Goethe

What didn't you like about it? I thought it was fantastic.

There's no comparison between Werther and Faust.
The former is pretty much just much feels par excellence, the latter is one of the major documents of western civilization.
Much like antiquity had Homer and the medievalists had the Bible, Faust is the blueprint of our society. It's pretty much impossible to overstate it's importance. It's the Illiad of modernity.

>partakes too much of pseuding out

I read Werther, Elective Affinities, and both parts of Faust. Ultimately, he may have been a genius, but he was too cerebral for my taste. He didn't really change my worldview or deeply affect me the same way other authors have. I think the reason he's so glorified is because of his lifestyle, people almost explicitly glorify him more for the fact that, besides being a literary genius, he was also incredibly fit and had a well-developed body, was in politics, moved easily amongst higher social circles, didn't glorify negative emotions, and had a scientific bent of mind. He's a sort of pseudo-Renaissance man, he didn't even do much in science and politics, just happened to dabble in them. It reminds me of how Gaddis (who ironically based his Recognitions on Faust) criticizes the cult of the author; for instance, half of Byron's reputation is him being some super-romantic manic-depressive womanizer who died fighting for Greek independence, etc...

I don't hate Goethe, I'm just mildly disappointed by his reputation. It's disappointing that people glorify him for things that are outside of his literature.

You're mixing truth and fiction in creation of a flippant point.
Obviously there's a cult of personality around Goethe, much like any other celebrity figure. That has literally nothing to do with his literary talents.
Taking shots at his scientific investigations just makes you seem petty. He was active over 200 years ago, how much science of that age is still authoritative? It's not exactly a field known for remaining static for centuries.

The facetiousness of your argument is the contention that people glorify him for things outside of literature while at the same time you more or less accurately note that his contributions outside of literature are all currently irrelevant.
People literally study him for his literature. I mean if you're going to portray thousands of academics, critics, and readers are merely under the sway of "personality" then you could at least do something to convince us that his lit isn't as good as we think it is. You are speaking almost as if you are the only one who has read Goethe or something.

You sound upset. My contention is that people think his literature is better than it is because he became famous due to the cult of personality around him. The excessive fame and praise of him has lingered around him even to this day.

For instance, even this thread has people talking more about his personality than his literature.

>his philosophy was to always evolve and never stop your personal development and never bind yourself to a specific ideology/way of thinking

>He disciplined himself to a whole, he created himself.
>He aspired to totality. He strove against separation of reason, sensibility, emotional, will.

>There's a story about Goethe early health.
>When he was born and as a child, Goethe had very poor health and was a weak, frail boy, and so enacted a highly demanding physical training regimen. Of course everyone knows the story how after Goethe's much later death, Eckermann lifted the bed sheets in order to see Goethe's naked body and was in awe. Goethe repeatedly mentioned his deep belief that he could not die until he willingly relinquished his soul on earth.
>All of this the physical half of what made Goethe a literary giant.

I don't hate his literature, just don't think it's epoch-shattering. The first part of Faust is (in translation) a relatively dull story about a bored intellectual who sells his soul to the devil and uses his newfound power to seduce a not very interesting young girl named Gretchen. The second part, while definitely more splendid, grotesque, and beautiful, also suffers from the same lack of characterization, and while it is a massive and fantastic spectacle, ultimately seems in the end, looking back on it, like an overly artificial pastiche of mythology and turgid philosophical/occult musings and references with some sociological/economic theories thrown in for good measure. It's like a very broad but shallow lake.

As I've just said, I think the other works i've read by Goethe also suffer from a lack of characterization, the characters are very shallow and 2-D, even if/when they're being passionate.

Again, I won't deny that he was intellectually a genius, and that (according to those who have read him in German) he is one of the greatest poets of all time. I just don't find a lot of intellectual or even emotional depth to him. It's mostly pageantry.

Can you give me any notion of how it's the blueprint of modernity without my having read it?

He was a polymath in an age where people weren't aware of the retardedness of polymathism. That's why everyone sucked his cock. That and because German literature hadn't had any writer worth mentioning since the Medievals. Faust is pretty good though.

>My contention is that people think his literature is better than it is because he became famous due to the cult of personality around him.

And as I said in my post, you're speaking as though you are the only one who has read Goethe. We read him too.

Why the fuck should you be surprised if meme answers are getting posted on a Veeky Forums board?

>The first part of Faust is (in translation) a relatively dull story about a bored intellectual who sells his soul to the devil and uses his newfound power to seduce a not very interesting young girl named Gretchen. The second part, while definitely more splendid, grotesque, and beautiful, also suffers from the same lack of characterization, and while it is a massive and fantastic spectacle, ultimately seems in the end, looking back on it, like an overly artificial pastiche of mythology and turgid philosophical/occult musings and references with some sociological/economic theories thrown in for good measure. It's like a very broad but shallow lake.

Ok you demonstrably don't understand Faust. You literally read epic poetry for plot lol.

I'm not saying that it's just the plot that was boring. The ideas and characterization were lacking, too. Not only that, but the 1st part is hardly an epic, it's basically a cute little tale told in verse. In fact, the first part has almost nothing of value in it. The second part i actually had great fun reading and can't criticize for the "plot", but there's not much interesting ideas or characterization in it too.

This guy pretty much agrees with me in a more succinct form.

Today I learned Goethe was Veeky Forumslit/

You're definitely trolling.

He is famous because:
He single handedly invented severaly new genres in german literature
His influence on german language is comparable to Shakespeare in England and Pushkin in Russia (we still use many of his quotes as proverbs etc.)
He is one of the best, if not the best, poet in the german language
Faust (1)

But yeah I can understand that non-germans might be disappointed by his work (poetry can't be transalted and his language is lost in translation), even in german some of his works haven't really survived the times that well and if you want life advice or smth. you sould read his talks with Eckermann

>there are people on Veeky Forums who don't like goethe/faust

amazing faggotry. go back to r/books.

Friendly reminder that Goethe loved European loli

>tfw if Goethe was here today he would be shitposting on /fitlit/

This it looks like a good pleb filter.

>...from his phone while fucking some eastern european helena in a club in berlin

Eckermann lifted the bed sheets in order to see Goethe's naked body and was in awe.
in awe how

small benis?

ridiculous wrinkles?

Thank you, I like this post.

He had a massive and built body, particularly his chest (not as in female breasts har-har)

>tfw Goethe was the first to come up with /fitlit/

fpbp

sage slide threads

i dont know i havent read iit

I've read Werther, Novella, Faust 1&2, what next? Elective Affinities? Wilhelm Meister?

Hated Werther, loved Faust. Both don't compare on any level. Goethe's genius lies in his poetry, not his prose. That's why his plays outshine his novels imho.

I'm thinking of reading Faust 1 and I'd like to know what are the most important philosophical themes present in the poem in your opinions?

The secret of Goethe and his genius is that he was a man extremely of his time. I read a biography of him recently, and I couldn't help but be inspired. Every day Goethe would get up very early in the morning and do stretching exercises that he himself invented. Then he would go over to the window and gaze at the cows. As the cows chewed the grass and the sun rose, he would mash carrots with a mortar and pestle. Then he would take a walk around the neighborhood. His best friend was the blacksmith.

Based af

Goethe was also very particular. He wrote with a quill pen like everyone did in those days, but he had to have a very particular quill feather imported from very far away. It's how particular he was about things. There was a special exotic bird that he had read about in one of the many books he had read in his library. (His library was full of books.) Very often you would find him sitting in there, in his library, reading a book. You couldn't get him away from those things.

When Goethe would write, he would write very small, teensy tiny, so nobody could copy his work. He also wrote in a "code" that turned out to be no code at all. This was his genius. At the top of every piece of parchment (they had to write on parchment in those days) he would write "DO NOT TRY TO DECODE" (in German, of course). But then he just wrote it normal.

Not to mention he also arguably created the prototype for World Literature in his essays about "Weltliteratur". This less-studied idea of Goethe's paved the way for Comparative Literature, enabling scholars like Damrosch, Bhabha and Spivak to eventually bring Goethe's idea of World Literature into a legitimate scholarly realm.

It's a bummer that Goethe isn't more widely studied, his essays and his fiction/poetry are great!

>His best friend was the blacksmith.
Adorable.

I can tell he's an American. Americans, and the British to an extent, put all the emphasis on the plot, instead of the metric - in fucking poetry. I understand, though. All the english language has to offer is blank verse.

Is trying to become a pollymath pointles? Can someone really excel in numerous fields?

damn i don't even care if faust is absolute shit that is based i think i'm a goethe fan now?

man Faust pt 2 is the closest thing to the second coming of Hamlet in all post-shakespeare western literature, if you think there's a "lack of characterization" therein you missed something imo. Sad because I can see where you're coming from, my opinion of pt 1 is similar. it's like we read the same thing but experienced it completely differently. Faust 2 is full of mythological and philosophical/occult musings, yes, but they're anything but "turgid"!

For how many years would I have to study German before I could read Faust pt 2?

Anyone who reads Faust 1 as a love story is a brainlet.
The whole thing is allegory and symbolism. It shouldn't even be that hard to interpret since it's embedded in western civ's DNA

What's the best translation of Faust again? I remember the thread on it a while back but didn't take note?

Lol, a lot.
You can barely read it in English.

>mfw someone says GURR-TURR near me

lel

Well, I did say I don't know German, so i can't judge him for his poetry; and I did concede that the Germans rate him one of the greatest poets of all times, so I can't speak on that. Although even all the rhetorical figures and metaphors and images in Part 2 show, through translation, a massive verbal talent and imagination.

I'm a pleb. It's GUR-TUH, right?

Until I heard someone pronounce it, I thought it was said like it rhymed with "oath". .

from an intro to excerpts from the italian journey--

"Everybody knows that the thrones of European literature are occupied by the triumvirate
referred to in Finnegans Wake as Daunty, Gouty and Shopkeeper, but to most English-speaking
readers the second is merely a name. German is a more difficult language to learn to read than
Italian, and whereas Shakespeare, apparently, translates very well into German, Goethe is
peculiarly resistant to translation into English; Hölderlin and Rilke, for example, come through
much better. From a translation of Faust, any reader can see that Goethe must have been
extraordinarily intelligent, but he will probably get the impression that he was too intelligent, too
lacking in passion, because no translation can give a proper idea of Goethe’s amazing command
of every style of poetry, from the coarse to the witty to the lyrical to the sublime."

>Until I heard someone pronounce it, I thought it was said like it rhymed with "oath". .

A lot of people make this mistake. Don't worry.

>It's GUR-TUH, right?

Yep. Closer to "Gerr-Tuh", though. And his book 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' is "Verr-Tuh".

>From a translation of Faust, any reader can see that Goethe must have been
>extraordinarily intelligent, but he will probably get the impression that he was too intelligent, too
>lacking in passion, because no translation can give a proper idea of Goethe’s amazing command
>of every style of poetry, from the coarse to the witty to the lyrical to the sublime
Damn son, it appears I got preemptively wrecked by whoever this critic is.

>faggot
Kill yourself.

>never joined any of these movements
because he was a coward