Torquato Tasso (1790)
... and other works from Goethe.
The name "Goethe" keeps coming up. He seems to have been one of those figures in history whose influence has seeped everywhere, but who, at least in American culture, isn't directly relevant. Prior to this expedition I could probably have made the connection between Goethe and Faust, but certainly not more than that. But something about his work seems to be directly relevant to me and my interests, so I stuck his name on my "to read" list.
And that name stayed on that list for quite a while, until finally I ran across it enough times to reach critical mass. I found a copy of "The Essential Goethe" and started in. Unfortunately, I did not finish it.
Goethe was, primarily, a playwright. He was born in 1749 in Germany and died there in 1832. He is considered to be the "Shakespeare of Germany", or perhaps the "Dante of Germany". Reading about him and his work gives the sense that German literary and philosophic culture can be split into before-Goethe and after-Goethe; his "Faust" is regarded particularly highly as both a play and a poem. This tidbit [0] specifically caught my eye:
His Faust, though eminently stageworthy when suitably edited, is also Europe’s greatest long poem since John Milton’s Paradise Lost, if not since Dante’s The Divine Comedy.
All three of Europe's greatest long poems feature a main character going to hell. There's something there.
The Essential Goethe did not contain all of Goethe's plays, only (what I assume are) the most important ones. Faust was of course included, but it didn't stand out to me much. Part of the problem could well be in the translation; Goethe wrote in german, and all of his work was heavily poetic. I would be very willing to accept that much was lost in translating to English and that The Original Was Better. Maybe one day I'll learn german to find out.
The other works featured in The Essential Goethe included Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, his most notable novel, and collections of essays and journals from his travels in Italy. I only managed to get halfway through Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, which is quite long. The story centers on the life of a naive bourgeois playwright in 18th century Germany (write what you know, I guess), who bumbles around alternately making poor choices and giving sermons about The Theater that are only thinly disguised essays from Goethe himself, plus a lot of praise for Shakespeare to fill the gaps. Perhaps you have to be a real theater expert to properly appreciate this book, but I'm not.
By the time I burned out of the novel I didn't have the energy for travel journals or essays on rocks (he has a real interest in geology, apparently), and I left the collection there.
So perhaps Goethe isn't for me, except for one particular play: Torquato Tasso.
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Tasso was in fact a real poet in 16th century Italy, and Goethe's play depicts the critical point of his life where he apparently went insane and was exiled from the court of his patron. The real circumstances around this event aren't known, but Goethe uses it as a framework to stage an excellent character drama pitting the titular poet, a genius who's come from a lower class to live in the court of nobility, against a courtier/diplomat named Antonio. Needless to say, he is completely outmatched.
The aspect of this play which struck me above all the others was the subtlety in the dialogue, especially that which features Antonio. As can be expected of a diplomat, Antonio speaks kindly, gently, and politely always, even when he is ruthlessly side-lining Tasso in the court. It's subtle enough that the audience might not even be sure Antonio's doing it, at least until Tasso confronts him directly, leading eventually to Tasso's demise. It's a real testament to the author that such a complex dynamic can be read so clearly even through a translated script.
The other characters, especially the two Eleanoras (yes, the two female leads have the same name), do their best to help Tasso, and they come across as honest but ultimately a bit naive. The gentleness and kindness they show Tasso in the first act is contrasted with their helplessness in the face of Tasso's apparently insane behavior in the final act, and they can do nothing but move on with their lives as Tasso is left behind. Certainly the tragic hero of the story is Tasso, who loses everything, but the Eleanoras also lose a dear friend and bright light in their lives.
Torquato Tasso is relatively short, and like all good work there's not really much to say about it except that it's just good. The story is simple and moves quickly, and the characters execute their roles in that story perfectly. There were other plays from Goethe that the same could be said for, and which I enjoyed greatly; Egmont and Iphigenia in Tauris both come to mind. But Torquato Tasso showed off most what I saw to be Goethe's strengths: characters and the dramatic interplay between them.
Appendix
[0] Encyclopedia Britannica: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Published 2024-12-05
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