Miles Watson's Blog: ANTAGONY: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION - Posts Tagged "goethe"
BOOK REVIEW: "GOETHE: CONVERSATIONS AND ENCOUNTERS"
If I love you, what business is it of yours?
This forgotten little book, edited by David Luke and Robert Pick, is a gem in the almost literal sense -- being both valuable and having many facets. In the former sense, it is a great introduction to one of the greatest writer-artist-philosopher-thinkers of European history; in the latter, it is a treasure-trove of insight and quotation. You may think it a bit scholarly-sounding (or just plain boring) by way of title, but you'd be wrong. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was eminent polymath, one of the great thinker-creators of all history, and a true savant, standing somewhere beyond genius in the power of his thinking and creativity: he was also a very colorful and deeply flawed man who becomes all the more interesting for his vanities and caprices, laid bare here in this editorially-assembled collection of firsthand encounters with the man as recorded by various friends, admirers, relations, rivals, acquaintances, colleagues, and enemies. Presented in chronological format, they trace Goethe from his preciocious childhood in which he embodied the German concept of the Wunderkind, all the way to his deathbed.
To understand the range of Goethe's interests, it's worth noting that one of his least-known efforts is still held in awe 214 years after it was published: THEORY OF COLORS (1810) "disputed the Newtonian view of the subject and formulated a psychological and philosophical account of the way we actually experience color as a phenomenon." [1] Werner Heisenberg later commented, "Goethe’s colour theory has in many ways borne fruit in art, physiology and aesthetics," while noting that Sir Isaac Newton's work was the more influential, being more scientific in nature. This is undoubtedly true, but rather misses the point that even when acting as a scientist, Goethe's view of life was not really scientific, but consisted of brilliant "intuitive schema" which spoke more to those very arenas of which Heisenberg referred -- art, physiology, aesthetics. Goethe's was not only a brilliant but a profoundly restless and unconventional mind, and a man who seems to have deeply influenced many other great men of his era: "His poems were set to music by many composers including Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, and Mahler." [3]
The author of FAUST was born in 1749 and lived until 1832, and in that time numbered among friends and acquaintances such people as Mozart and Napoleon, Mendelssohn, Schopenhauer and Schiller, not to mention innumerable politicians, artists, poets, and noblemen from all over Europe, including Talleyrand and Lord Byron. Holding court at his estate in Weimar, he frequently regaled visitors with his thoughts on every aspect of life, and it is these conversations which make up the book -- a selection of Goethe's views on everything from art and politics to music and science; religion, immortality, writing, poetry, science, the creative process, critical acclaim...you name it. And this is what makes the book valuable, for Goethe, while eccentric and often moody, was an immensely wise and quotable man with a lot of insight. I marked down literally dozens of quotations which I found inspiring, arresting, or simply too provocative to forget:
"When a writer can find no more suitable development for his theme, he kills his hero."
"Each man should sacrifice himself to his own conviction."
"Maximum possibilities are realized if the impossible is demanded."
"A monk is a refugee from life; a man buried alive."
"The essential thing is to love truth and to be receptive when one finds it."
"At least there is some character in hatred."
Somme of the anecdotes are just amazing -- the time, for example, when a young Felix Mendelssohn was at his house, and Goethe handed him some sheet music to play for the guests...music which turned out to be hand-written original drafts by Mozart and Beethoven. Goethe pointed out that Beethoven's "looked as if they'd been written with a broom dipped in ink" while Mozart's were picture-perfect, lacking even a single correction, as if dictated directly by God. That would make a great scene in a movie (provided Milos Forman directed it, of course). The point is that in an age very heavy on technology and very light on wisdom, GOETHE: CONVERSATIONS AND ENCOUNTERS is wisdom-heavy...without being a heavy read. I must emphasize this because you couldn't be blamed if you felt your eyeballs hardening just reading the title. I assure you, like most oral histories it moves very swiftly, interweaving somber and in some cases tragic moments with extremely funny, deeply thought-provoking conversations about every aspect of life. Goethe could be a wonderful and considerate man, or an arrogant, cold-hearted jerk, and seems to have been both refreshed and exhausted by the regard in which he was held. Some of this comes off in the different ways he handled, or was handled, by those who met him.
In closing I should admit I knew almost nothing about Goethe when I decided, based on a glimpse of what was inside, that I would read through it, and while this selection of conversations and encounters is by no means a biography, and only touches glancingly on most of his diplomatic career, published works and scientific studies, it is a very excellent portrait of the man himself and his mental processes...a man who was one of the towering artistic and intellectual figures of the 19th century, but almost unknown in America except by a handful of scholars.
This forgotten little book, edited by David Luke and Robert Pick, is a gem in the almost literal sense -- being both valuable and having many facets. In the former sense, it is a great introduction to one of the greatest writer-artist-philosopher-thinkers of European history; in the latter, it is a treasure-trove of insight and quotation. You may think it a bit scholarly-sounding (or just plain boring) by way of title, but you'd be wrong. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was eminent polymath, one of the great thinker-creators of all history, and a true savant, standing somewhere beyond genius in the power of his thinking and creativity: he was also a very colorful and deeply flawed man who becomes all the more interesting for his vanities and caprices, laid bare here in this editorially-assembled collection of firsthand encounters with the man as recorded by various friends, admirers, relations, rivals, acquaintances, colleagues, and enemies. Presented in chronological format, they trace Goethe from his preciocious childhood in which he embodied the German concept of the Wunderkind, all the way to his deathbed.
To understand the range of Goethe's interests, it's worth noting that one of his least-known efforts is still held in awe 214 years after it was published: THEORY OF COLORS (1810) "disputed the Newtonian view of the subject and formulated a psychological and philosophical account of the way we actually experience color as a phenomenon." [1] Werner Heisenberg later commented, "Goethe’s colour theory has in many ways borne fruit in art, physiology and aesthetics," while noting that Sir Isaac Newton's work was the more influential, being more scientific in nature. This is undoubtedly true, but rather misses the point that even when acting as a scientist, Goethe's view of life was not really scientific, but consisted of brilliant "intuitive schema" which spoke more to those very arenas of which Heisenberg referred -- art, physiology, aesthetics. Goethe's was not only a brilliant but a profoundly restless and unconventional mind, and a man who seems to have deeply influenced many other great men of his era: "His poems were set to music by many composers including Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, and Mahler." [3]
The author of FAUST was born in 1749 and lived until 1832, and in that time numbered among friends and acquaintances such people as Mozart and Napoleon, Mendelssohn, Schopenhauer and Schiller, not to mention innumerable politicians, artists, poets, and noblemen from all over Europe, including Talleyrand and Lord Byron. Holding court at his estate in Weimar, he frequently regaled visitors with his thoughts on every aspect of life, and it is these conversations which make up the book -- a selection of Goethe's views on everything from art and politics to music and science; religion, immortality, writing, poetry, science, the creative process, critical acclaim...you name it. And this is what makes the book valuable, for Goethe, while eccentric and often moody, was an immensely wise and quotable man with a lot of insight. I marked down literally dozens of quotations which I found inspiring, arresting, or simply too provocative to forget:
"When a writer can find no more suitable development for his theme, he kills his hero."
"Each man should sacrifice himself to his own conviction."
"Maximum possibilities are realized if the impossible is demanded."
"A monk is a refugee from life; a man buried alive."
"The essential thing is to love truth and to be receptive when one finds it."
"At least there is some character in hatred."
Somme of the anecdotes are just amazing -- the time, for example, when a young Felix Mendelssohn was at his house, and Goethe handed him some sheet music to play for the guests...music which turned out to be hand-written original drafts by Mozart and Beethoven. Goethe pointed out that Beethoven's "looked as if they'd been written with a broom dipped in ink" while Mozart's were picture-perfect, lacking even a single correction, as if dictated directly by God. That would make a great scene in a movie (provided Milos Forman directed it, of course). The point is that in an age very heavy on technology and very light on wisdom, GOETHE: CONVERSATIONS AND ENCOUNTERS is wisdom-heavy...without being a heavy read. I must emphasize this because you couldn't be blamed if you felt your eyeballs hardening just reading the title. I assure you, like most oral histories it moves very swiftly, interweaving somber and in some cases tragic moments with extremely funny, deeply thought-provoking conversations about every aspect of life. Goethe could be a wonderful and considerate man, or an arrogant, cold-hearted jerk, and seems to have been both refreshed and exhausted by the regard in which he was held. Some of this comes off in the different ways he handled, or was handled, by those who met him.
In closing I should admit I knew almost nothing about Goethe when I decided, based on a glimpse of what was inside, that I would read through it, and while this selection of conversations and encounters is by no means a biography, and only touches glancingly on most of his diplomatic career, published works and scientific studies, it is a very excellent portrait of the man himself and his mental processes...a man who was one of the towering artistic and intellectual figures of the 19th century, but almost unknown in America except by a handful of scholars.
ANTAGONY: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION
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