Barthold Heinrich Brockes and Nature Writing

Abstract

Historical studies in search of nature writing in German literature occasionally mention the Early Enlightenment poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes, who presents natural phenomena as manifestations of a purposive order that proves the benevolent design of an almighty Creator. Nature writing also deals with the experience of ethically significant plays of forces that link inner and external nature in dynamics beyond human reach, but it can no longer read nature as a scripture, and it prefers immersion in to a contemplation of nature. This study compares these modes of writing in more detail: Both belong to the genealogy of ethical demands to surpass the limits of instrumental thought through bodily explorations of nature. But whilst Brockes complements instrumental thought with exercitations about the theonomous foundations of human autonomy, nature writing rejects the estrangement of instrumental reason from our bodily belonging to an unwieldy nature, and it thus breaks with the modern aesthetico-religious project to reconcile nature and human needs.

Barthold Heinrich Brockes (1680–1747), the most eminent German poet of the Early Enlightenment, is best known for his didactic poems, which appeared in the nine-volume collection Earthly Pleasure in God [Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott] (1721–1748).¹ As a physico-theologist, Brockes presented scientifically guided observations of nature, from the purposive order of which he concluded the existence of a Creator who acts with intent, wisdom and benevolence (Kemper 1991, 48). In studies which pursue the topical question as to whether German literature has traditions comparable to anglophone nature writing (from the late eighteenth century onwards in England and since the mid-nineteenth century in the United States), Brockes’ didactic poems are mentioned occasionally (Schröder 2017, 175–176; Fischer 2019, 131; Goodbody 2007, 18, 22).² With their claim to decipher the perceptible order of nature as the manifestation of an intrinsic significance beyond human command, these poems resemble nature writing; however, the latter no longer has recourse to religious doctrines of a purposefully ordered nature, and it prefers an active bodily exploration of nature to its contemplative beholding. Nature writing renews the assumption of an intrinsic ethical significance of nature, which can already be found in the Early Enlightenment, as part of the secular critique of a reductive technico-instrumental understanding of nature which became dominant in science and industrial technology during the late stage of the Enlightenment (Fischer 2019, 129–133).

This article aims to show that Brockes’ writings about nature and nature writing respond to different historical problematics which should be clearly distinguished from a literary-historical point of view. The similarities between pertinent views of Brockes and the nature writers result from different positions in the history of the demand that the intrinsic significance of nature be explored bodily, so that the mind can overcome its absorption in purposive action that renders it insensible to ethically binding experience. The historical distance between Brockes and current contributors to the germanophone tradition of nature writing can serve as a reminder of lost cultural certainties which contemporary projects of an ethically meanigful bodily exploration of natural environments can no longer retrieve.

1 Varieties of the Term “Nature Writing”

In current discussions of the question as to whether there are examples of nature writing in germanophone literature, approaches to the definition of this mode of writing vary. For Simone Schröder, nature writing consists in the non-fictional representation of subjective ways in which ecologically relevant relations with nature are experienced; it employs essayistic prose to explore introspectively the effects of specific natural environments and to tease out their exemplary significance (Schröder 2018). Jürgen Goldstein does not restrict nature writing to the essay genre; for him, it draws on verbal poetic thought, which can also be used in lyric poetry and renders manifest to the senses an emotive significance of nature that is eclipsed by mere technico-instrumental approaches. According to Goldstein, nature writing is typically concerned with the experience of situations in which the uncontrollable features of human connections with the natural environment acquire an intrinsic ethical relevance (Goldstein 2018).

Ludwig Fischer regards nature writing as a way of expressing the experience of specific relations between embodied subjectivity and non-human nature which emerge in active explorations of a natural “co-world”. Natural things and beings appear as parts of a co-world when our dealings with them reveal a meaningful link between a nature of which we form a part and a non-human nature which follows its own dynamics; this kind of nature writing can also focus on fictitious situations, provided that they give authentic expression to salient features of an actual experience (Fischer 2019, 182–183). As Fischer’s approach covers the whole range of possible genre-poetic cases, it is particularly well suited for the search for varieties of germanophone nature writing which might depart from the conventions of their anglophone counterparts. With his emphasis on bodily explorations of “lived space” (cf. Waldenfels 1985, 195–198) as the basis of pertinent experiences of nature, he also specifies best the features that distinguish nature writing from other observations of and reflections on nature (Fischer 2019, 58, 71–81). This article thus links up chiefly with Fischer’s explication of the term in question.

According to Fischer, attempts at nature writing in German literature come to a halt in the mid-nineteenth century (Fischer 2019, 198–205). After Alexander von Humboldt, whose reports about scientific excursions into nature still sought to trace its “spirit” by literary means, a strict division of labour emerged between the objectivising prose of the natural sciences and the poetic language of a literature which regarded nature as a refuge from the “crude reality of social, economic and political conflicts of the time” after 1848 (Fischer 2019, 199). In Great Britain, the literary tradition founded by Gilbert White in the eighteenth century to explore signature features of regional or local natural environments was continued, and in the United States, a literature emerged that was dedicated to experiences of and in bodily explored natural environments (Fischer 2019, 129–130); in contrast, German literature largely presented nature as a space for the contemplation of symbolically meaningful impressions. For Brockes, whose work precedes White’s inauguration of nature writing, the ethically meaningful exploration of a natural co-world still entails symbolic interpretations of natural forms.

2 Brockes’ “Twenty-Third Piece” in The Patriot (8th June 1724)

Brockes’ essay in the issue of 8th June 1724 of the journal The Patriot begins with an extract from a fictitious letter from his male cousin:

On a recent spring morning right at the break of day, I left my place to sleep and sought, as usual, some pleasurable exercise in the open air. It may be that this very exercise lasted too long, or that my senses were too heavily affected by the study of all things I had encountered, or also that I had not found complete rest in the night before. In any case, I found myself quite tired out after a two-hour walk and felt compelled to sit down on a bench in the shade I had noticed, on which I could also lean on the broad trunk of a tree that stood by its side.

[An einem neulichen Frühlings-Morgen verließ ich sogleich bey anbrechendem Tage mein Nacht-Lager, und suchte mir unter freiem Himmel, wie gewöhlich, eine angenehme Bewegung zu machen. Es kann seyn, daß entweder diese Bewegung zu lange gedauert, oder daß ich meine Sinne in Betrachtung aller mir vorgekommenen Dinge zu starck angegriffen, oder auch die Nacht zuvor nicht völlig ausgeruhet hatte. Wenigsten fand ich mich, nach einem zweystündigen Spatzier-Gange, ziemlich ermüdet, und genöthiget, auf eine mir aufstossende Banck im Schatten mich niederzusetzen, wo ich zugleich an den breiten Stamm eines zur Seite stehenden Baumes mich anlehnen konnte.] (Brockes 2012, 445)

The bodily exploration of Hamburg’s surroundings aims at refreshing the “vital spirits” [“Lebens-Geister”] (Brockes 2012, 445), but it can also be exhausting when it lasts too long. The aim of this walk is not merely to stroll but to contemplate in detail all that meets the senses. Even in his state of exhaustion, the walker is refreshed by sense impressions from a pleasing and graceful nature—and falls asleep. The cousin experiences himself as part of the nature to which he turns his attention whilst also feeling the effect of natural processes that do not concur with his will or abilities. His talk of a somniferous refreshment is only seemingly contradictory, as his “soul” [“Seele”] “almost seemed to be more alert in its sleep than before; and it seemed as though I still continued to walk further in this area” [“schien in diesem Schlaffe fast wachsamer zu seyn, als vorher; und mich dauchte, daß ich noch beständig in dieser Gegend fort wandelte.”] In his dream, he can fly and float in the air without effort, explores without difficulty a particularly beautiful scenery by foot, and he thus discovers bit by bit the topography of a particular landscape, in parts of which “art” had “expended its efforts with utmost diligence” [“die Kunst ihren äussersten Fleiß verschwendet”], whilst other parts reveal “the uncontrived essence of nature in its most powerful splendour” [“das ungekünstelte Wesen der Natur in ihrer stärcksten Pracht”] (Brockes 2012, 445). The letter aims to unfold successively the specific features of this landscape before the mind’s eye, but it does not abstract from the walker’s bodily immersion in the scenery. The pleasant nature appeals to eye, ear and nose; the pure air of a plain is filled with “balsamic scent” [“balsamischen Dufte”], and the walker also “pleased” [“vergnügte”] his “sense of smell” [“Geruch”] in a forest on a crest. Some details—such as the “small painted gondolas” [“kleinen bemahlten Gondeln”] on a lake or six pyramids in the landscape—appear dream-like and strange (Brockes 2012, 447), but when the dreamer awakens, he realises that his dream “had represented to him a natural landscape with utmost meticulousness”; “… I found myself on the Hamburg Wall where I saw everything before me in full detail, and where everyone can find with awake eyes the very joys which I, at this occasion, had relished there in my sleep.” [“eine natürliche und mit allen Umständen eintreffende Landschaft, vorgestellet hatte” [“… ich befand mich auf dem Hamburgischen Walle, wo ich alles aufs genaueste vor mir sahe, und wo ein ieder mit wachenden Augen eben diese Vergnügung finden kann, deren ich für das mahl im Schlaffe daselbst genossen”]. (Brockes 2012, 448)

His imaginative thought outlines a variety of locations, the bodily exploration of which would have required great effort, as stations in an easily traversed topography. However, this unreal and defamiliarising fantasy results from a natural psychological process that refreshes the bodily exhausted life spirits and sharpens the senses’ attention to external nature. The cousin explains the benefit of such a fantasy: when he depicted the dreamt landscape to an acquaintance as though it had been explored on a journey, the well-travelled compatriot immediately began to compare it with foreign scenery. But the cousin demonstrated, to the surprise of his acquaintance, that he had referred to the landscape which they faced on the Hamburg Wall, and he thus opened the latter’s eyes to what he had passed unheeding. In short, sensuously imaginative thought can help refresh the sense for what is good and beautiful in ambient nature. Afterwards, the cousin presented to the acquaintance briefly my thoughts about the harmful force of our tyrannical habits, which deprive us of

all present happiness as they bind, so to speak, the powers of our senses through permanent lack of attention …

From this wicked source meanwhile flows an ingratitude to God, an oblivion of his loving presence, an indifferent knowledge of his omnipotence and wisdom, and a permanent dissatisfaction which often renders our whole life morose and bitter …

[mit wenigem meine Gedancken vor, über die schädliche Gewalt der tyrannischen Gewohnheit, welche uns aller gegenwärtigen Glückseeligkeit beraubet, indem sie durch immerwährende Unachtsamkeit die Kräffte unserer Sinnen gleichsam bindet …

Aus dieser unartigen Quelle fliessen inzwischen ein Undanck gegen GOTT, eine Vergessenheit seiner liebreichen Gegenwart, ein kaltsinniges Erkenntniß seiner Allmacht und Weisheit, und eine beständige Unzufriedenheit, die uns oftmahls unser gantzes Leben verdrießlich und bitter machet ….] (Brockes 2012, 449)

Nevertheless, the dream is made up; to be sure, it illuminates the regenerative powers of nature which are manifest in an uncontrolled interplay of embodied perception and imagination, but the dreamt content is an example for the power of poetic thought. It therefore does not come as a surprise that the author of the essay who published the letter of his cousin now wants to sharpen for his part our sense for the amenities of Hamburg by quoting from a range of poems about the city and its landscapes, which amount to a panorama that also allows the reader to decipher some of the dream motifs. With hindsight, the gondolas turn out to be sailing boats, whilst the six pyramids can be recognised as an allusion to the towers of a particular church. In these poems, there is no longer talk of bodily excursions; rather, the city and its landscapes are interpreted allegorically. The quoted poetry shall nevertheless, in ways comparable to dreams about allegorically structured worlds in other essays by Brockes (Brockes 2012, 454–458, 470–475), open our eyes to the benevolent order of humanity’s specific living conditions.

3 In Praise of Smelling: Brockes’ Earthly Pleasure in God

The twenty-third essay from The Patriot illuminates the central concern of Brockes, who in his autobiography explains how his interest in writing literature came about: “Touched by the beauty of Nature” [“[D]urch die Schönheit der Natur gerühret”], he decided to

sing the praise of the Creator thereof in joyful contemplation and good description. To which I felt all the more obliged, as I considered such a great and almost irresponsible neglect, impassivity and the resulting ingratitude to the Almighty Creator to be most reprehensible, and improper for Christianity.

[den Schöpfer derselben, in frölicher Betrachtung und möglicher Beschreibung zu besingen. Wozu ich mich um so viel mehr verpflichtet hielte, als ich eine so große und fast unverantwortliche Nachlässigkeit, unempfindlichkeit, und dem daraus folgenden Undanck gegen den Allmächtigen Schöpfer für höchststräflich und dem Christentum ganz unanständig hielte.] (Brockes 2012, 25)

In his “Rules about Child-Rearing” [“Regeln zur Kinder-Zucht”] in the Eighteenth Piece for the The Patriot of 4th May 1724, he demands that children be forbidden to be cruel to animals, to whit, “by the depiction of the coarse stupidity of a rabble that understands neither the nature of animals nor the limits of human dominion over them” [“mit Vorstellung der groben Dummheit eines Pöbels, der weder die Natur der Thiere, noch die Grentzen der menschlichen Herrschaft über dieselben erkennet”] (Brockes 2012, 442). However, educational and literary depictions are not supposed to replace actual explorations of nature; according to Brockes’ autobiography, they rather ought to help ensure that “all human beings may learn to make better use of their senses” [“ein jeder Mensch dadurch seine Sinnen besser gebrauchen … lernen möge”] (Brockes 2012, 25). Meanwhile, those rules also require us to “make” children “aware in good time of the thousandfold beauty of nature” [“zeitig auf die tausendfache Schönheit der Natur … führen”] and to provide them with an age-appropriate understanding thereof (Brockes 2012, 444). To be sure, the embodied nature of perception does not always need to be stressed, but the poems in Earthly Pleasures in God often highlight the actual use of the senses, and when Brockes speaks of the physically absorbing nature of olfaction, he also thematises connections between natural phenomena and bodily experience. In his series of poems about the senses, the poem “The Sense of Vision” [“Das Gesicht”] is followed by one entitled “The Sense of Smell” [“Der Geruch”]³:

68. That we smell in moderation / Is a marvel. If we would / Sense all vapours much more keenly, / Which right now we hardly could; / Many thousand matters must / Cause displeasure and disgust, / About whose fumes we now don’t carp, / As our sense is not too sharp. 69. How much ben’fit in our lives / Does the sense of smell us bring? / If a blaze starts to arise, / It’s more useful than our seeing. / Conflagrations would be felt, / If they were not timely smelt / And fought, so that the fire would / Not destroy our livelihood. 70. So much spicery, many flowers, / Numberless variety, / Which in India and Edom / Grow and in barbarity, / Would not serve a single creature, / Vanish as a useless feature, / If our noses were not fit / To refresh themselves with it. 71. “Tell me, uncouth mindset, does / “All this come by accident‚ / “Or from pow’r and loving kindness / “of an or’gin sapient? / “Tell me, should this not be prized / “So much as to be recognised? / “Who of creation loses sight‚ / “desecrates his Maker’s might.”

[68. Daß wir riechen, doch mit massen / Ist ein wunder. Sollte man / Alle dünste schärffer fassen, / Die man jetzt nicht spühren kann; / Würden so viel tausend sachen / Uns verdruß und eckel machen, / Deren Dampf uns jetzt nicht rührt, / Weil man gar zu scharf nicht spührt. 69. Welchen nutzen in dem leben / Bringet der geruch uns nicht? / Will sich eine brunst erheben; / Nutzt er mehr als das gesicht. / Manche gluht wär’ ausgebrochen, / Hätte man sie nicht gerochen, / Und bey zeit dem feur gewehrt, / Das sonst hab’ und gut verzehrt. 70. So viel specerey und blumen, / Die unzählbar mancherley, / Was in Indien, Idumen / Wächst und in der barbarey, / Könnte kein geschöpf gebrauchen, / Und müst, ohne nutz, verrauchen, / Wär die nase nicht geschickt, / Daß sie sich dadurch erquickt. 71. “Sprich verwildertes gemühte, / “Kommt dieß wohl von ungefehr, / “Oder aus der macht und güte / “Eines weisen Wesens her? / “Sprich! verdienen solche wercke / “Nicht so viel, daß man sie mercke? / “Wers geschöpfe nicht betracht, / “Schändet seines Schöpfers macht.] (Brockes 1740a, 975)

Brockes praises the smell of creation chiefly with a view to flowers and blossoms. The physico-theological proof of God demonstrates the purposeful design of creation also with reference to the physical and spiritual impacts of such smells. This does, however, require a mental effort, so that “one, if one beholds it, truly senses, / That this smell actually cools the lung, / That through the lung it does refresh the heart, / And, through the brain, gives pleasure to the soul” [“man, wenn mans betrachtet, wirklich fühlet, / Daß der Geruch die Lunge wirklich kühlet, / Daß er das Herz, durch unsre Lung, erfrischt, / Ja, durchs Gehirn, die Seele selbst vergnügt”]. For the praise of God,

the soul must make an effort, / And, from the other senses, as it were, contract within itself, / Upon repeated op’nings of the lung reflect upon the mixture that’s so sweet, / Which from the beaut’ful flower flows, / In order to bestow to Him, who gave it tools and spirit to enjoy such pleasure, / As a sweet offering, a heart of admiration.

[muß die Seele sich bemühn, / Und, aus den andern Sinnen, gleichsam sich in sich selbst zusammenziehn, / Bey öftern Oeffnungen der Lunge auf das so süß Gemische denken, / Das aus der schönen Blumen fließt, / Um dem, der ihr so Geist als Werkzeug, wodurch sie solcher Lust genießt, / Geschenkt, zu einem süssen Opfer, ein ihn bewundernd Herz zu schenken.] (Brockes 1739, 35)

Brockes’ praise of smell takes the form of an instruction to grasp introspectively the physical, emotive and cognitive effects of external nature and to interpret their complexity and nuance as the gift of a divine almighty.

The poem “The Ruddy White Hyacinth” [“Die röthliche weisse Hyacinthe”] increases the complexity of such an introspection as it explores the interplay of vision and olfaction. Beauty is beheld by the sense of sight:

As I, on your white snow, / With zest, and grace within my soul / And heartfelt pleasure see, / How sweet from the filled cavity / Such a sweet redness radiates, / And paints your petals’ whitish light / With rosy-colored sheen; / When I behold the tender shine, / And note the gentle rosy-coloured glow, / Which even puts the most beautiful blood / Of the most lovely skin to shame, / Whilst white and red so sweetly join together: / My touched spirit ‘s being filled with pleasure.

[Da ich auf deinem weissen Schnee, / Mit Lust, und Anmuth meiner Seele / Und innigem Vergnügen seh, / Wie süß aus der gefüllten Höhle, / Solch eine süsse Röthe stralet, / Und deiner Blätter weißlich Licht, / Mit rosenfarbnem Glantze malet; / Wenn ich den zarten Schein betrachte, / Die sanfte rosenfarbne Gluht, / Die, auch das allerschönste Blut / Der schönsten Haut, beschämt, beachte, / Da weiß und roth so süß sich fügt: / Wird mein gerührter Geist vergnügt.] (Brockes 1739, 28)

At the same time, the ruddy white hyacinth enlivens the sense of smell and renders sensible a creative force in all beings that can only be perceived by the nose:

When now your fair adornment subsequently / Does gently press itself against my nose: / Thus is in me, through zest renewed, / The spirit vitalised anew. // Is the Creator’s grace, who joined / A twofold pleasure within you, not worth, / That, as one sensed a twofold joy, / One honors Him with joyous praise to God? // Yes, I am, my dearest flower, through the splendour that adorns your, / Thusly led to our Creator, source of you and me. / Your friendly, cool and sourly-sweet scent stirs me most notably, / Which, from you little chalices exhales into the air / Incessantly, as if from many mouths, arising from so very many sources, / Which to our souls does not appear through sight and through the light, but only through the mell, /just through our nose.

[Wenn nun nachhero deine holde Zier / Sich sanft an meine Nase drücket: / So wird, durch neue Lust, in mir, / Der Geist auf neue Weis erquicket. // Ist denn des Schöpfers Huld nicht werth, / Der dopple Lust in dir verbunden, / Daß, wenn man dopple Lust empfunden, / Man, durch ein froh Gott Lob! Ihn ehrt? // Ja ich werde, liebste Blume, durch das Prangen, das dich zieret, / So zu dein- als meiner Quell, unsern Schöpfer, hingeführet. / Sonderlich rührt mich dein freundlich- kühl- und säurlich süsser Duft, / Der, aus deinen kleinen Kelchen, unaufhörlich in die Luft, / Als aus so vielen Münden haucht, als aus so viel Quellen steiget, / Der sich unsern Seelen, zwar durch die Augen, und durchs Licht, / So wie andre Körper, nicht / Sondern ihr, nur im Geruch, / durch die Nase bloß, sich zeiget.] (Brockes 1739, 28–29)

By contrast with heavier and prepared fragrances, the fresh and natural scent of the hyacinth vitalises the human spirit in a bodily sensible manner, thereby inspiring the faculty of thought as the decisive medium of poetic religious worship. Brockes compares the hyacinth smell with ambergris and civet to underline the animating effects of the former. In the poetological discourse of the Enlightenment, the latter substances can critically allude to the overly ornate qualities of Baroque poetry (cf. Alt 1994, 37–38),⁴ and even though Brockes includes them also in his praise of creation, they can tend to overpower human understanding in the context of certain pleasures and ceremonies:

When we mix ambergris with civet and incense with ointment: / This will nevertheless not refresh the spirit through smell as much / As we are refreshed, through the lovely vapours from the little children of the earth, / The adorned hyacinths, by their scent. / For, even though our soul senses grace in the former, too; / And feels a lovely sensation, a fair impression: / Through the flower’s scent, it is yet stirred in such a manner, / That the sourly-sweet mixture simultaneously delights, cools, / Refreshes, gladdens and properly rouses it.

[Wenn wir Amber mit Zibeth, und mit Balsam Rauchwerk mischen: / Wird es doch den Geist so sehr nicht, durch den Geruch, erfrischen, / Als wir, durch die holden Dünste, von den Kinderchen der Erden, / Den geschmückten Hyacinthen, im Geruch, erquicket werden. / Denn ob unsre Seele gleich Anmuth auch von jenen fühlt; / Und ein liebliches Empfinden, einen holden Eindruck, spüret: / Wird sie, durch der Blumen Duft, doch auf solche Art gerühret, / Daß die säurlich-süsse Mischung sie zugleich ergötzet, kühlt, / Labt, erfreut und recht ermuntert.] (Brockes 1739, 29)

Beauty and the vitalisation of body and soul lead human understanding, each in their specific ways, to the contemplation of a nature that is purposefully designed to meet humanity’s needs, and their interplay intensifies the inclination to praise divine creation. During moments in which the reflection on the process of smelling reveals the divine as the origin of a scent-diffusing exhalation, smell turns into a sacred medium for a pantheistic exercitation (cf. Kemper 1991, 58–59) which provides reassurance about the presence of a benevolent and uncontrollable higher force. The revelation of God in the blossoming Book of Nature speaks, as Brockes explains, to “vision, olfaction and feeling” [“Gesicht, Geruch, Gefühl”] (Brockes 1739, 8), and we are supposed to think of the Creator in “joyful mindfulness” [“in froher Achtsamkeit”] (Brockes 1740b, 197). In addition to the characteristic scent mixtures of specific kinds of flowers, the well-balanced multitude of fragrant creatures is worth noting. His praise of the sourly sweet hyacinth smell notwithstanding, Brockes also celebrates those scents of creation which resemble ambergris, civet, ointment or incense, as, for example, the ambergris-like fragrance of tree blossoms can retain its vitalising force when it’s diffused in moving air.⁵ In Brockes’ poem “Bean Fields” [“Bohnen-Felder”], the praise of creation is almost strained when potentially overwhelming scents are celebrated, as they also stem from God’s creatures:

Now these are fields of green beans which, when they’re in bloom as presently, / Fill the air, due to their volume, with so much balsamic scent: / So that our brain and our lung are nearly overwhelmed by such a splendid grace, / And at the same time pressed and quickened by the almost too strong waft. / Especially, when from making hay, from camomile and lilac blossoms, / Wherefrom, in such abundance now, scents are arising everywhere, / The rich and ambergris-like flecks are mixed with the blossom’s balm. / Through these so sweetly mixed airs one feels the heated bloods / Not only, so to speak, itself recov’ring, cooling, and refreshing, / A soul that’s thusly driven by sweet air, by God, feels / Fire that is inwardly enlivening …

[Dieß sind nun Felder grüner Bohnen, die, wenn sie, wie sie jetzo blühn /Mit so balsamischem Geruch die Luft, durch ihre Menge, füllen: / Daß unser Hirn und unsre Lunge, vor großer Anmuth fast gedrückt, / Und durch den fast zu starken Schwall, zugleich gepreßt wird und erquickt. / Zumal, wenn von gemachtem Heu, von blühndem Flieder und Camillen, / Woraus, in solchem Ueberfluß, die Düft, itzt aller Orten, quillen, / Die Ambra-reich-und gleichen Theilchen sich mit der Blühte Balsam mischen. / Durch die so süß vermengten Dünste, fühlt man das hitzige Geblüte, / Nicht nur sich gleichsam recht erhohlen, nicht nur sich kühlen und erfrischen, / Es fühlt ein, durch so süsse Luft, durch Gott getriebenes Gemüthe / Ein innerlich erquickend Feuer …] (Brockes 1739, 133–134)⁶

By virtue of its biodiversity, nature always restores a quickening equilibrium of scents, and Brockes repeatedly praises the invigorating balance of mildness and strength.⁷ And even though it would be anachronistic to speak of an ecological balance of natural feedback loops: Brockes is interested in relations between spheres of nature of which we form a part and external nature’s own dynamics, and he is thus concerned with nature as a co-world.

At the same time, Brockes recovers the religious meaning of biblical smell motifs in a knowledge of God that stems from innerworldly experience, as the following allusion to 2 Exodus 29: 25 shows:

The flowers are offering musk-sated juices; / The herbage is stewing enlivening forces, / Solely to honor the great universe. // O aspire, you humans, to notice it well; / Strive, through devotion and in your good deeds, / To be a sweet savour for the Creator!

[Es opfern die Bluhmen bebiesamte Säfte; / Es dünsten die Kräuter erquickende Kräfte, / Dem grossen All zur Ehr’ allein. // Ach trachtet, ihr Menschen, es wol zu bemerken; / Bemüht euch in Andacht, und guten Werken, / Dem Schöpfer ein süsser Geruch zu seyn!] (Brockes 1724, 162)⁸

This depiction of forms and qualities of nature as suggestive allusions to religious metaphors and symbols is yet another way of making the rationally knowable manifestation of an uncontrollable higher power in nature perceptibly palpable. Brockes’ poem about the ruddy white hyacinth does this in a very subtle manner. At first glance, the contrasting colours suggest, in line with contemporary ideals of female beauty (Muchembled 2020, 143–146), the skin and blood of a beautiful woman’s face. However, in the context of ancient myth, the colour red also hints at Hyacinthus as the lover of the highest god who after his death was turned into a flower in which his blood appeared as crimson.⁹ In a Christian allegoresis of myth, the flower would stand for the human soul as the bride of Christ, and this interpretation fits the allusion to a beautiful woman’s face, but at the same time, the colours link up with the religious tradition to imagine Christ as a rose, whose red represents his blood whilst the white symbolises his innocence (cf. Angelus Silesius 2000, 125). It remains uncertain as to whether this seemingly androgynous fusion of soul (as the bride) and Christ (as the groom) is owed to “the heretical view, shared also by” Jakob “Böhme, of the world’s creation as an act of begetting and birth within God” [“häretischen, auch von Böhme vertretenen Auffassung von der Weltschöpfung als innergöttlichem Zeugungs- und Gebärvorgang”] (Kemper 1991, 119); the view of Christ as a bride belongs to the heretical versions of Christian nuptial mysticism (Kemper 1988, 144–145). In contexts which are theologically more innocuous, Brockes moves explicitly from morphological observation to symbolic imagination. In his poem about the blue hyacinth, he lets the flower speak:

I stand, with my colour’s splendour, / For the blue of sky, for heaven. / With my form that is so fair, / I let you see the stars on earth. / O, may my stars make you become / Acquainted with the Lord of stars. … My grandeur shows beyond dispute / As does the proper nature / Of my build, the loveliness / Of colours, of my scent, which were made just for you; / That I did not conceive myself, / That I did not create myself.

[Ich stell, in meiner Farben Zier, / Die Himmel-blau, den Himmel für. /In meiner Form, da sie so schön, / Laß ich die Stern auf Erden sehn. / Ach, möchtet ihr, in meinen Sternen, / Den Herrn der Sternen kennen lernen. … Euch zeigt unstreitig meine Pracht, / Die richtige Beschaffenheit / Von meinem Bau, die Lieblichkeit / Der Farben, des Geruchs, die bloß für dich bereit; / Daß ich mich selber nicht erdacht, / Daß ich mich selber nicht gemacht.] (Brockes 1739, 14)

These quotations may suffice to illustrate that Brockes’ poetry can serve as an early example of a literature that is concerned with bodily explorations of nature, informed by scientific-taxonomical learning and focussed on introspective knowledge about the uncontrollable dynamics of relations between human and external nature. The design of external nature serves human purposes, but it does so in a manner that is entirely beyond human reach.

4 Brockes and Nature Writing: Affinities and Differences

These findings on Brockes’ essays and poems confirm that they have little in common with nature writing in Schröder’s sense of the term. His essayistic work contains fanciful fiction, and his poetry wouldn’t qualify as nature writing even if his nature poems could be classified as versified essays. His poetry does thematise bodily and emotional aspects of perceptions in nature, but his introspective contemplation maps inner states onto a universally authoritative and empirically knowable order of things. Goldstein’s attempt to define nature writing with reference to the experience of an Other beyond human command seems to come closer to Brockes’ writings, but the latter locates the uncontrollable in the power of God which is manifest in a purposive order of nature and which retains anthropocentric significance even when it thwarts human claims. Fischer’s study already pointed to this difference between physico-theology and nature writing. Brockes presents a beautiful, beneficent and occasionally overpowering nature as an instructive source of reassurance about reliable foundations for a good life in this world; nature writing in Fischer’s sense of the term is irreversibly cut off from edifying readings in the Book of Nature. For Brockes, nature reveals God as an ethically binding source of orientation; in nature writing, nature is also ethically significant, but it no longer conveys general norms or human values (Fischer 2019, 60–63).

Even the Early Enlightenment saw reason for concern about human beings who were empowered to be autonomous, as their unmindful self-assertion might fail to heed duly the uncontrollable essence of nature. However, rational purposiveness did not yet count as a possible source of alienation. Brockes laments the lack of reason in purposive action which remains aesthetically and religiously indifferent; such action inflicts harm on human nature, as the intellect remains emotionally cold. By contrast, nature writing is critical of purposive action which is solely guided by a scientific faculty of reason that is incapable of sensing the intrinsic significance of nature’s own uncontrollable dynamics; this significance can only be uncovered from a perspective that no longer searches for universalisable knowledge. Brockes’ nature poems and nature writing pursue similar aims insofar as they endeavour to counter the harm that stems from a purposive practice which is guided by a mind that blinds out the ethical significance of nature’s own dynamics; however, their ways of critiquing a blinkered purposeful mind result from very different historic problematic.

Nevertheless, Fischer’s approach allows us to tease out another shared concern of Brockes’ texts and nature writing: in both cases, humanity is urged to explore nature bodily and to sharpen its senses with scientific learning to facilitate an emotionally meaningful encounter with that which mere purposive action leaves unnoticed, namely the experience of ethically significant processes of which we form a part but over which we have no control. However, Brockes believes in the harmony of human and external nature, even though its realisation requires a good portion of reasoned humility, whilst nature writing foregrounds unresolvable tensions between self and other, which may well exercise healing powers but which subvert the project of reconciling the inner nature of needs with natural environments. Neither nature writing nor Brockes’ didactic poems aim to replace the bodily experience of nature with its literary representation (Fischer 2019, 58–60), and both strive for “the perception and exploration of natural phenomena with best possible precision, and in conjunction with the self-examination of the percipients” [“die möglichst genaue Wahrnehmung und Erkundung der Naturerscheinungen in Verbindung mit der Selbstprüfung des bzw. der Wahrnehmenden”] (Fischer 2019, 48). However, nature writing explores the specific profile of singular localities (Fischer 2019, 36, 203), whilst Brockes’ poetry chiefly considers generic features and guides the reader to exercitations which can be generally repeated in comparable situations.

An exception are those of Brockes’ texts which aim to conjure up the defining features of a unique landscape. They do, however, retain the tension between the topographic exploration of an unmistakeable place and the contemplation of things and beings at particular points of the field trip. In the previously discussed fictitious letter from a cousin who explores the specifics of Hamburg’s surroundings, the physico-theological assessment of singular beings and things is left out; by contrast, the seventh volume of Earthly Pleasures in God aims to combine these approaches. It is focussed on life in a particular landscape; in his poem “The Lovely Country of Ritzebüttel, Together with Some Reflections” [“Die schöne Gegend zu Ritzebüttel, nebst einigen Betrachtungen”], Brockes proclaims that the region he wants to sketch always incites him to field trips: “To put my plume to one side, to get up from the chair, / To do nothing but look, / As things are just too wonderful” [“Meine Feder wegzulegen, von dem Sessel aufzustehn, / Nichts zu thun, als nur zu sehn, / Weil es gar zu wunderschön”] (Brockes 1748, 7). But as soon as attention turns to the significance of singular matters, the local features are presented successively with a view to their generic qualities. The poem “Four Particular Wondrous Deeds of the Creator, from a Knoll in Ritzebüttel” [“Vier besondere Wunder des Schöpfers, von einer Höhe in Ritzebüttel”] deals with the unique advantages of the Elbe near Hamburg, but the sections about fields and the sky are focussed again on generic features; the same holds true for the section that deals with the sunlight, even though it speaks of the latter’s effects on “this lovely country” [“dieses liebe Land”] (Brockes 1748, 26). The contemplation of the purposeful design of any specific matter renders the bodily field trip into a mere series of separately considered impressions whose particular meaning no longer represents a specific locality. Conversely, Brockes’ fiction imagines localities which in reality can only be accessed in a series of separate field trips as surveyable parts of one accessibly coherent space from the unreal viewpoints of flying of hovering persons (Brockes 2012, 454–455)¹⁰; the specifics of actual bodily experience are thus edited out.

In this respect, Brockes’ texts also approximate nature writing on the surface only. Nature writing detaches the ethos of a sensitive bodily exploration of that which does not belong to human nature from the project of harmonising a well-understood nature of human needs with nature-related life-praxis—a project which is progressively radicalised from the Enlightenment through Sensibility and Storm and Stress to Romanticism. For Brockes, separating these two aspects is not yet an issue; the due bodily exploration of nature forms part of a specialised activity which combines useful instruction with pleasure.¹¹ Walking vitalises and opens up concrete landscapes whose beauty and utility deserve our attention; as a beholder, the wanderer rests at particular stages to ascertain, for the glory of God, the generics of particular parts of a whole. By contrast, nature writing strives for an “‘authentic’ perception and exploration of concrete nature” [“‘authentische’ Wahrnehmung und Erkundung von konkreter Natur”] (Fischer 2019, 45) as a meaningful awareness of that which does not coincide with human expectations; this experience is valued as an undistorted manifestation of the particular condition of a natural co-world. Brockes’ encounters with the unexpected are confined to the astounding, which is neglected in quotidian purposiveness and which therefore needs to be brought to our attention in regular spiritual exercises.

Brockes’ texts and nature writing, thus, do not stem from shared historical problematics. They are akin only insofar as both belong to the genealogy of the ethical demand to explore the intrinsic and uncontrollable significance of nature bodily as a way of escaping the purposively acting mind’s insensitivity to ethically binding experience. Brockes is acknowledged in the context of nature writing precisely because he doesn’t yet differentiate between scientific cognisance and the bodily exploration of nature as separate spheres of application, whilst nature writing aims to address problems of this separation of spheres by opening up innovative connections between them. However, from this point of view, the historic specificity of Brockes’ enlightened religiousness fades into the background (as an example, see Schröder 2017, 175–176).

By contrast, a Late Enlightenment writer such as Christoph Martin Wieland sharpens the critical sense for idealising religious approaches to nature which disturb the innerworldly balance between nature and life-praxis. He can no longer link up with Brockes’ ethos; in the second of his “Letters to a Young Poet” [“Briefe an einen jungen Dichter”], which appeared in The German Mercury [Der Teutsche Merkur] in October 1782, Wieland praises “the richness and melodiousness of our language, with a view to euphony and singability” [“den Reichtum und das Melodiöse unsrer Sprache, in Rücksicht auf Wohlklang und Singbarkeit”] which Brockes’ poems demonstrated notably in the first volume of Earthly Pleasures in God, but he does not dwell on their didactic message (Wieland 1967, 456). In his Late Enlightenment phase, Wieland dissociates himself from the literary movement of Sensibility on the basis of a scepticism (cf. Frick 1988, 387, note 8) which no longer provides scope for a religious experience of nature. In his satirical novel History of the Abderites [Geschichte der Abderiten] (1780), Wieland exposes the belief in a sacred order of nature as an illusion; he elaborates this psychological critique with a focus on the perception of smells which render the interplay between corporeality and natural enviroment sensible. He represents the sentimentalist abandon to poetically evoked fragrances of nature as a symptom of an overdeveloped faculty of imagination which deludes itself with sacralised imagery about the lustful origin of its own fantasies (Wieland 1984, 27–29). The Abderites’ religious prejudices also distort the secular dynamics of human and external nature: the construction of frog ditches in honour of the goddess Latona gets so thoroughly out of hand that the inhabitants of the country finally must emigrate. Even before their exodus, they imagine the plains of their exile with religious undertones “as fertile paradises” [“wie fruchtbare Paradiese”], and “they already breathed the milder airs and yearned with undescribable impatience to leave the thickened, frog-swampy atmosphere of their disgusting native city” [“atmeten schon die mildern Lüfte und sehnten sich mit unbeschreiblicher Ungeduld aus dem dicken, froschsumpfigen Dunstkreis ihrer ekelhaften Vaterstadt heraus”] (Wieland 1984, 376). The Abderites are curiously insensitive to the secular reality of desire and disgust.

Wieland’s critique of disturbed relations between bodily practice, inner nature and natural surroundings disconnects nature-related practice from metaphysical doctrines about the world as a whole. Meanwhile, the very scientific disillusion which appears liberating to the late Wieland has prompted nature writers to reconnect the separate spheres of objective cognisance and ethical evaluation in bodily active field trips into lived space. In this way, nature writing responds to the awareness that something is missing in scientifically disenchanted nature.¹² With a view to its distance from Brockes’ writings, nature writing could sharpen its sense for the cultural losses that frame any contemporary attempt at renewing the ethical imperative to explore the natural co-world physically. The providentially guaranteed coalition of human autonomy and theonomy would have to give way to what Bernhard Waldenfels calls the “intrinsic claims and demands of experience” [“das Eigenrecht und die Ansprüche der Erfahrung”]

which—even without recourse to universal laws—bring forth their own kinds of urgency up to the point of inescapability … The claims and demands bring into play a Heteron, the pre-forensic status of which eludes the dichotomy of autonomy and heteronomy.

[die—auch ohne Rekurs auf universale Gesetze—eigene Formen der Dringlichkeit hervortreiben bis hin zur Unausweichlichkeit … Die Ansprüche und Anforderungen bringen ein Heteron ins Spiel, das sich in seiner Vorgesetzlichkeit dem Gegensatzpaar von Autonomie und Heteronomie entzieht.] (Waldenfels 1985, 145)

The indomitable other of experience “also bears on one’s own self” [“betrifft auch das eigene Selbst”] (Waldenfels 1985, 146), and it thereby subverts the very ideal of a lasting reconciliation of self and environment on which approaches to nature so often draw in the history of German literature.