Life of Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Оглавление

James Sime. Life of Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Life of Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Table of Contents

NOTE

LIFE OF GOETHE

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

INDEX

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. WORKS

II. TWO OR MORE WORKS

III. SINGLE WORKS

IV. POEMS

V. TRANSLATIONS

VI. MISCELLANEOUS

VII. LETTERS

VIII. SELECTIONS

IX. APPENDIX

Biography, Criticism, Etc

Faust

Songs, etc., Set to Music

Magazine Articles

X. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS

Отрывок из книги

James Sime

Published by Good Press, 2019

.....

He was received in a friendly way by Böhme, the professor of history, whose wife, a cultivated and pleasant woman, liked to talk with him. She offended him a little, however, by laughing rather too freely at some of his Frankfort modes of expression, and by disparaging the writings of his favourite poets. Every day he dined at the house of one of the medical professors, where he met chiefly students of medicine and natural science. When the novelty of his position at Leipsic wore off, he began to miss the pleasures to which he had been accustomed at home, and, above all, he longed for some friend to whom he might confide his inmost thoughts and aspirations. Gradually he fell into a dejected and forlorn state of mind, and so keenly did he suffer that in the spring of 1766 one of his Frankfort friends, Horn, who came to study law at Leipsic, could not find in him a trace of his old liveliness and good humour. The presence of Horn, who remained for some years one of his most intimate comrades, did much to revive Goethe; and soon afterwards the process was completed by another friend, Schlosser, who took Leipsic on his way from Frankfort to Treptow, where he was to act as private secretary to Duke Frederick Eugene of Würtemberg. Schlosser, who ultimately married Goethe’s sister, was a man of vigorous and independent character, somewhat stern in manner, but essentially kind and sympathetic, and he quickly succeeded in restoring Goethe to all his former cheerfulness and self-confidence.

Schlosser put up at the house of a vintner called Schönkopf, who, his wife having come from Frankfort, always welcomed visitors from her native place. Goethe was so much pleased with the company at Schönkopf’s table that he determined to dine and sup there daily, and this resolution he acted upon during the remainder of his time at Leipsic. Schönkopf had a pretty, coquettish daughter, Anne Catharine, and, needless to say, she no sooner saw the susceptible Goethe than she made a conquest of him. Like Gretchen, she was his senior by two or three years, but that, he felt, only made her the more worthy to be loved. Annette, as he usually called her, accepted his devotion with pleasure, and was sincerely fond of him; but, having a shrewd suspicion that she could never be his wife, she gave him no marks of favour that she was not equally ready to give to other admirers. Many a time Goethe was thrown into a fever of jealousy by her kindness to his rivals, but she had only to smile on him to exalt him to a heaven of enchantment and delight. Upon the whole, his relation to Annette, which went on for years, seems to have brought him more misery than happiness. It was impossible for him to claim her love as exclusively his own, yet he could not bear to think of it as a treasure that might pass into the possession of some one else.

.....