Quote of the Day (Hermann Hesse, on ‘People With Courage and Character’)

“People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.” — German-Swiss Nobel Prize-winning novelist Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), Demian: A Dual-Language Book, translated by Stanley Appelbaum (1919)

Quote of the Day (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, on Nature and Art)

“Nature, it seems, must always clash with Art,
And yet, before we know it, both are one;
I too have learned: Their enmity is none,
Since each compels me, and in equal part.”— German man of letters Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), “Nature and Art” (c. 1800; published 1807), translated from the German by Michael Hamburger, in Selected Works (Everyman’s Library, 2000)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—born 275 years ago today in Frankfurt, Germany—was to German literature what William Shakespeare was to England’s and Alexander Pushkin to Russia’s—a titanic figure who decisively influenced its language and literary standing around the world.

But, because of his attitude to nature and art, he was so much more. I think that Goethe might have been the last of the Enlightenment figures who were able to make their marks in multiple fields.

Had he confined his endeavors to literature, Goethe still would have been acclaimed for his versatility in multiple genres: the novel (The Sorrows of Young Werther, a bestseller in 1774), travelogues (Italian Journey), drama (Faust), and assorted poems eventually set to music.

Like Thomas Jefferson—born only six years before—Goethe trained in the law before dabbling in science (he formulated the concept of morphology, a kind of forerunner to Darwin’s theory of evolution) and practicing statecraft (as an aide to Duke Carl August, who later became Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach).

I mentioned that he was an Enlightenment figure, but in another sense, he harked back to the Renaissance who could excel at multiple areas of endeavor. Besides the above activities, Goethe was also a skilled painter and, well into middle age, an enthusiastic athlete.

(For more on Goethe as Renaissance man, see this August 2020 post from the Sarkologist blog.)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, using Goethe as a representative of “The Writer” type in his seven lectures on Representative Men (1850), saw him as someone who “in conversation, in calamity…finds new materials” 

Such was his capacity, that the magazines of the world’s ancient or modern wealth, which arts and intercourse and skepticism could command,—he wanted them all. Had there been twice so much, he could have used it as well. Geologist, mechanic, merchant, chemist, king, radical, painter, composer,—all worked for him, and a thousand men seemed to look through his eyes. He learned as readily as other men breathe. Of all the men of this time, not one has seemed so much at home in it as he. He was not afraid to live.

Quote of the Day (Thomas Mann, on Space, Time, and Forgetfulness)

“Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state. Yes, it can even, in the twinkling of an eye, make something like a vagabond of the pedant and Philistine. Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.”—German novelist and Nobel Literature laureate Thomas Mann (1875-1955), The Magic Mountain, translated by H.T. Lowe-Porter (1924)

Quote of the Day (Thomas Mann, on Christmas Season in 19th Century Germany)

“The great dining-room was closed and mysterious, and there were marzipan and gingerbread to eat — and in the streets, Christmas had already come. Snow fell, the weather was frosty, and on the sharp clear air were borne the notes of the barrel-organ, for the Italians, with their velvet jackets and their black moustaches, had arrived for the Christmas feast. The shop-windows were gay with toys and goodies; the booths for the Christmas fair had been erected in the market-place; and wherever you went you breathed in the fresh, spicy odour of the Christmas trees set out for sale.”—German novelist and Nobel Literature laureate Thomas Mann (1875-1955), Buddenbrooks (1901), translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter (1924

Quote of the Day (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, on Trusting Yourself)

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”— German playwright, poet, and novelist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Faust, Part One, translated by John R. Williams (1808)

Seeing that quote, outside of its theatrical context, one might regard it with the same optimism and innocence as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” (And, indeed, in his essay collection Representative Men, the American admired the German man of letters so much as to offer him as an example of “The Writer.”) What could be wrong with that?

Well, wait. In Goethe’s tragedy Faust, the line is said by Mephistopheles—yes, the Devil himself. He may be more gentlemanly and witty than what one might expect, but he remains wheedling, calmly appealing to Faust’s belief in his own reason and scholar’s overweening vanity.

Self-confidence lies at the heart of the modern self-help movement. Yet it is crucial to remember that, unchecked by any outside restraint, that quality can lead to self-delusion, a refusal to recognize reality, and a willingness to use others for one’s own ends.

Quote of the Day (Thomas Mann, on ‘The Artist's Highest Joy’)

“Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought — these are the artist's highest joy.” — German novelist and Nobel Literature laureate Thomas Mann (1875-1955), Death in Venice, translated by H.T. Lowe-Porter (1911)

Bonus Quote of the Day (Thomas Mann, on a ‘Luminous’ Munich on the First Day of June)

“Munich was luminous. A radiant, blue-silk sky stretched out over the festive squares and white-columned temples, the neoclassical monuments and Baroque churches, the spurting fountains, the palaces and gardens of the residence, and the latter’s broad and shining perspectives, carefully calculated and surrounded by green, basked in the sunny haze of a first and lovely June day.”—German Nobel Literature laureate Thomas Mann (1875-1955), “Gladius Dei” (1902), in Death in Venice and Other Tales, translated by Joachim Neugroschel (1998)

This quote was too beautiful not to highlight on this day.

Quote of the Day (Heinrich Heine, on How ‘Dark Times are Rumbling Toward Us’)

“Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison.”—German poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), Lutetia; or, Paris. From the Augsberg Gazette, 12, VII (1842)

Quote of the Day (Thomas Mann, on a Wine Bottle--Beautiful Outside, Awful Inside)

“[T]he firm of Engelbert Krull paid unusual attention to the outside of their bottles, those final adornments that arc technically known as the coiffure. The compressed corks were secured with silver wire and gilt cords fastened with purplish-red wax; there was, moreover, an impressive round seal — such as one sees on ecclesiastical bulls, and old state documents — suspended from a gold cord; the necks of the battles were liberally wrapped in gleaming silver foil, and their swelling bellies bore a flaring label with gold flourishes round the edges. This label had been designed for the firm my godfather Schimmelpreester and bore a number of coat of arms and stars, my father’s monogram, the brand name, Loreley extra cuvee, all in gold letters, and a female figure, arrayed only in bangles and necklaces, sitting with legs crossed on top of a rock, her arm raised in the act of combing her flowing hair. Unfortunately it appears that the quality of the wine was not entirely commensurate with the splendour of its coiffure. ‘Krull,’ I have heard my godfather Schimmelpreester say to my father, ‘with all due respect to you, your champagne ought to be forbidden by law. Last week I let myself be talked into drinking half a bottle, and my system hasn’t recovered from the shock yet. What sort of vinegar goes into that brew? And do you use petroleum or fusel oil to doctor it with? The stuff’s simply poison. Look out for the police!’”—German novelist and Nobel Literature laureate Thomas Mann (1875-1955), Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, translated by Denver Lindley (1955),

Quote of the Day (Thomas Mann, on the Exclusivity of Stories)

“Not every story happens to everyone.”—German Nobel Prize-winning novelist, short-story writer, and essayist Thomas Mann (1875-1955), in his introduction to The Magic Mountain (1924)

Quote of the Day (Thomas Mann, on Europe on Edge, 100 Years Ago)

“It was a spring afternoon in that year of grace 19-, when Europe sat upon the anxious seat beneath a menace that hung over its head for months.” — German novelist and Nobel Literature laureate Thomas Mann (1875-1955), Death in Venice (1911)

It might be more appropriate for today’s “menace”—nationalism/fascism revived—to appear while we wait for the cold of winter to arrive…

Quote of the Day (Thomas Mann, on Why Speech is ‘Civilization Itself’)

“Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact — it is silence which isolates.”— German novelist and Nobel Literature laureate Thomas Mann (1875-1955), The Magic Mountain (1924)