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Untitled Article
of the means of supplying some deficiencies in the very scanty memoir in our last number , drawn up in great haste , and with scanty materials at hand . Tk |> publication of the edition , entitled ' Vollstaendige ausgabe , letzter hand '—( complete , and , as we should say , with the last corrections , ) commenced in 1827 ., —It had occupied the author from 1823 , and obtained from the German diet , at his solicitation , a
copyright—of force through all Germany , to guard it from piracy . The arrangement is not chronological . The author found the requisite labour too great . Neither is the classification strictly , though in the main according to the form of the works . It commences judiciously with the small poems—which fill the first four volumes , but though these , including songs and epigrams ^ amount
to more than 1440 , the class is not exhausted . It occupies several subsequent volumes . Being so numerous , we must abandon altogether the plan of inserting the titles except of the classes ; and shall take leave , instead , ( adverting only to a few of them individually , ) to make a few remarks on the general character of Goethe ' s small poems .
The work opens appropriately with a Zueignung —( Dedication ) one of the most exquisitely polished of his poems . It is in ottavo rime , and has been translated—See the London Magazine , for February 1824 . The curious reader will have pleasure in comparing it with Cowley ' s € Complaint , ' and Burns' ' Vision '—with the latter especially . In each the poet confesses his infirmities , and derives from the heavenly muse admonishment and consolation . In the dedication , the poet is presented with a veil : —
' Aus Morg'en-duft gewebt und Sonnenklarheit Der Dichtung * Schleyer aus der hand der Wahrheit . ' [ Woven of morning * dew and mid-day beams From truth ' s own hand the veil of poetry . ] An image , which , with singular felicity , expresses the double nature of poetry—in the sunbeams , its intellectual , in the dew its sensual character . And more appropriate than the same image as used b y Jeremy Taylor , a writer we could hardly suppose Goethe to nave known— ' His life was like the rainbow , half made
of the glories of the light , and half of the moisture of a cloud . ' The translator has thus rendered the concluding stanzas . It is the divine Muse or Truth , who addresses the poet in the first stanza . The last is the dedication . And when thou feel ' st the heat of sultry noon , Thou , or thy friends , this veil above thee spread , The careful breath of eve shall cool thee soon , And flowers and spices round their odour shed . All woes shall yield to this celestial boon , The grave itself shall be a cloudy bed ; The ills of life it will destroy or lighten . Make the day lovely and dark midnight brighten . '
Untitled Article
362 Goethe ' s Works .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1832, page 362, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1814/page/2/
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