W.H. Auden (again) on Goethe

This post is an addendum to my last post, in which I mentioned two reviews Auden had written on Goethe subjects. (In the meantime, by the way, a reader of this blog has alerted me to several poems by Auden that directly address Goethe. See the Comments in the earlier post.) Back in 2017 I posted the question "Did Goethe have a pet?" I asked the question in connection with the book Celebrating Charlotte Brontë by Alice Spawls, which devoted much attention to the physical details of Charlotte Brontë's world, including the pets in the Brontë household. One wishes more of such details of Goethe's world.

Auden discusses the issue of animals in the review of Goethe: Conversations and Encounters. He mentions Goethe's "well-known dislike of dogs," which, Auden writes, is no great significance, except that it points to Goethe's lack of curiosity about the animal kingdom, despite his one anatomical discovery. Auden finds such lack of curiosity surprising in a man passionately interested in human beings, weather, stones, and vegetables. The reason for the lack of interest? Animals had no conversation, at least as reported by Riemer:

Animals only interested him as more or less close organizational approximations to man, provisional forerunners of the eventually manifest lord of creation. He did not despise them, indeed he even studied them, but chiefly he pitied them as masked and muffled creatures unable to express their feelings intelligibly and appropriately.

The image above is from Goethezeitportal, which offers other examples of Goethe Sprüche on the subject of animals.