Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1912-02-01


best know and understand the English
Shakespeare Indeed some Gernmls
have said that Shakespeare belongs etos
them by right of intellectual con-
quest: they claim themselves inheri-
tors of his genius.
Perhaps it is true that Goethea
philosophy is self confessed. wnelc
Shakespeare hides itself-after the re-
served habit of his people. Few writ
ers have hidden themselves behind
their works, as Shakespeare did, all
uneonscioasy, as seems evident
Goethe's great romance, wilhelm
Meister." is no doubt in deep sense
|autobiographic, the record not SO
much in outward event as in inward
development, of that life experience
which he knew in himself. Perhaps
one might say that Goethe understood
mankind by looking into himself.
Shakespeare stood apart and looked at
his fellows with sympathetic, discern
ing eyes. all his self consciousness abb
sorbed in his art.
No one can read Goethes prose
without feeling that he thought and
felt under similar conditions what his
Werther and Wilhelm think ana feel.
one of his books is named Aus
Meinem Leben, Dichtung una Wahr-
heit" (Poetry and Truth out of my
Life). Goethc's poems are in this
point far more intimate of course than
anything of Shakespeare's except the
problcmtatic sonnets.
In everything of the great Germans
indeed. we feel himself speaking to us.
He knows these things because he has
lived and learned them.~>t;oethe's
"t'aust" is universal indeed, and yet
very German. Shakespeare's greatest
men might belong to any race or age,
SO are they sheer human nature de
clarcd. Such personality as Faust
can hardly be imagined among Eng
| llshmen, and when Shakespeare want
ed 10 use some Of the external ma
terials which Goethe finds so natural
a medium to express his German hero.
Shakespeare called Prospero the Duke
of Milan. The Tempest" is neccs-
sarily a domain of sheercst fancy
rathen than of philosophic magma
ton. Indeed there is nothing in
Shakespeare which exaets that one
shall think, search himself deeply. as
one must search te read Faust"
Any one can read any of Shakespeare
and enjoy the drama without dipping
below the surface though the depths
| are there. But one must be in love
with philosophy to get at Goethe at
al.
Schiller told Goethe that his concept
of what his hero Faust should type
was far too vast to be covered by a
single drama. Goethe sought to
epitomize all real human experience in
the single German savant. Shake
spare was. perhaps too much the
artist to attempt this in any one char
acter. His whole product of plays
seems needed TO declare all that he
saw in the human heart and thought
and in the working of environment
and the interplay of event with its re-
| action upon character. Goethe tried
to get it all into one drama, and
| therefore. his work had to use type
and symbol as shorthand, so To
speak, which are to be interpreted
His close wrought web of thought de-
mands slower study than Shake
speare's simpler. freer and more open
method of work.
Of course comparison between the
two artists is impossible. save as each
sums the highest genius of his people
Shakespeare was in manner surely the
expression of his simpler time. and
Browning in English is perhaps near
er the real animus of Goethe. But by
promoting better study Of the great
German this new impulse at Cornell.
where German literature has always
been emma sized must ott,. ~, ,,-i,oI.
OF American thought To interest in Il
great literature that is by no means
sutilclemly known in the United
stateS.-chrlstian Science Monitor.
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