Excerpt from Diderot, Vol. 2: And the Encyclopaedists By far the most important of these is Ramean's ivezohew. The fortunes of this singular production are probably unique in literary history. In the year 1804 Schiller handed to Goethe the manuscript of a piece by Diderot, with the wish that he might find himself able to translate it into German. 'as I had long, ' says Goethe, 'cherished a great regard for this author, I cheerfully undertook the task, after looking through the original. People can see, I hope, that I threw my whole soul into it.' When he had done his work, he returned the manuscript to Schiller. Schiller died almost immediately (may, and the mysterious manuscript disappeared. Goethe could never learn either whence it had come, or whither it went. He always suspected that the autograph original had been sent to the empress Catherine at St. Petersburg, and that Schiller's manuscript was a copy from that. Though Goethe had executed his translation, as he says, 'not merely with readiness but even with passion, ' the violent and only too just hatred then prevailing in Germany for France and for all that belonged to France, hindered any vogue which Ramean's Nephew might otherwise have had. On the eve of Austerlitz and of Jena there might well be little humour for a satire from the French. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.