Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is often remembered only as a figure of literary genius, with little relevance to the way we live today. Yet Goethe was driven by much more than the desire for literary success- he wanted (much the same as us) to live life well. In Love, Life, Goethe, John Armstrong subtly and imaginatively explores the ways that we can learn from Goethe, whether in love, suffering, friendship or family. At the centre of this project is happiness- in an imperfect world, how can we live well with what we have, and accept what we haven't? From our lives at home, to our relationships, the politicians we choose, and our relationship with money, John Armstrong explores the main themes of our lives through the life of Goethe, and helps us learn how to live.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is often remembered only as a figure of literary genius, with little relevance to the way we live today. Yet Goethe was driven by much more than the desire for literary success- he wanted (much the same as us) to live life well. In Love, Life, Goethe, John Armstrong subtly and imaginatively explores the ways that we can learn from Goethe, whether in love, suffering, friendship or family. At the centre of this project is happiness- in an imperfect world, how can we live well with what we have, and accept what we haven't? From our lives at home, to our relationships, the politicians we choose, and our relationship with money, John Armstrong explores the main themes of our lives through the life of Goethe, and helps us learn how to live.

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.

For readers of Colm Toibin’s The Master and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, a witty, moving, tender novel of impossible love and the mysterious ways of art. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is so famous his servant auctions off snippets of his hair and children and adults recite from his many works by memory. When he was a young poet, his first novel, a story of love and romantic fervor ending in suicide, was an international blockbuster that set off a wave of self-inflicted deaths across Europe. Now seventy-three, sought after and busy with scientific pursuits and responsibilities to the Grand Duke, he has fallen in love with a nineteen-year-old, Ulrike von Levetzov. Infatuated, at the spa in Marienbad, he seeks her out. They exchange glances, witty words. In the social swirl, they find each other. On the promenade, they parade together arm in arm. Time spent away from her is sleepless, and when they kiss, it is in the “Goethian” way, from his books: a matter of souls, not mouths or lips. And yet, his years fail him. At an afternoon tea party, a younger man tries to seduce her. At a costume ball, he collapses. When he proposes nonetheless, Ulrike and her mother are already preparing to leave. Caught in a storm of emotion and torn between despair and unwillingness to give up hope, he begins an elegy in his coach as he pursues her: “The Marienbad Elegy,” one of his last great works.

Examines the major themes of the work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in terms of his own life story and explains how his poetry resonates in the present with its depictions of the human yearning for happiness, friendship, and family.

'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.