Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

I wouldn't have thought about reading Goethe if we hadn't been sitting in the rain last November talking about Nietzsche, and we wouldn't have been talking about Nietzsche if Helen hadn't been trying to explain Steiner to me for the hundredth time, and she wouldn't have been trying to explain Steine......more

This is the prototypical Bildungsroman - the influence of "Wilhelm Meister" on global literary history can hardly be overestimated, because with this text from 1795, Goethe defined the genre. The central aspect he highlighted is that "Bildung" does not only entail formal education, but also the deve......more

Majster je toliko toga! Najpre je temelj za svakoga ko se interesuje za Bildungs-narative i filozofiju obrazovanja. Nemoguće je i neozbiljno govoriti o poetici Bildungsromana bez čitanja Getea. Tako i samo čitanje ima obrazovnu ulogu – upoznajemo se sa kodom, obuhvatom i mogućnostima ovakve vrste ro......more

Die Herkunft aus gutem Haus, der Drang zur Selbstverwirklichung, der verschlungene Lebensweg: Wilhelm Meister hat einiges mit seinem Erfinder Johann Wolfgang von Goethe gemeinsam. In die Form eines Romans gepresst, weicht Goethes Lebensschilderung doch stark von dem handlungsgetragenen Schema ab, da......more

I’ve read most of Goethe's major work at this point, and I’ve not found a single one of them to be completely satisfying. There is always too much of something or not enough of something, and this book is no exception. I daresay most modern readers will find this work problematic. On the levels of c......more