First published by Wordsworth Editions 1999 and 2007. First published by Princeton University Press in 2016.

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Economist and Kirkus Reviews This “splendid biography” (Wall Street Journal) of Goethe presents his life and work as an essential touchstone for the modern age. A masterful intellectual portrait, Goethe: Life as a Work of Art is celebrated as the seminal twenty-first-century biography of the writer considered to be the Shakespeare of German literature. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), a remarkably prolific poet, playwright, novelist, and—as Rüdiger Safranksi emphasizes—a statesman and naturalist, first awakened not only a burgeoning German nation but the European continent with his electrifying novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Safranski has scoured Goethe’s entire oeuvre, relying exclusively on primary sources, including his correspondence with contemporaries, to produce a “fresh and authentic” (Economist) portrait of the avatar of the Romantic era. Skillfully blending “artistic analysis with swift, sharp renderings” of the great political and intellectual figures Goethe encountered, “[Safranski’s] portrait of the prolific genius leaves the reader with lasting awe, even envy” of a monumental legacy (The New Yorker). As Safranski ultimately shows, Goethe’s greatest creation, even in comparison to his masterpiece Faust, was his own life.

Contains a brief biography of Goethe, a collection of some of his best-known works, and a sampling of his personal correspondence. Includes his four major works, together with a selection of his finest letters and poems. The Sorrows of Young Werther is a story of self-destructive love that made its author a celebrity overnight at the age of twenty-five. Its exploration of the conflicts between ideas and feelings, between circumstance and desire, continues in his controversial novel probing the institution of marriage, Elective Affinities. The cosmic drama of Faust goes far beyond the realism of the novels in a poetic exploration of good and evil, while Italian Journey, written in the author's old age, recalls his youth in Italy and the effect of Mediterranean culture on a young northerner. Translators include W. H. Auden, Louise Bogan, David Constantine, Barker Fairley, and Elizabeth Mayer.

Much has been written about the golden youth and the Olympian old age of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, poet; less has been written, however, about Goethe the scientist, who, pursuing independent research in many fields, opposed the professional men of his day with brilliant theories of his own. The educated world, familiar with Faust, Werther, and Wilhelm Meister, is not so generally aware of the scientific achievements of the man who had a genus of plants (Goethea) and a mineral (goethite) named for him who coined and first used the word morphology; who contributed to the understanding of the physiology of color; who rediscovered and described the intermaxillary bone in man, propounded the vertebral theory of the skull, formulated a concept in botanical morphology that persists to this day; who discovered the volcanic origin of a mountain; who established the first system of weather stations; who made the first systematic classification of minerals and was among the first to use the comparative method in biology; and who came unwittingly close to achieving the greatest concept in biology—some say the greatest concept in the thinking of man—the theory of organic evolution and the descent of man. Even in those few cases where subsequent research has proved Goethe’s theories to be wrong, his supporting accumulation of facts has proved extremely valuable to science. Goethe was born at the beginning of a great scientific era. But he was a creative thinker; his was not the analytic mind that emphasized fine differences but the synthetic mind that sensed the unity behind the differences. He was also an ardent lover of nature, possessed of unlimited curiosity. Consequently, as a contemporary observed, "Whatever Goeth looked upon in nature immediately acquired the character of a living experience for him." Most of the material translated in this volume is taken from notes and essays which Goethe published from 1817 to 1824 in journal form. Occupying a central position is the most famous and lasting of his scientific writings, the essay on the metamorphosis of plants—an essay which is today considered "one of the minor classics of botany." One of the most important episodes in Goethe's life was his flight to Italy, where he was delighted by the climate and the luxuriance of the plant life. A fan palm in particular attracted his attention because its leaves seemed to exhibit a complete series of transitions from the simple lance-shaped first leaves to the most complex fan type. "At my request," Goethe wrote in his diary, "the gardener cut off an entire sequence of modifications for me, and I burdened myself with several pasteboard containers in which to carry these treasures around." From this beginning Goethe started to evolve his theory of plant metamorphosis, and he returned to Weimar convinced that he had found the secret. The literary student will find much to interest him in this translation—the poet's own account of his grief and suffering at the hands of misunderstanding friends, and his victory over a threatening neurosis. Such essays as "The History of My Botanical Studies" and "The Fate of My Manuscript" throw much light on the crucial middle period of Goethe's life. During Goethe's lifetime and after, there was a tendency to ignore his scientific accomplishments in the face of his literary works. Many felt that they were almost a crime against his poetry. A few, however, contended that in science lay the center and focal point of Goethe's mental life. Goethe, himself, toward the end of his life wrote, "For more than a half century I have been known as a poet, in my own country and undoubtedly also abroad; or at any rate I have been permitted to pass for one. But the fact that I have busily occupied myself with Nature in all her general physical and organic phenomena, constantly and passionately pursuing seriously formulated studies—this is not so generally known; still less has it been accorded any attention." "Minds like Goethe's," Thomas Carlyle said, "are the common property of all nations; and, for many reasons, all should have correct impressions of them." This translation will enable those not familiar with the German language to gain a direct impression of Goethe's mind as expressed in his botanical writings.

'Shall I embrace you, must I let you go? Again you haunt me: come then, hold me fast!' Goethe viewed the writing of poetry as essentially autobiographical and the works selected in this volume represent over sixty years in the life of the poet. In early poems such as 'Prometheus' he rails against religion in an almost ecstatic fervour, while 'To the Moon' is an enigmatic meditation on the end of a love affair. The Roman Elegies show Goethe's use of Classical metres in homage to abcient Rome and its poets, and 'The Diary' , supressed for more than a century, is a narrative poem whose eroticism is unusually combined with its morality. Arranged chronologically, David Luke's verse translations are set alonjgside the German orginals to give a picture of Goethe's poetic development. This edition also includes an introduction and notes placing the poems in the context of the poet's life and times.

Arranged chronologically, David Luke's verse translations are set alongside the German originals to give a picture of Goethe's poetic development.

Exceptionally fine poetry by Germany's greatest literary figure, from his earliest, "An den Schlaf" ("To Sleep"), written when he was 18, to his last great poem, "Verdächtnis" ("Legacy"), written when he was 80.

Part of an exhaustive series which provides English translations of a representative proportion of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's vast body of work, this volume contains such essays as "On Gothic Architecture", "On the Laocoon" and "Shakespeare: a Tribute."