Goethe’s Color Studies in a New Perspective: Die Farbenlehre in English

Abstract

It was related in antiquity that in atonement for their misdeeds the daughters of King Danaus were made to spend eternity filling a vessel with water. The bottom of the vessel was riddled with holes so that no matter how they labored their task was never accomplished. The work of the translator bears a certain resemblance to this penance of the children of Danaus: the vessel provided by the second language is often frustratingly inadequate in conveying the meanings found in the original, and this frustration may yield to a sense of despair when the fundamental impossibility of the task is realized.

Originally read at a joint symposium sponsored by the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science and the Departments of Germanic Languages and History of Science at Harvard University, 3–4 December 1982. My own translations from the Farbenlehre have been prepared for publication by Suhrkamp Publishers in the forthcoming volume Goethe’s Scientific Studies, edited by Alan Cottrell and Douglas Miller.