Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/315

 Reviews and Notes 309 great ease, "und durfte glauben die Autoren zu verstehen, weil mir am buchstablichen Sinne nichts abging." It is of interest to modern language teachers that Goethe learned the Latin as he did the German, "nur aus dem Gebrauch, ohne Regel und ohne Begriff. " And without grammar, "mir schien alles naturlich zuzugehen, ich behielt die Worte, ihre Bildungen und Umbildungen in Ohr und Sinn, und bediente mich der Sprache mit Leichtigkeit zum Schreiben und Schwatzen." The Iliad and the Odyssey were an almost inexhaustible source of interest and study to Goethe; he devoted an astonish- ing amount of time to them. From early boyhood to his very last years he was almost constantly in intimate touch with the Homeric poems; his interest was especially active from 1770 to 1775, during the Italian journey, from 1793 to 1798, and in 1820-1821. He never grows weary of expressing his admiration for Homer's naturalness. A great part of his attention is taken up by various translations of Homer: Clarke, Stolberg, Bodmer, Burger, Zauper, Monti, Hiille, and principally Voss; he is also interested in the editions of Ernesti, Wetstein, Mai, and Wolf; in the works on Homer of Creuzer, Schaufelberger, Blackwell, and especially Wolf's Prolegomena and Schubarth's Ideen uber Homer und seine Zeit. The Achilleis, Nausikaa, some transla- tions, an epitome of the Iliad, are Goethe's own productions in this connection. He was deeply interested in the struggle over the Homeric question; at first he weakly resisted the new theory as propounded by Wolf, but accepted it half-heartedly in 1796 (pp. 45-47). In Greek lyric poetry, Pindar seems the only one, and temporarily Anacreon whose ode to the cicada he translates in 1781, who has real attraction for Goethe. In 1772 he translates the fifth Olympian ode. In 1804, Goethe places Pindar, as a representative of plastic (classic) art, at the side of Homer, Sophocles, and Shakspere. While Pindar never was a prominent factor in his life, yet Pindar continued to hold a high place in his estimation to the end. Goethe expressed some of his warmest praise of Pindar after his seventieth year. Sappho's poetry remained a closed book to Goethe. Keller offers a plausible explanation for this strange neglect (p. 51). The great Attic tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, are the object of Goethe's profound admiration. In fact, to him, Greek tragedy means the works of these three poets. His own humility when measuring himself against them is shown in a letter to Zahn (Sept. 7, 1827): "Ich glaube auch etwas geleistet zu haben, aber gegen einen der groszen attischen Dichter, wie Aeschylos und Sophokles, bin ich doch gar nichts." Goethe's interest in Aeschylus awakens early, but it does not continue steadily; not until the completion in 1816 of