GOETHE AFTER TWO HUNDRED YEARS
KOHN, HANS
Goethe After Two Hundred Years Reviewed by HANS KOHN GOETHE. WISDOM AND EXPERIENCE. Selections by Ludwig Curtixu. Edited by Hermann J. Weigand. 290 pp. New York: Pantheon Books,' 1949....
...His judgment may have been premature, for beside the old Patchen...
...Rexroth knows this: "program" is only a faint distillate of feeling and internal conviction, whatever that might be: the poet is not an intellectual...
...THERE IS SOME FINE work in this volume Thomas...
...It is probably difficult not to agree that a shift by the English poets from the "rational classicism" practiced by the Auden school, an objective poetry, objective not in the complete sense at which Rexroth seems to hint, that is, the suppression of feeling, intuition and personality...
...If one gets, now and then, from this introduction, a notion that a program comes first and then the poetry is lined up, it is no doubt the overstatement of Rexroth and|the now faint outlines of Dada, Breton, Automatic Writing, and the epigones of Freud and Marx...
...New Directions...
...JVeu.' York: New Directions, 1949...
...One selection, edited by Professor Weigand of Yale University, stresses Goethe's wisdom and his philosophy of life, arranging the various fragments from his prose works, letters and recorded conversations/under systematic headings: religion, nature, science and philosophy, the social sphere, the moral sphere, art, the body politic...
...Neil Weiss has written poetry for Accent and criticism for other publications...
...Greater than all his works, even than his poetry, was, however, his life and the strength with which he formed it into a unique and yet universally valid experience...
...Of course...
...Treece, Keyes, Spender (who seems to have a foot in both camps), Savage, Comfort "went along...
...Hans Kohn is professor of His story at Smith College...
...THE WORK OF DYLAN THOMAS...
...as the volcano is periodical}' opposed to thj city...
...Biermann has construed a biogiaphy of Goethe as recorded in his own writings and in letters and diaries of those with whom he came in contact...
...Lewis and MacNiece...
...420 pp...
...Perhaps much of it is too straight from the heart...
...This program, we learn, is a compound of religious personalism and political anarchism and was made up, ad hoc fashion, as poets Thomas, Read, Barker...
...The other point which he emphasizes is of no lesser importance to the present day...
...The three greatest men whom the German speaking world has given to the common, heritage of the West...
...We have a few new poems which show that even Patchen is learning what is what: as he says in "The Radiance in A Dark* Wood": Fear is the Grace Which moves the stone...
...he opposed it and saw clearly the dangers of the new age with its slogan of national independence: "The sense of liberty and love of country, which is supposed to have its source in the ancients, turns to caricature in most peoples...
...New Directions...
...An anthology edited by Kenneth Rexroth...
...but objective because the poems cluster close to a rational flippancy, and emotion and the personal are hidden under the weaving marionette sickness we see in Auden's plays it is certainly possible to agree that it is better, as t^o the new English poets, to speak, as it were, right straight from the heart...
...I have again and again with real emotion turned over the final pages of Faust where Goethe represents as the last experience of Faust his attempt to remove the hurt which disturbs him, by a slight and well-intentioned act of violence, being tired of righteousness...
...Our Poetic Climate Reviewed by NEIL WEISS THE NEW BRITISH POETS...
...Kant, Goethe and Beethoven, predated the rise of nationalism in Germany: they were true citizens of the Western world...
...5.00...
...Boston: The Beacon Press, 1948...
...GOfTHE'S WORLD, AS SEEN IN LETTERS AND MEMOIRS...
...Watkins, Durrell, Douglas but many of these new Romantics show that they have a heart but have nottyet learned to turn out what Karl Shapiro has recently called the not-word, the poem...
...His book which is excellently illustrated may serve for the general reader as the best available introduction to Goethe's life and world...
...ONE OF THE MOST UNIVERSAL spirits of all times, Goethe was equally remarkable as a poet and a scientist, an art lover and a minister of state...
...the young master of the new English Romantic School, has been for two decades oppc.'jj to the work of Auden & Co...
...2.00...
...Goethe's insistence on the freedom of personality is one of the points which Albert Schweitzer stresses in his two lectures...
...That Goethe at the conclusion of his Faust ' should insert this episode, shows us his strong desire to realize any plan that has to be carried out without causing any kind of injury...
...the one who writes in this new book Oh...
...However, the book is valuable not only for its good work, but for that which is important but should not be confused with the poetry: the spiritual climate, the personal, the rock bottom after three monstrous decades, or a violent rejection of the posturers, the Intellectuals, windbags and humbugs who calmly practice the automatic art of rationalization while they hack away at each other...
...on the other hand he has given particular attention to Americans who knew Goethe or corresponded with him...
...you poor, weak little frauds sucking around Frantically for something to ease your guilt seems to indicate failure of humility, and absolutely not to be dispensed with condition of the poet...
...When about the end of the last century the theory began to prevail that whatever is to be realized must be realized without regard to right, without regard to the fate of those who are hard hit by the change, it was to me a real experience to And everywhere in Goethe the longing to avoid realizing any design at the cost of right...
...The whole source of our civilization, Including the Christian religion, makes for communication and participation and for all the social virtues of courtesy and accommodation, including the yielding up of feelings and sentiments, even of rights, that are one's prerogative in a primitive state of nature...
...IN AN INTRODUCTION which amounts to a manifesto and declaration of war against Auden & Co., Kenneth Rexroth examines and approves, with what seems at times a furious naivete, the "program" of the new British poets who make again the old systolic swing from "Classicism" to "Romanticism...
...3.75...
...Our life leads us not to rigid separation from other peoples, but rather to the freest possible interchange...
...75 pp...
...He combined as few men ever did the intensity of passion and an extremal sensibility with a disciplined mastery of his nature and a humane and serene wisdom...
...3.00...
...Biermann uses much material little known in America...
...2.00...
...From similar material put together in chronological order Mr...
...About a year and half ago, one of our more discerning critics suggested, what with the furious sentimentality, the lugubrious wheeling and wailing, the lumbering forward to discharge his pea-shooter, that Kenneth Patchen should at last be consigned to the bobby-soxers...
...RED WINE AND YELLOW HAIR...
...But Thomas produces his wildly crossed images* from whatever unlooked-for place they come and not from an opposition to the Oxonian bedside manner of Auden...
...But in the execution, this well-intentioned act of violence becomes a cruel act of violence...
...Goethe witnessed the rise of nationalism...
...It may also help to put the German "question" into better perspective...
...Edited by Berthold Biermann...
...Of this life and of the world within which it ran its long course, two new books try, by apt choice of selections from the abundant material, to convey a picture to the American reader...
...TWO ADDRESSES BY ALBERT SCHWEITZER...
...By Kenneth Patchen...
...THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY of Goethe's birth promises to produce a welcome addition to the Goethe literature in English...
Vol. 32 • May 1949 • No. 20
