/lit/ - Literature

>>21579913
I’ve never read him because reading translated poetry is retarded

>>21579925
Bayard Taylor's translation of Faust is very good, at least according to a german anon from here some time ago

But in our modern day.… men like Goethe and Schopenhauer,and even Carlyle, have demanded that mankind should yield service to them, and then, by the furtherance and development they thereby attain, they promise to work out the deliverance of men from superstition and unreality and the bondage of
ignorance. Goethe in this matter is typical. He preached and practiced the most uncompromising humanity in no way so well
as by making every one he met, and all the experiences he encountered, minister to his own intellectual growth. Instead of saying with Moses, “Blot me out of Thy book,” but spare these dim idolatrous masses, he would have said, “Let them all perish and let me become the origin of a wise, more intellectual, more
self-restrained race than they.” He consequently pursued his own ends relentlessly from his early years, and attained results so immense that almost every domain of thought, speculation, and science is now under some debt to him. But for all purposes of inspiring moral and spiritual enthusiasm he is practically useless. His selfishness, however high its kind, accomplished its work and left him cold, unapproachable, isolated

>>21579913
>>21580101
he was an amateur at everything he did
he did not excel to the absolute heights of any of the things he did
the most glorious midwit
I still like him though, but sometimes he gets too much credit

>>21579913
>Poet
>Composer
>Dramatist
>Theatre director
>Actor
>Philosopher
>Music Theorist

And he achieved success at the highest level in all of these fields.

>>21580213
Indeed. Wagner is who Goethe wanted to be, but did not have the genius.

>>21580213
>Poet, Composer, Dramatist, Theatre Director, Actor, Music Theorist
These are all the same fucking thing though.

>>21580213
Neither Wagner nor Goethe did a single thing for Philosophy.

>>21580281
You mustn't have read much philosophy.

>>21580253
perhaps you are memeing or something, but i can't imagine how you'd argue that poetry and music theory are "the same fucking thing." one has to do with relationships between harmonies and the other has to do with capturing emotions via language. maybe you mean because musicians sing poetry as lyrics, and that means they're the same discipline? this is a pretty obvious mistake to make so i have to assume you are saying nonsensical things because you have sexual kink of some kind that involves people correcting you. it's very strange, anon, please don't subject us to it

>>21580281
you have not read Sir Roger Scruton
I advise you correct this oversight

>>21580126
>he was an amateur at everything he did
>he did not excel to the absolute heights of any of the things he did

Except for literature and poetry, I hope you’re saying? Faust is still regarded as one of the greatest works of German literature ever written, if not the greatest.

Goethean science is easy to dismiss as a historical and philosophical curiosity, so that’s a fair enough point if you’re referring to his scientific endeavors. Although, as a fun fact, he’s credited with discovering that a cranial bone with similar structure and function was to be found in the jaw of many mammals, including humans, called the premaxilla, and sometimes called “Goethe’s bone” in homage to him

>>21579913
I hate him because he was German and i'm not.

>>21580384
I think Faust is the only work of genius that he produced. He gets completely redeemed by this, and brings his other works the aura of genius because of this.
I read and enjoyed other works of his like Wilhelm Meister, Sorrows of Young Werther, Italian Journeys, but do not think they are works of genius. They are good, but not great, not top notch creative achievements of the human spirit.
Did not read much of his poetry, so I might be missing something.

>>21580388
If you're Turkish you can become German quite easily now. The gap is not that big.

>>21580412
too bad I belong to a cursed plumber race of Eastern Europoor

>>21579913
/Lit/ is full of midwits.

>>21579913
I like him a lot. Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe is one of the better books I’ve read in the last year. His plays are good and fun, and everyone seems to only know Faust.

>>21580126
>I still like him though, but sometimes he gets too much credit
You've already posted enough and I already want to kill myself. You absolutely surpass Goethe in being incredibly retarded

>>21580101
Stick to Alan Watts then, loser

>>21579913
But we don’t.

>>21579913
goethe = dicksucker

I'll never say that germans have no good poets, for that would be a lie ---but goethe is unresting in hell for being such a cocksucker bitch ass envious little man.

>>21582086
who was he envious of?

>>21582093
>who was he envious of?
he cockblocked Schopenhauer's early contribution to his metaphysics of colour ---which then was published as Schopenhauer's 'Theory of colour'--- because it was a more adecuated metaphysics to their historical standards.

Goethe made 1/3 of his career snitching on non-politically-orthodox people, just like soviet oriented cultural theoricists between 1927-1959, while sucking the base-political-material that will become the soc-dem german polis.

>>21582109
He was a scam; not a bad writer, but not an OG, not a princeps poet by proper right, but a figure, a simulacrum because of political compromise ---and such a pathetic little loser that he didn't even repair on calling other people second-hand philosophers/poets (cfr. Goethe against Ion's legitimacy as a Platonic dialogue).

>>21579913
FUCK GOETHE AND FUCK BRAINLET BUROCHRATIC COCKSUCKING LEGITIMATED AGENCY.

>>21582122
DESTROY AND FORGET THE ---MENTALLY OR PHYSICALLY--- ILLCONSTRUCTED.

>>21582109
As far as I'm concerned, Schopenhauer made his own color theory and released it at nearly the same time to undercut Goethe. Goethe snubbed him because they disagreed on all fronts. Schopenhauer sticking with his little metaphysics, Goethe actually being somewhat more original in this case.
If Hegel wronged Schopenhauer then so must have Goethe.

>>21582179
why couldn't they all be frens?

>>21582204
You can't make friends with losers like Copenhauer or they'll bring you down to their level

>>21579913
He significantly influenced 19th and 20th century intellectual history but that doesn’t mean he has much appeal beyond the elite classes of people he inspired. In the current world it’s hard to rank him with people like Shakespeare or Dante

>>21582179
>goethe
>original
pick one; Goethe was the hotpocket of his time.

>>21582204
Goethe was friendly despite their different views but Schopenhauer was unrelentingly critical of Goethe's theory which doesn't make a very good partner so Goethe ended contact and Schopenhauer regretted it for the rest of his life.

>>21582218
I'll pick GOAThe

>>21582222
epic numbers and book cover

>>21580281
Good!

>The intended theme of the Faust is the consequences of a misology, or hatred and depreciation of knowledge caused by an originally intense thirst for knowledge baffled. But a love of knowledge for itself, and for pure ends, would never produce such a misology, but only a love of it for base and unworthy purposes. There is neither causation nor progression in the Faust; he is a ready-made conjuror from the very beginning; the incredulus odi is felt from the first line. The sensuality and the thirst after knowledge are unconnected with each other. Mephistopheles and Margaret are excellent; but Faust himself is dull and meaningless. The scene in Auerbach's cellars is one of the best, perhaps the very best; that on the Brocken is also fine; and all the songs are beautiful. But there is no whole in the poem; the scenes are mere magic-lantern pictures, and a large part of the work is to me very flat. The German is very pure and fine.

>The young men in Germany and England who admire Lord Byron, prefer Goethe to Schiller; but you may depend upon it, Goethe does not, nor ever will, command the common mind of the people of Germany as Schiller does. (...) In his ballads and lighter lyrics Goethe is most excellent. It is impossible to praise him too highly in this respect. I like the Wilhelm Meister the best of his prose works. But neither Schiller's nor Goethe's prose style approaches to Lessing's, whose writings, for manner, are absolutely perfect.

>Although Wordsworth and Goethe are not much alike, to be sure, upon the whole; yet they both have this peculiarity of utter non-sympathy with the subjects of their poetry. They are always, both of them, spectators ab extra,—feeling for, but never with, their characters. Schiller is a thousand times more hearty than Goethe.
t. coleridge

lots of posts about "faustian spirit" this and faustian that, but nobody ever lists goethe's faust among his "just like me" favs or any favs

>>21583093
>neither Schiller's nor Goethe's prose style approaches to Lessing's, whose writings, for manner, are absolutely perfect.
where do I start with Lessing?

Is Goethe's "Theory of Colours" worth reading?

The Nazis never knew what to do with Goethe because he was a based enlightened philosemitic cosmopolitan. No surprised that modern Nazis hate him too.

>>21583168
Well his reinterpretation of Faust is not as deep as he thought and his theory of colours is wrong. So Nazis would be right to discard that retarded faggot

>>21583093
Faust is about the divorce of sensuality from the pursuit of knowledge. It's not about the depreciation of the pursuit of knowledge.Another reason not to take le famous art critic's opinions seriously