The paper had been called forth by a violent and coarse
attack, which he described as _literarischer Sansculottismus_, on the
writers of the period, and with a testiness unusual with him he took
up their defence. Under what conditions, he asks, do classical writers
appear? Only, he answers, when they are members of a great nation and
when great events are moving that nation at a period in its history
when a high state of culture has been reached by the body of its
people. Only then can the writer be adequately inspired and find to
his hand the materials requisite to the production of works of
permanent value. But, at the epoch when he and his contemporaries
entered on their career, none of these conditions existed. There was
no German nation, there was no standard of taste, no educated public
opinion, no recognised models for imitation; and in these
circumstances Goethe finds the explanation of the shortcomings of the
generation of writers to which he belonged.
On the truth of these conclusions Goethe's adventures as a literary
artist are the all-sufficient commentary. From first to last he was
in search of adequate literary forms and of worthy subjects; and, as
he himself admits, he not unfrequently went astray in the quest.
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