The Invention of Nature (54 page)

22 ‘Apollo’ and changed appearance: Maria Körner to K.G. Weber, August 1796, Goethe Encounters 1965–2000, vol.4, p.223.

23 Goethe’s son in miner’s uniform: Goethe’s Day 1982–96, vol.3, p.354.

24 ‘cold, mono-syllabled God’: Jean Paul Friedrich Richter to Christian Otto, 1796, quoted in Klauss 1991, p.14; for Goethe’s arrogance: Friedrich Hölderlin to Christian Ludwig Neuffer, 19 January 1795, Goethe’s Day 1982–96, vol.3, p.356.

25 Goethe rude: W. von Schak about Goethe, 9 January 1806, Goethe Encounters 1965–2000, vol.6, p.4.

26 ‘sacred poetic fire’: Henry Crabb Robinson, 1801, Robinson 1869, vol.1, p.86.

27 ‘No one was more isolated’: Goethe, 1791, quoted in Safranski 2011, p.103.

28 ‘the great Mother’: Goethe, ibid., p.106.

29 Goethe’s house and garden: Klauss 1991; Ehrlich 1983; Goethe’s Day 1982–96, vol.3, pp.295–6

30 ‘was getting tired’: Goethe to Johannn Peter Eckermann, 12 May 1825, Goethe Eckermann 1999, p.158.

31 ‘most melancholic mood’: Goethe, 1794, Goethe’s Year 1994, p.26.

32 lived like hermit: Goethe, 1790, ibid., p.19.

33 ‘plank in a shipwreck’: Goethe, 1793, ibid., p.25.

34 18,000 specimens: Ehrlich 1983, p.7.

35 Metamorphosis of Plants: Goethe, Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären, 1790.

36 ‘Forwards and backwards’: Goethe, Italienische Reise, Goethe 1967, vol.11, p.375.

37 AH ignited Goethe’s interest: Goethe to Karl Ludwig von Knebel, 28 March 1797, Goethe Correspondence 1968–76, vol.2, pp.260–61.

38 Goethe and urform: Richards 2002, p.445ff.; Goethe in 1790, Goethe’s Year 1994, p.20.

39 AH proposed to publish: Goethe, 1795, Goethe Encounters 1965–2000, vol.4, p.122.

40 Goethe dictated: Goethe to Jacobi, 2 February 1795, Goethe Correspondence 1968–76, vol.2, p.194; Goethe Encounters 1965–2000, vol.4, p.122.

41 ‘That’s how I walk’: Karl August Böttiger about Goethe, January 1795, Goethe Encounters 1965–2000, vol.4, p.123.

42 AH’s visits to Jena and Weimar: 6–10 March 1794, 15–16 April 1794, 14–19 December 1794, 16–20 April 1795, 13 January 1797, 1 March–30 May 1797.

43 ‘early morning corrected’: Goethe, 9 March 1797, Goethe Diary 1998–2007, vol.2, pt.1, p.100.

44 ‘whipped the scientific: Goethe to Karl Ludwig von Knebel, 28 March 1797, Goethe Correspondence 1968–76, vol.2, pp.260–61.

45 Goethe in Jena spring 1797: Goethe stayed until 31 March 1797; see his diary and letters from that time, Goethe Encounters 1965–2000, p.288ff.; Goethe, March–May 1797, Goethe Diary 1998–2007, vol.2, pt.1, pp.99–115; Goethe’s Year 1994, pp.58–9.

46 trying to finish his book: Humboldt’s Versuch über die gereizte Muskel-und Nervenfaser (Experiment on the Stimulated Muscle and Nerve Fibre); AH to Carl Freiesleben, 18 April 1797, AH to Friedrich Schuckmann, 14 May 1797, AH Letters 1973, pp.574, 579.

47 AH’s work in Jena: AH to Carl Freiesleben, 18 April 1797, AH to Friedrich Schuckmann, 14 May 1797, AH Letters 1973, pp.574, 579.

48 AH’s lectures on galvanism: Goethe, 3, 5, 6 March 1797, Goethe Diary 1998–2007, vol.2, pt.1, p.99.

49 ‘pierced by shotgun’: AH to Friedrich Schuckmann, 14 May 1797, AH Letters 1973, p.580.

50 ‘I cannot exist without’: Ibid., p.579.

51 AH’s favourite experiment: AH, Versuch über die gereizte Muskel-und Nervenfaser, 1797, vol.1, p.76ff.

52 ‘breathing life into it’: Ibid.,p.79.

53 ‘neither matter nor force’: Goethe, Erster Entwurf einer Allgemeinen Einleitung in die Vergleichende Anatomie, 1795, p.18.

54 Goethe and organism: Richards 2002, p.450ff.; see also Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, Kant 1957, vol.5, p.488.

55 Goethe captivated: Goethe to Karl Ludwig von Knebel, 28 March 1797, Goethe Correspondence 1968–76, vol.2, pp.260–61.

56 Goethe’s work in 1797: Goethe 1797, Goethe’s Year 1994, p.59; Goethe, March–May 1797, Goethe Diary 1998–2007, vol.2, pt.1, pp.99–115.

57 ‘Our little academy’: Goethe to Karl August, 14 March 1797, Goethe Encounters 1965–2000, vol.4, p.291.

58 WH, Aeschylus and Goethe: 27 March 1797, Goethe Diary 1998–2007, vol.2, pt.1, p.103.

59 optical apparatus with AH: Goethe, 19 and 27 March 1797, ibid., pp.102–3.

60 investigated phosphor with AH: Goethe, 20 March 1797, ibid., p.102.

61 friends meeting in Jena: Goethe, 25 March 1797, ibid., p.102.

62 to Weimar ‘to recover’: Goethe to Karl Ludwig von Knebel, 28 March 1797, Goethe Correspondence 1968–76, vol.2, p.260.

63 woken from hibernation: Goethe to Friedrich Schiller, 26 April 1797, Schiller and Goethe 1856, vol.1, p.301.

64 Schiller worried about Goethe: Biermann 1990b, pp.36–7.

65 ‘poverty of meaning’: Friedrich Schiller to Christian Gottfried Körner, 6 August 1797; Christian Gottfried Körner to Friedrich Schiller, 25 August 1797, Schiller and Körner 1847, vol.4, pp.47, 49.

66 Goethe invited AH: Goethe to AH, 14 April 1797, AH Letters 1973, p.573; for AH’s visit see Goethe, 19–24 April 1797, Goethe Diary 1998–2007, vol.2, pt.1, p.106; AH to Johannes Fischer, 27 April 1797, Goethe Encounters 1965–2000, vol.4, p.306.

67 Goethe in Jena: Goethe, 25, 29–30 April, 19–30 May 1797, Goethe Diary 1998–2007, vol.2, pt.1, pp.107, 109, 115.

68 AH and Goethe at Schiller’s Garden House: Goethe, 19, 25, 26, 29, 30 May 1797, Goethe Diary 1998–2007, vol.2, pt.1, pp.109, 112, 113, 115.

69 stone table: Goethe to Johannn Peter Eckermann, 8 October 1827, Goethe Eckermann 1999, p.672.

70 song of nightingales: Friedrich Schiller to Goethe, 2 May 1797, Schiller and Goethe 1856, vol.1, p.304.

71 ‘art, nature and’: Goethe, 16 March 1797, Goethe Diary 1998–2007, vol.2, pt.1, p.101.

72 Kant and Copernicus: Kant, Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, 1787.

73 AH learning from Kant: AH to Wilhelm Gabriel Wegener, 27 February 1789, AH Letters 1973, p.44.

74 Kant’s lectures: Elden and Mendieta 2011, p.23.

75 ‘most fashionable seat’: Henry Crabb Robinson, 1801, Stelzig 2010, p.59; they were also discussing Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s Doctrine of Science. Fichte took Kant’s ideas of subjectivity, self-consciousness and the external world, and pushed them even further by eliminating Kant’s dualism. Fichte worked at the university in Jena and became one of the founding fathers of German Idealism. According to him there was no ‘thing-in-itself’ – all consciousness was based on the Self, not the external world. With this Fichte declared subjectivity as the first principle of understanding the world. If Fichte were correct, the consequences for the sciences would be momentous because then independent objectivity would not be possible. For Goethe and AH discussing Fichte, see Goethe, 12, 14, 19 March 1797, Goethe Diary 1998–2007, vol.2, pt.1, pp.101–2.

76 ‘study himself to death’: AH to Wilhelm Gabriel Wegener, 27 February 1789, AH Letters 1973, p.44.

77 Kant as important as Jesus: Morgan 1990, p.26.

78 AH on Kant: AH Cosmos 1845–52, vol.1, p.197; see also Knobloch 2009.

79 ‘within ourselves’: AH Cosmos 1845–52, vol.1, p.64; AH Kosmos 1845–50, vol.1, pp.69–70.

80 ‘melt into each’: AH Cosmos 1845–52, vol.1, p.64; AH Kosmos 1845–50, vol.1, p.70.

81 ‘The senses do not’: Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen, no.295, Buttimer 2001, p.109; see also Jackson 1994, p.687.

82 ‘vivid phantasy confuses’: AH to Johann Leopold Neumann, 23 June 1791, AH Letters 1973, p.142.

83 ‘Nature must be experienced’: AH to Goethe, 3 January 1810, Goethe Humboldt Letters 1909, p.305; see also AH Cosmos 1845–52, vol.1, p.73; AH Kosmos 1845–50, vol.1, p.85.

84 ‘moss-embroider’d beds’: Darwin (1789) 1791, line 232.

85 popularity of poem in England: King-Hele 1986, pp.67–8.

86 ‘powerful and productive’: AH to Charles Darwin, 18 September 1839, Darwin Correspondence, vol.2, p.426. AH referred to Erasmus Darwin’s book Zoomania which was published in Germany in 1795; see also AH to Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring, 29 June 1795, AH Letters 1973, p.439.

87 ‘poetic feeling’: Goethe to Friedrich Schiller, 26–27 January 1798, Schiller Letters 1943–2003, vol.37, pt.1, p.234

88 ‘greatest antagonists’: Goethe Morphologie 1987, p.458.

89 Goethe worked on Faust: Late December 1794, Goethe Encounters 1965–2000, vol.4, p.117; Goethe, 1796, Goethe’s Year 1994, p.53; WH to Friedrich Schiller, 17 July 1795, Goethe’s Day 1982–96, vol.3, p.393; Safranski 2011, p.191; Friedrich Schiller to Goethe, 26 June 1797, Schiller and Goethe, 1856, vol.1, p.322; originally conceived as the Urfaust in the early 1770s, Goethe had also published a short Fragment of the drama in 1790.

90 ‘feverish unrest’: Faust I, Scene 1, Night, line 437, Goethe’s Faust (trans. Kaufmann 1961, p.99); I have used two different translations and have picked those quotes that come closest to the original. The translations are by Walter Kaufmann (1961) and David Luke (2008).

91 ‘I’ve never known’: Goethe to Johann Friedrich Unger, 28 March 1797, Goethe Correspondence 1968–76, vol.2, p.558.

92 ‘all Nature’s hidden’: Faust I, Scene 1, Night, line 441, Goethe’s Faust (trans. Kaufmann 1961, p.99).

93 ‘That I may detect’: Ibid., lines 382ff. (p.95).

94 ‘Humboldt seemed to her as’ (footnote): Louise Nicolovius, as told by Charlotte von Stein, 20 January 1810, recalling a conversation with Goethe, Goethe’s Day 1982–96, vol.5, p.381.

95 ‘Metamorphosis of Plants’: Goethe composed and published the poem in 1797, Goethe, 1797, Goethe’s Year 1994, p.59.

96 ‘all chemical combinations’: Pierre-Simon Laplace, Exposition du systême du monde, 1796, see Adler 1990, p.264.

97 ‘We snatch in vain’: Faust I, Act 1, Night, lines 672–5, Goethe’s Faust (trans. Luke 2008, p.23).

98 combine nature and art: AH to Goethe, 3 January 1810, Goethe Humboldt Letters 1909, p.304.

99 ‘had destroyed all’: John Keats, 28 December 1817, recounted by Benjamin Robert Haydon, Haydon 1960–63, vol.2, p.173.

100 ‘affected me powerfully’: AH to Caroline von Wolzogen, 14 May 1806, Goethe AH WH Letters 1876, p.407.

101 ‘new organs’: Ibid.

Chapter 3: In Search of a Destination

1 he felt ‘chained’: AH to William Gabriel Wegener, 27 March 1789, AH Letters 1973, p.47.

2 WH recounting childhood: WH to CH, 9 October 1818, WH CH Letters 1910–16, vol.6, p.219.

3 WH to Tegel: Geier 2009, p.199.

4 WH felt paralysed: WH to Friedrich Schiller, 16 July 1796, Geier 2009, p.201.

5 AH in Berlin: AH to Carl Freiesleben, 7 April 1796, AH Letters 1973, p.503.

6 AH excited about attention: AH to Carl Freiesleben, 25 November 1796; AH to Carl Ludwig Willdenow, 20 December 1796, ibid., pp.551–4, 560.

7 ‘great voyage’: AH to Abraham Gottlob Werner, 21 December 1796, ibid., p.561.

8 AH’s control of his destiny: AH to William Gabriel Wegener, 27 March 1789, ibid., p.47; AH, Meine Bekenntnisse, 1769–1805, in Biermann 1987, p.55.

9 ‘strangers to each’: AH to Carl Freiesleben, 25 November 1796, AH Letters 1973, p.553.

10 AH relieved to leave home: AH to Archibald Maclean, 9 February 1793, ibid., pp.233–4.

11 ‘her death … must be’: Carl Freiesleben to AH, 20 December 1796, ibid., p.559.

12 WH and CH in Paris: Gersdorff 2013, pp.65–6.

13 AH’s inheritance: Eichhorn 1959, p.186.

14 ‘I have so much’: AH to Paul Christian Wattenback, 26 April 1791, AH Letters 1973, p.136.

15 preparations for voyage: AH to Carl Ludwig Willdenow, 20 December 1796, ibid., p.560; AH, Meine Bekenntnisse, 1769–1805, in Biermann 1987, pp.55–8.

16 ‘splendid’ tree: AH to Carl Freiesleben, 4 March 1795, AH Letters 1973, p.403.

17 AH to Freiberg: AH to Schuckmann, 14 May 1797; AH to Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 10 June 1797; AH to Joseph Banks, 20 June 1797, ibid., pp.578, 583, 584.

18 AH to Dresden: AH to Carl Freiesleben, 18 April 1797; AH to Schuckmann, 14 May 1797, ibid., pp.575, 578.

19 wanted to compare mountains: AH to Goethe, 16 July 1795, Goethe AH WH Letters 1876, p.311.

20 tropical plants in Vienna: Personal Narrative 1814–29, p.5; AH to Carl Freiesleben, 14 and 16 October 1797, AH Letters 1973, p.593.

21 future would be ‘sweet’: AH to Joseph van der Schot, 31 December 1797; see also AH to Carl Freiesleben, 14 October 1797, AH Letters 1973, pp.593, 603.

22 AH in Salzburg: AH to Joseph van der Schot, 31 December 1797; AH to Franz Xaver von Zach, 23 February 1798, ibid., pp.601, 608.

23 ‘This is just the’: AH to Joseph van der Schot, 28 October 1797, ibid., p.594.

24 Italy closed to AH: AH to Heinrich Karl Abraham Eichstädt, 19 April 1798, ibid., p.625.

25 West Indies and Egypt: AH to Count Christian Günther von Bernstorff, 25 February 1798; AH to Carl Freiesleben, 22 April 1798, ibid., pp.612, 629.

26 Bristol arrested as spy: AH to Carl Ludwig Willdenow, 20 April 1799, ibid., p.661; AH, Aus Meinem Leben (1769–1850), in Biermann 1987, p.96.

27 AH’s plans for Paris: AH to Heinrich Karl Abraham Eichstädt, 19 April 1798; AH to Carl Freiesleben, 22 April 1798, AH Letters 1973, pp.625, 629.

28 AH in Paris: Moheit 1993, p.9; AH to Franz Xaver von Zach, 3 June 1798, AH Letters 1973, pp.633–4; AH, Meine Bekenntnisse, 1769–1805, in Biermann 1987, pp.57–8; Gersdorff 2013, p.66ff.

29 ‘I live in the midst’: AH to Marc-Auguste Pictet, 22 June 1798, Bruhns 1873, vol.1, p.234.

30 Bougainville invited AH: AH to Carl Ludwig Willdenow, 20 April 1799, AH Letters 1973, p.661.

31 Bonpland: Biermann 1990, p.175ff.; Schneppen 2002; Sarton 1943, p.387ff.; AH to Carl Ludwig Willdenow, 20 April 1799, AH Letters 1973, p.662.

32 ‘Alexander couldn’t get’: Friedrich Schiller to Goethe, 17 September 1800, Schiller Letters 1943–2003, vol.30, p.198; see also Christian Gottfried Körner to Friedrich Schiller, 10 September 1800, Schiller Letters 1943–2003, vol.38, pt.1, p.347.

33 ‘great fear for ghosts’: AH to Carl Freiesleben, 19 March 1792, AH Letters 1973, p.178.

34 Baudin’s expedition: AH to Carl Ludwig Willdenow, 20 April 1799, ibid., p.661; AH, Meine Bekenntnisse, 1769–1805, in Biermann 1987, p.58.

35 AH’s plans to Egypt: AH to Heinrich Karl Abraham Eichstädt, 21 April 1798; AH to Carl Ludwig Willdenow, 20 April 1799, AH Letters 1973, pp.627, 661.