Today August 28 2016 is 268th Birth Anniversary of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
पु. शि. रेगे (P. S. Rege)'s epigraph for his novella 'Matruka' (मातृका),1978:
'Das Ewig-Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan." Faust II
("Eternal womanhood
Leads upward and on." or
I heard very early in life that Goethe loved Kālidāsa's 'Abhijñānaśākuntalam' so much that he danced by bearing it over his head.
I have never heard any one in India making such a dance after reading Goethe's 'Faust'.
p.s फौस्टला डोक्यावर घेवून भारतात कोणी नाचले का? Perhaps the late Vinda Karandikar (विंदा करंदीकर) did because he translated it in Marathi: फाऊस्ट...
"...Deep in our heart Care quickly makes her nest,
there she engenders secret sorrows
and, in that cradle restless, destroys all quiet joy;
the masks she wears are always new—
she may appear as house and home, as wife and child,
as fire, water, dagger, poison;
we live in dread of things that do not happen
and keep bemoaning losses that never will occur..." (
Stuart Atkins’ translation of Faust)
पु. शि. रेगे (P. S. Rege)'s epigraph for his novella 'Matruka' (मातृका),1978:
'Das Ewig-Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan." Faust II
("Eternal womanhood
Leads upward and on." or
"Eternal Womanhood
Draws us on high")I heard very early in life that Goethe loved Kālidāsa's 'Abhijñānaśākuntalam' so much that he danced by bearing it over his head.
I have never heard any one in India making such a dance after reading Goethe's 'Faust'.
Adam Kirsch compares him not to Kalidasa but to Shakespeare for The New Yorker dated February 1 2016:
“...To get a sense of how Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
dominates German literature, we would have to imagine a Shakespeare known to
the last inch—a Shakespeare squared or cubed. Goethe’s significance is only
roughly indicated by the sheer scope of his collected works, which run to a
hundred and forty-three volumes. Here is a writer who produced not only some of
his language’s greatest plays but hundreds of major poems of all kinds—enough to
keep generations of composers supplied with texts for their songs. Now consider
that he also wrote three of the most influential novels in European literature,
and a series of classic memoirs documenting his childhood and his travels, and
essays on scientific subjects ranging from the theory of colors to the
morphology of plants.
Then, there are several volumes of his recorded table talk,
more than twenty thousand extant letters, and the reminiscences of the many
visitors who met him throughout his sixty-year career as one of Europe’s most
famous men. Finally, Goethe accomplished all this while simultaneously working
as a senior civil servant in the duchy of Weimar, where he was responsible for
everything from mining operations to casting actors in the court theatre. If he
hadn’t lived from 1749 to 1832, safely into the modern era and the age of
print, but had instead flourished when Shakespeare did, there would certainly
be scholars today theorizing that the life and work of half a dozen men had
been combined under Goethe’s name...”
I also read this about him.
Osman Durrani, TLS, July 13 2016:
"...Raised a Protestant, Goethe retained a soft spot for Luther’s Bible. At heightened moments he tended to recycle its phrases and imagery. Yet many of the outward manifestations of Christianity filled him with loathing. He abhorred the sight of crucifixes and the sound of church bells. By contrast, he inclined sympathetically towards Judaism and Islam, which refrain from depicting the deity in visual terms. For the same reason he condemned the lavish temples of India and, provocatively, praised the general who defaced the colossal statue of Buddha at Bamiyan centuries before it was dynamited by the Taliban. But in the end, it was Faust, Part Two that created the greatest furore. Nothing he wrote met with more invective and derision than its final scene, in which the erstwhile devil’s disciple appears levitating towards some pseudo-Catholic form of absolution in the company of angelic choirs. This seemed to run counter to everything he stood for. Robertson is, understandably, at pains to put a positive spin on the controversial conclusion of the poet’s magnum opus, arguing that his inner motivation had always led Faust to strive productively for something beyond his reach. This enduring commitment to striving, so often taken as the key to Faust’s career, is perhaps best viewed as the inevitable legacy of the Enlightenment. Its value is thrown into question by the multiple murders, brute thuggery, land-grabbing and summary evictions in which he was complicit, along with the invention of capitalism through the creation of paper money and the use of slave labour in a colonial context..."
I also read this about him.
Osman Durrani, TLS, July 13 2016:
"...Raised a Protestant, Goethe retained a soft spot for Luther’s Bible. At heightened moments he tended to recycle its phrases and imagery. Yet many of the outward manifestations of Christianity filled him with loathing. He abhorred the sight of crucifixes and the sound of church bells. By contrast, he inclined sympathetically towards Judaism and Islam, which refrain from depicting the deity in visual terms. For the same reason he condemned the lavish temples of India and, provocatively, praised the general who defaced the colossal statue of Buddha at Bamiyan centuries before it was dynamited by the Taliban. But in the end, it was Faust, Part Two that created the greatest furore. Nothing he wrote met with more invective and derision than its final scene, in which the erstwhile devil’s disciple appears levitating towards some pseudo-Catholic form of absolution in the company of angelic choirs. This seemed to run counter to everything he stood for. Robertson is, understandably, at pains to put a positive spin on the controversial conclusion of the poet’s magnum opus, arguing that his inner motivation had always led Faust to strive productively for something beyond his reach. This enduring commitment to striving, so often taken as the key to Faust’s career, is perhaps best viewed as the inevitable legacy of the Enlightenment. Its value is thrown into question by the multiple murders, brute thuggery, land-grabbing and summary evictions in which he was complicit, along with the invention of capitalism through the creation of paper money and the use of slave labour in a colonial context..."
Artist: Johann Tischbein, 1787
p.s फौस्टला डोक्यावर घेवून भारतात कोणी नाचले का? Perhaps the late Vinda Karandikar (विंदा करंदीकर) did because he translated it in Marathi: फाऊस्ट...
