But you and Vess are
very much mistaken if you think that it could ever be indifferent to me,
under such circumstances, on what I work. Nothing less true, whether as
respects the work itself or the principal object wherefor I work. I have
been in my life before now in very wretched circumstances, yet never in
such that I would have written for bread in the true meaning of the word.
I have begun my 'Contributions' because this work helps me ... to live
from one day to another." It is plain that he does not call this kind of
thing in any high sense writing. Of that he had far other notions; for
though he honestly disclaimed the title, yet his dream was always to be a
poet. But he _was_ willing to work, as he claimed to be, because he had
one ideal higher than that of being a poet, namely, to be thoroughly a
man. To Nicolai he writes in 1758: "All ways of earning his bread are
alike becoming to an honest man, whether to split wood or to sit at the
helm of state. It does not concern his conscience how useful he is, but
how useful he would be." Goethe's poetic sense was the Minotaur to which
he sacrificed everything. To make a study, he would soil the maiden
petals of a woman's soul; to get the delicious sensation of a reflex
sorrow, he would wring a heart.
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