[Here’s an excerpt from the entry dated “May 9,” in THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; translated by Elizabeth Mayer and Louise Bogan:]
You see, dear friend, how limited and how happy were the glorious Ancients! how naïve their emotions and their poetry! When Ulysses speaks of the immeasurable sea and the infinite earth, everything is true, human, deeply felt, intimate, and mysterious. What is the use of my present knowledge, which I share with any schoolboy, that the earth is round? Man needs only a few clods of earth whereon to enjoy himself, and even fewer for his last rest.