German Romanticism and Science: The Procreative Poetics of Goethe, Novalis, and Ritter

Abstract

Reviewed by: German Romanticism and Science: The Procreative Poetics of Goethe, Novalis, and Ritter Heather I. Sullivan German Romanticism and Science: The Procreative Poetics of Goethe, Novalis, and Ritter. By Jocelyn Holland. New York: Routledge, 2009. 221 pages. $95.00. For a book purportedly about "procreation," there is not a lot of sex in Jocelyn Holland's analysis of Goethe, Novalis, and Ritter. The introduction leaps provocatively enough into the 18th-and early 19th-century debate between epigenesis [the gradual development of an embryo in the womb "through a chemical reaction of completely 'unformed' substances" (8)] and preformation (the notion that all progeny are preformed as mini-men in the sperm), but Holland rather quickly suggests exploring what she terms the "middle ground" between both these scientific ideas and between science and literature more broadly. She thus leads the scientific topic of "procreation" into standard arenas of romantic discourse such as creativity, language, and "production." The science-literature exploration appears to be a one-way road, in other words. Goethe's botany, for example, "embeds the scientific activities of observation and experimentation within a procreative context" (14). This suggestive-sounding "context" actually serves as a dainty metaphor for "a sexual courtship" (21). Obviously, courtship and seduction can lead to "procreation," but this is exactly my critique of the book: it, too, seduces the reader into expecting a mating of science and literature, but it remains instead at the level of seductive promise—or metaphor. That is, German Romanticism and Science presents Goethe, Novalis, and Ritter as authors/scientists who document the scientist's metamorphosis into self-reflection, his role as both using and being a "Werkzeug" (tool) between the subject and object, and his production of "Wortspiele" (word games). Holland's scientists are a verbal lot, and they tend towards poetic complexity rather than a messy mating of disciplines with back-and-forth exchanges. As Holland writes about Goethe's poem "Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen": "the moment of procreation itself remains uncommented, undescribed, and uncommunicated" (45). One might hope that romantic squeamishness about actual procreation would not hold sufficient sway for a 21st-century book, especially one claiming attention to science, to leave that very physical, bodily, and messy moment—whether of conception or birth—similarly "uncommunicated." There are two main points to this review: first, I must note that Holland's book is without doubt an invaluable contribution to the study of Novalis and Ritter in terms of their speculative writings that begin with scientific questions and then leap into metaphysical assertions. This book is, indeed, a masterful reading of their encyclopedic and autobiographical writings—writings that transform their desires into romantic longing in the highest spiritual form, albeit in scientifically relevant terms. In terms of Goethe, Holland uses his concept of metamorphosis not so much to shed new light on his work as science but rather to "ground" the rest of her analysis on what she terms "the contingency of human understanding" (45). German Romanticism and Science, in this context, fits very neatly into existing scholarship on the romantics and their broader cultural explorations around 1800, and it expands the horizons of the field, particularly regarding Novalis's play with subjectivity and Ritter as autobiographical author transforming galvanic ideas into literary enigma. The questions posed are of a truly interdisciplinary nature. The second point of this review, though, is to raise a concern about how interdisciplinary the analyses and conclusions of this book actually are. Holland posits a [End Page 619] quest for interdisciplinary methodology in the introduction, noting the challenge of attempting "a productive coupling of literature and science" (14), and asserting that "the middle ground is the most fertile" (14). What the middle ground between literature and science may look like remains a quandary. In German Romanticism and Science, the "middle ground" begins solidly with both fields but quickly leans towards the traditional literary emphasis on the linguistic prowess of homo sapiens as a "procreative power." With that, we are back to the romantics as potent poets. For example, Holland most meticulously describes how Novalis's ultimate "instrument" (the artist), uses language and so himself becomes a "supersensory poesy, or, eventually, a hieroglyphic...