. Backgrounds of literature. tration the aridity ofspirit, the shallowness of insight, and the dead-ness of thought which reigned in Germany inthe early years of Goethes life. Never has apoet of the first rank fallen upon times moreuninspiring and come to maturity among a peo-ple more divided. Both race and language wereold, but they lacked the trained intelligence, thesolidarity of experience, the unity of emotionand ideal, which are the finest fruits of the very start Goethe was driven backupon himself and forced to undertake con-sciously and of set purpose the work which, un-d
. Backgrounds of literature. tration the aridity ofspirit, the shallowness of insight, and the dead-ness of thought which reigned in Germany inthe early years of Goethes life. Never has apoet of the first rank fallen upon times moreuninspiring and come to maturity among a peo-ple more divided. Both race and language wereold, but they lacked the trained intelligence, thesolidarity of experience, the unity of emotionand ideal, which are the finest fruits of the very start Goethe was driven backupon himself and forced to undertake con-sciously and of set purpose the work which, un-der more inspiring conditions, would have beenalmost instinctive. For to speak simply andnaturally, in good German speech out of asound German heart, was, at the time Gotz appeared, to be a reformer and to lead a move-ment. Not only was the French influence to bedestroyed and the French standards, methods,and tastes to be driven out, but a native tastewas to be educated, and true racial forms of 146 The State Church at Weimar. WEIMAR AND GOETHE expression were to be fashioned. Goethe wastoo self-centered, even in his youth, and of anintellectual fiber too vigorous, to come under thespell of the shallow foreign influence so widelyprevalent. The French classicism, which drewits inspiration, not from the originative litera-ture of the Greeks, but from the derivative litera-ture of the Romans, had no charms for a natureso rich in original instincts and so stronglyswayed by the free and living forces of the was to the past of his own people that Goetheturned when he wrote, with a strong, vigoroushand, the virile and genuinely German dramaof Gotz von Berlichingen ; it was the dis-eased and disordered fancy among his own Teu-tonic kin that he portrayed with such searchinginsight and power in the Sorrows of the storm of acclamation which swept Ger-many showed how powerfully the chords of ra-cial feeling had been struck and how clear wasGoethes insight into the German
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