Almanac of Story Tellers: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of Aug. 28th

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    It is the 240th day of the year, leaving 125 days remaining in 2022.

 

    On this date in 1749, the German writer  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in Frankfurt, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire.

    He is considered one of the premier writers and thinkers of his period, and helped usher in the Romantic period in European literature. He remains the foremost representative of that style, which emphasized the individual, subjectivity, and emotionalism. In the German tongue, it was called Sturm und Drang, and Goethe was its foremost practitioner.

    In addition to writing plays, poems, and novels, Goethe also was a scholar of the science and the arts, writing on botany, anatomy, and color theory.

    To the modern world, he is perhaps best known for his lyrical poem, Faust, also a play in two parts, which he wrote between 1772 and 1831 (the second part was published after his death). It is considered one of the greatest works of German literature, and edited versions have been performed innumerable times since, in multiple languages. Both parts are rarely performed at once.

    In brief, the play begins with god debating whether Mephistopheles, an agent of the devil, can led astray the Lord's favorite scholar. The ensuing drama, with an array of lyric, epic, operatic, and balletic elements, builds on that premise. 

    One of Goethe's early novels is considered the first of the Sturm und Drang novels, and one of his better works. The Sorrows of Young Werther, published in 1774, is about a young man's response to unrequited love. It was widely popular in Europe, sometimes described as the first best-seller.

    But Goethe revised the novel a dozen years later, and after a while, he disowned it, regretting the attention it brought to him and others as it was somewhat autobiographical.

    Goethe died in 1832 in Weimar, then a part of the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.