 
Choose another writer in this calendar: by name: by birthday from the calendar.
TimeSearch |
|
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) |
|
German poet, novelist, playwright, courtier, and natural philosopher, one of the greatest figures in Western literature. In literature Goethe gained early fame with Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774, The Sorrows of Young Werther), but his most famous work is the poetic drama in two parts, Faust. Like the famous character of this poem, Goethe was interested in alchemy. He also made important discoveries in connection with plant and animal life, and evolved a non-Newtonian and unorthodox theory of the character of light and color, which has influenced such abstract painters as Kandinsky and Mondrian. "I have carefully collected all I could possibly find out about the history of poor Werther, and I lay it before you here, knowing that you will thank me for doing so. You cannot deny his mind and character your admiration and love, or his fate your tears." (The Sorrows of Young Werther, translated by Byard Quincy Morgan, Alma Classics, 2015, p. 3) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in Frankfurt am Main, the
first child of a lawyer Johann Caspar Goethe, and Katherine Elisabeth
Textor, the daughter of the mayor of Frankfurt. Goethe had a
comfortable childhood and he was greatly influenced by his mother, who
encouraged his literary aspirations. Due to troubles at
school, he received education at home. At the age of 16, Goethe began
to study law at Leipzig University (1765-68), and he also studied
drawing with Adam Oeser. An unhappy love affair inspired Goethe's first
play, Die Laune des Verliebten
(1767, The Lover's Caprice). Götz von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand
(1773) was an early success. This Sturm und Drang tragedy told of the
notorious fifteenth century robber baron, whom Goethe turns into a
champion of freedom. After a period of illness, Goethe resumed
his studies in Strasbourg (1770-71). Some biographers have speculated
that Goethe had contracted syphilis – at least his relationships
with women were years apart. Goethe practised law in Frankfurt
(1771-72) and Wetzlar (1772). He contributed to Frankfurter
Gelehrte Anzeigen (1772-73), and in 1774 he published his first
novel, self-revelatory The Sorrows of Young Werther, in which
he created the prototype of the Romantic hero, who wears blue coat and
yellow breeches and commits suicide. The novel, written in the form of
a series of letters, depicted the hopeless affair of a young man,
Werther, with the beautiful Charlotte. In the end the melancholic
Werther shoots himself in the head, after one brief moment of happiness
with Charlotte, when she lets him kiss her. Goethe's model was
Charlotte Buff, the fiancée of his friend, whom he had met in Wetzlar
in 1772. William Thackeray attacked the cult of "Wertherism" in his
verse: "Werther had a love for Charlotte, / Such as words could never
utter; / Would you know how he first met her? / She was cutting bread
and butter." (Ballads by William Makepeace Thackeray, Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1882, p. 97) Goethe's youth was emotionally hectic to the point that he
sometimes feared for his reason. He was recognized as a leading figure
in the Sturm und Drang, which celebrated the energetic
Promethean restlessness of spirit as opposed to the ideal of calm
rationalism of the Enlightenment. Goethe's poem 'Prometheus', with its
insistence that man must believe not in gods but in himself, might be
seen as a motto for the whole movement. After a relaxing trip to Switzerland, Goethe made a decisive break with his past. In 1775 he was welcomed by Duke Karl August into the small court of Weimar, where he worked in several governmental offices. Occasionally he read aloud his texts to a selected group of persons – among them the Duke and the two Duchesses. To his disappointment a dog-trainer was also allowed to amuse in the court theatre. "What you don't feel, you will not grasp by art, In Weimar Goethe did not have much time to publish fiction. He
was a council member and member of the war commission, director of
roads and services, and managed the financial affairs of the court.
Also Goethe's scientific researches were wide. He discovered the human
intermaxilarry bone (1784), and formulated a vertebral theory of the
skull. His idea of Urpflanze, the archetypal forms after which
all other plants are patterned, has similarities with Plato's theory of
eternal and changeless Forms. In general, Goethe's metaphysics and
organic view of nature showed the influence of Spinoza. As the director of the Court Theater from 1791 to 1817, Goethe had Mozart's The Magic Flute performed over eighty times. It was the single most performed work during his tenure. A Freemason like Mozart, he knew well the background of the opera, but it was not performed with its original libretto by Emmanuel Schikaneder. Goethe preferred the adaptation of his common-law brother-in-law C.A. Vulpius, which offered a backstory and clarified the roles of the Queen of the Night and Sarasto. Goethe also spent to years trying to write the libretto for a sequel, Die Zauberharfe (The Magic Harpf). The famous magician Count Alessandro Cagliostro, another Freemason, reputedly inspired the character of Sarastro in The Magic Flute. During
this period, Goethe's great love was Charlotte von Stein, an
older married woman, but the relationship remained platonic. Eventually
Goethe was released from day-to-day governmental duties to concentrate
on writing, although he was still general supervisor for arts and
sciences, and director of the court theatres. After Goethe's emotional
dependence on Charlotte ended, he lived happily and unmarried with
Christiane Vulpius, who became Goethe's mistress in 1789. Goethe called
her his "Little Eroticon", while she called his penis "Herr Schönfuss". (Private Lives: Curious Facts about the Famous and Infamous by Mark Bryant, 1996, p. 143) In
spite of
public pressure, it was not until 1806 when they married. Goethe had a
son with her in 1789, August, who died in Rome in 1830. "I was not
unaware that I had begotten a mortal," Goethe stated. (Ibid., p. 143) In 1786-88 Goethe made a journey to Italy. In Rome he began to read Johann Joachim Winckelmann's Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764).
He drew statues and ruins,
collected antique and botanical samples, and was shocked by the
primitive power of an ancient Greek temple – Renaissance art did not
interest him. "In Rome I have found myself for the first time. For the
first time I have been in harmony with myself, happy and reasonable,"
wrote Goethe in his diary. (Italian Journey, 1786-1788 by J.W. Goethe, translated from the German with an introduction by W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer, 1968, p. 482) The journey ended Goethe's celibacy and inspired his play
Iphigenie auf Tauris,
and Römische Elegien,
sensuous poems relating partly to Christiane. The ancient monuments he
saw in Italy significantly influenced his growing commitment to a
classical view of art. "Three thing," Goethe later wrote in Die
Wahlverwandtschaften
(1809, Elective Affinities), "are needful in a building: that it is in
the right place, that it has good foundations, and that it is perfectly
executed." (Elective Affinities: A Novel, translated with an introduction and notes by David Constantine, 1999, p. 58) While in Sicily, Goethe met Count Cagliostro's relatives. At the time Goethe wrote his masonic comedy entitled Der Groß-Cophta (1791, The Grand Koptha), Cagliostro was touring the courts of Europe. In this play "the Count" was portrayed as a self-confident swindler, whose trickery reflected the moral corruption of the court. One month after the first performance of the play, Goethe wrote: "All secret associations should be destroyed, whatever the consequences." (Goethe: The Poet and the Age: Volume II: Revolution and Renunciation (1790-1802) by Nicholas Boyle, 2000, p. 173) For a period, Goethe himself may have been a member of the Order of Illuminati under the alias of Abris. The secret society had been founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt to oppose monarchies and religions and spread enlightened reason. In the 1790s Goethe contributed to
Friedrich von Schiller´s journal Die Horen, published Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm
Meister's Apprenticeship) in 1795-96, and continued his writings on the
ideals of arts and literature in his own journal Propyläen.
Wilhelm Meister's story had preoccupied the author for many years.
Wilhelm, disillusioned by love, starts actively to seek out other
values, and becomes an actor and playwright. Whereas Werther's life
ended in despair, Wilhelm has a more optimistic spirit. At the end of his wanderings in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821; 2nd ed. 1829, Wilhelm Meister's Travels) he finds happiness in present life. Wim
Wenders and Peter Handke made in 1974 a modernized film adaptation of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, entitled Wrong Move,
in which Wilhelm's visions are shot down. "If only both, the poeticc
and the political, could be one," he says to his friend, The old man, who answers:
"That would be the end of longing—and
the end of the world." ('The Writer in Film: Wrong Move' by Richard W. McCormick, in The Cinema of Wim Wenders: Image, Narrative, and the Postmodern Condition, edited by Roger F. Cook, Gerd Gemünden, 1997, p. 92) During the French Revolution Goethe reported in letters –
sometimes written in the middle of cannon fire – to his family his
inconveniences, complaining that he was forced to leave his home and
dear garden after the French army attacked Prussia. He also saw
killings and looted villages. Although Goethe supported freedom and
progress, he wanted to preserve the bourgeois or his
artistic-individualistic way of life. However, the majority of the
German intelligentsia greeted with enthusiasm the goals of the
revolution, including Kant, Schiller, and Friedrich Schlegel. As a
response to the French Revolution Goethe wrote the epic poem Hermann und Dorothea (1797), which
contrasts chaos and bourgeois harmony. In the abandoned drama The Mystified he tried to analyze the preconditions that led to the Revolution. Die natürliche Tochter,
derived from the memoirs of Princess Stéphanie-Louis de Bourbon Conti,
was Goethe's attempt to delt with the abuses of the ancien
régime. Before Bram Stoker's novel Dracula
(1897), vampires were not very popular figures in literature, but
Goethe's poem 'Die Braut von Corinth' (1797) features a female vampire:
"From my grave to wander I am forc'd, / Still to seek The Good's
long-sever'd link, / Still to love the bridegroom I have lost. / And
the life-blood of his heart to drink; / When his race is run, / I must
hasten on. / And the young must 'neath my vengeance sink." (quoted in Vampires and Vampirism by Dudley Wright, London: William Rider and Son, 1914, p. 154) The poem is set in ancient Greece. Faust is an alchemical drama from beginning to end, claims C.G. Jung. Goethe came under the spell of alchemy in his youth, when he read Anton Josef Kirchweger's Aurea Catena Homeri (1723), Georg von Welling's Opus Mago-cabbalisticum et Theosophicum (1735) – which he described as "obscure and incomprehensible" – and studied authors such as Basil Valentine and Paracelsus. He started to compose Faust about the age of twenty-three, and finished the second part in 1832, just before his death. Many of its lines have passed into the proverbial wisdom in Germany. At the beginning of WWI, Goethe's Faust along with the New Testament and Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra were printed in special edition and distributed to the soldiers at the front. The first English translation from Faust was published in the Monthly Review (1810), Shelley made translations of sections of the work in 1822, and Bayard Taylor's verse translation came out in 1870-71. The original figure in the Faust legend was Gregorius Faustus
(or Gregorius Sabellicus, Faustus Junior, c1480-1510/1), a seeker of
forbidden knowledge. His true identity is not known, but he claimed to
be an astrologer, expert in magic, and an alchemist. This legend
attracted Christopher Marlowe, who offered
in his play a psychological study of the battle between good and evil.
Marlowe's drama ends with the protagonist's damnation. Goethe's story
created a new persona for the Devil – Mephistopheles was a
gentleman, who had adopted the manners of a courtier. Faust's lust for
knowledge is limitless and he makes a contract with Mephistopheles: he
will die at the moment he declares himself satisfied, if he should
exclaim, "Stay, thou art so fair" (Verweile doch, du bist so schön!). In the first part, published in 1808, Faust seduces and loses
Margaret (in German, Margarete, or its diminutive, Gretchen), an
innocent girl, who is condemned to death for murdering her illegitimate
child by Faust. She asks Faust, does he believe in God? And he
answers: "Does not the heaven vault above? / Is the earth not firmly
based down here? / And do not, friendly, / Eternal stars arise? / Do we
not look into each other's eyes, / And all in you is surging, / To your
head and heart, / And weaves in timeless mystery, / Unseeable, yet
seen, around you?" (Goethe's Faust: Part One and Selections from Part Two, translated by Walter Kaufmann, 1963, p. 327) In the philosophical second part Faust marries Helen of Troy and starts to create an ideal community. Harold Bloom has said, that the monstrously complex poem is a "scandalous pleasure for the exuberant reader, but it is also a trap, a Maphistophelean abyss in which you will never touch bottom." (The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, by Harold Bloom, 1994, p. 206) Without knowing that his plans have failed, the blind Faust is finally satisfied. However, Mephistopheles loses his victory, when angels take Faust to heaven. Faust versions: Gotthold Lessing's (1729-1781) lost play Faust, Don Juan/Don Giovanni (perhaps best known from the Opera by Lorenzo Ponte and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorothy L. Sayers's play The Devil to Pay (1939), Thomas Mann's novel Doctor Faustus (1947). Film adaptations: 1909, dir. Edwin S. Porter; 1911, Bill Bumper's Bargain, starring Francis X. Bushman, Harry Cashman, Dolores Cassinelli; 1922, dir. Gérard Bourgeois; 1926, dir. F.W. Murnau, starring Gösta Ekman, Emil Jannings, Camilla Horn; 1941, All That Money Can Buy , dir. William Dieterle, based on Stephen Vincent Benét's work; 1948, La Leggenda di Faust, dir. Carmine Gallone, starring Italo Tajo, Nelly Corradi, Gino Mattera; 1949, La Beauté du Diable, dir. René Clair; 1957, Faustina, dir. José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, starring María Félix, Juan de Landa; 1960, dir. Peter Gorski, starring Will Quadflieg, Gustaf Gründgens, Ella Büchi; 1964, Mi alma por un amor, dir. Rafael Baledón, starring Enrique Guzmán, Angélica María, Manolo Muñoz; 1970, Genius, dir. Gregory J. Markopoulos; 1988, dir. Dieter Dorn, starring Helmut Griem, Romuald Pekny, Sunnyi Melles; 1994, dir. Jan Svankmajer, starring Petr Cepek; 2002, 666 - Traue keinem, mit dem Du schläfst!, dir. by Rainer Matsutani, starring Jan Josef Liefers, Armin Rohde; 2009, Faust. Der Tragödie erster Teil, dir. Ingo J. Biermann; 2009, Faust, dir. Ansel Faraj; 2011 TV film, The Damnation of Faust, dir. Peter Maniura; Faust, 2011, dir. Aleksandr Sokurov, starring Johannes Zeiler, Anton Adasinski, Isolda Dišauk; 2020, Goethe's Faust, dir. Karsten Pruehl, starring Bernardo Arias Porras, Heidrun Bartholomäus, Peer Blank. Opera: Gounod's Faust (1859), Buïto's Mefistotele (1866), Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust (1893), Busoni's Doktor Faust (1925). Animation: 1994, dir. Jan Svankmaijer. Goethe advised Duke Carl August on mining and Jena University, which for a short time attracted the most prominent figures in German philosophy, including Hegel and Fichte. In 1812 Goethe met the famous composer Ludwig van Beethoven in Teplitz. Beethoven had admired Goethe already in his youth, although he considered Goethe's attitude toward the nobility too servile. Beethoven composed several music pieces based on the author's texts, among them Egmont. Franz Schubert's (1797-1828) first Lieder masterpiece, 'Gretchen am Spinnrade', took the words from Faust, but Goethe did not much appreciate Schubert's musical achievements. Goethe remained creative during his last period. He edited
Kunst and Altertum (1816-32) and Zur Naturwissenschaft
(1817-24), wrote his autobiography, Aus
meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811-1833, Poetry and
Truth), and completed the novel Wilhelm
Meisters Wanderjahre; Goethe's readers have never truly loved this book. Thomas Carlyle translated the Wilhelm
Meister novels into English, but they deviate from the original.
He called Goethe "the Wisest of our Time" but he also said of the Apprenticeship
in a letter that there "are touches of the very highest, most ethereal genius in
it; but diluted with floods of insipidity, which even I would not have written for the world." (The Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle: Vol. II: 1821-1826, edited by Charles Eliot Norton, 1886, p. 219) When Ludwig van Beethoven
met Goethe, his great idol, in Teplitz in 1812, he was disappointed: by
accident they saw the Emperor Franz and his family on the Promenade,
and while Beethoven strode defiently on through the Royal party,
Goethe's eyes were lowered and he bowed with the greatest ceremony. Interested in visual arts throughout his life,
Goethe published a large volume on the theory of color, which he
considered one of his major achievements. In Zur Farbenlehre
(1810) Goethe
famously attacked Newton on methodological ground and put his trust in direct
testimony of the senses. Comparing Newtonian theory to an old
uninhitable castle, which has never been taken during its history. Goethe rejected mathematical
approach in the treatment of color, and argued that light, shade and
color are associated with the emotional experience – "every color
produces a distinct impression on the mind, and thus addresses at once
the eye and feelings." (Goethe's Theory of Colors, translated from the German by Charles Lock Eastlake, 1840, p. 406) Despite best attempts to convince Goethe that he had misunderstood physical optics, he ignored facts and let his own "poetic imagination" guide his studies of light and color. In England, J.M.W. Turner's 'Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) – the Morning after the Deluge – Mooses Writing the Book of Genesis' (1843) was an impressive expression of the Farbenlehre. Charles Lock Eastlake, who championed the pre-Raphaelites, was also the translator of Theory of Colours. In drawing attention to the importance of the book, Eastlake said in the preface: "It may require more magnanimity in English scientific readers to do justice to the merits of one who was so open and, in many respects, it it believed, so mistaken an opponent of Newton; but it must be admitted that the statements of Goethe contain more useful principles in all that relates to harmony and colour than any that have been derived from the established doctrine." (Goethe's Theory of Colors, translated from the German by Charles Lock Eastlake, 1840, p. 15) At the age of 74 Goethe fell in love with the 19-year old Ulrike von Levetzow; she was his Muse in the 'Elegie' of Trilogie der Leidenschaft (1827). He followed her with high hopes from Marienbad to Karlsbad, and then returned disappointed to Weimar. There he wrote The Marienbad elegy, the most personal poem of his later years. Goethe died in Weimar on March 22, 1832. He and Schiller, who died over a quarter of a century earlier, are buried together, in a mausoleum in the ducal cemetery. The Goethe House and Schiller House stand in the town, and the two statues of these literary giants are outside the National Theatre. For further reading: Goethe in Context, edited by Charlotte Lee (2024); Conversations with Goethe: In the Last Years of His Life by Johann Peter Eckermann; translated by Allan Blunden; with an introduction and notes by Ritchie Robertson (2022); Goethes Haus am Weimarer Frauenplan: Fassade und Bildprogramme by Christian Hecht (2020); Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman: Rethinking the Wilhelm Meister Novels by Frederick Amrine (2020) Goethe: Life as a Work of Art by Rüdiger Safranski (2017); Goethe and Judaism: the Troubled Inheritance of Modern Literature by Karin Schutjer (2015); Mehr Licht: Goethe mit Newton im Streit um die Farben by Olaf L. Müller (2015); Goethe: The Poet and the Age. Vol. II. by Nicholas Boyle (2000); Unterirdische Gänge. Goethe, Freimaurerei und Politik by W. Daniel Wilson (1999); Das Goethe-Tabu by W. Daniel Wilson (1999); Christiane un Goethe by Sigrid Damm (1999); Goethes "Werther": Kritik und Forschung by Peter Hans Herrmann (1994); Goethe: The Poet and the Age. Vol. I. by Nicholas Boyle (1991); Wilhelm Meister: Das Ende der Kunst und die Wiederkehr des Mythos by Hannelore Schlaffer (1989); Goethe Contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color by Dennis L. Sepper (1988); The Damnation of Newton: Goethe's Color Theory and Romantic Perception by Frederick Burwick (1986); "The Sorrows of Young Werther" by Martin Swales (1987); Goethe's Faust: A Critical Reading by L. Dieckmann (1972); Goethe's Novels by Hans Reiss (1969); Goethe's "Die Wahlverwandtschaften": A Literary Interpretation by Harry George Barnes (1967); Goethe: A Critical Introduction by H. Hatfield (1963); Goethe: A Psychoanalytic Study by Kurt Eissler (1963); Goethe-Bibliographie (1955-, serial); Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister" by Karl Schlechta (1953); Goethe the Alchemist: A Study of Alchemical Symbolism in Goethe's Literary and Scientific Works by Ronald D. Gray (1952); Goethe, The History of a Man, 1749-1832 by E.Ludwig (1928); The Life and Works of Goethe by G.H. Lewes (1855); Gespräche mit Goethe by Johann Eckermann (1836) - Museums: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's House (Goethehaus), Am Frauenplan 1. Goethe lived there for fifty years. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Summerhouse, im Park an der Ilm. Goethe started there Iphigènie. In Weimar is a copy of Goethe's Gartenhaus; also the furniture and other details follow the original. - Suomeksi on julkaistu mm. kaksi laitosta Valittuja teoksia, ensimmäinen 1932 (8 osaa) ja toinen 1956 (3 osaa) sekä Goethen elämäkerta V.A. Koskenniemen kirjoittamana. Jälkisointuja: Goethen kirkkaimmat runot ilmestyi 2013 (suom. Helmut Diekmann ja Arja Hakulinen). Selected works:
|
