DOI article:
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 Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51154#0011
10
cated to extolling the virtues of Cologne cathedral, Wil-
helm Smets dwells on the colourful radiance pervading
its interior. The poet compares it to ‘the blue of the pur-
est ether’, which may represent an allusion to the roman-
tic interpretation of this colour. In addition, in the same
sonnet, we read about ‘the wonderful light’ and an image
which is reminiscent of‘a pink-and-golden wave of a veil’,
woven by the morning dew.34 Indeed, it is by virtue of such
gleaming, shiny colours that the interior is perceived by
Smets as a space that is religious per se. Still, the sonnet
that follows focuses on the shadows enveloping the inside
of the cathedral. And yet the juxtaposition of that dark-
ness of the interior of the cathedral with the complete im-
penetrability of the night and the brightness of the day,
together alternating outside and incessantly splitting the
lyrical subject, warrants the hypothesis that for Smets the
interior of the cathedral is filled with twilight rather than
complete darkness. The shaded premises of the church
are a space to which the external world is given no ac-
cess, completely exempt from the mutability of the times
of day, nor is there any room for quotidian afflictions be-
setting the soul. Such distractions have to yield to pious
contemplation, which guides believers to ‘the column of
eternal light’ and transmutes the interior of the cathedral
into the garden of paradise.35
Even though the space of a Gothic church, steeped in
a multi-coloured glow, was habitually perceived as the an-
teroom leading to a metaphysical reality, it was also plau-
sible to put other constructions on that reality. For exam-
ple, in Goethe’s poem entitled Gedichte sind gemalte Fen-
sterscheiben, published in 1827, the church, saturated with
radiance pouring through the colourful glass, becomes
an environment lending itself to aesthetic illumination,
a shrine impenetrable to philistines’ eyes because from
the outsider vantage point nothing but darkness can be
spotted inside.
Poems are stained-glass windows which, when seen
By looking in from the great square outside,
Through gloom and dark reveal of light no sign.
That is the vision of the philistine
Who may in lifelong sullenness abide
Because of it, morose of mind and mien.
But come inside, and from within survey
The sacred house with reverent, joyful cheer.
The colours now at once shine bright and clear,
And history and ornament appear,
Significant and noble their display.
Children of God, that is a goodly sight;
Be edified, and give your eyes delight!36 * *
34 W. Smets, Eintritt, in idem, Gedichte, Aachen, 1824, p. 18.
35 W. Smets, Weihe, in idem, Gedichte, p. 19 (as in note 34).
36 Translation sourced from E.G. Stanley, ‘The Early Middle Ages
= The Dark Ages = The Heroic Age of England in English’, in The
Of course, when it came to the factors underlying the shift
in the perception of the significance of the unique qual-
ity of light filling Gothic churches, in addition to such
contributing factors as the new understanding of dark-
ness and the novel metaphysical interpretation of colours,
we ought to acknowledge also a transformative process
whereby the Middle Ages came to be credited with a pe-
culiar brand of devout religiosity, lofty feelings, and social
harmony, and were also perceived as a period in which
the German national character was in its heyday. This is
the accolade given to the Middle Ages by Wilhelm Hein-
rich Wackenroder and Eudwig Tieck in their seminal,
groundbreaking publication entitled Herzensergießungen
eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders, released in 1797. The
thrust of their arguments boils down to the statement that
the development of German art in that period reached its
peak in Dürers time.
The intermeshing of the national and religious spheres,
so conspicuous in Wackenroder and Tieck’s text, gained
reinforced traction especially during the period of the
Napoleonic wars. Tailored to the propaganda demands
of the day, the necessarily disparaging and oversimplified
stereotype of the French (who were associated with Lati-
nized culture and perceived as beholden to the Romano-
Hellenic heritage) led to the consolidation of the German
people and rallied them around nationalist and Germanic
battle cries. As claimed by Jost Hermand, the inventory
of patriotic propaganda symbols drew upon the imagery
of the Middle Ages and the Gothic, notions of Germanic
identity, the culture of the North and the legend of Os-
sian.37 All of this provided nutritious fodder for nurtur-
ing a shared identity. The subdued ambient light of Goth-
ic shrines, which was, incidentally, highly emblematic of
the atmosphere of Macpherson’s Fragments of Ancient Po-
etry (which captured the imagination and favourably re-
fashioned people’s vision of the non-classical, northern
counterpart of the dim and distant ‘ancient past’), was
obviously harnessed as part of the politicized imagery.
That symbol appropriation was all the easier because the
metaphoric significance of such dim light could be easily
linked to the allegedly Germanic roots of the Gothic style,
typified by lancet-like curves.
In 1816, when the fervour of the resurgent patriotic
campaign directed against Napoleon was still far from be-
ing over, Friedrich Wilhelm Carové characterized Goth-
ic cathedrals as ‘idealized, art-enhanced forest shrines of
old-time Germanic peoples’.38 Elsewhere in his study on
medieval art, he observes that Germanic peoples, intu-
Middle Ages after the Middle Ages in the English-speaking World,
ed. by M.-E Alamichel, D. Brewer, Cambridge, 1997, p. 67.
37 J. Hermand, ‘Die gescheiterte Hoffnung. Zur Malerei der Befrei-
ungskriege’, in idem, Avantgarde und Regression. 200 Jahre Deut-
sche Kunst, Leipzig, 1995, p. 14.
38 EW. Carové, Ansichten der Kunst des deutschen Mittelalters’, in
Taschenbuch für Freunde altdeutscher Zeit und Kunst auf das Jahr
1816, p. 73 (as in note 19).
cated to extolling the virtues of Cologne cathedral, Wil-
helm Smets dwells on the colourful radiance pervading
its interior. The poet compares it to ‘the blue of the pur-
est ether’, which may represent an allusion to the roman-
tic interpretation of this colour. In addition, in the same
sonnet, we read about ‘the wonderful light’ and an image
which is reminiscent of‘a pink-and-golden wave of a veil’,
woven by the morning dew.34 Indeed, it is by virtue of such
gleaming, shiny colours that the interior is perceived by
Smets as a space that is religious per se. Still, the sonnet
that follows focuses on the shadows enveloping the inside
of the cathedral. And yet the juxtaposition of that dark-
ness of the interior of the cathedral with the complete im-
penetrability of the night and the brightness of the day,
together alternating outside and incessantly splitting the
lyrical subject, warrants the hypothesis that for Smets the
interior of the cathedral is filled with twilight rather than
complete darkness. The shaded premises of the church
are a space to which the external world is given no ac-
cess, completely exempt from the mutability of the times
of day, nor is there any room for quotidian afflictions be-
setting the soul. Such distractions have to yield to pious
contemplation, which guides believers to ‘the column of
eternal light’ and transmutes the interior of the cathedral
into the garden of paradise.35
Even though the space of a Gothic church, steeped in
a multi-coloured glow, was habitually perceived as the an-
teroom leading to a metaphysical reality, it was also plau-
sible to put other constructions on that reality. For exam-
ple, in Goethe’s poem entitled Gedichte sind gemalte Fen-
sterscheiben, published in 1827, the church, saturated with
radiance pouring through the colourful glass, becomes
an environment lending itself to aesthetic illumination,
a shrine impenetrable to philistines’ eyes because from
the outsider vantage point nothing but darkness can be
spotted inside.
Poems are stained-glass windows which, when seen
By looking in from the great square outside,
Through gloom and dark reveal of light no sign.
That is the vision of the philistine
Who may in lifelong sullenness abide
Because of it, morose of mind and mien.
But come inside, and from within survey
The sacred house with reverent, joyful cheer.
The colours now at once shine bright and clear,
And history and ornament appear,
Significant and noble their display.
Children of God, that is a goodly sight;
Be edified, and give your eyes delight!36 * *
34 W. Smets, Eintritt, in idem, Gedichte, Aachen, 1824, p. 18.
35 W. Smets, Weihe, in idem, Gedichte, p. 19 (as in note 34).
36 Translation sourced from E.G. Stanley, ‘The Early Middle Ages
= The Dark Ages = The Heroic Age of England in English’, in The
Of course, when it came to the factors underlying the shift
in the perception of the significance of the unique qual-
ity of light filling Gothic churches, in addition to such
contributing factors as the new understanding of dark-
ness and the novel metaphysical interpretation of colours,
we ought to acknowledge also a transformative process
whereby the Middle Ages came to be credited with a pe-
culiar brand of devout religiosity, lofty feelings, and social
harmony, and were also perceived as a period in which
the German national character was in its heyday. This is
the accolade given to the Middle Ages by Wilhelm Hein-
rich Wackenroder and Eudwig Tieck in their seminal,
groundbreaking publication entitled Herzensergießungen
eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders, released in 1797. The
thrust of their arguments boils down to the statement that
the development of German art in that period reached its
peak in Dürers time.
The intermeshing of the national and religious spheres,
so conspicuous in Wackenroder and Tieck’s text, gained
reinforced traction especially during the period of the
Napoleonic wars. Tailored to the propaganda demands
of the day, the necessarily disparaging and oversimplified
stereotype of the French (who were associated with Lati-
nized culture and perceived as beholden to the Romano-
Hellenic heritage) led to the consolidation of the German
people and rallied them around nationalist and Germanic
battle cries. As claimed by Jost Hermand, the inventory
of patriotic propaganda symbols drew upon the imagery
of the Middle Ages and the Gothic, notions of Germanic
identity, the culture of the North and the legend of Os-
sian.37 All of this provided nutritious fodder for nurtur-
ing a shared identity. The subdued ambient light of Goth-
ic shrines, which was, incidentally, highly emblematic of
the atmosphere of Macpherson’s Fragments of Ancient Po-
etry (which captured the imagination and favourably re-
fashioned people’s vision of the non-classical, northern
counterpart of the dim and distant ‘ancient past’), was
obviously harnessed as part of the politicized imagery.
That symbol appropriation was all the easier because the
metaphoric significance of such dim light could be easily
linked to the allegedly Germanic roots of the Gothic style,
typified by lancet-like curves.
In 1816, when the fervour of the resurgent patriotic
campaign directed against Napoleon was still far from be-
ing over, Friedrich Wilhelm Carové characterized Goth-
ic cathedrals as ‘idealized, art-enhanced forest shrines of
old-time Germanic peoples’.38 Elsewhere in his study on
medieval art, he observes that Germanic peoples, intu-
Middle Ages after the Middle Ages in the English-speaking World,
ed. by M.-E Alamichel, D. Brewer, Cambridge, 1997, p. 67.
37 J. Hermand, ‘Die gescheiterte Hoffnung. Zur Malerei der Befrei-
ungskriege’, in idem, Avantgarde und Regression. 200 Jahre Deut-
sche Kunst, Leipzig, 1995, p. 14.
38 EW. Carové, Ansichten der Kunst des deutschen Mittelalters’, in
Taschenbuch für Freunde altdeutscher Zeit und Kunst auf das Jahr
1816, p. 73 (as in note 19).