Goethe: Schauen und Glauben (review)

Goethe Yearbook 211 whose Goethe: Leben und Werk (2 vols., 1982, 1985) the present book can best be compared, avoids such fragmentary discussion of the works. I found only one bothersome mistake: Werther did not die on Christmas Eve (170, 172) but on the 23rd. It seems to me wrong to discuss Herder's version of "Heidenröslein" ("Aber er vergaß danach / Beim Genuß das Leiden") in detail and to mention the version published by Goethe only in passing (113, 114, 604). Among the general positions maintained by Boyle I want to cite (1) his rejection of the term "Age of Goethe" (Goethe did not serve as a model for his time; in agreement with other scholars, Boyle points to the French Revolution as the decisive event of the period) and (2) his subsuming the works of the first half of the poet's life under the rubric "Poetry of Desire." According to the author, Goethe had hoped his stay in Italy would lead him to a fulfillment of desire, but he came to "realize that the true alternative, the only alternative that could inspire him, was a poetry of renunciation" (443)· Entsagung, renunciation in the sense of acceptance of one's limitations, is to be the subtitle of the second volume ("The Age of Renunciation, 1790-1832"). Boyle holds his own as a biographer and as an interpreter of Goethe's works. His presentation is based on authentic sources. In addition to the preface there are 666 pages of text and 141 of bibliography, notes, and an elaborate index. The book's greatest shortcoming has to do with the author's overly conscientious attention to detail and his excessive regard for chronological sequence. The result is a volume crammed with information that is not likely to entice many to read it from cover to cover. As a work of reference, though, it wilt be the standard guide in English for the foreseeable future. University of North Carolina, Christoph E. Schweitzer Chapel Hill Graham, ftse, Goethe: Schauen und Glauben. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1988. The title of this 631-page collection of 21 essays and lectures by the late Use W.B. Appelbaum Graham alludes to verse seven of chapter five of the second epistie of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians in Luther's translation, "wir wandeln im Glauben, und nicht im Schauen" (in English unhelpfully "we walk by faith, not by sight"), which paradoxically furnishes two words nicely suited to evoke her major recurrent theme, Goethe's belief in the visibility to observation of God-Nature with the corollary of that belief, his faith or total value system. To reassure the reader possibly confused by remembering that Goethe was a "dezidierter Nichtkrist," Graham explains that by Schauen she really means "die Schaubarkeit von Gott und Göttlichem," since for him intense observation "mit den Augen des Geistes" involves "einen Glaubensakt." Epistemology is largely disposed of in Graham's briefEinführung, and in what follows she devotes herself to explaining Goethe's ideas — especially those important in his scientific studies — and to explicating in the light of these ideas, various texts or parts of texts chiefly literary in character. The result is an almost always interesting and, if not always illuminating at least stimulating, 212 Book Reviews volume that, because its component sections must often use the same eviden tiary material, is occasionally somewhat repetitive and is therefore better not read, as it must be by a reviewer, all at once in its entirety. Since it is not a monograph, I shall comment briefly on its essays, which are called Kapitel but are unnumbered despite frequent cross references by arabic chapter number, numbering them sequentially and treating most briefly those (nos. 4, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 14, which constitute one quarter of the volume) that appeared earlier in journals and annuals. There are five groups of essays, each with its Roman number and subtitle. The first, "Erfinden und Entdecken," treats topics closely connected with Goethe's interest in entomological morphology. "Mignons Flügel" (no. 1) discerns Mignon's self-fuffillment in transcendence and points to analogous patterns in the Wanderjahre. No. 2, "Der geflügelte Genius...