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Notes on video lecture:
Goethe and Eckermann
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on March 17, 2017 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
master, theatrical, salary, scandalized, Richardson, public, poverty, influential, Finance, accelerate, tutoring, wait, Law, intellectuals, Elegies, Weimar, working, Vulpius, Chinese, Rome, three, duke, garden, strange, Johann, 1832
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Castle of             
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center of Goethe's social and work life
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the          had brought Goethe to Weimar as a budding writer
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Goethe began to assume more and more              functions
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theater
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founded an amateur                      troupe and turned it into a professional theater company
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Minister of               
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sent on diplomatic missions
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Goethe's garden house
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here 39-year-old Goethe met 23-year-old Christian               
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he had just returned from         
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vivacious
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had little formal schooling
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came from a                class background
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when the relationship was made public, the court was                       
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the Duke, to which Goethe owed so much, essentially banished him to live in this              house
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lived there for            years before he was allowed to move back to town
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it was here that he spent wonderful years with Christiane
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here their only son to survive was born
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Goethe wrote the Roman                here
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a homage both to their relationship and to Rome
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             Peter Eckermann (1792-1854)
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grew up in               
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studied law at the Universtiy of Göttingen
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wrote literature and poetry instead
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a friend recommended he read Goethe
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dropped out of        School to write a book about Goethe
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in          sent his manuscript to Goethe entitled "Reflections on Poetry"
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Goethe was 73
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Eckermann did not wait passively for a response
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walked to Weimar for two weeks
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spent the rest of his life
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wrote down his conversations with Goethe
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Goethe was now living in a large house with many rooms
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Goethe was very welcoming
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Eckermann was looking for a              of sorts, and Goethe was looking for an all-purpose assistant
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spent 9 years with Goethe before Goethe died
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helped him publicized his terms
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free of charge
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did                  to earn enough money to pay for food and rent
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never asked Goethe for a proper             
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he was happy to be making acquaintance of distinguished writers and                            in Goethe's circle
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Conversations with Goethe
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Eckermann realized Goethe was someone very                       
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Goethe told Eckermann to          before publishing them
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Eckermann waited until Goethe died to publish them
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they read like interviews in which Eckermann prompts Goethe to say interesting, provocative and profound things
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Eckermann is not entirely passive in the conversations
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responds incredulously
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but mostly agreeing
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sometimes puzzled and asks follow-up questions
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Goethe talked of the influence of Samuel                      on his work
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Goethe said he had read a                novel
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Eckermann said it must have been very strange
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Goethe said it was much less                than one thinks
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they were more decent than the French
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Eckermann said that this Chinese novel must be unusual, the exception to the rule
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Goethe said nothing could be further from the truth
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the Chinese have thousands of them and them, and they had them when our ancestors were still living in trees
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the time has come for the epoch of world literature, and everyone must seek to                      it

Ideas and Concepts:

The birth of world literature via this afternoon's Masterpieces of Literature class: "In his book Conversations with Goethe, Eckermann tells of a conversation he had with Goethe on January 31, 1827. Goethe mentioned that he had read a Chinese novel and Eckermann replied that it must have been very strange. Goethe said that, no, it was much less strange than one would think, and that it was more decent than most French novels. Eckermann said that this Chinese novel must be unusual, the exception to the rule. Goethe replied that nothing could be further from the truth, that the Chinese had hundreds of these novels, that they had them when our ancestors were still living in trees. Goethe insisted that people must begin reading literature from other parts of the world, that the time had come for the epoch of world literature, and that everyone must seek to accelerate it."
Goethe and Eckermann
Goethe's Corpus and World Literature
The 19th Century Recovery of the Library of Ashurbanipal from 650 BC
Gilgamesh as World Literature
Themes from the Epic of Gilgamesh
Enkidu Introduced to Culture Via Shamhat
Gilgamesh, Enkidu, Humbaba and the Country
Gilgamesh and the Story of the Flood