The Blue Hour in Goethe and Stendhal

(21.4.2022) There is only one single blue hour in the whole oeuvre of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and this one blue hour is a telling curiosity. One must know that Goethe actually was very concerned with the poetic potential of dusk, twilight and dawn. He even, at one point, being also obsessed with phenomena of colours, and with polemizing against certain leading scientists, planned a publication on the subject of twilight, which, however, never saw the light of day. One must also know that, for Goethe, dusk and dawn, was rather grey. ›Rather grey‹, because there is this one single blue hour, the curiosity, our precious curiosity that we are concerned with here.

In his Italienische Reise Goethe included also a text, also a rare thing, that was by another hand. In this case it is a letter to Goethe by the painter Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (picture on the right), who, in Rome had acted as a sort of cicerone for Goethe. Tischbein, who is the author of the famous portrait of Goethe shown below, in his letter speaks of a ›dawning blue‹ (»Da oben auf der Zinne des Berges im dämmernden Blau lagen die Trümmer von Genserichs zerfallener Burg; […].«). And as a result we have in this work of Goethe, island-like, a blue hour that is actually blue, while in the whole oeuvre of Goethe we have myriads of twilights, dusks and dawns that, if the poet is indicating an actual color at all, are simply grey.

Due to Tischbein it is obvious that one could see, at around 1800, a blue hour as being blue (or at least encompassing also a quantum of blue in its, if one likes so, greyness). The blue hour, thus, is not exclusively a fin-de-siècle phenomenon (which means here: a cultural construction of the era around the year of 1900). It was blue before, if one could see it at around 1800. Or better: if one could think of it as being blue and thus see it. Since Goethe, being obsessed with a Farbenlehre, might have been able to see it, but perhaps his thinking was so obsessed with other things (›blue shadows‹, being produced at dusk; ›sparks of blossoms‹ at dusk; which means, phenomena that have to do with complimentary colours), that he could not see the obvious (or trivial) which, a painter like Tischbein could see and name (in a letter to Goethe). This letter, perhaps also worth noting, did not result, despite of Tischbein naming the obvious, in ›dusk and dawn in Goethe‹ turning blue. He might have needed a more active cicerone, but the friendship with Tischbein, a friendship that had been a warm one in Rome, had languished anyway.

We might be able to perceive here an analogy to the perception of art in Goethe, which also, as far the Italienische Reise is concerned, seems to be somewhat paralysed by convention, despite of the impressive descriptions Goethe, nevertheless, showed to be capable of, with one example being the description of how Goethe literally ›was opened a window‹ to see Mount Vesuvius – at dusk. It is Sunday, 2.6.1787:

»Wir gingen im Zimmer auf und ab, und sie, einer durch Läden verschlossenen Fensterseite sich nähernd, stiess einen Laden auf, und ich erblickte, was man in seinem Leben nur einmal sieht. Tat sie es absichtlich, mich zu überraschen, so erreichte sie ihren Zweck vollkommen. Wir standen an einem Fenster des oberen Geschosses, der Vesuv gerade vor uns, die herabfliessende Lava, deren Flamme bei längst niedergegangener Sonne schon deutlich glühte und ihren begleitenden Rauch schon zu vergolden anfing; der Berg gewaltsam tobend, über ihm eine ungeheure feststehende Dampfwolke, ihre verschiedenen Massen bei jedem Auswurf blitzartig gesondert und körperhaft erleuchtet. Von da herab bis gegen das Meer ein Streif von Gluten und glühenden Dünsten; übrigens Meer und Erde, Fels und Wachstum deutlich in der Abenddämmerung, klar, friedlich, in einer zauberhaften Ruhe. Dies alles mit einem Blick zu übersehen und den hinter dem Bergrücken hervortretenden Vollmond als die Erfüllung des wunderbarsten Bildes zu schauen, mußte wohl Erstaunen erregen.«

The Italienische Reise was published in 1816/17, which means also, after another writer acted as a testimony, our testimony, proving that one could see and name the blue hour as being blue at around 1800. And this writer was Stendhal, who, in his 1811 travel diary from Italy (the note of 1.9.1811 actually is referring to a place in France) of a ›bluish twilight‹.

***

(Paintings of Mount Vesuvius, below, by Scipione Compagno, Hackert and Dahl; the Neapolitan Fisher Girl by Tischbein).

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