Faustian Polarity and Colourful Mediations: Goethe’s Experimental Landscapes

Although it does not deal with landscapes as such, the Goethean framework I reconstruct can help to illuminate the process of mediof organic coexistence and mutual influence and reinforcement of artistic creation, scientific investigation of nature and philosophical conceptions,2 providing a promising groundwork to explore the “intersectional” character of landscapes. In Goethe, the successful cooperation of normally distinct activities and worldviews results in an overall experimental attitude toward the interaction of the human and the non-human. Such interaction is construed in a holistic, continuistic way, of which art, science and philosophy give different but mutually supportive accounts. Within this mediation process, “experiential landscapes” coalesce, i.e. experimental spaces of human perception and action in nature, which are informed by, and could be considered as case studies of, this holistic and continuistic view. Through a joint focus on Goethe’s Faust and his Theory of Colours, and some more cursory references to other Goethean works, the aim of this paper is to flesh out a view of landscape ‘mediation’ that is attractive both for its theoretical heuristic function and for its practical implications.