The great German poet, novelist, playwright, scientist and thinker, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 – 1832) is regarded as the giant of world literature. It is accepted this celebrated work Faust is the play translated into most languages placing no second count to Shakespeare. His was an entire life dedicated to writing simple lyrics, maxims and reflections to lengthy ballads and volumes of narratives and notes linked to aesthetics, literature and philosophy.
As noted by Stephen Spender in his work titled Great Writings of Goethe (A Mentor Book), Goethe is sometimes described as the last man to have the qualities of a Renaissance genius. He certainly has claims to be universal. As Spender further notes, he is a poet who could – to the credit of the aristocrat who was the ruler of the little state of Weimar – be described as a poet among the princes. Besides writing Faust, the well-known play, he was a statesman, administrator, scholar and scientist. The simple and profound works show a sense of humanism that has deep roots in oriental religions.
Surface observation
Take, for instance, this simple poem titled as ‘Found’ as translated from German to English by Michael Hamburger.
“Once in the forest, I strolled content,
To look for nothing – my sole intent
I saw a flower shaded and shy,
Shining like starlight
Bright as an eye.
I went to pluck it, gently it said:
Must I be broken,
Wilt and be dead?
Then whole I dug it, out of the loom,
And to my garden, carried it home
There to replant it,
Where no wind blows,
More bright than ever
It blooms and grows.
Commenting on the poetic vision of Goethe, the literary critic Spender states that the poem rests on several layers of meanings other than the surface observation one reads line by line. It is symbolic of the inner flowering of an individual who possesses the plant of knowledge required for existence. He notes that Goethe’s position as a poet happened to be a turning point in the modern poetry.
Romantic sickness
Interpreting most other poems inclusive of those found in Faust, Spender goes on to say that Goethe’s view of poetry is mostly what is the opposite of the common eye view. His was the opposite of that of the Romantic School. At times, as he notes opposite views converge Goethe’s name and creations are linked with those of other great poetic geniuses like Shakespeare and Dante. Spender also says that Goethe in his youth had experienced the Romantic sickness and learned to know it as something which brought him to the verge of suicide, despair, madness even.
The man who, looking back at his past, at the end of his life said he had never known a week in which he had not endured agony, who despite his health was subject to serious bouts of illness – lived most of his days very close to dissolution under the surface of his resolution (Spender). Goethe continuously had the habit of noting down his various types of thought in notebooks that have gone into volumes one good collection comes in the form of a book titled as Maxims and Reflections (Penguin Classics 1998) as translated and edited by Elisabeth Stopp from German sources.
The compiler professor of these maxims and reflections has assembled 1413 pieces categorised into groups that appear as culled from various known and unknown jottings of Goethe. As a reader, I found some quite modern, terse and blissful. The compilation triggers off from the following.
Favourable realisation
“We enjoy looking into the future because by our secret longings we so much want to bring about a favourable realisation of the vague possibilities that move to and fro in that realm.”
The next one goes as follows:
“It is not easy for us to be int eh company of many people without thinking that chance, having brought together many, should also bring us our friends.”
A very short maxim of Goethe goes as:
“Every spoken word evokes its contrary meaning.”
In Goethe’s Maxims and Reflections are observed two ways of creative thinkers. Goethe in his reflections embark on varied subject areas such as art, politics, aesthetics, ethics, literature and all sciences. It is said that throughout his long, hectic and various lifestyle Goethe had the habit of jotting down his passing thoughts on theatre programmes, visiting cards, draft manuscripts and even bills at a time when the term communication was never heard as a subject discipline in social sciences, Goethe defined the term as follows:
“To communicate is natural, to accept what is communicated is an acquired art.”
In many ways, it seems that Goethe had lived and thought beyond his time. We see the modernity in age-old stages.
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