Pamela Currie - Goethes Visual World

GOETHE'S VISUAL WORLD

LEGENDA, founded in 1995 by the European Humanities Research Centre of the University of Oxford, is now a joint imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge. Titles range from medieval texts to contemporary cinema and form a widely comparative view of the modern humanities, including works on Arabic, Catalan, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish literature. An Editorial Board of distinguished academic specialists works in collaboration with leading scholarly bodies such as the Society for French Studies and the British Comparative Literature Association.

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Editorial Committee
Chair: Professor Ritchie Robertson (University of Oxford)
Dr Barbara Burns (Glasgow University)
Professor Jane Fenoulhet (University College London)
Professor Anne Fuchs (University of Warwick)
Dr Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen (University College London)
Dr Almut Suerbaum (University of Oxford)
Professor Susanne Kord (University College London)
Professor John Zilcosky (University of Toronto)

Germanic Literatures includes monographs and essay collections on literature originally written not only in German, but also in Dutch and the Scandinavian languages. Within the German-speaking area, it seeks also to publish studies of other national literatures such as those of Austria and Switzerland. The chronological scope of the series extends from the early Middle Ages down to the present day.

APPEARING IN THIS SERIES

1. vani Gol: The Thwarted Pursuit of the Whole, by Rober tVilain
2. Sebald's Bachelors: Queer Resistance and the Unconforming Life, by Helen Finch
3. Goethe's Visual World , by Pamela Currie
4. German Narratives of Belonging:
Writing Generation and Place in the Twenty-First Century, by Linda Shortt

Managing Editor
Dr Graham Nelson, 41 Wellington Square, Oxford ox1 2JF, UK
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Pamela Currie (19412012 )

Goethes Visual World

Pamela Currie

First published 2013

Published by the
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
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LEGENDA is an imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Modern Humanities Research Association and Taylor & Francis 2013

ISBN 978-1-907975-89-9 (hbk )

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Contents

Guide

On behalf of our mother, Pamela Currie, we would like to express our gratitude to a number of individuals and institutions.

Help in obtaining images was given by the photographic archive staff at the Palazzo Barberini and the Palazzo Pitti, photographer Nicol Orsi Battaglini, and the past and present Directors of the Vatican Museums, Dr Francesco Buranelli and Dr Antonio Paolucci. Dr Guido Cornini of the Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome, and Dr Christofer Conrad of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, enabled our mother to view paintings that were not on display to the public.

The staff of various libraries and archives provided assistance over many years. These include the Goethe-und Schiller-Archiv, the British Library, the Bodleian Library, and the Taylor Institution Library. Although researched and written in retirement, this book has benefitted in various ways from the contributions of former colleagues at Lady Margaret Hall and in the Oxford Sub-Faculty of German.

Professor Jan J. Koenderink of the Buys Ballot Laboratory, University of Utrecht, kindly read and commented on an earlier draft of .

We would like to thank Oxford German Studies for permission to reprint . In the preparation of the manuscript, our series editor Professor Ritchie Robertson, copy-editor Richard Correll, and indexer Sue Dugen have played an important role.

Our heartfelt gratitude goes to Professor T. J. Reed who first conceived of this book and since then has been so generous with his time, support, and knowledge. We are also indebted to Dr Graham Nelson for taking on this project and so expertly guiding it through to completion.

Finally, our mother would have wished to thank our father, Robert Currie, for his unfailing encouragement in this endeavour, as in all others.

Elizabeth and Daniel Currie, London, March 2013

T. J. Reed

The essays collected in this volume are not a loose assemblage but the product of a remarkable and coherent research interest. Not a programme of the kind funding bodies now commonly demand, as if the scope of an enquiry could be delimited before it is undertaken; more a record of being led on from answering one question to asking the next. In the grateful shelter of retirement, Pamela Currie was able to spend ten years freely following where the themes led.

Connectedness was not just a matter of her private curiosity. What began squarely in the field of literary studies, where she had earlier taught, contained the seed of work on psychology, cognition, light and colour, the history and theory of visual art. Connection was possible, indeed given, through the central figure of the essays. Goethe's work and thinking arguably touched the world at more points than those of any other European writer. Most of those points were sensory: from early on he was a man confident in the 'truth of his five senses' and very much a Man of the Eye, an 'Augenmensch', committed to seeing the world aright, and succeeding impressively in doing so.