[Juenger-list] DIE SCHERE #68: Note 3: Goethe and the body snatchers

[rcalvom@ctv.es (rcalvom@ctv.es)]

Dear members

Guenter Rebing wrote:


> Goethe enclosed his notes on plastic anatomy, written several days
> earlier, in a letter to Beuth in Berlin on 4 February 1832, just a few
> weeks before his death. He did so because he hoped to enlist the high
> official's help in an old pet project of his.
> 
> Goethe, an erstwhile Weimar minister for education and the arts, was
> convinced that the training of physicians has to include a thorough
> training of human anatomy. He expected that the demand  for corpses to
> be dissected in anatomy classes at medical schools would soon exceed
> the supply, which consisted mostly of the bodies of executed
> criminals.

Guenter, is it not a bit strange that Ej do not mention that Leonardo 
was one of the first one to make disecctions (in modern ages)?

> Goethe's answer is taken up by EJ in #6. The sculptor learning his art
> and striving beyond the mere mechanical tricks of the trade will
> discover the mysteries of the human figure the more easily if they
> have already passed through an artist's imagination [both the
> craftsman who made the model and the one who copied it Goethe regarded
> as artists].
> 
> In other words, Gestalt is more easily comprehended by looking at an
> artist's representation of an object rather than by looking at the
> object itself.


Indeed, this principle is at the basis of the "stereoscopical view" of 
EJ, an optic system biased on figures. This could be a neoplatonic 
(look at the similities with Ibn Arabi=B4s archetypes) arrangement with 
relationships with the visual memory of Renaissance.

The Goethe/Newton trial has some similities with the religious and 
philosophical fights between the two major kinds of memory at 
those "strange days": visual (Camillo. R. Llul, Ficino, Bruno).or 
abstract ("establishment":-). Indeed, those battles are  
relationshiped with the "final" victory of the newtonian "way of life" - 
as they put the grounds to. All this story is studied in a extended   
way in Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, Ioan P. Culiano *.

Keep on "working" Guenter, you=B4re a "torch" of the list:-). ( as Nick 
has well remarked,  your "work" is of great consequence)  

Salud
Roberto

* By the way, can anybody tell me about a strange character that 
appears in this book(unknown to me): Johan Rudolf 
Glauber, a forerunner of modern theroies about war(EJ and others) 
and synarchy)?.

Pd: Jung=B4s "Memories, Dreams and Reflections" and also another 
essays (Wotan, "A civilization in transition" (in where appears a 
laudatory remark on " Auf den Marmor-Kipplen ") and some others) 
could have some interest for the investigators of Die Schere