Posts Tagged ‘Johann Gottfried Herder’

“Nothing is more terrible
than ignorance in action.“

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe has always been shortchanged in the English-speaking world, and one Stanford alum (he got his PhD in 2000) wants to do something about it. Tino Markworth has also studied in Bielefeld (Germany) where he taught in the University of Bielefeld’s Philosophy Department, in London and in Washington, D.C. He also studied in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and taught in the English Department at Stanford.

His new website, Goethe Global, is here. He says it offers “bite-sized pieces of wisdom” that show that his writing is still relevant to our lives today. “My hope is that these quotes will motivate people to find out more about him and ultimately engage further with Goethe’s longer texts.”

“On the website, you can find Goethe quotes in English, often newly translated, with the German original and the exact source,” he wrote me. “In addition, there are links to free versions of some of Goethe’s works in English and to online resources about Goethe in English.”

Here are a few of the quotes:

… we are forced to forget our century
if we want to work according to our convictions.

***

The excellent is rarely found,
more rarely valued.

***

Beauty and Genius
must be removed
if you don’t want
to become their servant.

***

… the spirit and the senses so easily grow
dead to the impressions of the beautiful
and perfect, that the ability to feel it
should be preserved by every possible means

Goethe is not Markworth’s only passion. He organized the first international conference on Bob Dylan in 1998 at Stanford, which attracted more than 400 people.

Here’s another passion: he also has a thing for Johann Gottfried Herder, the German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic who was born on this very day in 1744: “All our science calculates with abstracted individual external marks, which do not touch the inner existence of any single thing.”

(P.S. I found this on my internet travels: if you want to read an interview with Goethe, go here.)

Postscript: Neil Silberblatt, who runs the “Voices of Poetry” Facebook page, is a Herder fan, too. Inspired by this post, he reposted a birthday tribute from my own alma mater, “Herder and the Idea of a Nation,” here.

Postscript on August 28: I didn’t realize Goethe’s birthday would come so soon! “Why look for conspiracy when stupidity can explain so much?” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born on this date in 1749