Exploring the Visible. Words and Images in Goethe’s Naturfreundschaft
Exploring the Visible. Words and Images in Goethe’s Naturfreundschaft

Summary/Abstract: The paper explores Goethe’s unique approach to the question of expression and expressibility, presenting it as a key element to understand the relation between his literary and his scientific vocation. Section 1 sets Goethe’s Sprachkritik in its context by briefly outlining some arguments on the limit of expression raised in his time (Herder, Lichtenberg, Hamann). Section 2 then shifts the focus to Goethe. It is argued that – akin to many of his contemporaries, but for partially different reasons – he neither fully distrusts nor completely relies on the power of words and images. Provided that expression refrains from deliberately moving away from or suffocating its objects, Goethe rather views the unavoidable simplification of the visual experience that it produces as a potential instrument of intensification of experience itself. Finally, section 3 takes into account the interplay between words and images as different expressive media. From Goethe’s perspective, images are closer to singularity but poorer in conveying the temporal dimension, whereas words can provide images with a temporal dimension but need images to overcome their tension to universality. In the end, just like visual experience and expression as a whole, so can words and images be seen as linked in a polarity, both potentially collaborating into a singular (infinite) expressive effort.

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