REMEMBERING GOETHE
It is a sacred duty of the literary fraternity to remember
today, March 22nd, the great literary giant Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, the German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist , statesman, theatre director, critic and artist for the massive
legacy of luminous thoughts which will continue to enlighten the world for
centuries to come.
Goethe was born on 28 August 1749 at Frankfurt, Germany, and
passed away on 22 March 1832 at Weimar, Germany.
Of the many works written about him is one by Eckermann
comprising his conversations with Goethe from June 10, 1823 to March 11, 1832.
Its gamut very vast as it covers innumerable topics which seldom become stale.
Goethe expressed his views on
number of subjects like art, knowledge, education, faith, character,
youth and age, marriage and children, politics and power, east and west, life and
death, effort and aspiration, etc.
Given below is a small bouquet of his memorable
thoughts.
1.Who knows
himself and others, here too shall be guided, to see that East and West are
brothers not to be divided. Who learns to swing between both worlds wisely, he
worketh best and so good luck to him
who travels between the East and West!
2.
Revolutions are impossible so long as governments are consistently just and continuously alert, forestalling them
by timely reforms. Governments must not wait till
the necessary changes have been forced on them.
3. Arbitrary
laws and punishments a re at the root o the trouble. There will be no conflict
in a country where the prince is accessible to all, class-hatred unknown and
everyone free to do his proper work.
4. People
should study not their contemporaries, but the great men of old whose works
have kept their value through the centuries. A rally gifted man will be moved to do so
himself, for the wish to consort with the great minds of the past is the surest
sign of talent. We should study Moliere, we should study Shakespeare, but first
and last, the Greeks.
5. There are
few men of intellect who are also capable of action. Intellect widens but
weakens: action vivifies, but limits.
6. It is the
enviable luck of youth to receive impressions in their full force and freshness
and get the full joy of them. Little by
little we advance in critical knowledge
the source of this untroubled delight dries up. Every man is an Adam:
soon or late he is driven out from this
Paradise of glowing emotion.
Finally, to give a finishing touch
to this small bouquet of Goethe’s
precious a quotation about A Happy
Man:
“A happy man
is not the man to guide those who are happy; it lies in human nature that the more we have the more we demand,
both from ourselves and from others. Only a man who has suffered and is
recovering can train himself and his
fellows to accept with rapture even the little gifts of life. “
********
22nd
March 2021 G.R.Kanwal
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