Profiles in Poetry: Johann Wolfgang Goethe

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) remains Germany’s most popular poet and arguably its best, alongside Friedrich Schiller. Born into a bourgeois upper-middle-class family in Frankfurt, he spent his early years as a leading voice in the Romantic literary movement known as “Sturm und Drang” (Storm and Stress). However, he would ultimately leave this impassioned and avant-garde movement behind in order to help establish Germany’s most glorious cultural movement, Wiemar Classicism.

Even in his early career, Goethe demonstrated his genius through use of classical irony and metaphor—the hallmark of great poets going back to Shakespeare, Dante, and the Classical Greeks. One should read, and then listen to such early pieces as his “Mailied” (May Song) to experience the creative energy whirling within the young poet. In “Mailied,” Goethe does not simply use the beautiful natural imagery of spring as a sym…