the classic Magia naturalis et innaturalis was known to Johann W. von Goethe, who, like Gotthold Lessing, saw Faust's pursuit of knowledge as noble; in Goethe's great Faust the hero is redeemed.
Showing posts with label Goethe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Goethe. Show all posts
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Frank von Sepp... illustrations for Faust 1921...
click on image to enlarge
click on image to enlarge
~
Fill your heart to overflowing,
and when you feel profoundest bliss,
then call it what you will:
Good fortune! Heart! Love! or God!
I have no name for it!
Feeling is all;
the name is sound and smoke,
beclouding Heaven's glow.
MEPHISTOPHELES The modest truth I speak to thee.
If Man, the microcosmic fool, can see
Himself a whole so frequently,
Part of the Part am I, once All, in primal Night,--
Part of the Darkness which brought forth the Light,
The haughty light, which mow disputes the space,
And claims of Mother Night her ancient place.
And yet, the struggle fails; since Light, however weaves,
Still, fettered, unto bodies cleaves:
It flows from bodies, bodies beautifies;
By bodies is its course impeded;
And so, but little time is needed,
I hope, ere, as the bodies die, it dies!
If Man, the microcosmic fool, can see
Himself a whole so frequently,
Part of the Part am I, once All, in primal Night,--
Part of the Darkness which brought forth the Light,
The haughty light, which mow disputes the space,
And claims of Mother Night her ancient place.
And yet, the struggle fails; since Light, however weaves,
Still, fettered, unto bodies cleaves:
It flows from bodies, bodies beautifies;
By bodies is its course impeded;
And so, but little time is needed,
I hope, ere, as the bodies die, it dies!
from Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
previous von Sepp
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832)...Zur Farbenlehre ...bookplate 1810
"To divide the united, to unite the divided, is the life of nature; this is the eternal systole and diastole, the eternal collapsion and expansion, the inspiration and expiration of the world in which we move." ~ Goethe
Based on his experiments with turbid media, Goethe characterized colour as arising from the dynamic interplay of darkness and light. Rudolf Steiner gives the following analogy:
Modern natural science sees darkness as a complete nothingness. According to this view, the light which streams into a dark space has no resistance from the darkness to overcome. Goethe pictures to himself that light and darkness relate to each other like the north and south pole of a magnet. The darkness can weaken the light in its working power. Conversely, the light can limit the energy of the darkness. In both cases color arises.
—Rudolf Steiner, 1897 >
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