Goethe's Works - 1879 Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: One day lately a new poet presented himself; lie does not seem at all bad, or else I am prejudiced by finding in him certain reflexes of your mind, for you seem ... more »to have greatly influenced him. I enclose the poem, please tell me your opinion of it. 421.—Goethe to Schiller. Weimar, January 31, 1798. Business matters and diversions are ever producing new things of their kind to be attended to, so that I feel almost inclined to come over to you for a day or two; I see no prospect of any peace in the meantime. Yesterday we heard a new opera.f Cimarosa proves himself a perfect master in this style of composition ; the text is after the Italian fashion, and I made the observation, that it is quite possible for what is foolish, nay even absurd, to be happily wedded to the highest aesthetic grandeur of music. This is accomplished solely by humour (Humor); for without itself being poetical it is a species of poetry, and, in accordance with its nature, raises us above the subject. The German rarely possesses the talent for this, inasmuch as his philistinism allows him to appreciate only that species of stupidity which has the appearance of sentiment or common sense. I herewith send you a curiosity, an announcement that a last descendant J of the old Niirnberg Meistersanger intends publishing a selection of his own works. I know several things of his already, and unfortunately forgot to look him up when I was in Niirnberg. He has written some things full of humour and naturalness which might easily be translated into a purer form of German, and which no one need be ashamed to own. We shall get the book through Knebel when it is published. Schiller intentionally did not say that the enclosed idyll, Die Capelle im Walde, was written by his own wife. It was published in the la...« less