ABSTRACT
With the Farbenlehre Goethe has freed himself from the greatest burden of his life and from his only great enemy and opponent. Now he can breathe, His anger remains till the end of his life, and is vented from time to time in epigrams, letters and conversation, but these are only rumblings after the storm. One fact remains still to be noticed: Goethe wrote the book during the years when his physical condition was at its worst; he had grown fat and flabby and was often ill, twice, in 1801 and 1805, severely so, the first time with erysipelas, the second time with angina followed by kidney trouble. Out of this heavy body, with its paunch, its pendulous cheeks and its bags under the eyes, there now gradually emerges the much slimmer Goethe of the closing years, the very epitome of a splendid and magnificent old man; it is thus that he has been described and painted by the many visitors to his imposing house on the Frauenplan.
