This chapter examines H.D.’s Helen in Egypt (1961). While H.D. reviews her own life’s (Greek) work in her long poem in ways that recall Pound’s gathered currents in Women of Trachis, the challenge she sets herself is the opposite of that discernible in Pound’s late cantos: not coherence, but the embrace of proliferating images. The whole poem is an extended “hatching” of the Greek word eidolon ‘image, phantom, idol.’ The importance of the eidolon for H.D. has been previously recognized; the argument here differs in the specificity with which the author traces its lexical and conceptual translation throughout the poem. She reads the first part of Helen in Egypt both as a faithful and programmatic translation of Euripides’s Helen and as a revision of H.D.’s own previous writings on Helen. As with H.D.’s earlier translations, this one too catalyzes new writing: Helen in Egypt’s next two parts in subsequent years, where the Euripidean play’s import and relevance, as well as its unresolved tensions, are teased out. Helen in Egypt thus both performs and argues for the kind of approach to Greek here termed modernist hellenism: balancing freedom and constraint, “philology” and poetry.

Chapter 12 introduces Goethe’s two Wilhelm Meister novels. It problematises the notion of the Bildungsroman which is often assigned to the first novel, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship), and proposes that the two novels exemplify the four modes proposed by Northrop Frye: satire, irony and comedy in the case of the Lehrjahre, and, in the case of the sequel, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (Wilhelm Meisters Journeyman Years), romance. The chapter argues that the supposed disjunctions within and between the two novels are in fact part of their unifying principle.

Chapter 30 examines Goethe’s relationship with America. The country was for him an imagined space full of possibility, a historical frontier which opened onto modernity. The chapter considers the transatlantic network which, in the post-Napoleonic period, linked Harvard, Göttingen and Weimar, and would prove particularly important for Goethe’s geological studies. It also describes the – at times ambivalent – perspectives on American democracy that reached Goethe from Prince Bernhard, the son of Carl August, during his American travels, before moving to an analysis of American influences on and representations of America in Goethe’s literary work.

Chapter 26 explores the role of the English language and the culture of Britain on Goethe’s development. The influences began in his childhood, and became particularly significant in his twenties, owing not least to his friendship with Herder and their shared enthusiasm for Shakespeare and Ossian. The chapter also emphasises the importance of visitors from Britain in furthering Goethe’s knowledge of a country to which he never travelled himself, and examines his relationship with contemporary British writers, above all Byron and Carlyle. It closes with an overview of the reception of Goethe in Britain.

Chapter 24 offers an overview of Goethe’s geological output, a vast but somewhat understudied area of his work. It focuses in particular on Ilmenau, where between 1776 and 1796 Goethe supervised a mining project, and it argues that, despite the ultimate failure of the enterprise, the Ilmenau period was crucial in developing Goethe’s understanding of geological issues. The chapter also charts the course of Goethe’s geological work after the Ilmenau period, and it brings to light the geological references which pervade his literary work – including Faust and some of his best-loved poems.

Chapter 21 examines Goethe’s relationship to German Idealism. Although the speculative nature of the Idealist method appears alien to Goethe’s own thought, and he himself expressed reservations about it, his poetic and scientific works display a significant degree of sympathy with the concerns that motivated his contemporaries. The chapter highlights the importance of Spinoza in the alignment between Goethe and Idealist thought, before considering in detail the significance of Kant, Fichte, Hegel and above all Schelling, whose philosophy of nature and art is particularly resonant with Goethe’s own.

Chapter 1 details the major events in Goethe’s long and varied life, from its beginning to its end, and explains their significance for his development. The scope of the account ranges from intimate details of Goethe’s life to the impact of major political events on him and his work. It follows Goethe from location to location, examines the many strands of his career and considers particularly important relationships, professional, literary, intellectual and personal. The chapter also explains the circumstances of the composition of all his most significant works.

Chapter 17 considers Goethe’s extensive collections, which ranged in subject matter from art and ethnography to natural history and scientific instruments, and also included a vast library. It uses the period around his Italian journey (1786–8), when his involvement with art and art objects was particularly intense, to highlight tensions within his approach to collecting which apply throughout his career as a collector. The chapter also addresses the complexity of classifying Goethe’s collections, owing to their scale and diversity, and to the variety of his own collecting habits.

Chapter 18 explores Goethe’s influence on the development of the Weimar landscape, from the gardens of his own houses on the River Ilm and the Frauenplan, to the Ilm Park, grounds that belonged to Weimar’s ruler but were also made available for public leisure use. It also charts the reciprocal relationship between Goethe’s landscaping activity and his literary work, from the resonances of his Werther in his first garden on the Ilm, to those later pieces – especially Die Wahlverwandschaften (Elective Affinities) – which build on his own work with and study of gardens.

Chapter 3 explains the development of the court and society of Weimar, from the strategic decisions taken by Anna Amalia during her regency to the influence of her son, Carl August. The chapter considers the different forms of sociability that were cultivated, alongside the roles of particular institutions in the life of Weimar, above all the theatre and the university at nearby Jena. It addresses the paradox of a society that was at once conservative and progressive, a tension which was also reflected in Goethe’s own career in the town.

Chapter 16 examines the drawings that Goethe produced throughout his life and places his work in its art-historical context. Over the course of the eighteenth century, drawing had come to be seen as an essential artistic technique; Goethe received instruction in drawing in his early years, and from that time on, he drew wherever he was. The chapter analyses the evolution of his work and the shifting influences on it: Dutch art played an important early role, and the inspiration that he received in Italy, including from contemporaries based there, was crucial.

Chapter 36 reflects on the ways in which Goethe’s meaning and value have evolved. Analysis of Goethe’s legacy and reception demands that we attend to the historical situation of the readers too, and that we remain alert to the role of politics in shaping responses to and uses of his work. The chapter considers Goethe’s afterlife in a variety of contexts, from his prominence in German secondary education between 1871 and 1914 to the mixed feelings of German-Jewish readers in the 1930s. It also analyses Goethe’s own interventions in his reception.

Chapter 5 details the workings of social estates of eighteenth-century Germany. Many of Goethe’s works of prose and drama either directly depict his own society, or transpose significant features of that social world to a different historical setting. The chapter highlights the differences in the social organisation of rural areas on the one hand, and of towns and cities on the other. Further, it distinguishes between the social structure of Frankfurt, Goethe’s birthplace and a large city, and Weimar, a small residence town with the duke at the top of its hierarchy.

Chapter 22 introduces the concept of morphology, the study of form which attends to both the uniqueness of individual manifestations of life and the invariable laws which underpin them. Rather than forming a single theory, Goethe’s extensive reflections on morphology emerged in different contexts and run throughout his oeuvre. The chapter examines the most significant stages in Goethe’s engagement with morphology, from his search for the Urpflanze (primeval plant) in Sicily to his development of Anschauung (intuition) as a method, and positions him in relation to other thinkers, above all Wolff and Kant.

Chapter 9 explores Goethe’s development as a dramatist, from the works of the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) era, through the classical period to his last plays, and the associated shifts in style. It considers both the dramas that have entered the canon and those – such as the fragments, masques and Singspiele – that have now largely been forgotten. The chapter also emphasises the importance of seeing Goethe not only as a playwright but also as a practitioner, whose involvement in the Weimar court theatre helped to shape his writing.

Chapter 35 examines Goethe’s awareness of the impact of human activity on the physical environment and his often prescient depictions of damage to natural systems. These are shaped by a range of perspectives and experiences, from Goethe’s work as a civil servant, to his scientific study, to his lifelong passion for nature. The chapter traces two themes in particular that run through his literary work: first, flooding, and second, fire and the destruction of forests. It also examines Goethe’s historical position, between the pre-industrial world and capitalist modernity.

Chapter 34 surveys Goethe’s extensive influence on the musical world. It considers his own musical background, his relations with contemporary composers, notably Carl Friedrich Zelter, and focuses especially on Goethe’s reception in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the nineteenth century, his influence was most evident in the Lied (art-song), most famously those of Franz Schubert, and in opera, where Faust proved especially powerful. Twentieth-century composers were less likely to set Goethe’s literary texts, but both Richard Strauss and Anton Webern engaged intensively with his thought in their own creative activity.

Chapter 7 examines Goethe’s unconventional attitudes to religion and religious authority, and their influence on his creative work. It emphasises that, despite his opposition to institutionalised Christianity, Goethe remained interested in Christian beliefs and convinced of the value of scriptural reading. The chapter details his engagement with Spinozist Pantheism (the view of God as embodied in the world), with Judaism and the Hebrew Bible, and with Islam. It argues that we should see in Goethe’s approach not the rejection of religious narratives, but their reframing and rewriting.

Chapter 20 reflects on Goethe’s unique way of thinking and his persistent challenges to orthodoxy. It builds on Goethe’s own assertion that he was ‘not naturally equipped to do philosophy in its proper sense’, and argues that his thought engages the figurative power of ‘improper’ (that is, poetic) language to do philosophical work. The chapter notes his criticism of the modes of, among others, Kant and Hegel, and highlights places in Goethe’s oeuvre, including in his literary works, where we can see new and unconventional pathways for thought being built.

Chapter 15 details Goethe’s commitment to Greek and Roman art, demonstrating that it pervades all his activity, including his literary work. His interest was primed by his years as a student in Leipzig, but his Italian journey of 1786–8 was the turning point, for it enabled him to connect the theory which he had learned with his own creative practice. Moreover, Italy gave him access to both Roman and Greek heritage. The chapter also examines neoclassical tenets in Goethe’s writing on art and closes with an analysis of his characterisation of Winckelmann.