Write against him I may not; he is a
conqueror.... He is a mental phenomenon, and, truly, such apparitions
are rare in Germany."[61] That Goethe, at this period, should have had
such an unbounded admiration for Wieland is an interesting commentary
on his pietistic leanings; for Wieland was now in his full pagan
phase, so distasteful to moral Germany, as Goethe himself indicates.
"I have already been annoyed on Wieland's account," he writes--"I
think with justice. Wieland has often the misfortune to be
misunderstood; frequently, perhaps, the fault is his own, but as
frequently it is not." At a later day Goethe clearly saw and marked in
Wieland that lack of "high seriousness" on which he himself came to
lay such stress as all-important in literature and life, but in the
meantime he freely acknowledged what Wieland had been to him.[62]
"After him (Oeser) and Shakespeare," he wrote in the letter just
quoted, "Wieland is still the only one whom I can hold as my true
master; others had shown me where I had gone astray; they showed me
how to do better."
[Footnote 60: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. 205.]
[Footnote 61: _Ib._ p. 230.]
[Footnote 62: Goethe has this entry in his _Tagebuch_ (April 2nd,
1780): "Wieland sieht ganz unglaublich alles, was man machen will,
macht, und was hangt und langt in einer Schrift.
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