Quote of the Day (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, on Nature and Art)

“Nature, it seems, must always clash with Art,
And yet, before we know it, both are one;
I too have learned: Their enmity is none,
Since each compels me, and in equal part.”— German man of letters Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), “Nature and Art” (c. 1800; published 1807), translated from the German by Michael Hamburger, in Selected Works (Everyman’s Library, 2000)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—born 275 years ago today in Frankfurt, Germany—was to German literature what William Shakespeare was to England’s and Alexander Pushkin to Russia’s—a titanic figure who decisively influenced its language and literary standing around the world.

But, because of his attitude to nature and art, he was so much more. I think that Goethe might have been the last of the Enlightenment figures who were able to make their marks in multiple fields.

Had he confined his endeavors to literature, Goethe still would have been acclaimed for his versatility in multiple genres: the novel (The Sorrows of Young Werther, a bestseller in 1774), travelogues (Italian Journey), drama (Faust), and assorted poems eventually set to music.

Like Thomas Jefferson—born only six years before—Goethe trained in the law before dabbling in science (he formulated the concept of morphology, a kind of forerunner to Darwin’s theory of evolution) and practicing statecraft (as an aide to Duke Carl August, who later became Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach).

I mentioned that he was an Enlightenment figure, but in another sense, he harked back to the Renaissance who could excel at multiple areas of endeavor. Besides the above activities, Goethe was also a skilled painter and, well into middle age, an enthusiastic athlete.

(For more on Goethe as Renaissance man, see this August 2020 post from the Sarkologist blog.)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, using Goethe as a representative of “The Writer” type in his seven lectures on Representative Men (1850), saw him as someone who “in conversation, in calamity…finds new materials” 

Such was his capacity, that the magazines of the world’s ancient or modern wealth, which arts and intercourse and skepticism could command,—he wanted them all. Had there been twice so much, he could have used it as well. Geologist, mechanic, merchant, chemist, king, radical, painter, composer,—all worked for him, and a thousand men seemed to look through his eyes. He learned as readily as other men breathe. Of all the men of this time, not one has seemed so much at home in it as he. He was not afraid to live.

Quote of the Day (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, on Trusting Yourself)

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”— German playwright, poet, and novelist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Faust, Part One, translated by John R. Williams (1808)

Seeing that quote, outside of its theatrical context, one might regard it with the same optimism and innocence as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” (And, indeed, in his essay collection Representative Men, the American admired the German man of letters so much as to offer him as an example of “The Writer.”) What could be wrong with that?

Well, wait. In Goethe’s tragedy Faust, the line is said by Mephistopheles—yes, the Devil himself. He may be more gentlemanly and witty than what one might expect, but he remains wheedling, calmly appealing to Faust’s belief in his own reason and scholar’s overweening vanity.

Self-confidence lies at the heart of the modern self-help movement. Yet it is crucial to remember that, unchecked by any outside restraint, that quality can lead to self-delusion, a refusal to recognize reality, and a willingness to use others for one’s own ends.

Quote of the Day (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, on Work and the Human Race)

"The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it." — German man of letters Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died at age 82 in Weimar, in what was then known as the German Confederation, on this date in 1832, of apparent heart failure. His range of interests and talents was astonishing—not only was he a poet, playwright (Faust), novelist (The Sorrows of Young Werther),critic and memoirist, but also a civil servant and even botanist.  His influence on modern culture—especially Germany’s—was enormous.

Quote of the Day (Goethe, on What ‘A Man Sees in the World’)

“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: First Part (1808)

(Thanks to my friend Mary Ann for bringing this quote to my attention.)

Quote of the Day (Goethe, on Women and Manners)

"Where there are no women, there are no good manners."--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities (1809)

Quote of the Day (J.W.V. Goethe, on What To Do Every Day)

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if it were possible, speak a few reasonable words."—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795-96)

Quote of the Day (Giorgio Vasari, on Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel)

“When the work was uncovered everyone rushed to see it from every part and remained dumbfounded. The Pope, being thus encouraged to greater designs, richly rewarded Michelangelo, who sometimes said in speaking of the great favours showered upon him by the Pope that he fully recognised his powers, and if he sometimes used hard words, he healed them by signal gifts and favours. Thus, when Michelangelo once asked leave to go and spend the feast of St. John in Florence, and requested money for this, the Pope said, ‘When will this chapel be ready?’ ‘When I can get it done, Holy Father.’ The Pope struck him with his mace, repeating, ‘When I can, when I can, I will make you finish it!’ Michelangelo, however, returned to his house to prepare for his journey to Florence, when the Pope sent Cursio, his chamberlain, with five hundred crowns to appease him and excuse the Pope, who feared what Michelangelo might do. As Michelangelo knew the Pope, and was really devoted to him, he laughed, especially as such things always turned to this advantage, and the Pope did everything to retain his good-will.”—Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists (1550)

Say what you want about Pope Julius II (and in a prior post, I said quite a lot about this “warrior pope,” little if any of it complimentary). But one look at this image also says this: you have to give him credit for knowing genius when he saw it.

On All Saints Day in 1512, Michelangelo Buonarroti staggered the world of the Renaissance when his work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was exhibited to the public for the first time.

When the artist completed it, his immediate sensation might have been sheer physical relief. As Vasari, the fine artist who gave us even finer biographical sketches of the great paints and sculptors of the time, put it: “Michelangelo had to stand with his head thrown back, and he so injured his eyesight that for several months he could only read and look at designs in that posture.” (For someone like myself with a severe fear of heights, it’s equally daunting that he did all of this work atop a 60-ft. scaffold.)

The artist’s second feeling might have been sweet vindication in the game of artistic and Vatican politics. In his section on this great work of art, Vasari notes that the commission resulted from a booby trap laid by an enemy, the architect Donato Bramante. At least some modern scholars have disputed Vasari’s contentions (evidently held by Michelangelo himself) that a) Bramante was a kinsman of Raphael, and b) that the two, in an effort to undermine a rival for patronage, convinced Julius to hire the sculptor in an area where he felt less sure of himself: painting. (Michelangelo really wanted to do the tomb of the pontiff.) Nevertheless, Michelangelo felt angry enough about these two that he was still complaining three decades later that they caused the only troubles he ever had with the pope.

Reams of art criticism have been created about the Sistine Chapel over the past 500 years, but I think Michelangelo might have best enjoyed reading about himself in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s travelogue Italian Journey (1816), in which the titan of German letters admits that he had grown “so enthusiastic about Michelangelo that I have lost all my taste for Nature, since I cannot see her with the same eye of genius as he did.”

Here’s the part that would have brought a smile to the competitive artist’s lips: “From the chapel we went to the loggias of Raphael, and, though I hardly dare admit it, I could not look at them any longer. After being dilated and spoiled by Michelangelo’s great forms, my eye took no pleasure in the ingenious frivolities of Raphael’s arabesques, and his Biblical stories, beautiful as they are, do not stand up against Michelangelo’s.”

One of my memories as a kid was watching the 1965 film adaptation of Irving Stone’s biographical novel of the creation of the Sistine Chapel, The Agony and the Ecstasy, with Charlton Heston as Michelangelo and Rex Harrison as Julius. What sticks in my mind (indelibly, because it was repeated ad nauseum) was the pontiff’s importunate question— “When will you make an end?”—and the artist’s equally disgusted response—“When I am finished!”

Through five centuries, millions of visitors to the site—and even more who have beheld it through lavishly illustrated books or some visual medium—are likely to agree that the wait was worth it.

(The image here is, of course, a detail of the great fresco from the ceiling on The Creation of Adam.)