Colloquia Germanica (Special Issue) Colloquia Germanica 42:1 (2009) "The German Gothic" 9783772083815

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The German Gothic: Introduction HEIDE CRAWFORD AND LINDA KRAUS WORLEY

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Mysterious monks in dark and dusty cloisters, stormy nights in wild nature or in towering castles, long shadows that hide those who are inclined to lurk in them and whose identities are never easily determined, a feeling of sublime horror that excites and intrigues the reader: these common elements of Gothic horror fiction have been present since the first such literary works were written by British and German authors. It is the purpose of this special issue on German Gothic literature to draw attention to the important contributions the German authors Carl Grosse, Friedrich Schiller, Ludwig Tieck, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm made to the development of European Gothic horror literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The contributors to this volume address various aspects of Gothic horror writing, ranging from the influence of Immanuel Kant’s theory of the sublime to the potential for horror in the fairy tale. In his essay «The Kantian Analytic of the Sublime in Tieck’s Runenberg,» James Landes explains the significance of Immanuel Kant’s ideas of the sublime for German Gothic horror literature. Rather than locating feelings of the sublime directly in the physical sense of seeing, as Edmund Burke had proposed earlier in the eighteenth century, Kant locates the sublime in the imagination. Landes argues that Der Runenberg can be read as an application of Kant’s theory of the sublime in the context of the German Gothic horror tradition. Heide Crawford’s «‹Keine Apologie des Grauenhaften›: Toward an Aesthetic of Horror in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s ‹Vampyrismus›» adds another element to our understanding of the aesthetics fueling the German Gothic by looking closely at E.T.A. Hoffmann’s collection of stories Die Serapionsbrüder (1819–1821). She highlights the critical discussions in the collection’s frame by the members of the Serapion brethren who insist that horror and Gothic elements be aesthetically pleasing as well as rooted in reality. Their discussions become, in effect, Hoffmann’s aesthetic of horror. The British and German Gothic literary horror traditions are thus fueled to a large extent by different theories of the beautiful and the sublime; nevertheless they share a deep interest in «Anthropologie» or «the science of man» as Rainer Godel argues in his essay «Carl Grosse’s Der Genius, or: Contingency

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Heide Crawford and Linda Kraus Worley

and the Uncanny in Cultural Transfer.» Godel discusses Grosse’s popular four-volume Gothic novel, Der Genius. Aus den Papieren des Marquis C* von G*, as an example of the complex processes of Gothic cultural transfer, which include translations, adaptations, and references from the Germanspeaking countries to England and from England to Germany. By looking closely at these processes, Godel sketches how context as well as views on aesthetics determine what is understood to be «Gothic» in the English and German traditions. Jeffrey High also concentrates on the mechanisms of cultural transfer by providing a detailed examination of the reception of the German Gothic in Britain around the turn of the nineteenth century in «Schiller, Coleridge, and Reception of the ‹German (Gothic) Tale.›» High focuses on the initial enthusiastic reception, then later dismissal, of Friedrich Schiller’s important contribution to German and European Gothic horror Der Geisterseher. In particular, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s varied reactions to Schiller shed new light on the reception history and influence of German Gothic horror in Britain. A common feature of German Gothic horror literature is that it is not restricted to one literary genre, although the common terms «Gothic novel» or «Schauerroman» suggest the opposite. German Gothic literature encompasses poetry, especially ballads, and a wide range of fiction: short stories, novellas, novels and fairy tales. In «The Horror! Gothic Horror Literature and Fairy Tales: The Case of ‹Der Räuberbräutigam,›» Linda Kraus Worley focuses on «Der Räuberbräutigam» as an example of a tale included by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in their Kinder- und Hausmärchen anthology. The Grimms edited «Der Räuberbräutigam» repeatedly so as to increase the effect of horror, thus essentially creating a subgenre of fairy tale, a «Gothic» fairy tale. One of the more popular German Schauerromane of the nineteenth century, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Die Elixiere des Teufels, is the subject of Christopher Clason’s essay, «Narrative ‹Teasing›: Withholding Closure in Hoffmann’s Elixiere des Teufels.» Clason compares the consistent popular appeal of the novel with its contemporaneous impact and subsequent critical reception. In addition, Clason addresses the manner in which Hoffmann’s narrative strategy simultaneously frustrates and fascinates the reader by drawing her or him into a suspenseful narrative that repeatedly withholds satisfaction or closure through a variety of narrative strategies and techniques. This collection of essays is a veritable microcosm of the German Gothic horror tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by dint of the range of its essays, which move from discussions of aesthetic theory and narrative strategy to reception, all the while focusing on different types of texts. German Gothic horror is a sublime horror, a physical perception of seeing

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that combines with the subjective imagination and as such is wrought with contingencies, uncertainty, and confused identity as experienced by the characters and by the reader who is drawn into the sublimity of horror through artfully crafted narratives.

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NEUERSCHEINUNG

Günter Butzer, Hubert Zapf (Hrsg.)

THEORIEN DER LITERATUR Lizenziert für Gast am 08.10.2021 um 00:38 Uhr

Grundlagen und Perspektiven BAND V 2011, II, 290 Seiten, €[D] 39,90/SFr 53,90 ISBN 978-3-7720-8381-5

JETZT BESTELLEN!

Literaturtheorie ist in den letzten Jahrzehnten national und international zu einem der wichtigsten Bereiche der Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften geworden. Ihr kommt damit eine grundlegende, kritisch-reflektierende und systematisch-orientierende Funktion für künftige Lehre und Forschung zu. Im Blick auf diese Situation wurde die Reihe ‚Theorien der Literatur’ konzipiert. Auch der nun vorliegende fünfte Band behandelt sowohl unverzichtbare Grundlagen als auch aktuelle Perspektiven der Literaturtheorie und geht davon aus, dass diese beiden Pole keinen Gegensatz, sondern einen produktiven Zusammenhang bilden. Er enthält Studien zur sozialen Leistung von Literatur, die den Begriff der Funktionsgeschichte, die Verbindung von Literatur und Psychosomatik, das Konzept einer littérature engagée sowie Programme des Postkolonialismus und der Transkulturalität behandeln, gefolgt von Beiträgen zur Aktualität des RealismusKonzepts aus rhetorischer und semiotischer Perspektive. Weitere Aufsätze thematisieren Aspekte literarischer Kommunikation – von der Intentionalität literarischer Texte über die systemtheoretische Beobachtung von Literatur und die Buchkritik bis hin zur Bedeutung der Kategorien ‚Spannung‘ und ‚Atmosphäre‘ für die Literaturtheorie. Arbeiten zur Medialität und Narratologie der Literatur, die das Verhältnis von Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit, die medialen Qualitäten literarischer Einbildungskraft sowie die Theorie mittelalterlichen Erzählens in den Blick nehmen, beschließen den Band.

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The Kantian Analytic of the Sublime in Tieck’s «Runenberg» JAMES LANDES

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In his Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790) Immanuel Kant shifted the sublime’s locus from sense experience to the imagination, a departure from Edmund Burke’s sublime.1 This essay puts forward the thesis that Ludwig Tieck’s short story «Der Runenberg» (1804) can be viewed as a thoroughgoing and paradigmatic application of the Kantian sublime within German Gothic horror fiction.2 The quest of the protagonist Christian to move from the world of his everyday life to a new awareness of self, brought about by a terrifying challenge to his imaginative powers, incorporates Kant’s conceptualization of the mathematical and dynamical sublime, as evidenced by the spatial and temporal realms of the story, respectively. Tieck’s story, therefore, serves as an important example of what can be termed German Gothic horror, not merely for its use of Gothic characteristics of setting, for example, but also specifically for the inspiration it draws from Kant’s philosophical reformulation of the sublime aesthetic.3 This essay focuses exclusively upon this Kantian understanding of the sublime aesthetic in «Der Runenberg.»4 Tieck’s own interest in the sublime predates «Der Runenberg.» An unfinished manuscript written by a youthful Tieck in 1792 entitled Über das Erhabene was first published by Edwin Zeydel in 1935. Ignored almost entirely by scholars before Zeydel’s publication, the essay makes no explicit reference to Kant, and remains largely dismissed to this day as unimportant. Roger Paulin, for examples, subsumes discussion of it under a brief treatment of the Gothic and sublime in Tieck’s «Abdallah.»5 In the first sentence of his book on Tieck, William Crisman refers to the fragmentary essay, only to stress that the work is «perhaps less interesting in itself than for the use Tieck intended for it,» that is, to be read aloud before a literary group (1). While I agree with the above scholars that the essay itself is not of great importance from a critical point of view, it is worth addressing for two reasons: first, to show that the topic of the sublime was very much on Tieck’s mind for at least a decade before the publication of «Der Runenberg,» and second, to stress a point made by Tieck within this essay fragment about the poet’s role in bringing the reader to the feeling of the sublime. Tieck writes,

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James Landes

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Ein Dichter kann uns nur gefallen, wenn wir zu seinen Bildern, Charakteren und Seelenerscheinungen Analogien in uns selbst finden, die uns jene wahrscheinlich machen, oder gar die nehmlichen Bilder und Ideen. Je häufiger dies der Dichter thun kann, in je mehrere Situationen er den Leser hineinwirft, je mehr anscheinende Widersprüche er ihm auflöst, je mehrere Charaktere, die uns in der alltaglichen Welt […] fremd und keine Ähnlichkeit mit uns selbst zu haben scheinen, je näher er diese dem Leser bringt und ihm gleichsam ein Sehrohr in die Hand giebt, durch dessen Hülfe er tausend verborgene Kräffte (sic) in der Seele entdeckt, je mehr ist der Dichter Genie. Er muß alle Seelen gleichsam vor uns aufschließen, und uns das ganze verborgene Triebwerk sehen lassen, das dem gewöhnlichen Menschen mit einem undurchdringlichen Schleier bedeckt ist. Dies eben ist die große Alchemie, durch die der wahre Dichter Alles, was er berührt, in Gold verwandelt […].6

One notes here already Tieck’s presumed connection between the sublime effect on the reader and the «alchemy» by which the writer produces this effect. Recalling Crisman’s insight that the essay was originally intended to be read before a literary group, and also the fact that the anthology Märchen aus dem Phantasus includes «commentary» by a fictional literary group on the stories in the volume, the idea that Tieck may have used «Der Runenberg» as an «alchemical» device to produce the effect of the sublime on the reader can be logically inferred. Indeed, as Ingrid Kreuzer notes, the narrative structure of the story involves the reader in the main character’s initiatory experience as the story begins: «Doch darf der Leser mit Christian zu Anfang durch das Fenster in den ‹Saal› der Runenbergruine blicken und sogar den Striptease der Schönen mit ansehn, er teilt mit ihm also das entscheidende Initiationserlebnis» (134). In examining «Der Runenberg,» therefore, I will consider precisely how Tieck evokes the feeling of the sublime in the reader. I will show how the narrative aims to «initiate» the reader into the feeling of the sublime as it is set against the backdrop of the «ordinary» world, a world in which the questions that touch the soul, as Tieck describes in his essay, are thus covered up by an impenetrable veil. In order to show that the sense of the sublime evoked in «Der Runenberg» is Kantian, the relevant Kantian points bear a brief explanation. Kant’s new understanding of the sublime rests first upon his distinction between the sublime and the beautiful, and then upon his delineation of the mathematical and dynamical aspects of the sublime. With regard to the former, one must recall that for Kant the feelings derived from the beautiful and the sublime are not sensory in nature but result from reflection within the faculty of the imagination.7 Natural beauty, for Kant, concerns the form of an object, and therefore, deals with that which is limited, whereas the sublime is connected with the idea of formlessness, and thus with an absence of limits (576). Beauty is thus understood as having to do with quality (as an objective

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The Kantian Analytic of the Sublime in Tieck’s «Runenberg»

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form), while the pleasure resulting from the sublime concerns quantity (as an infinite magnitude). According to Kant, moreover, the power of mental judgment is adequate for apprehending the beautiful, but not the sublime, which has the capacity to overwhelm the imagination. Kant’s distinction between the beautiful as something that conforms to the power of judgment and the sublime as something that does violence to the imagination shows the main difference between the two: the inadequacy of the imagination to deal with the sublime and to represent it within the judgment of the observer.8 As Paul Crowther notes in this regard, Kant’s «point here is that, if an object is formless, our imagination has so much difficulty in grasping its manifold that the object seems to defeat the very end of cognition itself» (82). Significantly, then, the object that produces the feeling of the sublime cannot in itself be described as sublime in Kantian terms; rather, it is the effect of viewing such an object that is sublime. This effect is not a positive one, as in the case of the beautiful, but negative, a result of the difference between the phenomenological structures in which the beautiful and the sublime are grounded (Crowther 81). The form of the beautiful object generates a harmony of the cognitive faculties, whereas the formlessness of the object producing the sublime feeling challenges the observer in a way that produces sublimity in the mind. Kant describes this negative effect in terms of the mathematical and dynamical sublime. He defines the mathematical sublime in terms of its magnitude: Erhaben nennen wir das, was schlechthin groß ist. Groß-sein aber, und eine Größe sein, sind ganz verschiedene Begriffe (magnitudo und quantitas). Imgleichen schlechtweg (simpliciter) sagen, daß etwas groß sei, ist auch ganz was anderes als zu sagen, daß es schlechthin groß (absolute non comparative magnum) sei. Das letztere ist das, was über alle Vergleichung groß ist. (579, emphasis in original)

In explaining the mathematical sublime as that which is absolutely great, Kant cites as an example the feeling one has upon entering St. Peter’s in Rome: «Denn es ist hier ein Gefühl der Unangemessenheit seiner Einbildungskraft für die Ideen eines Ganzen, um sie darzustellen, worin die Einbildungskraft ihr Maximum erreicht, und, bei der Bestrebung, es zu erweitern, in sich selbst zurück sinkt, dadurch aber in ein rührendes Wohlgefallen versetzt wird» (585). Mentioning this example, Frederick Copleston succinctly defines Kant’s mathematical sublime as that in which «the imagination refers the mental movement involved in the experience of the sublime to the faculty of cognition» (364, emphasis mine). Copleston contrasts this with Kant’s dynamical sublime, which he describes as the philosopher’s term for the sublime as it relates to the faculty of desire (364, emphasis mine).

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The dynamical sublime, according to Kant, occurs when one is overwhelmed by fear resulting from one’s inability to resist a force more powerful than oneself, such as the awesome power of nature, yet at the same time finds in one’s own limitation a «nonsensuous» standard for judgment. For Kant, this nonsensuous standard is one’s capacity for infinite reason, through which one may find a superiority to this power: «Man kann aber einen Gegenstand als furchtbar betrachten, ohne sich vor ihm zu fürchten, wenn wir ihn nämlich so beurteilen, daß wir uns bloß den Fall denken, da wir ihm etwa Widerstand tun wollten, und daß alsdann aller Widerstand bei weitem vergeblich sein würde» (596, emphasis in original). Through the dynamical sublime one becomes aware of the independence of one’s reason from one’s physical helplessness, and through this awareness feels power within the imagination.9 Here it is important to remember that this judgment by the observer, while arising through an understanding of one’s power of reason, is not itself rational. This judgment is not derived from logic. Rather, it is an aesthetic judgment based upon a sublime feeling that derives from a heightened sense of perspective. Tieck uses the Kantian sublime in portraying his protagonist’s imagination, which is overwhelmed by both conditions of perception – those of space and time – that Kant outlines in his first Critique. The mathematical sublime is evoked in Christian’s perception of the Runenberg and in his experiences there on the mountain, in that his ability to imagine within the spatial realm is taxed beyond his capacity: his faculty of cognition is inadequate to represent his experiences there. Moreover, the joy and peace that Christian finds upon accepting life with the terrible woman who eventually becomes known as the Waldweib reveal the dynamical sublime, in that Christian comes to terms with his inability to project rationally beyond the temporal into the eternal and thus overcomes his fear. Christian’s struggle involves a choice between his wife, Elisabeth, and the Waldweib, a struggle that is related to his faculty of desire. Tieck’s «supernatural method,» as described by James Trainer, is also evident in the sublime aspects of «Der Runenberg.» Trainer notes the following precept in Tieck’s essay «Über das Erhabene» as being present in many later works, such as «Abdallah,» William Lovell, and «Karl von Berneck»: «Eine Menge klarer Gefühle ist das Wesen des Schönen, viele dunkle Gefühle der Charakter des Schrecklichen und Gedanken das Zeichen des Erhabenen» (cited in Trainer 68).10 According to Trainer, how this feeling operates in Tieck’s work derives from Tieck’s study of Shakespeare. The author’s supernatural method is «based on the observation that the necessary illusion must be created before the action involving the marvellous ever begins. In this way there

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is no abrupt hiatus between mortal and supramortal, the boundary between the two is not even distinguishable and the reader’s tendency to rationalize is overcome before it can begin to operate» (Trainer 68). This supernatural method resonates in the opening scene of «Der Runenberg,» in which Christian has a vision among the Runenberg’s ruins. The reader shares the «initiatory» experience with Christian, who at the start of the story is directed by a stranger to the mountain.11 That he follows a stranger is already suggestive, for Christian clearly seeks the unfamiliar and the unknown. This is reflected in Christian’s explanation to the stranger of his prior life, which contrasts his status as a hunter traveling in the mountains with the life that had been planned for him as a gardener in the plains: es hat mich wie mit fremder Gewalt aus dem Kreise meiner Eltern und Verwandten hinweggenommen, mein Geist war seiner selbst nicht mächtig; wie ein Vogel, der in einem Netz gefangen ist und sich vergeblich sträubt, so verstrickt war meine Seele in seltsamen Vorstellungen und Wünschen. Wir wohnten weit von hier in einer Ebene, in der man rund umher keinen Berg, kaum eine Anhöhe erblickte; wenige Bäume schmückten den grünen Plan, aber Wiesen, fruchtbare Kornfelder und Gärten zogen sich hin, so weit das Auge reichen konnte, ein großer Fluß glänzte wie ein mächtiger Geist an den Wiesen und Feldern vorbei. Mein Vater war Gärtner im Schloß und hatte vor, mich ebenfalls zu seiner Beschäftigung zu erziehen; er liebte die Pflanzen und Blumen über alles und konnte sich tagelang unermüdet mit ihrer Wartung und Pflege abgeben. Ja er ging so weit, daß er behauptete, er könne fast mit ihnen sprechen; er lerne von ihrem Wachstum und Gedeihen, so wie von der verschiedenen Gestalt und Farbe ihrer Blätter. Mir war die Gartenarbeit zuwider […]. (63–64)

The element of control here evokes the sense of the sublime: life on the plains is controllable through gardening and domesticated agriculture, while the life to which Christian is called in the mountains is beyond such control. This contrast also recalls Kant’s distinction between the beautiful and the sublime. The gardener seeks to control nature as an object in order to produce beauty, in accordance with preconceived notions of an objective form. The hunter’s relationship with nature is less mediated: Christian experiences this relationship not through conformity to preconceived notions but as a challenge that he cannot resist, one that surpasses expectations and familiarity. Indeed, Christian’s explanation of his choice to become a hunter in the wild contains a direct reference to the mountain landscape as sublime. He speaks of das Gefühl, daß ich nun die für mich bestimmte Lebensweise gefunden habe. Tag und Nacht sann ich und stellte mir hohe Berge, Klüfte und Tannenwälder vor; meine Einbildung erschuf sich ungeheure Felsen, ich hörte in Gedanken das Getöse der Jagd, die Hörner, und das Geschrei der Hunde und des Wildes; alle meine Träume

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James Landes

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waren damit angefüllt und darüber hatte ich nun weder Rast noch Ruhe mehr. Die Ebene, das Schloß, der kleine beschränkte Garten meines Vaters mit den geordneten Blumenbeeten, die enge Wohnung, der weite Himmel, der sich ringsum so traurig ausdehnte, und keine Höhe, keinen erhabenen Berg umarmte, alles ward mir noch betrübter und verhaßter. (64)

Tieck’s use of these contrasting elements in a Gothic tale is not unique. Such distinctions, including that between mountain and landscape, were also used by British Gothic writers such as Ann Radcliffe (Trainer 53). Tieck’s innovation, however, was not merely to contrast the scenery, but also to interpret the contrast and analyze its effects upon the mind (Trainer 55). In doing so he is able to introduce elements of the Kantian sublime to the story through the psyche of his protagonist, as seen in the effects upon Christian beginning with his vision on the Runenberg. As Christian makes his way up the mountain, he is overcome by a joy that is also painful, described in such a way as to draw attention to the negative feeling connected to it: «sein Herz klopfte, er fühlte eine so große Freudigkeit in seinem Innern, daß sie zu einer Angst emporwuchs» (66). This passage is directly followed by a description of the unfamiliar surroundings that contain an abyss of life-threatening magnitude, all of which affect his imagination: Er kam in Gegenden, in denen er nie gewesen war, die Felsen wurden steiler, das Grün verlor sich, die kahlen Wände riefen ihn wie mit zürnenden Stimmen an, und ein einsam klagender Wind jagte ihn vor sich her. So eilte er ohne Stillstand fort, und kam spät nach Mitternacht auf einen schmalen Fußsteig, der hart an einem Abgrunde hinlief. Er achtete nicht auf die Tiefe, die unter ihm gähnte und ihn zu verschlingen drohte, so sehr spornten ihn irre Vorstellungen und unverständliche Wünsche. (66)

Here the effect of natural surroundings upon Christian can be described with the Kantian mathematical sublime, for an overwhelming magnitude in his physical surroundings challenges his imagination and overpowers him. It is precisely when Christian comes to a high wall lost in the clouds that his path ends. He stands before a window, compelled to stop, not knowing what to do. Christian has a vision while peering through a window (66–67). In this vision the enormous magnitude is underscored by the size of the hall and the stature of the feminine figure before him as well as by the multitudes of precious gems and crystals in the hall (67).12 As the vision unfolds, Christian sees the womanly figure of «überiridischen Schönheit» undress before him (Tieck 68). The «unearthly» aspect of her beauty suggests that it is not definable, as in Kant’s description of «the beautiful,» but rather a beauty of such great magnitude that it cannot be properly imagined, as in Kant’s mathematical sublime.

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The ending of the story confirms this understanding. When Christian returns briefly to his family, the Waldweib is described by the narrator as «entsetzlich» to the other characters, who have not shared his initiatory experience (82). Memory is a device linking Tieck’s treatment of the sublime within the spatial and temporal realms in his story. As Christian’s vision on the Runenberg ends, the woman before him hands him a tablet inlaid with jewels. The tablet overwhelms his senses and imagination to such a degree that he loses his sense of self during his vain effort to comprehend the tablet’s beauty: In seinem Innern hatte sich ein Abgrund von Gestalten und Wohllaut, von Sehnsucht und Wollust aufgetan, Scharen von beflügelten Tönen und wehmütigen und freudigen Melodien zogen durch sein Gemüt, das bis auf den Grund bewegt war: er sah eine Welt von Schmerz und Hoffnung in sich aufgehen, mächtige Wunderfelsen von Vertrauen und trotzender Zuversicht, große Wasserströme, wie voll Wehmut fließend. Er kannte sich nicht wieder […]. (68)

The beauty of the tablet is not that of an object that accords with previously known forms of beauty and therefore brings pleasure. Rather, it is a beauty that causes a negative pleasure and an overwhelming sense that threatens the observer. In Kantian terms, it is not beauty that is described here, but the sublime. The woman in the vision offering Christian the tablet with the words «Nimm dieses zu meinem Angedenken!» recalls the Christian communion rite (Tieck 68). William Lillyman describes this act as a «counter communion» that directly contrasts with the next scene in the story, in which Christian returns to society by taking communion in a church, where he meets his future wife Elisabeth (69; Lillyman 98–99). The tablet serves as Christian’s reminder of the transcendent communion he experienced in the spatial realm, which contrasts with his everyday life after he returns to the plains and attempts to live as a gardener with Elisabeth. However, it also serves as a link to the eternal realm with which he has communed, a realm that contrasts with the ephemeral temporal realm in which he tries to resume his «ordinary» life. One finds the Kantian analytic of the sublime at work in «Der Runenberg» not only in the spatial realm of perception but also in the temporal realm. Just as the representation of the sublime in the spatial realm depends upon a contrast, such as the one between the mountain and the plains, so, too, does the representation of the sublime in the temporal realm. In this case the contrast is between the Waldweib, who represents the eternal, and Elisabeth, who represents the temporal. More specifically, it is the earthly beauty of Elisabeth that is temporal. The memory of the eternal, unearthly beauty of the Waldweib eventually overwhelms Christian’s imagination and draws him away from life

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with Elisabeth. This occurs when he rationally accepts his own powerlessness against this beauty and embraces it, much in the sense of the Kantian dynamical sublime. There are a number of direct comparisons between the Waldweib and Elisabeth that help explain this contrast and its function as an element in the Kantian sublime. It is worth recalling here how Copleston characterizes Kant’s dynamical sublime as relating to the faculty of desire, for Christian is caught in a conflict between desire for his wife and desire for the Waldweib. When Christian returns to life on the plains as a gardener, he reassumes an earthly cycle of life, as made clear by the priest’s sermon on the goodness of God, who provides for the harvest: «der Priester hatte seine Predigt begonnen, von den Wohltaten Gottes in der Ernte: wie seine Güte alles speiset und sättiget was lebt, wie wunderbar im Getreide für die Erhaltung des Menschengeschlechtes gesorgt sei, wie die Liebe Gottes sich unaufhörlich im Brote mitteile und der andächtige Christ so ein unvergängliches Abendmahl gerührt feiern könne» (70). It is telling that Christian first meets his wife in this scene which describes the life cycle. The theme of this cycle recurs soon after he marries her, when Christian makes a direct comparison between Elisabeth and the Waldweib: Nach einem halben Jahre war Elisabeth seine Gattin. Es war wieder Frühling, die Schwalben und die Vögel des Gesanges kamen in das Land, der Garten stand in seinem schönsten Schmuck, die Hochzeit wurde mit aller Fröhlichkeit gefeiert, Braut und Bräutigam schienen trunken von ihrem Glücke. Am Abend spät, als sie in die Kammer gingen, sagte der junge Gatte zu seiner Geliebten: «Nein, nicht jenes Bild bist du, welches mich einst im Traum entzückte und das ich niemals ganz vergessen kann, aber doch bin ich glücklich in deiner Nähe und selig in deinen Armen.» (71)

Christian’s life with Elisabeth begins in the spring, with her beauty in full blossom. This also foreshadows their love’s demise, for Christian is already comparing Elisabeth at the peak of her physical beauty to his memory of the eternal vision of the Waldweib, which he can «never entirely forget.» When, afterward, Christian first leaves Elisabeth, ostensibly to find his parents, he once again draws a comparison between the vision of the mountain woman and his wife. His thoughts move back and forth between his wife, who is waiting for him and literally counting the hours of his absence, to the vision still calling him from the mountains, a vision that he links to a form of insanity: «Ich kenne dich Wahnsinn wohl», rief er aus, «und dein gefährliches Locken, aber ich will dir männlich widerstehn! Elisabeth ist kein schnöder Traum, ich weiß, daß sie jetzt an mich denkt, daß sie auf mich wartet und liebevoll die Stunden meiner Abwesenheit zählt. Sehe ich nicht schon Wälder wie schwarze Haare vor mir?

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Schauen nicht aus dem Bache die blitzenden Augen nach mir her? Schreiten die großen Glieder nicht aus den Bergen auf mich zu?» (72)

This comparison between an earthly wife, who waits and counts time and the memory of a vision that seems to operate outside chronological time, further hints that the juxtaposition of the wife’s temporal beauty and the sublime eternal represented by the woman in the mountain vision is central to the sublime aspect of this story. Furthermore, Christian’s insistence that he will overcome the «insanity» of the situation reflects his inward struggle to make sense of this conflict rationally, by means of an inward movement that comes to the limits of his reason, as described by the Kantian dynamical sublime. Tieck also reveals to the reader, from an outside perspective, the transformation in Christian that occurs as he comes to terms with the force that overwhelms his imagination. Elisabeth’s perspective, more than any other, is significant here, since she first experiences the Waldweib vicariously through Christian’s apparent insanity after he has surrendered himself to the vision’s power and begun to neglect his duties within the temporal, domesticated, civilized world. She explains to Christian’s father: Wie sehr mußte er daher erstaunen, als ihn an einem Abend Elisabeth beiseit (sic) nahm und unter Tränen erzählte, wie sie ihren Mann nicht mehr verstehe, er spreche so irre, vorzüglich des Nachts, er träume schwer, gehe oft im Schlafe lange in der Stube herum, ohne es zu wissen, und erzähle wunderbare Dinge, vor denen sie oft schaudern müsse. Am schrecklichsten sei ihr seine Lustigkeit am Tage, denn sein Lachen sei so wild und frech, sein Blick irre und fremd. Der Vater erschrak und die betrübte Gattin fuhr fort: «Immer spricht er von dem Fremden, und behauptet, daß er ihn schon sonst gekannt habe, denn dieser fremde Mann sei eigentlich ein wunderschönes Weib; auch will er gar nicht mehr auf das Feld hinausgehn oder im Garten arbeiten. (75)

Elisabeth’s perspective gives the reader a glimpse of Christian from the viewpoint of the «uninitiated.» Elisabeth, whose imagination has not been overwhelmed by the vision at the Runenberg, tries to make sense of her experiences from within the framework of the ordinary. She therefore experiences Christian’s actions as indicative of some sort of mental breakdown. After Elisabeth’s outward perspective on Christian, the narrative shifts to Christian telling his father of his personal introspection on the eternal vision that haunts him. He contrasts the vision with his ordinary life. This passage is perhaps the most compelling example within the story of the Kantian dynamical sublime: Gern, Vater, auch ist mir oft ganz wohl, und es gelingt mir alles gut; ich kann auf lange Zeit, auf Jahre, die wahre Gestalt meines Innern vergessen, und gleichsam ein fremdes Leben mit Leichtigkeit führen: dann geht aber plötzlich wie ein neuer

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Mond das regierende Gestirn, welches ich selber bin, in meinem Herzen auf, und besiegt die fremde Macht. Ich könnte ganz froh sein, aber einmal, in einer seltsamen Nacht, ist mir durch die Hand ein geheimnisvolles Zeichen tief in mein Gemüt hineingeprägt; oft schläft und ruht die magische Figur, ich meine sie ist vergangen, aber dann quillt sie wie ein Gift plötzlich wieder hervor, und wegt sich in allen Linien. Dann kann ich sie nur denken und fühlen, und alles umher ist verwandelt oder vielmehr von dieser Gestaltung verschlungen worden. […] alles will dann die inwohnende Gestalt entbinden und zur Geburt befördern, und mein Geist und Körper fühlt die Angst; wie sie das Gemüt durch ein Gefühl von außen empfing, so will es sie dann wieder quälend und ringend zum äußern Gefühl hinausarbeiten, um ihrer los und ruhig zu werden. (76)

Christian’s explanation seems to invoke directly the Kantian description of the dynamical sublime, given its emphasis both on the overwhelming nature of the feeling forced upon his imagination, and on his internal strife, which aims at finding a position of rest against the compelling force. Explaining to his father the difference between the vision that dominates his «inner» man and the life he leads in the «outer» world, Christian once again immediately mentions time, contrasting the temporal, chronological outer world with the vision’s eternal power over his inner world. Christian’s longing for the happiness that would result from a peaceful understanding of the vision on the mountain comes to a climax in his explicit rejection of his wife and her fading beauty, in favor of the eternal vision from the mountain: «aber heut ist Elisabeth nicht mehr ein blühendes kindliches Mädchen, ihre Jugend ist vorüber, ich kann nicht mit der Sehnsucht wie damals den Blick ihrer Augen aufsuchen: so habe ich mutwillig ein hohes ewiges Glück aus der Acht gelassen, um ein vergängliches und zeitliches zu gewinnen» (77–78). Immediately thereafter, he has a vision of the Waldweib, who hands him the bejeweled tablet, just as she did in his initial vision. Most important in regard to the sublime, Christian recognizes the form of this Waldweib as that of the woman from the mountain vision («den mächtigen Bau der Glieder wiederzuerkennen»), despite her appearance as «ein altes Weib von der äußersten Häßlichkeit» (78). The contrast here between the power of the vision and beauty is an important clue to understanding this vision as a sublime vision. This contrast is confirmed at the very end of the story, when Christian explains to Elisabeth that he has abandoned her for «meine Schöne, die Gewaltige,» the Waldweib, who, when viewed from Elisabeth’s perspective, is described by the narrator: «Dann ging er still fort, und im Walde sahen sie ihn mit dem entsetzlichen Waldweibe sprechen» (82). This final passage ultimately shows the dynamical sublime at work in the story by stressing that Christian’s decision is essentially an aesthetic, as opposed to a rational, decision, in accordance with his faculty of desire.

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Tieck’s story «Der Runenberg» provides readers of German Gothic horror with more than the standard Gothic references and allusions. It offers an example of a specifically German perspective of the sublime that provides insight into the use of setting and psychology in the development of horror literature. The adaptation of a specifically Kantian analytic of the sublime allowed Tieck to develop a method for «initiating» the reader into an experience shared by his protagonist, to transcend the ordinary world, and to come face to face with the primeval emotions encountered at the limits of reason. Tieck’s alchemical rendering of Kantian aesthetic principles produces a story in which the reader finds «gold» by sharing the protagonist’s initiation into the sublime.

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Notes 1

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Burke, in his 1757 work A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, viewed the sublime as an empirical phenomenon of sense experience. Scholars believe that the story was written in 1801 or 1802, although it first appeared in the Taschenbuch für Kunst und Laune in 1804. It was later included in the Märchen aus dem Phantasus collection that appeared from 1812–1816 (Castein 17; Kreuzer 134). Dorothea E. von Mücke’s examination of the «pathology» of Tieck’s aesthetic sensibility in the story «Liebeszauber» is a significant contribution to the discussion of Kant’s aesthetic of the beautiful as a means of discussing Tieck’s horror fiction (Seduction 58–108). She does not seek, however, to show that this particular work is Kantian. Indeed, she points to the aesthetic sensibilities of the character Emil in «contradistinction» to Kant (Seduction 86). In her more recent article of 2008, von Mücke discusses Tieck’s «Liebeszauber» in a way that contrasts beauty in the story with the classical views of beauty seen in the philosophy of Kant, among others of the period: «The classicist ideal of a self-sufficient, calm and stable subjectivity, such as we can find in Herder’s, Schiller’s or Kant’s discussions of beholding beauty, appears as an extremely fragile construct that can only temporarily be upheld at the cost of excluding alterity. Tieck’s story makes it clear that merely a minimal shift of attention on to the fragility of an observer’s reality construction suffices to disrupt this observer’s contemplative calm and self-sufficiency» (419) Neither Kant’s nor Tieck’s ideas on the sublime, however, are explicitly addressed. For a general overview of «Der Runenberg» as a Gothic tale, see Lloyd. Lloyd focuses, however, more on the otherworldly setting of the story as indicative of the Gothic atmosphere, mentioning the sublime only in passing. Kant’s philosophical project of developing a transcendental philosophy that mediates between empiricism and phenomenalism informs his development of the sublime, which he summed up as follows:«Man kann mit der jetzt durchgeführten transzendentalen Exposition der ästhetischen Urteile nun auch die physiologische, wie sie ein Burke und viele scharfsinnige Männer unter uns bearbeitet haben, vergleichen, um zu sehen, wohin eine bloß empirische Exposition des Erhabenen und Schönen führe» (617). For a comprehensive, academically sound and accessible explanation of Kant’s project, see Allison. Allison explains Kantian «transcendental idealism» as it differs from empiricism, and also distinguishes it from phenomenalism.

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Paulin writes, «In this essay, as in the letters, the sublime is the tone for largeness of emotion and greatness of spirit; it is even (this to Wackenroder) at the basis of sympathetic friendship. The Gothic and the sublime are close partners; the aesthetic mode can be seen to justify all manner of frightfulness in the novel» (22). Here I quote from Zeydel’s publication of the essay (540), given that Tieck neither finished nor published the text among his own works. The text does not appear in collections of Tieck’s work published today, such as the collection edited by Marianne Thalmann. Kant opens his discussion of the sublime by stating, «Das Schöne kommt darin mit dem Erhabenen überein, daß beides für sich selbst gefällt. Ferner darin, daß beides kein Sinnes- noch ein logisch-bestimmendes, sondern ein Reflexionsurteil voraussetzt: folglich das Wohlgefallen nicht an einer Empfindung, wie die des Angenehmen, noch an einem bestimmten Begriffe, wie das Wohlgefallen am Guten, hängt; gleichwohl aber doch auf Begriffe, obzwar unbestimmt welche, bezogen wird, mithin das Wohlgefallen an der bloßen Darstellung oder dem Vermögen derselben geknüpft ist, wodurch das Vermögen der Darstellung, oder die Einbildungskraft, bei einer gegebenen Anschauung mit dem Vermögen der Begriffe des Verstandes oder der Vernunft, |als Beförderung der letztern, in Einstimmung betrachtet wird» (574–75). «Der wichtigste und innere Unterschied aber des Erhabenen vom Schönen ist wohl dieser: daß, wenn wir, wie billig, hier zuvörderst nur das Erhabene an Naturobjekten in Betrachtung ziehen (das der Kunst wird nämlich immer auf die Bedingungen der Übereinstimmung mit der Natur eingeschränkt), die Naturschönheit (die selbständige) eine Zweckmäßigkeit in ihrer Form, wodurch der Gegenstand für unsere Urteilskraft gleichsam vorherbestimmt zu sein scheint, bei sich führe, und so an sich einen Gegenstand des Wohlgefallens ausmacht; statt dessen das, was in uns, ohne zu vernünfteln, bloß in der Auffassung, das Gefühl des Erhabenen erregt, der Form nach zwar zweckwidrig für unsere Urteilskraft, unangemessen unserm Darstellungsvermögen, und gleichsam gewalttätig für die Einbildungskraft erscheinen mag, aber dennoch nur um desto erhabener zu sein geurteilt wird» (576). «Denn, so wie wir zwar an der Unermeßlichkeit der Natur, und der Unzulänglichkeit unseres Vermögens, einen der ästhetischen Größenschätzung ihres Gebiets proportionierten Maßstab zu nehmen, unsere eigene Einschränkung, gleichwohl aber doch auch an unserm Vernunftvermögen zugleich einen andern nicht-sinnlichen Maßstab, welcher jene Unendlichkeit selbst als Einheit unter sich hat, gegen den alles in der Natur klein ist, mithin in unserm Gemüte eine Überlegenheit über die Natur selbst in ihrer Unermeßlichkeit fanden: so gibt auch die Unwiderstehlichkeit ihrer Macht uns, als Naturwesen betrachtet, zwar unsere physische Ohnmacht zu erkennen, aber entdeckt zugleich ein Vermögen, uns als von ihr unabhängig zu beurteilen, und eine Überlegenheit über die Natur «(597). Here I follow the lead of Trainer (68), who italicized those words in Tieck’s essay «Über das Erhabene» that were underlined in the manuscript found by Zeydel. The choice of a mountain for this experience of the sublime calls to mind Kant’s own use of the mountains, not as a sublime object in themselves, but as the sort of setting that might cause one to experience the effect of the mathematical sublime through the inadequacy of the imagination: «Man sieht hieraus auch, daß die wahre Erhabenheit nur im Gemüte des Urteilenden, nicht in dem Naturobjekte, dessen Beurteilung diese Stimmung desselben veranlaßt, müsse gesucht werden. Wer wollte auch ungestalte Gebirgsmassen, in wilder Unordnung über einander getürmt, mit ihren Eispyramiden, oder die

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düstere tobende See, u.s.w. erhaben nennen? Aber das Gemüt fühlt sich in seiner eigenen Beurteilung gehoben, wenn, indem es sich in der Betrachtung derselben, ohne Rücksicht auf ihre Form, der Einbildungskraft, und einer, obschon ganz ohne bestimmten Zweck damit in Verbindung gesetzten, jene bloß erweiternden Vernunft, überläßt, die ganze Macht der Einbildungskraft dennoch ihren Ideen unangemessen findet» (590). «Er sah dem Scheine nach, und entdeckte, daß er in einen alten geräumigen Saal blicken konnte, der wunderlich verziert von mancherlei Gesteinen und Kristallen in vielfältigen Schimmern funkelte, die sich geheimnisvoll von dem wandelnden Lichte durcheinanderbewegten, welches eine große weibliche Gestalt trug, die sinnend im Gemache auf und nieder ging. Sie schien nicht den Sterblichen anzugehören, so groß, so mächtig waren ihre Glieder, so streng ihr Gesicht, aber doch dünkte dem entzückten Jünglinge, daß er noch niemals solche Schönheit gesehn oder geahnet habe» (67).

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Works Cited Allison, Henry E. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Burke, Edmund. «A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful.» A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful and Other Pre-Revolutionary Writings. London: Penguin, 1998. 49–200. Castein, Hanne. Erläuterungen und Dokumente: Ludwig Tieck: Der Blonde Eckbert/ Der Runenberg. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1987. Copleston, Frederick, S.J. A History of Philosophy. Volume VI. Modern Philosophy: From the French Enlightenment to Kant. New York: Doubleday, 1960. Crisman, William. The Crises of «Language and Dead Signs» in Ludwig Tieck’s Prose Fiction. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1996. Crowther, Paul. The Kantian Sublime: From Morality to Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Kant, Immanuel. Kritik der Urteilskraft. Texte und Kommentar. Ed. Manfred Frank and Véronique Zanetti. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2009. Kreuzer, Ingrid. Märchenform und individuelle Geschichte: Zu Text- und Handlungsstrukturen in Werken Ludwig Tiecks zwischen 1790 und 1811. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983. Lillyman, William J. Reality’s Dark Dream. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1979. Lloyd, Tom. «Ludwig Tieck.» Gothic Writers: A Critical and Biographical Guide. Ed. Douglass H. Thomson, Jack G. Voller and Frederick S. Frank, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. 429–36. Mücke, Dorothea von. «Beyond a Mere Daydream: The Strange Pleasures of the Fantastic Tale in Cazotte, Tieck and Hoffmann.» Forum for Modern Language Studies 44.4 (2008): 412–26. –. The Seduction of the Occult and the Rise of the Fantastic Tale. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. 58–108. Paulin, Roger. Ludwig Tieck: A Literary Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. Tieck, Ludwig. «Der Runenberg.» Werke in vier Bänden. Nach dem Text der «Schriften» von 1828–1854, unter Berücksichtigung der Erstdrucke. Ed. Marianne Thalmann. 4 vols. München:Winkler, 1963.

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Trainer, James. Ludwig Tieck: From Gothic to Romantic. London: Mouton & Co., 1964. Zeydel, Edwin. «Tieck’s Essay Über das Erhabene.» PMLA 50.2 (1935): 537–54.

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«Keine Apologie des Grauenhaften»: Toward an Aestheic of Horror in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s «Vampyrismus» HEIDE CRAWFORD

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U NIVERSITY

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The rise of Gothic horror literature is typically associated with the works of eighteenth century British authors such as Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, M.G. Lewis, and Clara Reeve as well as American authors of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries such as Charles Brockden Brown and Edgar Allan Poe. German authors of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were, however, not only active in developing a unique German strain of Gothic horror literature, they also helped make Gothic horror literature a pan-European phenomenon and, in turn, influenced many British and American authors of horror fiction in subsequent centuries. Indeed, by the turn of the nineteenth century, German tales of horror had become so popular on an international scale that nineteenth-century British and American authors of trivial Gothic romances often included the ominous subtitle «A German Story» in order to associate their stories with the Gothic horror genre. A few short years after Horace Walpole wrote the first Gothic horror novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), the German Gothic horror tradition, emerging out of the larger composite genre that is often referred to as Ritter-, Räuber- and Schauerromane, began with Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg’s drama Ugolino in 1768. Other texts such as Goethe’s Urfaust (1775/76), Götz von Berlichingen (1773), and Friedrich Schiller’s drama Die Räuber (1781) appeared soon thereafter. Far from being restricted to one genre, as the term Schauerroman suggests, German Gothic horror literature spans all the major genres of creative literature extant at the time, from drama and poetry in the eighteenth century to prose and other literary forms, including folk and literary fairy tales, in the nineteenth century. These texts feature the traditionally Gothic horror elements of fear, secrecy, the uncanny, uncertainty, contingency, unexplained occurrences, mysterious apparitions, and mistaken or ambiguous identities. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the German Gothic horror literature trend began to develop in a different direction than its British counterpart, due, in part, to the influence of Kant’s ideas concerning aesthetics and the sublime on German authors of horror. These authors were less concerned than their British counterparts with providing rational

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explanations for the perceived supernatural; they were interested in creating a lasting and continuous impression of sublime horror fraught with mystery. When E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote his collection of stories Die SerapionsBrüder (1819–1821) his Serapiontic principle did more than provide a general system of poetics. By including a story about vampirism, a popular subject for European Gothic horror literature at the time, he created a horror aesthetic that was uniquely German in the way it demanded that truly gruesome horror stories be narrated in an aesthetically pleasing manner and be based in reality or realistic situations. After Hoffmann’s friend Adalbert Chamisso returned to Berlin in 1818, Hoffmann decided to reestablish the literary group known as the «Seraphinenorden» to which he and Chamisso had belonged before Chamisso left on his travels. During this time, Hoffmann created the frame narrative for Die Serapions-Brüder as Hilda Meldrum Brown details in E.T.A. Hoffmann and the Serapiontic Principle (8–9). Hoffmann modeled the structure of his text on Ludwig Tieck’s collection of stories Phantasus. Eine Sammlung von Mährchen, Erzählungen, Schauspielem und Novellen, published in four volumes from 1812 to 1816. Hoffmann’s Die Serapions-Brüder is a collection of stories told by a group of friends who are writers. They gather to tell stories, discuss literature, and critique each other’s work. The brethren discuss various examples of prose narratives throughout the frame and in so doing they lay out a multitude of analytical perspectives and narrative strategies. One of the friends, Lothar, defines the Serapiontic principle as a system of poetics based on those qualities of the mad hermit Serapion which conjoin to make him an ideal literary model. Brown summarizes Lothar’s thoughts as follows: it is the quality of Serapion’s poetic visions and his ability to communicate these to others that will have the most practical relevance to a group of writers who are planning to refound their literary society. Intensity and communicability of the inner vision is paramount, as is the sense that what the poet communicates is based on personal involvement with his material, and that his transformation of this result is an enhancement or intensification of what has been observed or perceived and raises the work above the ordinary level. (47)

When Lothar elaborates to his fellow poets the relevant aspects of the Serapiontic principle, he emphasizes the nature and range of emotions that one must address in the process of artistic representation (Brown 48). Through Lothar, Hoffmann promotes one of his strongest artistic beliefs. Brown writes that Hoffmann demands that a work of art must «convey the whole gamut of human emotions; further that these should be expressed as feelings that are both extreme and strongly contrastive» (48). Lothar says that art must represent life «mit aller Lust, mit allem Entsetzen, mit allem Jubel, mit allen Schauern»

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(Hoffmann 67). Throughout Hoffmann’s text, the Serapion brethren discuss aesthetics, literary techniques and themes, all the while reflecting on the suitability of the story in terms of the Serapiontic principle. Far from dismissing popular occult topics such as controversial theories about hypnotism, somnambulism, and even vampires, the members of this fictional literary group see a world of possibilities for the artist in these topics in that they would allow the artist to delve into fantasy and the psyche. The story «Vampyrismus» is a tale told by the character Cyprian in volume four, part eight of Die Serapions-Brüder. Within the timeline of European vampire prose, Hoffmann’s story follows Ludwig Tieck’s «Liebeszauber,» written in 1811, and John Polidori’s story «The Vampyre,» written in 1819. From 1811 until 1829, German, British, French and Italian authors, dramatists and librettists produced stories, plays and operas of varying quality for a public that was drawn in great numbers to Gothic horror tales featuring vampires. Thus, in the span of 18 years, at least 17 such works were published. This wave of vampire stories provides the background for the stage directions written by Goethe for the herald who introduces groups of guests to a masquerade ball in the scene «Weitläufiger Saal» of Faust II: Die Nacht- und Grabdichter lassen sich entschuldigen, weil sie soeben im interessanten Gespräch mit einem frisch erstandenen Vampyren begriffen seien, woraus eine neue Dichtart sich vielleicht entwickeln könnte; der Herold muß es gelten lassen und ruft indessen die griechische Mythologie hervor, die, selbst in moderner Maske, weder Charakter noch Gefälliges verliert. (165; l.5299)

The «Nacht- und Grabdichter» to whom Goethe refers here are John Polidori, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Prosper Mérimée. Goethe also wrote an unpublished review of Mérimée’s collection of poems «La Guzla» (1827) in which he remarks that «Der Dichter … ruft als ein wahrer Romantiker das Gespensterhafte hervor … nächtliche Kirchen, Kirchhöfe … und nun erscheinen kurz Verstorbene drohend und erschreckend … der gräßliche Vampirismus mit allem seinen Gefolge» (qtd. in Trunz 597). In a letter to his friend Zelter on June 18, 1831, Goethe writes of his dismay about these Romantic graveyard poets: «Das Häßliche, das Abscheuliche, das Nichtswürdige … ist ihr satanisches Geschäft … Auch entschiedene Talente sind’s, die dergleichen unternehmen» (qtd. in Trunz 597–598). Goethe laments in this manner, despite the fact that he himself had introduced the female vampire into literature with his ballad «Die Braut von Korinth» almost 35 years earlier. Considering the plethora of horror texts of questionable quality that featured vampires, it seems that Hoffmann was consciously taking on the challenge of developing a model for a horror aesthetic in Die Serapions-Brüder by including a rather gruesome vampire story among the tales the brethren tell each other. In a discussion

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after Sylvester’s story «Der Zusammenhang der Dinge,» but before Cyprian’s vampire story, Lothar observes,

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das geschickte Benutzen der historisch wahren Gebräuche, Sitten, herkömmlichen Gewohnheiten irgend eines Volkes oder einer besonderen Klasse desselben [gibt] der Dichtung eine besondere Lebensfarbe, die sonst schwer zu erlangen. Doch sag’ ich ausdrücklich, das geschickte Benutzen, denn in der Tat, das Erfassen des geschichtlich Wahren, der Wirklichkeit in einer Dichtung deren Begebnisse ganz der Fantasie angehören, ist nicht so leicht als mancher wohl denken möchte und erfordert allerdings ein gewisses Geschick, das nicht jedem eigen und ohne welches statt einer frischen Lebendigkeit nur ein mattes schielendes Scheinleben zu Tage gefördert wird. (1113)

A discussion of the vampire in literature follows when Sylvester praises Lord Byron’s work, especially his tendency toward horror; Sylvester mentions that he did not dare read Byron’s story «The Vampire» (which has since been correctly attributed to Byron’s physician, John Polidori) because he feared this creature that sucks the blood of the living: Vorherrschend soll sein [Byrons] Hang zum Düstern, ja Grauenhaften und Entsetzlichen sein, und seinen Vampyr hab’ ich gar nicht lesen mögen, da mir die bloße Idee eines Vampyrs, habe ich sie richtig aufgefaßt, schon eiskalte Schauer erregt. Soviel ich weiß, ist ein Vampyr nämlich nichts anderes als ein lebendiger Toter, der Lebendigen das Blut aussaugt. (1115)

Lothar laughs and exclaims that a poet of Sylvester’s caliber should be more familiar with stories of ghosts, witches, magic and the like; he should probably also have some experience in the practice of the magical arts in order to be able to write about them, because these are useful topics for literature. Lothar recommends an interesting little work on vampires – Michael Ranft’s popular treatise «Traktat vom Kauen und Schmatzen der Toten in Gräbern» (1728). He recommends Ranft’s essay as a fine source for comprehensive information on vampirism, should Sylvester want to inform himself thoroughly. The extended title Lothar gives this work is «M. Michael Ranft’s Diaconi zu Nebra, Traktat von dem Kauen und Schmatzen der Todten in Gräbern, worin die wahre Beschaffenheit derer Hungarischen Vampyrs und Blutsauger gezeigt, auch alle von dieser Materie bisher zum Vorschein gekommene Schriften rezensirt worden» (1116). As far as Lothar is concerned, the title itself is an indication of how thorough the actual treatise is. He confirms Sylvester’s understanding of the vampire in his summary of Ranft’s essay since Ranft identifies a vampire as a person who rises from the grave to suck the blood of the living as they sleep. The vampire’s victims in turn become vampires, so that entire villages are transformed into vampires, according to this and other reports from Hungary. Lothar also mentions Ranft’s observation that vampires

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can be destroyed if they are exhumed, staked through the heart, and finally burned (1116). In his summary of Ranft’s treatise for this story, Hoffmann, through Lothar, focuses on the observations that Ranft made of the vampire superstition but does not address the major thrust of Ranft’s work, which was to use the methods of scientific inquiry to find a rational explanation for this superstition. This omission is understandable if one takes into account that Hoffmann’s brethren are primarily concerned with the aesthetic value of topics such as vampirism for creative literature; they don’t aim to explain the superstition. Nevertheless, Ranft’s essay is one of several actual historical documents written by scientists and medical doctors who studied local superstitious practices in Hungary on the orders of Habsburg Emperor Charles VI who had won these territories from the Ottoman Turks in the Austro-Turkish War of 1716–1718 (Barber 5; Mamatey 96–97). Ranft’s treatise thus establishes a solid foundation in reality for the literary vampire. Lothar continues his discussion of the vampire reports by mentioning a letter he attributes to a military officer, an ensign in Prince Alexander’s regiment. This letter is said to have been written in Belgrade to a famous doctor in Leipzig not named here. The letter Lothar mentions may in fact be a reference to the popular vampire story «Visum et repertum (Arnold Paole),» written by Johannes Flückinger and delivered to Charles VI in 1732. This intertextual nod is likely because Flückinger’s letter was also written in Belgrade and signed by officers from Prince Alexander’s regiment. At the end of his report, Flückinger credits his assistants; two officers of Prince Alexander’s regiment confirm the veracity of the document with their signatures (Sturm et al. 456). Since Lothar’s lengthy exposé of the vampire superstition uses documentation of vampire investigations in Central Europe, Hoffmann makes the reader aware of his own familiarity with the cultural history of the vampire, especially when he lets Lothar correctly remark, «Überhaupt beschäftigte sich damals das Militär ganz ungemein mit dem Vampyrismus» (1117). Far from being «ungestaltetes Material,» as Wulf and Ursula Segebrecht suggest in their comments in the Deutscher Klassiker edition of Hoffmann’s works (1638), Lothar’s exposé on Ranft’s treatise and the military officer’s letter connects the vampire theme in literature to its origins in the real world of the eighteenth-century vampire debates. In reaction to Sylvester’s remark that the mere idea of vampirism is exceedingly repulsive, Cyprian retorts that «der richtige poetische Takt des Dichters» can take this idea of vampirism and create something that «die tiefen Schauer jenes geheimnisvollen Grauens erregt, das in unserer eigenen Brust wohnt, und berührt von den elektrischen Schlägen einer dunkeln Geisterwelt den Sinn erschüttert, ohne ihn zu verstören» (1117). Theodor reminds Cypri-

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an that he need not offer an «Apologie des Grauenhaften» because so many of the greatest poets, especially Shakespeare, had already mastered the art of affecting a reader’s disposition without causing actual distress. In addition to Shakespeare, he names Ludwig Tieck’s body of work, especially his vampire story «Liebeszauber» (1811) and Heinrich von Kleist’s story «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» (1810) as further examples of mastery in creating an atmosphere of sublime horror in literature (1118). This discussion of vampirism reminds Cyprian of a story that he believes he either heard or read in a book; he then proceeds to tell the story «Vampyrismus» to the group of friends. Especially important in Lothar’s and Theodor’s reactions to Cyprian’s telling of the story is their praise of Cyprian’s ability to suggest events and actions that evoke feelings of dread and uncertainty in a narrative of contingency, all of which had been important aspects of European Gothic horror literature since Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto in 1764. Moreover, even before Cyprian told his story, Lothar’s discussion of the historical reports on vampires had already established the solid foundation in reality of the cultural beliefs in vampires. This foundation in historical reality, combined with the apparently real vampire story in an unnamed book alongside the skillfully constructed and suspenseful narration lauded by Theodor and Lothar for its tasteful approach, can be postulated as Hoffmann’s model for an aesthetic of horror in literature. By converging the reality of his own personal experiences as a member of the literary group «Seraphinenorden,» which coincidentally became the «Serapionsorden,» with the fictional frame narrative for his collection of stories, Hoffmann was able to skillfully interweave the real world with an imaginary world, thus implementing the Serapiontic principle of «basing a fictional narrative on […] solid foundations» for the structure of his collection of stories (Brown 9). Thus the gruesome story of a beautiful, cannibalistic vampire bride becomes a model proving that a horror story can be aesthetically pleasing in accordance with the Serapiontic principle, especially when the horrific details are told in a tasteful manner.

Works Cited Barber, Paul. Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality. 2nd edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. Brown, Hilda Meldrum. E.T.A. Hoffmann and the Serapiontic Principle: Critique and Creativity. New York: Camden House, 2006. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Faust. Ed. Erich Trunz. München: Beck, 1996.

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Hoffmann, E.T.A.»Vampyrismus.» Die Serapions-Brüder. Ed. Wulf and Ursula Segebrecht. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2001. 1113–35. Mamatey, Victor S. The Rise of the Habsburg Empire 1526–1815. Huntington, NY: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company, 1978. Segebrecht, Wulf and Ursula. «Kommentar.» Die Serapions-Brüder. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2001. Sturm, Dieter, and Klaus Völker, eds. «Visum et Repertum, Über die so genannten Vampirs, oder Blut-Aussauger, so zu Medvegia in Servien, an der Türkischen Granitz, den 7. Januarii 1732 geschehen.» Von denen Vampiren oder Menschensaugern: Dichtungen und Dokumente. Munich: Hanser, 1994.

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NEUERSCHEINUNG

Karl S. Guthke

Die Reise ans Ende der Welt Erkundungen zur Kulturgeschichte der Literatur Lizenziert für Gast am 08.10.2021 um 00:38 Uhr

Edition Patmos, Band 15 2011, VIII, 509 Seiten geb. €[D] 148,00/SFr 234,00 ISBN 978-3-7720-8415-7 Von Grenzen geht ein Reiz aus: was liegt darüber hinaus? Wie aber, wenn es sich um die Erfahrung der »letzten Grenze« handelt? Eine Herausforderung an den Menschen, zu erfahren, wer er ist? Die Überraschung, daß das »Ende der Welt« vielleicht ihre Mitte ist? Eine definierende Erfahrung allemal. Oder hat Durs Grünbein recht: es gäbe »keine fernen Orte mehr«? Und doch war ein Reisebuch mit dem Titel »Die Enden der Welt« 2010/2011 ein Bestseller. Dieses Buch vereinigt neuere Studien über reale und imaginative Erkundungen der jeweiligen »ultima Thule« in der Literatur seit dem »Zeitalter der Entdeckungen«. Vom Faustbuch über Goethe bis zu Traven erscheint die Faszination von den »Enden der Welt« in unerwarteten Variationen. Ein paar thematisch anders orientierte Essays bezeugen: die Literatur dieser Jahrhunderte war auch imstande, sich dem Reiz der »großen Öffnung in die weite Welt« zu verschließen. Doch warum? JETZT BESTELLEN!

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Carl Grosse’s Der Genius, or: Contingency and the Uncanny in Cultural Transfer1 RAINER GODEL

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M ARTIN -L UTHER -U NIVERSITÄT H ALLE -W ITTENBERG

Carl Grosse’s four-volume Gothic novel Der Genius. Aus den Papieren des Marquis C* von G** was published from 1791 to 1795 in Halle. Grosse’s Genius is – even in the English-speaking countries – better known than one would suppose at first glance. Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, a novel she probably began writing in 1798 and which was published posthumously in 1817, has one of world literature’s first and most famous scenes parodying the contemporary Gothic horror craze. Grosse’s Genius takes a prominent place here although neither Grosse nor the German title of the Gothic novel are mentioned. When Catherine Morland and Isabella Thorpe chat about their reading pleasures and horrors in chapter 6 of Northanger Abbey, they itemize the most fashionable tales of terror around 1800. One of their preferred novels is a book titled Horrid Mysteries, which scholars considered to be of dubious origin or even to be a fake for quite some time (Austen 33; cf. Thomson and Frank). This book was finally identified as Peter Will’s translation of Grosse’s Der Genius and was reprinted in the twentieth century along with the other so-called Northanger novels. Will’s translation, Horrid Mysteries, was published in London in 1796, only two years after the fourth volume of the German original appeared. Another even more thoroughly forgotten translation retained the German title The Genius and also appeared in 1796. The ubiquitous Peter Will was a London pastor of German origin (Hamberger and Meusel 533), who «made something of a career out of translating German sensational novels into English» (Clery and Miles 250). «Translating» may be a much too narrow description for what Will did with the German texts. He altered the style and sometimes also the structure of the novel in order to meet the expectations of the English audience.2 Will’s translations or transformations thus provide a significant example of the complex process of cultural transfer of Gothic literature from Germany to England, a process that does not lack in misappropriations and misreadings. Barry Murnane rightly points out that Austen’s «parody of Gothic novels» is «by no means an isolated reaction» («Importing Home-grown Horrors?» 54, 81). These complex processes of Gothic cultural transfer include translations, adaptations, enrichment, rejection, and (veiled or open) references from

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the German-speaking countries to Great Britain and from Great Britain to Germany. These various processes should be the focus of a comprehensive research project that abstains from older models of influence and instead uses methodological premises – such as the concept of «transfer culturel»3 – which enable researchers to work with the multi-polar levels of mutual transformation. Such a research project could be based on Murnane’s argument that there are two core tendencies in German and British Gothic literature leading to the fact that texts were altered in order to fit the taste of each respective audience («Uncanny Translations»). Edgar Allen Poe’s famous assertion, «I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul» (129), establishes a dichotomy whose one pole is that which was considered a specific «German» tradition of Gothic, mainly consisting of simple effects of horror, and the other a psychological tradition of the Gothic. This distinction, however, erases the contributions of the German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, who was one of the most remarkable sources for Poe, as well as the «black» side of German Romanticism, which also contributed abundantly to Poe’s work. I argue in this article that both the British and the German tradition of Gothic literature around 1800 and its various cultural transfers – as different as they appear and as different as they present themselves – are based upon a common ground resulting from yet another cultural transfer. This common ground is «Anthropologie» or «the science of man» as it was developed and discussed throughout the eighteenth century in the European-wide process of Enlightenment. Alexander Pope’s claim «Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;/The proper study of mankind is Man» (38) was adapted and altered often in Germany and France by writers ranging from Christoph Martin Wieland, Albrecht von Haller, and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg to the «Anti-Pope» Johann Georg Schlosser (Wieland 172; Haller 135; Schlosser). Denis Diderot’s multi-polar model of anthropologic knowledge in his Encyclopédie and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s rendering of aesthetics as the «Scientia sensitive cognoscendi et proponendi» (Baumgarten 16) helped form the discourse regarding the study of human beings. The «Anthropologists» do not simply aim at scientific explanations for human phenomena. Georg Friedrich Meier, in his Philosophische Sittenlehre of 1754, considers not only several academic disciplines to be «anthropologisch,» but also «Wahrheiten,» «Künste,» and «Dinge» (truths, arts, and objects), in so far as they contribute considerably to the knowledge of human beings (Meier par. 398, 368). Inside and outside universities and academies, «philosophes,» «Popularphilosophen,» and literary authors were looking for answers to anthropological questions within this broader understanding. This anthropological discourse

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became crucial for the development of literature in the late eighteenth century and, as I will argue, also provides important presuppositions for the genesis of the genre «Gothic novel.»4 I do not aim at ahistorical or typological explanations for the uncanny or for its boom around 1800. The uncanny – Todorov uses the more neutral concept of étrange – is seen here as one of many elements that produce the instability of the Gothic narrated world. I propose that the history of a literary genre should also be written as the history of its presuppositions. Grosse’s Der Genius5 exemplifies how contextual factors, in addition to aesthetic issues, codetermine what was considered a Gothic novel both in Great Britain and in Germany. Gothic novels both of British and of German origin were created within the context of the anthropologically determined self-enlightenment of the Enlightenment. Although Grosse’s aeshetic theory, as Carsten Zelle has shown, differs distinctively from the Enlightenment theory of the sublime (67), the novel follows, with regard to the practices of cognition which have become problematic, the same ideas that inform the self-reflexivity of the Enlightenment. A core aspect of the European Enlightenment in the last third of the eighteenth century was the belief that the means to achieve progress towards a state of being enlightened are restricted due to the unavoidable limits human beings encounter when trying to perceive, to judge, and to reason. The Enlightenment can serve to enlighten only within the parameters of what human beings are able to achieve.6 Thus, the development of the Gothic novel genre cannot be explained exclusively as some immanent need for metaphysics in times of secularization nor can it be seen merely as an antienlightenment program of esotericism.7 One of the main factors that form the basis of this genre is an anthropology-based perception of contingency that itself is disseminated through cultural transfer and transformation. These processes of cultural and intertextual transfer and transformation stipulate the multi-polar semantic superimposition of various layers in the textual form and in the narratives. They follow the rules of formation posited by several national and transnational discourses. Cultural transfer means the transfer of ideas, cultural facts, practices, and institutions from a specific system of social, behavioral, performance, and representational patterns into another system in the course of which background, motives, selective criteria, and purposes change.8 I will focus on a small range of these processes of cultural transfer, in particular on the relevance of «anthropological»9 thinking for Grosse’s novel and Grosse’s reception of the writings of the British philosopher James Beattie. While still a student in Göttingen and Halle, Grosse began to translate Beattie’s texts into German and to edit, at the same time, an anthropological journal, the Magazin für die Naturgeschichte des Menschen, which has been

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disregarded by scholars until now. The contributors to the Magazin discuss numerous anthropological sujects. The preface of the first issue of the Magazin mentions a wide realm of areas of knowledge, including «die eigentliche Naturgeschichte des Menschen,» «Anatomie, Physiologie, Physik und einige Capitel aus seiner Psychologie.» The contributors deal with the question of dreams and the genesis of ideas in the human mind; they provide biographical sketches and illness studies; they contribute to the debate on human races and how to determine them; they write about language and the human ability to speak; they discuss the relevance of fossil findings; they explore how the human iris is physiologically constituted; and they discuss questions regarding the history of mankind. Grosse also includes a review of Johann Daniel Metzger’s influential Medizinisch-philosophische Anthropologie für Aerzte und Nichtärzte (1790). In addition, the volumes of this journal are dedicated to two of Grosse’s prominent teachers: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach from Göttingen and Johann Reinhold Forster from Halle. Grosse contributed to the journal and, beginning with the second issue of the first volume, he served as its main editor. He included in the Magazin several of his own translations of James Beattie’s Dissertations Moral and Critical, above all the crucial essay on dreaming.10 A seemingly minor detail perfectly demonstrates that these translations are subject to a process of cultural transfer, not only of adaptation. In the preface to his edition of Beattie’s dissertations, Grosse explicitly criticizes Beattie for not including metaphysics in his system (Beattie, Moralische und Kritische Abhandlungen, Preface, vol.1) – a clear hint that Grosse’s cultural context is not identical with the British empiricist tradition (and its critics), but is part of the German Enlightenment tradition that rarely exists without a metaphysical layer.11 If we take these processes of alteration seriously, we must assume that it is not Beattie who has an impact on Grosse’s Gothic novel Der Genius, but it is Grosse’s reading and translation of Beattie; just as it is not Grosse who is mentioned in Austen, but Peter Will’s reading and translation of Grosse. By means of his intense studies of Beattie, Grosse got to know English-Scottish empiricism in detail through the eyes of a distinct critic. We may suppose that it was first and foremost the rehabilitation of the senses (against a presumed dominance of reason alone) that attracted the young student to Beattie’s theories. But Grosse probably also found a connection between Beattie and the developing «Gothic» tradition in England and Scotland which had been fostered by Macpherson’s influental «Ossian» poems as well as the ensuing debates and literary experiments. Between 1770 and 1774 Beattie had written a poem that was widely read, commented on, and used as a source in the English and Scottish Gothic tradition, for example by Ann Radcliffe. This poem, titled

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«The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius,» follows Ossian’s footsteps and develops the theme of the «unfolding of poetic genius» by providing a naturebound, heroic, Scottish character.12 There is no evidence available to determine whether Grosse knew this poem in written form or whether the title of this poem was the source for the title of his Gothic novel. In any case, Grosse’s excellent knowledge of Beattie contributed to a specific anthropological discourse that played a significant role in the cultural context of Grosse’s writing. Grosse had an outstanding knowledge of contemporary debates, a knowledge that was fueled by his close connections to the university landscape in Göttingen and Halle, connections which included his falling in love with the youngest daughter of the highly renowned Göttingen professor Johann David Michaelis (Dammann 727–28). Contributors to the journal include his Göttingen companion Philipp Michaelis, but also Blumenbach and Metzger, renowned participants in the anthropologic discourse of the era. Grosse’s excellent knowledge of anthropological arguments will be seen to be reflected in his novel. Anthropological arguments form a distinctive aspect of the Enlightenment; they do not contradict it. Eighteenth-century anthropology aims to enlighten human beings about human beings. A specific consequence of anthropology-based thinking forms one of the core tenets of late eighteenthcentury discourse: «Anthropologen» of the late eighteenth century argue that specific areas of human cognition can produce only contingent knowledge. The limits of human cognition and understanding were described by Meier, philosophically analyzed by Kant, and discussed by many others. These are areas of insecure knowledge or of nonknowledge. Discourses regarding flaws in knowledge and the contingent nature of knowledge gain a distinctive presence in the late eighteenth century (Adler and Godel). One may here consider Niklas Luhmann’s argument that it is precisely the attempt to enforce order and rationality that produces the perception of contingency (48). Essentially, the perception of contingency in the late Enlightenment is based on four discourses (Godel, Vorurteil 69ff.; Garber and Thoma). The first discourse involves anthropologists of the late eighteenth century who were of the opinion that dark, sensual cognition (including emotion) cannot be completely controlled. They identified as the core issue the mutual influence of body and mind. Moreover, the «lower» forces of cognition had been equated with the «upper» forces since Meier and Baumgarten. In Grosse’s translation, Beattie argues in the preface to his dissertations that «Gedächtniß, Einbildungskraft, Vernunft, Verstand, Bewußtseyn sind eben so gut Kräfte der menschlichen Seele, als Gehör, Gesicht, Gefühl, Geruch und Geschmack» (Moralische und Kritische Abhandlungen 1: 7).

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The second discourse focuses on empirical methods. These methods not only lead to the hoped-for increase in knowledge, but also put into question evaluations of knowledge, cognition, and certainty. Because of the limits of empirical observation, only preliminary remarks in certain areas can be made, especially in areas where experiments are impossible: «von einem solchen Gegenstande, über den nie irgend ein Versuch genau angestellt werden kann, […] können unsere Kenntnisse sich nie höher, als zu Wahrscheinlichkeiten erheben» (Beattie, «Über das Träumen» 39, trans. Grosse). Thus we see that dreaming – something every human being does, something that is fundamentally ‹human› – is one of those areas where a complete, rational knowledge is not possible. Yet one cannot dispense with empirical cognition. Another similar area is the question of whether or not it is possible to recognize other people’s character completely. Many writers of the late eighteenth century, including Carl Friedrich Bahrdt who lectured in Halle when Grosse was a student there, argue that it is impossible to recognize people’s motives behind their behavior because these are «completely invisible» (Bahrdt 107f.; Berg 378). Empirical judgments about other people’s character must remain tentative. The third discourse focuses on anthropologists who place human beings within the scope of a natural world that human beings can hardly survey: «Die Natur thut nichts umsonst, aber die Unvollkommenheit unsers Verstandes macht uns oft die Endursachen mißkennen» (Beattie, «Über das Träumen» 35, trans. Grosse). Nature cannot be completely measured and understood because it provides a complex whole of multiple influences and because human beings are always bound to one vantage point. The fourth and final discourse focuses on the issue of whether or not achieving knowledge is a process determined – or at least impacted – by history and culture. Grosse writes in the Magazin: Der rasche Strom der Zeiten hat alle Steine über einander gewälzt, wodurch man Abschnitte im Laufe der Aufklärungen ehemals wohl zu bezeichnen gedachte […] nur ihr itziger uns sichtbarer Gang hat allenfalls der Phantasie eine Richtschnur gezogen. (Grosse, «Was ist Geschichte» 3)

Even the wisest historians would be able only to venture «kraftlose Versuche, in die Oberfläche zu graben» (3). In the end, many consider the ways of achieving practical knowledge and the availability of knowledge contingent. Contingency is a factor in cognition. The question is then how to deal with this experience of contingency? Grosse argues that the task is to find ways out of «dem trüben Uebergange von Wahrheit zu Wahrscheinlichkeit und wahrscheinlicher Dichtung» (8). For perceiving contingency does not mean that human beings need to perse-

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vere in the lack of reliable judgments; it does not mean that enlightened optimism has to be turned upside down or turned towards fatalism. Whereas academic philosophers such as Kant strive for new epistemological models, their contemporaries react to the same experience with three options: 1. Some aim to radicalize the receptive side of Enlightenment processes by stressing the individual’s responsibility for enlightenment despite all contingency. The basis for this attempt is the idea that there is a «common sense» or «allgemeine Menschenvernunft,» which is distributed among all human beings (Hinske xviii). Contingency is supposed to be replaced by a rationally guided process of Enlightenment ready to deal with the fact that reason does not suffice and is subject to irrational impulses. Alas, this first answer trusts in the capacity of the individual to enlighten himself or herself. This concept runs the risk of falling into aporias when it comes to the question of how individual reason and individual cognition may be transferred (Thomé 388). 2. Other thinkers aim to establish general norms for cognition. If the masses were not able to achieve truth, then truth, especially moral principles, must be prescribed by philosophy, religion, and politics. This argument, correcting skeptical anthropological thinking, was developed by Beattie and many others. In «An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth» (1776), Beattie restricts himself to the «moral science» as he cannot explore the human mind (x). He does not aim to produce a system of logic: «A complete theory of evidence is not to be expected in this book» (x). However, he knows about the importance and the inevitability of the «science of human nature,» i.e., the same complex of knowledge that is named «Anthropologie» in German, and he proposes an empirical method for this area (10), which argues with David Hume’s skeptical-empiricist anthropology. Beattie’s research examining the human heart is led by «sagacity,» «sensibility,» «delicacy,» and by his claim to write in a popular way (12). Beattie acknowledges that truth is based upon subjective perception processes: «I account That to be truth (sic) which the constitution of our nature determines us to believe» (19). He opens the realm of inter-subjective concepts of truth by introducing «common sense» as the «energy of understanding» or «self-evident truth» (21, 27). Although Beattie uses the central concept of the Scottish School here, he explicitly demarcates his position against their supposed skepticism (Kühn). Beattie’s common sense enables human beings to recognize those truths that are immediately clear and therefore cannot be the object of doubt – such as the truth of moral laws. For Beattie, common sense is even more important than reason: «common sense is the ultimate judge of truth, to which reason must continually act in subordination» (Beattie, «Essay on the Nature» 31). Beattie attempts to combine the belief in human rationality, truth, virtue, and Christianity with

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the anthropology-based limits of human understanding in a conservative manner by insisting on the existence and the perceptibility of an irrefutable moral truth. Reinstitutionalizing morality cannot undo the corollaries of the anthropological discourse, but rather aims at suspending them by some kind of intuitive perception of truth named «common sense.» 3. Several eighteenth-century writers do not agree with these conservative attempts to reduce the problem of contingency to moral norms. These writers radicalize the production of ambivalence by means of complex writing strategies. Literary anthropology transforms the problems of dealing with the perception of contingency. Hans Richard Brittnacher rightly argues that the fear felt by those who despair when facing the complexity and contingency of reality is one of the basic assumptions underlying the production of the uncanny (7f.). As soon as this despair is threatening, the uncanny becomes the hyperbole of a confrontation with contingency. The uncanny connects the limits of human understanding with presuppositions such as those which assume a reality behind the perceived objects. The literary culture of the uncanny exaggerates a world perception, but it does not represent it mimetically. The Gothic novel shows the literary performance of a discursive perception of contingency (Godel, «Anthropologiebasierte Kontingenz». As we have seen, Grosse was perfectly acquainted with the contemporary debates on anthropology and its consequences. But his translation of Beattie’s texts also provided stimulation for his novel Der Genius. Impulses for literary motifs came from Beattie’s essays «Ueber Gedächtniß und Einbildungskraft» and «Ueber die Fabel und den Roman,» both published in the Dissertations, moral and critical, and both translated by Grosse in the late 1780s. In the first essay, Beattie explains how imagination works and how imagination is able to produce defective perceptions. Imagination can produce associations by means of attributing observed effects to causes that can be only guessed at. Superstition and prejudice emerge from charging effects with supposed meanings without a reason (Beattie, Moralische und kritische Abhandlungen 1: 167f.). Human beings are, according to Beattie, especially susceptible to this kind of precipitate judgment when their senses are unable to distinguish clearly: «Dunkelheit und Gefühl der Einsamkeit erzeugen in jeder Seele etwas von Aengstlichkeit, und wo das Auge die Gegenstände um uns in keinem bestimmten Gepräge zeichnet, sind wir immer mehreren Gefahren ausgesetzt, als wenn alle unsere Fähigkeiten in ungebundener Freyheit wirken» (170). Although there is no reason to be afraid in the dark, one’s power of imagination signals that there are dangers which one is unable to perceive. Our imagination is inclined to actively send such signals when the sense of sight is

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restricted in darkness. Ideas of «Gespenstern, Geistern und anderen schrecklichen Dingen» are, according to Beattie in Grosse’s translation, due to such absurd connections of ideas (171). The soul falls prey to its own thoughts, «die Einbildungskraft zerreißt ihre Zügel,» and now, the softest sound frightens us, the most common object «erscheine dem Auge verworren,» one believes «Gesichte (sic) zu sehen und Leute zu hören, die nur in unserer Einbildung Wirklichkeit haben» (172–73). In order to illustrate his argument, Beattie here specifies an almost complete repertoire of sensory objects and perceptions that may produce the described effects of the imagination: wide, unoccupied, church-like buildings, howling winds, the clapping of doors and windows, the creaking of rusty hinges, moldering walls, unexpected gleams of the moon, the forsaken apartments of an old castle, the uproar of rats and bats, piles of ruins that may shelter owls, deep groves, the crashing of branches and many more (173ff.). What Grosse finds in Beattie’s text is an inventory for a capital Gothic novel, along with a psychological explanation as to why these effects have an enormous impact on human beings. However, this is not the only context Beattie gives to these observations. In his essay «On Fable and Romance,» translated by Grosse under the title of «Ueber die Fabel und den Roman,» Beattie explicitly historicizes his argument by describing the effects of imagination as something peculiar to the Gothic era he is aiming to reconstruct. He writes about the «Gothic» behavior of medieval knights: «Their passion for strange adventures is another trait in the character of the knights of chivalry. The world was then little known, and men […] were ignorant and credulous» (540–41). Ignorance is linked to Gothic apparitions: Strange sights were expected in strange countries; dragons to be destroyed, giants to be humbled, and enchanted castles to be overthrown. […] The castles […], reared in a rude but grand style of architecture; full of dark and winding passages, of secret apartments, of long uninhabited galleries, and of chambers supposed to be haunted with spirits; and undermined by subterraneous labyrinths as places of retreat in extreme danger; the howling of winds through the crevices of old walls, and other dreary vacuities; […] the shrieking of bats, and the screaming of owls, and other creatures, that resort to desolate or half-inhabited buildings – these, and the like circumstances, in the domestic life of the people I speak of, would multiply their superstitions and increase their credulity. (541)

Superstition and prejudices arise from the lack of knowledge (not the lack of reason); they serve as a «natural» support in order to enable the medieval knights to explain their world. Both arguments – the historical and the anthropological way of explaining imaginings, superstition, and prejudices – were already well-known to German readers. In «Journal meiner Reise,» Jo-

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hann Gottfried Herder argued that sailors incline to overinterpretation and mythical exaggeration of a single data point of perception since they need to be aware of the slightest, possibly fatal, signal (22f.). Myths and prejudices emerge from the connection between the human addiction to poetic imagination and to the marvelous (25). Herder’s elaboration of this hypothesis, following David Hume’s Natural History of Religion,13 is another example for the multi-polar process of cultural transfer during the eighteenth century. Hume can be considered the source both for Herder and Beattie. These sources, alongside Beattie’s psychological explanation of how and why imagination is able to produce apparitions that are not reality-based, provided Grosse with everything he needed to write a Gothic novel of his own. He could use the descriptions of psychological processes to attempt to produce affects in his readers and could use some elements of Beattie’s inventory of Gothic motifs. However, we should keep in clear focus the basic difference between Grosse’s novel and Beattie’s texts: whereas Beattie aims to explain Gothic apparitions by historicizing and psychologically analyzing them, Grosse uses them in order to write a literary work. Aus den Papieren des Marquis C* von G**, the subtitle of Grosse’s Genius, already indicates that Grosse is playing with truth by means of feigning an editor, which was a technique often used in contemporaneous literature (Wirth). Starting with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, the assertion that the narration was based upon found manuscripts had become a core topos of the Gothic. «Reine strenge Wahrheit wird meine Feder leiten,» says Graf von O. in Friedrich Schiller’s «Geisterseher,» a story that is also ostensibly taken from historical documents (45). Grosse himself maintains in the Magazin für die Naturgeschichte des Menschen that objectivity and subjectivity can, under specific circumstances, jointly find the truth: on «idea-walks» into the area of natural philosophy, a new kind of objectivity may emerge which is based upon a subjective «Bestimmungsgrund» («Ideen» 161). One may see a contrast between literary claims for truth and the presence of ignorance and contingency in the novels of the era. Along with the claim for truth in the subtitle, Grosse’s novel asserts that the characters of the novel depend on something impenetrable. The first-person narrator Karlos relates the «Verwicklung von Zufällen» he believes to observe to an «unsichtbare Hand» (7). This motif is another example of a specific kind of cultural transfer: Grosse also translated Adam Smith, who popularized the symbol of the unseen hand that directs the autonomous functioning of free markets.14 Karlos is convinced that a secret society is attempting to influence him. But he can never explain how this secret society acts. He tries in vain to reconstruct the causal relations among the things happening to him (59); he tries in vain to find out about the hidden plan

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to which all apparitions seem to point (87). Occurrences remain unexplained and unexplainable: when and why something occurs seems contingent. Karlos always needs to doubt the «Wahrscheinlichkeit» (166) of the incidents. «Alles hing ja so sichtbar zusammen» (219), but nevertheless, even attempts to explain the meaning of the connections Karlos believes to have recognized are due only to «Zufälle[n]» (367 et passim). He experiences contingency, and he constantly strives to solve the conundrums it produces. But why do the novel’s characters always fail when they try to enlighten the uncanny? First and foremost, they are deceived by their senses. All the narrators in this novel report on their sensual and bodily reactions towards their respective perceptions, and their descriptions always result in the insight that the senses do not provide certain knowledge. All the crucial action takes place at night – the characters can hardly see anything. Being dependent on their hearing, they experience that they cannot attach the noises and sounds to any cause and thus they cannot explain them (25, 44 et passim). The sense of touch replaces seeing and hearing, but it does not provide explanations; what results is merely the renewed experience that something unexpected has been felt: coldness, heat, intangible objects (26). The sense of smell cannot contribute to clarity either. All senses – even when combined – do not suffice to explain what happens to Karlos and to the other characters in this novel. A clear, distinct, and evident cognition – the ideal of enlightened knowledge since Descartes – is impossible, as can be seen in the apparition of the «Genius» Amanuel. Almost all of the senses are involved here. Glaring light comes from an unknown source; Karlos notices streams of sparks, a slight noise, whispering, groaning from some un-identifiable person or animal; a «feiner Duft» gushes out of the objects, getting thicker and then gaining a form that cannot be seized (168f.). His reason and his senses fail him when he attempts to clarify his perceptions. Imagination takes the place of the disabled senses. The complete dissolution of certain, sensual perception leads to the complete failure of reason: «alle Gedanken schwammen in einer zweifelhaften Berauschung» (105). The senses do not achieve the hoped-for clarity and thus an exalted imagination takes their place, finally releasing all desires out of control. Karlos becomes addicted to the senses and to sensuality. What can we do when all the senses fail and when they, assisted by an exalted imagination, drag reason down? Beattie recommends the «Geist freyer Untersuchung,» reminding us to think reasonably and to act resolutely (Moralische und kritische Abhandlungen 1: 175, 177). But in Grosse’s novel, reason is not in a position to find the causes of the uncanny occurrences. When Karlos tries to keep calm, the bell cord tears apart when he attempts to call for help. When he tries to rationalize associations, «kalte Schlüsse der Vernunft

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zu ziehen» (80), he follows Beattie’s recommendation to «reason away» superstitious exaltations of imagination (Moralische und kritische Abhandlungen 1: 171). Beattie, however, also knows the limits of this method: if one is convinced by the evidence of the existence of an apparition, then no argument can change this opinion («Essay on the Nature» 42). The failure of the senses and of reason leads Karlos to formulate a diagnosis that posits the idea of an exalted imagination in an almost Fichtean metaphor: «Unsere Existenz war selbst ein Phantom» (541). Imagination plays a key role in constructing the contingent realm of experience: «meine Phantasie durchlief eine Reihe von Wahrscheinlichkeiten» (56). The overexcited imagination causes uncanny visions. According to Beattie, the productive imagination, which is not based upon reality, transforms «Gedanken in neue Gestalten» (Moralische und kritische Abhandlungen 1: 138). The secret society in Grosse’s Genius obviously seeks to use Beattie’s diagnosis that imagination can be manipulated especially when «die Seele sich in einer unruhigen Bewegung fühlt» (160). The danger for Karlos consists in the possibility that an overexcited imagination produces a contingency that can no longer be ordered by means of reason. In the end, Karlos does not expect to be able to achieve any certain knowledge: «Eine Dunstgestalt Deiner Phantasie wirst Du erhaschen, wenn Du ihnen am nahesten zu seyn gedenkst» (205). Imagination without empirical experience cannot connect ideas with each other in a meaningful way (362). The crisis of the senses, of reason, and of a reasonable imagination does not allow the characters in the novel to rely on either intersubjective or objective cognition. Although they often claim to have empirical certainty, these assertions are repeatedly disproven. A lady maintains that «die Wirklichkeit» and her «Erfahrung» prove that ghosts are real (226), but the presumed apparition turns out to be a young man whom Karlos unmasks as a rival and stabs in a duel at night. What was supposed to be empirical evidence offered by the lady turns out to be an attempted deception. Again and again minimal progress nourishes Karlos’s hopes to finally find the truth. Karlos believes that «Hier konnte sich vieles, […] aufklären» (232). Enlightenment is, however, long in coming. As empirical evidence reaches its limits, the true disposition of most of the characters remains unclear: «Wir alle sehen uns so gleich, und es sind mehr Zufälle als Anstrengungen, welche einen einzelnen aus der Masse herausheben» (571). The contingent relationship between inward and outward appearance does not allow for reliable accounts. «Trüglichkeit des menschlichen Aeußeren» (372) relentlessly occupies the characters in the novel. Even language is no certain means in order to achieve true knowledge. When Kar-

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los is being introduced into the secret society, he hears words, «von denen ich gar nichts begriff» (104; also Brittnacher 68ff.). He never knows how to interpret this language. Elmire, in her confession of love to the protagonist, maintains at first that she loves someone else (72). This behavior may be coquetry, but in Karlos’s thoughts, it raises the question whether he can trust language in general. In addition, simulatio and dissimulatio obstruct character cognition. In opposition to contemporary bourgeois claims, the members of the nobility constantly and inscrutably dissimulate: «Wer enträthselt aber des Herzens seltsamen (sic) Irrgänge!» (219). Character is merely a construction. Caroline, another woman to whom Karlos is attracted, is described as follows: «Sie war der Widerschein aller Gedanken, die man gegen sie äußerte, und die sie verstand; ein jeder sah in ihr sein eigenes Bild» (398). Caroline turns out to be one of the forerunners of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Olimpia. The appearance of nature contributes to the rising confusion of the characters. The path, «ein regelmäßiger Schlangenweg» (106) which the protagonists follow, leads through darkness and through labyrinths. The landscape Karlos reenters after his first encounter with the secret society is depicted as «etwas verwildert» (120), following the pattern of an English landscape garden in which nature seemingly has replaced visible art and in which emotional trepidation has replaced the rational order. The representations of nature in Grosse’s Genius comply with contemporary avant-garde patterns of garden theory and practice, as Harald Tausch has shown in his distinguished book (195ff.). Nature does not allow orientation; it accounts for its opposite. The crucial mode of perception in nature is nonknowledge: «Ungekannt trägt die Natur im geheimen Busen ihres Innern die schönsten Zauber ihrer Schöpfungen» (104). Moreover, certain knowledge seems impossible because judgments are subject to historical changes. Not only the emotional status of the characters, but also their judgments change: «Es giebt Zeitpunkte im menschlichen Leben, wo die Gedanken mit einer reissenden Eile vor der Seele vorüberflattern» (543). This passage is once again closely related to Beattie’s arguments in that the Scottish philosopher maintains that there is a remarkably fast transfer of ideas and the judgments based upon them (Moralische und kritische Abhandlungen 1: 149f.). Memory and imagination coincide; a true and stable judgment is hard to find and even harder to keep. What can be done in the light of these experiences of contingency that terrify Karlos? The novel presents two attempts «Wahrscheinlichkeiten zu vergewissern» (90). The first one is – not surprisingly – to enter a society. «Das Gefühl in einer Verbindung zu stehen» (86) is said to calm the knowl-

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edgeseeker. The secret society of the novel promises to distribute the «schöne Licht der Wahrheit» (102); it promises to reach a status that is «ganz, ganz unabhängig, nie berührt mehr von einem Gefühle der Bedürfnisse, von einem Streich der Umstände, von einem Hauche des Zufalls» (118). This solution is exactly what Beattie advises his readers to do: in order to cure one’s exalted imagination, one must seek the company of more intelligent people. If one does not do this, there is not much hope for healing («Ueber Gedächtniß und Einbildungskraft» 379). The punch line in the novel is that the secret society aims to take advantage of Beattie’s promise. After the members of the society have inflamed Karlos’s imagination and after they have confronted him with many inexplicable coincidences, it is the secret society that recommends to Karlos that it itself is the only effective remedy. Members of the secret society pretend to be purpose-oriented, rational representatives of the Enlightenment, and they claim that they are able to give shelter against contingency and all kinds of imponderables: «Nein, Don Karlos, es ist uns um Wahrheit zu tun» (102). However, the candidate has to fulfill several conditions: he must be open, he must not dissimulate, he is supposed to not wear a «Maske» (102). One could argue that even the secret society has no solution for the issue of recognizing other people’s characters – otherwise, there would be no need to demand openness. Karlos is taught the rule that he must never doubt, but instead trust the conclusions of the society. He has to obey the directives they give him and to play his role (115). Jakob, a member of the society, reinforces these demands: «Nicht immer wirst du uns verstehen, Karlos; aber darum zweifle niemals und gehorche willig. […] Sey immer gehorsam. […] Sey immer offen gegen uns» (137). Thus, the secret society interdicts enlightened «Mündigkeit» and enlightened self-thinking by claiming that truth has already been found and that the secret society guides the ignorant towards the right path. The individual turns out to be the tool of a corporation that supposedly turns the Enlightenment ideal of human progress towards perfection into reality by steering this process (Dammann 801). An enlightened elite observes and punishes individuals. However, for a considerable amount of time in this novel, Karlos sticks to a different version of the Enlightenment. He hovers between the emancipated use of his own reason and reliance on the society’s guidelines: «Vernunftschlüsse wechselten mit vorgeblichen Ahndungen in meiner Seele, und immer der letzte von ihnen schien Recht zu haben» (212). But all of Karlos’s attempts to bring the truth to light do not produce any enduring success, in part because the society knows how to frustrate them. In the end, the question remains open whether the promises the secret society makes really pro-

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vide a stable shelter against the experience of contingency or not. Are they in the position to satisfy the human desire for the pursuit of happiness? Karlos discovers an alternative way to counter contingency when he meets a hermit whose introduction by the narrator may be read as the opposite of all the cognitive problems Karlos and the other characters are facing: «Ein Blick, der in die Seele drang, ein Auge, das kein Schein betrügt, der stille Ernst der Mienen, aller Leidenschaften Ausdruck in einem gleichen Flusse aufgelößt» (268). The hermit teaches Karlos how to control his imagination, to persevere in his passions, to gain experiences on his own, and to treat the knowledge achieved differentially with respect to its purposes and perspectives. The hermit also teaches him that striving for honor is morally legitimized, and that merely satisfying sexual desires is not. Knowledge must – as the hermit maintains – not only relate to empirical cognition, it must be guided through the sublime and the beautiful (771; Hartmann). Karlos finally gains the insight that his previous way of dealing with experience was not guided by methodological principles: «Alle Erfahrungen, die ich auflas, sind nur Kinder des Zufalls und der Nothwendigkeit; das Studium hat sie noch zu nichts Ganzem vereinigt» (288). But now he is convinced that he has the ability to confront chance: «der Zufall hatte sein Schreckliches für mich verlohren, weil ich ihn für mich gewinnen lernte, und bald sah ich die Welt als ein Spiel um eine Kleinigkeit an» (290). Tolerance of contingency here is based upon a methodologically guided cognition that aims at practical behavioral standards. After the hermit’s death, Karlos goes out into the wide world, feeling that he is armed with the epistemological inventory he needs. Although he cannot explain some new constellations he encounters, this does not make him uneasy initially since he has gained a good portion of stoicism to help him deal with contingencies (308f.). Together with some new friends he creates a social circle. However, inexplicable things begin to happen. The circle’s finances deteriorate, the genius Amanuel appears once more, and, contrary to every reasonable expectation, Karlos meets Elmire again whom he had seen dying. Karlos tries to follow the hermit’s advice to rationalize the events (we are reminded of Beattie’s identical suggestion): Karlos tries to reveal the genius’s apparition as natural magic or as «Mummerey für Kinder,» and to explain it through the «Einfluß einer gespannten, überströmenden, außer sich gesetzten Einbildungskraft» (386). In this manner, some apparitions in the novel are uncovered as a mere swindle (412ff.). These events support my argument that it is not the ghosts that make the uncanny in this novel, it is the psychological effects of the contingency. Karlos asks, «Gehen die Begebenheiten der Menschen in der That einer vorgezogenen Linie nach, oder reihet zuweilen auch der Zufall seltsam verbundene Umstände aneinander?» (504). More and more

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often the characters speak of the «Zufall» – chance and fortunes that even the secret society cannot avoid (633, 645 et passim). Alfonso, the society’s representative, turns out to be Karlos’s uncle and his well-meaning «Genius.» In the hour of Alfonso’s death, he informs Karlos, «Ich blieb Herr der Umstände, aber ich vermag nichts über den Zufall. Das Ohngefähr rechne ich mir nicht zu» (547). At the end of part three of the novel there is the insight that judgments are only probable (552) and that truth is unutterable: «die kühnsten Hoffnungen von der Wirklichkeit zum Schweigen gebracht» (584). Karlos is introduced into the secret society. The first-person narrators of the diverging narrative layers (above all, Karlos, Graf von S**, Jakob, and Elmire) contribute to the reader’s inability to find a nonambiguous truth. They arrange multiple variations of diegetic levels that surprise the recipient, thus making it impossible to reconstruct the relations behind the plot. The narrators could be called «unreliable.» 15 They retain an internal focalization. They do not tell more than they can see. While the novel has a tendency to the «explained-supernatural» (Brittnacher 15) – Grosse is here once more in line with Beattie – several questions are left unanswered. Neither the narrators nor the readers can ever exactly identify who is a member of the secret society or who plays which role at any particular moment. In contrast with the «Turmgesellschaft» in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, the true purposes of the secret society in Grosse will not be explained until the end of the novel. Alfonso even reports on dissonances within the society that further complicate Karlos’s attempts to see through the society’s intentions (Genius 547f.). Thus, Karlos’s judgments about the society change. They are determined by the limits of his knowledge and by the historical changes within the society. The secret society is not a stable, but rather a dynamic association of people who constantly change their intentions, purposes, and means (Dammann 802f.). In the preface of part four of the novel, the narrator-author maintains that the novel resembles a conundrum. He says that he did not intend to substitute «Unbegreiflichkeit für Unbegreiflichkeit […], ohne meinen Lesern weiter die mindeste Mühe zu lassen, ähnliche Dinge zu vergleichen, – und in dieser Ähnlichkeit den Schlüssel zu finden» (538). I argue that Grosse’s Genius stages topoi such as the contemporary perception of contingency and its corollaries. Behind the «Verwicklungen von scheinbaren Zufällen» (8), behind the labyrinthine, confusing, enigmatic events of the novel, behind the unexplainable characters and the opaque structure of the secret society, behind the incertitude of (self-)perception, of interpretation and cognition, the novel stages the useless striving of the characters to deal with the multi-polar

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contingency of the «Zufälle [des] Lebens» (723) and their inability to proceed to an order of things, to recognize the «Faden», the «nemlichen Punkt», in which the «Begebenheiten gefühlvoller Seelen» (723) consolidate. The novel represents a contemporary problem that can be traced back to the European discourse of nonknowledge.

Notes 1

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I am indebted to Linda K. Worley, Heide Crawford, and Jeff Worley for their thorough revision of my text and for their thoughtful comments. However, if there are any mistakes or vagueness in the text, they are my fault. Will’s method reaches its peak in his «translation» (under the pseudonym Peter Teuthold) of Karl Friedrich Kahlert’s Der Geisterbanner. The English title is: The Necromancer; or the Tale of the Black Forest. Cf. Murnane, «Uncanny translations» 141–65; Jenkins. See Espagne and Werner; Espagne; Lüsebrink. Most of the research on European Gothic literature, although producing mostly useful and indispensible results, uses a one-sided perspective as well as the older paradigm of one tradition «influencing» the other. Cf. Boening; Horner; Mortensen. Parts of the following are based upon Godel, «Anthropologiebasierte Kontingenz.» Regarding Grosse, see: Dammann; Althof; Bloch; Hartmann; Kornerup. Grosse has been mentioned recently by Andriopoulos, «Occult Conspiracies,» esp. 79ff. Regarding «Anthropologie» of the eighteenth century, see: Godel, Vorurteil; Thoma; Garber and Thoma. The basis of this research was laid by Schings. If one tries to explain the development of the genre «Gothic novel» out of esoteric traditions, as Zacharias-Langhans argues, one misses the literary form. On the relevance of secularization for the genre, see Brittnacher 28, 40, 50ff. Regarding this definition of «cultural transfer,» see Lüsebrink, esp. 214. I am using the adjective «anthropological» with reference to the eighteenth-century usage of the term whose meaning was not yet restricted to research on foreign cultures. Beattie’s essay, entitled «Über das Träumen, von J.B.,» was printed in a German version for the first time in Grosse’s Magazin in 1788 (1.1:35–70) and then, with some minor changes, in Beattie, Moralische und Kritische Abhandlungen, vol. 1. Althof was the first to point at Grosse’s translation of Beattie (Althof 206ff.). In order to enable the readers to clearly distinguish between Beattie’s original text and Grosse’s translation, the quotes I give need to remain in their original language. Beattie, «The Minstrel,» quote from the preface (84); the poem (85ff.). Herder’s reading notes on Hume show the link (Irmscher 175). For more on Herder’s concept of prejudice, see Godel, Vorurteil 214ff. Cf. Andriopoulos, «The Invisible Hand» on the dissemination of the motif in Smith, in economic theory, and in Gothic literature. Regarding «unreliable narration,» see Nünning. Recent research does not relate «unreliability» with the concept of the implied author Booth had introduced (158f.) as an instance of unreliable narration.

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Works Cited Adler, Hans, and Rainer Godel. «Einleitung. Formen des Nichtwissens im Zeitalter des Fragens.» Formen des Nichtwissens der Aufklärung. Ed. Adler and Godel. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2010. 9–19. Althof, Hans-Joachim. Carl Friedrich August Grosse –1768–1847–, alias Graf Edouard Romeo von Vargas-Bedemar. Ein Erfolgsschriftsteller des 18. Jh. Diss. U of Bochum, 1975. Bamberg: Difo-Druck, 1975. Andriopoulos, Stefan. «Occult Conspiracies: Spirits and Secret Societies in Schiller’s Ghost Seer.» New German Critique 103 (Winter 2008): 65–81. –. «The Invisible Hand: Supernatural Agency in Political Economy and the Gothic Novel.» English Literary History 66.3 (1999): 739–758. Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. Ed. Barbara M. Benedict and Deirdre Le Faye. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. Bahrdt, Carl Friedrich. Handbuch der Moral für den Bürgerstand. Halle: Hemmerde und Schwetschke, 1789. Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb. «Metaphysica. Pars III. Psychologia.» Texte zur Grundlegung der Ästhetik. Trans. and ed. Hans Rudolf Schweizer. Hamburg: Meiner, 1983. Beattie, Jakob [i.e. James]. «An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism.» The philosophical and critical works of James Beattie: facsimile edition. Essays 1776. Vol. 1. Prep. Bernhard Fabian. Repr. Hildesheim, New York 1975. –. «On Fable and Romance (1783).» The philosophical and critical works of James Beattie: facsimile edition. Dissertations moral and critical 1783. Vol. 2. Prep. Bernhard Fabian. Repr. Hildesheim, 1974. 525ff. Extracts in: Clery, Gothic Documents 88–92. –. «The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1770–74).» Clery, Gothic Documents 84ff. –. «Über das Träumen, von J.B.» Trans. Carl Grosse. Magazin für die Naturgeschichte des Menschen 1.1 (1788): 35–70. –. Moralische und Kritische Abhandlungen. Aus dem Englischen, mit Zusätzen, und einer Vorrede. 3 vols. Trans. Carl Grosse. Göttingen: Johann Daniel Gotthelf Brose, 1789–1791. – «Über Gedächtniß und Einbildungskraft.» Moralische und Kritische Abhandlungen. Aus dem Englischen, mit Zusätzen, und einer Vorrede. 3 vols. Trans. Carl Grosse. Göttingen: Johann Daniel Gotthelf Brose, 1789–1791. Vol. 1: 1–392. –. «Ueber die Fabel und den Roman.» Moralische und Kritische Abhandlungen. Aus dem Englischen, mit Zusätzen, und einer Vorrede. 3 vols. Trans. Carl Grosse. Göttingen: Johann Daniel Gotthelf Brose, 1789–1791. Vol. 2: 1–144. Berg, Gunhild. Erzählte Menschenkenntnis. Moralische Erzählungen und Verhaltensschriften der deutschsprachigen Spätaufklärung. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2006. Bloch, Robert N. «Carl Grosse.» Bibliographisches Lexikon der utopisch-phantastischen Literatur. Vol. 6. Ed. Joachim Körber. Meitingen: Corian, 1999. Boening, John. The reception of Classical German Literature in England, 1760–1860. 10 vols. New York: Garland, 1977. Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. 2nd ed. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1983. Brittnacher, Hans Richard. Ästhetik des Horrors. Gespenster, Vampire, Monster, Teufel und künstliche Menschen in der phantastischen Literatur. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1994.

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Clery, E.J., and Robert Miles, eds. Gothic Documents. A Sourcebook 1700–1820. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002. Dammann, Günter. «Höfischer Held, Rousseau und das Ende der Aufklärung. Carl ‹Marquis› Grosses Leben und Werk.» Der Genius. By Carl Grosse. Frankfurt a.M.: Zweitausendeins, 1984. 725–835. Espagne, Michel, and Michael Werner. Transferts. Les relations interculturelles dans l’espace franco-allemand (XVIIIe et XIXe siècle). Paris: Éd. Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1988. Espagne, Michel. «Transferts culturels.» Genèses 8 (1992): 146–54. Garber, Jörn, and Heinz Thoma, eds. Zwischen Empirisierung und Konstruktionsleistung: Anthropologie im 18. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2004. Godel, Rainer. «Anthropologiebasierte Kontingenz: Neue Erklärungsversuche für das Unheimliche am Beispiel von Carl Grosses ‹Der Genius.›» Populäre Erscheinungen: Der deutsche Schauerroman um 1800 zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik. Eds. Barry Murnane and Andrew Cusack. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2011: 81–98. –. Vorurteil – Anthropologie – Literatur. Der Vorurteilsdiskurs als Modus der Selbstaufklärung im 18. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2007. Grosse, Carl. «Einige Ideen über die Dauer des menschlichen Lebens.» Magazin für die Naturgeschichte des Menschen 1 (1789): 2. St. 161–92. –. Der Genius. Aus den Papieren des Marquis C* von G**. Ed. Günter Dammann. 2nd ed. Frankfurt a.M.: Zweitausendeins,1984. –. Horrid Mysteries. A Story from the German of the Marquis of Grosse. Trans. Peter Will. 4 vols. London: Lane, 1796. –. Horrid Mysteries. A Story in Four Volumes. Trans. Peter Will. London: Folio Press, 1968. The Northanger Set of Jane Austen Horrid Novels. –. The Genius: Or, the Mysterious Adventures of Don Carlos de Grandez. By the Marquis Von Grosse. Trans. Joseph Trapp. 2 vols. London: Allen and West, 1796. –. «Was ist Geschichte der Menschheit?» Magazin für die Naturgeschichte des Menschen 3.2 (1791): 1–13. Haller, Albrecht von. «Vom Nutzen der Reisebeschreibungen.» Tagebuch seiner Beobachtungen über Schriftsteller und über sich selbst. Zur Karakteristik der Philosophie und Religion dieses Mannes. By Haller. Zweyter Theil. Bern, 1787. Hamberger, Georg Christoph, and Johann Georg Meusel. Das gelehrte Teutschland oder Lexikon der jetzt lebenden teutschen Schriftsteller. Vol. 8. 5th ed. Lemgo, 1800. Repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1966. Hartmann, Günter. Karl Grosses ‹Genius›: eine Studie zum Menschenbild im Bundesroman des ausgehenden 18. Jahrhunderts. Moers, n.p.,1957. Herder, Johann Gottfried. «Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769.» Werke in zehn Bänden. By Herder. Vol. 9/2. Ed. Rainer Wisbert and Klaus Pradel. Frankfurt a.M.: DKV, 1997. 9–126. Hinske, Norbert. Introduction. Was ist Aufklärung? Beiträge aus der Berlinischen Monatsschrift. Ed. Hinske. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973. xiii–vxix. Horner, Avril, ed. European Gothic. A Spirited Exchange 1760–1960. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002. Hume, David. The Natural History of Religion. London: printed for A. Millar, 1757. Irmscher, Hans Dietrich. «Herders Seereisen in den Jahren 1769 und 1770. Variationen einer Daseinsmetapher.» Königsberg-Studien. Beiträge zu einem besonderen

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Kapitel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte des 18. und angehenden 19. Jahrhunderts. Ed. Joseph K. Kohnen. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1998. 163–178. Jenkins, James D. Preface. The Necromancer or the Tale of the Black Forest. Founded on Facts. By Peter Teuthold [i.e. Peter Will/Karl Friedrich Kahlert]. Ed. with a new critical essay and notes by Jeffrey Cass. Chicago: Valancourt Books, 2007. vii– xii. Kahlert, Karl Friedrich. Der Geisterbanner. Eine Wundergeschichte aus mündlichen und schriftlichen Traditionen. Hohenzollern, 1792. –. The Necromancer; or the Tale of the Black Forest. Founded on Facts. Transl. from the German of Lawrence Flammenberg, by Peter Teuthold. London: Minerva Press, 1794. Kornerup, Else. Graf Edouard Romeo Vargas: Carl Grosse. Eine Untersuchung ihrer Identität. Kopenhagen: Munksgaard, 1954. Kühn, Manfred. Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy. Kingston: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2004. Lüsebrink, Hans-Jürgen. «Kulturtransfer – methodisches Modell und Anwendungsperspektiven.» Europäische Integration als Prozess von Angleichung und Differenzierung. Ed. Ingeborg Thömmel. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2001. 213–26. Luhmann, Niklas. «Kultur als historischer Begriff.» Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik. Studien zur Wissenssoziologie der modernen Gesellschaft. Vol. 4. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1995. 31–54. Magazin für die Naturgeschichte des Menschen. Ed. Carl Grosse. Zittau, Leipzig, 1788–1791. Meier, Georg Friedrich. Philosophische Sittenlehre. 2 vols. Halle: Hemmerde, 1754. Mortensen, Peter. British Romanticism and Continental Influences: Writing in an Age of Europhobia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Murnane, Barry. «Importing Home-grown Horrors? The English Reception of the Schauerroman and Schiller’s ‹Der Geisterseher.›» Angermion 1 (2008): 51–82. –. «Uncanny translations, uncanny productivity: Walpole, Schiller and Kahlert.» Cultural Transfer through Translation: The Circulation of Enlightened Thought in Europe by Means of Translation. Ed. Stefanie Stockhorst. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. 141–65. Nünning, Ansgar. «Reliability.» Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. Ed. David Herman, Manfred Jahn, and Marie-Laure Ryan. London, New York: Routledge, 2005. 495–97. Poe, Edgar Allen. «Preface. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque,1840» Poetry and Tales. By Poe. Ed. Patrick F. Quinn. New York: The Library of America, 1984. 129–30. Pope, Alexander. Vom Menschen. Essay on Man. Englisch-deutsch. Trans. Eberhard Breidert. Ed. Wolfgang Breidert. Hamburg: Meiner, 1993. Schiller, Friedrich. «Der Geisterseher.» Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Erzählungen. Vol. 16. Ed. Hans Heinrich Borcherdt. Weimar: Böhlau, 1954. Schings, Hans-Jürgen. Melancholie und Aufklärung. Melancholiker und ihre Kritiker in Erfahrungsseelenkunde und Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1977. Schlosser, Johann Georg. Anti-Pope oder Versuch ueber den Natürlichen Menschen: Nebst einer neuen prosaischen Uebersetzung von Pope’s Versuch ueber den Menschen. Leipzig, 1776.

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Tausch, Harald. «Die Architektur ist die Nachtseite der Kunst.» Erdichtete Architekturen und Gärten in der deutschsprachigen Literatur zwischen Frühaufklärung und Romantik. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006. Thoma, Heinz. «Unter falscher Flagge.» Rev. of Aufklärung. Eds. Roland Galle and Helmut Pfeiffer. IASLonline, January 27, 2009. . Last viewed February 9, 2009. Thomé, Horst. «Der Blick auf das Ganze. Zum Ursprung des Konzepts ‹Weltanschauung› und der Weltanschauungsliteratur.» Aufklärungen: Zur Literaturgeschichte der Moderne. Ed. Werner Frick et al. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003. 387–401. Thomson, Douglass H., and Frederick Frank. «Jane Austen and the Northanger Novelists.» Gothic Writers: A Critical and Bibliographical Guide. Eds. Douglass H. Thomson, Jack Voller, and Frederick Frank. Westport,CT: Praeger, 2002. 35–48. Todorov, Tzvetan: Introduction à la littérature fantastique. Paris: du Seuil, 1970. Walpole, Horace. «The Castle of Otranto, A Story. Trans. William Marshal, Gent. From the Original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto.» London, 1765 [recte 1764]. Translator’s Preface, n.pag. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. http://find.galegroup.com/ecco/infomark.do?&conte ntSet=ECCOArticles&type=multipage&tabID=T001&prodId=ECCO&docId= CW3312976077&source=gale&userGroupName=dfg_ecco&version=1.0&docLe vel=FASCIMILE>. Last viewed May 31, 2010. Wieland, Christoph Martin. «Ueber die Rechte und Pflichten der Schriftsteller, in Absicht ihrer Nachrichten und Urtheile über Nationen, Regierungen und andere öffentliche Gegenstände.» Wieland’s Werke. Dreiunddreissigster Theil. Kleinere politische Schriften. Berlin: Gustav Hempel, n.d. 169–80. Wirth, Uwe. Die Geburt des Autors aus dem Geist der Herausgeberfiktion. Editoriale Rahmung im Roman um 1800: Wieland, Goethe, Brentano, Jean Paul und E.T.A. Hoffmann. München: Fink, 2008. Zacharias-Langhans, Garleff. «Der unheimliche Roman um 1800.» Diss. U of Bonn, 1968. Zelle, Carsten. «Wezel und Grosse über Schreckenslust. Bemerkungen gelegentlich eines übersehenen Artikels von Johann Karl Wezel.» Die Kehrseite des Schönen. Ed. Karl Eibl. Hamburg: Meiner, 1994. 63–67.

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Schiller, Coleridge, and the Reception of the «German (Gothic) Tale»1 JEFFREY L. HIGH

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C ALIFORNIA S TATE U NIVERSITY L ONG B EACH

Despite important contributions to the Gothic canon (Die Räuber, 1781; «Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre,» 1786; Der Geisterseher, 1789) and two centuries of massive critical attention, the role of Friedrich Schiller (1759– 1805) as one of the accelerants of the German and British Gothic literature movements of the 1790s has until recently received remarkably little attention.2 One plausible cause for the delayed recognition lies in the swift and steady English criticism of German Gothic literature as 1) the pulpy mimicry of British forerunners, and 2) an unwelcome presence. Focusing on Gothic elements in Biographia Literaria of 1817, no less an authority than Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) dismissed German Sturm und Drang and Romantic literature as merely derivative of Edward Young’s Night Thoughts (1742, 1745), James Hervey’s Meditations Among The Tombs (1746), Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1748) and Sir Charles Grandison (1753), and Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764).3 The widespread agreement on the derivative (and inferior) nature of German Gothic literature has been challenged in findings by Syndy M. Conger (1980, 1987) and more recently by Daniel Hall (2000) and Andrew Phillip Steeger (2004). Conger argues that Schiller’s influence on English and American Gothic literature has been underestimated, in particular with regard to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Edgar Allan Poe’s «The Murders in the Rue Morgue» (1841). Hall concludes that English and German Gothic influences are «tides» in an «everdeepening sea of Gothic literature,»4 a thesis explored further in Steeger’s dissertation as «crosscurrents.» Published in 2002, The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, edited by Jerrold E. Hogle, does a good deal to emphasize the influences of Schiller and German Gothic literature on English literature of the 1790s, particularly in the essays by Robert Miles, Terry Hale, and Michael Gamer. Most recently, Jennifer Driscoll Colosimo has documented a compelling explanation for the historical paucity of scholarship on the reciprocal relationships between German and English Gothic literature of the 1790s to the 1820s: she posits an almost entirely Germanisten-free tradition of Gothic literature scholars.5 Due perhaps to a lack of awareness of British Gothic literature on the part of experts on German literature and to a corre-

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sponding lack of awareness of German Gothic literature on the part of experts on British literature, historical reception demonstrates some disagreement on a number of essential facts and positions central to the understanding of the evolution of Gothic literature. The following study seeks to locate the source of the historical critical divide separating Schiller and the international Gothic turn by tracing the conflicting implications of paradigmatic responses to the Schiller-led German literary invasion of England offered by Coleridge some twenty years apart (1794–1817).6 Subsequently, an analysis of the chronology and content of Schiller’s early dramas and prose works and their presence in canonical German and British Gothic texts – foremost in the novels of Karl Friedrich Kahlert, Anne Radcliffe, and Matthew Gregory Lewis – addresses the related and contributing reception problem of Who has been seen to have influenced Whom, and why Schiller has been a relatively minor player in this discussion. Despite the English roots of Gothic literature touched on above and its increased prominence in England from 1790–1820, by the early nineteenth century Gothic tales were so clearly established as «German Stories» – thus the title of a three-volume British collection of 18267 – that Edgar Allan Poe felt the need to reclaim the genre for all humanity in 1839: THE epithets «Grotesque» and «Arabesque» will be found to indicate with sufficient precision the prevalent tenor of the tales here published. […] I speak of these things here, because I am led to think it is this prevalence of the «Arabesque» in my serious tales, which has induced one or two critics to tax me […] with what they have been pleased to term «Germanism» and gloom. […] Let us admit, for the moment, that the «phantasy-pieces» now given are Germanic, or what not. Then Germanism is «the vein» for the time being. To morrow I may be anything but German, as yesterday I was everything else. […] But the truth is that, with a single exception, there is no one of these stories in which the scholar should recognise the distinctive features of that species of pseudohorror which we are taught to call Germanic, for no better reason than that some of the secondary names of German literature have become identified with its folly. If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul […].8

As is implied by Poe’s compulsion to defend himself against the charge, the association of horror literature with «Germanism» was widespread and the implication was pejorative. In Northanger Abbey (1818), Jane Austen characterizes the 1790s as a decade of «horrid» novels so stereotypically Gothic and German that they constitute self-parodies on both counts. Having cited Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and Lewis’s The Italian, Austen’s heroine Isabella continues: «I will read you their names directly; […] Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries» (Austen 33).

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Schiller, Coleridge, and the Reception of the «German (Gothic) Tale»

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The prominence of the concept of «Gothic» as «Germanism» in Poe’s text and (explicitly or implicitly) in the titles chosen by Austen invites a series of questions regarding the evolution of the Gothic novel and the literary traditions of «Germanism.» We must ask, for example, what exactly is the palpably German element of such works? What is the function of their Germanness, which competed with the Italianness of Otranto (Blasone 6)? What is the marketing significance of this Germanness? Of the nine works cited by Austen, all written in the 1790s, only two were originally written by Germans. Karl Friedrich Kahlert published Der Geisterbanner. Eine Wundergeschichte aus mündlichen und schriftlichen Traditionen gesammelt in 1792, which was adapted into English by Peter Teuthold as The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest in 1794; Carl Grosse’s Der Genius. Aus den Papieren des Marquis C* von G** of 1790–94 was adapted into English by Peter Will as The Horrid Mysteries: From the German of the Marquis of Grosse in 1796. That only two of the nine novels were written by Germans indicates that having actual roots in Germany was barely peripherally relevant to the genre characteristics associated with the German Tale. Two of the novels cited by Austen invoke German settings in their titles: Eliza Parsons’s Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) and Eleanor Sleath’s The Orphan of the Rhine (1798), thus indicating that the superficial attraction of these novels lay in the plausible Gothic picturesque setting of a land perceived to be gloomy, feudal, and mysterious. Four of the novels highlight their Germanness in a subtitle: Eliza Parsons’s The Mysterious Warning, a German Tale (1796) and Francis Lathorn’s The Midnight Bell: A German Story, Founded on Incidents in real life (1798); Teuthold’s adaptation of Kahlert’s Der Geisterbanner (The Necromancer) bears the new subtitle A Tale of the Black Forest; and Peter Will’s adaptation of Grosse’s Der Genius bears the altered subtitle A Story From the German Of The Marquis Of Grosse. In all four of the latter cases, the function of Germanness is a combination of genre description and the marketing thereof.9 Since the absence of any evidence of progress was no longer a characteristic of Germany by the early 19th century, in order to maintain the Gothic potential of setting, British authors from John Polidori (The Vampyre, 1819) to Bram Stoker (Dracula, 1897) tended to relocate the source of the Gothic tale to Eastern Europe. The early Italian (Otranto) and German locations and subsequent Carpathian relocations indicate that preindustrial feudal gloom and a landscape’s potential for conveying the convincing preconditions for superstition and metaphysical mystery are important genre attractions for the Gothic-consuming public. Another set of questions regards the timing of influence: who among the English and German Gothic writers could plausibly have influenced whom?

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The reception chronology here is documentably a matter of some confusion, paradox, and selective memory, to no small extent on the part of Coleridge, who was among the best informed experts on the German Gothic invasion of the 1790s and the translator of Schiller’s Die Piccolomini and Wallensteins Tod. If the first wave of English Gothic comprises the native novels of Richardson and Walpole among the others mentioned above (Young, Hervey), the innovations of the second wave demonstrate hardly any heritage of novels at all; instead, the innovations relate to Schiller’s early dramas and prose works to an important extent. Prior to the arrival of Schiller’s works in England in the early 1790s, the English-language tradition of locating the Gothic in a feudal setting distinguishes The Castle of Otranto as a Gothic pioneer. With the prominent exception of William Beckford’s Vathek: An Arabian Tale (1786), the majority of transitional proto-Gothic works published after Walpole but prior to the 1790s are set in England. These include works of the «Graveyard School» of poetry – Young’s Night Thoughts and Hervey’s Meditations – as well as novels, including Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron (1778) and Sophia Lee’s The Recess (1783–5). The arrival of Schiller’s works and, to a lesser extent, those of Gottfried August Bürger signal the arrival of the German in British Gothic. Note that all nine of the novels cited by Austen appeared (in English) between 1794 and 1798, several years after Schiller had published the most important dramas and prose works in his Gothic oeuvre, but before the actual post-Schillerian/Romantic establishment of the German states as centers of Gothic production (from the pens of Grosse, Kahlert, and Spiess through Tieck and Hoffmann, to name but a few). In his ambitious work of 1803, A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century, the American theologian and historian Samuel Miller delivered a sober assessment of eighteenth-century literature: «The mantle of Shakespeare or of Milton has not fallen upon any succeeding bard» (Miller 1805 3:1). As it turns out, this is not entirely true. By 1796, Coleridge had ranked Schiller above both in some regards, if only temporarily. Coleridge provides not only evolving, but contradictory views on the influence of German literature on English literature. In the 1790s, Coleridge was famously aware of Schiller’s Gothic talent as a «convulser of the heart.» On 3 November 1794, Coleridge was reading The Robbers in the 1792 translation of Alexander Tytler Fraser, Lord Woodhouselee, when he dropped the play and wrote to Robert Southey: Tis past one o’clock in the morning. I sat down at twelve o’clock to read the «Robbers» of Schiller. I had read, chill and trembling, when I came to the part where Moor fixes a pistol over the robbers who are asleep. I could read no more. My God,

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Southey, who is this Schiller, this convulser of the heart? Did he write his tragedy amid the yelling of fiends? […] Why have we ever called Milton sublime? that Count de Moor horrible wielder of heart withering virtues? Satan is scarcely qualified to attend his execution as gallows chaplain. (Collected Letters 1:122)

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This, Coleridge’s first response to The Robbers, is simultaneously a very Gothic-aware and an effusively positive reading, though it fairly pales in comparison to his laudatory Gothic sonnet of 1795 addressed «To the Author of the Robbers»: SCHILLER! that hour I would have wish’d to die, If thro’ the shuddering midnight I had sent From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent That fearful voice, a famish’d Father’s cry – Lest in some after moment aught more mean Might stamp me mortal! A triumphant shout Black HORROR screamed, and all her goblin rout Diminish’d shrunk from the more with’ring scene! Ah Bard tremendous in sublimity! Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood Wandering at eve with finely frenzied eye Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood! Awhile with mute awe gazing I would brood: Then weep aloud in a wild ecstasy! (Coleridge’s Poems 42)

In 1796, Coleridge published the above sonnett with a note of explanation that places Schiller firmly at the center of early British reception of the Gothic. Having recently ranked Schiller above Milton, Coleridge now praises the plausibility of the Schillerian Gothic over the Shakespearean – although Schiller’s Franz Moor paraphrases Richard III in his soliloquy and the Prince in Der Geisterseher cites Hamlet: One night in winter, on leaving a College-friend’s room, with whom I had supped, I carelessly took away with me «The Robbers,» a drama the very name of which I had never before heard of: – A winter midnight – the wind high – and «The Robbers» for the first time! – The readers of SCHILLER will conceive what I felt. Schiller introduces no supernatural beings; yet his human beings agitate and astonish more than all the goblin rout – even of Shakespeare (CP 42).

Coleridge’s enthusiastic testimony bears witness to distinctly mid-1790s English Gothic sensibilities in his somewhat lopsided focus on the Gothic qualities of Die Räuber, which are listed in detail by Colosimo.10 Despite his praise for Schiller’s original Gothic brilliance in 1794, 1795, and again in 1796; Coleridge has almost had his fill of «terrible» literature by 1797, as can be seen in his letter to William Lisles Bowles of 16 March:

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I am almost weary of the Terrible, having been an hireling in the Critical Review for the last six or eight months – I have been lately reviewing the Monk, the Italian, Hubert de Servrac & &c & &c – in all of which dungeons, and old castles, & solitary Houses by the Sea Side, & Caverns, & Woods, & extraordinary characters, & all the tribe of Horror & Mystery, have crowded on me – even to surfeiting (CL 1:183).

Almost. Later in 1797, Coleridge was still at work on the blank verse drama Osorio, which he later renamed Remorse, «drawn freely from the Sicilian’s tale in Schiller’s Der Geisterseher.»11 The Times of 25 January 1813 credits the applause at the premiere of Remorse to its «foolish blasphemy» and «other exploded plagiarisms from the German school» (Osorio xv). Coleridge was not alone in his near weariness. English critical patience with «the Terrible» was broadly wearing thin by the late 1790s, and the ensuing critical impatience found its focus in «Germanism.»12 Also in 1797, the anonymous «German schools» parody with the Robbers sound-alike title The Rovers; or the Double Arrangement «caricatures not only the excesses of the Sturm und Drang melodrama but also the British public’s appetite for them.»13 In William Seward’s «Ode to the German Drama» (1799), a Mozart opera (it happens to be The Magic Flute [1791], though Don Giovanni [1787] would have served just as well), dramas by Kotzebue and Schiller, and Kahlert’s novel Der Geisterbanner receive shared blame for German Gothic (literary) and revolutionary (political) violations of British taste: Daughter of the Night, chaotic Queen! Thou fruitful source of modern lays, Whose turbid plot, and tedious scene The monarch spurn, the robber raise. Bound in thy necromantic spell The audience taste the joys of hell, And Britain’s sons indignant grown With pangs unfelt before, at crimes before unknown. When first, to make the nations stare, Folly her painted mask display’d, Schiller sublimely mad was there, And Kotz’bue lent his leaden aid. Gigantic pair! Their lofty soul Disdaining reason’s weak control, On changeful Britain sped the blow, Who, thoughtless of her own, embraced ficticious woe. (Seward 92)

Before Schiller and Kotzebue are blamed explicitly, the «necromantic spell» of Peter Teuthold’s translation of Kahlert’s Der Geisterbanner (The Necromancer) is sandwiched between two implicit references to Schiller. The first regards the inferred glorification of a band of sylvan murderers in Die Räu-

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ber, and the second regards implicit criticism of the British oppression of the North American states in Kabale und Liebe (1784) and Don Karlos (1787).14 By 1817, Coleridge’s view of the «first fruits» of Schiller’s «youth (I had almost said of his boyhood)» (CBL II:183) has come full circle. He blames Schiller (along with Young, Hervey, and Richardson) and the «whole breed of Kotzebues» (CBL II:184) for all the ostensibly Shakespeare-derivative yet nonetheless infectious sins of German «romantic dramas,» which he dismisses for formulaic emptiness and lacking originality. Surprisingly, he includes Schiller’s Die Räuber, «the earliest specimen» (CBL II:183). But to understand the true character of the ROBBERS, and of the countless imitations which were its spawn, I must inform you […], that, about that time, and for some years before it, three of the most popular books in the German language were, the translations Of YOUNG’S NIGHT THOUGHTS, HERVEY’S MEDITATIONS, and RICHARDSON’S CLARISSA HARLOW. Now we have only to combine the bloated style and peculiar rhythm of Hervey […] with the strained thoughts, the figurative metaphysics and solemn epigrams of Young on the one hand; and with the loaded sensibility, the minute detail, the morbid consciousness of every thought and feeling in the whole flux and reflux of the mind, in short, the self-involution and dream-like continuity of Richardson on the other hand; and then to add the ruined castles, the dungeons, the trap-doors, the skeletons, the fleshand-blood ghosts, and the perpetual moonshine of a modern author (themselves the literary brood of the Castle of Otranto […]), – and as the compound of these ingredients duly mixed, you will recognize the so-called German drama. (CBL II: 183–84)

Although Coleridge ultimately stresses British responsibility for the German drama – «we should submit to carry our own brat on our own shoulders» (CBL II:185) – in a case of guilt by association with «Germanism,» he demotes Schiller from the heir to Shakespeare and Milton to the brood of Otranto. The evaluations voiced by Coleridge (1794, 1795, 1796, and 1797) and Seward (1799), regarding who was a good or bad literary influence on whom in England and the German states, appear quickly forgotten, if not forgiven in the case of Coleridge (1817). The critical assault on Gothic literature beginning in the late 1790s is accompanied by a curious transformation in the awareness of Schiller’s place in its chronology and his role in its popularization. In A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century (1803), Samuel Miller likens Schiller’s Der Geisterseher to «Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels and Lewis’s Monk» for its «mixed class» fusion of «ancient romance» and the «modern novel» form (Miller 1803 2:166–67; see also Parry 12–13). Possibly based on the year of his edition of The Ghost Seer, Miller’s summary implies that the popularity of Radcliffe’s Gothic novels (1791–1797) and those of Lewis (1796–1808) prece-

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ded the awareness of Schiller’s works in England, which is demonstrably not the case. Miller chastens the author of Der Geisterseher and others of his ilk in an afterthought, located just after praise of Radcliffe and condemnation of Lewis as «disgraceful»: «In this department of fiction several German writers have made a conspicuous figure, especially the authors of the Ghost Seer, The Victim of Magical Delusion, and many others of a similar cast» (Miller 1803 2:167). Tellingly, Schiller’s name is not mentioned. Thus, having once traveled through space to visit Germany, Lewis in 1792 and Radcliffe in 1794, their works appear to travel through time in order to predate Schiller’s Der Geisterseher in commentary written as early as 1803. Almost 200 years later, widely available reference works similarly, perhaps consequently, arrive at an almost Schiller-free family tree of Gothic literature. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (Clute and Grant, 1999) cites Christian Heinrich Spiess’s diabolism novel Das Petermännchen (original German version 1791–92) as an inspiration for Lewis’s The Monk and the novels of Radcliffe (EF 397). Though this is certainly a defensible contention, Schiller’s bestsellers that inspired Das Petermännchen are not mentioned in this context.15 Further, the «early wave» of German «fantasy» as seen in the works of Spiess, followed by those of Karl Gottlob Cramer (1758–1817), especially Hasper a Spada (1792–93), and those of Joseph Alois Gleich (1772–1841), who was both unpublished and barely seventeen years old when Schiller’s prose career ended in 1789, are described as «a seminal influence on the development of the early Gothic novel» (EF 397). This would depend on the definition of «early.» An examination of the British novels of the 1790s ostensibly influenced by Spiess, Cramer, and Gleich reveals three considerations to the contrary. First, the British Gothic novels in question, written between 1792 and 1798, were all written by authors who either post-date Schiller’s Gothic production entirely or who mention volumes by or including Schiller explicitly. Second, all but one of the novels written by the three German influences cited appeared for the first time in German after 1792, and thus too late to influence the earliest British writers of the 1790s and too late to predate the influence of Schiller’s earlier dramas and prose works. Since Spiess, Cramer, and Gleich were all clearly mimicking Schiller in their novels, as did Grosse, who evidently lifted his subtitle directly from Schiller’s Der Geisterseher,16 they can only constitute a post-Schillerian wave of German presence in English Gothic literature. Third, in the Gothic explosion of the 1790s, Schiller and Kahlert remain the most plausible influences due to the awareness of their works demonstrated by the German writers and two of the most prominent British authors, Lewis and Radcliffe (Hogle 42).17 Logically, there is no possibility of influence by the Gothic works of Spiess, Cramer, and Gleich, the «seminal

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influences» cited by The Encylopedia of Fantasy, in England until well into the British-German Gothic explosion of the mid-1790s. Schiller’s influence is even more important in Kahlert’s English presence than in his already derivative German original, Der Geisterbanner. As Conger has demonstrated, the English adaptation, Teuthold’s The Necromancer, ends with a hyper-Gothic adaptation of Schiller’s «Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre» (Necromancer 133–58).18 Further, Teuthold introduces his version of «Verbrecher» with a series of elements of the «explained supernatural» that had already appeared in Schiller’s Der Geisterseher (1789), but which are still most frequently associated with Radcliffe’s later The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794).19 These elements include the camera obscura and smoke effects (Necromancer 132), both of which are introduced in the séance scene in Book I of Der Geisterseher. Therefore, whoever read Teuthold/Kahlert in English also read the Gothic highlights of two of Schiller’s most popular works, even if unknowingly. For all of Kahlert’s evident English fame or infamy as the original author of The Necromancer and as the source of Seward’s «necromantic spell» (above), it is important to note that three years before Kahlert published his novel, and five years prior to the publication of Teuthold’s translation, necromancy comprised two of the most memorable scenes in Schiller’s Der Geisterseher, again the séance scene and then in the ensuing novella of Antonia and Jeronimo narrated by «the Sicilian.»20 Teuthold would not be the last to lift from Der Geisterseher in England in the 1790s. Citing as highlights the «sorcery-scene» and «the power of poetry,» a further review of Coleridge’s Remorse in The Examiner of 31 January 1813 credits Schiller for the play’s success and distances him from the sins of his countrymen and his age: «Mr. Coleridge is indebted to his acquaintance with the German drama, which, in the hands of Schiller at least, redeems all its faults in its excellence» (CO xiv). In an ultimate tribute to the resonance of Schiller’s Der Geisterseher,21 Kahlert revised Der Geisterbanner in 1799 to include the only Geisterseher element it was missing; he created a counterpart to the erotic worship of Schiller’s beautiful Greek woman – «a hint of exoticism and eroticism» in the form of «an escaped nun who appears as a ghost to a Schwärmer [zealot]» (Hall 60).22 Though there are many influences to be explored, the canonical twists in the German Tale of Western Gothic influence in the 1790s addressed here all lead back to (or at least through) the content of Schiller’s early dramas and prose works (1781–1789). Schiller’s fourth drama, Don Karlos (1787), features (off stage) Prince Karlos marching through empty palace halls in Madrid at midnight, disguised as his grandfather’s ghost dressed as a monk (SW 6:310, 323–24). This would be just one in a series of scary conspiratorial monks for Schiller, three in three years if one counts the Grand Inquisitor also in Don

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Karlos, four in eight years if one counts Schiller’s essay on «Cagliostro» of 1781 (SW 22:65–6). Schiller’s most important work in the Gothic tradition, the novel fragment/frame novella Der Geisterseher, features the most prominent of the four, the «Armenian» monk with supernatural powers that would define Schiller’s Gothic legacy. Though Daniel Boileau’s English translation, The Ghost-Seer, first appeared in London in 1795, there is good reason to believe that both Lewis and Radcliffe were already aware of the story by 1792 and 1794 respectively.23 Indeed, nowhere in the Gothic canon is Schiller’s presence more palpable than in Lewis’s The Monk (1796) and Radcliffe’s The Italian (1797), both of which already invoke Schiller’s occultist Venetian monk in their titles.24 The essential elements of Der Geisterseher comprise a confused German protagonist-prince, victimized by a very Cagliostro-like borderline-supernatural trickster known as a monk in Italy, and referred to by an ethnic epithet (Armenian); a con-man conjurer (the Sicilian), and a beautiful secret agent and nearly spectral autoerotic madonna known as the «beautiful Greek woman»; all of whom drag the unsuspecting protagonist into the clutches of a Catholic political conspiracy. Lewis’s The Monk is set in Madrid and Germany; his monk, Ambrosio, bears every similarity to Cagliostro embodied as Schiller’s Armenian and follows a very similar path. The Monk combines perverted monks and inquisitors, a bleeding ghost-nun («a tradition still credited in many parts of Germany»),25 a madonna-image trap, witchcraft, devil worship, and a Catholic conspiracy to create a conflation of The Castle of Otranto, Der Geisterseher, Don Giovanni, and various of the Faust traditions. Where Schiller’s text – between two scenes involving one phony and one possible case of actual necromancy – implies through the name Armenian and said Armenian’s evident agelessness that he might possibly be the proverbial Wandering Jew, Lewis’s Monk explicitly tells the tale of a necromancer believed in all probability to be the Wandering Jew (end of chapter 1). Lewis was familiar with Schiller’s works, having spent the summer of 1792 in Weimar, and worked on his own translation of Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe as early as 1793.26 Coleridge was clearly aware of Lewis’s reworkings of Schiller, and claimed in a letter to William Wordsworth dated 23 January 1798 that Lewis’s 1797 drama version of The Castle Specter is «Schiller Lewis-ized» (CL 225).27 Published a year after The Monk, Radcliffe’s last novel, The Italian features an evil conspiratorial monk named Schedoni, whose Catholic conspiracy lands the protagonists in the court of the Inquisition. Once again, Radcliffe creates an elaborate illusion of supernatural activity only to expose it as a ruse in what most will recognize as «the explained supernatural» or what has become known popularly as a Scooby-Doo ending28 – with the exception of

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four dead villains. Conger has demonstrated entire paragraphs of Radcliffe’s obvious borrowing from Schiller’s works (Conger, «Mary Shelley’s Monster» 121–22). Note that not one of Radcliffe’s trademark «explained supernatural» novels appear before Schiller’s Geisterseher, the centerpiece of which is the endless forensic debunking of the supernatural. As was the case with Lewis a nd The Monk, The Italian was written not long after a trip to Germany, which Radcliffe chronicled in A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794 (1795). Der Geisterseher had appeared in two book editions and one second printing in the German states between 1789 and 1792.29 The question of seminal German influences on both the English and German Gothic waves of the 1790s thus leads back to Schiller, not only through conflicting positions in later reception history, but directly from the era’s most canonical Gothic works. If there is indeed anything concretely German about the German tale, it can be found in the mimicry of the content of Schiller’s literary prose works and early dramas: foremost, but not exclusively, Der Geisterseher, Die Räuber, and «Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre.»30 Of the many characteristics that comprised the Gothic mood of the 1790s, or Poe’s «Germanism» and «gloom» – political, legal, and social failure; corruption, the Inquisition, persecution, rebellion, and superstition; executions, frame-ups, murders, seances, special effects, pacts with the devil, and ventriloquism; confidence men, conspiracy, and disquises; evil monks, ghosts, prisoners, robbers, and spies; dungeons, forests, lairs, and castle ruins – Schiller delivered all in three works in eight years (1781–1789) immediatetly preceding the German-English Gothic explosion of the 1790s. Noting similarities in content, however, is where most of the comparisons between Schiller and the Gothic authors of the 1790s end, since very few Gothic novels are considered to be on a comparative stylistic or philosophical niveau with Schiller’s works. The many secondary sources that overlook the impact of Schiller’s Gothic presence may nonetheless quietly hold the key to why Schiller’s influence on Gothic literature has remained such a relative nontopic. From the testimony of Coleridge of 1794–1796, it is evident Who this Schiller, «this convuser of the heart,» is supposed to be, that is, a dramatist and epic poet of classic stature in his own lifetime – the heir to Shakespeare and Milton, not the inspiration for Der Geisterbanner and The Monk. Critics since Coleridge have proven reluctant to mention Schiller and the Gothic explosion of the 1790s in the same breath. Schiller, who was forever torn between concerns for his legacy and his popularity, and who never acted on his plans for no less than three high-sea and pirate dramas (Das Seestück, Das Schiff, and Die Flibiustiers), likely would have approved of the critical silence. It is also probably true that

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if Schiller’s works and reputation had been the exclusive measure in 1839, Poe would have felt better about being accused of literary «Germanism.» Samuel Miller’s descriptions of Schiller’s works in 1803, fifty pages apart in sections entitled «Romances and Novels» and «Drama,» offer an early indication that the classic artist Schiller is to be regarded as transcendent of his Gothic tendencies. Thus the unnamed (!) «author of the Ghost Seer» – mentioned only in passing just after Lewis’s The Monk has been deemed «disgraceful to the character of the author» (Miller 1803 2:167) – is in no way associated with Schiller the dramatist: «perhaps no tragic writer of Germany has gained a reputation more extensive and commanding than Schiller, whose Robbers and Don Carlos evince powerful talents, and have gained unusual popularity» (Miller 1805 3:55). Similarly concerned with his legacy, and in the year of both his own death and the 150th anniversary of Schiller’s death, Thomas Mann describes this transcendent quality of Schiller’s works and reception in his essay «Versuch über Schiller» (1955) as «the rarest quality, classical popularity.»31 In the critical gulf that generally separates such «powerful talents» as those evident in Die Räuber from the mere popularity of the «the countless immitations which were its spawn […] themselves the literary brood of the Castle of Otranto» (CBL II:183–184), Coleridge lost the Gothic enthusiasm he first displayed in 1794. One can only wonder if the «powerful poetry» of Remorse warrants its exception from a thus doubly derivative brood. In that gulf, too, Schiller became disconnected from a legacy as one of the godfather’s of the Gothic novel, a distinction that most likely would have made him scream «BLACK horror» himself. Indeed, in 1788, Schiller had already preemptively expressed his permission to leave him out of the Gothic prose discussion in a series of unhappy outbursts over the «bad scribbling» and «sinful waste of time»32 that in his view characterized Der Geisterseher: «I still can’t bring myself to develop any interest in the cursed Geisterseher; what demon ever made me think of it?»33 Notes 1

2

My sincere thanks to Curtis Maughan, Roma Hermández, Lisa Beesley (California State University Long Beach), Whitney Powell (University of New Mexico), and Melissa Etzler (University of California, Berkeley) for their assistance, and to Clorinda Donato (California State University Long Beach), Jennifer Driscoll Colosimo (University of Puget Sound), and Jennifer M. Hoyer (University of Arkansas) for their insightful suggestions. The most notable exceptions are Ulrich Thiergard, «Schiller und Walpole: Ein Beitrag zu Schillers Verhältnis zur Schauerliteratur» (1959); Karl S. Guthke, Englische Vorromantik und deutscher Sturm und Drang. M.G. Lewis’ Stellung in der Geschichte der deutsch-

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englischen Literaturbeziehungen (1959), and Devendra P. Varma’s «Introduction» to The Necromancer (1968). The presence of the works of Gottfried August Bürger is addressed briefly by Varma (Necromancer viii), and deserves further attention. Biographia Litteraria (CBL) II:183–84. Schiller indeed mentions «Richardson’s novels about Grandison and Pamela» in the introduction to his «true» novella, «Eine großmütige Handlung aus der neuesten Geschichte» (1782). See High, Schiller’s Literary Prose Works 9. Schiller does not mention Walpole until 9 March 1798 (Schillers Werke 29: 217, 555), after the end of his own Gothic publishing career, and the only work he mentions is the 1791 edition of The Mysterious Mother, which Schiller appears to believe is a recent work. Though there is no evidence that Schiller had read Otranto prior to the late 1790s, his strategic insistence that his prose works are based on true stories represents a variation of Walpole’s insistence that The Castle of Otranto was a medieval Italian romance published by a fictitious translator. Jennifer Driscoll Colosimo draws attention to the similarities between Walpole’s The Mysterious Mother and Schiller’s sketches to two dramas he never finished, Die Braut in Trauer and Die Kinder des Hauses («Schiller and the Gothic» 294–95). The demonstrable connection between Walpole and Schiller is first evident over a decade after Schiller wrote the works that influenced the English Gothic literature of the 1790s. See also Thiergard, «Schiller und Walpole.» «The Gothic Tide» 60. See also Guthke’s study of English-German reciprocal influences Englischer Vorromantik. Colosimo provides a thorough catalogue of the secondary literature indicating that much of it either ignores Schiller altogether or treats him almost exclusively as a peripheral figure in the history of Gothic literature. See Colosimo, «Going Gothic?» esp. 15–17. Indeed, German Studies is still left without an umbrella term for Gothic literary phenomena, making do with the genre-specific term Schauerroman, the broader Schauerromantik, and the English term Gothic among the common descriptors. See Colosimo, «Schiller and the Gothic» 291. «the shortcomings of the sort of German Gothic scholarship ohne Germanistik that has found a place in the many recent monographs, compendia, and companions devoted to the Gothic genre, are readily apparent, particularly to the Germanist reader» (Colosimo, «Going Gothic» 15). Volume 2 includes Hoffman’s «Rolandsitten, or the deed of Entail,» which mentions Schiller’s Geisterseher explicitly. See Pearse Gillies, vol. 2, 19–20, 25–26. All of the original spelling, distinctions between upper and lower case, and punctuation have been maintained in all quotations. Edgar Allan Poe in the «Preface» to Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque 5–6. Norton 106; Miles 42. Colosimo points out a fascinating parallel trend: «Looking through Michael Hadley’s Romanverzeichnis, Bibliographie der zwischen 1750–1800 erschienenen Erstausgaben [Novel Index: Bibliography of First Editions Published between 1750–1800] one finds any number of German texts in the Gothic mode subtitled «aus dem englischen» [from the English] without the benefit of an author’s name» («Schiller and the Gothic» 287). «Gothic elements appear in a much greater concentration in Die Räuber: in addition to the focus on criminal protagonists, and the presence of a band of bloodthirsty robbers, there is a conflict over an inheritance that results in an attempted murder, a secret imprisonment of a family member presumed dead, and suggestions of supernatural phenomena. […] Daniel Hall notes how Schiller intensifies the emotional and psychological impact of the character’s reappearance through images ‹such as darkness, owls crying out,

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and cries of horror, which are designed to inspire terror, or at least unease.›» («Schiller and the Gothic» 293). That same year, Wordsworth completed his adaptation of Die Räuber, The Borderers (Osorio vii; Burwick 303). In 1807, Byron wrote the ballad «Oscar of Alva,» also based on the Sicilian’s tale in Der Geisterseher (Lowes 243). Gottfried August Bürger’s Gothic poem «Lenore» (1773 or 1774) was translated into English as early as 1782 and was receiving a similarly contradictory reception in England, with popular translations published by Stanley, Scott, Pye, and Spencer, but the object of derisive parody by T.J. Matthias: «With Spartan Pye lull England to repose,/Or frighten children with Lenora’s woes.» Cited as in Thürnau (16). See Colosimo’s discussion of The Rovers and Schiller’s place in Gothic reception («Schiller and the Gothic» 288–89). Seward conflates the Gothic with the revolutionary political: «Thy democratic rant be here,/To fire the brain, corrupt the taste» (Seward 92). For a discussion of the revolutionary political offenses implied, see High, «Why is this Schiller [still] in the United States?» 9–10. If Spiess comes after Schiller in the chronology of the Räuber-, Ritter- und Geisterroman, his tragedy Maria Stuart (1783) predates Schiller’s by some sixteen years, although Schiller’s plans for a Maria Stuart drama date back to 1783. Spiess’s collection Biographien der Selbstmörder (1785–1788) marks an important point in the history of tales of madness. Compare Schiller’s full title of 1789, Der Geisterseher. Aus den Memoiren des Grafen von O**, to Grosse’s of 1790–94, Der Genius. Aus den Papieren des Marquis C* von G**. As for Walpole’s influence on the early Gothic tides, interestingly, there is no evidence of great awareness of The Castle of Otranto in Germany until 1794, when F. Meyer published a new translation, which indicates, if anything, that the German Gothic boom of the 1780s and 1790s may have influenced international Walpole reception as much as Walpole influenced the Germans. This being the case, the possible influence of Aikins, Sophia Lee, and Clara Reeve on German authors, including Schiller, deserves further investigation. «A third even earlier translation which made Schiller’s tale [«Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre»] available in English in 1794 has been at our fingertips for some time, but, like Poe’s purloined letter, has escaped notice, no doubt because it was buried in another text and not identified by author or title. It forms the final episodes of The Necromancer of the Black Forest (Minerva Press, 1794), Peter Teuthold’s English translation of a contemporary German «Schauerroman» by Karl F. Kahlert called Der Geisterbanner. […] Schiller’s tale was woven by Teuthold into the end of the second volume of The Necromancer, perhaps as filler; and even though its beginning and ending were altered to accommodate it to the main story, it remains a recognizably discrete entity.» See Conger, «Mary Shelley’s Monster» 216–17. Regarding the «explained supernatural,» Varma writes, «Mrs Radcliffe’s Udolpho had become a popular model and the novels that followed it attempted to explain away the supernatural. Very often the strange noises and mysterious occurrences which frightened the characters were accounted for by ventriloquism, and the supernatural expliqué became a common device» (Necromancer ix). Note that among the elements of the explained supernatural in Schiller’s Geisterseher is a case of ventriloquism (Schillers Werke 16: 71–72).

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Schillers Werke 16: 56–63; 77–89 and Lamport 74–80; 90–99. Kahlert was hardly the last to borrow from Der Geisterseher. As Conger has demonstrated, Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue and his detective Dupin share a long list of parallels to Der Geisterseher and the Armenian («Another Secret»12). In another early parody of Gothic prose, Thomas Love Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey (1818) appears to parody a popular view of Schiller himself (as much as Shelley) as Scythrop, the melancholic Kantian revolutionary bent on reforming the world from a desk. Boileau’s translation was immediately reprinted in the United States in 1796 in the New York Weekly Magazine, like the original in serial form, here in fifteen installments. A second reprint, that of the translation by William Render, was published in Philadelphia in 1801 (Parry 10). Conger provides a list of Schillerian spin-off monks: «in The Monk, The Italian, Frankenstein, Melmoth the Wanderer, and St. Leon» («Another Secret»12). Lewis in the advertisement for The Monk (6). Irwin 21. Lewis’s finished translation, which was published as The Minister in 1797, does not include act II, scene 2, one of the scenes Seward alluded to above that criticize British politics. See High, «Why is this Schiller» 4. Coleridge points out another case of Lewis’s borrowing from Schiller in The Castle Spectre: «The author in a postscript lays claim to novelty in one of his characters – that of Hassan. Now Hassan is a negro, who had a warm & benevolent heart; but having been kidnapped from his country & barbarously used by the Christians, becomes a misanthrope» (Letters 225). Hassan is likewise the name of the misanthropic African in Schiller’s Fiesko (1783), who explains that having found no other outlet for his brilliance in white Christian society, he had chosen the relative freedom of a life of crime. Scooby Doo, Where are You? is a US cartoon series that has continued under different titles since 1969. The hallmark of the original two-year run was the unmasking of the supernatural antagonist as a confidence artist. For an early version of the Enlightenment’s assault on the supernatural, see Clara Reeve’s novel The Old English Baron:A Gothic Story (1778). Die Räuber features Franz Moor, arguably literature’s first empirically explainable and self-aware psychic vampire. Franz Moor is a product of Enlightenment science with an articulate plan to murder his father by systematically draining his will to live. That his plot in act I is an act of conscious vampirism becomes clear in Act II, Scene 2, when Old Moor first feels the effects of Franz’ efforts: «Ungeheuer, Ungeheuer! […] Scheusal! Scheusal! Schaff mir meinen Sohn wieder!» (Schillers Werke 3: 49–50). Francis Lamport’s translation emphasizes Old Moor’s recognition of Franz’s vampiristic intent: «Vampire! vampire! Give me my son again!» (Robbers 68). «das Seltenste: klassische Populärität» (Mann 208). Letter to Körner of 17 March 1788: «schlecht,» «Schmiererei,» and «sündliche[r] Zeitaufwand» (Schillers Werke 25:30). «Dem verfluchten Geisterseher kann ich bis diese Stunde kein Interesse abgewinnen; welcher Dämon hat mir ihn eingegeben!» Letter to Körner of 6 March 1788 (Schillers Werke 25:25). See also Schillers letter to his fiancée Charlotte von Lengefeld and her sister Karoline on 20 November 1788: «Ich sehe mit Sehnsucht der Epoche entgegen, wo ich meine Beschäftigungen für mein Gefühl besser wählen kann» (Schillers Werke 25: 141).

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Works Cited Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. Eds. Barbara M. Benedict and Deirdre Le Faye. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. Blasone, Pino. «A robe of more than glory: Edgar Allan Poe and the Italian Gothic.» Calenture 3.1 (2007): 6–13. Burwick, Frederick. «Schiller’s Plays on the British Stage, 1797–1825.» Who is This Schiller Now? Eds. Jeffrey L. High, Nicholas Martin, and Norbert Oellers. Rochester: Camden House, 2011. 302–20. Clute, John and John Grant. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria, or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. Vol. 2. Ed. Henry Nelson Coleridge and His Widow. New York: Putnam, 1848. –. Coleridge’s Poems. Ed. J.B. Beer. London: Everyman’s Library, 1963. –. Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. Earl Leslie Griggs. London: Oxford UP, 1966. –. Osorio. A Tragedy. As Originally Written in 1797. With Richard Herne Shepard. London: John Pearson, 1873. Colosimo, Jennifer Driscoll. «Going Gothic? –The Place of German Literature in the New Gothic Canon.» Germanic Notes and Reviews 39.1 (Spring 2008): 14–22. –. «Schiller and the Gothic – Reception and Reality.» Who is This Schiller Now? Eds. Jeffrey L. High, Nicholas Martin, and Norbert Oellers. Rochester: Camden House, 2011. 287–301. Conger, Syndy M. «Another Secret of the Rue Morgue: Poe’s Transformation of the Geisterseher Motif.» Studies in Short Fiction 24 (1987): 9–14. –. «A German Ancestor for Mary Shelley’s Monster: Kahlert, Schiller and the Buried Treasure of Northanger Abbey.» Philological Quarterly 59 (1980): 216–32. Crawford, Gary William. «Friedrich von Schiller, Immanuel Kant, Swedenborg, and Le Fanu.» Le Fanu Studies 3.1 (2008) www.lefanustudies.com/schiller.html. Flammenberg, Lawrence (Karl Friedrich Kahlert). The Necromancer or The Tale of the Black Forest. Trans. Peter Teuthold. London: The Folio Press, 1968. Gamer, Michael. «Gothic Fictions and Romantic Writings in Britain.» The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 85–104. Gillies, Robert Pearse. German Stories: Selected from the Works of Hoffmann, De La Motte Fouqué, Pichler, Kruse, and Others. 3 vols. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and T. Cadell, 1826. Guthke, Karl S. Englische Vorromantik und deutscher Sturm und Drang. M.G. Lewis’ Stellung in der Geschichte der deutsch-englischen Literaturbeziehungen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959. Hale, Terry. «French and German Gothic: The Beginnings.» The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 63–84. Hall, Daniel. «The Gothic Tide: Schauerroman and Gothic Novel in the Late Eighteenth Century.» The Novel in Anglo-German Context: Cultural Cross-currents and Affinities. Ed. Susanne Stark. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. 51–60.

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High, Jeffrey L. «Introduction: Schiller and the German Novella.» Schiller’s Literary Prose Works. New Translations and Critical Essays. Ed. Jeffrey L. High. Rochester: Camden House, 2008. 1–6. –. «Schillers Unabhängigkeitserklärungen: die niederländische Plakkaat van Verlatinge, der ‹amerikanische Krieg› und die unzeitgemäße Rhetorik des Marquis Posa.» Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2010. 80–108. –. «Why is this Schiller [still] in the United States?» Who is This Schiller Now? Eds. Jeffrey L. High, Nicholas Martin, and Norbert Oellers. Rochester: Camden House, 2011. 1–24. Hogle, Jerrold E., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. Irwin, Joseph James. M.G. «Monk» Lewis. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976. Kahlert, Karl Freidrich. The Necromancer or The Tale of the Black Forest. Founded on Facts. Translated from the German of Lawrence Flammenberg. Trans. Peter Teuthold. Ed. Devendra P. Varma. London: The Folio Press, 1968. Lewis, Matthew Gregory. The Monk. Ed. Howard Andersen Lewis. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Lowes, John Livingston. The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927. Mann, Thomas. «Versuch über Schiller.» Thomas Mann Essays. Vol. I. Literatur. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1977. 201–15. Meyer, F.L.W. Die Burg Otranto, Eine Gothische Geschichte. Berlin: Himburg, 1794. Miles, Robert. «The 1790s: The Effulgence of Gothic.» The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 41– 62. Miller, Samuel. A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century. New York: T. and J. Swords, 1803. Miller, Samuel. A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century. London: Ellerton & Byworth, 1805. Norton, Rictor, ed. Gothic Readings: The First Wave, 1764–1840. London & New York: Leicester UP, 2000. Parry, Ellwood Comly. Friedrich Schiller in America, in Americana Germanica. Ed. Marion Dexter Learned. Philadelphia: America Germanica Press, 1905. Rpt. of German American Annals, Vol. 3. Poe, Edgar Allan. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1840. Schiller, Friedrich. Friedrich Schiller. The Robbers. Wallenstein. Trans. Francis Lamport. London: Penguin, 1979. –. Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Ed. Julius Petersen et al. Weimar: Herrman Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1943ff. –. The Spiritualist. From the Memoirs of Count von O**. Trans. Francis Lamport. Schiller’s Literary Prose Works. New Translations and Critical Essays. Ed. Jeffrey L. High. Rochester: Camden House, 2008. 67–149. Steeger, Andrew Phillip. «Crosscurrents between the English Gothic novel and the German Schauerroman.» Diss. U of Nebraska, 2004. Seward, William. «Ode to the German Drama.» The Port Folio. Vol. 1. Philadelphia: John Watts, 1806. 92.

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Thiergard, Ulrich. «Schiller und Walpole: Ein Beitrag zu Schillers Verhältnis zur Schauerliteratur. Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft (1959): 102–17. Thürnau, Carl. Die Geister in der englischen Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Romantik. Berlin: Mayer & Müller, 1906. Varma, Devendra P. «Introduction.» The Necromancer or The Tale of the Black Forest. Founded on Facts. Translated from the German of Lawrence Flammenberg. Trans. Peter Teuthold. London: The Folio Press, 1968.

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The Horror! Gothic Horror Literature and Fairy Tales: The Case of «Der Räuberbräutigam» LINDA KRAUS WORLEY

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By the beginning of the nineteenth century, German tales of horror had become so popular on an international scale that British and American authors often included the ominous subtitle «A German Story» in order to draw readership.1 The adjective «German» became a marker for the dark and ominous not only for stories but also for fairy tales. For example, a collection of fairy tales titled Hans Andersen’s German Fairy Tales was published in New York in 1876, a year after the famous Danish author’s death. The use of the adjective «German» was certainly not a mistake regarding Andersen’s national origins, but linked his literary fairy tales to the dark tales associated with «German.»2 By the end of the nineteenth century, the Grimms’ collection of Kinder- und Hausmärchen had gained a wider readership than sunnier competitors such as Ludwig Bechstein’s Deutsches Märchenbuch (1845), which had dominated the market for several decades (Bottigheimer «Bechstein»). The ascendancy of the Grimms’ collection both at home in the German-speaking countries and abroad strengthened the connection between the adjective «German» and dark, grim tales.3 The connections between German fairy tales and Gothic novels and stories are, of course, not simply limited to the use of the word «German» in a title or subtitle. Scholars have long commented on the similarities in tone, motifs, and structure. The excellent articles on «Horrorliteratur» by Linda Dégh and on «Schauerliteratur» by Jürgen Klein in the Enzyklopädie des Märchens underscore these similarities and provide succinct lists of relevant secondary literature. Fairy-tale motifs and structures have been seen to inform a wide range of «Gothic» novels and films ranging from Jane Eyre to road slasher movies.4 «German» Gothic tales and «German» fairy tales are also connected, although at times indirectly, through debates concerning the possible deleterious effects of this hypothesized dark, «German» quality. The searing search for the roots of the German atrocities of the Nazi era led to a spate of books with telling titles such as McGovern’s From Luther to Hitler. It also led to an examination of the Grimms’ fairy tales in terms of their relationship to reallife cruelty: «Vor allem nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg erhob sich eine ganze

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Presse-Flutwelle gegen die ‹Grimmschen Märchengreuel›» (Röhrich 125). Renowned fairy-tale scholars such as Max Lüthi and Lutz Röhrich weighed in on this issue. In The European Folktale: Form and Nature (published originally as Das europäische Volksmärchen in 1947) Lüthi’s emphasis on the abstract nature of Märchen can be read as countering the contention that tales are viscerally and concretely «grausam,» and thus can dangerously affect the reader.5 In addition, Lüthi specifically points out that Märchen do not dwell on «Schauer» (So leben sie noch heute 19). Röhrich addresses the issue head-on in 1974 in a chapter of his book, Märchen und Wirklichkeit, titled «Die Grausamkeit im Märchen.» He attempts to rescue Märchen from the levied charges in a variety of ways. He underscores that the scenes of human sacrifice found in tales are remnants of distant historical realities, have been transformed over time into mere motifs, and «bedeuten meist nur noch eine epische Spannungsformel» (129). Even the horrific fate of the brides in the Bluebeard tale is seen not as «Selbstzweck einer blutrünstigen Schilderung, sondern es interessiert nur als mögliche Gefahr für die Heldin selbst und nur zur Erregung der Spannung wird es so in den Details ausgeführt» (128). In addition, Röhrich points out that even the most violent scenes of dismemberment, as can be found in the tale «Der Machandelboom,» produce little or no blood, implying that the scene is therefore not horrific: «Bei dieser Zerstückelung fließt offenbar kein Blut, sie vollzieht sich ohne jeden Akzent der Grausamkeit, die doch das Machandelboom-Märchen weithin beherrscht» (135). Indeed, Röhrich goes so far as to advance the following questionable assertion: Wirkliche Grausamkeit ist wohl nicht durch Erinnerung an Märchengeschehnisse entstanden. Der Pädagogik und der Jugendkriminalistik ist kein Fall bekannt, in dem das Märchen einen schädlichen Einfluß auf die kindliche Psyche ausgeübt hätte, während die Untersuchung zahlreicher Verbrechen von Jugendlichen nachweisbar ergab, daß die Lektüre von Groschenromanen und der Besuch von Gangster- und Kriminalfilmen die Anregung zu gleichartigen Taten gegeben hat. (153)

Röhrich thus draws a line between the cruelty in fairy tales and that in «Groschenromanen» and «Gangster- und Kriminalfilmen.» (We may add certain Gothic tales to the list in his argument insofar as some Gothic tales of horror were published as the dime novels to which Röhrich alludes.) Debates continue regarding the possible negative effects of fairy tales, tales of horror, and the media in general. My purpose is not to enter this discussion directly, but to demonstrate that, at least for one particular tale, «Der Räuberbräutigam,» editorial changes made by the Grimms over time increased the violent content, the horror, the tension, and the tale’s Gothic elements. Their editorial changes moved the tale away from the abstract style posited by Lüthi.

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Maria Tatar has provided stimulating readings of a set of tales related to «Der Räuberbräutigam» in Secrets beyond the Door: The Story of Bluebeard and his Wives. She notes that the many versions of the Bluebeard tale tend to emphasize either women’s curiosity in opening the forbidden door or men’s murderous lust.6 She investigates how this «master narrative» (11) has been «constantly altered, adapted, transformed, and tailored to fit new cultural contexts» (11) so much so that it can inform artistic works as diverse as Daphne du Maurier’s modern Gothic novel Rebecca and films such as Gaslight (76–107). Tatar does not incorporate «Der Räuberbräutigam» into her analysis in any detail, mentioning only that «The heroine of ‹The Robber Bridegroom,› though not faced with a forbidden chamber and a test of obedience, rescues herself from a murderous suitor, mobilizing her wits and her narrative skills to escape the cannibalistic thieves with whom her betrothed consorts» (59). Viewing the Grimms’ version of «Der Räuberbräutigam» within the context of its variants and detailing the editorial changes made from the manuscript version of 1810 to the final edition of 1857 make it possible to argue that the changes the Grimms made in motifs, plot, and language move this tale ever closer to the dynamic Gothic genre. Their changes to «Der Räuberbräutigam» run counter to the general tendency for the tales throughout the various editions of Kinder- und Hausmärchen to become ever more suitable for children. The Grimms’ editing, however, did not occur in a cultural vacuum; instead, their work occurred during the same time period and in the same literary climate which found other writers of the early nineteenth century reworking the Gothic tale. Writers such as E.T.A. Hoffmann in Germany, Mary Shelley in England, and Edgar Allen Poe in the United States appropriated for their own tales elements of earlier Gothic novels such as horrifying, perhaps supernatural events, «images of ruin and decay» and «episodes of imprisonment, cruelty, persecution» within a claustrophobic atmosphere of oppression and evil («Gothic fiction,» Oxford Reference Online). Their tales reimagined the characteristic «Gothic» theme of «the stranglehold of the past upon the present, or the encroachment of the ‹dark› ages of oppression upon the ‹enlightened› modern era» («Gothic Fiction,» Oxford Reference Online). Since these writers of the Romantic era at times emphasized supernatural elements, at other times psychological torment, guilt, self-division, and paranoid delusion, their Gothic tales, in turn, moved between the supernatural and the psychological modes. Scholarly efforts at classifying «Der Räuberbräutigam» reflect some of the tensions between these modes. Some folklorists read the tale as a realistic robber saga with gruesome details; others insist it is a true fairy tale. Thus, the tale inhabits a borderline, perhaps even hybrid, status

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as do literary tales such as Tieck’s Der blonde Eckbert and Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann. «The Robber Bridegroom» tale type is popular in German-speaking areas as well as in England, Central, North, and Eastern Europe (Uther 349–50).7 Christine Goldberg summarizes the relatively stable core of the tale: Eine junge Frau, die von einem anscheinend reichen Fremden umworben wird […] geht allein durch den Wald zu seinem Haus. In ihm findet sie Anzeichen fur einen Massenmord. Voller Angst versteckt sie sich, als sie jemanden kommen hört. Es ist ihr Bräutigam, der ein neues Opfer anschleppt, tötet und zerstückelt. Der Finger (die Hand) des Opfers mit seinem Ring (nur der Ring) fällt der Heldin in den Schoß. Nachts flieht sie, kehrt nach Hause zurück und berichtet ihrer Familie, was sie gesehen hat. Beim nächsten Besuch des Bräutigams (oft das Verlobungs- oder Hochzeitsfest) ist eine Reihe von Leuten bei ihr versammelt. Sie erzählt ihr Erlebnis, nennt es zuerst einen Traum, zeigt aber zuletzt den Finger als Beweis für die Wahrheit ihrer Erzählung. Der Mörder ist damit überführt, wird vor Gericht gebracht und hingerichtet. («Räuberbräutigam» 348)

Around this stable core, variants abound – ranging from a gypsy version to a Russian tale in which werewolves occupy the robber slot. English versions such as «Mr. Fox» are marked by the rhymed denials of an often-named murderer.8 It is at this point that scholars differ as to the status of the tale as a true fairy tale. Hans-Jörg Uther revised the tale-type classification system established by Antti Aarne and StithThompson but did not move the tale to be among the «Zaubermärchen,» instead keeping the tale (ATU tale type 955) within the «Realistic Tales/Novelle» section. Walter Scherf, on the other hand, counters, Andererseits findet sich mehr als ein Zug, der dem Erzähltyp die Nähe oder Herkunft von den Märchen des Auszugs in eine andere, zutiefst bedrohliche Welt bescheinigt, wobei diese das Erlebnis von Bewährung und Heimkehr mit einer neu gewonnenen Selbstsicherheit vermitteln, also aus dem Bereich der Zaubermärchen […] stammen. («Räuberbräutigam» 964)9

Details from the realm of faërie include the mysterious journey through the woods and a talking bird who warns the girl. The robber/murderer of the tale resonates with mythical figures such as the robber Grünbart so that the tale can be read as a «säkularisierte Dämonenerzählung» (Scherf, «Räuberbräutigam» 964–65). Scherf’s arguments are convincing if one looks only at «The Robber Bridegroom» tales; however, this set of tales intertwines with another set, ATU 956B, «The Clever Maiden alone at Home kills the Robbers,» which have no such demonic subtext. In these related tales, the heroine kills members of a band of robbers one-by-one as each attempts to climb into her home. Only the captain escapes. He later returns as a mysterious suitor whose aim

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is to kill her, thus supplying a «realistic» pre-story to the plot of «The Robber Bridegroom» tales. Goldberg is correct to point to the problems that occur when an interpretation takes into account neither the historically and geographically diverse field of variants nor other tales containing the same motifs. A perhaps fatally flawed interpretation may result if too much emphasis is placed on one, perhaps idiosyncratic, detail of a particular tale. I would, however, argue that it is too facile to dismiss the details in «Der Räuberbräutigam» as simply a «Reihe unbedeutender Details» as Goldberg does in her discussion of the tale («Räuberbräutigam» 349). Precisely the details which are added or subtracted by one person over a protracted length of time reveal much about the individual taleteller or editor, the particular tale and its audiences. Thus, the Grimms’ ongoing editorial work over the course of 47 years is not insignificant; it reveals much about the nature of the text.10 Scholars have long noted the often extensive changes the Grimms made to the tales and have hypothesized that the edits were designed to make the tales more appropriate for children, especially after the success of Edgar Taylor’s child-friendly English version of 1823, German Popular Tales. Jack Zipes summarizes the changes: They [the Grimms] eliminated erotic and sexual elements that might be offensive to middle-class morality, added numerous Christian expressions and references, emphasized specific role models for male and female protagonists according to the dominant patriarchal code of that time, and endowed many of the tales with a «homey» or biedermeier flavor by the use of diminutives, quaint expressions, and cute descriptions. (46)

Gruesome and violent elements tended, however, not to be eliminated as scholars such as Maria Tatar (Off with Their Heads) and Ruth Bottigheimer (Bad Girls and Bold Boys) have demonstrated. A close examination of the changes made to «Der Räuberbräutigam» shows that not only were violent elements retained, they were amplified. In the manuscript collection of 1810, which the Grimms sent to Clemens Brentano, they add «Mündlich» to the end of the «Rauberbräutigam.»11 The tale was told by Marie Hassenpflug (Rölleke, Älteste Märchensammlung 237, 392) to Jacob Grimm (Bottigheimer, Fairy Tales 29). The Grimms revised the tale for its first publication in 1812 as part of the two-volume edition targeted at scholars and again for the second edition of 1819, adding a note that the tale was now a combination of «zwei Erzählungen aus Niederhessen» (3:70). Certainly some of the changes made in the 1819 edition can be attributed simply to the «contamination» by the second tale.12 However, throughout the editorial process, the Grimms made conscious choices. It was their choice to

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merge the two versions of the tale for the 1819 edition. Indeed, the Grimms were able to choose from a wide variety of source material in general. They solicited tales from among a network of informants, some of whom were deeply engaged in the Romantic movement, and they were sent many unsolicited tales, especially after the popular success of the Kleine Ausgabe of 1825.13 Print versions of many tales, ranging from those collected by Basile and Perrault to those in other German anthologies, were literally at hand.14 A princess is engaged to a prince in the manuscript version of 1810 (234). The only reason given for the princess’s wish to avoid a visit to the prince’s castle is the fear that «sie sich in dem Wald verirren möchte» (234). Even after the prince has promised to mark the way with ribbons, the story factually states, «Sie that es [visit the prince in his castle] lange nicht, doch endlich mußte sie nachgeben» (234). The comma and «doch» together create a dramatic narrative pause. This pause is the gap which alerts the reader that all is not as it should be and suggests that it is not merely the fear of getting lost which is keeping the bride away from the castle of her bridegroom. The princess finally goes to the castle and, once inside, finds an old woman who answers her question as to the whereabouts of the prince by saying, «ach es ist gut daß sie jetzt kommen, da der Prinz nicht zu Haus ist, denn ich habe Waßer in einen großen Keßel tragen müßen, und er will sie umbringen u. in dem Waßer kochen und eßen» (234). After the old woman hides the princess behind a barrel in the basement, she disappears from the text. The prince returns with his «Spitzbuben» who bring in the princess’s grandmother «mit Gewalt» (234). The princess, «welche aus ihrer Ecke alles mit ansah» (234), witnesses her grandmother’s murder and the theft of her rings. This variant follows the core tale: one ringed finger is chopped off and lands in the princess’s lap. The finger remains undiscovered by the robbers. She waits until all are asleep, then carefully makes her way «über die Schlafenden hinweg» (234), follows the ribbons home and tells her father what happened. When her fiance next comes to visit, she relates her story as if it were a dream. The Grimms did not write out the princess’s narrative, noting instead in parentheses, «(u. erzählt alles, was ihr in seinem Haus begegnet, als einem Traum, – dies muß alles wörtlich wieder holt [sic] werden)» (236). The tale’s characteristic mise-en-abyme, the mirror retelling of events, gets special treatment, although it is not yet written out.15 This version of «Der Räuberbräutigam» is a straightforward report, almost a police report, despite the fact that it seems to possess the requisites of a traditional fairy tale – the opening line «Es war einmal,» a prince and princess, a deep forest, and a helper figure. It lacks, however, the essential element of a true Zaubermärchen, for there is no faërie, no Zauber. Instead, it is a grisly tale of murder, theft, and retribution.

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In the first published edition of 1812, the Grimms kept the basic contours outlined above. There are, however, a number of editorial changes that together function to increase the suspense and evoke feelings of hidden terror. Perhaps the most telling change is an addition to the evocative gap discussed above. The version now reads: «eine Zeitlang suchte sie es [the visit to her fiancee’s home] dennoch aufzuschieben, als ob es ihr heimlich gegraut hätte [italics mine].»16 It is with this phrase that the tale truly begins its journey into the space it shares with the Gothic horror story. It is worth noting that this princess does not go into the castle to explore; she is not the curious heroine of the Bluebeard tales. Nor is she in thrall to the magician husband found in «Fitchers Vogel» (ATU 311). She enters only because of the return of the «Prinz mit seinen Spitzbuben vom Raub» (235), and the old woman must hide her. The princess’s hidden watching and her powerless gaze upon the horrific scene is emphasized. Three ocular references occur in one sentence: «die Prinzessin sah wohl, daß es ihre Großmutter war, denn aus ihrer Ecke heraus konnte sie alles mit anschauen, was da vorging, ohne daß sie von einem Auge bemerkt wurde» (235). Later in the tale, the mirror narrative is written out by the Grimms for the first time. The princess frames her story in the subjunctive as if a dream: «ich habe einen so schweren Traum gehabt, mir träumte, ich käme in ein Haus» (237). Her tale, however, quickly switches to the simple narrative past and gains speed by means of a flurry of paratactical clauses linked by «und,» reaching its high point with the physical presentation of the finger: «u n d h i e r h a b i c h d e n F i n g e r ! [sic] bei welchen Worten sie ihn plötzlich aus der Tasche zog» (237). The suspense increases markedly as the reader imagines the prince’s growing fear and dawning recognition that he has been unmasked. The Grimms underscore the prince’s fear by adding «Wie der Bräutigam das sah und hörte, wurde er kreideweiß vor Schrecken, dachte alsobald zu entfliehen» (237) to the simpler plot description of 1812 which merely states that «Der Prinz will entfliehen» (236). Other changes are of the sort typical for the Grimms. There is more direct speech as when, for example, a «Spitzbube» discusses how to conduct the search for the missing ring finger (235), and adjectives are added so that the heroine now walks through a «langen, langen Wald» (235). The early version told by Marie Hassenpflug was merged with another variant «aus Niederhausen» for the second edition of 1819.17 After the first edition of 1812–1815, almost all of the editorial choices were made by Wilhelm Grimm, although Jacob insisted consistently that he had stayed involved in the project. Precisely what Wilhelm added from the other variant, what he rejected, indeed, which alterations are a product of his own imagina-

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tion is not known. Whatever the source of the changes, his choices pushed the tale squarely into the evolving Gothic horror genre. Vladimir Propp, the Russian formalist, would certainly have argued that changing the actors in the tale from a prince and princess to a robber and a miller’s daughter is meaningless since their functions in the tale do not change. However, within the history of this tale it is a significant change. In the 1819 version, the father-king becomes a miller who promises his daughter to a suitor who «sehr reich schien» (1:206). An aura of mistrust accompanies miller figures who, in traditional folk tales, are often described as avaricious men as willing to make a profit on their daughters as they are on their milling services. Wilhelm’s changes also immediately place suspicion on the suitor by adding that «das Mädchen hatte ihn nicht recht lieb, wie eine Braut ihren Bräutigam lieb haben soll, und fühlte ein Grauen in seinem Herzen, so oft es ihn ansah, oder an ihn dachte» (1:206). Wilhelm’s affirmation of nineteenth-century middle-class gender norms («wie eine Braut ihren Bräutigam lieb haben soll») is accompanied by a «Grauen» (1:206) that is described in more detail than in previous versions. Wilhelm’s choice to replace the ribbons marking the way to the castle with a much more ominous marker also adds to the reader’s deepening disquiet. Ashes, the ultimate sign of death, are the marker scattered by the suitor. Death is now palpably linked to the upcoming marriage. The dread felt by the miller’s daughter prompts her to set her own markers. The peas and lentils she strews are a staple food of life that will sprout and eventually allow her to find her way home. Other augers of death are added. A bird warns her twice, «Kehr um, kehr um, du junge Braut,/du bist in einem Mörderhaus» (1:207); a «steinalte Frau» inhabiting the basement makes the connection between her marriage and death unambiguously clear by intoning that «deine Hochzeit soll mit dem Tod seyn» (1:207), and by letting her know that the robbers’ plans include «zerhacken» (an addition to the gruesome catalogue of violence in the earlier tales), «kochen» and then «essen» (1:207), ghoulish perversions of domestic tasks. Wilhelm created a more passive heroine than in the previous versions, for it now falls to the old woman to give directives, plan for their escape, put a sleeping potion into the robbers’ wine, and in a moment of almost comic irony, stop the robbers’ evening search for the missing finger with the macabre comment, «der Finger lauft (sic) euch nicht fort» (1:208). It is at this juncture in the Märchen that the radical shift in versions is most evident. Although the central motif of the chopped-off finger remains constant, the choices made for the 1819 edition foreground fragmentation, splitting and doubling. In this combined, «contaminated» version of the tale the grandmother of the earlier versions becomes a «Jungfrau» (1:207) whose «Schrein und Jammern» (1:207) are ignored by the drunken robbers. Wilhelm

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enumerates in grotesque detail the three glasses of wine – white, red, and yellow – with which the robbers drug their victim and cause her heart to burst. They rip the clothes off the corpse, lay it naked on a table, chop up the beautiful flesh and salt the pieces. The murder and robbery of the earlier versions are gruesome in and of themselves; here they gain a new quality of terror as they become part of an act of ritualized, serial murder that unequivocally links sex and death. These are actions that emphasize a virginal woman’s flesh as flesh, which is to be literally dismembered and consumed in the dark, hidden abyss of the basement. At the end of the murder, there is no longer a recognizably human corpse; there are merely parts of a body lying on the table/bed. The ringed finger, perhaps to be read as a finger wearing an engagement ring, is hacked away in an orgy of phallic power. There is another fragmentation at work in this version: the heroine of the 1812 version has been split into two. Her active functions have been taken over by the old woman. It is as if the construct «woman» itself has been split into an old woman who speaks and directs in the basement and young flesh which can only watch. The girl, told to stay still behind the barrel, looks at the Lustmord spectacle in a state of absolute motionlessness, close to a state of paralysis. The tale comments briefly, «Da ward der Braut hinter dem Faß Angst, als müßte sie nun auch sterben» (1: 208). The doubling effect of the earlier versions whereby the girl sees her grandmother, her own flesh, killed, has become an even more horrifying doubling. She witnesses, «als müßte sie nun auch sterben [italics mine],» the nightmare mutilation of her mirror image, another Jungfrau, perhaps even another bride at a gruesome «wedding» feast ending in a cannibalistic consummation. Wilhelm made sure to add a double to this marriage feast of death when the heroine tells her own tale in her own home. The expanded scenes recording the private feast of orgiastic death in the basement cellar are contrasted with the public marriage feast celebrated within the safety of the bride’s endogamous family. The earlier scenes of horror are repeated, this time literally as narrative so that their violent power is contained by the semiotic act. The refrain, «mein Schatz, das träumte mir nur» (1:209), serves several narrative functions. It mollifies the bridegroom and adds dramatic irony to the tale within a tale. It emphasizes the border between dream and reality. The fact that the bride repeats the refrain four times heightens its importance and reminds the audience of the nightmare of the basement slaughter. The shift from third-person narrator to first marks a shift of power. The young girl is no longer fragmented; there is no more mention of the old woman of the basement. The young girl now can speak. The telltale dismembered finger, kept as a physical sign of the male violence, lust, and power which had ex-

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ploded in the dark of private desires, is now appropriated as a sign of female power, perhaps even of castrated male power. Through this physical sign, the nightmare is ended, the private horror pushed into the public realm of reason and justice. There can be no suspicion that her tale is merely a dream of paranoid delusion. Wilhelm continued to alter the text through the various later editions. In some ways, the final version can be said to suffer from too much editing. During the 38 years which elapsed between the second and the final editions, Wilhelm worked to fill what he may have felt were narrative gaps. The following passage is a good example. The old woman tells the girl, Du meinst, du wärst eine Braut, die bald Hochzeit macht, aber du wirst die Hochzeit mit dem Tode halten. Siehst du, da hab ich einen großen Kessel mit Wasser aufsetzen müssen, wenn sie dich in ihrer Gewalt haben, so zerhacken sie dich ohne Barmherzigkeit, kochen dich und essen dich, denn es sind Menschenfresser. Wenn ich nicht Mitleiden mit dir habe und dich rette, so bist du verloren» [italics signify differences from the 1819 version].18

Wilhelm’s editorial changes over the course of time tend to slow the pace, add the obvious, fill in «gaps» in motivation and move away from the distinct «folk» tone he and Jacob had themselves created. Some of these differences are certainly due to the changed literary climate of the 1850s, which saw a move away from Romantic-era sensibilities fascinated with ambiguous tales hovering between the psychological and the supernatural such as those penned by E.T.A. Hoffmann, to the more subdued context of the literary Nachmärz of Adalbert Stifter. That said, the Grimms never backed away from the powerful tale created in 1819, despite their editing of other tales so as to redirect the collection towards an audience of children. Their versions of «Der Räuberbräutigam» are tales of increasing dread, paralyzed seeing in a claustrophobic space, acts of horrific mutilation, woman as flesh and body parts, and, finally, woman as the empowered and believed teller of the tale. These elements became part of a Gothic repertoire. Seen in this light, the fact that the tale can be read as part of the Gothic horror genre adds a new facet to the scholarly disputes regarding whether the tale is a crime saga or supernatural Zaubermärchen in that the tale occupies the same type of liminal space between the supernatural and psychological realism inhabited by the Gothic novel. Over time the Grimms created out of the folkloric material of «Der Räuberbräutigam» a Gothic fairy tale. Scherf points out that the Grimms’ version has not been widely received. It was not, for example, included in the Kleine Ausgabe of 1825 which spurred the popularity of the tales; it is not to be found in any of the Grimms’ editions published in the 1960s aimed at the children’s market. Nevertheless, Scherf

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posits that the tale has a life of its own and «taucht allenthalben in den nachgrimmschen Sammlungen aus selbständiger mündlicher Überlieferung auf» (Herausforderung 233). There is an element in this tale that might account for its continued life as folk tale and beyond. Its horror has an element of immediacy which separates it from the Bluebeard tales: the heroine in «Der Räuberbräutigam» does not just see corpses in a secret chamber; she is present as the bodies are mutilated. Thus, this tale is not only part of the nineteenthcentury Gothic, but the immediacy of its horror lends itself to film and its emphasis on the gaze. It is closely related to the slasher film as suggested in the article on «Schauerliteratur» in the Enzyklopädie des Märchens. Carol Clover’s definition of the slasher-film genre could be a summary of «Der Räuberbräutigam»: the killer is the psychotic product of a sick family, but still recognizably human; the victim is a beautiful, sexually active woman; the location is not-home, at a Terrible Place; the weapon is something other than a gun; the attack is registered from the victim’s point of view and comes with shocking suddenness.19

Although the heroine of «Der Räuberbräutigam» is not sexually active, as a bride she is about to become so. Slasher films are not as misogynistic as they may seem, argues Clover, because a final girl survives using her wits. Positioning «Der Räuberbräutigam» within the Gothic mode raises questions for further research. Why did the Grimms change the tale in this way? Were they consciously trying to create a new sub-genre, a Gothic fairy tale? What were the contemporaneous reader responses to this tale through its various editions? Was the tale accepted by middle-class (male) readers? Was it deemed dangerous for the «Volk» along with other works of fantasy, the gruesome and sensationalistic, indeed, faërie and magic, as Rudolf Schenda so forcefully argued decades ago in Volk ohne Buch? Was, in essence, this (folk) tale deemed inappropriate for the folk? What was the status of women readers in this respect? Given this backdrop, research into the evolution of the Gothic tale (and film) needs to look at parallel developments in the fairy-tale genre. «Der Räuberbräutigam» as edited by the Grimms may well prove to have cast a wider and deeper shadow than has been recognized.

Notes 1 2

See the introduction to this issue of Colloquia Germanica. Using «German» as an adjective denoting horror fits Andersen’s tales well since, as Maria Tatar notes, «Cruelty and violence have often been seen as the trademark of German fairy tales, but P.L. Traverse, the author of the Mary Poppins books, found the Grimms’

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tales downright tame by comparison to the stories composed by Hans Christian Andersen» (Classic Fairy Tales 212). This play on words underlies the title of a recent collection, Grimm’s (sic) Grimmest, which contains some of the most violent and ominous of the Grimms’ tales. See Ballard; Barzilai; Clarke; Lee; McCombs; Tatar, Secrets beyond the Door. «The abstract, isolating, diagrammatic style of the folktale embraces all motifs and transforms them. Objects as well as persons lose their individual characteristics and turn into weightless, transparent figures» (Lüthi 66). All quotes are from John D. Niles’s translation. The Grimms’ version of the Bluebeard tale, «Blaubart,» was included in the first edition of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812–1815), but excluded from subsequent editions as the Grimms felt that the tale was based too closely on Perrault’s French version, «La Barbe Bleue,» and thus not truly part of the German corpus of tales. When referring to the Aarne-Thompson-Uther tale type, ATU 955, the term«Robber Bridegroom» is used; when referring to any of the Grimms’ versions, «Der Räuberbräutigam» is used. Underscoring the popularity of the tale is the fact that a line in Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing alludes to the refrain found in English variants. Benedick says, «Like the old tale, my Lord, ‹It is not so, nor t’was not so, but, indeed, God forbid it should be so›» (Act I, Scene I, Lines 218–20). See also Scherf, «Vom Mädchenmörder geraubt Oder: Vaterbindung, Abspaltung, Ichideal,» Herausforderung 217–25. «Der Rauberbrautigam» has been examined within the field of its folkloric variants (see, for example, Scherf, Herausforderung), but not in terms of the Grimms’ edits over time. Rölleke 236. All references to the 1810 manuscript are to Rölleke’s edition. The manuscript version is the so-called Ölenberg version of 1810, so named since it reappeared in the Ölenberg monastery in 1920. «Contamination» is a term used by folklorists when variants are merged. The Grimms would not have found this practice negative as they were not particularly interested in the unique variations of a tale. In the early stage of collecting the stories, the Grimms found most of their informants among the educated young women of the middle class or aristocracy. They included women of the Wild and the Hassenpflug families in Kassel in addition to young men and women of the aristocracy in Westphalia, including Annette von Droste-Hülfshoff. Dorothea Viehmann, a tailor’s wife, and Johann Friedrich Krause, a retired soldier, also provided many tales (Zipes 28–29). For an overview of the print tales at the disposal of the Grimms, see Bottigheimer, Fairy Tales: A New History. For an in-depth analysis of this element, see Barzilia. Rölleke 235. All references to the 1812 edition are to Rölleke’s edition. All references to the 1819 edition are to Uther’s edition. 1:219. All references to the 1857 edition are to the Reclam edition edited by Rölleke. Clover 23–24. Tatar adds to Clover’s contention that the unsettling of gender conventions in modern horror films is a legacy of woman’s liberation by pointing out that «modern horror may also be tapping into an earlier narrative tradition, one that included folktales such as ‹Bluebeard,› ‹The Robber Bridegroom,› or ‹Fitcher’s Bird,› in which women figure as investigative agents (uncovering crimes and outwitting villains), while men function as the criminal guardians of dark secret places» (Secrets 57).

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Works Cited Andersen, Hans Christen. German Fairy Tales. New York: The World Publishing House, 1876. Ballard, Finn. «No Trespassing: The Post-Millennial Road Horror Movie.» The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies 4 (2008). http://irishgothichorrorjournal. homestead.com/roadhorror.html. Last accessed April 11, 2011. Barzilai, Shuli. «A Case of Negative Mise en abyme: Margaret Atwood and the Grimm Brothers.» Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 4.2 (2006): 191–204. Bottigheimer, Ruth B. Fairy Tales: A New History. Albany, NY: SUNY, Albany, 2009. –. Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold Boys: The Moral and Social Vision of the Tales. New Haven: Yale UP, 1987. –. «Ludwig Bechstein’s Fairy Tales: Nineteenth Century Bestsellers and Bürgerlichkeit.» Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 15.2 (1990): 55–88. Clarke, Micael M. «Brontës Jane Eyre and the Grimms’ Cinderella.» Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 40.4 (2000): 695–710. Clover, Carol. Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1992. Dégh, Linda. «Horrorgeschichte, Horrorliteratur.» Enzyklopädie des Märchens: Handwörterbuch zur historischen und vergleichenden Erzählforschung. Ed. Kurt Ranke et al. Vol. 6. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1990. 1255–70. Goldberg, Christine. «At the Ogre’s House.» Folklore 115.3 (2004): 309–21. –. «Räuberbräutigam.» Enzyklopädie des Märchens: Handwörterbuch zur historischen und vergleichenden Erzählforschung. Ed. Kurt Ranke et al. Vol. 11. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2004. 347–54. «Gothic Fiction.» The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. Ed. Margaret Drabble and Jenny Stringer. Oxford University Press, 2007. In: Oxford Reference Online. http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview= Main&entry=t54.e2561. Last accessed December 14, 2010. Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. Die älteste Märchensammlung der Brüder Grimm: Synopse der handschriftlichen Urfassung von 1810 und der Erstdrucke von 1812. Ed. Heinz Rölleke. Cologny-Genève: Fondation Martin Bodmer, 1975. –. Grimm’s [sic] Grimmest. Illus. Tracy Arah Dockray. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1997. –. Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Edition of 1819. 3 vols. Ed. and intro. Hans-Jörg Uther. Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann, 2004. –. Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Edition of 1857. 3 vols. Ed. Heinz Rölleke. Berlin: Reclam, 2001. Klein, Jürgen. «Schauergeschichte, Schauerroman.» Enzyklopädie des Märchens: Handwörterbuch zur historischen und vergleichenden Erzählforschung. Ed. Kurt Ranke et al. Vol. 11. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2004. 1289–96. Lee, Linda J. «Guilty Pleasures: Reading Romance Novels as Reworked Fairy Tales.» Marvels & Tales 22.1 (2008): 52–69. Lüthi, Max. The European Folktale: Form and Nature. Trans. John D. Niles. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1982.

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–. So leben sie noch heute: Betrachtungen zum Volksmärchen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1969a. McCombs, Judith. «Searching Bluebeard’s Chambers: Grimm, Gothic, and Bible Mysteries in Alice Munro’s ‹The Love of a Good Woman.›» American Review of Canadian Studies 30.3 (2000): 327–48. McGovern, William M. From Luther to Hitler: The History of Fascist-Nazi Political Philosophy. New York: Am Press, 1941. Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. Bloomington, Indiana: Research Center, 1958. Röhrich, Lutz. Märchen und Wirklichkeit. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1974. Schenda, Rudolf. Volk ohne Buch. Studien zur Sozialgeschichite der populären Lesestoffe. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1970. Scherf, Walter. Die Herausforderung des Dämons. Form und Funktion grausiger Kindermärchen. Eine volkskundliche und tiefenpsychologische Darstellung der Struktur, Motivik und Rezeption von 27 untereinander verwandten Erzähltypen. Munich: K.G. Saur, 1987. –. «Der Räuberbräutigam.» Das Märchenlexikon.Vol. 2. Munich, Beck, 1995. 963–65. Tatar, Maria, ed. The Classic Fairy Tales. New York: Norton, 1999. –. Off with Their Heads: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1992. –. Secrets beyond the Door: The Story of Bluebeard and his Wives. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2004. Uther, Hans-Jörg. The Types of International Folktales. A Classification and Bibliography, Based on the System of Antii Aarne and Stith Thompson. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004. Zipes, Jack. The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World. 2nd ed. New York: MacMillan, 2002.

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Narrative «Teasing»: Withholding Closure in Hoffmann’s Elixiere des Teufels CHRISTOPHER R. CLASON

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Although the Gothic novel is often touted as a primarily English genre, it is well represented in Germany as the Schauerroman, especially by E.T.A. Hoffmann’s first published novel, Die Elixiere des Teufels, that appeared in two volumes in 1814 and 1815. While critical reception was largely negative, even damning, over the first hundred and fifty years after its publication, the Elixiere has recently enjoyed increased interest, somewhat parallel to the growing scholarly attention granted generally to the genre of Gothic literature.1 Articles and book chapters devoted to this work have been appearing with greater regularity, as well as new editions. A long-awaited new translation into English appeared in 2007 (Sumter). While attempting to gauge the late Romantic reading public’s reception of the work, Wolfgang Nehring cites several, roughly contemporary examples in which readers express their delight: «In Weimar sah man dem Erscheinen der Elixiere mit großer Erwartung entgegen. Hermann Graf von Pückler […] bestellte bei seinem Buchhändler ungeduldig den zweiten Teil des Werks, ehe dieser noch vollendet war» (1981, 326). As Nehring further points out, even Heine, whose barbed wit painfully stung many a Romantic author, lavishes the following praise on the novel for the effects it had on him: «In den Elixieren des Teufels liegt das Furchtbarste und Entsetzlichste, das der Geist erdenken kann. Wie schwach ist dagegen The monk [!] von Lewis, der dasselbe Thema behandelt. In Göttingen soll ein Student durch diesen Roman toll geworden sein» (326). Interest in the novel waned, however, after some less well-disposed critics began to weigh in. In England, for example, attitudes toward Hoffmann’s Elixiere fell largely under the influence of Walter Scott, whose comments damned the novel to relative obscurity for decades. In Germany, Goethe’s negative perspective on Romanticism, Hegel’s somewhat programmatic reaction to Hoffmann,2 as well as the sober attitudes of Romanticism’s far more conservative successor, the Biedermeier, could scarcely support the wild extravagances of such writing. However, as Nehring points out, the public’s pleasure in reading Hoffmann never disappeared. It is most telling that the critically oft-reviled novel achieved the status of becoming the third Hoffmann work to appear in the Reclam Universalbibliothek

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as early as 1870. Clearly, public opinion of Die Elixiere des Teufels reflects a substantial degree of interest and pleasure despite the objections of the nineteenth-century German literati establishment. Hoffmann’s manipulations of the reader have provided a continual source of fascination for critics. The Elixiere, perhaps more than any other novel composed in that style during the German Romantic period, offers a supreme example of how this author is able to evoke strong responses through such techniques as subtle communications and textual management.3 Three characteristics of the novel have a profound effect upon the reader: a convoluted, fragmented, and disjointed plot structure; the evocation of fear; and a strong undercurrent of erotic energy. In this essay I wish to illustrate how the novel’s narrative interplay of especially the first and the third of these elements (fragmentation and eroticism) «teases» the reader on several levels, provoking her or him to heights of interest, agitation and arousal, but, again and again at the last possible moment, withholds conclusion or climax, and thereby forges a tense equilibrium between frustration and fascination that compels the reader to read onward in the vain hope of resolution and closure.4 Disruption and fragmentation, marked by shifts and breakages in action, tone, character, narrative perspective and other essential textual features, distinguish the reader’s experience of the Elixiere from the outset (Becker 122). Almost immediately, the reader is struck by sea changes in atmosphere. In the «Vorwort des Herausgebers» the editor paints a clichéd and saccharine tableau of the monastery, the novel’s primary locus: against a sunny backdrop of tall mountains, shady trees, colorful and fragrant flowers and the frescoed, stone walls of the Gothic [!] monastery, pious monks silently walk about, their gazes fixed upward as they perform their daily office of prayer and ritual. Suddenly, the editor describes his experience of reading the Medardus papers, despite the prior’s warning against doing so: «Eigentlich, meinte der Alte, hätten diese Papiere verbrannt werden sollen» (12). According to the editor, the papers themselves present «die bunte-bunteste Welt» (12), a very positive formulation in line with the previous depiction of the monastery. Yet, the editor’s description of Medardus’s life experience in this world, which the reader is about to share, is filled with qualities in diametrical opposition to what one would usually expect, such as «das Schauerliche, Entsetzliche, Tolle, Possenhafte» (12). There can be no doubt, however, that Hoffmann wants to involve his public as intimately as possible with the tale: as in many of his works, an editor draws a «günstiger Leser» (Elixiere 12) into the narrative, encouraging the reader’s identification with the narrator’s point of view in perceiving the events, evaluating them and responding to them as the narrator does. The introductory function of the «Vorwort» is thus fulfilled, not by

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providing background details that enable the reader to order logically what she or he is about to read, but rather by acclimatizing her or him to vacillation, change, shifting directions and other deviations from the text’s logical forward progress. Before the editor concludes his «Vorwort,» he introduces two further images, apparently intended as metaphors to help forge the reader’s perspective:

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so wirst du dich vielleicht an den mannigfachen Bildern der Camera obscura, die sich dir aufgetan, ergötzen – Es kann auch kommen, daß das gestaltlosscheinende, so wie du schärfer es ins Auge fassest, sich dir bald deutlich und rund darstellt. Du erkennst den verborgenen Keim, den ein dunkles Verhängnis gebar, und der, zur üppigen Pflanze emporgeschossen, fort und fort wuchert in tausend Ranken, bis eine Blüte, zur Frucht reifend, allen Lebenssaft an sich zieht, und den Keim selbst tötet. (12)

The image of the camera obscura,5 like other metaphors of visual media in Hoffmann’s works,6 provides a hint to the reader on how to read this novel, contributing to the idea of reading pleasure («ergötzen») despite (or perhaps because of) apparent uncertainty («das gestaltlosscheinende»). Most importantly, the editor indicates that things should get clearer («so wie du schärfer es ins Auge fassest, sich dir bald deutlich und rund darstellt»). How clear can the image become? The editor continues with a second metaphor, in which a blossom bears fruit and kills the plant from which it sprang. Although many interpretations of this «Frucht» are possible, each is fraught with problems when one attempts to understand it in relation to the act of reading. Interesting for my argument, however, is the fact that Hoffmann complicated an obscure, at least somewhat confusing and perhaps only tangentially applicable metaphor, when he wrote down not the word «Frucht,» but rather «Furcht» in the manuscript for the novel.7 Could this be a mere mistake, or is it one additional element of Hoffmann’s less-than-gentle playing with the reader through a convoluted metaphor, which, in connection with other elements of the «Vorwort,» promises clarity but only delivers confusion? Following the «Vorwort,» the monk’s autobiographical narrative begins, and from the outset eroticism and virtue continuously duel for Medardus’s soul.8 It is noteworthy that, to a far greater extent than in other works by Hoffmann or, for that matter, most other novels by German Romantics, eros plays a central role in the Elixiere. A number of female characters arouse Medardus’s desires (Steinwachs 43). However, eroticism does not come to the fore merely as base descriptions of either the eroticized body or the sex act, but rather primarily through the main character’s confessions of his affective responses to specifically three female characters: a sister of his music instructor, who awakens Medardus’s fascination with the female body when he sees her

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nude; his beloved Aurelie, who is the primary focus of his libidinous cathexis, although he never consummates his lust; and Euphemie, the treacherous and scheming stepmother of Aurelie, with whom he shares a steamy sexual relationship before they eventually become enemies and he poisons her. Despite having engaged in sexual intercourse on several occasions with Euphemie, his association with her bears far less significance than either his initial voyeuristic encounter with the musician’s sister or his unrequited affair with Aurelie. Perhaps his passion reaches lofty zeniths because it remains unfulfilled. Since the reader’s identification with Medardus’s point of view is thorough and intimate, the ardor of the monk’s passion in these last two cases is experienced vicariously, but with surprising intensity. In order to illuminate Hoffmann’s techniques for controlling and augmenting the reader’s response through narrative, I would therefore like to examine two crucial incidents in which Medardus relates significant, albeit unrequited erotic experiences from his life. A detailed account of Franz’s (Medardus’s Christian name before taking vows) awakening erotic impulses comes in an episode where the youth visits a Konzertmeister for a music lesson, and espies the musician’s partially disrobed sister. The description of her «charms,» which the text reveals through a suddenly activated discourse of the male gaze, lies partly in the encoding typical for novels of the period, in which general form, arms, skin color and tone, etc. acquire representational signification for sexual features and experience, and partly in two striking, though subtle, additional details, one of form and the other of color: Der Konzertmeister hatte eine Schwester, welche gerade nicht schön genannt zu werden verdiente, aber doch, in der höchsten Blüte stehend, ein überaus reizendes Mädchen war. Vorzüglich zeichnete sie ein im reinsten Ebenmaß geformter Wuchs aus; sie hatte die schönsten Arme, den schönsten Busen in Form und Kolorit, den man nur sehen kann. – Eines Morgens als ich zum Konzertmeister gehen wollte, meines Unterrichts halber, überraschte ich die Schwester im Morgenanzuge, mit beinahe entblößter Brust; schnell warf sie zwar das Tuch über, aber doch schon zu viel hatten meine gierigen Blicke erhascht, ich konnte kein Wort sprechen, nie gekannte Gefühle regten sich stürmisch in mir, und trieben das glühende Blut durch die Adern, daß hörbar meine Pulse schlugen. Meine Brust war krampfhaft zusammengepreßt, und wollte zerspringen, ein leiser Seufzer machte mir endlich Luft. Dadurch, daß das Mädchen, ganz unbefangen auf mich zukam, mich bei der Hand faßte, und frug, was mir dann wäre, wurde das Übel wieder ärger, und es war ein Glück, daß der Konzertmeister in die Stube trat, und mich von der Qual erlöste. Nie hatte ich indessen solche falsche Akkorde gegriffen, nie so im Gesange detoniert, als dasmal. (21, my emphasis)

The specificity of mentioning «Form und Kolorit» in reference to the girl’s breast extends beyond the mere suggestion of a pretty figure, and forces the

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reader instead to linger for a moment in contemplation of the actual object. It is one instance of what in this novel becomes a common and subtle narrative titillation. While ostensibly innocent (because it is presented in the context of a character resisting temptation), it nevertheless focuses the reader’s attention on the exterior and concrete form of a desirable young woman’s body in a sexualized context. As soon as Franz actually fixes her in his gaze, the concrete details vanish from the depiction of the scene, and at the very point at which one expects further action and detail, the text retreats inward: «zu viel hatten meine gierigen Blicke erhascht, ich konnte kein Wort sprechen.» Confronted with his own new feelings of arousal, he flees from her by withdrawing from the outer world into the safety and solace of his own mind. What had been the discourse of the sexualized male gaze now becomes the discourse of interiority, and the text concentrates on mental processes and emotional reactions. The immediate, extreme effect that the experience has produced within him derails the potential that a first, physical sexual encounter will ensue. Franz passes moral judgment on his staring («gierig») and he loses the capacity to speak. Although the young woman seems willing to take advantage of the situation and to seize the moment of intimacy, Franz shuts down, and the entry of the Konzertmeister at this moment provides a convenient excuse for the adolescent boy to avoid further contact with her. One may understand how the musician’s intrusion would indeed provide relief for the inexperienced young man, frightened at the prospect of sudden sexual contact. However, because of the intimate connection between the affective point of view of Franz/Medardus and that of the reader, it is a disappointment – but also a provocation to read further – since in this erotically charged atmosphere «fulfillment» may lurk just beyond the next twist of plot. Hoffmann thus teases his audience by forging an emotional identification between the reader and Medardus, awakening desire and then confounding it, thwarting fulfillment at present but leaving open future possibilities. The pattern of initial confrontation with sexuality and boldness, followed by retreat, interruption and eventually by self-denial and withdrawal from a communicative exchange repeats itself at significant moments in Medardus’s autobiography. I would like to provide one additional example of this pattern at another crucial juncture in the plot, at the moment of Medardus’s initial encounter with Aurelie. After the incident at the home of the Konzertmeister and his sister, Medardus takes his vows and begins his monastic existence, although two important developments indicate that his vocation as a monk may already be in jeopardy. First, he becomes such a skillful rhetorician that throngs attend his Sunday sermons; however, the approbation he receives from the crowds inflames his ego and sets him at odds with his monastic colleagues. Secondly,

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he fails at his duty as guardian of the reliquary, in which the fabled Elixirs of St. Anthony are kept; he commits the ultimate transgression of his office and drinks from the bottle. His patroness, an abbess who later is revealed to be his aunt, has warned Medardus to mend his evil ways, but her chiding merely further alienates him. Clearly, the monk is slipping out of his childhood innocence, and his inappropriate behavior has made him susceptible to temptations of the flesh. One morning in the church, Medardus’s destiny finally begins to play out, when he first meets the woman who will be the object of his obsession for the remainder of the novel:9 Das Morgenlicht brach in farbichten Strahlen durch die bunten Fenster der Klosterkirche; einsam und in tiefe Gedanken versunken, saß ich im Beichtstuhl; nur die Tritte des dienenden Laienbruders, der die Kirche reinigte, hallten durch das Gewölbe. Da rauschte es in meiner Nähe, und ich erblickte ein großes, schlankes Frauenzimmer, auf fremdartige Weise gekleidet, einen Schleier über das Gesicht gehängt, die, durch die Seitenpforte hereingetreten, sich mir nahte, um zu beichten. Sie bewegte sich mit unbeschreiblicher Anmut, sie kniete nieder, ein tiefer Seufzer entfloh ihrer Brust, ich fühlte ihren glühenden Atem, es war, als umstricke mich ein betäubender Zauber, noch ehe sie sprach! – Wie vermag ich den ganz eignen, ins Innere dringenden Ton ihrer Stimme zu beschreiben. – Jedes ihrer Worte griff in meine Brust, als sie bekannte, wie sie eine verbotene Liebe hege, die sie schon seit langer Zeit vergebens bekämpfte, und daß diese Liebe um so sündlicher sei, als den Geliebten heilige Bande auf ewig fesselten; aber im Wahnsinn hoffnungsloser Verzweiflung habe sie diesen Banden schon geflucht. – Sie stockte – mit einem Tränenstrom, der die Worte beinahe erstickte, brach sie los: «Du selbst – du selbst, Medardus, bist es, den ich so unaussprechlich liebe!» – Wie im tötenden Krampf zuckten alle meine Nerven, ich war außer mir selbst, ein niegekanntes Gefühl zerriß meine Brust, sie sehen, sie an mich drücken – vergehen vor Wonne und Qual, eine Minute dieser Seligkeit für ewig Marter der Hölle! – Sie schwieg, aber ich hörte sie tief atmen. – In einer Art wilder Verzweiflung raffte ich mich gewaltsam zusammen, was ich gesprochen, weiß ich nicht mehr, aber ich nahm wahr, daß sie schweigend aufstand und sich entfernte, während ich das Tuch fest vor die Augen drückte und wie erstarrt bewußtlos im Beichtstuhle sitzen blieb. (42–43)

The scene begins in the morning hours, as darkness gives way to light, and only limited sight is possible in the church. But as Medardus becomes introspective, even this vision diminishes: what he can perceive is primarily acoustic. Everything seems normal. The «Laienbruder» cleaning the church echoes the «normalcy» permeating, for example, the novel’s introduction, in which the editor describes the actions of the monks at work and prayer. The reader descends with Medardus into his interior space. He sits brooding until he first hears movements and then catches sight of «ein Frauenzimmer.» She is a most exotic figure, the dignity of whose motion is termed «unbeschreiblich.» «Un-

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beschreiblich» becomes the first item in a series that, in typical Gothic fashion (Sedgwick 1986, 13–20), the text cannot seem to render verbally. Aurelie approaches him (veiled!) and gradually reveals to Medardus that she loves him to a degree also exceeding verbal description – the adverb here is «unaussprechlich» – and then grows silent. When Medardus responds to her, he says things that he later cannot remember; the reader would surely wish to know about such details, but the text again leaves the reader «in the dark.» Aurelie’s breath pattern seems to mirror the reader’s disappointment; she heaves a deep sigh, but communicates nothing further («schweigen» is repeated twice), then rises and departs, leaving Medardus (and perhaps the reader, as well) with seething, unfulfilled passion in the darkness. He then covers his eyes with a cloth, further «veiling» the veiled figure from his sight. The profusion of failure to see, remember, describe, and speak in this passage effectively retards the progress of the text and confines the action to little more than a one-sided declaration of the woman’s love. Thus, the pattern of erotic (non)encounter has been repeated: the passion of the moment has progressed through a psychological process of interiority, surprise, intensification and retardation, only to dissolve disappointingly as the characters fall out of the communicative situation. Before a sexual relationship can begin, Medardus’s object of cathexis withdraws, leaving him powerless, even unconscious, in his «Beichtstuhle» («wie erstarrt bewußtlos»), and the reader in a state of agitation and frustration.10 It is most significant that Aurelie wears a veil to her first meeting with Medardus, placing her squarely in the tradition of Gothic heroines.11 She is, of course, obliged to don a veil in order to enter a Roman Catholic church, as a sign of devotion and piety. The veil also supports the Gothic tension between secrecy and revelation, since Medardus cannot visually determine the identity of the veiled person who is declaring her love for him. Thus, he does not actually set his gaze upon her, as he did earlier in his encounter with the Konzertmeister’s sister, but rather «senses» her intuitively («Ich hatte das Gesicht der Unbekannten nicht gesehen, und doch lebte sie in meinem Innern …» [43]). His passion for her, which nevertheless is concrete and torrid, points to the deeper significance of the veil here as elsewhere in European Gothic novels. According to Sedgwick, The veil itself, however, is also suffused with sexuality. This is true partly because of the other, apparently opposite set of meanings it hides: the veil that conceals and inhibits sexuality comes by the same gesture to represent it, both as a metonym of the thing covered and as a metaphor for the system of prohibitions by which sexual desire is enhanced and specified. Like virginity, the veil that symbolizes virginity in a girl or a nun has a strong erotic savor of its own, and characters in Gothic novels fall in love as much with women’s veils as with women. (1981, 256)

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Aurelie’s veil thus does not preserve her anonymity, but rather enhances the eroticism infusing the scene. In addition, there is an important difference for Medardus between this encounter and the previous scene with the Konzertmeister’s daughter: instead of uncovering the cathected object for the reader’s gaze, and then withdrawing it from the reader’s view, the text here refuses access to that object by concealing its visual surface beneath another, perhaps even more strongly charged thing. Thus, the initial meeting between the monk and his fated lover becomes a significant textual «tease,» suggesting the object but ultimately withholding it from the subject’s vision and possession. Medardus’s gaze fixes instead on a portrait of St. Rosalie hanging above an altar in the church. The painting, whose origin is later revealed in the Old Painter’s Pergamentblatt, combines aspects of both eroticism and its rejection in the composition; it thus mirrors the «teasing» pattern characteristic of other «sexual» encounters in the text. It is no surprise to the reader that the monk recognizes the facial features he has imagined beneath Aurelie’s veil in the face of the saint in the portrait. Aside from the amazing coincidence of the painting’s origin and connections to the narrative’s present, the saint’s countenance evinces a hybrid representation of the forces within Medardus that threaten to destroy him as well as an external surface onto which he can focus his libidinous stare. For the reader, however, the painting presents another obstruction to forward movement toward an actual resolution of the erotic tensions arising in the situation. It stimulates Medardus’ erotic feelings, but after all, it is only a surrogate for a flesh-and-blood partner, with whom he could engage in authentic sexual experience. From the reader’s perspective, the jolting disruption of Medardus’ introspective mood and the sudden, unexpected intrusion of surface reality upon him could be received as disturbing, even annoying, rather than pleasurable: there is a fine line separating pleasure and frustration, and Hoffmann’s novel walks this line whenever the potential for eroticism enters the plot. The interruption of Medardus’ meditations through the sudden appearance of the exotic and extraordinary figure of Aurelie, who is undoubtedly the most significant person in the monk’s life and a character charged with erotic energy and intrigue, runs the risk of throwing the plot, and therefore the reader’s own perspective, into a psychological chaos. Again and again, the twists and turns of the plot rupture textual interiority, catalyzing the reader’s desire for reintegration, the recovery of logic, and the return to textual order, sequentiality and continence. For some members of Hoffmann’s audience, such a reading experience may become a puzzle and a challenge. However, if the experience proves wearying to the reader, the novel loses its effect as a provocation. This is perhaps the strongest criticism to be leveled against Hoffmann’s methods

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of terror and titillation in the Elixiere: although he evinces a strong talent for bringing the reader into the text, Hoffmann runs the risk of frustrating her or him by doing so in a too chaotic environment, wearing the reader down by promising but not delivering closure. In this essay I have attempted to illustrate Hoffmann’s techniques for «teasing» the reader by aligning her or his point of view with that of the main character, the monk Medardus, then creating a scene charged with sexual energy, but refusing consummation by delaying and hindering the characters’ physical intimacy through various disruptions. The central role textual disruption plays in Hoffmann’s Gothic novel, however, extends far beyond scenes of eroticism and provides an important compositional principle for several other key thematic and structural issues raised by the Elixiere. For example, since the Gothic plot depends to a great extent on the gradual revelation of multiple threads, the reader must almost constantly suspend disbelief, and wait vainly for later disclosure of the «sense» of the plot. This creates a yearning for knowledge that is seldom fulfilled, and on the epistemological level parallels the unconsummated erotic relationship between Medardus and Aurelie.12 In the tradition of the Gothic novel, Hoffmann brings the reader to a level of «knowing» that approaches certainty and teases her or him along to the brink of satisfaction, only to dash the reader’s hope for closure by introducing a seemingly impossible event or plot twist. Eventually, the reader’s desire to know gives way to her or his realization that fragmentation, uncertainty and mystery reflect essential conditions of the Gothic characters’ existence, and that the hope for «closure» cannot be fulfilled in the universe Hoffmann presents in Elixiere des Teufels. Notes 1

2

3

Histories of the novel’s reception and bibliographies can be found in Kremer (1999, 45–50, 228–41; updated 2009, 147–51) and Nehring (1981, 325–50); also useful for situating the novel in a reception context is the chapter on the Elixiere by Feldges and Stadler (194–216). Connections to the Gothic are variously explored in several essays, especially Heinritz and Mergenthal, Horstmann-Guthrie, Kleine and Romero. Sabine Kleine shows how damaging Goethe’s criticisms of Hoffmann’s writings were in general (28). She also traces the attempts by Hegel and others thereafter to «exorcis[e] the romantic as the destructive, grotesque and senseless perversion of art. This was precisely the sort of romanticism E.T.A. Hoffmann stood for» (29). For example, see the fine essay by Ulrike Horstmann-Guthrie. Although she focuses on the epistemological aspects of Hoffmann’s writing in comparison with Hogg, her analysis examines the erotic aspects of the Elixiere as a means of arousing pleasure, while refusing consummation. Wolfgang Trautwein discusses the close relationship between terror and pleasure in the Gothic (particularly in Hoffmann’s Serapiontic tales).

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Chambers 73–96. Chambers argues that narration per se is often an attempt to seduce the reader, and it may succeed or fail, but that «to allow oneself, as a reader, to be fascinated by narrative enigma and techniques of suspense is to fall victim to a form of ‹coquetterie› – that is, to artistic deception – and hence to court the same ultimate disillusionment» that a character experiences when narrated events frustrate fulfillment (90). Steinecke comments on the camera obscura: «Das Gerät zeigt Bilder der Wirklichkeit, aber in umgekehrter, ‹verkehrter› Form. Damit wird das Problem der Wirklichkeitsabbildung und der Grenzen des Mimetischen zum erstenmal angesprochen» (EdT 594). For example: «des mattgeschliffenen Spiegels dunkler Widerschein» in «Der Sandmann» (NS 27). Steinecke hypothesizes, «die Lesart des Erstdrucks ist unwahrscheinlich, sie könnte allenfalls als (bewußter) Bruch des Pflanzen-Metapher und als Vorausdeutung angesehen werden» (EdT 594). Steinwachs indicates how Hoffmann’s choice of the monastic vocation for his character Medardus creates an opportunity to represent the diametric polarity of the dissonant erotic-religious theme «inhaltlich wie formal» (37); Hinderer understands this choice as a result of Hoffmann’s fascination with current science («Bereits Schubert hatte beobachtet, daß gerade bei Menschen, die um religiöse Vollendung gekämpft haben, die Extreme von sinnlicher Lust und geistigen Freuden nicht nur ‹fürchtlich nahe› liegen, sondern geradezu austauschbar sind» [2003, 15]), but later integrates this characteristic into a thematic coding for love rather than a structural component; see also McGlathery (1979). It is important to note that some critics have expressed doubt that the meeting between the monk and Aurelie actually ever takes place, save in Medardus’s mind; McGlathery (1985) reads the passage as follows: «The unlikelihood that Medardus actually hears any such confession, much less that the girl could resemble the painting, suggests that the whole encounter is a substitute for, and idealization of, the music teacher’s sister, whose flirtations had sent him into panic five years before […] the sighs and hot breath of the unknown young woman that Medardus heard and felt in the confessional even before she began her declaration of love suggests that the whole is a fantasy of wish-fulfillment» (52). McGlathery’s reading, although sound from a psychoanalytic perspective, reflects a distancing from the text that must come after the reading act. This essay posits the phenomenology of a first-reading act that includes the full suspension of disbelief and a «naive» identification with the narrator’s perspective since it is only in this way that the reader’s spontaneous, affective responses can come into focus. Pfotenhauer claims that such scenes in the Elixiere are Hoffmann’s attempts to include aspects of Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert’s ideas from the recently published Symbolik des Traumes (440–42) and emphasizes that «Hoffmanns Roman ist nicht nur ein Roman, der mit seinen wiederkehrenden Halbträumen und Entrückungszuständen Bausteine einer Poetik der Imagination liefert, sondern er ist auch ein poetologischer Roman, welcher ständig auch das Erzählen selbst thematisiert» (442). The significance of the veil as a focus of sexual energy has occupied a number of psychologists and critics, including Freud; a compelling analysis can be found in Sedgwick (1981): 255–70. Gnam investigates a similar postponement of fulfillment in Kater Murr¸ and as an afterthought, the strange behavior of the character Belcampo in Elixiere, who, parallel to Johannes Kreisler in the Murr novel, inhibits the novel’s arriving at a «restlosen Aufklärung» by introducing «zuviele Störmomente und divergierende Seitenlinien»

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which «die Totalität der Gesamtbilanz [verunsichern]» (99), in an atmosphere charged with passion and desire. She concludes, «In seiner eingestandenen und ausagierten Unangepaßtheit ist Belcampo gegen den Ausbruch des Wahns, als verdrängter Begierde, geschützt» (100); the same is obviously not true for either Kreisler or Medardus.

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Works Cited Becker, Allienne R. «Die Elixiere des Teufels: E.T.A. Hoffmann’s House of Mirrors.» Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 9 (1998): 117–30. Chambers, Ross. Story and Situation: Narrative Seduction and the Power of Fiction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Feldges, Brigitte and Ulrich Stadler. E.T.A. Hoffmann: Epoche – Werk – Wirkung. Munich: Beck, 1986. Gnam, Andrea. «‹Unzucht mit schönen jungfräulichen Gedanken›: E.T.A. Hoffmann als Zeremonienmeister der versprengten Leidenschaft.» Recherches Germaniques 23 (1993): 93–100. Heinritz, Reinhard, and Silvia Mergenthal. «Hogg, Hoffmann, and their Diabolical Elixirs.» Studies in Hogg and his World 7 (1996): 47–58. Hinderer, Walter. «Die poetische Psychoanalyse in E.T.A. Hoffmanns Roman Die Elixiere des Teufels.» ‹Hoffmanneske Geschichte›: zu einer Literaturwissenschaft als Kulturwissenschaft. Ed. Gerhard Neumann, et al. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2005. 43–76. –. «Elixiere der Liebe: Bemerkungen zur romantischen Codierung von Liebe und deren Verwerfungen in E.T.A. Hoffmanns Die Elixiere des Teufels.» Cahiers d’Etudes Germaniques 45 (2003): 9–20. Hoffmann, E.T.A. Die Elixiere des Teufels: Werke 1814–1816. Ed. Hartmut Steinecke and Gerhard Allroggen. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2007. (EdT) –. Nachtstücke, Klein Zaches, Prinzessin Brambilla: Werke 1816–1820. Ed. Hartmut Steinecke and Gerhard Allroggen. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2009. (NS) –. The Devil’s Elixirs: The Posthumously Published Writings of Brother Medardus, a Capuchin Monk. Trans. Ian Sumter. Surrey, U.K.: Grosvenor House, 2007. Horstmann-Guthrie, Ulrike. «Narrative Technique and Reader Manipulation in Hoffmann’s Elixiere and Hogg’s Confessions.» Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Literary & Historical Section 22 (1992): 62–74. Kleine, Sabine. «Elixiere des Teufels: Notes on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s ‹Black Romanticism› and the Idealist Critical Response.» AUMLA 91 (1999): 27–44. Kremer, Detlef. «Die Elixiere des Teufels.» E.T.A. Hoffmann: Leben-Werk-Wirkung. De Gruyter Lexikon. Ed. Detlef Kremer. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2009. 144–60. –. E.T.A. Hoffmann: Erzählungen und Romane. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1999. 40–63. McGlathery, James M. «Demon Love: E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Elixiere des Teufels.» Colloquia Germanica 12 (1979): 61–76. –. Mysticism and Sexuality: E.T.A. Hoffmann. Part Two: Interpretation of the Tales. New York, Peter Lang, 1985. 48–55.

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Nehring, Wolfgang. «E.T.A. Hoffmann: Die Elixiere des Teufels.» Romane und Erzählungen der deutschen Romantik: neue Interpretationen. Ed. Paul Michael Lützeler. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981. 325–50. –. «Gothic Novel und Schauerroman: Tradition und Innovation in Hoffmanns Die Elixiere des Teufels.» Hoffmann Jahrbuch 1 (1992): 36–47. Pfotenhauer, Helmut. «‹Jenes Delirieren, das dem Einschlafen vorherzugehen pflegt›: zur Poetik und Poesie der Halbschlafbilder bei Tieck und Hoffmann.» Zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik: neue Perspektiven der Forschung. Ed. Konrad Feilchenfeldt et al. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006. 433–49. Romero, Christiane Zehl. «M.C. Lewis’ The Monk and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Die Elixiere des Teufels: Two Versions of the Gothic.» Neophilologus 63 (1979): 574–82. Schmidt, Ricarda. «Narrative Strukturen romantischer Subjektivät in E.T.A. Hoffmanns Die Elixiere des Teufels und ‹Der Sandmann.›» Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 49 (1999): 143–60. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. «The Character of the Veil: Imagery of the Surface in the Gothic Novel.» PMLA 96 (1981): 255–70. –. The Coherence of Gothic Conventions. New York and London: Meuthen, 1986. Steinwachs, Cornelia. «Die Liebeskonzeption in E.T.A. Hoffmanns Die Elixiere des Teufels.» E.T.A.Hoffmann-Jahrbuch 8 (2000): 37–55. Trautwein, Wolfgang. Erlesene Angst: Schauerliteratur im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert: systematischer Aufriß. Untersuchungen zu Bürger, Maturin, Hoffmann, Poe und Maupassant. Munich and Vienna: Carl Hanser, 1980.

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JAMES N. BADE: Fontane’s Landscapes. Fontaneana, Band 7. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009. 172 pp. € 28. This study introduces itself at the outset as «aimed primarily at English-speaking undergraduate students of German literature, but also with graduate students and a general readership in mind […]» (9). It is not a comprehensive discussion of Theodor Fontane’s prose works, but rather devotes its three central sections to the most popular ones: Schach von Wuthenow; Irrungen, Wirrungen; and Effi Briest. It admirably fulfills its task of introducing English-speaking students to this formidable yet rewarding writer or, as Bade cites another critic, to the «delicate and thorough realism» of this «simplest [and] subtlest of novel writers» (101). Detailed yet never tiresome plot summaries orient the first-time reader and set the stage for more detailed textual observations, which stress especially the author’s technique of employing leitmotifs. Photographs and discussions of castles, churches, waterways, and Fontane’s own sketches of the actual sites of the action lend real-life authenticity; one can follow in Bade’s footsteps and go there today. The meaning of «landscapes» is capacious, including not only landscape descriptions in the narrower sense. In Schach, for example, even the reader relatively familiar with the work might be surprised to learn how much of the action is bathed in the peculiar sunshine and shadows of sunset, with the significant exceptions of the Paretz and Charlottenburg sections, where encounters with the Prussian monarchy are bathed in the brightest sunshine. The memorable sunset flotilla of swans is appropriately juxtaposed to the king’s military review at Tempelhof in the following chapter. Nor are the landscapes always idyllic; the view during Botho and Lene’s walks to Wilmersdorf in Irrungen, Wirrungen, whose route they choose explicitly because by using it they are unlikely to meet acquaintances, includes rubbish and a pile of «angel’s heads, rejects from a stonemason’s yard» (74–75). Even Hankels Ablage, picked for its out-of-the-way charm, is spoiled by the unexpected intrusion of Botho’s fellow officers and their «ladies,» so the harmony of Lene’s mood and the exquisite landscape view from her window is short-lived (81–82). Bade is also a conscientious chronicler of Fontane criticism, citing widely in the secondary literature, thus making his study a useful bibliographical guide. As a result, this reader was struck by the sheer quantity of commentary that Fontane’s most famous novel has attracted. Here once again, the sites of the plot – Hohen-Cremmen, Kessin (fictitious but recognizable in Hinterpommern), Berlin’s Keithstrasse (the apartment that Effi chose and where she falls ill) – buttress yet another rewarding reading. Of particular interest is the Rügen chapter (24); the author follows Effi on her Sassnitz walk «an Häusergruppen und Haferfeldern vorüber» and comments: «The mention of the word ‹Haferfelder› immediately triggers the leitmotival associa-

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tions of ‹Strandhafer› with the Chinese grave, the dunes where Effi and Crampas pursued their affair, and the site of the duel between Crampas and Instetten – illicit love, banishment, and sacrifice» (133). A special feature of the Rügen narrative is Effi’s and her husband’s excursion to the Herthasee, echoing the name of Effi’s playmate, recalling the legend of the Germanic goddess Hertha with its sacrifice of slaves who witnessed the religious ceremony, and including the two ominous «Opfersteine» that one actually finds there. A photograph reproduces Fontane’s sketch of the geography that leads from the shore to the lake, including the stones (already by Fontane’s time a tourist trap) and his own comment, employing his favorite adjective: «Alles kolossaler Schwindel» (140). Who wouldn’t want to know what Fontane really thought about the «Opfersteine»? With this volume Germanists have an eminently useful reference and interpretive work to press into the hands of students wishing to approach this author. A final question, however, addresses the entire Fontane project. Back during the seven «fat» (or at least «fatter») years, my university library sprang for both post-war West German editions, the Nymphenburger (green) and the Hanser (yellow), where they now occupy considerable shelf space. Although using them when necessary (he cites Meine Kinderjahre twice, once from green and once from yellow – 43, 56), Bade employs the Grosse Brandenburger Ausgabe now produced in Berlin by Aufbau, along with its commentary. The Hanser, at least, certainly aspired to scholarly completion, and I wonder how this new edition, made possible by the Wende, will fare; during these lean years, I surely cannot justify asking my library to buy it. University of Kentucky

Michael T. Jones

HANS-MICHAEL BOCK AND TIM BERGFELDER (EDS.): The Concise Cinegraph. Encyclopedia of German Cinema. New York: Berghahn Books, 2009. 574 pp. $ 150. The recent interest in German film in the United States has produced a host of publications, among them Sabine Hake’s German National Cinema, Tim Bergfelder’s essay collection The German Cinema Book, Stephen Brockmann’s forthcoming Critical History of German Film, and Reinhard Zachau and Robert Reimer’s German Culture through Film, all of which provide essays on representative German films. Only Robert and Carol Reimer’s Historical Dictionary of German Cinema is an encyclopedia similar to The Concise Cinegraph. The Concise Cinegraph is based on Cinegraph, a German-language encyclopedia published by edition text + kritik in Munich. Cinegraph began in 1984 and consists of biographies and filmographies of actors and directors in German cinema history collected as loose-leaf entries in a ring binder that are updated at regular intervals. The idea for Cinegraph was copied from the Kritisches Lexikon zur deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur (KLG), the benchmark publication for keeping information on contemporary authors current by supplying biannual updates. At forty-eight updates the sister publication Cinegraph now has swollen to eight binders containing more than one thousand biographical entries on nearly twelve thousand pages. It is

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the most authoritative and comprehensive encyclopedia on German film. The German Cinegraph also collaborates with the Deutsches Film Institut in Frankfurt to supply information for the website filmportal.de. Hans-Michael Bock, one of the editors of Cinegraph and also of The Concise Cinegraph, developed the Hamburgisches Centrum für Filmforschung as a research institution as part of Cinegraph. The Concise Cinegraph represents a selection of more than twenty-five years of Cinegraph’s data collection. As the editors state, the English-language publication is part of Cinegraph’s international outreach program for «promoting a better understanding of German film history across borders.» (X) In order to condense the more than twelve thousand pages of the original publication to a volume of less than six hundred pages, the lengthy biographies had to be condensed to compact entries for the English-language book. The filmographies constituting the main achievement of this encyclopedia with their impressive detail were not condensed. Another major difference from the German Cinegraph is the attempt to edit the texts for a non-German readership to give a clearer idea of major figures and their positions in German culture. An appendix with short essays on German, Austrian, and Swiss-German film history establishes the context for the biographical data. These essays are accompanied by suggestions for further reading. This edition makes the Cinegraph resources available to English-language students and researchers for the first time. It offers a representative historical overview through biographical entries on major figures in German film from the beginning to the present day. Included are directors, actors, writers, cameramen, composers, production designers, film theorists, critics, producers, distributors, inventors, and manufacturers. The editors chose to include canonical names in their selection, such as Lang, Murnau, Dietrich, Kluge, and Fassbinder, which constitute a starting point for American and British audiences. Beyond the canonical names the book also gives readers the opportunity to discover a wide range of lesser-known names in German cinema. Because of the lack of information on the GDR film in the United States the inclusion of a wide selection of DEFA filmmakers and actors will be especially useful for an American readership. What is missing however for beginning film connoisseurs, is a list of significant German films as Reimer’s Historical Dictionary provides. There is no question that the German database of The Concise Cinegraph established an excellent foundation for this book. In fact, the Cinegraph project constitutes the most reliable information reservoir for German film available today. Its Internet base mentioned above far surpasses in accuracy and scope commonly available resources such as the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), All Movie Guide (AMG), or Wikipedia. The reviewer of The Oxford Times writes that after working with the Cinegraph one only wishes that more German cinema was available on DVD in English-speaking countries. And the film historian Kevin Brownlow remarks that «hardcore information [such as presented in this volume] is incredibly important for film historians and film students and sometimes even the filmmaker.» (VI) For students of German film The Concise Cinegraph will serve as an excellent introduction. However, it would be desirable to add an online English-language database to this book similar to filmportal.de to supplement the current german-films.de or the web portal for the Goethe Institute (www.goethe.de/kue/flm/enindex.htm).

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Internet-based encyclopedias have the advantage of linking to film clips, an essential element in immediate film appreciation. Reinhard Zachau

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University of the South

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