ABSTRACT
Contact with these reminders of his youth has rejuvenated Goethe. He looks with astonishment at the old manuscripts of his Satyros, which his loyal, though often derided, friend Fritz Jacobi has sent him. ‘A document of the divine insolence of our early years’, he calls it. But it is not to be published for the moment, because it does not harmonize with the antique columns and architraves of his new teaching. Nevertheless Goethe grows pensive. Two lines keep running through his head: ‘Wir sind vielleicht zu antik gewesen - Nun wollen wir es moderner leseri (Perhaps we have been too tied to antiquity - now let us try to be more up-to-date). However much he may regard himself as part of history, he is still very far from finished with his life; indeed he feels one of his new skins growing.
