It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me; but if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it; and then I never fail to make the most gratifying discoveries,to find new qualities in the work itself and new faculties in myself.

His conversations and various common undertakings throughout the 1790s with Schiller Johann Gottlieb Fichte Johann Gottfried Herder Alexander von Humboldt Wilhelm von Humboldt and August and Friedrich Schlegel have in later years been collectively termed Weimar Classicism. After returning from a tour of Italy in 1788 Goethe publiJohann Wolfgang von Goethed his first major work of a scientific nature the Metamorphosis of Plants. He was an early participant in the Sturm und Drang literary movement named for a play by his childhood friend Friedrich Maximilian Klinger.

Goethe's poems were set to music throughout the nineteenth century by a number of composers including Ludwig van Beethoven Franz Schubert Robert Schumann Johannes Brahms Hugo Wolf and Gustav Mahler. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German: [ˈjoːhan ˈvɔlfɡaŋ fɔn ˈɡøːtə] ([Image] listen) 28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German writer artist and politician.