Emerson called him "the greatest writer who ever lived." Claudel considered him a "great solemn ass." Jung pronounced him "a prophet." Evelyn Waugh dismissed him as a "wayward dabbler in philosophy." Valery said he was "one of the luckiest throws that fate has ever allowed the human race to make."
The enormous enigma of Johann Wolfgang Goethe has bewildered and fascinated two centuries of Western culture. In Germany he is worshiped as a demi-divinity; Albert Schweitzer, for instance, modeled much of his life on Goethe's. Yet in the English-speaking world his works are...
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