Goethe's Colors: Revolutionary Optics and the Anthropocene
Abstract:For Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832), a study of colors expresses the morphological and metamorphic processes of the active natural world, energized by the sunlight, that grow, live, and crystallize into ever new forms. Rather than focusing on static objects, Goethe saw the natural—and social—world as an expression of ongoing processes. Colors are, above all, actively developing components of a world in fux, not fxed entities. Newton, he wrote, was wrong in that he studied light as if it were an isolated feature and not an interactive part of the world. Newton's breakdown of white light into the spectrum of colors is accurate, of course; what Goethe recognized, in contrast, is the more complex and muddied realm of perception and relations between and among things and observers, studied in quantum mechanics and the new materialisms. In other words, these felds and Goethe postulate that our physical world and human existence are part of manifold engagements between energy, matter, living things, and mental perception. We are never truly "outside" of the system that we study, though most of empirical science assumes that we are or could be or at least should strive to be when undertaking objective studies. With this vision, Goethe offers what I call a proto-"ecological theory of colors" at the beginning of the newly defned geological era of the Anthropocene when human activities have left traces on environmental systems across the entire Earth.
Ecocriticism, Goethe’s Optics and Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten: Emergent Forms versus Newtonian “Constructions”
Long viewed as an anomalous assemblage of tales formulating either social or aesthetic developments, Goethe’s Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten, in fact, presents a sequence of perceptual categories relating to his optics and his exploration of our interface with the physical world around us. From the troublingly inexplicable sounds of the ghost stories through the embrace and renunciation of physical desires to the final, idealized visual spectrum of the Märchen’s colors and lights, the tales’ path explores how physical perception is enmeshed with interpretation. Hence the Unterhaltungen relates to ecocriticism’s interrogation of human- nature environments in that both Goethe and ecocriticism seek to change our perception itself so that we might recognize the “emergent forms” in which we inevitably participate (rather than simply “control” them). Both also seek to comprehend the artificiality of the damaging “constructions” wrought by Newtonian science (according to Goethe) or by the view that the natural world is naught but static material awaiting our “enlivenment.” (HIS)
Farther Afield in the Study of Nature-Oriented Literature
In the 1990s, the emerging field of ecocriticism nature-sensitive literary studies began to establish and define itself. Arguing that the field has matured to the point where it requires a thorough critique and new theoretical underpinnings, Patrick D. Murphy suggests a variety of ways ecocriticism can become more inclusive in its objects of study and more sophisticated in its methodologies.According to Murphy, ecocriticism in the United States has been too narrowly associated with the study of nonfiction. To broaden the field's purview, he proposes a new taxonomy that draws an important distinction between nature writing a nonfiction essay form descended from Henry David Thoreau nature literature, which includes fiction and poetry, and environmental literature, which is inspired by and concerned with a threatened natural world. He also urges ecocritics to expand their study to international literature, and he proceeds to survey nature-oriented prose from Central America, the Caribbean, southern Africa, Spain, and Japan.On a theoretical level, Murphy addresses the relationship of ecofeminism to postmodernism and provides interpretations of contemporary American multicultural and women's literature, including works by Gary Snyder, Simon Ortiz, Jane Brox, Pat Mora, Lori Anderson, Nora Naranjo-Morse, Sallie Tisdale, and Terry Tempest Williams. Applying his theories of ecocritical analysis to underappreciated or unknown literature, especially fiction and poetry by American women writers of color, Murphy introduces his fellow critics to authors ripe for ecocritical analysis.Murphy's wide-ranging book will no doubt serve as a watershed in the development of ecocriticism."