MR. MICROCOSM

Getting to grips with Goethe.

- BY MERVE EMRE

The biographer of a truly world-historical writer finds his work weighted with a double burden. He must trace how his subject’s private passions and follies gave rise to original art, and he must show this art to be the purest expression of the age, a register of its political and cultural upheavals. At his most artful, the biographer is like a professional juggler, tossing one ball into the air—up go the poet's earliest lyrics—and waiting for the right moment in its arc to toss a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth—the imperious father, the punishing lover, the rise of the bourgeoisie, the decline of religion, the final illness—while cleanly catching the first. The motion is hard to master. Every year brings fat biographies that are collections of dropped balls. But, when the correct rhythm is achieved, the balls merge into a fluid arc: a single life contains a whole era of history.