Goethe

What is strange, too, he lived in a small town, in a petty state, in a defeated state, and in a time when Germany played no such leading part in the world's affairs as to swell the bosom of her sons with any metropolitan pride, such as might have cheered a French, or English, or once, a Roman or Attic genius. Yet there is no trace of provincial limitation in his muse. --Ralph Waldo Emerson, Goethe; or, the Writer, Representative Men (1850), Chapter 7


Goethe's Bright Circle, by Jay Parini, The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 11, 2007, review of Love, Life, Goethe: Lessons of the Imagination From the Great German Poet by John Armstrong