“Hegel… Nietzsche, Freud, and ]ung were steeped in Goethe’s life and works”

In his own country the impact of the greatest poet always exceeds that of any philosopher. Homer, Vergil, Dante, and Shakespeare have no philosophical counterparts; neither does Goethe. He helped to shape the imagination of his people, including millions who never read a line of Kant's. Yet Goethe differs from most other poets in that he also had an immense influence on philosophy and the discovery of the mind. Even philosophy professors in the English-speaking world rarely have enough German to read Goethe for pleasure. If his impact were due to a few short texts, quite a number of scholars would be able to read those. People who read Kant in translation rarely realize how badly he wrote and how obscure he is. The lucid simplicity of much of Goethe's best verse, on the other hand, loses in translation. Rilke' s often very difficult poems are easier to render into English than Goethe's usually exceptionally clear lines.