# Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — Representative Men character guide

> Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Representative Men by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

**Role:** major

**Also known as:** Goethe, VII Goethe

**First appearance:** 0007-vii-goethe-or-the-writer

## Snapshot

The writer who is Bonaparte's other half — a poet quite domesticated in the nineteenth century, breathing its air and taking away, by his colossal parts, the reproach of weakness on its intellectual works.

## Who they are

Emerson sets Goethe against Napoleon as the representative of the century's inner life: where Bonaparte embodies its popular external aims, Goethe embodies its poet, a man impossible at any earlier time. He appears when general culture has spread and smoothed down all sharp individual traits, when there is no poet but scores of poetic writers, no Columbus but hundreds of post-captains with transit-telescope and barometer. He matters because he shows what the scholar or writer can still be in an age without heroes — and whether such a man can carry the power and duties of literature without the heroic frame that once sustained it.

## In the story

### [I: Uses of Great Men](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/representative_men_se/chapters/i-uses-of-great-men)

Referenced indirectly as a representative writer whose spirit diffuses itself.

### [Plato; or, the Philosopher](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/representative_men_se/chapters/ii-plato-or-the-philospher)

Listed among Plato's debtors, along with St. Augustine, Copernicus, Newton, Behmen, and Swedenborg.

### [Plato: New Readings](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/representative_men_se/chapters/plato-new-readings)

Described as 'this eldest Goethe,' hating varnish and falsehood, and delighting in revealing the real at the base of the accidental.

### [Swedenborg; or, the Mystic](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/representative_men_se/chapters/iii-swedenborg-or-the-mystic)

Mentioned in the context of the difficulty of proving originality among geniuses, alongside Swedenborg.

### [IV: Montaigne; or, the Skeptic](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/representative_men_se/chapters/iv-montaigne-or-the-skeptic)

Mentioned in the context of the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller, which was scarcely more kind than that of Pope and Swift in describing mankind.

### [VII: Goethe; or, the Writer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/representative_men_se/chapters/vii-goethe-or-the-writer)

Presented as the representative writer, the type of culture, and the lawgiver of art; his works and methods are analyzed in depth.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/representative_men_se/characters/goethe
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/representative_men_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/representative_men_se/characters