From Politics to Aesthetics: Goldsmith’s “The Traveller” and Goethe’s “Der Wandrer”

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size NotesDieter Breuer, “Goethes Gedicht ‘Der Wanderer.’ Zur Programmatik eines Textes,” Wirkendes Wort 20 (1970): 312.Breuer, p. 313.Breuer, p. 311.Both poems present problems as far as a “definitive” text is concerned. “The Traveller” in its first edition is 416 lines long, and it is reported that Johnson was responsible for some of the additional lines of the final text. This leads Robert H. Hopkins to claim in The True Genius of Oliver Goldsmith (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1969), p. 68, that the shorter version is tobe preferred because the expansion weakens the “emotional intensity.” Similarly, when Goethe prepared “Der Wandrer” for printing in 1789, he made spelling corrections and textual alterations. Walter Silz, in an essay on “Goethe: ‘Der Wandrer,‘” in Stoffe Formen Strukturen. Studien zur deutschen Literatur, eds. Albert Fuchs and Helmut Motekat (München: Max Hueber, 1962), criticized these changes as weakening and impairing the original, pp. 149–50. In a close reading of the respective poems, these would have to be considered factors; for the purposes of the present argument they are not relevant. “The Traveller” will be quoted from the Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, ed. Arthur Friedman (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), vol. 4. “Der Wandrer” will be quoted from Goethes Werke, ed. Erich Trunz (Hamburg: Christian Wegner, 1962, 6th printing), vol. 1. Line references will be given parenthetically.On Goethe’s familiarity with Goldsmith: Siegmund Levy, “Goethe und Oliver Goldsmith,” Goethe-Jahrbuch 6 (1885): 281–298; Carl Hammer, Jr., “Goethe’s Estimate of Oliver Goldsmith,” JEGP 44 (1945): 131–138; and Lawrence Marsden Price, English Literature in Germany (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1953), pp. 210–11. All three direct one to Goethe’s own references to Goldsmith and mention the influence of “The Traveller” upon “Der Wandrer.”.However, a cursory survey suggests that the Germans took more quickly and readily to Goldsmith than either the French or the Russians. It is likely that Herder’s enthusiasm for Goldsmith was a factor here. On Goldsmith in France, sec Edward D. Seeber and Henry H. H. Remak, “The First French Translation of ‘The Deserted Village,’” MLR 41 (1941): 62–67; and A. Lytton Sells, Oliver Goldsmith. His Life and Works (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1974), p. 397 ff. Adolf Stender-Petersen, Geschichte der russischen Literatur (München: C. H. Beck, 1957), 2:41, notes that when the Vicar of Wakefield was finally translated into Russian in 1786 it was well received.Goethes Gespräche mit J. P. Eckermann. ed. Franz Deibel (Leipzig: Insel, 1908), 2: 7.L. A. Willoughby, “‘Wanderer’ and ‘Hut’ in Goethe’s Poetry,” EG 6 (1951): 210.Silz, “Goethe: ‘Der Wandrer,’” p. 141.Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, 4: 246–7.Hopkins, The True Genius of Oliver Goldsmith, p. vii.On the political context, see Leo Storm, “Conventional Ethics in Goldsmith’s The Traveller,” SEL 17 (1977): 463–476.Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests. Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). Also relevant is M. M. Goldsmith, “Public Virtue and Private Vices. Bernard Mandeville and English Political Ideologies in the Early Eighteenth Century,” Eighteenth Century Studies 9 (1976): 477–510.One of the best introductions to the realities of Goethe’s position is Helmuth Kiesel, “Legitimationsprobleme eines ‘Hofpoeten.’ Zu den ‘Versen für und gegen den Hof’ in Goethes Autobiographie,” GRM NF 29 (1979): 390–415, with extensive references to further literature.