ABSTRACT
1793, the forty-third year of his life, marks the end of Goethe’s active participation in world affairs. During his remaining forty years he stays within the narrow confines of Weimar, leaving the little town only for his annual visit to one of the Bohemian spas, or for short journeys to the Rhine or the Main. He takes cognizance of contemporary events only in so far as it is absolutely necessary. In the twelve years of his correspondence with Schiller, who now becomes his great friend and colleague, even the name Bonaparte, which is one everybody’s lips, is scarcely mentioned; anyone expecting to glean a picture of the times from the six volumes of these letters will be sadly disappointed. They are concerned with quite other matters. The fundamental problems of poetics are discussed: rules and laws for it are to be drawn up; epic and dramatic poetry are to be kept distinct and separate. A new classicism is to be created, co-equal with that of the ancients. Above all the two men practise the most searching self-analysis; the correspondence is a dialogue, with no other participants, carried on in solitude, on a high and lonely plateau where neither tree nor shrub is to be seen. If colleagues are mentioned they are for the most part literary hacks or insignificant mediocrities; if there is any mention of the public, of the Germans, it is in terms of utter contempt.
