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Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer. George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters… and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, humanism, and science. Goethe's magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the two-part drama, Faust. Goethe's other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Goethe was one of the key figures of German literature and the movement of Weimar Classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; this movement coincides with Enlightenment, Sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours, he influenced Darwin with his focus on plant morphology.

He also long served as the Privy Councilor ("Geheimrat") of the duchy of Weimar. Goethe is the originator of the concept of Weltliteratur ("world literature"), having taken great interest in the literatures of England, France, Italy, classical Greece, Persia, Arabic literature, amongst others. His influence on German philosophy is virtually immeasurable, having a major impact especially on the generation of Hegel and Schelling, although Goethe himself expressly and decidedly refrained from practicing philosophy in the rarefied sense. Goethe's influence spread across Europe, and for the next century, his works were a major source of inspiration in music, drama, poetry, and philosophy. Goethe is considered by many to be the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in Western culture as well. Early in his career, however, he wondered whether painting might not be his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that he would ultimately be remembered above all for his work in optics.
years of life: 28 August 1749 22 March 1832

Quotes

Nikola Stajichas quotedlast year
What I possess I see afar off lying,
And what I lost is real and undying.
maken233has quotedlast month
Enter FAUST with the POODLE.

I leave behind me field and meadow
Veiled in the dusk of holy night,
Whose ominous and awful shadow
Awakes the better soul to light.
To sleep are lulled the wild desires,
The hand of passion lies at rest;
The love of man the bosom fires,
The love of God stirs up the breast.

Be quiet, poodle! what worrisome fiend hath possest thee,
Nosing and snuffling so round the door?
Go behind the stove there and rest thee,
There's my best pillow—what wouldst thou more?
As, out on the mountain-paths, frisking and leaping,
Thou, to amuse us, hast done thy best,
So now in return lie still in my keeping,
A quiet, contented, and welcome guest.

When, in our narrow chamber, nightly,
The friendly lamp begins to burn,
Then in the bosom thought beams brightly,
Homeward the heart will then return.
Reason once more bids passion ponder,
Mikaelahas quotedlast year
Often do I strive to allay the burning fever of my blood; and you have never witnessed anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as my heart.

Impressions

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👍Worth reading

The best I have ever read in terms of language, story, and character's depth.

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