The Enlightened Eye: Goethe and Visual Culture (Amsterdamer Beitraege zur neueren Germanistik 62) (Amsterdamer Beitrage zur Neueren Germanistik)

The Enlightened Eye Goethe and Visual Culture

62

Herausgegeben von

Gerd Labroisse Gerhard P. Knapp Norbert Otto Eke

Wissenschaftlicher Beirat:

Christopher Balme (Universiteit van Amsterdam) Lutz Danneberg (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) Martha B. Helfer (Rutgers University New Brunswick) Lothar Köhn (Westf. Wilhelms-Universität Münster) Ian Wallace (University of Bath)

2007

AMSTERDAMER BEITRÄGE ZUR NEUEREN GERMANISTIK

The Enlightened Eye Goethe and Visual Culture

Edited by

Evelyn K. Moore and Patricia Anne Simpson

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007

Die 1972 gegründete Reihe erscheint seit 1977 in zwangloser Folge in der Form von Thema-Bänden mit jeweils verantwortlichem Herausgeber. Reihen-Herausgeber: Prof. Dr. Gerd Labroisse Sylter Str. 13A, 14199 Berlin, Deutschland Tel./Fax: (49)30 89724235 E-Mail: [email protected] Prof. Dr. Gerhard P. Knapp University of Utah Dept. of Languages and Literature, 255 S. Central Campus Dr. Rm. 1400 Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA Tel.: (1)801 581 7561, Fax (1)801 581 7581 (dienstl.) bzw. Tel./Fax: (1)801 474 0869 (privat) E-Mail: [email protected] Prof. Dr. Norbert Otto Eke Universität Paderborn Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften, Warburger Str. 100, D - 33098 Paderborn, Deutschland, E-Mail: [email protected]

Cover image: Cy Twombly (b. 1928) American Bay of Naples 1961 [Rome] Oil paint, oil based house paint, wax crayon, lead pencil on canvas. 95-1/4 x 117-5/8 inches. 241.8 x 298.6 cm. Cy Twombly Gallery. The Menil Collection, Houston. Photographer: Hickey-Robertson, Houston All titles in the Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik (from 1999 onwards) are available online: See www.rodopi.nl Electronic access is included in print subscriptions. The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2124-2 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2007 Printed in The Netherlands

Table of Contents Acknowledgements

5

Abbreviations

7 INTRODUCTION

Patricia Anne Simpson and Evelyn K. Moore: The Enlightened Eye: Visual Culture in the Age of Goethe

11

I. VISIONS/REVISIONS OF THE NEOCLASSICAL AESTHETIC

Melissa Dabakis: Angelika Kauffmann, Goethe, and the Arcadian Academy in Rome Catriona MacLeod: Sweetmeats for the Eye: Porcelain Miniatures in Classical Weimar Beate Allert: Goethe, Runge, Friedrich: On Painting Margaretmary Daley: The Gendered Eye of the Beholder: The Co-ed Art History of the Jena Romantics Mary Helen Dupree: Elise in Weimar: “Actress-Writers” and the Resistance to Classicism Patricia Anne Simpson: Visions of the Nation: Goethe, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and Ernst Moritz Arndt

25 41 73 93 111 127

II. THE VIOLENCE OF VISION: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE STAGE OF LANGUAGE

Evelyn K. Moore: Goethe and Lavater: A Specular Friendship Elliott Schreiber: Towards an Aesthetics of the Sublime Augenblick: Reading Karl Philipp Moritz Reading Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers Clark S. Muenzer: Fugitive Images and Visual Memory in Goethe’s Discourse on Color Eric Hadley Denton: The Technological Eye: Theater Lighting and Guckkasten in Michaelis and Goethe Astrida Orle Tantillo: The Subjective Eye: Goethe’s Farbenlehre and Faust

165

193 219 239 265

4 Heide Crawford: Poetically Visualizing Urgestalten. The Union of Nature, Art, and the Love of a Woman in Goethe’s “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” Richard Block: Scribbles from Italy: Cy Twombly’s Experiment in Seeing Goethe See Language

279 289

III. APPENDIX

Notes on the Contributors

313

Index

317

Acknowledgements The editors wish to express their gratitude for the support that made this project possible. The book grew from a session we organized for the German Studies Association Conference in New Orleans (2003), and we would like to thank the panel’s participants, audience, and commentator (John Lyon, University of Pittsburgh) for generating such a productive discussion. In addition we owe special thanks to Eric Denton for his role in encouraging this project. Significant progress on the manuscript was made during Evelyn Moore’s sabbatical (2003–04), granted by Kenyon College, which coincided with a period of course release for Patricia Simpson (Spring 2004), generously supported by a Scholarship and Creativity grant from Montana State University, Bozeman. We also wish to thank our respective institutions for their continued support. Financial assistance from both Kenyon College and the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at MSU helped defray the cost of reproducing some of the images, and this support is gratefully acknowledged. Further, we thank Joanna Cook (The Menil Collection, Houston) for help in obtaining the rights to reproduce the Cy Twombly painting on the cover. Theo Lipfert (Media and Theatre Arts, MSU) rendered invaluable assistance with formatting other images in the book, and we thank him. We also want to express our appreciation to John Vaio for his careful reading of various stages of the project. Finally we would like to express our gratitude to Marieke Schilling and the series editors at Rodopi for their careful attention to this book during each stage of production.

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Abbreviations The following standard editions of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s collected works are referenced in the chapters of this book and abbreviated as follows: FA: S¨amtliche Werke. Ed. by Hendrik Birus, et al. 40 vols. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp – Deutscher Klassiker Verlag 1985ff. References to this edition in the volume are generally followed by set/volume and page numbers. WA: Werke. Weimarer Ausgabe. Ed. at the behest of the grand duchess Sophie von Sachsen, 50 vols. Weimar: H. Böhlau 1887–1919. References to this edition are generally followed by the set in Roman numerals, volume, part, and page numbers. MA: S¨amtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens. Ed. by Karl Richter, et al. 21 vols. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag 1985ff. References are followed by set, volume, and page number. HA: Goethes Werke in XIV B¨anden. Ed. by Erich Trunz. Hamburg: Christian Wegner 1950. References to this edition are followed by volume and page numbers. Several authors consulted the Suhrkamp edition of Goethe’s work in English translation: Goethe’s Collected Works. 12 vols. New York: Suhrkamp 1983–1989. References to these volumes are documented in individual chapters.

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INTRODUCTION

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Patricia Anne Simpson and Evelyn K. Moore

The Enlightened Eye: Visual Culture in the Age of Goethe Poets, painters, and philosophers in early nineteenth-century Germany all participated in a debate about the evolving status of visual culture in the arts and sciences. This debate, advanced significantly by G. E. Lessing’s seminal essay on Laokoon about the relationship between visual and verbal representation, continues to interrogate post-Enlightenment models of perception – and their ability to transmit knowledge in both the aesthetic and the scientific realms. Throughout the eighteenth century, Winckelmann’s classical aesthetics inform the production of art and literature alike.1 Scientific advances in lens technology further complicate the debate about the role of the “eye” in determining and discerning beauty, perspective, and even identity. There is virtually no field of endeavor untouched or unchanged by the discourse on visual culture. Artists like Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, Angelika Kauffmann, Philipp Otto Runge, and Casper David Friedrich were engaged in the debate, along with scientists like Isaac Newton and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, and philosophers like G. W. F. Hegel, on how art is to be produced, displayed, apprehended, and consumed.2 The relationship between the aesthetics of visual and verbal arts has wide-reaching implications for the formation of bourgeois identity, pedagogy, and pleasure. The purpose of this volume is to explore the ways in which Johann Wolfgang Goethe and his concerns with vision, language, and identity can be situated in a discussion of visual culture and the larger context of his time. These essays cover a range of media from painting and the decorative arts to theater, sculpture, and the science of seeing. Goethe was not only a prominent participant in these debates, but stood at their center. He belonged to the community of contemporary culture: he himself was a practicing amateur artist, a collector of art, and a critical participant in the debate on the production and value of art, as well as the author of scientific studies on the mechanisms of perception. The voluminous literature on Goethe contains many inquiries into Goethe and visuality from across the 1

For an overview see for example German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism: Winckelmann, Lessing, Hamann, Herder, Schiller and Goethe. Ed. by H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985. P. 3. 2 On Goethe’s role in the art world of classical Weimar, see Erik Forssman: Goethezeit. ¨ ber die Entstehung des b¨urgerlichen Kunstverst a¨ ndnisses. Munich and Berlin: U Deutscher Kunstverlag 1999. P. 298. Forssman also discusses the scholarly work on Goethe and art from the discipline of art history. See Forssman. P. 11.

12 spectrum of disciplinary and theoretical approaches.3 The present collection examines and illuminates the interconnection among various fields of inquiry into the visual in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with Goethe at the core. By acknowledging Goethe’s centrality in this debate, the essays in this volume demonstrate the degree to which visual aesthetics determined the cultural production of the time both in the German-speaking world and in a wider European context.

Part I: Visions/Revisions of the Neoclassical Aesthetic When he traveled to Rome – disguised as the painter Filippo Miller – on the Grand Tour in 1785, Goethe followed in the tracks of Winckelmann. Goethe’s account of the trip, Italienische Reise [The Italian Journey], not only provides the reader with discussions on famous art works, but also reveals how a work of art should be apprehended. While living in J. H. W. Tischbein’s atelier in Rome, Goethe was not only a subject for the artist’s paintings, but at the center of a vibrant and pivotal moment in the history of artistic production: the inauguration of “the modern”. The chapters in this part of the collection examine Goethe’s role in the artistic production of his time, his role as muse and mentor to artists like Tischbein and Kauffmann, as well as his controversial role in the reception of the later Romantic artists Runge and Friedrich. Goethe influenced both directly and indirectly the production of visual arts and the development of a new aesthetic sensibility. This section helps locate the shifting ground of a neoclassical aesthetics within the framework of gendered visuality.4 Melissa Dabakis takes us to Rome, the spiritual and aesthetic home for Goethe and contemporary European artists and beyond. As Dabakis points out, the prominent painter Angelika Kauffmann and Goethe were members of the little-known Arcadian Academy in Rome, which Goethe joined in 1787. The purpose of the Academy was to explore further the relationship between the sister arts of poetry and painting. The Arcadians insisted on the affinity between the 3 See especially David Wellbery: Die Wahlverwandtschaften. In Goethes Erz¨ahlwerk: Interpretationen. Ed. by P. M. L¨utzeler and J. M. McLead. Stuttgart 1985. Pp. 291–318. See also Stuart Atkins: Goethe’s Novelle as Pictorial Narrative. In: Essays on Goethe. Ed. by Jane K. Brown and Thomas P. Saine. Columbia SC: Camden House 1995. Pp. 220–229. 4 Throughout this study, we use the term “neoclassical” to indicate the reception of Greek and Roman antiquity by eighteenth-century artists and writers, with particular emphasis on the visual arts. The term “classical” overlaps to some extent with both the neoclassical aesthetic and, in a specifically German context, with aspects of Romanticism. We want to highlight the intersection of this European neoclassical/classical movement with the specificity of a dominant aesthetic that emerged from Weimar culture, centered on Goethe and Schiller. The articles in this collection reconfigure the interconnections among the terms Klassik [Classicism], Neoclassicism, and Romanticism.

13 verbal and the visual arts, breaching many of the assumed boundaries between them. The transformation of Goethe’s own dramaturgy, as evident in the poetic rewriting of his Iphgenie auf Tauris [Iphigenia in Tauris], took place through the liberating dialog of the Arcadian Academy. In turn, the influence was more than mutual, for Kauffmann – and Tischbein – painted not only portraits of Goethe, but also portraits of his literary works. This interaction demonstrates the high degree of intimacy between the visual and the verbal forms of representation. Kauffmann, in particular, drew inspiration from Iphigenie, specifically the scene in which Orestes emerges from the torture of his own madness. This reciprocity points not only to an exchange between the verbal and visual, but also symbolizes the gender equity involved in the Arcadian Academy, idyllic not only for its aesthetic, but also for its politics of inclusion. Moving from the classical idyll and high art represented by the Arcadian Academy to a new bourgeois appreciation of the neoclassical production of art, Catriona MacLeod analyzes the partnership of art and commerce in her work on porcelain miniatures. Through an examination of the technology and aesthetics of F¨urstenberg’s production of porcelain figures, MacLeod provides insight into the tactile and visual desires of bourgeois consumers of neoclassical taste. MacLeod’s critical discourse dwells in the materiality of arts, decorative and otherwise, and reveals the potential for obsession in the act of collecting, owning, and holding the smooth and fragile figures. Yet she also reads the radical reduction in scale from the colossal head, for example, of Goethe’s Juno, to a piece of porcelain that fits on the dining table. The process of miniaturization itself, MacLeod concludes, necessitates a violent repression of the human body, referring the viewer to the classical aesthetic of Winckelmann, Herder, and others. Just as the viewer of porcelain miniatures could hold and behold the classical aesthetic, MacLeod’s essay returns the reader to a visual awareness of “the repressed corporeality of Classicism”. The tensions between classical/neoclassical aesthetics and Romanticism become legible at this juncture, with Goethe cutting an imposing figure in this debate as well. The discourse about the Romantic seems to take place in a universe parallel to Goethe’s classical and classicizing Weimar, though much is posited by way of response to his own cultural practices. While gender difference overlaps many of his most urgent aesthetic concerns, Goethe remains aloof from Friedrich Schlegel’s aesthetic theories. Erik Forssman, who has written extensively on Goethe and art, maintains that F. Schlegel’s evaluation of art and art theory is often the precise opposite of what Weimar was defending.5 Indeed, F. Schlegel seems to be directly criticizing the position on art propagated by Schiller’s journal on aesthetics, the Propyl¨aen (1798–1800), as well the topics, judging, and criticism associated with the art competitions, the Weimarer 5

Forssman: Goethezeit. P. 262.

14 Preisaufgaben (1799–1805). Goethe’s distance from Schlegel’s aesthetics can be attributed to a variety of causes, not least of which are religious and political, but aesthetic conflict certainly plays its part. Do Classicism and by extension Neoclassicism operate on the assumption that the beholder of a painting brings a sufficiently classical Bildung to the act of viewing, and is therefore capable of generating his own narrative supplements to the muteness of paint, marble, and stone? While the tension between Goethe and the aesthetic views of the romantic painters is a topos for theorizing nineteenth-century art, Beate Allert argues in the next chapter instead for both a fraught and productive interaction between Goethe and those painters. Allert examines the specific historical role Goethe played in the development of German Romanticism’s greatest proponents, Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich, and their influence on Goethe. Her focus is artistic praxis; she orients the debate about art and classical versus romantic aesthetics on Goethe, Runge, and Friedrich. Allert transcends the connective tissue of biography by illuminating the visual and verbal responses of each artist to the other in their respective works. Here there is tension, occasional resentment, and uncomfortable influence, however productive their relationships ultimately turned out to be. Allert draws new conclusions about this subtextual debate by referencing insights gained from innovations in imaging technology; she reads a different picture of a romantic view of Goethe, one hitherto hidden in the layers of paint. Allert’s reading of Goethe’s dialog with Friedrich and Runge furthers the debate about Romantic aesthetics, subjectivity, its relationship to nature, and the mutual influence of elective repulsions between the Classical and the Romantic. Goethe criticizes the works of both Runge and Friedrich because they express too much raw and often negative emotion; they do not conform to the ideals of his “Weimar Classicism”. Allert shows that Goethe’s participation in the debates on color theory as well as in contemporary visual culture clearly exceeds the confines of the neoclassical moment. At this juncture, gender reemerges as a major consideration for the reception of visual arts in the Romantic circle of Jena. In Margaretmary Daley’s contribution, she asserts through her reading of the collectively authored Die Gem¨ahlde: Gespr¨ach [On Paintings: Conversation], that the eye of the beholder is always already gendered. Though informed by the insights gained by contemporary feminist theory, Daley’s reading of this complex piece of writing finds potential common ground in the viewing and discussing of paintings in the Dresden Gallery. The adequate interpretation of visual culture, Daley observes, is contingent upon gender-blind sociability: the presence of masculine and feminine assessments, refined in conversation, of art and poetry. This text, Die Gem¨ahlde: Gespr¨ach, specifically rejects the binary opposition of gender identity, promoting “a different, gender-aware means of correcting masculine myopia” through feminine interpretation of the visual arts. The primary concern in this

15 framed discourse, the translation of one art form, such as poetry, into another, such as painting, and vice versa, raises questions about the adequate representation of art in general. Mary Helen Dupree continues this investigation into the gender politics of Classicism with her essay on the theatrical performances and texts of Elise B¨urger. Dupree reexamines anecdotal evidence regarding the actresses who were Goethe’s contemporaries to question the marginalized status of “minor” women writers and their seemingly ancillary role in the cultural phenomenon that is Weimar Classicism. Dupree focuses first on B¨urger’s futile attempts to ingratiate herself into the cultural realm of Weimar. She discloses reasons for the confrontation between Goethe and Schiller and their ideal aesthetics with the texts and theatrical performances of the actress-writer B¨urger. Dupree presents a nuanced consideration of the tension between B¨urger’s specular performances and productions and the classical ideals of Goethe’s dramaturgy. By looking at B¨urger through the lens of the anecdotal, Dupree locates her in the milieu of personal connections among the retinue of performing and producing artists of which Goethe was the center in his capacity as actor, author, and director, and exposes the anxiety of classicizing ideals when confronted with the materiality of the female body. More importantly, by examining B¨urger’s efforts to attain recognition with Goethe, Dupree illuminates the decisive role that gender played in the construction of a “classical” aesthetic. This chapter underscores the way Elise B¨urger defies the socially conditioned marginalization of women; she finds her voice as a writer and her own aesthetic sensibility, articulated at least in part as a critique of Classicism. It is essential nonetheless to come back to the harmonizing ideals of Neoclassicism in order to understand the productive tensions which resulted in the creation of new literary and visual forms. Neoclassicism is never obsolete.6 Instead, its clean lines, monumental stature, and referential longevity inform the image of the nation as it emerges in the public visual culture of Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Berlin. Schinkel and Goethe, more than any other of their

6

For an overview of Goethe’s writings on architecture and interaction with architects, see Forssman: Goethezeit. Pp. 37–125. Crucial to this discussion is Goethe’s essay Von deutscher Baukunst, begun in 1771, published in 1883, and later rewritten. Goethe’s perception of architecture was of course affected by his trip to Italy. In 1789, he was appointed to the Schloßbaukommission in Weimar, and Goethe’s theoretical and literary texts show his keen eye for buildings. His later acquaintance with the brothers Boisserée would draw him into the discussion about renewed aesthetic and political enthusiasm for the German Middle Ages, embodied in Gothic architecture. Around 1810–1811, Goethe demonstrated an interest in things medieval, in spite of the older brother’s association with Friedrich Schlegel. See Forssman: Goethezeit. P. 96. Goethe and Schinkel became personally acquainted in 1810 and developed a mutual respect.

16 contemporaries, are invested in the neoclassical framing of the new German nation. In Patricia Anne Simpson’s article on visions of the nation, she follows the trajectory of neoclassical, republican, masculine iconography of form under the influence of Jacques-Louis David, in his Oath of the Horatii, and Ernst Moritz Arndt’s patriotic poetry to the persistence of neoclassical ideals in Schinkel. But Schinkel modifies the neoclassical aesthetic by referencing the German Gothic and incorporating female iconography in the construction of a national visual character that can signify hope for the nation. Simpson shows that Goethe is also negotiating the same imperatives. The Neoclassical in Goethe, Schinkel, and Arndt is deployed in a culture of war and the reassertion of national identity through language and art. In his festival play, Des Epimenides Erwachen [Epimenides’Awakening], a play commissioned for the return of the Prussian King after the allied victory over Napoleon, Goethe creates a new vision for the German nation. He responds to the patriotic challenge by re-framing national identity in the festival play. Goethe portrays the constitutive elements of German national character with an antique frame. In so doing, Goethe challenges the exclusively male iconography of Arndt’s vision of the fatherland. The neoclassical aesthetic and the implicit violence of an idealized model of both art and behavior, with the regulation of social and sexual codes, remain dominant.

Part II: The Violence of Vision: Science, Technology, and the Stage of Language Goethe’s trip to Italy was critical not only to his literary and artistic identity, but to his work on color theory as well. His position against Newton on the mechanisms of refraction of color proved to be one of the most controversial and contentious debates of the time. Goethe’s criticism of the mechanisms of observational bias contained in Newton’s experiments reveal the great split between psychological (subjective) and mechanistic (objective) perceptions of visual phenomena. While Lichtenberg and others were quick to condemn Goethe’s critique of Newton, Goethe’s observations on color began to have a fruitful reception from the artist community. Runge, for example, concurred with Goethe’s views, and William Turner’s theories on color as well as his paintings were influenced by Goethe’s work on color. The debates on visual culture become a means for defining the value of scientific observation and perception. The contributions in this part of the collection examine the consequences of this debate. Influential scholarly works in this field of inquiry include those of Barbara Stafford and of Jonathan Crary. The former, by connecting visual culture and the advances made in science and technology in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, has demonstrated the fascination that the visual exerted on the man of

17 science.7 Jonathan Crary, in his important study of nineteenth-century mechanisms of perception, argues that the marriage of the visual with technology opens up a new direction away from the totalizing optics of the eighteenth century. Moreover, he credits Goethe with playing a major role in the profound shift away from positivistic approaches to science.8 Goethe’s participation in the debate on subjective versus objective methods of perception is crucial to understanding the development of fields of scientific inquiry which focus not on the object, but rather on the subject of perception. These methods of inquiry lead to the development of studies on color, wavelength, as well as to the examination of the organs of perception – the eye, the brain, and the subconscious. This part of the volume examines the debate on the interaction among the sciences, technologies, and art. The authors further expand the area of inquiry to include the relationship between the visible and knowledge, the visual and subjectivity, and the enlightened science of seeing and language. Goethe’s criticism of Newton’s theory of color is not a rejection of the mechanics of visual experimentation, but represents instead an affirmation of the subjective aspects of perception. The link which Goethe makes between individual perception and the visual helps to explain why he considered his observations on the phenomenon of color to be part of his autobiographical project. The purpose of this part of the collection is to address the consequences of the connection between the visual and the subjective from a variety of critical perspectives. The contributions explore questions of subjectivity by engaging the correspondence between visual culture and language, the relationship between technological innovation in the optical realm and its effect on cultural production, and the sometimes elusive influence on a theory of vision. This part of the book continues to interrogate the place of the body in the scientific, social, and cultural pursuits of Goethe’s era and beyond. While the Newtonian/Cartesian model of knowledge removes the body from the pursuit of knowledge, Goethe conversely reintroduces the body and its mechanisms of perception – the eye, the mouth, touch, feeling, speaking – back into the equation. In his work on color theory in particular, Goethe reveals the mechanisms of scientific observation, like the camera obscura, which remove both the subject and the object from the process of perception, and remove the body and its affective domain from the truth of scientific discovery. Goethe contra Newton 7

Barbara Maria Stafford: Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Cambridge MA: MIT Press 1991; Voyage into Substance: Art, Science and Nature, and the Illustrated Travel Account, 1760–1840. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1984; Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education. Cambridge MA: MIT Press 1994. 8 Jonathan Crary: Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge MA: MIT Press 1993.

18 reveals the myth of scientific rationalism. Goethe’s extensive treatment of Newton’s color experiments as well as his engagement with visual culture on many levels, lead to the development of new areas of scientific research.9 Frederick Amrine has earlier noted that studies by Hermann von Helmholtz, Rudolph Steiner, and Werner Heisenberg are the most important new re-assessments of Goethe’s work on the color theory.10 But Crary has credited Goethe with initiating a new direction away from external mechanisms of perception to concentrate on the body itself.11 He notes, for example, the importance of Goethe to the subjective studies of David Brewster, the inventor of the kaleidoscope and the stereoscope, and Gustav Fechner, one of the “founders of modern quantitative psychology” and others on afterimages. By staring at the sun, they used their own body to advance their knowledge of the interaction of light and the mechanisms of perception. Some of these experimenters went blind as a result of this risky endeavor.12 Goethe’s engagement with visual culture is a powerful counterargument to Martin Jay’s thesis regarding the denigration of vision in the eighteenth century.13 Goethe’s polemic against Newton’s theory on the refrangibility of color attempts to restore the primacy of visual perception from the totalizing lens of theory. According to Goethe, the “charlatan” Newton had violated Nature itself. By meticulously repeating Newton’s experiments, Goethe demonstrates the powerful effect of visual perception, and explicitly condemns those who would bracket language, consciousness, and complexity from the interaction of seeing and cognition. In her essay, Evelyn K. Moore follows the itinerary of Werther, the hero of Goethe’s first novel, and Johann Caspar Lavater, the author of an enormously popular series of books on the “science of physiognomy”. This contribution revises certain assumptions about the way Lavater influenced Goethe, whose polemic against Lavater, an erstwhile friend, is in fact crucial to Goethe’s understanding the issues of visuality and their ramifications. Moore argues that Werther and Lavater, Goethe’s “specular friends”, represent the threat 9

See Felix Sepper: Goethe contra Newton: Polemics and the Project of a New Science of Color. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988. Sepper provides a good overview of the controversy surrounding Goethe and his contribution to science. 10 Frederick Amrine: Introduction/Annotated Bibliography. In: Goethe and the Sciences: A Reappraisal. Ed. by Frederick Amrine, Francis J. Zucker, Harry Wheeler. Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer 1987. Pp. 395–437, here p. 407. 11 Jonathan Crary: Modernizing Vision. In: Vision and Visuality. Ed. by Hal Foster. Seattle: Bay Press 1988. Pp. 29–44, here p. 34. 12 Ibid. P. 34. 13 Martin Jay: The Downcast Eye. The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press 1993. Jay traces the ocular and antiocular tendencies of the Western cultural past, a tendency which, according to Jay, is at its height in the enlightenment ideas of Descartes. Jay argues for the primacy of the written word over the pictorial.

19 Goethe perceived in the emotional outpourings of romantic art and literature. Further, Goethe frames this threat in visual terms, specifying the usurping and proprietary nature of the physiognomic gaze that would subvert language, social masks, and disguises. Moore demonstrates the fundamental violence involved in the narcissistic appropriation of vision present in Lavater’s theory of physical attributes and human identity. Werther, like Newton, seems unable or unwilling to allow the mechanism of perception, the eye, to be filled with what is given to be seen. Moore traces the complex reincarnation of Werther as narrator of Goethe’s Swiss journey and the ruthless critique of Werther’s ways of seeing. This visual practice isolates the eye from the body of the beholder, effectively severing the eye and “I” of Werther from the vicissitudes of his own desire. Moore argues that for Goethe imagination and its productive power lies not in the romantic projection of “feeling” onto the object, but in a reciprocal unfolding of affect. Moore’s work is informed by Lacanian principles that posit the mechanism of perception as central to the constitution of subjectivity. As Moore emphasizes, Goethe responds to the physiognomist’s attempt to bypass language with unmediated observation, with an autobiographical project of hide-and-seek that inscribes a critique of Lavater into Werther, whose narcissistic eyes do not recognize a feast. In the next chapter, Elliott Schreiber takes a different approach to the place of Werther in aesthetic theory, focusing on the role an Augenblick [moment] can play in both a temporal and visual sense. Schreiber reads Karl Philipp Moritz’s contribution to the aesthetics of the Augenblick within the context of a changed perception of time in modernity and its effects on reading practices. Departing from Moritz’s responses to Werther, Schreiber explores the ways in which Moritz employs a model from visual culture, that of perspective, to the reading of literature. Schreiber follows the experience of nature and subsequently its visual and verbal representation along Moritz’s itinerary on which the role of the full moment shifts: the Augenblick is first construed as potentially destructive, but later redeemed in a nearly Kantian moment of sublimity, one in which the timeless totality of nature can be glimpsed for a moment. By emphasizing Moritz’s use of perspective, Schreiber specifies the three ways in which Moritz challenges Lessing’s theorizing of the relationship between the temporal and the spatial in his Laokoon essay.14 In so doing, he reinvigorates the debate about the principles of imitation and autonomy in the work of art. In his essay Clark S. Muenzer points to the productive aspects of afterimages as not just a physiological anomaly but the embodiment of perception. 14

Schreiber’s focus on the Augenblick in literature opens interesting possibilities for comparison with Goethe’s aesthetic of sculpture in his own essay on Laokoon, the effects of which rely on “die Darstellung des Moments” [“the representation of the right moment”]. See Forssman: Goethezeit, for a discussion of Goethe’s essay, esp. p. 156.

20 Goethe’s scientific experiments on color challenge the conclusions regarding temporal and spatial, verbal and visual representation. His work on visual perception demonstrates instead the fundamental temporality involved in the act of seeing color: its dependence on dynamic relations among colors, its further reliance on access to memory and imagination. Muenzer places Goethe’s theory of color in a Spinozan self-regulating, singular, and dynamic system of Nature, which has the ability to reconfigure and reassemble itself in various forms. Muenzer distills Goethe’s laws of polarity and contrast in this piece, but notes the traumatic moment within every chromatic event. According to Muenzer, Goethe reclaims the dynamism of color’s relational production lost in Newton’s experiments. The ephemeral nature of color’s appearance and its temporality constitute Goethe’s contribution to the refinement of perception theory. What Muenzer calls “chromagenesis”, adopting Goethe’s own neologism that describes the production of color, highlights the subjective nature of physiological colors. The question of the visual, he also observes, is a “question of survival”. Muenzer elaborates Goethe’s preoccupation with the actual fluctuation of light and its reception in the eye itself. His work on the “fugitive image” provides the connective tissue between the science of visuality and the less tangible aesthetics of the imagination and memory. Eric Hadley Denton focuses on technological and aesthetic dimensions of light and dark on the stage. Finding no contradiction between the pastoral and the technological in Goethe’s Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern [Festival in Plundersweilern], Denton brings the innovations in the mechanical aspects of theater lighting to bear on dramaturgical traditions, with reference to the lesser known Johann Benjamin Michaelis and his Amors Guckkasten [Amor’s PeepShow] (ca. 1769). Further, Denton attributes historical agency to the “marginal” figures from traditional German farce, such as the Hanswurst, who appear in Goethe’s work as bearers of light, arbiters of desire, and carriers of the Guckkasten, the box of hidden erotic pleasures that stands not only as a metaphor for the imagination, but also for the theater itself. Denton demonstrates the degree to which Goethe’s dramaturgy references the practical demands of performance, but also the extent to which Goethe advances the use of the audience as part of the spectacle. He also highlights Goethe’s visual reclamations – bringing to life minor characters from the realm of the visual arts, etchings, and copperplates, to bring the street onto the stage of the late eighteenth century. In an innovative chapter on the complex development of both the practical and aesthetic aspects of theater lighting, Denton explores the ways Goethe uses the technologies of seeing as metaphors for the imagination. He negotiates the complex relationship between the self-referential aspects of vision and the stage. There lighting is used to calibrate the relationship between the subjective viewer, the theatergoing voyeur, and the object of aesthetic pleasure, namely the performance. With Astrida Orle Tantillo’s essay on both science and literature, we return to the question of a relationship between the gaze of science and the act of

21 reading with the physiology of the eye at the center of this discourse. The temporality on which perception itself physiologically relies is always subject to change. Goethe’s post-Enlightenment conclusions about the eye’s activity potentially invert the power hierarchies involved in an artificially stabilized relationship between the subject and the object of observation. Tantillo, in “The Subjective Eye: Goethe’s Farbenlehre and Faust”, recognizes that the eye, as the mechanism of perception, is the focus of this enterprise and provides an elegant analysis of the properties of the eye as perceptive apparatus. Tantillo furthers the discussion of polarities in the color theory, describing not the stasis, but instead the “fluidity of the subject and object relationship” in the act of observation. Tantillo reads the structure of Goethe’s Faust through the scientific lens of polarity, thereby revealing Goethe’s fundamental modernity. The dynamism she describes pertains literally to the activity of the retina, and by extending this mobile vision to the reading eye, Tantillo sheds new light on the conventional interpretation of opposition in Goethe’s magnum opus. What is the relationship between the science of vision and the production of art? Heide Crawford brings together Goethe’s treatment of nature and art in her innovative reading of Urgestalten [primal forms] in the botanical essay on plants and the later elegy “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” [“The Metamorphosis of the Plants”]. Crawford argues that the centrality of observing nature and art in Goethe’s work must be read through his own interest in occult philosophy. His dedication to the study of morphology leads him on a search for natural essences, the elusive, singular ancestor that serves as a theoretical paradigm for all subsequent and plural incarnations of plants. This search, Crawford argues, can be seen as part of Goethe’s pursuit of occult knowledge, specifically the relationships based on analogy. An example of this cognitive process is the correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm. Again, there is a form of “reading” involved here. Crawford initiates us into the presence of occult philosophy in Goethe’s elegy, by focusing on the development of love in the poem as a process that corresponds to the development of a plant. With this elegy, Goethe seems to be responding directly to Schiller’s observation that there is great difficulty in joining art and science. Through her reading of this poem in the context of Goethe’s occult philosophy, Crawford underscores the impact science had on classical aesthetics. To conclude the volume, we bring together the present and the past, from Goethe’s “Italian Journey” to the “scribblings” of Cy Twombly on Goethe in Italy. Richard Block’s essay on this series of six images brilliantly recapitulates the primary concerns of this volume: the nature of seeing in all its inflections, from scientific to aesthetic practices and their epistemological status vis-à-vis the immanence of language. In his carefully crafted and highly nuanced argument, Block reads the scribble on Twombly’s canvas as the blur generated by the act of seeing and that of reading. Exposing the tensions between the “sun-like”

22 (receptive) and “ink-like” (productive) functions of the human eye, Block, too, inhabits the discourse of Goethe’s color theory in order to relate the impulses of seeing and writing. According to Block, Twombly glosses for us the experiment and experience of vision in what has become an iconographic tradition of envisioning Goethe in Italy and the wider implications of this genealogy of representation. We move from the abyss of nature, art, and of scopic pleasure to the inscription of formal heights in Goethe’s classical idiom. Classical Goethe, Block implies, learned to speak/write through the pedagogy of the visual in Italy. He writes: “That is to say, learning to see in Italy – or in this instance, learning to see colors in Italy – leads Goethe to discover a particular character of German and, as we know, that discovery becomes the language of German Classicism”. Like Moore, whose essay introduces this section, Block references the problem-child, Werther, whose inability to lend form to the products of his own observation of nature demand an overcoming that Goethe purportedly achieved in Italy. The essays in this volume demonstrate, however, that this experience is not prefatory, but instead is continually present in Goethe’s lifelong devotion to his own exploration of the neoclassical frame of representation and its principles. At the same time, the authors explore the paradox at the heart of this enterprise. Goethe’s experiments in vision and in language disclose the tyranny of the gaze, inscribe the vanishing in the act of seeing, and expose the ruptures in any theory of totalizing closure.

I VISIONS/REVISIONS OF THE NEOCLASSICAL AESTHETIC

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Melissa Dabakis

Angelika Kauffmann, Goethe, and the Arcadian Academy in Rome Eighteenth-century Rome served as a vibrant cosmopolitan center for artists and writers who gravitated to the city in search of inspiration, camaraderie, and spiritual uplift. Among the large group of German-speakers drawn to Rome were the painters Angelika Kauffmann (1741–1807) and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751–1829), and the world-renowned writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832), who formed part of the Roman circle associated with the Arcadian Academy. Upholding the belief that painting and poetry were “sister arts”, the Arcadians created an atmosphere where fruitful interactions between the visual and literary arts were encouraged. Goethe came to Rome seeking a creative home and possibly a new identity as visual artist. Accepting membership in the Arcadian Academy in 1786, he was free to explore the literary and artistic sides of his creative agency.

Eighteenth-century Rome served as a vibrant cosmopolitan center for artists and writers who gravitated to the city in search of inspiration, camaraderie, and spiritual uplift. With its privileged place within the cultural imagination, Rome achieved cult status as the epicenter of western civilization. By 1775, Grand Tourists from Europe and North America flooded the city, inspired by its classical mystique and its historical grandeur.1 Among the large group of Germanspeaking artists and writers drawn to Rome were Angelika Kauffmann (1741–1807), Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751–1829), and Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832), who formed part of the Roman circle associated with the Arcadian Academy. The Arcadian Academy, founded in 1690, fostered personal, creative, and intellectual networks among Romans and foreigners [stranieri]. Talented writers and artists, both native-born and foreign, were attracted to the Arcadian Academy because of its desire to reform contemporary literary traditions through an embrace of Enlightenment principles. Upholding the belief that painting and poetry were “sister arts”, the Arcadians created an atmosphere where fruitful interactions between the visual and literary arts occurred. Already a world-renowned writer, Goethe came to Rome seeking a creative home and a possible new identity as visual artist. Accepting membership in the Arcadian Academy in 1786, he freely explored the literary and artistic sides of his creative agency.

1

Christopher M. S. Johns: The Entrepot of Europe: Rome in the Eighteenth Century. In: Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century. Ed. by Edgard P. Bowren and Joseph J. Rishel. Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Museum of Art 2000. P. 37.

26 The Arcadian Academy was a democratic and egalitarian institution which supported a diverse community of members. They allowed women unprecedented creative authority, bestowing public accolades upon them for their artistic and intellectual achievements. Angelika Kauffman, one of the pre-eminent history painters of the age and close friend to Goethe, was welcomed as a member of the Arcadian Academy in 1789.2 Until recently, the Arcadian Academy’s portrayal in cultural histories has been quite limited, recognized as a literary antecedent to the Enlightenment up through the middle of the eighteenth century. Moreover, its significance for the visual artists has been little explored.3 This essay will focus upon the Seconda Arcadia, the period of the 1770s and 1780s, in which fruitful encounters between contemporary writers and artists flourished in Rome. Kauffmann and Goethe attached special importance to their membership in the Arcadian Academy as witnessed in contemporary portraits of both artists.

Angelika Kauffmann Born in Churn, Switzerland, in 1741, Angelika Kauffmann was endowed with talents as a painter and musician. When she was two, the family moved to Lombardy, where her father, a Swiss decorative artist, taught her the craft of painting. A child prodigy at the age of 11, she painted the portrait of a local bishop; in 1754 she attended art school in Milan. After her mother’s death in 1759, Kauffmann returned to Switzerland for a short time. In 1762, she moved to Florence, resumed her artistic career, and was elected to both the Bolognese and Florentine Academies.4 By the age of 21, she had gained international renown within the eighteenth-century cosmopolitan art world. Her year in Florence marked a significant moment in her artistic career. Joining the city’s vanguard community of Anglo/German artist/intellectuals in 2 Hanns Gross: Rome in the Age of the Enlightenment. New York: Cambridge University Press 1990. Pp. 52–53; Rebecca Messbarger: The Century of Women: Representations of Women in Eighteenth-Century Italian Public Discourse. Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press 2002. P. 8; and Lilliana Barroero and Stefano Susinno: Arcadian Rome, Universal Capital of the Arts. In: Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century. P. 47. 3 Paola Giuli: The Feminization of Italian Culture: the Poetics of Seconda Arcadia and Literary History. NEMLA Italian Studies 19 (1995): 51. See also, Barroero and Susinno: Arcadian Rome, Universal Capital of the Arts. 4 Wendy Wassyng Roworth: Biography, Criticism, Art History: Angelica Kauffman in Context. In: Eighteenth-Century Women and the Arts. Ed. by F. Keener and S. Lorsch. New York: Greenwood Press 1988. Pp. 217–218; Angela Rosenthal: Angelica Kauffman Ma(s)king Claims. In: Art History 15 (March 1992): P. 54. C. H. S. John, writing in 1929, mentioned that Kauffmann had attended art school in Milan dressed as a boy. Although not verified in other sources, this is quite possible given the limitations upon women’s artistic training to be discussed later in this paper. C. H. S. John: Bartolozzi, Zoffany, and Kauffman. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. 1929. P. 44.

27 1762, she adopted the classicizing style that would catapult her to artistic success. In 1763, she made her first sojourn to Rome, where she met the leading lights of the neoclassical movement: the art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the painters Pompei Batoni and Gavin Hamilton, and the printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranesi.5 Portraiture had dominated Kauffmann’s artistic production until this time. In 1764, she painted her first neoclassical history painting, an ambitious endeavor for a young woman artist. With the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum just before mid-century, interest in the classical world came into vogue. The neoclassical style, in direct contrast to Baroque opulence, demanded a simplicity, austerity, and legibility in its didactic depictions of historical scenes. Within the European academies, history painting served as the most significant genre of painting, followed by the lesser categories of portraiture, landscape, and still life. Because it depicted scenes from antiquity, the Bible, and literature, history painting held high moral authority in the eighteenth-century public sphere; within Enlightenment communities, its didacticism aided in the formation of modern citizens. Not surprisingly, history painting was coded a masculine artistic practice with its access to the public realm. The more private and thus more feminine genres – still life and portraiture – were less appreciated in academic circles. Whereas history painting represented an ideal world in which noble ideas were fostered, the lesser genres, the European art academies believed, merely replicated nature without claiming the intervention of the intellect. Most importantly, history painting necessitated a familiarity with the human figure. The very idea of a woman artist gazing at the nude figure (whether male or female) and creating figure studies with either pencil or brush was in itself controversial, often construed as titillating to the male viewer and belittling to women artists. For this reason, women were historically excluded from life classes where male or female models were employed. To draw or even look at nude antique statuary could also be perceived as inappropriate. Although a woman artist was free to hire a live model independent of a life drawing class, this very act could call her public reputation as a woman and an artist into question.6 As an aspiring history painter, Angelika Kauffmann responded to such restraints by rarely painting the male or female nude.7 Among her first history paintings was the rare subject of Penelope at the Loom (1764) (Figure 1). Portraying her 5

Wendy Wassyng Roworth: Kauffman and the Art of Painting in England. In: Angelica Kauffman: A Continental Artist in Georgian England. Ed. by Wendy Wassyng Roworth. London: Reaktion Books 1992. P. 17. 6 Wendy Wassyng Roworth: Anatomy is Destiny: Regarding the Body in the Art of Angelica Kauffman. In: Femininity and Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture. Ed. by Gill Perry and Michael Rossington. New York: Manchester University Press 1994. Pp. 42–43. 7 Roworth: Anatomy is Destiny. P. 51.

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Figure 1. Penelope at the Loom. Angelika Kauffmann. 1764. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of The Royal Pavilion, Libraries and Museums, Brighton and Hove.

29 protagonist as the embodiment of female virtue and strength, Kauffmann demonstrated erudition through her knowledge of ancient literature. She depicted Penelope as the ideal married woman who remained patient and faithful to her husband Odysseus during his long absence from home. In adopting the balanced and restrained style of Neoclassicism, she posited herself among a vanguard of artists working in Rome. In this painting, Penelope, a massive and statuesque figure, is seated at her loom, sadly pondering the fate of her husband. A dog, lying in the foreground on Odysseus’s bow, signifies fidelity, the moral theme of the painting. In order to ward off suitors, Penelope repeatedly asserted that she had first to finish weaving a winding sheet for her father-in-law before choosing another husband. Each night, she would secretly undo her day’s work and thus postpone the issue. Kauffmann’s composition suggested a clear didactic message: Penelope represented an exemplum virtutis, an example of feminine virtue. Indeed, Enlightenment writers stressed the importance of the family unit, positing women as the “soul of society”, and mothers as the moral core of the family.8 Committed to the representation of women’s experience, Kauffmann would return to this maternal theme many times throughout her long career. Kauffmann assumed membership in some of the most prestigious artistic academies in Europe. In 1765, she was elected to the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. After moving to London the following year, she became one of the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Johan Zoffany documented these members in his group portrait, Academicians of the Royal Academy, 1771–1772, in which the male members of the Academy assemble in a life class, surrounded by casts of antique statuary, portrait busts, and two nearly nude male models. He depicted Kauffmann and still-life painter Mary Moser, the other female member of the Academy, in portraits which hung on the wall. Because their presence in a life class was deemed highly inappropriate, Zoffany presented them as removed from the center of artistic power.9 During her twentyyear residency in England, Kauffmann continued to create history paintings, but achieved popular success as a portrait painter and decorative artist. In 1781, she married Giuseppe Carlo Zucchi, an Italian painter, and moved with her new husband and aged father back to Italy where her reputation as a history painter again flourished. She lived in Rome until her death in 1807. When Kauffmann returned to Rome, she served as an important bridge figure between the Roman and London art circles. She occupied the studio of the neoclassical painter Raphael Mengs after his death and was at the center of the 8

Messbarger: The Century of Women. P. 6. Roworth: Kauffman and the Art of Painting in England. P. 22. For a reproduction of the Zoffany group portrait, located in The Royal Collection, Windsor Castle, New Windsor, England see: Marilyn Stokstad: Art History. Rev. ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1999. P. 937.

9

30 neoclassical tradition in Rome. Located at the top of the Spanish Steps on Via Sistina, her studio stood in Rome’s favorite quarter for foreign artists. Rome’s cosmopolitan community heralded Kauffmann as among its most talented artist/ intellectuals. She was multi-lingual, speaking Italian like a native, French, English, and her native German. Hosting an international salon in her studio, she regularly brought together a group of international literary and artistic figures, and generously promoted new talent, especially that of women.10 To be sure, women stood as a leitmotif at the center of Italian Enlightenment discourse. Among enlightened thinkers [illuministi], women were reconceived as modern female citizens [cittadine] and “the soul of society”, an image that we saw reflected in Kauffmann’s Penelope (Figure 1). Primarily cast as mothers, women were responsible for training young enlightened citizens at home. Increasingly Italian women appeared in public and participated in social conversations [conversazioni] outside the home. Kauffmann, for example, often attended the conversazioni of Maria Cuccovilla Pizelli, an enlightened patron of the arts who also demonstrated an interest in modern science. Within this cosmopolitan world, Kauffmann met Goethe in Rome in January 1787.11 Goethe had arrived secretly in Rome on 1 November 1786. Known as either Jean Philippe Moller, a merchant, or Filippo Miller, a painter, he embarked upon this “underground journey” in part to explore a career in the visual arts. He joined a youthful community of about 80 German artists who regularly met at the Caffe Greco (or more familiarly, the Caffe Tedesco – the German Café), which was located off the Piazza di Spagna near Kauffmann’s studio. In Rome, Goethe finally had the opportunity to meet the German artist Johann Tischbein, with whom he had communicated in letters. Developing a close friendship with the artist, Goethe shared his lodgings on the Via del Corso. Having lived in Rome for some time, Tischbein served as Goethe’s guide [cicerone] to the eternal city.12 In his Goethe at the Window of His Lodgings on the Corso in Rome 1787 (Figure 2), Tischbein rendered a casual portrait of his friend posed at an open window. Goethe’s body leans longingly out the window, conveying his deep fascination with Rome. Exposing a private moment of contemplation, the drawing communicated the focused intensity with which Goethe engaged the city. “I am living here now with a feeling of clarity and calm that I have not had for a long time”, he 10

Johns: The Entrepot of Europe. P. 54; John: Bartolozzi, Zoffany, and Kauffman. Pp. 45, 49, 54; Jon L. Seydl: Angelika Kauffman. In: Rome in the Eighteenth Century. P. 383. 11 Ornellia Francisci Osti: Key Figures in Eighteenth Century Rome. In: Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century. P. 90; R. W. Lightbrown: Introduction. In: Giovanni di Rossi: Vita di Angelica Kauffmann, pittrice, 1809 (rpt) London: Cornmarket Press 1970. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Italian Journey. Ed. by Thomas P. Saine et al. Trans. by Robert R. Heitner. New York: Suhrkamp Publishers 1989. (Collected Works, vol. 6). P. 134. 12 Goethe: Italian Journey. Pp. 103, 109, and p. 455, fn. 158 Nicholas Boyle: Goethe: The Poet and the Age. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1991. P. 434.

31

Figure 2. Goethe am Fenster [Goethe at the Window]. Johann Heinrich Tischbein. 1787. Aquarell und Kreide über Bleistift. 41.5 ⫻ 26.6 cm. Courtesy of the Freies Deutsches Hochstift/Frankfurter Goethe Museum.

32 explained in his journal soon after his arrival.13 Although he experienced this feeling only fleetingly, Goethe seemed poised to satisfy his two creative urges – the artistic and the literary – during his stay in Rome.

The Arcadian Academy Goethe’s arrival in Rome preceded by a few years the Arcadian Academy’s centennial celebrations. Founded in 1690, one year after the death of Queen Christina of Sweden, the Academy institutionalized the conversazioni that the Queen had held in her Roman palace since 1656. Queen Christina had supported those writers who looked to the past – to Greek, Latin, and Italian classics – and who were attentive to contemporary foreign literature. The Arcadian Academy followed in this tradition by fostering a reaction to the Baroque literary style. During the Seconda Arcadia (1770s–1780s), the Academy enjoyed a period of fruitful activity in which Enlightenment principles dominated and scientific and philosophical inquiry flourished. Encouraging natural expression, simplicity of verse, and elimination of bombast, the Arcadians advocated a return to the classics, a “new poetic humanism”. Embroiled in a contemporary ideological struggle, this new classicita was understood in some quarters as promoting an anti-Jesuit and rationalist approach to learning. It was during this heady period that Goethe and Kauffmann became members of the Arcadian Academy.14 This new aesthetic reform was linked to Neoclassicism, a style that was gaining favor in intellectual and artistic circles. The Arcadian Academy recalled a lost classical Golden Age. Each member, known as a shepherd, was given a pastoral name and a plot of mythical land in the Bosco Parraiso, located on the Janiculum since 1726. Through their promotion of this classical style, the Arcadians became a cultural phenomenon that unified Italy. Considered the first national academy with its seat in Rome, the Arcadians boasted 56 branches throughout the Italian peninsula, and one in Portugal.15 As a reform-minded institution, the Arcadian Academy opened its doors to women more than any other institution in the eighteenth century. In so doing, it publicly recognized the talents of creative women. Among the most controversial acts of the Seconda Arcadia was the choice of Corilla Olimpica (Maria Maddalena Morelli) as recipient of the Capitol laurels. Although she commanded 13

Ibid. 10 November 1786. P. 110. Hans Gross: Rome in the Age of Enlightenment. New York: Cambridge University Press 1990. Pp. 288–293. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Italian Journey. P. 386. 15 Gross: Rome in the Age of the Enlightenment. P. 287. Giuli: The Feminization of Italian Culture. P. 57. Edgar Peter Bowren: Painters and Painting in Settecento Rome. In: Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century. P. 296. Barroero and Susinno: Arcadian Rome, Universal Capital of the Arts. P. 48. Paola Giuli: Tracing A Sisterhood: Corilla Olimpica as Corinne’s Unacknowledged Alter Ego. In: The Novel’s Seduction: Stael’s Corinne in Critical Inquiry. Ed. by Karyna Szmurlo. London: Associated University Presses 1999. P. 165. 14

33 respect as a poet nationally and internationally, her crowning as poet laureate divided both the Italian literary establishment and European public opinion as a whole. Maria Maddalena Morelli (1727–1800), court poet to the Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1776, was renowned for her conversazioni to which the fashionable world had flocked. As an improvisatrice, her extemporaneous bursts of creative energy were praised as didactic poetry, divulging scientific and philosophical propositions. During her pre-crowning “examination”, her improvisations addressed a number of erudite topics: the preeminence of modern over ancient philosophy, the properties of light and optics, and the advantages of European law over the savage world.16 Mistress to princes and clergymen, Corilla Olimpica was crowned poet laureate on the steps of the Capitoline on 31 August 1776, the only woman to share this honor with Tasso and Petrarch. The sculptor Christopher Hewetson, who would later produce the marble bust of Kauffmann for the Pantheon, carved his Bust of Maria Maddalena Morelli Fernandez, in Arcadia Corilla Olimpica in 1776, to celebrate her coronation.17 During the crowning ceremony, Prince Gonzaga (her lover and patron) extolled her pronouncements as “new, surprising and wondrous things”; at the moment of divine inspiration or enthusiasm, Gonzaga continued, she would “suddenly ignite” with the sacred fires of inspiration, after which her poetry would flow “like a torrent”.18 Such words sparked a celebration of feminine genius and creativity that would be remembered well into the following century in Rome. The crowning was understood as a brazen political act both inside and outside the Academy walls. Her detractors within the Academy saw her as a rival to Pietro Metastasio, a member of the Arcadian Society since 1718 and considered the father of Italian melodrama. To many in the Papal Court, Corilla Olimpica was thought to represent an enemy of the Jesuits, and her crowning an anti-clerical stand. Responding to the “Jesuit Question”, Pope Pius VI ordered Corilla Olimpica to vacate the city immediately. The Arcadians had, perhaps unwittingly, become ensnared in the political crossfire between the Jesuits and anti-clerical forces in eighteenth-century Rome.19 Despite the unfortunate political consequence of her crowning, Corilla Olimpica achieved mythic status shortly before Kauffmann returned to the city 16

Giuli: The Feminization of Italian Culture. Pp. 52, 53, 56, 65, fn.10. Osti: Key Figures in Eighteenth Century Rome. P. 96. Gross: Rome in the Age of the Enlightenment. P. 295. 17 Figure 3. Christopher Hewetson, Bust of Maria Maddalena Morelli Fernandez, in Arcadia Corilla Olimpica, 1776, marble, Museo di Roma, Palazzo Braschi, Rome. For a reproduction, see Oscar Sandner: Angelika Kauffmann und Rom. Exh. Cat. Roma: Accademia Nazaionale di San Luca. 1998. P. 182. 18 As quoted in Giuli: The Feminization of Italian Culture. Pp. 60–61. 19 Osti: Key Figures in Eighteenth Century Rome. P. 96. Gross: Rome in the Age of the Enlightenment. P. 295.

34 in 1781. Her close friend and first biographer, Giovanni di Rossi, had witnessed Corilla’s crowning on the Capitoline and was himself elected a shepherd in the Arcadian Academy in 1783. Di Rossi was the editor of Memorie per le belli arti, an influential journal published between 1785 and 1788 devoted to reporting on new painting, sculpture, architecture, and archeology in Rome.20 In his 1809 biography of Kauffmann, he celebrated her as one of the best painters of all time. Using language comparable to that heard during Corilla Olimpica’s coronation, he wrote: “When [Kauffmann] picked up the brush she became as a poet who takes up the lyre and, possessed by inspiration, becomes transformed; anything might be attempted, and [the poet] knows no bounds to his [sic] flight”.21 To be sure, her brilliance as a painter was likened to the genius of native improvisatrici, a model of female creativity long respected in Rome. Among the first paintings that Kauffmann completed upon her return to Rome was Self-Portrait in the Character of Painting Embraced by Poetry (1782) (Figure 3), which represented her allegiance to Horace’s theory, ut pictura poesis [as is painting, so is poetry]. In Ars Poetica, Horace wrote that “imitation” was important to both poetry and painting, depicting the ideal in nature and expressing the ethical and spiritual meaning of human action.22 Not surprisingly, these same concerns were central to the project of history painting at which Kauffmann excelled. Embracing the idea of poetry and painting as sister arts, the Arcadian Academy created a cultural space where the literary and artistic spheres commingled. They fostered conversazioni for artists with theoretical concerns, for scholars committed to letters, science, antiquarianism, and religion, and for writers, like Goethe, who were deeply entranced by the visual.23 In her self-portrait, Kauffmann, dressed in white and holding a brush and album, looks out at the viewer. She is embraced by the figure of poetry, who, wrapped in warm passionate colors of gold and red, gazes attentively at the artist. She holds a lyre and wears a laurel wreath, perhaps representing an homage to Corilla Olimpica. The two women are represented as sisters, a fact that is reinforced by the two Doric columns that stand side-by-side. As an accomplished history painter, Kauffmann was well-received within the ranks of the Arcadian Academy. Their support of woman artists offered her public legitimacy within the male preserve of history painting. 20

R. W. Lightbrown: Introduction. In: Vita di Angelica Kauffmann, pittrice. Np. Roworth: Biography, Criticism, and Art History. P. 212. 21 As quoted in Roworth: Biography, Criticism, and Art History. P. 211. 22 For a fuller discussion of the idea of ut pictura poesis, see Vernon Hyde Minor: Art History’s History. 2nd edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall 2001. Pp. 166–171. Kauffmann painted another work related to this concept, Allegory of Imitation, 1780–1781, oil on canvas. Private German collection. 23 Roworth: Kauffman and the Art of Painting in England. P. 72; Barroero and Susinno: Arcadian Rome, Universal Capital of the Arts. Pp. 47–48.

35

Figure 3. Self-Portrait in the Character of Painting Embraced by Poetry. Angelika Kauffmann. 1782. Oil on canvas. The Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood. Courtesy of the English Heritage Photo Library.

Goethe in Rome Goethe accepted membership into the Arcadian Society on 4 January 1787. After abandoning his various pseudonyms, he received the pastoral name, “il Chiarissimo Novello Compastore Megaglio Melpomeno” [“the brightest new shepherd Megaglio Melpomeno”].24 He had, at first, resisted membership into the society, in hopes of living a quiet and anonymous life in Rome. Relenting, he

24

Boyle: Goethe: The Poet and the Age. P. 444; John F. Moffitt: Poet and Painter: J. H. W. Tischbein’s Perfect Portrait of “Goethe in the Campagna” (1786–87). The Art Bulletin 65 September 1983. P. 447.

36 accepted the Academy’s offer after his friends, “seemed to attach a special importance to this [invitation]”.25 Goethe was inducted into the Arcadian Academy after completing his play, Iphigenia, which illustrated his reform of German poetry through emotional restraint and the use of simplified literary passages. His experimentation with German poetic form coincided with the literary reforms espoused by the Arcadians. In January 1787, he read the play for the first time to his friends in Rome – Kauffmann, her husband Zucchi, and their mutual friend, Johann Friedrich Reiffenstein.26 Goethe described the scene: “The play made an incredibly deep impression on Angelika’s tender soul. She promised to create a drawing from it, which I should keep as a souvenir. And now, just as I am preparing to leave Rome (for Naples), I am forming affectionate bonds with these kind people. It is at once a pleasant and painful feeling to be certain that they do not like to see me go”.27 Kauffmann, inspired by his play, shared with the poet an intellectual and artistic affinity for the neoclassical tradition. Meanwhile, Tischbein had begun his formal portrait, Goethe in the Campagna in December of 1786 (Figure 4). Goethe, dressed in a flowing white cape and a broad-brimmed painter’s hat, reclines on a broken obelisk with his right hand – his writing hand – fully visible to the viewer. Next to him, crowned with ivy and representing immortality, is an ancient bas-relief showing the recognition scene from Iphigenia. The composite capital reflects Goethe’s architectural studies; his beloved monuments on the Campagna along the Appian Way – an aqueduct and the tomb of Caecilia Metella – occupy the background. The clouds, plants, and rocks, depicted in great detail, reflect his scientific interests.28 Tischbein represented Goethe relaxed in an outdoor setting, suggestive of a physical and spiritual union with nature. Tischbein’s portrait captured Goethe’s commitment to the visual arts and literature. After his sojourn to Naples, Goethe returned to Rome in the summer of 1787 and lived surrounded by artists. He saw the unfinished painting only once when it was exhibited in August of 1787.29 “What makes life in Rome so

25

Goethe: Italian Journey. P. 385. Moffitt: Poet and Painter. Pp. 449, 454. Boyle: Goethe: The Poet and the Age. P. 445. 27 Goethe: Italian Journey. (15 February 1787). P. 138. In March 1787, Kauffmann began a painting based on the meeting scene from Iphigenia in which Orestes recognizes his sister. (Act III, Scene 3) This scene, engraved by J. H. Lipps in 1788, appeared as the frontispiece to the third volume of Goethe’s collection, Schriften, which contained the first published edition of Iphigenia. Moffitt: Poet and Painter. P. 448. The engraving is reproduced on p. 449, fig. 9. Moffitt does not attribute the drawing to Kauffmann. 28 Boyle: Goethe: The Poet and the Age. P. 445. 29 Goethe never saw the completed work. Moffitt: Poet and Painter. P. 443. 26

37

Figure 4. Goethe in der römischen Campagna [Goethe in the Roman Campagna]. J. H. W. Tischbein. 1786. Courtesy of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main.

agreeable”, he wrote, “is that there are so many people here who spend their whole lives thinking about art and practicing it”.30 In Italy, Goethe studied intensely the great works of art and repeatedly returned to his favorite monuments. He began his artistic training in landscape, drawing view after view of the Italian countryside. Only after months of study did he attempt figure drawing, but never with much confidence. John F. Moffit argues that Goethe in the Campagna was originally envisioned as an Arcadian subject and depicted a spiritual collaboration between painter and poet.31 Goethe confirmed this belief: “Tischbein’s idea of having poet and artist work together, thus achieving unity from the outset, merits the highest approbation”.32 The initial drawing for the painting, Idyll Eines römischen Hirten, or Idyllic Shepherd, depicted Goethe as an Arcadian shepherd, the Illustrious New Shepherd Magalio Melpomeno Goethe.33 In the final version 30

Quoted in Boyle: Goethe: The Poet and the Age. Pp. 492–493. Moffit: Poet and Painter. P. 444. See also, Rudolf Bisanz: Goethe and Tischbein in Italy: An Epigonic Painting Reconstructed. Gazette des Beaux Arts 113 (February 1989). Pp. 108, 111. 32 Goethe: Italian Journey. (14 November 1786). P. 114. 33 Moffitt: Poet and Painter. P. 448. The chalk drawing is located in a private collection in Frankfurt/M and is reproduced in on p. 444, fig. 5. 31

38 of the painting, Tischbein characterized Goethe as a visionary, reformist writer, struggling with the composition of the verse-play in German vernacular. He decided to change the Arcadian Shepard of the preliminary drawing to the Wanderer poet/playwright in the finished painting.34 In the end, Tischbein conceived of Goethe as a great writer and Enlightened philosopher. The development of this portrait traced Goethe’s private quest in Italy – from a pursuit of the visual arts and embrace of ut pictura poesis at the Arcadian Academy to the full acceptance of his identity as a world-renowned writer. Indeed, by 22 February 1788, he wrote in his journal, “The benefit I shall have from my rather long stay in Rome is that I am giving up the practice of the visual arts”.35 Kauffmann and Goethe shared an intimate friendship from their initial meeting in January, 1787 until his departure from Rome in April, 1788. He would customarily see Kauffmann on Sundays when they would visit different art collections throughout the city. “It is most pleasant to view paintings with Angelica, since her eye is very cultivated and her technical knowledge of art is so great”. Goethe continued, “At the same time, she is very sensitive to everything beautiful, true and tender, and is incredibly modest”.36 Kauffmann, eight years Goethe’s elder, demonstrated much affection toward him. In June of 1787, she began a portrait of Goethe with which she was never satisfied.37 It is not impossible to imagine that their friendship exhibited a bit of sexual flirtation, despite the constant presence of Kauffmann’s elderly husband, Zucchi. One of Goethe’s biographers, Nicholas Boyle, suggested that Goethe may have fallen in love with Kauffmann, but instinctively withdrew from these feelings.38 To be sure, they shared their deepest of secrets with each other. “Angelica”, Goethe wrote, is not as happy as she deserves to be, in view of her truly great talent and daily increasing wealth. She is tired of painting pictures to sell, and yet her old husband delights in seeing such big money coming in [. . .] She would like to work for her own pleasure, with greater leisure, care and study [. . .] But that is not how it is, and it never will be. She talks very candidly with me [. . .] She has an incredible, and for a woman, truly prodigious talent.39

Goethe left Rome in April 1788, after presenting Kauffmann with his favorite cast of “Juno Ludovisi” and planting a pine sprout in her back garden. The parting was painful. When they said goodbye, Kauffmann exclaimed the experience

34

Moffitt: Poet and Painter. Pp. 441–442, 449. Goethe: Italian Journey. P. 417. 36 Ibid. (22 June 1787). P. 294. 37 The portrait is located in the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik, Weimar. For a reproduction, see Oscar Sandner: Angelika Kauffmann und Rom. P. 40. Figure 27. 38 Goethe: Italian Journey. (27 June 1787). P. 279; Boyle, Goethe: The Poet and the Age. P. 488. 39 Ibid. (18 August 1787). P. 307. 35

39 “pierced my heart and soul”.40 The antique cast and the seedling served as mementos of their friendship. Until her death in 1807, Goethe would regularly hear about the fledgling tree’s growth from Roman travelers.

Kauffmann and the Arcadian Academy Angelika Kauffmann was inducted into the Arcadian Academy in 1789. Within the next few years, she completed several portraits of Arcadian poetesses and improvisers: Fortunata Sulgher Fantastici of 179141 and The Portrait of Signora Teresa Bandettini of Lucca, called “Amaryllis” of 1794 (now lost). Teresa Bandettini Landucci (1763–1837) and Fortunata Sulgher (1755–1824) were among the most famous improvisatrici at the turn of the nineteenth century. Corilla Olympica dedicated her last extant verses to Landucci, whom she identified as the heir to her poetic laurels. From written sources we know that Kauffmann depicted Landucci as a muse reciting poetry and wearing an ivy wreath, not unlike the image of poetry in her Self-Portrait in the Character of Painting Embraced by Poetry (Figure 3). She gave the portrait to Landucci in 1794.42 The Arcadians bestowed legitimacy upon the poetesses and improvisers in Rome and created a model of feminine creativity that, no doubt, appealed to Kauffmann. Madame de Stael (Germaine Necker) memorialized this feminine genius in her extraordinarily popular novel Corinne, or Italy, published in 1807. De Stael, a novelist, feminist, and political thinker, wrote at length on Goethe, Schiller, and other German writers, but mentioned only Goethe in her famed novel. She arrived in Italy with her children in 1804, a refugee from Napoleon’s France, and was invited to join the Arcadian Academy sometime in 1805.43 In Rome between 1804 and 1807, de Stael, as a friend of Goethe, most likely sought out the acquaintance of Kauffmann. De Stael imagines the beautiful Corinne, of Italian and British parentage, as the most creative and erudite woman in Rome. In the opening chapter of the novel, the Englishman Oswald, Lord Nevil, Corinne’s eventual lover, muses

40

As quoted in Boyle: Goethe: The Poet and the Age. P. 511. Located in the Galleria Palatina, Florence. 42 Giuli: Tracing the Sisterhood. P. 274, fn 9. The painting is described by Lady Victoria Manners and Dr. G. C. Williamson: The Memorandum of Paintings. In: Angelica Kauffmann, R. A., Her Life and Her Works. 1924 Rpt. New York: Hacker Books 1976. P. 165. 43 Charlotte Hogsett: Marguerite Yourcenar: Daughter of Corinne. In: The Novel’s Seduction. P. 247; Giuli: Tracing a Sisterhood. P. 166; Mary Jane Cowles: Speaking the (Absent) Mother: Corinne and La Langue Maternelle. Psychoanalytic Studies 2: 4 (2000). P. 363; Letters From Goethe. Trans. by M. Von Herzfeld and C. A. M. Sym. New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons 1957. P. 564. 41

40 that “it was the first time he had witnessed honour done to a woman, to a woman renowned only for the gifts of genius”.44 Commemorating, no doubt, episodes from Corilla Olympica’s life, the novel includes a scene in which Corinne is ceremoniously crowned on the steps of the Capitoline. The fictional character Corinne became a model of liberation for many nineteenth-century women despite her eventual downfall after the loss of her British lover. With Corinne as her inspiration, for example, Elizabeth Barrett Browning examined the creative life of a woman poet in her epic poem of 1856, Aurora Leigh.45 Corinne, or Italy was published in 1807, the year of Angelika Kauffmann’s death. The great sculptor, Antonio Canova, was in charge of her funeral. All the artists in Rome, including the entire Academy of St. Luke, walked in the funeral procession to the Church of Sta. Andrea delle Fratte, where she was buried. Her bust, sculpted by Christopher Hewetson in 1795/6 in Rome was ceremoniously placed in the Pantheon in 1808 as a tribute to her great accomplishments as an artist.46 To be sure, the Roman circle of the Arcadian Academy, to which Kauffmann and Goethe belonged, facilitated some of the greatest literary and artistic efforts by both men and women of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

44

Madame de Stael: Corinne, or Italy. Trans. by Sylvia Raphael. New York: Oxford University Press 1998. P. 23. 45 Ellen Moers: Literary Women. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company 1976. P. 177; English Showalter Jr.: Corinne as an Autonomous Heroine. In Germaine de Stael: Crossing the Borders. Ed. by Madelyn Gutwirth, Avriel Goldberger, and Karyna Szmurlo. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press 1991. P. 189; Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Aurora Leigh 1857. Rpt. Ed. Margaret Reynolds. Athens: Ohio University Press 1992. 46 The bust is now located in the Promoteca Capitolina, Rome. It was one of 60 busts of great artists, among them Anton Raphael Mengs (whose studio she inhabited) and Piranesi. John: Bartolozzi, Zoffany, and Kauffman. P. 50. For an illustration of the Hewetson bust, see Oscar Sandler: Angelika Kauffmann und Rom. P. 180. Figure 156.

Catriona MacLeod

Sweetmeats for the Eye: Porcelain Miniatures in Classical Weimar* Neoclassical sculpture tends to have weighty, even colossal aspirations. This paper examines an innovative line of sculptural porcelain produced by the Fürstenberg manufactory in Braunschweig between 1771–1808, and which participates in an opposing trend, towards miniaturization. These works, busts of classical sculptures, Roman emperors, German aristocrats, and a canon of contemporary artists and intellectuals, placed neoclassical taste on the dining table, thus posing questions about tactile and visual desires. Toothsome versions of neoclassical sculpture, they came into close proximity to the bodies of the consuming aristocracy or, their successors in the tasteful contact with Neoclassicism, the upper middle classes. Embodying as they do the major theorists of Classicism in Germany from Winckelmann to Herder and Lessing – the miniature busts are also examined in this essay as both fashionable and critical reconfigurations of those writers’ constructions of antique and modern bodies.

Eighteenth-Century Porcelain Figurines: A Hollow World? In the eccentric Czech porcelain collector Utz, Bruce Chatwin created a figure who fortifies himself against the upheavals of World War II and of Stalinism by amassing more than 1000 Meissen figurines in a cramped Prague apartment.1 Chatwin’s 1988 novel, which itself has a jewel-like miniature form, is a poetic reflection on the history of this most fragile medium for sculpture, from its quasi-mystical discovery (as a substance known as the “arcanum”) at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Johannes Böttger in Dresden. The novel highlights the affective dimension of porcelain sculpture and of its collectors, who are said like Augustus the Strong to be vulnerable to a kind of porcelain “sickness”;2 it examines the precarious, second-class status of porcelain in the fine arts; and it considers the paradox inherent in a medium that has constantly striven to emulate marble, yet does so via lightness, fragility, and weightlessness. How can this hollow, delicate miniature world, Utz and the narrator ask, compete against epochs of gigantism (post-war Prague and its monumental * I would like to express my thanks to Martina Droth and Alison Yarrington, organizers of “A Fragile Alliance: Porcelain as Sculpture 1700–1900” at the College Art Association Conference in February 2004, for including me on the panels. I am grateful to them and the other speakers for their stimulating questions and comments on this paper and on the broader field of sculpture in porcelain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thanks, too, to Cordula Grewe for her help with illustrations. 1 Bruce Chatwin: Utz. New York: Penguin 1989. 2 Ibid. P. 50.

42 giants, Frederick the Great and his obsession with tall soldiers, the Neoclassicism that revered antique sculptures such as the colossal Farnese Hercules)?3 Fragile as they are, the narrator concludes, the figurines are nevertheless more resistant to decay than human bodies, and thus serve as fetishistic objects for (impossible) wholeness: “Things are the changeless mirror in which we watch ourselves disintegrate”.4 The notion of the sculpted figure – an idealized, eroticized, smooth body without wrinkle or blemish – as an antidote to death recalls Herder’s essays on sculpture of 1770 and 1778, Plastik: Einige Wahrnehmungen über Form und Gestalt aus Pygmalions bildendem Traume [Sculpture: Some Observations on Shape and Form From Pygmalion’s Creative Dream]. In these essays, which privilege the haptic appreciation of artworks, Herder considers the representation of veins, joints, and other unsightly body parts in sculpture highly undesirable, describing such protruding elements as “Zuwächse, oder kleine Lostrennungen, die die völlige Zerstörung des Körpers weissagen, die ein früher Tod sind” [“growths or small fissures that predict the complete destruction of the body, a premature death”].5 The word “fetish” appears in Chatwin’s postmodern novel in connection with the porcelain figurines.6 If a fetish is in psychological terms a defensive attempt to master lack or substitute for it through artificial surrogate objects, the etymology of the word “porcelain”, of which Utz reminds the narrator,7 speaks to the ultimately uncontrollable nature of the body, to the corporeal excess and corruptibility that are ardently repressed by Herder’s essays. The word “porcelain” is derived from the Italian porcella [little pig] – the smooth cowrie shell of the same name having been associated with a porcine body. “Porcelain” has also been used as a codeword for sex.8 Shared by the words “fetish” and “porcelain” are their origins in objects of colonial trade (magic charms exchanged between native peoples 3

Ibid. P. 38. Ibid. P. 113. 5 Johann Gottfried Herder: Plastik. In: Werke. Ed. by Wolfgang Pross. Munich: Carl Hanser 1987. Vol. 2. P. 434. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. 6 Bruce Chatwin: Utz. P. 105. 7 Ibid. P. 102. On the statue as a fetish object with the character of “highly cathected psychic images or ‘internal objects’ that people the space of mind”, see Kenneth Gross: The Dream of the Moving Statue. Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1992. P. 33. 8 See Janet Gleeson’s popular history of Meissen: Arcanum: The Extraordinary True Story. New York: Warner 1999. Pp. 46–47. Gleeson cites as an example the English dramatist William Wycherley’s bawdy comedy of 1675 The Country Wife, in which a married woman demands “china” from a libertine (who lives in a “china house”) – he fobs her off with a promise of a “roll-wagon” at a later date. A “roll-wagon” was a tall, thin Chinese vase. In the late seventeenth century, according to Sarah Richards, the audience took special pleasure from the tension between the refined (porcelain) and the gross. See: Eighteenth-Century Ceramics: Products for a Civilised Society. Manchester: Manchester University Press 1999. P. 103. 4

43 and Europeans, and the cowrie shells used as currency in the Far East). The relationship of Utz’s fetish with commodity culture is striking, and has been duly noted by critics. Emily Apter sees a kinship between Chatwin’s figurines and the nineteenth-century capitalist culture and mechanical reproduction that are the subject for writers such as Adalbert Stifter, Walter Benjamin, Georg Simmel, and others.9 It would be a worthwhile enterprise, as I propose here, to take a step back in the historical discourse, to the late eighteenth century, where the birth of modern consumer culture in Germany and attendant anxiety about industrialization coincide with the notion of “aesthetic autonomy”, with the manufacture and marketing of porcelain along innovative and distinctly modern lines and with debates about the cultural place of mass produced “copies” of “original” antique sculpture. This essay will explore the significance of what may appear, at least at first glance, a trivial range of objects in porcelain that were designed to cater to neoclassical fashion: an extensive line of miniature portrait busts manufactured by the Fürstenberg company in Braunschweig in the last third of the eighteenth century. What role, if any, do such objects – straddling art and bric-a-brac – play in neoclassical aesthetic theory or as expressions of theoretical concerns? What is their allure, and how do they reflect and embody the desires of aristocratic and bourgeois consumers? Do they respond to wider socio-cultural questions, or are they merely innocuous “eye candy” for dilettantes of neoclassical taste?

Art and Mass Production, Monumentality and Miniaturization Antique sculpture is a particularly interesting test case for competing discourses surrounding so-called “high” art and its mass-produced decorative progeny in late eighteenth-century Germany. Neoclassicism as a movement was obviously reliant on reproduction. Lessing, for example, had only seen the Laokoon statue group in prints when he wrote about it in 1766. Other writers and artists in Germany were dependent on visits to collections of plaster casts of classical sculptures, such as those at Kassel or at the Mannheim Antikensaal. Nevertheless, prominent neoclassical theorists in Germany, Goethe most strenuously among them, disparaged copying – even the hint of simulation or pastiche – and distanced it from the preferred term “imitation”. Despite the privileged place of antique sculpture in this aesthetic, the influential British sculptor John Flaxman was dismissed as the “Abgott aller Dilettanten” [“idol of all dilettantes”] by Goethe 9

Apter briefly alludes to Chatwin in her introduction to the collection Fetishism as Cultural Discourse. Ed. by Emily Apter and William Pietz. Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1993. P. 2. The word “fetishism”, deriving from a Portuguese trading term used for magic charms exchanged between blacks and whites, did not, however, enter the discourse of history of religions until the late eighteenth century, as noted by Wilhelm Pietz in his essay “Fetishism and Materialism: The Limits of Theory in Marx”. In: Fetishism as Cultural Discourse. Pp. 119–151.

44 because of his collaborations with the English porcelain manufacturer Wedgwood that helped to make antique style palatable for contemporary consumers.10 Porcelain copies of classical sculptures are an interesting subcategory to consider in relation to these broader discussions. As a medium for the reproduction of neoclassical objects, porcelain has a history that already places it in an ambiguous role, one that differentiates it from other imitative media, such as plaster or terracotta. On the one hand, like works in plaster porcelain sculptures, from their very beginnings, were characterized as reproducible: moreover, because they were formed in moulds, the individual mark of the artist was also being effaced.11 Their creators were designated as modelers, not as artists. Porcelain was assumed to be a secondary medium, dependent on and imitative of a material such as marble. As such, it was not accorded the theoretical attention, far less status, which attaches to sculpture in marble. Goethe, who wrote extensively about antique sculpture and indefatigably promoted the training of sculptors, was reticent about porcelain sculpture – only in one brief late essay on the decorative arts is it discussed, and then in the limited context of painting techniques on glass and enamel.12 The terms of Goethe’s discussion are themselves entirely consistent with the discourse of miniaturization: the word “miniare” derives from the use of red pigment in illuminations, and is not in its primary derivation related to size, thus underscoring a connection between ornament and virtuoso technique or micro-technology, artistic qualities thought to be on the wane in an age of industrialization. As we shall see, however, technological innovations by porcelain manufactories actually enhanced their ability to create miniatures, in a range 10 Goethe: Über die Flaxmanischen Werke [On Flaxman’s Works]. FA I/18: 651–652. Wedgwood adapted antique style, while, as Adrian Forty shows, consciously alleviating consumers’ potential anxieties about technological progress. Benjamin West’s 1791 painting of the Wedgwood factory “Etruria”, founded in 1769, exemplifies this attitude towards the industrialization of art, transforming what was in reality a highly rationalized factory into a classical scene depicting craft work by women in Greek costumes. See the chapter on Wedgwood in Forty’s history of industrial design. Adrian Forty: Objects of Desire. New York: Pantheon 1986. Pp. 13–28. On the German context, see also Silvia Glaser: “Kunst für den gebildeten Geschmack?” Vom Wandel des Kunsthandwerks am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts. In: Künstlerleben in Rom: Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844), der dänische Bildhauer und seine deutschen Freunde. Ed. by Ursula Peters. Nürnberg: Verlag des Germanischen Nationalmuseums 1991. Pp. 287–293. 11 On porcelain and reproduction see Malcolm Baker: The Ivory Multiplied: SmallScale Sculpture and its Reproductions in the Eighteenth Century. In: Sculpture and its Reproductions. Ed. by Anthony Hughes and Erich Ranfft. London: Reaktion 1997. Pp. 61–78. Famous antique sculptures were first copied in bronze, already in the fifteenth century. See Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny: Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500–1900. New Haven: Yale University Press 1994. P. 93. (In the late eighteenth century, Goethe was an avid collector of Renaissance bronzes.) 12 WA I 49/2: 137–138.

45 of sizes, of life-size original busts. Ludwig Giesz, in his influential study Phänomenologie des Kitsches [Phenomenology of Kitsch], identifies two art historical criteria for kitsch, both of which are features of much porcelain sculpture: material illusionism (one medium faking another, as in porcelain imitations of marble, basalt, or jasper), and a tendency for miniaturization.13 On the other hand, however, porcelain, unlike a purely reproductive medium such as plaster, which was often described as an “Ersatz” or “Surrogat” for a higher-order artwork, did enjoy an alliance in the eighteenth century, however fragile, with sculpture.14 Flaxman was not the only prominent European artist engaged in porcelain design, and porcelain modelers were also often academically schooled sculptors. (The convincing imitation of classical sculpture required high-level technical skills, and academic training.) Étienne-Maurice Falconet had been a key creative force at the Sèvres Company between 1757–1766; in Berlin, at the close of the century, Gottfried Schadow collaborated with architect Hans Christian Genelli and the Modellmeister J. C. F. Riese; and the noted German sculptor Friedrich Wilhelm Doell began his career as a modeler at the Kloster Veilsdorf porcelain manufactory in Thüringen. At the Fürstenberg manufactory, whose line of neoclassical busts is the focus of this essay, the Parisian modeler Desoches, the artist who created many of the neoclassical porcelain busts, had been trained at the Académie de Sculpture.15 Porcelain’s ties with neoclassical sculpture and aesthetics went beyond practical professional development and exchanges. The portrait busts produced en masse by Fürstenberg respond thematically as well to the sources and theorists of Weimar Classicism, notably to the trajectory of writings on sculpture from Winckelmann to Lessing and Herder, all of whom are modeled by Fürstenberg, along with the antique sculptures that are the focal point of their work. This correspondence will be examined in the second part of the present essay. Porcelain also had ambitions that belie the scale of the figurines more commonly thought of as typical eighteenth-century works in the medium. The efforts of Johann Joachim Kändler, 13

Ludwig Giesz: Phänomenologie des Kitsches. Frankfurt/M: Fischer 1994. P. 22. A shortcoming of the essays contained in the exhibition catalog Kleine Gypse is that they bundle together miniature sculptures in various media, including plaster, bronze, cast iron, zinc, papier-mâché, and porcelain, without consideration of the divergent histories, properties and associations of individual materials. Kleine Gypse: Wohnzimmerrezeption antiker Plastik; Begleitband zur Ausstellung im Haspelturm des Schlosses Hohentübingen vom 30. März bis 2. Mai 1999. Ed. by Anke Brüchert et al. Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde 1999. 15 On Falconet and Desoches, see Beatrix Freifrau von Wolff Metternich: Die Porträtbüsten der Manufaktur Fürstenberg unter dem Einfluss der Kunstkritik Lessings. In: Keramos 92 (1981). Pp. 19–68. Pp. 20 and 34 respectively. On Doell’s career path from Baroque porcelain modeler to neoclassical sculptor, see: Wiederholte Spiegelungen: Weimarer Klassik 1759–1832. Ed. by Gerhard Schuster and Caroline Gille. Munich: Stiftung Weimarer Klassik bei Hanser 1999. Vol. 1. P. 59. 14

46 Meissen’s most famous modeler, to execute a massive equestrian statue in porcelain – in its final form he planned a nine meter tall monument to Augustus III – speak to the at times colossal aspirations of the medium and its artists.16 Finally, because of its association with the Industrial Revolution, especially in connection with innovations taking place in Britain, porcelain by the end of the century was also viewed by Germans as a harbinger, as a symptom, and as a desirable product of modernity. The reorganization and division of labor that began in the luxury manufactories of ruling elites became the model for the industrial factory system in Britain.17 In the polemical 1797 essay “Kunst und Handwerk” [“Art and Handicraft”] Goethe writes off the master marketer Josiah Wedgwood, whose products were flooding the German market place via breakthrough advertising methods such as illustrated catalogs, without needing to name him directly.18 Fashionable items such as Wedgwood’s neoclassical porcelain are characterized in the same essay as ephemeral and hollow. In the Italienische Reise [Italian Journey], Goethe describes mass-produced neoclassical art as a profoundly destabilizing force, one that literally removes the foundations from culture: “Die Kunst, welche dem Alten seine Fußboden bereitete, dem Christen seine Kirchenhimmel wölbte, hat sich jetzt auf Dosen und Armbänder verkrümelt” [“The art which provided the floor for the antique world, and which formed domed churches above the Christian, has now crumbled on to jars and bracelets”].19 Indeed, a penchant for any reproductive art such as printmaking, according to Goethe, is an unmistakable sign of dilettantism. Furthermore, Goethe and Schiller associate dilettantism in general with copying, ornament, and mechanical aptitude, as well as with genres such as miniatures that are commonly linked with technical virtuosity and reproducibility.20 At the same time, the increase in production of miniature versions of antique sculptures in the second half of the eighteenth century certainly expresses, too, the anxiety about authenticity and craft in an age of increasing industrialization, since the virtuosity they require were thought to be waning skills. If miniature techniques are more commonly thought of as nostalgic glances at lost craft skills, it is critical to note that technological innovation, in the case of Fürstenberg, 16

Though he obsessively pursued the project for almost thirty years, and by 1761 had completed eight hundred molds for the base, Kändler was ultimately forced to give up because of the financial strain the work placed on him. He did successfully execute, among other large-scale conceptions, a large eagle almost two meters in height for Augustus the Strong’s monumental porcelain menagerie, with its life-size animal “portraits,” as well as a porcelain temple centerpiece nearly four meters tall. Gleeson: Arcanum. Otto Walcha: Meissen Porcelain. New York: Putnam 1981. Pp. 137–140. 17 Sarah Richards: Eighteenth-Century Ceramics: Products for a Civilised Society. Manchester: Manchester University Press 1999. Pp. 50–51. 18 Goethe: Kunst und Handwerk. FA 1/18: 437–440. 19 FA 1/15: 93–94. 20 Goethe: Über den Dilettantismus [On Dilettantism]. FA 1/18: 746.

47 was in fact the driving force behind reproduction and miniaturization – sintering processes were devised by the manufactory by which multiples in a range of sizes and prices could be created as exact replicas of original porcelain busts.21 In short, porcelain, a favored medium for the translation of Neoclassicism into the desirable accessories for an aesthetic lifestyle, attracts a cluster of contradictory meanings by the final decades of the eighteenth century. Though he does acknowledge the innovations of Wedgwood, art historian and archaeologist Karl August Böttiger, in a 1792 article on antique vases (such as Wedgwood’s celebrated Portland Vase) and their imitators, dismisses Rococo tendencies in porcelain as dubious and trivial. His anti-Rococo formulation is lifted directly from Winckelmann’s admonition to porcelain manufacturers in the 1764 Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums [History of Ancient Art] about the unworthiness of their sculptural efforts: “Noch werden unsere so sehr geliebten Porcellangefäße durch keine ächte Kunstarbeit veredelt. Das mehrste Porcellan ist in lächerliche Puppen geformet, wodurch der daraus erwachsende kindische Geschmack sich allenthalben verbreitet hat” [“Our so beloved porcelain vessels have still not been refined by genuine artistry. Most porcelain is fashioned into ridiculous dolls, resulting in the spread of a childish taste”].22 What makes this last statement of particular interest is its location, in Friedrich Justin Bertuch’s highly influential late eighteenth-century Weimar fashion journal, the Journal des Luxus und der Moden [Journal of Luxury and Fashion]. The publication of the magazine, with its long and successful run from 1786–1827, marked the emergence of a German consumer audience with an appetite for luxury commodities, many of them in the fashionable neoclassical style, and many of them 21

Wolff Metternich: Die Porträtbüsten der Manufaktur Fürstenberg unter dem Einfluss der Kunstkritik Lessings. See p. 34. 22 Journal des Luxus und der Moden. June 1792. P. 284. It is an almost verbatim quotation from Winckelmann, who polemicizes: “Wie unendlich prächtiger müssen nicht solche Geschirre von Kennern des wahren Geschmaks geachtet werden, deren schöne Materie bisher noch durch keine ächte Kunstarbeit edler gemacht worden, so daß auf so kostbaren Arbeiten noch kein würdiges und belehrendes Denkbild eingepräget gesehen wird. Das mehreste Porcellan ist in lächerliche Pupen geformet, wodurch der daraus erwachsene kindische Geschmak sich allenthalben ausgearbeitet hat” [“How much more magnificent such porcelain must be judged by connoisseurs of genuine taste, since their beautiful material has until now not been refined by true artistry, and such precious works have not received the mark of any worthy and instructive conception. Most porcelain is fashioned into ridiculous dolls, resulting in the spread of childish taste”]. Johann Joachim Winckelmann: Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums. In: Sämtliche Werke. Ed. by Joseph Eiselein. Donauöschingen: Im Verlage Deutscher Classiker 1825–1829. Vol. 3. P. 121. Winckelmann’s derogatory comment on porcelain comes at the end of a chapter on the materials of sculpture. Interestingly, anxieties about the proximity of porcelain sculptures to utilitarian vessels or to kitsch ornaments continue to surface in contemporary

48 entering the market from Bertuch’s own Weimar warehouse. An irony of neoclassical style is that while it attempted to rise above the vicissitudes of fashion, appealing to an ideal of beauty thought eternal, its simple, streamlined forms lent themselves particularly well to reproduction. Sculpture participated in this trend.23 Contemporary sculptors of the neoclassical movement such as Flaxman and Antonio Canova receive discussion in the eclectic magazine, but antique sculptures are also mentioned in the pages of the Journal des Luxus und der Moden in the guise of domestic objects with a close relationship to the consumer’s own body in the private sphere. Antique sculptures are copied (and often miniaturized) in a variety of imitative materials, ranging from cameo rings and buttons, to cast iron stoves, to London fashion mannequins, to terracotta garden accessories, to “Phelloplastik” [“models in cork”]. As Böttiger’s article indicates, however, porcelain sculpture, placed in the rubric of decorative art, and despite the “China fever” of the mid-century, seems to fare poorly in late eighteenth-century aesthetics.24 In the fashion magazine it is at once everywhere and nowhere. Porcelain appears in Bertuch’s journal as an accessory to interior design, but chiefly in the advertising lists that appeared in the magazine’s Intelligenzblatt and that publicized the newest lines from Wedgwood, Sèvres, or other companies. Space is also allocated to the promotion of local Thuringian porcelain, fired from local earth, in Ilmenau and Gotha: Bertuch was an indefatigable booster of new industries intended to compete with the foreign French and British imports. What does the association with porcelain sculpture of this kind porcelain art, which frequently resorts to ironic quotations of bourgeois decorative forms (for example, Jeff Koons’s explicitly whimsical 1998 “Puppy Vase”) and has inspired relatively few innovative or challenging works. The most “subversive” of ceramic objects may indeed originate in contempt for the medium, as one critic lately observed of Turner prizewinner Grayson Perry’s “eyesore” vases. See the review of the Tate Liverpool’s 2004 exhibition “A Secret History of Clay: From Gauguin to Gormley”. Jonathan Jones: Gone to Pot. The Guardian Review. 5 June 2004. Pp. 16–17. 23 On the status of antique sculpture and its reproductions in Bertuch’s magazine, see Catriona MacLeod: Skulptur als Ware: Gottlieb Martin Klauer und das Journal des Luxus und der Moden. In: Das Journal des Luxus und der Moden: Kultur um 1800. Ed. by Angela Borchert and Ralf Dressel. Heidelberg: Carl Winter 2004. Pp. 261–280. 24 A singular exception to the critical opprobrium on reproducibility and the decorative arts is to found in the writings of Karl Philipp Moritz, known as one of the foundational theorists of “autonomous art”, who viewed the study of antique art as desirable for craftsmen producing, for example, porcelain table decorations. Karl Philipp Moritz: Ein Blick auf die verschiedenen Zweige der Kunst [A Look at the Various Branches of Art]. In: Werke. Ed. by Horst Günther. Frankfurt/M: Insel 1993. Vol. 2. Pp. 602–604. The Swiss writer Salomon Gessner attempted to establish a porcelain manufactory whose products would contain motifs from his works in Kilchberg-Schooren in 1763, but it ran up high debts, and was dissolved in 1791. Annett Lütteken: “Minna” auf der Zuckerdose – Porzellane des 18. Jahrhunderts als literaturgeschichtliche Quelle betrachtet. In: Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert 27 (2003). Pp. 217–234. See p. 234.

49 do for the status of a sculptor? It was precisely the association with mass-produced neoclassical items such as the Fürstenberg figurines that placed Weimar court sculptor Gottlieb Martin Klauer (1742–1801), to name the figure most pertinent in this context, in an ambivalent role between artist and craftsman. Though most of the busts commissioned by Anna Amalia are copies by Fürstenberg modelers of other artworks – a bust of Anna Amalia is from a portrait by Johann Georg Ziesenis, and the modeler Desoches based many of his busts of antique sculptures on prints from the extensive collection of Carl I of Braunschweig – a significant number of the contemporary busts were produced in collaboration with Klauer. When Goethe encouraged Klauer to undertake original busts of prominent Weimar contemporaries (including himself), Bertuch promoted mass production of affordable replicas in plaster and terracotta – and the Fürstenberg porcelain miniatures of the already miniaturized plaster busts constitute yet another vector for serialization.25 In the October 1795 issue of the Journal des Luxus und der Moden a “Brief an eine Dame über die Kunde verschiedener Waaren des Luxus und unserer modischen Bedürfnisse” [“Letter to a Lady Concerning News of Various Luxury Items and Our Fashionable Needs”] is devoted to porcelain. The letter concludes with a paragraph in praise of the nearby Gotha porcelain manufactory. Though the factory does not produce grand-scale works, writes the author, it does create “niedliche Mundtassen, Biscuit-Figuren, Vasen” [“pretty cups, porcelain figurines, vases”], neoclassical decorative wares that enable it “mit dem Geiste der Zeit fortzuschreiten” [“to advance with the spirit of the times”] (454). The placement of porcelain figurines between teacups and vases is typical. Giesz’s analysis of kitsch does not mention – but could have – that proximity to the body of a consumer, and the functionalization of aesthetic form, in addition to smallness, are a common indicator of the kitsch object. 25

I have proposed elsewhere that Klauer occupies an ambivalent and often contentious location between aura and reproduction, monumentality and miniaturization, aristocratic patronage and bourgeois consumerism. This plays itself out in Klauer’s relationship with Bertuch, Anna Amalia and Bertuch. Bertuch advertised and promoted his full line of works; Duchess Anna Amalia facilitated the commercial relationship between Klauer and Fürstenberg; and Goethe presided over Klauer’s “aesthetic education”, while criticizing him for his aesthetic descent into the decorative arts, and viewing him as an unsuitable candidate for a public monument to Carl August. See Catriona MacLeod: Skulptur als Ware: Gottlieb Martin Klauer und das Journal des Luxus und der Moden. In: Das Journal des Luxus und der Moden: Kultur um 1800. Ed. by Angela Borchert and Ralf Dressel. Heidelberg: Carl Winter 2004. Pp. 261–280. On Klauer and the partial body represented by the portrait bust, particularly in relation to the whole body of the ideal antique sculpture, see Catriona MacLeod: Floating Heads: Weimar Portrait Busts. In: Unwrapping Goethe’s Weimar: Essays in Cultural Studies and Local Knowledge. Ed. by Burkhard Henke, Susanne Kord, and Simon Richter. Rochester: Camden House 2000. Pp. 65–96.

50 In the Wunderkammer, miniature sculptures in materials such as ivory had been prestigious objects, but in the eighteenth-century Kleinplastik, as such small sculpture was known, was increasingly marginalized. The very designation of porcelain sculptures as Kleinkunst in eighteenth-century Germany speaks volumes about their relationship to the colossal marble bodies admired and extensively analyzed in the neoclassical period – for example, the massive Juno bust owned by Goethe. The small figures and busts in porcelain that were produced serially during the neoclassical period have been relatively neglected as critical objects of study, overshadowed by their gigantic counterparts in marble and other media. Art historical accounts of European sculpture at the end of the eighteenth century privilege colossal monuments even exceeding the anthropomorphic classical scale, and hypertrophic portraits.26 Largely this has to do with the prestige of the full-figure marble sculpture in the wake of Winckelmann’s writings on antique art, of course: but the assumption that the gigantic is an expression of historical forces and sublime genius, while the miniature represents a controlled and trivial order of “closure, interiority, the domestic” may also have contributed to the exclusion of the latter category from critical consideration.27

26 Alison West’s excellent study of French sculpture of the era relates a certain “virile hypertrophy” of portraiture to historical factors (the ideological upheavals of the French Revolution) as well as to a concern with the representation of genius. In 1805, the year of Schiller’s death, the sculptor Johann Heinrich Dannecker is said to have proclaimed of the poet: “Schiller muß colossal in der Bildhauerei leben, ich will eine Apotheose” [“Schiller must live as a colossus in sculpture – I intend an apotheosis”]. Quoted in: From Pigalle to Préault: Neoclassicism and the Sublime in French Sculpture, 1760–1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998. P. 284, note 98. Goethe, of course, was himself the subject of numerous colossal portraits: from Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein’s painting Goethe in der Campagna (1786/1787), to Alexander Trippel’s marble bust (1788/1789) modeled after a classical Apollo, to Heinrich Christoph Kolbe’s 1826 painting. Herder’s essays on Plastik consider the gigantic to be the natural domain of sculpture: “[. . .] so muß gleichsam jeder hohe und starke Gott, jede Göttin der Erhabenheit und Ehrfurcht, unsrer Einbildung Kolossalisch und wenigstens übermenschlich werden über unsre Zwergengröße” [“(. . .) thus every great and potent god, every goddess of sublimity and reverence, must also appear to our imagination colossal, at least superhuman, in comparison to our dwarf-like stature”]. Pp. 532–533. Yet the same era expresses a fascination with sculptural miniaturization. I noted above the cork replicas of antique sculpture mentioned in the Journal des Luxus und der Moden. Probably the most extreme variant of this concern are the exquisitely refined miniscule sculptures in ivory executed in the late eighteenth century in sizes not exceeding a few centimeters (many of the details are barely visible to the naked eye). For examples of the latter, see the exhibition catalog: Mikrobilder: Wunder der Bildhauerkunst. Vienna: P. W. Hartmann 1999. 27 For this distinction between the gigantic and the miniature, see Susan Stewart: On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham: Duke University Press 1993. P. 70.

51 Fürstenberg Portrait Busts in Weimar: Table Décor and Classical Emulation The Fürstenberg line in portrait busts, which goes through a hybrid transitional phase in the 1770s, embodies several of these questions about status and scale, albeit in the guise of whimsy. Rococo porcelain figurines can themselves reveal a playful self-awareness of contemporary debates on taste and style. (A thematic concern with fashion is indeed a hallmark of Rococo art, whose fascination with novelty represents a concern that would be suspect for most neoclassical artists and theorists.) Embodying a manifestly hybrid rococo-neoclassical style, by virtue of this conscious juxtaposition some of the early figurines point to something that goes beyond what Hugh Honour has called, with reference to Wedgwood, a purely decorative appropriation of antiquity, “Rococo taste in antique fancy dress”.28 A 1770 Fürstenberg putto, modeled by Johann Christian Rombrich, seems gleefully malicious as he drives a chisel into the head of a marble portrait bust.29 Consider as well the witty and ironic self-representation of the porcelain sculptor Carl Gottlieb Schubert, also working for Fürstenberg (Figure 1). In this figurine, scale is once more the central issue, and is expressed in the juxtaposition of Rococo miniaturization and neoclassical gigantism. The 12 cm high figure of the sculptor, one in a series of four craftsmen, and gaily dressed in the bright colors characteristic of earlier Rococo porcelain sculpture, seems dwarfed by the massive neoclassical white marble bust he has created. Rococo whimsy figures itself as the creative, mayhem-causing force behind the new classical project that claims to transcend fashion – but in the space of less than a decade, it has been eclipsed. Duchess Anna Amalia of Weimar bought the four craftsmen figures in 1793 as a gift for her son, Duke Carl August.30 But the restrained antique bust being chiseled by the sculptor figurine, a copy of Fürstenberg modeler Jean Desoches’ biscuit bust of the emperor Luctator, was also one of Anna Amalia’s neoclassical commissions to the factory.31 This form of sculptural practice, collecting and display in late eighteenth-century Weimar has been documented but underinterpreted, especially bearing in mind that Weimar is the location for theoretical investigations into sculpture by writers such as Goethe, as well as for enormously successful entrepreneurship involving neoclassical fashions by Goethe’s antagonist Bertuch. Between around 1771–1794, Duchess Anna Amalia placed the 28

Hugh Honour: Neo-classicism. Harmondsworth: Penguin 1968. P. 48. See Siegfried Ducret: Fürstenberger Porzellan. Braunschweig: Klinkhardt & Biermann 1965. Vol. 3. P. 91 (Illustration 119). 30 Susanne Schroeder and Petra Damaschke: Tafelrunden: Fürstenberger Porzellan der Herzogin Anna Amalia in Weimar. Munich: Stiftung Weimarer Klassik bei Hanser 1996. P. 106. 31 Ducret: Fürstenberger Porzellan. Vol. 3. P. 160. 29

52

Figure 1. Bildhauer [Sculptor]. Carl Gottlieb Schubert. 1774. Herzog Anton UlrichMuseum. Inv. Nr. Für. 1186.

commissions with the Fürstenberg porcelain factory in Braunschweig for small portrait busts in biscuit porcelain. Links between the so-called Weimar “Musenhof ” [“court of the muses”] and the Fürstenberg manufactory emerged from the close familial ties between Anna Amalia and the court in Braunschweig – her father, Carl I of Braunschweig (1713–1780), in pursuit of the prestige and income that could

53 come with a porcelain factory, had founded the Fürstenberg factory in 1747.32 As Siegfried Ducret has illustrated in his comprehensive Fürstenberg catalog, the production of Fürstenberg figures was varied, its styles ranging from commedia dell’ arte to chinoiserie and Neoclassicism, though its modelers were derivative of those at Meissen and Berlin and have mainly been viewed as skilled craftsmen of lesser status than contemporary masters such as Kändler, Johann Peter Melchior, Johann Josef Niedermeyer or Wilhelm Beyer.33 Most figural work in porcelain in the eighteenth century was intended for table ornaments. Fürstenberg was also particularly noted, however, for its large-scale and widely advertised production of portrait busts and medallions.34 Between 1770–1794, the most productive period of this production, over 135 different portrait busts were created. Anna Amalia’s commissions bring together table décor and the portrait bust genre. She owned relatively few Fürstenberg figurines, when compared with her collection of busts. The subject matter of her commissions ranged from the Weimar ducal family, to (partial) copies of the most celebrated antique sculptures such as the Apollo Belvedere, the Antinous or the Laokoon group, to busts of Roman emperors, to busts of notable intellectuals and artists (among them Goethe, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Winckelmann, Mengs, Wieland, Herder and Gellert) by contemporary sculptors such as Klauer, Dannecker, and Cavaceppi or copied from older works, paintings or prints. The audience for these works is thus assumed to have knowledge not just of the classical statues that formed the “musée imaginaire” of the cultivated European elite, but also of the theorists and artists who had been instrumental in fashioning that canon. Conversely, it is likely that Lessing, who was librarian to the Braunschweig court from 1770 onwards in Wolfenbüttel, and who socialized with Fürstenberg artists such as the landscape painter Pascha Weitsch, had some influence on the subject matter of the Fürstenberg factory. The list of intellectuals modeled certainly reflects Lessing’s friendships (Nicolai and Mendelssohn) and cultural predilections (English figures such as Shakespeare, Milton, and the Shakespearean actor David Garrick are included).35 In placing her neoclassical commissions, Anna Amalia was no doubt also influenced by the advice 32

For details of the Weimar-Braunschweig connection, see Susanne Schroeder and Petra Damaschke: Tafelrunden: Fürstenberger Porzellan der Herzogin Anna Amalia in Weimar. Munich 1996. Pp. 8–22. See also Ducret: Fürstenberger Porzellan. Vol. 3, Figuren, contains a complete catalog of the portrait busts. 33 Ibid. P. 1. 34 See for example: Über Porzelan-Fabriken and Preis-Courant verschiedener Sorten von Büsten, Basreliefs, Medaillons, Aufsätzen auf Camine oder auf Plateaux, Pots pourris, Vasen und Figuren, von ächtem Fürstenberger Porzellan [On Porcelain Manufactories and Price List of Various Kinds of Busts, Bas Reliefs, Medallions, Decorations for Fireplaces or Pedestals, Pots Pourris, Vases and Figures, in Genuine Fürstenberg Porcelain]. In: Journal von und für Deutschland 1785. Pp. 7–13 and pp. 89–95. 35 See Wolff Metternich: Die Porträtbüsten der Manufaktur Fürstenberg unter dem Einfluss der Kunstkritik Lessings. In: Keramos 92 (1981): 19–68. Wolff Metternich views Lessing’s theoretical influence as pivotal, based on Lessing’s proximity to the

54 of Weimar court artist Adam Friedrich Oeser, who had known Winckelmann in Dresden. However, though they quote several theorists, it would be simplistic to read the busts as a straightforward catalog or illustration of Winckelmann, Lessing, or Herder and their views of antique sculpture (Figure 2, Figure 3, Figure 4). It is no small irony, indeed, that we find Winckelmann in the shape of a miniature porcelain bust (Klauer’s copy of a bust by the noted neoclassical sculptor Friedrich Wilhelm Doell), for Winckelmann, and Lessing in his wake, disparaged the portrait bust as a symptom of decadence in art. Winckelmann describes the genre of the bust as “kleinlich” or trivial in his Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums, and Lessing expresses a similar point of view in the Laokoon essay, observing that the portrait bust’s realism detracts from the expression of the aesthetic ideal: Der mittelmäßigen Porträts sollten unter den Kunstwerken nicht zu viel werden. Denn obschon auch das Porträt ein Ideal zuläßt, so muß doch die ähnlichkeit darüber herrschen; es ist das Ideal eines gewissen Menschen, nicht das Ideal eines Menschen überhaupt.36 There should not be too many mediocre portraits among artworks. For although the portrait genre does permit expression of an ideal, nevertheless it is dominated by resemblance; it represents the ideal of a particular individual, not the ideal of humanity in general.

Winckelmann profoundly opposed the subsuming of classical art by fashionable discourse, and indeed saw the first term as the antidote to the second.37 Braunschweig court, a cultural center for the German reception of antiquity. His friends in Braunschweig hoped, indeed, that Lessing would complete the second part of his Laokoon essay there. Among other activities, Lessing supplied the ducal Kunstkabinett, which was also the source for Fürstenberg, with prints from the Wolfenbüttel collection. The Braunschweig court participated in the cultural enthusiasm for antiquity. Prince Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand of Braunschweig had, for example, traveled to Rome in 1766 and enjoyed guided tours and conversations with Winckelmann. On the eighteenthcentury German literary canon and its private reception, as represented by Fürstenberg, see Lütteken: “Minna” auf der Zuckerdose – Porzellane des 18. Jahrhunderts als literaturgeschichtliche Quelle betrachtet. In: Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert 27 (2003). Pp. 217–234. Lütteken notes as well the emphasis on scholars from educational institutions in the orbit of the Braunschweig court, such as the Braunschweig Collegium Carolinum and the universities of Helmstedt and Göttingen. P. 219. 36 See Johann Joachim Winckelmann: Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1993. P. 232. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Laokoon oder Über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie. Stuttgart: Reclam 1987. P. 15. Portrait busts were more typical of Roman than of Greek art. With the discovery of Roman portrait busts at the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii, they became a fashionable accessory for neoclassical interiors. 37 On Winckelmann’s rejection of fashion as the antithesis to the ideal, natural body, see Klaus Schneider: Natur – Körper – Kleider – Spiel: Johann Joachim Winckelmann: Studien zu Körper und Subjekt im späten 18. Jahrhundert. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 1994. Pp. 133–137.

55

Figure 2. Bildnisbüste Johann Joachim Winckelmann [Portrait Bust of Johann Joachim Winckelmann]. J. Ch. Rombrich. 1787. Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum. Inv. Nr. Für. 912.

56

Figure 3. Bildnisbüste Gotthold Ephraim Lessing [Portrait Bust of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing]. 1783. Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum. Inv. Nr. Für. 3222.

57

Figure 4. Bildnisbüste Johann Gottfried Herder [Portrait Bust of Johann Gottfried Herder]. 1788. Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum. Inv. Nr. Für. 5466.

58 Lessing, unlike Herder, favored poetry over sculpture in his hierarchy of the arts because of its ability to excite the imagination. And finally, the partial body of the bust would be antithetical to notions of classical bodily wholeness shared by all three of these thinkers. Chronologically, the classical Fürstenberg subjects, mythological figures and Roman emperors, were the earliest (beginning in 1771), followed by the dynastic portraits (from 1772), and finally, the intellectuals (beginning with Voltaire in 1776, and adding increasing numbers of other European luminaries from 1783 onwards). The porcelain busts thus formed a coherent thematic program, and were advertised separately from other Fürstenberg lines. With the portrait busts, Fürstenberg was competing with Wedgwood, as Fürstenberg and Wedgwood were the first porcelain manufactories to begin production of neoclassical portraits: Wedgwood in “soft paste” jasperware and basaltware, and Fürstenberg in a hard biscuit porcelain. Over 135 Fürstenberg busts were produced, ranging in size from around 11–25 centimeters – several busts were offered in as many as five different sizes. Many are works of extreme delicacy and refinement. The busts derived in ornamental function from Baroque and Rococo figurines that decorated the elaborate aristocratic dining table in earlier decades, first modeled from sugar, and after the 1730s from porcelain, and which were deployed by pastry chefs in painterly, often mythological-allegorical compositions for representative purposes during the dessert course. Favored motifs were fountains and grottos; buildings such as temples and castles; gardens; and antique gods. Even the most enchanting and fanciful of the Rococo figurines, however, can bear political meaning, and can be deployed to ideological ends. Kändler’s monumental centerpieces for Meissen were emblems of dynastic potency. In Fürstenberg’s late eighteenth-century line, however, figurines made the transition from Rococo to neoclassical style and began to be deployed to different ends.38 Despite their status as miniature decorative objects, these Tafelrunden [table decorations] and their uses do point to social and artistic developments that gave the cultured middle class contact with political power, expressed progressive aspirations, and are not necessarily bearers of nostalgic, conservative values. To be sure, Dresden porcelain figurines had from their very beginnings in the 1730s placed an emphasis on taxonomy, on the spectacular reinforcement of Stände [class] and other hierarchies. The collection, recording and display of Saxon court possessions were the impetus for the creation of the figurines. Grouped and classified 38

On the origins of the figurines in the Baroque art of the table, see Susanne Schroeder and Petra Damaschke: Tafelrunden: Fürstenberger Porzellan der Herzogin Anna Amalia in Weimar. Munich: Stiftung Weimarer Klassik bei Hanser 1996. Pp. 38, 106; for the transition in the Schauessen [literally: “exhibition meal”] from sugar sculptures to porcelain, and on Baroque and Rococo table décor more generally, see Stefan Bursche: Tafelzier des Barock. Munich: Editions Schneider 1974.

59 together on the table were aristocrats, exotic “others” (including models of the animals in the court zoo), categories of artisans, and even the destitute.39 The clustering of figures with whom Carl I as patron of the arts was associated (Winckelmann, Lessing) around his bust on the Braunschweig dining table could be seen as a traditional panegyric to the ruler, rather than as an erudite, coherent set of allusions to these authors’ works.40 Nevertheless, a degree of social mobility is suggested by the reconfigurations of the busts in Weimar. At the Fürstenberg styled table in Weimar, prominent intellectuals and scholars joined the company of aristocrats; in turn, the aristocrats were modeled in an increasingly restrained neoclassical style. A 1784 bust of Anna Amalia, for example, is much simpler than that of Sophie of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, from 1777, whose pedestal is adorned with a medallion depicting Leda and the Swan. A figurine of Pallas Athena from the earlier period still represents dynastic power in allegorical form (Figure 5, Figure 6, Figure 7). Both groups – court and cultural figures – found their way on to the lists of busts advertised for sale by Fürstenberg, reflecting the inclusion in Anna Amalia’s erudite and convivial salons of artists, professors, and visiting intellectuals. (The portraits of scholars and artists all date to the period of Anna Amalia’s salons at the Wittumspalais.41) In turn, the increasing availability of reproductions of individual busts for sale to the upper middle class, for private consumption, further loosens the rigid social groupings of the aristocratic table. The eighteenthcentury discourse of friendship plays into this new configuration and mingling of social groups. The concentration on the face of the subject – whether that be the face of an aristocrat, a commoner, or a classical sculpture – without costume as an indicator of rank and status, has an added equalizing affect. This is not to say, however, that the portrait busts signal the complete breakdown of the hierarchies and social privileges that mark the absolutist court. Schiller’s social status in Weimar was precarious, for example, unlike that of Goethe. Only after he acquired his title was Schiller invited to attend official court functions along with his wife Charlotte, who had been born into the aristocratic von Lengefeld family. It is noteworthy that Schiller, who had been a resident of Weimar since 1799, yet who was not elevated into the nobility until 1802, came on to the Fürstenberg production line only in 1805, more than twenty years after Goethe.

39 See Sarah Richards: Eighteenth-Century Ceramics: Products for a Civilized Society. Manchester: Manchester University Press 1999. P. 183. 40 Lütteken accentuates the dynastic significance of the figures for the Braunschweig court: “Minna” auf der Zuckerdose – Porzellane des 18. Jahrhunderts als literaturgeschichtliche Quelle betrachtet. In: Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert 27 (2003). P. 223. 41 Wiederholte Spiegelungen: Weimarer Klassik 1759–1832. Ed. by Gerhard Schuster and Caroline Gille. Munich: Stiftung Weimarer Klassik bei Hanser 1999. Vol. 1. P. 62.

60

Figure 5. Bildnisbüste Anna Amalia [Portrait Bust of Anna Amalia]. Carl Gottlieb Schubert. 1784. Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen. Inv. Nr. KKg/00030.

61

Figure 6. Bildnisbüste Sophie Caroline Marie, Markgräfin von Brandenburg-Bayreuth [Portrait Bust of Sophie Caroline Marie, Markgräfin von Brandenburg-Bayreuth]. Anton Carl Luplau. 1774. Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen. Inv. Nr. KKg/00028.

62

Figure 7. Pallas Athene. Simon Feilner. 1758. Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen. Inv. Nr. KKg/00030.

63 Surfaces of Restraint Modeled in biscuit, an unglazed white porcelain with the color and texture of antique marble, or slightly later (ca. 1800) in black basaltware to imitate Wedgwood, the busts were set upon pedestals and began to migrate from dining room to library. The new medium of biscuit porcelain has properties that suggest a shift in the aesthetic apprehension of the figurines. Both biscuit and basaltware, matte surfaces that more closely resemble stone than sparkling, illusionistic Rococo porcelain, offer the classical eye what is a more subdued and optically controllable artwork than its precursors. Wolff Metternich’s comment on glazed white porcelain is suggestive of its problematic allure for this later neoclassical period: “Die vielen Glanzlichter glasierten Porzellans, je nach Beleuchtung wechselnd und vorher nicht einzuplanen, vermitteln einen unscharfen Eindruck und konnten zu Verfälschungen führen” [“The reflective properties of glazed porcelain, changeable and unpredictable according to lighting conditions, produce a blurry impression and could lead to distortions”].42 A greater interest in realism is apparent too in the porcelain busts, when compared with the anti-naturalistic emphases of Rococo porcelain. Most works in biscuit are realistic portraits or close copies of the antique sculpture that the medium is intended to mimic: ironically, this Neoclassicism promotes imitation and reproduction rather than diminishing it. In other ways, mobility is encouraged. At times, and this is the case with some versions of the Goethe busts, the pedestals were removable (Figure 8). The most costly pedestals (which could push the bust to an extravagant price of 50 Reichstaler, and could also be ordered separately) were fabricated from veined grey marble.43 (Weimar court sculptor Klauer, an active contributor to the Fürstenberg line, marketed a variety of display accessories that could be purchased along with his sculptural products and combined with them interchangeably.) Porcelain sculptures, unlike their antique counterparts, were not site-specific; they were open to placement as the consumer, aristocratic or bourgeois, saw fit, without regard to iconic origins, or to the architectural context of an original antique work. They were literally without foundation, 42

Wolff Metternich: Die Porträtbüsten der Manufaktur Fürstenberg unter dem Einfluss der Kunstkritik Lessings. P. 22. 43 Schroeder and Damaschke: Tafelrunden: Fürstenberger Porzellan der Herzogin Anna Amalia in Weimar. Munich: Stiftung Weimarer Klassik bei Hanser 1996. P. 109. As a point of comparison, plaster portrait busts such as those produced by Klauer in Weimar were typically priced at around one or two Reichstaler. Larger classical busts by Fürstenberg such as those of Laokoon and Niobe were priced at around 7 Reichstaler, smaller versions of the same busts at 2 Reichstaler. Prices are from: Preis-Courant verschiedener Sorten von Büsten, Basreliefs, Medaillons, Aufsätzen auf Camine oder auf Plateaux, Pots pourris, Vasen und Figuren, von ächtem Fürstenberger Porzellan. In: Journal von und für Deutschland 1785. Pp. 89–90. The porcelain busts are thus, unlike the more affordable plaster busts, commodities of quite significant value.

64

Figure 8. Bildnisbüste Johann Wolfgang Goethe [Portrait Bust of Johann Wolfgang Goethe]. Carl Gottlieb Schubert. 1784. Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen. Inv. Nr. KKg/00030.

65 and as such, apparently antithetical to a basic understanding of the monument, which presupposes a site and permanence. Yet, they were also a miniature form of monument, as Goethe observed, peculiarly suited to modernity. Writing on the subject of monuments in 1804, Goethe declares the bust the appropriate monument of the age, because it is easily reproduced – [“ein schönes Denkmal, das mehrere Freunde besitzen können” or “a beautiful monument that can be owned by several friends”] – and, just as importantly, because it is “transportable”, a shippable and mobile commodity.44 However, what comes into relief here is a tension between two overlapping conceptions of the porcelain miniature. In the first period of Fürstenberg’s production, we have the figurine as whimsical, shiny, colorful table decoration, an object with sensual appeal to touch. Its viewer is embodied, a consumer of food as well as of art. An influential line of eighteenth-century thought considered sculpture to be an art with an especially direct appeal to physical feeling, especially touch. Though Herder’s essays on “Plastik”, which appeared in the same decade as the first Fürstenberg portrait busts, were written in criticism of mannered Rococo taste, they do nevertheless suggest a response to sculpture that is pertinent in this context: a response that denies detachment and embraces sensual incorporation of the artwork. As Daniel Purdy has argued, Herder’s essays can be read in connection with developments in consumer culture at the close of the eighteenth century, and the case can be made that Herder’s thesis failed to gain general cultural acceptance precisely because of its refusal to accept the autonomy of art at the expense of the subjective desires of the observer.45 Paradoxically, the Fürstenberg line simultaneously places the classical sculpture on the cultural table as an object of gustatory and tactile desire, and moves to de-emphasize or bring into line its sensual aspects. The neoclassical busts, with their controlled and subdued surfaces, their erudite pedigree, their abandonment of color, and their suppression of whimsy, appeal to a more intellectually detached spectator. Initially food-related artworks, they throw into problematic relief questions of 44

Goethe: Denkmale [Monuments]. FA 1/18: 961f. On Goethe’s notion of the monument see Clark S. Muenzer: Wandering Among Obelisks: Goethe and the Idea of the Monuments. Modern Language Studies 31 (2001). Pp. 5–34. 45 Daniel Purdy’s essay on Prussian military uniforms and late eighteenth-century aesthetic readings of the Pygmalion myth persuasively links discourses of fashion with Herder’s account of the phenomenological apprehension of sculptures. Daniel Purdy: Sculptured Soldiers and the Beauty of Discipline: Herder, Foucault and Masculinity. In: Body Dialectics in the Age of Goethe. Ed. by Marianne Henn and Holger A. Pausch. Amsterdam: Rodopi 2003. Pp. 23–45. Much of the earlier discussion of pleasure and entertainment in eighteenth-century Germany has been theorized through literature, at the expense of a consideration of material culture. On the schism that opened up between autonomous art and popular/utilitarian culture in the late eighteenth century as a response to modernization see: Zur Dichotomisierung von hoher und niederer Literatur. Ed. by Christa Bürger, Peter Bürger, and Jochen Schulte-Sasse. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp 1982.

66 good and bad taste. But however calm and restrained they become, they still represent the irrepressible appetites and desires of emerging consumerist society, and they cannot easily be subsumed into the category of disinterested aesthetic contemplation. As I have argued here, they engage with and even challenge the central tenets about sculpture posited by the very theorists whom they embody. It was through sociable contact with porcelain miniature busts as well as through the better-known plaster copies that Braunschweig and Weimar culture physically appropriated, interiorized the artifacts and theorists of the classical world.46 The souvenir, as described by Susan Stewart in her meditation on the role of the miniature in consumer culture, performs a similar function, reducing “the public, the monumental, and the three-dimensional into the miniature, that which can be enveloped by the body, [. . .] that which can be appropriated within the privatized view of the individual subject”.47 The miniature world also promises its viewer and consumer a fantasmatic identification with the desired other. With this in mind, it is important not to overlook the metaphorical density of precisely the tiny object.48 As we have seen, the semiotic value of the face increases with each stage of the portrait bust’s miniaturization. Josiah Wedgwood, certainly the driving force of modern mass production and whose success inspired Fürstenberg and other manufacturers, had also well understood the economic niche that could be filled by miniature portrait busts – objects that expressed narcissistic desire and, themselves movable private monuments, also promised to fulfill longings for upward mobility: “People will give more for their own Heads, or the Heads in fashion, than for any other subject, & buy more abundantly of them [. . .]”.49 Porcelain busts, to sum it up, are judged by classical Weimar’s theorists, critics, and entrepreneurs in multiple and contradictory ways: as both regressive (throwbacks to Rococo fashion, aristocratic culture) and as symbols of modern mass production, the mobile relations of capitalism, new sociable configurations, and bourgeois cultivation and aspirations. Where an Adornian reading of eighteenth-century mass culture would claim that high art refuses to entertain and that pleasure is the province of popular art, the Fürstenberg busts suggest the existence of artworks that resist such dichotomous theories. 46

On the neoclassical consumer as a copyist, see Hannelore Schlaffer: Antike als Gesellschaftsspiel. In: Analogon rationis. Ed. by Marianne Henn and Christoph Lorey. Edmonton: M. Henn and C. Lorey 1994. Pp. 193–207. 47 Stewart: On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham: Duke University Press 1993. Pp. 137–138. 48 Marianne Schuller and Gunnar Schmidt in their Lacanian-inflected study of the miniature note the symbolic, metaphysical value of small objects such as the communion wafer: Mikrologien: Literarische und philosophische Figuren des Kleinen. Bielefeld: Transcript 2003. Pp. 28–29. 49 Quoted in Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb: The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1982. P. 132.

67

Figure 9. Bildnisbüste Laokoon Sr. [Portrait Bust of Laokoon]. Jean Desoches. 1772. Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum. Inv. Nr. Für. 5856.

68 Bodies of Pleasure and Pain In closing, I would like to add another element of complexity to an assessment of the Fürstenberg groups, by considering the inclusion in the line of the famed Laokoon sculpture group, which is reproduced in the reduced and partial form of a portrait bust50 (Figure 9). As Susan Stewart has argued so compellingly, the world of the miniature is ordered, closed, static, and perfect, in contrast to the tempestuous forces of the gigantic, aligned with the historic shock of the new.51 According to Stewart, the miniature world is one that is uncontaminated by the grotesque and closed off from contagion.52 What, then, is the meaning of the Laokoon busts within the miniature context? They appear to have been a favorite subject for Fürstenberg, since busts of all three heads were produced, in a range of sizes, beginning in 1771. Wolff Metternich interprets the bust by Desoches, in contrast to my reading, as a deliberate modulation of extreme affect, along the lines of Lessing’s deflection of the scream.53 Yet the very form of the bust forces a viewer’s attention on the unspeakable materiality of that gaping mouth. Not only is the partial, ruptured meaning of the bust antithetical to much neoclassical thought, but the intense focus that the bust places on the pain suffered by the elder Laokoon and his sons stands in stark contrast to Lessing’s attempt, in his influential 1766 essay on the sculpture group, to mitigate stark suffering, to remove attention from the scream. This is all the more striking in the context of porcelain miniatures’ identification with the sweetmeat: the violence concentrated on the faces of the Laokoon sculptures haunts the assumed gentility and refinement of the medium, which tends not to engage with dark or challenging subject matter. The Laokoon statue made its way into the world of porcelain already in the Rococo period, but the Fürstenberg versions of the Laokoon could not be more different from the Capodimonte porcelain figurine from around 1750 mentioned by Haskell and Penny – a gaudy Rococo whimsy

50

The Laokoon group, which was the subject of much discussion and theoretical attention throughout Europe (by, among others, Winckelmann, Lessing, Herder, and Goethe), particularly concerning the nature of the priest’s pain, had also become a popular subject for copying in porcelain from the Rococo period onwards. Marble copies of Laokoon’s head were created for domestic interiors, due to the sheer scale a life-size, full-body replica would demand and the difficulty of creating and transporting casts: Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny: Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500–1900. New Haven: Yale University Press 1994. P. 244. Haskell and Penny note that busts of Niobe and her daughters were also fairly common. Ibid. P. 278. 51 Stewart: On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham: Duke University Press 1993. P. 86. 52 Ibid. P. 68. 53 Wolff Metternich: Die Porträtbüsten der Manufaktur Fürstenberg unter dem Einfluss der Kunstkritik Lessings. In: Keramos 92 (1981): 19–68. P. 36.

69

Figure 10. Gladiator moriens. Carl Gottlieb Schubert. 1784. Herzog Anton UlrichMuseum. Inv. Nr. Für. 7042.

70 “covered in mauve drapery and green snakes”.54 Nor are the busts of Laokoon and his sons the only Fürstenberg heads that represent intense suffering. Other sculptures, too, are abbreviated in ways that accentuate the painful emotions passing across a face, or, in the case of the Arrotino, human cruelty. These include: portrait busts of the traumatized Proserpine; of the Arrotino, or Schleifer [knife sharpener] – who according to Winckelmann and others represents the executioner preparing to flay the satyr Marsyas after his defeat by Apollo in a musical competition; of the Dying Gaul (Figure 10);55 and of the Niobe group. Writing in a sketch for Plastik about how statues must come to life under the touch of a Pygmalion-like viewer – “Wir müssen sie anzutasten glauben und fühlen, daß sie sich unter unsern Händen erwärmt” [“We must believe that we are touching it, and sense that it is growing warm in our hands”] – Herder, like Lessing, wards off pain, and selects Niobe as a model of the disciplined “Mäßigung eines Affekts” [“moderation of affect”]: Gehe hin, und lerne von der Stirn des Apollo Hoheit der Seele! [. . .] Vom Antlitz der leidenden Niobe wahres stilles Leiden und schreie nicht kindisch und knechtisch [. . .].56 Go to the brow of Apollo and learn nobility of the soul! [. . .] from the face of the suffering Niobe learn about true calm suffering, and do not cry out in a childish and abased manner [. . .].

Though the Fürstenberg busts cite a catalog of works that represent a modulation of desire and emotion in the theoretical works of Herder and Lessing, they also embody the taboo of corporeal dissolution and pain in spectacular terms. In doing so, they hint at Classicism’s preoccupation with aesthetic terms that threaten its own stability – we might think here of Lessing’s obsession, in his Laokoon essay, with the category of the ugly as well as the beautiful. For Lessing, the visual representation of ugliness – he uses the skinning of Marsyas as an example of a sight that would provoke visceral disgust – allows 54 Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny: Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500–1900. New Haven: Yale University Press 1994. P. 96. 55 One English viewer of the Dying Gaul in the late eighteenth century commented that “the very lips seem to quiver as in the agony of death”. Ibid. P. 226. Haskell and Penny observe that it was the emotional pathos of the statue that attracted most visitors. 56 Johann Gottfried Herder: Paralipomena. In: Werke in zehn Bänden. Ed. by Martin Bollacher et al. Frankfurt/M: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag 1985–2000. Vol. 4. Pp. 1023–1024. Daniel Purdy offers a succinct account of the relevance of the Pygmalion myth in eighteenth-century writings on sculpture in: Sculptured Soldiers and the Beauty of Discipline: Herder, Foucault and Masculinity. In: Body Dialectics in the Age of Goethe. Ed. by Marianne Henn and Holger A. Pausch. Amsterdam: Rodopi 2003. Pp. 41–44. See also Inka Mülder-Bach: Im Zeichen Pygmalions: Das Modell der Statue und die Entwicklung der “Darstellung” im 18. Jahrhundert. Munich: W. Fink 1998.

71 the viewer no respite from bodily disintegration.57 Lessing’s formulation of “the pregnant moment” as the highest form of visual representation modulating pain is, as Gustafson has noted, throughout the Laokoon essay revealed as “the instant frozen on the brink of corporeal catastrophe”.58 The Fürstenberg statues’ repose, their intimations of bodily wholeness, become strangely fraught and problematic. What happens when one desires and touches the statue? Goethe’s own critique of the Pygmalion myth puts it bluntly – with this form of aesthetic appreciation, there is always the risk of base sensual desires overwhelming genuine art: “Die Tradition sagt: daß brutale Menschen gegen plastische Meisterwerke von sinnlichen Begierden entzündet werden” [“Tradition holds that plastic works of art arouse the sensual desires of brutal human beings”].59 The meaning of the Fürstenberg portrait busts is not, finally, as obvious as one might suppose. They belie the verses written by Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer in 1809 on the subject of the emerging bourgeois culture of the table: “Zuvörderst factisch, nimmer problematisch, / Dann allzeit practisch nimmer theoretisch” [“Above all concrete, never problematic, / Forever practical, never theoretical”].60 Neither a banal line of decorative objects, nor a straightforward

57

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Laokoon oder Über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie. Stuttgart: Reclam 1987. P. 182. On ugliness in Lessing’s essay, see Carol Jacobs: The Critical Performance of Lessing’s Laokoon. In: Modern Language Notes 102 (1987). Pp. 483–521. Susan E. Gustafson has interpreted the same work through the lens of Kristevan abjection: Beautiful Statues, Beautiful Men: The Abjection of Feminine Imagination in Lessing’s Laokoon. In: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 108 (1993). Pp. 1083–1097. 58 Ibid. P. 1092. 59 Goethe: Diderots Versuch über die Malerei [Diderot’s Essay on Painting]. FA 1/18: 559–608. See p. 569. To live and create by the example of Pygmalion, argues Goethe, is to fall into the trap of dilettantism: “Hätte Pygmalion seiner Statue begehren können, so ware er ein Pfuscher gewesen, unfähig eine Gestalt hervorzubringen, die verdient hätte, als Kunstwerk oder als Naturwerk geschätzt zu werden” [“If Pygmalion had been able to desire his statue, he would have been done a botched job as an artist, and would have been incapable of creating a form deserving of the titles of either artwork or work of nature”]. P. 570. 60 Quoted in Renate Müller-Krumbach: Altes Porzellan. Weimar: Nationale Forschungs- und Gedenkstätten der klassischen deutschen Literatur in Weimar 1987. P. 61. Riemer does, however, pay ironic tribute to the poetic dimension of the tea table in the opening decade of the nineteenth century. The poem concludes: “Sodann pathetisch, drastisch und dramatisch, / Und plastisch und romantisch und poetisch, / So heißt er uns mit vollem Recht S. T.tisch” [“Then pathetic, drastic, and dramatic, / And plastic and romantic and poetic, / It now rightly goes by the name S. T.tisch (aesthetic)”]. By the end of the century, portraits of intellectuals and artists had also found their way on to functional tableware for private use in Fürstenberg porcelain such as tea and coffee services. Lütteken documents items of this type – including tea services designed for

72 “illustration” of the neoclassical program, the portrait busts are multiply transformed from their antique originals and negotiate as well the status of their contemporary subjects and owners.61 With a dramatic change in scale, and the abbreviation of the body, come a restraining of sensual play and a turn to visual control. Yet the heads of the Arrotino, the Niobe, and the Laokoon, among other classical copies, all return the viewer powerfully to the repressed corporeality of Classicism.

use by one or two people – decorated with portraits of Gellert, Gessner, Leibniz, Hagedorn, Mendelssohn and Sulzer, as well as with scenes from literary works such as Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm and Goethe’s Leiden des jungen Werthers: “Minna” auf der Zuckerdose – Porzellane des 18. Jahrhunderts als literaturgeschichtliche Quelle betrachtet. In: Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert 27 (2003). Pp. 225–232. 61 Silvia Glaser argues that the miniaturization of antique sculptures in decorative objects leads to a complete disregard for iconic identification. In the case of the Fürstenberg busts, which intertwine theory and the objects of that theory, this claim needs to be revisited: “Kunst für den gebildeten Geschmack?” Vom Wandel des Kunsthandwerks am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts. In: Künstlerleben in Rom: Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844), der dänische Bildhauer und seine deutschen Freunde. Ed. by Ursula Peters. Nürnberg: Verlag des Germanischen Nationalmuseums 1991. Pp. 287–293. See p. 290.

Beate Allert

Goethe, Runge, Friedrich: On Painting While it is true to some extent that Goethe had an impact on the lives of Runge and Friedrich, it is equally true that he was very critical of German Romanticism and tried to impose on others his own ideals of Weimar Classicism. Goethe was deeply affected by the works of both Runge and Friedrich. In fact Goethe shared many aspects of the painters’ diverse sensibilities, which are revealed in Goethe’s own writing. He was as influenced by them as they were by him. The relationship was by no means one-sided in either case and should be recognized as more complex than a matter of Goethe’s offended Classicism.

Goethe’s complex relationship with the visual artists of his time, and especially with Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810) and Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), has been widely discussed, although these interpretations have focused mainly on Goethe. The possible cross-references and mutual influences among them seem to have attracted little attention: this relationship is usually considered to be proof of Goethe’s friendship and well-connectedness with famous contemporary artists. Moreover, it is used to reinforce the claim for Goethe’s centrality in the German-speaking world of late eighteenth-century European culture.1 More recent scholarship on this topic has drawn attention to Goethe’s rejection of the movement of Romanticism in Germany, on the one hand associated with the Jena circle for philosophy and literature and on the other identified with a group

1

Richard Benz: Goethe und die Romantische Kunst. Munich: Piper Verlag 1940. Gerhard S. Kalienke: Das Verhältnis von Goethe und Runge im Zusammenhang mit Goethes Auseinandersetzung mit der Frühromantik. Hamburg: Helmut Buske 1973, offers in his first chapter a detailed summary of earlier scholarship on Goethe and Romantic art. One group which emphasizes Goethe’s friendly relations and well-connectedness with the painters of his time can be identified through works such as Andreas Aubert: Runge und die Romantik. Berlin: P. Cassirer 1909; Lothar Brieger: Die romantische Malerei. Eine Einführung in ihr Wesen und ihre Werke. Berlin: Deutsche Buch-Gemeinschaft 1926; and Kurt K. Eberlein: Goethe und die bildende Kunst der Romantik. In: Jahrbuch der GoetheGesellschaft 14 (1928). Pp. 1–77. Kalienke identifies a second group of scholars who notice a distance between Goethe and Runge but simply attribute it to Runge’s friendship with the Romantic poet Tieck and his “bad influence”, as well as some assumed sympathy between Runge and the Nazarenes whom Goethe really disliked. These scholars nevertheless point out that Goethe’s interest in Runge’s color theory continued despite his skepticism of his possible affiliations with the Romantics. Works belonging to this second group are Hermann Hettner: Kleine Schriften. Braunschweig: Vieweg 1884; Alfred Peltzer: Goethe und der Ursprünge der neuerer deutschen Landschaftsmalerei. Leipzig: Seemann 1907; and Paul Ferdinand Schmidt: Philipp Otto Runge: Sein Leben und sein Werk. Leipzig: Insel 1923.

74 of visual artists in Dresden.2 If we consider the relationship of Goethe to Runge and Goethe to Friedrich exclusively in terms of Goethe’s interest in visual art and his close connections to artists, then we would have to gloss over the considerable difficulties he had with these artists and vice versa.3 Yet to place principal emphasis on how much Goethe really disliked certain developments in the visual arts of his own time, developments he saw personified in Runge and Friedrich, would be also to ignore the complex specifics of this fascinating yet intricate interaction.4 In this essay, I first argue that Goethe was as influenced by the Romantic visual aesthetic and artists who represent it as these artists were by Goethe. If we refer to Goethe’s Faust, for example, we see that Runge and Friedrich influenced Goethe’s work. Moreover, new imaging technology enables us to argue for Goethe’s imprint on a number of important paintings by these artists. One must address some of the various tensions and contradictions in Goethe’s conflicting roles as poet, art critic, and politician and illustrate further how new imaging technology can alter the ramifications of previously accepted interpretations of paintings. I shall demonstrate that Goethe not only responded vigorously to the new developments in art in order to affirm and protect the viability of his own classical principles, but that as a consequence this interaction with both Runge and Friedrich caused him major difficulties. Goethe was indeed truly affected and even influenced by their works – even though he was at times extremely disconcerted and even angry. He admired their paintings but at the same time he hated them for reasons that are have never been completely clear. I propose that Goethe’s rejection is not simply a matter of offended Classicism. Goethe himself at times seems quite happy to put aside his own classical ideals, and it may be his Faust is more intimately indebted to both Runge and Friedrich than has ever been acknowledged.

2

Goethe und die Kunst. Ed. by Sabine Schulze. Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje 1994. This richly illustrated volume contains several chapters on painting but always with Goethe as the main focus of attention. A book on German Romantic painting with very little mention of Goethe, is on the other hand Mitchell Benjamin Frank: German Romantic Painting Redefined. Burlington VT: Ashgate Publishing 2001. See also Goethe und das Zeitalter der Romantik, Stiftung für Romantikforschung 21. Ed. by Walter Hinderer. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2002. It covers a wide range of topics including much about Goethe responding to the movement of Romanticism in more than 500 pages, but neither Runge nor Friedrich appear in the index. 3 Günther Bergmann: Goethe – der Zeichner und Maler, ein Portrait. Munich: Callway 1999; and Gerhard S. Kalienke: Das Verhältnis von Goethe und Runge im Zusammenhang. 4 Hartmut Fröschle: Goethes Verhältnis zur Romantik. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2002. The first chapter offers a detailed survey on the scholarship on Goethe and Romanticism and the index offers several interesting links to Runge and Friedrich, however always with Goethe at the center of interest. See also Rudolf M. Bisanz: German Romanticism and Philipp Otto Runge: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Art Theory and Iconography. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press 1970.

75 There are important links between Goethe’s and Runge’s color theories and it is interesting that according to Runge’s letters, Goethe had nothing new to teach him but was apparently very interested in learning from Runge, who had developed a three dimensional color sphere or color ball as opposed to the two dimensional color circle as proposed by Goethe.5 While Runge agreed with Goethe in his criticism of Newton, it was Runge who initiated a shift of interest from structures to colors. First (in April 1806) Runge was happy when Goethe wrote to him that he would now pay greater attention to colors,6 but then Goethe disappointed Runge by expressing an interest only in his paper cuttings which he sent Goethe but never got back.7 Rudolf Bisanz has documented that much of Runge’s dissertation on the “Colorsphere”, nearly one hundred pages in Hinterlassene Schriften, was summarized by Runge in his correspondence with Goethe only to reappear again in the 1810 version of Goethe’s Farbenlehre which, as Bisanz adds, “contains much of the above material, considerably expanded, refined, and elaborated”.8 5

In a letter, written in Hamburg in March 1809, Runge sends Henrik Steffens his latest thoughts on the color ball, and asks him whether he thought it advisable to inform Goethe of this material which he was preparing for publication. Runge explains that he had corresponded with Goethe about this subject matter, but learned nothing new from him. Nevertheless he wanted to avoid the impression that he did anything behind Goethe’s back or publish anything prematurely: “[. . .] auch sage mir, ob Du es nötig findest, daß ich Goethe vorher etwas davon mitteile, weil ich mich über die Materie wohl schriftlich mit ihm unterhalten habe? Von ihm habe ich nichts nehmen können, da ich ihm zwar manches, er mir aber noch nichts mitgeteilt hat, möchte aber doch nicht, daß er im geringsten von mir dächte, als wolle ich fürwitzigerweise ihm vorgreifen oder etwas hinter seinem Rücken tun, da er mich noch im Herbste sehr gütig zu einer mündlichen Unterhaltung über den Gegenstand zu sich eingeladen”. [“(. . .) also tell me whether you think it would be necessary that I tell Goethe something about this ahead of time, as I have discussed this material with him in writing? I was not able to gain anything from him, since I have informed him of quite a few matters, but he has shared nothing with me yet. However I would not in the least wish him to think that perhaps I wanted to surpass him or do something behind his back, since he has invited me very graciously even this coming autumn to his home for a face-to-face discussion about this material”]. Philipp Otto Runge: Briefe und Schriften. Ed. by Peter Beckhausen. Munich: C. H. Beck 1982. P. 213. 6 Letter from Runge to Goethe, 26 April 1806: “Am meisten hat es mich erfreut, daß Sie künftig Ihr Augenmerk mehr auf die Farben richten wollen, und ich hoffte, Ihnen schon lange von dieser Seite mich nähern zu können”. [“Most of all I was glad that in the future you want to direct your attention more to the colors, and I have hoped for a long time to be able to come closer to you from this perspective”]. Runge: Briefe und Schriften. P. 181. 7 Letter to Goethe, Wolgast, 17 September 1806: “Sie erhalten hierbei auch einige ausgeschnittene Blumen”. [“Herewith you also receive some paper cuttings of flowers”]. Runge: Briefe und Schriften. P. 190. 8 Rudolf M. Bisanz: German Romanticism and Philipp Otto Runge. P. 94. He adds: “In addition, Runge approaches [. . .] the problem of opacity and translucency of textures and natural objects, relates these to their respective reproductive pigments (opaque and transparent colors), and thus brings considerable order to a most vexing studio problem”.

76 I hope to explore some aspects of an exciting interdisciplinary debate about the tensions between the aesthetics of the Classical and the Romantic. Gerhart Hoffmeister has argued that Goethe thought highly of some Romantic poets and painters such as Lord Byron and that he had many important ideas in common with the English Romantic painter William Turner.9 When verbal and visual documents by Goethe, Runge, and Friedrich are both considered, so that their works and words are interpreted interactively, they reveal a fascinating network of intertextual relations and shared images and counter-images. As also recent scholarship by Werner Busch suggests we do well to take into account the capacity of new X-ray and imaging techniques that now allow insights into earlier versions of a painting. We may then interpret an artwork no longer merely in terms of its final completed result, but also with respect to earlier versions, taking the “editing” process of the artwork into account, thus learning about additional levels of meaning and cross-reference.10 Goethe was not simply a friend and supporter of Runge and Friedrich, as earlier interpretations had put it, and his subsequent criticism of the two painters reflects his rejection of the movement of Romanticism in general.11 It is certainly interesting that it was in the context of visual art rather than poetry that the stark differences between Weimar Classicism and German Romanticism were delineated in the debates by Goethe and his contemporaries. These differences are most clearly articulated in some of Goethe’s less official yet no less important writings, such as letters, diaries, and informal correspondences. These differences can also be traced via the correspondence of others, such as in the communications of Runge and Friedrich to their family and friends, documents that deserve to be taken with equal seriousness, and which reflect the painters’ difficulties with the master Goethe whom at times they admired and hoped to please – but only to a certain degree. Runge and Friedrich both in their own way broke consciously with Goethe who had come to have difficulties accepting what had by then become an insurmountable gap – one that he himself had brought into being. He kept trying to bridge this gap when, in fact, it was too late. Runge’s and Friedrich’s criticism of Goethe affected him but this criticism had to do not only with certain artistic principles and ideals, but also with Goethe’s own practice of cultural politics which ran counter to the younger mens’ particular searches for individual and personal freedom of expression. To put it mildly, if

9 Gerhart Hoffmeister: Goethe und die europäische Romantik. Munich: Francke 1984. Chapter II. Part 6. Pp. 204–217. 10 Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Ästhetik und Religion. Munich: Beck 2003. Pp. 46–73. 11 On the complexities concerning aspects of Classicism and Romanticism internationally, see: Klassizismus & Romantik: Architektur, Skulptur, Malerei, Zeichnung 1750–1848. Ed. by Rolf Toman. Cologne: Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft 2000.

77 Goethe was critical of them (which no doubt he was), this criticism is not only based on the principles of Weimar Classicism but on a conflict that arose equally or even more so out of reasons involving Goethe’s own ego, his wanting to be in control, and an unfortunate lack of humor and tolerance on his part for some aspects of their caricature, irony, and allegorizing. Whereas Runge responded both verbally and visually and freely offers much insight into what he felt and thought about Goethe throughout his life and how he perceived their differences, Friedrich’s style of response differs. He was at times rather mute and almost exclusively visually oriented, yet the few comments he made about Goethe also leave no doubt about his need to withdraw. Furthermore he saw Goethe as someone who never looked him in the eye directly but preferred to communicate, as Friedrich himself then caricatured it, via Rückenfiguren only, with his face turned elsewhere. We should also keep in mind that Goethe’s work cannot be reduced to the level of intentionality for it is multi-layered, complex, and sometimes selfcontradictory.12 We know that Goethe disliked the movement of Romanticism and fought it throughout his life. Yet Goethe’s work may well exceed the boundaries he sought to impose on himself and on others, especially during his specific classical period. At times his work may even come close at moments to Transzendentalpoesie or aspects of Romantic philosophy which Goethe as a writer would always have abhorred but which his work nevertheless integrates and deals with, sometimes against the level of intentionality. Goethe was a politician, administrator, and harsh critic of others. He regulated and censored what art should and should not be. He made judgments on who among young talents were to be respected and who were not. He was nevertheless himself a poet, an artist, and a scientist; and he was influenced by others whether he would want to have admitted it or not. Goethe, and subsequently Hegel, associated the movement of Romanticism with a loss of objectivity, danger for the subject, even with sickness and madness.13 Goethe’s response was to continue to assert the classical ideals as articulated by Johann Joachim Winckelmann.14 Through his own work and cultural politics, Goethe outlawed those artists and writers who were influenced by the credos of German Romanticism. This burgeoning movement had found its public organ in the Athenaeum journal, published 1800–1802 in Jena, in opposition 12

See also Beate Allert: Goethe’s Farbenlehre (Treatise on Colour). In: The Literary Encyclopedia. Ed. by Robert Clark. ⬍www.LitEncyc.com⬎. 2006. 13 On the reception history of Romanticism and the impact of Goethe’s verdict see Beate Allert: Goethe and the Visual Arts. In: The Cambridge Companion to Goethe. Ed. by Lesley Sharpe. Cambridge University Press 2002. Pp. 193–206. 14 Johann Joachim Winckelmann: Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture. Ed. and trans. by Elfriede Heyer and Roger C. Norton. La Salle, IL: Open Court 1987.

78 to the Propyläen journal, Goethe and his friends had published in Weimar, 1798–1800. In addition to the publication of this journal Goethe orchestrated from 1799 to 1805 competitions and awards in the visual arts in order to educate the young talents and to exert an influence on their artistic production. Both Runge and Friedrich participated several times in such competitions and both were eventually rejected, although at times also favorably received. The relationship between Goethe and Runge and Goethe and Friedrich turns out to be not only one of friendship or of the interplay between the master Goethe and the aspiring talents Runge and Friedrich, but a rather complex set of interactions among equals in the mind, and not just the consequence of the simple dichotomy between Goethe’s Classicism and their Romanticism as most critics maintain. This complex situation was not that simple and deserves to be further explored, keeping in mind the perspectives of all three participants.

Runge’s Critical Stance Runge was born in 1777 in the port city of Wolgast in Swedish Pomerania, a territory eventually awarded to Prussia at the Congress in Vienna in 1815.15 He was a son of a ship owner and it was due to the influence of the theologian, poet, and teacher Gotthard Ludwig Kosegarten (1758–1818) that Runge became a painter.16 Kosegarten suggested in 1789 that Runge should study art. Runge moved to Hamburg in 1795 and in 1799 he left for Copenhagen to study at the art academy there, just one year after Caspar David Friedrich had left that city in order to move to Dresden, not only to be closer to the Athenäum circle but also in order to be closer to Weimar and to Goethe whom at the time apparently all the young artists admired. Friedrich too was born in Swedish Pomerania, in the town of Greifswald not far from Wolgast and had, similar to Runge, a Protestant upbringing, being influenced also by Kosegarten with his Pantheist and NeoPlatonic ideas. Kosegarten had introduced both students to the ideas of the seventeenth-century Protestant mystic Jacob Böhme. It is due to Böhme’s influence that both painters paid much attention to the concept of surrendering one’s own self to the divine surrounding such as landscapes, sunsets, and the

15 Jörg Träger: Philipp Otto Runge und sein Werk: Monographie und kritischer Katalog. Munich: Prestel, 1975. Also Philipp Otto Runge, Caspar David Friedrich: The Passage of Time. Ed. by Andreas Blühm. Trans. by Rachel Esner. Zwolle: Waanders Publishers 1996. 16 There is also at least one other important influence on Runge and that is the engraver, Carl Wilhelm Kolbe. William Vaughan comments: “Indeed, it was the sight of his 1796 etchings that finally convinced Runge of his ability to become an artist”. William Vaughan: German Romantic Painting. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press 1994. P. 33. On Kolbe, see Ulf Martens: Der Zeichner und Radierer C. W. Kolbe d. Ä. (1759–1835). Berlin: Gebr. Mann 1976.

79 unpredictable forces of nature.17 Both Runge and Friedrich sent Goethe samples of their work at various times to the Propyläen competitions and both artists felt rejected and ridiculed by some of the responses they got, although Goethe also made some comments that indicate a certain level of interest and recognition.18 Runge’s copper plate composition Achilles and Skammandros was submitted to the Weimarische Kunstausstellung in 1801 and immediately rejected and so was the second work he sent Goethe, Der Kampf Achills mit den Flüssen [Achilles’ Fight with the Rivers]. Goethe commented that one would much rather want to see Achilles win the battle than to see his fear of losing it, which is what Runge’s painting indicated to Goethe and the Weimar friends.19 17

Helmut Börsch-Supan and Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich: Gemälde, Druckgraphik und bildmäßige Zeichnungen. Munich: Prestel 1973. In 1787 Caspar David Friedrich’s brother Johann Christopher fell through the ice when skating and drowned. This was a traumatic experience for the older brother and had an impact on his work throughout his life. 18 In a letter to Friedrich Christoph Perthes, 16 November 1810, Goethe wrote from Weimar about his respect for Runge: “Daß wir den Herrn Runge verlieren sollen, schmerzt mich sehr; doch er ist jung, Hoffnung ist bei den Lebenden, und meine Wünsche können ihn nicht loslassen. Es ist ein Individuum, wie sie selten geboren werden. Sein vorzüglich Talent, sein wahres treues Wesen, als Künstler und Mensch, erweckte schon längst Neigung und Anhänglichkeit bei mir, und wenn seine Richtung ihn von dem Wege ablenkte, den ich für den rechten halte; so erregte es in mir kein Mißfallen, sondern ich begleite ihn gern, wohin seine eigentümliche Art ihn trug. Möchte er sich doch nicht so geschwind in die ätherischen Räume verlieren”. [“That we should lose Mr. Runge hurts me very much; yet he is young, hope is among the living, and my wishes cannot let him go. He is an individual as they are seldom born. His outstanding talent, his honest loyal being, as artist and human being, have long evoked my sympathy and a liking for him, and if his direction were to lead away from the path which I think is the correct one, then it would trouble me, but I would accompany him voluntarily wherever his peculiar way may have taken him. May he not get lost so quickly in the ethereal space”]. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Goethes Briefe und Briefe an Goethe. HA 3: 140–141, here 141. Letter 828. Goethe similarly made some positive comments about Friedrich, but never without some critical undertone. 19 Letter to Daniel Runge, 8 July 1806: “Ich schicke Dir hiebei (sic) den Brief von Goethe und meinen an ihn – ich habe ihm das alles nun einmal geschieben, und es soll wohl so sein. Ich habe einen rechten Mut gekriegt, durch die Welt zu dringen, seitdem so kümmerliche Exempel von der Feigheit so recht vor unsern Augen liegen; auch wenn man sich die Haare nur nicht sebst gar abschneidet, so wachsen sie einem wohl wieder, wie des Simsons seine; so ist es auch mit dem Herausgeben beschaffen. Du siehst aus Goethes Brief, was er begehrt (Ausgeschnittenes; Sihouette); es ist doch wohl ein recht großes Kind darin, welches das Spielen ordentlich wie ein Geschäft treibt; was will man dagegen machen?”]. [“I am sending you the letter by Goethe enclosed and mine to him – I have written everything to him now and let it be that way. I have got a real courage to conquer the world since there lie such miserable examples of cowardice right in front of our eyes; even if one does not cut one’s own hair in the end it will eventually grow again just like that of Samson; it goes the same way with publishing. You see from Goethe’s letter what he wants (cuttings, silhouette); so there is a big child in

80 Runge rejected Goethe’s notion of a hero and felt indeed that nature was stronger than man. He wrote to his brother Daniel how much Goethe had annoyed him with this rejection of his Achilles’ Fight but nevertheless indicates that he understood there was truth in this reading. So he kept corresponding with Goethe and accepted the criticism initially. What then annoyed Runge further, however, was that Goethe seemed less attentive to his colorful prints and paintings than to his paper cuttings which were only silhouettes and ornaments but in which he did not experiment much with color. Runge had done those clippings on the side and had difficulty understanding whether Goethe was being ironic by giving these paper cuttings priority over his paintings, or whether he truly admired them as much as he claimed. When Runge eventually did realize that Goethe had rejected him and the artworks he meant to represent him, he had the courage to make a break. For Goethe, however a repeated rejection of Runge’s work was not intended to be final and Goethe later tried to reconnect with Runge when it was too late. Runge wrote to his brother Daniel on 9 March 1802 what he truly thought of Goethe’s blind insistence on an ideal that, as he felt, belonged to the past long gone and, in Runge’s understanding, one that could not be recuperated via any traditional approach such as the one Goethe suggested. Runge is upset about Goethe’s arrogance and refusal to accept the present time when he writes: Und was soll nun herauskommen bei all dem Schnickschnak in Weimar, wo sie unklug durch die bloßen Zeichen etwas wieder hervorrufen wollen, was schon dagewesen? Ist denn jemals wieder entstanden? Ich glaube schwerlich, daß so etwas Schönes, wie der höchste Punct der historischen Kunst war, wieder entstehen wird, bis alle vergeblichen neueren Kunstwerke einmal zu Grunde gegangen sind, es müßte denn auf einem ganz neuen Wege geschehen [. . .].20 And what should this lead to with all the tittle-tattle in Weimar where they attempt against better reason to evoke only via empty signs something that had meaning once in the past? Has it ever been resurrected? I find it difficult to believe that something as beautiful as that which could be the highest point in the history of art could come to arise again only once all the futile newer art works would have some day vanished; it would have to happen in an entirely new way [. . .].

Runge was not interested in Goethe or Weimar Classicism for the rest of his life and became close friends with Novalis, Tieck, and others in the Dresden circle. He kept corresponding with Goethe only because he was curious about his Farbenlehre, a topic that interested them both until the ends of their lives. It is clear that Runge rejected the notion of any hero conquering nature and his own

him who pursues the game like a business; what can one do against it?”]. Runge: Briefe und Schriften. P. 187. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. 20 Runge: Briefe und Schriften. P. 76.

81 art is, as his early submission to the Weimar competitions documents and as it remained throughout his oeuvre, a celebration of light. His favorite motifs are, as he succinctly put it in a distancing letter to his brother Daniel in February 1802, that whereas for Goethe and his Weimar circle, “Sujets” or topics are primary, for him it is rather an “eigenes Gefühl”, one’s own true emotion that is most important. Any suitable “Sujet” or topic would then have to follow accordingly to be chosen by each artist individually and not given by any norm.21 Runge’s favorite such topics were children, flowers, the sun, the morning, and change itself, light and various hues, textures, and tones. But it is essential to add that equally important for him are frames and minor, apparently ornamental features as well as colors and textures, not any isolated motifs or structures. It was Runge who saw in the painting of landscapes a new age for painting and he not only shifted new meaning to color but also to motion by creating the most delicate and transitory images of the time. Runge died at only 33 years of age, shortly after Goethe had invited him again to stay with him after a long period of silence. They first met in 1803 when Runge visited Weimar and they discussed his drawings Die Zeiten [The Times of the Day], a cycle of Morning, Noon, Evening and Night.22 Runge

21

In a essay Runge wrote in Dresden in February 1802 he makes clear his reaction to Goethe’s explicit new tasks for the Propyläen competition: “[W]ir sind keine Griechen mehr, können das Ganze schon nicht mehr so fühlen, wenn wir ihre vollendeten Kunstwerke sehen, viel weniger selbst solche hervorbringen, und warum uns bemühen, etwas mittelmäßiges zu liefern? – Die neue Aufgabe ‘läßt viel Empfindung und Symbolisches zu’; nun können wir sitzen gehen und empfinden, das heißt uns: beim verkehrten Ende anfangen. – Der Tiresias ist ‘eine neue Entdeckung in der Composition’ – ja die Leute jagen nach Sujets, als wenn die Kunst darin stäcke, oder als wenn sie nichts lebendiges in sich hätten. Muß denn so etwas von außen kommen? haben nicht alle Künstler, die noch ein schönes Kunstwerk hervorbrachten, erst ein Gefühl gehabet? haben sie sich zu dem Gefühl nicht das passende Sujet gewählt?” [“We are no longer Greeks; for a long time now, we have not been able to feel everything in that way when we see their completed works of art, much less can we produce such works ourselves and why should we attempt to deliver something that would be mediocre? – The new task ‘permits much emotion and symbolism’ – now we can go sit and feel which means for us beginning at the wrong end. – Tiresias is ‘a new discovery in the composition’ – yes people chase after subjects as if art was contained in them already, or as if they had nothing alive within themselves. Must something like this come from the outside? have not all artists who brought about a beautiful work of art first had an emotion? have they not accordingly then chosen a suitable subject in tune with that emotion?”]. Runge: Briefe und Schriften. Pp. 237–238. See also Benz: Goethe und die Romantische Kunst. He identifies the “new task” for the Goethe’s 1802 competition as “Perseus und Andromeda”. P. 90. 22 Runge: Briefe und Schriften. P. 323. These drawings were executed as copper engravings and published in 1805 (25 copies) and 1807 (c. 250 copies). See Traeger: Philipp Otto Runge, nos. 280, 281, 282a–b, 283 (drawings); 280A–283A, 280B–283B (engravings).

82 met Goethe again on a walking tour in 1805 but the last invitation in 1810 was to a stay with Goethe at home for a longer period of time, even months.

Goethe’s Critical Stance One wonders if Runge would have accepted Goethe’s offer had he not died that same year. Goethe must have seen something in Runge that interested him very much despite his disagreements. He realized that this painting truly expressed the spirit of the present time which Goethe was so much trying to avoid. Goethe missed him when it was too late. Soon after Runge’s early death, Goethe was visited by Sulpiz Boisserée who then noticed that Goethe had Runge’s Die Zeiten hanging on the wall of his music room. When Goethe saw Boisserée’s eyes fixed on Runge’s engravings, Goethe asked Boisserée: “Was, das kennen Sie noch nicht?” [“What, you don’t know this yet?”]. He continued: Da sehen Sie einmal was das für Zeug ist, zum rasend werden, schön und toll zugleich. Ich antwortete: ja ganz wie die Beethovensche Musik, die der da spielt, wie unsere ganze Zeit. Freilich, sagte er, das will Alles umfassen und verliert sich darüber immer ins Elementarische, doch noch mit unendlichen Schöheiten im Einzelnen; da sehen Sie nur, was für Teufelszeug, und hier wieder, was da der Kerl für Anmuth und Herrlichkeit hervorgebracht, aber der arme Teufel hat’s auch nicht ausgehalten, er ist schon hin, es ist nicht anders möglich, was so auf der Kippe steht, muß sterben oder verrückt werden, da ist keine Gnade.23 Here take a look, what stuff this is; one could go mad with it, beautiful and crazy at the same time. I answered: just like Beethoven’s music, as is now being played, like our times in general. Granted, he said this wants to encompass everything, and in the process of it always gets lost in the elementary, but still with infinite beauty in the details; here see what for devil’s stuff and here again what this guy produced for grace and beauty, but the poor devil couldn’t stand it, he’s already vanished, and it’s not possible otherwise, whoever stands on the cliff like this must die or go mad, there is no help for it.

The emotional outbreak by Goethe is somewhat surprising and it reveals indeed a strong admiration for the younger Runge. He finally acknowledged him as a true artist, yet he had to struggle with Goethe so much all of his life. Runge’s sequence Die Zeiten was published first in 1805 in Dresden and again in 1807 in Hamburg.24 The work seems to hold in nuce what much of Romanticism is about. This may be the reason why Boisserée made the connection between Runge and 23 Letter to Melchior Boisserée in Heidelberg, 6 May 1811, Sulpiz Boisserée, Briefwechsel/Tagebücher. Ed. by Mathilde Boisserée, 2 vols. Stuttgart 1862. Reprint with afterword by Heinrich Klotz. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1970). Vol. 1. Pp. 113–115, here p. 114. 24 Goethe had reviewed the first edition favorably for the Jenaische Allgemeine Literaturzeitung in 1807: Unterhaltungen über Gegenstände der bildenden Kunst. FA 19: 295–326, esp. 317–318.

83 Beethoven since it was the genius Beethoven, who had also gone astray in the opinion of Goethe. They were competitors in a similarly outrageous way.25 As mentioned, Goethe had the cycle of Die Zeiten hanging in his room after Runge’s death. It consists of delicate drawings that in the second edition were made of copper prints so that the images could be multiplied. Each specific time of the day is represented by one primary color on these cycles and thus relies on drawing techniques. Runge’s even more exquisite paintings are known as Der Kleine Morgen (1808), which survives in two versions. One is an outline drawing; the other is painted in the most brilliant colors with oil on canvas.26 The borders of each painting transcend the main panel and continue throughout the framing margins or ornamental borders that add more of a dimension to the image.27 These border elements deserve to be included in the actual painting, thus transgressing an expected boundary. Runge’s painting Der Morgen of 1808 involves more than one light source and various points of reference and so does his later version of 1809 which consists of various even more separate distinct panels of paintings that are intricately laced together. At the lower panel of both versions of the painting we see a little child lay on a bed of many healthy looking plants. There is a sense of transparency and fluidity between them and each image itself is divided into rhythmic qualities and distinct moments of reflection. There is nothing marginal in this picture since every little detail reflects on time and temporality. The collage consists of an intricate combination of elements that reflect each other and together suggest harmony. Runge thought of the gap between the panels and of the various images. Although they belong 25

For example, compare this comment Carl Friedrich Zelter made in a letter to Goethe, 12 November 1808 with the remarks Goethe made to Boisserée about Runge: “[. . .] mit Bewunderung und Schrecken sieht man Irrlichter und Blutstreifen am Horizonte des Parnasses. Talente von der größten Bedeutung wie Cherubini, Beethoven und mehr entwendeten Herkules’ Keule, – um Fliegen zu klatschen; erst muß man erstaunen und nachher gleich drauf die Achsel zucken über den Aufwand von Talent, Lappalien wichtig und hohe Mittel gemein zu machen. Ja, ich möchte verzweifeln, wenn mir einfällt, daß die neue Musik verloren gehen muß, wenn eine Kunst aus der Musik werden soll” [“(. . .) with admiration and horror does one see the deceptive lights and blood streams on the horizon of the Parnassus. Talents of the greatest importance such as Cherubini, Beethoven, and others who have stolen Hercules’ club – in order to smack flies; first one must be astonished and soon later shrug one’s shoulders about the effort of talent to make nonsense important and high means ordinary. Yes I want to despair when I think about it that the new music must become lost if an art has to come out of music”]. HA 5: 553–555, here 554. Letter 365. 26 Good prints and helpful commentaries can be found in: Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich: The Passage of Time. Ed. by Andreas Blühm. With essays by Hanna Hohl and Werner Busch, trans. by Rachel Elsner. Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum and Zwolle: Waanders Publishers 1996. Pp. 34–68. 27 See Traeger: Philipp Otto Runge. Nos. 414, Der kleine Morgen and 497, Der große Morgen.

84 together they are clearly separate and distinct from each other. Background and foreground, the base and the sky are clearly distinct from each other and there is no apparent transition provided between them. In a letter to Henrik Steffens, Runge writes in 1809: Eine absolute Einheit oder das absolute Quantitative ist der sinnlichen Vorstellung unbegreiflich. Zur Ahnung derselben mögen wir durch die Differenz ihrer Eigenschaften und das Verhältnis aller dieser zueinander wohl gelangen; zur sinnlichen Erkenntis von derselben aber können wir nur kommen durch das Verhältnis oder die Differenz derselben mit einem zweiten außer ihr, so daß das Quantitative wieder als Qualität erscheint.28 An absolute unity or the absolute quantitative is not conceivable to sense perception. The premonition of it can only be approximated via the difference of its attributes and the relationship of these among each other; but we can only arrive at a sensory knowledge of it through relating or differentiating it to a second entity outside of it, so that the quantitative appears again as quality.

Runge clearly insists on the need to relate what is shown in the picture to something that is located outside of it, or hidden in the imaginary. For him the allegorical is indispensable in contrast to Goethe. According to Goethe’s ideal symbolism, an image had to be restricted to the immanent, thus avoiding anything allegorical or arabesque. Runge consciously proposes a concept of difference. He draws more emphasis on relations rather than on essences per se. More important than the specific motifs are the light, colors, the ways they interact. Objects are always mediated and reflected. If Goethe argues that one should show everything within an image as provided by the artist while avoiding any references to the absent or hidden, Runge contradicts this saying that images can only make sense in relation to something outside of themselves. Whereas Goethe rejected the allegorical for the symbolic, Runge welcomed it with new meanings. For him paintings show more than what they contain within themselves, he does not adhere to Goethe’s idea of immanence. As both his cycle Die Zeiten and his paintings of Der Morgen reflect, he uses multiple frames indicating openings towards wide borders with recurrent motifs of the center panel. Above the little child who is surrounded by more children on both sides offering flowers, there are additional panels and in the center a female figure who could be allegorized as Aurora, the Goddess of light, Venus, or Mary. The light has multiple sources, it radiates from the child up and from behind Aurora, not as perhaps expected down from one single light source only. This implies an anti-hierarchical move and new creative possibilities. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke observed much later, the great miracle of a sunset has

28

Letter March 1809. Runge: Briefe und Schriften. P. 216.

85 never been painted again with such vitality and freshness.29 The center does not present a hero as normal in classical paintings, but it has two focal points that are equally important: a child and a female figure. She seems to be standing or lifted by a wave on top of the ocean with an effortless motion, as if gliding and weightless, lifting one arm. The same painting inspired a famous stage illustration for the performance of Mozart’s Zauberflöte by another great visual artist, Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841) who referred to Runge when he created his Sternenhalle der Königin der Nacht [Star Hall of the Queen of the Night] in 1819.30 The female figure has many possible allegorical meanings and it has been noted that Runge saw Raphael’s famous picture of the Sistine Madonna, the virgin and the child, in the Dresden national gallery before he did this series of paintings.31 Goethe, who was critical of allegorical allusions that go beyond the immanent, could well have written a response to Runge as soon as he saw his beautiful images while the artist was alive. Instead he waited to write a scene in Faust in which the spectator is also promised a new awakening as the goddess of light leaves for the night, thus making a dream disappear. Goethe wrote: Schon tut das Meer / Sich mit erwärmten Buchten / Vor den erstaunten Augen auf. / Doch scheint die Göttin (die Sonne) endlich wegzusinken; / Allein der neue Trieb erwacht, / Ich eile fort ihr ewges Licht zu trinken, / Vor mir der Tag, Und hinter mir die Nacht, / Den Himmel über mir und unter mir die Wellen. / Ein schöner Traum indessen sie – die Sonne – entweicht. / Ach! Zu des Geistes Flügeln wird so leicht / Kein körperlicher Flügel sich gesellen.32 Already with its sun warmed bays the ocean / reveals itself to the astonished eyes. / At last the goddess is downward sinking; / Yet to new urge awakes the mind, / I hasten on, his ceaseless radiance drinking, / The day ahead of me. Night left behind, / The waves below, and overhead the sky. / A beautiful dream meanwhile the sun disappears. / Oh! Not easily will any physical wing join that wing of the spirits.33 29

Rainer Maria Rilke: Werke: Kommentierte Ausgabe. Ed. by Manfred Engel et al., 4 vols. Frankfurt/M: Insel 1996. Vol. 4. Schriften. Ed. by Horst Nalewski. Pp. 307–325. 30 See Ernste Spiele: Der Geist der Romantik in der deutschen Kunst 1790–1990. Ed. by Christoph Vitale et al. Munich: Haus der Kunst 1995. Catalog no., 446, plate no. 247; The Romantic Spirit in German Art 1790–1990. Ed. by Keith Hartley et al. London: Thames and Hudson 1994. Catalog no. 32, plate pg. 225. 31 This link between the central female figure in Runge’s Der kleine Morgen and Der große Morgen, and the Sistine Madonna by Raphael is made by William Vaughan: German Romantic Painting. P. 51. He also mentions affinities with Tieck, Wackenroder, and Novalis, especially the notion of the unattainable “blue flower” in Novalis’ Romantic novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen. For a plate of the Sistine Madonna (Dresden Gemäldegalerie), see: The Complete Work of Raphael. Ed. by Mario Salmi et al. New York: Reynal 1969. Plate 34. She too is descending from above or softly walking on clouds and there are multiple children watching. 32 Goethe: Faust I, ll. 1082–91. FA 7/1: 55. 33 Translated last line by Cyrus Hamlin: “To spirit wings will scarce be joined alas, Corporeal wings where with to fly”. P. 27.

86 Despite his admiration on one level for Runge Goethe and his Weimar friends rejected him and his work as they did similarly to Beethoven, someone they also thought had gone astray.34 Goethe’s comment that no corporeal wing is able to match the dream may have been an assertion of his own idea of presence and his insistence of the real over the spiritual. But it is nevertheless a comment that belongs to a dialogue with Runge. Goethe too writes about a feminized sun, a goddess that cannot be reached. Goethe wrote to Runge on 2 June 1806 after he had received a set of Runge’s Die Zeiten that he did not agree with his approach to painting: “Zwar wünschte ich nicht, daß die Kunst im ganzen den Weg verfolgte, den Sie eingeschlagen haben [. . .]” [“Although I do not wish that art in general would pursue the way you have chosen (. . .)”],35 he added in a letter to Runge’s brother Daniel, 11 December 1812: “Der Gang, den er nahm, war nicht der seine, sondern des Jahrhunderts, von dessen Strom die Zeitgenossen willig oder unwillig mit fortgerissen werden”.36 [“The way which he took was not his but that of the century, the current of which pulled along its contemporaries, voluntarily or not”]. This may be interpreted a confession regarding his ambivalence and final inability to resist the power of Runge’s Zeiten. At the same time, we can notice a parallel to Goethe’s comments on Friedrich with whom he broke in 1817 if not earlier.

Goethe and Friedrich: More Complexities In “Über Kunst und Altertum” [“On Art and Antiquity”], after some more positive comments about Friedrich, Goethe wrote the verdict: “aber er wendete sich dennoch nicht von seinen mystisch-allegorischen Landschaften, weil ihm der eingeschlagene Weg als der rechte, zum wahren Ziel der Kunst leitende vorkömmt”37 [“but he did not turn away from his mystic-allegorial landscapes because the way he had begun seemed to him the right one, the one that should lead to the true goal of art”]. Goethe assumed that all artists should have “the correct approach to truth” and he, the art critic, knew best which one approach this would have to be. He believed in unity but he missed the logic in both cases above since Runge and Friedrich insisted on their own paths. In each of their perspectives, every artist could well have a different und a unique way and there was no need at all to be generalized or regulated. In an essay entitled “Bild als Entgegnung: Goethe, C. D. Friedrich und der Streit um die romantische Malerei”, Theodore Ziolkowski argued that Friedrich’s painting Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer is not only “the most Romantic” 34

Otto Benz: Goethe und die Romantische Kunst. Munich: Piper 1940. HA 3: 22–23, here 22. Letter 832. 36 Cited in Benz: Goethe und die Romantische Kunst. P. 130, also pp. 37, 38, 129, 130 and in the correspondence by Boisserée. 37 Goethe: Über Kunst und Altertum I. Part 2 (1817). Neu-Deutsche Religiös-Patriotische Kunst. FA 20: 122. 35

87 painting by Friedrich but it also represents Goethe the author.38 It is Friedrich’s most explicit commentary on the study of clouds as demanded by Goethe but with a twist to it. Friedrich’s visual response to a verbal demand by Goethe as transmitted to Friedrich via Louise Seidler (1786–1866), a painter and friend of both (with Goethe since 1810) is his answer to Goethe. It is, one may say, a rejection of Goethe’s demand. In a short letter with a sketch of 2 May 1814, Friedrich responded as indirectly back to Goethe as Goethe had chosen to communicate with him when he had asked Friedrich via his messenger to paint a series of cloud studies following Luke Howard’s recent theories on clouds.39 His paintings should integrate new discoveries of science and empirical data into, as Goethe would have liked it, a holistic vision of art. What he wanted from Friedrich is something complete and from a meta-perspective. It should counteract the fragmentation which Goethe found typical of the time and which he rejected in the movement of Romanticism. Goethe wanted from Friedrich a visualization of clouds, a series of paintings that would illustrate his classical wish and ideal, and by giving him orders on how sublime the effect should be he hoped to use Friedrich’s talent for his own purposes. This was certainly a request that Friedrich could not accept. Instead of writing his rejection to Goethe, he responded via his painting. And he also wrote a cryptic note that to have acceded to Goethe’s request would mean the end of painting. It is interesting, if indeed the wanderer could be seen as Goethe, to see how nature is represented not as a consolation but rather a threat to the human individual for whom there is no safe position.40 Friedrich painted the figure from behind, with a face that cannot be seen, as one of his Rückenfiguren on the edge of an abyss. The clouds in the painting have no unifying effect; they are scattered, diffuse, and multi-layered. Recent developments in media and imaging technology have led to insights behind the interpreted “products” of Friedrich’s paintings. They reveal stages in the production processes and a consideration of the additions and erasures of features in these paintings leads to new interpretations of Friedrich’s art works. Werner Busch argues that Friedrich’s highly discussed painting Der Mönch am Meer (1808–1810, Staatliche Museen Berliner Nationalgalerie) had initially two persons in it, both wearing old-style German clothing, and that these figures are very similar to a book illustration by Moritz Retzsch to Goethe’s Faust showing 38

Theodore Ziolkowski: Bild als Entgegnung. Goethe, C. D. Friedrich und der Streit um die romantische Malerei. In: Kontroversen, alte und neue: Akten des 7. Internationalen Germanisten Kongresses Göttingen 1985. 11 vols. Ed. by Albrecht Schöne et al. Tübingen: Niemeyer 1986. Vol. 2. Pp. 201–208. 39 Caspar David Friedrich in Bekenntnissen und Briefen. Ed. by Sigrid Hinz. 3rd ed. Berlin: Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft 1984. P. 246. 40 Werner Busch: Die Ordnung im Flüchtigen – Wolkenstudien der Goethezeit. In: Goethe und die Kunst. Ed. by Schulze. Pp. 519–527.

88 Faust and Wagner.41 Busch goes even as far as to interpret Friedrich’s early version of the famous painting as a direct response to the Faust illustrations. Only one figure now remains and knowing what was there before makes it possible to consider that it is allusion to Faust or perhaps even Goethe, now all by himself, lonely at the shore. The erasure of the other figure or the partner in dialog may indicate Friedrich’s vision of Goethe as someone who will have no friends to talk to. The layering of sand, ocean, and sky which dominates the image makes the human figure appear minute and unimportant. If this is Friedrich’s response to Goethe’s Faust, a drama about an individual coming into his own and conquering a moment of happiness in a deal with the alter ego, then it is possible to argue that his response is a questioning of the very notion of the individual. It presents an uncanny nature resisting comprehension and description, the open sea without any border for a horizon. The title of the painting does not say much about its content and the word “monk” was not used by Friedrich himself; the word “Kapuziner” was introduced in a commentary by Brentano and Kleist later.42 Even if it were an allusion to Goethe, the person on the shore is extremely small and almost negated in comparison to the long stretches of sand, the water with whitecaps, and the powerful sky overriding everything making the figure whose face we cannot see completely marginal. If Goethe were to take this painting personally it could mean not only a philosophical questioning of the individual’s place in the universe but also a questioning of Goethe’s own position as a judge and cultural critic. Friedrich was for Goethe someone easily ignored, avoiding responses to certain letters, not very open for a dialogue that could have been far more explicit in the verbal realm as well. Sulpiz Boisserée refers in his diary to a comment by Goethe: Im jetzigen Zustand der Kunst sey bei vielem Verdienst und Vorzügen große Verkehrtheit; die Bilder von Maler Friedrich können eben so gut auf den Kopf gesehen werden. In the current state of art, despite much of merit and excellence, there is great wrong-headedness; the pictures by the painter Friedrich might just as well be seen upside down.

Boisserée then adds: Goethe’s Wuth gegen dergleichen; wie er sie ehemals ausgelassen, mit Zerschlagen der Bilder an der Tischecke; Zerschießen der Bücher u.s.w. er habe sich da nicht erwehren können, mit einem Ingrimm zu rufen: das soll nicht aufkommen; und so habe er irgend eine Handlung daran üben müssen, um seinen Muth zu kühlen.43 41

Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. P. 62. Gernot Müller: Man müßte auf dem Gemälde selbst stehen. Tübingen: Francke 1995. Pp. 204–217. 43 Tagebuch. 11 September 1815: Boisserée: Briefwechsel/Tagebücher. 1, 267. 42

89 Goethes’s anger about such stuff; as he had previously vented it, with smashing pictures on the edge of the table; riddling books with bullets, etc.; he said he was then not able to prevent himself from shouting with rage: this ought not come into being; so he had to do something about it in order to cool his temper.

Goethe had no time for Friedrich. But why couldn’t he and Friedrich coexist in peace?44 Although Friedrich had shared a first prize at the Weimarische Kunstausstellung in 1805 for two pictures,45 Goethe had distanced himself from Friedrich whom he found so interested in air, clouds, ruins, and graveyards and who had a strange liking for motifs that drew meaning from outside. Thus the meaning of these paintings was no longer grounded in the presence of the artwork, but instead was allegorically linked to the absent or hidden. He tried to impose his influence on Friedrich through the essay “Ruysdale als Dichter” [“Ruisdael as Poet”], a text from 1816 which was directed to landscape painters such as Friedrich in an attempt to teach them to learn from Ruisdael and to turn away from the romantic style.46 Friedrich’s paintings were much influenced by Goethe but Goethe was much influenced by Friedrich. There is something about Faust at the core of Goethe’s thinking that he refused to address in his correspondences but which can be seen as a final revision of his earlier rejections. Friedrich responded as indirectly to Goethe as Goethe to him. In his essay “Über Kunst und Kunstgeist” [“On Art and the Spirit of Art”] he wrote: Heilig sollst du halten jede reine Regung deines Gemütes; heilig ächten jede fromme Ahndung, denn sie ist Kunst in uns! In begeisternder Stunde wird sie zur anschaulichen Form; und diese Form ist dein Bild [. . .] Mit eigenen Augen sollst du sehen und, wie dir die Gegenstände erscheinen, sie treulich wiedergeben; wie alles auf dich wirkt, so gib es im Bilde wieder! [. . .] Jedem offenbart sich der Geist der Natur anders, darum darf auch keiner dem anderen seine Lehren und Regeln als untrügliches Gesetz aufbürden. Keiner ist Maßstab für alle, jeder nur Maßstab für sich.47 You have to keep sacred every pure emotion of your mind; you should respect as sacred each devout premonition, for art is within us! In an hour that comes with enthusiasm it becomes visible form and this form is your image. [. . .] You should see with your eyes exactly how the objects appear to you and represent them faithfully; how 44

Stefan Grosche: “Zarten Seelen ist gar viel gegönnt”. Naturwissenschaft und Kunst im Briefwechsel zwischen C. G. Carus und Goethe. Göttingen: Wallstein 2001; and my review of it in Goethe Yearbook 12 (2004). Pp. 264–266. 45 Busch-Supan and Jähnig, Caspar David Friedrich. Nos. 125 and 126. 46 See Goethe: Ruysdael als Dichter. FA 19: 632–636. This text first published 1816 but substantially written earlier, was directed at Romantic landscape paintings such as Friedrich in an attempt to teach them to learn from the Dutch painter, Jacon Isaacksz Ruisdael (1628/1629–1682) for the better; see Ernst Osterkamp: Im Buchstabenbilde: Studien zum Verfahren Goethescher Bildbeschreibungen. Stuttgart: Metzler 1991. Pp. 321–355 on 330–331. 47 Caspar David Friedrich in Briefen und Bekenntnissen. Ed. by Sigrid Hinz. Berlin: Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft 1968. P. 85.

90 everything has an effect on you, show that in the image! [. . .] To each person the spirit of nature reveals itself differently. Therefore nobody is allowed to impose his teachings and rules on someone else as if they were an infallible law. Nobody is the norm for everyone; everyone is the ruler for himself [. . .].

Conclusion Friedrich and Runge, whose works vary in intricate ways despite their shared cultural background, are both associated with Romanticism. They were, at least in the end, rejected by Goethe. Friedrich influenced Kleist and Brentano. Runge was subsequently much celebrated by Jean Paul, Rilke, and Walter Benjamin. Goethe reception on the other hand provided a model of rejection for many that has had consequences down to the present times. It is documented that Runge and Goethe developed their color theories mostly independently but with similar results. They also shared a keen interest in botany, in minute details as they can be found in nature, as parts of plants or ornaments deserve attention and are integral to nature and science. In this regard, Goethe and Runge have both influenced such painters as Paul Klee, Willi Baumeister, Henry Moore, and Joseph Beuys, as Christa Lichtenstern argues.48 Runge died young and Goethe had the last word. The case with Friedrich is somewhat different. Goethe was upset with Friedrich, not only because he had gone too far in another direction, Romanticism instead of Classicism, but also because Friedrich’s paintings came dangerously close to Goethe’s own poetic work. Friedrich’s version of the individual in nature stands in stark contrast to Faust and according to Busch rejects Faust’s drive or superbia. Busch characterizes Friedrich’s painting as a “Palimpsest” and documents that it is much more closely related to Goethe than one would have ever assumed so far. In the Retzsch illustration of Goethe’s Faust I, the figures of Faust and Wagner are standing in reflection and are both dressed in old style German garments. What is truly striking is that at the core of this painting is again the same scene from Goethe’s Faust I which is also connected with Runge’s Morgen as shown above: Schon tut das Meer / Sich mit erwärmten Buchten / Vor den erstaunten Augen auf. / Doch scheint die Göttin (die Sonne) endlich wegzusinken; / Allein der neue Trieb erwacht, / Ich eile fort ihr ewges Licht zu trinken, / Vor mir der Tag, Und hinter mir die Nacht, / Den Himmel über mir und unter mir die Wellen. / Ein schöner Traum indessen sie – die Sonne – entweicht. / Ach! Zu des Geistes Flügeln wird so leicht / Kein körperlicher Flügel sich gesellen.49

Like Runge and Friedrich, Goethe explored various techniques of framing, saw the sacred in nature, had pantheistic ideas, celebrated aurora, experimented with phenomena of light, texture, and shadow, and searched for symbols of growth 48

Christa Lichtenstern: Die Wirkungsgeschichte der Metamorphosenlehre Goethes. Von Philipp Otto Runge bis Joseph Beuys. Weinheim: VCH Verlagsgesellschaft 1990. 49 As previously cited. Goethe: Faust I, ll. 1082–1091. P. 55.

91 and transition in nature. Although Goethe’s approach to the symbol differs from the allegorical, the arabesque, the metaphoric and metonymic – as used by Runge and Friedrich – Goethe too had to contend with fragmentation, loss, and the open-ended. There are objects to be desired beyond any given canvas. Even Faust’s rescue will depend on the conditional mode of his words that elude and just cannot grasp entirely whatever he or we may see. Considering Goethe’s interest in the phenomenon of time – the entire Faust is about one decisive Augenblick – it seems contradictory that (at least during his classical period but also later) he upheld normative, static values by trying to recapture the style and essence of antiquity, a time that belongs to the past. He followed the principles outlined by Winckelmann and categorically applied them to contemporary artists. This caused Goethe to neglect and to reject even the best among such contemporaries. Goethe had a pronounced interest in temporality which can be traced as a countercurrent despite his reactionary cultural politics. Color and motion characterize much of what we see in Goethe’s terms, and the spectator participates productively in the processes of perception and cognition. When Goethe wanted to know what we see when we close our eyes, and when he studied afterimages and visual effects, he was creative in ways that have since been applied to various color theories, color therapies, painting, film, and perception theories. Perhaps Goethe lost his balance because he was affected by his time and others more than he realized. He, too, had lost not only a dream but an earlier totalizing conception of how to present reality. We may finally recall that in Faust II in the very end of the drama Goethe had the protagonist rescued by the power of the feminine, “Das ewig Weibliche zieht uns hinan” and metamorphosis in time.50 Ongoing change became a motif at the core of his drama. It is also a “chorus mysticus”, an anonymous collective voice rather than that of a hero who has the last word. If Goethe’s Faust has, as I have argued in this essay, a scene that reflects a vision by Runge and as it plays also a role for Friedrich, then Goethe could not ignore them in the least. If Friedrich’s Seelandschaft [Landscape by the Sea, also known as Monk by the Sea] portrays the solitary Faust or Goethe who had disappointed his partners in dialogue and who is now lost in space, then Goethe’s poetic language is more in tune with his Romantic contemporaries than he would have admitted elsewhere. 50

Goethe, Faust II, ll. 12104–10. FA 7/1: 464. At the very end of the drama it is the “Chorus Mysticus” that has for Goethe, the anti-mystical writer and critic of the Romantics before, surprisingly the final words singing: “Alles Vergängliche / ist nur ein Gleichnis, / Das Unzulängliche / Hier wird’s Ereignis; / Das Unbeschreibliche / Hier ist es getan; Das Ewig-Weibliche / Zieht uns hinan” [“Everything temporal is only a symbol; / The unreachable here becomes an event; / The indescribable / Here it is done; / The eternal-feminine / Draws us upwards”]. It seems after all that Goethe had adopted Runge’s painting as a key symbol for his own work, thus not only evoking “Jungfrau, Mutter, Königin, and Göttin” as called for by Doctor Marianus in the verse before, but also expressing a final acknowledgement of Runge’s Die Zeiten.

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Margaretmary Daley

The Gendered Eye of the Beholder: The Co-ed Art History of the Jena Romantics Of the three points of the ekphrastic triangle (visual text, viewer, and verbal text), this essay focuses on the viewer and uses the tools of gender studies to investigate Die Gemählde: Gespräch [On Paintings: Conversation] – a 1799 work of the Jena Romantics describing Renaissance paintings from the Dresden Gallery. In particular, the essay interprets the work’s verbal representation of three Mary Magdalene paintings. Furthermore, the tangle of genres, including the peculiar St. Luke poem, underscores the gendering of the beholder. Ultimately, by noting that a sole viewer must be male or female, the Jena Romantics advocate a mixed gender group of observers for ekphrastic undertakings.

Die Gemählde: Gespräch: In Dresden 1798 is a collaboratively authored and collaboratively structured piece of writing.1 Accuracy on the authorship is unclear – besides August Wilhelm Schlegel, it is sometimes attributed to one or more of the women Romantics in the Jena circle, Dorothea Mendelssohn Veit Schlegel or Caroline Schlegel-Schelling.2 Philologically speaking, this text still suffers from all of the problems identified over twenty years ago by Jeannine Blackwell.3 Its 1 A likely place to locate the text is under Friedrich Schlegel as editor of the Athenäum, which was reprinted in facsimile as Athenaeum: Eine Zeitschrift 2.1. 1799. Rpt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1970. Pp. 39–151. Alternatively, it is in August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s collected works, for example: Sämmtliche Werke. Ed. by Eduard Böcking. Leipzig: Weidmann 1846. Vol. 9. Pp. 3–101. (This version appears without the St. Luke paratext: see below.) I cite the 1970 reprint and therefore retain the spelling of the first printing. Pages numbers from here on in the text refer to the Darmstadt reprint. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. 2 On the one hand, Beate Allert attributes it to Caroline Schlegel-Schelling and her then husband August Wilhelm. See Beate Allert: Romanticism and the Visual Arts. In: The Literature of German Romanticism. Ed. by Dennis F. Mahoney. Rochester: Camden House 2004. Pp. 273–306, esp. p. 284. Helmut Pfotenhauer, as another somewhat recent example, attributes it to August Wilhelm and Dorothea Schlegel in his afterword. Helmut Pfotenhauer: Nachwort. Wilhelm Heinse. In: Über einige Gemälde der Düsseldorfer Galerie. Frankfurt/M: Insel 1996. P. 95. 3 Jeannine Blackwell: Anonym, verschollen, trivial: Methodological Hindrances in Researching German Women’s Literature. In: Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies and German Culture 1 (1985). Pp. 39–59. Women’s texts, especially singleauthored ones, suffer from a deplorable lack of philological attention. Exceptions such as the fine critical edition of Bettine von Arnim’s works (begun simultaneously in what was East and West Germany) are too rare. One wonders when in the twenty-first century scholarly editions will appear of writers such as Caroline Schlegel-Schelling, Dorothea Veit Schlegel, Friederike Unger, Louise Adelgunde Gottsched, Sophie Mereau Imhoff, Caroline Pichler, and so many more.

94 predominant form is conversational, meaning that much of the text facing the reader is printed as a dramatic script would be. Character names are followed by a colon and direct speech. However, unlike a drama, Die Gemählde: Gespräch has neither divisions into acts and scenes nor stage directions and asides. There are, in addition, a number of non-dramatic passages: prose essays, speeches, sonnets, and pictorial sketches all reroute the narrative from its primary oral mode. Distinguishing the main text from the paratexts remains problematic,4 and worse, it is not easy even in a university library to find a copy of it, with or without paratexts. In the first printing in the Athenaeum, the title of the work includes an auctorial identifier: “ein Gespräch von W.” – “W.” glyphing possibly but not uniquely to the poet Waller and further to (August) Wilhelm Schlegel. It is just as difficult to categorize the plot in terms of literary genres. It is arguably an imaginative and fictionally flavored piece of non-fiction, or the opposite: a documentary-styled work of fiction, or perhaps a hybrid of the two: the eighteenth-century paper predecessor of today’s cinematic “mockumentaries” and largely contrived “reality” shows. The current interpretation takes into account these interesting philological problems but strives to offer an interpretation of the work independent of them. Die Gemählde: Gespräch is a fascinating tangle of genres, styles, and ideas that yields an alternative perspective on ekphrasis, one that disagrees with mainstream ideas and insists instead that the eye of the beholder is and always will be gendered.5 Furthermore, and more significantly, this text argues that inclusion of a feminized point of view enhances appreciation of the Beautiful in pictorial art. It is not only in form that the text rebels against mainstreaming. In content, Die Gemählde: Gespräch reads like an eighteenth-century setting of a judging contest held by three realistic characters vetting the oil paintings in the Dresden Gallery. At its worst, it would be an American Idol for the ekphrastic community; fortunately, however, the contestants are Italian Renaissance masterpieces. The focus of the contest shifts from aesthetic judgment per se to how the Beautiful – once it is a given – is perceived and by whom. The topic of conversation is how one beholds the Beautiful in indisputable works of art. In discussing the topic, 4

Paratext is Gennette’s term. If one compares the availability of this work to Diderot, the disparity in philological treatment is impressive. Diderot’s text is reprinted in a dozen languages, appears in quarto and folio editions with and without reproductions of the paintings he mentions, and is still available in paperback (though often on sale tables). The Schlegels’ text – if you permit the implication of plural authorship – can only be found by those who already know where to look. Gérard Genette: Seuils. Paris: Editions du Seuil 1987. 5 The Jena Romantics do not define sharply the tradition of art criticism that they critique; therefore, I use the general term “mainstream” and give some further specifics below. The text does cite the venerable Vasari and imply that that tradition continues to their day.

95 this ekphrastic conversation draws a clear and peculiarly optimistic line between the visual aesthetics of men and those of women, and then ties them together in an implicit and hope-filled manifesto: men perceive beauty analytically, while women perceive through synthetic observations. Even though men were the active producers of oil paintings in the Italian Renaissance, male and female observers need mediation by words shared in mixed company – men and women interacting simultaneously with each other – in order to appreciate beauty fully. The text displays consciousness of the role that gender plays in both the perception and the articulation of forms of the Beautiful; however, this does not necessarily equate with feminist approaches, especially with contemporary feminist criticism, and it is thus intentionally that I term the viewpoint “feminized”. Die Gemählde: Gespräch represents an historic moment in the feminist history of literature because it dismisses those gender divisions that allege insuperable binary oppositions between women and ephemeral domesticity on the one hand and men and public intellectualism on the other. This gender-aware text rejects such overt sexism. The Jena Romantics make their rejection of such gender biases patently clear in concomitant texts such as their parody of Schiller’s “Ehret die Frauen, sie stricken die Strümpfe” [“Honor the women, they knit the stockings”]. Die Gemählde: Gespräch is, I argue, a vision-correcting piece to exclusively masculine notions on the perception and evaluation of the Beautiful. Yet unlike much concurrent feminism, this text does not deny a gender-based separation of intellectual strengths and concerns. It also does not challenge women’s historical absence and exclusion from producing verbal and visual works of arts, but it does promote (in a non-expository and almost aphoristic way) a different, gender-aware means of correcting masculine myopia. Many of Friedrich Schlegel’s most successful programmatic texts are similarly non-expository and frequently aphoristic: “[. . .] so lässt sich auch eigentlich nicht reden von der Poesie als nur in Poesie” [“(. . .) one cannot speak of poesy except in poesy”]. This often-quoted and repetitive but not tautological statement from another conversational treatise, Gespräch über die Poesie [Conversation about Poesy], contains a cleverly worded demand for ekphrasis as well as a motive for Die Gemählde: Gespräch. Poesy, in this context, embraces myriad art forms irrespective of genre and medium. Ekphrasis, the “verbal representation of a visual representation”,6 is one specific instance of speaking about poesy in poesy. While it may initially appear that Goethe or Schiller’s approaches to artworks are equally valid alternatives, Die Gemählde: Gespräch rejects prosaic formulations of aesthetics, certainly as they apply to visual representations such as oil paintings. The collaboratively authored text represents a truly new

6

James Heffernan: Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1993. P. 3.

96 self-aware, intrapoetic criticism. It takes polar opposites and redoubles the terms of opposition both compositionally and thematically. To put it more simply, its claim is that only when men and women act together and not only write silent composition but also converse with spontaneous and informed but not erudite words about painting, only then will a full appreciation and critique of visual art be possible. Die Gemählde: Gespräch makes few direct propositions; instead, it yields the belief in the aesthetic success of united, complementary gendered eyes. And part of our fascination with the text is the extent to which it represents a translation of one art form into another, namely the transformation of salon conversation – an art form in which Caroline Schlegel-Schelling was reputedly a superb artist – into a written document. Although Louise has what I have facetiously termed the starring role, she is neither a dramatic protagonist nor the wisdom-dispensing philosopher of Socratic dialogs. If salon conversation is an art, it is certainly an ephemeral one. Much in keeping with the parameters proposed philosophically by Schleiermacher in his Versuch einer Theorie der Geselligkeit [Essay on a Theory of Sociability] for a salonière to mediate between different attendees, Louise mediates the three-way discussion between Waller and herself, and Reinhold and herself, as well as between Reinhold and Waller. However, the intimacy of the trio falls clearly short of Schleiermacher’s recommended number for a salon gathering. Despite its lack of expository prose, the work has an unmistakable drive toward exposition – this atypicality is typical for the early Romantics. Friedrich Schlegel’s tendency to make theoretical statements in non-expository writing at the time of the Jena circle of Romantics is well known: in addition to the already mentioned Gespräch über die Poesie, there are the Fragments of the Athenaeum and “Über die Philosophie: An Dorothea von F” [“On Philosophy: To Dorthea von F”].7 Heinse’s Über einige Gemälde der Düsseldorfer Galerie: Aus Briefen an Gleim von Heinse [On Several Paintings of the Düsseldorf Gallery: From a Letter to Gleim from Heinse] is yet another example of a deposition of essayistic notions in a different genre – here a contrived epistolarity.8 It is not, then, in the philosophic tradition of Socratic dialog but rather in the Romantic tradition of genre- and gender-bending that this work should be read.

7 Über die Philosophie. An Dorothea von F. appeared in the same number of the Athenäum as the less widely reprinted Die Gemählde: Gespräch. 8 The Schlegels do not mention Heinse’s 1776 essay on the paintings in Düsseldorf, though at least one passage can be read as a reply to Heinse. Waller seems to represent Heinse’s ideas when he praises the ancient Greek nudes. P. 42; however, he changes his mind when after he listens to Louise’s spirited oral argument that Greek statues of clothed figures represent an even great achievement in the harmony of attire and person and in the sacred grace of modestly portrayed dignity. P. 43.

97 Art and Sociability Because it offers a privileged insight into the role that gender plays in what has been termed the “ekphrastic triangle”,9 it is well worth the labor to unravel the fictional context of Die Gemählde: Gespräch. Although it is elaborate, it is neither abstruse nor difficult. In the fictional setting, three characters named Louise, Waller, and Reinhold (thus, one woman and two men) have been viewing paintings in the Dresden Gallery in 1798. Louise plays the starring role in the reality show or mockumentary, and we shall see that it is also she who has a literary and auctorial motive for generating the very piece of writing we are reading (or one that is very like it) and thus involves herself as possibly our author. However, she does not reveal that at first and so we will return to it later. Instead, Louise is introduced without introduction; the text begins with her first lines, which engage Waller almost immediately on the matter at hand: a discussion of ekphrasis. She asks him if being among the antique works of art in the gallery has given him the impetus to compose poetry about the ancients. They discuss the goal of sculpture as eternalizing a moment and perfecting it, more or less in agreement with Lessing’s famous Laokoon statement. Some of Waller’s utterances recall the pithy aphoristic fragments that appeared earlier in the same short-lived Schlegel journal as Die Gemählde: Gespräch, namely, the Athenaeum. For example, Waller aphorizes: Waller. Aller Plastik ist entweder organisch oder mathematisch, das heißt, sie läßt in den hervorgebrachten Formen eine beseelte Einheit erkennen, oder mißt sie nach regelmäßigen ergründlichen Verhältnissen ab. Die mathematische Plastik ist die Architektur. (42) Waller. Sculpture is either organic or mathematical, that is to say there is either an animated unity recognizable in its traditional forms or there are determinate, even proportions that are measurable. Mathematical sculpture is architecture.

And presumably organic sculpture is human, which was the point of a witty jest at Waller’s expense: he is so contemplative he could turn himself into stone. This quasi-reverse pygmalionalism is meant to be amusing and to foreshadow the coming discussion of the relationship between the visual arts, verbal arts, and nature. Although it is said in jest, the notion that intense study and deep appreciation of a work of art could lead one to wish to be a work of art is a notion that pervades the conversation and its internal performances of verbal works of art. Reverse pygmalionalism could occur with verbal art. Intratextually, the primary author of the conversation is Louise; yet, here, too, there is a fictional 9

W. J. T. Mitchell: Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1994. P. 11.

98 work-within-the-work, for Waller also contributes by reading aloud poems he has composed and by including excerpts from his writing journal. Furthermore, Louise proposes to Waller and Reinhold that they walk out of doors and listen to what she has already written down, making her an inset author: Louise. Laßen Sie uns in’s Freie hinaus, in das Gebüsch; und weil Sie so sehr für das Ausüben, für das Hervorbringen sind, so wollen wir nicht länger vom Plaudern über Kunstwerke plaudern, sondern ich will Ihnen etwas schon fertig Geplaudertes zum Besten geben. (My emphasis, 50) Louise. Let’s go outside, among the shrubbery and because you are so in favor of practicing, of creating, let us no longer talk about talking about art; instead let me contribute to the conversation by reading you a polished chat.

Shortly later, she puts it playfully: “[I]ch habe die Fantasie unter das Auge gefangen genommen, und mich so recht in die Bildern hineinzusehen bemüht” [“I am holding my fantasy captive to my eyes and trying really to see into the pictures”] (51). It is here, to the surprise of Waller and by extension the reader, that Louise reveals her specific motivation for beginning, maintaining, and recording the ekphrastic conversation. Her motivation for writing down her impressions and recording the oral discourse of the group comes from the absence of her sister Amalia. This fictional figure remains extra-textual; she had wanted to travel to Dresden to see the gallery but could not, and Louise has agreed to be her pair of eyes and her documentary writer (51). Therefore, Louise, the female character/narrator, uses her female eye to see into the pictures as an ersatz for other female eyes. What a remarkably complex and delightful moment! Die Gemählde: Gespräch claims the existence of (fictional) raw material for what I am calling the documentary for Amalia. The text we read is either that documentary in its final form, or it is a documentary on the making of Louise’s documentary for Amalia. Immediately to note, of course, is that it is not a true documentary – at the very least, the names have been changed from Caroline to Louise, from Dorothea to Amalia (or vice versa) and from Wilhelm to Waller and Friedrich to Reinhold, as well as other possibilities. Louise announces the artwork-within-the-artwork and yet it seems to go in the opposite direction. Unlike a play within a play (which seems to be often about inside information), Louise proposes to talk about art, record the talk, and to talk about the talking, and so on, expanding outwardly. Thus, it is not certain that the text of Die Gemählde: Gespräch is the one intended for Amalia, but it is unambiguously the case that this text is about the representation of art. As Louise says above, let’s not talk about talking about art any more and instead let me read you a finished conversation or a “polished chat”. She will recite a conversation – that is speak again – words that were already spoken and now are written down, thus saying an “Already Said” yet again. Furthermore, the act of sharing it by performing it reminds us of the insistence in form and content of this text on Geselligkeit or

99 sociability, all of which emphasizes the act of speaking informally with an audience. Therefore, a listener or reader unfamiliar with the paintings might be able to reconstruct at least a compositional sketch of the paintings from the recorded conversation and the nested levels of discourse; her descriptions of the paintings are always in part pictorial and the listener/reader has only to see through Louise’s sister’s eyes.10 Yet there is another aspect of the text that is crucial. Namely, the character/narrator’s descriptions are about description itself. Louise’s descriptions are not only designed to summon mental pictures; her text is also about the possibility of a female-centered and female-directed criticism of both verbal and visual art. Evidence to support this interpretation comes from the fact that the text is not simply a didactic essay telling the reader how to appreciate art through gendered eyes, but rather a demonstration of how a representative woman, through an alternative form of discourse, persuades two representative men to see things in a new way. Let us look at the two male characters, Reinhold and Waller. Reinhold is an artist (visual or graphic), who is copying one of the sculptures of classical antiquity and it isn’t going well. He curses the Torso of a Wrestler (49). Louise tries to console him by saying that the verbal artist Waller regularly experiences the same problem: Es geht Ihnen, wie Wallern auch mitunter, wenn er sich an den Pindar oder Sophokles macht. Er hat zum Uebersetzen nur Deutsche Worte, Töne und Rhythmen, Sie nur schwarze Kreide. (44) What happens to you is the same thing that happens to Waller when he works on Pindar or Sophocles. For his translations, he has only German words, sounds, and rhythms while you have only black chalk.

To Reinhold, translating an artwork from one language into another seems much easier than reproducing a visual artwork from one medium to another, that is from sculpture to a chalk drawing (also called black chalk). Reinhold exclaims wistfully: “Ach, wenn meine Zeichnung eine Uebersetzung wäre! [“If only my drawing were a translation!”] (44). Curiously, however, he has a low opinion of language: “Die Sprache pfuschert an allen Dingen herum: sie ist wie ein Mensch, der sich dafür ausgiebt, von allem Bescheid zu wissen und darüber oberflächlich wird” [“Language butchers everything. It’s like a person who pretends to know everything but is actually superficial”] (47). As we shall see, the text of 10

I use “pictorial” in Heffernan’s sense as a text’s use of a mental picture of a natural object related to but different from ekphrasis. “[E]kphrasis differs from both iconicity and pictorialism because it explicitly represents representation itself. What ekphrasis represents in words, therefore, must itself be representational”. P. 4. For Heffernan Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow exemplifies pictorialism” while Williams’s Pictures from Breughel demonstrates the ekphrastic.

100 Die Gemählde: Gespräch belies Reinhold’s dismissive view of discourse on art as superficial verbiage and posits instead a formula for comparing visual artworks to each other and for converting visual into verbal arts under certain conditions. Louise disagrees with Reinhold: “Lieber starrsinniger Reinhold, wie Sie sich dagegen setzen, daß man Statuen und Gemählde, die für sich ewig stumm sind, auch einmal reden lehren will” [“Dear stubborn Reinhold, how you protest against the notion of teaching eternally mum statues and paintings to say something for once”] (49). With this cogent indeed somewhat coquettish argument favoring ekphrastic ventriloquism, Louise, as we shall see, prevails. The conditions that restrict yet permit a relationship between verbal and visual arts are delivered by Louise, whose terms of ekphrastic negotiation are, I argue, an historically specific feminist criticism. She is explicitly against art for art’s sake, against the notion that art would find the beginning and end of its raison d’être in its own area (49). She is in favor of writing as a self-aware woman: she consciously rejects Diderot’s style on the ground that it is French and masculine: Waller. Kennen Sie Diderots Salon de peinture? Louise. Ob ich das kenne? Ich habe mir aber seine durch und durch geistvollen Schilderungen jetzt mit Fleiß entfernt. Sehen Sie, fürs erst bin ich eine Frau, und möchte nicht gern für kocket gehalten werden. Waller. Are you familiar with Diderot’s Salon de peinture [Salon of Paintings]? (My emphasis, 52) Louise. Do I know it? I have worked hard to distance myself from his thoroughly intelligent descriptions. See, in the first place, I am a woman and would not like to be considered coquette.

Despite its seemingly modern self-awareness, Die Gemählde: Gespräch is not a prescient work of contemporary feminism; to the extent that it does entail a (proto) feminist viewpoint, it represents a moderate feminism, a feminism that neither questions the systematic basis nor examines the sexist infrastructure, but one that does support intelligent women’s viewpoints as a complement to learned men’s. As examples of its limited critique, we can take some of the unquestioned assumptions: the text does not question the means of artistic production and access to them; it does not notice the absence of women as painters despite their presence as the painted; it assumes that conventional art criticism will continue to be written by men like Vasari and Diderot, or even their contemporary, Forster. Mainstream art criticism, which happens to have been written exclusively by men, is dismissed several times throughout the piece. As three examples, Louise first declines modestly to enter that kind of discourse by claiming she ought to have nothing to do with “the metaphysics of art” (42); then Waller echoes the sentiment, “Das trockene Urtheilen wollen wir gern den Kunstverständigen überlassen” [“We shall happily leave dry judgments to the art experts”] (47). Louise again feigns not to understand a more traditional approach, Mengs’s

101 description of Correggio’s Mary Magdalene (94). Louise and Waller distinguish the work they are in – and rightly so – from the precursors by Diderot and Forster by noting that the former is a piece of memorable writing about less memorable paintings and the latter is a highly personal, individual view (53). Heinse’s work is not mentioned. The Jena Romantics offer a different text, one that challenges but does not rebel against mainstream presumptions. Not surprisingly, then, the text questions art for art’s sake and, implicitly and explicitly institutionally driven, patriarchal, purely formalist art criticism. Louise argues for a community of the arts including the masculine standards and also a mixed sociable interplay: “Nein, mein Freund, Gemeinschaft und gesellige Wechselberührung ist die Hauptsache” [“No my friend, community and sociable mutual-interaction is the main thing”] (49). This is central to the feminized viewpoint that the text advocates including. It is, moreover, an indirect appeal to interpret Die Gemählde: Gespräch as more than fetching descriptions of some beautiful Italian paintings and to see in it a powerful argument in both form and content in favor of free aesthetic intercourse. As if the implications of free trade in a wide, almost global level could be missed, the two characters underscore it by a simile. Waller answers, “Sehr wahr: es ist mit den geistigen Reichthümern wie mit dem Gelde. Was hilft es, viel zu haben und in den Kasten zu verschließen? Für die wahre Wohlhabenheit kommt alles darauf an, daß es vielfach und rasch cirkulirt” [“Very true, intellectual treasures are like money. What does it help to have much of it if it’s locked away in a chest? For true prosperity, it is essential for it to circulate frequently and quickly”] (49). The text thus promotes words as an intermediary species to negotiate between the two arts so long as the already active masculinized aesthetic discourse is supplemented and made to exchange with an active feminized discourse. This is also why their definition of art is inclusive enough to embrace salon conversation.11 And that is the argument here. Although identifying the mainstream as masculinized, the text is not entirely clear who the opponent is and whether he is inherently masculinized. Louise specifically rejects Diderot’s Salon de peinture as a model. Moreover, she states 11

The confidence in spoken language as a vehicle for visual and verbal works of art to discuss each other anticipates Gerhard Kaiser’s catachrestic notions in a remarkable way. Though Kaiser never mentions the Schlegels’ text, it almost sounds like Louise speaking or a modernized version of Die Gemählde: Gespräch when Kaiser writes: “Ich versuche, Bilder zu lesen. Werke der bildenden Kunst erscheinen in diesem Blickwinkel als Zeichenschrift. [. . .] Als Zeichensysteme können Werke der bildenden Kunst und der Literatur voneinander und miteinenander sprechen” [“I attempt to read images. From this perspective, works of the plastic arts seem to be a sign script or writing. (. . .) As sign systems, works of the plastic arts and of literature are able to speak about and with each other”]. Gerhard Kaiser: Bilder Lesen: Studien zu Literatur und bildender Kunst. Munich: Fink Verlag 1981. P. 7.

102 two reasons for rejection, that she is German and that she is a woman. However, Waller and Reinhold – at least in this context – also reject the masculinized discourse of the mainstream. They agree with Louise when she proposes an alternative means of discoursing on art. Für alle Künste, wie sie heißen mögen, ist nun doch die Sprache das allgemeine Organ der Mittheilung; daß ich bey Wallers Gleichniß stehen bleibe, die gangbare Münze, worein alle geistigen Güter umgesetzt werden können. Also plaudern muß man, plaudern! (50) For all arts, however they may be called, language is the general organ of mediation, and so I hold to Waller’s simile, exchangeable coinage, into which all the intellectual goods can be converted. For this reason, one must talk and talk!

Louise, the sole female character in the piece, insists programmatically on conversation [plaudern is chatting or talking]. She is therefore arguing against a view of art that is so clearly the dominant one; she doesn’t even mention her agon, academic discourse. She does not insist (does not even mention) the mainstream ideas of categorization according to form, to installation in a museum, to recognition from an art society or board of distinguished experts. A work such as Die Gemählde: Gespräch ought to be included in general definitions of European Romanticism as put forward by Löwy and Sayre in Romanticism: Against the Tide of Modernity.12 Löwy and Sayre define Romanticism as a response to profound social and economic changes brought on in the advent of capitalism (17) and they claim that criticism of “reification” is one of the most common forms. Reification is denounced as the dehumanization of human life, “the transforming of human relations into relations among things, inert objects” (20). The Romantic (but realistic) fictional characters of Die Gemählde: Gespräch participate in the criticism of reification without terming it such. They are, however, delighted to discover that the visual form of the Beautiful can be transformed into an exchangeable commodity, at least one that can be exchanged for words, which are then further exchangeable for any number of other relations. In Heffernan’s interpretation of Homer’s famous ekphrastic passage on Achilles’ shield, Homer complicates the apparently “simple opposition between the spatiality of graphic and the temporality of verbal art” through his “narratives of movement without pause or pose” (18 and 17). One could say that Louise’s way of turning pictures into stories also complicates any simple opposition between the spatiality of painting as a visual art and temporality of verbal art, which is here doubly complex for there are two texts, namely the text she is in, as well as the one she is creating for her sister. Louise’s stories of the paintings 12 Michael Löwy and Robert Sayre. Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity. Trans. by Catherine Porter. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press 2001.

103 preclude any art criticism that would make evaluations based on timeless, transcendent forms extracted from the specifics of individual perception. Heffernan identifies the storytelling impulse as ancient and innate: “From Homer’s time to our own, ekphrastic literature reveals again and again this narrative response to pictorial stasis, this storytelling impulse that language by its very nature seems to release and stimulate” (5). Yet the Jena Romantics indicate that in their time, it was forgotten, neglected, and sidelined. The text gives perhaps it most detailed and compelling example of complementary gendered eyes beholding a work of art in Louise’s hierarchical interpretations of the three paintings of Mary Magdalene. She segues to them as “eine Ermahnung zur Buße in drey Kapiteln” [“an admonition to penance in three chapters”] (88), in reply to yet another instance of contrasting her feminized view of artwork with the masculine gaze. The context is this: Reinhold has twice mentioned the venerable Vasari. Louise has answered, “Wenn unser eins auf die Art urtheilte, so würden wir es, mit Erlaubniß, ein wenig albern finden” [“If one of us were to judge in this manner, then we would consider it – if you’ll permit me to say so – a trite foolish”] (87). Thus, she contrasts the canonical view not only her individual ideas, but also with a general feminine view. She speaks of “our kind of people”, which again does not refer uniquely to women but rather can be inclusive of all who are able to see beyond the mainstream and hitherto masculinized discourse of art history.13 Reinhold returns to his didactic point and then Louise thanks him by reading aloud one of her “polished chats” or an “Already Said” on the three paintings, which is her way of admonishing him to do penance for having cited chapter and verse of Vasari. Of course, Mary Magdalene is known for her penitence, and this crucial set of four directly compared and ranked paintings indicates that not only Reinhold but also the art world should take the expiatory hint. (Waller tags on the fourth, a painting by Mengs.) Bringing speech to the pictures, we hear them say that women’s point of view has been given sufficient chance to speak out. “Welch ein anmuthvolles Bild ist die Magdalena der katholischen Sage, zu der die Schrift nur wenig Züge angiebt!” [“What a graceful picture the Magdalena of the Catholic 13

The non-traditional approach of Die Gemählde: Gespräch contradicts in part many of the conclusions drawn today about visual arts in the age of Romanticism. In his interesting critique of the underlying capitalist nature of romantic museums, Maleuvre relies heavily on Hegel: “the museum artwork is a beautiful but petrified object, emptied of the spirit of its age, devoid of spirituality. A historical fossil only fit for historiographic scholarship [. . .]”. Maleuvre: The Aesthetics of Misplacement: The Romantic Museum. In: Romanticism across the Disciplines. Ed. by Larry H. Peer, Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America 1998. P. 142. Were the Schlegels included, the criticism that the Dresden Gallery removes the works from their age would still hold; however, the remarkable resuscitation of artworks, the reanimation that occurs would require at least a different nuance.

104 legend presents, yet there are but a few lines written about her!”] (88). The painters have indeed let Mary Magdalene speak; yet we viewers (and readers) need Louise to be able to hear her. Louise’s interpretation of the Franceschini painting (Figure 1) is narrative and dramatic: she quotes the hitherto inaudible speech of Mary Magdalene and her attendants:

Figure 1. Franceschini, The Repentant Magdelene. Meisterwerke der staatlichen Gemäldegalerie in Dresden. Munich: Hanfstaengl, 1924.

105 Louise. Sie wendet sich mit dem Kopf hinauf, nach der älteren Freundinn, die neben ihrem Sessel steht und ihr zuredet. Ihre Augen blicken diese flehend an, ihr Mund spricht: kannst du mir nicht helfen aus diesem Labyrinth? weißt du nicht, was ich thun soll, um die Noth in meiner Brust zu stillen? (88–89) Louise. She is turning her head upward, toward the older friend, who is standing next to her chair and speaking to her. Her eyes look imploringly at her, her mouth speaks: can you not help me out of this labyrinth? Do you not know what I can do to assuage the need in my breast?

A young girl in a supporting role also has speaking lines. Louise finds the girl charming but is subjectively disappointed in a formal, almost mainstream technical way, because Franceschini has cast too much of the shadow on her. Louise notes this at the same time as she animates her: Louise. [. . .] und sie wird von einem jungen Mädchen unterstützt, das sich zu ihr herumbeugt. Eine allerliebste Figur, die nur zu sehr im Schatten steht; aber das artige Köpfchen tritt hervor und fragt mit gefühlvoller Neugierde: was soll dies bedeuten? Was fehlt meiner schönen Gebieterin? wie kann man sich so kränken? (89) Louise. [. . .] and she is supported by a young girl, who turns toward her. A very dear figure, yet one who stands too much in the shadows, but her fetching little head appears and she asks with sympathetic curiosity: what does this mean? What’s the matter with my beautiful mistress? How can anybody be so distressed?

While Louise perceives beauty in the painting and shares her perception of it with Waller and Reinhold, she is at the same time evaluating the success of the representation. Franceschini’s Magdalene does not receive the highest rating because of his use of shadow and equally because of his politically unappetizing portrait. This is particularly clear in her parting words on the painting: “Der Mohr, welcher in der andern Ecke halb auf der Erde liegt, und in der Verwirrung den weggeworfenen Schmuck zu erbeuten sucht, möchte sich immerhin mit den schwarzen Tinten vermischen: der Einfall ist doch mehr drollig als schicklich” [“The Moor, who is lying in the other corner half on the ground and in the confusion is trying to snatch up the jewelry, might as well blend in with the black ink: the idea is more ludicrous than clever”] (90). Louise takes her disapproval of the racist (the thieving black man) and racy: “Auch über die Geißel sehe ich gern hinweg” (90) [“Also, I prefer not to see the whip”] and permits it to influence her overall aesthetic appreciation of the painting. It is not, in her female subjective and legitimate view, the best portrait of Magdalene. She turns next to Batoni’s painting of the biblical penitent (Figure 2). Here she again notes some formal elements such as the colors, composition, and light in her detailed pictorial description. Louise. Sie liegt am Eingange einer Grotte, im vollen Licht, das von der linken Seite auf sie fällt. Der dunkle Hintergrund bliebt doch ganz in Harmonie mit der hellen Gestalt; eine kleine Oeffnung oder perspektivische Durchsicht ins Freye unterbricht

106

Figure 2. Batoni. The Repentant Magdelene. Meisterwerke der staatlichen Gemäldegalerie in Dresden. Munich: Hanfstaengl, 1924. die braune Felsmasse, die sie einfaßt. Ihre Lage ist schräg nach der Linken hervor, auf der Hüfte und dem Arm ruhend, mit welchem sie sich auf einen Stein legt. (90) Louise. She lays at the entrance to a grotto, entirely lit by light, which falls on her from the left. The dark background stays in complete harmony with the bright figure; a small aperture or perspectival view onto the open interrupts the brown cliff, which it embraces. Her pose slants left, resting on a hip and an arm, with which she has placed herself on the stone.

But seeing and listening with Louise, we notice that her position is uncomfortable; we doubt whether she would stay long in that position (91). Further, we are brought to see how the painting overstates the case with heavy-handed symbols not naturally found in an outdoor grotto such as the book and skull. Our docent Louise finds that these and other specifics cause the meaning of the work to wobble: “Ob der innre Sinn aber nicht ein wenig dabey umherflattert?” [“Don’t you think the deep meaning gets a little lost as a result?”] (90). She strikes a conversational tone, such as using an easily understood fragment (beginning the query with “ob”/“whether”) and the presence of flavoring particles and litotes (“aber nicht ein wenig”/“but not a little”) and ordinary diction (“umherflattern”/“to flutter around, wobble”). Indeed, when we listen to the ekphrasis of this painting, it is not Mary Magdalene but Louise who speaks. Her interpretation of the Batoni hinges on the discrepancy between the representation in the painting and the natural expectations we would have from the penitent’s story: “Die Sündlichkeit scheint oberflächlich, und die Bekehrung vielleicht vergeblich.

107

Figure 3. Corregio. Mary Magdalene, Formerly Dresden.

Wovon sollte sie sich auch bekehren? Von dem unschudligen Wohlgefallen an sich selber?” [“Evil here seems superficial, and the conversion perhaps in vain. From what must she turn away? From the innocent pleasure in herself?”] (92). Her praise of Correggio derives from her approval of what she believes is the painter’s ability to paint the truth. Truth could mean a level of excellence in technique so advanced that reality seems to be reflected as it is, without the mediation of the painter and his paint. But it does not mean verisimilitude, for earlier in the triangular dialog the Greek context to paint life-like natural objects was brought up as a curiosity and set aside as of secondary importance. The praise for Correggio derives from the perception – a perception established through conversational intercourse, not logical demonstration – that Correggio’s Mary Magdalene is truly guilty and truly penitent (Figure 3). Louise explains that unlike Batoni’s innocent, Correggio’s figure of Magdalene is guilty and expiatory: “[S]ie ist die eigentlich schöne Seele, die der zufällige Irrthum früher Jugendzeit nicht hat entstellen können” [“She is truly the beautiful soul, on whom the chance error of early youth could not leave a mark”] (92). In calling her “the truly beautiful soul”, Louise indicates that the painting’s beauty stems not only from its realistic representation of concrete nature but also from its accurate representation of a mental idea. The sounds Louise hears from this representation are not words but tears; moreover, it is not a mere moment in time

108 that Louise hears but rather even the passage of time as the hot tears subside (93). The ultimate praise comes from the ultimate expression of uncontrived nature: “Sie kann nicht anders liegen, es ist nichts zurecht gemachtes an der ganzen Gestalt, nicht der leiseste Anspruch” [“She couldn’t be lying there in any other attitude; there is nothing artificial about the entire figure, not even the slightest pretension”] (93). In fact this painting and Louise’s interpretation of it to Reinhold and Waller is crucial because Waller’s interruption – questioning whether she is familiar with Mengs’s painting of Mary Magdalene (which they both dismiss as inferior) – both because it reminds us of the frame (of the mixed gender company) and because, within the work, it brings Louise to her most programmatic statement of aesthetics: Louise. Bey einem ächten Kunstwerke kann ich es mir nicht anders denken, als daß die ganze Darstellung nach ihrem Hauptgegenstande bestimmt wird, daß also Farbengebung und Helldunkel durch innige Beziehungen mit der Handlung, dem Charakter der Zeichnung und dem Ausdrucke zusammenhängt. Und vielleicht war nie ein Künstler harmonischer als Correggio. (94) Louise. With a true work of art, I can’t help but to think that the entire representation is determined by the main subject, so that there is a necessarily intimate relationship between coloration and chiarscurro and the treatment of the subject as well as the character of the drawing and the expression. And perhaps there was never a more harmonic artist than Correggio.

Above, Louise makes explicitly clear that admiration will be granted to those works of art that harmonize objective factors and subjective ones (my emphasis). In fact, the statement uses terms associated with visual art for the objective factors, for example, “Farbengebung” [“coloration”] and “Helldunkel” [“chiarscurro”] and a distinctly verbal art term “Handlung” [“treatment of the subject”] for the more subjective issue. The interpretations of the Mary Magdalenes do not culminate the work; instead, several more ekphrastic texts are recited, including Louise on Leonardo da Vinci and Waller on a number of paintings by Rubens. Chatty discussions are also interspersed, and the text draws to its penultimate close with the reading aloud of nine ekphrastic sonnets – interrupted only once as the other two guess at the visual inspirations – the sonnets are presented as a quasi-parlor game. Contrary to Waller’s instruction not to understand the sonnets as deriving from specific paintings, Louise and Reinhold quickly do exactly that. They interpret each sonnet as having a specific visual impetus, and they enjoy making some guesses. Die Gemählde: Gespräch finally ends with a twenty-one-stanza poem and a brief promise by Reinhold to dedicate his first successful drawing of the Madonna to St. Luke and Raphael. The St. Luke poem is yet another paratext often left out of editions of Die Gemählde: Gespräch. To understand why the conversation concludes with a dispersal of paratexts, we must recall that the

109 implicit argument is neither to overthrow standard ekphrasis nor to invalidate traditional viewpoints. Let us forget neither the gendered eyes of ekphrasis nor the ricocheting paths of its gaze. Mitchell’s structural analysis of the ekphrastic triangle is not thrown off by this kind of ricocheting geometry. He elaborates that ekphrasis is “the social structure of representation as an activity and a relationship of power/knowledge/desire – representation as something done to something, with something, by someone for someone”.14 In our instance, we have the representation of Italian Renaissance painting,15 via German prose and dialog, by Louise, Waller, and Reinhold for Louise’s sister. Here, in technical detail, is a female subject (Mary Magdalene) gazed upon and reproduced by a male painter (Correggio) translated into verbal art by a female wordsmith (Louise) digested by a mixed gender group (Louise, Waller, and Reinhold) to be appreciated by an absent female consumer (Louise’s sister and us and further on to those in posterity whom she represents). In a nostalgic poem reflecting on the production and impact of the journal Athenaeum, Friedrich Schlegel emphasizes the collaborative nature of the group and simultaneously its independence from others: “Bestrebten wir uns treu im freyen Bunde, / Und wollten uns auf uns allein verlassen” [“We strove faithfully within our free union / And wanted to rely on ourselves alone”]. The recital of the St. Luke/ artist poem as the conclusion of Die Gemählde: Gespräch represents another instance of collaboration because it, too, is a reading of the “Already Said”. Though it is not “polished chat” but rather words sculpted into formal verse, it is a poem in which the living Madonna comes to sit for a painter painting her likeness. It is a poem that contains a performance of ekphrasis, just as Die Gemählde: Gespräch does. And recall that this representation of representation occurs in nature; Louise called for them to go “in’s Freye” [“under the open sky”], and Reinhold echoes the suitability of a natural setting: “Hier, dächte ich, ließen wir uns nieder: wir können keinen bequemeren und anmuthigeren Sitz finden. Vor uns der ruhige Fluß; jenseits erhebt sich hinter dem grünen Ufer die Ebne in leisen Wellen” [“Here, I’d think, we’ll sit down. We could hardly find a more comfortable and more pleasant seat. In front of us we have the calm river; opposite us and behind its green banks, the plains rise up in gentle waves”] (54). Through layers of fiction, this underscores one of the Jena Romantics’ unshakeable tenets on visual culture: “die Kunst [ist] eine bloße Abschrift der Natur” [“art is merely a transcription of nature”] (62). The translation of Abschrift is disputable: rendering it as “copy” or “duplication” underplays the uniqueness and primacy of nature as the original as well as the reliance on script, on words. Reinhold and Louise, in this passage and others, 14

Mitchell: Picture Theory. P. 180. The artworks described in detail are predominantly but not exclusively Italian. Louise devotes a long and detailed description to a family portrait by Holbein. Pp. 69–75.

15

110 mean “transcription”, for they use modifiers like “bloß” [“merely”] a transcription and “zurückstehen” [“infinitely lag behind”]. The full context shows this: Reinhold. Ich muß Louisen vertheidigen. Es versteht sich von selbst, lieber Freund, und wir geben es gleich zu, daß die Kunst als bloße Abschrift der Natur gegen das ewige Regen und Weben derselben unendlich zurückstehen müßte. Eben deswegen soll sie den Abgang durch etwas von wesentlich verschiedner Art ersetzen. Der Künstler kann die landschaftliche Natur nur durch Wahl und Zusammenstellung verbessern, nicht an sich erhöhen. (62)16 Reinhold. I must defend Louise. It’s self-explanatory, dear friend, and we quickly admit that art – were it the mere transcription of nature – would have to lag infinitely behind nature’s eternal stirring and weaving/ pitching and heaving. For this very reason, art ought to replace what is lost with something substantially different. The artist can only improve nature’s landscapes through selection and composition, not enhance them as such.

Eventually, Waller agrees with Louise and Reinhold by admitting that listening to the description of a painting aroused in him the desire not to see the painting per se, but rather a longing to see its subject (Lago Salernitano) and summoned its image in his head (69). The Romantic definition of nature as a transcribable truth perceived by men and women in collaboration explains the denouement of Die Gemählde: Gespräch.17 The St. Luke/artist poem is about the miraculous way that painting can capture the beauty of nature. Nature is here not a landscape but rather the “real” Mary, Mary the Madonna. It is therefore fitting that the ultimate word in the text is the versified story of her (female) self transformed into visual art by a (male) painter and transcribed into verbal art by a (male) poet and recorded by a (female) conversationalist. In the eyes of the mixed gendered Jena Romantics, it takes not only a man’s schooled technique and learned aesthetics but also a woman’s sight and insight to appreciate the Beautiful as depicted in art, regardless of how that art is scripted.

16

Heffernan identifies the “belief in the timelessness of visual art” as a “distinctively romantic”. P. 93. Certainly, Reinhold, a German romantic, subscribes to the belief that visual art eternalizes what is in constant flux in nature. 17 Though his introductory and theoretical chapters take careful note of Lessing’s Laokoon, Heffernan’s chapter on Romanticism concentrates on Wordsworth and does not include any German-language writing. Nonetheless, his exegesis of Wordsworth’s late poem “Peele Castle” as constructing in words “yet another imaginary picture” of the subject all the while believing to have “seen the soul of truth in every part” has much in common with Waller’s reaction. Pp. 91–107, esp. pp. 106–107.

Mary Helen Dupree

Elise in Weimar: “Actress-Writers” and the Resistance to Classicism This essay investigates the response to Weimar Classicism of the late eighteenth-century actress-writer Elise Bürger, who in 1802 attempted unsuccessfully to ingratiate herself with Weimar society. Without family or social connections of her own, Bürger developed a number of textual and non-textual strategies aimed at courting the favor of influential male authors such as Goethe. Both in her texts and her theatrical performances, Bürger cultivated an image of herself as a priestess of “classical” German literature. However, Bürger’s literary works also engage in a critique of the concept of the “classical” and its gendered implications. By reading anecdotes about Bürger together with Bürger’s own literary works, the essay seeks to illuminate the ways in which information the contributions of actresses of the Goethezeit [Age of Goethe] have been rendered marginal by traditional literary criticism.

In the literary and cultural landscape of the so-called Goethezeit, actresses figure prominently. Actresses and other women involved with theater surface repeatedly in Goethe’s biography: for example, there is Goethe’s admiration of the actress, singer and composer Corona Schröter, who was the first to embody his Iphigenie on stage; his mentorship of Christiane Becker-Neumann, the Weimar actress and subject of the elegy “Euphrosyne”; his intellectual bond with the amateur actress and playwright Charlotte von Stein; and his turbulent working relationship with the actress and memoirist Caroline Jagemann. Schiller, too, cultivated relationships with actresses at critical periods in his working life; for example, in Frankfurt in 1784, he formed a friendship with the Erfurt-born Sophie Albrecht, a successful actress and poet who performed as Luise in Kabale und Liebe [Cabal and Love].1 As directors, writers and sometimes as actors, Goethe and Schiller had extensive contact with amateur and professional actresses, who, unlike many other eighteenth-century women, were often well-read, well-traveled, and highly cosmopolitan. Moreover, actresses produced numerous texts in a variety of genres during this period. These include not only unpublished memoirs, such as those of Karoline Schulze-Kummerfeld and Caroline Jagemann, but also published works, such as Sophie Albrecht’s three volumes of lyric poetry, the essays of the Swiss-born former actress Marianne Ehrmann, and the narrative poems of the Weimar court actress Amalie von Imhof. These texts are not only invaluable sources of information about the Goethezeit but also worthwhile literary 1

Berit Christine Ruth Royer: Sophie Albrecht (1757–1840) im Kreis der Schriftstellerinnen um 1800. Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche WerkMonographie. Dissertation U. of California, Davis. 1999. Pp. 50–66.

112 works in their own right, which have only recently begun to be taken seriously by scholars in the fields of German literary and theater studies. However, to write about eighteenth-century actresses is not always easy; reliable sources are hard to come by. To be sure, anecdotes about actresses have long been the stuff of biographies, novels, and films about the Goethezeit, as well as general-market paperbacks on the perennially popular theme of “Goethe und die Frauen” [“Goethe and Women”]. Such works, however, tend to rely heavily on crude, stereotypical, and sometimes anachronistic images of the actress. Unfortunately, this situation does not improve with more serious literary scholarship: here, anecdotes about actresses often appear in the margins, as footnotes or short digressions within the text itself. Deployed in this way, anecdotes about actresses serve to add humor, a sense of authenticity and a hint of sexiness to one’s scholarship. They provide what the New Historicist critic Stephen Greenblatt has called “the touch of the real”, but only just a touch.2 The problem with this approach is that when anecdotes are used marginally in this way, they become disconnected from the main argument and are no longer subject to question. In the case of the Goethezeit, anecdotes about actresses tend to reproduce a traditional, Goethe-centered view of literary history, in which the prince of poets looms large while all other figures recede into the background. The actresses around Goethe are depicted primarily as facilitators of the male protagonist’s Bildung, like the actresses who befriend Wilhelm in the Lehrjahre. They are reduced to stock characters (von Stein, the stern muse; Jagemann, the silly diva), in such a way as to obscure their real and significant contributions to the cultural and literary landscape of Germany around 1800. For the ever-increasing cohort of literary scholars working on actresses, women and other “minor” figures in German literary history, such anecdotes present both an obstacle and a starting point for further investigation. One finds oneself engaged in a dual process: of interrogating the structures that produce conventional images of the actress on the one hand, and of investigating traditional sources in order to salvage important information on the other. This essay seeks to contribute to this process by focusing on the literary works and performances of Elise Bürger, a highly prolific actress and writer who was active in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. With a few contemporary exceptions, most of the literary scholarship that acknowledges Bürger at all has centered on two anecdotes: the story of her scandalous, short-lived marriage to Gottfried August Bürger in Göttingen in the early 1790s on the one hand, and the narrative of her failed attempt to ingratiate herself with Goethe’s circle in Weimar in 1802 on the other. By tracing the development and circulation of these anecdotes, I wish to expose some of the structures, both in Weimar society and in traditional literary 2 Stephen Greenblatt: The Touch of the Real. In: Representations 59 (Summer 1997). Pp. 14–28.

113 scholarship, that have kept the literary and creative contributions of eighteenthcentury actresses from reaching a broader audience. At the same time, I investigate the ways in which Bürger herself grappled with her own exclusion from the Weimar Parnassus; in particular, I am interested in how Bürger’s literary works and performances respond to the “classical”, both as a mode of idealist aesthetics and as a way of imagining the Greek and Roman past. As an author of occasional poems and a performer of classicizing Attitüden [artistically performed postures] and declamatory concerts, Bürger frequently styled herself as a devotee of the “classical” in both senses. Yet, in many of her literary works, Bürger develops a gendered critique of Classicism, which she depicts as the inflexible, masculine opposite of a feminized aesthetic that gives free rein to imagination, feeling and experimentation. In works such as the short play Die antike Statue aus Florenz [The Antique Statue from Florence], this critique is anchored rhetorically in a juxtaposition of the rigid, inflexible forms of idealist aesthetics with the materiality of the female body in theatrical performance. Bürger’s works thus represent a uniquely critical response, from an actress’s perspective, to the status of the “classical” around 1800 and its gendered implications.

Scandal and Self-Promotion: “An den Dichter Bürger” (1789) Born Marie Christine Elise Hahn in Stuttgart in 1769, Bürger was one of a small but significant number of late eighteenth-century women who combined a theatrical Laufbahn [career] with a parallel profession as an author of prose, poetry, and dramatic works. As an actress, Bürger specialized in performing aristocratic, stately, and mythological heroines, such as Maria Stuart, Isabella in Die Braut von Messina, Medea and Ariadne in Georg Benda’s duodrama Ariadne auf Naxos.3 She debuted as Lady Milford in Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe in Altona in 1796; in the course of the following decade, she received steady, long-term engagements with standing theaters in Bremen, Hanover, and Dresden.4 In addition to her work as a member of these ensembles, Bürger repeatedly toured Germany, Austria, and France as a freelance Gastspiel [guest performance] artist; she also specialized in forms of solo performance such as tableaux vivants, attitudes, and DeklamationsKonzerte [declamatory concerts], in which popular literary works were read aloud to musical accompaniment.5 In all, Elise Bürger’s career spanned well over thirty years; she wrote, performed, and gave acting lessons up until a few years before her death in Frankfurt in 1833. 3

Elise Bürger: Gastrollen. Ms. Deutsches Literatur Archiv, Marbach am Neckar. Michael Rüppel: “Was sagen Sie von Mme Bürger?” Elise Bürger (1769–1833) als Schauspielerin und das Theater zur Zeit der “Weimarer Klassik”. In: G. A. Bürger und J. W. L. Gleim. Ed. by Hans Joachim Kertscher. Tübingen: Niemeyer 1996. Pp. 224–238. 5 August Langen: Attitüde und Tableau in der Goethezeit. In: Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft 12 (1968). Pp. 231–232. 4

114 Given the extent of Bürger’s theatrical career, it is not surprising that Bürger’s works are strongly influenced by theatrical performance. Her published oeuvre includes numerous works that thematize theater as well as songs, Vorreden [theatrical speeches], and poems explicitly intended to be performed onstage or in salons. At the same time, her works clearly belong to what Christa Bürger has described as the “middle sphere” of women’s writing in the Goethezeit, namely a marginal zone between the increasingly stratified categories of “high” and “low” literature.6 Like the works of many other German women writers of her time, Bürger’s works were published on subscription; while her works often make reference to classical authors and antique motifs, they also eschew “high” genres such as classical drama in favor of “lower” or more popular ones such as the medieval Ritterdrama [knightly plays/tales], the neo-Gothic ballad, and drawingroom comedy. Bürger’s literary oeuvre encompasses two historical dramas, Adelheit Gräfin von Teck (1799) and Klara von Montalban (1808); several oneand two-act comic plays; two volumes of poetry, Gedichte [Poems] (1812) and Lilienblätter und Zypressenzweige [Lily Petals and Cypress Branches] (1826); and various prose works, collected in the volumes Irrgänge des weiblichen Herzens [Detours of the Female Heart] (1799) and Mein Taschenbuch den Freundlichen meines Geschlechts gewidmet [My Notebook, Dedicated to the Friendly Ones Among My Sex] (1809). Bürger’s works have been largely ignored or dismissed by traditional literary scholarship; only recently have feminist scholars, such as Karin Wurst, begun to take her literary production seriously.7 However, during her lifetime, Bürger achieved a moderate amount of success for a woman writer; her poetic works were published in well-known journals such as Iris and the Teutscher Merkur, and she published a number of her works under her own name, which was by no means a given for a woman writer of her generation. Elise Bürger’s moderate success as an actress and writer would perhaps be unremarkable, but for the fact that it was achieved without social, literary or family connections of any kind. For Bürger, acting and writing were an absolutely essential means of survival; both of these activities provided income as well as possibilities for cultivating connections with potential patrons and mentors. Lyric poems in particular provided an opportunity to communicate with, and court the favor of, important personages. As a very young woman, Bürger facilitated her own initiation into German literary society through her poetry, a gesture 6 Christa Bürger: “Die mittlere Sphäre.” Sophie Mereau – Schriftstellerin im klassischen Weimar. In: Deutsche Literatur von Frauen. Ed. by Gisela Brinker-Gabler. Munich: C. H. Beck 1988. P. 366. 7 Karin Wurst: Elise Bürger and the Gothic Imagination. In: Women in German Yearbook 13 (1997). Pp. 11–27. See also Karin Wurst: Negotiations of Containment: Elise Bürger’s Adelheid, Gräfin von Teck and the “Trivial” Tradition. In: Thalia’s Daughters: German Women Dramatists from the Eighteenth Century to the Present. Ed. by Susan L. Cocalis and Ferrel Rose. Tübingen: Francke 1996. Pp. 35–52.

115 that had lasting consequences both positive and negative. In 1789, a poem in praise of Gottfried August Bürger, entitled “An den Dichter Bürger” [“To the Poet Bürger”] appeared anonymously in the Beobachter [Observer], a moral weekly published by Marianne Ehrmann, and her writer husband, Theophil Friedrich Ehrmann. The unnamed author was the young Elise Hahn, who was then living in Stuttgart with her family. The poem begins by praising Bürger’s literary talents: “O Bürger, Bürger, edler Mann,/Der Lieder singt, wie’s keiner kann!” [“O Bürger, Bürger, noble man/Who sings songs as no other can!”].8 The poem goes on to describe the speaker’s emotional response to reading Bürger’s poetry: Ach, als ich Deine Lieder las, Da wurde mir im Herzen baß, Hoch pochte meine Brust! Jetzt rannen Zähren allgemach – Schnell stahl sich aus der Seel’ ein Ach Voll süßer Lust.9 Ach, when I read your songs, I felt awe in my heart, My heart beat high! Now tears ran everywhere – From my soul escaped an Ach Full of sweet pleasure.

The poem depicts the act of reading poetry as a form of emotional exchange, in much the same way that late eighteenth-century theatrical performances were popularly depicted as acts of emotional communication between actor and audience. In the last four stanzas, it launches into a poetic autobiography of the speaker, who describes herself as a simple, softhearted Schwabenmädchen [Swabian girl] of modest means: Recht heitern Geist und frohen Muth, Ein sanftes Herz, gar fromm und gut, Hab’ ich, auch offnen Sinn. Ich bin nicht arm, doch auch nicht reich; Mein Stand ist meinen Gütern gleich: Sieh, wer ich bin! A cheerful spirit and happy mood, A soft heart, quite pious and good, And an open sense have I. 8

Elise Bürger: “An den Dichter Bürger”. In Bürgers Liebe. Dokumente zu Elise Hahns und G. A. Bürgers unglücklichem Versuch, eine Ehe zu führen. Ed. by Hermann Kinder. Frankfurt/M: Insel 1981. Pp. 12–13. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. 9 Quotations by Elise Bürger are reprinted here exactly as they appear in the sources, with original spellings intact.

116 I am not poor, but also not rich; My station is like to my goods: See who I am!

“An den Dichter Bürger” idealizes both sides of the relationship between author and reader, which it playfully compares to a love affair. It casts Bürger as the ideal German poet, with the simple, good-hearted Schwabenmädchen as the ideal audience. In this way, Bürger engages in the twofold gesture of promoting her own special qualities by promoting the genius of another. “An den Dichter Bürger” exploits the comparison between the author/reader relationship and a love affair to the fullest; it ends with the speaker’s offering herself to Gottfried August Bürger in marriage: Drum kommt Dir mal das Freien ein, So lass’s ein Schwabenmädchen seyn, Und wähle immer mich! So if you take a mind to court, So let it be a Swabian girl, And choose me!

Under the guise of a joke, the poem makes an unmistakable gesture of courtship, which apparently was taken quite seriously by its intended reader, Gottfried August Bürger. In so doing, it boldly reverses the terms of the traditional marriage proposal, with the young woman taking on the role of the pursuer. Like an eighteenth-century actress’s decision to take the stage, Elise Hahn’s publication of “An den Dichter Bürger” was a provocative and risky gesture with ambivalent consequences. It won Elise the undeniable benefit of establishing a solid connection with Bürger, but left her vulnerable to public scorn and ridicule. What happened after the publication of “An den Dichter Bürger” is well documented. With the aid of Marianne Ehrmann, Gottfried August Bürger tracked down Elise Hahn and initiated a courtship with her. The couple eventually married in 1790, but the marriage was by all accounts a catastrophe; Gottfried August found fault with Elise for neglecting her household duties in favor of social life and literary pursuits, and ultimately accused her of infidelity. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1792; Elise Bürger was forbidden to remarry and sought out the stage almost immediately as a means of sustaining herself. The question of who was responsible for the failure of this marriage has been discussed at length in numerous essays, monographs and literary biographies, and I will not attempt to reopen it here.10 What I would like to emphasize is the 10 See for example Friedrich W. Ebeling: Gottfried August Bürger und Elise Hahn: Eine Ehe-, Kunst- und Literaturleben. Leipzig: Wartig 1868; Karl Schiefer’s dissertation on Bürger, Elise Bürger: Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte (Dissertation Frankfurt/M 1923), focuses mainly on Elise Bürger’s marriage and theatrical career.

117 extent to which this event defined Bürger’s reception as an actress and writer, both during and after her lifetime. As the news of the divorce became known, Elise Bürger acquired a lasting reputation throughout German intellectual circles as a vicious adulteress and harpy, the classic bluestocking who neglects her husband in order to pursue her literary and social ambitions. Ten years later, while Bürger was performing on the stage in Hanover, she was made the subject of a devastating Schmähschrift [polemic], which was circulated anonymously under the title Schicksale einer theatralischen Abentheurerin auf der hannöverschen Bühne [Fates of a Theatrical Adventuress on the Hanover Stage]. Reiterating Bürger’s charges against his wife, the polemic described Elise as grasping, amoral, and vain, and made her indirectly responsible for her husband’s death.11 As late as 1814, the poet Helmina von Chézy, attending one of Bürger’s performances of tableaux vivants in Darmstadt, expressed surprise that Bürger could embody Dürer’s Madonna so convincingly; surely someone with a soul as stained as Elise Bürger’s could not convey the innocence and humility of the Blessed Virgin.12

Exclusion from Parnassus: Elise Bürger’s Gastspiel in Weimar As the attacks on her character multiplied, Bürger continued to pursue various strategies of self-promotion. In 1801, Bürger published a counter-polemic in her defense entitled Über meinen Aufenthalt in Hannover [On My Stay in Hanover], which refuted the charges made against her by the author of the Schicksale; the pamphlet included a dossier of positive reviews and endorsements by Bürger’s friends.13 At the same time, Bürger continued to employ the strategy of promoting herself by praising the accomplishments and status of others. As the cult of Weimar Classicism began to take root in German literary circles, Bürger began to cultivate an image of herself as a priestess of Weimar Classicism and German literature in general, a role she played enthusiastically in her declamatory concerts. After Schiller’s death in 1805, Bürger began to perform so-called “Schiller-Feier” [“Schiller Ceremonies”], elaborate performances that were part declamatory concert, part memorial service for the deceased poet. Bürger’s first Schiller-Feier was performed in the Gewandhaus in Dresden in December 1805; the genre caught on and became popular as the posthumous cult of Schiller developed in the nineteenth century.14 11

Anonymous: Schicksale einer theatralischen Abentheuererin bei der Hannoverschen Bühne. Altona 1801. 12 Helmina von Chézy: Unvergessenes. Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben von Helmina von Chézy. Von ihr selbst erzählt. Vol. 2. Leipzig: Brockhaus 1858. P. 92. 13 Elise Bürger: Über meinen Aufenthalt in Hannover gegen den ungenannten Verfasser der Schicksale einer theatralischen Abenteurerin. Altona 1801. 14 Elise Bürger: Lilien-Blätter und Zypressenzweige. Frankfurt/M: Heller und Rohm 1826. P. 197.

118 Bürger’s efforts to make herself over as a high priestess of Classicism are evident in the letters and texts that emerged out of Bürger’s only guest performance in Weimar in 1802. On 22 April, Bürger wrote to Goethe announcing her intention to travel to Weimar and asking for permission to perform a Gastspiel at the court theater there. Effusive in its flattery of Goethe, Bürger’s letter makes liberal use of classicizing tropes, such as the Olympian gods, the Muses, and the laurel wreath: Allverehrtester! Eine Schülerin Thaliens und Melpomenens, deren Nahmen Ihnen nicht ganz fremd sein kann, findet zufällig Gelegenheit den längst gehegten Wunsch, Weimar, den Sitz der Musen, und den Parnaß, wo Apollo Göthe! alles Schöne und Große schaft und würkt, früher als sie es erwartete zu sehen. Sie naht sich daher dem Lorbeerbekränzten und bittet im Voraus um gütige Aufnahme: “darf ich – so schreibt sie – mich auch dem Tempel nahen, den du der Kunst weihest? Darf ich meinen Kranz unter die Zahl der Kränze aufstellen welche dort den Kunstbeflissenen vergönnt sind? – ”15 Most honored one! A pupil of Thalia and Melpomene, whose name cannot be completely foreign to you, has by accident found occasion to see her long-held wish, Weimar, the seat of the muses, and the Parnassus, where Apollo Goethe! creates and effects everything beautiful and great, earlier than she expected. She therefore approaches the laurelcrowned one and asks in advance for a kind reception: “may I – so she writes – also approach the temple, which you dedicate to art? May I set up my wreath amongst the number of wreaths that have been granted to the artistically gifted there? –”

As in “An den Dichter Bürger”, Elise Bürger here places herself in the position of supplicant, audience, and praise-singer of the powerful male poet who is in a position to grant her favors. Once again, Bürger plays with contemporary models of authorial self-stylization; however, the letter to Goethe makes it apparent how much these models have changed since 1789. With Gottfried August Bürger, Elise mobilizes Empfindsamkeit [literature of sentimentality] models of reading and writing as emotional exchange; with Goethe, she engages the early nineteenth-century vogue for classical imagery while paying elaborate homage to the rapidly emerging Goethekult. Moreover, unlike “An den Dichter Bürger”, the 1802 letter to Goethe does not contain an appeal to the erotic dimension or a cheeky reference to Bürger’s Swabian roots. With an actress’s ability to switch roles at will, Bürger discards the mask of the Schwabenmädchen for that of the Iphigenie-like priestess of classical literature. Unfortunately for Elise Bürger, the letter did immediately not reach its intended reader; since Goethe was in Jena at the time of its arrival, the letter was first read by the impresario Franz Kirms, who granted Bürger’s wish and scheduled a performance of Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos, with Bürger in the lead role, for 15

Elise Bürger, qtd. in Rüppel: P. 231.

119 the third of May. The day after this performance, Goethe wrote to Schiller from Jena to ask about Bürger: “Was sagen Sie von Mme Bürger? deren Erscheinung ich wohl gern selbst mit abgewartet hätte” [“What do you say about Madame Bürger, whose appearance I would have liked to attend myself ?”].16 Schiller wrote back with a scathing dismissal not only of Bürger’s performance, but also of her personality, describing her as “eine armselige herz- und geistlose Comödiantin von der gemeinen Sorte, die durch ihre Ansprüche ganz unausstehlich wird” [“a miserable, heartless, and soulless actress of the common type, who has made herself quite unbearable through her demands”]. In addition, Franz Kirms, Christiane Vulpius, and even Goethe’s twelve-year-old son August wrote to Goethe describing Bürger’s performance as vulgar, incompetent, and in bad taste. Among the accusations leveled at Bürger were that her declamation was poor, and that her costume, which was pinned up at the knee, revealed her legs in an obscene and unattractive way. In a reply to Schiller, Goethe announced his intention to attend Elise Bürger’s concert in Jena, but only on the condition that he could leave early if necessary: “Auf alle Fälle werde ich mich in eine Ecke des Saals, nicht weit von der Thüre, setzen und nach Beschaffenheit der Umstände aushalten oder auf und davon gehen”.17 [“In any case, I will sit in a corner of the hall, not far from the door, and either endure it or leave on the spot, depending on the state of things”]. According to contemporary accounts, Goethe did in fact leave the performance early, after the performance of an ode by Klopstock. Undaunted by her poor reception in Weimar and by Goethe’s absence from her performance as Ariadne, Elise Bürger apparently tried to use this opportunity to make literary connections: on 8 May, Bürger sent Schiller several of her poems and the first act of a play, with a request for feedback. Schiller, however, did not respond, instead passing the poems on to Gottlieb Hufeland, with an apology for recommending such an unpleasant person to him. In Weimar, therefore, Bürger failed in her attempts to further her career both as an actress and a writer. Thanks to Schiller’s interventions, she was barred from any sort of interaction with Goethe, whose attention she had so desperately sought in her letter of 22 April. As with her gesture of courting Gottfried August Bürger through her poetry, Elise Bürger again received a mixed result; she achieved her goal of performing Ariadne in Weimar, but only at the cost of incurring the ridicule of Weimar society, which apparently closed ranks against her. Why did Bürger’s performance in Weimar inspire such scorn? It has often been argued that Bürger was rejected in Weimar because of her allegiance to the “natural” style of acting, which became popular in the 1760s and 1770s and was associated with actors such as Konrad Ackermann and Konrad Ekhof; as an actress in Altona, Bremen, and Hanover, Bürger would most likely have been 16 17

Goethe an Schiller. Di. 4 May 1802. FA 5: 248–249. Rüppel: “Was sagen Sie von Mme Bürger?”. P. 233.

120 trained in this style. Under Goethe’s direction, however, the Weimar court theater sought to distance itself from the “natural” school in favor of a more formal style of dramaturgy that, at least in theory, favored the “ideal” over the lifelike.18 However, it seems clear that contemporary discourses of femininity and theatricality played an equally important role in Bürger’s reception in Weimar. The scandalous cut of Bürger’s costume was singled out as an offense both against decency and aesthetics; the exposure of the female body onstage was interpreted as being just as dangerous to the performance as Bürger’s allegedly poor declamation and acting skills. In the same gesture, Bürger was seen as transgressing both sexual codes of conduct and the elevated aesthetic demands of the Weimar court theater. As Goethe’s gatekeeper and a particularly aggressive critic of actresses, Schiller played a particularly important role in Elise Bürger’s exclusion from Weimar society. Schiller’s earlier theoretical writings often engage in a merciless critique of actresses’sexuality; in the 1783 essay “Über das gegenwärtige teutsche Theater” [“On the Current German Theater”] for example, Schiller imaginatively depicts how “eine abgefeimte Italienische Iphigenie” [“a cunning Italian Iphigenia”] might destroy the theatrical illusion by means of a coy “Blick durch die Maske” [“look through the mask”] that returns the audience’s attention to her own body and sexuality.19 The actress’s body is thus seen as being at odds with the integrity of the performance, indeed the entire project of Enlightenment drama: Wir sollten ja die Neigungen des schönen Geschlechtes aus seiner Meisterin kennen; die hohe Elisabeth hätte eher eine Verletzung ihrer Majestät, als einen Zweifel gegen ihre Schönheit vergeben. – Sollte eine Aktrice philosophischer denken? Sollte diese – wenn der Fall der Aufopferung käme – mehr auf ihren Ruhm außerhalb der Kulissen, als hinter denselben bedacht sein? Ich zweifle gewaltig. So lang die Schlachtopfer der Wollust durch die Töchter der Wollust gespielt werden, so lang die Szenen des Jammers, der Furcht und des Schrekkens, mehr dazu dienen den schlanken Wuchs, die netten Füße, die Grazienwendungen der Spielerin zu Markte zu tragen [. . .] so lange mögen immer unsere Theaterschriftsteller der patriotischen Eitelkeit entsagen, Lehrer des Volks zu sein. We should know the tendencies of the fair sex from its mistress: the great Elizabeth would have sooner forgiven an insult to her majesty than a doubt regarding her beauty. – Would an actress think more philosophically? Would she – if it came to a sacrifice – be more concerned for her fame before the scenes, than behind them? I doubt it most forcefully. As long as the victims of lust are played by the daughters of lust, as long as the scenes of misery, of fear and of terror, serve more to bring to market the slender figure, the lovely feet, the graceful turns of the actress [. . .] so long may our playwrights forego the patriotic vanity of calling themselves teachers of the people. 18

See Ebeling. Pp. 173–174. Friedrich Schiller: Über das Gegenwärtige teutsche Theater. In: Werke und Briefe. Vol. 8. Frankfurt/M: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag 1992. Pp. 169–170. 19

121 In passages such as these, Schiller posits a fundamental dissonance between the aesthetic and moral agenda of Enlightenment theater and the material and social conditions of theater as a commercial enterprise. This is not a misogynist argument in and of itself; however, by using misogynist rhetoric to illustrate his point, Schiller endorses the position that actresses are little better than whores and that women’s sexuality is dangerous to the male viewer. In other writings, Schiller characterizes the values, lifestyle, and habits required of actresses as being completely at odds with the feminine ideal of the schöne Seele. For example, in 1784, Schiller urged his friend Reinwald to dissuade Sophie Albrecht from a career in the theater, as he believed that theatrical life would undermine her “beautiful soul”. Schiller writes, Nur, mein Bester, schreiben Sie ihr, über ihre Lieblingsidee zu siegen, und vom Theater zu gehen. Sie hat eine sehr gute Anlage zur Schauspielerin, das ist wahr, aber sie wird solche bei keiner solchen Truppe ausbilden; sie wird mit Gefahr ihres Herzens, ihres schönen und einzigen Herzens, auf dieser Bahn nicht einmal große Schritte thun – und thäte sie diese auch, schreiben Sie ihr, daß der gröste theatralische Ruhm, der Nahme einer Clairon und Yates, mit ihrem Herzen zu theuer bezahlt sein würde. Mir zu Gefallen mein theuerster, schreiben Sie ihr das mit allem Nachdruk, mit allem männlichen Ernst. Ich hab es schon gethan, und unsere vereinigte Bitten retten der Menschheit vielleicht eine schöne Seele, wenn wir sie auch um eine große Actrice bestehlen.20 Only, my dear friend, write to her that she should conquer her favorite idea, and leave the theater. She has a very good actress’s disposition, that is true, but she will not develop it in any such troupe; she will not take great steps on this path without risk to her heart, her beautiful and unique heart – and even if she were to do this, write to her that the greatest theatrical fame, the name of a Claron and a Yates, would be paid too dearly with her heart. As a favor to me, my dearest, write this to her with all urgency, with all manly earnestness. I have already done so, and our united pleas will perhaps rescue a beautiful soul for humanity, even if we rob it of a great actress.

In Schiller’s estimation, actresses cannot be beautiful souls, and a beautiful soul cannot have a career as an actress. Other eighteenth-century writers were open to the possibility that an actress could have a pure and virtuous heart; the Hamburg actress Charlotte Ackermann, for example, was widely received as a model of virtue and was lauded in numerous poems and essays after her death. Schiller, however, is inflexible in his rejection of actresses. He depicts the actress, whose job it is to dissimulate and impersonate others, as the opposite of the schöne Seele, whose every gesture and word are the direct expression of her inner grace and purity.21 Schiller writes off as morally dangerous a career in the theater, which for many eighteenth-century actresses served as a path to 20

Schiller: An Wilhelm Friedrich Hermann Reinwald. Mannheim. 5 May 1784. In: Werke und Briefe. Vol. 11. Frankfurt/M: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag 1992. Pp. 104–108. 21 Schiller: Über Anmut und Würde. In: Werke und Briefe. Vol. 8. Frankfurt/M: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag 1992. Pp. 370–371.

122 independence, education, and a writing life; in this way, he contributes to the increasing relegation of women to the private sphere around 1800. To be sure, the most successful actresses in this period were able to manipulate images of female virtue and immorality in their own favor. Despite Schiller’s efforts to keep her from the stage, Sophie Albrecht enjoyed a long and successful career as an actress and writer; specializing in melancholy and affecting roles, she capitalized on the very image of the schöne Seele that Schiller juxtaposed with that of the actress. Elise Bürger, however, never managed to shake her reputation as a precise opposite of the virtuous, graceful schöne Seele. If the negative image of Bürger as a bluestocking and an unfaithful wife was still circulating more than twenty years after the demise of her marriage, it almost certainly played a part in the failure of her attempt to ingratiate herself with Goethe’s circle in Weimar in 1802. Bürger’s reputation, her unapologetic theatrical ambitions and her frank efforts at self-promotion were clearly at odds with Schiller’s ideas about femininity; this is ironic indeed, given that Schiller’s “Würde der Frauen” [“Dignity of Women”] was a favorite highlight of Bürger’s declamatory performances. As a result, Bürger was successfully blocked from receiving the encouragement and feedback she sought from the influential authors in Weimar. Thus, despite her best efforts, Bürger’s position as a social outsider and a minor author of the “middle sphere” was reaffirmed by the Weimar circle. This did not prevent Bürger from finding moderate success as an actress and writer elsewhere during her lifetime, but it did help to ensure that Bürger’s literary contributions were not acknowledged by subsequent generations of literary historians, who tended to take Goethe and Schiller’s judgments at face value.

The Priestess Talks Back: Elise Bürger and The Cult of the Classical Bürger’s own response to her exclusion from Weimar is difficult to trace. After 1802, both Bürger’s declamatory concerts and her literary works continued to cast her as a fervent champion and priestess of German literature, particularly Schiller. For example, Bürger’s volume Lilien-Blätter und Zypressenzweige includes a cycle of four sonnets dedicated to the memory of four German poets, Klopstock, Gleim, Bürger (!), and Schiller. In the footnotes, Elise Bürger describes being inspired to write the four poems by a reading of Schlegel’s sonnets dedicated to classical Italian poets. Bürger’s four poems were published in Wieland’s Teutscher Merkur, and she often read them in her declamatory concerts, which often took place on one of the poets’ death-days.22 In the poem dedicated to Schiller, Bürger’s tone is hyper-laudatory, in the manner of her 1802 letter to Goethe:

22

Elise Bürger: Lilien-Blätter und Zypressenzweige. Pp. 197–201.

123 So manchen kranken Sinn ließ Er gesunden; Im reichen Kranz, den Er Sich Selbst gewunden, Sind alle Blumen wahre Poesie!23 Many a sick sense has he healed, In the rich garland that he wove himself, Are all the flowers true poesy!

The image of Schiller as a healer of sick sensibilities anticipates the distinction that Goethe, in his conversations with Eckermann, would later make between “sick” Romanticism and “healthy” Classicism.24 Here, Elise Bürger places Schiller and, by extension, herself, squarely on the side of healthy, classical, “wahre Poesie”, a category from which she had been roundly excluded in her one visit to Weimar. However, there are a number of discordant elements in this constellation. Bürger aligns herself with both classical and anti-classical strains in German literature; she lavishes equal praise on both Schiller and Gottfried August Bürger, whose poems were roundly attacked by Schiller in 1791 for being too prosaic and populist.25 Similar contradictions are at work in Elise Bürger’s other works. On the one hand, Bürger’s poems, plays, and prose works often play to the early nineteenth-century vogue for all things classical, making reference to gods, goddesses, Amor, ancient groves and laurel wreaths. However, Bürger’s works are not “classical” in the sense of embracing ideal aesthetics. Her approach to genres and themes is catholic in the extreme: her collections of poetry do not follow a top-down aesthetic agenda, but jumble classicizing poems together with poems in dialect and Gothic ballads in the style of Gottfried August Bürger’s “Lenore”. Bürger’s own literary works are characterized less by a commitment to “classical” aesthetics than by a willingness to experiment with a variety of genres and registers. Moreover, when Bürger reflects on her own works, she emphatically distances herself from the aesthetics of the ideal. In the introduction to her first volume of poetry, Bürger characterizes her poems as spontaneous products of emotion and imagination rather than attempts to emulate a Classicism that she interprets as rigid and masculinist. Bürger writes, Keines dieser Gedichte habe ich machen wollen; Wehmuth oder Scherz, Gefühl oder Laune, haben sie erzeugt, und es ist ihnen daher auch nie erlaubt, Ansprüche, welche gelehrten Männern misfallen müßten, zu machen; zwar sind unter den gütigen Unterzeichnern sehr gelehrte Männer, aber diese kennen mich und wissen, wie weit ich entfernt bin, mich über die Gränzen des beschränkten weiblichen Wissens hinüber wagen zu wollen. Gefühl, Fantasie und Sprache sind mir geworden, und 23

Ibid. P. 201. Johann Peter Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens. FA 12: 324 (2 April 1829). 25 Rüppel: “Was sagen Sie von Mme Bürger?”. P. 236. 24

124 mehr als was diese drei hervorbringen, will ich nicht aufstellen, und wie viel mehr wird noch erfordert, um klassisch werden zu können!26 I did not want to create any of these poems; melancholy or whimsy, feeling or mood gave rise to them, and therefore it is forbidden to place demands on them, which must needs displease learned men; indeed, there are very learned men among my benevolent subscribers, but these men know me and know how far removed I am from wanting to transgress the limits of circumscribed female knowledge. Feeling, imagination, and language have been mine, and I will not attempt more than what these three provide, and how much more is necessary in order to become classical!

Here, Bürger opposes her own intuitive, imaginative, feminine literary production to a model of Classicism that she associates with aesthetic idealism and “masculine” intellectual rigor. At the same time, there is a good deal of irony in the very eagerness with which Bürger plays down her own literary merits and appeals to the patience of “learned men”. Bürger appeals to the notion of Classicism while subtly linking it to a kind of intellectual machismo and pedantry that is opposed to the free play of “feeling, imagination, and language”. Bürger challenges “das Klassische” again in her 1814 short play, Die antike Statue aus Florenz [The Antique Statue from Florence], which satirizes the early nineteenth century’s investment in the “classical” as an aesthetic category as well as its fascination with classicizing phenomena such as copies of Greco-Roman art and artifacts, Attitüden, and tableaux vivants. Set in contemporary times, the play depicts the humiliation of a bourgeois aesthete, Ludwig, who has become obsessed with objects of “classical” beauty as a result of seeing a female attitude performer. His wife, Laura, complains bitterly of his obsession: “Denn seit dem Unglückstag, da findt er alles schlecht, / Was nicht antik, und klassisch will er alles haben” [“For since that unhappy day, he finds fault with all / That isn’t antique, and must have everything classical”].27 The play uses humor to expose Ludwig’s enthusiasm for the “classical” as nothing more than a kind of voyeuristic sexual fetishism, which causes him to neglect his wife and shut himself away with his beloved drawings and plaster casts of Greek and Roman statues. Laura, however, takes revenge by performing an Attitüde herself; she impersonates an antique statue so effectively that Ludwig believes himself to be a modern-day Pygmalion. On discovering that the statue is actually Laura, he renounces his

26 Elise Bürger: Gedichte von Elise Bürger geb. Hahn. Als erste Band ihrer Gedichte, Reise-Blätter, Kunst- und Lebens-Ansichten. Hamburg: Conrad Müller 1812. Pp. xvii–xviii. 27 Elise Bürger: Die antike Statue aus Florenz. Frankfurt 1814. P. 13. The play is reprinted in its entirety in Karin Wurst: Spurensicherung: Elise Bürgers Einakter Die antike Statue aus Florenz (1814) als Beispiel dramatischer Experimente an der Jahrhundertwende. In: Goethe Yearbook 8 (1996). Pp. 223–227.

125 obsession with “fremde Formen” [“foreign forms”] and is reconciled with his wife. Die antike Statue aus Florenz celebrates the triumph of a living female body over the brittle relics of antiquity; in this way, it argues against the rigid, unyielding aesthetic standards of “Classicism” in favor of a healthy appreciation of everyday beauty and emotion. The play identifies “das Klassische” as the sick party, which places arbitrary constraints on the free play of emotion, inspiration, and desire. Despite her many claims to be a priestess of Classicism, Bürger ultimately reveals herself to be one of its strongest critics. Against both the stringent demands of ideal aesthetics and the faddish mania for relics of antiquity, she posits an explicitly feminized aesthetic dedicated to experimentation, imagination, and laughter. Read in the larger context of Elise Bürger’s creative life, the anecdote of Bürger’s visit to Weimar thus reveals a great deal about the relationship between Classicism, theater, and models of femininity around 1800. Bürger’s experiences in Weimar expose the limits of women’s involvement with Classicism, as actresses, writers, and performers, around 1800, and the rhetorical hoops through which they had to jump in order to gain access to Goethe and his circle. At the same time, a reading of this story reveals the ways in which Weimar Classicism sought to define itself in terms of the exclusion of others, such as Gastspiel actors and women writers who did not conform to the mold of the schöne Seele. Finally, it foregrounds the way in which anecdotes, hearsay, and gossip influence the reception of female cultural producers and ensure their status as “minor” figures in both literary circles and literary history. It demonstrates the need for an alternative practice of critical inquiry that takes seriously the literary and cultural contributions of eighteenth-century actresses; moreover, it draws attention to the ambivalent status of both theater and women’s writing as sites of resistance to, as well as celebration of, the cult of the classical.

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Patricia Anne Simpson

Visions of the Nation: Goethe, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and Ernst Moritz Arndt* This chapter examines the influence of the neoclassical aesthetic on the representation of the nation in Goethe’s festival play Des Epimenides Erwachen (1815), Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s portrait of his wife, Susanne (1810/1813), and Ernst Moritz Arndt’s political poetry and pamphlets in support of German national sentiment. Of the three cultural figures, Goethe most definitively inscribes gender identity into his celebratory tableaux and opera to mark the victory of Prussia and its allies in the Wars of Liberation. More so than his contemporaries, Goethe organizes gender definitions around the ideals of neoclassical painting, in which male and female roles in war and high politics are clearly delineated. However, Goethe introduces the discourse of national identity to stabilize any shifts generated by the transfer of gendered attributes. Through reference to visual arts, he restores the ordering concept of the bourgeois family to postwar gender hierarchies.

In the Preface to Nationalism and Modernism, Anthony D. Smith recounts the story of the painter Benjamin West and his famous work, The Death of General Wolfe (ca. 1770). Sir Joshua Reynolds had warned West to “ ‘adopt the classic costume of antiquity, as much more becoming the inherent greatness of [. . .] [the] subject than the modern garb of war’ ”.1 West defended his rejection of the neoclassical style for this work as geographically inappropriate; the event having taken place “ ‘in a region of the world unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and at a period of time when no such nations, nor heroes in their costume, any longer existed’ ”.2 While Smith’s concern with this event is the provenance of nationalism, mine is the challenge to portray visually the early modern nation within the prevailing dominant neoclassical style. In this chapter, I argue that three major cultural figures of the early nineteenth century, Goethe, Schinkel, and Arndt, each sketches an image of the nation in response to the historical events of war. Of the three, Goethe’s work most subtly invokes gender and transferable gender traits to signify the modernity of the nation, yet still within the neoclassical aesthetic. In short, Goethe introduces the discourse of national character traits to stabilize the shifting gender boundaries upset by envisioning a woman warrior. * This essay is a shortened version of “The Gender of Nation”, chapter five of my book, The Erotics of War in German Romanticism (2006). I reprint parts of that work with the kind permission of Bucknell University Press. I would like to thank Eve Moore and Melissa Dabakis for their generous readings of earlier drafts of this piece. 1 Quoted in Anthony D. Smith: Nationalism and Modernism: A critical survey of recent theories of nations and nationalism. London and New York: Routledge 2003, first published 1998. P. x. 2 Ibid.

128 Goethe’s festival play, Des Epimenides Erwachen [Epimenides’ Awakening] explicitly responds to the specific historical event of war with a national allegory in a neoclassical frame. Prussia’s (a synecdoche for Germany’s) triumph over Napoleon through the Wars of Liberation (1813–1815) prompted a wide range of cultural artifacts, which were produced under the influence of a discourse of national identity that accompanies military victory. The allegorical festival play was commissioned in May 1814, when the theater director August Wilhelm Iffland asked Goethe to write something for a performance at the Berliner Theater to celebrate Napoleon’s defeat, marking the return of Friedrich Wilhelm III; Czar Alexander was also to be present.3 Goethe eventually did send Iffland a piece in four “decorations”, a series of tableaux with music in the style of Baroque opera. The work was not actually performed in Berlin until 1815, after the Congress of Vienna. At that point, any hope of unity for the German states had been quashed.4 This text and its variants provide an insight in Goethe’s evolving concept of gender, particularly in the context of an amplified sense of German national feeling. This play showcases Goethe’s attempt to accommodate the rising tide of national victory, but contain it within the preferred neoclassical frame.5 The result is a hybrid: German war, represented through tableaux and opera, performed before a Berlin audience (and eventually in Weimar as well), but through the lens of the awakened figure of Greek mythology, Epimenides. This generic hybrid in turn generates a figure of a woman warrior who morphs into an allegory of unity.6

3

This request came via Hofrat Franz Kirms, Goethe’s assistant at the Weimar Theater. For further details, see MA 9: 1294ff. 4 The play’s production history is full of ups and downs. Goethe first hesitated to take on the project with such short notice. Then, for reasons that have never been completely clear, the performance was delayed. Goethe’s well-known support of Napoleon and tensions with Berlin seem sufficient enough to explain any the hesitation. After the passing of the initial historical occasion, another presented itself upon the King’s return from the Congress of Vienna, and the first performance was somewhat marred by Napoleon’s escape from Elba. These notwithstanding, it premiered in Berlin. Goethe altered the historical significance of the play for its Weimar performance, the house of Saxony-Weimar displacing the kings who defeated Napoleon. For further information on the play’s inception and realization, see MA 9: 1160f. 5 Goethe had to educate his audience through program notes, however. Briefly, according to Goethe’s notes: Epimenides, son of a nymph, is born on Crete where he shepherds his father’s flocks. While searching for a lost sheep, he wanders into a cave and falls into a forty-year sleep. Upon awakening, he finds his family and is taken back into the fold of the community. This miraculous slumber signifies his special status; he is protected and loved by the gods. Goethe had to dispel any notion that Epimenides could be a reference to the Prussian King. Even this gesture indicates an uncomfortable relationship between the theater and history: aesthetic constructs and the historical figures they resemble. 6 Unity represents the alliance of Prussia, Russia, and Austria against Napoleon, not the unity of the German states.

129 Epimenides’Awakening has traditionally been read as Goethe’s public penance for his support of Napoleon and his awakening to national feeling.7 However, in light of the growing body of scholarship on the complexity of Goethe’s gendered constructs, I want to reread this play as a specular moment in which the “scene” on the Berlin stage opens onto national history. The visual and aesthetic attributes hitherto associated with gender identity begin to acquire national signatures. This play represents the inscription of gendered attributes into the service of nation. Goethe is nothing if not complex. He is, for example, no friend of extreme German nationalists. For this reason, I go beyond Goethe’s play. I frame the reading of Epimenides on one side by Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s portrait of his pregnant wife, Susanne (ca. 1810–1813), and on the other with Ernst Moritz Arndt’s poem “Des Deutschen Vaterland” [“The German’s Fatherland”] (1813). These are both precursor texts, though neither exerts any direct influence on Goethe’s work. Schinkel would collaborate with Goethe later on the stage set for the performance of Iphigenie auf Tauris that opened the Schauspielhaus in 1821. But as an architect and Prussian official, he is directly involved in translating a vision of nation into brick and buildings. Arndt represents another expression of loyalty to the idea of nation. Goethe, in his cosmopolitan ways, has little to say about patriots. Yet he participates in the larger context of national discourse, even if reluctantly or unconsciously, in Fredric Jameson’s sense of the term in the classic The Political Unconscious. Goethe offers, however, a more complex and differentiated treatment of gender. In each work, Goethe, Schinkel, and Arndt deploy gender in ways that ultimately reassert the bourgeois sphere as the primary signifier of postwar political stability.8 Goethe, however, destabilizes this gender model while maintaining a contiguous relationship to antiquity’s patient and persistent aesthetic.

7

See for example Marinus Pütz: Goethes “Des Epimenides Erwachen” – politisch betrachtet. In: Goethe Jahrbuch 113 (1996). Pp. 287–290, here p. 289; see his Anmerkung 2 for further references. See also a brief discussion in Gerhard Kaiser: Wandrer und Idylle: Goethe und die Phänomenologie der Natur in der deutschen Dichtung von Geßner bis Gottfried Keller. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1977. My analysis is also informed by the chapter on Goethe in: Klaus F. Gille: Zwischen Kulturrevolution und Nationalliteratur. Gesammelte Aufsätze zu Goethe und seiner Zeit. Ed. by Hannelore Scholz. Intro. by Karl Robert Mandelkow. Berlin: Trafo Verlag 1998. Pp. 133ff., in which he discusses Goethe and the national movement. Foremost, he treats the ways Goethe manages to dehistoricize the material and complicate a naïve patriotism through the perspective on the spectacle provided by Epimenides. He notes the pedagogical imperative of antiquity, at this point in contemporary events somewhat residual pedagogy, in the conclusion of the essay. 8 See George Mosse: The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996. P. 7. The role of the visual, middle-class society, and the affiliation between the nation and modern masculinity is crucial to the discussion.

130 Art Goes to War The triangulation of war, gender, and the visual arts in the early nineteenth century reveals a striking shift in aesthetic practices. Goethe’s extensive private collection exhibits his own preference for neoclassical art, and it is perhaps in this realm of visual culture that the difference between Classicism and Romanticism can be safely and unambiguously underscored.9 In his multiple roles as diplomat, writer, painter, and collector, Goethe plays a pivotal part in managing the visual incarnations of German history after the Wars of Liberation. For him, art can serve as a counterpoint to the ravages of war.10 He also had visible agendas in his support of the visual arts. Goethe was in charge of acquisitions, part of his responsibility as head of the Weimar library: this included overseeing the art collections.11

9

See Beate Allert: Goethe and the Visual Arts. In: The Cambridge Companion to Goethe. Ed. by Lesley Sharpe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002. Pp. 193–206, esp. p. 202 on the Propyläen art contests Goethe was involved in judging. 10 For example, he purports to having recovered from enlisting conscripts during the day by writing Iphigenie at night. For more on this type of resonance between life and work, see Walter Benjamin: Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, 12 vols. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp Verlag 1980 ff. II.2 and II.3, for an essay on Goethe in which he draws compelling conclusions about Goethe’s relationship to tragedy and revolution as unfolded in this encyclopedia article from the late 1920s. This critical piece was solicited by the Neue Große Russische Enzyklopädie, limited to three hundred lines “[. . .] vom Standpunkt der marxistischen Doktrin” [“(. . .) from the viewpoint of Marxist doctrine”] (Benjamin, II/3, p. 1465), and ultimately rejected/revised beyond recognition for publication in 1929. Here Benjamin specifies the role of power and violence in Goethe’s life and aesthetics. In it, Benjamin makes connections between Goethe’s political activity and his writing that have since become critical commonplaces. His vocabulary, however, one that attempts to articulate the biographical with the bibliographical aspects of Goethe and his time, opens a way out of the critical impasse in which the life and work are used in a mutually explanatory function. Specifically with regard to Iphigenie, Benjamin notes: “Wenn [Friedrich Wilhelm] Riemer aus dem Jahre 1779 erzählt, wie Goethe anderthalb Monate lang das Herzogtum durchstreift, am Tage die Landstraßen besichtigt, in den Amtshäusern die junge Mannschaft zum Kriegsdienst auserlesen, abends und nachts in den kleinen Gasthäusern gerastet und an seiner Iphigenie gearbeitet habe, so gibt er eine Miniatur dieser ganzen kritischen, vielfach bedrohten Goetheschen Existenz” [“When (Friedrich Wilhelm) Riemer reports on the year 1779, he tells about how Goethe roamed the duchy for a month and a half, by day inspecting the country roads, selecting in the offices a unit of young men for military service, and by night Goethe would rest in the small inns and work on his Iphigenie; he gives us a glimpse of this entire critical, multiply endangered Goethean existence”] (II/2). P. 712. 11 See Hermann Mildenberger: Goethes italienisches Museum. In: Geheimster Wohnsitz. Goethes italienisches Museum. Im Blickfeld der Goethezeit III. Ed. by Hermann Mildenberger et al. Berlin: G ⫹ H Verlag 1999. P. 9. Mildenberger points out that Goethe shared this position with Christian Gottlob Voigt beginning in 1797. They were also in charge of the art collections.

131 Goethe’s motivation for sponsoring the Weimarer Preisaufgaben12 included not only fostering his own neoclassical taste, but also scouting artists who would then quite literally leave their mark on the vision of court life through commissioned work.13 Painting at the time is more than decorative; it is also instructive, erotic, and economic. The visual arts in general exceeded the role of providing aesthetic pleasure or possibly even erotic inspiration: art was exemplary, and paintings were consciously commissioned to illustrate appropriate gender models as well. Goethe’s selections reveal a predisposition toward recuperating classical themes around war and revising them for his own present time. He recognizes and fosters the ability of the visual arts to allegorize the myths and events of history for essentially private purposes. In other words, paintings inform not only aesthetic judgment but also ethical behavior, specifically gendered behavior. Two prominent artists whom Goethe knew and admired were Angelika Kauffmann (1741–1807) and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751–1829), though Goethe would break with the latter for reasons that remain largely speculative.14 Before I proceed with a closer look at Goethe’s play, the Schinkel painting, and the Arndt poem, I want to contextualize that discussion with reference to three paintings from the late eighteenth century because they treat the role of art, war, and gender in the representation of antiquity. Kauffmann’s works display models of womanhood: Julia, die Gattin des Pompeius, fällt in Ohnmacht [Julia, Pompey’s Wife, Faints] (Figure 1) and Cornelia, die Mutter der Gracchen [Cornelia, the Mother of the Gracchen]15 (Figure 2). In the Julia painting of 1785, the woman who collapses at the sight of her husband’s bloody clothes, gives birth, and dies,

12

See Hermann Mildenberger: Verzweigte Wege von Klaassizismus und Romanatik. In: Hermann Mildenberger et al. Aquarelle und Zeichnungen. Im Blickfeld der Goethezeit I. Berlin: G ⫹ H Verlag 1997. Pp. 9–32. Mildenberger focuses on the pedagogical impetus in Goethe’s motivation for the prize competition, conceived in part as a corrective to contemporary taste, though he also highlights Goethe’s recognition of the talents of Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich. 13 See Rolf Bothe: Wilhelm Tischbein und die klassizistische Malerei im Weimarer Schloß. In: Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein. Hektor wirft Paris seine Weichlichkeit vor und mahnt ihn, in den Kampf zu ziehen. Ed. by Kulturstiftung der Länder/Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen. Weimar/Berlin 2003. Pp. 6–18, here p. 12. 14 See Rolf Bothe: Wilhelm Tischbein und die klassizistische Malerei im Weimarer Schloß. In: Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein. Hektor wirft Paris seine Weichlichkeit vor und mahnt ihn, in den Kampf zu ziehen. Ed. by Kulturstiftung der Länder/Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen. Weimar/Berlin 2003. Pp. 6–18, here p. 11f. 15 These aesthetic models of virtuous females from Roman history are inspired by Valerius Maximus. Queen Caroline of Sicily, wife of King Ferdinand IV, daughter of the Emperor Franz I and Maria Theresia, commissioned Kauffmann to paint these two scenes. The first painting is alternately called Julia, die Gemahlin des Pompejus, erfährt den vermeintlichen Tod ihres Gatten or Pompey’s Wife Julia Hears the News of Her Husband’s Reputed Death.

132

Figure 1. Julia, die Gattin des Pompeius, fällt in Ohnmacht [Julia, Pompey’s Wife, Faints]. Angelika Kauffmann. 1785. Reprinted courtesy of the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen.

epitomizes the role of a political wife. In the Cornelia work, a woman who considers her sons as her most valuable possession exemplifies the virtuous mother. These two paintings are offset by male virtue and its counterpart in Wilhelm Tischbein’s Hektor wirft Paris seine Weichlichkeit vor und mahnt ihn, in den Kampf zu ziehen [Hektor Admonishes Paris for His Weakness and Warns Him to Join the Battle] (Figure 3). Here the painter takes a moment of inspiration from the sixth song of Homer’s Iliad to portray the courage and virility of one warrior over the effeminate sexual addiction of his brother. A closer look at the nexus of these paintings demonstrates the degree to which contemporary politics enters into the allegorical deployment of antiquity in the realm of the aesthetic in order to regulate gendered virtues. The iconography of gender, shaped by Greek and Roman models, is subject to shift during a time of war in response to a fluctuating relationship between individuals and their nation. In other words, the aesthetic exemplarity of neoclassical virtue becomes the political tool for defining the nation at war.

133

Figure 2. Cornelia, die Mutter der Gracchen [Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchen]. Angelika Kauffmann. 1785. Reprinted courtesy of the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen.

Gendered Virtues: Wife, Mother, Warrior Kauffmann’s life and work are well known, and her role as a late eighteenthcentury woman artist, with emphasis on both words, well documented. Still, many art historians minimize the importance of her contributions precisely because of her gender. Hermann Mildenberger raises the interesting possibility that Kauffmann consciously performs her role as female artist: that her gender performance is congruent with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, namely that gendered behavior is learned and enacted.16 As he writes of her international fame in his catalogue biography: Ein besonderes Element prägte Angelika Kauffmanns beruflichen Werdegang: Sie war klug genug, zu einer Zeit, die den Kult graziöser Weiblichkeit zur eleganten Verpflichtung machte, als eine Inkarnation dieses modischen Ideals selbst die Bühne 16

Judith Butler: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge 1990; 1999. P. xiv is especially important, for here Butler discusses her changing response to performativity.

134

Figure 3. Hektor wirft Paris seine Weichlichkeit vor und mahnt ihn, in den Kampf zu ziehen [Hektor Admonishes Paris for His Weakness and Warns Him to Join the Battle]. Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein. 1786. Reprinted courtesy of the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen. zu betreten. Ihre persönliche Ausstrahlung, ihre Inszenierung im gesellig-offiziösen Rahmen dienten dem Ruhm als Malerin, vervielfachten ihn, waren Garanten einer jahrzehntelang erfolgreich betriebenen “public relations” – Strategie.17 A special element characterized Angelika Kauffmann’s professional development: At a time that made the cult of gracious femininity obligatory, she was intelligent enough to come on stage as an incarnation of this fashionable ideal itself. Her personal charisma, her staging in social, semi-official contexts served her fame as a painter, greatly increased it, were guarantors of a “public relations” strategy she pursued for decades.

Mildenberger locates Kauffmann in a pantheon of other influential women of the time, mentions the Empress Maria Theresia and Catherine the Great to reference 17 Hermann Mildenberger: Angelika Kauffmann. In: Angelika Kauffmann. Berlin: G ⫹ H Verlag 1996. P. 9. Throughout this essay, Mildenberger refutes Bettina Baumgärtel’s work on Kauffmann, including assertions about the quality of Kauffmann’s work, comparisons with Jacques-Louis David, and her claim, with regard to Julia, about fainting as a female act of heroism. My point here is not so much to engage in detailed art historical debates,

135 political power,18 but it is possible to interpret Kauffmann’s feminine posturing as a counterpart to the excessive and exclusive masculinity associated with classical art. Kauffmann’s behavior supports Butler’s claim that gender is a kind of performance. Her exemplary women, and by extension her work, exist in an asymmetrical relationship to masculine portrayals of power, republican passions, and warrior virtues.19 It becomes clear that the self-consciousness about gender roles affects not only behavior of the artist, but the work as well. Kauffmann painted portraits, allegories (as portraits), and a range of perhaps predictable historical scenes, but she often gave her themes a female-specific focus. Michael Levey, in his Rococo to Revolution, disparages Kauffmann’s contributions to the neoclassical tradition, criticizes her portraits with a “tendency to petrify” and suggests that “[. . .] she was perhaps more successful in touching the heart”.20 The reliance of the neoclassical movement on moral force is legible in Kauffmann’s two Roman paintings.21 Her models of ideal women, the wife whose despair at the thought of her husband’s death causes her own, and the mother, who treasures her sons, demonstrate the extent to which this moral force is gendered. These gender roles inform the scholarly reception of the work; depictions of the male sphere of political violence and historical force exceed any private female experience on canvas. The effective exclusion of the female experience is not lost on Kauffmann’s contemporaries. Not accidentally, Kauffmann illustrated scenes from Goethe’s play Iphigenie auf Tauris; she would have been familiar with the moral force of Goethe’s humanist heroine, and her call for a female role in the arts. As in Goethe’s play, the feminine assumes a moral position of influence vis-à-vis male politics. In other words, Goethe and Kauffmann both theorize a political place for women through their ability to persuade certain powerful men and perhaps the public. As Mildenberger points out, Julia married Pompey as a result of Caesar’s political manipulations.22 Yet she loved her husband, who was much older, and was in fact able to broker an understanding between the two men: she refused to settle but to highlight the negative reception of certain female-specific role models in painting because of gender. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. 18 See Mildenberger: Angelika Kauffmann. Bemerkungen zum Stil. Pp. 9–10. 19 For an overview of the dominant trends in early nineteenth-century painting, see Thomas Crow: Patriotism and Virtue: David to the Young Ingres. In: Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History. Ed. by Thomas Crow, Brian Lukacher, et al. London: Thames and Hudson 2002, 2nd edition. Pp. 18–54. 20 Michael Levey: Rococo to Revolution: Major Trends in Eighteenth-Century Painting. London: Thames and Hudson 1965 and 1977; reprinted 1995. P. 183. 21 Ibid. P. 186. There Levey writes: “But the specific eighteenth-century recipe was to fuse nature and antiquity to produce a type of art which should compel attention by its moral force”. 22 Mildenberger: Cornelia und Julia als Vorbilder. Zur ikonographischen Deutung der Pendants von Angelika Kauffmann. P. 21.

136 for the position of political pawn which her father had chosen for her. With her death, the political rivalry resumed. The Cornelia image also carries a similar political message. Popular during the time of the French Revolution, the woman who prizes her sons over the vanity of jewels eventually raises them as republican activists. It is worth remembering here that French women who supported the revolutionary cause tossed their jewels into piles, willingly sacrificing their wealth to their political convictions. The sacrifice of jewels as a political act is specific to gendered morality, and I return to this point in my reading of Epimenides. Kauffmann’s paintings, and a certain tradition of reading them, intentionally elevate the realm of the private into the public eye of history. She also shares with Goethe certain concerns about the role of the feminine in the overwhelmingly male political sphere. Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein also transmits the moral message of the neoclassical tradition, though with different results. On Goethe’s Italian journey, he met and befriended Tischbein in Rome. Tischbein, along with Kauffmann, painted Goethe. While Tischbein’s Goethe in the Roman Countryside has become an icon, Goethe questioned the likeness between himself and Kauffmann’s vision of him (though he liked the portrait). Hektor wirft Paris seine Weichlichkeit vor stems from the year 1786.23 Tischbein hoped to sell the painting to Duke Ernst II of Saxony-Gotha, from whom he received a stipend in part thanks to Goethe’s intervention. Angelika Kauffmann had painted the theme in 1775: Hektor mahnt Paris, in den Kampf zu ziehen [Hektor Warns Paris to Join the Battle].24 Tischbein’s version invites comparisons to her work, but not only because they choose the same theme. The moral force in each is gender-specific. Tischbein, however, invites comparison to the most prominent and revolutionary representative of the neoclassical tradition: Jacques-Louis David. Goethe is among the first to erect a comparison between Tischbein’s piece and David’s Oath of the Horatii.25 David’s painting, according to Levey, “[. . .] united the generations and the nations, and was admired by those whom by implication it attacked”.26 He continues to describe the content of this painting more explicitly: But the Horatii, presented with powerful realism, are fighting for Rome, putting the state before all personal considerations; they are men in a world without gods, trusting in their swords to preserve the city from tyranny. It is an exciting prospect, a call to arms in a just cause by ordinary citizens: themselves brothers, amid their family, equals about to die for liberty.27 23 The Weimar court acquired several paintings by Wilhelm’s cousin, Johann Friedrich August, and until recently only a self-portrait August could be counted among the museum’s collection. See Rolf Bothe: Wilhelm Tischbein und die klassizistische Malerei im Weimarer Schloß. P. 17. 24 Bothe: Wilhelm Tischbein. P. 17. 25 Ibid. Mildenberger. P. 19. 26 Levey: Rococo to Revolution. P. 190. 27 Ibid. Pp. 190–191.

137 Levey concludes the summary with a note that the painting ominously marginalizes: the deaths “[. . .] culminate in the high Roman virtue of a brother killing his sister for loving the Republic’s enemy”.28 The story would have been familiar to David’s audience. It was Tischbein, upon being invited into David’s studio to view the painting, who commented on the seriousness of the young men, but also noted the stress of the bent woman off to the side: “ ‘If you develop the group of women, like the men, then it will be considered among the most excellent paintings and no one will contest its rank’ ”.29 David answered that he was finished with the painting, and no amount of protest from Tischbein could sway him. Still, Tischbein remains attuned to the suffering, the female-specific loss, inspired by the young men’s sacrifice of themselves to their political cause. Whether his comment pertains solely to style or technique, he still attends to the plight of the figure about to lose her young husband. In the visible and the implied legend, women sacrifice and are sacrificed through love and blood. The young wife, anticipating mourning, is no less heroic in her sacrifice than the young men, about to die for liberty, intoxicated by their own zeal. The reception weights these roles differently, putting art history in alignment with history. This message is implicit in Tischbein’s daring critique of David’s work. His moral register is open both to the suffering of men and women in war.30 His comment on the role of women, however confined to the domestic sphere and the privacy of suffering, is rejected by David, who is steeped in his own pictorial, masculine fervor. And David’s politics and aesthetics dominate not only the aesthetic tradition of the late eighteenth century, but they shape subsequent readings of the work. The rise of masculine nationalism throughout the nineteenth century (and beyond) parallels the articulation of nation with masculinity. Smith, in exploring the relationship between gender and nationalism and recent scholarship to that point, writes: In an age of revolutionary nationalism, after all, such neo-classic images as David’s painting of the Oath of the Horatii (1784), West’s The Death of Wolfe (1770) and Fuseli’s Oath of the Rütli (1779) focus explicitly on the traditional masculine attributes of energy, force and duty.31 28

Ibid. P. 191. Quoted in Hermann Mildenberger: Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein. Hektor wirft Paris seine Weichlichkeit vor. Ein Konkurrenzbild zu Jacques-Louis David von 1786 und die Folgen. In: Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein. Hektor wirft Paris seine Weichlichkeit vor und mahnt ihn, in den Kampf zu ziehen. Ed. by Kulturstiftung der Länder/Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen. Weimar/Berlin 2003. Pp. 19–51, here p. 22. 30 It is worth noting that a painting attributed to the School of David (Hector Admonishing Paris and Helen) clearly indicts both figures. In: Thomas E. Crow: Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris. New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1985. Pp. 246–247. 31 Anthony D. Smith: Nationalism and Modernism. London and New York: Routledge 1998. P. 208. 29

138 Smith references the copy of many art catalogs, on which he bases his observations.32 Here, however, I want to recover Tischbein’s voice for a moment and read his work in the context of that implicit critique: why not fully articulate the role of women? If we temporarily and artificially slow down the juggernaut of nineteenth- and twentieth-century nationalisms, it is possible to glimpse the culture of masculine national and political feeling that accommodates the feminine in differentiated and subtle ways, even though these involve the containment of the erotic in the domestic. The paintings of women and children Peter Paret discusses in his work on art and military history are the modern incarnations of these neoclassical gender models.33 Tensions emerge between advocates of Neoclassicism and those who would seek new forms to represent the nation. For art provides, among other things, moral models. Tischbein’s Hektor wirft Paris seine Weichlichkeit vor is no less a model of ethical masculinity than Kauffmann’s Julia and Cornelia are incarnations of feminine virtue. The gazes locked between brothers, Hektor dominates the scene. Paris, pale, lovely in profile, and undefined, rests his weapon at his side. Hektor, buff and militarized, gestures at the battle, the index of manly duty. Hektor’s nipples are covered in metal, while Paris’ exposed one is delicate. Paris’ weapon lays idle on the floor, and a red cloth drapes his quiver. The beautiful Helena, surrounded by attendants, drops the threads of her woman’s work, which Tischbein references to emphasize the differences in male and female attributes. The latter image also conventionally invokes the visual attributes of the Fates in contemporary painting. Tischbein connects debilitating desire with gendered destiny in this image. Still, he makes a place for Helena, for her downcast gaze, pulled toward Paris. In other words, Tischbein does not pass judgment in this painting. He neither condemns nor vaunts her, but tacitly acknowledges her sacrifice by representing the spilled tools of her gendered waiting. Any moral outrage this scene inspires must be directed at Paris, who shirks his duty to fight in a war his own actions have caused. The models of gender available in the classical art and literature of Greek and Rome inform the contemporary interpretation of culture in the Age of Goethe, struggling to balance the weight of the neoclassical and the modern. As in the work of David, the revolutionary impulse comes to the foreground. Goethe’s own work, Iphigenie auf Tauris, for example, is a work of modernity 32 Smith: Nationalism and Modernism. Further, he cites George Mosse’s work on the roots of masculinized nationalism in the bourgeois family and its morality, acknowledging the Greek ideal of physical beauty in anticipation of a Nazi aesthetic. P. 209. 33 See Peter Paret: Witnesses to Life. Princeton: Advanced Studies Institute 1996. Also significant is Smith’s discussion in his preface of Benjamin West’s painting The Death of General Wolfe (1770), a reference to which opens this chapter. Smith writes: “Nationalism, in West’s understanding, is not the exclusive property of the ancients, nor is heroic selfsacrifice for one’s country”. See Smith: Nationalism and Modernism. P. x.

139 as G. W. F. Hegel points out in his Lectures on the Aesthetic because Goethe revises the role of the gods, who do not intervene overly much in the unfolding of events, in order to elevate human reason. For all its dramatic flaws, that play still occupies a central place in the moral canon of German literature.34 During the height of the neoclassical trend, the representation of war, family, and gender undergoes a similar transition from the pre-modern to the post-Enlightenment imperative of human reason. Art endorses a masculinity that heeds the call to arms.

Pregnancy and Paternity: Karl Friedrich Schinkel The Napoleonic wars began in 1796, and a generation of German intellectuals divided along political lines. While many supported the reforms Napoleon would bring – Hegel would report enthusiastically in the Bamberger Zeitung about Napoleon’s advances – others would condemn the occupation of German states as colonialism, and the foremost example of this philosophically informed position remains J. G. Fichte and his Reden an die deutsche Nation [Addresses to the German Nation] – published, subject to censorship, in 1807. In Berlin, which initially suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of Napoleon’s army, dominant sympathies lay with Prussia. Schinkel, to a great extent responsible for the imperial, neoclassical look of Berlin, is no exception. Born in 1781, Schinkel moved to Berlin in 1794. There he attended Gymnasium, began to draw and paint landscapes, and was inspired to become an architect. He studied at a school of architecture, and became acquainted with many contemporary artists, writers, and philosophers. He met the aesthetic philosopher Karl W. F. Solger, who introduced him to the work of Schelling. As Michael Snodin points out, Schinkel also read Fichte.35 In 1802, Schinkel designed the scenery for Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris. In the course of his early career, he traveled to Italy and France, and would later spend time in England. In Berlin, he knew members of the romantic circle (Achim and Bettina von Arnim, among others), but also worked closely with other artists, such as the sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow. Artists in Berlin at the time generated their own cultural genealogy through this kind of cooperation. Schinkel himself, best known as an architect, worked in a variety of media, from painting and drawing to engravings. This range enabled him to fulfill his civic duties. In 1810, he was appointed Senior Assessor of Public Works, and was officially responsible for overseeing the design of public buildings.36 Among 34

See Theodor Adorno: On the Classicism of Goethe’s Iphigenie. In: Notes to Literature. Trans. by Shierry Weber Nicholsen. New York: Columbia University Press 1992. Vol. 2. Pp. 153–170. 35 For a detailed chronology of Schinkel’s life, see Michael Snodin: Karl Friedrich Schinkel. A Universal Man. Ed. by Michael Snodin. New Haven: Yale University Press 1991 (in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum). P. 208ff. 36 See Snodin: Karl Friedrich Schinkel. P. 209.

140 his most prominent designs are the Neue Wache, Schauspielhaus, the Altes Museum, not least, the mausoleum for the beloved Queen Luise, who died in 1810. In his work, Schinkel masterfully combines the classical with the contemporary, art and industry, personal and public visions. His long career in public service would bring him into contact with the most significant political and cultural figures of his time. His encompassing approach to the practical, technical, as well as to the aesthetic, elements of his work, leaves his signature on the public management of memory, specifically with regard to the Wars of Liberation. Here, too, the domestic sphere plays a decisive role in the representation of the nation. In the portrait of Susanne (née Berger) (Figure 4), whom he married in 1809, Schinkel articulates his own hope for the future of his family with the architectural vision of a nation. Schinkel is working with a certain iconographic tradition: the portraiture of women, usually in advanced stages of pregnancy, painted for posterity, given the high likelihood of death in childbirth. Schinkel varies this theme. The young wife, in the early stages of pregnancy, is inscribed as a signifier of hope to align with the birth of a nation, or at least, of national feeling. Marie Ursula Riemann-Reyher writes: “radiating stillness and confidence, she looks the very embodiment of hope”.37 There are citations to other traditions in this portrait as well: the iconography of Gothic madonnas, the “German” attributes of the architecture, combined with personal touches (the “S” in the mouchettes, the hearts in the balustrade, as pointed out by Riemann-Reyher). What was his intention in connecting the future of the fatherland to the body of a pregnant woman?38 Schinkel’s Susanne, her hand poised below her breasts in the signifier of pregnancy, symbolizes the hope of the individual in a nationalizing society in a sexspecific way. As Matthew Craske observes, Susanne is a “symbol of generative femininity posed in the gothic porch before the cloister of some great Cathedral”.39 Unlike Riemann-Reyher, he notes the pessimism of the drawing, denoted by the shadow. He does, however, locate Schinkel in a context of contemporaries, like Runge; family portraits attest that “desire to cherish and support his family was [the male artist’s] patriarchal contribution to other grand process of national renewal”.40 Schinkel may be referring to a portrait of Queen Luise from 1798 37

Ibid. P. 102. Riemann-Reyher concludes: “Perhaps Schinkel was combining the major emotional upheaval in his personal life and the fate of the Fatherland into a single image commemorating those three years”. In: Snodin: Karl Friedrich Schinkel. P. 102. My translation. 39 Matthew Craske: Art in Europe 1700–1830. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997. P. 70. 40 Craske correctly identifies the link between “Fatherhood” and “Fatherland”: “the private search of the artist for domestic harmony was intimately linked with his public role as defender of the national identity”. Craske: Art in Europe. P. 70. Neither Riemann-Reyher nor Craske establishes the female-specific context of this drawing, and I believe a look at the work of Schinkel’s contemporaries reveals a larger movement away from a concept of identity grounded in nature to one specific to the cultural community established by the idea, not the fact, of a nation. 38

141

Figure 4. Susanne. Karl Friedrich Schinkel. 1810/13. Photo: Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, NY.

142 (by Heinrich Dähling, Hanover: Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Landesgalerie). In this portrait by the artist appointed to chronicle the Queen’s life, she pauses on walk, simply attired and unadorned.41 The natural background serves to underplay, if not erase, her political stature, perhaps to emphasize her natural state of approaching motherhood. Another drawing by Schinkel’s contemporary reinforces this idea of pregnancy as a state of nature. Ludwig Buchhorn (1770–1856) produced a pencil drawing, painted with watercolors, of the artist Karl Friedrich Hampe’s pregnant wife.42 The painter’s wife strikes precisely the same pose as that of Susanne in Schinkel’s portrait. She wears a long shawl, posed in a field, with a bit of ground cover visible in the foreground, though her hands are folded. Schinkel’s work falls between the earlier watercolor of the Queen and this portrait of a fellow artist’s pregnant wife. In both pendant pieces, the pregnant woman stands in the midst of nature that showcases her natural state. Neither references Gothic architecture in the background. They portray no links between fatherhood and the iconography of the fatherland. Schinkel, as artist and father, situates Susanne in a setting that is full of self-citation. He drafted designs for Gothic cathedrals that were never built. Here he draws his vision of a neoclassical world with a distant German-Gothic future and a romantic vision of the sea. More literally, Schinkel is also inscribed into the portrait: “S” represents not only “Susanne” but also “Schinkel”. “Specularity”, according to David Wellbery, “[. . .] is always a scene”.43 In viewing this private portrait, we see the familial facts of both pregnancy and paternity (referenced through the “S”) located in the foreground of architectural history, mythologized memory, and the future of the fatherland. Unlike the interiors or the middle-class view of the urban center (familiar from Vermeer, for example), Schinkel opens the domestic onto the visionary public sphere. This scene of both personal and political hope revises the late eighteenth-century role of painting: it opens onto a scene in which the artist as father and citizen provides a new model of masculinity as head of the family. The paternal presence is inferred; the father participates in this scene as the spectator, as well as the author. The eroticized charge in the visual arts persists, but Schinkel’s portrait valorizes the domestic as sexually contained, familial, and politically correct. Hope is perhaps too fragile a human emotion to inscribe in a purely public painting, let alone a government building. Privacy is framed by the medieval signifiers of a modernity to come, one that symbolizes both the home and the nation. While 41

Irmgard Wirth: Berliner Malerei im 19. Jahrhundert. Von der Zeit Friedrichs des Großen bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg. Berlin: Siedler Verlag 1990. P. 81. 42 This work, from 1820, hangs under the staircase in the Schinkel-Pavillon at the Schloss Charlottenburg. 43 David E. Wellbery: The Specular Moment: Goethe’s Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1996. P. 218.

143 evidence of this trend exists in Goethe’s festival play, Ernst Moritz Arndt represses the private sphere as a necessary prerequisite for a nation going to war.

Das ganze Deutschland: Ernst Moritz Arndt Ernst Moritz Arndt’s stance on German national politics is unambiguous. Nothing sums up his reputation more clearly than the painting by Caspar David Friedrich, Huttens Grab, from 1823–24. Friedrich’s work contains a collapsed commemoration of at least two anniversaries: the 300th of Hutten’s death and the tenth year after the Wars of Liberation. Friedrich pays tribute to the opponents of the restoration, the programs of which were firmly in place. On the postament, we read Jahn 1813, Arndt 1813, Stein 1813, Görres 1821, and F. Scharnhorst (Gerhard von Scharnhorst is meant). A lonely figure stands in the center of the painting; it is dark, as if this tribute must be cloaked in night. Indeed, many felt their national loyalties had to remain hidden during the 1820s. Ernst Moritz Arndt is inscribed into this group. In this Christianized representation to commemorate the Wars of Liberation, Arndt is effectively canonized. Famous in certain circles for his ardent patriotism, inspiring ballads, and inflammatory journalism, Arndt stands firmly on the side of Germany as a united fatherland. His poems and prose of this period (1813–1815) revile Napoleon and anything “Welsch” [“French” is meant] flex the muscles of German military masculinity, and strictly limit the role of the feminine in a society at war. Yet gender plays a role in his work in ways that foreground the alliance between masculinity and the nation.44 Smith refers briefly to Arndt in his study of nationalism, departing from George Mosse’s work on the Central European notion of family and respectability. “This”, Smith writes, “produced a sharp differentiation, not only in gender roles but also in gendered attributes and stereotypes, already evident in the anti-revolutionary German-speaking regions, which identified the French forces as ‘loose-living’, in opposition to the respectable, masculine German morality, which nationalists like Ernst Moritz Arndt embraced”.45 While I agree completely with Smith’s characterization of Arndt, I would like to examine his work in the more specific context of emerging national characteristics, as represented in the culture of the German-speaking states, not because I would challenge the equation between 44

In his important work on the Befreiungslyrik, Ernst Weber discusses certain aspects of the feminine in Arndt’s work. See Ernst Weber: Der Krieg und die Poeten. Theodor Körners Kriegsdichtung und ihre Rezeption im Kontext des reformpolitischen Bellizismus der Befreiungslyrik. In: Die Wiedergeburt des Krieges aus dem Geist der Revolution. Ed. by Johannes Kunisch und Herfried Münkler. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 1999. Pp. 285–325, esp. 293 and 295. His primary concern in this article is Körner’s poetry, but many points he makes pertain to Arndt as well. Weber also refers to the general demonization of Napoleon, though I am persuaded that the attack on his masculinity and “Orientalism” are as significant as his association with the devil. 45 Smith: Nationalism and Modernism. P. 209.

144 the national and the masculine, but rather because the nexus of war, gender, and the erotic involved in his work as well lends insight into the intimacy between modernity, the nation, and the dominant masculine. Arndt, the unequivocal German patriot, spearheads this movement. He rejects the neoclassical model of the state and of art; instead, he takes recourse in German history: Arndt inspires a Germanic masculinity that prevails over all things foreign, the French foremost among them. Born on the island of Rügen in 1769, Arndt grew up with a close relationship to his natural surroundings and a strong sense of Christianity. His father, who lived in indentured servitude, had purchased his independence.46 Arndt attended Gymnasium in Stralsund, and then began the study of theology in Greifswald. He continued in Jena. As a young man, he began writing poetry. While in Greifswald, he fell in love with Charlotte Quistorp, the illegitimate daughter of a professor of natural sciences, and his subsequent European travels, interrupted by French advances in Italy, did nothing to discourage this attachment. On his return to Greifswald, he took his masters exam to qualify him to teach at the university, married in 1800, and continued to write. The brief marriage ended in 1801 with Charlotte’s death in childbirth.47 He traveled during his life to Sweden and Russia, in part from the necessity of avoiding the French occupation. In the early nineteenth century, Arndt trafficked in patriotic circles (the publisher Reimer, Eichhorn, Schleiermacher, and Scharnhorst among them; Reimer and Scharnhorst also feature in Friedrich’s painting), and was eventually relieved of his position in Greifswald. He went to Berlin and continued his association with German patriots opposed to Napoleon at the time of French occupation, and his war ballads became enormously popular (32). Freiherr von Stein enlisted Arndt’s help in a campaign to stir German national sentiment. His most influential prose works, some of which were published in newspapers or distributed as pamphlets, were “Landsturm und Landwehr” [“Territorial Reserves”] and “An die Preußen” [“To the Prussians”] (1813), which I treat below. His major work, Geist der Zeit I–IV [Spirit of the Time, volumes I–IV], was published in his lifetime, beginning in 1806. This volume gained Arndt fame throughout Germany (the later volumes were less well-received). It contains many of his earlier patriotic writings and journalism, but his poetry dominates the legacy. His life and work are full of highs and lows, many of which were inspired by the shifting political climate

46 Among Arndt’s first publications is a history of servitude in Pommerania and on the island. I base my remarks in part on the introduction to the first volume of his works. Ersnt Moritz Arndt: Ausgewählte Werke. Ed. by Heinrich Meisner and Robert Geerds. Leipzig: Max Hesses Verlag 1908. 16 vols. Here I: 7ff. References to this edition appear in parentheses following direct quotations with volume number and the title of various pieces. Translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 47 Later Arndt would marry Schleiermacher’s half-sister (1817) and have more children.

145 in which Arndt existed, but also by war. Like many patriots, Arndt was disappointed by the Congress of Vienna; later he would obtain a university post in Bonn, but was accused of demagoguery (though he only spent half a day in jail). Advanced in years, he was elected representative to the Frankfurt parliament, but was again disappointed when the Prussian king refused the crown from the people. At the height of German national feeling (1813), Arndt began composing in Königsberg “ein Lied vom deutschen Vaterlande” [“a song of the German fatherland”] (39), the poem for which he is best known. I examine it now, in the context of Arndt’s prose work. In the familiar 1813 poem “Des Deutschen Vaterland”, Arndt posits a national ideology based on the totalizing aesthetic principle by which the whole exceeds the sum of the parts. In the first six of nine stanzas, Arndt repeats the question: “Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland”? [“What is the German’s fatherland?”] and provides provisional answers. Most responses refer conventionally to the natural landscapes of various German-speaking regions, also to states and countries from Prussia, Switzerland, and Austria, rivers are mentioned as well. These political and geographical entities are rejected, however, as inadequate, for the refrain insists: “O nein! nein! nein! / Sein Vaterland muß größer sein” [“Oh no! no! no! / His fatherland must be greater”]. The answers in the first five stanzas probe the surface signifiers of the fatherland. In the sixth, Arndt cuts to the chase: “So weit die deutsche Zunge klingt [. . .]” [“As far as the German language sounds (. . .)”] (26). This response goes beyond rhetorical flourish; Arndt does not believe in rivers or mountains or treaties as national boundaries, but rather in the bond of common language as the prime determinant of borders.48 Further, he adheres to a concept of both terrestrial and divine linguistic community of German speakers: German men swear oaths, shake hands, and love warmly. In Arndt’s work, love is a male emotion, purged of any sexual or erotic connotations. Arndt includes God in the imaginary linguistic community: God, who presumably understands the language perfectly, given his purported fondness for singing Lieder in heaven. With this inclusion, Arndt establishes an alliance between divine authority and the power of an organic, national realm. The poem calls for an organic concept of the German fatherland: das ganze Deutschland, predicated on the expulsion of all foreign influence. The French, of course, are the prime culprits: Wo Zorn vertilgt den welschen Tand, / Wo jeder Franzmann heißet Feind, / wo jeder Deutsche heißet Freund – / Das soll es sein! / Das ganze Deutschland soll es sein! (26) 48

Arndt wrote an essay in 1813 on the Rhine as a German river, not a border: Der Rhein, Deutschlands Strom, aber nicht Deutschlands Grenze (XIII: 145–196). He shares the view with many nationalists that language is a constitutive factor not only in national identity, but geography as well.

146 Where anger kills foreign trumpery, / Where every Frenchman is called the enemy, / Where every German is called friend – / That it should be! / The whole Germany is what it should be!

The poem ends in a prayer, issued ultimately on behalf of a nation large enough to contain all the attributes and properties of Germanness. These contrast with virtually all things French. Above all, Arndt despises Napoleon. The anti-Napoleon discourse Arndt disseminates effectively sets up an opposition between the “other” and the German. As Smith points out, the German male morality plays a role in establishing this opposition. War is the catalyst, as Ernst Weber points out, but the element of the foreign in representing the French, and the subsequent attribution of blame to German women play roles as well, and in fact are constitutive elements of that male morality.49 A closer look at the context from which Arndt’s poem emerges brings the relationship between French, foreign, and immoral into sharp focus. These traits are feminized in Arndt’s general journalism. Moreover, Arndt avails himself of other cultural trends, for example, Orientalism, in demonizing Napoleon. His verbal portraits of both French turpitude and German moral superiority diverge from contemporary allegorical paintings. Arndt does not acknowledge the erotic appeal of Napoleon; he instead condemns Napoleon for betraying his wife, a popular queen.50 He refers to Napoleon as “der kleine Korse” [“the little Corsican”],51 compares him elsewhere to Genghis Kahn and Attila the Hun and attacks his masculinity: Du bist klein, wie du prunken bist, ein aufgedunsener Orientale, wie dein Glück und Schicksal orientalisch war, und das erstaunte Europa dies neue Wunder anstarrt.52 You are small as you are showy, a bloated oriental, just as your luck and fate were oriental, and an astonished Europe beholds this new miracle.

All the while, Arndt valorizes war: Napoleon’s reasons for fighting are also corrupt, a violation of the sacred imperative of war (he fights for wealth and selfaggrandizement). While the French betray a certain barbarity, Arndt recuperates the “pre-civilized” German male model: the Teutonic warrior. “Des Deutschen Vaterland” empowers a German sense of nation; it is founded on a premise about the ability to abstract intrinsic, natural attributes of German identity. Elsewhere in Arndt’s work, especially the inflammatory pre-war journalism, he seeks the roots of male virtue, power, and national feeling in German 49 See Weber: Der Krieg und die Poeten. He writes: “Der Krieg wurde zum Katalysator, der nationale Idee und bürgerliche Wert- und Verhaltensvorstellungen aufs engste miteinander verschmolz” [“War became a catalyst that fused most closely the national idea with bourgeois concepts of value and behavior”]. P. 299. 50 Arndt: Geist der Zeit I. IX. P. 73. 51 Ibid. P. 195 52 Ibid. P. 25.

147 history and legend. (None of these include any aspect of the feminine.) While he implies that Napoleon is a barbarian on a moral spectrum, Arndt recuperates the pre-modern Germanic man: “Auch die Germanen schienen rohe Barbaren zu sein, aber sie waren innerlich ein lebendiges, geistiges, freies und bildendes Volk [. . .]” [“Even the Germanic tribes seemed to be crude barbarians, but they were inwardly a lively, spiritual, and educating people (. . .)”].53 The evidence for this nearly undetected attribute of the Germanic people is the defeat of Rome. The contemporary soldier, whom Arndt addresses specifically on many occasions in print, inherits these traits, as if virtue and strength were dominant in the German gene pool. He writes: “[. . .] der Geist wandelt als der unsichtbare Strom der Tugend durch die Geschlechter fort” [“(. . .) the mind changes as the invisible stream of virtue from race to race”].54 This genetic persistence informs Arndt’s theory of history, and he calls upon Hermann, Friedrich II., Martin Luther, and other great German men to model for his contemporaries. Unlike the neoclassical narratives of Greek and Roman models of exemplary men and women, Arndt’s heroes are all German. The enemy also dwells within, and Arndt shows his fellow Germans who accept Napoleon’s enslavement of Germany no mercy. The terms of the critique are not always predictable, and it is here that gender enters Arndt’s steroid-injected prose. In general terms, Arndt condemns all cosmopolitans, contrasting them to nationalists: “Kosmopolitismus sei edler als Nationalismus und die Menschheit erhabener als das Volk. [. . .] Ohne das Volk ist keine Menschheit und ohne den freien Bürger kein freier Mensch” [“Cosmopolitanism is supposed to be more noble than nationalism and humanity more sublime than the people. (. . .) Without the people there is no humanity and without the free citizen no free human being”].55 As an extension of that critique, he rejects classical models as delusional, and insists on attention to the German present.56 In fact any and all allegiances that do not embrace the German amount to “Äfferei”.57 He hurls the insults of “aping” with some frequency, but he also associates it with the realm of the aesthetic. Only the good can be beautiful, and the French are not good: Äfferei treiben sie mit dem Heiligen, zur Mode erniedrigen sie die Kunst, zur Weinerlichkeit das Mitleid, und die lahmen und jämmerlichen Gestalten, die aus solcher Erbärmlichkeit hervorgehen, lassen sie durch ihre Humanität und Bildung werden und schelten die Tüchtigkeit und Wahrheit der Väter Unhuld und Barbarei.58

53

Ibid. Pp. 106–107. Ibid. P. 109. 55 Ibid. P. 111. 56 Ibid. P. 14; see also Geist der Zeit II. X. P. 8. 57 Arndt: Geist der Zeit I. IX. P. 227. 58 Ibid. Pp. 227–228. 54

148 They practice this aping with the sacred, the denigrate art to fashion, compassion to tearfulness, and the lame and complaining figures that emerge from such wretchedness they allow to become through their humanity and cultivation and scold the efficiency and truth of the fathers’ fiendishness and barbarity.

Arndt locates this critique in the cultural infrastructure of Europe. Those who mime the French not only demean themselves, but in so doing they disparage the cultural inheritance of the fathers. In this passage, Arndt comments generally on the legacy of beauty. Elsewhere, he directly indicts literature and links the dismal effects of novels on the military. In Geist der Zeit II, Arndt turns his attention to the malaise in Germany after the devastating losses at Jena and Auerstedt. No “Hellenentöne” [“Hellenic tones”] will inspire this people, he declares.59 In pumped up prose, he calls for revenge against the Saracen, again using orientalist discourse to discredit Napoleon.60 Arndt summons the current generation of men to sacrifice themselves for the future of the race, and rehearses the humiliations of the French occupation. He calls upon the princes to die bloody deaths in the glory of battle, pronouncing war inevitable.61 After some historical analyses, he segues into an account of how the battles of Jena and Auerstedt could go so wrong. He blames the lower-level commanders for their literary proclivities, describing the situation as follows: Geistlosigkeit war für Stolz, empfindsame Erbärmlichkeit für rauhen Todesmut gekommen: es waren lafontainische Ehemänner und Liebhaber geworden, die einen sentimentalischen Roman mit Entzücken lesen, mit Liebesschwärmerei zu dem lieben Mond aufschauen, aber für Weiber, Kinder und Bräute, für das ewige Vaterland und den ewigen Ruhm nicht kalt und männlich dem Tod in das hohle Auge schauen könnten.62 Lack of intelligence replaced pride, sentimental wretchedness raw courage in the face of death: they had become Lafontaine-like husbands and lovers, who read a sentimental novel with delight, who gaze up at the lovely moon with the rapture of love, but for wives, children, and brides, for the eternal fatherland and eternal glory they were not able to look death in its hollow eye in a cold and manly way.

The author of sentimental family novels is blamed for the corrosive influence on the masculinity of the German military and its officers. The cause of this tendency to indulge in fantasy, rather than confront the present, is literature, but it leads to a more pernicious form of domestic denial as well. The real wives, children, and 59 Robert Tobin identifies “Hellenism” and “Orientalism” as subcultural codes for male same-sex love. See Tobin: Warm Brothers: Queer Theory and the Age of Goethe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2000. Pp. 5ff. Arndt’s use of the term could be seen as part of a general effort to emasculate Napoleon’s image as well. 60 Arndt: Geist der Zeit. II. X. P. 8. 61 Ibid. P. 29. 62 Ibid. P. 60.

149 brides who suddenly populate the fatherland are sacrificed at the altar of the imaginary. In his book on romantic masculinity, Tim Fulford points to the role played by the cult of sensibility in disrupting the stability of a conventionally gendered model of “sensitivity” and emotional responses. The destabilization results in “a masculinity open to traditionally female emotion”.63 Arndt roundly rejects this sentimentality as an emotional alloy when pure iron must be forged. In Arndt, gendered attributes become transferable, yet this transfer has no return ticket: men may assume female traits, but only if they pass through a masculinizing lens. Fraternity is the appropriate, homosocial expression of love between men, and it is distinct from paternalistic power the younger generation will want to reject. It paves the way for the masculinity with a nationally motivated fraternal love. In the seventh stanza of Arndt’s poem, love sits warmly in the male German’s heart. But he redefines love as a form of exclusively male bonding; it is a nationalized and Christianized emotion. Arndt participates in an appropriation of female attributes; he projects the metonymy of love (the heart) onto a construction of German masculinity at the inaugural moment of national identity and totalizing patriotism. In effect, Arndt masculinizes the ability to love; that emotion is reserved for fellow Germans, those who belong to the linguistic (not yet national) community. The parts are present: the political whole remains an aesthetic projection. This love is also military: “wo solche Liebe herrscht, da hören die Befehle auf ” [“where such love rules, there the commands stop”].64 What role, if any, do women play in this landscape? The reference to women in the excerpt is consistent with Arndt’s general deployment of the weaker sex as that which must be left behind and defended. His nation is not without women, but they are centerpieces at the victory table. Weber writes, with reference to peace: “Die Frauen sollten den Nationalcharakter zur Anschauung bringen” [“Women should bring national character into view”].65 But women are deployed in the rhetoric of war as well. Women in Arndt’s work are the sexually violated victims of the enemy, reminders of a wayward German masculinity, or examples of “breeding” and “Scham” or modesty.66 In one instance, women are praised for their contributions to the national struggle during the general mobilization of Prussia. In the immensely successful pamphlet about Prussian people and the military, Arndt discusses the disadvantages of a standing army: the farmers and citizens are exempt from war. He advocates instead the

63 See Tim Fulford: Romanticism and Masculinity: Gender, Politics and Poetics in the Writings of Burke, Coleridge, Cobbett, Wordsworth, De Quincey and Hazlitt. London: MacMillan 1999. P. 35. 64 Arndt: Das preußische Volk und Heer im Jahre 1813. XIII. P. 136. 65 See Weber: Der Krieg und die Poeten. P. 299. This is the aspect of Arndt’s view of women that is most frequently observed. 66 Geist der Zeit II. X. P. 60.

150 mobilization of the entire people, and offers the example of Prussia before the war: [. . .] ja selbst die Jungfrauen unter mancherlei Vorstellungen und Verlarvungen drängten sich zu den Waffen: alle wollten sich üben, rüsten, und für das Vaterland streiten und sterben.67 [. . .] yes even the young ladies with various imaginings and disguises pushed their way to the weapons: everyone wanted to train, arm, and fight and die for the fatherland.

Arndt expresses almost mild amusement at the sight of women with weapons. For him, the female equivalent of men taking up arms is generalized nurturing: [. . .] das tat das zärtere Geschlecht der Frauen durch stille Gebete, brünstige Ermahnungen, fromme Arbeiten, menschliche Sorgen und Mühen für die Ausziehenden, Kranken und Verwundeten.68 [. . .] the more delicate sex did that through quiet prayer, heated admonitions, pious works, humane care and effort for those moving out, the sick, and wounded.

Only under those conditions, however, when all social bets are off and the classes cooperate, do women play an active role. In fact, Arndt associates women with the corrupting influence of the French, largely through their refusal to refrain from learning the language of the enemy. Worse, they – he speaks only of mothers – continue to have their daughters learn French, thus succumbing to social and class pressure. Among the bourgeoisie and the nobility alike, these mothers are linguistic traitors who put class interests before national identity. Arndt does not mince words: “Es ist eine Hurerei” [“It is whoring”].69 Arndt writes under the acute pressure of a nation at war, or one that should go to war. His personal sacrifices for his belief in the fatherland are numerous; his own life full of turmoil, his career subject to a series of political exigencies. While Kant may have envisioned a community forged delicately by the memory of courage in war, and Fichte acknowledged the sacrifice of the parents’ sons to the state, Arndt severs all family ties. He completely fraternalizes the relationship among men; the family, women, children, the elderly, the virgins occupy the background of a distant domestic scene. Arndt’s warriors are German men who are identified by their opposition to the French, who are not only “loose-living”,70 but also effeminate, corrupt, and sensual. German literature, by contrast, is “rein” and “keusch” [“pure” and “chaste” respectively].71 They boast but “wenige sinnliche 67

Arndt: Volk und Heer XIII. P. 131. Ibid. P. 132. 69 Arndt: Geist der Zeit IV. XII. P. 176. 70 See Smith: Nationalism and Modernism. P. 209. 71 Arndt: Geist der Zeit IV. XII. P. 178. 68

151 Fülle” [“little sensual wealth”]72 in comparison to other Europeans, and Arndt counts this among their strongest virtues. The peak passionate moment on his emotional barometer is love of the fatherland; all else derives from that. In Arndt’s rhetoric, German men are not born of women: rather they are “Kinder eines Volkes” [“children of a people”].73

Goethe’s National Awakenings Wherever Arndt was, whether Berlin or Königsberg, he would find himself in the midst of like-minded patriots. In Dresden, he stayed with Theodor Körner’s father in similar ideological circumstances. The editors of Arndt’s collected works report an incident that disrupted the harmony: Wie in Königsberg, fand er sich dort wieder in einem Kreise begeisterter Patrioten, in den Goethe während seines Besuches durch sein Eintreten für Napoleons Ideen einen kurzen Mißklang brachte.74 Just as in Königsberg, [Arndt] once again found himself in a circle of enthusiastic patriots, into which Goethe introduced brief discord during his visit with his defense of Napoleon’s ideas.

Goethe’s politics and aesthetics – or the interpretation of either – cannot always be brought into alignment. The “unwrapping” of Goethe’s Weimar, with insightful attention to the performance of gendered and class identity, the conscious division between the classical “high” art and all other forms, and the interplay between aesthetics and commodities, calls for a rereading of Goethe’s relationship to “local culture”.75 I contend that a significant part of that local culture in the early nineteenth century involved the discourse on nation and its articulation within a neoclassical aesthetic. Recent scholarship on gender, homosexuality and homosociality, and the visual arts,76 is redefining our understanding of Goethe and “his” age, and I would like to examine some of the gains from this growing body of scholarship in light of Goethe’s role in the culture of war, mediated by the aesthetic.77

72

Ibid. Arndt: Volk und Heer XIII. P. 139. 74 Introduction. P. 40 75 See Unwrapping Goethe’s Weimar: Essay in Cultural Studies and Local Knowledge. Ed. by Burkhard Henke, et al. Rochester: Camden House 2000. 76 See for example Beate Allert: Goethe and the Visual Arts. Note 9. See also Allert’s contribution to this volume. 77 Key texts here are: Outing Goethe and His Age. Ed. by Alice A. Kuzniar. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1996; Robert Tobin: Warm Brothers: Queer Theory and the Age of Goethe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2000; Susan E. Gustafson: Men Desiring Men: The Poetry of Same-Sex Identity and Desire in German Classicism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press 2002. 73

152 In the anecdote I recount above, Goethe upsets the patriots, like Arndt, who still admire (albeit selectively) his works. As I pointed out in the introduction to this chapter, Goethe’s investment in visual culture is considerable, and his sponsorship of the Weimarer Preisaufgaben puts him in league with the National Endowment for the Arts: he calls the aesthetic shots, with the ability to put money where his taste tends. His selection of topics that elicit contemporary deliberations on antique themes of war and personal tragedy is significant. While a trendsetter – the influence of Werther on European masculinity is considerable78 – he is not immune to the imperatives of commission. The commission here in question is the festival play Goethe produced to mark the victory of Prussia over France. In this play, which was performed as an opera with music by Bernhard Anselm Weber (1764–1821), Goethe allegorizes the political figures of both good and evil in relationship to the nation, with Epimenides’ transhistorical eye observing the spectacle of transition from antiquity to Prussia’s Germany. His recourse to Greek mythology, as embodied in the figure of Epimenides, demanded explanation in the age of rising German semiotics.79 Karim Hassan points out in his excellent study of the composer Bernhard Anselm Weber, the antique material did not necessarily rise to the occasion of “der aktuellen patriotischen Hochstimmung” [“the current mood of high patriotism”].80 Yet Goethe at least references contemporary trends in this work, though he never approaches compliance. Goethe is everything but tendentious. The negotiation between political demand and aesthetic supply is evident in the festival play Des Epimenides Erwachen that at once celebrates triumph on the battlefield, installs bourgeois, domestic bliss as the respite from, reward for war, and complicates the representation of gender in the public sphere. Gender is a volatile element in Goethean signification, his portrayal of naturalized or essentialized gender attributes nearly combustible. Goethe’s works provided perhaps the widest range of models for gender identity. From the excesses of young Werther, the sturdy forthrightness of Götz, the capacious ambition of Faust, and the stateliness, or repression, of the Captain to Eduard’s helpless infatuation, Goethe’s male characters participate in a wide range of masculinities. The same applies to his female characters – who also participate in a wide range of masculinities as well as models of the feminine. Iphigenia speaks like 78 See Nicholas Boyle: Goethe: The Poet and the Age, Volume I: The Poetry of Desire (1749–1790). Oxford: Clarendon Press 1991. Pp. 172–178, on Werther reception in Europe of the time. 79 One could speculate that Goethe’s friendship with Sulpiz Boisserée increased his appreciation for Gothic (considered “German”) architecture in general. 80 Karim Hassan: Bernhard Anselm Weber (1764–1821). Ein Musiker für das Theater. Frankfurt/M: Peter Lang 1997. P. 346. Hassan’s analysis of this piece foregrounds the structural cooperations among the composer, author, publisher, and theater; he is not primarily interested in an aesthetic evaluation of the play, nor in its national allegories. His research into the documents surrounding the production of the play is extremely illuminating in any case.

153 a man, Claire fights like a man, Charlotte reasons like a man. A quick glance at his cast of female characters assures us of the strictly feminine among his various articulations of the “eternal feminine” in Faust and beyond: Gretchen’s simple piety, Helena’s beauty, Ottilie’s devotion, Luciane’s frivolity. Mignon, elusive and childlike, shapes the behavior of women such as Bettina von Arnim. My point is that Goethe incarnates a variety of aesthetic gender models, and some exert an influence on the behavior of his contemporaries. He never follows a script when it comes to engendering his figures, and often transfers gender attributes with less-than-disastrous results. In this play it is precisely the shifting ground of gendered identity that constitutes Goethe’s contribution to the celebration of victory for Prussia and Germany. While resorting to the domestic scene as a signifier of stability and hope, Goethe still resists the essentializing traits of German national identity represented in the works of more overly nationalist authors like Arndt. Though I carefully claim that the discourse of nation stabilizes Goethe’s concept of gendered identity, he still selects a woman warrior to allegorize German hope at a time of crisis. However, Goethe resorts to conventional gender roles for the grand finale in which he envisions the nation. The success of what came to be known as the Holy Alliance of Prussia, Russia, and Austria on the battlefields has an immediate impact on the representation of nation and gender, among other things. In preparation for war, Friedrich Wilhelm III issued the appeal “An mein Volk” on 20 March 1813. In this document, the King justifies the reasons for war, explaining: “Große Opfer werden von allen Ständen gefordert werden [. . .]” [“Great sacrifices will be required of all classes (. . .)”], but also stressing the identity of Prussian and German.81 The involvement of the general populace in the war effort is crucial to a military victory, as I pointed out in my discussion of Arndt in the previous section. The evidence of victory is documented in a range of artifacts. First, historical paintings depict the meeting of Franz I, Friedrich Wilhelm III, and Czar Alexander I on the battlefield at Leipzig, where the allies defeated Napoleon on 16–19 October 1813.82 The capitulation of Paris is commemorated in an etching (Vienna) from 1814.83 But these images of victory and patriotism spread to the household through the decorative arts. A tablecloth, too, was produced in honor of the First Peace of Paris (30 May 1814): Mars occupies the center, with Ceres the goddess of fertility on one side, and on the other, Mercury for commerce; the edges bear the coat of arms of the Holy Alliance and Great Britain. While he was in Paris, Friedrich Wilhelm III ordered six table services from the Berlin Königliche 81

An Mein Volk. In: Schlesische privilegierte Zeitung, No. 34, Sonnabends des 20. März 1813. See <www.davier.de/anmeinvolk.htm>. 82 See Marie-Louise von Plessen: Idee Europa. Entwürfe zum “Ewigen Frieden”. Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum/Henschel 2003. P. 176. 83 Ibid. P. 177.

154 Porzellan Manufaktur, destined as gifts to his commanders. The center of each dinner plate features an iron cross, the rims decorated with oak and laurel leaves. Only the generals received a centerpiece.84 Though conceived perhaps exclusively for display, patriotic porcelain, a common state gift even under Frederick the Great, now serves an historical purpose as well, in that it commemorates the Wars of Liberation, and does so in the upper-echelon household. The mythological references on the tablecloth point to a challenge: how should the new national present be represented in a cultural climate so conditioned by and devoted to the models of antiquity? The association between Rome and France foregrounds the preferred analogy between Greece and Germany. The dominance of the postwar neoclassical must accommodate the signifiers of the German nation as well. Schinkel’s work provides the prime example of an imperial style, with the German Gothic subsumed into the neoclassical. The glories of antiquity house the contemporary power of the Prussian and German (by extension) symbols, from iron crosses to eagles, to the depiction of historical scenes on imperial porcelain, to the attributes of Eros as a Germanic warrior (a sculpture by Emil Wolff, 1836). Goethe, too, inscribes the specifics of German national character into the Greek frame of his play. He drafts central figures that seem to step out of Kauffmann’s and Tischbein’s paintings: a virtuous woman and a feminized man. However, his figure of Hope is a woman with male attributes. Since this piece is not always required reading, I summarize its contents. At the opening of this work, Epimenides sleeps – he erroneously assumes he is entering the realm of death – and “dreams” a series of tableaux, complete with chorus, allegorical figures, arias, duets, etc. Oppression, the villain, appears in “the costume of an oriental despot” with the help of a “Dämon der List” [“demon of cunning”]. The allegorical sisters of Love and Faith are tricked by Oppression, who draws his power and influence from his ability to dupe and seduce the sisters. Hope appears on the scene, armed with a helmet, shield, and sword. She embodies the tension between her feminine identity and masculine attributes. But this is more than a scene of cross-dressing.85 Instead, Goethe is preoccupied with the 84

See Dr. Samuel Wittwer: Porzellan der Schinkelzeit; Patriotismus für Tafel und Vitrine. Nr. C 5/01. Berlin: Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg, Abteilung Museumspädägogik/Besucherabteilung 2001. Collection information available in the Schloss Charlottenburg, Neuer Pavillon (Schinkelpavillon). Wittwer also describes a table with a porcelain plate, designed by Schinkel and plates with military scenes of the victorious Prussian and Russian armies. 85 Cross-dressing in Goethe does not refer only to dressing across gender. See Susan E. Gustafson for a discussion of male-male cross-dressing. In: Men Desiring Men. P. 175ff. See also W. Daniel Wilson: Amazon, Agitator, Allegory: Political and Gender Cross(Dress)ing in Goethe’s Egmont. In: Outing Goethe and His Age. Ed. by Alice A. Kuzniar. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1996. Pp. 124–146. See also Elisabeth Krimmer: In the Company of Men: Cross-Dressed Women Around 1800. Detroit: Wayne State University Press 2004.

155 actual presentation of the play on stage. With an eye toward the Berlin audience, he forges myth, allegory, and history.86 In his correspondence, Goethe suggests that in staging the play, a resemblance between Hope and Queen Luise, first and now deceased wife of Friedrich Wilhelm III, may be appropriate. At the suggestion of General Field Marshall Count Kalckreuth and with the King’s support, Queen Luise herself met with Napoleon to negotiate what all hoped would be more favorable terms for Prussia, as her beauty would presumably dazzle him. This ploy, however, proved unsuccessful. Yet the meeting enhanced the popularity of the Queen and her reputation for patriotism.87 But Goethe also suggests Minerva as a model for Hope in the first version. His allegory of hope for the German nation is suspended between history and mythology. Hope saves her sisters. The ultimate victory is celebrated with choral proclamations about the new age of German triumph: Epimenides unveils the figure of Einigkeit. Unity moves, however, from a clearly referenced political alliance to the unity of the German Geschlecht [race or kind]. Here Goethe effects a transition from an allegory of gendered virtues to a possible allegory of nation: So waren wir und sind es auch / Das edelste Geschlecht, / Von biederm Sinn und reinem Hauch / Und in der Taten Recht. (MA 9: 231, ll. 973–976)88 Thus we were and are as well / The most noble race, / Of upright sense and pure breath / And justified in our deeds.

86

Goethe’s relationship to Berlin was not unproblematic. See Steffen Martus: Goethe, die Kunst, die Wissenschaft und Berlin. <www.hu-berlin.de> for further references. There is evidence that Friedrich Wilhelm III held Goethe in less than high esteem. See Karim Hassan: Bernhard Anselm Weber (1764–1821). Ein Musiker für das Theater. Frankfurt/M: Peter Lang 1997. P. 349. In a discussion about why the play’s premiere was delayed, Hassan speculates: “Ob nun der Komponist dafür verantwortlich war oder ob die Aufführung an der Antipathie Friedrich Wilhelms III. Goethe gegenüber scheiterte, wird in der Literatur nicht eindeutig beantwortet” [“The question of whether the composer was perhaps responsible, or whether the performance was cancelled due to Friedrich Wilhelm III’s antipathy for Goethe is not clearly answered in the literature”]. 87 While those close to the Queen acknowledged the utter failure of this mission, an officer in Napoleon’s army assumed she gained concessions. See Dagmar von Gersdorff: Königin Luise und Friedrich Wilhelm III. Eine Liebe in Preußen. Berlin: Rowohlt 1996. According to von Gersdorff, though Napoleon wrote to Joséphine that Luise was indeed charming, the meeting, in which Luise addressed Napoleon in her capacity as “Gattin und Mutter” [“wife” and “mother”], had no effect. Pp. 157–158. We get quite another story from the officer. See Captain Elzéar Blaze: Recollections of an Officer of Napoleon’s Army. Trans. E. Jules Méras. New York: Sturgis & Walton Company 1911. P. 158. Here the meeting at Tilsit is mentioned. He writes: “The Queen of Prussia was very beautiful, I saw her; she was said to have been very amiable, I know nothing about that; but it is certain that she obtained many concessions from Napoleon”. P. 158. 88 Translations, unless otherwise noted, are mine.

156 In Des Epimenides Erwachen, Goethe makes a point about gender, violence, and aesthetic nationalism: that women warriors win. Goethe permits the transferability of gender attributes – the arming of a female warrior in defense of a just cause. The corresponding feminization of the righteous (political) male, however, is prevented by the equation of German and masculinity. In other words, national identity is introduced to ward off the possible transfer of female attributes to the male. I want to examine specifically the battle between Oppression and the figures of Love, Faith, and Hope. Political power is figured sexually. When Oppression finds himself alone, he seeks the company of women: So sei die Welt denn einsam! aber mir, / Dem Herrscher, ziemt es nicht, daß er allein: / Mit Männern mag er nicht verkehren, / Eunuchen sollen Männer wehren, / Und halb umgeben wird er sein; / Nun aber sollen schöne Frauen / Mit Taubenblick mir in die Augen schauen. (MA 9: 210, ll. 397–403) So let the world be lonely! but for me, / The ruler, it will not do to be alone: / He does not wish to traffic with men, / Eunuchs should fight men, / And half surrounded should he be; / But now there should be lovely women / Who gaze into my eyes with dove-like looks.

He hears the voice of Love offstage and is surprised and touched by her song; “Doch dein Busen will entflammen” [“Yet your breast is aroused”] (MA 9: 211, l. 420). They converse, Love sings. Faith enters and implores her sister to feel the same dejection she is experiencing “in diesen Jammerstunden” [“in these miserable hours”] (MA 9: 212, l. 456). Oppression succeeds in driving a wedge between the sisters; he then attempts to reconcile them. While tempting them with jewels, he has them put in chains. In this short scene, both Oppression and the sisters themselves refer multiple times, both literally and figuratively, to their Brust and Busen. The Brust engenders the love between sisters; Oppression admonishes first Faith: “Herrlich Mädchen! welches Bangen, / Welche Neigung, welch Verlangen / Reget diese schöne Brust” [“Splendid maiden! what care, / What inclination, what demand / Stirs this lovely breast”] (MA 9: 213, ll. 471– 473). And then to Love: “Wie, du Holde? das Verlangen / Deine Schwester zu umfangen, / Regt sich’s nicht in Deiner Brust” [“What, my lovely? / The demand / To embrace your sister, / Does not stir within your breast?”] (MA 9: 213, ll. 477– 479). The lines emphasize gender attributes, specifically the breast as a site of both longing and sexual stimulation. Bracelets are given to Love – and here the correspondence between jewelry and bondage cannot be overlooked – and Faith receives: “einen köstlichen Gürtel oder vielmehr Brustschmuck [. . .]” [“an expensive belt or breast decoration (. . .)] (MA 9: 214). Oppression decorates her “volle Brust” [“full breast”] (MA 9: 214, l. 502), and, as he has bestowed these gifts “liebkosend” [“caressingly”] in both cases, the fullness of Faith’s breast indicates both the metonymy of sisterly love and the erotic response to Oppression’s unmistakable material foreplay. While the stage direction calls for small demons to bear heavy black

157 chains, Faith obliviously declares: “Das verdient wohl dieser Busen, / Daß ihn die Juwele schmückt” [“This breast indeed deserves / To be decorated with jewels”] (MA 9: 214, ll. 503–504). While gazing at her decorated breast, the demons chain her from behind. Love experiences a similar capture. While she admires her braceleted arms, the demons chain her from below. Oppression’s decorative gifts persuade the virtues into vanity, then captivity. Marinus Pütz interprets this scene politically: the sisters’ susceptibility to an opportunistic demon aligns with those who cooperated with Napoleon. I would like to cross-reference this with gender politics, jewels, and the specific female vice of vanity. One thinks immediately of Faust’s seduction of Gretchen with the case of jewels. Again, the vision of French women giving up their jewels to the Revolution politicizes the renunciation of vanity. That historical referent invokes a more specific instance of this costly and facile appeal to women’s vanity, which occurs in Act II/V of the Natürliche Tochter [The Natural Daughter]. In this twisted Antigone play, Eugenia receives the forbidden chest; when she opens it, the doors are mirrored (l. 1036, Suhrkamp translation), so that she immediately views herself enhanced, clothed and decorated with jewels, her image commensurate to her social station – but only if accepted by the king. There is, however, another element of cultural and economic history that hovers in the background of jewels as a means of seducing weak-minded women. In 1804, the Berliner Kgl. Eisengießerei was founded: it produced jewels, plates, and a variety of other useful objects. According to curators of the collection at Schloss Charlottenburg: “In the first half of the nineteenth century, no other craft product of Prussia was as characteristic of the spirit of this land as iron-casting. Especially since the Wars of Liberation, which were referred to as an ‘iron time’, this material took on a patriotic meaning. With regard to its non-material significance, the economical metal was valued above gold. The donation of precious metal from the people to support the war, especially the exchange of gold wedding rings for iron ones, was organized under the motto: ‘I gave gold for iron’ ”.89 As art historians point out, this craft took on a patriotic quality, especially during the preparations for war. The wealthy in particular were asked to contribute their jewels during the Wars of Liberation, and received for their sacrifice a symbolic iron cross. Schinkel, involved in nearly all aspects 89

In Room 19 on the upper floor of the pavilion, there is a display case of iron jewelry from the year 1804. The description follows: “Kein kunstgewerbliches Erzeugnis Preußens war in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts so bezeichnend für den Geist dieses Landes wie der Eisenkunstguß. Vor allem seit den Befreiungskriegen, die eine ‘eiserne Zeit’ genannt wurden, erhielt das Material eine patriotische Bedeutung. Das preiswerte Metall wurde in Hinblick auf seine ideelle Aussage über das Gold gestellt. Das Spenden vom Edelmetall aus dem Volk zu Unterstützung der Kriegsführung, insbesondere der Eintausch von goldenen Trauringen gegen eiserne, wurde unter der Devise ‘Gold gab ich für Eisen’ organisiert”. See also p. 70ff. from the Schinkel-Pavillon guide. Berlin 1990, 5th revised edition.

158

Figure 5. Iron Crosses. Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Friedrich Wilhelm III. Photo: Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, NY.

of art and industrial production imaginable, had collaborated with Friedrich Wilhelm III in designing the decoration (Figure 5). According to Rand Carter, between 1813 and 1815, more than 11,000 pieces of iron jewelry (Figure 6) were made, among them 5000 crosses.90 Patriotism transforms wedding rings of gold into iron in a process of reversed alchemy. Goethe renders the vulnerability to vanity gender-specific; jewels signify an excess, one that, in the context of iron substitutes, is complicit. While the two sisters are allegories, they still succumb to the specter of their own vanity. This narcissism prepares for their downfall. There is a closely construed relationship between Oppression’s despotic abuse of power and male seduction. The demon’s appearance in “oriental” garb confirms a stereotypical association familiar from German Orientalism among trickery, seduction, and effeminate attributes. It is also the association Arndt cements between Napoleon and all negative attributes “oriental” signifies. The enemy is a man capable of deploying “feminine” weapons, 90 See Rand Carter: Karl Friedrich Schinkel. “The Last Great Architect”. <www.tc.umn.edu/⬃peikx001/rcessay.htm>.

159

Figure 6. Eisenguß-Schmuck [Iron Jewelry]. Parure im Originaletui. KS IV, 347. Photo: J. P. Anders. Courtesy of Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten.

and we detect a correspondence between the unethical political male and a seducing female whose only power is sexual. The figure of Oppression, while operating in the male power register, seduces Love and Faith. Thus a feminized sense of “power” and unethical politics are equated. The reversal of roles and gender attributes previously suggested is clinched in the figure of Hope. As she appears atop the ruins in the iconography of war, Oppression comments: “Sie kommt! Sie ist’s! – Ich will sie kirren: / ‘s ist auch ein Mädchenhaupt, ich will’s verwirren” [“She is coming! It is she! – I am going to put her in her place / She also has a girl’s head, I want to confuse it”] (MA 9: 215, ll. 5130–5131). While the derogatory attribute effectively disembodies the “girl”, it reveals an explicit link

160 between cognition and sexuality. The “head”, also the metonymy of thought, imagination, taste, visual, aural, and olfactory perception, plays a significant role in the process of seduction. It is ultimately the manipulated, misguided gaze of the virtues Love and Faith that distracts them from Oppression’s gifts of beauty and makes them vulnerable to a bondage from which Hope is immune. Hope’s real arsenal of weapons is in her “head” in the form of disruptive visions, and though she raises a spear at Oppression and remains “in drohender Gebärde unbeweglich” [“motionless, in a threatening gesture”], he succumbs to his imagination. In a striking piece of teichoskopia, Oppression describes the transfiguring vision, ambiguous shapes that form a Wolke and a Volke (MA 9: 216, ll. 562–563) and overcome him. He delivers an encapsulated commentary on the mental events he has screened privately and reported on stage. Hope’s victory is in his head. Faith and Love return to their senses, set aside both the chains and the jewels, and finally Hope speaks: “Weiblich gestaltet, bin ich männlich kühn” [“In the figure of a woman I am bold like a man”] (MA 9: 219, l. 635). The transferable attribute is a form of cognition; it is a head-game. Just as Oppression is male, but can assimilate feminine traits at will, Hope’s biology and behavior diverge in terms of gender. Hope ends with a geo-political reference to salvation that has come from the East. One is reminded of the intended audience. Hope then mentions the lisping and stammering of the word Freiheit [freedom]; it is repeated chorally, moderately, and in crescendo (MA 9: 221, l. 688). Pütz interprets Goethe’s “politics” here as personal; the poet advocates an individual concept of freedom. Yet another feminine allegory is invoked, and the parabasis establishes a communicative channel to the audience of kings. In this way, the three Virtues participate in the political process; the play marries politics, and the gender of virtue allied the gender of kings will engender the freedom of the German nation(s). Night falls, and Epimenides awakens to ruins, but also to a specular moment in which the Spiegel held up to the Fürsten includes a chorus of freedom. Goethe must now reaffirm the proper order of things. Epimenides awakens and the Genien or spirits show him: “a well-known image!” (MA 9: 223, l. 736). The stage direction continues: “ ‘The father sits on his wide cushion, / The wife in a chair, children stand around them / Of every age [. . .]’ ” (MA 9: 223, ll. 738–740).91 The image, an ancient bas-relief, depicts the proper constellation of the nuclear family with the father, mother, and children of all ages. The instability of gender attributes, including the negative transfer of female seductive moves to a male monarch and the positive projection of masculine boldness onto/into a female form, is re-envisioned as a family scene. The recourse to patriarchal family structure is visualized and celebrated as an icon of peace. Hope triumphs, and the play closes with the allegory Einigkeit, whom Epimenides unveils. The final scene further underscores the reemphasis on 91

See also Pütz: Goethes “Des Epimenides Erwachen”. P. 288.

161 stabilized gender roles. In the original version, the virtues were supposed to direct praise from the stage to the present monarchs: Faith to the Czar of Russia; Love to the Emperor of Austria; Hope to the King of Prussia. In Iffland’s letter to Goethe, he hinted that Friedrich Wilhelm III was not partial to such a staging. However, this type of address – female virtues from the realm of representation to male monarchs in the “real” political arena of the audience – too closely resembles what the play is playing out in its subtext: the gender of objects and subjects, the uneasy relationship between the powerless and the powerful, the presumptive, communicative relationship between the stage and the state. In the published version, Goethe reverts to conventional gender roles. The warriors’ chorus asserts its version of stable, gendered roles: Und wir wandeln mit freien Schritten, / Weil wir uns was zugetraut, / Und empfangen in unsere Mitten / Gattin, Schwester, Tochter, Braut. (MA 9: 230, ll. 946–949) And we stroll with free steps, / Because we had the courage to do something, / And we welcome into our midst / Wife, sister, daughter, bride.

And the women’s chorus responds in kind: Euch zu laben / Laßt uns eilen, / Unsre Gaben / Auszuteilen, / Eure Wunden / Auszuheilen: / Selige Stunden / Sind gegeben / Unsrem Leben! (MA 9: 230–231, ll. 952–960) To refresh you / Let us hurry, / Our gifts / To distribute, / Your wounds / To heal; / Blessed hours / Have been given / To our lives!

With the restoration of freedom and clearly delineated gender roles, the celebration may culminate. The final chorus’ song begins: So rissen wir uns rings herum / Von fremden Banden los. / Nun sind wir Deutsche wiederum / Nun sind wir wieder groß. / So waren wir und sind es auch / Das edelste Geschlecht, / Von biederm Sinn und reinem Hauch / Und in der Taten Recht. (MA: 9, 231, ll. 969–976) We tore ourselves free / All around from foreign bonds / Now we are Germans again / Now we are great again. / Thus we were and are as well / The most noble race, / Of upright sense and pure breath / And justified in our deeds.

The final declaration of German identity shifts the discourse of power and gender in the play into a higher register. It complicates a sentiment about the relationship of culture to the (German) nation. Several similarities emerge from a comparison to Arndt’s poem, even though the two represent opposing political poles. The primary difference is inscribed in Goethe’s manipulation of gender roles and power. The contrast between a more popular “romantic” discourse of unity and Goethe’s “classical” interventions is stark. Arndt gently dismisses the young women who would arm themselves to defend Prussia. Goethe invests the power of both sexes

162 in his allegory of Hope. But the rhetoric of the German nation seems to participate in the larger political discourse, however mediated. He takes the apparent and gendered contingencies of kinship and motivates them, extending the model of the individual to all Germans. In this, he resembles Arndt. These qualities are focused in the explicit attribute of courage or boldness, as demonstrated in the struggle for liberation from France; thus Germans earned greatness, through their purity, authenticity, and righteousness. Allegory, the abstraction of an emotion or attribute, plays a key role in defining national identity. The visual signifiers of gender to some extent regulate the formation. As in Arndt’s poem, Goethe makes the connection between a core identity and ethical behavior available at the level of representation. Unlike Arndt, however, Goethe accesses the feminine in his assertion of German identity. The figure of boldness is female. She is neither androgynous nor monstrous. Her masculinity is acknowledged; her femininity is obvious. After watching the second performance, the composer Zelter, who set several of Goethe’s poems to music, wrote the following to Goethe: Das Auftreten der Hoffnung ist von großer Gewalt. Diese Szene hat mich wieder tüchtig angepackt, wiewohl sie noch nicht vollkommen gegeben wird. Sie ist der geheime Leib, woran alle Glieder festgesetzt sind; – in Ruhe, aber ungeheuer.92 The appearance of Hope is of great power. This scene really grabbed me again quite effectively, although it is not quite perfectly performed. It (the scene) is the secret body on which all members are established; – in stillness, but monstrous.

In this description Zelter specifies the center of power in this figure: the scene of Hope. Her appearance is “of great force”, power without violence. Hers is the immense, terrible composure that thwarts corrupted male dominance through cognitive intervention. Yet the power of the female body is at once hidden and visible. The secret veils a feminized immensity that undergirds the subtext of Goethe’s envisioned and gendered ideology.

92

HA 5: 544.

II THE VIOLENCE OF VISION: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE STAGE OF LANGUAGE

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Evelyn K. Moore

Goethe and Lavater: A Specular Friendship* This chapter examines the relationship between language, the autobiographical subject, and the visual. Goethe’s treatment of Johann Caspar Lavater, the author of a series of books on physiognomy, reveals the importance of this problematic figure to Goethe’s thinking on visual culture. I examine the relation between image and viewing subject not only through the physiognomic assumptions of Lavater, but also through the introspection of Werther, Goethe’s fictional alter-ego. This allows me to trace not only the place which Lavater had in Goethe’s life, but also to define Goethe’s concept of language in relation to Lavater’s visual project.

Shortly before going to Italy, Goethe wrote to Charlotte von Stein about his last meeting with his old friend Johann Caspar Friedrich Lavater (6 June 1786). “Die Götter”, he writes, “wissen besser was uns gut ist, als wir es wissen, drum haben sie mich gezwungen ihn zu sehen. [. . .] Kein herzlich, vertraulich Wort ist unter uns gewechselt worden und ich bin Haß und Liebe auf ewig los” (21 July 1786) [“The Gods know better what is good for us than we do and that is why they have forced me to see him. [. . .] We exchanged no trusting friendly word and I am free of love and hate forever”].1 Goethe’s letter to Charlotte von Stein reveals his extremely emotional response to Lavater’s last visit to see him in Weimar. He states that he needs to free himself from the bonds of friendship. But Lavater had not only played a significant role in Goethe’s personal life, but from the very beginning this friendship brought Goethe into contact with Lavater’s project on physiognomy. Lavater believed he could study the features and characteristics of the face in order to ascertain the true character of the person. This science of sensitive perception promised a “new eye” so discerning that nothing stayed hidden from it. Johann Georg Zimmermann (1741–1801), who had supported Lavater through all the stages of his project, had published Lavater’s prequel to his four-volume work on physiognomy in 1772. Here Lavater for the first time defines this new science in visual terms. He asserts that physiognomy is nothing less than “a new eye”. Die Physiognomik ist eine Quelle der feinsten und erhabensten Empfindungen; ein neues Auge, die tausendfaltigen Ausdrücke der göttlichen Weisheit und Gute zu * I would like to thank Patricia Simpson and John Vaio for their comments on earlier drafts of this piece. 1 Goethes Briefe an Frau von Stein. Ed. by Julius Peterson. Leipzig: Insel-Verlag 1909. P. 274. All translations of Goethe in the text and in the notes are my own.

166 bemerken [. . .] Wo das stumpfe, das ungeübte Auge des Unaufmerksamen nichts vermuthet, da entdeckt das geübte des Gesichtskenners unerschöpfliche Quellen des geistigen, sittlichsten, und zärtlichsten Vergnügens.2 Physiognomy is a source of the finest and most noble sensations; a new eye, [a way to be] aware of the thousand-fold expressions of godly wisdom and goodness [. . .] where the blunted and uneducated eye of the inattentive does not see anything, the practiced eye of the one who knows [how to read] faces discovers the endless source of the spiritual, the most moral, and most tender of pleasures.

We know that Goethe was not only aware of Lavater’s physiognomic project, but that he was actively recruited by Lavater to be one of the artists contributing to the books’ many illustrations. Lavater draws Goethe into both his personal and professional sphere through their shared interest in visual culture. In this article, I examine Goethe’s way of seeing and his problematic relationship to Lavater’s “physiognomic eye”. For Goethe, as well as for Lavater, the visual is central to seeing oneself and others. But for both Goethe and Lavater the visual implicates the verbal as well, and both are essential to the formation of the subject. Goethe’s treatment of Lavater, as well as Lavater’s judgments about Goethe takes place on both a verbal and visual plane. For both men, the philosophical implications of a verbal and a visual language are crucial to understanding the individual and his place in the world. Goethe and Lavater are concerned with the right way of seeing. But what does this mean? What function does the process of observation and reflection serve for Goethe? What do questions of visuality have to do with autobiography? What is the nature of the autobiographical subject in relation to the visual? How is seeing connected to language? For Lavater, as well as for Goethe, the intersection between the visual and the verbal reveals and conceals. For both, this intersection is the key to the construction of identity. It is my goal to define this difference between Lavater and Goethe. I analyze what seeing means for these specular friends through the lens of the Lacanian gaze. Jacques Lacan, like Goethe, was interested in the place of the visual in the construction of the subject. For Lacan, language and image, the place of the observer and of the observed are critical to his theory of identity formation. Lacan’s formulation of a psychoanalytic theory which explains the subject in terms of the visual is precisely the tool needed to examine the intersection between the verbal and the visual in Lavater’s and in Goethe’s “way of seeing”. Goethe’s treatment of Lavater in Dichtung und Wahrheit [Writing and Truth] reveals the problematic place Lavater had in Goethe’s life and work. He is both 2

Johann Caspar Lavater: Von der Physiognomik. Leipzig: Weidmanns Erben and Reich 1772. Part 3. This section, among many others is reprinted in Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntiß und Menschenliebe. Leipzig and Wintherthur: Weidmann, Reich and Steiner 1775–1778. P. 9.

167 there and not there. Goethe plays a complicated game of autobiographical hideand-seek with Lavater and the reader by removing Lavater from episodes of his life where we know from letters and other sources that he had indeed played a major role. At the same time, Goethe inserts Lavater into his autobiography at times and places where we know Lavater could not have been. By taking these liberties with the “truth” of Lavater’s place in his life, Goethe was clearly engaging in that game of masquerade and disguise which, he had explained to the Countess O’Donell, an old friend, was so important to his autobiographical project.3 His friendship with Lavater began when Goethe was virtually unknown and Lavater had already achieved great celebrity. Goethe was brought to Lavater’s attention in part because he had written a review of Lavater’s book Aussichten in die Ewigkeit [Views to Eternity] in the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen (November 1772), and because Herder suggested that Goethe serve as an illustrator for Lavater’s project on physiognomy. Lavater was intrigued by the young man and immediately initiated a correspondence in which he asked for Goethe’s likeness for physiognomic analysis. He opened the letter which contained the promised image with “mit zitternder Begierde” [“with trembling desire”].4 Goethe and Lavater met for the first time in Bad Ems (April to August 1774), where Lavater had gone for a rest cure. Shortly after the meeting, Lavater had asked Goethe to participate in his new enterprise which was to be a primer for physiognomic analysis. The publication of Physiognomische Fragmente (1775– 1778) made Lavater a house-hold name.5 The work created a sensation and with it Lavater became one of the most famous men of his time. The science of “the legible body” appealed to many different levels of society.6 The work of many 3

In a letter to the Countess O’Donell, Goethe thanked her for her words of encouragement and praised her acuity for recognizing the subterfuge involved in his autobiographical effort. “Zunächst aber sollen Sie, verehrteste Freundin, höchlichst gepriesen sein, daß sie mir meine biographische Maskerade ein freundliches Wort haben sagen wollen. Sie bemerken sehr richtig, daß ich eigentlich nur mein späteres Leben hinter das frühere verstecken kann” [“You, dearest friend, are highly appreciated, for wanting to say a few friendly words about my biographical masquerade. You notice quite correctly that am actually only able to hide my later life behind my early one”] (1 January 1813) (MA 16: 912). 4 Lavater to Goethe (6 November 1773): Goethe und Lavater. Briefe und Tagebücher. Weimar: Verlag der Goethegesellschaft 1901. P. 5. 5 Johann Caspar Lavater: Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntniß und Menschenliebe. Leipzig and Wintherthur: Weidmann, Reich and Steiner, 1775–1778, 4 vols. All quotations will be from this edition and the translations throughout the paper are my own. 6 I am taking the term the “legible body” from Michael Shortland’s discussion of Barthes Empire of the Signs. In: Skin Deep: Barthes, Lavater and the legible Body. (Economy and Society). Vol. 14.3. August 1985. Pp. 275–312. Shortland traces physiognomy to Giambattista della Porta’s attempts in his de humana physiognomia (1586) to establish a typology of animals and human beings, as well as to the visual studies of Charles le Brun, who attempted to systematize the expression of human passions in art.

168 artists flattered the royal patrons to whom the books were dedicated. But the books also offered the ordinary man inclusion into the portrait gallery of human subjects. While the famous and noble were the subjects for silhouette makers, the common man could also afford to be immortalized in the same way. Lavater’s pseudo-scientific explanations for the reading of faces and gestures appealed to both commonly held beliefs about the visual aspects of human appearance and at the same time offered a higher philosophical and “scientific” explanation for what one already knew to be true. And Lavater’s method held out the promise of arcane insight beyond what one could “see”. The books were translated into most European languages and in spite of their cost were widely read.7 These books on physiognomy not only fed a voracious appetite for the secret to the reading of images but also stimulated the desire to see oneself and others portrayed in lifelike drawings. The camera obscura and the concomitant craze for silhouettes reflected this desire to “fix” the image, a desire which was to finally be realized with the advent of photography and film. Lavater enlisted the help of artists like Johann Heinrich Fussli, Daniel Chodowiecki, and Johann Heinrich Lips for the drawings, silhouettes, and engravings which are at the heart of his project. The collection of images included in the books made this the greatest coffee-table book of the eighteenth century. Initially Goethe was an enthusiastic participant. As his friendship with Lavater intensified, involvement with the project increased as well. He contributed articles to the four volume work and functioned as editor and middle-man between Lavater and his publisher, Theodor Reich, throughout the publication of the four volumes of Physiognomische Fragmente.8 7

See The Faces of Physiognomy: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Johann Caspar Lavater. Ed. by Ellis Shookman. Princeton: Camden House 1993, for the importance of Lavater to a number of different disciplines. See especially Christoph Siegrist’s Letters of the Divine Alphabet. Pp. 25–39; Carsten Zelle’s Soul Semiology: On Lavater’s Physiognomic Principles. Pp. 41–59; Siegfried Frey’s Lavater, Lichtenberg and the Suggestive Power of the Human Face. Pp. 64–103. These articles were particularly useful in helping me formulate my discussion of Lavater’s importance to Goethe. They place the publication of Lavater’s Physiognomische Fragmente in the context of his own time and reiterate the importance of this publication to contemporaries. Frey notes, for example, that upon its publication “a wave of enthusiasm for physiognomics swept all Germany”. P. 67. All major newspapers and literary journals dealt with the issue and literary societies were formed to purchase the book on physiognomy. 8 The problematic nature of Goethe’s relationship to Lavater has escaped few biographers and scholars of Goethe’s work. One of the most exhaustive studies of Goethe’s collaboration with Lavater on the Physiognomische Fragmente is Eduard von der Hallen’s Goethes Anteil an Lavaters Physiognomischen Fragmenten. Frankfurt/M: Literarische Anstalt Rütten & Loenig 1888. Hallen successfully shows through letters from Lavater, Goethe, as well as from other contemporaries, that Goethe had an intimate role to play not only as a contributor to the book, but also as a mediator between

169 Although its publication was met with great public approval and acclaim, the scientific community quickly mobilized to criticize the book. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Professor of Physics at Göttingen, one of Lavater’s chief critics, disputed Lavater’s claim that physiognomic analysis, which purported to provide a key to unlocking the universal meaning of particular physical attributes, had a scientific basis. Furthermore, he argued that the real study of physiognomy should be based, not on physical attributes such as eye color, and facial structure, as Lavater believed, but on the individual characteristics exemplifying human emotion.9 Following this outcry from the scientific community against Lavater, Goethe publicly distanced himself from his involvement in the project. But in spite of his reluctance to be openly connected to the books on physiognomy, Goethe did not break off his relationship with Lavater until 1784, 10 years later. In addition to an active and often emotionally charged correspondence, Goethe visited Lavater twice in Switzerland, and Lavater made several trips to Weimar to see Goethe. When Goethe visited Switzerland in 1779, the real goal of the trip was to meet with Lavater and introduce him not only to Carl August, the Duke of Weimar-Eisenach but also to the Grand-Duchess Anna Amalia, the Duke’s mother, who came especially to meet the great man. Goethe wrote to von Stein that the meeting was a great success. Die Bekanntschaft von Lavatern ist für den Herzog und mich, was ich gehofft habe: Siegel und oberste Spitze der ganzen Reise und eine Weide an Himmelsbrot, wovan man lange gute Folgen spüren wird. [. . .] Er ist der Beste, Größste, Inningste aller sterblichen und unsterblichen Menschen, die ich kenne.10 The friendship with Lavater is for me and for the Duke exactly what I hoped for. It marks the end and is at the same time the high point of our journey, a meadow filled with manna which will nourish us for a long time. [. . .] Of all the December 1779.

And to Carl von Knebel he writes of Lavater that “such truth, faith, love, patience, strength, wisdom, goodness, activity, wholeness, multi-dimensionality and peace is not to be found in Israel or among the heathens” (November 1779).11 Reich, the publisher, and Lavater. Pp.16–32. He points out that Goethe’s effort to deny his involvement in the project is especially noteworthy, since at this time of his life (at the time he was writing his autobiography) he was busy taking credit for other anonymous publications of his youth. P. 2. But Hallen’s attempts to prove Goethe’s participation in Lavater’s project through an analysis of style of the essays cannot be considered reliable. 9 Lichtenberg’s main arguments against Lavater are contained in the essay Über Physiognomik: wider die Physiognomen. In: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Schriften und Briefe. Ed. by Wolfgang Promies. Vol. 3. Darmstadt 1972. Pp. 256–295. 10 This quote is included in Wilhelm Bode: Goethes Schweizer Reisen. Basel: Basler Buchstube 1922. Pp. 184–185. 11 Bode finds Goethe’s relationship to Lavater to be so close that they “enjoyed a great physical and intellectual attraction to one another, almost like lovers of the opposite sex” (my own translation). P. 9.

170 Yet despite these enthusiastic letters, which testify to the importance of Lavater for Goethe, his published account of the trip to Switzerland did not refer to Lavater at all. In other autobiographical writings Goethe also minimizes and at times completely denies his involvement in Lavater’s physiognomic project. While Goethe recalls, in the Campagne in Frankreich, that he provided the Physiognomische Fragmente with articles on animal physiology, he admits to nothing else. The extant 17 letters attesting Goethe’s friendship with Lavater exhibit a great range of emotion from adulation and sentimental devotion to irritation and pique. By ignoring Lavater in his accounts of the trips to Switzerland and diminishing his own involvement in Lavater’s physiognomic project, Goethe shrouds in mystery a figure, who inspired in him an inordinate, at times inexplicable, outpouring of emotion.

Lavater and the Eye of Physiognomy: The Science of “Sensitive Perception” The penetration of Lavater’s gaze, its power to kill, to undermine the very ground of existence, has ample verification in Goethe’s description of his first meeting with Lavater in Dichtung und Wahrheit. Before it took place, Lavater had already requested and received a picture of him. Upon meeting Goethe, Lavater exclaimed that the real Goethe was much different from his imaginings, while Goethe found Lavater in reality to be just like his picture. Furthermore, he says that the impression that he and Lavater made on people was also the opposite of one another. Those who found Lavater problematic at a distance or in writing, found him to be charming in person. Conversely, those who found charm in Goethe’s writing found in reality someone very cool and distant (MA 16: 652). The difficulty which these people had in reading the truth of the body points directly to Lavater’s great gift, his physiognomic “eye”. But while Goethe acknowledges Lavater’s ability or gift, he is at the same time wary of it. Lavater was always being put to the test even by his friends. Goethe relates a little trick which he played on him by sending him a picture of his friend Bahrd instead of a picture of himself. But, according to Goethe, Lavater was not fooled by the deception and immediately recognized the subterfuge (MA 16: 676). Goethe writes that Lavater had the uncanny ability to dissolve borders, separate the outside from the inside, and penetrate to the surface below. Indeed, to be around Lavater, was to feel spied upon: Lavaters Geist war durchaus imposant; in seiner Nähe konnte man sich einer entschiedenden Einwirkung nicht erwehren, und so muß’ ich mir denn gefallen lassen, Stirn und Nase, Augen und Mund einzeln zu betrachten, [. . .] mir kam es immer als eine Tücke, als ein Spionieren vor, wenn ich einen gegenwärtigen Menschen in seine Elemente zerlegen und seinen sittlichen Eigenschaften dadurch auf die Spur kommen wollte. Lieber hielt ich mich an sein Gespräch, in welchem er nach Belieben sich enhüllte. Hiernach will ich denn nicht leugnen daßes in Lavaters Nähe gewißermassen bänglich war: denn in dem er sich auf physiognomische Wege unsrer Eigenschaften

171 bemächtigte, so war er in der Unterredung Herr unsrer Gedanken, die er im Wechsel des Gespräches mit einigem Scharfsinn gar leicht erraten konnte. (MA 16: 797) Lavater’s spirit was thoroughly imposing. One could not escape a certain influence in his presence and so I had to allow that forehead, nose, eyes and mouth were each to be observed and their relationship and weighed, [. . .] It seemed as an odd thing, to be like a spy, when I divided a person into his specific parts and was thus to come to an understanding of his social role. I would rather have engaged in conversation, in which the person revealed himself at his pleasure. Therefore I won’t deny that it was somewhat frightening to be near Lavater because our characteristics were known to him through the study of physiognomy, so he was master of our conversations, and with his sharp wits could easily guess what they were during each conversation.

There is a kind of violation attached to this physiognomic gift. Lavater represents the dangers inherent in the unmediated reading of the image. Lavater desires an unmediated access to knowledge of the soul. To him words are a screen which obscures the real nature of the subject. Lavater’s physiognomic project is a way to bypass ordinary language and to create a fully transparent body language. This goes straight to the heart of the masquerade. According to Lavater, everything which indicates social standing – education, as well as behavior – masks the “real” person, who is hidden behind these disguises: “Stand, Gewohnheit, Besitzthuemer, Kleider, alles modificiert, alles verhüllt ihn”12 [“Position, habit, possessions, clothes, all modify, everything hides him (the individual)”]. Lavater sees the pattern of dissimulation which the body presents not only in all expressions of emotions but in the very life of the body in motion. Thus he differentiates between “Physiognomik” and “Pathognomik” – the first has to do with stillness, the effect of the soul on the body, the latter has to do with motion and thus of masquerade.13 According to Lavater, the science of physiognomy uncovers the soul. The physiognomist understands the language of nature, the language of the “moral and intellectual genius, the language of truth and morality”. He understands others better than they understand themselves. Mit geheimer Entzückung durchdringt der menschenfreundliche Physiognomist das Innere des Menschen, und erblickt da die erhabensten Anlagen, die sich vielleicht erst in der zukünftigen Welt entwickeln werden. Er trennt das Feste in dem Charakter von dem Habituellen, das Habituelle von dem Zufälligen.14 12

Lavater: Vol. 1. P. 15 of Physiognomische Fragmente. Quoted in Ursula Geittner: Die Sprache der Verstellung. Tübingen: Niemyer 1992. P. 244. Geittner argues convincingly that Lavater’s distrust of language and his search for an unmediated language of nature is reflected in anti-rhetorical attitudes in the eighteenth century. 14 Lavater: Physiognomische Fragmente. Vol. 1. P. 160. The quote is also included in Von der Physiognomik (1772). 13

172 With secret pleasure, the man-loving physiognomist pierces through all these coverings, and penetrates into [a person’s] real character, to discover there the most profound latent talents, which will perhaps be only developed in the next life. He divides the solid in the character from the habitual, the habitual from the accidental.

The body is thus transparent to the eye of the physiognomist. The body and its attributes like eye color, facial characteristics like the size and shape of the lips, eyes, nose, chin, forehead etc., muscles, skin, and pulse are fixed. Lavater provides a method for reading these attributes. But more importantly, this knowledge allows the physiognomist to penetrate the outer shell of the body to read the soul. When Lichtenberg criticizes Lavater’s study of physiognomy, he emphasizes instead the very aspects of human physiology and expression which Lavater has attempted to erase, the study of gestures and other expressions of human emotions.15 In Lavater’s view, these aspects of human behavior masked the real and true character of an individual and were on the side of dissimulation and disguise, that is, they hid the true characteristics of the body and of the soul. Lichtenberg’s critique exposes the flawed logic behind the desire for a universal and unmediated language of the body. The case of Socrates becomes a pivotal example of the flawed reasoning behind physiognomic analysis. Lichtenberg argues that if the laws of physiognomy were valid, then Socrates’ example of a good soul in an ugly, deformed body would not be possible. The case of Socrates is pivotal to Lavater as well. He puts Socrates under the gaze of the physiognomist. But instead of seeing Socrates’ ugliness as an exception to the rules of physiognomy, he sees him as the verification of physiognomic principles. The misshapen body, in the case of Socrates, masks the beauty of his soul. “The form of his face could have appeared to the un-physiognomic eye as ugly and his gestures beautiful and vice-versa”16 (Figure 1). The ability of the physiognomist to penetrate the infinite disguises and masks of the body provides the support for the seemingly paradoxical position that Socrates is both hideously ugly and beautiful in his soul. That is, the “eye of the physiognomist” is not fooled by the trappings of the body which can mislead the less discerning eye, and the body itself placed under that “eye” is stripped of its deceiving qualities. The image of a skeleton covered by the mask of the face with which Lavater ends his chapter on women illustrates this divide. The mask of the soft, fleshy face, which characterizes women even more than men, covers and also covers up the enduring contours of the skull underneath17 (Figure 2). 15

For an insightful discussion on Lichtenberg’s ideas see Gerhard Neumann: “Rede damit ich dich sehe”. Das neuzeitliche Ich und der physiognomische Blick. In: Das neuzeitliche Ich in der Literatur des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts. Ed. by Ullrich Fülleborn and Manfred Engel. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 1988. Pp. 73–108. 16 Lavater: Physiognomische Fragmente. Vol. 1. P. 150. 17 Lavater: Physiognomische Fragmente. Vol. 3. P. 293.

173

Figure 1. Nine Heads of Socrates. Johann Caspar Lavater. Physiognomische Fragmente. 1775–1778. Vol. 2. P. 70. University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center.

174

Figure 2. Skull and Mask. Johann Caspar Lavater. Physiognomische Fragmente. 1775–1778. Vol. 3. P. 293. University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center.

175 Lavater’s desire to tame the deceptive body leads ultimately to the idea that true knowledge can only be ascertained when the body is not being guided by the will and the emotions of the living being. He advises his readers to watch for those unguarded moments before “the deceiver” is aware of being watched. Der Betrüger ist nie weniger vermögend, sich zu verstellen, als im ersten Augenblicke, da wir ihn sehen, wenn er sich noch gleichsam ganz allein gelassen, eh er in eine gewisse Aktivität und Wärme gesetzt ist. – Nichts ist schwerer, behaupte ich, und nichts dennoch leichter, als Heucheley zu entdecken. Nichts schwerer, so lange der Heuchler denkt daß er beobachtet werde.18 The deceiver is never less able to deceive than in the first moments, since we see him when he is still left quite alone, before a certain warmth and activity has been set in motion. – Nothing is more difficult, I maintain, and nothing simpler, than to uncover deception. There is nothing harder so long as the deceiver thinks he is being watched.

To capture those moments, deception on the part of the physiognomist is warranted. Goethe is correct in his fear of being spied upon. At the heart of the physiognomic enterprise is the voyeur, for only he is in the privileged position of observing secretly. In order to catch the person in unguarded states vulnerable to the penetrating eye of the physiognomist, it is best, according to Lavater, to seek out moments of sudden und unexpected seeing, the moment of greeting for example, the moment of sudden passion or feeling, of compassion, etc. Bemerkt die blitzschnellen Momente der völligen Überraschung. Wer in solchen seine Gesichtszüge günstig und edel bewahren kann; wem in solchen kein fataler Zug entwischt, kein Zug der Schadenfreude, des Neides, des kaltverachtendes Stolzes, dessen Physiognomie und dessen Character warden jede Probe aushalten, die man über sterbliche und sündige Menschen darf ergehen lassen.19 Notice the lightning-fast moments of total surprise. Those whose facial expressions can remain looking noble and looking good; those who remain without betraying a fatal expression, without a hint of “Schadenfreude”, of envy, of coldly calculating pride, whose physiognomy and character can withstand all trials, which are visited on mortal sinners.

The physiognomist is thus the arbiter of “true” feelings and “true” character. He alone is the judge, the spy, who can discern these signs and penetrate the mask of consciousness. Lavater cites moments when we are least conscious of our behavior. These moments reveal the public persona displaying a private and uncontrollable gesture. But Lavater singles out the lover, spying on his beloved, as perhaps the best and most opportune moment for physiognomic insight.

18 19

Lavater: Physiognomische Fragmente. Vol. 2. P. 61. Lavater: Von der Physiognomik 1772. Part IV.

176 In jenen Augenblicken, die sich nicht herrufen, nicht erzwingen, mit nichts erkaufen lassen, die gegeben werden vom Vater des Lichts [. . .] In jenen Augenblicken, deren der Thor lacht, und der Weltweise spottet [. . .] In solchen Augenblicken, oder in denen seltlern der schlaflosen Mitternacht, wo wir erwachend an der saften edlen Gattin Seite, die dämmernde Lampe [. . .] in den seltnen seligen Augenblicken, wo Abschiednehmend nach durchwachter, durchschwätzter durchweinter Nacht – ein Geliebter, oder Bruder und Freund – im Lichte des Mondes stehn [. . .] In solchen Augenblicken sollte man Menschen zeichnen und über den Menschen schreiben.20 In those moments, which cannot be consciously produced, cannot be forced, cannot be bought, that are given to us by the father of light [. . .] In those moments where the fool laughs, and the man of the world jeers [. . .] In those moments, or in those less common [moments] of sleepless midnight, where we wake up at the side of the noble and gentle wife, the dimming light [. . .] in those seldom holy moments, where we take leave after a night of waking and talking and crying – a lover, a brother, and friend-standing in the light of the moon [. . .] In those moments we should draw and write about [these] people.

These are exactly those moments which Goethe will both seek out and screen in his autobiography. When he cautions Lavater against adopting a confessional style, he warns him that the truth about events is not contained there. In rejecting the confessional mode, a style made famous by Rousseau, Goethe is, in effect, shielding himself from the intrusive gaze of the physiognomist, from those moments which are the most open to being spied upon or seen. Lavater’s desire to have the body and particularly the face open to the discerning gaze of the physiognomist is thwarted by life itself. He longs for the cessation of movement, for those moments which stop and fix the living being in time. Lavater reveals his yearning for the knowledge which lies beyond the body in motion when he discusses the lessons he learned from watching the faces of the dead. So viele Todte habe ich gesehen, hab ich dabey die einförmige Beobachtung gemacht, daß sie etwa 16,18, 24 Stunden nach ihrem Tode (je nachdem sie eine Krankeit gehabt hatten) eine schönere Zeichnung hatten, als sie ihrem Leben niemals gehabt hatten – viel bestimmter, proportionierter, homogenischer, edler, viel edler, erhabner [. . .] Dürfte nicht vielleicht eine Grundphysiognomy sein? Durch die Ebbe und Fluth der Zufälle und Leidenschaften vertrübt? Die sich nach und nach durch die Ruhe des Todes wieder herstellte, wie trübgewordenes Wasser, wenns unzerrüttet stehen kann, helle wird.21 I have seen so many dead people, that I have been able to make the unique observation, that about 16, 18, 24 hours after their death (depending on what kind of illness they have had) [they have] a better outline [expression] than they have ever had while still alive – [an outline/picture] which is much more determined, proportional, homogeneous, nobler, and sublime [. . .] Couldn’t this be a the real basis for the physiognomy [of that person]? Through the ebb and flow of chance and passion this [basic physiognomy] fades after a while[;] is it restored again a while after death like muddy water which becomes clear when it has been allowed to stand still? 20 21

Lavater: Physiognomische Fragmente. Vol. 2. P. 4. Lavater: Physiognomische Fragmente. Vol. 2. P. 34.

177 The Problem of Deception While death seemed the ideal way to resolve the inevitable deceptive expressions in the living being, the problem of deception or Verstellungskraft had to be circumvented or at least minimized in Lavater’s physiognomic method. While painting, drawing and silhouette making were all important to the art of the physiognomist, they are not of equal value to him. In the discussion of the problems of deception and dissimulation in the living body, the ultimate goal was a cessation of movement. Analogously, stillness determines Lavater’s hierarchy of artistic choices. Lavater tells us that the portrait shows us better than nature the true face because it has made the face stop moving. It captures what in nature is impossible to stop.22 While a particularly life-like painting can tell the physiognomist a great deal about a person, an even better tool is the silhouette. Unlike the painting, which also displays the emotions of the subject, the silhouette strips the body of these “transitory” features and according to Lavater, fixes the unchanging and underlying shape of the skull. While Lavater notes that the silhouette is weak because it is a negative image, yet this very quality makes it most valuable to the physiognomist: “In einem Schattenrissse ist nur eine Linie; keine Bewegung, kein Licht, keine Farbe, keine Höhe und Tiefe; kein Aug, kein Ohr – kein Nasloch, keine Wange, – nur ein sehr kleiner Theil von der Lippe – und dennoch, wie entscheident bedeutsam ist Er”.23 [“A silhouette is only a line, no motion, no light, no color, no height; no eye, no ear – no nostril, no cheek, – only a small part of the lip – and still how decisive and important it is”]. Lavater places the silhouette in a privileged place as an instrument of physiognomic analysis because it provides an unmediated access to the soul. Gestures and emotions, the deceptive language of the body, are eliminated and replaced by a language which is “pure, unchanged and speechless”.24 If read correctly, the lines of the silhouette offer an alphabet of the soul.25 Lavater explains that the structure of such a language of the body can be discerned by dividing each silhouette into nine horizontal parts – from the crown of the head to the hairline, the line of the brow to the eyebrows, the eyebrows to the end of the outline of the nose, from there to the upper-lip, the actual lips, the top part of the chin, the bottom part of the chin, and finally the neck. These parts,

22

Lavater: Physiognomische Fragmente. Vol. 3. P. 21. Lavater, Physiognomische Fragmente. Vol. 2. P. 90. 24 Ibid. P. 90. 25 See Karsten Zelle: Soul Semiology. In: The Faces of Physiognomy: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Johann Caspar Lavater. Ed. by Ellis Shookman. Princeton: Camden House 1993. Pp. 40–59. Zelle discusses Lavater’s search for such an alphabet. 23

178 according to Lavater are actually letters of the alphabet and capable of speaking “truth”: Jeder einzelne Theil dieser Abschnitte ist an sich ein Buchstabe, oft eine Silbe, oft ein Wort, oft eine ganze Rede – der Wahrheit redender Natur.26 Each of these parts is actually a letter of the alphabet, or often a syllable, often a word, or often an entire speech of truth-speaking nature.

Lavater maintains that he has “gathered more physiognomic knowledge from silhouettes than from all other portraits”.27 This then is the essence of the language of the body which Lavater attempted to in his work on physiognomy (Figure 3). Lavater’s desire for a direct expression of the soul, a language in which signifier and signified are locked together in a transparent and unchanging sign, is already present in his Aussichten in die Ewigkeit, the book Goethe had reviewed in 1772. According to Lavater, in heaven a truly ideal language can be realized. This language is free from the dissimulation contained in words and gestures.28 In heaven beings can communicate wordlessly and directly. “Arbitrary sounds, which have no natural relation to the things they represent seem to me to be such an incomplete, accidental, and indefinite means of communicating our thoughts and feelings to others that I can hardly imagine, that these could exist in that land of truth”.29 Lavater envisions a language which would make all known languages obsolete. There in that eternal realm a language could exist in timeless space. “This unmediated language is physiognomic, pantomimic, and musical”.30 Such a language would be free from the vagaries of emotion and desire, and of language itself. Yet this heavenly language, free from the slippage and arbitrary meaning of the play of signification in language, remains tied to the visible. Music accompanies this language only in so far as it too is free of words and thus free of the voice which speaks those words. Lichtenberg, in his critique of physiognomy, had recognized that Lavater’s physiognomic rules shut out the ear in favor of the eye. Socrates becomes once again decisive. His demand of Charmides to “speak, so I can see you” indicates

26

Lavater: Physiognomsiche Fragmente. Vol. 2. P. 97. Ibid. P. 91. 28 See Geittner for an analysis of Lavater’s anti-rhetorical position. See also Gerhard Neumann: “Rede, damit ich dich sehe”. Das neuzeitliche Ich und der physiognomische Blick. Pp. 71–107. Neumann argues that Lavater and Lichtenberg take opposed positions toward a rhetoric of gesture and emotion. Lichtenberg’s proposed study of pathognomy develops a language of emotion while Lavater rejects all rhetorical, i.e., emotional signifiers in his physiognomic language. 29 Lavater: Aussichten in die Ewigkeit in Briefen an Hernn Joh. Zimmermann. Zurich 1781. P. 101. 30 Ibid. P. 108. 27

179

Figure 3. Sheet of Silhouettes. Johann Caspar Lavater. Physiognomische Fragmente. 1775–1778. Vol. 2. Pp. 49, 50. University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center.

180 to Lichtenberg a profoundly important shift from the gaze to the voice.31 As a consequence of his search for such a language of unmediated expression, Lavater’s project results not only in an enormous personal collection of the silhouettes of the most important figures of his time, but it also generates the mania for the art of silhouette drawing which became de rigueur as a parlor game in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

Goethe, Lavater, and Werther In his autobiographical Campagne in Frankreich Goethe notes that Lavater’s zeal in commissioning these images for his book resulted in the sickness he calls “Werther-fever”, an illness characterized by the narcissistic conception of the self. This fever, according to Goethe, was the result of Lavater’s physiognomic project. Werther’s problems, characterized by his sentimental ennui, his romantic yearning, were actually symptoms of a disease. Werther and his followers had succumbed to the mania for representation. Anyone important was brought under the painter’s brush. But, just as Lavater’s book on physiognomy had promised, both the noble and common man could have a silhouette made of their face and body. This new craze had a singular effect. According to Goethe, it promoted a false conception of the self. And “everyone”, Goethe tells us, “was practiced in this art and no stranger was allowed to escape before someone had written him onto a wall. The ‘stork-beaks’ [pantographs] of the silhouette makers were allowed no rest” (FA 16: 530) (Figure 4). The problems of revelation and concealment, of truth and dissimulation, of the function of language are issues important both to Lavater and to Goethe. Both men are also concerned with the expression of form in painting and figural arts. Yet Goethe in his autobiography strongly affirms his great distance from Lavater and his physiognomic studies. A number of scholars have pointed out Goethe’s strong connection both to the man and to his project. Gert Mattenklott, for example, has noted the connection between Lavater’s project to Goethe’s own interests in physiognomy and the murky connections between the two men. Mattenklott cites the Goethe’s desire to develop a course on human skeletal structure as an example of the continued influence of Lavater’s ideas on the importance of unmediated expression.32 But the case is more complex. Even as he denies his involvement in Lavater’s project, Goethe will continue to admit 31 Neumann suggests that Lichtenberg, in shifting his emphasis from the eye to the ear, anticipates the insights of Freudian analysis. P. 98. While Lichtenberg continues to believe in certain physiognomic truths, his distrust of the speaking body, points to the importance of social factors in the definition of identity. 32 Gert Mattenklott: Der übersinnliche Leib. Hamburg: Rowohlt 1982. He begins his study with Goethe’s thinking about the body and specifically the eye. P. 19. Mattenklott assumes that Goethe, even though Lichtenberg’s ridicule made obvious

181

Figure 4. Pantograph. Johann Caspar Lavater. Physiognomische Fragmente. 1775–1778. Vol. 2. P. 93. University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center.

his own contributions on animal physiology. He tells Gräfin X that he directly contributed a section on animal skulls to Lavater’s Physiognomische Fragmente (FA 16: 551). But Goethe’s interest in a direct expression of nature is far removed from Lavater’s concept of an unmediated language of nature. Mediation and masquerade are at the center of Goethe’s own semiotics.33

The Present Absence: Lavater and Werther in Switzerland Letters to von Stein and Knebel had described Lavater as the focus of trip to Switzerland in 1779. But the account of this journey, which was published in Schiller’s Horen (1792), makes no mention of Lavater at all. Subsequent to its allegiance to Lavater’s works untenable, continues to believe in many of the principles of the Physiognomische Fragmente. And to some extent I agree with Mattenklott. Goethe did not really delete Lavater from his own thinking, but formulated his ideas, particularly his concept of nature, both in opposition and in relation to Lavater. But how this was accomplished was more complex than Mattenklott allows in his analysis. My examination reveals the extent to which Goethe addressed Lavater and his work in his autobiographical work, especially in those moments when Goethe completely denied his connection to Lavater or deleted him from his recollection of events. 33 Mattenklott also recognizes the great importance of die Hülle [the mask] for Goethe and writes convincingly about its significance in Goethe’s thinking.

182 publication in Horen, the episode appears as a part of Goethe’s collected works and is certainly a part of his autobiographical project.34 Werther, the protagonist of his first novel, is resurrected and made the fictional narrator of the trip he had taken to Switzerland with the Duke of Weimar to see Lavater. In his introduction to the journey, Werther reveals a profoundly disturbed connection to the visible. This disturbed gaze has already been connected by Goethe to Lavater and his effect on perception and the process of identity formation. It had resulted in the sickness Goethe called “Werther-fever”. This sickness was a result of a disturbed ability to see oneself correctly in relation to the others in the world. The process of identity formation – the dialectical relationship between the external world and what is given to be seen there and how these objects are seen, that is understood – is also related to how nature functions in its relation to the visible. For Werther, one major response to what he sees is nausea. Looking at the great cliffs, Werther feels disgusted at the sight of the small Swiss Bürger [citizen], who exists in this sublime landscape. He feels nauseated at the sight of a plowed field. Man, he says is born to fly, not to labor like ants. Goethe had described Lavater in similar terms: Ich möge ihn [Lavater] einem Mann vergleichen, die Güter, Geld, Besitzthümer, Weib, Kinder, Freunde alles nicht achtete und vernachlässigte um einen unwiderstehlichen Trieb nach mechanischen Künsten zu befriedigen und eine Machine zum fliegen zu erfinden.35 I would like to compare him to a man, who did not value his property, money, possessions, wife, children, friends, and neglected all these in order to satisfy an irresistible urge for the mechanical arts and to invent a flying machine.

Werther tells the reader, as well as his fictional correspondent, that he is caught in the movement between art and nature. He confronts the dilemma between subject and object, between impressing and being impressed by the visible, when a friend shows him a special painting, enclosed in a special box. Inside the box is a life-size painting of Danae, captured by the painter while being impregnated by Zeus in the form of golden rain (the painting is in the style of Titian or Corregio). The friend, caught by the lure of the painting, looks at it in admiration and does not notice that this painting does not move Werther at all.

34

See K. R. Eissler: Goethe: a Psychoanalytic Study. Detroit: Wayne State University Press 1962. 2 vols. The use of Werther as an introduction to the trip to Switzerland prompts Eissler to conclude that this was a way to experience the pleasure of a woman’s body as well as to ward off homosexual feelings. Vol. 1. P. 374. 35 Letter to Lavater (July 1782) in Goethe und Lavater. Briefe und Tagebücher. P. 201. Goethe was himself interested in flying machines. Eissler sees this connection between Goethe and Lavater as significant because here Lavater serves as a screen on which he projects many of his own problems. Pp. 738–739.

183 Disturbed by his own coldness and inability to react to the painting, Werther decides on a remedy. Werther’s inability to be moved or fascinated by the lure of the painting stands in direct opposition to the well-known example of Zeuxis and Parrhasios. Zeuxis had painted grapes so life-like that even the birds were taken in by them, but Parrhasios painted a veil, which so fascinated Zeuxis that he asked what was behind it. Lacan points out that by deceiving the eye, that is, by giving the eye the image of the veil, the gaze triumphed. The source of Zeuxis’ reaction was not the painting’s resemblance to life, that is, by appearance, but its relation to the idea, that is to something beyond appearance. Lacan calls this thing beyond appearance which has the power to fascinate, the petit a. It is the lure in the painting. Examining Werther’s solution to his problem, that is, his inability to be fascinated by the images in the painting, brings us back to the gaze and its relation to the disease of sentimentality of which the Werther-Lavater complex is a symptom. What afflicts Werther has to do with the gaze. By not reacting to the painting, he does not allow himself to be pacified and captured by the fascinating images put down by the painter. In refusing the lure of the painting, he refuses the call of the Other, that is both the desire of the painter and of the image itself is erased. Werther, as observer, refuses to be seduced by the desire of the Other behind the painting. Werther resolves that the cure for this inability to desire is to impress the form of a real woman into himself. In order to accomplish this, he arranges to view a real woman in the nude. This experience, he thinks, will help him to be moved by a depiction of a woman in a painting. His failure to appreciate the painting of Danae and her rape by Zeus, he believes, is due to his inability to compare her to the real thing. The recognition of what is true and false is put into question. Werther assumes his problem is due to his failure to graft his own imaginary objects into the painting. What is operating in Werther’s inability to be moved by the painting is essential to the function of the gaze. His refusal to lay down his own gaze and be impregnated by the gaze of the painter, like Danae by the golden rain of Zeus, makes it impossible to be moved by the fascinum of the painting. Werther’s problem as the hero of Goethe’s great epistolary novel had not been caused not by a failure to fantasize, but by an excessive narcissistic fantasy life. In thus restating Werther’s dilemma in starkly visual terms, Goethe here elaborates on the solution to the problem. What is the right way to see and be seen? How does the process of seeing the self in relation to the world of desiring others operate? Goethe inscribes this new incarnation of Werther in a visual landscape. Just as Goethe had masqueraded as Maler Möller in his Italian journey, Werther in Switzerland pretends to be an artist. Here Goethe clearly resurrects Werther not only as a stand-in for the now absent Lavater, but also for his own autobiographical persona. In this disguise as a landscape artist, Werther, the narrator

184 of the Swiss journey, pays an old madam to procure for him a young and beautiful girl. He says: Ich nam mir fest vor, es koste was es wolle, ein Mädchen in dem Naturstande zu sehen [. . .] Sollten in dieser großen Stadt, dachte ich, nicht ein Mädchen sein, die sich für einen gewissen Preis dem Mann überlassen?Und sollte nicht eine darunter schön und willig genug sein meinen Augen ein fest zu geben? (FA 16: 27) I decided, no matter what the cost, to see a girl in the state of nature [. . .] I thought, shouldn’t there be in this great city a girl who for a certain price would give herself over to a man. And shouldn’t one of these be beautiful and willing enough to give my eyes a feast.

Werther asks for a girl who will provide him with something which will feed his eye. He desires the lure which Lacan has described as necessary to feed the eye. Unlike Zeuxis, Werther does not confront a painting but instead he is confronted with the scene which imitates a painting. The old woman tells him that what he is about to see is indeed a “feast for the eyes” and she says the “enjoyment is free”. She brings him into a small room and tells him to sit in an armchair across from the bed and the fire-place. Then she leaves the room. Es währte nicht lange, so kam zu der entgegengesetzten Türe ein großes herrlich gebildedes, schönes Frauenzimmer heraus, ihre Kleidung unterschied sich nicht von der gewöhnlichen. Sie schien mich nicht zu bemerken, warf ihren schwarzen Mantel ab und setzte sich vor die Toilette. Sie nahm eine große Haube, die ihr Gesicht bedeckt hatte, vom Kopfe, eine schöne regelmäßige Bildung zeigte sich, braune Haare mit vielen und großen Locken rollten auf die Schulern heruner. Sie fing an sich auszukleiden; welch eine wunderliche Empfindung da ein Stück nach dem andern herabfiel, und die Natur, von der fremden Hülle entkleidet, mir als fremd erschien und beinahe, möcht’ich sagen mir einen scheurlichen Eindruck machte. Ach! mein Freund, ist es nicht mit unsern Meinungen, unsern Vorurtheilen, Einrichtungen, Gesetzen und Grillen auch so? Erschrecken wir nicht, wenn eine von diesen fremden, ungehörigen, unwahren Umgebungen uns entzogen wird, und irgend ein Teil unsrer wahren Natur entblößt dastehen soll? Wir schaudern, wir schämen uns, aber vor keiner wunderlichen und abgeschmackten Art, uns durch äußern Zwang zu entsellen, fühlen wir die mindeste Abneigung. Soll ich dir’s gestehen, ich konne mich eben so wenig in den herrlichen Körper finden, da die letze Hülle herab fiel, als vielleicht Freund L. sich in seinen Zustand finden wird, wenn ihn der Himmel zum Anführer der Mohawks machen sollte. Was sehen wir an den Weibern? was für Weiber gefallen uns und wie konfudieren wir alle Begriffe? Ein kleiner Schu sieht gut a`us, und wir rufen: welch ein schöner kleiner Fuß! ein schmaler Schnürleib hat etwas Elegantes, und wir preisen die schöne Taille. [. . .] reizend war sie, indem sie sich entkleidete, schön, herrlich schön, als das letzte Gewand fiel. Sie stand, wie Minerva vor Paris mochte gestanden haben, beschieden bestieg sie ihr Lager, unbedeckt versuchte sie in verschiedenen Stellungen sich dem Schlafe zu übergeben, endlich schien sie entschlummert. In der anmutigsten Stellung blieb sie eine Weile, ich konnte staunen und bewundern. Endlich schien ein leidenschaftlicher Traum sie zu beunruhigen, sie seufzte tief, veränderte heftig die Stellung, stammelte den Namen eines Geliebten und schien ihre Arme gegn ihn

185 auszustrecken. Komm! Rief sie endlich mit vernehmlicher Stimme, komm mein Freund, in meine Arme oder ich schlafe wirklich ein. In dem Augenblick ergriff sie die seidne durchnähte Decke, zog sie über sich her, und ein allerliebstes Gesicht sah unter ihr hervor. (FA 16: 30–31) Before long, a tall, beautiful but young woman, whose clothing was not out of the ordinary, came out of the door opposite me. She seemed not to notice me, threw off her coat, and sat in front of the dresser. She took off the hood which had hidden her face and revealed beautiful regular features with brown hair, the locks of which fell onto her shoulders. She began to undress. What an incredible feeling as one piece after the other fell off and nature, freed of its foreign shell, seemed to me strange and almost gave me an uncanny feeling. Oh, my friend, isn’t it the same with all our opinions, prejudices, positions, accommodation, laws, and habits? Don’t we become afraid when one of these untrue accouterments is removed from us and part of our true nature stands revealed? We shudder; we are ashamed, but we do not hesitate to alter ourselves as a result of outside pressure. Should I confess it to you? I found myself as little able to find myself in this glorious body as maybe friend L [sic] will know of the conditions of being made leader of the Mohawks. What do we see in women? What kinds of women appeal to us and we cry out. “What a beautiful foot!” A small cinched corset has something elegant about it and we praise a small waist. [. . .] After she had taken off her clothes She stood like Minerva must have in front of Paris. Humbly she entered her bed and she tried to fall asleep uncovered in various positions. She remained still in the most attractive position so that I could only wonder and admire her. Finally a passionate dream seemed to make her restless. She sighted deeply, changed her position, stammered the name of a lover and seemed to lift her arms towards me.

But we know from the beginning of the story that the invitation, this call from the other, will not be answered, since Werther has assured us of his refusal at the onset of his tale. He writes to a friend that he has managed to remain aloof from the sight of this seductive image: “Fürchte nichts und höre mich: ich habe mir nichts vorzuwerfen, der Anblick hat mich nicht aus meiner Fassung gebracht, aber meine Einbildungskraft ist entzündet, mein Blut erheitzt” [“Do not fear and hear me: I have nothing to criticize myself for, the view did not disturb me, but my imagination is inflamed and my blood heated up”] (FA 16: 29). Werther assumes, like Lavater, that in undressing, a true essence reveals itself. Stripped of the accouterments of social convention, the deceptive nature of social position can now easily be discerned. It is here that the eye of physiognomy shows itself again. Werther, in his assumption that an essential self exists which is separate and apart from social convention, in effect, expresses Lavater’s desire to strip the body not only of the deceiving mask of clothes but also of movement itself. These assumptions behind the idea of an essential self which exist behind the mask of social convention are connected to the disease which Lavater’s physiognomic eye has caused and from which Werther suffers. This is the disease which Goethe had coined as “Werther-fever”, a disease which had been stimulated and indeed caused by Lavater’s physiognomic project.

186 But in the game of sexual play, instead of revealing an essential self, the strip-tease of the young prostitute only reveals the mask underneath. The girl poses as if she were asleep and calls to Werther to join her in her bed. It is the call at the level of desire that Werther refuses. His inflamed passion, he confides to the reader, calls for an ice-cold shower to cool off. He is unable to exact a cure for the refusal which constitutes his disease – the inability to be moved by the image. That is, seeing, for Werther, is a path toward blindness. He does not really see anything outside himself at all. Instead of allowing nature to impress itself, he projects the product of his imagination onto what he sees. Alice Kuzniar, in her Lacanian study of Goethe’s novel, has shown that Werther’s desire for transparency in language leads him to “project his own state of mind onto nature, thereby creating a double of himself ”.36 By connecting Werther with Lavater and himself in his autobiographical writings, Goethe brings this process of doubling into the function of autobiography itself. The desire for an unmediated view and a language which is transparent has led each figure to a specular hall of mirrors. But how is autobiography and nature a cure for the narcissistic over-valuation of the self? Here we reach a further explication of the disease of sentimentality which afflicted Werther, his followers and Lavater, the actual source of infection. The relation between subject and object is the source of the problem. What does it mean then to see correctly or to see incorrectly? For Lavater, seeing was a way to penetrate and establish the “true” character of a person. But this physiognomic gaze was singular and annihilating. Lavater’s project to “see” the figure of the real figure of Jesus led him to commission hundred of portraits of Christ. But none of these were actually equal to the Christ who existed in his own imagination. Thus the eye of the 36 Alice Kuzniar: The Misrepresentation of the Self: Werther versus Goethe. Mosaic. Spring 1989. Pp. 15–29, here p. 17. I agree with Kuzniar who argues that Werther projects his own state of mind and thus his own double onto nature. She recognizes the function of this doubling as an attempt to cover up a lack in being. Kuzniar points out that Werther was neither a direct expression of autobiographical reality, nor was he a completely fictional being unrelated to Goethe’s own life’s story. Kuzniar’s Lacanian reading of Goethe and his relation to his fictional hero leads to the conclusion that Werther’s desire for direct access to language makes it impossible for him to establish a relationship with the Other. “Werther does not surrender himself; he literally gives the Other his own features”. P. 22. My study tries to address this lack of surrender in terms of Lacan’s theory of the function of the gaze in the construction of identity. By using Werther as a narrative voice in the recollection of his Swiss journey, the process of doubling also becomes more complicated because the fictional persona of Werther stands in more directly for the author and his alter egos, Lavater, Plessing etc. than he had in the The Sorrows of Young Werther. Goethe is not isolating the fictional persona of Werther from his own life.

187 physiognomist, while purporting to really see and judge the images around him, seems to be not capable of seeing what is there to be seen. His real aim is to look behind the image, to obliterate the traces of what does not match the picture found in his own imagination. Lavater’s relationship to Goethe is characterized by this same annihilating gaze. For Lavater, Goethe, especially as he was catapulted to literary fame, was the object of adulation and even desire. He commissioned a number of portraits and drawings of Goethe and subjected them to physiognomic analysis. But while he expressed his admiration of the great man, Lavater also attempted criticized Goethe. And this criticism was not only verbal but visual. Lavater actually commissioned an illustration for the book which showed Jesus tempted by Satan, whose image was modeled on Goethe. Lavater paints both living and dead subjects in the colors of his imagination. But these attempts are not free of masks and dissimulation. Both Goethe and Lavater reveal themselves on both a verbal and visual level. Is there a distinction to be made between Goethe’s autobiographical masquerade and Lavater’s confessional writings? On the contrary, Goethe’s masks and Lavater’s physiognomic eye are linked by the function of the gaze (Figure 5).

Autobiography and the Function of the Gaze: Goethe’s masks in his autobiography and Lavater’s physiognomic eye are linked by the function of the gaze. The function of the masquerade in Dichtung und Wahrheit can be better understood in the light of Goethe’s relationship to Lavater and his physiognomic eye. The power of the eye of the physiognomist to unmask the other makes it necessary to put on the mask to fool the other. The necessity of the mask had characterized Goethe’s recollection of past events. Goethe describes his autobiography as anti-confessional. Unlike Rousseau, who delighted in showing his readers great moments of pain and self-doubt, Goethe avoided these revealing moments. But perhaps even more important for Goethe than Rousseau was the example of Lavater’s own autobiographical writings. While Rousseau’s Confessions exhibit a strong degree of self-absorption, Lavater’s diaries develop this mode of self-examination to an extreme point. Lavater published two diaries which were ruminations on the state of his soul. The first, Geheimes Tagebuch. Von einem Beobachter Seiner Selbst (1771) [Secret Diary from an Observer of his Own Self ], was a record of one month of his life. Lavater’s attempts to uncover the deepest secrets of his soul for the public make this the antithesis of Goethe’s own efforts to deflect the gaze of the reader from such moments. Lavater’s stated goal was to eliminate all possible areas of deception. But because the diary was published anonymously, the public was first and foremost intrigued by the identity of the author. The second diary, Unveränderte Fragmente aus dem Tagebuch eines Beobachters seiner

188

Figure 5. Satan with Jesus in the Desert. Johann Caspar Lavater. Jesus Messias. 1783. Vol. 1. Pp. 172, 173. University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center.

189 Selbst (1773)37 [Unchanged Fragments from the Diary of an Observer of his Own Self ], which covers a period of six months, addresses the problem of dissimulation directly. Here Lavater provides his readers not only with his identity as the author, but in a letter to the editor, he assures his readers that the diary will eliminate the offending hand of the editor, thus promising a direct expression of his own thoughts. The diary also includes a letter from the editor to Lavater assuring him and the reader that he will emend only the most essential orthographic irregularities in the diary. This desire to eliminate the mask of anonymity as well as the hand of the editor stands in direct opposition to Goethe’s aim in his autobiography to avoid confession and to tell the truth with fiction. By using the fictional persona of Werther to relate the events of his Swiss journey, Goethe makes dissimulation the focus of his account. By deliberately choosing Werther as a narrative voice, Goethe provides a link to Lavater as a manifestation of the Werther persona. These alter egos are at once different from, yet at the same time intimately related to Goethe. And it is the repetition itself which directs our gaze to all the interconnections between them. Lavater and Werther all are obsessed with seeing. But Goethe questions the function of sight for each of them. Both want to see the world through the screen of their own imagination, whereas Goethe differentiates this seeing from the fictions he invents to tell the “truth” of his own story. Lavater’s project, to uncover as much of himself as possible, and to achieve this by removing all mediation between himself and the reader, ultimately reveals as much fictional consent as Goethe’s own “fictions”. By providing the reader with an unmediated record of his thoughts, Lavater wanted to focus the attention of the reader from the author to the text. But by removing the screen of anonymity, Lavater shifts the reader’s attention squarely to himself. Because the only real object of seeing for Lavater is the self, the Other exists only as a shadow whose purpose is to reflect the image of the self. But the distinction between Goethe and his alter egos points not only to the difference between them but also to the similarities. When Goethe advises Friedrich Viktor Lebrecht Plessing to look to nature for the cure of his Wertherfever, he is himself implicated both in the disease and in the cure.38 This cure, 37

Lavater: Unveränderte Fragmente aus dem Tagebuch eines Beobachters seiner Selbst (1773). Ed. by Christoph Siegrist. Bern and Stuttgart: Verlag Paul Haupt, 1978. See Siegrist’s Nachwort for a helpful commentary detailing the history of these two diaries. Siegrist concludes that, finally, for Lavater “his fellow human beings only exist in order to provide a mirror for his own personality and to stimulate the same”. P. 29. 38 Goethe’s encounter with Friedrich Viktor Lebrecht Plessing took place in 1776, when Plessing after studying law and theology, returned to his parents home in Wernigerode, suffering from emotional distress. He resumed his studies at the University of Königsberg in 1778 to study law and philosophy and became Professor of Philosophy at Duisberg in 1788. Stellenkommentar. FA 16: 970.

190 he tells us, is to look to nature. But nature itself cannot speak. Goethe is pointing not to nature as language but to something else. It is the process of seeing itself which is implicated here. The cure is a way of seeing which inserts a third term. This third term with which the dyadic specular relation must be cut is language itself. What Lacan meant when he said that “[t]hey have eyes that they might not see”,39 defines Werther’s dilemma. Instead of opening his eyes, he closes them. He refuses to partake in the promised Augenschmauss [feast for the eyes]. He uses his sight in order to shut himself off from the other and thus reveals himself to be one of those closed beings, who had become a victim of Lavater’s mania for contemplating one’s own portrait. Goethe criticizes Lavater, Rousseau, and all others who are reflected in the fictional persona of Werther of navel-gazing and of narcissistic contemplation, an activity which ultimately leads to a diseased sense of self. To understand what is going on in Goethe’s criticism of the Werther/Lavater “fever” we turn to Lacan’s psychoanalytic explanation of the construction of identity in terms of the gaze. Lacan characterizes this narcissistic process of contemplation as an “avoidance of the gaze”. The narcissistic subject “derives its reference from the specular image – in the satisfaction, not to say self-satisfaction, that diffuses from it, which gives the subject a pretext for such a profound mis-recognition [mesconnaissance].40 By hiding Lavater within the story of his life and making him appear and reappear, Goethe lets us see Lavater peeping out at us like the young prostitute coquettishly peeped out at her voyeuristic observer. He unveils Lavater’s coy exhibitionism in publishing a diary, which is at the heart a strip-tease meant for all eyes. Lavater’s desire for an unmediated view and a transparent language leads to a specular hall of mirrors. By using language as a method of dissimulation, Goethe uncovers the mis-recognition at the center of the confessional mode practiced by Lavater and others like him. The game of insertion and deletion Goethe had played with Lavater and Werther in his autobiography reveals the split in which the subject is constituted. That is, the game of fort-da by which Goethe banishes and then retrieves these figures points to the first moments of traumatic loss. The subject of language is always reminded of what he has lost in being born into language. The game of fort-da thus is a constant reminder of this divide. According to Lacan, it is not the absent mother but the split subject who is revealed in the repetition of the game. The game represents an end to the illusion of completeness while at the same time it knits together the tapestry of loss. It symbolically repeats the departure of the loss of plenitude and satisfaction represented by the child and mother dyad. The game creates a gap which is always open. 39

Jacques Lacan: Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Ed. and trans. by Alan Sheridan. New York/London: Norton 1981. P. 109. 40 Ibid. P. 74.

191 Werther and Lavater stand on the other side of the divide and thus represent those objects lost to the subject which he is always trying to retrieve. Lacan refers to these objects symbolically as the objet a, those parts of the subject which were lost to him. They are represented by the breast, by the feces, by the voice, and most importantly by the gaze. By playing the game of fort-da, Goethe relegates his doubles and himself to the place of eternal vacillation and divide, within which the subject constitutes and recognizes himself. Masquerade becomes a way out of the imaginary dyad. Lavater in his desire to see the essential self avoids the recognition of this divide. His wish to convert Goethe is unmasked as a desire for dyadic union. His distrust of language and desire for an unmediated view represents a longing for the mortification of the other. He peers at us coyly from under the covers of Goethe’s own story, and is unmasked as voyeur. What he looks for and finds is “merely a shadow, a shadow behind the curtain”.41 Thus he will fantasize any magic of presence and like Werther will project the product of imagination onto the Other. It is not surprising that Goethe when asked what Werther’s fate would have been had he allowed him to live, replied that he would be blind. By cutting Werther off from sight, would then finally, like Charmides’ appeal to Socrates, he be able to speak?

41

Ibid. P. 182.

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Elliott Schreiber

Towards an Aesthetics of the Sublime Augenblick: Reading Karl Philipp Moritz Reading Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers* Moritz, through his lifelong engagement with Goethe’s first novel, formulated the first modern aesthetics of the instant, or Augenblick. I analyze this engagement against the background of the reading revolution in late eighteenth-century Germany. This revolution gave rise to a conception of the “Neuzeit” [modernity] in the most literal sense: an awareness of time as always radically new. Moritz’s famous concept of the autonomous artwork, which he developed through his reading of Werther, does not provide a refuge from this tumultuous modern time, as some scholars argue. Only in the very first sublime moments of artistic production does the artist glimpse nature’s eternal whole, a totality that both continually eludes and stimulates artistic representation.

One of the hallmarks of modernity is its restless and relentless pace of change, whose origins social historians have traced to the second half of the eighteenth century.1 Already before the seismic shifts of the French Revolution, there emerged in Germany a conception of Neuzeit, a time that was felt to be always radically new.2 The pace of change was first set in this period not by a political revolution, but rather by a revolution in text production and reading.3 “Nie ist mehr geschrieben und mehr gelesen worden” [“Never before has more been written and more been read”], marveled Wieland in 1779.4 Decried by critics of the

* I would like thank Fritz Breithaupt, Eric Denton, and participants in the Vassar College colloquium on “Writing Modernity” for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. 1 See Marshall Berman: All That Is Solid Melts into Air. The Experience of Modernity. New York: Penguin Books 1988. 2 See Reinhart Koselleck: Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp 4th ed. 2000. Pp. 12, 330. 3 Though for a consideration of the political implications of the new literary public sphere, see Reinhart Koselleck: Kritik und Krise. Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp 8th ed. 1997. For surveys of the reading and publishing revolution in Germany, see Rolf Engelsing: Die Perioden der Lesergeschichte in der Neuzeit. In: Zur Sozialgeschichte deutscher Mittel- und Unterschichten. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1973. Pp. 112–154. Helmuth Kiesel and Paul Münch: Gesellschaft und Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert. Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck 1977. Erich Schön: Der Verlust der Sinnlichkeit oder Die Verwandlungen des Lesers. Mentalitätswandel um 1800. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 1987. Albert Ward: Book Production: Fiction and the German Reading Public 1740–1800. Oxford: The Clarendon Press 1974. 4 Ward: Book Production. P. 59.

194 time as a Lesesucht [reading addiction] or Lesewut [reading rage], a new, “extensive” reading mode on the part of the burgeoning Bildungsbürgertum increasingly displaced the traditional practice of “intensive” reading. The latter limited itself to a canon comprising a few authoritative texts, mostly devotional in nature, that were held to embody eternal values, and were read repeatedly, often ritualistically according to the cycle of the religious calendar.5 The extensive mode of reading exploded the bounds of this canon, and shattered the cyclical time of repetitive reading into a series of Augenblicke, or transient instants.6 That is to say, faith in an eternity that envelops the here and now was eroded not only by what was read in the Enlightenment, but also by how the escalating number of texts were read.7 The new practice of extensive reading both fuelled, and was fuelled by, a dramatic rise in book production. It has been estimated that of the approximately 175,000 German titles produced in the course of the eighteenth century, fully two-thirds were published after 1760.8 The emergence of a modern book market made it possible for the first time for German authors to emancipate themselves from their traditional patrons. They were, however, now beholden to the very market that liberated them. To meet consumers’soaring demand, the swelling ranks of authors worked against the clock to churn out texts. “Wenn England eine vorzügliche Stärke in Rennpferden hat”, quipped Lichtenberg, “so haben wir die unsrige in Rennfedern” [“If England’s forte is race horses, then ours is race pens”].9 Acceleration became the norm both for the consumers as well as for the producers of the mounting quantity of texts. While the output of religious literature for the layman dropped precipitously, there was a surge in the production of imaginative literature, in particular the novel.10 No genre stimulated the new extensive reading vogue as powerfully as the sentimental novel, whose popularity reached its height in the 1770s. Daniel Purdy has suggested that sentimental novels, by arousing readers’ empathy with

5

Schön: Der Verlust der Sinnlichkeit. Pp. 40–41. On the modern fragmentation of time into discrete moments through the reception of print media, see Engelsing: Perioden der Lesergeschichte. Pp. 134–135. Niklas Luhmann: Temporalisierungen. In: Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp 1997. Vol. 2. Pp. 1001, 1008. Marschall McLuhan: The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1962. P. 241. 7 On the imbrication of temporality and eternity in the pre-modern era, see Georges Poulet: Studies in Human Time. Trans. Elliott Coleman. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1956. Pp. 3–8. 8 Kiesel and Münch: Gesellschaft und Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert. P. 181. 9 Ward: Book Production. P. 61. My translation of this quote is adapted from Martha Woodmansee: The Author, Art, and the Market. Rereading the History of Aesthetics. New York: Columbia University Press 1994. P. 25. 10 Ward: Book Production. Pp. 33, 49. 6

195 characters’ ever-changing emotional states, drew them into a cycle of desire and momentary gratification that spurred further literary consumption. The flood of emotionally gripping narratives thereby “restructured the time frame within which [the] individual reader’s desires were developed, satisfied, and then replaced”.11 The most famous German sentimental novel, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, immediately captivated and polarized the German and wider European reading public like no other book of its day. Having appeared at the Leipzig book fair in September 1774, by the end of the following year, it had gone through no fewer than eleven German editions (most of them pirated), and ignited a fashion for all things Werther, from his epistolary style to his mode of dress to his personal mannerisms and even, most infamously, his suicide.12 In his autobiography, Goethe attributes the astonishing success of his first novel to its timeliness [“weil es genau in die rechte Zeit traf ”].13 Indeed, it struck like a lightning bolt into an age that was already electrified by the rage for reading sentimental literature. And it arguably did so because it gave precise expression to the modern sense of accelerating change that the reading revolution had helped create, particularly in its protagonist’s powerful vision of the transformative Augenblick in his letter of 18 August: “Da ist kein Augenblik, der nicht dich verzehrte und die Deinigen um dich her, kein Augenblik, da du nicht ein Zerstöhrer bist, seyn mußt” [“There is no moment that does not consume you and yours, no moment in which you are not, must be, a destroyer”].14 From one moment to the next, nothing stays the same; the only constant of the modern age is perpetual change. As Purdy has recounted, Goethe denounced the identificatory reading practices that his own novel aroused, and turned away from sentimentalism to embrace a “neo-classical aesthetics of artistic autonomy” with its “search for eternal laws of aesthetic form”.15 Credit for the first decisive articulation of this aesthetics goes to Karl Philipp Moritz, whom Goethe befriended in Italy, and who is best 11

Daniel Purdy: The Tyranny of Elegance: Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Goethe. Baltimore – London: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1998. Pp. 35, 39. 12 Nicholas Boyd. Goethe: The Poet and the Age. Oxford: The Clarendon Press 1991. Vol. 1. Pp. 175. Boyd here makes the intriguing suggestion that “Werther became a fashion because it was about a fashion”, first and foremost the fashion of reading. For an interesting recent discussion of Werther-Fieber as well as Goethe’s response to it, see also Hans Rudolf Vaget: Werther, the Undead. In: Goethe Yearbook 12 (2004). Pp. 17–29. 13 FA 14: 641. All translations from Goethe’s works are my own. I have consulted the following translations: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther. Trans. by Victor Lange. In: Goethe’s Collected Works. Vol. 11. Ed. by David E. Wellbery. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1995. The Sorrows of Young Werther. Trans. by Burton Pike. New York: The Modern Library 2004. The Autobiography of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Trans. by John Oxenford. 14 FA 8: 106–108. 15 Purdy: The Tyranny of Elegance. Pp. 47, 23.

196 known today for his autobiographical novel, Anton Reiser. According to Martha Woodmansee, Moritz launched the concept of the autonomy of the artwork in an effort to distinguish true art from the works being mass produced and consumed in his day at an unprecedented rate.16 In short, the line of scholarship pursued by Purdy and Woodmansee portrays Goethe and Moritz as having sought refuge from the tumultuous waves of the revolution in reading and book production on the eternally peaceful shores of the autonomous artwork. By contrast, I argue that Moritz inaugurated an aesthetics that at once seeks a vision of eternity, and hence a redemption from modernity’s restless change, and yet recognizes that this eternity can only be glimpsed in the instant. He thereby makes one of the first and most consequential forays into what Bruno Hillebrand has identified as a particularly modern aesthetic sensibility, an “Ästhetik des Augenblicks” [“aesthetics of the instant”].17 Moritz develops his aesthetic of the instant as a reader through several stages of engagement with Goethe’s Werther. In the first stage, Moritz’s fictional alter ego, the teen-aged Anton Reiser, identifies intensely with Werther’s description of the transformative Augenblick in his letter of 18 August precisely through a manner of reading that is itself transformative, that alters the very text it reads. Thus, though Anton’s repeated reading of Goethe’s novel would appear to represent a return to a traditional, intensive reading practice, it in fact merely underscores the impossibility of a stable, enduring text that the traditional practice presumes; the transformative moment of reading precludes exact repetition. In the second stage of his engagement with Werther, in a structural analysis of Goethe’s novel, Moritz tries to overcome this transformative moment by sublating it within the timelessness of the autonomous artwork, or the work that is “in sich selbst vollendet” [“complete in itself ”]. He attempts this through a “perspectival” reading that regards the letter of 18 August as the central point around which Goethe’s novel 16 Woodmansee: The Author, Art, and the Market. P. 27. Woodmansee is not the first to read Moritz’s concept of aesthetic autonomy as a refuge from the forces of the literary market. See in particular Martin Fontius: Der Autonomiegedanke bei Moritz und die Antinomien der Marktproduktion. In: Literatur im Epochenumbruch. Funktionen europäischer Literaturen im 18. und beginnenden 19. Jahrhundert. Ed. by Günther Klotz, Winfried Schröder and Peter Weber. Berlin – Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag 1977. 17 Bruno Hillebrand. Ästhetik des Augenblicks. Der Dichter als Überwinder der Zeit – von Goethe bis heute. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1999. Hillebrand sees Goethe as formative for this modern aesthetic sensibility, but completely disregards Moritz. For a sustained study of the role of the Augenblick in Goethe’s work, see Andreas Anglet: Der “ewige” Augenblick. Studien zur Struktur und Funktion eines Denkbildes bei Goethe. Cologne – Weimar – Vienna: Böhlau 1991. For an excellent alternative analysis of the Goethean Augenblick, see Nicholas Rennie: Ut Pictura Historia: Goethe’s Historical Imagination and the Augenblick. In: Goethe Yearbook 8 (1996). Pp. 120–141. See also Nicholas Rennie: Between Pascal and Mallarmé: Faust’s Speculative Moment. In: Comparative Literature. Fall 2000. Vol. 52, no. 4. Pp. 269–290.

197 is formally structured, and that hence freezes the transformative Augenblick in space. In so doing, he negates the temporality held by Lessing to be the defining feature of the verbal medium; like visual art according to Lessing, literature in Moritz’s new reading of Goethe’s novel is conceived as fundamentally spatial. This solution to the transformative moment, however, proves only temporary: in the third and final stage of his engagement with Werther, Moritz shifts the center of gravity of his aesthetics away from the autonomous work of art, situating it instead in the Augenblicken just prior to its completion, and thereby calls that completion into question. He does so in a remarkable reading of Werther’s letter of 10 May in his essay, “On a Painting by Goethe”, revealing how in the very first instants of artistic production, the artist intimates the sublime, eternal totality of nature. But it is an eternal totality whose perception the very act of artistic representation ruptures, and that is thus paradoxically transient, vanishing in the blink of an eye. Moritz’s later aesthetics thus prefigures Kant’s concept of “negative representation” in the analytic of the sublime in his Critique of Judgment. In sum, Moritz moves from a concern with the transformative moment of reception to a formalist, “perspectival” aesthetics that attempts to contain that moment within the contours of the autonomous artwork, to an aesthetics of open-ended artistic production that struggles to represent the absolute totality intimated in sublime, unrepresentable Augenblicken. Moritz’s concept of the autonomy of the artwork, then, far from proving a stable refuge from the sea change in temporal sensibility brought about by modern textual production and reception practices, ultimately undermines the possibility of such a refuge. It thereby launches arguably the first truly modern aesthetic, one that at once envisions and radically subverts the possibility of transcending the perpetually new time of the Neuzeit through artistic representation.

The Transformative Augenblick of Reception Published in 1786, the Second and Third Parts of Moritz’s autobiographical novel, Anton Reiser, contain one of the most vivid accounts of the contemporary reception of sentimental literature, in particular of Werther. A little over a year before he lays eyes on Goethe’s novel, in the summer of 1775, the teenaged Anton is drawn into a reading frenzy that bears out Purdy’s claim that sentimental literature restructures the time-frame in which the reader’s desires are aroused, gratified, and replaced. Anton’s emotional upheaval during this Lesewut prepares the way for his identification with the character of Werther, particularly with his vision of the all-consuming Augenblick. This act of identification changes both Anton and the text in which he sees himself reflected; his reading of Werther, then, is itself a transformative moment. Marginalized by his fellow pupils and neglected by his teachers, Anton finds an escape in reading novels and plays: “Er ging zu einem Antiquarius und holte

198 sich einen Roman, eine Komödie nach der andern, und fing nun mit einer Art von Wut an, zu lesen” [“He went to a used book vendor (‘Antiquarius’) and obtained one novel and one comedy after another, and began reading with a kind of fury”].18 The term Antiquarius is somewhat misleading, for he in fact supplies Anton with contemporary literature, particularly works in a sentimental vein such as Lawrence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey and Johann Gottlieb Schummel’s Empfindsame Reisen durch Deutschland [Sentimental Journey through Germany] (256). Such works quickly supplant the classical regimen of texts that is the mainstay of his Gymnasium curriculum; he thus secretly reads a novel in class while his classmates study the Roman historian Livy (263), and exchanges his schoolbooks for contemporary works (254) – an exchange that is representative of a period that saw a sharp decline in the printing of Latin texts and an upsurge in texts written in the vernacular, particularly novels.19 This exchange feeds into Anton’s escalating cycle of debt and desire: the Antiquarius extends him credit to borrow his books, and to pay down this debt, Anton sells the Antiquarius his schoolbooks, which earns him a new line of credit with which he attempts to fill his ever-growing hunger for reading. These transactions occur at a dizzying speed; “ehe er es merkte” [“before he knows it”], Anton has read himself deeply into debt; and the book vendor resells his schoolbooks immediately, in Anton’s presence, turning a sixfold profit (254–255). Instantaneous transformation characterizes not only the financial transactions around Anton’s reading, but also his emotional investment in the sentimental reading material: in der dramatischen Welt lebte und und webte er – da vergoß er oft Tränen, indem er las, und ließ sich wechselsweise bald in heftige, tobende Leidenschaft, des Zorns, der Wut und der Rache, und bald wieder in die sanften Empfindungen des großmütigen Verzeihens, des obsiegenden Wohlwollens, und des überströmenden Mitleids versetzen. – (256) he lived and breathed in the dramatic world – he often shed tears there while reading, and entered by turns into the violent, raging passion of anger, fury, and revenge, and into the mild emotions of magnanimous forgiveness, triumphant benevolence, and overflowing compassion. –

Just as he exchanges one book for another, so Anton replaces one emotion with another, each one intense but ephemeral. His exchange of emotions is made

18

Karl Philipp Moritz: Werke in zwei Bänden. Frankfurt/M: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag 1999. Vol. 1. P. 254. Page numbers appear in the text following direct quotations. All translations from Moritz’s works are my own. With Anton Reiser, I have adapted the following outstanding translation: Karl Philipp Moritz: Anton Reiser. A Psychological Novel. Trans. by Ritchie Robertson. London: Penguin 1997. 19 See Ward: Book Production. P. 29.

199 possible by the literature he reads, which functions as a kind of sentimental currency. Instantaneous financial and sentimental exchange intersect most clearly in an instance (and an instant) in which Anton unexpectedly receives money. The scene takes place in the home of the school’s rector, where Anton is lodging, and where a guest gives Trinkgeld [a gratuity] to a maid as well as to Anton, as though he were no more than another household servant: Reiser hatte eine sonderbare Empfindung dabei, da er das Geld nahm; es war ihm, als ob er einen Stich erhielte, wo sich der erste Schmerz plötzlich wieder verlor – denn er dachte an den Bücherantiquarius, und in dem Augenblick war alles übrige vergessen – für das Geld konnte er mehr wie zwanzig Bücher lesen – sein beleidigter Stolz hatte sich noch zum letztenmal empört, und war nun besiegt. – (264) Reiser had a strange feeling as he took the money; it was as though he had been stabbed, and the initial pain suddenly wore off – for he thought of the bookseller, and in that moment everything else was forgotten – with the money he could read more than twenty books – his injured pride had made one last protest, and was now defeated. –

In the “Augenblick” in which Anton accepts the money, he exchanges it in his mind for over twenty books. This prompts a further exchange, this time one of emotions, as his injured pride is suddenly replaced by relief. The mere thought of reading, then, triggers the rapid conversion of one sentiment into another. From this moment on, the passage continues, Anton takes no consideration of himself, but only of the fate of fictional characters: “Reiser nahm von diesem Augenblick an keine Rücksicht mehr auf sich selbst – [. . .] an dem Schicksal einer Miß Sara Sampson, einer Julie und Romeos hingegen konnte er den lebhaftesten Anteil nehmen” [“From this moment on Reiser paid no more heed to himself – (. . .) by contrast, he sympathized warmly with the fate of a Miss Sara Sampson or a Romeo and Juliet”] (264–265). Any sense of selfhood thus vanishes as Anton trades in his injured pride, losing himself in the sentiments of the characters with whom he identifies. Anton believes he finds his entire range of alternating emotions reflected in Goethe’s Werther, which he encounters in the summer of 1775, shortly after its appearance: “Reiser glaubte sich mit allen seinen Gedanken und Empfindungen, bis auf den Punkt der Liebe, im Werther wiederzufinden” [“Reiser believed that he recognized himself in Werther with all his thoughts and feelings, except for the item of love”] (336). While unable to empathize with Werther’s unrequited love, he identifies all the more with his other ideas and sentiments. Of these, Moritz highlights the notion of the transient and transformative Augenblick. Anton sees reflected in Werther precisely the instantaneous transformation that he experiences in the act of reading – not least, in his own transformative act of reading Werther.

200 The first quote from Werther that Moritz singles out articulates succinctly the idea of radical transformation: seine Betrachtungen über Leben und Dasein fand er [Anton Reiser] hier fortgesetzt. – “Wer kann sagen, das ist, da alles mit Wetterschnelle vorbeiflieht?” – Das war eben der Gedanke, der ihm schon so lange seine eigne Existenz wie Täuschung, Traum, und Blendwerk vorgemalt hatte. – (334–335) here he [Anton Reiser] found a continuation of his reflections on life and existence – “Who can say, that is, when everything flees by like the wind?” – That was the very thought that for so long had made his own existence seem like an illusion, a dream, a deception. –

The question cited here is drawn from Werther’s letter of 18 August, quoted below in its immediate context in the first edition of Goethe’s novel: Es hat sich vor meiner Seele wie ein Vorhang weggezogen, und der Schauplatz des unendlichen Lebens verwandelt sich vor mir in den Abgrund des ewig offnen Grabs. Kannst du sagen: Das ist! da alles vorübergeht, da alles mit der Wetterschnelle vorüber rollt, so selten die ganze Kraft seines Daseyns ausdauert, ach in den Strom fortgerissen, untergetaucht und an Felsen zerschmettert wird. Da ist kein Augenblik, der nicht dich verzehrte und die Deinigen um dich her, kein Augenblik, da du nicht ein Zerstöhrer bist, seyn mußt.20 A curtain has been drawn from before my soul, and the scene of never-ending life is transforming before me into the abyss of the eternally open grave. Can you say: That is! when everything passes, when everything rolls by like the wind, and the strength of its existence so seldom lasts, is torn away, alas, into the torrent, submerged, and dashed against rocks. There is no moment that does not consume you and yours, no moment in which you are not, must be, a destroyer.

Werther here envisions a radical transformation from never-ending life to an eternally open grave. As indicated by the adjective “offnen” [“open”] this transformation does not end in a closed, terminal state, but rather opens into perpetual change. Thus, in the very instant one exclaims the words “That is!” the referent of the pronoun “that” is already passing. The same applies to the referent of the personal pronoun in the question “Can you say: That is!” In the split second it takes you to utter this exclamation, you are transformed, for there is no “Augenblick” or instant that would not consume you. Indeed, not only “that” and “you”, but “alles” – everything – is in the process of passing. This process of transformation is articulated stylistically through a series of transformative repetitions. Goethe thus has Werther repeat a subordinate clause, but with a twist: “da alles vorübergeht, da alles mit der Wetterschnelle vorüber rollt” [“when everything passes, when everything rolls by like the wind”]. While the clausal structure is repeated, the verb in the first clause, “vorübergeht” 20

FA 8: 106–108.

201 [“passes”], itself goes by, overtaken by a verb phrase that indicates a far quicker passing: “mit der Wetterschnelle vorüber rollt” [“rolls by like the wind”]. The series of transformative repetitions continues when the exclamation “Das ist!” is echoed and at the same time altered in the first two words of the next sentence, “Da ist kein Augenblick, der nicht dich verzehrte [. . .]” [“There is no moment that does not consume you”]. Next, the second part of this same sentence repeats the antecedent and relative clause structure of the first part, while reversing the meaning: “kein Augenblik, da du nicht ein Zerstöhrer bist” [“no moment in which you are not a destroyer”]. Here, the moment in which you are the victim transforms into one in which you are the perpetrator of destruction. Finally, even the copula at the end of this clause is repeated with a difference in the modal construction “seyn mußt” [“must be”]. No repetition occurs in this letter without a simultaneous revision. The language of Werther’s letter thereby enacts the very process of transformation which it depicts. Anton identifies with the idea of perpetual transformation expressed in Werther’s letter: “Das war eben der Gedanke, der ihm schon so lange seine eigne Existenz wie Täuschung, Traum, und Blendwerk vorgemalt hatte” [“That was the very thought that for so long had made his own existence seem like an illusion, a dream, a deception”] (334–335). Unexpectedly, his identification with the idea of ceaseless transformation offers a potential way out of it. For a complete identification would mean that the referent of the pronoun “that” in the phrase, “That was the very thought”, does not vanish in an instant; rather, the idea expressed in Werther’s question would be repeated exactly in Anton’s own thoughts. Moritz, however, casts doubt upon the possibility of such an absolute identification. Thus, his narrator characterizes Anton’s identification with Werther’s ideas and emotions as a belief, not as a fact: “Reiser glaubte sich mit allen seinen Gedanken und Empfindungen, bis auf den Punkt der Liebe, im Werther wiederzufinden” [“Reiser believed that he recognized himself in Werther with all his thoughts and feelings, except for the item of love”] (336; my emphasis). Furthermore, the narrator’s reflections on the impact of Goethe’s novel on Anton’s generation suggest that this belief in the complete identity between Werther’s ideas and sentiments and his own is misguided: Allein die zu oft wiederholte Lektüre des Werthers brachte seinen [Antons] Ausdruck sowohl als seine Denkkraft um vieles zurück, indem ihm die Wendungen und selbst die Gedanken in diesem Schriftsteller durch die öftere Wiederholung so geläufig wurden, daß er sie oft für seine eignen hielt, und noch verschiedene Jahre nachher bei den Aufsätzen, die er entwarf, mit Reminiszenzien aus dem Werther zu kämpfen hatte, welches der Fall bei mehrern jungen Schriftstellern gewesen ist, die sich seit der Zeit gebildet haben. (337) However, his [Anton’s] too frequent re-reading of Werther greatly reduced his powers both of expression and of thought, for frequent repetition made him so familiar with this writer’s turns of phrase and even with his thoughts that he often mistook

202 them for his own, and even some years later, in writing essays, he had to contend with reminiscences of Werther, as is the case with a number of young writers who have been educated since then.

Anton’s repeated reading of Werther leads him to regard its author’s turns of phrase and thoughts as his own. That is to say, as the narrator elsewhere states, Werther did not simply reflect, but rather intervened in all of Anton’s ideas and emotions [“in alle seine damaligen Ideen und Empfindungen (. . .) eingriffen”] (334). Only after this intervention has transformed these ideas and emotions does there seem to be a perfect identity.21 Confronted with the ineluctably transformative Augenblick, though, Anton’s repeated reading of Werther still seems to offer a consolation: in a world in flux, one can still repeatedly return to the text of Werther. In other words, one can turn from extensive to intensive, repetitive reading, the kind of reading that affirms the existence of eternally valid, authoritative texts.22 At least of texts such as Werther, it would appear possible to claim, “That is!” But even the permanence of Goethe’s text is called into question by the quote Moritz gives: “Wer kann sagen, das ist, da alles mit Weterschnelle vorbeiflieht?” [“Who can say, that is, when everything flees by like the wind?”] (334). Moritz’s text makes several changes to Goethe’s original question, altering its wording and punctuation, and also compressing it. We have already noted the acceleration of the pace of change that occurs in the two clauses in the original letter, “da alles vorübergeht, da alles mit der Wetterschnelle vorüber rollt” [“when everything passes, when everything rolls by like the wind”]. Moritz’s quote further quickens this acceleration, substituting for these two clauses a single clause with a verb indicating even greater speed: “da alles mit Wetterschnelle vorbeiflieht” [“when everything flees by like the wind ”]. In Moritz’s own transformative repetition, then, it is impossible to say of Goethe’s original text, “that is”, for its reproduction and its revision coincide in the same Augenblick.23 21

Isabel A. White makes a similar observation: “Die Leiden des jungen Werthers is the stated source of certain ideas which Anton Reiser supports, or, as he prefers to present the situation, Goethe’s novel reflects thoughts which had already occurred to him”. See White: “Die zu oft wiederholte Lektüre des Werthers”: Responses to Sentimentality in Moritz’s Anton Reiser. In: Lessing Yearbook 26 (1994). Pp. 93–112, here p. 100. 22 As Vaget points out, many in the first generation of readers of Goethe’s novel treated it as a devotional text to be read repeatedly: “Among the readers of Werther, we find virtually all the hallmarks of the typical devotional reader’s response: repeated readings, quasireligious immersion in the text, eagerness to regard the book as a source of consolation, readiness to identify with, and to imitate, Werther”. Vaget: Werther, the Undead. P. 20. 23 On this point, my reading differs from that of Robert Stockhammer: Leseerzählungen. Alternativen zum hermeneutischen Verfahren. Stuttgart: M & P 1991. Stockhammer claims that Anton is “von fremden Texten bewohnt wird, die er nicht anverwandeln kann” [“inhabited by foreign texts that he can’t transform into his own”]. P. 199. By contrast, I see a reciprocal process of transformation taking place between Anton and Goethe’s text.

203 In brief, Anton identifies with Werther’s vision of the transformative Augenblick in the 18 August letter precisely through the transformative experience of reading. The instantaneous conversion of one emotion into another marked his reception of sentimental literature and sets the stage for this act of identification. Yet this identification does not lie in Anton’s viewing this experience of continual conversion precisely mirrored in Goethe’s text; rather, it lies in the reciprocal transformation of Anton by the text, which intervenes in his thoughts and emotions, and of the text by Anton – a possibility that is at the very least opened by Moritz’s own permutation of the text in his quotation. In Anton Reiser, then, Moritz provides a vivid and complex account of how the escalating production and reception of sentimental literature in the late eighteenth century contributed to the sense of perpetual change that marks modernity.

The Timeless Perspective of the Autonomous Artwork Moritz published the Second and Third Parts of Anton Reiser that contain this account in 1786, the same year that he befriended Goethe in Rome. Following his extended sojourn in Italy, Moritz was Goethe’s guest in Weimar for December 1788 and January 1789, a period that coincides with a new stage of his engagement with Werther. He attempts to overcome the transformative Augenblick through a reading of Goethe’s novel as a timeless, autonomous artwork. In effect, he spatializes the Augenblick, fixing it firmly at the center of the novel, which he now regards as a self-contained whole. In the process, he departs from his earlier emphasis on the transformative moment of reception, and in its place formulates an aesthetic that envisions the timeless structure of an artwork that is complete in itself. To illuminate the structure of the literary work of art, Moritz adopts a concept from the domain of optics and visual art, namely perspective. A fascination with this concept runs through his entire literary career.24 He deepened this interest while in Rome in 1788, embarking on a study of perspective as it relates to visual art, in the hope of receiving a professorship at the Academy of Arts and Mechanical Sciences in Berlin, a position that materialized the following year.25 A letter from Caroline Herder to her husband on Christmas day, 1788, records the way he applied the concept of perspective to literary works, citing his discussion of Werther as a prominent example. She reports 24

On the theme of perspective in Moritz’s work within the framework of Leibniz’s theory of monadism, see in particular Claudia Kestenholz: Die Sicht der Dinge. Metaphorische Visualität und Subjektivitätsideal im Werk von Karl Philipp Moritz. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 1987. 25 For biographical details see Hugo Eybisch: Anton Reiser. Untersuchungen zur Lebensgeschichte von K. Ph. Moritz und zur Kritik seiner Autobiographie. Leipzig: Voigtländers Verlag 1909. P. 150.

204 that Moritz recently visited her over coffee, and their discussion turned to Goethe’s works: da sagte er mir, wie er durch das Studium der Perspective darauf gekommen sei, den Mittelpunkt in einem Stück aufzusuchen; den müsse man nun nicht am Ende des Stücks, sondern in der Mitte suchen, so wie alle Radien vom Mittelpunkt ausgehen, und sich in den Anfang und Ende verlieren.26 he told me how through the study of perspective he had learned to search for the central point in a piece; one must search for it not at the end of a piece, but rather in the middle, just as all radii depart from the central point and lose themselves in the beginning and in the end.

In contemplating a literary work, the task of the reader is thus to find a central point from which the work radiates out. Her allusion to Moritz’s study of perspective suggests that this task is comparable to locating the vanishing point in a visual artwork composed in central perspective, a point toward which all the orthogonal lines (those viewed as perpendicular to the plane of the picture) in the work incline. She continues by noting that Moritz pinpointed just such a Mittelpunkt in Goethe’s novel in Werther’s letter of 18 August. Caroline Herder’s account of this application of the theory of perspective to literary works is supported in the biography of Moritz published by his companion and former pupil, Karl Friedrich Klischnig. Like Caroline Herder, Klischnig reports that Moritz conceived of each masterpiece as structured around a Mittelpunkt in which all of its parts converge, like the radii of a circle.27 He further elaborates that Moritz viewed such a central point of a literary work as furnishing the proper “Gesichtspunkt” [“vantage point”] from which “die Zweckmäßigkeit des Ganzen” [“purposiveness of the whole”] can alone be judged. Klischnig, too, notes that Moritz located precisely such a central point in Werther’s 18 August letter, specifically citing the passage quoted by Moritz in Anton Reiser.28 As paraphrased by both Caroline Herder and Klischnig, Moritz’s theory of perspectival structure represents a further development of his groundbreaking aesthetic treatise, “Versuch einer Vereinigung aller schönen Künste und Wissenschaften unter dem Begriff des in sich selbst Vollendeten” (1785) [“Toward the Unification of All the Fine Arts and Sciences under the Concept of Self-Sufficiency”].29 In this short essay, Moritz posits the radical autonomy

26

Quoted in: Karl Philipp Moritz: Schriften zur Ästhetik und Poetik. Ed. by Hans Joachim Schrimpf. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag 1962. P. 345. 27 Karl Friedrich Klischnig: Mein Freund Anton Reiser. Aus dem Leben des Karl Philipp Moritz. Ed. by Heide Hollmer and Kirsten Erwentraut. Berlin: Gatza 1992. P. 139. 28 Klischnig: Mein Freund Anton Reiser. P. 139. 29 In: Moritz: Schriften zur Ästhetik und Poetik. Pp. 3–9.

205 of the artwork, conceived as a whole that is “in sich selbst vollendet” [“entirely complete in itself ”]. Countering the theory proposed by Mendelssohn that the purpose of art is to give pleasure, he claims that the work of art is not a means to an end, but is rather an end in itself, possessing an “innere Zweckmäßigkeit” [“inner purposiveness”] (6) – a term that resonates with Klischnig’s reference to the purposiveness of the whole. Commentators have frequently remarked that Moritz’s concept of inner purposiveness anticipates Kant’s famous explanation of the beautiful in the Critique of Judgment (1790) as “Zweckmäßigkeit [. . .] ohne Zweck” [“purposiveness (. . .) without an end”] while noting that a crucial difference to Kant lies in Moritz’s locating inner purposiveness in the object rather than in the subject.30 This view, however, is slightly misleading, for on the point of objectivity his essay is not entirely consistent. Early in the essay, it is the recipient who endows the work its inner purposiveness by regarding it as complete in itself: “Bei der Betrachtung des Schönen aber wälze ich den Zweck aus mir in den Gegenstand selbst zurück: ich betrachte ihn, als etwas, nicht in mir, sondern in sich selbst Vollendetes” [“But when regarding the beautiful, I roll the end back from me into the object itself: I regard it as something that is not complete in me, but rather as something that is complete in itself ”] (3). In the course of the essay, though, the dynamic between recipient and artwork is reversed, such that the beauty of the artwork now attracts the recipient to itself “das Schöne unsere Betrachtung ganz auf sich zieht” (5). The beauty of the of the object, that is to say, its inner purposiveness or completion in itself, is no longer merely attributed to the object by its recipient, but is instead found in the “schönen Gegenstand” [“beautiful object”] itself (5). Moritz’s later remarks on the perspectivally constructed literary artwork solidify this shift toward objectivity: the recipient of the literary work, according to Caroline Herder’s account, must discover an actually existing central point around which the work is structured. Klischnig’s version, too, accentuates this objectivity: the work itself furnishes the proper vantage point from which it can be seen as a whole that is complete in itself. Moritz underlines this objective vantage point in an outline of his aesthetic theory that was likely written during or immediately following his two-month stay in Weimar. In the final point of this 30

See Immanuel Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft. In: Werkausgabe. Ed. by Wilhelm Weischedel. Vol. 10. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp 14th ed. 1994. P. 135. On the similarities and differences between Moritz’s objective concept of “inner purposiveness” and Kant’s subjective concept of “purposiveness without an end”, see Peter Szondi: Poetik und Geschichtsphilosophie I. Ed. by Senta Metz. and Hans-Hagen Hildebrandt. Frankfurt/ M: Suhrkamp 14th ed. 1974. Vol. 2. P. 97. Alessandro Costazza: Schönheit und Nützlichkeit. Karl Philipp Moritz und die Ästhetik des 18. Jahrhunderts. Bern et al.: Peter Lang. P. 142. Seraina Plotke: Der ästhetische Trost. Karl Philipp Moritz’ ästhetische Schriften im Spiegel der Sinnsuche. In: Monatshefte 95 (2003). Pp. 421–441, here p. 426.

206 outline, he contends that in order for a beautiful work of art to be seen as a whole unto itself, it is necessary to discover “in dem Werke selbst” [“in the work itself ”] the “Gesichtspunkt” [“vantage point”] from which each component of the work presents itself in a necessary relation to the whole.31 Moritz’s theory of the artwork conceived as objectively complete in itself implies the timelessness of the work of art, as Seraina Plotke observes in her commentary on Moritz’s 1785 essay. This timelessness, she argues, signalizes eternity: “Das Kunstwerk als ein ‘in-sich-selbst-Vollendetes’ drückt demnach Ewigkeit aus, mehr noch: Ewigkeit manifestiert sich im Kunstwerk” [“The artwork as ‘something that is complete in itself’ thus expresses eternity; or rather: eternity manifests itself in the artwork”].32 With the withdrawal in the Enlightenment of a religious sense of eternity, the work of art is thus able to offer its recipient an aesthetic consolation.33 The literary work of art that is constructed perspectivally in the manner later conceived by Moritz during his stay in Weimar is all the more emphatically timeless. It replaces the wheel of time with the timeless wheel of art, whose spokes radiate out from a central axis. Particularly in the context of Moritz’s reading of Werther, this timelessness of the perspectivally constructed artwork bears with it far-reaching consequences. By viewing the letter of 18 August as the central point of an artwork that is complete in itself, Moritz sublates this letter’s vision of the transformative Augenblick within a timeless whole, thereby both literally and figuratively containing its transformative power. The instant in time that devours everything, becomes frozen into the Mittelpunkt of the novel. By emphasizing the spatial structure of the novel, Moritz negates the temporality of the verbal medium as posited by Lessing in his Laokoon, and thereby erases Lessing’s famous distinction between visual and verbal media. According to Lessing, works in the verbal medium (or Poesie) are temporal in nature, comprised of “artikulierte Töne in der Zeit” [“articulated sounds in time”].34 Hence, it is the medium best suited to imitating objects whose parts follow one another, i.e. “Handlungen” [“actions”] (114). “Mahlerei” [“visual art”], by contrast, consists of “Figuren und Farben in dem Raume” [“figures and colors in space”], and is hence best able to imitate objects whose parts exist side-by-side,

31

Moritz: Bestimmung des Zwecks einer Theorie der schönen Künste. In: Schriften zur Ästhetik und Poetik. P. 122. Moritz’s original, posthumously published piece was untitled. 32 Plotke: Der ästhetische Trost. Pp. 426–427. 33 Plotke: Der ästhetische Trost. P. 422. 34 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Werke und Briefe in zwölf Bänden. Ed. by Wilfried Barner. Vol. 5/2. Frankfurt/M: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag 1990. P. 116. My translations are adapted from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Trans. by Edward Allen McCormick. Baltimore – London: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1984.

207 i.e. “Körper” [“bodies”] (116). In his theory of the perspectivally constructed artwork, Moritz expands Lessing’s definition of visual art as spatial to subsume literary works such as Werther, and thus annuls the temporality of their medium. And he adds a further crucial twist: the space of the literary artwork does not imitate outside bodies, but rather is entirely closed in upon itself. There remains a third fundamental difference between Moritz and Lessing, who each accord a different role to the Augenblick within the space of the artwork. Lessing complicates the clear distinction that he draws between verbal and visual art by pointing out that that the latter imitates bodies existing not only in space, but also in time: “Sie dauern fort, und können in jedem Augenblicke ihrer Dauer anders erscheinen, und in anderer Verbindung stehen” [“They (bodies) persist in time, and in each moment of their duration they can assume a different appearance or stand in a different combination”] (116). While visual art cannot directly represent a body as it changes from moment to moment within what he terms “der immer veränderlichen Natur” [“ever-changing nature”] (22), it can suggest such change by selecting the most “pregnant” or suggestive moment: “Die Malerei kann in ihren coexistierenden Compositionen nur einen einzigen Augenblick der Handlung nutzen, und muß daher den prägnantesten wählen, aus welchem das Vorhergehende und Folgende am begreiflichsten wird” [“Visual art can use only a single moment of an action in its coexisting compositions and must therefore choose the one which is most pregnant and from which the preceding and succeeding actions are most easily comprehensible”] (117). This pregnant moment liberates the imagination of the viewer: “Dasjenige aber nur allein ist fruchtbar, was der Einbildungskraft freies Spiel läßt” [“But only that is fruitful which gives free reign to the imagination”] (23). Lessing is thus crucially concerned with how the spatialized Augenblick of the visual artwork activates the viewer’s imagination to transcend the very confines of that moment by envisioning the moments that precede or succeed it. In other words, he is interested in how the seed of the Augenblick embodied in a work of art bears fruit in the imagination of the viewer. In his perspectival reading of Goethe’s novel, Moritz neutralizes the fertility of that seed, viewing it as entirely static and securely contained within the shell of the literary artwork. It does not prompt the reader to transcend it, but rather to admire it in its self-contained beauty. He thus triply negates Lessing’s distinction between verbal and visual media: first, by subsuming the former within the space of the latter; second, by regarding literary space in and of itself, not as an imitation of outside bodies; and third, by re-casting Lessing’s pregnant Augenblick such that it is entirely enclosed within the bounds of the artwork. In this second stage of Moritz’s engagement with Werther, then, the transformative Augenblick of reception – as conceived by Lessing, but also by Moritz himself in his description of Anton Reiser’s reception of Goethe’s novel – gives way to the Gesichtspunkt objectively inherent in the work itself.

208 The Sublime Augenblicke of Production The second stage of Moritz’s engagement with Goethe’s novel accords well with the claim that the theory of the autonomous artwork arose as a reaction formation to the accelerated literary production and consumption habits of the late eighteenth century. Yet this theory was not itself static, frozen in time, and certainly not for Moritz. Rather, he went on to radically innovate it, and his continued engagement with Werther played a pivotal role in this development. According to Klischnig, Moritz informed Goethe about his perspectival reading of Werther, and Goethe encouraged him to work out and publish his ideas.35 While this project never came to fruition, Moritz did publish a fascinating essay in 1792 devoted to a single letter in Werther. Entitled “Über ein Gemählde von Goethe” [“On a Painting by Goethe”],36 this piece illuminates the perspectival structure of Werther’s second letter, that of 10 May, in other words, the precise counterpart to the letter of 18 August. Again, this kind of perspectival reading of a poetic work as a self-contained whole implies its timelessness. Surprisingly, however, counter to his attempt to contain the force of the transformative Augenblick by spatializing it as the Gesichtspunkt at the center of the novel, he now shifts the center of gravity away from the central point of the letter’s poetic picture, and toward the very first moments of its production. It is these sublime Augenblicken, he contends, that the poet ceaselessly seeks, but always fails, to capture. In reading the letter of 10 May as a perfect description of this process, Moritz mobilizes crucial insights of his second key aesthetic treatise on the autonomous artwork, “Über die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen” [“On the Formative Imitation of the Beautiful”]. In so doing, he moves from a protoformalist aesthetics of the artwork conceived as a whole that is complete in itself, toward an aesthetics of production, one that emphasizes the open-ended process of creating art. Rather than culminating in a timeless refuge from the ephemeral instant, this process unfolds in an endless series of Augenblicken. Moritz claims that in the letter of 10 May, the poet presents a perspectivally structured poetic picture in the long middle sentence: Wenn das liebe Thal um mich dampft, und die hohe Sonne an der Oberfläche der undurchdringlichen Finsterniß meines Waldes ruht, und nur einzelne Strahlen sich in das innere Heiligthum stehlen, und ich dann im hohen Grase am fallenden Bache liege, und näher an der Erde tausend Gräschen mir merkwürdig werden; wenn ich das Wimmeln der kleinen Welt zwischen Halmen, die unzähligen Gestalten der Würmchen, der Mückchen, näher an meinem Herzen fühle, und fühle die Gegenwart des Allmächtigen, der uns nach seinem Bilde schuf, das Wehen des Alliebenden, der uns, in ewiger Wonne schwebend, trägt und erhält; mein Freund, wenns dann um meine Augen dämmert, und die Welt um mich her und der Himmel 35 36

Klischnig: Mein Freund Anton Reiser. P. 140. In: Moritz: Schriften zur Ästhetik und Poetik. Pp. 142–148.

209 ganz in meiner Seele ruht, wie die Gestalt einer Geliebten, dann sehn’ ich mich oft und denke, ach, könntest du dem Papier das einhauchen, was so voll so warm in deiner Seele lebt, daß es würde der Spiegel deiner Seele, so wie deine Seele ist der Spiegel des lebendigen Gottes!37 When the lovely valley mists around me, and the high sun rests on the surface of the impenetrable darkness of my forest, and only isolated rays steal into the inner sanctuary, and I then lie in the tall grass by the falling brook, and closer to the earth I notice a thousand blades of grass; when I feel closer to my heart the teeming of the small world among the blades, the countless forms of the little worms, the little insects, and feel the presence of the Almighty who created us in his image, and the breeze of the All-Loving One which sustains us, as we float in eternal bliss; my friend, when it grows dim before my eyes, and world and sky rest completely in my soul, like the form of a beloved, then I often yearn and think, oh, if only you could breathe into the paper all that lives so fully and warmly in your soul, that it would become the mirror of your soul, as your soul is the mirror of the living God!

After citing this sentence in full, he analyzes it into its component parts, and displays how each part is structured around a central point. Thus, the poet first draws a circumference or Umriß [contour] with the image of the surrounding valley (“Wenn das liebe Tal um mich dampft”) [“When the lovely valley mists around me”), then gradually descends to the blades of grass on the ground, focusing on “dem kleinsten Gesichtskreise des Auges” [“smallest field of vision”], which comprises the Mittelpunkt or center of the picture (143). From here, the scope of vision widens again, until it reaches the “großer Umriß” [“large circumference”] in the subordinate clause, “my friend, when it grows dim before my eyes, and earth and sky rest completely in my soul, like the form of a beloved” (143–144). Finally, Moritz claims that, in the sentence’s main clause, beginning with the adverb “dann” [“then”], “eine das Ganze umfassende Empfindung” [“a sensation encompassing the whole”] “vollendet” [“completes”] the picture (143). In short, as portrayed by Moritz, the poet presents the reader with a perspectivally structured poetic picture that is entirely complete in itself. Consequently, it not only expresses a sense of being suspended in eternal bliss, but, as an autonomous artwork, itself manifests eternity. What distinguishes this poetic picture in Moritz’s eyes is not simply its paradigmatic quality as a perspectivally constructed artwork, but the way it simultaneously depicts the process of artistic representation from which it arises: “Man wird nicht leicht ein Werk der Poesie finden, wo der Darstellungstrieb selber sich so getreu mit dargestellt hätte, als in diesem poetischen Gemählde” [“One won’t easily find a work of poetry in which the representational drive also represents itself so faithfully as in this poetic picture”] (147). His analysis of this self-representation of the representational drive in the poetic picture owes much to his own earlier examination of the process of artistic production in his seminal 37

Moritz: Schriften zur Ästhetik und Poetik. P. 143.

210 essay on the formative imitation of the beautiful,38 which he published in 1788 and which, according to Goethe in his Italian Journey, arose out of their conversations in Rome.39 Three years later, Moritz brings the most subversive insights of this essay to bear on his discussion of Goethe’s poetic picture – that is, precisely those reflections that undermine the possibility that an autonomous work of art can embody the end point of the process of formative imitation it describes. It may seem paradoxical to view the autonomous artwork as being formed through imitation. After all, the traditional concept of mimesis presupposes that the work of art represents something external to itself, such as the bodies or actions that Lessing sees as the objects imitated by visual and verbal art respectively. But Moritz’s concept of formative imitation departs sharply from the traditional understanding of mimesis by positing as its object neither particular objects in nature, nor ideal forms, but the beautiful as such.40 Moritz identifies this absolute beauty with nature as a totality, or “das einzige, wahre Ganze” [“the only true whole”] (72). The act of formative imitation of the beautiful produces an artwork that is a microcosm of this whole: “Jedes schöne Ganze aus der Hand des bildenden Künstlers ist daher im Kleinen ein Abdruck des höchsten Schönen im grossen Ganzen der Natur” [“Each beautiful totality emerging from the hands of the artist who forms it is thus an impression on a small scale of the highest beauty in the great totality of nature”] (73). By imitating the highest beauty in the great totality of nature, the artist produces a work that is itself a beautiful, autonomous whole, constructed “nach eben den ewigen, festen Regeln” [“according to the same eternal laws”] (73) as the whole of nature. Moritz elucidates this process of the formative imitation of the beautiful through an optical metaphor. To produce a beautiful totality, the artist’s Seele [soul or mind] must possess a “thätige Kraft” [“dynamic faculty”] that is infinitely receptive: it thus must offer an endless number of contact points to nature, and hence be capable of collecting “die äussersten Enden von den Verhältnissen der Natur im Großen” [“the outermost ends of the relations of nature as a whole”] (76). At this stage, the totality of nature is only obscurely intimated; the dynamic power collects side by side the extreme points of the rays that it emits (76). The 38

In: Moritz: Schriften zur Ästhetik und Poetik. Pp. 63–93. FA 15/1. Goethe writes of Moritz’s essay, “es war aus unsern Unterhaltungen hervorgengangen, welche Moritz nach seiner Art benutzt und ausgebildet” [“it arose out of our conversations, which Moritz used and developed in his own way”]. FA 15/1: 572–573. However, as Mark Boulby argues, “it would be wrong to conclude that Moritz was merely a passive vehicle for the canalisation of Goethean insights in aesthetics”. See Boulby: Karl Philipp Moritz: At the Fringe of Genius. Toronto – Buffalo – London: University of Toronto Press 1979. P. 164. 40 On Moritz’s radical departure from the traditional concept of mimesis, see Tzvetan Todorov: Theories of the Symbol. Trans. by Catherine Porter. Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1972. Pp. 148–164. 39

211 more distinct faculties, such as the faculties of thought, imagination, and sense perception, demand that this obscure intimation of the whole of nature become perceptible to them. Toward this end, in the next phase, the dynamic faculty must now function as a kind of lens, tapering the rays emitted by the whole of nature into a focal point: “Sie muß alle jene Verhältnisse des grossen Ganzen, und in ihnen das höchste Schöne, wie an den Spitzen seiner Strahlen, in einen Brennpunkt fassen” [“It (the dynamic faculty) must gather together into a focal point all those relations of the great whole, and in them the highest beauty, as though at the ends of its rays”] (76). Finally, the work of art must then round itself out from this focal point, and display to the more distinct faculties the perfect relations of the whole of nature within its small circumference (76). Moritz wrote his essay on the formative imitation of the beautiful in the same period in Italy during which he engaged in his study of perspective, and the optical metaphor underlying his theory of formative imitation shares significant structural features with his theory of the perspectival construction of the artwork. In both theories, “Strahlen”, “Radien” [“rays”] are envisioned as converging in a “Brennpunkt” [“focal point”], “Mittelpunkt” [“single point”]. His essay on the formative imitation of the beautiful suggests, furthermore, a causal relation between the two theories, as the process of condensing the whole of nature into a Brennpunkt is the precondition for creating a work of art that “sich von allen Seiten auf seinen Mittelpunkt stützt” [“is oriented on all sides toward a central point”] (73). Having traced this trajectory that leads via the formative imitation of the beautiful to the autonomous artwork, though, Moritz begins to undermine it. Already his repeated use of the modal verb müssen to qualify each of his assertions about artistic production makes it possible to read them not as simple assertions, but as imperatives.41 He shows what must be done to create an autonomous work of art, thereby raising the question whether it can in fact be accomplished. He addresses this question of possibility shortly after describing

41

“Alle die in der thätigen Kraft bloß dunkel geahndeten Verhältnisse jenes großen Ganzen müssen nothwendig auf irgend eine Weise [. . .] faßbar werden: und um dieß zu werden, muß die Thatkraft, worinn sie schlummern, sie nach sich selber, aus sich selber bilden. – Sie muß alle jene Verhältnisse des grossen Ganzen, und in ihnen das höchste Schöne, wie an den Spitzen seiner Strahlen, in einen Brennpunkt fassen. – Aus diesem Brennpunkte muß sich, nach des Auges gemessener Weite, ein zartes und doch getreues Bild des höchsten Schönen ründen [. . .]. Weil nun aber dieser Abdruck des höchsten Schönen nothwendig an etwas haften muß, so wählt die bildende Kraft [. . .] irgend einen sichtbaren, hörbaren, oder doch der Einbildungskraft faßbaren Gegenstand, auf den sie den Abglanz des höchsten Schönen im verjüngenden Maßstabe überträgt”. P. 76; my emphases.

212 the path that leads through the formative imitation of the beautiful to the autonomous artwork: so kann auch der lebendige Begriff von der bildenden Nachahmung des Schönen nur im Gefühl der thätigen Kraft, die es hervorbringt, im ersten Augenblick der Entstehung statt finden, wo das Werk, als schon vollendet, durch alle Grade seines allmähligen Werdens in dunkler Ahndung auf einmal vor die Seele tritt, und in diesem Moment der ersten Erzeugung gleichsam vor seinem wirklichen Daseyn da ist; wodurch alsdann auch jener unnennbare Reiz entsteht, welcher das schaffende Genie zur immerwährenden Bildung treibt. (77) the living concept of the formative imitation of the beautiful can only take place in the feeling of the dynamic faculty that produces it, in the first moment of production, in which the work appears suddenly in dark intimation before the soul, already complete, having advanced through all the stages of its gradual becoming; and in this moment of its first production, it is, as it were, present before its actual existence, thereby giving rise to that unnamable charm that drives the creative genius to perpetual formation.

There is, then, only a single point when the formative imitation of the beautiful really takes place, and hence when the totality of nature is encompassed in microcosm: the focal point into which the dynamic power concentrates this totality. And even this Brennpunkt is not a fixed point in space; rather, this burning point combusts instantly. In other words, the focal point turns out to be a single, ephemeral point in time, or Augenblick. This momentary Brennpunkt gives rise not to a timeless, autonomous artwork, but rather to the process of its “immerwährenden Bildung” [“perpetual formation”]. Moritz further develops this critique of his own theory of artistic production in his essay on Goethe’s poetic picture. As noted, following his detailed structural analysis of the perspectival form of the poetic picture, he turns his attention to the way it depicts the process of its own production. He sees this process articulated with particular clarity in the text of the letter that precedes and follows the poetic picture proper, and that hence forms a kind of frame around it.42 The purpose of a frame, according to a short essay entitled “Der Rahmen” [“The Frame”] that he published a year later, is to accentuate the autonomy of 42 The first part of the frame consists in four sentences that open the letter and precede the sentence containing the poetic picture proper: “Eine wunderbare Heiterkeit hat meine ganze Seele eingenommen, gleich den süßen Frühlingsmorgen die ich mit ganzem Herzen genieße. Ich bin so allein, und freue mich meines Lebens, in dieser Gegend, die für solche Seelen geschaffen ist, wie die meine. Ich bin so glücklich, mein Bester, so ganz in dem Gefühl von ruhigem Daseyn versunken, daß meine Kunst darunter leidet. Ich könnte jetzt nicht zeichnen, nicht einen Strich, und bin nie ein größerer Mahler gewesen, als in diesen Augenblicken” [“A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like the sweet spring mornings which I enjoy with all my heart. I am so alone, and rejoice in my life in this place, which was created for souls like mine. I am so happy,

213 the work of art: “Das Bild stellt etwas in sich Vollendetes dar; der Rahmen umgrenzt wieder das in sich Vollendete” [“The picture presents something complete in itself; the frame draws a further border around that which is complete in itself ”].43 His discussion of the 10 May letter, however, illuminates how the border drawn by the textual frame around the poetic picture does precisely the opposite: rather than underscore its autonomy, the frame foregrounds the very impossibility of that autonomy. As in his essay on the formative imitation of the beautiful, Moritz in his essay “On a Painting By Goethe” views a period of keen receptivity toward the totality of nature, which he here terms “Empfindung” [“sensation”], as a prerequisite for artistic production (146–147). This stage, he remarks, is expressed in the first part of the textual frame, in which Werther describes his sense of being “so ganz in dem Gefühl von ruhigem Daseyn versunken” [“so immersed in the feeling of tranquil existence”], to the point where his art suffers (146; original emphasis). Nevertheless, Werther writes, although he couldn’t sketch a single line, he expresses that he has never been a greater painter “als in diesen Augenblicken” [“than in these moments”] (146). In his commentary, Moritz extrapolates a general insight about artistic production from these introductory remarks: Derjenige wird die Natur am besten beschreiben, wer sie so empfindet, daß sie mit ihm selber gleichsam ein Ganzes ausmacht, indem er sich in sie versenkt, und mit ihr auf das innigste verwebt fühlt. [. . .] In den Augenblicken, wo eine solche Beschreibung glücken soll, muß das einzelne Selbstbewußtsein, sich gleichsam in dem Mitbewußtsein des großen Ganzen der Natur verlieren, wovon das denkende und empfindende Organ durchströmt wird. (147)

my dear friend, so immersed in the feeling of tranquil existence, that my art suffers. I could not draw now, not a line, and yet I have never been a greater painter than in these moments”]. P. 146; Moritz’s emphasis. The second part of the textual frame comprises a single sentence that follows the poetic picture and closes the letter: “ich gehe darüber zu Grunde, ich erliege unter der Gewalt der Herrlichkeit dieser Erscheinungen” [“I run aground over this, I succumb beneath the power of the magnificence of these apparitions”]. P. 146. 43 Moritz: Schriften zur Ästhetik und Poetik. P. 210. Goethe makes a strikingly similar observation in his autobiography regarding the binding of his manuscript of Werther: “Das nunmehr fertige Manuskript lag im Konzept, mit wenigen Korrekturen und Abänderungen, vor mir. Es ward sogleich geheftet: denn der Band dient der Schrift ungefähr wie der Rahmen einem Bilde: man sieht viel eher, ob sie denn auch in sich wirklich bestehe” [“The manuscript that was now finished lay before me in draft form, with few corrections and alterations. It was bound at once: for the binding is to a written work about what a frame is to a picture: one can see much better if it exists in itself ”]. P. 639. In this manner, Goethe follows the neoclassicist version of Moritz’s reading of Werther as an autonomous whole, and in so doing, distances himself from the identificatory manner of reading exhibited by the masses who became swept up in the Werther-Fieber.

214 He will best describe nature who senses how it constitutes a whole, as it were, with himself, as he immerses himself in it and intensely feels himself interwoven with it. [. . .] In the moments in which such a description is to succeed, the individual selfconsciousness must lose itself, as it were, in the co-consciousness of the great totality of nature that streams through the thinking and sensing organ.

The sensation that Moritz here describes recalls his depiction of the first phase of the process of the formative imitation of the beautiful, in which the dynamic faculty obscurely intimates the great whole of nature (76). As I have remarked, in that earlier essay Moritz describes the second phase of formative imitation of the beautiful, that of the Brennpunkt, as a momentary phenomenon; he leaves open, however, the possibility of a continual state of the obscure intimation of the whole of nature. But in the passage above from his essay on Goethe’s poetic picture, the Brennpunkt has vanished altogether, and the state of obscure intimation of nature’s totality becomes compressed into “Augenblicke”. The process of formative imitation, then, becomes intensely accelerated in the later essay. If the sensation of the whole of nature is momentary to begin with, Moritz sees its momentariness further accelerated by the “Darstellungstrieb” [“representational drive”]: Unter der Fülle des Genusses leidet wirklich die Kunst, und indem der Darstellungstrieb dem Genuß untergeordnet ist, so strebt er, um gleichsam den Genuß nicht zu lange zu unterbrechen, nach dem leichtesten und unmittelbarsten Ausdruck durch die Sprache; die Umrisse verwandeln sich in Worte; der Zeichner oder Mahler wird zum Dichter. (146–147) Art really suffers under the plenitude of pleasure, and because it is subordinate to this pleasure, the representational drive, in order not to interrupt the pleasure for too long, as it were, strives for the easiest and most immediate expression through language: the contours transform into words; the draftsman or painter becomes a poet.

The sensation of nature’s eternal totality – or what Moritz here describes as the “plenitude of pleasure” – while a prerequisite for artistic representation, also precludes that representation; hence, in the moments of receptivity toward the whole of nature, art suffers, as noted in the first part of the textual frame. Conversely, this sensation suffers through the act of representation, which interrupts it. Moritz claims that poetry here has an advantage over graphic art: the more immediate expression of language does not cause as long an interruption as does graphic representation. For this reason, the visual artist becomes a poet, and the visual contours or circumferences transform into verbal ones. But this does not solve the dilemma that language, too, cuts short the sensation of nature’s totality that the artist attempts to represent. For even if language does not interrupt this sensation for too long, how could even the swiftest verbal expression not rupture the fleeting Augenblicke in which this sensation is present?

215 A potential compensation for this dilemma presents itself not so much in the choice of a graphic or a verbal medium, as in the possibility of producing, in either medium, an autonomous artwork, one that is capable of reproducing on a smaller scale the eternal totality of nature as it is momentarily sensed. It is just such a possibility that the poetic picture would seem to realize as a perspectivally constructed work of art that is complete in itself. But Moritz reveals that its completion is broken at two crucial points: at the point at which the poetic picture achieves its “reizende Vollendung” or “charming closure” (145); and in the second part of the textual frame, with which the letter draws to a close directly after the completion of the poetic picture. According to Moritz, the poetic picture ends with “eine das Ganze umfassende Empfindung” [“a sensation that encompasses the whole”]: “dann sehn’ ich mich oft und denke, ach, könntest du dem Papier das einhauchen, was so voll so warm in deiner Seele lebt, daß es würde der Spiegel deiner Seele, so wie deine Seele ist der Spiegel des lebendigen Gottes!” [“then I often yearn and think, oh, if only you could breathe into the paper all that lives so fully and warmly in your soul, that it would become the mirror of your soul, as your soul is the mirror of the living God!”] (143). But as he also highlights, the feeling that encompasses the whole of the poetic picture is not one of fulfillment, and hence closure, but rather of yearning: “Dieß ist jene Sehnsucht, dem Papier unmittelbar einzuhauchen, was in der Seele lebendig dasteht, und unter dem Buchstaben nur zu leicht verschwindet” [“This is the yearning to breathe immediately into the paper that which is vividly present in the soul, and which vanishes beneath the letter only too easily”] (145). According to Werther, the whole of nature rests in his soul: “die Welt um mich her und der Himmel ganz in meiner Seele ruht” [“the entire world around me and the heavens rest in my soul”]. As Moritz sees it, the soul that reflects this totality disappears beneath the very letters that are intended, in turn, to reflect the soul. Unable to present a microcosm of this totality, the artwork cannot itself form a complete, autonomous whole. Consequently, the “reizende Vollendung” embodied in the final clause of the autonomous poetic picture turns out to be a reißende Vollendung, a closure that ruptures the very timeless, autonomous artwork that it completes.44 Rather than draw a border around the poetic picture that would contain this rift and perhaps establish a greater unity, the second part of the textual frame, 44

See, by contrast, Gerhart Pickerodt: Das “poetische Gemählde”. Zu Karl Philipp Moritz’ “Werther”-Rezeption. In: Weimarer Beiträge: Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft, Ästhetik und Kulturwissenschaften 36 (1990). Pp. 1364–1368. Pickerodt argues that by viewing Werther’s wish as the Vollendung of the poetic picture, Moritz thereby eliminates the disproportion between the experience of nature and the ability to express this experience with graphic, or visual, means. P. 1366. I maintain, on the contrary, that Moritz thereby highlights precisely the impossibility that the artwork can be commensurate with the experience.

216 as Moritz reads it, even more radically subverts the completion of the poetic picture: Die wahre Darstellung ist daher gewissermaßen ein Ringen mit der Natur, die doch immer mächtiger ist, und sich von dem menschlichen Geiste weder in Worte noch Umrisse bringen läßt; daher kömmt denn auch noch der allerwahrste Zug zu dem Gemählde unsers Dichters: “ich gehe darüber zu Grunde, ich erliege unter der Gewalt der Herrlichkeit dieser Erscheinungen”. (146; original emphasis) The true representation is hence, as it were, a struggle with nature, which is, however, always more powerful, and which can be brought by the human spirit neither into words nor into contours; hence the truest feature of our poet’s painting: “I run aground over this, I succumb beneath the power of the magnificence of these apparitions”.

The process of true representation is never complete. For it is impossible to draw either verbal or graphic Umrisse [contours] around the eternal totality of nature, which always exceeds these confines: “die doch immer mächtiger ist” [“which is always more powerful”]. True representation is thus a Ringen in two ways: it is an attempt to draw a ring around this totality; and in so doing, it is a struggle with nature, and one which it invariably loses. The truest feature of Goethe’s poetic picture hence lies in its textual frame, which shows the contour of the artwork to be a mere trace of an interminable Ringen. If Moritz’s depiction of the inner purposiveness of the beautiful artwork that is complete in itself resembles notion of the “purposiveness without end” that Kant views as characteristic of the beautiful, then his discussion of the ceaseless struggle to represent the totality of nature within the contour of the artwork may be seen as comparable to Kant’s treatment of the “negativer Darstellung” [“negative representation”] of the sublime.45 Kant regards the sublime as a sensation arising from the subjective play of imagination and reason (182). This play begins when the imagination is confronted by something in nature that overwhelms it, for instance through its vastness. But this only awakens in the subject a sense of something even greater, namely reason’s idea of an “absolute Totalität” [“absolute totality”] (172). The subject strives to represent this idea by means of the imagination, but to no avail: its representations serve only to indicate their own incommensurability with reason’s idea of totality (166); they are perceived solely as negative representations of something unrepresentable (201). Once again, the principle difference to Moritz lies in his objective conception of the sublime as comprising nature in its totality. Reason’s idea of totality plays no role here, as it does with Kant, but rather only the obscure, momentary intimation

45

Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft. P. 201.

217 of an objective totality, one that the artwork is forever incapable of representing within its contours. Moritz introduced this conception of the sublime (explicitly terming it a “Begriff des Erhabenen” [or a “concept of the sublime”] (73; original emphasis) in his essay on the formative imitation of the beautiful, two years prior to the appearance of Kant’s Third Critique, and provided his most probing analysis of an instance of the sublime in his discussion of Goethe’s poetic picture. The most the artist can do – and this is the true achievement, in his eyes, of Goethe’s poetic picture, including its textual frame – is struggle to represent the totality of nature, and at the same time indicate its incommensurability. Indeed, as Moritz views it, Goethe manages to do both in a single stroke: to draw an Umriss [contour] that demolishes itself – umreißen in both senses of the word. I have tried in this essay to keep pace with Moritz in his lifelong engagement with Werther as he flees the transformative Augenblick of reception, seeks refuge in the fixed point of view of the perspectivally constructed work of art that is complete in itself, and then undermines this completion, revealing the impossibility of circumscribing in an autonomous artwork the totality of nature as intimated in the very first, sublime Augenblicken of artistic production. By affording a glimpse into the impossibility of arresting and framing that instant in perpetuity, Goethe’s Werther is “die einzige noch wahre mögliche Epopee unsrer Zeiten” [“the only true epos of our times”], as Moritz described it in 1793, the year of his untimely death at age thirty-seven.46 I have argued that the times to which Moritz here refers were filled with a sense of upheaval, brought about by a revolution in reading and text production. It is tempting to view the final stage of his reading of Werther as the most modern, most in touch with the pulse not only of his time, but of our own, prefiguring a fascination with the sublime instant in contemporary avant-garde art.47 Yet this would be to isolate and hypostasize merely one moment of his reading and of his ongoing aesthetic thought. What is, in the end, most modern about the aesthetics of the Augenblick that he formulates through his reading of Werther, is its very liability, its resistance to being permanently circumscribed. Like the Neuzeit itself, his aesthetics proves to be perpetually new, transforming beneath the reader’s gaze from one moment to the next.

46

Moritz: Der Dichter im Tempel der Natur. Ein Fragment. In: Schriften zur Ästhetik und Poetik. Pp. 160–166, here p. 161. 47 See Jean-François Lyotard: Newman: The Instant. In: The Inhuman: Reflections on Time. Trans. by Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1991.

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Clark S. Muenzer

Fugitive Images and Visual Memory in Goethe’s Discourse on Color Like his philosophical counterpart, Spinoza, Goethe envisioned the animate unity of nature as a universal landscape where endless processes of composition and decomposition transpire to constitute the sensate world as a vast region of liminality. Goethe’s system of color understood the power of light, as one of the most elusive of the modes of the divine, through its fugitive effects in color production. His symbolic color wheel, which records the restorative capacity of the eye to maintain itself in chromagenesis, helped him to frame the question of visuality as a question of survival and of memory as well.

Goethe’s Spinozan Construction of Nature Fundamental to Goethe’s understanding of a single system of nature is Spinoza’s argument that the divine substance remains in essence indivisible, although it exists physically – and can exclusively be known – as an infinitely variable assemblage of interacting bodies.1 “In jedem lebendigen Wesen”, the “Studie nach Spinoza” (1784–1785) asserts, “sind das, was wir Teile nennen, dergestalt unzertrennlich vom Ganzen, daß sie nur in und mit demselben begriffen werden können”2 [“In every animate being what we call parts are inseparable from the whole in such a manner that they can be grasped only in and through the same”] (FA 25: 15). That is, even if the parts of “the whole of nature as one individual” can “vary in infinite ways”, this necessarily happens – according to the monotheistic framework of Spinoza’s metaphysics – “without

1

Ethics Book I, Prop. 13 and 21. All references to Spinoza will be made according to the Dover reprint edition of the Bohn Library, Benedict de Spinoza: Works. Vol. 2. Trans. by R.H.M. Elwes. New York: Dover 1955. I will indicate the book and proposition numbers, etc. for the Ethics in parentheses. According to Spinoza’s metaphysical system, bodies are (extensive) modes of the divine, natura naturata, or “the order and connection of things”. See Genevieve Lloyd: Spinoza and the Ethics. London and New York: Routledge 1996. P. 48. Although their reality is fragmentary, each body partakes of the divine totality, or nature (natura naturans), which is in turn expressed through the dynamic series of all corporeal determinations and transformations. For Spinoza, bodies are virtual, or commemorative, sites where the effects of hidden causes collect and become visible as the perpetual record of each body’s actions and sufferings. When Goethe characterizes colors as the “Taten” and “Leiden” of the divine light on the first page of the “Vorwort” [“Preface”] of Zur Farbenlehre (1810) (FA 23/1: 12), he is establishing a basic connection between his own teachings on color production and Spinoza’s Ethics (1677). 2 Unless otherwise noted, the translations of all German citations are my own.

220 any change to the individual as a whole”.3 The “face of the whole universe” may be infinitely expressive, Spinoza muses in a letter to Tschirnhausen in 1675,4 but it endures eternally as the same face.5 Much like the unified totality of the Jewish philosopher’s self-generative and metamorphosing God, Goethe’s system of nature strives to maintain itself in dynamic encounters between and among finite modes of interacting bodies.6 In its Spinozan incorporation as complex individual, the Goethean “Gott-Natur”7 [“God-Nature”] is thus a self-regulating engine, or assembly of “Triebräder”8 [“gears”] (FA 25: 81), that similarly endures as its evanescent forms constitute and reconstitute themselves within a dynamic web of complex relatedness.9 3

Spinoza: Ethics Book II, Lemma 7 note. Spinoza: Works. P. 400. For more on complexity and the “facies totius universi” as the “highest order individual” in Spinoza’s thought, see Stuart Hampshire: Spinoza. Baltimore: Penguin Books 1962. Pp. 72–6. 5 The sustaining environment that holds and contains us “verbirgt sich in tausend Namen und Termen und ist immer dieselbe” [“conceals itself in thousands of names and terms and is always the same thing”] (FA 25: 13), Tobler proclaims in his aphoristic Tierfurt-reflections about a century later. Toward the end of his life Goethe recognized Tobler’s nature-rhapsody as so in harmony with his own youthful Spinozism that he might have composed it himself. See his “Erläuterung zu dem aphoristischen Aufsatz ‘Die Natur’” [“Explication of the Aphoristic Essay, ‘Nature’”] (FA 25: 81). 6 For treatments of the reception of Spinoza by Goethe and his contemporaries see Mathias Victorien Ntep II: Die pantheistische Naturauffassung Goethes. Sinzheim: Pro Universitate 1999. Pp. 37–50; Albert Jungmann: Goethes Naturphilosophie zwischen Spinoza und Nietzsche. Frankfurt/M: Lang 1989; David Bell: Spinoza in Germany from 1670 to the Age of Goethe. London: Bithell 1984; Momme Mommsen: Spinoza und die deutsche Klassik. Carelton Germanic Papers 2 (1974). Pp. 67–88; Martin Bollacher: Der junge Goethe und Spinoza. Studien zur Geschichte des Spinozismus in der Epoche des Sturm und Drang. Tübingen: Niemeyer 1969; and H. Lindner: Das Problem des Spinozismus im Schaffen Goethes und Herders. Weimar: Böhlau 1960. 7 FA 2: 685. 8 “Polarität” and “Steigerung” [“Polarity” and “intensification”] according to Goethe’s “completion” of Tobler’s fragment, are the “zwei großen Triebräder aller Natur” [“two great gears of all of nature”] (FA 25: 8). In its materiality – Goethe’s commentary implies – polarity resembles the divine attribute that Spinoza called extension (body), while intensification resembles his attribute of thought (mind). Goethe’s configuration of nature as an assembly of gears in this posthumously published essay is clearly indebted to Spinoza’s determinism, which had already been celebrated, as early as 1771 in his Zum Shakespears Tag. There a fictional Shakespeare-enthusiast claims to have discovered the driving engine of the genial playwright’s theater of nature within a mysterious point where “das Eigentümliche unseres Ichs, die prätendierte Freiheit unsres Wollens, mit dem nothwendigen Gang des Ganzen zusammenstoßt” [“the most intimate possession of our selves, our imagined freedom of will, collides with the necessary course of the whole”] (FA 18: 10). 9 In 1773 Goethe had celebrated the cathedral at Strasbourg as a living network of connected parts. Its architect Erwin, the speaker proclaims, whose gothic structure is a personal monument to his own genius, has reproduced the complex harmonies of God’s 4

221 Consequently, to explore nature “globally” for Goethe required his acknowledging and respecting the fugitive character of all the phenomenal variation that drives the system of nature as a whole. “Was kann der Mensch im Leben mehr gewinnen” [“What more from life can humans hope to win”], the memorial poem to Schiller’s skull – “Im ernsten Beinhaus” (1827) [“In the Solemn Sepulcher”] – would conclude, Als daß sich Gott-Natur ihm offenbare? Wie sie das Feste läßt zu Geist verrinnen, Wie sie das Geisterzeugte fest bewahre. (FA 2: 685) Than knowing God in nature is revealing? How what holds fast flows forth as thinking spirit, How what coursed through of mind is safely fastened.

The paradoxical “Grundeigenschaft der lebendigen Einheit” [“fundamental characteristic of the animate unity”], according to a maxim from Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821; 1829),10 is to exist through self-contradiction: sich zu trennen, sich zu vereinen, sich in’s Allgemeine zu ergehen, im Besondern zu verharren, sich zu verwandlen, sich zu spezifizieren, und wie das Lebendige unter tausend Bedingungen sich dartun mag, hervorzutreten und zu verschwinden, zu solideszieren und zu verschmelzen, zu erstarren und zu fließen, sich auszudehnen und sich zusammen zu ziehen. (FA 10: 577–578) to divide, to unite; to traverse the general, to endure in the particular; to transform and to specify oneself; and as the animate world expresses itself in thousands of states, to emerge and to disappear, to crystallize and to dissolve, to become rigid and to flow, to expand and to contract.

That is, like his philosophical counterpart, Goethe typically envisioned nature as a universal landscape, or topography, where endless processes of composition and decomposition transpire under countless conditions to constitute the sensate world as a vast region of liminality.11 Upon its stage, interacting bodies appear in significant configurations with one another, only perpetually to disappear universe in the soaring towers and foliating tracery on the face of the building’s massive western wall: “die großen, harmonischen Massen, zu unzählig kleinen Teilen belebt; wie in Werken der ewigen Natur, bis aufs geringste Zäserchen, alles Gestalt, und alles zweckend zum Ganzen” [“the great, harmonious masses, animated in innumerable small cuts; as in the works of eternal nature, up to the most miniscule piece, all living form, all purposive within the whole”] (FA 18: 115). 10 Interestingly when the Wanderjahre was published in its final version in the testamentary Ausgabe letzter Hand in 1829, Goethe printed “Im ernsten Beinhaus” on its final two pages (FA 10: 774). 11 See Clark Muenzer: Borders, Monuments and Goethe’s Reconstruction of Knowledge. Arcadia 38 (2003). Pp. 248–53.

222 and realign themselves in new configurations. No matter how tough or how solid, each individually composed body within this fluid place of passage is destined to encounter other bodies,12 more or less powerful than itself, that are similarly constituted to persevere in their own being.13 Hence, whatever stability or balance the living network claims for itself across its various modes, each of them, as well as all of its discrete moments of consolidation, carries the traumatic possibility of its own destruction. Already in his Sulzer-review of 1772 the youthful Goethe had taught that where sight is concerned – “what we see of nature” – the visualized object, or the image that fills the perceptual field and, in turn, becomes the sole foundation of authentic knowledge, is “Kraft” [“power”]. Within regimes of power, however, all things are also transitory: [D]ie Kraft verschlingt nichts gegenwärtig alles vorübergehend, tausend Keime zertreten jeden Augenblick tausend geboren, groß und bedeutend, mannigfaltig ins Unendliche; schön und häßlich, gut und bös, alles mit gleichem Rechte neben einander existierend. (FA 18: 99) Power consumes nothing present everything transitory, a thousand seeds trampled every moment a thousand born, great and meaningful, variety without end; beautiful and hideous, good and evil, all things coexisting with equal right.

Just as Spinoza’s unified divinity understood God’s expression as corporeal substance in terms of dynamic attributes (thought and extension) that strive to balance active and passive affects,14 then, the observable sequences of finite modes within Goethe’s natural order (rocks, plants, bones, clouds, colors, sounds, etc.) suggest animate processes, or transitory stagings of nature, that record the efforts of the system as a whole to organize its striving parts and, thereby, to maintain itself as a totalizing form: Weil nun alle diese Wirkungen im gleichen Zeitmoment zugleich vorgehen, so kann alles und jedes zu gleicher Zeit eintreten. Entstehen und Vergehen, Schaffen und Vernichten, Geburt und Tod, Freud und Leid, alles wirkt durch einander, in gleichem Sinn und gleicher Maße; deßwegen denn auch das Besonderste, das sich ereignet, immer als Bild und Gleichniß des Allgemeinsten auftritt. (FA 25: 113–114)15 12

See Clark Muenzer: At the Edge of Chaos: Goethe and the Question of the Global. In: Literatur im Spiel der Zeichen: Festschrift für Hans-Vilmar Geppert. Ed. by Werner Frick, Fabian Lampart, and Bernadette Malinowski. Tübingen: Francke 2006. Pp. 125–140. 13 See Gilles Deleuze: Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Trans. by Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights Books 1988. Pp. 21ff., for a useful discussion of Spinoza’s conatus as an unconscious power within bodies that strives to endure as well as the mind’s growing consciousness of such a power. 14 See Lloyd: Spinoza and the Ethics. Pp. 31–38 and pp. 72–74. 15 In Faust the fundamental connection in Goethe’s thinking between the fugitive phenomenal world and the power of commemorative structures to capture the eternal, or

223 Because all of these effects then transpire all together at the same moment, so, too, can each and all things come about at once. Origination and passing, creation and destruction, birth and death, joy and suffering, everything works through everything else, in equal sense and in equal measure; for which reason the most particular thing that happens is always staged as an image or parable of the most general.

In this context, and in accord with Goethe’s Spinozan disposition, the system of color stands in precise relation to and expresses the divine power of light, which it stages through meaningful images within the universal system of nature as a whole: “Farben und Licht stehen zwar unter einander in dem genausten Verhältniß” [“Colors and light, of course, stand in the most precise relationship to each other”], Goethe announces in the “Vorwort” [“Preface”] of the Farbenlehre (1810). But he cautions that this relationship includes all of nature: aber wir müssen uns beide als der ganzen Natur angehörig denken: denn sie ist es ganz, die sich dadurch dem Sinne des Auges besonders offenbaren will. (FA 23/1: 12) but we must think of both as belonging to the whole of nature: for it is nature in its entirety that specifically wants to reveal itself through it to the sensate eye.

Furthermore, because the “animate unity” of light becomes available to the understanding in its essence only when it physically “happens”, or becomes “eventful”, to the eye (“sich eräugnen”), Goethe’s treatise initially considers the self-organizing collection of inter-connected physiological “effects” that are produced by the human body within the visual organ as individual colors are retinally generated, interact, and struggle to persist.16 The Goethean system of coloring, the divine, in dynamic networks of endurance is eloquently proclaimed, first by the Erdgeist – “Geburt und Grab, / Ein ewiges Meer, / Ein wechselnd Weben, / Ein glühend Leben, / So schaff’ ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit, / Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid” [“From birth to grave, / A sea without end, / Web never slowing / Life always glowing, / At time’s roaring loom I thus raise and refine / The Godhead’s bold garment in living design”] (ll. 498–504) – and in grand culmination, by the chorus mysticus – “Alles Vergängliche / Ist nur ein Gleichniß / Das Unzulängliche / Hier wird’s Ereigniß / Das Unbeschreibliche / Hier ist’s getan; / Das Ewig-Weibliche / Zieht uns hinan” [“All things that pass-away / Are only parable / What is deficiency / Here is eventful. / What is indescribable / Here it is done. / What Ever-Womanly / Drawing us on”] (ll. 12104–12111). 16 See Beate Allert: Hidden Aspects of Goethe’s Writings on Color, Seeing, and Motion and their Significance for a Feminist Visual Theory. In: Bodies of Resistance: New Phenomenologies of Politics, Agency, and Culture. Ed. by Laura Doyle. Evanston: Northwestern University Press 2001. Pp. 144–191. Allert treats Goethe’s theory in terms of the role of the observer’s body, including senses other than just sight. In sections on “Komplementärfarben” [“complementary colors”], “Nachbilder” [“after-images”], “Farbige Schatten” [“colored shadows”], “Liquified Images”, and “Alethic Viewing”, pp. 149–156, she demonstrates how sight in Goethe, including, but not limited to the production of color, situates the semiotic process in “constant change and the transformation of all interrelated elements”. P. 156.

224 however, must not be confused with the unknowable essence of light, which should never be atomistically reduced, as Newton had done, to a spectral sum of ghostly parts: Denn eigentlich unternehmen wir umsonst, das Wesen eines Dinges auszudrücken, Wirkungen werden wir gewahr, und eine vollständige Geschichte dieser Wirkungen umfaßte wohl allenfalls das Wesen jenes Dinges. (FA 23/1: 12) For we undertake in vain to express the essence of a thing; instead we perceive effects, and only a complete history of such effects would in truth encompass the essence of the thing.

Instead, as the “Taten und Leiden des Lichts” [“the actions and sufferings of light”] (FA 23/1: 12), the color relations of Goethe’s spectrum (like all modes of God as nature) constitute a self-generating web of effects that are produced when illuminated bodies act upon, or suffer the activity of other bodies. In the following I will concentrate my remarks on Goethe’s initial, didactic treatment of physiological color production, which is staged on the interior surface of the eye “Netzhaut” [“retina”], because it provides special insight into the way the other color regimes work as well. For physiological, as well as for physical and chemical color formation, that is, the dynamic harmonies of the Goethean color-wheel are grounded in a Spinozan view of nature as a complex and fluid system that strives to maintain itself, within each of its discrete determinations, through transitions to more or less powerful (meaning more or less permanent) effects. As one of the most elusive of the modes of the divine, light – Goethe appears to be instructing – must be understood by understanding its effects in color production in terms of the fugitive nature of the individual colors that stand in reciprocal relationship to each other on a symbolic wheel. Within the landscape of nature, moreover, color’s totalizing effort at self-maintenance expresses the hidden “will”17 within the “animate unity” of light to re-produce – when traumatized – the essential wholeness of its regime.18 Goethean color, in 17 This kind of will is not to be confused with the autonomous and fully conscious “good will” of Kant’s ethics. As Astrida Tantillo has shown in The Will to Create: Goethe’s Philosophy of Nature. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 2002, Goethe appears to inscribe nature with a creative will that I, in turn, understand as largely unconscious. Like the unconscious system in Freud, however, its mechanism becomes available to consciousness, and thus interpretable, through memory traces that are composed in a zone of liminality (like Freud’s pre-conscious). As constructed by Goethe, such commemorative zones, which produce dream-like texts for the interpretative understanding, can be identified with sites as varied as Shakespeare’s stage, the western façade of the Strasbourg cathedral, or the symbolic color-wheel of the Farbenlehre. 18 Interestingly, Goethe devotes the opening sections of the introduction to his Beiträge zur Optik (1791) [Contributions to Optics] to the stimulating experiences of colors, or the “Reize der Farben” [“stimuli of colors”] that cover the natural landscape (“die ganze sichtbare Natur”) [“visible nature in its entirety”]. In addition to the green that clothes the whole of the botanical world, he finds of special note the more definitive, vernal

225 other words, which as the ideatum of light embodies its essence under the attribute of extension, behaves like a Spinozan mode of the divine substance, because it similarly exemplifies “the effort by which each thing strives to persevere in its being”.19 The spectral record (Geschichte) of color-effects (Wirkungen) that are left under varying (i.e., increased or diminished) conditions of lighting is also a virtual record of color production construed as conatus.

Goethe’s Trek Through the Landscape of Chromatic Production “Wie leicht die Farbe verschwindet” [“How easily colors vanish”] (FA 23/1: 231), the heading to paragraphs 712–713 of the first part of the Farbenlehre cautions. Summarizing a theme that has recurred throughout his treatise, Goethe goes on to identify the ephemeral moments of Mischung [color mixing], Steigerung [intensification], Vereinigung [union], Entzweiung [separation], and Forderung [harmonious promotion] that his meticulously arranged experiments had described in the first three sections of the color didactic.20 His “light and shadow show” there – for physiologically, physically, and chemically generated colors – might at first read like the detailed mise-en-scène of a three-act scientific spectacle.21 But as the complete record of the actions and passions of light, its “Taten und Leiden”, this “Schauspiel” [“stage-show”] also raises the curtain on the full range of chromatic possibility. By imagining color in terms of its systematic generation, or “Chroagenesie”,22 (FA 25: 819) that is, Goethe suggests that no single hue should be seen in isolation. If the “Falschspieler” [“charlatan”] (FA 23/1: 469) Newton had broken the sacred unity of light to produce his ghostly spectrum, his own experiments have reclaimed and restored the shambles of the trickster’s ruined fortification (FA 23/1: 16) by re-assembling its fragmented spectra into a system of dynamic relations among six basic colors.23 hues that nature wears “in den Stunden ihrer Hochzeitsfeier” [“during the hours of its wedding celebration”] (FA 23/2: 15). The multi-colored flowers and blossoms of spring in turn serve “dem Größten Zweck [“the highest purpose”], we are instructed, by which Goethe means “die Dauer künftiger Geschlechter” [“the endurance of future generations”] or the Spinozan effort of each individual body to survive through its kind (FA 23/2: 15). 19 Deleuze: Spinoza. P. 21. 20 See paragraph 712, FA 23/1: 231. 21 See Tantillo, who imaginatively suggests that Goethe’s “entire work may be read as a play”. P. 36. 22 This is Goethe’s neologism for the generation of colors. I will render it in English with another neologism, chromagenesis. 23 See in this connection the sixth of the Zahme Xenien: “Einheit ewigen Lichts zu spalten, /Müssen wir für törig halten, / Wenn euch Irrtum schon genügt. / Hell und Dunkel, Licht und Schatten / Weiß man klüglich sie zu gatten, / Ist das Farbenreich besiegt” [“One eternal light to break in parts / Must be insanity we’re thinking, / Even if wrong satisfies. / Bright and Darkness, Light and Shadow / Know to wed them smart together / And you’ve conquered color’s realm”] (FA 2: 672).

226 Goethe’s trek through the landscape of chromatic production begins – as summarized in paragraph 802 – with the pure “Mutterfarben” [“maternal colors”] (FA 23/1: 256), yellow and blue, which are presented in paragraph 778 as the reciprocal modifications of white “Licht” [“light”] and “Nichtlicht” [“notlight”] or “hell” [“light”] and “dunkel” [“dark”].24 So wie Gelb immer ein Licht mit sich führt, so kann man sagen, daß Blau immer etwas Dunkles mit sich führe. (FA 23/1: 252) Just as yellow always brings light along, it may be said that blue always brings along some dark.

Their physical mixing next causes green to appear, the first of the three transitional colors in the theory’s taxonomy, while their subsequent heightening into orange (or reddened-yellow) and violet (or reddened-blue) join (or individually heighten a second time) to produce “Purpur” [“pure red”]. This hue is the most dignified of all, because as Goethe goes on to suggest in paragraph 793, it dynamically captures the multiple processes of color production across the symbolic wheel-of-color in its totality: Wer die prismatische Entstehung des Purpurs kennt, der wird nicht paradox finden, wenn wir behaupten, daß diese Farbe teils actu, teils potentia alle andern Farben enthalte. (FA 23/1: 254) Whoever knows the prismatic origin of pure red will not find it paradoxical, if we claim that this color contains in part “actu” and in part “potentia” all the other colors.

The whole of Goethean color, moreover, appears “mit der grössten Schnelligkeit und Bereitwilligkeit” [“with the greatest quickness and readiness”], we learn in paragraph 712, only to disappear again just as rapidly: “aber eben so schnell verschwindet auch die Farbe wieder gänzlich” [“but colors also disappear again just as quickly”] (FA I 23/1: 231). And this holds true across the full range of conditions through which Goethe walks the observer, whenever he sets the stage, step by step, for his play of light and shadow with its successive manifestations of physiological, physical, and chemical colors. As Goethe next summarizes this show in paragraph 713, experiences in the first of the fields, which belong to the eye,25 are fated to vanish almost 24 These conditions of color generation are already summarized in the “Einleitung” (FA 23/1: 26ff.). 25 In the opening paragraph of the first section, Goethe emphatically reminds us that physiological colors, which have been traditionally dismissed, constitute “das Fundament der ganzen Lehre” [“the foundation of the entire treatise”]. He will place them first, “weil sie dem Subjekt, weil sie dem Auge, teils völlig, teils größtens zugehören” [“because they belong in part entirely, in part largely, to the perceiving subject or the eye itself ”] (FA 23/1: 31).

227 immediately: “Die physiologischen Erscheinungen sind auf keine Weise festzuhalten” [“physiological phenomena can in no way be arrested”], while those in the second, which result when light has been engaged by colorless media such as prisms, mirrors, and clouds, “dauern nur so lange, als die äussere Bedingung währt” [“endure only so long as the external condition persists”]. Finally, even colors of the third order, which have been fixed in materials like pigments and dyes, “haben eine grosse Beweglichkeit” [“have great instability”], he concludes, “und sind durch entgegengesetzte Reagenzien herüber und hinüber zu werfen, ja sogar aufzuheben” [“and may be altered, even eliminated, in fact, by means of opposing reagents”] (FA 23/1: 231). From start to finish, in other words, the opening didactic section of the Farbenlehre has constructed color to a greater or lesser degree within each of its embodiments as a fugitive phenomenon. Like the other natural events in Goethe’s book of nature, it, too, will be marked by “Beweglichkeit” [“motion”] (FA 23/1: 230). Interestingly, however, a framing sentence from the treatise’s “Einleitung” offers a revealing observation about chromatic production that gradually re-inscribes its initial characterization as straightforward change. Only physiological colors are “unaufhaltsam flüchtig” [“relentlessly fugitive”], Goethe cautions. By contrast, physical colors – though likewise “vorübergehend” [“transitory”] – are also “allenfalls verweilend” [“nonetheless enduring”], while chemical colors show a propensity to hold fast “bis zur spätesten Dauer” [“to the longest extent”] (FA 23/1: 26). What seems inexorable in Goethe’s description of colors belonging to the eye, in other words, becomes a source of lingering transitions26 in his rendering of physical colors. And when chemical colors come into play, he reinscribes change yet again – only now even more pointedly – in terms of their inherent effort to endure. Accordingly, the didactic task of his Farbenlehre will be to represent all three kinds of chromatic experience in a series of experiments, Goethe’s “Anzeige und Übersicht” (1810) [“Announcement and Outline”] of the treatise announces. The “stetige Reihe” [“continuous series”] of his instructional demonstrations will connect “die flüchtigen mit denverweilenden und diese wieder mit den dauernden” [“the fugitive with the tarrying and these, in turn, with

26

See Goethe’s completion of the color-wheel in the “Zugabe” [“addendum”] near the conclusion of the color didactic, which features orange, violet, and green as the transitional colors: “so bilden sich aus den drei Farben, Gelb, Rot und Blau drei Übergänge, Orange, Violett und Grün (ich heiße alles Orange, was zwischen Gelb und Rot fällt, oder was von Gelb oder Rot aus sich nach diesen Seiten hinneigt) und diese sind in ihrer mittleren Stellung am brillantesten und die reinen Mischungen der Farben” [“thus are three transitions, orange, violet, and green, formed from the three colors yellow, red, and blue (I call everything that falls between yellow and red, orange, or whatever of yellow and red tends toward these sides) and in their intermediate placement these are the most brilliant and the pure mixtures of colors”] (FA 23/1: 287).

228 the enduring”], he explains, in order to preserve27 each distinct field of chromatic transition for “ein höheres Anschauen” [“a higher form of seeing”] (FA 23/1: 1047).28 My remaining remarks will consider how Goethe’s lesson of refined seeing frames his chromatic discourse by disclosing color’s endeavor to persist as a necessary consequence of its characteristic mobility.

Chromatic Instability and the Effort to Endure One of the instructional aids that Goethe developed to assist in his educational project was his color-wheel of 1793.29 While Newton’s experimentum crucis had tortured nature by pressing light through a tiny aperture in order to stretch it out on the rack of his dark chamber, the “Farbenkreis” [“color wheel”] teaches about light contextually.30 That is to say, it schematically represents the border regions between light and darkness where chromatic effects first arise and then struggle to endure by systematically reappearing as related hues. Like some of the other perceptual diagrams that were reproduced with it in the theory’s third volume of plates, then, this device helped Goethe to frame the question of visuality, in accord with nature’s dynamism, as a question of survival and, so, of memory as well. If the visual organ, as already claimed in paragraph 60 of the color didactic, demands totality “und schließt in sich selbst den Farbenkreis ab” [“and includes within itself the color-wheel”] (FA 23/1: 50), Goethe’s schematic circle, as well as the serialized experiments of his treatise, conversely invites “Durchwanderung” [“passage”] (FA 23/1: 230) through a succession of chromatic neighborhoods.31 By recording the passage of pure 27

Goethe’s term here, no doubt influenced by Hegel, is “aufheben”. The suggestion seems to be that color production accomplishes its conserving goal with the aid of antithetical mechanisms of disruption. 28 In Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt (1793) [The Experiment as Mediator of Object and Subject] (FA 25: 26–36), Goethe had already described the construction of an authentic experiment as a process that multiplies a single, partial experiment to produce an idealized series. 29 Goethe wrote Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt during the same time-period. See note 28. 30 See Ruprecht Matthaei: Goethes Farbenlehre. Ravensburg: Otto Maier 1987. Pp. 55–56, for a reconstruction and discussion of the significance of Goethe’s Farbenkreis. 31 Near the end of the color didactic, paragraph 710 reads: “Die Beweglichkeit der Farbe haben wir schon bei der Steigerung und bei der Durchwanderung des Kreises zu bedenken Ursache gehabt” [“We already had occasion to consider the mobility of color in the cases of its intensification and the trek across the circle”] (FA 23/1: 230), while section XLI on chemically produced colors bears the title “Durchwandern des Kreises” [“A Trek through the Circle”] (FA 23/1: 184). The use of this term, which from the Rede zum Shakespears Tag (1771) [Speech for Shakespeare’s Day] through Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821; 1829) frequently suggests the non-linearity of Goethe’s thinking, serves a similar purpose in his construction of color as a complex process of network relationships.

229 yellow and blue through their transitions across green, orange, and violet as a passage of return to pure red, moreover, the “Farbenkreis” reproduces the eye’s capacity for restorative “Farbenwechsel” [“chromatic change”], as detailed in paragraphs 55–61 (FA 23/1: 48–50). Here we can see with the mind’s eye how an endeavor at self-maintenance that recalls Spinoza’s conatus became a necessary correlate of chromatic instability in Goethe’s thinking.32 “So wären wir, bei Betrachtung des Entziehens, der Flüchtigkeit und Vergänglichkeit glänzender Farbenerscheinungen, wieder auf die Forderung der Dauer zurückgekehrt” [“Thus, while observing the removal, or the fugitive and transitory quality of radiant chromatic phenomena, we have returned once again to the challenge of durability”] paragraph 604 later observes – which treats the permanence of the dyes used in tapestries – “und hätten auch in diesem Sinne unsern Kreis abermals abgeschlossen” [“and have in this sense again completed our circle”] (FA 23/1: 201). The drive of individual colors to persist by modifying themselves, in other words, does not merely complement the constitutive “Beweglichkeit der Farbe” [“mobility of colors”] (FA 23/1: 230), according Goethe. It comes to stand, significantly, as the chief hallmark of all ocular embodiment. In fact, as the first section of the didactic argues, the vulnerable eye shares a chromatic capability with sunlight: “Das Auge hat sein Dasein dem Licht zu danken” [“the eye must thank light for its existence”], Goethe reminds his readers in the “Einleitung” [“Introduction”]: Aus gleichgültigen tierischen Hülfsorganen ruft sich das Licht ein Organ hervor, das seines Gleichen werde; und so bildet sich das Auge am Lichte für’s Licht, damit das innere Licht dem äußeren entgegentrete. (FA 23/1: 24) From the indifferent auxiliary organs of animals, light calls forth an organ that is its own equal, so that the internal light engages the external one.

Because the visual organ, has been endowed with the attribute of divine radiance, in other words – because it is “sonnehaft” [“sun-like”] (FA 23/1: 24)33 – it shares the Creator’s capacity to produce, or to generate, color: “Läg’ nicht in uns des Gottes eigne Kraft, / Wie könnt’ uns Göttliches entzücken” [“Were not the power of the God our own / How could a godly force amaze us?”] (FA 2: 645). Anyone who has followed the order of the initial experiments in the Farbenlehre can 32

For a discussion of Goethe’s treatment of entoptic colors in light of his Spinozism, see Frederick Burwick: The Damnation of Newton: Goethe’s Color Theory and Romantic Perception. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter 1986. Pp. 54, 58. 33 Here Goethe inserts the following version of one of the Zahme Xenien into his scientific treatise: “Wär’ nicht das Auge sonnenhaft, / Wie könnten wir das Licht erblicken? / Lebt nicht in uns des Gottes eigne Kraft, / Wie könnt’ uns Göttliches entzücken?” [“Were not the eye itself a sun / How could the light be seen when looking. / Were not the force of God alive in us / How could his power so amaze us?”] (FA 23/1: 24).

230 readily see this simply by exposing the organ to the alternating conditions of light and darkness as described in paragraphs 5–14 (FA 23/1: 32–34) or by simultaneously regarding black and white patterns, as paragraphs 15–29 (FA 23/1: 34–38) specify, or by subjecting the eye to physical shock, or “mechanischen Anstoß” [“mechanical blow”] (FA 23/1: 25). Across all of these situations, Goethe will proceed to identify the delayed “Wirkungen” [“effects”] of light and its absence by registering the variety of familiar images that are generated on the retina in the eye’s effort to preserve chromatic balance and maintain its integrity. He also emphasizes in the very first paragraph of “Physiologische Farben” [“Physiological Colors”] that the varied effects of ocular disturbances “Leiden” [“sufferings”] are not mere optical illusions, as suggested by their traditional designation with the labels “Scheinfarben”, “Augentäuschungen”, or “Gesichtsbetrug” (FA 23/1: 31). Nor are they just the isolated symptoms of some underlying pathology. Instead, the stunning variety of blinding, colored, and pathological after-images that can be reproduced in experiment provide a visible record, in the healthy eye, of its own creative activity “Taten” [“deeds”].34 By virtue of their grounding in chromatic harmony, Goethe concludes, physiological colors, which are also the most subjective, constitute “the foundation of the entire theory” (FA 23/1: 31). If earlier investigations had typically banished retinal images and their fleeting colors as insubstantial specters, moreover, “weil man ihre Flüchtigkeit nicht haschen konnte” [“because their transitoriness could not be caught”] (FA 23/1: 31), his own account contends that such “Gespenster” [“ghosts”] (FA 23/1: 31) are both substantive and real. And as if to emphasize this point, Goethe finally reminds us – in remarkable anticipation of Freud’s interpretation of mental pathologies – that “wie jeder abnorme Zustand” [“as any abnormal state”] (FA 23/1: 31), even retinal after-images in the diseased eye have revelatory value. That is to say, even they are not “subjective” in the usual derogatory sense, but offer “eine vollkommenere Einsicht” [“more complete insight”] (FA 23/1: 31) into physiologically generated colors by disclosing the “objective” – and otherwise invisible – laws of all chromagenesis.35

“Chroagenesie” and the Eye As I propose reading chromatic production in the Farbenlehre, the first of these laws would maintain that color, as part of the system of nature [natura naturans] 34 See in this connection Tantillo’s illuminating discussion of the Goethean eye, as both a physical and mental structure, in the context of polarity. Pp. 37–47. Her double construction of the visual organ complements my own reading of the Spinozan framework of Goethe’s treatise, which understands the eye in terms of the two divine attributes, extension and thought. 35 Burwick offers a detailed analysis of Goethe’s gradual re-evaluation of the physiological section of the Farbenlehre as foundational for his entire theory through the 1820s. Pp. 9–101.

231 is a self-generative process. Each color calls forth other, complementary colors in order to survive through its opposite and keep the chromatic household in balance. In line with Goethe’s Spinozan construction of color theory, I call this process of dynamic self-maintenance “color coloring” – which suggests a second law of chromagenesis. “Coloring” operates differentially – through the productive oppositions, or polarities, that progressively constitute it as a process of endless transitions between white and black or brightness and darkness. Chromatic events “happen” and continue happening for Goethe, when illuminated bodies act or are acted upon in the turbid border regions of the “Helldunkel” [“light-dark”] (FA 23/1: 34). Like Spinoza’s natura naturans, moreover, “color coloring” is a serial event. It involves temporal spacing – “ein Zuvor und Hernach” [“a before and after”] (FA 23/1: 13) – and as with other morphological processes in Goethe (i.e., all Bildung), its sequences exceed simple chronology. A third law of chromagenesis, would, therefore, state that sight, which is the defining property of the “sun-like” eye, symptomatically fills successive moments in the fields of “coloring” with liminal images of its own restorative efforts to sustain the activity of seeing. By carefully examining these images, which the eye projects as the imaginative effects of its actions and passions, the color investigator can discern how they reciprocally capture traumatized moments of chromatic specification from the past. They do so in order to collect – and then systematically re-assemble at some future point – all of the color-wheel’s individual spectra within the totalizing field of chromagenesis. Along these lines, the visual traces, or after-images, that Goethe stages with his experiments in physiological color provide a serial record, or monument, to the self-maintaining life of the eye. It should not surprise us, therefore, that the first subsection of “Physiologische Farben” (paragraphs 5–14) – entitled “Licht und Finsternis zum Auge” [“the effects of light and darkness on the eye”] (FA 23/1: 32–34) – begins its discussion of the “Taten und Leiden” [“actions and sufferings”] (FA 23/1: 12) of the visual organ by noting its mnemonic capacity to hold onto its own characteristic “turning” between contrasting fields of illumination. Reading the eye’s constant passages from light to darkness or from darkness to light, we are instructed in paragraph 9, requires our reading the after-images where these generative conditions of visuality linger for a while: Gehen wir schnell aus einem dieser Zustände in den andern über, wenn auch nicht von einer äußersten Grenze zur andern, sondern etwa nur aus dem Hellen ins Dämmernde; so ist der Unterschied bedeutend und wir können bemerken, daß die Zustände eine Zeit lang dauern. (FA 23, 1: 32) If we pass swiftly from one of these states to another, even if not from one extreme to another, but instead only from light into twilight; the difference is significant, and we might note that the states last for a while.

232 Subsequently, in the more extreme case of what paragraph 8 calls, “Überspannung” [“overexcitement”] (FA 23/1: 32), the example of a blinding image is considered that suddenly arises when light has been directed through a circular aperture onto a white surface. Upon turning away from the colorless image and into a fully darkened corner of a room, the observer will immediately experience “einen starken dauernden Eindruck” [“a strong and lasting impression”] (FA 23/1: 41), Goethe explains, which signals that the recuperative capacity of the eye has been awakened by some sort of trauma, or shock. As this vivid impression of light fades, moreover, a circular “Farbenerscheinung” [“chromatic phenomenon”] (FA 23/1: 41), or colored after-image, is belatedly generated by the retina, which according to paragraph 40 gradually moves from the center of the figure to its periphery through colorless brightness and yellow hues, back to the pure red of perfect ocular balance. In einem Zimmer, das möglichst verdunkelt worden, habe man im Laden eine runde Öffnung, etwa drei Zoll im Durchmesser, die man nach Belieben auf- und zudecken kann; durch selbige lasse man die Sonne auf ein weißes Papier scheinen und sehe in einiger Entfernung starr das erleuchtete Rund an; man schließe darauf die Öffnung und blicke nach dem dunkelsten Orte des Zimmers; so wird man eine runde Erscheinung vor sich schweben sehen. Die Mitte des Kreises wird man hell, farblos, einigermaßen gelb sehen, der Rand aber wird sogleich purpurfarben erscheinen. (FA 23/1: 41) Make a round aperture with a diameter of about three inches in the window-shutter of a room that has darkened as much as possible. Allow the sun to shine onto a white piece of paper through the aperture, which can be opened and closed at will, and from some distance, fix the gaze onto the illuminated circle; then close the aperture and look toward the darkest place in the room; you will see floating in front of you a circular image. The middle of the circle will appear bright, colorless, somewhat yellow, but the edge will, at the same time, appear pure red.

After a while, we are instructed, the harmonious “Purpurfarbe” [“pure red”] covers the circular field in its entirety, only to witness a “bluing” effect set in from the periphery toward the center. Once the dynamic image is fully blue, its circumference becomes colorless, and the circle steadily darkens, until it fades and completely disappears. Thus, the retina, Goethe implies, has restored (or collected) itself by collecting colors:36 Hier sehen wir abermals, wie sich die Netzhaut, durch eine Succession von Schwingungen, gegen den gewaltsamen äußern Eindruck nach und nach wieder herstellt. (FA 23/1: 42) Here we can see once again how the retina, by means of a succession of oscillations, gradually restores itself after experiencing a violent external jolt. 36

To complete the Farbenkreis Goethe modifies the conditions of his initial experiment to produce an initial greening of the illuminated circle from its periphery and a subsequent yellowing, rather than the reddening and “bluing” of paragraph 39.

233 As Goethe describes this process for colorless images, however, it tends to conceal the trauma of chromatic origins. Accordingly, he next stages his play of Licht und Finsternis as a series of experiments with “colored images”, which progressively reveal the history of spectral formation through a spectacle of chromatic “Schwingungen” [“oscillations”] (FA 23/1: 42). In the experiments with “colorless images”, the visible effect of coloring happened belatedly as a kind of troping, as one color had gradually turned into another, and so forth, after the shock of an inaugurating turn. But when Goethe investigates “farbige Bilder” [“chromatic images”] in the next subsection (paragraphs 47–61), he discovers “analoge Erscheinungen” [“analogous phenomena”] (FA 23/1: 44) that repeat – with a more intelligible visible effect – his fundamental construction of the ocular image as a therapeutic site of chromatic commemoration: Wie von den farblosen Bildern, so bleibt auch von den farbigen der Eindruck im Auge, nur dass uns die zur Opposition aufgeforderte und durch den Gegensatz eine Totalität hervorbringende Lebendigkeit der Netzhaut anschaulicher wird. (FA 23/1: 44) As is the case with colorless images, with colored ones, too, the impression remains in the eye, only here the vital capacity of the retina to produce a totality against the challenge of opposition may be more readily observed.

Thus, according to paragraph 50, it is the entire collection of complementary colors within the totality of the Farbenkreis – and not just one of its segments – that we are instructed to read as model for the reciprocal generation of color within the eye: So fordert Gelb das Violette, Orange das Blaue, Purpur das Grüne, und umgekehrt. So fordern sich alle Abstufungen wechselweise, die einfachere Farbe fordert die zusammengesetztere, und umgekehrt. (FA 23/1: 45) Thus, yellow promotes purple; orange, blue; pure red, green; and vice versa. Thus, all gradations of color reciprocally promote one another; the more simple ones promote the more complex, and vice versa.

Like the “lebendige Einheit der Natur” [“animate unity of nature”] (FA 10: 577) of which it is an integral organ or part, the animated retina of Goethe’s experiments in physiological color has become a site of commemoration where the full life of “coloring” is first visibly produced and then maintained as virtual reality through the reciprocal play of too much and too little light.37 37

Goethe had already explained this in Paragraph 8: “Jeder dieser äußersten Zustände nimmt auf die angegebene Weise die ganze Netzhaut ein, und in so fern werden wir nur einen derselben auf einmal gewahr. Dort […] fanden wir das Organ in der höchsten Abspannung und Empfänglichkeit, hier […] in der äußersten Überspannung und Unempfindlichkeit” [“Each of these most extreme states acts on the retina in its entirety, and so, we perceive only one of them at one time. There (. . .) we encountered the organ in the highest state of relaxation and receptivity. Here (. . .) in the highest state of tension and insensitivity”] (FA 23/1: 32).

234 A detailed analysis of the “farbige Bilder” [“colored images”] that Goethe subsequently discusses would offer additional examples for the kind of dynamic complementarity at work in such a site.38 Likewise, the remaining subsections of “Physiologische Farben” on colored shadows in paragraphs 62–80 (FA 23/1: 51–57), or weakened light sources and their retinal effects in paragraphs 81–88 (FA 23/1: 57–59), or pathological colors in paragraphs 101–135 (FA 23/1: 62–69) emphasize the active effort to persist (conatus) that underlies all processes of chromagenesis. Yet however actively the eye appears to be engaged during the physiological production of color, a cautionary aside near the end of the section on “Farbige Bilder” also acknowledges and aphoristically summarizes a basic traumatic component within every chromatic event. If gazing at a single color produces a “Farbenwechsel” [“chromatic change”] across the whole retina that is “gesetzmäßig” [“in accord with laws”] (FA 23/1: 48), Goethe warns, the use of sunglasses with green lenses should, nonetheless, be avoided, because “jede Farbspezifikation dem Auge Gewalt antut und das Organ zur Opposition nötigt” [“every chromatic specification does violence to the eye and compels the organ to opposition”] (FA 23/1: 48). Goethean visuality, in other words, belatedly records the hidden traumas of “color coloring”, which in turn connects it to all other sovereign processes of natural formation (Bildung). When seen in this light, each visual record of Goethe’s experiments can be read as a Nachtrag, or collection of supplementary entries in the historical ledger of nature’s household that together re-inscribe the fugitive spectra of chromatic specification within the shifting fields of chromagenesis. At least that would be my working hypothesis for reading the rest of Goethe’s Farbenlehre as the multiplication of his first physiological experiments and as a “collective” discourse about visual memory. “Color coloring”, according to this framework, is informed by the kind of Nachträglichkeit that Rainer Nägele’s reading of Freud’s term has suggested.39 That is to say, it similarly involves “the transformation and rewriting of [. . .] memory traces on the basis of later experiences in the context of a new phase of development” (174). In the spirit of this reading, I will turn now, in conclusion, to one of several supplements, or Nachträge, to the Farbenlehre that Goethe would (belatedly) publish in his own Morphologische Hefte [Morphological

38

Goethe’s examples include a “wohlgewachsenes Mädchen mit blendendweissem Gesicht, schwarzen Haaren und einem scharlachroten Mieder” [“a well-built girl with a blindingly fair face, black hair, and a scarlet bodice”] (FA 23/1: 46). His eye had chromatically captured this image in reverse while gazing at the young woman against a white wall. What the retina retained, we learn, was a black face, a halo, and a sea-green dress. The striking “Nachbild” [“after-image”] was reproduced with the illustrations to the Farbenlehre in the Tafelband (FA 23/1: Abb. 20). See also note 43 below. 39 Rainer Nägele: Reading After Freud: Essays on Goethe, Hölderlin, Habermas, Nietzsche, Brecht, Celan, and Freud. New York: Columbia University Press 1987.

235 Notebooks] some fourteen years after his controversial treatise on color had first appeared in print.40

Goethe and Purkinje The essay in question offers a sympathetic review of Jan Purkinje’s “Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Sehens in subjektiver Hinsicht” (1819) [“Contributions to an Understanding of Sight in a Subjective Sense”].41 It consists of a series of quotations from the dissertation of the young Bohemian physiologist interspersed with parenthetical comments by the reviewer. Purkinje would initially have attracted Goethe’s attention with the title of his dissertation, which frames his own experimental work in ocular physiology as a furthering of Goethe’s position in 1810 that the subjectivity of sense-perceptions – including sight – can be conceptually organized in accord with the objective laws of nature. When deprived of one of the senses, Goethe asserts in approving admiration of his young follower, the organism will replace and represent it with another, thereby suggesting “das innerste Geflecht der verschiedensten Systeme” [“the most intimate intertwining of the most varied systems”] (FA 25: 818). A few pages later, he extends this thought by offering several examples from his own scientific experience for the kind of natural equivalences that he, along with Purkinje, has observed. Prominent among these are the symmetrical patterns produced by sound and polarized light. Both the so-called “Chladischen Tonfiguren” [“Chladian tonal figures”] and the entoptic “Kreuz” [“cross”] not only resemble one another, Goethe remarks; they also resemble the “Acht-Figur” [“octagonal figure”] of the traumatized eye, which like the entoptic glass is disposed to register the most subtle transitions, or “Übergänge”, in the reciprocal exchange of “Hell und Dunkel” [“bright and dark”] (FA 25: 822).42 I mention Goethe’s parenthetical references to Purkinje’s physical observations, because they frame his reading of a notion, shared with him, that each of the senses has a mnemonic capability. As Purkinje asserts, then, and as Goethe 40

The complete run of the Hefte, with a substantial commentary, has been collected in volumes 24 and 25 of the FA. 41 It was published in 1824. See FA 25: 817–27. For more on Goethe and Pukinje, see Vladislav Kruta: Goethe und Purkyneˇ. Goethe 90 (1973). Pp. 233–49. 42 Burwick offers an extensive account of Goethe’s emerging fascination with polarized light and entoptic color production, including a reading of Homunculus’ crystal vile in Faust II as an entoptic glass. Pp. 54–101. This chromatic phenomenon, which interested Goethe because of its intermediate position between the physiological and physical color regimes, offers a special and particularly dramatic example of the relationship that I have analyzed between the traumatic origin of color and its effort to endure. The entoptic medium is prepared by subjecting a cold piece of glass to the sudden extreme of heat. The shock of this change in turn enables the glass to capture polarized light in a record of organized chromatic images.

236 agrees, there is something like a “Gedächtnis des Gesichtsinnes” [“memory of sight”], by which he means “Nachbild” [“after-image” or “imagination”] (FA 25: 825).43 The reconstructed after-image, moreover, seems to invite a kind of training of both the imagination and the memory44 at its source – which brings me, in conclusion, to the last and longest commentary in the review. There Goethe recalls his ability to “think” the image of a flower “in der Mitte des Sehorgans” [“at the center of the visual organ”] at will. But the projected figure “erharrte nicht einen Augenblick in ihrer ersten Gestalt” [“did not remain frozen for a moment in its initial form”], he remarks. Instead, “sie legte sich auseinander” [“the flower unfolded itself ”], we are told, “und aus ihrem Innern enfalteten sich wieder neue Blumen aus farbigen, auch wohl grünen Blättern” [“and new flowers with colored and also green foliage continued to unfold from within”] (FA 25: 826). Goethe’s animated chromo-image of botanical propagation and efflorescence, moreover – which was more “phantastic” than “natural” – was also “regelmäßig” [“regular”], or as systematic as “die Rosetten der Bildhauer” [“the sculptors’ rosettes”] (FA 25: 826). Most importantly, it was impossible to fix “die hervorquellende Schöpfung” [“the cascading creation”] (FA 25: 826), which nonetheless “maintained itself ” [“dauerte”] as long as the dreaming Goethe desired. As this anecdote draws to its conclusion, we can begin seeing, along with Goethe, the same systematic connection of “Wechsel” and “Dauer” [“change” and “permanence”]45 that is the hallmark of ocular embodiment in the color didactic. As the dynamic source of its own reproduction, his fantastic flower, which issued from eight green leaves, provides something like a record in stone of its self-maintaining passages through life. Accordingly, Goethe goes on to connect this remarkable figure to a second chromo-image of a stainedglass window, which he then likens to “Zierat” [“architectural ornamentation”]. With both of these instances – which also remind him of David Brewster’s 43 In her recent book on cinematic time, Mary Ann Doane discusses the relationship between motion and the persistence of vision in an extensive chapter that is devoted to the “after-image”. Doane appropriately, pays homage to Goethe’s Farbenlehre and even describes the image of the girl in the sea-green dress that I cite above in note 38. As I have argued, moreover, the connection that Doane explores here informs Goethe’s understanding of color as reciprocally fugitive and enduring. See The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, and the Archive. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2002. Pp. 69–107. For the reference to Goethe (and Purkinje) see pp. 71ff. 44 See Gabriel Motzkin: Goethe’s Theory of Memory. In: Goethe und das Zeitalter der Romantik. Ed. by Walter Hinderer. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2002, Pp. 151–162. Motzkin explores the tensing of memory toward the future, which I have discussed elsewhere as the temporal structure of the Goethean monument. In his Purkinje piece, Goethe’s connection of memory and imagination implies the same kind of temporal configuration. 45 FA 2: 78.

237 recently invented kaleidoscope – moving patterns filled a field of sight, he explains, to capture the symmetry, or regularity, of the fugitive world in a macrocosmic spectacle of change. After relating these personal animations to the “Acht-Strahl” of entoptic figures and retinal after-images, Goethe returns to Purkinje, who has similarly understood the role that the memory and the imagination must play in the reconstruction of the world as knowledge. “Hier ist die Erscheinung des Nachbildes, Gedächtnis, produktive Einbildungskraft, Begriff und Idee alles auf einmal im Spiel” – Goethe summarizes in approving recognition of his young disciple – “und manifestiert sich in eigner Lebendigkeit des Organs [. . . ]”. Along these lines, the mark of the true artist, he concludes, like that of the scientific investigator, I would add, is an animate visual organ, or inborn capacity to produce the same kind of “Nachbilder” that we find as vestigial traces in the reciprocal work of the memory and the imagination. “Sie müssen sich entfalten, wachsen, sich ausdehnen und zusammenziehen” [“They must unfold, grow, expand and contract”], Goethe proclaims, “um aus flüchtigen Schemen wahrhaft gegenständliche Wesen zu werden” [“in order for fugitive phantoms to become truly objective beings”] (FA 25: 826).

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Eric Hadley Denton

The Technological Eye: Theater Lighting and Guckkasten in Michaelis and Goethe In Goethe’s Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern [Festival in Plundersweilern] and Johann Benjamin Michaelis’s Amors Guckkasten, the Guckkasten [peepshow, magic lantern, shadow show, curiosity box] makes an enigmatic appearance as theater prop and plot device. Technology is function: if these plays have a plot, it is theater lighting. Furthermore, technology and optical devices serve as props for the imagination. Goethe rehabilitates Hanswurst as Lichtputzer [candle-trimmer]. As theoretical props, both Fredric Jameson and Bakhtin make surprise appearances. Indeed, in the entire history of entertainment and news media, traditions of carnival and technological development are more interrelated than meets the eye. Goethe and Michaelis transform the marketplace into a theatrical feast celebrating mixed media, in which print and visual cultures, literary and visual genres, Hannswurst technology – Guckkasten, shadow play, magic lantern, and lighting – are not contradictions.1

In theater, it is all a matter of lighting, without which we would all be left in the dark.2 The would-be Hannswurst in Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern is a theatrical anti-sandman, whose function is to keep the audience from falling asleep from boredom, but he also has a real job to do, as Lichtputzer. In the history of theater, the candle-trimmer is among the most significant of forgotten and neglected figures. Lighting is the central technical problem of the European stage; solutions to problems of lighting affect every aspect of dramaturgical

1

Editors’ note: Throughout this essay Hanswurst refers to the generic character, while Hannswurst refers to Goethe’s incarnation of the character. 2 A much longer and comprehensive version of this essay appears as chapter four in my forthcoming book: The Pathos of Character: Goethe, Performance, 1775. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press 2006. A longer, related essay, focusing on all the entertainers in Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern and their diverse origins, appears in the Goethe Yearbook 13 (2005). The original research for this chapter was conducted for my 1994 Yale dissertation, The Microcosm of Comedy: Goethe and Eighteenth-Century Theater. The raw materials were radically refreshed and rethought – thanks to the GoetheGesellschaft and the Stiftung Weimarer Kultur – during the summer of 1996 in Weimar while living among the ghosts in the Nietzschehaus. I presented a paper with an abbreviated, family resemblance to this essay at the ASECS 2000 in Philadelphia for the Goethe Society panel “Goethe and Visual Culture”. My appreciation goes to Cyrus Hamlin, Cecile Cazort Zorach, and Curt Bentzel for wading with me through the deluge; to Waltraud Maierhofer, Theodore Fiedler, David Wellbery, and especially Catriona MacLeod, Eve Moore, and Patricia Simpson for their astute and kind suggestions as I treaded water.

240 script and performance.3 Goethe’s eighteenth-century stage was lit “durch Wachskerzen, Talglichter und Ölfächer” [“with wax candles, torches, and oil lamps”], which illuminated the stage and theater equally, and in most cases, equally badly. The candle-lit chandelier in the middle of the auditorium was the major source of light for both actors and audience, which left the audience both exposed and often of as much interest as the production itself.4 Lighting, therefore, dictates the parabasic, carnivalesque, and feedback-loop atmosphere of most theaters in eighteenth-century Germany, where the audience by necessity becomes part of the spectacle. Parabasis refers to direct addresses to the audience, verbally and physically stepping across the footlights: This is an interlude, named from parabainein, to step across, to come forward, to turn around to the spectators instead of to the actors, and address the audience. This has rightly been recognized as the earliest element of comedy, developed from the original komos.5

In Romanticism, such illusion-breaking dialog becomes the very principle of self-reflection itself, Friedrich Schlegel’s dictum, “Die Ironie ist eine permanente Parakbase” [“Irony is a permanent parabasis”].6 In general, parabasis is a dynamic principle of constant interruption. “Carnivalesque” refers to the traces of cultural phenomena already dead, yet celebrated in comic effigy in ritual, religious, or festive settings, a world turned upside down, in which social norms 3

Ruth Padel: Making Space Speak. In: Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context. Ed. by John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990: “On our stage, light orchestrates the spectators’ feeling by contrasting tones. Western understanding of theatrical space was changed forever by Adolph Appia and the subsequent development of his ideas about the use of light. Light is now theater’s most important plastic medium, ‘scene-painter, interpreter’, with ‘the character of a form in space’ ”. P. 339. Padel makes this point in comparison to Greek theater, which provided little or no experience of lighting effects; the very concept of stage lighting would be foreign to the “daylight” of the Greek theater experience. 4 Sybille Maurer-Schmoock: Deutsches Theater im 18. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer 1981. Pp. 68–69. (Studien zur deutschen Literatur 71): “The most important source of light for the auditorium was a chandelier, studded with candles, hanging in the middle of the room. The audience space was therefore lit during the entire performance, a situation, which often focused attention more on the public than on the stage: being seen was more important then seeing”. All German secondary literature is cited in English in my own translation. I take full responsibility for all mistakes, indelicacies, and liberties in translation, a delicate and painstaking task, but one intended to bring important work from Germany to the attention of an American and English audience. 5 Margarete Bieber: The History of the Greek and Roman Theater. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1961. P. 37. 6 Philosophische Lehrjahre 1796–1806. In: Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe. Ed. by Ernst Behler. I.18: 85.

241 are inverted, as explored by M. M. Bakhtin.7 The feedback-Schleife [feedback loop] is a central concept in performance studies, which permits, even encourages an audience to respond directly to a performance: Das Interesse richtete sich nun explizit auf die feedback-Schleife als selbstbezügliches, autopoietisches System mit prinzipeiell offenem, nicht vohersagbarem Ausgang.8 Our interest is directed explicitly towards the feedback-loop as a self-referential, autopoetic, system with a specifically open, unpredictable outcome.

Almost all of pre-textually based theater in the eighteenth century functions along the lines of these three fundamental concepts. Perhaps more importantly, lighting – and the technology that generates it and the optical props that convey it – are simultaneously references to the imagination. As we will see, Goethe is not an isolated case when it comes to conceptualizing the imagination in terms of mechanical devices like the peepshow, magic lantern, shadow box, or Raritätenkasten [wonder cabinet]. Spectacle abhors boredom, and one cure for boredom is the Hanswurst figure, who himself is an embodiment of the vis comica: the visualization of humor and slapstick, with or without props. Unfortunately, just this figure finds itself banned from German textual stage by critical popes and arbiters whose preference is text and verbal declamation. To some extent, like so many of the aesthetic battles fought by the young Goethe, this one is epigonal. Goethe works his way not just through a history of genres, but through a history of aesthetic arguments as well. While agreeing with Gottsched’s rejection of Hanswurst in general, playwrights like Lessing or polemicists like Möser had already addressed most of the issues involved in rehabilitating the figure.9 Goethe chooses to depict this argument retrospectively: his Hannswurst is still relegated to the sidelines. With a twist on his own fraudulent talents, the Marktschreyer [mountebank] bemoans this fact; he is unable to cure the aesthetic sickness of his own employee: “Könnt ich nur meinen Hannswurst kurieren!” [“If I could only cure my own Hanswurst!”].10 He diagnoses the illness solely along profit margins: the boredom induced by morality on stage and the economic impropriety of 7

M. M. Bakhtin: Rabelais and his World. Trans. by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1984. 8 Erica Fischer-Lichte: Ästhetik des Performativen. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp 2004. P. 61. 9 For discussions of the banning and subsequent revival of the harlequin, see Walter Hinck: Das deutsche Lustspiel des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts und die Italienische Komödie: Commedia dell’arte und Théâtre Italien. Stuttgart: Metzler 1965 (Germanistische Abhandlungen 8); see also Horst Steinmetz: Der Harlekin: Seine Rolle in der deutschen Komödientheorie und -dichtung des 18. Jahrhunderts. In: Neophilologus 50 (1966). Pp. 95–106. 10 Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern. Der Junge Goethe. Ed. by Hanna Fischer-Lamberg. 6 vols. Rev. ed. Berlin – New York: de Gruyter 1999 (1963).

242 putting an audience to sleep. The fundamental function of the Hanswurst, which has been precluded in this play, is to enliven – literally, to wake up – the audience during intermission. It is worth reiterating: he serves as an “anti-sandman”: Der sonst im Intermezzo brav Die Leute weckt aus’m Sittenschlaf. (ll. 27–28) Who usually does his work in the intermezzo By waking the audience from their moral sleep.

Goethe dramatizes the aesthetic debate by making light of it; in his own comic revue, he draws explicit attention to the object of decades of aesthetic critique by way of absence. The attempt of the Lichtputzer to understudy the role of the missing Hanswurst later in the farce will continue to make light of this debate; in his inadequacies, this candle-trimmer will point out the entertainment value of the absent comic figure. If in the twentieth- and twentieth-first centuries, the candle-trimmer has been forgotten or subsumed by lighting experts and artists like Robert Wilson11 – or by directors like Frank Castorf,12 who utilize live video cameras and television monitors in every aspect of their productions – Goethe and theater counterparts like Johann Benjamin Michaelis not only foresaw the advent of new technologies, they made them plot devices and characters as well. The appearance of the Guckkasten [peep-box/magic lantern] on the late eighteenth-century stage as a film-like device is as startling as it is enigmatic (Figure 1). In Jahrmarktsfest, the magic lantern projectionist provides the comic pyrotechnics; the audience welcomes the novelty promised by the hurdy-gurdy cry of the Schattenspielmann [shadow-player]: Orgelum, orgeley. Dudeldumdey. (ll. 286–287)13 Line 26. All citations from this play are from this edition (Vol. III. Pp. 134–147) and are subsequently cited in parentheses by line number. I prefer this edition because it maintains Goethe’s original, idiosyncratic, and sometimes revealing orthography. All translations from Goethe are my own. 11 Robert Wilson is the most famous Gesamtkunst performance artist alive. Director, producer, designer, creator, his work focuses almost exclusively on the visual. His most famous work are perhaps his collaborative works Einstein on the Beach, with the composer Philip Glass, and CIVIL War(S), with the German playwright Heiner Müller. See Arthur Holmberg: The Theatre of Robert Wilson. New York: Cambridge 1996. 12 Frank Castorf is the innovative manager and director of the Volksbühne in Berlin. He is famous for his sets, in collaboration with Bert Neumann, his use of video and video monitors to distance and to interiorize the performance, and, like Robert Wilson, for the length of his productions. His style is often referred to as Techno-theater. See Volksbühne, Frank Castorf – Intendanz. Ed. by Thomas Irmer und Harald Müller. Berlin: Theater der Zeit 2003. 13 Max Herrmann traces anticipations and echoes of this refrain throughout the eighteenth century: Jahrmarkstsfest zu Plundersweilern: Entstehungs- und Bühnengeschichte.

243

Figure 1. Der Guckkasten. F. J. Lück, Frankenthal. 1759–62. Residenzschloß Mannheim. The frequency with which the Guckkasten found visual representation in porcelain in the eighteenth century documents the remarkable double vision of the topos. At once novelty, ornament, and reproduction, Guckkasten captures the act of seeing in palpable, visual form, while the object of the gaze remains mysterious and obscure.

His laterna magica presentation – and the comic, cosmological narration that accompanies it – represent an embedded performance within a theater script full of double and features, which make of parabasis a plot device. In Goethe’s near proximity, there is another tantalizing Guckkasten sighting, that of Johann Benjamin Michaelis’s Amors Guckkasten, which anticipates Goethe’s interdisciplinary virtuosity: pastoral, satyr, Guckkasten technology, and Singspiel.

244 Michaelis (1746–1772) is yet another of those gifted, pre-Goethe writers in northern Germany who died all too young.14 In a poem, “Amors Guckkasten: Eine flüchtige Erzählung” (circa 1769) – the child-love-god Amor constructs a “Wunderkasten” and uses it as an aphrodisiac and seduction device: Was kann ein Gott zu Stande bringen? Eh’ noch ein Mond den andern sah, Stand ihm von tausend Wunderdingen Ein vollgepropfter Kasten da. ... In allen Göttern, für Entzücken, Lies unser kleiner Archimed, Den Wunderkasten auf dem Rücken, Und zeigte seine Rarität.

Berlin: Weidmann 1900. Pp. 39–42. Herrmann provides a fascinating history of this device from the perspective of a fledging Theaterwissenschaft. In her Ästhetik des Performativen, Erika Fischer-Lichte sees Herrmann as the crucial founding father of an aesthetics of performance. Pp. 52–57. At its core, Herrmann’s performance concept implies a paradigm shift from the Textbegriff [concept of the text] to the Ereignisbegriff [concept of the event]. What should be clear throughout my own reading is that Goethe in his early plays, especially in Jahrmarktsfest, is experimenting with conceptions of performativity, event, and happening a century before both Reinhardt and Herrmann – phenomena due less, perhaps, to Goethe’s creativity than his sensitivity to their ubiquity in theater tradition. 14 Born in Zittau in 1746, Michaelis studied in Leipzig beginning in 1764 with many of Goethe’s own professors: Gellert, Oeser, Clodius. Michaelis and became a noted prologwriter and librettist and in the Leipzig theater world and Theaterdichter of the Seyler group from 1770–1771; he died in Halberstadt in the company of Gleim in 1772: see Ernst Reclam: Johann Benjamin Michaelis, sein Leben und seine Werke. Leipzig: Reclam 1904. Reclam speculates, yet has no proof of any contact between the slightly older, poorer Michaelis and the younger, well-to-do Goethe: “That, as has been speculated, Michaelis met the young Goethe in the circles of Oeser and Weiße, is possible, but we have no evidence whatsoever for such an encounter”. P. 12. Unfortunately, Michaelis is best known for having aroused Wieland’s anger with his dialog poem, “Pastor Amors Absolution”, in one of the outbursts of letter wars so frequent and examplary of the eighteenth century (in reevaluating the affective and affectionate epistolary, we should not neglect the vengeful and vindictive mode that is part and parcel of the genre). See Albert R. Schmitt’s blow-by-blow account of this episode: Wieland and Johann Benjamin Michaelis: Die “Pastor-Amor”-Affäre. In: Modern Language Notes 99: 3 (1984). Pp. 607–32. Here Schmitt is extremely critical of Wieland and complimentary of Michaelis: “There is no doubt that from all those involved in the ‘Pastor-Amor’Affäre, Michaelis makes the best impression, demonstrating both the most honesty and the most courage”. P. 629. An actual porcelain miniature of Amor, dressed in the costume of a French priest and in the possession of none other than Sophie de la Roche circa 1768, set off this cultural war. Pp. 615–16. That makes one wonder even more about the direct impact of material culture on literature and theater and about the role of concrete, visual, palpable representation in Goethe’s own imagination.

245 ... A–h! hi ha! –schöne Raritäten! ... Der Schalk mit seiner Kunstmaschine Trat drauf zu uns die Reise an, Und lockte Schüchterne und Kühne Ans Guckglas, und vom Glas zum Mann.15 What is a god capable of? In the space of one moon to another, a box crammed full of a thousand fantasies stood ready for use. ... Stories of all the gods, for enchanting the viewer, our little Archimedes read aloud them all, the peep-box on his back, He showed his rarities. ... A–h! hi ha – lovely curiosities! ... The scamp with his machine of artifice undertook the long trip to us, And he seduced the shy and the cunning to peep into the box, and the glass-image passed from hand to hand.

In an authentic biography eerily reminiscent of the fictional Wilhelm Meister, while employed as resident playwright for Seyler’s wandering troupe 1770–1771, Michaelis revised this fable-like poem into a Singspiel libretto. Originally intended for the absent company composer, Anton Schweitzer, this libretto was published in 1772 and ultimately attracted two other composers on the Leipzig scene: Christoph Gottlob Neefe and J. F. Reichard. In Amors Guckkasten, the plot thickens, as the forest-god, satyr-like Komus has stolen Cupid’s Wunderkasten and uses it as a go-between for his own seductive pursuits. This one-act Operette opens with nothing less than a street-cry, in which like a ventriloquist, Komus mimics the theme-song of a Guckkasten-entertainer – “Leyermann” or a “Schattenspielmann”: Komus (Von den beyden Nymphen verfolgt, mit einem Guckkasten auf den Rücken.) He! Raritäten, Lieblich zu schauen! Püppchen und Puppen, 15

Johann Benjamin Michaelis: Sämmtliche poetische Werke. 4 vols. Wien: Schrämbl – Alberti 1791. Vol. 2. Pp. 109–112.

246 Herren und Frauen! Männer und Jüngferchen, Wittwer und Weiber! Götter und Götterchen, Täubchen und Täuber! Ha, hiha, trallala!16 Komus (Pursued by two nymphs, with a peepshow on his back.) He! Rarities, to be seen for amusement. Boys and girls, Ladies and gentlemen! Men and young ladies, Widowers and widows! Gods and little gods, Turtledoves and doves! Ha, hiha, trallala!

Here, Komus evokes his prospective audience, yet what makes the device so attractive and effective for theater and theater audiences is what is depicted in Cupid’s Guckkasten. Suggestively eluded to, yet never described in any detail, what is left to the imagination of the audiences are the erotic adventures of the classical gods themselves. Of particular interest for our discussion here is less influence or interreferentiality, but rather two essential points: first, how amorphously Rococo motifs and lighting props and projectors co-exist within the same context; neither Michaelis nor Goethe seem to be conscious of any contradiction between pastoral and the technological. And secondly, the erotic, salacious, voyeuristic context in which and connotations with which these visualization devices are utilized; indeed, we can hardly refer to the older English form peepshow without feeling like peeping Toms ourselves. It comes as no surprise that the Goethe who will later write a treatise on light and color and who focuses on visual effects in both text and in the speculative dramaturgy of Faust pays special attention to theater lighting and lighting devices from early on.17 In this regard, Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern documents

16 Ibid. Vol. 3. Pp. 10–62, here p. 13. Both poem and libretto demonstrate that there is a crying need for a new reading and new evaluation of Michaelis’s entire oeuvre; there is more to this writer than has yet met the eye of the literary canon. 17 See Frederick Burwick: Romantic Drama: From Optics to Illusion. In: Literature and Science: Theory and Practice. Ed. by Stuart Peterfreund. Boston: Northeastern University Press 1990. Pp. 167–208; see also his book: Illusion and the Drama: Critical Theory of the Enlightenment and Romantic Era. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press 1991, for speculative discussions on Faust, stage lighting, and the imagination.

247 the technologically motivated development of dramatic media circa 1773. Form is function; if this play has a subject, it is theater lighting. In terms of such manipulation of media both in these farces and coming to culmination in Goethe’s Faust, Fredric Jameson’s material (or materialist) postmodernism helps us make sense of the unintentional chaos of fragments in which Michaelis’s death left his work to us, in which Goethe so often left his early works, and the chaos theory that is most definitely intentional in Faust II. Media as a theorizing concept, Jameson argues, “now conjoins three relatively distinct signals: that of an artistic mode of specific form of aesthetic production, that of a specific technology, generally organized around a central apparatus or machine; and that, finally, of a social institution”.18 When applied to the past, however, the concept of media becomes retrograde in a way analogous to Michaelis’s and Goethe’s retrograde theater. One thing we still have to learn to see in lost works like Amors Guckkasten and Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern, for example, is the pre-history of cinema: what happens when we apply the implications of the concept of cinema, retroactively, to eighteenth-century media: It is because we have had to learn that culture today is a matter of media that we have finally begun to get it through our heads that culture was always that, and that the older forms or genres, or indeed the older spiritual exercises and mediations, thoughts and expressions, were also in their very different ways media products. The intervention of the machine, the mechanization of culture, and the mediation of culture by the Consciousness Industry are now everywhere the case, and perhaps it might be interesting to explore the possibility that they were always the case throughout human history, and within even the radical difference of older, precapitalist modes of production.19

In Amors Guckkasten and Jahrmarktsfest zu Plunderweilern, theater corresponds to Jameson’s form of aesthetic production, technology is optical and protocinematic, and the social institution is the marketplace itself. For Michaelis and the early Goethe, however, “Consciousness” is still a cottage industry. There are many moments in this script when characters underscore Goethe’s focus by commenting directly on the lighting conditions. When the performance begins prematurely, the Marktschreyer [mountebank] worries out-loud about the loss of lighting effects: Daß nur sehr Schad ist Daß heller Tag ist Sollte stich dunkel seyn Denn sind viel Lichter drein. (ll. 152–153)

18

Fredric Jameson: Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press 1991. P. 67. 19 Ibid. Pp. 67–68.

248 It’s a shame That it’s bright daylight It would be better in the dark Then there would be lots of lighting (effects).

When the Schattenspielmann [magic-lantern projectionist] interrupts, the Docktor calls for “lights out”; this audience can trust one another in the dark (which hints at the possibility of indecent gestures and pick-pocketry, two of the more mundane dangers of theater-going): Thut die Lichter aus Sind ja in einem honetten Haus. (ll. 289–290) Put the lights out Everybody can be trusted here.

These asides indicate that Goethe captures in miniature two very important moments in theater history. Lighting effects are beginning to become a draw for the audience, and, conversely, it is becoming more common to play to a darkened house; a theater public for the first time has the experience of sitting alone in the dark.20 In the experience specific to this play, the magic lantern as device functions as a medium of light, and in his narration, the magic lantern projectionist conceptualizes light, his point of reference constantly shifting from the actual darkness in the theater to the cosmological situation in his pictures: Ach wie sie is alles dunkel ... Sprach sie Gott’s werd Licht. (ll. 300; 305) Oh how everything was dark ... Then God said, let there be light

Yet the character in this farce who most embodies lighting in function, while doubling as Hannswurst, is the Lichtputzer.

20

In a play that functions so closely in line with economic realities, it is worth speculating about the accidental curtain-time. Not to mention that theater times were severely regulated by the authorities, there seems also to have been a gradual shift from afternoon to evening curtain-times in the eighteenth century: “Noticeworthy is the fact that the beginning times of performances dramatically altered: at the beginning of the century, the curtain openned between 4 and 5 pm: at the end of the century, it took place no earlier than 7 pm”. Reinhard Meyer: Von der Wanderbühne zum Hof- und Nationaltheater. In: Deutsche Aufklärung bis zur Französischen Revolution 1680–1789. Bd. 3. Ed. by Rolf Grimminger. München: Hanser 1980. (Hansers Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur). P. 205. Is Goethe noting and commenting on this change? – a creature of habit, the candle-trimmer begins the play according to the customary schedule.

249 Someone among the eighteenth-century “techies” or stage-crew has to attend to the candles: lighting them, trimming them to regulate smoke and smell, even acting as fire marshal. This role was often undertaken by the souffleur [prompter], a multi-tasker kept busy organizing rehearsals, “trimming the candles in the interval and generally operating as stage-manager”.21 Goethe’s mountebank, however, has his own candle-trimmer under employment: A entirely typical phenomenon in theater practice in the eighteenth century was the candle-trimmer. His function was to trim the smoky wicks of the tallow and wax candles, in order to prevent the smoke and stinking, oily smell.22

The appearance of such a figure on stage, both during the performance and at intermissions, had a profoundly anti-illusionist effect, which invited a parabasic response on the part of, and partly initiated by, the audience. Students (like Goethe and his friends in Leipzig, for instance) were notorious for making him the butt of their cat-calls, and some candle-trimmers gave as good as they got. In Maurer-Schmook’s striking formulation: “The candle-trimmer became altogether the embodiment of the unaesthetic and amusing character in regards to the cultural institution theater”.23 And we could have no more definitive proof of the roots of the performative in Goethe and in eighteenth-century theater: its very logistics produce the audience feedback loop that Fischer-Lichte then theorizes and aestheticizes. Aesthetics follows function. In Jahrmarktsfest, Goethe gives the candle-trimmer a dramatic function by costuming him as Hannswurst. It is no accident that the currently celebrated philosopher Giorgio Agamben, referring as far back to the sixteenth century and Scalinger, places parabasis front and center in his recent essay on parody and, perversely, designates it as the site of Heimat, our aesthetic homeland: In the gesture of parabasis, when the performance falls apart, actors and spectators, the author and the public exchange roles, the tension between stage and reality is lessened, and parody undergoes its ultimate dissolution. Parabasis is a resolution 21

Michael Patterson: The First German Theatre: Schiller, Goethe, Kleist and Büchner in Performance. London: Routledge 1990: “The prompter [‘Einsager’], whose function extended well beyond his indispensable duty of prompting during performance, organizing rehearsals, trimming the candles in the interval and generally operating as stagemanager, would distribute roles and perhaps suggest entrances and exits, but that would be all”. P. 18. See also Maurer-Schmook: “Lighting was usually left up to the souffleur”. P. 72. 22 Maurer-Schmook: P. 96. 23 Ibid. P. 96: “The illusion-disrupting entrance of the candle-snuffer during the pauses provided the student audience above all with opportunities with interchange with that figure: a Leipzig woman complains about the behavior of the academic public in a fictitious letter to Gottsched’s weekly, ‘Vernünfftige Tadlerinnen’ (17. Stück), which more than anything else had their fun playing tricks on the candle-snuffer”.

250 (Aufhebung) – a crossing beyond or a culmination of – parody. For that reason, Friedrich Schegel, with his usual attention for every possible ironic transcendence of art, sees in parabasis the place where comedy jumps over its own shadow in the direction of the novel, the Romantic form incarnate. Scenic dialog – divided in internal and parodic terms – opens into a room next-door (represented concretely by the logeion [loges] – and turns into a simple conversation, an entirely normal human entertainment.24

Through Jahrmarktsfest, Goethe is moving his entertainers and his audience in such profane directions: towards secularization, towards conversation, toward entertainment – and towards textual spaces where there is little difference between comedy and tragedy, parody and authenticity, original and aura. Lessing’s ironic reflections on the Lichtputzer in the Hamburgische Dramaturgie anticipate, perhaps even occasion, Goethe’s use of the figure in Jahrmarktsfest. Commenting on the acting in minor roles, Lessing suggests that the critic should not be too exacting. Only in a utopic theater could every candle-trimmer be a star: Man muß mit der Vorstellung eines Stückes zufrieden sein, wenn unter vier, fünf Personen einige vortrefflich und die andern gut gespielet haben. Wenn, in den Nebenrollen, ein Anfänger oder sonst ein Notnagel so sehr beleidigt daß er über das Ganze die Nase rümpft, der reise nach Utopien, und besuche da die vollkommenen Theater, wo auch der Lichtputzer ein Garrick ist.25 You have to be content with the performance of a play when only a couple of the four or five actors are superb and the only merely good. Whoever thumbs his nose when, in the character roles, a beginner or an otherwise last resort is atrocious, that audience member should take a trip to utopia and visit the theater of perfection, where every candle-trimmer has the talent of a Garrick.

Lessing’s Lichtputzer also has a self-assurance of function that is essentially comic; in a form-following-function reversal, the figure argues that the intermissions are intended for his service function, not for diverse entertainments: wenn Noth an den Mann gehet, so kann ja auch der Lichtputzer herauskommen und sagen: Meine Damen und Herren, treten Sie ein wenig ab; die Zwischenakte sind

24

Giorgio Agamben, Profanierungen. Trans. by Marianne Schneider. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp 2005. P. 44 (the translation is my own from this German edition). Agamben continues: “When parody – the fission between song and word and between language and world – contemplates the displacement in reality of human speech, then the heartbreaking absence of place comes to rest for a moment in parabasis, dissolved in Heimat, a place called home”. P. 44. Furthermore, Agamben’s ideas parallel Hegel’s thoughts of comedy as the end of art and, more prosaically, the transition from theater to the novel – and from the novel to film – as the central media of human entertainment, i.e. our aesthetic Heimat. 25 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Hamburgische Dramaturgie. Sämtliche Werke. Ed. by Karl Lachmann und Franz Muncker. 3rd ed. Stuttgart: Göschen 1893 – new ed. Berlin: de Gruyter 1968. Vol. 9. P. 191 (2. Stück, 5 May 1767).

251 des Putzens wegen erfunden, und was hilft Ihr Spielen, wenn das Parterr nicht sehen kann?26 If it gets really bad, then the candle-trimmer can come out and say: ladies and gentlemen, take a break; intermissions were invented for the purpose of candle-trimming, and what good is your playing when people in the stalls can no longer see the stage for the smoke?

Goethe’s Lichtputzer has both these attributes: self-assurance in interjecting himself onto the scene and the pretence of acting. Instead of emulating the star Garrick, however, he sets his sights on the role of Hannswurst. No doubt the unanticipated, unprecipitated appearance of the Schattenspielmann that preempts the Hannswurst fits into a pattern of interruptions that constantly derails this play. No doubt Goethe utilizes this interruption to avoid closure, in the best Fastnachtspiel tradition.27 Yet the appearance of the Schattenspielmann is neither as unmotivated nor as mysterious as it might seem at first glance. The figure is an established member of the marketplace and carnivalesque typology that populates this play. Due to the theatricality of its appearance and function, this figure had become particularly popular in the street-crier prints of the eighteenth century. A now overlooked genre, street-crier prints are among the most widely spread examples of visual culture from the Book of Hours in the sixteenth century to early children’s books in the nineteenth century.28 A number of eighteenth-century sets of criers might have served Goethe as direct models. That Goethe was looking at them for inspiration – working artistic depictions, not from real life – seems clear from typology, cast of characters, and, in particular, his inclusion of certain Savoyard entertainers who had become especially popular in eighteenth-century iconography. While the Bänkelsänger [ballad-singer] and the Zitterspielbub [boy with jew’s harp] are

26

Ibid. 235 (13. Stück, 12 June 1767). Lessing suggests, ironically, that such inserts are one quick way to turn three acts into five: “Was kostet es denn nun auch für grosse Mühe, aus drey Aufzügen fünfte zu machen?” [“What kind of a collossal effort does it take, to turn three acts into five?”]. 27 “The conscious intention, to prevent the nature of the play from being taken perfectly for granted is clear above all in the efforts of the author to sabotage a nuanced plot ending”. Eckehard Catholy: Das deutsche Lustspiel: Von Mittelalter bis zum Ende der Barockzeit. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1969. P. 35. For a recent discussion of this formal tradition, see R. P. T. Aylett: Goethe and “the Fastnachtspiel”. In: Publications of the English Goethe Society 61 (1992). Pp. 1–25. 28 For histories of this genre, see Sean Shesgreen: The Criers and Hawkers of London: Engravings and Drawings by Marcellus Laroon. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1990; see also the large and beautiful collection in Karen F. Beall: Cries and Itinerant Trades-Kaufrufe und Straßenhändler. Hamburg: Hanswedell 1975.

252 generic, the Marmotte [trained animal/marmot], and, more importantly, the Schattenspielmann are specific to this tradition: The French prints of this period frequently include a plate of “savoyards.” These were mountain people from the Alpine district of Savoy who migrated to Paris during the winter months to make a living in whatever way they could. Many were entertainers who played the hurdy-gurdy; had magic lanterns and peep shows, or had trained marmots. The “boîtes à curiosité” contained scenes either of battles, exotic places around the world, or theatrical performances in diorama form.29

In introducing the Schattenspielmann in particular, Goethe is fleshing out an illustration.30 Goethe’s figures seem particularly close in attitude and typology to those of Edme Bouchardon and the Comte de Caylus.31 Their set of etchings, Études prises dans le Bas Peuple ou Les Cris de Paris, first appeared in 1737–1746; due to the popularity of this set, new copies were etched by Jacques Juillet in 1768 (Les Cris de Paris en 8 Suites gravés de’apres les Desseins de Mr Bouchardon Sculpteur du Roy). The cast of characters in these etchings is of particular importance in regard to Goethe. Like Goethe’s cast, the first set includes Savoyarde [street musician], jeune laitière [milk-maid], balayeuse [broom-seller], la vielleux [hurdy-gurdy-player], and la lanterne magique (Figure 2). The second set includes: le petit vielleur [hurdy-gurdy boy], la made d’éventail [fan-maid], and la petite marmotte en vie (Goethe’s Marmotte!). Bouchardon and de Caylus also seem responsible for the introduction of entertainers to this iconographic repertoire: In addition to the numerous vendors of edibles and services, entertainers of various types appear in the set. The peepshow with its vues d’optiques scrolls of pictures that were cranked for the customer to see when looking through a lens – the early

29

Beall: P. 211. Just post-dating Goethe’s Jahrmarktsfest, Mattheis Deisch of Danzig included a bar of music in his series (1780); he concentrates on details of trade-goods and dress. His “Laterna, Magika” has the tag refrain: “Zattenspiehl an der Wandt” [“Shadowplay on the wall”]. Reproduced in Beall. P. 61; also reproduced in Herrmann. Facing P. 40. While Herrmann discusses the impact of the phenomenon of the magic lantern, however, he shows little interest in the print history, which is for him merely illustration. 31 According to Dichtung und Wahrheit (II. 8), Caylus is brought to Goethe’s attention by his art teacher, Professor A. F. Oeser, influential director of the Zeichenakademie in Leipzig: “Nachdem wir unter den Franzosen vorzüglich Caylus hatten rühmen hören, machte er uns auch mit deutschen, in diesem Fache (dem Kunst- und Geschmackselement) tätigen Männern bekannt”) [“After we heard primarily Caylus praised from among the French, he acquainted us with the Germans working in this medium (in the arts and the defining of taste)”]. 30

253

Figure 2. L’orgue de Barbarie [Hurly-gurdy with Peepshow]. Jacques Juillet, Les Cris die Paris en 8 Suites gravés de’apres les Desseins de Mr Bouchardon Sculpteur du Roy. 1768. Wandering performance artists are frequently found among depictions of criers, marketplace hawkers, and fair entertainers in the eighteenth century. Goethe often worked directly from such visual representations, mixing media and dramatizing the visual.

254 motion picture – is pictured with the crier playing a barrel organ to accompany the changing scene.32

Goethe may or may not have seen these etchings, but I cannot escape the impression in this farce of pictures coming to life – that Goethe dramatizes his hawkers directly from illustrations of street-criers. This would fit into a life-long pattern of Goethe’s bringing prints, reliefs, and mythological depictions to literary life, a matter closely related to his later interest in living tableaux. In Dichtung und Wahrheit (II. 8), Goethe describes just this process in his appropriation of Oeser’s art collections while a student at Leipzig ca. 1767: Die mancherlei Gegenstände, welche ich von den Künstlern behandelt sah, erweckten das poetische Talent in mir, und wie man ja wohl ein Kupfer zu einem Gedicht macht, so machte ich nun Gedichte zu den Kupfern und Zeichnungen, indem ich mir die darauf vorgestellten Personen in ihrem vorhergehenden und nachfolgendne Zuständen zu vergegenwärtigen, bald auch ein kleines Lied, das ihnen wohl geziemt hätte, zu dichten wußte und so mich gewöhnte, die Künste in Verbindung miteinander zu betrachten.33 The various subjects, which I saw depicted by artists, awakened my poetic talent, and in the same way one turns their engravings into a poem, I transformed their engravings and drawings into poems. I visualized the persons depicted in them in situations before and after the fact, held them fast in a small poem that would have been most appropriate to them, in order to see the arts (visual arts and literature) linked to one another.

In any case, Goethe’s own frequent use of the Guckkasten or Raritätenkasten as a metaphor for the imagination indicates his familiarity with the phenomenon from a number of perspectives, some trivial, some profound.34 To summarize: there is for what seems an idiosyncrasy in Goethe’s Jahrmarktsfest – his introduction of criers and, in the end, a magic lantern projectionist – a wide-spread tradition, both in the reality of the marketplace 32 Beall: P. 212. It is interesting to note that all German editions of this play identify the Schattenspielmann as Italian, based on his accent: “Wegen seines Akzents als Italiener vorzustellen” [“To be considered an Italian, due to his accent”]: Dieter Borchmeyer. Kommentar. FA 1/4: 757. The iconographic tradition (and my own instincts) would suggest a Savoyard origin. (Despite centuries of political upheaval, Savoy has always been predominately French-speaking.) The distinction is of course of importance because of theater tradition; more importantly, however, it takes the figure of the Schattenspielmann out of isolation and fits him back into a larger tradition of marketplace entertainers and multi-media devices in this French print tradition. 33 MA 16: 338. 34 Walther Kothe: Der junge Goethe und die Bühne. Göttingen: Dieterich 1910: “Simultaneously, Goethe demonstrated a love of the peep-show, which lasted for three years, the origin of which was most probably due to the fact that it inspired Goethe to let play images of the world and of literature enter and exit the stage of his imagination, as if they were images utilized by such an apparatus”. P. 81. In Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, the narrator describes it as a childhood toy; Werther describes it as an image of the imprisoned self.

255 and, more importantly, in the graphic arts tradition, as well as in poetry and in Singspiel.35 From this point, it is only one step further in the history of lighting media to Goethe’s Schattenspielmann, who utilized not a peepshow, but a magic lantern: Although there is some evidence that wandering showmen carried small magic lanterns with them as an alternative to the more familiar peepshow, the lack of a sufficiently powerful light source prevented the device from becoming a general public entertainment.36

Goethe’s most significant formal use of the trope, however, comes in Zum Schäkespears Tag: “Schäckespears Theater ist ein schöner Raritäten Kasten”, where Goethe fills the concept with philosophical profundity. Helmut Schanze argues that in doing so, Goethe brings new meaning to old forms: “Both Diderot and Bodmer relegated antiquated situations like the market fair to the uneducated and rejected them for that reason. By contrast, Goethe revitalized the old form by using it to define the problem of the ‘collision of the self’with the ‘mechanism of the determinacy of things in their entirety, and with that the social-historical question of the time’ ”. Goethes Dramatik: Theater der Erinnerung. Tübingen: Niemeyer 1989. P. 53 (Theatron 4). Kothe’s work on just this point, which as published is only half of his dissertation, is brilliantly modernist and theoretical. I can find no other trace of further work; did the war intervene? The most recent contribution to this debate is Clark S. Muenzer: Wandering Among Obelisks: Goethe and the Idea of the Monument. In: Modern Language Studies 31: 2 (Spring 2002). Pp. 5–34. Muenzer does not discuss Jahrmarktsfest, but is very insightful on Goethe’s powerfully ambivalent usage of Raritätenkasten in Zum Schäkespears Tag: “More in line with its carnival origins, then, which suggested subversion and transformation for Goethe, the oft maligned Raritätenkasten has magically broken through its enlightenment limits to rescue memory for the future”. P. 14. 35 As proof that a re-investigation of the technological tradition of art can shake things up, witness the furor that accompanied David Hockney’s provocative suggestion that the old masters made elaborate use of camera lucida and Philip Steadman’s more substantial account of how Vermeer made use of the perspectivism of camera obscura: David Hockney: Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the lost techniques of the old masters. New York: Penguin – Studio 2001; Philip Steadman: Vermeer’s Camera: The Truth Behind the Masterpieces. London: Oxford University Press 2001. 36 Richard D. Altick: The Shows of London. Cambridge: Belknap Press 1978. P. 117. As always, it is tempting to look to technology for the origins of even minor transformations in popular imagination: “From the mid-1770’s, for some reason, interest in the lantern became more lively. Though records of performances before audiences outside the home are lacking, the existence of some sort of vogue is indicated by the facts that in 1775 an exhibition of caricatures at the Great Room, Panton Street, was called the Magick Lantern, and that satirical printmakers, always alert for timely topics, were repeatedly using the magic lantern as a central accessory [. . .] It is tempting to think that this increased interest had some connection with the invention in 1782 of the Argand lamp, which, by replacing the customary oil-lamp wick with a hollow incandescent cylinder, provided a source of concentrated light such as was required to project images on a wall or screen from a moderate distance”. P. 117. Just as important to realize is that technological developments and break-throughs show up in entertainment cultures as quickly, if not more so, than anywhere else.

256 Goethe’s Schattenspielmann seems to have solved that problem; Goethe no doubt had in mind a variant on the magic lantern, the “shadow show”, as the projectionist’s name explicitly suggests: “A second type of optical entertainment which depended on lighting was the shadow show, otherwise known as the Schattenspiel, Italian shadows, or Ombres Chinoises”.37 The projection technique differs slightly. The magic lantern projects light so as to illuminate and enlarge scenes painted on glass slides; the shadow show illuminates transparencies that can serve as the background for sketches performed by shadowy figures, actors or more usually puppets. In either case, Goethe bridges any gap with his dramatic imagination; the source that illuminates his magic lantern in this script is verbal imagery. In this performative text, the Schattenspielmann narrates the pictures that we as readers perceive. Both visually and verbally, the Schattenspielmann presents a sound-andlight show that becomes a cosmology of light and darkness not uncommon in the early Goethe. The precondition for his entertainment is complete darkness, illuminated only by his lamp. He seems a pragmatist, too, insisting that the candles should all be put out; “otherwise, the visual effect is lost”: Lichter weg! mein Lämpgen nur! Nimmt sich sonst nicht aus. (ll. 295–296) Turn out the lights! Just my lamp! Otherwise the damn thing doesn’t work.

In the dark is where his narration begins, before creation: Ach wie sie is alles dunkel Finsternis is ... Hab sie al nicks auf die Erd gesehen Orgelum:,: Sprach sie Gott’s werd Licht Wie’s hell da ‘rein bricht. (ll. 300–301; ll. 304–306) Oh, how everything is dark, Blackness reigns ... Nothing to be seen on earth Orgelum:,: The God said: let there be light And brightness broke out everywhere.

37

Ibid. P. 117. This performance technique was popular at the court of Anna Amalia and with the Weimar Liebhabertheater circa 1778; Duke Carl August, for example, reviews the performance of a shadow play, Minervens Geburt, honoring Goethe’s thirty-second birthday: Das Journal von Tiefurt. Weimar:Verlag der Goethe-Gesellschaft, 1892. (Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft 7). Pp. 16–20.

257 The comedy of his routine is two-fold. It consists of abrupt leaps from the mystical-profound to the commonplace: if it were so dark, then how could anybody see anything? These incongruities are highlighted by shifts of language levels, in which the divine is expressed in broken dialects.38 The Schattenspielmann speaks in tongues. Through his narration, it is possible to glimpse several of the scenes projected by the magic lantern.39 The Schattenspielmann dips even further back into Old Testament stories than the theater company earlier in the play. He illustrates the book of Genesis, if in his own exotic fashion: the creation story; the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise; the sinful population explosion of the Golden Age; and, ultimately, the apocalyptic flood. It is worth noting that Goethe lifts these scenarios directly from the repertoire of medieval mystery plays and from Hans Sachs himself. In effect, he revives the earliest scripts of Northern European theater, church-steps drama, by way of a new medium. And all these scenes are punctuated by the highly suggestive, vaguely obscene “Orgelum orgeley” refrain; it distracts (even muffles the technological noise) during the frame or scene changes

38

That what is a geographical and linguistic coincidence becomes a formal characteristic is of interest here. What was once heritage becomes an essential part of the Schattenspielmann identity, whether authentic or role-playing: “The sing-song, a kind of verbal mishmash or rather a reduction of the German language to a rhythmic verse patter, owes its origins in the beginning to the linguistic inadequacies of the Italian performers. Over time, however, this kind of performance became the benchmark of every peep-show manipulator and became identical with his image”. Der Guckkasten: Einblick – Durchblick – Ausblick. Ed. by Georg Füsslin et al. Stuttgart: Füsslin, 1995. Pp. 25–26. To my knowledge, Der Guckkasten is the best recent German book on the subject – and a gorgeously illustrated and informative work on visual culture it is. In English, see the catalog to the Getty exhibition, Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen. Ed. by Barbara Maria Stafford et al. Los Angeles: Getty Trust Publications 2001. And perhaps we should split the difference and give the Füsslin volume the last word on the nationality of the Schattenspielmann: “Other sources often speak of the theme songs of the ‘Italian man’ or of the ‘Italian’, who wandered from place to place with their peep-shows. That might well lead to the conclusion that the beginnings of the trade are to be sought in Italian-speaking regions and that there existed a wandering caste, which migrated over France (Savoy) in the direction of Germany and patented their art there”. P. 36. 39 Among the various motives from Guckkastenblättern are: “Veduten”, “Ansichten von Städten”, [“views of cities”] “Landschaften mit exotischem Flair” [“exotic landscapes”], “Katastrophen wie Überschwemmungen, Erdbeben, Brände, Einstütze von Bauten oder Schiffskatastrophen” [“catastrophes like floods, earthquakes, fires, the collapse of buildings, or the sinking of ships”], “historische Motive” [“historical motives”], “Illuminationen, Ballonaufstiege, Feste” [“fireworks, balloon ascents, festivals”]; “Darstellungen aus der antiken Mythologie, dem Altem und Neuem Testaments waren ebenfalls verbreitet” [“depictions from antique mythology, from the old and new Testament”]. Füsslin: Der Guckkasten. Pp. 25–26.

258 (much as the antics of the Hannswurst during intermissions are intended to conceal scene changes and candle-trimming). This creation story even has elements that anticipate the big-bang cosmology presented by the satyr in another of Goethe’s farces, Satyros: Wie in Unding das Urding erquoll Lichts macht durch die Nacht scholl Durch drang die Tiefen der Wesen all Dass aufgekeimte Begehrungs schwall Und die Elemente sich erschlossen Mit Hunger in einander ergossen All durchdringend all durchdrungen.40 How in nothingness nothing resonated Light broke through the night Forced its way though the essence of existence So that a seeded wave of desire emerged And all the elements coagulated With hunger poured into one another All penetrating all penetrated.

The hermetic elements themselves intermingle; “durkeinander” [“in-oneanother”] self-parodies a favorite word and concept of the early Goethe: Wie si all durkeinander gehn Die Elemente alle vier In sechs Tag alles gemacht is Sonn Mond Stern Baum und Thier. (ll. 307–310) How they are mix in one another All four elements In six days, everything was made Sun moon star tree animal.

In the expulsion from Paradise and Golden Age scenes, the Schattenspielmann exploits the sexuality of his pictures in ways that range from the carnivalesque to the voyeuristic to the mildly pornographic. His delivery is punctuated throughout by the imperative “Seh sie!” [“Behold!”]. Seh sie Adam in die Paradies! Seh sie Eva hat sie die Schlange verführt. (ll. 313–314) Behold: Adam in paradise Behold: how the snake seduces Eve.

The succinctness of his narration is comic, especially in comparison to the verbosity of the Marktschreyer; for the Schattenspielmann, the expulsion is a oneword event: “Nausgejagt” [“Expelled”] (l. 315). Yet not without a tell-tale 40

Der junge Goethe. Vol. 3. P. 311. Ll. 297–303.

259 aftermath: in noting the consequences of the fall, he concentrates, significantly enough, on the curse of birth-pangs: Mit Dorn Disteln Geburtsschmerzen geplagt O weh! (ll. 317–318) With thorns and briars Plagued with birth pangs O how it hurts!

Here is where Michael Bakhtin, surprisingly, helps bridge the gap between carnival and technology: childbirth plays an important role in carnivalesque rites, where a “mimicking of childbirth” is “one of the three acts in the life of the grotesque body”: sexual intercourse, death throes, and the act of birth. The birth-pangs of creation are mirrored in the pain of child-bearing; as ever, Goethe’s parody is serious business.41 In his skewed depiction of the Golden Age – I take the phrase specifically from the context of paintings by Lucas Cranach, which depict in sequence the decline of that mythological Golden Age into violence and overt sexuality – the Schattenspielmann participates fully in the obscene and scatological language of the marketplace.42 In populating the world, society has undergone a moral decline; an aristocratic grouping of knights and ladies cavort openly in the pastoral meadows and groves: Hat sie die Welt vermehrt Mit viel gottlose Leut ... Seh sie die Ritter and Damen Wie sie zusammen kamen Sich begehn, sich begatten In alle grüne Schatten Uf alle grüne Häide. (ll. 320–321; 326–330) The world is populated With many godless people ... Behold: the knights and ladies How they come together Walking, mating

41

Bakhtin: P. 237. For Cranach’s work, see Edgar Bierende: Lucas Cranach d. Ä. Und der deutsche Humanismus: Tafelmalerei im Kontext von Rhetorik, Chroniken und Fürstenspiegeln. München: Deutscher Kunstverlag 2002. For the concept itself, see Bodo Gatz: Weltalter, goldene Zeit und sinnversandte Vorstellungen. Hildesheim: G. Olms 1967.

42

260 In all the green shadows On all the green meadows.

A number of typically Goethean elements intermingle here: sexual fantasy; a middle-class morality in formation that rails against the improprieties of the upper-class; contrastingly, the laughter of the marketplace, which revels in making public the non-public, unofficial sexual sphere of life. That Goethe leaves such elements unresolved – the moralistic patter of the Schattenspielmann veils the sexual innuendo and titillation that he simultaneously exploits – makes for the ambiguity, the lack of closure, with which the play ends (and which will leave a later play like Hanswursts Hochzeit in pornographic fragments). This performance piece, too, ends in apocalypse, albeit an aesthetic, interreferential one. There are two reasons for this, which, in their interrelation, indicate the way the carnivalesque seizes upon technology to express itself and the way developing entertainment media exploit the carnivalesque. Bakhtin stresses that the seemingly innocuous cries of hawkers almost inevitably lend themselves to parodic prophecy: Let us stress in this prophetic picture the complete destruction of the established hierarchy, social, political, and domestic. It is a picture of utter catastrophe threatening the world. The historical calamity is increased by a cosmic disaster. The author predicts a flood which will drown all mankind [. . .].43

This is exactly the situation presented by the Schattenspielmann in his own depiction of the flood: Fährt da die Sündflut rein Wie sie Gotts erbärmlick schreyn All all ersaufen schwer Is gar kein Rettung mehr. (ll. 334–336) Thus comes the deluge flooding in How they all scream so horribly to God All, all totally drowned, No chance of being saved.

Goethe plays with the idea of total annihilation throughout the play; chaos is always threatening – formally, aesthetically, ideologically. Yet it is exactly such scenes of catastrophic spectacle that new technological media of magic lantern, shadow-show, and, ultimately, more elaborate devices like the Eidophusikon (1781) and the phantasmagoria exploit, in order to attract and amaze an audience: shipwrecks, storms with thunder and lightning, earthquakes, volcanic 43

Ibid. P. 237.

261 explosions, scenes of imaginative destruction from Dante (inferno) and Milton (pandemonium): The public was now coming to some plays as much for the scenery as for the actors, and in reviews the press devoted more and more space to the spectacle – settings whose fidelity to nature was heightened by imitations of changing light.44

Carnival and technology combine to shape the Schattenspielmann performance. There is nothing new about the onslaught of disaster and apocalyptical films with which we are constantly entertained by Hollywood (or in the very real catastrophes with which nature and occasionally terrorism or war confront us, which overwhelm the ability of the media to depict and, therefore, change the course of history). Yet Goethe and others preempt the genre. Indeed, in the entire history of entertainment and news media, traditions of carnival and technological development are more inter-related than meets the eye. Carnival demands a happy ending, and the Schattenspielmann obliges: Guck sie! in vollem Schuß Fliegt daher Mercurius Macht ein End all dieser Noth Dank sey dir lieber Gott. (ll. 340–342) Behold: in the end here comes Mercury flying Brings an end to all the horror Thanks be to you o loving God.

In a mischievous, inter-referential twist, Goethe substitutes the vignette figure of “winged” Mercury for the Biblical dove. Such playfulness also invites an ambiguity of meanings. Is Goethe shifting from a Judaic-Christian to a Greek mythology, as he does programmatically in his life and works? Or is he shifting to yet another medium: Wieland’s Der teutsche Merkur, which has just arrived in the mail, as if by postmodernist post?45 Tired of writing, the author becomes a reader. Is this play literary parody or literary reception? In terms of the carnivalesque, the pattern is nevertheless humorously consistent: [. . .] finally calm and gladness will once more descend upon earth. In this picture we dimly see the threat of a universal crisis, of a fire that is to burn the old world, and of the joy brought by a world renewed. This image is in a way related to the one

44

Richard D. Altick: The Shows of London. P. 120. “There wouldn’t be a ending without the the literary reference to Wieland’s Merkur – after the work on the Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen by the friends in Darmstadt circa 1772, everybody was intently anticipating the appearance of this new journal at the beginning of 1773”. Gerhard Sauder: Goethe-Handbuch, Vol. 2. Ed. by Theo Buck. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler 1996. P. 52 (Dramen). 45

262 we have already seen, the transformation of the funeral pyre into a kitchen hearth and banquet.46

The Schattenspielmann completes a carnivalesque microcosm by reflecting on what has gone before: laughter in the context of death and fertility, destruction and renewal. Goethe – not from originality, but following in the footsteps of Michaelis – transforms the marketplace into a theatrical feast celebrating mixed media, in which print and verbal cultures; literary and visual genres; and comic and mythological figures like Hannswurst, Cupid, and Komus and the praxis of technology are far from contradictions. Dr. Wolf, as his mother Catharina Elisabeth Goethe inclined to call her famous son with equal doses of affection and irony, visualizes Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern in terms of technical devices related to the theater. All of Goethe’s references to optical props are simultaneously references to the imagination.47 He conceptualizes the imagination as a mechanical device like the peepshow, magic lantern, shadow box, or Raritätenkasten [wonder cabinet]. These devices attempt to make room for the imagination, to create space, which is, however, miniature and enclosed – much in the same way as the theater becomes a box, an enclosed room with three walls. The invisible fourth wall is the one that looks inward, that peeps in while always threatening to collapse in on itself. Projection inwards is the process that creates an interiority of the imagination, with the danger to the external self, whether character, actor, or audience, of falling down a bottomless pit. The eighteenth-century cult of interiority, both of imagination and feeling, which is itself a kind of jack-in-the-box, finds in the Guckkasten its perfect symbol. Yet Goethe would not be Goethe if having fallen into the box of imagination, he had not simultaneously found a way out. He shifts his attention from boxes looking-in to devices that project images outwards, onto walls and onto theatrical surfaces: the magic lantern and the shadow-box. The escape, even escapist function of such projections becomes crucial in Jahrmarktsfest. Paradoxically, it is the artificiality of such visual conceptualization to which Goethe responds. Despite all talk of nature in Sturm und Drang and Romanticism, Goethe remains crucially aware of the artificial nature of any artistic form or genre: “Jede Form, auch die gefühlteste, hat etwas Unwahres [. . .]” [“Every form, even the

46

Bakhtin: P. 237. The magic lantern has remarkable resonance as short-hand for the workings of the imagination in real life. To mention only two recent uses, the name of Ingmar Bergman’s 1988 autobiography is The Magic Lantern (Laterna Magica). The Magic Lantern (“Laterna Magika”) is the name of the multi-media Prague theater associated with Václav Havel and at the center of both revolutionary aesthetics and politics in 1989. Goethe keeps good company. 47

263 most heartfelt consists of something inauthentic (. . .)”].48 The sentiments expressed in this often overlooked fragment, “Aus Goethes Brieftasche” [“Straight from Goethe’s Writing Portfolio”] (1775), are remarkable in that they document both Goethe’s detailed attention to theater praxis and his earliest theoretical repudiation of nature in favor of theater illusion: Wer übrigens eigentlich für die Bühne arbeiten will, studiere die Bühne, Würkung der Fernemalerey, der Lichter, Schminke, Glanzleinewand und Flittern, lasse die Natur an ihrem Ort, und bedenke ja fleißig, nichts anzulegen, als was sich auf Brettern zwischen Latten, Pappendeckel und Leinewand, durch Puppen, vor Kindern ausführen läßt.49 Anybody who really wants to work in the theater should study the stage, the effect of scenery, the lights, the ornamentation, the curtain, and the eaves, should leave nature alone, and should strive to let nothing on stage except that which can be performed by children, with puppets, between wooden boards, cardboard, and curtains.

The visible limits and limitations of such forms do not permit them to be confused with nature and reality, which, conversely, is their very virtue. Leave nature at the theatrical door, and imitate the puppet show: Goethe could not have expressed the credo of his early farces more clearly: a strict division between art and nature, neither one imitating the other. Such limitations are also what permit closure; they enclose whatever is in them. Only in such closed theatrical universes is totality possible, where that totality consists of formal (not content-oriented) prerequisites. Within these forms almost anything is possible; Goethe can fill them with the most heterogeneous and diverse kind of theater requisites. There is a definite sense of the museal about these works, and not just because Michaelis and Goethe revert back to antiquated forms. Among other things, such farces are working museums of technology and theater. Yet like the advent of silent film, which could never foresee films that talk, peep-show and projectionist technology will never quite work out in the way Amors Guckkasten and Jahrmarktsfest memorialize. As for a theater of 48

Der junge Goethe. Vol. 5. P. 353. That this quotation continues in the form of yet another optical analogy, to kindling fire through a magnifying glass, ups the ante: “Jede Form, auch die gefühlteste, hat etwas Unwahres, allein sie ist ein für allemal das Glas, wodurch wir die heiligen Strahlen der verbreiteten Natur an das Herz der Menschen zum Feuerblick sammeln” [“Every form, even the most heart-felt, has something inauthentic about it, form is no more or less than the glass, through which we focus the holy rays that imminate from nature and ignite them into fire in the human heart”]. This text is another one of Goethe’s myriad donations or collaborative efforts. Along with other Goethe pieces, it appeared in 1776 as the appendix to a translation, by Heinrich Leopold Wagner, of Sebestian Mercier’s Du Theatre ou nouvel essai sur l’art drammatique. 49 Der junge Goethe. Vol. 5. P. 353.

264 nostalgia,50 that point of view is what differentiates Goethe (and Michaelis) from Lessing or Schiller and what has always made either of them difficult to designate in a canonic history of the theater. Goethe and Michaelis transform the marketplace into a theatrical feast celebrating mixed media, in which print and visual cultures, literary and visual genres, Hannswurst technology – Guckkasten, shadow play, magic lantern, and lighting – are not contradictions.

50

There is a startling parallel between Goethe’s and Michaelis’s performative Guckkasten and Joseph Cornell’s shadow boxes, particularly in terms of mixed media and affect. The following characterization by the cultural critic Adam Gopnick seems to me just as true of the early Goethe (and to a lesser degree Michaelis) as it is of Cornell: “When you read Cornell while staring at his art, two words eventually come to mind and stick there to help explain what makes the art last, makes it matter: ‘weird’ and ‘real’ ”. In terms of biography, Goethe is simultaneously sincere, weird, and real, and in this sense, the same is true of his early plays: to really see is indeed to really believe. Gopnik argues that “Cornell’s great subject – announced and taboo – in all his boxes was nostalgia, and his desire was to vindicate it as an emotion”. Similarly, I read Goethe as the originator of the concept of nostalgia in terms of theater; see Adam Gopnik: “Sparkings”. In: The New Yorker (17/24 Feb. 2003): ⬍www.newyorker.com/critics/ atlarge/?030217crat_atlarge⬎.

Astrida Orle Tantillo

The Subjective Eye: Goethe’s Farbenlehre and Faust This article first looks to Goethe’s Farbenlehre in order to establish his theory of dynamic subjectivity and objectivity based upon the physical reactions of the eye. It then uses this theory to explain some of the reasons behind the main controversies surrounding Faust. It argues that the text cannot be read simply through one perspective but needs to be read through two, opposing ones.

Polarity is Goethe’s best known and most written-about scientific principle.1 Like many of the most important twentieth-century philosophers, he was influenced in his understanding of this principle by the pre-Socratics. However, where many view polarities in terms of contradictions that question the existence of meaning, Goethe saw polarities as the source of creativity and “dynamic” meaning – of meaning or truth that may exist if only for a moment, only then quickly to change and metamorphose into something else. In the first part of this essay, I examine the dynamic qualities of polarities by focusing upon Goethe’s discussion of the eye in his Farbenlehre. There, he extensively analyzes the eye and argues that its most important functions are the result of polar actions. On one level, Goethe tries to demonstrate that Newton’s theories were wrong: where Newton argues that colors arise from the breaking up and the refracting of white light, Goethe argues that all colors arise through polar interactions of light and shade that are analogous to the polar actions of the eye itself. On another level, however, Goethe’s discussion of the eye postulates the fluidity of the subject and object relationship. The eye, as Goethe illustrates, will often create images in reaction to the objects that it sees. In the end, subjects quickly become objects and vice versa. One can therefore only speak of “a” subject or “an” object at a particular moment, because at the next moment, the relationship could very well be reversed. The second part of my essay applies Goethe’s theory of subject and object to a literary text: his magnum opus, Faust. Many of Goethe’s works, especially his later ones, are characterized by the ambiguities of their most central aspects. In the case of Faust, there is not even scholarly consensus about who

1

For a more detailed discussion of polarities and their role in Goethe’s natural philosophy, see my Will to Create: Goethe’s Philosophy of Nature. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 2002. Pp. 12–57.

266 wins the wager or whether Faust deserves to go to heaven.2 In this section, I analyze Faust to illustrate that the ambiguities in Goethe’s literary texts reflect the polar philosophy of his scientific texts. In other words, his literary texts present opposing strands that allow for at least two interpretations. Although these interpretations conflict, this is not to argue that they negate each other. Rather, each is correct from a particular perspective. To read the text only through one lens, therefore, is to miss half, if not in some sense, the whole story.

Polarity and the Eye By examining several of Goethe’s discussions of polarity within his scientific texts, one can quickly see the dynamic nature of this principle. In a short scientific sketch, he provides us with a list that allows us to see how far-reaching this principle is: Ideales und Reales [Ideal and real] Sinnlichkeit und Vernunft [Sensuality and reason] Phantasie und Verstand [Fantasy and understanding]

2 The outcome of the wager has engendered a great deal of controversy. Ada M. Klett even composed a chart outlining how many scholars argue for 1) Faust winning in the literal and higher sense; 2) Faust losing; 3) Faust partially winning and partially losing; 4) nobody winning. Der Streit um Faust II seit 1900. Jena: Verlag der Frommannschen Buchhandlung 1939. P. 67. Theodor Adorno argues: “H¨atte Faust die Wette gewinnen ¨ konomie gewesen, ihm im sollen, so w¨are es absurd, Hohn auf die k¨unstlerische O Augenblick seines Todes eben die Verse in den Mund zu legen, die ihn dem Pakt zufolge dem Teufel u¨berantworten. Vielmehr wird Recht selber suspendiert”. Zur Schlußszene des Fausts. In: Aufsa¨tze zu Goethes Faust II. Ed. by Werner Keller. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1991. P. 382. For an overview of this whole debate, see Albrecht Schöne: Faust. Kommentare. Frankfurt/M: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag 1994. Pp. 752–4. Schöne argues that the bet itself is largely irrelevant for the outcome of the play. For a discussion of the controversies that the ending has generated, see ¨ rgernis Faust. In: Aufsa¨tze zu Goethes Faust II. Ed. by Werner Arthur Henkel: Das A Keller. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1991. Pp. 290–315, and Wilhelm Böhm: Goethes Faust in neuer Dichtung: Ein Kommentar f u¨ r unsere Zeit. Cologne: Verlag E. A. Seemann 1949. Pp. 308–16. Many scholars focus in some way on issues of morality. Jane Brown argues that the ending cannot be seen in moral terms because from the very beginning, the reader knows that “God will forgive whatever sins [Faust] might commit”. Goethe’s Faust: The German Tragedy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1986. P. 251. For those that argue for the justice of Faust’s heavenly ascension, they generally focus on his relentless striving, e.g., Franziska Schößler: Progress and Restorative Utopia in Faust II and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. In: A Companion to Goethe’s Faust: Parts I and II. Ed. by Paul Bishop. Rochester: Camden House 2001. P. 183. James Van Der Laan, in contrast argues that the play is “neither an affirmation nor a rejection of either an orthodox or an unconventional morality. James Van Der Laan: Faust’s Divided Self and Moral Inertia. In: Monatshefte 91 (1999). P. 452.

267 Sein und Sehnsucht [Being and desire] Zwei K¨orperh¨alften [Two halves of the body] Rechts und Links [Right and left] Atemholen [Breathing] Physische Erfahrung [Physical experience]: Magnet. Wir und die Gegenst¨ande [We and the objects] Licht und Finsternis [Light and darkness] Leib und Seele [Body and soul] Two souls [Zwei Seelen] Geist und Materie [Spirit and matter] Gott und die Welt [God and the World] Gedanke und Ausdehnung [Thought and extension] (FA 25: 142–143)3

On the surface, this list may seem to be about separations and divisions. Metaphysical and physical worlds seem to be neatly divided, as do the subject from the object. Goethe, however, emphasizes a different aspect of the relationship of these pairs. For him, the primary relationship is a dynamic one that illustrates the indivisibility of one side of the pair from the other. Inhaling is meaningless with exhaling, just as the body is meaningless without the soul or light without darkness. Each side of the polar pair exists only insofar it is contrasted and related to the other side. In this sense, the magnet becomes a metaphor for the relationship of all of the pairs: two opposites coexist within one entity. To look at a magnet from only the perspective of one of its poles would therefore be to miss its entire essence. Polarity is itself part of a polar pair with Goethe’s other main natural principle, intensification, or “Steigerung” [“heightening”]. According to Goethe, the interactions of these two forces explain nature’s extensive creative powers. At first, the two principles seem to follow the classic division of matter and spirit, but very quickly even these divisions become blurred. He elaborates on the relationship of these two opposites: [. . .] jene [Polarit¨at] der Materie, insofern wir sie materiell, diese [Steigerung] ihr dagegen, insofern wir sie geistig denken, angeh¨orig; jene ist in immerw¨ahrendem Anziehen und Abstoßen, diese in immerstrebendem Aufsteigen. Weil aber die Materie nie ohne Geist, der Geist nie ohne Materie existiert und wirksam sein kann, so vermag auch die Materie sich zu steigern, so wie sichs der Geist nicht nehmen l¨aßt anzuziehen und abzustoßen. (FA 1, 25: 81) [. . .] the former [polarity] a property of matter insofar as we think of it as material, the latter (Steigerung) insofar as we think of it as spiritual. Polarity is a state of constant 3

All translations from Goethe’s works are taken from Goethe’s Collected Works. 12 Vols. New York: Suhrkamp 1983–1989 and are abbreviated as SA followed by volume and page number.

268 attraction and repulsion, while intensification is a state of ever-striving ascent. Since, however, matter can never exist and act without spirit, nor spirit without matter, matter is also capable of undergoing intensification, and spirit cannot be denied its attraction and repulsion. (SA 12: 6)

Polarity and Steigerung thus become yet another example of a polar pair that is inseparable and that must work together if it is to exist at all. Moreover, what begins as appearing strictly material ends up as partially spiritual and vice versa. The very definition of their functioning demands the blending of one category into the next. The entire structure of Goethe’s Farbenlehre is based upon the polar principle. The work begins by describing colors as the “Taten und Leiden” [“actions and passion”] of light. It soon becomes evident that all of nature partakes in polarities, which are characterized as the “Sprache” [“language”] of nature: Indem man aber jenes Gewicht und Gegengewicht von ungleicher Wirkung zu finden glaubt, so hat man auch dieses Verh¨altnis zu bezeichnen versucht. Mat hat ein Mehr und Weniger, ein Wirken ein Widerstreben, ein Tun ein Leiden, ein Vordrigendes ein Zur¨uckhaltendes, ein Heftiges ein M¨aßigendes, ein M¨annliches ein Weibliches u¨ berall bemerkt und genannt; und so entsteht eine Sprache, eine Symbolik, die man auf a¨ hnliche F¨alle als Gleichnis, als nahverwandten Ausdruck, als unmittelbar passendes Wort anwenden und benutzen mag. (FA 1/23: 13) Observers have found an apparent imbalance in the effect of weight and counterweight and have tried to give expression to this relationship as well. They have noted this principle in all things and given names to it: plus, minus; aggressive, resistant; active, passive; assertive, restraining; force, moderation; male, female. In this process a language, a set of symbols, has arisen which we may apply to like events in a metaphor, a closely related expression, a precisely suited word. (SA 12: 158–9)

At the heart of Goethe’s explanation of polar color formation is the organ of the eye: the eye serves both as the building block for his understanding of polar color formations and also as a symbol that represents godlike creativity. His discussion of the eye often borders on the mystical because of the importance with which he endows its functioning. In the introduction to his Farbenlehre, he compares this organ overtly to light and subtlety to god. In a rather complicated passage, he begins by postulating that the eye is analogous to light itself and is indeed created by light in its own image: Das Auge had sein Dasein dem Licht zu danken. Aus gleichg¨ultigen tierischen H¨ulfsorganen ruft sich das Licht ein Organ hervor, das seines Gleichen werde; und so bildet sich das Auge am Lichte f u¨ rs Lichte, damit das innere Licht dem a¨ ußeren entgegentrete. (FA 1/23: 24) From among the lesser ancillary organs of the animals, light has called forth one organ to become its like, and thus the eye is formed by the light and for the light so that the inner light may emerge to meet the outer light. (SA 12: 164)

269 Light thus becomes like the biblical God who creates in its own image. The eye, too, however, has creative powers that mimic that of light and by analogy those of God. It is a created object that itself becomes a creator: it is both an object of creation as well as a further creator of its own objects. Goethe illustrates this point within the text with a poem based upon Ionic philosophy:4 W¨ar’ nicht das Auge sonnenhaft, Wie k¨onnten wir das Licht erblicken? Lebt’ nicht in uns des Gottes eigne Kraft, Wie k¨onnt’ uns Göttliches entz¨ucken? (FA 1/23: 24) Were the eye not of the sun, How could we behold the light? If God’s might and ours were not as one, How could His work enchant our sight? (SA 12: 164)

The poem argues that because like can only recognize like, the eye must be similar in some way to light. However, Goethe goes even further than admitting the similarity between light and the eye (and hence by analogy the similarity between human beings and God): he posits a relationship of equality. What begins as a proportional relationship of light to eye and God to human beings is transformed into an equal relationship: Jene unmittelbare Verwandtschaft des Lichtes und des Auges wird niemand leugnen, aber sich beide zugleich als eins und dassselbe zu denken, hat mehr Schwierigkeit. Indessen wird es faßlicher, wenn man behauptet, im Auge wohne ein ruhendes Licht, das bei der mindesten Veranlassung von innen oder von außen erregt werde. Wir k¨onnen in der Finsternis durch Forderungen der Einbildungskraft uns die hellsten Bilder hervorrufen. Im Traume erscheinen uns die Gegenst¨ande wie am vollen Tage. Im wachenden Zustande wird uns die leiseste a¨ußere Lichteinwirkung bemerkbar; ja wenn das Organ einen mechanischen Anstoß erleidet, so springen Licht und Farben hervor. (FA 1/23: 24–25) None will dispute a direct relationship between light and the eye, but it is more difficult to think of the two as being simultaneously one and the same. We may clarify this by stating that the eye has within it a latent form of light which becomes active at the slightest stimulus from within or without. We can evoke dazzling inner images in the dark through the power of our imagination. In dreaming, we can see objects as though in the clear light of day. When awake, we can perceive the slightest impression of light from without, and we can even find that when the eye is struck a burst of light and color is seen. (SA 12: 164)

Potentially, the organ of the eye contains godlike or light-like powers of creation. This potential power becomes actual either through imaginative 4

For a discussion of this passage and its relation to several of Goethe’s other works, see Peter Michelsen: Fausts Erblindung. In: Aufsätze zu Goethes Faust II. Ed. by Werner Keller. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1991. Pp. 346ff.

270 processes or through physical ones. Although Goethe overtly recognizes the difficulty of equating light and the eye (and by analogy, us to God), he explains that the eye may call forth light (thereby creating in its own image), as well as darkness and color. Although the references to god, light, and the eye may seem abstract, the body of the text gives very specific as well as very simple, everyday examples of the eye’s creative powers: if the eye views a bright color (e.g., orange) against a light background, it will create the complementary color (blue). Although the experiments that Goethe proposes to demonstrate these effects are quite simple – from comparing the apparent size of black and white objects to various experiments that measure the effect of light upon the retina – the conclusions that he draws are far reaching: Wir glauben hier abermals die große Regsamkeit der Netzhaut zu bemerken und den stillen Widerspruch, den jedes Lebendige zu a¨ ußern gedrungen ist, wenn ihm irgend ein bestimmter Zustand dargeboten wird. So setzt das Einatmen schon das Ausatmen voraus und umgekehrt; so jede Systole ihre Diastole. Es ist die ewige Formel des Lebens, die sich auch hier a¨ ußert. Wie dem Auge das Dunkle geboten wird, so fordert es das Helle; es fordert Dunkel, wenn man ihm Hell entgegenbringt, und zeigt eben dadurch seine Lebendigkeit, sein Recht, das Objekt zu fassen, indem es etwas, das dem Objekt entgegengesetzt ist, aus sich selbst hervorbringt. (no. 38)5 We may infer that in this instance we have once again recognized the retina’s great vitality and the silent contradiction every living thing is moved to express when presented with any specific state. Thus inhaling presupposes exhaling and vice versa; each systole presupposes its diastole. Here, too, it is the eternal rule of life which is asserting itself. When offered something dark the eye demands something bright; it demands darkness when presented with brightness. Through this very fact it demonstrates its living quality, its right to take hold of an object, by bringing forth out of itself an element which is the opposite of the object. (SA 12: 173)

Like the magnet, the eye may simultaneously contain two opposite states (nos. 13, 15), and the eye’s creative powers stem from the very fact that when presented with one color, it brings forth the opposite, complementary color. The eye becomes its own creator. It craves a balance so that when it is presented with one phenomenon – such as a bright color – it quickly creates the opposite phenomenon. Thus, when the eye first views a colored object, it is acted upon. Soon, however, it becomes active again and creates its own image. It is in a constant state of action and reaction: Das Auge eines Wachenden a¨ ußert seine Lebendigkeit besonders darin, daß es durchaus in seinen Zust¨anden abzuwechseln verlangt, die sich am einfachsten vom Dunkeln zum Hellen und umgekehrt bewegen. Das Auge kann und mag nicht einen

5

Numbers refer to original paragraph numbers within the text.

271 Moment in einem besondern, in einem durch das Objekt spezifizierten Zustand identisch verharren. Es ist vielmehr zu einer Art von Opposition gen¨otigt, die, indem sie das Extrem dem Extreme, das Mittlere dem Mittleren entgegengesetzt, sogleich das Entgegengesetzte verbindet, und in der Sukzession sowohl als in der Gleichzeitigkeit und Gleichörtlichkiet nach einem Ganzen strebt. (FA 1/23: 39, no. 33) The eye of a person not asleep reveals its living quality largely through its constant need to alternate between different states; at its simplest this consists of moving from dark to light and back again. The eye cannot and will not remain fixed for even a moment in a particular state determined by some object. It is instead compelled to a form of opposition: setting extreme against extreme and intermediate against intermediate, it quickly merges opposites and strives to achieve a whole, both successively and simultaneously in time and space. (SA 12: 172)

The eye operates as both a passive recipient and an active creator. It is described as both object and subject. Throughout the whole process, it creates the polar opposite of the phenomenon presented to it as a means of creating a new whole, a harmony or balance of opposites. Nor is this dynamic interplay of subject and object limited to the organ of the eye. Goethe devotes an entire section of his Farbenlehre on the effects that various colors have on our moods (“Sinnlich-sittliche Wirkung”) [“SensoryMoral Effect of Color”]. Colors may bring about various emotions and moods, whether yellow has a cheering effect or green a calming one (no. 812). While such examples seem trivial, they represent the power that objects may exert upon us, even at their most simple levels: we are acted upon by the objects around us at times without our even being aware of it. Although we may view ourselves as subjects who are in control, we may instead be the passive recipients of the “object’s” influences. Goethe succinctly addresses this reciprocal relationship between subject and object in a short essay, “Das Unternehmen wird entschuldigt” [“The Enterprise Justified”]. Wenn der zur lebhaften Beobachtung aufgeforderte Mensch mit der Natur einen Kampf zu bestehen anf a¨ngt, so f u¨ hlt er zuerst einen ungeheuern Trieb, die Gegenst¨ande sich zu unterwerfen. Es dauert aber nicht lange, so dringen sie dergestalt gewaltig auf ihn ein, daß er wohl f u¨ hlt wie sehr er Ursache hat, auch ihre Macht anzuerkennen und ihre Einwirkung zu verehren. Kaum u¨ berzeugt er sich von diesem wechselseitigen Einfluß, so wird er ein doppelt Unendliches gewahr, an den Gegenst¨anden die Mannigfaltigkeit des Seins und Werdens und der sich lebendig durchkreuzenden Verh¨altnisse, an sich selbst aber die Möglichkeit einer unendlichen Ausbildung, indem er seine Empf a¨ nglichkeit sowohl als sein Urteil immer zu neuen Formen des Aufnehmens und Gegenwirkens geschickt macht. (FA 1/24: 389) When in the exercise of his powers of observation man undertakes to confront the world of nature, he will at first experience a tremendous compulsion to bring what he finds there under his control. Before long, however, these objects thrust themselves

272 upon him with such force that he, in turn, must feel the obligation to acknowledge their power and pay homage to their effects. When this mutual interaction becomes evident he will make a discovery which, in a double sense, is limitless; among the objects he will find many different forms of existence and modes of change, a variety of relationships livingly interwoven; in himself, on the other hand, a potential for infinite growth through constant adaptation of his sensibilities and judgment to new ways of acquiring knowledge and responding with action. (SA 12: 61)

While the subject begins its relationship with the object, believing itself to be the one in control, very soon thereafter the object begins to exert its control over the subject. The relationship is thus one of mutual dependence between subject and object and one in which the subject quickly becomes the object and vice versa. The eye represents one example of such a relationship. The initial color limits the eye, but then the eye’s ability to create a complementary color frees it by creating a whole. Goethe’s view of the subject, perspective, and meaning is quite modern in that he postulates dynamic theories. The subject and object exist, but one must carefully consider the particular moment when discussing which is which. What may be true for a particular moment, whether the eye is viewing a particular color or the subject believes to be the entity in control, may very well switch in the next moment so that another color may be created and the subject has switched to becoming the object. This same pattern of dynamic movement of meaning, and perspective and the importance of particular moments in time are central to interpreting Goethe’s Faust.

The Perspective in Faust Polarities have long been recognized as being central components to Goethe’s Faust: the entire play is premised on a bet between the devil and god, Faust describes the agony of his own existence as due to the two conflicting souls within his breast (the earthly and the spiritual), Mephisto defines himself as that which desires to do evil but accomplishes instead the good, and the final words of the play involving the eternal feminine have long encouraged reading the whole as the struggle between masculine striving and feminine love.6 6 In her discussion of Act V of Part II, Brown also focuses upon the dialectical character of the ending: “The first half of the act seems to reject all of the positions the play has hitherto sought to affirm – the classical tradition, beauty, creative magic, activity – and to embrace what it earlier avoided – the traditional models of tragedy and traditional ethics. In the second half of the act a sudden reversal in tone releases all of these concerns into a finale that exploits the full exuberance of the operatic stage. The extent to which the this finale is understood as triumphant or bitter, genuine or ironic, dishonest or weak, will depend very much on how one reads the rest of the fifth act”. P. 231. However, whereas Brown argues for moments of synthesis, I focus upon the moments of tension between the two polar sides – on the need constantly to move from one perspective to the next.

273 Similarly, the fact that the outcome of the play resides largely in how one interprets a particular moment in time is also well known: Faust will lose his bet with Mephisto should he ever desire an “Augenblick” [“a moment”] to stand still. I contend, however, that the disagreements of the play’s most basic elements (e.g., whether God cheats Mephisto, Mephisto or Faust wins their bet, Faust is an exempllary character, his final land reclamation project represents a utopia, or the play as a whole is moral or immoral) reside quite literally within the eye of the beholder – within the question of perspective or the glance of the eye (Augen/blick). If in seeing, the retina is simultaneously in opposing states,7 then to “see” the meaning of Faust also requires the ability to view it in two opposing ways. In other words, according to Goethe’s views of polarities, especially those that define the eye, it is wrong to view the play from solely one perspective. Instead, the play is structured to encourage opposing views as a means of seeing the whole picture. To focus upon only one side of the interpretive debates is therefore to miss that one polarity demands its opposite to have a whole. It is no coincidence that the terms of the bet between Faust and Mephisto revolve around a moment in time that is defined by the eye’s activity. Although the bet initially revolves around several terms, where Faust would lose if he ever were to become lazy, self-satisfied, or fooled by the devil, the bet would ultimately be lost if Faust would ever desire a moment to stand still: Werd’ ich zum Augenblicke sagen: Verweile doch! du bist so sch¨on! Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen, Dann will ich gern zugrunde gehen! Dann mag die Totenglocke schallen, Dann bist du deines Dienstes frei, Die Uhr mag stehn, der Zeiger fallen, Es sei die Zeit f u¨ r mich vorbei. (ll. 1699–1706) If I should ever say to any moment: Tarry, remain! – you are so fair! then you may lay your fetters on me, then I will gladly be destroyed! Then they can toll the passing bell, your obligations then be ended – the clock may stop, its hand may fall, and time at last for me be over!

In many ways, Faust banks on his unhappiness. Because he never believes that he will be able to be satisfied, the terms of the bet are appealing: he will obtain 7

“Die Netzhaut befindet sich bei dem, was wir sehen heißen, zu gleicher Zeit in verschiedenen, ja in entgegengesetzten Zuständen” no. 13 [“In the process of what we call ‘seeing’ the retina is simultaneously in different – indeed, in opposite – states”] (SA 12: 169).

274 the devil as his servant for an eternity. He is so certain that he will win because of his knowledge of his own divided self. He views the possibility of happiness as an impossibility: Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust, Die eine will sich von der andern trennen; Die eine h¨alt, in derber Liebeslust, Sich an die Welt mit klammernden Organen; Die andre hebt gewaltsam sich vom Dust Zu den Gefilden hoher Ahnen. (ll. 1112–17) Two souls, alas! reside within my breast, and each is eager for a separation: in throes of coarse desire, one grips the earth with all its senses; the other struggles from the dust to rise to high ancestral spheres.

Faust recognizes his own internal dynamism. Like the eye of Goethe’s Farbenlehre, he is never at rest because the moment he is one state of being, he is immediately drawn to other. His life therefore is constant back and forth, just as the eye constantly moves from one state to the other. Faust overtly recognizes that should a static moment ever occur, it would signal, if not actually be, the definition of death. Self satisfaction would be a kind of stasis equivalent with death. Striving and life itself is premised on a dynamic tension. The cessation of the tension between the two souls means the cessation of interacting with the world. At the end of the play, Faust dies precisely at the moment that he anticipates the satisfaction of a static moment. He (mistakenly) believes to have accomplished his life’s greatest goal and further believes that therefore his name will live on in light of his achievements. He is willing to rest on his laurels and as a consequence withdraws from the world of activity. Although Faust is completely fooled by Mephisto and the digging that he hears is for his own grave and not for the land reclamation project, he thinks he has conquered and controlled one of the world’s most powerful forces, the ocean. He thinks that as a result, a teeming, thriving community will be established on his newly reclaimed shore. Though that community has not yet been established, Faust is confident enough that it will go according to his plan that he is willing to enjoy that static moment now: Zum Augenblicke d u¨ rft’ ich sagen: Verweile doch, du bist do schön! Es kann die Spur von meinen Erdetagen ¨ onen untergehen. – Nicht in A Im Vorgef u¨ hl von solchem hohen Gl¨uck Genieß’ ich jetzt den h¨ochsten Augenblick. (ll. 11581–11586)

275 then, to the moment, I could say: tarry a while, you are so fair – the traces of my days on earth will survive into eternity! – Envisioning those heights of happiness, I now enjoy my highest moment.

Faust’s desire for time to stand still signals his death. His particular “Augenblick” [“perspective or eye’s view”] of his own project leads to the “Augenblick” or moment of his death. (Significantly, at this point Faust is blind, so it becomes especially ironic that he is misled by the moment/glance of the eye.) In being willing to rest, Faust is no longer capable of the polar striving that would keep him active on earth. Unlike the living eye that cannot be at rest, Faust’s blinded eye (metaphorically and literary) leads him to his moment of death. Faust’s death scene as well as the entire ending of the play has engendered a great deal of controversy. Commentators debate whether he has won on a technicality, is deserving to go to heaven at all, or is an exemplary character.8 I contend that the controversies have been so intense about these issues because many commentators have viewed the play through one perspective, whether through the eyes of Gretchen, God, Mephisto, or one of Faust’s souls. Instead, the polar structure of the play demands that we view the play in two, opposing ways, from the perspective of each of Faust’s souls or from both Mephisto and God, etc. In other words, the very structure of the play demands that we view it in two conflicting, but simultaneous ways: just as black demands white of the eye, so too should the reader be able to see two, opposing readings of the play as part of its whole structure. The play itself provides many clues that we ought to read it according to a dynamic dualism. Above, I already discussed Faust’s two souls. Throughout most of the play, Faust is driven to strive because of his dissatisfaction. Should one soul be satisfied, whether the earthly one that is tempted by Gretchen’s simple world or Helen of Troy’s worldly sensuality, it is immediately countered by its opposing mate, whether it drives Faust to understand nature or conquer the waters. Mephisto further notes that although reason elevates human beings above the animals, it also at times makes human beings “tierischer als jedes Tier zu sein” [“worse than any animal”] (287).9 The same force, thus, is responsible for our greatest elevation as our greatest degradation. Similarly, the devil, too, is 8

See note 2. This view is a familiar one throughout Western culture, whether in Aristotle’s observation in the Politics that a human being is the most perfect animal, but if he “has not excellence, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals” (1253a30–35) to the observation in Shakespeare’s Sonnet no. 94 that “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds”. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Ed. by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1984.

9

276 not outrightly an “evil” force. As Mephisto explains to Faust, he is: “Ein Teil von jener Kraft, / Die stets das B¨ose will und stets das Gute schafft” [“A part of that force / which, always willing evil always produces good”] (ll. 1335–1336), and “ein Teil des Teils, der anfangs alles war, / Ein Teil der Finsternis, die sich das Licht gebar” [“a part of the Part that first was all, / part of the Darkness that gave birth to Light”] (ll. 1349–1350). Mephisto’s destructive evilness creates goodness just as the darkness that is a part of him leads to the creation of light. The polarities are inextricable, and one automatically leads to the other. What, then, do these polarities mean for an interpretation of the play? They encourage the reader not to see only one side, but to read one interpretation against another. Goethe calls his play a tragedy, but its ending mirrors Dante’s Divine Comedy. The play ends happily if we examine it from God’s perspective or from the perspective of Faust’s heavenly soul, which, unlike the earthly one, advances into heaven (ll. 11954–11965; l. 12088).10 It ends unhappily for both Mephisto and Faust’s earthly soul.11 These aims are achieved, moreover, through an inversion of right and wrong.12 If Mephisto accomplishes good by doing evil, what do God and his angels accomplish by doing good? In a real sense, Faust is saved only because God cheats. Mephisto, by rights and terms of the bet, ought to have gained control of Faust’s soul. Instead, he ends up like Job, covered in boils caused by the petals of heavenly roses (l. 11809). Hell may be governed by rules of contract and precedent (l. 1413), but heaven does 10

Stuart Atkins: Irony and Ambiguity in the Final Scene of Goethe’s Faust. In: Stuart Atkins: Essay on Goethe. Ed. by Jane K. Brown and Thomas P. Saine. Rochester: Camden House 1995. P. 288. Atkins argues that although the angels postulate the desirability of the separation of the earthly from the heavenly, that this separation does not actually occur. I would argue, however, that this separation seems clear when Gretchen says: “Sieh, wie er jedem Erdenbande / Der alten Hu¨lle sich entrafft!” [“See him work loose from all the bonds / that once enveloped him on earth!”] (12088–89). 11 As Martin Swales notes, the tension between Faust’s two souls is not only about striving, but also about the “dynamic elation and eroding despair”. And although one is tempted to place emphasis upon the element of despair, Swales notes that we should not “undervalue the moments of delight, for they too [. . .] are part of the perennial endowment of humanity”. The Character and the Characterization of Faust. In: A Companion to Goethe’s Faust, Parts I and II. Ed. by Paul Bishop. Rochester: Camden House 2001. P. 39. Faust dualism allows for both great happiness and great despair. That one of Faust’s two souls appears devalued in heaven further places into question whether going to heaven is an unqualified good. For a different perspective on the conflict of Faust’s two souls, see Van der Laan who looks to them as a basis to argue that “Faust presents us with the incoherent individual whose inner division prevents moral decision and action”. P. 455. 12 See also, for example, Brown, who in her analysis of Act IV draws parallels between Faust’s temptation on the mountain and Christ’s. The logic of this scene is turned upside down from the Biblical one: “Faust can only be saved by accepting all temptations. To reject temptation would be Christian, and hence Mephistophelean”. P. 221.

277 not appear to be. In the end, it is the angels’ posteriors that determine the outcome: the naked backsides of the heavenly, “pure” cherubs prove too much of a distraction to the devil. Moreover, if only one of Faust’s souls goes to heaven, what does this mean for Faust’s future existence? In the beginning of the play, God explains that: “Es irrt der Mensch, solang’ er strebt” [“men err as long as they keep striving”] (317). Striving and error appear to go hand in hand. The ascension of one of Faust’s souls may very well mean that it will no longer err, but will Faust’s immortal existence continue to strive? Or, to put the same point in another way, Gretchen and Faust have completely exchanged roles. On earth, Faust was the active agent (the seducer), Gretchen the passive one (the seduced). In heaven, she now is active and he passive: she intercedes for him (ll. 12069–12075), she will be teaching him (“belehren”) (l. 12092), he will be following her (l. 12093), and the feminine in general seems to determine the direction of activity (l. 12110). One could similarly go through many aspects of the play to see how opposing views are simultaneously represented, whether the good of private individuals (Baucis and Philemon) trumps the greater good of society (a larger, thriving community), whether the ends ought to justify the means, whether Faust’s rejection of magic and regret at his pact wipe out his earlier deeds, etc. One of the strengths of the play is that it forces the reader into these various positions and gives justification for both sides. The play does not support just one perspective on its main issues, but provides at least two. It therefore encourages the same kind of dynamism that Goethe wrote about in the eye and that he saw throughout all of nature: one perspective immediately calls forth its opposite and vice versa. Or, to put this sentiment in Goethe’s own words in a letter to Zelter (1 June 1831), Faust was to be “an obvious puzzle” [“ein offenbares R¨atsel”] that would “continually entertain human beings and give them plenty to do” [“die Menschen fort und fort erg¨otze und ihnen zu schaffen mache”].

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Heide Crawford

Poetically Visualizing Urgestalten. The Union of Nature, Art, and the Love of a Woman in Goethe’s “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” Whether scientific or artistic, Goethe’s treatment of his favorite themes of nature, art, and women in his work were based largely upon a visual perception and careful observation that is based in occult philosophy. Numerous studies have been published on Goethe’s poem “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” [“The Metamorphosis of the Plants”], his related scientific studies, and his interests in the occult sciences and secret societies, but to my knowledge, no study has combined these approaches by investigating the impact of Goethe’s occult worldview on his approach to visualization in his literary work. In this chapter I will demonstrate a connection between Goethe’s emphasis on visualization in his poem “The Metamorphosis of the Plants” and his quest for Urgestalten [primal forms] that is based in his occult worldview. “Wer [die Natur] nicht allenthalben sieht, sieht sie nirgendwo recht”. [“Whoever does not see (Nature) everywhere, does not see it correctly anywhere”]. Goethe: “Allgemeine Naturlehre”

Goethe’s combined interests in the sciences, the occult, the arts, women and the quest for Urgestalten [primal forms] in all things have resulted in what I will refer to here as an occult worldview and poetic visualization that is characteristic of much of Goethe’s poetry and other literary and scientific works. Nature, art and women were in fact the great themes that dominated Goethe’s life and his life’s work.1 Whether scientific or artistic, his treatments of these themes in his work were based largely upon a visual perception and careful observation that is based in occult philosophy. Furthermore, he was particularly interested in observations that one could make with the naked eye; in his biological and botanical studies he was primarily interested in the morphology of forms in nature, specifically metamorphosis. Karl Richter mentions that although the study of metamorphosis is not the only aspect of Goethe’s conception of morphology, it is central to his thinking. In his essay, Richter quotes Goethe as saying: Die Gestalt ist ein bewegliches, ein werdendes, ein vergehendes. Gestaltenlehre ist Verwandlungslehre. Die Lehre der Metamorphose ist der Schlüssel zu allen Zeichen der Natur.2 1

Robert J. Richards: The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2002. P. 383. 2 Karl Richter: Morphologie und Stilwandel: Ein Beitrag zu Goethes Lyrik. In: Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft. Ed. by Fritz Martini, Walter MüllerSeidel, and Bernhard Zeller. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner 1977. No. 21. P. 199.

280 Form is mobile, emerging, passing. The study of form is the study of morphology. The study of metamorphosis is the key to all signs of nature.

This is also representative of Goethe’s influence by Spinoza. He agreed with Herder that Spinoza’s philosophy had an impact on one’s understanding of nature. Goethe believed that an approach to the study of anatomy, for example, based on Spinoza’s teachings, required a comparative approach. This meant that in order to come up with an idea of an archetype or Urgestalt, one had to visually compare similar features in different animals.3 This concept of analogy is also fundamental to occult philosophy, as will be explained in more detail below. Goethe always looked for the Urgestalt or archetype in nature’s diversity and vice versa. This symbolic approach does not only shape Goethe’s thinking of the world, but it also influences his poetic imagery.4 With regard to Goethe’s concept of the Urpflanze [primal plant], Schiller remarked: “Das ist keine Erfahrung, das ist eine Idee” [“That is not an experience, it is an idea”].5 Goethe’s response to his friend’s remark was simply: “Das kann mir sehr lieb sein, daß ich Ideen habe, ohne es zu wissen, und sie sogar mit Augen sehe” [“That’s fine by me that I have ideas without realizing it and that I even see them with my eyes”].6 In his Maximen und Reflexionen Goethe reflects quite a bit on his scientific approach through observation, but two of his thoughts are particularly applicable in the context of the current investigation: “Denken ist interessanter als Wissen, aber nicht als Anschauen” [“Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but not as interesting as observing”]; and “Die Sinne trügen nicht, das Urteil trügt” [“The senses are not deceptive, judgment is deceptive”].7 Visualization was important to Goethe from a scientific and an artistic standpoint and figures prominently in much of his work. His poem “Metamorphosis of the Plants” combines his interests in science (specifically botany), the study of forms and primal forms, art and love in one holistic concept that, in turn, emphasizes his occult worldview. With this poem Goethe unites science with art to represent a worldview that is based in an occult approach to visualization.

3

Richards: P. 379. Dieter Borchmeyer: Weimarer Klassik: Portrait einer Epoche. Weinheim: Beltz Athenäum 1998. P. 198. 5 Quoted in Borchmeyer: P. 197. My translation from the German. It should be mentioned here, however, that the term “idea” does stem from the Greek word ideîn, which means “to see”. 6 Borchmeyer. P. 197. 7 Goethe: Maximen und Reflexionen. Frankfurt/M: Insel 1982. Translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. 4

281 Numerous studies have been published on Goethe’s poem “The Metamorphosis of the Plants”,8 his related scientific studies,9 and his interests in the occult sciences and secret societies, but to my knowledge, no study has combined these approaches by investigating the impact of Goethe’s occult worldview on his approach to visualization in his literary work. In the following I will demonstrate a connection between Goethe’s emphasis on visualization in his poem “The Metamorphosis of the Plants” and his quest for Urgestalten that is based in his occult worldview. Fundamental to Goethe’s perception of the world around him, whether manifested in his scientific writings or in his poetry, is his occult worldview. During the eighteenth century there was an increasing interest in occult philosophy and the secret societies that based their tradition on occult philosophy and the language societies of the seventeenth century.10 It is well-known that Goethe was an initiate of the Freemasons and the Illuminati, that he was very likely an initiate of the Rosicrucians,11 that he dabbled in alchemy, that his religious beliefs were pantheistic, and that he was a Gnostic.12 Fundamental to all these secret societies, alchemy, pantheism and Gnosticism is a basic perception 8

See, for example, Gertrud Overbeck: Goethes Lehre von der Metamorphose der Pflanzen und ihre Widerspiegelung in seiner Dichtung. In: Publications of the English Goethe Society 31 (1960–1961); Christoph Siegrist: Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen. In: Goethe-Gedichte: Zweiunddreißig Interpretationen. Ed. by Gerhard Sauder. Munich: Carl Hanser 1996. Pp. 168–177. 9 Dorothea Kuhn: Selbst – Natur – Welt. Modelle der Natur bei Goethe und seinen Zeitgenossen. In: Allerhand Goethe. Ed. by Dieter Kimpel and Jörg Pompetzki. Frankfurt/M: Peter Lang 1985. Pp. 31–44; Alfred Schmidt: Goethes Wissenschaftsbegriff. In: Kimpel and Pompetzki. Pp. 139–164; Theodor Butterfass: Goethe und die Wissenschaft von der Pflanze. In: Kimpel and Pompetzki. Pp. 165–180. 10 Rolf Christian Zimmermann: Das Weltbild des jungen Goethe: Studien zur hermetischen Tradition des deutschen 18. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Wilhelm Fink 1969. Vol. 1. Pp. 19–20. 11 Horst E. Miers: Lexikon des Geheimwissens. Munich: Goldmann 1993. P. 254. Miers mentions here that although there is no evidence that Goethe was in fact a member of the Rosicrucians, his membership has been inferred from references to Rosicrucian principles and symbolism in several of his works. Nicholas Boyle gives an example of the Rosicrucian symbolism that Goethe used in his poem “Dedication” (1789). In this poem a monk, Brother Mark comes to a monastery that bears the sign of the Rosicrucians – the “cross of garlanded roses”. Nicholas Boyle: Goethe: The Poet and the Age. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991. Pp. 397–398. 12 Though there are numerous sources that reference Goethe’s familiarity with and active participation in various occult sciences and secret societies, my sources for this inquiry are the following: Max Seiling: Goethe als Okkultist. Berlin: J. Baum 1920; Miers (see note above for full reference information); André Nataf: The Occult. New York: Chambers 1991. Pp. 206–207; Dan Burton and David Grandy: Magic, Mystery and Science: The Occult in Western Civilization. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2004.

282 of the world that focuses on the occult concept of analogy that is represented by the fundamental idea of the microcosm in the macrocosm. In occult philosophy the microcosm, one’s body, recapitulates the macrocosm, the universe. The formula for this concept of the microcosm in the macrocosm in magic, alchemy and other occult sciences is “As above, so below”. This formula is the short version of the occult philosophical theory that everything that happens in the universe above (the macrocosm), is directly reflected in what happens to human beings on earth (the microcosm). Astrology, particularly the effect of the cosmos, the constellations, and planetary alignments on human beings, best illustrates this microcosm/macrocosm concept.13 Likewise, the opposite of this concept is true: “As below, so above”. This implies that events on earth can predict occurrences in the universe or, at the very least, they can predict what the universe may hold for a person’s future. In magic, for example, the practitioner is able to read signs in nature that will allow him or her to predict what will happen to a person in the future. This worldview of “As above, so below / As below, so above” holds that all things that happen have a purpose and predates our modern era, in which we are more inclined to acknowledge that all things do in fact have a cause, but that they may not necessarily have a purpose.14 Fundamental to the learned ability of the occultist to recognize signs in nature that can affect human beings and their place in the macrocosm is careful visual observation of events on earth and an ability to understand their relevance in a larger cosmic context. These ideas, and by extension, Goethe’s own worldview are characteristic of Gnosticism. Gnosis is the Greek word for knowledge, but in the occult sense of the term, it suggests a privileged knowledge of the universe that was reserved for those few who had acquired an inner enlightenment in contrast to the borrowed knowledge of the general populace. The early Gnostics believed that gnosis, i.e. “knowledge of God’s involvement in the cosmos and, by extension, of one’s own origin and present situation”, was far superior to faith as the ultimate path to salvation.15 Hence, Gnosticism combines the concept of the microcosm in the macrocosm with a desire to understand the origins of things. This idea of understanding the origins of things in order to understand one’s present situation is fundamental to Goethe’s worldview and is particularly apparent in his poem “Metamorphosis of the Plants”. However pre-modern the occult worldview of the microcosm in the macrocosm may at first appear, it is a fundamental philosophy of the occult sciences in general and the secret societies, such as the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians and the Illuminati in particular that developed in later centuries and based their

13

Burton and Grandy: P. 43. Ibid. Pp. 43–44. 15 Ibid. P. 290. 14

283 philosophies and worldviews in occult philosophy.16 The initial purpose of Freemasonry was to improve society spiritually and socially by first improving the individual with the help of a group of like-minded people. In a socio-political context, secret societies such as the Freemasons and the Illuminati promoted and practiced democracy and tolerance during their meetings in the lodges. Numerous prominent intellectuals, poets, and musicians in Germany during this time, such as Klopstock, Goethe, Lessing, Herder, Fichte, Wieland, Haydn, and Mozart, to name a few, were Masons and many others, including Schiller and Kant were at the very least interested in secret societies, even if they were themselves not initiated members.17 Numerous princes and monarchs were also initiated Masons. For example, the initiation of Frederick the Great in 1738, less than a year after the first German lodge was founded in Hamburg in 1737, was a significant event for German Freemasonry.18 The ideal of the Rosicrucians to gather and combine all human knowledge – sacred and secular – into one all-encompassing whole must have been particularly appealing to Goethe.19 Considering Goethe’s interest in and knowledge of occult sciences such as magic and alchemy and his active participation in several secret societies, it is not surprising to find numerous direct and indirect references to the occult and occult practitioners in many of his works.20 In his scientific observations, whether in botany, geology or mineralogy, Goethe’s idea of nature was more typical of the traditional occult approach to nature as a knowing and sentient organism than the prevailing materialistic Newtonian approach of his day. In fact, Goethe argued against the singular claim that contemporary science had on knowledge and explanation and it is well-known that he opposed Newton’s theories on optics. Goethe’s understanding of the world as a living and knowing universe is a very fundamental occult worldview. Considering man’s place in nature, Goethe viewed nature’s appeal to man as “so primal that it could not be divorced from itself ”.21 Because the opposing approach of materialistic science 16

Modern Freemasonry traces its roots to early eighteenth-century England. Though the order originated centuries earlier among stonemason guilds, modern Freemasonry started in England in 1717 when several small Masonic lodges came together to form a Grand Lodge in London. During the course of the eighteenthcentury, Freemasonry and its many later offshoots, including the Illuminati and the Rosicrucians, became increasingly popular in Europe and especially in Germany among the educated middle class and the upper classes. See Scott Abbott: Fictions of Freemasonry: Freemasonry and the German Novel. Detroit: Wayne State University Press 1991. P. 15. 17 Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger: Europa im Jahrhundert der Aufklärung. Stuttgart: Reclam 2000. Pp. 125–126. 18 Abbott: P. 17. 19 Burton and Grandy: P. 297. 20 Examples include, of course, Faust, his poem “Der Zauberlehrling”, his play Der Groß-Cophta. 21 Burton and Grandy: P. 304.

284 was so prevalent, Goethe held a Gnostic view of nature as a “holy open secret”.22 Much like the Philosopher’s Stone of the Medieval alchemists, the knowledge or gnosis of what nature is and how humans are connected to it is attainable to the enlightened, but at the same time concealed from those who are restricted by a self-inflicted ignorance of the world.23 This idea that materialistic science would never be able to satisfy mankind’s desire for understanding in the sense of gnosis because it did not consider the larger context is reflected in Goethe’s Faust, for example, when Faust laments: Habe nun, ach! Philosophie, Juristerei und Medizin, Und leider auch Theologie Durchaus studiert, mit heißem Bemühn. Da steh’ ich nun, ich armer Tor, Und bin so klug als wie zuvor!24 I’ve studied now Philosophy And jurisprudence, Medicine, – And even, alas! Theology, – From end to end, with labor keen; And here, poor fool! with all my lore I stand, no wiser than before [. . .].25

Goethe diverges quite significantly from traditional representations of the Faust legend, in which Faust sold his soul to the Devil in return for fame, knowledge and pleasure and was doomed to burn in hell after his pre-determined time on earth had concluded. In Goethe’s version, Faust is saved from hell because the pleasures of the material world are not sufficient to satisfy him. Indirectly, Goethe emphasizes here that a spiritual connection to and understanding of the world and mankind’s place in it is essential and a materialistic focus will never be enough. It was Goethe’s goal to bring human beings into a more egalitarian connection with nature than materialistic Newtonian science could provide. But as a poet, he did more than this and more than occult scientists before him. By addressing man’s place in nature and the spiritual development of love that is analogous to the physical development of a plant in his poem “Metamorphosis of the Plants”, for example, Goethe combines his holistic and 22 Goethe quoted in Walter Heitler: Goethean Science. In: Goethe’s Way of Science: A Phenomenology of Nature. Ed. by David Seamon and Arthur Zajonc. Albany: State University of New York Press 1998. P. 59. 23 Burton and Grandy: P. 306. 24 In: Goethe: Faust – Der Tragödie erster und zweiter Teil. Urfaust. HA 3: 20. Faust, Part 1, scene 1. 25 Goethe: Faust, Part 1, scene 1. Trans. by Bayard Taylor. New York: Modern Library 1912. P. 15.

285 occult philosophical approach to the study of nature with his art and, in so doing, he lifts the mere physical act of seeing and observing to a higher plane.

“Metamorphosis of the Plants” When Goethe wrote his elegy “Metamorphosis of the Plants” in 1798, it was generally acknowledged that science and art could not be combined with positive results. In his essay Über die naïve und sentimentalische Dichtung [On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry] (1795), Schiller wrote that the difficulty in joining art with science lay in the fact that art is vivid and science is intellectual. With this he intended to imply that a didactic poem is intellectually descriptive rather than poetically vivid .26 At the same time, however, he maintained that it would be possible to overcome the disparity between the non-vivid nature of the didactic poem and the poetic vividness of art.27 When Schiller wrote his essay he had not yet found this type of poem, in which the scientific was joined with the poetic or in which the scientific idea of the poem was poetic. He even seemed to be challenging poets when he stated that “Dasjenige didaktische Gedicht, worin der Gedanke selbst poetisch wäre und es auch bliebe, ist noch zu erwarten” [“the didactic poem, in which the idea itself is poetic and remains so, is yet to be written”];28 Goethe seemed to meet Schiller’s challenge to write a didactic poem that was poetic when he wrote his elegy eight years after he had written a scientific essay on the metamorphosis of plants. As an amateur scientist and as a poet, Goethe was able to combine his scientific observations with artistic perception. In 1790 he published his essay “Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären” [“An Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants”], one of the most important of his morphological studies. In this essay on his research, Goethe defined metamorphosis as a gradual developmental process that “durch Umwandlung einer Gestalt in die andere, gleichsam auf einer geistigen Leiter, zu jenem Gipfel der Natur, der Fortpflanzung zweier Geschlechter, hinaufsteigt” [“ascends through the transformation of one form into another, more or less like on an intellectual ladder, to the peak of nature – reproduction”].29 Goethe’s representation of the metamorphosis of plants in his poem corresponds factually with the observations he made in his scientific study. Goethe’s poem “Metamorphosis of the Plants” is an elegy, but it differs substantially in subject matter from his other elegies, specifically his Roman Elegies, which typically address more traditional topics such as love, departure 26

For example, the German Lehrgedicht. Overbeck: Pp. 38–39. 28 Friedrich Schiller: Werke und Briefe in zwölf Bänden. Frankfurt/M: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag 1988–2002. Vol. 12. P. 206. 29 Goethe: FA 13: 65. 27

286 and death. In “Metamorphosis of the Plants”, however, a lesson in botany is presented in the form of a poem. Hence, nature, i.e., a scientific study in botany, and art are combined here in poetic form. Moreover, the study in botany that is the theme of this poem is based on the visual perception of flowers in the garden, the careful comparison of their basic forms that at first seem to lose themselves in a chaotic myriad of different shapes and colors, and the lesson is addressed to a beloved woman. The confusing multitude of flowers in the garden that is described in the beginning of the poem (FA l: 1–8) dissolves in the middle of the poem.30 In this middle portion of the poem, the law of nature that applies to the metamorphosis of plants is explained based on the example of the step-by-step development of a single plant (FA l: 11–62). In this second part of the poem the observers’ roaming and extended view that initially can only perceive the “Blumengewühl” [“chaos of flowers”] (FA l: 2) contracts and concentrates on a single plant in its development from a seed to full maturity and blossom, as if the observers were seeing it in a laboratory setting. Just as the narrator is able to direct and guide his lover’s gaze, by extension, the reader’s gaze is moved from the confusion of the multitude of plants in a garden to the image of a single plant with a very basic form. This alternating expansion and concentration of visual perception is repeated in this manner throughout the poem, much like a plant’s metamorphosis occurs according to Goethe’s own observations in his scientific study.31 Hence, in a truly classical sense something general, namely the basic law of nature, becomes evident in something particular, the single plant and its metamorphosis, which results in the observation that all plants undergo a similar metamorphosis. A general, lasting principle is herewith connected with a particular observation. By describing the scientific subject matter of the metamorphosis of plants in the ancient Greek poetic form of the elegy, Goethe combines science with antiquity, which is yet another fundamental principle of Classicism. The basic element of elegiac verse is the distich and the ever-recurring regular meter of the syllables represents a fundamental organ of the poem, much like the leaf of a plant, according to Goethe’s studies. As a plant follows a law of nature in its metamorphosis, so does the distich follow a law of meter in the hexameter of the first line and the pentameter of the second line.32 However, at the same time that the distich holds fast to the strict rules of meter, it can vary greatly in theme and imagery, much like a particular plant may vary greatly from others when it blossoms. In a similar manner, the development of a relationship between a man and a woman follows a law of nature, as Goethe shows by analogy at the end of his poem. Two people meet, become acquainted with one another, then 30

Overbeck: P. 41. Ibid. P. 57. 32 Ibid. 31

287 a friendship develops. Man and woman reach the full bloom and maturity of their relationship, however, once they have found love, the peak of the relationship between the sexes that goes beyond mere physical interaction. The final part of the poem answers the question that is posed at the beginning. The individual phenomena appear as symbols of the “die höhere Welt” [“higher world”] (FA l: 80). The poet moves from the world of the plants in the garden, to the animal kingdom and then he directs his lover’s gaze to interpersonal relationships that follow a law of nature analogous to the law of the metamorphosis of the plants. In this manner the relationship between a man and a woman develops according to a natural law of metamorphosis until it reaches a maturity, the full blossom of harmony, “gleicher Ansicht der Dinge” [“same view of things”]; and, thus, the “higher world” of love. The metamorphosis of the plants in this poem functions as a symbol for the development of relationships between men and women and as a symbol for the gradual, well-ordered formation of works of art, such as this poem. In this way one can see nature reflected in art if one recognizes the laws of nature that are at work in the creation of a work of art. Hence, a poet follows a law of meter, for example, when he writes an elegy such as this one. The poem as dichterische Gestalt [poetic form] is analogous to the formation of nature and it is a symbol in the sense that Goethe explains: Das ist die wahre Symbolik, wo das Besondere das Allgemeine repräsentiert, nicht als Traum und Schatten, sondern als lebendig-augenblickliche Offenbarung des Unerforschlichen.33 True symbolism occurs where the particular represents the general principle, not as a dream or shadow, but rather as the immediate, living revelation of that which cannot be investigated.

In his application of the word “metamorphosis” Goethe seems to be addressing both the cause and the effect of a plant’s development. Hence, when he observes the metamorphosis of a plant he does not simply see that one form changes into the next form, but also how this development proceeds.34 Goethe’s poem, then, is a dichterische Gestalt that is analogous to forms found in nature. With his morphological principles of alternating contraction and expansion Goethe found a formulation for the basic elements of shaping creation in nature and in his own poetry.35 By doing so, he creates visualized concepts. These are concepts, such as the concept of the metamorphosis of plants that are so vivid that they can only be understood in conjunction with visualization. In this 33

HA 12: 471. Overbeck: Pp. 47–48. 35 Ibid. P. 56. 34

288 sense, then, the metamorphosis of plants is a visualized concept and consequently the scientific concept of the metamorphosis of plants is combined with the vivid art of the elegy.36 Therefore, Goethe’s didactic poem contains the element of vividness that Schiller considered to be indispensable for all forms of poetry in his essay.37 Goethe’s poem “Metamorphosis of the Plants” is the poem that, according to Schiller, was yet to be written.

Conclusion In his didactic poem about the metamorphosis of plants Goethe does much more than offer a lesson in botany. In this poem he combines science, art and the love of a woman to demonstrate, in a deeply occult philosophical manner, that all things on earth, whether plant, animal or human, follow the same basic laws of nature in their respective contexts to acquire the highest possible level of perfection. The microcosm, i.e. the plant and by extension mankind, though physically restricted to the earth plane, are affected by the macrocosm, i.e. the laws of nature. And because of this, much like the plant reaches full bloom due to the laws of nature, so too can humankind reach a higher level of awareness and distinction from others of their kind, when they reach the ultimate peak of human spiritual inter-connection – love. Though interest in occult philosophy and activity in secret societies that followed occult philosophy was quite popular during Goethe’s lifetime, his involvement was unique. As a poet and as an amateur scientist Goethe had a worldview that was truly holistic. In a very Gnostic approach to awareness, Goethe knew that scientific knowledge, however exciting and useful for furthering mankind’s understanding of the world around him, would never completely satisfy the curiosity of the individual who seeks enlightenment. As a spiritual being mankind is driven to find his place in and a higher purpose for himself in the universe. This study of Goethe’s occult worldview as it is revealed through his visualization of events in this poem warrants further study into the significance of this aspect of Goethe’s life and its relevance in his work.

36 37

Overbeck: P. 49. Ibid. P. 49.

Richard Block

Scribbles from Italy: Cy Twombly’s Experiment in Seeing Goethe See Language Understood as a serial painting, Cy Twombly’s Goethe in Italy authenticates the need for a second sight or what Goethe called the “Auge des Geistes” [“eye of the mind”] to recover a form that transcends the temporality of scientific and artistic observation. But as Goethe’s scientific works demonstrate, the eye can only visualize its own processes. The signature, or the penultimate image in Twombly’s serial painting, thus emerges to stabilize seeing’s endlessly referential structure. But reading and seeing the signature is a blur; that is to say, the scribble, which is also the last of Twombly’s images, is the signature of German Classicism or Goethe’s post-Italy oeuvre.

In 1978 Cy Twombly completed what appears to be a series of six different images, Goethe in Italy. The conceit of this essay is that Twombly’s serial images offer an irresistible gloss on Goethe in Italy, or on what Goethe learned in Italy about seeing that allowed for his studies of the arts and sciences to generate a different kind of writing.1 Conversely, I also read Goethe’s scientific works or method as a key to understanding Twombly’s staging of what might be called an experiment in seeing. In other words, Twombly’s images have something to say about seeing or experiments in seeing that in this instance carry the title Goethe in Italy, and inform the literary productivity of Goethe’s post-Italy years. Typically, Twombly is associated with what appear to be scribbles on paper that meander across the entire canvas without direction or itinerary. What has been described as a tracing of drawing’s performance produces a nomadic form of script that asks to be read and seen at the same time.2 The serial work under consideration here asks the same. As we will see, tracking the movement of the scribble – or the blur that results from seeing and reading – gives way to a formal consideration or a consideration of form that we might call Classicism. In the Italienische Reise, Goethe posited an intimate relationship between seeing and writing: “Daß ich zeichne und die Kunst studire, hilft dem Dichtungsvermögen auf, statt es zu hindern; denn schreiben muß man wenig, zeichnen viel” [“That I draw and study art aids rather than hinders my capacity 1

Helmut Müller-Sievers has demonstrated that the shift in Goethe’s classical poetics results from an abandonment of immediacy and experience to a “mean-time” in which “the rules of an already extinguished language [Latin] are mastered all the while conveying the illusion of a daring immediacy”. See Helmut Müller-Sievers: Writing Off: Goethe and the Meantime of Erotic Poetry. In: MLN 108 (1993). P. 439. 2 Roland Barthes: The Wisdom of Art. In: The Responsibility of Forms. Trans. by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang 1985. P. 178.

290 for writing poetry. For one must write little, but draw a lot”] (WA I 32: 159).3 If we accept the axiom that Goethe’s Italian experience restored his poetic talents, it is the productive relationship between the image and the word – seeing and writing – that requires exploration, and it is one that Twombly’s painting pursues. This suggests as well that seeing and sketching were not simply passi-tempo for Goethe in Italy but essential to generating a classical language in the “mean-time” of classical meter.4 The image, or what the image calls forth to lend itself form, is – to draw on Goethe’s description of the “Urpflanze” – the “hidden germ” of his poetry.5 Save for the last image, each of the six canvases mix crayon and pencil.6 The first four cannot be said to be related by subject matter, not because the images are stylistically divergent or because they seem to issue from different hands. On the contrary, they share a color palette, and while the dimensions of the canvases change, the images, which all gesture toward representation of an unidentified object, recall one another and seem to cluster around an object that has yet to be captured. The images, we might conjecture, are four takes on the same subject, except that the subject cannot be confidently identified. That is to say, in the first four canvases Goethe is nowhere to be found in Italy. Instead, a kind of seeing that discovers its objects in parts is Goethe in Italy. That explains the full title or description given the work in the 1982 catalogue for the Berlin exhibit, 3

All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. Helmut Müller-Sievers. P. 439. 5 WA I 31: 239. The temptation, of course, is to regard Goethe’s efforts as a sketch artist as mere dilettantism, albeit a productive one. See Hans Vaget: The “Augenmensch” and the Failure of Vision. Goethe and the Trauma of Dilettantism. In: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift 75, 1 (March 2001). Pp. 15–26. The quality of the sketches confirms this impression as does Goethe’s own decision to enlist Christoph Heinrich Kneip to do the sketching during their time in Sicily. That also seems to be the role Goethe assigned to his pre-occupation with art when he noted in July 1787 the following: “Ich bin im Land der Künste, laßt uns das Fach durcharbeiten, damit wir uns für unser übriges Leben Ruh’ und Freude haben and an was anders gehen künnen” [“I am in the land of the arts, let us work through that field so that we can have rest and peace for the remainder of our lives and move on to something else”] (WA II 32: 34). Art may be a distraction, but it is a necessary one, if Goethe is to move on or return someday to Weimar and resume his vocation as a poet. 6 In a strict sense one cannot speak of canvases or of a painting. Although the Zeitgeist catalogue entitles the work “a painting in six parts”, there is no paint to be found on any of the six surfaces, only crayon and pencil. The surfaces alternate between paper and canvas. While I take up a discussion later of Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre, Twombly’s alternate use of paper and canvas calls attention to the surface upon which color is perceived and thereby puts in play the notion of chemical colors to which Goethe assigned constancy. In other words, is the surface, the crayon, or the eye the bestower of color? Goethe, as we know, tries to isolate these or similar aspects. Twombly, through such alterations, questions the reliability of such distinctions in the determinations or even apperception of color. 4

291 Zeitgeist: a painting in six parts.7 The innocuous character of what also must be considered a caption, since it appears under the first image, seeks an overall unity that the naked eye cannot possess on its own; the Zeitgeist can be missed with a blink of an eye or in the time required to move from one image to the next. “The action in a Twombly painting is transitive; it seeks only to provoke a result”.8 The result is Goethe or “Goethe in Italy” since that is both the inscription and palimpsest/pentimento of the fifth canvas. “Goethe in Italy” is written in noncursive script twice on the canvas that serves as the fifth image. The words are imperfectly laid upon their double or upon what appears to have been an earlier script eroded or erased by time – even the time it has taken to arrive at the fifth image in the series. The appearance of the subject(s) relates to the subject of the previous four images only in the manner in which it re-inscribes the descending character of the images from the upper right to the lower left in images two through four. Reading the images from left to right is a painting or act of painting that produces a subject that looks to erase itself. It is here that Twombly’s Goethe in Italy in 1978 begins to tell us something about Goethe and seeing.

Staging the Abyss of Seeing In “Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt” [“The Experiment as Mediator (. . .)”] (1793) Goethe insists upon the need to follow every single experiment through its variations, or in Twombly’s case, its six instances.9 In training the eye to observe variation, the poet, artist or scientist would seek to arrive at a form of reflective judgment whereby the “Urphänomen” could be grasped.10 “The simultaneous and the successive are “daher [. . .] in der Idee 7

Zeitgeist: International Art Exhibit (catalogue). Ed. by Christos Joachmides, and Norman Rosenthal, Berlin: Georg Brazilier 1983. P. 241. 8 Roland Barthes: Cy Twombly. Works on Paper. In: The Responsibility of Forms. Pp. 157–76. 9 WA II: 11, 22. 10 For an explanation of how the “Urphänomenon” is dependent upon Goethe’s so-called “Auge des Geistes” and how such seeing, in turn, is related to Kant’s reflective judgment in the Third Critique, see Eckart Förster: Goethe and the Auges des Geistes. In: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift 75, 1 (March 2001). Pp. 87–101. As Förster explains, Goethe recognized the need to generate a continuous series of experiments or phenomena. Once this series was viewed in its totality, a “higher experience” could be realized. It is this “Auge des Geistes” that allows him to perceive the higher. “We switch from a discursive and analytical mode to an intuitive and holistic mode and view the empirical unity of an object as developing dynamically from an archetypal form”. P. 98. The question that emerges is where to assign ontological priority: is the inner eye already there or do the series of images give rise to it? Twombly’s series is, I argue, an attempt to stage such an experiment only to discover that what this second sight perceives is only the double vision and blur of the fifth image. Translations of Goethe’s botanical writings, unless otherwise noted, are based upon Bertha Berthaler: Goethe’s Botanical Writings. Woodridge, CT: Oxbow 1989.

292 Simultanes und Sukzessives innigst verbunden, auf dem Standpunkt der Erfahrung hingegen immer getrennt” [“therefore (. . .) intimately bound together in an idea, whereas they are always separated in experience”] (WA II 11: 57). But the idea that restores simultaneity is itself dynamic: Ich hatte die Gabe, wenn ich die Augen schloß und mit niedergesenktem Haupte mir in der Mitte des Sehorgans eine Blume dachte, so verharrte sie nicht einen Augenblick in ihrer ersten Gestalt, sondern sie legte sich auseinander und aus ihrem Innern entfalteten sich wieder neue Blumen [. . .]; es waren keine natürlichen Blumen sondern phantastische [. . .]. [Das Sehen in Subjektiver Hinsicht] (WA II 11: 282) I had the gift that when I shut my eyes and bowed my head to imagine in the middle of my organ of sight a flower that it did not persist in its primary form but instead opened up from within to unfold yet again new flowers [. . .]; these were not natural flowers; rather, fantastic ones [. . .].

That which reflective judgment presents to the eye in the form of an idea unfolds according to a particular rhythm, perhaps that of the blinking inner eye. The successive is not grasped, for those who possess this particular gift, as a static image or idea, but rather the sign of possessing the gift is the ability to reproduce even the idea serially. Twombly’s Goethe in Italy is likewise an experiment in seeing something that is imagined reproduce itself. It is not simply a mediation of and meditation on what was Goethe’s great passion in Italy, painting, a passion that eventually gave way to writing and sponsored Goethe’s second dilettantism, science.11 But the painting also tests the ability of the eye to make the laws of the fantastic visible, to display what Twombly imagined Goethe in Italy to have seen as it originally appeared, which is serially. For Goethe at least, that is true to the natural order of things: “Ich habe eine Vermutung, dass [die Künste] nach eben den Gesetzen verfuhren, nach welchen die Natur verfährt und denen ich auf die Spur bin” [“I have a suspicion that the arts proceed according to the same laws as nature, and it is those traces which I am now following”] (WA I 30: 264). In fact, the trace by which the inscription “Goethe in Italy” is doubled conforms to the laws of nature, whereby paintings about nature in Italy mediated by Goethe (Twombly’s images are in many respects landscapes or cross-sections of a piece of land) map their own descent or descending order. While all of this might be nothing more than a curious gloss on a cultural tradition, something that is fairly common in Twombly’s work,12 a critical aspect of this gloss is that the form apperceived only by its 11

Hans Vaget: Pp. 15–17. As Varnedoe notes, from the 1950s on Twombly embraced a “cultural patination”. He also notes that in other works the inscriptions of “Roma” or “Olympia” sets up a dialogue “between the associations and the idea and the character of its inscription”. See Cy Twombly: A Retrospective at Moma (catalogue). Ed. by Kirk Varnedoe. New York: Abrams 1994. P. 29. 12

293 descending character is consistent with the manner in which Goethe described from Naples his discovery of the “Urpflanze” in Sicily: “Den Hauptpunkt, wo der Keim steckt, habe ich ganze zweifellos gefunden; alles übrige seh’ ich schon im Ganzen [. . .]. Mit diesem Modell und dem Schlüssel dazu kann man alsdann noch Pflanzen in’s Unendliche erfinden” [“I have undoubtedly discovered the main point, where the germ is hidden. Everything else I now see in its entirety. (. . .) With this model and its key I can go on discovering plants ad infinitum”] (WA I 11: 239). The hidden germ is known only by its progeny. Even if Goethe claims to have found the “Hauptpunkt”, the seed is hidden.13 The idea that links the successive and simultaneous is present only serially. The point is emphatically stated in a letter to Zelter from 1803: “Natur- und Kunstwerke lernt man nicht kennen wenn sie fertig sind; man muß sie im Entstehen aufhaschen, um sie einigermaßen zu begreifen” [“One does not come to know works of nature and art once they have been completed; one has to catch them as they come into being in order to grasp them in some measure”] (WA IV 16: 265). What one catches sight of, however, might not be works of nature or art but rather the workings of the eye catching sight. Remarkably, Twombly’s staging of such an experiment in painting nature leads to a form of writing that produces itself and a trace of itself in the fifth image, “Goethe in Italy”. Self-citation – and what else is Goethe’s Italienische Reise – is the inevitable result of the experiment(er) tracking its own movements or of a traveler keeping a journal. This, in turn, produces an iterative double that points to a common source or shared law; writing and its traces is how experiments in seeing come to see themselves. In other words, if Goethe learned to see in Italy and if such seeing or dabbling in art led to what we call the “renaissance of his poetic genius”, it is the coming to see of writing or to see the trace of writing, which we might call a scribbling, that sponsors this renaissance.14 Staging an experiment so as to perceive in all of its stages a higher unity, even an “Urphänomen”, only produces in Twombly’s work a second sight or double vision that is the signature of the subject.15 In this manner the phantasmic dynamism of the eye is made manifest. Or, once Goethe’s gift to imagine an endless unfolding assumes on the canvas more than a phantasmic presence, 13

It is important to note that Goethe’s report of his find comes after the fact; that is, after he has returned from Sicily where he apparently discovered the “Urpflanze”. It is only in looking back, in retrospect that the origin can be postulated. Curiously, that is the entire structure of the Italienische Reise. Appended to the second Roman visit at the end of the “correspondence” of each month is a “Bericht” or report. 14 Jane Brown: The Renaissance of Goethe’s Poetic Genius in Italy. In: Goethe in Italy. Ed. by Gerhart Hoffmeister. Amsterdam: Rodopi 1988. Pp. 77–93. 15 Goethe’s famous dispute with Schiller over the “Urpflanze” is relevant here insofar as Goethe insists upon its existence since he can see it in his mind. Twombly, in this context, might reply, “Such ideas are only ideas of yourself ”.

294 it acquires the character of writing, of a double signature seeking to erase itself. That is to say, it signs off. But if the experiment is said on this account to have failed, it does succeed in producing an author. Twombly’s gloss on Goethe requires witnessing a sexpartite expression that through a play of light, color and dimension gives way to writing. Goethe’s translation of Plotinius in the Farbenlehre. Didaktischer Teil is instructive here: “Wär nicht das Auge sonnenhaft, / Wie können wir das Licht erblicken?” [“How could we see the light if the eye were not sun-like?”] (WA II 1: 31). Since we are like that which emits light, we can receive light. This self-reflective structure already seems to explain Twombly’s fifth image; experiments in seeing, i.e. scientific experiments, are exercises in self-observation, whereby the self’s trace or what the emitting eye has seen reflected of itself is its own signature, which is always a trace of the self. One of the more productive glosses on Goethe’s words was expressed by the German scientist Wilhelm Ostwald, who observed, rather satirically, that in order to read the eye must be “tintenhaft” [“ink-like”].16 But as Davide Stimilli has pointed out, the paradox is only apparent. Citing Renaissance philologists, he notes how it is necessary “to divine rather than to read when we take up the challenge of reading that which was never written”.17 Certainly, we cannot take this to mean that “Goethe in Italy” has never been written; we have Goethe’s text(s). We can assert, however, that Goethe in Italy is reading an “Urform”, either in the form of the primal plant or in the form of “Goethe in Italy”, which journey has structured the itinerary of the countless who followed Goethe to Italy. This relationship between divination and the unwritten leads Stimilli to conclude that “reading, too, is a god”.18 But according to Twombly, what Goethe in Italy reads is his own signature, a kind of mis-en-abyme whereby the sun-like eye receiving its own light produces its own ink. Reading Goethe in Italy, in other words, is a god whose form is abysmal. Goethe in Italy is both a title as well as an image and trace whose referents are countless. The divine form preserves its unwritten character through an infinite regress of signifieds that structures self-reflexivity.19 This will become more apparent once we consider the kind of experiment that is being staged here; that is, how Goethe’s own scientific writings call forth the very experiment that Twombly’s images present.

16

Wilhelm Ostwald: Goethe, Schopenhauer und die Farbenlehre. Leipzig: Unesma 1931. P. 8. 17 Davide Stimilli: The Face of Immortality: Physiognomy and Criticism. Albany: SUNY 2005. P. 19. 18 Ibid. 19 One of the best discussions of how self-observation can lead to an infinite regression is to be found in Lawrence Ryan’s remarkable study of Hölderlin’s Hyperion in which he reconstructs the various rejected versions. Hölderlin’s Hyperion. Exzentrische Bahn und Dichterruf. Stuttgart: Metzler 1965. Pp. 8–45.

295 The relationship between image and word may explain the curious signature of the fifth canvas, but it does little to explain the illegible scribble of the sixth. The only relationship this pencil line has to the previous series of five is a formal one; it traces or is a trace of what by the fifth image has become a constant in the series: a descent. The double signature of the previous image, which served as the title of the entire series and cited as well a cultural ritual, is now the pathway of that signature, the extracted form of seeing “Goethe in Italy” inscribe and erase itself. Seeing and its shadow become an irreducible difference between light and dark, which for Goethe is color, or the irreducible difference between the sun-like and ink-like characters of the eye. But the irreducible form of the difference is the itinerary of a line that lacks color; the final two images are only in pencil. The difference that sponsors color has in the end only an itinerary of a line to show for itself. That might even be the best way to explain the line, “Goethe in Italy”, which refers to an itinerary of its own. Certain is that what remains or what becomes of the last traces of this experiment in seeing are the markings of the making of a sketch, i.e., a scribble. The spiral tendency of plants of which Goethe wrote is in question here insofar as its complementary principle, the vertical, is weakened: “Monstrositäten [. . .] werden entstehen dadurch, daß jenes aufrechtstrebende Leben mit dem Spiralen aus dem Gleichgewicht kommt, von diesem überflügelt wird” [“(A)bnormalities (. . .) arise when that upward striving force is thrown out of equilibrium with the spiral and is outdistanced (outwinged) by the latter”] (WA II 7: 39). The first four of Twombly’s images, in fact, are very possibly cross-sections of soil or land through which no plant has pushed forth. On the one hand, the dizzying referential structure of the subject favors the spiral tendency; it takes on wings of its own. The ensuing abnormality is thus two-fold. The upward striving force is captured by the changing dimensions of the image. Seeing arrests the development. The reframing of the object in the first four images means that the reading, or seeing of reading, of what occurs in nature requires another step to account for what the eye captures. The spiral tendency is captured only if one reads backwards or reads to erase what one’s initial reading produced; reading’s wings, oddly enough, need to be clipped. The descent of the series then becomes an ascent, just as when one reads the sixth image from right to left. On the other hand, this boustrophedon is not at odds with how one reads “Goethe in Italy”.20 One reads about a journey to recover the spirit of antiquity in a place, Italy, which is itself a read on an ancient Greece whose existence is verified only by this odd reading. And Goethe’s own experiments in seeing – and of which 20

Boustrophedon was initially applied to Greek law to describe writing that alternated from right to left and then left to right, much like the plow of the ox. For a provocative reading of the boustrophedon in relationship to the foundations of Rome see Michel Serres: Rome: The Book of Foundations. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1991. Pp. 1–28.

296 there will be more to say in a moment – reproduce this dizzying referential structure. The reader/observer stubbornly refers to himself in those moments precisely dedicated to erasing himself. He becomes a de-facto origin, as Italy did in the quest for antiquity. A letter from Goethe to Carl August (25 January 1788) confirms that what has just been described is the real pleasure and lesson of Goethe’s stay in Italy: Als ich zuerst nach Rom kam, bemerckt ich bald dass ich von Kunst eigentlich gar nichts verstand und dass ich dahin nur den allgemeinen Abglanz der Naturin den Kunstwercken bewundert und genossen hatte, hier that sich eine andere Natur, ein weiteres Feld vor mir auf, ja ein Abgrund der Kunst in den ich mich mit desto mehr Freude hineinschaute, als ich meinen Blick an die Abgründe der Natur gewöhnt hatte. (WA IV 8: 328) When I first came to Rome, I realized immediately that I really knew nothing about art and until then had only admired copies of nature in art. But here a different nature, a broader perspective opens before me; yes, an abyss of art into which I look with all the more joy since I have learned to look upon the abysses of nature.

The letter joins the abysses of nature, art, and the enjoyment of art. More likely, it is the hopeless entanglement of the three that enthralls Goethe – all the more delightfully because it signals a form of self-emanation, whose ultimate form-giver is Goethe.21 Stated otherwise, the letter necessitates asking what the abyss is that links both painting and this other nature in such a manner as to produce a writing (of this letter) that nonetheless looks to erase itself or witness its own self-erasure by handing itself over to the abyss. In Italy Goethe delights in moving beyond a reflection of nature to an art or other nature that rehearses the abysmal structure of nature. Is there really that much difference between one abyss and another? The pleasure, it seems, comes not only from looking into the abyss of art but also from the art of looking into that abyss after having learned to look into the abyss of nature. The eternal return of the abyss is bliss, which is why Twombly goes one step further. Looking into the abyss is falling; and if falling for “Goethe in Italy” is not the last line, the scribble produced by falling for it might be.

Seeing Double. Seeing Goethe. Although one might suspect that the highly unclassical painter Twombly would have little to show about the highly classical writer Goethe, not much effort is 21 Goethe’s final reflections on the Roman Carnival are instructive here: “[E]s bleibt dem Theilnehmer vielleicht weniger davon in der Seele zurück als unseren Lesern, vor deren Einbildungskraft und Verstand wir das ganze in seinem Zusammenhange gebracht haben” [“Less of the carnival is left perhaps in the souls of the participants than in those of our readers before whose powers of imagination and understanding the entire event has been coherently presented”] (WA I 32: 270). All that one can experience is unnecessary now that Goethe has brought what was necessary before the eyes of prospective attendees. Goethe’s sight is indispensable for our own.

297 required to inform their relationship and thus this particular series of Twombly images. The works for which Twombly is most widely known, of course, are the pencil lines that seem to be scribbled onto paper. The reversal in some of the images from the 1950s from black on white to white on black suggests the reflexive structure of a process concerned with its own performance. In doing so, these works reflect on and supplement the work of the Abstract Expressionists, most notably Jackson Pollock.22 The attempt to give expression to an interiority that is bounded and contained in a Pollock painting is uncontainable in a Twombly work: “Twombly’s writing no longer abides anywhere; it is absolutely in excess [. . .]”.23 The writing overruns its borders and thus relinquishes claims of representation, opting instead for pure expenditure. But this expenditure makes for good viewing: “Twombly’s art consist in making things seen – not the things he represents [. . .] but those he manipulates: these few pencil strokes, this graph paper, this patch of pink, that brown smudge”.24 Painting and drawing become visible acts by tracing their own developments. What some have called a metascript is not a discourse on writing – in most instances the lines only gesture at meaning – rather, it is a discourse.25 It runs its course, which exceeds the place of discourse. The question is not so much one of self-consciousness, of the pencil becoming conscious of its own markings. In that instance, the fifth image in the series Goethe in Italy would have to be overlaid by “Twombly”, which is to say we would have to come to read the last image as Twombly’s own signature. To be sure, the final scribble is “signature Twombly”, particularly since neither this image nor the others bear his signature.26 But just as importantly, interiority is overtaken and undone by gesture: “TW [sic] has his own way of saying that the essence of writing is neither form nor a usage but only a gesture, the gesture which produces it by permitting it to linger [. . .]”.27 The pencil’s pre-occupation with its own form and structure is a morphological grapheme save that no form or structure can contain it. In this respect Twombly’s graphemes do not measure up to Goethe’s definition of morphology: “Betrachtung des organischen Ganzen durch Vergegenwärtigung aller dieser Rücksichten und Verknüpfung derselben 22

Twombly has written, “Each line is the actual experience with its own innate history [. . .]. It is the sensation of its own realization”. See Kirk Varnedoe. P. 65. In other words, each line is not just expression but also performance. 23 Roland Barthes: Works [. . .]. P. 161. 24 Roland Barthes: Wisdom [. . .]. P. 178. 25 See Manfred de la Motte: Cy Twombly. In: Geschriebene Malerei (catalogue). Ed. by Michael Schwarz. Karlsruhe: Badischer Kunstverein 1975. P. 66. 26 Of course, even what I have called the signature of the fifth image is Twombly’s or Twombly’s signing of Goethe, which extends the abysmal structure of Goethe’s seeing himself seeing. “Twombly seeing himself painting” would have to placed at the beginning. 27 Roland Barthes: Works [. . .]. P. 158.

298 durch die Kraft des Geistes” [“A consideration of the organic whole by visualizing and linking all these considerations (of the various sciences) through mental processes”] (WA II 6: 292). Goethe, however, seems to be stymied. His own attempts to envision the whole or to represent it generate a discourse that doubles the self-generation of the form itself. In the “Vorarbeiten zu einer Physiologie der Pflanzen”, for example, Goethe asserts that the basis of such physiology is a metamorphosis that proceeds according to a two-fold law: the law of inner nature, whereby the plant has been constituted; and the law of environment, whereby the plant has been modified.28 The law repeats the binarism characteristic of Goethe’s thinking overall, whether that be defined as diastolic/systolic, centripetal/centrifugal, or contraction/expansion.29 The law might be what Goethe called “organic duality” or the “dualism in nature”. The question is whether these dualisms are synonymous and symmetrical. The so-called inner law that allows for apprehension of the outer form is itself: “in seinem Innern entzweit [. . .] denn ohne vorhergedachted Entzweiung des einen läßt sich kein drittes Entstehendes denken” [“disunited in its interior, (. . .) for no third developing body can be imagined without a previous division of the original body”] (WA II 6: 306). This double talk is repeated as well in the discussion of the origin of the root and the leaf: “Sie sind mit einander ursprünglich vereint ja eins läßt sich nicht ohne das andere denken” [“They are united by origin; indeed the one cannot be imagined without the other. They are also by origin opposed to each other”].30 Unity applies only to the imagining of a selfperpetuating duality in which one’s own discourse is implicated. Before demonstrating how Goethe’s own discourse performs what he comes to describe, we can remark that a law conceding original division requires a positing of that law that must also seek to erase itself since the dual nature of the law points to an a priori transgression of itself. At the very least, the law is never self-identical, just as the dualism apparent in the outer form cannot be reduced to that between

28

WA II 6: 292. WA II 6: 187. 30 WA II 6: 306. Goethe dismissed studying the root in favor of studying the leaf. In this respect Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s preference for the rhizome or that which is both root and leaf at the same time is instructive. Their desire for de-territoralization, of which the rhizome is emblematic, expresses an impulse contrary to Goethe’s for unity, even if Goethe sought to eliminate a distinction between “Kern” and “Schal”. Once the misprision that posits interiority is recognized, movement cannot be contained, just as it cannot in Twombly’s pencil scribblings on paper. Goethe requires the root, even if he dismisses it from the field of observation, to preserve at a least a minimal trace of a binarism as a guiding principle or law, which, in turn, structures his field of vision. While the concept runs throughout much of their work, a concise illustration can be found in Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Trans. by Dana Polan. Minneapolis: University Press Minnesota 1986. 29

299 inner and outer. The law reproduces itself with a difference, and that difference is what we can call an Urphänomen since it displays an original duality.31 Soon it will become apparent that this Urphänomen is an effect that can only be understood as language. Metamorphosis, Goethe observes, is the “alphabet of nature”.32 The letter of the law is thus constant transformation the form of which is visible only in succession. And just as the law becomes the visible form of its own transitivity in Twombly, metamorphosis offers a basis for apprehension of the inner law in language or in its signs. A descending series is common to both, which, as we recall, is characteristic of the “Urpflanze” and its infinite progeny. But the language offered to read the series gives rise to Goethe’s principle of an upward force. Reading Goethe in Italy is instructive here. The process Goethe tracks is read backwards. If we assign causality to the inner law that gives rise to the outer form, we read from the form to the law, from the lower right to the upper left in Twombly’s images. That movement is one-half of a dual law, and the process by which one seeks to undo the boustrophedon re-inscribes it: “Vorwärts und ruckwärts ist die Pflanze nur Blatt” [“Forwards and backwards the plant is ever only leaf ”] (WA I 32: 44). That is to say, every reading is a re-reading of an already existing alphabet in nature that is a metamorphosis, a transitivity that keeps giving rise only to itself in the form of a law. Goethe’s oft cited remark that “Alles ist Blatt” [“Everything is leaf/paper”] (WA II 7: 282) not only means that we cannot get to the root of things (thus, Twombly’s four takes on the same subject) but that we are also left only with a writing surface. Goethe in Italy calls forth the poet. 31

My understanding departs from the traditional understanding of the “Urphänomen” as the attempt to intuit an original unity. See Eckart Förster: Goethe and the “Auge” [. . .]. P. 96. Hannah Arendt offers as well a definition of the “Urphänomen” in, of all things, her introduction to the English translation of Benjamin’s Illuminations. It is “an archetypal phenomenon, a concrete thing to be discovered in the world of appearances in which ‘significance’ [. . .] and appearance, word and thing, idea and experience would coincide” Ed. by Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken 1969. P. 12. She is not the only one to note that Benjamin and Goethe shared an understanding of the “Urphänomenon” (WA I: 19). Agamben notes that Benjamin’s notion of “Ursprung” shares key characteristics with Goethe’s “Urphänomen”. “In the origin, in other words, there is a dialectic that reveals every ‘original phenomenon’ to be a reciprocal conditioning of ‘Einmaligkeit’, ‘onceness’, we might say, and ‘repetition’ ”. See Giorgio Agamben: Potentialities. Collected Essays in Philosophy. Ed. and trans. by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1999. P. 156. I argue that the advent of language in Twombly’s painting signals the reciprocal conditioning of the dual originary law. In so far as it is just that, it succeeds in producing an “Urphänomen”. 32 WA II 6: 397. Mueller offers the highly idiosyncratic translation of alphabet for “Zeichen”. P. 13. The real significance of Goethe’s remark is taken up at the end of the section.

300 A correction is required here. The translation offered at the beginning of the last paragraph needs to be completed and amended: “Die Lehre der Metamorphose ist der Schlüssel zu allen Zeichen der Natur” [“The doctrine of metamorphosis is the key to all the signs of nature”]. Nature, in other words, is a system of signs that only the doctrine of metamorphosis can present. The author of that language as well as that doctrine is Goethe. Just as it does in Twombly’s serial painting, the scientific endeavor always bears the signature of the reader of those signs, which is why Vaget could characterize Goethe’s scientific endeavors as a dilettantism; the poet is always getting in the way of the scientist. In fact, the confusion surrounding the term metamorphosis bears this out. As one reads at least twice in the notes to Goethe’s botanical studies, “Wirkung dieser Schrift und weiter Entfaltung der darin vorgetragene”, the word “metamorphosis” was interchanged persistently with the word “metaphor”.33 That confusion derives in no small measure from the fact that the signs of nature, its alphabet, cannot be reliably or consistently deciphered. Or, if Twombly serves as a guide, the only name that emerges from this scramble of signs is Goethe’s own.

Seeing Goethe. Seeing Language. While the comments above offer a gloss on Twombly’s painting, it must still be shown that Goethe’s own scientific studies mirror Twombly’s pictorial study, Goethe in Italy. If observing nature and the observation of that process is the kind of seeing Goethe learned in Italy, then the figuration of such seeing is a kind of writing, which just might mean it is a scribble.34 This is why Goethe’s scientific writings often acquire an unexpected dimension. The words or letters used to investigate and describe the signs of nature produce a series of effects that obscure the image. In fact, Goethe’s definition of morphology appears to guarantee overflow. Once again, “In the Preliminary Notes for a Physiology of Plants”, Goethe begins by stating, “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen (ist) der Grund einer Physiologie derselben” [“(t)he Metamorphosis of plants is the basis of the physiology of plants”] (WA II 6: 286), since it draws one’s attention to the two-fold law noted above – the law of inner nature and that of the environment. The drawing of one’s attention would seem to be easily overlooked except that

33 For example, “Das Wort Metamorphose [wird] mit dem Wort Metapher für gleich bedeutend [ge]halten” [“The word metamorphose is considered to mean the same as the word metaphor”] (WA II 6: 397). Also see WA II 6: 274. 34 Matthew Bell argues that Goethe staved off the “Wertheresque hunger of the imagination” in Italy by a “pure seeing” that he acquired through an objectivity which resulted from being estranged from the Italians. See Mathew Bell: Goethe’s Naturalistic Anthropology. Oxford: Clarendon 1994. P. 181. Such estrangement, of course, nurtures self-consciousness.

301 it turns out to be the real subject of that text – morphology. On the one hand, he notes the expository methods for classifying “the great mass of plants into a system” (WA II 13: 286). On the other, he is forced during the same period to attempt a recapitulation of his evolving definitions of the various sciences. He has already described physiology as the mental operation performed in attempting “ein ganzes zusammen zu setzen, das sichtbar und unsichtbar zugleich ist” [“to put together a whole, which is simultaneously visible and invisible”] (WA II 6: 290). But if physiology in its “consideration of form both in its parts and as a whole” is supposedly the most comprehensive of the sciences – bringing together natural history, natural philosophy, anatomy, chemistry, and zoology – its semiinvisible content necessitates another “higher” science, morphology. And it is at this point where the definition of morphology cited above is offered: “the consideration of an organic whole by visualizing and linking all these considerations through mental processes”.35 The process by which morphology comes to be defined – the attempt to articulate the domain of the various sciences – leads to an invisibility inherent in physiology that is left to morphology to visualize. But the organicity of physiology is divided and likewise doubled: Wir können eine organische Natur nicht lange als Einheit betrachten, wir können uns selbst nicht lange als Einheit denken, so finden wir uns zu zwei Ansichten genötight und wir betrachten uns einmal als Wesen, das in die Sinne fällt, ein andermal als ein andres, das nur durch den innern Sinn erkannt oder durch seine Wirkungen bemerkt werden kann. (WA II 6: 296) We cannot regard an organic nature as a unit for long, without being obliged to assume a double point of view, considering ourselves an entity sometimes perceivable by the senses and at other times recognizable only with the inner sense or noticed by its effects.

What is this double point of view? On the one hand, it refers to an inner sense or to the pure sight referred to above. On the other, it is precisely related to the complex relationship between image and word that Twombly’s painting highlights. The alphabet or signs of nature are an effect of nature that includes language or the ciphers essential for such a language. In other words, one effect gives rise to another. For Twombly this seeing of Goethe in Italy seeing “Goethe in Italy” or his double vision is a blur; it apparently can only be read as a scribble. For Goethe, seeing himself in Italy is “das weitere Feld” [“the expanse of sight”] referred to above. The double vision, which Twombly marks in his fifth image, is itself the result of a divided origin as it also opens onto abysses.

35

Ibid. P. 292.

302 A way out of this abyss might be to consider Twombly’s gloss on Goethe from another perspective. Too often the tendency has been to think of Goethe’s law as a simple dualism or contradiction, a result of the inner seeking its outer form. Goethe’s own words from 1807 complicate this notion: Die Produktionen der Natur erleiden zwar auch äuflere Bedingungen, aber mit einer Gegenwirkung von innen. Kurz, es ist hier ein lebendiges Wirken von auflen und innen, wodurch den Stoff die Form enthält. (WA II 2: 164) Productions of nature, to be sure, are subject to external conditions of nature, but to a counter-effect from within as well. In short, it is the vibrant effect of outer and inner that lends material its form.

The simplest reading of these words is to be found in Kandinsky in Über das Geistige in der Kunst: “Form wird zur Äußerung des inneren Inhaltes” [“Form becomes an expression of inner content”].36 The “counter-effect from within” is presumed to guarantee that circumstances do not lead to formlessness since that which threatens form threatens the expression of inner content. External influences coming from the environment or milieu give expression to the inner content so long as the former is held in check by the latter. But if this suggests a stable relationship between inner and outer, Goethe insists in the Ultimatum that this is not the case: “Natur hat weder Kern noch Schale. Alles ist sie mit einemale” [“Nature has neither a kernel nor a shell; she is both at once”] (WA I 3: 106). Reciprocation or the mutual accommodation of inner and outer is something only the eye does.37 The “Urform”, since the only form the inner law will assume is in the inseparable entity that is both “Kern” and “Schale” at once, is thus equally inseparable from the operations of the eye. Goethe’s initial inquiry into color in Zur Farbenlehere. Didaktischer Teil, not surprisingly, is into operations of the eye, which he calls the physiology of colors.38 Twombly’s painting could itself be considered an attempt to understand

36

Wassily Kandinsky: Über das Geistige in der Kunst. München: Piper 1918. For a comprehensive exploration of how Goethe’s scientific writings are taken up by Kandinsky see Barbara Hentschel: Kandinsky und Goethe: Über das Geistige in der Kunst in der Tradition Goetheischer Natur. Berlin: Wissentschaftlicher Verlag 2000. 37 See Barbara Hentschel: Kandinsky und Goethe. Pp. 94–96. 38 Reference to the Zur Farbenlehre. Didaktischer Teil are to the Hamburger Ausgabe. I do so since this text serves for the basis of the translation which I refer to in this section. Goethe’s Scientific Studies. Trans. by Douglas Miller. New York: Suhrkamp 1988. For problems regarding the organization of Goethe’s scientific work see Dorothea Kuhn: Der Arbeitsvorgang bei Goethes naturwissentschaftlichen Studien. In: Im Vorfeld der Literatur: Vom Wert archivalischer Überlieferung für das Verständnis von Literatur und ihrer Geschichte. Ed. by Karl-Heinz Hahn: Weimar: Böhlaus 1991. Pp. 44–57.

303 the nature of colors, save that changes in the color palette are accompanied by another change in the dimensions of the image. The repeated failure to isolate changes in color from changes in dimension results in the script of the fifth image. The operations of the eye generate an additional movement in the observation of color that disables efforts to restrict the experiment to one variable. But if the eye is where color begins, then Zur Farbenlehre, for example, not only explores how the eye necessarily seeks and produces a reciprocity of color but also how it seeks a reciprocity of its own processes in the object, or in what Goethe calls chemical colors with particular “immanence”. “[. . .] Hell, Dunkel und Farbe zusammen [machen] allein dasjenige aus, was den Gegenstand vom Gegenstand, die Teile des Gegenstande furs Auge unterscheidet. Und so erbauen wir aus diesen dreien die sichtbare Welt” [“(. . .) brightness, darkness, and color operate as the sole means for the eye to distinguish among objects or parts of objects. Thus we constitute the visible world out of these three elements”] (HA 13: 323). Two things are now evident, which can be considered Goethe’s own gloss on Twombly. We are on the verge of looking into an abyss; the eye may witness its own operations but it is also co-operating. Asserting immanence to the color of some objects serves to stabilize the operation or bring it to a halt, but that immanence can only be language. More specifically, it can only be Goethe’s signature. Twombly’s fifth image, which is both inscription and erasure, suggests as much. The “ink-like” character of the eye protects the eye from being blinded by its “sun-like” character upon witnessing its own operations. If what color produces is the form of the external world, then language is very possibly an “Urform” that the eye calls forth to shield itself from the sun. Goethe’s progression in Italy from a Weimar bureaucrat with writer’s block through a sketch artist learning to see to a restored poet returning to Weimar results from a discovery of the immanent character of language, an immanence that extends to the conjunction of “Schale” und “Kern” or form and content. Goethe’s discourse is unable to sustain a distinction between inner/outer that would allow for enough stability to apprehend an object. Goethe, in other words, stubbornly holds onto such a distinction only to challenge it. His own language becomes the “Gegenwirkung” [“counter effect”] that is the object of observation. This is not simply a cue taken from Twombly’s painting in six parts. The following quote from the Paralipomena zur Farbenlehre confirms an intimate relationship between seeing and speaking, image and word: “[. . .] das Auge vernimmt und spricht. [. . .] Die Totalität des Innern und Äufleres wird durchs Auge vollendet” [“(. . .) the eye perceives and speaks. (. . .) The totality of the inner and the outer is completed by the eye”] (WA II 5/ii: 12). If seeing compels the eye to speak, its effect, language, cannot be said to do much for seeing. In its attempt to grasp totality, language effects a counterforce to

304 a seeing that otherwise grasps only abysses; it prevents seeing from reproducing itself endlessly or from seeing itself. By denying or counteracting its imagined origin, language, moreover, is always only a form of erasure that invites totality since perception of erasure requires a seeing of the dual action of inscription and erasure. What Twombly’s fifth image also touches upon is how language posits what seeing cannot abide. In a letter to Sömmerring from 1786 Goethe writes: “[A]ber es läßt sich nach meiner Vorstellungsart nur sehr schwer und vielleicht gar nicht beweisen dass sie [die Idee] wirklich mit der Objecten übereinkommen und mit ihm zusammentreffen müsse” [“(A)ccording to my manner of imagining things, it is very difficult to prove that the idea really does coincide and join with the objects”] (WA IV 11: 175). The shift in Goethe’s own “Vorstellungsart” from seeing to writing cannot align itself with the idea. What seeing produces is the site of its own writing – “Alles ist Blatt”; a difference confirms the unity of the idea in the form of something that is out of focus. Since there seems to be no means to overcome this gap and since it seems to re-produce itself ever anew, one is tempted to submit that the idea and the form can never align themselves with each other so much so that the latter is an “Urphänomenon”. And the idea is not “wirklich” [“actually”] except in the form of a misalignment which misleadingly suggests a distinction between “Kern und Schal” [“core and shell”]. Even if we could assert, in keeping with Twombly’s images, that language arises from the reading that attempts to close that gap, there is no guarantee, as Twombly suggests, that this language is anything other than a form of self-inscription as well. We also have to concede that the possibility exists of a gap in the eye itself – one between its sun-like and ink-like characters. Might that not be the form of a scribble? Stated otherwise, if we return to the above quote from the Paralipomena to consider the omitted sentence: “In dem Auge spiegelt sich von außen die Welt, von innen der Mensch” [“In the eye is mirrored from without the world; from within, the person”], it becomes clear that totality is a product of self-refraction that relies on an inadequate “manner of imagining things”. But this inadequacy suggests an adequation of inner and outer, a totality that gives rise to an idea. In the final analysis that idea can only be language, the language that the inklike character of the eye speaks, which in turn is the sign system of nature. At the very least, it is the potential for language; everything can be leaf or folio only insofar as everything has the potential to receive script.39 Learning to see

39

As Agamben points out, potentiality also implies non-potentiality or the potential not-to-be. That could also explain the erasure of the fifth canvas; it is an expression of this dual potentiality or a marker of its potential not-to-be. Potentialities. P. 179.

305 double, to see, in fact, “counter-effects” not only produces but also necessitates language.

Goethe the Scribbler The necessary emergence of language becomes all the more compelling if we return to Twombly’s images and consider them in terms of Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre. Didaktischer Teil. The first four of Twombly’s images can be considered studies in color. If an actual object is the subject of these images – and Goethe in Italy would seem to qualify as both subject and object – that object is only available in shifts or double shifts in perspective. The frame is altered, vertically and horizontally. That can be called a change in dimensions. But another shift, one in color, also occurs. Images two and four, in fact, are the same dimensions which allows for detection of the subject. A pastiche of color in crayon has a readable outline that is the same in both. As we know, the patch of color descends diagonally. What is not the same is the color palette. In the first shades of brown predominate; in the latter, shades of blue. Both of these palettes are visible in the first image of the series which has no discernible shape save for that offered by shifts in color highlighted by shifts of light. The unreadable shape of Goethe proceeds to assume shape only in shifts of color, a play of light and dark. The form that takes shape perdures because the repetition of colors changes with each repetition. If we accept Goethe’s assertion that one color calls forth its polar opposite (“Wirkung” and “Gegenwirkung”) (HA 13: 325), the form that is perceived is that produced by the automatic movement of color. The irrepressible movement of color gives rise to form. That is the law of nature, which Goethe avers several times in the opening pages of the Zur Farbenlehre: “[D]ie ganze Natur offenbare sich durch die Farbe” [“(A)ll of nature manifests itself through color”] (HA 13: 323). Or, color is “die Natursprache” (HA 13: 315). The play of colors, whereby one calls forth its opposite, is nature’s way of finding its way. But there is something dis-cursive about this journey, which permits Goethe to speak of color as language. If that language is a form, it is subject to a series of shifts, as Twombly reminds us, in its dimensions. A shift in colors produces a shift in the size of the object. Those shifts, in turn, produce what Goethe calls a record of effects: “Wirkungen werden wir gewahr, und eine vollständige Geschichte dieser Wirkungen umfaßte wohl allenfalls das Wesen jenes Dings” [“What we perceive are effects, and a complete record of these effects ought to encompass that thing’s inner nature”] (HA 13: 315). In the context of Goethe in Italy that record is the form of a travel journal, since the subject is marked or perceived only in stations or stages such as a painting in six parts. The “inner nature” is effectively “Goethe in Italy”. Language of some sort is summoned to help nature find its way. Or as Heine ironically remarked, “Die Natur wollte wissen, wie sie aussieht, und sie erschuf Goethe” [“Nature wanted to

306 know how it looked, so it created Goethe”].40 Goethe is not so much an effect of nature; but the effect nature summons to mark its stations or to recover its language. The notion of difference referred to earlier can be illustrated more effectively by turning to the organization of Zur Farbenlehre. If there is anything certain about Goethe’s theory of colors, it is that writing about looking at colors is as unstable as the colors themselves. The introduction asserts: “Wir fanden dreierlei Erscheinungsweisen, dreierlei Arten von Farben oder, wenn man lieber will, dreierlei Ansichten derselben” [“We have three ways, three types of color, or if you prefer, three distinguishable aspects of color”] (HA 13: 325). Ways, types and aspects sponsor in turn a tripartite taxonomy of color into physiological, physical, and chemical whose distinguishing marks are in some measure temporal: ephemeral, transient but lingering, and constant over long periods (HA 13: 325). This penchant for tripartite divisions persists throughout the text. At the end of the section concerning pathological colors, Goethe remarks that “wilde Nationen” [“primitive peoples”], uneducated peoples, and children have a strong preference for vivid colors; animals are enraged by certain colors; and cultivated people avoid vivid colors entirely (HA 13: 359). This last set of distinctions, or rather their underlying unity is difficult to perceive. Where an animal’s outrage places it on the continuum that moves from uneducated and primitive to cultivated is not clear. More than reveal a pathology for speaking in threes, these taxonomies point to the impossibility of the dual law producing a third term that joins the opposing terms in a symmetrical structure that would allow for a clear representation of that law or inner nature. That is what arguably happens throughout the text. The three parts or types of colors are supplemented by a fourth wherein general principles are offered. The ability to reach some form of unity, or as Goethe writes, “einen geschlossenen Kreis” [“a closed circle”] is the result of “bestimmen”, “sondern”, “ordnen” [“defining, separating, and organizing”] the three kinds of color whereby each color has in turn its own temporal category (HA 13: 476). But the circle is not closed; rather, it is related to other phenomena in nature (HA 13: 476), which necessitates a fifth section: “Relationship to Other Fields”. Given the alleged universality of the principles derived in the first three sections and then summarized in the fourth, it is not surprising that this list is as broad as it is odd: Philosophy, Mathematics, Techniques of Dying, Physiology and Pathology, Natural History, and Tone. The seventh of these branches is notable because it seems to be in a different register, so much so that it is mentioned precisely because of its lack of relationship: “Wie zwei Flüsse, die auf Einem Berge

40 Heine, Heinrich: Sämtliche Werke. Düsseldorfer Ausgabe. Ed. by Manfred Windfuhr. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe 1973. P. VII 1: 61.

307 entspringen, aber [. . .] in ganz entgegen gestezte Weltgegenden laufen, so daß auf dem beiderseitigen ganzen Wege keine einzelne Stelle der andern verglichen werden kann, so sind Farbe und Ton”. [“Color and tone are like two rivers which arise on a single mountain but (. . .) flow differently through completely opposite regions, so that no two points are comparable”] (HA 13: 491). This lack of relationship, nonetheless, points to a higher unity that serves as the basis for part six, “Sensory-Moral Effects of Color”. The simile that posits their differences links them to a single mountain, which is, it would seem, the source of sensory-moral effects. Twombly’s descending images illustrate the direction pursued by color. Tone would thus be on the other side of the image. But it cannot be that far removed from color, as the following descriptions make evident: “Das Blaue gibt uns ein Gefühle von Kälte” [“Blue brings a feeling of cold”] (HA 13: 497). “Die Farben von der Minusseite sind Blau, Rotblau und Blaurot. Sie stimmen zu einer unruhigen, weichen und sehnenden Empfindung”. [“The colors on the minus side are blue, red-blue, and blue-red. They bring an anxious, tender, longing”] (HA 13: 497). Tone is implicated in this new dimension of color, which leads Goethe to remark toward the end of that section: “Man würde nicht mit Unrecht ein Bild von mächtigem Effekt mit einem musikalischen Stücke aus dem Durton, ein Gemälde von sanftem Effekt mit einem Stücke aus dem Mollton vergleichen”. [“We would be justified in drawing a comparison between a picture with a powerful effect and a musical work in a major key, or a painting with a gentle effect and a musical work in a minor key”] (HA 13: 515). The mountain that serves as a means to visualize the unity of the two must also be related to the moral realm, since it is color’s – and we can surmise tone’s – ability through mediation to effect man’s inner nature that establishes its “direct connection with the moral realm” [“unmittelbar an das Sittliche anschließt”] (HA 13: 494). But like the mountain the moral realm is an effect of the eye seeking to posit harmony and totality. That totality, in fact, is the eye seeking to present to itself a totality of colors that it can never find presented in any object (HA 13: 501). What it can hope to find is “die Summe seiner eigenen Tätigkeit als Realität entgegenkommt” [“the result of its own activity standing before it as reality”] (HA 13: 502). It does so by looking around whereby next to every colored space it discovers a colorless one in which it can produce the complementary color (HA 13: 502). The balance or harmony produced by the eye, however, is out of key; it registers as tone even though tone moves in the “completely opposite direction”. By the end of the section Goethe thus finds, as we have noted, using tone or tonality indispensable for describing the effects of color. Tone makes up for what reality cannot furnish. What the eye cannot present to itself is on the other side of a mountain that offers itself to the eye in the form of the language of tonality, or as ink: “Jedoch wie schwer ist es, das Zeichen nicht an die Stelle der Sache zu setzen, das Wesen immer lebendig vor sich zu

308 halten und nicht durch das Wort zu töten”. [“How difficult it is, though, to refrain from replacing the thing with its sign, to keep the object alive before us instead of killing it with the word”] (HA 13: 492). In Twombly’s fifth image, the one which eliminates color, the erasure of “Goethe in Italy” is not only the palimpsest or pentimento of tone but also a record of color dying to express itself. This colorless language is in every sense of the word a formal one, which for Twombly is a scribble. For Goethe it is a language that carries no reminder of its origin (HA 13: 256). Oddly enough, that language is found in the “names” “gelb, blau, rot, grün” [“yellow, blue, red, green”] (HA 13: 256). If language’s colorlessness, like a scribble, functions “ohne etwas spezifisches hinzudeuten” [“without hinting of anything specific”], it thus conveys “das Allgemeinste der Farbe der Einblidungskraft” [“the most general quality of color to our power of imagination”] (HA 13: 256). Language in exile from its origin – “Goethe in Italy”, for example – is the best thing color can do for itself. And that is the particular advantage, according to Goethe, of German. That is to say, learning to see in Italy – or in this instance, learning to see colors in Italy – leads Goethe to discover a particular character of German, and, as we know, that discovery becomes the language of German Classicism. What I have argued in this paper is that Twombly’s serial painting lends a new dimension to the record Goethe himself left of his travels in Italy. Learning to see not only gives way to poetry, but the experiments in seeing, or the “pure” sight that Goethe acquired in Italy, generate as well a language for which German, according to Goethe, is particularly appropriate. The particular immanence of a language that gives no indication of its origin is a primal one, particularly in the form of a scribble. Moreover, it is just what color calls for, if we are to present “the most general quality of color to our imagination” and not just the eye’s ceaseless production of complementary colors. Of course, one still has to strike the right tone. That perhaps was Werther’s problem, when he celebrated his inability to produce even the slightest line: “Ich könnte jetzt nicht zeichnen, nicht einen Strich, und bin nie ein größerer Mahler gewesen als in diesen Augenblicken” [“At this moment I am unable to draw, not even a line, and yet I have never been a greater artist as in these moments”] (WA I 19: 7). What Werther lacks, even if he celebrates that lack, is the power to imagine form or the ability to strike the right tone, for it is hardly a sign of either to boast about being in possession of something one does not possess. The inner world to which he famously retreats and of which the eye tracking its own movements must be a part lacks as well a language to protect against the abyss of seeing. “[M]eine vorstellende Kraft is so schwach, alles schwimmt und schwankt so vor meiner Seele, daß ich keinen Umriß packen kann, aber ich bilde mir ein, wenn ich Thon hätte [. . .], so wollte ich’s wohl herausbilden” [“My power of imagination is so weak; everything swims and sways so in front of me that I cannot even manage an outline, but I imagine that if I had clay (Thon), I could

309 well make something of it”] (WA I 19: 57). Werther is unable to trace or produce a trace of that which seeing catches of itself or of that which we have come to understand as the palimpsest of tone.41 What Goethe acquires in Italy and what allows him to overcome Werther is a mimetic faculty for scribbling in the proper tone.42

41

The two meanings of “Ton” [“clay” and “character of sound”] are more than convenient here. The one is a palimpsest of the other. The clay “Ton” is related to a drying out or “dichtwerden”, which is to say that the sober Werther/Goethe of Italy acquires the ability to write poetry (“verdichten”). In contrast to the clay “Ton” the musical one is of Latin origin and thus more accessible in Italy. 42 Werther is in some respects a pre-occupation of the Italienische Reise. The most telling reference occurs when Goethe learns that a Milanese woman who has caught his attentions and whom he has been tutoring in English is engaged: “ ‘Es wäre wunderbar genug’, rief ich aus, ‘wenn ein wertherähnliches Schicksal dich in Rom aufgesucht hätte, um dir so bedeutende, bisher wohlbewahrte Zustände zu verderben’ ” [“ ‘It would be miraculous enough’, I cried out, ‘if a fate similar to Werther’s were to have sought you out in Rome in order to ruin for you conditions so well preserved until now’ ”] (WA I 32: 28). That the Milanese woman, and not Goethe, is soon stricken with a life-threatening illness is evidence of Goethe’s success in avoiding such a fate, even if it comes at the expense of another. His new-found survival instincts may also be the result of the self-referential structure of the passage (note the use of “dich”) or, in the jargon of this paper, in his ability to see himself see.

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III APPENDIX

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Notes on the Contributors Beate Allert, Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature and Chair of German in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Purdue University, 640 Oval Drive, West Lafayette IN 47907-2039, USA. Among her recent publications are: “Grenzen der Anschaulichkeit bei Lessing”. In: Lessings Grenzen. Ed. by Ulrike Zeuch. Wolfenbüttel 2005. “Romanticism and the Visual Arts”. In: The Literature of German Romanticism. Ed. by Dennis Mahoney. Rochester 2004. “Reconceptualizing a Pictorial Turn: Lessing, Hoffmann, Klee and Elements of Avant-Garde Language”. In: Reconceptions: New Ecologies of Knowledge. Ed. by Marsha Meskimmon and Martin Davies. London 2003. “Goethe and the Visual Arts”. In: The Cambridge Companion to Goethe. Ed. by Lesley Sharpe. Cambridge 2002. “Hidden Aspects of Goethe’s Writings on Color, Seeing, and Motion”. In: Bodies of Resistance: New Phenomenologies of Politics, Agency, and Culture. Ed. by Laura Boyle. Evanston IL 2001. Richard Block, Assistant Professor in the Germanics Department at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-3130, USA. He is also a member of the Program of Jewish Studies as well as the Program in Criticism and Theory at the University of Washington. He is the author of the forthcoming book The Spell of Italy: Vacation, Magic, and the Attraction of Goethe. Detroit 2006. Heide Crawford, Assistant Professor of German at the University of Kansas, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, 1445 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS 66045, USA. She specializes in eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury literature, as well as the vampire and the occult sciences in German literature and film. She has published “The Cultural-Historical Origins of the Literary Vampire in Germany”. Journal for Dracula Studies (October 2005), and is working on a monograph: Aesthetics and the Vampire: The Origins of the Modern Literary Vampire in 18th-Century German Literature. Further research interests include the representation of secret societies in literature during the eighteenth century and the effect of German Idealism and aesthetics on contemporary literary trends such as the vampire. Melissa Dabakis, Professor of Art History in the Department of Art History at Kenyon College, Gambier OH, 43022, USA. She is currently addressing the intersection of gender, creativity, and expatriation in her study of American

314 women sculptors in Rome entitled, The American Corinnes: Women Sculptures and the Eternal City, 1850-1876. She is author of Visualizing Labor in American Sculpture: Monuments, Manliness and the Work Ethic. Cambridge 1999. Margaretmary Daley, Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature and Director of Women’s Studies at Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland OH, 44106, USA. Her current research examines gender, genre, and pathos in French and German fictions of the long eighteenth century. She is author of a critical study of non-fictional epistolarity, Women of Letters. Columbia SC 1999. Eric Hadley Denton is Senior Fulbright Professor of German and American Studies at the Universität Regensburg, 2005–2006, and lives in Berlin. He has published on Goethe, on the eighteenth century, on theater, and on performance theory – and has recently worked as a radio correspondent for Radio Eins Berlin. His first book, The Pathos of Character: Goethe, Performance, 1775 is forthcoming from Bucknell University Press. He is currently working on his next book, Back-Stage Germany, which consists of interviews with playwrights that follow their plays from conception through rehearsal and production process to premiere and public reception. Mary Helen Dupree, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of German and Slavic Studies at Rice University, 307 Rayzor Hall, MS-32, Box 18, Houston, TX 77005-1892, USA. Her research interests are concentrated on questions of gender and theatrical performance in late eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury German literature and culture. Her dissertation, “Playing Against Type: ‘Actress-Writers’ in German Literature and Culture, 1775–1815” (defended at Columbia University 2006), traces the response to contemporary images of the actress in the works of Marianne Ehrmann, Sophie Albrecht, and Elise Bürger. Currently, she is investigating the significance of the Deklamations-Konzert in the literary culture of the early nineteenth century. Catriona MacLeod, Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania, 745 Williams Hall, Philadelphia, PA 191046305, USA. She has published articles on: figurations of androgyny in the writings of Goethe, Winckelmann, and Friedrich Schlegel; sculpture and fashion in Weimar Classicism; and inter-art relations in the prose of Clemens Brentano. She is also author of the book Embodying Ambiguity: Androgyny and Aesthetics from Winckelmann to Keller. Detroit 1998. Evelyn K. Moore, Associate Professor of German in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio 43022,

315 USA. She has published on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. She has been working on Goethe and visual culture from the framework of the Lacanian gaze in a book entitled The Eye and the Gaze: Goethe, Lacan and Visuality. She has published The Passions of Rhetoric: Lessing and the German Enlightenment. Dordrecht 1993. She is also Co-Editor with Ellie Ragland of (Re)-turn: A Journal of Lacanian Studies. Clark S. Muenzer, Professor of German and Chair of the German Department, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, 1409 Cathedral of Learning, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. He is currently completing a monograph on the role of monuments in Goethe’s reconstruction of knowledge. His research includes a book on Goethe’s novels: Figures of Identity: Goethe’s Novels and the Enigmatic Self. University Park and London 1984. He edited the volume Remembering Goethe: Essays for the 250th Anniversary. Modern Language Studies 31 (2001). With Helmut Koopmann, he co-edited Wegbereiter der Moderne: Festschrift für Klaus Jonas. Tübingen 1990. Articles on Goethe include: “At the Edge of Chaos: Goethe and the Question of the Global”. In: Literatur im Spiel der Zeichen: Festschrift für Hans-Vilmar Geppert. Ed. by Werner Frick, Fabian Lampart, and Bernadette Malinowski. Tübingen: 2006. Elliott Schreiber, Assistant Professor of German Studies in the Department of German Studies, Vassar College, Box 256, 124 Raymond Avenue, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604, USA. His publications include: “Tainted Sources: The Subversion of the Grimms’ Ideology of the Folktale in Heinrich Heine’s Der Rabbi von Bacherach”. In: The German Quarterly 78.1 (2005); and “Pressing Matters: Karl Philipp Moritz’s Models of the Self in the Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde”. In: Goethe Yearbook 11 (2002). Schreiber has also co-translated the work of the social theorist Niklas Luhmann. Patricia Anne Simpson, Associate Professor of German in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and German Coordinator at Montana State University, Bozeman. P. O. Box 172980, Bozeman, Montana 59717-2980, USA. She has published widely on German Romanticism, contemporary culture, and literary theory. Her articles and book chapters include: “Manche Menschen werden Brüder: Popular Music and New Fraternities”. German Politics and Society (Summer 2005); “The Syntax of Surveillance: The Language of Silence and Solidarity”. In: The Power of Intellectuals in Contemporary Germany. Ed. by Michael Geyer. Chicago 2001; and “Letters in Sufferance and Deliverance: The Correspondence of Bettina von Arnim and Karoline von Günderrode”. In: Bettina von Arnim: Gender and Politics. Ed. by Elke P. Frederiksen and Katherine R. Goodman. Detroit 1995. Simpson is author of the forthcoming study The Erotics of War in German Romanticism. Lewisburg 2006.

316 Astrida Orle Tantillo, Associate Professor of History and Germanic Studies and Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, UIC Department of Germanic Studies, MC 189, 601 S. Morgan Street, 1524 University Hall, Chicago IL 60607–7115, USA. She has written extensively on Goethe, including two books: The Will to Create: Goethe’s Philosophy of Nature. Pittsburgh 2002. Goethe’s Elective Affinities and the Critics. Columbia SC 2001.

Index The index contains the names of artists, writers, and scholars discussed in the main text of this volume. References to Goethe are too numerous to index, however, discussions of his important works are included under his entry. Ackermann, Charlotte 121 Ackermann, Konrad 119 Agamben, Giorgio 249 Albrecht, Sophie 111, 121, 122 Alexander, Czar of Russia 128, 153, 161 Altick, Richard D. 255–256, 261 Amrine, Frederick 18 Anna Amalia, Grand Duchess of Weimar-Eisenach 49, 51–53, 59–60, 169 Arndt, Ernst Moritz 16, 127, 129, 131, 143–153, 162 Arnim, Achim von 139 Arnim, Bettina von 139 Attila the Hun 146 Augustus the Strong 41 Augustus III 46

Boisserée, Sulpiz 81, 88 Böttger, Johannes 41 Böttiger, Karl August 47–48 Bouchardon, Edme 252 Boyle, Nicholas 38 Brentano, Clemens 88, 90 Brewster, David 18, 236, 237 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 40 Buchhorn, Ludwig 142 Bürger, Christa 114 Bürger, Elise (Marie Christine Elise Hahn) 111–120, 122–125 Bürger, Gottfried August 112, 115–119, 122–123 Burtin, Dan 281, 283–284 Busch, Werner 76, 87–88, 90 Butler, Judith 133, 135

Bahrd, Karl Friedrich 170 Bakhtin, Michael 239, 241, 259–262 Barthes, Roland 297 Batoni, Pompei 27, 105–107 Baumeister, Willi 90 Beall, Karen F. 252, 254 Becker-Neumann, Christiana 111 Beethoven, Ludwig van 82–83, 86 Bell, Mathew 301 Benda, Georg 113, 118 Benjamin, Walter 43, 90 Bertuch, Friedrich Justin 47–49, 51 Beuys, Joseph 90 Beyer, Wilhelm 53 Bieber, Margarete 240 Bisanz, Rudolf 75 Blackwell, Jeannine 93 Böhme, Jacob 78

Canova, Antonio 40, 48 Carl August, Duke of Weimar 51, 169, 182, 296 Carl I of Braunschweig 49, 52 Carter, Rand 158 Catherine the Great 134 Cavaceppi, Bartolomeo 53 Caylus, Compte de 252 Charmides 178, 191 Chatwin, Bruce 41–43 Chézy, Helmina von 117 Chodowiecki, Daniel 168 Christina, Queen of Sweden 32 Correggio (Antonio Allegri da) 101, 107–109, 182 Cranach, Lucas 259 Crary, Jonathan 16–18 Craske, Matthew 140

318 Dähling, Heinrich 142 Dannecker, Heinrich 53 Dante Alighieri 261, 276 David, Jacques-Louis 16, 136–138 da Vinci, Leonardo 108 Desoches, Jean 45, 49, 51, 67–68 de Stael, Madame (Germaine Necker) 39 Diderot, Denis 100–101 di Rossi, Giovanni 34 Doell, Friedrich Wilhelm 45, 54 Ducret, Siegfried 53 Dürer, Albrecht 117 Eckermann, Johann Peter 123 Ehrmann, Marianne 111, 115–116 Ehrmann, Theophil Friedrich 115 Ekhof, Konrad 119 Ernst II, Duke of Saxony-Gotha 136 Falconet, Étienne-Maurice 45 Fechner, Gustav 18 Feilner, Simon 62 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 139, 150, 283 Fischer-Lichte, Erica 241, 249 Flaxman, John 43, 45, 48 Forster, Georg 100–101 Franceschini, Marcantonio 104–105 Franz I 153, 161 Frederick the Great 42, 154, 283 Freud, Sigmund 230, 234 Friedrich, Caspar David 11–12, 14, 73–74, 76–79, 86–92, 143 Friedrich Wilhelm III 128, 153–155, 158, 161 Fulford, Tim 149 Fussli, Johann Heinrich 168 Garrick, David 53, 250 Gellert, Christian Fürchtegott 53 Genelli, Hans Christian 45 Genghis Kahn 146 Giesz, Ludwig 45, 49 Gleim, Johann Wilhelm Ludwig 122 Goethe, August 119 Goethe, Catharina Elisabeth 262

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von “Aus Goethes Brieftasche” [“Straight from Goethe’s Writing Portfolio”], 262–263; Beiträge zur Optik [Essays on Optics], 225; “Betrachtungen und Aphorismen” [“Observations and Aphorisms”], 222; Briefe aus der Schweiz [Letters from Switzerland], 181–185; Campagne in Frankreich [Campaign in France], 170, 180–181, 189; Dichtung und Wahrheit [Writing and Truth], 166, 170, 187, 254; Des Epimenides Erwachen [Epimenides’Awakening], 16, 128–129, 136, 152, 154–157, 159–162; “Erläuterungen zu dem aphoristischen Aufsatz ‘Die Natur’” [“Commentary to the Aphoristic Essay ‘Nature’”], 267; Farbenlehre [Theory of Colors], 75, 80, 223–234, 268–271, 274, 294–295, 297–298, 302–303, 305–308; Faust, 21, 74, 85, 87–91, 246–247, 265, 272–277, 284; Iphigenie auf Tauris [Iphigenia in Tauris], 13, 36, 112, 135, 138–139; Die italienische Reise [Italian Journey], 12, 46, 210, 289–293, 296, 299; Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern [The Festival in Plundersweilern], 20, 239, 241–242, 246–250, 256–257, 262; “Kunst und Handwerk” [“Art and Handicraft”], 46; Die Leiden des jungen Werthers [The Sorrows of Young Werther], 193–208, 217, 308–309; “Maximen und Reflexionen” [“Maxims and Reflections”], 280; “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” [“The Metamorphosis of Plants”], 21, 279–282, 284–288; Morphologische Hefte [Morphological Notebooks], 220, 234; Die natürliche Tochter [The Natural Daughter], 157; “Notizen aus Italien” [“Notes from Italy”], 299; “Die organische Entzweiung”

319 [“The Organic Division”], 298; “Parapilomena zur Farbenlehre” [“Parapilomena to the Theory of Colors”], 303–304; “Parapilomena zur Morphologie” [“Parapilomena to the Morphology”], 299–300; “Physikalische Vorträge Schematisiert” [“Lectures on Physics Schematized”], 267–268; “Römische Elegien” [“Roman Elegies”], 285; “Ruysdale als Dichter” [“Ruisdael as Poet”], 89; Satyros, 258, 259, 260; “Die schönen Künste in ihrem Ursprung, ihrer wahren Natur und besten Anwendung, betrachtet von J. G. Sulzer” (Rezension) [“The Fine Arts in their Origins, their true Nature and best Application” (review)], 222; “Das Sehen in subjektiver Hinsicht von Purkinje” [“Contributions to an Understanding of Sight in a Subjective Sense”], 235–237, 292; “Siebente Proposition. Sechstes Theorem” [“Seventh Proposition. Sixth Theory”], 302; “Studie nach Spinoza” [“Study in Light of Spinoza”], 219, 220, 222; “Über die Spiraltendez der Vegetation” [“On the Spiral Tendency of Vegetation”], 295; “Über Kunst und Altertum” [“On Art and Antiquity”], 86; “Ultimatum”, 302; “Das Unternehmen wird entschuldigt” [“The Enterprise Justified”], 271–272; “Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt” [“The Experiment as Mediator of Object and Subject”], 291–292; “Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären” [“Essay Explaining the Metamorphosis of Plants”], 285, 295, 298, 299–301; “Vorarbeiten zu einer Physiologie der Pflanzen” [“Preliminary

Notes for a Physiology of Plants”], 298, 300, 301; Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre [Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship], 112; Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre [Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years], 221, 233 Gonzaga, Prince 33 Gordon, George (Lord Byron) 76 Gottsched, Johann Christoph 241 Grandy, David 281, 283–284 Greenblatt, Stephen 112 Gustafson, Susan E. 71 Hamilton, Gavin 27 Hampe, Karl Friedrich 142 Haskell, Francis 68 Hassan, Karim 152 Haydn, Joseph 283 Heffernan, James 102–103 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 11, 77 Heine, Heinrich 305–306 Heinse, Wilhelm 96, 101 Heisenberg, Werner 18 Helmholtz, Hermann von 18 Herder, Caroline 203–205 Herder, Johann Gottfried 13, 41–42, 45, 53, 57–58, 65, 70, 167, 280, 283 Hewetson, Christopher 33, 40 Hillebrand, Bruno 196 Hoffemeister, Gerhart 76 Homer 102 Honour, Hugh 51 Horace 34 Howard, Luke 87 Hufeland, Gottlieb 119 Iffland, August Wilhelm 128 Imhof, Amalie von 111 Jagemann, Caroline 111–112 Jameson, Fredric 129, 239, 247 Jay, Martin 18 Juillet, Jacques 252–253

320 Kandinsky, Wassily 302 Kändler, Johann Joachim 45, 53, 58 Kalckreuth, General Field Marshall Count 155 Kant, Immanuel 150, 197, 205, 216–217, 283 Kauffmann, Angelika 11–13, 25–30, 32–36, 38–40, 131–136, 138, 154 Kirms, Franz 118–119 Klauer, Gottlieb Martin 49, 53–54, 63 Klee, Paul 90 Kleist, Heinrich von 88, 90 Klischnig, Karl Friedrich 204–205, 208 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb 119, 122, 283 Knebel, Karl Ludwig von 169, 181 Körner, Theodor 151 Kosegarten, Gotthard Ludwig 78 Kuzniar, Alice 186 Lacan, Jacques 166, 183, 186, 189–191 Landucci, Teresa Bandettini 39 Lavater, Johann Caspar 18–19, 165–182, 185–191 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 11, 19, 41, 43, 45, 53–54, 56, 58–59, 68, 70–71, 97, 197, 206–207, 241, 250–252, 283 Levey, Michael 135–137 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph 11, 16, 169, 172, 178, 180, 194 Lips, Johann Heinrich 168 Lichtenstern, Christa 90 Livy 198 Löwy, Michael 102 Lück F. J. 243 Luise, Queen of Prussia 140–141, 155 Luplau, Anton Carl 61 Maria Theresia, Empress 134 Mattenklott, Gert 180 Maurer-Schmook, Sybelle 249 Melchior, Johann Peter 53 Mendelssohn, Moses 53, 205 Mengs, Raphael 29, 53, 100, 103, 108

Metastasio, Pietro 33 Metella, Caecilia 36 Metternich, Wolff 63, 68 Michaelis, Johann Benjamin 20, 239, 242–247, 262–264 Mildenberger, Hermann 133–135 Milton, John 53, 261 Mitchell W. J. T. 109 Moffit, John F. 37 Moore, Henry 90 Moritz, Karl Philipp 19, 193–217 Möser, Justius 241 Moser, Mary 29 Mosse, George 143 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 85, 283 Nägele, Reiner 234 Napoleon (Bonaparte) 128–129, 139, 143–144, 146–148, 157 Neefe, Christoph Gottlob 245 Newton, Isaac 11, 16–19, 75, 224–225, 228–229, 265, 283–284 Nicolai, Friedrich 53 Niedermeyer, Johann Josef 53 Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) 80 O’Donell, Countess 167 Oeser, Adam Friedrich 54, 254 Olimpica, Corilla (Maria Maddalena Morelli) 32–34, 39–40 Ostwald, Wilhelm 294 Paret, Peter 138 Penny, Nicholas 68 Petrarch, Francesco 33 Piranesi, Giovanni Battista 27 Pius VI, Pope 33 Pizelli, Maria Cuccovilla 30 Plessing, Victor Lebrecht 189 Plotke, Seraina 206 Plotinus 294, 294 Pollock, Jackson 297 Purdy, Daniel 65, 194–197 Purjinke, Jan 235–237 Pütz, Marinus 157

321 Quistorp, Charlotte 144 Reich, Theodor 168 Reichard, Johann Friedrich 245 Reiffenstein, Johann Friedrich 36 Reinwald, Wilhelm Friedrich Hermann 121 Retzsch, Moritz 87, 90 Reynolds, Sir Joshua 127 Richter, Karl 279 Richter, Friedrich Johann Paul (Jean Paul) 90 Riemann-Reyher, Marie Ursula 140 Riemer, Friedrich Wilhelm 71 Riese J. C. F. 45 Rilke, Rainer Maria 84, 90 Rombrich, Johann Christian 51, 55 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 176, 187, 190 Rubens, Peter Paul 108 Runge, Daniel 80–81, 86 Runge, Philipp Otto 11–12, 14, 16, 73–86, 90–91 Sachs, Hans 257 Sayre, Robert 102 Scaliger, Joseph Justus 249 Schadow, Gottfried 45, 139 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von 139 Schiller, Charlotte (née von Lengefeld) 59 Schiller, Friedrich 13 (Propyläen), 21, 39, 46, 59, 78–79 (Propyläen), 95, 113, 119–123, 181–181 (Horen), 264, 280, 283, 285 Schinkel, Karl Friedrich 15–16, 85, 127, 129, 131, 139–142, 154, 158 Schlegel, August Wilhelm 93–94, 97–98 Schlegel, Dorothea Mendelssohn Veit 93, 98 Schlegel, Friedrich 77–78, 94 (Athanäum), 95–98, 109, 122, 240 Schlegel-Schelling, Caroline 93, 96, 98 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 96 Schröter, Corona 111

Schubert, Carl Gottlieb 51–52, 60, 64, 69 Schulze-Kummerfeld, Karoline 111 Schummel, Johann Gottlieb 198 Schweitzer, Anton 245 Seidler, Louise 87 Shakespeare, William 53 Simmel, Georg 43 Smith, Anthony D. 127, 137, 143 Snodin, Michael 139 Socrates 172–173, 178, 191 Solger, Karl W. F. 139 Sömmering, Samuel Thomas von 304 Sophie Caroline Marie, Margräfin von Brandenburg-Bayreuth 59, 61 Spinoza 219–220, 222–225, 229, 231, 280 Stafford, Barbara 16 Steffens, Henrik 84 Stein, Charlotte von 111–112, 165, 169, 181 Stein, Karl Freiherr vom und zum 144 Steiner, Rudolph 18 Sterne, Lawrence 198 Stewart, Susan 66, 68 Stifter, Adalbert 43 Stimilli, David 294 Sulgher, Fortunata 39 Sulzer, Johann Georg 222 Tasso 33 Tschirnhausen, Ehrenfried 220 Tieck, Ludwig 80 Tischbein, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm 11–13, 25, 30–31, 36–38, 131–132, 134, 136–138, 154 Titian 182 Turner, William 16, 76 Twombly, Cy 21–22, 289–294, 296–297, 299–305, 307–308 Vaget, Hans 300 Vasari, Giorgio 100, 103 Vermeer, Johannes 142 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet de) 58 Vulpius, Christiane 119

322 Weber, Bernhard Anselm 152 Wedgewood, Josiah 46, 66 Weitsch, Pascha 53 Wellbery, David 142 West, Benjamin 127 Wieland, Christoph Martin 53, 122, 193, 261 (Der teutsche Merkur), 283 Wilson, Robert 242 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 11–13, 27, 41, 45, 47, 50, 53–55, 59, 70, 77, 91

Wolff, Emil 154 Woodmansee, Martha 196 Wurst, Karin 114 Zelter, Karl Friedrich 162, 293 Ziesenis, Johann Georg 49 Zimmermann, Johann Georg 165 Ziolkowski, Theodore 86 Zoffany, Johan 29 Zucchi, Giuseppe Carlo 29, 36, 38