Life as a Work of Art
Picked up Rüdiger Safransk's biography of Goethe, Life as a Work of Art , translated by David Dollenmayer, in a bookstore before the shop closings due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Reading this well-written work in the last few days before I turn 50, I found it very suggestive about the development of an artistic character. From young, Goethe was keenly aware of his immense creative gift, but learned in his young adulthood to apply his gift to the "objective" world of politics, finance, and science, in order to grapple with "reality." Astonishing too was his capacity to fall hard in love, right up to his eighties. "The example of Shakespeare had taught Goethe what characterizes a great dramatist: he doesn't identify only with his hero, but grants all his figures the right to life." (82) "He notes in his diary, Every work of man has what I would call a smell. As, in a rough sense, a rider smells of horse, a bookstore a little of mildew, and a h...