_Der Kaiser and die Kunst_)]

It lies in the very style of the book and is a part of its author's
method of self-revelation. That he devotes so much space to the
seemingly transient and unimportant love-affairs of his youth is only
his way of recognizing that the poet-soul is born of love and
nourished by love. He felt that these fleeting amorosities were a part
of the natural history of his inner being.

And even in the serene afternoon of his life lovely woman often
disturbed his soul, just as in the days of his youth. But the poetic
expression of his feeling gradually became less simple and direct: he
liked to embroider it with musing reflections and exotic fancies
gathered from everywhere. Just as he endeavored with indefatigable
eagerness of mind to keep abreast of scientific research, so he tried
to assimilate the poetry of all nations. The Greeks and Romans no
longer sufficed his omnivorous appetite and his "panoramic ability."
When Hammer-Purgstall's German version of the _D[=i]w[=a]n_ of
H[=a]f[=i]z came into his hands he at once set about making himself at
home in the mental world of the Persian and Arabic poets. Thus arose
his _Divan_ (1819), in which he imitated the oriental costume, but not
the form. His aim was to reproduce in German verse the peculiar savor
of the Orientals, with their unique blend of sensuality, wit, and
mystic philosophy. But the feeling--the inner experience--was all his
own. The best book of the _Divan_, the one called _Suleika_, was
inspired by a very real liking for Marianne Willemer, a talented lady
who played the love-game with him and actually wrote some of the poems
long ascribed to Goethe himself.

At last, in 1824, when he was seventy-five years old, he came back
once more to his _Faust_, the completion of which had long floated
before his mind as a duty that he owed to himself and to the world.
There was no longer any doubt as to what his great life-work was to
be. With admirable energy and with perfect clarity of vision he
addressed himself to the gigantic task, the general plan of which and
many of the details had been thought out long before. It was finished
in the summer of 1831. About sixty years after he had penned the first
words of Faust, the disgruntled pessimist at war with life, he took
leave of him as a purified soul mounting upward among the saints
toward the Ineffable Light, under the mystic guidance of the
Eternal-Womanly.

Goethe died March 18, 1832. Th