PREFACE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2009
Summary
Goethe-scholars and Goethe-lovers in Germany and England have not ceased for the past hundred years to comment on and re-define Goethe's relations with the Greek tradition. Only four years ago one of the finest of these commentaries appeared: Walther Rehm's Griechentum und Goethezeit. But still there is no book that gives a coherent chronological account of the stages by which Goethe gained knowledge and understanding of Greece. The facts upon which a student must base his appreciation of Goethe's attitude to Greece lie scattered in innumerable books and periodicals, many of them out of print and no longer easy of access. My chief purpose has been to give a clear account of the facts, and especially to establish with all reasonable certainty the extent of Goethe's knowledge of Greek things at every stage of his development. In the first three chapters, which deal with the growth of Goethe's knowledge and the development of his ideas, I have therefore recorded every piece of evidence which suggests an interest in Greece. It seemed to me unnecessary to continue this method in the last three chapters, from the Italian Journey to Goethe's death. By that time his knowledge of Greece was essentially complete; and as, during the height of his Hellenism, almost every activity of his life had some contact with Greece, it seemed better to select those facts and utterances which throw light on his conception of the nature and value of the Greek heritage.
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- Goethe and the Greeks , pp. xliii - xlivPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1981