The primary aim of the article is to present a scientific description of the main toposes of childhood (home, garden, play) and the archetypal figures of grandmother, mother and father that appear in Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s autobiographical prose entitled Z mojego życia. Zmyślenie i prawda. During the remembering time of early youth is transformed, in an important way, into a literary creation. The image of this author’s childhood, inspired by the ideas of Rousseau and the Enlightenment concepts of the education, becomes mythi­cised. It is transformed into Arcadia, the land of happiness, to which a way back is incessantly looked for. The recall of his boyhood is motivated by another important reason: an attempt to self‑identification at the end of the writer’s life and answer to the questions about existence.