The Aesthetics of Fear in German Romanticism 0773558896, 9780773558892

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THE AESTHETICS OF FEAR IN GERMAN ROMANTICISM

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M c Gill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Ideas Series Editor: Philip J. Cercone   1 Problems of Cartesianism Edited by Thomas M. Lennon, John M. Nicholas, and John W. Davis

10 Consent, Coercion, and Limit: The Medieval Origins of Parliamentary Democracy Arthur P. Monahan

  2 The Development of the Idea of History in Antiquity Gerald A. Press

11 Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy Manfred Kuehn

  3 Claude Buffier and Thomas Reid: Two Common-Sense Philosophers Louise Marcil-Lacoste   4 Schiller, Hegel, and Marx: State, Society, and the Aesthetic Ideal of Ancient Greece Philip J. Kain   5 John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England Charles B. Schmitt   6 Beyond Liberty and Property: The Process of SelfRecognition in EighteenthCentury Political Thought J.A.W. Gunn   7 John Toland: His Methods, Manners, and Mind Stephen H. Daniel   8 Coleridge and the Inspired Word Anthony John Harding   9 The Jena System, 1804–5: Logic and Metaphysics G.W.F. Hegel Translation edited by John W. Burbidge and George di Giovanni Introduction and notes by H.S. Harris

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12 Paine and Cobbett: The Transatlantic Connection David A. Wilson 13 Descartes and the Enlightenment Peter A. Schouls 14 Greek Scepticism: Anti-Realist Trends in Ancient Thought Leo Groarke 15 The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought Donald Wiebe 16 Form and Transformation: A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus Frederic M. Schroeder 17 From Personal Duties towards Personal Rights: Late Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought, c. 1300–c. 1650 Arthur P. Monahan 18 The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi Translated and edited by George di Giovanni

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19 Kierkegaard as Humanist: Discovering My Self Arnold B. Come 20 Durkheim, Morals, and Modernity W. Watts Miller 21 The Career of Toleration: John Locke, Jonas Proast, and After Richard Vernon 22 Dialectic of Love: Platonism in Schiller’s Aesthetics David Pugh 23 History and Memory in Ancient Greece Gordon Shrimpton 24 Kierkegaard as Theologian: Recovering My Self Arnold B. Come 25 Enlightenment and Conservatism in Victorian Scotland: The Career of Sir Archibald Alison Michael Michie 26 The Road to Egdon Heath: The Aesthetics of the Great in Nature Richard Bevis 27 Jena Romanticism and Its Appropriation of Jakob Böhme: Theosophy – Hagiography – Literature Paola Mayer

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28 Enlightenment and Community: Lessing, Abbt, Herder, and the Quest for a German Public Benjamin W. Redekop 29 Jacob Burckhardt and the Crisis of Modernity John R. Hinde 30 The Distant Relation: Time and Identity in SpanishAmerican Fiction Eoin S. Thomson 31 Mr Simson’s Knotty Case: Divinity, Politics, and Due Process in Early EighteenthCentury Scotland Anne Skoczylas 32 Orthodoxy and Enlightenment: George Campbell in the Eighteenth Century Jeffrey M. Suderman 33 Contemplation and Incarnation: The Theology of MarieDominique Chenu Christophe F. Potworowski 34 Democratic Legitimacy: Plural Values and Political Power F.M. Barnard 35 Herder on Nationality, Humanity, and History F.M. Barnard 36 Labeling People: French Scholars on Society, Race, and Empire, 1815–1849 Martin S. Staum

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37 The Subaltern Appeal to Experience: Self-Identity, Late Modernity, and the Politics of Immediacy Craig Ireland 38 The Invention of Journalism Ethics: The Path to Objectivity and Beyond, Second Edition Stephen J.A. Ward 39 The Recovery of Wonder: The New Freedom and the Asceticism of Power Kenneth L. Schmitz 40 Reason and Self-Enactment in History and Politics: Themes and Voices of Modernity F.M. Barnard 41 The More Moderate Side of Joseph de Maistre: Views on Political Liberty and Political Economy Cara Camcastle 42 Democratic Society and Human Needs Jeff Noonan 43 The Circle of Rights Expands: Modern Political Thought after the Reformation, 1521 (Luther) to 1762 (Rousseau) Arthur P. Monahan

46 When the French Tried to Be British: Party, Opposition, and the Quest for Civil Disagreement, 1814–1848 J.A.W. Gunn 47 Under Conrad’s Eyes: The Novel as Criticism Michael John DiSanto 48 Media, Memory, and the First World War David Williams 49 An Aristotelian Account of Induction: Creating Something from Nothing Louis Groarke 50 Social and Political Bonds: A Mosaic of Contrast and Convergence F.M. Barnard 51 Archives and the Event of God: The Impact of Michel Foucault on Philosophical Theology David Galston 52 Between the Queen and the Cabby: Olympe de Gouges’s Rights of Women John R. Cole

44 The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament Janet Ajzenstat

53 Nature and Nurture in French Social Sciences, 1859–1914 and Beyond Martin S. Staum

45 Finding Freedom: Hegel’s Philosophy and the Emancipation of Women Sara MacDonald

54 Public Passion: Rethinking the Grounds for Political Justice Rebecca Kingston

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55 Rethinking the Political: The Sacred, Aesthetic Politics, and the Collège de Sociologie Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi 56 Materialist Ethics and Life-Value Jeff Noonan 57 Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Dialectical Justification of Philosophy’s First Principles Ardis B. Collins 58 The Social History of Ideas in Quebec, 1760–1896 Yvan Lamonde Translated by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott 59 Ideas, Concepts, and Reality John W. Burbidge 60 The Enigma of Perception D.L.C. Maclachlan 61 Nietzsche’s Justice: Naturalism in Search of an Ethics Peter R. Sedgwick 62 The Idea of Liberty in Canada during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, 1776–1838 Michel Ducharme Translated by Peter Feldstein 63 From White to Yellow: The Japanese in European Racial Thought, 1300–1735 Rotem Kowner 64 The Crisis of Modernity Augusto Del Noce Edited and translated by Carlo Lancellotti

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65 Imprinting Britain: Newspapers, Sociability, and the Shaping of British North America Michael Eamon 66 The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship John von Heyking 67 War as Paradox: Clausewitz and Hegel on Fighting Doctrines and Ethics Youri Cormier 68 Network Democracy: Conservative Politics and the Violence of the Liberal Age Jared Giesbrecht 69 A Singular Case: Debating China’s Political Economy in the European Enlightenment Ashley Eva Millar 70 Not Even a God Can Save Us Now: Reading Machiavelli after Heidegger Brian Harding 71 Before Copernicus: The Cultures and Contexts of Scientific Learning in the Fifteenth Century Edited by Rivka Feldhay and F. Jamil Ragep 72 The Culturalist Challenge to Liberal Republicanism Michael Lusztig

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73 God and Government: Martin Luther’s Political Thought Jarrett A. Carty

76 Life Embodied: The Promise of Vital Force in Spanish Modernity Nicolás Fernández-Medina

74 The Age of Secularization Augusto Del Noce Edited and Translated by Carlo Lancellotti

77 The Aesthetics of Fear in German Romanticism Paola Mayer

75 Emancipatory Thinking: Simone de Beauvoir and Contemporary Political Thought Elaine Stavro

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The Aesthetics of Fear in German Romanticism

Paola Mayer

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

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©  McGill-Queen’s University Press 2019 ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN

978-0-7735-5888-5 (cloth) 978-0-7735-5889-2 (paper) 978-0-2280-0025-9 (ePDF) 978-0-2280-0026-6 (ePUB)

Legal deposit first quarter 2020 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: The aesthetics of fear in German Romanticism / Paola Mayer. Names: Mayer, Paola, author. Series: McGill-Queen’s studies in the history of ideas; 77. Description: Series statement: McGill-Queen’s studies in the history of ideas; 77 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190183551 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190183586 | ISBN 9780773558892 paper) | ISBN 9780773558885 (cloth) | ISBN 9780228000259 (ePDF) | ISBN 9780228000266 (ePUB) Subjects: LCSH: German literature—19th century—History and criticism. | LCSH: Romanticism—Germany. | LCSH: Aesthetics in literature. | LCSH: Fear in literature. Classification: LCC PT363.A4 M39 2019 | DDC 830.9/006—dc23

This book was typeset by Marquis Interscript in 10 /12 New Baskerville.

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Contents

Preface xi Acknowledgments xv Abbreviations xvii Introduction 3 PART one  From the Sublime to the Romantic Aesthetics of Fear 1   Theoretical Discourses  53 2   Ludwig Tieck  123 3   Apel and Laun, Gespensterbuch 189 4   Heinrich von Kleist  212 PART two  E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Aesthetics of Fear 5   Definitions and Theories  243 6   Tales of Music and Musicians  302 7   Tales of Science and Scientists  365 PART three  Conclusion 8   Romanticism Re-evaluated: Joseph von Eichendorff  415 Coda 457 Bibliography 459 Index 477

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Preface

In 1769 Johann Gottfried Herder described the early stages of human civilization as dominated by the all-pervasive fear of an overwhelmingly powerful, incomprehensible, and potentially hostile environment and posited that religion and mythology were invented as attempts to come to grips with this fear.1 Scholars such as Richard Alewyn have argued that this fear did not significantly recede until the advent of such modern scientific inventions as electric light and the lightning rod. Light, both electrical and metaphorical, may since that time have pushed fear below the surface, but that fear certainly has not been dispelled, as evidenced by the mixture of fascination and disquiet that darkness and the seemingly supernatural so often elicit. Viewed from this perspective, the Enlightenment can be described as an attempt to contain this inchoate fear and to domesticate the irrational, incommensurable Other, be it natural or supernatural. The Enlightenment in this sense was a historically specific phenomenon that arose in eighteenth-century Europe but it is also a persistently recurring trend that at times predominates and at other times is challenged by critical efforts to recuperate the irrational Other and to explore the nature and causes of fear. Romanticism in Germany was one such counter-current. Postmodernity arguably is another, as witness the debates that have opened up around the concept of the uncanny in the last thirty years or so, not just in critical theory and literary studies but also in disciplines such as art history and architecture. One might cite as example Anthony Vidler’s The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely (1992), whose subtitle suggests that the concept captures a fundamental characteristic of the modern condition. The affinity of counter-currents to the Enlightenment project goes some way to explain the renewed popularity and relevance of Romanticism as an object of study.

1 J.G. Herder, Über die ersten Urkunden des Menschengeschlechts.

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xii

Preface

Now as in earlier centuries, a lack of consensus, even a degree of confusion, around terminology and purposes pervades debates on the aesthetics of fear. There is, for instance, no consensus on the meaning and relative spheres of such terms as horror and terror, as evidenced in recent scholarship on the gothic genre, and this confusion increases exponentially when linguistic boundaries are crossed. Because of its limited range of terms, the English language cannot fully reveal the richness of such concepts, as German can, while French and Italian lack an equivalent to the German unheimlich or the English uncanny. Quite often too, investigations of fear aim not just to explore it but to combat it by bringing it into the light or under the control of reason. Eighteenth-century discourses on the sublime and Freud’s justly famous essay on the uncanny both fall in this category. The present book aims not to bring order to this chaos but to highlight the difficulties and complexities of the subject by drawing attention to its historical lineage. Rather than attempting to systematize fear by examining it in literature and aesthetic discourses as the symptom of a timeless psychological phenomenon (which admittedly it also is), I draw out its culturally determined, constantly shifting character by proposing a case study viewed in its specific historical context. I will show that German Romanticism played a formative role in the history of the aesthetics of fear, as a crucial transitional phase between the eighteenth-century sublime and the early-twentieth-century uncanny. It differed from both, however, precisely because it attempted to recuperate the irrational Other and to question reason’s domesticating efforts rather than to promote them. I thus aim to add to the richness of the debate by pointing out rather than eliding its contradictions and shifting character, and also to reveal reasons why Romanticism is both popular and deeply relevant today. I will argue that a new aesthetics of fear took shape during the Romantic period, distinct from the preceding discourses of the sublime and indeed partly in opposition to them, and equally distinct from the twentiethcentury theories that have so strongly shaped our understanding of this aspect of Romanticism. I will show that the Romantic aesthetics of fear is characterized by radical transgressive potential, reflected in its deliberate subversion of rationality, empiricism, and teleological optimism of whatever provenance, but characterized as well by its insightful exploration of the nature, functioning, and even constructive effects of fear. Both aspects have the potential to resonate powerfully with our present age. This book traces the development of the Romantic aesthetics of fear from its inception with pre-Romantics such as Jean Paul Richter to what might arguably be called its end, in the shape of Joseph von Eichendorff’s retrospective re-examination and ultimate rejection of it. I will argue that the Romantic aesthetics of fear developed out of discourses of the sublime, as a radicalization and specialization of that concept, and at the same time

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Preface xiii

turned against its progenitor: by conjuring up situations where reason was helpless, it reaffirmed the inaccessibility of the Other and thus revoked the Kantian reclamation of reason’s supremacy. I must make clear at the start that, though I speak for convenience’s sake of an aesthetics of fear, there was no single unified theory of it common to all authors, just as no single generally accepted term for it emerged. This book thus traces not one but a broad spectrum of theories, pointing out common elements and intertextual relationships, which in turn justify my speaking of a Romantic aesthetics of fear. My approach deliberately breaks down the barriers between philosophy – perceived to operate through discursive genres such as essays or treatises – and literary fiction by showing how the theories in question not only informed and determined the nature of the fiction but indeed were developed through and in fiction. By analyzing a multitude of authors and texts, this book reveals the great variety of conceptualizations of fear and the equally great variety of purposes and effects of frightening elements in literary texts. The brightest red thread that runs through the texts studied is subversive criticism of all teleological optimism (that is, all beliefs in purposive development towards a positive end). The critique in question addressed not just the Enlightenment (as to be expected), but also of certain Romantic authors. This tends to blur the boundaries between the two movements, since a common attitude is detected in them. My discoveries thus confirm the presence of a self-critical strain within the Romantic movement itself, already observed by other scholars. At times the attack is less specific in its targets, amounting to a generalized protest against certainties of all kind (especially moral and metaphysical). At the opposite end of the spectrum we encounter an unexpected contribution to the Romantic longing for transcendence, in the form of a constructive, cognitive function assigned to fear. Since my approach is historical rather than systematizing, seeking to elucidate the thinking of the time in its own terms, I must begin by showing that the radical shift in the aesthetics of fear that I have claimed above is not just the product of hindsight but was recognized as such by contemporaries. To this end, the first section of the Introduction explores contemporary reviews, parodies, and adaptations of E.T.A. Hoffmann, with two aims: (1) to show that contemporaries perceived something radically new in his fantastic tales, something that they experienced as disturbing and offensive; and (2) to isolate from these attacks the elements responsible for the contemporary reaction, which can then be used as clues to the details of the new aesthetics. Having thus identified – and justified – my object of study, the rest of the Introduction outlines my methodology and terminology and situates these with respect to relevant scholarship. Part I traces the development of the new aesthetics: its gradual emergence and self-differentiation from the sublime, the crucial

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xiv

Preface

contributions of key precursors such as Jean Paul, and the trying out of various terms and concepts in order to formulate a new and distinctive aesthetics (chapter 1). In this context, considerable space is given to discourses on music as a particularly revealing test case for the transition. This chapter culminates in a discussion of Hoffmann’s review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and in a first statement of a key argument: that in connection with Beethoven, Hoffmann developed a definition of the Romantic as well as an apologia for fear and horror in artistic production, which he would later adapt to his own literary output and which would constitute the basis of his aesthetics of fear. The remainder of Part I addresses two Romantic authors known for their dark tales, Tieck and Kleist, to show how and for what purposes their fiction (and Tieck’s theorizing) exemplified the paradigm shift claimed above. I also analyze a less well-known and artistically less successful work, Apel and Laun’s Gespensterbuch (Book of Ghosts), because it makes extensive use of the frameand-embedded-tale structure, with the frames employed to discuss the potentially supernatural, the proper attitude towards it, and its relationship to the Enlightenment. Both the content and the technique suggest instructive parallels to Hoffmann and, to a lesser extent, to Tieck, and thus indirectly shed light on their less explicit and more complex works, helping us elucidate the thinking of the time. Part II is devoted entirely to E.T.A. Hoffmann, reflecting his importance for the fantastic genre and for an aesthetics of fear. It is with Hoffmann that the ideas and literary techniques pioneered by Tieck and Kleist come to full, deliberate, and self-conscious flowering, which makes him the most suitable candidate for a case study. His explorations of the causes, psychological workings, effects, and uses of fear are so numerous and multifaceted as to merit an entire chapter. I then choose two frequent themes in his fiction – music and science – as test cases to highlight the subversive potential of fear in Hoffmann’s hands, that is, its power as a tool for critiquing prevailing currents of thought as well as cultural developments. In Hoffmann, this book addresses the high point of Romanticism, chronologically as well as thematically, before winding down and taking leave of the movement in Part III. This shift is admirably carried out by Eichendorff, who both ideologically and chronologically had an ambivalent and conflicted relationship to Romanticism. In chapter 8 I analyze a selection of his works, chosen from different periods of his career, to show his retrospective re-examination of the Romantic aesthetics of fear and his growing rejection of it in favour of a traditional ideology with its unquestioned certainties. In a sense, then, we come full circle, back to the early responses to Hoffmann, confirming once again the radical novelty and transgressive impact of the Romantic contributions to the aesthetics of fear.

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Acknowledgments

This book could not have been completed without the help of a number of people and institutions. I owe special thanks to Dennis Mahoney, Andrea Speltz, and Jean Wilson, who have read and commented on individual chapters and thus helped me clarify and improve the arguments. My thanks also to Hermann Patsch, who helped me track down some citations. I wish to express my warm gratitude to Alice Kuzniar for her encouragement, feedback, and practical advice throughout the process of writing and publishing this book, and also for the opportunities she provided to present my ideas at meetings of her research group, Poetics and Nature circa 1800, and at colloquia organized by that group. And thank you also to the Waterloo Centre for German Studies for funding these activities. I am grateful to Rachel Schmidt for acting as a sounding board for many of my ideas. I owe the greatest debt to my husband, Hartwig Mayer, without whose help and support this book could not have been written. I am very grateful to the anonymous readers who refereed this manuscript for their insightful comments, which led to significant improvements in the book. I wish to thank the Deutsche Literaturarchiv Marbach for access to its collections, particularly its librarians for their help in finding and accessing the materials. My thanks to Sara Marsh and Samuel Schirm, who helped with the final formatting of the manuscript. Special thanks to Richard Ratzlaff, the editor at McGill-Queen’s University Press, for guiding the manuscript through the review and publication process, and to the staff at McGillQueen’s, generally. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Additional funds were provided by the College of Arts at the University of Guelph.

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Abbreviations

For E.T.A. Hoffmann’s works, the following abbreviations were used. These also correspond to volumes in the Winkler edition, with the exception that Fantasiestücke and Nachtstücke, which I cite separately, are printed as a single volume. FS NS SB SM SW

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Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier Nachtstücke Die Serapions-Brüder Schriften zur Musik Späte Werke

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THE AESTHETICS OF FEAR IN GERMAN ROMANTICISM

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Introduction

1. Hoffmann’s Transgression: The Challenge to Contemporaries I have claimed in the Preface that the Romantic era brought about a radical shift in the aesthetics of fear, taking leave from a tradition of thought (the discourses of the sublime) that culminated in the subordination of fear and its object to the supremacy of human reason, and committing instead to a critical scrutiny and an undermining, not just of Enlightened rationalism, but of all forms of teleological optimism, and indeed of all apodictic certainties. So radical a transformation can hardly have gone unnoticed by contemporaries. Before proceeding to outline the new aesthetics, it is therefore necessary to show that this shift is not the outcome of hindsight but rather was noticed and experienced as such at the time. To this end, I choose the contemporary reception of Hoffmann – as already suggested, the movement’s most daring and self-aware innovator – as a test case, and begin my study in what might seem a backwards manner, with the reception of an author who will not be discussed in depth until Part III. My aims here are twofold: (1) to show that contemporaries did indeed perceive something radically new in Hoffmann’s works; and (2) to identify provisionally the nature of Hoffmann’s innovations by isolating the elements that contemporaries experienced as threatening and offensive. Later chapters will then show whether what contemporaries regarded as a challenge to established values and modes of thought corresponded to Hoffmann’s own efforts to reconceptualize fear and its place in literature. This exploration of the reception is thus intended to justify my claim that there was a paradigm shift and to situate the Romantic texts that are the focus of this book in the context of the times’ prevailing modes of thought. With these aims in mind, we turn to reviews of, allusions to, and parodies of Hoffmann’s works, published during his lifetime or in the following decade.

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4

The Aesthetics of Fear in German Romanticism

Critics liked or disliked Hoffmann’s works for a variety of reasons (e.g., for living up to, or for not living up to, the Serapiontic principle). Two appreciative reviews highlight as new and unusual Hoffmann’s characteristic practice of introducing the fantastic into the ordinary everyday world. In his review of Die Serapionsbrüder (The Serapion Brethren), Friedrich Gottlob Wetzel distinguishes realistic works from those that create a marvellous world not governed by the laws of the real one, and notes that Hoffmann’s tale collection fits neither, “indem uns mitten in einer höchst phantasiereichen Welt nicht selten Scenen und Charaktere begegnen, zu denen dem Bildner unläugbar Figuren aus dem Kreise seiner wirklichen Lebenserfahrung gesessen, und die, in das phantastische Treiben mit hineingezogen, um so wunderlicher da stehen”1 (because in the midst of a highly imaginative world we not infrequently encounter scenes and characters for whom undeniably figures from the circle of his real life experience stood as model for the creator, and who, when pulled into the fantastic action stand there all the more strangely).2 A review of Nachtstücke (Night Pieces) contrasts Hoffmann’s approach to creating terror and horror with Fouqué’s conventional use of devils, ghosts, and the like, remarking that Hoffmann only needs a doll, a painting, or a pair of staring eyes, “um seine Geister vor allen Leuten, ja Mittags, wenn das Licht am höchsten gestiegen ist, entstehen zu lassen”3 (in order to let his spirits come into existence before everyone, even at midday, when the light has climbed to its highest), and praises the latter as more poetic because created with the help of the reader’s imagination. While some reviewers like at least some of Hoffmann’s dark tales, there is a tendency to reject the more extreme forms of the horrific, either in human behaviour (crime or perversions) or in the supernatural and inexplicable, as offensive and an improper subject for literature. Specifically – and of crucial significance for defining the subject of the present investigation – those phenomena are condemned that impugn or even simply fail to confirm the supremacy of human reason, the moral dignity and the moral freedom of humanity. The review of the final two volumes of the Serapionsbrüder in the Heidelberger Jahrbücher der Literatur complains of an excess of dark and horrific effects and singles out “Der unheimliche Gast” (“The Uncanny Guest”) and the tale of necrophagia embedded in the frame discussion of vampirism for particular criticism, precisely for its undermining of moral foundations. “Der unheimliche Gast” is first termed “unwahrscheinlich” (improbable) for the very mixing of the real and fantastic that Wetzel had identified as 1 Wetzel, Rev. of Die Serapionsbrüder, 1201. Identified in Kremer, Hoffmann, 267. 2 Unless otherwise indicated, translations are my own. 3 Hallische Allgemeine Literaturzeitung, Rev. of Nachtstücke, column 598.

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Introduction 5

new and characteristic: “hier sehen wir mitten durch das Reich der Wirklichkeit, wie dunkle Macht [sic] – allerdings einen gar unheimlichen Gast – walten, wodurch alle natürliche Einwirkung der Personen aufeinander gestört wird”4 (here we see in the midst of the realm of reality, how dark power [sic] – admittedly a truly uncanny guest – hold sway, by which all natural influence of the characters on each other is disrupted). The uncanniness of this dark power is then located in the fact that “sogar die jungfräuliche Seelenunschuld, die wir doch als das von allem bösen Zauber unverletzliche betrachten, […] gegen die Einwirkung dieser Macht nicht zu wahren vermag und in des Menschen Innerem, unabhängig von seinem Willen, in künstlicher Verblendung, Neigungen geweckt werden, vor denen er sich dann selbst entsetzen muss”5 (even the virginal innocence of the soul, which we indeed regard as the one thing invulnerable to all evil magic, … is incapable of protecting from the influence of this power, so that inclinations are aroused in the inner [sphere] of the human being, against his will, by an artful blinding, by which he must then be horrified). It is for this reason that the reviewer rejects the effect of the tale as injurious and offensive: “Wir fühlen uns recht eigentlich verwundet, wo wir freye Willenskraft, das Fundament, worauf alle moralische Welt beruhet, angetastet sehen”6 (We feel most truly wounded where we see freedom of the will attacked, as the foundation on which all moral worlds rest). Similarly, the tale of vampirism is condemned because in it “aller mo­ ralischen Gefühle und aller göttlichen Huth zum Trotze die Höllengewalt plötzlich den Menschen erfasst”7 (despite all moral feelings and all divine protection, the power of hell suddenly seizes the human being). Consequently, “obgleich wir dem Grauenhaften keines Weges abhold sind, so glauben wir doch, dass dieses da seine Schranken finden muss, wo nicht mehr eine höhere moralische Kraft in dem Menschen dasselbe zu bewältigen vermag, und müssen daher diese ganze Geschichte eine abscheuliche, diabolische Erfindung nennen”8 (although we are in no way hostile to the horrific, we nevertheless believe that it must find its limits there, where a higher moral power in the human being is no longer capable of overcoming it, and therefore we must call this entire story a loathsome, diabolical invention). In one further instance – “Spielerglück”(“Gambler’s Luck”) – the offence of the injury to moral feeling is compounded by the lack of explanation for the events: the one 4 Heidelberger Jahrbücher der Literatur 14, Rev. of Die Serapionsbrüder, 80. 5 Ibid., 100. 6 Ibid. 7 Heidelberger Jahrbücher der Literatur 75, Rev. of Die Serapionsbrüder, 1187. 8 Ibid.

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6

The Aesthetics of Fear in German Romanticism

morally good character dies in a mysterious way.9 This lack of explanations as a failing emerges here and there as a subtheme, one that will prove significant in the context of our investigation into the differences between Hoffmann’s aesthetics of fear and the aesthetics of the sublime. The review of Hoffmann’s Nachtstücke in the Hallische Allgemeine Literaturzeitung (quoted above), though mainly positive, sounds the same note – that literature should not be allowed to undermine moral axioms – in connection with “Der Sandmann” (“The Sandman”), specifically in connection with the finale on the tower, which is described as “neu und fürchterlich” (new and terrible). In noting the effect on the reader’s feelings, the reviewer asks: [D]arf der Dichter seine Menschen schaffen, um sie zu vernichten? Wo aber ­keine höhere Ansicht über die vernichtete Hoheit des Menschen tröstet, und wie hier, der durch Phantasie Gefallene von der Phantasie dem nüchternen Verstande zum kalten Bedauern überlassen wird, da scheint uns vielmehr eine unreine Vermischung, als ein poetisches Ineinanderspielen der Phantasie und Wirklichkeit vorgegangen zu seyn. (10) Is the poet allowed to create his persons in order to destroy them? Where no higher point of view consoles for the destroyed greatness of the human being, and, as here, the person who has fallen through imagination is abandoned by imagination to the cold commiseration of sober understanding, there, it seems to us, an impure mixing, rather than a poetic interplay of imagination and reality, has taken place. (emphasis in original)

The notion of an attack on morality is developed with increasing clarity and detail in two other reviews, which amount to an almost wholesale rejection of Hoffmann’s works. Ludwig Börne’s discussion of Die Serapionsbrüder is noteworthy for its wealth of images, which reveal more than the analysis contains and which thus highlight the emotional nature of this reaction. Börne first welcomes Hoffmann’s works as “tröstende, liebliche Eilande” (consoling, charming islands) standing out from the shallow and witless sea of the German lending libraries. Having landed on these at first sight fertile and welcoming islands, Börne continues, the reader is then frightened and horrified to such a degree that the deathbringing sea now appears the lesser of two evils: “da kommen von allen Seiten mit gräßlichem Geheule die wilden Bewohner, mit Pfeilen und Wurfspießen bewaffnet, auf uns zu. Überreste verzehrter Menschenopfer

9 Heidelberger Jahrbücher der Literatur 14, Rev. of Die Serapionsbrüder, 101.

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erfüllen uns mit Schauer. Wir fliehen entsetzt an den Strand zurück und vertrauen uns der greulichen Wasserwüste von neuem an”10 (then from all sides the wild inhabitants come towards us with horrible howling, armed with arrows and spears. Remains of eaten human sacrifices fill us with shuddering. We flee in horror back to the beach and confide ourselves again to the horrible water desert). Börne himself stresses that this reaction is an emotional rather than intellectual or aesthetic one: “Mag der richtende Verstand diese gesammelten Erzählungen für preiswürdig er­ klären, die Empfindung schweigt gewiß, wenn sie nicht gar murrt gegen den Ausspruch” (The judging understanding may declare these collected tales as praiseworthy, but feeling is certainly silent, if it doesn’t even grumble against the judgment). He then conscientiously embarks on what he terms the difficult and irritating task of justifying this revulsion of feeling (556). Over several pages, he develops several related accusations. First, Hoffmann’s works insistently present views into a dark abyss, a reminder of the dark side of the universe and of the human soul that is frightening and unwelcome: “es herrscht eine abwärts gekehrte Romantik, eine Sehnsucht nach einem tieferen, nach einem unterirdischen Leben, die den Leser anfröstelt und verdrießlich macht” (556; There predominates a romanticism tending to the depths, a longing for a deeper, subterranean life, which makes the reader shiver and causes him irritation). Second, what makes this insight particularly objectionable is that, because imagination is allowed to operate without the control of the understanding, the reader is not offered any safety net or distancing device: “so findet der Leser an der Besonnenheit des Dichters keine Brustwehr, die ihn vor dem Herabstürzen sichert, wenn ihn beim Anblicken der tollen Welt unter seinen Füßen der Schwindel überfällt” (556; the reader therefore finds no safety rail in the form of the poet’s deliberation, which might protect him from falling down, when he is overcome by dizziness at the sight of the crazy world under his feet). I wish to draw particular attention to this remark, as I will later argue that this removal of the safety of the reader is a key feature distinguishing the Romantic aesthetics of fear from discourses of the sublime. Third, Börne finds objectionable the destruction of human moral dignity, the reduction of humans to insignificant, powerless beings: Hoffmann’s characters are like puppets who in their frenetic dance hurl away their limbs and their heads (“nur daß diese [die Hoffmannschen Gestalten] von allen Gliedern den Kopf zuerst verlieren” [except that these, i.e., Hoffmann’s characters, of all limbs lose their heads first]), or they are like unfortunates confessing under torture; even music

10 Börne, Sämtliche Schriften, 556.

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does not lead to higher regions, but rather to lower ones, and significantly to that intolerable recognition of one’s own insignificance: Selbst die Musik, […] dient nicht dazu, den Himmel, dessen Dolmetscherin sie ist, auf die Erde herabzuziehen und ihr verständlich zu machen, sie wird nur gebraucht, um höhnend den unermeßlichen Abstand zwischen Himmel und Erde zu beweisen, zu zeigen, daß jene Höhe von sehnsuchtsvollen Menschen nie erreicht werden könne, und ihnen “das Mißverhältnis des innern Gemüts mit dem äußern Leben” genau vorzurechnen, damit sie ja nicht der Verzweiflung entgehen. (561; emphasis in original) Even music, does not serve to bring heaven – whose interpreter she is – down to earth and to make it comprehensible, rather she is only used to prove derisively the immeasurable distance between heaven and earth, to show that that height can never be reached by longing-filled humans, and to demonstrate to them “the disproportion of the inner spirit with outer life,” so that they may not escape from despair. (emphasis in original)

The last sentence is revealing: Börne does not argue that the image of the world created by Hoffmann’s works is untrue or ineffectual; rather, he argues that it is intolerable because it leads to despair – an indirect testament to both its truth and its effectiveness. His final sentences indeed recognize and confirm this. The work he has been describing is “die Epopee des Wahnsinns” (the epopee of insanity) that thus illumines a dark side of the human psyche. In its work of analysis and description, it is “ein lobenswertes Unternehmen, wenn es lobenswert ist, den menschlichen Geist, der nachtwandelnd an allen Gefahren unbeschädigt vorübergeht, aufzuwecken, um ihn vor dem Abgrunde zu warnen, der zu seinen Füßen droht” (562; a praiseworthy enterprise, if it is praiseworthy to wake the human spirit, which sleepwalking goes past all dangers unharmed, in order to warn it about the abyss which threatens at its feet). Let us recapitulate the three main points of Börne’s accusation: (1) that Hoffmann’s works show a dark dimension of the world, and of the human, best left in the dark; (2) that they remove the safety of the reader; and (3) that they impugn the moral dignity of humans and present them as insignificant and powerless. It will be argued in this book that these are the very elements that distinguish the Romantic aesthetics of fear from the aesthetics of the sublime and thus warrant regarding the former as a new chapter in the history of the aesthetics of terror. The first of these ideas recurs – as with Börne, combined with reluctant admiration for Hoffmann’s skill – in a letter (March 1821) by J.H. Voss the younger to Christian von Truchseß. Voss finds many of the works

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Introduction 9

effective – indeed all too effective – yet his feelings revolt against them – “die meisten seiner Produkte sind, bei aller Anziehungskraft, zurückstoßend und schaudervoll”11 (most of his products are, despite their attraction, repulsive and cause one to shudder) – mainly because they draw on the sphere of “Fratzenhaftigkeit” (grotesqueness) instead of nature, and because of the very skill with which this grotesque is combined with the ordinary. He concedes that Die Elixiere des Teufels (The Devil’s Elixir) is a great work, because it is firmly rooted in the world of nature and not implausible although it resembles fevered dreams, and ex negativo he subscribes to the requirement that literature may not undermine accepted moral systems by stressing that in the novel morality and religion are never endangered (95). Nevertheless, because of the very success with which the horrific is presented, he stresses that he would not want this picture always before his eyes; indeed, he longs for the moment when it will fade into distant memory. Perhaps most significant and revealing are Voss’s comments on “Der Sandmann.” Again, praise for its novelty and ingenuity is combined with revulsion caused by its subject matter: “eine der geistreichsten Erzählungen unserer Zeit, wenn dieser nicht wiederum in Schauer und Entsetzen sich umtriebe” (96; one of the cleverest tales of our time, if it didn’t once again wallow in shuddering and horror). The ideas he singles out as particularly “sinnreich” (inventive) and fearful are the very ones in which later theorists would locate the source of the uncanny: the notion of the Sandman and its connection with the spyglass, the scene of dancing with an automaton with its combination of life and death. Indeed, this last is termed the non plus ultra of uncanniness: “[in Olimpia] finde ich das Maß des Unheimlichen übervoll gemessen” (97; [in Olimpia] I find the uncanny measured to the fullest and overfull). This appraisal is immediately followed by the same conclusion that Börne came to, and that motivates the adjectives “zurückstoßend und schaudervoll” – that literature should not be allowed to explore what a beneficent providence has concealed in darkness: “Die Poesie sollte uns billig mit Gott und der Natur und unserm Innern versöhnen, nicht mit Wesen befreunden, die Gott noch vor der Schöpfung aus seiner schönen Welt verstoßen hat” (97; Literature should by rights reconcile us with God, nature and our own inner being, not cause us to make friends with beings whom God banished from his beautiful world even before creation). Konrad Schwenk, in his overview of Hoffmann’s oeuvre a year after the author’s death, voices similar objections with even greater clarity.12 By

11 Voss, Mitteilungen über Göthe und Schiller, 93. 12 Schwenk, “Ueber E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Schriften.”

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and large, his appraisal is rather shallow and trivial, driven by the desire that literature confirm an optimistic world view. He dislikes most tales that describe evil or undesirable aspects of the human psyche, or that involve the supernatural or fail to provide a natural, psychological explanation of events; he likes best tales that have a happy or at least a sentimental ending. For instance, he likes the Märchen but dislikes all of the Nachtstücke except “Das steinerne Herz” (“The Stone Heart”), which he finds “rührend,” (moving) and he likes “Meister Martin der Küfner und seine Gesellen” (“Master Martin the Cooper and His Journeymen”) for its truth to nature as well as for its sentimentally happy ending, excepting only his dislike for the notion that one cannot be both a great artist and a happy husband. He tends to motivate his rejection of supernatural and horrific elements by claiming that they are cheap, trite, or ineffective, as only weak persons succumb to the horrors of the imagination. Gradually, however, a different explanation emerges. Schwenk too distinguishes two tendencies in Hoffmann’s oeuvre, namely one that “die aus der poetischen Anlage und der Sehnsucht des Gemüthes sich entwickelnde phantastische Welt des Innern darzustellen strebt” (strives to portray the fantastic inner world that develops out of the poetic tendency and the spirit’s longing) and another that “das Gemüth in eine ungewöhnliche Stimmung zu versetzen sucht durch unerwartete, außer der Regel liegende und dadurch an eine verborgene, dunkle Macht mahnende Erscheinung und ihre Einflüsse auf das Individuum” (83; seeks to put the spirit in an unusual mood through unexpected appearances that lie outside the rule and hence warn of a hidden dark power and its influences on the individual). It is this notion of an influence of a dark power, and its implications for human morality and dignity, that he rejects. He finds it unacceptable, as he states quite openly, because literature should not be allowed to portray subject matter that involves anything horrific, criminal, vulgar, or unedifying. He first makes this argument in rejecting Hoffmann’s self-justification through the authority of Tieck. Schwenk roundly condemns Tieck’s “Liebeszauber” (“The Love Potion”) and dismisses the defence of truth put forward in Phantasus, quoting Aeschylus: “Allein es geziemt, zu verbergen das Böse dem Dichter, / Nicht vorzubringen und aufzuführen” (It is only fitting for the poet to hide evil, not to bring it forth and to stage it). He continues: “Was geht es die Poesie an, daß das Leben allerhand Qualen darbietet und daß Gräuel und Verbrechen geübt werden? Wo keine Würde des moralischen Menschen ist, fängt die Gemeinheit an, und die kann nicht der Vorwurf der schönen Kunst sein” (93–4, emphasis mine; What does it have to do with literature, that life offers all sorts of tortures and that atrocities and crimes are committed? Where there is no dignity of the moral human being, meanness begins, and it cannot be the subject of

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Introduction 11

beautiful art [emphasis mine]). He too singles out the discussion of vampirism and accompanying tale of necrophagia, which arouse a remarkable intensity of moral and emotional outrage in him: “ekelhaft, widerlich, unausstehlich, scheuslich, und es ist durchaus die höchste Verirrung in der Kunst, wenn die Krankheit und ihre ekelhaften Wirkungen Effect machen sollen” (94; revolting, nauseating, intolerable, repulsive, and it is absolutely the highest aberration in art, if sickness and its revolting effects are to make an impression). Again and again, illnesses and actions deriving from physical causes are passionately rejected as repulsive and unworthy of literary treatment. The reason for this passionate revulsion of feeling eventually emerges: nothing may appear in the arts that in any way undermines human dignity and moral freedom: Diese [i.e. Poesie] bezieht sich immer auf den moralischen Theil des Menschen und seine Sehnsucht nach Höherem, und die Seele darf darin nie von der physischen Gewalt absolut abhängig erscheinen, wie es der Fall ist, wenn magnetisch auf die Nerven gewürkt wird; sie muß im Gegentheil mächtiger auf den Körper wirken, als dieser auf sie. Alles Leben ist bedingt durch Nothwendigkeit und Freiheit, und erst wo die letztere überwiegt, geht das Gebiet der Dichtung und der Schönheit an. (102–3) [Literature] always refers to the moral part of the human being and his longing for something higher, and the soul may never appear in it as absolutely dependent on physical force, which is the case if the nerves are affected by magnetic operations; on the contrary, the soul must affect the body more strongly than vice versa. All life is determined by necessity and freedom, and only where the latter predominates does the sphere of literature and beauty begin.

If one admits the possibility of subjection of one will to that of another, the subjected individual becomes a mere tool, is robbed of freedom of the will, and “eine allen freien Willen hemmende Befangenheit, die durch körperliche Afficirung kommt, kann kein Gegenstand der Kunst seyn, die im Stoff immer einen freien Geist darstellen muß” (103; a discomfort that impedes all free will, which comes from a physical influence, cannot be an object of art, which must always portray a free spirit in its subject matter). What is remarkable about this prescription for literature as the expression of wishful thinking, is the degree to which it coincides with Schiller’s conceptualization of the sublime (which will be discussed in part I, chapter 1). We can therefore tentatively advance this theory: what contemporary critics experienced as new in Hoffmann’s works, and what provoked emotional reactions ranging from disquiet to outrage, were precisely those aspects that deviated from or exceeded the aesthetic category under which

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seventeenth- and eighteenth-century readers subsumed dark, ugly, and frightening phenomena – namely, the sublime. It was not just the newness that proved disturbing; it was also that this new aesthetic undercut notions of moral freedom and rational supremacy that the sublime had left intact or even confirmed. Before developing this thesis, I will seek further confirmation for this characterization of the contemporary reception of Hoffmann by examining three authors who engage in an intertextual debate with him via fictional texts with corrective, and in some cases parodistic, intent. These intertexts are composed of a tissue of allusions to and borrowings from Hoffmann and either involve characters from his tales or turn Hoffmann himself into a character. They share a world view determined by the assumptions that purposiveness and harmony underlie the universe and that humans are essentially good, moral entities with an honourable place in the cosmic order. They thus offer further evidence that the dark and disturbing world view in many of Hoffmann’s tales, his use of the supernatural, and especially his intermingling of the fantastic with the real, ordinary world, were experienced as new and blameworthy for the reasons outlined above: that they tend to degrade human moral and ontological dignity and pre-eminence and that they unsettle the reader by undermining generally accepted axioms or belief systems. Common to all these intertexts is that the supernatural is explained or resolved in a way that confirms rather than undercuts existing belief systems, be they discourses of sublimity in the Kantian or Schillerian sense, empirical scientific accounts of a nature that is governed by a system of discoverable laws, or traditional Christian faith and dogma. Willibald Alexis articulated a critique of Hoffmann in an appraisal of his oeuvre, written at Hitzig’s request and appended to the latter’s biography