PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK PDF
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PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE “Goethe in this ... autobiography, which I read now ... seems to know altogether too much about himself.” — Waldo Emerson HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK A WEEK: Goethe’s whole education and life were those of the PEOPLE OF artist. He lacks the unconsciousness of the poet. In his A WEEK autobiography he describes accurately the life of the author of Wilhelm Meister. For as there is in that book, mingled with a rare and serene wisdom, a certain pettiness or exaggeration of trifles, wisdom applied to produce a constrained and partial and merely well-bred man, — a magnifying of the theatre till life itself is turned into a stage, for which it is our duty to study our parts well, and conduct with propriety and precision, — so in the autobiography, the fault of his education is, so to speak, its merely artistic completeness. Nature is hindered, though she prevails at last in making an unusually catholic impression on the boy. It is the life of a city boy, whose toys are pictures and works of art, whose wonders are the theatre and kingly processions and crownings. As the youth studied minutely the order and the degrees in the imperial procession, and suffered none of its effect to be lost on him, so the man aimed to secure a rank in society which would satisfy his notion of fitness and respectability. He was defrauded of much which the savage boy enjoys. Indeed, he himself has occasion to say in this very autobiography, when at last he escapes into the woods without the gates: “Thus much is certain, that only the undefinable, wide- expanding feelings of youth and of uncultivated nations are adapted to the sublime, which, whenever it may be excited in us through external objects, since it is either formless, or else moulded into forms which are incomprehensible, must surround us with a grandeur which we find above our reach.” He further says of himself: “I had lived among painters from my childhood, and had accustomed myself to look at objects, as they did, with reference to art.” And this was his practice to the last. He was even too well-bred to be thoroughly bred. He says that he had had no intercourse with the lowest class of his towns-boys. The child should have the advantage of ignorance as well as of knowledge, and is fortunate if he gets his share of neglect and exposure. “The laws of Nature break the rules of Art.” GOETHE HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK A WEEK: On his journey from Brenner to Verona, Goethe writes: PEOPLE OF “The Tees flows now more gently, and makes in many A WEEK places broad sands. On the land, near to the water, upon the hillsides, everything is so closely planted one to another, that you think they must choke one another, — vineyards, maize, mulberry-trees, apples, pears, quinces, and nuts. The dwarf elder throws itself vigorously over the walls. Ivy grows with strong stems up the rocks, and spreads itself wide over them, the lizard glides through the intervals, and everything that wanders to and fro reminds one of the loveliest pictures of art. The women’s tufts of hair bound up, the men’s bare breasts and light jackets, the excellent oxen which they drive home from market, the little asses with their loads, — everything forms a living, animated Heinrich Roos. And now that it is evening, in the mild air a few clouds rest upon the mountains, in the heavens more stand still than move, and immediately after sunset the chirping of crickets begins to grow more loud; then one feels for once at home in the world, and not as concealed or in exile. I am contented as though I had been born and brought up here, and were now returning from a Greenland or whaling voyage. Even the dust of my Fatherland, which is often whirled about the wagon, and which for so long a time I had not seen, is greeted. The clock-and-bell jingling of the crickets is altogether lovely, penetrating, and agreeable. It sounds bravely when roguish boys whistle in emulation of a field of such songstresses. One fancies that they really enhance one another. Also the evening is perfectly mild as the day.” “If one who dwelt in the south, and came hither from the south, should hear of my rapture hereupon, he would deem me very childish. Alas! what I here express I have long known while I suffered under an unpropitious heaven, and now may I joyful feel this joy as an exception, which we should enjoy everforth as an eternal necessity of our nature.” GOETHE HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK WALDEN: Sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and PEOPLE OF gossip, and worn out all my village friends, I rambled still WALDEN farther westward than I habitually dwell, into yet more unfrequented parts of the town, “to fresh woods and pastures new,” or, while the sun was setting, made my supper of huckleberries and blueberries on Fair Haven Hill, and laid up a store for several days. The fruits do not yield their true flavor to the purchaser of them, nor to him who raises them for the market. There is but one way to obtain it, yet few take that way. If you would know the flavor of huckleberries, ask the cow-boy or the partridge. It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them. A huckleberry never reaches Boston; they have not been known there since they grew on her three hills. The ambrosial and essential part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off in the market cart, and they become mere provender. As long as Eternal Justice reigns, not one innocent huckleberry can be transported thither from the country’s hills. JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK 1585 In WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, Henry David Thoreau would write that “The maker of this earth but patented a leaf,” WALDEN: Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the PEOPLE OF principle of all the operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth WALDEN but patented a leaf. What Champollion will decipher this hieroglyphic for us, that we may turn over a new leaf at last? This phenomenon is more exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fertility of vineyards. True, it is somewhat excrementitious in its character, and there is no end to the heaps of liver lights and bowels, as if the globe were turned wrong side outward; but this suggests at least that Nature has some bowels, and there again is mother of humanity. This is the frost coming out of the ground; this is Spring. It precedes the green and flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry. I know of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and indigestions. It convinces me that Earth is still in her swaddling clothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every side. Fresh curls springs from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag of a furnace, showing that Nature is “in full blast” within. The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit, –not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviæ from their graves. You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it, are plastic like clay in the hands of the potter. JEAN-FRANÇOIS CHAMPOLLION GEOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK commenting upon Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Urpflanze” in his VERSUCH DIE METAMORPHOSE DER PFLANZEN ZU ERKLÄREN (AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE METAMORPHOSIS OF PLANTS) that would be published in 1790. You can visit the European fan palm (Chamaerops humilis var. arborescens) which Goethe used for his illustration of his idea about the Ur-shape of leaves. This palm tree still survives. It had been planted in this year. It is in the glass house inside the circular garden in the botanical garden of Padua, Italy. Goethe would write to Charlotte von Stein in 1786, the year in which he would sight this palm tree that had been planted in 1585: What pleases me most at present is plant-life. Everything is forcing itself upon me, I no longer have to think about it, everything comes to meet me, and the whole gigantic kingdom becomes so simple that I can see at once the answer to the most difficult problems. If only I could communicate the insight and joy to someone, but it is not possible. And it is no dream or fancy: I am beginning to grow aware of the essential form with which, as it were, Nature always plays, and from which she produces her great variety. Had I the time in this brief span of life I am confident I could extend it to all the realms of Nature – the whole realm. Henry Thoreau would be informing himself of Goethe’s Italian journey during Spring 1838. Although today this thinking about the Ur-shapes of leaves falls under the category of obsolete science, in that period before the creation of Darwin’s theory of evolution, while Thoreau would be studying it, this would still be cutting edge science. Read about it in James McIntosh’s THOREAU AS ROMANTIC NATURALIST (Cornell UP, 1974). (Of course, when Darwin would publish in 1859, taking the science of biology beyond this Goethe stage, Thoreau would be one of his very first American readers, and would be open to Darwin’s heretical new ideas.) THE AGE OF REASON WAS A PIPE DREAM, OR AT BEST A PROJECT. ACTUALLY, HUMANS HAVE ALMOST NO CLUE WHAT THEY ARE DOING, HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK WHILE CREDITING THEIR OWN LIES ABOUT WHY THEY ARE DOING IT. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK 1763 August 25, Thursday: The Mozart family gave a 3d public concert in Frankfurt. It was attended by a 15-year-old named Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who would remember the event to the end of his life. ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE, IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK 1765 October: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who had wanted to read classics in the university at Göttingen where English influence prevailed, was sent instead by his father to study law at his father’s alma mater in Leipzig. NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK 1768 Fall: His studies in Leipzig having been interrupted by severe illness, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe convalesced at his family’s home. Upon recovery, his father would send him for legal studies in Strassburg as a first step toward Paris, and a Grand Tour (which he would not complete). “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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