Yesterday evening , Octavia Stocker, my new editor at continuum/Bloomsbury, gave me the bound proofs of my biography of Goethe, which is to be published this autumn. It is a shaming confession, but this moment in the writing life is always one of intense pleasure. Yes, Jane Austen, P.G.Wodehouse, Shakespeare are endlessly re-readable, but the truth is, there is no reading-pleasure to compare with the thrill of the first reading of one’s own words in print. This is not to say that one is such a prize ass as to esteem one’s own works above the greats . I am just recording the quiet purring which occurs when the bound proofs appear
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Goethe was a tough nut to crack, but I so enjoyed writing this book. In fact, I can not remember a book which gave me more pleasure to write. And I still look forward, eagerly, to my hour of German reading each morning. The difficulty, of course, was knowing how to introduce readers who had no German to his work. In some cases, I have given a prosaic rendition, and in others, I have tried to write “versions” of the poetry. In one of his most beautiful lyrics, “Joyful Yearning”, he is lying in a post-coital moment of tenderness with his beloved, looking at the flickering of candle-light. We do not know who the lover was. It is often assumed that it was a woman, but Goethe in youth was undoubtedly bisexual.
His passion for the handsome philosopher, six years his senior, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi is attested in their passionate correspondence, sometimes letters as long as ten pages.
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