»Eine Art Wahnsinn«. Intellektuelle Anschauung und Goethes Schriften zur Metamorphose

Spirale (Spiral)

“…For while he insists that the proposition of a universal spiral tendency ought to be seen as conforming to and extending his theory of metamorphosis, his letters, notes, and journal entries attest to his ongoing struggle to adapt Martius's discovery to his earlier botanical theory. 17 Thus, in a letter from March 15, 1832, only a week before his death, he still speaks of the "große Schwierigkeit jenes Zusammenwirkens der in Eins verbundenen und verschlungenen Vertikalität und Spiralität dem Anschauen lebendig zu erhalten" (WA 4.49:446; great challenge of keeping vividly within the intuition verticality and spirality, bound and absorbed into one), and in another letter from January 5 of the same year he refers to it as a "gordischen Knoten" (LA II.10B:745; Gordian Knot). This problem emerges because, as an intellectual intuition, Goethe regards spiral tendency as a principle of fecundity and reproduction.…”