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Here I read Goethe everything I have of his, both what is well known and what is not; here I shed invariable tears over Werther, however often I read it; here I wade through Wilhelm Meister, and sit in amazement before the complications of the Wahlverwandschaften; here I am plunged in wonder and wretchedness by Faust; and here I sometimes walk up and down in the shade and apostrophise the tall firs at the bottom of the glade in the opening soliloquy of Iphigenia.
In those days when I tried to kindle my heart at the cold altar of Goethe, I did read a great deal of his prose and somewhat of his poetry, but it was to be ten years yet before I should go faithfully through with his Faust and come to know its power. For the present, I read 'Wilhelm Meister' and the 'Wahlverwandschaften, and worshipped him much at second-hand through Heine.
In the weeks that followed they read "Werther" and "Wilhelm Meister" and "Wahlverwandschaften"; they read "Undine" and "Peter Schlemil" and the "Leben eines Taugenichts"; they read Heine's poems, and Auerbach's and Freitag's novels, and Wieland's "Oberon" is there anybody in Germany who still reads Wieland's "Oberon?"
But Helmine gave her royal suitor no encouragement, and he soon consoled himself with the Princess Liegnitz. Lucie spared no pains to marry off the inconvenient beauty, but Pueckler frustrated all her efforts, implored her not to separate him from Helmine, and suggested an arrangement based upon the domestic policy of Goethe's Wahlverwandschaften.
In those days when I tried to kindle my heart at the cold altar of Goethe, I did read a great deal of his prose and somewhat of his poetry, but it was to be ten years yet before I should go faithfully through with his Faust and come to know its power. For the present, I read 'Wilhelm Meister' and the 'Wahlverwandschaften, and worshipped him much at second-hand through Heine.
I did not give up trying to read, as usual, and part of my endeavor that winter was with Schiller, and Uhland, and even Goethe, whose 'Wahlverwandschaften, hardly yielded up its mystery to me. To tell the truth, I do not think that I found my account in that novel.
"The collection of pictures in the Old Museum," wrote George Eliot in 1855, "has three gems which remain in the imagination, 'Titian's Daughter, Correggio's 'Jupiter and Io, and his 'Head of Christ on a Handkerchief. I was pleased, also, to recognize among the pictures the one by Jan Steem which Goethe describes in the 'Wahlverwandschaften' as the model of a tableau vivant presented by Lucian and her friends.
I did not give up trying to read, as usual, and part of my endeavor that winter was with Schiller, and Uhland, and even Goethe, whose 'Wahlverwandschaften, hardly yielded up its mystery to me. To tell the truth, I do not think that I found my account in that novel.
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