German Romanticism and Science: The Procreative Poetics of Goethe, Novalis, and Ritter (review)

Jocelyn Holland’s inquiry into the procreative poetics of Goethe, Novalis, and Ritter is motivated by the observation that around 1800, “the mystery of procreation remained unsolved and European fascination with the topic had reached a peak” (2). Therefore, Holland asks, “How do we account for procreation as a discursive phenomenon? What patterns, tendencies, and distinctive rhetorical features characterize this discourse?” (2). In Holland’s study, procreation serves as the discursive site to revisit the ever-contentious relation between literature and science and analyze their interaction. Holland argues that procreation lies at the heart of scientific and literary interdisciplinarity during the Romantic period, since the boundaries between literature and science were more porous than they are today, on the one hand, and the meaning of procreation was not limited to a narrow physiological discussion, but extended to all processes of generation, on the other. Holland’s authors of choice reflect this interdisciplinarity and the fluidity of the term “procreation”: Goethe, Hardenberg (Novalis’s given name with which he signed his scientific works), and Ritter all engage in literary and scientific treatments of procreation, and the range of their analyses reveals the diverse realms for which the discourse of procreation could be appropriated. According to Holland, the works of Goethe, Hardenberg, and Ritter take procreative language in “new, unforeseen directions” (3). Holland explores metamorphosis in Goethe as prolonged procreation; shows that procreation in Hardenberg links to a definition of the self as instrument; investigates “how Ritter relates procreation directly to his broad interest in forging connections between the organic and inorganic realms” (135). Each of these very different analyses sheds light on the discourse of procreation and the issues these authors encountered when narrating processes of procreation, but also offers detailed insights into the complexity of gender positions in Romanticism and the complex temporality of the act of procreation. Holland’s book exemplifies the various facets of procreation and brings together some of the period’s richest and most characteristic concerns in depicting how literature and science intersect in the subject of procreation.

Holland’s foray into the topic of procreation takes the specific form of a study of the “procreative poetics” of Goethe, Hardenberg, and Ritter, which seeks to trace the literary responses to this scientific and cultural phenomenon— in other words, the ways in which scientific theorems are received but also advanced in literature. Holland reflects on how scientific knowledge gets transformed in literature, and how literature in turn participates in the transformation of the scientific thought of her authors. Literature never becomes science, yet literary form—be it that of a poem, a collection of philosophical aphorisms, or a fictional autobiography—becomes for these authors the site of a working-through of scientific paradigms in ways that scientific method could not achieve. Literary or narrative form is the crucial element in literature’s contribution to science, and Holland’s examinations are highly tuned into discussions of form and its relation to and even creation of content.

Even though all three authors are united in their attempt to link biological generation to poetic creation, they do not share a definition of procreation. Mirroring the diverse understandings and applications of procreation, Holland resists theoretical positioning throughout her book, thereby setting herself off from other scholarly research in the field of procreation, particularly that of Helmut Müller-Sievers, whose Self-Generation advocates epigenetic views of biological generation. Holland says instead:

Any account of Romanticism’s engagement with procreation must be able to shift as productively between points of view as Goethe and the Romantics do themselves. This observation is central to the analysis in each of the individual chapters as well as the overall question guiding the study, how a poetics of procreation positions itself with regard to scientific theory.

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Considering the mutability of the concept, Holland’s methodological approach is to treat procreation in its own right for each and every text, and to reveal the individual modi...