Customer Reviews

Selected Poetry of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Penguin Classics)

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This new, bilingual selection of Goethe's poetry is very good. The editor and translator, David Luke, has brought together one volume of some of Goethe's best. Luke presents the poems in chronological order, allowing the reader to follow the development of Goethe's genius over his long and fruitful career.

This volume includes 100 of Goethe's best and most famous, including "An den Mond," an early poem and one of my personal favorites, and extensive selections from Goethe's masterpiece, Faust. The selection is very broad--you're sure to find something you like in this one.

The only real flaw is easily overlooked... if you speak German. The book is bilingual--Goethe's originals face translations by Luke, the book's editor. Luke's translations are good, but not great. He strains the meaning and accuracy in an effort at rhyme and meter. Sometimes it works; many times it doesn't. I'd still recommend this book to people who don't speak German, but with the reservation that the English translations pale in comparison to the originals.

All in all, though, a very good book--money well-spent.

Highly recommended.

The translations in this volume are mediocre and misleading. To illustrate what I find so objectionable, let's look at a line from Goethe's "Prometheus":
"Und meine Huette, die du nicht gebaut, / Und meinen Herd, / Und dessen Glut, / Du mich beneidest."

Our translator gives:
"And my hut which you did not build / And my hearth, the glowing / Home fire which fills you / With such envy."

A literal translation would be closer to:
"And my hut which you did not build / And my hearth, / And its glow that / You envy."

Naturally, there are different schools of thought regarding translation, but a first-rate poet like Goethe is extremely sensitive to the power and the function of words. The unwarranted addition by the translator of the redundant "glowing home fire which fills you" completely alters the sense of the line, and bloats its graceful economy with stuffy ornamentation.

This is what you'll find in this collection - translations that substantially modify and reorder Goethe's lines, in allegiance to David Luke's aesthetic sensibility, which is completely inscrutable to me.

The creative linguistic force of this master flows with particular resonance, because of his genius, whose mind like an admirable labyrinth of livings, experiences, prodigality, mythic inspiration seem to gather in just a man the strength and voices of thousand poets; from the stormy and wild sketch to the instinctively breath to the most polished small jewel; from the funny idea to the most concentrated vital wisdom.

Goethe' s poems will always reign among the most notable works of the universal literature; almost fifteen hundred pages, that describe since the spring to the winter stages of the existence of this multidimensional human being; where we may contemplate the grandness and the smallness of the universe even in its most ultimate details.

Every time we reread his chained Prometheus, we will feel how the long expected cry of freedom waited for so many centuries until to find the adequate poet, capable to carve in relief, with unquestionable ardor, the majestic rage expressed as the last frontier of the epic effort.

Hermann Hesse affirmed that Goethe was the greatest German poet in the last two centuries. So, don't miss these jewels out your invaluable library. They are a must-have.

This is a bi-lingual edition of selected poetry of Goethe. Since I can read a little German I very much appreciate the German texts. But I was surprised to read that there had been an earlier edition which supplied only literal prose versions of the poems, which I would much prefer. Goethe is untranslatable and the efforts of translators to provide "poetical" translations invariably results in drivel, as well as misrepresenting the original texts, and this book is no exception. In short, better than nothing, but not much better.

The delivery was prompt and in good condition. The book was in good condition but not as good as listed. However, still a good buy.