The metamorphosis of plants
The Metamorphosis of Plants is the title of an elegy by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , which was written on June 17 and 18, 1798 and published in Friedrich Schiller's Muses Almanac for 1799 at the end of 1798 . In 1800 he added it, slightly revised, to the seventh volume of the Neue Schriften and assigned it to the group of other elegies. In the final edition, however, he added the poem to the category God and World and followed it up with the related Metamorphosis of Animals .
His last elegy in ancient verse was inspired by the doctrinal poem De rerum natura by the Roman poet Lucretius . Deviating from the model, Goethe does not exclusively use hexameters , but the elegiac distich consisting of hexameter and pentameter and thus follows on from the previous Roman elegies .
The Metamorphosis of Plants is a central work from Goethe's classical period. With him he turned to Christiane Vulpius and presented not only the results of his botanical studies, but also his morphological teaching in concentrated form. Before the eyes of the reader, the ideal type of a plant unfolds according to the legality of metamorphosis , which Goethe also transferred to animals and people.
Origin and publication history
Didactic poem
By Karl Ludwig von Knebel translation lukrezischen didactic poem based, Goethe planned an extensive seal which all contemporary theory of nature should include. Schiller supported him because he missed representative examples of this art form and he wanted to bring "nature in its rich diversity, movement and interaction of the imagination" closer.
The metamorphosis of the plants was followed by a metamorphosis of the animals , which contains the quintessence of comparative anatomical studies, but is fragmentary in character. In it, Goethe concentrated on the type, regularity and harmony of the vertebrates . He was unable to complete the great "nature poem in our days" which he aimed at and idealized.
Botanical studies and return to Weimar
Goethe had already dealt with botany at the beginning of his Weimar years and deepened his studies during the Italian trip . In 1790, two years after his return from Italy, he published his first scientific work trying to explain the metamorphosis of plants . The poem concentrates essential parts of this writing. When he had this study printed a second time in 1817, he added the poem to symbolize the winding paths of botany, thus adopting the poetology of didactic poetry cultivated in antiquity and the Enlightenment .
In the accompanying pamphlet , Fate of the Booklet , he looked back and recalled the ideas and opinions he had to meet after his experiences in Italy. Critical voices had risen against his botanical treatise from within a scientific circle, and other contemporaries too “did not want to admit that science and poetry are compatible. One forgot that science developed out of poetry, ”and overlooked the fact that after a change in time,“ both could meet again in a friendly manner. ”Since some“ friends ”failed at“ abstract gardening ”, he tried them "To lure with an elegy."
The autobiographical treatise Schicksal der Manschrift , written in the same year, describes the difficulties after his arrival in Weimar. He came from “formally rich” Italy to “shapeless” Germany to “swap the serene sky” for the “gloomy one”. Nobody understood his enthusiasm for the distant or wanted to comfort him. After collecting and observing incessantly, he now believed that “he had noticed how nature was legally going to work”.
Form and content
The work is in three parts and can be viewed as a salutation, middle section and synthesis. At the beginning the narrator turns to his "lover", who seems to be confused by the vast ocean of the flower kingdom. His extensive explanation goes beyond the original question. The real meaning of love is only revealed at the end of the elegy.
First part
In the first eight verses and in the final part of verses 63 - 80, the lyrical I addresses someone who is to be taught. If it recognizes the secret law , which can only be grasped gradually, it will understand the deep secrets of nature.
Confused you, beloved, the thousandfold mixture
This throng of flowers over the garden;
Middle part
The middle section comprises verses 9-62 and describes the development of each plant. From the germinating seed , which, like a folded leaf , preserved the sleeping power of life , the shoot rises, which under the "holy" light, over knots and leaves, allows an ever larger shape to grow , which finally flows into the flower .
Becoming now look at how little by little the plant
Gradually led, forms into flowers and fruit.
The determining force of this development is “the drive”, which strives for perfection and gradually forms the calyx over the stem axis , which surrounds the flower, from which the fruit is formed. All of this is only possible if the forces of the seed are directed by “mighty hands” of nature in order to unfold and in a further step form the reproductive organs in the perianth . Soon the flower will carry innumerable germs and can continue the cycle of life . For Goethe, the cycles of life are lined up like an infinite chain:
And here nature closes the ring of eternal forces;
But a new one immediately touches the previous one,
That the chain should go on through all time
And the whole is animated, just as the individual is.
Enough
In the third part, Goethe transfers the just recognized "metamorphosis" of the flora to the fauna . The “beloved” sees everything more clearly, can see more distant regions and apply the “eternal laws” of the plant in other areas. If she looks around further and sees the caterpillar or the butterfly , she realizes that the laws not only apply in the animal kingdom, but also affect humans, who can, however , shape their metamorphosis responsibly .
At the end of the poem, he equates natural development with the genesis of human feelings that develop from the “seed of acquaintance”, through habit and friendship, to love . So he calls out to his partner:
Rejoice today too! Holy love
Strive for the highest fruit of like sentiments,
Same view of things, so in a harmonious look
Connect the couple, find the higher world.
metamorphosis
Today the term metamorphosis is generally more narrowly defined and does not have the range as it was in Goethe's or earlier times. In Greek and Roman mythology , it was used when humans transformed into plants or animals, springs or other natural phenomena. Goethe already found the term in Carl von Linné or Voltaire , but used it independently and developed it into a comprehensive system of ideas. If the modern biology of his day described the transformation from the larval to the adult stage of different animal groups, he extended the term to the general transformation of living things and the respective result of this transformation. Goethe distinguished the “successive” from the “simultaneous” metamorphosis. While in the successive transformation different life forms emerge from each other (larva - pupa - imago), the simultaneous one is the differences of similar structures, for example those between the vertebrae of the spine . Both forms play a role in his botanical treatise.
His natural research was of paramount importance for Goethe's art and has determined his work since the Italian trip . While he was pursuing his studies under the Italian sun, he believed at some point that he had recognized the deep connection between nature and art. Nature was the moment that created unity and offered laws with which the vast variety of appearances could be grasped. Since works of art were created according to natural laws just like everything living, society obeyed these laws and produced art as the highest . The model for all these processes was the “metamorphosis” of the small plant in front of him. From then on, he wanted to understand art as he viewed nature. The laws of development of nature are presented as an eternal sequence of metamorphoses of a respective original form, which affect not only botanical phenomena, but the entire process of the development of all living beings.
Botanical script and elegy
The individual stages of the plant genesis from seed to flower shown in the poem correspond to those in the botanical treatise. In Italy he had dealt with the primordial plant and later, to Schiller's critical objection that it was just an idea, replied in consternation that it was a fact of experience. In the further course of his travelogue he switched to other terms and spoke of the “metamorphosis of the plant” or the “legality of plant organization”, with which he dynamized the generative element of the original plant and enriched it with the central element of “development”. He was able to integrate what he had been working on since 1788 in the Italian Journey , published 30 years later .
For Goethe, the individual parts of the plant developed from a process of change during growth. Cotyledons and stems, nodes, flowers and fruit are modifications of the central shape - the leaf . The seed itself contains the rolled up and compacted leaf, the original function of which he repeatedly emphasized, in order to derive from the leaf shape at the same time the "various organs" and "those fruits which tend to close their seeds tightly in themselves." What was sought as the unity in the diversity of the plant parts should now be found in the principle of the leaf.
In his elegy he did not give up the scientific terms of his study, but transformed them into the rhetorical context of the lyric, which is noticeable in the epithets , for example . While factual adjectives determine the style layer in the study , in the poem there are more decorative and characterizing ones. At the beginning of the first chapter of the seed leaves one reads: “It leaves its cover more or less in the earth [...] and in many cases brings the first organs of its upper growth when the roots are fixed in the soil which were already hidden under the seed cover, to the light. ”In the poem, on the other hand, it says:“ They develop from the seed as soon as the earth / silence, humidifying womb releases it into life, / and the charm of light , the holy, ever moving, / recommends the most delicate structure of germinating leaves. "
Special features and interpretation
The elegy documents the priority of intuition , experience and sensuality over abstract generalizations and testifies to Goethe's belief in the harmonizing unity of man and nature. The general can reveal itself in the individual, but the individual must not disappear in the abstraction process. It is admittedly and scientifically sensible to form generalized laws, but the treasure of the particular must not sink into them.
Heide Kalmbach considers the term “elegy” to be appropriate not only because of the elegiac meter. She believes she always recognizes an elegiac keynote when the human sphere is addressed. Goethe designed the poem according to the very laws of morphology it wants to convey. By combining natural science and art, it forms the classic transition between the delicate poetry of the “Roman Elegies” and the value-related poetry, which is shown in Wilhelm Meister's educational laws , the natural attraction of elective affinities and the symbolism of Faust, and already on poetry of age.
According to Reiner Wild, the “beloved” - like the speaker - is the subject of the cognitive process. By understanding art and nature in their essence and starting to reflect, knowledge becomes self-knowledge and the separation of subject and object is overcome. In the harmonious gaze of nature, two people combine to form a couple . The initial address to the “beloved” is only revealed at the end of the elegy - the work becomes a love poem . Goethe not only connects the genesis of the plant with the development of love, but also adds a sensual note to his structure:
By already mentioning the word “pair” at the prominent point above the parts of the flower intended for union ( stylus and stamens ) , he enriches the elegy with an erotic and sexual dimension. He exaggerates the "connection" in the sense of chemical affinity and elective affinity to the "lovely couple", which is surrounded by "wonderful scents" and "hymen", the god of marriage . In accordance with this flower god, he ends up calling it Cupid and thus leads the botanical didactic poem into the love dialogue. “Holy love” is the all-embracing principle that nature carries to humans.
With their love, the couple finally becomes a symbol of the global significance of metamorphosis. Since the unity of poetry and natural science is an essential guiding principle of the classical period , the elegy thus stands for the classical positions of Goethe.
literature
- Maike Arz: The Metamorphosis of Plants. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1. Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-476-01443-6 , pp. 253-257
- Hans Joachim Becker: Metamorphosis. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 4/2. People, things, concepts. Metzler, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-476-01447-9 , pp. 700-702
- Heide Kalmbach: The metamorphosis of plants. Elegy. In: Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. Vol. 6, Munich, 1989, pp. 489-490
- Reiner Wild: The Poetics of Nature. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-15-017504-6 , pp. 149-168
Individual evidence
- ↑ Reiner Wild: The Poetics of Nature. In: Bernd Witte (Hrsg.): Interpretations, poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Stuttgart 2005, p. 152
- ↑ So Erich Trunz : The Metamorphosis of Plants. In: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe's works. Remarks. Hamburg edition, Volume I, CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 615
- ↑ Quoted from: Maike Arz: Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1. Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, p. 253
- ↑ Hans Joachim Becker: Metamorphosis. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 4/2. People, things, concepts. Metzler, Stuttgart 1998, p. 701
- ↑ Reiner Wild: The Poetics of Nature. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Interpretations. Poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, p. 155
- ↑ Reiner Wild: The Poetics of Nature. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Interpretations. Poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, p. 158
- ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Destiny of the print. In: Scientific writings I. Goethe's works. Hamburg edition, Volume XIII, CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 107
- ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Destiny of the handwriting. In: Scientific writings I. Goethe's works. Hamburg edition, Volume XIII, CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 102
- ↑ So Maike Arz: The Metamorphosis of Plants. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1. Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, p. 254
- ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The metamorphosis of plants. In: Goethe's works. Poems and epics I. Hamburg edition, Volume I, CH Beck, Munich 1998, pp. 199–201
- ↑ Maike Arz: The Metamorphosis of Plants. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1. Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, p. 254
- ↑ Hans Joachim Becker: Metamorphosis. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 4/2. People, things, concepts. Metzler, Stuttgart 1998, p. 701
- ↑ So Reiner Wild: The Poetics of Nature. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, p. 162
- ↑ Heide Kalmbach: The Metamorphosis of Plants. Elegy. In: Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. Vol. 6, Munich, 1989, p. 489
- ↑ Heide Kalmbach: The Metamorphosis of Plants. Elegy. In: Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. Vol. 6, Munich, 1989, p. 489
- ↑ Reiner Wild: The Poetics of Nature. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Interpretations. Poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, p. 156
- ↑ Reiner Wild: The Poetics of Nature. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Interpretations. Poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, p. 156
- ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The metamorphosis of plants. In: Goethe's works. Hamburger Ausgabe, Volume XIII, Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften I, CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 101
- ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The metamorphosis of plants. In: Goethe's works. Hamburger Ausgabe, Volume XIII, Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften I, CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 66
- ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The metamorphosis of the plant. Poems and epics I, Goethe's works, Hamburg edition, Volume I, CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 199
- ↑ Reiner Wild: The Poetics of Nature. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, p. 161
- ↑ Heide Kalmbach: The Metamorphosis of Plants. Elegy. In: Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. Vol. 6, Munich, 1989, p. 489
- ↑ Reiner Wild: The Poetics of Nature. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, p. 162
- ↑ Reiner Wild: The Poetics of Nature. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, p. 163
- ↑ Reiner Wild: The Poetics of Nature. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, p. 166