A 55-volume Goethe collected works set, a portion of his total 142 volume collected works set. [10] |
“A lady addressed Goethe on the subject of Elective Affinities: ‘I do not approve of this book at all, Herr von Goethe; it is truly immoral and I do not recommend it to any women.’—Thereupon Goethe kept a serious silence for awhile, and finally, with great civility, replied: ‘I am sorry, for it is my best book.’”
Goethe's 1809 novella Elective Affinities (Die Wahlverwandtschaften), original German cover, his self-defined best book (of his 142+ collected works publications); adjacent to an updated reprint ot the H.M. Waidson translation (1960, Kindred by Choice), One World Classics edition. |
“A women friend of mine said to Goethe at that time: ‘I cannot approve of Elective Affinities, Herr von Goethe; it really is an immoral book!’ According to her report Goethe was silent for a while and had then said with great earnestness: ‘I’m sorry you feel that way. It is my best book, and don’t think that this is the mere whim of an aging man. I grant you that one loves most deeply the child of one’s last marriage, the product of one’s late power of generation. But you wrong me and the book. The principle illustrated in the book is true and not immoral. But you must regard it from a broader point of view and understand that the conventional moral norms can turn into sheer immorality when applied to situations of this character.”
“The only production of greater extent, in which I am conscious of having labored to set forth a pervading idea, is probably my Elective Affinities.”
“Throughout his life Einstein was a man of the book, to a much higher degree than other scientists. The remarkably diverse collection of volumes in his library grew constantly. If we look only at the German-language books published before 1910 that survived Einstein’s Princeton household, the list includes much of the cannon of the time: Boltzmann, Buchner, Friedrich Hebbel, the works of Heine in two editions, Helmholtz, von Humboldt, the many books of Kant, Gotthold Lessing, Mach, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. But what looms largest are the collected works of Johann von Goethe in a thirty-six volume edition and another of twelve volumes, plus two volumes on his Optics, the exchange of letters between Goethe and Schiller, and a separate volume of Faust.”
1. | 39,345 works (Hamlet #1) in 110,020 publications in 138 languages and 4,387,523 library holdings (link). | |||
2. | 26,918 works (Faust #1) in 63,794 publications in 81 languages and 698,814 library holdings (link). | |||
3. | 31,429 works (Le Nozze de Figaro #1) in 103,242 publications in 65 languages and 937,666 library holdings (link). | |||
4. | 19,904 works in 30,491 publications in 65 languages and 1,143,104 library holdings (link). | |||
5. | 26,953 works (Brandenburg concertos #1) in 87,937 publications in 41 languages and 834,142 library holdings (link). |
An 1881 (Stuttgart. J.G. Gottafchen) 15-volume collected works set of Goethe, in German. A 42-book Goethe collected works set. |