Goethe

Rêves et cauchemars, les créatures de la nuit

by Jacques Coulardeau

Nous rêvons tous. Nous faisons tous des cauchemars. Nous savons tous que la démarcation entre les deux est fragile et floue. Leur meilleure représentation est Janus, cette numina de Rome qui avait deux visages, l’un jeune et l’autre vieux, faisant face à deux portes qui n’étaient fermées que quand Rome était en paix. Et elles n’ont été fermées que trois fois dans les sept siècles d’histoire romaine. Rêves et cauchemars sont les créatures de nos nuits, une réalité à deux visages qui n’en finit pas d’être. Tout art, tout artiste et chacun de nous avons toujours été fascinés par ces créatures de la nuit et leur réalité double. Bons ou mauvais ? Annonçant le futur ou se souvenant du passé ? Reflétant nos désirs ou les amplifiant ? Ils sont les moteurs fondamentaux de notre imaginaire, la force essentielle de notre créativité. Les arts sont comme les rêves et les cauchemars de notre vie. Les artistes condensent dans leurs œuvres tous les rêves et tous les cauchemars qu’ils ont jamais eus, ou que l’humanité dans son ensemble a eus au cours de son histoire séculaire. Les arts se souviennent du passé de l’humanité et en même temps reflètent son présent et imaginent son futur.

C’est cette relativité du théâtre, de l’opéra, de la musique, de tout art de scène qui est pour moi la chose la plus... more C’est cette relativité du théâtre, de l’opéra, de la musique, de tout art de scène qui est pour moi la chose la plus intéressante et inspirante. J’ai essayé de montrer combien on pouvait aller loin dans cette perspective, même si je suis convaincu que l’on pourrait aller plus loin et que certains souhaiteront probablement le faire. Let them be welcome to do so. En anglais dans le texte : grand bien leur fasse. Après tout, dans les arts créatifs, tout comme dans la technologie, le ciel et seulement le ciel est notre limite, même si Don Giovanni y monte pour s’y trouver carbonisé : après tout il n’est qu’un vampire. God bless the child and let’s seize the day. En anglais dans le texte à nouveau : que Dieu bénisse l’enfant et saisissons l’opportunité qui se présente.

DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES THE CREATURES OF THE NIGHT

by Jacques Coulardeau

That is this relativity of drama, opera, music, all stage arts that is for me most interesting and inspiring. I have tried to show how far we could go, even if I am convinced we could even go farther and some will probably wish to do so. After all, in creative arts, just like in technology, the sky and only the sky is the limit, even if Don Giovanni gets cremated up there : he is a vampire. God bless the child and let’s seize the day.

SYNOPSIS

Introduction p.1
1- The opera Don Giovanni p.1
2- The film Mary Shelley’s... more SYNOPSIS

Introduction p.1
1- The opera Don Giovanni p.1
2- The film Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein p.3
Goethe’s Prometheus p.5
3- Louis Richard’s Marionnettes p.5
Polichinelle, Tyll Eulenspiegel
Jules Mousseron p.7
4- Music p.7
William Byrd p.7
Clemens Non Papa p.8
5- Goethe’s play Egmont p.9
Egmont p.9
A Midsummer Night’s Dream p.11
Goethe’s Faust p.12
Marshall McLuhan p.13
6- Other cases of media mixing or hybridization p.15
Old Hall Manuscript p.15
Elizabethan times and the Commonwealth p.16
Queen Mary II and Purcell p.17
Purcell’s King Arthur p.18
Romeo and Juliet : Shakespeare and Bellini p. 23
7- Antonio Caldara’s Mad(d)alena a Piedi di Christo p.23
8- Who is Grendel’s Mother ? [Beowulf] p.29
A./ GOING DOING INTO THE DEN p.29
B./ THE FIGHT ITSELF WITH THE MOTHER AND ITS END p.32
CONCLUSIONS p.36
9- The cathartic value or functioning of the nightmare p.37
Death and the survival instinct p.37
Ron Hubbard’s mistake p.38
Lavadieu and La Chaise-Dieu
Death and Danse Macabre p.38
The first cathartic value
Greek theatre p.39
The second cathartic value
Urban paranoia
Dreamcatcher
The Green Mile
The Storm of the Century p.39
The third cathartic value
Wes Craven and Hitchcock
Thriller p.40
The fourth cathartic value
American History X
Surface meaning and subliminal meaning p.41
1- Epiphany : final equilibrium and regeneration
Hamlet, As You Like It, Richard III, La Nozza di Figaro
Blue Soldier, Little Big Man, Dances with Wolves p.42
2-The power of the press
The Dead Zone, Firestarter p.42
3-Christ revisited
The Stand, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Passions,
Madalena a Piedi di Christo p.42
4- Identification with the hero who kills the monster or the nightmare
Dracula, Beowulf, Frankenstein p.43
5- Rejection of the hero
Psycho, American Psycho p.43
6- The Virgin Island
Mouning Becomes Elektra, Death of a Salesman,
Mr Sammler’s Planet p.43
7- Memory
Ravelstein p.43
8- The Killing of the Mother
The Queen of the Damned, Anne Rice p.43
9- The opening of a double entendre or double meaning
The Taming of the Shrew p.44
Conclusions p.46
Notice Biographique p.48

'Nietzsche's Goethe: In Sickness and in Health', Publications of the English Goethe Society, 77 (2008), 113–124.

by Nick Martin

Originally presented as an invited paper to the English Goethe Society, April 2007.

Goethe's Asses: Wilhelm Meister's Apuleian Theology of Curiosity and the Prospect of a World Literature

by Anthony Curtis Adler

From a Philosophy of Self to a Philosophy of Nature: Goethe and the Development of Schelling's Naturphilosophie

by Dalia Nassar

published in Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 92:3 (2010): 304-321.

This essay won the prize for "best essay published in the year 2010 on Goethe, his times, and/or contemporary figures," awarded by the Goethe Society of North America (GSNA).

One of the most significant moments in the development of German idealism is Schelling's break from his mentor Fichte.... more One of the most significant moments in the development of German idealism is Schelling's break from his mentor Fichte. On account of its significance, there have been numerous studies examining the origin and meaning of this transition in Schelling's thought. Not one study, however, considers Goethe's influence on Schelling's development. This is surprising given the fact that in the fall of 1799 Goethe and Schelling meet every day for a week, to go through and edit what came to be Schelling's most path-breaking work. This paper considers Goethe's influence on the development of Schelling's thought, and argues that it was by appropriating Goethe's idea of metamorphosis that Schelling was able to put forth a conception of nature as independent from the mind.

Thomas Mann, leitor de Goethe: O fardo da naturalidade em "Viagem à Itália" e "Morte em Veneza"

by Pedro Caldas

Um Fausto e seu Mefistófeles: o mito de Fausto na obra Macário, de álvares de Azevedo

by Francisco Innocencio

« Le théâtre à l’ère des Lumières néohelléniques », στον τόμο Grèce: 1770-1844. Lumières et Liberté [φυλλάδιο συνοδευτικό της έκθεσης που διοργανώθηκε στο Institut et Musée Voltaire (Château des Délices), 20 mars - 26 septembre 2009], Genève 2009, σσ. 47-64.

by Anna Tabaki

Goethe's Way of Science as a Phenomenology of Nature (2005)

by David Seamon

Published in JANUS HEAD, Summer 2005, vol. 8, no. 1 [special issue on "Goethe's delicate empiricism"]

In this article, I argue that Goethe’s way of science, understood as a phenomenology of nature, might be one valuable... more In this article, I argue that Goethe’s way of science, understood as a phenomenology of nature, might be one valuable means for fostering a deeper sense of responsibility and care for the natural world. By providing a conceptual and lived means to allow the natural world to present itself in a way by which it might speak if it were able, Goethe’s method offers one conceptual and applied means to bypass the reductive accounts of nature typically produced by standard scientific and humanist perspectives. I illustrate this possibility largely through examples from Goethe’s Theory of Color (1810).

"Goethe's Analysis of Exodus 34 and Its Influence on Julius Wellhausen: The Pfropfung of the Documentary Hypothesis."

by Bernard M. Levinson

Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 114 (2002) 212-223.

This article investigates the intellectual history of the argument for the antiquity of Ex 34,11–26. In the... more This article investigates the intellectual history of the argument for the antiquity of Ex 34,11–26. In the contemporary debate about pentateuchal theory, a question that remains insufficiently addressed is how and why the idea originally developed that the unit represents an ancient, independent, pre-Deuteronomic legal source. Wellhausen credited the idea to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s »Zwo bisher unerörterte biblische Fragen …« (1773). Like Goethe, Wellhausen regarded the unit as a »ritual Decalogue,« in contrast to the »ethical Decalogue« of Exodus 20. The distinction helped Wellhausen consolidate the classical model of the documentary hypothesis: he attributed the cultic Decalogue to the Yahwist and the ethical one to the Elohist. Despite the importance of Goethe’s essay to the history of pentateuchal criticism, it is not clear that its arguments have previously been investigated. The article addresses equally Goethe's construction of the Jew as "other" and as particularistic, in contrast to the German Protestant as "self" and universal. The article demonstrates that Goethe could not have read read Spinoza's Tractatus, despite the common belief otherwise.

Keywords:
Julius Wellhausen, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Baruch Spinoza, Zwo bisher unerörterte biblische Fragen, Dekalog, Decalolgue, cultic Decalog, ethical Decalog, German Jewish history, Christian Jewish relations, Ten Commandments, history of biblical scholarship, Exod 34:11-26; German Romanticism

The Great Snape Debate

by Peter Appelbaum

Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies

Not only was the story really all about Snape, and not about, say, Harry. It turns out Snape is a key to many things,... more Not only was the story really all about Snape, and not about, say, Harry. It turns out Snape is a key to many things, as is typically the main character in the  Bildungsroman tradition. Snape is important because he helps us think about the limits of what we can know about the contradictions of liberal educational philosophy, including the politics of aesthetics.

The Art of Nature: Alchemy, Goethe, and a New Aesthetic Consciousness

by Seth Miller

This essay explores the building of a new aesthetic consciousness, working out of insights from alchemy, into a new... more This essay explores the building of a new aesthetic consciousness, working out of insights from alchemy, into a new aesthetic method of observing brought forth by Goethe, and ending with a
brief mention of the way this stream was taken further with the works of Rudolf Steiner.  I present an evocative picture of the development of this new consciousness, which Goethe felt
dissolved the subject/object boundary, and give a series of images and related videos as a part of a brief practical example of how this consciousness can be developed.  I invite you, the reader, to participate actively in your reading of this work, as if you were viewing an artistic piece, to get into a mood suitable for engagement with the content herein.