The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “Goethe”

The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self: How a Circle of Friends and Lovers United Nature and Human Nature
The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self: How a Circle of Friends and Lovers United Nature and Human Nature

“Mind is invisible nature, while nature is visible mind.”

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The Art of Sympathetic Enthusiasm: Goethe on the Only Opinion Worth Voicing About Another’s Life and Creative Labor
The Art of Sympathetic Enthusiasm: Goethe on the Only Opinion Worth Voicing About Another’s Life and Creative Labor

In praise of the “loving sympathy” that makes life worthy of living.

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The Courage to Despair: Goethe, the Inner Tension of Creativity, and What It Takes to Be a Great Artist
The Courage to Despair: Goethe, the Inner Tension of Creativity, and What It Takes to Be a Great Artist

“[The artist] must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.”

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Harry Clarke’s Beautiful and Haunting 1925 Illustrations for Goethe’s Faust
Harry Clarke’s Beautiful and Haunting 1925 Illustrations for Goethe’s Faust

“Part of that power which would do evil constantly and constantly does good.”

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Nobel Laureate André Gide on What It Really Means to Be Original and Goethe’s Paradoxical Model of Creativity
Nobel Laureate André Gide on What It Really Means to Be Original and Goethe’s Paradoxical Model of Creativity

“If one does not absorb everything, one loses oneself completely. The mind must be greater than the world and contain it…”

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Two Hundred Years of Blue
Two Hundred Years of Blue

Cerulean splendor from Goethe, Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Rachel Carson, Toni Morrison, and other literary masters.

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Goethe’s Graphically Daring Diagrams of Color Perception
Goethe’s Graphically Daring Diagrams of Color Perception

How a misguided refutation of Newton inspired artists and philosophers with a new visual aesthetic.

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Alexander von Humboldt and the Invention of Nature: How One of the Last True Polymaths Pioneered the Cosmos of Connections
Alexander von Humboldt and the Invention of Nature: How One of the Last True Polymaths Pioneered the Cosmos of Connections

“In this great chain of causes and effects, no single fact can be considered in isolation.”

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Goethe on Beginner’s Mind and the Importance of Having Disciplined Discernment in Your Media Diet
Goethe on Beginner’s Mind and the Importance of Having Disciplined Discernment in Your Media Diet

“One must be something in order to do something.”

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How the Clouds Got Their Names and How Goethe Popularized Them with His Science-Inspired Poems
How the Clouds Got Their Names and How Goethe Popularized Them with His Science-Inspired Poems

“Most pioneers are at the mercy of doubt at the beginning, whether of their worth, of their theories, or of the whole enigmatic field in which they labour.”

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