Johann Wolfgang von Goethe through the eyes of Thomas Elliot

There are writers who, despite their significance, do not become representative of their era. Others express and form the spirit of their time, and thus gain the value of first-time masters of the word whose works change the general views of literature and rearrange the existing artistic order. This is the case with the English poet, playwright and essayist Thomas Eliot, who lived from 1888 to 1965. Eliot is a descendant of a Puritan family who moved to the 17th century beyond the ocean of New England. He earns his education at Harvard, Sorbonne and Oxford. After 1914, Eliot lived in the homeland of his ancestors, Britain, in 1927, receiving British citizenship and entering into the english faith. In 1948, he was awarded with the Nobel Prize for Literature. In the year of his death, Eliot is already a cavalier of the English and the French Order of Merit and Honorary Doctor of twenty-three universities. Already with his first work Alfred Prufrock's Love Song of 1917, Elliot began the modern poetry in England, proclaiming the universal loss of life and revisiting the traditional aesthetic value system. Eliot perceives the bourgeois world in a state of revival and decay in a state of apocalypse. This apocalypse involves the entire Western European culture, the whole of the anti-Christian tradition, even the whole process of civilization. The cultural crisis is represented not only as a ruin of values but also as a threat to the physical existence of mankind. This relationship, Eliot, also expresses in his essay, published from 1920 to 1957. Among his critically acclaimed articles, "Tradition and Individual Talent," "What is Classic," "Three Voices of Poetry," and "The Critic's Function," are particularly popular. But the essence of his critical thought is gathered in the late essay "Goethe the Wise," which Eliot wrote in 1956 at the age of 68. Here, the elderly poet returns to his youth, to the paths of his creative maturation, to take up the theme of the artist's majesty throughout his life.

Goethe in the Roman Campagna (1786) by Tischbein image source

The reason for turning to Goethe's image is rather strange: twenty years earlier, Eliot had a strong dislike for the Weimar Olympian and allowed himself to write a sentence for him that, in old age, seemed ridiculous and untrue. "For Goethe it is probably best to say that he was mistaken in philosophy and poetry without much success in both, his real role being a secular man and a sage, such as Laroshfuko." Eliot notes that the sentence is interesting because it contains so many mistakes in so few words and only one truth: that Goethe is a sage. But this truth also contains a mistake: the identification of wisdom with secular wisdom. Without at least damaging our admiration for Laroshfuko, Eliot points out that the wisdom of the "secular man" is too limited. According to him there is a "secular wisdom", but there is also "spiritual wisdom". Wisdom entirely of the first kind can eventually become stupid if it neglects or tries to judge those things beyond its reach. But wisdom, which is purely spiritual, may be beneficial in this world. When we speak that one person is "wise," and when the context does not indicate that we mean only one kind of wisdom, then this person has wisdom to a greater extent than other people. This can be said about Goethe, concludes Eliot. And it goes on: There are probably areas of wisdom in which Goethe has not penetrated, but it is more interesting to understand the wisdom that Goethe possessed than to define its borders. Eliot points to another mistake in the sentence he quotes to his detriment. It suggests that wisdom is something that manifests itself in wise thoughts, aphorisms, and maxims. Positively, they can be signs of wisdom, but true wisdom is more than a collection of wise thoughts.

image source

And here Elliot comes to his hearty theme: what are the common features of that chosen number of authors to which Goethe, which we call the great works of Europe, belongs? This question also gives rise to a second: what is the process that makes us reconcile with the great authors to whom we have experienced indifference or antipathy in our youth - not just why, but why should this happen? Judging from his personal experience, Eliot concludes that three important phases exist in the development of taste and critical assessment in literature. In his adolescence, one is enthusiastically enthralled by different authors who respond to the instinctive needs in the course of his personal development. At the stage of enthusiasm, critical ability has not yet woken up, as there is no comparison between the individual authors, there is still no sense of gradation, no sense of grandeur. At this stage, there are only authors we are fascinated about and authors who leave us indifferent. When one continues to read more and more when he becomes acquainted with the growing diversity of the best authors of poetry and prose, while at the same time gaining more life experience and developing his ability to think, his taste becomes more and more comprehensive, the passions his - more controlled, his understanding - more penetrating. Only then will we begin to develop that critical ability and power of self-criticism without which a poet would never advance and repeat himself for the rest of his life. And yet, "continues Elliot," although in this second phase we enjoy, understand and appreciate the infinite variety of artistic and philosophical geniuses, there will still be some stubborn cases when authors of great magnitude will continue to be antipathic. So the third phase of development - maturation, to the extent that this process can be illustrated by the history of our reading and learning - is the one where we start to dig into the reasons for our inability to like what the generations before us have found admirable and have probably been with a much more developed sense of judgment than ourselves.

Trying to understand why we fail to properly evaluate a particular author, we seek an explanation not only within the creator but also within himself. Studying the authors whose works one fails to please is a particularly valuable test; such a study is not an attempt to enjoy what we have not been able to enjoy, it is an attempt to understand the work and to understand ourselves about the work. The delight, if ever, will come as a result of the fact that we have already understood the studied work, "Elliot concluded. And he sets out to determine what Goethe has ever been upset about, and why he still remains one of the great artists of Europe with whom he has to "reconcile" in order not to miss some opportunities for self-development. Here Elliot defines the basic qualities possessed by the great artist, among which universality is the most important. His essay about Goethe's wisdom, Thomas Elliot, concludes with the observation that the best proof of the wisdom of a great writer is the fact that readers, after long talking with his books, can say, "I feel wiser than the long time, I spent with Goethe." For we communicate with wisdom deeper than with logical judgments. And the wisdom of a great poet is hidden in his works, and when we begin to feel it, we wise ourselves. In order to survive our European culture, European nations must maintain their ability to create such poets. And if there is a time when the term "European literature" ceases to make sense, then the literature of each of our nations and languages will also die and perish, Elliot concludes. Thus, the English writer once again warns of the danger hanging over human culture when it loses its connection with past and tradition. For, as Elliot notes in his essay "Tradition and Individual Talent," "no poet, no creator matters to himself, his meaning, the evaluation of his case is determined by his attitude to the dead creators."