Goethe's Autobiography

Author: Liu Simu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-01-01
Features: In the history of world literature, Goethe is ranked alongside Dante and Shakespeare as the "Three Great Poets." He is recognized as one of the giants of world literature. After Goethe's death, the famous philosopher Heinrich Heine regarded it as the "end of the artistic era." The renowned literary figure Thomas Carlyle, in a letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson, said that like Dante, Goethe "hid a profound, prophetic sorrow." Napoleon, after meeting Goethe in Erfurt, said, "That is what a man truly is": not a ascetic, mystic, saint, recluse, Don Juan, or a poet of poets, but a person who strives wholeheartedly to achieve the highest form of the "common mortal."