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

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 In this context, his rhapsodic re-construction of the cathedral was never superseded in his architectural thinking by Greek temples and amphitheatres or Roman arenas or Palladian villas.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

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 to Faust (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 II or 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) (FA 15.1:44)as well as the herrlichen Gebude (the majestic buildings) (FA 15.1:57) by Palladio in

Venice and his neoclassical Prachthaus (luxurious home) (FA 15.1:60), 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 Grabe hervor, sie heit mich ihre Lehren, wie die Regeln einer ausgestorbenen Sprache, studieren, nicht um sie auszuben, oder mich in ihr lebendig zu erfreuen, sondern nur um die ehrwrdige, fr ewig abgeschiedene Existenz der vergangenen Zeitalter in einem stillen Gemte zu verehren. [Architecture rises from the grave like an ancient spirit, it commands me to study its doctrines, like the rules of a dead language, not in order to be an architectural practitioner or to take lively delight in architecture, but only to honor in a tranquil soul the venerable life of ages past, which is gone forever.] (FA 15.1:104-5) 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, Baukunst12 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

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 Vitruviuss De 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 building that 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

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: the Baukunst essay of 1795 and the 1827 vision of Orpheus as the first architect in the Maximen 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) (FA 18:114). But between his initial invocation of Erwins lost grave in section one and the redemptive words of the spectral Werkmeister in 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

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 der Massen ber dich gekommen, die du anstauntest, du httest nicht so nur nachgeahmt, weil sies taten und es schn ist; notwendig und wahr httest du deine Plane geschaffen, und lebendige 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, you would not merely have imitated, because they did and because it is beautiful; you would have created your plans to be necessary and true, and living beauty would have sprung 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,

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 French philosophes.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 puzzling Denkmal that 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

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 its genius 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 the Divan 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

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

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 in Zur Farbenlehre (1810), [t]reue Beobachter der Natur . . . werden doch darin miteinander bereinkommen, da alles, was erscheinen, was uns als ein Phnomen begegnen solle, msse entweder eine ursprngliche Entzweiung, die einer Vereinigung fhig ist, oder eine ursprngliche Einheit, die zur Entzweiung gelangen knne, andeuten . . . und sich auf eine solche Weise darstellen . . . . [observers faithful to nature will certainly agree that whatever ought to appear or be encountered as phenomenon, must point toand in this manner 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 from Zur 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

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 Langers Feeling 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

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

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 geringste Zserchen, alles Gestalt und alles zweckend zum Ganzen; wie das festgegrndete ungeheure Gebude sich leicht in die Luft hebt; wie durchbrochen alles und doch fr die Ewigkeit. [as in Natures eternal works, down to the smallest fiber, everything formed and everything purposeful for the whole; how the firmly grounded monstrous building rises effortlessly into the air; how reticulated everything and yet for eternity.] (FA 18:115) Like all living things in the system of nature, where purposivenessin Kants and

Spinozas senseis synonymous, respectively, with self-organization and selfmaintenance, 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 of Dichtung und Wahrheit in 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

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 itself authentically 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 a poetic 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,

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, noch einziger, ausschlieender gerhrt von dem Wahren als ehemals, da ich oft aus kindlicher Ergebenheit das zu ehren mich bestrebte, wofr ich nichts fhlte und, mich selbst betrgend, den kraft-und wahrheitsleeren Gegenstand mit liebevoller Ahndung bertnchte. [Once again at your graveside, holy Erwin! I feel, thank God, that I am as I was, to this day as powerful, as moved by what is great and joyouslymore singly, more exclusively moved than before by what is true, since I often strove to honor with childlike devotion, what I did not feel and, in selfdeception, I whitewashed the object, emptied of power and truth, 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

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.

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 the Falkonet essay 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

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 the Falkonet essay. 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 vor ihm, mcht ich sagen, wie vor ihrem Schpfer, der in dem Augenblick, da er sich des Geschaffnen freut, auch alle die Harmonien geniet, durch die er sie hervorbrachte und in denen sie besteht. Drum glaubt nicht so schnell zu verstehen, was das heie: Das Gefhl ist die Harmonie und vice versa. [He penetrates to the causes . . . . The world lies before him, I would say, as before the Creator, who by taking pleasure in Creation also takes pleasure in all the harmonies through which He put forth the world and in which it persists. So, do not so readily believe you understand what is meant by feeling is accord and vice

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 postItalian 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 from Zur 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

(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 of Faust II dramatically 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 the Faust-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,

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 selfmaintenance. 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

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.

1 2

All translations from the German are my own. The secondary literature on Goethe and architecture is extensive. In addition to the titles I cite, the Goethe chapters in Purdys On the Ruins of Babel deserve special mention, 162- 231. This groundbreaking study shares a phenomenological approach with my work on Goethes architectural idea and addresses a number of issues I also address, including the presence of ghosts and spirits in Goethes accounts of buildings, as well as the problematic continuities between the architectural experiences in Strasbourg and Italy, 162-92. While Purdy analyzes this process of assimilation with reference to Laugier, 187-90, I attribute more significance to the gothic building in Strasbourg, which was flexible enough to insist itself into his vision of classical and neoclassical buildings as well. 3 See Purdy, 14-28, for an account of Perraults reassessment of the orders. 4 See Hilgerss discussion of Goethes essay for its connection to Aristotles hylomorphism. Goethes figuration of the Strasbourg cathedral as a divine tree verweist . . . auf den entelechischen Charakter des Bauwerkes . . . (suggests that the building is entelechial in nature) 99-100. 5 Ethics, E3P6. 6 See Beutler, 23, and Fechner, 42-3, for more on the title-page of the first edition of the essay. 7 The impulse that organizes the site of Erwins cathedral as a site of commemoration is clear from the essays first sentences: Als ich auf deinem Grabe herumwandelte, edler Erwin, . . . da ward ich tief in die Seele betrbt, und mein Herz . . . gelobte dir ein Denkmal (As I wandered on your grave, noble Erwin, 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 be made according to volume and page numbers of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Werke, eds. Hendrik Birus, Dieter Borchmeyer et. al. 40 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1987-2000), abbreviated FA. Faust will be cited according to this edition by line number. FA 18:110. 8 Toward the end of the essay the decorative instinct of aboriginal peoples is linked to the plastic potential within material things to be modeled, FA 18:11617. 9 Jane and Marshall Brown, 74-77, have discussed Goethes transformative re-inscription of the literary gothic in Faust with 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 consciousness toward a restless energy beyond conceptual grasp 77. The Schauderfest (festival of fright) of the Klassische Walpurgisnacht in Faust II, 7705, where a bottled-up quantum of restless energy named Homunculus 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 reading of the relationship between (a founders) intention and its completion in Goethes architectural theorizing. 10 See Purdy, The Building in Bildung, 63, for a discussion of Goethes conversation with Palladios ghost. 11 In a letter to Knebel written from Rome on November 17, 1786, Goethe extends the reach of architectural hauntingwith prominent reference to Vitruvius and Palladio againto the assembly of ancient monuments that constitute the built environment of the entire city of Rome and nourish his mind with architectural figures: und so steigt der alte Phnix Rom wie ein Geist aus seinem Grabe, doch ists Anstrengung statt Genues und Trauer statt Freude (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. 12 According to Bisky, Goethe avoids using the concept Bauart in the title of his 1772 essay, weil dieser die besondere Modifikation einer auf den Regeln des Geschmacks gegrndeten Schnheit benennt. Deutsche Baukunst fr ihn ruht auf eigenen Grundlagen . . . (because it would stipulate the specific 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 an alternative reading of the relationship between (a founders) intention and its completion in Goethes architectural theorizing. 14 The 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. 16 The statement continues by discounting Laugiers primitive hut, FA, 18:112. 17 See Rykwert, 48-49. Purdy, 186-9, offers a different account of Goethes relationship to Laugier, especially following his architectural experiences in Italy. My reading of this relationship, which also involves Goethes efforts to assimilate Vitruvian thinking, follows Dripps, 35-9, who interrogates the question of origin by reconsidering the debates about the primal hut. 18 With 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. 19 See Purdys discussion of the genius loci, 172-3. 20 The Baukunst essay (1795) develops the concept of architectural fiction to rethink the functional aspect 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 from Winckelmanns, 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. 21 Breithaupt discusses this kind of aesthetically conditioned mediation with reference to Baukunst essay, 66-68. 22 Langer, 63-66. 23 Langers 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 its significance for his aesthetics, see Tantillo, 104-51. 24 My reading of the opposition of column and wall in Von deutscher Baukunst with reference to Goethean polarity differs fundamentally from Purdys interpretation, 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. 25 This account adds Boisseres resumption of work on the Cologne Cathedral to the mix. 26 See the Baukunst essay. 27 See Goethes letter to Herder on 17 May 1787, where the search for the primal plant provokes an identical question about botanical organization. With his mind still occupied by thoughts about the Doric ruins in Paestum and Homers poetic-natural sensibility, the traveler explains: Mit diesem Modell und dem 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 Notwendigkeit haben. 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 series of 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, which are apparitions, but with an inner truth and necessity. This selfsame law can be applied to all other living things) FA 15.1:346. 28 In 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 1795 Baukunst essay and the meditation of 1827 on Orpheus as the first architect from the Maximen und Reflexionen, which my current bookproject 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 to Fausts medieval fortress to the rocky and enclosed landscape of an ancient grove.