The Destruction of Monuments

Well why not??? save the statues of Adolf Hitler. Apart from the sculpture itself being unimpressive… With the beginning of the Secessionists in Vienna and then in the 1890s in Germany – it’s all rather unimpressive Optical Record and stylistic retarded kitsch. The French had a head start on degradation of their sculpture quality prior to the Austrians and Germans. Saint Gaudens – a product of the French Academy as an American student in Paris after his production work on relief cameos in Naples – is a small potato – not a particularly good sculptor – a rather awful sculptor compared to the best contemporaries in Europe. But I agree, allowance to tear down one is allowance to tear down all sculpture – even a statue representing the most famous subject that might actually be Gumby in disguise. Otherwise – yes, why not grand statues of Hitler? We have the Medici and every other imaginable person of historical actions called into questionable norms of moral and ethical conduct. Even going back to the Greeks we have despotic kings, rulers, and heroes that plundered, mythological realms of Dionysian cult subjects, realms of erotic lust depicted in beautiful works of sculpture in what are the greatest achievements in art. They – Greek Classical, Hellenistic, and early Greco-Roman in the best examples have more significance as the greatest achievements in High Art than any Christian period sculpture, regardless of the subject, whether of a pious Saint, a sculpture of Christ, an honorable personage, anything from the Renaissance through til now. They butchered people, held massive numbers of slaves and serfs in proportion to the entitled society and are the framework for Western society in most all categories of great achievement. Greco-Roman heritage is the heritage of greatness that Europe is founded on. The barbarians are always ready to demolish civilization.

The statues made by American sculptors of the 19th century are not particularly sophisticated or of high merit compared to the better contemporaries in Europe, at least as a measure based on Classical / Hellenistic / early Greco-Roman sculpture standards. I can’t really get worked up over most of the American 19th century sculptures potentially missing from view. But the scale, compositional mass of the better American attempts in sculpture and the well educated Classical and Beaux Art architects responsible for the pedestal designs as part of an architectural urban design vista – viewed altogether is often pleasing. There are some exceptional sculptures that were imported from Europe such as the various figure and portrait bust works of Jean Antoine Houdon’s sculpture, the Munich, Germany sculptors August von Kreling who collaborated with Ferdinand von Miller – for the “Genius of Water” monument imported to Cincinnati, Ohio renamed the Tyler Davidson Fountain, The destroyed by vandals – Ernst Herter sculpture monument – the “Lorelei Fountain” in New York City, Old Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland with the relief sculptures of Christ and Moses made in Spain by the court sculptor Antonio Capeliano. Capeliano also made the female figure atop the Hellenistic Neo-Egyptian Revival cenotaph [the marble sculpture of the female figure suffered the elements long ago probably missing much of it’s refinement in detail even in the late nineteenth century, a replacement has been erected which bears little resemblance to the quality of the original] – Battle Monument commemorating the 1814 battle in Baltimore. The 1814 battle monument was designed by J. Maximillian M. Godefroy. The Indiana State Soldiers and Sailors Monument, Indianapolis, Indiana. 284 ft 6 in (86.72 m) tall neoclassical monument built on Monument Circle designed by German architect Bruno Schmitz was built over a thirteen-year period, between 1888 and 1901. Even though Nikolaus Geiger has sculpture as part of the monument, his representation here is not equal to the two other Denkmal in Germany designed by Bruno Schmitz which include prominent sculptures by Nikolaus Geiger. Those Monuments designed by Bruno Schmitz with Nikolaus Geiger’s (1849–1897) sculpture are the Kyffhäuserdenkmal, also known as Barbarossa Monument (Barbarossadenkmal), is an Emperor Wilhelm I monument in the Kyffhäuser mountain range in the German state of Thüringen. It was erected from 1890 to 1896 atop the ruins of Kaiser Barbarossa medieval Kyffhausen Castle near Bad Frankenhausen. Nikolaus Geiger sculpted the Kaiser Barbarossa relief sculpture in red sandstone. The 6.5 m (21 ft) high figure was fashioned on site from several sandstone blocks. Nikolaus Geiger, sculptor, with architect Bruno Schmitz, also designed the Grabstätte Carl Hofmann, (Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof Berlin), an example of late 19th. Century, German school of architecture, and sculpture monument incorporating a high level of content derived from Greek Hellenistic period influence. The Soldiers and Sailors Monument as an architectural design is beautiful.

Many other European sculptors work and bronze castings after Greek and Greco-Roman sculpture attain a higher order of monument in the U.S.A. than the native U.S.A. sculptors. Some of the imports were of very good quality but many were rather crude cheaper castings, or from the decline period post 1820 in France. Most of the European immigrant sculptors to the U.S.A. during the nineteenth century were ones of lower skill, talent, and training. The nineteenth century native European sculptors had a much better reception, funding, support, as well as the ability to make a higher order of sculpture in the nude figure for public monument in nineteenth century Europe than the U.S.A. The American sculptors that arrived in Europe to study predominately pursued their training in Paris and Rome. Neither of these cities had particularly sustained their golden period of art or training by the second half of the nineteenth century. The Americans were also ill prepared to glean what was alternatively available – European sculptor holdouts against photographically oriented Optical Record art. The American sculptors with such a lack of prior serious training in the U.S.A. never came to realize the Optical Record art was a degenerate art-form, or were unwilling to address the negative self analysis. The freedom of finance to re position themselves – the arriving American artists – to relocate to Vienna, Austria or Germany – Germanic regions Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Königsberg in order to achieve a more demanding course of study would have gone against the socially brainwashed misconception of the enduring position of France and Italy in art of the nineteenth century. Especially the second half of the nineteenth century when art was declining in quality rather quickly as the century proceeded. Generally I avoid looking with any focus at the actual sculpture portion of most monuments in the United States. It’s like listening to a tone deaf Fred Flintstone screeching an out of time synchronization caveman rendition of rap music claiming to be replacements of standards supplanting Othmar Schoeck, Richard Strauss, Ferruccio Busoni, Brahms, Franz Schubert, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Rameau, etc… Unlike Classical music art became corrupted and dysfunctional starting in the late eighteenth century France and Italy. I avoid altogether looking at sculptures and monuments after 1900. But the monuments should never have an anarchist mob of imbeciles attacking the culturally important symbols of the past enacting their destruction. The monuments context / value is often more complex, foreign, nuanced and contrary to contemporary viewpoints which discredits the simpleton deciding their fate. The replacement monuments if any are expected will surely be enormously more visually hideous than the prior monuments – especially those pre-dating 1900.

Even if White Privilege is true, what does that concept actually mean? It‘s a malleable indistinguishable mush of a statement. If one implies Greco-Roman heritage then I would lend an agreement that yes White Privilege is real because it is the glue of philosophical, aesthetics, ethics, mathematics, architecture, art, music on and on of which high water marks of achievement were gleaned – the cultural roots surviving as a basis of society. The privilege of being a recipient of this regardless of ethnic background at this point in time equates it’s value. Though because of what fractured remnants survive in this heritage from a butchered attack by barbarians – the fruits of it are discombobulated. Those barbarians were the Europeans themselves in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty first centuries. So certain European countries have surviving tidbits depending on their maintained cultural aspects, as also Western oriented countries have corrupted fragments in general. The criticism of White Privilege it seems is the desire to take the aim of the Vox Populi to the lowest common denominator possible in order to establish the most inane and primitive notions of culture so as such they should be imposed on all to match the antithesis of Greco-Roman heritage culture – to invigorate the barbarians.

A small fragment of the original cast collection of plasters cast after Greek and Greco-Roman sculpture are now in the Glyptothek Altierhaus der Akademie Bildende Künste Wien – allocated to the basement, and many crammed together. When Hitler came to power in Austria, the teachers and students who at that time in the Akademie Bildende Künste Wien were the proponents of indoctrination into political and artistic modernist extremist belief, performed an activist action of throwing the plaster cast that they could manage to lift up to the windows – out the upper story windows onto the outside street to smash. This as a demonstration in opposition to the Fascists coming into power. The Nazi – Fascists had awful artwork that they promoted and funded as their new art / really it was a pastiche of Bauhaus, Secessionists Realism rooted in arbitrary stylistic kitsch utilizing photography and Optical Record, mixed with other banalities of early twentieth century, and late nineteenth century movements in art. Really not any better or worse than much of the American sculpture of the twentieth and twenty first century. Though those involved in historic art promotion within the Nazi party had great veneration of Classical, Hellenistic Greek and early Greco-Roman sculpture. There was a complete disconnect between historic promotion and sanctioned contemporary art. In the early 1990s / 1989 an attempt was made to bring the surviving plaster cast collection established in the 18th and 19th century after mostly Greek and early Greco-Roman sculpture – back to the Art Academy in Wien, or a designated building in the same area to purchase for the exhibition of the surviving historic collection of plasters. There were thousands of “activists” marching through central Wien against the return of Fascism with the return of the surviving plasters for permanent exhibition. Though the collection long pre-dated Fascism. Slowly the very small group of plaster casts that survived the events of the late nineteenth and twentieth century has finally made it to a cluttered basement in the Glyptothek Altierhaus der Akademie Bildende Künste Wien. One of the early official celebrations of the Nazi Party in Munich after Hitler had taken over France, was a procession march through Munich with Renaissance / Heraldic / Trachten costumed bearers guiding work horse drawn wheeled period carts bearing plaster casts of the most famous Greek Classical, Hellenistic, and early Greco-Roman sculpture. Large military marching bands accompanied the procession performing well known Prussian, Austrian, and Bavarian, etc… nationalist marching music of the nineteenth and twentieth century. It was a procession patterned after Napoleon’s famous victory procession through the center of Paris of similar wheeled carts carrying magnificent Greek and Roman marbles garnered from Italy. Neither of the Processions though led to a return to prior methods and content in contemporary sculpture related to Greco-Roman heritage. France had some terrific sculptors such as James Pradier, 1790, Geneva, Switzerland – 1852 Paris, France. Pradier had a better than typical of the period understanding – post Napoleon – of Hellenistic, early Greco-Roman complex visual content, orders, and composition – best for his erotic nymph related sculptures. Later in the second half of the nineteenth century in France Ernest Dubois 1863, Dieppe, France – 193-, Paris – produced one of his first sculpture works – Le Pardon, Marble, Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark (Louvre, Arras, Rouen, 1892) – exhibiting his attempt to develop complex visual content derived from his study and admiration of Hellenistic sculpture. This was short lived though as a maturing aim in his sculpture. The path along this route toward a maturing process in gleaning the ability of incorporating Hellenistic Greek sculpture complex visual content is enormously difficult and demanding. Even in periods more favorable toward this goal, few consistently attempt to continue, since the cost and effort are so high. Ernest Dubois – Monument à Joseph et Xavier de Maistre (bronze, château de Chambéry, 1898), – not as imbued with complex visual content, but very well composed. His – Monument d’Eugène Fromentin (Place des Petits-Bancs, La Rochelle, 1905), – quite late in date, still not not as imbued with complex visual content, but a beautifully composed work. His Le Vengeur (Haut-relief, Panthéon, Paris), is a modernist mess, as well as his Statue de l’amiral Mouchez (1896). Ernest Dubois seems to have succumbed to the madness of modernism with his other efforts. There are other sculptors with similar attempts in Europe post 1800 that failed after one or a few sophisticated sculpture works entering into complex visual shape content derived from Hellenistic sculpture. Most of the attempts after 1800 occurred in the Germanic regions – where support was established toward this goal with the influence of Goethe, as well as the traditions started in the late eighteenth century that continued in Austria and Germany (what was to become Germany). The support of historic collections of plaster casts as well as study after Hellenistic and early Greco-Roman sculpture was reinstated by the conservatives within the Third Reich period, after a period of modernist contemporary insanity in art that took over from the 1880s until the Third Reich. But this was completely undermined by the State controlled “Socialist Nationalist Style” that was dictated – the conservatives won then lost.


Gotha, Friedrich W. E. Döll, sculptor, Vielsdorf, Thuringia 1750–1816, Part Two

Gotha, Friedrich W. E. Döll, sculptor, Vielsdorf, Thuringia 1750–1816 Gotha, Weimar, Jena, Classicism in 18th. and 19th. Century Sculpture

On the History of the Appraisal and Use of Plaster Casts of Ancient Sculpture (especially in Germany and in Berlin), By Adolf H. Borbein, English translation by Bernard Frischer

http://www.digitalsculpture.org/casts/borbein/index.html

In 1665 Lorenzo Bernini, who was already very famous, came to Paris in order to make a portrait of the king. On this occasion, he visited the royal academy of art, looked with little enthusiasm at the works of the members of the academy that were displayed there, and recommended to his assembled colleagues that the education of their students would be better served if the academy created a collection of casts of famous ancient statues, busts, and reliefs. Through drawing the classical models students would come to understand Beauty, and this would be useful for the rest of their life as a standard of quality. It would only hurt young people if they were confronted from the start with Nature. Nature is almost always / [p. 31] feeble and ugly. If the artist only followed Nature, then he would never be able to create something truly beautiful and great.[17]

What Bernini meant is illustrated by a picture made in 1827 by the Danish painter Wilhelm Bendz (fig. 3). A sculptor works after a living model but at the same time he corrects his model by looking at casts of ancient statues, especially the famous “Borghese ‘Gladiator’” in the Louvre, represented in his studio by a cast in reduced format.[18]

Figure 3. Wilhelm Bendz, “A sculptor works after a living model in his studio” (1827). Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst (from: Kunstmuseets Arsskrift 1977–1980, 42 fig. 3).

Figure 3 - Wilhelm Bendz, A sculptor works after a living model in his studio

Figure 3 – Wilhelm Bendz, A sculptor works after a living model in his studio

Bernini’s words could have been uttered by Johann Joachim Winckelmann—an oddity, because for Winckelmann Bernini embodied the decline of art, a decline which could only be reversed by reviving understanding of Greek art. Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums appeared in 1764 and is primarily a history of sculpture. The descriptions which Winckelmann devoted to the Belvedere Apollo and Torso, sound rhetorical to our ears. Nevertheless, in terms of methodology they were a milestone in the history of sculpture. They showed something still valid today, viz. that the interpretation of a statue presumes the precise description of the object; that it must concentrate on the details without ever losing a sense of the whole and its impact on the observer.[19]

The French sculptor Étienne Falconet (1716-1791), a contemporary of Winckelmann, was convinced that a cast allows the aesthetic qualities of a statue to be more clearly recognized than does the original itself. White plaster, seen under even light, makes it easier to judge pure form. And it makes the strengths and weaknesses of the artist stand out more clearly.[20] Winckelmann designated white as the most beautiful color. According to him, a white, nude body was not only beautiful but also appeared bigger than one that was painted. In this context Wickelmann expressly mentions freshly created plaster casts, which appeared to have a greater volume than their originals.[21] In another passage, Winckelmann combines the cast with Beauty: “The true feeling of the Beautiful approximates a fluid plaster which is poured over the head of Apollo and touches and embraces all its parts.”[22] People liked to view white casts illuminated by torchlight, which made them appear animated. Nighttime visits to cast collections were popular throughout the eighteenth century.[23]

Figure 5 -Berlin Schloß Tegel Antikensaal
Figure 5 -Berlin Schloß Tegel Antikensaal

Figure 5 -Berlin Schloß Tegel Antikensaal

The above text on Bernini, Winckelmann, and Falconet taken from:

On the History of the Appraisal and Use of Plaster Casts of Ancient Sculpture (especially in Germany and in Berlin), By Adolf H. Borbein, English translation by Bernard Frischer

http://www.digitalsculpture.org/casts/borbein/index.html

Johannes Kepler Büste von Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Döll, Hist. Museum, Regensberg Fürst-Anselm-Allee. Denkmal für Johannes Kepler, dorischer Monopteros mit
Johannes Kepler Büste von Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Döll, Hist. Museum, Regensberg Fürst-Anselm-Allee. Denkmal für Johannes Kepler, dorischer Monopteros mit

Johannes Kepler Büste von Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Döll, Hist. Museum, Regensberg Fürst-Anselm-Allee. Denkmal für Johannes Kepler, dorischer Monopteros

Johannes Kepler Büste von Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Döll, Hist. Museum, Regensberg Fürst-Anselm-Allee. Denkmal für Johannes Kepler, dorischer Monopteros mit
Johannes Kepler Büste von Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Döll, Hist. Museum, Regensberg Fürst-Anselm-Allee. Denkmal für Johannes Kepler, dorischer Monopteros mit
Johannes Kepler Büste von Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Döll, Hist. Museum, Regensberg Fürst-Anselm-Allee. Denkmal für Johannes Kepler, dorischer Monopteros mit
Johannes Kepler Büste von Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Döll, Hist. Museum, Regensberg Fürst-Anselm-Allee. Denkmal für Johannes Kepler, dorischer Monopteros mit
Johannes Kepler Büste von Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Döll, Hist. Museum, Regensberg Fürst-Anselm-Allee. Denkmal für Johannes Kepler, dorischer Monopteros mit
Johannes Kepler Büste von Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Döll, Hist. Museum, Regensberg Fürst-Anselm-Allee. Denkmal für Johannes Kepler, dorischer Monopteros mit

Johannes Kepler Büste von Friedrich Döll, Hist. Museum, Regensberg. Fürst-Anselm-Allee. Monument to Johannes Kepler, with Doric Monopteros

Conical roof, bust, marble relief (copies, originals in the museum Hist.) Astronomical symbols, 1806/1808 by Emanuel d’Herigoyen, sculpture bust of Johannes Kepler, by Frederich Wilhelm Eugen Doell, marble relief added later, sculpted by Johann Heinrich von Dannecker, 1859.

Corona Schröter (1751-1802), German Singer, drawing a bust of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, 18. Century in company of Goethe from 1794 to 1797, oil painting (Ölgemälde von) by Georg Melchior Kraus, 1785
Corona Schröter (1751-1802), German Singer, drawing a bust of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, 18. Century in company of Goethe from 1794 to 1797, oil painting (Ölgemälde von) by Georg Melchior Kraus, 1785

In 1780 Goethe was an apprentice in the Weimar Masonic Anna Amalia zu den drei Rosen aufgenommen (which had to close soon). In April 1782 he finally got the Duke of nobility by the emperor, so that at official occasions he no longer had to sit on the sidelines. In 1783, the recording was followed in the Illuminati as “Abaris”. Besides innumerable odd jobs (masquerades, elevators, redoubts, singing games and occasional poems, mostly for performances in the pleasure palaces of the ducal court) he wrote essentially only “Iphigenia in Tauris”, a play in prose and counterpoint to his life. Government business, the peculiar relationship with Charlotte, simultaneously a half affair with the attractive Corona Schröter – that life was neither noble nor silent. Corona Elisabeth Wilhelmine Schröter also composed songs, setting texts by Frederich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to music. The figures in the Iphigenia, however (even the barbarian prince) are human and calm. Brought to the great beginnings of Frankfurt (“Egmont“, “Faust“, “Der ewige Jude”), he dared not move. But he started the 1778 Bildungsroman “Wilhelm Meister”, just a quiet chamber piece for five people, “Torquato Tasso”. After its success in the youth Goethe could now do with his work no more sensation. There were two unauthorized “total expenditure” (aka piracy), but otherwise, it had depreciated audience and publishers.

http://www.goethezeitportal.de/index.php?id=425
Jutta Assel
Goethe-motives on postcards:Goethe-sculptures
as of June 2015

Klauer 1790 b
See point 10.

Klauer 1790 b
Klauer 1790 b

Other pages to Goethe images on postcards

  • Contemporary Goethe-portraits and their adaptations
http://www.goethezeitportal.de/index.php?id=433
  • Stielers Goethe-portrait and its adaptations
http://www.goethezeitportal.de /index.php?id=435
  • Tischbein “Goethe in the Campagna
http://www.goethezeitportal.de/index.php?id=434
  • Goethe silhouettes
http://www.goethezeitportal.de/index.php? id = 2556
    For picture postcards see:
Contemporary Goethe-portraits and their adaptations ,
Chap 1, with further reading.

  • Introduction
    “Goethe appreciates the portrayal as a necessary and in a certain sense useful art. In the succession of Lessing, he distinguishes the individual art genres according to their inherent laws, from which the artist’s limited possibilities to choose material and to design.” (G. Körner: On the Difficulties of Portrait Art, p. 154) On the sculpture he sums up (cf. ibid.):
  • The sculpture art is rightly held so high, because it can and must bring the representation to its highest summit, because it expels man from all that is not essential to him …
  • “The colourlessness of sculpture, the distribution of light and shadows by its own form, further pushes it from reality to symbolism as the coloring of the painting is able to do, but as far as portrait is concerned, the sculptor can only do it – and the antique busts Offer ideals here, but do not elevate them to the ideal. […] From his intentions to promote art in Germany, from pragmatic considerations, Goethe sees himself and other clients in the duty of sculpture through portrait assignments (Ed., P. 154). The Academy, Goethe demanded, “to make important hunts, especially by traveling, to hunt them, to model them, and to put an imprint in a burnt tone” (cf ibid., P 155)
  • Goethe himself, like painters who “hunted” for him, afforded very different time for their work or refused meetings, if the artist did not like him. Some artists could Goethe in larger intervals win for meetings, other varied her portrait of Goethe (eg JP Melchior, of his relief portrait of Goethe of 1775 [no. 1 , 2 ] a modified replica 1785 [no. 5 ] produced) or changed the (As from about 1778/79 JP Melchior used the colorless, matte, marble-like bisquite instead of the porcelain).
  • Variations of the poet bust also show up at MG Klauer (Nos. 4 , 9 , 10 ) by using different materials such as limestone or gypsum (busts of 1779/80 et seq.) Or the new Goethe-bust type of approximately 1790 in blackened plaster Or in sound shaping. Later moldings for commercial exploitation existing in the workshop forms were common and are often carried out less carefully (eg by Klauer son Louis, the next his father also Schadows Goethe bust [no. 14 continues ausformte] in plaster and artificial brick).
  • For the production of postcards, this means that the reproduced (relief) portrait brushes depict different models – from the artist’s original work to workshop-produced replicas in various materials and different shaping qualities. This explains deviations and prevents precise information about the picture template, if it is not noted on the postcard.
  • Informative and attractive are the different views as well as illuminations of the busts. Any selected photographers-views can be eg the life mask Weisser (no. 11 – 12 ) look very different. Near-sighted placed in the small format of the postcard, the busts can achieve monumental effect.
  • Ref : Gudrun grains: About the difficulties of portraiture. Goethe’s relationship to portraits. In: Goethe and Art. Hg. By Sabine Schulze. Ostfildern: Publisher Gerd Hatje 1994, S. 150-158.

1.1 Contemporary Goethe sculptures

Melchior 1775


Melchior 1775
Melchior 1775

1.1 Contemporary Goethe sculptures

Melchior 1775
NOTE:To zoom in, double-click the pictures.

JP Melchior, 1774-75

Verso: First relief by Johann Peter Melchior [1742-1825] 1774-1775. Goethe in plastic. Signet. Publisher Alt-Weimar, Weimar.


Melchior 1775 b
Melchior 1775 b

Verso: GOETHE, modeled in 1775 by JP Melchior (Goethe National Museum, Weimar) FA Ackermanns Kunstverlag, GmbH, Munich, No. 1770 –


Melchior 1779
Melchior 1779

JP Melchior, 1779
Verso: Goethe, modeled in 1779 by JP Melchior. FA Ackermann’s Kunstverlag, Munich. Series 147 (12 cards). No. 1770.  – Payer-Thurn, n. 51. Election, n. 9. Verso: “The author of the sufferings of young Werther by his friend Melchior, 1775.”

Klauer 1780
Klauer 1780

MG Klauer, 1780

Verso: Bust by Martin Gottlob Klauer [1742-1801] c. 1780. Goethe in plastic. Signet. Publisher Alt-Weimar, Weimar.  – Election, no. 18. Further Goethe busts of Klauer (around 1780), see Wahl / Kippenberg, p. 77.


Melchior 1785
Melchior 1785

Melchior 1785

JP Melchior, 1785
Verso: Second relief by Johann Peter Melchior 1785. Goethe in plastic. Signet. Publisher Alt-Weimar, Weimar.


Trippel 1787
Trippel 1787

Trippel 1787

A. Trippel, 1787/90
Verso: Weimar, Goethe National Museum. Goethe. Bust of Alexander Trippel [1744-1793]. Rome, 1787, No. 634. L. Held, Hofphotogr. Weimar, Marienstr. 1. Tel. 432.  – Goethe and the Arts, p. 182 Fig. 131. Payer-Thurn, n. 114 (facial mask). Choice, No. 31. Wahl / Kippenberg, p. 126.


Trippel 1787 b
Trippel 1787 b

A. Trippel, 1787/90
Verso: Alexander Trippel: Goethe (Marble Coast). Signet. Publisher Alt-Weimar, Weimar.


Trippel bueste
Trippel bueste

A. Trippel, 1787/90
Wolfgang von Goethe. Triple bust Verso: Postcard.


Klauer 1790
Klauer 1790

Klauer 1790

MG Klauer, around 1790
GOETHE, 1790. After the fragment of the Tonbüste by Martin Gottlob Klauer. Verso: Published by Berger, German Book and Art Publishers, Dresden. Published with the permission of the Goethe National Museum, Weimar. Produced by F. Bruckmann AG Munich.  Election, nos. 33 and 34. Further Goethe busts of Klauer (c. 1780), see Wahl / Kippenberg, p. 77.


Klauer 1790 b
Klauer 1790 b

Klauer 1790 b

MG Klauer, around 1790
Verso: Fragment of the bust of Martin Gottlob Klauer about 1790. Goethe in plastic. Signet. Publisher Alt-Weimar, Weimar.


Weisser 1807
Weisser 1807

Weisser 1807

  1. KG White, 1807
    GOETHE 1807. According to the mask of Karl Gottlob Weißer [1779-1815]. Verso: Published by Berger, German Book and Art Publishers, Dresden. Manufactured by F. Bruckmann AG Munich. Not running. “The mask is the only facial cast ever taken from Goethe.neither Schadow [cf. No. 14] has made a new facial print in 1816, The sculptor Weisser, Schadow, Rauch, and Tieck have, in a very different manner, laid the mask upon their busts. “” The mask is the only one that is beyond the subjectivity of the fine artist. ” (P. 280) Repeated reflections, p. 479: “The literary, much-attested asymmetry of the facial features and the specific shape of the skull bones are so clearly reproduced as scars and folds as traces of the long, fulfilled life.”


Weisser Gesichtsmaske Held
Weisser Gesichtsmaske Held

Weisser Gesichtsmaske Held
11a. Goethe. From Weisser mouldable facemask 1807.Louis Held, court photographer, Weimar.


Weisser 1807

Living mask of Goethe, 1807
Verso: face mask of Goethe. 1807 manufactured by Weißer. Goethe National Museum, Weimar.

Weisser 1807
Weisser 1807

Weisser Bueste 1807
Weisser Bueste 1807

Weisser Bueste 1807

KG White, 1807/08
Verso: Bust by Karl Gottlob Weisser 1807-1808. Goethe in plastic. Signet. Publisher Alt-Weimar, Weimar. – Election, no. 44.


Schadow 1816
Schadow 1816

Schadow 1816

JG Schadow, 1816
GOETHE. Mask of [Johann Gottfried] Schadow [1764-1850] 1816. Prepress temple: Goethe National Museum Weimar. Verso: From the Goethe House in Weimar. Ph. Louis Hero, Weimar. – Payer-Thurn, no. 149.


Rauch 1820
Rauch 1820

Rauch 1820
15th c. D. Rauch, 1820
Verso: FA Ackermann’s Kunstverlag, Munich. Series 115: 12 Goethe Portraits. No. 1450: The Goethe bust of C [hristian] D [aniel] Rauch 1777-1857. Not running. Goethe, and the art, p. 184. “The similarity of this portrait,” writes Heinrich Meyer, “hardly leaves anything else But he also succeeded in satisfying the demands of the higher art, and not only did the artist achieve a very lively, lively turn of the head, but he also knew how to enlighten the features of the face and bring to the whole the most praiseworthy agreement. Election / Kippenberg, p. 206.


Rauch 1820 b
Rauch 1820 b

Rauch 1820 b
16th century, D. Rauch, 1820
Verso: Leipziger Museum, No. 248. Christian Daniel Rauch: Portrait of Goethe. Publisher of Fischer & Ludwig Leipzig.  A comparison of nos. 15 and 16 shows deviations of the replicas.


Rauch 1820 c
Rauch 1820 c

Rauch 1820 c
17th century, D. Rauch, 1820
Verso: Bust by Christian Daniel Rauch 1820. Goethe in plastic. Signet. Publisher Alt-Weimar, Weimar.


Rauch 1820 d
Rauch 1820 d

Rauch 1820 d
18th century, C. Rauch, 1820
Verso: Goethe. Bust of Rauch, Jena 1820. Weimar, Goethe National Museum. 642 L. Held, Hofphotogr. Weimar, Marienstr. 1, tel. 432.


Rauch 1828
Rauch 1828

Rauch 1828
19th c. D. Rauch, 1828
Verso: Statuette by Christian Daniel Rauch 1828. Goethe in the plastic. Signet. Publisher Alt-Weimar, Weimar. Postmark: 9.5.37. – Election, No. 71. Election / Kippenberg, p. 206.


D Angers 1829
D Angers 1829

D Angers 1829

PJD D’Angers, 1829
GOETHE 1829. After the bust of Pierre Jean David D’Angers [1788-1856]. Verso: Published by Berger, German Book and Art Publishers, Dresden. Published with the permission of the Goethe National Museum, Weimar. Manufactured by F. Bruckmann AG Munich.  – Goethe and Art, p. 187 Fig. 136. Payer-Thurn, no. 175. Election, no. 72 (with base). Wahl / Kippenberg, p. 227 (with base).


David Goethe Alt Weimar
David Goethe Alt Weimar

David Goethe Alt Weimar
20a. PJ David d’Angers, 1829
Verso: Goethe in plastic. Relief from Pierre Jean David d’Angers, 1829. Publisher Alt-Weimar, Weimar.


Facius Goethe Alt Weimar
Facius Goethe Alt Weimar

Facius Goethe Alt Weimar
20b. A. Facius, 1825-1830
Verso: Goethe in plastic. Relief from Angelica Facius between 1825 and 1830. Publisher Alt-Weimar, Weimar.


Schiller - Schaedel
Schiller – Schaedel

Schiller – Schaedel
1.2 Posthumous Goethe sculptures
NOTE:To zoom in, double-click the pictures.

Goethe, when looking at Schiller’s skull, 1897

Socket row: Secret vessel! Spelling oracles. / How am I going to hold you in my hands? / Goethe by looking at Schiller’s skull. Weimar, Goethehaus “Goethe when looking at Schiller’s skull”. Verso: 1801 Publisher of Zedler & Vogel, Darmstadt.

The 1.10 m high bust was created by Gustav Eberlein [1847-1926] 1897 without order, the Gipsoriginal is owned by the Museum Weimar classic. “The bust was shown in 1898 as a gypsum model in the Grand Berlin Art Exhibition and in the Munich International Art Exhibition and in 1905 as a marble exhibition in Berlin.” Rolf Grimm: Eberlein, a glowing admirer of Goethe. URL: http://www.hann-muenden.net/spontan/eb_goet2.htm .

“Schiller’s body was first set up in a vault of the Jacobskirchhof in Weimar, which had to be cleared in March 1826. The mayor was summoned to find Schwabe Schiller’s bones among the mass of the remaining buried there, the skull was provisionally on the 17th September 1826 on the Grand Ducal In the solemn act, in which he himself did not participate, Goethe composed the wonderful Terzines, “Considering Schiller’s Skull.” Payer-Thurn, Explanation to No. 183. For six months Goethe preserved Schiller’s skull. Cf. Albrecht Schöne: Schiller’s skull. Munich: CH Beck 2002.

In serious ossuary was it where I gazed,
fit Like Skulls skulls arranged;
The old time I thought, the gray.

They stand in line clamped, the otherwise hated each other,
and rough bone, the fatal beating each other,
you are crosswise, tame to rest all hier.

Entrenched shoulder blades! what they wore,
nobody asks, and dainty-tät’ge members,
the hand, the foot, scattered from life joints.

Your tired so lagt down in vain,
not repose in the grave was allowed to drive you,
you come up to the light of day again,

and no one can love the dry shell,
Welch splendidly fine core kept them well.
But me adepts was written Scripture,

the sacred sense undisclosed anyone
When I midst of such rigid amount
Invaluable gorgeous saw a Gebild,

That in the room Moderkält ‘and Enge
I freely and heat feeling refreshed me,
as if a fountain of life to death sprang,

as me mysteriously delighted the form!
The god-inspired trail, which is preserved!
A look that carried me to that sea,

The flutend flows increased figures.
Secret vessel! Oracles donating
How am I worth to keep you in hand,

you most treasure from Moder pious entwendend
And in the open air to free the senses,
to sunlight reverently turning towards me.

What can man in life attract more,
as that God-nature manifest him?
How it can trickle to spirit the celebrations
as they keep the spirit generated fixed.


Schiller - Schaedel b
Schiller – Schaedel b

Schiller – Schaedel b

Goethe, when looking at Schiller’s skull, 1897

Goethe looking at Schiller’s skull. Pedestal: Secret vessel! Spelling oracles. / How am I going to hold you in my hands? Verso: Publisher: F. Feuerstein Nachflg., Weimar.


Goethe Betrachtung von Schillers Schädel
Goethe Betrachtung von Schillers Schädel

Goethe Betrachtung von Schillers Schädel
22a. Goethe looking at Schiller’s skull
Goethe looking at Schiller’s skull. Dr. Trenkler Co., Leipzig. 1905. Wei. 23.


Epple
Epple

Epple

Epple
Verso: Goethe. According to the sculptor [Emil] Epples [1877-?] Hermen im Kgl. Court Theater in Stuttgart. Artist Postcard. Folder 206/2 poets and composers. L. Schaller, Kunstverlag, Stuttgart (founded in 1860). Signet.


Mueller
Mueller

Mueller

G. Mueller
P12. Verso: Prof. Georg Müller-Munich [1880-1952] “Goethe”. Real dog photo. Publisher Fotostöckel, Hanover.


literature
Goethe and art. Hg. By Sabine Schulze. Ostfildern: Publisher Gerd Hatje 1994 (exhibition catalog Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt and Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar).

Payer-Thurn, Rudolf: Goethe. A picture book. His life and work in 444 pictures. Leipzig: Günther Schulz oJ

Pechel, Rud (olf): Goethe and Goethe. 88 pictures (Schaubücher, 32) Zürich, Leipzig: Orell Füssli 1932.

Election, Hans: Goethe in the Portrait. Leipzig: Island of 1925.

Election, Hans / Kippenberg, Anton: Goethe and his world. With the cooperation of Ernst Beutler. 580 pictures. Leipzig: Im Insel publishing house 1932.

Repeated reflections. Weimar Classic, 1759-1832. Permanent exhibition of the Goethe National Museum. Hg. By Gerhard Schuster and Caroline Gille. 2 Bde (with side count). Stiftung Weimarer Klassik at Hanser. Munich, Weimar: Carl Hanser 1999.


3. Legal Notice and Contact

All templates originate from a private collection. The private use and non-commercial use to educational, artistic, cultural and scientific purposes is permitted provided that the source (Goethe time portal) and URL ( www.goethezeitportal.de/index.php?id=425 ) are indicated. Commercial use or use for commercial purposes (eg for illustration or advertising) is only permitted with the express written permission of the author. Contact:

Prof. Dr. Georg Jäger
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Institute of German Philology
Schellingstr. 3
80799 München

Email: [email protected]

Schwanteich - Gotha, Thüringen, 1805, Frederick William Eugen Döll, photograph taken in 1885
Schwanteich – Gotha, Thüringen, 1805, Frederick William Eugen Döll, photograph taken in 1885

Schwanteich, Gotha, Thüringen, 1805, Frederick William Eugen Döll, 1885 Photo

The monument at the swan pond in Gotha (Thüringen) was a water feature in the park on the former base now the main post

Gotha, Altenburg Lodges Certificate Gotha - Freemasonry Shown are the Sphinx and the Anubis referring to Frederich Wilhelm Eugen Döll’s sculpture in Gotha, and Wörlitz
Gotha, Altenburg Lodges Certificate Gotha – Freemasonry Shown are the Sphinx and the Anubis referring to Frederich Wilhelm Eugen Döll’s sculpture in Gotha, and Wörlitz

Gotha Altenburg Lodges Certificate Gotha Freemasonry Shown are the Sphinx, and the Anubis referring to Frederich Wilhelm Eugen Döll’s sculpture in Gotha, and Wörlitz

(Gotha-Altenburg lodges certificate) for the Gotha Freemasonry

Shown are the Sphinx, and the Anubis referring to Frederich Wilhelm Eugen Döll’s sculpture in Gotha, and Wörlitz

August Geutebrück was born in 1758 and came to a doctrine on agriculture at the age of 24 years at the service of the ducal family Gotha-Altenburg. Already in the year 1770, he came into contact with Grand Master Ernst II, in 1774 founded Masonic Lodge “to compass”. At least since 1783 August Geutebrück was a member of the lodge, to which also his friend Frederick IV later joined. In 1793, the activities of the Order of Gotha were hired, in 1801 it came to the final resolution of the Gotha Lodge. In 1806, after the death of Ernst II, the lodge was under the name “SERIOUS FOR COMPASS” and reopened. Until shortly before the turn of the century, the Gotha Lodge was in the house Neumarkt No.6. In 1882 the Masonic Lodge was moved to a newly built site, which was next to the Post Office Square. On 15.07. In 1935 the lodge was dissolved by the Gotha THIRD REICH, and all their records were seized.

Schwanteich - Gotha, Thüringen - 1805 - Frederick William Eugen Döll, Sphinx, Gotha-Altenburg Freemason Group
Schwanteich – Gotha, Thüringen – 1805 – Frederick William Eugen Döll, Sphinx, Gotha-Altenburg Freemason Group

The Schwanteich (swan pond) was at the point where there is now the rear of the main post office mail. The monument was located on the site of today’s rear building of the community center. It was designed in 1805 by sculptor Frederick William Eugen Döll. A cascade filled the pond with water, the monument stood 25 feet high, was in the form of a portal, consisting of two stones carved with hieroglyphs, each 17 feet high, 6 feet wide, 2 feet deep and over 200 hundred pounds. Within the portal, was a pool, formed from the ibises, up to a fountain, whose jet proceeded to the ceiling and spread a fine rain. The frieze monument was decorated with a winged shield base relief of Isis, and the fluted cornice, a Sphinx resting on the roof of the monument.

After the pond drained and the Imperial Post Office, as well as the building of a new lodge, was built, the monument disappeared. Only the Sphinx remained on the steps of the garden entrance of the lodge but was incorporated by disputes over the ownership of the Sphinx from the demolition company Gebr Eisser. The Sphinx was placed in 1937 first in the garden of the district court of the city, and then in 1948, at the request of older surviving Masons, on the island in the park pond, where seven dead members are buried. The Sphinx is still preserved in its original state.

The monument at the swan pond in Gotha (Thüringen) was a water feature in the park, the former base for the monument is now the main post site.

Schwanteich Gotha Thüringen 1805 Frederick William Eugen Döll

https://sites.google.com/site/geutebrueckdenkmalpark/home

Reconstruction in Gotha digital reconstruction pictures

https://sites.google.com/site/geutebrueckdenkmalpark/bilder/restauration

That was the front of the GEUTEBRÜCK MONUMENT.

Only in a single element description of the monument is in question, of the butterfly image. The detail on a photograph from 1902 – on which only the butterfly could be seen – it is still preserved as above. The top image is a montage but is 100% original condition. The butterfly was a common symbol in that time – it is a sign of resurrection, hope (larva – pupa – butterfly) and thus also the Metarmophose. The butterfly is like the character of the liberated soul from matter.

The inverted flare on the left side of the monument. The torch has not been preserved. The inverted torch is to point out the dying light of life.

There is a palm branch and a laurel wreath on the right side of the monument. The only relief is that the monument is still preserved very well. Symbols of well-deserved fame and finally found peace

The Egyptian Sphinx is predominantly a statue of a male lion with a human head. In the era of classicism sphinxes of more or less Egyptian coinage were a popular motif in art. The Sphinx was in the 18th Century a symbol of eternity, immortality, and the enigmatic. There were 6 sphinxes in Gotha, as far as what is known today. There were probably 2-3 more, but this is no longer recorded.

At the entrance of the Friedhof I was the “old cemetery”, and these two sphinxes standing on the Erbgräbern of Rosenberg and Purgold. The sphinxes were penned by the sculptor Rathgeber.

Rathgeber column on Friedhof II


In 1838, a smaller Sphinx was seated next to the pillar at the grave of Caroline Rathgeber. The Sphinx is also sculpted by Friederich Wilhelm Eugen Döll. The grave site was part of the pyramidal Rathgeber – family grave.

Lüderitz – Fountain

The sphinxes of medium size, made by Rathgeber, were set in 1840 at the Lüderitz wells (mountain garden), but in 1962 they were removed because hooligans destroyed the sphinxes beyond recognition.

Monument at the swan pond

Schwanteich Gotha Thüringen 1805 Frederick William Eugen Döll

Ruinenberg on Swan Pond

A small hill was near the swan lake until 1820, at the position which today is at the Arnoldi monument. Positioned at the top of the hill were openings for both an external as well as a hidden underground passage. There you could enjoy the most beautiful view under a magnificent tree. At the summit of the hill, a sphinx rested, which seemed to want to follow on to the swan pond the monument. The lower part of the hill has been hiding in the ruins of an ancient temple.

The Loge of Gotha made an attempt to reform German Freemasonry, which was known as the “Association of German Masons,” but historical reform remained unfinished. In 1793, the Duke arranged the lodge activity. In the years 1804 to 1810, he was also the financial manager for Frederick IV, working during the time Frederick IV was in Rome. Frederick IV wrote that the Lord Geutebrück ran the business with perfect order and loyalty. Immediately before his death in 1817, he donated 200 dollars for the Frankenberg `sche hospital. August Geutebrück died on 29.04.1817 in Gotha. The Gotha city archives states: The monument was in the southern part of the English garden of Gotha, five statues, that were probably the most artistic. Duke Frederick IV had the archive secretary and later government Rath August Geutebrück erect the monument in 1820. Frederick IV for the third time in 1814 went to Rome in order to recover from a cramp. When he returned in 1820 to Gotha his friend August Geutebrück, who took care of his finances and business, had been dead for three years. Since he no could not attend his funeral at the old cemetery, he had constructed the last great monument as a proof of his friendship. A year later, at the request of the Freemasons a sphinx on the stone was placed, as a sign of the faithful and close ties with the council of the Lodge “to Ernst compass”, suggesting “Hereafter will solve the dark mystery of life.”. Below the inscription is a butterfly as a symbol of resurrection and metamorphosis. The inverted torch to extinguish, indicating the dying light of life. Laurel wreath and palm, and as symbols of the well-earned fame finally found peace of view. The almost completely weathered inscription on the back reads: “The memory of a brave Biedermanns, on April 29, 1817, the deceased Herzögl.Sächs.Rates August Geutebrück, dedicated by his grateful friend F.”

The oldest preserved photograph of the monument in 1885

The court sculptor Frederick William Doell (1750-1816) was the creator of the sophisticated Sphinx sculpture resting on a base made from Seeberger sandstone. The Sphinx was not made specifically for the base of the monument Geutebrück. It was made already years ago by Doell and after his death in an estate inventory remained in his workshop at Steinmetz. The base was made to match the already existing Sphinx.

By the early 20th. Century, the almost completely weathered inscription and the monument condition in desecration, after violent storm damage in 1928, the Sphinx was erected again properly but had altogether lost by falling the stone headscarf. The four rear hornbeam were uprooted. A bomb explosion in 1945, not far from the monument damaged the Sphinx’s head and damaged the base so that corners were missing completely at the lower end. The other white houses were damaged by the hit and after the war ended were used as firewood. Witnesses of the badly battered sphinx still remember it in the 1950-ies. The Sphinx was highly damaged during a storm by a falling tree, and the Sphinx was removed in 1963.

It was not known until just recently what happened to the Sphinx until it was found in a garbage dump where it was placed under tons of rubble in the 1960s, which was filled in, again and again, only half a meter below the ground. Excavations were not allowed, according to a document from the city archives in Gotha. The Sphinx got there in the dump spring of the 1963rd.

All the text above for the Gotha Altenburg Freemason Lodge is from the website below:

https://sites.google.com/site/geutebrueckdenkmalpark/home

Schwanteich Gotha Thüringen 1805 Frederick William Eugen Döll

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Schwanteich, Gotha, Thüringen, 1805 - Frederick William Eugen Döll - Sphinx vom Monument
Schwanteich, Gotha, Thüringen, 1805 – Frederick William Eugen Döll – Sphinx vom Monument

Der Venustempel im Wörlitzer ParkDer Venustempel im Wörlitzer Park Der Venustempel im Wörlitzer Park (Detail)Der Venustempel im Wörlitzer Park (Detail) Der Venustempel im Wörlitzer Park (Detail)Der Venustempel im Wörlitzer Park (Detail) Wörlitzer Wörlitzer Wörlitzer Iris, Theatrum – Hieroglyphicum, Munich, Frederick William Eugen Döll Wörlitzer Iris, Theatrum – Hieroglyphicum, Munich, Frederick William Eugen Döll
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Ancient portal (Egyptian) at the Orangerie in the New Gardens in Potsdam, Johann Gottfried Schadow (traditional ascription), Egyptian guards (one original copy after antique Egyptianising Antinous in Rome, Vatican City), sandstone, combined black, ca 1791-93, Potsdam, new garden, porch of the Orangery (Foundation for Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg)

Isis holding sistrum and oinochoe (Roman marble, reign of Hadrian) Capitolini Marble Life size with restorations

Fortuna-Isis restored as Faustina the Younger as Demeter. The head, hands and legs are modern restorations, 2nd century A.D.. Naples National Archaeology Museum, Farnese Collection

Bust of Isis-Sothis-Demeter. White marble, Roman artwork, the second part of Hadrian’s reign, ca. 131–138 CE. From the gymnasium in the Villa Adriana, near Tivoli, 1736, Museo Gregoriano Egiziano

Antikenportal (ägyptisch) an der Orangerie im Neuen Garten in Potsdam, Johann Gottfried Schadow (traditionelle Zuschreibung), Ägyptischer Wächter (Kopie nach antikem Original eines ägyptisierenden Antinous in Rom, Vatikan), Sandstein, schwarz gefaßt, ca. 1791–93, Potsdam, Neuer Garten, Portal der Orangerie

(Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg)

Ancient portal (Egyptian) at the Orangerie in the New Gardens in Potsdam, Johann Gottfried Schadow (traditional ascription), Egyptian guards (one original copy after antique Egyptianising Antinous in Rome, Vatican City), sandstone, combined black, ca 1791-93, Potsdam, new garden, porch of the Orangery

(Foundation for Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg)

Wörlitzer “Osiris”-Relief (KAt. 127) hat der Gothaer Hofbildhauer Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Doell (1750 – 1816) diese Büste dann mit dem Körper der Münchener Statue eines falkenköpfigen Gottes (Kat. 104) kombiniert.

Wörlitzer “Osiris”- Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Doell

Pantheon, Iris, Osiris, Horus, Anubis

Marble Palace, Isis

Orangery, Sphinx

Museum of Egyptian Art in Munich

http://aegyptisches-museum.de/index.php?id=170

Theatrum Hieroglyphicum Theatrum Hieroglyphicum

Ägyptisierende Bildwerke im Geiste des Barock Ägyptisierende image works in the spirit of the Baroque

11th März 2011 bis 22. March 2011 to 22 Januar 2012 January 2012

Knauf-Museum Knauf Museum

97343 Iphofen, Am Marktplatz 97343 Iphofen, Am Marktplatz

Das Interesse der Ägyptenrezeption des 18. The interest of Egypt reception of the 18th Jahrhunderts spiegelt sich nicht nur in der beginnenden Sammlungstätigkeit einzelner Fürsten wider, sondern führte auch zur Schaffung ägyptisierender Bildwerke. Century reflected not only in the beginning collection activity of individual rulers, but also led to the creation of Egyptian style statues. In der Ausstellung werden Architektur und Skulpturen des ägyptischen Teils aus dem Pantheon in Wörlitz (Sachsen) rekonstruiert und das Münchner Ensemble ägyptisierender Götterbilder vorgestellt, das im 18. In the exhibition, architecture and sculpture of the Egyptian part of the pantheon in Wörlitz (Saxony) reconstructed and presented to the Munich Company Egyptian style idols, in the 18th Jahrhundert in Italien entstanden und von Kurfürst Karl Theodor erworben worden war. Century had been originated in Italy and acquired by Elector Karl Theodor.

Theatrum Hieroglyphicum: Die Hauptdarsteller dieses barocken Hieroglyphischen Theaters sind Osiris, Isis und Horus – die klassischen Gottheiten Altägyptens. Theatrum Hieroglyphicum: The protagonist of this hieroglyphic baroque theater are Osiris, Isis and Horus – the classic gods of ancient Egypt. Im Hieroglyphischen Theater treten sie auf als dunkle, geheimnisvolle Gestalten, und ihre Farbe ist demzufolge meist auch schwarz, zur deutlichen Unterscheidung von den hellen, strahlend weißen Göttergestalten Griechenlands und Roms, also des Pantheons der klassischen Kulturen Europas. In hieroglyphic theater do they appear as dark, mysterious figures, and their color is therefore usually black, to clearly distinguish them from the bright, crisp white gods of Greece and Rome, so the pantheon of classical cultures of Europe. Der farbliche Kontrast symbolisiert den typischen Gegensatz zwischen Lichtsphäre und Unterwelt, zwischen Bewußtem und Unbewußtem, zwischen Leben und Tod. The color contrast symbolizes the typical contrast between light sphere and the underworld, between conscious and unconscious, between life and death. Diese in der mythologischen Tradition des Humanismus und der Kunst der Renaissance stehende Wiedergeburt der antiken Götterwelt ist charakteristisch für die Ägyptenrezeption der Barockzeit. Current standing in the mythological tradition of humanism and the Renaissance art revival of the ancient gods of Egypt is characteristic of the reception of the Baroque period.

Die im Geiste des Barock geschaffenen ägyptisierenden Bildwerke aus dem Pantheon in Wörlitz und aus dem Königlichen Antiquarium der Münchener Residenz stellen die beiden einzigen bekannten Götterensembles dieser Art aus der Zeit des Klassizismus dar. Es handelt sich dabei um nicht nur nachweisbar und deutlich sichtbar an antiquarischen Vorlagen orientierte, sondern davon auch inspirierte Neuschöpfungen im ägyptischen Stil aus der 2. In the spirit of the baroque created Egyptianising sculptures from the Pantheon, Worlitz and from the Royal Antiquarium in the Munich Residenz, the two only known gods ensembles of its kind in the Classicist period represents This is to not only demonstrably and clearly visible on antique originals oriented, but it also inspired creations in the Egyptian style from the 2nd Hälfte des 18. Half of the 18th Jahrhunderts, die, hergestellt in fürstlichem Auftrag, im Medium der Kunst die als Mysterium empfundene altägyptische Kultur repräsentieren sollten. Century, which should made in princely order, the medium of art, perceived as representing mystery ancient Egyptian culture.

Photo: 2011″‘ type=”#_x0000_t75″ alt=”http://www.aegyptisches-museum-muenchen.de/assets/components/phpthumbof/cache/bba15da458f32dfb90ad0f98e86cf64c.56aaaf2b40dc2d9f2b05e0d2aa3de54c.jpg” href=”http://www.aegyptisches-museum-muenchen.de/assets/components/phpthumbof/cache/bba15da458f32dfb90ad0f98e86cf64c.0a06639280bc493d8b3f39ee5af11488.jpg” o:button=”t” o:spid=”_x0000_i1027″>http://www.aegyptisches-museum-muenchen.de/assets/components/phpthumbof/cache/bba15da458f32dfb90ad0f98e86cf64c.56aaaf2b40dc2d9f2b05e0d2aa3de54c.jpg” href=”http://www.aegyptisches-museum-muenchen.de/assets/components/phpthumbof/cache/bba15da458f32dfb90ad0f98e86cf64c.0a06639280bc493d8b3f39ee5af11488.jpg” o:button=”t” o:spid=”_x0000_i1027″>

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Der geistesgeschichtliche Hintergrund dieses in barocker Manier inszenierten Theatrum Hieroglyphicum ist somit die für das späte 18. The historical background of this staged in baroque style Theatrum Hieroglyphicum is thus the 18th for the late Jahrhundert symptomatische fürstliche Sammeltätigkeit – und die Enträtselung dieser ägyptisierenden Bildwerke gibt deshalb nicht nur Einblick in die kunsthistorische Dimension, sondern vor allem auch in den ideengeschichtlichen Prozess der in Europa bereits im Mittelalter einsetzenden Ägyptenmode. Symptomatic century princely collecting – and the unraveling of this Egyptianising sculptures are therefore not only an insight into the art-historical dimension, but also in the intellectual history of the process in Europe in the Middle Ages onset Egypt fashion.

Dabei stehen die hieroglyphenkundlichen Münchener Götterfiguren stellvertretend für die allgemeine Ägyptophilie bzw. Ägyptosophie im Geiste des Barock, die ägyptisierenden Wörlitzer Bildwerke dagegen für die Ägyptomanie bzw. Ägyptenromantik der Goethezeit. Here, the hieroglyphics known union Munich idols are representative of the general Ägyptophilie Ägyptosophie or in the spirit of the Baroque, the Egyptianising Wörlitzer sculptures contrast to Egypt and Egyptomania Romantic Age of Goethe.

National Museum of Egyptian Art in Munich, Arcisstraße 16, 80333 Munich

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Chodowiecki, Daniel Nikolaus 1776 – Goethe

Chodowiecki, Daniel Nikolaus 1776 - Goethe
Chodowiecki, Daniel Nikolaus 1776 – Goethe

Chodowiecki Daniel Nikolaus – Entstehungsjahr 1787, Pyramid Eye

Chodowiecki Daniel Nikolaus - Entstehungsjahr 1787, Pyramid Eye
Chodowiecki Daniel Nikolaus – Entstehungsjahr 1787, Pyramid Eye

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Kegeldach, Büste, Marmorrelief (Kopien, Originale im Hist. Museum) und astronomischen Symbolen, 1806/1808 von Emanuel dHerigoyen, Büste von Friedrich Döll, Marmorrelief von Johann Heinrich von Dannecker; bis 1859 weiter westlich. Prince Anselm Avenue; Monument to Johannes Kepler, Doric monopteros with Kegeldach, bust, marble relief (copies, originals in the hist. Museum) and astronomical symbols, 1806/1808 by Emanuel dHerigoyen, bust by Friedrich Döll, marble relief by Johann Heinrich von Dannecker; Until 1859 further west.

Fuerst-Anselm-Allee_Denkmal_für_Johannes_Kepler_Regensburg, Prince Anselm Avenue; Monument to Johannes Kepler, Doric monopteros with Kegeldach, bust, marble relief (copies, originals in the hist. Museum) and astronomical symbols, 1806/1808 by Emanuel d`Herigoyen, bust by Friedrich Döll, marble relief by Johann Heinrich von Dannecker; Until 1859 further west.
Fuerst-Anselm-Allee_Denkmal_für_Johannes_Kepler_Regensburg, Prince Anselm Avenue; Monument to Johannes Kepler, Doric monopteros with Kegeldach, bust, marble relief (copies, originals in the hist. Museum) and astronomical symbols, 1806/1808 by Emanuel d`Herigoyen, bust by Friedrich Döll, marble relief by Johann Heinrich von Dannecker; Until 1859 further west.
Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Döll, Portrait Bust, Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha, Thüringen
Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Döll, Portrait Bust, Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha, Thüringen

Büste des Johannes Kepler von Friedrich Döll im 1806/08 von Emanuel d’Herigoyen errichteten Denkmal an der Fürst-Anselm Allee in Regensburg, nahe der Grabstätte im alten Petersfriedhof.

English: Bust of Johannes Kepler by Friedrich Döll. It is placed within the Kepler memorial that was erected by Emanuel d’Herigoyen at the Fürst-Anselm Allee in Regensburg, near Kepler’s burial.

Sculpture Works of Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Döll

In Wörlitz are gardens, and buildings that are a UNESCO World Heritage-listed site. The “Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Empire,” were built in the second half of the 18th Century under the reign of Prince Leopold III. Friedrich Franz of Anhalt-Dessau (1740-1817). The park is part of the network Gartenträume Saxony-Anhalt. In the basement of the Pantheon is a cave “unterquerender” that holds a Kanope, which is a symbol of Elbflusses, reliefs of Anubis, of Osiris and the Harpokrates and a statue of Isis. They were developed by Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Doell (1750-1816) created and belong to the earliest after ancient Egyptian art templates created in Germany.

Sculpture works of Eugen Doell:

Faith, Love and Hopeat the Hauptkirche in Luneburg.

22 stucco high-reliefs at the princely riding-school at Hauptreliefs in Stuck an der fürstlichen Reitbahn in Dessau

a lifesize statue of Catherine II of Russia as Minerva

Catherine II, with a maiden before her offering at an altar

Winckelmann’s monument in the Rotonda in Rome

Eugen Doell - Female Bust Hodded, Gotha
Eugen Doell – Female Bust Hodded, Gotha

Eugen Doell – Female Bust Hooded, Gotha

busts of Sappho and Raphael Mengs

The New Muses, Bas-relief, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden on a horse, crowned by victories, bas-relief , Gustav Adolfs torg (Swedish for “Gustav Adolf’s Square”) is a public square in central Stockholm, Sweden named after King Gustavus Adolphus.

The square is home to the Royal Opera, the Swedish State Department, Arvfurstens palats (housing the Ministry for Foreign Affairs) and the Ministry of Defence. South of the square are the Parliament on Helgeandsholmen and the Royal Palace in Stockholm Old Town. In the middle of the square there is a statue of Gustav II Adolf, which was erected in 1796.

Eugen Doell - Female Robed With Vase, Gotha
Eugen Doell – Female Robed With Vase, Gotha

Eugen Doell – Female Robed With Vase, Gotha

lifesize figures of Minerva, a Muse, and Hygieia;

grave-monument to the Gräfin von Einsiedel at Dresden and duke Karl von Meiningen;

monument to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing at the Wolfenbüttel library

Kepler’s statue at Regensburg.

Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Doell - Portrait Bust, Gotha
Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Doell – Portrait Bust, Gotha
Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Doell - Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha, Thueringen - Portrait Bust
Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Doell – Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha, Thueringen – Portrait Bust
Crouching Venus, Aphrodite - Leopold Döll - Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha, Thüringen
Crouching Venus, Aphrodite – Leopold Döll – Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha, Thüringen
Leopold Doell - Crouching Aphrodite, Gotha, Thueringen
Leopold Doell – Crouching Aphrodite, Gotha, Thueringen

Crouching Venus, Aphrodite – Leopold Döll – Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha, Thüringen

Leopold Doel, – “Crouching Athena Figure”

APHRODITE “CROUCHING APHRODITE”, Musée du Louvre, Paris, France, “Aphrodite accroupie”, Material: Marble, Height: 0.71 metres, Copy by Greek sculptors of an earlier Greek statue C3rd BC, during Roman Imperial period, Style: Hellenistic, Aphrodite crouching, bathing herself with upraised arm. The goddess is raising her left hand towards her neck whereas the prototype used to cross her arms on her breast., H. 71 cm, Collections of Louis XIV of France; seized during the French Revolution (27 ¾ in.), Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, Sully, ground floor, room 17, Louvre Museum, Paris France

The sculptor Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Döll’s son – the sculptor Friedrich Leopold Döll, (1791-1856)

On cemetery I also called “old gods”, these two sphincters stood on the hereditary tombs of the Rosenberg family. The sphinxes came from the hand of the sculptor Leopold Döll. In 1908, the sphinxes were dismantled and brought to Coburg, where they now guard around the rear exit of the castle to the park.

Arnoldidenkmal - Leopold Frederich Doell - Gotha
Arnoldidenkmal – Leopold Frederich Doell – Gotha

Arnoldidenkmal – Leopold Frederich Doell –

Gotha  ,

Wilhelmine Arnoldi - Leopold Friedrich Doell
Wilhelmine Arnoldi – Leopold Friedrich Doell

The influence of Crouching Aphrodite Greek Hellenistic and Greco-Roman sculpture on Leopold Fredrich Doell

Leopold Friedrich Döll – Two Sphinx – Gotha, Now In Coburg


The Enduring Qualities of Public Monuments Functions of the monument over centuries. Catesby Leigh Updated: Feb 13, 2020 Original: Jul 17, 2015

The Enduring Qualities of Public Monuments
Functions of the monument over centuries.
Catesby Leigh
Updated:
Feb 13, 2020
Original:
Jul 17, 2015

Public Monuments,” Traditional Building, Fall 2014 By Catesby Leigh

Monumentality entails objective, enduring formal qualities that contemporary designers ignore at their peril.

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The tomb was the original monument in the Western world. It took various forms in prehistoric times, ranging from rock-cut chambers to earthen mounds or tumuli, which might be crowned with megalithic structures known as dolmens.
The tomb lay at the center of the life of the family or clan. This was the original community, long antedating the political community. It was not a community of the living only. It was a community of the dead, the living, and those yet to be born, and it existed to perpetuate the ancestral worship. The origins of culture itself lie in this cult of the dead. The living were tasked with ensuring they themselves would be cared for in the afterlife. They must make very sure they had dutiful offspring, whether biological or adopted, lest their shades be expelled from the family tomb by hunger and neglect, and condemned to the dreadful fate of wandering larvae.
Time might have its way with the house of the living, but the house of the dead must endure forever. That’s why the tomb is the principal architectural witness to remote antiquity. The tomb’s prehistoric function, moreover, was not commemorative. In contrast to “monument,” there is no Latin cognate for the modern word “memorial,” understood as an element of the built environment, even though “memorial” derives from the Latin word for memory. That is because the monument, in its purest, most ancient sense, is not about “memory.” It’s about presence. The prehistoric tomb communicated the presence of the dead at a very visceral level.
Is it all that different with the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC? In other words, is “memorial” perhaps something of a misnomer in this instance? For here we have a monument pure and simple. Building and statue alike convey a powerful sense of physical presence. Viewed from the east, Henry Bacon’s temple is the Mall’s static but imposing terminus; viewed at an oblique angle from Memorial Bridge, on the other hand, it is the mighty pivot redirecting the Arlington Cemetery axis to the great spatial corridor that is the Mall. The statue within the temple, in turn, gives us Lincoln physically enlarged and vividly characterized. Seated on a high podium, he is removed from us, but he is not a “memory.” And his presence does not command superstitious enslavement to a hyper-ritualized existence, as the primeval tomb-monuments did. It rather inspires that noblest of human emotions: reverence.

The functions of the monument have thus changed over the millennia, but it manifests crucial continuities as well. And both abstract and figurative elements have come to be employed in its design in very different ways. But for its size and central location, the unornamented obelisk that is the Washington Monument could be dedicated to any number of historic figures or events. Obviously it doesn’t make its namesake present the way the Lincoln statue does. Yet the Washington Monument has a very powerful physical presence in its own right, and from this its resonance as a monument derives. It is the towering, luminous magnet that seemingly prevents the vast surrounding conurbation from drifting off into space. In other words, it is not only a spatial entity, it is a dimensional one, meaning it not only occupies space in a static sense but acts on its environment at a perceptual level, partly of course because it possesses the mass needed to do so.
If its lack of ornament renders the Washington Monument a proto-modernist artifact, as has been suggested, then so are the gigantic Egyptian pyramids (themselves sepulchral edifices, for the record), not to mention the comparatively miniscule yet strikingly monumental pyramid of unmortared granite commemorating the Confederate dead in Richmond, VA’s Hollywood Cemetery. Like the pyramid from which it derives, the obelisk is a highly resolved geometric form that tapers vertically to a point. As with the pyramid its spatial character is attributable to the fact that we naturally prefer to behold it from an oblique angle, so that we see two sides, rather than dead-on. And also like the pyramid its vertical orientation is akin to that of the standing human being.
The Washington Monument is thus a canonic form, treated in an unconventional manner by the lights of the classical tradition because it is completely devoid of detail that would endow it with scale. While this monument’s treatment evolved over an extended period of time from Robert Mills’ much more elaborate but ill-proportioned original design, the final result is remarkably appropriate to its site.

Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch in St. Louis, MO, strikes an interesting contrast. This lofty form, a sort of giant parabolic goal post, is obviously designed to be viewed in frontal silhouette – which is to say it reads pictorially rather than spatially or dimensionally. It lacks the mass to galvanize the space around it and nothing about its design instills a desire to experience it in the round. It may look fine on a picture postcard but it is devoid of the dimensional qualities of the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, not to speak of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris or the Soldiers and Sailors Arch in Brooklyn, NY. The Gateway Arch, then, does not qualify as a monument. Nor is it an anti-monument. In current parlance, it is an icon, which simply means it is very picturesque.
Unlike Saarinen’s arch, Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial is categorically anti-monumental. It is not even a mass, but rather what Lin called “a wound in the earth” – a void, in other words. Her chevron-shaped indentation in the landscape, faced in black granite, grows deeper as the visitor approaches the chevron’s vertex, while the ranks of names of the dead engraved in the granite grow taller. There is thus an important spatial aspect to the visitor’s experience of Lin’s remarkably simplistic design.
But the minimalism it exploits so effectively has proved disastrous in other settings. The 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan, with its twin cavities in the footprints once occupied by the Twin Towers, is Exhibit A. Each cubic abyss is girded above ground with tilted panels bearing the names of the dead. Water cascades down the sides and then funnels down the square hole in the middle of the floor below. What we have here is a pair of gigantic sunken commodes in eternal flush mode. The title of the competition-winning design that led to this anti-monumental fiasco, “Reflecting Absence” (emphasis mine), speaks volumes.
Monument Vs. Monumental
In its most fully developed form, then, a monument is a dimensionally oriented artifact that can be primarily architectural or figurative in nature. An esthetically resonant physical presence allows it to communicate the enduring significance of a personage, belief, ideal or event in the life of a community. Monumental buildings, on the other hand, are not usually conceived in commemorative terms. They rather incorporate formal qualities characteristic of a true monument. Of course the distinction cannot be a tidy one. The United States Capitol doesn’t commemorate anybody or anything but it would not be unreasonable to describe it as a monument to our civic ideals.
Major classical monument types – temples, statues, commemorative arches, circular tholos shrines, obelisks – are of a decidedly spatial character, even if the frontal view might be the designer’s main concern in a given context, as with the termination of an axis. If not an outright vertical orientation, a significant element of vertical integration (as with the Greek temple’s pediment and pitched roof) is a common feature. Minor monument types, it is true, can be pictorially oriented, starting with the Greek stelai, many of which are funereal artifacts taking the form of freestanding vertical slabs with figure compositions carved in relief on one side only.
Statuary and Architecture
The ancient link between statuary and architecture is crucial to understanding the monumental tradition in Western art. Monuments have been structural entities from time immemorial. Usually erected on tumuli, dolmen chamber tombs consisted of a polygonal arrangement of megalithic uprights that supported massive capstones. Large kerb stones might gird either the foot of the mound, or its plateau, making for an emphatically spatial ensemble that dominated the surrounding landscape. Other megalithic tombs feature spatially enthralling beehive vaults covered by tumuli. (The tholos shrine has its origins in such vaults.) The largest and most artistically impressive of these vaulted tombs is the misnamed Treasury of Atreus, situated outside the Bronze Age citadel of Mycenae. Here a dramatic entry axis that led to a magnificent portal was cut into the tumulus.

In fine art, the earliest important representational work we encounter, such as the cave paintings of France and Spain, is of course pictorial, rather than spatial or structural, in nature. Monumental sculpture, on the other hand, is by definition a spatial art. And it has a very interesting history with a critical structural aspect.
Sculpture itself emerged in Ancient Egypt and elsewhere in the Near East as a pictorially oriented art. It presented a massive spectacle to the eye, but it was conceived quadri-frontally, as a combination of discrete pictorial views – front, side and rear – rather than as a spatially continuous entity that led the eye around it. That’s why we encounter hybrid Assyrian creatures with five legs instead of four. The titanic Sphinx, 241 ft. long, is a rigidly quadri-frontal figure, and statues of pharaohs, their wives, and tutelary deities share its pictorial orientation while diverging from it in their more exclusive emphasis of the frontal view.
Art historians tell us that in the 7th century B.C. the experience of Egyptian statuary inspired the Greeks’ passion for monumental sculpture. At the same time, majestic temple colonnades along the Nile influenced their formalization of the Doric order in stone. This pivotal cultural development involved the transfiguration of a wooden structural system employed on the Greeks’ primitive temples into what one scholar has called “petrified carpentry.” (Egyptian columns were themselves variously derived from palm trees or even bundled papyrus.) But the approach to monumental form the Greeks developed is far more profound than anything we encounter in Egyptian art. And it is highly unlikely they would have taken full advantage of the Egyptian achievement but for the monumental heritage embedded in their own culture.
The Egyptians probably were not conscious of the fact that we humans view the world pictorially. In other words, the lens of the human eye focuses reflected light from the world around us onto the optic screen that is the retina. Gradations from light to shade and diminution in perspective allow the flat images that appear on that screen, essentially as patches of varied color, to serve as two-dimensional, pictorial reflections of three-dimensional reality. A photograph, we must understand, is itself a mechanical recording of an optical image.
Overriding Pictorial Constraints
Over time Greek sculptors somehow grasped the fact that the pictorial mechanism of human vision was impeding their quest for a fully lifelike representation of the figure. They internalized, as no artists had ever done before, the crucial distinction between what we see and what is, and without appreciating that fact we cannot understand their concept of the imitation of nature, let alone their concept of monumentality. They struggled for generations to override the pictorial constraints of human vision.
This explains the evolution of the human figure in Greek sculpture from a rigidly quadri-frontal entity conceived in pictorial terms, much as those five-legged Assyrian creatures were, to the spatially continuous figure that leads the eye from side to side as an emphatically three-dimensional, non-pictorial entity. Hence the intensified sense of reality, of presence, the human figure in the best Greek sculpture conveys, as with the magnificent reclining Ilissus figure from the Parthenon’s west pediment.
This revolutionary artistic development did not occur in isolation. As the distinguished scholar Rhys Carpenter emphasized, it involved a sort of feedback loop between the development of the Greek sculptural canon and the Greek architectural canon. The classical architectural orders were originally conceived as articulating the support of massive weight in pictorial terms. To put it another way, the mere silhouette of the British Museum’s Ionic order articulates a structural equation: the gravitational equilibrium between the column and the entablature it supports. And of course it does so in an anthropomorphic way, leading us to register that structural equation in terms of our own embodied state.

What’s more, the clear hierarchy of parts the classical column manifests, starting with its division into base, shaft and capital and continuing on to the array of subordinate elements within each division, contributes to its legibility. During the archaic period, this principle carried over into monumental sculpture, which often had to be read from a distance, as with pedimental compositions, so that we typically encounter a very clear delineation of the principal forms of the human figure, and the male nude especially: head, torso and limbs, with their respective components just as clearly subordinated.
A century after their historic introduction to the monuments flanking the Nile, then, archaic Greek sculptors articulated the structure of the male nude in quasi-architectural terms, but with ever increasing realism, even as they remained shackled to the constraints of pictorial vision and a quadri-frontal approach to composition. The famous Caryatids of the Erectheum, which date to the classical period but hone closely to archaic precedent, encapsulate this historic interaction between sculpture and architecture. The structural clarity of the Ilissus figure itself can thus be said to have architectural roots.
A closely related aspect of classical monumentality in sculpture is the geometric interplay between the forms comprising the figure. Geometry, after all, was the Greeks’ key to “what is” – to a reality transcending pictorial phenomena. The head of the fallen combatant in a Parthenon deep-relief panel makes this principle clearer precisely because the face is missing. We can observe that the geometry of the shoulder muscles and pectoral muscles relates to and indeed derives from the shape of the head.
Baltimore sculptor Brad Parker calls this “shape orientation.” It demands enormous skill, not only because it variously involves the truncation, inversion or warping of shapes so derived, but also because it entails the expression of the highly complex inner structure of the body in the figure’s topography.
Classical drapery, for its part, is no longer a matter of intricate, pictorially oriented ornamental patterns as it is in archaic sculpture. Its sinuous lines of light and shade instead lead us around the figure in countless trajectories, intensifying our sense of its dimensional presence. Increasingly sophisticated compositional techniques, basically revolving around multiaxial design – as in the celebrated youthful Hermes in Naples, with its multiple alignments, including the rotation of the upper torso on the pelvis – virtually compel the spectator to experience the figure in the round rather than just taking in a frontal view.
The Parthenon
Despite these radical innovations, which allowed the finest Greek sculptors to endow the human figure with a formal coherence and organic unity that has never been surpassed, there remains a significant continuity between their achievement and the many megalithic monuments scattered around Europe: Both are structurally and spatially oriented entities. Of course, we can say much the same thing about the Greek temple, and particularly the greatest of all Greek temples, the Parthenon.
Like the megalithic dolmens – but unlike the tombs whose cave-like beehive vaults would re-emerge, ethereally transfigured, in the rotunda of the Roman Pantheon and, long after that, the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol – the Greek temple was chiefly designed for external effect. Like the archaic statue, it was a quadri-frontal entity. Architectural adjustments for optical effect, however, had been brought to an astonishingly high level by the time the Parthenon was built and endowed it with a sculptural presence of an entirely non-archaic character.

Needless to say, the Parthenon was situated on the Acropolis in a way that emphasized oblique rather than frontal views. The very slight doming of its floor was accompanied by the rise of its entablature toward the middle on all four sides and the barely detectable inward tilt of its columns and walls – actually a diagonal tilt of a little over two inches in the case of the corner columns. The marginally greater thickness of these corner columns compensates for perceptual diminution arising from their isolation on one side. The minute swell or entasis in the shafts of the Parthenon’s columns conveys a subtle sense of organic life while the resulting column profiles discourage the eye from a simplistic upward movement such as the pyramid’s pure geometry compels.
While the Parthenon acts with magnetic force on its environment, its columns’ inward tilt generates a tension – a countervailing outward thrust. This ambivalent dynamic further removes it from the realm of commonplace experience and even today instills in the sensitive viewer a state of heightened awareness or consciousness that the sculptural decoration, itself unsurpassed in Western art, could only reinforce. For the ancients this intensified state of consciousness was conducive to reverence and even awe.
Stonehenge
No doubt Stonehenge, the remarkably sophisticated open-air temple that antedates the Parthenon by 2,000 years, had a similar effect on the villagers who worshiped there. As with a primitive tumulus, or a tholos shrine, or for that matter the majestic dome of the Capitol in Washington, Stonehenge’s circular configuration is inherently more spatial than that of the quadri-frontal Greek temple. As with the Parthenon, however, Stonehenge’s architecture is derived from timber construction. Hence the mortise-and-tenon and tongue-and-groove joints used to attach its uprights and lintels of sarsen stone, a very hard sandstone.
The curving lintel stones of the outer sarsen ring were cut with formidable precision, and that ring, which may never have been completed, retained a level height despite the slightly sloping site. The inner horseshoe-shaped array of five freestanding sarsen trilithons (two uprights supporting a lintel) was graded in height and gave elemental expression to the principle of gravitational equilibrium mentioned above in connection with the Greek orders. Finally, Stonehenge was originally a burial site, but the temple, oriented to the midsummer rise and midwinter setting of the sun, was like the Parthenon devoted to a sky-god cult.
The Parthenon is a monument in the purest sense: It was created to impress the presence of the goddess Athena upon the Athenian populace with all the force art could muster, and not only by means of the lofty, long-lost gold-and-ivory statue of the goddess that was housed in the temple’s principal chamber.
The Parthenon thus serves to underscore the fact that in architecture as in sculpture monumentality manifests itself most profoundly in the vividly dimensional presentation of structure in anthropomorphic terms. Classical monumentality in particular is a relational monumentality. Grounded in the complex geometric and proportional relationships in the human body, it revolves around the interplay between lesser and greater parts, the forms they comprise, and the figure or architectural entity as a whole. Classical monumentality, and monumentality in the humanistic architectural styles that derive from the classical, is thus a monumentality of scale.
The Egyptian pyramids and the Washington Monument, on the other hand, are monumental because they are big and because they are geometrically well-resolved forms of a decidedly spatial character. They present no interplay, or at most a very limited one (i.e., that involving the Washington Monument’s shaft and crowning pyramidion), between parts and whole.

Stonehenge and the dolmen tombs are monumental, but they stand apart from the monumental tradition – the classical tradition – that has yielded the most abundant fruit in Western art. The megalithic monuments bear a very significant relationship to that tradition, but they belong to a different one, a primitive one that civilization left behind. That is, until Modernist devotees of the tabula rasa, casting about for a radically new take on monumentality, looked to Stonehenge for inspiration, as is evident from a significant number of benighted entries in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial competition half a century ago.
Indeed, the FDR memorial that eventually got built in Washington’s West Potomac Park has decidedly neo-megalithic features, what with its labyrinthine array of cyclopean walls. But thanks to its sprawling landscape-oriented design, episodic narrative content and incompetent sculpture, it fully qualifies as an anti-monument.
Louis I. Kahn’s Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island in New York City, also devoted to FDR, is far more coherently designed than its Washington counterpart, but here again we are speaking not of an object, which is what a monument is, but a place. The tapering Four Freedoms landscape, which creates a tunnel-vision effect, merely serves to diminish the scale of its terminus, the freestanding granite niche harboring Jo Davidson’s portrait bust of Roosevelt, thereby underscoring the niche’s inadequacy relative to the scale of the park and the park’s dramatic setting in the middle of the East River.
Of course, the Lincoln Memorial itself is no Parthenon, and we’re not just speaking of stylistic differences such as the former’s being crowned with a rectilinear attic instead of a pitched roof. The architecture of the Lincoln Memorial lacks the subtlety and refinement of the Athenian temple. And though the statue of Lincoln within is a distant descendant of the enthroned Zeus in the ancient Greek temple at Olympia, Daniel Chester French was a minor talent compared to Phidias, who created both the Olympian Zeus and the Parthenon’s Athena statue, and who was also in charge of the Parthenon’s entire sculptural program.
The fact remains that the Lincoln Memorial not only belongs to the same tradition as its Athenian forerunner but also partakes to a significant degree of the same idea of monumentality. And this has allowed it to yield a rich return on the creative effort and economic resources devoted to its creation.
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was no Phidias, either. And yet his Liberty Enlightening the World is the greatest monument in the United States. Like many a 19th-century sculptor, Bartholdi had an incomplete grasp of classical form. One good look at Lady Liberty’s rather crudely idealized head makes that plain enough. But she cuts an emphatically dimensional, monumental figure even so. To achieve that effect Bartholdi took his main cues from classical Greek sculpture – starting with the frontally oriented pose with the trailing right leg and raised heel. The folds of drapery girding Liberty’s body, on the other hand, lead the viewer around the figure and create a spiraling dynamic that culminates resoundingly in the raised arm bearing the torch aloft. The torch, moreover, is astutely counter-balanced by the book Liberty clasps at her left side. As with its Greek prototypes, there is an artful ambivalence in Liberty’s pose – it is not clear whether she has come to rest or is moving forward. What we feel is the bodily thrust propelling the torch aloft.
There are numerous Greek female figures which are heavily draped, but Bartholdi went beyond ancient precedent. He was less concerned with preserving feminine modesty than increasing Liberty’s bulk, and especially her flanks, the portion of the figure most vulnerable to visual decimation against the vast backdrop of New York Harbor. As a result only limited indication of anatomical forms beneath Liberty’s drapery – her breasts and right knee and lower leg – is provided. Given the tremendous challenge posed by the site, however, Bartholdi succeeded brilliantly. Liberty expands into the enveloping space, while her contours read with great clarity not only from the Lower Manhattan shoreline but from other distant vantage points as well.

Pound for pound, however, our greatest statue is Jean-Antoine Houdon’s life-size George Washington in the Capitol in Richmond, VA. Houdon, one of the last of the great classical masters, had a comprehensive understanding of the structure of the human body. The clothes on this life-size portrait statue resemble a membrane beneath which the informing body is readily legible. The border of Washington’s open coat is employed, much as classical drapery would be, to intensify the statue’s spatial presence: It guides the eye from the back of his legs, up his right side, along his chest, and around the back of his neck.
The shapes comprising the figure are articulated with great precision and likewise make that presence register more vividly. As with the Naples Hermes noted above, the composition is multiaxial, with a subtle tension between the turn of Washington’s head and left leg and the rotation of his torso toward the right arm clasping a walking stick. Here again a dynamic ambivalence akin to what we observed with the Parthenon results. Houdon’s supremely dimensional statue utterly dominates the large rotunda space in which it is situated.
Persistent, Objective Qualities
Monumentality, then, has persistent, objective qualities wedded to a persistent, objective formal vocabulary. It also has a normative history shaped by the greatest artists and architects who’ve ever lived. That doesn’t mean its formal possibilities have been thoroughly explored, let alone exhausted. But it does mean that monumentality is not just an arbitrary concept, subject to reinvention at the drop of a hat. It follows that the patron or designer who desires monumental expression in a contemporary idiom with a tenuous or non-existent relationship to the monumental tradition faces very long odds.
A case in point is Frank Gehry’s extravagant design for an Eisenhower Memorial in Washington. Gehry has conceived a four-acre postmodern theme park with an ill-conceived sculptural narrative in disordered megalithic settings plus an ersatz Great Plains landscape – all enclosed by enormous steel-mesh billboards with quasi-photographic images of the rural Kansas from which Ike hailed. The billboards hang from cylindrical, stone-clad, freeway-interchange-style pylons 80 ft. tall. Gehry’s monumentally pretentious design hardly represents a viable alternative to the tradition it reinterprets or negates, depending on your point of view.
The traditional camp faces daunting challenges too. Classical architects seeking institutional work confront a degraded culture of building in which modern frame construction is geared to the production of commodities, or at best meretricious icons, as opposed to substantive architecture of a monumental character. On the fine-art side of the ledger, the traditional practice of sculpture has itself been degraded by photography’s influence since the 19th century. Photography has led many a latter-day academic sculptor to espouse an essentially pictorial outlook beholden to the manipulation of the play of light and shade on the surface of the form rather than the expression of the deep structure underlying the form.
A corollary issue, one that arises in Auguste Rodin’s decidedly unclassical oeuvre, is the confusion of mass with structure. Because he could not draw this distinction, Felix de Weldon’s rather lumpen Marines on Arlington Ridge are big, period, and their flat, undimensional arrangement amply reflects the photographic genesis of his design. Traditionalists might scoff at de Weldon’s memorial as pseudo-monumental kitsch, which it is, but the fact remains that it points to serious deficiencies that much “classical” sculpture of recent vintage merely disguises.
An even more extreme example of photography’s baneful influence is the truly awful relief portrait of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., facing the Tidal Basin in Washington. The Modernistic treatment of the King figure as an agglomeration of simplistic planes is a logical extension of photography’s re-orientation of sculpture from formal depth to formal superficiality.

While monumentality poses distinct challenges for architects and sculptors, their aims hold – or at least should hold – much in common, insofar as they share a common lineage. Let’s hope they can meet these challenges in the years ahead. A dubious god called “modernity” is lobotomizing our culture, which is carrying out its immemorial role of uniting past, present and future – as the ancestral tomb once united the dead, the living, and those yet to be born – to an ever-diminishing degree.
As a result the monumental tradition languishes in the ghetto to which “modernity” has consigned our amputated past. In an age without heroes, as ours has been called, reverence meanwhile gives way to nihilistic indifference or preening moral self-regard. Our ability to build enduring value into an ever-expanding human habitat is gravely impaired as a result.
In a world besieged by technology worship and an Internet-enabled deluge of pictorial trivia, it is imperative that monumental design create new space for a deeper engagement with our humanity, our communal identities, and with nature itself. Otherwise we and our children run the risk of becoming hapless partakers of a deracinated, disembodied culture, reduced to the dreadful status of postmodern larvae.
Secrets of Successful Civic Monuments
Every February, the editors of Traditional Building publish an in-depth examination of a contentious topic in the world of traditional design. The question we’re exploring in this issue: What’s gone wrong with new public monuments?
This topic is screaming for attention because of the numerous bland – and sometimes disastrous – contemporary monuments being foisted on the public. (Example: The monument to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. featuring a statue of Dr. King looking like an aloof despot.) With our culture’s incessant striving for novelty we’ve lost the ability to create monuments with the power and gravitas of the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. Contemporary monument-making all too often defers to the idiosyncratic vision of a starchitect or the currently fashionable artist. These exercises in individual ego are usually praised by the critics, but are met by public reactions ranging from indifference to bewilderment and dismay.
The culmination of this calamitous trend was the recent bizarre proposal for an Eisenhower memorial in Washington, DC, designed by Frank Gehry. This sprawling unfocused plan is currently in limbo – and there is reason to hope the proposal is dead. That the project was finally put on hold is due largely to the vigilance of the National Civic Art Society (NCAS) in Washington, DC. This small organization spent countless hours documenting and testifying both to the grandiose design’s inherent flaws and to the furtive process that hatched it. The NCAS went so far as to sponsor a public design competition to prove that more comprehensible and economical designs were both possible and desirable.
All the demonstrated failings of the stalled Eisenhower Memorial cast into high relief the central problem: Contemporary designers have abandoned traditional symbols and conventions that are generally understood by the public, and substituted instead personal conceptions which often leave viewers unmoved and perplexed.
The Critical Role of Sculpture
To address this issue, the editors asked a well-known cultural critic – Catesby Leigh – to undertake a fundamental review of what makes a successful civic monument. Clearly, there were principles that were known in the past that our current generation has forgotten.
In his essay, Leigh makes the frequently ignored point that a monument is a thing, not a place. He goes on to show that the classical figure is the central element of the monumental tradition – and asserts that few sculptors today have the training or sensibility to create appropriate monumental figures. Further, Leigh demonstrates the crucial link between statuary and architecture in the Western monumental tradition. This relationship has been refined over the centuries by a feedback loop between the Greek sculptural canon and the Greek architectural canon. It’s this symbiosis between sculpture and architecture that generates monuments with emotional power and clarity of message.

When Henry Bacon designed the Lincoln Memorial, he – and most of his contemporaries – understood that a monument is a coherent physical object layered with meaning rather than an abstract concept subject to capricious reinterpretations. The editors hope this discussion of monumentality leads to a deeper understanding of the essential elements of successful civic monuments – and that this understanding might eventually result in new memorials that will speak eloquently to future generations.– Clem Labine, Editor Emeritus

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February 2014HistoricMonuments
By
Catesby Leigh
Catesby Leigh has written about public art and architecture for publications including The Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard, National Review, Modern Age and First Things. In 2002, he was a cofounder of the National Civic Art Society. Leigh is currently working on a book, Monumental America, an inquiry into the sources of monumentality in the nation’s built environment and the challenges contemporary culture poses for monumental design. 


A Genius in Draft Form By Catesby Leigh • January 20, 2018 9:00 AM, National Review

A Genius in Draft Form
By Catesby Leigh

January 20, 2018 9:00 AM, National Review

Tityus Drawing, by Michelangelo Buonarroti, Ca. 1530-32 (Lent by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017)

The Met’s superb exhibition of Michelangelo drawings illuminates the origins of the artist’s mastery.
On the façade of the church of Orsanmichele in Florence, more than a dozen niches contain faithful replicas of works by sculptors of the Quattrocento. One of the earlier ones is a statue of St. George by Donatello. A sculpture of the risen Christ, with St. Thomas extending his hand toward the wound in his side, was created by an artist born half a century after Donatello, Andrea del Verrocchio. Donatello’s St. George, shown gazing outward with his tall shield poised in front, is a handsome figure, but his static, frontal pose confines him to his niche. He is pictorially conceived, whereas Verrocchio’s two figures are dynamically, dimensionally designed, projecting boldly out of their niche into the viewer’s perceptual space. They are also a good deal more sophisticated in their modeling. They convey a more powerful sense of presence than Donatello’s figure. Which is to say they are more monumental.

It was Michelangelo, of course, who would take the monumental impulse the Italian Renaissance nurtured to heights only the best of the ancients attained. He did so as a sculptor, painter, architect, and — a landmark exhibition currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum in New York amply demonstrates — draftsman. The key to this achievement was his revolutionary insight into the formal means by which the Hellenistic sculptors of works such as the Belvedere Torso and the Laocoön, both of which he studied in Rome as a young man and both of which find echoes in much of his oeuvre, endowed the male nude with a riveting combination of structural articulation, coherence, and dimensional presence.

It was the incessant practice of drawing that enabled Michelangelo to internalize the concepts he absorbed from Greek sculpture, develop his mastery of form, and work out the designs in which that mastery found expression. Drawing was thus the foundation of masterworks including the decoration in fresco of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, completed in 1512; the Last Judgment fresco in the same chapel (1541); and the majestic sculptures in the New Sacristy (also known as the Medici Chapel) at San Lorenzo in Florence, on which the artist labored during the 1520s and ’30s. It was drawing, then, that largely accounted for the elderly Michelangelo’s being accorded the sobriquet Il divino, the divine one.
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Michelangelo Buonarroti, by Daniele da Volterra (Daniele Ricciarelli), ca. 1544. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Clarence Dillon, 1977)
Born into an impecunious Tuscan family of the minor nobility, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) was generous to his friends, inexhaustibly industrious, proud, vain, subject to bouts of melancholy intertwined with a religiosity that deepened as he grew older, and, last but not least, capable of virulent animosity — most famously toward his younger rival, Raphael. Raphael would predecease Michelangelo by more than four decades. But while he was alive, he proved quite willing to take instruction from Michelangelo’s work, though Leonardo da Vinci was his main exemplar.

Michelangelo would have had his admirers believe that his brilliant feats were simply unheralded, breaking with Renaissance precedent rather than building on it. Verrocchio’s Orsanmichele sculpture shows us that’s not entirely true. But when we look at a celebrated engraving of ten nude warriors in action by Antonio del Pollaiuolo, a sculptor and painter roughly Verrocchio’s age who was considered the supreme master of the male nude during his lifetime, we see that Michelangelo indeed broke with his modern predecessors in his interpretation of the figure. Pollaiuolo’s engraving — included in the Met exhibition, Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer, which runs until February 12 — betrays a lack of resolution in the musculature of the nudes that largely results from a limited ability to subordinate lesser forms to larger ones. His treatment of the musculature of the back, for example, yields a curiously vermiculated topography. Pollaiuolo’s interest in the nude was inspired by antique sculpture and he may even have engaged in dissection, which Michelangelo first practiced as a teenager. But this engraving shows that Pollaiuolo failed to grasp the formal order the Greeks sought in the figure.

Not only does Michelangelo’s mastery of form and composition shine through in his drawings: so does his increasing mastery of draftsmanship as a medium of expression.

Michelangelo’s own breakthrough did not come immediately. No question, his David (1504) is a real hunk. But the modeling lacks the suppleness and complexity of the master’s mature work, in which we do not encounter histrionic gestures like the David’s obviously over-scaled head and right hand holding the stone for the sling at his side. The pose is frontal and the figure lacks the dimensional qualities of The Risen Christ (1521) in Rome’s Santa Maria sopra Minerva or the Victory (1530) in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. (The latter’s triumphant nude has a torsional quality reminiscent of the Belvedere Torso.) The David shows Michelangelo searching for a formal approach that would allow him to endow the nude with terribilità — an awe-inspiring presence. This was the over-arching aim of the master’s career, as the Met exhibition unforgettably demonstrates through the display of 133 of his drawings, including compositional sketches, more or less detailed figure studies, and highly finished works he created for his closest friends — plus a variety of architectural sketches and designs. This quest is what led him to lavish close attention on Hellenistic sculpture — that is, Greek sculpture created and copied after the death of Alexander the Great and throughout most of the Roman imperial era.
It was in painting rather than his principal métier, sculpture carved in marble, that Michelangelo first demonstrated a stupendous mastery of monumental form in a major work of art. This was the Sistine Chapel ceiling, commissioned by Pope Julius II, on which the master labored over a four-year period, creating an elaborate, illusionistic architectural framework for a highly complex portrayal of Old Testament personages and events as the prelude to the gospel of salvation revealed in Christ. This 1,754-square-foot opus — a quarter-scale photographic reproduction of which the Met has very helpfully hung above an exhibition space where preparatory studies are displayed — demanded brutally taxing physical exertion on Michelangelo’s part, but it ranks as painting’s most universally significant achievement. The Met happens to be the proud possessor of a superb sheet of studies in red chalk for the Libyan Sibyl, one of the five pagan prophets on the ceiling reputed to have foreseen the Messiah’s coming. Like many of Michelangelo’s female figures, the ceiling’s Libyan Sibyl is somewhat androgynous, and the model employed for the Met sheet was a young man. In the sheet’s principal study, we see the model’s back in three-quarter view. The detailed rendering of his highly complex anatomical structure — less emphatically treated in the painted Sibyl’s exposed upper torso — makes Pollaiuolo’s engraving look like child’s play. The Sibyl’s pose allows for a beautiful articulation of her feet and, less visibly, hands, with which she takes hold of a sacred tome. Her left foot and hand are analyzed exquisitely in the Met sheet.

Studies for the Libyan Sibyl, by Michelangelo Buonarroti, ca. 1510–11. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1924)

This sheet offers insight into what Michelangelo learned from the ancients as well as what he learned from dissection. The heart-like shape of the model’s left deltoid, or shoulder muscle, corresponds to the shape of the group of small muscles at the base of the model’s thumb, adjoining the palm. This is not a coincidence. It is a technique developed by Greek sculptors. A gifted Baltimore sculptor, Brad Parker, refers to this technique as “shape orientation.” It allowed Michelangelo, who surely had other such correspondences in mind as he drew from the model for the Sibyl, to heighten his figures’ organic coherence.

The drawing on this sheet is not naturalistic. Like so much of Michelangelo’s draftsmanship, it reflects observation of the model transfigured by a sculptural consciousness of form. Sculpture for Michelangelo was the definitive art. Hence his decidedly ambivalent opinion of Titian. He admired Titian’s enchanting palette and “very beautiful and lively manner,” according to Vasari, but lamented that the Venetians were not properly trained in drawing. The gist of his criticism was that Titian lacked the mastery of form resulting from close study, early on, of antique sculpture and the work of moderns who emulated it. This criticism epitomizes the familiar dichotomy between the formal, more sculptural orientation of the Florentines and the Venetians’ typically pictorial mindset, which not even Michelangelo’s example could undermine.
Even so, the Met exhibit fleshes out Michelangelo’s remarkable interaction with the Venice-born-and-bred painter Sebastiano del Piombo. Michelangelo attempted, with only limited success, to establish Sebastiano as a rival to Raphael. The exhibit includes figure studies the master made for his Venetian understudy, who put them to impressive use in remarkably distinctive works, including the Viterbo Pietà (1516) and The Raising of Lazarus (1520). It also includes drawings by Sebastiano that incorporate Michelangelesque concepts of monumental form while retaining painterly qualities that were distinctively Venetian.
Not only does Michelangelo’s mastery of form and composition shine through in his drawings: so does his increasing mastery of draftsmanship as a medium of expression. Looking at earlier drawings, including his studies for the Libyan Sibyl and other figures on the Sistine Chapel ceiling — such as its highly sculptural male nudes, or ignudi, whose varied poses reflect the shifting emotional states bound up in our mortal coil — we can get a good idea of how Michelangelo created them. First of all, they display clearly delineated contours, which Michelangelo emphasized, or not, depending on how hard he pressed down on the chalk. For modeling in light and shade within those contours, he relied on the use of hatching, or parallel strokes, along with cross-hatching, meaning a web-like complex of intersecting strokes. He would modulate the direction and density of the hatching and even the tone of individual strokes to articulate anatomical transitions, always following the form rather than the light or the shade. The hatching could also be modulated to indicate forms only summarily or to reveal them in detail. Michelangelo is famous, after all, for bringing individual figures to a partial state of completion. For highlights he variously resorted to touches of white gouache or white chalk — or simply left the paper blank.

Just using red chalk, with the limited aid of gouache or chalk highlights, Michelangelo could endow portions of figures like the Libyan Sibyl with an almost marmoreal brilliance. This effect is even more strikingly achieved by the Unfinished Cartoon of the Virgin and Child from the mid 1520s, in which the Christ child turns to suckle at his mother’s breast, a pose akin to that in the unfinished Madonna and Child (1534) sculpture in the New Sacristy. Michelangelo fleshed out the child’s torso and right arm with brown wash and gouache highlights as well as red and black chalk, thereby endowing him not with an infant’s pudgy flesh but with a decidedly statuesque musculature. In the most finished portions of the Christ figure, it becomes difficult to detect individual strokes of the master’s hand. And when we arrive at exquisitely finished drawings Michelangelo made during the 1530s, using only black chalk, we encounter decidedly sculptural figures whose contours are well defined but in which individual modeling strokes have given way to a delicate sfumato texture that makes us wonder how the drawings were made. Examples include Michelangelo’s portrait of his young friend Andrea Quaratesi, his mythical Tityus being tormented by the vulture, and the protagonist in his spell-binding allegory, The Dream. This texture, Met curator Carmen C. Bambach informs us in her superb book for the exhibition, is attributable to Michelangelo’s masterful blending of his strokes by rubbing or stumping them.

Portrait of Andrea Quaratesi, by Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1532. (The British Museum, London)

Il Sogno (The Dream), by Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1530s (London, Courtauld Gallery, Prince Gate Bequest, 1978)

The Met exhibition includes three minor sculptures by Michelangelo, though the attribution of only two of them is certain. (Some doubt he carved the Young Archer, supposedly an early work.) It does put his impressively conceived but unfinished 1540s bust of Brutus, Julius Caesar’s nemesis, to instructive use by juxtaposing it with a Tuscan contemporary’s belabored bust of Caesar and a technically subpar late Hellenistic bust of the emperor Caracalla. But none of the three sculptures, which include an unfinished Apollo or David figure, provides even an inkling of the power of Michelangelo’s masterworks, such as the four recumbent Times of Day figures in the New Sacristy.

Michelangelo’s mastery of form yielded an increasingly inventive approach to architecture, an art to which he only began to devote sustained attention in his early 40s. He came to see architecture as a kind of abstract sculptural expression in its own right. Hence, for example, the strikingly sculptural articulation of his vestibule for the library at San Lorenzo. The vestibule’s constricted space is seized by the most gloriously ADA-noncompliant staircase ever created. Constructed a quarter-century after Michelangelo left Florence for good in 1534, it has justly been compared to a cascading lava flow.
In working on St. Peter’s in Rome for almost two decades prior to his death, Michelangelo again eschewed clutter for a supremely dignified clarity of form and space, thereby transforming, and vastly improving upon, the overly elaborate design he inherited from Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. In this case visitors aren’t given the wherewithal to make detailed comparisons as with the Brutus bust. But we do see Michelangelo improving on his own concept for a centrally planned church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini at Rome. His earlier plan entails superimposition of a circular domed structure enclosing the church’s main space on a square mass. The ingenious but unrealized final design, produced just a few years before his death, resolves that plan’s schematic geometry into a quatrefoil fused with four shallow projections on the cardinal axes. The brilliant, abstractly figural quality of the forms and spaces thus created fortunately was not lost on architects of the baroque period.
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We encounter the shape orientation of the Libyan Sibyl study in the Elgin Marbles, and the Parthenon’s slightly tilted columns and their minute curvature in profile make a distinctly sculptural impression of compressed internal energy, which one art historian likened to that of a crouching lion waiting to pounce. Michelangelo never saw the Marbles or the temple, but he grasped the Greeks’ essential artistic motives while investing them with the force of his own creative genius as no modern had done before and none has done since. Like that of the Belvedere Torso, the structure of his most monumental figures seemingly radiates from an internal nucleus or core like some mysterious geological event. And like the best Greek artists, Michelangelo was well aware of the role of light and shade in communicating form, but understood that form itself must logically, indeed ontologically, come before light and shade.
Rubens’s draftsmanship was famously influenced by Michelangelo’s. But we see powerful echoes of the master in Caravaggio’s sculpturally informed oeuvre as well. Both the pose and the anatomical rigor of the latter’s superb Cupid figure in Amor Vincit Omnia (1603) hearken back to the Sistine Chapel ignudi and other Michelangelo creations. His powerful Flagellation of Christ (1607) recalls Sebastiano’s Flagellation mural (ca. 1520), which Michelangelo helped design, in the church of San Pietro in Montorio in Rome. The treatment of Christ’s distended neck in the Caravaggio Flagellation is itself distinctly Michelangelesque. That Caravaggio was imbued with a realist sensibility Michelangelo lacked is beside the point.
Few artists could be expected to successfully incorporate Michelangelo’s formal ideas into their work, because of the level of intellect and discipline that required. Bernini’s long career would follow an increasingly pictorial, even scenographic, trajectory. Further on, Canova would develop a facile, highly stylized idiom whose main feature was the play of light and shade on his static, generic, highly polished marble surfaces. Optical surface effects rather than a sculptural topography articulating internal anatomic structure likewise characterize Rodin’s histrionic attempts to redefine Michelangelo’s sculptural terribilità. Photography, which appeared on the scene around the time Rodin was born, played a decisive role in burying the classical concept of the human figure as a thing-in-itself of great complexity. The figure was thereafter condemned, like everything else within the artist’s purview, to the status of an optical byproduct of reflected light, and academic training swiftly accommodated the new dispensation.
That dispensation, and the dumbed-down approach to drawing the figure it nurtured, is very obvious in the academic studies produced by the young Picasso. A recent exhibition at the Frick Collection in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., was organized on the risible proposition that the academic training Picasso underwent “had remained relatively unchanged since the Renaissance.” In the exhibition catalog, a Frick senior curator reserved the epithet “one of the world’s greatest draughtsmen” for two artists only — Picasso and Michelangelo.

One can only hope this curator has set aside plenty of time for the Met exhibit.

Catesby Leigh writes about public art and architecture and lives in Washington, D.C.


Excerpts from GOETHE & THE GREEKS BY HUMPHRY TREVELYAN

Excerpts from GOETHE & THE GREEKS BY HUMPHRY TREVELYAN FOREWORD BY HUGH LLOYD-JONES CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY P… Author: Humphry Trevelyan | Hugh Lloyd-Jones – excerpts concerning Goethe on the subject of Greek sculpture and art
https://epdf.pub/goethe-and-the-greeks.html
“The school of art directed by Adam Friedrich Oeser, who had taught Winckelmann, contained a few casts of Greek statues, and Oeser drew Goethe’s attention to the casts of ancient gems contained in the Daktyliothek of Philipp Daniel Lippert, which offered one of the few means of getting some notion of ancient art then readily available. Goethe was at all times deeply sensible to visual impressions; small objects of art were scarcely less fascinating to him than large ones, and he took special pleasure in the study of gems and coins. Oeser also introduced him to the works of Winckelmann. The great history of art, which had appeared in 1763, he did not read until he was in Rome in 1786; but he read at Leipzig, probably in 1766, Lessing’s Laokoon, Winckelmann’s essay on the imitation of the Greeks in painting and sculpture, and the two essays published to supplement that work during the following year. The effect of this may not have been immediate, for in 1768 he visited Dresden without seeing the collection of antiquities; but in 1769, after his return home from Leipzig, he made an expedition to Mannheim to see the Elector’s collection of casts, and a letter written at the time shows that the experience made a deep impression. Trevelyan has rightly pointed out that what impressed Goethe at this time was not Winckelmann’s aesthetic theory but his picture of the Greeks as a people devoted to physical and intellectual beauty and free from the constraints imposed by a society such as that which Goethe himself lived in. It was now that he formed the opinion which he never had occasion to revise, that the Greeks had been the people who, beyond all others, had lived in accordance with Nature. Winckelmann’s celebrated notion that the essence of Greek art lay in “noble simplicity and quiet greatness” did not at this time appeal to him. One of the casts that he had seen in Mannheim was of the Laocoon group, and Goethe took a lively interest in the celebrated controversy which it occasioned. Winckelmann had praised the sculptors for making Laocoon merely moan in his agony, and not scream as he does according to Virgil; Lessing had defended Virgil, pointing out that plastic art had different principles from literary art, and that Greek writers had been as ready as Virgil to represent the vocal expression of physical
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agony. Sculptors, on the other hand, Lessing thought, moderated that expression in order that their statues should be beautiful. The young Goethe was greatly struck by Lessing’s treatise; but he refused to accept this theory. The Greeks, whose art was based so firmly upon Nature, could not have watered down the expression of strong emotion so as to give beauty to their statues; and Goethe suggested that Laocoon does not scream only because he cannot do so, the attitude in which he is portrayed rendering it impossible. Whatever may be thought about this ingenious solution of the problem, it is remarkable that even at the age of twenty Goethe asserted his conception of the Greeks as living and creating in accordance with Nature in such a characteristic fashion. The encounter with Herder in Strasburg during the winter of 1770/1, so decisive in many ways, brought about a marked change in his attitude towards the Greeks. Herder’s assertion of the rights of natural feeling against the intellectualism of the Enlightenment implied that the poetry of unsophisticated ages, epic, folksongs and ballads, scorned by the sophisticated admirers of Voltaire, in fact possessed a special value. The Goethe of the Sturm und Drang period admired Ossian; he admired Shakespeare far more; but a yet more important author in his eyes was Homer, upon whom he flung himself with altogether fresh enthusiasm.”
“Schiller had argued that man should seek balance between duty and inclination, spirit and matter, Sittlichkeit and Sinnlichkeit; he should not suppress his sensual instincts, or the higher morality that resided in the harmony between the two principles could never be achieved. This point of view coincided remarkably with that which Goethe had arrived at during his Italian sojourn. In this work and in the later essay Uber naive und sentimentale Dichtung, Schiller adopts the same view of the Greeks as a people living close to Nature and in accordance with her laws to which Goethe had for so long subscribed. Whether or not one agrees with Schiller in regarding Goethe as a “naive” poet, one who depicts Nature directly instead of reflecting on the difference between the world and the ideal, that is certainly the kind of poet Goethe wished to be. The aesthetic theory which the two men worked out during their collaboration strongly insisted that a work of art should express in a clear and necessary way the essential determinants (Bestimmungen) of its subject; it must not lose itself in details which are not related or are only loosely related to those determinants.”
“Greek art must have been almost unknown among the older generation in Goethe’s childhood. There were practically no antique statues in Germany, none at all of the best period of Greek art. Those at Dresden were stowed away in a lean-to, so that even Winckelmann could make little of them. 2 Doubtless there were some casts of ancient works, as in Oeser’s academy at Leipzig; but the formation of the famous collection of casts at Mannheim during the late ‘sixties was an epochmaking event for the knowledge of ancient art in Germany. Until 1769, when the Mannheim collection was completed by the addition of casts newly made in Italy,3 there was nowhere in Germany where a student could get a comprehensive view of ancient art. Some, Goethe’s father fcamong them, had travelled to Rome and seen the Laocoon and the Apollo with their own eyes; but such fortunate ones were few. Before the publication of Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums in 1763, there was no book which gave a proper account of the development of ancient art. The two books on antiquities most commonly used, Montfaucon’s Vantiquite expliquee (first edition 1719) and Caylus’s Recueils Vantiquite (1752-1767), both had serious shortcomings. Montfaucon was not interested in the ancient works of art for their aesthetic value, but only in so far as they threw light on the mythology and mode of life of the ancients. He made no distinction between Greek, Roman and Etruscan work. Caylus valued ancient art as art,4 and was the first to distinguish Greek art from Roman, Etruscan and Egyptian; but he discussed and reproduced only those works which he himself possessed, for the most part statuettes, busts and gems, so that the reader got no information about the masterpieces of ancient art. 5 1
Cf. H. Voelcker, Die Stadt Goethes, 1932, and E. Mentzel, Wolfgang und Cornelia Goethes Lehrer, p. 211. 2 Justi, Winckelmann und seine Zeitgenossen, Zweite Auflage, Leipzig, 1898, 1, p. 274, and Winckelmann, Werke, 11, p. 405. 3 G-J. XXVII, p. 150 fol., and Goethe’s letter to Langer, 30 Nov. 1769: see p. 38 below. 4 Avertissement to vol. 1. 5 For Goethe’s retrospective opinion of Caylus see his letter to Hirt, 9 June 1809.”
“In life and in art the Greeks and the Greeks alone are Winckelmann’s inspiration. In their minds and in their bodies the Greeks were “the most perfect creations of Nature”, for “in Greece, where man could devote himself to joy and delight from youth up, and where the bourgeois respectability of to-day never interfered with the freedom of manners, natural beauty could show itself undisguised, to the great advantage of the artists”. 2 Out of this perfect existence had grown Greek art, which was for Winckelmann not merely a better representation of Nature than modern art, but the absolute ideal, to approach which should be the sole striving of every artist. “Those who know and imitate Greek works find in these masterpieces not only Nature at its best, but something more than Nature, namely certain ideal beauties formed from pictures created only in the mind of the artist.” 3 “Hence the study of Nature must at any rate be a longer and more toilsome road to the knowledge of perfect beauty, than the study of the antique.”4 Upon this assumption of the ideal perfection of Greek art Winckelmann based his challenging exhortation: “The only way for us to be great, ay, if it may be, inimitable, is the imitation of the ancients.”5”
“CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
delight by the general public; Winckelmann became famous overnight; and the cultured elite of Germany eagerly awaited his next pronouncements from Rome. The long night of hostility and ignorance was over. With the decay of rationalism and the spread of classical knowledge the time had come when men would again seek inspiration and guidance from the achievements and example of the Greeks. In Goethe’s boyhood enthusiasm for the Greeks was commoner than a sound knowledge of their literature and art. We may safely assume that, before he went to Leipzig, Goethe came in contact with no one who knew as much about Greece as a sixth-form boy on the classical side in any English public school to-day. Still less can intelligent conversation on classical subjects have been customary among his father’s circle in Frankfurt. But even in Frankfurt, in spite of the presence of men like Loen, there were probably some who sniffed the fresh breeze from the Aegean; and from them the boy Goethe may have learned the fashion of the new enthusiasm. But he would have sought the Greeks in any case, for there was something in his nature which drew him to them. 1 This affinity was part of his “gepragte Form”. The world in which he grew up, his environment, was ignorant of the Greeks but ready to believe the best of them. Whatever picture of the Greeks his innate sympathy with them might paint for him, the world would influence it little, either by malicious distortion or by cramping knowledge. Goethe was born at exactly the right moment for the development of an ideal, not an historical, view of the Greeks. Born twenty years before, he would have had to fight against the modernist prejudice, and in the heat of battle his glance would have lacked the serenity which in fact carried it so deep into the nature of the Hellenic tradition. Born twenty, even ten years later, he would, with his opportunities, have known so much about the Greeks that he could hardly have seen in them ideal creatures raised above the accidents of time and space. 1”
“ It was Oeser, the friend and teacher of Winckelmann, endowed with little talent as a painter but with much insight into the nature of beauty, who first encouraged the young student to read what there was to read and see what was to be seen. Already by the Christmas of 1765, Goethe was a regular pupil in his academy1 and was soon a favourite with the old man and with his family. From him he heard of Caylus’s work, 2 and may, within the limits of its usefulness, have learnt something from it. At the academy there were casts of Laocoon (only the central figure) and a faun with cymbals,3 but nothing else. The faun, the first Greek statue he had ever seen, impressed itself so deeply on his inward eye, that still in his eightieth year he could recall perfectly how it looked and how it stood in Oeser’s studio.4 Oeser also drew his attention to Lippert’s Daktyliothekfi It was this famous collection of casts of ancient gems which enabled Goethe to get his first view of a large body of antique works of art. The majority of the gems were of course of Roman workmanship (or even modern imitations).6 They gave him, to our ideas, an over-refined, mannered picture of ancient art, but, as he says in Dichtung und Wahrheit, he learnt through them to value the ancients’ power of happy invention, of apt composition and of tasteful treatment. 7 He may, as Morris suggests,8 have tried to reproduce some figures and motifs from these gems in his poems, particularly Amor in the Hochzeitslied of October 1767. He may from this have gone on to study the question of date^ and styles when he undertook to rearrange a collection of gem impressions belonging to the Breitkopf family.9 The Breitkopfs also possessed “representations of antiquity” in engravings. Were these reproductions of ancient sculpture ? If they were they may have given Goethe his first sight of the then most famous statues 1
Letter to Cornelia, 12 Dec. 1765 (WA. iv, 1, p. 30). 3 WA. 27, p. 160, and see above, p. 5. WA. 28, p. 87. 4 WA. 32, p. 324. 5 See above, p. 6, and WA. 27, pp. 161, 387. 6 See Justi, op. cit. 1, p. 342. 7 8 WA. 27, p. 161. MM. vi, p. 70. 9 WA. 27, p. 179. The Breitkopfs moved house in the autumn of 1766. Goethe’s work with the gem impressions may therefore fall any time after this. By position in D. und W. it comes after the trip to Dresden in March 1768. 2
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of antiquity—the Apollo Belvedere, the Niobe group, the Farnese Hercules and so on—about which he had heard much talk, without ever having had the chance to see them even in reproduction. Oeser it was, too, who led him to read Winckelmann’s works. 1 Important as this reading was for the development of his ideas, it added little to his knowledge of Greek art. It is almost certain that he read only the three short essays that Winckelmann wrote before he left Dresden.2 These are rich in ideas rather than in information. The great Geschichte der Kunst des Alterturns, which gave an historical account based on all the ancient works of art then extant, of the growth, flowering and decay of Greek and Roman art, was probably left unread by Goethe, who preferred at this time to be inspired rather than instructed.3 Even if he did attempt it, he must quickly have seen that he could learn nothing from it. Not until, twenty years later, he too was living in Rome, surrounded by the statues of which Winckelmann was writing, could he begin to learn from the Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums. He even neglected the one opportunity that came to him at Leipzig to see original works of antique sculpture. Three vestals, as they were then held to be, and an Agrippina, which had been brought from Herculaneum, together with some antique reliefs, were to be seen at Dresden, miserably housed and lighted indeed, but still reckoned by Winckelmann to be the most valuable collection of antiques then in Germany.4 In March 1768 Goethe spent several days in Dresden with the express purpose, so he says in Dichtung und Wahrheit, of getting visual material (Anschauung) for the ideas with which his head was filled from the reading of Lessing’s Laokoon. Yet he “declined” to see these antiques, though Winckelmann commended them in the Gedanken as “equal to Greek works of the first rank”,5 and spent all his time in the picture-gallery, where 1
WA. 27, p. 161. Gedanken uber die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst, published in the spring of 1755; Sendschreiben uber die Gedanken and Erlauterung der Gedanken, both written in the summer of the 3 same year and published 1756. WA. 27, p. 183. 4 Werke, 11, p. 405, and justi, op. cit. 1, p. 274. 5 1, p. 27. 2
LEIPZIG TO HERDER: 1765-1770
37 ”
“ It is probable he went to Dresden to test, and if possible to confirm, ideas of his own about the nature of art as a whole. The problem of the nature of Greek art was not yet of great importance to him. Back once more in Frankfurt he had no opportunity to add to the small beginnings that his acquaintance with Greek art had made in Leipzig. But he did not cease to ponder the aesthetic questions raised by Winckelmann and Lessing.2 The fact, however, that he had seen hardly any of the works of these Greek artists, who were continually called to give evidence by both sides, made it hard for him to come to any conclusion. Now, as he sat in Frankfurt, there came to him reports of a collection of casts, many of which had been newly made in Rome, more complete than anything of its kind in Germany, commodiously housed, and so lighted and arranged that every statue could be studied to the best advantage; and all this at Mannheim, within fifty miles of him.3 In the last days of October 1769 he made an expedition to Mannheim with the purpose, amongst other things, of studying the casts in the Electoral collection. “Entre bien de jolies choses que j ‘ y ai rencontre,” he wrote to Langer,4 “entre bien de magnifiques qui frappent les yeux, rien n’a pu tant attirer tout mon 1
WA. 27, p. 174. He read Lessing’s Briefe antiquarischen Inhalts, which deals in part with questions raised by the Laokoonstreit, during the winter of 1768-1769 (see letter to Oeser, 14 Feb. 1769, WA. iv, 1, p. 205, and MM. vi, p. 59). 3 For these and following details of the Mannheimer Antikensaal see J. A. Beringer’s article, G-J. xxvm, p. 150-8. 4 Goethes Briefe an E. T. Langer. This letter 30 Nov. 1769. 2
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CHILDHOOD AND
YOUTH
etre que la grouppe de Laocoon, nouvellement moulee sur r o r i g i n a l d e Rome. J’en ai ete extasie, pour oublier presque toutes les autres statues qui ont ete moulees avec elle et qui sont dans la meme salle. J’ai fait des remarques sur le Laocoon qui donnent bien de lumiere a cette fameuse dispute, dont les combatants sont de bien grands homines.” If Goethe had any eyes at all for the other statues besides Laocoon and his sons, he must have gone home with as clear a picture of what Greek sculpture was, as was possessed by any young German of his day, for the collection contained casts of twenty of the most famous antique statues, 1 all in fact that were then regarded as of outstanding beauty and importance. There were, it is true, few works of the great period of Greek art among them, hardly any indeed that are not n o w recognised as being Greco-Roman work. But still from that day on he had in his mind’s eye a picture of Greek art, different from that he had gained in Leipzig from Lippert’s Daktyliothek, and, with all its limitations, more typical.* 1
Beringer gives the following list: Apollo Belvedere, Dying Gladiator, Laocoon group, Castor und Pollux, Farnese Hercules, Farnese Flora, Borghese Gladiator, the Apoxyomenos, Borghese Hermaphrodite, Venus de Medici, Boy with Thorn, the Wrestlers, the Belvedere Torso, the Faun with Cymbals, the Ildefonso Faun, Antinous, a Dying Niobid, Idolino, Amor und Psyche, and heads of: Homer, Niobe, Alexander and Niobe’s daughter. 2 One question of great interest has been raised by the publication of the letter to Langer, quoted above. Before its publication it was assumed that the visit to the Mannheim collection, which Goethe describes in D. und W. as taking place on the return journey from Strassburg to Frankfurt—that is in Aug. 1771—was the first visit. It is now clear that this is not so. But the thought cannot help arising: Perhaps the visit of Oct. 1769 was the only visit. Perhaps Goethe, writing forty years later, had forgotten the date and circumstances of his visit and laid it in 1771, naturally assuming that he had made it on the way either to or from Strassburg. As evidence of a visit in Aug. 1771, there is the large role played by Apollo—”Pythos totend”—in Wandrers Sturmlied (early spring, 1772), and one sentence in a letter to Herder of late summer or autumn 1771: “Apollo vom Belvedere, warum zeigst du dich uns in deiner Nacktheit…” (WA. iv, 1, p. 264, and MM. 11, p. 117). There is unfortunately doubt as to the date of this letter. Morris refers it to “Frankfurt, etwa Oct. 1771″, in which case it would support the visit of 1771. But the Weimar Ausgabe heads i t ” Strassburg, Sommer 1771 ‘ \ If this dating is correct, Goethe must, as he was writing, have been thinking back to what he saw in Mannheim in 1769; and there is then no reference to a visit to Mannheim in the letters of the late summer or autumn 1771.
LEIPZIG TO HERDER: 1765-1770
39
During the winter following his visit to Mannheim he was concerned to put his ideas about Laocoon into essay form. To enlarge his visual knowledge for this work he studied at least one book of reproductions of ancient art, Barbault’s Les plus beaux monumens de Rome ancienne (1761). 1 The engravings
throughout the work are miserably bad, and no attempt is made at critical explanation of the plates, not even to distinguish the Greek works from those of Roman or Etruscan origin. Goethe cannot have been helped by this work either to greater knowledge of Greek art or to a truer conception of it. Still he felt how little he knew beside what he would like to know. In April of 1770 he wrote to Langer from Strassburg, described the great tapestries woven from cartoons by Raphael, and fell thereby into violent longing for Italy. “To Italy, Langer ! To Italy! But not this year; I have not the knowledge that I need; I have still much to make up. Paris shall be my school, Rome my university.”” He was thinking here of his ignorance both of Greek sculpture and of Renaissance painting. There were Roman remains in Strassburg and the neighbourhood. The bas-reliefs at Niederbrunn especially aroused his enthusiasm.3 But in these he was only seeing in the original what such works as Barbault had already shown him in reproduction. Though he might feel himself in their presence “laved by the spirit of antiquity”, 4 it was a far cry from them Moreover, in this letter to Langer, 30 Nov. 1769, Goethe mentions having written to Oeser after the visit to Mannheim in Oct., to tell him of his discoveries on the subject of the Laocoon dispute. This letter to Oeser is mentioned also in D. und W., but of course as having been written after the visit in 1771. It is not likely that Goethe wrote twice to Oeser on this subject, not likely that he would write at all in 1771, when he had ceased to be under the influence of Oeser’s aesthetic ideas. If Goethe never visited Mannheim in 1771, but only in 1769, the description in D. und W. of the conflict between classical and Gothic art, which the visit aroused in him is Dichtung and not Wahrheit (WA. 28, p. 87). This is not impossible, especially as it was a conflict that was much in the air at the time Goethe was writing his memoirs (1812). N.B. In one Schema to D. und W. Book 7 (WA. 27, p. 388) Goethe put down “Mannheimer Sammlung” immediately after “Dresdener Gallerie”. This provides evidence neither for nor against a visit in 1771, except in so far as it shows how little Goethe cared about holding J to an exact chronological succession in D. und W. WA. 37, p. 90. 2 3 Goethes Briefe an E. T. Langer, p. 27. WA. 27, p. 3 39. 4 “Umspulte mich der Geist des Altertums.”
40 “
“ The importance at that time of Winckelmann’s name and writings to any German who interested himself in the Greeks cannot be exaggerated. Goethe, as Oeser’s pupil, was brought into a peculiarly close relationship with the man and his ideas. He tells in Dichtung und Wahrheit of the reverence with which he pored over the Gedanken and Winckelmann’s other early essays,1 struggling to make sense even of the most enigmatical passages; of the jubilant expectation with which Winckelmann’s arrival in Leipzig was awaited ill the summer of 1768, and of the crushing dismay that befell their small circle when, instead of the revered master, the news arrived of his tragic and horrible death.2 There can be no doubt that Winckelmann’s writings, particularly the Gedanken uber die Nachahmung der Griechen,
made a deep impression on Goethe’s mind in Leipzig. The capital importance of the Greek element in ancient culture, the correspondingly subordinate and imitative role played by Rome, was here for the first time made clear beyond all chance of doubting. 3 In them, too, he found a different picture of the Greeks from that given by the French classical tragedy, till then his only source for visual impressions. He was shown now the Greece of the palaestra—of beautiful bodies and of the sun, where the mind of the philosopher and the eye of the 1
WA. 27, pp. 161, 182. Winckelmann was stabbed to death in Trieste on 8 June 1768, by an Italian named Arcangeli, who coveted some gold medals that Winckelmann had shown him. For a vital description of Winckelmann’s last weeks and fateful end see Miss Butler’s account in The Tyranny of Greece over Germany, Cambridge, 1935, pp. 40-3. 3 Werke, 1, pp. 6, 7, and G. Baumecker, op. cit. pp. 36, 37. 2
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artist were alike trained on the aspect of beauty: a land where a kindly climate brought all nature to its most perfect development and led on the hearts of men to a natural joyfulness; where beauty was held in esteem above all else, and where no bourgeois respectability hemmed the free and natural outlet of all youthful joys. 1 This picture he got from Winckelmann as a student in Leipzig, and it remained with him throughout his life;2 later reading and observations, the influence of Lessing and Herder, only developed and added to the picture, they did not change it. A picture, then, he got from Winckelmann, a living picture with the power in it of growth; but he got nothing else. The central doctrine of the Gedanken, the imitation of Greek art in preference to nature, left him unmoved. He continued to draw from Nature, to copy landscapes when he etched, and to prefer naturalistic to ideal art.3 In August 1767 he tried, at his father’s suggestion, to study a book on the proportions of the body,4 but found it useless. This is the only evidence of any artistic interest in the human body, let alone in the human body as idealised by the Greeks. Had he become in any sense a disciple of Winckelmann he would have tried to apply the master’s teaching to his own poetical productions. He would have given up everything to study Greek literature and to reproduce what he found there in his own poems.5 But, as we have seen, he read no Greek while he was at Leipzig. Nor did he try to carry out Winckelmann’s recommendations for the allegorical use of mythology.6 We have already seen how he used mythological figures in his poetry. He had none of Winckelmann’s reverence for them. 1
Winckelmann, Werke, 1, pp. 9-15, 134, 138, 172. Its first visible manifestation is in a letter to Friederike Oeser, 13 Feb. 1769 (WA. iv, 1, p. 198): “Unter Deutschlands Eichen wurden keine Nymphen geboren wie unter den Myrten im Tempe.” It has here rather an Arcadian-rococo flavour, but the idea of the ” glucklichere Natur” of the Greeks is clearly present. 3 WA. 27, pp. 171, 175, 188. Volbehr, Goethe und die bildende Kunst, Leipzig, 1895, p. 85. Eduard Castle, In Goethes Geist, Vienna, 1926, realises the limits of Winckelmann’s influence on Goethe in Leipzig. 4 Letter to Cornelia (WA. iv, 1, p. 99). 5 The fact that Goethe wrote “dithyrambs” in his winter in Leipzig (WA. iv, 1, p. 33) need not arouse excitement. Gottsched in his Kritische Dichtkunst, p. 83, defines a dithyramb as a “satyrisches Gedicht”! 6 Winckelmann, Werke, 1, pp. 58, 59, 170, 190, 201. 2
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Winckelmann had defined the essence of Greek art as being “a noble simplicity and a quiet greatness in attitude as in expression”.1 No matter what bodily and mental sufferings might be portrayed, Greek sculpture showed always “a great and restrained soul”.2 So Laocoon, though every muscle of his body shows the agony he suffers, does not allow this agony to express itself unrestrained (mit Wut) either in his face or in his attitude. He moans (ein beklemmtes Seufzen), he does not scream. Like Sophocles’s Philoctetes he bears his sufferings stoically. Only an artist who could himself endure suffering so heroically, could conceive and execute such a work of art. The ancient artists named the immoderate expression of suffering parenthyrsus and regarded it as a serious fault.3 Winckelmann saw the same noble simplicity and quiet greatness in the Greek works of literature of the best period—”the works of Socrates’s school”.4 This famous conception of the Greeks was no better able to strike root in young Goethe’s mind than had been Winckelmann’s exhortations to imitate the antique. He may have accepted in principle Oeser’s and Winckelmann’s doctrine that the highest ideal of beauty was simplicity and repose, but he felt he could not follow this rule, and resigned himself to the conclusion that no young man can be a master. 5 Even this partial acceptance seems to have come first in Frankfurt, during the months of brooding after his illness. In the letters from Leipzig there is no reference to Winckelmann or to his aesthetic ideas. The poems written in Leipzig show no attempt to paint noble simplicity or quiet greatness. They are for the most part the erotic day-dreams of a youth of eighteen, recounted with a slippery, Rococo grace. Where the emotions are stirred below the surface, there is no attempt to keep them from finding their 1
Werke, i, pp. 31-3: “Eine edle Einfalt und eine stille Grosse, so wohl in der Stellung als im Ausdrucke.” 2 3 “Eine grosse und gesetzte Seele.” Ibid. p. 33. 4 Ibid. p. 35. What did Winckelmann mean by “Socrates’s school”? Did he mean to include Sophocles under this heading? Goethe probably did not break his head over the question and we will not either. 5 Letter to Oeser, 9 Nov. 1768 (WA. iv, 1, p. 178), and to Reich, 20 Feb. 1770 (Ibid. p. 229), and Ephemerides, WA. 37, p. 101. Volbehr (op. cit. p. 75) points out that Oeser’s ideal of beauty is mentioned in the same breath witn Shakespeare and Wieland.
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natural expression: the girl in danger bursts into a storm of sobs and flings her arms round her lover’s neck.1 Goethe might still have accepted Winckelmann’s definition of the nature of Greek art and have got from it an impression of the Greeks in which a certain cold stoicism would have outweighed their joyfulness, had not Lessing’s Laokoon appeared (1766) and saved him.2 Lessing took exception to the criticism of Virgil implied by Winckelmann in the Gedanken. Winckelmann had praised the artists of the Laocoon group, because they had represented Laocoon merely moaning, not screaming terribly as he does in Virgil’s account in the Aeneid? Lessing defended Virgil on the ground that the plastic arts and poetry are governed by different principles. Poetry does not appeal primarily to the visual sense but to the mind and feelings. It is therefore no fault in poetry to describe things which, if presented to the eye in sculpture or painting, would be ugly and revolting.4 In their literature the Greeks showed no restraint in giving expression to physical and mental agony. Sophocles’s Philoctetes fills the stage and the best part of an act with his cries and groans. Hercules too cries out in his death agony, and the Homeric heroes when they are wounded. We moderns think it indecent to cry and weep. Not so the Greeks! They felt deeply and were not ashamed to give free expression to their feelings.5 Why then does Laocoon in the group not cry aloud in his agony? Because the Greek artists knew that plastic art has laws of its own, the first of which is: only what is beautiful shall be represented. Rage and despair disfigured none of their works. Violent passions were toned down in their expression until all ugliness was banished from the form. 6 Lessing’s Laokoon had the profoundest effect upon Goethe.7 He saw now clearly the difference in kind between poetical and plastic creation. He was freed from any obligation he 1 “
“His interest in ancient art was indeed always keen, but for some time after that fruitful visit to Mannheim in 1769 the chances of increasing his knowledge were scarce and his progress slow. If we assume that he did not visit the Mannheim collection again in August 1771,3 there is a gap of nearly two years during which his occupation with ancient art seems to have been suspended. During the winter of 1770-1771 he probably heard from Herder most of those ideas on the nature of Greek sculpture which were later published in Herder’s 1
Bied. 1, p. 52: ” Kenner und Leser der Alten, besonders der Griechen.” The review of Bergstrdssers Realworterbuch (Morris, Goethes und Herders Anted, p. 247) shows knowledge of Plutarch and Theophrastus’s Characters. 3 See above, p. 38, note 2. 2
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essay Plastik;1 but only his ideas, not his visual knowledge, were helped by these talks. From then on during his last summer in Alsace through the winter and spring of 17711772 in Frankfurt, the following summer in Wetzlar and the last months of 1772, which he spent again at home, he had no contact with Greek art. Not that the visions which he had from Mannheim faded altogether. Apollo especially stood clear and rather terrible in his mind.2 But through all these months there is no sign that he ever set eyes on any Greek art, nor even that he felt the need of such contemplation. By February of 1773 however he possessed casts of three antique heads—a Paris, a Venus and a Mercury—who stood beside him on his desk as he wrote. 3 Perhaps his interest had been revived by reading Heyne’s Einleitung in das Studium der Antike, which he reviewed for the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen in October 1772.4 From now on at any rate he continued to collect both casts and engravings of Greek works, until by the end of 1774 he had a small collection, which in those days would have been coveted by any amateur of the Greek. At the Easter Fair of 1773 he got from Italian pedlars good casts of the heads of the Laocoon group and of the daughters of Niobe.5 During the course of the same year he took a favourable opportunity and bought some good engravings of the most famous antiques, and these he hung around his room. 6 In April of the following year he was trying to add to his collection of casts through the good offices of Raspe, inspector of the Cassel art galleries, and of his friend Hopfner,7 and in December he wrote to Boie asking him “to send the Niobe in part payment”. 8 His enjoyment of all these works of Greek art was not only passive. He made drawings of heads of Apollo and Laocoon9 during the summer and autumn of 1773, and began, perhaps in con1
Werke, vm, pp. vii, viii, 116 foil. See the letter to Herder (WA. iv, 1, p. 264) quoted above, note to p. 38, and Wandrers Sturmlied, for which Apollo Belvedere and Iliad, 1, 43-52 were both in his thoughts. 3 Letter to Kestner (WA. iv, 2, p. 62). 4 WA. 38, p. 374. 5 WA. 28, p. 188. 6 7 Ibid. p. 189 and Bied. 1, p. 27. MM. iv, p. 77. 8 WA. iv, 2, p. 220: “Und schicken mir doch indess auf Abschla-g die Niobe.” 9 Ibid. pp. 102,118; MM. vi, p. 274 and Diintzer, Zur Goetheforschung, p. 29. 2
KNOWLEDGE
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nexion with this drawing, a critical discussion of the heads of the Laocoon group.1 During these five years, between his meeting with Herder and his departure for Weimar, he advanced very far in knowledge and understanding of Greek art. He did not come to know many other statues than those he had seen at Mannheim in 1769; but now, by making a collection of his own, of all the reproductions in plaster and engravings that he could lay hands on, he made it possible for himself to contemplate and study much of the best Greek sculpture that was then known, and so to get a firm basis of visual knowledge for whatever ideas his contemplation might bring him. Even so the material that he could provide for himself, had serious limitations. Reproductions of full-length statues or whole groups could only be in the form of engravings, which, even if they were as fine as the plates of Apollo Belvedere and the Medici Venus in Spence’s Polymetis, could not convey as true an effect of plasticity as any reproduction in the round could do. His casts were all of heads detached from the torso; and this fact tended, as his Laocoon fragment shows, to concentrate his attention on the power of emotional expression in Greek art rather than on its greatness and perfection in representation of the human form. For all that, he had done as much as any man could do, who was not solely an archaeologist and who had to live in Germany, to gain knowledge and understanding of Greek art. From time to time still his thoughts turned with longing towards Italy. Already in the autumn of 1773 he spoke of this wish to Schonborn.2 Then in the summer of 1775 he stood with one friend on the summit of the St Gothard and looked over the snow-streaked precipices towards the sunny plains. How easy the descent!—to Milan, to Florence—to Rome! But love and Fate drew him back—northwards to another destiny. During the agonised months that followed, a journey to Italy seemed at times the only escape.3 But it was not yet to be. Eleven years were to pass before he could walk in daily worship among the great forms that already filled him with such longing. 1
A fragment of this essay is preserved WA. 48, p. 235. For date see v. Liicken, Natalicium, p. 88. 2 3 Bied. 1, p. 27. WA. iv, 2, p. 278; Bied. 1, p. 63.
68 “
“ In May 1778, he was in Leipzig, saw his old master Oeser and had talk with him on the principles of art.2 Winckelmann’s doctrine of “noble simplicity and quiet 1 WA. in, 1, p. 61: “Diese Woche viel auf dem Eis, in immer gleicher fast zu reiner Stimmung Stille und Vorahndung der Weisheit… Bestimmteres Gefuhl von Einschrankung, und. dadurch der wahren Ausbreitung.” 2 WA. iv, 3, p. 231.
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greatness’, and the art on which that doctrine was based, must have been brought vividly to Goethe’s mind even if, as seems to have been the case, he did not actually read any of Winckelmann’s works.1 In the July following he read the aesthetic works of Mengs, which may have served as a substitute for Winckelmann. Anton Rafael Mengs, a German painter of considerable repute in his day, had written much about the theory and practice of art.2 He had been an intimate friend of Winckelmann in Rome, whose maxims he echoed in his own writings. In these essays Goethe found a picture of Greece that had no room for the gigantic figures of old fable, from whom he was trying to escape. Instead he saw a beautiful youth, and an art that made this single figure the centre of all its labour, constantly refining the representation of it until out of perfect balance and proportion grew a thing of perfect beauty. Divine youth ! Was not just such balance and proportion the goal towards which Goethe had been struggling for close on three years, the goal at which he had now arrived ? In the same year Herder published his essay Plastik. The ideas in it were not new to Goethe. In Strassburg eight years before, he had read as much of the essay as was already written, or had heard the essence of it from Herder himself.3 But much had changed in those eight years, especially in the knowledge and insight with which Goethe approached the subject. Coming at this moment the essay must have worked as a revelation in his receptive spirit. “A statue”, Herder wrote, “stands there complete in itself under the clear sky as it were in Paradise: image of a fair creature of God, and around it is innocence.” “The forms of sculpture are simple and eternal”—these forms which the Greeks evolved.4 The human form with its mystical 1
Herder’s Preisschrift on Winckelmann, written for the prize competition instituted by the Cassel “Societe des Antiquites” and sent in in May 1778, cannot have attracted Goethe’s interest back to Winckelmann. It is almost certain that Goethe knew nothing of the essay (see Duncker’s edition of it, 1882). 2 The first edition of Mengs’s works (in Italian) appeared in 1780. All that Goethe can have read in 1778 were the Betrachtungen iiber die Schonheit,
Zurich, 1765, and the Letter to Don Antonio Pons, translated into Italian from the Spanish, 1777. 3 4 Cf. Herder, Werke, vm, p. vii. Ibid. pp. 25, 35, 36.
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symmetry, stripped of all particularity of time and place as only the Greeks had the wisdom to represent it2—this was to be the mediator henceforward between Goethe and God. Herder showed also how this vision of the human form could be used to produce new works of beauty and wisdom. He pointed out how the Greeks had used their ideal forms as means of expression. They were not “masks of a beautiful, eternal inactivity; the breath of life blew through their forms”. Apollo Belvedere expresses a noble anger and determination in his attitude. The other gods and heroes speak to us plastically.3 Inevitably as he realised the deeper significance of Greek sculpture, Goethe longed for more opportunity to study it. In the years of inner conflict he had felt out of touch with the serenity of Greek art. There were some antiques in his house,4 probably brought with him from Frankfurt, and in the spring of 1776 he had some antique gem impressions sent from Leipzig by Oeser.5 This seems to have been his only effort to gain new knowledge of Greek art. From 1779 onwards, however, he took every opportunity to see and contemplate reproductions of the great works of Greek sculpture.6 In the summer of 1778—just as the inner meaning of Greek art was dawning on him—he began to take an interest in the work of Klauer, the court sculptor,? who in time produced several plaster casts and some bronzes of Greek originals. One commission that Goethe gave to Klaueisis ofparticular significance. In December 1778 Klauer began a nude of Fritz v. Stein, Charlotte’s six-yearold son; Goethe commented on it in his diary of January 1779:8 “Klauer at work on the model of Fritz. At last, thank God, he is finding an unending field of study in the beautiful body He cannot wonder enough at its beauty. The story of how it 1
2 Cf. Herder, Werke, vra, p. 69. Ibid. pp. 19-20. Ibid. pp. 57 foil., 61. 4 Diintzer, Zur Goetheforschung, p. 34. 5 Letter to Oeser, 6 April 1776 (WA. iv, 3, p. 49) and Duntzer, Zur Goetheforschung, pp. 34, 35. 6 See below, pp. 118, 119. 7 See WA. in, 1, pp. 68, 70, 74. 8 Ibid. p. 78. Volbehr (op. cit. p. 143) points out the significance of this sudden interest in the human form. See also E. Wolf, Goethe und die 3
griechische Plastik in Neue Jahrbucher fiir Wissenschaft und Jugendbildung, 1
(1925), p. 35-
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has all happened from the beginning is worth remembering.”1 The tone of these words shows that it was his own conversion rather than Klauer’s that excited him. With the help of Winckelmann, Mengs and Herder, all of whom based their thought on the tradition of Greek sculpture, he had begun to realise the inner significance of the human form. The Greeks had understood this significance as no other race had done, and had revealed it in the ideal human forms of their sculpture. This was the principle on which from this moment Goethe interpreted Greek art. The greater knowledge that he gained in Italy, and afterwards, did not cause him to change his attitude; he used it only to develop the simple idea in ever greater detail. The way was now clear to create through the inspiration of the Greek ideal. He must reproduce in his poetical medium the “noble simplicity and quiet greatness” of Greek statuary. For the great work in which he would portray his struggle and his victory, such a style was aesthetically inevitable. Only thus in fact could the aesthetic significance of the new wisdom be expressed. So Iphigenie took shape in his mind during the last weeks of 1778,2 and was brought to paper in the intervals of administrative duties during the February and March following. In the statuesque simplicity, the grave restraint, the perfect humanity of the characters, Goethe was trying to re-create in words his vision of the Hellenic man. It may be maintained that he was not successful, that the characters in Iphigenie lack real plasticity. It is true we learn to know them entirely through their thoughts and feelings; their physical appearance is not portrayed. Such description seemed unnecessary to Goethe. Their physical attributes were those of Greek sculpture, which were well known and needed no description. He was concerned to portray the deeper significance of Greek contour and 1 “Klauer an Fritzens Modell gearbeitet. Er findet doch endlich, Gott sei Dank, an dem schonen Kdrper ein iibergros Studium Er kann jetzt nicht genug dessen Schonheit bewundern. Die Geschichte, wie es damit von Anfang gegangen ist, muss ich nicht vergessen.” 2 Some have held that Goethe began to think over a plan to Iphigenie in
1776 (seeDiintzer, Die drei dltesten Bearheitungen von Goethes ” Iphigenie \ 1854,
p. 143), but this view is not generally accepted. Even if this were so it is significant that he could not bring his plan to fruition until he had found a new line of approach to the Greek genius.
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Greek proportion, as he understood it, and in this he certainly succeeded. His use of the Greek sculptural ideal involved a reproduction in the poetic medium of certain qualities of Greek plastic art. It was in a sense “imitation”—a thing that he had never allowed himself in the days of Sturm und Drang. How far had he accepted the principle of imitation in other matters ? How far in fact should Iphigenie be regarded as an attempt to write a Greek tragedy? Before this question can be answered it is essential first to establish how well Goethe knew the body of Attic tragedy from personal study. Before he came to Weimar he had read the Alcestis and probably the Prometheus Vinctusy and was familiar at least with the story of the Philoctetes.1 For the first five years after his arrival in Weimar—until September 1780—there is no direct evidence of any interest in the tragedians, except a reference to Sophocles in a letter to his mother, which might or might not mean that Goethe had been reading him. 2 In letters and diaries there is no indication that Goethe read a single Greek play in preparation for his own Iphigenie. Negative evidence, however, can prove nothing, and in this case it is contradicted by strong evidence from other sources. In 1811 Goethe said to Riemer: “Incompleteness is productive. I wrote my Iphigenie from a study of the Greek works, which was however incomplete. If it had been exhaustive, the play would have remained unwritten.” 3 The evidence of this categorical statement is supported by an examination of the text of Iphigenie. A number of phrases and images in it are strongly reminiscent of passages in various Greek tragedies. When Goethe made Iphigenie say: “I came here young, yet old enough to remember those heroes, who, like the gods in the glory of their armament, went forth to fairest renown”, 4 he may well have had in his mind’s eye the picture drawn at much greater length by Euripides in the Iphigenia in Aulis (lines 171-300). Orestes describes how 1
See above, pp. 59, 61. 16 Nov. 1777 (WA. iv, 3, p. 187). 3 Graf, Drama, in, p. 211: “Das Unzulangliche ist produktiv. Ich schrieb meine Iphigenie aus einem Studium der griechischen Sachen das aber unzulanglich war. Wenn es erschopfend gewesen ware, so ware das Stuck ungeschrieben geblieben. 4 WA. 39, P-358. 2
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“ 2 It was the lack of just this delicacy which shocked Goethe when for the first time in his life he set eyes on a Greek temple. 3 A continued study of Greek plastic art also helped to allay his doubts about the validity of the moral message of Greece. Already in the summer of 1780 a cast of Apollo dominated his dining-room.4 Perhaps this was one of the many casts of antique statues made by Klauer during the early ‘eighties. Amongst others in Weimar were the Laocoon group, Niobe and daughter, the Medici Venus and the Antinous.5 In January 1782, two months before Tobler sent his last translations of Aeschylus, a cast of the Apollo Belvedere arrived from Gotha, 6 and in June of the following year Goethe saw the casts that the Duke of Gotha had collected.7 In September 1781 Herder’s essay on Winckelmann appeared8 in the Teutscher Merkur. It would have been natural, if Herder’s enthusiastic appreciation of the man and his work had fired Goethe at last to undertake a proper study of the Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums. He had by now seen so much of the great statues of antiquity that such a study would have been profitable. But apparently he still left the Geschichte der Kunst unopened, as he had done in his student days at Leipzig, and only three years before when the Greek youth had first appeared to him. In the following February and March he was reading Mengs,9 a complete edition of whose works, in Italian, had appeared in 1780. Again as in 1778 Mengs acted as proxy for Winckelmann. 1 2 3 5 6 8
Letter to Herder, late Nov. 1784 (WA. iv, 6, p. 400). An die Cicade, WA. 2, p. n o . Cf. WA. iv, 6, p. 165. 4 See below, p. 152. Bied. 1, p. 106. Teutscher Merkur, March 1785. WA. m, 1, p. 136. 7 WA. iv, 6, p. 171. Werke, xv, pp. 35 foil. 9 WA. HI, 1, p. 140.
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The better he came to know the remains of Greek sculpture, the more certainly he saw in them a visible expression of the highest moral and aesthetic ideal. Und Marmorbilder stehn und sehn mich an: Was hat man dir, du armes Kind, getan?1 Thus he summed up his feelings in the presence of a Greek statue. How was it possible that he, the modern, northern man, could have fallen so far below the physical and spiritual standard, that here stood, visible and tangible, not a mere idea, before him? In 1778 he had first fully realised the significance of Greek sculpture. The years passed and the vision never left him, but it was hard to keep it productive in a northern land. A few casts in Weimar, an occasional sight of some better equipped princely collection, a description of the Acropolis and its treasures from the pen of some travelling Englishman2— thus sparingly did the sunshine of the ideal filter through the Cimmerian cloud-rack to warm the seed that longed to flower. Except for these glimpses, his life was spent among the firforests and bare cornlands of Thiiringen, in a town of narrow gables and dark streets, among men and women without beauty, surrounded by an art without sense for the ideal. The vision was there but in such circumstances it could never be realised. It turned instead into a longing so violent that it became in time a sickness.3 It no longer found expression directly, as it had done in Iphigenie in the first strength of realisation. The longing for the ideal, not the ideal itself, became poetically active and produced a symbol of itself—not Pylades, a vigorous, beautiful youth, but Mignon, a frail child, pining for its sunny home, misunderstood, at times mishandled, by barbarian masters. Strangely Mignon resembles Proserpina. Both, condemned to wander in a dark land, pine with longing for the sunny country they have once known. In those last 1
“And marble statues stand and gaze at me: ‘What have they done to you, poor child?”‘ 2 Richard Chandler’s Travels in Asia Minor and Greece (Chaps, vni and ix), read by Goethe in a German edition in April 1781 (cf. WA. iv, 5, P- 119). 3 WA. in, 1, p. 290, and letter to Kayser, 24 June 1784 (WA. iv, 6, p. 3H)-
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years in Weimar before the flight to Italy1 Goethe was back almost where he had started in his relationship to the Greek genius. Mignon symbolises a frustration almost as complete as that for which Proserpina had stood. There is but one difference. Proserpina’s longing was utterly hopeless. “What thou seek’st, lies ever behind thee”, she had told herself. At that time it seemed to Goethe that Greece was gone for ever, because it was past in time. Mignon is not without hope. The land of longing is not gone for ever. It is not here, but neither is it nowhere. It is there, just beyond the Alps, removed only in space not in time. The cloudy path that leads away can also lead back. The mules pass over with their loads, then why not she and her protector? Why not? Why not? The question hammered in his head, until to fight it down almost cost him his reason. He could not read a Latin book; he avoided the contemplation of Greek sculpture;2 except for the novel in which his Mignon lived, his poetical vein was almost dead; he turned the energy of his genius to exploring the secrets of Nature. He had seen Greece from afar, but, living as and where he did, he could never possess the holy land. The beautiful youth held out his hand to him and he could not take it. As the winter of 1783 closed down he asked his friend for maps of Italy.3 For two more summers and two more winters he endured. As the third spring tarried he could hold out no longer, and when in July he went to take the waters at Carlsbad, he knew—he and his secretary, but no one else—that he would not come back to another winter of living death in Thiiringen. Proserpina would be free, Mignon would be free, and Pylades would welcome them with quiet greatness as they came down from the Alps into the sunny land. 1 Mignon first appears in the third book of Wilhelm Meisters Theatralische Sendung, which was finished in Nov. 1782 (WA. iv, 6, p. 88). The poem Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt (Book vi, chap, VII, WA. 52, p. 225) was sent to Charlotte von Stein in June 1785 (WA. iv, 7, p. 67). 2 The visit to Gotha in June 1783 is the last indication of any interest in Greek art. 3 Letter to Charlotte von Stein, 26 Nov. 1783 (Ibid. 6, p. 217).
CHAPTER IV ITALY Hier! durch ein Wunder, hier in Griechenland! Ich fiihlte gleich den Boden, wo ich stand; Wie mich, den Schlafer, frisch ein Geist durchgliihte, So steh ich, ein Antaus an Gemiite. A. TOWARDS ROME N the 3rd of September at three o’clock of the morning, I stole out of Carlsbad; they would not otherwise have let me go.” 1 With the swiftness and secrecy of an escaped prisoner Goethe pursued his journey southward, through Munich and Innsbruck, over the Brenner, down along the shores of Garda to Verona, where for the first time he paused. From there he wrote to the friends in Weimar, but still gave them no hint of where he was. Even in Venice, where he stayed nearly three weeks, he still concealed his whereabouts, as though to reveal it before he had reached Rome might in some way jeopardise his whole plan. At last, two months after leaving Carlsbad, he wrote from Rome to tell his Duke and his other friends where he was and what had been the object of his unaccountable flight. This strange stealth, quite unjustified on rational consideration of the circumstances, is proof enough that Goethe was in no normal state during the summer and autumn of 1786. Suspicions and fears, the product only of his own strained phantasy, hunted him and would not be shaken off. He was in fact in danger of suffering some irremediable catastrophe such as has overtaken many of the noblest minds of German literature. “Forgive m e ! ” he wrote to Charlotte, “I was in a life-and-death struggle and no tongue can tell what was going on within me.” 2 It was not merely that he needed a holiday with sun, as many of us do after a northern winter, nor that Charlotte was holding him with too tight a rein, nor that society in Weimar had come to seem intolerably petty to 1
Tagebuch, 1786 (WA. in, 1, p. 147). 23 Dec. 1786 (WA. iv, 8, p. 102): “Ich kampfte selbst mit Tod und Leben, und keine Zunge spricht aus was in mir vorging.” 2
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him. All these were only symptoms of a fundamental maladjustment. We must seek deeper for the cause of Goethe’s flight to Italy. “His genius, his daimon drove him”, Miss Butler says,1 and thus expresses excellently the terrifying power of the forces that were at work. Gundolf, less picturesquely but with no less appreciation of the vast emotional tensions which Goethe had somehow to keep under control, speaks of his “urge to give form to great impressions”, 2 and defines the cause of his mental sickness as the lack of a world which could provide these “great impressions”. In Weimar his artistic genius was starved for subjects worthy of its power. He believed he could find the “great world” in Italy, and so he fled. He did not expect to be inspired by everything he found in Italy. There, no less than in the rest of Europe, the Middle Ages had represented, in his opinion, a relapse into barbarism, and the culture of medieval Italy repelled him no less than a German fir-forest. In Assisi St Francis and Giotto were nothing to him. He climbed the hill straight to the piazza, where a Roman temple of Minerva still stands, worshipped there in his own way the wisdom of the ancients—and strode on to Foligno. For us it is important to ascertain to what extent Goethe regarded the rest of what he was to see in Italy as equivalent to the Greek tradition in art and in life. Was he seeking solely, or even primarily, the secret of Greek supremacy? Or were the statues in Rome, the only remnant, as was then thought, of Greek art, only one “great impression” among many that awaited him? Certainly it was not these statues alone that attracted him to Rome, like a needle to a magnet. On his journey thither Renaissance painting drew from him more comment than the examples of antique sculpture which he saw; arid throughout his eighteen months in Italy the study of Raphael, Michelangelo and other modern masters took up a large part of his time. Furthermore, no art however noble would have constituted for him a “great world”, unless seen against the ennobling background of Italian landscape, Italian climate and Italian vegetation. On the shores of Garda, on the Lido at first sight of the sea, among the Apennines or the Alban Hills, in Naples and in Sicily, Nature revealed herself to him on a scale 1 2
WA. iv, 8, pp. 104 foil. Goethe, p. 363: “Trieb nach Gestaltung grosser Eindriicke.”
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and with a meaning that was new to him. This “grosse Natur” was one of the most powerful of the great impressions that he received. He had always expected that it would be so. In these two ways it was not Greece but modern Italy that gave him what he was seeking. In a third category were all those impressions of grandeur and truth which came to him from the works of u the ancients”. On innumerable occasions Goethe wrote thus ambiguously of “die Alten”, in such a way as to suggest that he had no clear idea of the difference between Greek civilisation and Roman. At times he undoubtedly thought in terms of two civilisations—the ancient and the modern—more or less opposed to each other in ideals and practice, and was not concerned to define how much of what was ancient was also Greek. In architecture especially such purely Roman works as the Amphitheatre at Verona and the aqueduct near Spoleto impressed him profoundly, and led him to generalise on the mighty conceptions and superb execution of “the ancients”.1 It is hard to say whether he was aware that the Greeks had known nothing of such giant structures, which were the product of a purely Roman spirit. The relative merits of Greek and Roman sculpture had been pointed out clearly enough by Winckelmann2 and were by now well understood; but in architecture, the same distinction was far less clearly established. Examples of Greek architecture were practically unknown—even the temples of Paestum, only sixty miles from Naples, had hardly begun to attract attention in Winckelmann’s day.3 Goethe used Palladio as guide in architectural matters, who founded his practice on that of “the ancients”, but to whom the true Greek Doric with its sturdy proportions was unknown. 4 There were moments however, even in the first days of his Italian journey, when Goethe realised that “die Alten” were not enough, and that even in Italy there were still veils between him and the light that had once streamed out from Greece. Italian art was crippled by its Christian subject-matter,5 and 1
2 WA. m, 1, pp. 197, 327. Werke, v, pp. 282, 290, 292. Winckelmann, Werke, 1, pp. 330 foil. 4 9 The First Book of Andrea Palladio s Architecture, London, 1742, p. 28. Cf. Winckelmann, Werke, 1, pp. 289, 292. 5 WA. in, 1, pp. 283, 308. 3
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even the Romans were barbarians, who plundered the world of its beautiful things, and yet were always dependent on Greek craftsmen to help them use what they had robbed.1 At bottom he was seeking the Greek tradition in life and in art, and had no patience with the “modern”, “Christian” or “northern” tendencies which obscured it even in Italy. At times he found the true Greek or “southern” nature in the common people: the Odyssey he saw embodied in a Venetian beggar; Italian love of rhetoric, though only a feeble survival of the Athenian passion for all the forensic arts, explained to him the long harangues of Greek tragedy;2 and when he said that the common people of Italy still displayed the mentality and customs that are to be found in the “ancient” writers, 3 he must have been thinking primarily of Homer: nowhere in Latin literature are those qualities as vividly painted, which astounded Goethe when he first met them in Venice. The unreflecting naturalness, the passionate absorption in the business of living, the singing, the quarrelling, the chaffering, the law-suits in the open air, the rhapsodist’s intent audience4—this was life, direct, simple, intense, free from the distortions, the uncertainties, the impotence that had gathered round it in the two thousand years that had passed since Homer was the Bible of the Western world. In Germany and as he crossed the Alps, Goethe may not have realised how sharply he would have to distinguish between merely Italian or even “ancient” culture and the Grecian core in which the pure essence of what he was seeking was preserved. From his earliest childhood he had dreamed of Italy as the land where all longing would be stilled, and he never ceased throughout his life to speak of Rome as the capital of the world, or even as a world in itself. Even in Italy his desire to reach Rome was so great that he hurried through Florence with hardly a glance at its artistic treasures; and when he had at last to leave the Eternal City and return to the Cimmerian forests, he wept in anguish. Yet the longer he stayed in Italy the more clearly he saw that Rome too could not satisfy him. In so far as it was not Greece it was nothing, and in many ways 1 3 4
2 WA. m, i, p. 308. Ibid. pp. 248, 271. Bied. 1, p. 179 (8 Oct. 1791). Cf. WA. 31, p. 39. WA. in, 1, pp. 248, 249, 250, 260.
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it was very far from being Greece. Why then, if he knew that Greece alone would satisfy him and that Greece was not to be found in Rome—why did he not go to Greece? The journey, though difficult, was not impossible. He had an opportunity to go and refused it. Was it simply lack of enterprise, inertia, fearfulness of the physical dangers and inconveniences ? Partly perhaps, but not at bottom. There was in fact no reason why he should go. As far as he knew, all the remains of Greek sculpture were in Italy—most of them concentrated in Rome. The Olympian pediment figures, the Hermes of Praxiteles, the Aeginetan marbles and innumerable other works were still buried. The Parthenon marbles had been seen by travellers; their existence was realised,1 but not their importance. Historically Greece did not interest him. It would have meant little to him to stand on the Pnyx and reflect that here Themistocles and Pericles and Demosthenes had swayed the Athenian Demos with the magic of words, or to look out from the Acropolis over the Saronic Gulf, and to think of all the famous events that had taken place on its waters or around its shores. This was not the kind of “great impression” which Goethe was seeking. In short there was nothing to induce him to make a hazardous sea voyage to a barbarous outpost of the Turkish empire. But though he never went to Greece, he did at one moment escape from Rome and make a journey that amounted in his mind to “going to Greece”. In Sicily he found at last what he was looking for—essential Hellas, free of northern mists, of Roman vulgarity, and of Christian other-worldliness. Great impressions with which to feed his creative genius were what he sought as an artist. As seer or seeker after truth he crossed the Alps in the hope that in Italy he would find life in closest contact with ideal reality. In northern lands there seemed to be a veil over the process of manifestation, so that neither Nature nor human life, and therefore also not art, could reveal themselves in great, simple forms of ideal signifi1
Goethe first saw drawings of the Parthenon marbles in August 1787, during his second stay in Rome (WA. 32, p. 63). They had been brought back from Athens by Richard Worsley (Goethe wrote Worthley), and were later published in the Museum Worsleyanum, 1794-1803. The Museum contains engravings of some metopes, much but not all of the frieze, and none of the pediment figures.
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cance. In Italy he knew it would be otherwise, and so it proved. Even the Alps, the barrier between north and south, were to him the ” fairest and grandest natural phenomena of the land”. 1 On the shores of Garda, with a strong wind driving great waves against the strand and with the sun streaming down in southern strength,1 he was aware of a new power in Nature to carry through great ideas, without faltering, in simple immediacy. Next at Verona, as he stood in the Roman amphitheatre and filled it in imagination with a thronging multitude, as it was meant to be seen, there came to him a revelation of what man could do, when he worked like Nature directly, unfalteringly, from a vast and simple idea to its vast and simple fulfilment.2 It was thus that the ancients had worked; the temple at Assisi and the aqueduct at Spoleto confirmed this first impression; 3 and it was thus that he must learn to work. The conception did not need to be vast (the temple of Minerva was modest in proportions, befitting a small town), so long as it were true in itself and were carried out with a simple attention to the expedient means. The antique stelae in Verona exemplified this “true purposefulness” of ancient art most perfectly.4 Here was no armoured knight, awaiting on his knees a blissful resurrection, no folded hands, no heavenward glances; such other-worldly nonsense, Goethe implied, was foreign to the ancient way of thought. Instead: “There stand the father and mother, their son between them, and look at each other with indescribable naturalness; another pair clasp hands. There a father seems to bid his family adieu, as he lies on his death-bed…. The artist has just portrayed the simple presence of these men and women, and so prolonged their existence and made it eternal…. They are what they were, they stand beside each other, they are concerned with c>ne another, they love each other.” Despite often inadequate craftsmanship these simple ideas were so movingly expressed, that Goethe wept as he gazed on them. It is remarkable how little Goethe commented on the other works of antique sculpture which he saw on his way to Rome, although he dutifully visited the galleries and checked off the 1 2 3 4
WA. in, i, p. 182. Ibid. pp. 194 foil., 197. Ibid. pp. 323 foil., 327. Ibid. pp. 199 foil.: “Wahre Zweckmassigkeit.”
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antiques in his guide-book. A Ganymede attributed to Phidias received a laconic “good”; a Leda in the same collection in Venice he found to be “nobly sensuous in conception”. 1 The antiques in Verona were “schon”, those in Ferrara “kostlich”. 2 Only the collection of antique sculpture in the Casa Farsetti in Venice drew from him any general comment: “These are works in which the world can rejoice for thousands of years and still will never exhaust the artist’s worth.”3 He probably saw little of importance that he did not know already, except perhaps the Niobe and daughter.4 In his haste to reach Rome he neglected the antiques in Florence, among them the Medici Venus, which moved him to such admiration on his return journey eighteen months later. More important than any lack of material was the fact that his eye was not trained to the appreciation of these more impersonal works of antiquity.5 They did not yet reveal to him any fundamental idea. He was disappointed, for he had come to Italy in search of revelations, among the most important of which was to be that which showed him the ideal significance of Greek art. That first revelation, which had produced Iphigenie, was too limited, too narrowly moral. It had fitted the stage of development at which he had arrived eight years ago. Now he was ready for something greater, something more profoundly simple, more subtly complex. On the hurried journey to Rome there was no opportunity for the intensive study and the undisturbed contemplation which alone would compel the vision to appear. In Venice he thought that the analogy with architecture was setting him on the right road,6 but it was not until a year later that he really saw and knew and understood. Nature revealing herself with simple power; ancient architecture that followed Nature in its immediate expression of great ideas; the life of the common people, unself-conscious, passionate, directly expressive, like that of men and women in Homer—these were three “great impressions” which Goethe 1
Ibid. p. 255: “Von hohem sinnlichen Sinn.” 3 Ibid. pp. 208, 299: “Beautiful” and “delightful”. Ibid. p. 261. 4 In the Teutscher Merkur, March 1785, this group is mentioned as being among the casts of antique statues in Weimar, yet Goethe mentions it in his diary (WA. in, 1, p. 260) among the works seen by him for the first time. 5 6 Ibid. pp. 153, 261. Ibid. p. 261. 2
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received before he reached Rome. Each of these showed him the idea revealing itself without distortion or waste; and the example of ancient architecture taught him that man could find the way to such direct expression, as well as Nature. This example he must follow. He must learn to feel and think and produce as the ancients had done. He must make their power of vast conception and their methods of execution his own. Yet imitation, mere copying, was not enough. He was a modern man. The world that he knew was not Homer’s world. He could not write an epic poem full of bloody and heroic deeds, nor of mariners’ tales of ships and storms and giants and sorceresses. He had never seen blood spilt in anger, had never set foot on a ship; and in the modern world giants and sorceresses were only pretty fictions, not, as in Homer’s day, awful possibilities. Nor could he write a Greek tragedy of blood and hatred, larded with rhetorical harangues. He must draw his material from his own experience and in handling it remain true to his own nature. Only in interpreting and giving form to the world around him, he must rival the ancients in power and directness of expression. This principle was easy enough to state; in its application, it raised problems to which solutions were hard to find. How much, for instance, was the success of the ancients in giving expression to the idea due to the forms of expression which they had evolved? Was it possible to achieve equally powerful expression without using these forms ? If they were to be used, how would modern material fit itself into them ? Was it possible to write iambic trimeters in German ? Herder had advised against it, 1 and he was probably right. But could blank-verse ever convey the impression of dignity and restrained power which the trimeter gave? Again, could the greater emotional complexity of the modern world ever be expressed as directly as the Greeks had expressed their simpler, but more powerful ideas ? Would not the attempt to press this modern material into the old forms produce something monstrous, something half bull, half man, and neither quite ? These were the problems which Goethe brought with him to Italy. His failure with Elpenor, the success of his epigrams, and the work of versifying Iphigenie, had given him conflicting experience. The sight of the amphitheatre at Verona impressed 1
See below, p. 131.
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him again with the vital importance of finding some way to interpret Nature as the ancients had done. At this critical moment he found a guide, one who had faced the same problem, had made the same mistakes, and had found at last a working solution. It was in Vicenza that Goethe first saw examples of Palladio’s work. 1 At once he was filled with wonder and recognised a companion in genius.2 Palladio too, he saw, had struggled with the problem of combining the tradition of antiquity with modern needs, and had not always been successful. These buildings in Vicenza showed plainly how he had experimented, first on this theory then on that. His attempt to use pillars in the ancient style on the fixed forms of modern domestic architecture was imposing, it revealed the force of Palladio’s genius, but the result was a monstrosity. In the Olympic Theatre, on the other hand, he had cut loose from all modern tradition and sentiment, and had reproduced an ancient theatre. The result was “indescribably beautiful”. But it did not suit modern needs. It was too lofty a conception for everyday life. In the Rotonda Palladio had tried another solution of the problem. 3 He had been free to build in any form he pleased. Instead of copying some ancient building, he had chosen to give expression to his complex, modern genius. Only the parts, not the whole, took their forms from the tradition of antiquity, and the result was “a bit wild”. 4 By a curious chance Goethe heard his own and Palladio’s problem debated in the Academy of the Olympians in Vicenza. The question for debate was: ” Whether invention or imitation is more advantageous to the fine arts.”^ Goethe had no sympathy with the supporters of imitation. Their arguments were just such specious sophistries as the many can appreciate. But in fact there could be no conclusion to a debate in which imitation and invention were set up as opposing, hostile principles. Goethe had long realised that the only solution of the problem lay in making a synthesis of the two. His difficulty 1
WA. in, 1, p. 213. Ibid. p. 214: “Palladio ist ein recht innerlich und von innen heraus grosser Mensch gewesen.” 3 4 Ibid. p. 218. “Ein wenig toll.” 5 Ibid. pp. 222 foil. 2
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was to find means for putting the synthesis into practice. It was significant that Palladio was cited by both sides in the debate. In Padua Goethe bought Palladio’s great treatise on the theory and practice of architecture. In Venice, where he arrived on 28 September 1786, he studied it, his eyes were opened, and he saw the goal that he had come to seek. “The revolution that is going on in me, is that which has taken place in every artist, who has studied Nature long and diligently and now sees the remains of the great spirit of antiquity; his soul wells up, he feels a transfiguration of himself from within, a feeling of freer life, higher existence, lightness and grace.”1 Goethe does not tell what it was in Palladio’s book which revealed to him the secret of production in the manner of the ancients. It may however be hazarded that it was the sureness with which Palladio prescribed the proportion for every part in relation to every other part, and the unquestioning assumption that the product of these proportions would be beauty. These laws of beauty Palladio had from Vitruvius and from his study of ancient buildings. It was they which enabled the ancients to give complete, unfaltering expression to their great ideas. This system of proportions, worked out and perfected through centuries of diligent experiment, was the key to the greatness of the ancients in architecture. But merely to follow these specific laws—proportion of diameter to height in columns, height of pedestal to height of column and so on— would be imitation. The modern artist with modern emotions and material would not be helped by such superficial knowledge of ancient practice. It must be possible—Palladio had probably done it—to discover the fundamental law of proportion, upon which the ancients had worked in evolving all the specific laws, and from this fundamental law to evolve new specific laws for the creation of forms fitted to modern needs. Here was the key to the modern artist’s dilemma. If the ancients had had these laws for architecture, they had them 1 WA. in, 1, pp. 250 foil.: “Die Revolution, die jetzt in mir vorgeht, ist die in jedem Kiinstler entstand, der lang emsig der Natur treu gewesen und nun die Ueberbleibsel des alten grossen Geists erblickte, die Seele quoll auf und er fiihlte eine innere Art von Verklarung sein selbst, ein Gefuhl von freierem Leben, hoherer Existenz, Leichtigkeit und Grazie.”
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also for sculpture and for poetry. Hard work and intuition would reveal them—first the specific laws, then the fundamental, and from that could be evolved new laws for use when modern needs demanded forms unknown to the ancients. No wonder Goethe spoke of Palladio with reverence and gratitude. He had learnt from him the method which in future he always used, to win from ancient art the secret of its ideal significance. In the meantime Goethe was confronted with a self-imposed task, whose completion he could not long postpone. Iphigenie in its loosely iambic prose had never satisfied him. He had polished it at intervals during the last seven years,1 especially during the summer of 1781, when he was reading much Greek tragedy, but had undertaken no radical change in the form. The decision to publish it in the first complete edition of his works forced him in 1786 to apply himself with energy to the task of giving Iphigenie an outward form worthy of its content. Encouraged in this decision by Wieland and Herder, he had taken the manuscript with him to Carlsbad and had set to work, with Herder’s active help in the solution of questions of prosody, to recast the whole in blank-verse. The task had proved more formidable than he had thought. He was perhaps glad to have to take the “sweet burden” with him over the Alps. On the shore of Garda, in Verona, Vicenza and Venice he had worked on. Now, after a week in Venice, he found it impossible to continue. Not till he had been ten days in Rome did he return to the charge, and two months more passed before in January 1787 the perfected fair copy was dispatched to the friends in Weimar. During this work on Iphigenie Goethe had the Greek tragedians always at his elbow. In Carlsbad he read the Electra of Sophocles in the Greek. The “strange rolling and turning” of the pauseless six-footed iambics made so strong a sensual impression on him, that he at once determined to recast his Iphigenie in trimeters rather than blank-verse.2 He even set to work to rewrite the first scene. But the idea was soon given up, probably on Herder’s advice, and the work on Iphigenie was continued in the simpler metre. Goethe took the tragedians in a Greek 1 2
For the full history of the text see WA. 39, pp. 449 foil. Letter to Herder, late Aug. 1786 (WA. iv, 8, p. 8).
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text with him to Italy. In a letter to Herder from Venice he quoted the last lines of the Ajax in Greek;2 and the final version of Iphigenie shows indubitable traces of recent reading of many Greek tragedies. Iphigenie’s reflexions on woman’s lot in her opening speech3 are a close parallel to a passage in the Medea;* 4 ‘the shy glance” that Iphigenie cast at the departing heroes— a visual touch not in the first version—is taken directly from Iphigenia in Aulis (lines 187, 188); and Iphigenie’s appeal to Diana to save Orestes from madness (lines 1317-31) corresponds so closely to the similar appeal in Euripides’s Iphigenia in Tauris, that one line of Goethe’s text is actually a translation from the Greek.5 Already in the prose version these three passages show a vague resemblance to the Greek passages cited. The last two were probably suggested by reading of the two Iphigenias. But in the verse text the resemblance is one not merely of thought but of concrete images, in one case of actual words. These passages, and others in the final version of Iphigenie? prove beyond a doubt that Goethe had the Greek tragedians at hand, while he was engaged on the work of re-writing. Goethe hoped no doubt that a new soaking in Greek tragedy, combined with the great impressions of ancient art and southern life, would rid Iphigenie of its northern mistiness and make it worthily antique. In fact the influence of the amphitheatre at Verona and of the Attic tragedians can be plainly discerned in the finished play. Already in 1781 Goethe had added touches which made the story of the house of Tantalus still more dark and terrible,7 and emphasised the helplessness of mankind in struggling against implacable gods. In the final version the horror of the bloody deeds and their terrible punishment is made more present and compelling by a number of finely visual passages.8 Therewith the conflict is sharpened between Iphigenie’s lofty trust in goodness and the despairing philosophy 1
Ernst Maass, Goethe und die Antike, p. 168 and Schr. der G.G. 11, pp. 319, 439. Cf. also Egmont, Act v, WA. 8, p. 302, and Trachiniae, lines 1222 foil. 2 3 WA. iv, 8, p. 31. WA. 10, p. 4, lines 24-34. 4 5 Medea, 230-54. Iph. i$2i=Iph. Taur. 1401. 6 Cf. especially Iph. 307 and Ag. 629. 7 Especially WA. 39, p. 472, lines 8, 9. 8 Especially lines 384-7, 751-2, 1036, 1057-65, 1726-66 (the Parzenlied re-cast in verse).
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which sees the world governed by gods who “kill us for their sport”. The conflict comes to its crisis in Iphigenie’s heart and finds expression in those famous lines: O dass in meinem Busen nicht zuletzt Ein Widerwille keime! der Titanen Der alten Gotter tiefer Hass auf euch, Olympier, nicht auch die zarte Brust Mit Geierklauen fasse! Rettet mich, Und rettet euer Bild in meiner Seele.1 In the first version the conflict and the danger are only implied, not stated. In Carlsbad Goethe may have wished merely to give Iphigenie %. more worthy outward form before publishing it. The re-reading of Greek tragedy and the sight of ancient works of art, especially the amphitheatre and the stelae, made him see that profounder changes must be made. The idea of Iphigenie must be expressed with the directness of an ancient work of art. The contrast of dark and light must be intensified, the whole made more visual, less abstract. So to Herder he wrote: “It is tending towards complete crystallisation. The fourth act”, in which the crisis of the play is reached, “is turning out almost completely new.” 2 So he progressed, with ever deepening insight into the nature of the problem, until he had been almost a month in Italy, one week in Venice. Then on 7 October he noted in his diary that he had been unable to compose a single line, and by the ioth he realised that he was not destined to finish Iphigenie immediately.3 He gave no reasons to explain this sudden impotence, but it was in fact inevitable that he should have to pause in his work on Iphigenie. His attitude to the problem of composition in the antique manner was changing daily. Great new impressions had thrown his ideas into confusion. Palladio’s ex1 Lines 1712-17: “Oh! may no opposition grow at last in my breast! May the deep hatred which the Titans and the old gods feel for you, Olympians, not seize my tender heart too with vulture-claws! Save me, and save your image in my soul!” 2 WA. iv, 8, p. 32. 3 WA. in, 1, p. 289. The letter to Herder (WA. iv, 8, p. 31), dated 14 Oct., was only sent on that date. It was written probably soon after Goethe’s arrival in Venice.
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ample had shown him the pitfalls that awaited the modern artist. Finally on 2 October he had seen something which made him despair of ever making anything but a ” monstrosity” out of his attempt to give antique expression to so modern a conception as that oflphigenie. It was a Luilding by Palladio, 1 the reproduction of an ancient dwelling-house. Goethe was carried away. He had seen nothing more sublime, he wrote. Here at last “the artist with the in-born sense for greatness.. .had had an opportunity to execute a favourite idea… in circumstances where the conception was entirely suitable. There was nothing to cramp him and he acted accordingly.” 2 In contrast to this Goethe saw on the same day and the next fresh examples of Palladio’s failure, when attempting to combine ancient forms with modern conceptions.3 The lesson was all too clear. He would himself produce nothing truly in the style of the ancients, until he could set to work on a subject of his own choosing. He must be uncramped, like Palladio. All his tinkering at Iphigenie would produce at best a “beautiful monster”, neither truly northern nor truly southern.4 At first this realisation seems to have produced in him a resigned despair. On 5 October he wrote: ” O n this journey I hope I shall bring my mind repose on the matter of the arts. I want to stamp their holy image indelibly into my soul and keep it there for my own silent enjoyment. Then I shall apply myself to handicrafts, and when I come back, study chemistry and mechanics. For the day of beauty is past; our age demands only stern necessity.”5 In Palladio’s day, in that wonderful second blooming of the spirit of antiquity, it had still been possible, if only occasionally, for the great artist to achieve perfection. What hope was there that his own modern genius would ever discover for him a subject that would enable him to repeat Palladio’s experience with the ancient dwelling1 In the Convent of Santa Maria della Carita, now the Accademia di Belle Arti. 2 WA. in, 1, pp. 254, 268, 292: “Der treffliche Kiinstler mit dem innerlichen Sinn furs Grosse geboren,… findet Gelegenheit einen Lieblingsgedanken auszufuhren, eine Wohnung der Alten nachzubilden, Gelegenheit da wo der Gedanke ganz passt. Er ist in nichts geniert und lasst sich von nichts genieren.” 3 Ibid. pp. 257 foil. 4 Ihid. p. 275. 5 jyum p. 266.
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house ? Better to resign himself in time and turn his energies to work that could be profitable. Thus once again Goethe’s spirit failed at the vastness of the task that had been thrust upon it. During those days in Venice he first fully realised the difficulty of making Greece live again in a world that had forgotten every ideal for which Greece had once stood. He saw that the attempt was foolishness and resolved to give it up. But his human common sense was no match for his genius and his destiny. The stone must be rolled to the top of the hill; the gods alone would decide whether the labour should be crowned with achievement, or the stone roll back and all be lost. His genius allowed him only a short breathing space. Two weeks later it revealed to him the new subject to which he could apply his antique manner “ungeniert”. “Early this morning,” Goethe wrote in his diary,1 “on the way here from Cento, I had the good fortune, between sleep and waking, to find the plan to Iphigeneia at Delphi complete. There is a fifth act and a recognition-scene that few can equal. I cried over it myself like a child, and in the treatment of it the southern quality2 will, I hope, be recognisable enough.” Next day in Bologna he saw a St Agatha by Raphael. The “healthy sure maidenliness without coquetry, but without frigidity or coarseness”3 of the saint seemed to him to be the visual realisation of his Iphigenie. He resolved to “read his Iphigenie aloud to this ideal and let his heroine say nothing that this saint could not say”. It is usually assumed that the Iphigenie here referred to was the old one, the Iphigenie auf Tauris. Goethe himself states as much in the Italienische Reise.* Nevertheless it is not impossible that he was there exercising his right of’”Dichtung” at the expense of ” Wahrheit”: the straightforward sequence of events of the diary is altered at this point so as to bring the two Iphigenies into more striking juxtaposition, and emphasise the inner struggle which their rival claims on his time and energies caused him.5 It is far more natural to suppose that Goethe was 1
2 Bologna, 18 Oct. {Ibid. p. 304). “Das Tramontane.” “Eine gesunde, sichre Jungfraulichkeit ohne Reiz, doch ohne Kalte und Roheit”: Ibid. p. 306. 4 WA. 30, p. 167. 5 Cf. also Italienische Reise, 6 Jan. 1787 (Ibid. p. 244). 3
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still full of the Iphigenie auf Delphos when he saw St Agatha, and that it was his new play that he intended to read aloud to her as he composed it. An inspiration that had moved him so deeply only the day before, and that offered the opportunity of making the perfect modern work of art, can hardly have been forgotten or even deliberately laid aside so soon. It is more probable that Iphigenie auf Delphos continued to occupy him during the remaining ten days of his journey to Rome, and that it was at some point during the first days or weeks in Rome that his feeling of duty towards the old Iphigenie finally triumphed.1 Yet if this Iphigenie auf Delphos was the longed-for new subject in which Goethe was to be “ungeniert”, free of the cramping demands of modern-northern traditions, as Palladio had been when he made his ancient dwelling-house, how could the heroine of the new piece find her visual embodiment in the picture of a Christian saint ? Surely there could be no hope of making anything antique out of such a character. Let us examine the action of the play as Goethe intended it to be, and try to see how he hoped to make out of it something truly “in the style of the ancients”.2 Nothing of the new Iphigenie was ever written down; at least no fragment of it has survived for posterity. All that is known about it is contained in the passage from Goethe’s diary quoted above, and in the synopsis of the plot which he inserted from memory into the Italienische Reise nearly thirty years later.3 This synopsis runs as follows: “Electra, confident that Orestes will bring the ikon of the Taurian Diana to Delphi, appears in the temple of Apollo and dedicates the fatal axe that has caused so much woe in Pelops’s house, to the god as final offering of expiation. Unfortunately she is met by one of the Greeks, who tells her how he accompanied Orestes and Pylades to Tauris, how he saw the two friends led to death, and how he himself was fortunate enough to escape. The passionate Electra is beside herself, and does not know whether to direct her rage against gods or men. In the meanwhile Iphigeneia, Orestes and Pylades have also arrived in Delphi. Iphigeneia’s saintly 1
Other references to Iphigenie in the diary—whether the Delphic or the Taurian is not indicated—occur: WA. in, i, pp. 314, 315. 2 3 “Im Sinne der Alten.” WA. 30, pp. 167 foil.
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calm contrasts most strangely with Electra’s earthly passion as the two figures meet without recognising each other. The Greek who escaped sees Iphigeneia, recognises in her the priestess who sacrificed the friends, and reveals it to Electra. She is about to murder Iphigeneia with the self-same axe, which she seizes up from the altar, when a fortunate turn saves the three from this last frightful calamity. If this scene comes off, it would be as noble and moving as anything that has ever been seen on the stage.” It is easy to see how this plot would provide Goethe with opportunity for treatment in the Greek manner, despite Iphigenie’s modern-Christian character. Electra was to be in every way the Electra of Greek tragedy, passionate, ruthless, bloodthirsty in revenge. In her rage against the gods she could blaspheme with Euripidean bitterness, and in her hatred of her brother’s murderess and in her resolve to requite blood with blood, she would reveal herself as one of those characters compounded of flint and fire, to which, as Goethe well knew, Greek tragedy owes its powerful effect. With this character as a foil even the gentleness of Iphigenie-Agatha would be compatible with the antique style of expression; by the powerful contrast of these two characters the idea of the play would be expressed with the direct simphcity that Goethe had learnt to wonder at in ancient works of art. The problem that Goethe was attempting once again to state and to solve in dramatic symbolism was the same that had inspired Elpenor: the problem of Greek inhumanity. Fresh reading of the Greek tragedians in juxtaposition with intensive work on his own Iphigenie had stirred up the old question. Now his genius had shown him the means, antique in their simphcity, of dramatising the problem and its solution. The two moralities were to meet, to come into conflict, the one was nearly to destroy the other; but they were to find reconciliation in the realisation that they were sisters, co-equals, diverse but not opposed, who had never wronged each other. This was to be the deeper meaning that underlay the moving drama of human emotions, hopes and fears. It will be objected that a reconciliation on this basis is still no solution. ” Iphigenie-morality” and” Electra-morality” cannot hold sway together as co-equals in one mind; and so long as Goethe was so much a modern at heart as to see his ideal in
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Iphigenie, he must continue to reject Electra. In fact the moral of Iphigenie aufDelphos is a rebuke for Electra. She is proved fundamentally wrong in her belief that the gods deliberately lead human beings to destruction; and only this belief can justify her recourse to violence. In Goethe’s mind the Greeks were still condemned for their belief in an inhumane worldorder. Had Goethe set to work at once to write his new Iphigenie, he might have finished it. He delayed to do so, allowed himself to be caught up in all the wonder of Rome, and returned to the more mechanical task of versifying his old play; in the meantime that change began in his whole Weltanschauung which caused him to turn his back on the gentle Iphigenie, calmly trusting in the goodness of humane gods, and to dismiss the morality for which she stood as “quite devilish humane”. 1 As soon as that process had started, Iphigenie auf Delphos could never be finished. Goethe would have been condemning a view of life that he was himself coming to adopt. So the first great opportunity to compose in the style of the ancients was lost, because Goethe’s mind was still developing faster than his genius could gather the fruits of his experience. B. ROME Goethe arrived in Rome on 29 October 1786. Next day he visited the chief ruins of ancient Rome, and St Peter’s.* So began the most intensive and penetrating sight-seeing that the Eternal City has ever experienced. For the first six weeks he saw and saw without method, anxious only to obtain as quickly as possible a general impression of the city and all it contained. Ruins, statues, Renaissance painting and architecture occupied his time and energy equally. Only medieval Rome, like medieval Assisi, was neglected. New impressions of grandeur and beauty poured in on him daily, almost hourly. He made no attempt as yet to order them or reflect on them; but a few were so powerful that of themselves they took possession of 1
Letter to Schiller, 19 Jan. 1802 (WA. iv, 16, p. 11): “Ganz verteufelt human.” 2 WA. in, 1, p. 331.
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his mind to the temporary exclusion of everything else. The Apollo Belvedere, seen at last in the living warmth of the marble, seemed to him the most inspired work of art in the world.1 The vast ruins of ancient Rome—the Colosseum, the baths of Diocletian, the imperial palaces on the Palatine, “that stand like cliffs”, the facade of the Pantheon—impressed him profoundly.2 He began to feel “a solidity of spirit.. .earnestness without dryness, and a firm but joyful nature”. 3 These were the Greek virtues as Winckelmann had described them. 4 It is significant that Goethe connected their growth in himself with the influence and example of Roman architecture. Apart from the Apollo Belvedere and the Ludovisi Juno, 5 works of ancient art drew from him less exclamations of enthusiasm during these first weeks than did Roman architecture and Renaissance painting. During the last days of November he could think and speak of little but of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo’s frescoes overwhelmed him, so that even Raphael and the ancient sculptors faded for the time from the forefront of his interest.6 Not that he was in any doubt as to the supreme excellence of ancient art. His naive certainty on this point is illustrated by a passage in a letter to Frau v. Stein.7 There was a picture in Rome which had been held to be “antique”, until Mengs on his deathbed confessed that he had painted it. Goethe sided with those who still believed it to be genuine or at least a copy of an “antique”, 8 on the grounds that the unrestored parts of it were “too beautiful even for Raphael”. Goethe presumably knew that the picture, if antique at all, was at best the work of a Greek artist of the early Roman Empire. Yet such magic lay in the word “antique” that even the nameless products of this decadent period were assumed to be superior to those of the greatest artist of the Italian Renaissance. It is true that in November 1786, when Goethe gave his opinion on this picture, he had not yet studied 1
2 WA. iv, 8, p. 45. Ibid. pp. 46, 51, 75. “Eine innere Soliditat… Ernst ohne Trockenheit, und ein gesetztes Wesen mit Freude”: Ibid. p. 51. 4 5 Winckelmann, Werke, 1, pp. 31, 161. WA. iv, 8, p. 117. 6 7 Ibid. pp. 63, 71, 75. Ibid. p. 56. 8 I thus interpret Goethe’s remark: “Ich habe eine Hypothese wie das Bild entstanden.” 3
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Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst, and had little idea of the historical development of ancient art or of the inferiority of Romano-Greek work.1 In later years an exacter knowledge of periods and styles gave his opinions more proportion; but throughout his classical period he tended to a habit of mind, exemplified by this judgment of Mengs’s “antique” picture, which divided culture into “ancient” and “modern”, and attributed all good qualities to the former and at best a power of imperfect imitation to the latter. By the middle of December he had obtained his general view, and could turn with deliberation to a deeper study of whatever seemed most worthy. 2 At once he threw himself onto the remains of Greek sculpture. The Apollo renewed in him inarticulate wonder. The mask of a Medusa now for the first time attracted him; 3 it remained throughout his life one of his dearest impressions. He began to buy casts of those works that delighted him most: first in mid-December a colossal head of Jove,4 three weeks later the Ludovisi Juno to match,5 and about the same time another Juno head and the head of the Apollo.6 In the first days of the new year he began to study Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Alterturns.7 He had
bought it soon after his arrival in Rome 8 (from his reference to it in a letter to Herder it is clear he had never read it before), and had used it as a guide-book to the museums; 9 now at last, when he had seen with his own eyes the statues of which Winckelmann was writing, he felt himself ready to take Winckelmann as a guide in the task of ordering his impressions and deducing from their multiplicity the single ruling idea. Late in life Goethe said to Eckermann: “One learns nothing when one reads Winckelmann, but one becomes something.” 10 He had forgotten how little he had known of Greek art when he came to Rome, and how hard it would have been for him to find his way among that forest of undated statues, if he had not had Winckelmann to guide him. He learnt in fact from the Geschichte der Kunst the very fundamentals of an exacter 1
2 4 7 10
Cf. Winckelmann, Werke, v, p. 186.
W A . iv, 8, pp. 96, 100. Ibid. p. 101.
5
Ibid. p. 117.
8 Ibid. p. 119. WA. 30, p. 232. Eckermann, 16 Feb. 1827.
3 Ibid. p. 100. 6 Ibid. p. 135.
9 WA. iv, 8, p. 76.
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knowledge of ancient art. Before January 1787 he had no clear conception of its historical development or of the relation of schools and artists one to another; as soon as he started to study the Geschichte der Kunst he realised the basic importance of Winckelmann’s “periods”. 1 They became the framework into which he fitted all the vast knowledge that came to him through years of observation and study. Winckelmann devoted one of the books of his Geschichte der Kunst to an account of the rise and fall of Greek art. He recognised four distinct styles: the archaic, in works dating from the earliest beginnings down to Phidias; the grand or lofty, with Phidias, Polyclitus, Scopas and Myron as its great exponents; the beautiful, from Praxiteles to Lysippus and Apelles; and the period of the imitators, in which ancient art (in Winckelmann’s opinion the Romans had no art independent of the Greek)2 slowly declined until it disappeared in barbarism.3 For Winckelmann Greek art reached its highest excellence in the period of the “beautiful style”. The “lofty style” was indeed worthy of profound admiration; it was great and powerful, nobly simple in conception and execution; but it lacked a certain “grace and charm”; 4 beauty was sometimes sacrificed in it to an austere correctness of proportions. The works of Praxiteles and Lysippus had a delicacy of thought and softness of contour which made them the perfection ofartistic achievement.5 Of all the ancient works of art in Rome Winckelmann recognised only two as dating from the period of the “lofty style”. These were a Pallas in the Villa Albani and the famous group of Niobe shielding her daughter from the shafts of Apollo. This work, now assigned to the late fourth or early third century, a product, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, of “the pathetic school”, appeared to Winckelmann to typify all the qualities of the lofty style (fifth century). The sublime simplicity of the idea executed with effortless perfection, as it were “blown by a breath”, could, according to Winckelmann, have been achieved only by a contemporary of Phidias.6 No work nor copy of a work by Phidias, Polyclitus 1 2 4 6
WA. iv, 8, p. 137 and WA. 30, p. 264. 3 Werke, v, pp. 282, 290, 292. Ibid. pp. 210, 236. 5 “Grazie und Gefalligkeit.” Ibid, v, pp. 236-45. Ibid. pp. 239 foil.: “Von einem Hauche geblasen.”
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or Myron was known. Goethe believed he had discovered another example of the lofty style, overlooked by Winckelmann, in an Athene in the Giustiniani palace.1 The beautiful style was better represented in Rome. Outstanding among examples of it, and in their different ways the most perfect works of all ancient sculpture, were the Apollo Belvedere and the Laocoon group. Lessing and others had doubted whether the Laocoon could date from so early a period, but Winckelmann placed it in the fourth century on the grounds solely of its supreme perfection.2 It is now known to be Rhodian work of the first century B.C. It is not surprising that Winckelmann was often wrong in his attempts to date the remnants of ancient art. He was the first to try to arrange these remnants in chronological periods. There were no criteria, established by a tradition of scholarly investigation. He had to evolve his criteria for himself, and inevitably he was forced to rely rather on intuition than on reasoning from observation. It was unfortunate that his taste led him to stress the excellence of such works as the Apollo, the Niobe and the Laocoon, which give no idea of what Greek sculpture at its highest could achieve. His fault here was due partly to the age in which he lived, in which grace and delicacy were held in higher esteem than to-day, but still more to the fact that the greatest works of Greek sculpture, such as the Parthenon marbles, the pediment figures from Olympia, and innumerable others, were unknown to him. He did not know the best and so was forced to commend the second best. His merit was that he defined the characteristics of the different periods so truly, that later discoveries of Greek works of art of the best period did not disturb the picture which men had learnt from him, but merely confirmed it. He sensed, as it were, the existence of the Elgin Marbles. It was they that he unwittingly described when he wrote of the lofty style. Only in looking round for an example of this style to which he could point, he was forced to light on an inferior work such as the Niobe. Winckelmann’s importance for Goethe was just this: he established the periods of Greek art and the characteristics of each so rightly, that Goethe was able to fit all his knowledge, as it accumulated, into this framework; and when thirty years 1
WA. iv, 8, pp. 130, 131.
2
Werkey vi, 1, p. 101.
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later the Parthenon sculptures came at last to be fully known, their qualities were not strange or unexpected, as the temples at Paestum had been at first sight; they were the fulfilment which Winckelmann had foretold and for which Goethe had been waiting. In the meantime, it is true, Goethe worshipped the Apollo Belvedere and the Laocoon, but that was inevitable in the state of knowledge of those days. The Geschichte der Kunst suggested to Goethe a second line of enquiry which led him in time to strange depths of contemplation. The problem was to discover what the Greeks had intended to express in the statues of their gods and heroes. In writing up the Italienische Reise he defined the problem thus: “to find out how those incomparable artists set to work, in order to reveal, through the medium of the human form, the circle of the divine nature, which is completely closed, and in which no primary character is lacking any more than the intermediary stages and connecting links.1 I have an idea they followed just those laws which Nature follows and of which I am on the track. Only there is something else there, which I would be at a loss to define.”2 It is not likely that in January 1787 Goethe was already so clearly aware of the nature of the problem. The passage is probably an interpolation, made at the time when he was working up his letters and diaries for publication as the Italienische Reise. But there can be no doubt that, during the last weeks of his first stay in Rome, he was beginning to realise the capital importance of the question and to make his own studies and observations. Winckelmannhadnot attempted to define the significance which the Greeks attached to the statues of the gods, but he had emphasised an important fact, which Lessing had already pointed out, 3 namely that each god was represented in a stereotyped form which was recognisable through the individual variations of each statue. Thus Mercury could be distinguished from Apollo by a “special fineness in the face”; 4 the elder gods, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Vulcan 1 German: “zu erforschen wiejene unvergleichlichen Kiinstler verfuhren, urn aus der menschlichen Gestalt den Kreis gottlicher Bildung zu entwickeln, welcher vollkommen abgeschlossen ist und worin kein Hauptcharakter so wenig als die Uebergange und Vermittlungen fehlen.” 2 WA. 30, pp. 264-5 (28 Jan. 1787). 3 Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet, Werke, xi, p. 8. 4 Winckelmann, Werke, iv, p. 84.
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are as easily recognised and distinguished as the portraits of famous men of antiquity ;* Juno can be known by the large eyes, Pallas by the thoughtful look in half-closed eyes and gently bowed head.2 Lessing had attributed the origin of these different forms to chance, their general acceptance and continued use to convenience; Winckelmann had indicated that they were held in antiquity to be the result of special revelations received by the great artists,3 but he had not gone more deeply into their significance. Goethe could not rest until he had probed the matter to the bottom, for in the solution might lie the key to the meaning of Greek art, even perhaps to the whole Greek genius. He surrounded himself with heads of the great gods, in the hope that in their constant presence he might be granted the revelation of their secret.4 He applied himself to the study of antique gems and coins,^ which offered the richest material for a study of the forms of the gods. He wrote to Herder that he was practising himself in the study of the different gods and heroes. “What the ancients accomplished in this line, has never been told and never could be told. I won’t speak of it, but will demonstrate it to my friends when I have made myself sure of it.” 6 His interest in the second part of Herder’s Zerstreute Blatter, which he read aloud to his artist friends,7 lay partly in the fact that in the essay on Nemesis Herder was attempting to re-define the characteristics of one of the Greek goddesses from the picture that the Greeks had made of her in their literature and their art.8 During the last days of January and the beginning of February Goethe was indefatigable in visiting and re-visiting the museums, seeking out anything that he had missed, seeing the great works again and again.9 A new conception of the significance of Greek art was beginning to take shape in him, 10 but he was still far from having evolved a 1
2 Winckelmann, Werke, iv, pp. 96, 98, 102. Ibid. pp. 115 foil. Ibid. p. 135. 4 It is true that Goethe bought the Jupiter and the Juno before he started his systematic reading of the Geschichte der Kunst. But he had been using it ever since his arrival in Rome, and he had probably come across what Winckelmann says about the Greek gods during the earlier reading. 5 6 WA. iv, 8, pp. 135, 150 (13 and 25 Jan.). Ibid. p. 153. 7 Ibid. p. 155. 8 Herder, Werke, xv, pp. 395-428. 9 Io Ibid. pp. 156, 170, and WA. 30, p. 270. WA. iv, 8, p. 150. 3
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system of interpretation, which would enable him to judge clearly and formulate his judgments. 1 At this moment he found a companion whose kindred mind was at work on the same problems. Karl Philipp Moritz had become known to Goethe in the previous November. A relationship of extraordinary intimacy sprang up between them. Goethe described himself as Moritz’s “father-confessor and confidant, finance-minister and private secretary”, and looked on Moritz as his younger brother; for the story of Moritz’s life seemed a replica of Goethe’s own, save that fortune had always been hard on Moritz while she had smiled on Goethe.2 Moritz had an active and sensitive mind. His theories of prosody were of great value to Goethe in the final work on Iphigenie^ At the beginning of 1787 he began, perhaps at Goethe’s suggestion, to occupy himself with Greek mythology. His object was to reinterpret the myths in such a way as to make them once again a source of living symbols for artist and poet. He worked throughout in close co-operation with Goethe and the result of his labours, Die Gotterlehre, undoubtedly sets forth essentially Goethe’s own views on the origin and significance of the Greek myths.4 Die Gotterlehre was not published until 1791; Goethe and Moritz were most actively engaged on it in the summer of 1787, after Goethe’s return from Sicily ;5 but it will not be out of place to quote from it at this point, since the interpretation of mythology which it sets forth was already forming in Goethe’s mind. By 17 February 1787, when he wrote to Herder asking him to help Moritz in his “antiquarian undertaking”,6 Goethe had already passed into a new stage of his unending development. He had freed himself at last from Iphigenie and Charlotte. He had become a pagan. In Moritz’s view the myths reveal, through the medium of the poetical faculty (“Phantasie”), the nature of the fundamental forces which create and maintain the world. The gods are these forces made visible by poetry to human understanding. Moritz hoped that his book would be the evangel of a new 1 2
Cf. E. Wolf, Goethe und die griechische Plastik, p. 57.
3 WA. iv, 8, p. 115 and p. 94. WA. 30, p. 248. 4 This is denied by Rudolf Fahrner in his essay Karl Philipp Moritz Gotterlehre, Marburg, 1932. 5 6 WA. 30, p. 70. WA. iv, 8, p. 189.
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religion, based on the pagan tradition, which Christianity had destroyed. He speaks of the “new dawn” that will come if the myths are properly understood.1 All the myths, even the most primitive, are full of the eternal wisdom that has significance for men of all ages. According to the Greeks Night enfolded within her “all the forms which the light of day reveals to our eyes”.2 This is the Neo-Platonic conception of the world of Ideas, as active in our day as three thousand years ago; it is Goethe’s “Realm of the Mothers”, where Faust sought the magic tripod. The war of the old gods against the new was not just a strange old tale to the Greeks; it symbolised the victory of proportion and form over the monstrous and unformed.3 Most significant of all is a defence of anthropomorphism in religion. Nature created mankind in order that she might be conscious of herself. In return mankind has learnt how to re-express Nature in his own form. “For the expression of the divine form, nothing nobler could be found than eye and nose, brow and eyebrow, cheek, mouth and chin; since only from a living thing which has this form, can we know that it has conceptions like ours, and that we can exchange thoughts and words with it.” 4 The Greeks it was who in their art reached the summit of achievement in this holy work; they created forms of gods, that were human yet raised above human stature, forms from which everything accidental was excluded, in which all essential characteristics of power and sublimity were combined.5 It was wrong in Moritz’s opinion to seek ethical precepts in the myths. In them “man is of such secondary importance that little regard is taken of him or his moral needs. He is often nothing but a sport of the higher powers.” The gods punish not so much injuries done by man to man, as “every appearance of encroachment on the prerogatives of the gods”. (This was the sin of Tantalus.) In fact these higher powers are not moral beings. Their attribute is power. Each one of them represents Nature with all her “luxuriant, wanton growths”, and is therefore above morality.6 Conflict between the gods, often 1 2 4
Die Gotterlehre, 3. unveranderte Ausgabe, 1804, p. 6. Ibid. p. 9. 3 jhil p . J6. 5 Ibid. p. 22. Ibid. p. 73; cf. also pp. 38, 81-2. Ibid. pp. 5, 6: “Uppigen Auswiichsen.”
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portrayed in Greek mythology, is not a barbarous conception, fit only for primitive religions. All these higher powers coexist in Nature, so that conflict between them is inevitable, a basic law of Nature. Conflict such as that between the young gods and the Titans was not a conflict of Good against Evil, but simply of Power against Power. 1 The young gods won, because they were more “gebildet”, their being was more firmly established and defined. But the vanquished gods remain great and venerable. They are part of Nature and cannot be destroyed. The younger gods—Zeus, Hera, Mars, Apollo “the destroyer”—are anything but humane in the sense in which Iphigenie’s gods were humane. “Jupiter begot with Juno implacable Mars, the dreadful god of war. Jupiter was often wroth with him, and threatened to fling him from Heaven, but spared him, because he was his own son.” 3 Conflict and violent destruction are part of the order of Nature. Though they may seem at times to disturb the plan of the supreme deity, the Greeks knew they must be allowed to play their part in the world. Hera’s jealousy is not ridiculous but noble and beautiful; for it is not impotent, but is armed with divine might, and successfully opposes the Thunderer himself on the highest summit of his power.3 It is entirely fitting that the heroes should result from secret matings that Zeus enjoys only with difficulty, for the Greeks well knew that “everything beautiful and strong… must struggle against opposition and difficulties and must go through many a trial and danger”. 4 The Greeks fully realised the implacable essence of life. They depicted it in the Fates and the Furies. But even to these dreadful, and to human beings hateful, powers they gave beautiful forms; not because on aesthetic grounds they avoided the hideous in art, but because in their deep wisdom they knew that these highest powers, who ruled even the gods, were beautiful. “The Fates represent the terrible Power to which even the gods are subject, and yet they are portrayed as beautiful women…. Everything is light and easy for the unlimited highest Power. Nothing laborious or difficult exists on this plane; all opposition ceases at this culminating point. “5 Gods, and still more mortals, know pain and trouble, but on the highest plane of being there 1
Ibid. p. 17. 3 Ibid. p. 62.
%
Ibid. p. 61. • Ibid. p. 64.
5 ibid. p. 34.
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is nothing but unimpeded power. For an existence so perfect and so easy the only possible symbol was the youthful female form in idealised perfection. Iphigenie’s gentle doctrine of understanding, non-violence and trust in the goodness of God has no place in this interpretation of the world. The gods had turned out to be inhumane and cruel, as Iphigenie had feared but had refused to believe. ” Every attempt of a mortal to measure himself against their lordly power, is terribly punished”, Moritz wrote,1 and quoted the Parzenlied from Iphigenie, to illustrate the Greek conception of the relation of men and gods. Iphigenie’s doubts had conquered; her faith had been misplaced. The sight of the Apollo Belvedere, the Zeus of Otricoli and the Ludovisi Juno had carried Goethe past the barrier that we know as the problem of good and evil. He had seen the inner meaning of conflict, the justification of “Electra-morality”. The tendency that was fundamental in him, to admire what was great, beautiful and powerful, though it might be in no way beneficent on the human plane, now found itself supported and justified by the wisdom of the Greeks, which they had incorporated in their myths, their poetry and their art. Already on 23 December 1786 he wrote to Charlotte that his moral sense was undergoing as great changes as his aesthetic ideas.* The new wisdom was breaking through. During the next two months his intense study of the remains of ancient art and his talks with Moritz on mythology, helped it to take root, to grow and to gain shape, so that when on 21 February he left Rome for Naples, he went a pagan, with eyes open to see the world as it is, in its beauty and its terror. C. NAPLES AND SICILY Already in the middle of December Goethe had made up his mind to leave Rome at the New Year and spend some weeks in Naples. His object was “to enjoy the glorious countryside, wash my mind clean of so many mournful ruins, and to get relief from over-austere aesthetic conceptions”.3 He stayed 1
2 Gotterlehre, p. 263. WA. iv, 8, p. 101. Ibid. p. 33: “Mich der herrlichen Natur erfreuen und meine Seele von der Idee sovieler traurigen Ruinen reinspiilen, und die allzustrengen BegrifFe der Kunst lindern.” 3
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six weeks longer in Rome than he had intended, because his study of Greek sculpture had brought him to the problem of the Greek gods and their significance. But his objects, when he did start out for Naples, were the same as they had been two months before. After five months in Italy, of which three and a half had been spent in Rome, he realised that he had not got to the heart of what he was seeking. None of the country that he had seen quite fulfilled his expectations as a direct manifestation of the forces of Nature. He hoped that the landscape and the vegetation round Naples would show him what he wanted: Nature revealing herself unhindered in great and simple forms, that were perfect expressions of the ideas behind them. His search for the same quality in human culture, which he had expected to find in Rome in the remains of “ancient” civilisation, had also not been entirely successful. Much of what he had seen was indeed of the highest conceivable excellence and value; but Rome itself, he was coming to see, contained too much that blurred the outlines of his great impressions”. Already in December he had begun to have a horror of the “mournful ruins”, and to see that their interest was little more than historical. His study of Greek art during January and February and his reading of Winckelmann made him realise, more and more clearly, that the Romans had left behind little or nothing that could help him in his search for aesthetic-philosophical truth. In art the Romans had been nothing but imitators. Their importance lay in their history, which Goethe studied in Livy during January,1 and in their political achievement; their significance for later generations was therefore conditioned by the changing circumstances of human life. Goethe was seeking eternal ideas, which should be as valid now as they had been two thousand years ago. For these, he now saw, the Greeks had been the sole fountain-head. Did he know that he would find Greece, if he journeyed farther south to Naples and Sicily? He could hope at least to come nearer to the forms he was seeking, if he got away from “form-confusing Rome” 2 to a land where Nature was great and simple, and where the memories of wars, of consuls and of emperors were not so oppressively present. 1 2
Ibid. pp. 143, 146, 152. WA. 31, p. 120: “das gestaltverwirrende Rom.”
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It was natural too that, after two months’ intensive study of Greek sculpture, he should feel the need of a period of contemplation during which to set in order the crowd of impressions that he had received. He must strive to find the idea that governed this mass of phenomena and gave to each and all their pure significance. This effort to lay bare the kernel of Greek art would lead him, he knew, to strange planes of thought; the pursuit of the new-found problem of the Greek gods would link the contemplation of art with the contemplation of Nature. There could be no better background for this aesthetic enquiry than the “herrliche Natur” of the Neapolitan countryside. During his stay in Naples, where he remained until the end of March 1787, Goethe gave himself a holiday from the study of Greek sculpture. Except for an antique horsehead, the coin collection of Prince Waldeck, and the decorated household utensils that had been brought from Pompeii, 1 he did not take special notice of any of the ancient works of art in Naples. He spent his time observing the way of life of the Neapolitans and in making expeditions to the places of interest in the neighbourhood—Pozzuoli, Vesuvius, Pompeii and Herculaneum, Capua, Paestum. On these expeditions he was surrounded by the splendour of Nature, and he was not disappointed by what he saw. The situation of Naples, the sweep of the gulf, Vesuvius, the rich lands sloping to the sea, the sea itself—real sea with real waves and storms—the islands, the luxuriant vegetation, and over all the blue Heaven—here was nothing half-expressed, veiled, distorted.2 As Goethe and the artist Kniep were driving back from Paestum and came over the high ground that lies between Salerno and the Bay of Naples, the whole picture lay before them in all its nobility and beauty. Suddenly their ecstatic contemplation was interrupted by a “ghastly singing or rather shrieking and howling ofjoy “. It was the Neapolitan lad who had accompanied them. Goethe rebuked him sharply. “For a while he never moved; then he touched me gently on the shoulder, stretched his right arm between us pointing and said * Signor, perdonate! questa e la mia patria!’—Poor Northerner that I am, something like tears came into my eyes! ” 3 * WA. 31, pp. 33,35, 60. Ibid. pp. 23, 24, 34, 47, 48, 75.
3
3 fad. p. 73.
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In Naples he felt, for the first time, what it could mean to be a “Southerner”. The happy-go-lucky way of living, that in Northern Italy and Rome had repelled him as often as not, here seemed to him utterly good. “Naples is a paradise; everyone lives in a sort of drunken half-consciousness. I feel the same. I hardly know myself; I seem to be another being altogether. Yesterday I thought: either you were mad before, or you are mad now.” 1 The Neapolitans, even those of the educated class, had a naivete that brought them near to being the unspoilt hommes naturels, of whom so many in Goethe’s day dreamed.2 Goethe felt himself turning natural in spite of himself.3 He had now seen with his own eyes that marvellous background of sky and landscape from which the Greek civilisation had sprung, and had experienced something of that happy carelessness, that capacity to live without thinking, without problems, without “Thou-shalt-nots”, which he and his contemporaries held to be one of the basic qualities of the Greek character.4 Here too Goethe saw the idea finding expression directly; even these modern southerners had something “elementally human” about them.5 How much more nearly ” Urmenschen” must the ancients have been, above all the Greeks! By coming to Naples he had come closer to Greece. He was enchanted by the “passion for art and pictures displayed by a whole people” which the painted walls and household things of ruined Pompeii revealed.6 He did not regard Winckelmann’s warning voice, who had condemned the wall decorations in Herculaneum as being “of a period, in which good taste no longer ruled”. 7 These ancients with their simple spontaneous joy in life had known how to use art, so as to “cheer the spirit and give it breadth”.8 Goethe knew of course that the inhabitants of Pompeii had not been Greeks, but he had no difficulty in regarding this riot of daintiness as in keeping with the Greek spirit. He greeted it as confirmation of his belief in the “Heiterkeit”, the productive cheerfulness, of the Greek way of life. 1
2 Ibid. p. 52. Ibid. p. 49. 4 Ibid. p. 63. Cf. Ibid. p. 260. 5 ” Urspriingliches der Menschengattung”: Ibid. p. 49. 6 Ibid. pp. 38, 60: “Kunst- und Bilderlust eines ganzen Volks.” 8 7 Werke, v, p. 186. WA. 31, p. 60.
3
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How strangely then was his belief upset when for the first time he stood before a Greek temple! In the second half of March he visited Paestum with Kniep. In the marshy barrens by the sea three temples stand, as the Greek settlers built them five hundred years before the birth of Christ. Two of them date from the early days of the colony when the Greek temple form was still evolving. The middle temple, a little later than the Parthenon and the temple of Zeus at Olympia, represents the perfection of the Doric style.1 These were the first buildings which Goethe had seen, in which the voice of Hellas spoke to him directly, undistorted by Roman or Renaissance imitators. “The first impression could rouse only astonishment. I found myself in an utterly unfamiliar world. For as the centuries progress from the severe to the pleasing, so they modify mankind with them, indeed they create him so.2 Now our eyes, and through them our whole inner being, is adapted and accustomed to slenderer architecture, so that these squat, tapering column-masses, pressed close one against another, seem to us oppressive, even terrifying. Yet I quickly pulled myself together, remembered the history of art, thought of the age which found such a style fitting, called to mind the austere [i.e. Winckelmann’s ‘lofty’] style of sculpture, and in less than an hour I felt myself at home.” 3 Thus Goethe describes his feelings in the Italienische Reise. There is no record in letter or diary of the first visit to Paestum, but there is no reason to doubt that this account of the impression which the temples made upon Goethe is essentially true. It was a profound shock to his whole conception of the ” ancient” attitude to life. The “Bilderlust” of the old Pompeians, which had survived even to the present day among the Neapolitan peasantry,4 the care-free life and the untrammelled flourishing of Nature, had all emphasised in his mind the ease and joyousness of existence in ancient times. The Rococo element in ancient art was beginning to mean too much to him.5 Roman superficiality had seduced him, though he had left Rome to escape just such 1
Encyclopaedia Britannica, eleventh edition, Paestum. “Denn wie die Jahrhunderte sich aus dem Ernsten in das Gefallige bilden, so bilden sie den Menschen mit, ja sie erzeugen ihn so.” 3 WA. 31, pp. 71 foil. 4 5 Ibid. p. 39. Ibid. p. 60. 2
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dilution of the true Greek spirit. Now these stark temples, utterly lacking in ornament, scorning all elegance save that of solidity and proportion, reminded him of the austerity of his quest, and revealed to him how far he still was from feeling and seeing as a Greek. Since January, when he had read the Geschichte der Kunst, he had been needing some visible example that should demonstrate the difference between Roman and Greek culture. He had found it in the temples of Paestum. He saw now that Palladio had known nothing of Greek architecture, that his “ancients” were merely Romans.1 It was essential for him to avoid the same mistake. Since the early days of his stay in Naples he had been thinking of making a journey to Sicily. In Naples he felt the same kind of longing for the little-known island as in Germany he had felt for Rome and all Italy.2 He had not yet found what he had come to find. Yet for many days he could not decide to go. The decision, whether to go or stay, he felt to be of profound importance to his whole life. He seemed to himself hardly a free agent: “Two spirits are fighting over me.” 3 When at last he had made up his mind to go, he felt immense relief, and knew that the journey would be “decisive” for him. 4 What did Goethe expect to find in Sicily ? The hints that he gives us in the Italienische Reise are confusing, and the letters and diary help but little. Sicily, he said, pointed on to Asia and Africa. It would be an experience to stand on “the remarkable point, where so many radii of the world’s history are focussed”.5 Later he spoke of his hope that Sicily and “Neugriechenland” (presumably Magna Graecia) would free him from the evils of an education based on “formless Palestine and form-confusing Rome”; 6 and in the only letter from Palermo which has survived, he told Fritz v. Stein: “I have seen an enormous amount that was new to me; only here does one get to know Italy.” 7 Before he left Naples he announced his intention of being back in Rome before the end of June. “Since I have missed Easter, I must at least celebrate St Peter’s Day there. My Sicilian journey must not distract me too far from my original purpose.” 8 1 2 4 7
Cf. W A . iv, 45, p. 115. W A . 31, pp. 23, 24. Ibid. pp. 76, 90. W A . iv, 8, p. 211.
5
Ibid. p. 76.
3 ibid. p. 53; cf. p. 57. Ibid. p. 121. 8 W A . 31, p. 76.
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It was not Goethe’s way in his autobiography to reveal the inner springs of action that led him to adopt this course or that. That sentence for instance, in a letter to Charlotte—”Ich kampfte selbst mit Tod und Leben”—which shows the whole seriousness of Goethe’s condition before the flight to Italy, does not appear in the Italienische Reise. So we should not expect to be told the exact nature of the hopes that drew Goethe to Sicily, and of the fears that nearly held him back. Nor should we be surprised, if some of the hints given are hard to reconcile with the main body of the evidence. Deliberate mystification was not Goethe’s intention, but it often happened that in working up his letters, he gave as much prominence to what had at the time been a secondary consideration, as he did to any hints of his fundamental motive. It is highly improbable that Sicily was of much importance to him as a stepping-stone to Asia and Africa or as the scene of so much of the world’s history. It is hard to know what interest he can have felt in Asia at that time, unless it were in Asia Minor as the land of the Ionian Greek cities, of Troy and of the probable birthplace of Homer. His reading of Livy had shown him the important part played by Sicily in the Punic Wars as no-man’s land between Rome and Carthage. As Meinecke points out,1 Goethe’s interest in a focal point of history of this sort was not purely historical. He derived rather an aesthetic satisfaction from being able “to scan all the roads that once led outwards from such a centre of mighty events into the world around”. That he undertook the Sicilian journey primarily in order to taste this pleasure is obviously impossible. He was seeking a far deeper spiritual experience than this. He went to Sicily in order to see two things: Greek culture untouched by any Roman influence, and above all the land on which this culture had grown. 2 With these things seen and understood he was confident that the revelations which he was seeking would soon come to him, and his quest would be at an end. When he said that one had to go to Sicily in order to understand Italy, he meant that Sicily revealed the quintessence of the southern spirit, without any of those impurities and complications that had made him dissatisfied with the im1 2
Die Entstehung des Historismus, n, p. 515. Cf. Rehm, op. cit. p. 144.
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pression that Rome and Italy had made on him. Italy without Sicily, he said, “makes no picture in the mind”. 1 The purity and the simplicity of the impressions which he expected to receive in Sicily, would drive out the confusion of his Roman impressions. Yet one more problem remains. If in Sicily he hoped to come to the end of his quest, to find at last in its purest essence the knowledge that as a northerner he lacked, why did he speak of the journey to Sicily as leading him aside from his original purpose? Surely his original purpose had been to find this essential knowledge. N o doubt it had been: but inextricably bound up with this fundamental purpose had been the longing to see Rome. When he left Germany, Goethe never doubted that he would find in Rome complete satisfaction of all his desires.2 For thirty years his mind had been acquiring a habit of veneration and longing for Rome. The realisation that Rome was not enough, was unwelcome. Mental inertia resented the necessity of modifying this habit, and opposed any step, such as the Sicilian journey, which this necessity brought about. The lesson of Paestum had been accepted; but it had been a shock, not only to his preconceived notions, but to his pride. It left him curiously touchy, on the defensive against any demands which the new realisation might make on him. The Sicilian journey was as far as he would go in altering his plans for the sake of ancient Hellas. ” T h e Prince of Waldeck”, he wrote the day before he sailed for Sicily, “unsettled me just as I was saying good-bye. He actually suggested that I should be ready on my return to go with him to Greece and Dalmatia. When once you set out into the world and get entangled with it, you must be on your guard that you don’t get led astray, or even driven crazy by it. I am incapable of another word.” 3 Strange outburst! He longed to go and knew he ought to. But it would have meant another change of plans; he might encounter more shocks like that of Paestum. He knew in his heart that these objections were worthless, and sought to hide 1
“Macht kein Bild in der Seele”: WA. 31, p. 124. WA. iv, 8, p. 37. 3 WA. 31, p. 78, last two sentences: “Wenn man sich einmal in die Welt macht und sich mit der Welt einlasst, so mag man sich ja hiiten, dass man nicht entriickt oder wohl gar verriickt wird. Zu keiner Silbe weiter bin ich fahig.” 2
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his weakness behind a spurt of annoyance against the Prince and “the world”. On 2 April Goethe arrived in Palermo, after a rough crossing made in the face of contrary winds. As in Naples, his interest in Greek art was secondary to other interests. Not until 11 April did he visit the antiques, then housed in the Palazzo. He was disappointed to find the statues in confusion, owing to redecoration of the gallery, but he was delighted by the two bronze rams, ” mighty figures of the mythological family, worthy to bear Phrixus and Helle”. 1 He attributed them to the “best Greek period”. With some reluctance he allowed himself to be taken to see a collection of antique coins. He knew so little of the subject and did not want to be troubled by a new branch of learning just at that moment. In the end he was glad to have gone, for he gained a vivid new impression of the wealth and high culture of the old Siceliot cities, and a fresh proof of the superiority of Greek things over Roman.2 But the problems of ancient art were not in the forefront of his mind. On the 15th, on a last sight-seeing trip around the city, he happened on some statues, much damaged and badly placed for investigation. ” We had not the patience to make out what they were.” 3 On 18 April Goethe left Palermo, accompanied by the German artist Kniep, whom he had engaged to go with him and sketch whatever of landscape and ruins was worth preserving. On the third day they visited the temple of Segesta, a Doric building of the late fifth century B.C. The temple stands below the ancient city on a small hill in the cup of a great valley. It was never finished, but all that was completed—the outer rectangle of columns with their architraves and the pediments— is still standing. The columns were left unfluted. Goethe’s description of the temple in his diary is matter of fact in the extreme. Not a word of praise, not a touch of enthusiasm; and one suggestion of criticism. As at Paestum he felt a forbidding austerity, a lack of charm. “The wind whistled through the columns as through a wood, and birds of prey wheeled screaming above the entablature. I suppose they had young in the crevices.”4 The sense of transience, of destruction, of the past 1 4
WA. 31, p. 119. WA. in, 1, p. 341.
2
Ibid. p. 120.
3
Ibid. p. 146.
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as something irrevocably gone, oppressed him, the more so as these Greek temples should have pointed him to the eternal ideas that he was seeking. The proportions of the Greek temple were still so strange to him, that he could not see in them the timeless truth that conquers the destruction of the centuries. At Selinus, a few miles away, there were remains of other great temples of the fifth century. But of them not even the columns stand. He left them unvisited. He was seeking ” Anschauung\ a picture for his mind’s eye. Foundations and tumbled drums could not help him. So too at Girgenti, where he spent five days (23 to 28 April), the vast ruins of the temple of Zeus impressed him by their size—he could stand comfortably inside the fluting of the fallen columns—but the “shapeless chaos” gave him no pleasure. When he had viewed it, he felt that he had “seen nothing and gained nothing”. 1 The temple of Concord on the other hand, again a Doric structure of the late fifth century, which has been preserved almost intact, spoke to him a language that he understood. “Its slender style approaches our standard of what is beautiful and graceful. It compares with the temples at Paestum as a god’s form with that of a giant.” 2 It is true that the columns of the temple of Concord are taller in proportion to their breadth at the base than those of the temple of Neptune at Paestum. In the former temple the relation is 5 to 1, in the latter about 4J to i. 3 But by Palladio’s standards, who gives the proportion for Doric pillars as q\ or 8 to 1, the columns of the temple of Concord are still absurdly stocky. In the case of the Paestum temples Goethe had also complained that the columns were set too close together. 4 In fact the columns of the temple of Concord are set closer than the temple of Neptune (Concord: 13 columns in 130 feet; 6 feet between each. Neptune: 14 columns in 197 feet; 9 feet between each). Goethe’s eye, helped by the enthusiasm with which his guidebook* described these ruins, was beginning to become accustomed to Greek proportions. But still he derived most pleasure 1
2 WA. 31, p. 163 and WA. iv, 44, p. 84. WA. 31, p. 162. Measurements taken from the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 4 “Enggedrangt.” 5 Riedesel’s Reise dutch Sicilien und Grossgriechenland, Zurich, 1771; cf. pp. 40-1. 3
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from the sight of the T o m b of Theron, a work of the Hellenistic period. 1 In the cathedral at Girgenti Goethe admired the relief-work on a marble sarcophagus as the finest he had seen, and noted it as ” a n example of the most graceful period of Greek art”. 2 Actually it is late Roman work, though perhaps a copy of a fourth-century Greek original. 3 From Girgenti Goethe and his companion struck inland and made a four days’ journey across the island to Catania. T o do this they had to give up their intended visit to Syracuse. Riedesel mentions a wellpreserved temple at Syracuse in the Doric order, like those at Paestum and Girgenti, 4 but this was no attraction to Goethe in comparison with the chance of seeing the rich cornlands of the interior. He probably knew nothing of the Athenian siege of Syracuse in the Peloponnesian W a r (Riedesel does not mention it, and Goethe had never read Thucydides); Nicias, Epipolae, the fateful quarries were not even names to him. But even had he known, he would not have greatly cared. In Catania Goethe viewed the antiques in the palace of the Biscari family, but found little of interest. The Prince’s coin collection on the other hand gave him opportunity to continue the study that he had begun in Palermo. Here, as always now, he found Winckelmann’s periods an infallible guided On 12 May Goethe sailed from Messina and arrived in Naples on the 15th. 6 O n the crossing he looked back over his Sicilian journey and summed up its results. Sea-sickness made him overrate the failures and forget the achievements. ” W e had really seen nothing but the vain efforts of men to maintain themselves against the violence of Nature, the malicious caprice of time, and their own quarrels and dissensions. The Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Romans and innumerable races that followed them, had built and cast down. Selinus lies deliberately destroyed: two thousand years had not sufficed to reduce the temples of Girgenti to ruins, but a few hours, nay moments, had been enough to wipe out Catania and Messina.” 7 The 1 3 4 6 7
2 WA. 31, p. 164. Ibid. p. 159. Cf. Eduard Castle, In Goethes Geist, Vienna, 1926, p. 201. Op. cit. p. 85. 5 WA. 31, p. 187. For the problem of the dates at this point see Ibid. pp. 306, 340. Ibid. p. 224.
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Greek temples had not succeeded in giving him that vision of eternity which he had hoped for. They had come nearer to doing so than he yet realised; but still on this score he was perhaps justified in feeling disappointment. Fortunately his Sicilian journey had had another goal, and this had been attained with a richness of fulfilment that amazed and awed him. He felt deep happiness at ” possessing the great, beautiful, incomparable conception of Sicily so clear, complete and pure” in his mind.1 To the Duke he wrote that his vision of Sicily was an “indestructible treasure” for his whole life.2 In the Sicilian landscape he had hoped to find that unthwarted Nature which he had been seeking ever since he left Germany. He found it and he found much more—the link between this vision and that of the ” Urmensch”, which he had been approaching in Rome and in Naples. This link was the Odyssey. With profound insight Rehm has pointed out,3 that the understanding of Greece and the understanding of Nature were two aspects of the same problem for Goethe. If he had not seen the ” Urlandschaft” in Naples and Sicily, Greece would have remained a riddle; if he had not re-read the Odyssey and known what he did of Greek art and culture, the deepest significance of the ” Urlandschaft” would have been lost to him. The voyage from Naples to Palermo introduced him into the world of Odysseus. There was a storm; the ship was driven out of her course, and had to go far about to reach Palermo. For the first time in his life Goethe saw islands on the horizon, as Odysseus had often seen them as he sailed to and from Ithaca.4 It affected him deeply, so that he often spoke of his journey through Sicily, which was really confined to the single main island, as a journey to “the islands”.5 As the vessel approached Palermo, Goethe first observed that “hazy clarity”, which transfigured hills and sea.6 Later he described it poetically: Ein weisser Glanz ruht iiber Land und Meer, Und duftend schwebt der Aether ohne Wolken,7 1
Ibid. p. 237. 3 WA. iv, 8, p. 221. Op. cit. pp. 144 foil. 4 5 WA. 31, p. 84 and Od. ix, 26. WA. 31, p. 237; cf. p. 198. 6 Ibid. p. 91: “Dunstige Klarheit.” 7 WA. 10, p. 423: “A white radiance rests on land and sea, and fragrant and cloudless hang the heavens.” 2
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In Palermo the presence of the sea never let him forget the Odyssey. The dark waves sweeping in on the bays and headlands, the smell of the sea, carried him in spirit to the island of the Phaeacians.2 And when in the public gardens by the sea he saw around him the full luxuriance of southern vegetation in its unbroken fruitfulness, he felt himself to be in the gardens of Alcinous.3 He had no Homer with him, but on 15 April, after nearly two weeks in Palermo, he bought a copy, Greek with Latin version.4 He sat in the public gardens and read again with wonder and joy of that enchanted island of the Phaeacians. But now he saw that it was not enchanted, not a fairyland that could never exist. Homer had described the world that he saw around him.5 That world—its hills, its plants, its colours, the sea, the men—was an “ideal” world, but not in the sense that it existed only in the beautifying imagination of the poet. It was ideal because in it all Nature’s intentions were perfectly realised. Nothing was half-expressed or distorted. Homer’s greatness, like that of all the Greek writers, had lain solely in his power of seeing this world in all its grandeur, its beauty, its outward forms and inner relationships, and in describing what he saw in such a way that nothing remained half-expressed. By doing so he had himself made Nature’s intentions manifest; he had created as even Nature could only sometimes create. For Goethe the Odyssey ceased at this moment to be a poem; it seemed to be Nature herself.6 In Naples and Sicily Goethe saw with his own eyes the same ideal landscape that Homer had known.7 The summits of the hills were as “eternally classical”8 as in Homer’s day; the sea was as fascinating to him in its manifold beauty, as terrible in its 1
2 Od. vi, 44. WA. 31, p. 106. WA. iv, 8, p. 211; WA. 31, pp. 105, 106. 4 Cf. WA. 10, p. 413. 5 Goethe once suggested that the Odyssey was composed in Sicily (Spring, 1795: Bied. 1, p. 229). 6 Letter to Schiller, 14 Feb. 1798 (WA. iv, 13, p. 66). 8 7 Rehm, op. cit. p. 147. WA. 31, p. 95. 3
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latent power as it had been to Homer; the journey through the interior from Girgenti to Catania had shown him what fruitfulness in Nature could be: he had seen Ceres manifest; and in the ” gardens of Alcinous” at Palermo he had hoped that he might find that imaginary plant which Schiller saw was “only an Idea”—the “Urpjianze”. With this picture in his soul he hoped to be able to reproduce, even when back at home in the north, “shadow pictures of this blest abode”. 2 If he could keep what he had seen, he would be able to create as the Greeks had done, by merely describing this ideal nature. But Goethe could never depend solely on the beauties of Nature for his poetic material. His poetry had to be primarily human. To create as the Greeks had done he must have seen and known ideal men and women as well as ideal Nature. The vision of the ” Urmensch” was even more necessary to him than that of the ” Urlandschaft”. The modern Italians had not satisfied him. In Venice they had shown some qualities that had marked them as decadent descendants of true “natural men”. Still more had the carefree life of the Neapolitans seemed to give a hint of what the existence of the ” Urmensch” would be like. But Goethe never supposed for a moment that the modern Neapolitans expressed fully and undistorted God’s idea of man. In Sicily too he found nothing that brought him nearer his goal. The ” Urlandschaft” was there, and perhaps the ” Urpflanze”; but the ” Urmensch” no longer walked those hills or sailed those bays. He, it was all too plain, was only an idea. Yet he had once been real, for Homer had described him; and Homer did not invent or idealise—he described what he saw “with a terrifying clarity and inner understanding”. 3 The picture that Goethe needed, of man as he is, with all his essential qualities, passions and abilities, free to develop within his set limits, unhampered by unfavourable natural surroundings, by cramping customs or religious taboos, this picture Goethe found in Homer, at present in the Odyssey, especially in the 1 WA. 31, pp. 89, 90, 106, 198 foil., 203, and WA. 10, p. 419. Cf. Od. vm, 138, 139, underlined by Goethe in the copy bought at Palermo (cf. WA. 10, p. 413). 2 WA. 31, p. 91: ” Schattenbilder dieser glticklichen Wohnung.” 3 Ibid. p. 239: Mit einer Reinheit und Innigkeit gezeichnet, vor der man erschrickt.” 162 ITALY description of the Phaeacians, and later with undiminished truth in the Iliad. Already in the days of Sturm und Drang Homeric man had been something of an ” Urmensch” to Goethe. He had represented man stripped of the falsities of civilisation, simple in habits, sincere in feeling. It had been a limited ideal, because it had contained in it a negative idea: hostility to civilised life. In the new conception of the Homeric man as the ” Urmensch” none of the positive qualities of the human spirit could be excluded. The passages which Goethe marked in his Sicilian Odyssey1 show how his appreciation of Homer’s men and women had developed since Wetzlar. The simile of the ploughman who longs for his supper2 would have delighted the author of Werther no less than the mature Goethe. This is the ”Urmensch” as “Naturmensch”. The same sensual appreciation of the value of meat and drink attracted him also in the marked passage at the beginning of the ninth book (lines 5-11). But here the earthly pleasures of palate and belly are secondary to the artistic pleasure of listening to the divine minstrel. This was the new emphasis in Goethe’s reading of Homer. The “Urmensch” had known that without art life was incomplete. He did not take delight in living primitively, as Werther imagined the Homeric heroes to have done. The Phaeacians (in another marked passage)3 boast modestly of their love of “banquets, music, dancing, changes of raiment, warm baths and the couch”. These Homeric men were sensual, but not coarsely so. They delighted in all the sensations of life and prized art as the noblest of these. No doubt Goethe thought of the Pompeians as he read this passage. They too had used art to set the peak of joyfulness on a life of vigorous sensuality. And as with the Phaeacians (did Goethe think of this?), their lovely city had been buried by a mountain. This then was the realisation that the Sicilian journey and the Odyssey, re-read in that setting, brought to Goethe :4 the Greeks had been perfect men living in perfect natural surroundings. That had been their good fortune. Their merit, which made their art and their literature pre-eminent, had lain in their 1 3 4 Cf. WA. 10, p. 413. 2 Od. XIII, 31 foil. Od. vm, 246-9. Cf. letter to W. v. Humboldt, 26 May 1799 (WA. iv, 14, p. 95). NAPLES AND SICILY 163 capacity to know and to understand the perfection of the world they lived in, and in their simplicity of soul, which made them content merely to describe what they saw, not what they felt. “They portrayed the reality, we usually its effect; they described terrible things, we describe terribly; they pleasant things, we pleasantly, and so on.” 1 In this way they had achieved the highest of which art is capable. They had made manifest the ideas of God more directly and more perfectly than Nature herself is usually capable of doing. In old age he said to Eckermann:2 “He who would make something great, must have trained himself to such a pitch, that he is able like the Greeks to raise the less perfect actual world to the level of his own spirit, and to make actual that which in the world of phenomena has remained unfulfilled, whether owing to inner weakness or thwarting from without.” It was in Sicily that he first clearly understood that this was the nature of Greek art, and that his own production must in future be based on the same principles. As soon as he arrived in Palermo, Goethe began to put on paper a poetical project that had occupied his thoughts from time to time for some months. The idea of dramatising Odysseus’s stay among the Phaeacians had come to him first on the last stage of his journey to Rome, in October of the previous year. He had then called the tragedy Ulysses auf Phda.3 Scherer suggests that the plan was again in his mind in Naples,4 and it is likely he gave it more thought during the voyage to Palermo.5 Some time before 15 April (when Goethe bought a Homer)6 the whole plan was written down, the subject of each scene being indicated in a few words. This scheme is preserved.7 The first scene8 was also written before Goethe began to read Homer.9 The other fragments that have been preserved, he wrote with the Odyssey open at his 1 WA. 31, p. 239: “Sie stellten die Existenz dar, wir gewohnlich den EfFekt; sie schilderten das Furchterliche, wir schildern furchterlich; sie das Angenehme, wir angenehm, usw.” 2 20 Oct. 1828. 3 4 WA. in, 1, p. 315. Goethe-Aufsatze, p. 209. 5 Cf. WA. 10, p. 412, and Ernst Maass, Goethe und die Antike, p. 188. 6 Cf. JA. xv, p. 352; also WA. 10, pp. 412 foil, and 31, p. 147. 8 7 WA. 10, pp. 417 foil. Ibid. pp. 99 foil. 9 Ibid. p. 413. 164 ITALY 1 side. Most was written in the public gardens during his last three days in Palermo. Only at this stage did the tragedy receive the name Nausikaa by which it is always known. More would have been written had not the luxuriant vegetation of the gardens distracted his interest from his poetical plans to the search for the ” Urpflanze” .2 But the interruption was only momentary. At times during his journey through the island, Goethe pondered the detailed execution of his plan and jotted down a line or two. 3 Especially in Taormina Nausikaa was much in his mind. 4 Scherer suggested5 that the plan as first written down in Palermo was considerably changed in Taormina, and that this second plan is contained in the version given in the Italienische Reisef* Morris has shown? that this view is not tenable, and that the plan in the Italienische Reise was, as Goethe indicated, composed from memory thirty years later,8 and can therefore not be considered in any reconstruction of Goethe’s intentions for Nausikaa. All the hundred and seventy-five lines and fragments of lines of Nausikaa that were ever written, were written in Sicily. Once Goethe had left the island where Homer had become for him “a living word”, 9 the figures of his Homeric tragedy faded from his mind, and never returned to disquiet him or bring him joy. It may be questioned whether Homer meant to hint that Nausicaa had fallen in love with Odysseus, when she found him sea-battered on the shore, and won him her father’s protection and favour. A modern reader is inclined to conclude as much, and to wonder at Homer’s restraint in not treating in more detail so promising a motive. Goethe saw in this unfulfilled episode all the material for a tragedy. Nausicaa was to fall in love with Odysseus; ignorant of his name and of the fact that he was married, she was to make an avowal of her 1 WA. 10, p. 409, lines 16-20: Od. v, 483, 488; ibid. p. 416, line 24: Od. vi, 20 foil.; ibid. p. 418, lines 7-11: Od. VII, 114-21; lines 16-18:. Od. VII, 129; ibid. p. 422 (a): Od. xi, 363-8; (b) Od. vi, 44. 2 WA. 31, p. 147. 3 WA. 31, p. 201; WA. 10, p. 418, line 15; cf. ibid. p. 419, line 4; ibid. p. 418, lines 23-4, Girgenti to Catania; p. 420, line $b [iv], Etna, but cf. WA. iv, 8, p. 91. 4 5 WA. 10, p. 414; 31, p. 198. Goethe-Aufsatze, p. 213. 6 7 WA. 31, pp. 200 foil. G-J. xxv, pp. 109 foil. 8 9 Cf. WA. 10, p. 4i5;JA. xv, p. 353. WA. 31, p. 239. NAPLES AND SICILY 165 love, only to find that he was about to return to his native land and his wife. Partly from shame at having compromised herself, but chiefly owing to the realisation that her passion was hopeless, Nausicaa was to kill herself.1 Morris may be right in maintaining that such romantic love, for which life loses all value except in relation to the beloved, is a human passion unknown to Homer. Goethe probably did not feel that his central theme was unantique: Sappho’s leap and Phaedra’s suicide would have been sufficient warrant for him that it was antique enough, if he considered the question at all. Moreover since he regarded Homer’s men and women as “Urmenschen”, he can hardly have believed that they were ignorant of an emotion so fundamental in modern man. a Be that as it may, the theme of Nausikaa was taken from Goethe’s own experience. All too often his personality had roused a woman’s love, and always his fate had made it necessary for him to desert her. There may have been recent flirtations in Rome and Naples, as is suggested in the Italienische Reise? but the immediate experience which provided the material for Nausikaa was undoubtedly his own breaking away from Charlotte, and the suffering that he knew he had caused her. The treatment of this very personal theme was to show the effects of his new insight into the nature of Greek wisdom and art. In the first place the play was to be a real tragedy. No lofty trust in the goodness of God could here avert the fatal conflict of natural forces. Ulysses’s share of guilt was to be a very minor one, deriving from his having told Nausicaa that he was unmarried. The catastrophe would be represented as a “misfortune sent from God”. 4 The world-order would be revealed as inhumane: inhumane the daemonic power of attraction in Ulysses’s character; inhumane the love that drives the girl to destruction. Had Goethe wished to use the conventions of Greek tragedy, he could have let Aphrodite foretell 1 There have been various attempts to reconstruct the action of Nausikaa. Scherer’s essay in Goethe-Aufsdtze and Max Morris’s in the Goethe-Jahrbuch, xxv are the most important. 2 Compare his discussion of this question in Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert, WA. 46, p. 26. 3 4 WA. 31, p. 201. “Gottgesendet Uebel”: WA. 10, p. 422. 166 ITALY Nausicaa’s doom in a grim speech modelled on the prologue to Hippolytus. In this way Nausikaa was nearer to the spirit of Greek tragedy than either Iphigenie or Elpenor. The form was still to be modern: five-footed iambic lines, five acts, no chorus. It was in the style, that the new closeness to Greece would emerge most clearly. It would be a description, carried out with Homeric “clarity and inner understanding”, of the ideal world of men and Nature, which the Greeks had known and which Goethe now believed he had seen. He would “portray the reality”, not, as modern writers do, the effect;1 and so having ideal man and ideal Nature for his subject, he would give perfect manifestation to ideas that often lie unfulfilled in Nature. The fragments that he wrote down contain examples of this new style of “naiv”, not “sentimental”, description. In the most successful he crystallised his observations of that phenomenon of “hazy clarity” that filled him with such wonder: Ein weisser Glanz ruht iiber Land und Meer, Und duftend schwebt der Aether ohne Wolken.2 Description of the ” Urlandschaft”—the sea, the coast, the islands, the hills, the vegetation, the harmonising colours— was to form as important a part of the play as the human action of which it was the setting.3 That no essential element might fail in this microcosm of Nature, a large part of the second act was to be taken up with a description of a storm and of its destructive effect on the beauty of the gardens. The men and women who move in this setting harmonise with it in the simple perfection of their humanity. Phaeacian society was to be drawn on the lines of the picture given in the Odyssey: a simple community, still founded on the essential needs of man, uncorrupted by over-complication and false conventions, yet cultured in every way that ennobles the human spirit. Morris points out 4 that the characters in Nausikaa are psychologically less complicated than those of Iphigenie 1 2 3 4 See above, p. 163. WA. 10, p. 423; see also above, p. 159. WA. 31, pp. 198 foil, and 10, pp. 417 foil. G-J. xxv, p. 114. NAPLES AND SICILY 167 and Tasso. As “Urrnenschen” they were to have only those basic emotions which are common to all men who have emerged from a state of barbarism. They were to be free of scruples and subtleties such as plague and thwart modern refined society. Perhaps the naive manner in which Alcinous and Ulysses arrange to marry off Nausikaa to Telemachus was intended as a trait proper to simple humanity, which is more concerned with realities than sentiment.1 Nausikaa and Ulysses were to represent most clearly this essential, unthwarted humanity. She is unable—perhaps she does not even try— to conceal her passion; nor when it is shown to be hopeless, does she wish to overcome it and drag on a wretched, unsatisfied existence. Ulysses appears first as naked man, stripped of every aid to life but his bare wits. By these he wins back to fortune and to the accomplishment of his single purpose—his return. It is in pursuit of this purpose that he commits the fatal error of concealing his identity.2 In this undeviating determination to survive and to achieve his end he is ” Urmann”, as much as Nausikaa, by her absorption in her passion, is “.Urweib”3 His “manly bearing” was to be stressed by Nausikaa’s brother.4 It is the ideal perfection of these opposed emotions which brings on the catastrophe. Had they been tempered by inhibiting subtleties of feeling, there would have been no storm in the world of men to match that in the world of Nature. Goethe left Sicily with all his longing stilled. He had seen and he understood. He was confident that he would now be able to create as the Greeks had created. He even hoped that he might live as they had lived. Fear of his old northern self had gone: on his return to Naples he agreed to meet a stranger who wished to discuss Werther with him; “six months ago.. .1 should have refused. My acceptance showed me that my Sicilian journey had had a good effect on me.” 5 His last misunderstandings with the spirit of Hellas had been removed by what he had seen in Sicily. The day after his return to Naples 1 WA. 10, p. 421. I have already pointed out that Goethe introduced this idea into the last act of Egmont (written in Rome during the summer of 1787), and that he may have taken it from the Trachiniae (line 1222 foil.). 2 WA. 10, p. 419. 3 “Essential man” and “essential woman”. See below, p. 171. 4 5 WA. 10, p. 420. WA. 31, p. 241. 168 ITALY he went once more to Paestum. “It is the last and, I might almost say, the most glorious idea, that I now carry northwards with me complete. The middle temple (of Neptune) is in my opinion better than anything that is still to be seen in Sicily.” 1 His settled opinion of the Greek Doric 2 was less enthusiastic but still respectful. He granted that its effect was majestic, sometimes even inspiring (reizend), but he took leave to prefer the slenderer Ionic, defending his preference on the ground that it is natural for human taste to develop “even beyond its goal”. In other words he could not accept the fifth-century style of architecture as canonic. In order to justify his own taste he was forced, contrary to the tendency of his thought on other matters at the time, to stress the right of aesthetic standards to change and progress. He never came to feel at home in the world of the Doric temple. In his old age he spoke of it with reverence but called it a “fairy world”. 3 Any difficulty that he may still have felt, at fitting Greek tragedy into his picture of the Greeks, was finally dispelled in Sicily. His own experience of a storm at sea had brought vividly home to him the terrifying power of Nature. 4 In the Odyssey he had found more perfectly portrayed man’s helplessness in the face of implacable natural forces. He had hoped to give expression to this fundamental callousness of life in Nausikaa. The Greeks had done the same in their tragedies, and in so doing had given proof not of barbarity of mind and morals, but of their greatness in seeing and depicting the world as it is, not as it might be. “Humanitdt”, as he had preached it in Iphigenie and as Herder still preached it in his Ideen, was to Goethe now only a “fair dream-wish”. In a letter to Charlotte from Rome, 5 he mocked at Herder for clinging to the old ideal. ” T h o u g h I may believe that ‘Humanitdt’6 will finally conquer, I fear that at the same moment the world will be one great 1 WA. 31, p. 238. Contained in the essay Zur Theorie der bildenden Kunst (WA. 47, pp. 60 foil.), 1788. 3 WA. iv, 45, p. 115. 4 Cf. also WA. 31, p. 203. 5 8 June 1787 (WA. iv, 8, p. 233). Humanitdt cannot be translated by “humanity”, nor “humanism”. “Humane ethics” is too ambiguous a term. It is simplest to identify Humanitdt with “Iphigenie-morality”. See above, p. 137. 2 ROME AGAIN 169 hospital, and each will be occupied in being the other’s humane ” T nurse. The ten years’ aberration towards a Christian-ethical interpretation of the world was over. Once more Goethe could admire the Greeks as he had done in the days of Gotter, Helden und Wieland, even for those qualities in which they had run counter to modern sentiment. Having seen, in Sicily and in the Odyssey, God’s ideas made manifest, he could only say: “That which is, is moral.” D. ROME AGAIN On 6 June 1787 Goethe was back in his old quarters in Rome. He returned at once to his interrupted studies in art. In order truly to understand the possibilities and the limits of artistic expression, he drew and painted. In the beginning of July he began to copy casts of antique heads.2 Along with this practical activity went repeated contemplation of the ancient statues.3 In August he and Moritz returned to those discussions of ancient mythology which resulted in Moritz’s Gotterlehre.* On 22 August Goethe saw sketches which an English traveller had brought back from the eastern Mediterranean. Among them were drawings of the Parthenon frieze. “The few simple figures” at once roused Goethe’s wonder.5 It was the first time he had seen any reproduction of the Parthenon sculptures. In the following days he made the final discovery that rounded off what he had learnt in Sicily, so that in future he could say he understood Greek art, as he understood Homer and the world of Nature in which the Greeks had lived. “The human form”, he wrote to Charlotte, “is asserting its rights…. I have found a principle which will lead me, like Ariadne’s thread, through the labyrinth of the human structure. . . . It is as though a veil had suddenly been removed from all statues. I have begun to model a head of Hercules. My artist 1 Cf. WA. 31, p. 238 arid WA. iv, 11, p. 100, Herder as “Freund Humanus”; Suphan in Preussische Jahrbiicher, XLIII, pp. 430 foil.; and Irmgard Taylor, Kultur, Aufklarung, Bildung, Humanitdt und verwandte Begriffe bei Herder, Giesseh, 1938, pp. 14 foil. 2 3 WA. 32, p. 28. Ibid. pp. 6, 32, 35, 39. 4 Ibid. p. 59; see also above, p. 145. Material both to the Gotterlehre and to Anthousa, Moritz’s work on the antiquities of Rome (publ. 1791) was 5 probably discussed. WA. 32, p. 32. 170 ITALY friends are amazed, because they think I have hit the likeness by chance, but I have made it according to my principle and can make others so, if I have time and industry to develop this principle.” 1 The Italienische Reise throws further light on this revelation. “The alpha and omega of all known things, the human form, has gripped me and I .it, and I say: Lord, I will not let thee go, till thou bless me, though I be lamed in my wrestling…. I have come on an idea, that makes many things easier…. My obstinate study of Nature, the care with which I have worked at comparative anatomy, now enable me to see much as a whole in nature and in antique sculpture, which an artist has to seek singly and with difficulty.”2 His “principle” linked up with his old studies in physiognomy. 3 In the following weeks he applied his principle to the study of the antiques and also to his drawing and modelling of the human figure. He found it worked in every case.4 It was like Columbus’s egg—so simple and so perfect a solution of the problem. November and December he spent on the study of the head and face; with the new year he passed on to the body, working downwards section by section, until by the middle of March he had reached the foot.5 Neither in letters nor in the Italienische Reise did Goethe reveal the nature of his “principle”. It is plain from the manner in which he speaks of it and of his studies of the human 1 WA. iv, 8, p. 255: “Die menschliche Gestalt tritt in alle ihre Rechte und das Ubrige fallt mir wie Lumpen vom Leibe. Ich habe ein Prinzip gefunden, das mich wie ein Ariadnischer Faden durch die Labyrinthe der Menschenbildung durchfuhren wird…. Indess bin ich sehr vergnugt, weil mir auf einmal wie ein Vorhang vor alien Statuen wegfallt. Ich habe einen Herkuleskopf angefangen, woriiber sie sich alle wundern, weil sie denken ich hab ihn durch einen Zufall so getrofFen, ich hab ihn aber nach meinem Grundsatz gemacht und wenn ich Zeit und Fleiss habe diesen Grundsatz zu entwickeln und mich mechanisch zu iiben, kann ich andere eben so machen.” 2 WA. 32, p. 62: “Nun hat mich zuletzt das A und O aller uns bekannten Dinge, die menschliche Figur, angefasst, und ich sie, und ich sage: Herr, ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn, und sollt ich mich lahm ringen Wenigstens bin ich auf einen Gedanken gekommen, der mir vieles erleichtert…. Es lauft darauf hinaus: dass mich nun mein hartnackig Studium der Natur, meine Sorgfalt, mit der ich in der comparirenden Anatomie zu Werke gegangen bin, nunmehr in den Stand setzen, in der Natur und den Antiken manches im Ganzen zu sehn, was den Kiinstlern im Einzelnen aufzusuchen 3 4 schwer wird.” Ibid. p. 113. WA. 32, pp. 73, 77, 81. 5 WA. iv, 8, pp. 316, 320, 329; WA. 32, pp. 208, 212, 294. ROME AGAIN 171 form, that he was occupied with just such an apperception of the nature of things, as had come to him in his vision of the “Urpflanze”. It was a revelation terrifying in its profundity and its power. He had struggled in thought to win it, as Jacob struggled. It had opened to him the door of the temple,1 and he knew that if he could follow the thread of Ariadne as the ancient artist had followed it, it would be granted him to see God, the ultimate Necessity.2 He spoke of receiving revelations, of seeing deep into the nature of things and their relationships, and in clear connexion with this he wrote: “The study of the human body now holds me completely. Everything else is as nothing to it.” 3 Formerly he had been unable to bear the brilliance that streamed from the human form, as from the sun, but now he was able to contemplate it and to linger on it with rapture.4 The human form he called the “non plus ultra of all human knowledge and activity. “5 There can be no doubt that his study of Greek sculpture, supported by the knowledge of comparative anatomy acquired before he came to Italy, had given him a vision of the ” Urmensch”, just as the southern vegetation had brought him the vision of the ” Urpflanze”‘. The two conceptions are precisely parallel. The ” Urpflanze” was, in Platonic language, the Idea of the plant form; that essence common to all plants, by which we know that a plant is a plant and not an animal or a stone; that binding influence that prevents any plant species from straying so far from the norm, that it loses its character as plant. With this ideal plant clear in mind it was possible “to invent plant forms ad infinitum.. .which, even though they do not exist, yet could exist, and are not merely picturesque or poetical shadows or seemings, but have an inner truth and necessity”. Significantly Goethe added: “The same law will be capable of application to the rest of the living world.” 7 1 2 3 WA. 32, p. 77. Ibid. p. 78. Ibid. p. 208 (5 Jan. 1788). 5 WA. iv, 8, p. 329. WA. 32, p. 212. 6 WA. 31, pp. 147-8; cf. WA. 32, pp. 470, 471. 7 WA. 31, p. 240: “Mit diesem Modell und dem Schliissel dazu kann man alsdann noch Pflanzen ins Unendliche erfinden, die consequent sein miissen, das heisst: die, wenn sie auch nicht existieren, doch existieren konnten und nicht etwa mahlerische oder dichterische Schatten und Scheine sind, sondern eine innerliche Wahrheit und Notwendigkeit haben. Dasselbe Gesetz wird sich auf alles iibrige Lebendige anwenden lassen.” 4 172 ITALY So, in the world of ideas at least, there is an ” Urmensch”, an idea of man, which is present in more or less degree in every race of men and in every individual man. The Homeric men and women of whom Goethe read in Sicily, brought him close to the vision of the ideal man. They had portrayed the moral qualities of the “Urmensch”, But they lacked that quality which is the essence of the Platonic ideas—form. Goethe could not get the imprint of the form of the ” Urmensch9′ from Homer. It was the “Urmensch” as visible, tangible, measurable form, that was revealed to him during his second stay in Rome. That he should have wrung this revelation from the grudging hands of Nature, was the supreme achievement of his Italian journey. It was of course the Greek statues from which he derived the form of the ” Urmensch”, Not abstract speculation alone— “der Betrachtung strenge Lust”—had brought him this revelation; “der Vorwelt silberne Gestalten” had appeared before him and had shown him the way. Thus poetically he described his experience in one of the scenes of Faust that were written in Rome.1 Outside Rome, he said—that is, away from the statues—one could have only an imperfect idea of the human body.2 In his detailed study of each part of the body he always had before him examples from Nature and from antique works of art. Those from Nature showed him the imperfect expression of the idea, those from the antique the perfect expression, as God conceived it.3 For, just like Homer, the Greek artists had known Nature from within and without; they had known what her intentions were, even if in the actual world she was seldom able to realise these; and. they had created untrammelled according to her laws, so that what they produced was the complete expression of her ideas. “These noble works of art are at the same time the noblest works of Nature, produced by men according to true and natural laws. Everything capricious, everything merely imagined collapses; there is Necessity, there is God.”4 Not that any one Greek statue was the “Urmensch” made 1 “The silver figures of the past”: WA. 14, p. 164 (Wald und Hohle). WA. iv, 8, p. 320. Ibid. p. 329 and WA. 32, p. 294. 4 WA. 32, pp. 77 foil., last sentence: “Alles Willkurliche, Eingebildete fallt zusammen, da ist Notwendigkeit, da ist Gott.” 2 3 ROME AGAIN 173 visible. No single statue could express all the qualities that lay in God’s idea of man. All that art could do was to express each one of these qualities in perfection. This the Greeks had done in their statues of gods and heroes. A statue of Apollo was the perfect visible expression of a certain aspect of man’s moral and physical existence. Jupiter represented another aspect or character, Athene another, Mars another, and the heroes yet others. The moral or spiritual character of each was expressed in the form and the attitude. In the eleventh Roman Elegy1 Goethe stressed rather the characteristic attitude, but the pure form was at least equally important. 2 All were ” Abweichungen”, variations, from the basic idea; yet behind each variation, as the Greeks portrayed it, the norm of the ” Urrnensch” was visible, and the circle of gods and heroes taken together expressed the idea of man completely. Already before his journey to Naples and Sicily Goethe had been investigating this question of the ideal characters of man, as represented by the statues of the Greek gods. 3 He had learnt from Winckelmann that the Greek artists had unalterable rules for the portrayal of each god, but he had not then discovered the secret of these rules. The vision of the “Urmensch” gave him the secret. He saw the norm, the common denominator, of all these variations, and so could deduce the rules which the Greek artists had followed in leaving the norm to produce the ideal characters. Goethe told none of his friends in Rome, except Meyer and Moritz, of the essence of his discovery,4 nor did he reveal it in the essays on art which he wrote and published on his return from Rome. It was a mystery not fit for the ears of any but the few who could truly understand. But one day in September after his return to Germany, as he was driving with Caroline Herder and Fritz v. Stein down the Saale valley from Rudolstadt to Jena, while the sun shone with mild late-summer radiance, he was moved by discussion of Schiller’s newest poem, Die Gotter Griechenlands, to open his heart to the trusted friends. “Goethe came to speak”, Caroline wrote to Herder, 5 “of the 1 2 WA. 1, p. 246. Cf. Schr. der G-G. v, p. 29. 4 See above, p. 143. WA. 32, p. 77. 5 Bied. 1, p. 150: “Goethe kam auf die Eigenschaften, die die Alten in ihren Gottern und Helden in der Kunst dargestellt haben, wie es ihm 3 174 ITALY qualities which the ancients represented in art in their gods and heroes, and of how he has succeeded in finding out how they did it…. The whole idea lies, it seems to me, as a great unfulfilled task in his mind. He said at the end, he believed, if Louis XIV were still alive, he could manage the whole business with his support;… he could work it out in ten years—in Rome of course. The moral implications of his idea moved me extremely.. .. No single man, he said, could have one character in perfect manifestation; he could not live if he had; he must have mingled qualities in order to exist. As he said all this he was truly in his Heaven, and we had to promise at the end to speak to no one about it.” In a later letter to Herder,1 Caroline gave more details: “I will tell you something about the gods and heroes that I heard from Goethe that time, when he spoke of the characters in statues… .It is hard to find a true head of a god or hero even among the antique works. The artist often took the portrait of someone he wished to honour, as model for a god or hero… .Deep study is necessary to discover the true ideals….If Goethe were favoured by fortune, money, and artists in Rome, I am sure, he could work out each human character from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet.” Caroline’s account gives us a clearer idea of what Goethe meant by” ideal characters”. Any human being is compounded gegliickt sei, den Faden des Wie hierin gefunden zu haben…. Die ganze Idee liegt wie ein grosser Beruf in seinem Gemiit. Er sagte endlich: Wenn Ludwig XIV. noch lebte, so glaubte er durch seine Unterstutzung die ganze Sache ausfuhren zu konnen… .Er konnte es in zehn Jahren, in Rom versteht sich’s, ausfuhren. Der moralische Sinn darin hat mich sehr geriihrt…. Gar schon war’s, wie er sagte, dass ein einzelner Mensch nie einen Charakter in dem hochsten Ausdruck haben konne; er wiirde nicht leben konnen; er musste vermischte Eigenschaften haben, um zu existieren. Er war in der Stunde, da er dies alles sprach, recht in seinem Himmel, und wir haben ihm endlich versprechen miissen, mit niemand davon zu reden.” 1 Bied. i, p. 151: “Ueber die Gotter und Helden will ich dir doch etwas sagen, was ich damals beilaufig von Goethe gehort habe, als er von den Charaktern in den Bildsaulen sprach, als wir von Kochberg zunickfuhren. Es ist selbst schwer einen echten undwahren Gotter- und Heldenkopf unter den alten aufzufinden. Der Kiinstler hat oft, wenn er diesen oder jenen ehren wollte, sein Portrat zum Gott oder Helden, oder jenes Frauenportrat zur Gottin genommen. Dazu gehort ein Studium, die echten Ideale aufzufinden. . . . Wenn Goethe begiinstigt wiirde durch Gliick, Geld und Kiinstler in Rom, so glaube ich gewiss, dass er jeden menschlichen Charakter vom Scheitel bis zur Fusssohle, wie er glaubt, herausbringen konnte.” ROME AGAIN 175 of a number of spiritual qualities, which influence and interfere with each other so that none appears “im hochsten Ausdruck”. In the Idea of man these characters exist side by side in perfection. But so long as they are merely ideas, so long as their manifestation in the actual world is through the imperfect medium of human individuals, Nature has failed in her highest object. Greek art was of supreme value because it had evolved a means of giving complete expression to these ideal characters in the actual world. In ten years, Goethe thought, he could rediscover the lost tradition that the Greek artists had evolved, and reduce it again to a system that could be handed on from master to pupil. It would involve a minute study of all the antiques in Rome, careful measurements of every statue in all its parts, comparison of the results, deduction of the norm for each god and hero, then of the ultimate norm, the form of the ” Urmensch”. So the vision that came to him in August 1787 would be made actual, given tangible, communicable shape, and art could be re-founded to fulfil its highest mission, as it had done in ancient Hellas. Already in Rome, immediately after the discovery of his “principle”, he started to work out the proportions between the different parts of the body. He learnt from his artist friends what they knew of the matter;1 he tried to find out from such works as Camper’s Kleinere Schrifteti2′ what other moderns had discovered; and he compared all this, as well as he could, with the antiques. Even at night, in the arms of his Faustina, the great problem did not leave him: Dann versteh’ ich den Marmor erst recht; ich denk’ und vergleiche.3 He noted down the statues that were especially important for his purpose;4 but he had to leave Rome before the task was one-tenth accomplished. In Weimar he pushed on with his investigation despite the lack of material. He attended lectures on anatomy in Jena “as preparation for the study of characters 1 WA. 32, p. 77Cf. ibid. p. 113 and Herder, Werkc, xiv, p. 108. WA. 1, p. 239: “Only then do I understand the marble aright; I ponder and compare/’ « WA. 32, p. 4542 3 iy6 ITALY 1 in the human body”. In December 1788 he wrote to Herder that he had made good physiognomical discoveries relating to the formation of ideal characters.* In July of the next year he was at work himself on a profile of Jupiter.3 Amid unfavourable surroundings, with the innumerable distractions of his life in Weimar, his determination flagged at times,4 but revived again especially under Meyer’s influence. In March 1791 he asked for Meyer’s help in “working out a canon of male and female proportion; seeking the variations through which characters arise; studying the anatomical structure more closely and seeking the beautiful forms which make outward perfection”.5 It is impossible to say how far the two friends progressed at this attempt. Three years later there was much still to do. Meyer spent the summer of 1794 in Dresden at work in the art gallery. He asked leave not merely to copy the antiques but to take measurements. This was not permitted, and he wrote to Goethe: ” l a m the most unfortunate of men, for the chief hope and purpose of my whole journey is thus brought to naught.”6 Nevertheless Goethe and Meyer were clear about the general rules of the Greek tradition for portraying ideal characters by the mere form. Winckelmann had observed some of them: Mercury’s greater fineness of feature in comparison with Apollo;7 Juno’s large eyes;8 the rounded brow of Hercules, indicative of his strength and ceaseless labour;9 Jupiter’s cheeks, less full than those of the younger gods; his loftier brow.10 Goethe had observed that Venus’s character wa£ expressed by the smallness of the spaces between her features.11 Meyer interpreted Odysseus’s character from an antique head, in a manner strongly reminiscent of Lavater’s physiognomical 1 Caroline to ‘Herder, 14 Nov. 1788 (W. Bode, Goethe in vertraulichen Briefen, p. 391). 2 WA. iv, 9, p. 67. 3 4 Ibid. p. 145. Cf. Schr. der G-G. v, p. 14. Cf. WA. 47, p. 21. 5 WA. iv, 9, p. 248: “Auf einen Canon mannlicher und weiblicher Proportion loszuarbeiten, die Abweichungen zu sudien wodurch Charaktere entstehn, das anatomische Gebaude naher zu studieren, und die schonen Formen, welche die aussere Vollendung sind, zu suchen.” 6 Schr. der G-G. xxxn, p. 98, also p. 116; cf. also xxxm, p. 8. 8 9 7 Werke, iv, p. 84. Ibid. p. 115. Ibid. p. 87. 10 Ibid. p. 94. ” Bied. 1, p. 180. ROME AGAIN 177 1 theories. The character was expressed not only in the face, but equally in the form of the whole body.2 Apollo’s long thighs had significance no less than Bacchus’s broad, almost womanish, hips, or Jove’s massive solidity of torso. All these proportions had to be discovered by measuring, and the results correlated, before the Greek tradition could be made active in the world again. In this drudgery of measuring and comparing, the original vision of the ideal form of man was in danger of becoming intellectualised and losing itself in a desert of figures. But while it was fresh and vivid in Goethe’s mind, and at times for many years after his return from Rome, it had all the power and the depth of a religious revelation. Through it he had gained far more than a new insight into Greek art, more even than a new understanding of the nature of man. It was a revelation of the ultimate nature of existence, of the forces which govern the whole physical and spiritual universe. The circle of gods, as the Greek sculptors represented them, was Goethe’s creed expressed in forms instead of words. To Goethe the Greek gods were as real as they had been to any ancient Greek. They were not allegorical figures, artistic formulae, convenient by reason of their associations for expressing certain intellectual or moral concepts. “Statues of gods in themselves have no meaning outside themselves, but are really what they represent: Jupiter, the image of the loftiest dignity of boundless power; Minerva, the image of reflective wisdom; Hercules, of strength; Venus, of woman created for love; that is, they are characters of the purest kind, or general ideas given form by art. Such representations are called symbols, as distinct from allegories.”3 The Greeks, or at least their poets and artists, had looked into 1 2 Schr. der G-G. XXXII, p. 21. Cf. Iliad, 11, 477, 478. ” Gotterbilder aber, an sich selbst, haben keine fernere Beziehung, sondern sind wirklich was sie darstellen: Jupiter, das Bild hochster Wiirde unumschrankter Macht; Minerva, sinnender Weisheit; Herkules, der Kraft; Venus, des zur Liebe geschafFenen Weibes usw.; also Charaktere von der hochsten Art, oder allgemeine von der Kunst verkorperte BegrifFe, und solche Darstellungen nennt man, zum Unterschiede von eigentlichen Allegorien, Symbole” (Winckelmann, Werke, 11, p. 684). The notes to this edition were written by Meyer (cf. Justi, op. cit. in, p. 220), and therefore contain Goethe’s views of Greek art as finally established in Italy. For Goethe’s interest in this edition see Bied. v, p. 67. For symbol and allegory c£. WA. iv, 9, p. 251. 3 178 ITALY the heart of the universe and had seen there certain vast forces whose action and interaction created and still uphold the world in which we live. The poets, especially Homer, had first personified these forces as gods in human form; later the artists had evolved a means of representing them in visible and tangible shape, also in the medium of the human form. It was possible to express such fundamental forces or ideas by means of the human form, because in man Nature becomes self-conscious, contemplates and reflects herself.1 Man is a microcosm of the whole universe. While at work on a profile ofJupiter Goethe had “very curious thoughts about anthropomorphism, which is the basis of all religions”, and remembered with pleasure the bon mot: ” Tous les animaux sont raisonnables, l’homme seul est religieux.”* Goethe believed that in Italy the ultimate truth about the nature of things had been revealed to him, as it had been revealed to all the supreme artists of the past, above all to Raphael and to the Greek artists and Homer. The highest art could only be produced by an individual who was in touch with the whole universe, and understood the laws on which it was built. This is the central idea of Moritz’s essay Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schonen, which is the codification of Goethe’s new aesthetic ideas.3 Goethe himself wrote, in his essay on Einfache Nachahmung, Manier, Stil, “style [the highest form of artistic expression] rests on the foundations of knowledge, on the nature of things”. 4 This knowledge, which he now possessed, had come to him in Italy: first through sight of the ” Urlandschaft” round Naples and in Sicily, then through reading of Homer in those surroundings, and finally and most completely through study of Greek sculpture, by which he won the vision of the form of man, in unity and variety, a microcosm of the universe, key to the knowledge of God. 1 Gotterlehre, p. 22; already quoted above, p. 146. Letter to Herder, July 1789 (WA. rv, 9, p. 145). 3 For the Genie s relation to the universe cf. especially pp. 25-8, 31-3, 35, 36 (reprinted edition, Heidelberg, 1924). Cf. also Bied. 1, pp. 163-5, 1734 WA. 47, p. 80: “So ruht der Stil auf den tiefsten Grundfesten der Erkenntnis, auf dem Wesen der Dinge.” This essay appeared in the Teutscher Merkur, February 1789. 2 CHAPTER V FULL CLASSICISM: 1788-1805 Beim erneuerten Studium Homers empfinde ich erst ganz, welches unnennbare Unheil der jiidische Prass uns zugefugt hat. Hatten wir die Sodomitereien und agyptisch-babylonischen Grillen nie kennen lernen, und ware Homer unsere Bibel geblieben, welch’ eine ganz andere Gestalt wiirde die Menschheit dadurch gewonnen haben. A. BACK IN WEIMAR W HEN Goethe returned to Weimar in June 1788, and settled down to a new life in the old surroundings, he believed that he had found in Italy the secret of Greek supremacy in art and in living. In Naples and Sicily he had seen the conditions of climate and land which had made the Greek man possible. In the Italian character he had caught glimpses of this Greek man, but they had been fleeting and unsatisfying. In Homer then, re-read in Sicily, he had found the picture for which he was searching: man as God conceived him, developing with instinctive Tightness all his faculties to their allotted perfection. This “Urmensch” lived in harmony with Nature, however much he might have to battle with her in many of her manifestations. He did not ask that life should be other than what it was. Thus, at peace with God, he was granted exceptional revelations of ultimate truth, and, with the sure instinct of his nature, found the simplest means of giving artistic expression to these revelations, by faithful reproduction of the God-filled world around him. Goethe knew that the Greeks had been exceptionally favoured by circumstance. It had been enough for them to reproduce the world around them, because in that world Nature’s intentions were more perfectly expressed than in the modern world, more so particularly than in the modern world north of the Alps. It was therefore unlikely that any modern, northern artist could achieve what the Greeks had achieved. But Goethe knew of no alternative; the Greek way of artistic production was the only way by which the artist could fulfil 179 180 FULL CLASSICISM: 1788-1805 his function. The attempt must be made to follow the Greeks, despite the unfavourable circumstances of a northern artist’s life. The excellence of Greek art was based on the excellence of the Greek way of life; and the Greek way of life was based on the principle that every faculty in man should be allowed to develop freely in accordance with its nature. In modern society with its innumerable social and religious taboos, such free and natural development was impossible. Nowhere was the modern social code so destructive of the proper growth of mind and body as in the restrictions which it put on the sexual relations between man and woman. In der heroischen Zeit, da Gotter and Gottinnen liebten, Folgte Begierde dem Blick, folgte Genuss der Begier. Glaubst du es habe sich lange die Gottin der Liebe besonnen, Als im Idaischen Hain einst ihr Anchises gefiel? Hatte Luna gesaumt, den schonen Schlafer zu kiissen, O, so hatt’ ihn geschwind, neidend, Aurora geweckt. Hero erblickte Leander am lauten Fest, und behende, Stiirzte der Liebende sich heiss in die nachtliche Flut. Rhea Sylvia wandelt, die fiirstliche Jungfrau, der Tiber Wasser zu schopfen, hinab, und sie ergreifet ein Gott.1 This was the teaching and example of the ancient world in such matters, and Goethe was determined to follow it. Whether or not there was in fact a Roman “Faustina”, with whom he had had a semi-permanent relationship, there is no doubt that he took steps in Rome to satisfy the physical needs of his sexual nature, and so to keep his body in a “delightful equilibrium”. 2 It is clear that he attributed his “physical-moral troubles” of the last years before the Italian journey partly to the unnatural state of celibacy in which he had lived.3 On his return to 1 Romische Elegien, m (WA. i, p. 236; WA. iv, 8, p. 347; also ibid. p. 314): “In the heroic age, when gods and goddesses loved, desire arose at first sight, enjoyment came hard on desire. Do you suppose the goddess of love deliberated long, when once in the grove of Ida Anchises took her fancy? Had Luna been slow to kiss the fair sleeper, swiftly Aurora would have waked him in envy. Hero caught sight of Leander at the busy festival, and straight the lover plunged into the midnight flood. Rhea Sylvia, the royal maiden, goes down to the Tiber to draw water, and a god seizes her.” 2 “Ein kostliches Gleichgewicht.” 3 Cf. WA. iv, 8, p. 327, lines 17 foil. BACK IN WEIMAR 181 Weimar he lost little time in ensuring that he should not make the same mistake again. As Mars took Rhea Sylvia on her way to draw water at the Tiber, so Goethe took Christiane and made her his mistress. It was a relationship in the Italian style,1 founded not on a sentimental community of ideas or outlook (Christiane was illiterate and utterly incapable of sharing Goethe’s intellectual life), but on the simpler, deeper need of man and woman, and on the common joys and sorrows of making and rearing a family. Warum treibt sich das Volk so, und schreit? Es will sich ernahren, Kinder zeugen, und die nahren, so gut es vermag. Merke dir, Reisender, das, und thue zu Hause desgleichen. Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell er sich, wie er auch will.* This was the fundament of life, an existence based on the primary instincts. The common people lived so; the Greeks had lived so; the modern disciple of the Greeks must live so too. The return to “Nature” in sex matters carried Goethe even further than this. He loved Christiane and regarded her as his wife, but this did not prevent him, while in Venice, from seeking sexual satisfaction where he could find it. He was following a natural law, which was accepted as valid by the Greeks, that a certain degree of promiscuity is natural to the male. All the Achaean heroes at Troy had their mistresses; and Odysseus, though faithful in mind to Penelope through all his ten years’ wanderings, slept with Circe and Calypso and thought no wrong. A similar fundamental faithfulness, that is not disturbed by occasional promiscuity when circumstances demand, is one of the themes running through the Venetian Epigrams.3 For a pagan, promiscuity needed no other justifica1 Cf. WA. iv, 8, p. 314: “Was das Herz betrifft, so gehort es gar nicht in die Terminologie der hiesigen Liebeskanzley.” 2 Venezianische Epigramme, x (WA. 1, p. 310): “Why does the common folk jostle and shout so? They want to feed themselves, get children and feed them, as well as they may. Note that, traveller, and do the same at home. No man can do more, try how he will.” 3 In Nos. 3,13, 28, he longs for Christiane; 36-45 (Bettine), his eye begins to rove; 49, he remembers Christiane; 68-72 and 85, he goes to the brothel; 90, 91, 94, 96, 98, 100, 101, 102, but is fundamentally true to his wife and their son. 182 FULL CLASSICISM: 1788-1805 tion than the example of Zeus. In the myths of the loves of Zeus, that shock modern sentiment, the Greeks had given religious sanction to a practice that springs from the nature of man. In Goethe’s opinion modern sentiment was unnatural and therefore wrong. He was not ashamed to follow the Greeks. Goethe took Christiane in order to maintain the “kostliches Gleichgewicht” that he had established in Rome; but he soon found, what he had probably expected to find, that physical and spiritual are brothers not enemies. Goethe’s love for Christiane was a very different thing from his soul-matings with Lotte Buff and Frau von Stein. It was fundamentally physical, while these had been purely spiritual. But for a while at least it was for him a spiritual experience of great purity and intensity. Here too the Greeks showed him the way. Their holiest mysteries had taught the secrets of love-making. 1 Physical delights were hallowed by them as the command and teaching of a god. The discovery of what love in this sense meant, filled him with awe and wonder, and a deep joy. With his eyes he saw the very human body of his little German flower-girl; his spirit saw and worshipped the great goddess, Kupris-Aphrodite. The success of his experiment in pagan love enabled him for a moment to feel himself in harmony with life, as the Greeks had done. From the strength of this serenity he was able to give his experience poetic form in the Greek manner. Lebe gliicklich, und so lebe die Vorzeit in dir. He was happy, and for a brief space antiquity lived again in his poetry. He found the door to the “school of the Greeks” still open; the years had not closed it. 2 The Romische Elegien (“Erotica” Goethe first called them) were written between October 1788 and April 1790.3 The Roman elegists, especially 1 Romische Elegien, xn: WA. 1, p. 247. Goethe sought guidance also in the Priapea, a collection of Latin carmina in honour of Priapus. See WA. 53, 2 pp. 197 foil., 492. Elegy xm: WA. 1, p. 247. 3 Goethe was certainly misstating the facts when he told Goschen (4 July 1791; WA. iv, 9, p. 277) that he had written the elegies in Rome. Even if some of the elegies were begun in Rome, the greater part of the work was certainly done in Weimar (cf. Hans v. Arnim, Entstehung und Anordnung der Romischen Elegien. Deutsche Revue, XLVII, 2, p. 135). BACK IN WEIMAR 183 Propertius and Tibullus, provided the model for their form as well as for much of their content. But on a deeper plane their inspiration lay in Homer. In them for the first time Goethe was able to practise the style of composition that he had learnt in Sicily from his reading of the Odyssey. Their central theme is the love of the poet for his “Liebchen”. Goethe was no novice in this branch of poetry. Friederike, Lili, Charlotte von Stein, had all inspired him. Around each name there clings a group of Goethe’s love-poems. Each group is different in style and mood, but all have this in common, that they are lyrics, direct expressions of the emotion aroused in the poet by his love. From none can one learn much of the circumstances of that love, still less of the character or appearance of the beloved. 1 In the Romische Elegien the poet’s approach is entirely different. Several whole elegies and large parts of many others are devoted to a close description of his relations with his girl in their various aspects. The end of Elegy II explains the business basis of the liaison. In Elegy III he dispels her fears that he may despise her for having yielded to him so quickly. The fourth Elegy hints at the secret rites that lovers know, and at the end contains a description of the beloved as she first appeared to him. So each Elegy adds some touch to the picture of the two lovers, or sheds some light on the progress of their love. These passages of objective description are treated with the greatest simplicity, but with an “indescribable clarity and inner understanding”, 2 which makes them great and moving just as Homer’s description is great and moving. But this is not their only beauty. They are the essential element in the whole series of elegies. Without them the other themes—the Roman background, the conflict with society, the ancient gods and goddesses—could never have been brought together to give each its shade of deeper significance to the whole. At first Goethe intended to write just “Erotica”, descriptions of his love. Then because this love had helped him to recover the antique poise in living, he painted his Erotica on a Roman background, to symbolise this return to antiquity.3 The strictures of society 1 Those to Lili are the most objective, especially “Lili’s Park’, which is not really a lyric at all. But still it would not be possible to reconstruct the story of Goethe’s relationship to Lili from these poems alone. 2 3 Cf. above, p. 161. Cf v. Arnim’s article and Elegy VII. 184 FULL CLASSICISM: 1788-1805 were woven in, so that the happy love of man and woman might appear as a green island, in the sea of human pettiness; and through the whole there walk the radiant figures of the gods, who raise the poet’s common human experience to ideal significance, because like him they did not disdain to love. The simple experience which inspired the Romische Elegien worked like a stone dropped into a pool; from it spread rings of significance that lapped at last on the obscurest problems of existence. This was “style” as Goethe understood it after finding Greece in Italy: a faithful reproduction of Nature in a manner that rested on “the knowledge of the nature of things”. 1 For the execution of his intentions in detail Goethe also practised imitation of Greek and Latin models on a large scale. From his return to Italy until the end of the century the majority of his poetical works were written in classical metres, 2 and resembled classical models in their outward form. But this was not all. He was not ashamed to borrow innumerable traits, situations, metaphors and turns of phrase from classical authors. This was indeed nothing new: Iphigenie, even in its earlier form, was full, as we have seen, of such borrowings; and even in the days of Sturm und Drang the Greek authors sometimes lent him material. 3 But now this borrowing was an essential part of his poetic technique, and was made into a principle of composition. This principle is laid down in a letter to Meyer, written while Goethe was at work on the Romische Elegien. Meyer, who had sent Goethe a sketch for a picture representing Oedipus guessing the riddle of the sphinx, 5 had excused himself for making Oedipus’s attitude resemble a figure of Pylades on an antique vase. Goethe replied 6: “It 1 See Einfache Nachahmung, Manier, Stil: WA. 47, p. 80; and cf. Elegy XIII, line 24: WA. 1, p. 249. 2 3 See Appendix below. See above, pp. 61-62. 4 April 27, 1789 (WA. iv, 9, p. n o ) ; cf. ibid. p. 26, line 22; also WA. 48, pp. 43, 64; WA. 49, 2, p. 19, line 22, and WA. 33, p. 254. 5 Reproduced in Schr. der G-G. xxxvm, No. 2. 6 WA. rv, 9, p. n o : “Es hat gar nichts zu bedeuten, dass Ihr Oedipus dem Pylades auf der Vase einigermassen gleicht. In dem Kreise, in welchem Sie arbeiten, liegen die Niiancen gar nah beisammen. Die menschliche Figur ist von den Altenso durchgearbeitet, dass wir schwerlich eine ganzneue Stellung hervorbringen werden, ohne aus den Grenzen des guten Geschmacks zu schreiten. Es kommt nur darauf an dass sie das ausdrucke, was wir gedacht haben, und dass wir sie zu unsrer Absicht wieder hervorbringen konnen.” BACK IN WEIMAR 185 does not matter, that your Oedipus is somewhat like the Pylades on the vase. In the field in which you work, the nuances are so very slight. The human figure has been so thoroughly worked over by the ancients, that we can hardly expect to produce an entirely new attitude without transgressing the limits of good taste. The important thing is that it should express what we have thought, and that we should be able to reproduce it for our own purpose.” Goethe was thinking of his own problems as well as Meyer’s when he wrote this judgment. He had accepted the whole of ancient literature and art as an indispensable source from which to draw the means of sensual expression for his ideas. A certain amount of adaptation to the individual context was all that these borrowed traits needed. In the manner of this adaptation lay Goethe’s opportunity to exercise his genius. The Romische Elegien offer innumerable examples,1 amongst which the myth of Fama and Amor, in the nineteenth Elegy, presents the best occasion for a study of Goethe’s methods. This myth of the eternal conflict between reputation and love occurs nowhere in ancient literature or mythology. It was invented by Goethe to give poetic expression to the trouble which the gossips of Weimar were causing him. But each individual motiv in the execution of the idea is taken from some writer or work of art of antiquity. Bronner has proved direct use of material from the Latin elegists, Ovid, the Greek Anthology, an antique gem, the Odyssey and “Anacreon”.2 The result of this wholesale plagiarism is a poem of great originality, true in its conception and vital in its expression. The same method of direct imitation, with a larger or smaller element of adaptation, is easy to detect in all the other “classicising” works of this period. The Venezianische Epigramme take their material chiefly from the Latin elegists and Martial. 3 In Amyntas and Der neue Pausias Goethe made free use of Theocritus, the Anthology and other Greek and Latin authors.4 The Achilleis is full of reminiscences of Homer, Hesiod and the tragedians. The Helena of 1800 1 Cf. Goethes romische Elegien und ihre Quellen, by F. Bronner, in Neue Jahrbucher fur Philologie, 1893’» also Die Gottin der Gelegenheit, by Leitzmann, in Euphorion, XVIII, p. 158. 2 4 P. 453. Cf.JA. 1, pp. 354, 355. 3 Ernst Maass,/r&. der G-G. XII, pp. 68 foil. 186 FULL CLASSICISM: 1788-1805 borrows freely from the tragedians. Only Hermann und Dorothea carries its sources of material within itself. The Romische Elegien, and in a lower degree, the Venezianische Epigramme, show Goethe’s new style of composition “im Sinne der Alten”. Tasso, on the other hand, composed for the most part during the first months of Goethe’s work on the Romische Elegien, owes almost nothing to the new principle of “Homeric style”. Apart from the use of a few Greek turns of speech1 (a habit that had by now become subconscious with Goethe), there is nothing in Tasso to remind one of the Greek tragedians or of Homer. Its greatness lies in the combined power and subtlety with which it portrays the psychological condition of an abnormally subjective man, who through the fault of his nature falls into a state of morbid distrust of the world around him. It is a state as far removed as possible from that of the Greek man, living in perfect harmony with Nature; and the means suitable for its portrayal were not any that the Greeks had known, but rather those that Goethe had perfected in Iphigenie for exploring emotional conditions into their finest ramifications. In style and mood Tasso is nearer to Iphigenie than to any other of the great works that Goethe produced during the fifteen years after his return from Rome. The lofty “Humanitdt” that inspires all the characters was Goethe’s preItalian ideal, which after Italy he tended to despise. The conflict between “Erlaubt ist, was gefallt” and “Erlaubt ist, was sich ziemt” 2 was the chief problem of his first ten years in Weimar, and the essence of his relationship with Frau von Stein. In Italy he found the synthesis, and so the conflict ceased to interest him. Tasso is a relic of the troubled years before the Italian journey. That is precisely its interest to us. It reminds us that Goethe’s genius was always more powerful than any particular obsession that might for a time have a hold on his intellect. After Rome Hellenism was an obsession with Goethe. It was an ideal from which, with German concentration, his intellect was busy drawing “last consequences”, and demanding that he should put these into practice in art and in life. If Goethe’s intellect had not been more than balanced by an 1 Cf. H. Morsch, Goethe und die griechischen Buhnendichter, p. 35. Lines 994-1006: “What is pleasant, is allowed” and “What is proper, is allowed”. 2 BACK IN WEIMAR 187 emotional life of great power and depth, this obsession might have worked negatively, so as to make him reject any productive urge that could not be made to conform to the rules of the obsession. The need to give the Tasso-problem its final expression was imperious after Goethe’s return from Italy. It was a subject that could not be treated “in the manner of the ancients”; and so in spite of his obsession, Goethe treated it as it had to be treated, in the manner that suited it. The first eighteen months after Goethe’s return to Weimar saw Tasso finished and the greater part of the work on the Romische Elegien completed. In the spring of 1790 the Venezianische Epigramme came as a pendant to the two great works of this productive period. After the Epigrams, which already show his genius flagging, there lies a period of three years in which Goethe could produce nothing worthier of immortality than der Burgergeneral and der Gross-Kophta. The only literary work of this period that has any connexion with Goethe’s Hellenism is the unfinished allegorical story, Die Reise der Sohne Megaprazons. The political problems of the day form the subject of the allegory; the setting is taken in part from Rabelais; the local colour, in so far as there is any, is modern;1 but the names of the six brothers are Greek. This mixture of Greek and modern throws light on Goethe’s attitude to the Greek tradition. The sons represent human characters in ideal expression. It was fitting therefore to give them Greek names— Epistemon the understanding eldest brother; Panurg the tireless worker; Eutyches the carefree youngest—since the Greeks had first evolved, and best understood, the representation of ideal characters. The Greek names also helped to preserve for the individualised ideas their timeless significance. But it was not necessary to place the whole story in an ancient Greek setting, with Greek costume and historical background. The significance of Greece for the modern world was in Goethe’s view quite independent of the outward circumstances of Greek life. The unproductive period, 1790-1793, was for Goethe a period of generally lessened interest in Greek things. On 5 November 1789 he wrote to Karl August: “I am going 1 WA. 18, p. 371. 188 FULL C L A S S I C I S M : 1788-1805 ahead eagerly with Greek.” 1 From then until November 1793, when he turned once again to Homer, there is evidence on only one occasion of Greek reading: in the last days of January 1793, he read the Symposium, Phaedrus and Apology of Plato with great delight.2 His interest in Greek art was kept alive by his correspondence with Meyer; and, from November 1791 onwards, by Meyer’s presence in Weimar. But his researches, except those connected with the portrayal of ideal characters in sculpture,3 were desultory and unproductive. The most important event in this period for the development of his knowledge and understanding of Greek art was his acquisition on loan of the gem collection of Princess Gallitzin. The collection arrived in Weimar in January 1793,4 and remained in Goethe’s hands until February 1797.5 The possession of this fine collection enabled Goethe to acquire a comprehensive and thorough knowledge of a branch of ancient art which he had previously been able to study only for fleeting moments, as the chance of his travels brought him in contact with this collection or that. He was never tired of expressing his thanks for the loan both privately and publicly.6 In January 1793, Goethe’s genius struggled clear of the deadening influences which had reduced it to impotence for three years, and produced in less than three months the four thousand hexameters ofReinecke Fuchs. According to Goethe’s own account in the Campagne in Frankreich? he chose the hexameter for his re-working of this medieval epic, because he wished to give himself practice in writing this metre according to the stricter rules which Voss was beginning to preach and to practise.8 In fact the reason for his choice lay deeper. In its 1 “Das Griechische wird eifrig betrieben”: WA. iv, 9, p. 161. Theocritus and the other Greek idyllic poets were probably his chief study. Cf. WA. in, 2, p. 323. 2 WA. iv, 10, p. 47. The reference in a letter to Jacobi of March 1790 (Ibid. 9, p. 184) to “studying the ancients and following their example”, probably alludes to Goethe’s study of the Priapea. Cf. WA. 53, pp. 491-2. 3 4 See above, p. 176. Cf. WA. in, 2, p. 30. 5 WA. iv, 12, p. 32. 6 Ibid. 12, pp. 8, 32; 33, pp. 253 foil., 259; 48, p. 133; 49, 2, p. 102. For further occupation with ancient art in this period (1790-1793) see Schr. der G-G. xxxn (Goethe-Meyer Briefwechsel), pp. 60, 65, 67, 74, 76; also WA. iv, 9, p. 218, 10, pp. 37, 54, 73. 7 8 WA. 33, p. 266. See Appendix below. “ “ BACK IN WEIMAR 189 FULL CLASSICISM: 1788-1805 B. SCHILLER The summer of 1794 is a landmark in Goethe’s life. It brought him Schiller’s friendship. To Schiller is usually given all the credit for the reawakening of Goethe’s genius; but in fact the process had begun with Reinecke Fuchs, and was continuing in the return to Homer, and still more notably in the work on Wilhelm Meister. Goethe had taken this up again in March 1793, and had found the courage to bind himself to finish it, before the “Bund mit Schiller” had been formally sealed by the exchange of letters of 23 and 27 August 1794. Nevertheless Schiller’s friendship completed the process of emancipation, and enabled Goethe to enter on a period of productivity hardly less remarkable than the hectic years of Sturm und Drang. With extraordinary speed and sureness Schiller broke down the many fences of distrust that guarded Goethe’s heart. Goethe gave him passage, because he found in the younger man understanding for his new life-purpose, such as no one else had been able to show him since his return from Italy. Not the smallest part of Goethe’s delight was due to Schiller’s clear realisation and approval of the position and function of the Greek ideal in that purpose. On 23 August 1794, when the rapprochement between the two proud men of genius had been in progress little more than two months and was still a far from hardy shoot, Schiller took a step that a lesser man would not have dared to take, or, had he dared, would not have carried out successfully. He wrote to Goethe and analysed to him his own genius and the nature of the task which he had set himself to accomplish. “For long,” he wrote, “although at a considerable distance, I have watched the progress of your spirit, and have with ever renewed admiration noted the road that you have set for yourself. You are seeking law in Nature, but you seek it by the hardest path, that any weaker mind would avoid. You take the whole of Nature together, in order to get light on the individual; you seek the explanation of the individual in the sum of Nature’s manifestations. Beginning from the simplest organism, you mount step by step to the more SCHILLER 193 complex, so that at the last you may construct the most complex of all, man, organically out of the materials of the whole temple of Nature. By re-creating as it were in Nature, you seek to probe the secret technique of man’s creation. A great and truly heroic idea ! that displays sufficiently, how well your spirit holds the varied totality of its conceptions in a proper unity. You can never have hoped that your life would suffice for the accomplishment of such a purpose; but only to set out on such a path, is worth more than to complete any other. You have chosen, like Achilles in the Iliad, between Phthia and immortality. If you had been born a Greek, or even an Italian, and had been surrounded from the cradle by an ideal Nature and an idealising art, your way would have been enormously shortened, perhaps made quite unnecessary. With your first perception of things you would then have absorbed the form of the ideal, and with your first experiences the great style would have developed in you. Now that you have been born a German, now that your Grecian spirit has been thrown into this northern world, you had but the two alternatives, either to become a northern artist, or to provide your imagination by means of your intellect with the material which the real world could not give it, and so to produce your Greece as it were from within, by an intellectual process. In that period of your life when the spirit is creating its inner world out of the outer world, you were surrounded by imperfect forms, and so had already been imbued with a lawless, northern world; but your victorious genius, mightier than the material world, discovered this imperfection from within, and was confirmed in its view by evidence from without, through acquaintance with the Greek world. You then had to correct the older, worser world, that had been forced upon your imagination, in accordance with the pattern that your creative spirit made for itself. That can be accomplished only with the help of guiding principles. But this logical tendency, which the spirit cannot avoid in contemplation, is not easily compatible with the aesthetic function, through which it creates. You had therefore one more labour: as you previously passed from perception to abstraction, so now you had to turn logical conceptions back into intuition, and change thought into feeling, since genius can bring forth only with the help of the 194 FULL CLASSICISM: 1788-1805 1 latter.” In these words Schiller gave back to Goethe his lost confidence in the Tightness of his struggle to recapture Greek standards in life and in art, and so achieve the highest form of existence of which man is capable. 1 Jonas, m, pp. 472-4: “Lange schon habe ich, obgleich aus ziemlicher Feme, dem Gang Ihres Geistes zugesehn, und den Weg, den Sie Sich vorgezeichnet haben, mit immer erneuerter Bewunderung bemerkt. Sie suchen das Notwendige der Natur, aber Sie suchen es auf dem schwersten Weg, vor welchem jede schwachere Kraft sich wohl hiiten wird. Sie nehmen die ganze Natur zusammen, um iiber das Einzelne Licht zu bekommen; in der Allheit ihrer Erscheinungsarten suchen Sie den Erklarungsgrund fur das Individuum auf. Von der einfachen Organisation steigen Sie, Schritt vor Schritt, zu den mehr verwickelten hinauf, um endlich die verwickeltste von alien, den Menschen, genetisch aus den Materialien des ganzen Naturgebaudes zu erbauen. Dadurch dass Sie in der Natur gleichsam nacherschafTen, suchen Sie in seine verborgene Technik einzudringen. Eine grosse und wahrhaft heldenmassige Idee, die zur Geniige zeigt, wie sehr Ihr Geist das reiche Ganze seiner Vorstellungen in einer schonen Einheit zusammenhalt. Sie konnen niemals gehofFt haben, dass Ihr Leben zu einem solchen Ziele zureichen werde, aber einen solchen Weg auch nur einzuschlagen, ist mehr wert, als jeden anderen zu endigen,—und Sie haben gewahlt wie Achill in der Ilias, zwischen Phthia und der Unsterblichkeit. Waren Sie als ein Grieche, j a nur als ein Italiener geboren worden, und hatte schon von der Wiege an eine auserlesene Natur und eine idealisirende Kunst Sie umgeben, so ware Ihr Weg unendlich verkiirzt, vielleicht ganz (iberflussig gemacht worden. Schon in die erste Anschauung der Dinge hatten Sie dann die Form des Notwendigen aufgenommen, und mit Ihren ersten Erfahrungen hatte sich der grosse Stil in Ihnen entwickelt. Nun, da Sie ein Deutscher geboren sind, da Ihr griechischer Geist in diese nordische Schopfung geworfen wurde, so blieb Ihnen keine andere Wahl, als entweder selbst zum nordischen Kiinstler zu werden, oder Ihrer Imagination das,, was ihr die Wirklichkeit vorenthielt, durch Nachhilfe der Denkkraft zu ersetzen, und so gleichsam von innen heraus und auf einem rationalen Wege ein Griechenland zu gebaren. In derjenigen Lebensepoche, wo die Seele sich aus der ausseren Welt ihre innere bildet, von mangelhaften Gestalten umringt, hatten Sie schon eine wilde und nordische Natur in sich aufgenommen, als Ihr siegendes, seinem Material iiberlegenes Genie diesen Mangel von innen entdeckte, und von aussen her durch die Bekanntschaft mit der griechischen Natur davon vergewissert wurde. Jetzt mussten Sie die alte, Ihrer Einbildungskraft schon aufgedrungene schlechtere Natur nach dem besseren Muster, das Ihr bildender Geist sich erschuf, corrigieren, und das kann nun freilich nicht anders als nach leitenden Begriffen von Statten gehen. Aber diese logische Richtung, welche der Geist bei der Reflexion zu nehmen genotigt ist, vertragt sich nicht wohl mit der asthetischen, durch welche allein er bildet. Sie hatten also eine Arbeit mehr, denn so wie Sie von der Anschauung zu der Abstraction iibergingen, so mussten Sie nun riickwarts Begriffe wieder in Intuitionen umsetzen, und Gedanken in Gefiihle verwandeln, weil nur durch diese das Genie hervorbringen kann.” SCHILLER 195 The fundamental importance of Hellenism became ever clearer as the two friends revealed to each other more of their problems and beliefs. Schiller had for some time been devoting his best energies to a philosophical enquiry into the nature of beauty and its importance for man. The first results of this enquiry were published in June 1793, in the essay Ueber Anmut und Wurde. Reduced to the simplest language, Schiller’s contention in this essay is that a complete victory for man’s moral nature in the age-old conflict between duty and inclination, spirit and matter, ” Sittlichkeit” and ” Sinnlichkeit”‘, is not desirable because it is not “beautiful”. For him the highest form of human existence is reached when man can stand above the moral conflict because he desires only what his moral instinct approves.1 To despise the world of sense is as much an imperfection in man as to become subjugated by the material element in life. Harmony and co-operation between the two instincts are necessary before “the ideal of perfect humanity” can be attained.2 Of course such a condition of harmony presupposes complete control of the sensual instincts by the will. But this alone is not enough; it gives man only dignity. 3 As long as any trace of conflict or effort in suppressing the sensual instincts is visible, perfection is not achieved, because beauty 3 is lacking. The Greeks understood this highest morality, that is above morality, and gave it expression at least in their art. Schiller cites the Niobe and the Apollo Belvedere.4 This was the point at which Schiller had arrived when he and Goethe came together in the summer of 1794. By a very different road he had reached the same position as Goethe. To their surprise they found themselves side by side on the same lofty pinnacle, looking down on a misunderstanding world. It was the miracle that Goethe needed to restore his faith in himself and God. Schiller was already engaged on a fuller exposition of his morality of beauty. Since June 1794 he had been at work on those letters which later became the Briefe Uber die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen, in which he intended fully to define and establish the nature of beauty and its dominant position 1 Schiller, Werke, xiv, pp. 33-43, especially pp. 36 and 42, 43. Ibid. p. 54. 4 3 “Wurde” and “Anmut”. Werke, xiv, p. 57. 2 ip6 FULL CLASSICISM: 1788-1805 in the nature of the proper man. Before he had advanced far, his contact with Goethe had begun to enrich and deepen his ideas. Joachim Ulrich has attempted with great skill to establish the exact extent of Goethe’s influence on the Aesthetische Briefe.1 He attributes, no doubt rightly, the contrasted pictures of Greek and modern society in the Sixth Letter2 to his influence. The essence of this contrast is that the Greeks were complete men, whereas we are cogs in the machine of the community. Each individual Greek was a worthy representative of the species. With us the individual represents only one aspect of the idea of the species. Thousands of individuals must be taken together in order to get a true conception of that idea. Until each individual is once again complete, with all his powers fully developed and in use, society will not recover from its ills. In the later letters Schiller points the road that is to lead mankind upwards to the new “completeness”.3 His solution is the morality of beauty, by which the conflict of spirit and matter is overcome. Ulrich’s contention that Goethe is responsible for the whole conception of a third, harmonising instinct (the ” Spieltrieb”, play-instinct), is perhaps misleading. Already in Ueber Anmut und Wurde Schiller had used the term “Spiel” to denote that condition of moral freedom which results when man is able to .rise above the conflict of duty and desire.4 But it may be true that Goethe’s encouragement induced Schiller to give man’s capacity for harmony the rank of an “instinct” (Trieb), to make it, that is to say, as fundamental an element in man’s nature as his “Fortntrieb” (moral instinct) and his “Stoffirieb” (material instinct). Once again in the Aesthetische Briefe the illustration of the morality of beauty is taken from Greek art. The Greeks embodied their ideal of life in their gods. “They released the blessed ones from the bonds of every object, every duty, every care, and made idleness and indifference the envied lot of godhead, applying merely human names to the freest and loftiest existence.”5 The Ludovisi Juno (Goethe’s favourite antique) is cited as the perfect expression of the highest moral state, above conflict, above desire, above moral effort of any sort. 1 3 5 Jrb. der G-G. xx, pp. 164-212. “Ganzheit.” Ibid. pp. 175 foil. 2 4 Werke, xiv, pp. 132-4. Ibid. p. 36. SCHILLER 197 Schiller’s next philosophical essay, Ueber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung* shows even clearer traces of Goethe’s influence. For here it is not merely the Greek gods, in their representation in art, who are cited as illustrations of perfect humanity. The Greeks themselves are given the credit of having achieved perfection in real life. Schiller contrasts the modern way of life with that of the Greeks. Why, he asks, do we moderns feel a sentimental delight in contemplation of inconscient Nature, in brooks and trees, in sunsets and birdsong? And why was this emotion unknown to the Greeks? It is because we have exiled ourselves from Nature by our artificial manner of life. We long to return, but we cannot. Our society is an artificial patchwork;* our religion the product of over-subtle reasoning: we feel that our humanity is a failure and are only too glad to escape from “a form that has failed so utterly” to the naive Tightness of Nature.3 The Greeks on the other hand were still part of Nature. They felt no need to escape from a humanity divided within itself. For they were not divided. They were whole. “United in himself and happy to feel himself a man, he was content to regard humanity as the highest and to endeavour to raise the rest of Nature to this level.”* This is in all essentials the picture of the Greeks which Goethe won for himself in Sicily. It was part of Goethe’s belief, that the Greeks really had been perfect men (just as he hoped to find the ” Urpjlanze” growing in Sicily), not merely that they had been able to express the ideal in their art. This passage in Ueber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung can be taken as being a very exact expression of Goethe’s own view of the Greek ideal and its relation to modern man. There is no relevant utterance of this date from Goethe himself. For Goethe the Greek way of life was at this time too living a necessity for him to be able to define it in any but poetically allusive terms. Ten years later, when he had at last realised that it was unattainable, he wrote: 5 “Man is capable of much through proper use of isolated 1 Werke, xv, pp. 1-102. Begun in 1794, but mostly written in the latter 2 half of 179 5. Machwerk der Kunst. 3 “Eine so mislungene Form”: Ibid. pp. 18-21. 4 Ibid. pp. 18-21. 5 W A . 46, pp. 21-3: Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert, “Antikes”. 198 FULL CLASSICISM: 1788-1805 abilities; he can produce extraordinary results if he combines several gifts; but the unique, the utterly unexpected, he achieves only when all his qualities unite in him in equal force. This last was the fortunate lot of the ancients, especially of the Greeks in their lpest period. We moderns are forced by Fate to content ourselves with the first two.” 1 The highest creation of Nature is man, when he “works as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as in a great, fair, worthy and valuable whole”.* Modern man attempts the unlimited and, failing, must be content to confine himself to some specialised sphere of activity; the ancients were content to occupy themselves within “the delightful boundaries of the lovely world. Here they had been set; this was their appointed place; here they found room for their energy, material and nourishment for their emotional life.”3 “Feeling and thought were not yet split in pieces, that scarce remediable cleavage in the healthy nature of man had not yet taken place.”4 How consistently Goethe held to the essence of his Greek creed can be seen when these passages from Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert (1805) are compared with the words in which he described his emotion at sight of the antique stelae in Verona, nearly twenty years before.5 There the “scarce remediable cleavage” of modern life is symbolised in the knight in armour who casts his eyes to Heaven and awaits the mystical bliss ofa resurrection in a better world. The ancients on the other hand, even in their thoughts of death, stayed within the “pleasant boundaries of the lovely world”. “There one sees a man, who stands with 1 “Der Mensch vermag gar manches durch zweckmassigen Gebrauch einzelner Krafte, er vermag das Ausserordentliche durch Verbindung mehrerer Fahigkeiten; aber das Einzige, ganz Unerwartete leistet er nur, wenn sich die sammtlichen Eigenschaften gleichmassig in ihm vereinigen. Das letzte war das gliickliche Los der Alten, besonders der Griechen in ihrer besten Zeit; auf die beiden ersten sind wir Neueren vom Schicksal angewiesen.” 2 “Als ein Ganzes wirkt, wenn er sich in der Welt als in einem grossen, schonen, wiirdigen und werten Ganzen fuhlt.” 3 “Innerhalb der lieblichen Grenzen der schonen Welt. Hieher waren sie gesetzt, hiezu berufen, hier fand ihre Tatigkeit Raum, ihre Leidenschaft Gegenstand und Nahrung.” 4 “Noch fand sich das Gefuhl, die Betrachtung nicht zerstiickelt, noch war jene kaum heilbare Trennung in der gesunden Menschenkraft nicht vorgegangen.” 5 WA. m, 1, pp. 199 foil. SCHILLER 199 his women-folk and looks out of a niche as though out of a window. There stand father and mother, their son between them, and look at each other with indescribable naturalness. There a couple take each other’s hands.”1 In Verona, if not earlier, the sickness of the modern world and the soundness of the ancient were revealed to Goethe. What he saw and learnt in Rome and Sicily confirmed that revelation and enriched it. The necessity for “Ganzheit”, wholeness, as the complement to antique contentment in the world, came to him in Italy also.2 In both its senses—both as freedom from the moral conflict and as the ability to develop the human personality in well-balanced universality—Goethe took “wholeness” as his creed during the fifteen years after his return from Italy. In preparatory work for an unwritten essay of 1798 or 1799 he wrote: “The highest idea of man can be attained only through manysidedness, liberality. The Greek was capable of this in his day. The European is still capable of it.” 3 It is far truer to say of him than of Winckelmann that his life was “whole and rounded, entirely in the antique manner”. 4 Winckelmann was only a scholar of genius. The gift that made him great was confined in its working to a very limited sphere of human activity. But Goethe was a universal genius such as even Greece had not known, except perhaps (who can say?) in Homer. The unfailing energy which is the basic element of genius, found in his case an outlet not only in his poetic gift (which was itself of an extraordinarily universal character); in the realm of the spirit he was not content to accept the condition of an amateur in any branch of natural science or art. In politics, so essential a part of the life of every Greek,5 he was 1 “ “ See above, p. 126. WA. iv, 8, pp. 231-2, 324. Cf. KorfF, Geist der Goethezeit, 11, p. 321. Herder’s clear picture of the Greeks in his Ideen (Werke, xrv, pp. 92-150), with its emphasis on their many-sided genius (pp. 92, 98, 129) and on the perfect flowering of their culture (pp. 143, 121), no doubt gave Goethe valuable support in clarifying his own conception of the Greeks. Goethe read this part of the Ideen in Italy (WA. 32, pp. 105, n o , 112, 113, and iv, 8, p. 233). 3 WA. 47, p. 292: “Der hochste Begriffvom Menschen kann nur durch Vielseitigkeit, Liberalitat erlangt werden.—Dessen war zu seiner Zeit der Grieche fahig.—Der Europaer ist es noch.” 4 WA. 46, 24: “Ganz und abgeschlossen, vollig im Antiken Sinne.” 5 Cf. WA. 46, p. 23, line 3. 2 “ To write as a German under the guidance of the Greek ideal, no longer satisfied him. He would write now as a Greek; he would continue the Iliad; he would add jewels to the broken necklace of Greek tragedy. The possible had been granted him. Now, still Faust at heart for all his Hellenism, he would accomplish the impossible. C. CRISIS AND FAILURE In the summer and autumn of 1797 Goethe set to work to codify his beliefs on the nature and proper practice of the plastic arts. His aesthetic ideas had attained their final form in Italy; but the essays which he published in the Teutscher Merkur on his return to Weimar1 are in no way an exhaustive exposition of these ideas. During the following years he com1 Zur Theorie der bildenden Kunst, WA. 47, pp. 60-76; Einfache Nachahtnung der Natur, Manier, Stil, ibid. pp. 77-83; Ueber die bildende Nachahtnung des Schonen von C. P. Moritz, ibid. pp. 84-90; Ueber Christus und die zwolfApostel, ibid. pp. 227-34; Von Arabesken, ibid. 235-41; Frauenrollen aufdem romischen Theater durch Manner gespielt, ibid. pp. 269-74. 216 FULL CLASSICISM: 1788-1805 municated his aesthetic theories only to Meyer. Their correspondence contains many important utterances on the subject. But it was not until Schiller’s friendship gave him courage again to work for the good and the true, that Goethe roused himself to write down and to publish his ideas on art. Even these essays, which appeared in, or were intended for, the Propylden, do not form a logically developed theory of art in its nature and application. Goethe’s fundamental conception of the function of art in the world could not be discussed in the antechamber of the temple.1 Nevertheless a fairly complete picture of his beliefs can be put together from these essays and fragments. In particular the position of Greek art in the whole structure is clear enough. “Re-creation from the idea” was here, as in literature, the basic conception in Goethe’s theory and practice. Mechanical imitation of the Visible world was not art in its highest sense; nor yet could this high title be claimed by “Manier”‘, a system of conventional formulas that represented nothing but the artist’s individual manner of seeing and expressing the world. 2 The artist who would deserve the name, must know how to see through the confusion of phenomena to the ideas or intentions that strive unsuccessfully to find expression in the world and so “rivalling Nature, to bring forth something spiritually organic”. 3 This highest art, which “seizes the object on that plane where it is stripped of all that is common and individual”,4 was understood and practised by the Greeks as by no other race.5 The stupendous task of re-expressing Nature’s intentions in sculpture or painting was fulfilled by the Greeks with extraordinary ease. This was due only in small part to the excellence of their technical methods, though this excellence was assumed by Goethe not only in sculpture but also in painting. Both Goethe and Meyer at this time denied that the Greeks had understood less about painting than the moderns; 6 their under2 Cf. WA. 47, p. 5 . Ibid. pp. 77-79, 82, 83. ? “Etwas geistig Organisches”: Ibid. p. 12 in Einleitung in die Propylden. 4 “Man fasst inn auf der Hohe, wo er von allem Gemeinen und Individuellen entkleidet [ist].” 5 Ueber die Gegenstdnde der bildenden Kunst, Ibid: pp. 91, 92. 6 Schr. der G-G. xxxn, p. 175; WA. n, 3, p. 120. By 1803 Goethe had modified his claims for Greek painting (Polygnot, WA. 48, pp. 100, 102), 1 3 CRISIS AND FAILURE 217 standing of the mysteries of colour-harmony was believed by Goethe to be greater than that of any modern painter or scientist.1 Their success in expressing the ideal was due to the instinctive Tightness with which they chose their subjects. In the first place they knew exactly what could, and what could not, be expressed in paint or marble. They avoided the fault so often made by modern artists of trying to express moral ideas in a sensual medium. Only certain moral ideas are suitable to representation by the plastic arts, namely those “which are most closely related to the sensual world and permit of expression through form and attitude”. 2 The Greeks knew that a work of plastic art must express everything in and by itself.3 The supreme example of such a self-expressing work of art was the Laocoon. Goethe believed, as we have seen,4 that the statues of the gods were the greatest contribution of the Greek genius to art and to the human race. They were a revelation, for those who had eyes to see, of the ultimate nature of the world and of man in it. When the brothers Riepenhausen dared to suggest that Greek art was incapable of symbolising such profound truths, which had become the property of art only with the revelation of the Christian religion, Goethe’s ire was roused and he thundered against the “neo-catholic sentimentality” and “das klosterbrudrisirende, sternbaldisirende Unwesen”.5 Nevertheless he never expounded his doctrine of ideal characters in public. In the Propylden essays there is hardly a hint of this inner teaching. It was the mystical basis of Goethe’s aesthetic creed, and it was not communicable to all and sundry. The statues of the gods are not often cited by Goethe in these essays. though in 1808 he still resented the commonly repeated assertion that in painting the Greeks had not been the equals of the moderns (Bied. n, p. 12). 1 Schr. der G-G. xxxn, pp. 175, 195, 208, 217, 270; WA. n, 3, pp. 61, 108-23, especially pp. 116, 120. 2 Schr. der G-G. xxxn, p. 37. Cf. Einleitung in die Propylden, WA. 47, p. 18. 3 Schr. der G-G. xxxn, p. 28: “Man sollte sich nicht etwas bei dem Bilde 4 denken.” See above, pp. 177-8. 5 W A . 48, p. 122: Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders by Wackenroder and Tieck’s Franz Sternbald were the two works in which the standard of Romantic medievalism in art was raised against Classicism. .218 FULL C L A S S I C I S M : 1788-1805 Their pre-excellence is assumed; they are “the first and favourite subjects of sculpture”; 1 but no analysis of their greatness is given. In the less lofty subjects of human action and suffering the Greek genius showed itself no less supreme; and Goethe was eager to point out the reasons for this excellence. His ideas found their most consequent expression in the essay Ueber Laokoori2 and in his reconstruction of the wall-paintings of the fifth-century Athenian painter, Polygnotus. 3 In both these works Goethe admired above all the profundity of the conception and the wisdom with which the central theme was set off by balancing or contrasting secondary motives. In the paintings by Polygnotus Goethe admitted that the technique must have been so crude that the composition can have had no unity of visible form but only of thought and feeling.4 Nevertheless the idea itself was so powerful in its simplicity, yet so rich in effective motives, that Goethe recommended it and similar “simplelofty and profound-naive” subjects with eager insistence to the artists of his day. W e need quote only a short passage, from his comments on the central painting, the “Glorification of Helen”, to illustrate what it was that Goethe most admired in Greek works of art of this kind. The moment chosen by the artist is after the sack of Troy, when the Greeks are about to sail home with their booty. The captured Trojan women are shown, herded together, bewailing their lot. Wounded Trojans, the last remnant of that glorious army that for ten years successfully resisted the Greek attack, are also shown in captivity. “And all this suffering of body and spirit, for whose sake is it endured? For a woman’s sake, the symbol of the highest beauty. There she sits, a queen again, waited on and surrounded by her maids, admired by a former lover and suitor, greeted with awe by a herald…. Among the crowd of captives she sits as a queen, in whose power it lies to loose and to bind. Every sin against her majesty brings the bitterest consequences; her sin is wiped out by her presence…. U p to this moment the 1 WA. 47, p. 105. Published in the Propylden, Snick 1, 1798: WA. 47, pp. 101-17. Polygnots Gemdlde in der Lesche zu Delphi. 1803, published in the Jena Allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung: WA. 48, pp. 83-122. 4 Ibid. p. 104. 2 3 CRISIS AND FAILURE 219 object of a destructive war, she now appears as the fairest prize of victory; raised upon heaps of dead and of captives, she sits enthroned at the summit of her power. All is forgiven and forgotten; for she is there again.”1 Every subsidiary figure was designed by position and association to impress on the onlooker this central idea. The Laocoon group shows the same grandeur of conception and the same faultless planning of the means of execution. These qualities, together with the technical mastery of the material, made it in Goethe’s view a perfect work, from which one could deduce all the laws of art.2 It is not necessary for my purpose to discuss the whole of Goethe’s analysis of the group. That has often been done before; and it would throw little light on Goethe’s conception of the Greeks, except to emphasise the fact that he held them to have been all-wise and allcompetent in matters of art. Two points alone need be stressed* The first conception of the Laocoon group was great in Goethe’s eyes, because the artists had stripped the subject of all its local and secondary associations such as Laocoon’s priesthood, his Trojan nationality, and all the special circumstances of the fable, and so permitted the purely human aspect of the situation to receive all the emphasis of their art. Laocoon “is nothing of all that the myth makes him to be. It is a father with two sons in danger of succumbing to two dangerous beasts.”3 Two aspects of the Greek genius were illustrated by this: its instinct for seizing the ideal essence of a subject, before it has become confused and obscured by the world; 4 and its insistence on man as the sole subject for artistic representation, and as the adequate measure of all things. In the essay Ueber Laokoon Goethe touched for the first time on a point which is of fundamental importance for a proper understanding of his view of the Greeks. The artist’s genius, he wrote, “shows itself in its highest energy and dignity, when i t . . . knows how to moderate and restrain the passionate outbursts of mans nature in its artistic representation.”5 We are carried back by these words to that old controversy begun by Winckelmann and pursued by Lessing, in which Goethe as a lad of 1 3 4 Ibid. pp. 107-9; c£ p- I 0 5Ibid. p. 106. Ibid. p. 91, quoted above, p. 216. 2 WA. 47, p. 103. 5 Ibid. p. 116. 220 FULL C L A S S I C I S M : 1788-1805 twenty had thought of taking part: the controversy over the reason for Laocoon’s half-closed mouth. Since that lost essay and the remarks in the Ephemerides,1 Goethe had shown little interest in the subject. Now his attention had been brought back to the whole question by an essay published in the Horen2 and written by the antiquarian, Aloys Ludwig Hirt, whom Goethe had known in Rome. In this essay, the subject of which was also the Laocoon group, Hirt roundly denied that the expression on Laocoon’s face was toned down (gemildert) at all; Laocoon did not scream, because he could not scream; and he could not scream, because he was in the last agony, about to succumb to the poison of the snake’s bite.3 The moment chosen was in fact the most terrible of the whole gruesome tale. From this Hift proceeded to deny that beauty, as Lessing had held, or “noble simplicity and quiet greatness”, in Winckelmann’s phrase, was the basic principle in Greek art. “Individuality of meaning, and character”4 was its peculiarity.^ The thought or meaning peculiar to, or characteristic of, the subject to be treated, had to be expressed as clearly and fully as possible. So if the artist chose to portray the destruction of a father and his two sons by monstrous snakes, a subject in the highest degree tragic and horrible, his object must be to convey the tragedy and horror of it to the onlooker with the greatest possible force and clarity. Goethe was impressed by Hirt and by his essay. He and Schiller agreed that character and individual meaning ought to be stressed as qualities of Greek art, as the tendency at the time was to regard Greek art as only ideal.6 But he held Hirt’s point of view to be one-sided; and as he developed his own views, while at work on his Laocoon essay, he came more and more to feel the danger of Hirt’s theories. He replied to them not only in Ueber Laokoon but also in der Sammler und die Seinigen, where Hirt appears, somewhat unsympathetically sketched, as the ” Charakteristiker”. In Goethe’s view Hirt applied the principle of ideal characters too pedantically, so 1 See above, p. 47. 3 1797, Snick 10, pp. 1-25. Pp. 7 foil. 4 5 “Individuellheit der Bedeutung, Karakteristik.” Pp. 11, 12. 6 Goethe-Schiller Briefwechsel, 1 to 8 July 1797; especially Schiller to Goethe, 7 July, and Goethe’s reply. 2 CRISIS AND FAILURE 221 that with certain subjects, particularly terrible subjects like the Laocoon, he was forced to attribute to great works of art a purpose and meaning which was incompatible with the highest function of art. If the Laocoon group really were as Hirt held it to be, “it would deserve to be instantly broken in pieces”.1 Goethe demanded that terrible subjects such as the stories of Laocoon and of Niobe should be treated so that they should make a pleasant impression on the eye and mind. This was achieved by the Greeks by careful consideration of principles of symmetry, balance, contrast of masses and so on, by all in fact that could give the work beauty or “Antnut” of appearance. He held the Laocoon group to be “a model of symmetry and variety, repose and movement, contrasts and gradations, which together impress themselves on the onlooker, some through his senses and some through his mind, and so alongside the high emotional content of the representation arouse a sensation of pleasure, and moderate the storm of suffering and passion through beauty both sensual and spiritual”.2 The spiritual means adopted to moderate the impression of terror that such a subject could produce, were illustrated in the Laocoon group by the condition of the two sons. “In order to moderate the violent impression of terror (aroused by the sufferings of the father), it inspires pity for the condition of the younger son, and anxiety for the elder, while yet leaving some hope for his survival.”3 It was the business of art to please and uplift even in representations of terrible subjects. This the Greeks had known and had proved not only in their sculpture but also in their tragedies. The subjects chosen by the tragedians were often intolerable and loathsome. But the tragedies themselves are not loathsome nor even terrible. “Of course if one sees in poetry only the material out of which the poem is formed, if one speaks of the work of art as though one had experienced what it portrayed, in real life instead of through its medium, then 1 Sammler, WA. 47, p. 167. Laokoon, Ibid. p. 105. Cf. ibid. pp. 162 foil.: “Ein Muster von Symmetrie und Mannigfaltigkeit, von Ruhe und Bewegung, Gegensatzen und Stufengangen, die sich zusammen teils sinnlich teils geistig, dem Beschauer darbieten, bei dem hohen Pathos der Vorstellung eine angenehme Empfindung erregen, und den Sturm der Leiden und Leidenschaft durch Anmut und Schonheit mildern.” 3 Ibid. p. 115. 2 222 FULL CLASSICISM: 1788-1805 even the tragedies of Sophocles can be made out to be loathsome and horrible.” But they are not, for the treatment of the material makes everything not merely tolerable but beautiful.1 Goethe does not defend more fully the necessity for this “law of moderating beauty”.* The fact that it prevents a work of art from arousing “unpleasant sensations” in the onlooker, is apparently sufficient justification. This may hardly seem the case to us, for some degree of sincerity must be sacrificed to it in such subjects as the Laocoon. But Goethe was afraid of such “unpleasant sensations”, still more of any art whose object it was to produce them. The acute susceptibility that was the basis of his genius in the days of Sturm und Drang, had not grown less with the years, though it had perhaps been driven deeper underground. It was there still, ready to respond to any sudden stimulus and to break through in all its old terrifying force. Men like Hirt knew nothing of such dangers. But the Greeks had known. They had felt the cruelty of Ufe with souls sensitive by nature to pain no less than to joy. They had not tried to shut their eyes to suffering. They had used it, as all great artists must, as material for their art; but they had created out of it, not something that made the world more horrible to live in, but something that enriched man’s life and strengthened him to endure and to enjoy, by showing that new life, new beauty, new greatness could grow even out of pain and death. The ancient artist who adorned a sarcophagus with the destruction of Niobe’s children achieved thereby the “greatest audacity of art”. 3 “Art adorns no longer withflowersand fruits, but with corpses of men, with the greatest catastrophe that can overtake a father and mother, the sight of a blooming family reft at one stroke from before their eyes.”4 1 WA. 47, pp. 167,168: “Freilich, wenn man in der Poesie nur den StofF erblickt, der dem Gedichteten zum Grund liegt, wenn man vom Kunstwerke spricht, alshatte man, an seiner Statt, die Begebenheiten in der Natur erfahren, dann lassen sich wohl sogar Sophokleische Tragodien als ekelhaft und 2 abscheulich darstellen.” “Milderndes Schonheitsprinzip.” 3 “Die hochste Schwelgerei der Kunst.” 4 Ibid. p. 163: “Sie verziert nicht mehr mit Blumen und Friichten, sie verziert mit menschlichen Leichnamen, mit dem grossten Elend, das einem Vater, das einer Mutter begegnen kann, eine bliihende Familie auf einmal vor sich hingerafFt zu sehen.” CRISIS AND FAILURE 223 “ “ He continued especially that educative campaign in favour of Greek standards in art, which he had launched in the Propylden. His chief 1 The significance of Goethe’s explanatory essay has been discussed above, p. 218. 2 Keudell, op. cit.t gives 1801, Xenophon, January-February; Statius, Achilleis, October; Plato, October; Philosophia vetus et nova, and Aristotle, November. Other Greek reading: G-J. XIII, p. 132; Iliad, January 1804; late summer and autumn, 1804, several Greek tragedies, especially Sophocles, with the younger Voss (Bied. 1, pp. 373, 375, 377, 405); November 1804, Timaeus (WA. iv, 17, p. 219). 3 Op. cit. p. 163. 252 FULL CLASSICISM: 1788-1805 vehicle of education was the yearly prize competition on set subjects, in which all German artists were invited to take part. This annual event began in 1799 under the auspices of the Propylden, and continued after the collapse of that periodical in 1801, until 1805. Its object was to combat the prevailing tendency to “historical, sentimental-unsignificant, and uninspired-naturalistic” subjects, by setting subjects which gave opportunity for the practice of the proper sensual-symbolical function of art.1 All but one of the subjects set was derived from Homer or from Greek mythology and legend. In his announcement of the first competition in 1799, Goethe recommended Homer as “the richest source from which artists have always taken material for their works of art”. 2 And in the announcement of the subject for 1801, he repeated his recommendation on the same ground.3 This advice was repeated in 1803, and the tragedians were commended to the artist’s attention as interpreters of the body of traditional myths.4 How utterly Goethe regarded Greece as the foundation of all true art is shown especially by that first statement, that “Homer has always been the richest source of material for artists”. The Christian tradition is simply ignored. Christ and his Mother and all the Saints might never have been subjects of painting or sculpture, for all Goethe appeared to know, or at least to care. The excellence of art in Stuttgart and Cassel Goethe attributed to the presence there of antiques, which artists could copy; the sentimental-theatrical tendency noticeable in Saxony was due to the absence of antiques. Goethe suggested that some should be acquired and exhibited for a moderate entrance fee. “The capital outlay would bring in a good return; while an artistic talent, banned to these Northern parts, would not lack all light.”5 In this educational work in the cause of higher art, Goethe’s genius showed itself at its lamest. It is not surprising that the wind of artistic inspiration listed to blow in quite another direction from that which Goethe recommended. But it was inevitable that Goethe should attach immense importance to this attempt to found a true tradition of art in Germany. He believed that his failure 1 3 4 WA. 48, pp 65 foil. Ibid. p. 20: “Grundschatz aller Kunst.” Ibid. p. 60. 2 5 Ibid. p. 4; cf. p. 223. Ibid. pp. 21-2. HELENA 253 to re-create Greece in his own poetry was due not only to the meaner forms of German life, but also to the lack of any tradition which could help the man of genius like himself quickly and easily over the first stages of artistic production to the fulfilment of the highest tasks that his genius might set him. Raphael was an example of the genius who was born already on the pinnacle of a great tradition. All the preparatory work had been done for him by the artists of the quattrocento, so that he could devote all his energies to the production of the highest art. So too the masterpieces of Phidias and Lysippus were possible only because earlier artists had made the way straight. With some bitterness Goethe felt that he had been left to blaze his own trail, to make his own mistakes and learn from them, and so had wasted half his life and the best part of his energies in fruitlesSvOr mistaken labours.1 He was determined to do his part at least to start German art in the right way, so that the period of experiment might be as short as possible. “ “The personality of wellknown actors is obliterated. At once appears, for you to look at, a multitude of strangers, as the poet wills, to give you varied delight.” 3 Cf. WA. 40, p. 74. 2 HELENA 255 whose label they bear. It was a new technique for Goethe.1 Never before, certainly not in Hermann und Dorothea, where the subsidiary characters also have no names, had he withdrawn so completely into a world of abstractions. He probably thought that he was doing as the Greek tragedians had done. Schiller at least regarded the characters of Greek tragedy as “ideal masks”: Odysseus in the Ajax and Philoctetes was the “ideal of deceitful shrewdness”; Creon in the Oedipus and Antigone was “simply cold regal dignity”; and Schiller added: “Such characters are obviously a great advantage in tragedy. They expound themselves more quickly, and their features are firmer and more permanent. Truth does not suffer through this type of character, since they are no more mere logical beings than they are mere individuals.”2 It is hard for us to recognise even a reflexion of the vigorous figures of Greek tragedy in the bloodless shadows of the Naturliche Tochter. The influence of Greek art is almost more obvious. The second, third and fourth scenes of the third act3 contain an ideal representation of paternal grief, constructed and executed in accordance with the principles which Goethe saw embodied in the Laocoon group. Like Laocoon the duke is stripped of all unessential attributes such as nationality or rank; he is the man, the father, suddenly bereft of a beloved child. This “profoundnaiv” idea is composed of a nunjber of aspects, all of which are given expression in such a way as to illustrate and emphasise the basic idea. This was the manner of conception and execution which Goethe admired in Greek works of art such as the Laocoon and the frescoes of Polygnotus,4 and which he recommended so urgently and with so little success to the artists of his day. Goethe’s picture of the father’s grief cannot move us emotionally, since we can feel no sympathy for so unreal a character as the duke; but it is undoubtedly a powerful manifestation of poetic art. The Naturliche Tochter, which was finished in March 1803, marks a stage in Goethe’s retreat from pure Hellenism.5 After the Achilleis and the Helena fragment, he never again attempted 1 Cf. Graf, Drama, 111, p. 550. Letter to Goethe, 4 April 1797 (Jonas, v, p. 168). 3 4 WA. 10, pp. 307-25. See above, pp. 218 foil. 5 Cf. WA. 40, pp. 79-80. 2 256 FULL CLASSICISM: 1788-1805 to reproduce the form of Greek epic and drama (except in his continuation of the Helena in 1825). In the Naturliche Tochter form and material are modern; only the idealising technique is borrowed from the Greeks. In Hermann und Dorothea too Goethe had cleansed the modern world of its insignificance and raised it out of its meanness by contact with the Greek spirit. But there the purifying agent had been a vision, a spiritual experience of the greatest intensity, an ideal of life. The idealisation of the material in the Naturliche Tochter sprang only from an intellectual belief in the efficacy of a certain artistic technique which Goethe held the Greeks had evolved. Hellenism had ceased to be a vital urge from below; it was in danger of becoming a barren intellectual ideal. In February 1804, Goethe turned seriously to the publication of a work, which he had long planned as a worthy monument to the great founder of German classicism, Winckelmann. 1 The composite essay, which contained hitherto unpublished letters of Winckelmann and contributions from Meyer and Wolf, was published in the summer of 1805 under the title Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert.2 Goethe’s contribution was written between December 1804 and April 1805. In it he stressed Winckelmann’s personality, insisting that its greatness was based on its affinity to the Greek nature. In this way Goethe gave himself the opportunity of making full confession of his Hellenic faith. The Greeks achieved the perfection of humanity by balanced co-ordination of all human faculties and by contentment to live and work and suffer within the world. By achieving this ideal they fulfilled the last and highest objective of the created world. “For to what purpose is all this array of suns and planets and moons, of stars and Milky Ways, of comets and nebulas, of created and creating worlds, if at the last a happy man does not rejoice unwitting in his existence?” 3 Out of this perfection of vigorous life grew the flower art, which gives permanence to the necessarily transient condition of earthly perfection, and reveals in ideal reality the man as god, the god as man.4 The Phidian Zeus was the highest manifestation of this highest function of spirit. 1 3 Cf. W A . 46, p. 391. Ibid. p. 22. 2 4 Ibid. pp. 1-101. Ibid. p. 28. HELENA 257 At the same time as Goethe thus depicted the absolute beauty and value of the Greek existence, he contrasted the modern world with it. No modern could ever achieve that balanced co-ordination of all faculties by which the Greeks had produced their unique achievements.1 The modern man attempts to know and to achieve the infinite and, failing, must resign himself to a limited field of activity.2 He is hopelessly divided within himself,3 the result of his divorce from Nature in his social and religious life. In the matter of knowledge and science the Greek may have been at some disadvantage, since the firm unity of his character made it hard for him to divide his attention sufficiently to advance far in any one branch of technical knowledge; but his case was not as hopeless as that of the modern, who loses himself in an infinity of unconnected sciences and lacks the formative element in his character that might make a whole out of these disjointed parts.4 The pagan characteristics and beliefs that gave the Greek his “indestructible soundness”,5 alike in good fortune and bad, Goethe held to be fundamentally opposed to the Christian view of life.6 So in a last eloquent outburst of admiration and longing Goethe said farewell to his Greek endeavour. The note of resignation runs strongly through the whole essay. He had ceased to struggle. He had failed to make Greece live again; he must be content to look on antiquity as something eternally distant, as something past and gone.7 In those dark late-winter months of 1805, with the ideal that had supported him for twenty years no longer valid, with no new goal to take its place, Goethe’s vitality was at its lowest ebb. He was sick himself, and he was racked by fears for Schiller’s health. “In doloribus pinxit”, he wrote to Schiller, should be the motto for his Winckelmann? The sun of Greece had set, and no new dawn yet glimmered to lighten his darkness. All that he could do was to rear this monument to a dead ideal, and wait till the germs of life began to stir once more in his spirit. 1 3 5 6 8 Ibid. p. 21. Ibid. p. 23. “Eine unverwiistliche Gesundheit.” Ibid. pp. 25-6. 20 April 1805 (WA. iv, 17, p. 273). 2 4 Ibid. p. 22. Ibid. p. 24. 7 Ibid. p. 38. 258 “ “His love for Greek things ran as an undercurrent to his intellectual activities through all the years up to his death. To some aspects of the Greek genius in fact he devoted more attention after 1805 than before. The pre-Socratic philosophers especially contributed many vital conceptions to his thought.1 Their influence may be recognised not only in Goethe’s ideas on the nature of light and other scientific subjects,2 and in such poems as Urworte Orphisch? but in subtler form in certain poems of the Divan* and in Pandora. At times the old passion for Greece welled up and occupied the main channel of his thoughts. So in 1817 and for some years after, he spent long hours of study on the Elgin Marbles, the Aeginetan sculptures and the frieze from Bassae,6 all of which had become generally known at about the same time. Dissatisfied with the small-scale reproductions in published works, he arranged for life-size drawings of two groups from the pediment figures of the Parthenon to be sent from England. They arrived in January 1819; in June a cast of the horse head from the east pediment arrived for Goethe’s order.7 These new discoveries8 brought about no change in Goethe’s views on Greek art; they were rather the confirmation of those conclusions that he had drawn from the Apollo Belvedere, the Zeus of Otricoli, the 1
Cf. C. Bapp, Aus Goethes griechischer Gedankenwelt, Leipzig, 1921. WA. n, 3, pp. 1-4,108-13; 7, pp. 37, 203; and Klassische Walpurgisnacht, WA. 15, 1, pp. 146-76. Cf. JA. xiv, p. 348. 3 WA. 3, 95. Cf. Letters to Knebel, 9 Oct. 1817 (WA. iv, 28, p. 272), and to Boisseree, 16 July 1818 (Ibid. 29, p. 240). 4 Cf. JA. v, pp. xlviii, 335, 383. 5 Cf. Morris, Goethestudien, 1, p. 279. 6 Elgins: WA. iv, 28, pp. 96, 140, 282, 292, 304, 389 foil.; WA. 36, pp. 105, 124, 145. Bassae: WA. iv, 29, pp. 45, 105 foil.; WA. 49, 2, p. 16. Cf. G-J. xix, 11. Aeginetans: WA. iv, 22, p. 320; 28, pp. 282, 390; 29, p. 105; WA. 49, 2, p. 20; 36, pp. 76, 124. 7 WA. iv, 31, p. 180; Letter to August v. Goethe, 14 June 1819. 8 Goethe had previously seen drawings of some of the Parthenon sculptures in Rome in 1787 (see above, p. 169), and in Darmstadt in 1814 (WA. iv, 25, p. 57) he had seen casts of part of the frieze. Cf. also G-J. xix, p. 9. 2
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Ludovisi Juno and all the other remains of ancient art that he had found in Italy. For this very reason the Elgin Marbles were for him of supreme value. He had no desire to go again to Italy; but he would not be surprised to find himself one day on the road to the British Museum. “You would have to share my conception of what these remains mean, in order to see how utterly reasonable the absurdity of such a journey would be…. For after all here alone [in the Elgin Marbles] are law and evangel side by side. Everything else one could, if need were, do without.” 1 He advised every German sculptor to go to England and live there for as long as possible for the purpose of studying the Elgin Marbles.2 It seems he realised that they were worth more than all the statues in Rome together.3 The Elgin Marbles brought about a renaissance in Goethe’s active interest in Greek things. Between 1817 and 1823 he not only finished and published two essays on ancient art, Myrons Kuh and Philostrats Gemdlde,* which he had begun some years before; he also followed closely the controversy between Hermann and Creuzer on Greek mythology; 5 and in 1820 and 1821 he revised and published the digest of the Iliad which he had made for his own use in 1798.6 In connexion with this work he returned with delight to Homer’s world, and revived his long-dormant interest in the Homeric question.7 With obvious relief he came back to a belief in a personal Homer, an arch-editor of genius, and greeted the work of the younger critics who opposed the Wolfian heresy, in these lines: Scharfsinnig habt ihr, wie ihr seid, Von aller Verehrung uns befreit, Und wir bekannten iiberfrei, Dass Ilias nur ein Flickwerk sei. 1 “
“On the other hand any attempt to set Greek things down on a level with the achievements of other cultures was abhorrent to him. When F. Creuzer attempted to prove a common origin for the myths of all Indo-Germanic peoples,2 Goethe did not conceal his displeasure. “When the attempt is made to leave the Hellenic circle of god-in-man and to point to every region of the earth and indicate similarities in word and form, here the frost-giants, there the fire-brahmas, it causes us really too much pain, and we take flight again to Ionia, where loving spring-daemons mate, and bring forth Homer.” 3 Auf ewig hab’ ich sie vertrieben, Vielkopfige Gotter trifft mein Bann, So Wischnu, Cama, Brama, Schiven, Sogar den AfFen Hannemann. Nun soil am Nil ich mich gefdlen, Hundskopfige Gotter heissen gross. O, war’ ich doch aus meinen Hallen Audi Isis und Osiris los.4 This was Goethe’s opinion of the gods of other races. To suggest that Zeus, and Apollo and Pallas, were even distant cousins of these monsters, seemed to him no better than wanton sacrilege. The Greeks were different from all other races. “One has to make allowances for all other arts, to Greek art alone one 1 2
Noten und Abhandlungen zum Divan. Warnung, W A . 7, p. 108. In Briefe uber Homer und Hesiodus, vorzuglich uber die Theogonie, Heidel-
berg, 1818, pp. 38, 55, 93 onwards. 3 WA. iv, 28, p. 267: c£ WA. iv, 31, p. 276; 33, pp. 242-3: “Geht’s nun aber gar noch weiter, und deutet man uns aus dem hellenischen GottMenschenkreise nach alien Regionen der Erde, urn das Ahnliche dort aufzuweisen, in Worten und Bildern, hier die Frost-Riesen, dort die FeuerBrahmen, so wird es uns gar zu weh, und wir fluchten wieder nach Ionien, wo damonische liebende Quellgotter sich begatten und den Homer erzeugen.” 4 WA. iv, 35, p. 237; cf. WA. iv, 25, p. 274: “I have banned them for ever; I am done with many-headed gods—Vishnu, Cama, Brahma, Shiva, even the monkey Hanneman. Now they want me to feel at home on the Nile and call dog-headed gods great. Oh! would that I were rid of Isis and Osiris from my halls.”
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is eternally in debt.”1 So in 1827, while talking with Eckermann about the age of ” Weltliteratur” which was dawning, he said: “However much we value foreign literatures, we must not cling to one in particular and try to take that one as our model. We must not think the Chinese, or the Serbian, or Calderon, or the Nibelungen can be that. If we are in need of a model, we must always go back to the ancient Greeks, in whose works the object of representation is always beautiful humanity (der schone Mensch). Everything else we must look at from a purely historical standpoint, and take in what is good in it as far as may be.” 2 Goethe’s reasons for setting Greek culture in this unique position were the same now as they had been at the height of his Hellenism. In their art and literature the Greeks had expressed Nature’s intentions more perfectly than was commonly the case in the world of phenomena. He cited two horse heads from the Parthenon: “The English, the best judges of horses in the world, are forced to admit that two antique horse heads are more perfect in form than those of any breed extant to-day. These heads date from the best period of Greek art. Our wonder and admiration is not to be explained on the assumption that those artists were working from more perfect individuals than those which exist to-day. The reason is rather that they had, with the progress of time and art, themselves become something, so that they brought an inner greatness of spirit to their observation of Nature.” 3 A French visitor in 1828 reported him as having said: “Celui qui veut faire quelque chose d’ideale, doit avoir amene son developpement interieur a un point tel que, comme les Grecs, il puisse elever la realite mesquine de la nature a la hauteur de son esprit. Le role de l’artiste est de transformer en une realite sans lacunes ce que dans la nature, par suite d’une faiblesse intime, ou de quelque obstacle exterieur, est reste a l’etat d’intention.”4 The other chief reason for the unique value of Greek culture was that for the Greek the object of art and the centre of all spiritual activity had been “der schone Mensch”.5 This was 1 2 3 5
WA. 48, p. 183. Eckermann, 31 Jan. 1827. Cf. WA. 41, 2, p. 233. 4 Eckermann, 20 Oct. 1828. Bied. iv, p. 166; cf. in, p. 24. Bied. m, p. 339; cf. WA. 41, 2, p. 233.
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what gave the Greek tradition its eternal value. Man in any age had only to look back at what the Greeks had been and had created, to see himself as he was in intention and as he might be in fact, with labour and the grace of God. The form of European man especially was akin to the Greek.1 In Goethe’s view European culture could advance only when it based itself on the Greek tradition. This is what he meant when he said: ” W e should still be living in barbarism, if the remains of the ancient world in its different forms were not extant.”* After the Roman Empire, which had continued in the Greek tradition, had been destroyed by barbarians and Christianity, 3 there had come a vast break in the tradition; and European culture had resumed its advance only when the achievements of the ancient world had once again become known and its standards, in part at least, accepted. “


Philosophy & History related to Hellenistic Influenced Art

Philosophy & History related to Hellenistic Influenced Art

First entry below is from,
Information:
Joe Sachs Email: mailto:[email protected]?subject=Your
St. John’s College, Annapolis
Aristotle (384-322 BCE.): Ethics
Standard interpretations of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics usually maintain that Aristotle emphasizes the role of habit in conduct. It is commonly thought that virtues, according to Aristotle, are habits and that the good life is a life of mindless routine. These interpretations of Aristotle’s ethics are the result of imprecise translations from the ancient Greek text. Aristotle uses the word hexis to denote moral virtue. But the word does not merely mean passive habituation. Rather, hexis is an active condition, a state in which something must actively hold itself. Virtue, therefore, manifests itself in action. More explicitly, an action counts as virtuous, according to Aristotle, when one holds oneself in a stable equilibrium of the soul, in order to choose the action knowingly and for its own sake. This stable equilibrium of the soul is what constitutes character. Similarly, Aristotle’s concept of the mean is often misunderstood. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle repeatedly states that virtue is a mean. The mean is a state of clarification and apprehension in the midst of pleasures and pains that allows one to judge what seems most truly pleasant or painful. This active state of the soul is the condition in which all the powers of the soul are at work in concert. Achieving good character is a process of clearing away the obstacles that stand in the way of the full efficacy of the soul. For Aristotle, moral virtue is the only practical road to effective action. What the person of good character loves with right desire and thinks of as an end with right reason must first be perceived as beautiful. Hence, the virtuous person sees truly and judges rightly, since beautiful things appear as they truly are only to a person of good character. It is only in the middle ground between habits of acting and principles of action that the soul can allow right desire and right reason to make their appearance, as the direct and natural response of a free human being to the sight of the beautiful.
Table of Contents (Clicking on the links below will take you to those parts of this article)
1. Habit 2. The Mean 3. Noble 4. References and Further Reading
1. Habit
In many discussions, the word habit is attached to the Ethics as though it were the answer to a multiple-choice question on a philosophy achievement test. Hobbes’ Leviathan? Self-preservation. Descartes’ Meditations? Mind-body problem. Aristotle’s Ethics? Habit. A faculty seminar I attended a few years ago was mired in the opinion that Aristotle thinks the good life is one of mindless routine. More recently, I heard a lecture in which some very good things were said about Aristotle’s discussion of choice, yet the speaker still criticized him for praising habit when so much that is important in life depends on openness and spontaneity. Can it really be that Aristotle thought life is lived best when thinking and choosing are eliminated? On its face this belief makes no sense. It is partly a confusion between an effect and one of its causes. Aristotle says that, for the way our lives turn out, “it makes no small difference to be habituated this way or that way straight from childhood, but an enormous difference, or rather all the difference.” (1103b, 23-5) Is this not the same as saying those lives are nothing but collections of habits? If this is what sticks in your memory, and leads you to that conclusion, then the cure is easy, since habits are not the only effects of habituation, and a thing that makes all the difference is indispensable but not necessarily the only cause of what it produces.
We will work through this thought in a moment, but first we need to notice that another kind of influence may be at work when you recall what Aristotle says about habit, and another kind of medicine may be needed against it. Are you thinking that no matter how we analyze the effects of habituation, we will never get around the fact that Aristotle plainly says that virtues are habits? The reply to that difficulty is that he doesn’t say that at all. He says that moral virtue is a hexis. Hippocrates Apostle, and others, translate hexis as habit, but that is not at all what it means. The trouble, as so often in these matters, is the intrusion of Latin. The Latin habitus is a perfectly good translation of the Greek hexis, but if that detour gets us to habit in English we have lost our way. In fact, a hexis is pretty much the opposite of a habit.
The word hexis becomes an issue in Plato’s Theaetetus. Socrates makes the point that knowledge can never be a mere passive possession, stored in the memory the way birds can be put in cages. The word for that sort of possession, ktÎsis, is contrasted with hexis, the kind of having-and-holding that is never passive but always at work right now. Socrates thus suggests that, whatever knowledge is, it must have the character of a hexis in requiring the effort of concentrating or paying attention. A hexis is an active condition, a state in which something must actively hold itself, and that is what Aristotle says a moral virtue is.
Some translators make Aristotle say that virtue is a disposition, or a settled disposition. This is much better than calling it a habit, but still sounds too passive to capture his meaning. In De Anima, when Aristotle speaks of the effect produced in us by an object of sense perception, he says this is not a disposition (diathesis) but a hexis. (417b, 15-17) His whole account of sensing and knowing depends on this notion that receptivity to what is outside us depends on an active effort to hold ourselves ready. In Book VII of the Physics, Aristotle says much the same thing about the way children start to learn: they are not changed, he says, nor are they trained or even acted upon in any way, but they themselves get straight into an active state when time or adults help them settle down out of their native condition of disorder and distraction. (247b, 17-248a, 6) Curtis Wilson once delivered a lecture here at St. John’s College, in which he asked his audience to imagine what it would be like if we had to teach children to speak by deliberately and explicitly imparting everything they had to do. We somehow set them free to speak, and give them a particular language to do it in, but they–Mr. Wilson called them little geniuses–they do all the work.
Everyone at St. John’s has thought about the kind of learning that does not depend on the authority of the teacher and the memory of the learner. In the Meno it is called recollection; Aristotle says that it is an active knowing that is always already at work in us. In Plato’s image we draw knowledge up out of ourselves; in Aristotle’s metaphor we settle down into knowing. In neither account is it possible for anyone to train us, as Gorgias has habituated Meno into the mannerisms of a knower. Habits can be strong but they never go deep. Authentic knowledge does engage the soul in its depths, and with this sort of knowing Aristotle links virtue. In the passage cited from Book VII of the Physics, he says that, like knowledge, virtues are not imposed on us as alterations of what we are; that would be, he says, like saying we alter a house when we put a roof on it. In the Categories, knowledge and virtue are the two examples he gives of what hexis means (8b, 29); there he says that these active states belong in the general class of dispositions, but are distinguished by being lasting and durable. The word disposition by itself, he reserves for more passive states, easy to remove and change, such as heat, cold, and sickness.
In the Ethics, Aristotle identifies moral virtue as a hexis in Book II, chapter 4. He confirms this identity by reviewing the kinds of things that are in the soul, and eliminating the feelings and impulses to which we are passive and the capacities we have by nature, but he first discovers what sort of thing a virtue is by observing that the goodness is never in the action but only in the doer. This is an enormous claim that pervades the whole of the Ethics, and one that we need to stay attentive to. No action is good or just or courageous because of any quality in itself. Virtue manifests itself in action, Aristotle says, only when one acts while holding oneself in a certain way. This is where the word hexis comes into the account, from pÙs echÙn, the stance in which one holds oneself when acting. The indefinite adverb is immediately explained: an action counts as virtuous when and only when one holds oneself in a stable equilibrium of the soul, in order to choose the action knowingly and for its own sake. I am translating as “in a stable equilibrium” the words bebaiÙs kai ametakinÍtÙs; the first of these adverbs means stably or after having taken a stand, while the second does not mean rigid or immovable, but in a condition from which one can’t be moved all the way over into a different condition. It is not some inflexible adherence to rules or duty or precedent that is conveyed here, but something like a Newton’s wheel weighted below the center, or one of those toys that pops back upright whenever a child knocks it over. This stable equilibrium of the soul is what we mean by having character. It is not the result of what we call conditioning. There is a story told about B. F. Skinner, the psychologist most associated with the idea of behavior modification, that a class of his once trained him to lecture always from one corner of the room, by smiling and nodding whenever he approached it, but frowning and faintly shaking their heads when he moved away from it. That is the way we acquire habits. We slip into them unawares, or let them be imposed on us, or even impose them on ourselves. A person with ever so many habits may still have no character. Habits make for repetitive and predictable behavior, but character gives moral equilibrium to a life. The difference is between a foolish consistency wholly confined to the level of acting, and a reliability in that part of us from which actions have their source. Different as they are, though, character and habit sound to us like things that are linked, and in Greek they differ only by the change of an epsilon to an eta, making Íthos from ethos We are finally back to Aristotle’s claim that character, Íthos, is produced by habit, ethos. It should now be clear though, that the habit cannot be any part of that character, and that we must try to understand how an active condition can arise as a consequence of a passive one, and why that active condition can only be attained if the passive one has come first. So far we have arranged three notions in a series, like rungs of a ladder: at the top are actives states, such as knowledge, the moral virtues, and the combination of virtues that makes up a character; the middle rung, the mere dispositions, we have mentioned only in passing to claim that they are too shallow and changeable to capture the meaning of virtue; the bottom rung is the place of the habits, and includes biting your nails, twisting your hair, saying “like” between every two words, and all such passive and mindless conditions. What we need to notice now is that there is yet another rung of the ladder below the habits.
We all start out life governed by desires and impulses. Unlike the habits, which are passive but lasting conditions, desires and impulses are passive and momentary, but they are very strong. Listen to a child who can’t live without some object of appetite or greed, or who makes you think you are a murderer if you try to leave her alone in a dark room. How can such powerful influences be overcome? To expect a child to let go of the desire or fear that grips her may seem as hopeless as Aristotle’s example of training a stone to fall upward, were it not for the fact that we all know that we have somehow, for the most part, broken the power of these tyrannical feelings. We don’t expel them altogether, but we do get the upper hand; an adult who has temper tantrums like those of a two-year old has to live in an institution, and not in the adult world. But the impulses and desires don’t weaken; it is rather the case that we get stronger.
Aristotle doesn’t go into much detail about how this happens, except to say that we get the virtues by working at them: in the give-and-take with other people, some become just, others unjust; by acting in the face of frightening things and being habituated to be fearful or confident, some become brave and others cowardly; and some become moderate and gentle, others spoiled and bad-tempered, by turning around from one thing and toward another in the midst of desires and passions. (1103 b, 1422) He sums this up by saying that when we are at-work in a certain way, an active state results. This innocent sentence seems to me to be one of the lynch-pins that hold together the Ethics, the spot that marks the transition from the language of habit to the language appropriate to character. If you read the sentence in Greek, and have some experience of Aristotle’s other writings, you will see how loaded it is, since it says that a hexis depends upon an energeia. The latter word, that can be translated as being-at-work, cannot mean mere behavior, however repetitive and constant it may be. It is this idea of being-at-work, which is central to all of Aristotle’s thinking, that makes intelligible the transition out of childhood and into the moral stature that comes with character and virtue. (See Aristotle on Motion and its Place in Nature for as discussion energeia. -ed.)
The moral life can be confused with the habits approved by some society and imposed on its young. We at St. John’s College still stand up at the beginning and end of Friday-night lectures because Stringfellow Barr — one of the founders of the current curriculum — always stood when anyone entered or left a room. What he considered good breeding is for us mere habit; that becomes obvious when some student who stood up at the beginning of a lecture occasionally gets bored and leaves in the middle of it. In such a case the politeness was just for show, and the rudeness is the truth. Why isn’t all habituation of the young of this sort? When a parent makes a child repeatedly refrain from some desired thing, or remain in some frightening situation, the child is beginning to act as a moderate or brave person would act, but what is really going on within the child? I used to think that it must be the parent’s approval that was becoming stronger than the child’s own impulse, but I was persuaded by others in a study group that this alone would be of no lasting value, and would contribute nothing to the formation of an active state of character. What seems more likely is that parental training is needed only for its negative effect, as a way of neutralizing the irrational force of impulses and desires.
We all arrive on the scene already habituated, in the habit, that is, of yielding to impulses and desires, of instantly slackening the tension of pain or fear or unfulfilled desire in any way open to us, and all this has become automatic in us before thinking and choosing are available to us at all. This is a description of what is called human nature, though in fact it precedes our access to our true natural state, and blocks that access. This is why Aristotle says that “the virtues come about in us neither by nature nor apart from nature” (1103a, 24-5). What we call human nature, and some philosophers call the state of nature, is both natural and unnatural; it is the passive part of our natures, passively reinforced by habit. Virtue has the aspect of a second nature, because it cannot develop first, nor by a continuous process out of our first condition. But it is only in the moral virtues that we possess our primary nature, that in which all our capacities can have their full development. The sign of what is natural, for Aristotle, is pleasure, but we have to know how to read the signs. Things pleasant by nature have no opposite pain and no excess, because they set us free to act simply as what we are (1154b, 15-21), and it is in this sense that Aristotle calls the life of virtue pleasant in its own right, in itself (1099a, 6-7, 16-17). A mere habit of acting contrary to our inclinations cannot be a virtue, by the infallible sign that we don’t like it.
Our first or childish nature is never eradicated, though, and this is why Aristotle says that our nature is not simple, but also has in it something different that makes our happiness assailable from within, and makes us love change even when it is for the worse. (1154b, 21-32) But our souls are brought nearest to harmony and into the most durable pleasures only by the moral virtues. And the road to these virtues is nothing fancy, but is simply what all parents begin to do who withhold some desired thing from a child, or prevent it from running away from every irrational source of fear. They make the child act, without virtue, as though it had virtue. It is what Hamlet describes to his mother, during a time that is out of joint, when a son must try to train his parent (III, Ìv,181-9):
Assume a virtue if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat Of habits evil, is angel yet in this, That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock or livery, That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight, And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence; the next more easy; For use almost can change the stamp of nature…
Hamlet is talking to a middle-aged woman about lust, but the pattern applies just as well to five-year-olds and candy. We are in a position to see that it is not the stamp of nature that needs to be changed but the earliest stamp of habit. We can drop Hamlet’s “almost” and rid his last quoted line of all paradox by seeing that the reason we need habit is to change the stamp of habit. A habit of yielding to impulse can be counteracted by an equal and opposite habit. This second habit is no virtue, but only a mindless inhibition, an automatic repressing of all impulses. Nor do the two opposite habits together produce virtue, but rather a state of neutrality. Something must step into the role previously played by habit, and Aristotle’s use of the word energeia suggests that this happens on its own, with no need for anything new to be imposed. Habituation thus does not stifle nature, but rather lets nature make its appearance. The description from Book VII of the Physics of the way children begin to learn applies equally well to the way human character begins to be formed: we settle down, out of the turmoil of childishness, into what we are by nature.
We noticed earlier that habituation is not the end but the beginning of the progress toward virtue. The order of states of the soul given by Aristotle went from habit to being-at-work to the hexis or active state that can give the soul moral stature. If the human soul had no being-at-work, no inherent and indelible activity, there could be no such moral stature, but only customs. But early on, when first trying to give content to the idea of happiness, Aristotle asks if it would make sense to think that a carpenter or shoemaker has work to do, but a human being as such is inert. His reply, of course, is that nature has given us work to do, in default of which we are necessarily unhappy, and that work is to put into action the power of reason. (1097b, 24-1098a, 4) Note please that he does not say that everyone must be a philosopher, nor even that human life is constituted by the activity of reason, but that our work is to bring the power of logos forward into action. Later, Aristotle makes explicit that the irrational impulses are no less human than reasoning is. (1111 b, 1-2) His point is that, as human beings, our desires need not be mindless and random, but can be transformed by thinking into choices, that is desires informed by deliberation. (1113a, 11) The characteristic human way of being-at-work is the threefold activity of seeing an end, thinking about means to it, and choosing an action. Responsible human action depends upon the combining of all the powers of the soul: perception, imagination, reasoning, and desiring. These are all things that are at work in us all the time. Good parental training does not produce them, or mold them, or alter them, but sets them free to be effective in action. This is the way in which, according to Aristotle, despite the contributions of parents, society, and nature, we are the co-authors of the active states of our own souls. (1114b, 23-4)
Back to Table of Contents
2. The Mean
Now this discussion has shown that habit does make all the difference to our lives without being the only thing shaping those lives and without being the final form they take. The same discussion also points to a way to make some sense of one of the things that has always puzzled me most in the Ethics, the insistence that moral virtue is always in its own nature a mean condition. Quantitative relations are so far from any serious human situation that they would seem to be present only incidentally or metaphorically, but Aristotle says that “by its thinghood and by the account that unfolds what it is for it to be, virtue is a mean.” (1107a, 7-8) This invites such hopeless shallowness as in the following sentences that I quote from a recent article in a journal called Ancient Philosophy (Vol. 8, pp. 101-4): “To illustrate …0 marks the mean (e.g. Courage); …Cowardice is -3 while Rashness is 3…In our number language…’Always try to lower the absolute value of your vice.’ ” This scholar thinks achieving courage is like tuning in a radio station on an analog dial. Those who do not sink this low might think instead that Aristotle is praising a kind of mediocrity, like that found in those who used to go to college to get gentlemen’s C’s. But what sort of courage could be found in these timid souls, whose only aim in life is to blend so well into their social surroundings that virtue can never be chosen in preference to a fashionable vice? Aristotle points out twice that every moral virtue is an extreme (1107a, 8-9, 22-4), but he keeps that observation secondary to an over-riding sense in which it is a mean. Could there be anything at all to the notion that we hone in on a virtue from two sides? There is a wonderful image of this sort of thing in the novel Nop’s Trials by Donald McCaig. The protagonist is not a human being, but a border collie named Nop. The author describes the way the dog has to find the balance point, the exact distance behind a herd of sheep from which he can drive the whole herd forward in a coherent mass. When the dog is too close, the sheep panic and run off in all directions; when he is too far back, the sheep ignore him, and turn in all directions to graze. While in motion, a good working dog keeps adjusting his pace to maintain the exact mean position that keeps the sheep stepping lively in the direction he determines. Now working border collies are brave, tireless, and determined. They have been documented as running more than a hundred miles in a day, and they love their work. There is no question that they display virtue, but it is not human virtue and not even of the same form. Some human activities do require the long sustained tension a sheep dog is always holding on to, an active state stretched to the limit, constantly and anxiously kept in balance. Running on a tightrope might capture the same flavor. But constantly maintained anxiety is not the kind of stable equilibrium Aristotle attributes to the virtuous human soul.
I think we may have stumbled on the way that human virtue is a mean when we found that habits were necessary in order to counteract other habits. This does accord with the things Aristotle says about straightening warped boards, aiming away from the worse extreme, and being on guard against the seductions of pleasure. (1109a, 30- b9) The habit of abstinence from bodily pleasure is at the opposite extreme from the childish habit of yielding to every immediate desire. Alone, either of them is a vice, according to Aristotle. The glutton, the drunkard, the person enslaved to every sexual impulse obviously cannot ever be happy, but the opposite extremes, which Aristotle groups together as a kind of numbness or denial of the senses (1107b, 8), miss the proper relation to bodily pleasure on the other side. It may seem that temperance in relation to food, say, depends merely on determining how many ounces of chocolate mousse to eat. Aristotle’s example of Milo the wrestler, who needs more food than the rest of us do to sustain him, seems to say this, but I think that misses the point. The example is given only to show that there is no single action that can be prescribed as right for every person and every circumstance, and it is not strictly analogous even to temperance with respect to food. What is at stake is not a correct quantity of food but a right relation to the pleasure that comes from eating.
Suppose you have carefully saved a bowl of chocolate mousse all day for your mid-evening snack, and just as you are ready to treat yourself, a friend arrives unexpectedly to visit. If you are a glutton, you might hide the mousse until the friend leaves, or gobble it down before you open the door. If you have the opposite vice, and have puritanically suppressed in yourself all indulgence in the pleasures of food, you probably won’t have chocolate mousse or any other treat to offer your visitor. If the state of your soul is in the mean in these matters, you are neither enslaved to nor shut out from the pleasure of eating treats, and can enhance the visit of a friend by sharing them. What you are sharing is incidentally the 6 ounces of chocolate mousse; the point is that you are sharing the pleasure, which is not found on any scale of measurement. If the pleasures of the body master you, or if you have broken their power only by rooting them out, you have missed out on the natural role that such pleasures can play in life. In the mean between those two states, you are free to notice possibilities that serve good ends, and to act on them. It is worth repeating that the mean is not the 3 ounces of mousse on which you settled, since if two friends had come to visit you would have been willing to eat 2 ounces. That would not have been a division of the food but a multiplication of the pleasure. What is enlightening about the example is how readily and how nearly universally we all see that sharing the treat is the right thing to do. This is a matter of immediate perception, but it is perception of a special kind, not that of any one of the five senses, Aristotle says, but the sort by which we perceive that a triangle is the last kind of figure into which a polygon can be divided. (1142a, 28-30) This is thoughtful and imaginative perceiving, but it has to be perceived. The childish sort of habit clouds our sight, but the liberating counter-habit clears that sight. This is why Aristotle says that the person of moral stature, the spoudaios, is the one to whom things appear as they truly are. (1113a, 30-1) Once the earliest habits are neutralized, our desires are disentangled from the pressure for immediate gratification, we are calm enough to think, and most important, we can see what is in front of us in all its possibility. The mean state here is not a point on a dial that we need to fiddle up and down; it is a clearing in the midst of pleasures and pains that lets us judge what seems most truly pleasant and painful.
Achieving temperance toward bodily pleasures is, by this account, finding a mean, but it is not a simple question of adjusting a single varying condition toward the more or the less. The person who is always fighting the same battle, always struggling like the sheep dog to maintain the balance point between too much and too little indulgence, does not, according to Aristotle, have the virtue of temperance, but is at best self restrained or continent. In that case, the reasoning part of the soul is keeping the impulses reined in. But those impulses can slip the reins and go their own way, as parts of the body do in people with certain disorders of the nerves. (1102b, 14-22) Control in self-restrained people is an anxious, unstable equilibrium that will lapse whenever vigilance is relaxed. It is the old story of the conflict between the head and the emotions, never resolved but subject to truces. A soul with separate, self-contained rational and irrational parts could never become one undivided human being, since the parties would always believe they had divergent interests, and could at best compromise. The virtuous soul, on the contrary, blends all its parts in the act of choice. This, I think, is the best way to understand the active state of the soul that constitutes moral virtue and forms character. It is the condition in which all the powers of the soul are at work together, making it possible for action to engage the whole human being. The work of achieving character is a process of clearing away the obstacles that stand in the way of the full efficacy of the soul. Someone who is partial to food or drink, or to running away from trouble or to looking for trouble, is a partial human being. Let the whole power of the soul have its influence, and the choices that result will have the characteristic look that we call courage or temperance or simply virtue. Now this adjective “characteristic” comes from the Greek word charactÍr, which means the distinctive mark scratched or stamped on anything, and which to my knowledge is never used in the Nicomachean Ethics. In the sense of character of which we are speaking, the word for which is Íthos, we see an outline of the human form itself. A person of character is someone you can count on, because there is a human nature in a deeper sense than that which refers to our early state of weakness. Someone with character has taken a stand in that fully mature nature, and cannot be moved all the way out of it.
But there is also such a thing as bad character, and this is what Aristotle means by vice, as distinct from bad habits or weakness. It is possible for someone with full responsibility and the free use of intellect to choose always to yield to bodily pleasure or to greed. Virtue is a mean, first because it can only emerge out of the stand-off between opposite habits, but second because it chooses to take its stand not in either of those habits but between them. In this middle region, thinking does come into play, but it is not correct to say that virtue takes its stand in principle; Aristotle makes clear that vice is a principled choice that following some extreme path toward or away from pleasure is right. (1146b, 22-3) Principles are wonderful things, but there are too many of them, and exclusive adherence to any one of them is always a vice.
In our earlier example, the true glutton would be someone who does not just have a bad habit of always indulging the desire for food, but someone who has chosen on principle that one ought always to yield to it. In Plato’s Gorgias, Callicles argues just that, about food, drink, and sex. He is serious, even though he is young and still open to argument. But the only principled alternative he can conceive is the denial of the body, and the choice of a life fit only for stones or corpses. (492E) This is the way most attempts to be serious about right action go astray. What, for example, is the virtue of a seminar leader? Is it to ask appropriate questions but never state an opinion? Or is it to offer everything one has learned on the subject of discussion? What principle should rule?–that all learning must come from the learners, or that without prior instruction no useful learning can take place? Is there a hybrid principle? Or should one try to find the mid-way point between the opposite principles? Or is the virtue some third kind of thing altogether?
Just as habits of indulgence always stand opposed to habits of abstinence, so too does every principle of action have its opposite principle. If good habituation ensures that we are not swept away by our strongest impulses, and the exercise of intelligence ensures that we will see two worthy sides to every question about action, what governs the choice of the mean? Aristotle gives this answer: “such things are among particulars, and the judgment is in the act of sense-perception.” (1109b, 23-4) But this is the calmly energetic, thought-laden perception to which we referred earlier. The origin of virtuous action is neither intellect nor appetite, but is variously described as intellect through-and-through infused with appetite, or appetite wholly infused with thinking, or appetite and reason joined for the sake of something; this unitary source is called by Aristotle simply anthropos. (1139a, 34, b, S-7) But our thinking must contribute right reason (ho orthos logos) and our appetites must contribute right desire (hÍ orthÍ orexis) if the action is to have moral stature. (1114b, 29, 1139a, 24-6, 31-2) What makes them right can only be the something for the sake of which they unite, and this is what is said to be accessible only to sense perception. This brings us to the third word we need to think about. Back to Table of Contents
3. Noble
Aristotle says plainly and repeatedly what it is that moral virtue is for the sake of, but the translators are afraid to give it to you straight. Most of them say it is the noble. One of them says it is the fine. If these answers went past you without even registering, that is probably because they make so little sense. To us, the word noble probably connotes some sort of high-minded naivetÈ, something hopelessly impractical. But Aristotle considers moral virtue the only practical road to effective action. The word fine is of the same sort but worse, suggesting some flimsy artistic soul who couldn’t endure rough treatment, while Aristotle describes moral virtue as the most stable and durable condition in which we can meet all obstacles. The word the translators are afraid of is to kalon, the beautiful. Aristotle singles out as the distinguishing mark of courage, for example, that it is always “for the sake of the beautiful, for this is the end of virtue.” (111 S b, 12-13) Of magnificence, or large-scale philanthropy, he says it is “for the sake of the beautiful, for this is common to the virtues.” (1122 b, 78) What the person of good character loves with right desire and thinks of as an end with right reason must first be perceived as beautiful.
The Loeb translator explains why he does not use the word beautiful in the Nicomachean Ethics. He tells us to kalon has two different uses, and refers both to “(1) bodies well shaped and works of art …well made, and (2) actions well done.” (p. 6) But we have already noticed that Aristotle says the judgment of what is morally right belongs to sense-perception. And he explicitly compares the well made work of art to an act that springs from moral virtue. Of the former, people say that it is not possible add anything to it or take anything from it, and Aristotle says that virtue differs from art in that respect only in being more precise and better. (1106b, 10-15) An action is right in the same way a painting might get everything just right. Antigone contemplates in her imagination the act of burying her brother, and says “it would be a beautiful thing to die doing this.” (Antigone, line 72) This is called courage. Neoptolemus stops Philoctetes from killing Odysseus with the bow he has just returned, and says “neither for me nor for you is this a beautiful thing.” (Philoctetes, line 1304) This is a recognition that the rightness of returning the bow would be spoiled if it were used for revenge. This is not some special usage of the Greek language, but one that speaks to us directly, if the translators let it. And it is not a kind of language that belongs only to poetic tragedy, since the tragedians find their subjects by recognizing human virtue in circumstances that are most hostile to it.
In the most ordinary circumstances, any mother might say to a misbehaving child, in plain English, “don’t be so ugly.” And any of us, parent, friend, or grudging enemy, might on occasion say to someone else, “that was a beautiful thing you did.” Is it by some wild coincidence that twentieth-century English and fourth-century BC Greek link the same pair of uses under one word? Aristotle is always alert to the natural way that important words have more than one meaning. The inquiry in his Metaphysics is built around the progressive narrowing of the word being until its primary meaning is discovered. In the Physics the various senses of motion and change are played on like the keyboard of a piano, and serve to uncover the double source of natural activity. The inquiry into ethics is not built in this fashion; Aristotle asks about the way the various meanings of the good are organized, but he immediately drops the question, as being more at home in another sort of philosophic inquiry. (1096b, 26-32) It is widely claimed that Aristotle says there is no good itself, or any other form at all of the sort spoken of in Plato’s dialogues. This is a misreading of any text of Aristotle to which it is referred. Here in the study of ethics it is a failure to see that the idea of the good is not rejected simply, but only held off as a question that does not arise as first for us. Aristotle praises Plato for understanding that philosophy does not argue from first principles but toward them. (1095a, 31-3) But while Aristotle does not make the meanings of the good an explicit theme that shapes his inquiry, he nevertheless does plainly lay out its three highest senses, and does narrow down the three into two and indirectly into one. He tells us there are three kinds of good toward which our choices look, the pleasant, the beautiful, and the beneficial or advantageous. (1104b, 31-2) The last of these is clearly subordinate to the other two, and when the same issue comes up next, it has dropped out of the list. The goods sought for their own sake are said to be of only two kinds, the pleasant and the beautiful. (1110b, 9-12) That the beautiful is the primary sense of the good is less obvious, both because the pleasant is itself resolved into a variety of senses, and because a whole side of virtue that we are not considering in this lecture aims at the true, but we can sketch out some ways in which the beautiful emerges as the end of human action. Aristotle’s first description of moral virtue required that the one acting choose an action knowingly, out of a stable equilibrium of the soul, and for its own sake. The knowing in question turned out to be perceiving things as they are, as a result of the habituation that clears our sight. The stability turned out to come from the active condition of all the powers of the soul, in the mean position opened up by that same habituation, since it neutralized an earlier, opposite, and passive habituation to self-indulgence. In the accounts of the particular moral virtues, an action’s being chosen for its own sake is again and again specified as meaning chosen for no reason other than that it is beautiful. In Book III, chapter 8, Aristotle refuses to give the name courageous to anyone who acts bravely for the sake of honor, out of shame, from experience that the danger is not as great as it seems, out of spiritedness or anger or the desire for revenge, or from optimism or ignorance. Genuinely courageous action is in no obvious way pleasant, and is not chosen for that reason, but there is according to Aristotle a truer pleasure inherent in it. It doesn’t need pleasure dangled in front of it as an extra added attraction. Lasting and satisfying pleasure never comes to those who seek pleasure, but only to the philokalos, who looks past pleasure to the beautiful. (1099a, 15-17, 13)
In our earlier example of temperance, I think most of us would readily agree that the one who had his eye only the chocolate mousse found less pleasure than the one who saw that it would be a better thing to share it. And Aristotle does say explicitly that the target the temperate person looks to is the beautiful. (1119b, 15-17) But since there are three primary moral virtues, courage, temperance, and justice, it is surprising that in the whole of Book V, which discusses justice, Aristotle never mentions the beautiful. It must somehow be applicable, since he says it is common to all the moral virtues, but in that case it would seem that the account of justice could not be complete if it is not connected to the beautiful. I think this does happen, but in an unexpected way. Justice seems to be not only a moral virtue, but in some pre-eminent way the moral virtue. And Aristotle says that there is a sense of the word in which the one we call just is the person who has all moral virtue, insofar as it affects other people. (1129b, 26-7) In spite of all this, I believe that Aristotle treats justice as something inherently inadequate, a condition of the soul that cannot ever achieve the end at which it aims.
Justice concerns itself with the right distribution of rewards and punishments within a community. This would seem to be the chief aim of the lawmakers, but Aristotle says that they do not take justice as seriously as friendship. They accord friendship a higher moral stature than justice. (1155a, 23-4) It seems to me now that Aristotle does too, and that the discussion of friendship in Books VIII and IX replaces that of justice.
What is the purpose of reward and punishment? I take Aristotle’s answer to be homonoia, the like-mindedness that allows a community to act in concord. For the sake of this end, he says, it is not good enough that people be just, while if they are friends they have no need to be just: (1155a, 24-9) So far, this sounds as though friendship is merely something advantageous for the social or political good, but Aristotle immediately adds that it is also beautiful. The whole account of friendship, you will recall, is structured around the threefold meaning of the good. Friendships are distinguished as being for use, for pleasure, or for love of the friend’s character.
Repeatedly, after raising questions about the highest kind of friendship, Aristotle resolves them by looking to the beautiful: it is a beautiful thing to do favors for someone freely, without expecting a return (1163a, 1, 1168a, 10-13); even in cases of urgent necessity, when there is a choice about whom to benefit, one should first decide whether the scale tips toward the necessary or the beautiful thing (1165a, 4-5 ); to use money to support our parents is always more beautiful than to use it for ourselves (1165a, 22-4); someone who strives to achieve the beautiful in action would never be accused of being selfish (1168b, 25-8). These observations culminate in the claim that, “if all people competed for the beautiful, and strained to do the most beautiful things, everything people need in common, and the greatest good for each in particular, would be achieved …for the person of moral stature will forego money, honor, and all the good things people fight over to achieve the beautiful for himself.” (1169a, 8-11, 20-22) This does not mean that people can do without such things as money and honor, but that the distribution of such things takes care of itself when people take each other seriously and look to something higher.
The description of the role of the beautiful in moral virtue is most explicit in the discussion of courage, where the emphasis is on the great variety of things that resemble courage but fail to achieve it because they are not solely for the sake of the beautiful. That discussion is therefore mostly negative. We can now see that the discussion of justice was also of a negative character, since justice itself resembles the moral virtue called friendship without achieving it, again because it does not govern its action by looking to the beautiful. The discussion of friendship contains the largest collection of positive examples of actions that are beautiful. There is something of a tragic feeling to the account of courage, pointing to the extreme situation of war in which nothing might be left to choose but a beautiful death. But the account of friendship points to the healthy community, in which civil war and other conflicts are driven away by the choice of what is beautiful in life. (1155a, 24-7) By the end of the ninth book, there is no doubt that Aristotle does indeed believe in a primary sense of the good, at least in the human realm, and that the name of this highest good is the beautiful.
And it should be noticed that the beautiful is at work not only in the human realm. In De Anima, Aristotle argues that, while the soul moves itself in the act of choice, the ultimate source of its motion is the practical good toward which it looks, which causes motion while it is itself motionless. (433a, 29-30, b, 11-13) This structure of the motionless first mover is taken up in Book XII of the Metaphysics, where Aristotle argues that the order of the cosmos depends on such a source, which causes motion in the manner of something loved; he calls this source, as one of its names, the beautiful, that which is beautiful not in seeming but in being. (1072a, 26-b, 4) Like Diotima in Plato’s Symposium, Aristotle makes the beautiful the good itself. I want to add just one more word, on the fact that the beautiful in the Ethics is not an object of contemplation simply, but the source of action. In an article on the Poetics I discussed the intimate connection of beauty with the experience of wonder. The sense of wonder seems to me to be the way of seeing which allows things to appear as what they are, since it holds off our tendencies to make things fit into theories or opinions we already hold, or use things for purposes that have nothing to do with them. But this is what Aristotle says repeatedly is the ultimate effect of moral virtue, that the one who has it sees truly and judges rightly, since only to someone of good character do the things that are beautiful appear as they truly are (1113 a, 29-35), that practical wisdom depends on moral virtue to make its aim right (1144a, 7-9), and that the eye of the soul that sees what is beautiful as the end or highest good of action gains its active state only with moral virtue (1144a, 26-33). It is only in the middle ground between habits of acting and between principles of action that the soul can allow right desire and right reason to make their appearance, as the direct and natural response of a free human being to the sight of the beautiful.
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4. References and Further Reading
Aristotle, Metaphysics, Joe Sachs (trans.), Green Lion Press,
1999.Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Joe Sachs (trans.), Focus
Philosophical Library, Pullins Press, 2002.
Aristotle, On the Soul, Joe Sachs (trans.), Green Lion Press, 2001.
Aristotle, Poetics, Joe Sachs (trans.), Focus Philosophical Library,
Pullins Press, 2006.
Aristotle, Physics, Joe Sachs (trans.), Rutgers U. P., 1995.
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Author Information:
Joe Sachs Email: mailto:[email protected]?subject=Your
St. John’s College, Annapolis
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AESTHETICS,
branch of philosophy concerned with the essence and perception of beauty and ugliness. Aesthetics also deals with the question of whether such qualities are objectively present in the things they appear to qualify or whether they exist only in the mind of the individual; hence, whether objects are perceived by a particular mode, the aesthetic mode, or whether instead the objects have, in themselves, special qualities—aesthetic qualities.
Criticism and the psychology of art, although independent disciplines, are related to aesthetics. The psychology of art is concerned with such elements of the arts as human responses to color, sound, line, form, and words and with the ways in which the emotions condition such responses. Criticism confines itself to particular works of art, analyzing their structures, meanings, and problems, comparing them with other works, and evaluating them.
http://www.history.com/encyclopedia.do?articleId=200336
The term aesthetics was introduced in 1753 by the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, but the study of the nature of beauty had been pursued for centuries. In the past it was chiefly a subject for philosophers. Since the 19th century, artists also have contributed their views.
Classical Theories.
The first aesthetic theory of any scope is that of Plato, who believed that reality consists of archetypes, or forms, beyond human sensation, which are the models for all things that exist in human experience. The objects of such experience are examples, or imitations, of those forms. The philosopher tries to reason from the object experienced to the reality it imitates; the artist copies the experienced object, or uses it as a model for the work. Thus, the artist’s work is an imitation of an imitation.
Plato’s thinking had a marked ascetic strain. In his Republic Plato went so far as to banish some types of artists from his ideal society because he thought their work encouraged immorality or portrayed base characters, and that certain musical compositions caused languidness or incited people to immoderate actions. Aristotle also spoke of art as imitation, but not in the Platonic sense. One could imitate “things as they ought to be,” he wrote, and “art partly completes what nature cannot bring to a finish.” The artist separates the form from the matter of some objects of experience, such as the human body or a tree, and imposes that form on another matter, such as canvas or marble. Thus, imitation is not just copying an original model, nor is it devising a symbol for the original; rather, it is a particular representation of an aspect of things, and each work is an imitation of the universal whole.
Aesthetics was as inseparable from morality and politics for Aristotle as for Plato. The former wrote about music in his Politics, maintaining that art affects human character, and hence the social order. Because Aristotle held that happiness is the aim of life, he believed that the major function of art is to provide human satisfaction. In the Poetics, his great work on the principles of drama, Aristotle argued that tragedy so stimulates the emotions of pity and fear, which he considered morbid and unhealthful, that by the end of the play the spectator is purged of them. This catharsis makes the audience psychologically healthier and thus more capable of happiness. Neoclassical drama since the 17th century has been greatly influenced by Aristotle’s Poetics. The works of the French dramatists Jean Baptiste Racine, Pierre Corneille, and Molière, in particular, advocate its doctrine of the three unities: time, place, and action. This concept dominated literary theories up to the 19th century. ‘
Other Early Approaches.
The 3d-century philosopher Plotinus, born in Egypt and trained in philosophy at Alexandria, although a Neoplatonist, gave far more importance to art than did Plato. In Plotinus’s view, art reveals the form of an object more clearly than ordinary experience does, and it raises the soul to contemplation of the universal. According to Plotinus, the highest moments of life are mystical, which is to say that the soul is united, in the world of forms, with the divine, which Plotinus spoke of as “the One.” Aesthetic experience comes closest to mystical experience, for one loses oneself while contemplating the aesthetic object.
Art in the Middle Ages was primarily an expression of religion, with an aesthetic principle based largely on Neoplatonism. During the Renaissance in the 15th and 16th centuries, art became more secular, and its aesthetics were classical rather than religious. The great impetus to aesthetic thought in the modern world occurred in Germany during the 18th century. The German critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, in his Laocoön (1766), argued that art is self-limiting and reaches its apogee only when these limitations are recognized. The German critic and classical archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann maintained that, in accordance with the ancient Greeks, the best art is impersonal, expressing ideal proportion and balance rather than its creator’s individuality. The German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte considered beauty a moral virtue. The artist creates a world in which beauty, as much as truth, is an end, foreshadowing that absolute freedom which is the goal of the human will. For Fichte, art is individual, not social, but it fulfills a great human purpose.
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Plotinus
Plotinus–On the Intellectual Beauty Plotinus defends art against the Platonic charge of being 3x removed from reality (and therefore not only useless, but dangerous). In his view, despite the removal, or distance, of art from the One (the source of ideas/forms) it is “not to be slighted on the ground that they [the artists] create by imitation of natural objects.” Instead, the art objects “give no bare reproduction of the thing seen but go back to the reason-principles from which nature itself derives.” Art may actually improve upon the natural world: “they [art objects] are holders of beauty and add where nature is lacking.” Plotinus compares the function of the One as the ultimate source of all things to the function of the artist as a “maker”: “All that comes to be, work of nature or of craft, some wisdom has made: everywhere a wisdom presides as a making.” The artist is not simply imitating objects which are themselves imitations of the ideas springing from the One. The artist has some concept of the idea available to him: “the artist himself goes back, after all, to that wisdom in nature which is embodied in himself.” This statement sounds much like the biological justification made for the Jungian formulation of psychological archetypes; the natural world is itself a reflection of the ideas of the One–we are part of that world, and therefore we are a reflection of the ideas of the One. The artist need not merely copy a bed made by a craftsman; he has the concept of “bedness” available to him already, not through philosophy, but through his very being, his participation in nature. In Plotinus, ultimate knowledge lies in the soul’s ability to contemplate and grasp the world of forms. OK, here we are still with Plato. Here is the essential difference: Plato sees the world and its products as being separated from the One, mere copies of the ideas of the One. Plotinus–if I am understanding him–sees the world and its products as being part of the One, thus not separated from the One and not to be regarded as valueless distractions from the One. In fact a contemplation of the world’s beauty can be the first step toward an eventual contemplation of, and union with, the One. The philosophy is ultimately one of transcendence which does not reify that which is transcended. Art–including poetry–can be a perfectly legitimate path to transcendence. The Plotinian metaphysic is hierarchical. Matter emanates from the Soul, which in turn emanates from the realm of intellect or nouV (nous); at the source of all of these things is the One. Matter, as it looks away from the realm of soul, tends to become disorganized matter (the Plotinian roots of Teilhard de Chardin’s evolutionary theology are clear to me now); when matter is subject to the direction of soul, it exemplifies harmony and order to the highest degree it is capable of attaining (this is why the physical world is not to be despised in the Plotinian system). To the extent that the soul’s attention is focused on matter, it tends to forget itself and become wrapped up in physical desires; but to the extent that the soul turns its attention to the realm of intellect, it is drawn away from merely physical concerns and becomes absorbed in contemplation. The soul, by looking to itself (and here the point Plotinus makes about the artist looking to the forms already present within himself becomes clear) and discovering its higher nature, is led away from the realm of matter to matter’s source–the One.
Michael Bryson;
1.6. Plotinus (205-270 AD)
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Plotinus was the founder and main figure of the neoplatonic school. His contribution is not to the theory of literature but to aesthetics in general, underlining the cognitive value of art and its metaphysical implications. His theory of art is accordingly found in his work on metaphysics, the Enneads.
Being is an emanation from and a return to the Divine One. There is this world, an appearance as for Plato, and then Reality, above it. Its grades form a kind of Trinity: Soul , Intellect, and Oneness. “The One expresses itself in a triad, the Good, the Intellect and its return to it. Beauty, as Plotinus laboriously defines it, is central to his system, since the more beautiful a thing is, the closer it is to the One” (Adams 105). The principle which produces Beauty is itself beautiful and close to the One. Wisdom itself is the highest form of beauty. And both are eternal, above the changes in Nature. The Gods do not contemplate processes, but being. Nature, change, process, are the manifestation of the One and of the intellectual realm, of Being. The One is too lofty to be thought of in terms of “beauty”. Beauty belongs rather to the second hypostasis, to the Intellectual realm. Intelligence itself is below the level of the One: Proclus, a disciple of Plotinus, will remark that knowing involves a duality, subject and object. The One can only be reached by negation of differences and not knowing. Beauty lies in the imposition of the artist’s mental form on materials with a struggle. Beauty in art comes from form, and not from the materials. This form is present in the mind of the artist, and is transferred (derivatively and not wholly) to the work. So, the works of art “give no base reproduction of the thing seen but go back to the reason-principles from which Nature itself derives.” Art can provide a valuable, though imperfect, spiritual insight. It improves Nature. Beauty in natural objects comes from the same principles: it is present in the idea, rather than in the actual matter. In the realm of literary criticism, these ideas will contribute to the growth of allegorical interpretation: what is important in the literary work, the neoplatonic critics will argue, is not its matter, its literal meaning, but the idea which organizes the whole and gives the work a spiritual meaning (cf. 1.8).
Art is not a wholly rational kind of knowledge, in the sense that it leads beyond human reason. The way to the One is through inner vision, through the mystical shedding of self. The role of the artist is important, but in the last analysis he is only a channel for Beauty to express itself. The principles of beauty are not dependent on him; they are high above the artist and nature: No doubt the vision of the artist may be the quid of the work; it is sufficient explanation of the wisdom exhibited in the arts; but the artist himself goes back, after all, to that wisdom in nature which is embodied in himself; and this is not a wisdom consisting of a manifold detail coordinated into a unity but rather a unity working out into detail.
The role of the artist is not to create, but to reveal or to reconstruct a unity which is already existent in the realm of ideas. This goes against some of the ideas on unity which we have seen (the Stoics’, for instance, saw beauty in the relationship of parts imposed by the artist). In Plotinian aesthetics, “sheer symmetry is not necessarily, as in earlier Greek aesthetics, a sign of beauty” (Adams 105). Plotinus says that each part of the whole must be a whole in itself, just as each part of the Universe mirrors the structure of the whole. Beauty is often linked to brightness . Good, unity and brightness are in eternal association in the human mind. But true beauty is invisible, it no longer needs sensory beauty.
The aesthetic theory expounded by Plotinus opens the way of the “musician” to the realm of ideas, a way which was closed in the original Platonic theory. Art is for the neoplatonists a cognitive, beneficial, and even divine activity. Neoplatonic philosophy was absorbed by the early Fathers of the Church, and therefore the neoplatonic approach to aesthetics and to the interpretation of literary works was an important influence on Christian thought about art and literature all through the Middle Ages. There are neoplatonic revivals in the Renaissance and in the Romantic age. This mystical and ideal conception of art will reappear in some Romantic poets such as Schlegel, Shelley or Keats.
This quote from “Contemplation” says everything to me about what it means to make art: Were one to ask Nature why it produces, it might-if willing-thus reply:”You should never have put the question. Silently, as I am silent and little given to talk, you should have tried to understand…that what comes to be is the object of my silent contemplation: mine is a contemplative nature. The contemplative in me produces the object contemplated much as geometricians draw their figures while contemplating. I do not draw. But, contemplating, I drop within me the lines constitutive of bodily forms. Within me I preserve traces of my source that brought me into being. They too were born of contemplation and without action on their own part gave birth to me.
Section 1
1. It is a principle with us that one who has attained to the vision of the Intellectual Beauty and grasped the beauty of the Authentic Intellect will be able also to come to understand the Father and Transcendent of that Divine Being. It concerns us, then, to try to see and say, for ourselves and as far as such matters may be told, how the Beauty of the divine Intellect and of the Intellectual Kosmos may be revealed to contemplation.
Let us go to the realm of magnitudes: Suppose two blocks of stone lying side by side: one is unpatterned, quite untouched by art; the other has been minutely wrought by the craftsman’s hands into some statue of god or man, a Grace or a Muse, or if a human being, not a portrait but a creation in which the sculptor’s art has concentrated all loveliness.
Now it must be seen that the stone thus brought under the artist’s hand to the beauty of form is beautiful not as stone- for so the crude block would be as pleasant- but in virtue of the form or idea introduced by the art. This form is not in the material; it is in the designer before ever it enters the stone; and the artificer holds it not by his equipment of eyes and hands but by his participation in his art. The beauty, therefore, exists in a far higher state in the art; for it does not come over integrally into the work; that original beauty is not transferred; what comes over is a derivative and a minor: and even that shows itself upon the statue not integrally and with entire realization of intention but only in so far as it has subdued the resistance of the material.
Art, then, creating in the image of its own nature and content, and working by the Idea or Reason-Principle of the beautiful object it is to produce, must itself be beautiful in a far higher and purer degree since it is the seat and source of that beauty, indwelling in the art, which must naturally be more complete than any comeliness of the external. In the degree in which the beauty is diffused by entering into matter, it is so much the weaker than that concentrated in unity; everything that reaches outwards is the less for it, strength less strong, heat less hot, every power less potent, and so beauty less beautiful.
Then again every prime cause must be, within itself, more powerful than its effect can be: the musical does not derive from an unmusical source but from music; and so the art exhibited in the material work derives from an art yet higher.
Still the arts are not to be slighted on the ground that they create by imitation of natural objects; for, to begin with, these natural objects are themselves imitations; then, we must recognize that they give no bare reproduction of the thing seen but go back to the Ideas from which Nature itself derives, and, furthermore, that much of their work is all their own; they are holders of beauty and add where nature is lacking. Thus Pheidias wrought the Zeus upon no model among things of sense but by apprehending what form Zeus must take if he chose to become manifest to sight.
Plotinus was the founder of Neoplatonism, the dominant philosophical movement of the Graeco-Roman world in late antiquity, and the most significant thinker of the movement. He is sometimes described as the last great pagan philosopher. His writings, the so called Enneads, are preserved as whole. While an earnest follower of Plato, he reveals other philosophical influences as well, in particular those of Aristotle and Stoicism. Plotinus developed a metaphysics of intelligible causes of the sensible world and the human soul. The ultimate cause of everything is ‘the One’ or ‘the Good’. It is absolutely simple and cannot be grasped by thought or given any positive determination. The One has as its external act the universal mind or ‘Intellect’. The Intellect’s thoughts are the Platonic Forms, the eternal and unchanging paradigms of which sensible things are imperfect images. This thinking of the forms is Intellect’s internal activity. Its external act is a level of cosmic soul, which produces the sensible realm and gives life to the embodied organisms in it. Soul is thus the lowest intelligible cause that immediately is immediately in contact with the sensible realm. Plotinus, however, insists that the soul retains its intelligible character such as nonspatiality and unchangeability through its dealings with the sensible. Thus he is an ardent soul-body dualist. Human beings stand on the border between the realms: through their bodily life they belong to the sensible, but the human soul has its roots in the intelligible realm. Plotinus sees philosophy as the vehicle of the soul’s return to its intelligible roots. While standing firmly in the tradition of Greek rationalism and being a philosopher of unusual abilities himself, Plotinus shares some of the spirit of the religious salvation movements characteristic of his epoch.
6. Human beings 
A noteworthy feature of Plotinus’ psychology is his use of Aristotelian machinery to defend what is unmistakably Platonic dualism. For instance he uses the Aristotelian distinctions between rational, perceptive and vegetative soul much more than the tripartition of Plato’s Republic (see Psych ). He employs the Aristotelian notions of power (dynamis) and act (energeia), and sense perception is described very much in Aristotelian terms as the reception of the form (eidos) of the object perceived (see Aristotle §18). However, he never slavishly follows Aristotle and the reader should be prepared for some modifications even where Plotinus sounds most Aristotelian.
Plotinus identifies human beings with their higher soul, reason. The soul, being essentially a member of the intelligible realm, is distinct from the body and survives it. It has a counterpart in Intellect which Plotinus sometimes describes as the real human being and real self. As a result of communion with the body and through it with the sensible world, we may also identify ourselves with the body and the sensible. Thus, human beings stand on the border between two worlds, the sensible and the intelligible, and may incline towards and identify themselves with either one. For those who choose the intelligible life, philosophy (dialectic) is the tool of purification and ascent. As noted previously, however, it is possible to ascend beyond the level of philosophy and arrive at a mystical reunion with the source of all, the One. In contrast with the post-Porphyrian Neoplatonists, who maintained theurgy as an alternative, Plotinus stands firmly with classical Greek rationalism in holding that philosophical training and contemplation are the means by which we can ascend to the intelligible realm.
Plotinus’ account of sense perception is an interesting example of how he can be original while relying on tradition. Sense perception is the soul’s recognition of something in the external sensible world. The soul alone only knows intelligibles and not sensibles. If it is to come to know an external physical object it must somehow appropriate that object. On the other hand, action of a lower level on a higher is generally ruled out and a genuine affection of the soul is impossible because the soul is not subject to change. Plotinus proposes as a solution that what is affected from the outside is an ensouled sense organ, not the soul itself. The affection of the sense organ is not the perception itself however, but something like a mere preconceptual sensation. The perception properly speaking belongs to the soul. It is a judgment (krisis) or reception of the form of the external object without its matter. This judgment does not constitute a genuine change in the soul for it is an actualization of a power already present. In formulating this problem Plotinus’ dualism becomes sharper, and in some respects closer to Cartesian dualism, than anything found in Plato or previous ancient thinkers. Plotinus contrasts sense perception as a form of cognition with Intellect’s thought, which is the paradigm and source of all other forms of cognition. Sense perception is in fact a mode of thought but it is obscure. This is because the senses do not grasp the ‘things themselves’, the thoughts on the level of Intellect, but mere images. Since they are images they also fail to reveal the grounds of their being and necessary connections.
As the preceding account may suggest, Plotinus sees the goal of human life in the soul’s liberation from the body and from concerns with the sensible realm and identification with the unchanging intelligible world. This is in outline the doctrine of Plato’s middle dialogues. There are noteworthy elaborations, however. Plato holds that the soul’s ability to know the Forms shows its kinship with them (Phaedo 79c-e). Plotinus agrees and presents a doctrine about the nature of this kinship which is left unclear in Plato. For as we have seen the whole realm of Forms is for Plotinus the thought of Intellect. The human soul has a counterpart in Intellect, a partial mind which in fact is the true self and is that on which the soul depends. This has two interesting consequences for the doctrine of spiritual ascent: (1) the soul’s ascent may be correctly described as the search after oneself and, if successful, as true self-knowledge, as fully becoming what one essentially is; (2) on account of Plotinus’ doctrine about the interconnectedness of Intellect as a whole, gaining this self-knowledge and self-identity would also involve gaining knowledge of the realm of Forms as a whole.
Plotinus’ views on classical Greek ethical topics such as virtues (see Aret) and happiness (see Eudaimonia) are determined by his general position that intellectual life is the true life and proper goal of human beings. He devotes one treatise, I 2(19), to the virtues. The suggestion in Plato’s Theaetetus (176a-b) that the virtues assimilate us with the divine is central to his views on them, and serves as his point of departure. The question arises how to reconcile this doctrine with the doctrine of the four cardinal virtues in the Republic. Plotinus distinguishes between political virtues, purgative virtues and the paradigms of the virtues at the level of Intellect. These form a hierarchy of virtues. The function of the political virtues (the lowest grade) is to give order to the desires. It is not clear, however, how these can be said to assimilate us to god (Intellect), for the divine does not have any desires that must be ordered and hence cannot possess the political virtues. Plotinus’ answer is that although god does not possess the political virtues, there is something in god answering to them and from which they are derived. Furthermore, the similarity that holds between an image and the original is not reciprocal. Thus, the political virtues may be images of something belonging to the divine without the divine possessing the political virtues.
There are two treatises dealing with happiness or wellbeing: I 4(46) and I 5(36). In the former treatise Plotinus rests his own position on Platonic and Aristotelian doctrines, while criticizing the Epicureans and Stoics. He rejects the view that happiness consists at all in pleasure, a sensation of a particular sort: one can be happy without being aware of it. He also rejects the Stoic account of happiness as rational life. His own position is that happiness applies to life as such, not to a certain sort of life. There is a supremely perfect and self-sufficient life, that of the Intellect, upon which every other sort of life depends. Happiness pertains primarily to this perfect life that is in need of no external good. Since all other kinds of life are reflections of this one, all living beings are capable of at least a reflection of happiness according to the kind of life they have. Human beings are capable however of attaining the perfect kind of life, that of Intellect. In the latter treatise Plotinus holds with the Stoics that none of the so-called ‘external evils’ can deprive a happy person of their happiness and that none of the so-called ‘goods’ pertaining to the sensible world are necessary for human happiness (see Stoicism §§15-17). In I 5 he argues that the length of a person’s life is not relevant to happiness. This is because happiness, consisting in a good life, is the life of Intellect and this life is not dispersed in time but is in eternity, which here means outside time.
7. Influence
Plotinus is one of the most influential of ancient philosophers. He shaped the outlook of the later pagan Neoplatonic tradition, including such thinkers as Porphyry and Proclus, and he left clear traces in Christian thinkers such as Gregory of Nyssa (see Patristic philosophy §5), Augustine and Boethius. Since all these were extremely influential in their own right, Plotinus has had great indirect impact. He clearly played a significant role in preparing for medieval philosophical theology. A forged extract from the Enneads was known in the Islamic world as the Theology of Aristotle. The supposed Aristotelian origin of this text helped the fusion of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism that characterizes much of Arabic philosophy. Neoplatonism saw a revival in Europe during the Renaissance. A Latin translation of the Enneads by Marsilio Ficino first appeared in 1492 and gained wide distribution. Plotinus exerted considerable direct influence on many sixteenth-and seventeenth-century intellectuals. Even if the popularity of Neoplatonism and Plotinus receded in the seventeenth century, many individual thinkers since have read and been influenced by Plotinus, for instance Berkeley, Schelling and Bergson.
EYJÓLFUR KJALAR EMILSSONCopyright © 1998, Routledge.;
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Modern Aesthetics
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant was concerned with judgments of taste. Objects are judged beautiful, he proposed, when they satisfy a disinterested desire: one that does not involve personal interests or needs. It follows from this that beautiful objects have no specific purpose and that judgments of beauty are not expressions of mere personal preference but are universal. Although one cannot be certain that others will be satisfied by objects he or she judges to be beautiful, one can at least say that others ought to be satisfied. The basis for one’s response to beauty exists in the structure of one’s mind.
Art should give the same disinterested satisfaction as natural beauty. Paradoxically, art can accomplish one thing nature cannot. It can offer ugliness and beauty in one and the same object. A fine painting of an ugly face is nonetheless beautiful.
According to the 19th-century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, art, religion, and philosophy are the bases of the highest spiritual development. Beauty in nature is everything that the human spirit finds pleasing and congenial to the exercise of spiritual and intellectual freedom. Certain things in nature can be made more congenial and pleasing, and it is these natural objects that are reorganized by art to satisfy aesthetic demands.
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer believed that the forms of the universe, like the eternal Platonic forms, exist beyond the worlds of experience, and that aesthetic satisfaction is achieved by contemplating them for their own sakes, as a means of escaping the painful world of daily experience.
Fichte, Kant, and Hegel are in a direct line of development. Schopenhauer attacked Hegel but was influenced by Kant’s view of disinterested contemplation. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche followed Schopenhauer at first, then disagreed with him. Nietzsche concurred that life is tragic, but thought that this should not preclude acceptance of the tragic with joyous affirmation, the full realization of which is art. Art confronts the terrors of the universe and is therefore only for the strong. Art can transform any experience into beauty, and by so doing transforms its horrors in such a way that they may be contemplated with enjoyment. Although much modern aesthetics is rooted in German thought, German thinking was subject to other Western influences. Lessing, a founder of German romanticism, was affected by the aesthetic writings of the British statesman Edmund Burke.
Aesthetics and Art
Traditional aesthetics in the 18th and 19th centuries was dominated by the concept of art as imitation of nature. Novelists such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens in England and dramatists such as Carlo Goldoni in Italy and Alexandre Dumas fils in France presented realistic accounts of middle-class life. Painters, whether neoclassical, such as J. A. D. Ingres, romantic, such as Eugène Delacroix, or realist, such as Gustave Courbet, rendered their subjects with careful attention to lifelike detail.
In traditional aesthetics it was also frequently assumed that art objects are useful as well as beautiful. Paintings might commemorate historical events or encourage morality. Music might inspire piety or patriotism. Drama, especially in the hands of Dumas and Henrik Ibsen, a Norwegian, might serve to criticize society and so lead to reform.
In the 19th century, however, avant-garde concepts of aesthetics began to challenge traditional views. The change was particularly evident in painting. French impressionists, such as Claude Monet, denounced academic painters for depicting what they thought they should see rather than what they actually saw—that is, surfaces of many colors and wavering forms caused by the distorting play of light and shadow as the sun moves.
In the late 19th century, postimpressionists such as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh were more concerned with the structure of a painting and with expressing their own psyche than with representing objects in the world of nature. In the early 20th century this structural interest was developed further by cubist painters such as Pablo Picasso, and the expressionist concern was reflected in the work of Henri Matisse and other Fauves and by the German expressionists such as E. L. Kirchner. The literary aspects of expressionism can be seen in the plays of August Strindberg, a Swede, and Frank Wedekind, a German.
Closely connected with these relatively nonrepresentational approaches to art was the principle of “art for art’s sake,” which was derived from Kant’s view that art has its own reason for being. The phrase was first used by the French philosopher Victor Cousin in 1818. This doctrine, sometimes called aestheticism, was espoused in England by the critic Walter Pater, by the Pre-Raphaelite painters, and by the expatriate American painter J. A. M. Whistler. In France it was the credo of such symbolist poets as Charles Baudelaire. The “art for art’s sake” principle underlies most of avant-garde Western art of the 20th century.
An article from Funk & Wagnalls® New Encyclopedia. © 2006 World Almanac Education Group. A WRC Media Company. All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted by written agreement, uses of the work inconsistent with U.S. and applicable foreign copyright and related laws are prohibited.
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Dr. Wong Kwok Kui
Nietzsche, Plato and Aristotle on Mimesis
Lingnan University of Hong Kong
Introduction
An attempt to relate Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy to Plato’s and Aristotle’s theory of mimesis would inevitably bring out a series of questions: why Nietzsche? Why mimesis? What do they have to do with each other? For it is a fact that Nietzsche never set out for a confrontation with the Greek idea of mimesis by Plato and Aristotle in his first important work on Greek tragedy – a concept which is supposed to be a foundation of Greek theory of tragedy. Nietzsche has only mentioned mimesis four times in this book, among which only three times refer to Aristotle’s alleged saying that “art is the mimesis of nature”. All in all, he has not engaged in a serious confrontation with this idea, and seems then that any attempt to establish any relation between the two would end in vain.The reason for Nietzsche’s lack of interest in Plato’s and Aristotle’s mimesis theory lies probably in that he want to avoid this idea on purpose in order to strike a new direction in the interpretation of Greek aesthetics. His two art sponsoring deities, Apollo and Dionysus, are by no means “mimetic”, i.e. they are not gods for a “imitation of reality”, but are grounded on principles that must be understood as the opposite of “mundane reality” (Tageswirklichkeit). Nietzsche can even be understood as an opponent of Plato and Aristotle in terms of aesthetics, in that he discovers the “irrational” side of this art form vis-à-vis Plato’s and Aristotle’s “rational” understanding[1]. On the one hand, his aesthetics has placed strong emphasis on art as an “illusion”, which is the reason for Plato’s objection to it. On the other hand, his criticism against Aristotle’s idea of mimesis are sometimes so vehement that one may draw the conclusion that his position was formulated exactly by means of direct opposition to Aristotle’s understanding of tragedy [2]: first, he understands tragedy as a representation of pathos – which is for Aristotle something rather to be purged – rather than plot; second, in his fragments he has also something very critical to say about Aristotle’s catharsis theory [3]. These all drive one to the conclusion that any study in the role of “mimesis” in Nietzsche’s aesthetic thinking could only result in a series of critical remarks which can only serve as the negative starting point for his own thought.However, a closer look into the matter will produce something different. There are three reasons to revise the above conclusion: first, though Nietzsche has not discussed mimesis in The Birth of Tragedy, his numerous fragments and notes which were written when he was preparing for this book show that he had not ignored this subject. He had, for example, thought of a writing project of a criticism of Aristotelian catharsis-theory [4], although it is not clear what role would mimesis play in it. Apart from that, his utterance on the Aristotelian concepts like “unity” [5], “plot” [6], “stagecraft” [7], and above all “catharsis” [8] in Poetics betray a consistent line of thought. One may then speculate which role this confrontation with Aristotle could have played for the genesis of Nietzsche’s thought, and such speculation is not unfounded: Nietzsche was the opinion that tragedy was developed as a representation of pathos of the characters instead of plot, and then developed his thesis that this art was born from music, an aspect of tragedy which is, in his opinion, neglected by Aristotle. On the other hand, given the interesting role played by pathos in Poetics, that catharsis is done by the means of the mimesis of pathos, the relation between Nietzsche, Aristotle, catharsis and mimesis would be an interesting topic. The second reason relates to the interpretations of “mimesis”. The traditional interpretation as “imitation” has undergone radical revision in light of new philological studies. Since the work of Koller [9] and the discussions afterwards, new directions in the understanding of the meaning of this Greek word has been offered, or one may even say the “darker” side of mimesis is discovered which is closely related to Dionysian ecstasy. Philological studies have shown a cultural-historical relation between mimesis and Dionysus which the Nietzsche scholars cannot ignore. Even before Nietzsche, K.O. Müller has shown their interconnection and thus characterises the Aristotelian catharsis as an effect of the Dionysian liberation of human affects, which had probably influenced Nietzsche’s view [10]. Since then there were a series of discussions which had thematised the relation between Dionysus and catharsis, above all Bernays, whom Nietzsche had read. Numerous other studies, from the earliest Cambridge Ritualist School’s claim that the tragedy is a mimetic “re-enactment” of the Dionysian ritual to recent discussions, had tried to establish the religious and aesthetic relation between Dionysus and mimesis. Furthermore, the history and evolution of the word “mimesis’ from pre-Platonic time to Aristotle has shown its inner contradictions, and this contradiction corresponds interestingly enough with the difference between the views Plato, Aristotle and Nietzsche, i.e. for the two Greek philosophers mimesis is more a literary poetry (Lesedichtung) and a copy of the origin where the artist keeps a distance from the imitated object, whereas for Nietzsche it means more a “performative”, dramatic representation where the artist takes aprt personally [11].
Nietzsche on Mimesis and Individuum
Now let us first see what Nietzsche himself said above the subject. In a fragment which had been rarely discussed before, Nietzsche says: “Voraussetzung des mimischen Naturzustandes, daß man außer sich ist: dann wird man leicht auch in ein andres Wesen sich versetzt fühlen. Der Haupunterschied ist, daß der mimische Darsteller für sich spielt: daß er an keinen Zuschauer u. Zuhörer denkt. Der Glaube an die Verwandlung von Mensch u. Thieren ist eine Vorahnung des dramatischen.” [12]
In another fragment Nietzsche makes explicit reference or even criticism to Plato’s view on mimesis: „Es ist Unsinn von einer Vereinigung von Drama Lyrik und Epos im alten Heldenliede zu sprechen. Denn als das Dramatische wird hier genommen das Tragische: während das unterschiedliche Dramatische nur das Mimetische ist. Der erschütternde Ausgang, phobos und eleos haben gar nichts mit dem Drama zu thun: und sind der Tragödie zu eigen, nicht indem sie Drama ist. Jede Geschichte kann sie haben: die musikalische Lyrik aber am meisten. Wenn das langsame aber ruhige Entfalten von Bild um Bild Sache des Epos ist, so steht es als Kunstwerk überhapt höher. Alle Kunst verlangt ein ‘außer sich sein’, eine ekstasis; von hier aus geschieht der Schritt zum Drama, indem wir nicht in uns zurückkehren, sondern in fremdes Sein einkehren, in unserer ekstasis; indem wir uns als Verzauberte geberden. Daher das tiefe Erstaunen beim Anschauen des Dramas: der Boden wankt, der Glaube an die Unlöslichkeit des Individuums.Auch bei der Lyrik sind wir estaunt, unser eigenstes Fühlen wieder zu empfinden, es zurückgeworfen zu bekommen aus anderen Individuen.“ [1]
Similar fragments relating to „mimesis“ can be found somewhere else, though the word „mimesis“ may not be used. There are two points in these two fragments we may pay attention to: first, Nietzsche distinguishes poems into different genres: lyric, epic, drama and tragedy, and the “mimetic” quality of each genre differs, from the lowest for lyric to the highest for tragedy. Similar view is also put forward, as we shall see soon, by Plato. Second, a certain kind of ecstasy or “geting-out-of-oneself” is a prerequisite for such mimesis, and therefore the level of “ecstasy” increases with the change of poetic genre, with drama and tragedy the highest. This is a point of great significance, and should provide a link between Nietzsche’s, Plato’s and Aristotle’s mimesis theory.
Plato on Mimesis and Subjectivity
First we may see a similar view on mimesis and subjectivity in Plato’s Ion, that a certain overcoming of subjectivity of individual is necessary for the rhapsodic performance of heroic epic poetry, which Nietzsche regards, in the fragment cited above, as not yet combined with drama. However, even for this form of performance it is necessary that his nous is no longer with him (Ion 534b5-6) in order for Ion to be able to recite Homer. Without this process such rhapsodic performance is not possible, but with this process, where Ion is deprived of his reason, he may be able to feel what Hector or Hecuba or Priam feels, and therefore has tears in his eyes or his heart trembles when he recites the relevant lines. Suddenly he seems to have access to the inward feelings of each character, and imitates those whom the divine power touches. Here Plato explains Ion’s enthusiasm by comparing it to a magnetic field, where the muses stand in the centre so that they can inspire every poet to write and represent all kinds of characters and figures. Thus, the process of mimesis set off by the muses must not be limited to particular affects, but must have an access to a certain kind of universal emotion. The world seems to be linked up by one stroke. The muse should then have immediate access to a whole wealth of affects, while Ion, who is not a god, must first be robbed of his own reason or nous in order to have access to it. This is also the reason for Plato’s criticism of Ion, who can only recite Homer but has no knowledge about the practical contents of Homer’s epics. Moreover, Ion can only recite and judge Homer’s epic, but has nothing to say about other epic poets. Plato explains this in that though Ion’s reason is robbed, he is only touched by certain muse who is related to Homer.Now in another dialogue a similar opinion is expressed, and more importantly, we can see also the progression of the degree of ecstasy as the poetic genre or form of performance changes from mere narrative to those with more mimetic elements. In the third book of Republic Plato distinguishes two kinds of poem: diegesis and mîmesis. In comparison with diegesis, by which the poet himself narrates and speaks, by mîmesis the poet speaks in a way that as if he were the represented character (Republic 392e1-395c5). Plato takes an example from Iliad, where Chrysus the priest leaves Agamemnon and goes to Apollo. Plato says that if one erases the lines between Chrysus’ speech where Homer himself speaks, the speech would be a “mimesis”, a dramatic representation like tragedy and comedy. However, it is not about “what” or which kind of poems is allowed in the city-state, but “in what way” is the poem represented which should be forbidden (Republic 394c7-8). If the guard, Plato says, may not be engaged in many business but only one, as he would otherwise not able to do well, he should also not be allowed to “mime” many persons, as he cannot represent so many as well than only one (Republic 394e8-9). Thus the same man may not be an actor of tragedy, comedy and rhapsody at the same time. The reason for that is what Plato calls “the splitting up of the human nature” (katakekermatisthai he toû anthropou physis.) (Republic 395b3-6). The permitted form of representation must therefore be a mixture of diegesis and mîmesis, so that when the undesired contents appear (e.g. woman, slaves, evil and mad man), the guard may keep a distance from them by means of objective narration. On the contrary, if noble characters appear they are welcome to be represented by mimesis.The ethically undesired effect, that such ignoble characters could be imitated, is not the only reason why mimesis is not allowed in Plato’s city. The key lies more in the nature of mimesis itself. One asks why Plato fears the effect mimesis more than objective narration. In the next passage Plato mentions the idea of “human nature” (physin) again in relation of the effect of mimesis for the education of the noble quality of man, that the mimesis of their outlook will: “settle down into habits and second nature in the body, the speech, and the thought.” (“eis te kai physin kathistantai kai kata sôma kai phonas kai kata ten dianoian.”) (Republic 395d1-3) Schleiermacher has translated the word “kata” with accusative as “im Verhältnis zu” (in relation to), while Paul Shorey renders it as “second nature”. So Plato seems to mean that mimesis can go through to habit and to human nature, also “in relation to” body and tone and disposition. It seems that no causal relation between human nature and body is expressed here. However, the next passage points to something else: Plato draws the conclusion that the guards may not imitate the behaviour of women like scolding, screaming, sacrilege of gods, or be ill or in love, or the behaviour of evil men or cowards like insulting, mocking or be drunk. It is obvious that Plato worries that the imitation of these behaviours may influence the habits and nature of the guards. The relation between human nature, body and tone must therefore not only be that of “as well as in relation to”. Mimesis or the dramatic representation, which begins with the imitation of the external gestures and movements, has stronger effect to the soul than narration does, for the latter always keeps a distance from its object. The idea of “nature”, physis, means originally “to grow”. It acquires the meaning of human nature in terms of qualities acquired through growth which is not to be transplanted from outside, but, in relation to external behaviour, springs from the inside through “natural” habits. In Book II of Republic, as Plato is talking about the education of the guards, he argues that they should have the appropriate “nature” for the duty, and he compares this with that of a dog, which should be suitable for his job both in physical terms and inwardly: loyal to the master, fierce to the enemy (Republic, 374e4). The union of body and soul, of outward behaviour with inner disposition, is the main subject of Book III, and it is also the reason why the distinction between mimesis and narrative is made.There is therefore a deeper reason why Plato forbids poets in his state, which has much to do with the essence of mimesis: in the mimesis of many characters one forgets his own role or duty in the state, for if a guard always mimes foreign characters, his soul would be split up between these untrue lives. Mimesis, in summary, leads to the splitting up of the soul of the guards. Gadamer has also discussed the question why Plato forbids poets in his earlier essay “Plato und die Dichter”. Imitation, Gadamer says, the action of miming the other, is at the same time an act of self-forgetting. “Nachamung bedeutet also denn eine Selbstentzweiung.” Here is the core of Plato’s critic of poetry: „der Reiz des Nachahmens und die Freude an der Nachahmung sind eine Form der Selbstvergessenheit, die sich am stärksten erfüllt, wo auch das Dargestellte Selbstvergessenheit, das ist Leidenschaft, ist.“ The spoiling of the soul is the essence of mimesis itself. „Die Erlebniswelt der trughaften Nachahmung ist schon selbst das Verderben der Seele. Denn an der vertieften Erkenntnis der ‚inneren Verfassung’ der Seele zeigt sich: die ästhetische Selbstvergessenheit gewährt der Sophistik der Leidenschaft Einlass in das menschliche Herz.“[13] Further, mimesis works, in comparison with enthusiasm in Ion, even deeper in the human soul. Plato fears that the different natures of the guards would be brought out by the imitation of the different people and characters. While in the case of enthusiasm for Ion the receptive ability is suddenly confronted with an abundance of affects, while the real nature remains a distance from it, in the case of mimesis is the human nature, which stays deep in the soul, is, together with the reception, challenged and brought to movement, so that an “entrance in another being” is accomplished. It is no longer that one does not know what one speaks, but that what he does becomes “natural”. This happens in the dramatic art first through the imitation of the physical gestures, which penetrates in the human soul, so that the dramatic action comes forth from the interior “naturally”. In the division of the soul into three parts, i.e. rational, lustful and courageous, Plato acknowledges that the human soul is full of contradictions, that the desire are like horses of a chariot which need to be controlled and steered by reason. These desires in themselves always contradict each other and go to different directions. (Republic, 603d6-7) Dramatic performance has the effect of bringing out these contradictions, for a reasonable man hides in his emotion when he is alone, but will succumb to such different expressions of the multitude of emotions in a public assembly like in performance of a play (Republic 604a-e). It is not the splitting up of the human soul of audience which is feared, but that of the guards, who turns from this controlling reason and opens up his own inner contradiction in the process of mimesis, which is otherwise held up in normal condition. For the man is a multi-facetted being, something which Plato has recognized too well, and he therefore regards every occasion which may break this hold to be dangerous. Therefore, as far as the relevance of Plato’s opinion to Nietzsche is concerned, we may conclude that both regard the splitting up of the soul and the absence of reason or consciousness of individuality as the prerequisite and effect of mimesis.
Nietzsche, Aristotle and Bernays on Catharsis
Nietzsche and Aristotle on mimesis and catharsis can be related through Jacob Bernays, a contemporary of Nietzsche, who had written an interesting commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics, titled Grundzüge der verlorenen Abhandlung des Aristoteles über die Wirkung der Tragödie (Hildesheim 1970), which Nietzsche had borrowed twice from the Basel University library when he was writing The Birth of Tragedy [14], and was influenced by him. He has mentioned Bernays’ name many times in his notes, and had once even considered using Bernays’ argument when he was preparing for The Birth of Tragedy as the book was still at the formulating stage [15]. It is however controversial how big his influence on Nietzsche was [16]. Nevertheless, obvious agreements between the two can still be found. The most conspicuous seems to be their attention on the Dionysian ecstasy as the origin of tragedy. But the question of exactly how they relate to each other has until now been insufficiently discussed [17]. Yet an important hint is provided by Reibnitz, who draws attention to Nietzsche’s understanding of catharsis as process where the contradiction between pain and lust is essential. Nietzsche, Bernays and Yorck von Wartenburg [18] find agreement in that the tragic hedone is a sublime form of orgiastic lust, which is instigated by the acceleration and the “reversal” (Umschlag) of affects, especially from negative to positive ones [19]. Here we may quote a similar saying by Nietzsche in BT, where he interprets the alleged Aristotelian understanding of art as the “mimesis of nature”:
“Yet the peculiar blending of emotions in the heart of the Dionysian reveler – his ambiguity if you will – seems still to hark back (…) to the days when the infliction of pain was experienced as joy while a sense of supreme triumph elicited cries of anguish from the heart. For now in every exuberant joy there is heard an undertone of terror, or else a wistful lament over an irrecoverable loss. It is as though in these Greek festivals a sentimental trait of nature were coming to the fore, as though nature were bemoaning the fact of her fragmentation, her decomposition into separate individuals.” [20]
This process of reversal is accompanied by the destruction of individual, a point of primal significance to our argument. According to Bernays’ interpretation, catharsis is an ecstatic-enthusiastic process by which the oppressive affects in a sick man are instigated, brought out, and then channeled out and relieved. However, in order to bring out these affects in the first place, the patient must first be brought to a certain state of movement in his emotional disposition. Bernays’ reference to Aristotle’s Politics has reconstructed a hint to the lost second part of Poetics, where he had supposedly discussed catharsis in greater detail. In Politics the different effects of music as medium of emotional movement are described. Aristotle calls the kind of melody, which should effect catharsis, the “enthusiastic” (enthousiastike), and is frequently associated with religious rituals. Bernays explains the frequency of such appearance of enthusiastic behaviour, especially in oriental and archaic Greek world, in terms of the psychological constitution of these archaic people, namely the irritability of their emotional capacity because their “self-consciousness” is still not firmly established, so that they could be easily led to a “selbstentäusserten Verzückung“. “Wo aber der Menschgeist noch nicht in sich selber eingewohnt hat, da wird das Ausser-sich-sein für heilig und göttlich gehalten.” [21] Enthusiasm, Bernays implies, is essentially human spirit getting out of itself, in which “das ekstatische Element von dem Zug der Gewalt des Gesanges hingerissen und hervorrast, sich der Lust hingiebt, aller Fugen und Bande des Selbst ledig zu sein, um dann jedoch, nach dem diese Lust gebüsst worden, wieder in Ruhe und Fassung des geregelten Gemütszustandes sich einzuordnen.“ [22]The keyword in the previous passage, where Bernays explains the process of catharsis step by step, is the so-called “ecstatic elements”. It is what Bernays calls “welches wider die Fessel des Bewußtseins anschäumt, ohne sie aus eigener Kraft sprengen zu können; in unablässigen Wühlen würde es die Grundvesten des Gemüths untergraben.“ They are affects which are suppressed in normal condition, but are always ready for outbreak. However, they cannot free themselves from the constraint of self-consciousness by itself, but can only be brought out by external stimulants. They are ecstatic, first because they always drive to go out from the self; second, and more interestingly, because they do not belong to the self. So Bernays says: “Denn alle Arten von Pathos sind wesentlich ekstatisch.” What he means by this can be explained with reference to Aristotle’s Politics: “ho gar peri enias symbainei pathos psychas ischyrôs, toûto en pasais hyparchei, tô de hêtton diapherei kai tô mallon, hôion eleos kai phobos, eti d’ enthousiasmos…“ (Politics 1342a, 4-7) Bernays’ translation reads thus: „Nämlich, der Affekt, welcher in einigen Gemüthern heftig auftritt, ist in allen vorhanden, der Unterschied besteht nur in dem Mehr oder Minder, z.B. Mitleid und Frucht (treten in dem Mitleidigen und Fruchtsamen heftig auf, eingeringerem Masse sind alle Menschen derselben unterworfen), es giebt aber Leute, die häufigen Anfällen dieser Gemüthsbewegung ausgesetzt sind.“ [23] There seems therefore to be a general theory of human disposition where there is a contradiction between affects and self-consciousness[24]. Aristotle himself has not expressly pointed out such a opposition, and it is only Bernays who sharpens it. This opposition finds its ground in the readiness of these affects to break out. The question is: why do they want to break out? Why is the human “self” their constraint? Does it mean that they do not originally belong to the “self”, and is only held up by it for some reason? Bernays talks about the “universality” of affects in the explanation of the ecstatic character of these affects. Those affects, which are present in all human beings and are ready to break out, are “generalisable” (“Verallgemeinerung fähig”), and thus calls them “universal affects”, “durch sie alle wird der Mensch ausser sich gesetzt”. They are originally universal, and therefore may be brought up by dramatic representation of the similar affects. The religious enthusiasm, after its transformation into tragedy, has thus become a cathartically effective purgation of affects. The medium of such instigation, instead of melody, is now pity or eleos. Thus Bernays compares eleos to a gateway to the human disposition which is otherwise closed: „Denn da er [Aristoteles] Selbstgenügen und Selbstgenuss (autarkeia) für die höchste Vollkommenheit ansieht, die allein Gott besitzt, der Mensch immer nur erstrebt, so musste er vor allen andern Affekten in dem Mitleid und der Furcht die zwei weit geöffneten Thore erkennen, durch welche die Aussenwelt auf die menschliche Persönlichkeit eindringt und der unvertilgbare, gegen die ebenmässige Geschlossenheit anstürmende Zug des pathetischen Gemüthselements sich hervorstürzt, um mit gleichempfindenden Menschen zu leiden und vor dem Wirbel der drohend fremden Dinge zu beben.“ [25] This „suffering together“ (Mitleid) with other people guarantees their universality. The human disposition has given a narrower definition of these affects by projecting them to the immediately surrounding space, time and causality situation and are therefore conceived by the consciousness in a narrower perspective, without the person knowing that these affects have universal validity. Eleos restores its universality by means that the person, as in the ecstasy of music, is driven out of himself and all his affects are now liberated from this spatial-temporal projection and submits to the openness of the world as if they had a divine or cosmological significance, and are in turn contemplated by the person himself as something like the schopenhaurian universal Will. “Denn wenn das Mitleid so universalisiert worden, dass der Zuschauer mit dem tragischen Helden zusammenfliesst; so verschwindet vor der Wonne, welche dieses Heraustreten aus dem eigenen Selbst begleitet.“ „Die das Mitleid erregende Person muss, wie scharf auch ihre Individualität ausgeprägt sei, doch der Urform des allgemein menschlichen Charakters nahe genug bleiben.“ [26] Drama brings him closer to this general human character, and, like a mirror held up against the audience, this universality is represented before their eyes and therefore their pity will be brought up, “damit der Zuschauer im Spiegel eines Wesens, das ihm gleichartig ist (ho homoios), sich selber erblicken und das Mitleid, welches er für das dargestellte Leid fühlt, den Reflex der Furcht in sein eignes Innere zurückwerfen könne.”This „sich selber erblicken“, which is the moment when catharsis is effective, is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s „die Augen drehen“ in the Dionysiac revel where one sees the inside of oneself as the universal Will, the “One” [27]. The reversal from fear to lust is a process of “universalisation of affects”, where through the liberation of suppressed affects one also frees himself from the yoke of his subjectivity. Then when one contemplates his own affects inside from a higher plane, one regards them as actually not only his own, but that of the world, it follows then an aesthetic joy where one experiences a kind of aesthetic sublimation. Bernays describes this process of the working together between eleos and phobos in the following manner:
„nur wenn die sachliche Freude durch das persönliche Mitleid vermittelt ist, kann der rein kathartische Vorgang im Gemüthe des Zuschauer so erfolgen, dass, nachdem, im Mitleid das eigene Selbst der ganzen Menschheit erweitert worden, es sich den fruchtbar erhabenen Gesetzen des Alls und ihrer die Menschheit umfassende unbegreiflichn Macht von Angesicht zu Angesicht gegenüberstelle, und sich von demjenigen Art der Furcht durchdringen lasse, welche als ekstatische Schaunder vor dem All zugleich in höchster und ungetrübter Weise hedonisch ist.“ [28]
The transformation from fear and pain to joy is therefore parallel with this extension of one’s own “self” to the “self” of the whole humanity, a splitting up of the individual, the destruction of principium individuationis. For Aristotle and Bernays this is a receiving, healing process, from which a sublimated joy follows. For Nietzsche this destruction of individual and the transformation of personal affects to universal schopenhauerian Will is a creative process, the product of which, namely tragedy, should effect a sublimation of the affects of the audiences who receive it. [1]
His most expressed opposition against Plato’s criticism of poets can be found in his notes: KSA 7, 1 [7], [43], [65].[2] On Aristotle: KSA 7, 3 [53], [66], [65].[3] Fröhliche Wissenschaft, [80] KSA 3, p.435-437; Götzen-Dämmerung [5], KSA 6, p.106. His opinion on Aristotle’s catharsis can be found in Menschliches, All-zu-Menschliches 1, which, interestingly enough, agrees somehow to Plato’s opinion, KSA 2, [212], p.173-174.[4] HKG III, p. 319. (October 1867-April 1868) [5] KSA 7, 1 [53] [66], KSA 7, 3 [1], [53].[6] KSA 7, 3 [2].[7] KSA 7, 3 [66].[8] KSA 7, 1 [65].[9] Koller, H. Mimesis in the Antike: Nachahmung, Darstellung, Ausdruck (Bern, 1954)[10] Müller, K.O. Aeschylos Eumenides: Griechisch und Deutsch, mit erläuternden Abhandlungen über die äussere Darstellung, und über den Inhalt und die Composition dieser Tragödie (Göttingen, 1833), p. 191. For Müller’s influence on Nietzsche, see Barbara von Reibnitz: Ein Kommentar zu Nietzsches Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (Stuttgart, 1992), p.121.[11] In ancient Greece the origin of mimesis, according to Koller, was a kind of cultic orgiac dance. Koller’s thesis is that the Greek word mimesthai came from mîmos, which means “Akteur”, or in English “participant in an event as protagonist”, from which the meaning of “dramatic actor” is derived. “Mimesis” was not limited only to music and dance, but implies the power of expression of mousike in its original unity. The meaning of “imitation” was a later development, a watered-down application of the word in the areas like painting and plastic art or the general meaning of “imitation”, to which this word originally did not belong. “„Zugleich bemüht sich Koller zu zeigen, daß Platon und sein Nachfolger Aristoteles den Begriff in folgenschwerer Weise auf ‘Nachahmung’ im ästhetischen Bereich einengen und daß Platon im zehnten Buch der Politeia den Begriff bewußt in diesem Sinne ‘verfälscht’.“ Notwithstanding whether Koller’s etymological explanation for the origin of mimesis from dance is true or not, the history of the watering-down of meaning is itself interesting. So Koller: „jom‹M Mîmos wäre erst mit dem Dionysos-kult nach Griechenland gekommen. Das dem Griechischen fremde Grundwort kann nicht etymologisiert werden. Fast sämtliche von uns genannten Zeugnisse führen in die Sphäre des bacchantischen, orgiastischen, geheimen Kultes[….] Wir erinnern uns aber, daß Platon offensichtlich die wichtige orgiastische Seite der Mimesis aus erzieherischen Gründen unterschlagen hat.“ Koller (1954), p.48-49. Of course such a suppression has an ethical reason. But the watering-down itself goes hand in hand with the extension of the usage of this word in other areas, and the wider it is used, the less the possibility to relate it with ecstasy. Parallel to this development is the distance between the miming person and the object: not only in the sense of physical distance as in painting, but more importantly that the miming person no longer takes part “personally” in the mimesis, but through a third medium, be it pictures, statues or writing. So has mimesis become “mediate” vis-à-vis the immediacy between the god and the participants in the bacchaic cult.[12] KGA. III 5/1, p.111.[][13]Gadamer, H.G. Gesammelte Werke (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1990) vol. 5, p.205.[14] But later Gründer remarks thus: „ob er sie gelesen hat, weißt niemand.“ p.522 in „Jacob Bernays und der Streit um die Katharsis“ in: Epirrhosis. Festgabe für Carl Schmitt, Vol. 2, ed. Hans Barion and others. (Berlin: 1968) p.495-528.[15] KG III, 3, 71, II 6-9.[16] Gründer and Momigliano agree that there is a serious affinity in the thought between Bernays and Nietzsche. Karlfried Gründer’s “Einleitung” in Bernays Grundzüge, p. VIII-IX. At one point Bernays says even that Nietzsche’s opinion was also “seine [Bernays’] Anschauung, nur stark übertrieben.“ Momigliano, Arnaldo Jacob Bernays. (Amsterdam: 1969), p.17. On the other hand, Silk and Stern however warn against an over-emphasis on Bernays’ influence, pointing out that BT has little to do with catharsis, and that although Nietzsche had borrowed Bernays’ book when he was preparing BT, his thought then had already been firmly formulated. Silk, M.S. & Stern, J.P. Nietzsche on Tragedy (Cambridge: 1981), p. 415, n97.[17]Gründer, for example, has only given an account on the objective condition of both of their writings, without going into the content comparison. [18] Reibnitz refers to Yorck’s writing “Die Katharsis des Aristoteles und der Oedipus Coloneus des Sophokles”, which Nietzsche had borrowed from the Basel University library twice. Here Yorck agrees with Bernays’ thesis that catharsis happens through such reversal, and has even further developed this thesis, arguing that ecstasy is a “sich Verlieren an die Herrschaft der Macht der Natur”, an occasion in which the affects are brought out and overcome, and pain and lust were channeled off.[19] Reibnitz, Barbara von Ein Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsche „Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik“ (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992), p.112.[20] The Birth of Tragedy, tr. F. Golffing (New York: Doubleday, 1956).[21] Bernays, p.43.[22] Bernays, p.44.[23] Bernays, p.7.[24] cf. Gadamer, Truth and Method, tr. J. Weinsheimer & D.G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1989) p.130.[25] Bernays, p.48-49.[26] Bernays, p.49 [27] c.f. Shaftesbury, A.: „A Letter on Enthusiasm“, in: Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times with a Collection of Letters, vol. I. (Basil, 1711) p.1-46. „There is a melancholy which accompanies all enthusiasm.“ „There are certain humours in mankind, which, of necessity, must have vent. The human mind and body are both of them naturally subject to commotions, and as there are strange ferments in the blood, which in many bodies occasion an extraordinary discharge.“ p.10-11. ”To understand ourselves, ‘and know what spirit we are of.’ Afterwards we may judge the spirit in others, consider what their personal merit is, and prove the validity of their testimony by the solidity of their brain. By this means we may prepare ourselves with some antidote against Enthusiasm.“ p.46. „We can never be fit to contemplate any thing above us, when we are in no condition to look into ourselves, and calmly examine the temper of our own mind and passions.“ p.27. [28] Bernays, p.50.
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[Philosophy Forum] Re: N’s S as Educator 2
Nietzsche’s “The Birth of Tragedy”
Skiddle: N started a practice in “The Birth of Tragedy” in standing ready to discard rational [Apolloian] thought when it suited him. Hb3g: I didn’t get that at all from the Birth of Tragedy. Both principles, the Dionysian and the Apollinian, are, in Nietzsche’s opinion, essential to understanding the birth of tragedy and the importance of tragedy for the ancient Greeks. Nowhere in the Birth of Tragedy does Nietzsche promote the idea that the Apollinian principle is to be discarded. To the contrary, what Nietzsche is saying there is that it is to be understood by its essential relation to the powerful Dionysian undercurrent that it transforms and enhances, just as that undercurrent is, in turn, transformed and enhanced by the Apollinian. As for Nietzsche’s antagonism toward rationalism, I think he is putting his finger on what should be obvious. There is more to what makes us human than just our thinking. Our feelings also have an important part to play in shaping who and what we are. We ignore, or despise, the irrational core of our human nature at our own peril. There is a huge difference between being critical of an exclusively rationalistic approach to philosophy and being downright irrational. Yes, Nietzsche’s style is dithyrambic, in works like Zarathustra, and also in the late series of poems that he called Dionysus Dithyrambs. The name he chose for those poems should clue us in on what Nietzsche was consciously intending to express. Niezsche deliberately chose the dithyrambic style of expression. He wasn’t just raving irrationally. He was making the point, rather, that the rational, alone, does not give us a complete understanding of ourselves. He overstated the opposing irrational element, the Dionysian, because he must have felt, as I mentioned in one of my other posts, that it was almost necessary to shout in order to be heard. This essay, along with the other three in the untimely meditations, is, in fact, being untimely on purpose. It is meant to go against the grain. It is consciously polemical, and the polemic here is against the rationalistic confidence and optimism, typical of the Hegelian approach to philosophy, which was prevalent in Germany during Nietzsche’s lifetime. Put this together with the declaration of the second Reich under Kaiser Wilhelm I in 1871. These essays were published by Nietzsche between 1873 and 1875, and he called them untimely for good reasons, considering the political climate of the time and the state of academic philosophy, which, according to the Hegelian program, as it was then being put forth, was supposed to be in service to the state. The essay on the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life directly addresses the notion that philsophy somehow belongs to history, or politics, that philosophy should be looked upon as belonging to the so-called sciences of man. Nietzsche is directly challenging the often stated idea that a philosophy is supposed to be the comprehension of its historical time in metaphysical thought. Quite to the contrary, according to Nietzsche, if the philosophy is timely, if it is historically derived, or demonstrated, it can’t possibly be truly metaphysical. This goes right along with Schopenhauer’s deep disdain of, historicist thinking in philosophy. History is contingency. Philosophy, if it is truly metaphysics, cannot be about contingency; rather, it must be about what is necessary, what is permanent, not what is only temporary, therefore, not what is timely, but, precisely, what is fundamentally quite untimely. Hb3g
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Oswald Spengler. The Decline of the West.
An abridged edition by Helmut Werner. English abridged edition prepared by Arthur Helps from the translation by Charles Francis Atkinson. New York: oxford University Press c199 [1926, 1928, 1932]. xxxx,415, xvix – A partial reprint.
VI Music and Plastic: The Arts of Form [115]ARTS AS THE SYMBOL OF THE HIGHER ORDER Q1
The clearest type of symbolic expression that the world-feeling of higher mankind has found for itself is (if we except the mathematical-scientific domain of presentation and the symbolism of its basic ideas) that of the arts of form…And with these arts we count music…. If an art has boundaries at all–boundaries of its soul-become- form–they are historical and not technical or physiological boundaries. …The choice of art-genus itself is seen to be a means of expression. What the creation of a masterpiece means for an individual arts–the “Night Watch” for Rembrandt or the Meistersinger for Wagner–the creation of a species of art, comprehended as such, means for the life-history of a Culture. it is epochal. Apart from the merest externals, each art is an individual organism without predecessor or successor. Its theory, technique and convention all belong to its character, and contain nothing of eternal or universal validity. When one of these arts is born, when it is spent, whether it dies or is transmuted into another, why this or that art is dominant in or absent from a particular Culture–all these are questions of Form in the highest sense, just as is that other question of why individual painters and musicians unconsciously avoid certain shades and harmonies or, on the contrary, show preferences so marked that authorship-attributions can be based on them.
The importance of these groups of questions has not yet been recognized by theory… A futile up-and-down course was stolidly traced out. Static times were described as “natural pauses,” it was called “decline” when some great art in reality died, and “renaissance” where an eye really free form prepossessions would have seen another art being born in another landscape to express another humanity. And yet it is precisely in this problem of the end, the impressively sudden end, of a great art–the end of the Attic drama in Euripides, of Florentine sculpture with Michaelangelo, of instrumental music n Liszt, Wagner, and Bruckner–that the organic character of these arts is most evident. …
IMPRESSIONISM [152-3]
“Impressionism,” which only came into general use in Manet’s time (and theirin, originally, as a word of contempt like Baroque and Rococo), but very happily summarized the special quality of the Faustian way of art that has evolved from oil-painting. Impression is the inverse of the euclidean world-feeling. It tries to get as far as possible from the language of plastic and as near as possible to that of music. The effect that is made upon us by things that receive and reflect light is made not because the things are there, but as though they “in themselves” are not there. The things are not even bodies, but light-resistances in space, and their illusive density is to be unmasked by the brush-stroke. …
Impressionism is the comprehensive expression of a world-feeling, and it must obviously therefore permeate the whole physiognomy of our “Late” Culture. There is an impresionistic mathematic, which frankly and with intent transcends all optical limitations. It is Analysis, as developed after Newton and Leibniz, and to it belong the visionary images of number- “bodies,” aggregates, and the multi-dimensional geometry. There is again an impressionistic physics which “sees” in lieu of bodies systems of mass-ponts–units that are evidently no more than constant relations between variable efficients. There are impressionistic ethics, tragedy and logic, and even (in Pietism) an impressionistic Christianity. … Is Impressionism (in the current narrow sense) a creation of the nineteenth century? Has painting lived, after all, two centuries more? Is it still existing? But we must not be deceived in the [p 154] character of the new episode, that in the nineteenth century (i.e. beyond the 1800 frontier and in “Civilization”) succeeded in awakening some illusion of a great culture of painting, choosing the word Plein-air to designate its special characteristic. The materialism of a Western cosmopolis blew into the ashes and rekindled this curious brief flicker–a brief flicker of two generations, for with the generation of Manet all was ended again. I have characterized the noble green of Grünewald and Claude and Giorgione as the Catholic space-colour and the transcendent brown of Rembrandt as the colour of the Prostestant world-feeling. On the other hand, Plein-air and its new colour scale stand for irreligion. From the spheres of Beethoven and the stellar expanses of Kant, Impressionism has come down again to the crust of the earth. Its space is cognized, not experienced, seen, not contemplated; there is tenderness in it, but not Destiny. Rousseau’s tragically correct prophecy of a “return to Nature” fulfils it’s self in this dying art–the senile, too, return to Nature day by day. The modern artist is a workman, not a creator…
PERGAMUM AND BAYREUTH: THE END OF ART [155-6]
The last of the Faustian arts died in Tristan. This work is the giant keystone of Western music. Painting achieved nothing like this as a finale. …
The symptom of decline in creative power is the fact that to produce something round and complete the artist now requires to be emancipated from form and proportion. Its most obvious though not its most significant, manifestation is the taste for the gigantic. Here size is not, as in the Gothic and the Pyramid styles, the expression of inward greatness, but the dissimulation of its absence. This swaggering in specious dimensions is common to all nascent Civilizations–we find it in the Zeus altar of Pergamum, the Helios of Chares called the “Colossus of Rhodes,” the architecture of the Roman Imperial Age, the New Empire work in Egypt, and American skyscraper of today. ….
{ I felt a comment here is important. Though I agree with his criticism of the French modern artwork after the 1820s, and most of the rest of Europe, Germany was producing its best artwork from 1770 to 1890. This late German work in Munich, Berlin, Konigsberg, etc…. is in the best examples, of equal merit to much of the earlier French sculpture artwork. I am not thrilled with Impressionism for the very reasons he states. The French work of the 19th. Century is weak, and imitative of the life model / subject, attempting to mimic skin at the expense of basic sculptural content. The introduction of the influence of the photograph represents a polar opposite to the influence of the Antique in content. Working with light not form is common in the 19th. Century, and negates the more mature, and aesthetic results seen in the better earlier European artwork. The Hellenistic sculpture is the high water mark of all the Greek sculpture. This Hellenistic sculpture continues through the 2nd. Century A.D… It was the prevailing myth in the early twentieth century until the late 1980s – to look at the Hellenistic period as a time of decadent art, as well as the Greco Roman art period under Hellenistic influence, maintained, and created by hired Greek sculptors. Superficial style is the influence on this viewpoint presented by Spengler concerning the Greek sculpture. Lack of education in the deeper issues with art, and visual impairment are the merits of membership. To compare the American Sky Scraper of today to the most mature Hellenistic sculpture is a peculiar comparison that seems baseless to me. I happen to find some of his ideas interesting, but his arguments lack a full understanding of the artistic field of painting, drawing, & sculpture he is analyzing. This is a problem in a literary account that has no background in an understanding of the actual content of the art, and is absent of any proper art training. He is parroting the outlook of a certain camp of his period. By accident, they are correct on some of the presumptions, and assume that merits some magical understanding of the whole. – Blogger PBP }
Between Wagner and Manet there is a deep relationship, which is not, indeed obvious to everyone but which Baudelaire with his unerring flair for the decadent detected at once. For the Impressionists, the end and the culmination of art was the conjuring up of a world in space out of strokes and patches of colour, and this was just what Wagner achieved in three bars. A whole world of soul could crowd into these three bars. … Here the contrast of Western music with Greek plastic has reached its maximum. Everything merges in bodiless infinity, no longer even does a linear melody wrestle itself clear of the vague tone-masses that in strange surgings challenge an imaginary space. The motive comes up out of dark terrible deeps. It is flooded for an instant by a flash of hard bright sun. then, suddenly, it is so close upon us that we shrink…
All that Nietzsche says of Wagner is applicable, also, to Manet. Ostensibly a return to the elemental, to Nature, as against contemplation-painting and abstract music, their art really signifies a concession to the barbarism of the Megalopolis, the beginning of dissolution sensibly manifested in a mixture of brutality and refinement. As a step, it is necessarily the last step. An artificial art has no further organic future, it is the mark of the end.
And the bitter conclusion is that it is all irretrievably over with the arts of form of the West. The crisis of the nineteenth century was the death-struggle. Like the Apollinian, the Egyptian and every other, the Faustian art dies of senility, having actualized its inward possibilities and fulfilled its mission within the course of its Culture.
What is practiced as art today–be it music after Wagner or painting after Manet, Cézanne, Leible and Menzel– is impotence and falsehood. One thing is quite certain, that today every single art-school could be shut down without art being affected in the slightest. We can learn all we wish to know about the art-clamour which a megalopolis sets up in order to forget that its art is dead form the Alexandria of the year 200. There, as here in our world-cities, we find a pursuit of illusions of artistic progress, of personal peculiarity, of “the new style,” of “unsuspected possibilities,” theoretical babble, pretentious fashionable artists, weight-lifters with cardboard dumb-bells–the “Literary Man” in the Poet’s place, the unabashed farce of Expressionism, which the art-trade has organized as a “phase of art-history,” thinking and felling and forming as industrial art.
Alexandria, too, had problem-dramatists and box-office artists whom it preferred to Sophocles and painters who invented new tendencies and successfully bluffed their public. The final result is that endless industrious repetition of a stock of fixed forms which we see today in Indian Chinese and Arabian-Persian art. Pictures and fabrics, verses and vessels, furniture, dramas and musical compositions–all is pattern-work. We cease to be able to date anything within centuries, let alone decades, by the language of its ornamentation. So it has been in the Last Act of all Cultures.
THE GREAT STYLE, THE HISTORY OF STYLE AS AN ORGANISM [109- 110]
We are now able to see a great style sequence as an organism. here, as in so many other matters, Goethe was the first to whom vision came In his Winckelmann he says of Velleius Paterculus; “With his standpoint, it was not given to him to see all art as a living thing that must have an inconspicuous beginning a slow growth, a brilliant moment of fulfillment and a gradual declines like very other organic being, though it is presented in a set of individuals.” This sentence contains the entire morphology of art-history. Styles do not follow one another like waves or pulse-beats. It is not the personality or will or brain of the artist that makes the style, but the style that makes the type of the artist. The style, like the Culture, is a prime phenomenon in the strict Goethian sense, be it the style of art or religion or thought, or the style of life itself. it is, as “Nature” is, an ever-new experience of waking man, his alter ego and mirror-image in the world-around. And therefore in the general historical picture of a Culture there can be but one style, the style of the Culture. The error has lain in treating mere style-phases– Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, Rococo, Empire–as if they were styles on the same level as units of quite another order such as the Egyptian, the Chinese (or even a “prehistoric”) style. Gothic and Baroque are simply the youth and age of one and the same vessel of forms, the style of the West as ripening and ripened. Hence Ionic columns can be as completely combined with Doric building forms as late Gothic is with early Baroque in St. Lorenz at Nürnberg, or late Romanesque with the late Baroque in the beautiful upper part of the West choir at Mainz. The test before art-history is to write the comparative biographies of the great styles, all of which as organisms of the same genus possess structurally cognate life-histories.
CITIES AND PEOPLES [250]
What makes the man of the world-cities incapable of living on any but this artificial footing is that the cosmic beat in his being is every decreasing, while the tensions of his waking- consciousness become more and more dangerous.. [252]this then, is the conclusion of the city’s history; growing from primitive barter-centre to Culture-city and at last to world-city, it sacrifices first the blood and soul of its creators to the needs of its majestic evolution, and then the lst flower of that growth to the spirit of civilization–and so, doomed, moves on to final self-destruction. …
But the essence of Alexandrinism and of our Romanticism is something which belongs to all urban men, without distinction. Romanticism marks the beginning of that which Goethe, with his wide vision, called world-literature–the literature of the leading world-city, against which a provincial literature, native to the soil, but negligible, struggles everywhere with difficulty to maintain itself. … Consequently, in all Civilizations the “modern” cities assume a more and more uniform type…
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Intellectual Pursuits of the Hellenistic Age
 Throughout the Hellenistic period (323–31 B.C.), Athens remained the leading center for the study of philosophy, fostering several famous philosophical schools (1993.342). The first to be established in the first half of the fourth century B.C. were Plato’s Academy, and Aristotle’s Peripatos, a place for walking, built on the site of a grove sacred to Apollo Lykeios. In the second half of the fourth century B.C., Zeno of Citium (335–263 B.C.) established his Stoic school of philosophy, named for his teaching platform, the stoa, or arcade, in the Athenian Agora. Around the same time, Epikouros (341–270 B.C.) developed his philosophical school, the Kepos, named after the garden in Athens where he taught (11.90). The schools, as some of their names imply, were less buildings than collections of people sharing a similar philosophy of life (10.231.1). They were devoted to gaining and imparting knowledge. The Cynics were another philosophical group that had no meeting place. Rather, they roamed the streets and public places of Athens.
The two schools of thought that dominated Hellenistic philosophy were Stoicism, as introduced by Zeno of Citium, and the writings of Epikouros. Stoicism, which was also greatly enriched and modified by Zeno’s successors, notably Chrysippos (ca. 280–207 B.C.), divided philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics. Epikouros, on the other hand, placed great emphasis on the individual and the attainment of happiness. The Athenian schools of philosophy were truly cosmopolitan institutions. Teachers and students from all over Greece and Rome came to study. In addition to philosophy, students engaged in rhetoric (the art of public speaking), mathematics, physics, botany, zoology, religion, music, politics, economics, and psychology.
Elsewhere in the Hellenistic world, rulers of the Macedonian court at Pella and the Seleucid dynasts at Antioch supported the pursuit of knowledge as benefactors of intellectuals. In many ways, this kind of patronage developed first at Alexandria, Egypt, where Ptolemaic kings created a renowned intellectual center during the early Hellenistic period. Prominent philosophers, writers, and other scholars studied at the Alexandrian Library and Mouseion, an institute of learning that is the root of the modern word museum. Here, scholars copied and codified earlier works, such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (09.182.50). They wrote commentaries, compilations, and even encyclopedias. They also enjoyed access to one another and, most likely, were fed and housed at the king’s expense. In the latter part of the third century B.C., the Attalid kings of Pergamon emulated the Ptolemaic dynasts by building their own library, which attracted artists and intellectuals away from Athens and Alexandria to their royal court.
The Hellenistic period was a golden age of Greek poetry, whose practitioners easily measured up to the great lyric poets of the Greek Archaic and Classical periods (09.221.4). Literature also flourished. One writer, Kallimachos of Cyrene, is credited with more than 800 books! Although relatively little Hellenistic literature survives, much can be gleaned from Roman literature, which was significantly influenced by the Greek writers. Generally speaking, drama was less popular in the Hellenistic period than in Classical times, although Menander (344–292 B.C.), a comic writer from Athens, was a prolific exception. His plays embodied new ways of presenting and discussing the life of the individual and the family.
In the Hellenistic period, tremendous strides were made in scientific understanding. Early on, Euclid (ca. 325–250 B.C.) wrote a book of elementary mathematics that was to become the standard textbook for more than 2,000 years. The mathematician Apollonios of Perge (ca. 262–190 B.C.) established the canonical terminology and methodology for conic sections. And Archimedes of Syracuse (ca. 287–211 B.C.), whom many consider the greatest mathematician of antiquity, made important contributions to engineering, including wondrous machines that were used against the Romans at the siege of Syracuse in 212 B.C. Another Hellenistic inventor, Ktesibios of Alexandria (ca. 296–228 B.C.), was the first to devise hydraulic machines, most famous of which are his water clocks. In the second half of the second century B.C., the astronomer Hipparchus (ca. 190–120 B.C.) transformed Greek mathematical astronomy from a descriptive to a predictive science. His work provided the foundation for Ptolemy of Alexandria’s thirteen-volume systematic treatise on astronomy, which was published in the middle of the second century A.D.
Colette Hemingway Independent Scholar Seán Hemingway Department of Greek and Roman Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Citation for this page:
Hemingway, Colette, and Seán Hemingway. “Intellectual Pursuits of the Hellenistic Age”. In Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ipha/hd_ipha.htm
(April 2007)
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Happiness in Hellenistic Philosophy
Author: Alexandria E. Wise
Two main belief systems, Epicureanism and the Stoicism, dominated Hellenistic philosophy. Even though they were considered the two most popular philosophies, it would “be hard to find [two] system[s] more diametrically opposed…at every point” (Green 633). Both philosophies, however, focused on the attainment of happiness. This paper will focus on the differing paths that Epicureanism and Stoicism took towards attaining happiness, and what each of these paths said about the contemporary Hellenistic World.
Epicurus founded Epicureanism circa 341 BC. The Epicurean theory has been dubbed the “philosophy of pleasure” (More 18). The notion that good stemmed from pleasure was originally a Hedonistic thought that was later redefined by Epicurus and incorporated into his beliefs. Epicurus aligned pleasure with the highest possible good declaring, “I spit on the Good . . . when it produces no pleasure” (Green 624). He also warned, however, “No pleasure is a bad thing, but the means of achieving certain pleasures bring also disturbances many times greater than the pleasures” (Green 624). Epicureans defined pleasure as the removal of pain, suffering, fear and other negative objectives in one’s life, and advocated the avoidance of these negative objectives in order to attain happiness. Actions that resulted in short term happiness, but in long term pain were undesirable. Epicurus instructed his followers to, “Test each of your desires by this question: ‘What will happen to me if that which this desire seeks is brought to fulfillment, and what if it is not?’” (Epicurus 71). As seen in this quote, Epicurus did not want his followers to experience pleasure that resulted in greater pain.
To avoid the negativities throughout the world, Epicurus provided his followers with an alternative option: the Garden. The desire to be free of worries caused by public affairs and politics ultimately led Epicureans in 311 BC to retreat from Hellenistic society to the famed Garden. The seclusion of the commune style Garden resulted in many rumors of sexual and gluttonous pleasures, concerning outsiders as these actions have been closely associated with disruptive social behavior. The Garden’s seclusion combined with the apprehensiveness from rumors may have hindered the public’s acceptance of Epicureanism, potentially turning individuals towards the largest philosophy of the time, Stoicism.
Stoicism, founded by Zeno of Citium, defined philosophy by a strong emphasis on the value of virtue and goodness. According to Stoicism, the only good stemmed from virtue, and virtue was established by a harmonious relationship with reason, nature or God. Diogenes Laertius wrote that in Stoicism anything “honorably virtuous;…renders us happy” (Laertius 540). As Stoicism’s popularity remained constant throughout the Hellenistic world, the rigidity of beliefs declined with time and rulers. Beside happiness stemming from virtue, Stoicism requires happiness to be dependent on the existence of evil. The existence of evil provides a backdrop to contrast and define happiness. Laertius summaries the Stoic perception of pleasure as, “Pleasure, they [the Stoics] define to be an irrational longing after that which seems to be desirable. Of which, they number up these several sorts: tickling delights, insulting joys, and excess of joy” (Laertius 532). This view of pleasure makes reference to and condemns Epicurean belief. Stoicism used virtue and goodness to attain and define the essence of happiness.
Hellenistic philosophy used contemporary problems to define philosophical beliefs, establish methods to cope with and even master life. The Hellenistic era left limited means to thoroughly comprehend Hellenistic society. Philosophic beliefs, therefore, provide a unique view into the lives and personal dilemmas that occurred in the Hellenistic period. For instance, the most popular of the Hellenistic philosophies, Stoicism, provided strong moral virtues and ascetic guidelines to deal with life. This suggests that the Hellenistic society lacked some degree of order, which philosophy counteracted with austere guidelines to recreate structure and order. To fully comprehend the impact of Epicureanism and Stoicism it is beneficial for one to look at the differences between these philosophies and the historical background in which they existed. Stoics mainly incorporated the upper and ruling classes in their philosophy, while the Epicureanism included individuals of lesser standards, i.e. slaves and women. Stoicism, through moldable doctrines, embraced the chaos and corruption of the political and public world; however, Epicureans retreated to the Garden to avoid those particular aspects of life. The instability of the political world played a major role in the development of these two philosophies. The instability resulted from Alexander the Great’s death and the fight for succession to his throne. Athens in particular, had to deal with the Macedonian troops stationed on the Hill of Muses and Antigonus Gonatas as a rising threat that would soon conqueror them (Green 640). Along with the instability in the Hellenistic Period was the oppressive nature of the monarchies and oligarchies (Green 632). Athenians dealt with constant threat of political transition and as a result Epicureanism and Stoicism, both originated in Athens, approached this problem two completely different ways. Although Epicureanism had a decent following, one cannot help but notice how Stoicism deeply effected the Hellenistic world in three ways: the mass acceptance of Stoicism, the corruption of Stoicism and the changing political environments. The overall acceptance and popularity of Stoicism in the World is directly related to political leaders’ acceptance of Stoicism. Antigonus Gonatas was “actively interested in Stoicism” (Green 633). As leaders of the Hellenistic World incorporated philosophy into their lives they also spread philosophy throughout their kingdoms. In many instances main philosophical thinkers accepted royal patronage as a means to continue to expand their philosophical thought. Epicurus himself said, “Since the attainment of riches can scarcely be accomplished without servitude to crowds or kings,” which implied the beneficial nature of royal patronage (Epicurus 71). The proximity of the political leaders and philosophical thinkers to each other must have resulted in a strong exchange of support from both players, thus expanding philosophical thought, in this case Stoicism, throughout the Hellenistic world. The spread of the monarchs’ philosophical viewpoint portrays a Hellenistic world at the mercy of strong influential rulers. The second image of the Hellenistic World that Stoicism reflected was its ability to become corrupt. A hindsight view of Hellenistic Stoicism portrays a corrupt and moldable belief system by political leaders. Hellenistic leaders, from their perspective, did not view molding Stoic tenets as corrupt, nor as evil. The altering belief system is evident between the Early and Middle Stoa Periods, during which the code of ethics was “tailor-made for men of action” (Green 641). In many cases this corruptibility of Stoicism justified individuals’ actions as events pre-determined by fate (Green 635). The manipulation of Stoicism by the Hellenistic rulers paints a world where tremendous strength lay in the ruler’s hand while his influence is far reaching. Stoicism also reflects the changing political environment in the Hellenistic world. Alexander the Great’s death left a vast empire without a ruler; as a result, monarchs battled for the right to succession throughout the Hellenistic era. The constant turnover in political leadership led to anxiety and uneasiness felt by all throughout the Hellenistic world. Therefore philosophy, in particular Stoicism, needed to fulfill the desire for happiness. On the other hand, Epicureans fulfilled this desire for happiness through the removal of negatives. Why did Epicureans’ pleasure result from deleting negative objectives from their lives and what does that say about the Hellenistic era? Epicurus, as the founder of his philosophy and a human with unintentional biases, allowed his personal life to influence his philosophies’ tenets. Epicurus’ life was a struggle in pain with chronic internal discomfort and he supposedly died of strangury and renal calculus (Green 619). His life may have been overcome with pain, but one’s personal suffering is not enough to gather followers unless they too are in the same state of discomfort. His followers were not attracted to Epicureanism because of his personal suffering. Instead, Epicureans and others in the Hellenistic world most likely were banded together with common concerns of political turmoil, fear, pain and uncertainty in the future. Once the motive for Epicureanism is established, the removal of pain and desire for happiness, one must understand where such a strong fear existed. The political situation provides the prefect answer to this question, because the political sphere affects an incredibly large population. All throughout the Hellenistic world individuals were experiencing similar political situations, which were prompted by the battle for succession. After Alexander the Great’s death, battles for the succession swept over his vast, yet crumbling empire. Potential successors throughout the Hellenistic era were a constant threat and placed negative stresses on the common citizen. The Garden exemplifies Epicureans’ reactions to the political uncertainty, because the Garden created seclusion from the public and political life. Although Epicureans were more isolated, that did not stop them from embracing happiness and enjoying pleasure. Stoics, on the other hand, incorporated the public and political sphere into their doctrines, and even molded tenets that were most beneficial to them. Pleasure for the Stoic resulted from a harmonious relationship with reason, nature or God. The Hellenistic world created philosophy that answered the major questions of the day, particularly how to obtain happiness.
Links: Back to Brilliant Scholarly Arguments Page To read more on Epicureanism: Epicureanism and Baroque Art
Works Cited: Green, Peter. Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age. Berkeley: University of California. 1990. Epicurus. Epicurus: Letters, Principle Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings. Trans. Russel M. Greer. New York: MacMillan. 1985. Diogenes Laeritus. The lives, opinions, and remarkable sayings of the most famous ancient philosophers. London: Pall Mell. 1969. More, Paul. Hellenistic Philosophies. New York: Greenwood Press. 1923.
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Travis Skowronski  HST 301.
Exploratory Essay
So there I was sitting in class discussing Ptolemaic pharaohs and their relationship with the Egyptians and Egyptian priests. This was a snowy Tuesday in February and unlike most subjects this one caught the whole attention of the class. We were all involved in a rather heated debate that included among other things a critique of the Catholic Church. This was a real can of worms and I was happy to get up to my elbows in the discussion. At first I was required to read from Green and Pollitt, plus some inscriptions from the instructor. My first impression was that the Ptolemaic Pharaohs tried to control the Egyptians through the native priests. After the first in class debate on the matter I was able to see the other side of the argument that they operated under their own accord as more feasible. I wasn’t as committed to my earlier position anymore due to the input of classmates. Their interpretations of such important objects in the center of the debate, such as the Rosetta stone, allowed me to gain a different now more undecided position.
When the time came for me to pick a topic to develop further as a main addition to the website for the class this topic came to mind. The reason I was interested in investigating this topic was basically because of my neutral position and interest in the religious aspect. The polytheistic worship by the Greeks and Egyptians had interested me since grammar school. I thought it interesting to see how these two would intertwine and connect. Now I had the vehicle in witch to pursue this interest. Class discussion last week also helped me ask questions on the topic. Thanks to the external ideas I was able to keep the debate fresh in my mind.
The question remained the same for the paper as was for the debate. I would have to have a rough idea for the next class on what my thesis or title at least would be. I went immediately back to the texts to review what was assigned. I then looked at the notes I took during class. Unfortunately I was too involved in the discussion to take good notes. I decided to talk to the professor about getting more sources. I then went to the Internet to see what was out there on the analysis of the Rosetta stone. Nothing much in the way of religious analysis was found. The Rosetta stone was mostly looked at as unlocking the hieroglyphic language of the Egyptians.
The Title I decided upon was “Ptolemaic Egypt: From Greeks to Gods” as an eye catching phrase which I though would be the best on a website that contained link based pages. The link would be the title and the better it was, hopefully the more it would be visited. The questions I asked myself were: How did the monarchs interact with the priests? What was the nature of the relationship? Why was the relationship sustained as such? How could the relationship have been different? Why was the relationship maintained and for how long? Is there evidence in Egyptian culture today that point to the lasting influence of the Greeks in their religion? What is the most significant evidence used to lend credibility to both sides of the argument? What analysis can be done to this evidence?
The debate unfolded in front of me as I asked more questions of myself. The next step will be to gather all the information and try to answer the questions I have posted to myself. Following the analysis of all the evidence I will then craft a thesis to fit the analysis I have done. The last step will be writing the paper and submitting it to the class. I hope to illicit a response based on my findings that brings back the same interest displayed so long ago in February.
Following the exploratory essay is my final essay that was the labor of many hard nights in the computer lab burning my retinas staring at the screen waiting for the paper to write itself.
Final Essay
Travis Skowronski
HST 301
Final Paper
Ptolemaic Egypt: From Greeks to Gods
The relationship between the Greeks in Egypt and the native peoples
Following the death in 323 B.C. of Alexander the Great, Egypt and all the other lands formerly united by the king were split apart. Egypt went to the old Macedonia general Ptolemy I. Ptolemy I and his successors ruled in Egypt for 300 years until it was taken over by the Romans in 30 B.C. Alexander made a great deal with the pharaoh (or king) of Egypt at the time in order to gain the land without a fight. The pharaoh was to gain significant wealth and still remain in some sort of power. After Alexander’s death Ptolemy I who was in opposition to several other Alexander successors wrangled the territory for himself. The Egyptian administration and bureaucracy remained in place while Ptolemy took over as head of state and church just as the pharaohs had before him. He saw the importance in Egyptian culture of the church and state relationship and wanted to preserve it. The two needed to coexist if he was going to rule for any substantial amount of time. The Ptolemaic kings needed their help in communicating to the locals but were not at any time beholden to them. The Ptolemaic kings controlled the Egyptian priests who in turn were allowed to continue to practice their religion. The Ptolemaic kings allowed the practice of the Egyptian religion because it wasn’t too far different from their own brand of polytheism. The use of the priests would also help aid them in communicating with the natives. At the head of the new Greek Egypt was the city of Alexandria named after Alexander who founded the plans shortly after he first controlled Egypt. Ptolemy intercepted his body on the way back East and kept it in Egypt as a sign of his power. Ptolemy assumed the title of “king” in 305 B.C. and was named Soter or savior. During this time Alexandria becomes one of the most important trade ports in the Mediterranean world. Not only that but it also developed into a very important center for Greek culture as well.
Ptolemy I Soter died in 282 B.C. of natural causes the only Diadochoi or successor to do so. Before he died he established the new cult of Sarapis as the state patron God. Sarapis linked Greek and Egyptian Gods into one multipurpose figure and “…fostered the cult of the new” (Green 85). He had to rely on the Egyptian priests to communicate to the rural, agrarian, and illiterate population. There had to be a domestic balance between the Greeks and the natives because there were considerably more Egyptians in Egypt than Greeks. At times this did not happen. Egyptians were treated as unequal and subordinate by some of the Greeks who were in control. Despite this the ruling Greeks did many things to preserve some Egyptian practices and Ptolemy II even married his own sister, which was a common pharonic practice.
Understanding the culture of the Greeks is important to understanding how they dealt with the Egyptians. Examining Alexandria, which was the cultural center of Hellenistic Egypt, it can be seen that impressionism, allegory, and social realism were the trends in thought of the day (Pollitt 250). The Greeks had a common focus and writers were “…uncramped by powerful socioethnic constraints” (Green 85). There was a trend towards looking back towards the classic past, individualism, and naturalism in Hellenistic culture especial in Alexandria because of Ptolemy I. Ptolemy I recruited philosophers from all over the Hellenistic world in order to make Alexandria’s Library and Museum the cultural center for learning. Such philosophers included Callimachus from Cyrene and Cosan scholars to educate his son Ptolemy II. This intellectual band enjoyed several pleasures while serving the state. They did not pay taxes on their high wages, had nice homes, and had all the free meals they could eat. This caused them to be cautious not to offend their patrons for fear of loosing all of these comforts. This caused infighting and unrest at times (Green 87). The Egyptian priests were much the same way as the intellectuals. They relied on the patronage of the state and tried best not to bring offence to them.
The Ptolemaic kings did not treat the local Egyptians with total disregard; rather they tried to incorporate several of their cultural and religious beliefs. Examining artwork done during this time Ptolemaic art has two distinct patterns (Pollitt 250). One is the standard Greek style of art and the other is an adaptation of Egyptian art. This adaptation added a little “…local charm” (250) to mainly the royal charactures. There were two types of Royal charactures. One was Greek and very highly detailed then there was a generic Egyptian form done by native craftsmen in the Egyptian Pharonic style. Examining inscriptions from Egypt as evidence of the relationship that the Ptolemaic kings had with the native priests is a good way to gain perspective on the particular relationship of church and state. Most of the inscriptions that survive today are trilingual in Greek, Hieroglyphs, and Demotic the latter two being Egyptian. The Canopus decree is one of these inscriptions. The Rosetta stone inscribed 40 years later is also a tool used to examine the relationship. These works describe how the Ptolemaic kings were worshiped on their birthdays and Ptolemy is described as the Avenger of Egypt. Priests were to “…pay homage to the images thrice daily” (Rosetta Stone). Both were decrees passed by an assembly of priests describing the many deeds that the Greeks in Egypt had done for the state and church economically, politically, and socially.
These inscriptions were posted in the market place and the temples. Both were public places were they could be read by anyone who could read any of the three languages. Today we have no way of knowing how many of the native Egyptians were literate but it is not thought that it was a great deal of the population. Most would have to listen to the reading of the inscription. How many did that we also cannot know today.
The ancient inscriptions portray a working relationship of the priests and the Greeks. They were working in conjunction with the Greeks. The Greeks would provide them temples and seem to be protecting their religion by doing things like rescuing their sacred artifacts from the Syria in order to keep them as the mouthpiece of the state to the natives. The priests eventually started to worship the Kings just as the Greeks did as Gods while they were still alive.
As long as the priests had a good working relationship with the ruling Ptolemy then they were allowed to continue the practice of the native religion. The Ptolemaic kings did a lot of things to gain a good reputation through the priests like rescuing ancient sacred images from Persia and building new temples to worship in. The priests knew that as long as they conformed to Greek rule that they would have the favor of the Ptolemaic kings and receive the patronage they coveted for the continuation of their religion. This is just another example in the long line of the endless waltz of the separation and inclusion of church and state.
Green, Peter. Alexander to Actium. University of California Press, 1993. Pollitt, J.J. Art in the Hellenistic Age. Cambridge University Press, 1986. The Canopus Decree, The Rosetta Stone, and Sale of Priestly Rights all ancient Inscriptions found in Egypt relating to the topic. ” To read more: Gods in Literature
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Tessa Boyd
HST 301
Professor Gaughan
Walking a Faint Line
The Olympian gods during the Classical period were seen and depicted as perfect. Plato described the gods as, “beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like.”1 Their primary role was to control mortal lives and establish order. During the Hellenistic period, almost every discipline reflected a changing image of the gods. The gods began to be depicted as more fallible, while men were often portrayed as close to perfection. Such depictions reflected the way that the relationship between the gods and man was changing in real life. In Hellenistic literature, the portrayal of gods, rulers and individuals demonstrate that the line between mortals and immortals was becoming increasingly permeable throughout Hellenistic society.
In the Argonautica, the gods are depicted as if they were, “commonplace Greek nagging relatives.”2 The scene where Hera and Athena approach Kypris to ask for her son’s help is just laughable! Plato’s description of the immortals does not present the image of people sitting around complaining about how their kids are acting. That is something that humans do, as they have a tough time with their kids. The reason for the goddess’s complaints are clearly demonstrated in the unusual depiction of Eros as a child. Eros is not merely a child physically; in the Argonautica; he acts like a child might. He is playing a game with Ganymede and his mother must then bribe him with a toy, in order to get him to shoot Medea with one of his arrows.3 Similarly, Callimachus depicts a playful Artemis when she is, “still just a slip of a goddess.”4 An immature child would not have been the way to represent a god in the era prior to the Hellenistic. This is because although there were myths about the birth of the gods, there was not a preoccupation with their childhood (if they had one). Such representations mean that Eros and Artemis were perceived as growing up like mortal humans instead of as having always been powerful, independent, and perfect immortals. The gods were not the only beings who experienced a changing image in society and literature. The reign of Alexander the Great, followed by the introduction of the Diadochoi, had paved the way for the creation of ruler cults. According to Hellenistic philosopher Euhemerus this was a natural practice since he proposed that the kings would eventually be gods, just as the Olympian gods had once been kings.5 Writers during the Hellenistic period often found themselves seeking the favors of these rulers and they took advantage of this theory to do so.
Callimachus is starkly blunt in his depiction of Ptolemy Philadelphos as Zeus himself and possibly also as Apollo.6 He refers to Zeus as a “Benefactor and Savior.”7 The dynastic cults, which began with Ptolemy and Arsinoe II, led them to be referred to as Savior and Benefactor Gods.8 By using Ptolemy’s cult name to refer to Zeus the poet is elevating Ptolemy to the status of Zeus, something that could only be accomplished in ancient Egypt where a Pharaoh is synonymous with a god or in a time where humans could be gods. Of course Callimachus’ own motivation is also revealed in the hymn: “Dispense goodness and wealth/ Wealth without goodness is a worthless increase/ and goodness needs substance/ Bless us with both, Zeus.”9 Apparently, Callimachus felt this mortal could provide him with just as much as an immortal; hence the line became even less distinct.
Callimachus reflects the frustration with gods, which are not right in front of him and this could be one reason that once the line had begun to fade, the idea became easier to accept. “The god is no longer far…/ Magnificent to see the god/ and graceless not to see him [Ptolemy].”10 Besides the poet’s own personal reward for writing such lines, it is logical to assume that individuals in general would find it comforting to have a more personal relationship with a god(s). Such relationships are demonstrated in the mystery religions, which seemed to be so alluring in the Hellenistic period. In association with the rising popularity of mystery cults, the practice of magic boomed. Magic gave individuals the opportunity to personally alter fate itself, thereby holding the power of a god. Curse tablets, magical papyri and spells flooded the Hellenistic world in an attempt to, “overturn the laws of nature and bypass all human institutions.”11 By possessing such individual authority over events, individuals were taking away a piece of control that the gods had over the cosmos. The power that magic provides individuals is also represented in Hellenistic literature.
The Argonautica, although it is a story involving extraordinary mortals, also reflects the blurring line of the Hellenistic period. In the Argonautica, Medea is a practitioner of magic and thus, joins Athena and Hera in aiding Jason throughout his journey. As Medea flees from her house, the Moon goddess reveals just how much power this individual has, “How many times your treacherous incantations caused me to hide…/ But now you yourself, it would seem, are a victim of a / madness like mine.”12 Not only do the statements by the moon goddess (probably Selene) demonstrate that Medea’s magic can affect a goddess, but the goddess even compares the priestess’ situation to her own. Although the stories surrounding Medea and magic predate the Hellenistic period, the point remains just the same. The revelations disclosed in the Argonautica through Medea take Euhemerus’ theory a step forward. Since kings are mortal before they reach a godly status, why can’t other mortals possess the qualities and powers of gods as well?
Although the Olympian gods were still worshipped in the Hellenistic period, their powers did not generate the same awe they had before. Scientific advances had ensured that “no one in Apollonius’s day would, in his heart of hearts, attribute the thunder to Zeus.”13 Mortals were creating new ideas for the creation of events around them, which left the gods out completely. For instance, the introduction of the “atomic theory of nature” during the Hellenistic period attributed the creation of the universe to random scientific processes.14 By diminishing the power of the gods, it became easier for mortals to elevate their own power. Therefore, mortals reached for immortality, as the gods seemed to be forced to hang out on Mt. Olympus and act human. Hellenistic literature reflects these changes and how all beings in the Hellenistic period were walking a faint line.
1Plato, Phaedrus. 11 April 2001.http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/phaedrus.html. 2Peter Green, From Alexander to Actium. (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990) 205. 3Apollonius of Rhodes, Jason and the Golden Fleece, trans. Richard Hunter (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) 3: 122-134. 4Callimachus, Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments, trans. Stanley Lombardo & Diane Rayor (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1988) Hymn I: 8 5Green 55. 6Callimachus Hymn I & II 7Callimachus Hymn I: 122. 8Green 404. 9Callimachus Hymn I: 125-128 10Callimachus Hymn II: 9, 12-13. 11Green 600. 12Apollonius IV: 55-56, 59-60. 13Green 207. 14Green 454. For more on Gods in Literature: Ptolemaic Egypt: From Greek to Gods Back to Scholarly Arguments
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Epicurus and Baroque Art: Emotions in the Hellenistic World
By Kristen M Syfert 🙂
The Hellenistic period was a time of great change in Alexander’s Empire. One of the changes taking place during the decades after Alexander’s death was the breakdown of the poleis, or Greek city-states. The erosion of the poleis left many people feeling alone and frightened. In their need, they turned to different emerging cultural movements, each of which attempted to provide the Greeks with what they had lost, a sense of community and a place where they “belonged.” Not least important of these emerging movements were the schools of philosophy that were founded and revived during the Hellenistic period.
The influence that philosophy had on the people of the Hellenistic period manifests itself in art. While some artwork produced during the Hellenistic period reflects the beliefs of the philosophical school of Epicurus, much of the artwork labeled “Hellenistic baroque” stands in contrast to a main belief of the Epicureans: the suppression of emotions. One piece of artwork that refutes Epicurus’ teachings on emotions is the Laocoon.
Epicurus’ teachings had a profound effect on the Hellenistic world. He was born in 341 BCE in Samos. At the age of 35, he settled in Athens and founded his Garden, which was a place where his followers could gather and be taught. The main tenets of Epicureanism are: 1) unattainable desires cause pain, so you should only desire what you can get, 2) the world is made up of atoms moving randomly in a void, 3) the gods should not be feared because they are uninterested and uninvolved in human affairs, and 4) death should not be feared. In order to live in accordance with these four main goals, Epicurus advocated withdrawing from society and living with other people who held similar beliefs.
Epicurus also taught about emotions. In his Principal Doctrines and The Vatican Sayings, Epicurus expounds on the need to eliminate emotions. Three emotions that Epicurus deals with specifically are anger, honor, and fear. “That which is blessed and immortal is not troubled itself, nor does it cause trouble to another. As a result, it is not affected by anger or favor, for these belong to weakness.”[i][i] Epicurus is saying that strength comes from the absence of anger and the absence of feelings of favor toward anyone. If you are angry with another person, it is because he has done something to hurt you, meaning he held some kind of advantage over you, be it physical strength or cunning. By showing hostility toward that person, you are admitting your inferiority. If you admire someone, you are again showing inferiority by acknowledging that another person is greater than you are in word or deed. Another weakness that Epicurus denounced was fear. “Any device whatever by which one frees himself from the fear of others is a natural good.”[ii][ii] Fearing another person testifies to inferiority, and admitting inferiority is a sign of weakness.
So what is the importance of strength in Epicureanism? In Epigram I, Epicurus equates weakness with being troubled.[iii][iii] Weakness leads to the desire for strength, but one must eliminate all desires, with the exception of those desires that are easily attainable or very basic, such as food and shelter. In another epigram, Epicurus states: “The just man is least disturbed; the unjust man is filled with the greatest turmoil.”[iv][iv] For nearly everyone, being the strongest person, whether physically or intellectually, is impossible. Inability to become superior causes pain, leads to turmoil, and prevents a person from living justly. To avoid this scenario, one must avoid being weak. This means that the emotions of anger, honor, and fear, among others, must be eliminated in order to live a pleasurable, just, calm life.
The elimination of emotions was a major part of Epicurus’ teachings. This tenet stands in stark contrast to an artistic movement of the Hellenistic Period. The baroque movement, while it had been present in the artwork of previous centuries, became prevalent in the period from 225 – 150 BCE.[v][v] Baroque art displays “a theatrical manner of representation which emphasizes emotional intensity…”[vi][vi] There were many methods available to artists to help them create the baroque affect. Restless surfaces, agonized facial expressions, and deep carvings to create extreme contrasts are three of the ways that Pollitt mentions.[vii][vii] One piece of artwork that exemplifies this baroque style and stands in sharp contrast to Epicurus’ teachings on emotions is the sculpture Laocoon.
The Laocoon group was sculpted around 50 BCE.[viii][viii] The sculpture displays Laocoon, a priest in Troy, and his two sons being attacked by two large serpents, which had been sent by the gods to prevent Laocoon from warning the Trojans about the danger of the Trojan Horse.[ix][ix] The sculpture is a marvelous example of the techniques, mentioned by Pollitt, that artists used to create the baroque affect. Laocoon cocks his head to the side as he looks skyward. His brow is furrowed, his mouth slightly open, and his beard and curly hair untamed. His facial expression conveys despair, pain, and wonderment at why he was the target of such a brutal attack. The head of his younger son is tilted backward, and he is obviously in pain as one of the serpents bites his torso. Meanwhile, the older son is looking on. One of the serpents is wound around his arm, but he is concentrating on removing the coil of the other serpent from his leg. The older son is looking at his father and brother. His expression can best be described as “horrified,” yet through his eyes we see pity and the faint hope that if he could just unwrap the coils, he could escape.
The bodies of the men also convey their suffering. The muscles in Laocoon’s legs and arms are taut, and the veins in his extremities are bulging to the surface. Laocoon’s left hand grasps at the head of a serpent as it bites him, and the knuckles of his hand show the tightness of his grip. As he is being bitten, the muscles in Laocoon’s torso contract and show the outline of his ribs. The intricate details of the sculpture extend all the way down to the feet. The toes on Laocoon’s right foot curl up in pain, and the right foot of his younger son presses in pain against his left foot. The Laocoon group, through the facial expressions and intricacy in the bodily details, displays fear, pain, and a sense of disbelief as Laocoon looks skyward and, by the look on his face, asks “Why me?”
The sculptor of the Laocoon group has rejected many of the teachings of Epicurus. In one of his epigrams, Epicurus states: “Continuous bodily suffering does not last long. Intense pain is very brief, and even pain that barely outweighs physical pleasure does not last many days.”[x][x] The faces of these men seem to denounce this claim. Laocoon and his sons are suffering, but this suffering is not the pain that goes as quickly as it comes. The serpents have intertwined themselves among the arms and legs of the three men, something that could not have been done quickly. The serpents are biting Laocoon and his younger son on their torsos, a tender spot. Besides the physical pain, there is the mental pain of seeing your father, sons, or brother being slowly poisoned. The sculpture can be viewed as a critique of Epicurus’ view toward pain. While it was easy for Epicurus to sit in his Garden and teach that pain is nothing compared to pleasure, the actual moments of pain do not go by quickly. Thought processes do not normally lead you to say that your pain may be bad now, but that will just make the pleasure more pleasurable when it comes. If we believe Epicurus, there is no afterlife and no god to reward your good deeds, so when does the pleasure come after you have been smothered, bitten, and poisoned by god-sent serpents?
Laocoon refutes Epicurus’ claims about pain in another way. While the epigram states that “Intense pain is very brief,” Laocoon and his sons will forever be represented in their most painful moment of life, at the threshold of their deaths. The decision by the artist to sculpt the scene could be viewed as a conscious effort to portray the fact that pain lasts a long time, sometimes forever, and that Epicurus’ teaching that pain is brief is a false teaching. The viewers of the Laocoon will see pain and suffering whenever they view the statue, be it for hours, days, or years. The pain of Laocoon and his sons is not brief. If we look at the sculpture today, we still see the pain in Laocoon’s face and the fear of his eldest son, the same pain and fear that were present in these faces more than 2000 years ago when the sculpture was created. ‘ The sculpture also challenges another aspect of Epicurean philosophy that deals with emotions: fear of the gods. Epicurus tells us that we should not fear the gods because the gods are not concerned in human affairs and any kind of fear makes a person weak. Yet the story of the Laocoon is in direct opposition to these views. The gods send the serpents to kill Laocoon because they are against Troy and want to see it destroyed, something Laocoon was attempting to prevent. The gods do not have the laissez-faire attitude that Epicurus claims. Not only are they interested in human affairs, but they must follow these matters with some regularity if they believe that the Trojans have done something worthy of punishment. Also, the gods acted upon their opinions by meting out a horrible, very painful punishment to the wrongdoers. The fear and anguish of Laocoon and his sons makes the viewer reconsider the idea that the gods are not to be feared. After all, look what happened to those who did not show fear.
Laocoon is a good example of Baroque art, but it becomes fascinating to analyze the artwork in contrast to Epicurus and his philosophical school. Epicurus advocated the suppression of emotions because emotions create weakness, which leads to unjust living. For Epicurus, pain should be looked at in a larger picture: it won’t last forever and it will make you appreciate pleasure more when the pleasure comes. Also, fear is a weakness, especially fear of the gods because the gods don’t care about humans. Yet, in the Laocoon, we see the pain of the three men and we know the reason for that pain, ignoring the gods. Laocoon indicates that pain can last a long time, even forever, and that fear of the gods is necessary in order to stay alive. We see that much of Hellenistic baroque artwork displays the same disdain for Epicurus’ idea of suppression of emotions. Laocoon is an excellent example of this rejection of Epicurean principles.
While you’re here, why not take a peak at the location of Epicurus’ Garden!
To check out more page on Epicureanism and Hellenistic Philosophy, go to:
Happiness in Hellenistic Philosophy
Also by Kristen… Visit
The Timeline O’ Hellenistic History
Back to Brilliant Scholarly Arguments Page
[i][i] Epicurus, Principal Doctrines, I. [ii][ii] Epicurus, Principal Doctrines, VI. [iii][iii] See footnote 1. [iv][iv] Epicurus, Principal Doctrines, XVII. [v][v] Pollitt, page 111. [vi][vi] Pollitt, page 111. [vii][vii] Pollitt, page 111. [viii][viii] Valentin Müller, cited by Bieber, page 20. [ix][ix] Pollitt, page 121. [x][x] Epicurus, Principal Doctrines, IV. ‘ Bibliography ‘ Bieber, Margarete. Laocoon: The Influence of the Group Since its Rediscovery. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942. ‘ Epicurus. Letters, Principle Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings. Translated by Russel M. Greer. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1985. ‘ Pollitt, J.J. Art in the Hellenistic Age. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986.
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Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Hellenistic Astrology
Arthur Information: Marilynn Lawrence
Email: [email protected]
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Hellenistic and Late Antiquity astrologers built their craft upon Babylonian (and to a lesser extent Egyptian) astrological traditions, and developed their theoretical and technical doctrines using a combination of StoicMiddle Platonic and Neopythagorean thought. Astrology offered fulfillment of a desire to systematically know where an individual stands in relation to the cosmos in a time of rapid political and social changes. Various philosophers of the time took up polemics against astrology while accepting some astral theories. The Stoic philosopher Posidonius was alleged to embrace astrology and write works on it (Augustine, De civitate dei, 5.2). Other Stoics such as Panaetius and (late) Diogenes of Babylon were primarily adverse to astrological determinism. For some philosophers such as Plotinus, horoscopic astrology was absurd for reasons such that the planets could never bear ill will toward human beings whose souls were exalted above the cosmos. For others, such as the early Church Fathers, ethical implications of astrological fatalism were the main point of contention, as it was contrary to the emerging Christian doctrine of free will. The Gnostics, who for the most part believed the cosmos is the product of an evil and enslaving creator, thought of the planets as participants in this material entrapment. Prominent Neoplatonists such as Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus found some aspects of astrology compatible with their versions of Neoplatonic philosophy. The cultural importance of astrology is attested to by the strong reactions to and involvement with astrology by various philosophers in late antiquity. The adaptability of astrology to various philosophical schools as well as the borrowing on the part of astrologers from diverse philosophies provides dynamic examples of the rich ‘electicism’ or ‘syncretism’ that characterized the Hellenistic world.
Table of Contents (Clicking on the links below will take you to those parts of this article)
1. Introduction a. Babylonian Astrology in the Hellenized World b. Hellenistic Theorization and Systemization of Astrology 2. Early Greek Thinking a. Fate, Fortune, Chance, Necessity b. Greek Medicinec. Plato and Divination d. Ages, Cycles, and Rational Heavens 3. The Philosophical Foundation of Hellenistic Astrology: Stoics, Middle Platonists, and Neopythagorean a. Astral Piety in Plato’s Academy b. Stoic Cosmic Determinism i. Fate and Necessity ii. Stoic-Babylonian Eternal Recurrence iii. Divination and Cosmic Sympathy iv. The Attitude of Stoic Philosophers Towards Astrology c. Middle Platonic and Neopythagorean Developments i. Ocellus Lucanus ii. Timaeus Locrus iii. Thrasyllus iv. Plutarch 4. The Astrologers a. The Earliest Hellenistic Astrology: Horoscopic and Katarchic b. Earliest Fragments and Texts c. Manilius d. Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria e. Vettius Valens 5. The Skeptics a. The New Academy (Carneades) b. Sextus Empiricus 6. Hermetic and Gnostic Astrological Theories 7. Neoplatonism and Astrology a. Plotinus b. Porphyry c. Iamblichus d. Firmicus Maternus e. Hierocles f. Proclus 8. Astrology and Christianity 9. Selected References  1. Introduction
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a. Babylonian Astrology in the Hellenized World
Astrology, loosely defined as a method of correspondences between celestial events and activity in the human realm, has played a role in nearly every civilization. Its role in the late-Hellenistic era is of special concern, particularly due to its complex interaction with Greek philosophy, as well as its claims on the life of an individual. A horoscopic chart (also ‘birth chart’, ‘natal chart’, or ‘horoscope’) is a list of planetary positions against a backdrop of zodiac signs, divided into regions of the sky (with reference to the rising and setting stars on the horizon) on the basis of one’s exact time and place of birth. Such charts form the basis of ‘natal astrology’ or ‘genethlialogy’, which started in Babylon but was later developed in Hellenized Greek speaking regions.
The earliest surviving horoscopic chart pertaining to an individual is dated 410 B.C.E. in Babylon. Babylonian astrology flourished from the seventh century to the Seleucid era (late fourth century). However, astral religion and divination based on star omens have a much longer history in Mesopotamia. Stars were considered to be representations of gods whose favors could be courted through prayers, magical incantations and amulets. The triad of Anu, Enlil, and Ea corresponded not with individual stars or planets but to three bands of constellations. Traces of the basic characters of the planetary gods, such as the malevolent nature of Mars/Nergal (the god of destruction and plagues) and Venus/Ištar (the goddess of love), can be found in Hellenistic astrology. Given the small available sample of Late Babylonian horoscopic tablets containing planetary placements and laconic predictions (around 28 extant), it is very difficult to come to solid conclusions about the theoretical ground for the practice of the earliest horoscopic astrologers. The case will be different in the Hellenistic culture in which theoretical grounding was important for the development of the practice, and in which there is more extensive textual evidence.
Given the dynamic tension resulting from Greek philosophy meeting Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian and Jewish religions and ideologies, and the ‘syncretism’ of cross-cultural influences, the Hellenistic era provided fruitful soil for the cultivation of what began primarily as a Mesopotamian system of celestial omens. Before Alexander’s conquest, the practice of astronomy and astrology in Babylon flourished but was not yet of much interest to the Greek thinkers. Babylonian priests/astrologers, notably Berossus, who settled on the island of Cos, are thought to be responsible for introducing astrology to Greece and the surrounding area. Plato mentions those who seek celestial portents in the Timaeus (40c-d), while the student of Plato who authored the Epinomis paved the way for application of astronomical studies to astral piety.
As the intellectual center in Egypt, Alexandria is a likely location for major developments in Hellenistic astrology. A portion of what Garth Fowden (in Egyptian Hermes) classified as “technical Hermetica,” material typically earlier than the “philosophical Hermetica,” represents a part of the early Hellenistic astrological corpus. Surviving Greek astrological writings, catalogued over a period of fifty years in a work called the Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum (CCAG), reveal that for the sake of credibility, many of the Hellenistic astrologers attributed the earliest astrological works to historical or mythologized figures such as the pharaoh Nechepso, an Egyptian priest associated with Petosiris. Hermes is a legendary figure credited with the invention of astrology. Some fragments attributed to Hermes survive while some of the Nechepso/Petosiris work from the mid-second century B.C.E. survives in quotes by later authors. Asclepius, Anubio, Zoroaster, Abraham, Pythagoras, and Orpheus are additional figures having astrological works penned in their names. There are late Hellenistic references to three Babylonian astronomers/astrologers, Kidinnu (Kidenas), Soudines (the source of some material for second century C.E. astrologer, Vettius Valens), and Naburianos. The rivalry between the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms may be reflected in the astrologers’ varying attributions of the origins of astrology to Egyptians or Babylonians (called the Chaldaeans). Various astrological techniques and tables are either attributed to Egyptians or Chaldaeans, but by late antiquity, the source for specific techniques and approaches were often wrongly attributed. By the second century B.C.E., Babylonian astrology techniques were combined with Egyptian calendars and religious practices, Hermeticism, the Pythagorean sacred mathematics, and the philosophies of the Stoics and middle Platonists.
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b. Hellenistic Theorization and Systemization of Astrology
Hellenistic astrology displays the influence of a variety of philosophical sources. However, given the divergent and ever multiplying streams of thought in the Hellenized world, practical astrology did not necessarily conform to one particular philosophical model offered by the major philosophical schools. However, as outlined below, the Neopythagoreans, Platonists and Stoics provided the foundational influence on the development of the art. After a system or systems of Hellenistic astrology quickly developed, the later practitioners and writers did not follow any one philosophical influence as a whole. In fact, the surviving instructional texts only scantily betray the philosophical positions of the authors. Vettius Valens, whose Anthologiarum is one of the most valuable sources for historians of this subject, indicates Stoic leanings. The astrologer, astronomer, and geographer whose work greatly influenced later development of astrology, Claudius Ptolemy (fl. 130-150 C.E.), using Aristotelian influenced manners of argumentation that had been absorbed by other Hellenistic schools such as the Middle Platonists and the Academic Skeptics, sought to portray astrology as a natural science, while dismissing a good portion of doctrine due to lack of systematic rigor. The later Platonic Academyhad its fair share of astrological interest – head of the academy in the first century C.E., Thrasyllus, for example, acted as an astrologer to Emperor Tiberius and is credited for works on astrology and numerology. Neoplatonists Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus all practiced or accepted some form of astrology conforming to their unique contributions to Neoplatonism. It is difficult to imagine that the practice of astrology would have been divorced from philosophy by philosophers who were also astrologers. The idea of astrology, as a systematic account of fate, had a pervasive impact on the influential thinkers of the time who helped to shape the theoretical and cosmological understanding of the practice. Thinkers in the skeptical Academy and Pyrrhonic schools sought to attack the theoretical underpinnings of the practice of astrology, using a variety of arguments centering around freedom, the ontological status of the stars and planets, and the logical or practical limitations of astrological claims.
We now turn to the philosophies and philosophical schools of the Hellenic and Hellenized world that made the spread and acceptance of Babylonian astrology possible.
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2. Early Greek Thinking
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a. Fate, Fortune, Chance, Necessity
The role of Fate was often interchangeable with that of the gods in early Greek thinking. Fate implied foreknowledge, which was divine and sometimes dispensed by the gods. The intervention of the gods in human affairs also presented the possibility of two paths of fate, based on a moral choice. A decision that pleased or displeased the gods (such as the choice Odysseus must make regarding the Oxen of the Sun (Odyssey, Book XII) could set one off on a road of inexorable circumstances to follow.
For the pre-Socratic philosophers, personified powers – such as Moira (Fate or Destiny) Anankê (Necessity), Nemesis, Heimarmenê (Fate), Sumphora (Chance) and Tukhê (Fortune or Chance) – took on both metaphysical significances and personifications that blurred any distinction between the theological and the ontological. In thinkers such as Anaximander, Moira and Tukhê play a part in cosmology that exceeds and is possibly even prior to the gods. While the Olympian gods may be given foresight into the workings of Moira, they were often left without the power to transgress this transcendental dispensation of justice. Nature and the gods were both encompassed by Moira. At this time in Greek thinking, Fate and Fortune, and Zeus as its capricious dispenser, fell outside the pale of human understanding, for leading a virtuous life was no insurance of protection from material ruin. This sense of futility resulted in the pessimism of Ionian thinkers such as Mimnermus and Semonides. The attitude toward Moira and Tukhê by Archilochus is wholly pessimistic, for Moira and Tukhê were the sole dispensers of good and evil, with no possibility of mediation. We see the emergence of the question of the role of human responsibility in justice and injustice in early Greek thinking (i.e., Solon), but it is unusual to see sharp distinctions between circumstantial Fate that dispenses good or evil and the human response to fate through virtue that was to later develop in Hellenistic thinking (such as found in the later Stoic position that happiness is self-control in spite of an immutable Fate). Theognis, however, offers a proto-Stoic forebearance of Fate and triumph of human character, while he expresses the frustration of apparent injustice in the dispensation of good to the wicked and bad to the innocent. Democritus reacted to skepticism based on the whims of Chance by favoring a causal determinism ruled by necessity (anankê). Attribution of events to Chance, he claimed, was an excuse for one’s lack of vigilance of the chain of causality (Fr. 119, Diels-Kranz). While not claiming such a thing as absolute chance, Democritus retained chance to indicate an obscure cause or causes. We find in pre-Socratic thinking a stage set for the overcoming of the limitations of knowledge about the laws of the cosmos, not simply on a universal scale, but on the level of individual fortune as well. Hellenistic astrologers, in part, attempted to provide a complex astral logic to explain the apparent injustices of Fate. They attempted to fill this gap of knowledge and turn Chance and Fate into a predictable science for the initiated.
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b. Greek Medicine
The development of Greek medical theory brought about a distinction between a basic ‘human nature’ (koinê phusis) and an ‘individual nature’ (idiê phusis). Greek medicine was motivated by the idea that nature has a unity and lawfulness. In the manner of Democritian Atomism, even Tukhê is causal, but not necessarily predictable. A Hippocratean would classify an individual’s psychophysical nature into one of four types based on the qualities of hot, cold, moist, and dry. Astrologers borrowed and elaborated upon the psychology and character typology found in early medical theory (cf. Manilius, Astronomica, 2.453-465; Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, 3.12.148). In turn, astrology in the Hellenistic era was to in turn inform medical theory with 1) zodiacal and planetary melothesia (the association of astral phenomenon at birth with physical type), 2) iatromathematics (which included consideration of auspicious and inauspicious times), 3) sympathies and antipathies between healing plants and celestial bodies, and 4) prognostication of the course of an illness, of life expectancy or recovery, based on the moment a person fell ill. Melothesia and iatromathematics are found in the works of astrologers Manilius, Teucer (Teukros) of Babylon, Ptolemy, and Firmicus Maternus, as well as a variety of anonymous and pseudepigraphal works. (cf. Serapion, CCAG, 1.101-102; Pythagoras, CCAG, 11.2.124-138).
Galen’s own position on astrology was nuanced, for he rejected some aspects of astrological doctrine as it had been applied to medicine (particularly the Pythagorean numerology used in critical days, and the association of thirty-six healing plants with the Egyptian decans), while he supported other astrological considerations such as the Moon phases and relationship to planets for prognosis. Two of his works pertaining directly to this topic, On the Critical Days and Prognostication of Disease by Astrology. In On the Critical Days Galen claimed an empirical basis for his selective acceptance, favoring astronomical accuracy (with fractional measures) over the Pythagorean doctrines in astrology (such as seven days per quarter cycle of the Moon). A passage in On the Natural Faculties (1.12.29) also alludes to his support of astrology in general and to a lost work on the physician Asclepiades where he dealt with the topics of omen, dreams and astrology. The context of the passage reveals that his theoretical acceptance of astrology is due to his Vitalist view of Nature (that the natural world is a living organism) as opposed to the Atomistic view of Nature (that all things are composed of inanimate atoms). Nature, for Galen (drawing upon the Vitalist position of Hippocrates) possesses faculties of attraction and assimilation of that which is appropriate (e.g., for an organism) and of expulsion of that which is foreign. Nature also provides the soul with innate ideas such as the virtues of courage, wisdom, temperance, etc. Omens and astrology are signs of Nature’s providence and artistry of the principles of assimilation and expulsion. The Atomist (Epicurean) school rejected astrology and divination by dreams and omens because they believed there is no causality and purpose in Nature, so there is no means of producing these ‘signs’ or correspondences and no means of prediction by way of them.
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c. Plato and Divination
Babylonian astrology was not wholly unknown to the Greeks prior to Alexander’s campaign. Plato, for instance, demonstrates an awareness of divination by the stars in the Timaeus dialogue, in which the protagonist criticizes divination by the stars without the means of astronomical calculation (logizethai) and a model (mimêmaton) of the heavens:
To describe the dancing movements of these gods, their juxtapositions and the back-circlings and advances of their circular courses on themselves; to tell which of the gods come into line with one another at their conjunctions and how many of them are in opposition, and in what order and at which times they pass in front of or behind one another, so that some are occluded from our view to reappear once again, thereby bring terrors and portents of things to come to those who cannot reason – to tell all this without the use of visible models would be labor spend in vain. 40c-d, Donald J. Zeyl translation, emphasis mine).
Each astronomical consideration listed in this passage, the conjunctions and oppositions, the occlusion or heliacal settings of planets and stars, the retrogradation are basic considerations in Babylonian (and subsequently Greek) astronomy. This passage may allude to early exposure of the Greeks to astrological methods more akin to numerology rather than based on astronomical observation, for the use of visible models can more accurately measure celestial phenomena. It may also be taken as evidence that Plato is at least aware of the Babylonian practice of omenic astrology or the horoscopy that emerged in the fifth century B.C.E. Also in the Timaeus, Plato mentions the “young gods” whose job it is to steer souls. The identity of these gods would become a problem in later Platonism, but they are established, at least by the first century as planetary god (Philo, De opificio mundi, 46-47). As this dialogue was treated with great importance in Platonism during the formative period of Hellenistic astrology, this passage could have been used by those looking for philosophical justification for the practice. Plato further expresses in the Laws (7.821a-822c; 10.986e) the value of studying astronomy for the sake of astral piety. He points out that the name planetos (from ‘to wander’) is a misnomer, for the Sun, Moon and planets display a cyclical regularity in their course that can be more accurately understood by astronomical research. We can suspect, in this regard, the influence of contemporary astronomers and students in the academy such as Eudoxus. Astral piety, however, is to be contrasted with ‘astrology’ proper that originated with the attempt to apply reason, order, and predictability to phenomena that had been previously considered to be merely astral omens. Plato held in low regard the divinatory arts that are not prophetic, i.e., a madness (manic/mantic) directly inspired by the gods (cf. Ion). He expressed an attitude of ambiguity toward divination revealed in the double-edged characterization of Theuth (cf. Phaedo, 274a), the inventor of number, calculation, geometry, astronomy, games and writing. Just as writing results in a soul’s forgetfulness through the mediation of symbols, semiotic or sign-based prediction, as astrology was often considered, is inferior to directly inspired prophecy (Phaedo, 244c).
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d. Ages, Cycles, Rational Heavens, and Soul
As early as Hesiod, the Greeks mythologized ages of civilization. The Golden Age, in which the gods walked upon the earth, gave way to Silver, then Bronze, then Iron Age. Empedocles taught of a natural cycle of the interplay of Love and Strife: Love and harmony dominated one Age, then Strife in the next Age. Plato also expresses world ages, particularly in the Statesman or Politicus (269d-274d). Throughout the myths in this dialogue and others, he introduced the notion of a ‘cosmos’ or a rational order and ontological hierarchy of the spheres of heavenly beings, elements, daimons, and earthly inhabitants. The cosmologies in Plato’s dialogues marked the emergence of a rational cosmic order in place of earlier cosmogonies. His Timaeus dialogue, with its detailed story of the creation of the world, was to become, perhaps the most influential book along with the Septuagint in the late Hellenistic era). Babylonian astronomical cycles would, soon after Plato, fuse with Greek cosmologies. In the Myth of Er in the Republic, Plato describes the cosmos as held together by the Spindle of Necessity, such that the spheres of the fixed stars and the planets are held together by an axis of a spindle. Sirens sing to move the spheres (or whorls) while the Three Moirai participate in turning the wheel. Each whorl has its own speed, with the sphere of the fixed stars moving the fastest and in the direction opposite those of the planets. In the Phaedrus (245c-248c) dialogue, he further illustrates the Law of Destiny that governs souls who accompany the procession of the gods in a heavenly circuit for a period of 1000 years. If the souls remember the Good (those of the philosophers) they will regain lost wings of immortality in three circuits or 3000 years. Otherwise they fall to the earth and continue a cycle of rebirths for 10,000 years. Immortal souls dwell in the rim of the heavens among the stars.
This leads to another significant development introduced by Plato, one that would become critical for the Hellenistic spread of astrology and astral piety – the ensouled nature of celestial bodies. Plato gives the planets and stars a divine ontological status absent in the writings of the pre-Socratics, many of whom took the planets and stars to be material bodies of one substance or another. (e.g., Anaxagoras [Plato, Apology, 26d]; Xenophanes [Aetius, De placitis reliquiae, 347.1]; Anaximander [Aristotle De caelo, 295b10]; Leucippus and Democritus [Diogenes Laertius, Lives, 9.30-32]). In the Laws (10.893b-899d; 12.966e-967d), Plato posits that Soul is older than created things and an immanent governor of the world of changing matter. Secondly, the motion of the stars and other heavenly bodies are under the systematic governance of Nous. That the circuits of the planets and stars have an ordered regularity or rationality, and that they are always in motion, indicates that they are immortal and ensouled (cf. Phaedrus, 245c). While leaving open the question of whether the Sun, Moon and planets create their own physical bodies or inhabit them as vehicles, Plato includes in the Athenian’s argument that celestial beings are in fact gods, and (unlike the thought of the Atomists) are engaged in the affairs of human beings (Laws, 10.899a-d). Pre-Socratic philosophers such as Anaxagoras who believed that mind (Nous) governs the cosmos, failed in their cosmological account by not also recognizing the priority of soul over body (Laws, 12.967b-d). The conception of mind moving soulless bodies, noted the Athenian, led to common accusations that studying astronomy promotes impiety.
As Babylonian astronomical cycles met with a rational and ensouled Greek cosmos, the basis for both Stoic eternal recurrence and technical Hellenistic astrology was formed.
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3. The Philosophical Foundation of Hellenistic Astrology: Stoics, Middle Platonists, and Neopythagoreans
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a. Astral Piety in Plato’s Early Academy
The Platonic dialogue Epinomis, most likely written by Phillip of Opus, demonstrates a transformation of the view of the heaven that soon paved the ‘western way’ for astrology. This dialogue shows the transformation of the planets into visible representations of the Olympian gods, just as the Babylonian planets were images of their pantheon. The older names of the planets encountered in Homer and Hesiod (and in Plato’s Republic) designated their appearance rather than divine personification. Jupiter was shining (Phaithon), Mercury was twinkling (Stilbôn), Mars was fiery (Pureos) and Venus was the bright morning star and evening star (Phosphoros and Vesperos). In the Epinomis, the planets are given proper names for Greek gods, though the author leaves open the question of whether the celestial beings are the gods themselves or likenesses fashioned by the gods (theous autous tauta humnêteon orthotata, ê gar theous eikonas hôs agalmata hupolabein gegonenai, theôn autôn ergasamenon, 983e). The new names of planets as Greek gods corresponded loosely with the astral deities of Babylonian astrology, such as the identification of ruling Olympian, Zeus, with the planet Jupiter, replacing the principle Babylonian god Marduk. Ištar (female as evening star, male as morning star) became Aphroditê/Venus, Nergal (god of destruction) Ares/Mars, Nabu Hermes/Mercury, Ninib Kronos/Saturn, and Sin became the female lunar deity Selênê.
The author of Epinomis extends the sentiment of astral piety evident in the Laws, and goes so far as to say that the highest virtue is piety, and that astronomy is the art/science that leads to this virtue (989b-990a) – for it teaches the orderliness of the celestial gods, harmony, and number. While Plato himself would never place the heavenly gods in direct control of a person’s destiny, the distinction between the fatalism of such a control measured by astrology and an astral piety that permitted some intervention of gods in human affairs was not sharply drawn. Does the care of the gods for “all things great and small” (epimeloumenoi pantôn, smikrôn kai meizonôn, 980d) mean that it is through their activities or motions they control, guide or occasionally intervene in human matters? While we do not yet see a clear distinction between astral piety and practical astrology, later texts on mystery cults, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and magic demonstrate that someone who either worships stars, or is concerned with their ontological status, need not be technically proficient in astronomy. Nor must they believe that life is fated by astrally determined necessity. Likewise, the technical Hellenistic astrologers who calculated birth charts and made predictions did not necessarily practice rituals in reverence to planetary gods. While there is no clear evidence for a unified school in which technical astrologers were indoctrinated into both technique and theory of the craft, the fact that the Hellenistic techniques (barring the basic foundation of Babylonian astrology) had developed in a variety of conflicting ways speaks to the possibility of several schools of thought in theory, practice, and perhaps geographic distance. As each astrologer contributed their own techniques or variations on techniques, the technical material quickly multiplied, and students of astrology had many authoritative writers to follow. The most likely scenario is that the practicing astrologers possessed a variety of viewpoints about the life and ‘influence’ of the planets and stars, based on available cosmological views in religion and philosophy. While borrowing freely from Stoic, Pythagorean and Platonic thought, the astrologers who would soon emerge varied theoretically on issues such as which aspects of earthly existence may or may not be subject to Fate and the influence of the stars, and whether or not the soul is affected by celestial motions and relationships.
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b. Stoic Cosmic Determinism
Although the founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium, integrated fate into the system of physics, the first Stoic to write a treatise On Fate (Peri heimarmenês) is Chrysippus of Soli (280-207 B.C.E.). Xenocrates and Epicurus both penned lost works of the same title prior to his (Diog. Laert., 4.12; 10.28). Given the influence of Xenocrates on the Stoa on matters as important as oikeôisis, there is no reason to think that all of the issues of fate and freedom discussed by Chrysippus originate with him. Later Stoics such as Boethus, Posidonius and Philopator, dedicated works to fate, a topic that would become a critical issue for all Hellenistic schools of thought. The development of Hellenistic astrology is placed in the context of these theories.
i. Fate and Necessity
Stoic theory of fate involves the law of cause and effect, but unlike Epicurean atomism, it is not a purely mechanistic determinism because at the helm is divine reason. Logos, for the Stoics, was the causal principle of fate or destiny. This principle is not simply external to human beings, for it is disseminated through the cosmos as logos spermatikos (seminal reason) which is particularly concentrated in humans who are subordinate partners of the gods. Individual logoi are related to the cosmic logos through living in harmony with nature and the universe. This provided the basis of Stoic ethics, for which there is the goal of eupoia biou or smooth living rather than fighting with the natural and fated order of things. Chrysippus makes a distinction between fate (heimarmenê) and necessity (anankê) in which the former is a totality of antecedent causes to an event, while the latter is the internal nature of a thing, or internal causes. By its nature, a pot made of clay can be shattered, but the actual events of the shattering of a specific pot are due to the sum total of external causes and inner constraints. Fate, in general, encompasses the internal causes, though to be fated does not exclude the autonomy of individuals because particular actions are based on internal considerations such as will and character. Some events are considered to be co-fated by both external circumstances and conscious acts of choice. Diogenianus gives examples of co-fatedness, e.g., the preservation of a coat is co-fated with the owner’s care for it, and the act of having children is co-fated with a willingness to have intercourse (Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, 2.998). Character or disposition also plays a part in determining virtue and vice. Polemical writers such as Alexander of Aphrodisias characterize the Stoic position as maintaining that virtue and vice are innate. However, it is more accurate to say that for the Stoics an individual is born morally neutral, though with a natural inclination towards virtue (virtue associated with reason/logos) that can be enhanced through training or corrupted through neglect. Though morally neutral at birth, a human being is not a tabula rasa, but has potentialities which make him more or less receptive to good and bad influences from the environment. An individual cannot act contrary to his or her character, which is a combination of innate and external factors, but there is the possibility of acquiring a different character, as a sudden conversion. Since character determines action the ethical responsibility rests with the most immediate causes. An often cited example is that of a cylinder placed on a hill – the initial and external cause of being pushed down the hill represents the rational order of fate, while its naturally rollable shape represents will and character of the mind (Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, 7.2.11). Cultivation of character through knowledge and training was thought to result in “harmonious acceptance of events” (which are governed by the rational plan of the cosmos), whereas lack of culture results in the errors of pitting oneself against fate (Gellius, 7.2.6).
ii. Stoic-Babylonian Eternal Recurrence
Berossus, a Babylonian priest who settled on the island of Cos and the author of Babuloniakos, is often credited for bringing Babylonian astrology to the Greek-speaking world. Because he is thought to have flourished around 280 B.C.E., he is not the first to expose Greek speakers to this art, but he is known for founding an astronomical and astrological school. Kidinnu and Soudines, two Babylonian astronomers mentioned by second century C.E. Vettius Valens, also contributed to Hellenistic astronomy and astrology. Although many of the technical and theoretical details of pre-Hellenistic Babylonian astrology in Greece are lost in all but a few tablets, the doctrine of apokatastasis or eternal recurrence is attributed to Berossus by Seneca (Quaest. nat., 3.2.1). One scholar of the history of astronomy (P. Schnabel, Berossus und die babylonisch-hellenistische Literatur, Leipzig 1923) argued that Kidinnu possessed a theory of ‘precession of the equinox’ prior to Hipparchus. Precession occurs due to a slight rotation of the earth’s axis resulting in a cyclical slippage of the vernal point in reference to the stars. (See section on Ptolemy for more on precession) From this was concluded an eternal recurrence based on the precession of the vernal point through the constellations. Schnabel’s theory, however, had been refuted by Neugebauer. Whatever the case may be, it is likely that Babylonian cosmological theories influenced the founding Stoics, particularly Chrysippus. The early Stoic version of the eternal recurrence is that a great conflagration (ekpurôsis) marks a stage in the cycle of the reconstitution of the cosmos (apokatastasis). One cycle, a Great Year (SVF, 2.599), would last until the planets align in their original position or zodiac sign in the cosmos (SVF, 2.625). Each age would end in Fire, the purest of elements and the irreducible cosmic substance, and would be followed by a restoration of all things. This fire, for the Stoics, was a ‘craftsmanly fire’ (pur tekhnikon identified with Zeus and of a different nature than the material fire that was one of the four elements. In the reconstitution of the world, the fiery element would interact with air to create moisture, which then condenses into earth. The four elements would then organize in their proper measures to create living beings (SVF, 1.102). By Necessity, the principle cohesive power of the cosmos, the same souls which existed in one cycle would then be reconstituted in the cosmos and would play the same part in the same way, with perhaps an insignificant variation or two. This concept from the early Stoa is sometimes known as the ‘eternal recurrence.’ Because human souls are rational seeds of God (Logos, Zeus, Creative Fire), the conflagration is an event in which all souls return to the pure substance of creative fire (pur technikon), Zeus. This is not to be understood as an ‘afterlife’ of human souls, as one would find in Christianity, for example. God, then restored in his own completion, assesses the lives of the previous cycle and fashions the next great age of the world that will contain an identical sequence of events. Heraclitus, whom the Stoics claimed as a precursor, possessed an earlier doctrine of conflagration, though it is not to be assumed that his generation and decay of the cosmos was measured by the planetary circuits, for its movement, to him, is a pathway up and down rather than circular (Diog. Laert., 9. 6). As reported by Philo, the only Stoics to have rejected the eternal recurrence include Boethus of Sidon, Panaetius, and a mature Diogenes of Babylon (De aeternitate mundi, 76-7).
Astrological configurations were specified as part of the Stoic-Babylonian theory of eternal recurrence. According to Nemesius, The Stoics say that when the planets return to the same celestial sign [sêmeion], in length and breadth [mêkos kai platos], where each was originally when the world was first formed, at the set periods of time they cause conflagration and destruction of existing things. Once again the world returns anew to the same condition as before; and when the stars are moving again in the same way, each thing that occurred in the previous period will come to pass indiscernibly. (SVF, 2.625, tr. Long and Sedley, Hellenistic Philosophers V. 1, p. 309).
The word sêmeion used by Nemesius could represent any celestial indicator, though the typical word for ‘sign of the zodiac’ was zôidion. The celestial position of ‘length and breath’ (latitude and longitude) is more specifically identified by second century C.E. astrologer Antiochus as the last degree of the zodiac sign of Cancer or the first degree of Leo. A variation of this theory of apokatastasis includes an antapokatastatis, which is an additional destruction by water which occurs when the planets align in the opposing sign, Capricorn. Such destruction by a Great Flood during this alignment was also attributed to Berossus by Seneca. Fourth century astrologer turned Christian, Firmicus Maternus, associated apokatastasis with the Thema Mundi (or Genesis Cosmos), which is a ‘birth chart’ for the world consisting of each planet in the 15th degree of its own sign. For the sake of consistency with the Stoic eternal cosmos, Firmicus claimed this chart does not indicate that the world had any original birth in the sense of creation, particularly one that could be conceived of by human reason or empirical observation. The Great Year contains all possible configurations and events. Because it exceeds the span of human records of observation, there is no way of determining the birth of the world. He claimed that the schema had been invented by the Hermetic astrologers to serve as an instructional tool often employed as allegory (Mathesis, 3.1). A more common Genesis Cosmos mentioned in astrological texts is a configuration of all planets in their own signs and degrees of exaltation hupsoma), special regions that had been established in Babylonian astrology.
iii. Divination and Cosmic Sympathy
The eternal recurrence doctrine in Stoicism entails justification of divination and belief in the predictability of events. The Sun, Moon and planets, as gods, possess the pur technikon and are not destroyed in the ekpurôsis (SVF, 1.120). While their physical substance is destroyed, they maintain an existence as thoughts in the mind of Zeus. Because the gods are indestructible, they maintain memory of events that take place within a Great Year and know everything that will happen in the following cycles (SVF, 2.625). Divination, for Stoicism, is therefore possible, and even a divine gift. Stoics who accepted divination include Chrysippus, Diogenes of Babylon, and Antipater (SVF, 2.1192). The presupposition that divination is a legitimate science was also used by Chrysippus as an argument in favor of fate. Cicero, however, argued for the incompatibility of divination and Stoicism (De fato, 11-14), particularly the incompatibility between Chryssipus’ modal logical (which allows for non-necessary future truths) and the necessary future claimed by divination’s power of prediction. These non-necessary future truths include all things that happen ‘according to us’ (eph’ hêmin). The example argument presented by Cicero, “If someone is born at the rising of the Dogstar, he will not die at sea,” would not, by his account, fall under the category of non-necessary truths since the antecedent truth is necessary (as a past true condition). Therefore the conclusion would also be necessary according to Chrysippus’ logic. Cicero mentions Chrysippus’ defense against charges of such contradictions, but regardless of the success or failure of Chysippus’ defense against them, the issue for the possibility of divination, for the Stoics, was not considered a logical contradiction between fate and free will. The eph hêmin in Stoicism was based on a disposition of character that, while not a causal necessity, would lead one to make decisions between the good, bad, and indifferent in accordance with nature. Because human beings are by nature the rational seeds (logoi spermatikoi) of the Godhead, their choices will correspond to the cosmic fate inherent in the eternal recurrence, and would not alter that which is divined. For Chrysippus, at least, the laws of divination are accepted as empirically factual (or proto-science) and not as a matter of logical connectivity between past, present, and future. Since divination occurs as a matter of revelation though signs, the idea that there can be knowledge of a necessary causal antecedent leading to a future effect is not the principle behind it (cf. Bobzein, p. 161-170). The Stoic argument for divination through signs would be as follows: if there are gods, they must both be aware of future events and must love human beings while holding only good intentions toward them. Because of their care for human beings, signs are then given by the gods for potential knowledge of future events. These events are known by the gods, though not alterable by them. If signs are given, then the proper means to interpret them must also be given. If they are not interpreted correctly, the fault does not lie with the gods or with divination itself, but with an error of judgment on the part of the interpreter (Cicero, De divinatione, 1.82-3; 1.117-18). Another theory in support of divination and by extension astral divination, is that of cosmic sympathy. Cosmic sympathy was already prevalent in Hipparchean medical theory, though Posidonius is credited for its development in the Stoic school. Posidonius, though, claimed to have drawn this notion from DemocritusXenophanes, Pythagoras and Socrates. Stoic physical theory holds that all things in the universe are connected and held together in their interactions through tension. The active and passive principles move pneuma, the substance that penetrates and unifies all things. In fact, this tension holds bodies together, and every coherent thing would collapse without it. Pneuma as the commanding substance of the soul penetrates the cosmos. This cosmos, for the Stoics, is both a rational and sensate living being (Diog. Laert., 7.143). The Stoics thought that the cosmos is ensouled and has impulses or desires (hormai). Whereas in Platonism these impulses are conflicting and need the rational part of the soul to govern them, in Stoicism desires of the cosmic soul are harmoniously drawn toward a rational (though not entirely accessible to human beings) end, which is Logos, or Zeus’ return to himself through the cosmic cycle of apokatastasis. So the idea of cosmic sympathy supports divination, because knowledge of one part of the cosmos (such as a sign) is, by way of the cohesive substance of pneuma, access to the whole. In contrast to Plato’s disparaging view of divination that it is not divinely inspired but based on the artless fumbling of human error, the Stoic view, for the most part, is that rational means of divination can be developed. The push to develop a scientific (meaning systematic and empirical) knowledge-based divination finds its natural progression in mathematically based astrology.
Stoic-influenced astrologers went a step further than Stoic philosophers to define innate potentials of character by assigning them to the zodiac and planets. Virtuous and corrupt characteristics are identified as determined by the potential of the natal chart, while external circumstances are indicated by the combination of this chart with transits of planets through time and certain periods of life set in motion by the configurations in the natal chart. For instance, in his list of personality characteristics for individuals born with certain zodiac signs on the horizon, Teukros of Babylon (near Cairo) includes character traits that are not morally neutral. For example, those born when the first decan of Libra is ascending are ‘virtuous’ (enaretous), while those born when the third decan of Scorpio is ascending ‘do many wrongs’ or are ‘law-breakers’ (pollous adikountas).
iv. The Attitude of Stoic Philosophers Toward Astrology
While it is clear that Stoic philosophy influenced the development of astrology, the attitude of the Stoa towards astrology, however, varied on the basis of the individual philosophers. Cicero stated that Diogenes of Babylon believed astrologers are capable of predicting disposition and praxis (one’s life activity), but not much else. Diogenes, though, is said to have calculated a ‘Great Year’ in his earlier years (Aetius, De placitis reliquiae, 364.7-10). His turn to skepticism changed his view on Stoic ekpurosis and likely modified his view on astrology. Middle Stoic Panaetius is said to have rejected astrology altogether. That an astrological example is used by Cicero to illustrate a contradiction in Chrysippus’ logic and divination does not necessarily mean that Chrysippus himself had much exposure to or took an interest in astrology. (Cicero’s example is, “If someone is born at the rising of the Dogstar, he will not die at sea.” Si quis (verbi causa) oriente Canicula natus est, is in mari non morietur. De fato, 12). In Chrysippus’ time, Hellenistic astrology had not yet been formulated systematically. However, given that the example is based on a consideration of importance to Babylonian astrology, the rising of the fixed star Sirius, the possibility exists that Chrysippus or one of his contemporaries discussed astrology in the context of logic and divination.
Posidonius was alleged by Augustine to have been “much given to astrology” (multum astrologiae deditus) and “an assertor fatal influence of the stars” (De civitate dei 5.2). His actual relationship to astrology, however, is more complicated, but there are several reasons to think that he supported astrology. For one, in his belief that the world is a living animal, he followed Chrysippus in identifying the commanding faculty of the world soul as the heavens (Diog. Laert., 7.138-9. Cleanthes considered it to be the Sun). Secondly, Posidonius had a strong research interest in astronomy and meteorology. He was the first to systematically research the connection between ocean tides and the phases of the Moon. His research in this area possibly led him to his doctrine of cosmic sympathy, as he considered natural affinities among things of the earth. Cosmic sympathy allows for an association between signs (within nature that can extend to planets and stars) and future events without direct causality. If the higher faculty of the cosmos is located in the heavens, then it is more likely that these signs would carry weight for Posidonius. Thirdly, Cicero, who can be given more credibility than Augustine by having attended Posidonius’ lectures, mentions him in connection with astrology in De divinatione (1.130). Fourthly, Posidonius (as a Platonic-influenced thinker) believed idea that the signs of the zodiac (zôdia) are ensouled bodies – living beings (Fr. 149, Edelstein-Kidd / Fr. 400a, Theiler). However, given that Posidonius is flourishing at the same time as the earliest textual evidence for Hellenistic astrology (first century B.C.E.; some ‘technical’ Hermetic fragments about Solar and Lunar observations may be earlier), it is difficult to say what type of astrology he would have had an interest in – whether it had been remnants of the Babylonian omen-based astrology, or the beginning formulation of a systematic Greco-Roman astrology. Because he was widely traveled, he may have gained exposure to one or more astrologers or schools of astrologers. With his observations of the connection between seasonal fluctuations of the tides and the Solar/Lunar cycles, he apparently refuted Seleucus, a Babylonian astronomer who believed that the tides also fluctuation according to the zodiac sign in which the Moon would fall; he claimed the tides were regular when the Moon would be in the equinoctial signs of Aries or Libra and irregular in the solstitial signs of Capricorn, Cancer (Fr. 218, Edelstein-Kidd / Fr. 26, Theiler). This observation would not have necessarily been considered an astrological one, though it is schematized according to characteristics of the zodiac rather than lunations and seasons, and such schematizations were quite common in Hellenistic astrology. It cannot be said with certainty whether Posidonius’ advocacy of cosmic sympathy lent support to the development of astrology or if this development itself reinforced Posidonius’ own theories of cosmic sympathy and fate.
The importance of astrology in politics of first century Rome was aided by its alignment with Stoic fatalism and cosmic sympathy. Balbillus, son of Thrasyllus and astrologer to Nero, Seneca, and a certain Alexandrian Stoic, Chaeremon, were all appointed tutors to L. Domitius. Chaeremon (who Cramer, p. 116, identifies with the Egyptian priest/astrology in Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo and in Eusebius’ Praeparatio evang., 4.1) wrote a work on comets (peri komêtôn suggramma) that cast these typically foreboding signs in a favorable light. Seneca, too, wrote a work on comets (Book 7 of Quaestiones naturales), in which he portrays some as good omens for the Empire (cf. Cramer, p. 116-118).
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c. Middle Platonic and Neopythagorean Developments
So far in this account of the theoretical development of Hellenistic astrology, the pre-Socratic thinkers contributed a deep concern for fate and justice. Plato contributed an orderly and rational cosmos, while those in the early Academy displayed an astral piety that recognized the planets as gods or representations of gods. The Stoics contributed theories of fate and divination, that already had an astrological component with the Babylonian contribution to the Eternal Recurrence. Cosmic sympathy, present in Greek medicine and popularized by the middle Stoic Posidonius, provided astrologers with a theoretical grounding for the associations among planets, zodiac signs, and all other things. One notable Stoic contribution to Hellenistic astrology which distinguishes it from the Babylonian is the incorporation of Chryssipus’ principle of two forces, active and passive, manifest in the activities of the four elements. Fire and air were active, earth and water passive. The astrologers later assigned these elements and dynamic qualities to each sign of the zodiac. Further philosophical developments by the Middle Platonists and the Neopythagoreans would then lead to astrology as a system of knowledge due to its systematic and mathematical nature. The systematic nature would make it plausible to some and a worthy or dangerous foe to others. These developments set astrology apart, epistemologically speaking, from other manners of divination such as haruspicy (study of the liver of animals), or dream interpretation. The union between Pythagorean theory and Platonism should come as no surprise given Plato’s late interest in Pythagoreanism. From the early academy onward, elements of Pythagorean theory became part and parcel of Platonism. Speusippus wrote a work on Pythagorean numbers (Fr. 4), and he would become influential in this regard, if not as directly on subsequent Academy members as on Neopythagorean circles. He and Xenocrates both offered cosmic hierarchies formed from the One and the Dyad. The One, or Monad, is a principle of order and unity, while the Dyad is the principle of change, motion, and division. The manner in which these principles are related was a critical issue inherited from the early Academy. Xenocrates (Fr. 15) believed that stars are fiery Olympian Gods and in the existence of sublunary daimons and elemental spirits. We see in Xenocrates both the identification of Gods with stars (as we saw in Phillip of Opus) and the notion that Gods are forces of Nature, thereby creating an important theoretical issue for astrology, namely what is the domain of influence of the planetary gods, as the Olympians are identified with the planets. He also believed that the world soul is formed from Monad and Dyad, and that it served as a boundary between the supralunary and sublunary places. Xenocrates’ cosmology would be highly influential on Plutarch, who elaborated on the roles of the world soul, the daimons, the planets and fixed stars. The middle Platonists, many of whom believed themselves to be true expounders of Plato, were influenced by other schools of thought. The physical theories of Antiochus of Ascalon are very Stoic in nature. For example, he incorporated the Stoic ‘qualities’ (poiotêtes), which were moving vibrations that act upon infinitely divisible matter, into his cosmology. The unity of things is held together by the world soul (much as it is held together in Stoic theory by pneuma). Antiochus equated the Stoic Logos/Zeus with the Platonic World Soul, and this soul of the cosmos governs both the heavenly bodies and things on earth that affect humankind. He also accepted the Stoic Pur Tekhnikon (Creative Fire) as the substance composing the stars, gods, and everything else. There is little to indicate that Antiochus held in his cosmology the notion common to some other Platonists of transcendent immateriality; his universe, like the Stoics, is material. On the subject of fate and free will, he argues against Chrysippus (if he is in fact the philosopher identified as doing so in Cicero’s De fato and Topica) by accepting the reality of free will rather than the illusion of free will created simply by the limitations of human knowledge in grasping fated future events. Antiochus’ view on other beings in the cosmos, particularly the ontological status of stars and planets, may be found in his Roman student Varro who stated that the heavens, populated by souls (the immortal occupying aether and air), are divided by elements in this order from top to bottom: aether, air, water, earth.
From the highest circle of heaven to the circle of the Moon are aetherial souls, the stars and planets, and these are not only known by our intelligence to exist, but are also visible to our eyes as heavenly gods.” (from Natural Theology, tr. Dillon, Middle Platonists, p. 90).
Daimons and heroes, then, were thought to occupy the aerial sphere. The importance of Antiochus for the development of Hellenistic astrology may be his break with the skepticism of the New Academy, one which allowed the Middle Platonists to espouse more theological and speculative views about the soul and the cosmos while anticipating Neoplatonic theories. In Alexandria, which, not by coincidence would become a hotbed for astrological theory and practice, Platonism incorporated strong Neopythagorean elements. Eudorus of Alexandria, who wrote a commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, contributed to the importance of Timaean cosmology in middle and Neoplatonic thought. References to Eudorus’ are found in Achilles’ work, Introduction to Aratus’ Phenemona. Achille used Eudorus as a source for this work that also contains references to Pythagorean theories of planetary harmonies. We know from Achilles that Eudorus followed the Platonic and Stoic belief that the stars are ensouled living beings (Isagoga, 13). This intellectual climate is likely the immediate context for the development of systematic astrology – with its complex classifications of the signs, planets, and their placements in a horoscope, and the numerological calculations used for predicting all sorts of events in one’s life.
i. Ocellus Lucanus
The revival of Pythagoreanism by the mid-first century B.C.E. brought about the acceptance of pythagorica of ‘Timaeus of Locri’ and Ocellus Lucanus as genuinely “early” Pre-Platonic Pythagorean texts, though both mostly like date around the second century B.C.E., or at latest, the first half of the first century B.C.E. The Neopythagorean texts just mentioned are significant for the development of Hellenistic astrology. They represent cosmological theories that likely were used as justification for astrology.
In On the Nature of the Universe (peri tês tou pantos phuseôs), Ocellus argues for a perfectly ordered harmonious universe that is immutable and unbegotten. By appealing to the empirical rationale that we cannot perceive the universe coming to be and passing away, but only its self-identity, he concludes the eternity of the whole, including its part. This whole though is divided into two worlds, the supralunary and the sublunary. The heavens down to the Moon comprise a world of unchanging harmony that governs the sublunary realm of all changing and corruptible activity. In Platonic manner, the unchanging (the Monad) governs and generates the changing (the Dyad). In Pythagorean manner, the divine beings in the unchanging realm are in perfect harmony with one another through their regular motions. Visible signs for the unchanging harmony and self-subsistence of the universe are found in the harmonious movements of things in relation to one another. Based on the nature of the relations listed – “order, symmetry, figurations (skhêmatismoi), positions (theseis), intervals (diastaseis), powers, swiftness and slowness with respect to others, their numbers and temporal periods” (1.6) – he clearly means the movements of planets and stars. This list comprises the primary factors by which astrologers would assess the strength and qualities of planets in a given horoscope as the basis for the formulation of predictive techniques and statements. For instance, swiftness of planets was thought to make them stronger while slowness (which occurs close to the retrogradation motion) weakens the planet, while “figurations” (skhêmatismoi) is a word used for aspects, or the geometrical figures planets make to one another and the ascending sign (horoskopos). Temporal periods were assigned by astrologers in a variety of ways, though usually based on the “lesser years” of the planets, the time it took for one planet to complete its revolution with respect to a starting point in the zodiac. “Intervals” (diastaseis) were measures that were calculated either between planets or between planets and the horizon or culminating points in a horoscope; in the case of the latter, the intervals were used in astrology to determine strong and weak areas in the horoscope. The former notion of intervals was used for determining various time periods of one’s life assigned to each planet (cf. Valens, Anthologiarum, 3.3). “Numbers” was a term used to indicate a planet’s motion (as appearing from earth) as direct or retrograde. “Powers” (dunameis) of the planets are combinations of heating, cooling, drying, moistening – these powers made planets benevolent or malevolent (cf. Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, 1.4). Ocellus goes on to name these powers as hot, cold, wet, and dry, and he contrasts them with the “substances” (ousiai) or elements of fire, earth, water and air. The powers and substances, or ‘qualities’ and ‘elements’ as they are more commonly called, were used in horoscopic astrology to describe the natures of the planets and zodiac signs. In Ocellus’ explanation of astral causality, the powers are immortal forms that affect changes on the sublunary substances (2.4-5).
Whether or not Ocellus and other Neopythagoreans are at the forefront of formulating these particular astrological rules, he provides a metaphysical basis for the notion that the planets and stars effect changes on earth. He is further described as saying that the Moon is the locus where immortality (above) and mortality (below) meet. He also says the obliquity of the zodiac, the pathway of the Sun, is the inclining place at which the supralunary generates activity in the sublunary realm. The Sun’s seasonal motion conforms to the powers (hot, cold, wet, and dry) that bring about changes in the substances (elements); the ecliptic path inclines these powers into the realm of strife and nature.
In his discussion on the generation of men, Ocellus argues, in more of an Aristotelian than Platonic sense (as found in On Generation and Corruption, that the only participation of men in immortality is through the gift by divinities of the power of reproduction. Following rules of morality in connubial relations results in living in harmony with the universe. Immoral transgressions, though, are punished by the production of ignoble offspring. A manner of cosmic sympathy (as found in Greek medicine) plays a role in determining that the circumstances of conception (such as a tranquil state of mind) will reflect upon the nature of the offspring. This notion is in keeping with the fact that astrologers studied charts not only for the moment of birth, but for conception as well. The only major difference is that for the astrologers, the circumstances of the birth appear to be reflected universally at a given time and not the direct result of moral or immoral actions as it is for Ocellus. The moment of birth or conception for the astrologers is reflected in all things of nature and in any activities initiated at that particular moment, as reflected in the positions of the planets and signs. The technical astrologers typically did not include reflections on moral retributions in their manuals of astral fate. They were primarily concerned with detailing knowledge of fate for its own sake, though speculation about such matters as retribution and rebirth is not excluded by astrological theory.
ii. “Timaeus Locrus”
The Hellenistic text attributed to Timaeus Locrus, On the Nature of the World and the Soul, purports to be the original upon which Plato drew for his dialogue of his name. For the most part, it consists of a summary of the material by Plato. The circles of the Same and the Different carry the fixed stars and the planets respectively. The sphere of the fixed stars containing the cosmos is granted the Pythagorean perfect figure of the dodecahedron. One addition of note for the theory of astrology is the doctrine of the creation of souls. The four elements are made by the demiurge in equal measure and power, and Soul of man is made in the same proportion and power. Individual souls of human beings are fashioned by Nature (who has been handed the task by the demiurge of creating mortal beings) from the Sun, Moon, and planets, from the circle of Difference with a measure of the circle of the Same that she (Nature being hypostasized as the female principle) mixes in the rational part of the soul. There appears in this to be a difference in individual souls reflecting different fates based on the composition. While this merely reiterates what is found in Plato’s Timaeus (42d-e), the supposition that one could read this account straight from Timaeus Locrus gave authority to these notions. It is likely that these ideas filtered to the astrologers, who would devise methods for seeking out the ruling planet (oikodespotês) for an individual (see section on Porphyry). Perhaps what they were seeking in the horoscope was one of the “young gods” whose task it was to fashion the mortal body of each soul and to steer their course away from evils. As mentioned above, some philosophers associated the young gods with the planets. Astrological fragments of a writer “Timaeus Praxidas” date to the same period (early to middle first century B.C.E.), but there is little textual evidence to indicate that these are one and the same writer. What it at least indicates is that the legend of Timaeus lent authority to the astrological writers.
iii. Thrasyllus
Thrasyllus (d. 36 C.E.), a native of Alexandria, was not only the court astrologer to Tiberius, but a grammarian and self-professed Pythagorean who studied in Rhodes. Given that he published an edition of Plato’s works (and is known for the arrangement of the dialogues into tetralogies), and that he wrote a work on Platonic and Pythagorean philosophy, we can assume that his astrological theory represents Middle Platonism of the early first century C.E. However, a summary of his astrological work “Pinax” (tables), indicates that he is drawing upon earlier sources, particularly the pseudepigrapha of “Nechepso and Petosiris” and Hermes Trismegistus. A numerological table, perhaps containing zodiac associations to numbers as that found in Teukros of Babylon, is also attributed to Thrasyllus. It appears that his own philosophy contains a mixture of Hermetic and Pythagorean elements.
A search for exact origins of astrology’s development into a complex system remains inconclusive, but the following can be surmised. The combination of Pythagorean theory, such as the supralunary realm influencing the sublunar, Platonic ensouled planets moving on the circle of the Different, Stoic determinism and cosmic sympathy, and the emergence of a Hermetic tradition, comprised the intellectual context for the systematic structuring of astrology, its classifications of the signs, planets, and their placements in a horoscope, and the numerological calculations used for predicting all sorts of events in one’s life.
iv. Plutarch of Chaeroneia
Besides being a prolific writer on a variety of subjects, Plutarch was, philosophically speaking, a Platonist, as defined by his era, that is, one influenced by AristotelianStoic, and Neopythagorean notions. In Plutarch’s case this includes ideas culled from his study of Persian and Egyptian traditions. By his time (late first century C.E.), astrology had been systematized and appropriated by Greek language and thinking, and in Rome, the political implications of astrological theory were made evident in the relationships between astrologers and emperors (such as Thrasyllus and his son Balbillus) and in the edicts against predictions about emperors (cf. Cramer, 99 ff). Plutarch’s own form of Platonism did not then directly contribute to the technical development of astrology, but it does add a Middle Platonic contribution to an explanation of how astrology gained some credibility and much popularity in the first three centuries of the common era. He also borrowed some astrological concepts (and metaphors) for his own philosophy. First of all, as a priest of Apollo, Plutarch saw all other deities as symbolic aspects of One God that is invisible and unintelligible. He gained impetus for this from an etymology of ‘Apollo’, which is explained as an alpha-privative a-pollos, or ‘not many’ (De E apud Delphos, 393b). He resists a pure identification of the Sun with Apollo (De pythiae oraculis 400c-d), because the One God is Invisible, and the Sun an intelligible copy. He likens the Sun to one aspect, that of the Nous, the heart of the cosmos. The Moon is then associated with the cosmic Soul (and spleen), and the earth with the bowels. Taking cue from Plato’s suggestion in the Laws (10.896 ff) of two world souls, beneficent and malevolent (a concept Numenius would take up later), he believed the malevolent soul to be responsible for irrational motion in the sublunary world. The malevolent or irrational soul preexisted the demiurge’s creation. It is not pure evil, but the cause of evil operating in the sublunary realm, mixing with the good to create cosmic tension. Plutarch maintains the distinction of Ocellus between the generating supralunary realm and the generated sublunary realm, but he offers more detail about operations in the sublunary world of change. He posits two opposing principles or powers of good and evil that offer a right-handed straight path and a reversed, backwards path for souls (De Isis., 369e). Individual souls are microcosms of a world soul (based on Timaeus, 30b), and the parts of the soul reflect this cosmic tension. Souls are subject in the sublunary realm to a mixture of fate (heimarmenê), chance (tukhê), and free choice (eph’ hêmin). The “young gods”, the planetary gods in the Timaeus (42d-e) that steer souls, Plutarch designates as the province of the irrational soul. With the emphasis of the irrational soul and the mixture of forces in the sublunary realm, Plutarch’s cosmology allows for the possibility of astrology. Plutarch also posits four principles (arkhê) in the cosmos, Life, Motion, Generation and Decay (De genio Socratis, 591b). Life is linked to Motion through the activity of the Invisible, through the Monad; Motion is linked to Generation through the Mind (Nous); and Generation is linked to Decay through the Soul. The three Fates (Moirai) are also linked to this cycle as Clotho seated in the Sun presided over the first process, Atropo, seated in the Moon, over the second, and Lachesis over the third on Earth (cf. De facie in orbe lunae, 945c-d). At death the soul of a person leaves the body and goes to Moon, the mind leaves the soul and goes to Sun. The reverse process happens at birth. Plutarch is not rigid with his use of planetary symbolism, for in another place, he associates the Sun with the demiurge, and the young gods with the Moon, emphasizing the rational and irrational souls (De E apud Delphos, 393a). Plutarch’s own opinion about astrology as a practice of prediction is ambiguous at best. He supported the probability of divination by human beings, although dimmed by the interference of the body, as evident in his arguments for it in On the E at Delphi (387) and in De defectu oraculorum (431e ff). However, he complains about generals who rely more heavily on divination than on counselors experienced in military affairs (Marius, 42.8). In his accounts of astrologers, his attitude appears to be more skeptical. In Romulus (12), he discusses the claims made by an astrologer named Taroutios, namely, of discovering the exact birth date and hour of Romulus as well as the time in which he lay the first stone of his city, by working backwards from his character to his birth chart. Plutarch considered astrologers’ claims that cities are subject to fate accessible by a chart cast for the beginning of their foundation to be extravagant. He also wrote about how Sulla, having consulted Chaldaeans, was able to foretell his own death in his memoirs (Sulla, 37.1). However, Plutarch finds himself at a loss at explaining why Marius would be successful in his reliance on divination while Octavius was not so fortunate accepting the forecasts of Chaldaeans.
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4. The Astrologers
a. The Earliest Greek Astrology: Horoscopic and Katarchic
Cicero’s account in On Divination of Eudoxus’ rejection of Chaldaean astrological predictions points to Greek awareness of Babylonian astrology as early as the third century B.C.E. Another account about Theophrastus’ awareness of Chaldaean horoscopic astrology (predicting for individuals rather than weather and general events) is given to us by Proclus (In Platonis Timaeum commentaria, 3.151). Technical manuals by Greek-speaking astrologers used for casting and interpreting horoscopic (natal) charts date as early as the late second century B.C.E. In addition to natal astrology, many of the fragments exemplify the practice of katarchical astrology, or the selection of the most auspicious moment for a given activity. Katarkhê was also used to ascertain events that had already happened, to view the course of an illness, or track down thieves, lost objects, and runaway slaves. Fragments attributed to Thrasyllus, the philosopher-astrology include such methods. This use of astrology implies that the astrologers themselves did not prescribe to strict fatalism, at least the kind that dictates that knowledge from signs of the heavens cannot influence events. Perhaps like Plutarch, they believed in a combination of fate, chance, and free will. Given the pervasiveness of cosmic sympathy and a unified cosmic order, astrology pertaining to proper moments of time and to natural occurrences was less controversial than that pertaining to the soul of human beings. However, the texts of the next few centuries focus primarily on natal rather than katarchic astrology. Methods to ascertain controversial matters such as one’s length of life would proliferate and play a significant part in Roman politics (cf. Cramer, p. 58 ff). Such fascination with either the fate or predisposition of individuals reflects a stronger concern in the late Hellenistic world for the life of the individual in a period of rapid political and social change. ‘
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b. Earliest Fragments and Texts
The earliest Hermetic writings, the technical Hermetica (dated second century B.C.E. and contrasted with philosophical Hermetica cf. Fowden, p. 58) include works on astrology. As mentioned by Clement, (Stromata, 6.4.35-7), they include: on the ordering of the fixed stars, on the Sun, Moon and five planets, on the conjunctions and phases of the Sun and Moon, and on the times when the stars rise. These topics in the early Hermetica do not reflect much technical sophistication in comparison to the complicated techniques of prediction that we find in the katarchic and natal astrology texts of other astrological writers. The astronomical measurements that appear to be used for these topics are most likely for the purpose of katarchic astrology and ritual because they do not contain the apparatus for casting natal charts. An exception to the technical sparsity of astrology considered to be in the lineage of Hermes Trismegistus are the works attributed to Nechepso and Petosiris (typically dated around 150 B.C.E.), portions of which survive in quotations. Combined, they are considered a major source for many later astrologers, and are said by Firmicus Maternus to be in line with the Hermetic tradition, handed down by way of other Hermetic figures such as Aesclepius and Anubio, from Hermes himself. It is impossible to say to what extent the writers of these texts had organized existing techniques or invented new ones, but based on the frequency with which Nechepso and Petosiris are quoted by later authors, we can be certain that they were important conveyers of technical Hellenistic astrology. More about the astral theories in the later philosophical Hermeticism and Gnosticism will be discussed below.
Additional fragments are preserved of real and pseudepigraphical astrologers of the first centuries B.C.E and C.E. including Critodemus, Dorotheus of Sidon, Teukros of Babylon, (pseudo-)Eudoxus, Serapion, Orpheus, Timaeus Praxidas, Anubion, (pseudo-)Erasistratus, Thrasyllus, and Manilius. Only a few representative writers will be highlighted below.
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c. Manilius
For most of the early astrological writers, we can only speculate about their theoretical justification for the practice, two exceptions being first century B.C.E. Roman Stoic Manilius, (from whom we have the Latin didactic poem, Astronomica), and Thrasyllus, whose work is described above. Manilius was also associated with the Roman imperial circle, dedicating his work to either Augustus or Tiberius (see Cramer, p. 96, for more on this controversy). While his poetic account of astrology contains much technical material, there is little evidence to show that he himself practiced astrological prediction. Some scholars speculated that he intended to avoid the political dangers of the practice in his day with the poetic writing style and the exclusion of astrological doctrine about the planets, which is necessary for the practice (or his work could simply be incomplete). His Stoic philosophy is one in which Fate is immutable, and astrology is a means of understanding the cosmic and natural order of all things, but not of changing events. However fated we are, he says, is no excuse for bad behavior such as crime, for crime is still wicked and punishable no matter what its origin in the sequence of causal determinism (4.110-117). He used the regularity of the rising of the fixed stars and the courses of the Sun and Moon as proof against the Epicureans that nothing is left to chance and that the universe is commanded by a divine will (1.483-531). Nature apportions to the stars the responsibility over the destinies of individuals (3.47-58). Nature is not thought to be separate from reason, but is the agent of Fate – one orchestrated by a material god for reasons not readily accessible to the mortals who experience apparent injustices and turns of events that defy normal expectations (4.69-86). The purpose of the deity is simply to maintain order and harmony in its cosmos (1.250-254). Astrology demonstrates cosmic sympathy among all things and can be used to predict events insofar as it grants access to the predestined order. In addition to the use of astrology for psychological acceptance of one’s fate, Manilius emphasizes the aesthetic and religious benefits of its study, for he considers it a gift to mortals from the god Hermes for the sake of inducing reverence and piety of the cosmic deity.
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d. Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria
Astrology had increased in popularity in the second century C.E., and two writers of this period operating under different philosophical influences, Ptolemy (c. 100-170 C.E.) and Vettius Valens (fl. 152-162 C.E.), will next be discussed. Ptolemy is an exception among the astrological authors because first and foremost he is an empirical scientist, and one who, like his philosophical and scientific contemporaries, is concerned with theories of knowledge. His works include those on astronomy, epistemology, music, geography, optics, and astrology. He is best known as an astronomer for his work Syntaxis mathematica (Almagest), but from the middle ages to present day, his astrological work, Apotelesmatica (or Tetrabiblos as it is more commonly known), has been considered the key representative of Greek astrology, primarily due to its prominence in textual transmission.
Scholars have claimed Ptolemy’s main philosophical influences to be either Peripatetic, Middle Stoic (Posidonius), Middle Platonist (Albinus) or Skeptic (sharing a possible connection with Sextus Empiricus). Any attempts to tie him to a single school would be futile. His eclecticism, though, is by no means an arbitrary amalgam of different schools, but a search for agreements (rather than disagreements sought by the Pyrrhonian Skeptics) and a scientist’s harmony of rationalism and empiricism (cf. Long in Dillon & Long, p. 206-207). His epistemological criteria (in On the Criterion shows only superficial differences with the Skeptics, while he often employs Stoic terminology (such as katalêpsis) without the Stoic technical meanings. He extends the Stoic notion of oikeiôsis (as the manner of familiarity that a Stoic Sage achieves with the cosmos) to the relations of familiarity that planets and zodiac signs share among themselves. Because Ptolemy deviates significantly from other astrologers in theory and technique, some have doubted that he was a practicing astrologer at all. It is difficult to support this claim when in the Tetrabiblos he makes a long argument in favor of astrology and he claims to have better methods than offered by the tradition. It seems best to call him a ‘revisionist’ rather than a ‘non-astrologer’. His revisions and causal language make his position vulnerable to later attacks by Plotinus and other philosophers. The methods Ptolemy rejects include material that can be traced to the Hermetic Nechepso/Petosiris text, particularly the use of Lots (klêroi) and the division of the chart into twelve places (topoi) responsible for topics in life such as siblings, illness, travel, etc. Lots were points in the chart typically calculated from the positions of two planets and the degree of the ascending sign. He also rejects various subdivisions of the zodiac and nearly all numerologically based methods. He considered these methods to be disreputable and arbitrary because they are removed from the actual observations of planets and stars. (It might be noted here that he also rejects Pythagorean musicology on empirical grounds in his work Harmonica).
Ptolemy says, in the beginning of Book I, that the study of the relations of the planets and stars to one another (astronomy) can be used for the less perfect art of prediction based on the changes of the things they “surround” (tôn emperiekhomenon). He notes that the difficulty of the art of astrological prediction has made critics believe it to be useless, and he argues in favor of its helpfulness and usefulness. He blames bad and false practitioners for the failing of astrology. The rest of the argument involves the natural cosmic sympathy popularized by Posidonius. The influence of the Sun, Moon, and stars on natural phenomena, weather and seasons brings the possibility than men can likewise be affected in temperament due to this natural ambience (ton periekhon). The surrounding conditions of the time and place of birth contribute a factor to character and temperament (as we find earlier in Ocellus). While the supralunary movements are perfect and destined, the sublunary are imperfect, changeable, and subject to additional causes. Natural events such as weather and seasons are less complicated by additional causes than events in the lives of human beings. Rearing, custom, and culture are additional accidental causes that contribute to the destiny of an individual. He seems to encourage critics to allow astrologers to start their predictions with knowledge of these factors rather than do what is called a ‘cold reading’ in modern astrology. The criticism he counters is that of Skeptics such as Sextus Empiricus, who elaborated on earlier arguments from the New Academy, and who argue that an astrologer does not know if they are making predictions for a human or a pack-ass (Adversus mathematicos, 5.94).
Ptolemy’s arguments that astrology is useful and beneficial are the following: 1) One gains knowledge of things human and divine. This is knowledge for its own sake rather than for the purpose of gains such as wealth or fame. 2) Foreknowledge calms the soul. This is a basic argument from Stoic ethics. 3) One can see through this study that there are other causes than divine necessity. Bodies in the heavens are destined and regular, but on earth are changeable in spite of receiving “first causes” from above. This corresponds again to the Neopythagorean Platonism found in Ocellus. These first causes can override secondary causes and can subsume the fate of an individual in the cases of natural disasters. Ptolemy’s attribution of the nature of planets and stars, which is the basis of their benefic or malefic nature, is that, like Ocellus before him, of heating, drying, moistening, and cooling. The stars in each sign have these qualities too based on their familiarity (oikeiôsis) with the planets. Geometrical aspects between signs, which are the basis of planetary relations, are also based on ‘familiarity’ determined by music theory and the masculine or feminine assignment to the signs. He considers the sextile and trine aspects to be harmonious, and the quadrangle and opposition to be disharmonious.
Book 2 of Tetrabiblos includes material on astrological significations for weather, ethnology and astro-chorography. Ptolemy is not the first to delineate an astrological chorography (geographical regions assigned to signs of the zodiac), and his assignments differ significantly from those found in Dorotheus, Teukros, Manilius, and Paulus Alexandrinus. Book 3 and 4 consist of methods of prediction of various topics in natal astrology. Absent in his work is the katarchical astrology found in earlier writers. Ptolemy is the first astrologer to employ Hipparchus’ zodiac modified to account for the ‘precession of the equinox’, i.e., the changing seasonal reference point against the background of the stars. This zodiac uses the vernal equinox as the beginning point rather than the beginning of one of the twelve constellations. (This ‘tropical’ zodiac would become the standard in the Western practice of astrology up to present day. Modern opponents of astrology typically utilize precession – pointing out the fact that zodiac ‘signs’ no longer match with the star constellations.) Other astrologers, including those shortly following Ptolemy, were either not aware of Hipparchus’ observation or did not find it important to make this adjustment. Valens claims to use another method of Hipparchus, but it is debatable whether or not he adjusted his zodiac to the vernal point. Ptolemy had no impact on other astrologers of the second century, likely because his texts were not yet in circulation.
We do not find in Ptolemy’s work the language of signs and astral divination, but a causal language – the relationships between the planets cause natural activity on earth, from weather to seasons to human temperament. However, Ptolemy argues for the fallibility of prediction, and cannot be considered a strict astral determinist for this reason, though he believed that astrology as a tool of knowledge could be made more accurate with improved techniques, closing the gap of fallibility. The idea that stars are causes is not original with Ptolemy, being an acceptable idea to Peripatetic thinkers cued by Aristotle’s eternal circular motions of the heavens as the cause of perpetual generation (On Generation and Corruption (336b15 ff). For Ptolemy, though, this idea as a justification for the practice of astrology was probably filtered through the Peripatetic influenced Neopythagoreans such as Ocellus. Ptolemy’s arguments may have been the target of subsequent attacks by Alexander of Aphrodisias, Plotinus and early Church Fathers.
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e. Vettius Valens
The work Anthologiarum of Vettius Valens the Antiochian (written between 152-162 C.E.) is important for a number of reasons. It contains fragments of earlier writers such as Nechepso and Critodemus, and numerous horoscopes important for the study of the history of astronomy. He is also an astrological writer who best exemplifies the details of the practice and the mind of the practitioner. Having traveled widely in search of teachers, he exhibits techniques unavailable in other astrological texts, indicating much regional variety. Among his sources, he mentions the following astrologers and astronomers (in alphabetical order): Abram, Apollinarius, Aristarchus, Asclation, Asclepius, Critodemus, Euctemon, Hermeias, Hermes, Hermippus, Hipparchus, Hypsicles, Kidenas, Meton, Nechepso, Petosiris, Phillip, Orion, Seuthes and Soudines, Thrasyllus, Timaeus, Zoroaster. Valens claimed to have tested the methods and to have the advantage of making judgments about the methods through much toil and experience (cf. 6.9). He occasionally interjects the technical material with reflections about his philosophical convictions. His philosophical leaning is far less complicated than Ptolemy’s, for it is primarily based on Stoic ethics. His association of the Sun with Nous (1.1), for example, exhibits remnants of the Neopythagorean/Middle Platonic roots (see Plutarch), but his conscious justification for astrology is based on Stoicism. That which is in our power (eph’ hêmin), according to Stoic ethics, is how we adapt ourselves to fate and live in harmony with it. Valens argues that we cannot change immutable fate, but we can control how we play the role we are given (5.9). He quotes Cleanthes, Euripides, and Homer on Fate (6.9; 7.3), emphasizing that one must not stray from the appointed course of Destiny. Valens maintains a sense of ‘astral piety’, treating astrology as a religious practice, exemplified in the oath of secrecy upon the Sun, Moon, planets and signs of the zodiac in his introduction to Book 7. He asks his reader(s) to swear not to reveal the secrets of astrology to the uneducated or the uninitiated (tois apaideutois ê amuêtois), and to pay homage to one’s initial instructor, otherwise bad things will befall them. In Book 5.9, he provides a Stoic argument in favor of prognostication through astrology. He considers the outcomes that Fate decrees to be immutable, and the goddesses of Hope (Elpis) and Fortune (Tukhê) acting as helpers of necessity and enslave men with the desires created by the turns and expectations of fortune. Those however who engage with prognostication have ‘calmness of soul’ (atarakhôn), do not care for fortune or hope, are neither afraid of death nor prone to flattery, and are “soldiers of fate” (stratiôtai tês heimarmenês). While other places, Valens gives techniques for katarchical astrology (5.3; 9.6) he states that no amount of ritual or sacrifice can alter that which is fated in one’s birth chart. He also considers the time of birth to account for dissimilar natures in two children born of the same parents. In keeping with his religious approach to astrology, he treats it as “a sacred and venerable learning as something handed over to men by god so they may share in immortality.” Like Ptolemy, Valens also blames the imperfections of predictions on the astrologers – particularly the inattentiveness and superficiality of some of the learners.
Ptolemy and Valens stand as representatives of astrology in the second century, but their works were not the most prominent. Astrological concepts were also used in magic, Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Gnostic Christian sects such as the Ophites, and by the author of the Chaldaean Oracles. Other known astrologers of the second century include Antiochus of Athens and Manetho (not to be confused with the Egyptian historian). One additional astrologer will be treated for his philosophical position, Firmicus Maternus. Though because he was influenced by Neoplatonic theories, he will be included below in the section on Neoplatonism.
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5. The Skeptics
Already mentioned is Pliny’s acceptance of some methods of astrology and rejection of others based on numerology. Similarly mentioned was Ptolemy’s rejection of various methods based on subdivisions of the zodiac and manipulations based on planetary numbers. Both he and Valens, as astrologers, criticized other practitioners for either shoddy methods or deliberate deception, posing their forms of divination as astrology. Valens went so far as to admonish those who ‘dress up their ‘Barbaric’ teachings in calculations as though they were Greek, perhaps in reference to the frequently maligned ‘Chaldaeans’ (Anthologiarum, 2.35). Geminus of Rhodes, an astronomer of the mid-first century B.C.E., accepts some tenets of astrology, particularly the influence of aspects ‘geometrical relations’ of planets, while rejecting others, such as the causal influence of emanations from fixed stars. Midde Stoic Panaetius is also known to have rejected astrology, most likely under the influence of his astronomer friend Scylax, who like other astronomers of the time, attempted to set the practice of astrology apart from astronomy. Arguments against astrology can be grouped into one of two categories (though there are other ways to classify them): ones that deny the efficacy of astrology or astrologers; and ones that admit that astrology ‘works’ but question the morality of the practice. Arguments of the latter type include those that see astrology as a type of practice of living that assumes a strict fatalism. Some of the earliest arguments against astrology were launched by the skeptical New Academy in the second century B.C.E. Arguments against astrology on moral or ethical grounds would proliferate in Christian theologians such as Origen of Alexandria and other Church Fathers. Astrology would become an important issue for Neoplatonists, with some rejecting it and others embracing it, though not within a context of strict fatalism.
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a. The New Academy (Carneades)
The earliest arguments against the efficacy of astrology have been traced to the fourth head of the skeptical New Academy, Carneades (c. 213-129 B.C.E.) (cf. Cramer, p. 52-56). As an advocate of free will, primarily against Stoic determinism, Carneades is likely to have influenced other philosophers who have argued against astrology. The arguments by Carneades, who left no writings, have been reconstructed as the following:
Precise astronomical observations at the moment of birth are impossible (and astrological techniques depend on such precision). Those born at the same time have different destinies (as empirically observed)
Those born neither at the same time or place often share the same death time (as in the case of natural disasters) Animals born at the same time as humans (according to strict astrological fatalism) would share the same fate.
The presence of diverse ethnicities, customs and cultural beliefs is incompatible with astrological fatalism.
Astrologers would respond to the last argument with the incorporation of astro-geography or astro-chorography (perhaps as early as Posidonius), indicating an astral typology of a people, and used for the purpose of ‘mundane’ astrology, predictions for entire nations, which would also account for the second argument. Astro-chorography can be found as early as Teukros of Babylon and Manilius, but might be traced to Posidonius’ predecessor Cratos of Mallos.
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b. Sextus Empiricus
About three centuries later, Pyrrhonian skeptic Sextus Empiricus would elaborate upon these arguments in “Against the Astrologers” (Pros astrologous, Book 5 of Pros mathêmatikous). He first outlines the procedure of drawing a birth chart, and the basic elements of astrology, the places (topoi), the benefic and malefic nature of the planets, and the criteria for determining the power of the planets. He also notes the disagreements among astrologers, particularly regarding subdivisions of the signs, a disagreement also noted by Ptolemy. Sextus first notes typical arguments against astrology: 1) earthly things do not really sympathize with celestial. He uses an example from anatomy, namely, the head and lower parts of body sympathize because they have unity, and this unity is lacking in celestial/earthly correspondence; 2) It is held that some events happen by necessity, some by chance, some according to our actions. If predictions are made of necessary events, then they are useless; if of chance events, then they are impossible; if of that according to our will (para hêmas), then not predetermined at all. If as he says, these are arguments by the majority, then there was an attack on the theory of cosmic sympathy and on the use of prediction (any form of divination) on events determined by any or all of the three causes. This precludes the possibility that the planets and stars are causes that determine necessity in the sublunary realm, and it presents astrology as a form of strict determinism. Sextus continues by offering a more specific set of criticisms, including the five thought to originate with Carneades. He especially focuses on the inaccuracy of instruments and measurements used for determining either the time of birth or conception. To these criticisms he adds that astrologers associate shapes and characters of men (tas morphas kai ta êthê) with the characteristics of the zodiac signs, and questions, for example, why a Lion could be associated with bravery while an equally masculine animal, the Bull, is feminine in astrology. He also ridicules physiognomic descriptions, such that those who have Virgo ascending are straight-haired, bright-eyed, white-skinned; he wonders if there are no Ethiopian Virgos. Sextus adds the argument that predictions from the alignment of planets cannot be based on empirical observation since the same configurations do not repeat for 9977 years (one calculation of the Great Year. Many such calculations exist in the Hellenistic and Late Hellenistic eras, for the exact length of the cycle was debated).
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6. Hermetic and Gnostic Theories of Astrology
The ‘philosophical’ Hermetica, texts in the Hermetic tradition that are typically of later origin than the ‘technical’ astronomical and magical fragments, share astrological imagery in common with another heterogeneous group of texts known as ‘Gnostic’. (See more on Hermeticism and Gnosticism in Middle Platonism and Gnosticism). A factor present in both collections is the role planets and stars play in the cosmologies and eschatologies, one in which the planets and other celestial entities are seen as oppressive forces or binding powers from which the soul, by nature divine and exalted above the cosmo, must break free. Fate (Heimarmenê) plays a major role in the Hermetic texts, and astrology is sometimes taken for granted as knowledge of the Fate by which the mortal part of a human being is subjected to at birth (cf. Stobaei Hermetica, Excerpt VII). The planets are said to be subservient to Fate and Necessity, which are subordinate powers to God’s providence (pronoia). In the Poimandres text, God made man in his own image, but also made a creator god (demiurge) who made seven administrators (the planets) whose government is Fate. Man being two-fold, is both immortal, and above the celestial government, and mortal, so also a slave within the system, for he shares a bit of the nature of each of the planets. At death the soul of the individual who recognizes their immortal, intellectual, and divine self ascends, while gradually surrendering the various qualities accumulated during the descent: the body is given to dissolution; the character (êthos) is yielded to the daimon (cf.Heraclitus, Fr. 119); and through each the seven planetary zones, a portion of the incarnated self that is related to the negative astrological meaning of each planet (e.g., arrogance to the Sun, greed to Jupiter) is given back to that zone. Arriving at the eighth zone, the soul is clothed in its own power (perhaps meaning its own astral body), while it is deified (in God) in the zone above the eighth (some Gnostic texts also refer to a tenth realm). Astrological fatalism, then, is modified by the Platonic immortal soul whose proper place is above the cosmic order. Astrology affects the temperament and life while in the mortal body, but not ultimately the soul. Another Hermetic text that incorporates astrology is the Secret Sermon on the Mount of Hermes to Tat (Corpus Hermeticum, Book XIII). Here the life-bearing zodiac is responsible for creating twelve torments or passions that mislead human beings. These twelve are overcome by ten powers of God, such as self-control, joy and light. In Excerpt XXIII of the Stobaei Hermetica, the zodiac is again thought responsible for giving life (to animals) while each planet contributes part of their nature to human being. In this instance, as well as in Excerpt XXIX, what the planets contribute is not all vice, but both good and bad in a way that corresponds with the nature of each planet in astrological theory. The Discourses from Hermes to Tat is a discussion of the thirty-six decans, a remnant of Egyptian religion, which was incorporated into Hellenistic astrology. The decans are guardian gods who dwell above the zodiac, and added by servants and soldiers that dwell in the aether, they affect collective events such as earthquakes, famines and political upheaval. Furthermore, the decans are said to rule over the planets and to sow good and bad daimons on earth. Although Fate is an integral part of these Hermetic writings, it seems that the transmission of the Hermetic knowledge, which intends to aid the soul to overcome Fate, is for the elect, because most men, inclining towards evil, would deny their own responsibility for evil and injustice (Excerpt VI). This is a rehashing of the Lazy Man Argument used against Stoic determinism, though cast in the light of astral fatalism.
Hippolytus, being mostly informed by Irenaeus, tells us that the Christian Marcion and his followers used Pythagorean numerology and astrology symbolism in their sect, and that they further divided the world into twelve regions using astro-geography (6.47-48). They may have used a table of astro-numerology like that found in Teukros of Babylon. Some Gnostic sects such as the Phibionites, as did the Christian Marcionites associated each degree of the zodiac with a particular god or daimon. Single degrees of the zodiac (monomoiria) were governed by each planets. The astrologers assigned each degree to a planet by various methods as outlined in the compilation of Paul of Alexandria. For the Gnostics, the degrees were hypostatized as beings that did the dirty work of the planets, who themselves are governed by higher beings on the ontological scale as produced by the Ogdoad, and Decade, and Dodecade, and ultimately leading to a cosmic ruler or demiurge, typically called Ialdabaoth, though varying based on the specific version of the cosmo-mythology of each sect. It is likely that the astrologers and the Gnostics did not use these divisions in the zodiac in the same way. Assignment of planets to divisions of the zodiac is typically used in astrology for determining the relative strength of the planets, and in the case of Critodemus (cited in Valens, 8.26), in a technique for determining length of life. The monomoiria may have been used in the Gnostic and/or Hermetic writers for the sake of gaining knowledge of the powers that oppress in order to overcome them.
In the Chaldaean Oracles, a text of the second century and thought to bear the influence of Numenius, one finds a view of the cosmos similar to that found in the Hermetic corpus. However, the divine influences from above are mediated by Hecate, who separates the divine from the earthly realm and governs Fate. Fate is a force of Nature and the irrational soul of a human being is bound to it, but the theurgic practices of bodily and mental purification, utilizing the rational soul, is preparation for the ascent through the spheres, the dwelling place of the intelligible soul and the Father God. The Oracles share with the Gnostic and Hermetic texts a hierarchy of powers including the zodiac, planets and daimons.
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7. Neoplatonism and Astrology
Neoplatonism is typically thought to have originated with Plotinus; though his philosophy, like every Late Hellenistic philosophy and religion, did not develop in a vacuum. Plotinus was acquainted with the Middle Platonists Numenius and Albinus, as well as Aristotelian, Neopythagorean, Gnostic, and Stoic philosophies. Numenius (fl. 160-180 C.E.) shares with the Hermetic and Gnostic cosmologies the notion that the soul of human beings descends through the cosmos (through the Gateway of Cancer), loses memory of its divine life, and acquires its disposition from the planets. The qualities of the planets are again astrological, but vary by degree based on the distance from the intelligible realm – at the highest planetary sphere, Saturn confers reason and understanding, while at the lowest, the Moon contributes growth of the physical body. During the ascent, judges are placed at each planetary sphere; if the soul is found wanting, it returns to Hades above the waters between the Moon and Earth, then is reincarnated for ages until it is set right in virtue (based on the Myth of Er in Plato’s Republic 10.614-621).
The cosmological schemes, particularly the ontological hierarchies, in Middle Platonic, Gnostic and Neopythagorean thinkers typically allows for the place of astrology, if not in a strictly deterministic way for the entire human being, for the transcendent soul descends and ascends through the cosmos and one’s own actions determine future ontological status. This context places Neoplatonic philosophy in a difficult relationship with astrology and fatalism. Plotinus is unique in that he reverses the ontological status of the soul and the cosmos, for the All-Soul (World-Soul, Nous) is the creator and governor of the cosmos, but not a part of it. His philosophy, which exalts the soul above the cosmos and above the ordinance of time, forms the basis for some of his arguments against astrology.
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a. Plotinus
Plotinus (204-270 C.E.) takes up the issue of astrology in Ennead 3.1 “On Fate,” and in more detail in the later Ennead 2.3, “Are the Stars Causes?” (chronologically, the 52nd treatise, or third from the last). In the first text, Plotinus points out that some hold the belief that the heavenly circuit rules over everything, and the configurations of the planets and stars determine all events within this whole fated structure (3.1.2). He then elaborates upon an astrology based on Stoic cosmic sympathy theory (sumpnoia), in which animals and plants are also under sympathetic influence of the heavenly bodies, and regions of the earth are likewise influenced (3.1.5). Many astrologers divided countries into astrological zones corresponding to zodiac signs (cf. Manilius Astronomica, 4.744-817). Plotinus briefly presents the arguments that for one, this strict determinism leaves nothing up to us, and leaves us to be “rolling stones” (lithous pheromenois – this recalls the rolling cylinder example in Stoicism). Secondly, he says the influence of the parents is stronger on disposition and appearance than the stars. Thirdly, recounting the New Academy argument, he says that people born at the same time ought to share the same fate (but do not). Given this, he does argue that planets can be used for predictive purposes, because they can be used for divination like bird omens (3.1.6; 3.3.6; 2.3.7-8). The diviner, however, has no place in calling them causes since it would take a superhuman effort to unravel the series of concomitant causes in the organism of the living cosmos, in which each part participates in the whole.
In Ennead 2.3, his arguments can be divided into two types, the first being a direct assault against the specific doctrines and language used by astrologers, the second concerning the roles that the stars have on the individual soul’s descent into matter, as he sees in accordance with Plato’s Timaeus and Republic 10. In the first set of arguments, Plotinus displays more intimate familiarity with the language of technical astrology. He turns around the perspective of this language from the observer to the view from the planets themselves. He finds it absurd, for instance, that planets affect one another when they “see” one another and that a pair of planets could have opposite affections for one another when in the region of the other (2.3.4). Another example of the switched perspective is his criticism of planetary ‘hairesis’ doctrine, such that each planet is naturally diurnal or nocturnal and rejoices in its chosen domain. He counters that it is always day for the planets. More pertinent to his philosophy, Plotinus then poses questions about the ontological status of the planets and stars. If planets are not ensouled, they could only affect the bodily nature. If they are ensouled, their effects would be minor, not simply due to the great distance from earth, but because their effects would reach the earth as a mixture, for there are many stars and one earth (2.3.12). Plotinus does think planets are ensouled because they are gods (3.1.5). Furthermore, there are no bad planets (as astrologers claim of Mars and Saturn) because they are divine (2.3.1). They do not have in their nature a cause of evil, and do not punish human beings because we have no effect on their own happiness (2.3.2). Countering moral characteristics that astrologers attribute to the zodiac and planets, Plotinus argues that virtue is a gift from God, and vice is due to external circumstances that happen as the soul is immersed in matter (2.3.9; 2.3.14).
Plotinus does concede that just as human beings are double in nature, possessing the higher soul and the lower bodily nature, so are planets. The planets in their courses are in a better place than beings on earth, but they are not themselves completely unchanging, like beings in the realm of Intellect (2.1). In this regard he attempts to square the contribution of the stars to one’s disposition in the Spindle of Fate in Plato’s Republic 10, to his belief in free will. From the stars we get our character (êthê), characteristic actions (êthê praxeis) and emotions (pathê). He asks what is left that is ‘we’ (hêmeis), and answers that nature gave us the power to govern (kratein) passions (pathôn) (2.3.9). If this double-natured man does not live in accordance with virtue, the life of the intellect that is above the cosmos, then “the stars do not only show him signs but he also becomes himself a part, and follows along with the whole of which he is a part” (2.3.9, tr. Armstrong).
In summary, Plotinus ridicules astrological technical doctrine for what he sees as a belief in the direct causality of the planets and stars on the fate of the individual. He also finds offensive the attribution of evil or evil-doing to the divine planets. However, he does believe that planets and stars are suited for divination because they are part of the whole body of the cosmos, and all parts are co-breathing (sumpnoia) and contribute to the harmony of the whole (2.3.7). The planets do not, then, act upon their own whims and desires.
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b. Porphyry of Tyre
Plotinus’ best-known student, Porphyry of Tyre (c. 232/3-304/5), held quite a different view on astrology. He wrote a lost work on astrology, Introduction to Astronomy in Three Books (the word ‘astronomy’ meaning ‘astrology’), and put together an Introduction to Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos (Eisagôgê eis tên Apotelesmatikên tou Ptolemaiou). In this work he heavily draws upon (and in some cases copies directly from) Antiochus of Athens, an astrologer of the late second century C.E. Antiochus’ influence was considerable, and perhaps greater than Ptolemy’s in the third and fourth centuries, since he was referenced by several later astrologers such as Firmicus Maternus, Hephaistion of Thebes, Rhetorius, and the medieval ‘Palchus’. It may be that Porphyry encountered Antiochus’ work when he studied in Athens under Longinus (another student of Ammonius Saccas) before continuing his Platonic education under Plotinus. Porphyry attempts to reconcile his belief in astrology with the Platonic belief in a free an exalted soul that is separable from the body. As a Pythagorean, Porphyry promoted abstinence from meat and other methods of detachment from the body as promoting virtue and a life of Nous. (cf. Launching Points to the Realm of the Mind; Letter to Marcella; On Abstinence). In an earlier work of which only fragments exist, Concerning Philosophy from Oracles, Porphyry asserts that gods and the demons use observations of the movements of stars to predict events decreed by Fate, a doctrine originating with the Stoics. He claims astrologers are sometimes incorrect in their predictions because they make faulty interpretations (while assuming that the principles of astrology itself are not false) (cf. Amand, p. 165-166; Eusebius Praeparatio evangelica, 6.1.2-5). In another fragment (Stobaeus, 2.8.39-42), Porphyry interprets Plato’s Myth of Er (Republic 10.614-621) as justification for the compatibility of astrology and free choice (Amand, p. 164-165). Before the souls descend to earth, they are free to choose their guardian daimon. When on earth, they are subject to Fate and necessity based on the lot chosen. Porphyry says this is in agreement with the (Egyptian) astrologers who think that the ascending zodiac sign (hôroskopos), and the arrangement of the planets in the zodiac signify the life that was chosen by the soul (Stobaeus, 2.8.39-42). He notes, as does Plotinus (Enn., 2.3.7), that the stars are scribbling on the heavens that give signs of the future. Both Porphyry and Plotinus discuss the Myth of Er and the stars as giving divinatory signs (sêmainô), but Porphyry accepts the astrological tradition filled with complicated calculations and strange language, while Plotinus rejects it. Porphyry’s Introduction to Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos contains little content from Ptolemy, and purports to fill in the terminology and concepts that Ptolemy had taken for granted. Porphyry says that by explicating the language in as simple a way as possible, these concepts will become clear to the uninitiated. His great respect for Ptolemy is evident by his other work on the study of Ptolemy’s Harmonics, and by statements that he makes of his debt, but he includes in the compilation numerous techniques that Ptolemy rejected. The debt he may be paying though, may actually be to readers of Plotinus. It may be a response to Plotinus’ criticism of the language of astrology and the belief that stars are causes. Porphyry seems to think that understanding the complicated scientific language will give back the credence to astrology that the naturalistic model by Ptolemy took away (at least for his most respected teacher). In the Letter to Anebo, Porphyry poses a series of questions about the order of and distinctions between visible and invisible Gods and daimons, and about the mantic arts. He mentions the ability of some to judge, but the configurations of the stars, whether or not divinatory predictions will be true and false, and if theurgic activity will be fruitful or in vain (Epistula ad Anebonem, 2.6c – in reference to katarchical astrology). He also asks about the symbolism of the images of the Sun that change by the hour (these figures are twelve Egyptian forms that co-rise with the ascending signs of the zodiac. The dôdekaôrai. These uneven hours were measured by the time it took for each sign to rise; cf. Greek Magical Papryi, PGM IV 1596-1715). In this work, though, he complains of Egyptian priest/astrologers such as Chaeremon, who reduce their gods to forces of nature, do not allow for incorporeals, and hold to a strict deterministic astral fatalism (Epist. Aneb., 2.13a). Porphyry concludes with questions about the practice of astrologers of finding one’s own daimon, and what sort of power it imparts to us (Epist. Aneb., 2.14a-2.16a; cf. Vettius Valens, Book 3.1; Hephaistion, Apotelesmatica, 13; 20). Again, reconciling his notions of virtue and free will with astrology, he states that if it is possible to know one’s daimon (indicated by the planet derived through a set of rules and designated as the oikodespotês) from the birth chart, then one can be free from Fate. He notes the difficulties and disagreements among astrologers about how to find this all-important indicator. In fact, in Introduction to Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos (30), he includes a lengthy chapter (again, borrowing from Antiochus of Athens) that explains a method for finding the oikodespotês) and for differentiating this from other ruling planets (such as the kurios and the epikratêtôr). As will be explicated, Iamblichus, who formed his own unique relationship to astrology, answered these questions in his De mysteriis.
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c. Iamblichus
While Iamblichus (c. 240-325 C.E.) believed in the soul’s exaltation above the cosmos, he did not, like Plotinus, think that the embodied soul of the human being is capable of rising above the cosmos and its ordering principle of Fate through simple contemplation upon the One, or the source of all things. Iamblichus responds to Porphyry’s accusation that Egyptian religion is only materialistic: just as the human being is double-natured, an incorporeal soul immersed in matter, this duality is replicated at each level of being (5.20). Theurgy, for most people, should begin with the material gods that have dominion over generation and corruption of bodies. He does not think the masses are capable of intellectual means of theurgy (this is reserved for the few and for a later stage in life), but that a theurgist must start at their own level of development and individual inclinations. His complex hierarchy of beings, including celestial gods, visible gods, angels and daimons, justifies a practice of theurgy in which each of these beings is sacrificed and prayed to appropriately, in a manner pleasing to and in sympathy with their individual natures. Material means, i.e., use of stones, herbs, scents, animals, and places, are used in theurgy in a manner similar to magical practices common in the Late Hellenistic era, with the notable difference that they are used simply to please and harmonize with the order of the higher beings, rather than to obtain either an earthy or intellectual desire. Divinity pervades all things, and earthly things receive a portion of divinity from particular gods. Answering Porphyry’s question about the meaning of the Sun god seated on the Lotus (an Egyptian astrological motif), Iamblichus responds that the images that change with the zodiacal hours are symbolic of an incorporeal (and unchanging) God who is unfolded in the Light through images representing his multiple gifts. His position above the Lotus (which, being circular, represents the motion of the Intellect) indicates his transcendence over all things. Curiously, Iamblichus also says that the zodiac signs along with all celestial motions, receive their power from the Sun, placing them ontologically subordinate to it (De mysteriis, 7.3). Next addressing Porphyry’s question about astral determinism of Chaeremon (who is thought to be a first century Alexandrian astrologer/priest versed in Stoic philosophy; cf. Porphyry, De abstinentia, 4.6; Origen Contra Celsum, 1.59; Cramer, p. 116-118) and others, Iamblichus indicates that the Hermetic writings pertaining to natal astrology play a minor role in the scope of Hermetic/Egyptian philosophy (De myst., 8.4) Iamblichus does not deny the value of natal astrology, but considers it to be concerned with the lower material life, hence subordinate to the intellectual. Likewise, not all things are bound to Necessity because theurgic exercises can elevate the soul above the cosmos and above Fate (8.7). On Porphyry’s question about finding one’s personal daimon through astrological calculation, Iamblichus responds that the astrological calculations can say nothing about the guardian daimon. Since the natal chart is a matter concerning one’s fatedness, and the daimon is assigned prior to the soul’s descent (it is more ancient; presbutera) and subjection to fate, such human and fallible sciences as astrology are useless in this important matter (9.3-4). In general, Iamblichus does not show much inclination for use of astrological techniques found in Ptolemy, Antiochus, and other astrologers, but he does believe that astrology is in fact a true science, though polluted by human errors (9.4). He also accepts and uses material correspondences to celestial gods (including planets), as well as katarchical astrology, observations used for selecting the proper times (8.4).
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d. Firmicus Maternus
Julius Firmicus Maternus was a fourth century Sicilian astrologer who authored an astrological work in eight books, Matheseos, and about ten years later, a Christian polemical work, On the Error of Profane Religions (De errore profanarium religionum). Unlike Augustine (who studied astrology in his youth), Firmicus did not launch polemics against astrology after his conversion to Christianity He is mentioned briefly for his Neoplatonic justification for the practice of astrology. While he claims only meager knowledge in astrology, his arguments betray a passionate commitment to a belief in astral fatalism. He treats astrological knowledge as a mystery religion, and as Vettius Valens did before him, he asks his reader, Mavortius, to take an oath of secrecy and responsibility concerning astrological knowledge. He refers to Porphyry (along with Plato and Pythagoras) as a likeminded keeper of mysteries (7.1.1). In De errore, however, he attacks Porphyry for the same reason, that he was a follower of the Serapis cult of Alexandria (Forbes’ translation, p. 72). Firmicus’ oath is upon the creator god (demiurge) who is responsible for the order of the cosmos and for arranging the planets as stations along the way of the souls’ ascent and descent (7.1.2). While outlining the arguments of astrology’s opponents, (including the first and second arguments of the New Academy, mentioned above), Firmicus claims not to have made up his mind concerning the immortality of the soul (Matheseos, 1.1.5-6), but he shortly betrays a Platonic belief in an immortal soul separable from the body (1.3.4). These souls follow the typical Middle Platonic ascent and descent through the planetary spheres; as a variation on this theme, he holds the notion that souls descend through the sphere of the Sun and ascend through the sphere of the Moon (1.5.9). This sovereign soul is capable of true knowledge, and, by retaining an awareness in spite of its forgetful and polluted state on Earth, can know Fate imperfectly through the methods of astrology handed down from Divine Mind (mentis treated as a Latin equivalent for nous, 1.4.1-5; 1.5.11). In response to the critics, he suggests that they do not have first hand knowledge and that if they encountered false predictions, the fault lies with the fraudulent pretenders to astrology and not with the science itself (1.3.6-8). For Firmicus, the planets, as administrators of a creator God, give each individual soul their character and personality (1.5.6-7).
After offering profuse praise of Plotinus, Firmicus attacks his belief that everything is in our powers and that superior providence and reason can overcome fortune. He argues that Plotinus made this claim in the prime of his health, but that he too accepted the powers of Fate toward the end of his life, since all efforts to advert poor health, such as moving to a better climate, failed him (1.7.14-18). Following this and other examples offered to his reader of fated events, he argues against the notion held by some, that fate (heimarmenê) only controls birth and death. This argument may be a precursor of the definition of fate that Hierocles offered a century later, which will be discussed next.
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e. Hierocles of Alexandria
Hierocles of Alexandria is a fifth century Neoplatonist who argued against astrology, particularly an astrological theory based on a Stoic view of Fate and Necessity. He also rejected magical and theurgical practices prevalent in his time as a way to either escape or overcome the fate set down in one’s birth chart. His argument against these practices is based on his view of Providence and Fate, found in his work On Providence, which only survives in later summaries by ninth century Byzantine Patriarch, Photius. In general, Hierocles saw himself in line with the thinkers starting with Ammonius Saccas, who argue for the compatibility between Plato and Aristotle, while he rejects thinkers who emphasize their differences, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias. His view of Fate is that it is an immutable ordering of thinking according to divine Justice. Using, as do Plotinus and Porphyry, Plato’s Myth of Er (Rep., 10), fate is a system of rewards and punishments the souls choose before reincarnation on earth. He does not, though, like Porphyry, accept the transmigration of the soul from human to animal body and vice versa. This view on reincarnation had already been put forth by Cronius, a contemporary of Numenius (cf. Dillon, p. 380). He considers astrology to be contrary to this notion of Fate because it works by a principle of “mindless necessity” (enepilogiston anagkên). Photius writes of Hierocles:
He does not at all accept the irrational ‘necessity’ spoken of by the astrologers, nor the Stoic ‘force’, nor even what Alexander of Aphrodisias supposed it to be, who identifies it with the nature of Platonic Bodies. Nor does he accept that one’ birth can be altered by incantations and sacrifices. (Codex 214, 172b, tr. Schibli, p. 333) The astrological theory he is arguing against is supported by Stoic fate and necessity, which assumes a chain of physical efficient causes. The astrologers who most closely represent this view are Manilius and Vettius Valens (link to above sections). There is nothing in the surviving summary to indicate that Hierocles also argues against the notion of Plotinus and Porphyry that the stars are signs rather than causes, because they are part of the rational and divine order of all things. Since he believed there is nothing outside of rational Providence, including that which is in our power (to eph’ hêmin), the stars too would be a part of the rational ordering. His fate, being quite deterministic but based on moral justice, does not allow for magic and theurgic practices used to exonerate one from his Fate revealed through astrology (cf. Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo; Greek Magic Papyri, XIII, 632-640). These practices he saw as unlawful attempts to manipulate or escape the ordering of things by the Providence of God.
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f. Proclus
Proclus (410/11-485) was the director of the Platonic School at Athens, which called itself the ‘Academy’ in order to maintain lineage with Plato’s fourth century school. In the absence of direct statements about the astrology, Proclus’ position on astral fatalism can be surmised through his philosophy, particularly his metaphysical hierarchy of beings. A paraphrase of Ptolemy’s astrological work, Tetrabiblos, is attributed to him, though there is little evidence to make a substantial claim about the identity of the author/copyist. Proclus did, however, take a keen interest in astronomy, and critiqued Ptolemy’s astronomical work, Syntaxis (or Almagest) in his Outline of Astronomical Hypotheses. In this work, he argues against Ptolemy’s theory of precession of the equinox (Hyp. astr., 234.7-22), although other Plato/Aristotle synthesizers, such as Simplicius, accepted it along with the additional spheres the theory would entail beyond the eighth (the fixed stars).
Proclus generally proposed three levels of being – celestial, earthly, and in-between. The four elements exist at every level of being, though fire (in the form of light) predominates in the celestial realm. Celestial beings are independent, self-subsistent, divine, and have their own will and power. As ensouled beings, celestial bodies are self-moving (the Platonic notion of soul). In order to maintain a consistency with Platonic doctrine, he argued against the notion that celestial spheres are solid paths upon which the planets and stars are carried along. Rather they are places possessing latitude, longitude, and depth (bathos – a measure of proximity to earth), which are projected by the free planets as their potential course. As visible gods, he thought the planets to be intermediaries between the intelligible realm and the sensible. In terms of planets being causes, he accepts the Aristotelian notion that they cause physical changes below (due to heat and light). However, he also accepted another type of non-physical causality, more akin to cosmic sympathy, in which several causes come together to form a single effect at a proper time and place. Everything lower in the hierarchy is dependent upon the higher, and is given its proper lot (klêros) and signature (sunthêma) of the higher beings. The celestial gods also have a ruling power over lower beings (Institutio theological, 120-122). This notion of properness (epitêdeiotês) extends from the celestial realm to all things below, including plants and metals (cf. Siovanes, p. 128-129). This is much akin to astrological theory, in which each planet and sign contributes, in varying proportions, to a single effect, the individual. The planetary gods are not the only actors, for they have invisible guardians (doruphoroi – not to be confused with the planets who guard the Sun and the Moon in astrological doctrine) who populate that the space of the planets’ courses, and who act as administrators. Proclus, though, is not a strict astral determinism, for as a theurgist, he also thought these allotments can be changed through theurgic knowledge (In Platonis Timaeum commentaria, 1.145).
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8. Astrology and Christianity
Astrology’s relationship with early Christianity has a very complex history. Prior to being established as the official religion of the Roman Empire, the attitude of Jews and Christians toward astrology varied greatly. Philo of Alexandria and various Jewish pseudepigraphical writers condemned the practice of astrology (1 Enoch, Sibylline Oracles), while other texts accept portions of it and depict biblical figures such as Abraham and Noah as astrologers (cf. Barton, Ancient Astrology, p. 68-70). As mentioned above, early Christians such as Marcion and Basilides incorporated some aspects of astrology into their belief systems. In general, though, for the earliest Christian polemicists and theologians, astrology was incompatible with the faith for a number of reasons, mostly pertaining to the immorality of its fatalism. Some of the Christian arguments against astrology were borrowed from the skeptical schools. Hippolytus of Rome (170-236 C.E.) dedicating nearly an entire book (4) of his Refutations Against All Heresies, closely followed the detailed arguments from Sextus Empiricus, particularly concerning the lack of accurate methods for discerning the time of birth, which is required for establishing the natal chart. He is particularly troubled by the associations between signs of the zodiac and physiognomical features. Hippolytus outlines a list very similar to that of Teukros of Babylon (as contained in the latter’s De duodecim signis) containing correspondences between physiological and psychological characteristics; and he argues that the constellations were merely markers for star recognition, bear no resemblance to the animals by which they are named, and can bear no resemblance to human characteristics (Refutatio omnium haeresium, 4.15-27).
Bardaisan/Bardesanes (c 154-222 C.E.) was a converted Syriac Christian, who, like Augustine, studied astrology in his youth. It appears that in his conversion he did not give up all astrological thinking, for he accepts the role of the planets and stars as administrators of God. He wrote against astro-chorography, particularly the association of regions with planets based on seven climata or zones, stating that laws and customs of countries are based on institution of human free will and not on the planets. Along with free will, though, he accepts a degree of governance of nature and of chance, indicated by the limit of things in our control. Bardesanes is thought to be a forerunner of Mani, for he accepted a dualism of two world forces, dark and light (cf. Rudolf, Gnosis, p. 327-329). Origen of Alexandria’s (185-254 C.E.) relationship to astrology was equally, if not more, complex than that of Plotinus. In his Commentary on Genesis he, in a manner similar to Plotinus, offers arguments against stars as causes, but in favor of stars as signs, divine writings in the sky. These writings are available for divine powers to gain knowledge and to participate in the providential aide of human beings (Philocalia, 23.1-23.21; cf. Barton, Power and Knowledge, p. 63-64). Origen believed that all beings, celestial, human or in-between, have the role of helping all creatures attain salvation. Celestial beings play a particular role in this cosmological paideia of educating creatures toward virtue. These signs, however, are imperfect at the human level, and cannot give exact knowledge (Philocalia, 23.6). Elsewhere (De oratione, 7.1), Origen urges us to pray for the Sun, Moon and stars (rather than to them), for they are also free beings (so he surmises by interpreting Psalm 148:3) and play a unique role in the salvation of the cosmos. Quite uniquely, Origen also appears to have been one of the first philosophers (if not the first) to use the theory of precession of the equinox as an argument against astrological prediction (Philocalia, 23.18).
Origen argued against those in antiquity who interpreted the Star of Bethlehem as an astrological prediction of the birth of Christ made by the Chaldaeans. He first notes that the Magi (from Persia) are to be distinguished from Chaldaeans (a word which at the time generally referred to Babylonian astrologers or simply astrologers). Secondly, he argues that the star was unlike any other astral phenomenon they had observed, and they perceived that it represented someone (Christ) superior to any person known before, not simply by the sign of the star, but by the fact that their usual sorcery and knowledge from evil daimons had failed them (Contra Celsum, 59-60). In general, regardless of the intentions of the gospel writers of including the myth of the Star of Bethlehem, it was interpreted by Christians not as a prediction by astrological methods of divination, but as a symbol of Christ transcending the old cosmic order, particularly fate oppressing the divinely granted human free will, and replacing it with a new order (cf. Denzey, “A New Star on the Horizon,” in Prayer, Magic, and the Stars, p. 207-221).
Three fourth century theologians, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzen, and Basil, known as the Cappadocians, rejected astrology as a part of an overall rejection of irrational Chance (Tukhê) and deterministic Necessity (Anankê) (see Pelikan, p. 154-157). Random chance had no place in the economy of God’s universe, while blind necessity denies human free will. They differentiated astrology from astronomy, which was an appropriate study for admiration of creation. Unlike Origen and Plotinus, Gregory Nazianzen rejected the notion of that stars give signs for reading the future. He feared that those who interpret the biblical notion that the stars were created for giving signs (Genesis 1:14) would use this as justification for horoscopic astrology (Pelikan, p. 156).
In the Latin west, Augustine (354-430 C.E.) took up polemics against astrology in conjunction with his arguments against divination (De civitate dei, 5.1-7). His distain for astrology is related to his early exposure to it as a Manichean prior to his conversion to Christianity. In De civitate dei (City of God), he borrowed freely from Cicero’s arguments against Stoic fate and divination. He particularly elaborated upon the New Academy argument that people born at the same time having different destinies (the twin argument). He includes in his attack on astrology the futility of katarchic astrology (choosing the proper moments for activities) as well as its contradiction with deterministic natal astrology. If persons are predestined by their natal charts, how can they hope to change fate by choosing the proper time for marriage, planting crops, etc? In addition, he attributes correct predictions by astrologers to occasional inspiration of evil daimons rather than the study of astrological techniques (De civ., 5.7).
As Christianity gained political and cultural ascendancy, decrees against astrology multiplied. With the closing of the ‘pagan’ schools in 529, Neoplatonists and the astrology attached to them fled to Persia. Substantial debate exists about whether or not they set up a new school in Persia, specifically Harran, and likely, later, in Baghdad; but one thing that is certain is that astrological texts and astronomical tables (such as the Pinax of Ptolemy) used for casting charts were translated into Persian and adjusted for the sixth century. The astrological writings, particularly of Ptolemy, Dorotheus, and Vettius Valens, were then translated into Arabic and would become a part of Islamic philosophy. The Greek texts, in combination with developments in Persia and the astrology of India, would form the basis of medieval astrology. Astrology from that point on would continued its unique history, both combining with and striving against philosophical and scientific theories, up to the present day.
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9. Selected References
Amand, David. Fatalisme et Liberté dans L’Antiquité Grecqué (Lovain: Bibliothèque de L’Université, 1945) Barton, Tamsyn. Ancient Astrology (London: Routledge, 1994) Barton, Tamsyn. Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomics, and Medicine under the Roman Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994) Bobzien, Susanne. Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1998) Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum, ed. D. Olivieri, et al., 12 Volumes (Brussels: Academie Royale, 1898-1953) Cramer, Frederick H. Astrology in Roman Law and Politics (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1959) Denzey, Nicola. “A New Star on the Horizon: Astral Christologies and Stellar Debates in the Early Christian Discourse,” in Prayer, Magic, and the Stars, ed. Scott B Noegel (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2003). Dillon, John. The Middle Platonists (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977) Dillon, John and A. A. Long, eds. The Question of “Eclecticism”: Studies in Later Greek Philosophy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988) Edelstein, L. and I. G. Kidd, eds. Posidonius: I. The Fragments (Cambridge University Press, 1972) Firmicus Maternus, The Error of the Pagan Religions, tr. Clarence A. Forbes (NY: Newman Press, 1970) Firmicus Maternus. Mathesis, Vol. I and II, ed. W. Kroll and F. Skutsch (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1968) Firmicus Maternus, Matheseos Libri VIII, tr. Jean Rhus Bram (Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Press, 1975) Fowden, Garth. Egyptian Hermes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986) Green, William Chase. Moira: Fate, Good, & Evil in Greek Thought (Harper & Row, 1944) Gundel, W. and Gundel, H. G. Astrologumena: die astrologische Literatur in der Antike und ihre Geschichte (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1966) Holden, James Herschel. A History of Horoscopic Astrology (Tempe, AZ: American Federation of Astrologers, Inc, 1996) Hunger, Hermann, and David Pingree. Astral Science in Mesopotamia (Leiden: Brill, 1999). Iamblichus. On the Mysteries, tr. Thomas Taylor (San Francisco: Wizards Bookshelf, 1997) Layton, Bentley, tr. and ed. The Gnostic Scriptures (New York: Doubleday, 1987). Long, A. A. ed. Problems in Stoicism (London: Athlone Press, 1971). Long, A. A., and D. N. Sedley. The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) Manilius. Astronomica, tr. G. P. Goold (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977) Neugebauer, Otto. Astronomy and History: Selected Essays (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1983) ‘ Pelikan, Jaroslav. Christianity and Classical Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993) Plutarch. Plutarchi moralia (Leipzig: Teubner, 1929-1960) Claudius Ptolemy. Tetrabiblos, tr. F. E. Robbins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956) Reiner, Erica. Astral Magic in Babylonia (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1995) Rochberg, F. Babylonian Horoscopes, trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., Vol. 99, 1 (Philadelphia, 1998) Rudolf, Kurt. Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism, tr. Robert McLachlan Wilson (San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 1987) Sandbach, F. H. The Stoics (London: Chatto & Windus, 1975) Schibli, Hermann S. Hierocles of Alexandria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Scott, Walter, ed. and tr. Hermetica Vol 1. (Boston: Shambala, 1985) Sextus Empiricus. Against the Professors, Vol IV (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949) Shaw, Gregory. Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995) Siovanes, Lucas. Proclus: Neo-Platonic Philosophy and Science (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, ed. J. von Arnim (Leipzig: Teubner, 1903) Vettius Valens. Anthology, ed. David Pingree (Leipzig: Teubner, 1986)
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Author Information:
Marilynn Lawrence
Email:[email protected]
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
© 2006 
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Regional variations > Hellenistic alchemy
Western alchemy may go back to the beginnings of the Hellenistic period (c. 300 BC–c. AD 300), although the earliest alchemist whom authorities have regarded as authentic is Zosimos of Panopolis (Egypt), who lived near the end of the period. He is one of about 40 authors represented in a compendium of alchemical writings that was probably put together in Byzantium (Constantinople) in…
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India and the Greek World; A study in the transmission of culture.
Sedlar, Jean W. New Jersey, 1980.
Buddha
[66] Ultimately the most striking and influential example of Indo-Greek interaction at any period occurred in the sphere of Buddhist art. Until about the first century B.C., Buddhists considered it totally unfitting to depict the Buddha as a human being. His presence was indicated by symbols only – the Wheel of the Law, his footprints, his umbrella, an empty throne, or the Bo-tree under which he attained Enlightenment. Portrayal of the Buddha in human form came about as the direct result of Hellenistic influences. The new art-form originated in Gandhhara, immediately to the south of the Hindu Kush – a region where Greek Indian and even Chinese cultures came into contact. The school was in its formative stages when Parthian rule supplanted that of the Shakas in Gandhara and the Punjab; and it profited fully from the Hellenistic revival associated with Parthian rule. The earliest known statue of the Buddha by a Gandhara artist dates from this Parthian period. Under the Kushans, i.e. from the middle of the first century A.D. onward, the Gandhara school reached its zenith. This was a period unusually favorable to the diffusion of cultural models; for peace reigned in both the Roman and the Persian (Parthian) empires. Presumably a significant number of Hellenistic sculptors and painters migrated to Gandhara via the central Asian trade routes which crossed that territory, and established workshops to ply their skills. Certainly the larger works of art presuppose either Hellenistic craftsmen in Gandhara or Indians familiar with Hellenistic models. Unlike small trays and dishes, even medium-sized statutes are unlikely to have been carried in merchants’ packs all the way from Mediterranean countries. Naturally enough, Greek artists were obliged to adapt their material to the wishes of local patrons; but their techniques remained Hellenistic. Thus the Buddha, formerly not portrayed at all, came to resemble the Greek god Apollo or a Roman emperor in heroic pose draped in a toga. The statues were drawn to classic proportions, following Hellenistic models for the physiognomy, the gestures, and the drapery, while the [67] reliefs employ that narrative style commonly found in western Asia for recounting the life-stories of historical or religious heroes. But in every case the themes were Indian, depicting scenes from the Buddha’s life and exemplifying his powers as a saviour. Buddhist painting as well as sculpture seem to have flourished in Gandhara; the Chinese pilgrim Hsüan Tsang remarked upon the painted scenes which decorated the monasteries of that region early in the 7th century when he passed through. Although all the specimens of painting have long since succumbed to the Indian climate and the destructiveness of invaders, presumably here too an extensive synthesis of Indian and Greek forms occurred.
The evolution of this Hellenized art over a period of several centuries indicates that it was increasingly perpetuated by native craftsmen, who were more and more removed from the original Greek stimulus. In the course of the Kushan era the statues of the Buddha became less Greek and more Indian in appearance, while the Buddha himself was portrayed as a more spiritualized figure than previously. The efflorescence of Buddhism associated with the reign of Kanishka led to an enhanced demand for statues of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Thus a tendency developed toward the mechanical repetition of stereotyped motifs and conventional poses. The high point of this Buddhist art probably came between the early 2nd and the mid-3rd centuries A.D.; thereafter the standard of technical competence declined noticeably. Kushan coinage too decayed, not only in that new types were not presented, but that the images became more and more difficult to recognize, and the Greek Legends increasingly difficult to read.29 Nonetheless this Hellenistic art of Gandhara attained an extraordinarily wide diffusion. Not only did it spread to surrounding regions of northwest India; Hellenized statues of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas were carried along the trade routes throughout most of eastern Asia. The Greek kings, Greek cities, Greek language and lifestyle all disappeared from northwest India and Bactria. But the Greek feeling for proportion and drapery became permanently embodied in the forms of the Indian saviors whose meditative forms are still found today in Buddhist temples and shrines throughout Asia.
Possible evidence of Buddhist proselytizing in Hellenistic countries may be found in one of the edicts of the Indian emperor Ashoka (r. 274-236 B.C.) grandson of that Chandragupta Maurya who defeated Seleukos’ attempt to restore Alexander’s Indian empire. The inscription in question records that Ashoka despatched envoys to the Hellenistic kings of Syria, Egypt, Macedonia and Cyrene — all of whom are cited by their correct names. The edict states expressly that the emperor commanded his emissaries to propagate the “Dhamma,” i.e. the Law of Piety. The term “Dhamma” (Sanskrit: Dharma), of course, is not exclusive to Buddhism; it comprehends such general moral principles as avoidance of killing (ahimsa), good family relationships, and concern for others’ welfare. However, Ashoka personally was a professed Buddhist, at least toward the latter part of his reign. While expressly promoting religious toleration, he apparently also used the apparatus of the Maurya state to promote Buddhist doctrine.
Buddha Sakyamuni is born in 580 BC, lives around 80 years. ;
(Buddhism spreads for 230 years, unknown dispersion) ;
Great buddhist universities like Nalanda and Nara are established in 400 BC ;
Alexander conquest Bactria ca 330 BC ;
King Asoka unites India under Buddhist rule ca 280-240 BC ;
Romans subdue Greece ca 200 BC, and since then it is Roman thought that counts and is spread or retained in collective western thought. ;
Eastmost Greeks endorse Buddhism, and mixing with Tocharians the great civilizations of Gandhara and later Kushans is established. ;
in ca 1. century AD, Mahayana is established in Kushan area, diversifying from orthodox Theravada Buddhism. ;
from 3rd to 6th century AD, everything is destroyed by White and Black Huns, from northenmost borders of China to even the western Roman Empire that crumbles. The great movement of people’s groups takes place, displacing e.g. Turks from north China to Asia Minor, Slavs from mid Asia into Europe, etc. The Dark Ages ensue. Muslim warriors conquer all over Persia somewhere in 7th century AD. The old teachings are transferred to Tibet by Padmasambhava who is of Oddiyana (Bactria? origin) ;
Hmmm, another point: hasn’t there been some speculation in academic circles that some aspects of the Dzogchen teachings might have come from the West? (I gather the correct location of Oddiyana, the posited origin of those teachings, hasn’t quite been settled, but if it was as far to the West as Afghanistan, this connection might be plausible.) ;
Particularly, the emphasis on “light” seems to be something that could possibly have come from Manichaeism and/or Gnosticism. ;
1. The interraction between Hellenistic Greece and Buddhism started when Alexander the Great conquered Asia Minor and Central Asia in 334 BCE, going as far as the Indus, thus establishing direct contact with India, the birthplace of Buddhism. Alexander founded several cities in his new territories in the areas of the Oxus and Bactria, and Greek settlements further extended to the Khyber Pass, Gandhara (see Taxila) and the Punjab. These regions correspond to a unique geographical passageway between the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush mountains, through which most of the interaction between India and Central Asia took place, generating intense cultural exchange and trade.
2. Buddhism flourished under the Indo-Greek kings, and it has been suggested that their invasion of India was intended to show their support for the philhellenic Mauryan empire, and to protect the Buddhist faith from the religious persecutions of the Sungas.
3. Menander, described on his coins as the “Saviour king”, seems to have converted to Buddhism, and is described in Buddhist texts as a great benefactor of the religion, on a par with Ashoka or the future Kushan emperor Kanishka. He is famous for his dialogues with the Buddhist monk Nagasena, transmitted to us in the Milinda Panha. Upon his death, the honour of sharing his remains was claimed by the various cities under his rule, and they were enshrined in stupas, in a parallel with the historic Buddha (Plutarch )
4. During the reign of Menander, the Greek (Pali: Yona, lit: “Ionian”) Buddhist monk Mahadhammarakkhita (Sanskrit: Mahadharmaraksita) is said to have come from “Alasandra��? (thought to be Alexandria of the Caucasus, the city founded by Alexander the Great, near today’s Kabul) with 30,000 monks for the foundation ceremony of the Maha Thupa (“Great stupa”) at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, indicating the importance of Buddhism within Greek communities in northwestern India, and the prominent role Greek Buddhist monks played in them: ;
The anthropomorphic representation of the Buddha
An aniconic representation of Mara‘s assault on the Buddha, 2nd century CE, AmaravatiIndia. Although there is still some debate, the first anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha himself are often considered a result of the Greco-Buddhist interaction. Before this innovation, Buddhist art was “aniconic“: the Buddha was only represented through his symbols (an empty throne, the Bodhi tree, the Buddha’s footprints, the prayer wheel).
This reluctance towards anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha, and the sophisticated development of aniconic symbols to avoid it (even in narrative scenes where other human figures would appear), seem to be connected to one of the Buddha’s sayings, reported in the Digha Nikaya, that discouraged representations of himself after the extinction of his body.[15]
Probably not feeling bound by these restrictions, and because of “their cult of form, the Greeks were the first to attempt a sculptural representation of the Buddha”.[16] In many parts of the Ancient World, the Greeks did develop syncretic divinities, that could become a common religious focus for populations with different traditions: a well-known example is the syncretic God Sarapis, introduced by Ptolemy I in Egypt, which combined aspects of Greek and Egyptian Gods. In India as well, it was only natural for the Greeks to create a single common divinity by combining the image of a Greek God-King (The Sun-God Apollo, or possibly the deified founder of the Indo-Greek KingdomDemetrius), with the traditional attributes of the Buddha.
Standing Buddha, ancient region of Gandhara, northern Pakistan, 1st century CE.
Many of the stylistic elements in the representations of the Buddha point to Greek influence: the Greco-Roman toga-like wavy robe covering both shoulders (more exactly, its lighter version, the Greek himation), the contrapposto stance of the upright figures (see: 1st–2nd century Gandhara standing Buddhas[17]), the stylicized Mediterranean curly hair and topknot (ushnisha) apparently derived from the style of the Belvedere Apollo (330 BCE),[18] and the measured quality of the faces, all rendered with strong artistic realism (See: Greek art). A large quantity of sculptures combining Buddhist and purely Hellenistic styles and iconography were excavated at the Gandharan site of Hadda. The ‘curly hair’ of Buddha is described in the famous list of 32 external characteristics of a Great Being (mahapurusa) that we find all along the Buddhist sutras. The curly hair, with the curls turning to the right is first described in the Pali canon of the Smaller Vehicle of Buddhism; we find the same description in e.g. the “Dasasahasrika Prajnaparamita”. Greek artists were most probably the authors of these early representations of the Buddha, in particular the standing statues, which display “a realistic treatment of the folds and on some even a hint of modeled volume that characterizes the best Greek work. This is Classical or Hellenistic Greek, not archaizing Greek transmitted by Persia or Bactria, nor distinctively Roman“.[19] The Greek stylistic influence on the representation of the Buddha, through its idealistic realism, also permitted a very accessible, understandable and attractive visualization of the ultimate state of enlightenment described by Buddhism, allowing it reach a wider audience: “One of the distinguishing features of the Gandharan school of art that emerged in north-west India is that it has been clearly influenced by the naturalism of the Classical Greek style. Thus, while these images still convey the inner peace that results from putting the Buddha’s doctrine into practice, they also give us an impression of people who walked and talked, etc. and slept much as we do. I feel this is very important. These figures are inspiring because they do not only depict the goal, but also the sense that people like us can achieve it if we try” (The Dalai Lama[20]) During the following centuries, this anthropomorphic representation of the Buddha defined the canon of Buddhist art, but progressively evolved to incorporate more Indian and Asian elements.
A Hellenized Buddhist pantheon
Herculean depiction of Vajrapani (right), as the protector of the Buddha, 2nd century CE GandharaBritish Museum. Several other Buddhist deities may have been influenced by Greek gods. For example, Herakles with a lion-skin (the protector deity of Demetrius I) “served as an artistic model for Vajrapani, a protector of the Buddha” (Foltz, “Religions and the Silk Road”) (See[21]). In Japan, this expression further translated into the wrath-filled and muscular Niō guardian gods of the Buddha, standing today at the entrance of many Buddhist temples.
According to Katsumi Tanabe, professor at Chūō University, Japan (in “Alexander the Great. East-West cultural contact from Greece to Japan”), besides Vajrapani, Greek influence also appears in several other gods of the Mahayana pantheon, such as the Japanese Wind God Fujin inspired from the Greek Boreas through the Greco-Buddhist Wardo, or the mother deity Hariti [22] inspired by Tyche. In addition, forms such as garland-bearing cherubsvine scrolls, and such semi-human creatures as the centaur and triton, are part of the repertory of Hellenistic art introduced by Greco-Roman artists in the service of the Kushan court. See also: Buddhist art
Greco-Buddhism and the rise of the Mahayana
The geographical, cultural and historical context of the rise of Mahayana Buddhism during the 1st century BCE in northwestern India, all point to intense multi-cultural influences: “Key formative influences on the early development of the Mahayana and Pure Land movements, which became so much part of East Asian civilization, are to be sought in Buddhism’s earlier encounters along the Silk Road” (Foltz, Religions on the Silk Road). As Mahayana Buddhism emerged, it received “influences from popular Hindu devotional cults (bhakti), Persian and Greco-Roman theologies which filtered into India from the northwest” (Tom Lowenstein, p63).
Conceptual influences
Mahayana is an inclusive faith characterized by the adoption of new texts, in addition to the traditional Pali canon, and a shift in the understanding of Buddhism. It goes beyond the traditional Theravada ideal of the release from suffering (dukkha) and personal enlightenment of the arhats, to elevate the Buddha to a God-like status, and to create a pantheon of quasi-divine Bodhisattvas devoting themselves to personal excellence, ultimate knowledge and the salvation of humanity. These concepts, together with the sophisticated philosophical system of the Mahayana faith, may have been influenced by the interaction of Greek and Buddhist thought:
The Buddha as an idealized man-god
The Buddha was elevated to a man-god status, represented in idealized human form: “One might regard the classical influence as including the general idea of representing a man-god in this purely human form, which was of course well familiar in the West, and it is very likely that the example of westerners’ treatment of their gods was indeed an important factor in the innovation… The Buddha, the man-god, is in many ways far more like a Greek god than any other eastern deity, no less for the narrative cycle of his story and appearance of his standing figure than for his humanity”.[23] The supra-mundane understanding of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas may have been a consequence of the Greek’s tendency to deify their rulers in the wake of Alexander’s reign: “The god-king concept brought by Alexander (…) may have fed into the developing bodhisattva concept, which involved the portrayal of the Buddha in Gandharan art with the face of the sun godApollo” (McEvilley, “The Shape of Ancient Thought”).
The Bodhisattva as a Universal ideal of excellence
Portraits from the site of Hadda, 3rd century CE.
Lamotte (1954) controversially suggests (though countered by Conze (1973) and others) that Greek influence was present in the definition of the Bodhisattva ideal in the oldest Mahayana text, the “Perfection of Wisdom” or prajñā pāramitā literature, that developed between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE. These texts in particular redefine Buddhism around the universal Bodhisattva ideal, and its six central virtues of generosity, morality, patience, effort, meditation and, first and foremost, wisdom.
Philosophical influences
The close association between Greeks and Buddhism probably led to exchanges on the philosophical plane as well. Many of the early Mahayana theories of reality and knowledge can be related to Greek philosophical schools of thought. Mahayana Buddhism has been described as the “form of Buddhism which (regardless of how Hinduized its later forms became) seems to have originated in the Greco-Buddhist communities of India, through a conflation of the Greek DemocriteanSophisticSkeptical tradition with the rudimentary and unformalized empirical and skeptical elements already present in early Buddhism” (McEvilly, “The Shape of Ancient Thought”, p503).
In the Prajnaparamita, the rejection of the reality of passing phenomena as “empty, false and fleeting” can also be found in Greek Pyrrhonism. [24]
The perception of ultimate reality was, for the Cynics as well as for the Madyamikas and Zen teachers after them, only accessible through a non-conceptual and non-verbal approach (Greek Phronesis), which alone allowed to get rid of ordinary conceptions.[25]
The mental attitude of equanimity and dispassionate outlook in front of events was also characteristic of the Cynics and Stoics, who called it “Apatheia”[26]
Nagarjuna‘s dialectic developed in the Madhyamika can be paralleled to the Greek dialectical tradition.[27]
Cynicism, Madhyamika and Zen
Numerous parallels exist between the Greek philosophy of the Cynics and, several centuries later, the Buddhist philosophy of the Madhyamika and Zen. The Cynics denied the relevancy of human conventions and opinions (described as typhos, literally “smoke” or “mist”, a metaphor for “illusion” or “error”), including verbal expressions, in favor of the raw experience of reality. They stressed the independence from externals to achieve happiness (“Happiness is not pleasure, for which we need external, but virtue, which is complete without external” 3rd epistole of Crates). Similarly the Prajnaparamita, precursor of the Madhyamika, explained that all things are like foam, or bubbles, “empty, false, and fleeting”, and that “only the negation of all views can lead to enlightenment” (Nāgārjuna, MK XIII.8). In order to evade the world of illusion, the Cynics recommended the discipline and struggle (“askēsis kai machē”) of philosophy, the practice of “autarkia” (self-rule), and a lifestyle exemplified by Diogenes, which, like Buddhist monks, renounced earthly possessions. These conceptions, in combination with the idea of “philanthropia” (universal loving kindness, of which Crates, the student of Diogenes, was the best proponent), are strikingly reminiscent of Buddhist Prajna (wisdom) and Karuna (compassion).[28]
Greco-Persian cosmological influences
A popular figure in Greco-Buddhist art, the future Buddha Maitreya, has sometimes been linked to the Iranian yazata (Zoroastrian divinity) Miθra who was also adopted as a figure in a Greco-Roman syncretistic cult under the name of Mithras. Maitreya is the fifth Buddha of the present world-age, who will appear at some undefined future epoch. According to Foltz, he “echoes the qualities of the Zoroastrian Saoshyant and the Christian Messiah”.[29] However, in character and function, Maitreya does not much resemble either Mitra, Miθra or Mithras; his name is more obviously derived from the Sanskrit maitrī “kindliness”, equivalent to Pali mettā; the Pali (and probably older) form of his name, Metteyya, does not closely resemble the name Miθra.
The Buddha Amitābha (literally meaning “infinite radiance”) with his paradisiacal “Pure Land” in the West, according to Foltz, “seems to be understood as the Iranian god of light, equated with the sun”. This view is however not in accordance with the view taken of Amitābha by present-day Pure Land Buddhists, in which Amitābha is neither “equated with the sun” nor, strictly speaking, a god.
Gandharan proselytism

See also: Silk Road transmission of Buddhism   Buddhist monks from the region of Gandhara, where Greco-Buddhism was most influential, played a key role in the development and the transmission of Buddhist ideas in the direction of northern Asia.   Blue-eyed Central Asian Buddhist monk, with an East-Asian colleague, Tarim Basin, 9th-10th century.   Kushan monks, such as Lokaksema (c. 178 CE), travelled to the Chinese capital of Loyang, where they became the first translators of Mahayana Buddhist scriptures into Chinese.[30] Central Asian and East Asian Buddhist monks appear to have maintained strong exchanges until around the 10th century, as indicated by frescos from the Tarim Basin. Two half-brothers from GandharaAsanga and Vasubandhu (4th century), created the Yogacara or “Mind-only” school of Mahayana Buddhism, which through one of its major texts, the Lankavatara Sutra, became a founding block of Mahayana, and particularly Zen, philosophy.   In 485 CE, according to the Chinese historic treatise Liang Shu, five monks from Gandhara travelled to the country of Fusang (“The country of the extreme East” beyond the sea, probably eastern Japan, although some historians suggest the American Continent), where they introduced Buddhism:   “Fusang is located to the east of China, 20,000 li (1,500 kilometers) east of the state of Da Han (itself east of the state of Wa in modern KyūshūJapan). (…) In former times, the people of Fusang knew nothing of the Buddhist religion, but in the second year of Da Ming of the Song dynasty (485 CE), five monks from Kipin (Kabul region of Gandhara) travelled by ship to Fusang. They propagated Buddhist doctrine, circulated scriptures and drawings, and advised the people to relinquish worldly attachments. As a results the customs of Fusang changed” (Ch:”扶桑在大漢國東二萬餘里,地在中國之東(…)其俗舊無佛法,宋大明二年,罽賓國嘗有比丘五人游行至其國,流通佛法,經像,教令出家,風 俗遂改.”, Liang Shu, 7th century CE).   Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen, is described as a Central Asian Buddhist monk in the first Chinese references to him (Yan Xuan-Zhi, 547 CE), although later Chinese traditions describe him as coming from South India.

Intellectual influences in Asia

Through art and religion, the influence of Greco-Buddhism on the cultural make-up of East Asian countries, especially ChinaKorea and Japan, may have extended further into the intellectual area. At the same time as Greco-Buddhist art and Mahayana schools of thought such as Dhyana were transmitted to East Asia, central concepts of Hellenic culture such as virtue, excellence or quality may have been adopted by the cultures of Korea and Japan after a long diffusion among the Hellenized cities of Central Asia, to become a key part of their warrior and work ethics.

Buddhism and Christianity

Although the philosophical systems of Buddhism and Christianity have evolved in rather different ways, the moral precepts advocated by Buddhism from the time of Ashoka through his edicts do have some similarities with the Christian moral precepts developed more than two centuries later: respect for life, respect for the weak, rejection of violence, pardon to sinners, tolerance.   Known representations of the Buddha on Kanishka‘s coinage (circa 150 CE).   Queen Māyā’s white elephant dream, and the conception of the Buddha. Gandhara, 2-3rd century CE.   One theory is that these similarities may indicate the propagation of Buddhist ideals into the Western World, with the Greeks acting as intermediaries and religious syncretists. [31]   “Scholars have often considered the possibility that Buddhism influenced the early development of Christianity. They have drawn attention to many parallels concerning the births, lives, doctrines, and deaths of the Buddha and Jesus” (Bentley, “Old World Encounters”).   The story of the birth of the Buddha was well known in the West, and possibly influenced the story of the birth of Jesus: Saint Jerome (4th century CE) mentions the birth of the Buddha, who he says “was born from the side of a virgin”.[32] Also a fragment of Archelaos of Carrha (278 CE) mentions the Buddha’s virgin-birth.[33]   Early 3rd-4th century Christian writers such as Hippolytus and Epiphanius write about a Scythianus, who visited India around 50 AD from where he brought “the doctrine of the Two Principles”. According to these writers, Scythianus’ pupil Terebinthus presented himself as a “Buddha” (“he called himself Buddas” Cyril of Jerusalem [34]). Terebinthus went to Palestine and Judaea where he met the Apostles (“becoming known and condemned” Isaia), and ultimately settled in Babylon, where he transmitted his teachings to Mani, thereby creating the foundation of what could be called Persian syncretic Buddhism, Manicheism. One of the greatest thinkers and saints of western Christianity, Augustine of Hippo was originally a Manichean.   In the 2nd century CE, the Christian dogmatist Clement of Alexandria recognized Bactrian Buddhists (Sramanas) and Indian Gymnosophists for their influence on Greek thought:   “Thus philosophy, a thing of the highest utility, flourished in antiquity among the barbarians, shedding its light over the nations. And afterwards it came to Greece. First in its ranks were the prophets of the Egyptians; and the Chaldeans among the Assyrians; and the Druids among the Gauls; and the Sramanas among the Bactrians (“Σαρμαναίοι Βάκτρων”); and the philosophers of the Celts; and the Magi of the Persians, who foretold the Saviour’s birth, and came into the land of Judaea guided by a star. The Indian gymnosophists are also in the number, and the other barbarian philosophers. And of these there are two classes, some of them called Sramanas (“Σαρμάναι”), and others Brahmins (“Βραφμαναι”).” (Clement of Alexandria “The Stromata, or Miscellanies” [35]).   The main Greek cities of the Middle-East happen to have played a key role in the development of Christianity, such as Antioch and especially Alexandria, and “it was later in this very place that some of the most active centers of Christianity were established” (Robert Linssen, “Zen living”).

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The Fibonacci Numbers
(so-named after Leonardo of Pisa, also known as filius Bonacci, meaning “son of Bonacci,” which was contracted to “Fibonacci”) are members of a sequence of integers having the property that each number of the sequence is the sum of the two preceding members of that sequence. The sequence begins as follows (the zero is usually omitted):
(0), 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597…
The Lucas Numbers
We have seen in earlier pages that there is another series quite similar to the Fibonacci series that often occurs when working with the Fibonacci series. Edouard Lucas (1842-1891) (who gave the name “Fibonacci Numbers” to the series written about by Leonardo of Pisa) studied this second series of numbers: 2, 1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 18, .. called the Lucas numbers in his honour. On this page we examine some of the interesting properties of the Lucas numbers themselves as well as looking at its close relationship with the Fibonacci numbers. The following page generalises further by taking any two starting values.
A quote from Coxeter on Phyllotaxis
H S M Coxeter, in his Introduction to Geometry (1961, Wiley, page 172) – see the references at the foot of this page – has the following important quote:
it should be frankly admitted that in some plants the numbers do not belong to the sequence of f’s [Fibonacci numbers] but to the sequence of g’s [Lucas numbers] or even to the still more anomalous sequences
3,1,4,5,9,… or 5,2,7,9,16,…
Thus we must face the fact that phyllotaxis is really not a universal law but only a fascinatingly prevalent tendency.
The Golden Rectangle And Its Construction From a Square:

– to – height ratio is in Divine Proportion. In other words, the golden rectangle’s height is to its width as its width is to its width plus its height. As was already mentioned in the history of the Divine Proportion (in Section 1), the golden rectangle is the most pleasing aspect-ratio to most people, and has been much used in art and architecture ever since the ancient Greeks discovered this harmonious proportionality of Nature. Even designers of computer monitor screens seem to be aware of the optimally-pleasing qualities of the Golden Rectangle, for the widescreen 1280 x 800 pixel (16:10 aspect ratio WXGA) computer screens approximate the golden rectangle to within about 1.127 percent — really quite a good approximation considering how “round” these numbers are (1280 = 5 x 28, and 800 = 52 x 25). And this format has another advantage, too: it turns out that (16:9 aspect ratio) 1280 x 720 progressive scan High Definition Television pictures can be displayed quite well on such a (1280 x 800) screen, with 80 pixels worth of room at the top and/or bottom of the screen for toolbars, clock, status indicators, etc. Anyway, back to the Golden Rectangle….

In this section, we will explore how the Golden Rectangle can be constructed from a square. Although this geometrical construction is not really any simpler that the construction of the Golden Section which is described in Section 3 of this article (because it necessitates the preliminary geometric construction of a square), nevertheless, the construction of the Golden Rectangle provides us with an interesting and enlightening alternative way of geometrically producing the Divine Proportion. Here, then, in summary form, is how to construct a Golden Rectangle:
Procedure for Constructing a Golden Rectangle From a Square:
1. Given square ABCD, bisect the square with line segment EO.
2. Draw diagonal OB (= OG). Set the radius of the compass to this distance (OB), and draw a circle with this radius centered on point “O”.
3. Extend line segment DC to reach the circle. Label this point of intersection “G”.
4. Erect a perpendicular upward at point “G”, and extend line segment AB to the right, to meet this perpendicular at point “F ”.
5. The rectangle AFGD thus produced is the Golden Rectangle, in which the height (AD) and the width (DG) are in divine proportion. Moreover, the part (BFGC) added onto the original square is a golden rectangle, too.
If a rectangle is drawn, whose sides are in Golden Ratio (as above), the “Golden Rectangle” may be divided into a square, which will leave another, similar (but smaller) residual golden rectangle. This process may then be repeated on the residual golden rectangle, and so on, ad infinitum. Because the sum of the areas in this infinite series of diminishing squares is equal to the area of the original golden rectangle (i.e., 1 x φ square units), we know that φ must be a root of the infinite series equation:
The Divine Proportion’s Connection with the Logarithmic (Equiangular) Spiral and the Chambered Nautilus; and How to Use Golden Rectangles to Draw an Approximation to an Equiangular Spiral:

As mentioned in Section 5, when a golden rectangle is divided into a square and a left-over piece, the left-over piece is itself a golden rectangle (albeit a smaller one, rotated by 90°). This process may then be repeated with similar results on the residual golden rectangle, ad infinitum. When a golden rectangle is divided into a series of diminishing squares like this, it is possible to draw an equiangular spiral through successive vertices of the sequence of squares. A good approximation to this (equiangular or logarithmic) spiral can be produced by a sequence of quarter-circles of diminishing radius. The spiral recedes inward, converging toward the point where the diagonals of all the golden rectangles meet:

Referring to the immediately-preceding figure, the equiangular (or logarithmic) spiral may be approximated (using a compass and straight-edge alone) from the golden rectangle in the following manner:
1. Construct a golden rectangle, in the manner outlined in Section 5.
2. Partition the golden rectangle into the largest possible square and a left-over rectangle (Note: this left-over rectangle also turns out to be in divine proportion — automatically!) This square is, of course, produced by marking off with the compass the (shorter) height of the golden rectangle along its (longer) width, and then drawing the partitioning segment, BC.
3. Now repeat Step 2 on every successive residual golden rectangle as many times as you can before the squares and rectangles become too small to work with. [As a practical matter, inaccuracies grow with every successive partitioning, but if you draw the diagonals AF and CE, this will help keep you from going too far astray, for three of the corners of every golden rectangle in the figure fall upon these two lines, as do two of the corners of every square. The diagonals are shown as the two crossing red line segments in the figure.]
4. After you have partitioned the original golden rectangle into a total of six (or so) squares, set the compass radius to span the distance from point “C” to point “D”, and then, using point O1 (at point “C”, or the bottom right corner of square #1) as center, swing a circular 90° arc from point “D” to point “B”.
5. Next, reset the compass radius to span the distance from point O2 to point “B” and, using point O2 (the bottom left corner of square #2) as center, swing a circular 90° arc from point “B” to the bottom right corner of square #2.
6. Now, reset the compass radius to span the distance from point O3 to the upper right corner of square #3 and, using point O3 (the upper left corner of square #3) as center, swing a circular 90° arc from the upper right corner of square # 3 to the bottom left corner of the same square.
7. Once again, reset the compass radius, this time to span the distance from point O4 to the bottom right corner of square #4; then, using point O4 (the upper right corner of square #4) as center, swing a circular 90° arc from the bottom right corner of square #4 to the upper left corner of the same square.
8. As before, reset the compass radius, this time to span the distance from point O5 to the bottom left corner of square #5; then, using point O5 (the bottom right corner of square #5) as center, swing a circular 90° arc from the bottom left corner of square #5 to the upper right corner of the same square.
9. Finally, reset the compass radius again, this time to span the distance from point O6 to the upper left corner of square #6; then, using point O6 (the bottom left corner of square #5) as center, swing a circular 90° arc from the upper left corner of square #5 to the bottom right corner of the same square. The resulting figure should be a fairly nice geometrically-constructed approximation of an equiangular or logarithmic spiral, based upon the properties of the divine proportion.
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Approximate and true Golden Spirals. The green spiral is made from quarter-circles tangent to the interior of each square, while the red spiral is a Golden Spiral, a special type of logarithmic spiral. Overlapping portions appear yellow. The length of the side of a larger square to the next smaller square is in the golden ratio. (A Fibonacci spiral is not shown, but could be constructed from a similar “whirling rectangle diagram”, in which the ratios of the rectangles were based on the terms in the Fibonacci series, rather than phi.)
Fibonacci spiral that approximates the Golden Spiral
In geometry, a golden spiral is a logarithmic spiral whose growth factor b is related to φ, the golden ratio. Specifically, a golden spiral gets wider (or further from its origin) by a factor of φ for every quarter-turn it makes. Contents [hide]
1 Formula
2 Approximations of the golden spiral
3 Golden spiral in nature
4 References
5 See also //
Approximations of the golden spiral
There are several similar spirals that approximate, but do not exactly equal, a golden spiral.[3] These are often confused with the golden spiral.
For example, a golden spiral can be approximated by a “whirling rectangle diagram,” in which the opposite corners of squares formed by spiraling golden rectangles are connected by quarter-circles. The result is very similar to a true golden spiral (See image on top right). Another approximation is a Fibonacci spiral, which is not a true logarithmic spiral. Every quarter turn a Fibonacci spiral gets wider not by φ, but by a changing factor related to the ratios of consecutive terms in the Fibonacci sequence. The ratios of consecutive terms in the Fibonacci series approach φ, so that the two spirals are very similar in appearance. (See image on bottom right). Golden spiral in nature
Although it is often suggested that the golden spiral occurs repeatedly in nature (e.g. the arms of spiral galaxies or sunflower heads) , this claim is rarely valid except perhaps in the most contrived of circumstances. For example, it is commonly believed that nautilus shells get wider in the pattern of a golden spiral, and hence are related to both φ and the Fibonacci series. In truth nautilus shells exhibit logarithmic spiral growth, but at a rate distinctly different from that of the golden spiral.[4] The reason for this growth pattern is that it allows the animal to grow at a constant rate without having to change shape. Spirals are common features in nature, but there is no evidence that a single number dictates the shape of every one of these spirals. The greatest misconception in the mystification of the golden spiral is the incorrect assumption that all spirals in nature are in fact the golden spiral. While logarithmic spirals are often observed, they may be of differing pitches, and therefore there is no single “spira mirabilis“.
— Divine Proportions Appearing in the Pentagram —
As proven in Euclid’s Elements (Book 13, Proposition 8,) in the regular pentagram (i.e., the five-pointed star made up of all five diagonals of the regular pentagon), each diagonal of the pentagon (in this case, AB) intersects two others such that the diagonal is sectioned into the divine proportion in four different ways:
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the pentagram contains a staggering two hundred golden ratios! Are you beginning to see why the Pythagoreans were in awe of the Pentagon, the Pentagram, and the polyhedron based upon them — the dodecahedron? When they discovered this mystical proportionality popping up over and over again, they felt they had touched divinity. Hence, the name.
— Divine Proportionality of Nested Pentagons —
If a series of nested pentagons and pentagrams is drawn such that two of the indented edges of one pentagram also define two of the protruding edges of the next (smaller) pentagon in the series, then the sides of any two adjacent pentagons nested in such a diminishing series will be in Divine Proportion:
This, of course, also implies that the distance between any two adjacent points of a pentagram (i.e., neighboring “points of the star”) is in divine proportion with the length of the long sides of the isosceles triangles which point outward from the central pentagon produced by the intersections of the five diagonals. It would seem, the divine proportions crop up in such profusion in the pentagon and pentagram, that they are literally piled one upon the other!
– Divine Proportions Appearing in the Decagon —
A regular decagon (i.e., a 10-sided polygon having all sides equal, and all angles equal) can be constructed by laying together ten acute isosceles golden triangles (i.e., acute triangles two of whose sides are in divine proportion to the third) in such a way that the vertices opposite the short side of the triangles meet at a point, which becomes the center of the decagon:
Another way of looking at this would be that, in the regular decagon, the circumcircle radius is in divine proportion with any side of the inscribed decagon. One would expect the central angle of each side of the decagon (and hence the triangles of which it is composed) to subtend 36° — since ten equal angles must add up to 360° — but what it is perhaps surprising is that the 72° – 36° – 72° isosceles triangle just so happens to have sides which are in divine proportion, and, therefore, five such triangles can be arranged to produce a regular pentagram.
The Divine Proportions Appearing in the Regular Icosahedron, Regular Dodecahedron, and Rhombic Triacontahedron
In view of the fact that he was the discoverer of the Divine Proportion, it is perhaps not surprising that Pythagoras also knew of the Golden Section’s connection with two of the five possible regular polyhedra. The regular icosahedron is a polyhedron having 20 equilateral triangular faces, 12 vertices, and 30 edges. Well, it just so happens that when the icosahedron’s twelve vertices are divided into three coplanar groups of four, these groups of four vertices lie at the corners of three symmetrically-situated, mutually-perpendicular golden rectangles, with their one common point situated at the center of the icosahedron. In other words, the Divine Proportion is built into this beautiful mathematical shape! Bear in mind that this trio of golden rectangles does not merely appear accidentally within the icosahedron, but these golden rectangles in a sense define the icosahedron. An illustration may help to make this relationship easier to comprehend:
[In this figure, the ratio of the blue rectangle-edges to the magenta edges is exactly φ.]
Because the dodecahedron is the dual* form of the icosahedron, it is perhaps not surprising that the regular dodecahedron also has a connection with the Divine Proportion. The Regular dodecahedron is a polyhedron having 12 regular pentagonal faces, 20 vertices, and 30 edges. As one might expect from this polyhedron’s duality with the icosahedron, the centers of the 12 pentagonal faces of the regular dodecahedron are divisible into three coplanar groups of four. These tetrads lie at the corners of three symmetrically-situated mutually-perpendicular golden rectangles, with their common point situated at the centroid of the dodecahedron. Again, an illustration may help to make this relationship more readily comprehensible:
Once again, a beautiful shape of Nature is based upon the Divine Proportion!
* Note: Two polyhedra are duals if the vertices of one can be put in one-to-one correspondence with the centers of the faces of the other. Incidentally, the reader is asked to ignore the imperfections of the figure above, and to imagine that the corners of the golden rectangles do indeed touch the centers of the pentagons. It took Khan most of a day to get the drawing to this state of imperfection!
As we have already mentioned, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was quite enamored of the Divine Proportion, and indeed, upon occasion, he called it by that name. In view of his reverence for this harmonious proportionality of Nature, it is only fitting that Kepler was also the discoverer of the Archimedean polyhedron known as the Rhombic Triacontahedron. The Rhombic Triacontahedron is a polyhedron having 30 identical rhombic faces, 20 vertices where 3 rhombi meet, 12 vertices where 5 rhombi meet, and 60 edges. Because it is such an attractive polyhedron, the writer of this article could not resist the temptation to make one, in the year 1991. When constructing the template from which to cut matte-boards into the correctly-shaped rhombic faces (to be glued together), it was noted that the face angles were (the arctangent of 2) and (180° minus the arctangent of 2). This seemed to imply that the ratio between the lengths of the two diagonals of the rhombic triacontahedron’s faces was a very simple ratio, so we did a bit of analysis to find out what this ratio may be, and we were dumbfounded to see the Divine Proportion pop up again in yet another beautiful mathematical shape. Although we suspect that this was known to Kepler centuries before we re-discovered the fact, it turns out that every face of the Rhombic Triacontahedron is a golden rhombus, i.e., a rhombus whose diagonals are in Divine Proportion! In case the reader dares to risk catching the “polyhedron-constructing madness bug”, here is Khan Amore’s template for the golden rhombus used to construct the Rhombic Triacontahedron:
Polyhedra
Polyhedra
In this page not only some known polyhedra but also animations of dual polyhedra are presented. Of the various polyhedra, which are simultaneously convex and regular? These polyhedra, already known in ancient Greece are called platonic solids. There are only five platonic solids – tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron and dodecahedron.
(The animations and figures were made with mathematica© and converted with the help of LiveGraphics3D. About how to use the software see help).
Platonic Solids tetrahedron

https://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/tetrahedron.html

Polyhedra
Polyhedra
In this page not only some known polyhedra but also animations of dual polyhedra are presented. Of the various polyhedra, which are simultaneously convex and regular? These polyhedra, already known in ancient Greece are called platonic solids. There are only five platonic solids – tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron and dodecahedron.
(The animations and figures were made with mathematica© and converted with the help of LiveGraphics3D. About how to use the software see help).
Platonic Solids tetrahedron
click on text here: tetrahedron , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.
Polyhedra
Octahedron
click on text here: cube , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.
click on text here: octahedron , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.
click on text here: icosahedron , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.
click on text here: dodecahedron , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.
Once all the regular convex polyhedra are known, it is natural to ask: Are all regular polyhedra convex? Johannes Kepler, in 1619, found two polyhedra which are simultaneously regular and not convex – the small stellated dodecahedron and the big stellated dodecahedron. Two centuries later it woud be proved that there are only nine polyhedra in these conditions: the five platonic solids and four nonconvex regular polyhedra – the Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra. Kepler-Poinsot Polyhedra
small stellated dodecahedron
Johannes Kepler’s regular and not convex polyhedra, peqdodecahedron, small stellated dodecahedron
click on text here: small stellated dodecahedron , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.

click on text here: big stellated dodecahedron , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.

Kepler-Poinsot polyhedral, nonconvex regular polyhedral, grandodhedron, big dodecahedron

click on text here: big dodecahedron , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.

Kepler-Poinsot Polyhedra, nonconvex regular polyhedral, Graicosahedron, stellated icosahedron

click on text here: stellated icosahedron , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.
If we consider any platonic solid and “join” the center ponts of sides, we get a new platonic solid (see the lower table). These two solids are said to be duals of one another. Duality
Platonic Solids, joined center ponts of sides two solids are said to be duals of one another, Dual of the tetrahedron, dtetrahedron

click on text here: Dual of the tetrahedron , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.

Platonic Solids, joined center ponts of sides two solids are said to be duals of one another, Dual of the cube, dcuboedron

click on text here: Dual of the cube , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.
Platonic Solids, joined center ponts of sides two solids are said to be duals of one another, Dual of the octahedron, doctaedron
click on text here: Dual of the octahedron , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.
click on text here: Dual of the dodecahedron , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.
click on text here: Dual of the icosahedron , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.
The previous table points to a certain distribution of the 5 regular polyhedra in 3 classes: Tetrahedron (dual of itself), Cube and Octahedron, Dodecahedron and Icosahedron. Consider the pair – octahedron/cube – count the number of faces, vertices and edges of each of these solids. Now consider the pair – dodecahedron/icosahedron – and do the same. To finish, count the number of faces, vertices and edges of the tetrahedron. What do you conclude?
The animations presented in the following table show that it is possible to construct the dual of a given platonic solid by truncating it successively.
Table of Animations
Platonic Solids truncated successively Anim. trunc. tetr./tetrahedron, animtetrahedron
click on text here: Anim. trunc. tetr./tetrahedron , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.
Platonic Solids truncated successively Anim. trunc. cube/octahedron, animcubohedron

click on text here: Anim. trunc. cube/octahedron , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.

click on text here:  Anim. trunc. dodec./icosahedron , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.

In the model formed by a tetrahedron and its dual (which is also a tetrahedron) presented in the duality table, if we enlarge the interior tetrahedron so that the edges of both tetrahedron are at the same distance of the common center, we obtain a composed polyhedron – the stella octangula.
Composed polyhedron
Platonic Solids tetrahedron and its dual, enlarged interior tetrahedron, edges of both tetrahedron same distance from the common center, composed polyhedron – Stella Octangula
click on text here: stella octangula , and control moving dimensional image with mouse cursor.
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Polyclitus, Aristotle and Plotinus
If beauty is definable some general concept on order of this sort must be part of the definition. If it is not definable, mathematical order must at least be a potent criterion of beauty, on Plato’s view. In this he was at one with artists who like Polyclitus incorporated systems of proportions into their work. Polyclitus, a late 5th century Greek sculptor, is said to have written a book setting forth ideal human proportions and sculpted a statue called the Canon (rule) because it exhibited these relationships at least as far as a physical particular can.
During the 500 years between Aristotle and Plotinus intellectual life was vigorous and thinkers certainly discussed beauty. But very little is left, especially of Hellenistic writings about beauty. One major idea appearing in this period may be identified from later sources, namely the idea of the phantasia in the mind of the artist or appreciator of beauty. The great Roman orator Cicero presents this notion in the following passage, written in the first century B.C.
…I am firmly of the opinion that nothing of any kind is so beautiful as not to be excelled in beauty by that of which it is a copy, as a mask is a copy of a face. This ideal cannot be perceived by the eye or ear, nor by any of the senses, but we can nevertheless grasp it by the mind and the imagination. For example, in the case of the statues of Phidias, the most perfect of their kind that we have ever seen, and in the case of the paintings I have mentioned, we can, in spite of their beauty, imagine something more beautiful. Surely that great sculptor, while making the image of Jupiter or Minerva, did not look at any person whom he was using as a model, but in his own mind there dwelt a surpassing vision of beauty; at this he gazed and all intent on this he guided his artist’s hand to produce the likeness of the god.
Accordingly, as there is something perfect and surpassing in the case of sculpture and painting-an intellectual ideal by reference to which the artist represents those objects which do not appear to the eye [for instance, gods and perhaps other mythological personages ], so with our minds we conceive the ideal of perfect eloquence (Cicero’s subject is rhetoric], but with our ears we catch only the copy. These patterns of things are called ideai [Ideas, Forms] by Plato, that eminent master and teacher both of style and of thought… (Orator III, 8-10) Cicero makes a connection here between beauty and representational art that Plato evidently did not, judging from the Book X of the Republic. This connection was to become the cornerstone of artistic theory in the Renaissance.
{ I actually find this a little silly, to quote Cicero, an orator about the sculpture method, that was not known at this time of Phidias. Logically if one studies the slow and even progression of sculpture technique, and content in Greek sculpture – there isn’t any great break from earlier times, the process is additive. The geometry in Phidias’s sculpture would be simplistic if the basis for Classical period sculpture (of the upper tier work) was from the imagination, not extracted from nature. The whole premise in Greek art is an understanding of nature in its essential depth. Abstraction in form is evident throughout Greek sculpture periods. This abstraction is beyond a simple likeness in the Classical, Transitional, and Hellenistic. The complexity would not be seen in such depth, visually scanning obliquely across the surface as walking round the sculpture,-sighting very complex geometry as the boundaries of the sculpture surface., – Blogger P Brad Parker }
Plotinus’ theory of beauty
Plotinus (204-69 A.D.) revived and modified Plato’s philosophy, considerably increasing the mystical element in it. His writings were collected by his pupil, Porphyry, and arranged in six Enneads (literally, of nine parts each). As background, let me first sketch Plotinus’ cosmology or theory of reality at large, even though I can give only the roughest sketch of it. Plotinus conceived of all reality as the outflowing of a single mystical being, “the one”, which was ineffable (literally indescribable) and capable of being apprehended only in exalted mystical states of consciousness. The “emanations” of this One formed a continuous hierarchy of beings: Divine Intellect, the Platonic Forms, the World Soul, individual souls, physical things ranging from the most refined to the grossest, and at the bottom raw matter. This ordered array of things filled all possible grades of being, and came to be known as the Great Chain of Being. The philosopher’s quest is to rise up as far as possible in the chain of being by developing the aspects of himself that stand highest in it, which are of course his intellectual and moral capacities, as Plato says in the Symposium. This ascent achieves as much beauty as we are capable of; above our reach stand yet more beautiful beings which we can only contemplate.Plotinus’ texts give us more about beauty than any of those which have survived other than Plato’s. Further, he is the first thinker to write an extended essay specifically on beauty. The following sections present some of the more notable parts of his discusssions.
As mystical as Plotinus is, at times he becomes rigorously analytical, as in this argument against the view that beauty being the reducible to symmetry of parts and charm of color. (trans. S. Mackenna) What is it that attracts the eyes of those to whom a beautiful object is presented, and calls them, lures them, toward it, and fills them with joy at the sight? If we possess ourselves of this, we have at once a standpoint for the wider survey.
Almost everyone declares that the symmetry of parts towards each other and towards a whole, with, besides, a certain charm of colour, constitutes the beauty recognized by the eye, that in visible things, as indeed in all else, universally, the beautiful thing is essentially symmetrical, patterned.
But think what this means. [On such a hypothesis] only a compound could be beautiful, never anything devoid of parts, and only a whole; the several parts would have beauty not in themselves but only as working together to give a comely totality. Yet in fact [contrary to the hypothesis] beauty in any aggregate demands beauty in details; it cannot be constructed out of ugliness; its law must run throughout.1 All the loveliness of colour and even the light of the sun, being devoid of parts (2) and so not beautiful by symmetry, must [on the hypothesis] be ruled out of the realm of beauty. And how [on that theory] comes gold to be a beautiful thing? And lightning by night, and the stars, why [according to the theory] are these so fair? [1. Here Plotinus repeats the idea in Plato’s Symposium that really beautiful things must be beautiful through and through. But it is highly dubious, since its suggests e.g. that sculptures are more beautiful if made of precious materials. 2. It is not easy to know whether light, color, and musical tones should be regarded as simple or complex in their aesthetic aspect, that is, as they are experienced. Can we perceive any complexity in them? Plotinus thinks not, but we can certainly distinguish hue from brightness and saturation, and pitch from loudness and tone quality. However, Plotinus’ main point does not require the strict simplicity of these things, but only that there be no parts which could be symmetrically arrayed. And that seems undeniable. His argument could easily be recast to avoid the problem of strict simplicity.] In sounds also the simple must be proscribed though often [contrary to the hypothesis] in a noble composition each individual tone is delicious in itself. Again since the one face, constant in symmetry, appears sometimes fair and sometimes not, can we doubt that beauty is something more than symmetry, that symmetry itself owes its beauty to a remoter principle? Turn to what is attractive in methods of life or in the expression of thought; are we to call in symmetry here? What symmetry is to be found in noble conduct, or excellent laws, in any form of mental pursuit?
In sounds also the simple must be proscribed though often [contrary to the hypothesis] in a noble composition each individual tone is delicious in itself. What symmetry can there be in points of abstract thought?
The symmetry of being accordant with each other? But there may be accordance or entire identity where there is nothing but ugliness; the proposition that honesty is merely a generous artlessness chimes in the more perfect harmony with the proposition that morality means weakness of will; the accordance is complete.
The again, all the virtues are a beauty of the soul, a beauty authentic beyond any of these others; but how does symmetry enter here? The soul, it is true, is not a simple unity, but still its virtue cannot have the symmetry of size or of number: what standard of measurement could preside over the compromise or the coalescence of the soul’s faculties or purposes?
Finally, how by this theory would there be beauty in the Intellectual-Principle, essentially’ the solitary? (Ennead I, 6, §1) Like Plato, Plotinus stresses how spontaneous our response to beauty and ugliness is:
…it is something perceived at first glance, something which the soul names as if from an ancient knowledge and, recognizing it, welcomes it, even enters into unison with it.
But let the soul fall in with the ugly and at once it shrinks within itself, denies the thing, turns away from it, not accordant, resenting it. Our interpretation is that the soul — by the very truth of its nature, by its affiliation to the noblest Existents in the hierarchy of Being — when it sees anything of that kinship, thrills with an immediate delight, (3) takes its own to itself, and thus stirs anew to the sense of its nature and of all its affinity. Ennead, I, 6, 2.
[3. Plotinus gives the impression that the delight never fails, as if beauty always thrills. But elsewhere he acknowledges that this holds only for the purified soul. Commonly people fall short of this ideal because they are in some degree corrupt or ill-trained. The term immediate in this context is mainly a matter of the delight not depending on our ability to explain what is so good about the thing that delights us.]
The following excerpts reflect the Apollonian ideal and were more influential in the Middle Ages than were Plato’s writings, which were less widely available than were those of Plotinus and Christian Neoplatonists. We hold that all the loveliness of this world comes by communion in Ideal-Form.
All shapelessness whose kind admits of pattern and form, as long as it remains outside of Reason and Idea, is ugly by that very isolation from the ‘Divine-Thought. And this is the Absolute Ugly: an ugly thing is something that has not been entirely mastered by pattern, that is by Reason, the Matter not yielding at all points and all respects to Ideal-Form.
But where the Ideal-Form has entered, it has grouped and coordinated what from a diversity of parts was to become a unity; it has rallied confusion into cooperation; it has made the sum one harmonious coherence; for the Idea is a unity and what it moulds must come to unity as far as multiplicity may.
And on what has thus been compacted to unity, Beauty enthrones itself, giving itself to the parts as to the sum: when it lights on some natural unity, a thing of like parts, then it gives itself to that whole. Thus, for an illustration, there is the beauty, conferred by craftsmanship, of all a house with all its parts, and the beauty which some natural quality may give to a single stone. (§2)
The beauty of color is also the outcome of a unification: it derives from shape (1), from the conquest of the darkness inherent in Matter by the pouring-in of light, the unembodied, which is a Rational-Principle and an Ideal-Form.
Hence it is that Fire itself is splendid beyond all material bodies, holding the rank of Ideal Principle to the other elements, making ever upwards, the subtlest and sprightliest of all bodies, as very near to the unembodied; itself alone admitting no other, all the others penetrated by it; for they take warmth but this is never cold; it has colour primally; they receive the Form of colour from it: hence the splendour of its light, the spendour that belongs to the Idea. And all that has resisted and is but uncertainly held by its light remains outside of beauty as not having absorbed the plentitude of the Form of colour.
And harmonies unheard in sound create the harmonies we hear (2) and wake the Soul to the consciousness of beauty, showing it the one essence in another kind: for the measures of our sensible music are not arbitrary but are determined by the Principle whose labour is to dominate Matter and bring pattern into being.
Thus far of the beauties of the realm of sense, images and shadow-pictures, fugitives that have entered into Matter — to adorm, and to ravish, where they are seen. (Ennead I, 6, §3)
[1. It is hard to make out what Plotinus could mean by color being derived from shape. Perhaps it is connected with the idea of color being a mixture of daylight and darkness derived from matter. He seems to believe that color results from daylight being partly absorbed by the matter of things which we see as colored, and the shape of the particles of matter may produce the different mixtures we see as color. 2. The unheard harmonies are the pure mathematical ratios involved in musical harmony. Plotinus thinks that the soul responds to the mathematics rather than to the heard qualities of sound]
Plotinus picks up the phantasia idea earlier expressed by Cicero and in addition neatly inverts Plato’s argument about the mimetic arts. They can’t be much worse than natural objects if they are so much like them. Further, he develops Aristotle’s idea that artists (in the broad sense which includes craftsmen) create as nature does. They don’t merely produce imitations of nature’s products. So conceived the best artist is just one step below the creative principle in nature, which is a compliment, coming from someone so finely tuned to the glories of the world as Plotinus. This last is demonstrated by praise of nature in the same passage, even though here and elsewhere he stresses the incomparable beauty of purely spiritual things, from individual souls all the way up to the One, or Intellectual-Principle, which is beyond mere beauty.
Still the arts are not to be slighted on the ground that they create by imitations of natural objects; for, to begin with, these natural objects are themselves imitations; then, we must recognize that they give no bare reproduction of the thing seen but go back to the Reason-Principles from which Nature itself derives, and, furthermore, that much of their work is all their own; they are holders of beauty and add where nature is lacking. Thus Pheidias wrought the Zeus upon no model among things of sense but by apprehending what form Zeus must take if he chose to become manifest to sight. (Ennead V, 8, §1) Whence shone forth the beauty of Helen, battlesought; or of all those women like in loveliness to Aphrodite; or of Aphrodite herself; or of any human being that has been perfect in beauty; or of any of these gods manifest to sight, or unseen but carrying what would be beauty if we saw? In all these is it not the Idea, something of that realm but communicated to the produced from within the producer, just as in the works of art, we held, it is communicated from the arts to their creations? Now we can surely not believe that, while the made thing and the Idea thus impressed upon Matter are beautiful, yet the Idea not so alloyed but resting still with the creator — the Idea primal, immaterial, firmly a unity — is not Beauty. (§2)
And indeed if the divine did not exist, the transcendently beautiful, in a beauty beyond all thought, what could be lovelier than the things we see? Certainly no reproach can rightly be brought against this world save only it is not That. (§8)
In the next passage Plotinus speaks about the process of inner reflection which he believes is required if we are to refine and deepen our apprehension of beauty. It provides a corrective to any hasty conclusion from the earlier reference to our knowledge of beauty as immediate and spontaneous. “We must close our eyes and invoke a new manner of seeing, a wakefulness that is the birthright of us all, though few put it to use.” He continues:
What, then, is this inner vision?
Like anyone just wakened, the soul cannot look at bright object. It must be persuaded first to look at beautiful habits, then the works of beauty produced not by craftsman’s skill but by virtue of men known for their goodness, then the soul of those who achieve beautiful deeds. “How can one see the beauty of a good soul?” Withdraw into yourself and look. If you do not as yet see beauty within you, do as does the sculptor of a statue that is to be beautified; he cuts away here, he smooths it there, he makes this line lighter, this other one purer, until he disengages beautiful lineaments in the marble. Do you this, too. Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one radiance of beauty. Never cease “working at the statue” until there shines out upon you from it the divine sheen of virtue, until you see perfect “goodness firmly established in stainless shrine.” Have you become like this? Do you see yourself, abiding within yourself, in pure solitude? Does nothing remain now to shatter that interior unity, nor anything external cling to your authentic self? Are you entirely that sole true light which is not contained by space, not confined to any circumscribed form, not diffused as something without a limit, but ever unmeasurable as something greater than all measure and something more than all quantity? Do you see yourself in this state? Then you have become vision itself. Be of good cheer. Remaining here you have ascended aloft. You need a guide no longer. Strain and see. Only the mind’s eye can contemplate this mightly beauty, But if it comes to contemplation purblind with vice, impure, weak, without the strength to look upon brilliant objects, it then sees nothing even if it is placed in the presence of an object that can be seen. For the eye must be adapted to what is to be seen, have some likeness to it, if it would give itself to contemplation. No eye that has not become like unto the sun will ever look upon the sun; nor will any that is not beautiful look upon the beautiful. Let each one therefore become godlike and beautiful who would contemplate the divine and beautiful.
So ascending, the soul will come first to The Intelligence and will survey all the beautiful Ideas therein and will avow their beauty, for it is by these ideas that there comes all beauty else, by the offspring and the essence of The Intelligence. What is beyond The Intelligence we affirm to be the nature of the good, radiating beauty before it. (Ennead I, 6, §9)
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Hellenistic period – Alexandria, Egypt
One may conclude, as does Fowden, that “genuine cultural fusion” between, on the one hand, native Egyptian religion & philosophy and, on the other hand, Greek rationality, both scientific & philosophical, most likely took place in the “educated native milieu”. The origin of Alexandro-Egyptian culture (of a genuine merge) is thus to be found in the relatively small upper classes of the native priesthood & administrators (open to the impact of Greek thought and different from the large majority of natives that did not adopt Greek beliefs and practices) as well as in the very limited number of Greeks that egyptianized. As only ca.10% of the total population was literate (Davies, 1995, p.27), we may conclude that the original “niche” of this emergent new Graeco-Egyptian consciousness (infusing fertile traditions with rationality) was rather small in number. Was it potent enough to initiate a new Alexandro-Egyptian cultural form, including a religious system, a philosophy, a ceremonial order as well as a vast number of popular magical practices, namely Hermetism ?4.4 Religious syncretism & stellar fatalism.syncretism as a political toolSerapis was associated with Isis, to whom Alexander the Great had dedicated a temple in Alexandria. This divine pair was linked with the divine royal couple, Serapis to Pharaoh, Isis to the queen. With these linear equations, the Greeks introduced dual-natured syncretic deities, corresponding to the two-fold aspect of the Ptolemaic rulers, both Basileus and Pharaoh. They deified themselves in the process. The dynastic cult was the political device with which the Ptolemies legitimized their rule : for the ruling classes Ptolemy I was Basileus, a divine person in Alexandrian style, for the natives he was Pharaoh, son of Re, Egypt personified.
Anubis as a Roman in the sarcophagus room of the hypogaeum – Roman period – first centuries CE – Alexandria Ptolemaic kingship had to be upheld by the gods, and hence the Greek rulers worshipped Greek, Egyptian and Graeco-Egyptian deities.Cultic syncretism is best evidenced in the Hellenized parts of Egypt, such as Alexandria (and the Fayyum) and was initiated by the Greek rulers.The principle continued to be applied until the Roman period, when it ran against the canon of Egyptian art and involved a grotesque putting together of disparate elements, like the use of Roman vestments …
In general, the native Egyptian remained loyal to the venerable cultic forms (preferably going back to the Old Kingdom) and religious syncretism is an ambiguous process :”Although it presupposes the interaction of at least two religious cultures, interest in this process may fluctuate widely among different categories of worshippers, and produce an extremely uneven effect on their conception of the gods involved, and on the way in which they worship those gods.”Fowden, 1986, p.19. As we know that both groups tended to keep to their own, it is unlikely that syncretic deities as Serapis were worshipped by native Egyptians without thinking of Osiris (as Amun might have been praised by a few exceptional Greeks, but never without considering Zeus). In many ways, syncretism downgrades the specificity of each archetype. In Ptolemaic Egypt, it was a diplomatic way for the ruler to honor both sides.fatalism and the movement of the stars : “Aegyptus imago sit caeli”Next to the traditional Egyptian religious forms (recapitulating Old Kingdom canons), and the particularities of the ideology of the Greek Basileus, we must stress the further development of a trend which started in the Late New Kingdom. It consisted in attributing less importance to worldly success (position in the Pharaonic state) and more to the inward man and his realization of modesty in the face of reality. This regrouping of values made the new ideal man humble before godhead. He realized that everything was decreed by god’s will. Maat was still the divine order which governed the world, but, living according to Maat, was no longer described in terms of material rewards or position in society, but as the humility of man toward the omnipotent will of god. Worship was thus a way to please god, a sacrifice made to make the personal will coincide with the divine will (with magic the opposite was aimed at, namely influence over the divine will by assuming it).
… it has become certain that the Hermetic Gnosis was routed in a secret society in Alexandria, a sort of Masonic lodge, with certain rites like a kiss of peace, a baptism of rebirth in the spirit and a sacred meal of the brethren. It started with the astrologic lore contained in works like the Hermetic Panaretos, of the second century before the beginning of the common era. (…) Greeks, Egyptians, and Jews were members of the Hermetic lodge and unanimously contributed their specific traditions to the common views. Christian influences, however, are completely absent.”Quispel, 1998, p.74.the philosophical HermeticaFor Mahé, the allusions to “the god” and “the gods” in the Egyptian instruction genre are an anticipation of the complex Hermetic God, both One and All. However, this position is disputed, for we are dealing here with a syncretistic culture whose elements were not easily separable. Indeed, the philosophical Hermetica also refer to Jewish (Septuagint) and Greek sources (Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics). Hence, these texts are not lineal descendants of the Egyptian wisdom teachings. Egyptian wisdom is ethical, social and engaged with life here and now. The Hermetica are individualistic, theological, reflective, contemplative and invoke the inner, mystical initiation or celestial voyage of the soul (in trance) during life on Earth (cf. Dionysian and Orphic elements). Moreover, Hermetism is ascetical and rejects matter and the world (cf. the influence of Greek philosophy, Parmenides’ two roads, Plato’s two-world ontology and bi-polar anthropology). the historical phases of HermetismThree fundamental phases appear :
1. native Hermopolitan theology : the perennial worship of the native Egyptian Thoth centered in Hermopolis (“Hermoupolis Magna”). Although the contents of this theology is only know from Ptolemaic sources, “Khnum Khemenu”, “the Eight town” (also called “Per-Djehuty”, the “house of Thoth”) existed in the Vth Dynasty and was associated with the Ogdoad or company of eight precreational gods (frog heads) & goddesses (serpent-headed). A few of them were mentioned in the Pyramid Texts, but the complete list is first mentioned in the Middle Kingdom. These deities emerged from the Nun (the primordial, undifferentiated ocean) and constituted the soul of Thoth. They may also be understood as further characterizations of this dark, unlimited realm of before creation : Amun and Amaunet (hiddenness), Heh and Heket or Huh and Hauhet (eternity), Kek and Keket or Kuk and Kauket (darkness), Nun and Nunet or Nun and Naunet (primordial chaos). This dark, unlimited and eternal realm would return in Jewish qabalah as the “negative existence” of the “Ain Soph”. Hermopolitan theology will provide the framework for Ptolemaic Hermetism.
2. historical Hermetism : the identification of Thoth, “Thrice Greatest”, with Hermes Trismegistus, who, in his philosophical teachings, is Greek and human (although Egyptian elements persist), but who assumed, in the technical Hermetica, the cosmicity of the native Egyptian Thoth. The technical Hermetica are attested under the Ptolemies, and the existence of an Alexandrian multi-cultural Hermetic lodge in the first century BCE is likely. The theo-philosophical sources are the 17 treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Latin Asclepius, the Armenian Hermetic Definitions and the Coptic Hermetica found at Nag Hammadi, in particular The Eighth and the Ninth Sphere (Codex VI.6), which all date from the first centuries CE. It is possible to see Hermetism as a “gnosticism”, but then one particular to imperial Alexandrian culture, for the notion of an evil demiurge (cf. Christian gnosticism) is not present. Constituted by Egyptian, Greek and Jewish elements, Hermetism will influence Judaism (the Merkabah mystics of the Jewish gnostics of Alexandria), Christianity (Clement of Alexandria, the Greek Fathers, the “Orientale Lumen”) and Islam (the Hermetic star worshippers of Harran) ;
3. literary Hermeticism : Renaissance Hermeticism produced a fictional Trismegistus as the godhead of its esoteric concept of the world as an organic whole, with an intimate sympathy between its material (natural) and spiritual (supernatural) components. This view was consistent with the humanistic phase of modernism, which was followed by a mechanization of the world and the “enlightenment” of the eighteenth century. These new forces ousted all formative & final causes from their physical inquiries, and reduced the four Aristotelian categories of determination to the material & efficient causes. Astrology, magic and alchemy were deemed scientifically backward & religiously suspect. “Actio-in-distans” was impossible, and Paganism was Satanical. In 1666, Colbert evicts astrology from the Academy of Sciences (the court-astrologer Morin de Villefranche had to take place behind a curtain to note the hour of birth of the dauphin). In the nineteenth century, under the influence of the morbid but exotical fancies of the Romantics, Hermeticism became part of Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, Theosophy and generalized Egyptomania
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Aphrodite Hellenistic, Greco-Roman, related Female Hellenistic Sculpture

Aphrodite Hellenistic, Greco-Roman, related Female Hellenistic Sculpture

 

 

 

 

“The restorations of the arms was made by Ercole Ferrata, who gave them long tapering Mannerist fingers that did not begin to be recognized as out of keeping with the sculpture until the 19th century.

The marble Aphrodite at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,[11] is a close replica of the Venus de’ Medici.[12] The pose of the head is not in doubt, for it did not break off when other breaks occurred, in which the arms were irrevocably lost. On the plinth is the left foot, with part of the dolphin-and-tree-trunk support, and a trace of the missing right foot, restored by a cast, for the sculpture was in two sections, which were joined by casts taken of the Venus de’ Medici’s lower legs. For dating the replicas, attention is focused on the minor details of the dolphins that were added by the copyists, in which stylistic conventions come to the fore: the Metropolitan dates its Aphrodite of the Medici type to the Augustan period.

The Metropolitan Aphrodite was in the collection of Count von Harbuval genammt Chamaré in Silesia,[13] whose progenitor Count Schlabrendorf made the Grand Tour and corresponded with Johann Joachim Winckelmann.” Excerpts from Wikpedia

 

 

 

Aphrodite Hellenistic, Greco-Roman Sulptures, related Female Hellenistic Sculpture

 

 

Kallipygos Aphrodite, Kallipygos is Greek for with a beautiful rump Greco-Roman marble copy after a Greek Hellenistic bronze, Naples National Archaeology Museum

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pudicizia, copia romana dell’età flavia (i sec. dc.) da originale ellenistico, con testa di reaturo Statue of a Woman, Braccio Nuovo, Vatican Woman in palla, a shawl with crown worn over head and under tunic, Rome, Italy

http://artgallery.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/coll_an_bull_2008_portrait_lady.pdf

Portrait of a Lady:

A New Statue at the Yale University Art Gallery

Lisa R. Brody

Both Greek and Roman societies judged men and women by certain standards. Women were expected to be modest, chaste, and reserved; these values determined her level of respect from family and peers.1 These personal moralities are central not only in the written traditions of the ancient world but also in its portraiture. Hellenistic and Roman portraits of women typically show them in canonical modes connected to certain traits, so that the images would be easily understood as commentary on lifestyle and disposition. The Gallery’s recent acquisition (fig. 1) is a perfect example of such a portrait; it follows a scheme known to scholars as pudicitia and asserts a strong visual statement about the decorous and modest character of the woman shown. She stands in a self-contained pose, her body enveloped by rich garments and one arm bent so that the hand is near the face. This type was a popular option for images of women, not only in freestanding statuary but also in relief sculpture, beginning in the eastern Mediterranean around the second century b.c. and spreading west.2 It continued to appear through the second century a.d., though with decreasing regularity after the early Imperial period. In creating a late Hellenistic or Roman portrait, artists chose from a variety of standard body types, most of which were loaded with meaning from centuries of dissemination. A woman might be shown as Aphrodite, even nude or semi-nude, and the image would be interpreted as a statement about the woman’s beauty and charm. Hellenistic examples frequently display less concern for individual appearance, so that even statues designed as portraits tend toward idealisation. In the Roman period, statues tended to be strongly personalised, often including a contemporary fashion hairstyle. Exceptions appear in the Greek East, where patrons and sculptors maintained strong ties to Hellenistic traditions. There are several variations of the pudicitia statue type, though all carry the same connotations when chosen for a portrait. Some versions shift the weight to the opposite leg and/or reverse the position of the arms. The arrangement and treatment of the drapery sometimes also varies. The new Yale statue is a high-quality example of the so-called Braccio Nuovo type, named for a statue in the Vatican Museums, in Rome (fig. 2). In this type, the edge of the mantle falls in front of the body, crossing over the left wrist and creating a long diagonal line that accentuates the figure’s elegant stance. The Gallery’s new statue was acquired at Sotheby’s in New York in December 2007.3 It came from a private owner in France and had stood in a garden there since being

 

Fig. 1 (opposite). Figure of a Woman, Roman,

1st century b.c.–early 1st century a.d. Marble, 7715⁄16 x 305⁄16 x 18¿ in. (198 x 77 x 46 cm). Yale University Art Gallery, Purchased with the Ruth Elizabeth White and Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., b.a. 1913, Funds, 2007.207.1

Fig. 2 (above, left). Statue of a Woman, Braccio Nuovo type (right hand and head restored), Roman, late 1st century a.d. Marble, h. 6 ft. 9√ in. (2.08 m). Vatican Museums, Rome, Braccio Nuovo 23

Fig. 3 (above, right). Photoshop reconstruction of fig. 1

purchased from London antiquities dealer Robert Kime, who had acquired it at a Sotheby’s auction in England in 1987. Certain restorations, particularly the right arm, suggest that the statue was in a European collection by at least the nineteenth century, when such techniques were common.

The slightly over life-size marble statue, six feet tall, portrays a woman in a frontal pose with her weight primarily on her right leg, her left leg bent and set slightly forward. She wears a long dress (chiton) covered by a mantle (himation) and thin-soled shoes of soft leather. True to the pudicitia scheme, the left arm crosses in front of the torso, enveloped in layers of drapery. The original right arm would have been bent so that the hand was near the chin, possibly grasping the mantle that is drawn up over the head (fig. 3). The mantle is notable for its fringed edge, carefully and skillfully carved. Such fringe is a distinctive and individualising element; fringed garments were worn by both men and women in antiquity and were associated with Hellenistic royalty and the luxurious East.5 The closed shoes are another specific feature, a distinctive fashion element of metropolitan Rome.6 Since we lack the inscription that originally would have accompanied this statue on its base, we must rely upon such iconographic clues in discussing its identity and context.

The carving on the Gallery’s statue is exceptionally fine, showing great sensitivity to contrast in texture and detail of drapery. In typical Hellenistic-style sculptural fashion, the lines of the heavier chiton are visible beneath the thinner mantle overlay. The complex patterns of folds and creases balance the compositional lines and stabilise the figure. The face is idealised, the hair brushed back in waves from a central part. It recalls images of Greek goddesses and suggests a strong Classical tradition, such as existed in the Greek East even into the Roman era.7

Although largely complete, the statue has undergone several repairs and restorations. These treatments are now being studied to determine an appropriate plan for conservation and display. As mentioned above, the right arm is obviously restored. The marble limb may have been crafted in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, specifically for the restoration, or it may have been borrowed from another ancient statue. The long-sleeved garment on this arm suggests that, if ancient, it comes from a statue of a male barbarian. A round marble plug conceals the dowel used to attach the arm, and the seam where the arm joins the body was later filled with epoxy resin.

Other areas of the statue, including the chin and two fingers of the left and, were also restored in marble. There are significant repairs to the neck and surrounding drapery, with fragments of marble pieced together and the joins covered with epoxy resin. The nose, upper lip, and left pointer finger are restored using epoxy; some or all of these restorations were likely added by Robert Kime as the 1987 Sotheby’s catalogue seems to show the nose and part of the upper lip missing, with a dowel hole for a previous restored nose visible. There is a large chip missing from the proper right cheek, and another large loss on the back of the head (the latter was never repaired because the statue probably would have stood against a wall or in a niche, so that the back would not have been visible). Two holes in a broken area on top of the head indicate another restoration (now missing). The statue stands on a new marble base. The surface is covered with gray-black dirt and green moss as well as iron oxide stains, a condition that is a result of the statue standing outside. The 1987 Sotheby’s catalogue shows that it was already in a similar state then, suggesting that the object had already been in a collection and displayed outdoors for many years prior to 1987. Extensive cleaning and conservation will take place during the 2008–9 academic year.

After treatment, the pudicitia statue is certain to become a highlight of the Gallery’s collection. Surrounded by divine and mythological statues, portrait heads and busts, and other objects of ancient art, it will speak elegantly to the visitor of sculptural style and portrait traditions during

the late Hellenistic and early Roman eras. Scholars, faculty, and students will examine the significance of its type, costume, and probable context, while non-specialists will be drawn to the quality of its carving and the elegance of its composition. We at the Yale University Art Gallery look forward to seeing the statue through its course of conservation, from which we expect it to emerge as a spectacular example of ancient portraiture.

 

  1. The ancient Latin terms associated with these values include pudicitia, castitas, sanctitas, modestia, with related concepts such as eidos and sophrosyne in Greek. See R. R. Smith, Hellenistic Sculpture: A Handbook (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), 84–85; Paul Zanker, “The Hellenistic Grave Stelai from Smyrna,” Images and Ideologies: Self-Definition in the Hellenistic World, ed. Anthony Bulloch et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 222–27; Paul Zanker, “Brüche im Bürgerbild? Zur

bürgerlichen Selbstdarstellung in den hellenistischen Städten,” in Stadtbild und Bürgerbild im Hellenismus, ed. Michael Wörrle and Paul Zanker (Munich:

  1. H. Beck, 1995), 262–63.
  2. See, for example, the statue of Kleopatra from Delos in Smith, Hellenistic Sculpture, 84, fig. 113. On Hellenistic grave reliefs, see Ernst Pfuhl and Hans Möbius, Die ostgriechischen Grabreliefs I–II (Mainz am Rhein, Ger.: Philipp von Zabern, 1977–79), 138–48, 413–51.
  3. Sale , Sotheby’s, New York, December 5, 2007, lot 69.
  4. Sale , Sotheby’s, Sussex, September 23–24, 1987, lot 598.
  5. When fringed cloaks are mentioned in ancient literature, the cloak is often purple or crimson and

 

the fringe gold, e.g. Ovid, Met. 2.734, 5.51. One instance of a very similar fringed mantle appears on the famous Hellenistic bronze dancer (the so-called Baker Dancer) owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York (inv. no. 1972.118.95). For such garments worn by men, with their connotation of luxury, see Christopher Hallett, The Roman Nude: Heroic Portrait Statuary 200 BCAD 300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 132–36.

  1. Norma Goldman, “Roman Footwear,” The World of Roman Costume, Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), 116. Among the corpus of portrait statues from Aphrodisias, for example, only three of the twenty female statues whose footwear survives wear closed shoes; two of these also have contemporary metropolitan hairstyles. See R. R. R. Smith et al., Aphrodisias II: Roman Portrait Statuary from Aphro- disias (Mainz am Rhein, Ger.: Philipp von Zabern, 2007), 194.
  2. It is evident, despite the restorations to the neck and surrounding drapery, that the head does belong

to the statue. Making statues of a single block became particularly desirable in the early Roman period and later; see Smith et al., Aphrodisias II, 30.

 

Bartolomeo Cavaceppi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Painting of Bartolomeo Cavaceppi by Anton von Maron, ca. 1794.

The Sandalbinder, an antique statue restored by Cavaceppi, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (c. 1716 – December 9, 1799) was an Italian sculptor who worked in Rome, where he trained in the studio of the acclimatized Frenchman, Pierre-Étienne Monnot, and then in the workshop of Carlo Antonio Napolioni,[1] a restorer of sculptures for Cardinal Alessandro Albani, who was to become a major patron of Cavaceppi, and a purveyer of antiquities and copies on his own account.[2] The two sculptors shared a studio. Much of his work was in restoring antique Roman sculptures, making casts, copies, and fakes of antiques, fields in which he was pre-eminent and which brought him into contact with all the virtuosi: he was a close friend of and informant for Johann Joachim Winckelmann.[3] Winckelmann’s influence and Cardinal Albani’s own evolving taste may have contributed to Cavaceppi’s increased self-consciousness of the appropriateness of restorations[4] — a field in which earlier sculptors had improvised broadly — evinced in his introductory essay to his Raccolta d’antiche statue, busti, teste cognite ed altre sculture antiche restaurate da Cav.[5] Bartolomeo Cavaceppi scultore romano[6] (3 vols., Rome 1768-72). The baroque taste in ornate restorations of antiquities had favoured finely pumiced polished surfaces, coloured marbles and mixed media, and highly speculative restorations of sometimes incongruous fragments.[7] Only in the nineteenth century, would collectors begin for the first time to appreciate fragments of sculpture: a headless torso was not easily sold in eighteenth-century Rome.

In the competition for a permanent marble of Saint Norbert for the last available niche in St. Peter’s Basilica, Cavaceppi, the candidate favoured by Cardinal Albani, lost out in the end to the more conservative declamatory Baroque manner of Pietro Bracci, who received the commission.[8]

Cavaceppi, “now certainly one of the most underrated artist-personalities in that era” according to Seymour Howard, was the Pope’s chief restorer, and a measure of his other clientele may be drawn from the plates that illustrated the works of art that had been restored in his extensive studio in the Raccolta, which appeared in three folio volumes, 1768-72. Haskell and Penny note[9] that of sixty plates in the first volume, thirty-four reproduced works already belonging to Englishmen, while a further seventeen showed works in German collections. The remainder were divided among CardinalsAlessandro Albani and Giuseppe Alessandro Furietti (1684–1764) and Conte Giuseppe Fede,[10] with one more in the Capitoline Museum and another belonging to Jacques-Laure le Tonnelier de Breteuil, the Bailli de Breteuil.[11] The following year’s volume showed sixty plates of sculptures that were all on the market. Cavaceppi made a considerable fortune from his endeavors.

Cavaceppi’s studio, staffed with a host of assistants, was a stop for all the young connoisseurs making the Grand TourGoethe described his visit in Italienische Reise XXXII. Cavaceppi was entrusted with making casts of antiquities. Joseph Nollekens purchased from Cavaceppi the casts of the Furietti Centaurs that may still be seen at Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire; Cavaceppi also produced full-size copies in marble.

For his contributions in the formation of the Museo Clementino, based in large part on Albani’s collection, Cavaceppi was made a Knight of the Golden Spur in 1770[12] and was henceforth Cavaliere Cavaceppi. His sculptures were presented for sale in the Museo Cavaceppi between the Piazza di Spagna and the Piazza del Popolo, the part of Rome most frequented by foreigners.

In the 1770s he carved a reduced version of Trajan’s Column, which was purchased by the English virtuoso Henry Blundell to complement his antiqities at Ince Blundell; Blundell also acquired Cavaceppi’s working model, a wooden column painted in grisaille.[13]

At the time of his death, the collection of fragments and casts in the Museo was vast. Prince Giovanni Torlonia purchased over a thousand items from Cavaceppi’s legacy.[14] In some senses,Vincenzo Pacetti, who had collaborated with Cavaceppi on restorations and who supervised restorations and display of the Borghese collection at Villa Borghese was Cavaceppi’s successor.

An exhibition “Bartolomeo Cavaceppi”, curated by C.A. Picon in London, 1983, helped to bring him out of obscurity.

Some other sculptors in Rome renowned for their restorations

Notes

  1. His name was variously given in contemporary notices. Francesco Giuseppe Napoleoni, who provided sculptures for Bernini’s colonnade at St. Peter’s may have been kin, according to Seymour Howard, “Some Eighteenth-Century ‘Restored’ Boxers” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 56 (1993, pp. 238-255) p 240 note 5.
  2. Tomasz Mickoki, “Zeichnungen und Stiche nach Skulpturen in polnische Sammlungen”, Jahrbuch des deutschen Archäologischen Institut, 1992:205; Mickoki is concerned with three antiquities that passed through Cavaceppi’s hands that are conserved in Poland, two sarcophagi and a grave stela.
  3. Winckelmann and Cavaceppi are discussed by I. Gesche, “Antikenergänzungen im 18. Jahrhundert: Johann Joachim Winckelmann und Bartolomeo Cavaceppi”, Antikensammlungen im 18. Jahrhundert, 1981:335ff.
  4. Quickly shifting parameters of what was considered appropriate in restoring antique sculpture is discussed in O. Rossi Pinelli, “Artisti, falsari o filologhi? Da Cavaceppi al Canova: il restauro della scultura tra arte e scienza”,Richerche di storia dell’arte 13/14 (1981:41ff.
  5. The designation Cav[aliere] shows that Cavaceppi, like Giovanni Battista Piranesi, had received the papal Order of the Golden Spur.
  6. “Collection of antique statues, busts, identified heads and other antique sculptures restored by Cav. Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, Roman sculptor””.
  7. Jennifer MontaguRoman Baroque Sculpture: the Industry of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press) 1989.
  8. The details of the story, which “admirably documents the workings of power politics and intrigue in matters of taste, traditional factors in the competition for lucrative commissions in the art capital of Western Christendom” has been detailed by Seymour Howard, “Bartolomeo Cavaceppi’s Saint Norbert” The Art Bulletin 70.3 (September 1988), pp. 478-485.
  9. Haskell and Penny 1981:68.
  10. Conte Fede owned part of the site of Hadrian’s Villa where he carried out excavations in his property.
  11.  Depasquale, “The Bailli de Breteuil, the Château de Breteuil and its literary connections” 2001.
  12. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was made a cavalier of the Golden Spur the same year. (Howard 1988:479).
  13. Haskell and Penny 1981:47
  14. Howard 1993:243 note 5.

References and Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bartolomeo Cavaceppi.
  • Bignamini, C. Hornsby, Digging And Dealing In Eighteenth-Century Rome(2010), p. 252-255
  • G. Barberini and C. Gasparri, Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, scultore romano (1717-1799)[exhibition catalogue, Museo del Palazzo di Venezia, Rome] (1991)
  • Haskell, Francis and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900(1981. Yale University Press)
  • Howard, Seymour, ‘Bartolomeo Cavaceppi’s Saint Norbert’, in The Art Bulletin70.3 (September 1988), pp. 478–485. [Howard appends a list of original sculptures by Cavaceppi.] S. Howard, Bartolomeo Cavaceppi Eighteenth-Century Restorer[Ph. D. thesis, New York] (1982)

 

 

Carlo Albacini

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Amazon, marble after the original in the Capitoline Museums (Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, Madrid)

Carlo Albacini (1739? — after 1807[1]) was an Italian sculptor and restorer of Ancient Roman sculpture.

He was a pupil of Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, an eminent sculptor and restorer of Rome. Albacini was notable for his copies after classical originals such as the Farnese Hercules; his version of theCastor and Pollux at the Prado is now in the Hermitage Museum[2]) or the Capitoline Flora from Hadrian’s Villa,[3] for the Grand Tourist market. Like Cavaceppi, he also restored classical sculptures, notably the Farnese marbles, which Albacini worked on in 1786-89, in preparation for their transfer to Naples under the direction of the German painter Hackert and Domenico Venuti.[4] Some of his restorations were free, by modern standards: in the famous Farnese Aphrodite Kallipygos at Naples, the head, the exposed right breast, left arm and right leg below the knee are restorations by Albacini.[5] Not restored in Rome before shipment to Naples, however, were the Farnese paired Tyrannicides restored as Gladiators.[6] Albacini was the principal restorer for Thomas Jenkins, whose pre-eminent client was Charles Townley; Townley’s collection is at the British Museum. Townley introduced Albacini to Henry Blundell whose collection of Roman sculptures was magnificently displayed at Ince Blundell.[7] In 1776 Blundell, considering that a fine modern copy was superior to a mediocre antiquity, commissioned from Albacini a copy of a colossal marble head of Lucius Verus;[8] when the young Antonio Canova visited the workshops of Cavaceppi and of Albacini in 1779-80, he spoke to one of Albacini’s garzonieri who said he had already spent fourteen monthspointing up a copy of the Borghese bust of Lucius Verus and had five months of work still to do.[9]

The Farnese Aphrodite Kallipygos, (National Archaeological Museum, Naples) restored in 1780s

He catalogued the immense collection of antique sculpture, some of its freely restored, left by Cavaceppi,[10] and he assembled the collection of casts of Greco-Roman portrait busts that was sold by Filippo Albacini and can be seen in the Capitoline Museums, the Vatican Museums, in Naples, and at the Prado and Casa del Labrador, Aranjuez,[11] and especially at the National Gallery of Scotland, where the presence of a large group of plaster casts purchased from Albacini’s son in 1838 was the subject of a colloquium on the varying reputation and cultural significance of casts of classical sculptures and the varying parameters of ethical restorations.[12]

On a smaller scale his workshop, working with Luigi Valadier, produced the elaborate table-setting in gilded and patinated bronze and rare coloured marbles on the Romantic-Classical theme The Ruins of Paestum that was designed for Maria Carolina by Domenico Venuti, 1805.[13]

As marble masons, Albacini’s workshop also executed architectural sculptures, such as the two simple chimneypieces of white and coloured marble for the gallery ofFerdinand IV of Naples‘ hunting box, the Casino Reale at Carditello,[14] about 14 km northeast of Naples. Pedestals for sculpture, for which Albacini was to be paid, were shipped from Livorno in 1780 by Gavin Hamilton intended for Thomas Pitt, later Lord Camelford, who did not take them.[15]

His son, also Carlo Albacini (1777 – 1858), was a sculptor.

Some other sculptors in Rome renowned for their restorations

Notes

  1. Death as in Dizionario biographico degli italiani, (Rome 1960) vol. I:588
  2. Hermitage Castor and Pollux.
  3. A half-size copy is conserved in the Indianapolis Museum of Art; it was included in the exhibition The Splendor of Eighteenth-Century Rome, Philadelphia and Houston, 2000.
  4. Alvar González-Palacios, “The Furnishing of the King of Naples’s Hunting Lodge at Carditello”, The Burlington Magazine 146 1219, Art in Italy: Discoveries and Attributions (October 2004:683-690) pp 683.
  5. Gösta Säflund, Peter M. Fraser, tr. Aphrodite Kallipygos, Stockholm, 1963.
  6. Illustrated by Howard 1993 pl. 38c, as restored by Albacini, but see Andrew Stewart, “David’s ‘Oath of the Horatii’ and the Tyrannicides” The Burlington Magazine 143  1177 (April 2001: 212-219) p. 216 note 9.
  7. Gerard Vaughan, in Davies 1991.
  8. Jane Fejfer, The Ince Blundell Collection of Classical Sculpture 2: The Roman Male Portraits, 1997
  9. Hugh Honour, “Canova’s Studio Practice-I: The Early Years”, The Burlington Magazine 114 828 (March 1972:146-159) p.153, noting Canova’s Quaderni di viaggio.
  10. Seymour Howard, “Some Eighteenth-Century ‘Restored’ Boxer”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 56(1993;238-255) p. 243.
  11. Seymour Howard, “Ancient busts and the Cavaceppi and Albacini casts”, Journal of the History of Collections 3(1991:199-217); Glenys Davies, “The Albacini Cast Collection – Character and significance”Journal of the History of Collections 1991 32:145-165.
  12. Glenys Davies, ed. Plaster and Marble: the Classical and Neo-Classical Portrait Bust (the Edinburgh Albacini Colloquium)Journal of the History of Collections 3, (Oxford University Press) 1991.
  13. Alvar González-Palacios, Il gusto dei principi: arte del corto nel xvii e xviii secoli
  14. González-Palacios 2004:683, illus. p. 686 ; González-Palacios notes that the two chimneypieces in question were stolen from storage in 2002.
  15. Brendan Cassidy, “Gavin Hamilton, Thomas Pitt and Statues for Stowe” The Burlington Magazine 146  1221 (December 2004:806-814) p. 809.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Carlo Albacini.

 

These sculptures below have some sophistication beyond the norm of European art from Carlo Albacini’s study after Greek sculpture and his restorations.

But his sculpture is more convincing as stylization than content from the Greek-influenced work he based his own sculpture.

 

 

 

 

Franz Alexander Friedrich Wilhelm Wolff (* 6. April1814 in Fehrbellin; † 30. Mai1887 in Berlin) –Bacchantin mit dem freilich hundezahmen Panther, 1869, FriederichswerderscheKirch, Schinkel Museum designed by Karl Frederich Schinkel – architect 1822 – 1823, Berlin, Germany

{This quite a step down from Greek Hellenistic sculpture quality, but it still shows even in the second half of the nineteenth century in the hold out regions for traditional Greek-influenced art that some issues were still understood. This is an example of the sculpture enclosed within a geometric shape (an alignment within and through a portion of a platonic solid), and elements of the combined mass of the female figure and the panther reflect the shape geometry of the forms of the female (Bacchantin). Part of this combined shape of the Bacchantin and panther start at the lateral proximal left external oblique (where the narrowing of the waist ends and the waist begins to proceeds out) of Bacchantin which proceeds in a horizontal arch across Bacchantin’s torso, over her right wrist / hand to the top head of the panther, down with and at the angle of the folds of drapery, across the vertical stump element, including the panther torso, hip, pre tail at tail base, to leg angled forward; the opposite side being the hip, and legs of Bacchantin through the ankle across to the lower forward fold of cloth at the center base, and including the front turning of the square base. This shape is also dimensional – the interior portion of this shape area: the panthers right olecranon (elbow) area, and Bacchantin’s left patella (knee) area, project forward together representing the same geometry as the glabella – between the superciliary prominence (forehead shape projection forward between eyebrows region). /// The same geometry of the whole shape of the panther & Bacchantin first described can be seen in the head of Bacchantin as seen at the narrow top of Bacchantin’s head just past the coronal suture / proximal parietal down both sides of the head to the lateral lower cheek bones, zygomatic and mass of the cheeks angled inward as proceeding distally / lower cheeks aligned with the lower nose, because of foreshortening the appearance of the shape ending at the lower lip / proximal mentalis (top chin). //// The proximal zyphoid around to both side of the projected 7th. intercostal out to the external mass of the rib cage and returning to the proximal (top) platform of the belly button transverse ligament, – reflect the same shape again, in the same right side up position as the panther Bacchantin shape element already mentioned.

All through this specific geometry is displayed. Because photography flattens shape, and only shows gradations of light, not geometric form, these examples are a bit difficult to see three dimensionally. Also, this is a very simplistic example of the order of shape geometry I have described, used as possible with the source picture.}, – , PBP

was a famous German animal sculptor 19. Century, towards. the animal Wolff.

After the training in the royal iron foundry in Berlin and with the royal institute for trade (to the forerunner DO Berlin) he extended his knowledge of the casting technology not least by the promotion Beuths with Soyer in Paris and in Munich with Johann Baptist Stiglmaier. Subsequently, it made itself independent in Berlin with its own bildgiesserei, which it handed to his brother over Albert later. He dedicated himself to the plastic representation of animals to a large extent.

It was represented since 1839 on the exhibitions of the Prussian academy of the arts and became 1865 member of the academy.

WORKS [WORK ON]

  • Eagle relief for the eight bases of the lock bridgein Berlin center;
  • ((The Sachsenrossbefore the Welfenschloss in Hanover.)) The Sachsenross is clear from sculptor Albert Wolff!!!

LITERATURE: [WORK ON]

  • Bildwerke from three centuries in Hanover. Described of Gert of the east. Taken up by Hildegard Mueller. Hrsg. of the art association Hanover to its 125jährigen existence. Munich: Bruckmann 1957, P. 100-101 (Sachsenross before the University of Hanover).

 

Aphrodite, FriederichswerderscheKirch, Schinkel Museum designed by Karl Frederich Schinkel – architect 1822 – 1823

{This sculpture is influenced by the Venus Callypige, Napoli, Hellenistic sculpture pictured above & below. The German sculpture of Aphrodite here is not sophisticated in form-content, or as graceful as the Greek Venus Callypige sculpture.}, , PBP

The National Archaeological Museum of Naples can be considered one of the most important cultural centres in the world in terms of the quantity and quality of Greek and Roman relics it contains. The museum building was constructed in 1585, on the hill of Santa Teresa, then a solitary spot but now surrounded by the chaotic traffic of the city centre. The building was originally a Cavalry Barracks, built by order of Don Pedro Giron, Duke of Ossuna, viceroy of Naples; was later used as a University, and was finally turned into a museum under Charles of Bourbon.
The National Library was also situated here for a long period, up until 1922 when it was transferred to the Royal Palace. The initial nucleus of the museum was established by Charles of Bourbon to display the Farnese collection which he inherited from his mother. However, the subsequent enlargement of the immense artistic patrimony, determined by the addition of remains found in the archaeological excavations at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabia, led to the search for new premises, and the transfer to the present building. It is practically impossible to mention everyone of the enormous number of relics and works on display here, which makes the National Archaeological Museum of Naples one of the most authoritative and prestigious collections in the world; we will instead limit ourselves to some of the most important artistic works.
It should also be remembered that a change in exhibiting criteria has led, in the last few years, to a new arrangement of the areas open to the public.
Most notable among the various exhibits and rooms are the Farnese Hercules, from the Roman Baths of Caracalla; the Farnese Cup a splendid example of cameo, once a part of the Medici collections; the Halls of Villa Papyri, where numerous sculptural exhibits are displayed, brought here from the excavations at the Herculaneum villa; the Halls of the Temple of Isis, containing frescoes and other material from Pompeii, once kept in the museum’s store-rooms; the Doryphorus, an admirable copy from the original by Polyclitus, from Pompeii; the relief showing the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice; the “Tyrannicides”, Aristogeiton and Harmodius, the magnificent Roman copy of a Greek original of the 5th century BC; the Venus Callypige, from an Hellenistic original; the Farnese Bull, also from Capua; the small bronze of the Dancing Faun; the mosaic showing the Battle of Issus. Completing the vast array of exhibits are paintings from Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabia, sculptures, small bronzes, and a collection of vases. Among the latter, note the vases originating form Etruria, Attica, Lucania, Apulia and Campania. Among the exhibits linked to Etruscan culture, the Small Bronze of a Donor (5th-4th centuries BC) is of considerable importance; it was found in the Commune of Capoliveri (Island of Elba) at the end of the 16th century.

Aphrodite Kallipygos, National Museum Neapel

Der Name soll folgendem Vorfall seine Entstehung verdanken. Zwei sizilische Mädchen stritten sich, welche von ihnen am Hinterteil schöner sei. Ein Jüngling, zum Schiedsrichter aufgefordert, entschied für die ältere und vermählte sich mit ihr, sein Bruder mit der andern. Beide Mädchen, nun reich geworden, errichteten darauf der Aphrodite in Syrakus einen Tempel mit ihrem Bild in oben bezeichneter Stellung. Eine berühmte Statue dieser Art, wenn die Darstellung nicht etwa ein Hetärenmotiv ist, steht im Nationalmuseum zu Neapel.