The Invention of Nature

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