Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Notes on Men, Women, and Books
The greatest literary men amongst them, Goethe, and a few others excepted, have generally commenced life as school master or private tutor, and ended as priest, professor, or state counsellor. This is the usual routine but the duality in their lives is still more striking than the uniformity. The outer world, so prosaic, dull, struggling, matter-of-fact - the mner a central fire, ever heaving up some gigantic mass of thought, or pouring forth its rich lava stream over the rude mechanical strata of daily life, crystallising all it touches into gems.
Richter's parents belonged to the humbler classes. Their dwelling, in which he first saw the light, was a little thatched cottage. Their library, the first dawning to him of a brighter light than the material, consisted only of the family Bible and psalm-book. Here, cradled in poverty, material and spiritual destitution, sprang to life one of the most gifted souls of the century. Truly, let none despair. Genius is of the palm tree nature, which springs up and spreads out broader to heaven the bleaker and more arid is the desert around Welcome poverty, ' continues Jean Paul, so it come not too late in life. Riches weigh more heavily on talent than poverty. Under gold mountains lie crushed many spiritual Titans. Fate darkens the cage of the singing bird until he learns the harmonies she would teach him.'
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