Goethe’s advice to young Eckermann.
“He introduced the conversation by asking me whether I had written any poems this summer. I replied that I had indeed written some, but that on the whole, I lacked the feelings of ease requisite for production.
“Beware of attempting a large work. It injures our best minds. The thoughts and feelings which daily press upon the poet will and should be expressed. But, if you have a great work in your head nothing else thrives near it, all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasantness of life itself is for the time lost.
If the poet daily seizes the present, and always treats with a freshness of feeling what is offered him, he always makes sure of something good, and if he sometimes does not succeed, has, at least lost nothing.
It is not enough to take steps which may some day lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise.
If you treat, at present, only small subjects, freshly dashing off what every day offers you, you will generally produce something good, and each day will bring you pleasure.
I especially warn you against great inventions of your own; for then you would try to give a view of things, and for that purpose youth is seldom ripe. Further, character and views detach themselves as sides from the poet’s mind and deprive him of the fulness requisite for future productions. Finally, how much time is lost in invention, internal arrangement, and combination, for which nobody thanks us.”
From: Conversations with Goethe by Johann Peter Eckermann.
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