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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter February 27, 2008

Penumbra

  • Cora Stam
From the journal arcadia

Abstract

In 1996, John Neubauer published the article “Clair-Obscur, An Imagined Dialogue between Diderot and Goethe”. In the first part of his paper he organized the dialogue – about the issue of the theory of colours – between the two heavyweights; in the second part Neubauer hazarded a hypothesis why Goethe would have left the original project of his translation of Diderot's Essais sur la peinture incomplete. It is common knowledge that Goethe disagreed with Newton about the issue of chromatics and that he considered Diderot as a follower – like most of the French – of Newton and his ideas. In this essay I will focus on the twilight zone of the polemic character of the “Clair-Obscur”-dialogue. Unfortunately, like Neubauer, I have not been able to find any translations, so the passages written by Diderot are in French, and Goethe's commentary is in German. I would like to start with a squib from the article “Clair-Obscur”.

Published Online: 2008-02-27
Published in Print: 2003-10-14

© Walter de Gruyter

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