Goethe: The Poet and the Age: The Poetry of Desire, (1749-1790)

Rating:
Summary: Boyle's Goethe
Review: Boyle's Goethe supasses just about anything available--including what one can find in German (i. e. Conrady). Granted, it is not easy going. Boyle offers extensive contextualisation of his subject and thereby provides something of an introduction to such figures as Herder for the uninitiated. If you want the latest word on Goethe, this is it.

Rating:
Summary: Boyle's Goethe
Review: Boyle's Goethe supasses just about anything available--including what one can find in German (i. e. Conrady). Granted, it is not easy going. Boyle offers extensive contextualisation of his subject and thereby provides something of an introduction to such figures as Herder for the uninitiated. If you want the latest word on Goethe, this is it.

Rating:
Summary: Goethe The Poet And The Age Volume One
Review: If a person enjoys a scholarly biography with a lot of esoteric detail, this is a biography for him. However,If a person finds scholarly biographies tough going,he will be bored by this book.

Rating:
Summary: Fails to live up to the promise of its subject
Review: One would be hard pressed to find a better subject for a literary biography than Goethe. Not only is he a major literary figure, one of those few who could be said to have truly shaped their national culture, not only is his enormous oeuvre is little read outside his home country, not only is he so marginal in the minds of English readers that his name is perpetually mispronounced and his most significant work, Faust, is continually assumed to be identical to other works of the same name, but--perhaps not so incredibly considering all else I have mentioned--there is absolutely no competition in the market for biographies of this amazing man. Which makes Nicholas Boyle's work all the more unfortunate, I'm afraid.

There can be no question that Boyle is well-familiar with Goethe's work, and the context of his long life. However, he communicates neither very well. A few bright moments poke through in the text, such as the fine description of the household in which Goethe grew up, but the reader generally finds himself at a loss when attempting to picture the type of life which Goethe lived. Esoteric religious concerns and theories about the effect of the German political situation on the souls of its people cloud what could have been a fascinating look at another time and place with distracting, and ultimately useless, complexities. Even worse is Boyle's approach to Goethe's work. One should have perhaps been warned by the author's decision to regiment "life" and "work" into alternate chapters that the work would be subjected to, and ultimately consumed by, a light but continual barrage of literary theory which, while it does not reach the absurd heights of which academia is often capable, manages to render the power of Goethe's poetry and fiction effectively lifeless. That is a formidable achievement indeed, and one which literary biographers, as a whole, should strive to avoid.

I am still waiting for a biography of Goethe worthy of him, a man whose literary relevance is unquestionable--Pushkin, Hugo and Shakespeare, perhaps, are the only others who can match him, and whoever writes the story of his life should attempt to show this truth, rather than obscure it unnecessarily, as Boyle has done.

Two stars, one for the minimum, and one for what it might have been.

Rating:
Summary: Fails to live up to the promise of its subject
Review: One would be hard pressed to find a better subject for a literary biography than Goethe. Not only is he a major literary figure, one of those few who could be said to have truly shaped their national culture, not only is his enormous oeuvre is little read outside his home country, not only is he so marginal in the minds of English readers that his name is perpetually mispronounced and his most significant work, Faust, is continually assumed to be identical to other works of the same name, but--perhaps not so incredibly considering all else I have mentioned--there is absolutely no competition in the market for biographies of this amazing man. Which makes Nicholas Boyle's work all the more unfortunate, I'm afraid.

There can be no question that Boyle is well-familiar with Goethe's work, and the context of his long life. However, he communicates neither very well. A few bright moments poke through in the text, such as the fine description of the household in which Goethe grew up, but the reader generally finds himself at a loss when attempting to picture the type of life which Goethe lived. Esoteric religious concerns and theories about the effect of the German political situation on the souls of its people cloud what could have been a fascinating look at another time and place with distracting, and ultimately useless, complexities. Even worse is Boyle's approach to Goethe's work. One should have perhaps been warned by the author's decision to regiment "life" and "work" into alternate chapters that the work would be subjected to, and ultimately consumed by, a light but continual barrage of literary theory which, while it does not reach the absurd heights of which academia is often capable, manages to render the power of Goethe's poetry and fiction effectively lifeless. That is a formidable achievement indeed, and one which literary biographers, as a whole, should strive to avoid.

I am still waiting for a biography of Goethe worthy of him, a man whose literary relevance is unquestionable--Pushkin, Hugo and Shakespeare, perhaps, are the only others who can match him, and whoever writes the story of his life should attempt to show this truth, rather than obscure it unnecessarily, as Boyle has done.

Two stars, one for the minimum, and one for what it might have been.

Rating:
Summary: This one sets a new standard.
Review: There are two points of interest here, one being the life of Goethe, the second being the job that Boyle has done in presenting it. As to Boyle's work, I would be hard pressed to reconstruct the details of my own life with anything approaching the thoroughness provided here by Boyle. This is virtually a day to day account from birth to age 40, multidimensionally presented as Boyle meticulously places Goethe in the total context of his environment and provides us with the background to judge the development of the young Goethe as both artist and man. The faults of this biography, some of them existing by sheer volume and weight of content, are many and obvious. But, the imperfections are also in my view irrelevant to the tremendous accomplishment of the work as a whole. First, be informed that Boyle is a first rate intellect who is almost as able as his subject to a clarity of expression and penetrating insight that one finds only in the best minds. Boyle is possessed of the intellectual talent to provide a synthesis of man, history, environment, religious and philosophical ideas as well as standard universal human values and emotions, which makes this biography unique in its all encompassing presentation of its subject. It is apparent from the beginning that Boyle is attempting to provide to the reader the development in all phases as Goethe passes through age 40, which is when this book ends. Secondly, Boyle provides thorough scholarship and obvious effort. It seems that Boyle has read every published word written by Goethe and much that has been written about him, and in addition to the mere reading has studied and logically glued together and digested the life in all its dimensions. While many biographies purport the same, the extent taken here appears to me to be unmatched. The results of this highly energetic undertaking is basically to subsume whatever imperfections exist in the work to give us what undoubtedly is the best biography of Goethe,and, I suspect, also the best biography, period. This review would be incomplete without a word about my reaction to Goethe himself, for this is an author who sparks an unusual amount of attention on the other side of the Atlantic, and after reading of the first 40 years of his life I would say the stage had been set by then as to how Goethe would subsequently be called the German Shakespeare. One of the first to write a biography of Goethe in English was George Henry Lewes, better known as the husband of George Eliot of Middlemarch and Silas Marner fame. And, I must add, after reading Boyle's work that this is an entertaining and fascinating life backgrounded by a spectacular but little understood German culture of the time, as we witness Goethe, the determined agnostic attempt to find a meaning for his life without religion. How this is done in the first 40 years provides for the reader a rewarding, entertaining experience, and also much food for thought.

Rating:
Summary: This one sets a new standard.
Review: There are two points of interest here, one being the life of Goethe, the second being the job that Boyle has done in presenting it. As to Boyle's work, I would be hard pressed to reconstruct the details of my own life with anything approaching the thoroughness provided here by Boyle. This is virtually a day to day account from birth to age 40, multidimensionally presented as Boyle meticulously places Goethe in the total context of his environment and provides us with the background to judge the development of the young Goethe as both artist and man. The faults of this biography, some of them existing by sheer volume and weight of content, are many and obvious. But, the imperfections are also in my view irrelevant to the tremendous accomplishment of the work as a whole. First, be informed that Boyle is a first rate intellect who is almost as able as his subject to a clarity of expression and penetrating insight that one finds only in the best minds. Boyle is possessed of the intellectual talent to provide a synthesis of man, history, environment, religious and philosophical ideas as well as standard universal human values and emotions, which makes this biography unique in its all encompassing presentation of its subject. It is apparent from the beginning that Boyle is attempting to provide to the reader the development in all phases as Goethe passes through age 40, which is when this book ends. Secondly, Boyle provides thorough scholarship and obvious effort. It seems that Boyle has read every published word written by Goethe and much that has been written about him, and in addition to the mere reading has studied and logically glued together and digested the life in all its dimensions. While many biographies purport the same, the extent taken here appears to me to be unmatched. The results of this highly energetic undertaking is basically to subsume whatever imperfections exist in the work to give us what undoubtedly is the best biography of Goethe,and, I suspect, also the best biography, period. This review would be incomplete without a word about my reaction to Goethe himself, for this is an author who sparks an unusual amount of attention on the other side of the Atlantic, and after reading of the first 40 years of his life I would say the stage had been set by then as to how Goethe would subsequently be called the German Shakespeare. One of the first to write a biography of Goethe in English was George Henry Lewes, better known as the husband of George Eliot of Middlemarch and Silas Marner fame. And, I must add, after reading Boyle's work that this is an entertaining and fascinating life backgrounded by a spectacular but little understood German culture of the time, as we witness Goethe, the determined agnostic attempt to find a meaning for his life without religion. How this is done in the first 40 years provides for the reader a rewarding, entertaining experience, and also much food for thought.