DOI Artikel:
Szybisty, Tomasz: Between light and shadows: reflecting on varied conceptual perspectives on the peculiar lambency suffusing gothic churches as evidenced by German literature from the latter decades of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51154#0009
8
before it had been shining full, that she awoke to posses-
sion of herself, and hastened back to the castle.16
In the wake of that inspiring moment, one of the entries
in Ottilies diary takes the following form: ‘The coloured
window panes convert the day into a solemn twilight;
and some one should set up for us an ever-burning lamp,
that the night might not be utter darkness’.17 Thanks to
the dimmed colourful light pervading the chapel, the eye
can consummate a synthesis of the disparate elements of
Gothic architecture, and this is the only perceptual envi-
ronment capable of imparting unified ‘integrity’ to other-
wise discrete components. (An account of the same rev-
elation can be found in Goethe’s juvenile text about Stras-
burg cathedral.) The unique luminosity induces in the
beneficiary of that mystical experience a sense of spiritual
darkness, which, however, subsides when physical dark-
ness sets in and the rays of the sun stop glittering through
the panels of the stained glass. As the plot unfolds, it be-
comes clear that this darkness descending on the recipi-
ent of the experience portends and prefigures death, for
one year after her vision Ottilie succumbs to anorexic self-
annihilation and dies. Her mortal remains are deposed in
the chapel, which represents the fulfilment of the pre-
monition at the beginning of the novel: the chapel turns
into a sarcophagus edifice. Therefore, in Goethe’s world,
a Gothic interior constitutes a buffering halfway station
between temporality and the eternity of afterlife, and the
key element responsible for its simultaneous heterotopic
nature is none other than subdued, coloured light.
If we cross-reference Elective Affinities and the oth-
er previously cited eighteenth century works, two im-
portant, symptomatic changes can be isolated. The first
change highlighted the part played by the subdued illu-
mination as being conducive to a supra-rational insight
into reality, whereas the second concerned the quality of
that light per se. The latter development seems to have
been grounded in the fact that the sheer atmospherics of
the Gothic penumbra had first trumped any chromatic
aspects, which is borne out by ample evidence, deriving
from Goethe’s juvenile text, from Herder’s and Spieß’s fix-
ation on the uncanny atmospherics and their marginal-
ization of colour, and last but not least, from Heinses and
Forster’s accounts.
Although the colourful light pervading the chapel de-
scribed by Goethe could be interpreted in direct conjunc-
tion with his theory of colour, whose studious elaboration
coincided with the writing of Elective Affinities,18 the viv-
16 J.W. Goethe, Elective Affinities, Boston, 1872, p. 170.
17 Ibidem, p. 172.
18 T. Critzmann, Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften als Jahresmärchen,
pp. 239-244 (as in note 15); see also C. Brodsky, ‘The Coloring
of Relations: Die Wahlverwandtschaften as Farbenlehre’, Modern
Language Notes, 97,1982, no. 5, pp. 1147-1179; M. Fancelli, “‘Die
Farbenlehre” und “Die Wahlverwandtschaften”, in Goethe und
die Natur. Referate des Triestiner Kongresses, ed. by H.A. Glaser,
Frankfurt am Main, Bern and New York, 1986, pp. 177-186.
idly mystical component of Ottilies vision seems to sug-
gest that the author included here an ironic allusion to the
Romantic understanding of darkness and colours, which
went a long way towards a new interpretation of Gothic
architecture.
Indeed, by calling into question the presumption of the
omnipotence of rational knowledge, symbolized by light,
Romanticism jumpstarted profound paradigm shifts in
the realm of symbology. Thus, shade, ‘a different incarna-
tion of light’ signifying knowledge that is supra-rational,
intuitive and revealed, was elevated to the status of being
positively contrapuntal to light. Nothing could have bet-
ter crystallized this new kind of mentality than Novalis’s
Hymnen an die Nacht (1800), where it was darkness that
was portrayed as the source of gnostic illumination. Less
than two decades had passed when Eberhard von Grote
couched this sentiment even more explicitly, coining the
notion of the ‘tranquil nightliness’19 of mystical, Gothic
cathedrals. Yet, almost in the same breath, he acknowl-
edged that it would be a real challenge for his contempo-
raries, brought up in and conditioned by the Enlighten-
ment’s fetish-like reverence for the light of reason, to ac-
commodate their senses to such cathedrals’ dark interiors
and understand medieval architecture as such. The twilit
premises of Gothic churches also commanded the inter-
est of Hegel, who believed that they were a perfect exter-
nalization of the Christian spirit, seeking internal peace,
and detachment from materiality, thereby facilitating sub-
limation of temporality.20
However, the romantic pivot to darkness, taking place
at the turn of the nineteenth century, was not so much
bent on subverting the metaphoric significance of light as
championed by Enlightenment; instead, it strove to cre-
atively ‘juxtapose opposites in order to attain all the more
profound understanding’.21 To once again invoke the ex-
ample of Novalis’s Hymnen an die Nacht, the night, epon-
ymously used in the title, is not construed as ultimate
darkness and an affirmation of death, but as a conjunction
of darkness and light, approximating a moment of libera-
tion obliterating the ‘dichotomy of night and day, being
me and not-me at once’.22
19 E. von Grote, ‘Vorwort. Bilder der Zeiten, in Taschenbuch für
Freunde altdeutscher Zeit und Kunst auf das Jahr 1816, Cologne,
1816, p. XI.
20 G.WE Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik, ed. by D.H.G. Ho-
tho, vol. 2, Berlin, 1837, p. 335; cf. W Balus, “‘La cathédrale” of Jo-
ris-Karl Huysmans and the Symbolical Interpretation of the Gothic
Cathedral in the 19th Century’, Artibus et Historiae, 57, 2008, p. 168.
21 A.K. Haas, ‘Światłości pełne światła. Niemiecka literatura i ma-
larstwo przełomu osiemnastego i dziewiętnastego wieku wobec
problemu (samo)poznania’, Ethos, 30, 2017, no. 3 (119), p. 191.
22 G. von Molnar, ‘Novalis’ “blaue Blume” im Blickfeld von Goe-
thes Optik’, in Novalis. Beiträge zu Werk und Persönlichkeit Fried-
rich von Hardenbergs, ed. by G. Schulz, Darmstadt, 1986 (Wege
der Forschung, 248), p. 443.
before it had been shining full, that she awoke to posses-
sion of herself, and hastened back to the castle.16
In the wake of that inspiring moment, one of the entries
in Ottilies diary takes the following form: ‘The coloured
window panes convert the day into a solemn twilight;
and some one should set up for us an ever-burning lamp,
that the night might not be utter darkness’.17 Thanks to
the dimmed colourful light pervading the chapel, the eye
can consummate a synthesis of the disparate elements of
Gothic architecture, and this is the only perceptual envi-
ronment capable of imparting unified ‘integrity’ to other-
wise discrete components. (An account of the same rev-
elation can be found in Goethe’s juvenile text about Stras-
burg cathedral.) The unique luminosity induces in the
beneficiary of that mystical experience a sense of spiritual
darkness, which, however, subsides when physical dark-
ness sets in and the rays of the sun stop glittering through
the panels of the stained glass. As the plot unfolds, it be-
comes clear that this darkness descending on the recipi-
ent of the experience portends and prefigures death, for
one year after her vision Ottilie succumbs to anorexic self-
annihilation and dies. Her mortal remains are deposed in
the chapel, which represents the fulfilment of the pre-
monition at the beginning of the novel: the chapel turns
into a sarcophagus edifice. Therefore, in Goethe’s world,
a Gothic interior constitutes a buffering halfway station
between temporality and the eternity of afterlife, and the
key element responsible for its simultaneous heterotopic
nature is none other than subdued, coloured light.
If we cross-reference Elective Affinities and the oth-
er previously cited eighteenth century works, two im-
portant, symptomatic changes can be isolated. The first
change highlighted the part played by the subdued illu-
mination as being conducive to a supra-rational insight
into reality, whereas the second concerned the quality of
that light per se. The latter development seems to have
been grounded in the fact that the sheer atmospherics of
the Gothic penumbra had first trumped any chromatic
aspects, which is borne out by ample evidence, deriving
from Goethe’s juvenile text, from Herder’s and Spieß’s fix-
ation on the uncanny atmospherics and their marginal-
ization of colour, and last but not least, from Heinses and
Forster’s accounts.
Although the colourful light pervading the chapel de-
scribed by Goethe could be interpreted in direct conjunc-
tion with his theory of colour, whose studious elaboration
coincided with the writing of Elective Affinities,18 the viv-
16 J.W. Goethe, Elective Affinities, Boston, 1872, p. 170.
17 Ibidem, p. 172.
18 T. Critzmann, Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften als Jahresmärchen,
pp. 239-244 (as in note 15); see also C. Brodsky, ‘The Coloring
of Relations: Die Wahlverwandtschaften as Farbenlehre’, Modern
Language Notes, 97,1982, no. 5, pp. 1147-1179; M. Fancelli, “‘Die
Farbenlehre” und “Die Wahlverwandtschaften”, in Goethe und
die Natur. Referate des Triestiner Kongresses, ed. by H.A. Glaser,
Frankfurt am Main, Bern and New York, 1986, pp. 177-186.
idly mystical component of Ottilies vision seems to sug-
gest that the author included here an ironic allusion to the
Romantic understanding of darkness and colours, which
went a long way towards a new interpretation of Gothic
architecture.
Indeed, by calling into question the presumption of the
omnipotence of rational knowledge, symbolized by light,
Romanticism jumpstarted profound paradigm shifts in
the realm of symbology. Thus, shade, ‘a different incarna-
tion of light’ signifying knowledge that is supra-rational,
intuitive and revealed, was elevated to the status of being
positively contrapuntal to light. Nothing could have bet-
ter crystallized this new kind of mentality than Novalis’s
Hymnen an die Nacht (1800), where it was darkness that
was portrayed as the source of gnostic illumination. Less
than two decades had passed when Eberhard von Grote
couched this sentiment even more explicitly, coining the
notion of the ‘tranquil nightliness’19 of mystical, Gothic
cathedrals. Yet, almost in the same breath, he acknowl-
edged that it would be a real challenge for his contempo-
raries, brought up in and conditioned by the Enlighten-
ment’s fetish-like reverence for the light of reason, to ac-
commodate their senses to such cathedrals’ dark interiors
and understand medieval architecture as such. The twilit
premises of Gothic churches also commanded the inter-
est of Hegel, who believed that they were a perfect exter-
nalization of the Christian spirit, seeking internal peace,
and detachment from materiality, thereby facilitating sub-
limation of temporality.20
However, the romantic pivot to darkness, taking place
at the turn of the nineteenth century, was not so much
bent on subverting the metaphoric significance of light as
championed by Enlightenment; instead, it strove to cre-
atively ‘juxtapose opposites in order to attain all the more
profound understanding’.21 To once again invoke the ex-
ample of Novalis’s Hymnen an die Nacht, the night, epon-
ymously used in the title, is not construed as ultimate
darkness and an affirmation of death, but as a conjunction
of darkness and light, approximating a moment of libera-
tion obliterating the ‘dichotomy of night and day, being
me and not-me at once’.22
19 E. von Grote, ‘Vorwort. Bilder der Zeiten, in Taschenbuch für
Freunde altdeutscher Zeit und Kunst auf das Jahr 1816, Cologne,
1816, p. XI.
20 G.WE Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik, ed. by D.H.G. Ho-
tho, vol. 2, Berlin, 1837, p. 335; cf. W Balus, “‘La cathédrale” of Jo-
ris-Karl Huysmans and the Symbolical Interpretation of the Gothic
Cathedral in the 19th Century’, Artibus et Historiae, 57, 2008, p. 168.
21 A.K. Haas, ‘Światłości pełne światła. Niemiecka literatura i ma-
larstwo przełomu osiemnastego i dziewiętnastego wieku wobec
problemu (samo)poznania’, Ethos, 30, 2017, no. 3 (119), p. 191.
22 G. von Molnar, ‘Novalis’ “blaue Blume” im Blickfeld von Goe-
thes Optik’, in Novalis. Beiträge zu Werk und Persönlichkeit Fried-
rich von Hardenbergs, ed. by G. Schulz, Darmstadt, 1986 (Wege
der Forschung, 248), p. 443.