PREFACE.
GOETHE, the man, the poet, and the author, has been described over and over. His works have been translated, interpreted, discussed, and it seems almost redundant to return to him again. And yet we venture to offer a book on Goethe. Certain very important phases in Goethe's life appear to have been neglected. Most of his greatest works have been translated into English, a few of them, for instance "Faust," in many different versions, but there are some of his most characteristic poems of which no one has ever ventured to off'er a translation, and it is precisely these poems that contain the most thoughtful verses ever written by this great poet, prominent in the literature not only of the German fatherland but of the whole world.
We offer this presentation of Goethe with the special purpose in view of bringing out those features of his life which characterize him as a thinker or, perhaps better, as a philosopher.
Though Goethe can not be called a philosopher proper, though he had a positive aversion to philosophy as a specialized study, he may fairly well be called a philosopher in the broad sense of the term. He was a thinking man who had a definite world-conception which dominated not only his particular life but also his poetry.
Some of the philosophical poems of Goethe are rather difficult to understand and have therefore not become as well known as those other poems of his which were written in a lighter vein. Nevertheless they are by no means unintelligible to the general reader and possess the advantage of becoming more interesting as soon as their real significance has been grasped. P. C
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THE LIFE OF GOETHE.
SINCE it is not our intention to add a new biography of >«J3 Goethe to those which have already appeared, we will here simply recapitulate for our readers in a few words the chief events of Goethe's life, and point out the personages who at one time or another played a part in it. In subsequent chapters we shall supplement our meager sketch with quotations from Goethe's autobiography -of such passages as characterize the man, his philosophical thoughts, his religious views, and his maxims on the conduct of life.
Goethe was the first and only son of Johann Caspar Goethe, a Frankfort magistrate with the title Counselor, and of his wife, Catharine Elizabeth, riee Textor. The child was named Johann Wolfgang, after his maternal grandfather Textor.
In his autobiography "Truth and Fiction,"[1] the poet speaks of his horoscope which he describes thus:
"On August 28, 1749, at midday as the clock was striking twelve, I came into the world at Frankfort on the Main. The position of the heavenly bodies was propitious: the sun stood in the sign of the Virgin and culminated for the day; Jupiter and Venus looked on the sun with a friendly eye and Mercury not adversely, while Saturn and Mars remained indifferent; the moon alone, just full, exerted the power of its reflection all the more as it had then reached its planetary hour. It was opposed, therefore, to my birth which could not be accomplished until this hour was passed."
[1] Throughout this work the quotations taken from Goethe's Autobiography follow mostly the translation of John Oxenford, with occasional minor alterations. Those taken from Faust are in Bayard Taylor's poetical version. All the translations of other miscellaneous poetry have been made by the present author, except where expressly credited to some one else.
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