In the Valley of the Open Secret

In 1828, Thomas Carlyle, the British author and polymath, wrote an essay considering Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. Carlyle praised the work that he also translated into English—and he praised it in particular on the grounds that, through the character of Wilhelm, a young man who rejects a life of urban business for one in pursuit of art, the novel had itself achieved a kind of transcendence. In the character of Wilhelm, Carlyle suggested,  

Poetry and Prose are no longer at variance, for the poet’s eyes are opened: he sees the changes of many-colored existence, and sees the loveliness and deep purport which lies hidden under the very meanest of them; hidden to the vulgar sight, but clear to the poet’s; because the “open secret” is no longer a secret of goodness; that whatever has being has beauty.