Book Review: Goethe

Goethe by Peter Boernertranslated from the German by Nancy BoernerHaus Publishing, 2015 According to one biographer, Goethe was "the supreme product" of "the age of paper." He lived the best-documented life prior to the digital paparazzi. Not even a much-scrutinized meteor of a man like Napoleon -- who once met with Goethe to express his admiration -- generated the same volume of personal writings and letters, or inspired the same quantity of reminiscences. Goethe's fame hardly abated from his 25th year -- when he published the European best-seller, The Sorrows of Young Werther -- until his death at 82 -- when the completed masterpiece Faust, the labor of his lifetime, was first published in full. At every turn of the revolutionary 18th century, Goethe seemed to reinvent himself to crown anew the culture of his seismic times. In addition to the literary work for which he is best remembered, he served as a brilliant administrator in the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar, drew and painted an enormous body of artwork, and engrossed himself in everything from biology to color theory.But despite his unparalleled worthiness of remembrance, Goethe's life and work remain largely a gnostic specialty in English. His reception among us has been impressive, beginning with the biography by G.H. Lewes (George Eliot's husband) and extending to such masterpieces as Nicholas Boyle's still unfinished three-volume biography. Yet this reception is one-sidedly erudite. It tends to the monumental and repels the casual inquirer.Suitable to this lacuna, in 2015 the University of Chicago Press has released in North America for the first time Haus Publishing's short biography, Goethe, by Peter Boerner. It is translated from the German by Nancy Boerner and embodied in an invitingly colorful and compact volume. The main text runs to about 100 pages, a biography to be consumed like a snack in just a few hours. Illustrations dot nearly every page: portraits, pages of Goethe's handwriting, his own sketches. Boerner finds a way to handle the chief problem for any short biography of this Proteus -- how to convey the panoply of his achievements without assuming the character of a mere catalogue or bibliography -- by relying heavily upon Goethe's own words and by emphasizing the pattern of rebirth that structured his life.Establishing the odd typographic convention of italicizing all the words that come from Goethe himself, Boerner composed a book that is about one third direct quotation from its subject:

A portrayal of Goethe that makes use of his own words can draw on an almost endless supply of sources. In addition to his literary, scientific and particularly his autobiographical writings, among them Poetry and Truth, the story of his youth, he penned more than 15,000 letters and kept a diary for 52 years.

The translations here do a good job of conveying the vigorous clarity of Goethe's prose, which undercuts the English stereotypes of German murk. He remains his own best advertisement: few sympathetic readers will fail to acquire a taste for him, just from the quotations. Here he is, for example, reflecting on his refusal to get over-excited (either with sympathy or reaction) about the French Revolution and the career of Napoleon:

For himself, he felt, in politically unsettled times it was best to stick to his quiet study and carefully preserve the holy fire of science and art, even if it is only an ember under the ashes, so that when the night of war has passed and the dawn of peace is breaking, the indispensable Promethean fire will not have vanished.

In addition to the useful expedient of heavy quotation, Boerner cleverly focuses upon the transitions in Goethe's life rather than the continuities. For example, when Goethe embarked upon his administrative career at the age of 26, invited by the Duke to become one of his chief councilors despite his lack of experience or qualification, he served for a decade as the organizing force behind everything from the Duchy's fire-fighting system and diplomacy to its small army and large library. Boerner dispenses with these years in one chapter, focusing upon Goethe's arrival and the reasons for his temporary departure -- the Goethe of Boerner's biography is a phoenix of self-cultivation whose preferred antidote to the poison of creative stagnation is to pack his bags:

Thus at the end of his tenth year in Weimar, he reached a decision to distance himself from his obligations there, if only temporarily. After putting all his official and personal affairs in order, he asked the Duke for an indefinite leave of absence. His actual departure took place seemingly from one day to the next and, as earlier in 1772 in Wetzlar and 1775 in Frankfurt, resembled a flight.

While this emphasis upon transitions lends Boerner's narrative a commendable vivacity, it has the side-effect of scanting the less mercurial depths of Goethe's life. For one thing, the magnum opus which Goethe gestated for half a century, composing in fragments like an alchemist laboring in secret, is treated in one chapter rather than alluded to throughout the narrative. Faust claimed the best of Goethe's creative energies for decades, but Boerner's book only addresses it in a single chapter toward the end. Still, such scanting is perhaps an inevitable feature of the kind of introduction Boerner so excellently proffers; and when he does come to address the making of Faust, he finds the perfect words to describe it, Goethe's own:

More than sixty years ago, the concept of Faust was already clear to my youthful self, although the sequence of scenes was less distinct. I let the intent accompany me always, and worked only on those particular passages that interested me at the moment. Consequently, in the second part gaps remained that required a similar intensity of interest before they could be joined to the rest. Here the great obstacle was to achieve by means of resolve and willpower what really should have come from spontaneous action. But it would not be right if after such a long and reflective life this were not possible[.]

The newcomer to Goethe will leave Boerner's book with a clear impression of Goethe's personality and of the scope of his works, ready to read him and, perhaps, to read at greater length about him. The higher reaches of Goethe studies and translations in English await this reader, now that she is hooked: but we may thank Boerner that, at last, the hook has been baited by an excellent introduction.