ABSTRACT
Among Goethe's novels, Wilhelm Meister's Years of Apprenticeship is the one most taken up with the relations between philosophy and art. For the moment suffice it to say that any discussion of the artist-philosopher that fails to take into account Goethe's place in the history of philosophy does so at its own peril. At the close of Wilhelm's premier production of Hamlet, a cast party has gathered, and the players join in drinking toasts to the evening's success. And while Mignon's sexually veiled verses suggest none other than Ophelia, the figure of Hamlet is played by Wilhelm, the surrogate father and dreamland lover of the would-be bride. On the question of Goethe's interpretation of Hamlet, Freud says the following: In the Oedipus the child's wishful fantasy that underlies is brought into the open and realized as it would be in a dream.
