In the business of
reviewing, however, he seems to have taken little pleasure. "The day
has begun festively," he wrote to Kestner on Christmas, 1772, "but,
unfortunately, I must spoil the beautiful hours with reviewing; but I
do so with good heart, as it is for the last issue."[134]
[Footnote 134: Goethe wrote the epilogue to the last number of the
Review, of which he says to Kestner, "hat ich das Publikum und den
Verleger turlipinirt."]
To the same year, 1772, belong two short productions of Goethe which
deserve a passing notice as exhibiting his strange blending of
interests at this period. The one is entitled _Brief des Pastors zu
... an den neuen Pastor zu ..._, and professes to have been translated
from the French. The Letter is another illustration of his interest in
religion and in the interpretation of the Bible which had begun with
his early reading of the Old Testament, and which his intercourse with
the Fraeulein von Klettenberg and Herder had intermittently kept alive.
The theological teaching of the Letter is, in point of fact, a
compound of the teaching of these two. Its main object is to emphasise
the necessity of toleration in the interest of religion itself, and
nowhere was the monition more needed than in Frankfort, where the
antipathy between those of the Reformed and the Lutheran communions
was such as even to debar intermarriage.
Pages:
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212