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In the preceding chapter we spoke of Schopenhauer's personal encounter with Goethe in the autumn of 1813, yet this was not quite the first time the two had met, or at least had been present in the same room at the same time. Here is how they had begun to make one another's acquaintance. On gaining permission from his mother to drop a commercial career, Arthur had entered the gymnasium at Gotha in the spring of 1807, in order to acquire the command of Greek and Latin required for entrance to the academy; but his stay there was not to be a very long one. A verse mocking one of his teachers led to a conflict with the rector and, rather than apologizing, young Arthur chose to leave the school in December of the same year and to complete his classical studies in private. This he did with such quick progress that (so we recall) he could enroll at the university of Göttingen in the autumn of 1809. These almost two years of private study, then, he spent in Weimar, though not in his mother's house. Well aware of her son's somewhat difficult temperament, she preferred not to live with him under one roof, and strictly rationed him as to the number of visits he was allowed to pay her. Yet Johanna Schopenhauer, née Trosiener, did admit him to the literary tea-parties she used to give in her drawing-room (just like every other self-respecting and cultivated lady at the time, and the more so since she was herself a successful author of society novels).

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-9369-4_4

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