e-book Goethes poems

Free download. Book file PDF easily for everyone and every device. You can download and read online Goethes poems file PDF Book only if you are registered here. And also you can download or read online all Book PDF file that related with Goethes poems book. Happy reading Goethes poems Bookeveryone. Download file Free Book PDF Goethes poems at Complete PDF Library. This Book have some digital formats such us :paperbook, ebook, kindle, epub, fb2 and another formats. Here is The CompletePDF Book Library. It's free to register here to get Book file PDF Goethes poems Pocket Guide.
The child of an imperial councilor, Goethe had a thoroughly classical education Goethe wrote Hermann and Dorothea (), an epic poem that examines the.
Table of contents

This principality became his home for the rest of his life. There Goethe was given a position of responsibility in matters of state. His concerns included the important areas of mining and agriculture, which led to his growing interest in science. Goethe was later appointed director of the ducal theater at Weimar, occupying this position for twenty two years.

His literary output continued, and included lyrics and ballads, a novel about the theater and the play Iphigenie auf Tauris. This last was cast into an iambic version and marked a turn toward a new classical phase of writing, following a visit in to Rome to view classical antiquities.

Podcasting Goethe

Goethe finished Egmont in Italy and began re-working Faust in his new classical style, rejecting Sturm und Drang. His son was born in In following his scientific interests, Goethe studied the comparative morphology of plants and began to recognize the importance of evolution. He also pursued studies in optics, geology and archeology. Goethe was present in campaigns against the French that led to a German defeat at Valmy and the siege of Mainz. He later wrote about these experiences and about the criticism he received for not becoming a poet glorifying war.

At about this time, he revised his novel about the theater, which appeared with resounding success as Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjarhe. In this, Goethe was encouraged by a younger poet, Johann Schiller, with whom he formed a lasting friendship. Schiller also encouraged Goethe to complete the first part of Faust.

Goethe's Poems

This was published in and was received enthusiastically by the Romantic movement that had recently emerged. The story of Faust emerged at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century, although it had roots in early Jewish legends. By the Seventeenth century, the character portrayed changed from a wandering charlatan and swindler to an accomplished and well-connected magician. As such, Faust plays became a means of illustrating the perils of questioning established church doctrine through scientific and humanistic studies. Goethe, working on his version of the play throughout his life, incorporated his changing humanistic interests into the script, and essentially reversed the story: Faust, exploring a vast range of cultural and scientific interests, ultimately triumphs as a humanist, whereas the devil, Mephistopheles, loses.

Throughout his life Goethe had passionate love affairs that provided much of the material for his plays and novels. Gretchen, Anna, Susanne, Friederike, Charlotte, Lotte, Lili, Charlotte, various Italians, Christiane who married Goethe in , Bettina, Minna, Marianne, and Ulrike, all contributed to his literary output, often providing the raw material for explorations of his own character and that of others.

With such a range of humanistic interests and literary works, it is difficult to provide representative extracts in a short space.

Description

Here, excerpts are presented from some of the conversations Goethe had with a younger colleague as he looked back over a long life. As soon as he does that, he is lost as a poet: he must bid farewell to his free spirit, his unbiased view, and draw over his ears the cap of bigotry and blind hatred. The poet, as a man and citizen, will love his native land. But the native land of his poetic powers and poetic action is the good, noble, and beautiful. As such, it is confined to no particular province or country. The poet seizes what he finds and forms it into art wherever it is.

In this he is like an eagle who hovers with free gaze over whole countries, and to whom it is of no consequence whether the hare he pounces on is running in Prussia or in Saxony. If the poet has employed a life in battling with pernicious prejudices, in setting aside narrow views, in enlightening minds, purifying tastes, ennobling the feelings and thoughts of his countrymen, what better could he have done?

How could he have acted more patriotically? You know that, on the whole, I care little what is written about me. But it still reaches my ears, and I know well enough that, hard as I have toiled throughout my life, all my labors are as nothing in the eyes of certain people, just because I have disdained to mingle in political parties. To please such people I would have had to become a member of a Jacobin club, and preached bloodshed and murder.


  • McChivels Mosaic: Start Here.
  • Poems of the East and West.
  • Perfect Fall Wedding: The Coming of Christ.

I have never uttered anything which I have not experienced, and which has not urged me to production. I have only composed love songs when I have loved. How could I write songs of hatred without hating! And, between ourselves, I did not hate the French, although I thanked God that we were free from them. How could I, to whom culture and barbarism are alone of importance, hate a nation that is among the most cultivated of the earth, and to which I owe so great a part of my own cultivation? You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.

But there is an upper degree where it vanishes altogether, and where one stands to a certain extent above nations, and feels the well-being or sorrow of a neighboring people, as if it had happened to one's own. This degree of culture was conformable to my nature, and I had become strengthened in it long before I had reached my sixtieth year.

Thus I have experienced results and gained insights impossible to those who are born now and must learn all these things from books, which they will not understand. What the next years will bring I cannot predict; but I fear we shall not soon have repose. It is not given to the world to be contented. The great are not such that there will be no abuse of power. The masses not such that, in hope of gradual improvement, they will be contented with a moderate condition. If we could perfect human nature, we might expect a perfect state of things. But, as it is, there will always be a wavering hither and thither.

One group must suffer while the other is at ease. Envy and egotism will be always at work like bad demons, and party strife will be without end. I have always regarded each man as an independent individual, whom I endeavored to study and to understand with all his peculiarities, but from whom I desired no further sympathy. In this way I have been able to converse with every man. This way alone produces the knowledge of various characters and the dexterity necessary for the conduct of life.

Related Articles

For it is in a conflict with natures opposed to his own that a man must collect his strength to fight his way through. By this means the different sides of our character are brought out and developed, so that we soon feel ourselves a match for every foe. You should do the same. You have more capacity for it than you imagine. Indeed, you must at all events plunge into the great world, whether you like it or not. But, as I said, all violent transitions are revolting to my mind, for they are not conformable to nature.

But he would not exterminate evils, which are often inevitable, with fire and sword. He endeavors, by a judicious progress, to remove glaring defects gradually, without at the same time destroying an equal amount of good by violent measures. He contents himself in this ever imperfect world with what is good, until time and circumstances favor his attaining something better. I do not know that I ever joined in any way against the people; but it is now settled, once for all, that I am no friend to the people.

I am, indeed, no friend to the revolutionary mob, whose object is robbery, murder, and destruction, and who, behind the mask of public welfare, have their eyes only upon the meanest egotistical aims. I am no friend to such people, any more than I am a friend of a Louis XV. I hate every violent overthrow, because as much good is destroyed as is gained by it. I hate those who achieve it, as well as those who give cause for it.

But am I, therefore, no friend to the people? Does any right-minded man think otherwise?

Catalog Record: The poems of Goethe | HathiTrust Digital Library

Neither could I be indifferent to the fact that the Germans were endeavoring, artificially, to bring about such scenes here, as were in France the consequence of a great necessity. But I was as little a friend to arbitrary rule. Indeed, I was perfectly convinced that a great revolution is never a fault of the people, but of the government. Revolutions are utterly impossible as long as governments are constantly just and constantly vigilant, so that they may anticipate them by improvements at the right time, and not hold out until they are forced to yield by the pressure from beneath.

Do I then serve a tyrant—a despot? Do I serve one who lives at the cost of the people, only for his own pleasures?

You may also be interested in...

Such princes and such times lie, God be praised, far behind us. I have been intimately connected with the Grand Duke for half a century, and have, during half a century striven and worked with him. I would speak falsely if I were to say that I have known a single day in which the Grand Duke has not thought of doing and executing something tending to the benefit of the land, and fitted to improve the condition of individuals.

As for himself personally, what has he got from his princely station but toil and trouble? Is his dwelling, his apparel, or his table better appointed than that of any wealthy private man? Only go into our seaport towns and you will find the kitchen and cellar of any considerable merchant better appointed than his. One rises to it a little better than another, and swims on the surface a little longer—that is all. So is it with music, in the highest degree, for it stands so high that no understanding can reach it, and an influence flows from it which masters all, and for which none can account.

Hence, religious worship cannot dispense with it; it is one of the chief means of working upon men miraculously. Thus the daemonic loves to throw itself into significant individuals, especially when they are in high places, like Frederic and Peter the Great. While I was in it I would not for the world have been without it, and now I would not for any consideration fall into it again.

I wrote that poem immediately after leaving Marienbad, while the feeling of all I had experienced there was fresh. At eight in the morning, when we stopped at the first stage, I wrote down the first stanza; and thus I went on composing in the carriage. I wrote down at every stage what I had just composed in my head, so that by the evening the whole was on paper.


  • A Tail of my Life: Mistys Story: Change?
  • Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (–): Selected Poems;
  • Truth No. 2?
  • Selected Poetry by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
  • Selected Poetry?
  • Goethe’s Works, vol. 1 (Poems) - Online Library of Liberty!

From this it has a certain directness and is, I may say, poured out at once, which may be an advantage to it as a whole. I staked upon the present moment as a man stakes a considerable sum upon a card, and sought to enhance its value as much as I could without exaggeration.

Medtner - 12 Goethe Songs, Op. 15 (1907)

It is this which separates poetry from prose; in which understanding always is, and always should be, at home. But they must all be poems for a special event; that is to say, reality must give both impulse and material for their production.