Classico e Romantico in Goethe. Una prospettiva

Classic and romantic in Goethe. A point of view. The relationship of Goethe to the classical and the romantic view of the world is outlined here through the reference to three essays written in the years of the growing success of the German Romanticism: Winckelmann and his Century (1805), Shakespeare without End (1813) and Epochs of Spirit (1817). Along with the political opposition to the Romantic Movement, Goethe's famous dictum «Classic is healthy, Romantic is sick» expresses the safeguard of the finite form against the principle of the incommensurability of idea and reality. In the conclusion, an analogy is suggested between Goethe's attitude and Thomas Mann's criticism towards the Bachofen revival endorsed by Alfred Baeumler in 1926.