that the wealth of the material which he had accumulated for the Second Part occasioned an embarrassment in regard to the form, which partly accounts for the long postponement of the work. He expressly declares[1] that the Second Part of the drama must be performed upon a different, a broader, and more elevated stage of action; that one who has not lived in the world and acquired some experience will not know how to comprehend it; and that, like an unsolved riddle, it will repeatedly allure the reader to the renewed study of its secret meanings.
The last of these declarations is not egotistical, because it is so exactly true. No commentary can exhaust the suggestiveness of the work. Schiller doubted that a poetic measure could be formed, capable of holding Goethe’s plan; and we find, indeed, that the substance overflows its bounds on all sides. With all which the critics have accomplished, they have still left enough untouched to allow fresh discoveries to every sympathetic reader. There are circles within circles, forms which beckon and then disappear; and when we seem to have reached the bottom of the author’s meaning, we suspect that there is still something beyond. The framework lay buried so long in the sea of Goethe’s mind, that it became completely incrusted, here and there with a barnacle, it is
- ↑ Announcement of the Helena (quoted in note 103). Correspondence with Schiller, and Eckermann’s Conversations.
