Goethe: The Poet and the Age

When I started Vol. One, I realized I would need adjust to Boyle's prose style, and wanted to be sure it would be worth it (I am not an academic). I googled the work and found a review that said the same thing, and that also insisted it was well worth it. It was. I'm about to finish the second volumne and will be anxiously awaiting the third. The work is aptly named -- The Poet and the Age -- keep reading...

This is a magnificent biography. Nicholas Boyle, the Schröder Professor of German at Cambridge University, brilliantly portrays Goethe's first forty years, setting him in his social, political and cultural contexts. Boyle is also superbly perceptive about Goethe's work and about his relationship to the intellectual and aesthetic currents in late 18th-century German and European culture. For example, he notes, "For absolute individualism belongs only in a theatre of inner conflict, not in a theatre of external conflict between worldly forces, and so is in the end the hand-maid of state absolutism." Boyle also observes that Goethe had no religion: "There is no room for the fancies of reincarnation." Goethe simply acknowledges our mortality: "we are together like this only once."

This is the first of three volumes (the third is still being written); it should go without saying that it is a scholarly biography, but based on some reviews, apparently it does need to be said. At some level, it is a reference book, but one can also enjoy it by reading selected sections. I am not a literature scholar by any means, and at first, this book intimidated me. The first chapter was excellent, but then I got bogged down in the next chapter due to deep discussion of literary theory and religious arguments. But I slogged on, and then was mesmerized by the half dozen pages describing the relationship between Goethe and Charlotte von Stein. Now I realize that one can enjoy this book by reading quickly those portions that are not so interesting and then read leisurely those portions that excite you. This 3-volume biography is clearly not for those who only enjoy drive-through fast-food restaurants, but for those who enjoy long drawn out multi-course banquets. One last thought: there are so many good things to say about this book, that to list any one thing is inadequate, but the fact that Nicholas Boyle includes the translation to every entry in German is wonderful. For those who say the book doesn't give a good picture of what Goethe was really like, or what his home life was like, after reading the section concerning 1775 - 1786, I come away feeling I know Goethe pretty well: his expertise in government made me think of Kissinger; his poetry, of course, rivals Shakespeare; his passion for women makes me think of any number of Romantics; and, his interest in science makes me think of Darwin. Maybe by the time I finish all three volumes I will realize I am completely wrong, but it's a good starting point.

There are two points of interest here, one being the life of Goethe, the second being the job that Boyle has done in presenting it. As to Boyle's work, I would be hard pressed to reconstruct the details of my own life with anything approaching the thoroughness provided here by Boyle. This is virtually a day to day account from birth to age 40, multidimensionally presented as Boyle meticulously places Goethe in the total context of his environment and provides us with the background to judge the development of the young Goethe as both artist and man. The faults of this biography, some of them existing by sheer volume and weight of content, are many and obvious. But, the imperfections are also in my view irrelevant to the tremendous accomplishment of the work as a whole. First, be informed that Boyle is a first rate intellect who is almost as able as his subject to a clarity of expression and penetrating insight that one finds only in the best minds. Boyle is possessed of the intellectual talent to provide a synthesis of man, history, environment, religious and philosophical ideas as well as standard universal human values and emotions, which makes this biography unique in its all encompassing presentation of its subject. It is apparent from the beginning that Boyle is attempting to provide to the reader the development in all phases as Goethe passes through age 40, which is when this book ends. Secondly, Boyle provides thorough scholarship and obvious effort. It seems that Boyle has read every published word written by Goethe and much that has been written about him, and in addition to the mere reading has studied and logically glued together and digested the life in all its dimensions. While many biographies purport the same, the extent taken here appears to me to be unmatched. The results of this highly energetic undertaking is basically to subsume whatever imperfections exist in the work to give us what undoubtedly is the best biography of Goethe,and, I suspect, also the best biography, period. This review would be incomplete without a word about my reaction to Goethe himself, for this is an author who sparks an unusual amount of attention on the other side of the Atlantic, and after reading of the first 40 years of his life I would say the stage had been set by then as to how Goethe would subsequently be called the German Shakespeare. One of the first to write a biography of Goethe in English was George Henry Lewes, better known as the husband of George Eliot of Middlemarch and Silas Marner fame. And, I must add, after reading Boyle's work that this is an entertaining and fascinating life backgrounded by a spectacular but little understood German culture of the time, as we witness Goethe, the determined agnostic attempt to find a meaning for his life without religion. How this is done in the first 40 years provides for the reader a rewarding, entertaining experience, and also much food for thought.

Boyle's Goethe supasses just about anything available--including what one can find in German (i. e. Conrady). Granted, it is not easy going. Boyle offers extensive contextualisation of his subject and thereby provides something of an introduction to such figures as Herder for the uninitiated. If you want the latest word on Goethe, this is it.