单项选择题
| Unlike the carefully weighed and
planned compositions of Dante, Goethe’s writings have always the sense of
immediacy and enthusiasm. He was a constant experimenter with life, with ideas,
and with forms of writing. For the same reason, his works seldom have the
qualities of finish or formal beauty which distinguish the masterpieces of Dante
and Virgil. He came to love the beauties of classicism, but these were never an
essential part of his makeup. Instead, the urgency of the moment, the spirit of
the thing, guided his pen. As a result, nearly all his works have serious
flaws of structure, of inconsistencies, of excesses and redundancies and
extraneities. In the large sense, Goethe represents the fullest development of the romanticist. It has been argued that he should not be so designated because he so clearly matured and outgrew the kind of romanticism exhibited by Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. Shelley and Keats died young; Wordsworth lived narrowly and abandoned his early attitudes. In contrast, Goethe lived abundantly anti developed his faith in the spirit, his understanding of nature and human nature, and his reliance on feelings as man’s essential motivating force. The result was all-encompassing vision of reality and a philosophy of life broader and deeper than the partial visions and attitudes of other romanticists. Yet the spirit of youthfulness, the impatience with close reasoning or "logic-chopping," and the continued faith in nature remained his to tile end, together with an occasional waywardness and impulsiveness and a disregard of artistic or logical propriety which savor strongly of romantic individualism. Since so many twentieth century thoughts and attitudes are similarly based on the stimulus of the Romantic Movement, Goethe stands as particularly the poet of the modern man as Dante stood for medieval man and as Shakespeare for the man of the Renaissance. |