When the playwright, poet, novelist and intellectual Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) died, he was a colossus of world literature. For The Sorrows of Young Werther and Faust he stands alongside Shakespeare and Dante. Had Nobel prizes existed, he would have deserved several and his lyric poetry is considered the best in any language.

Armstrong’s literary criticism and elucidation is excellent, especially of Goethe's poetry (which lends itself poorly to translation from German). Of one poem to his platonic lover, Charlotte, Armstrong explains that “like so many of Goethe’s poems, the diction is unnervingly simple”. He also recreates beautifully Goethe’s times: both the Seven Years’ War and a fecundity that gave the world Beethoven and more besides.

Armstrong also has an empathy with the man behind the words. A biography, at least in part, this unusual book also convincingly presents Goethe as a model for how to live well: “Goethe is important because he integrates material and emotional stability with an astonishingly fertile creative life.” Armstrong shows that Goethe’s genius towers above us, but is of us. “There is no crime I have heard of,” Goethe wrote, “that I could not have committed myself.” Gentle, ruminative and gracious, and an equal of Robert Dessaix’s lovely Twilight of Love, about Turgenev, this is an extraordinary, exemplary book about a seminal and marvellous man.

Love, Life, Goethe: How to be Happy in an Imperfect World by John Armstrong

Penguin, £9.99

Buy the book here for the offer price of £9.49 (free p&p)

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