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Introductory Note
Introductory Note
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the greatest of German men of letters, was
born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, August 28, 1749. His father was a man of
means and position, and he personally supervised the early education of his
son. The young Goethe studied at the universities of Leipsig and Strasburg,
and in 1772 entered upon the practise of law at Wetzlar. At the invitation of
Karl August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, he went in 1775 to live in Weimar, where
he held a succession of political offices, becoming the Duke`s chief adviser.
From 1786 to 1788 he traveled in Italy, and from 1791 to 1817 directed the
ducal theater at Weimar. He took part in the wars against France, 1792-3,
and in the following year began his friendship with Schiller, which lasted
till the latter`s death in 1805. In 1806 he married Christiane Vulpius. From
about 1794 he devoted himself chiefly to literature, and after a life of
extraordinary productiveness died at Weimar, March 22, 1832. The most
important of Goethe`s works produced before he went to Weimar were his tragedy
"Gotz von Berlichingen" (1773), which first brought him fame, and "The Sorrows
of Young Werther," a novel which obtained enormous popularity during the so-
called "Sturm und Drang" period. During the years at Weimar before he knew
Schiller he began "Wilhelm Meister," wrote the dramas, "Iphigenie," "Egmont,"
and "Torquato Tasso," and his "Reinecke Fuchs." To the period of his
friendship with Schiller belong the continuation of "Wilhelm Meister," the
beautiful idyl of "Hermann and Dorothea," and the "Roman Elegies." In the last
period, between Schiller`s death in 1805 and his own, appeared "Faust,"
"Elective Affinities," his autobiographical "Dichtung und Wahrheit" ("Poetry
and Truth"), his "Italian Journey," much scientific work, and a series of
treatises on German Art.
Though the foregoing enumeration contains but a selection from the titles
of Goethe`s best known writings, it suffices to show the extraordinary
fertility and versatility of his genius. Rarely has a man of letters had so
full and varied a life, or been capable of so many-sided a development. His
political and scientific activities, though dwarfed in the eyes of our
generation by his artistic production, yet showed the adaptability of his
talent in the most diverse directions, and helped to give him that balance of
temper and breadth of vision in which he has been surpassed by no genius of
the ancient or modern world.
There are few modern poems of any country so perfect in their kind as the
"Hermann and Dorothea" of Goethe. In clearness of characterization, in unity
of tone, in the adjustment of background and foreground, in the conduct of the
narrative, it conforms admirably to the strict canons of art; yet it preserves
a freshness and spontaneity in its emotional appeal that are rare in works of
so classical a perfection in form.
The basis of the poem is a historical incident. In the year 1731 the
Archbishop of Salzburg drove out of his diocese a thousand Protestants, who
took refuge in South Germany, and among whom was a girl who became the bride
of the son of a rich burgher. The occasion of the girl`s exile was changed by
Goethe to more recent times, and in the poem she is represented as a German
from the west bank of the Rhine fleeing from the turmoil caused by the French
Revolution. The political element is not a mere background, but is woven into
the plot with consummate skill, being used, at one point, for example, in the
characterization of Dorothea, who before the to me of her appearance in the
poem has been deprived of her first betrothed by the guillotine; and, at
another, in furnishing a telling contrast between the revolutionary uproar in
France and the settled peace of the German village.
The characters of the father and the minister Goethe took over from the
original incident, the mother he invented, and the apothecary he made to stand
for a group of friends. But all of these persons, as well as the two lovers,
are recreated, and this so skilfully that while they are made notably familiar
to us as individuals, they are no less significant as permanent types of human
nature. The hexameter measure which he employed, and which is retained in the
present translation, he handled with such charm that it has since seemed the
natural verse for the domestic idyl - witness the obvious imitation of this,
as of other features of the poem, in Longfellow`s "Evangeline."
Taken as a whole, with its beauty of form, its sentiment, tender yet
restrained, and the compelling pathos of its story, "Hermann and Dorothea"
appeals to a wider public than perhaps any other product of its author.
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