Kenneth S. Calhoon

Natur, Raume, Landschaften@@@The Idea of the Forest: German and American Perspectives on the Culture and Politics of Trees

The Idea of the Forest is a collection of essays originally delivered at the University of Oregon during an interdisciplinary conference on the forest and its role in the political cultures of both Germany and North America. Contributions examine the forest as a site in the imagination as well as the focal point of current political, economic and ecological disputes.

Reading and the Art of Leisure in Morike's "Wald-Idylle"

In 1814, the painter Georg Friedrich Kersting produced a small canvas entitled Lesender beim Lampenlicht (fig. I). The alliterative appellation is at odds with the prosaic theme. Depicted is a young man, wearily ensconced in a stack of papers or unbound volume. Several sealed letters are visible on his desk, and one supposes him working late into the night. A bell-cord indicates both the availability of a servant or secretary and the reader’s own isolation. The lamp, a brass fixture with three candles and an opaque, black shade, casts patterns of shadow on the walls and ceiling, emphasizing the drabness of the surroundings and creating an atmosphere of claustrophobia—effects reinforced by the drawn window-shade, which extends the pale green of the adjacent wall. The draperies and the lamp itself import a degree of ornament into an otherwise austere room, whose furnishings, along with the complete absence of books, denote a professional, perhaps legal study. The spartan character of the space is consistent with the need for concentration (Sammlung), of which distraction and beauty are kindred foils. Emil Staiger, in suggesting that nocturnal silence envelops Kersting’s reader with a “magical tone,” occludes the sheer disenchantment of a world defined by the utility of literacy and the partitioning of the household into atomized cells.1 The solitary scene presents a modern, bureaucratic counterpart to the gotisches Studierzimmer that Goethe’s Faust, through recourse to magic, endeavors to flee.

The Gothic Imaginary: Goethe in Strasbourg

Goethe’s essay Von Deutscher Baukunst (1771), along with Book 9 of Dichtung und Wahrheit, describe the young Goethe’s encounter with the great Gothic cathedral in Strasbourg. The early essay in particular recounts the process whereby Goethe came to discount the Neo-Classical tenets that associated the “gothic”, which had become a catch-phrase for a variety of styles and practices, with aesthetic monstrosities. The present discussion analyzes the experience in terms of a subjective reorientation wherein an organic wholeness, which Goethe imputes to the Gothic structure, amounts to a fantasmatic counterpart to his own sense of internal disunity. The essay explores parallels to Lacan’s mirror stage, as well as to Ortega y Gasset’s account of the subjective revolution of modern vision.ZusammenfassungGoethes Aufsatz Von Deutscher Baukunst (1771), wie auch das 9. Buch von Dichtung und Wahrheit, beschreibt die Begegnung des jungen Goethes mit dem gotischen Münster in Strassburg. Insbesondere anhand des frühen Aufsatzes lässt sich nachvollziehen, wie Goethe den Neo-Klassizismus abzulehnen lernte, der das „Gotische”, welches zum Sammelbegriff für eine Mehrzahl von Stilen und Praktiken geworden war, mit ästhetischen Monstrositäten assoziierte. Der vorliegende Beitrag analysiert die Erfahrung Goethes als subjektive Umorientierung. Die organische Einheit, die Goethe der gotischen Struktur zuschreibt, erscheint dabei als fantasmatisches Gegenstück zum Gefühl der eigenen Fragmentierung. Erforscht werden Parallelen sowohl zum Spiegelstadium Lacans wie zu Ortega y Gassets Analyse der subjektiven Revolution der Betrachtungsweise in der Moderne.