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Polarity in Goethe's Faust

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Clive H. Cardinal
Clive H. Cardinal*
Affiliation:
Waterloo College, University of Western Ontario, Waterloo, Canada
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Extract

Already at an early stage in his life, when the Urfaust was being conceived, did Goethe sense the dynamic essence of the universe. He was deeply aware of the fact that the whole of existence, both in its physical and spiritual manifestations, is in a constant state of flux, with conflicting forces acting upon each other, eventually weaving themselves into a harmonious whole. This vast dynamic urge extends far beyond the biological into the very essence of the entire physical universe to the point where even matter itself is energy. His conviction became strengthened when he later took up the study of the natural sciences, and it played a most basic rôle in his view of life as an old man. Out of this idea of existence as ceaseless activity, which found varied poetic expression in his works, emerged a second concept equally important to an understanding of his philosophy: the concept of the polarity of conflicting antagonistic forces in nature, the name for which he took from the polarity of magnetism. Having accepted the fact that the nature of matter is force, he advanced to the idea that this force never expresses itself in a single phenomenon, but in two diagrammatically opposed entities or forces. Proceeding from the same point of departure they divide, repulse each other, finally to attract and unite again.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , June 1949 , pp. 445 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1949

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References

1 In this concept of matter as force he anticipates our modern physicists, especially Einstein and Milligan. His view of polarity throws an interesting sidelight on the electronic theory of the atom. Here too Goethe went far to obviate the mechanistic view of Newton and of the inertia of matter with which he was always at variance.

2 Referred to in his Dichtung and Wahrheit and in 1820–22 when he wrote his Campagne in Frankreich: Aus der Anziehungskraft und Zurückstossungskraft der Materie “… ging mir die Urpolarität aller Wesen hervor, welche die unendliche Mannigfaltigkeit der Erscheinungen durchdringt und belebt” (Werke, xxxiii, 196).

3 Cf. Jahrbuch der Goethe-Gesellschaft, xvi (1930); Paul Müllensiefen: “Die Französische Revolution und Napoleon in Goethes Weltanschauung” in which it is said inter al. (p. 80) : “In der Geschichte wie in der Natur bekämpfen sich zwei Gegensätze, vereinen und steigern sich, um wieder aus diesem fruchtbaren Punkte neue Gegensätze hervorzurufen ”'

4 “Antithesis und Synthesis sind die Momente der eigentlichen und absoluten Synthese, die absolute Einheit von Dasein, Leben, Seele steht über der relativen, die ihre Ergänzung, ihr Korrelat in der Antithesis findet”—Georg Simmel, Goethe, p. 85.

5 Thomas Davidson, The Philosophy of Goethe's Faust, p. 153.

6 Cf. C. G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious (New York: Moffat, Yard & Co., 1916).

7 Cf. Romain Rolland, Goethe and Beethoven (London: Hamish Hamilton, Ltd., 1931), pp. 106, 111, 116, 234.