Goethe

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This translation of Goethe's poetry remains both true in form and spirit to the original, yet is at the same time readable and engaging. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0460882120
• ISBN13: 9780460882125
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: Everyman Paperback Classics
• Length: 100 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

The Original Beautiful Mind Goes South

In preparation for a trip to Italy, I began reading the accounts of famous travellers to that land: D.H. Lawrence, Charles Dickens, Tobias Smollett, and now Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I had no great expectations but was knocked for a loop from page one. Never before had I encountered a questing mind quite like Goethe's. Almost from the moment to left Carlsbad in September 1786, he was noticing the geological structures underlying the land and the flora and fauna above it. He sits down and talks with ordinary people without an attitude -- and this after he had turned the heads of half of Europe with his SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER. Here he was journeying incognito, apparently knowing the language well enough to communicate with peasants, prelates, and nobility. One who abhors marking books I intend to keep, I found myself underlining frequently. "In this place," he writes from Rome, "whoever looks seriously about him and has eyes to see is bound to become a stronger character." In fact, Goethe spent over a year in Rome learning art, music, science, and even sufferings the pangs of love with a young woman from Milan. Bracketing his stay in Rome is a longish journey to Naples and Sicily, where he becomes acquainted with Sir Warren Hamilton and his consort Emma, the fascinating Princess Ravaschieri di Satriano, and other German travelers. One of them, Wilhelm Tischbein, painted a wonderful portrait of Goethe the traveller shown on the cover of the Penguin edition.The translation of W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer is truly wonderful. My only negative comments are toward the Penguin editors who, out of some pennywise foolishness, have omitted translating the frequent Latin, Greek, and French quotes. I am particularly upset about the lack of a translation of the final quote from Ovid's "Tristia." In every other respect, this book is a marvel and does not at all read like a work written some 215 years ago. It is every bit as fresh and relevant as today's headlines, only ever so much more articulate!

Rocks and Rolls

This was billed as a good introduction to Goethe. I don't know, since this is the first Goethe I've read--but I'm delighted. It starts as a sojourn south, with detailed notations of rocks, geologic information and topography. Don't let that deter you! His description of eating just bread and red wine on his sea voyage to Sicily (because of his rolling seasickness) had me running for a bottle Italian Barbera! As my late great aunt would have said: "A nice, nice book."

Beautiful

This has long been my favorite work by Goethe. It is very readable, which most people don't expect from Goethe, connecting him to his poetry and to Faust, etc. But the book reveals so much about him (the reader gets a sense that the man knows he will be evaluated by people hundreds of years hence) and it also leaves so much to the imagination. I can't recommend this book more highly. It contains the musings of a brilliant human being and is a singular travelogue of Italy.

Still the best guide to Italy.

This classic reveals much about Goethe, as well as about Italy. In observing the waves at the gulf of Naples he shows the extreme empiricism of his incursions into science, with beautiful words, of course. The portraits of Naples and Catania are still up to date in their essentials. I wish I had read this book before my long sojourn in that wonderful country.

An exquisitely unforgettable portrait of 18th century Italy.

Many people are deterred from attempting to read something...anything...by Goethe because of his extremely penetrating intelligence and dense prose. But his "Travels in Italy" are by far easier to digest than anything else by him. The journal is a straightforward diary of his sojourn to Italy as a young man sometime in the 1770's. The book has a modern ring to it, and indeed Goethe seems to foreshadow the coming of many of the things we consider "modern" today: intense self examination, scientific methodology, and anthropology. But that's not what makes this a great book. Long after you finish it you will be contemplating the wealth of pithy, insightful comments he makes about Italians in particular and humans in general. You will revisit portions of this book many times, and you will mark passages in it so you can pull it down and quote it to your friends. A fabulous feast for the intellect and a balm for the spirit.