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Goethe, however, said very amiably: "It may be unforgivable that I lived to be eighty-two. My
satisfaction on that account was, however, less than you may think. You are right that a great
longing for survival possessed me continually. I was in continual fear of death and continually
struggling with it. I believe that the struggle against death, the unconditional and self-willed
determination to live, is the motive power behind the lives and activities of all outstanding men.
My eighty-two years showed just as conclusively that we must all die in the end as if I had died
as a schoolboy. If it helps to justify me I should like to say this too: my nature had much of the
child in it, its curiosity and love for idleness and play. Well, and so it went on and on, till I saw
that sooner or later there must be enough of play."
As he said this, his smile was quite cunning—a downright roguish leer. He had grown taller
and his erect bearing and the constrained dignity of his face had disappeared. The air, too, around
us was now ringing with melodies, all of them songs of Goethe's. I heard Mozart's "Violets" and
Schubert's "Again thou fillest brake and vale" quite distinctly. And Goethe's face was rosy and
youthful, and he laughed; and now he resembled Mozart like a brother, now Schubert, and the
star on his breast was composed entirely of wild flowers. A yellow primrose blossomed
luxuriantly in the middle of it.
It did not altogether suit me to have the old gentleman avoid my questions and accusations in
this sportive manner, and I looked at him reproachfully. At that he bent forward and brought his
mouth, which had now become quite like a child's, close to my ear and whispered softly into it:
"You take the old Goethe much too seriously, my young friend. You should not take old people
who are already dead seriously. It does them injustice. We immortals do not like things to be
taken seriously. We like joking. Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It consists, I
don't mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time. I, too, once put too high
a value on time. For that reason I wished to be a hundred years old. In eternity, however, there is
no time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke."
And indeed there was no saying another serious word to the man. He capered joyfully and
nimbly up and down and made the primrose shoot out from his star like a rocket and then he
made it shrink and disappear. While he flickered to and fro with his dance steps and figures, it
was borne in upon me that he at least had not neglected learning to dance. He could do it
wonderfully.