Dear Marion,

Reflecting on your request for help with Goethe's
poem Prometeus, I thought before improvising my own
conclusions, I should look at the critical comments
of others. What the Internet had to offer seemed
shallow and simplistic. I remembered where on the
shelves I had placed my copy of the Goethe biography
which my teacher Karl Vietor published in 1949, just
in time for the 200th anniversary of Goethe's birth,
and just in time before he himself was overtaken by
renal cancer. Vietor died on my father's fifty-second
birthday, June 7, 1951.

The book, somberly bound in black linen. On its outside
the cover is embossed in golden script with the facsimile
signature "Goethe"; on the inside, in pencil I wrote my
name and the date 27/9/49; beneath, in Vietor's neat
handwriting in blue ink a quotation:
"Die hoechste Wirkung des Geistes ist, den Geist hervorzurufen."
(The most potent effect of spirit is the evocation of spirit.)
There was never doubt in my mind, that the spirit to be evoked
was mine, but to this day I'm not sure whether it's the spirit
of Goethe or of Vietor that was to be the evocation.

I hadn't looked into Vietor's tome for many years. I don't 
remember ever having read it from cover to cover. This time
I was startled by a certain lack of eloquence and of subtlety.
Vietor was a very impressive teacher; his lectures were
inspirationally theatric. He explained to me that he had
taken lessons in elocution; but as I read his book, I infer
that writing did not come easily. I remember his recommending
to me for the improvement of my German, which he refused, as
a matter of principle, to read, - he insisted that all
examinations and all course papers be written in English,
a book called "Sprachdummheiten" whose instructions seemed so
obvious to me that I wondered why he considered them important.

Vietor doesn't have much to say about Goethe's Prometheus.
From the first forty or so pages which I read, I learned that
intellectual and spiritual conflicts between individuality and
community analogous to those which seem to me of contemporary
importance, dominated also the latter half of the 18th century,
when disillusionment with the sterile formality of social life
at all levels let to an explosive efflorescence of personality
and individuality which was reflected both in Goethe's life
and in his writing. Prometheus served as a role model. The poem
is a monument to what was to be learned from him.

Prometheus

Bedecke deinen Himmel, Zeus,
Mit Wolkendunst
Und übe, dem Knaben gleich,
Der Disteln köpft,
An Eichen dich und Bergeshöhn;
Musst mir meine Erde
Doch lassen stehn
Und meine Hütte, die du nicht gebaut,
Und meinen Herd,
Um dessen Glut
Du mich beneidest.

Ich kenne nichts Ärmeres
Unter der Sonn als euch, Götter!
Ihr nähret kümmerlich
Von Opfersteuern
Und Gebetshauch
Eure Majestät
Und darbtet, wären
Nicht Kinder und Bettler
Hoffnungsvolle Toren.

Da ich ein Kind war,
Nicht wusste, wo aus noch ein,
Kehrt ich mein verirrtes Auge
Zur Sonne, als wenn drüber wär
Ein Ohr, zu hören meine Klage,
Ein Herz wie meins,
Sich des Bedrängten zu erbarmen.

Wer half mir
Wider der Titanen Übermut?
Wer rettete vom Tode mich,
Von Sklaverei?
Hast du nicht alles selbst vollendet,
Heilig glühend Herz?
Und glühtest jung und gut,
Betrogen, Rettungsdank
Dem Schlafenden da droben?

Ich dich ehren? Wofür?
Hast du die Schmerzen gelindert
Je des Beladenen?
Hast du die Tränen gestillet
Je des Geängsteten?
Hat nicht mich zum Manne geschmiedet
Die allmächtige Zeit
Und das ewige Schicksal,
Meine Herrn und deine?

Wähntest du etwa,
Ich sollte das Leben hassen,
In Wüsten fliehen,
Weil nicht alle
Blütenträume reiften?

Hier sitz ich, forme Menschen
Nach meinem Bilde,
Ein Geschlecht, das mir gleich sei,
Zu leiden, zu weinen,
Zu genießen und zu freuen sich,
Und dein nicht zu achten,
Wie ich!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(1774)

Zeus is the representative of the old order, the epitome of
"the establishment." His power of decapitating oak trees and
mountains, though not to be denied, is scoffed at and scorned.
The do-it-yourself upstart has build his own hut, has discovered
or invented the fire which glows on his hearth, and in his heart,
the cause of envy for the dispassionate god.

The established order which dominated the world in which Goethe
grew to manhood was preeminently the Protestant clergy.
God means God. For the 18th century antiquity constituted a
fantasy world to which one resorted to escape a social and 
religious order which one dared not challenge.  Zeus,
if I read the poem correctly, is a transparent stand-in for
Jehovah, who so far as this poet is concerned, has not kept
his promise of lending an ear to his prayers, of coming to
his aid when in distress. Prometheus no longer has need of
a god; he has discovered salvation within himself. Fifty
years later Wilhelm Mueller wrote "Will kein Gott auf Erden
sein, sind wir selber Goetter." (Schubert's Winterreise)

Hast du nicht alles selbst vollendet,
Heilig glühend Herz?

As a result he scoffs at conventional religion,
and boasts that he (too) is capable of creating humans.
And why not? After all, what else does a poet, what else
did Shakespeare do?

I find that I'm not very eloquent tonight.
Maybe tomorrow will be better.
Jochen