Goethe: The Poet and the Age. Vol. 2. Revolution and Renunciation, 1790-1803, and: Goethe: Der Dichter in seiner Zeit. Bd. 2. 1790-1803 (review)

284 Book Reviews Nicholas Boyle, Goethe: The Poet and the Age. Vol. 2. Revolution and Renunciation, 1790-1803. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 968 pp. Nicholas Boyle, Goethe: Der Dichter in seiner Zeit. Bd. 2. 17901803 . Trans. Holger Fliessbach. Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 1999- 1115 pp. During his state visit as Federal President to Great Britain, Theodor Heuss said on 22 October 1958, at a reception held for hün Ui London's County HaU, that the first "real" biography of Goethe had been written by an EngUshman, George Henry Lewes, claiming that, Ui the days of his youth, Lewes's The Life and Works of Goethe (1855) had been the most popular account even Ui Germany. Heuss's praise was no mere exaggeration: for example, Rilke's adrrUration for Lewes's biography was an Unportant part of his renewed engagement with Goethe from 1910 onwards, amounting to a rejection of his eariier assertion "daß mü das Organ fehlt, um von Goethe zu empfangen" (itself an echo of Goethe's, perhaps equaüy üonic, claim that "für PhUosophie im eigentUchen Sinne hatte ich kein Organ"). A century and a half later, another EngUshman, Nicholas Boyle, is responsible for another biography of Goethe that promises to become equaUy celebrated both at home and Ui Germany, albeit with at least one major difference: it is much, much longer than Lewes's. The first volume of Goethe: The Poet and the Age, entitled The Poetry of Desire Cl 749-1790), was pubüshed Ui 1991, to near universal acclaim. Richard Holmes wrote that "it is a worthy successor to Lewes and the great tradition" (The New York Review of Books); Theodore Ziolkowski caUed it "certainly the best biography of Goethe Ui EngUsh since Lewes, and one of the finest Ui any language " (Times Literary Supplement); Hans Reiss described it Ui the Neue Zürcher Zeitung as "ein Markstein Ui der Geschichte der GoetheBiographien "; and George Steiner, who Ui an earüer review (The Sunday Times, 1984) of a monograph on Goethe by TJ. Reed had observed that "he rightly gives up any thought of biography (we have an almost daUy record of Goethe's Olympian, self-observant Ufe)," felt moved to write of Boyle in The New Yorker that it was "the best biography of Goethe Ui EngUsh." In time for the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of Goethe's birth, the German translation of the second volume of Boyle's biography appeared Ui 1999, closely foUowed Ui 2000 by the EngUsh original, entitled Revolution and Renunciation Cl 790-1803). Boyle's original plan to offer a two-volume biography has, as the dating suggests Ui the subtitle (omitted Ui the German), been changed: even though Hegel wUl have to make do with the two volumes of R. S. Harris's biography (simUarly, BerUoz has recently been dealt with Ui two volumes by David Cairns), Goethe wUl enjoy the same treatment as Rousseau has at the hands of Maurice Cranston and receive three volumes dedicated to hün. "Make it three volumes! Goethe deserves it," as the anonymous American journaUst, whose words are recaUed in the preface, put it. And so far, the reception of volume 2 has been largely warm, Ü mixed: from the extremely positive Goethe Yearbook 285 remarks of Martin Swales (Ui The Times Higher Education Supplement ), the equaUy welcoming, tf somewhat defensive, review of Michael Beddow (Times Literary Supplement), to the criticism ("strictly with one's hat off") by T. J. Reed of "so monumental a work of scholarship " for having focused on renunciation, "a notion so aUen to Goethe and to the art he practiced" (The Guardian) and the hostile review by Benedikt Erenz, concentrating on the apparent shortcomings Ui Boyle's account of the French Revolution (Die Zeit). Certainly the Revolution is the starting-point, UteraUy, of volume 2: "In 1789 the world changed" (3). According to Boyle, Goethe's experience of the Revolution was marked by two great historical coincidences , the spread of Kantian phüosophy and, for hün, a time of personal crisis. Boyle goes into great detaU about the importance of Kant's system for the eighteenth century, setting out (schematicaUy, but...