Goethe

A great vitalist as well as a profound hypochondriac, Goethe completely rejected what reminded him of illness and death. Therefore, he took advantage of everything when fate threw his way with extraordinary enthusiasm and talent to turn his life into a successful race towards immortality. Helena Cortés, an expert Germanist and renowned translator of Goethe, reconstructs in this biography the most significant stages and episodes in the life of the German writer, based on extensive documentation and a vigorous and entertaining narrative that effectively recreates the various adventures and events almost cinematically. characters that parade through its pages. Whether it is the intense and complex friendship with the Duke of Weimar, his patron; his unconventional understanding of eroticism and his relationship with women; his tender treatment with his grandchildren and his obsession with leaving behind a legacy; his passion as a naturalist and his facet as an amateur scientist; the very happy bohemian years of his in Italy; the political tensions of Germany in the Napoleonic era and the subsequent conservative repression, which conditioned his life, as well as a painting of the romantic cenacles of Jena or life in backward Weimar... Everything fits in this masterful story that, far from from being a new hagiography of «genius», it reveals to us a flesh and blood Goethe. The volume is completed with ten reading guides to his most outstanding works, which will provide the reader with a complete and enlightening literary balance of one of the giants of European culture.