460 i Flora Unveiled
1831 mit Tafeln in den “Verhandlungen der Kaiserlich Leopoldinisch- Carolinischen Akademie
der Naturforscher.” Cited by Barteczko, K., and M. Jacob (2004), A re- evaluation of the pre-
maxillary bone in humans. Anatomy and Embryology 2 0 7: 4 17– 4 37.
- von Goethe, J. W. (1962), Italian Journey, trans. W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer.
Penguin Books, p. 37. - Syphilis. According to Wikipedia, “The first written records of an outbreak of syphilis
in Europe occurred in 1494 or 1495 in Naples, Italy, during a French invasion (Italian War of
1494– 98).” It was assumed that the disease was spread by French troops. - von Goethe, Italian Journey (April 17, 1787).
- Cited by Richards, The Romantic Conception of Life, p. 424.
- von Goethe, Italian Journey (April 17, 1787).
- Frequently overlooked, however, is the fact that Goethe also stated that roots and stems
were modified leaves. Although some underground structures, such as seed cotyledons and
bulbs, are indeed modified leaves, both stems and roots predated the appearance of leaves in the
fossil record and therefore cannot be considered modified leaves. - Portman, A. (1987), Goethe and the concept of metamorphosis, in F. Amrine, F. J. Zucker,
and H. Wheeler, eds., Goethe and the Sciences: A Re- Apprasial. Springer, pp. 133– 145. - von Goethe, J. W. (1790/ 1952), The Metamorphosis of Plants, in Goethe’s Botanical
Writings, trans. Bertha Mueller. University of Hawaii Press, pp. 31– 78. Goethe may be refer-
ring here to a passage in Plato’s Symposium in which the philosopher and priestess Diotima of
Mantinea describes the “ladder of love,” in which the lover progresses from physical beauty to
spiritual beauty, finally ascending to ideal beauty: “Starting from individual beauties, the quest
for the universal beauty must find him ever mounting the heavenly ladder, stepping from rung
to rung— that is, from one to two, and from two to every lovely body, from bodily beauty to
the beauty of institutions, from institutions to learning, and from learning in general to the
special lore that pertains to nothing but the beautiful itself— until at last he comes to know
what beauty is.” - The cell walls of the water- conducting vessel elements of the xylem are often reinforced
by such spiral wall thickenings, which can pop out of the tracheary elements during prepara-
tion of plant tissue for microscopy. Hedwig was the first to suggest that that these stiff coils
(“spiral vessels”) functioned as elastic springs that could contract or expand. Goethe adapted
Hedwig’s model to his theory of metamorphosis. Normally, the spiral vessels elongate, but as the
sap becomes purified the spiral vessels somehow contract. The contraction of the spiral vessels
overcomes the expansive force of the sap, resulting in short, wide vessel elements instead of elon-
gated, narrow ones. Unable to stretch, the shortened vessel elements then fuse with one another
(“anastomose”), preventing the future stamen from expanding into a petal. - von Goethe (1853), The Poems of Goethe, trans. Sir Edgar Alfred Bowring. The Henneberry
Company. - Goethe’s theory of anastomosis may have been the inspiration for one of Rainer Maria
Rilke’s more enigmatic poems, “Dirait- On,” from the song cycle, Les Roses (1927), in which “self-
caressing” is likened to “Narcissus fulfilled” (trans. Morten Lauridsen):
Abandon surrounding abandon,
Tenderness touching tenderness ...
Your oneness endlessly
Caresses itself, so they say;