Yes, Goethe is up there. He's hard for the English-speaking world to fully evaluate due to the less than brilliant translations... especially of his masterpiece, Faust and his lyric poetry. Michael Hamburger, one of the finest German-to-English translators, translated some of Goethe's poetry but I wish he had translated more. Hölderlin, Rilke, Heine, and several other German poets have been better served when it comes to translations than Goethe. Having said that, his prose works are quite accessible in English. The Italian Journey, surely ranks with Rousseau's Confessions among Romantic-era autobiographical works and there are several good translations... including one by the British poet, Auden. I loved The Sorrows of Young Werther as a teen.
Other rivals to Shakespeare among Western writers would certainly include not only Goethe, but also Dante, Homer, Virgil, Tolstoy, Cervantes, William Blake, Flaubert, and Proust. I'd probably give the nod to Dante's Comedia and the Bible as the single greatest works of Western Literature, but overall, Shakespeare just has such breadth and depth.
Funny that a post on Twombly has turned to a post on literature.
