Gottfried

“ Now, that is not the only singularity of Gottfried’s structure, although it is the only one that would appeal to the untrained mind. Careful sounding of Gottfried’s internal arrangements by a well-known surgeon seems to point to the fact that all the other unsymmetrical parts of his body are similarly misplaced. The right lobe of his liver is on the left side, the left on his right; while his lungs, too, are similarly contraposed. What is still more singular, unless Gottfried is a consummate actor, we must believe that his right hand has recently become his left. ”

“ He heaps upon Tristram and Yseult the most extravagant praises: he is the flower of all knighthood, and she, the kindest, gentlest, purest, and noblest of women; he insists upon the wickedness of the world which is for ever waging war upon their passion, and holds up to execration all those who seek to spy out their secret. Gottfried is most genuinely overcome by the ideal beauty of this inextinguishable devotion, by the sublimity of this love which holds the whole world as dross ”

“ Otto, in a boat, and guarded by a company of his father's men-at-arms, was on the river going towards Cologne, to the monastery of Saint Buffo there. The Lady Theodora, under the guard of Sir Gottfried and an attendant, were on their way to the convent of Nonnenwerth, which many of our readers have seen—the beautiful Green Island Convent, laved by the bright waters of the Rhine!
“What road did Gottfried take?” asked the Knight of Hombourg, grinding his teeth.
“You cannot overtake him,” said the Margrave. “My good Gottfried, he is my only comfort now: he is my kinsman, and shall be my heir. ”

“ Gottfried wrote one great poem, Tristan und Isolt. The story is of Celtic origin; it came first from Britain and Ireland, thence was carried to France, and thence to Germany. Few stories have been so often treated or have had so wide an influence upon literature. A very few words will suffice to give Gottfried’s version of it. King Mark of Cornwall has a nephew named Tristan, whom he sends to woo vicariously, and bring home as queen of Cornwall, the beautiful Isolt, princess of Ireland. The young man goes on his mission, is successful, and sets out with Isolt on the homeward journey. ”

“ And Gottfried said, quietly, "He is fighting the battle of God with the scribes and Pharisees of our days; and whether he triumph or perish, the battle will be won. It is a battle, not merely against falsehood, but for truth, to keep a position he has won."
"When I hear him," said Ulrich, "I wish my student days over, and long to be in the old castle in the Thuringian Forest, to give everything good there a new impulse. He makes me feel the way to fight the world's great battles is for each to conquer the enemies of God in his own heart and home. He speaks of Aristotle and Augustine ”

“ But of this defect Gottfried was not conscious; or, at least, he would not have acknowledged it to be such. With all his wisdom, he knew not the meaning of virtue; for he was perpetually confounding it with learning; so that with him the philosophy [229] of life might be said to consist in these few words: “To be learned is to be virtuous.” Thus it was, that, in the pride of his attainments, he looked down upon other men as immeasurably his inferiors, and was even half convinced that they were of a different nature from himself. ”

“ The permanent interest of the poem consists in its representation of human passion, and in the knowledge it shows of the human heart. The plain, rude story, when told by Gottfried, takes a depth and pathos that are hardly its own. All is described, too, with such clear, bright touches, and such vivid force, that the poem seems somehow a tale of our own time. ”

“ If the world is so bad, and there is so much hypocrisy in the holiest places, perhaps I have been hard on poor Christopher after all.
But if Fritz has found it so, how unhappy it must make him!
Can really religious people like Fritz and Eva do nothing better for the world, but leave it to grow more and more corrupt and unbelieving, while they sit apart to weave their robes of sanctity in convents. It does seem time for something to be done. I wonder who will do it?
I thought it might be the Pope; but Gottfried shakes his head, and says, "No good thing can begin at Rome." ”

“ The minister of religion was touched, and instantly agreed to marry them. He repaired at once to the death-chamber, and there the dying man and the murderess joined hands and were made man and wife. Within twenty-four24 hours, however, Gesina was a widow again, for Gottfried passed away as the result of an extra strong dose which she administered twenty minutes after she had become Frau Gottfried.
She did not lose anything by the marriage even if she did not gain much. Gottfried left a few hundred pounds, and to this sum she succeeded. Her principal motive for marrying him was vanity. ”

“ Gottfried had just written the concluding paragraph of a treatise upon some abstruse subject, which possessed an interest only for scholars like himself. His pen dropped wearily from his fingers, and he passed his hand across his eyes.
“Yes,” said he, musingly, and a smile lighted up his face, “at length it is finished, the labor of many years. But the reward is to come. My fame as a scholar, already great [230] among men, will become greater still. Fame, bright goddess of my youthful dreams! how through weary years have I toiled for thee! ”

“ There seems here evidence of the strongest confirmatory character that Gottfried has exchanged his left side for his right. Yet how a human being can be so changed, short of a fantastic and pointless miracle, it is exceedingly hard to suggest.
In one way, of course, these facts might be explicable on the supposition that Plattner has undertaken an elaborate mystification, on the strength of his heart’s displacement. Photographs may be faked, and left-handedness imitated. But the character of the man does not lend itself to any such theory. ”

“ GOTTFRIED. Meister Gottfried of Strasburg, the most brilliant German poet of the Middle Ages, flourished about the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th century. Of his life and position we have no certain information, for he has told us next to nothing about himself, and contemporary records are dubious and confusing. ”

“ In the hope of controlling them, Gottfried, at their own request, puts himself at their head, but finds himself powerless to check their excesses, and on their defeat he is again taken prisoner. But the main interest of the last act is concentrated in Adelheid, who now reveals all the depths of her sensual nature and her unscrupulous ambition. Weislingen she has discovered to be a despicable creature, and she attaches herself to Sickingen, in whom she finds a man after her own heart, able to satisfy all the [Pg 126] cravings of her nature. ”

“ The play exists in three forms—the first draft being recast for publication in 1773, which second version was adapted for the Weimar theatre in collaboration with Schiller in 1804. It is generally admitted that in its first form we have the fullest manifestation of its author's genius, and equally the fullest expression of the original inspiration that led to its production. Like Shakespeare he had a book for his text—the Memoirs of Gottfried, written by himself ”

“ Sickingen, who is on friendly terms with the Emperor, does him the still further service of securing his relief from the ban, whereupon Gottfried settles down to a peaceful life in his own castle, and to relieve its monotony betakes himself to the uncongenial task of writing his own memoirs. In the fifth act we sup with horrors. The peasants rise in rebellion and wreak frightful vengeance on their oppressors. ”

“ The bishop, who had performed the marriage ceremony, was at the dinner. Hermann went straight up to him, knelt down, and confessed aloud, and with many tears, that a young girl named Gottfriede, fairer and better than all her sisters, had loved him dearly, and that he had returned her love and then abandoned her. ”

“ And, as a matter of fact, Dorothea's head did fall about that time.
But he had not long lain thus motionless, when a clear shining lightened the twilight, and pierced with blinding radiance beneath Theophilus's hands in which his face lay buried, and poured itself into his closed eyes like liquid gold. At the same time a rare fragrance filled the air. The young man arose as if pervaded by some new and unknown life. Before him stood a wondrous lovely boy, with golden ringlets, clad in a star-spangled garment, and with radiant naked feet, bearing a small basket in no less radiant hands. ”

“ A mighty longing permeated him with a sweet fire, and, clasping the basket to his breast and concealing it with his mantle, he hastened down from the house-top, through the streets and into the palace of the governor, who was sitting at table endeavouring to drown his wild rage in untempered Colchian wine.
With flashing eyes, Theophilus advanced towards him, without uncovering the basket, and exclaimed before the whole company, "I declare that I am of the same faith as Dorothea, whom you have just now murdered. It is the only true faith!" ”

“ And when they were alone, Gottlieb was not ashamed to hide his tears on his mother's heart.
"See, darling mother!" he said, "the dear Saviour did send the raven! Perhaps, one day, He will make us good enough for Him to send the angels."
Then the simple family all knelt down and thanked God from their hearts, and Gottlieb added one especial bit of his own of praise and prayer for his kind Hans, of whom, on account of his grim face and rough voice, he had stood in some dread. ”

“ Gottlieb made bad jokes, and laughed about the devil, and the other old fellow groaned and sighed, and talked of the devil, as if he sat at table with us every day, and eat his potatoes, like other honest people. Now, my little girls were quite perplexed; Mining attached herself to Gottlieb, and Lining to Rudolph, for now it was Rudolph who said Gottlieb did not occupy a Christian standpoint."
"Fie!" said Bräsig, "he should not have said that. And such a fellow as that cannot catch a good-sized perch!" ”

“ You asked me, "What was the reason for his damnation?" to which I replied, "The reason was the condition of the dying man, namely the burning hatred of God in which he died." For since the soul is not open to new, external sensations after death (when the body is returned) the soul sticks to its last thoughts. These do not change, but are intensified in death. But hating God, Who is the happiest being, leads to the greatest pain, since hatred means to suffer pain because of the hated one's happiness, just as love means to rejoice in the beloved's happiness. ”

“ Now, as in the ideas of God there is an infinity of possible worlds, and as only one can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for the choice of God, which determines him to one rather than another. ”

“ As we have above established perfect harmony between two natural kingdoms, the one of efficient, the other of final causes, we should also notice here another harmony between the physical kingdom of nature and the moral kingdom of grace; that is, between God considered as the architect of the mechanism of the universe, and God, considered as monarch of the divine city of spirits. ”

“ For it can happen that a single change which augments the expression of the one may diminish that of the other. Now the virtue of a particular substance is to express well the glory of God, and the better it expresses it, the less is it limited. Everything when it expresses its virtue or power, that is to say, when it acts, changes to better, and expands just in so far as it acts. ”

“ In saying, therefore, that things are not good according to any standard of goodness, but simply by the will of God, it seems to me that one destroys, without realizing it, all the love of God and all his glory ”

“ But God neither desires sins nor does them, since He doesn't find them good in themselves. But God finds that sins mingle in the universal harmony, since He has chosen it to be the most harmonious; their presence in the whole chain of events is compensated by greater harmony. For this reason, God tolerates, or rather allows sins, although He would eliminate them, if He could craft another, better chain of events without them. But God does not merely allow the whole chain of events ”

“ God contributes everything to sin except the desire to sin, and consequently He does not sin. Thus, I feel that sins are not due to the divine Will, but rather to divine Reason, or to the eternal ideas of things, which are the same thing. These eternal ideas constitute the nature of everything, so one should not foolishly imagine that there are two basic elements of things and two gods, hateful to each other, one good, one bad. ”

“ Finally, under this perfect government, there will be no good deed without its recompense, and no evil deed without its punishment, and all must redound to the advantage of the good—that is to say, of those who are not malcontents—in this great commonwealth, who confide in Providence after having done their duty, and who worthily love and imitate the Author of all good, pleasing themselves with the contemplation of his perfections, following the nature of pure and genuine Love, which makes us blest in the happiness of the loved. ”

“ Tomorrow may pass without his plans succeeding, but this failure will not blunt or quench his desire for change. It is not for us to set deadlines for God; only those who persevere will be crowned with victory. In short, a lover of God should always consider the past good, but still strive to improve the future. ”