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The Golden Goblet: Selected Poems of Goethe
The Golden Goblet traces Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poetry from the idealism of youth to the liberation of maturity. In contrast to his rococo contemporaries, Goethe’s poetry draws on the graceful simplicity of German folk rhythms to develop complex, transcendent themes. This robust selection, artfully translated by Zsuzsanna Ozsváth and Frederick Turner, explores transformation, revolution, and illumination in Goethe’s lush lyrical style that forever altered the course of German literature.
- GenresPoetry
140 pages, Paperback
Published May 28, 2019
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23 people want to read
About the author
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
13.3k books6,984 followersA master of poetry, drama, and the novel, German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem
Faust
, published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scientific research in various fields, notably botany, and held several governmental positions.
George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters... and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Works span the fields of literature, theology, and humanism.
People laud this magnum opus as one of the peaks of world literature. Other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther .
With this key figure of German literature, the movement of Weimar classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries coincided with Enlightenment, sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours , he influenced Darwin with his focus on plant morphology. He also long served as the privy councilor ("Geheimrat") of the duchy of Weimar.
Goethe took great interest in the literatures of England, France, Italy, classical Greece, Persia, and Arabia and originated the concept of Weltliteratur ("world literature"). Despite his major, virtually immeasurable influence on German philosophy especially on the generation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, he expressly and decidedly refrained from practicing philosophy in the rarefied sense.
Influence spread across Europe, and for the next century, his works inspired much music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Many persons consider Goethe the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in western culture as well. Early in his career, however, he wondered about painting, perhaps his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that people ultimately would remember his work in optics.
George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters... and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Works span the fields of literature, theology, and humanism.
People laud this magnum opus as one of the peaks of world literature. Other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther .
With this key figure of German literature, the movement of Weimar classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries coincided with Enlightenment, sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours , he influenced Darwin with his focus on plant morphology. He also long served as the privy councilor ("Geheimrat") of the duchy of Weimar.
Goethe took great interest in the literatures of England, France, Italy, classical Greece, Persia, and Arabia and originated the concept of Weltliteratur ("world literature"). Despite his major, virtually immeasurable influence on German philosophy especially on the generation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, he expressly and decidedly refrained from practicing philosophy in the rarefied sense.
Influence spread across Europe, and for the next century, his works inspired much music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Many persons consider Goethe the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in western culture as well. Early in his career, however, he wondered about painting, perhaps his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that people ultimately would remember his work in optics.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 29, 2019
The notes on the translators' work and the introduction explaining how Goethe's language changed over time and influenced art and literature were very interesting.
The poems? Eh, maybe not. The translators were very careful to preserve the rhyme scheme and meter of the poems, but they felt very cold. Not inspiring or passionate, which is one of the first thing one thinks of with Goethe. It may have been better had the publishers chose to do a facing-page style presentation, with the original German on one page and the new English translation facing the other. Because it was hard to judge how much Goethe was changing since he didn't write in English. Since I read German, that would have been fun.
The poems? Eh, maybe not. The translators were very careful to preserve the rhyme scheme and meter of the poems, but they felt very cold. Not inspiring or passionate, which is one of the first thing one thinks of with Goethe. It may have been better had the publishers chose to do a facing-page style presentation, with the original German on one page and the new English translation facing the other. Because it was hard to judge how much Goethe was changing since he didn't write in English. Since I read German, that would have been fun.
January 24, 2023
Fantastic selection of poems and translation. However, something about the critical introduction and the concluding "About" section for the translation didn't sit well with me. The snippets about Goethe's contribution towards biological evolution and its potential relationship between cultural evolution and philology were interesting. But it meandered to the point of being borderline tangential. The section was also way too dismissive of "Postmodernism" (I'm still unsure what that category means to the translators) while discounting some of the ways that Goethe contributed to related predecessors of that "genre" (for lack of a better word).
July 19, 2019
This was my first foray into Goethe since college and I found the whole endeavor immensely enjoyable. The 3 essay accompanying the text are really worthwhile.
March 15, 2023
This man says “breasts” wayyyyy too often
May 13, 2023
some of the poems feel a bit lost in translation but overall i liked the vast majority along with the essays that came with them
August 23, 2022
The introduction and postscript are both well-written and insightful. The poems seem as if they were translated to keep the rhyme scheme and the rhythm in tact over the sentimentality/romanticism of the language. I guess translators must pick & choose, and I don't mind their choices here. The poems were still glowing with beauty and easy on the English tongue, and since I'm not an experienced Goethe reader, I'm in no place to make judgments about the correctness of translating him.
The book itself is high-quality: the cover is cool and the paper, editing, and typefacing are all top-notch.
If you want a random selection of Goethe poems (in chronological order) and aren't a snob about it, this is probably as good as any.
The book itself is high-quality: the cover is cool and the paper, editing, and typefacing are all top-notch.
If you want a random selection of Goethe poems (in chronological order) and aren't a snob about it, this is probably as good as any.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews