1832 If Heine’s are the wittiest last words of a German man of letters (see 27 November), the most exalted are those of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. As recorded by his faithful biographer Johann Peter Eckermann (author of Conversations with Goethe), they were ‘Mehr Licht! Mehr licht!’ (‘More light! More light!’) As a child of the enlightenment, the leader of Sturm und Drang, a major philosopher as well as a toweringly great writer, they make a fitting epitaph.
There have, however, been contradictions to this most perfect of valedictions. It is suggested that what Goethe actually said was: ‘Open the second shutter, so that more light may come in’ (some versions have ‘second blind’ – the exact domestic layout of Goethe’s death chamber is not recorded). The central element is there (‘more light’) but the instruction is anything but lofty. Banal even. More so in the original German: ‘Macht doch den zweiten Fensterladen in der Stube auch auf, damit mehr Licht hereinkomme.’
Another account has it that his last words were intimately tender to his daughter-in-law: ‘Come, my little daughter, and give me your little paw.’ It’s nice to think of him entering eternity, hand in hand, with her. Other accounts have ‘little woman’ and even ‘little wife’ (the German ‘Frau’ translates either way).