The writers who translated Goethe became some of the best writers in English

This argument might hold up better if Ada Lovelace were a more important or foundational figure. In reality, although undoubtedly bright and an intuitive 'computational thinker', as far as I know her contribution did not have a great influence on any later work and would probably be almost entirely obscure were it not for the significance of her being a woman.

Of course, admiring German classic is something of a necessary prerequisite for Chinese career bigwigs.Must have something to do with Hegel and Marx.

Yes. Apparently there are very few languages in which a complete edition of Goethe's opus is available, and Chinese is one of them. Thanks to Xi Jinping.

Nice. Here's the German version:

Amerika, du hast es besser

als unser Kontinent, der alte

Hast keine verfallenen Schlösser

und keine Basalte.

Dich stört nicht im Innern

Zu lebendiger Zeit

Unnützes Erinnern

und vergeblicher Streit.

It rhymes so I'd say the first translation you posted has an edge. The second half of the AI creation sounds poetic but completely misses the meaning. I think Goethe is trying to say that the young US isn't weighed down by history as was Europe. Of course that completely changed with the civil war.

Indeed, that is an apt quote for today's world.

Looking at the meaning instead of the form - Jefferson may have said similar about Washington's doctrine about entangling alliances, "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations - entangling alliances with none."

GPT-3 shows some promise:

I am an artificial poet. Please request a poem and I will do my best.

    Q: Please write a poem in the style of Goethe that starts with 
    "America, yours is the better lot Than is our continent’s, the old."
    A:
    --------generated---------

    America, yours is the better lot
    Than is our continent’s, the old.
    For you have Liberty’s bright torch
    And our world’s dull night doth fold.

CSU, Sacramento (California) has a section of Goethe’s works

There seems to be a Kazakh translation by a guy called Medeubai Kurmanov.

See: http://www.rusnauka.com/9_NND_2014/Philologia/6_162301.doc.h...

Quote: 'The first part of tragedy in Kazakh language was published in 1969. The full translation of Goethe’s drama poem "Faust" was edited in 1983. The translation of "Faust" into Kazakh language in Germany was marked. Klaus Schneider in his book «Alma-Ata. Kasachischer Fruehling» writes with delight about Medeubai Kurmanov. Many warm words are written about him in the reporting of Rut Kraft «Fruechte aus Alma-Ata». Medeubai Kurmanov is selected the honorary member of Goethe International society.'

Maybe the Goethe-Institut in Almaty knows more.

Things like this have a wistful tragedy for me. There's a book I read as a child that had one particularly beautiful description of the protagonist eating some toast with blackberry jam. I have no idea what the rest of the book was about, what genre it was, the author, nothing except for a clear recollection that there was a very cozy scene about jam. It feels so easy to come across books or works that leave an impression on us somehow, but it's even easier to lose touch and then potentially never come back to them again. Thankfully the internet can be astonishingly good at identifying these things. I'd suggest asking your question on reddit or a forum somewhere. I've found a couple of things that I was sure would be lost forever thanks to helpful internet strangers.

I found a version you can read online: http://kazneb.kz/site/catalogue/view?br=1110185 I don't know Kazakh, so apologies if it turns out to be in the wrong language. It doesn't seem to be Russian, at least.

gutenberg project?

btw, isn't the original of Faust written in Klingon?

This the line of thinking I'm interested in. If the model holds true, could it be generally applicable elsewhere? Specifically programming.

Modeling/emulating others is a well known method of learning. I guess I may have answered my own question.

If you believe that Will had the potential to become a great artist or philosopher - and whether you believe this depends on your reading of the text, since I believe it is left somewhat ambiguous whether he was truly gifted or simply a high-grade dilettante - then you should probably consider the life he settled for to be underwhelming.

You can probably name half a dozen great writers or great painters of the Victorian era without pausing for breath, but can you name even one back-bench MP? Perhaps this is because, especially in the time of Middlemarch, Britain's democracy was only just struggling out of the dark ages (the Reform Act is in fact a major plot point), and was still far from the (mostly) accountable and representative system it is today. Most likely the life of an obscure MP was in fact rather more trivial (and for that matter, rather more bourgeois) than it is today.

Of course, perhaps you consider Will to have simply reached his ceiling, as a bright but decidedly non-genius young man. Certainly the reader is left with the impression that while he may be impressive in his own way, the obscurity of Will's later life is something less of a tragedy than the obscurity of Dorothea's, whose brilliance seems rather more unquestionable.

However, although it may be the lesser tragedy, I think when considered in view of the broader themes of the book, one must consider Will's comfortable irrelevance to be an underachievement. Recall the title - 'a study of provincial life'. Recall also how the ending dwells on the nature of a parochial existence; 'there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it'. It seems to me - and this reading is not uncommon - that if Eliot intended to leave the reader with any lasting impression, it would be this: that even if a person has a very great talent, potential, or even genius, and even if they also have the temperament to put it to work, without a societal scaffold that is willing to support their growth they are doomed to languish - to settle.

For these reasons I think the author of the article is right - Will did choose a trivial existence, neglecting his potential, and to refer to his prior travails as simply 'dabbling in painting' is to discount what should be regarded as the embryonic stages of his curtailed development into an artist of real stature and significance.

Thank God, nobody was inspired by Newton's occultism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studie...

Or, say, Jack Parson's for that matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons_(rocket_engineer)

Oh, wait, there was Ron.