How pleasant the summer is in Germany, how boring it is in winter! In this country in the middle of Europe, winters are long and cold, and from November onwards, the sky is always gloomy and gloomy, making people willing to curl up indoors and engage in abstract thinking activities: how many thinkers and philosophers were born in the winter of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries! But in that era when heating had not yet been born, there was a poet who longed for winter to come soon every year: "Winter of mercy, when will you come, freeze the water, and we can start the dance on the ice again!" He wrote to a friend and poured out his expectations for winter. When the River Main in front of his house is finally covered with thick ice, like a solid ground, he will rush to tie a pair of Low-top Lassie skates of The Friesland style, and slide the ice on the river with his friends all day until the cold moon rises, and the cold stars are still unfinished.
He is Goethe. Many people in the world know that this genius poet is also an avid natural science researcher, but his side as an athlete is little known. Goethe excelled at horseback riding, fencing, and ice skating, especially for ice skating, and Goethe described himself as "stretching for a long time." In his autobiography, Poetry and Truth, Goethe happily recalls: "It is not enough to spend such a sunny day on the ice, we skate until late at night... We, who are stuck in this movement, have forgotten our serious work. ”
A playful and playful person. Goethe on the ice rink was skilled and skilled, just as he could easily switch between various poetic bodies when writing poetry. The frozen River Main stretches like the poet's talents and becomes the brightest and happiest winter social scene for Goethe and his companions. In 1862, thirty years after Goethe's death, the painter Wilhelm von Kölbach created the copperplate engraving Goethe on the Ice Rink (above). The poet in the painting has a healthy posture, a handsome face, and a self-confidence and solemnity in his eyes, just like a god in Homer's epic poem, who is stepping on the golden soles of his wings and quickly walking through the world. On the side, Goethe's mother, sister, and Miss Von Ranoch threw flattering or adoring glances at him. If we look more closely, we will find that Goethe is wearing a women's mink piping cape. Von Korbach must have read Poetry and Truth carefully before he dared to "dress up" Goethe in this way.
It turned out that Goethe went out early that morning to skate, his clothes were a little thin, he played on the ice rink for most of the day, he was already frozen, and suddenly he saw a graceful lady sitting in the carriage not far away, who was the mother who came to see the liveliness. Goethe didn't want to think about it, and blurted out, "Dear mother, give me the mink cape on you, I'm freezing to death!" "Mother Goethe did not hesitate to take it off and hand it to her beloved son." After putting it on, I continued to skate uninhibited, the ice rink was full of people, and my strange outfit should not attract the attention of others. It's just that afterwards I was ridiculed and attributed my wearing my mother's clothes to one of my strange behaviors. ”
In his later years, Goethe wrote in a proverb poem nostalgia for the past: "Without skates and crisp bells, January is an evil day." In Goethe's eyes, winter goes from "benevolent" to "evil", separated only by an ice rink. God knows how much he likes the cold and crisp winter days, the golden sun sprinkling on the ice, like countless elves jumping and chasing. Goethe took a deep breath, listened intently, and then opened his arms and slid into the depths of the ice field with the wind, all the way to the end of time: "At night, a full moon emerges from the clouds, illuminating the frozen night field, and the evening wind that whistles and blows against us as we glide, and the ice that collapses due to the decrease of the river makes a thunderous deep sound, emitting a strange echo from the sliding under our feet." From this description, we can see a Goethe who is leisurely oblivious to the heavens and the earth, a natural child whose body and mind penetrate the Epicurean spirit, who always knows how to grasp the present, capture the moments in time, and collect them one by one in the pocket of memory.
Skates from the Goethe era
Goethe was the fashion maker of his time. Once, inadvertently, he made the blue tuxedo, yellow pants, and flap boots of the Witt all over Europe. As for ice skating, Goethe would enthusiastically promote it everywhere he went. In November 1775, shortly after Goethe went to Weimar for his post, he asked his family to send him three pairs of skates. From that winter onwards, the despicable and conservative Weimar became popular in ice sports. The young Archduke Carl Auguste and the bride, Princess Louise, spearheaded the goethe-led skating team. On the Irm River, on the pond in Baumgarden Garden, on the icy lawn, Goethe taught his friends how to skate, and he also launched the "Ice festival", which included fireworks and masquerades. When countless torches illuminate the ice rink and shine with the stars on the sky, the humble little principality of Weimar is transformed into Germany's "nightless sky on earth". On one occasion, Goethe accompanied the Grand Duke on a visit to Bad Homburg, the Principality of Hesse, and the two of them slid across the icy pond in the palace garden, and they were so ostentatious that they wanted to encourage the local princes and nobles to join the ice sport.
Madame Charlotte von Stein, Goethe's closest aristocratic girlfriend in Weimar, was also encouraged by Goethe's enthusiasm and lingered on the ice rink for days, and her actions inevitably caused gossip. One Countess of Golts wrote to her husband: "The mad Mrs. Stein spends all day on the ice, from nine to one in the morning and from three to six or seven in the afternoon." This is called 'having a mind'! Soon all I could see was the way she looked in skates, which was ridiculous. ”
If a person loves something, they can't wait to see a couple of close relationships. In the winter of 1781, Goethe wrote in a letter to Charlotte: "The weather was horribly cold. If you want to go ice skating on the Ilm River, go for it. Go for a rare experience. But on January 18, Charlotte went to the ice rink alone, and Goethe became jealous for no reason and wrote to her: "You didn't take me with you in the end, this is not good... Goodbye, if I let my dark imagination succeed, then I don't want to go to the ice rink even after dinner. "A jealous Goethe is no different from a child who ignores people because his partner forgot to ask him to play together. Stimulated by happiness, Goethe occasionally had some small accidents, such as the winter when he was 28 years old, Goethe fell into the water while skating, fortunately, he was blessed with a big life, changed others, and always got sick.
In order to skate, goethe, who was middle-aged, would also perfunctory his close friend Schiller. Schiller was ten years younger than Goethe, but he experienced poverty, often stayed up late to write to earn writing fees, and his body was broken, so he never dared to brave the cold to go out to exercise. And Schiller knew in his heart that he was not a long-lived person, and he had to race against time, otherwise his ambition would be difficult to reward. Goethe, on the other hand, had an unhurried attitude toward life, and was enthusiastically engaged in seemingly unmatched hobbies: botany, mineralogy, astronomy, human skeletons, food, jewelry, coins, painting, sports and socializing... When it came to skating season, Goethe, who usually cared about Schiller, was not very diligent in writing letters, and delayed meeting with Schiller. In a letter to Schiller of December 5, 1796, Goethe wrote: "I haven't written to you these days because the weather is so good and the ice rink under clear skies is fantastic. I'll write you a few more words tonight, it's been a really happy day..."
When it comes to the benefits of skating, the experience of great poets is naturally sharper and richer than that of ordinary people. Goethe's numerous letters, notes, essays and poems can be found in his passionate testimony and close insight into the ice sport. Goethe found that skating is not as quickly exhausting as other sports, but the more you skate, the more exciting you are, and the more you skate, the more stretched and light. "Skating brings us into contact with the freshest childhood, it allows young people to fully enjoy the agility of the body and be able to withstand the premature arrival of a shaky old age". People gather on the ice from all directions, like water droplets flowing into the ocean, laughing and laughing, regardless of the old and the young, no matter the novice or the master. At the same time, this group movement gives individuals a space for freedom, people are infinitely close to each other in an instant, and they quickly slip away, they can slide alone in the long space, and all kinds of latent inner desires and memories will be awakened.
Goethe has been a hobby of skating for twenty-eight years, and it's no wonder that today's Germans hold figure skating tournaments and always like to quote Goethe's poems to add to the event. Goethe is superior to ordinary people, he is good at fun, but he can pull out and will not be led astray by pleasure. Skating brought him pleasure and excitement, but at the same time kept him in a "pure mood", gave him "wisdom enlightenment", and even promoted his literary creativity, he wrote in his diary: "The reason why my creative plan can be realized more quickly is really due to this sport. In fact, all his activities have left traces in his literary creation.
Once, Safransky, a well-known Contemporary German scholar and author of the biography of Goethe and Schiller, was asked in an interview with television: Do you know Goethe or Schiller better? Safransky groaned and replied, "I think I know Schiller better." For Goethe, I always feel that there are still many unknowns, and I will always be curious about him. As he said this, the heavy-looking Safransky suddenly had a smile on his face and his eyes sparkled, as happy as a child possessing a "secret treasure." This is the charm of Goethe, whose personality and the richness and charm of his life are no less than his works.
In my opinion, one of Goethe's many proverbs left to posterity is the most earnest: "Don't forget life" (Gedenke zu leben). Goethe on the ice rink uses his feet to write his ardent love for life and nature, and he seems to remind people that the joy of sports is a precious gift from God to mankind, and don't forget to enjoy it.
Author: Huang Xueyuan
Editor: Xie Juan
Editor-in-Charge: Shu Ming
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.