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The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 01 - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. by Unknown
page 65 of 706 (09%)
He wrote two or three very ordinary plays to satirize various phases
of the revolutionary excitement--phases that now seem as insignificant
as the plays themselves. In 1792 he accompanied the Duke of Weimar on
the inglorious Austro-Prussian invasion of France, heard the cannonade
at Valmy, and was an interested observer as the allies tumbled back
over the Rhine. Perhaps the best literary achievement of these years
is the fine hexameter version of the medieval _Reynard the Fox_.

The year 1794 marks the beginning of more intimate relations between
Goethe and Schiller. Their memorable friendship lasted until
Schiller's death, in 1805--the richest decade in the whole history of
German letters. The two men became in a sense allies and stood
together in the championship of good taste and humane idealism.
Goethe's literary occupations during this period were very
multifarious; a list of his writings in the various fields of poetry,
drama, prose fiction, criticism, biography, art and art-history,
literary scholarship, and half a dozen sciences, would show a
many-sidedness to which there is no modern parallel. Of all this mass
of writing only a few works of major importance can even be
mentioned here.

In 1796 appeared _Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship_, a novel which
captivated the literary class, if not the general public, and was
destined to exert great influence on German fiction for a generation
to come. It had been some twenty years in the making. In its earlier
form it was called _Wilhelm Meister's Theatrical Mission_.[3] This
tells the story of a Werther-like youth who is to be saved from
Werther's fate by finding a work to do. His "mission," apparently, is
to become a good actor and to promote high ideals of the histrionic
art. Incidentally he is ambitious to be a dramatic poet, and his
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