GOETHE

JOHANN WOLFGANG von GOETHE*
(1749-1832)
(A Biographical Poem)
*pron. Gerta

What is poetry without romance?
abstractions without people?
Philosophy without insight?
Courtesy without love?

So it was with Goethe:

Brilliance without admirers;
Humorless French theatrics
that mimicked Greek tragedies;
A Napoleonic perception that tragedy
only befalls royals and monarchs
thus keeping their subjects in awe;

Goethe’s poetry is filled with alchemy and darkness depicting conflict, dread, and tragedy.
Among his poems,
- “It is Good,” is a conflict among Adam, Eve, and God;
- “Dance of the Dead;”
- “To Luna,” where spirits wake at night;
- “The Fisherman,” who meets his fate by the lure of the siren’s bait.
All eventually leading to the infamous debate
between Mephistopheles and God
about the worth of man, who is always destroyed under God’s grand plan.

Thus began the dark struggles of FAUST!

He, a God-fearing man seduced by Mephistopheles,
by willing his soul to Hades.
But God’s heavenly restraints win out.
Despite Faust’s newly restored youth, wealth, scintillating sex, and fame,
after the fun…his soul is redeemed, and God wins the game.

A devoted author of Weimar Classicism
in a privileged German-Jewish heritage,
Goethe lived a life of tragic formulations
always haunted by a stern father’s aspirations.
Six languages by the age of eight,
philosophy, medicine, and law by eighteen,
self reliant and unconstrained he fell deathly ill,
returned home to struggle with health, love
family aspirations, and new social skills.
Transformed by this turmoil, his coherent vision
of good and bad produced a remarkable Dicter**
who influenced freund** Frederich Schiller
on his poems of death:

- The Secret Ring of Polycrates;
- Nadowession Death, and
- A Funeral Phantasy,
inspiring Schiller to write Tales of William
Tell, and Don Carlos, both as with Faust stories and operas of great poignancy.
Alas, Geothe’s wish to be buried alongside Schiller
who predeceased him.
A fitting end to this Greek tragedy, but that was verboten**.








** Poet, friend, forbidden, resp.