Goethes Art Of Living

Goethe researcher Katharine Mommsen draws the reader into the fascinating life of Germany's greatest literary genius, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). We discover how ordinary items such as the food we eat or the beverages we drink, and everyday activities like hiking, ice-skating, horseback riding, dancing the waltz, and music-making acquire fresh meaning within Goethe's own pantheistic life philosophy. He directed his wisdom toward keeping body and soul healthy, lively, focused, and strong as a basis for a fuller life - for him it became an essential part of the poet's worldly gospel. This book which is composed around hundreds of excerpts from Goethe's works, correspondences and conversations transcends biography, and shows us the poet's art of living in its richness in wit and wisdom, goodness, and love for humanity.

This “splendid biography” (Wall Street Journal) of Goethe presents his life and work as an essential touchstone for the modern age. A masterful intellectual portrait, Goethe: Life as a Work of Art is celebrated as the seminal twenty-first-century biography of the writer considered to be the Shakespeare of German literature. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), a remarkably prolific poet, playwright, novelist, and—as Rüdiger Safranksi emphasizes—a statesman and naturalist, first awakened not only a burgeoning German nation but the European continent with his electrifying novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Safranski has scoured Goethe’s entire oeuvre, relying exclusively on primary sources, including his correspondence with contemporaries, to produce a “fresh and authentic” (Economist) portrait of the avatar of the Romantic era. Skillfully blending “artistic analysis with swift, sharp renderings” of the great political and intellectual figures Goethe encountered, “[Safranski’s] portrait of the prolific genius leaves the reader with lasting awe, even envy” of a monumental legacy (The New Yorker). As Safranski ultimately shows, Goethe’s greatest creation, even in comparison to his masterpiece Faust, was his own life.

This work seeks to demonstrate that Johann Wolfgang Goethe 's practice of an art of living closely corresponds with the ancient philosophical form of life as elaborated by Pierre Hadot, in his work, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. I demonstrate how Hadot's conception of ancient philosophy as a concrete way of life consisting in the practice of spiritual exercises or techniques designed to substantively alter fundamental modes of behavior in commerce with the world to effectuate a new perspective on reality, corresponds with Goethe's conception of philosophy as an art of living. I offer a descriptive account of such a Goethean philosophy of existence, elucidating its specific character, normative committments and concrete know-how by drawing from what I take to be the central Goethean text recounting the practice of spiritual exercise; the Italienische Reise. I utilize the Italienische Reise as a case study documenting Goethe's practice of the concrete methods constitutive of an ancient spiritual way of life. Finally, I demonstrate the way in which Goethe innovatively retrieved an ancient art of living premised on spiritual exercise by embedding it in the practices of natural scientific inquiry and the reception and production of art. I argue that Goethe in a way revived and modernized the ancient art of living, giving it a new foundation for the existential task of fashioning a life worth living.

Part of an exhaustive series which provides English translations of a representative proportion of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's vast body of work, this volume contains such essays as "On Gothic Architecture", "On the Laocoon" and "Shakespeare: a Tribute."

Goethe’s Path to Creativity provides a comprehensive psycho-biography of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a giant of modern German and European literary, political, and scientific history. The book brings this influential work by Rainer Matthias Holm-Hadulla to the English language for the first time in a newly elaborated edition. Goethe’s path to creativity was difficult and beset by a multitude of crises, beginning with his birth, which was so difficult that he was initially not thought to have survived it, and ending with an infatuation that left him, at the age of 74, toying with the same kind of suicidal thoughts he had entertained as a 20-year-old. Throughout his long life, he suffered bitter disappointments and was subject to severe mood swings. Despite being a gifted child, a widely recognized poet, and an influential scientist and politician, he spent his entire life loving and suffering; nonetheless, he had the exceptional ability to endure emotional pain and to transform his sufferings creatively. The way in which he mined his passions for creative impulses continues to inspire modern readers. Readers can apply the lessons they have learned from his life and use Goethe’s strategies for their own creative art of living. Goethe’s Path to Creativity: A Psycho-Biography of the Eminent Politician, Scientist and Poet will be of great interest to all engaged in the fields of creativity, literature, psychoanalysis, psychology, psychotherapy, and personal growth.

In 1814, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe read the poems of the great fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz in a newly published translation by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. For Goethe, the book was a revelation. He felt a deep connection with Hafiz and Persian poetic traditions, and was immediately inspired to create his own West-Eastern Divan as a lyrical conversation between the poetry and history of his native Germany and that of Persia. The resulting collection engages with the idea of the other and unearths lyrical connections between cultures. The West-Eastern Divan is one of the world’s great works of literature, an inspired masterpiece, and a poetic linking of European and Persian traditions. This new bilingual edition expertly presents the wit, intelligence, humor, and technical mastery of the poetry in Goethe’s Divan. In order to preserve the work’s original power, Eric Ormsby has created this translation in clear contemporary prose rather than in rhymed verse, which tends to obscure the works sharpness. This edition is also accompanied by explanatory notes of the verse in German and in English and a translation of Goethe’s own commentary, the “Notes and Essays for a Better Understanding of the West-Eastern Divan.” This edition not only bring this classic collection to English-language readers, but also, at a time of renewed Western unease about the other, to open up the rich cultural world of Islam.

Essays on the Wilhelm Meister novels, Faust, Goethe's early plays, Schiller's Räuber and on Goethe's thought in relation to current debates on cosmopolitanism and postcoloniality. The Goethe Yearbook, first published in 1982, is a publication of the Goethe Society of North America and is dedicated to North American Goethe Scholarship. It aims above all to encourage and publish original English-language contributions to the understanding of Goethe and other authors of the Goethezeit, while also welcoming contributions from scholars around the world. This year's volume features a cluster of exceptional essays thatshed new light on Goethe's Wilhelm Meister novels and Faust, as well as fascinating articles on the early play Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilen and the poem "Ilmenau," Schiller's Die Räuber, and anessay that places Goethe's thought in relation to current debates about cosmopolitanism and postcoloniality. Engaging reviews of recent publications in Goethe studies round out the volume. Contributors include Eric Denton, Matt Erlin, Jaimey Fisher, Ingrid Rieger, Rainer Kawa, David Barry, Stephanie Dawson, and John Pizer. Simon J. Richter is Professor of German at the University of Pennsylvania. Book review editor Martha B. Helfer is Professor of German at Rutgers University.