INTRODUCTION TO THE TWENTY VOLUMES OF THE GERMAN CLASSICS It is surprising how little the English-speaking world knows of German literature of the nineteenth century. Goethe and Schiller found their herald in Carlyle; Fichte’s idealistic philosophy helped to mold Emerson’s view of life; Amadeus Hoffmann influenced Poe; Uhland and Heine reverberate in Longfellow; Sudermann and Hauptmann appear in the repertory of London and New York theatres—these brief statements include nearly all the names which to the cultivated Englishman and American of today stand for German literature. The German Classics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been planned to correct this narrow and inadequate view. Here for the first time English readers will find a panorama of the whole of German literature from Goethe to the beginning of the twentieth century; here for the first time they will find the most representative works; here for the first time an opportunity will be offered to form a just conception of the truly remarkable literary achievements of Germany during the last hundred years. For it is a grave mistake to assume, as has been assumed only too often, that, after the great epoch of Classicism and Romanticism in the early decades of the nineteenth century, Germany produced but little of universal significance, or that, after Goethe and Heine, there were but few Germans worthy to be mentioned side by side with the great writers of other European countries. True there is no German Tolstoy, no German Ibsen, no German Zola—but then, is there a Russian Nietzsche, or a Norwegian Wagner, or a French Bismarck? Goethe died March 18, 1832. The story that his last words were “more light” is probably nothing more than a happy invention. Admirers of the great German see more in him than the author of the various works, which have been all too briefly characterized in the preceding sketch. His is a case where, in very truth, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Goethe is the representative of an epoch. He stands for certain ideals which are not those of the present hour, but which it was of inestimable value to the modern man to have thus nobly worked out and exemplified in practice. Behind and beneath his writings, informing them and giving them their value for posterity, is a wonderful personality, which it is a delight and an education to study in the whole process of its evolution. By way of struggle, pain and error, like his own Faust, he arrived at a view of life, in which he found in which he found inspiration and inner peace. It is outlined in the verse, which he placed before his short poems as a sort of motto: Wide horizon, eager life, Busy years of honest strife, Ever seeking, ever founding, Never ending, ever rounding, Guarding tenderly the old, Taking of the new glad hold, Pure in purpose, light of heart, Thus we gain - at least a start. Herman and Dorothea is universally known and prized in Germany as no other works of the classical period of German literature except Goethe’s Faust and Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, and although distinctively German in subject and spirit, it early became and is still a precious possession of all the modern world. It marks the culmination of the renaissance in the literary art of Germany and perhaps of Europe. Schiller hailed it as the pinnacle of Goethe’s and of all modern art. The Central theme of Goethe’s Faust may be put in the form of a question thus: Shall a man hate life because it does not match his dreams, or shall he embrace it eagerly and try to make the best of it as a social being? Goethe’s answer is at once scientific and religious, which partly explains its vital interest for the modern man. To be sure, his answer is given at the end of a long relevant to the main issue. It must never be forgotten that Faust is not the orderly development of a thesis in ethics, but a long succession of imaginative pictures. Some of them may seem too recondite and fantastic to meet our present-day demand for reality, but on the whole the poem of it Faust arrives at a noble view of life, and his last words undoubtedly tell how Goethe himself thought that a good man might wish to end his days-unsated with life to final moment, and expiring in an ecstasy of altruistic vision. Goethe was about twenty years old when his imagination began to be haunted by the figure of the sixteenth century magician Doctor Faust. In 1772 or 1773 he commenced writing a play on the subject, little thinking of course that it would occupy him some sixty years. Is there in all literature anything finer, grander, and more nobly conceived? CONTENT OF VOLUME I (Pages I-19) “Literary Organization.” “Consulting Executive Board.” ”Contributors to Volume I.” “Contents.” “Editor’s Preface.” “Publishers’ Foreword.” “General Introduction.” “The Life of Goethe.” POEMS (Pages 20-153) “Greetings and Departure.” “The Heathrose.” “Mahomet’s Song.” “Prometheus.” “The Wanderer’s Night-Song.” “The Sea-Voyage.” “To the Moon.” “The Fisherman.” “The Wanderer’s Night-Song.” “The Elk-King,” “The Godlike.” “Migon.” “Proximity of the Beloved One,” “The Shepherd’s Lament.” “Nature and Art.” “Comfort in Tears.” “Epilog Bibamus.” “The Walking Bell.” “Found.” “Hatem.” “Reunion.” “Promion.” “The One and The All.” “Lines on Seeing Schiller’s Skill.” “A Legacy.” Introduction to Herman and Dorothea.” Herman and Dorothea.” DRAMAS (Pages 154-497) “Introduction to Iphigenia in Tauris.” “Iphigenia in Tauris.” “The Faust Legend from Marlowe to Goethe.” “Introduction to Faust.” “Faust (Part I).” “Faust (Part II).” Keywords: The German Classics Volume 1, Greetings and Departure, Promethius, Faust Part I, Faust Part II, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, The Tragedy of Faust, Iphigenia in Tauris, Herman and Dorothea, The Erl-King, Weimar,

Book Details