Goethe Is Everywhere

The Goethe Global project is something I should have posted on long ago, but things have piled up so much that I haven't posted at all for over a month. Several months ago I was contacted by "The Goethe Global Team," which announced the creation of a new website in order to raise Goethe’s popularity among English speakers worldwide. Further, "On the website, we provide Goethe quotes in English, often newly translated, with the German original and the exact source. In addition, we link to free versions of some of Goethe’s works in English and to online resources about Goethe in English."

After some back and forth I agreed to list the website on my blogroll, but (again, lack of time) did not include a blogpost about it. I think the best way to inform readers of this blog about the site is to provide a link to the blog of Cynthia Haven's website The Book Haven, which tells more about the activities of Tino Markworth and The Goethe Global Team. Cynthia mentions Markworth's other passion: he organized the first international conference on Bob Dylan in 1998 at Stanford, which attracted more than 400 people. If you are looking for Goethe wisdom in English, the categories of translation range from action, advice, aging to world of delusion, writing, and youth.

I've mentioned elsewhere that Goethe turns up in the darndest places, which is why, when I open a scholarly book, I immediately turn to the index. One is often sure to find him there. Here is a link to something found on the internet: the Goethe Project 2021. The intention is to read Goethe's works in English in 2021. It is late in the year, but here is a link to the reading schedule. The site was founded by two grad students in Classics at NYU. Bravo.

The last item for today concerns a piece by Edward Luttwak that appeared in the London Review of Books of June 3, 2021, entitled "Goethe in China." Luttwak is of the opinion that the founder of the project to translate "all" of Goethe's works into Chinese must be recruiting "every qualified Chinese Germanist" there is. (How many can there be in China, anyway?) This founder is Wei Mao-ping, dean of the School of Germanic Studies at Shanghai International Studies University. (See link to project here.) Such a project requires lots of financing, and Luttwak writes that a major "paying customer" must be  Xi Junping, "the only world leader who knows Faust by heart." At least, so he boasted to Angela Merkel on meeting her.

This reading experience took place when Xi was being "re-educated" at the age of 15 in rural China, when another teenager in exile lent him a copy of Faust.  The translator was Guo Moruo (1892-1978), "a consciously Faustian character himself, though his own, widely accepted claim was that he was China's Goethe." His exceptional prominence as a poet and scholar and early supporter of Mao might not have saved him during the Cultural Revolution, but, when the Guards came after him, he had a self-critical text ready that declared the counter-revolutionary nature of his earlier writings. He even remained silent when the Red Guards persecuted two of his sons, who later committed suicide in order to avoid further torture.

Luttwak describes the fall from grace of Xi's own father (leading to abuse and imprisonment for 16 years), which apparently did nothing to cause the present Chinese leader to turn against the regime. Something to keep in mind.