus be obliged to say: "la société civile, c'est moï'(4)—although they fare badly in this, for according to p. 101, civil society is only "an abstraction".
If, however, the Germans have no state, they have instead "a massive bill-of-exchange on truth, and this bill-of-exchange must be realised, paid up and changed for jingling coin" (p. 5). This bill-of-exchange is no doubt payable at the same office where Herr Grün pays his "property tax", "to obtain a seat in the Chamber of Representatives of mankind".
[Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung No. 94, November 25, 1847]
The most important "positive" things he enlightens us about concern the French Revolution, on whose "significance" he delivers a special "digression". He begins with the oracular utterance that the contradiction between historical law and rational law is indeed important, for both are of historical origin. Without wishing in any way to belittle Herr Grün's discovery, which is as new as it is important, that rational law too arose in the course of history, we would diffidently venture the observation that a quiet encounter in the quiet of his chamber with the first volumes of Buchez's Histoire parlementaire should show him what part this contradiction played in the Revolution.
Herr Grün, however, prefers to give us an extensive proof of the evil nature of the Revolution which eventually boils down to the one, ponderously massive complaint against it: that it "did not examine the concept of man" [p. 195]. Indeed such a grievous sin of omission is unforgivable. If only the Revolution had examined the concept of man, there would have been no question of.a ninth Thermidor or an eighteenth Brumaire[109]; Napoleon would have contented himself with his general's commission and maybe in his old age written drilling regulations "from the human aspect".—We further learn, in the course o*f our enlightenment, "about the significance of the Revolution", that basically there is no difference between deism and materialism, and why not. From this we see with some pleasure that Herr Grün has not yet quite forgotten his Hegel. Cf. for example Hegel's Geschichte der Philosophie, III, pp. 458, 459 and 463, second edition.—Then, likewise to enlighten us "about the significance of the Revolution", a number of points about competition are made, of which we anticipated the most important above; further, long excerpts from the writings of Holbach are given, in order to prove that he explained crime as having its origin in the state; "the significance of the Revolution" is similarly elucidated by a generous anthology from Thomas More's Utopia, which Utopia is in turn elucidated to the effect that in the year of 1516 it prophetically portrayed no less than—"present-day England" (p. 225), down to the most minute details. And at last, after all these vues and considérants, on which he digresses at length over 36 pages, the final verdict follows on p. 226: "The Revolution is the realisation of Machiavellianism." An example which is a warning to all those who have not yet examined the concept of "man"!
By way of consolation for the unfortunate French, who have achieved nothing but the realisation of Machiavellianism, on p. 73
Herr Grün dispenses one little drop of balm:
"In the eighteenth century the French people was like a Prometheus among the nations, who asserted human rights a^ against those of the gods."
Let us not dwell on the fact that it must presumably have "examined the concept of man" after all, nor on the fact that it "asserted" human rights not "as against those of the gods" but those of the king, the aristocracy and the clergy, let us pass over these trifles and veil our heads in silent grief: for something "human" has happened to Herr Grün himself here.
Herr Grün, you see, has forgotten that in previous publications (cf. for instance the article in Volume I of the Rheinische Jahrbücher* "Die soziale Bewegung" etc.) he had not merely expatiated upon and "popularised" a certain argument concerning human rights that is to be found in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher,(5) but with the truest plagiaristic zeal had even carried it to nonsensical extremes. He has forgotten that there he had pilloried human rights as the rights of the épicier,(6) the philistine, etc.; here he suddenly transforms them into "human rights", the rights of "man". The same thing happens to
Herr Grün on pp. 251 and 252, where "the right with which we were born and which, alas, is universally ignored", from Faust, is turned into "your natural right, your human right, the fight to translate one's ideas into practice and enjoy the fruits of one's labours"; although Goethe opposes it directly to "law and rights", which "are passed on from generation to generation like an everlasting disease",(7) in other words the traditional law of the ancien régime, with which only the " innate, ageless and inalienable human rights" of the Revolution, but by no means the rights of "man" conflict. This time, it is true, Herr Grün had to forget his previous point, so that Goethe should not forfeit his human aspect.
Herr Grün has however not yet completely forgotten what he learned from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher and other publications of the same tendency. On p. 210 he defines the freedom in France at that time, for example, as "the freedom of unfree (!), common (!!) beings (!!!)". This non-being has arisen from the common being on pp. 204 and 205 of the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher(8) and from the translations of these pages into the current language of German socialism of that time. Arguments which make abstract of philosophy and contain expressions from law, economics, etc., are incomprehensible to the true socialists, who therefore have the general habit of condensing them in the twinkling of an eye into a single brief catchphrase, studded with philosophical expressions and then committing this nonsense to memory for use on any conceivable occasion. In this way, the legal "common being" in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher has been transformed into the above philosophico-nonsensical "general being"; political liberation, democracy, has acquired its philosophical short formula in "liberation from the unfree general being", and this the true socialist can put in his pocket without having to fear that his erudition will prove too heavy for him.
On p. XXVI Herr Grün exploits what is said in the Holy Family about sensationism and materialism(9) in a manner similar to that which he uses in respect of the above-mentioned quotations from Holbach and their socialist interpretation, the hint contained in that publication that links with the socialist movement of the present day are to be found in the materialists of the eighteenth century, including Holbach.
Let us pass on to philosophy. For which Herr Grün has a thorough-going contempt. As early as p. VII he informs us that he "has no further use for religion, philosophy and politics", that these three "have existed and will never rise again from their dissolution" and that from all of them and from philosophy in particular he "will retain nothing more than man himself and the social being capable of social activity". The social being capable of social activity and the above-mentioned human man are, it is true, sufficient to console us for the irreversible downfall of religion, philosophy and politics. But Herr Grün is far too modest. He has not only "retained" "humanistic man" and various "beings" from philosophy, but he is also the proud possessor of a considerable, if confused, mass of Hegelian tradition. How could it be otherwise, when several years ago he knelt in reverence on a number of occasions before the bust of Hegel? We shall be asked not to introduce such scurrilous and scandalous personal details; but Herr Grün himself confided this secret to the man from the press. We shall not at this juncture say where. We have already quoted Herr Grün's sources with chapter and verse so frequently that we may for once request a like service of Herr Grün. To give him at once further proof of our kind intentions towards him, we will confide to him the fact that he took his final verdict in the free-will controversy, which he gives on p. 8, from Fourier's Traité de l'Association, section "du libre arbitre". Only the idea that the theory of free will is an "aberration of the German mind" is a peculiar "aberration" on the part of Herr Grün himself.
We are at last getting closer to Goethe. On p. 15 Herr Grün allows Goethe the right to exist. For Goethe and Schiller are the resolution of the contradiction between "pleasure without activity", i. e., Wieland, and "activity without pleasure", i. e., Klopstock. "Lessing first based man on himself." (One wonders whether Herr Grün can emulate him in this acrobatic feat.)—In this philosophic construction, we have all of Herr Grün's sources together. The form of the construction, the basis of the whole thing is Hegel's world-famous stratagem for the reconciliation of contradictions. "Man based on himself" is Hegelian terminology applied to Feuerbach. "Pleasure without activity" and "activity without pleasure", this contradiction on which Herr Grün sets Wieland and Klopstock to play the above variations, is borrowed from the Complete Works of M[oses] Hess. The only source which we miss is literary history itself, which has not the remotest inkling of the above hotch-potch and is therefore rightly ignored by Herr Grün.
Whilst we are on the subject of Schiller, the following observation of Herr Grün's should be apposite: "Schiller was everything one can be, insofar as one is not Goethe" (p. 311). Beg pardon, one can also be Herr Grün.—Incidentally, our author is here ploughing the same furrow as Ludwig of Bavaria:
Rome, thou art lacking in Naples' gifts, she in those
that thou layst claim to; Were but the two of you one, it had been too much for the earth.(10)
This historical construction prepares the way for Goethe's entry into German literature. "Man based on himself" by Lessing can continue his evolution only in Goethe's hands. For to Herr Grün belongs the credit of having discovered "man" in Goethe, not natural man, begotten by man and woman in the pleasures of the flesh, but man in the higher sense, dialectical man, the caput mortuum(11) in the crucible, in which God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost have been calcined, the cousin germain of Homunculus in Faust—in short, not man as Goethe speaks of him, but man as such, as Herr Grün speaks of him. Who is "man as such", then, of whom Herr Grün speaks?
"There is nothing in Goethe that is not human content" (p. XVI).—On p. XXI we hear "that Goethe so portrayed and conceived of man as such as we wish to realise him today".—On p. XXII: "Goethe today, and that means his works, is a true compendium of humanity."—Goethe "is humanity fulfilled" (page XXV).— "Goethe's literary works are (!) the ideal of human society" (p. 12).—"Goethe could not become a national poet because he was destined to be the poet of all that is human" (p. 25).—Yet, according to p. 14, "our nation"—that is, the Germans — is nevertheless supposed to "discern its own essence transfigured" in Goethe.
This is the first revelation about "the essence of man", and we may trust Herr Grün all the more in this matter because he has no doubt "examined the concept of man" with the utmost thoroughness. Goethe portrays "man" as Herr Grün wishes to realise him, and at the same time he portrays the German nation transfigured—"man" is thus none other than "the German transfigured". We have confirmation of this throughout. Just as Goethe is not "a national poet" but "the poet of all that is human", so too the German nation is not a "national" nation, but the nation "of all that is human". For this reason we read on p. XVI again: "Goethe's literary works, emanating from life, ... neither had nor have anything to do with reality." Just like "man", just like "the Germans". And on p. 4: "At this very time French socialism aims to bring happiness to France, German writers have their eyes on the human race." (While "the human race" is for the most part accustomed to "having" them not before "their eyes" but before a somewhat opposite part of the anatomy.) On innumerable occasions Herr Grün therefore expresses his pleasure at the fact that Goethe wanted "to liberate man from within" (e. g., p. 225), which truly Germanic form of liberation has so far refused to emerge from '"within"!
Let us duly note this first revelation then: "Man" is the German "transfigured".
[Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung No. 95, November 28, 1847]
Let us now observe how Herr Grün pays homage to "the poet of all that is human", the "human content in Goethe". We shall thereby best discover who "man" is, of whom Herr Grün is speaking. We shall find that Herr Grün here reveals the most secret thoughts of true socialism, which is typical of the way his general craving to outshout all his cronies leads him rashly to trumpet out to the world matters which the rest of the band prefer to keep to themselves. His transformation of Goethe into "the poet of all that is human" was incidentally facilitated for him by the fact that Goethe himself had a habit of using the words "man" and "human" with a special kind of emphasis. Goethe, it is true, used them only in the sense in which they were applied in his own day and later also by Hegel, for instance the attribute "human" was bestowed on the Greeks in particular as opposed to heathen and Christian barbarians, long before these expressions acquired their mystically philosophical meaning through Feuerbach. With Goethe especially they usually have a most unphilosophical and flesh-and-blood meaning. To Herr Grün belongs the credit of being the first to have turned Goethe into a disciple of Feuerbach and a true socialist.
We cannot of course speak of Goethe himself in any detail here. We would just draw attention to one point. In his works Goethe's attitude to contemporary German society is a dual one. Sometimes he is hostile towards it; he attempts to escape from what he finds repulsive in it, as in Iphigenie and above all throughout the Italian journey; he rebels against it as Götz, Prometheus and Faust, he lashes it with his bitterest satire as Mephistopheles. But then sometimes he is on friendly terms with it, "accommodates" himself to it, as in the majority of the Zahme Xenien and many prose writings; he celebrates it, as in the Maskenzüge, even defends it against the oncoming movement of history, as particularly in all the writings in which he comes to speak of the French Revolution. It is not just some aspects of German life which Goethe accepts in contrast to others which are repugnant to him. More frequently it is a question of the different moods he is in; there is a continuing battle within him between the poet of genius who feels revulsion at the wretchedness of his environment, and the cautious offspring of the Frankfurt patrician or the Weimar privy-councillor who finds himself compelled to come to terms with and accustom himself to it. Goethe is thus at one moment a towering figure, at the next petty; at one moment an obstinate, mocking genius full of contempt for the world, at the next a circumspect, unexacting, narrow philistine. Not even Goethe was able to conquer the wretchedness of Germany; on the contrary, it, conquered him, and this victory of wretchedness over the greatest of Germans is the most conclusive proof that it cannot be surmounted at all "from within". Goethe was too universal, too active a nature, too much a man of flesh and blood to seek refuge from this wretchedness in a Schillerian flight to the Kantian ideal; he was too keen-sighted not to see how ultimately such a flight amounted to no more than the exchange of a prosaic form of wretchedness for a grandiloquent one. His temperament, his energies, his whole mental attitude disposed him to the practical life, and the practical life he found around him was wretched. This dilemma of having to exist in an environment which he could only despise, and yet being bound to this environment as the only one in which he could be active, this dilemma always faced Goethe, and the older he became, the more the mighty poet withdrew de guerre lasse* behind the insignificant Weimar minister. Unlike Börne and Menzel, we do not criticise Goethe for not being liberalb but for being capable of occasional philistinism as well, not for being unsusceptible to any enthusiasm for German freedom but for sacrificing his spasmodical-ly erupting and truer aesthetic instinct to a petty-bourgeois fear of all major contemporary historical movements, not for being a man of the court but for being capable of attending with such solemn gravity to the pettiest affairs and menus plaisir? of one of the pettiest of the little German courts, at the time when a Napoleon was flushing out the great Augean stable that was Germany. We criticise him not from a moral or from a party point of view, but at the very most from the aesthetic and historical point of view; we measure Goethe neither by moral nor by political nor by "human" standards. We cannot here involve ourselves in a description of Goethe's relationship to his whole age, his literary precursors and contemporaries, his process of development and his station in life. We therefore restrict ourselves simply to noting the facts.
We shall see in respect of which of these aspects Goethe's works are a "true compendium of humanity", "humanity fulfilled" and the "ideal of human society".
Let us first of all take Goethe's critique of the existing society and then move on to the positive description of the "ideal of human society". In view of the wealthy content of Grün's book, it goes without saying that in either area we are only highlighting a few points of characteristic brilliance.
As a critic of society Goethe does indeed perform miracles. He "condemns civilisation" (pp. 34-36) by giving voice to a few romantic complaints that it blurs everything that is characteristic and distinctive about man. He "prophesies the world of the bourgeoisie" (p. 78) by depicting in Prometheus tout bonnement the origin of private property. On p. 229 he is "judge over the world..., the Minos of civilisation". But all these things are mere trifles.
On p. 253 Herr Grün quotes Catechisation:
Reflect, my child! From whom have you these talents? You cannot have them from yourself, you know.— Why, father gave me everything.— And who gave them to him?—My grandfather.— No, no! From whom could he, your grandfather, receive them? — Well, he just took them.
Hurrah! trumpets Herr Grün at the top of his voice, la propriété, c'est le voP—Proudhon in person!0
Leverrier can go back home with his planet and surrender his medal to Herr Grün — for this is something greater than Leverrier, this is something greater even than Jackson and his sulphuric ether fumes. For the man who condensed Proudhon's theft thesis, which is indeed disquieting for many peaceful members of the bourgeoisie, to the innocuous dimensions of the above epigram by Goethe — the only reward for him is the grand cordon of the Legion of Honour.
The Bürgergeneral presents more difficulties. Herr Grün gazes at it for a while from every side, makes a few doubtful grimaces, which is unusual for him, and begins to cogitate: "true enough ... somewhat wishy-washy ... this does not amount to a condemnation of the Revolution" (p. 150).... Wait! now he has it! What is the object at issue? A jug of milk[110] and so: "Let us not ... forget that here once again ... it is the property question that is being brought to the fore" (p. 151).
If two old women are quarrelling beneath Herr Grün's window over the head of a salted herring, may Herr Grün never find it too much trouble to descend from his room with its fragrance of "roses" and mignonette to inform them that for them too "it is the property question that is being brought to the fore". The gratitude of all right-thinking people will be the best reward for him.
[Deutsche-Briisseler-ZeitungNo. 96, December 2, 1847]
Goethe performed one of the greatest feats of criticism when he wrote Werther. Werther is not by any means merely a sentimental love-story, as those who have hitherto read Goethe "from the human aspect" believed.
In Werther "the human content has found so fitting a form that nothing can be found in any of the literatures of the world which might even remotely deserve to be set beside it" (p. 96). "Werther's love for Lotte is a mere instrument, a vehicle for the tragedy of the radical pantheism of emotion.... Werther is the man who has no vertebra, who has not yet become a subject" (p. 93 [p. 94]). Werther shoots himself not from infatuation but "because he, that unhappy pantheistic spirit, could not come to terms with the world" (p. 94). " Werther depicts the whole rotten condition of society with artistic mastery, it seizes the wrongs of society by their deepest roots, by their philosophico-religious basis" (which "basis" everybody knows to be of more recent origin than the "wrongs"), "by the vague and nebulous understanding.... Pure, well-ventilated conceptions of true human nature" (and above all vertebra, Herr Grün, vertebra!) "would be the death of that state of wretchedness, those worm-eaten, crumbling conditions which we call bourgeois life!" [p. 95].
An example of how " Werther depicts the rotten condition of society with artistic mastery". Werther writes:
"Adventures? Why do I use this silly word ... our false bourgeois relationships, they are the real adventures, they are the real monstrosities!"(12)
This cry of lamentation from a lachrymose emotionalist at the discrepancy between bourgeois reality and his no less bourgeois illusions about this reality, this faint-hearted sigh which derives solely from a lack of the most ordinary experience, is given out by Herr Grün on p. 84 as incisive social criticism. Herr Grün even asserts that the "despairing agony of life" which the above words express, "this unhealthy urge to turn things on their heads so that they should at least acquire a different appearance" (!) "ultimately dug for itself the burrow of the French Revolution". The Revolution, previously the realisation of Machiavellianism, here becomes merely the realisation of the sufferings of young Werther. The guillotine of the Place de la Révolution is only a pale imitation of Werther's pistol.
By the same token it is self-evident, according to p. 108, that in Stella too Goethe is dealing with "social material", although here only "the most disreputable circumstances" (p. 107) are depicted. True socialism is much more broad-minded than our Lord Jesus. For where two or three are forgathered — they need not even do so in its name — then it is in the midst of them and there is "social material". Like its disciple Herr Grün, it generally bears a striking resemblance to "that kind of dull-witted, self-satisfied nosey-parker who makes everything his business but gets to the bottom of nothing" (p. 47).
Our readers will perhaps remember a letter Wilhelm Meister writes to his brother-in-law(13) in the last volume of the Lehrjahre, in which, after a few rather trite comments on the advantages of growing up in well-to-do circumstances, the superiority of the aristocracy over the narrow-minded bourgeoisie is acknowledged and the subordinate position of the latter as well as of all other non-aristocratic classes is sanctioned on the grounds that it is not possible to change it for the present. It is said that only the individual is able in certain circumstances to attain a level of equality with the aristocracy> Herr Grün remarks apropos of this:
"What Goethe says of the pre-eminence of the upper classes of society is absolutely true if one takes upper class as identical with educated class, and in Goethe's case this is so" <p[p]. 264[-65]).
And there let the matter rest. Let us come to the much-discussed central point: Goethe's attitude to politics and to the French Revolution. Here Herr Grün's book provides an object lesson in what it means to endure through thick and thin; here Herr Grün's devotion gives a good account of itself.
So that Goethe's attitude towards the Revolution may appear justified, Goethe must of course be above the Revolution and have transcended it even before it took place. As early as p. XXI we therefore learn:
"Goethe had so far outstripped the practical development of his age that he felt he could only adopt towards it an attitude of rejection, a defensive attitude."
And on p. 84, apropos of Werther, who, as we saw already, embodies the whole Revolution in nuc&\ "History shows 1789, Goethe shows 1889." Similarly on pp. 28 and 29 Goethe is obliged in a few brief words "radically to dispose of all the shouting about liberty" since back in the seventies he had an article(14) printed in the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen which does not at all discuss the liberty which the "shouters" are demanding, but only engages in a few general and fairly sober reflections on liberty as such, the concept of liberty. Furthermore: because in his doctoral dissertation(15) Goethe propounded the thesis that it was actually the duty of every legislator to introduce a certain form of worship — a thesis which Goethe himself treats merely as an amusing paradox, inspired by all manner of small-town clerical bickering in Frankfurt (which Herr Grün himself quotes)—because of this "the student Goethe discarded the whole dualism of the Revolution and the present French state like an old pair of shoes" (pp. 26 an'd 27). It would appear as if Herr Grün has inherited "the student Goethe's worn-out shoes" and used them to sole the seven-league boots of his "social movement" with.
This of course now sheds a new light for us on Goethe's statements about the Revolution. It is now clear that being high above it, having "disposed of it" as long as fifteen years previously, having "discarded it like an old pair of shoes" and being a hundred years in advance of it, he could have no sympathy with it and could take no interest in a nation of "shouters for liberty", with whom he had settled his accounts way back in the year seventy-three. Herr Grün now has an easy time of it. Goethe may turn as much trite inherited wisdom into elegant distiches, he may philosophise upon it with as much philistine narrow-mindedness, he may shrink with as much petty-bourgeois horror from the great ice-floes which threaten his peaceable poet's niche, he may behave with as much pettiness, cowardice and servility as he will, but he cannot carry things too far for his patient gloss-writer. Herr Grün lifts him up on his tireless shoulders and carries him through the mire; indeed he transfers the whole mire to the account of true socialism, just to ensure that Goethe's boots stay clean. From the Campagne in Frankreich to the Natürliche Tochter, Herr Grün takes on responsibility (pp. 133-170) for everything, everything without exception, he shows a devotion which might move a Buchez to tears. And if all this does not help, if the mire is just too deep, then a higher social exegesis is harnessed to the task, then Herr Grün [p. 137] paraphrases as follows:
The sad destiny of France, let the mighty think on it, But verily the lowly should ponder it more. The mighty perished; but who defends the multitude From the multitude? The multitude was tyrant to itself.(16)
"Who defends", shouts Herr Grün for all he is worth, with italics, question marks and all the "vehicles of the tragedy of the radical pantheism of emotion" [p. 93], "who, in particular, defends the unpropertied multitude, the so-called rabble, against the propertied multitude, the legislating rabble?" (p. 137). "Who in particular defends" Goethe against Herr Grün?
In this way Herr Grün explains the whole series of worldly-wise bourgeois precepts contained in the Venetian Epigramme:
they "are like a slap in the face delivered by the hand of Hercules which only now" (after the danger is past for the philistine) "appear to us to smack home really tolerably now that we have a great and bitter experience" (bitter indeed for the philistine) "behind us" (p. 136).
From the Belagerung von Mainz Herr Grün
"would not wish to pass over the following passage for anything in the world: "On Tuesday ... I hastened ... to pay homage to his Highness, and had the great good fortune to wait upon the Prince ... my ever gracious Lord", etc. [p. 147].
The passage in which Goethe lays his humble devotion at the feet of Herr Rietz, the King of Prussia's (17) Gentleman, Cuckold and Pimp of the Bedchamber, Herr Grün does not think fit to quote.
[Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung No. 97, December 5, 1847]
Apropos of the Bürgergeneral and the Ausgewanderte we read:
"Goethe's whole antipathy towards the Revolution, whenever it was expressed in literary form, was concerned with the eternal lament at seeing people driven out from circumstances of well-deserved and well-accustomed property, which intriguers and envious men, etc., then usurped ... this same injustice of robbery. ...His peaceful, domesticated nature became indignant at this violation of the right of property, which, being arbitrarily inflicted, made destitute refugees of whole masses of people" (p. 151).
Let us without more ado put this passage to the account of "man" whose "peaceful, domesticated nature" feels so much at ease in
"well-deserved and well-accustomed", to put it blundy, well-earned "circumstances of property" that it declares the tempest of the Revolution which sweeps away these circumstances sans façon to be "arbitrary" and the work of "intriguers and envious men", etc.
In the light of this it does not surprise us that Herr Grün "finds the purest pleasure" (p. 165) in the bourgeois idyll Hermann und Dorothea, its timid, worldly-wise small-townsfolk and lamenting peasants who take to their heels in superstitious fear before the sans-culotte army and the horrors of war. Herr Grün
"even accepts with relief the pusillanimous role which is assigned at the end ... to the German people:
It befits not a German to be at the head of a movement Fleeing in terror, nor to waver first this way, then that."a
Herr Grün is right to shed tears of sympathy for the victims of cruel times and to raise his eyes to heaven in patriotic despair at such strokes of fate. There are enough ruined and degenerate people anyway, who have no "human" heart in their bosoms, who prefer to join in singing the Marseillaise in the Republican camp and perhaps even make lewd jokes in Dorothea's deserted bedchamber. Herr Grün is a decent fellow who waxes indignant at the lack of feeling with which for instance a Hegel looks down on the "little, dumb flowers" which have been crushed underfoot by the onrush of history and mocks at the "litany of private virtues of modesty, humility, love of one's fellow-men and charity" which is held out "against the deeds of world history and those who perform them".»> Herr Grün is right to do this. He will no doubt receive his reward in heaven.
Let us conclude these "human" remarks on the Revolution with the following: "A real humorist might well take the liberty of finding the Convention itself infinitely ridiculous", and until this "real humorist" is found, Herr Grün meanwhile provides the necessary instructions (pp. 151, 152).
Herr Grün similarly sheds some surprising light upon Goethe's attitude towards politics after the Revolution. Just one example. We already know of the profound resentment "man" feels in his heart towards the liberals. The "poet of all that is human" must of course not be allowed to go to his rest without having specifically had it out with them, without having pinned an explicit memorandum on Messrs Welcker, Itzstein and .their cronies. This memorandum our
"self-satisfied nosey-parker" unearths in the following of the Zahme Xenien (p. 319):
All that is just the same old tripe,
Do acquire some savvy!
Don't be forever just marking time,
But make some progress!
Goethe's verdict: "Nothing is more repulsive than the majority, for it consists of a few strong leaders, of rogues who accommodate themselves, of weaklings who adapt themselves, and the mass jogging along behind without having the faintest idea what it wants"[3]—this verdict so typical of the philistine, whose ignorance and short-sightedness are only possible within the narrow bounds of a petty German principality, appears to Herr Grün as "the critique of the later" (i.e. modern) "constitutional state" .(18) How important it is one may discover "for instance in any Chamber of Deputies you care to choose" (p. 268). According to this, it is only out of ignorance that the "belly" of the French Chamber looks after itself and its like in such an excellent manner. A few pages later, on p. 271, Herr Grün finds "the July Revolution" "misbegotten", and as early as p. 34 the Customs Union[111] is sharply criticised because it "makes yet more expensive the rags the unclothed and the shivering need to cover their nakedness, in order to make the pillars of the throne (!!), the liberal-minded money-masters" (whom everyone knows to be opposed to "the throne" throughout the Customs Union) "somewhat more resistant to decay". Everyone knows how in Germany the philistines always bring out the "unclothed" and "shivering" whenever it is a question of combating protective tariffs or any other progressive bourgeois measure, and "man" joins their number.
What light does Goethe's critique of society and the state, as seen through Herr Grün's eyes, now shed on "the essence of man'(19)?
Firstly, "man", according to p. 264, exhibits a most marked respect for "the educated estates" in general and a seemly deference towards a high aristocracy in particular. And then he is distinguished by a mighty terror of any great mass movement and any determined social action, at the approach of which he either scuttles timidly back into his fireside corner or takes to his heels with all his goods and chattels. As long as it lasts, such a movement is "a bitter experience" for him; scarcely is it over than he takes up a dominant position at the front of the stage and with the hand of Hercules delivers slaps in the face which only now appear to him to smack home really tolerably, and finds the whole business "infinitely ridiculous". And throughout he remains wholeheartedly attached to "circumstances of well-deserved and well-accustomed property" ; apart from that he has a very "peaceful and domesticated nature", is undemanding and modest and does not wish to be disturbed in his quiet little pleasures by any storms. "Man is happy within a restricted sphere" (p. 191, as the first sentence of Part Two has it); he envies no one and gives thanks to his maker if he is left in peace. In short, "man", who, as we have already seen, is German by birth, is gradually beginning to turn into the spit image of a German petty bourgeois.
What actually does Goethe's critique of society as conveyed by Herr Grün amount to? What does "man" find in society to take exception to? Firstly that it does not correspond to his illusions. But these illusions are precisely the illusions of an ideologising philistine, especially a young one, and if philistine reality does not correspond to these illusions, this is only because they are illusions. For that very reason they correspond all the more fully to philistine reality. They differ from it only as the ideologising expression of a condition in general differs from that condition, and there can therefore be no further question of them being realised. A striking example of this is provided by Herr Grün's commentary on Werther.
Secondly "man's" polemic is directed against everything that threatens Germany's philistine régime. His whole polemic against the Revolution is that of a philistine. His hatred of the liberals, the July Revolution and protective tariffs is the absolutely unmistak-able expression of the hatred an oppressed, inflexible petty bourgeois feels for the independent, progressive bourgeois. Let us give two further examples of this.
Every one knows that the guild system marked the period of efflorescence of the petty bourgeoisie. On p. 40 Herr Grün says, speaking on behalf of Goethe, in other words, of "man": "In the Middle Ages the corporation brought together one strong man in defensive alliance with other strong men." The guildsmen of those days are "strong men" in the eyes of "man".
But in Goethe's day the guild system was already in decay, competition was bursting in from all sides. As a true philistine, Goethe gives voice to a heart-rending wail at one point in his memoirs(20) which Herr Grün quotes on p. 88, about the rot setting among the petty bourgeoisie, the ruination of well-to-do families, the decay of family life associated with this, the loosening of domestic bonds and other petty-bourgeois lamentations which in civilised countries are treated with well-deserved contempt. Herr Grün, who scents a capital criticism of modern society in this passage, can so little moderate his delight that he has its whole "human content" printed in italics.
Let us now turn to the positive "human content" in Goethe. We can proceed more quickly now that we are on the track of "man".
Before all else let us report the glad tidings that "Wilhelm Meister deserts his parental home" and that in Egmont "the citizens of Brussels are demanding privileges and liberties" for no other reason than to "become men" (p. XVII).
Herr Grün has detected affinities with Proudhon in the elderly Goethe once before. On p. 320 he has this pleasure once again:
"What he wanted, what we all want, to save our personalities, anarchy in the true sense of the word, on this topic Goethe has the following to say:
Now why should anarchy have for me
Such attraction in modern times?
Each lives according to his lights
And that is profit for me as well",(21) etc.
Herr Grün is beside himself with joy at finding in Goethe that truly "human" social anarchy which was first proclaimed by Proudhon and adopted by acclamation by the German true socialists. This time he is mistaken however. Goethe is speaking of the already existing "anarchy in modern times", which already "is" profit for him and by which each lives according to his lights, in other words of the independence in sociable intercourse which has been brought about by the dissolution of the feudal system and the guilds, by the rise of the bourgeoisie, and the exclusion of patriarchalism from the social life of the educated classes. Simply for grammatical reasons there can therefore be no question of the Herr Grün's beloved future anarchy in the higher sense. Goethe is here not talking at all about "what he wanted" but about what he found around him.
But such a little slip should not disturb us. For we do have the poem: Eigentum.
I know that nothing is mine own
Save the idea that peacefully
Secretes itself from my spirit,
And every instant of happiness
Which destiny beneficent
Gives me to savour fully.
If it is not clear that in this poem "property as it has existed up to now vanishes into smoke" (p. 320), Herr Grün's comprehension has come to a standstill.
[Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung No. 98, December 9, 1847]
But let us leave these entertaining little exegetical diversions of Herr Grün's to their fate. They are in any case legion and each invariably leads on to others still more surprising. Let us rather resume our search for "man".
"Man is happy within a restricted sphere," as we have read. So is the philistine.
"Goethe's early works were of purely social?' (i.e. human) "character.... Goethe clung to what was most immediate, smallest, most domesticated" (p. 88).
The first positive thing we discover about "man" is his delight in the "smallest, domesticated" still-life of the petty bourgeoisie.
"If we can find a place in the world," says Goethe, as summarised by Herr Grün, "where to rest with our possessions, a field to provide us with food, a house to shelter us — is that not a Fatherland for us?"
And, exclaims Herr Grün,
"How these words express our deepest thoughts today!" (p. 32).
Essentially "man" is dressed in a redingote à la propriétaire and by that too reveals himself as a thoroughbred épicier.(22)
The German bourgeois, as everyone knows, is a fanatic for freedom at most for a brief moment, in his youth. That is characteristic of "man" too. Herr Grün mentions with approval how in his later years Goethe "damns" the "urge for freedom" which still haunts Götz, that "product of a free and ill-bred boy", and even quotes this cowardly recantation in extenso on p. 43. What Herr Grün understands by freedom can be deduced from the fact that in the same passage he identifies the freedom of the French Revolution with that of the free Switzers at the time of Goethe's Swiss journey, in other words, modern, constitutional and democratic freedom with the dominance of patricians and guilds in medieval Imperial Cities and especially with the early Germanic barbarism of cattle-rearing Alpine tribes. The montagnards of the Bernese Oberland even have the same name as the Montagnards of the National Convention! »> The respectable bourgeois is a sworn enemy of all frivolity and mockery of religion: "man" likewise. If Goethe on various occasions expressed himself in a truly bourgeois manner on this topic, Herr Grün takes this as another aspect of the "human content in Goethe". And to make the point quite credible, Herr Grün assembles not merely these grains of gold, but on p. 62 even adds a number of meritorious sentiments of his own, to the effect that "those who mock religion ... are empty vessels and simpletons", etc. Which does much credit to his feelings as "man" and bourgeois.
The bourgeois cannot live without a "king he loves", a father to his country whom he holds dear. Nor can "man". That is why on p. 129 Karl August is for Goethe a "most excellent Prince". Stout old Herr Grün, still enthusing for "most excellent Princes" in the year 1846!
An event is of interest to the bourgeois insofar as it impinges directly on his private circumstances.
"To Goethe even the events of the day become alien objects which either add to or detract from his bourgeois comforts and which may arouse in him an aesthetic or human but never a political interest" (p. 20).
Herr Grün "thus finds a human interest in a thing" if he notices that it "either adds to or detracts from his bourgeois comforts". Herr Grün here confesses as openly as possible that bourgeois comforts are the chief thing for "man".
Faust and Wilhelm Meister provide Herr Grün with an occasion for special chapters. Let us take Faust first.
On p. 116 we are told:
"Only the fact that Goethe came upon a clue to the mystery of the organisation of plants" enabled him "to complete his delineation of humanistic man" (for there is no way of escaping "human" man) "Faust. For Faust is brought to the peak of his own nature (!) just as much as by natural science."
We have already had examples of how that "humanistic man", Herr Grün, "is brought to the peak of his own nature by natura! science". We observe that this is inherent in the race.
Then on p. 231 we hear that the "bones of brute and human skeletons" in the first scene signifies "the abstraction of our whole life"—and Herr Grün treats Faust in general exactly as though he had the Revelation of St. John the Theologian before him. The macrocosm signifies "Hegelian philosophy", which at the time when Goethe was writing this scene (1806) happened to exist only in Hegel's mind or at most in the manuscript of the Phänomenologie which Hegel was then working on. What has chronology to do with "human content"?
The depiction of the moribund Holy Roman Empire in the Second Part of Faust Herr Grün (p. 240) imagines without more ado to be a depiction of the monarchy of Louis XIV, "in which," he adds, "we automatically have the Constitution and the Republic!" "Man" naturally "of himself has" everything that other people first have to provide for themselves by dint of toil and exertion.
On p. 246 Herr Grün confides to us that the Second Part of Faust has become, with regard to its scientific aspect, "the canon of modern times, just as Dante's Divine Comedy was the canon of the Middle Ages". We would commend this to natural scientists who have hitherto sought very little in the Second Part of Faust, and to historians, who have sought something quite other than a "canon of the Middle Ages" in the Florentine's pro-Ghibelline poem![112] It seems as though Herr Grün is looking at history with the same eyes as Goethe, according to p. 49, looked at his own past: "In Italy Goethe surveyed his past with the eyesoi the Belvedere Apollo", eyes which pour comble de malheur* do not even have eyeballs.
Wilhelm Meister is "a Communist", i.e. "in theory, on the basis of aesthetic outlook" (!!) (p. 254).
On nothing does he set great store, And yet the whole wide world is his b (p. 257).
Of course, he has enough money, and the world belongs to him, as it belongs to every bourgeois, without his needing to go to the trouble of becoming "a communist on the basis of aesthetic outlook".—Under the auspices of this "nothing" on which Wilhelm Meister sets great store and which, as we see from p. 256, is indeed an extensive and most substantial "nothing", even hangovers are eliminated. Herr Grün "drains every cup to the lees, without ill effect, without a headache". So much the better for "man" who may now quietly worship Bacchus with impunity. For the day when all these things shall come to pass, Herr Grün has meanwhile already discovered the drinking song for "true man" in On nothing do I set great store—"this song will be sung when mankind has arranged its affairs in a manner worthy of itself" ; but Herr Grün has reduced it to three verses and expunged those parts unsuitable for youth and "man".
In W[ilhelm] M[eister] Goethe sets up
"the ideal of human society". "Man is not a teaching but a living, acting and creating being." "Wilhelm Meister is this man." "The essence of man is activity" (an essence he shares with any flea) pp. 257, 258, 261.
Finally the Wahlverwandtschaften. This novel, moral enough in itself, is moralised even more by Herr Grün, so that it almost seems as though he were concerned to recommend the Wahlverwandtschaften as a suitable text-book for schools for young ladies. Herr Grün explains that Goethe
"distinguished between love and marriage, so that for him love was a search ofmar-riage and marriage was love found and fulfilled" (p. 286).
By this token, then, love is the searchoi "love that has been found". This is further elucidated to the effect that after "the freedom of youthful love", marriage must come about as "the final relationship of love" (p. 287). Exactly as in civilised countries a wise father first allows his son to sow his wild oats for a few years and then finds him a suitable wife as a "final relationship". However, whilst people in civilised countries have long passed the stage of regarding this "final relationship" as something morally binding, whilst on the contrary in those countries the husband keeps mistresses and his wife retaliates by cuckolding him, the philistine once again rescues Herr Grün:
"If man has had a really free choice, ... if two people base their union on their mutual rational wishes" (there is no mention here of passion, flesh and blood) "it would require the outlook of a libertine to regard the upsetting of this relationship as a trifle, as not so fraught with suffering and unhappiness as Goethe did. But there can be no question of libertinism with Goethe" (p. 288).
This passage qualifies the timid polemic against morality which Herr Grün permits himself from time to time. The philistine has arrived at the realisation that there is all the more reason for having to turn a blind eye to the behaviour of the young since it is precisely the most dissolute young men who afterwards make the best husbands. But if they should misbehave themselves again after the wedding — then no mercy, no pity on them; for that "would require the outlook of a libertine".
"The outlook of a libertine!" "Libertinism!" One can just picture "man" as large as life before one, as he places his hand on his heart, and overflowing with pride exclaims: No! I am pure of all frivolity, of "fornication and licentiousness", I have never deliberately ruined the happiness of a contented marriage, I have always practised fidelity and honesty and have never lusted after my neighbour's wife — I am no "libertine"!
"Man" is right. He is not made for amorous affairs with beautiful women, he has never turned his mind to seduction and adultery, he is no "libertine", but a man of conscience, an honourable, virtuous, German philistine. He is
De la maison il lui laisse l'empire, Au moindre signe obéit sans mot dire Et vit ainsi cocu, battu, content.(23)
(Parny, Goddam, chant III.)
There remains just one observation for us to make. If above we have only considered one aspect of Goethe, that is the fault of Herr Grün alone. He does not present Goethe's towering stature at all. He either skims hurriedly over all works in which Goethe was really great and a genius, such as the Römische Elegieen of Goethe the "libertine", or he inundates them with a great torrent of trivialities, which only proves that he can make nothing of them. On the other hand, with what is for him uncommon industry he seeks out every instance of philistinism, petty priggery and narrow-mindedness, collates them, exaggerates them in the manner of a true literary hack, and rejoices every time he is able to find support for his own narrow-minded opinions on the authority of Goethe, whom he furthermore frequently distorts.
History's revenge on Goethe for ignoring her every time she confronted him face to face was not the yapping of Menzel nor the narrow polemic of Börne. No,
Just as Titania in the land of fairy magic Found Nick Bottom in her arms,(24)
so one morning Goethe found Herr Grün in his arms. Herr Grün's apologia, the warm thanks he stammers out to Goethe for every philistine word, that is the bitterest revenge which offended history could pronounce upon the greatest German poet.
Herr Grün, however, "can close his eyes in the awareness that he has not disgraced his destiny of being a man" (p. 248).
Endnotes
[106] The first edition of P. H. Holbach's Système de la nature, ou des loix du monde physique et du monde moral (London 1770) bore, for conspirational reasons, the name of the Secretary of the French Academy J. B.Mirabaud, who died in 1760, as its author.
[107] 1 Joseph Addison's tragedy Cato was written in 1713; Goethe's Leiden des jungen Werthers m 1774.
[108] The Federal Decrees of 1819 (the Karlsbad decisions) were drawn up on the insistence of the Austrian Chancellor Metternich at the conference of the German Confederation in Karlsbad in August 1819 and were endorsed by the Federal Diet on September 20, 1819. These decisions envisaged a number of strict measures against the liberal press, the introduction of preliminary censorship in all German states, strict surveillance over universities, prohibition of students' societies, establishment of an investigation commission for the prosecution of participants in the oppositional movement (so-called demagogues).
[109] I 9 Thermidor—see Note 3. 18 ßrumaire—the coup d'état of November 9, 1799 which completed the bourgeois counter-revolution and led to the personal rule of General Napoleon Bonaparte.
[110] In one of the scenes in Goethe's comedy Der Bürgergeneral a rural barber who pretended he was a Jacobin general drank a jug of milk and thus angered the master of the house.
[111] See Note 53.
[112] II Ghibellines—a political party in Italy formed in the 12th century in the period of strife between the popes and the German emperors. It included mostly feudal lords who supported the emperors and furiously opposed the papal party of the Guelphs, which represented the upper trade and artisan strata of Italian towns. The parties existed till the 15th century. Dante, who hoped that the emperor's rule would help to overcome the feudal dismemberment of Italy, joined the party of the Ghibellines in 1302.
[3] The Jacobin revolutionary government headed by Robespierre fell as a result of the coup of 9-10 Thermidor (July 27-28), 1794. 5 8 12 ing an armed uprising of the plebeian masses against the bourgeois regime of the Directory and establishing a revolutionary dictatorship as a transitional stage to "pure democracy" and "egalitarian communism". The conspiracy was disclosed in May 1796. At the end of May 1797 its leaders were executed.