Bishop, P. (2013) From the archaic into the aesthetic: myth and literature in the "Orphic" Goethe. In: Burnett, L., Bahun, S. and Main, R. (eds.) Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious. Karnac Books: London, UK, pp. 189-210. ISBN 9781782200024
Full text not currently available from Enlighten.
Abstract
Goethe’s interest in neo-Platonism is well documented, particularly as mediated through the work of Plotinus (see P.F. Reiff, 1912; H.F. Müller, 1915-1919; F. Koch, 1925; and Hansen, 2005). At first glance, his late poem Primal Words. Orphic looks like a series of initiatory invocations, leading the reader from a (daimonic) world (in ΛΑΙΜΩΝ), via a process of transformation (in ΤΥΧΗ), to a (loving) encounter with the ineffable One (in ΕΡΩΣ). As Goethe’s subsequent notes on the poem make clear, however, this initiation can also be understood in a psycho-existential sense; and his poem takes us beyond the (neo-Platonic) One to a consideration of the dialectical relation between freedom and necessity (in ΑΝΑΓΚΗ) and finally (in ΕΛΠΙΣ) to a transcendence of Time and Space themselves. This paper examines the relationship between the intellectual background to Goethe’s composition of this text — his reception of Creuzer and Hermann, and his involvement with the early nineteenth-century debate about myth — and reads it as an aesthetic transformation of ancient Orphic teaching.
Item Type: | Book Sections |
---|---|
Keywords: | aesthetic; archaic; Goethe; Orphic |
Status: | Published |
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: | Bishop, Professor Paul |
Authors: | Bishop, P. |
College/School: | College of Arts & Humanities > School of Modern Languages and Cultures > German |
Publisher: | Karnac Books |
ISBN: | 9781782200024 |
University Staff: Request a correction | Enlighten Editors: Update this record