The Other Lotte

The other Lotte, Lotte von Stein, was certainly the more interesting Lotte in Goethe's life. But she gets either no press or bad one. Mann barely mentions her in his Lotte in Weimar (dedicated to the earlier Lotte), clearly having had no clear notion of her; others' notions tend to portray her as neurotic or vicious or fake, forgetting that she was educated, cultured, strong willed, and of considerable social standing which she needed to protect. I wanted to strike a blow for her; I must have failed: a reader thinks this is the worst Lotte von Stein yet.

*

“So – you have returned.”

“So I have.”

“There were some doubts… some people even placed bets.”

“Ah, yes… I hope I didn’t ruin anyone by coming back… And you, did you bet?”

“I never bet, my Goethe. But I also did not bet because… I did not know how to bet. I didn’t know what to expect.”

“I didn’t know it, either. My return – it wasn’t decided until the last moment, you know. I hesitated until the last day. On my last night in Rome, in bed, I thought of giving up my seat in the post-carriage. But by then of course it was too late.”

“The passage had been paid.”

“Ah, yes, you know me: the bags packed, the good byes said, the letter announcing my return sent… It would have been such labor to undo all this. And it would have been – well, silly.”

“You mean it would have felt silly to have to explain it. It seemed easier to you to convince yourself that it had all been decided, the dice have been cast, any change was out of your hands, because it would have seemed unreasonable to change your mind. Unreasonable, or perhaps awkward.”

“Yes. It does sound rather silly when you put it this way, does it not?”

“Especially after you had gone to Italy, as you say, on the spur of the moment, in an act of poetic madness… This was much admired here: mad acts of inspiration rising above the customary, the triumph of the individual. Yet, in the end, you turn out a thoroughly reasonable poet.”

“Yes. How German of me.”

“German? I don’t know that it is German. Maybe not so German as – Frankfurtian? Very city-like: responsible and predictable. Reliable. But I did guess that you hesitated to the last. I know I would have.”

“To tell the truth, I am nor sure why I returned. I wanted to see old friends; see you, of course. But – “

“But?”

“I was not sure that I wanted to return – for good. I often thought I’d return, stay several months and then go back again… Whenever I thought about returning here, to Weimar, I imagined it most often as a temporary visit. Maybe extended, but temporary.”

“Then you know yourself less than I know you. I had no doubt that once you returned –if you returned – it would be forever.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think you have it in you to turn up here and then leave again.”

“Oh?”

“Of course! I suppose the prince probably knew this, too. That’s a very special skill of princes, you know, to know their subjects. One marvels at how they pick up this knowledge, this special skill of managing people. It’s the special skill of the princely blood, you know: part of the vast body of knowledge about how to be a prince.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, the salary, of course. When the word came from you from Venice two and a half years ago that you have absconded, that from Vienna, instead of coming back here you turned south and crossed the Brenner Pass, His Highness immediately decided to continue your salary as if nothing had happened; as if you have not – escaped.”

“Yes. He wrote me that all was well and that I was to stay in Italy as long as I liked and that whenever I chose to return was fine with the prince. Very generous of him, I must say. Very princely.”

“Ah, but that’s just it: it wasn’t generous. It was cunning. Look, he wrote: whenever you chose to return, meaning that you will. Some other, lesser person in his situation may have been mad at you, and cut you off, never wishing you to return. Another might cut you off precisely for the opposite reason, imagining that penury would force you to give up Italy and return, hat in hand, begging to be reinstated like some prodigal son. Of course, both would have been foolish. The first would have lost you irrevocably. The second would have forced you to make a living in Italy, which with your intelligence and resources you would have managed; which would have made it possible for you to stay there indefinitely and never to return. But His Highness is a crafty man, he has avoided both these mistakes. He paid. He paid and wrote “all is well, you may return anytime”. But also, as if to say, “don’t bother setting up in Italy; Italy is a mere sojourn, make the most of it: don’t try to be anything other than a tourist”. And it worked, hasn’t it? For two and a half years you remained – a tourist. You did not set up in Italy – because you did not even try and you did not try because – you did not have to and you didn’t have to because your salary was paid to you by our prince. So, you see? His highness has managed you expertly. His highness really knows how to be a prince!”

“Yes, that’s very insightful of you. But tell me something else, tell me why did you not think I could return to Weimar only for a while and then go back to Italy again?”

“Because, dear Goethe, you are too… too… decent. His Highness has paid you on the understanding that one day you will come back and continue in service here. You have accepted the salary –with it the implicit obligation to return into service. I am guessing that you feel guilty about the generous manner in which His Highness has treated you. And I am guessing that you feel you could not repay that generosity – by quitting. You do not have it in you. It would be too… ruthless. You are not ruthless. You are a nice fellow, my dear. Really, it’s very Frankfurtian, you know.”

“Somehow it doesn’t sound like a compliment on your lips.”

“Because it isn’t.”

“You have the same charming smile… as always.”

“One can see a fault in one’s friends character and yet not be offended by it. Some faults are charming. Like gluttony, for instance. Or stuttering.”

“Or decency.”

“Decency? How about – timidity.”

“Timidity?”

“Of course, my dear. I said decency, but I really should have said: timidity. Some see this trait of yours as politeness: never wishing to offend. But I – and his highness – we know better. You are a nice fellow because you cannot help it. You don’t know how to be rude. Or, should I say, how to be assertive. That’s why you left for Italy the way you did: surreptitiously, without a word of warning.”

“Ah, so we come to that.”

“Oh, I am not angry, if that is what you imagine.”

“No?”

“No.”

“And were you not then?”

“No, not really. At least I don’t think so. No, I wasn’t.”

“No?”

“Does it disappoint you?”

“You smile.”

“Of course. Your first letter to me from Italy – it gave me the idea that you expected me to be screaming mad with you.”

“And weren’t you?”

“No. I was upset that you left without warning, without saying good bye. This is why I say that you are timid rather than polite: a polite person would have taken leave properly. A timid person doesn’t know how to displease by telling an unpleasant truth – and will dodge uncomfortable meetings. A timid person will leave without leave-taking.”

“But I really did decide to go only once I reached Vienna. I didn’t know it yet at the time when I left Weimar that I would go to Italy and stay. So, I could not have warned you when we said good-bye because I didn’t know it then.”

“Oh, but it is all in character, my dear. While you were here, with us, it didn’t even occur to you that you could leave. You had to go all the way to Vienna, far away from us, your employers and your lovers, to dare such a daring thought, to hatch the plan. Do you see why I call this timidity? But don’t worry about it too much. It isn’t important.”

“But you aren’t angry.”

“Again, no.”

“And you weren’t then?”

“Again, no. And again: are you disappointed?”

“No, no, of course not. I am… relieved. I did think all these years that I may have hurt you by disappearing like that.”

“You did.”

“But you weren’t angry.”

“No, dear friend. It was not a good moment for me – I mean it was a bad moment in my life, you have chosen a bad moment to leave; I would have liked you to stay a little longer somewhere near. But I think I already knew by then that you were going to leave; I mean – that I was going to lose you one way or another. If not to Italy, then to France, if not to France, then to a new novel, or a new woman, or some such. I expected that.”

“You did?”

“Yes. Nothing is forever, especially not with poets, especially not with you. I never expected it to last.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, I knew it would end someday. I just didn’t know when. So when you left I was very sad, of course, but I was also relieved: now I knew when the end was and it was then. It was decisive; over in one clean cut; over before I could even realize what was happening. There was no opportunity to struggle, to object. It was like sudden death: not much to do about it, but accept. That’s a good way to end things.”

“But Lotte… you must realize… it was too hard for me… our love… it was so circumscribed… I could have you so little: so little of you, of your time, of your letters… I felt imprisoned in out love – imprisoned I say, because while I was required to give it my all, in return I got very little. Seeing you only several times a week, mostly in company and in between only your letters. Your letters! You never wrote anything – politics, philosophy, literature, weather, court, yes, but – anything but anything relevant, anything but feelings, but love! You smile again.”

“You know why I wrote the kind of letters I did.”

“To be safe.”

“Well, yes, that too.”

“Is there another reason?”

“A woman, my dear, has nothing if she does not have her reputation.”

“You have certainly protected yours!”

“Well, dear Goethe, I had been warned. I knew – the whole Europe knew – that you like to make novels out of your loves. That poor Lotte of yours, the other one, she’ll be saddled with that awful book to her dying day. What am I talking about? She will be saddled with it forever. As long as people remember Werther they will remember her and the confusion you wrought in her little mind!”

“That’s not nice.”

“I am not trying to be nice. I am polite, but I am not nice. This is the truth: you have confused the poor girl and then made a book out of her. I never wished to be confused and I certainly did not wish to become a book.”

“Lotte – the other one – she will be famous for as long as people read my book. You smile.”

“I wonder if you will ever understand that some people do not care a fig for that.”

“For being immortal?”

“Immortal, famous, what’s the difference?… If by immortality you mean some future maid reading about me in bed, in her sleeping cap, with a cup of hot chocolate by the bed, and, when turning the pages, licking their finger and then rubbing that finger over the page where my name is written and my feelings described and analyzed… well, then, no, that is not the immortality I want!”

“But why?”

“It’s pride, dear Goethe. I wonder if you could understand it? I suppose most people imagine that not wanting to be talked about comes from not wishing to offend public mores, a matter of fear and submission before the public opinion. Of course this is often true. This is what people usually mean when they try to hush things up – to prevent a scandal. But there is a better cause not to be in the public eye: pride. One may simply not wish to be known or understood or analyzed or discussed or pitied or evaluated by another person. One may simply not wish it because it is demeaning, because they, whoever they are, do not deserve to know about us. Because we do not want to explain, because we do not have to explain. Because to explain is to concede to those to whom we explain the right to judge us. I wish to be very picky about the persons to whom I give such a right. Perhaps he has not yet been born.”

“Explain about us?”

“Oh, no, don’t be too flattered by my words. This is merely a matter of grammatical form and I should have chosen a different one. So let me restate: I may not want to be written about or read about or talked about. I may not want to explain myself. I may be too good to be in your book.”

“My books aren’t good enough?”

“Oh, don’t try to take me by pity. Your books are fine; some of the best ever. You know it and I agree. No, that’s not it. You see, I don’t want to be in any book, even the best book.”

“But why?”

“Because my innermost thoughts and feelings are mine and mine only and no one gets to know them; no one gets to finger them.”

“Is this why you never wrote to me about your feelings in your letters?”

“I suppose that was one reason. Never my innermost feelings, no. Never the important ones. I am happy to concede that Weimar bores me or that the summer weather makes me faint or that your poem moves me. I can say things like that as long as it doesn’t strike that special cord, the cord which must remain private.”

“Have I never struck that special cord in you?”
”Oh, I forgot, you are a writer and therefore you must be vain. Very well, I will tell you. Some of your letters did move me; a lot. But I will stop at this.”

“You will not tell me which?”

“I do not remember.”

“But you could go back…”

“…and look them up? Why would I do that?”

“For the sake of our love! Ten years of love and intellectual companionship! Ten years of platonic yearning, of secrecy, of rules, stupid, stupid rules, of decency which had to be observed, of veiled conversations in the company of totally irrelevant third persons… what suffering! What impediment! They say love thrives on impediment – well, certainly this one did! All those nights spent sleepless, dreaming of you, writing you these poems and letters… surely, I deserve at least to know that they have moved you, that they have touched your feelings!”

“I don’t think you are asking this for the sake of our love. You are asking this for the sake of your writer’s wounded pride. Anyway, you know that I cannot go back to your letters even if I could.”

“You did not really destroy them all? Tell me it’s not true!”

“Of course I did.”

“But you didn’t tell me! I had no warning!”

“Of course I didn’t tell you because if I did tell you, you would have kept copies of those letters for yourself. They were too precious as literature to be written, read and then – forgotten, right?”

“So that’s why you insisted that I swear to you that I am not making copies! So that you could be sure that the letters are wiped out once and for all, without a trace!”

“Yes.”

“Woman! You have the cunning of a snake!”

“And thanks to this, I remain as pure as a dove.”

“As pure as a dove… Not quite! Do you perhaps remember?... A certain autumn day in Zweibrucken? A key mysteriously appearing in my desk, the dark room, the drawn curtains, in the room a woman, unrecognizable for the dark, silent – you never said a word, except at the end to extract from me a promise.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Oh, no, Goethe. You are mistaken. Whatever it is you are talking about – some assignation in Zweibrucken – is this why people go there? So, I suppose, do you – I know nothing about it and I don’t want to know.”

“Lotte, how can you?...”

“How can I what? Someone has played a practical joke on you, has sent you a woman, a common prostitute, who wore her hair like me and who wore my perfume… and you have of course believed it all completely. You are so naïve. Did you really think I would violate my sacred marriage vows?”

“It was you!”

“I really don’t know what you are talking about. And I am not interested what Weimar officials do on their theater visits to Zweibrucken. Spare me the story, will you? Actually, on second thoughts… no: do tell me one thing. I am curious about one thing.”

“Yes?”

“What did the woman – the prostitute – you say she made you promise something. What did she make you promise?”

“You know.”

“I don’t. Tell me.”

“Er… she demanded – you demanded – that I never ever speak about the assignation to anyone.”

“To anyone?”

“Yes.”

“Would that mean Lotte von Stein? Yes? You are speechless… why? I suggest we stop now, before you say another word. Keep your promises, even if they had been given to another woman, even to a mere prostitute. And another thing: if you think, as you just suggested, that that act which you committed in Zweibrucken, whatever it was, and whoever was the counterparty, was not pure, then I am certainly glad you did not commit it with me.””

“You have me…. I have – promised.”

“Then keep your promise.”

“But there isn’t anyone here to hear us talk.”

“But I am here.”

“Yes. And so you are.”

“Oh, don’t sulk. I know, I know: you did not return for this. In fact, I am sure this is what you ran away from.”

“I have forgotten how to be under an iron fist. How to take orders regarding what to talk about and how.”

“Oh, I realize that. Some girl, Faustina, I think was her name. In Rome. I have heard. There were probably others.”

“Are you interested?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, of course not, why should I be interested?”

“Jealousy? Are you not the least jealous?”
”I am not jealous of you.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, it’s over. To be jealous would be to concede somehow to you, and to myself, that it is not over. But it is. You broke it and I have accepted the rupture. I have taken you at your word; or rather, at your action. I accept that our love is over. I refuse to pretend otherwise. I refuse to feel sentimental, or sorry. I refuse to even remember the old days.”

“But why?”

“That, my Goethe, would be conceding something and I am not willing to concede anything.”

“Can you really be so hard?”
”I am and I have to be. You know it.”

“It’s so cold.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Here, let me cheer you up. There is another reason why I am not jealous.”

“What is it?”

“It is the secure knowledge that whatever you have with this Faustina, and others, it is not like what you and I once had. I know that you will never have another love like ours. You can’t, it’s impossible and you know it.”

“There are other brilliant women out there, you know.”

“Yes, and other brilliant men, also. The problem is that they are not available. Even you, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Hofrat, even your chance of running into another woman like me, under the same liberal circumstances, with both of you able and willing to commit the time and energy and intellect and emotions to something like this, to a ten year project like this, are practically zero. You know it and I know it. What you have with Faustina, or whatever her name, may be very beautiful, but I know as well as you, that it is not the same. It can’t be. If nothing else, you are too old now to commit ten years of your time to such a project again. As time gets shorter for you, you will increasingly invest in simpler, more effective projects… So, you see, there simply is nothing to be jealous of – you will never have again what you had with me. Nor, let me add to cheer you up, will I have it again with anyone else.”

“Can you live with that?”

“With what?”

“With the knowledge that you – will never have such love again?”

“Oh, my dear… I have known this for many years… I had known this for many years before you left for Italy. I had known this practically the moment we met. You see, you could say that I have had the time to get used to the thought.”

“And?”

“Well, it is not a happy thought, but then, what is one to do? We are mortal. We are born the sex we are born, in the families in which we are born, with the bodies and minds with which we are born. We have limits. We have to live with them. This is just one of many.”

“But love! That most sacred of feelings!...”

“No, my dear. It isn’t the most sacred of feelings; or even the most valuable. It is important; and it is beautiful, I agree. But it isn’t rare. It happens to everybody – I mean everybody seems to fall in love, strange as it seems; and most of us seem capable of falling in love more than once in our lifetime. So, you see, one could in fact say that it is the most ordinary of feelings. It is surprising how much respect such a common feeling gets.”

“But a requited love…”

“Haven’t you written a book in praise of an unrequited love?”

“Yes.”

“And isn’t everyone in Europe convinced that it is a good thing, however tragic?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, what matters is that we love, not that our love is requited, right? At least it should. And I try to live up to these high standards I set for myself: I do what I should. I love and do not ask for my love to be requited. Otherwise love would be like some kind of a business transaction, no?”

“Do you mean?...”

“No, I don’t mean that I love you. I don’t love you, my dear Goethe. I don’t love you anymore. But I like you. You should be happy: this is an emotion which will place a lot less pressure on you. I am glad that you are back, so that I can have from time to time the pleasure of your company if and when we meet in some salon or another; and so that I can have news of you without having to wait six months for a letter from Italy to arrive. To the extent that you may need my friendship, you may have it, though try not to abuse it. And that really is it. Really, this is very convenient, if you think about it.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“You mean, we are to be – friends and nothing more?”

“Yes. Oh, come on, I know too well that you had come here with the intention of saying these very words to me; but you have been too… timid to say them; so I have brought you, like a chasseur brings his horse to water, to a place in which it becomes natural to speak these words. And I have even taken things a step further: I have spoken them myself. And now you can say them. Say them.”

“Friends. Just friends.”

“Yes. Bravo! So that is settled then. And now I think we’ve had enough of this nonsense. You should tell me about Rome. I am dying to know about Rome. Tell me, have you been inside the Terme di Tito? Are the paintings as vivid as they say?”

*

(Throughout this interview there was something else Goethe had wished to say, but which saying his timidity – as Lotte had called it – prevented. He had come to hate their love: it had been useless and infertile. Platonic loves – or nearly Platonic loves – always are. She compelled him to it without giving him any – or very little – of that warmth, that physical intimacy that he had wanted so. Such a fruitless, unfulfilled love: why did it interest her so? Why did she want it so? It was a kind of vain, recreational love, he thought: it satisfied her that someone pined for her; it lifted the boredom of her days; it made the misery of her unhappy marriage and her unhappy family life – it was not in her character to be a wife and a mother – a little easier to bear. She used him as a salve for her wasted life. And he did not want to be that. He was single and free, he did not need any of these constraints, he did not need any of this unnecessary longing and suffering, he wanted to use his love on pursuits which paid back the investment made. Because he could.)