Good Evening Herr Goethe!

            December 6 is the day on which St. Nikolaus used to stand at my childhood’s doorstep with nuts and apples and chocolate. My mother or my grandmother invited him inside. My cousin and I sang and recited poems to please him, and we shivered with fear, because outside, in the snow, stood his helper, Knecht Ruprecht, with a switch. Luckily the behaviour of three and five year olds is never bad enough to warrant the application of a switch to our backsides, but the threat loomed over us for weeks and months.

Hans Christian Andersen in Solvang

Sledding in Truckee

            Thinking of Knecht Ruprecht makes me smile now; he was the one who was punished by having to stand in the freezing, dark December night. Ironic. And today, while I sip hot chocolate and watch the wisteria on my front porch fight with the wind, my thoughts, though drifting back to my childhood, also travel forward, to my upcoming trip. I cross off my list what has been accomplished – suitcase packed, bills paid, mail delivery halted, watchdogs’ teeth sharpened – and I tend to my final chores. But before I shop for batteries, copy names from my address book to my journal, secure transportation to the airport, I feel compelled to explain my travel companion Tyana, the teddy bear, to you, Herr Goethe. People stare at me sometimes. Am I stuck in child’s play? Am I a crazed person who conveys sinister thoughts to a stuffed animal? You never know!

            Tyana has posed at the feet of Hans Sachs in Nürnberg and next to Hans Christian Andersen in Solvang. She has fallen off the castle wall in Dilsberg, and has sledded in Truckee. She has been photographed in the ruins of Ephesus and has entertained little girls in Jamaica. She has climbed the welcome sign in front of Emily Carr’s house in Victoria B.C. and the rocks of Abiquiu in search of Georgia O’Keeffe.

I have dragged Tyana J LittleString over mountains and I have dragged her across restaurant tables. A picture in front of the twisted tree. Click! One more with the yummy chocolate cake. Click!

It's windy in Dilsberg

Childish substitution or an attempt to draw attention to myself? I hope to assure you, Herr Goethe, that it is neither, though Tyana is a stand-in and she gets noticed.

I travel alone; often I am in need of a “place marker.” A photograph of a monument would be just another travel shot, but having Tyana in the picture makes it my shot. Sometimes, to my embarrassment, she does cause people to pay attention. While walking along Hadrian’s Wall my reputation as the “bear lady” traveled ahead of me at times. Posing her in front of a maritime museum on Guernsey caused a small dog to bark at the top of his lungs. On Corfu I was asked if she eats ice cream.

Emily Carr House in Victoria

Tyana has a large wardrobe – more than 100 outfits – and an even larger portfolio of eight by tens. She travels with her toys, wears boots in winter, but no, she does not eat ice cream.

So, that is the Sachverhalt, the way things are, Herr Goethe. My mother would have said, “Das ist des Pudel’s Kern.” She quoted you frequently. I wonder if she knew that Faust used the phrase when he realized that the black poodle, following him to his study, was Mephistopheles? I don’t like the translation into English, “So, this then, was the kernel of the brute.” Why the brute? Isn’t your devil smooth and well behaved?

Herr Goethe, if you see me walking the snowy streets of Weimar, camera in hand and a bear attached to my backpack, say hello. Help me find your Garden house by the Ilm and your big house am Frauenplan. The Elephant Hotel. The Bauhaus Museum. The Schiller Haus. The Cranach Haus. The Anna-Amalia Library. Hoffmann’s bookstore. And, of course, a good Café for the best afternoon sweets Weimar has to offer. I’ll treat.

Yours in admiration. G.

Good Evening Herr Goethe.

As you have seen by now, I ignore borders and explanations forced upon us by language, culture, and time. I write to you as I would write to friends; as a matter of fact I will open this account of my impressions to family and friends once I arrive in Weimar. Addressing you is a matter of personal preference and it goes along with the importance of your words in my life, right now. Writing in English profits my friends; the lack of translation into German (maybe later I will change that) shows my laziness. But just this once I would like to go into a bit of detail about the modes of transportation and communication of the 21^st century and I would like to give you a quick overview of the niceties that surround me, conveniences that let me write away an afternoon of rain and global unrest.  

Imagine, for a moment, if you can, that I sit at my desk. In front of me is a little machine with lots of powers, my computer. I write and arrange my thoughts on it, send letters, gather information, play games. When I look up I watch, through a large window, rain flood gutters and wind take the last leaves off a tree across the street. On my other machine, the television, I can see the world at large. The discussion among experts is about terrorism and the state of affairs in US politics. My television has a screen that is 19 inches (around 45 centimeters) in diameter, just a little larger than my computer screen. It allows me to select and view the imaginative compositions and findings of those with more experience, or, depending on my mood, the often rather trivial outbursts of ordinary characters. Herr Goethe, if you were alive today, you would probably sit in an official “studio,” where you would recite one of your plays or a poem, or simply say, “Frohe Weihnachten,” and millions of us would see and hear you on the television or computer, and many more would follow you on various other gadgets, such as iphones, ipads, netbooks, blackberries, nooks, kindles, etc. Every word you’d utter publicly would race around the world in minutes. Hard to imagine, isn’t it?

Goethehaus Frankfurt  circa 1930

These programs travel over the air into living rooms across the globe. The other day I saw a segment on Weimar. Increasingly, over the last two years, I have wanted to travel to Weimar; this short profile settled it; I bought my plane ticket.

“A plane ticket?” you ask.

A plane is just another one of our machines; this one flies like a bird and carries hundreds of us in its belly. The one I will be traveling on will land in the city of your birth: Frankfurt. The Frankfurt of 2010 is quite different from the Frankfurt of 1749, the year you were born. The house of your birth at Grosser Hirschgraben was almost totally destroyed during World War II, but has been rebuilt true to the original design. You are, Herr Goethe, Frankfurt’s most famous son.

Which makes me wonder, do you keep track of your legacy? I suppose this is part of the big question, “is there life after death?” If your spirit is reborn, or if you roam the universe, how much do you know about my century? How much is important to know? Are you part of the collective unconscious? Did your genius reappear in a baby born in India or Africa? As Faust would say,

Ihr schwebt, ihr Geister, neben mir;

Antworted mir, wenn ihr mich hört!

(Spirits! I feel you hov’ring near;

Make answer, if my voice ye year!)

There are other parts of my life that I want to tell you about. For instance, I am part of the masses, Pöbel, as you call them, and yet I have the financial means and time to travel occasionally. I live in America. I have been to China, Egypt, Morocco, Jamaica, Canada, Italy, France, Greece, Turkey, England, Croatia, and, of course, Germany, the country of my birth.

Machines aid in almost all the chores of my daily life. I wash and dry laundry without getting my hands wet. My meals take very little preparation; often I cook them in a batch and keep them frozen in a refrigerator. I own an oven, a microwave oven, and a toaster oven. I clean my carpets with a vacuum cleaner. I dispose of vegetable and fruit waste products through a garbage disposal. Light and water come to my house via cables and pipes. My outings, shopping and visiting with friends, are made quick and easy by way of an automobile.

Herr Goethe, these are just a few things that come to mind as I sit here and compare our lifestyles. It is difficult to remember all the material advantages of my time, but we do have things in common. Important things. We both love to walk, and though you often had no choice and I have many other ways to get from one place to another, we both do it with joy in our hearts. And – I hesitate to say it, because you are clearly the master -  we both love to write. I can think of no better way to spend an afternoon, than to write. Well, maybe photography tops it at times. Photography, too, was invented after your death, but you might have heard of Louis-Jacques-Mandé .Daguerre, who tinkered with it during your lifetime. You would have liked it. You will see lots of my photographs once I arrive in Weimar. What I can’t say with words I say with pictures.

Until later,

Ihre Gisela

(photograph of Goethe's house of birth from www.altfrankfurt.com)

Good Evening Herr Goethe.

You never experienced flight, phone calls, email, facebook, or even a ride to the airport in a limousine. Your Vocabulary didn’t include words like google or android or television, and yet you were the communicator extraordinaire. You used the words you had with incomparable sensitivity and great awareness. You rocked it, Herr Goethe. And I am sorry that I didn’t pay closer attention earlier.

You did play a large part in my childhood. I recited your “Erlkönig,” read your “Faust,” bought your “Sorrows of Young Werther” and “Elective Affinities,” and discussed, at length, the period known as Weimar Classicism and its precursor, Sturm und Drang, with teachers and friends at the Hoelderlin Realgymnasium.

All the attention given to your writings should have made me a Goethe lover. But it didn’t. That is my stepfather’s fault. In our living room, ominous, always wagging a threatening finger at me, one of your sentences was displayed. Here, above an oversized couch I would read the printed words “Die Tat ist alles, nichts der Ruhm.” Below it, in small letters, your name: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

“The deed is everything; glory means nothing.”

Why should this noble statement spit its claim at me for the next 60 years?

Well! This statement embodies everything that was wrong in my life. Every lie. Every demand. Every threat. Every lonely game of solitaire I played, stubbornly revisiting the resentment caused by one incident of moral depravity. The deed was plastered all over the walls of my childhood.

It took me a lifetime to make peace with you, Herr Goethe, but in December I will travel to Weimar to let you know that I have forgiven you.

My stepfather called himself a “proud Prussian.” Today I look at his arrogance the way I look at a pedophile priest’s declaration that he is “a humble servant of God.” But how does a child weigh rhetoric and action against each other? If a man who should be the child’s protector becomes her abuser, how does she judge moral relevance? And, how does this relate to the serious proclamation of one so important as you, Herr von Goethe?

In my childish ways I interpreted your words with major emphasis on deed, knowing instinctively that my stepfather would not indulge in seeking glory. The deed itself was his glory. I was unable to separate the words on the wall from his conduct. You, Herr Goethe, condoned his behaviour, therefore your magnificent words were lies to this thirteen-year old girl. And for all these years, even though I had long forgiven my stepfather, I was unable to enjoy  your great poetry. Maybe we tend to absolve mere mortals from their sins, but show less leniency toward the shortcomings of those who might be our immortal heroes. 

My childhood was difficult, my young adulthood crazy, my marriages complicated by early impressions of male female relationships, and, I assume that my mothering, too, is compromised by past experiences. When I retired I began to write, cautiously at first, then more boldly. I stepped back in time. I discovered the very young me who braided daisy chains, sang the praise of gnomes, collected pebbles, shouted the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from a mountaintop.

I reread the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” last year. In googling English translations to German poetry I learned that a young man in Germany had made a name for himself by rapping Goethe and Schiller in schools, and so promoting a new concept of reciting and learning the classics. Doppel-U, the rapper, brought me back to you. His unconventional, playful treatment of your poetry removed Herr Goethe, the man, from Herr Goethe, the writer.

Doppel U’s rap of the  ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice “ will accompany me on my trip to Weimar. In my daydreams I imagine myself walking through the cemetery on Christmas Eve, candles from a nearby tall spruce lighting the way, snowflakes falling from the sky, settling on my shoulders, the faint echo of caroling children’s voices hanging in the air. When I lay a single white rose on your grave I will recite “In die Ecke, Besen! Besen!” banning the ghosts forever into a corner of my conscious mind. Then I will drink a hot chocolate at the Resi and write in my travel journal about our meeting. The Resi, I am told, once bordered onto your first residence in Weimar. Today, what was once your living room has become a room for guests, known as Goethe Zimmer.

          Herr Goethe, you can’t imagine how much I am looking forward to this journey. And though you will be unfamiliar with many of my expressions and the innovations of two centuries beyond your lifetime, you will understand what this trip is all about.

See you soon,

Gisela.

P.S. I am traveling with a teddy bear; her name is Tyana J LittleString. The above photograph shows her on top of my packed suitcase.