Goethe

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Goe·the

(gœ′tə), Johann Wolfgang von 1749-1832.

German writer and scientist. A master of poetry, drama, and the novel, he spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem Faust (published 1808 and 1832). He also conducted scientific research in various fields, notably botany, and held several governmental positions.

Goe′the·an (-tē-ən) adj.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Goethe

(German ˈɡøːtə)

(Biography) Johann Wolfgang von (joˈhan ˈvɔlfɡaŋ fɔn). 1749–1832, German poet, novelist, and dramatist, who settled in Weimar in 1775. His early works of the Sturm und Drang period include the play Götz von Berlichingen (1773) and the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). After a journey to Italy (1786–88) his writings, such as the epic play Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787) and the epic idyll Hermann und Dorothea (1797), showed the influence of classicism. Other works include the Wilhelm Meister novels (1796–1829) and his greatest masterpiece Faust (1808; 1832)

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Goe•the

(ˈgœ tə)

n.

Johann Wolfgang von, 1749–1832, German poet and playwright.

Goe•the•an, Goe′thi•an, adj.

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Noun

Goethe - German poet and novelist and dramatist who lived in Weimar (1749-1832)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Translations

Goethe

References in classic literature ?

It was the period in Germany of Goethe's highest fame.

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The Republic of Plato is also the first treatise upon education, of which the writings of Milton and Locke, Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants.

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Besides other things he had translated and published Wilhelm Meister, a story by the great German poet, Goethe. It was well received.

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As devout Eckerman lifted the linen sheet from the naked corpse of Goethe, he was overwhelmed with the massive chest of the man, that seemed as a Roman triumphal arch.

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Cavalcanti, dressed in black, like one of Goethe's heroes, with varnished shoes and white silk open-worked stockings, passed a white and tolerably nice-looking hand through his light hair, and so displayed a sparkling diamond, that in spite of Monte Cristo's advice the vain young man had been unable to resist putting on his little finger.

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Goethe recommended seeing human nature in the most various forms, and Mr.

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The elder Geoffroy and Goethe propounded, at about the same period, their law of compensation or balancement of growth; or, as Goethe expressed it,

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Pandora remarked also that she wanted to show her little sister everything while she was comparatively unformed ("comparatively!" he mutely gasped); remarkable sights made so much more impression when the mind was fresh: she had read something of that sort somewhere in Goethe. She had wanted to come herself when she was her sister's age; but her father was in business then and they couldn't leave Utica.

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Therefore it was droll in the good Riemer, who has written memoirs of Goethe, to make out a list of his donations and good deeds, as, so many hundred thalers given to Stilling, to Hegel, to Tischbein; a lucrative place found for Professor Voss, a post under the Grand Duke for Herder, a pension for Meyer, two professors recommended to foreign universities; &c., &c.

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But in the effort he completed the exhaustion of his long-overtaxed strength, and, a trip to Italy proving unavailing, returned to Abbotsford, and died, a few weeks after Goethe, in 1832.

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See in Goethe's Helena the same desire that every word should be a thing.

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It is very well to say one is greater than Keats, or not so great as Wordsworth; that one is or is not of the highest order of poets like Shakespeare and Dante and Goethe; but that does not mean anything of value, and I never find my account in it.