I've always been a sucker for centrists. Part of my crush on Anglicanism stems from its refusal to pick a side between Catholicism and Protestantism. I have friends who disagree, of course. I haven't officially been confirmed though. I'm still working through how I could make peace with a state church whose history has been plagued with colonial activities... so I'm just a Protestant wanna-be who dreams of a low-church liturgical revival.

Goethe first piqued my interest when I heard a lecture by Elizabeth Vandiver discussing how Goethe oscillated between Romanticism and Neoclassicism. Goethe was proto-romanticist who talked about feelings and subjectivity before it was cool, but he also penned several scientific texts. He was a centrist in that regard.

So I found Robertson's treatment of Goethe super helpful for contextualizing Goethe himself. The introduction discusses the themes surrounding Goethe's works: love, nature, classical art and world lit, politics, tragedy, and religion. It also included biographical information that illustrated how Goethe discovered and combined all his passions.

I was also surprised to learn how important romantic love was to Goethe. He didn't have a great love life though so probably why he turned them into tragedies.