ABSTRACT
The Wetzlar summer lasted four months. Goethe endures Frankfurt for another four years and then he breaks away for ever. But these four years are not years of inactivity; they constitute a period of ceaseless wandering, in the countryside and on paper, of constant meetings with new acquaintances, friends, patrons and young talents, of new loves and new escapes from these loves. It is the most tumultuous period of Goethe’s life; it is also the richest in creative activity. Much of this never got beyond plans or fragments, much has been lost, and some of it saw the light of day only after long wrestlings. Within the period the main themes of his æuvre are already in existence : Faust, Tasso and possibly Wilhelm Meister; Götz and Werther are completed and published, along with Singspiele, dramatic works, shrovetide plays, daring parodies and pamphlets, and poems. At the end of it his Collected Works, in three volumes, begin to appear, not collected by himself but in pirated editions, as was then the custom.
