Love, Life, Goethe

Love, Life, Goethe
Author: John Armstrong
Publisher: Allan Lane
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2006
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is often remembered only as a figure of literary genius, with little relevance to the way we live today. Yet Goethe was driven by much more than the desire for literary success- he wanted (much the same as us) to live life well. In Love, Life, Goethe, John Armstrong subtly and imaginatively explores the ways that we can learn from Goethe, whether in love, suffering, friendship or family. At the centre of this project is happiness- in an imperfect world, how can we live well with what we have, and accept what we haven't? From our lives at home, to our relationships, the politicians we choose, and our relationship with money, John Armstrong explores the main themes of our lives through the life of Goethe, and helps us learn how to live.

Love, Life, Goethe

Love, Life, Goethe
Author: John Armstrong
Publisher: Allan Lane
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2006
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is often remembered only as a figure of literary genius, with little relevance to the way we live today. Yet Goethe was driven by much more than the desire for literary success- he wanted (much the same as us) to live life well. In Love, Life, Goethe, John Armstrong subtly and imaginatively explores the ways that we can learn from Goethe, whether in love, suffering, friendship or family. At the centre of this project is happiness- in an imperfect world, how can we live well with what we have, and accept what we haven't? From our lives at home, to our relationships, the politicians we choose, and our relationship with money, John Armstrong explores the main themes of our lives through the life of Goethe, and helps us learn how to live.

Goethe: Life as a Work of Art

Goethe: Life as a Work of Art
Author: Rüdiger Safranski
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2017-05-16
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0871404915

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Economist and Kirkus Reviews This “splendid biography” (Wall Street Journal) of Goethe presents his life and work as an essential touchstone for the modern age. A masterful intellectual portrait, Goethe: Life as a Work of Art is celebrated as the seminal twenty-first-century biography of the writer considered to be the Shakespeare of German literature. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), a remarkably prolific poet, playwright, novelist, and—as Rüdiger Safranksi emphasizes—a statesman and naturalist, first awakened not only a burgeoning German nation but the European continent with his electrifying novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Safranski has scoured Goethe’s entire oeuvre, relying exclusively on primary sources, including his correspondence with contemporaries, to produce a “fresh and authentic” (Economist) portrait of the avatar of the Romantic era. Skillfully blending “artistic analysis with swift, sharp renderings” of the great political and intellectual figures Goethe encountered, “[Safranski’s] portrait of the prolific genius leaves the reader with lasting awe, even envy” of a monumental legacy (The New Yorker). As Safranski ultimately shows, Goethe’s greatest creation, even in comparison to his masterpiece Faust, was his own life.

A Man in Love

A Man in Love
Author: Martin Walser
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2019-09-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1628728744

For readers of Colm Toibin’s The Master and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, a witty, moving, tender novel of impossible love and the mysterious ways of art. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is so famous his servant auctions off snippets of his hair and children and adults recite from his many works by memory. When he was a young poet, his first novel, a story of love and romantic fervor ending in suicide, was an international blockbuster that set off a wave of self-inflicted deaths across Europe. Now seventy-three, sought after and busy with scientific pursuits and responsibilities to the Grand Duke, he has fallen in love with a nineteen-year-old, Ulrike von Levetzov. Infatuated, at the spa in Marienbad, he seeks her out. They exchange glances, witty words. In the social swirl, they find each other. On the promenade, they parade together arm in arm. Time spent away from her is sleepless, and when they kiss, it is in the “Goethian” way, from his books: a matter of souls, not mouths or lips. And yet, his years fail him. At an afternoon tea party, a younger man tries to seduce her. At a costume ball, he collapses. When he proposes nonetheless, Ulrike and her mother are already preparing to leave. Caught in a storm of emotion and torn between despair and unwillingness to give up hope, he begins an elegy in his coach as he pursues her: “The Marienbad Elegy,” one of his last great works.

Faust

Faust
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher:
Total Pages: 890
Release: 1887
Genre:
ISBN:

The Sufferings of Young Werther

The Sufferings of Young Werther
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2012
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0393079384

"Stanley Corngold's translation is a triumph. This is a glorious achievement, a Werther for the ages."--Christopher Prendergast

Goethe’s Path to Creativity

Goethe’s Path to Creativity
Author: Rainer Holm-Hadulla
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2018-10-03
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429860994

Goethe’s Path to Creativity provides a comprehensive psycho-biography of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a giant of modern German and European literary, political, and scientific history. The book brings this influential work by Rainer Matthias Holm-Hadulla to the English language for the first time in a newly elaborated edition. Goethe’s path to creativity was difficult and beset by a multitude of crises, beginning with his birth, which was so difficult that he was initially not thought to have survived it, and ending with an infatuation that left him, at the age of 74, toying with the same kind of suicidal thoughts he had entertained as a 20-year-old. Throughout his long life, he suffered bitter disappointments and was subject to severe mood swings. Despite being a gifted child, a widely recognized poet, and an influential scientist and politician, he spent his entire life loving and suffering; nonetheless, he had the exceptional ability to endure emotional pain and to transform his sufferings creatively. The way in which he mined his passions for creative impulses continues to inspire modern readers. Readers can apply the lessons they have learned from his life and use Goethe’s strategies for their own creative art of living. Goethe’s Path to Creativity: A Psycho-Biography of the Eminent Politician, Scientist and Poet will be of great interest to all engaged in the fields of creativity, literature, psychoanalysis, psychology, psychotherapy, and personal growth.