However, as my learning accelerated I began to read enthusiastically, what I could manage in German alone and more advanced material in translation. I was lucky to have an inspiring and dedicated teacher who encouraged me particularly to read Kant and Goethe; I loved the neatness of Kant's arguments in 'Was Ist Aufklaerung?', and am currently reading Faust Part I. Naturally this is challenging, but the text is rewarding my perseverance by its depth, its probing questions and its humour. I am also keenly interested in the music and philosophy of the Austro-German late Romantics, especially Wagner, whose music I think sublime, even if his drama fails to convince. This is truest of 'Parsifal', whose noxious cocktail of inchoate personal theology and disturbing racial undertones appals, but is set to some of the most gorgeous music imaginable. Simultaneous beauty and ugliness make Wagner's art unfailingly compelling, but seldom comfortably so. I studied Wagner at A level, along with Boell's bleak 'Die Verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum', completing the course in one year after GCSE and preparing for the written exams independently. In the year since then I have continued to read and am eager to pursue the active discovery of German and Germany as far as I am able.