Charlotte Sometimes

April Vázquez

As a teenager, my favorite band was The Cure. This was pre-Radiohead, pre-Editors, before bands—even alternative bands—tended to be literary. Yet The Cure turned out songs like “Killing an Arab,” based on The Stranger by Albert Camus, and “How Beautiful You Are,” an echo of Charles Baudelaire’s essay “The Eyes of the Poor” (both facts that I discovered, in those dark ages before Google, when I fortuitously—serendipitously?—stumbled upon the originals… one in a borrowed book that I came this close to not taking home with me). In that arid early-90s musical landscape, The Cure was an exception in more ways than one (the Smiths were another, but Morrissey has gone so far off the deep end with his white nationalism these days that I find it hard to listen to his music). I remember, during those years, several vivid dreams featuring the band’s teased-haired, heavily made-up vocalist Robert Smith, including one in which he appeared at my Shelby, North Carolina home to take me away with him. April Vázquez

(Sigh.)

I mention the The Cure because the title of one of their songs—“Charlotte Sometimes”—afterward became a kind of euphemistic shorthand with which I would refer to the period of months I spent at two different mental institutions during the fifteenth year of my life. My parents, at their collective wits’ end with my depression, self-harm, and runaway attempts, had decided to “send me off,” as it was referred to in the common parlance of my hometown of Shelby, North Carolina. (In retrospect, I have to say that I think my depression was justified; a close friend had recently been left paralyzed by a stupid, completely avoidable accident, and my reading of a college environmental studies textbook had convinced me not only that the adults running the show were doing a shit job of it but that the entire planet was in imminent danger, both of which have turned out to be all too true.) April Vázquez

The lyrics to “Charlotte Sometimes” fit the circumstances of my internment with an eerie similarity. The hospitals were both located in Charlotte, and my stays there were intermittent, first one, then another, over a period of months. The song describes a girl who lies in bed, eyes open, in a city in which the streets look strange. It mentions the “expressionless games” that the people (nurses? psychiatrists?) around her play. There are many of these strangers—they have “many different names”—and they’re too close to her; they crowd in on her. The song describes the wall around the girl, “glass-sealed,” and refers to unfamiliar sounds and lights (industrial, fluorescent?) that seem too bright and glare off of the (hospital’s?) white walls. April Vázquez

There’s a line in the song about the girl preparing herself for bed, which stands out because, one night as I lay in bed, eyes open and not yet asleep, one of the counselors came into my room to “tuck me in” and rubbed his hand from my cheek down my neck to my chest, where he got a good feel before finally bidding me good night. April Vázquez

I spent the next day nervous and uneasy. I suspected that Jamal, the counselor, would come back into my room that night, and that his groping might escalate into something more. Finally, in the evening, I made what I thought was a discreet inquiry: “Is Jamal working tonight?” When Nurse Radcliffe told me he was, I must have looked worried enough to prompt concern. “Why, April?” she asked gently, at which point I burst into tears. April Vázquez

I was a minor, away from home, and under the care of a group of adult healthcare professionals. Today I see clearly the potential for a lawsuit, just as the hospital’s administrators must have seen at the time. Jamal was phoned and told not to come in that night. Kids were questioned. It turned out that, although no one else accused him of sexual misconduct, he was well-known for making jokes and comments of an inappropriate, often sexual, nature. Jamal was fired, I was apologized to, and my parents were called in, presumably to head off any thoughts of litigation. April Vázquez

The administrators needn’t have worried. The only anger my parents expressed—privately, in my room, after a meeting with several hospital bigwigs in tailored suits—was with me. They were miffed at having to drive all the way to Charlotte on a weeknight for what they viewed as a tempest in a teapot, and my mother blamed me for provoking the incident. “You must have done something,” she concluded peremptorily, “to make him think you wanted it.” April Vázquez

When I look back on Charlotte Sometimes, I’m surprised how vivid my memories of that time are. I can still taste the spicy Blistex handed out to soothe the effects of the canned heat, and see the city’s rosy morning skyline as it was framed by the window of my room. It was a welcome revelation to encounter doctors and counselors who blamed my parents for most of my problems, who told them to stop making me sleep in the bed with my nine-year-old brother or capitulate to his other demands. Forced to eat a healthy diet for several months, I realized that I felt better. When my period came, for the first time in my life, it wasn’t heralded by gut-wrenching cramps. One of the counselors, a dark-haired young man named David who wore cloth shoes, told me that I should go vegetarian. “You’re too compassionate a person to eat meat,” he said with a smile. April Vázquez

He was right. A month after I was discharged from the second hospital, I dropped all meat from my diet. For twenty-eight years, I’ve eaten considerably more vegetables than typically figure in the American diet. At 40, a doctor told me, “You’re healthier than a lot of people half your age.” My only regret is that I never got to tell David what a difference he made in my life.

There was another benefit to my Girl, Interrupted interlude. Though I had always been a voracious reader, in the first hospital I was exposed to a new kind of literature, writing so fresh and exciting that, I’m ashamed to say, I tore several pages out of a literary anthology—including poems by Allen Ginsberg, LeRoi Jones, Ted Berrigan, and Sylvia Plath—to take with me when I left. Like the Velvet Underground’s Janie, whose life was saved by rock and roll, in a very real sense, my life was saved by literature. That delicious tome and others I found in the seventh-floor library offered me a glimpse of a new world, one in which I would immerse myself just a few years later, when I majored in literature at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

When my parents “sent me off,” I don’t think they expected to be blamed for my problems. They resented my talking about my home life to doctors and counselors, “telling their secrets,” as they saw it, and they retaliated by declaring that they’d spent enough and wouldn’t be shelling out a penny for my education. The last time I saw her, twenty-eight years after Charlotte Sometimes, my mother was still complaining about what my stint in the hospitals had cost them. But somehow, Fate paved the way for me. I got a full scholarship to college, a Master’s degree paid for by my employer, and today I’m a PhD student at one of the top ten public universities in the country, again on a full scholarship. I haven’t spoken with my parents in years, but it’s okay. I’ve made it without them.

Today, I see my time in Charlotte as one of the best things that ever happened to me. As “a woman standing where there was only a girl” (to come back to the The Cure), I see Charlotte Sometimes as formative in my life, a turning point. Those months “off” taught me that the world was bigger than my parents’ house, bigger than the town of Shelby, broader and grander and more interesting than anything I’d yet seen. As Robert Smith would say, “the party just gets better and better.”

Period.

I don’t want to be all playing into stereotypes here, but I’m on my period and everything is pissing me off. From my dog who selectively understands English and won’t stop whining at the squirrels to my long-distance boyfriend/affairmate who I haven’t even talked to today because I’m getting frustrated with Facebook messaging my daily “good morning” to someone I haven’t seen in over eight months, so, I’m angry.

And my crotch is bleeding

And I don’t want the two to be connected, but my God biology.

Even the squirrels are pissing me off. Not because my dog keeps whining at them, though that doesn’t help, but because their chatter is loud and it might actually be coming from birds. I don’t know species’ noises that well, apparently, which makes me feel dumb and that makes me mad.

Lack of species’ sounds knowledge aside, I do know that their incessant chatter can fuck off because I’m pissed and I still don’t know why and they aren’t helping me to concentrate on writing something coherent.

Mad woman writing on her rag. That’s what I should title this. But note: there’s a space between “mad” and “woman,” and it is history’s assumption that there is no space between those two words that also pisses off. A mad woman is a hysterical madwoman because her vagina bleeds on a regular basis. Ugg.

I’m not angry at the actual period, though. Bleeding happens. The only punctuation that pisses me off is the overly and incorrectly used ellipsis. But this isn’t about punctuation, rather a period and what it might be doing to me and how I’m pissed that I feel like a cliché right now.

I don’t let my dog be a cliché. When I saw Skylar after three months of being away at a writing residency, she didn’t initially recognize my voice. We hadn’t talked in those three months because I don’t speak dog and she only knows bits of human. Ball, sit, stay, and “you fucking dog” mostly. Though once I got close enough to her and she got a whiff of the uniqueness that is a person’s smell—the scent version of a fingerprint, if you will—she lost her shit. Well, more like she lost her piss. Well, she didn’t actually pee on me because we don’t allow clichés in this family but I could tell she wanted to because that’s how excited she was.

Right now, Skylar is intermittently staring at me and whining. Not helpful. She lets out a sigh like I’ve let her down because I’m not stopping the squirrel/possibly bird chatter. Now she’s pacing. FML.

Those three letters have become so entwined with the daily workings of my life lately. Anything from poking my finger with a knitting needle to only being able to Facebook Message the boyfriend/affairmate when his wife is not around (because she knows) all just make me spit “FML” to no one in particular—to no one at all, actually, because I’m in the middle of the mountains without cell phone reception so I can’t even talk on the phone to boyfriend/affairmate, thus Facebook Messenger, so it’s just me and my pouting and angry-whining dog and the squirrel-birds out here. I swear Skylar’s going to start thinking FML is a command I’m trying to teach her because I probably say it more than her name.

Though, bright point: I’m less mad woman-ish now because it’s like I’m writing it out of me or something, though I probably sound madwoman-ish to the female haters because God forbid a woman try to figure out her inexplicable anger so as not to blame it on her wandering womb. Sexism is one of my pet peeves, btw.

You can file this next paragraph under: Memory, Semi-Related.

Playing a game with my family a few holiday seasons ago where four people looked at a card with a noun on it and described how the noun applied to their lives in such a way that the fifth person could guess what the noun thingy was that was printed on the card. In this semi-related memory, the card said, “PET PEEVE.” My mom was the guesser. I said, “Mine is when people use punctuation incorrectly such as when they use an ellipsis to make a pause when they should use—.”

“Pet peeve!” Mom shouted out.

(Notice how I didn’t use an ellipsis there because I wasn’t trailing off in thought, rather I was interrupted, thus the em dash.)

Point being: you don’t use an ellipsis when you’re interrupted—only when you’re trailing off in thought or cutting text out of a direct quote.

Other point being: Mom knows me best.

My phone just vibrated twice—Facebook Messenger, probably from the boyfriend/affairmate because I haven’t said good morning yet. A long-distance relationship can be challenging. Having a long-distance relationship/affair with a married man can be challenging-er. Having a long-distance relationship/affair with a married man during a pandemic means I haven’t gotten laid in eight months. These are indeed trying times. Because there is no bumping and grinding with your boyfriend/affairmate when he’s lockdown-ed in a house that he’s been trying to sell for a year with a woman he no longer “loves like that” and with his 20-year-old son who is also stuck at home with his parents’ long-splintering marriage because his college is closed due to The Coronies.

Note: I recommend you not admit your infidelity to your wife while you are in a forced lockdown together. (It sounded like a good idea—stop lying, face life, let wife know that, for reals, the divorce they’ve been trying to have for the past handful of years long before The Other Woman—me—stepped in to fuck things up [literally] is for reals ending). She’s a mad woman who is probably turning into a madwoman and rightfully so. Her anger is justified, unlike mine.

What all this means is that although I’m fucking a married man, I haven’t been fucking him lately because a global pandemic is putting everyone on lockdown which makes having a long-distance affair more than kinda hard to maintain.

Maybe that’s why I’m mad, too—this succumbing to two stereotypes. Both of these are even more of a pet peeve than incorrect punctuation: 1) I’m not only the hysterical menstruating madwoman, but b) I’m also the mad woman who just needs to get some lovin’ to smash that frustrated feeling out of her.

“FML,” I say.

Skylar stops with the pouting face, stops with the pacing, looks at me, tilts her head, then sits down real pretty.

 

Disappearing in Goethe House: Johann’s Sleep

https://frankfurter-goethe-haus.de/ausstellung/-/frankfurter-goethe-haus-johann-wolfgang-von-goethe/234

No matter how long a journey is, and though it begins with eagerness and excitement, my heart aches the night before going back home for the narrow streets I had walked on for many days; the harmony of the unknown language, stores, coffees and restaurants, the rustle of women’s skirts sweeping the ground, the cheeping of children leaving school, and the murmur of cars. On the threshold of saying goodbye or farewell and still remembering the taste of food, I long to stay one more day despite homesickness. It doesn’t matter whether the journey is short or long because there is no such thing as a bad escape. Going back home means returning to reality, existing in the detached routine and work. Organizing and turning back to the writings, tidying the house, helping people, living… How sacred it is that time stops during a journey, and I spent it wandering through books in unknown languages. I was bestowed the pleasure of unhurriedly beholding the works of painters and sculptors of the region and the chance to rewrite stories. Soon to become tomorrow’s passenger, I think of all this all night.

The Letter in Abeyance

Staring at the ceiling of the room I rented in Frankfurt, I sought pretexts to stay. It would take a few minutes to change the ticket. I could talk to the landlady to let me stay one more night. Dive back into the magic of Heidelberg. One more morning walk. What about the next night? Other nights? Other cities? The broken wing of time was a passage to sleep for me.

In the morning, I put on my broad-brimmed hat and rolling my suitcase behind me, I rang the bell for Ingeborg. As she always did, she smiled and said, “Good morning.” She asked me whether I wanted a cup of coffee before leaving and handed me a piece of paper. “This came for you last night, but I didn’t want to wake you up.” I was surprised by the letter. It was an old-styled letter, sealed and written on parchment paper. But who wrote it? Why? Why a letter instead of email, phone call, or a text message? Moreover, it was sent to the house I temporarily stayed at. Even my family didn’t know the address! I grumbled in Turkish, how? Ingeborg asked whether I wanted milk. “No,” I said. “How did it come here?”

Lifting her eyebrows, she said a man with a triangular hat brought it. She thought it was from a friend living in Frankfurt or hereabouts.

With a knife, I scratched the seal and unfolded the letter. I tried reading the messy handwriting, but it was in vain. It was in German, so I needed Ingeborg’s help, and she was curiously looking from behind my shoulders. I was about to ask whether she could translate the letter when I glanced at the signature. It couldn’t be true; I must be hallucinating.

Ingeborg squinted and read out loud:

“Dear Fräulein,

I’ve been watching you pass by my house for days. I’ve been expecting you to lift your hat and smile at me or knock at the door, wondering why the house is here. But you walk in a hurry each time and don’t smile at me. I wistfully look at you. I know you will go back home tomorrow morning. Stay one more day for my sake and come here immediately. I need you.

Address: Großer Hirschgraben No: 23–25

Waiting wistfully,

Johann Goethe”

Ingeborg burst into laughter. She gave me the letter, sat down on the couch, and kept on laughing.

“It’s not that funny, I guess,” I murmured.

She wiped her tears and said, “Someone is making fun of you, Fräulein!” I stood up, took the letter, and approached the door with my suitcase.

“No, Frau Ingeborg,” I shouted as I went down the stairs. “No one is making fun of anyone; it is just an overdue letter! Tschüss!”

I hurriedly walked towards the main street, hailed a taxi, and whispered Goethe House to the driver who I thought was probably a Turk.

It is the Call of Johann

I could see his silhouette standing behind the curtain. I bowed my hat and smiled; the silhouette backed away. I paid the entrance fee to the house that was a museum and left my suitcase at the entrance. I passed by the entrance paved with new stones and stopped before the majestic old wooden door at the end of the hall where floor tiles were worn out.

Which Johann was waiting for me? Which Goethe called for me? Was it the brokenhearted young man who left Lotte and went back to Frankfurt or the genius who finally finished Faust with an aching heart and gray hair? I lifted the lock and pushed open the door. I first saw the hand holding the handrail at the top of the wide, curved stairs on the left. I heard the rattles. Watching him come down the stairs, one by one, took my breath away. The dim light from the wide saloon behind the stairs illuminated his body. The embossed embroidery and brocaded edges of his jacket reaching his knees shined. Above the jabot of his shirt, partly hanging down from the tight pants, his neck was white. The light fell upon his sharp jaw. I saw his thin but characteristic lips, shapely nose, blazing eyes, and pure white forehead. He tied his brown hair back with a black ribbon. The curls over his ears were vivid. At the last step, he took his hand away from the handrail and reached it out towards me.

“I’m glad you accepted my invitation, Fräulein.”

His cheeks were burning as if he had gotten out of a lake after long hours of riding. They were burning with excitement, passion, and, mostly, youthfulness. Perhaps like shortly before writing Werther or at the exact moment of writing it. He was in front of me. Young Johann Goethe!

He held my hand and brought it to his lips. After saying how he was afraid I would leave the city without receiving the letter, he pulled me close to him, as if he were embracing a friend he hadn’t seen for centuries. We stood before the console with a giant mirror, at the saloon. He seemed to be wondering why the traveler who went to cities of many authors didn’t come to his house, I intuited. I smiled at his reflection. “Herr Goethe,” I said. “Perhaps I was startled by your notoriety on libertinism. Or I was not ready to resist The Sorrows of Young Johann. Or I might be afraid of meeting Mephistopheles. Do not ask.”

He held my chin, turned me towards himself. “Even the greatest blessings perish on earth, but only the impression we make through our thoughts beyond the time is there, it stays in eternity. Now stay here and share my loneliness of centuries in the rooms of this empty house.”[1]

What were my options? Going back to the ones who expect me, or living a carefree life? I asked him to tell the servant to bring in my suitcase.

The Days in Goethe House

It was only us in the great triplex house. He wanted me to stay in the lit room facing the street. The furniture in the room was only a bed with a brass headboard, a small table, and a dressing mirror. It was enough. In the writing room, where the floors squeaked as we sat down with candles and oil lamps at night, he told me to select a book I liked from the library. Regardless of the language of the book, he translated and read me incredible stories. We talked about Central Asia, the history of prophets, and, mostly, the forests. He insisted on going to the Black Forest together: “Let us go and surrender ourselves to the soil, hear the insects. Let us collect plants and put them inside our notebooks. Let us drink more and ride horses along the Main River.”

The days passed quickly. I forgot about my life in my country, abandoning myself to the smooth, idle rhythm of the house, the small garden, and the expansive yard. I felt spoiled when I touched the soft Persian carpets with my bare feet in the room where we studied early in the mornings. I wandered about in the libraries with a tattered chemise I found in a closet. I watched Johann from behind his shoulder as he wrote sonnets. “Must it ever be thus, that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery?” I feared losing my ghost, my Johann, and willed myself to refuse that moment when it would be time to go home. Thinking about all the women admiring Johann, I suppressed not to disguise myself as an infatuated woman turned into huge boils on my skin.

In the morning after a night he had drunk so much and fallen asleep, I read a passage I found while tidying up the papers on his desk. “The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a demon which perpetually pursues and harasses me. When in bygone days I gazed from these rocks upon yonder mountains across the river, and upon the green, flowery valley before me, and saw all nature budding and bursting around; the hills clothed from foot to peak with tall, thick forest trees; the valleys in all their varied windings, shaded with the loveliest woods; and the soft river gliding along amongst the lisping reeds, mirroring the beautiful clouds which the soft evening breeze wafted across the sky, — when I heard the groves about me melodious with the music of birds, and saw the million swarms of insects dancing in the last golden beams of the sun, whose setting rays awoke the humming beetles from their grassy beds, whilst the subdued tumult around directed my attention to the ground, and I there observed the arid rock compelled to yield nutriment to the dry moss, whilst the heath flourished upon the barren sands below me, all this displayed to me the inner warmth which animates all nature, and filled and glowed within my heart. I felt myself exalted by this overflowing fullness to the perception of the Godhead, and the glorious forms of an infinite universe became visible to my soul! … It is as if a curtain had been drawn from before my eyes, and, instead of prospects of eternal life, the abyss of an ever open grave yawned before me. Can we say of anything that it exists when all passes away?”[2]

I folded the paper and put it in my brassiere. I went to the backyard and waited for the cold to sober me up.

Goethe House… The poet’s house was behind the old well before me. It was the eternal grave of my ghost and my temporary residence. The place where the great author put his head on the pillow and said to his wife Charlotte von Stein, “I own two Gods only: you and the god of sleep. You heal everything in me which was capable of healing and drive out the evil spirits.”[3] It was the first time I really looked at the house: his magical energy ever present. I passed by the well and entered the house. I stopped in the hall where I first saw him. I looked at the yellow- and blue-painted saloons and the kitchen to the right.

I wandered the blue saloon where Johann wrote Götz of the Iron Hand on the round dining table. They were there: his father Caspar, his mother, and his sister and only confidant) Cornelia.

The lace pillows were made by his mother, and the rococo objects in the showcase were bought from the best manufacturers of the time. The yellow saloon, or the Weimar Saloon, was where his mother stored everything she bought in Weimar. The kitchen to the right was filled with cake molds, cauldrons, and pots. A cook and two servant girls worked in the kitchen. Calluna bundles were hung on the window facing the backyard. A pump brought cold water to the dining table from the well in the cellar. A big oven, where everything was cooked, warmed the entrance. The lanterns on the kitchen cabinet were lit to welcome the gentlemen home at night.

I felt as if everyone who ever passed through the house touched my skin. I trembled. I began climbing the stairs that made up nearly one third of the house. I touched the curved wrought-iron handrails, then the letters JCG and CEG carved on them—the first letters of Johann’s mother and father.

At the top of the stairs, the clothes of the family hung in closets resembling a big ghost The clothes were many because only three days a year were laundry days in Goethe House. Perhaps Johann’s love of Italy arose from the copper Rome engravings on the walls behind the closets. His father Caspar Goethe made them in 1740. They often drank and had parties, meetings in the Red Saloon because of its Chinese wallpaper. During the Seven Years War, the lieutenant of the king of France, Thoranc, stayed in this saloon, although Caspar Goethe, who supported Prussia, was not pleased with this. Still, a portrait of Thoranc greets people in the next room. The Goethe family was keen on music: father Caspar Goethe played oud, Johann played cello, and Cornelia played piano. Johann’s mother accompanied them by singing. An oil painting above the red clavichord drew a bittersweet portrait of the family. The Goethe family smiles at the peaceful scenery in the painting made by Johann Corvad Seekatz. Five babies are behind them‑they symbolized the five siblings who died at an early age.

I climbed to the second floor and entered the room where Johann was said to be born. Near the window, the Frankfurter Frag newspaper was framed with the issue from 29th of August in 1749, the date of his baptism. The next room was his mother’s, filled with small porcelain objects. The walls were covered in various paintings in gold frames. This room led to the library. The foundation of the library was laid when Johann’s father created a treasure of 2,000 volumes for him because he liked reading at home—that’s how Johann learned about the stories of Dr. Faust.

Third floor welcomed people with another waiting room. One of the rooms on the floor housed a puppet theater where Johann prepared shadow plays and created miniature worlds. The puppet theater was a gift to the family and became famous through its depiction in Johann’s The Theatrical Mission of Wilhelm Meister. Beyond the theater room was the poet’s room—where there was an eternal dominance by paper and ink! Poems, dramas, satires, musical plays. Young Werther! The walls were decorated with drawings, the images of his Lotte, and a portrait of Cornelia. What was on his mind while drawing, figuring all his characters? He spoke with them and created an ink community out of silhouettes. He slept on a small couch, brought in from the waiting room, when he was tired.

Looking at the Poet from a Distance

I glanced at the sleeping poet whose head slightly fell over his arm on the couch. It was like he aged within a few days. His slightly open mouth was growling. I contemplated on his life once again. His journey to Italy, the frustration of the love in Italy, the deadlock of his love for Charlotte von Stein, the failure of achieving social reforms according to the principles of Enlightenment at Weimar Princedom.

But I was with young Johann. There was something that comforted me in his steady breath which calmly welcomed the wrinkles on his face. Young Goethe… Goethe, who clearly revealed the social obstacles before self-improvement through his complicated thoughts about the contradiction between personality and society, saw feudal stratification as obstacle to self-improvement and sharply criticized the social order of his time—with the help of satire.

I thought about what George Lukacs said of Werther. “Young Werther is considered a love story…Is that correct? Yes. Werther is one of the greatest love stories in world literature. But like every really great poetic expression of erotic tragedy Werther provides much more than a mere tragedy of love. Werther’s tragedy of love is a tragic explosion of all those passions. Young Goethe succeeded in introducing organically into this love-conflict all the great problems of the struggle for the development of personality.”[4] The wave of admiration after publishing Werther prevented Caspar Goethe from seeing his son merely as a lawyer, and he accepted him as an author (it was not a surprise, then, that Johann’s most productive period began after Werther).

After coming to Weimar in 1775, Goethe dealt with politics and became the special mentor of the Duke. The Duke continued working on the interpretation of the Quran, with which he first met in 1771, and he was the first man of literature to show a positive approach to Islam in Germany.

Resisting aristocracy, Goethe’s ethics in the council of ministers were evaluated in a different way by the literati. Some authors describe Goethe as a reformist politician who struggled to free the peasantry from oppressive and heavy taxes. Others describe Goethe as being supportive of children’s mandatory entry into the army of Prussia and precautions regarding the limitation of freedom of speech. Goethe is described as voting for the death sentence of a mother who killed her baby out of desperation and then—in contrast with his beliefs—he treated his merciful behavior in Gretchen’s Tragedy (however, there is no information available about whether it was his personal opinion or if he surrendered to the majority opinion).

He was tired of his relationship with Stein. He had adventures in his journey to Italy, became famous with his libertinism, fell in love with Christiane Vilpius, and struggled to have society accept “the little vamp” by marrying her. He was the tired poet. He invited unrest after his death by writing. Though he was forgotten for a while, he was declared as the greatest author of Germany. His bones may be lost beneath the soil, but what about his soul?

His soul, which couldn’t leave the house he spent his life and wrote Werther in, insisted on staying away from the moment of death every day. He was with me. Sleeping.

The Sleep of Goethe

I had to leave him as is because I got lost in the tremble of lips and his eyes that saw gondolas passing by misty canals and experienced the magic of the theatres in Venice. I was not afraid of becoming a ghost, becoming a visitor living out of a suitcase in the huge house, being gossiped about by the servants in the kitchen, or the possibility of Johann’s family to come. I was neither afraid of the possibility of Lotte, Stein, nor Vilpius. Rather, I had to leave because I had escaped from the arms of literature.

Being unable to leave the stories and tales I heard in various languages every new day, enjoying the traces of history in each room of this house, becoming addicted to climbing down the stairs within the arms of Johann as we danced, loving the man who vividly told me of the East, being unable to shorten the bridles of the horse I would ride towards Black Forest with him… Were these fears? By degrading the affinity through his words, sentences and narrations, did I try to escape from his magic, his great character and his heart, yearning for nature like mine? Why did I want to run away from Goethe House instead of having inspiration and writing everything in detail when I went back home?

Because I knew what he wrote, I ran away from it.

“Why dost thou waken me, O spring? Thy voice woos me, exclaiming, I refresh thee with heavenly dews; but the time of my decay is approaching, the storm is nigh that shall whither my leaves. Tomorrow the traveller shall come, he shall come, who beheld me in beauty: his eye shall seek me in the field around, but he shall not find me.”[5]

He moved, put his arm below his head. The pink light of the fading day reflected on his brown hair from between the curtains. I approached, quietly pulled the black ribbon on his hair and tied it around my neck. I caressed the forelocks on his cheek with my fingers. He grumbled, but he didn’t wake up. I wanted Goethe’s sleep to remain in this moment. It was illuminated and bright.

I took off the chemise, folded it and left it on the working table. I left the house as I had entered it, to go back home, with my small suitcase rolling behind me.

 

[1] Goethe Diyor Ki – Doğu Batı Publishing

[2] The Sorrows of Young Werther – J.W. von Goethe (Translated by R.D. Boylan)

[3] Goethe Diyor Ki – Doğu Batı Publishing

[4] Goethe and His Age, George Lukacs, Merlin Press, 1968.

[5] The Sorrows of Young Werther – J.W. von Goethe (Translated by R.D. Boylan)

Photo at the top of the page: “Goethes Gartenhaus” by Tobi NDH is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.