Goethe Reviewed After Sixty Years

Author : J. Seeley
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781717464293
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (642 download)

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Download or read book Goethe Reviewed After Sixty Years written by J. Seeley and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-04-26 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "IT is not well," Professor Seeley remarks, in the preface to his "Goethe, Reviewed after Sixty Years", "to bury a great and delightful post under a weight of commentary." Perhaps, considering the unceasing labors of German critics towards this end, it were superfluous in an English critic, addressing English readers, to add to the intolerable burden "after sixty years." There is really more need of excavating than of burying. Accordingly, Professor Seeley's little book on Goethe is designed for the practical guidance, as a key or companion, to the English student. There is always some more or less reasonable ground for suspecting that when a writer has become in any sense a classic, and is inordinately written about -- of, and round about -- he has ceased to be read, or at least is no longer a vitalizing force and intellectual influence. If we hearken to the voices of German critics of to-day, Goethe's fame was never more assured nor higher than now. Hermann Grimm, for instance, regards Goethe as the greatest poet of all ages and of all nations. Professor Seeley is content to ask in this connection, "Why rank him with Shakespeare?" If Goethe is not one of the greatest of dramatic posts, it is clear that the German critic is more patriotic than critical. Faust may fairly be ranked among the Shakespearian dramas, as Professor Seeley puts it; but what of other works of Goethe of the first order? There is Hermann and Dorothea "very pretty and perfect." There are Iphigenie -- "very noble"; Tasso -- "very refined"; Gölz -- "very spirited"; Egmont -- "somewhat disappointing"; while the other plays are unimportant, "when not, like Stella, extravagant." Then, Professor Seeley remarks, "The pathos of Werther is almost as obsolete as that of Richardson" -- by which it would seem that he is confusing spirit and letter, Richardson's style or manner and Richardson's pathos. "Thanks to the human heart by which we live," the pathos of Clarissa Harlowe can never be obsolete. From such generalities the author proceeds to the work in hand, and it must be owned that there is much in his " companion " for the English student of Goethe that is suggestive and valuable. He lays great stress on the true significance of Goethe's strenuous endeavours for self-culture, and on a right understanding of the various literary periods or phases of his intellectual development. He would correct the habit, common to English readers, of regarding Goethe simply as a dramatic poet and the author of the First Part of Faust. Throughout his discriminating exposition of Goethe's literary phases he illustrates the truth of Byron's observation that Goethe "created the literature of his country." In his excellent analysis of Wilhelm Meister, as in other portions of his discourse, Professor Seeley shows to what extent the poet was inspired by the criticism of life rather than the creative imagination, and from other points of view treats his complex subject in a well-tempered spirit. --The Saturday Review, Vol. 77