Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship and travels, vol. 1 (of 2)Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
General
Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship and travels, vol. 1 (of 2)
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Bildungsromans; German fiction -- Translations into English; Self-realization -- Fiction
Werner contradicted this opinion: their discussion became lively, and
Wilhelm could not without emotion employ against his friend the
arguments with which he had already so frequently tormented himself.
Werner maintained that it was not reasonable wholly to relinquish a
pursuit for which a man had some propensity and talent, merely because
he never could succeed in it to full perfection. There were many vacant
hours, he said, which might be filled up by it; and then by and by some
result might be produced which would yield a certain satisfaction to
himself and others.
Wilhelm, who in this matter was of quite a different opinion, here
interrupted him, and said with great vivacity,--
"How immensely, dear friend, do you err in believing that a work, the
first presentation of which is to fill the whole soul, can be produced
in broken hours scraped together from other extraneous employment. No:
the poet must live wholly for himself, wholly in the objects that
delight him. Heaven has furnished him internally with precious gifts; he
carries in his bosom a treasure that is ever of itself increasing; he
must also live with this treasure, undisturbed from without, in that
still blessedness which the rich seek in vain to purchase with their
accumulated stores. Look at men, how they struggle after happiness and
satisfaction! Their wishes, their toil, their gold, are ever hunting
restlessly,--and after what? After that which the poet has received from
nature,--the right enjoyment of the world, the feeling of himself in
others, the harmonious conjunction of many things that will seldom exist
together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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