‘Love, Life, Goethe’ by John Armstrong
Written on July 26, 2007
Love, Life, Goethe: Lessons of the Imagination from the Great German Poet
I don’t often read biographies, so this is not a book I would ordinarily pick up, but since it was there on my local library’s new book shelf, with the subtitle’s promise of “lessons of the imagination,” I took it home and found it to be very readable. (Nice short chapters for one thing.)
Goethe is seen as an example of the reconciliation of life and art; he is able to say that life is good, while still striving to develop himself. (‘I am not here simply to have a good time, but to devote myself to noble objects.’ p. 178)
Goethe is determined to bridge the gaps between creative art and what is called ‘the real world.’ For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries artists have withdrawn their sympathy from the normal conditions of comfortable existence. The artist is at odds with – and critical of ‘bourgeois life.’ …
Goethe’s immense hope was that there need not be – should not be – a spiritual loathing or artistic contempt for that life. Which, after all, is normal life, broadly speaking. If depth of thought, maturity of passion and grace of feeling are to be central to a society, these spiritual qualities have to coexist with the normal demands of life. And Goethe suggests more than coexistence; he is looking at the ways in which the discipline of ‘the real world’ – the demands of power and responsibility – might actually offer special opportunities for personal growth and development. (p. 101)
Another edition has the subtitle “how to be happy in an imperfect world.” Google Book Search page for this title has links to several reviews.
