The Last Universal Man?

To the left you see a portrait of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). It was painted by Gerhard von Kügelgen in 1808. That was the year Faust, Part One was first published. It was also the year that Goethe met Napoleon (a big fan of Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther) in the German city of Erfurt.

It is remarkable to note that Faust, Part One wasn't performed for the first time until 1829, twenty years later, in Brunswick. This speaks to some of the difficulties in staging this work. As one of our discussants noted in our meeting last week, getting horses up on stage (as directed) can be a challenge.

Goethe can be considered the last universal man. He was a man of letters and a man of science. He is credited with founding the science of morphology and "discovered" the intermaxillary bone in humans. He put forward a powerful critique of Newton's optics. He also had a longstanding interest in meteorology.

Goethe's aesthetic concerns jibed with this scientific interests. Morphology, for example, can be a form of poetry in the way it matches object and word.

It is the persistence of Goethe's intellect that most qualifies him as a "universal." A close reading of Faust confirms this. Goethe spent at least 40 years writing and revising the two parts of Faust. His motto, after all, was

Ohne rast aber ohne hast.

Which, translated into English, means "Without rest BUT without haste."

Resource: Steuer, Daniel, "In defence of experience: Goethe's natural investigation," In The Cambridge Companion to Goethe," Lesley Sharpe, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.