Faust Goes to Colorado

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 528, 5 August 1949, Page 4

Faust Goes to Colorado

PPROPRIATE broadcasts will A draw the attention of -_New Zealand listeners to the bicentennial of Goethe’s birth. In the meantime readers who may wonder how much notice should be taken of the event are invited to turn to pages 6 and 7 for a description of what happened at a small town in Colorado, where a few weeks ago people from different parts of the world attended a celebration. on a somewhat massive scale. Some of us may be doubtful whether the convocation at Aspen was the best way of paying homage to genius. At the end of three weéks, during which the visitors took part in symposia in the mornings, listened to con-certs--and thunderstorms — in the afternoons, and went to lec‘tures inthe evenings, everybody was "pretty tired and confused." Yet the occasion was clearly much | more than a formal celebration; Land it is probable that Goethe, an Olympian figure, would have approved this earnest concentration on his life and work. There are always people who are drawn

— ito a cultural event tor reasons which have little to do with art, but at Aspen some of the world’s outstanding thinkers and artists were like lions among the intellectuals, and it may be supposed that they will have given qa new impetus to a study which already has a literature of its own. Goethe is like Shakespeare in that his writings provoke endless debate. He was Gerfmany’s greatest poet; but he was also a novelist, a playwright, a critic, a scientist, and even -in a modest degree-a statesman. It has been said of him that he was the last of those universal thinkers who were able to see in broad outline the life and thought of their times. Goethe came before the Industrial Revolution, though he heard its first rumblings. In his lifetime it was still possible to find common ground for the artist and the scientist; and although his science was sometimes shaky — especially in

his stubborn opposition to the Newtonian theory of light and colour-he was able to write intuitively on subjects which now belong to the specialist. His greatest work, Faust, has become one of the creative sources in world literature: its influence passes, not merely across the barriers of language, but from one art to another, and especially into music. Goethe was not always old and wise. In his youth he lived passionately, and the poetic drama which he wrote around the Faustian myth had elements from personal experience as well as from medieval legend. The poem also became a framework for a _ philosophy which expressed the ideas of 18th Century humanism. There were, indeed, many Goethes: the susceptible young man who Had a succession of love affairs, and who wroté untidy and sentimental novels to escape from them; the mature thinker, still falling in love, but wrestling also with the problems of good and evil; and the old man who, unafraid of new

ideas, talked brilliantly to Eckermann (and fell in love again) in the last years at Weimar. There must have been endless scope for discussion among the scholars who came together in a Colorado valley. For people elsewhere, however, the significance of the meeting will not be found in the lectures and symposia, or even in the music-though many will envy the New Zealander who heard the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra playing Beethoven among the mountains. Beyond the music and the talking was. always the presence of a man, long since dead, whose mind remains alive and powerful. Goethe is a German who belongs to the world. The enthusiasts at Aspen weré paying tribute to genius, and they were proving once again that art has no frontiers. In an age much addicted to conferences it is a relief to read of one international gathering which was concerned mainly with poetry and truth.