Frankfurt am Main, 9 August 1797
Goethe to Schiller
"...the public in a great city*...lives in a constant whirl of getting and spending, and what we call mood ["Stimmung"] can be neither produced not communicated. All entertainments, even the theatre, are there only to provide distraction and the great inclination of the reading public for magazines and novels arises because the former always, and the latter usually furnish a distraction from distraction.... I even think I have noticed a kind of distaste for poetical productions, at least in so far as they are poetical, which on these grounds seems quite natural. Poetry requires, indeed commands concentration, it isolates a person against their will...".
-- Goethe: The Poet and the Age: Volume II: Revolution and Renunciation, 1790-1803, Nicolas Boyle, 2000, p. 543.
* Frankfurt in 1800 had ca. 35,000 inhabitants.
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