Goethe: The Poet and the Age. Volume I: The Poetry of Desire (1749-1790) (review)

Book Reviews Boyle, Nicholas, Goethe: The Poet and the Age. Volume I: The Poetry of Desire (1749-1790). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. This is the first of two volumes: it stops almost exactly at the halfway point of Goethe's long life, on the day of his return to Weimar in June 1790, after a brief second trip to Italy that followed his stay there from September 1786 to June 1788. Boyle organizes the massive material chronologically, making excellent use of all available sources, including letters and conversations, and maintaining a healthy skepticism toward the poet's own statements. The reader learns about background and character of the major and minor people with whom Goethe came into contact. There is a helpfuf introduction to the German literary scene, also a discussion of the prevailing philosophical trends. The author describes in detail the political and cultural ambience of places like Frankfurt and Weimar, fn the case of Frankfurt he reconstructs what the young Goethe would have seen on a walk from Friedberg Gate to his house and what foul smells he would have encountered; inside the house, though, his father's immense stock of barrelled wine would have given off a more pleasant aroma. Boyle explains the father's estrangement from Frankfurt society and tells us what his annual income was, ca. 2,700 guilders — a country pastor made between 250 and 520 guilders a year. While Johann Caspar has not fared well in some Goethe books, Boyle is his partisan. We are given evidence of his generosity toward the brilliant and often difficult son who only late in life earned more than he spent. Equally factual is the information about Goethe's expenditures at the university, his salary at Weimar, and the contracts with publishers. Boyle rightly stresses the fact that Goethe was, in contrast to most of his contemporaries, free of indebtedness to either church or state. When it comes to the important decision to consider Cari August's invitation to Weimar, we are given alt the factors that made the poet accept it against his father's better judgment. Also impressive is the depiction of Goethe as being "intellectually and emotionally on the verge of bankruptcy" (354) after nine years in Weimar and in danger of losing his reading public. Ultimately, his flight to Italy must be seen as "the desperate search for meaning itself' (416). The issue of Goethe's relationship to women is given its proper attention. In the case of Friederike Brion, Boyle steers a middle course. After recounting * Reprinted with permission of The New York Times, where a rather different version appeared on July 28, 1991. 210 Book Reviews the various phases of their love, and in so doing correcting some of the information to be found in Dichtung und Wahrheit, the author points out Goethe's guilt feelings toward her and relates these, as to be expected, to their various literary echoes. In connection with his leaving Friederike, Boyle mentions Goethe's becoming aware of wanting or needing to lead a "symbolic existence" (109), an idea that recurs frequently in the book as the thirty references to the concept in the index indicate. Marriage at age twenty-two did not suit him. The intricate relationship between Goethe and Charlotte von Stein, to whom he could get so close because she was "sexually unavailable" (261), is presented with great insight. It is refreshing to be reminded of the many charitable and less well-known acts of Goethe, such as his support of Victor Leberecht Plessing and Johann Friedrich Krafft, the taking into his househoid of an orphaned Swiss peasant boy, Peter im Baumgarten, and the nursing of Karl Philipp Moritz in Rome. The latter's concept of the artist as having "no higher duty than to be himself' (519) is related to Goethe's understanding of his role in society. This is an all-inclusive biography. We learn about the many administrative assignments Goethe carried out or tried to carry out: among other things he was "one of the few defence ministers who have voluntarily halved their own budget" (254). Boyle explains Goethe's scientific endeavors carefully and soberly. He follows Albrecht Schöne...