The book contains Goethe's romantic poetry made him a leader of the "Sturm and Drang" movement. The roots of his poems are in the literatures of England, France, Italy, classical Greece, Persia and the Arab world.
Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, philosophy, and science; his broad sympathies and balanced personality illuminated German culture. His influence on German philosophy is virtually immeasurable, having major effect especially on the generation of Hegel and Schelling.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Poems"
Robert Browning "Poems"
Browning is a forerunner of modernism. His poetry can offer difficulty because of the labyrinthian syntax in pursuit of meanings which for their originator, at least, were clear.
Browning is a "Christian" poet but no orthodox one. He believes in a dynamic incarnation repeating itself throughout creation and in every moment of existence. Grace and Redemption, however, are relatively foreign if not alien concepts to him - one of the reasons it's quite accurate to think of him as the most "optimistic" poet, if not author, in all English literature.
William Wordsworth "Poems"
Wordsworth, born in his beloved Lake District, was the son of an attorney. His school years were later to be described vividly in "The Prelude". Wordsworth wrote many of his greatest poems after his returning from France (1795-1799), where he twice fell in love: once with a young french woman Annette Vallon, and the, once more, with the French Revolution. In these years he wrote enlarged edition of "Lyrical Ballads", this was followed by the publication of "Poems in Two Volumes", which included the poems "Resolution and Independence" and "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood". During this period he also made new friendships with Walter Scott, Sir G. Beaumont and De Quincy, wrote such poems as "Elegaic Stanzas suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle".
Today Wordsworth's poetry remains widely read. Its almost universal appeal is perhaps best explained by Wordsworth's own words words on the role, for him, of poetry; what he called "the most philosophical of all writing" whose object is "truth... carried alive into the heart by passion".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)