goethe baroque

8/12/2019 Goethe Baroque

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Reflections on Goethe and the BaroqueAuthor(s): Helmut RehderSource: MLN, Vol. 77, No. 4, German Issue (Oct., 1962), pp. 368-378Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3042960.

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REFLECTIONS ON GOETHEAND THE BAROQUE

HELMUT REHDERGoethe'simagery-next o his philosophicalbeliefs themost per-sonal property f his creativegenius-reveals a remarkablekinshipin structure nd purpose to certain traditionsof the Baroque.While the fundamental ifferencesn style nd temper hould notbe ignored, t is rewarding o trace the metamorphosiswhich some

Baroque concepts,configurations,nd values underwent n themedium of Goethe's imagination.In order to avoid the dangersof premature generalization, tseems advisable to consider some fundamental reservations. twould be difficult,or example, to find any commonground be-tweenGoethe's conciliatoryhumanism and the icy exclusivenessof absolutismand counter-reformation.ikewise it would be diffi-cult to detect any affinityetweenthe heroicand oratoricalPathosof 17th-centurylays and the dynamicspontaneityof Goethe'sdramatic characters.Even the countlessoccasional poems fromGoethe's pen, the profusionof dedications,epistles,epigrams, n-vectives, ermitonlymost tenuous analogies to their counterpartsin 17th-centuryerse.Still the reader who is both stimulated ndperplexedby the symbolism f Goethe's Mdrchen, he festival layPandora, the Wahlverwandtschaften, ilhelm Meisters Wander-jahre, or the Second part of Faust (and manyof the lesserknownplays) cannot help looking forcorrespondencesnd prototypesnBaroque life and letters n orderto comprehend he poetic intentof Goethe's subtle allegorical devices.It matters ittle whetheror not the term Baroque was cur-rent or known in Goethe's time.The underlyinghistoricalrealityand culturalsubstanceto whichit referswas close to him,so close

368


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M L N 369indeed thatat times he could emphaticallydisclaimany indebted-ness. In fact,Goethe's ascendanceas a writer o much overlappedthe decline of the Baroque that it is hard to say whetherGdtzvon Berlichingenand Wertherare the fruitsof a past or theseeds of a comingage. Baroque style, n conductand reading, ur-roundedGoethe's childhood and earlyyouth. Understandably,tbecame one of the most lasting influences hough not necessar-ily themostarticulateformative orceof his poetic career.To besure, this was a Baroque stylewhich no longerpertainedto thedimensions f courtly ociety, ut a stylewhichhad steppeddownto meet the standardsof bourgeoisambition. It attempted o bemajestic withoutmajesty;it had establishedpreceptsfor moraland aestheticbehaviorwithouthaving developed adequate tech-niques for the understanding f the spiritualneeds of the indi-vidual. Therefore,when Goethe at timesdenounced certain traitsof his own age as artificial nd deceitful-theformalismn life andart, its overwrought plendor, the pretentionof grandeur,andthe attendant emotional and spiritual empoverishment f theindividual-he only indicated that he had absorbed the spiritofhis age to the extentof having become conscious of its limita-tions. But he did not whollyabandon it-as he did not become arevolutionary.It is unfortunate hat the term Baroque, from ts origin inthehistory f art, has come to signify mannerism and precio-site when restraineddynamism, rrested elf-assertionr stuntedwill-to-existmighthave been more justifiablethoughmore gen-eral termswithwhichto comprehend hevariety f historical vi-dence. The selectionof dependable criteriaof judgmentrestsonthe detectionof observableand communicablefeatures.However,the attempt o describe and completely escribe historicalphe-nomena musttake into account the possible shortcomings f anysortof formulation.Without exception,historical ubstancetran-scends its definition; nd while no single formulacan ever fullycapture the irreplaceableunityof an individual, even an exten-sive descriptionwill fall shortof the infinite spects n the physi-ognomy of an age. It is with such reservations n mind thatGoethe's relationto theBaroque Age, its monuments, tyle andtemper,may be subjected to investigation. ealing with a histor-ical and culturalperiod as a panorama,as it were,withoutregardto temporaldimensions nd chronology,magnifies he importance


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370 M L Nof the vantage point. Change the vantagepoint, and you changethe perspective nd the appearance,thoughnot the factuality, fthe panorama.The Baroque Age, extendingroughlyfrom 1600 to 1750, withthe appropriateperiodsofgestationpreceding nd sterility ollow-ing it, was distinguished y towering chievementsn at least threefieldsof human endeavor-the fieldof scientificnd philosophicalthought, hat of artistic xpression, nd that of political institu-tions. By the time Goethe began to participatein the culturalconsciousness f his age, these pheres f intellectual ffort ot onlyhad crystallizedn theaccomplishmentsf a Newton,Spinoza,andLeibnitz,the masterpieces f a Rembrandt,Neumann, and Han-del, the statesmanship nd strategy f a Mazarin, Marlborough,and Prince Eugene, theyhad also become converted nto histor-ical content,dogma, or discipline. To any one faced with suchrealities, whetherhe approached them throughreflection,ntui-tion or creative magination,this age was an age of abstractionwhose goal was the demonstration f reason,of first rinciplesorultimate ends; and no matterhow much the individual wouldcrave self-realizationn his own, particular,unrepeatable situa-tion,he could not transcendbeyond the barrier of abstractrela-tionships, nd conceived of himself, n Cartesian cognition,as amoreor less inferior r superiorrepresentativef Spinoza's sub-stance or Leibnitz' monad. If he was artistically eceptive,hemighthave foundan answer n the abstraction f allegory. t wasan age of dynamic-formalism,f experimentationwith the void.It was also an age in which the searchinghuman mind took toextremes. The century hat witnessed the most monumentalat-tempts t systems f thought, lso abounded with restless uper-stitionand secret ore; the age thatproducedgreatest rtists, lsofabricatedgreatestartificialities.With its museums,coin collec-tions and emblembooks, its tapestries nd arabesques, its china,ermine, ilk and velvet,that century ppears as the age in whichart, as the glorification f appearance, enjoyed greatestprestigein daily life, f it was not subtlyexploitedin the service of reli-gion and politics.In both areas-thoughtand art-the tendency owardabstractionresulted n an inescapabledualism. The moreman is intentuponan all-embracing rincipleof truth, he more he is rewardedbythe experienceof illusion. The alternativebetweenthe realmsof


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M L N 371Nature and Grace, between faith and scepticism, stablished anever wideningchasm n man's mind, the voices of genuineness ndauthentichappiness became ever rarer, and the literatureof theage seemed to be resigned to the monotony f abstractionwhen itwas not distortedby the cries of inner misery. Pascal sounds thekeynotewhen he writes of the grandeur and the miseryof man.As long as the attempts t a synthesiswere inspiredby largelyscientific onsiderations, hey resulted in such physico-theologicalproducts s Brockes' and Triller's versified atural histories.Wheretheyfollowed didactic or inspirational considerations, s in theworks of Haller and Klopstock,they placed the self-realization fthe individual into the transcendental phere of the ideal. Onlywherethe vacuum of abstractionwas again filled with temporal,individual, personal content, and where the trend to discoverultimatecauses and archetypesnd the trend toward emblem andallegory gain merged with the respect for and the enjoyment fthe individual self, a genuine synthesis ould be attained. Butsuch a synthesiswas the confutation f the Baroque and equal tothe creationof a new style. It was the achievement f Goethe.In historical erspective, he age of the Baroque musthave sig-nified to Goethe what the age of Romanticism-from Herder toThomas Mann-may signify o us: the rallyingof all intellectualresources, rom science to mythology, nder the one purpose ofdefiningthe calling and destinyof man, die BestimmungdesMenschen. As for the historicalsubject matter, t is significantthat, aside from classical antiquity (Homer to Platonism), theauthorsof theBaroque age represent he largest ingle contingentof any period in Goethe'sreading. Althoughhe foundfaultwithmostofthem, ecausetheymistook ffectationor rtand eruditionfor creativeness, e derived the most consistent nd productivestimulusfromthe few who towered ike rocks over a sea of pas-sions. The creativegeniusesof Shakespeareand Calderon loomedso largebeforehis mind that as modelshe almost considered hemthreatening.The wisdomof Spinoza and Leibnitz endowed himwiththeperspective f universalrelationshipsn which t was pos-sible forhim to raise the fates of an obscure mountebank to thelevel of a symbolof humanity.Mysticism nd science,crystallizedin theworksof GottfriedArnoldand Boerhaave, guided him to alife-longoccupation with the varietyof human beliefs and thevariety f forms f naturalgrowth.A quaint treatise n thenature


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372 M L Nand varietyof human beliefs n the supernatural,BalthasarBek-ker's Bezauberte Welt,clarifiedn his mind the poetic conceptionof the spiritof negation and evil, and an even quainter treatiseon alchemy, Kirchweger'sAurea Catena Homeri, suggested amanner n which the conceptionof chromatic nd meteorologicalchangesmight be visualized. We must not forget hat the Faustplot itselffirstentered into Goethe's imagination through themedium of popular literary raditionof theBaroque, through hepuppet playsof itinerant ctorsand the Volksbuchdes Christlich-Meynenden. t must strikeus, then,as peculiarlyparadoxical thatat a time when important geographical,physiological, hemical,and electromagnetic iscoveries romisedto revolutionize he con-cept of the knownworld,young Goethe withdrew o his gloomyalchemistickitchen and got submerged n cabbalistic and neo-platonic lore.There is anotherand more serene medium throughwhich theBaroque temper mparted tself to Goethe's imagination: the artof the 17th century.Paintings by Rembrandt and Rubens sug-gestedto him thenotion of innerform which,as we shall see,was to develop into a fundamentalconceptof his aestheticphil-osophy.Of even greater ppeal was the landscapeart,thoseheroictableaux of Poussin, Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa, in whichthe infinitenessf the universe eems to have been broughtdownto earthand into the narrow precincts f human existence. Andwe recognize n theseheroic andscapes themodels for the roman-tic stage settings f Goethe's Pandora, of the OffeneGegendand the Arcadian idyll of Faust, Part II. Timeless as theseland-scapes seem to be, theyreceive theirmeaning froma fundamen-tal human situation, ymbolizedn some eventfromScriptures rancient history r mythology.Often a key for the mythologicalelement is provided in Ovid's Metamorphoses; nothing seemsmorecongenial n form nd temper o theconceits f theBaroquethan the workof this epigone of Roman austerity,o perfect nstyle, o brilliantin imagery, nd still so devoid of sincerityndtruth. Yet Goethe thoughtdifferently.e did not shareHerder'sharsh verdictwhich threatenedto subverta deep predilection.HenceforthGoethe guarded fromHerder his fondnessof Ovid asjealously as he guarded his fancyfor Faust and his alchemisticexperiments.And nothing indicates better his lifelong attach-ment to thisfavorite uthorof the Baroque than the pathoswith


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M L N 373which he couched the accountof his departurefromRome in themoving strainsof Ovidian lamentations.However revealing the instancesof Goethe's acquaintance withBaroque literature nd art, they do not necessarily stablishtheevidence of kinship. They appear incidental to the artistictech-nique of a sovereign eclectic who could appropriate alien ele-ments in order to enhance his own productions.The fact thatEgmont or Torquato Tasso, who may well be consideredforerun-ners or early representativesf the Baroque, could inspireGoetheto the most soul-stirringragedieshe ever conceived,doesnot makethese plays Baroque in temper any more than Schiller'sWal-lensteinor Maria Stuart. Nor does the fact that Goethe,in orderto attain certainpoetic effects, touched Calderon forthe use oftheSpanish trochee, hakespearefor the technique of characteriza-tion, or Leibnitz for the idea of man's ascent fromconfusedper-ception to the clear vision of truth.When the Stage Director inthe Prelude to Faust exhortshis collaborators,

LaBt Phantasie mit allen ihren Chdren,Vernunft,Verstand,Empfindung, eidenschaft,doch, merktEuch wohl, nicht ohne Narrheithdren,then we are perhaps remindedof the allegorical plays in thefash-ion of Lohenstein and Rist; but the reference oes not sufficeoreconstructhe historicalatmosphere. t is the originaltemperofthe Baroque, ratherthan itsreconstruction,hat concernsus here.The fruitful oints of contact lie beneaththe surfaceof demon-strabledetail.In 1797, when Goethe had long been stymied regardingthecontinuationand the possible completionof Faust, he broke thedeadlock in a trulyBaroque solution. He projected the play, asit were,onto two evels of action,a heavenly nd an earthly phere,of which the first-visiblen the Prologue in Heaven and in theconcludingscene of the play surrounds, determines,nd finallyabsorbs the second. Faust,whose fates fillthe cycleof the earthlyaction, is not presentin the heavenly action; he is merelydis-cussed and acted upon ratherthan active. This felicitouspoeticdevice which makes the reader,as it were, a participantin thetruthabout Faust, whereas Faust himselfhas to strugglehis waythrough rror, urnsout to be of momentous onsequence:we arereminded that the entireFaust play is not merely n action tak-


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374 M L Ning place in earthly,finite, mmanentdimensions,but that ateverymomentor turn it is determinedby a sphere of transcen-dence,althoughthelattercan neverbe recognized. or we are toldthat nach drUben st die Aussichtuns verrannt, nd that AllesVergingliche st nur ein Gleichnis. As manya Baroque painterhad done before,Goethe shiftedthe drama of human life ontoan immensecosmicstage,but kept our interestfocusedon earthand man, on desire and enjoyment, n effortnd error,on exis-tenceand time. In otherwords,the stern perspective f Baroquedualism which had strictly istinguishedbetween substance andaccidence, essence and appearance,was resolved in a view ofpolaritywhose nature is mutual complementation.As a resultofthe Prologue in Heaven, the principlesof freewill and determin-ism,of Good and Evil, of Light and Darkness theseever-recur-ring questionsof Baroque rationalism-appearmerged n a man-ner suggestive f Leibnitz' The-odicee. As for the conclusionofFaust forwhichGoethe admittedly vailed himselfof traditionalCatholic imagery, short poem, which reads like a confession fBaroque mysticism,xpresseswhat Goethe leftunsaid at the endof the play:

Wenn im Unendlichen dasselbesichwiederholend wig flieBt,das tausendfailtigeewblbesich kriftig neinanderschlieBt,-str6mt ebenslustaus allen Dingen,dem kleinstenwie dem gr6BtenStern:und alles Draingen, lles Ringenist ewigeRuh in Gott,dem Herrn.Although iterary istory as accustomedus to interpretGoetheas the liberatorof individual sentiment nd expression,we mustbear in mind thathe also was the greatmystifier,nd thathe con-sidered himself s such. The figure f Homunculus, the concept

of die Mfitter, he mysteriousittle chestin the Wanderiahre,the Rosicrucian symbol n Die Geheimnisse re only randomex-amples of this tendency. n Dichtung und WahrheitGoethe tellsus how as a youngman he mystifiednd edifiedhis friendsbyrecounting uch fairy-taless Der neue Paris and Die neueMelusine -both figures amiliarto us fromthe storeof Baroqueiconography. In a thirdtheme, Der neue Amadis, expressing


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M L N 375mood of early youth,he anticipated the yearningof Mignon'sItalienlied which is literallyfraught with Baroque imagery.Reduced to its essentials, he mysteryf der neue Amadis (asof the famous Mdrchen of 1796) reveals itself as the spirit ofpoetry.And this is a significant evelopment: for poetry is nolongerconsidered, s it was by Gottsched nd Bodmer, nstructiveentertainmentor a pedestrianbourgeoisie,but the manifestationofa divine spark, s itwas byOpitz and Shaftesbury.ndeed poetrywas to awakenthe soul, set the innernetwork glow, iberatemanand remindhim of his creativenature.Poetryhad indeed a claimto apostolic succession. With this in mind, even Die Leiden desjungen Werthers ssumes ignificancen the Baroque tradition. fimitation was the purpose of poetry,why not the imitation ofChrist?And in a spurt of youthful bsessionand blasphemy, hePassion ofYoung Werther, his self-sacrificeor thesake of thosewho were similarly fflicted,xpressed what was repeated in theFaust fragment f 1790:

und was der ganzenMenschheit ugeteilt st,will ich in meineminnern SelbstgenieBen,mitmeinemGeist das Hdchst' und Tiefstegreifen,ihrWohl und Weh auf meinenBusen hWufenund so mein eigen Selbstzu ihremSelbsterweitern-und, wie sie selbst,am End' auch ich zerscheitern.Even a casual reader of Goethe's poetrywill be struckby thefrequencywithwhich the concept of an inwardreality, n inner

structure nd creativeenergyappears among Goethe's imagery.Whenever it occurs,we feel we are touchingon something hatwas extremely elevantto Goethe.A cryptic lan forthe comple-tion ofFaust called forthepoeticrenditionof SchopfungsgenuBvon innen. Whetherwe mayrecognize herealizationof thisplanin the brilliantspectacle of the KlassischeWalpurgisnacht, nthe Helena-Euphorionepisode, or in the scene of Faust's transfig-uration,may be left undecided. Perhaps, n all of them. For allof them abound in an intricate exture f concepts, hemes,myth-ological and musical configurationsn which the wealth of Ba-roque imagery, ts arts, its music, its sensuous and speculativequalities have come to life again. Je incommensurabler nd furden VerstandunfaBlicher ine poetischeProduktion, estobesser,Goethe remarked o Eckermann.


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376 M L NThis remarkcan scarcelybe interpreted s an admission of

agnosticism uch as inspired the resignedstatementby Albrechtvon Haller, Ins Innre der Natur dringtkein erschaffnereist.Goethe'sviolentobjection to thisstatement id not mean that hehad achievedwhatHaller had despairedof achieving.He merelydid not accept the dualisticdistinctionbetweenthe externalandthe internalwhich to him was a construct f human Verstandratherthan a quality of existence.To Goethe, das Innere wasmanifest verywhere, ot as object or detail of observation, ut asa principleof integration nd progressive ynthesis.t was a sym-bol and as such thepattern of possibleorder n themidstof cha-otic evolution. It is interesting o observe that Goethe's poeticsymbols elating o such a patternrenewcertainmotifs f Baroqueimagery.Many of them are spatial in natureand suggest he tra-ditional predilectionfor the idyllic or the sublime,as, for exam-ple, the peacefullittlehut as thegoal of the restlesswanderer, rthe symbolof the garden,Gretchen'sgarden,contrastedwith thesymbolof Faust's wilderness in the scene Wald und Hbhle.Indeed themysteriousymbolof the cavern tself,which is foundin almosteverymajor work of Goethe's,appears so much to havebecome a part of his poetic equipment thatwe may easily over-look the Baroque symbolof the grottowithwhich it shares thesame psychologicaland iconographicalorigin. Most reminiscentof the Baroque temper,however, s the image of the beloved, oftheVirgin,or ofmotherhood das Ewig-Weibliche which in theglory ftransfigurationnd as a finalblessing nd promiseofbeati-tude concludes the tragediesof Egmont, the Wahlverwandtschaf-ten, and Faust.Iconographiccorrespondences an be tracedand verified r dis-proven; but rarelywill such tracing lone reveal the inneroriginof the image itself.Perhaps, it maybe looked for n deeper layersof consciousnesswhichconnect a human being with his culturallyformativematrix. The point in which Goethe and the Baroqueshow the greatestdegree of affinitynd, at the same time, thegreatestdivergence ppears in the sphereof thinkingconcerningthenatureof energy nd form-thoseultimateconceptswhichper-mit a glance into the formation f fundamentalbeliefs. The cas-ual observermaybe tempted o relateGoethe'spreoccupationwiththe dynamicaspects of existence to a similarity ynamicconcep-tion of life in theBaroque era. Goethe'semphasison Tat and


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M L N 377Tdtigkeit, on movementand growth, ndeed seems to invitecomparisonwiththeBaroque devotionto grandeur, ts cult of theenergetic,display of power, and readiness to accept life underunresolved ensions.But there s a differencen outlook and beliefwhether nergy,manifestingts presenceand effectivenessn theforms fmatter,s conceivedof underthe aspectof things haped,fashioned, atterned, culptured, tamped or twisted,or whetherenergy s visualized as the formingprincipleitselfwhich, in themomentof individualization nd self-realization,oints at its realand potentialpaths in past and future. The latterperspective scontained in Goethe's conceptionof inner form, aestheticallyvisualized n the geprigteForm,die lebend sich entwickelt. heformer iewmaybe gleaned fromthemonuments nd documentsof theBaroque which, in spite of Spinoza's distinctionbetweennatura naturans and natura naturata, and in its fervorforabstraction nd its insistence n demonstratinghe realityof rea-son, was proneto neglecttheindividual.Applyingone of Goethe'sdistinctions:the Baroque concept of formwas oriented towarddas Gewordene, scarcely toward das Werdende, as wasGoethe'sconcept. t is significanthatthe image of the clockworkof the universe, nce manufactured y the Creatorand then leftto its perpetual motion,was the ultimateansweroffered y Ba-roque systems f thought o the questionof mundane existence. fthepotentialnotionof dasWerdende was at all sensed, s itwasby an attentive, nonymousreader of Leibnitz, it was expressedin thefaintand almostapologeticconfession: Alles in derNatur

lebt,nichts st ganz tot.It is a moot question to what extent Goethe's morphologicalreflectionsnd, in particular,his poetic imagerydealingwith theentelechiesof Faust and Homunculus are indebted to Leibnitz.Likewise it would be an intriguing ask to examine, far beyondthe incidental aspects of biographical and literarybackground,how the same psychologicalpattern that governs Philipp vonZesen'sAdriatischeRosemund-the languishingof thehuman soulfor her lover and savior-could re-emerge,nder modified ircum-stances, n the patterngoverningGoethe's Werther nd Wahlver-wandtschaften. nd finally, onsidering he fact that the ideal ofGlick, or thenotion of perfecthuman adjustmentand equili-brium, represents ne of the recurring hemes n Goethe's works,several nterveningtagesmayhave to be removedand uncovered


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378 M L Nbefore t mightbe possible to show that Fortuna, the leading idolof Baroque ambition, tandsat the source of Goethe's conflict fthemes. Specificproblemssuch as these exceed the scope of thepresent nquiry.But all of themconfirm he assumptionthatcom-mon and fundamental human concepts connect Goethe's workwith the Age of the Baroque. Both own a dynamicview of exis-tence. The difference ies in the concept and interpretation fform.That whichhad appeared as restraint romwithout, ppliedarbitrarily nd coincidentallyby the forces of chance or Provi-dence or impenetrable Reason, had become the resultand func-tion of an inner law - the law and raison d'etre of the indi-vidual. Goethe's imagery, he poetic expressionof this most per-sonal beliefs, derives to a large extent from the heritageof theBaroque. It required the psychological nsightinto the spiritualneeds of the individual before the empty formsof allegoricalabstraction ould again be filled with meaningful ontent.

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