Love, Life, Goethe: Lessons of the Imagination from the Great German Poet Hardcover – January 9, 2007

I picked up Love, Life, Goethe at my local library hoping to learn something about Goethe, a great man who I'd known mostly by reputation and hopefully also learn something of his great works without having to read them. It was soon obvious that this book is one I wanted to own and soon did. The reader comes away with knowledge about Goethe's life and times but most important his relevance for today. Armstrong shows us how Goethe achieved genuine genius without unnecessary suffering, real happiness without inane superficiality. Goethe struggled with how to live a life of meaning and purpose and succeeded. Luck, Love, Power, Art, War, Friendship, Nature, Peace, Happiness and Death: Armstrong covers each in his short and easily accessible chapters based on how Goethe lived his life(according to his extensive autobiography) and insights Armstrong culled from his great works of prose and poetry. This is a book I will be returning to again and again. I recommend this book for anyone wishing to know more about themselves and/or about this great man of letters.

great

This book seriously changed my life for the better. It contains ideas from Goethe, via John Armstrong, which have been incredibly helpful for me and have shaped the direction I've wanted to go in, in life. Just one of these ideas is the belief that intellectual ambition can be combined with seeking money - with being worldly and pursuing practical success. Goethe, and Armstrong, want to bring things together which our current world often drives apart: to pursue the Renaissance ideal of well rounded, educated but non-pedantic people who are also comfortable with the realities of managing power and making their impact on the world. It's a hugely inspiring book.

In the way John Armstrong weaves critical biography with advice on how to live a happy life, he seems to have attempted to do for Goethe what Alain de Botton, in How Proust Can Change Your Life, did for Proust. This is a lovely idea.Armstrong gives the reader a lot of interesting information -- both biographical and critical -- about Goethe, his times, and his writings. As a big fan of Goethe, I found this fascinating. Some of Armstrong's views -- purportedly gleaned from Goethe -- on how to enjoy life, however, are another matter.Throughout the book, Armstrong offers his views (or "lessons") on what we can learn from Goethe. While some of Armstrong's views are insightful, too many are over-simplifications. He stresses, for instance, that through Goethe we can learn to focus on the good things in life, to be well-balanced, and to stop wasting time. Such "lessons from the imagination of the great German poet," while good to keep close to heart, are here ineffectively presented, fail to do justice to the depth and complexities of Goethe's writings, and are unlikely to be of much value to the thoughtful and intelligent people who are likely to read this book.Armstrong takes the complexities of Goethe and whittles them down to a simplicity that strays far from the depth and substance of the original. Coming on the heels of Armstrong's rather good discussions of Goethe's great literature, and on the heels of Armstrong's interesting presentation of Goethe's biography, Armstrong's simplified "lessons" seem simply irksome. While the book has a lot to offer, it is marred by an appoach which, though pleasantly accessible, is prone to simplification.

What a satisfying and rewarding biography! I found Mr. Armstrong's work to be erudite, insightful, intelligent, and highly sympathetic to Goethe's life, work, and "noble project."Although I dare not compare myself to such literary and philosophical giants as Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, or James Joyce--all of whom were great admirers of a man who has been called "Germany's Shakespeare," I, too, have ahigh opinion of Goethe.I realize that admiration of this great "cultural icon" is not enough, but the question is, Can one take from him the courage to improve one's self-development, to "become oneself" as a thinking, feeling, and active individual.What marvelous explications Mr. Armstrong makes of Goethe's major works: FAUST; THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER; WILHELM MEISTER'S APPRENTICESHIP; ELECTIVE AFFINITIES, and so forth. Kudos to the author for providing us with this wonderful reading experience.Finally, and this is but a minor criticism, but it seems that there is a contradiction in what Mr. Armstrong says about Goethe. I refer to comments on page 185 and page 450. In the former reference, the author speaks of Goethe as a "cheerful pessimist" (a paradoxical concept, to be sure, if not an oxymoron, but nevertheless quite suggestive and intriguing--even appealing to this reviewer). In the latter reference the author says, "But at the same time, Goethe is not a pessimist."I hope I am not betraying Mr. Armstrong's confidence, when I explain that I wrote an e-mail to him, telling him that I was puzzled by this discrepancy in his assessment of Goethe. He replied in this manner: "Dear Roy, Many thanks for this very generous response to my work - I'm delighted to hear that you enjoyed my book on Goethe. You point out a confusion in the ways I describe G's character: as (a) a cheerful pessimist (ie some kind of pessimist) and (b) not a pessimist. You are right, I simply made a slip. Or perhaps a better explanation is that I wasn't clear about what I thought and what I was trying to explain: I just didn't think enough about the issue. I'm glad you noted and and brought it to my attention. Kind regards, John."I am impressed by Mr. Armstrong's honest and candid reply to my inquiry. Such an admission is pretty amazing for an author to make; I don't think that's very common. Actually, this honest response to my inquiry gave me an even greater respect for the author, who strikes me not only as an accomplished scholar but as a gentleman as well--as was the subject of his biography.