Spirale (Spiral)

The lexeme Spirale (spiral) serves as an important symbol and figure of thought in Goethe’s oeuvre that cuts across numerous discourses and disciplines, ranging from aesthetics and art history to mineralogy and geology, from botany and cosmology to anthropology and sexuality. Early on in Goethe’s life it plays a rather marginal role in his thought; yet by the year of his death in 1832, it becomes a pivotal, if contradictory, figure imbued with scientific, literary, and even metaphysical significance. Associated with such archetypal polarities as systole/diastole, male/female, and life/death, the spiral ultimately emerges in Goethe’s conceptual lexicon as a type of motion within opposing force fields whose ever greater intensification also suspends them, thereby inhibiting a higher synthesis or conceptual resolution. In brief, Goethe’s concept of the spiral works to overstep boundaries, transgress binaries, and resist stasis and closure.