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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In 1830, at a time when the United States was still considered in Europe to be a small and insignificant country east of the Mississippi, Goethe published the poem “Den Vereinigten Staaten.” Almost at once it attracted attention, becoming with the years one of his most famous literary productions. A few months after its appearance in Germany, Fraser's Magazine in England offered the following quaint translation:
The original poem, as Goethe gave it to the public, was:
Amerika, du hast es besser
Als unser Continent, das alte,
Hast keine verfallene Schlösser
Und keine Basalte.
Dich stört nicht im Innern,
Zu lebendiger Zeit,
Unnützes Erinnern
Und vergeblicher Streit.
Benutzt die Gegenwart mit Glück!
Und wenn nun eure Kinder dichten,
Bewahre sie ein gut Geschick
Vor Ritter-, Räuber- und Geistergeschichten.
1 Fraser's Mag., iii, xvi (May 1831), 542. The word “war” is not a correct translation. It should be “quarreling” or “bickering among themselves.” By unser Kontinent, given here by “our hemisphere,” Goethe meant merely “our section of the world,” that is, Western Europe not including most of Russia. By America, he meant Eastern America, i.e., the country east of the Mississippi or possibly east of the Rockies, the only section of North America occupied at that time by the United States.
2 Goethes Werke, herausgegeben im Auf trage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1887-1912), v, i, 137. Throughout this article the Weimar Edition has been used. Hereafter it will be referred to merely by one of its four parts: Werke, Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, Tagebücher, Briefe, or simply by the letters W, N, T,B.
3 Deutsche Versgeschichte (Berlin, 1929), iii, 355, 356, 359.
4 Leonard L. Mackall, “Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Amerikanem,” in Ludwig Geiger, ed. Goethe-Jahrbuch (Frankfurt: Literarische Anstalt, 1904), xxv, 6.
5 A. E. Ticknor, ed. Life of Joseph Green Cogswell as Sketched in His Letters (Cambridge Mass.: Riverside Press, 1874), p. 58.
6 Mackall, Goethe-Jahrbuch, xxv, 8.
7 Mackall, ibid., 27.
8 Mackall, Goethe-Jahrbuch, xxv, 11.
9 Ticknor, Cogswell, p. 59.
10 Walter Wadepuhl makes a similar statement in Goethe's Interest in the New World (Jena: Frommannsche Buchhandlung, 1934), p. 29.
11 Mackall, Goethe-Jahrbuch, xxv, 30.
12 Leonard L. Mackall, “Goethe's Letter to Joseph Green Cogswell dated July 29, 1819,” Essays Offered to Herbert Putnam (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1929), pp. 315-326.
13 Mackall, Goethe-Jahrbuch, xxv, 13.
14 Although the thoroughness of Cleaveland's book certainly gave the impression that he could have studied under Werner in Freiberg in Saxony and had travelled widely, neither assumption is true.
15 Flodoard Frhr. von Biedermann, ed. Goethes Gespräche, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: F.W. v. Biedermann, 1909-11), iii, 399.
16 Ticknor, Cogswell, p. 107.
17 Karl Bernhard, Travels through North America during the Years 1825 and 1826 (Philadelphia, 1828), p. 237. I know the book only in this English translation.
18 Werke (Noten und Abhandlungen au besserem Verständnis des West-östlichen Divans), vii, 40.
19 Biedermann, Goethes Gespräche, iv, 82.
20 Werke (Italienische Reise), xxx, 26.
21 Fritz Jonas, ed. Schillers Briefe (Stuttgart, 1892), i, 380.
22 Werke (Italienische Reise), xxx, letters of 7 and 14 Sept. and 22 Oct. 1786.
23 Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, ix, 76. This was written in 1808 and supported by a second article in 1820.
24 Ibid., p. 304. This was written in 1789.
25 Werke (Italienische Reise), xxx, 132.
26 Biedermann, Goethes Gespräche, ii, 438.
27 Werke (Tages- und Jakreshefte 1820), xxxvi, 155.
28 A writer discussing the United States in 1816 meant only the country east of the Mississippi. Cleaveland's and Maclure's maps extended only slightly beyond the Mississippi. Mackall noticed the relationship between this line in Cleaveland's work and the poem “Den Vereinigten Staaten” years ago, but he never developed the matter beyond a footnote (see p. 320 of the book quoted in n. 11, above). We know now what the pioneer Cleaveland did not know, namely, that there is a little basalt east of the Mississippi. However, both Cleaveland and Goethe were completely right in thinking that this stretch of land had a comparatively quiet mineralogical background. In the 2nd ed. of his book, Cleaveland cautiously withdrew his statement that basalt was rumored to be in the Rockies, outside the United States.
29 Werke (Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre), xxiv, 16. I have changed Goethe's exact words.
30 Werke (Italienische Reise), xxx, 191. I have simplified the statement.
31 “On the Geology of the United States of North America,” Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., N.S. i (1818), 23.
32 To understand these few sketchy Bohemian notes, one should read them in conjunction with Book ii, Ch. 10, of Wilhelm Meesters Wanderjahre and Cleaveland's Mineralogy, pp. 281-286. The reference to Auvergne on p. 286 in the Mineralogy should be compared to the similar reference in the Bohemian notes. Max Semper, in Die geologischen Studien Goethes (Leipzig, 1914), p. 174, attempts to explain the notes but fails to understand them fully because he does not refer to Cleaveland.
33 Because of Goethe's wavering position between the Neptunists and the Vulcanists, it is questionable whether he had the right to call himself a Neptunist. In him there was a conflict between heart and head in regard to this question. He was a Neptunist (the older, traditional attitude) only for temporary periods when his emotions dominated his intellect. In all his references to America's lack of basalt, he speaks with a conviction or a suspicion of the volcanic origin of the stone.
34 Derogatory use of the word “klassisch” is not infrequent in Goethe's works. The phrase “klassischer Boden” appears in the Italienische Reise, letter of 27 Oct. 1786. For another use of “klassisch” in the meaning of ‘bound by tradition,‘ see Werke, vii, 108.
35 Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, x, 273 (written in 1822).
36 Walter Wadepuhl, “Amerika, du hast es besser,” GR, vii, ii (1932), 189.
37 Biedermann, Goethes Gespräche, iii, 349.
38 That these words may also be conceived as praise of Cooper, several of whose novels Goethe had read with great interest during 1826, is undoubtedly true. Cf. Wadepuhl, GR, vii, 191. I do not believe, however, that the words constitute an attack on Washington Irving, whose work cannot be characterized by the phrase “Ritter-, Räuber-, und Geistergeschichten.”