ABSTRACT
The Zürich preacher Lavater, eight years older than Goethe, was already famous when he wrote his first letters to the young poet; shortly afterwards he visited him. In a period of vivid contrasts he was, perhaps, the figure with the most disparate characteristics, both in his outward appearance and in himself. Goethe’s opinions of him reflect these contrasts: at first Lavater is the best, the greatest, the wisest, the most profound of mortals, and he forms a close attachment to the prophet, even sharing the same bed with him on their travels; in later years he disposes of him as though he had been a swindler, ‘he deceived himself and others’. There was something of all this in Lavater; he was like a piece of patchwork, woven with the most varied strands: there are fine, delicate threads, a deep understanding of the spiritual conditions of others, side by side with a down-to-earth industriousness; there is humility coupled with the arrogance of the sectarian; the unassuming domesticity of a family patriarch, in which everyone who visits him sees the ideal of the unspoilt Swiss way of life, and a vast correspondence which proudly embraces the Empress of Russia, duchesses, marchionesses, and the mistresses of princes. His face, with the long, pointed nose of a man on the track of souls, has, at the same time, fine eyebrows and a delicate mouth, though this latter can be very firm on occasion. His flat chest and his stiff ungainly walk, which reminded Goethe of a crane, do not prevent him from moving nimbly and with a sure step among the most reluctant of his admirers and winning them over by his charm of manner. His small eyes give the impression of candour but, in fact, they see virtually nothing, or only what he has already made up his mind about, or what, by clever questioning, he extracts from the person in front of him, this last one of his greatest gifts. He was one of the very first to recognize Goethe’s greatness, and bestowed extravagant praise on him before ever he saw him or had read Werther. But he was equally extravagant in his praise of a rogue and swindler like Cagliostro, refusing to alter his opinion even when irrefutable evidence of the man’s villainy came to light; he simply declared stubbornly that that was a different Cagliostro, the miracle worker of the same name was a saint.
