15 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2024
    1. Prometheus is the creative and rebellious spirit which, rejected by God, angrily defies him and asserts itself; Ganymede is the boyish self which is adored and seduced by God. One is the lone defiant, the other the yielding acolyte. As the humanist poet, Goethe presents both identities as aspects or forms of the human condition.

      Prometheus as representing mythos (creativity and rebellion) whereas Zeus represents logos.

    2. Both belong to the period 1770–1775. Prometheus (1774)

      Is Prometheus (Goethe) published in 1773 or 1774? (Sebastiaan van Bommel making a mistake?)

    3. "Prometheus" is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in which the character of the mythic Prometheus addresses God (as Zeus) in misotheist accusation and defiance. The poem was written between 1772 and 1774 and first published in 1789 after an anonymous and unauthorised publication in 1785 by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. It is an important work of the Sturm und Drang movement.
  2. Apr 2023
    1. 51:20 - [Aby] Not until art history can show51:22 that it sees the work of art51:23 in a few more dimensions than it has done so far51:27 will our activity again attract the interest of scholars51:31 and of the general public.51:36 Every serious scholar51:37 who has to venture on a problem of cultural history51:40 reads over the entrance to his workshop Goethe's lines:51:43 "What you call the spirit of the age51:46 "is really no more51:47 "than the spirit of the worthy historian51:49 "in which the age is reflected."51:57 In my role as psycho-historian,51:59 I tried to diagnose52:00 the schizophrenia of Western civilization52:02 from its images in an autobiographical reflex.52:10 May the history of art and the study of religion,52:13 between which lies nothing at present52:15 but wasteland overgrown with verbiage,52:18 meet together one day in learned and lucid minds,52:22 and may they share a workbench in the laboratory52:24 of the iconological science of civilization.
  3. Jan 2023
    1. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Maxims and Reflections. Penguin Classics. Penguin Books, 1998.

      urn:x-pdf:577d8c2ae537c748bc9ae3d1e12ecb38

    2. Goethe's Maxims and Reflections represents a commonplace book of sorts.

      Who numbered the maxims though? Was it Goethe or someone after him?

      (stray note on a slip of paper dated 2022-10-27)

  4. Oct 2022
    1. Workflow for capturing and processing online content for use in a Zettlekasten

      reply to https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/ye3bvk/workflow_for_capturing_and_processing_online/

      While it's possible that some set of tools will work best for you and potentially be more "fun" than other combinations, the upper limit you'll find on efficiency and productivity in this area is limited.

      As a result, I'd recommend looking at the quality of the material you're putting into your stream as potentially the best means of improvement at your disposal. The quality of your ideas and thought will increase if you're reading and conversing with the highest quality sources you can get your hands on. Well-researched, long form material (books, journal articles) will have likely done a lot of the filtering and heavy work for you, so use those as input when you can.

      Unless you're a sociologist or cultural anthropologist looking for examples of behaviors and material in social media, it may not be the best place to turn. Before I open social media apps I remind myself of note #1267 from Goethe's slipbox (Maxims and Reflections): "Ignorant people raise questions which were answered by the wise thousands of years ago."

      Similarly, upon hearing the words "firehose", "drowning", or "information overload", I'm reminded that, presuming you'd even want to make the effort, there's only one way to eat a whale: one bite at a time.

  5. May 2022
    1. WhenNiklas Luhmann decided in 1951, toward the end of his legal studies, to no longergather loose sheets into portfolios, as Goethe once did,9 but rather to take up work ona slip box, just like his implicit benchmark Hegel, the position of the Other becameoccupied by a paper machine.

      Niklas Luhmann created his slip box in 1951 after the model of Hegel rather than using the method of loose sheets into portfolios as Goethe had done.

      1. See Ernst Robert Curtius, “ Goethes Aktenf ü hrung,” in Kritische Essays zur europäischen Literatur (Bern: Francke, 1954), 57 – 69.

      Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832)

  6. Dec 2019
    1. Sorrows of Werter

      The Creature identifies himself with the hero of Johann Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Werther (1774), but unlike his reputation among European readers, Werther is not a glamorous figure for Shelley but an emblem of the Creature's isolation and despair. On the relation of these novels, see Roswitha Burwick, "Goethe's Werther and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein," Wordsworth Circle 24.1 (1993): 47-52.

  7. Feb 2017
    1. "Gross vulgarity is a fault to be pre-vented; but the proper prevention is lo be got from habit-not rules." Similarly, there can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, Chan upon practice and natural aptitude.

      "A good deal can be said of the advantages of rules, much the same as can be said in praise of bourgeois society. A man shaped by the rules will never produce anything tasteless or bad, just as a citizen who observes laws and decorum will never be an unbearable neighbor or an out-and out villain; and yet on the other hand, say what you please, the rules will destroy the true feeling of Nature and true expression!" (32) Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther

  8. Sep 2013
    1. hr führt in’s Leben uns hinein.Ihr lasst den Armen schuldig werden,Dann überlasst Ihr ihn den Pein,Denn iede Schuld rächt sich auf Erden

      ambivalence; guilt; remorse; aggressive avengence

    2. 4510 The assumption of the existence of an instinct of death or destruction has met with resistance even inanalytic circles; I am aware that there is a frequent inclination rather to ascribe whatever is dangerous andhostile in love to an original bipolarity in its own nature. To begin with it was only tentatively that I putforward the views I have developed here, but in the course of time they have gained such a hold upon methat I can no longer think in any other way. To my mind, they are far more serviceable from a theoreticalstandpoint than any other possible ones; they provide that simplification, without either ignoring or doingviolence to the facts, for which we strive in scientific work. I know that in sadism and masochism we havealways seen before us manifestations of the destructive instinct (directed outwards and inwards), stronglyalloyed with erotism; but I can no longer understand how we can have overlooked the ubiquity of non-eroticaggressivity and destructiveness and can have failed to give it its due place in our interpretation of life. (Thedesire for destruction when it is directed inwards mostly eludes our perception, of course, unless it is tingedwith erotism.) I remember my own defensive attitude when the idea of an instinct of destruction firstemerged in psycho-analytic literature, and how long it took before I became receptive to it. That othersshould have shown, and still show, the same attitude of rejection surprises me less. For ‘little children donot like it’ when there is talk of the inborn human inclination to ‘badness’, to aggressiveness anddestructiveness, and so to cruelty as well. God has made them in the image of His own perfection; nobodywants to be reminded how hard it is to reconcile the undeniable existence of evil - despite the protestationsof Christian Science - with His all-powerfulness or His all-goodness. The Devil would be the best way out asan excuse for God; in that way he would be playing the same part as an agent of economic discharge asthe Jew does in the world of the Aryan ideal. But even so, one can hold God responsible for the existenceof the Devil just as well as for the existence of the wickedness which the Devil embodies. In view of thesedifficulties, each of us will be well advised, on some suitable occasion, to make a low bow to the deeplymoral nature of mankind; it will help us to be generally popular and much will be forgiven us for it.¹¹ In Goethe’s Mephistopheles we have a quite exceptionally convincing identification of the principle of evil with thedestructive instinct:Denn alles, was entsteht,Ist wert, dass es zu Grunde geht . . .So ist dann alles, was Ihr Sünde,Zerstörung, kurz das Böse nennt,Mein eigentliches Element.The Devil himself names as his adversary, not what is holy and good, but Nature’s power to create, to multiply life -that is, Eros:Der Luft, dem Wasser, wie der ErdenEntwinden tausend Keime sich,Im Trocknen, Feuchten, Warmen, Kalten!Hätt’ ich mir nicht die Flamme vorbehalten,Ich hätte nichts Aparts für mich.

      Faust