The 3 best books by the great Goethe

When trying to identify the best writer in a country, it is best to resort to the consensus of the cultural sphere of that country. And in the German case the absolute majority determines Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as the greatest storyteller who was born and stepped on that land.

Who knows if that social transcendence was his ultimate intention. What is clear is that with his works he sought existential transcendence, immortality. His Faust, a world masterpiece, penetrates through the mists into the world of wisdom, knowledge, morality, everything that concerns the human being in his most complete and complex evolutionary process.

However Goethe was a romantic, the largest of all, probably. And that implied a spiritual intention even toward the esoteric. Goethe's intention would be more than to end up being a learned author, but to achieve the label of a writer who travels through the human soul, towards heaven or hell. It is not so much about finding empirical answers or dogmatic intentions, but rather about gathering subjective experiences and perceptions of overwhelming richness.

Because to know ... science was already there, in whose various branches this prodigious author also made inroads. From the strictly anatomical such as optics and osteology to chemistry or geology. No doubt Goethe rode his concerns as best he could, always looking for new fields in which to find out and learn. As a synthesis of his enormous capacity, Goethe also opted for politics, when to be a politician he sought the most cultivated and gifted ...

Goethe lived to be 82 years old. And the romantic writing thing lasted as long as it did. In his last years as a literary creator, little of that captivating romantic remained and the most classicist author emerged, the normal thing for an author who rode between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries. In so many years of life, his testimony was fundamental to the history of Europe. Influenced by many other authors and considered, probably along with Leonardo Da Vinci, the most intelligent man in history ...

Top novels by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

auspicious

Faust was always the mythological figure of human vanity, of boundless will and ambition. What is paradoxical about Faust is that this all-encompassing intention is as positive as it is negative.

And from this rich proposal that is the mere character, Goethe knew how to create one of the greatest novels, capable of encompassing all ideas of the human being, from the most ambitious to the most cowardly.

Because there is always a reason to act and to behave. We are all a bit of a Faust, capable of considering selling our soul to the devil in exchange for enjoying a full life. Fullness is always a matter of satisfying our wills of knowledge, and in that we are leaving our lives ...

The compensation is the habitation of our being by the devil..., but that will be in another life, once you have left this world with your feet first and a cold smile for having achieved everything, from maximum knowledge to knowledge. of all pleasure. That was Fausto's idea, his reason for selling his soul. And yet, in Faust we find the deepest frustration of existing.

After all, the devil knows what there is in terms of our limitations by knowing everything and encompassing everything. Goethe knew how to elevate this myth to the category of the maximum drama of the human, at the height of the Divine Comedy of Dante.

Goethe's Faust

Wilhelm Meister's Learning Years

This very interesting novel is buried by Fausto. It is more than likely that having been written by many writers in history, it would have risen to the level of the greatest work, but in the case of Goethe, it remains in second place... And that, as I say, this novel has a lot of greatness.

The wise writer leads the character in an allegory of learning in all areas, from the most particular to the most concerning wisdom, empiricism, knowledge of the environment. Good old Wihelm Meister talks with great sages, reflects on what he has learned.

But the character also knows the artistic manifestations and enters the natural to seek the essence of everything. And despite that pedagogical appearance there is a lot of intimacy, of deciphering the person who advances on his path, of adventure of living.

Wilhelm Meister's Learning Years

Young Werther's Misadventures

In Goethe's time writing romance novels was something else. It was a long time before the pink provided the triviality and the strictly sensory (hey, welcome to the current genre).

Love as an argument in Goethe's time was existentialism at its finest. The epistolary construction of this book allows a first-person approach to the passions and sufferings of love.

The moral greatness of the human being in love and the tragedy of collapse as an approach to the worst instincts of hatred, revenge or self-destruction.

Love can be a fertile field to share or a desolate wasteland of sensations capable of conquering all reason, all will. Werther and Carlota, plus Werther's brother, Guillermo.

Between the three of them a love story is built that invites us to see beyond the letters, to feel the sender's fist on the reader's own experiences.

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