ABSTRACT
Eight days after his arrival in Weimar Goethe is introduced to Charlotte von Stein, one of the ladies-in-waiting, whose silhouette he has already seen and tried to interpret. She is 33, small, no beauty, but with finely wrought nervous features; her hair is black and she has large dark eyes. Her complexion is ‘Italian brown’ and her cheeks bright red, the colour probably artificially heightened. ‘Her body slim, her whole being a combination of elegance and simplicity’ is how Zimmermann, the physician, describes her, after meeting her at Pyrmont where she was taking the waters. She suffers a great deal, largely as the result of her seven confinements in the eleven years of her marriage; four of the children are dead, leaving her with three sons. Zimmermann, whose correspondence is as extensive as his practice, immediately informs Lavater of his new acquaintance; it was also he who showed Goethe the silhouette of this interesting woman. It is a strange way of life that is in vogue among the sentimentalists of the day, a constant getting together or bringing together of other people. They try forming endless combinations, they spin threads and sever them again, they instigate friendships, love affairs and marriages, and then discuss them with a total lack of restraint. Zimmermann spins a thread between Goethe and Frau von Stein, who have not yet met, and Goethe takes up the game. In Lavater fashion he indulges in fancies about the profile: Tt would be a glorious spectacle to see how the world is mirrored in this soul. She sees the world for what it is and yet through the medium of love. And thus gentleness is the pervading impression.’ To this he adds: ‘traps with nets’. Zimmermann gives a circumstantial report of all this to Frau von Stein, who can only have shaken her head, for trapping with nets was utterly foreign to her nature. But she is curious, and wants to know more about this Goethe, some of whose books she has read, such as Werther, which probably did not greatly appeal to her, and Götz, which almost certainly was even less to her taste. For this new wildness and aggressiveness she has no use. Zimmermann spins a new thread over to Weimar: he has been staying in Frankfurt at the Goethes, ‘and if you should happen to see him one day remember that, because of all I told him about you, he was unable to sleep for three nights’. In a further letter he becomes still more insistent: ‘You want me to tell you more about205
