Portrait of Goethe, by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe saw its first light on August 28st, 1749. The considerate father of German Romanticism He was a brilliant and versatile man. Poet, novelist, playwright and scientist, deeply influenced writers, thinkers, composers, and artists of the next generation and everywhere. Today I celebrate its anniversary highlighting 4 of his poems and 20 of his phrases.
Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is surely one of the greatest and best known poets, playwrights and novelists of Germany and maximum representative of the romantic movement. His work touches genres such as lyric poetry, novel or drama. He also cultivated a scientific production on topics such as botany or a color theory. And it influenced all fields of thought, literature and art in general.
Among his works the most important and world-known is undoubtedly his drama auspicious, the most iconic and influential, source of inspiration and object of multiple versions. And his most representative novels are Young Werther's Misadventures o wilhelm meister. In poetry, his Prometheus and also Hermann and Dorotea or Roman Elegies.
His surname gives name to Institute Goethe, the institution in charge of spreading German culture and language throughout the world. These are 4 of his shorter poems to remember it and 20 phrases more.
4 poems
The beautiful night
I must leave the hut
where my beloved lives,
and with a stealthy step
I wander through the arid jungle;
the moon shines in the foliage,
encourage a soft breeze,
and the birch, swinging,
its fragrance rises to her.
How coolness pleases me
of the beautiful summer night!
How good it feels here
what fills us with joy!
Hard work to say! ...
And yet I would give
I a thousand nights like this
for one with my friend.
***
The sunset of life
On the summits
there is peace,
in the treetops
you can barely
perceive a breath,
the little birds have fallen silent in the forest.
Wait soon
you will rest too.
***
Love without rest
Through the rain, through the snow,
Through the tempest I go!
Among the sparkling caves,
On the misty waves I go,
Always forward, always!
Peace, rest, have flown.
Quick through the sadness
I wish to be slaughtered
That all the simplicity
Sustained in life
Be the addiction of a longing,
Where the heart feels for the heart,
Seeming to both burn
Seeming that they both feel.
How am I going to fly?
In vain were all the confrontations!
Bright crown of life,
Turbulent bliss ...
Love, you are this!
***
The farewell
Let me tell you goodbye with my eyes,
since to say it deny my lips!
Farewell is a serious thing
even for a man, like me, tempered!
Sad in the trance it makes us even
of love the sweetest and most tender proof;
cold I crave the kiss of your mouth
loose your hand, let mine hold.
The slightest caress, in another time
sneaky and flying, I loved it!
It was something like the precocious violet,
that started in the gardens in March.
I will no longer cut fragrant roses
to crown your forehead with them.
Frances, it's spring but fall
for me, unfortunately, it will always be.
20 phrases
- Maximum unhappiness, like maximum happiness, modifies the appearance of all things.
- Man always believes himself to be more than he is, and esteems himself less than he is worth.
- Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.
- Good it is indeed to acquire, but it is much better to keep.
- Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and putting your thoughts into action is the hardest thing in the world.
- A noble example makes difficult actions easy.
- We are shaped by what we love.
- The cruelest revenge is the contempt of all possible revenge
- Nobody knows what he is doing while acting correctly, but what is wrong one is always aware.
- Man is made by his beliefs. As he believes, so it is.
- Love is an ideal thing; marriage, a real thing; the confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
- Whoever does good selflessly is always paid with usury.
- What you cannot understand, you cannot possess.
- There is nothing insignificant in the world. Everything depends on the point of view.
- Character is formed in the stormy waves of the world.
- The human mind is not limited to any limits.
- We are all so limited that we always believe we are right.
- Sins write history, good is silent.
- The happiest man in the world is one who knows how to recognize the merits of others and can rejoice in the good of others as if it were his own.
- Certain books appear to have been written not to learn from them, but to make known what their author knew.