This day in history: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (pronounced Gur-ta) was born on this day in 1749. He is considered to be the greatest German literary figure of the modern era.
According to A.J. Jacobs, "When Goethe wasn’t busy explaining to people how to pronounce his name, he found time to be a critic, journalist, lawyer, painter, theater manager, statesman, educationalist, alchemist, soldier, astrologer, novelist, songwriter, philosopher, botanist, biologist, color theorist, mine inspector, and issuer of military uniforms. Well, at least he didn’t supervise irrigation schemes, that slacker. Oh wait. My mistake. He was also a supervisor of irrigation schemes. I was familiar with the phrase 'Renaissance Man,' but Goethe is like a Renaissance Man with access to amphetamines. I can’t figure out how he fit all these jobs into a single life, much less the one-page single-spaced résumé that employers generally request. He makes Leonardo da Vinci look like a lazy bum."
Goethe became an overnight literary celebrity after writing The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774. The book recounts an unhappy romantic infatuation that ends in suicide. Werther's funeral became one which "no clergyman attended" and that made the book deeply controversial at the time, for on the face of it, it appeared to condone and glorify suicide. The book would go on to inspire a rash of copycat suicides. The men were often dressed in the same clothing "as Goethe's description of Werther and using similar pistols." Often the book was found at the scene of the suicide. This led authorities in certain areas to ban the book, and the clothing style of Young Werther.
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Frankenstein's monster finds the book and sees Werther's case as similar to his own, of one rejected by those he loved.
However, Goethe's greatest literary would be his Faust, wherein Faust makes a compact with the Devil. The State authorities in Berlin suppressed the production of "Faust," until certain "dangerous passages" concerning freedom were deleted.
As a poet Goethe had few rivals. Consider his dark and gloomy "The Erl King":
Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear?
The father it is, with his infant so dear;
He holdeth the boy tightly clasp'd in his arm,
He holdeth him safely, he keepeth him warm.
"My son, wherefore seek'st thou thy face thus to hide?"
"Look, father, the Erl King is close by our side!
Dost see not the Erl King, with crown and with train?"
"My son, 'tis the mist rising over the plain."
"Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!
For many a game I will play there with thee;
On my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,
My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold."
"My father, my father, and dost thou not hear
The words that the Erl King now breathes in mine ear?"
"Be calm, dearest child, thy fancy deceives;
the wind is sighing through withering leaves."
"Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there?
My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care
My daughters by night on the dance floor you lead,
They'll cradle and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep."
"My father, my father, and dost thou not see,
How the Erl King is showing his daughters to me?"
"My darling, my darling, I see it aright,
'Tis the aged grey willows deceiving thy sight."
"I love thee, I'm charm'd by thy beauty, dear boy!
And if thou aren't willing, then force I'll employ."
"My father, my father, he seizes me fast,
For sorely the Erl King has hurt me at last."
The father now gallops, with terror half wild,
He holds in his arms the shuddering child;
He reaches his farmstead with toil and with dread,—
The child in his arms he finds motionless, dead.
Goethe was also very quotable. Consider:
Painting and tattooing the body is a return to animalism.
If a man sets out to study all the laws, he will have no time left to transgress them.
Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
With knowledge grows doubt.
The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognizing a truth which has already been recognized by others.
He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
The solution of every problem is another problem.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.
He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.
Nothing is worth more than this day.
The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.
All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.
Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.
I call architecture frozen music.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
You are certainly wrong to compare suicide ... with great accomplishments, since it cannot be considered as anything but a weakness. After all, it is easier to die than to endure a harrowing life with fortitude.
Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.
Beauty can never really understand itself.
It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape; it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.
History-writing is a way of getting rid of the past.
It is much easier to recognize error than to find truth; for error lies on the surface and may be overcome; but truth lies in the depths, and to search for it is not given to everyone.
Piety is not an end, but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquility of soul. Hence it may be observed that those who set up piety as an end and object are mostly hypocrites.
Beauty and Genius must be kept afar if one would avoid becoming their slave.
No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.
An intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous.
At all times it has not been the age, but individuals alone, who have worked for knowledge. It was the age which put Socrates to death by poison, the age which burnt Huss. The ages have always remained alike.
Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.
I see my discourse leaves you cold;
Dear kids, I do not take offense;
Recall: the Devil, he is old,
Grow old yourselves, and he'll make sense!
It is a belief in the Bible, the fruits of deep meditation, which has served me as the guide of my moral and literary life. I have found it a capital safely invested and richly productive of interest.
One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.
Patriotism ruins history.
America, you have it better than our continent, the old one.
Nothing venture, nothing gain.
A world without love would be no world.
Doesn't surprise me that Christ our Lord
preferred to live with whores
& sinners, seeing
I go in for that myself.
A true German can't stand the French,
Yet gladly he drinks their wines.
One is never satisfied with a portrait of a person that one knows.
He who does not speak foreign languages knows nothing about his own.
Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.
Everything is simpler than one can imagine, at the same time more involved than can be comprehended.'
People should talk less and draw more. Personally, I would like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic nature, communicate everything I have to say visually.
No comments:
Post a Comment