MUSIC AND MUSICAL METAPHOR IN GOETHE'S WORK OR: WHEN IS A LANGUAGE NOT A LANGUAGE?

Abstract

This paper argues that Goethe's musical reference is metaphorical: i.e.it uses aspects of music to explore phenomena in other domains, and sometimes vice versa. It suggests that such metaphor is extensively deployed by Goethe as part of the 'rhetoric' of his texts, and should be read as an aspect of his thought and language (without prejudice to composers' settings of his work). The main focus is on one of Goethe's metaphor groups, the idea of music as like or unlike language; and on an attempt to recover the force of these metaphors from nineteenthcentury models which have obscured them. From a consideration of the writers and communities in whose thought and language Goethe encountered this analogy, it emerges that such metaphors hung on aspects of oral language and of musical sound: on timbre and pitch, on voice modulation, tempo and melody, and on diverse types of 'song'. Goethe attaches traditional value associations to these aspects of music and language, as well as developing some of his own. Particularly in 'Faust', 'Wilhelm Meister' and 'Novelle', they become part of his strategy for a 'mannigfaltige Sprache' which both acknowledges and counters the limitations of language.