This First Friday Lecture is supported by the Class Gift given by the 2023 graduates of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults.
In his 1787 drama Iphigenia in Tauris, based on Euripides’ tragedy of the same name, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe has the stranded Greek princess Iphigenia recount how she wandered the foreign shores of Tauris, “seeking the land of the Greeks in my soul.” This scene can be read as emblematic of the emphatic turn to ancient Greece in German culture at the end of the nineteenth century. This lecture will explore some of the major artistic and intellectual achievements of this turn, arguing that, far from a nostalgic longing for an idealized past, German writers found in the cultural achievements of ancient Greece a means of reimagining the possibilities of their present moment – using many of the texts on the Basic Program’s reading list.
