[Note: I cut out lines which I thought were not pertinent to the following brief essay. It appeared in The Connection sometimes early in 1995. (The Connection is an APA, which means basically you subscribe and get to publish stuff in it – sort of a poor man's vanity press. I wrote in it for many years, sometimes under pen names such as John Yasunga.) It's really not much of an essay. I had hoped at the time to do a longer survey of Goethe's esthetics. I only reprint it here in hopes that others might do so.]
... the late Terry Inman claimed Ayn Rand's theory of art being influenced by Goethe. Recently, I bought a copy of Essays on Art and Literature (EAL), the third volume of Goethe: The Collected Works. Reading part of it, I found there might be something to Inman's claim.
I read two of the shorter ones and culled a few points that seem to anticipate Rand. For the record, proving that a given thinker was influenced by another is no easy task. In Rand's case, she didn't always cite sources – at least not in a fashion helpful to scholars. The minimum for any case for influence has to be that the influence (Goethe) preceded the influenced (Rand) and that there's some similarity between the two. The former point has been met. To support the latter one, I offer two quotes each from both thinkers. I start with Goethe.
"Style... rests on the most fundamental principle of cognition, on the essence of things – to the extent that it is granted us to perceive this essence in visible and tangible form." ("Simple Imitation, Manner, Style" in EAL, p72)
Here's a quote from Rand that seems to catch the spirit of Goethe:
"An artist does not fake reality – he stylizes it. He selects those aspects of existence which he regards as metaphysically significant – and by isolating and stressing them, by omitting the insignificant and accidental, he presents his view of existence." (The Romantic Manifesto (RM), p36 [emphasis in the original])
Now the second Goethe quote:
"... the true connoisseur [of art] sees not only the realism of what is imitated but also the excellence in the selection of subject matter, the imaginativeness in composition, and the supra-natural spirit of this micro- world of art. He feels that he must rise to the level of the artist in order to enjoy the work, that he must focus his scattered energies on the work of art, that he must live with it, must see it again and again, and thus achieve a higher level of awareness." ("On Realism in Art" in EAL, p78)
A very similar view is held by Rand.
"The sensory-perceptual awareness of an adult does not consist of mere sense data... but of automatized integrations that combine sense data with a vast context of conceptual knowledge. The visual arts refine and direct the sensory elements of these integrations. By means of selectivity, of emphasis and omission, these arts lead man's sight to the conceptual context intended by the artist. They teach man to see more precisely and to find deeper meaning in his field of vision." (RM, p47)
She uses painting here, but her view is applicable to all the fine arts.
Again, the above does not prove Rand was influenced by Goethe. To prove such a case one would have to show she was exposed to Goethe or some Goethe-influenced works. That aside, the similarities fill me with an urge to try to understand Goethe's views of art.