Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I

Introduction

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German poet, dramatist, novelist, and scientist. Goethe's poetry expresses a modern view of humanity's relationship to nature, history, and society; his plays and novels reflect a profound understanding of human individuality. Goethe's importance can be judged by the influence of his critical writings, his vast correspondence, and his poetry, dramas, and novels upon the writers of his own time and upon the literary movements which he inaugurated and of which he was the chief figure. According to the 19th-century English critic Matthew Arnold, Goethe must be considered not only “the manifest centre of German literature” but one of the most versatile figures in all world literature.

Goethe was born on August 28, 1749, in Frankfurt am Main, the son of a government official. From 1765 to 1768 he studied law at Leipzig; there he first developed an interest in literature and painting and became acquainted with the dramatic works of his contemporaries Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Their influence and his own attachment to the daughter of a wine merchant at whose tavern he dined are reflected in his earliest poetry and in his first dramatic works. These early plays included a one-act comedy in verse, Die Laune des Verliebten (The Lover's Caprice, 1767), and a tragedy in verse, Die Mitschuldigen (The Fellow-Culprits, 1768). Goethe's health broke down in Leipzig and he returned to Frankfurt, where, during his convalescence, he studied occult philosophy, astrology, and alchemy. Through the influence of a friend of his mother, Susanne Katharina von Klettenberg, who was a member of the Lutheran reform movement known as Pietism, Goethe gained some insight into religious mysticism. From 1770 to 1771 he was in Strasbourg to continue his study of law; in addition, he took up the study of music, art, anatomy, and chemistry.

II

Early Friendships

In Strasbourg Goethe formed two friendships important for his literary life. One was with Friederike Brion, the daughter of a pastor of the town of Sesenheim; she later was the model for feminine characters in several of Goethe's works, including that of Gretchen in his poetic drama Faust. The other friendship, which proved to be the most intellectually stimulating experience of his youth, was with the philosopher and literary critic Johann Gottfried von Herder. Through Herder's influence Goethe became sceptical of the influence of the principles of French Classicism that largely prevailed in Germany at the time, including those of the three dramatic unities which the French Classical school had adopted from ancient Greek drama. Herder also taught Goethe to appreciate the plays of Shakespeare, in which the Classical unities are largely discarded for the sake of direct emotional expression; and to realize the value of German folk poetry and German Gothic architecture as sources of inspiration for German literature.

As a result of Herder's influence, Goethe, after he had received his law degree and returned to practise law in Frankfurt, wrote the tragedy Götz von Berlichingen (1773; trans. 1799). The play, modelled on those of Shakespeare, is an adaptation of the story of a German robber knight of the 16th century; to his exploits Goethe gave the significance of a national German revolt against the authority exerted by the emperor and the Church in the early part of the 16th century. Götz von Berlichingen was of great consequence in German literary history. Together with the pamphlet Von deutscher Art und Kunst (Of German Style and Art, 1773), to which Goethe, Herder (with two essays praising Ossian and Shakespeare), and others contributed, the play inaugurated the important German literary movement known as Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress), the forerunner of the German Romantic movement. The following year, as the result of an unhappy love affair with Charlotte Buff, the fiancée of one of his friends, Goethe wrote the romantic and tragic tale Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1779). This work was the earliest significant novel of modern German literature and it became the model for numerous tales of Enthusiasm—the fatal effect of a taste for absolutes, whether in love, art, or thought—subsequently written in Germany, France, and elsewhere. Among Goethe's other works written during the years 1772 to 1775 were the plays Clavigo (1774) and Stella (1775), and a number of short critical essays on literary and theological subjects. He became engaged to Lili Schöneman, daughter of a rich banker, but found the fashionable circles in which she moved restrictive of his artistic creativity. The refuge he sought from this affair was nature and it inspired many of his short lyric poems, such as Auf dem See.

III

Goethe in Weimar

The year 1775 was important for Goethe and for the literary history of Germany. In that year Charles Augustus, heir apparent to the duchy of Saxe-Weimar, invited Goethe to live and work in Weimar, its capital, at that time one of the intellectual and literary centres of Germany. From 1775 to the year of his death Goethe resided in Weimar, and from there his influence as a writer spread throughout Germany. The first ten years of his connection with the court of Weimar were for him a period of intellectual development rather than of literary production. Through association at Weimar with Herder and the writer Christoph Martin Wieland, and through his friendship with Charlotte von Stein, the wife of a Weimar official and a woman of great charm and talent, Goethe's intellectual life was broadened. Experience in public office, which included service in important posts in the Weimar government as well as a term of office as privy counsellor, gave Goethe an extensive knowledge of practical affairs. In addition he continued his work in science, studying mineralogy, geology, and osteology (the study of bones). He wrote little during the first ten years of his stay at Weimar, except for some notable poems inspired by Charlotte von Stein, including the lyric “Wanderers Nachtlied” (Wanderer's Night Song) and the ballad “Der Erlkönig” (The King of the Elves). He began the composition of some of his best-known works, including the prose drama Iphigenia in Tauris (1787; trans. 1793) and the character dramas Egmont and Faust, all of which he altered as a result of the next important event of his life, his visit to Italy from 1786 to 1788.

IV

Sojourn in Italy

Several reasons induced Goethe to go to Italy. He had grown weary of the life of the Weimar court, the frustration of his relationship with Charlotte von Stein, and, above all, he felt the need of fresh perspectives upon which to base his future writings. He found a new vitality in Italy and a revelation of the grandeur of the Classical world. After visiting several cities in northern Italy, he settled in Rome, where, except for a short trip to Naples and Sicily, he remained until 1788. He studied the art, architecture, and literature of ancient Greece and Rome and those Renaissance works that had been most strongly influenced by the ancients; he achieved an understanding of the Classical spirit, which stressed balance and perfection of form rather than emotional content. Thenceforth, his work dealt with universal and timeless themes, expressed with a measured calmness yet vibrant with passion. The writings dating from his Italian stay and the period shortly following it include an iambic version of Iphigenia in Tauris, the dramas Egmont (1788) and Torquato Tasso (1790); and further work on Faust, part of which appeared as Fragment (1790). These works brought into German literature the discipline of ideas and form that initiated the so-called Classical period.