Safranksi biography of Goethe in English

A reader of this blog wrote to inform me of the appearance of the English translation of Goethe: Life as a Work of Art by Rüdiger Safranski. I wrote a review of Safranski's book for the Goethe Yearbook when it appeared in German a few years ago and even devoted a few posts to it, including this one.

The translation is by David Dollenmayer, a professor of German at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. I do not know Professor Dollenmayer, but a little internet research has turned up quite a bit of praise for his translations from German. The Other Press features several of these translations on its website. In 2010 he was the receipient of an Austrian Cultural Forum in New York award for his "translation-in-progress" of Michael Köhlmeier's Idyll With Drowning Dog (Idylle mit ertrinkendem Hund), first published in 2008.

In a statement regarding NEA funding in 2014, for Michael Kleeberg's A Garden in the North (Ein Garten im Norden), Dollenmayer wrote that, in a career of teaching German language and literature, translation seemed like an extension of close reading.

The review of Goethe: Life as a Work of Art by Ben Hutchinson appeared in the above-pictured June issue of The Literary Review. According to Hutchinson, Dollmayer "has boldly decided to translate all quotations from Goethe’s works and letters himself, rather than use existing translations. Occasional anachronisms aside – Goethe the ‘whiz kid’ – this works surprisingly well, giving a single, unified voice to a diverse body of work."

Congratulations to David Dollenmayer on this publication and for its contribution to wider acquaintance with Goethe in the English-speaking world.

Goethe biographies

From The Book Haven

I have a new book review project: Rüdiger Safranski's Goethe: Kunstwerk des Lebens. I suppose it is not surprising that the titles of Goethe biographies resemble one another: Ludwig Geiger, Goethe: Sein Leben und sein Schaffen (1913); Albert Bielschowky, Goethe: Sein Leben und seine Werke (1895, followed by numerous editions); Friedrich Gundolf, simply Goethe (1916). It can't be helped. The same thing goes for biographies of Napoleon, Dante, Churchill, and lesser lights. Nevertheless, this issue of titles has me thinking about the book I am now completing, the title of which I will reveal in due course. Obviously, a book has to have a title that forces book buyers to want to look.

Safranski's method is to make use only of primary sources: the oeuvre, letters, diaries, conversations, reports of contemporaries. Whether this method is ultimately satisfying remains to be seen:  I have only reached chapter 7, which concerns the events after Goethe's return from Strassburg. In his preface, Safranski writes of a reason for our continuing interest in Goethe: "Er war nicht nur ein großer Schriftsteller, sondern auch ein Meister des Lebens." And the reason for a new biography? "Jede Generation hat die Chance, im Spiegel Goethes auch sich selbst und die eigene Zeit besser zu verstehen." In this respect, of Götz von Berlichingen he writes that what fascinated Goethe on this historical figure is the same as our fascination with American Westerns, i.e.: "der romantische Blick in eine vergangene Welt, in der der Einzelne noch zählt, der kraftvolle Kerl, der sich selbst seiner Haut wehren kann und der seine Souveränität noch nicht an Institutionen abgetreten hat, wodurch man zwar an Sicherheit gewinnt, aber eben auch verzwergt wird." That is definitely a Goethe for our time.

I was interested to see that Nicholas Boyle, author of Goethe: The Poet and the Age, of which two volumes have so far appeared, also published in 2012 a book entitled: 2014: How to Survive the Next World Crisis. This is a case of the kind of caution one must use in choosing a title. According to a headline of a 2012 review of the book in the English Daily Mail, "World could be plunged into crisis in 2014: Cambridge expert predicts 'a great event' will determine course of the century." Retuers (UK) headline: "Historian warns of looming political crisis." Well, 2014 is past, and what was that great event? An interdisciplinary journal, Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy, opines: "A tempting thesis, leavened with erudite references, to Hegel, Bentham, Johnson and Jefferson, and sound on the confused waffle that surrounds 'human rights.'"

Cover image of book, 1949

The Amazon "reviewers" of books, ordinary readers, are always interesting. There were only three of 2014, two of which gave it five stars. Here is the one-star review, with the headline The Blurb Says It All, thus beginning with a quote from the book's jacket copy: "If human civilization is to survive the 21st century, that ideology [American exceptionalism] will have to give way to a more realistic acceptance of supranational authorities, and especially of an enhanced IMF and WTO." The reviewer then continues: "In other words, saving humanity requires giving the parasites of the world increased power to plunder America. Meanwhile we're going broke as it is. LOL."

As much as I admire Professor Boyle, I am always skeptical of people wandering outside of their discipline to opine on the state of the world, especially the future. Although Reuters identifies Boyle as a historian, he is really a scholar of literature. Moreover, despite having spent many years trying to enter into the world of the 18th century, I am reticent to draw lessons for the present from events and the actions of individuals of that time. One only lives when one lives. Thus, history or the writing of history is of interest for the "errors" of the past, but I am not really sure what lessons one can draw for current issues. Yet, of course, that is the aim of even Safranski's biography of Goethe: "im Spiegel Goethes [Generation] auch sich selbst und die eigene Zeit besser zu verstehen."

Photo credits: Cynthia Haven; Only Artists; Dictus

Goethe at Christmas

As an indication of how little Christmas meant to Goethe, there is not a single mention of Goethe in the Christmas email of the Goethezeitportal. This is the major website for all kinds of information on Goethe and the era of Goethe, including texts, documentation, and so on. As always, there are lots of cool pictures (including the two posted here) and texts. Even Heinrich Heine, who was not a Christian (despite conversion), has an entry, describing Christmas in Berlin in 1822. Rüdiger Safranski in his book on the friendship between Goethe and Schiller, mentions one Christmas, in 1800, when Karoline Schlegel wrote to Goethe imploring him to invite Schelling for Christmas. It seems that Schelling (whom Karoline would later marry) was depressed. One glance from Goethe, she wrote, would transform him: "If I had a wish that I might dare to express, it is this, that you would lure him from his solitude at Christmas and invite him to be near you."

Goethe did, going so far as to send his own horses to Jena to pick up Schelling and bring him to Weimar on December 26. Schelling stayed until January 4 as a guest in Goethe's house am Frauenplan. Schiller joined them on New Year's Eve, when they engaged in "serious discussions," according to Safranski.

It's unclear to me whether Safranski is making a connection between events, but the next paragraph (p. 263) reports that, three days later, Goethe came down with erysipelas, a horrible bacterial infection, that nearly killed him: "he lost his sight, occasionally consciousness."

Dilettantism

The Metropolitan Museum of Art currently has a small exhibition entitled "Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Collage." It contains charming examples of photocollages by a number of aristocratic ladies, including Alexandra, Princess of Wales; Victoria Alexandria Anderson-Pelham, Countess of Yarborough; and Constance Sackville-West.

The works combine photographic cutouts of humans or animals in fanciful landscapes or ordinary domestic settings that have been rendered in beautifully executed watercolors. The exhibit made me think of Goethe and Schiller's writing on dilettantism, which addresses the subject of "amateur art," especially as practiced by ladies.

According to Michael Niedermeier, who wrote the entry on dilettantism for the Goethe-Handbuch, "dilettante" was coined in the Italian Renaissance to distinguish the connoisseur of art from the "professional" artist. The term only began to have a negative connotation in the late 18th century. As part of this critical evaluation Goethe wrote a short epistolary novel in 1798 entitled Der Sammler und die Seinigen (The Collector and His Circle). The letters characterize different responses to art and contain a criticism of amateur art, especially the mixing of media, the tendency to naturalism, and subjectivism. Shortly after it was published, Goethe and Schiller began to plan a larger treatise on the subject, which remained fragmentary, however, and was published (as "Über den Dilettanismus") only after they had both died.

On this subject, Rüdiger Safranski notes in this book on the Goethe-Schiller friendship that amateur art (or, in German, Laienkunst) was widespread in aristocratic and bourgeois circles. Watercolors, papercuts, versifying, singing, acting in amateur performances -- everyone was being "artistic." Goethe's Iphigenie was first performed in the Weimar court theater made up of non-professionals, including the young duke Carl August. Goethe, when he went to Italy in 1786, still wasn't sure whether he would be a writer or an artist; in other words, he was still trying to find himself, as we would say today. He had drawing instruction from Tischbein and others while in Italy and discovered that he was not an artist, but an amateur. (See example below, executed in Pozzuoli in 1787.)

This immersion in art, however, and the exposure to classical and Renaissance art made him think more seriously about the aims of art. When he had returned to Weimar and became, in 1790, the director of the theater there, he became much more professional about the business of acting. By 1796, part of the "classical" program of art that he and Schiller were developing was concerned with the objective rules of art and with the training and attitudes that distinguished "real" artists (which would include literary artists) from those who were only playing at being ones.

Here are some of their thoughts on the subject (in the translation of Ellen and Ernest von Nardroff):

The dilettante always shies away from serious study, avoids acquiring essential knowledge in order just to practice, and confuses art and subject matter. Thus, one will never find a dilettante who draws well. If he did draw well, he would be on the path to art. ... Precisely because most dilettantes lack a true concept of art, they prefer quantity and mediocrity, the unusual and costly to what is select and god. Many dilettantes have large collections. We might even say that all large collections owe their existence to dilettantes. For the dilettante's desire to collect, particularly when supported by great wealth, usually deteriorates into an obsession to amass as much as he can. He wants only to possess, not to select judiciously, and be satisfied with less, but of good quality. ...

Art creates its own laws and sets the standards of the time; dilettantism follows the trends of the time. ...

Toying with the serious and important corrupts man. [The dilettante] skips some levels, lingers on others, which he regards as goals, and he thinks he is justified in judging the whole from this vantage point, thus hindering his advancement. ...

All dilettantes are essentially plagiarists. They undermine and destroy all natural beauty in language and thought by mimicking and aping it in order to cover up their own vacuity.

By the time this was written there were many women who wrote and painted and performed. Helen Fronius, in her book Women and Literature in the Goethe Era, writes that Schiller and Goethe saw a connection between dilettantism and the presence of women in the literary scene. At the same time they acted as mentors to certain women, e.g., the poet Amalie von Imhoff, pictured here in a charming portrait miniature, an artistic genre that certainly must be included in the ranks of amateur arts. Indeed, the Metropolitan devoted a rather large exhibition and catalogue to painted miniatures several years ago.

The Goethe-Schiller Friendship

I have begun reading Goethe & Schiller: Geschichte einer Freundschaft (yes, the "&" is in the German title) by the eminent German man of letters, Rüdiger Safranski, which looks like it will be a delight. In the first two chapters Safranksi shows the two writers moving along parallel paths, with only a single cursory encounter before 1787. This was on December 11, 1779, when Schiller was 20 and a student at the elite military academy in Stuttgart that had been founded by Karl Eugen, the duke of Wurttemberg. Schiller, portrayed below when he was studying medicine at the academy, was already filled with a burning desire to be a writer. Within two years his play The Robbers would make him famous.

Goethe's arrival at the military school in late 1779 coincided with the visit to Karl Eugen in the company of Carl August of Weimar, with whom Goethe was returning from a trip to Switzerland. The students at Karl Eugen's academy, including Schiller, revered Goethe, the author of Götz von Berlichingen and The Sorrows of Young Werther. As Safranski writes, Goethe's reputation was a symptom of the transformation of literary life in this period: "Writing, reading, and living had moved closer together. Readers wanted to encounter their own life in literature and to find it enhanced [aufgewertet]. They wanted to see themselves [in the books they read], but also the author, whose life had become of interest." Sounds like the beginnings of celebrity culture.

By 1779, however, the transformation of literary life that Götz and Werther represented was in the process of being rejected by the one who had written those works, i.e., Goethe himself.

Goethe had gone to Weimar in 1775, and though at first it appeared that he would bring some life to the court there, it was he who was changed. He left his Sturm und Drang enthusiasms behind, and indeed Schiller's The Robbers would be an uncomfortably reminder of those enthusiasms. By then he was more and more devoted to administrative work for the duchy. In turn, his poetic work suffered, and, as was noted by his friends in Weimar, he was in the process of becoming stiff and reserved. But just as Goethe was being trapped by the life at the court, Schiller was making plans to leave the court of Karl Eugen behind, in particular the plans for a medical career for which the duke intended him. As The Robbers was being performed to great acclaim in Mannheim -- it was The Rite of Spring of its day -- he literally escaped from Stuttgart. The date was September 22, 1782 when, according to Safranski, half of Stuttgart was occupied with festivities that had been arranged to honor the visiting Russian Grand Princess. Karl Eugen's castle "Solitude" was illumined for the occasion, and fireworks filled the night sky as Schiller left.

For the next several years Schiller would seek to craft the independent life of a writer and thinker, which was not easy for a man of such a modest background. Goethe, by contrast, seemed to have it easy, but, by 1786, he would also respond to his need to escape from the life of the court and head for Italy. Stay tuned for further installments in the history of this friendship.

Picture credits: Joachim Frank; Anatomy Lesson