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342 GOETHE SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA Reed, T.J., Goethe. Past Masters Series. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. The premise of TJ. Reed's Goethe monograph, as illuminating as it is concise, is found in die concluding paragraph of the book. Here the author, after having delineated Goedie's unique life and wondrous literary oeuvre, pits him against the "modern " literary scene and offers the following assessment: His work, like his life, offers a norm—he is indeed monumentally normal beside many of the developments in literature and men's diinking about literature since his time: die growing existential gloom; die social marginality of writers; the 'poètes maudits,' with tÃ-ieir deliberate deranging of the senses; the pursuers of art for its own question-begging sake; die hermetically obscure, the agonizers over how to write at aU, the despairers of ever conveying diought; and most recendy die dehumanizers of literature who would detach it from its roots in Ufe and make it a self-referential game, sabotaging men's most valuable form of open communication by simplistic doubts about its viability. Beside all diis, Goedie's normality is not antiquated but defiant and envigorating. He stands high above diis subsequent modernity ... , luminous against die dark. Needless to say, this is an extensive quotation for such a short review. But why should the author not speak par lui-même even in such limited space, particularly when his final remarks turn so pointedly against recent critical practices and reach back to Goedie's own work, to "good sense," and to die understanding of literature as die highest affirmation of language's expressive power? It is quite obvious that Reed's monograph has been inspired by a sincere and deep appreciation of Goethe's poetic and scientific accomplishments. This esteem rests upon Goethe's intimate knowledge of nature, an intimacy which—with the possible exception of Lucretius—distinguishes him from all other European poets, ancient and modern. During his Sturm und Drang years die sense of harmony between Goethe and the natural world furnished die emotional basis of his unrivaled "great hymns." They are testimonies of die individual completely at home in die external world. Yet the prerequisites of the novel and the drama, genres with other suppositions, proved to be quite different, indeed problematical. For outside die lyrical reafm young Goethe had to confront die demons of society which, in die age of Werther, were Ui no way conducive to gratifying die enormous demands of the enlightened individual. Goedie's early work, then, displays an irreconcilable dichotomy between his attitudes towards nature and his perception of contemporary society. This discrepancy widened, according to Reed, in Goedie's Classical period, during which he accomplished, above aU, two things: He learned to bridle his own subjectivity, and he succeeded in conceiving of a natural order of tilings, a "grand monism." The latter encompasses nature, man, art, and God; its essential principle is "inner necessity." In the absence of a representative "German society," Goethe created, as Reed shows, a "one man's order [or style]: a formed culture grounded in natural impulse; a personal Volker Dürr 343 and individual—if we want to push paradox to the extreme, a Romantic— Classicism." As a result of a newly acquired self-confidence, rooted in diis sense of an aU-encompassing natural order, Goethe was able to endow his Classical poetic works with monumental validity. Whether one looks at dramatic efforts such as lphigenie, Tasso, and Egmont, narrative creations such as Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and Hermann und Dorothea, or his Classical poetry, the result seems to be the same. Reed observes that in almost aU these works problems of whatever kind are resolved by natural forces. The same can even be said about Faust, to which Reed devotes one entire, and very substantial, chapter of his slender book. He reads the play as the "justification of natural man and of a progress through life which, however unregenerate, can stUl be affirmed." Ultimately, however, the drama and die understanding of the world it offers are validated not by argument, but by the unparalleled beauty and power of the poetry. Is it not more than...

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