"[35] And
elsewhere he declares that the great lesson he had learned from Oeser
was that the ideal of beauty is to be found in "simplicity and
repose." But the main interest of Goethe's intercourse with Oeser in
connection with his general development is that it strengthened an
illusion from which he did not succeed in freeing himself till near
his fortieth year--the illusion that nature had given him equally the
gifts of the painter and the poet. Many hours of the best years of his
life were to be spent in laboriously practising an art in which he was
doomed to mediocrity; and it must remain a riddle that one, who like
Goethe was so curiously studious of his own self-development, should
so long and so blindly have misunderstood his own gifts.[36]
[Footnote 33: "Das Beduerfnis meiner Natur zwingt mich zu einer
vermannigfaltigten Thaetigkeit," he wrote of himself in his
thirty-second year.]
[Footnote 34: When, in his thirty-sixth year, Goethe renewed his
acquaintance with Oeser, he wrote of him to Frau von Stein: "C'est
comme si cet homme ne devroit pas mourir, tant ses talents paroissent
toujours aller en s'augmentant."]
[Footnote 35: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i.
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