Henri Fuseli anew

Fuseli and Bodmer

Goethe Girl has been occupied with a couple of literary projects the past couple of months that kept me away from devoting as much time as I would like to Goethe and to this blog. But I have been saving up for a couple of weeks now a review in the New York Review of Books (4/20/23) of a book entitled Dinner with Joseph Johnson: Books and Friendship in a Revolutionary Age in which the Swiss artist Henry Fuseli (Heinrich Füessli) prominently features. Johnson was an English bookseller and befriended Fuseli after the latter's arrival in England in 1763. Considering that Goethe never met Fuseli, there are many posts on this site in which Fuseli and his work are mentioned. There were, after all, many links connecting Goethe and Fuseli. Goethe's first "foreign" travel, after all, was to Switzerland, where he met Bodmer, who had been Fuseli's mentor. If any reader wishes to know more about these connections, please enter "Fuseli" in the "Q" box at the top left, and you will be directed to quite a few posts.

Goethe's closest connection to Fuseli was through Johann Kaspar Lavater, a friend of Fuseli from Zurich. Both Lavater and Fuseli were fellow theology students, and the two were partners in the denunciation of a Swiss magistrate for his misdemeanors. It was a very celebrated affair that caused the magistrate to be condemned and exiled from Zurich, but since such youthful actions might affect their own future in the canton, they both undertook an educational tour of German lands in 1763, accompanied by Johann Georg Sulzer, a friend of Bodmer. In Berlin, Fuseli met the English ambassador at the Prussian court, and headed off to England with him. Lavater, meanwhile, through Sulzer's influence came in contact with individuals who (according to Goethe Handbuch 4/2) represented the leading theological, philosophical, and literary tendencies, among others Klopstock and Mendelssohn, Gellert and Gleim.

Lavater, Goethe, & Basedow

Lavater returned eventually to Switzerland, and by 1772 he was a well-known author outside his homeland with his Aussichten in die Ewigkeit (speculation re eternity), which Goethe reviewed in the Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen that year; skeptically, according to Goethe Handbuch. In the same year, Lavater's small volume on physiognomy was reviewed in FGA by Johann Georg Schlosser. Goethe's own small tract, Briefe des Pastors zu *** an den Pastor zu ***, prompted Lavater to write to Goethe. It was in the summer of 1774 that they met and, for a while, formed a firm friendship and even partnership in connection with the subject of physiognomy. Together with Johann Bernhard Basedow they made a journey down the Rhine and the Lahn. (Richie Robertson has written a nice story of their "unusual friendship.") The friendship, as such, went from hot to cold within a decade or so, but Goethe wrote a wonderful account of the trio and their Rhein-Lahn journey in Book 14 of his autobiography.

This post is supposed to be about Fuseli and has turned out to be about Lavater, about whom there are also plenty of posts on this blog. As I mentioned, both he and Lavater were students of theology in Zurich, but while Lavater remained dedicated to the religious calling, Fuseli was apparently more of a free thinker. By 1779, Fuseli was firmly ensconced in London, but he remained in correspondence with Lavater. As I have discovered from some online research, Fuseli produced not only the first English translation of Winckelmann's history of Greek art, but also a book by Lavater entitled "Aphorisms on Man." The last-named was illustrated by William Blake. The review mentions Fuseli's plan to create a series of thirty huge paintings on the works of John Milton, which would be reduced to book size to illustrate the edition. Fuseli's interest is this English writer must certainly be traced back to his Swiss roots, to Bodmer, whose translation of Paradise Lost  made Milton accessible to Germans. The book did not come to fruition, but Fuseli apparently opened a Milton Gallery in 1799. Fuseli liked to portray literary topics.

Lady Macbeth Walking in Her Sleep (1784)

In London Fuseli really became "English." He was a member of Joseph Johnson's own "club" (similar to that of the 1760s of Dr. Johnson, memorialized by Boswell), which included such eminences as Joseph Priestly, William Godwin, Tom Paine, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. That guest list indicates the changing times, politically and socially. Moreover, Fuseli's most famous painting, The Nightmare ("unnervingly sexy," according to NYRB reviewer Miranda Seymour) dominated the room in which they convened. Joseph Johnson's table include women as well, e.g., Anna Laetitia Barbauld and Mary Wollstonecraft. Fuseli must have been a very attractive man. The review points out that Wollstonecraft "became close enough to Fuseli to seek even to join the artist's marriage," a "bold suggestion," which Fuseli later claimed "was fiercely rejected by this wife." In 1792 Johnson and the Fuselis and Wollestonecraft terminated their plans to travel to France to observe the revolution after the news of the royal family's failure to escape the country, and Wollstonecraft, "anxious to snap the painful chain of association with Fuseli," traveled on her own to Paris, where she met "a charming but fickle adventurer," with whom she gave birth to her first child.

As per the review in the NYRB review, the encounter of Johnson and Fuseli had the "most enduring effect on Johnson's life." Fuseli took rooms at Johnson's premises already in 1766 and, at Johnson's death in 1809, he was, with his wife, Johnson's "devoted caregiver."

One can't help wondering what Fuseli's status would be today if he had remained in Switzerland. He is something of an in-between figure, despite his role in this important circle of early 19th-century British life as well as a member of the Royal Academy of Arts and a professor there. (Sir Joshua Reynolds was a friend.) The Freies Deutsches Hochstift in Frankfurt has the largest collection of his works in Germany, while Fuseli has featured prominently in various exhibitions in recent decades, e.g., at the Getty.  Even in Germany there has been only one biography in recent decades, and only two in the 20th century in English.

Images: Lavater, Goethe & Basedow; Lady Macbeth (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

Bodmer and world literature

Henry Fuseli, Satan Starting from the Touch of Ithuriel's Spear

A recent article of mine claimed J.J. Bodmer as a precursor of the philosophic discussion of the sublime in German letters. Despite the title of this post, I am not really claiming him as a forerunner of Goethe's concept of world literature. I came across a quotation by him today, however, that made me think of Goethe's use of the terms "commerce" and "trade" to describe intellectual exchange. Here is the quote from Bodmer, from the preface of the Neue kritische Briefe of 1746:

Der Verfasser will gerne für einen nützlichen Kaufmann angesehen seyn, der zu den vornehmsten europäischen Nationen gereiset ist, und bey ihnen kostbare Waaren von Witz und Kunst gesammelt hat, welche er izt nach Hause bringt, und seinen Landsleuten überliefert, ihrem einheimischen Bedürfniss damit zu Hülfe zu kommen.

The quote appears at the end of a very long article written by the American-German comparatist Louis Paul Betz on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Bodmer's birth on July 19, 1898. Betz is one of the comparatists I have been reading lately. Although Betz concedes that Bodmer made a major contribution to changing literary tastes in German letters, he lays to rest the notion that Bodmer was anti-French in any way. He describes the feud between Bodmer and Gottsched as part of the ongoing "Battle of the Ancients and Moderns." Even the treatise on the marvelous, Bodmer's defense of Milton's Paradise Lost against Voltaire's criticisms of the epic, contains no serious arguments. While defending the claims of "Phantasie" and challenging the insipid "reason" poetry of post-classical France (die nüchterne Verstandespoesie des nachklassischen Frankreichs), Bodmer fails here to be a literary pathbreaker. Instead, he contents himself with accusing Voltaire of "unverschämte Dreistigkeit" and "unverdaute Begriffe," without any true criticism.

Jacques-Louis David, The Anger of Achilles

Betz includes some wonderful quotes from Bodmer's attacks on Gottsched, which Betz calls "schonungslos" and "unerbittlich." Bodmer reveled in pointing out the shortcomings of Gottsched's translation of Racine's tragedy Iphigenia. As Betz writes, "Nicht genug kann er wiederholen, welcher Abgrund zwischen Original und Nachbildung liegt." And then, quoting Bodmer: "Die traurige Erfahrung anderer Poeten hätte ihn [Gottsched] lehren sollen, kein Original zu erkiesen, das seine Uebersetzng notwendig beschämen musste."

Betz does a very good job of portraying the overwhelming influence of French culture on Germany in the 18th century. His article is an example of what he himself asserted was the purpose of comparative literature, namely, to demonstrate the influence of writers of one country on writers of another. Unfortunately, one comes aways feeling that Bodmer did not have a single original literary insight (or, for that matter, a literary bone in his body); even when invoking the rights of the imagination, he was pleading with the arguments of French writers, in particular Dubos. The article confirmed a view that I presented in my article on Bodmer: it was through literature, through the writings of the best poets, not through experience, that one learned how to live properly. Read Molière if you wanted to know about people's motivations.

Fritz Strich, in his schema of the development of European literatures, makes the argument that Germany's "hour" had struck when French neoclassicism had played itself out and the literary Zeitgeist required an infusion of new life, which was provided by Romanticism. Bodmer (and Breitinger) was certainly the most important early mediator in this process, particularly in introducing the Germans to English letters (even if, according to Betz, he did not fully grasp Milton's greatness). Mediation, of course, is a central aspect of Goethe's concept of world literature. While Gottsched was urging German writers to model themselves on French writers, Bodmer's writings had the effect, in the end, in leading  Germans to create a "German" literature.

The Sublime, Again

In an essay written in 1746 Johann Jakob Bodmer distinguished between the sublime and our ordinary enjoyment of or delight in works of nature. Examples of the latter might be flowers or a rainbow or a running brook. One does not feel astonishment or marvel at such natural phenomena, writes Bodmer, although a reflective mind, aware of the beauty, greatness, and multiplicity of nature, is conscious of "the power and wisdom of their maker." The Creator, he continues, did not intend for us to live in a state of continuous enchantment or astonishment, however, but created nature to please and to instruct us. Of course, we all know folks (mostly in literature, I suspect) who exist in a state of rapture. Goethe's Werther lived on that plane, but Goethe himself came to reject Werther. As for works of art, they are of a lower order than nature's wonders. What is wondrous about them comes from being copies, the orginals of which (the Urbilder) are to be found in nature, and are valuable insofar as they resemble these.

If we look about the world, however, we discover works of nature and of man whose purpose does not seem to be to instruct or to delight, but that, instead, produce shock, terror, pity, and so on. Bodmer refers not simply to the usual sublime objects of 18th-century wonderment -- the Alps, the immensity of the starry skies above, the oceans -- but also certain great acts of humans. Most men, however, according to Bodmer, are not extraordinary and cannot be either good or evil in the highest degree. Every now and then, of course, one encounters people who depart from the ordinary rules and follow their own star, and one is amazed at their achievements.

I took notes on this treatise about a week ago, and, then, in the past two days, encountered two things, in the real world, that made me think about Bodmer's remarks.

The first was a very interesting documentary Rick and I watched, The Botany of Desire, based on a book by Michael Pollan. The film is about the relationship of humans to four "everyday plants": apples, tulips, cannabis, and potatoes. The idea is to link the natural history of the plant to human desires and to show the reciprocal relationship of plants and humans. The apple, for instance, originated in Kazakhstan, but has traveled around the world, playing an important role in the colonization of North America. Despite the efforts of Johnny Appleseed, very few of us get our apples straight from the orchard anymore or even from a local grower. Agro-business is the name of the game, and the result is what Pollan calls "monocultures": once there were dozens, maybe hundreds of varieties of apples, but nowadays the average American knows only two or three. Moreover, we can't really control nature only for our own purposes; for instance, overcultivated plants tend to fall prey to disease. Then, pesticides have to be introduced. Etc., etc.

Pollan's intention is to make people more aware of the things we take for granted, the ordinary beauties of nature of which Bodmer wrote. The subject has become much more complicated since the 18th century, but Pollan presents the subject in a very agreeable manner, not beating up on the giant conglomerates that bring flowers to our markets and French fries to our hungry mouths. The scenes of the motorized carts speeding through warehouses after the Aalsmeer Flower Auction, sending out millions of flowers from Holland into the world daily, are truly impressive. (Dare I say that there is something "sublime" about this modern achievement?) Likewise, the Idaho farmers Pollan features in his vignette on potatoes are a normal American family, with kids, parents, and a grandfather, the kind of people who might have once run a farm that provided for people 100 miles around but now run an operation that feeds the world: their potatoes go into French fries in Bangkok and Caracas. So, Pollan's documentary was reminding us about what we have lost, the ordinary wonders of the natural world that were "second nature" to people of Bodmer's era.

Yes, the business of feeding people around the world, raising standards of living and health everywhere have at the same time led to a disenchantment of the world. The Times Literary Supplement of January 15 reviews a collection of short stories by Xiaolu Guo, Lovers in the Age of Indifference. They are about people who live "alone or lonely in tower blocks, council estates and gated communities, ... resigned to lives encircled by a 'concrete horizon' and among 'obedient trees.'" No doubt only a few years before they couldn't wait to get out of the rice paddies, to leave villages where they toiled day in day out and yet could barely fill their stomaches, and to go to the city.

The new place is not the one of enchantment and wonder they imagined. Even worse, at least as Xiaolu Guo writes, there is not even any of the ordinary beauty in Beijing that one could, at least, come to take for granted. As a person whose subject is "world literature," I don't know enough about this Chinese writer to know whether she is writing from her own experience, or whether she is simply imitating Western thematic conventions, of which the deep sense of fatigue with modern life is a big one.

Michael Pollan feels that same fatigue, but he still has a sense of wonder about the world and has sought to make us feel it, too. If you want to see real fatigue among some very privileged people, it's worth watching the "Special Features" that accompanies the movie The Botany of Desire. It features a panel discussion with Pollan and four bloviating West Coast academic types, who don't know how good their lives are. It's always amusing to watch a tenured professor drone on about the downside of "consumer culture."

Now, to my second experience, this time with the sublime. I was walking through Central Park this afternoon. On my iPod, Bryn Terfel was singing from his album Simple Gifts. This man is a genius of a singer, really beyond the achievements of ordinary mortals. One of his songs was truly expressive of the feeling of the sublime described by 18th-century writers. Here are the words:

O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the works thy hand hath made, I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder, thy power throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul, my savior God, to thee: "How great thou art, how great thou art."

Some classical music reviewers have called Terfel's rendition "sentimental," even "campy," a judgment that speaks volumes for our modern loss of a belief in the greatness of, well, not only God but just about anything. So, as I wrote in an earlier post, we are reduced to finding a chocolate mousse "sublime."

Picture credits: Cheese Web; Royal Mandarin;