In _West-östlicher Diwan_ (1819), a collection of lyrics--matchless in form and even more concentrated in expression than those of earlier days--which were suggested by a German translation of Hafiz, Goethe had another surprise in store for his contemporaries. And, again, it was an actual passion--that for Marianne von Willemer, whom he met in 1814 and 1815--which rekindled in him the lyric fire. Meanwhile the years were thinning the ranks of Weimar society: Wieland, the last of Goethe's greater literary contemporaries, died in 1813, his wife in 1816, Charlotte von Stein in 1827 and Duke Charles Augustus in 1828. Goethe's retirement from the direction of the theatre in 1817 meant for him a break with the literary life of the day. In 1822 a passion for a young girl, Ulrike von Levetzow, whom he met at Marienbad, inspired the fine _Trilogie der Leidenschaft_, and between 1821 and 1829 appeared the long-expected and long-promised continuation of _Wilhelm Meister, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre_. The latter work, however, was a disappointment: perhaps it could not have been otherwise. Goethe had lost the thread of his romance and it was difficult for him to resume it. Problems of the relation of the individual to society and industrial questions were to have formed the theme of the _Wanderjahre_; but since the French Revolution these problems had themselves entered on a new phase and demanded a method of treatment which it was not easy for the old poet to learn. Thus his intentions were only partially carried out, and the volumes were filled out by irrelevant stories, which had been written at widely different periods.
But the crowning achievement of Goethe's literary life was the completion of _Faust_. The poem had accompanied him from early manhood to the end and was the repository for the fullest "confession" of his life; it is the poetic epitome of his experience. The second part is, in form, far removed from the impressive realism of the _Urfaust_. It is a phantasmagory; a drama the actors in which are not creatures of flesh and blood, but the shadows of an unreal world of allegory. The lover of Gretchen had, as far as poetic continuity is concerned, disappeared with the close of the first part. In the second part it is virtually a new Faust who, at the hands of a new Mephistopheles, goes out into a world that is not ours. Yet behind these unconvincing shadows of an imperial court with its financial difficulties, of the classical _Walpurgisnacht_, of the fantastic creation of the Homunculus, the noble Helena episode and the impressive mystery-scene of the close, where the centenarian Faust finally triumphs over the powers of evil, there lies a philosophy of life, a ripe wisdom born of experience, such as no European poet had given to the world since the Renaissance. _Faust_ has been well called the "divine comedy" of 18th-century humanism.