Physiognomy in Profile: Lavater's Impact on European Culture (review)

Physiognomy in Profile is an entertaining collection of essays on the history of physiognomy in its European context (in particular England and France, where its impact thus far has not yet been assessed in detail). A number of contributions deal with the origins of Lavater's thinking.

In particular Lavater's religious beliefs, as is noted by several contributors, played a major role in his work. Kevin Berland discusses the issue of "free will" in Lavater's work in the context of physiognomical discourse before Lavater. Lavater's position is highly contradictory; he professes to believe in "free will," in accordance with his religious beliefs, but nevertheless his theory is based on the idea of natural inclinations and original dispositions. Lavater's work is also embedded in hermetic and sensualist patterns of thinking that, in contrast to Lavater's own claims, in many respects presume a prescientific approach to the world of phenomena (Maximilian Bergengruen). When we discuss Lavater, it is important to be aware of the fact that the man was not just the author of the Physiognomische Fragmente, but of many other texts as well. It is interesting to know that he also published texts like the handwritten, thirty-nine-page pamphlet "Lord Chatam. Oder Pitts Büste" (1789), dedicated to the English nobleman mentioned in its title (1708–78). Several copies have survived, none of them identical to each other (so that those who would reprint it illegally could be traced); the benefits of this publication were apparently to go to the less fortunate in his parish.

The core of Physiognomy in Profile consists of essays on the reception of Lavater and his work in particular during the nineteenth century. Traces of his thinking can be found in Walter Scott, even though Scott never mentioned him (Graeme Tytler). Lavater's influence on drawing manuals is very clear (Ross Woodrow). It is clear that Degas and Manet were working in an aesthetic tradition for which physiognomic thinking in general and Lavater in particular were still very important (John House). A comparison of Laclos's Liaisons dangereuses from 1782 and Zola's Nana from 1880 (by Christopher Rivers) shows not only that descriptive strategies have changed little, but also that the normative element in such descriptions has remained remarkably constant; in both books "disease" functions as the outward sign of the moral "ills" of society. Such examples show that the impact of Lavater on art is beyond question; the argument that Lavater is also a major figure in nineteenth-century scientific discourse is harder to make. I was not at all convinced by Caroline Warman's claim that physiognomy was "eagerly adopted [...] by medicine" and became part of the "analytical equipment" of medical doctors (99); the evidence offered for these theses is rather minimal, although there are certainly moments in the history of medicine when its interests coincided with those of the physiognomists. It is clear, however, that physiognomy became part of all sorts of popular science.

Physiognomic theory was throughout the nineteenth century very present in many popular manuals that were aimed at helping people to navigate the increasingly complex social structures of society and that, one way or another, claimed Lavater as an authority. Martina Lauster shows very convincingly how physiognomy, zoology, and physiology offered important paradigms for a sociological description in mid-nineteenth-century literature. There also existed a powerful tradition that sought to develop a physiognomy of the city and its inhabitants that led straight to Walter Benjamin (Michael Gamper). John Plews offers a detailed reading of Eduard Mörike's Malter Nolten (1832), also picking up on the social functions of physiognomy, in which he argues that physiognomical discourse helped shape a masculine ideal meant to represent Bildung, and also could be used to identify "countertypes" in society. While physiognomy, in other words, catered to a homosocial desire at the core of society, it could also serve...