The Permanent Goethe
edited byDial, $5.00.
In commemoration of the two-hundredth anniversary of Goethe’s birth, Thomas Mann has compiled this protean (655 pages) anthology, in which all facets of Goethe’s genius are represented, and has prefaced it with a long essay on Goethe’s life and work. The volume includes Faust (Part One), Egmont, Iphigenia in Tauris; The Sorrows of Young Werther and extracts from Wilhelm Meister: a sampling of the travel sketches, literary essays, maxims and reflections; and a great many poems and letters. New renderings of some of the poems have been prepared by Stephen Spender and stilted translations replaced. The vogue for anthologies and “portables of the great masters has produced some welcome volumes, but none more notable than The Permanent Goethe.