The Natural Sublime

I have occasionally read articles by Roger Scruton over the years, but recently my friend Maureen Mullarkey posted an item on her blog about his book Beauty. Maureen has great taste in writing and in artists, so I immediately acquired the book. Scruton writes the clearest, most accessible prose, breaking down really big ideas into portion athat non-philosophical minds (like mine can grasp. Herewith an example, from the chapter "Natural Beauty," in which he distinguishes our experience of, say, the songs of birds and the colors or shapes of flowers from works of art:

"Works of art are expressly presented as objects of contemplation. They are framed on a wall, contained between the covers of a book, installed in the museum or reverently performed in the concert hall. To change them without the artist's consent is to violate a fundamental aesthetic propriety. Works of art stand as the eternal receptacles of intensely intended messages. ... Nature, by contrast, is generous, content to mean only herself, uncontained, without an external frame, and changing from day to day."

I also like his use of the term "apartness" to speak of natural phenomena, "their capacity to show that the world contains things other than us, which are just as interesting as we are."

Now, it was in the 18th century that people discovered nature as an object of aesthetic interest. Starting with the English critic John Dennis and then expanded on by Joseph Addison, the experience of the natural sublime was practically synonymous with an encounter with grand mountains (and also with the starry skies above and so on). In the essay I am writing on Bodmer, I have posed this question: Why in none of his treatises on poetry did Bodmer consider natural experience or natural beauties as potential poetic subjects? Surrounded his entire life long (1698-1783) by the mountains of Switzerland, about which otherwise so much ink was spilled in the 18th century, he never even mentions them when writing of "the Great" in nature, a notion he took over from Addison. Bodmer never uses the term "sublime" in reference to nature's effects. "Sublime" is reserved for the portrayal of noble and grand actions. Even the actions of Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost can be described as sublime, exceeding as they do in evil. When speaking of the grand in nature he resorts to stock formulas that are repeated by almost every writer on the sublime in the 18th century -- mountain gorges and abysses, violent storms, shipwrecks -- all drawn from literary accounts. The real world of nature does not interest him.

Bodmer's late essay on the sublime of 1746 indicates that he was aware of the connection that was being made between the sublime and personal encounters with nature. Reading Scruton, I seem to see that Bodmer's conventional references to nature, whether of natural beauty or of grandeur, are attempts to "frame" nature, to place it in a poetic world of its own, where the imagination can, as Scruton writes, "wander freely, with our own interests and desires in abeyance." Thus, his literary examples came from Homer and Virgil and even from some early 18th-century German poets (e.g., Brockes). Whether it is scenes of nature or of human action, the works of those poets, as Scruton writes, "come to us soaked in thought." Art is thus "freed from the contingencies of everyday life."

Scruton doesn't mention it, but it may be that freedom "from the contingencies of everyday life" is what attracts us to nature, whether to walks in the country or, in my case, kayaking on the river in the summer. (Kayak season starts in exactly one month, when the water temperature reaches 55 degrees.) Just being lazy, without any purpose.

"Christtag früh"

As a young man Goethe did express some enthusiasm about Christmas, as can be seen in a letter to Johann Christian Kestner, written on Christmas day, 1772. He begins the letter vividly, locating himself in a specific time and place, up in his famous attic room:

Early Christmas day. It is still night, dear Kestner, and I have got up early in order to write again by the light of early morning, which recalls pleasant memories of earlier days; I had coffee made to honor the feast and plan to keep writing until morning breaks. The crier has already announced his song; I woke up on account of it. Praise to you, Jesus Christ. I love this time of year, the songs one sings; and the sudden cold makes me feel completely cheerful.

This was at the height of the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen phase, the so-called Sturm und Drang era, when Herder, Merck, and Goethe formed a literary circle. His letters are of a piece with the poetry and other literary writings. He sketches in this longish letter his changing mood as day dawns and reflects on his days with Lotte and Kestner. He mentions the previous evening:

We had a beautiful evening yesterday, like people on whom fortune has bestowed a great gift, and I fell asleep grateful to the holy ones in heaven for wanting o bless us with childlike joy for Christmas. When I walked through the market and saw the many lights and the toys I thought of you and my boys ...

Soon day arrives: "The first sign of day [das erste Grau!] has arrived above my neighbor's house, and the bells call together a Christian congregation." Yes, some enthusiasm on Goethe's part for Christmas, though it must be remembered that the protagonist of The Sorrows of Young Werther killed himself at Christmas time. Kestner of course was the fiance of Lotte Buff, the inspiration for Werther's love interest.

The pictures accompanying this post are totally unrelated to Goethe. They are from an old advertisement featuring a watercolor by the artist Charles E. Burchfield, an American artist with whom I have recently become acquainted via my friend, the artist Maureen Mullarkey. A good cheer to all at Christmas! I will be reading tomorrow, as every year, Charles Dickens' Christmas tales.

Goethe as Gourmand

I wrote in an earlier post (November 30, 2008) that Goethe liked good food and wine. In his garden in Weimar (photo above by Adreas Trepte) he planted fruit trees and berries and raised potatoes and other vegetables, especially asparagus. Trellises on the south house wall were full of apricots. Even the cooking herbs came from this garden. In July 1793 Christiane wrote to Goethe (he was then in Marienborn; this was during the siege of Mainz) that she had eaten kohlrabi and artichokes from their garden.

The Weimar "court gardener" Friedrich Gottlieb Dietrich has also described the "experimental" portion of Goethe's garden, in which he analyzed the differences between local and foreign varieties of vegetables. According to Dietrich, Goethe liked to show visitors, such as Knebel Herder, Einsiedel, Gerning, "as well as women," around the garden, explaining the plants and giving small lectures. Providing an important contemporary illustration of the state of the garden is the charming colored etching below, by Eduard Lobe, showing Goethe and his grandsons in the garden ca. 1825.

Goethe's household accounts also show that he spent large sums on such items as chestnuts, grapes, fermented mustard, and honey. Chocolate was ordered from Vienna, and wines were imported from the Rhine region. Here are some of the other products guests enjoyed at Goethe's table: fois gras, truffles, mussels, salmon, Spanish raisins, and caviar. Weimar, a town of 6,000 people, could hardly have supplied Goethe with such delicacies, which we routinely enjoy today if we live near Zabar's or Fairway. Indeed, one of the first things that struck me when I first arrived in Manhattan so many years ago was the variety of food that could be enjoyed by ordinary folks. I grew up in the heartland, where cheese meant Velveeta.

Goethe's appreciation for such delicacies, as far as I can read the matter, takes place after the turn of the 19th century. From the moment his foot touched ground in Italy, in 1786, Goethe raved about the fruit, not surprising for an inhabitant of northern Europe. And though he mentions meals eaten in The Italian Journey -- published in 1816-17, though based on notes from the time of his stay in Italy in 1786-88 -- there is not a word in this account about Italian cuisine. It may be that in 1786 there was not what we today would call "cuisine" in Italy, though I doubt that is the case. One senses in the Italians' enjoyment of their food something atavistic; so, too, must Horace have enjoyed his food.

The appreciation for fine food among ordinary people and their ability to put it on their own table or in their own picnic baskets are phenomena of the kind of commerce that was starting to blossom in Goethe's time. It was this phenomenon that was one of the sources of Goethe's thinking on "world literature." As I have emphasized before, the free trade in goods was accompanied by the free trade in ideas. For Goethe the latter consisted of the work of writers, which he believed would bring the nations of the world into comity. To a great extent it is true that there is a "world republic of letters": those of us who care about these things are quickly made aware of the newest literary products from all over the world. We are also "tolerant" of many different ideas.

In our democratic age, however, more and more people are able to enjoy the products of free trade in material goods, especially in food. What is more, people have a great desire to move beyond what is local. An amusing story in the BBC news: although the Islamic Republic of Iran does not import any goods from Israel, in April authorities in Tehran discovered that Jaffa oranges were being imported in boxes marked as Chinese. Iranians love that seedly, sweet fruit, and someone in Tehran was willing to take the risk to supply them with it.

On a recent walk I discovered that a Whole Foods Market is to open tomorrow at Columbus Avenue and 100th Street. This is being announced as an "Upper West Side" store, but this only shows the extension of the concept of Upper West Side. The jump across 96th Street indicates a the changing demography. Lots of new apartment construction in that area, for people with trust funds or earning very big salaries, but there is also a large tract of public housing nearby. Never mind: people of all classes now appreciate choice and variety in their foods. Goethe Girl and her husband shop regularly at Fairway, another emporium for food choice.

The appearance on the shelves of stores of all these food offerings does not happen by accident. Like the Iranians who risk their lives to sell Jaffa oranges, people all over the world, in small ways and large, are working to satisfy our tastes in food and in other material goods. Working people like them are what makes our world go round. Think of all the different people behind those different varieties of bottled water at Fairway. I wish our politicians appreciated this aspect of our economy. The problem with most politicians is that none has actually worked in a real job. Like us folks in "the republic of letters," they are full of good ideas, most of which have no basis in real life.

The beautiful still life of melons and pears (in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) is by an 18th-century painter, Luis Meléndez (1716-1780). Goethe probably never saw a painting by Meléndez, though he certainly would have enjoyed fruits in Italy like those Meléndez painted. I recently became acquainted with Meléndez through a review by Maureen Mullarkey of a recent show of his paintings in Washington, D.C. Just a week ago I was in Washington to see the show myself. Another aspect of world literature, in the sense of intellectual exchange: I have probably seen more paintings in my life than Goethe ever did.

Jaffa picture credit: art2day4u

Goethe Überall

Whenever I pick up a book I find myself consulting the index to see if there is an entry for "Goethe." It is an indication of his influence that Goethe is so frequently cited, say, in a book I just chose randomly from Rick's bookshelf, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (1982), by Ernst Mayr, which leads off the discussion on Naturphilosophie with Goethe. It's a reminder of how many areas of thought Goethe worked in. In a recent post on Sylvia Townsend Warner I mentioned finding in her correspondence with the writer and New Yorker editor William Maxwell letters between them in which they discussed Wilhelm Meister. But even in books that have no immediate reference to Goethe's own pursuits, Goethe himself still resonates. For instance, in Escapism by the cultural geographer Yi-fu Tuan (a writer in whom I like to dip for escape as well as for wonderful insights), one finds Goethe embedded in a discussion of human anxiety: "History can make unbearable reading because it exposes the extent and weight of misery among humbler folk. As to the individual life, even the favorites of the gods, such as Tolstoy or Goethe, claim that they have known few moments of genuine happiness."

Goethe is still a touchstone, though sometimes as a product of the past or maybe only as a catch phrase rather than a figure of continuing relevance. I was reminded of this by a collage entitled "Frankfurt" (at the top of the post) by the artist Maureen Mullarkey in which she utilizes a scrap from the spine of an old edition of Goethe's works. The work is in an exhibition of her collages at the Kouros Gallery in Manhattan, in a show entitled, appropriately enough, "Gutenberg Elegies": all the works in the show are made from scraps of old books.

I first encountered Maureen Mullarkey through her columns in The New York Sun, the now defunct conservative New York daily, which had the best arts and literary writing of any New York newspaper (and that includes The New York Times). It was via the Sun that Rick and I would read of the openings in Chelsea to which the Sun devoted so much coverage. We met one of the former publishers of the Sun at Maureen's opening. When we lamented the Sun's demise, he said it would take only $20 million to start it up again. Surely there must be something in the Stimulus package for that!

Maureen, by the way, is also a wonderful painter. I like this portrait of a rather androgynous figure. It has a Weimar Republic quality to it (in contrast to the Goethe-period Weimar). I look forward to a show of her paintings.