Goethe and Physiognamy

Sointula evening sky

Goethe Girl is again this summer on a small island in British Columbia. This marks a decade, after her first visit in 2013 to give a talk at a conference on “Utopian Thought in the 18th Century.” It is wonderfully quiet here, not to forget the beautiful skies, and I am able to concentrate on my various literary projects, which this summer includes rereading almost all the writings of Goethe up through 1775. Ergo, “the young Goethe,” which has always been my subject of interest.

Right now I am investigating Goethe’s contributions to the so-called Physiognomische Fragmente: zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe (PF) of Lavater, published in 1777, which proceeded from the assumption that facial features and body shapes were a key to an individual’s moral character. As I am learning from my research, Lavater brought back to life in the 18th century a physiognomic tradition stretching back centuries. Indeed, Aristotle had written on the physiognomy of animal skulls, a portion of which Goethe translated for the PF. According to Windows of the Soul: The Art of Physiognomy in European Culture, 1470–1780, by Martin Porter, physiognomy had during the Middle Ages formed a part of sermons based on passages of Scripture, and early books were dedicated to the discussion of the meaning of physiognomical passages in the Bible. According to Porter the astrologer and natural philosopher Hagecius ab Hajek, who served at the court of Rudolf II in the late 16th century, wrote that lines on the forehead were “vestiges of the impression of God.” Sir Thomas Browne likewise spoke of the “characters” to be found in the human face, hands, and forehead: “The finger of God hath left an Inscription upon all his works, not graphicall or composed of Letters, but of their severall formes.”

In the last quarter of the 15th century, Italian humanists Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola began translating Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, and Pythagoras, texts known as the Corpus hermeticum, and by the 17th century writers were attempting, according to Porter, “to reconcile and synthesize a dominant Christianity with Egyptian and pagan Neoplatonic philosophy.” Since this hermetic tradition was already known to Goethe before he encountered Lavater, it is perhaps not surprising that he joined forces with Lavater, assisting in PF’s publication as well as writing many of the “character assessments.”

The PF were controversial in their own day, and even some of Lavater’s acquaintances refused to be portrayed therein. Albrecht von Haller, for instance, the Swiss anatomist, wrote to Charles Bonnet, describing Lavater as a poet and placing no confidence in a man entirely so governed by imagination. Haller was of course a deeply devout man, but also a man of science, and it is interesting to consider that the rise of physiognomy in the Renaissance, its attempt to see a resemblance between “signifiers and things signified,” also coincided with investigations that sought to penetrate into the workings of nature. But, as Martin Porter notes, this resemblance was “far from the new geometry that Galileo had claimed was the language in which the ‘book of nature’ was written.’”

Whatever the case, what Goethe wrote in the PF bears looking at for what it tells us about Goethe. First off, all of his descriptions of the character of various subjects (Scipio, Titus, Tiberius, Brutus, Caesar) were drawn from his consultation of drawings, or, in the case of contemporaries, from silhouettes (Schattenrisse). In other words, not from direct encounter. While using the physiognomical vocabulary or grammar, Goethe was basically describing his perception of characteristics that, in turn, were the perception of an artist. Thus, his characterization of Titus : “Höchst edel und trefflich die Nase” (The nose is extremely noble and excellent). Of Caesar, he draws attention to “das verzogene, abgeschlappte Augenlid! der schwankende abziehende Mund! Im Ganzen eine eherne, übertyrannische Selbstigkeit” (the warped, worn-out eyelid! the faltering deducting mouth! All in all, an iron, overly tyrannical ego).

There are a few instance where he writes of less elevated individuals, for instance, of a “sehr kränkelnder, schwindsüchtiger, cholerischmelancholischer, einfältiger Schuster, …völlig ermangelnd an Leben und Quellgeist” (a very ailing, consumptive, choleric, melancholic, simple-minded shoemaker, utterly lacking in life and internal spirit). Pretty strong stuff.

At the same time, Goethe did recognize the subjective nature of his observations. In “Von den oft nur scheinbaren Fehlschlüßen des Physiognomisten,” he writes as follows: “Wie die Sachen eine Physiognomie haben, so haben auch die Urtheile die ihrige, und eben daß die Urtheile verschieden sind, beweist noch nicht, daß ein Ding bald so, bald so ist.” (Just as things have a physiognomy, so too with our judgments, and the very fact that judgments differ does not prove that a thing is sometimes this way, sometimes like that). He introduces the example of a book that portrays the joys and miseries of love in all its lively and manifold colors, a book that young people rave about, but that older people dismiss. Who is correct? No one! It is the role of the physiognomist to step in and remind opponents that words like excellent and terrible lead to “confrontation.” Everything is relative (verhältnismaßig) in the world. Only God know the relationship between things.

Sterbender Schmertz

It strikes me here that Goethe is expressing, avant la lettre, exactly what Kant wrote (in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View) about the subjectivity of “taste.” Herewith this quote from Porter: “Physiognomy is the art of judging what lies within a man, whether in terms of his way of sensing or of his way of thinking, from his visible form and so from his exterior.” Our reaction, however, is a matter of subjective judgment, by which we rationalize our pleasure or displeasure with men, and such a judgment “cannot serve as a guiding principle to Wisdom, which has the existence of man with certain natural qualities objectively as its end (which, is for us, quite incomprehensible) …” Kant does agree with the subtitle of Lavater's book, namely, that physiognomy had the potential for improving human relationships.

The drawing above (click to enlarge), “after Fusseli,” portraying the pain of a dying man (sterbender Schmerz),  again underlines the connection between Goethe, Lavater, and Fuseli, about which I have posted in recent months.