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Goethe
- Life as a Work of Art
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
- Length: 24 hrs and 25 mins
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Publisher's summary
This sterling biography of Germany's greatest writer presents Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as if we are seeing him for the first time.
The work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe has reverberated through two and a half centuries, altering the course of literature in ways both grand and intimate. No other writer so completely captivated the intellectual life of late 18th- and early 19th-century Europe, putting into language the anxieties and ambitions of a civilization on the cusp of modernity. A literary celebrity by the age of 25, Goethe, who was born in Frankfurt in 1749, attracted the adulation and respect of the greatest scientists, politicians, composers, and philosophers of his day. Schoolboys dressed like his fictional characters. Napoleon read his first novel obsessively. He was an astoundingly prolific writer, a master of many genres, from poetry to scientific treatises, from novels like the tragic Sorrows of Young Werther to dramatic works like Faust. Indeed, Goethe's unparalleled literary output would come to define the Romantic age.
Rüdiger Safranski's Goethe: Life as a Work of Art is the first definitive biography in a generation to tell the larger-than-life story of the writer considered to be the Shakespeare of German literature. Drawing upon the trove of letters, diaries, and notebooks Goethe left behind, as well as correspondence and criticism from Goethe's contemporaries, Safranski weaves a rich tale of Europe in the throes of revolution and of the man whose ideas heralded a new era.
Safranski's monumental biography is a careful survey of Goethe's wide-ranging genius. Beyond his incredible literary gifts, Goethe was intensely interested in natural science and took seriously his official post as a statesman, working tirelessly to ensure that the working poor received wages and daily bread. With grace and nuance, Safranski crafts a portrait of Goethe's inner life that illuminates both his written work and the turmoil and triumphs of his era. Reading Goethe affords not simply an encounter with a literary virtuoso but an opportunity to develop a deeper appreciation of the human condition.
Goethe was writing in the midst of a dramatic and bloody time for Europe: The revolutions in France and America overturned the old regimes and introduced new ways of thinking about the world. Set against this backdrop, Goethe's life and work serve as an essential touchstone for the birth of the modern age. But as Safranski ultimately reveals, Goethe's greatest creation was not only his literary masterpieces but his very life.
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- tpritch
- 07-06-19
Academic
This is a heavy tome about a complex individual, geared toward the academic community over general readership. Monotonous narration did not lighten matters.
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13 people found this helpful
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- August
- 04-26-19
Erste Klasse
Superb account which I wish I’d read when majoring in German at U of Dayton❗️So remarkable his English translations of Goethe’s poems that they appeared to have been originally written in English. I always admired him. Now I have more motivations to do so👍
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- Scott Free
- 07-21-21
To many unspoken important details left out
Goethe's involvement with secret societies completely missing from biography. Instead long discussion of his feelings.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 06-01-22
A litterary giant
Another well made book, another great biography and life.
Goethe's life story has been a fascinating read. He is said to be the INFJ personality type, and we would share this trait in that case. If that however counts for much, I cannot say, but I do sense that the man has struggled with something akin to bipolar disorder, or another affliction of the sort - throughout his life. And this is a common experience in the INFJ condition. He certainly dances with melancholy and the sublime intermittantly
I take with me a plethora of intruiging thoughts and quotes from this book, to help me in my own work as I strive toward my own theories. After all, the man is a litterary "genius".
I am also greatly inspired to read the mans written works, as they are portrayed in the book quite interestingly. No doubt they contain within them some imeasurable value.
For anyone interested in the human experience, and to learn about all sides of it from different parts of history, I recommend this biography.
Vertchu
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- ReviewAmazon384
- 04-12-22
Comprehensive
This is an excellent biography and introduction to the philosophy and literary works of Goethe. It covers his whole life in considerable detail, making extensive quotations from his letters and journals. It is based on original research.
Safranksi does a good job also of summarizing the major philosophical themes and personal-historical context of Goethe's individual works—especially The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, The Roman Elegies, Hermann and Dorothea, and Faust—as well as the evolution of Goethe's overall philosophical thought.
I approached this book with very little prior knowledge of Goethe, but with a fair amount of background knowledge on philosophy and the trends in philosophy in the late 18th and early 19th century. This book's breadth, depth, and extensive quotations from the historical subject himself made the book accessible for a non-expert in Goethe like myself without ever feeling pedantic. Some background knowledge of Enlightenment philosophy is probably a good idea before reading this book, however. Nadler's "A Book Forged in Hell" (about Baruch Spinoza) would be helpful background. As Goethe was heavily influenced by Spinoza's thought, it would help considerably to have some background knowledge of Spinoza before reading this book.
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- PublicProfileName420
- 02-10-23
Amazing
One of the greatest biographies I’ve listens to, about one of the greatest men in all of human history, a true artist.
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- Anonymous User
- 04-17-22
excellent, detailed biography of goethe
an excellent, engaging book which looks at Goethe's life and shows how it influenced his work. maybe not the most penetrating of biographies, but very enjoyable. the narration is perfect for it
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Story
Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world's first comprehensive Encyclopedie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity - for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality.
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lifelong coverage of his life.
- By Michael Daly on 03-22-21
By: Andrew S. Curran
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Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
- By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 22 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship was Goethe’s second novel, published 1795-6, almost two decades after The Sorrows of Young Werther. It again focuses on a young man but this time on his growing understanding and maturity as he makes his way in the world. As such, it is regarded as the founding work in the ‘coming of age’ genre: the ‘bildungsroman’ ( a term actually coined some 30 years later), which characterised a philosophical novel tracing the cultural, emotional and educational development of an individual from youth to adulthood.
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A delightful few days
- By MrWondrous on 10-13-23
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Faust: Parts I & II
- By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Narrated by: Philippe Duquenoy
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Faust has long been considered one of the most important works of European literature ever published. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe began writing Faust in the 1770s while still a young man, spending most of his adult life on the project. Faust was finally finished almost 50 years later, near the end of his life. Faust is a philosophical drama full of humor, satire, and tragedy. The demon Mephistopheles makes a bet with God that he can lure Faust from the path of good.
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Wonderful Performance
- By David Sanders on 03-15-18
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The Sorrows of Young Werther
- By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Werther, a sensitive young artist, finds himself in Wahlheim, a quiet, attractive village in Germany where he seeks solace from the turmoils of love. It is a young spring, and he hopes that arcadian solitude will prove a genial balm to his mind. But his romantic tendency rules otherwise, and he falls in love with Charlotte - Lotte - even though he knows she is affianced to another.
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Great performance for a classical story.
- By Brandon Shaw on 09-15-17
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Goethe: A BBC Radio Drama Collection
- Six Full-Cast Dramatisations Including Faust, The Sorrows of Young Werther and More
- By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Narrated by: Simon Callow, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jack Farthing, and others
- Length: 17 hrs and 5 mins
- Original Recording
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Johann Wolfgang Goethe was a colossus of German literature and a true Renaissance man. A novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher, he wrote the first international bestseller, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and his epic masterpiece Faust is one of the most famous and celebrated dramas of all time.
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Faust
- By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Narrated by: Auriol Smith, Gunnar Cauthery, Stephen Critchlow, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 58 mins
- Abridged
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Faust is one of the pillars of Western literature. This classic drama presents the story of the scholar Faust, tempted into a contract with the Devil in return for a life of sensuality and power. Enjoyment rules, until Faust’s emotions are stirred by a meeting with Gretchen, and the tragic outcome brings Part 1 to an end. Part 2, written much later in Goethe’s life, places his eponymous hero in a variety of unexpected circumstances, causing him to reflect on humanity and its attitudes to life and death.
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Mixed Feelings
- By Kyle on 12-04-11
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The Infidel and the Professor
- David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought
- By: Dennis C. Rasmussen
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Vividly written, The Infidel and the Professor is a compelling account of a great friendship of two towering Enlightenment thinkers that had great consequences for modern thought. David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime, he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism.
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a thoroughly enjoyable account of friendship
- By henryj on 02-21-20
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The Sorrows of Young Werther
- By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Narrated by: Jim Donaldson
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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The Sorrows of Young Werther was Goethe's first major success, turning him from an unknown into a celebrated author practically overnight. Napoleon Bonaparte considered it one of the great works of European literature. He thought so highly of it that he wrote a soliloquy in Goethe's style in his youth and carried Werther with him on his campaigning to Egypt.
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This reminds me of an ex-boyfriend...or two
- By january on 04-23-13
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Faust
- By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Narrated by: Tim Habeger
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Goethe's masterpiece and perhaps the greatest work in German literature, Faust has made the legendary German alchemist one of the central myths of the Western world. Here indeed is a monumental Faust, an audacious man boldly wagering with the devil, Mephistopheles, that no magic, sensuality, experience or knowledge can lead him to a moment he would wish to last forever.
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Where's Part II???
- By Joe Reader on 05-10-14
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The Maxims and Reflections
- By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Narrated by: David Pickering
- Length: 3 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Maxims and Reflections is a collection of brilliant, unforgettable maxims, aphorisms, and reflections by the German Renaissance writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It is divided into the categories Life and Character, Literature and Art, Science and Nature.
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Magical Wisdom
- By O. on 11-30-23
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Exact Thinking in Demented Times
- The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science
- By: Karl Sigmund
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Inspired by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Bertrand Russell and David Hilbert's pursuit of the fundamental rules of mathematics, some of the most brilliant minds of the generation came together in post-World War I Vienna to present the latest theories in mathematics, science, and philosophy and to build a strong foundation for scientific investigation. Composed of such luminaries as Kurt Gödel and Rudolf Carnap, and stimulated by the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, the Vienna Circle left an indelible mark on science.
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Historical narrative, with physics and despair.
- By Philip J. Kurle on 10-08-18
By: Karl Sigmund
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Faust: Parts 1 & 2
- By: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
- Narrated by: Adriel Brandt
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Faust is a tragic play in two parts that reworks the late medieval myth of a brilliant but disillusioned scholar who makes a deal with the devil. Faust is considered by many to be Goethe's masterpiece and the greatest work of German literature. Part I sets out Faust’s despair, his pact with Mephistopheles, and his love for Gretchen. Part II deals with Faust’s life at court, the wooing and winning of Helen of Troy, and his purification and redemption.
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Italian Journey
- By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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