goethe's haunted architectural idea

7/28/2019 Goethe's Haunted Architectural Idea

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Goethes Haunted Architectural Idea

Wir graben den Schacht von Babel [We are digging the pit of Babel]

(Franz Kafka, Tagebcher)1

Jane Browns The Persistence of Allegory (2007) brilliantly rethinks the history of

the neoclassical aesthetic in literature and the visual arts over the past 300 years. The

studys interpretative frame, which Brown describes as morphological in Goethes sense

of the word (x), allows her to revisit the fluid relationship between the mimetic interests

of an array of neoclassicisms from Shakespeare to Wagner and the disruptive allegorical

interests of a variety of non-illusionist stage-practices. The following comments on

Goethes architectural idea are indebted to Browns analysis of how the allegorical

impulse persisted by adaptively re-inscribing itself within the practices of neoclassical

drama. Despite the enlistment of Aristotelian mimesis by the practitioners of literary

neoclassicism, who displaced allegory with the illusion of reality, Brown repeatedly

shows how allegory found ways to survive. Ultimately, allegory came to haunt the

neoclassical stage for Brown in the sense that it unsettled the closely regulated household

of dramatic verisimilitude, whether grounded in Aristotles material causality and

psychological realism or Vitruviuss perspectival stage-illusion (113).

Following a similar line of argumentation, I contend that even after Goethe fell

under the spell of Italys ancient monuments, the gothic persevered in his system of

architectural accounting whenever he took stock of what buildings are and how they

should be perceived.2 Despite its protean resistance to the formulaic application of the

classical orders,3 gothic building retained a privileged position in his thinking about

architecture and its modeling activities by adaptively entering into a conversation with

the classical. Much like Browns version of Goethes adaptation of allegory to the


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classical stage, then, we can say that the writers vision of Erwins construction project

proved itself sufficiently flexible to effect the translation of the unruly gothic cathedral in

Strasbourg into the measured language of classical and neoclassical theories of building

as well. As odd as this sounds, for Goethe, the sacred arcana of Erwins edifice came to

inhabit the columned precincts of ancient buildings as well. In this context, his rhapsodic

re-construction of the cathedral was never superseded in his architectural thinking by

Greek temples and amphitheatres or Roman arenas or Palladian villas. Instead, its

principles of emergence survived in a search for the haunted interior within architecture,

which the early readings of the minster in Strasbourg as the encrypted model of

architectural perfectibility had inaugurated.

When understood as an esoteric story of persistence and self-maintenance,

Goethes assessment of architectural process through gothic building recallsin addition

to Aristotles entelecheia4Spinozas conatus, which identifies the striving of all

organized entities, or finite modes, to persevere in their own being and equates this

striving with purposive action.5 Along similar lines, Erwins cathedral is exemplary,

because it displays the mark of its inhering impulse to organize and complete itself on its

face. Hence, it should come as no surprise to find the story of the monuments emergence

from the rocky excavation pit beneath its soaring walls linked to a search for the

architects gravestone. This inaugurating moment, moreover, culminates with an

architectural lesson from Erwins ghost, who instructs Goethes tourist in the

foundational thoughtor as yet untranslated Babelgedanken (FA 18:110) (Babel-like

thought)of his aesthetic practice. In this context, the anonymous title-page of the

essays first printing is inscribed like a grave-marker with a date1773 [sic]and a


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nameD.M. Ervini a Steinbach (FA 18:110), which can be rendered as either dicatum

memoriae (dedicated to the memory of) or divis manibus (to the sacred departed

spirits).6 By linking the architectural monument, or Denkmal,7 with the name of a ghost

and thereby configuring the site of the minsters construction as haunted, Goethes

earliest reflection about architecture establishes the matter of building as a matter of

survival and perpetual displacement as well.

Important to note in this regard are the many other ghosts who gather in the

Goethes imagination. But like the schwankende Gestalten (wavering forms)in the

Zueignung toFaust(1-32), which become the poets most pressing reality, such

ghostly legions cannot be dismissed as phantasmal distractions. For their Zauberhauch

(magic breath)(8) animates what would otherwise be dead, and they compel attention as

the staging of something intractably real. Whether configured as the spirit Homunculus in

Faust IIor the ghost of a young actress who died in the elegy Euphrosyne, these

phantoms typically strive to re-unite with the world and survive in the imagination. Their

characteristic drive for reincarnation models the vast potential for shapedness8 that

organizes the world from within.9 From the time of Goethes earliest reflections on

architecture, in other words, his ghosts engage the capacity for form that is also the

defining feature of all worldly matter. They bring into view the persistent being-at-work

of things to complete (i.e. perfect) themselves by staying the same.

After Goethe visited the Roman amphitheater in Veronadas erste bedeutende

Monument der alten Zeit, das ich sehe, und so gut erhalten! (the first significant

monument from ancient times that I have seen, and so well preserved)(FA15.1:44)as

well as the herrlichen Gebude (the majestic buildings) (FA15.1:57)by Palladio in


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Venice and his neoclassical Prachthaus (luxurious home) (FA15.1:60), the Villa

Rotunda, outside Vicenzahe would summarize the essence of his architectural

experience for a second time with reference to ghosts and the haunting they entail. 10 Like

Erwins shade in Strasbourg, he reports, the specter of architecture has again risen as an

allegorical figure among (classical) ruins in order to revive its dead language, or the

lost system of rules that governs how buildings are organized. 11

Die Baukunst steigt, wie ein alter Geist, aus dem Grabehervor, sie heit mich ihre Lehren, wie die Regeln einerausgestorbenen Sprache, studieren, nicht um sie auszuben,oder mich in ihr lebendig zu erfreuen, sondern nur um die

ehrwrdige, fr ewig abgeschiedene Existenz dervergangenen Zeitalter in einem stillen Gemte zu verehren.[Architecture rises from the grave like an ancient spirit, itcommands me to study its doctrines, like the rules of a deadlanguage, not in order to be an architectural practitioner orto take lively delight in architecture, but only to honor in atranquil soul the venerable life of ages past, which is goneforever.] (FA15.1:104-5)

Goethes reconfiguration of the ghost on Erwins grave within a classical landscape

indicates that his recent architectural experiences of the ancients marks a telling shift in

his attention from the personification of the architect to the dynamic workings of

architecture itself. Understood as an art form, or one of the formative arts, Baukunst 12

here has replaced the ghostly person of 1772 with the haunting process of material

organization that had produced the irretrievable cultural achievements of past ages. 13

Furthermore, implied in this shift is the post-Babelian challenge of translation again,

which in turn suggests the unsettling prospect of re-organization.14

Happily, the dead

language of the classical orders in Vitruvius has been reinvented and, so, revived, Goethe

implies. Perhaps the effort of the personified spirit of architecture to persevere can

succeed after all. Driven by its conatus, it had already re-materialized in Palladios


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calm mental disposition and, therefore, had not given up the ghost.

At this point in his architectural reflection, Goethe reports feeling a load on his

back, which he curiously attributes to his recent purchase of the Italian translation of

VitruviussDe Architectura by Galiani. He had acquired the massive folio-volume in

response to a growing fascination for Palladio, but his study of the Roman engineers

treatise, he ironically observes, weighs no less heavily on his brain now than the onerous

tome on his back: Da Palladio alles auf Vitruv bezieht, so habe ich mir auch die

Ausgabe des Galiani angeschafft; allein dieser Foliante lastet in meinem Gepck, wie das

Studium desselben auf meinem Gehirn (Because Palladio relates everything to

Vitruvius, I have also acquired the edition by Galiani; only this folio-volume weighs

down my luggage, just as its study weighs heavily on my brain)(FA 15.1:114). Palladios

neoclassicism, by contrast, or more specifically, the characteristically Palladian way of

building and writing about buildingthat was increasingly the focus of Goethes

architectural experience, appears to have succeeded in the translation of Vitruvian

principles where the hefty Italian translation did not: Palladio hat mir durch seine Worte

und Werke, durch seine Art und Weise des Denkens und Schaffens, den Vitruv schon

nhergebracht und verdolmetscht, besser als die italienische bersetzung tun kann

[Through his words and his works, through the manner of his thinking and making,

Palladio has brought me closer to Vitruvius and interpreted him better than the Italian

translation can do](FA 15.1:104-105). And this, no less, I would add, than the French

translation of Vitruviuss account of the classical orders in Laugiers Essai sur

larchitecture (1753).

But what, precisely, is the nature and extent of the affiliation in Goethes


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architectural reflection between the ruins of ancient monuments in Italy and Palladios

buildings, on the one hand, and Erwins Babelgedanken in Strasbourg, on the other?

That is to say, what relation obtains in Goethes evolving architectural experience

between gothic and classical buildings, and what, if any, significance does this

relationship have for his most extensive theoretical statements from the post-Italian years

about architecture as a formative art: theBaukunstessay of 1795 and the 1827 vision of

Orpheus as the first architect in theMaximen und Reflexionen? Keeping Goethes

intriguing characterization of Palladios works in Venice as divinely inspired

Ungeheuer (monster)(FA 15.1:656) in mind, I will begin framing these questions by

returning my discussion to that first monster of a building (FA 18:114) in Strasbourg,

which inaugurated Goethes pilgrimage in pursuit of his haunted architectural idea.

We have already observed the architectural tourist of the 1772 essay walking on

the ruins of Erwins grave in search of its marker, which in Goethes reconstruction of the

cathedral as a monument, is linked to a founders intention. Subsequently, in the essays

third section, the architects ghost actually rises from this site of commemoration and

temporal displacement and appears in a forest grove15 to address the tourist after he has

composed and recomposed his vision of the riveting mass of a building von allen Seiten,

aus allen Entfernungen in jedem Lichte des Tags (from all sides, from all distances in

every light of the day) (FA18:114). But between his initial invocation of Erwins lost

grave in section one and the redemptive words of the spectral Werkmeisterin section

threewhich hold out the promise of his buildings completion by the initiates of future

generationsthe reader must pass through section two and its biting satire of the Abb

Laugier, whom another ghostder seinem Grab entsteigende Genius der Alten (the


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genius of the ancients rising from the grave) (FA 18:111)had also curiously captivated,

or gefesselt (FA 18:111). Unfortunately, however, as the acknowledged arbiter of

modern architectural taste, the ex-Jesuit, Goethe complains, completely distorted the

artistic secrets of the ancients and their massive buildings, or Riesengebude, for

which the Frenchmans crude measures have proven entirely inadequate:

Httest du mehr gefhlt als gemessen, wre der Geist derMassen ber dich gekommen, die du anstauntest, du httestnicht so nur nachgeahmt, weil sies taten und es schn ist;notwendig und wahr httest du deine Plane geschaffen, undlebendige Schnheit wre bildend aus ihnen gequollen.[Had you felt more rather than measured, had the spirit of

the masses at which you gazed in awe seized you, youwould not merely have imitated, because they did andbecause it is beautiful; you would have created your plansto be necessary and true, and living beauty would havesprung from them with the power to shape and to edify.](FA 18:111)

The fluid spirit and vital beauty of ancient building practices did not, then, just captivate

Laugier. As is evident in the extravagant pleasure palaces that he patched together out of

the sacred ruins of the ancients, his doctrines actually put architectural thought and action

into chains: . . . Schule und Principium fesselt alle Kraft der Erkenntnis und Ttigkeit

(Doctrine and principle fetter all power of understanding and action)(FA 18:112).16 The

mechanical and arbitrary imitation of the most important constitutive element of the

Greek temple, its column, cannot, in other words, guarantee the vitality and viability of

ancient architecture for modern sensibilities, as Laugier had argued. The real challenge

for architecturewhich Goethes essay reformulates as the challenge of a ghost rising

from its graveis not just a matter of Zoll und Linien (inches and their fractional

parts) (FA 18:111). Instead, all aspiring builders must engage and develop an intuitive,

aesthetically grounded, sense for the kind of emergent beauty that the genius Erwin,


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unlike Laugier, translated into the architectural plans of the self-organizing mass now in

front of Goethes architectural enthusiast. In the context of two spectral conversations,

thenthe first one between Erwin and the ancients and the second between the essays

peripatetic theorist and Erwinthe complex form of the massive gothic building can be

seen as the persistent re-emergence and material embodiment of the esoteric doctrine of

all building as such.

It is my contention that Goethe never really fully joins the debate about the primal

hut that he provocatively invokes by disclosing Laugiers complicity with Rousseau and

the circle of Frenchphilosophes.

17

More importantly, his rhetorical maneuver allows him

to redirect the misguided search of the rationalist critics in France for a single origin of

architecture from actual buildings and their competing prototypes to a series of

phenomenologically framed questions about what (a) building really is.18 Thus, when

near the middle of his meditation Goethes sightseer first takes note of the commanding

prospect of the surrounding province from the cathedrals unfinished towers (FA

18:115), his homage to Erwin begins setting the stage for inquiring how built

environments like the one in Strasbourg come to life and persevere. Taking a cue from

his veiled reference to the cathedral as sovereign vantage point, the reader of his

rhapsodic translation of the architects vision in stone might ask, in a similar vein,

whether Goethes Blatt verhllter Innigkeit (leaf of disguised interiority)(FA 18:182)

actually brings into focus any visible marks on the puzzlingDenkmalthat make its

otherwise hidden process of self-realizationor Geist der Massen (spirit of the masses)

(FA 18:111)legible. What esoteric system of rules, we might ask, has organized this

massive and unruly construction project, which has emerged from its excavation pit to


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tower on the horizon and establish itself as the governing spirit of a natural and a built

environment? And why does the turbid illumination of the cathedrals ornamented

western faade, which is bathed in the revealing shimmer of twilight, provide the most

reliable staging of this zone of emergence and itsgenius loci19?

Interestingly, Goethe does not secretly lodge the foundational moment of all

building within the cathedrals interior, however, which remains inaccessible to his

system of architectural accounting. Instead, his tourist learns to read the buildings

massive stonewallas inscribed by Erwinin terms of its own dynamic capacity of

material formation. As theDivan poem Wiederfinden (1819) will suggest along similar

lines, in fact, while origins cannot be inhabited, they can be perceived. Thus, after the

primal act of creation, which first sundered the light from the darkness, God created the

Dawn in order to generate the rainbowein erklingend Farbenspiel (a resounding play

of colors) (FA 3:197). Accordingly, if Erwins plan were actually completed one day, we

would have to turn our eyes from the blinding illumination of its perfection, just as Faust

in Part II turns from the blinding light of the rising sun at dawn to the self-organizing

Wechsel-Dauer (changing permanence)(4722) of the rainbow, which rises in a liquid

column to display the rhythms of lifedes Lebens Pulse (pulses of life) (4679)in the

resonant harmonies of its colors. If only Laugier had translated the spirit of the animated

mass (Geist der Massen) from ancient buildings into his own architectural plans, they

would have produced the same kind of flowing beauty that we are urged to see in Erwins

liquid cathedral: lebendige Schnheit wre bildend aus ihnen gequollen (living beauty

would have sprung from with the power to shape and edify) (FA 18:117).

When Goethe describes the first task of the construction workers at the base of the


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cathedrals fluid column as the hollowing out (graben) and not the laying of a solid

foundation, he offers a clue as to how he will continue to interrogate building and

dwelling, even after his architectural horizon expands in Italy: Wenigen ward es

gegeben, einen Babelgedanken in der Seele zu zeugen, ganz, gro, und bis in den

kleinsten Teil notwendig schn, wie Bume Gottes (Few have been offered the gift to

beget a Babel-like thought in their minds, whole, enormous, and of a compelling beauty

into its most minute part, like Gods trees) (FA 18:110), the musings begin. Those select

architectural spectators who feel challenged by the massive walls and soaring towers of

Erwins masterpiece, which cosmically extend human reach from earth to heaven, are

urged to respect the incomprehensible thought that first engendered the building. But

even fewer of the select, we are reminded, have been chosen to partake of the esoteric

process of material organization20 in and through which the massive, cosmic design of the

cathedral becomes real: wenigern [ward es gegeben], auf tausend bietende Hnde zu

treffen,Felsengrund zu graben, steile Hhen drauf zu zaubern und dann sterbend ihren

Shnen zu sagen: ich bleibe bei euch in den Werken meines Geistes, vollendet das

Begonnene in die Wolken (even fewer to come upon thousands of hands that offer to dig

their way through to the rocky ground beneath cliffs, to conjure the steep heights on top

and declare to their sons with dying breath: I will remain with you in the works of my

mind, complete what is begun through to the clouds) (emphasis added, FA 18:110). The

first insight encrypted within the excavation pit of the cathedrals foundation, then, is that

the dwelling places we make for ourselves rise upon graves. The buildings we inhabit

mark a transitional zone of both separation and re-union between the living and the dead.

Accordingly, the foundations of our households, like the ground under Erwins


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building, actually conceal hollows, or crypts, inhabited by ghosts. And their spiritual

haunting in turn stages the compelling rhythm of all life: emergence and disappearance,

consolidation and dispersion. As Goethe asserts inZur Farbenlehre (1810),

[t]reue Beobachter der Natur . . . werden doch darinmiteinander bereinkommen, da alles, was erscheinen,was uns als ein Phnomen begegnen solle, msse entwedereine ursprngliche Entzweiung, die einer Vereinigung fhigist, oder eine ursprngliche Einheit, die zur Entzweiunggelangen knne, andeuten . . . und sich auf eine solcheWeise darstellen . . . . [observers faithful to nature willcertainly agree that whatever ought to appear or beencountered as phenomenon, must point toand in thismanner representeither a basic division that is capable of

union or a basic union that can achieve division.] (FA 23.1:239)

In this context, the spectral mechanism addressed as Erwins ghost in Von deutscher

Baukunst can be understood as a metaphysically significant medium of the Goethean

imagination that facilitates the mediation of the phenomenal world.21 With the spirit that

haunts the gothic building and regulates its emergence, Goethe has exhibited

(darstellen) an original split (ursprngliche Entzweiung) within architecture between

the perpetual effort of its material form to complete itself according to a grand design, on

the one hand, and the virtual perfection of that effort as staged in the culminating totality

of its ornamented exterior, on the other. Das Geeinte zu entzweien, das Entzweite zu

einigen, ist das Leben der Natur (to divide the united, to unite the divided),the maxim

fromZur Farbenlehre continues. [D]ies ist die ewige Systole und Diastole, die ewige

Synkrisis und Diakrisis, das Ein- und Ausatmen der Welt, in der wir leben, weben und

sind (This is the eternal systole and diastole, the eternal syncrisis and diacrisis, the

breathing-in and breathing-out of the world in which we live, make our weaving way, and

exist) (FA 23.1: 239). As configured and re-configured in Goethes architectural


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discourse, I want to suggest, the web of ornamentation that he first saw displayed on the

screen of the cathedrals western faade in Strasbourg brought into view the animating

rhythm of the gothic building and its surrounding world (das Ein- und Ausatmen der

Welt, in der wir leben, weben und sind). And with this, Von deutscher Baukunst has

instructed all the architectural spectators of the future (including Goethe) to look at

buildings and built environments with an eye for detecting the rhythmic foundation in

and through the intricate weave of their animated designs. Wie frisch leuchtet er im

Morgenduftglanz mir entgegen (How freshly its radiance met me in the misty glow of

the morning), Goethe proclaims of the towers Hauptschmuck (jeweled crown), which

he found illuminated by the filtered light of the dawn. [W]ie froh konnt ich ihm meine

Arme entgegen strecken, schauen die groen harmonischen Massen, zu unzhlig kleinen

Teilen belebt (How happily could I stretch my arms toward it, behold the enormous,

harmonious masses, which were animated in innumerable minute parts) (FA 18:115).

According to Susanne LangersFeeling and Form (1953), a pure design (60),

or good decoration, has the immediate effect . . . to make the surface, somehow, more

visible (61). Designs instruct at this foundational level, Langer explains, because the

grammar of artistic vision develops plastic forms for the expression of basic vital

rhythms (62). As I understand it, then, Erwins charakteristische Kunst (characteristic

art) (FA 18:117) in Goethes reconstruction exemplifies Langers plastic form. The

gothic cathedral finally triumphs over Laugiers mechanical imitation of architectural

order, Goethe suggests, because its aesthetic is bildend (formative/edifying) (FA

18:116).In anticipation of Langers decorative design, that is, and as made visible on the

surface of the buildings western faade, its ornamented exterior displaysin Langers


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formulationwhat geometric form . . . does not havemotion and rest, rhythmic unity,

and wholeness (63). And as her meditation continues, we find an analysis that could

readily explain what Goethe locates within gothic architecture as foundational. A design

simulates growth, Langer observes, in accord with the rhythm that constitutes the

motion and changing direction of its lines.22 As a living form (65)a term borrowed

from Schilleran emergent design stages the permanence of its dynamic wholeness as a

pattern of changes (66). In other words, and as Goethe distilled from his first

architectural experience in Strasbourg, die Kunst ist lange bildend, eh sie schn ist (art

is formative long before it is beautiful) (FA 18:116). The growth of designs, when

perceived rhythmically, according to Langer, can be felt as the semblance of life, or

activity maintaining its form (67).23

After dismissing Laugiers narrative about the primal hut in section two of his

essay, including its distorted account of the primacy of the column, Goethe reveals a

second secret about Erwins cathedral. This time, however, the lesson is not encrypted in

the excavation pit under its rocky foundation, but rather in the intricate design of its

massive western wall. Vermannigfaltige die ungeheure Mauer, die du gen Himmel

fhren sollst (make multifarious the monstrous wall, point it toward heaven), he is

instructed, da sie aufsteige gleich einem hocherhabnen, weitverbreiteten Baume

Gottes (so that it rises like a sublime, wide spreading tree of God)(FA 18:113).

According to Goethes reconstruction of the exemplary building, the translation of the

upward thrust of a tree into the free-standing columns of Laugiers Vitruvian hut has been

adaptively appropriated in order to stage the endless horizontal expansion of the gothic

wall. With its pattern of endless variation, moreover, the ornamented surface of the


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faade has produced Erwins architectural masterpiece as an expression of divine

perfection, or Herrlichkeit (glory) (FA 18:113). And from this moment on, I contend,

ornament, or designin Greek, begins to replace the rock-solid foundations of

the architectural tradition as the grounding principle of all building in Goethes thinking.

Thus, as we hear in section three, his spectator has learned to see the fluid masses of the

cathedrals tracery through the filtered light of dusk, which in turn has enabled him to

elevate the unruly designs and their complex arrangement on the face of the wall zum

stimmenden Verhltnis (into harmonious proportion) (FA 18:114), another concept from

the classical lexicon. Or, after Erwins ghost invokes the missing Hauptschmuck

(jeweled crown)with its five small turrets that was meant to top-off the cathedrals lone

tower, we find him returning to the building at dawn to look freshly and with greater

understanding (schauen) at its harmoniously articulated segments. Thus, as seen

through the cathedrals ornamented wall, which incorporates the openings of its

fenestration into its fluid design, the groen harmonischen Massen (large harmonious

masses)of the overall pattern of the building, we learn, zu unzhlig kleinen Teilen

belebt (animated in innumerable minute parts) (FA 18:115), reveal the rhythmic patterns

of life:

wie in Werken der ewigen Natur, bis aufs geringsteZserchen, alles Gestalt und alles zweckend zum Ganzen;wie das festgegrndete ungeheure Gebude sich leicht indie Luft hebt; wie durchbrochen alles und doch fr dieEwigkeit. [as in Natures eternal works, down to thesmallest fiber, everything formed and everythingpurposeful for the whole; how the firmly groundedmonstrous building rises effortlessly into the air; howreticulated everything and yet for eternity.] (FA 18:115)

Like all living things in the system of nature, where purposivenessin Kants and


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Spinozas senseis synonymous, respectively, with self-organization and self-

maintenance, the massive building ultimately rises in Goethes architectural imagination

under its own power leicht in die Luft (effortlessly into the air), thereby also recalling

the graceful and free-standing column of ancient buildings. And it does this, Goethe

implies, in accord with a porous, reticulated design, or founding intention, which

organizes and maintains itself through a system of intervals. But like all intervals, those

of architectural organization separate as well as connect. Hence, as reconstructed in the

vision, the Strasbourg cathedral emerges in its rhythmically determined wholeness by

making spaces, or separation, when it connects and by gathering masses, when it divides.

As a figure of the imagination, Erwins building thus came to stand as the primal

narrative of the architectural interval through which Goethe continued to see (classical)

columns and (medieval) walls in a fundamental relationship of reciprocity. Ultimately, he

would stage this complex as the Urphnomen of the extended worlds we build and

inhabit. And he would do this, even in and after Italy, with an intuitive sense for the

insistent rhythm of the complex interval of column and wall that had regulated the

material organization of pure mass into the architectural miracle of Strasbourg, as well as

the wonders of Verona, Venice, Vicenza, Rome, and Paestum. 24

As Goethes architectural experience in Strasbourg continued unfolding, then

from the rhapsodic essay of 1772, through the account, some four years later, of a third

visit to the cathedral with Lenz in 1775, to the autobiographical recollections ofDichtung

und Wahrheitin 1811-1225 his reflections on architecture as a formative art continued

to supplant the fanciful tales, or protoplastischen Mrchen (protoplastic fairytales) (FA

18:112), about the mythical beginnings of architecture that he had sarcastically attacked


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in his first exposition. But ultimately, the challenge of the unruly cathedral was always

about origins for Goethe and so always remained a metaphysical issue for him. That is to

say, with Von deutscher Baukunst he initiated a lifelong meditation on architecture that

was itselfauthentically protoplastisch. Well beyond Strasbourg, he insistently sought to

imagine all buildings in terms of a formative impulse that shaped their patterned

emergence from the moment of digging a foundation right through to the culmination of

their growth in a crowning display of ornamentation, both on columnar and walled

buildings.

Within this framework and following his return from Italy, Goethe would

eventually articulate apoetic perspective on the architectural experience, which the

haunted visions of Von deutscher Baukunst had already begun to lay out with their

celebration of design as the dynamic source of all building and their staging of Erwins

construction project, in terms of language and translation, as the Tower of Babel. As he

extended his search for the unspecified governing idea of architectural formation, then,

which I have equated with its rhythmic determinationthat is to say as Goethes

architectural experience moved beyond Strasbourghe typically found himself, like the

poet of Zueignung, engaged by the challenge of a new, more essential, reality, which

was produced in the workshop of the imagination. But even before Goethe considered the

roles of imitation, translation, and fiction in architectural organization in the essay

Baukunst (1795), the truth of that reality, which is also the truth and reality of the

poetic fiction, was the topic of two aesthetic essays collected in 1775 under the title

Anhang aus Goethes Brieftasche.

The last of these meditations, Dritte Wallfahrt nach Erwins Grabe im Juli 1775,


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finds the architectural enthusiast from 1772 compelled to return to Erwins haunted

house, but now as a devoted pilgrim rather than just an accidental tourist. The architects

ghost, which earlier had already risen from the ruins of an unmarked grave, has not left

the site, we soon learn, but returned to life in the sacred buildingstill a Denkmal des

ewigen Lebens in dir (a monument of the eternal life within you) (FA 18:180), the

pilgrim proclaims. Only at this point, his persistent efforts to transcribe his feelings about

the arcane truth of Erwins massive vision in stone have facilitated the ghosts survival:

Wieder an deinem Grabe . . . , heiliger Erwin! fhle ich,Gott sei Dank, da ich bin wie ich war, noch immer so

krftig, gerhrt von dem Groen, und, o Wonne, nocheinziger, ausschlieender gerhrt von dem Wahren alsehemals, da ich oft aus kindlicher Ergebenheit das zu ehrenmich bestrebte, wofr ich nichts fhlte und, mich selbstbetrgend, den kraft-und wahrheitsleeren Gegenstand mitliebevoller Ahndung bertnchte. [Once again at yourgraveside, holy Erwin! I feel, thank God, that I am as I was,to this day as powerful, as moved by what is great andjoyouslymore singly, more exclusively moved thanbefore by what is true, since I often strove to honor withchildlike devotion, what I did not feel and, in self-deception, I whitewashed the object, emptied of power andtruth, with loving intuition.] (FA 18:180-81)

The speakers renewed reverence for the foundational reality of the architectural vision,

which both in 1772 and 1775 he configured as the urge to writeich will schreiben (I

want to write) (FA 18:181)has been explicated here in terms of a formative power that

as child-enthusiast, he had not yet fully grasped and, therefore, neither developed nor

preserved.

What appears significant about Erwins house, howevercharacterized in terms

reminiscent of Spinozas natura naturans as [e]ins und lebendig, gezeugt und entfaltet

(unified and alive, begotten and developed) (FA 18:181)is not, as Goethe had put forth


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with his earlier jabs at Laugier, the placement of the cathedrals elemental walls at the

origin of all architecture. Instead, he suggests, the cathedral engages a specifically poetic

capability in the perception of both natural and made objects that promises him insight

into their shared principles of organization. Furthermore, with each of his steps during the

third and final station of his ascent up the structure, Goethes pilgrim recognizes that his

emerging vision has sympathetically activated the same kind of formative power, or

Schpfungskraft, that the architectural genius, like any creative mind, experiences in

the process of making. Significantly, Goethe legitimizes this powerwith terms

borrowed from the classicist lexicon againas an invigorating intuition of male potency,

or aufschwellendes Gefhl der Verhltnisse, Mae und des Gehrigen (swelling sense

for proportion, measure, and the proper) (FA 18:183),26 that is the condition of possibility

of all generation. For it is only through the appropriate measure of its constituent parts

and their inter-relationshipsor what I would identify as the haunting rhythms of all

built structuresthat ein selbstndig Werk, wie andere Geschpfe durch ihre

individuelle Keimkraft hervorgetrieben werden (autonomous works, like other creatures,

can be driven forth by their distinct power of self-generation) (FA 18:183). In this sense,

the poetically inspired architect Erwin had first translated his intuitive sense of how

living forms are rhythmically constituted and perfected into the plans for his building,

which even as a ruined fragment continues to emerge in front of all schpfungsvolle

Knstler, gefhlvolle Kenner (creative artists, feeling connoisseurs)(FA 18:183) who

encounter it. And with each of its successive appearances, the architects haunted house

would body forth in successive poetic reconstructions that together model its unique

formative principle (Keimkraft) as the sensible abstraction of architectural experience.


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That is to say, as configured and reconfigured in the productive imagination, Goethes

totalizing vision of the Strasbourg cathedral contains the unrealized, but still real (i.e.,

material) possibility of all built or un-built structures that can be read as buildings. But

how do we achieve such recognition?27

In the brief introduction to the two essays published as the Anhang (appendix),

Goethe had already suggested that the most pressing challenge for art is to engage an

inner sense, which the reigning critics (of drama), he explains, have ignored with

impunity. In the name of Aristotelian imitation (mimesis), these false arbiters of taste

erroneously reduce their standard of aesthetic perfection to such misconceptions about

form as the three unities und wie das Zeug alle hie (and whatever all such stuff was

called) (FA 18:174). But like the artists of genius whom he privileges, the more attuned

connoisseurs of the day have alternatively developed an inner sense as a perceptual

organ, or Gefhl (feeling)(FA 18:174), with the capacity to see through the stuff of the

worlds they inhabit to the vast potential within each dwelling place for form. That is to

say, with every meaningful encounter in the worldwhether as artists, critics, or

scientistswe become increasingly capable of experiencing objects poetically, in terms

of a rhythmically sustained principle of self-generation die alle Formen in sich begreift

(that comprehends all forms in itself) (FA 18:174).

Goethe continues his consideration of this primary form with an initial reference

to the visual perception of the heiligen Strahlen der verbreiteten Natur (sacred rays of

nature extended) (FA 18:174-75), which then re-appear in theFalkonetessay as the

acoustic perception of the heiligen Schwingungen und leise Tne (sacred vibrations

and soft tones) (FA 18:176) in the exemplary paintings of a Rembrandt, a Raphael, or a


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Rubens. These sacred vibrations, he suggests in a veiled reference to Spinozas God

which permeate the infinitely extended natural world through the living totality of its

unending modifications, or tonescan also be detected in works of art. More

specifically, the inner, or regulating, form of such works, which collect all the possible

moments of their formation, serves as a lens of pure illumination. While the Feuerblick

(blazing gaze)that focuses such diverse sense-experiences in the feeling heart cannot be

entirely disassociated from artifice, howeverJede Form, auch die gefhlteste, hat

etwas Unwahres an sich (Every form, even the most felt one, has something untruthful

about it) (FA 18:174)Goethe appreciates that the technology of form can purify the

gaze and, thereby, produce a more complete understanding of how things work from the

inside than any accounting of their measurable, external features.28 When all has been

said and done, poetic fictions engage a magic capacity to present the organizing

principles within processes of emergence to our sense-organs, because our bodies are

perfectly attuned to the rhythmic vibrations that animate the natural world. [D]as Gefhl

ist bereinstimmung und vice versa (Feeling is accord and vice versa) (FA 18:176), we

are reminded in theFalkonetessay. The creative artist, moreover, whose internal

attunement to these vibrations is acute, can gain access to origins where others cannot:

Er dringt bis in die Ursachen hinein . . . . Die Welt liegt vorihm, mcht ich sagen, wie vor ihrem Schpfer, der in demAugenblick, da er sich des Geschaffnen freut, auch alle dieHarmonien geniet, durch die er sie hervorbrachte und indenen sie besteht. Drum glaubt nicht so schnell zuverstehen, was das heie: Das Gefhl ist die Harmonie undvice versa. [He penetrates to the causes . . . . The world liesbefore him, I would say, as before the Creator, who bytaking pleasure in Creation also takes pleasure in all theharmonies through which He put forth the world and inwhich it persists. So, do not so readily believe youunderstand what is meant by feeling is accord and vice


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versa.](FA 18:177)

With the artists special capacity for form in mind, I will conclude this discussion

of Goethes Strasbourg aesthetic by briefly considering it with reference to his post-Italian repudiation of the gothic style in building, which according to most critical

accounts was required by his newly embraced classicist views. 29 By contrast, and as I

hope to have suggested through my association of architectural haunting with buildings

on both sides of the Alps, the aesthetic principles developed through the vision of the

massive cathedral in Strasbourg were sufficiently capacious to survive their translation,

not only onto classical construction sites, but as in the post-classical Orpheus-meditation,

also onto the primeval site of architectural emergence. Not surprisingly, in this regard, the

most prominent formative elements of gothic and classical buildingthe wall and the

columnare not antithetical in Goethes architectural thinking in the static sense of

mutual exclusion, which would implyas in the debate about the primal hutthe

priority of one kind of building over another. Instead, the organizing rhythm of each of

these elemental forms stands in opposition to the other one, but in proper Goethean terms,

as the reciprocating poles through which architecture strives for completion. As Astrida

Tantillo has succinctly summarized, largely with examples fromZur Farbenlehre,

according to Goethes way of thinking, [p]olar interactions . . . illustrate a nature that is

alive due to its dynamic desire to form a whole. (56)

Gothic architecture, which Von deutscher Baukunst celebrates as [e]in lebendiges

Ganze (a living whole), is likewise a malleable form of the first order with its own

internal split and dynamic purposiveness. As read in the infinitely variegated design on

the animated faade of the cathedral, it is alles Gestalt und alles zweckend zum Ganzen


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(all form and all purposeful for the whole) (FA 18:116). Wie in Werken der ewigen

Natur, moreover, Erwins masterpiece exemplifies the same organization of large,

harmonious masses (FA 18:116) that all building accomplishes. Indeed, as the magic

appearance of a Greek temple within the gothic courtyard (Rittersaal) near the end of the

first act ofFaust IIdramatically suggests, architectural emergence as articulated in the

inherently purposeful masses of building materials is not limited in the Goethean

imagination to gothic buildings. Thus, in preparing the spook-show of Helen and Paris

and with a complimentary acknowledgement of the astrologers intuitive understanding

of cosmic rhythms Du kennst den Takt, in dem die Sterne gehn (You know the

rhythm of the stars) (6401)Mephistopheles listens with feigned fascination as the

necromancer describes a paradigmatic transformation of theFaust-stage30which had

already become the scene of an allegorical masqueinto a classical construction site. As

the erstwhile professor prepares to embark on his own morphological journey to the

primal place of all formation, the astrologer beckons the audience to observe the

medieval set as its break apart and turns inside-out: Die Mauer spaltet sich, sie kehrt sich

um . . . (The wall divides in two, turns inside-out) (6395). And with the gothic walls

now concealed within, [e]in tief Theater (a cavernous theater) (6396) of serialized

columns appears to rise in their place to illuminate the stage and reveal an ancient temple:

Durch Wunderkraft erscheint allhier zur Schau,

Massiv genug, ein alter Tempelbau.

Dem Atlas gleich, der einst den Himmel trug,

Stehn reihenweis der Sulen hier genug;

Sie mgen wohl der Felsenlast gengen,

Da zweie schon ein gro Gebude trgen.

[Through magic force appears all-round, behold,


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An ancient temple mass built plenty bold.

Like Atlas, once, whose shoulders bore the skies,

Here rows enough of standing columns rise,

Enough to hold the rocky precipice,

Just two could bear a giant edifice.](6402-07)

I can think of no more incisive (or ironic) expression of the co-existence of gothic and

classical elements within Goethes morphological vision of the building as process than

this magic-display on the haunted stage of architectural self-organization and self-

maintenance. Everything I have identified in my discussion of the revisionist

consideration of architectures origin at the construction site in Strasbourg is here: the

magic of the poetic fiction, including a cautionary gesture toward its ironic qualification;

the association of building with a formative power, or founding intention, that regulates

its emergence as a visual perception; the connection of that power with a ghost-story; the

rhythmic determination of architectural organization and its implied connection with the

measured tones of music and the intervals of dance (bodies in motion); its further

connection with cosmic design; the placing of architecture in a border-zone between

heaven and earth to suggest walls that have become columns; the horizontal extension of

a columnar series to suggest columns that have become walls; the translation of the

column and wall complex onto Atlas to suggest a basic sympathy between the sensate

human body and all made things; the self-sufficiency of a building as indicated by the

three-fold use of the lexeme genug; the implication that something about the display of

the temple is excessive, thereby dissociating the architectural act from function; and

finally, the characterization of the temple with reference to the material mass out of

which it emerged. When all has been said and done, Goethes morphologically


24/25

determined architectural idea understands both gothic and classicist construction as the

staging of the esoteric process of material organization in and through which pure mass,

in accord with the rhythms of cosmic design, becomes real.


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1 All translations from the German are my own.2The secondary literature on Goethe and architecture is extensive. In addition to the titles I cite, the Goethe chapters in Purdys On the Ruins of Babeldeserve special mention, 162- 231. This groundbreaking study shares a phenomenological approach with my work on Goethes architectural idea andaddresses a number of issues I also address, including the presence of ghosts and spirits in Goethes accounts of buildings, as well as the problematiccontinuities between the architectural experiences in Strasbourg and Italy, 162-92. While Purdy analyzes this process of assimilation with reference toLaugier, 187-90, I attribute more significance to the gothic building in Strasbourg, which was flexible enough to insist itself into his vision of classical andneoclassical buildings as well.3See Purdy, 14-28, for an account of Perraults reassessment of the orders.4See Hilgerss discussion of Goethes essay for its connection to Aristotles hylomorphism. Goethes figuration of the Strasbourg cathedral as a divine treeverweist . . . auf den entelechischen Charakter des Bauwerkes . . . (suggests that the building is entelechial in nature) 99-100.5Ethics, E3P6.6See Beutler, 23, and Fechner, 42-3, for more on the title-page of the first edition of the essay.7The impulse that organizes the site of Erwins cathedral as a site of commemoration is clear from the essays first sentences: Als ich auf deinem Grabeherumwandelte, edlerErwin, . . . da ward ich tief in die Seele betrbt, und mein Herz . . . gelobte dir ein Denkmal (As I wandered on your grave, nobleErwin, I was saddened to the depths of my being, and my heart swore to erect a monument to you). Unless otherwise noted, all Goethe-citations will bemade according to volume and page numbers of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Werke, eds. Hendrik Birus, Dieter Borchmeyer et. al. 40 vols. (Frankfurtam Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1987-2000), abbreviated FA. Faustwill be cited according to this edition by line number. FA18:110.8Toward the end of the essay the decorative instinct of aboriginal peoples is linked to the plastic potential within material things to be modeled, FA18:116-17.9Jane and Marshall Brown, 74-77, have discussed Goethes transformative re-inscription of the literary gothic inFaustwith reference to the power of the

poets experience of Schauer (fright) in this passage and its evolving role through Part II in redirecting attention away from individual consciousnesstoward a restless energy beyond conceptual grasp 77. The Schauderfest (festival of fright)of the Klassische Walpurgisnacht inFaust II, 7705, wherea bottled-up quantum of restless energy namedHomunculus similarly strives to get a body, also comes to mind. See Jane and Marshall Brown, 73.Purdys discussion of Goethes almost hallucinatory intimacy with a specific architect in Von deutscher Baukunst, 188-9, offers an alternative readingof the relationship between (a founders) intention and its completion in Goethes architectural theorizing.10See Purdy, The Building inBildung, 63, for a discussion of Goethes conversation with Palladios ghost.11In a letter to Knebel written from Rome on November 17, 1786, Goethe extends the reach of architectural hauntingwith prominent reference toVitruvius and Palladio againto the assembly of ancient monuments that constitute the built environment of the entire city of Rome and nourish his mindwith architectural figures: undso steigt der alte Phnix Rom wie ein Geist aus seinem Grabe, doch ists Anstrengung statt Genues und Trauer stattFreude (and so the ancient Phoenix Rome rises from its grave like a ghost, only with effort rather than delight and mourning rather than joy) FA II.3:162.12According to Bisky, Goethe avoids using the concept Bauart in the title of his 1772 essay, weil dieser die besondere Modifikation einer auf denRegeln des Geschmacks gegrndeten Schnheit benennt. Deutsche Baukunst fr ihn ruht auf eigenen Grundlagen . . . (because it would stipulate thespecific modification with reference to a notion of beauty that is grounded on the rules of taste. German architecture rests for him on its own foundation)41.13 See Purdy, 188-89, whose discussion of Goethes almost hallucinatory intimacy with a specific architect in Von deutscher Baukunst offers analternative reading of the relationship between (a founders) intention and its completion in Goethes architectural theorizing.14The challenge of translation is also implied in the 1772 essay by calling Erwins building a Babelgedanken FA, 18:110.15 See Purdy, 177, for a discussion of the specifically German and, therefore, Gothic character of the forest.16The statement continues by discounting Laugiers primitive hut, FA, 18:112.17See Rykwert, 48-49. Purdy, 186-9, offers a different account of Goethes relationship to Laugier, especially following his architectural experiences inItaly. My reading of this relationship, which also involves Goethes efforts to assimilate Vitruvian thinking, follows Dripps, 35-9, who interrogates thequestion of origin by reconsidering the debates about the primal hut.18With this argument, I differ substantially from Lillyman, who connects Goethes architectural journey through Italy with a positive re-assessment of

principles that the writer had earlier rejected in Laugier.19See Purdys discussion of thegenius loci, 172-3.20TheBaukunstessay (1795) develops the concept of architectural fiction to rethink thefunctionalaspect of building materials in terms of (Aristotelian)notions of inner form. See Schadewalt, who argues that Goethes aesthetic in this regard, which is one of immanence, differs fundamentally fromWinckelmanns, which focuses its attention on heroes and gods: Goethe bleibt auf der Erde . . . . Ihm ist das Kunstwerk . . . Physis, Natur, Entelechie,sinnliche Gegenwart des Ideelen (Goethe remains on the earth . . . . For him the work of art is Physis, nature, entelechy, the sensual presence of the ideal)61.21Breithaupt discusses this kind ofaesthetically conditioned mediation with reference toBaukunstessay, 66-68.22Langer, 63-66.23Langers interpretation of design as the semblance of the dynamic self-maintenance of organic forms within a context of patterned change recalls the

principle of compensation in Goethes morphology, as well as Spinozas conatus. For an illuminating discussion of Goethean compensation, including itssignificance for his aesthetics, see Tantillo, 104-51.24My reading of the opposition of column and wall in Von deutscher Baukunst with reference to Goethean polarity differs fundamentally from Purdysinterpretation, which claims that Goethe does not provide a revised history of architecture 168. It was precisely his emerging morphological approach to

building that first required Goethe, in my view, to abandon the debates of Enlightenment architectural theory about the primitive hut .25This account adds Boisseres resumption of work on the Cologne Cathedral to the mix.26See theBaukunstessay.27See Goethes letter to Herder on 17 May 1787, where the search for the primal plant provokes an identical question about botanical organization. With hismind still occupied by thoughts about the Doric ruins in Paestum and Homers poetic-natural sensibility, the traveler explains: Mit diesem Modell unddem Schlssel dazu, kann man alsdann noch Pflanzen ins Unendliche erfinden, die konsequent sein mssen, das heit: die, wenn sie auch nicht existieren,doch existieren knnten und nicht etwa malerische oder dichterische Schatten und Scheine sind, sondern eine innerliche Wahrheit und Notwendigkeithaben. Dasselbe Gesetz wird sich auf alles brige Lebendige anwenden lassen (With this model and the key to it, you can go on to invent an infinite seriesof plants that must be systematic. That is to say, even if they actually do not exist, they certainly could, and not as the shades of painters and poets, whichare apparitions, but with an inner truth and necessity. This selfsame law can be applied to all other living things) FA 15.1:346.28In this respect, Goethes idea of form here anticipates the Formen der reinen Anschauung (forms of pure intuition) in Kants transcendental philosophy:space and time.29 See the 1795Baukunstessay and the meditation of 1827 on Orpheus as the first architect from the Maximen und Reflexionen, which my current book-

project on Goethes metaphysics of immanence treats in a chapter devoted to his architectural thinking.30 This series of transformations anticipates the crucial change of sets in Act III, which magically moves the theatrical spectator from Menelaus palace toFausts medieval fortress to the rocky and enclosed landscape of an ancient grove.

goethe's haunted architectural idea

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