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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.

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Publisher: Liveright

Kindle Book

  • Release date: May 16, 2017

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9780871404916
  • File size: 3183 KB
  • Release date: May 16, 2017

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9780871404916
  • File size: 3183 KB
  • Release date: May 16, 2017

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Formats

Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

Languages

English

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.

Expand title description text