Goethe: His Faustian Life - The Extraordinary Story of Modern Germany, a Troubled Genius and the Poem that Made Our World

by A. N. Wilson

Goethe remains one of the most influential figures in modern literature and thought.

Goethe was the inventor of the psychological novel, a pioneer scientist, great man of the theatre and a leading politician. As A. N. Wilson argues in this groundbreaking biography, it was his genius and insatiable curiosity that helped catapult the Western world into the modern era.

A N. Wilson tackles the life of Goethe with characteristic wit and verve. From his youth as a wild literary prodigy to his later years as Germany's most respected elder statesman, Wilson hones in on Goethe's undying obsession with the work he would spend his entire life writing – Faust.

Goethe spent over 60 years writing his retelling of Faust, a strange and powerful work that absorbed all the philosophical questions of his time as well as the revolutions and empires that came and went. It is his greatest work, but as Wilson explores, it is also something much more - it is the myth of how we came to be modern.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, Germany, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, Literature

416 pages, Hardcover

Published December 3, 2024

Reviews

[Kelly Lambert · Rating 1 out of 5]

I guess I should have looked into Wilson’s work more - I wasn’t aware this was going to be written in such a vulgar opinion style.

[Paul W. B. Marsden · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lively, conversational biography by A. N. Wilson, on the great writer, scientist and states-person - Johann Wolfgang Goethe.

We don’t appreciate Goethe enough in the UK and Wilson has written a captivating portrait that does justice to perhaps the greatest German writer of all time (often compared to Shakespeare based upon Goethe’s influence).

This biography frequently uses the Goethe’s sumptuous poem of Faust to drive the arc of the story and this works well. We travel through his comfortable upbringing, instant stardom from his first book, The Sorrows of Young Werther, legendary letter writer, epic travel writer and love of Rome, becoming a key part of the court of Weimar, witness to the French Revolution, famous friendship with Schiller, his Theory of Colour, and his sublime Faust. What a human being!

I can’t fault Wilson’s book. So I thoroughly recommend it for the author’s research, insight, and being a very accessible book.

[Toby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure if the Western Canon exists anymore, but if it does, in some corner of our culture, then the big European names that dominate it, as they have done for the past 200 years are Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe and Tolstoy. Each one of them somehow define the language in which they are written. People will learn Italian just so they can read The Divine Comedy, or Russian so that they can read War and Peace in the original. But I wonder how many learn German so that they can read Goethe? Certainly of those four big names, it is Goethe that I am not familiar with. I once tried to read Faust but couldn't really get on with it.

Can A.N. Wilson rescue Goethe for me and make me want to take up Faust again. The result is sadly No. A.N. Wilson is not, I find, a helpful author to read. At times his pomposity is laughable (in an early chapter he describes sitting in Leipzig watching the Michelin-men sized women lumbering around serving drinks whilst he contemplates the German character. It would have served him right if one of the giant serving frauleins had spilled a stein over him). He digresses unnecessarily and has the air of an over-knowledgable tour guide who is more interested in displaying his brilliance than in illuminating his subject. There is also an odd editorial decision to follow every single name in the book with their dates of birth and death, something that in most cases is utterly irrelevant to the book and makes for a distracting read.

What then of Goethe himself. The biography is short, which is probably just as well as with the volume of Goethe's writing there could be a real danger of being bogged down in detail. Despite Wilson's claims that Faust speaks to the post-modern man perhaps more so than in any other age, and that in Faust we see ourselves, he also spends a lot of time talking about the considerable difficulties of the work, especially Part 2. He advises readers not to skip over long passages such as the Walpurgis night - a sure indication that skipping over is exactly what most readers would want to do. The poetry may well be beautiful in German, but the translations appear dull and uninteresting. Perhaps this is how Shakespeare appears in German but it is not true of all poetry in translation - hence the enduring popularity of Dante. There has been nothing in this book that makes me want to return to Goethe. I am sure that is a shame but perhaps Goethe doesn't speak to me in the way that Wilson thinks that he should. Perhaps ultimately my imagination is fired more by Dante's vision of the love that moves the stars rather than Goethe's ultimate quest for the Eternal Feminine.

[ANTHONY CUTLER · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written by a dilettante, for dilettantes; about a dilettante.

Perhaps that's a little unfair, and it's a "soft" 2 stars, but I found this book very unsatisfying. He sets out to persuade us of Goethe's greatness but, he failed with me. I read Faust, First Part and Faust, Part Two in English translation many years ago and failed wholly to understand, even allowing for language differences, how this could be great literature. Wilson concedes that, especially Part 2, is baffling. Nevertheless, he makes no sufficiently analytical account of it to explain why it is so great. He speaks in generalisations without reference to the text. He makes the schoolboy error of telling rather than showing.

As for Goethe's scientific work, there is dimply insufficient to come to any judgment.

The Sorrows of Young Werther is a workmanlike novel. I read it long ago, mainly because of Massenet.

The rest is just a catalogue of dramatic works that were thought awful at the time and are unperformed since.

It has inspired me to re-read Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns which I didn't really understand when I read it. And I must find out more about Novalis.

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had not planned to read this book but changed my mind after reading the NYT review. The biographer is excellent and I appreciated in proposition to those who did not read German. The claim is that appreciation of Goethe’s greatness is limited if one cannot read and appreciate his poetry. So Mr. Wilson set his objective for non German readers to be that of convincing them to read Goethe’s Faust (both parts) in translation after working through his biography. This is appropriate because it too Goethe much of his life to write and revise Faust and it was not finished until just before he died. Mr. Wilson has convinced me to read Faust and this is an excellent biography, although I think the time as passed for me to learn sufficient German to read Goethe in the original. Oh well …

A problem that arises in writing about (and reading about) Goethe is that the man was a genius, who lived at a time of unbelievable intellectual activity, and networked with Just about everybody. (He was also, if Wilson is to be believed, a man of great administrative ability and practical orientation.) So there are relatively few quiet spaces in his timeline. In addition, he was interested in just about every topic of current and potential interest and so it is dizzying to just keep up with Goethe’s various projects. Third, he prospered at a time featuring a revival of interest in classical works and languages - and he was familiar with all or most of them in multiple languages.

It can be noted here that Goethe was occasionally referred to as the “great unread”. I now understand why - because most readers are just capable of engaging even with much interest. The man was an intellectual hurricane who could not care less if most readers proved unable to keep up with him.

Next up is Faust. I will try to keep up. It might help that I am reading Reade’s new book on “Paradise Lost”, but time will tell on that.

[George Crofts · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have heard so much about the importance of Goethe to the Romantic period and to German thought and literature so I thought I’d learn more about him.

Goethe was an extremely popular author in his day. “The Sorrows of Young Weather” (1787) led to many copy cat suicides. Not very uplifting.

Goethe was a member of the “Sturm und Drang” (storm and stress) literary movement in Germans literature also associated with Romanticism.

The author claims it is hard to appreciate Goethe without knowing German, but intends the book to explain Goethe to both the Getman and Non-German speaker.

Goethe’s personal life was a mess, but he was revered as a scientist, playwritie, philospher, statesman, and author in his time. His contribution as a scientist is debatible.

[Brian Thomas Troy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This biography was informative and entertaining in spots, though a bit long-winded. A challenge for an English biographer is that in Germany - as Wilson acknowledges - Goethe is most fondly remembered for his lyric poems, which don't always translate well, and for short books such as Werther, rather than for the likes of Faust, a difficult work more admired than enjoyed. (I confess to finding his longer novels, such as Wilhelm Meister and Elective Affinities, rather tedious - my God, I thought that funeral scene in Wilhelm Meister was never going to end.) So Goethe isn't all that accessible to a non-German-speaking audience, who may well wonder what all the fuss about him is. This book is a valiant attempt to remedy that. I just found its style a little bombastic.

[Miguel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wanted to like and enjoy this more but found Wilson's writing to be too abstruse - it's not an easy bio to absorb if one is not already familiar with Goethe's works and life. I've likely been more exposed to Goethe in German than in English, and I've barely been exposed to him here in Germany outside of the placards on buildings and such. Having had that difficulty, it does contain enough interesting tidbits about his life in spite of Wilson's attempt to obscure (also he shouldn't narrate his own audiobooks - get a professional).

[Benji · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the reader with no German, I recommend Walt Disney's Fantasia. Please don't be offended, Thomas Mann was a devotee of Mickey Mouse!


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Goethe satirically noted the extreme intolerance of the revolutionary young:

O Freiheit süß der Presse!
Nun sind wir endlich froh;
Sie pocht von Messe zu Messe
In dulci jubilo.
Kommt, laßt uns alles drucken
Und walten für und für;
Nur sollte keiner mucken,
Der nicht so denkt wie wir.

Plus ça change blablabla

[Matthew Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would say this book is not the best if you are unfamiliar with Goethe or his work before you read it. It’s a bit of a meta analysis of his life’s work that weaves in and out of parts of his work in Faust and his actual biography. Having little to no familiarity with Faust or Goethe it was a struggle to get through. With that being said I did get through it and learned some interesting things about Goethe and his significance, particularly in Germany

[Clare Boucher · Rating 4 out of 5]

An informative account of the life of Goethe. I knew a few of the lyrics and had read The Sorrows of Young Werther, but little else. The subtitle of the UK edition is ‘His Faustian Life’. I’m not sure it was particularly Faustian, although the author focuses on the ongoing work on this poem and its themes. I really must read it.

[Meakin Armstrong · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wilson’s pomposity and socially conservative tangents make this more of a 3.5. Also, I would have preferred more about what made him write Elective Affinities, the book that made me love Goethe—and less of his dry, professorial opinions of Faust. I still don’t know who Goethe was—other than his being a polymath bisexual drunk. Underneath all the filigree, that is basically his conclusion

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this, almost to a frustrating degree since I now want to add everything by Wilson and everything by Goethe to my already too long “to read” list.

[Steve · Rating 1 out of 5]

High Hopes that were soon dashed.

[ROBERT · Rating 4 out of 5]

much i did not know about the man. I need to reread the works I have read and to read the works I have not