Гёте – Завет

Legacy is the title of a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that he wrote in 1829. Since the volumes of poetry in the first-hand edition were completed two years ago, he placed it in volume 22 at the end of the second part of his novel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre , with which it is internally connected.

The late work , written in Goethe’s 80th year of life, is regarded as a poetic testament, [1] in which he presented the sum of his knowledge and experiences and finally arranged many motifs from his older work. [2]

The work emerged from Goethe’s contradiction to a previous poem. Eckermann wrote on February 12, 1829 that Goethe was annoyed that the last two lines of the poem Eins und Alles, written in 1821, were exhibited in golden letters on the occasion of a congress of Berlin natural scientists : “Because everything has to disintegrate into nothing if it wants to persist in being . ” [3]

He was not bothered by the older poem itself, but by the striking emphasis and absolutization of the ending, which could have been interpreted Mephistophelically : [4] “I am the spirit that always denies! / And rightly so; because everything that arises / is worth it to perish; … ” [5]

Heraclitus, in the figure of Michelangelo , detailed view from Raphael’s The School of Athens (1510–1511), fresco in the Stanza della Segnatura , Vatican

While One and All sings about the eternal flow of things in Heraclitus’ tone and extols the power of change in the sense of the Hegelian dialectic , Goethe now wants to look for the constant. [6] In the first verse, he contradicts with antithetical reference (as a negation of negation ) to the earlier work: “No being can disintegrate into nothing!”. [7]

In the last edition he placed the classical poem duration in alternation , written as early as 1803 , [8] in which the Panta rhei Heraclitus is also addressed, immediately before one and all . A series of beautiful images of transience pass by, rain of blossoms, fruits and love, threatened by storm and rain , age and time – but in the end, in keeping with the classic ideal, the muse promises constancy and reason inner freedom.

So it is not just a mere contradiction in the legacy : Goethe presents a different, more advanced perspective and world view and also took up thoughts of Immanuel Kant . If the wish to persist in the earlier poem led to decay, the essence of beings can now be preserved through all change.

The first stanza reads: [9]

No being can disintegrate into nothing!
Ew’ge moves forward in everyone,
Keep yourself happy in being!
Being is eternal; for laws
keep the living treasures
from which the universe is adorned.

First, Goethe addresses the eternity of being, the truth and the Copernican laws of the solar system and, in the further course of the poem, connects them with the conscience , feeling and social responsibility of the individual who has to turn inward.

Meaning and interpretation

Immanuel Kant

Since Goethe was far from Kant’s systematic unconditionality, he formulated no categorical imperatives, but recommendations for life of good behavior. [10]

According to Friedrich Dieckmann , he wanted to protect being from nothingness and thus oppose the faint-heartedness, disgruntlement and social resignation that showed themselves to him after the Napoleonic Wars . He lacked strength and courage. He told Eckermann that the weak was “a characteristic of our century. I have the hypothesis that in Germany it is a consequence of the effort to get rid of the French ”. The Germans would be helped if they were taught “following the example of the English, less philosophy and more energy, less theory and more practice.” [11]

Eckhard Heftrich observes that the introspection and the talk of an independent conscience, which follow the view of the solar system, initially seem like a poetic design by Kant. For him, however, it remains questionable whether the “center” corresponds to the categorical imperative . Goethe accepted philosophy, but he was a poet according to his own will, trusted the senses and made the true dependent on the fertile . The insights as a poet in moments of Cairo therefore remain secrets that are unique to the wisereveal. Despite numerous parallels to other writings, Goethe’s poetic quintessence is neither an idea nor a thought poem. For him, the magic lies in the rhythm of the lines, which unobtrusively only serves to convey the message. [12]

For Erich Trunz , the contradiction to the Heraclitic poem is only an apparent one. While Goethe deals with the dissolution of the individual there, the legacy is about the whole, in which the individual remains in a changed form. A feeling of happiness fills him when he looks at the general and recognizes the connections of the cosmos. [13]The idea that nature manages its treasures and lets them work can also be found in his scientific writings. It is the task of man to research the laws of nature. The fact that the truth “had long been found” is for Trunz an allusion to Copernicus , who was also part of a spiritual tradition, as it was Aristarchus of Samos who, 1800 years earlier, had expressed the heliocentric worldview without having been recognized. After man has recognized the natural law of heaven, he discovers in himself the moral law of conscience. It is precisely here that Kant’s influence with his sentence from the Critique of Practical Reason isto recognize: “Two things fill the mind with ever newer and increasing admiration and awe … The starry sky above me, and the moral law in me.” [14]

Secondary literature
Friedrich Dieckmann : Imperatives of the fulfilled moment. In: Interpretations, poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Reclam, Ed. Bernd Witte, Stuttgart 2005, pp. 282–306
Gero von Wilpert : Legacy. In: ders .: Goethe-Lexikon (= Kröner’s pocket edition . Volume 407). Kröner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-520-40701-9 , p. 1112.
Weblinks

Гёте – Завет

Гёте — Завет

Goethe — Vermächtnis

A Legacy by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

ЗАВЕЩАНИЕ — ГЁТЕ, буквальный перевод на русский

A review of the Vermächtnis in English

Гёте – Завет

Гёте — Завет

Goethe — Vermächtnis

A Legacy by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

ЗАВЕЩАНИЕ — ГЁТЕ, буквальный перевод на русский

A review of the Vermächtnis in English

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