390.]
[Footnote 146: While writing a defence of his friend Lessing against
the charge of atheism, Mendelssohn's mental agitation was such that it
was believed to have occasioned his death.]
[Footnote 147: Turgenieff relates that on translating passages from
_Satyros_ and _Prometheus_ to Flaubert, Edmond de Goncourt, and
Daudet, all three were profoundly impressed by the range and power
displayed in them.]
To the same period as _Prometheus_ belongs another fragment, inspired
by an equally grandiose conception, which, like so many others with
Goethe, was never to be realised. The theme of the projected drama was
to be the career of Mahomet, and in his Autobiography Goethe has
indicated the leading ideas it was to embody. Contrary to the
prevailing opinion, which had received brilliant expression in
Voltaire's play on the same subject, Mahomet was to be represented not
as an impostor but as a prophet sincerely convinced of the truth of
his message, and inflamed with a disinterested desire to give his
countrymen a purer religion--a view of Mahomet, it may be said in
passing, which Goethe's disciple, Carlyle, was among the first to
proclaim in this country.
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