The Invention of Nature

There were other examples of Goethe’s fusion of art and science. For his poem ‘Metamorphosis of Plants’, he translated his earlier essay about the urform of plants into poetry. And for Elective Affinities, a novel about marriage and love, he chose a contemporary scientific term as a title that described the tendency of certain chemical elements to combine. Because of this inherent ‘affinity’ of the chemicals actively to bond with another, this was also an important theory within the circle of scientists who discussed the vital force of matter. The French scientist Pierre- Simon Laplace, for example, whom Humboldt greatly admired, explained that ‘all chemical combinations are the result of attractive forces’. Laplace saw this as nothing less than the key to the universe. Goethe used the properties of these chemical bonds to evoke relationships and changing passions between the four protagonists in the novel. This was chemistry translated into literature. Nature, science and imagination were moving ever closer.

Or as Faust says, knowledge could not be wrenched from nature by observation, instrument or experiment alone:

We snatch in vain at Nature’s veil,

She is mysterious in broad daylight,

No screws or levers can compel her to reveal

The secrets she has hidden from our sight.

Goethe’s descriptions of nature in his plays, novels and poems were as truthful, Humboldt believed, as the discoveries of the best scientists. He would never forget that Goethe encouraged him to combine nature and art, facts and imagination. And it was this new emphasis on subjectivity that allowed Humboldt to link the previous mechanistic view of nature as promulgated by scientists such as Leibnitz, Descartes or Newton with the poetry of the Romantics. Humboldt would thus become the link that connected Newton’s Opticks, which explained that rainbows were created by light refracting through raindrops, to poets such as John Keats, who declared that Newton ‘had destroyed all the Poetry of the rainbow, by reducing it to a prism’.

The time in Jena, Humboldt later recalled, ‘affected me powerfully’. Being with Goethe, Humboldt said, equipped him with ‘new organs’ through which to see and understand the natural world. And it was with those new organs that Humboldt would see South America.

¹ It was the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta who proved Humboldt and Galvani wrong, showing that animal nerves were not charged with electricity. The convulsions that Humboldt had produced in animals were in fact triggered by the contact of the metals – an idea that led Volta to invent the first battery in 1800.

² Others also made connections between Humboldt and Mephistopheles. Goethe’s niece said that ‘Humboldt seemed to her as Mephistopheles did to Gretchen’ – not the nicest compliment since Gretchen (Faust’s lover) realizes at the end of the play that Mephistopheles is the devil and turns to God and away from Faust.

3

In Search of a Destination

AS HUMBOLDT TRAVELLED across the vast Prussian territory, inspecting mines and meeting scientific friends, he continued to dream of faraway countries. That longing never disappeared but he also knew that his mother, Marie Elisabeth von Humboldt, had never shown any patience with his adventurous dreams. She expected him to climb the ranks of the Prussian administration and he felt ‘chained’ to her wishes. All that changed when she died of cancer in November 1796 after battling the disease for more than a year.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, neither Wilhelm nor Alexander grieved much for their mother. She had always found fault in whatever her sons did, Wilhelm confided to his wife, Caroline. No matter how successfully they had completed their studies or excelled in their careers, she had never been satisfied. During her illness, Wilhelm had dutifully moved from Jena to Tegel and Berlin to look after her, but he had missed the intellectual stimulation in Jena. Oppressed by his mother’s dark presence, he couldn’t read, work or think. He felt paralysed, Wilhelm had written to Schiller. When Alexander briefly visited, he had left as soon as possible, leaving his brother in charge. After fifteen months Wilhelm had not been able to bear the vigil any longer and returned to Jena. Two weeks later their mother died, with neither son at her bedside.