The Essential Goethe

With an extensive and instructive introduction by the editor, this is the best available one-volume anthology of Goethe's works, spanning the full range of his output of poetry, drama, novels, literary criticism, autobiography, philosophy and science. The scope and insight of his work is extraordinary and his style eminently readable in every discipline. His science is well represented, especially on colour and morphology, and his profound understanding of transformation. Writing of an individual organism he lists its basic characteristics as: 'to divide, to unite, to merge into the universal, to abide in the particular, to transform itself, to define itself, and, as living things tend to appear under a thousand conditions, to arise and vanish, to solidify and melt, to freeze and flow, to expand and contract. Since these effects occur together, any or all may occur at the same moment. Genesis and decay, creation and destruction, birth and death, joy and pain, all are interwoven with equal effect on weight; thus even the most isolated event always presents itself as an image and metaphor for the most universal.'