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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
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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.