Goethe and the sublime

Owachomo Bridge, in Natural Bridges National Monument (Utah)

In my last post I wrote about the mountains of the American Southwest (click on images for enlargement) and their difference from those of Europe, which were inspiration for theories of the sublime. This was an aesthetic category that arose in the 18th century, precipitated by the 1674 retranslation by Nicholas Boileau of the ancient treatise of Longinus. The reception of the sublime was itself part of the dismantling of normative poetics in the 18th century. For Longinus, the sublime was a rhetorical category, and his treatise mapped the ways in which a poet or an orator could achieve the sublime style in order, as he wrote, to "transport" listeners.  "Our soul," he wrote, "is uplifted by the true sublime." He mentioned in particular three sources of elevated language that could achieve this effect: the formation of figures, noble diction, and dignified composition.

In "Von Deutscher Baukunst" of 1772, Goethe would seem to have taken lessons from Longinus. In the guise of a pilgrim visiting the cathedral at Strassburg, he portrayed himself as transported by the sight of this immense structure: "Anfangs ein Schauern, das uns überläuft, und sodann etwas dem Schwindel ähnliches, das uns oft nöthiget, die Augen von dem Gegenstande abzuwenden." By this time, the sublime was no longer principally an aesthetic category, as described by Longinus (and also by Bodmer), but was increasingly applied to natural wonders. Thus, Goethe used various adjectives to describe the cathedral that stressed its magnitude and irregularity, as if it were a huge natural wonder, rather than a man-made creation: Ungeheuer, groß/Größen, erhaben, königlich, Riesengeist, Würde, Macht, Koloß, Herrlichkeit, großen ... Maßen. By using naturalistic imagery, Goethe was relating the artist's products to God's creations of the natural world. Thus, the poet's creations are quasi-divine. Well, this was in the Sturm und Drang era, when Goethe felt inspired most intensely by his poetic Genius.

Canyon de Chelly, Arizona

Beginning in 1776, with his appointment to the Ilmenau mine commission, Goethe immersed himself in the study of geology and launched his scientific studies  He took his duties seriously, even visiting mines. It was an era of much interest in the origins of the earth, and Goethe began to develop his ideas on the subject of granite, which he considered to be the earth's"Urgestein." One outcome was "Über den Granit" in 1785, in which he again appears as a solitary traveler, this time confronting a monumental natural object. As in the Strassburg essay, he is apostrophic, addressing the granite formations as "euch ihr ältesten würdigsten Denkmäler der Zeit." As in "Von Deutscher Baukunst," he heaps up descriptive adjectives. In the case of the cathedral, Nature's hand guided the artist;  in the scheme of the earth's creation described in "Über den Granit," the creative function is all Nature's. Goethe concludes the essay by asserting that it is her principles that are the task of the scientist to comprehend.

This 1785 essay was a temporary relapse into the Sturm und Drang manner. In 1779, he and Carl August had traveled to Switzerland, journeying by horse over some dangerous mountain paths, but while the account of that journey indicate appreciation, marvel, even astonishment at what he sees, Goethe's equanimity in the face of these stupendous, and dangerous, phenomena was now supported by his recognition that they were not aberrations or the result of chaos or of undirected violent processes.  His thoughts concerning the sublime go hand in hand with geological-historical considerations about nature. Immersion in science fortified his conviction that, whatever the seeming disorder of the natural world, an unseen hand nevertheless operated according to eternal laws.

Hiking in Canyon de Chelly

Interestingly, this perception of purposefulness was already apparent to Goethe seven years earlier, at least to his literary stand-in, the pilgrim in "Von Deutscher Baukunst."  For him the disorienting feeling initially produced by the sublime object was likewise replaced with an equanimity that parallels the "hohes Gefuhl von ewiger Festigkeit" that Goethe experienced in the mountains of Switzerland. As he wrote in the earlier essay: "Deinem Unterricht dank ich's, Genius, daß mirs nicht mehr schwindelt an deinen Tiefen ..." Bodmer, in his writings on the sublime, also indicates that the use of one's understanding, including study and reflection, lessens one's apprehensions in the face of seemingly monstrous natural phenomena.

Goethe lived on the cusp of geological science. Today, of course, we know how the monumental geological formations were formed, and we also know that they were the result of violent processes. For instance, the very patch of land on which I am now writing was once part of a "supercontinent," which broke away about 200 million years ago due to tectonic movement of the earth's crust. Arizona began to rise due to similar forces about 60 million years ago. I just read the following in John McPhee's Basin and Range: "The sea is not all that responds to the moon. Twice a day the solid earth bobs up and down, as much as a foot." How would Goethe have responded to that?

The Sublime

Canyon de Chelly, Arizona

The aesthetic category of the sublime has interested me for some time. I have posted several times on the subject and also published an essay on Goethe and the sublime, which dealt with Goethe's earliest geological writings. In response to that essay, Glenn Most, a scholar from whose writings I have much profited, wrote me and asked why Bodmer did not appear in my references in that article. So, I plunged a bit deeper into the subject and investigated Bodmer's writings on the subject, which also led to an essay that appeared in the Goethe Yearbook. In both essays, mountains played a prominent role.

Goethe Girl in Monument Valley

Since that time I have encountered very different kinds of mountains from those that feature in European writings. For the second time I am visiting friends in northern Arizona. On the first visit two years ago we drove to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, and I also had an opportunity to see the red sandstone formations in Sedona. This past week we made a whirlwind trip to Monument Valley and Natural Bridges in Utah and Canyon de Chelly and the Petrified Forest in Arizona. (900 miles: glad to get out of the car at the end.) My friends agreed that there is something "alien" about these formations, as in "outer space." It is true that some Indian tribes have lived in them or in their vicinity, but they cannot be cultivated or farmed in the sense of agricultural communities, in contrast to their domestication in most parts of Europe.

West Mitten Butte in Monument Valley

One is amazed at the grandeur of the Southwestern mountains, especially when they appear in groups. Their otherworldly character comes perhaps from their isolated and overpowering presence, as they tower over a "landscape" lacking any evidence of human cultivation. Some 18th-century theorists of the sublime asserted that mountains, oceans, and other large natural phenomena were evidence of divine creation. Evidently the Indians in this part of the world found them sacred, yet it is difficult to imagine Adam and Eve walking or working in this landscape or being "stewards" of this creation. The fact that you can't DO anything with these mountains contributes to their sense of being alien. Thus, in the 19th century Westerners felt no compunction about building railroads through them (e.g., through the Petrified Forest) or mining them.

In my next post I will discuss Goethe and the sublime.

The starry skies above

Beethoven vor nächtlichem Sternenhimmel (Richard Pfeiffer)

The back problem continues today. Thus, another day on my back in bed, which has its positive side. It is rather meditative, because I don't get up and move around. Thank goodness I have a laptop. I have spoiled myself, for instance, allowing myself a second cup of tea in the afternoon. It is true that I can stand and walk, but sitting for any length of time is out of the question. Last evening I ventured out for a lecture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and am paying the price today.

In connection with the Beethoven string quartets being performed there, the Met has offered two lectures on Beethoven. The one last evening on Beethoven and the Romantic sublime was by Marsha Morton of the Pratt Institute. It was an excellent paper, but I am not sure what the general Met audience took away from the presentation, even if it was accompanied by slides: references to Wackenroder, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Kant, and Schiller's essay on the poetry of Friedrich von Matthisson are only a few of the names that flew around fast and furious.

In contrast, Edmund Morris's talk three days before on the effect of Beethoven's deafness on his late works was audience-friendly, with a lot of learning dished out in small doses and enlivened with audio clips and with Morris himself at the piano illustrating some of his points.

Nevertheless, both presentations helped me to understand why I find Beethoven's music, aside from the sonatas, so torturous to listen to. Morton concentrated on the dissonance, irregularity, bombast, and so on that characterize the aesthetics of the sublime in the late 18th and early 19th century. Early critics of Beethoven, finding him unlistenable, remarked on just these characteristics. Morton gave credit to E.T.A. Hoffmann, whose  essay on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony fashioned the new and appreciative reception of Beethoven.

Beethoven watches over Liszt's performance (Josef Danhauser, 1840)

It wouldn't be a contemporary talk if gender issues were not introduced, in particular the "masculine" qualities of the sublime (already discussed by Edmund Burke) and thus sublime music, according to Morton became more and more eroticized by the time of Liszt.

The title of Edmund Morris's talk was "The Roar That Lies on the Other Side of Silence," and he made a plausible case for the effect of Beethoven's early tinnitus and the drumming and roaring in his ears as deafness set in. According to the program, "Beethoven's most exquisite (or sometimes frightening) effects may have arisen from his deafness."

Well, one man's exquisite is another man's torture. When I first met Rick, my husband, he was part of a music group that met monthly to listen to music, with one person each time presenting new recordings. One of the members of the group, quite knowledgeable, nevertheless hated what she called "nervous music"; thus, the group didn't listen to music written after Schubert's death, 1828. Rick was more ecumenical. Toward the end he especially liked Mahler.

The final audio clip of Morris's presentation was the full recording of "Meeresstille," which Morris prefaced by noting that Goethe had not even responded after  Beethoven had sent him the score. I had to laugh at that, especially after hearing the recording. No doubt, I am one of those people who prefer pleasant (angenehme) music. I presume Goethe was also. As I wrote in an essay a few years ago, Goethe seems to have put the sublime behind him quite early, way before the Romantic writers took it up.

Picture credit: Beethoven Haus, Bonn; Objective Art