Goethe on Imagination, Plants, and Work

Quotes from tonight's reading of Italian Journey.

"A thousand times I have heard people complain that some object they had known only from a description was disappointing when seen in reality, and the reason was always the same. Imagination is to reality what poetry is to prose: the former will always think of objects as massive and vertical, the latter will always try to extend them horizontally."

I'm not sure I understand what he's talking about, but it certainly is food for thought.



"Let me say briefly what I think about the ancient writers and us moderns. They represented things and persons as they are in themselves, we usually represent only their substantive effect: they depicted the horror, we depict horribly; they depicted the pleasing, we pleasantly, and so on. Hence all the exaggeration, the mannerisms, the false elegance and the bombast of our age. Since, if one aims at producing effects and only effects, one thinks that one cannot make them violent enough."



Look, look! I just posted about Goethe's unifying/Primal Plant theory, and it showed up in what I read this evening!

"I must tell you confidentially that I am very close to the secret of the reproduction and organization of plants, and that it is the simplest thing imaginable. This climate offers the best possible conditions for making observations. To the main question - where the germ is hidden - I am quite certain I have found the answer; to the others I already see a general solution, and only a few points have still to be formulated more precisely. The Primal Plant is going to be the strangest creature in the world, which Nature herself shall envy me. With this model and the key to it, it will be possible to go on for ever inventing plants and know that their existence is logical; that is to say, if they do not actually exist, they could, for they are not the shadowy phantoms of a vain imagination, but possess an inner necessity and truth. The same law will be applicable to all other living organisms."



And here's an interesting defense of Naples workers, who were accused across the board of being lazy:

"...all of them work not merely to live, but to enjoy themselves: they wish even their work to be a recreation."

It sounds like us today - it's hard to imagine that such an attitude about enjoying one's work could have seemed novel at one time.