The Epic Imaginary: Political Power and its Legitimations in Eighteenth-Century German Literature 9783110271997, 9783110271942

Citation preview

STUDIEN ZUR DEUTSCHEN LITERATUR

Herausgegeben von Wilfried Barner, Georg Braungart und Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf

Band 197

Charlton Payne

The Epic Imaginary Political Power and its Legitimations in Eighteenth-Century German Literature

De Gruyter

The publication of this book was supported by funds made available by the “Cultural Foundations of Integration” Center of Excellence at the University of Konstanz, established in the framework of the German Federal and State Initiative for Excellence.

ISBN 978-3-027194-2 e-ISBN 978-3-027199-7 ISSN 0081-7236

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. © 2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ∞ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my dissertation advisors at the University of California, Los Angeles for their help along the way: Andrew Hewitt, Christopher Wild, John McCumber, and Ken Reinhard. Albrecht Koschorke both advised my dissertation while I was a fellow in the Graduiertenkolleg »Die Figur des Dritten« at the University of Konstanz and provided timely support afterwards. I will always be grateful for this, and look forward to future collaborations. Discussions with Susanne Lüdemann, Ethel Matala de Mazza, Alexander Schmitz, and many others in Konstanz have left their indelible marks on these pages. I thank the editors of »Studien zur deutschen Literatur« and Walter de Gruyter, as well as my thorough colleague Sabine Frost, for helping transform this project into a published book. A modified version of Chapter 3 appeared as »Epic World Citizenship in Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea,« Goethe Yearbook 16 (2009): 11–28. Finally, this study was made possible by the numerous resources of UCLA, the DAAD, DFG, and the Center of Excellence »Cultural Foundations of Integration« of the University of Konstanz.

V

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Epic Imaginary in Eighteenth-Century German Literature . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Imaginary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Epic Imaginary and Literary History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Epic and Political Poetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 1.

The Epic Genre and the Question of Legitimacy in Eighteenth-Century Poetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Legitimations I: Gottsched. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Legitimations II: Bodmer and Breitinger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Blankenburg 1774: The Theory of the Novel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Blankenburg’s Literarische Zusätze zu Johann Georg Sulzers Allgemeiner Theorie der Schönen Künste (1796–1798): »Der neuere Held« . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Merck: Epic Naiveté . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Herder: »Genealogie älterer Meister« . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

2.

The Epic Prosody of the Sublime Nation: Klopstock’s Messias . . . . . . . . 46 The Mimesis of the Epic and Epic Mimesis: Klopstock’s Theory of Hexameter as »Darstellung« . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 The High Priests of the Nation: Klopstock’s Supplementary Epic Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Excursus: The Passions of Klopstock and Badiou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 3.

4.

The Politics and Poetics of Epic World Citizenship in Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Figures of Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Laws of Epic Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wieland’s Parodic Humanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wieland’s Parodic Humanism: Oberon in Context (Part I) . . . . . . . . . . . »Das Volk,« Cosmopolitanism, and Sovereignty in Wieland’s Political Essays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Irregularity in Wieland’s Humanism: Oberon Beyond Parody . . . . . . . . .

86 91 93 117 119 131 142 VII

Epilogue: Brentano’s Romanzen vom Rosenkranz and the Romantic Epic . . . . A. W. Schlegel’s Anthropology of Poetry: Or, the Birth of Meter out of the Nature of Rhythm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Philological Legitimacy and the Invention of Romantic Epic . . . . . . . . . Romanzen vom Rosenkranz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

152 155 164 175

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

VIII

Introduction: The Epic Imaginary in Eighteenth-Century German Literature

This study examines literary articulations of political and poetic legitimacy within experiments with the epic genre in eighteenth-century German literature. While epic myths of the origins and borders of nations and international regimes fulfill a supplementary role within political orders owing to the incompleteness of a given legal system and its imaginary unities,1 literary narratives demonstrate a capacity for complexity of perception and density of meaning that can exert legitimating as well as de-legitimating force on political power. Poets and rulers thus have a mutually productive, love-hate relationship. One of this study’s premises is that the fictive nature of political communities lends poetics a degree of political legitimacy. Depending on the context, the legitimacy of poetics might emanate from either a supportive or critical relationship to political power, in sometimes surprising proportion to the extent to which poetic fictions supply or undermine the legitimacy of existing political institutions.2 1

2

Myths perform decisive functions for the development of human society in general, and modern nation-states in particular: »Die wichtigste soziale Funktion von Mythen ist die Stiftung kollektiver Identität und Gemeinschaft: Mythen schaffen ein Bewußtsein der Zugehörigkeit unter denjenigen, die den Mythos teilen, indem sie die Geschichte des Ursprungs der Gemeinschaft erzählen (aitiologischer Mythos) oder indem sie die Autorepräsentation einer Gemeinschaft leisten (politisch-sozialer Mythos) oder indem sie die Verbindlichkeit grundlegender Werte und Normen sicherstellen (normativer Mythos). Die Relevanz von Mythen beschränkt sich nicht auf archaische und antike Gesellschaftsformationen, sondern gerade auch für moderne Gesellschaften haben Mythen eine große Bedeutung, da sie vom Legitimationsdruck rationaler Begründungen dispensieren.« (Sabine A. Döring, »Vom nation-building zum Identifi kationsfeld. Zur Integrationsfunktion nationaler Mythen in der Literatur.« In: Kulturelle Grenzziehungen im Spiegel der Literaturen: Nationalismus, Regionalismus, Fundamentalismus, ed. by Horst Turk, Brigitte Schultze, and Roberto Simanowski, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 1998, p. 63–83, here: p. 75). To analyze literature’s contribution to political legitimacy of course raises questions about the political function of literature. One of the most important studies on the relationships between political and literary sovereignty in German literature is: Clemens Pornschlegel, Der literarische Souverän. Studien zur politischen Funktion der deutschen Dichtung, Rombach Verlag, Freiburg im Br. 1994. Pornschlegel interprets the politics of national literature as following certain structural similarities, regardless of whether the sovereign is an absolutist monarch or a democratic republic: »Nationalsprachliche Literatur freilich ist Arbeit an einer neuen und anderen Repräsentation, die eine neue und andere absolute Referenz in Szene setzt, die des neuzeitlichen Souveräns und seines

1

Literary narratives harness a potential hermeneutic ambiguity that is productive for the sustainability of political institutions, even if this ambiguity questions the legitimacy of concrete instances of political power. The source of this ambivalence is rooted in the origins of political communities themselves, for the beginning of a political community – whether a polis, nation-state, or empire – does not properly belong to the community it founds, and this very structure informs the institutions of law: The origin of law cannot be treated as a moment within the legal system, for a non-legal act establishes the legal system. Hence, the transition from the prelegal condition to the state of law can only be narrated through extra-legal means. Literary narratives enter the picture, then, to fill this gap in the legal system with foundational myths which legitimate the state. Albrecht Koschorke illustrates this conundrum of legitimacy with the example of how the Romulus myth – the story of the founding of Rome, as transmitted by the Chroniclers – grounds the Roman legal system. What is most curious about the Romulus myth is the prominence of ambivalence, which would seem to undermine its authority as a grand narrative meant to lend stability to a political order. For a crime founds Rome: a fratricide that is itself the result of a hermeneutic disagreement between Romulus and Remus over the interpretation of the auspices. Remus first received six vultures, but afterwards Romulus received twice as many; both derive their claim to the throne from the auspices, leading to a battle between them and Remus’ death at the hands of Romulus. The semiotic ambivalence of the auspices mirrors the ambivalence of the Romulus myth: The foundational narrative of Rome should legitimate the founding of Rome, yet the story narrated is itself illegitimate, because the foundational act is a crime. Koschorke concludes that this ambivalence serves two purposes: »einerseits das irdische Geschehen an einen göttlichen Willen [zu] knüpfen, […] andererseits dafür Sorge [zu] tragen, dass der göttliche Wille unbestimmt und unbestimmbar bleibt, um das Gut politischer Handlungsfreiheit nicht im Übermaß Idioms nämlich, bestimmt man ihn nun absolutistisch oder revolutionär national-demokratisch« (68). My analysis of individual experiments with the epic, however, argues for the intricacies of different forms of representation in both politics and poetics. Nevertheless, Pornschlegel provides a compelling analysis of the complicity between the rise of national literature as a medium of power in Europe and the specific contours of the discourse of literary autonomy in Germany: »Hat man genau diesen (medien-)politischen Zusammenhang im Auge, so läßt sich der Prozeß, der Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland zur ›Autonomie‹ der Kunst und Literatur führt, begreifen als die erfolgreich gewordene Inszenierung einer dem neuen Medium Buchdruck bzw. Nationalsprache gehorchenden Sakralität, und dies – im Unterschied zumal zu Frankreich – ohne zentralisierenden und zentralisierten Staat – weswegen die Autonomie auch Autonomie ist: Inszenierung einer neuen Gründungsreferenz« (96). In agreement with Pornschlegel, my study shows how the lack of centralized national sovereignty enables greater experimentation with the epic genre. For an analysis of state power’s need for mediating (imaginary) instances, see: Ethel Matala de Mazza, »Zugänge zum Machthaber. Über Spiegel und andere Medien.« In: Die Macht und das Imaginäre, ed. by Rudolf Behrens and Jörn Steigerwald, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, p. 71–88.

2

zu beschneiden.«3 The Romulus myth reveals a flexible relationship between the mythical source of legitimacy and the exercise of political power, which is itself stored and iterated as a hermeneutic ambivalence within the myth itself. Far from inhibiting the work of political institutions, the inconsistencies emerging out of the incompleteness of political entities can often function as an engine of their sustainability. Koschorke’s reflections on the pragmatics of political legitimation offer a refined approach to understanding the dynamics of both political institutions and foundational narratives. Such an approach emphasizes the interplay of legitimating and de-legitimating constellations within the stories through which political power seeks to ground itself and maintain its operability. These twin moments of legitimation and de-legitimation, as constitutive of communication and action within political institutions, are especially important for the study of the epic genre, which tends to be regarded within literary history as »a medium of discourse that sees itself as all-embracing of the society identified by it and identifying with it.«4 In his book Epic and Empire, David Quint describes this potential for identification or »politicization of epic poetry,« since at least Virgil’s Aeneid, as having generated the definition of epic as a master narrative, according to which »the equation of power and the very possibility of narrative is a defining feature of the genre.«5 Quint describes the logics of political legitimacy within the literary history of the epic genre, yet understands them differently from my study’s approach to these logics as borrowed from Koschorke’s analysis of the Romulus myth. Quint identifies »two rival traditions of epic,« deriving from Virgil and Lucan, which he classifies as the epic of the victors and the epic of the defeated: In the course of telling this story [of the politicization of epic poetry], I have continually been impressed by the persistence of two rival traditions of epic, which are here associated with Virgil and Lucan. These define an opposition between epics of the imperial victors and epics of the defeated, a defeated whose resistance contains the germ of a broader republican or antimonarchical politics. The first, Virgilian tradition of imperial dominance is the stronger tradition, the defining tradition of Western epic; for, as I shall argue, it defines as well the norms of the second tradition of Lucan that arose to contest it.6

Quint pairs a political history of imperial winners and losers with the literary history of the genres of epic and romance. Imperial winners generate epic narratives

3 4

5 6

Albrecht Koschorke, »Götterzeichen und Gründungsverbrechen. Die zwei Anfänge des Staates,« http://www.uni-konstanz.de/kulturtheorie/KoschorkeRomulus.pdf, p. 10–11. Gregory Nagy, »Epic as Genre.« In: Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World. The Poetics of Community, ed. by Margaret Beissinger, Jane Tylus, and Susanne Wofford, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1999, p. 21–32, here: p. 29. David Quint, Epic and Empire. Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1993, p. 15. Quint, Epic and Empire, p. 8.

3

with a teleological coherency seeking to legitimize the political order that has unfolded, but they also generate the stories of the historical losers who seek to account for the contingency of history through romance narratives of wandering agents: To the victors belongs epic, with its linear teleology; to the losers belongs romance, with its random or circular wandering. Put another way, the victors experience history as a coherent, end-directed story told by their own power; the losers experience a contingency that they are powerless to shape to their own ends.7

My study is less concerned with situating eighteenth-century German-language epics within Quint’s literary history of epic and romance as two separate-yet-related traditions; rather, I analyze within the epics under consideration the ambivalence between telling coherent and hence legitimating stories of political community and narrating open-ended stories of contingency that might de-legitimate political power. This ambivalence manifests itself in eighteenth-century poetics above all in the disjunction between programmatic definitions of the epic and actual experiments with the genre, but it can also arise within a single epic in the course of its narrative. The present study thus traces how particular eighteenth-century epics explore an originary incompleteness of political power and its narrative legitimations as displayed in the ambivalences of the Romulus myth. The first chapter sketches an overview of how eighteenth-century writers construct an imaginary epic genre that is assigned the task of performing the cultural work of legitimating political communities by narrating their allegedly unifying origins and borders. The subsequent chapters, however, explore how the practice of epic storytelling in works by Klopstock, Goethe, Wieland, and, in an epilogue, Brentano enact the disruptive potential of poetic language and narrative to question the legitimations of imaginary political origins and unities.

The Imaginary In referring to the term imaginary, my starting point is Koschorke’s description of the fictive nature of the body politic: »Weil die Einheit des Kollektivs ein in Hinsicht auf seinen Ursprung wie auf seine Innen-/Außen-Unterscheidung künstliches, das heißt: ästhetisches Gebilde ist, fällt sie, vor allen Funktionsroutinen, in die natürliche Zuständigkeit der Dichtung.«8 If both the origins and borders of social collectives can be described as aesthetic productions, this is because neither the origin of society belongs to the experience of the collective, and therefore must be

7 8

4

Quint, Epic and Empire, p. 9. Albrecht Koschorke, »Macht und Fiktion.« In: Des Kaisers neue Kleider. Über das Imaginäre politischer Herrschaft. Texte, Bilder, Lektüre, ed. by Thomas Frank, Albrecht Koschorke, Susanne Lüdemann, and Ethel Matala de Mazza, with assistance of Andreas Kraß, Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 2002, p. 73–84, here: p. 80–81.

retroactively narrated as an allegory; nor do everyday face-to-face relations among people ever amount to an encounter with a collective on the scale of the nation in its entirety, as Benedict Anderson has discussed in his influential study Imagined Communities.9 The same holds for the borders defining inside and outside of collectives, as well as for notions of belonging to either side of these borders as a friend or enemy.10 Channels of communication, above all print media, give rise to the imagination of a communion with others that most individuals will never experience. Further, the circulation of print media enables the institution of a »politics of language« which sets the conditions for the interactions of sovereignty and poetics by propagating standardized forms of speech and standards of poetic discourse.11 In short, we are dealing here with the imaginary as an irreducible and unavoidable dimension of social and political institutions, in the sense that Cornelius Castoriadis uses the term to investigate psychic and social interdependencies in Gesellschaft als imaginäre Institution.12 Following Susanne Lüdemann, we need to analyze the imaginary as the attempt by social agents to process the »notwendige Inkonsistenz und Inkohärenz des sozialen Feldes« through figurations and narratives of origins and collectives.13 Such figurations of the imaginary are fictions understood as a me-

9 10

11 12 13

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, London and New York 1991. »[K]eine Gesellschaft existiert ohne Institutionen, und Institutionen sind in dem hier bezeichneten Sinn fi ktiv. Allein damit sich eine Ansammlung von Individuen als kollektiver Agent begreifen kann, um sich überhaupt institutionsfähig zu machen, ist eine Reihe von schöpferischen ästhetischen Prozeduren erforderlich. Es müssen Vorstellungen von Einheit und Ganzheit geschaffen werden, über deren Vermittlung die Beteiligten erst rückwirkend zu einem Selbstverhältnis, zu einem Eigenbild finden. Das gilt schon für kleinere soziale Einheiten wie die antike Polis, erst recht aber für moderne politische Leitkategorien wie Staat, Volk oder Nation, die ihre Innen-/Außen-Grenze mit literarischen und ikonographischen Mitteln justieren (Gründungsmythen, Feindbilder, Schwellennarrative). Besonders folgenreich ist in diesem Zusammenhang die Metapher des sozialen Körpers, deren Wirkungsgeschichte sich von Platon und Paulus bis hin zur Biopolitik des 20. Jahrhunderts erstreckt. Dass solche ästhetischen Konstrukte Eingang in die Systemsteuerung von Gesellschaften finden, zeigt nicht zuletzt der juridische Diskurs, der Vorstellungen vom kollektiven Körper und von dessen fi ktiver Person erfolgreich in operative Rechtsgrößen umgemünzt hat.« (Albrecht Koschorke, Susanne Lüdemann, Thomas Frank, and Ethel Matala de Mazza, Der fi ktive Staat. Konstruktionen des politischen Körpers in der Geschichte Europas, Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 2007, p. 11). On the necessity of imagery for the unbelievable fiction of state power, see also: Manfred Schneider, »Imagination des Staates.« In: Die Macht und das Imaginäre, ed. by Rudolf Behrens and Jörn Steigerwald, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, p. 41–58. Pornschlegel, Der literarische Souverän, p. 55. Cornelius Castoriadis, Gesellschaft als imaginäre Institution. Entwurf einer politischen Philosophie, Suhrkamp Frankfurt/M. 1990. Susanne Lüdemann, Metaphern der Gesellschaft. Studien zum soziologischen und politischen Imaginären, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 2004, p. 61.

5

dium for the generation of possibilities, and literature designates a sphere in which such fabrication becomes »play,« according to Wolfgang Iser: [D]iese Möglichkeiten gewinnen ihre Kontur durch genichtete Realitäten, die deswegen genichtet werden können, weil sie ihrerseits realisierte Möglichkeiten sind. Das Zusammenspiel von Fiktivem und Imaginären erwiese sich dann als die Inszenierung eines solchen Vorgangs, der in der Literatur deshalb so paradigmatisch erfolgen kann, weil hier das Fiktive die Aktivierung des Imaginären als ein von lebensweltlicher Pragmatik entlastetes Widerspiel entfaltet.14

Iser’s theory of play describes a doubling effect that is a constitutive feature of literary texts in their operations of selection, intertextuality, and self-disclosure as fictionality. These operations disrupt given fields of reference by selecting particular structural and semantic elements with which to fashion an alternative field of reference within the literary text, which, however, cannot entirely negate extratextual reference: The items selected, however, function properly because they carry the outstripped fields of reference in their wake, according to which they now begin to unfold unforeseeably shifting relationships both with their old context and with the new one into which they have been transplanted. This turns the text into a kind of junction where other texts, norms, and values meet and work upon each other, thus opening up a play-space between the text and extratextual references.15

Although both Castoriadis and Iser suggest that the imaginary supplies an elementary layer of experience, or materia prima, that is active on a level prior to all conventional determinations, I argue instead that the imaginary is not itself an origin that can be conceptualized outside of institutional structures, networks, and conventional frames of reference.16 If instituted political power bears traces of an instituting force, the origin of this instituting power does not reside at any time or

14

15

16

6

Wolfgang Iser, Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre. Perspektiven literarischer Anthropologie, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1991, p. 404. In literary fiction: »Fingieren wird freies Spiel, das sich im Übersteigen, dessen, was ist, dem zuwendet, was nicht ist« (407). Wolfgang Iser, »The Aesthetic and the Imaginary.« In: The States of Theory: History, Art, and Critical Discourse, ed. by David Carroll, Columbia University Press, New York 1990, p. 201–220, here: p. 215–216. Although I take as my point of departure Castoriadis’ insight that society’s institutions and instituting power are inseparable from the productive forces of the (psychic and social) imaginary, I do not agree with his celebration of a radical imaginary as the ultimate ground of society that precedes and harnesses the potential to annihilate all social institutions. Lüdemann delivers a compelling critique of Castoriadis’ notion of the radical imaginary in: Lüdemann, Metaphern der Gesellschaft, p. 47–61. One of the best explications of the impossibility of conceptualizing an origin of fantasy outside of the linguistic setting of the fantasy of an origin itself remains the psychoanalytic acount by Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, Urphantasie. Phantasien über den Ursprung, Ursprünge der Phantasie, trans. by Max Looser, Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1992.

place prior to instituted political power. This is why in the context of eighteenthcentury poetics the epic imaginary emerges out of discussion about and play with conventions of literary genre and their relationships to forms of political power.

The Epic Imaginary and Literary History The most extensive contribution to recent scholarship on the verse epic as a literary genre in the eighteenth century is Dieter Martin’s Das deutsche Versepos im 18. Jahrhundert published in 1993. Martin’s study is above all important for its extensive bibliographic catalogue of the German-language verse epics that were planned, remained as fragments, or completed between 1725 and 1800. The bibliography includes the diverse assortment of verse epics appearing during this period: biblical, national, panegyric, fantastical, Alexandriner, Hexameter and Stanzen. Martin’s method of cataloguing the various epics and their features relies on a specific notion of the epic as a stable genre, which defines the epic as a »Handlung erzählende Versdichtung gehobenen Anspruchs und größeren Umfangs.«17 His definition reflects the predominant perception among eighteenth-century literary critics and writers of the epic as a genre narrating a serious subject matter with great significance in a manner which continues to make use of characteristics regarded as »traditional« for the genre: Als Dichtung gehobenen Anspruchs unterscheidet sich das hohe Epos von parodistischen, satirischen, komischen und ähnlichen Varianten der Gattung. Der gehobene Anspruch artikuliert sich explizit durch die ernsthafte Verwendung einer Gattungsbezeichnung in Titel oder Vorrede und implizit durch ein Thema von nationaler, religiöser oder sonstiger Wichtigkeit sowie in der ernsthaften stilistischen Anknüpfung an die Tradition der Gattung durch Übernahme typischer Merkmale (zum Beispiel Prooimion, katalogartige Aufzählungen) [italics Martin].18

During the period dating from the emergence of Bodmer and Gottsched as the leading public literary proponents calling for the writing of a great German-language verse epic around 1725 and continuing to the appearance of the first German-language romantic knight’s epic modeled on Ariost – Wieland’s Idris from 1768 – around 55 epics were either written, or at least begun, if not completed. The majority of these appeared in the 1750s, following the publication of the first songs of Klopstock’s Messias in 1748. At least nine of the epics published in the 1750s are written by Bodmer.19 The period would seem to represent the highpoint of the

17 18 19

Dieter Martin, Das deutsche Versepos im 18. Jahrhundert. Studien und kommentierte Gattungsbiographie, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1993, p. 3. Martin, Das deutsche Versepos, p. 3–4. See Martin’s chronological list: Martin, Das deutsche Versepos, p. 432–434.

7

public debate between Bodmer and Gottsched over the criteria and models for a German-language epic. Wie Bodmer in den vierziger Jahren einen deutschen Milton herbeisehnt, so hofft Gottsched auf den deutschen Vergil. Als der Zürcher im ›Messias‹ die Erfüllung seiner Wünsche erblickt und Gottsched den ›Hermann‹ seines Schülers Schönaich den Deutschen als ihr Musterepos anpreist, wird die Frage des deutschen Heldengedichts zum Gegenstand der letzten Phase des fast nur noch polemisch geführten Literaturstreits.20

Martin’s remarks on the turn to polemics in the literary discussion over the epic genre points to a decisive aspect of the history of the epic genre in the eighteenth century German literary sphere, which can be regarded as a surplus of programmatics in the epic imaginary. By attempting to define and revive inherited traditions of the epic genre, the poetics of the epic emerging out of the controversies between Bodmer and Gottsched ascribe a heavy programmatic weight to the genre which demands that epics exemplify an imaginary stability and univocality of form as the legitimately crowning and legitimizing poetic genre.21 Dieter Martin describes how already in 1768 the Erfurter Professor Friedrich Justus Riedel diagnoses this discrepancy between the theory and praxis of the epic in the mid-eighteenth century. In his Briefe Ueber das Publicum from 1768, and in particular in the »Erzählung eines Chinesers von Deutschland,« Riedel identifies this discrepancy among German-language writers: »[S]ie verstehen alles, was zu einer Epopäe gehöret; aber sie machen keine,« a disproportion that he ascribes to a surplus of theory over praxis: »Überhaupt sind unter den Deutschen mehr Regeln, als Genies, mehr Critik, als Kunst. In Einer Meße standen vor kurzem vier neue Theoristen auf; kein einziger neuer Dichter.«22 Riedel explains this discrepancy as resulting from the epic genre’s lack of legitimate source material in a secular age which questions the status of the supernatural: Vielleicht aber werden die Deutschen ein vollkommenes Heldengedicht nie haben, nie haben können. Weil sie den Begrif der Epopäe aus dem Homer schöpfen, so erfordern sie zu einem solchen Werke allemahl etwas Wunderbares, welches durch die Einwürkung übernatürlicher Kräfte, die sie Maschinen nennen, erhalten wird. Woher nun den Stoff

20

21

22

8

Martin, Das deutsche Versepos im 18. Jahrhundert, p. 24. For more general remarks on the nature of the famous dispute: Jürgen Wilke, »Der deutsch-schweizerische Literaturstreit.« In: Formen und Formgeschichte des Streitens. Der Literaturstreit, ed. by Franz Josef Worstbrock and Helmut Koopmann, Akten des VII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses Göttingen 1985, Kontroversen, alte und neue, ed. by Albrecht Schöne, vol. 2, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1986, p. 140–151. What I am describing as an excess of programmatics in relation to actually written epics is best exemplified by Wieland’s abandoned attempt (between 1757–1759) to emulate Homer with a heroic hexameter epic. Five songs of Cyrus were published in 1759, yet Wieland never completed the fragment. See: Martin, Das deutsche Versepos, p. 185–202. Friedrich Just Riedel, Briefe über das Publikum, ed. by Eckart Feldmeier, Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Wien 1973, p. 97.

des Gedichts und woher die Maschinen? Nicht aus der neuern Zeit; denn Wunderwerke sind nicht mehr Mode und selbst der Dichter hat nicht das Recht, Dinge einzuführen, die dem gemeinen Glauben so sehr entgegen sind. Nicht aus den alten deutschen Geschichten; denn die Wunder dieser Zeiten und die altbardischen Gottheiten kennt das lesende Publicum zu wenig; und eine jede andere Mythologie wäre an diesem Orte unschicklich. Nicht von den Ausländern; selbst nicht aus dem ReligionsSystem der Griechen; denn mit diesem verbindet ein Mann, der den Lucian und Wieland gelesen hat, so viele lächerliche Ideen, daß die griechischen Götter keine ernsthafte Würkung mehr thun können. Das ganze Ding ist für unsere Zeiten zu unwahrscheinlich, als daß es der Dichter in einem großen ernsthaften Werke gebrauchen dürfte. Nicht aus der christlichen Religion; denn diese ist theils nicht sinnlich genug, und theils ist die christliche Mythologie deswegen nicht für den Dichter gemacht, weil dieser Gottheiten bedarf, die schon sattsam charakterisiert sind, wo jede ihre eigenthümlichen Beschaffenheiten und Handlungen hat. Wo ist aber der individuelle charakteristische Unterschied under den Engeln, den der Dichter schon voraussetzen könnte? Soll ihn der Poet erst selbst erschaffen, so muß er allemahl von den Homeren übertroffen werden, deren Mythologie schon ganz fertig vor ihnen lag. Nicht endlich aus der Allegorie; denn die Personen in der Epopäe müßen handeln, und allegorische Wesen als handelnd vorgestellt, mit würklichen Wesen gemischt, sind in einem ernsthaften Werke unerträglich.23

Martin’s summary of Riedel’s arguments about the historically divergent systems of belief, the modern skepticism regarding Greek mythology, and the problems of representation posed by the Christian religion that hinder the successful creation of a modern epic poem reads like a miniature account of the history of the poetics of the epic in eighteenth-century Germany: Die von Gottsched als ›vernünftig‹ bezeichnete Ableitung des Gattungsbegriffs von den antiken Mustern trägt für den der normativen Poetik skeptisch gegenüberstehenden Riedel die wesentliche Schwierigkeit des neuzeitlichen Epikers in sich. Denn integraler Bestandteil von Homers Epen sind selbständig handelnde Gottheiten, die sich charakteristisch voneinander unterscheiden, dem Publikum vertraut sind und von diesem anerkannt werden. Ein Dichter, der sich in aufgeklärter Zeit an ein klassizistisches Epos wagt, hat für Riedel insbesondere mit der Integration der sogenannten ›Maschinen‹, ohne die dem ersten Epos das ihm als essentiell angesehene Wunderbare mangelt, in seinen Gegestand zu kämpfen. Probleme ergeben sich vor allem durch den Glaubwürdigkeitsverlust antiker Gottheiten oder wunderbar-göttlichen Einflusses in der modernen Welt, durch die Unbekanntheit der germanischen Götter sowie durch den Mangel sinnlich darstellbarer Handlung und charakteristischer Unterscheidung bei wunderbaren Wesen aus der ›christlichen Mythologie‹. Ein ›vollkommenes Heldengedicht‹ im Sinne der an der Antike orientierten Gattungspoetik hält Riedel somit im 18. Jahrhundert nicht nur für nicht existent, sondern für nicht realisierbar. Tatsächlich haben jedoch die deutschen Epiker der Zeit – mit mehr oder weniger großer Einsicht in die aufgezeigte Problematik – die Mehrzahl der negierten Möglichkeiten ausgiebig versucht. Riedels Text bietet somit ex negativo einen Überblick in der Gattungsgeschichte beschrittener Wege.24

23 24

Riedel, Briefe über das Publikum, p. 98–99. Martin, Das deutsche Versepos, p. 12–13.

9

Riedel concludes that eighteenth-century authors would be well advised to abandon the project of a German-language epic based on ancient models and making use of mythological or archaic historical material. Riedel argues against the viability of such models in a secular age. He thus participates in a rationalistic Enlightenment discourse that anticipates later philosophies of history which declare the end of the epic and the rise of the novel as the appropriate literary form for a »prosaic age.«25 However, Riedel’s critique of the epic literary ideal partakes in the same literary imaginary that he criticizes, for he too lifts a tremendous programmatic weight onto the history and genre conventions of the epic, even as he excuses contemporary poets for not accomplishing their goal for historical pragmatic reasons. Riedel’s remarks on the viability of the epic genre in a secular age reflect a frustration within the poetics of the second half of the eighteenth century with previous attempts to deliver a German-language national epic, a frustration that is based on certain presuppositions about the ancient model of heroic epic.26 What changes after the mid-century proliferation of heroic epics is the choice of a subject matter that does not narrate heroic warrior stories.27 Martin uncovers a discourse within

25

26

27

10

The most influential diagnosis in this vein from the fields of German literary theory and philosophy is: Georg Lukács, Die Theorie des Romans. Ein geschichtsphilosophischer Versuch über die Formen der großen Epik, DTV, München 1994. Since its appearance in 1920, Lukács’ study has dominated discussions about the differences between the epic and the novel forms in literary history. However, Lukács’ theory is firmly anchored in an epic imaginary that links epic form to stable sources of legitimacy, even if they are understood in a more ontological than political sense, as in his reference to the concept of a »Seinstotalität« which is supposedly lost to the isolated subject in the modern era (30). The notion that the novel is the appropriate literary form for a »prosaic age« finds an early formulation in Hegel’s aesthetics: »Der Roman im modernen Sinne setzt eine bereits zur Prosa geordnete Wirklichkeit voraus, auf deren Boden er sodann in seinem Kreise – sowohl in Rücksicht auf die Lebendigkeit der Begebnisse als auch in betreff der Individuen und ihres Schicksals – der Poesie, soweit es bei dieser Voraussetzung möglich ist, ihr verlorenes Recht wieder erringt.« (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1993, vol. 3, p. 392–393). Martin describes the developmental trajectory of literary interest in the epic genre during the second half of the eighteenth century: »Gegenüber Drama und Roman gerät die epische Gattung ins Abseits des Interesses der literarischen Öffentlichkeit. Die Akzente der folgenden Jahrzehnte setzen die Wandlungen Wielands, dessen allmähliche Ablösung von den Schweizern es im vierten Kapitel zu verfolgen gilt, und seine Hinwendung zu Ariost, die die gemischte Gattung der romantischen Heldengedichte in Deutschland einführt. Mit der zunehmenden Orientierung an der griechischen Antike und dem Aufkommen des Originalitätsgedankens wird unterdessen für die heroische Epik, die neben der Ritterepik stets weiter existiert, Homer zum zentralen Vorbild. Am Ende des Jahrhunderts schließlich verleiht Goethe der Entwicklung des deutschen Epos nochmals Gewicht, indem er die noch immer bestehende Herausforderung, sich in der tradtionell höchsten Gattung mit deren erstem Dichter zu messen, annimmt« (Martin, Das deutsche Versepos, 25). See also: Anselm Maler, Der Held im Salon. Zum antiheroischen Programm deutscher Rokoko-Epik, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1974.

the literary history of the epic genre articulated as early as 1724 that rejects panegyric heroic epics. Berthold Heinrich Brockes, who had declined Bodmer’s invitation to write an epic in 1723, composed a poem with the title »Helden-Gedichte,« in which he criticizes any poetic celebration of the destruction of war for serving as an accomplice to bellicose politics: 11. Aus solchem frechen Blut-Vergiessen Soll dem nun, der die Mörder hält, Ein Kranz von Palm- und Lorbern spriessen? O Zeit! o Sitten dieser Welt! 12. Wird – – wohl mit Recht erhoben, Der Teutschland zu verheeren sucht? Sollt’ ich an Alexandern loben, Was man am Attila verflucht?28

Martin interprets Brockes’ rejection of war’s inhumanity as an articulation of an enlightened humanist poetic agenda: Das Gedicht kennzeichnet damit zu Beginn der untersuchten Epoche die Problematik heroischer Epik in aufgeklärter Zeit. Der kriegerische und tötende Heros, der in der Antike und damit traditionell im Zentrum eines Heldengedichts steht, wird den fortschrittlicher denkenden Kräften des 18. Jahrhunderts zunehmend suspekt, indem er human [my italics, C. P.] geprägten Vorstellungen widerspricht.29

The desire to experiment with the epic form for the purpose of creating an epic narrative celebrating the »humanity« of communities resonates in Klopstock’s Messias and the experiments with poetic language underlying its hexameter verse (as I elaborate in Chapter 2), as well as in Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea (Chapter 3) and Wieland’s Oberon (Chapter 4). The »humanist« agenda appears implicitly and explicitly in the poetics arising out of the competition between Bodmer and Gottsched.30 Although this strand of the epic imaginary shifts the focus from the positive representation of heroic acts of violence which found communities to the narration of alternative communal ties – rooted in notions of love, justice, or right – it nonetheless implies new, yet no less onerous, burdens of legitimacy. If a legiti-

28

29 30

Barthold Heinrich Brockes, Auszug der vornehmsten Gedichte aus dem Irdischen Vergnügen in Gott, reprint of the edition of 1738, afterword by Dietrich Bode, J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1965, p. 551–558. Martin, Das deutsche Versepos, p. 22. See in particular my discussion of Blankenburg’s theory of the epic and novel in Chapter 1 for a discussion of »the new hero.« On this problem of the poetics of the epic as a reflection of the tension between nationality and cosmopolitanism at the end of the eighteenth century, see: Conrad Wiedemann, »Zwischen Nationalgeist und Kosmopolitismus. Über die Schwierigkeit der deutschen Klassiker, einen Nationalhelden zu finden.« In: Patriotism, ed. by Günter Birtsch, Meiner, Hamburg 1991, p. 75–101.

11

mate epic consisted before in the successful representation of the heroic acts which found an aristocratic or national community, then an epic can now be regarded as legitimate when it successfully represents the universally human underlying historical community formations. Uniting proponents and critics of the poetic call for a revival of the epic, as well as philosophers of history, is precisely the imagination of an epic genre that legitimately legitimizes communities. Although lengthy chapters are dedicated to analysis of Klopstock’s Messias and Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea, Martin’s study is less concerned with the relationships between poetic and political legitimacy which constitute the focus of my study. Martin’s study concentrates instead on the aspects of eighteenth-century epics that fascinated erudite literary critics but precluded wider public reception: »Das Epos bleibt […] zugespitzt formuliert ein Werk gebildeter Literaten für ein gebildetes Publikum, das Zitate, Anspielungen und gattungstypische Stilmerkmale erkennt.«31 The value of Martin’s contribution to research on the epic lies not only in the compilation of an exhaustive bibliography of eighteenth-century epics, but also in the descriptions of the intertextual references, allusions, and stylistic traits within the individual epics he analyzes.

Epic and Political Poetics Heiko Christians’ Der Traum vom Epos, on the other hand, offers a recent study that explicitly addresses relationships between reflections on the epic genre and notions of political communities from the eighteenth century to contemporary German-language literature. It does so by looking at the idealization of the epic genre against the backdrop of the factual rise of the novel as a dominant literary form of story-telling. Christians’ study analyzes the semantics that have been articulated as normative distinctions drawn between the epic and the novel, primarily the association of »(political) community« and great poetry with the epic, and the »(social) individual« and entertainment with the novel.32 The novel as a form of circulation, with the individual reader typifying the novel’s mode of reception, creates the sociological basis for reflections on the differences between the epic and the novel in the eighteenth century. The emergence of an individualized mode of reading has major implications for processes of identification and the imagination of community.33 An increased reading tempo accompanies an excess of communication and

31 32 33

12

Martin, Das deutsche Versepos, p. 24. Heiko Christians, Der Traum vom Epos. Romankritik und politische Poetik in Deutschland (1750–2000), Rombach Verlag, Freiburg 2004, p. 18–19. Christians describes this central problem of »Gattungssoziologie« as requiring an intertwinement of media history and systems theory: »Epos und Roman sind nicht nur soziologisch, sondern vor allem mediengeschichtlich zu unterscheidende Konzeptualisierungen von Wirklichkeit, welche wiederum immer stärker als eine in unaufhebbaren

spawns a desire to re-integrate the isolated reader bombarded by information within a greater community; however, the (epic) community is only imaginable from a perspective arising out of the novel’s conditions of reception: Die Einzellektüren werden in hohem Tempo ausgeführt und können wahllos aufeinander folgen. Damit trainieren und erzeugen sie erst jenes individuelle Imaginationspotential, das ein modernes Eposprogramm, das die ›Alten‹ adressiert, aus dieser sehr irdischen Konkurrenz zur Vorstellung einer eigenen verbindlichen, umfassenden (konnektiven) Lektüre zurücktransformieren möchte.34

According to Christians, the poetics of the epic emerges as an idealized literary agenda invested with the promise of performing the work of community formation for a society constituted by individual readers who have developed both a faculty of the imagination and a desire for forms of community: »Das Epos-Programm wird an diesem kritischen Punkt als Chance genutzt, den sich pluralisierenden imaginären Communitäten eine erneute Verbindlichkeit zu verleihen.«35 The medial expression of this type of a »program of the epic« is an »empfindsame Kommunikation,«36 a poetics of the imagination which explores modes of literary communication that seek to produce a functional medial immediacy (a type of collective experience of the text) despite the physical absence of communication partners.37

34 35 36

37

gesellschaftlichen Widersprüchen verfangene Klassenwirklichkeit in Betracht kommt. Gattungssoziologie ist deshalb nicht mehr nur Gruppensoziologie und die Analyse der basalen Materialitäten hat sich bis in die Philologien verschoben. Wie die ›doppelte Funktion einer Gattung – einerseits im symbolischen und andererseits im sozialen System‹ – neu zu bestimmen ist, bleibt die Aufgabenstellung« (Christians, Der Traum vom Epos, p. 55). As to the question of the interactions between literary myths and political effects as processes of identification: »Wie aber darf und kann eine ›Identifi kation‹ wiederum nur wirken? Ist sie politischer Ansporn zu kriegerischen Taten oder ›bloße‹ Unterhaltung ohne unmittelbare Haftung in der (vermuteten) politischen Wirklichkeit? Die Frage, ob das Kollektiv einer Sippe, eines Volkes oder eines Staates, das, was es zu sein bemüht ist, allererst den Texten, die diese soziologischen Fiktionen begründen und weiterreichen, entnimmt, oder ob Texte, mit denen es in Verbindung gebracht wird und werden möchte, nur (noch) seine Strukturen nachzeichnen, ist in allen damit befaßten Fächern umstritten und läuft schließlich auf die (pauschale und weitgehend ungeklärte) Frage nach dem Status und der Wirkungsweise der Texte in kleinen und großen, alten und modernen Gesellschaften hinaus« (59). Christians, Der Traum vom Epos, p. 73. Christians, Der Traum vom Epos, p. 74. Christians, Der Traum vom Epos, p. 78. Christians warns, however, that an exclusive focus on questions of reception neglects the political agenda accompanying such transformations in media: »Die empfindsame Lektüre läßt Gattungsgrenzen im Zeichen von Gefühl, Tränen und Visualisierungen verschwinden und entschärft so den politischprogrammatischen Gemeinschaftsbegriff« (79). On the problem of the absence constitutive of literary communication and the poetics of the imagination in the eighteenth century, see: Albrecht Koschorke, Körperströme und Schriftverkehr. Mediologie des 18. Jahrhunderts, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 2003, p. 263–321. Issues of literary reception and the potential effects of literary language

13

Whereas Martin’s focus on the literary history of experiments with the epic genre in the eighteenth century is based on formal criteria that define the genre yet bracket epic’s political functions, Christians’ focus on the political poetics of the distinction between the epic and the novel subsumes the intricacies of the poetic discourse and the complexity of the attempted experiments with the genre under the reigning semantics of an idealized epic distinguished from the novel in modernity. Where Christians’ study explores both the implicit and explicit political semantics of the epic imaginary, Martin’s study differentiates the wealth of experiments with epic form and content during the eighteenth century. By replicating the notion of a »Wiederbelebung des Epos im 18. Jahrhundert,«38 both studies, however, neglect the production of a new type of epic in the second half of the eighteenth century that articulates the de-legitimating power of the epic imaginary in relation to the communities narrated. The epic imaginary that is formed by the texts analyzed in my study inhabits a constellation consisting of four nodal points of sources of legitimacy and their unraveling. I separate these four points here for the sake of clarity, yet they are in fact constantly overlapping and forming new constellations. 1) Tensions between the universal and the particular appear at a number of junctures in the eighteenth-century epic imaginary. For one, the construction or representation of nationality seeks to identify the distinguishing features of a particular collective, whether this collective is understood along the lines of ethnicity, language, territory, customs, or forms of political organization.39 The desire for a national epic in this sense seeks to mobilize conventions and possibilities of literary narrative to articulate a semantics of a German nation.40 This patriotic moment of the epic imaginary contrasts with its cosmopolitan moments, which seek to narrate border crossings, intercultural encounters, and shared political histories or religious myths.41 Rather than emphasize the differences between a perceived German iden-

38

39

40

41

14

play most prominently a role in my chapter on Klopstock, who ambitiously explores the possibilities of an »empfindsame Kommunikation« through epic prosody. The phrase is the title of Heinrich Maiworm’s dissertation from 1949, which is one of the pillars of research into the epic genre within German literary studies (Heinrich Maiworm, Die Wiederbelebung des Epos im 18. Jahrhundert, dissertation, Tübingen 1949). Reinhart Koselleck, »Einleitung: Volk-Nation-Nationalismus-Masse.« In: Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, vol. 7, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1992, p. 142–151. Hans-Martin Blitz describes the »Janusköpfigkeit« of the semantics of the German nation within the eighteenth-century German literary public sphere, which displays a »Bandbreite des Vaterlandsdiskurses zwischen bürgerlicher Despotismuskritik und exklusiven Machtansprüchen, zwischen theoretisch beschworenem, friedlichem Gemeinsinn und literarischen Phantasien gewaltsamer Abgrenzung nach außen.« (Hans-Martin Blitz, Aus Liebe zum Vaterland. Die deutsche Nation im 18. Jahrhundert, Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2000, p. 17). That the discourse of cosmopolitanism in Germany during the eighteenth century is a »grundsätzlich pluralistisches Modell unterschiedlicher Kosmopolitismen« is convinc-

tity in contrast to other nationalities, in either a patriotic or cosmopolitan mode, the epic imaginary at times claims to narrate a story of humanity or universality.42 Whereas the patriotic and cosmopolitan impulses can overlap at certain junctures, movement toward a universal narrative has to establish a high degree of distance to its national agendas and inevitably particular point of enunciation. 2) Epic and Romance are terms from literary-history and genre criticism that designate different literary approaches to narrative trajectory and subject matter within the history of verse narrative.43 Epic names the teleological narration of lofty myths of a community’s genealogy in the tradition of Homer and Virgil, while romance is associated with circular stories of the contingent wanderings of (anti-)heroes. If the teleologies of epic narrative aim to establish an ineluctable foundational narrative of community, romance narrates the contingency of such communal formations and thus questions the teleology or universality of epic narratives. 3) The practice of comparison, according to Niklas Luhmann, generates a semantics of culture44 at the same time that it de-ontologizes existing forms and institutions by creating similarities and continuities and revealing in these very acts of comparison that the entities ascribed to »culture« are »contingent.«45 The con-

42

43

44

45

ingly argued in: Andrea Albrecht, Kosmopolitismus. Weltbürgerdiskurse in Literatur, Philosophie und Publizistik um 1800, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 2005, p. 10. Albrecht shows how claims to universality were uttered under the banner of cosmopolitanism already in the first half of the eighteenth century: »Universalisierbarkeit wird zu einem allgemeinen Legitimationskriterium für theoretische Konzepte und Programme jedweder Provenienz« (Albrecht, Kosmopolitismus, p. 31). These are, of course, the two dominant terms of Quint’s study. As a contrast to the epic defined as a unified heroic verse narrative modeled on ancient prototypes, the term romance includes medieval and renaissance genres such as the Ritterepik, or the comic epic, which is sometimes used to refer to Wieland’s epics influenced by Ariost: Heinrich Maiworm, Neue deutsche Epik, Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1968, p. 56–58, p. 104– 113; Hans Fromm, »Epos«. In: Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft, ed. by Klaus Weimar, vol. 1, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 31997, p. 480–484. Romance occupies a unique position between the conventions of epic and the novel. For an analysis of some features of romance narrative, see: Florian Gelzer, Konversation, Galanterie und Abenteuer. Romaneskes Erzählen zwischen Thomasius und Wieland, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2007. »Vergleiche forcieren die Gleichheit des Verschiedenen und die Verschiedenheit des Gleichen und genieren damit, als Medium der dafür in Betracht gezogenen Formen, Kultur. Kultur bietet damit immer auch die Möglichkeit, sich aus der Position des Verschiedenseins gegen das Gleichsein zu wehren.« (Niklas Luhmann, »Religion als Kultur.« In: Das Europa der Religionen. Ein Kontinent zwischen Säkularisierung und Fundamentalismus, ed. by Otto Kallscheuer, Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1996, p. 291–315, here, p. 306). »Kultur ist nach all dem ein Doppel, sie dupliziert alles, was ist. Daher formuliert sie ein Problem der ›Identität‹, das sie für sich nicht lösen kann – und eben deshalb problematisiert. Nach wie vor kann man mit einem Messer schneiden, kann man zu Gott beten, zur See fahren, Verträge schließen oder Gegenstände verzieren. Aber außerdem läßt sich all

15

struction of national identity requires acts of comparison to arrive at descriptions of wholeness (of one’s own as well as other nationalities) that pick apart, observe, and re-assemble practices into groups coded as the durable national characteristics of a regional identity.46 The patriotic discourse of literary critics in Germany demanding the advent of a particularly German epic thus undercuts, in the act of comparing different national canons of literature, the very univocality that such critics are hoping to gain from a national epic as a source of legitimacy. Furthermore, the compilation of characteristics of national culture can also generate parody as a form of second-order observation, as in Wieland’s romance epics and journal publications. 4) The epic imaginary raises questions about the relationships between myth, fiction, and literature. It is possible to regard myth, as Northrop Frye does, as a structural element of literature containing inherited story-patterns. These abstract patterns evoke a sense of tradition that is only literary, for this tradition does not claim to be based on empirical fact, but merely draws on »story-telling devices.«47 The chiasmatic relationship between the literary world of mythology and the mythic structures of literature can result in »the obliterating of boundaries separating legend, historical reminiscence, and actual history that we find in Homer and the Old Testament.«48 The flipside of myth’s blurring of history and fiction in the devices of literature is the articulation in myth of a »discrepancy between the world man

46

47

48

16

das ein zweites mal beobachten und beschreiben, wenn man es als kulturelles Phänomen erfaßt und Vergleichen aussetzt. Kultur ermöglicht die Dekomposition aller Phänomene mit offenen Rekompositionshorizonten. Aber das hat Folgen, die über den Einzelfall hinausreichen. Was einmal dekomponiert und rekomponiert wurde, kann immer wieder dekomponiert werden.« (Niklas Luhmann, »Kultur als historischer Begriff.« In: Luhmann, Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik: Studien zur Wissenssoziologie der modernen Gesellschaft, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1999, p. 31–54, here: p. 41–42). Luhmann regards the prominence of concepts of culture and nation as interdependently arising phenomena of second-order observation in the eighteenth century: »Kultur [ist] in diesem Sinne ein Begriff, der überhaupt erst im 18. Jahrhundert entsteht und sich von da aus universalisiert. Kultur ist, so gefaßt, ein Weltprojekt, das sowohl Geschichte als auch regionale (›nationale‹) Unterschiede als Vergleichsmaterial einbezieht. Mit dem Begriff der Kultur wird der Begriff der Nation aufgewertet, ja in seiner modernen Emphase überhaupt erst erzeugt.« (Luhmann, »Kultur als historischer Begriff«, p. 41). Frye defines myth as »a story in which some of the chief characters are gods or other beings larger in power than humanity. Very seldom is it located in history: its action takes place in a world above or prior to ordinary time […] it is an abstract story-pattern […] there is no need to be plausible or logical in motivation. The things that happen in myth are things that happen only in stories; they are in a self-contained literary world. Hence myth would naturally have the same kind of appeal for the fiction writer that folk tales have. It presents him with a ready-made framework, hoary with antiquity, and allows him to devote all his energies to elaborating its design.« (Northrop Frye, Fables of Identity. Studies in Poetic Mythology, Harcourt, Brace & Worl, New York and Burlingame 1963, p. 30–31). Frye, Fables of Identity, p. 31.

lives in and the world he would like to live in,« which »separates reality into two contrasting states, a heaven and a hell.« 49 These contrasting spatio-temporalities within the complex structural interrelations of myth and literature studied by Frye can also be cast as the semiological problem of the »Woher« and the »Wohin« of literary or mythic narratives.50 In terms of the epic imaginary, we are dealing with the question of whether myths narrate the legendary origin of a community or whether fictions have the power to unite by narrating a future collective destiny. Pursued more radically, the question of the »Wohin« of narrative might even lead to literary attempts to construct the very community being narrated by delving into the immediate performative power of poetic language, as we find in Klopstock’s prosody. Warning against the dangers of conflating myth and literature, Frank Kermode argues that the difference between them lies precisely in an awareness of fiction’s status as fiction: »fictions can degenerate into myths whenever they are not consciously held to be fictive.«51 Fiction would then be literature so long as it retains an awareness of its own fictionality, as well as of the incompleteness of the communities formed by myths.52 The epic imaginary operates along these poles of

49 50

51

52

Frye, Fables of Identity, p. 32. See Bernd Fischer’s important study the role of philosophy and literature in the construction of national identity in eighteenth-century Germany: B. Fischer, Das Eigene und das Eigentliche: Klopstock, Herder, Fichte, Kleist. Episoden aus der Konstruktionsgeschichte nationaler Intentionalitäten, Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1995. Fischer aligns the question of the »Wohin« and »Woher« of national identity with strategies of legitimacy that either refer to the common origin of a nation or the future realization of the individual’s potential within a republic (16). While I analyze the epic imaginary as defined by these two directionalities, I do not distinguish them according to the strict dichotomy of community vs. individual. Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending. Studies in the Theory of Fiction, Oxford University Press, New York 1967, p. 39. Frye also considers belief to be an important catalyst of myth, although he sees a continuity between the loss of belief and the persistence of myth in literature in the literary nature of myths themselves: »When a system of myths loses all connexion with belief, it becomes purely literary, as classical myth did in Christian Europe. Such a development would be impossible unless myths were inherently literary in structure.« (Frye, Fables of Identity, p. 32). Kermode says of the difference between fiction and myth: »Fictions are for finding things out, and they change as the needs of sense-making change. Myths are the agents of stability, fictions the agents of change. Myths call for absolute, fictions for conditional assent« (Kermode, The Sense of an Ending, p. 39). And of literary fictions: »They are not myths, and they are not hypotheses; you neither rearrange the world to suit them, nor test them by experiment, for instance in gas-chambers« (41). Kermode’s arguments resemble those of Jean-Luc Nancy, whose remarks on community and fiction I take up in the context of my analysis of Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea. Reflecting on the relationship of myth and fiction, Nancy concludes that all community is a myth: »myth represents multiple existences as immanent to its own unique fiction, which gathers them together and gives them their common figure in its speech and as its speech,« and furthermore that, »myth and myth’s force and foundation are essential to community and that there can be, therefore, no community outside of myth.« (Jean-Luc Nancy, The

17

myth and literature to explore the limitations as well as possibilities of both myth and literature in political life.53 These four nodal points of the eighteenth-century epic imaginary make up the core issues elaborated in the texts under consideration in this study. The incredible capacity of literary form to articulate the complexity of such issues for a poetics of community attests to the ambivalent power of these innovations in Enlightenment epic, yet not necessarily in the ways imagined by contemporary authorities or the authors of these texts themselves.

53

18

Inoperative Community, ed. by Peter Connor, trans. by Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus, Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1991, p. 57) Nancy prizes the incompleteness of literature that he believes interrupts myth (63). Once it is functionalized as the epic imaginary of eighteenth-century poetics, the problem of the »Wohin« and »Woher« of epic myth gets reformulated according to the referential logics of the »Hin« and »Her« of literary fiction, whose operation Iser describes: »[Es] entsteht ein Hin und Her zwischen dem, was in den Text eingegangen ist, und der Referenzrealität, aus der es herausgebrochen wurde. Ähnliches gilt für das vom Fiktiven zur Gegenwendigkeit entfaltete Imaginäre, das sich als Durchstreichen und Hervorbringen, Entgrenzen und Kombinieren sowie als Irrealiseren und Vorstellen entwickelt, wodurch die Referenzrealitäten des Textes in das daraus entspringende Hin und Her hineingezogen werden. Diese Spielbewegung ist weder dialektisch, noch verläuft sie teleologisch, und sie läßt sich auch nicht in dem verankern, was durch sie ins Spiel gebracht worden ist.« (Iser, Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre, p. 406).

1.

The Epic Genre and the Question of Legitimacy in Eighteenth-Century Poetics

In this chapter, I present theories of the epic genre in eighteenth-century poetic treatises by Gottsched, Breitinger, Blankenburg, Merck, and Herder. As I adumbrated in the introduction, and show in greater detail below, eighteenth-century poetics imputes a great programmatic importance to the epic genre. The epic is treated as a genre with political significance due to its function as a poetic narrative of foundational myths, and hence as supplying legitimations of political power as well as narrating stories of collective identity. While interlocutors within the field of poetics discuss the importance of the epic genre for questions of rulership and collective identity, they also seek to situate the epic among hierarchies of genre, canons of literary history, and modes of poetic representation. Their focus on the poetic aspects of the epic genre seeks to establish their own status as a specialized intellectual elite capable of analyzing their subject matter at the same time that this focus on poetics legitimizes literature, as exemplified by the assumed preeminence of the epic genre,1 as a form of representation that supplements political power in precisely those moments that it unleashes a potential to accomplish more than merely to narrate the history of particular rulers or nations.

Legitimations I: Gottsched In Chapter 19 of his Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst from 1730, Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700–1766) undertakes a systematic treatment of the epic genre. Reflecting his own interchangeable use of the terms for epic, the chapter bears the title »Von der Epopee oder dem Heldengedichte,« a genre which he pronounces to be »das rechte Hauptwerk und Meisterstück der ganzen Poesie.«2 The fact that the epic is such an important literary monument is proportionate to the few examples

1

2

The epic genre is treated as exemplary of great poetry in two seminal eighteenth-century theories of poetics and aesthetics: Lessing’s Laokoon (1766) and Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790). Lessing’s Laokoon proclaims laws about the differences between poetry and painting based on an example from Virgil’s Aeneid, and his usage of the term and examples from the epic genre functions as a trope for all literature. In section 47 of Kant’s third Kritik, Homer and Wieland, an ancient and a modern epic poet, are cited as two examplars of poetic genius in contrast to the scientific brilliance of Newton. Johann Christoph Gottsched, Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst, reprint of the edition

19

of successful epics in Greek, Latin, Italian, French, English and German literary traditions (279). At the start of Gottsched’s analysis of the epic genre we find several acts of legitimation at work. Homer ist also der Vater und der erste Erfinder dieses Gedichtes, und folglich ein recht großer Geist, ein Mann, von besonderer Fähigkeit gewesen. Seine Ilias und Odyssee haben sich nicht nur den Beyfall von ganz Griechenland, sondern auch die Hochachtung und Bewunderung des tiefsinnigsten unter allen Weltweisen, Aristoteles, erworben. Dieses letztere ist bey mir von weit großerm Gewichte, als das erste: denn das scharfsichtige critische Auge eines Kunstverständigen sieht auf das innerste Wesen einer Sache; da hergegen der unverständige Pöbel, die Helden, Gesetzgeber und Prinzen, ja auch die Menge der Halbgelehrten dergleichen Werk nur obenhin ansieht, und weder alle Schönheiten, noch alle Fehler desselben wahrzunehmen, im Stande ist. (279–280)

Gottsched’s argument honors Homer as the »Vater und der erste Erfinder« of the epic genre; the argumentation thus evokes and simultaneously inaugurates a poetic genealogy traceable back to a founding father. By insisting on Homer’s authority in the opening section of the chapter, he lauds Homeric epic as the exemplar of the criteria for what constitutes successful epic poetry. The reference to Aristotle as the perceptive critic who was capable of appreciating the greatness of Homer’s epic poetry, furthermore, establishes a tradition of literary criticism whose disciplined eye perceives »das innerste Wesen einer Sache,« its beauty and blemishes, in ways that »der unverständige Pöbel, die Helden, Gesetzgeber und Prinzen« cannot. Gottsched legitimizes here his own project by linking it to the achievements of Aristotle as an analyst of epic poetry, which furthermore grants the shared domain of poetry and critical poetics a privileged position with its own integrity and necessity and distinct from the larger populace, epic heroes, and lawgivers. Epic’s source of legitimacy is to be found, according to Gottsched, in the nature of the »epische Fabeln, die unter den Allegorien einer Handlung moralische Wahrheiten lehren,« which is the dimension of moral didacticism that sets epic poetry apart from mere history writing (289). Great epics communicate a moral truth that is instructive for the political well-being of at least an entire nation (»Volk«). In Gottsched’s own words: Ein Heldengedicht überhaupt beschreibt man: Es sey die poetische Nachahmung einer berühmten Handlung, die so wichtig ist, daß sie ein ganzes Volk, ja wo möglich, mehr als eins angeht. Diese Nachahmung geschieht in einer wohlklingenden poetischen Schreibart, darinn der Verfasser theils selbst erzählet, was vorgegangen; theils aber seine Helden, so oft es sich thun läßt, selbst redend einführet. Und die Absicht dieser ganzen Nachahmung ist die sinnliche Vorstellung einer wichtigen moralischen Wahrheit, die aus der ganzen Fabel auch mittelmäßigen Lesern in die Augen leuchtet. (292)

of 1751, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 51962, p. 279. Cited hereafter parenthetically.

20

The representation of an important moral truth by means of poetic style and voice is what distinguishes epic narrative from mere chronicles of the greet deeds of heroes and rulers. Although Gottsched does not discuss the epic in terms of myth, the fable of an epic is the kernel of moral truth that could be understood as the link between mythic deeds and political present, and the epic poem is the narrative construction of these mythic plots. Gottsched identifies, for instance, a clear fable in Homer’s Iliad: »Uneinigkeit sey sehr schädlich.« Speaking hypothetically as if it were one’s goal to teach this fable to an audience, Gottsched concludes that Homer deftly executes this task in the form of an epic poem: Z. E. Ich wollte lehren, die Uneinigkeit sey sehr schädlich. Dieses auszuführen, dichte ich, daß etliche Personen sich mit einander verbunden gehabt, ein gemeinschaftliches Gut zu suchen; wegen einer vorgefallenen Mishälligkeit aber hätten sie sich getrennet, und hätten sich also ihrem Feinde selbst in die Hände geliefert, der sie einzeln gar leichtlich zu Grunde zu richten vermocht. Dieses ist die allgemeine Fabel, die der Natur nachahmet, allegorisch ist, und eine moralische Wahrheit in sich schließt. Homer, der ein Heldengedichte daraus zu machen willens war, that nichts mehr dabey, als daß er den Personen Namen gab, und zwar solche, die in Griechenland berühmt waren, und das ganze Land aufmerksam machen konnten. Denn er wollte nicht, wie ein Philosoph, in der Schule, von Tugenden und Lastern predigen; sondern seinem ganzen Vaterlande, allen seinen Mitbürgern, ein nützliches Buch in die Hände geben, daraus sie die Kunst lernen könnten, ihre gemeinschaftliche Wohlfahrt zu befördern. Die kleinen griechischen Staaten waren sehr uneins; und das rieb sie auf. Die nackte Wahrheit dorfte er ihnen nicht sagen; darum verkleidet er sie in eine Fabel. (292–293)

According to this description, the fable’s truth operates as a hypothetical which does not tell the story of how the ancient Greeks achieved political unity, but of how the existing fragmented city-states of Homer’s time should work together at forging a common political bond that would enable them to fend off potential enemies. Less important is the historical veracity of story and actors as is the moral truth and its communication to a contemporary audience. The mythical element adorns the moral truth with the prestige of legend. The heroes’ status as legends is less constituted by epic story-telling as it is used by epic story-telling to teach an important lesson about moral truth. Or at least the relationship between the heroic legends and politically relevant moral truth can be understood as constituted by a circuit in which the heroes make the truth more appealing and familiar at the same time that the practical truth of the fable justifies the inclusion of these heroes and their deeds within the archive of present memory. In order for the moral truth to become didactic for the audience, the narrative has to represent a chain of cause and effect explaining how and why the rift between Agamemnon and Achilles was harmful for the Greeks. The fable is only »complete« once it is narrated in an understandable and probable way: »Er mußte uns auch die Ursachen der Uneinigkeit, und die Ursachen der erfolgten Aussöhnung, auf eine verständliche und wahrscheinliche Art entdecken, und also

21

seine Fabel vollständig machen« (294). Gottsched echoes Aristotle’s definition of a complete plot as consisting of a beginning, middle, and end.3 Gottsched’s explanation for why Virgil in some ways surpasses Homer in the art of epic poetry indicates his conception of the relationship between poetic (which for Gottsched is also always moral) truth and political rulership. [Virgils] Absicht mochte wohl gewesen seyn, dem Augustus, als dem Stifter eines neuen Reichs, die Eigenschaften eines großen Helden und Regenten vorzubilden, und dadurch die grausame Gemüthsart ein wenig zu dämpfen, die der Kaiser in seinen ersten Jahren spüren ließ. Er nimmt also die gemeine Sage der Römer für bekannt an, daß Aeneas nach Italien gekommen sey, und bauet seine ganze Fabel darauf. Diesen konnte er nunmehr als den Stifter der römischen Monarchie vorstellig machen, und ihn so abschildern, wie er selbst wollte, damit er nur seine moralische Wahrheit dadurch ausführen könnte: Ein Stifter neuer Reiche müsse gottesfürchtig, tugendhaft, sanftmüthig, standhaft und tapfer seyn [italics Gottsched]. So hat er uns nun seinen Aeneas auf der See, in Sicilien, Africa und in Italien abgebildet. Er ist überall ein frommer und gnädiger; aber dabey unerschrokkener Held. Turnus ist gegen ihn ein trotziger Starrkopf; Mezentius aber ein gottloser ehrvergessener Bösewicht zu nennen. Will man also die Aeneis ein Lobgedicht des Aeneas nennen, so war es doch nur ein erdichteter Aeneas, der mehr zeigte, wie ein Regent seyn soll; als wie einer wirklich gewesen war: und dadurch wird seine Fabel moralisch und lehrreich; weil Augustus und alle übrige Großen der Welt ihre Pflichten daraus abnehmen konnten [my italics, C. P.]. (284)

Gottsched regards the Aeneid as serving a political function by presenting an exemplary regent upon which the Emperor Augustus could model himself. By constructing a mythological genealogy from Aeneas to Augustus, the poem both legitimates the Roman monarchy by narrating the (fictive) origin of its (fictive) legacy and challenges Augustus to rule in accordance with this legacy. Virgil’s Aeneas might be »fictive« (erdichtet), but he thus acquires the status of an allegorical figure of a virtuous ruler. The epic poet Virgil does not simply invent a literary Aeneas to celebrate the Roman emperor, but rather to articulate a moral truth about the duties of a sovereign to be »gottesfürchtig, tugendhaft, sanftmüthig, standhaft und tapfer,« which then functions as an injunction for current and future rulers to rule this way. The Aeneid follows the same principle of construction as that of Homer’s epics: The fable is based on an already existent and famous legend, in this case, that Aeneis arrived in Italy; this legend is then used to construct a story about the founding of the Roman monarchy which is narrated to convey certain truths about the proper ethos of all great founders of empires. The entry for »Heldengedichte oder Epopee« in Johann Heinrich Zedler’s Grosses vollständiges Universallexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste from 1735

3

22

On Gottsched’s reception of Aristotle, and ancient rhetoric and poetics, see: Uwe Möller, Rhetorische Überlieferung und Dichtungstheorie im frühen 18. Jahrhundert. Studien zu Gottsched, Breitinger und G.Fr. Meier, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 1983; Thorsten Unger, Handeln im Drama. Theorie und Praxis bei J.Chr. Gottsched und J. M. R. Lenz, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1993.

cites Gottsched’s definition of the epic as »eine Nachahmung einer berühmten Handlung, die so wichtig ist, daß sie ein ganzes Volck, ja wo möglich mehr als eines angeht.«4 Summarizing Gottsched’s arguments in the Versuch einer critischen Dichtkunst, the Zedler’s article adds: Es kann aber auch so beschrieben werden, daß es sey ein poetischer Vortrag, in welchem unter einer Fabel, von der Handlung eines Helden, der moralische Satz, daß die Tugend alle Mahl ihren Endzweck zu erreichen vermag, ungeachtet ihr das Glücke allerhand Hindernisse verursachet, vorgestellet wird, damit der Leser diejenige Wahrheit, welche ihm ohne Zierrath nicht gefallen würde, nunmehro ergreiffen möge, und also zur Nachahmung der Tugend ermuntert werde.5

The article from Zedler’s emphasizes two aspects of Gottsched’s theory of the epic. Firstly, the moral truth of the fable should be represented by the acts of the protagonists, who moreover accomplish these acts of virtue despite the contingency of various obstacles. This implies that both the moral truth and its representation are not subject to the whims of contingency. Secondly, the aim of an epic poem is to instruct the reader through pleasing narration so that the reader will imitate the virtue contained within the fable and enacted by the heroes. What the article adds to Gottsched’s theory of the epic is stated in the concluding two sentences, where the article expresses doubt about the practicality of an epic program. Nunmehr reden die Dichter die Sprache des Fuchses, vestigia me terrent, indem es doch jeder Zeit leichter ist, ein Helden-Gedicht zu censiren, als selber eins zu machen. Und vielleicht ist es auch besser, daß starcke Geister und sonderlich unsere lieben Teutschen ihren Fleiß und Kräffte auf nöthigere Dinge wenden, als auf ein solches Werck, das vor ein Spielwerck zu viel, und vor eine ernsthaffte Arbeit zu wenig ist.6

The article’s concluding remark suggests that Gottsched’s ruminations impose difficult programmatic requirements upon poets seeking to craft an epic poem; it also questions however the very legitimacy of the genre which is supposed to legitimate political rulership and institute a virtuous readership, for it suggests that the degree of effort is too great in proportion to the importance of the epic as a literary endeavor. The construction of an epic is devalued here as a practical enterprise, because the criteria for successful realization of the genre are too strict.7 However, the article’s skepticism regarding the practical viability of epic poetry in German4 5 6 7

Johann Heinrich Zedler, Grosses Vollständiges Universal-Lexikon, Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt Graz 1961, vol. 12: H–He, p. 1218. Zedler, Universal-Lexikon, p. 1218. Zedler, Universal-Lexikon, p. 1223. The article’s skepticism regarding the practical viability of the epic refers to an aspect of the eighteenth-century epic imaginary, which is the focus of the subsequent chapters devoted to detailed analysis of the individual epic poems by Klopstock, Wieland, Goethe and Brentano, namely, that there is a disjunction between the imaginary of legitimation associated with the epic and the enactment of de-legitimating potential in the actual writing of epics.

23

speaking territories negatively anticipates an aspect of the eighteenth-century epic imaginary that would later be put into practice by Klopstock, Wieland, Goethe, and Brentano, and which allows for and even thrives on greater flexibility and referential play in its practical execution.

Legitimations II: Bodmer and Breitinger Johann Jakob Breitinger’s (1701–1776) Critische Dichtkunst appeared in 1740 with a forward by Johann Jakob Bodmer (1698–1783).8 Its appearance marks a highpoint in a public literary debate between the two Swiss critics and Gottsched about the nature of poetry and the interests of a critical poetics. My point is not to delve into the intricacies of this debate, which is nevertheless remarkable for the development of a poetic discourse in the eighteenth century;9 may aim is instead to reconstruct their contribution to what I am calling the epic imaginary. For like Gottsched, they confer a great status to the epic within their system of literary genres. In contrast to both Gottsched and Lessing, for whom the epic would ultimately take second place to drama, their theories of literature derived from a concentrated engagement with the epic genre, and in particular from their celebration of Milton’s Paradise Lost as exemplifying the two related concepts of »das Wunderbare« and »das Mögliche« in literature. This emphasis on »das Wunderbare« shifts the locus of epic’s source of legitimacy. The concept of the fable occupies a central place in Breitinger’s poetics. However, he attributes different features to the fable than are to be found in Gottsched’s definition of the fable as merely containing a didactic moral truth: »[D]ie Fabel [sey] ein lehrreiches Wunderbare, oder eine unter der wohlgerathenen Allegorie einer ähnlichen Handlung verkleidete Lehre und Unterweisung« (I, 194). An epic poem and a fable differ merely in length: Denn gleichwie das Helden-Gedicht eine prächtige und ausführliche Fabel ist, so ist hergegen, wie La Motte mit Grund angemercket hat, die Fabel ein kleines und ins Kurze gefaßtes episches Gedichte. Beyde gehören unter ein Geschlecht und haben ein gleiches Wesen, die oben gegebene Erklärung der Fabel [sie sey ein lehrreiches Wunderbare] schliesset darum auch beyde ein. In beyden muß die Handlung, die erzehlet wird, nur einfach seyn, und eine Haupt-Lehre zur Absicht haben. (I, 195–196)

8

9

24

Johann Jakob Breitinger, Critische Dichtkunst, reprint of the edition of 1740, 2 vols, J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1966. Hereafter cited parenthetically according to book and page number. A fascinating account of the pragmatics of the »critical communication« formed out of the debates between Gottsched and Bodmer (and Breitinger) is provided in detail by: Steffen Martus, Werkpolitik. Zur Literaturgeschichte kritischer Kommunikation vom 17. bis ins 20. Jahrhundert mit Studien zu Klopstock, Tieck, Goethe und George, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 2007, p. 113–168.

The didactic truth of a fable, according to Bodmer and Breitinger, is not reducible to the plausibility of a narrative. Drawing on Leibniz’s metaphysics of possible worlds,10 Bodmer and Breitinger make a distinction between »die sichtbare und die unsichtbare Welt« (I, 54): the former is the corporeal, sensory realm of human experience, »was der Prüffung der Sinnen unterworfen ist,« whereas the latter opens onto a world of »Gott, die Engel, die Seelen der Menschen; ihre Gedancken, Meinungen, Zuneigungen, Handlungen, Tugenden, Kräfte,« whose point of reference, »[in] dem Zeugniß des Gewissens, und der göttlichen Offenbarung gegründet ist« (I, 55).11 The invisible point of reference does not attenuate the truth-content of such figures and the realm they describe, but instead indicates another realm of truth in possibility: »Alle diese mögliche Welten, ob sie gleich nicht würcklich und nicht sichtbar sind, haben dennoch eine eigentliche Wahrheit, die in ihrer Möglichkeit, so von allem Widerspruch frey ist, und in der allesvermögenden Kraft des Schöpfers der Natur gegründet ist« (I, 57). For Bodmer and Breitinger, the representation of the possible hidden within actual nature is »das eigene und Haupt-Werck der Poesie« (I, 57). For »Dichten« is defined in Breitinger’s Critische Dichtkunst as: sich in der Phantasie neue Begriffe und Vorstellungen formieren, deren Originale nicht in der gegenwärtigen Welt der würcklichen Dinge, sondern in irgend einem andern möglichen Welt-Gebäude zu suchen sind. Ein jedes wohlerfundenes Gedicht ist darum nicht anderst anzusehen, als eine Historie aus einer andern möglichen Welt: Und in dieser Absicht kommt auch dem Dichter der Nahme […] eines Schöpfers, zu, weil er nicht alleine durch seine Kunst unsichtbaren Dingen sichtbare Leiber mittheilet, sondern auch die Dinge, die nicht für die Sinnen sind, gleichsam erschaffet, das ist, aus dem Stande der Möglichkeit in den Stand der Würcklichkeit hinüberbringet, und ihnen also den Schein und den Nahmen des Würcklichen mittheilet. (I, 60)

The addition of this aspect of the counter-factual to the jurisdiction of poetics by the Swiss critics has repercussions for the theory of the epic. By expanding poetic criteria they hope to insert Milton’s epic poem within the canon of great literature and valorize his text as a potential model for a German-language epic. The epic genre is thereby granted further sources from which to draw the legitimacy for its narratives and the stories it narrates. The act of poetic invention, according to this model, re-creates the stories and figures inhabiting the »invisible world«; it is an act of creation that both uncovers the divine within the sensory world of nature and mirrors the original act of divine creation. The expansion of literature’s domain to include the possible and its special link to the divine has implications for the definition of the fable and the epic genre.

10

11

See also: Horst-Michael Schmidt, Sinnlichkeit und Verstand. Zur philosophischen und poetologischen Begründung von Erfahrung und Urteil in der deutschen Aufklärung. Leibniz, Wolff, Gottsched, Bodmer und Breitinger, Baumgarten, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 1982. On the figure of witnessing in eighteenth-century poetics, see: Thomas Weitin, Zeugenschaft. Das Recht der Literatur, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 2009, p. 19–120.

25

By way of identifying the difference between epic and Aesopian fables Breitinger’s Critische Dichtkunst formulates a new definition of the epic fable: Die epische Fabel hat eine grosse und wichtige, meistens politische Wahrheit, an deren Beobachtung nicht nur die Wohlfahrt einzeler Menschen, sondern das Heil ganzer Völcker hängt, zur Haupt-Absicht; die Haupt-Personen sind darum keine schlechte Menschen von niedrigem Rang, sondern berühmte Helden von hohem Gemüthe und Character; und die Handlung muß, der symbolischen Absicht gemäß, auch groß und wichtig seyn, die sich durch mancherley unvermuthete Zufälle und Verwirrungen nach und nach entwickelt; und in welcher durch die Zwischenkunst und den Beystand der Götter die Würdigkeit der menschlichen Personen nicht wenig erhoben wird: Die esopische Fabel hergegen regieret das gemeine bürgerliche Leben der Menschen; darum sind auch die Personen gemeiniglich, eben wie ihre Geschäfte und Verrichtungen an sich selbst betrachtet von keinem grossen Ansehn; und um eben dieser Ursache willen kan die esoposche Fabel keine grosse Weitläuftigkeit in der Ausführung vertragen. (I, 197–198)

This definition imputes to the epic fable the ability to contain a kernel of political truth that concerns the well-being of both single human beings and entire communities. Whereas Aesopian fables are based on the »common« side of human life, featuring everyday characters undertaking routine tasks, and are thus unable to sustain an extensive or detailed narrative, the fabula of an epic, Breitinger says, is a »great« and »important« truth. This truth is political and affects the well-being or sanctity (»Heil«) of an entire »people« (»Volk«).12 Breitinger’s use of the plural for »people« (»Völker«) suggests a plurality of historical people who embody political truths. The purpose of an epic fable is to present this political truth to be observed for the benefit of its specific audience. The protagonists and antagonists are not »commoners« but »famous heroes« with »high« minds and moral character. Consequently, the plot of an epic must reflect the greatness of the story, with episodes consisting of numerous coincidences and perplexities that develop according to a temporal succession (»nach und nach«). An epic fable begins on a grand level, taking a nationally significant story as its starting point, and the characters become increasingly elevated over the course of the narrative, as the presence and intervention of the gods alongside the humans contributes to the »dignity« and sublimity of the human characters (»durch die Zwischenkunst und den Beystand der Götter die Würdigkeit der menschlichen Personen nicht wenig erhoben wird«). Such stories are distanced from everyday life, according to their symbolic intention, and enable the audience to experience a bit of the fantastic underlying the »sanctity« or »wellbeing« (Heil ) of a community. This is because for him the fable is »in ihrem Wesen und Ursprung betrachtet nicht anders, als ein lehrreiches Wunderbares« (I, 166). Its

12

26

For reflections on relationships between the utterance of »Heil« and patriotism in Kleist’s writing, see: Jan Mieszkowski, »Patriot Acts: Heinrich von Kleist and the Language of Heil.« In: Romanticism and Patriotism, ed. by Orrin Wang, Romantic Circles Praxis Series (May 2006).

didactic efficacy lies in its being marvelous and even supernatural.13 Belonging to the realm of the »invisible,« »sanctity« (Heil ) is presented here as an indispensable aspect of community. The reference to the »sanctity« of a political community in this definition seems to concern less the community’s foundation as its destination, for which epic poetry is in large part responsible. The addition of »sanctity« not only expands the point of reference for the legitimacy of a political community to include the question of securing its destiny, but also invests epic poetry with the ability and responsibility to contribute to the community’s path of destiny by narrating the symbolic political truths whose observation will secure the community’s future well-being. In epic poetry, the marvelous can supply the content of a fable, yet it must also be created as an effect through the narrative structure, as the passage above explains, and, as we will now see, through the actual words of the poem. Before launching a discussion of Bodmer’s translation of Milton’s Paradise Lost,14 Breitinger inserts one of his most lengthy and general ruminations on the nature of epic poetry, in which he addresses how the rhetoric of epic poetry enables the movement toward sublimity: Wie sich nun die Poesie insgemeine über alle andern Gattungen der Rede dadurch erhebet, daß sie die Sachen nicht bloß als wahrscheinlich vorstellet, sondern dieselben von dem Scheine der Wahrheit künstlich entfernet, und dem Ansehen nach ganz wunderbar machet, so muß vornehmliche in einem epischen Gedichte das Wunderbare herrschen, und darum muß auch der Ausdruck selbst von der gemeinen und gewohnten Art zu reden abgehen. (II, 67)

Breitinger repeats the theme in the remarks on the fable, namely that the »marvelous« has to reign in epic poetry. To do so requires an »artificial« distance between what is »probable« and has the appearance of truth on the one hand, and the figuring of it as »marvelous« (»on the face of it«) on the other hand. The key is to produce a gap between the expectations of everyday life and the wonders of poetic life. Poetic language assists this operation by departing from the common modes of expression. Homer’s expressions accomplish such a distancing of poetic from routine life on the rhetorical plane: Homer hat, wie es scheinet, die Vermischung der verschiedenen Mundarten eben deßwegen mit Fleisse gesucht, und wie einige gesagt haben, zuweilen lieber wider das Sylbenmaaß gesündiget, als sich des gemeinen mündlichen Gebrauches bedienet: Auch sind seine Ausdrücke kräftig, voll Feuers, und mit allem ersinnlichen Witz gearbeitet. (II, 67–68)

13

14

Hans Otto Horch and Georg-Michael Schulz, Das Wunderbare und die Poetik der Frühaufklärung. Gottsched und die Schweizer, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1988. For a thorough discussion of Bodmer’s translation: George Burridge Viles, Comparison of Bodmer’s Translation of Paradise Lost with the Original, Emil Glausch, Leipzig 1902.

27

Breitinger then calls on Alexander Pope to testify to Homer’s power to paint wonderful figures through language: »Man könnte seinen Ausdruck, sagt der Hr. Pope, mit den Farben eines vornehmen Kunstmahlers vergleichen« (II, 68). Even Aristotle agrees with Breitinger that Homer is a master of poetic language: »Und Aristoteles hat mit Grund gesagt, daß dieser Poet alleine lebendige Worte erfunden habe, und der Vater der poetischen Ausdrückung sey« (Ibid). Breitinger includes Virgil in his encomium, to conclude: daß diese beyden vortrefflichen Poeten des Altherthums alle Mittel gebrauch haben, ihrem Ausdrucke eine ungemeine Kraft und Schönheit, und ein recht verwundernswürdiges Ansehen zu verschaffen; darunter die Anwendung um etwas ungewohnter, aber dabey an Bedeutung nachdrücklicher Wörter keines der geringsten gewesen, weil es nicht wenig dienete, den Leser in der Verwunderung zu unterhalten. (II, 68–69)

A number of things are happening from the start to the finish of this long passage, which I have broken into its parts, that is situated as a preface to his discussion of Bodmer’s translation of Milton. Not only does Breitinger argue his case that poetic language transcends the quotidian through uncommon power and beauty of expression, arguing that these are the proper means to produce the effect that the reader is held in a state of amazement, he also places epic poetry on a rhetorical plane above all other speech genres (»die Poesie insgemeine über alle andern Gattungen der Rede dadurch erhebet, daß sie die Sachen nicht bloß als wahrscheinlich vorstellet […]«). When we examine Breitinger’s own rhetoric more closely, moreover, we find that the passage executes two subterranean operations as well. What Foucault would label an »author-function« enables Breitinger to make his argument about the efficacy of poetic language to bring the reader into the domain of the marvelous. Breitinger invokes a name to authorize every point of his argument, for instance Homer, which is then further legitimated by reference to the critics Aristotle, Pope, and Dacier, creating a catalogue of authors along the way.15 This use of an author-function institutes through the performativity of its utterances a process of canonization by declaring a continuity running from Homer through Virgil to Milton, while also drawing upon this canon as a reservoir of legitimation for its own claims. Breitinger thereby inserts Milton’s Paradise Lost into a tradition of extraordinary epic poetry and in the process attempts to inscribe himself within a canon of literary criticism. If the primary trait of this particular tradition lies in

15

28

Michel Foucault, »What is an Author?« In: Foucault, Language, Counter-memory, Practice, ed. by Donald F. Bouchard, Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1980, p. 113–38. Breitinger repeats here Bodmer’s recourse to a particular notion of the author in his critique of Gottsched’s Milton critique: »Es ist – der aufklärerischen Hermeneutik entsprechend – der Autor, die immer wieder angeführten ›Absichten‹ Miltons, auf die Bodmer in spezifischer Weise abzielt. Der solchermaßen erfundene Autor gleicht nun eben nicht mehr dem Literaturtechniker der rhetorischen Kultur […], sondern für ihn sind Ausnahmeregelungen verbindlich, weil sich nicht jedes Werk dem Urteil jedes Menschen unterwerfen läßt.« (Martus, Werkpolitik, p. 163).

its power to create for its audience an effect of the marvelous through the poetic language of epic narrative, the authority of the literary critic resides in his power to identify literary manifestations of the marvelous. As an extension of his discussion of poetic language, Breitinger turns to questions of translation and thereby revisits the earlier suggestion, in the definition of the epic fable, that epic poetry is concerned with the sanctity of political communities in the plural. More specifically, the plurality of political communities can be regarded as a differentiation into nations based on linguistic difference. Breitinger posits a basic fungibility of ideas across national languages, derived from a shared limitation of the powers of mind, the similarity of objects in the world with which humans occupy themselves, and the limitations of the truths that arise out of this encounter between human mind and object world (II, 138–139). Yet only through the various languages do thoughts get communicated: »Die Sprachen sind ein Mittel, dadurch die Menschen einander ihre Gedanken offenbaren können« (II, 138). The question then arises as to whether the fact that languages differ across time and space influences the ideas that can be communicated.16 Breitinger seems to waver on this point. He argues that the task of the translator lies in not deviating in thought, form, or mode from the archetype (Grundschrift); only the signs can be exchanged, he says (II, 139). So in the case of Milton, it is important for the translator to convey the same sublimity of Paradise Lost despite the linguistic divergences: Milton muß uns in der Uebersezung eben dieselben erhabenen und verwundersamen Bildnisse und Schildereyen, in eben der Ordnung, wie in dem Originale, vorstellen, und in dem Gemüthe der deutschen Leser eben die hohen Begriffe und abwechselnden Bewegungen hervorbringen, welche sie wahrnehmen und empfinden würden, wenn ihnen die Zeichen bekannt wären, worinn der Ausdruck im Englischen eingekleidet ist. (II, 139–140)

The translator strives to approximate the effects of the imagery and ekphrasis, to communicate the concepts as if the reader were reading within the system of signs of the native language. However, Breitinger acknowledges the linguistic problems that hinder such a reproduction, mostly due to the force of »idioms« peculiar to different national languages. When Breitinger elaborates this concept of »idiotism« – the figures of speech and unique linguistic structures found in different national languages – he retreats from his original belief in the basic similarity of the structure of the mind and suggests that language in fact structures the actual thoughts of its speakers. »Idiotismos« arises, he says, out of the different features of national languages and out of the differences of »Gemüthes-und Gedenckens-Art ungleicher Nationen« (II, 144). Language is regarded here as influencing thought, just as the modes of thought are inflected in the dissimilarities of languages. This aspect of language becomes all the more apparent when trying to translate the figural lan-

16

Susan Bernofsky, Foreign Words: Translator-Authors in the Age of Goethe, Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2005.

29

guage of Milton’s epic into German. Yet as Breitinger’s tedious comparisons in the chapter on translation show, it is also a factor in the translation of Virgil and Cicero due to the specificity of poetic languages. Bodmer’s and Breitinger’s poetics of the epic, as systematized in the Critische Dichtkunst, introduce the category of »sanctity« (Heil ) as the political effect of the successful communication of the lessons of a political truth contained within an epic fable. Great epic poems represent the »invisible worlds« of the divine within nature and human beings by carefully crafting their narratives and adorning them with figural language capable of communicating their truth content in a symbolic manner. The epic poetic act hence imitates the divine act of creation. Such feats of epic narration are inherently specific to particular nations due to the unique idioms of national languages; thus for the Swiss critics the truth of a great epic such as Milton’s Paradise Lost deserves cosmopolitan recognition for its accomplishments as both a work of great literature, which exemplifies the narration of the marvelous story of the Fall through rich figural language, and as an epic achievement for British literary culture that sets a standard for German-language writers to emulate. These descriptions of the fable, narrative, and language of the epic define its didactic function as guaranteeing the »sanctity« of a nation. In Breitinger’s Critische Dichtkunst, the invisible worlds of the marvelous are ascribed to the realm of the epic imaginary.

Blankenburg 1774: The Theory of the Novel The emergence of the novel as an object of interest for literary theory marks a new discursive formation for the epic imaginary in the eighteenth century. While the specific poetic interest in the novel pays close attention to the didactic potential of the novel, the expanded field of poetic analysis nevertheless retains the main features of the epic imaginary. That is to say, the theory of the novel reiterates earlier definitions of the epic as the genre which narrates significant public deeds, even as it ascribes the genre to an historically prior form of narrative and focuses its attention on the peculiarities of the novel. Christian Friedrich von Blankenburg’s (1744–1796) theory of the novel thus requires an epic imaginary as the horizon against which it can identify specific features of the novel.17 The novel, he argues at the start, is a later historical manifestation of an anthropological propensity for narrative: Die Erfindung, das menschliche Geschlecht durch Erzählung allerhand rührender und anziehender Begebenheiten und Vorfälle zu unterhalten, ist vielleicht so alt, als irgend

17

30

Friedrich von Blankenburg, Versuch über den Roman, reprint of the edition of 1774 (Siegert, Leipzig), J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1965. Hereafter cited parenthetically.

eine andre auf diese Absicht zweckende Erfindung. Vielleicht ist sie so alt, als das Epische Gedicht, und hat nur, nach veränderter Denkungsart des Menschen, eine andre Gestalt angenommen. Im allgemeinsten Sinn gehört wirklich das Heldengedicht mit allen seinen Gattungen hieher; oder vielmehr gehöret der Roman einigermaßen mit zur Gattung der Heldengedichte, und die Theorienschreiber der Dichtkunst, wenn sie die Romane mit in ihren Plan zu ziehen würdigen, pflegen Epopee und Roman in eine Classe zu setzen. (3–4)

If the novel is a later outgrowth of the epic, then a theory of the novel will have to identify the distinctive traits of both in order to formulate their essential differences. Blankenburg defines this difference as a matter of plot length and selection of events (Begebenheiten) to be depicted: »[S]o wie das Heldengedicht öffentliche Thaten und Begebenheiten, das ist, Handlungen des Bürgers (in einem gewissen Sinn dieses Worts) besingt: so beschäftigt sich der Roman mit den Handlungen und Empfindungen des Menschen« (17). Whereas the epic depicts the public deeds and events which constitute the actions of »Bürger« – that is to say, human actors in their role as citizens in the social and political domain – the novel depicts the actions and feelings of agents as human beings. Furthermore, the divergence of the novel from the epic results from historical differences in custom and institutions: Diese beyden Unterschiede gründen sich auf die Verschiedenheit in den Sitten und der Einrichtung der Welt. So wie aber vorzüglich in der Epopee die Thaten des Bürgers, in Betracht kommen: so scheint in dem Roman das Seyn des Menschen, sein innrer Zustand, das Hauptwerck zu seyn. Bey jenen Thaten läßt sich für den Bürger eine anziehende Unterhaltung deuten, weil diese Thaten entweder den Ruhm der Vorfahren, oder die Wohlfahrt ihres Landes enthalten können [my italics, C. P.]. Wenn die Epopee den gehörigen Eindruck machen soll: so muß ihr Inhalt aus dem Volk genommen seyn, für das sie geschrieben wird. Wie könnte der Muselmann sich bey der christlischen Epopee gefallen? – Und wenn sich der Romanendichter auf Thaten und Unternehmungen des Menschen allein einschränken wollte, was kann heraus kommen, das den vorangeführten Thaten gleich interessant wäre? – Aber wohl kann uns das Innre des Menschen sehr angenehm beschäftigen. – Bey einer gewonnenen Schlacht ists nicht das Innre des Feldherrn, um das wir uns bekümmern; die Sache selbst hat ihren Reiz für uns; aber bey den Begebenheiten unsrer Mitmenschen, ist es der Zustand ihrer Empfindung, der uns, bey Erzählung ihrer Vorfälle, mehr oder weniger Theil daran nehmen läßt. Dies lehrt Jeden die Erfahrung. Sind es Thaten und Begebenheiten, die uns so sehr angenehm im Tom Jones unterhalten; oder ist es nicht vielmehr dieser Jones selbst, dieser Mensch mit seinem Seyn und seinen Empfindungen? Er thut nichts, wenigstens sehr wenig, das wir nur gut heißen können, und doch lieben wir ihn herzlich, und nehmen deßwegen sehr viel Theil an seinen Begebenheiten. (17–19)

Blankenburg argues that the citizen of a nation is entertained by an epic due to its narration of deeds either performed by the citizens’ ancestors or relevant to the welfare of the citizens’ nation. This requirement determines the choice of content for the epic, which should be selected from the sourcebook of a nation’s public legends. Blankenburg makes a strict distinction between the »exterior« and »interior« actions of characters. It could include but is not equivalent to the »invisible worlds« described by Bodmer and Breitinger, for while the opinions and feelings of indi31

viduals belong to the »interior« of a character, supernatural phenomena do not. As Blankenburg formulates the objective of the novel in terms of eighteenth-century poetics: »Der Romandichter zeigt uns in seinem Werke wenigstens die möglichen Menschen der wirklichen Welt« (257). More resembling Gottsched’s rationalism, Blankenburg’s theory of the novel emphasizes the reconstruction of necessary sequences of cause and effect within the plot of a novel for the purpose of teaching readers how to ascertain how it is that a character was motivated to act in one way or another, as well as to judge whether this character acted morally in a given situation.18 The result is a circumscription of the public deeds of warriors to the narrative content and style of the epic genre. National heroes interest an audience insofar as their actions pertain to that audience’s shared history as a political collective. No one cares about a warrior’s thoughts and feelings, but rather about what he did for the nation. Someone who was not engaged in a decisive political struggle might interest a reader, however, as a human being with complex thoughts and emotions. This is why, according to Blankenburg, kings and heroes are treated as human beings, and not as public actors, within the plot of a novel (19). Moreover, the primary distinction between exterior, public action and interior, private action is reflected on the level of style: Oeffentliche Handlungen werden, in aller Art, mit einer Feyerlickeit, mit einer Würde vollzogen, die bey Privatbegebenheiten mehr als Geziere seyn würde. Wer spricht unter Freunden, so wie er in einer öffentlichen Rede, vor einer öffentlichen Versammlung spricht? – Wenn auch der Styl des Heldengedichts andre Schönheiten hat, als daß er nur dieser Uebereinstimmung wegen allein, viel Wirkung und Reiz haben sollte, und deßwegen eingeführt worden ist: so dünkts mich doch gewiß, daß das Oeffentliche der epischen Handlungen eine mit von den Veranlassungen zur dichterischen Schreibart gewesen seyn muß. (21)

Epics are thus described as deploying a lofty style to reflect the ceremoniousness and dignity of the public deeds they narrate, a style which would be incompatible with the communicative situation depicted by the novel and staged with the reader. This situation resembles rather two human beings conversing as »friends.« Yet by shifting the attention of poetics to stories of human psychology as narrated by novels, Blankenburg’s theory reinforces the view that epics narrate stories about the founding or perpetuation of political communities. The theory of the novel can thus be regarded as drawing on an epic imaginary that it parasitically

18

32

Blankenburg is thus also concerned with the didactic potential of the novel, in this case, to teach readers how to judge whether fictional characters acted correctly or not: »Der Dichter thut sehr viel zur Verbesserung des menschlichen Geschlechts, der durch sein Werk diese Kunst lehret, der in uns die, von der Natur erhaltene Fähigkeit, andre, und unsre eigne Situation, jene nach ihren Ursachen, diese nach ihren Folgen, richtig zu beurtheilen, übt« (Blankenburg, Versuch über den Roman, p. 293–294).

feeds upon in order to articulate specific historical, philosophical, moral or aesthetic claims.19

Blankenburg’s Literarische Zusätze zu Johann Georg Sulzers Allgemeiner Theorie der Schönen Künste (1796–1798): »Der neuere Held« Blankenburg’s Literarische Zusätze first accompanied the revised and expanded edition of Johann Georg Sulzer’s Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste in 1786–87, appeared in revised form as a supplement to the revised and expanded second edition of Sulzer’s Theorie from 1792–1794, until appearing separately in its third and final revised version between 1796 and 1798.20 Blankenburg’s encyclopedia of literary terms, genres, and works represents an impressive exercise in comparative literary history and theory. The entry for »Heldengedicht« sketches an international history of epics as well as theories of epic from antiquity to the end of the eighteenth century. He provides an overview of theoretical texts and epic poems that appeared in Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, English, and German. Blankenburg’s work is thus a valuable reference for eighteenth-century theories of the epic. My focus here is on his outline of recent experiments with the epic genre. Blankenburg classifies two dominant approaches to the epic genre in modern (»neuere«) literature: »Die eine derselben besteht aus denjenigen, welche, mehr oder weniger, nach den Mustern der Alten, abgefaßt sind; und die andre aus solchen, welche ihre Form aus den Sitten und Einrichtungen der Zeit erhalten haben« (II, 16). Blankenburg refers to the first type as »die eigentlichen Heldengedichte« (II, 16) and to the second as »die sogenannten romantischen oder Ritterepopöen« (II, 17). Blankenburg’s classification parallels, to a certain extent, Quint’s distinction between the epic of the victorious and the romance narrative of the defeated. The difference is that Blankenburg’s distinction relies on a perceived historical gap between ancient and modern systems of belief, whereas Quint’s scheme demarcates contesting political agendas within the formation of traditions of epic narrative. What Quint describes as the victory epic’s linear teleology is described by Blanken-

19

20

The point applies well to Hegel’s aesthetics, which, in a sense, is founded upon a certain image of the ancient epic as the art form appropriate to a supposedly »heroic age«: »Dies ist der Weltzustand, den ich, im Unterschiede des idyllischen, schon andernorts den heroischen nannte. In schönster Poesie und Reichhaltigkeit echt menschlicher Charakterzüge finden wir ihn bei Homer geschildert. Hier haben wir im häuslichen und öffentlichen Leben ebensowenig eine barbarische Wirklichkeit als die bloß verständige Prosa eines geordneten Familien- und Staatslebens, sondern jene ursprünglich poetische Mitte vor uns.« (Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, vol. 3, p. 341). Friedrich von Blankenburg, Literarische Zusätze zu Johann Georg Sulzers allgemeiner Theorie der schönen Künste (1796–1798), reprint of the 3rd edition, 2 vols, Athenäum, Frankfurt/M. 1972. Hereafter cited parenthetically according to book and page number.

33

burg as the recent epic’s reflection of an antique »in sich vollkommener zusammen geseztes Ganzes« containing »mehr Einheit im Plan und Zweck, oder in der Handlung und im Helden« (II, 16–17). Instead of identifying »two rival traditions of epic« – that of the winners and the losers – resulting from the »politicization of epic poetry« by Virgil and Lucan, as Quint does,21 Blankenburg attributes the diverging traditions to historically contrasting systems of belief. The differences are however not so great, since for Quint the victory epic seeks to impose both a unified linear narrative and the belief in a coherent worldview upon the narrated material. In any event, for Blankenburg the differences are inflected in variances of tone. Epics modeled on the ancient archetypes strike a »feyerlicher und ernsthafter Ton« that is incompatible with the »in dem bloßen Volksglauben gegründete neuere Wunderbare« (II, 16). This discrepancy between form and content results from historical transformations of religions and belief, and hence from changes in the audience’s relation to mythological sources. Die Mythologie der Alten aber kann eben so wenig noch den nöthigen Glauben finden, als sie mit Gegenständen aus andern Zeiten, oder Begebenheiten von andern Völkern sich in schickliche Verbindung bringen läßt, und ist folglich nur Anspielungsweise zu gebrauchen. Die Verfasser dieser Heldengedichte sind also größtentheils genöthigt gewesen, sich mit bloßen allegorischen Wesen zu behelfen, und hieraus ist denn schon, so wohl in Ansehung der Form, als der Wirkung, ein Unterschied zwischen ihnen und den Heldengedichten der alten Welt entstanden. (II, 16)22

Historical changes in belief have influenced modern attempts to write epics modeled on the epics of antiquity in that Christianity has become the »mythological« reference point, which, however is complicated by »die ganz andern Verhältnisse, worin die christliche Religion zu ihren Bekennern steht« that results in predominantly allegorical representations (II, 16). The second point of difference between ancient and modern epics and the conditions of production that hinder modern attempts to construct epics modeled on ancient exemplars of the genre returns to Blankenburg’s main arguments in the theory of the novel about the status of the hero. What was before a difference between the genres of the epic and novel is now applied to the theory of the epic and based on an historical claim about changing notions of »grandeur« (Größe): Ein zweiter Unterschied gründet sich darauf, daß, bey ganz andern Verfassungen, und einer ganz andern Geistesbildung, die Helden in den ersten lange nicht so viel Interesse zu erwecken im Stande sind, als die Helden in den letzten noch jetzt erwecken, und um desto eher bey ihren Völkern erwecken mußten. Aus dem, allmählich immer größer gewordenen Unterschiede, oder der allmähliche entstandenen Absonderung der verschiedenen Stände der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft von einander, und vielleicht auch aus den

21 22

34

Quint, Epic and Empire, p. 8. Blankenburg’s arguments resemble Schiller’s critique of Klopstock’s Messias, which I discuss in the next chapter on Klopstock.

Eigenheiten der christlichen Religion, hat für die neuern Europäischen Völker, sich ein ganz anderer Begriff von Größe, als die Alten haben konnten, bilden müssen; und diesem zu Folge haben die neuern Helden, weder durch solche Springfedern in Bewegung gesetzt werden, noch solche Thaten verrichten können, als die Helden der Alten. (II, 17)

This is a significant displacement within the epic imaginary of the eighteenth century. Rather than seeing rival epic traditions at the core of the epic genre, legitimating as well as de-legitimating moments represented by Virgil and Lucan, eighteenth-century theory of the epic attributes a unitary wholeness which encompasses epic form and content and characterizes the ancient life-world. Yet Blankenburg’s following remarks retreat from this initial positing of an historical divide between ancient and modern society and religion to account for differences in literary genre and articulate instead a notion of the human that is assigned validity as an interpretive framework for both ancient and modern epic. The result is a longer rumination on literary character based on anthropological presuppositions about human psychology, literary authorship, and the psychology of the reader. Die Unternehmungen, welche Homer besingt, sind nicht so wohl Wirkung oder Folge weit absehender Plane, überlegter Entwürfe, kaltblütig ausgedachter Vorsätze von Seiten seiner Personen, als Unternehmungen, wie sie aus den, allen Menschen, zu allen Zeiten, eigenen Empfindungen zu entspringen vermögen. In der Iliade entwickelt sich Alles, aus der, dem individuellen Character des Achill, aus der ihm, als Mensch, zugefügten Beleidigung; und in der Odyssee Alles, aus einer jedem Menschen eben so sehr, als dem Ulyß, natürlichen Sehnsucht nach Vaterland, nach Weib und Kindern; und vielleicht könnte man überhaupt mit einigem Anschein von Recht sagen, daß Homer nicht so wohl Thaten und Begebenheiten, als Menschen und ihre Charactere besingt; jene dienen nur, diese ins Licht zu setzen, und sind ihnen gänzlich untergeordnet. (II, 17)

The category of human character, understood as the interior psychology of human agents, which the theory of the novel ascribed to the domain of the novel and opposed to the external »deeds and events« depicted by the epic, is now applied to ancient and modern epic alike. According to Blankenburg’s humanistic analysis of the »characters« underlying the actions of Homer’s epic heroes, Achilles’ rage expresses a human emotion that sparks the reader’s interest in Achilles’ actions. In short: character precedes event. [Homer] will den Zorn des Achill, und die Weisheit des Ulyß besingen. Und hieraus nun entsteht, meines Bedünkens, unsre Theilnehmung an den Begebenheiten selbst, unsre Bereitwilligkeit, dem Helden allenthalben zu folgen. Nicht diese Begebenheiten, sondern die Quelle derselben, hält uns fest. (II, 17)

The »Quelle« of events is located not so much in religious mythology as in the motivation of the human being as agent of historical events. Yet Blankenburg’s observations aim to rehabilitate Homer as an exemplar of a universal history of the epic genre rooted in the depiction of human character. For Blanckenburg criticizes Virgil’s preference for representations of deed over character: 35

Schon bey dem Virgil verhält die Sache sich anders. Ihm scheint der Mensch allein schon nicht so viel werth gewesen zu seyn. Er läßt so gar in seiner Ankündigung die Thaten desselben vorangehen; erst arma, dann virum: […] der Stifter des Reichs sticht schon durch; und Handlungen, welche aus einer, dem Menschen überhaupt, so entfernt liegenden Quelle fließen, können diesen unmöglich mit sich fortreißen. Wer nicht mit dem Helden selbst sympathisirt, sympathisirt auch nicht mit den Handlungen desselben. (II, 17)

According to the theory of the epic developed here by Blankenburg at the end of the eighteenth century, stories about the acts founding political community are not appealing per se, but only when they depict the human psychology motivating them. Blankenburg asserts that modern readers do not identify with these politically significant acts but with their human source. The presumably human dimension of events that Blankenburg describes as arousing the reader’s sympathy and motivating his or her »Theilnehmung« on the events of a story supplies furthermore the basis for the transnational and transhistorical reception of epic poetry. It is this human aspect of literature that stimulates modern interest in the authors of ancient epics and works from other national literary canons. As a consequence, the humanist impulse of great epic poetry overshadows the patriotic enthusiasm of the author: die Begeisterung des Dichters wird, in solchen Fällen, uns immer, mehr oder weniger, und wenigstens dunkel, erkünstelt scheinen; wir glauben nicht, daß ihm Thaten der Art im Ernste so wichtig haben seyn, daß sie ihm so sehr zu Herzen haben gehen können, um darüber in Feuer und Flamme zu gerathen; wir glauben, daß diese, durch Nebenumstände, Nebenabsichten, so heftig haben angeblasen werden müssen, wenigstens, in dem vorhabenden Falle, wir, die wir keine Römer sind; wir wünschen auch in ihm, den Patrioten gleichsam dem Menschen untergeordnet zu sehen, weil er immer doch zuerst Mensch ist. (II, 17–18)

Blankenburg discredits the authority of patriotism as the inspiration for writing epic poetry or as a measure of accomplishment. Patriotism is described as artificial or insincere at worst, and secondary to humanity at best. Judged from the standpoint of a poetics based on the depiction of human character, Virgil’s politicized epic about the founding of Rome falls short of Homer’s depictions of character. Modern epic poetry has to make room for a new hero who is the product of a new form of belief in the capacity of human beings to exhibit »grandeur« in ways other than by performing heroic deeds that found nations. The »Bewegungsgründe« for »Theilnehmung« on stories by modern readers are attached to new conceptions of »Größe« (II, 18). Blankenburg’s earlier distinction, in the theory of the novel, between the exteriority of the epic and the interiority of the novel re-enters into the theory of the epic in the Literarische Zusätze as a difference between ancient and modern heroes. »Der neuere Held« of modernity corresponds to the protagonist of the novel insofar as the »dignity« of both is located in their intellect – is interior, that is – rather than in the exteriority of great public deeds.

36

Der neuere Held muß mehr, gleichsam mit seinem Geiste als mit seinem Körper handeln; es ist ganz unter seiner Würde, für sich ganz allein, irgend ein kühnes, beschwerliches Abenteuer zu unternehmen, oder sein Leben, sein Daseyn, aus ganz eigenem Antriebe, oder aus bloßem Heldenmuth, aufs Spiel zu setzen; er theilt alle Gefahren, in welche er kommen kann, nicht allein mit mehrern, sondern es ziemt ihm auch nicht, sich, für seine Person, in die größten zu begeben, weil er für das Ganze, dem er vorsteht, sorgen, und die Unternehmungen Anderer leiten soll. Aber dieses kann nur durch Anordnungen, und Befehle geschehen; und so viel Geisteskräfte immer hiezu erforderlich, und so edel diese Bestimmung auch immer seyn mag; so sind denn doch einmahl jene Geisteskräfte schwerlich hinlänglich zu versinnlichen; und dann können zu wenig Menschen in solche Lagen kommen, als daß sie viel Theilnehmung zu erwecken fähig seyn sollten. (II, 18)

The modern conception of dignity as located in the mental powers of human agents calls the ancient importance of external deeds into question and disrupts the putatively unified tradition of style, language, and content associated with the epic genre of antiquity.23 Blankenburg more favorably assesses the second strand of revivals of epic poetry that he associates with the tradition of romance epic. The romance epic is »beynahe die einzige Originaldichtung der Neuern, und ihre Eigenheiten so wohl als ihr Ursprung verdienen daher besonders in Erwägung gezogen zu werden« (II, 19). Such stories as the Arthurian legends depict knights who venture out into the world and battle other knights with the sole purpose of performing deeds that bring them fame and prove that they are worthy to be knights. This more limited scope of the romance epic enables greater flexibility in tone and content of these poems, in contrast to the more strict demands of »proper« epics: Der Ton darin hat dadurch mannichfaltiger und abwechselnder werden können, als er es in den eigentlichen Heldengedichten seyn darf; und mit dieser Freyheit verträgt sich zugleich der Gebrauch des, bloß im Volksglauben gegründeten Wunderbaren sehr gut. Dieses Wunderbare selbst, die, in diesen Epopöen erscheinenden Riesen, Feen, Zwerge, Zauberer, Schlangen, Drachen, u. s. w. gehören zu den vornehmsten Eigenheiten derselben, und sind, höchst wahrscheinlicher Weise, aus den eigenthümlichen Meinungen, Sitten und Einrichtungen derjenigen Zeit, und derjenigen Länder entsprungen, in welchen diese Epopöe selbst entstanden ist; sie scheinen nichts, als Verstärkung, oder dichterische Darstellung des Wirklichen […]. (II, 19)24

23

24

On some implications of the social history of this shift in choice of protagonists as a matter of the rise of the bourgeoisie, see, for instance: Heinz Schlaffer, Der Bürger als Held: sozialgeschichtliche Auflösungen literarischer Widersprüche, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1973. Blankenburg refers here directly, and critically, to Thomas Warton’s »Abhandlung über den Ursprung der romanhaften Dichtung in Europa,« which was translated in Eschenburg’s »Britisches Museum.« He devotes several pages to arguing against Warton’s claim that the fantastic figures of early romance are borrowed from the »Orient«; instead, Blankenburg argues that they are traceable to popular legends within Europe.

37

Blankenburg identifies a colloquial tradition of the marvelous transmitted by the genre of the romance epic. What he regards here as »Volksaberglauben« serves as an idiomatic source for this second type of epic, which appears in the different European »Landesprachen« and expresses the »Sitten und Vorstellungsarten der abendländischen Völker selbst« as a plurality of nations and their customs (II, 22). After describing the two major strands of epic poetry, the Heldengedicht and the romantische Epopöe, and concluding that experiments with the romance epic best capture the plurality of national customs in the recent literary history of Europe, Blankenburg’s history and theory of the epic catalogues the epics that have appeared in each European national language. What is striking about Blankenburg’s catalogue of German-language epics is how it conveys a sense of history and origins with philological acumen. Blankenburg’s method in these passages can be described as more philological than philosophical or mythological. He cites the sources, editions, translations, and critical reception of the extant epic texts appearing in the German language from antiquity through the medieval period and into the eighteenth century (II, 74–83).

Merck: Epic Naiveté Whereas Blankenburg’s own approach to the history of the epic genre in his literary additions to Sulzer’s aesthetics exhibits breadth of knowledge and learned attention to philological history, the literary publicist Johann Heinrich Merck (1741–1791) emphasizes the attributes of naiveté which he regards as characteristic of both Homeric epic and the common observer of everyday life. In the essay »Ueber den Mangel des Epischen Geistes in unserm lieben Vaterland« from 1778, Merck criticizes the prevalence of satire in German literature for depicting the world with too much distance: »[S]o entstand das pikante Produkt, das man Satyren nennt, die aber niemand heutzutage mehr mag. Der Grund davon ist deutlich einzusehen, weil alles übertrieben, und nichts zum Menschlichen oder zum Momentanen herab gemildert ist.«25 Merck counters the satirical trend in epic literature with a plea for greater attention to that which is »circumstantial,« »intricate,« or even »cumbersome« in the »common man’s« perceptions of life: Man vergleiche damit die Naivetät des gemeinen Mannes, des würklich sinnlichen Menschen. Seine Gabe zu sehen macht ihn zum beredtsten Erzähler. Seine Einbildungskraft ist roh, durch Vergleichungen ungebildet. Das Gegenwärtige ist ihm daher immer groß und anziehend, weils von allen Seiten Eindruck auf ihn gemacht hat. Man höre ihm nur zu, wenn er die geringste Stadtbegebenheit, einen Todesfall, eine Familiengeschichte

25

38

Johann Heinrich Merck, »Ueber den Mangel des Epischen Geistes in unserm lieben Vaterland.« In: Merck, Werke, ed. by Arthur Henkel, introduction by Peter Berglar, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1968, p. 385–391, here: p. 389.

erzählt. Er eilt nicht schnell zum Schluß, wie der philosophische Erzähler; er drängt keine Begebenheiten, er mahlt aus. Jeder einzelne Eindruck ist ihm kostbar, er sucht ihn wieder zu geben. Daher das Umständliche das den Gelehrten so lästig ist, und das doch eigentlich das Ding zu einer Begebenheit macht. Man höre nur auf die Conversation eines Weibes, eines Jägers, eines Soldaten, und man wird eine Gabe zu erzählen finden, die dem Scribenten nachzuahmen ohnmöglich fallen wird.26

The »Naivetät des gemeinen Mannes« is presented here as a precondition for attention to the sensory impressions surrounding an event and the ability to narrate the details of its circumstances. The occurrences cited are furthermore not lofty heroic deeds of the past, but instead seemingly minor incidents such as the death of an acquaintance or a family story in the present. Merck presents the naiveté of the »common man« relating such events in conversation with another as the true »gift« of story-telling, and constructs out of this scenario an epic imaginary that prizes such putative naiveté as an empirically based »Reise durch das Leben« that is opposed to the second-hand knowledge and mediated reflection and emotion of the learned writer: Obs nicht alles von Hörensagen, obs nicht alles gelesen ist! Sie sollen sich nur üben Einen Tag, oder Eine Woche ihres Lebens als eine Geschichte zu beschreiben, daraus ein Epos, d. i. eine lesenswürdige Begebenheit zu bilden, und zwar so unbefangen und gut, daß nichts von ihren Reflexionen und Empfindnissen durchflimmert, sondern daß alles so dasteht, als wenns so seyn müßte.27

Merck’s epic imaginary of the »common man« as story-teller appropriates the eighteenth-century revival of Homer for its own agenda to celebrate local flavor and criticize elitist sophistication. It ascribes these qualities of naïve story-telling to the very Homeric epic that serves as inspiration for so many of Merck’s contemporaries in Germany: Fühlen diese Herrn wohl in ihrem Vater-Homer den ganzen großen Umfang seines Mährchens, die beständige Gegenwart des Subjekts, daß alles vor ihren Augen entsteht, und die Handlung mit eben der Langsamkeit und Zeitfolge fortrückt wie in der Natur; nichts vergessen wird, was da seyn sollte, nichts da ist, was nicht dahin gehörte, niemand zu viel noch zu wenig sagt, alles vom Anfang bis zu Ende Ganz ist, niemand den Erzähler hört, nichts von seinem eignen Medio zum Vorschein kommt, sondern alles gerade weder größer noch kleiner erscheint, wie es jedermann mit seinen Augen gesehen zu haben glauben würde?28

In summary, Merck’s polemic calls for a populist epic that rejects the pretensions of intellectuals, as well as the nobility as its subject matter, and targets a »nichtschreibende[s] Publiko.«29 Merck’s imaginary epic naiveté describes a tradi-

26 27 28 29

Merck, »Ueber den Mangel des Epischen Geistes«, p. 389–90. Merck, »Ueber den Mangel des Epischen Geistes«, p. 389. Merck, »Ueber den Mangel des Epischen Geistes«, p. 388. Merck, »Ueber den Mangel des Epischen Geistes«, p. 390.

39

tion of story-telling inspired by the lived impressions of those who belong to neither the nobility or educated elite. In this sense, it promotes a decidedly non-canonical tradition of epic story-telling and detaches this tradition from the requirement to narrate the great deeds of noble heroes who founded nation-states. Finally, Merck’s variant of the epic imaginary also anticipates the »Romantic« turn to folklore and other forms of popular poetry, a subject of philological interest hinted at already in Herder’s reflections on epic poetry.

Herder: »Genealogie älterer Meister« In the Adrastea from 1803, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) recapitulates several of the major themes of eighteenth-century theory of the epic in German poetics: the origins of epic narrative and epic poetry’s narration of origins, the function of hexameter, the nature of the fable, the role of the marvelous, and differences to other genres such as tragedy. Unique to Herder’s approach is how he arrives at a theory of the epic by way of etymology and genealogy. Herder opens with the translation of epic as »Wort, Rede,« and then expands this minimal definition to connote »eine lebendige Volkssage« that is »national, ein Kind der Umstände, des Locals und der Zeiten.«30 Herder emphasizes, however, that, as with all popular traditions, the origins of these legends are uncertain: Wie bei allen Volkstraditionen der Ursprung äußerst ungewiß ist, so gewiß bei diesen lebendigen, geflügelten Worten. Man fragt nicht, wer der Urheber der Sage sey? sondern wenn sie ruhmreich gefällt, wenn sie die Ehre der Nation oder einzelner Geschlechter und Stämme sichert, höret man sie gläubig, und pflanzt sie weiter. Wer hat König Artus oder Arthurs Geschichte erfunden? Gottfried von Monmouth oder Caradoc gewiß nicht. So viel Localbenennungen von Arturs Sitz, Arturs Hügel, Arturs Tafel u. f. in Süd-England, so viele Erzählungen dabei vom Knaben und dem Horn, dem Mantel, den Rittern, der Königin u. f. waren im Munde des Volks, daß solche ein einzelner Chronikschreiber unmöglich veranlaßen konnte. Vielmehr nahm er seine Erzählung aus jenen Volkssagen, die wie erweislich ist, meistens auf – Localitäten, jedoch mit verändertem Geschmack im Fortgange der Zeiten gegründet waren. Denn die Volkssage, ein Kind der Phantasie und alten Geschichte, ist eine lebendige Fama; sie läuft und wächst und gestaltet sich mit dem Fortgange der Zeiten. (229–230)

30

40

Herder, Adrastea. In: Herder, Herders Sämmtliche Werke, ed. by Bernhard Euphan, vol. 24, Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1886, p. 229. Hereafter cited parenthetically. For further discussion of Herder’s views on the epic genre’s relationship to history, see: Mathias Oehme, »Epos und Geschichte in Herders ›Adrastea‹.« In: Weimarer Beiträge 30:5 (1984), p. 777–792. Oehme describes Herder’s aims as »die Absicht, Beziehungen zwischen poetischen Gattungen und Natur- und Geschichtsprozessen zu entdecken« (784), and that he seeks to explain the »strukturelle Verwandtschaft von Geschichte und Epos« (785).

Herder describes a lack of certainty with regard to knowledge about the origins of popular traditions, and in so doing suggests that the »honor of the nation« is itself not traceable back to an originary moment but is rather »secured« and confirmed in the course of its transmission by colloquial stories.31 Herder’s remarks emphasize that national honor and popular legend have the quality of being »lively«: the words of these legends are lively and maintain their presence through the practice of oral story-telling, just as their content continues to circulate and transform over time.32 Yet Herder identifies the geographical place of birth of the ancient fable, »im schönsten Erdstrich Klein-Asiens« (230), and the historical development of »die Ebne vor Troja« as the site where »das gesammte Griechenland versammeln, und Held nach Held seine Tapferkeit zeigen [konnte].« As with the legends of knightly deeds during the crusades, it is not clear whether the heroic acts of the Trojan War motivated the fabrication of fables or whether these heroic acts are fabrications of the fables: Gleichsam ein Musterplatz griechischer Volksführer und Stammesfürsten ward diese Ebne vor Troja; der Helden, die nachher auf ihrem Rückzuge so viele Schicksale erlitten, so manche Fabeln erzeugten, so manchen Gegenden und Städten neue Namen gaben. Was in den mittleren Jahrhunderten die Kreuzzüge auf Europa wirkten, war der Trojanische Krieg fürs alte Griechenland, wenigstens in der Fabel [my italics, C. P.]. (230)

In any event, Herder turns from geographical considerations about the rise of fables in popular legends to an etymological argument regarding Homer’s name in order to construct a genealogy of Greek epic. The name Homer derives from homerus, which Herder translates as »ein Mitsänger oder Uebereinstimmer des Gesanges« (231) and thereby delivers an important intervention into debates about the origins of epic poetry and Homer as an author at the end of the eighteenth century.33 For according to Herder, Homer did not invent the fables of ancient Greek epic, but instead, unified them in a larger composition that was then transmitted as epic poetry (232). Herder traces Homer’s genealogy:

31

32

33

On this notion of constructed traditions, see: The Invention of Tradition, ed. by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York 2003. On Herder’s own experiments with the writing of fables, or »Kleinepik,« see: Wolfgang Stellmacher, »Herders Fabeln, Parabeln, Legenden als Versuche einer ›abgerissenen‹ und ›verstummenden‹ Poesie.« In: Herder Jahrbuch/Herder Yearbook 6 (2002), p. 115–127. Stellmacher concludes about these experiments: »Die Legenden sind nicht mehr wie viele der vorangegangenen fabel- oder parabelartigen Dichtungen Formen einer symbolischen oder allegorischen Poesie mit weithin offenen Denkhorizonten und Assoziationsangeboten, sondern sie sind geprägt von einer inhaltlich klaren lehrhaften Tendenz, die in gewollter poetischer Schmucklosigkeit den Leser anspricht« (126). For a discussion of these debates, see: Martin, Das deutsche Versepos im 18. Jahrhundert, p. 249–257; as well as the editors’ introduction to Friedrich August Wolf, Prolegomena to Homer, trans. with an introduction and notes by Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and James E. G. Zetzel, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1985.

41

Da die meisten dieser Namen als Sänger und Dichter bekannt und bedeutend sind, was hindert uns, sie als eine Genealogie des griechischen Gesanges selbst [my italics, C. P.] anzusehen, der bekanntlich von Thracien über Thessalien nach Griechenland kam, und sich natürlich von Geschlecht zu Geschlecht, von Gesangmeister zu Gesangmeister fortpflanzte. Der vierzehnte in dieser Reihe berühmter Sänger war Homer, dessen Name, wie seiner Eltern, seines Schwiegervaters sogar, für die Geschichte des Gesanges bedeuten. Evepos hieß jener, dessen Vater Mnesigenes war; seine Mutter Eumetis; deren Sohn also Homer, gleichsam Concertmeister des alten Gesanges, Vater eines bleibenden Epos, der jene Stimmen vereinigte, indem er sie in eine Kunstform band, an den man fortan reihete, was sich an ihn reihen ließ. Ists mit Anakreon und Aesop, unter den Hebräern mit Moses, David, Salomo, Jesaias, unter den Sängern der Westwelt mit Oßien u. f. nicht auch also gewesen? (232)

Homer is thus an ideal that unites a lineage of singers and poets: Wie das bekannte Haupt des Homer ein idealisches Gebilde ist, das indeß sehr bestimmt und charakteristisch die Gestalt des göttlichen Sängers zeiget: so laßet uns die Sammlung der Gedichte betrachten, die seinen Namen tragen. Uns sind sie Homerus, die Gesammtstimme (homophonie) der Gesangesvorwelt, das aus vielen und vielerlei Sagen älterer Zeit Kunstreich emporgehobene Epos. (232–233)

Homer is further the name for a principle of form. It is the principle of homophonie, the unity of the elements, and is significant for the theory of epic, because it ascribes this formal principle to the genre itself. Herder claims that the Odyssey and the Iliad, despite the many differences of characters, predicaments, and symbols, both exhibit a Homeric form that unifies »zwei griechische Welten, eine Ost- und Westwelt« (233). Homeric thus describes »die zusammengeflochtene, zusammengefügte Kunstform des alten griechischen Epos« (233–234). Further, according to Herder, this form was inseparable from the melody of hexameter verse. However: »Jede Nation hatte zu ihren Volkgesängen ein bestimmtes, ein- und vieltöniges Silbenmaas, wie die Gesänge der nordischen Skalden, die Jagd- und Kriegslieder der Germanen, die assonirenden Romanzen der Spanier, die Gesänge Oßians es erweisen« (234). Providing a unitary form to an assemblage of popular legends entails, according to Herder, not only the use of deviations of melody in verse, but also the effective narration of an otherwise lengthy story. In order for the narrative to acquire »Maas und Ziel« and work »angenehm« for the reader, it has to have a beginning, middle, and end (236). Against Blankenburg’s privileging of character over events, Herder insists on the centrality of »eine merkwürdige Begebenheit, ein Abenteuer« for the epic and as the elementary unit of epic popular legends (236). Arguing implicitly against the later Blankenburg’s projection of a humanist Homeric epic concerned with depicting psychological human states, Herder says clearly of Homeric epic: »Die Begebenheite, das Abenteuer bindet Charactere; es übet und prüft sie; der Ausgang (eventus) steht uns vor Augen; jetzt wird Handlung« (236–37). The rhythm of the hexameter allows for a successive representation of the plot along its horizontal axis, but is also interrupted by the often cumbersome similes along its vertical axis. Both however belong to the »Gang und Fortschritt lebendiger Rede,« 42

according to Herder (237), which derives from the epic’s history as a mode of oral story-telling (238).34 Like Bodmer and Breitinger, Herder regards »das Wunderbare« as an indispensible element of the epic. The argument is a bit more complex here, though, and is less a reflection of a Leibnizian world-view regarding the representation of the divine within nature as it is an argument for the poetic depiction of contingency as a defining element of plot. Epics, he says, are about heroes encountering and overcoming obstacles such as battles and other dangers. Modern observers might attribute the hero’s success to his virtue and cleverness, but the ancient epic »wußte zu gut, wie viel in den wichtigsten, größesten, schwersten Dingen es auf das Kleinste, auf Zufälle ankommt, die nicht in unsrer Macht sind, die unsre Klugheit nicht ordnet« (238). Herder thus understands »das Wunderbare« as those factors which reside outside of human control, in short, as destiny: »Dem Helden stand eine Macht entgegen, ein Hülfsgott ihm zur Seite; auf seinen Charakter, auf sein Benehmen kam das Meiste, aber nicht Alles an; zuletzt entschied das Verhängniß« (238). In the occurrences of the Odyssey, for instance, gods and heroes are »aufs innigste verbunden« because heaven and earth, the divine and nature, were intertwined (239). In subsequent epics, such as the idyll, where nature replaced the divine, or magic or religion took its place, as in medieval and renaissance epics, the »Triebfedern der Menscheit« were disempowered (240), resulting in improper epics, in Herder’s sense of the epic. »Jene mächtigen Wesen« are irreplaceable and speak to a human desire to experience the marvelous in poetic narrative; »Mit dem gemein-Menschlichen Hans und Peter sind wir zu bekannt; mit Erdegeschöpfen haben wir täglichen umgang; auch das Göttliche wollen wir einmal sehen, das im Menschen und mit ihm wirkt, oder das, als höchster Rathschluß über ihm schwebet« (240). Herder rejects the claim that the epic has diminished in importance as a literary form since Homer, labeling such declarations themselves »fables,« and cites the accomplishments of Klopstock and Wieland as evidence of the persistence of the epic spirit in eighteenth-century German literature. Herder’s definition of the epic links the principles of Homeric poetry with the history of human thought and announces this history’s perpetuation: Uebrigens ists eine Fabel, daß das wahre Epos seine Macht verlohren habe. Ariost und Tasso, Milton, Klopstock, Wieland und manches andre wahrhaft Epische hat Wirkungen hervorgebracht, die kein andres Gedicht hervorbringen konnte: denn die höchstphilosophische Geschichte des menschlichen Geistes und Herzens, in lebendigen Charakteren auf die wirksamste Weise durch erzählende Rede dargestellt, ist ja das Epos. Da es dies nun in einer Kunstform thut, die einerseits sich der Handlung oder Begebenheit eines Helden anschließt, anderseits ein Weltsystem schafft und mit unendlicher Mannichfaltigkeit die höchste Einheit in fortgehend-stiller Harmonie verbindet; wie könnte

34

On the decline of oral practices of story-telling, see: Erich Schön, Der Verlust der Sinnlichkeit. Die Verwandlung des Lesers. Mentalitätswandel um 1800, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1993.

43

ein lebendiger Gesang dieser Art ersterben? Vielmehr muß er mit Hülfe der Zeiten in neuem Glanz aufgehn und neue Kräfte beleben. (240–241)

Homer thus names not so much a lost possibility of epic poetry as it does a model of poetic form that, while evolving over time, remains capable of harmonizing diversity within the unity of poetic representation and hence perpetuates the lively words of human history and thought: »Wahrscheinlich aber wird als Verflechter und Zusammenstimmer des alten Gesangs, in seiner Darstellung sowohl als in seiner Kunst der Verflechtung, allen kommenden Zeiten Homer als Muster voranstehen« (241). Herder’s definition of the epic imputes a creative potential to the epic, however, that exceeds the mere harmonization of extant popular legends in order to create a »Weltsystem.« This is a striking formulation, for it emphasizes the creative over the reflective quality of epic. The epic does not merely reflect a given historical world-view but is apparently actively involved in the construction of a »Weltsystem.« The fables of particular world systems also fabricate them. The stories epics tell are not mere histories of a nation or hero; »sie schafft die wahre, die vollkommene, die ewigdaurende Geschichte, eben indem sie auf das Einzelne, wie es ist, anders nicht Rücksicht nimmt, als sofern im Besondern das Allgemeine liegt, das sie mit der energischen Schöpfungskraft, die der Dichtkunst allein eigen ist, in Jenem behandelt« (241). Further, these stories invent »ganze Welten« consisting of »Götter-, Feen- und Geisterwelten,« which draw on the mythologies of ancient poetic legends, perpetuate them, and invent new ones (243). Comparing the genres of the epic and drama, Herder concludes that the scope of epic representation is less restricted by considerations of space and time, because its »Gebiet so weit ist als die Phantasie es sich erschaffen will« (245); however, this greater scope forces the epic poet to select carefully an object for epic representation that can capture the »Intereße« of its audience. The object of representation must be based on a popular legend, for instance, of national heroes, that had resonance for the »Nation,« just as the successive representation by versification has to produce a slow, yet enduring, »stille Wirkung« on its audience: Aber auch einen tieferen Grund hat die Epopee als das Drama, da sie auf die innigste Gesinnung, auf das Herz der Volkstradition bauen muß, ohne welche sie ein Wirkungsloses Mährchen bleibet. Wer lieset anjetzt unser Heldenbuch? wer die Ritter von der runden Tafel? wer Lohensteins Arminius, König Otocar, den Theurdank, den Weißkönig? Auf die Nation haben diese Helden nie gewirket. Eben so wenig hätten es Heinrich der Vogler, Heinrich der Löwe u. f. gethan, deren Epos andre Dichter sich wählten. Unter den Britten gelang dem Blackmore sein Artur nicht, weise ließ Pope seinen Brutus fahren. Zu einem epischen Gedicht, wenn echt-homerisch es an Gegenständen und Sprache die poetische Rede der Nation von Grundaus aufnehmen und in allen ihren Zweigen ausdrücken soll, gehört viel. (245)

The »heroes« named here by Herder apparently never had a resonating impact on the »Herz der Volkstradition.« Does Herder suggest that they were too insignificant to incite a truly popular national legend, or does he imply that the epics representing them failed to create an enduring legacy? In light of his ruminations on the cir44

cularly productive and reflective aspects of the legendary adventures and narratives of epic myths, the answer would have to be a paradoxical »yes« to both questions. As a concluding remark to this overview of the epic imaginary in theoretical poetics, and before turning to the individual analyses of specific experiments with the epic in the eighteenth century, I would like to draw attention to an aspect of the epic imaginary that will move to the foreground of my readings. Theorizations of the epic genre seek to describe what an epic either properly is or should be. Linked to these prescriptions are a number of presuppositions about the productive capacities of literary texts and their modes of reception. It is, for instance, asserted that an epic should narrate public deeds and communicate moral truths in the process, but it is by no means obvious just how a literary text should accomplish such objectives. A driving concern of my study is thus to analyze how the poetic question of how to legitimately legitimate community shifts in the texts by Klopstock, Wieland, Goethe, and, in an epilogue addressing the status of the epic in the Romantic period with specific reference to Brentano’s verse epic, from a primary focus on mythic content – the »what« of epic as we find it theorized by the critics – to the »how« of the epic as we find it explored in the praxis of epic poetry. In other words, the focus shifts to problems of representation, such as what literary strategies are required for an epic plot to be, in Breitinger’s words, »der symbolischen Absicht gemäß,«35 or how, in Gottsched’s words, »die sinnliche Vorstellung einer wichtigen moralischen Wahrheit« can »in die Augen [der Leser] leuchten,«36 or in Herder’s terms, how to combine »mit unendlicher Mannichfaltigkeit die höchste Einheit in fortgehendstiller Harmonie.«37 Such questions of literary representation are highly contested and open-ended matters for writers in the eighteenth century – matters which can only be articulated, tested, and evaluated in the practice of narration – and they have implications not only for the subject matter of epic poetry, but also for the eighteenth-century political imaginary.

35 36 37

Breitinger, Critische Dichtkunst, p. 197. Gottsched, Versuch einer critischen Dichtkunst, p. 292. Herder, Adrastea, p. 240–241.

45

2.

The Epic Prosody of the Sublime Nation: Klopstock’s Messias

As thunder rumbles in the distance, rain patters onto the lawn, and a refreshing scent fills the warm air, a young man and woman steal away from the polite company at the party to enjoy the splendor of nature and a moment of intimacy. Speechless, he approaches the young woman gazing out the window onto the landscape. She looks at the sky, turns to him, tears in her eyes, desire welling in his heart. She lays her hand upon his. One word, a name in fact, suffices to symbolize the passion of their bond and the divinity of nature: »Klopstock,« she says. The young man and woman are, of course, Werther and Lotte, the scene at the window, one of the most famous out of Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werther. In this scene, Lotte refers to Klopstock’s ode Die Frühlingsfeyer (1759/1771), which Goethe’s ekphrasis evokes through its borrowed vocabulary and its parallelism to the festive atmosphere of the ball set against a spring thunderstorm. Lotte’s tears associate the pathos of this scene with Klopstock’s famous ode, and through these tears Goethe in effect sentimentalizes Klopstock’s poetry, and by extension the passionate love between two human beings and the divine in nature that he ascribes to Klopstock’s name. If Klopstock’s name signifies something for most readers today, it is certainly this maudlin scene from Goethe’s novel, symbolized by Lotte’s tears. Nearly a quarter of a century later, in Über naïve und sentimentalische Dichtung from 1795, Schiller coins a technical meaning of the term »sentimental,« derived from a theoretical interpretation of human history and an epistemology of aesthetic representation. Schiller identifies all of Klopstock’s poetry – singling out however his epic poem, Der Messias – with the genre of »elegiac sentimental« poetry, i. e. poetry that »stirs us through ideas, not through sensual truth«1; through this act of classification, Schiller adds a theoretical edifice to Goethe’s allusion in Werther and defines the terms of subsequent Klopstock reception with implications for not only

1

46

Friedrich Schiller, Philosophische Schriften. Erster Teil. In: Schiller, Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe, vol. 20, with the assistance of Helmut Koopmann, ed. by Benno von Wiese, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, Weimar 1962, p. 452. Hereafter cited parenthetically within the text. One of the best studies of Klopstock’s odes in conjunction with the problems of representation affi liated with the epic that I discuss in this chapter is: Inka Mülder-Bach, Im Zeichen Pygmalions. Das Modell der Statue und die Entdeckung der ›Darstellung‹ im 18. Jahrhundert, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 1998. Her study is based on the argument: »Klopstock’s Darstellungstheorie ist nicht zuletzt eine Explikation der impliziten Poetik der frühen Oden« (151).

the view of Klopstock as a poet of Empfindsamkeit but also for the reception of Der Messias.2 A closer look at Schiller’s diagnosis of Klopstock’s poetry, exemplified for Schiller by the epic poem Der Messias, reveals a tendency to sentimentalize Klopstock’s epic poem in its own way, which has subsequently led to a sentimentalizing epic imaginary within German aesthetic criticism.3 The predominance of Schiller’s interpretation of the fate of epic hexameter has led critics to overlook the cultural work Klopstock’s epic poem and theoretical texts perform on the level of the political imaginary as efforts to construct collective nationality through the creation of a national epic. According to Schiller, Klopstock is an exemplary poet of the supersensory realm of ideas. Schiller deploys a Kantian terminology to describe the epistemological process of the faculties when confronted with Klopstock’s texts.

2 3

Nikolaus Wegmann, Diskurse der Empfindsamkeit. Zur Geschichte eines Gefühls in der Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts, J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 1988. Schiller’s critique of Der Messias in Über naïve und sentimentalische Dichtung inaugurates a longstanding interpretation within German-language poetics which proclaims the anachronism of the epic genre and thereby accounts for the rise of the modern novel as the modern epic form. Both the Frühromantik experimentation with the novel and Hegel’s philosophical aesthetics promulgate this theoretical line of thought, which reached its pinnacle in Lukács’ theory of the novel, an exemplar of the tendency within German criticism to regard melancholically the epic form as belonging to a long lost era of Greek naiveté in which totality was immanent to life and guaranteed a subjective connection to objective experience. See for instance: Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, vol. 3, p. 392–93. Though it is fair to say that Lukács’ theory of the novel has dominated the view within subsequent German criticism of the epic, we could more precisely describe this general view as forming two often-overlapping strands within literary criticism, one philosophical-historical and the other formal. As practitioners of New Criticism in, respectively, the German and Anglo-American contexts, Emil Staiger and Norbert Frye exemplify an approach that treats the epic as a timeless form consisting of a poet, singer, or reader who communicates a text orally to a present audience of listeners. This archetypal epic setting – what Heinrich Maiworm calls an »epische Ursituation« – becomes problematic, so the formalist argument goes, with the rise of a public sphere, to use Habermas’ term, mediated by the production and consumption of print media: Maiworm, Neue deutsche Epik, p. 99; Emil Staiger, Basic Concepts of Poetics, trans. by Janette C. Hudson and Luanne T. Frank, Penn State University Press, University Park 1991; Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford 2000; Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1990. Both the philosophical-historical and the formalist interpretations consider the hexameter epic to be a relic of the past, belonging to a bygone era, and replaced by the novel as the form appropriate to a reader and subject matter constituted by modern individuation. In contrast, I argue throughout this chapter that Klopstock’s project to construct a national epic and a theory of hexameter to support it attempts to transform ancient Greek hexameter into a modern genre capable of narrating Germany’s national story by providing an antidote to the paradox of German epic narrative.

47

Unwillkührlich drängt sich die Phantasie der Anschauung, die Denkkraft der Empfindung zuvor, und man verschließt Auge und Ohr, um betrachtend in sich selbst zu versinken. Das Gemüth kann keinen Eindruck erleiden, ohne sogleich seinem eigenen Spiel zuzusehen, und was es in sich hat, durch Reflexion sich gegenüber und aus sich herauszustellen. Wir erhalten auf diese Art nie den Gegenstand, nur was der reflektirende Verstand des Dichters aus dem Gegenstand machte, und selbst dann, wenn der Dichter darstellen will, erfahren wir nicht seinen Zustand unmittelbar und aus der ersten Hand, sondern wie sich derselbe in seinem Gemüth reflektiert, was er als Zuschauer seiner selbst darüber gedacht hat. (452)

Schiller explains that Klopstock’s reader »closes his ear« and »sinks into himself« because Klopstock’s texts are mostly unable to match intuitions with objects, leaving the recipient with only the reflections of the poet’s own faculty of understanding. Left without intuitions to be mentally processed, the recipients’ own fantasy falls into a reflective play alienated from the immediacy of the objective world of nature. The alienation from objective nature appears as a retreat from life and individuality into the realm of »ideality«: »Was nur immer, außerhalb den Grenzen lebendiger Form und außer dem Gebiete der Individualität, im Felde der Idealität zu erreichen ist, ist von diesem musikalischen Dichter geleistet« (455). Schiller bases his claim that Klopstock is a musical poet on a distinction between musical and plastic modes of representation. According to this scheme, literature consists of impulses resembling music (»Tonkunst«) as well as the plastic arts (»bildende Kunst«). Literature is plastic if it imitates a determinate object, as the plastic arts strive to do, and is musical if it produces a determinate condition of the mind, without requiring a determinate object, as is the case with music (455). Schiller’s designation for the term »musical« refers to the non-objective effects produced in the recipient, not to the musical aspects of poetry, such as meter or rhyme. However dubious this distinction between the plastic and musical modes of representation may be, it is decisive for his evaluation of Klopstock’s poetry.4 As a musical poet, Klopstock moves the reader to turn inward and reflect upon the ideas his poetry seeks to convey, but he fails to depict individual objects of sensation that are

4

48

Schiller’s elaboration from around 1795 draws markedly different conclusions about the nature and capabilities of the musical than do earlier formulations in the eighteenth century that regard the musical as a lively form of representation and particularly efficacious mode of »lebendige Erkenntnis.« See: Caroline Torra-Mattenklott, Metaphorologie der Rührung, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 2002, p. 135–208, as well as Inka MülderBach’s discussion of eighteenth-century praise for the musical by thinkers such as Daniel Webb, Rousseau, and Herder (Mülder-Bach, Im Zeichen Pygmalions, p. 164–175). For a discussion of Schiller’s notion of musical poetics with regard to Klopstock’s work, see also the editor’s essay on »Genese und Geschichte des Werkes« in the critical apparatus to Klopstock’s Die deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik (F. G. Klopstock, Die deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik. In: Klopstock, Hamburger Klopstock-Ausgabe [HKA], founded by Adolf Beck, Karl Ludwig Schneider, and Hermann Tiemann, vol. VII.2, ed. by Rose-Maria Hurlebusch, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1975, p. 234–311).

adequate to these ideas and are intuitable for the reader. For Schiller, Der Messias validates these observations: So eine herrliche Schöpfung die Messiade in musikalisch poetischer Rücksicht, nach der oben gegebenen Bestimmung, ist, so vieles läßt sie in plastisch poetischer noch zu wünschen übrig, wo man bestimmte und für die Anschauung bestimmte Formen erwartet. Bestimmt genug möchten vielleicht noch die Figuren in diesem Gedichte seyn, aber nicht für die Anschauung; nur die Abstraktion hat sie erschaffen, nur die Abstraktion kann sie unterscheiden. Sie sind gute Exempel zu Begriffen, aber keine Individuen, keine lebenden Gestalten. Der Einbildungskraft, an die doch der Dichter sich wenden, und die er durch die durchgängige Bestimmtheit seiner Formen beherrschen soll, ist es viel zu sehr frey gestellt, auf was Art sie sich diese Menschen und Engel, diese Götter und Satane, diesen Himmel und diese Hölle versinnlichen will. Es ist ein Umriß gegeben, innerhalb dessen der Verstand sie nothwendig denken muß, aber keine feste Grenze ist gesetzt, innerhalb deren die Phantasie sie nothwendig darstellen müßte. (456)

The poetic constructions of Der Messias do not achieve the level of mimesis to be found in the plastic arts, because the humans, angels, God, Satan, heaven and hell, are abstract »exemplars of concepts« rather than »individuals« or »living forms.« Such abstractions appeal to the faculty of understanding but are too freely formed to appeal to the faculty of imagination.5 Here, fantasy has no firm borders to guide the representation. Coming full circle back to the scene from Werther in which Klopstock’s fate as a sentimental figure is sealed, let us read Schiller’s remarks on Klopstock’s epic poem as equally applicable to Werther’s plight. Die Jugend, die immer über das Leben hinausstrebt, die alle Form fliehet, und jede Grenze zu enge findet, ergeht sich mit Liebe und Lust in den endlosen Räumen, die ihr von diesem Dichter aufgethan werden. Wenn dann der Jüngling Mann wird, und aus dem Reiche der Ideen in die Grenzen der Erfahrung zurückkehrt, so verliert sich vieles, sehr vieles von jener enthusiastischen Liebe, aber nichts von der Achtung, die man einer so einzigen Erscheinung, einem so außerordentlischen Genius, einem so sehr veredelten Gefühl, die der Deutsche besonders einem so hohen Verdienste schuldig ist. (457–458)

With both critical distance and mature respect, Schiller assesses Klopstock as a poet who appeals to the idealism of youth, to someone as full of love and desire for the infinite as Werther.6 Werther, of course, is a hopeless case because he never survived his »enthusiastic love« for Klopstock’s poetry, never confined his idealism within

5

6

Discussions about the faculty of imagination abound in eighteenth-century poetics, and Schiller’s intervention marks only a later instance among several competing versions. See: Koschorke, Körperströme und Schriftverkehr, p. 273–311. Another way to formulate the critique would be along the lines of Kant’s remarks on »enthusiasm« in the Kritik der Urteilskraft: »da, wo nun die Sinne nichts mehr vor sich sehen, und die unverkennliche und unauslöschliche Idee der Sittlichkeit dennoch übrigbleibt, würde es eher nötig sein, den Schwung einer unbegrenzten Einbildungskraft zu mäßigen, um ihn nicht bis zum Enthusiasm steigen zu lassen.« (Immanual Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, Meiner, Hamburg 1990, p. 122) See also: Andreas Gailus, Passions of

49

the boundaries of experience. Too removed from the mature experience of nature’s limits, Klopstock’s epic, like most other modern poetic works, is incapable of the naïve representation most proper to the ancient epic form. Schiller ends his discussion of Klopstock on precisely this point: »So ist mir die Messiade als ein Schatz elegischer Gefühle und idealistischer Schilderungen theuer, wie wenig sie mich auch als Darstellung einer Handlung und als ein episches Werk befriedigt« (458). Schiller’s critique of Klopstock’s epic raises two important issues for the interpretation of Der Messias. First, in order to overcome the predominance of Schiller’s reception of Klopstock’s poetry, we have to pose the question not as a matter of whether Klopstock’s project to create a German-language hexameter is a »sentimental« recovery of an anachronistic form of poetic experience, but rather as a question of the extent to which it is an attempt to transform an ancient prototype into a modern genre full of new possibilities for literary experience. We need to interpret Schiller’s claim that Der Messias belongs to the elegiac sentimental genre as yet another articulation of an epic imaginary, albeit in the negative, for this interpretation overlooks significant aspects of Klopstock’s project to create a Germanlanguage hexameter that are not simply explained by the theory of symbolic poetic representation advocated by Goethe and Schiller.7 Secondly, and following from the first issue, Klopstock’s theory of hexameter should be seen as offering a unique intervention into the analysis of representational practices that understand »life« as a point of departure and a standard of measure.8 Schiller’s complaint about the lack of a »Handlung« appropriate for an epic poem overlooks the implications of Klopstock’s transformation of preconceived notions of epic plot through the praxis of epic poetry.9 Dieter Martin describes this transformation as a »Verinnerlichung der

7

8

9

50

the Sign: Revolution and Language in Kant, Goethe, Kleist, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2006, p. 28–73. Such is the evaluative standard used by Gerhard Kaiser in Klopstock. Religion und Dichtung, which contrasts a »classical« concept of the symbol to Klopstock’s poetics (Gerhard Kaiser, Klopstock. Religion und Dichtung, Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, Gütersloh 1963, p. 344). See the discussion by: Joachim Jacob, Heilige Poesie. Zu einem literarischen Modell bei Pyra, Klopstock und Wieland, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1997, p. 6–10. I return to Goethe’s and Schiller’s reflections on epic poetry in light of questions of symbol and allegory in the chapter on Hermann und Dorothea. Usually referred to in eighteenth-century poetics as the question of Lebendigkeit, and traceable to Baumgarten’s aesthetics. See: Torra-Mattenklott, Metaphorologie der Rührung, p. 139–208, and as constitutive of an empfindsame Ausdruckstheorie, Mülder-Bach, Im Zeichen Pygmalions, p. 164–175. On this point at least, Herder seems to agree with Schiller: In »Gespräch zwischen einem Rabbi und einem Christen über Klopstock’s Messias,« published in Herder’s Zweite Sammlung of the Fragmente über die neuere deutsche Literatur from 1766, the »Verinnerlichung« of the plot, its emphasis on »das Moralische auf Kosten des episch Rührenden« is criticized for delivering too much talk and too little action (Johann Gottfried Herder, Frühe Schriften 1764–1772. In: Herder, Werke in zehn Bänden, ed. by Martin Bollacher a. o., vol. 1, ed. by Ulrich Gaier, DKV, Frankfurt/M. 1985, 299–301).

epischen Gattung,« to which the Messias openly attests: »Der traditionelle Anruf im Eingang des Werks richtet sich nicht an eine Muse oder ein anderes göttliches Wesen, sondern nach innen« toward an invisible realm of the soul.10 Without a doubt: »Der Reichtum an seelischer Handlung bedingt aber den Verzicht auf plastische Darstellung. Die Konsequenz ist weitgehende Unanschaulichkeit.«11 Yet the following analysis will show that that is precisely the point. For Schiller, the elegiac sentimentality of Klopstock’s epic retreats from the objectivity of lived experience. In a strangely mixed metaphor that conflates the body with the clothes that cover it, Schiller figures Klopstock’s borderless reign of fantasy as a disembodiment akin to an act of disrobing that erases all life from poetic representation and leaves the supersensory without concrete form, or perhaps merely cloaked by the tethers of ornament: »Man möchte sagen, er ziehe allem, was er behandelt, den Körper aus, um es zu Geist zu machen, so wie andere Dichter alles geistige mit einem Körper bekleiden« (456). Schiller’s metaphor seems either to conflate the body with its clothing, language with the physical referent as counterpart to the supersenory, or to suggest that an intermediary element between idea and language as mere fabric of the universal is shed. In any event, with regard to his interpretation of Klopstock’s epic, the upshot of this stripping away of the body to render it as spirit is that »alle Gefühle, die er, und zwar so innig und so mächtig, in uns zu erregen weiß, strömen aus übersinnlichen Quellen hervor« (456). He leads us out of the phenomenal world of life, Schiller says: »immer nur den Geist unter die Waffen ruft, ohne den Sinn mit der ruhigen Gegenwart eines Objekts zu erquicken« (457). What Schiller criticizes as a poetic failure to achieve plasticity, and then uses as the main criterion with which to locate Klopstock’s epic poetry within a history of aesthetics organized along the poles of ancient and modern, naive and sentimental, is alternatively interpreted by Gerhard Kaiser as a tendency toward the sublime in the service of demythologization. Regarded from the standpoint of a demythologizing impulse, Klopstock would appear as the more radical proponent of enlightenment, for Schiller’s aesthetics are based on a mythological notion that objects might be animated by spirit(s) and that poetic language harbors the potential to render an image of this infusion for the human faculty of the imagination. In contrast to Schiller’s inadvertently mythological poetics of the symbol, the poetics underlying Klopstock’s Messias affirm the discrepancy between human and divine realms in order to probe the nature of this separation and to explore the potential of literary representation to enact other experiences of communion. In the vein of Enlightenment critiques of mythology in both ancient and modern variations, the Messias surprisingly stands the tradition of Christian epics on its head. In Gerhard Kaiser’s words:

10 11

Martin, Das deutsche Versepos, p. 138. Martin, Das deutsche Versepos, p. 138.

51

Seine Tendenz zur Erhabenheit ist nichts anderes als der Versuch, die nach dem Gleichnis des Menschen gebildete christliche Mythologie früher christlicher Epen zu »entmenschlichen.« Er will eine Bildsprache schaffen, die nicht aus der Ähnlichkeit der Geisterwelt mit der Menschenwelt, sondern aus der Unähnlichkeit beider Welten lebt. Der antike Mythos in der Dichtung Homers ist geglaubte oder zumindest halbgeglaubte Göttersage. Der christliche Mythos Miltons ist Bildungs- und Kunstprodukt. Klopstock dagegen nimmt das in der Wurzel unmythische Denken des Christentums in seiner Dichtung ernst.12

Lessing, on the other hand, took Klopstock’s demythologization of Christian myth for a theologically irreverent empowerment of the poet. When the opening lines of the Messias cite the epic genre’s convention of invoking the muses by calling upon the »unsterbliche Seele« of Christian monotheism, these verses also authorize the poet’s function as creator and singer of an epic poem about salvation. The formulation »Singe, unsterbliche Seele der sündigen Menschen Erlösung,« according to Lessing’s letter from 1753, does not invoke a muse or a god like we find at the beginning of Homer’s epics, but repeats instead the grammatical structure of Virgil’s opening lines, »I sing the weapons and the hero,« to read as »Ich unsterblicher Klopstock, singe der sündigen Menschen Erlösung.«13 The formulation invokes in effect the immortality of the poet, which is only reinforced a few verses below, where the lines between the immortality of the powers of creation and poetic imitation are blurred, at the same time that the holy spirit is anthropomorphized: »Weihe sie [i. e. die Dichtkunst], Geist Schöpfer, vor dem ich im stillen hier bete./ Führe sie mir, als deine Nachahmerin, voller Entzückung,/ Voll von unsterblicher Kraft, in verklärter Schöhneit entgegen./Rüste sie mit jener tiefsinnigen einsamen Weisheit,/ Mit der du, forschender Geist, die Tiefen Gottes durchschauest.« The poet’s powers of representation claim here not only to draw from the immortal powers of the holy spirit (as one element of the triad »Father-Son-and Holy Ghost) but also to imitate in poetry God’s acts of creation. Lessing was uneasy both with the implicit elevation of the poet above all other mortals and with how the reference to a »forschender Geist« equates the holy spirit with the human mind striving to understand the ways of God.14 Although Klopstock’s poetry insists on the sublimity of its content, and

12 13

14

52

Kaiser, Klopstock, p. 207. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Werke, vol. III, ed. by Herbert G. Göpfert, Carl Hanser Verlag, München 1972, p. 307, 742. In a later edition of the »Letters,« Lessing changed the formulation to »Ich unsterbliche Seele«. Lessing’s arguments are summarized by Sven-Aage Jørgensen in the »Nachwort« to: Christoph Martin Wieland, Oberon. Ein romantisches Heldengedicht in zwölf Gesängen, Reclam, Stuttgart 1990, p. 348. Lessing would have preferred a more clear identification of Klopstock’s singer position with that of the »sinning humans,« rather than with immortality: »Würde es nicht noch schöner gewesen sein, wenn er seine Seele, als diejenige angeredet hätte, welche selbst an der Erlösung der sündigen Menschen Teil hat? […] Sich selbst, oder seine Seele, schildert der Dichter auf ihrer prächtigsten Seite, auf der Seite der Unsterblichkeit; alle andere Menschen auf der allerelendesten, auf der

thus on the impossibility of a unity of the divine and the human in the empiricism of poetic symbol, despite Lessing’s concerns about the implicit anthropomorphism of Klopstock’s depiction of the holy spirit, its quest for a poetics capable of channeling this sublimity assigns a privileged role to the poet as high priest of the poetic community in the process of what Matías Martínez refers to as Klopstock’s attempt at »self-canonization.«15 In light of the controversial theological implications and contested representational practices of Klopstock’s poetics, it is the argument of this chapter that Klopstock’s writings insist that, by reaching beyond a phenomenal here and now, the counterfactual domains of the imaginary become just as much a part of »life« as are those apperceptions assumed to belong to an empirical realm of experience. While it might appear counterintuitive to consider Klopstock the poet-prosodist of the Messias in conjunction with the problem of political power, such a juxtaposition reveals not only that the two realms are in closer proximity than one might think, but that they are in fact mutually informing one another. For just as the intangibility of Christian salvation requires a highly developed range of representational practices, so too must the sublimity of the nation draw on the wealth of poetic language for its self-representation: Die göttliche Offenbarung, die Klopstock in seinem Hauptwerk, dem Messias, poetisch zu neuem Leben erweckt, kann man nicht wissen, man kann sie nur glauben und fühlen. Man muß von ihr durch und durch ergriffen sein, um überhaupt zu erahnen, was Christentum bedeutet – und so verhält es sich auch mit der Nation. Man muß sie glauben, fühlen und feiern. Nur auf diesem Weg stellen sich für Klopstock Nationalbewußtsein und Nationalgefühl her. Die Aufgabe des Dichters ist nicht, einem kollektiven Gefühl einer konkret gelebten Sozietät einen angemessenen Ausdruck zu verleihen, sondern Klopstock will dieses Gefühl, weitgehend unabhängig von der politischen Sinnhaftigkeit konkreter deutscher Staaten, im großen nationalen Gesang inszenieren und erschaffen.16

15

16

Seite sündiger und verlorner Geschöpfe. Scheint sich der Dichter also nicht von ihnen auszuschließen?« (Lessing, Werke, vol. III, p. 313) In the eighteenth letter, Lessing criticizes the »indignity« of the adjective »forschend« as a predicate of the divine spirit: »das Forschen selbst könne wohl von einem endlichen Wesen, nicht aber von dem Geiste Gottes gesagt werden.« (Lessing, Werke, vol. III, p. 317). Matías Martínez, »Gelungene und mißlungene Kanonisierung: Dantes Commedia und Klopstocks Messias.« In: Kanon-Macht-Kultur. Theoretische, historische und soziale Aspekte ästhetischer Kanonbildungen, ed. by Renate von Heydebrand, J.B Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 1998, p. 215–229. Bernd Fischer pursues this argument with regard to Klopstock’s treatment of the Arminius material for his militant bardic songs, which present of course a more explicitly direct political and military application of his poetic prowess than I am trying to uncover in the Messias (Fischer, Das Eigene und das Eigentliche, p. 131). See also: Heinrich Bosse, »Klopstocks Kriegslied (1749). Militärische Poesiepolitik im 18. Jahrhundert.« In: Jahrbuch des freien Deutschen Hochstifts (2000), p. 50–84. In a more recent analysis of the political imaginary in Klopstock’s bardic dramas, Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf takes

53

Klopstock’s epic prosody functions at the border of religion and patriotism – two nebulous but nonetheless significant components of the eighteenth-century political imaginary, as a glue that binds together the tendency toward state subordination to the tendency toward individualization within modern politics and paves the way for the imagining of a modern state.17 In Klopstock’s writings the construction of an imaginary national (Christian) collectivity is mediated through strategies of representation that develop out of an experimentation with the epic genre. As a poetic fiction, this fantastical community leads an ambivalent double-life, for as a form of patriotic discourse it can both support the nascent political structures of the time and suggest alternatives to them. Klopstock’s epic prosody thus displays a »Janusköpfigkeit« in its Christian universalism and local patriotism.18 I argue here that it presents an imaginary national collectivity as existing within an extra-po-

17 18

54

a psychoanalytic approach to the constellation of national identity in these texts. The unattainable and intractible »real« of a presumed common national identity – a tangible essence of the community, or even better, of the body politic, that would be positively evident to all – produces a hateful narcissistic gaze. This gaze issues from the way that a collective paradoxically misrecognizes its own unity by perceiving a missing wholeness in the gaze of others. The gaze of the other is in this way associated with a desire to rob the nation of its unity, and yet the perceived unity and threat from outside are only made possible by the very structure in which a community is formed by its own desire for that essential commonality that it does not have but which is imagined as being threatened by others. A string of discreet practices are then treated as representative of national identity. In the absence of an immediately shared or evident core, members of a political group identify with a disjunctive catalogue of national characteristics and even organize their activity around certain practices considered to distinguish the collective from others. Such activity can erupt into xenophobia or aggressive nationalism once these traditions and the collectivity they enable are interpreted as threatened. Wagner-Egelhaaf unpacks the logic of narcissistic defensiveness through an analysis of the function of the eagle trope in Klopstock’s bardic Hermann dramas. The circulation of the figure of the eagle as national symbol for both the Germanic tribes and the Romans indicates how the nation can only be experienced through fleeting representations that cannot ultimately belong to any one nation. In an interesting parallel to the function of Christ within the Christian community, the Hermann figure of national unity is preferrably only spoken about by other characters and bards, favorably of course, and, Wagner-Egelhaaf argues, must die so that the imaginary constellation of national identification, for which Hermann had become the ideal figure of positive attributes in unity, does not come undone in the exigencies of war (Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, »Klopstock! Oder: Medien des nationalen Imaginären. Zu den Hermann-Bardieten.« In: Hermann Schlachten. Zur Literaturgeschichte eines nationalen Mythos, ed. by Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, Veröffentlichungen der Literaturkommission für Westfalen vol. 32, Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2008, p. 195–214). Gerhard Kaiser, Pietismus und Patriotismus im literarischen Deutschland. Ein Beitrag zum Problem der Säkularisation, Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1961. Han-Martin Blitz uses the term »Janusköpfigkeit« to describe the mixture of patriotism and cosmopolitanism within Enlightenment discourse, before the Napoleonic wars (Blitz, Aus Liebe zum Vaterland).

litical, socio-psychic space of institutionalized literature. Furthermore, Klopstock’s prosody collides with the implications of Lutheran semiotics, which treat the communion as a performative reiteration that constitutes the Christian community, by developing a parallel poetic practice of communion directed at affect as the indispensable element of community. In 1735, under the entry for »Heldengedichte oder Epopee,« we find in Zedler’s Grosses Vollständiges Universal-Lexikon Gottsched’s definition of the epic as »eine Nachahmung einer berühmten Handlung, die so wichtig ist, daß sie ein ganzes Volk, ja wo möglich mehr als eines angeht.«19 The concluding sentence of the encyclopedia entry points to the lack of an extant German epic: »Und vielleicht ist es auch besser, daß starke Geister und sonderlich unsere lieben Teutschen ihren Fleiß und Kräffte auf nöthigere Dinge wenden, als auf ein solches Werck, das vor ein Spielwerck zu viel, und vor eine ernsthaffte Arbeit zu wenig ist.« Klopstock’s expressed intention was to take up the challenge described in the Zedler article, and expend his »Fleiß und Kräffte« to write a national narrative for Germany, just as his English predecessor Milton had accomplished for England.20 However, if the purpose of an epic is primarily to »imitate a famous plot« through the narrative of a past event, particularly one that is significant for »an entire group of people,« then the narration of a German national epic faces a paradox: without an extant written text or factual political unity to function as an epic point of reference, the relation to a national past has to be invented, and it falls upon epic narration to (re-) construct a past which can be retroactively posited as the epic point of reference. Klopstock’s theory of hexameter – with its central category of »Darstellung« – can be interpreted as an attempt to produce a poetics capable of overcoming this paradox.21 He launches this project first of all by finding a story he can appropriate as

19 20

21

Zedler, Universal-Lexikon, p. 1217–1223. See for instance the letter to Bodmer from 21 September 1748 in: Klopstock, HKA, Briefe, vol. I, p. 17–20. Klopstock asks Bodmer: »Aber haben Sie nicht, bey Ihren Zweifeln selbst, noch ein zu gütiges Vorurtheil vor unsre Nation? Ich glaube, daß man sie oft aufwecken müssen wird, eh sie nur mercken, daß ein Messias da ist« (17). Klopstock then defends his decision to write in hexameter. Milton states his intention to write an English epic in the preface to Paradise Lost, »The Verse«: »This neglect then of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming« (John Milton, Paradise Lost, Penguin, London 2000, p. 1). On Klopstock’s literary competition with Milton as it relates to concepts of aemulatio and imitatio from rhetoric, see: Jacob, Heilige Poesie, p. 113–14, and p. 120–122. Klopstock was apparently well aware of the logic of such myth-making in the service of instituting national identity: »In seiner Ode ›Der Hügel und der Hain‹ (1767) formuliert er programmatisch den Versuch, dem zersplitterten Deutschland durch einen fi ktionalen Ursprungsmythos eine nationale Identität und geschichtlich begründete Daseinsberechtigung zu geben, die innerhalb der deutschen Poetik in Widerspruch zu Gottscheds Vorbildfunktion der griechischen Antike und zur Regelpoetik der Nachahmung steht.«

55

the story of the German people: the biblical story of Christian salvation, an epic Klopstock asserts is still alive in the German-speaking world and which poetry can stage as a communal experience accessible through epic poetry. The ode »Mein Vaterland« (1768/1771) reflects back on his decision to narrate the Christian story of the resurrection instead of his earlier choice of the story of Heinrich der Vogler (Heinrich I) as Germany’s national epic: Früh hab ich dir mich geweiht! Schon da mein Herz Den ersten Schlag der Ehrbegierde schlug, Erkor ich, unter den Lanzen und Harnischen Heinrich, deinen Befreier, zu singen. Allein ich sah die höhere Bahn, Und entflammt von mehr, denn nur Ehrbegier, Zog ich weit sie vor. Sie führet hinauf Zu dem Vaterlande des Menschengeschlechts!22

The purview of the poet’s patriotism has expanded beyond the story of the heroic liberator of the fatherland to the story of the »fatherland of humanity.« The ode explains that this »höhere Bahn« connects Germany to Christian salvation: O schone mein! dir ist dein Haupt umkränzt Mit tausendjährigem Ruhm! du hebst den Tritt der Unsterblichen, Und gehest hoch vor vielen Landen her! O schone mein! Ich liebe dich, mein Vaterland! Ach sie sinkt mir, ich hab es gewagt! Es bebt mir die Hand die Saiten herunter; Schone, schone! Wie wehet dein heiliger Kranz, Wie gehst du den Gang der Unsterblichen daher.23

22 23

56

(Emanuel Peter, Geselligkeiten. Literatur, Gruppenbildung und kultureller Wandel im 18. Jahrhundert, Studien zur deutschen Literatur vol. 153, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1999, p. 159). Klopstock, »Mein Vaterland.« In: Klopstock, Ausgewählte Werke, Carl Hanser Verlag, München 1962, p. 117–119, here: verses 29–36. Klopstock, »Mein Vaterland«, verses 17–24. In the Nachwort to this volume, F. G. Jünger describes Klopstock’s connection to Heinrich I thus: »Mit der Stadt [Quedlinburg, eine Gründung Heinrich I.] ist das Leben der sächsischen Könige und Kaiser eng verwoben. So wie der Harz Klopstocks Gebirge ist, so ist Heinrich I. sein König und Stammesfürst. Er fühlt sich als Sachse und sieht in Heinrich das Urbild des Fürsten. Dem Leben Heinrichs gilt sein erster Plan zu seinem Epos. Die Hermannsschlacht verlegt er in die Gegend der Roßtrappe. Und Hermann selbst läßt er auf dem großen Bodefelsen geboren werden. Cherusker und Sachsen hält er für den gleichen Stamm.« (1335–1336). Without commenting on the earlier project to commemorate Heinrich I, Joachim Jacob traces a direct line between Klopstock’s reflections on epic poetry in his so called Abschiedsrede delivered upon completion of his studies in September 1747 and the ambitions of a Heilige Poesie experimented with in the Messias: »Bereits in Pforta konzipiert und in den an-

Not only is Germany’s national story intertwined with the story of Christianity, but it is also regarded as no less than the story of humanity. We thus find both inclusionary and exclusionary mechanisms at work within the universalist impulse of Klopstock’s sense of nationality, as is evident at the start of the Messias in the narrator’s address to »ihr wenigen Edlen« in the first song: So hört meinen Gesang, ihr besonders, ihr wenigen Edlen, Theure gesellige Freunde des liebenswürdigen Mittlers, Ihr mit der Zukunft des grossen Gerichts vertrauliche Seelen, Hört mich, und singt den ewigen Sohn durch ein göttliches Leben.24

My focus here is on how Klopstock’s identification of German nationality with Christian salvation combines elements of a »heilige Poesie« concerned with the »Erweiterung der Vorstellungskraft und das Interesse an anschaulicher Erkenntnis«25 with a particular model of communication between text and reader that accentuates the illocutionary force of poetic language in order to activate the recipient’s internal experience of an enlivened26 patriotic and religious community. Klopstock’s identification of the epic of German nationality with the epic of humanity, construed as the story of Christianity, not only emerges against the backdrop of questions of representation and communal participation inherited from the Reformation, but also transforms expectations within the epic imaginary about the nature of epic »Handlung.« In turning to the Christian myth of crucifi xion and resurrection, Klopstock implicitly reformulates the Reformation’s discussion of the sacrament (i. e., das Abendmahl ) in terms of a secular poetic and political problem of narrating an otherwise invisible community.27 A confrontation with a Lutheran conception of representa-

24

25 26

27

schließenden Studienjahren in Jena und Leipzig ausgearbeitet, soll das bislang vermißte christliche Epos in deutscher Sprache entstehen, das sich neben den geschätzten Beispielen der europäischen Tradition behaupten kann.« (Jacob, Heilige Poesie, p. 112) The Abschiedsrede is translated from Latin into German in: Carl Friedrich Cramer, Klopstock. Er; und über ihn, vol. 1: 1724–1747, Schniebes, Hamburg 1780, p. 54–132. Klopstock, Messias, Erste Druckfassung 1748. In: Klopstock, HKA, IV.3, p. 3, lines 19–22. Heinrich Bosse refers to the exclusionary yet constructive dimension of the first three songs published in 1748, »die sich an die wenigen Edlen richten, um aus ihnen eine Leser-Gemeinde zu bilden.« (Bosse, »Klopstocks Kriegslied (1749),« p. 58). Jacob, Heilige Poesie, p. 3. Jacob points out that, contrary to Schiller’s argument, a Heilige Poesie is indeed concerned with the poetics of »Anschaulichkeit.« Mülder-Bach aligns this model of communication with the Pygmalion metaphor: »Denn nicht nur als Autor, sondern vor allem als Leser oder Betrachter, der am fremden (oder fremd gewordenen eigenen) Werk den Überschuß des Lebendigen zu erzeugen sucht, wird Pygmalon zu einer zentralen Gestalt der Poetik und Ästhetik des 18. Jahrhunderts« (Mülder-Bach, Im Zeichen Pygmalions, p. 9). I thus agree with Jacob’s argument: »So ist die Literarisierung der christlichen Religion und die Sakralisierung der Literatur durchaus nicht nur ein unter theologischen Voraussetzungen zu beschreibendes Programm, sondern mit gleichem Recht auch eines,

57

tion thus underlies Klopstock’s poetic innovations and figuration of community. Klopstock’s narrative paradox, the problem of how to narrate a communal origin that has a sublime referent, shares certain similarities with Lutheran semiotics because both come in the wake of changing institutional parameters accompanying the rise and circulation of print culture.28 The nature and function of the sacrament has been a topic of theological debate for centuries with repercussions for the doctrines and practices of institutionalized Christianity. Jochen Hörisch has termed the semiotics of the Abendmahl, with its twin holy signifiers Brot und Wein, a »Semontologie,« »[i]ndem das Abendmahl das göttliche Wort immer erneut Fleisch werden und mitten unter uns wohnen läßt, garantiert es die erfüllte Identität von Sein und Sinn. Im Sakrament von Brot und Wein wird Sinn sinnlich erfahrbar.«29 Luther’s complex, radical, and enormously influential attempt to resolve the many paradoxes vexing the doctrine of the Abendmahl 30 consists in a shift from a »Semontologie« to an »Ontosemiologie« that imputes the words of Christ with a motivating power inseparable from the certainty of belief. This shift relies on a fundamental distinction between word and sign: The words of Christ are the testament that infuse the

28

29

30

58

das zur poetologischen Reflexion auf die Möglichkeiten und den Zusammenhang von Vorstellung und Darstellung einer nicht nur ›großen und herrlichen,‹ sondern auch einer schwierigen und bisweilen ganz unanschaulichen Materie drängt.« (Jacob, Heilige Poesie, p. 4). »Luther wurde zum Theoriker und Politiker des heißen Mediums Buchdruck, des Mediums, das die sensorische Beteiligung des Lesers auf einen Sinn reduziert, indem er die Schrift, das biblische Zeichen, aus dem Medium der sakramentalen Semiotik befreite.« (Manfred Schneider, »Luther mit McLuhan. Zur Medientheorie und Semiotik heiliger Zeichen.« In: Diskursanalysen 1 – Medien, ed. by Friedich Kittler, Manfred Schneider, and Samuel Weber, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1987, p. 13–25, here: p. 19). Jochen Hörisch, Brot und Wein. Die Poesie des Abendmahls, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1992, p. 16. Hörisch also provides a brief history of the semiotics of the sacrament and the development of the Eucharistielehre up to the triumph of the Transsubstantiationslehre in the thirteenth century (81–92). Hörisch describes the numerous paradoxes: »Christi Gegenwart wird in der Messe und im Gottesdienst geehrt und verzehrt. Das Abendmahl erinnert an Christi Sterben und will Leben bringen. Dieses Sterben aber wäre, so Christus gewollt hätte, vermeidbar gewesen und schließt deshalb Reflexionen über seine suizidale Tendenz zumindest nicht kategorisch aus. Das Opfer des Selbstmordes gilt jedoch eben der Religion als Todsünde, die auf einen (zumindest latenten) Selbstmörder zurückgeht. In Brot und Wein ist der Erlöser real and alles bloß Zeichenhafte überwinden anwesend; und doch sind priesterliche Symbole, Worte und Zitate notwendig, um diese Realität zu bewirken. Leiblich real anwesend aber ist Christus nur denen, die daran glauben. Wer ungläubig dasselbe verzehrt, verzehrt doch nicht dasselbe. Verzehrend ist zumal auch der Zeitmodus des Abendmahls. Ist es doch zugleich ein Gedächtnismahl, ein eschatologisches Mahl und ein präsentes Ereignis. Ein Ereignis allerdings, das als Ereignis eine hochrituelle Institutionalisierung erfährt, welcher Widerspruch sich auch darin kundtut, daß der Vollzug des Abendmahls als verzehrender Entzug seiner sakramentalen Elemente prozediert. Wer daran glaubt, läuft Gefahr, daran glauben zu müssen« (Hörisch, Brot und Wein, 101).

signifiers of the sacrament with the promise (Verheißung) of salvation. Brot und Wein function then as »Gedächtniszeichen« of Christ’s promise that make these words present for the participant and thereby constitute the Christian community of believers as a community.31 In terms of speech act theory, the communion functions as the ritualistic reiteration and enactment of salvation because it is motivated by the illocutionary force set into motion by the promise uttered by Christ: Das Reale kann Zeichen für Gottes Sein, Gnade und Güte nur sein, weil ihm göttliche Worte vorangegangen sind, die freie Christenmenschen als wahres Versprechen und als gültiges Testament beglaubigen müssen, auf daß sie erfüllt werden.32

Since Luther’s critique of the Catholic church’s clerical practices of the sacrament is based on the primacy of Christ’s words as illocutionary speech acts, the printed word holds the potential to become the new medium of belief because it obviates the need for both the administrative role of the priests and the mediatory functions of the sacrament itself: Das Wort, das sich der Mensch, also jeder Gläubige, täglich und stündlich vor Augen halten kann (mihi proponere), ist das im politischen Raum gestreute Schriftenzeichen des gedruckten Buches. Die Lutherische Logik des Sakramentalzeichens beruht auf der Möglichkeit, durch die visuelle Permanenz des Wortes der Verheißung auf das sakramentale Eingedenken zu verzichten.33

It is not my ambition here to assess whether Klopstock’s poetics contribute to the secularization of Christian dogma into modern patriotic and poetic discourses, but it cannot be overlooked that his approach to community is Lutheran insofar as it ascribes a sacred dimension to poetics which, all performativity aside, presupposes belief among its audience as »die Energie, welche den Signifikanten zum Glühen

31

32 33

Schneider cites Luther’s text Von der babylonischen Gefangenschaft der Kirche (1520), in which this distinction is clearly drawn and the point about the mnemonic function of signifiers is made: »Gott pflegt bei jeder Verheißung ein Zeichen hinzuzufügen, damit sie durch dieses Andenken oder Denkmal seiner Verheißung desto treuer behalten werde und wir uns um so kräftiger an sie erinnern würden. […] Daraus ersehen wir, daß uns in jeder Verheißung Gottes zwei Dinge vorgelegt werden: das Wort und das Zeichen, so daß wir das Wort als das Testament und das Zeichen aber als das Sakrament erkennen sollen. Wie in der Messe: das Wort Christi ist das Testament, Bort und Wein sind das Sakrament. Und wie im Wort mehr Kraft liegt als im Zeichen, so auch mehr im Testament als im Sakrament.« (Schneider, »Luther mit McLuhan,« p. 19–20). Hörisch, Brot und Wein, p. 120. Schneider, »Luther mit McLuhan,« p. 20. The implication is already explicit in Von der babylonischen Gefangenschaft der Kirche. Luther writes: »Denn der Mensch kann das Wort oder Testament ohne das Zeichen oder Sakrament haben und es gebrauchen. […] So kann ich täglich, ja sogar stündlich Messe haben, sofern ich, sooft ich will, mir Christi Worte vor Augen halten und meinen Glauben an ihnen stark machen und vollziehen kann.« (20)

59

bringt.«34 This is one of two potential problems that emerge in conjunction with Klopstock’s performative epic of the sublime nation. For the enacted participation or membership in the collective being narrated goes hand in hand with a presupposed belief in the promised community on the part of those participants. Would the signs have the same effects in the absence of such belief? Reflecting on the »Lebendigkeit« of the celestial »teilnehmende Zuschauer« depicted in the scenes at the cross and grave, who participate but do not themselves propel the plot forward, Klopstock writes in 1801 that their »Lebendigkeit« can only be expected to have an effect on Christian believers: Wirkung hervorzubringen, ist Zweck; vorgestellte Handlungen, oder Theilnahme sind nur Mittel. Bey der letzten kommt auch das in Betrachtung, daß er Theilnehmende zuweilen mehr Lebendigkeit (und was ist diese nicht in Absicht auf die Darstellung) zeigen kann, als der, welcher bloß mit ausführt. Auf die Neueren wirkt Handeln und Theilnehmen in der Ilias nicht, wie auf die Griechen, sondern nur wie eben dieses im Messias auf die Nichtchristen wirkt.35

The second problem with Klopstock’s confrontation with a Lutheran semiotics concerns a potential conflict between the poet-priest and the newly afforded freedom of independent readers unleashed by the circulation of the printed word. No doubt, »[d]aß Worte, so sie beglaubigt werden, stiften, was real und tatsächlich zu bleiben vermag, ist eine Botschaft, die Dichter gern hören,«36 and it is a message that elevates poets to the status of something like a high priest of the nation,37 while also threatening to stage a conflict with the »Ontosemiologie« upon which their

34

35

36 37

60

Schneider, »Luther mit McLuhan,« p. 20. Jochen Hörisch agrees: »Glaube ist – seit Luther beginnt sich diese Einsicht durchzusetzen – nur mehr durch Glaube (und nicht durch einen in Brot und Wein gegenwärtigen Gott oder durch einen ontologischen Gottesbeweis) fundiert.« (Hörisch, Brot und Wein, p. 25). Yet suggesting that it might work without belief, he then quotes a passage that he describes as »merkwürdig« from a letter he received on 25 July 1801, in which someone reports to him: »Jedoch habe ich auch die Freude gehabt in Leipzig, wo ich bey meinen Landesleuten auch den Vorleser machte, zu bemerken, daß Ihr Messias selbst auf solche, die gar nicht zu glauben vorgaben, die heilsamsten Eindrücke machte.« (Klopstock, »Über den Messias«. In: Klopstock, Der Messias, HKA, vol. 3, p. 174). Hörisch, Brot und Wein, p. 121. »Dichtung und Literatur hängen am theologisch-juridischen Dispositiv des Staates und seiner Souveränität und sind ihm korreliert über erstens die Produktion einer National- und verbindlichen Muttersprache, eines neuen Mediums also, das auf die Gutenbergsche, kommunikationstechnische Revolution der mobil gewordenen Lettern und Schriften herausgibt, und zweitens über all die Kommentare, Poetologien und Ästhetiken eines neuen, weltlichen Klerus, die eine Pragmatik der Wörter und literarischen Diskurse elaborieren und reflektieren, um die freigesetzte alte Autorität im Wortsinn zu (re)territorialisieren und damit die noch unbesetzte Macht der neuen Wörter zu bannen.« (Pornschlegel, Der literarische Souverän, p. 94). Or as Bernd Fischer puts it: »Mit Klopstock wird der Dichter zum empfindsamen Seher und exaltierten Priester.« (Fischer, Das Eigene und das Eigentliche, p. 131).

ascent is based. For since a collective cannot always presuppose the belief of its constituents, the ritualistic dimension of its iterations persists as an ineluctable factor of successful representation. That which is represented has to be constructed by a performative act which establishes an institutional fact that holds validity for those who have accepted the legitimacy of a particular institutional setting.38 The upshot is that the magical order of the priests is substituted by the privileged activities of the poets as the new administrators of the collective. More than an example of secularized Pietism, then, Klopstock’s prosody explores poetic community from within the framework of a larger discussion of representation and community formation not simply inherited from the Reformation, but also inherent to modern figurations of collectivity. It is to the details of this prosody that I will now turn.

The Mimesis of the Epic and Epic Mimesis: Klopstock’s Theory of Hexameter as »Darstellung« Klopstock’s poetics and epic poetry are at once an imitation of conventions of the epic and a challenge to contemporaneous notions about the nature of epic imitation. At first glance, his decision to write in hexameter, defended in his essays, seems invested in the reproduction of an epic naiveté within German-language literature. In particular, the essay, »Von der Nachahmung des griechischen Sylbenmasses im Deutschen« (1755), suggests that, by returning to the hexameter form, German literature can attain the same heights as ancient verse: »Wir können den Griechen und Römern in ihren Sylbenmassen so nahe nachahmen, daß diese Nachahmung, besonders grössern Werken, einen Vorzug gebe, den wir, durch unsre gewöhnliche Versarten, noch nicht haben erreichen können.«39 Klopstock’s discussion (in this essay) presupposes a concept of mimesis that understands imitation as the imitation of an original Greek hexameter, in the sense of imitato employed in Horace’s poetics (i. e. the imitation of literary prototypes): »Es kommt uns izt darauf an, zu unter-

38

39

Hörisch cites a linguistic analysis of the eucharistic speech act by Iwar Werlen which demonstrates the institutional conundrum at the heart of the performance of the sacrament. In Werlen’s words: »Diese Repräsentation, Darstellung ist nicht bloße Darstellung, sondern Vergegenwärtigung, die wirksam ist – der Kern des Sakramentes: das was dargestellt wird, wird auch hergestellt – ein wirksames Zeichen. […] durch das Aussprechen der Wandlungsworte [wird] eine institutionelle Tatsache geschaffen: die Tatsache, daß von nun an dieses Brot und dieser Wein als Leib und Blut Jesu Christi gelten. Die Geltung ist natürlich beschränkt auf jene, die daran glauben, die also die Rahmensbedingungen der Institution annehmen.« (quoted in: Hörisch, Brot und Wein, p. 102). Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, »Von der Nachahmung des griechischen Silbenmaßes im Deutschen.« In: Klopstock, Gedanken über die Natur der Poesie. Dichtungstheoretische Schriften, ed. by Winfried Menninghaus, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1989, p. 9. Subsequent references to this text will be cited parenthetically.

61

suchen, wie nahe wir diesem grossen Originale kommen können?« (129). For Klopstock the mimesis of ancient Greek hexameter has more to do with the capabilities of the German language, rather than with a philosophical history or inventory of aesthetic representation like we find in Schiller. While Klopstock affirms the ability of the German language to imitate ancient hexameter – »Wir haben Daktylen, wie die Griechen« – he also recognizes that the dearth of spondee and their replacement by trochee departs from a strict imitation of ancient meter (130). This departure is no disadvantage, for, on the contrary, he claims that it provides a flow that pleases the ear (130–131). Later, in his fragment »Vom deutschen Hexameter« (1779), he develops further the implications of this »essential« transformation of the hexameter through the proliferation of trochee. »Unser Hexameter ist also nicht sowohl eine griechisch-deutsche Versart, sondern vielmehr eine deutsche« (60). Klopstock’s emphasis shifts from the problem of imitating Greek hexameter, which presupposed a paradigm of mimesis understood as the imitation of something pre-given, to the theorization of a form of German hexameter which is no longer concerned with the mimesis of a pre-existent ancient epic or with a concept of mimesis as the reproduction of a pre-given entity.40 An epigram entitled »Aufgelöster Zweifel« characterizes Klopstock’s shift as one from imitation to invention: ›Nachahmen soll ich nicht; und dennoch nennet Dein lautes Lob mir immer Griechenland.‹ Wenn Genius in deiner Seele brennet; So ahm’ dem Griechen nach. Der Griech’ erfand!41

According to the epigram, to imitate the ancient Greeks means imitating their inventive impulse, so a true imitation is no imitation at all, but rather a continuation of the inventive spirit of the poetic genius formalized in ancient Greek hexameter. Nevertheless, Klopstock grounds his shift from a theory of mimesis as representation to one of presentation in the metrical implications of the linguistic differences between ancient Greek and modern German. The twenty-two word feet gained by the trochee in German, versus the seventeen word feet of the Greek hexameter, produces according to Klopstock, »mehr Abwechslung, oder so viel mehr Anlaß, gewisse Beschaffenheiten der Empfindung und Leidenschaft und der sinnlichen Gegenstände auszudrücken.«42 Klopstock’s theory of mimesis, then, which

40

41

42

62

For a survey of the diversity of theories of imitation from the Baroque to around 1750, see: Ingo Stöckmann, Vor der Literatur. Eine Evolutionstheorie der Poetik Alteuropas, Communicatio vol. 28, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2001, p. 165–195. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, »Aufgelöster Zweifel.« In: Klopstock, HKA, II, Epigramme, Nr. 26, p. 12. A theme which also reappears in the 1774 publication of Die deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik in the context of a discussion about the difference between Entdekkung und Erfindung: »Wer erfindet, sezt Vorhandnes auf neue Art und Weise zusammen.« (Klopstock, HKA, VII.1, p. 67). Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, »Vom deutschen Hexameter.« In: HKA, VII.1, p. 60. For

he terms »Darstellung,« seeks to express conditions of feeling and passion more than it seeks to imitate a specific image or plot, because, as we will see, its content or object is sublime. Furthermore, the point at which an imitation of Greek epic transforms into a theory of imitation as such in Klopstock’s writing reveals the creative thrust of his project. Klopstock’s mimesis of epic hexameter is far more than a yearning to reproduce an »original« ancient naiveté. In fact, a self-reflexive passage from the first version of Der Messias anticipates Schiller’s sentimentalization of the hexameter form and declares the novelty of its form of epic mimesis against such an interpretation: O so hör ihn, Eloa, wenn er, wie die himmlische Jugend, Kühn und erhaben, nicht modernde Trümmern der Vorwelt besinget, Sondern den Bürgern der göttlichen Erde dein Heiligthum aufthut. (Fassung 1748, I, 574–576)

Rather than mournfully commemorate the ruins of antiquity or even conjure them for present purposes, the rhapsodist seeks to render the sublime sanctuary perceptible to the inhabitants of the earth, or to elevate these inhabitants to the supersensory heights of the sublime.43 The theory of mimesis underlying Klopstock’s poetics associates the expression of feeling and passion with the revelation of religious sanctity, and hence combines poetics and religion. A passage from his essay »Von der Darstellung« (1779) encapsulates this link well by drawing an analogy to the intervention of ancient deities in Homer’s battle scenes: »Überhaupt wandelt das Wortlose in einem guten Gedicht umher, wie in Homers Schlachten die nur von wenigen gesehnen Götter.«44 Klopstock’s reference to Homeric mythology both evokes the tradition of ancient epic and figures »the wordless« in poetry as akin to the rare appearance of the gods to those few who are able to see them. The »wordless« lies at the intersection of the expression of »Empfindung« and »Leidenschaft« on the one side and the sublime experience of religion on the other side. Klopstock’s choice of the story of the passion as material for his national epic explicitly reflects the convergence of religion and poetry in his theory and praxis of the epic. The major complaint by critics against Klopstock’s Messias has been in fact leveled at the sublimity of the content, a discrepancy between form and content that derives from the necessarily allegorical nature of representations of the tenets

43

44

an explanation of how Klopstock arrives at this number of additional Wortfüße, see Hans-Heinrich Hellmuth’s footnote #7 in: Hellmuth, Metrische Erfindung und metrische Theorie bei Klopstock, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 1973, p. 221. Dieter Martin, »Klopstocks Messias und die Verinnerlichung der Deutschen Epik im 18. Jahrhundert.« In: Klopstock an der Grenze der Epochen, ed. by Kevin Hilliard and Katrin Kohl, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1995, p. 102. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, »Von der Darstellung.« In: Klopstock, Gedanken über die Natur der Poesie, p. 172. Subsequent references to this text will be cited parenthetically.

63

of Christianity.45 Nevertheless, Klopstock’s recourse to the sublime is constitutive of his theory of mimesis, because it underscores the non-referentiality of »Darstellung,« the idea that mimesis is more a mode of representation than a representation of a specific content. This idea distinguishes his theory of mimesis from the »poetics of the possible« articulated by Bodmer and Breitinger and opens the door to a more rigorously theoretical investigation of the very notion of mimesis.46 On the one hand, Klopstock selects the Christian passion story as the fabula for his national epic because he considers it to be the »famous story« that »concerns the entire people« of Germany, as the Zedler entry for epic puts it; yet the selection of the sublime story of the Christian passion also enables the presentation of the wordless in his epic poem, for it eliminates the requirement to reproduce a pregiven object of representation: after all, the first three songs of the Messias, take place on heaven, hell, and earth respectively. The overriding tendency is to move in the direction of the sublime: for example, the representation of heaven, describes a panorama of infinity, »Um den Himmel herum sind tausend offene Wege,/ Lange, nicht auszusehende Wege, von Sonnen umgeben« (1748, HKA, I, 194–195) that is the »Urbild der Welten, die Fülle/ Aller sichtbaren Schönheit« (I, 231–232). The epic narrative attempts to represent an un-representable epic content, in which the depicted exceeds the bounds of mundane intuition and leads into the infinite, as the pervasive use of the prefi x »un« indicates (heaven is »unermeßlich« [I, 232], an »unendlicher Raum« [I, 234]; god is »unendlich vollkommen« [I, 250]). The Christian material thus compliments the religious dimension of poetic representation, the wordless in poetry, enabling a mimetic practice that goes beyond representing a truthful or even probable subject matter and demands an appropriately inventive mode of poetic mediation. Moreover, poetic and national agendas inform one another reciprocally in Klopstock’s poetics of the epic. Recalling the narratological paradox of German epic – namely that a national epic has to posit the very story it has constructed as

45 46

64

For instance, Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, vol. 3, p. 413–414. This is in essence Schiller’s complaint. Breitinger’s Critische Dichtkunst refers to mimesis as the Nachahmung »einer andern möglichen Welt,« and describes the productive activity of »Phantasie« as »neue Begriffe und Vorstellungen [zu] formieren, deren Originale nicht in der gegenwärtigen Welt der würcklichen Dinge […] zu suchen sind« (Breitinger, Critische Dichtkunst, vol. 1, p. 60). Quoted in: Winfried Menninghaus, »Klopstocks Poetik der schnellen ›Bewegung‹.« In: Klopstock, Gedanken über die Natur der Poesie, p. 259–351, here: p. 267. Menninghaus makes this point about mode vs. content of representation on p. 333–335. Further references to Menninghaus’ essay will be cited henceforth parenthetically. My entire analysis of Klopstock’s theory of hexameter relies on Menninghaus’ insights. For a comparison of other eighteenth-century theories of »Darstellung« see: Martha Helfer, The Retreat of Representation: The Concept of Darstellung in German Critical Discourse, State University of New York Press, Albany 1996, p. 13–21. However, her study focuses on post-Kantian, i. e. Romantic theories.

the story of Germany’s past – Klopstock’s Messias can be read as the invention of a national epic community by virtue of the choice of sublime material. By choosing an unrepresentable material to represent the national history of German collective identity, Klopstock paves the way for a theory of mimesis that emphasizes the productive moment of »Darstellung« underlying all representation.47 Klopstock thereby offers a solution to the paradox of how to imitate a national narrative that has no precedent by developing a poetics capable of inventing an epic for Germany. This invention of a national epic goes hand in hand with the invention of a national community itself, for the »Darstellung« of Der Messias attempts to construct the very community whose story it tells. »Darstellung« is productive, according to Klopstock, because it expresses the »wordless« in poetry, the conditions of feeling and passion that belong to the domain of religious experience, what Klopstock also calls »the movement of the soul«: »Das Erhabene, wenn es zu seiner vollen Reife gekommen ist, bewegt die ganze Seele.«48 Here Klopstock’s prosody echoes the Reformation’s discussion of the status of communion: the words manifest among the participants a physical experience of divine presence, experienced as both individual confirmation of belief in salvation and the bond shared by the community

47

48

»Klopstocks Darstellungsbegriff dagegen [gegen Lessings] transzendiert nicht nur die Begrenzung auf die unmittelbare bildnerische Vorstellung eines Objekts, er sprengt den Objekt-Begriff überhaupt und entdeckt das erfindende, das produzierende Moment der Darstellung selbst« (Menninghaus, »Klopstocks Poetik der schnellen ›Bewegung‹,« p. 333). Lothar van Laak criticizes what he regards as Menninghaus’ one-sided emphasis on »unsinnliche Sinnlichkeit« (Menninghaus’ phrase) and »Bildkritik« (another evaluative term in Klopstock reception). Klopstock’s poetology is far more self-reflective than critics, including Schiller, have given it credit for being, van Laak argues, and this has implications for the receptive processes of perception for the reader, and hence for the construction of aesthetic experience: Klopstock’s model of aesthetic experience entails an »Übertragung einer energetischen Kraft mittels der Qualitäten der Sprache,« which is both »bildlich und rhythmisch« in its rhetorical performativity. Van Laak concludes that meaning is made present and the experience of presence becomes meaningful in this model of aesthetic experience (Lothar van Laak, »Sprachbildlichkeit und Musikalität. Zur ästhetischen Erfahrung bei Klopstock.« In: Wort und Schrift – Das Werk Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstocks, ed. by Kevin Hilliard and Katrin Kohl, Hallesche Forschungen vol. 27, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2008, p. 221–239, here: p. 238–239). While in a much older study Schneider also considers the »Wirkungstendenz als höchstes, strukturbildendes Gestaltungsprinzip« in Klopstock’s poetry, he emphasizes rather in tune with Menninghaus the language’s hindrance of imagistic perception: »Das Prinzip der Veredelung und Verfremdung des Wortes bildet die Bauelemente des Ausdrucks dadurch im Sinne des Wirkungstils um, daß es den Leser aus der Bequemlichkeit des Verständnisses aufstört, ein Spannungsverhältnis zum Wort versetzt und somit zum stärkeren Mitempfinden der Aussage anregt.« (Karl Ludwig Schneider, Klopstock und die Erneuerung der deutschen Dichtersprache im 18. Jahrhundert, Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1960, p. 106). Klopstock, »Von der heiligen Poesie.« In: Klopstock, Gedanken über die Natur der Poesie, p. 194. Hereafter cited parenthetically.

65

constituted by the declaration. For Klopstock the poetic act of narrating the nation’s epic is simultaneously constitutive of the community’s experience of itself. Epic community is not a relic of the past to be commemorated, but is instead conceived of as an experience still alive within the members of the community, so that it therefore falls upon epic poetry to (re-)produce this experience. Klopstock’s theory of »Darstellung,« as the art of »Bewegung« in both form and function, sets out to do just that by targeting a supposed affective experience of poetic language. Klopstock’s theory of mimesis (i. e. »Darstellung«) explicates a formal principal oriented toward affecting a presumed listener. To be sure, Klopstock insists on the rhetorical principle of aptum – especially the harmony of res and verba, which he calls »Mitausdruck«– and so he posits a necessary connection between the sublime content of the Messiade and the syntactical and rhythmical elements of his hexameter: »Der Wohlklang, und noch mehr das bedeutende Silbenmaß […] haben viel Ausdruck; wenn sie zu dem Inhalte passen: und unterbrechen die Täuschung; wenn sie nicht dazu passen.«49 The interweaving of poetic content and expression should achieve rhetoric’s goal of movere, moving the public through the arousal of passion and feeling, by creating an »illusion.«50 The aim of poetic genius, Klopstock says in »Von der heiligen Poesie« (ca. 1754), is to »move the entire soul«: Es giebt Werke des Witzes, die Meisterstücke sind, ohne daß das Herz etwas dazu beygetragen hatte. Allein, das Genie ohne Herz, wäre nur halbes Genie. Die lezten und höchsten Wirkungen der Werke des Genie sind, das sie die ganze Seele bewegen. Wir können hier einige Stufen der starken und der stärkern Empfindung hinaufsteigen. Dieß ist der Schauplatz des Erhabnen. (117).

It is significant that Klopstock introduces a metaphor of the theater (»der Schauplatz des Erhabnen«) to describe the poetic ascent to the sublime through affect.51 In many respects, a »Poesie« of the movement of the soul through »Darstellung«

49

50 51

66

Klopstock, »Von der Darstellung«, p. 171. Hellmuth argues that Klopstock’s metrical system is in no way a purely formalist enterprise: »Nirgends sonst spricht Klopstock so unmittelbar aus, daß ihm an der Verskunst als reiner Formkunst, an einer Autonomie des Verses nichts liegt. Hier besteht der tiefste Gegensatz zu dem Rigoristen, etwa Voß und später A. W. Schlegel, die vor allem nach einer möglichst adäquaten Nachahmung der antiken Versmaße um ihrer selbst willen, einem selbstgenügsamen metrischen L’art pour l’art streben – ein Gegensatz, der dann ein Jahrzehnt später in der brieflichen Fehde zwischen Klopstock und Voß um den deutschen Hexameter (1789) in aller Schärfe aufbricht. Klopstock sieht hingegen die höchste Aufgabe des Verses darin, als metrischer Mitausdruck die inhaltliche Aussage zu intensiverien.« (Hellmuth, Metrische Erfindung, p. 265). On Voß’ critique of Klopstock: Martus, Werkpolitik. Katrin Kohl, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 2000, p. 50. »Nicht von ungefähr ist der ›Schauplatz‹ eine leitende Metapher, um diese neue Literatur [der heiligen Poesie] zu etablieren. Dabei verkehrt sich deren aus Mittelalter und Barock überlieferte Bedeutung als eines von einem allgewaltigen Gott gelenkten theatrum mundi auf bezeichnende Weise in eine anthropozentrierte Ästhetik. Denn die Heilige Poesie

theatricalizes the epic, for the epic scene of the sublime takes place on the metrical level of the hexameter verse and aims to evoke affects in a present listener.52 This is an important shift in the objective of epic mimesis and helps explain why Klopstock develops a theory and prosody of epic mimesis instead of epic diegesis: the Messias does not recount the past as succession, in contrast to what one might expect from an epic narration, but produces instead the effect of a simultaneity that confounds the distinctions between past and present and becomes an act of showing, paradoxically, through the act of telling.53 Mid-passage shifts from indirect to direct speech register grammatically the movement toward a simultaneous presence and a flow of narrative perspective into the narrated.54 Likewise, interlaced reporting and reflection inform the narrative structure throughout the twenty songs, and yet remain stylistically similar and hence part of an indistinguishable, unitary narrative pattern.55 For instance, in the second song the narrative is interrupted by a simile that shifts the diagetic register from past-tense description to present-tense evaluative reflection: »Satan hört’ es, und sah bestürzt durch die Öffnung des Grabmahls./ So sehn Gottesleugner, der Pöbel, aus dunkeln Gewölben,/ Wenn am donnernden Himmel das hohe Gewitter heraufzieht, Und in den Wolken der Rache gefürchtete Wagen sich wälzen./ Satan hatte bisher […]« (II, 133–136). Furthermore, temporality transforms into a kind of spatiality in which all the events occur at different locations simultaneously – in heaven, on the north pole (I, 578), in inner earth (I, 601), in Jerusalem – all the while participating in the single narrative thread. Finally, the frequent use of apostrophe reduces the speech to a single tone, further eliminating

52

53

54

55

versteht sich als eine eigene Form der Darstellung der Religion, die deren Gehalt in einem neuen Licht inszenieren und erscheinen lassen will.« (Jacob, Heilige Poesie, p. 3). Klopstock’s poetics can hence be understood as belonging to attempts to codify affect within literary speech in the 18th century: Rüdiger Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck. Zur Umwandlung der literarischen Rede im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1990, p. 474–479. »Statt Sukzession herrscht Simultaneität. Lediglich gefühlsintensive Perspektivenwechsel werden vorgenommen […].« (Kaiser, Klopstock, p. 223). I rely heavily here on Kaiser’s formal analysis. As when the narrator speaks of Johannes: »Wen er, indem sie herab von dem Hügel wankten, erblickte/ Von den Zwölften, den Siebzigen, und den heiligen Weibern,/ Bat er zu seiner Mutter zu kommen, und wär’ es ihm möglich,/ Ihr die tiefe Wunde zu heilen, die Wund’ in der Seele;/ Zwar nicht ganz, das könnte kein Mensch, das könnte der Herr nur!/ Gabriel kann es, nicht wir, wenn ihn noch Einmal vom Himmel/ Gott, daß sie ihn von neuem erhebe, der leidenden sendet,/ Daß von neuem ihr Geist sich freue Gottes, des Retters!/ Bald/ versammelten sich in diesem Hause die Jünger […].« In this passage, the narrator switches from describing Johannes and his mother in the past tense (»bat er zu seiner Mutter zu kommen«) to a hypothetical subjunctive (»das könnte der Herr nur,«) and then unannounced to direct speech: »Gabriel kann es, nicht wir,« and back again to the epic past perfect (Klopstock, HKA, XII, p. 240–48; Kaiser, Klopstock, p. 252). As Maiworm shows, this is particularly clear in Gesang XVII: »Die Struktur ist einheitlich: Relativ kurze Berichte gehen immer wieder in Reflexionen, Empfindungen, Hymnen über oder sind davon durchzogen.« (Maiworm, Neue deutsche Epik, p. 94–95).

67

the distinctions between narrator and narrated. The collapse of narration and narrated, combined with the disruption of narrative succession, create a theatricalized version of the Christian passion in which the events condense into a present that is also linked to the eternity of Christian salvation. Hence, the epic mimesis links the narrated Christian passion to the present narrative moment within the epic poem, as well as to the future promise of humanity’s salvation. Although the narrator renounces any fi xed position vis-à-vis the narration, and even becomes part of the narrated, hovering for instance between narration and address, he in no way dissembles his role as narrator. From the start, the narrator announces its intention to sing the story of Christian salvation: »Aber, o Werk, das nur Gott allgegenwärtig erkennet/ Darf sich die Dichtkunst auch wohl aus dunkler Ferne dir nähern?/ Führe sie mir, als deine Nachahmerinn, voller Entzükkung,/ Voll unsterblicher Kraft, in verklärter Schönheit, entgegen. […] Also werd ich durch sie Licht und Offenbarungen sehen,/ Und die Erlösung des grossen Messias würdig besingen« (1748, I, 8–16). The self-conscious insertion of the narrator within the narrative shows that this is not a form of mimesis that conceals its own mediality; rather, the narrative strategies in Der Messias strive to produce the same affective presence they represent in their sublime content through intensified poetic narration.56 Only through an explicitly rhetorical mediality – which not only does not conceal its own role as mediator, but enthusiastically celebrates the act of narration – can the sublime affects that lie at the root of a Christian experience of collectivity be produced in the listener/reader. Here, the Christian community is not just an event of the past, but is eternal and, with the assistance of poetic language, can therefore be theatricalized in the present. Depending on the context, »Herz,« »Seele,« »Empfindung,« and »Leidenschaft« are synonyms for the sublime expression produced by the epic’s »Darstellung.« As Winfried Menninghaus demonstrates, this sublime expression arises above all out of the metrical movement of poetic language in Klopstock’s prosody, is thus inseparable from the theory of hexameter, and moreover is nothing less than a poetical element connecting the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes of the verse. The second version of the fragment »Vom deutschen Hexameter« from 1779 is the key text in

56

68

On this point, Klopstock seems to do the reverse of Gottsched, who describes a process of de-theatricalization through the departure from epic in the development of drama, whereas Klopstock re-theatricalizes the epic through an insistence on its theatrical qualities. See: Christopher J. Wild, Theater der Keuschheit, Keuschheit des Theaters. Zu einer Geschichte der (Anti-)Theatralität von Gryphius bis Kleist, Rombach Verlag, Freiburg im Br. 2003, p. 230–237. Wild describes Gottsched’s procedure so: »Mit der Ersetzung der Erzählung durch den Dialog, welchem Gottsched einen angenehmeren Effekt bescheinigt, wird die Vermittlungsinstanz, und damit auch der explizite Hinweis auf die Medialität, ausgeblendet. Im Gegensatz zur Erzählung suggeriert die dramatische Wechselrede in ihrer Gegenwärtigkeit, daß es sich bei dem, was auf der Bühne zu sehen ist, um unvermitteltes Geschehen handelt« (232).

which Klopstock articulates his theory of hexameter as a form of poetic movement. Before launching into his theory of hexameter, the idiosyncratic terminology should be clarified. Most importantly, the term »Wortfuß« should not be confused with a »Versfuß.« As Klopstock explains: Man zeigt die Füße an, welche nach gewissen Abwechslungen und Folgen in den Wörtern versteckt liegen sollen. Diese Füße heißen künstliche. Die der Vorschrift gemäß gebrauchten Wörter werden, in Ansehung ihrer Bewegung, und nur von dieser Seite betrachtet man sie hier, Wortfüße genannt. (Zuweilen können Wortfuß und künstlicher dieselben sein.) Diese bestehen nicht immer aus einzelnen Wörten, sondern oft aus so vielen, als, nach dem Inhalte, zusammen gehören, und daher beinah wie ein Wort müssen ausgesprochen werden.57

To illustrate the difference between a word foot and a verse foot, Klopstock uses the line of hexameter: »Schrecklich erscholl der geflügelte Donnergesang in der Heerschaar.« The artificial feet break down into a standard hexameter verse of five dactyl: Schrecklich er (−∪∪), scholl der ge (−∪∪), flügelte (−∪∪), Donnerge (−∪∪), sang in der (−∪∪), and a spondee at the end: Heerschaar (−−). However, the »Wortfüße,« which Klopstock claims a listener actually hears, and which correspond to the content and leave the words intact, read as follows: Schrecklich erscholl (−∪∪−), der geflügelte (∪∪−∪∪), Donnergesang (−∪∪−), in der Heerschaar (∪∪−−) (131). Klopstock’s distinction between »Wortfüße« and »Versfüße« is significant for his metrical theory, because the movement between »Wortfüße« constitutes its core.58 The fundament of this metrical »Wortbewegung« consists of what Klopstock calls »Zeitausdruck« and »Tonverhalt.« The »Zeitausdruck« concerns the »slowness« (Langsamkeit) or »quickness« (Schnelligkeit) of the movement of words, the duration of syllables, in poetic periods and »Wortfüße,« so that, for instance, a Wortfuß »säumt« or »eilt.« The more »Längen« a Wortfuß or period has, the slower the expression of time, as in the »Wortfuß« Wutausruf (−−−), whereas the more »Kürzen« a »Wortfuß« or poetic period has, the faster the duration – as in zu dem Triumph, (∪∪∪−). Always working alongside the »Zeitausdruck,« furthermore, the »Tonverhalt« contributes to the metrical movement and has as its objects »gewisse Beschaffenheiten der Empfindung und der Leidenschaft« (127). If the »Zeitausdruck« measures the duration of syllables, the »Tonverhalt« describes the dynamic of the syllables, how their sounds rise (»steigen«) und fall (»sinken«). Klopstock provides examples of how the »Längen« and »Kürzen« have »übereinstimmende, oder abstechende Verhältnisse untereinander«: Wenn z.E. ∪∪−− in dem Reihntanz ausgesprochen wird; so vergleicht man (es geschieht schnell, und daher desto lebhafter) die beiden Kürzen mit den beiden Längen; bemerkt

57 58

Klopstock, »Vom deutschen Hexameter,« p. 130. Despite certain affinities with respect to the performative nature of Christian salvation, Klopstock’s distinction between Wortfüße and Versfüße should not be conflated with Luther’s distinction between Christ’s words and the signifiers of the sacrament.

69

dabei eine Art des Steigens von jenen zu diesen, und hört darin Übereinstimmung. Wenn hingegen ∪−−∪ Gerichtsdonner ausgesprochen wird; so bemerkt man das Steigen in Gerichts und das gleich darauf folgende Sinken in donner, hört darin beinah noch mehr Abstechendes, als man vorher Übereinstimmendes gehört hatte. Wie stark die Wirkung des so verbundnen Steigens und Sinkens sei, wird auch dadurch hörbar, daß die umgekehrte Stellung: −∪∪− Wonnegesang eine der schönsten Übereinstimmungen hervorbringt. (126–127)

Klopstock asserts that changes of tone in the movement of words express different emotional states, which he even goes so far as to catalogue using examples from the twentieth song of Der Messias – word movement can express such emotional states as, for example, »das Sanfte,« »das Starke,« »das Muntre,« »das Heftige,« »das Ernstvolle,« »das Feierliche,« and »das Unruhige« (138–139). It would be wrong, however, to confuse »Wortbewegung« with a materiality of the phonetic signifier, a point that Klopstock stresses, when he says that »Wortbewegung« is the »Hauptsache in der Verskunst,« and that the »Wohlklang ist der Verskunst zwar auf keine Weise gleichgültig; allein er ist schwächerer Ausdruck« (128). Together, the »Zeitausdruck« and »Tonverhalt« produce a movement of words – at once irreducible to the sound of the words (»Wohlklang«) and to the meaning of each individual word,59 yet constitutive of both – which expresses the »wordless,« sublime experience of conditions of »Leidenschaft« and »Empfindung.« In fact, the terms »Empfindung« and »Leidenschaft« would seem to figure for Klopstock this tertiary moment as existing in the interstice between content and the meaning of words on the one side, and the sensory experience of the sound of words on the other.60 »Wortbewegung,« figured

59

60

70

In »Vom deutschen Hexameter,« Klopstock says that the »wortlose Bewegung« lies »allein in der Stellung der Füße, aber nicht in dem Sinne, auch nicht in den Worten« (Klopstock, »Vom deutschen Hexameter,« p. 143). Menninghaus understands Klopstock’s theory of Wortbewegung as a tertiary moment: »Offenbar [liegt die wortlose Bewegung] nicht in erster Linie auf den Verstand, dessen privilegierte Dimension eben die von ›Inhalt‹ und ›Wortsinn‹ wäre. Aber auch nicht ausschließlich auf den Gehörsinn – das wäre eher die Funktion des Wohlklangs der Worte, und dafür enthält die Wortbewegung zu viele Momente stuktureller Abstraktion. Bleibt also nur etwas Drittes, das die beiden ersten nicht ausschließt, wohl aber sich als der Dominante unterordnet« (Menninghaus, »Klopstocks Poetik der schnellen ›Bewegung‹,« p. 337). In a much older but no less insightful study of Klopstock’s poetic language, Karl Ludwig Schneider analyzes the decisive function of the stylistic principle of the »Kürze,« referring specifically to the shortening of words and periods within the verse, as elementary to the intensification of expression through rhythm: »die Wiederholung [erfährt] eine Bedeutungssteigerung durch die Kombination mit den kontrastierenden Stilformen der Kürze – und durch die Konsequenz des Dichters in der Umgehung aller Wiederholungen, die keine Stilfunktion haben. Von dieser Entwicklung der Wiederholung zu einer potenzierenden Figur profitiert aber wiederum der Kurzstil als Bewegungsausdruck selbst, weil ihm hier ein Mittel der Stauung zuwächst, das an innerer Hochspannung der Kürze nicht nachsteht und es gestattet, die Rede ohne Intensitätsverlust durch Momente des Stillstands hindurchzuführen.« (Schneider, Klopstock und die Erneuerung der deutschen Dichtersprache, p. 84).

as »Empfindung« and »Leidenschaft,« enables the paradigmatic axis of epic hexameter, the interchangeability of the words, to intersect with the syntagmatic axis, the relation of syllables, the meter and the grammar.61 Klopstock never actually defines more precisely what he means by »Empfindung« and »Leidenschaft,« but he associates them with the relational movement of words in a metrical rhythm that exceeds any individual word and which as such connotes the religious dimension of the sublime, »das Wortlose« that »saunters around in a good poem, like in Homer’s battles the gods who are only seen by a few.«62 Klopstock’s theory of »Darstellung,« poetic (re-)presentation as »Wortbewegung,« becomes a theory of poeticity itself. Having figured »Darstellung« as the non-phenomenal movement of words he calls »Empfindung« and »Leidenschaft,« for which there are no single words, he leaves us with a poetology that in the end has as its referent the movement of poetic language itself. Every poetic experience is ultimately the experience of poetry as a reflection of its own process of »Darstellung.« Yet this reflection on poeticity does not exhaust the purpose of Klopstock’s theory of hexameter and the concomitant writing of the Messias, or confine it within a sphere of self-referential play; rather, Klopstock’s gambit is that it is through poeticity that we can experience the quasi-religious heights of the sublime (figured as »Empfindung« and »Leidenschaft«) which includes an experience of German nationality. In Menninghaus’ words, »Der Klopstocksche ›Schauplatz des Erhabnen‹ sind ›die Stufen der starken und der stärkern Empfindung‹ als Korrelate dionysischer Wortbewegung, ob deren Inhalte nun Eistanz oder Religion, Vaterlands- oder Freundesliebe, Frieden oder Krieg, Revolution oder die Dichtung selbst sind« (345). Klopstock’s theory of hexameter as »Wortbewegung« is inextricable from his project to write a national epic and thereby construct a national community, for the theory of mimesis as »Darstellung« that he develops aims to create an experience of poetic community that, through the movement of words, can simultaneously constitute the national community whose story it is narrating in the very act of representing it. The Messias allegorizes the Christian community it describes and simultaneously creates through the act of narration in the descriptions of communal interaction, with which the audience should identify or be moved, during the crucifi xion

61

62

For Menninghaus, the syntagmatic axis (rhythm, grammar) is a horizontal axis of temporality (Klopstock’s tone and time), which structures the spatial vertical axis of forms of meaning such as thoughts and images (Menninghaus, »Klopstocks Poetik der schnellen ›Bewegung‹,« p. 328). On this point, see also: Hildegard Benning, Rhetorische Ästhetik. Die poetologische Konzeption Klopstocks im Kontext der Dichtungstheorie des 18. Jahrhunderts, M & P Verlag, Stuttgart 1997, p. 27–31, and especially: »Klopstocks Lavieren zwischen konventioneller ›Ordnung‹ und affektiv aufgeladener Wortmagie bildet die syntaktische Dimension eines arbeitsteilig angelegten wirkungsästhetischen Konzepts, welches die ›Bewegung der ganzen Seele‹ auf der horizontalen Achse des Ausdrucks als Summe der Stimulation jeder einzelnen ihrer Kräfte kalkuliert« (30). Klopstock, »Von der Darstellung,« p. 172.

71

and resurrection episodes.63 For example, the ninth song depicts the numerous participants in the story of the crucifi xion as they watch one another participate in the events. These scenes replicate the constitution of the community through the evocation of »Empfindung« and »Leidenschaft« in the participants or spectators as well as call attention to the theatrical quality linking form and content in part and whole of the epic. In this song alone, the participants include angels, humans, apostles, a thousand heathen souls, and devils.64 Not only do they all observe one another watching Christ die on the cross – the angels and spirits watch the humans, and the angels and devils watch one another – but the feelings of those they are observing are reduplicated in their own emotions stirred by the crucifi xion and the observation of the emotions of others reacting to the event. For example, Petreus seeks consolation from the disciple Lebbäus, who is himself so overcome by grief that he is incapable of uttering any words and can only offer a meaningful facial expression: »Noch schwieg er. Vergebens rang sein Gefühl sich/ Nun zur Stimme zu werden. Doch waren sein bebendes Antlitz,/ Seine Thränen nicht sprachlos! Allein die Tröstung berührte/ Simons Seele nur leise« (IX, 103–106). While the caesura in the middle of the verse interrupts the metrical flow of the verse in the passage from its description of an inability to speak to that of the »quivering visage,« the combination of mostly long and heavily-stressed syllables among the word feet creates here little variation of tone – a device which reflects the general mood of solemnness and slowed rhythm (in, for instance, »bebendes Antlitz«) and underscores the sense of timelessness evoked by the bringing of the verse to a near metrical standstill. The audience’s expectations are thus subjected to a tension between the pathos within the scene and a lack of semantic expressiveness, hovering like the disciples and later apostles between futility and solace, only to then find these expectations fulfilled, like Petreus, in the expressivity of tears.65 In a typical expression of emotion throughout the entire song, Joseph addresses god »mit thränenhellerem Blicke« 63

64

65

72

I use allegory here in Paul de Man’s sense of the term to mean not just imagistic rhetoric, but a sublime act of fiction that narrates a story of its own fictionality in the absence of a referent, or at least in the absence of a referential standpoint outside of signification. In fact, as »Wortbewegung,« Der Messias does not operate on the level of imagery. There are no images adequate to the sublime affects the epic narrative tries to present and evoke in the listening audience (Paul de Man, »The Rhetoric of Temporality.« In: de Man, Blindness and Insight. Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1983, p. 187–228). More specifically, the angel Eloa, Johannes and Maria, Petrus/Simon, the angel Ithuriel, a man »in fremdem Gewande,« Samma, Joel, Philippus, Lebbäus, Andreas, Joseph, Nikodemus, Abraham, Moses, Isaak, a cherub, a thousand heathen souls, Salem, Maria’s guardian angel Selith, and the fallen angel Abbadona. For an analysis that is far more adroit than mine of Klopstock’s use of such metrical techniques with reference to some of the changes he made over the many years of composing and revising the Messias, see: Klaus Weimar, »Theologische Metrik. Überlegungen zu Klopstocks Arbeit am ›Messias‹.« In: Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 16 (1969/70), p. 142–157. Weimar’s essay focuses primarily on such moments of slowing through alterration of the

(140). In yet another scene, Johannes observes sorrowfully the distraught women below the cross (»Keiner beklagt wehmüthiger diese Beängsteten, keiner/ Herzlicher, als der gerettete mitgekreuzigte Jüngling« (195–196)) and is in turn watched by Abraham, who is himself moved by Johannes’ display of sympathy (»Jetzo bewegt’ ihn das Mitleid, mit dem der geheiligte Jüngling/ Auf die frommen Leidenden sah« [203–204]).66 A similar type of community formation through the reduplication of affect follows later in song XIII. The representation of the resurrection in this thirteenth song allegorizes the Christian community of sympathy, when verse upon verse describe the emotions aroused among the spectators, all in loving relation to one another before, during, and after the resurrection.67 Both songs IX and XIII stage a mise-en-abyme of an affective community that the text strives both to describe and create among its audience. If the affective interaction among angels, fathers, and humans signifies the primary criterion for membership within a Christian moral community, then the descriptions of Satan and the other fallen angels in the second canto supply the counter-model. The devils are excluded from the Christian community and inhabit hell precisely because they are incapable of participating in a community. Their interaction resembles that of worldly tyrants, or even absolute monarchs, all selfishly vying for power against one another. Satan describes himself as the »king of the world« (II, 173) who has conquered the world as his »empire« (II, 190). When Satan assembles »the princes of hell« (II, 401), Adramelech’s own ambitions for the throne of hell and his competition with Satan become apparent: »Noch brannte sein Herz von grimmigem Zorne/ Wider Satan, daß dieser zuerst zu Empörung sich aufschwang!/ Denn er hatte schon lange bey sich Empörung beschlossen./ Wenn er was that; er thats nicht, Satans Reiche zu schützen:/ Seinentwegen verübt’ er es« (II, 301–305). Adramelech is motivated solely by his individual thirst for power; he is »Gottes, der Menschen, und Satans Feind« (II, 704). In fact, individuality seems to be one of the devils’ most striking traits. Adramelech and Satan travel to earth »neben einander,« but »Jeder allein, und in sich gekehrt« (II, 831–832); Adramelech’s ambitions for power are closely intertwined with his quest to reign as the sole king of the world. Observing the world, he describes his ambitions so: Ja, sie ist es, die ich, so bald ich Satan entfernet, Oder, besiegend den Gott, mich vor Allen habe verherrlicht Die ich dann, als Schöpfer des Bösen, allein beherrsche! Aber warum nur sie? Warum nicht jene Gestirne, […] Nein, zu ganzen Geschlechten! […] Dann will ich hier, oder dort, oder da, triumphirend und einsam Sitzen! […] (II, 838–849)

66 67

tact: »wenn z. B. mehrere schwere Betonungen nebeneinander stehen, geht die Schnelligkeit der ›Wortbewegung‹ – auch dies ein Klopstockscher Begriff – gegen Null« (154). Kaiser, Klopstock, p. 241. Kaiser, Klopstock, p. 241.

73

Yet Adramelech’s self-interested hate for all others is symptomatic of the entire group of »princes.« Abbadona, for instance, declares before the others, »Ja, ich hasse dich, Satan! dich hass’ ich, du schrecklicher!« (II, 669). When they do form a coalition, it is only to murder the Messiah (II, 736–737). The message is clear: hell is both a lack of community and a murderous conquest. Such descriptions of the devils as bellicose monarchs suggest that a critique of tyrannical monarchy also lurks behind this allegory of community and non-community.68

The High Priests of the Nation: Klopstock’s Supplementary Epic Community The prosodic process through which the Christian community constitutes itself is caught in a bind deriving from the retroactive circularity of the poetics of the nation, a circularity that haunts post-Reformation Christianity’s communal selfrepresentation, as well as perhaps all attempts to institute collectivities: it has to produce the community it presupposes for its proper reception. Because Klopstock’s poetics are above all designed for the ear, yet mediated by the printed word, the epic community would have to be organized around a staging of orality under the conditions of a circulating print culture. For an epic poetry derived from the way the tone and duration of words are spoken and heard, a common understanding of how to enunciate the German language is necessary, and an art of reading has to be cultivated. The regulation of a national German language, Klopstock says in one of the treatises published alongside the first and second editions of the first

68

74

The denigration of the individual and the celebration of a super-individual collectivity in the Messias suggests a link between Klopstock’s epic, odes, and drama and confirms Hans Martin Blitz’s claim that »Klopstocks vaterländische Begeisterung betont immer wieder einen kollektiven, überindividuellen Gemeinschaftsgedanken« (Blitz, Aus Liebe zum Vaterland, p. 369). It also lends credence to his assertions about the Hermann figure in Klopstock’s writings, with respect to the identification of France as the absolutist enemy: »Als ›Befreyer des Vaterlandes‹ stattet Klopstock seine Hermannfigur mit den Attributen des Kriegers gegen absolutistische Tyrannenherrschaft aus. Der Kampf gegen die römische ›Welttyrannin‹ wird bei Klopstock zum Sinnbild einer bürgerlichen Emanzipation von adeliger Tyrannei«; this bourgeois emancipation from tyranny took the form of a patriotic resistance to France as the »damaligen Inbegriff des Absolutismus« (367). Heinrich Bosse argues that Klopstock’s bardic poetry (in particular, the Kriegslied of 1749) similarly attempts to construct a communal experience of militancy that is not focused on an enemy or based upon the emotion of hatred: »Offensichtlich ist der Feind nicht mehr als eine notwendige Randbedingung der Identifi kation. Es geht hier um maximale soziale Kohäsion, aber ohne Haß. […] Die naturgegebene Sympathie, die Menschen zueinander zieht und miteinander vergesellschaftet, wird unter den extremen Bedingungen des Kampfes, bei Verschwörungen oder im Kriege, erstaunlicherweise verstärkt, so daß Menschenliebe und kriegerischer Heroismus letztlich fast zusammenfallen.« (Bosse, »Klopstocks Kriegslied [1749],« p. 74).

four songs of Der Messias, requires a shift in interest from French to native German belles-lettres and the institutionalization of the German language around a geographic center: Wir wären glücklich, wenn wir eine grosse Stadt in Deutschland hätten, die von der Nation, als Richterinn der rechten Aussprache, angenommen wäre. Aber wir dürfen hierauf wohl izt nicht hoffen, da Berlin eifersüchtiger darauf zu seyn scheint, den zweiten Platz nach Paris, als den ersten in Deutschland, zu behaupten. Gleichwohl liebe ich meine Landsleute so sehr, daß ich von ihnen glaube, daß sie in den Städten, wo es nicht mehr unbekannt ist, daß Achtung und Sorge für einheimische schöne Wissenschaften eine von den vorzüglichsten Ehren einer Nation sind, sich bemühen werden, ihre Sprache recht auszusprechen; und, wofern sie sich auch hierinn noch einige Nachlässigkeit verzeihen wollten, doch, wenn sie öffentlich reden, oder gute Schriften in Gesellschaften vorlesen, sich selbst und ihren Scribenten die Ehre erweisen werden, daß sie ihre volltönige und mächtige Sprache richtig aussprechen [my italics, C. P.].69

Were such an art of reading consisting of a speaking reader (»Vorleser«) and a listening audience (»Zuhörer«) already in place, Klopstock would have no cause to bemoan the lack of capable rhapsodists. Although Klopstock, like Virgil, writes his epic to then be read to an audience by a rhapsodist, in contrast to the fantasy of direct orality exemplified for the eighteenth century by Homeric epic, he considers the performative moment indispensable to his project. This moment exists as the interface of oral and written practices of narrative. Von dem Jamben erhüben wir uns weiter zu den volleren Perioden der Redner. Wenn wir diese lesen könnten; so fingen wir mit dem Hexameter an. Wir brauchten hierbey seine prosodische Einrichtung eben nicht zu wissen: und da die Geschicklichkeit, die Redner zu lesen, vorausgesezt wird; so dürften wir nur mit der gesezten Männlichkeit, mit der vollen und ganzen Aussprache, und, wenn ich so sagen darf, mit dieser Reife der Stimme, den Hexameter lesen, mit der wir die Prosa lesen.70

The epic community would require an institutionalization of literature as a public setting that harkens back to aspects of the performance-oriented practices of the discipline of rhetoric yet situates them within institutional parameters rendered imaginable by the circulability of the printed word.71 The epic community understood as the enacted embodiment of the promise of salvation cannot arise out of the community-formation allegorized and performed within the immanence of the Messias’ text alone, but presupposes extra-literary support (standardization of the German language, a community of German belles letters, properly-trained rhap-

69 70 71

Klopstock, »Von der Nachahmung des griechischen Sylbenmasses im Deutschen,« p. 130. Klopstock, »Von der Nachahmung des griechischen Sylbenmasses im Deutschen,« p. 137–138. The idea that Klopstock assimilates poetry to rhetoric has been developed in: Kevin Hilliard, Philosophy, Letters, and the Fine Arts in Klopstock’s Thought, Humanities Press, London 1987, p. 187.

75

sodists) before the poetic language can properly work to construct a (if we take the gendered vocabulary of the passage at its word – masculine) community of religious patriotism out of a scattered and presumably immature audience. In 1774, a year after the publication of the first edition of the last five cantos of the Messias, Klopstock presented in Die deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik a curiously inventive program for the institutionalization of such a German-language cultural politics.72 As Katrin Kohl has shown, the Gelehrtenrepublik designs a fictive community to serve as model for a future community of intellectuals: Seine Gelehrten versammeln sich in einer kompakten, von deutschen Eichen bewachsenen Landschaft, sind durch geimeinsame, an altfränkische Dokumente anknüpfende Gesetze, eine kontinuierliche Geschichte und große deutsche Vorbilder wie Luther und Leibniz geeint, und erneuern ihre Verbundenheit im Rahmen von Landtagen, die das gemeinschaftliche Anliegen im Prozess der produktiven Diskussion festigen und fortentwickeln.73

Klopstock’s sketch is, Kohl concludes, »ein Versuch, mittels Stimulierung der kollektiven Imagination auf höchst artifizielle Weise die verstreuten deutschsprachigen Intellektuellen zu einer institutionellen Gemeinschaft heranzubilden.«74 The very form of dissemination of the published text of Die deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik, in which Klopstock presents his fictional design for a national community of intellectual elites to be realized in the future, aims to inaugurate an institutional practice of discursive communion. For Klopstock attempted to institute a subscription system by sending announcements to acquaintances in German-speaking literary and intellectual circles in order to instate an awareness of the project, mobilize participants, and garner financial support. The ambition was to establish the material conditions for the mental and moral production of national culture by making intellectuals the owners of their writings and hence independent of publishers and book traders.75

72

73

74 75

76

Klopstock, Die deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik. Emanuel Peter shows how Klopstock’s model of a patriotic community, organized as a »Gelehrtenrepublik,« hopes to combine Klopstock’s notion of »Handlung« – as anything which brings about effects, but with particular emphasis on the internal motivation caused by passion (»Leidenschaft«) – with the activities of writers within a distinct set of nationally oriented and managed institutions (Peter, Geselligkeiten, p. 156–164). Katrin Kohl, »Kulturstiftung durch Sprache. Rede und Schrift in der Deutschen Gelehrtenrepublik.« In: Wort und Schrift – Das Werk Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstocks, ed. by Kevin Hilliard and Katrin Kohl, Hallesche Forschungen vol. 27, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2008, p. 145–171, here: p. 146. Kohl, »Kulturstiftung durch Sprache,« p. 151. Kohl, »Kulturstiftung durch Sprache,« p. 163. The public’s faith in the author’s ability to deliver completed works demanded by Klopstock’s subscription system can also be seen as analogous to the messianic faith presupposed by the Messias. Not prosody but money functions in this case as the guarantor of the subscription system: Both the Messias (for which a subscription was announced, without positive response, in 1753) and the Gelehrtenrepublik as works constituted by a subscription system »konnten nur dann Erfolg

While intellectuals would participate as both producers and consumers of their writings, Klopstock also hoped to reach a wider public of educated readers. And yet the incoherency of the innovatively open form of the Gelehrtenrepublik kept many readers from renewing their subscriptions, so that Klopstock neither published nor even tried to complete the second volume. The exclusionary impulses of the project further contributed to the project’s limited success. For instance, whereas women made for adept recipients of the Messias, due to their knowledge of the Bible and reading experiences with the techniques of empathy in sentimental novels, they are excluded from the Gelehrtenrepublik.76 Caught between the desire for an immanent poetic community and the necessity to supplement it with extradiagetic institutions, the overall project of an epic imaginary faces several hurdles, which Klopstock’s innovative but unsuccessful attempt to institutionalize literary culture with Die deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik demonstrates, before it can formalize its community within a prosody of epic hexameter. Klopstock’s epic imaginary was thus motivated by concerns similar to those of Goethe and Schiller, namely the construction of a national literature for a literary public.77 The difference is that Klopstock believed in the ongoing relevance of an epic poetic community and, accordingly, he dedicated his life’s work to the Mes-

76

77

haben, wenn das Publikum davon überzeugt war, daß Klopstock die in ihn gesetzten Erwartungen, die monetär beglaubigt werden sollten, auch erfüllen werde. Werkkonstitution und Autorenbild setzen daher ein gewisses messianisches Potential voraus. Offen bleibt, wie eine Subskription ohne dieses Autorvertrauen funktionieren soll bzw. wie eine Autorenkarriere in einem Subskriptionssystem beginnen soll, wie Klopstock es bei seinem großen Selbstverlagserfolg der Gelehrtenrepublik entwirft.« (Martus, Werkpolitik, p. 246). Regarding the diagetic sketch, Kohl explains: »Es ist ausschließlich auf Männer fokussiert, schließt Frauen aus der aktiven Teilnahme am Geschehen der fi ktiven Republik aus und vermittelt vor allem maskulin-kämpferische Werte.« (Kohl, »Kulturstiftung durch Sprache,« p. 165). Kohl’s final assessment of the project: »Finanziell war das Unterfangen für Klopstock ein durchschlagender Erfolg: Er warb annährend 3 500 Subskribenten, und der Nettogewinn betrug rund 2 000 Reichstaler. Medienpolitisch war es jedoch eine Fehlkalkulation, da er das Verfahren weder für den geplanten zweiten Teil noch wie beabsichtigt für andere Gelehrte identitätsbildend fruchtbar machen konnte. Kulturpolitisch erreicht er auch auf diesem Wege keine Stärkung literarischer Institutionen.« (Kohl, »Kulturstiftung durch Sprache,« p. 163). As evident in Goethe’s notion of an »unsichtbare Schule« consisting of the »Arbeiten deutscher Poeten und Prosaisten« whose publicistic efforts to collect and disseminate great literary works in the German-language enable the »Bildung« of a literary public. Even the trope of the »unsichtbare Schule« refers to a community that is essentialy »unanschaulich,« which would suggest an inadvertently close affinity to the sublime nation that is the objective of Klopstock’s poetics (Johann Wolfgang Goethe, »Literarischer Sanscülottismus.« In: Goethe, Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens, Münchner Ausgabe, ed. by Karl Richter, in cooperation with Herbert G. Göpfert, Norbert Miller, and Gerhard Sauder, Carl Hanser Verlag, München and Wien 1990, vol. 4.2, p. 15–20, here: p. 18–19).

77

sias and an appropriate prosody for a public literary culture based on a mixture of orality and print. He was convinced that German writers do not have to worry about strictly imitating the Greeks, because the essence of poetic imitation lies in invention; furthermore, there never was a community available to the Greeks but lost to the Germans, because, as a performative iteration, epic poetry could produce among its listeners the community whose sublime story it presented in the act of narration. The nostalgia for a community which has been lost, as we find it figured by Goethe and Schiller as the naiveté of youth that is lost to sober manhood, is missing from Klopstock’s poetics of the Christian nation. Even if Klopstock shared Goethe’s and Schiller’s concern for the construction of a literary public, his observations never took the form of a lament the way Goethe’s did, for instance when Goethe wrote to Schiller, »Warum gelingt uns das Epische so selten? Weil wir keine Zuhörer haben…«78 The primary difference separating these notions of epic community resides in divergent semantics of the category of the »imagination.« Schiller’s critique of Klopstock relies on a concept of imagination derived from a Kantian perspective presupposing, as it were, a physically isolated recipient. Recall that he criticizes the inability of Klopstock’s abstractions to set objective limits to the »Einbildungskraft.« Even when Goethe and Schiller evoke a model epic community, they propose that the narrating rhapsodist conceal himself behind a curtain to foster the imaginative faculties of the listening audience.79 Such a model of community resembles far more the late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century mode of reception characterized by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities than the performance-oriented practices more characteristic of the rhetorical tradition or the semiotics of the sacrament from which Klopstock often seems to draw. 80 Through an epic poetry that is more musical than visual,81 however, Klopstock’s experiment with the epic genre devises a political imaginary of national totality linked to an epic narrative of Christian community. The success of this particular version of the epic imaginary depends

78 79

80

81

78

Goethe to Schiller, 27 December 1797. Friedrich Schiller, »Über epische und dramatische Dichtung.« In: Schiller, Schillers Werke, Nationalausgabe, ed. by Benno von Wiese, with assistance of Helmut koopmann, vol. 20/1: Philosophische Schriften, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, Weimar 1963, p. 59. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, London and New York 1991. For a contextualization of discourses of the faculty of imagination in the eighteenth century: Gabriele Dürbeck, Einbildungskraft und Aufklärung. Perspektiven der Philosophie, Anthropologie und Ästhetik um 1750, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1998. On this point, see: Hildegard Benning, »Ut Pictura Poesis – Ut Musica Poesis. Paradigmenwechsel im poetologischen Denken Klopstocks.« In: Klopstock an der Grenze der Epochen, ed. by Kevin Hilliard and Katrin Kohl, with Klopstock bibliography 1972– 1992 by Helmut Riege, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1995. And the essays in: Klopstock und die Musik, ed. by Peter Wollny, Ortus-Musikverlag, Beeskow 2005.

upon the question of how to evoke – rhetorically, poetically, and institutionally – the presence of the Christian community as an affective experience within a textual circuit binding diagetic and extradiagetic participants to the promise of salvation.

79

Excursus: The Passions of Klopstock and Badiou

This brief excursus aims to assess a recent recuperation of subjective universality ascribed to the Christian legacy by way of a comparison of the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou’s rehabilitation of Paul with Klopstock’s appropriation of Christian myth for eighteenth-century literary theory. Klopstock’s Messias identifies the Christian fable of crucifi xion and resurrection with a humanist discourse of universality. In so doing, Klopstock surprisingly resembles Badiou’s turn to Pauline Christianity as an instance of universal declaration. Badiou claims that the mythological statement »Christ is resurrected« is on the same order of the mathematical statement »there is a limitless succession of prime numbers.«1 For Badiou, the Resurrection offers a narrative fable to which we cannot ascribe a historical veracity but which asserts universal validity (107). Yet much hinges on this point of articulation between the historically particular and the non-phenomenal universal. I argue that a common thread that runs from the eighteenth century to contemporary attempts to revive a concept of universalism is the struggle to articulate the relation between the generality and the singularity of the claim to universality. The common denominator here is an epic struggle itself over the meaning or framing of epic acts and the thresholds of the communities allegedly called into being by them: Can an act or utterance instantiate itself as a medium of meaning in political life or is political significance secondary to the epic acts which supply communal foundations and draw boundaries? Badiou’s specific appropriation of Christianity identifies Paul as the founder of universalism and hence the antidote for what he regards as a contemporary reduction of the subject to bodies and language (which he labels »democratic materialism«). According to Badiou, democratic materialism’s reduction to bodies and language abandons the peculiarly human capacity for declaring the »Event of Truth« and thereby becoming a subject through the militant act of such a declaration of truth: For me, Paul is a poet-thinker of the event, as well as one who practices and states the invariant traits of what can be called the militant figure. He brings forth the entirely human connection, whose destiny fascinates me, between the general idea of a rupture, an overturning, and that of a thought-practice that is this rupture’s subjective materiality. (2)

1

80

Alain Badiou, Saint Paul. The Foundation of Universalism, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2003, p. 107. Hereafter cited parenthetically.

Badiou is not interested in Christian doctrine, any particular content of Christianity, but rather with the conditions of universality insisted upon and enacted in Paul’s break with the laws of Judaism and the »state,« and in his groundless, or as Badiou puts it, »militant« belief in the exceptional truth of Christian Resurrection. A lengthy quote summarizes what Badiou has in mind: Paul’s general procedure is the following: if there has been an event, and if truth consists in declaring it and then in being faithful to this declaration, two consequences ensue. First, since truth is evental, or of the order of what occurs, it is singular; it is neither structural, nor axiomatic, nor legal. No available generality can account for it, nor structure the subject who claims to follow in its wake. Consequently, there cannot be a law of truth. Second, truth is being inscribed on the basis of a declaration that is in essence subjective, no preconstituted subset can support it; nothing communitarian or historically established can lend its substance to the process of truth. Truth is diagonal relative to every communitarian subset; it neither claims authority from, nor (this is obviously the most delicate point) constitutes any identity. It is offered to all, or addressed to everyone, without a condition of belonging being able to limit this offer, or this address. (14)

The »human connection« that Badiou contends is »Christian« or »Pauline« thus describes a universalism emptied of all particular identifications, references to a community, or historical determinants. The structure of such a groundless declaration rejects identification with historical difference – and here it articulates universalist aspirations to be a Subject of history which is not subject to history. The »ground« of Christian universality, and universality in general, according to Badiou, lies in its groundlessness, a groundlessness that founds it as a universal address. The universal Christian declaration is addressed to all, and as such is subjective; that is to say, Badiou presupposes the very subject who becomes a Subject in the act of declaring a truth event. To his credit, Badiou does not propose a monolithic, self-identical Subject, for he makes it clear that Paul’s subjective declaration of truth divides the subject between what he calls, following Paul, the »spirit« and the »flesh« (56–57). Fidelity to the Christ-event »is at once the suspension of the flesh through a problematic ›not,‹ and the affirmation of the path of the spirit through a ›but‹ of exception« (63). The »not« suspends the subject’s destiny in the law, while the exceptional »but« declares a fidelity to the event through grace, an affirmation of the path of the spirit as it ventures beyond the confines of worldly givens. The decisive point is that it is the form of the utterance »not…but« that bears the universal (64). Although the procedure is formal, the notion of Christian grace – which Badiou translates as »love« – plays an important role in his theory, for it leads out of the purely formal realm and into the affective dimension of the lived experience of universality as a truth-event. On this point, Badiou’s theory arrives at modern humanism’s core problem of how to reconcile universality and particularity. Particularity has always been a trouble spot in Badiou’s theory, which his recent work Logics of Worlds seeks to rectify.2 2

Alain Badiou, Logics of Worlds. Being and Event II, trans. by Alberto Toscano, Continuum, London and New York 2009.

81

In his work on Paul, Badiou argues that love supplies the »materiality of truth« (92). Love is the power of faith, the source of militancy that binds thinking and doing to a »transliteral« »law of spirit« operative in the process of subjectivization. The injunction to »love your neighbor as your self« is a pure affirmation that gives living truth to the subject who institutes itself through a universalized self-love addressed to others (90). If the evental declaration founds the subject, love gives it power and enlivens it. Through love, the subject manifests itself as an immanent exception: an exception to historical conditions that nonetheless actualizes power in the world through the universal address of self-love extended to others. Badiou’s concern with love (or grace), I contend, leads us beyond a purely formal version of Christian universalism and into the, to use Badiou’s word, »material« dimension of affect, which brings us back to Klopstock, for whom Christian universality is inextricably tied to the circulation of affect. Might a leap back a couple of centuries to Klopstock’s linkage of Christianity with universality within the eighteenth-century epic imaginary intervene in fruitful ways in the contemporary discussion? The value of this intervention, I contend, lies in Klopstock’s insistence on the particular within humanism’s claims to universality, while it also points to the limits of universalist discourses emerging out of Christian legend. Klopstock’s life-long work on his epic Messiade sought to develop a prosody capable not only of narrating, but also of recreating for its audience the sublime experience of affective interaction that he believed could be made accessible through the poetic depiction of the fable of Christian Resurrection in hexameter verse. Klopstock’s epic abandons a solely patriotic agenda, hoping instead with the Messias to narrate the »higher path« to the »fatherland of the human race.« Klopstock expands the epic’s traditional function as a narrative of the particular mythical origins of community to the narration of the story of humanity, a move that leads through »national« particularity to the universal.3 To accomplish this lofty and ambitious project, he articulated a theory of poetic language, which he called »Darstellung« and which he based on an innovative principle of prosody that he termed »word movement« (»Wortbewegung«). Prosodic word movement, he asserted, expresses the »wordless« in poetry and religion, the point at which religion and poetry intersect in the affects of »Empfindung« and »Leidenschaft« (as he terms them) constitutive of the humanism of the Christian community. In other words, according to Klopstock’s theory of »Darstellung« as the appropriate mode for narrating the Crucifi xion and Resurrection, the quintessential universal human experience is not to be found in Paul’s militantly formal, subjective declaration of the truth of the Res-

3

82

The notion that Germans embody the history of humanity gets repeated later in the context of the Napoleonic occupation, for instance in the fifth and sixth Reden an die deutsche Nation (1808), Fichte divides the history of »humanity« (the exact term is also »Menschengeschlecht«) into the ancient Greek and the modern German epochs. The German »Volk« is the »Tathandlung« that is constitutive of humanity (Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1978, esp. p. 88).

urrection, but rather in the shared affective experience of »Empfindung« and »Leidenschaft« evoked in the reenactment of the Crucifi xion and Resurrection through metrical word movement. Without repeating the technical details of Klopstock’s prosody – which I treat at length above in the chapter on the Messias – the short explanation for how word movement evokes sublime Christian pathos runs as follows: »Empfindung« and »Leidenschaft« are the »wordless« or sublime within poetry and religion. No words can adequately capture these sublime affects, but the movement among the feet and periods of the dactyl and trochee of German hexameter – irreducible to either the sound of the words or the meaning of each individual word, yet constitutive of both – produces affective states among the listeners. The words can move slowly or quickly (»Zeitausdruck«) and with variations in the dynamics of the syllables (»Tonverhalt«); these two aspects of word movement generate »certain states of Empfindung and Leidenschaft.« The production of these affective states, moreover, creates a community among the listeners modeled on the fabled Christian community of pathos formed around the fabled Crucifi xion and Resurrection. Klopstock’s procedure is thus twofold: in representing the mythical advent of the affective Christian community, Klopstock’s epic poetry seeks at the same time to construct this very community through the affective interaction among its listeners upon which it is based. Klopstock’s Christian humanism shares with Badiou’s militant universalism a privileging of a formal or performative procedure as the key to universality. Yet whereas for Badiou the form of Paul’s militant declaration bears a universality emptied of all pathological identifications (bodies and language), Klopstock’s performative reenactment of the sympathetic scenes of human salvation through poetic form is directed at evoking the affective interaction constitutive of the fabled Christian community whose »origins« the hexameter verse narrates as a universal human mode of interaction to be recreated in the present. Although both Badiou and Klopstock return to the fable of Resurrection to identify the conditions of universality, and emphasize universality’s enactment through formal procedures – for Badiou, the groundless declaration addressed to all; for Klopstock, the poetic re-enactment of communal sympathy through metrical word movement – significant differences separate them and demonstrate that a modern (Christian) discourse of universality is constantly at odds with itself. If we consider Klopstock’s absolute commitment to the power of poetic language to produce universally-shared states of »Empfi ndung« and »Leidenschaft,« then Klopstock’s Christian universalism would seem to be at odds with Badiou’s critique of the contemporary reduction of the concept of humanity to bodies and language as antithetical to the Pauline universalism he advocates. However, the picture becomes quite complicated, because Klopstock employs bodies (affect) and language (prosody) to enable a human experience of sublime universality. What is particularly compelling about Klopstock’s version of universality is that, although it attributes the experience of affect to all humans, it avoids a simplistic vitalism that celebrates a putative »raw« emotional experience, because it 83

insists that affects are products of signification, as is, for that matter, the pathos of religion. Badiou might argue that Klopstock’s humanism is not a strict universalism, because on the one hand it identifies the Christian community as an already constituted historical aggregate to be recreated and it is grounded in the German language, thus preventing a universal address. Klopstock’s identification of the story of humanity with the story of Christianity is indeed troubling. The identification of Christianity with both Germany’s national epic and the story of »humanity« risks enforcing an exclusionary logic and an astonishing hubris. Furthermore, as I have argued, the Christian reference focuses on the performative evocation of affect as the universal mark of humanity; it is not focused on any specific doctrine. As for the reliance on the German language, I can defend Klopstock by saying: yes, he dedicated his life’s work to developing a German-language prosody, but nowhere have I found him claiming that this poetic humanism is a uniquely German enterprise. In fact, the Messias was modeled on Milton’s Paradise Lost, and his prosodic writings argue throughout that different languages need to develop metric forms most appropriate to their sounds, structures, and vocabularies. This is why he spends considerable time defending his replacement of spondee by trochee in German hexameter, because German-language hexameter does not have to strictly imitate Greek hexameter. In other words, while language might be fundamental to the experience of a sublime prosody, no one language is superior over others. In conclusion, particularity is built into the very possibility of a Christian universality for Klopstock in ways that Badiou’s Pauline universality tries, with difficulty, to avoid. Klopstock’s version of universality is always caught between appeals to particularity – affects, linguistic devices, references to Christian salvation or even to a Germany before it exists as a geo-political entity – and an appeal to a shared human community of sympathy. Klopstock’s prosody shows that the human community is divided not by the form of a subjective declaration »not…but« which divides the spirit and the flesh, but rather by the identification with signification, which, due to the production of reference out of a differential system of phonemes, is arguably always an identification with difference. Through signification and the »material« experience of common affects, particular experience is elevated to the universally human. Particularity is constitutive of Klopstock’s Christian humanism and its claims to universality; one might say that Klopstock theorizes an embodied universality. In any case, the disjuncture between Klopstock’s insistence on a universalizable particularity of signification and affect and Badiou’s emphasis on the materializability of the formal conditions of the universal declaration of the »TruthEvent« indicates that a defining trait of modern universality is exactly this fissure between the particular and the general. The blind spot uniting their theories, and perhaps plaguing all discourses of universalism emerging from the narrative framework of Christianity, is how to account for the presupposition of belief in the asserted universality of any claim. Badiou does not explain the binding power of an investment in »love« as the electrifying force igniting Paul’s militant declaration of 84

the universality of his foundational act. That is to say, love might motivate Paul’s own declaration, but how do others come to share this affect? Borderlines of inclusion and exclusion soon form around a universality that presupposes belief or faith once it comes in contact with the possibility of non-belief created as its byproduct. The same holds for Klopstock’s post-Lutheran experiment in which the address of a »heilige Poesie« presupposes the community of believers that its techniques of representation aim to create. Can the specific poetic techniques of the epic narrative alone produce common affects among its audience and hence a shared experience of the community allegorized in the poem, or do they only perform effectively within a mutually recognized setting of believers, externalized as the rituals of the Christian church but based on an internal faith in the validity of these institutions? Even such attempts to emphasize performative or ritualistic dimension with little or no recourse to the content of Christian dogma cannot circumvent the persistent question of faith or belief in the efficacy or guarantees of the supposedly self-grounding nature of Christian fables.

85

3.

The Politics and Poetics of Epic World Citizenship in Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea.

There is a humorous scene towards the beginning of Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit (Part I, Book II), in which he describes the family conflict caused by the Klopstock reception in his childhood home. It seems Goethe’s father only considered verse to be poetry if it rhymed; hence, to him Klopstock’s hexameter was nothing more than rhythmic prose. Goethe and his sister, assisted by their mother, nonetheless avidly memorized lines from the contraband first ten books of The Messiah, which they happily recited with each other in different roles. One Saturday evening, their diabolic recitations – Goethe particularly liked to recite Satan’s lines in the poem – caused a commotion when Goethe and his sister performed a dialogue between Satan and Adramelech while their father was being shaved. At the highest moment of pathos in the scene, the barber was startled, sending the contents of the shaving bowl onto their father’s chest. Needless to say, this incident only confirmed the father’s suspicion of Klopstock’s epic poetry: »[W]e confessed to our diabolical play-acting, and since it was only too evident that hexameters had instigated the mishap, they were of course once again banished in disgrace« (HA, IX, 79–82; CW, IV, 69–71).1 Goethe’s story of two siblings upsetting their father with recitations of Klopstock’s epic hexameter may lower to comedic levels an epic poetry that strives for sublimity, but it likewise offers confirmation for Klopstock’s project to construct an epic prosody aiming to create a sublime national community. As I argued in the Klopstock chapter, the prosody underlying The Messiah seeks to create the very

1

86

Most of my quotations of Goethe’s texts come from the Hamburger Ausgabe, and will be cited with the abbreviation »HA« followed by the volume and page numbers. Whenever possible, I consult the English translations from: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Collected Works, ed. by Victor Lange, Eric Blackall, and Cyrus Hamlin, 12 vols, Suhrkamp, New York 1983–89. I cite it as »CW« followed by volume and page numbers. At times, I have translated the German myself, or altered the English translation. For the citations of Goethe’s and Schiller’s letter exchange, I use Volume VIII of the Münchener Ausgabe, »Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe in den Jahren 1794 bis 1805,« ed. by Manfred Beetz, In: Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens, Münchener Ausgabe, ed. by Karl Richter in cooperation with Herbert G. Göpfert, Norbert Miller, and Gerhard Sauder, Carl Hanser Verlag, München and Wien 1990. I also consult and quote from Correspondence between Goethe and Schiller 1794–1805, trans. by Liselotte Dieckmann, Peter Lang Verlag, New York 1994. When citing their letters, I simply put the letter’s date in parentheses.

community being narrated through the performance of the epic narration itself in the simultaneity of the text and its reception. Goethe and his sister running around as two German children reciting hexameter passages would seem to enact the poetic nationality on the level of their oral performances, which ultimately is the goal of Klopstock’s prosody. Goethe’s anecdote from Dichtung und Wahrheit indicates a turning point in eighteenth-century experimentation with the epic genre in German poetics. As we will see in this chapter, poetic community was just as important for Goethe’s own version of Classicism as it was for Klopstock’s epic prosody. However, Goethe shifts the emphasis from the oral performance of prosody, and the concomitant technical problems of translating German into (Greek) hexameter, to a different type of mediality based on appeals to ideal »laws« of human imagination.2 Goethe’s imaginary epic community lies at the crossroads of the French Revolution and the ascendant German nationalism that in large part emerged as a response to the threat of French invasion. The poetic laws upon which this epic imaginary is based derive from the humanistic principles of the French Revolution’s ideals of individual freedom and equality. Unlike in Klopstock’s fundamentally atavistic national community, which wavers between humanist claims to an affective universality in Christianity and only being accessible for Germans through peculiarities of the German language, membership in Goethe’s epic poetic community means holding a »world citizenship« which would guarantee freedom of mind and the promise of fully developing an individuated character, which on the narratological level means being voiced within the narrative. In their letter exchange (which is widely regarded as the apex of »Weimar Classicism«), Goethe and Schiller attempt a systematic discussion of the laws of epic poetry at the same time that Goethe is completing his own hexameter epic, Hermann und Dorothea (1797), which explicitly addresses political questions connected to the French Revolution: namely, how to give voice to the populace in a modern mass society in such a way that captures the specificity of humans as singular beings who are distinct yet in relation to one another. Goethe thus rehabilitates the epic as a response to modern mass society rather than as a retreat into idyll in order to consider the French Revolution’s declarations of what the French theorist of citizenship Étienne Balibar calls »the proposition of equal-

2

Goethe seemed unconcerned with the contemporaneous disagreements about translating Greek hexameter into German. Against the protestations of purists of prosody such as Voß, who were upset by the presence of a seventh beat in the second canto, Goethe decides to leave the prosodic impurity as a »Wahrzeichen,« a sign, as Seidlin interprets it, which »das Fremde sich als das Fremde bewahre.« (Oskar Seidlin, »Über Hermann und Dorothea.« In: Klassische und moderne Klassiker, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1972, p. 26). On Goethe’s position within the late eighteenth-century debates about Homer, and how he applies such questions to Hermann und Dorothea, see: Martin, Das deutsche Versepos, p. 249–273.

87

iberty«: the equation of equality and freedom (Equality = Freedom).3 Uniting the representatives of the General Assembly and Goethe’s and Schiller’s poetics is the problem of how to enact the proposition of equaliberty in the form of democratic representation. Following Goethe’s terminology, I contrast Goethe’s modern casting of humanism as »symbolic« with Georg Forster’s more »allegorical« reading of humanism and political representation. Why do Goethe and Schiller embark on a theoretical discussion of genre in 1796, a discussion in which the distinction (or dialectical relation) between epic and drama is the focal point? Why does Goethe go so far as to write a modern hexameter epic set in contemporary Germany – moreover shortly after completing, with great success, the novel Wilhelm Meister? Granted, »Weimar Classicism« entailed a return to ancient poetics to recover universal laws of poetry and, as Lukács phrases it, »to apply them to the material which the modern age offers its poets.« 4 Behind this discussion of problems of form lies a politics of form that is apparent in the insistence on principles of beauty when presenting contemporary life in the wake of the French Revolution. Numerous studies have sought Goethe’s »take« on the French Revolution through readings of the political valence of the plight of the refugees, the values of Dorothea’s first fiancé and his specter in their marriage, the representation of the mentality of the petty bourgeois villagers, and the personal growth of Hermann culminating in his jingoistic declarations at the end.5 Yet how does the form of Hermann und Dorothea, and more specifically the fact that it is modeled on the Homeric hexameter epic, feed into the political issues explored in the text? One way to consider the politics of form in this work is to follow Lukács’ lead and construe it as a problem of epic vs. novel. In Theory of the Novel, he argues that the study of antiquity helps us to identify problems of modern life alongside the problems of form confronting any modern artist hoping to express the condition of modern bourgeois life; followed to its end, this path results in Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre and the theory of the novel, which amounts to the destruction of artistic form. The bourgeois novel is forced to narrate the plight of an individual – like Wilhelm Meister, whose imperfections are characteristic of modern human social beings – subjugated to the contingencies of social conditions. Yet in his later essays from the 1930s, collected and translated into English as Goethe and His Age, Lukács confronts directly the fact that Goethe’s and Schiller’s »rediscovery« of universal laws of poetry applied to a modern, bourgeois social life that is »hostile« to the ancient, beautiful forms runs counter to his account of the rise of the modern novel

3 4 5

88

Etienne Balibar, Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy before and after Marx, trans. by James Swenson, Routledge, New York 1994. Georg Lukács, Goethe and His Age, trans. by Robert Anchor, Merlin Press, London 1968, p. 78. Hereafter cited parenthetically. Paul Michael Lützeler, »Hermann und Dorothea« in Goethes Erzählwerk, Reclam, Stuttgart 1998.

as the destruction of artistic form. Goethe and Schiller, he says, »decide in favor of the epic poem reduced to an idyll over the great modern novel« (87). In this case, »it is a question of overcoming the socially problematical character of the bourgeois present with the aid of ancient forms creatively renovated« (85). Lukács concludes that this second path is doomed to result in contradiction; caught as it is in contradiction, such literature is however truly classical bourgeois art belonging to the period from 1789–1845 in so far as it is a realist representation of the contradictory state of bourgeois art.6 This is for Lukács a quasi epic struggle in and of itself, a battle between bourgeois art and society: »a heroic struggle on the part of great bourgeois artists, for a great realism opposed to the character of capitalist society which is inimical to art« (97–98). Supposing that Lukács correctly assesses the contradictory nature of the classicism of Goethe and Schiller, and its implications for the history of poetics and the political imaginary, we nonetheless can ask whether there might be more at stake. What are the political implications of Goethe’s decision to write Hermann und Dorothea in the form of a verse epic? Literary critics and historians have followed a dichotomous construction of genre, which corresponds to a political polarization of the French Revolution versus patriotic German provincialism, to explain the politics of Goethe’s epic. According to this model idyllic provincial life and landscapes offer a desirable counterpart to the tumultuous political life of the metropolis. In life on the land, so the argument goes, we find community, »Bürgerlichkeit,« and the organic nation all represented by the genres of the idyll, the novella, and lyric poetry, whereas big city life in Paris offers society, class struggle, and centralized economic and cultural organization as represented by the novel.7 However, when we read the theory of genre from the letter exchange between Goethe and Schiller alongside Hermann und Dorothea, I contend we find that their theory of epic – counter-intuitively – ascribes a progressive, democratic potential to the epic genre as a form of narrative and a mode of reception. Their construal of the epic genre as a poetic form of representative democracy is a significant intervention into questions about the poetics of humanism within the epic imaginary of the eighteenth century.8 In their effort to resist what Lukács called the destruction of art by succumbing

6

7

8

Christa Bürger comes to this conclusion about Hermann und Dorothea too, but from a different route (Bürger, »Hermann und Dorothea oder: Die Wirklichkeit als Ideal.« In: Unser Commercium. Goethes und Schillers Literaturpolitik, ed. by Wilfried Barner, Eberhard Lämmert, and Norbert Oellers, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1984, p. 485–505). See, for instance: Peter Morgan, »The Polarization of Utopian Idealism and Practical Politics in the Idyll: The Role of the First ›Bräutigam‹ in Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea.« In: German Quarterly 57:4 (Fall 1984), p. 532–545, in particular: p. 533. One has to approach the term »representative democracy« with cautious attention to historical usage. Later, I discuss Georg Forster’s usage of the term. On the history of the word »democracy,« see: Robert R. Palmer, »Notes on the use of the word ›democracy‹ 1789–1799.« In: Political Science Quarterly 68 (1953), p. 203–226; Hans Maier, »Zur Geschichte des Demokratiebegriffs.« In: Theorie und Politik. Festschrift zum 70.

89

to the novel’s rise as the humanist, democratic, individualist genre par excellence, as it would become in the nineteenth century, Goethe and Schiller propose a beautiful politics based on »laws« of epic form.9 They treat the epic as a form of poetic narration that implies three »World Citizens«: one as object of narration on the diegetic level, i. e. as character; the second as ideal recipient of the narration within an imaginary epic community; and the third as narrator, or rhapsodist, who by extension becomes equated with the poet himself. The first step will be to examine how the ideal of humanist character is figured as a Goethean »symbol.« What Hermann und Dorothea establishes on the figural level then becomes the goal of the epic’s narrative machinery as it strives to realize its poetic and political ideal. The ideal of the world citizen can be described as the poetic and political representation of a complex, individuated character in relation to other such characters. As a poetic ideal, the world citizen gains freedom of mind and equality of representation through the »higher laws« of epic poetry; as a political ideal, the world citizen suggests a challenge to the practices of democratic representation that would lose sight of individual complexity in the attempt to represent the general will of »the many.« Hermann und Dorothea and the theorization of the »laws of epic poetry« in Goethe’s and Schiller’s letters thus present a humanist critique of the totalizing potential of the politics of Enlightenment humanism, without however relinquishing the epic imaginary’s claims to universality. Nevertheless, as my analysis of the tropological and narratological structures of characterization in Hermann und Dorothea demonstrates, even their renewal of »bourgeois« humanism in the aftermath of the Revolutionary Terror encounters another limit to their

9

90

Geburtstag von Carl Joachim Friedrich, ed. by Klaus von Beyme, Nijhoff, Den Haag 1971, p. 127–161; Reinhart Koselleck and Hans Maier, »Demokratie (IV). Das Zeitalter der Französischen Revolution.« In: Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 1, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1972, p. 847–861. For an account of Forster’s advocacy of democracy, see: Franz Dumont, »Georg Forster als Demokrat: Theorie und Praxis eines deutschen Revolutionärs.« In: Georg Forster Studien I (1997), p. 125–154. According to Herbert Marcuse, bourgeois art in this sense offers the promise of an alternative reality, a cry out against the injustices of modern society on behalf of the universal dignity of humanity, while also affirming those very conditions against which it protests. A version of the epic imaginary sharing Marcuse’s critique of »affirmative culture« would thus see these tendencies as exemplified by claims for the beauty of epic verse: »Verse makes possible what has already become impossible in the prosaic reality. In poetry men can transcend all social isolation and distance and speak of the first and last things. They overcome the factual loneliness in the glow of great and beautiful words; they may even let loneliness appear in its metaphysical beauty. Criminal and saint, prince and servant, sage and fool, rich and poor join in discussion whose free flow is supposed to give rise to truth. The unity represented by art and the pure humanity of its persons are unreal; they are the counterimage of what occurs in social reality.« (Herbert Marcuse, »The Affirmative Character of Culture.« In: Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, trans. by Jeremy J. Shapiro, Allen Lane The Penguin Press, London 1969, p. 88–133, here: p. 102).

alternative form of democratic (epic) representation. For the representation of the two complex characters, Hermann and Dorothea, depends upon the »minor-ing« of others within the structures of narration and distribution of narrative attention, or voice. This function of minor-ness, in turn, points to a problem at the heart of representative democracy – namely, whether the representation of individual complexity necessarily requires asymmetrical distributions of attention.

Figures of Character In Goethe’s theoretical distinction between symbol and allegory one might look for poetic insight into the complex relationship between singularity and universality, part and whole. Commenting on the poetic figuration of this relation in Maximen und Reflexionen, Goethe asserts: Es ist ein großer Unterschied, ob der Dichter zum Allgemeinen das Besondere sucht oder im Besondern das Allgemeine schaut. Aus jener Art entsteht Allegorie, wo das Besondere nur als Beispiel, als Exempel des Allgemeinen gilt; die letztere aber ist eigentlich die Natur der Poesie, sie spricht ein Besonderes aus, ohne ans Allgemeine zu denken oder darauf hinzuweisen. Wer nun dieses Besondere lebendig faßt, erhält zugleich das Allgemeine mit, ohne es gewahr zu werden, oder erst spät. (Maxime 751; HA, XII, 471)

And in the next Maxim: »Das ist die wahre Symbolik, wo das Besondere das Allgemeinere repräsentiert, nicht als Traum und Schatten, sondern als lebendig-augenblickliche Offenbarung des Unerforschlichen« (Maxime 752). The general according to Goethe’s tropology of symbol is not some abstraction imposed upon any given particular, but is rather the theoretical insight to be gained from a particular moment. The title of Goethe’s epic Hermann und Dorothea indicates that the story concerns two main characters or protagonists. The bulk of scholarship on Hermann und Dorothea has been concerned with determining the meanings of these two characters, what each »stands for« as encodings of two socio-political alternatives and milieu. Though Hermann’s name evokes the militant defender of Germania against the imperial oppressors, the Hermann who defeated the Roman general Varus in the battle of Teutoburger Forest in 9 A. D. (the Prince of the Cherusker is represented as the protagonist of Kleist’s Hermannsschlacht), he comes across in Goethe’s characterization as far more the immature, mild-mannered provincial bourgeois son. Dorothea, on the other hand, whose function within the charactersystem is quite complex, as we will see, displays a heroic temperament and worldliness linked to her experience as a refugee of the French Revolution, which undergoes a process of domestication over the course of the narrative. Goethe’s epic tells the story of their marriage, and likewise suggests a commentary on the two political options of the time and their potential resolution. In a letter to Herzogin Louise, Goethe describes his epic poem as the representation of the two main »dispositi91

ons« separating the contemporary world: »Das Ganze schien mir zu fordern daß die zwei Gesinnungen in die sich jetzt beinahe die ganze Welt teilt neben einander und zwar auf die Weise wie es geschehen ist dargestellt würden« (13 June 1797).10 These two political »attitudes,« however, can be said to describe a fissure within the late eighteenth-century epic imaginary, two character traits, if you will, of a conflicted enlightenment humanism. Goethe’s text does not present a simple political situation in which progressive enlightenment representative democracy confronts a reactionary provincial nationalism. Neither side is correct, for the truth lies in the fact of their mutual struggle within political life.11 Stated differently, we might say that the fissure inhabits the space between the general claims to humanism of the world citizen (»Weltbürger«) of the French Revolution and the particularity of the provincial German townsperson (»Bürger«) within the political imaginary. The presentation of these two »attitudes« in political life in the immediate wake of the French Revolution is framed within the setting of an idyll and figured as a symbol in Goethe’s sense of the term. The idyllic framework provides the most central trope – namely, the well – that helps figure the process of narrative characterization as both a political symbol and agent of narrative structure. In Canto VII, titled »Dorothea,« Hermann encounters Dorothea at a well outside the village. He says to her, »Freilich ist dies von besonderer Kraft und lieblich zu kosten./Jener Kranken bringst du es wohl, die du treulich gerettet?« emphasizing Dorothea’s beneficence (HA, 7, 20–21). The two sit beside one another at the well as Dorothea explains to him that she has come to fetch water from this well because the refugees have dirtied the water in the village by selfishly letting their animals or themselves wash anywhere in them, »Denn ein jeglicher denkt nur, sich selbst und das nächste Bedürfnis/ Schnell zu befried’gen und rasch, und nicht des Folgenden denkt er« (HA, 7, 35–36). The interaction of Hermann and Dorothea as it is figured through their mutual recognition of one another’s reflection in the well as they fetch water for the other refugees contrasts with the egocentric behavior of each of those individual refugees, »in such a hurry to deal with his own needs«:

10 11

92

Goethe, Goethes Briefe in 4 Bänden, vol. 2, p. 278. The structure of the imaginary Goethe is describing is elucidated, albeit in an entirely different context, by Claude Lévi-Strauss in his chapter »Do Dual Organizations Exist« in: Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans. by Claire Jacobson and Brooke G. Schoepf, Basic Books, New York 1963. Strauss writes about the two discrepant maps of the Winnebago village that emerged, depending upon which villagers drew them, »I should like to show here that the question is not necessarily one of alternatives. These forms, as described, do not necessarily relate to two different organizations. They may also correspond to two different ways of describing one organization too complex to be formalized by means of a single model, so that the members of each moiety would tend to conceptualize it one way rather than the other, depending upon their position in the social structure. For even in such an apparently symmetrical type of social structure as dual organization, the relationship between moieties is never as static, or as fully reciprocal, as one might tend to imagine« (134–135).

Also sprach sie und war die breiten Stufen hinunter Mit dem Begleiter gelangt; und auf das Mäuerchen setzten Beide sich nieder des Quells. Sie beugte sich über, zu schöpfen; Und er faßte den anderen Krug und beugte sich über. Und sie sahen gespiegelt ihr Bild in der Bläue des Himmels Schwanken und nickten sich zu und grüßten sich freundlich im Spiegel. (HA, VII, 37–42)

The exchange of glances is repeated as they leave the well, this time infused with more eros tempered by the »sweetness« of the idyllic environment: »Also standen sie auf und schauten beide noch einmal/ In den Brunnen zurück, und süßes Verlangen ergriff sie« (HA, 7, 106–107). In the first passage, we are presented with the mutual recognition of each individual character figured through the idyllic trope of the well couched within a bucolic nature setting beneath a blue sky. The vibrations of their reflections are the only disturbance within this idyllic setting, and are probably the traces of the erotic charge between them that is explicitly thematized in the second glance into the well. Here we have a visual interaction, both look into each other’s countenances, that leads to an acknowledgement signaled by their nodding and smiling at one another that happens on the representational level as »Schein«; in Schiller’s words, the epic poet presents us a plot that is »bloßes Mittel zu einem absolutern ästhetischen Zwecke« (25 April 1797). The trope serves as a symbolic commentary within the text of the overlapping poetic and political agendas of the epic poem. The political agenda is the representation and mediation of the two attitudes (»Gesinnungen«) of modern political life: two characteristics of modern humanity recognizing one another. The poetic agenda is the beautiful representation, the reflection in the well water, of this political division within the historical trajectory of humanity on the aesthetic plane: an experience of Schein that knows itself only to be Schein. Yet a political imaginary supports the aesthetic one, for this model of poetic character as fundamentally relational is the subterranean political ideal of representative (evident in the reflection of the well) democracy that serves as both the characterological principle and representational aesthetic underlying Goethe’s epic. In what follows, I will show through an analysis of Goethe and Schiller’s theory of epic poetry that the formal attempt to represent the poetic accomplishment of this political model follows from their theoretical exploration of the »laws« of epic poetry.

The Laws of Epic Poetry Under the banner of the muse Polyhymnia, subtitled the »Weltbürger,« the fifth canto occupies the middle position within the nine cantos making up the narrative structure of Hermann und Dorothea. The chiasmatic relation between the judge and the parson, who play important roles in the narration of the development of Hermann and Dorothea into »world citizens,« helps to elucidate the principles of 93

world citizenship. The parson, on the one side, comes from the same petty bourgeois milieu as Hermann’s father and thus inhabits the purportedly staid community of country life; the Richter, on the other side, leads the refugees and lives in world historical flux outside of stable social relations. However, the parson leaves the provincial life of the townspeople to cross into the world of refugees of the French Revolution, and equally the judge forms familial bonds among the refugees, assuming the role of a father-figure modeled on the patriarchy of provincial »Bürgerlichkeit.«12 Furthermore, the parson reads both religious texts and »the best worldly texts« (HA, I, 83),13 and he is described as having a »ruhigen Sinn« (HA, V, 208). Goethe’s figure of the »world citizen,« I argue, hovers somewhere between the restless pursuit of progress of the French revolutionaries and the bucolic patience of the country dweller. The parson describes the traits of the world citizen, without naming the concept explicitly. Playing on the ambivalent figure of the tree, which can serve as either a trope of idyllic landscapes (the pear tree) (HA, IV, 53) or as a trope of Revolutionary liberty trees (»Bäume der Freiheit«) (HA, VI, 24), the parson describes the world citizen: Niemals tadl’ ich den Mann, der immer, tätig und rastlos Umgetrieben, das Meer und alle Straßen der Erde Kühn und emsig befährt und sich des Gewinnes erfreuet, Welcher sich reichlich um ihn und um die Seinen herum häuft; Aber jener ist auch mir wert, der ruhige Bürger, Der sein väterlich Erbe mit stillen Schritten umgehet Und die Erde besorgt, so wie es die Stunden gebieten. Nicht verändert sich ihm in jedem Jahre der Boden, Nicht streckt eilig der Baum, der neugepflanzte, die Arme Gegen den Himmel aus, mit reichlichen Blüten gezieret. […] Glücklich, wem die Natur ein so gestimmtes Gemüt gab!

The »Bürger,« and not the »Weltbürger,« exhibits the patience lauded here. What is striking in this speech is how the even-tempered citizen resembles the organizing law of Goethe’s epic poetry: »der Mann bedarf der Geduld; er bedarf auch des reinen,/ Immer gleichen, ruhigen Sinns und des graden Verstandes« (HA, V, 25–26). Compare this description with Goethe’s remarks on the difference between epic and dramatic poetry in a letter to Schiller: Einen Gedanken über das epische Gedicht will ich doch gleich mitteilen. Da es in der größten Ruhe und Behaglichkeit angehört werden soll, so macht der Verstand vielleicht mehr als an andere Dichtarten seine Forderungen, und mich wunderte diesmal bei Durchlesung der Odyssee grade diese Verstandesforderungen so vollständig befriedigt zu sehen. (19 April 1797)

12 13

94

Maria Lypp, »Bürger und Weltbürger in Goethes Hermann und Dorothea.« In: Goethe 31 (1969), p. 129–142, here: p. 133. Lypp, »Bürger und Weltbürger,« p. 133.

Schiller responds with an emphasis on the freedom of mind gained through epic narration: Die bloße, aus dem Innersten herausgeholte, Wahrheit ist der Zweck des epischen Dichters: er schildert uns bloß das ruhige Dasein und Wirken der Dinge nach ihren Naturen, sein Zweck liegt schon in jedem Punkt seiner Bewegung, darum eilen wir nicht ungeduldig zu einem Ziele sondern verweilen uns mit Liebe bei jedem Schritte. Er erhält uns die höchste Freiheit des Gemüts, und da er uns in einen so großen Vorteil setzt, so macht er dadurch sich selbst das Geschäft desto schwerer, denn wir machen nun alle Anforderungen an ihn, die in der Integrität und in der allseitigen vereinigten Tätigkeit unserer Kräfte gegründet sind. Ganz im Gegenteil raubt uns der tragische Dichter unsre Gemütsfreiheit, und indem er unsre Tätigkeit nach einer einzigen Seite richtet und konzentriert, so vereinfacht er sich sein Geschäft um vieles, und setzt sich in Vorteil, indem er uns in Nachteil setzt. (21 April 1797)

In the summarized version of their letter exchange which appeared later with the title »Über epische und dramatische Dichtung,« these ideas are assembled into a more lapidary formulation: Die Behandlung im ganzen betreffend, wird der Rhapsode, der das vollkommen Vergangene vorträgt, als ein weiser Mann erscheinen, der in ruhiger Besonnenheit das Geschehene übersieht; sein Vortrag wird dahin zwecken, die Zuhörer zu beruhigen, damit sie ihm gern und lange zuhören, er wird das Interesse egal verteilen, weil er nicht imstande ist, einen allzu lebhaften Eindruck geschwind zu balancieren, er wird nach Belieben rückwärts und vorwärts greifen und wandeln, man wird ihm überall folgen; denn er hat es nur mit der Einbildungskraft zu tun, die sich ihre Bilder selbst hervorbringt, und der es auf einen gewissen Grad gleichgültig ist, was für welche sie aufruft. (HA, XII, 251; Schiller, Nationalausgabe, XXI, 59)

In each instance, reason enacted by the faculty of understanding (Verstand ), levelheadedness or composure (Besonnenheit), patience, and freedom of mind are all recurring properties of epic poetry (they also happen to be states of mind), its principles of composition, method of narration, and effects on the recipient. These laws govern the techniques of the poet, the narrator or rhapsodist, and the frame of mind of the recipient. Poet, narrator, and recipient are unified around the principle of a level-headed character guided by his or her unrestrained understanding (Verstand ). Importantly, this passage links the serene detachment of the rhapsodist and the appeal of the narrative to the integrity of the recipient’s faculty of imagination to a narrative movement that guides them »backwards and forwards.« The narrative proceeds like a leisurely stroll through Hermann’s orchard. Goethe and Schiller call this narrative technique »retardation.« Goethe writes, »Eine Haupteigenschaft des epischen Gedichts ist daß es immer vor und zurück geht, daher sind alle retardierende Motive episch« (19 April 1797). Dramas propel the narrative forward and in the process seize the recipient’s mind or understanding, binding the reader or listener to the suspenseful unfolding of the plot’s resolution. Dramatic plots require obstacles to enable the creation and release of the suspense, but retarding epic plots should have no hindrances (19 April 1797). Goethe and Schiller eventually desig95

nate epic »retardation« as following the epic genre’s law of the »how« as opposed to the »what« of the story (Goethe, 22 April 1797), or the »mere means to an absolute aesthetic end« rather than the end itself (Schiller, 25 April 1797). Epic retardation frees the recipient’s mind from dramatic plots, allowing it to follow the imaginative flow of poetic imagery in the plot, all the while providing the conditions which compliment the parson’s description of the equanimous person, who like the epic plot doesn’t rush to conclusions: Again, in the parson’s words, »der Mann bedarf der Geduld; er bedarf auch des reinen,/Immer gleichen, ruhigen Sinns und des graden Verstandes.« We find similar reflections on the nature of dramatic poetry if we compare the letter exchange on the differences between epic and dramatic poetry with the distinction between drama and the novel made in Book 5, Chapter 7 of Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. There, the novel is said to present »sentiments« (Gesinnungen, which I would rather translate as attitudes) and »events« (Begebenheiten), whereas drama presents »characters« (Charaktere) and »deeds« (Taten). Now, as my analysis of the structures of characterization will show, Hermann und Dorothea shares with the novel the portrayal of the development of character (in the manner of the Bildungsroman), but these characters have been reduced from warrior-like heroes to humanistic individuals. This »lowering« of character is apparent in the demand of the genres that the protagonist of a novel displays passivity while the protagonist of a drama is expected to exhibit »effective action and deeds« (CW, IX, 185–186). Already at the time of writing Wilhelm Meister, Goethe is aware of the primacy of »retardation« to the novel, and by extension the epic. Thus the conversation in Chapter 7 explains that »the novel must move slowly and the sentiments [Gesinnungen] of the main personage must, in some way or another, hold up the progression of the whole toward its resolution,« in contrast to the dramatic imperative to progress quickly to the plot’s end (185). Congruent with the theorized differences between epic and dramatic form, the discussion here also associates drama with »destiny« (Schicksal ). Contingency (Zufall ), on the other hand, structures the occurrences of epic plots, but nonetheless follows the dispositions (Gesinnungen) of the protagonists (186). In other words, there is little in the discussion in Book 5, Chapter 7 of Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship to suggest a significant difference between the epic and the novel vis-à-vis drama. Later in their letters, Schiller insisted on the superiority of the epic over the novel, exemplified for him in the differences between the poetic Hermann und Dorothea and the prosaic Wilhelm Meister. Schiller admonishes Goethe: [S]o ist es durchaus nötig dafür zu sorgen, daß dasjenige was Ihr Geist in Ein Werk legen kann, immer auch die reinste Form ergreife, und nichts davon in einem unreinen Medium verloren gehe. Wer fühlt nicht alles das im Meister, was den Herrmann so bezaubernd macht! Jenem fehlt nichts, gar nichts von Ihrem Geiste, er ergreift das Herz mit allen Kräften der Dichtkunst und gewährt einen immer sich erneuenden Genuß, und doch führt mich der Herrmann (und zwar bloß durch seine rein poetische Form)

96

in eine göttliche Dichterwelt, da mich der Meister aus der wirklichen Welt nicht ganz herausläßt. (20 October 1797)

For Schiller, and Goethe seems to have agreed with him, the key difference between the epic and the novel lies in the »purity« of form. The novel’s prosaic impurity derives from an obedience to a certain kind of reason construed as mere fact, or in other words reason as empiricism, from which the beauty of epic form offers an escape and an experience of reason as form (CW, IX, 233). The epic’s appeal to the imagination would seem to grant this escape from the prosaic rationality of the »real world.« Goethe calls this the »sufficient influence of the third world,« by which he means the fantastical world, according to his division of the world into physical, ethical, and fantastical worlds (23 December 1797).14 With Hermann und Dorothea, he believes to have interlaced the fantastic with »the great fate of the world, partly as real, partly symbolically through persons« (23 December 1797). As we will see when we examine the character-system structuring the narrative of Hermann und Dorothea, this poetic and political principle of the citizen of the world described by the parson is the predominant ideal of character in the fictional universe of Goethe’s epic, and the technique of »retardation« is the narratological technique peculiar to epic poetry that contributes to the ideal of character formation and representation. It is clearly an example of an aesthetic imaginary that seeks to organize poet, text, and recipient into an organic unity, a kind of purposiveness, structured by poetic laws that accord with universal principles of human character. In Goethe’s text, a dynamic emerges between the imaginary of a fictional world unified around the figure of the Weltbürger, which self-consciously asserts its beautiful response to the challenges of modern political life, and the reflection on the new challenges intrinsically arising out of the particulars of this alternative poetical and political construct; this dynamic contains, I argue, a referential value – as Lukács might say, a realistic impulse within classical bourgeois aesthetics – for modern representative democratic political forms, because its own operations of formal poetic representation encounter and expose – often inadvertently – similar challenges to the form of modern democratic political representation after the reconfiguration of politics produced by the French Revolution. The anomaly of a modern German epic in the wake of the French Revolution marks an instance of poetic self-reflection on both poetry and politics within the epic imaginary. It is no coincidence that Goethe and Schiller engage in a theoretical letter exchange on the laws of epic and dramatic poetry while Goethe is busy

14

»Daß es aus der dritten Welt, ob gleich nicht auffallend, noch immer genug Einfluß empfangen hat, indem das große Weltschicksal teils wirklich, teils durch Personen, simbolisch, eingeflochten ist und von Ahndung, von Zusammenhang einer sichtbaren und unsichtbaren Welt doch auch leise Spuren angegeben sind, welches zusammen nach meiner Überzeugung an die Stelle der alten Götterbilder tritt, deren physischpoetische Gewalt freilich dadurch nicht ersetzt wird« (23 December 1797).

97

composing Hermann und Dorothea and Schiller the Wallenstein trilogy. Strikingly, their epistolary discussion between the end of January to the beginning of May, and then later resumed between September and December 1797, focuses primarily on poetics and not on political issues.15 Notably, Goethe and Schiller presuppose a particular kind of recipient. They refer to two faculties of individuated minds – understanding and imagination – to which the epic poet appeals. This mirrors the imaginary of character as individual, a hallmark of both Enlightenment humanist politics and poetics. In Dichtung und Wahrheit, Goethe makes clear that a modern German epic has to abandon the superstitious recourse to the gods, one of the most salient mythological features of ancient epic, and replace it instead with a new mythology of humanism: Der erste wahre und höhere eigentliche Lebensgehalt kam durch Friedrich den Großen und die Taten des Siebenjährigen Kriegs in die deutsche Poesie. Jede Nationaldichtung muß schal sein oder schal werden, die nicht auf dem Menschlich-Ersten ruht, auf den Ereignissen der Völker und ihrer Hirten, wenn beide für einen Mann stehn. Könige sind darzustellen in Krieg und Gefahr, wo sie eben dadurch als die Ersten erscheinen, weil sie das Schicksal des Allerletzten bestimmen und teilen, und dadurch viel interessanter werden als die Götter selbst, die, wenn sie Schicksale bestimmt haben, sich der Teilnahme derselben entziehen. In diesem Sinne muß jede Nation, wenn sie für irgend etwas gelten will, eine Epopöe besitzen, wozu nicht gerade die Form des epischen Gedichts nötig ist. (HA, IX, 279–280)

Goethe insists on the link between great national heroes, like Frederick the Great, and the history of an entire national group; in this way, he acknowledges the necessity of depicting regents, but doesn’t limit epic story-telling to the representation of aristocratic deeds. This shift becomes all the more apparent in Hermann und Dorothea, in which the fates of both national and human history are depicted through mundane characters. The rehabilitation of the epic in an era of individuals who are not heroes calls attention to itself as an anomaly in a literary terrain that Goethe had already prepared for the emergence of the novel by writing Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Guiding Goethe’s epic is an implied character that serves as the backdrop to the development of all characters within the narrative and its character system. This implied character – who is on the one hand an individual, and, as my reading of the self-reflective trope of the well shows, always a character in reflective relation to another individual – is a threefold model of level-headedness, for it also implies an individual poet who creates the work centered around an implied individual character embodied by the protagonist and an individual addressant of the epic who embodies such characteristic level-headedness.

15

98

Schiller mentions political events once in a letter on April 25, 1797, in which he asks Goethe about the peace of Leoben ending the first War of the Coalition, asking Goethe, »What do you say to the news of the Regensburg peace?«

Goethe’s response to the debates caused by F. A. Wolf’s study of Homer, Prolegomena To Homer, published in Latin in 1795 (and still a canonical work of Classical Studies today),16 demonstrates his investment in the notion of the poet as individual creator of beautiful works of art. In a letter to Schiller, Goethe insists on the unified nature of the work of art and its creator: »Denn die Ilias und Odyssee, und wenn sie durch die Hände von tausend Dichtern und Redacteurs gegangen wären, zeigen die gewaltsame Tendenz der poetischen und kritischen Natur nach Einheit« (28 April 1797).17 This threefold humanist model of character as the basis of poet, protagonist, and reader/listener is the subject of »Bildung.« A. W. Schlegel formulates this in his review essay from 1797 of Hermann und Dorothea: Besonnenheit ist die früheste Muse des nach Bildung strebenden Menschen, weil in ihr zuerst das ganze Bewußtsein seiner Menschheit erwacht. Also nicht als die höchste oder vorzüglichste, aber als eine reine, vollendete Gattung hat das Epos ewig gültigen Wert. […] In diesem Stücke, wie in allem Wesentlichen, stimmt Hermann und Dorothea, ungeachtet des großen Abstandes der Zeitalter, Nationalcharaktere und Sprachen erstaunenswert mit seinen großen Vorbildern überein.18

The mythological content of Goethe’s epic, the myth of humanism, replaces the ancient »popular belief« (Volksglaube) of the Homeric world.19 A. W. Schlegel asserts a continuity between Homeric epic and Goethe’s epic that, though separated by vast historical differences, narrates fundamental human attributes and aspirations. It is nonetheless a major political feat for Goethe to shift the implied reference from noble »great men« to the more common individual who shares general characteristics with others, which is usually regarded as one of the major distinctions between the epic and the novel as narrative forms. This shift signals the poetic reflection of »the bourgeois epoch« in the theory and practice of the novel. In the critical writings of Blankenburg, Voltaire, Le Bossu, and especially Gottsched, we find in the discourse of poetic »character« a transition in the description of characterization from the depiction of »kings in war and danger,« as Goethe phrases it in the passage from Dichtung und Wahrheit, to a psychologized and individuated »Ich-Identität« that develops over time.20 By attaching this model of character to the development of the fable (i. e. plot), writers paved the way for the Bildungsro-

16

17 18 19 20

Wolf, Prolegomena to Homer. The editors’ introduction explains Wolf ’s arguments and situates them within their historical context and their impact on the discipline of Classical Studies (p. 3–35). For a more detailed discussion of Goethe’s response to Wolf ’s study, see: Martin, Das deutsche Versepos, p. 249–257. A. W. Schlegel, »Hermann und Dorothea.« In: Schlegel, Kritische Schriften, ed. by Emil Staiger, Artemis Verlag, Zürich 1962, p. 235. Schlegel, »Hermann und Dorothea,« p. 233–234. Hans Hiebel, Individualität und Totalität. Zur Geschichte und Kritik des bürgerlichen Poesiebegriffs von Gottsched bis Hegel anhand der Theorien über Epos und Roman,

99

man.21 Equally, paralleling Lessing’s reform of dramatic character, this focus on the development of an individual claims general human validity as a point of identification for the reader. The transition occurs, in short, once the abstract human enters the literary terrain. No longer can the poet presuppose a public form encompassing an actor-citizen, now that character has become a matter of a private, fungible individual who represents humanity, according to Hiebel’s description of this shift: »Damit sind die Elemente des bürgerlichen Romans benannt: er ist die Denkform der publikums-bezogenen Privatgeschichte individueller Bildung die die Geschichtsutopie der Gattung reflektiert.«22 Goethe’s text is exceptional, because it contains these features of a modern novel in its treatment of character, yet presents them in a seemingly anachronistic epic form. What are the political implications of such a move? I argue that Goethe’s poetic decision to portray modern »character« in the (for later critics, allegedly inappropriate) form of hexameter narrative offers a commentary on the political form of democratic representation or representative democracy. If we return momentarily to A. W. Schlegel’s interpretation of Hermann und Dorothea, we notice a significant contextualization of Goethe’s epic: Was nämlich wissenschaftlich oder mechanisch betrieben wird, wobei nach politischen und taktischen Berechnungen eine Menge Menschen wie bloße Werkzeuge mit gänzlicher Verzichtleistung auf ihre sittliche Selbsttätigkeit in Bewegung gesetzt werden; was für die lenkenden Personen selbst einzig Angelegenheit des Verstandes ist, die außerhalb der Sphäre ihrer sittlichen Verhältnisse liegt: dem ist schlechterdings keine poetische Seite abzugewinnen. In den öffentlichen Geschäften des Friedens kann nur da, wo die Verfassung echt republikanisch ist; in denen des Krieges konnte unter den Griechen nur im heroischen Zeitalter, unter uns nur in den Ritterzeiten der Mensch mit seiner ganzen geistigen und körperlichen Energie auftreten. Ein in unserm Zeitalter und unsern Sitten einheimisches Epos wird daher mehr eine Odysse als eine Ilias sein, sich mehr mit dem Privatleben als mit öffentlichen Taten und Verhältnissen beschäftigen müssen.23

A. W. Schlegel presumes that Goethe’s narrative is forced to deal with the private life of the main characters. The story is after all primarily about Hermann’s conflict with his father and marriage to Dorothea. However, the refugees bring traces of French conquest with them, and the echoes of the ideals of the French Revolution – and the consequent founding of a modern political republic – form the background to the marriage plot. Both war and republican politics impinge upon the customs and private life of this home-grown epic. In fact, I examine the character-system of Hermann und Dorothea, the insertion of human beings into the epic and their representation within its narrative structure and symbols, to consider how this po-

21 22 23

100

Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, Bonn 1974, p. 100-06. See also my discussion in Chapter 1. Hiebel, Individualität und Totalität, p. 103. Hiebel, Individualität und Totalität, p. 30. Schlegel, »Hermann und Dorothea,« p. 236–237.

etic problem is overdetermined as a political problem as well. This intersection of politics with poetics emerges out of the dynamic interaction of major and minor characters and the distribution of attention required within the narrative structure of the epic for the construction of its regulatory ideal of character as bourgeois humanism. Representative democracy faces a similar problem of narrative distribution, which, as we will see, has to be asymmetrical to even articulate its claims to symmetrical distribution of attention based on an ideal of individual character as the overarching ideology of narrative representation. In this approach, I am drawing largely on Alex Woloch’s study of nineteenthcentury English literature, The One vs. the Many, where he traces similar narrative strategies of bourgeois characterization after their solidification within the form of the novel: »Structures of characterization that lock together protagonist and minor character allow the realist novel to comprehend a relationship between the full, interior individual (the ›ideal of humanism‹) and social disjunction.«24 Woloch begins with the simple rhetorical question, »How can a human being enter into a narrative world and not disrupt the distribution of attention?«25 The same could be asked of political representation: In what ways does a human being’s entrance into structures of republican political representation disrupt the distribution of attention in a representative democracy? Hermann und Dorothea’s character-system offers an explicit reflection on this link between narrative and political representation. As the scene of Hermann and Dorothea at the well shows, the discursive register of the epic asserts an ideal of two individual protagonists in a relation of mutual recognition; however, the narrative itself relies on the support of minor characters who do not always participate equally in the distribution of recognition. The narratological problem of how a human being can enter into a narrative structure and be represented in all of his or her complex depth of character, in relation to other characters, runs alongside the ideal figure of two rounded protagonists represented equally to one another. Relations between characters are exposed as a problem in so far as the two protagonists rely on the appearance and disappearance of minor characters within the narrative field of vision and the allocation of voice. The symbol of Hermann and Dorothea at the well is preceded by another trope that anticipates the narratological problem of representation of characters and the dynamics of their rounding, or voicing.26

24 25 26

Alex Woloch, The One vs. The Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2003, p. 30. Woloch, The One vs. The Many, p. 26. I describe processes of characterization throughout in terms of »roundness« and »flatness« of character. A round character is complex, multidimensional and unpredictable, whereas a flat character is one with few traits and is highly predictable. See: Gerald Prince, A Dictionary of Narratology, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London 1989, p. 83 and 31, respectively. Woloch uses these terms as well, but they are traceable back to Edward Morgan Forster, Aspects of the Novel, Methuen, London 1927. Woloch’s

101

Wie der wandernde Mann, der vor dem Sinken der Sonne Sie noch einmal ins Auge, die schnellverschwindende, faßte, Dann im dunkeln Gebüsch und an der Seite des Felsens Schweben siehet ihr Bild; wohin er die Blicke nur wendet, Eilet es vor und glänzt und schwankt in herrlichen Farben: So bewegte vor Hermann die liebliche Bildung des Mädchens Sanft sich vorbei und schien dem Pfad ins Getreide zu folgen. Aber er fuhr aus dem staunenden Traum auf, wendete langsam Nach dem Dorfe sich zu und staunte wieder; denn wieder Kam ihm die hohe Gestalt des herrlichen Mädchens entgegen. Fest betrachtet’ er sie: es war kein Scheinbild, sie war es Selber. (HA, VII, 1–12)

This simile encapsulates the central problem of characterization within Goethe’s epic narrative. How does a variegated character enter the narrative field of vision and become the tranquil focal point – in the manner in which Dorothea focuses Hermann’s attention? Moreover, and perhaps more fundamentally, there is the question of whose field of vision constitutes the narrative; on this point, Gérard Genette’s narratology expands Woloch’s approach by considering the question of narrative voice. We have to analyze Goethe and Schiller’s discussion of epic retardation in conjunction with the structures of characterization to see how Hermann und Dorothea addresses these fundamental poetic conundrums: How can a singular character be voiced in all its complexity, and who or what does the voicing? Epic retardation allows a wider distribution of attention, as more and more stories are told before reaching the plot’s end. It is the decisive technique enabling this particular story to become the narration of two protagonists, for it allows a more complex description of Dorothea to be narrated, essentially adding a second plot centered on the development of a protagonist onto Hermann’s plot/character development.27 Instead of rushing to the happy ending in which Hermann and Dorothea marry, Hermann hesitates, oddly enough displaying a bit too much of the measured reserve of the

27

102

terminology benefits from the additional insights of Gérard Genette’s narratology, for whom characterization is a problem of what he calls »voice.« In the forward to Narrative Discourse, Jonathan Culler summarizes an aspect of the problem of voicing well: »if a story is told from the point of view of a particular character (or, in Genette’s terms, focalized through that character), the question whether this character is also the narrator, speaking in the first person, or whether the narrator is someone else who speaks of him in the third person, is not a question of the point of view, which is the same in both cases, but a question of voice.« (Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay on Method, trans. by Jane E. Lewin, Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1980, p. 10). This aspect of the text’s plot is briefly discussed in the commentary to the Munich edition of Goethe’s works (J. W. Goethe, Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens, p. 317). Astonishingly, Goethe writes later to Schiller that Hermann und Dorothea contains »no exclusively epic motif in it, i. e., nothing retarding« (23 December 1797). He provides no explanation for this bizarre conclusion, whereas the movement between narrations of Hermann’s and Dorothea’s characters suggests retardation.

mind of the epic world citizen as he considers that she must already be in love with someone else (VI, 233–50). However, his hesitation and dissimilation of his feelings for Dorothea delay the plot’s progression so that the narrative can incorporate and represent Dorothea’s story. In the process, she »rounds« more fully into a complex character, is voiced more complexly and likewise granted more voice. At the same time, this retarding element enables the movement of the plot to allocate more narrative space to the stories of villagers, refugees, and revolutionaries, with the effect of highlighting the role of »minor-ness« in the ideal character-formation of the two protagonists. By expanding narrative space for more minor characters, the epic retardation demonstrates the potentialities and limits of its own capacity for democratic representation of character. But can epic retardation continue ad infinitum? The function of narrative voice in the »rounding« of characters raises another fundamental question of whether we view the subject according to the liberal tradition – as an autonomous unit, and the other characters as the backstory to that unit, in which case retardation still serves the ultimate aim of bourgeois subjectivity – or whether we view the subject as constituted in structuralist fashion by a series of relations, in which case the lateral movement of digressive retardation would situate the subject as the by-product of social relations rather than as their origin. Do we, through retardation, get to know the protagonists more, or do we get to know more protagonists? That is, does retardation democratize by adding voices or by adding depth? Hermann und Dorothea tends toward the liberal tradition in its attempt to add depth or more voice to the two main protagonists, yet the narratological execution of characterization suggests that specificity emerges out of a structural relation of difference. To stand out a character needs something from which to stand out, and thus the problem arises: how to voice the multitude and how to give it voice so that a well-rounded protagonist can be voiced. Being voiced, i. e. being narrated, requires in Goethe’s text a polyvocal narrative, consisting of a mixture of homodiegetic and heterodiegetic narrators. Minor-ness emerges as a problem of narrative distribution most poignantly in the »Polyhymnia« (Der Weltbürger) and »Klio« (Das Zeitalter) songs. In the »Polyhymnia« song, Hermann, supported by his mother, confesses his love for Dorothea to his father. His father agrees to consider their marriage after the parson and apothecary volunteer to visit the refugee camp, discover whether Dorothea’s character is virtuous, and report their findings to Hermann’s father. The parson and apothecary visit the refugee camp where they meet the judge, who is once named Schulze and another time Schultheiß, and come in contact with the refugees from the Rhineland who have fled the French efforts to export the Revolution. The language used by the narrator to describe the impression of the refugees on the parson and apothecary characterizes them as a »Menge«: »Es gingen darauf die Freunde dem Dorf zu,/ Wo in Gärten und Scheunen und Häusern die Menge von Menschen/ Wimmelte, Karrn an Karrn die breite Straße dahin stand« (V, 183–185). Earlier, in his feigned jingoistic declaration to his mother, Hermann referred to the revolutionaries as a »Menge«: »Denn sie rufen zusammen aus allen Enden die Jugend / Wie das Alter und dringen gewaltig vor, 103

und die Menge / Scheut den Tod nicht; es dringt gleich nach der Menge die Menge« (IV, 84–6). Refugees and revolutionaries alike are crowds or »the many« (die Menge). These descriptions thematize the appearance of »the many« as a political problem emerging out of the French Revolution. What at first seems to be a political problem becomes a poetological one as well as soon as the political problem of »the many« is thematized in the discourse. In this case, we don’t find deep narrative structures undermining the narrated discourse, but rather a reversal in which the content of the discourse impinges upon the designs of the narrative structure. The discursive presentation of »the many« quickly challenges the structures of characterization on the narratological level; in other words, we might ask: How does poetic discourse handle the emergence of »the many« within its representational grid of characterization? Goethe and Schiller discuss in their letter exchange the issue of how best to depict »the many« as poetic characters. Schiller explains his admiration for Shakespeare’s ability to ascribe meaning to masses of common characters through a careful process of selection of particular individuals – or voices – through which to draw out the significant (and abstract) features of a large group of people: Über die letzthin berühte Materie von Behandlung der Charaktere freue ich mich, wenn wir wieder zusammen kommen, meine Begriffe mit Ihrer Hülfe noch recht ins klare zu bringen. Die Sache ruht auf dem innersten Grunde der Kunst und sicherlich können die Wahrnehmungen, welche man von den bildenden Künsten hernimmt auch in der Poesie viel aufklären. Auch bei Shakespear ist es mir heute, wie ich den Julius Caesar mit Schlegeln durchging, recht merkwürdig gewesen, wie er das gemeine Volk mit einer so ungemeinen Großheit behandelt. Hier, bei der Darstellung des Volkscharakters, zwang ihn schon der Stoff, mehr ein poetisches Abstractum als Individuen im Auge zu haben, und darum finde ich ihn hier den Griechen äußerst nah. Wenn man einen zu ängstlichen Begriff von Nachahmung des Wirklichen zu einer solchen Szene mitbringt, so muß einen die Masse und Menge mit ihrer Bedeutungslosigkeit nicht wenig embarrassieren, aber mit einem kühnen Griff nimmt Schakespear ein paar Figuren, ich möchte sagen, nur ein paar Stimmen aus der Masse [my italics, C. P.] heraus, läßt sie für das ganze Volk gelten, und sie gelten das wirklich, so glücklich hat er gewählt. Es geschähe den Poeten und Künstlern schon dadurch ein großer Dienst, wenn man nur erst ins Klare gebracht hätte, was die Kunst von der Wirklichkeit wegnehmen oder fallen lassen muß. Das Terrain würde lichter und reiner, das Kleine und Unbedeutende verschwände und für das Große würde Platz. (7 April 1797)

On the surface, Hermann und Dorothea narrates the development of a young protagonist into an individual from out of the shadow of his provincial family, which he accomplishes by marrying Dorothea, about whose unique history we learn by the time of the marriage at the end of the story. Gerhard Kluge describes this process as »Hermanns Verwandlung aus einem gehemmten Sonderling zu einem Weltbürger mit Offenheit für das Neue.«28 The narration of Hermann’s transformation

28

104

Gerhard Kluge, »Hermann und Dorothea. Die Revolution und Hermanns Schlußrede – zwei ›schmerzliche Zeichen‹?« In: Goethe Jahrbuch 109 (1992), p. 61–68, here: p. 67.

into a citizen of the world takes place against the backdrop of minor characters that are most often no more than an indistinguishable multitude. The emergence of Hermann and Dorothea as rounded main characters hence relies on the contrast with the flatness of »the many.« In the refugee camp, the parson and apothecary are confronted with an anonymous multitude of figures, hardly distinguishable from animals, among whom they struggle to find the person they seek, Dorothea. Also durch die Wagen sich drängend, durch Menschen und Tiere, Sahen sie rechts und links sich um, die gesendeten Späher, Ob sie nicht etwa das Bild des bezeichneten Mädchens erblickten; Aber keine von allen erschien die herrliche Jungfrau. Stärker fanden sie bald das Gedränge. Da war um die Wagen Streit der drohenden Männer, worein sich mischten die Weiber, Schreiend. Da nahte sich schnell mit würdigen Schritten ein Alter, Trat zu den Scheltenden hin; und sogleich verklang das Getöse, Als er Ruhe gebot, und väterlich ernst sie bedrohte. »Hat uns,« rief er, »noch nicht das Unglück also gebändigt, Daß wir endlich verstehn, uns untereinander zu dulden Und zu vertragen, wenn auch nicht jeder die Handlungen abmißt? Unverträglich fürwahr ist der Glückliche! Werden die Leiden Endlich euch lehren, nicht mehr, wie sonst, mit dem Bruder zu hadern? (V, 189–202)

The parson and apothecary search for the image (Bild ) of Dorothea, but are overcome by the monstrous scene of »the many« (das Gedränge) gathered in the refugee camp. Moreover, the mass of refugees is perceived as dangerously volatile, the men quarrelling are attributed a single characteristic of being threatening (»drohend«) and the women as no more than screaming (»schreiend«) alongside them. The paucity of visual descriptions for them suggests that they are less figures embodied in distinct images than an amorphous cluster of noise. This is then countered by the intervention of the world citizen, the judge, who is able to restore the calm, and stop the racket. The judge is introduced with a more generous account of his character traits; he is old, dignified, fatherly-serious, and granted direct speech. The scene emphasizes the awesome force of »the many« and the difficulty of governing a crowd of this size, bolstered by the juxtaposition with a somewhat more rounded character. A strong character like the judge (whom the parson likens to Moses later) has to enter the narrative field of vision to squelch the volatile »many« and remind the refugees to get along with one another. The judge turns out to be the refugees’ leader and representative who narrates their collective story. The refugees are presented as a »Menge« in the fifth song under the heading Polyhymnia, the muse of many songs. Attempting to discover Dorothea’s »song,« the parson and apothecary get lost among the racket of »the many.« The numerous »songs« (narratives) that threatened to overwhelm both the camp’s order and the visitors’ perceptions are condensed into a single coherent narrative intertwined with that of the revolutionaries in the next canto, Klio/Das Zeitalter, and told by the judge. 105

Furthermore, it is also against the backdrop of a monstrous crowd that Dorothea’s character can become more defined within the narrative. Hermann had insisted beforehand that the parson and apothecary would easily spot Dorothea among the refugees: »Und Ihr werdet sie bald vor allen andern erkennen;/ Denn wohl schwerlich ist an Bildung ihr eine vergleichbar« (V, 166–167). However, only after hearing first the refugees’ story and then some of Dorothea’s story can she emerge as a rounded individual character who enters the field of vision of the parson and apothecary. While the apothecary searches the camp for Dorothea, the judge tells how the residents of the Rhineland suffered at the hands of the revolutionaries. His account presents on the discursive level of Hermann und Dorothea the »attitude« of Goethe’s contemporary ideological situation represented by the universalisms of the French Revolution’s liberal democracy with its slogans: rights of man, freedom, equality. At first, the judge says, the Rhineland residents embraced the revolutionary ideals: »Als sich der erste Glanz der neuen Sonne heranhob,/ Als man hörte vom Rechte der Menschen, das allen gemein sei,/ Von der begeisternden Freiheit und von der löblichen Gleichheit!/ Damals hoffte jeder sich selbst zu leben;« (VI, 8–11). When the French marched into the Rhineland, they appeared to bring with them »friendship« and the promise of individual autonomy: »allein sie schienen nur Freundschaft zu bringen./ Und die brachten sie auch: denn ihnen erhöht war die Seele/ Allen; sie pflanzten mit Lust die munteren Bäume der Freiheit,/ Jedem das Seine versprechend, und jedem die eigne Regierung« (VI, 23–25). Alluding to the marriage plot between Hermann and Dorothea, the judge’s commentary likens the friendship between those German and French who embraced the ideals of the early phase of the Revolution to the days of engagement leading up to a wedding: »Oh, wie froh ist die Zeit, wenn mit der Braut sich der Bräut’gam/ Schwinget im Tanze, den Tag der gewünschten Verbindung erwartend!« (VI, 34–35). The Revolution turned bad once certain revolutionaries began to struggle with one another for power. Suddenly, in the judges account, the revolutionaries become a threatening and selfish »Many«: »Sie ermordeten sich und unterdrückten die neuen/ Nachbarn und Brüder und sandten die eigennützige Menge« (VI, 42–43). As in the refugee camp, the problem with revolution is linked to a »selfishness« that is less a trait of distinct individuals as it is of an indiscernible »many«: »der Flüchtige kennt kein Gesetz; denn er wehrt nur den Tod ab/ Und verzehret nur schnell und ohne Rücksicht die Güter./ Dann ist sein Gemüt auch erhitzt, und es kehrt die Verzweiflung/ Aus dem Herzen hervor das frevelhafte Beginnen« (VI, 58–61). In addition to being selfish, which is itself an adjective that does not seamlessly correspond to the description of non-rounded figures,29 the refugee becomes out

29

106

The trope of »selfishness« does not exactly fit here, because the »Menge« lacks a self; instead, we seem to find a structure of selfishness from which the self is missing. The description of the »many« resembles the fascist »brother horde« described by Adorno in

of desperation the negative counterpart to the citizen of the world, for the refugee’s mind is agitated rather than equanimous. Both revolutionaries and refugees turn to lawless violence, leading the judge to conclude that lawful order is preferable to freedom, »Möcht’ ich den Menschen doch nie in dieser schnöden Verirrung/ Wieder sehn! Das wütende Tier ist ein besserer Anblick./ Sprech’ er doch nie von Freiheit, als könn’ er sich selber regieren!/ Losgebunden erscheint, sobald die Schranken hinweg sind,/ Alles Böse, das tief das Gesetz in die Winkel zurücktrieb« (VI, 76–80). The judge himself fulfills the role of arbiter of the law, like the Leviathan, as his entrance into the narrative field demonstrated when he intervened in the refugees’ dispute.30 The citizen of the world is guided by the law which grants him equanimity. The judge’s statements are overtly directed at political concerns, but they likewise connect with the poetics of world-citizenship as embodied in the laws of epic poetry, according to which poet, audience, and character should be granted the greatest degree of calm reflexivity of mind. The laws of epic poetry are enacted as aesthetic reflection, and it is only through such a process that a character modeled on the world citizen can emerge. As we saw in the central trope of two individuals mutually recognizing one another in the reflection of the well, the law of epic poetry is figured as an image. Visual references appear frequently in the vocabulary of Hermann und Dorothea; »Blick,« »Auge,« »Sehen« recur throughout,31 yet only through story-telling do characters actually develop any rounded depth.32 The epic narrative of Hermann und Dorothea is the conduit for this formulation of character through which individuals emerge as effects of narration. Paradoxically, the act of narration is emphasized through a reduction of distance between narrated and narrator(s), because different characters who narrate the past in the present are responsible for the narration; the narration is distributed widely among characters,

30 31 32

»Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda«: »Their coherence is a reaction formation against their primary jealousy of each other, pressed into the service of group coherence.« (Theodor W. Adorno, »Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda.« In: Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann, with assistance by Gretel Adorno, Susan Buck-Morss, and Klaus Schultz, vol. 8, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1997, p. 425). Karl Eibl, »Anamnesis des ›Augenblicks.‹ Goethes poetischer Gesellschaftsentwurf.« In: DVjs 58 (1984), p. 111–138, here: p. 115. Lützeler, »Hermann und Dorothea,« p. 260. Goethe seems to have tried to model his poetics of the epic on sculpture, for he claims in a letter to Schiller: »Diejenigen Vorteile, deren ich mich in meinem letzten Gedicht bediente, habe ich alle von der bildenden Kunst gelernt. Denn bei einem gleichzeitigen, sinnlich vor Augen stehenden Werke ist das überflüssige weit auffallender als bei einem das in der Sukzession vor den Augen des Geistes vorbeigeht. Auf dem Theater würde man große Vorteile davon spüren. […] Es kommt im Ganzen und im Einzelnen alles darauf an: daß alles von einander abgesondert daß kein Moment dem andern gleich sei, so wie bei den Charakteren daß sie zwar bedeutend von einander abstehen aber doch immer unter Ein Gechlecht gehören (8 April 1797).

107

underscoring the relationality underlying individualization through characterization as a process of structures of narrative. Without the narration of an individual character’s story by other characters, a character might remain a mere part of the »many.« As the judge’s account of the plight of the refugees shows, the failure to become more than a crowd can have deleterious political ramifications; likewise, individual characterization relies on the many as a backdrop out of which a character can become discernible. Goethe’s text thematizes the »many« as a political problem, but quickly puts the »many« to good use as laborers for the (revolutionary) cause of humanist character formation. Dorothea’s character enters the foreground of the discursive field at the end of the judge’s narration of the refugees’ collective story. In contrast to the pernicious behavior of revolutionaries and refugees alike, she stands out as a unique instance of virtue. The judge recollects fondly on the time that her behavior illustrated how, »das schwache Geschlecht, so wie es gewöhnlich genannt wird,« performed the heroic deed of defending young girls from rape at the hands of plundering Frenchmen by seizing one of their swords and chasing them away (VI, 101–118). In Hermann und Dorothea, Dorothea’s act of bravery provides the only example of the heroism characteristic of Homeric epic.33 She is in this respect more like Achilles than the male protagonist with the heroic name Hermann, a fact which has led some scholars to emphasize the ironic elements in Goethe’s text that relativize the Homeric tradition of hexameter epic. The parson learns from the judge only later that the woman who acted so bravely is indeed Dorothea; before that, however, he catches a glimpse of Dorothea, whom the apothecary had identified »out of several hundred [Hab ich doch endlich das Mädchen aus vielen hundert gefunden]« according to Hermann’s description (VI, 125). The apothecary urges the parson: »So kommt und sehet sie selber mit Augen« (VI, 126). When she enters the narrative field of vision, her clothing fits Hermann’s description of her blue skirt, white shirt, and red pinafore whose color scheme matches the Revolutionary tricolor (VI, 137–145).34 Nevertheless, it is not enough that her appearance corresponds to Hermann’s description of her; as the apothecary says, »Trüget doch öfter der Schein! Ich mag dem Äußern nicht trauen« (VI, 161).35 Dorothea can only become a character through the telling of her story

33 34 35

108

Seidlin, »Über Hermann und Dorothea,« p. 22. Kluge, »Hermann und Dorothea,« p. 62. This brief discussion between the apothecary and parson would seem to offer a reflection on the status of »Anschaulichkeit.« It is not clear exactly where Hermann und Dorothea weighs in, because although the parson claims »Ich versichr’ Euch, es ist dem Jüngling ein Mädchen gefunden,/ Das ihm die künftigen Tage des Lebens herrlich erheitert,/ Treu mit weiblicher Kraft durch alle Zeiten ihm beisteht./ So ein vollkommener Körper gewiß verwahrt auch die Seele/ Rein, und die rüstige Jugend verspricht ein glückliches Alter« (VI, 154–59). He then agrees with the apothecary that it is better to use caution. However, his belief in »Anschaulichkeit« is justified by the fact that Dorothea turns out to be indeed a virtuous young woman. This is complicated, however, by the general trend I am arguing for within Goethe’s »laws of epic poetry,« namely that representation

by others, as is confirmed when the parson agrees with the apothecary’s suggestion, »Lasset uns also zuerst bei guten Leuten uns umtun,/ Denen das Mädchen bekannt ist und die uns von ihr nun erzählen« (VI, 166–167). It is at this point that the judge confirms that Dorothea was in fact the heroic defender of the young women, so that what they learn about Dorothea’s virtuous character coincides with the parson’s intuition of her virtue based on her appearance (VI, 179–182). Further bolstering the depiction of her character as virtuous, the judge testifies to her self-less care for her ailing father (VI, 183–185). Her domesticity is later augmented in the scene at the end of the seventh canto in which she has to sadly part from the refugees with whom she has become a quasi-family member. Though Dorothea’s character gains depth from the narration of her virtuous deeds as valiant defender and selfless daughter, contrasted with the selfish and unruly behavior of the »Menge,« her characterization requires the story of her first fiancé for her to more fully come into focus. The fiancé functions as the prosopopeiaic figure of what I call the »undead dead« ideals of the Revolution (freedom and equality) and the mass politics unleashed by it. I use the term »undead dead« to describe the figural and narratological function of Dorothea’s first fiancé along the lines of Slavoj Žižek’s theorization of that spectrality which is excluded from a symbolic order or a narrative, but which by virtue of its exclusion continues to haunt the »living« narrative. In The Fragile Absolute, Žižek discusses the way the undead dead contributes to community formation: »One becomes a full member of a community not simply by identifying with its explicit symbolic tradition, but when one also assumes the spectral dimension that sustains this tradition: the undead ghosts that haunt the living, the secret history of traumatic fantasies transmitted ›between the lines‹, through its lacks and distortions.«36 To enter the community symbolized by Hermann’s and Dorothea’s marriage plot – which I argue Goethe’s text presents as the goal of political representation of singular beings in their irreducible incompleteness in relation to one another – requires a degree of identification with the foreclosed Revolutionary myth of giving voice, and hence citizenship, to all human beings. The vanishing mediator which serves as this point of identification with the spectral underpinnings of Goethe’s narrative is Dorothea’s first fiancé. The introduction of her fiancé provides a minor character unable to participate overtly in the narration himself, because he enthusiastically went to Paris to join the Revolution and was killed. He thus occupies the status of a German of the same origin as the refugees who eagerly embraced the ideals of the Revolution, if only to fall victim to them. The judge reports about him: »ein edler Jüngling, im ersten/

36

through narration is the guiding law of epic poetry and the development of character. On the problem of »Anschaulichkeit,« see: Dorothea von Mücke, Virtue and the Veil of Illusion: Generic Innovation and the Pedagogical Project in Eighteenth-Century Literature, Stanford University Press, Stanford 1991. Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?, Verso, London and New York 2001, p. 64.

109

Feuer des hohen Gedankens nach edler Freiheit zu streben,/ Selbst hinging nach Paris und bald den schrecklichen Tod fand;/ Denn wie zu Hause, so dort, bestritt er Willkür und Ränke« (VI, 187–190). This is all that we hear of him in the sixth canto, and his character fades into the background until the end of the ninth canto when Dorothea tells them about his decision to abandon their marriage plans and join the revolution. Until then, the ring on Dorothea’s finger remains as a »painful sign« for Hermann of this absent minor character (VIII, 65). However, in this scene in which he is introduced, the judge also mentions that Dorothea handled the pain of the fiancé’s death »mit stillem Gemüt« (VI, 186), with the repose, that is, associated with epic poetry. Within the secondary literature, a considerable portion of the discussion of the significance of the fiancé has debated whether this character might not refer to the German writer and scientist-turned-Jacobin Georg Forster.37 For my analysis, the status of the first fiancé is relevant as an integral part of the epic imperative to evenly distribute narrative representation of character in the construction of the ideal of the world citizen. Dorothea’s character development arises out of a dynamic interrelation with the fiancé: the increasing attribution of domesticity to her culminates at the highest moment of the fiancé’s phantom presence within the narrated discourse, although the rounding of her character depends upon the flatness of his. In the final scene of the epic, right before Hermann and Dorothea are to be married by the parson, Dorothea explains the ring already on her finger as belonging to her first fiancé. She then narrates his story to Hermann, the family, the parson, and the apothecary. Dorothea’s separation from her fiancé parallels the Revolution’s sundering of the world into two dispositions: in the fiancé’s own words quoted by Dorothea, »alles bewegt sich/ Jetzt auf Erden einmal, es scheint sich alles zu trennen./ Grundgesetze lösen sich auf der festesten Staaten,/ Und es löst der Besitz sich los vom alten Besitzer,/ Freund sich los von Freund: so löst sich Liebe von Liebe« (IX, 262–266). According to him, the flux of revolution has alienated everyone from all that was familiar: »Nur ein Fremdling, sagt man mit Recht, ist der Mensch hier auf Erden;/ Mehr ein Fremdling als jemals ist nun ein jeder geworden« (IX, 269–270). Additionally, we hear a hardly veiled threat to private property in the speech. Dorothea tells how he instructed her, whatever the outcome of the Revolution, to hold on to his image: »Oh, so erhalte mein schwebendes Bild vor deinen Gedanken,/ Daß du mit gleichem Mute zu Glück und Unglück bereit seist!« (IX, 281–282). His specter belongs to her character, avowed and represented by her narration of him and his importance for the complexity of her own character, a complexity that emphasizes the absence constitutive of her ability to narrate and emerge as a voice within the epic narrative.

37

110

Morgan, »The Polarization of Utopian Idealism and Practical Politics in the Idyll«; Thomas P. Saine, Black Bread – White Bread. German Intellectuals and the French Revolution, Camden House, Columbia 1988, p. 391.

In his final monologue, Hermann’s statement about his union with Dorothea contradicts the fiancé’s utterances about private property and self-alienation: »Du bist mein; und nun ist das Meine meiner als jemals« (IX, 311). Through marrying Dorothea, appropriating her in fact, Hermann sees himself as individuating, which reveals that individuation is produced through relation to another. Hermann individuates into a more rounded character through his marriage to Dorothea, who reaches her apex of individuation through the spectral appearance of the first fiancé within the narrative. Her transformation from refugee to wife and co-protagonist happens when the fiancé’s image is most present in the narration. We do not get an image of him in the sense of physical description, nor do we get an extensive account of the complexity of his character, but instead a representation of his predominant character trait as a revolutionary battling arbitrariness on behalf of the humanistic principles of the Revolution. In this respect he remains one-dimensional, standing for the early Revolution, and thus is a univocal character ultimately lacking complexity. The structure of characterization allowing him to enter the narrative, moreover, contradicts his declarations that everyone is foreign to his or herself, because he is presented as a predictably consistent character standing for abstract revolutionary principles, empty signifiers (namely, »freedom« and »equality«). In contrast, Dorothea gains complexity through his contribution to the narration of her character, enabling her to achieve the status of a world citizen through a complex combination of provincial domestic woman and former refugee with ties (through the first fiancé) to the Revolution, or in other words, both of the tendencies Goethe’s letter to Herzogin Louise ascribes to the contemporary ideological landscape. The characterizations of the refugees and the fiancé show that, while the text’s narrative aims to evenly distribute the representation of its characters, through the technique of »retardation,« it falls short of achieving an equal degree of rounding for all. The voicing of the two protagonists depends above all on the univocality of minor characters who fall out of the textual field of vision produced by the structures of the narrated discourse. Character differentiation relies on the de-differentiated status of both the refugees and the fiancé. As the »undead dead« mediating these structures of differentiation, the fiancé assumes the »voice« of the »many« (Menge) of refugees, the multitude created as a political category by the Revolution, but as a voice that can only be voiced in its absence by other characters. This spectral voice is nonetheless indispensably constitutive of Hermann and Dorothea’s character development, and, ultimately, of their union. A reverse development from the parochial to the world-historical informs Hermann’s characterization as a rounded individual. Like Dorothea, he develops by the end into a complex character embodying the particularity of his petty bourgeois bucolic roots and the spirit of humanistic universalism. Furthermore, he is now capable of looking beyond the narrow confines of his familiar life on the land. Dorothea is crucial for his passage into world citizenship, for she contributes to Hermann’s character, through the enduring remembrance of her first fiancé, the values of the French Revolution, symbolized by the act of placing Hermann’s ring 111

next to the former fiancé’s ring on her finger (IX, 297). By placing Hermann’s ring alongside the first fiancé’s, Dorothea is not rejecting the de-differentiated univocality of the first fiancé, and hence the mass politics and form of political representation it implies, but rather unites this Revolutionary tendency with the ideal of the complexly-differentiated voice of the protagonists developed over the course of the narrative. Whether Hermann can really be considered a world citizen is called into question by his patriotic declarations at the very end of the last canto. During much of the nineteenth century, and especially in the Gründerzeit period of German nationbuilding, Hermann und Dorothea was celebrated as a conservative patriotic epic of stolid German bourgeois identity, but since then scholars have tried to come to grips with the meaning of Hermann’s rather strong patriotic statements, which culminate in the bellicose pronouncement: »Und drohen diesmal die Feinde/ Oder künftig, so rüste mich selbst und reiche die Waffen« (IX, 313–314). Gerhard Kluge, for instance, has argued that Hermann’s world citizenship shows in the »Leerstellen« of the final speech, so that Hermann’s references to the generalities, »Haus, Eltern, Weiber, Kinder, Macht, Gesetz,« parallel the openness of the world citizen.38 In a similarly apologetic vein, Thomas Saine argues, »The fact that the memory of the ›cosmopolitan‹ fiancé lives on in the marriage between Hermann und Dorothea militates against any purely ›national-German‹ interpretation of Hermann’s character and of the ending of the epic.«39 However, I argue that Hermann’s passage from provincial country boy to husband of the refugee’s revolutionary spirit to »manly« (IX, 298) defender of family and fatherland represents the polyphonic rounding/voicing of his character into an individual marked by the fissures within the political imaginary of his time. To be a world citizen means inhabiting both particular and general, idyll and Revolution – in short, to be represented in all the ideological complexity structuring the character of men and women on both sides of the Rhine. The insistence on the fullness of character as a product of ideological fissure in the structures of characterization in Hermann und Dorothea provides a strong critique of the French Revolution’s republican principle of representative democracy, and reveals the particular contours of Goethe’s Enlightenment humanism. We get a sense of the immanent critique of the politics of the epic imaginary, if we compare Goethe’s text with some of Georg Forster’s comments on the basis of representative democracy. In his Parisische Umrisse from 1793, Forster claims that the strength of the Revolution lies in »gerade diese durch das Ganze jetzt unwiderstehlich herrschende Einheit des Volkswillens, verbunden mit der Repräsentantenvernunft.«40 According to Forster »the people« are merely a »lifeless mass [Masse]« under despo-

38 39 40

112

Kluge, »Hermann und Dorothea,« p. 67–68. Saine, Black Bread – White Bread, p. 391. Georg Forster, Parisische Umrisse. In: Im Anblick des großen Rades, ed. by Ralph-

tism, but become a »living whole [zu einem lebendigen Ganze]« when representative democracy combines the will of the many with the reason of the representatives (»[die] Anregung der Verstandeskräfte, die wir der demokratischen Regierungsform verdanken«). 41 For Forster, the process of representation provides the imprint of a rationality indispensable to the well-being of the »will« of the many and the goal of equality. Forster’s notion of humanism is distinctly anti-egoist: Was anfänglich Ergebung in die Notwendigkeit ist, wird durch fortgesetztes Nachdenken endlich zur Anerkennung der Gesellschaftspflicht, der Billigkeit gegen den notleidenden Mitbürger; und auf diese Weise wird endlich der härteste Boden weich genug, um die süßen Früchte der Humanität: Aufopferung, Mitteilung, Nächstenliebe und Vaterlandsliebe, zu tragen. 42

Many of the same traits of »humanity« are echoed in Hermann und Dorothea, yet the representation of the individual in relation to the many as articulated in Goethe’s text diverges significantly from Forster’s account of democratic representation. For Forster, representatives and masses form a lively »whole« under a republican government, whereas in Goethe’s text, as we saw, the indistinguishable »Menge« (whether revolutionaries or refugees) were presented as a chaotic mess, and the point of the epic narrative was to allow Hermann and Dorothea to individuate as distinct and complex characters. In contrast to Forster’s humanism of »the whole,« Goethe’s humanism as representation of complex individual character challenges any critique of Enlightenment humanism that would impute to it an unambiguous, totalizing, unified consciousness universally imposed as the standard for what counts as human. Granted, the image of the epic citizen theorized in the letters between Goethe and Schiller presupposes the faculties of understanding and imagination shared by all, but the picture of the world citizen constructed within the interstices of German provincial life and Revolutionary spirit is by no means unified or insensitive to the multifaceted nature of the two protagonists. For this reason, I draw on Goethe’s poetic terminology to label Goethe’s version a »symbolic« form of citizenship as opposed to Forster’s »allegorical« form of citizenship. We find, then, a paradoxical interrelation between history and poetry in Hermann und Dorothea. As a theme within the text, the French Revolution challenges the theory of epic character, which is elaborated in the letter exchange between Goethe and Schiller, while Hermann und Dorothea challenges the French Revolution’s attempt at a political representation of the whole »public opinion« as an indistinguishable mass. Goethe’s and Schiller’s poetical and political construction pronounces similar humanist values of the French Revolution – poetic law guarantees freedom and equal rights for its citizenry – while it simultaneously criticizes the Revolutionary

41 42

Rainer Wuthenow, Luchterhand, Darmstadt 1981, p. 131–184, here: p. 598. Pagination differs. Forster, Parisische Umrisse, p. 615. Forster, Parisische Umrisse, p. 609–610.

113

humanism that would reduce every individual to a »Menge.« They thus show the limits of this imaginary, representing a fractured epic imaginary, without renouncing its claims to universality. In their letter exchange, Goethe and Schiller attempt a systematic discussion of the laws of epic poetry at the same time that Goethe is completing his own hexameter epic, Hermann und Dorothea, which explicitly addresses the French Revolution’s declarations of what the French theorist of citizenship Etienne Balibar calls »the proposition of equaliberty«: the equation of equality and freedom (Equality = Freedom). Uniting the representatives of the General Assembly and Goethe’s and Schiller’s poetics is the problem of how to enact the proposition of equaliberty in the form of democratic representation. In two letters to Goethe, Schiller describes the democratic poetic-political qualities of epic poetry’s humanism. The first is »freedom«: Beweg ich mich um die Begebenheit, die mir nicht entlaufen kann, so kann ich einen ungleichen Schritt halten, ich kann nach meinem subjektiven Bedürfnis mich länger oder kürzer verweilen, kann Rückschritte machen oder Vorgriffe tun u. s. f. Es stimmt dieses auch sehr gut mit dem Begriff des Vergangenseins, welches als stillstehend gedacht werden kann, und mit dem Begriff des Erzählens, denn der Erzähler weiß schon am Anfang und in der Mitte das Ende, und ihm ist folglich jeder Moment der Handlung gleichgeltend, und so behält er durchaus eine ruhige Freiheit. (26 December 1797)

The second feature of epic humanism is equality under (poetic) law. Schiller defines this equality as a property of a poetic rhythm which would grant equality of representation. In this context, Schiller discusses the merits of rhythm in drama, for he was in the process of adding rhythm to his Wallenstein, but the same features are implied in epic hexameter; both epic and drama follow a sovereign poetic law: Der Rhythmus leistet bei einer dramatischen Produktion noch dieses große und bedeutende, daß er, indem er alle Charaktere und alle Situationen nach Einem Gesetz behandelt, und sie, trotz ihres innern Unterschiedes in einer Form ausführt, er dadurch den Dichter und seinen Leser nötiget, von allem noch so charakteristisch=verschiedenem etwas Allgemeines, rein menschliches zu verlangen. Alles soll sich in dem Geschlechtsbegriff des Poetischen vereinigen, und diesem Gesetz dient der Rhythmus sowohl zum Repräsentanten als zum Werkzeug, da er alles unter Seinem Gesetze begreift. Er bildet auf diese Weise die Atmosphäre für die poetische Schöpfung, das gröbere bleibt zurück, nur das geistige kann von diesem dünnen Elemente getragen werden. (24 November 1797)

Schiller is claiming nothing less than a humanist guarantee of equality under the »laws« of poetry. Freedom and equality, two of the principles declared by the French Revolution, are transferred to the realm of poetics, and in particular are identified with an epic community. This is significant not just for the transfer of the political principle of »equaliberty« – that was unrealizable in Germany, and thus celebrated within the confines of Enlightenment Weimar culture – to the sphere of poetics or aesthetics (this historical sublimation comes as no surprise and has been treated many times over in the scholarship), but is also significant for the particular trans114

formation of the political and poetic uses of the epic genre itself. Goethe’s and Schiller’s theorization of the epic genre departs from the traditional treatment of the genre as a narrative of the mythic origins of a nation in favor of exploring its potential as a genre contributing to a »literature of citizenship.« We should place Goethe’s and Schiller’s unique exploration of the epic, in its role among attempts to forge a national culture, in dialogue with more recent considerations of literary citizenship. In an essay entitled »Myth Interrupted,« Jean-Luc Nancy describes the scene of an epic community gathered together to hear the story of its own origin.43 In effect, the gathering and narrating of the history that unites the members of a tribe is a ritual of community formation itself, not unlike Klopstock’s hopes to cultivate a prosody capable of constituting the Christian-Germanic community in the very act of reciting or listening to the affective movement of hexameter verse. As a counter to the primal mythic scene, Nancy designates »literature«: the interruption of myth, which entails the suspension of community. As in the scene at the well, in which Hermann and Dorothea form a passionate bond to one another through their reflection in the well, this alternative form of communion involves the relation between two singular beings without reference to a common past. What they have in common is that they don’t share a common communal bond. In Nancy’s words: »The singular being appears to other singular beings; it is communicated to them in the singular. It is a contact, it is a contagion: a touching, the transmission of a trembling at the edge of being, the communication of a passion that makes us fellows, or the communication of the passion to be fellows, to be in common.«44 It is Goethe’s insistence on the singularity of human beings as embodying the promise of »equaliberty« that grants Goethe’s imaginary epic community the status of a major contribution to what I call a »literature of citizenship.« Shakespeare scholar Julia Reinhard Lupton’s Citizen Saints challenges all of us working in the humanities to consider the relationship between literature and citizenship, to think of the many ways literature breaks with myth and the ways that citizenship breaks with the diverse manifestations of tribalism.45 Lupton traces the historical process of detribalization in the explosion of aristocratic Homeric myths by the institution of tragedy, concluding from this that we should seek the origins of the literature of citizenship in tragedy and not in the epic. Goethe’s and Schiller’s revival of the epic, however, suggests that the epic genre also contains the potential to foster a literary vision of citizenship. Their experimentation with the epic also suggests that the project to forge a national culture in eighteenth-century poetic discourse could imagine forms of community that did not promote or revert to tribalism.

43 44 45

Nancy, The Inoperative Community. Nancy, The Inoperative Community, p. 61. Julia Reinhard Lupton, Citizen-Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2005.

115

However, the representation of refugees, revolutionaries, and the first fiancé within the narrative structures of Hermann und Dorothea questions the political viability of the poetic ideal of the epic world citizen. To its credit, the text presents a model of character based on social relation (two protagonists, male and female), and the epic retardation strives for the widest distribution of attention for its characters within the narrative. However, the increase in complexity of Hermann and Dorothea accompanies a decrease in complexity (and hence increased minor-ing) of the other characters. Often enough, achieving complex individuation of character was the product of the work of minor characters within the narrative machinery. Their labor alienated them from the potential to be represented as complex, individuated characters in their own right. Their function as minor characters forecasts the bourgeoisie’s disavowal of the proletariat’s own humanist claims.46 Equal distribution of narration or development of characters’ stories proves impossible. The laws of epic poetry only grant full world citizenship to the protagonists, and to a lesser extent to the parson and judge. From this narrative asymmetry, we might conclude that Goethe’s and Schiller’s humanist critique of the totalizing potential of democratic representation fails to escape the fundamental predicament of how to fairly allocate the rights and space of political representation.

46

116

Etienne Balibar argues that this conflictual expansion of bourgeois humanist declarations lies at the heart of the French Revolution’s declaration of rights: »the unitary simplicity of the Declaration of Rights represents, in the field of ideas, or rather of words – of words that immediately escape the control of their authors – the real social complexity of the French Revolution: the fact that the Revolution, from the beginning, is not, is already no longer a »bourgeois revolution,« but a revolution made jointly by the bourgeoisie and the people or the nonbourgeois masses, in an ongoing relation of alliance and confrontation. The revolution is immediately grappling with its own internal contestation, without which it would not even exist, and always chasing after the unity of its opposites.« (Balibar, Masses, Classes, Ideas, p. 44).

4.

Wieland’s Parodic Humanism

After landing in the previous chapter at Goethe’s experiment with the distribution of narrative voice through epic retardation, in order to explore the epic imaginary’s concern with the French Revolution’s implications for political and literary representation, the study will now diverge from a chronological narrative trajectory by turning to Christoph Martin Wieland’s contribution to the epic imaginary. A parallel narrative thread emerges within the eighteenth-century epic imaginary that takes up the long tradition of romance narrative within the internally contested history of the epic genre. If both Klopstock’s Messias and Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea hope to draw upon the legitimacy enjoyed by Homeric epic by citing recognizable conventions of the genre (in true Virgilian mode), the rather free use of ottava rima stanza, along with numerous imagery and motifs, overtly align Wieland’s Oberon (1780) with the counter-tradition of romance epic. The question, then, is to what extent Wieland’s decision to write in this tradition replicates the subversive features of the genre described by David Quint with respect to political power: »For its part, the romance narrative bears a subversive relationship to the epic plot line from which it diverges, for it indicates the possibility of other perspectives, however incoherent they may ultimately be, upon the epic victors’ single-minded story of history.«1 Wieland’s experiments with romance narrative prompt a series of surprising reversals of both the tradition of epic narrative and Wieland’s own overlapping literary, political, and cultural agendas. By way of these reversals, as will be analyzed in what follows, parody assumes a serious tone, narrative disorder becomes subservient to narrative sovereignty, observational distances are asserted and collapsed, and a dynamic verse form becomes an agent of unifying incorporation. In short, the wayward elements of both the human individual and the political collective get discredited as barbarous interferences for the humanist voice of enlightenment. Literary scholars have used the labels »Rokokodichtung,« »scherzhaftes Erzählen,« and »humoristische Klassik« to describe the poetics of parody underlying Wieland’s verse narratives.2 While »Rokokodichtung« and »scherzhaftes Erzählen«

1 2

Quint, Epic and Empire, p. 34. Wolfgang Preisendanz, »Wieland und die Verserzählung des 18. Jahrhunderts.« In: Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 12 (1962), p. 17–31. The term »humoristische Klassik« was influentially coined by Friedrich Sengle (F. Sengle, Wieland, J. B. Metzler,

117

usually refer to his verse narratives of the 1760s and 70s, the term »humoristische Klassik« has most often been invoked in connection with Wieland’s verse epic Oberon (1780). Within the changing canon of German literature, Wieland’s novels have come to overshadow Oberon, due in large part to the ascendency of the novel in literary history, but at the time Oberon was celebrated as a poetic success that later critics consider a groundbreaking work of the Weimarer Klassik.3 The literary history of Wieland’s experiments with verse epic is above all relevant for the changing semantics of the epic imaginary. I argue that we can find in Wieland’s writings from roughly 1770–1795 the construction of what is standardly referred to in the scholarship as a »humanism« that marks a significant intervention within the epic imaginary of the eighteenth century. My point here is to take the widely held notion of a »humanism« inherent to Wieland’s texts as my starting point, in order to identify specific contours of this model within Wieland’s poetic and political writings. In the scholarship on Wieland’s literary output, the notion of a humanism has been ascribed to his ability to represent the deficiencies of human beings without condemning them, to general ruminations in literary form about the nature of the human, to his criticisms of court life in Oberon, and, depending on the context or preference of the observer, to either his investment in ideal’s of humanity or his deft questioning of dogmatisms, such as his own idealistic moral visions of humanity.4 The following analysis is concerned with how Wieland’s epic imaginary constructs a model of the human that is both a moral and sensual being, a rational, learned, cosmopolitan, as well as a reflectively distanced, that is to say, elitist, opponent of myth and demagoguery capable of grasping events from a manifold of perspectives, a technique which, when transposed as a narrator, usually assumes a playful stance. To describe Wieland’s model of humanism as constituted through a parodic narrative tone I am drawing on the semiotician Jurij Lotman’s notion of a »semiosphere.«5 I argue that we can understand aspects of Wieland’s

3

4

5

118

Stuttgart 1949). See also: Maiworm, Neue deutsche Epik, p. 106–107; Burkhard Moenninghoff, Intertextualität im scherzhaften Epos des 18. Jahrhunderts, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1991, p. 63–86. Hans Mayer, »Wielands Oberon.« In: Zur deutschen Klassik und Romantik, Neske, Pfullingen 1963, p. 30–47; Herbert Jaumann, »Vom ›klassischen Nationalautor‹ zum ›negativen Classiker.‹ Wandel literaturgesellschaftlicher Institutionen und Wirkungsgeschichte, am Beispiel Wielands.« In: Klassik und Moderne. Die Weimarer Klassik als historisches Ereignis und Herausforderung im kulturgeschichtlichen Prozeß, ed. by Karl Richter and Jörg Schönert, J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 1983, p. 3–26; and Michael Hofman, Reine Seelen und komische Ritter. Aspekte literarischer Aufklärung in Christoph Martin Wielands Versepik, Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 1998, p. 278–289. These aspects of Wieland’s »humanism« are treated under the rubric of a literary project of »Enlightenment« in: Hofmann, Reine Seelen und komische Ritter, in particular, in his critical reconstruction of discussions about Oberon’s relationship to the Weimarer Klassik, p. 273–289. Jurij Lotman, »Über die Semiosphäre.« In: Zeitschrift für Semiotik 12:4 (1990), p. 287– 305.

parodic humanism as constructed out of the semiotic relations between his verse narratives and his later journalistic contributions as editor of Der neue Teutsche Merkur, where Wieland explicitly discusses »the people,« sovereignty, democracy, cosmopolitanism, and the French Revolution. Parody is the central narrative technique that links the verse narratives with the political writings, and which thereby instates a parodic narrator as the main feature of Wieland’s so-called humanism. Whereas Wieland’s humanist legacy appears to reside in the attempt to narrate what it means to be human in a parodic mode, I also suggest a critique of such a parodic humanism, and argue that we can find an alternative within this epic imaginary. For Wieland’s Oberon deploys another narrative technique, grounded in the rhythm and rhyme of the verse, which more sympathetically depicts the mutual interaction between the inner states and physical movement of its characters, emphasizes the importance of human interrelationality, and enacts a poetics of movement. This narrative form reveals the dynamic social and semiotic exchanges at work in the epic imaginary, and hints at a mode of representation with the potential to challenge the particular semantic interpretations that link the sequences of Oberon’s plot and strive to reduce polyphonic elements in the process.

Wieland’s Parodic Humanism: Oberon in Context (Part I) Wieland dedicated his early poetic endeavors in the 1750s, as Bodmer’s pupil, to the creation of lofty Patriarchaden and hexameter epics (e. g., Hermann and Cyrus).6 However, with the publication of Idris. Ein heroisch-comisches Gedicht in 1768, and Der neue Amadis in 1771, Wieland’s verse epics took a playful turn toward parody and mockery. This tone is located in the jocular, distanced relationship of the epic narrator to the content and conventions of the epic genre.7 Some common traits of this type of »Rokokodichtung« include digressions about the omniscience of the muses, excuses for blind spots in the narrative attributed to missing segments of manuscripts, and reflections on the necessity of the deus ex machina at certain junctures in the narratives – these occurring usually during seduction scenes.8 In fact, one of Wieland’s contributions to the development of the verse epic genre in

6 7

8

On this phase of Wieland’s writing, see Dieter Martin’s thorough study, Das deutsche Versepos, p. 141–202. Wolfgang Preisendanz has shown how Wieland’s narrative technique intervenes in eighteenth-century discussions about mimesis: »Wieland und die Verserzählung des 18. Jahrhunderts,« and: »Die Kunst der Darstellung in Wielands Oberon.« In: Formenwandel. Festschrift zum Geburt von Paul Böckmann, Hoffmann und Campe Verlag, Hamburg 1964, p. 236–57. The most systematic work on Wieland’s verse epics is still: Hofmann, Reine Seelen und komische Ritter. See: Sven-Aage Jørgensen, Herbert Jaumann, John McCarthy, and Horst Thomé, Wieland. Epoche-Werk-Wirkung, C. H. Beck, München 1994, p. 59–62.

119

the eighteenth century lies in his de-mythologizing the genre in an even more overt way than Klopstock did with the Messias. Whereas Klopstock’s de-mythologization hinged upon the distinction between phenomenal and ethereal realms, Wieland in effect replaces those elements that were conventionally ascribed to the divine within epic story-telling with either psychology or the prerogatives of poetic fantasy. For example, the narrator in Oberon humanizes the conventional invocation of the muses that opens an epic narrative by placing the domain of the epic within the poet’s enraptured fairy-tale realm: Noch einmahl sattelt mir den Hippogryfen, ihr Musen, Zum Ritt ins alte romantische Land! Wie lieblich um meinen entfesselten Busen Der holde Wahnsinn spielt! Wer schlang das magische Band Um meine Stirne? Wer treibt von meinen Augen den Nebel Der auf der Vorwelt Wundern liegt? Ich seh’, in buntem Gewühl, bald siegend, bald besiegt, Des Ritters gutes Schwert, der Heiden blinkende Säbel.9

The references to the poet’s winged horse Pegasus (»der Hippogryph«), poetic rapture (»der holde Wahnsinn«), and the headband worn by ancient seers of the past (»das magische Band«), render these images into the tools of a self-fashioned narrator of marvelous stories set in the time and place of the crusades (»das alte romantische Land«).10 The narrator thus announces a fantastical content that refers to neither the antique machinery of the gods (Goethe) nor the Christian universe of angels and devils (Klopstock).11 Instead, »das Wunderbare« is aestheticized as a fairy tale with a symbolic content all its own.12 The attempt to construct a self-

9

10

11

12

120

References are to the edition: Christoph Martin Wieland, Wielands Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by Deutsche Kommision der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Abt. 1: Werke, Bd. 13: Dichtungen 2. 1780–1812, ed. by Wilhelm Kurrelmeyer, Weidmann, Berlin 1935. All passges will henceforth be cited parenthetically as (canto in Roman numerals: octaves in Arabic numerals), here: I, 1. »In Wielands Versepos […] verwandelt sich der Hippogryph von einer Figur innerhalb der Erzählung in eine poetologische Mittlerinstanz zwischen der realen Welt und dem Land der Phantasie.« (Andrea Polaschegg, Der andere Orientalismus. Regeln deutschmorgenländischer Imagination im 19. Jahrhundert, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 2005, p. 489). Jørgensen, »Nachwort,« p. 343–357. See also: S. Jørgensen, »Sing, komische Muse, in freyer irrenden Tönen…« Zur Museninvokation im ironischen Märchenepyllion des 18. Jahrhunderts.« In: Festschrift für Klaus von See, Odense University Press, Odense 1987, p. 467–479. Jørgensen argues that »solche mythologischen Figuren nunmehr rein künstlerische Symbole sind.« (Jørgensen, »Nachwort,« p. 356) Klaus Oettinger’s important study argues that the fairy-tale content in Wieland’s fiction is always anchored by the empirical view of reality expressed through the narrator; in the end, Wieland’s narrative stance stands behind, »der Sieg der Natur über die Schwärmerei.« About the call to pegasus in Oberon, Oettinger says: »Der ›Ritt ins alte, romantische Land,‹ zu den ›Wundern‹

enclosed poetic system that refers to a predominantly literary set of figures is reinforced by a preface, in which the author explains which elements of the »Fundgrube von poetischem Stoffe« he has drawn upon, for instance, that his Oberon character is borrowed from Chaucer and Shakespeare (»An den Leser«). The later edition from 1796 includes a glossary of archaic or foreign terms and poetic allusions. Wieland rejects Diderot’s condemnation of the burlesque, allegorical, and miraculous, for he imputes a love of »das Wunderbare« to the very nature of human beings.13 In the preface to Dschinnistan oder auserlesene Feen und Geistermärchen (1786–1789), Wieland links human history to fantastical story-telling: Die Geschichte der Völker fängt mit redenden Thieren und mit Theophanien an; Götter und Halbgötter in Menschengestalt, Genien und Feen, Zauberer und Zauberinnen, Centauren und Cyklopen, Riesen und Zwerge spielen die erste Rolle in den ältesten Zeiten der Nationen; jede hat ihre Mythologie, ihren Vorrath uralter Märchen, die mit ihrer eigenen Vorstellungs-und Lebensweise, mit ihrer Geschichte, Religion, klimatischen, sittlichen und bürgerlichen Verfassung so stark verwebt ist, daß keine Zeitfolge sie ganz daraus vertilgen kann.14

Despite the Herderian references to national identity, fairy tales are essentially cosmopolitan, not only in the way that their figures or fables might be shared across national borders and histories, as in the case of Wieland’s borrowing from Chaucer or the chanson de geste, but also insofar as their role in the cultural development of national literatures is common to many nations, ages, and ethnicities: Fabeln waren die erste Lehrart, Allegorie die älteste Hülle der Philosophie, Märchen der Stoff der ältesten und größten Dichter. Kamtschadalen und Griechen, Persianer und Isländer kommen in diesem Punkte zusammen. Die Literatur der rohesten Völker geht von Märchen aus, und ein großer, vielleicht der angenehmste und beliebteste Theil der Literatur der cultiviertesten besteht aus Märchen.15

In addition to all the international fairy-tale magic, Oberon is through and through a cosmopolitan epic characterized by constant movement from Paris to Baghdad, from Rome to Tunis, and back to Paris – replete with encounters between Chris-

13 14 15

der ›Vorwelt,‹ ist eine poetische Veranstaltung und wird durch die direkte und indirekte Anwesenheit des prosaischen Erzählerverstandes fortwährend als solche bewußt gemacht.« (K. Oettinger, Phantasie und Erfahrung. Studien zur Erzählpoetik Christoph Martin Wielands, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 1970, p. 119) Hofmann argues that the text presents »eine Ästhetisierung nicht nur der religiösen Vorstellungswelt des mittelalterlichen Christentums, sondern auch der Oberon-Handlung, die nicht als Symbol für eine jenseits des Literarischen zu formulierende Wahrheit steht, sondern selbst als ästhetisch-literarischer Gegenstand erscheint.« (Hofmann, Reine Seelen und komische Ritter, p. 279). Oettinger, Phantasie und Erfahrung, p. 109. Quoted in Oettinger, Phantasie und Erfahrung, p. 110. Oettinger, Phantasie und Erfahrung, p. 110.

121

tians and Muslims along the way. The imagination of cultural geography is thus incorporated into the empire of poetry. In the traditional invocation of the muses at the beginning of Oberon, Wieland makes poetry itself, rather than deities, an eternal god, or truth, the cornerstone of his narrative,16 which in effect situates the epic narrator at the center of the cosmopolitan fantasy and renders any future attempt to invoke the authority of mythical beings as self-parody, at the same time that the story’s moral dilemma and the versification lend the fairy tale elements a degree of earnestness.17 Klaus Oettinger claims that the tendency toward de-mythologization can primarily be attributed to the fact that the fantastical dimensions are always tempered by the narrator’s appeal to empirical reality.18 The empirical reality that gets explored by way of mythical tales of the plights of magical creatures, Hannelore Schlaffer argues further, is none other than the depths of human psychology, which is why the incredible aspects of these stories should be read as »Metaphern der unerforschten Zonen der Seele.«19 In this respect, Wieland’s Oberon intersects with the epic imaginary described by the theorist of epic and the novel Christian Friedrich von Blankenburg. Recall that Blankenburg’s late theory of the epic applies the categories previously used to define the novel’s focus on human character to explain the continued fascination with the epic genre: Not the heroic deeds themselves, he claims, but a concern with the internal motivation of epic heroes incites the modern reader’s »empathy« and »participation« in these stories. Blankenburg also considers the romance epic of the Renaissance a more adept vehicle for the depiction of the problem of psychological motivation.20 In this vein, Wieland’s romance epic seeks to imagine distant lands

16

17

18 19 20

122

In a later edition of his Henriade (1722), Voltaire replaces the opening call to the muses with a call to truth. Hamann takes Voltaire to task for criticizing religion, yet invoking religion as the »cornerstone« of his epic poetry (referring to the earlier invocation): »Wenn es auf den Geschmack der Undacht, die im philosophischen Geist und poetischer Wahrheit besteht, und auf die Staatsklugheit der Versification ankommt; kann man wohl einen glaubwürdigern Zeugen als den unsterblichen Voltaire anführen, welcher beynahe die Religion für den Eckstein der epischen Dichtkunst erklärt, und nichts mehr beklagt, als dass seine Religion das Widerspiel der Mythologie sey?« (Voltaire, Henriade. In: Volatire, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 2, Verlag Herder, Wien p. 204). For a discussion of this: Jørgensen, »Nachwort,« p. 344–346. »Vers und Reim machen aus dem Märchen aus der Kinderstube eine Dichtung. Obgleich auch der Reim zuerst dem Leser durch das Kinderlied bekannt geworden ist, erheben Reime, zumal wenn sie den metrischen Vorbildern der Weltliteratur folgen, eine jede Kindergeschichte in den Rang der Poesie.« (Hannelore Schlaffer, »Poesie und Prosa. Wielands Verserzählungen.« In: Wissen-Erzählen-Tradition. Wielands Spätwerk, ed. by Walter Erhart and Lothar van Laak, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 2010, p. 153–167, here: p. 156). Oettinger, Phantasie und Erfahrung, p. 119. Schlaffer, »Poesie und Prosa,« p. 154. I refer here to my discussion of Blankenburg’s theory of the epic and novel in the first chapter.

and epochs while probing mysteries of human nature, to connect the internal stories of characters with the conquest of foreign worlds. The plot of Oberon intertwines three fables: Hüon’s adventure to Baghdad ordered by Kaiser Karl, Hüon’s love story with Rezia/Amanda, and the reconciliation of the fairy king Oberon with his queen Titania.21 In the »Preface,« Wieland informs the reader that he regards the beauty of Oberon as lying in the way he has interlaced the two couples’ love stories. After a misunderstanding, Kaiser Karl orders Hüon to restore his honor by traveling to Baghdad and bringing back some beard hairs and teeth of the King of Babylon. Along the way, Hüon encounters Oberon, a fairy king borrowed from Chaucer’s Merchant Tale and Shakespeare’s Midsummernights Dream, who is on the search for a loyal couple following a dispute with his wife, Titania, who had defended the infidelity of a woman named Rosette in light of the unfair demands of a blind old husband. Declaring to now be »entzaubert« of his belief in the »Traum« of Titania’s love for him, Oberon mercurially vows to separate from Titania until another couple displays »chaste love« and fidelity in spite of the threat of drowning or being burned to death. This couple should even choose death together over the prospect of attaining political power: Nichts wende diesen Fluch und meinen festen Schluß: Bis ein getreues Paar, vom Schicksal selbst erkohren, Durch keusche Lieb’ in Eins zusammen fließt, Und, probefest in Leiden wie in Freuden, Die Herzen ungetrennt, auch wenn die Leiber scheiden, Der Ungetreuen Schuld durch seine Unschuld büßt. Und wenn dieß edle Paar schuldloser reiner Seelen Um Liebe alles gab, und unter jedem Hieb Des strengesten Geschicks, auch wenn bis an die Kehlen Das Wasser steigt, getreu der ersten Liebe blieb, Entschlossen, eh’ den Tod in Flammen zu erwählen, Als ungetreu zu seyn selbst einem Thron zu Lieb’: Titania, ist dieß, ist alles dieß geschehen, Dann werden wir uns wiedersehen! (VI, 101–102)

21

On the narrative’s intertwining of three main plots in relation to the question of narrative trajectory in epic and romance, see: Klaus Manger, »Unvermindert Aktuell. Wielands Digression im ›Oberon‹ und Goethes Intermezzo im ›Faust‹« (2004). In: Wieland Studien 6. Sibi Res Non Se Rebus Submittere. Festschrift für Klaus Manger zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Jutta Heinz, Universitätsverlag Carl Winter, Heidelberg 2010. »Es könnte ja gerade eine Abschweifungsgeschicklichkeit sein, die Wieland aus dem Roman in das Epos transferiert und die, indem das Werk dadurch abschweift und vorwärtsschreitet, dies beides zur gleichen Zeit, ihm dazu verhilft, die Handlungsverwebung neuartig zu verdichten. Anders gesagt liegt, so die These, die Neuartigkeit des ›Oberon‹ darin begründet, daß Wieland mit der aus Sternes Romanpoetik gewonnenen Digression eine unauflösliche Handlungsverknüpfung erreicht.« (Manger, »Unvermindert Aktuell,« p. 181).

123

As Hüon is undertaking the Kaiser’s mission in Baghdad, he and the sultan’s daughter, Rezia, fall passionately in love. She converts to Christianity (and changes her name to Amanda), and accompanies Hüon back to Europe. Hüon and Rezia face numerous obstacles on their path to Rome, to receive the Pope’s blessing, and then on to Paris, to deliver the sultan’s teeth and beard to Kaiser Karl. Oberon’s story intertwines with that of the young lovers, not only because the possibility of a reconciliation with Titania hinges upon the couple’s ability to remain loyal to one another despite the threat of death or the prospect of material gain, but also because Oberon decides to help them so long as they do not disobey his command to remain chaste. Here the challenge of loyalty becomes an issue for the two human characters as well as for Oberon: first with respect to the couple’s test to remain loyal to one another in the face of death or material gain; second, concerning their obedience to Oberon; and, finally, as a determining factor of Oberon’s willingness to serve loyally as their guardian, even after they have disobeyed him. When Oberon gives Hüon the sultan’s beard and teeth which he has magically procured, he tells them that he will abandon them (»von euch auf ewig trennen müßte«) in the event that they go astray of his order to await the Pope’s blessing in Rome (VI, 72). The narrator declares that this struggle to stay celibate becomes for Hüon, »Das schwerste Abenteu’r der Tugend« in what is for him a new battle against an internal enemy: Es war, wiewohl ihm oft die Kräfte schier versagen, Des Ritters ganzer Ernst, den Sieg davon zu tragen In diesem Kampf. Es däucht’ ihn groß und schön Das schwerste Abenteu’r der Tugend anzugehn, Schon groß und schön, es nur zu wagen, Und zehnfach schön und groß, es rühmlich zu bestehen. Allein, die Möglichkeit so einen Feind zu dämpfen, Der immer stärker wird, je mehr wir mit ihm kämpfen? (VI, 22)

Their ability to withstand the test of celibacy fails precisely because they are so madly in love. Eroticism does not exactly usurp the power of moral purity, however, for human sexuality is depicted here as instead in harmony with pure love by a narrator who questions Oberon’s moral austerity: »ihre Zärtlichkeit ergoß sich desto freyer,/ Je reiner ihre Quelle war« (VI, 107). Octave upon octave describe the erotic charge between the two young lovers in the sixth canto, scenes which are significantly set on board of a ship travelling to Lepanto on their way to Rome. In the long history of epic narrative, the seafaring vessel is an emblem of romance episodes that do not conform to the narrative arch of epic teleologies.22 In this case, the epi-

22

124

»For Borges and Northrop Frye, the wandering ship of Odysseus is the virtual emblem of romance: a narrative that moves through a succession of virtually discrete and unconnected episodes. The ship often finds these episodes on islands that reinforce their self-enclosed nature. The romance episode thus resists being fitted into the teleological scheme of epic, and Virgilian epic consequently sees any deviance from the historical

sodes involving the couple on board the ship do not comply with Oberon’s scheme for making a virtuous couple out of them but rather with the syntagmatic axis of the narrator’s particular humanist story which seeks a place for human sensuality alongside the imperative of loyalty. Not only does Rezia’s conversion to Amanda take place on board the first ship in the name of love – »Sie ist nun ganz für Hüon neu geboren,/ Gab alles, was sie war, für ihn,/ Gab einen Thron um Liebe hin,/ […] Für Liebe nur, durch Liebe nur zu leben,« (VI, 31) – so too does their transgression of Oberon’s moral imperative take place on board the next pinnace transporting them to Napoli. One night the couple can no longer resist temptation, a temptation which however is depicted as issuing from love and human nature: »länger hält die Menschheit es nicht aus:/ Halb sinnlos nimmt er sie (werd’ auch das ärgste draus!)/ In seinen Arm, die glüh’nden Lippen saugen/ Mit heißem Durst den Thau der Liebe auf,/ Und ganz entfesselt strömt das Herz in vollem Lauf« (VII, 15), with the result that »an Hymens Statt krönt Amor ihren Bund« (VII, 16). Oberon is aware of this offence, of course, and indeed abandons the couple as a storm threatens to wreck the boat. Because the ship’s captain attributes the storm to divine punishment and asks for a sacrificial victim, Hüon decides to sacrifice his own life as atonement for transgressing Oberon’s moral imperative, in order to save the rest of the crew and Rezia/Amanda, and jumps into the sea. Refusing to part from her lover, Rezia/Amanda plunges along with him. The embracing couple survives with the help of the magical ring Oberon had given Hüon and he to Rezia/Amanda, and so the plot continues. As if part of a self-enclosed episode that does not conform to Oberon’s plan to send them to Rome and then home to Paris, their illegitimate son is born on a bucolic island where they have been living happily together outside of society following their amorous encounter on the ship (VIII, 53–54). Rezia/ Amanda’s unplanned pregnancy is just one among a chain of seemingly unexpected events, but one which by no means contradicts the laws of cause and effect governing nature and which proves that the »dreams« of the psyche can have very real consequences.23 This blip in the narrative’s radar will nonetheless be incorporated into a larger humanist design by the end. The address to the reader at the end of the eighth canto indicates we are dealing with a reversal of the waywardness of sexuality associated with the ship into a triumph of love, so that the episode on the island is in fact an »empfindsames Zwischenspiel«24:

23 24

course of empire assuming the shape of romance narrative.« (Quint, Epic and Empire, p. 34). Schlaffer, »Poesie und Prosa,« p. 163. Hofmann uses this phrase to describe what he considers the text’s retreat from the relativistic questioning of moral ideals in Wieland’s other writings to an affirmation of such values in Oberon: »Die spezifische Differenz der Oberon-Dichtung liegt in der Tatsache, daß in ihr von der Anlage des Textes her der Perspektivismus und die mit ihm verbundene Weigerung, normative Wertsetzungen zu vollziehen, überwunden werden sollen und daß die dichterische Konstruktion im Dienste einer moralischen Botschaft zu stehen

125

Ihr, denen die Natur, beym Eingang in dieß Leben, Den überschwenglichen Ersatz Für alles andre Glück, den unverlierbar’n Schatz, Den alles Gold der Aureng-Zeben Nicht kaufen kann, das beste in der Welt Was sie zu geben hat, und was ins beßre Leben Euch folgt, ein fühlend Herz und reinen Sinn gegeben, Blickt hin und schaut – Der heil’ge Vorhang fällt! (VIII, 80)

For the text designs a positive model of (enlightened) human love that, like the symbol of the ring,25 unites sexual appetites and loving fidelity as the basis of a virtuously procreating family. The principle of natural devotion is not only demonstrated by Hüon and Rezia/Amanda’s sensual relationship, but even more so by the image of Rezia/Amanda nursing the newly born child in an idyllic setting: »Sie hört den stillen Ruf – wie leise hört/ Ein Mutterherz! – und folgt ihm unbelehrt./ […] Mit einer Lust, […] Legt sie an ihre Brust den holden Säugling an« (VIII, 78). Loyalty is hence presented as both a fundament of natural and social orders. This model of loyalty does not correspond exactly to the wishes or follow Oberon’s plan, but emerges out of the combination of narrative sequences as if it was the product of destiny but clearly abiding by the wishes of the narrator. The narrator reveals his proleptic knowledge of the couple’s destiny: »Getrost, o Rezia! Das Schicksal, das dich leitet,/ Hat dir zu helfen längst die Wege vorbereitet!« (VIII, 55). This time Titania intervenes by taking their son Hüonnet in order to protect him. While searching for him, Rezia/Amanda is captured by the »Barbaren« who want to deliver her over to the sultan’s harem in Tunis (IX, 59, 63). Titania then destroys the ship of Muslims and thieves transporting Amanda and brings Amanda safely to shore in Tunis. It is then Oberon’s turn to intervene by magically sending the devotedly suffering Hüon (reminiscent of Christ on the cross) to Tunis as well. In response to another spirit’s plea to him to help Hüon, Oberon comments upon his and Hüon’s role in the greater scheme of events by referring to a notion of a »higher destiny«: Der Erdensohn ist für die Zukunft blind, Erwiedert Oberon: wir selbst, du weißt es, sind Des Schicksals Diener nur. In heil’gen Finsternissen, Hoch über uns, geht sein verborgner Gang;

25

126

scheint.« (Hofmann, Reine Seelen und komische Ritter, p. 302–303). Hofmann’s phrase »empfindsames Zwischenspiel« appears on p. 299–300. Concerning the different symbolism of the ring and the horn: »Der Ring ist somit als das Symbol zu verstehen, das als Gegenbild zu dem Horn konzipiert ist. Während die Wirkung des Horns die sinnliche Begierde des Menschen bloßstellte und im Sinne des moralischen Rigorismus den Menschen in grausamer Manier zum Sklaven einer von allen ›höheren‹ Impulsen abgetrennten Natur machte, veranschaulicht der Ring die Aufhebung der Entzweiung und die wirksame Macht einer Liebe, die sinnliche und geistige Dimensionen des Menschen umfaßt.« (Hofmann, Reine Seelen und komische Ritter, p. 313).

Und, willig oder nicht, zieht ein geheimer Zwang Uns alle, daß wir ihm im Dunkeln folgen müssen. In dieser Kluft, die mich von Hüon trennt, Ist mir ein einzigs noch für ihn zu thun vergönnt. (X, 20)

Oberon’s representation of destiny here is not without irony as the competing powers of fate and contingency in the linking of events becomes a recurrent theme for the narrator in the final episodes of the story. The irony of Oberon’s view is that his decision to abandon the couple for disobeying his command that they remain chaste until they have received the Pope’s blessing is what enables the ultimate reunion between Titania and him, which he had made dependent upon the human couple’s fidelity to one another. Having already chosen to drown together, the couple elects to be burned to death alongside one another over the respective offers to each of them by the sultan and his wife in Tunisia to abandon the other and assume the throne of Tunis. These three ordeals correspond to the three conditions in Oberon’s curse-like promise to Titania. The status of this oath introduces yet another irony, for despite regretting the severity of his promise, he must remain stubbornly loyal to his word, and thereby transforms his promise into a self-imposed curse. Although Oberon’s magical interventions had afforded the couple’s opportunity to come together in the first place, the couple’s transgression enabled the fulfillment of the destiny announced in his oath. And yet contingency is invoked as explanation for the turn of events leading to the fulfillment of their destiny. »[W]ie sich der Zufall immer/ In alles ungebeten mischt,« as the narrator explains, the sequence of events do not seem to unfold the way the characters plan (XI, 36): as when the sultan’s wife intercepts a secret message delivered to Amanda/Rezia by Hüon, or when the Sultan happens to stumble upon his naked wife Almansaris as she tries to seduce Hüon in the garden grotto, or finally, when the couple is about to be burned at the stake by command of the sultan and the narrator describes how the text’s audience at this moment hopes »daß nicht den freyen Lauf/ Des Trauerspiels vielleicht ein Zufall hemme« (XII, 57). Their destiny is ultimately imputed to their choice to perish together rather than to be disloyal to one another, a choice that issues from love: »Daß ihre Lieb’ es ist, was sie hierher geführt./ Der Tod, der ihre Treu’ mit ew’gem Lorber ziert,/ Ist ihres Herzens Wahl; sie konnten ihn vermeiden« (XII, 58). The question of destiny could just as well be formulated as an interrogation of human behavior, as Michael Hofmann argues is the case: »Es handelt sich also hier um ein poetisch organisiertes psychologisches Experiment: Ist ein menschliches Verhalten möglich, bei dem auch in Situationen extremer Gefährdung die Treue der Partner stärker ist als die Möglichkeit zur Untreue, die durch die jeweiligen Umstände gegeben ist?«26 Human agency thereby finds a place within the sequence of events, although it is by no means clear how much of a choice one really has when it comes to true love. The same conclusion holds for Wieland’s verse epic that the theorist of the epic and 26

Hofmann, Reine Seelen und komische Ritter, p. 296.

127

novel Blankenburg makes with respect to the representation of events in Wieland’s Agathon, in Rüdiger Campe’s words: »Der kontingente Grund macht die Ereignisse verständlich, aber er ist seinerseits nicht verstehbar.«27 In any case, the fact that these three narrative threads merge into a unified fable reveals a certain filiation with the Aristotelian poetics of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581), in which the unity of the fable is »the reflection of an imperial unity achieved both over the vanquished foreigners and within the victors’ own ranks.«28 Oberon ends with the victory of Christians over Muslims, morality over barbarism, and loyalty over disloyalty, for in contrast to the sultan Almansor and his wife Almansaris, who will eagerly betray the other in pursuit of his and her own desires – Almansaris offers Hüon her husband’s throne, while Almansor offers to save Hüon if Amanda will become his wife – Hüon and Amanda/Rezia remain loyal to one another despite sexual temptation or the promise of material reward and even in the face of death. As we will see upon closer inspection of the depictions of Muslims and Arabs, this proclivity for a collective epic unity informs the coding of particular elements as wayward and barbaric for the purpose of their incorporation within the semiotic register of Wieland’s epic. The resolution of the competing demands of moral austerity and human sensuality into a model in which sexual attraction can go hand in hand with true love and fidelity, in order to become the bedrock of family and find harmony with the principle of loyalty, is one aspect of the epic’s humanist message.29 This is also a topos that connects Oberon, in an inverted manner, to the tradition of romance epic most clearly identified with Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1515), in which, as David Quint has shown, the power of the appetites and desire are asserted over the claims of reason: »With his celebrated moral flexibility, Ariosto seems to suggest that appetites and desires are an ineradicable part of what constitutes the human. This is one of the truths that romance tells in opposition to the voice of reason, which 27

28

29

128

Rüdiger Campe, »Agathon und deutscher Shakespeare. Zu Wielands Stellung im Wissen der Literatur.« In: Wieland/Übersetzen. Sprachen, Gattungen, Räume, ed. by Bettine Menke and Wolfgang Struck, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 2010, p. 206–221, here: p. 214. For a discussion of how contingency gets narrated in Wieland’s Agathon, see: Sascha Michel, Ordnungen der Kontingenz. Figurationen der Unterbrechung in Erzähldiskursen um 1800 (Wieland – Jean Paul – Brentano), Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2006. Quint, Epic and Empire, p. 40. In the Gerusalemme liberata, the historical battle for Jerusalem beomes an allegory for the struggle for reunification of the Church, which is also played out as mutiny within the ranks and individually within the psyche of the errant hero Rinald, who defects and then returns to fight the infidels as part of Goffredo’s army of knights (215). The tension between »Sinnlichkeit« and »Sittlichkeit« supplies a theme throughout Wieland’s work, and has been treated extensively in the secondary literature. An influential argument against the continuity of this theme is: Sengle, Wieland. For a critical response: John McCarthy, »Wielands Metamorphose.« In: DVjs 49 Sonderheft »18. Jahrhundert« (1975), p. 149–167.

would suppress or straighten out narratives of human experience that cannot be anything but wayward.«30 As much as Wieland aims to explore the effects of »appetites and desires« on human action, his narrators gravitate toward the forces of reason, regardless of all narrative digressions – in the case of Oberon, to design a particular harmony of erotic sensuality with a notion of loyalty in opposition to both the unreasonably burdensome demands of Oberon’s austerity and the even more unreasonably lascivious disloyalties of the Muslims. The narrator’s opposition to irrationality apparently extends to Oberon’s investment in the Pope’s consecration as well, for this requirement gets dropped entirely, suggesting a critique of the Church’s institutional authority and role in enforcing moral austerity.31 The question is to what extent unpredictable elements of the human psyche or political collective find expression in literary form as interruption. In Wieland’s texts, the resulting appropriation of potentially subversive techniques of romance narrative by a putatively sovereign narrator striving toward the goal of enlightenment is in fact one of the fascinating aspects of the epic imaginary. In Oberon representations of the psychic constitution of the human are accompanied by additional characteristic Enlightenment humanist themes. For instance, the »brotherly« relationship between Hüon and Scherasmin portrays knight and vassal as equals. As a Sancho Panza-like figure, a commonsensical man of the people, the vassal Scherasmin delivers prosaic interpretations of events.32 Furthermore, while the fairy king Oberon has been said to embody both nature and human morality in one, both Oberon and Hüon are on equal footing with respect to the moral demands placed upon them.33 In a more mundane sense, to use Hannelore Schlaffer’s phrase, Oberon and Titania are examples of how in general Wieland’s »Überirdischen sind Menschen mit einem fühlenden Herzen.«34 While these humanistic aspects of the plot, motifs, and characters elevate the popular fairy-tale images to elements of serious, symbolic poetry with the help of versification, they also thereby introduce an internal struggle among competing semiotic processes. For the potentially subversive narrative counter-strategies of Ariosto that call into question the Virgilian strategies for legitimizing political power are operationalized within Wieland’s narratives for the sake of the power of reason and the suppression of internal or external disturbances of both the human psyche and the political community. The key to understanding the crux of Wieland’s parodic humanism lies in the formal relationship between narration and narrated. The choice of the romance epic form modeled on Ariosto alludes to a playful narrative tradition character-

30 31 32 33 34

Quint, Epic and Empire, p. 38. A critique supported by the satirical depiction of monks and nuns as »hypocrites« in the second canto. (Hofmann, Reine Seelen und komische Ritter, p. 290). Schlaffer, »Poesie und Prosa,« p. 162. Mayer, »Wielands Oberon,« p. 44. Schlaffer, »Poesie und Prosa,« p. 154.

129

ized by the prominence of narrative digression.35 Most romance epics of the Italian »Volkspoesie« (i. e. written in the vernacular) exhibit a multiplicity of plots, as is the case with Oberon. The narration of these plots is interlaced with commentary, explanations, justifications, discussions with the reader, and intertextual references.36 For instance, the narrator addresses a virgin Hüon has rescued and omnisciently comments on the implications of the fact that Hüon is not tempted by her: »Ein Glück für dich, unschuld’ge Angela,/ Daß keiner deiner Blick’ in Hüons Busen Zunder/ Zum Fangen fand« (III, 42). The narrator’s reference to »Glück« questions both the innocence of the virgin and the absoluteness of virtue: »Hier zeigt sich die Relativität und auch die Problematik des Begriffes ›Unschuld‹ und die grundsätzliche Überzeugung des skeptischen Erzählers, daß Prinzipien nicht starr und abstrakt befolgt werden, sondern sich nur im Bezug auf Situationen bewähren (oder eben nicht bewähren) können.«37 Alternations between modes of address abound in the text, constantly interweaving levels of discourse, and constructing a shared textual space between characters, readers, and narrators, in which events transpire as chains of images within a narrative present.38 As the stranded couple desperately searches for food on the island where they are stranded, only to discover that the fruit they have found is rotten, the narrator utters a humanist plea to the fairy prince Oberon to relieve the couple of their misery, and in so doing calls attention to the fact that the narrative is being transcribed in the present: Hier zittert mir der Griffel aus der Hand! Kannst du, zu strenger Geist, in solchem Jammerstand Noch spotten ihrer Noth, noch ihre Hoffnung trügen? Faul, durch und durch, und gallenbitter war Die schöne Frucht! – Und bleich, wie in den letzten Zügen Ein Sterbender erbleicht, sieht das getäuschte Paar Sich trostlos an, die starren Augen offen, Als hätt’ aus heitrer Luft ein Donner sie getroffen. (VII, 54)

Furthermore, the narrator even goes so far as to ridicule the gallant protagonist Hüon’s credulity and lack of education while he tries to initiate Rezia’s conversion to Christianity: »Er war an Glauben stark, wiewohl an Kenntniß schwach,/ Und die Theologie war keineswegs sein Fach« (VI, 24).39 And yet, in a reversal of the pa-

35

36 37 38 39

130

On the Italian Renaissance epic, see: Leo Pollmann, »Das Renaissanceepos.« In: Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft, ed. by Klaus von See, vol. 9, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, Frankfurt/M. 1972. See: Jørgensen, »Nachwort,« p. 340. Hofmann, Reine Seelen und komische Ritter, p. 293. Schlaffer, »Poesie und Prosa,« p. 166–167. This scene supplies evidence for Hans Mayer’s claim that Oberon is a parody: Mayer, Zur Deutschen Klassik und Romantik, p. 32–33.

rodic operation, the point of this instance of mockery is to underscore love’s power to accomplish the task of religious, cultural, and political conversion.40 By the end of this chapter it will become more apparent why Oberon is far more limited in its narrative playfulness in comparison to the earlier verse epics. At issue is how different techniques of narration interact with the humanism articulated on the level of content in Oberon, in its focus on an enlightened reconciliation of the tension between sensuality and morality, and in its investment in creative, human, poetic activity that refuses to seek meaning in a mythical, divine source. These two humanistic features are most importantly, for my analysis, steered by the playful sovereignty of the narrator, who functions as the center of the epic imaginary of Wieland’s humanism.

»Das Volk,« Cosmopolitanism, and Sovereignty in Wieland’s Political Essays In the spirit of romance narrative, my analysis will develop parallel story-lines that do not follow a linear chronology or teleological sequence. Thus I will first skip ahead to Wieland’s depictions of the French Revolution, situate these writings among earlier ones, and then return to Oberon to end the chapter with an analysis of how the parallel plots might intersect, or not. In Wieland’s explicitly political contributions to Der neue Teutsche Merkur from January and February, 1791, Wieland deploys certain narrative strategies to present a debate in the French National Convention, which he printed under the title »Ausführliche Darstellung der in der Französischen National-Versammlung am 26 u. 27 Novbr. 1790 vorgefallenen Debatten.«41 The debate itself concerns a provincial cleric’s protest against a Revolutionary decree. The bishop of Nantes refused to recognize the decree and

40

41

The full implications of Rezia’s conversion to Amanda is even spelled out: »Auch Rezia, seitdem sie von Amanden/ Den Nahmen eingetauscht, glaubt freyer von den Banden/ Des Zwangs zu seyn, ist nicht mehr Rezia, vergißt/ Nun desto leichter Königswürde, Hof, Vaterland, und kurz, was nicht Amanda ist« (VI, 30). Christoph Martin Wieland, »Ausführliche Darstellung der in der Französischen National-Versammlung am 26 und 27 Nov. 1790 vorgefallenen Debatten.« In: Wieland, Politische Schriften, insbesondere zur Französischen Revolution, ed. by Jan Philip Reemtsma, Hans and Johanna Radspieler, 3 vols, Franz Greno, Nördlingen 1988, vol. 2, p. 215–295. For an overview of Wieland’s work as the editor of Der Teutsche Merkur (founded 1773) and of Der Neue Teutsche Merkur (founded 1790), see: Klaus Manger, »Wielands kulturelle Programmatik als Zeitschriftenherausgeber« (1994). In: Wieland Studien 6. Sibi Res Non Se Rebus Submittere. Festschrift für Klaus Manger zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Jutta Heinz, Universitätsverlag Carl Winter, Heidelberg 2010, p. 68–76. Manger claims that these essays contain »die kompetentesten Stellungnahmen zur Französischen Revolution, die damals in Deutschland erschienen sind.« (Manger, »Wielands kulturelle Programmatik,« p. 70).

131

authority of the nation in clerical matters, and Departement officials have come to request his arrest. However, the content of the debate is less interesting than the narrative strategies used to present the debate to the readership of Wieland’s journal. Ostensibly aiming to abandon the playful narration of the verse epics, Wieland claims to present a »faithful presentation« (»getreue Darstellung«) of the debate. Yet, as we will see, he quickly slips back into a parodic narrative mode. This example shows how the verse narratives and the journalistic writings together contribute to the formation of Wieland’s humanism understood along the lines of Lotman’s notion of a semiosphere. According to Lotman, a semiosphere is constituted by a separation from its exterior and irregularity within its interior.42 The semiosphere that I refer to as Wieland’s »humanism« draws a complicated boundary between patriotism and cosmopolitanism, between an attempt to define humanism with and against the Revolutionary activity on the other side of the Rhein, all the while claiming to observe a cosmopolitan drama. With regard to the irregularity of the interior of Wieland’s semiosphere, the narrator functions as a center, whose structures of parody control the internal irregularity of Wieland’s humanism. Wieland’s texts thus construct a narrative sovereignty that claims »cosmopolitan« legitimacy in contrast, and as a corrective, to state power in the form of either republican monarchy or democracy. However, the epic imaginary evoked here is interrupted by a collapse of the distinction between the perspectives of participants and observers, a collapse that is inseparable from the question of political participation. In what can be regarded as the »preface« to the »Ausführliche Darstellung,« Wieland frames his presentation of the debate with a justification that simultaneously sets boundaries: Je weniger aber unser eigenes Vaterland bey den dermahligen Nazional-Begebenheiten unsrer westlichen Nachbarn politisch interessiert ist, desto größer ist das moralische Interesse, welches wir bloß als Menschen dabey haben, bloß als unbefangene Zuschauer eines vor unsern Augen vorgehenden Drama’s [Wieland calls it a »cosmopolitan drama«], mit welchem keine andere ähnliche Weltbegebenheit an Größe und Wichtigkeit zu vergleichen ist: eines Drama’s, wobey nicht nur das Interesse unzählicher Privatpersonen, und der ehmals vornehmsten Stände, Classen und Gemeinheiten des Reichs, sondern das Wohl und Weh der jezigen Generation und der künftigen, ja die Existenz oder der Untergang des Staats auf dem Spiele liegt. 43

Wieland draws a line between France and Germany. The two countries are separated by a political boundary: the events in France, he claims, are not of immediate political interest for the »fatherland.« Rather, the proceedings of the National Convention interest his German readership for »moral« reasons, »which we share merely

42 43

132

Lotman, »Über die Semiosphäre.« Christoph Martin Wieland, Politische Schriften, vol. 2, p. 215–295, here: p. 216. Henceforth cited parenthetically within the text.

as humans,« he says, witnessing a »cosmopolitan drama« (217) unfold that concerns the well-being of current and future generations, and the status of the state in general. The first step of the editor’s argument stages the presentation as a meta-level observation in which Wieland’s narrator distances himself and readership from the events transpiring in France, in order to assume the position of a moral observer, »als unbefangene[r] Zuschauer eines vor unsern Augen vorgehenden Drama’s.«44 The theatrical metaphor is reflected on the level of structure, moreover, in so far as Wieland frames his presentation paratextually with a preface and afterword, and thereby describes a separation of actors on the political stage from the extra-diagetic spectators. The perspective of distanced observation is undermined, however, by both the enunciation of a moral judgment and the reproach against the political activation of the wider populace. The moral dimension of distance advocated by Wieland in the name of human interest, which from the standpoint of German-speaking territories merely seeks to observe in the manner of a journalist, is undercut by a political division between Germany and France, between moral and political interests, between cosmopolitan and national dramas. A return to the position of a participant in the drama »unfolding before our eyes« thus follows the evocation of a metaphor of the theater. Publicistic observation transforms into participating observation, for the debate presented is concerned with no less than »das Wohl und Weh der jezigen Generation und der künftigen, [da] ja die Existenz oder der Untergang des Staates auf dem Spiele liegt.« The observation of this debate thus enunciates a political interest in that being observed, just as likewise the German-speaking public does not only sit in the auditorium but is also very much involved in political matters and affected by events in France. Wieland’s »preface« to the »Ausführliche Darstellung« claims to present to the reader a »faithful« reconstruction of the debates borrowed from the unbiased translation and reproduction of these debates in the French journals, the Gazette Nationale and Moniteur.45 He thereby promises the reader »wahre und anschauende Begriffe von dieser Versammlung zu geben« (217). However, the presentation soon assumes the parodic tone of the verse epics, although in this case the epic narra-

44

45

Luhmann, »Kultur als historischer Begriff,« p. 31–54: »Überhaupt war die zweite Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts eine Zeit, in der viele gesellschaftliche Bereiche auf eine Beobachtung zweiter Ordnung umgestellt wurden und die dafür erforderlichen Begriffe, was immer ihre Vorgeschichte, erstrangige Prominenz erhalten. Das gilt zum Beispiel für den Begriff der öffentlichen Meinung als heimlicher Souverän oder als Richter, jedenfalls als Beobachter der Politik« (34). Wieland’s manifold »translations« in a variety of contexts are analyzed in the essays collected in: Wieland/Übersetzen. Sprachen, Gattungen, Räume, ed. by Bettine Menke and Wolfgang Struck, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 2010.

133

tive style is situated as a paratext.46 According to Gérard Genette, the paratext is a textual accessory that frames a text for a reading public. Paratexts often construct a presumed authorial intentionality to ground a text within an auctorial context, and thereby influence a text’s reception. If the »preface« frames the »Ausführliche Darstellung« as an unbiased presentation, the footnotes re-introduce the parody and mockery characteristic of the narrative voice which operates at the center of the rococo epics. Commentary embedded within the many footnotes adorning the text and delivered in verbose hypotactical prose reflect on the statements of the speakers, often exposing them to mockery. For instance, Wieland negatively comments on Mirabeau’s rhetoric and labels him a »demagogue« (246). He further comments on the incomprehensibility of different speakers’ remarks (251), on the offensive nature of some of the speeches, on the poor rhetoric of one of the speakers (263), and even defends the awkwardness of his translation as the result of this same speaker’s own inability to speak clearly (263). The commentary culminates in an epilogue, in which he chastises the deleterious effects of »das Murmeln und Applaudieren,« for functioning as »zwey Druckund Triebwerke in der politischen Maschine« that decide the result of a debate (291). According to Lotman, any given semiosphere requires a non-organized outer environment and invents one if needed.47 Wieland has to present the »applause« and »murmuring« in the National Convention as a non-organized, external limit, to which he contrasts the sovereignty of his parodic narration. This move results in a meta-level projection of an imaginary unity to organize the internal irregularity of the semiosphere around a central narrator. In effect, a dynamic process between the levels produces reciprocal effects between the meta-level (unity) and the »real« semiotic landscape constructed in relation to the limits of the discourse.48 At the same time, »Murmeln« and »Applaudieren« mark the collapse of a theater metaphor which presumes to stage Wieland’s presentation as the observation of a

46 47 48

134

Here, I am drawing on Gérard Genette, Paratexte, with a foreword by Harald Weinrich, trans. by Dieter Hornig, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/M. and New York 1989. Lotman, »Über die Semiosphäre,« p. 293. Lotman, »Über die Semiosphäre,« p. 294–295. Herbert Jaumann has pointed to the function of metacritique in Wieland’s political writings, arguing that »Die eigentliche Sphäre der Metakritik des politischen ist die ästhetische Erfahrung der konkreten Subjektivität« (H. Jaumann, »Politische Vernunft, anthropologischer Vorbehalt, dichterische Fiktion. Zu Wielands Kritik des Politischen.« In: MLN 99:3 (April 1984), p. 461–78, here: p. 475). In an essay on sovereignty, Wieland displaces the questions of sovereignty and rights onto a meta-level anthropology: »Die Rede ist von Naturgesetzen statt von Naturrechten. Indem er so eine Begründungsstufe tiefer ansetzt, begibt er sich auf die Position einer Metakritik u. a. auch naturrechtlicher Normen und davon wiederum abgeleiteter politischer Konzepte und juridischer Sätze« (473). Furthermore, Jaumann inadvertently seems to hint at my application of Lotman, when he characterizes Wieland’s ironic procedure as a »Streben nach Raum für Fiktionalität,« which I would argue is the humanist semiosphere I am describing (476).

drama. That the spectators – the (republican) public – begin to intervene signifies a limit to both the commentating discourse of the narrator as well as a contamination of the border between stage and auditorium. »Murmeln« and »Applaudieren« function as interference during the theatrical performance insofar as they annul the border separating performance and auditorium and reveal the paradoxes of an observer perspective. What Wieland’s narrator seeks to exclude on the meta-level of the text encroaches upon the level of content: What Wieland refers to as »Masse,« »Pöbel,« or »Volk« in his political writings renders the discursive limits to the performance legible in the moment of its function as interference, at the same time that it marks the entrance of the public on the political stage. As a new instance of political participation, which has become part of the performance and reveals the impossibility of distanced observation in a democracy, the amorphous and inarticulate voice of the »people« enters into political and cosmopolitan discourse as a displacement – as a re-entry of the distinction between (moral) spectator and (political) drama. Wieland’s humanism, then, is constituted by the sovereignty of the parodic narrator, as well as by the collapse of observer and participant perspectives as a consequence of the public’s entry onto the political stage. Traces of this dilemma can be found throughout Wieland’s political writings, as they seek to re-inscribe this displacement of perspective within literary and political discourse. That is to say, they aim to bring the German public onto the stage without renouncing the sovereignty of Wieland’s narrator(s). The »sovereignty« of Wieland’s narrator(s) lies in calling the sovereignty of others into question – for instance, protagonists of a novel or epic, or the representatives of the National Convention.49 Its mockery of both literary convention and myth, as well as of political demagoguery and Revolutionary populism, follows above all from a formal narrative operation. This narrative play, moreover, seems more characteristic of narrators of the burgeoning eighteenth-century novel, rather than that of the verse epic tradition. Through a well-demonstrated analysis of the novels Agathon and Don Sylvio, Steven R. Miller has shown how Wieland uses playful narration to make the act of narration a part of the object of fictional representation, as a poetic antidote to the modern epistemological problem of truth.

49

Albrecht Koschorke uses the example of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes, to demonstrate how literary sovereignty establishes itself: »Gegen die Kleiderweber, die er autoritativ als Betrüger denunziert, obwohl er sie doch auch als Künstlerkollegen hätte begrüßen können, schlägt er sich auf die Seite des Kindes und spricht mit dessen Stimme, die der Text bekräftigend als ›Stimme der Unschuld‹ ausweist. Der literarische Souverän, der allein und selbstherrlich darüber entscheiden kann, seinen Lesern den Märchenkaiser nackt oder angekleidet vor Augen zu führen, authentifiziert sich dadurch, dass er den politischen Souverän de-authentifiziert.« (Koschorke, »Macht und Fiktion,« p. 83).

135

In fast jedem Satz ist sein beobachtendes, bewertendes Ich zu spüren. Ein höchst subjektiver, persönlicher Ton ist die Folge davon. Diese neue Ich-Freiheit des Erzählers entsteht aus dem Bewusstsein seiner begrenzten Perspektive – eine Begrenztheit, die jeder individuellen Sicht innewohnt und die der Erzähler gar nicht mehr durch eine illusionäre allwissende Haltung zu vertuschen versucht. 50

Instead of omniscience, Wieland’s narrator strives for »conversation (Gespräch)« and »humility (Bescheidenheit),« and if the narrator’s humility derives from moments of self-proclaimed uncertainty, the conversation with the reader grows out of the garrulous narrator’s invitation to the reader to participate in the narration.51 Nonetheless, this attempt at conversation and humility only goes so far; as Miller admits, »Die Beteiligung des fiktiven Lesers ist zum grössten Teil illusorisch.«52 In the end, the narrator steers the narrative. Miller’s study does not compare the prose and verse narratives, but his observations apply to Wieland’s experiments with both genres. However, the investment in parody and mockery threatens to lead Wieland’s humanism down a path of tyranny. One of Wieland’s favorite targets for his scorn is the (revolutionary) »mass.« Wieland’s elitist distrust of »the people« (das Volk) appears throughout his writings on the French Revolution. In another piece for Der neue Teutsche Merkur, a dialogue called, »Nähere Beleuchtung der angeblichen Vorzüge der repräsentativen Demokratie vor der monarchischen Regierungsform (1799),« Wieland has one of the speakers, Wilibald, tell his partner in conversation, Heribert, »Sie wissen aber, wie das Volk ist. Sich in weitläufige und tiefsinnige Untersuchungen, Abstrakzionen und Distinkzionen einzulassen, ist seine Sache nicht.«53 Wilibald continues,

50 51 52 53

136

Seven R. Miller, Die Figur des Erzählers in Wielands Romanen, Verlag Alfred Kümmerle, Göppingen 1970, p. 95. Ideas developed early in Die Theorie und Geschichte der Red-Kunst und Dicht-Kunst (1757). Miller, Die Figur des Erzählers, p. 104. Miller, Die Figur des Erzählers, p. 107. Wieland, Politische Schriften, vol. 3, p. 456. Hereafter cited paranthetically. It is significant that Wieland presents his political discussion in the form of a dialogue here. In her speech upon receipt of the Lessing prize on 28 September 1959, Hannah Arendt describes how Lessing draws on the ancient political tradition of dialogue: »Für die Griechen aber lag das eigentliche Wesen der Freundschaft im Gespräch, und sie waren der Meinung, daß das dauernde Miteinander-Sprechen erst die Bürger zu einer Polis vereinige. Im Gespräch manifestiert sich die politische Bedeutung der Freundschaft und der ihr eigentümlichen Menschlichkeit […] Denn menschlich ist die Welt nicht schon darum, weil sie von Menschen hergestellt ist, und sie wird auch nicht schon dadurch menschlich, daß in ihr die menschliche Stimme ertönt, sondern erst, wenn sie Gegenstand des Gesprächs geworden ist.« (H. Arendt, »Von der Menschlichkeit in fi nsteren Zeiten.« In: Arendt, Rede am 28. September 1959 bei der Entgegennahme des Lessing-Preises der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, with an essay by Ingeborg Nordmann, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1999, p. 43). Wieland seems close to Arendt’s rendition of Lessing, for a (German) monarchist and (French) republican

Das Volk ist ein vielköpfiges, vielsinniges, vielzüngiges Thier, voller Leidenschaften und Vorurtheile; hitzig und brausend, wo es kalt und gelassen seyn, eigenwillig und starrsinnig, wo es auf Vernunft hören, wankelhaft, wo es unbeweglich stehen, unentschlossen, wo es schnellbesonnen und muthvoll seyn sollte. (460)

Because of this view of the populace at large, a distrust of popular sovereignty runs throughout the political »answers« to the French Revolution in Der neue Teutsche Merkur. The point here is that Wieland’s narrator derives its sovereignty by setting itself apart from a dubious mass. The »Volk« is not given a voice but is instead figured as animalistic noise – as little more than murmuring and applauding. The other speaker in the dialogue, Heribert, describes the »general will« as equivalent to »general reason« (allgemeine Vernunft), a property of an entire nation that is either »enlightened« with regard to its rights and privileges, or »represented« by the most »enlightened« and community-inspired part of the population: »in so fern sie über ihre eignen Rechte und Vortheile aufgeklärt ist, oder (was auf das nehmliche hinaus läuft) in so fern sie durch den aufgeklärtesten und von echtem Gemeingeist beseelten Theil des Volks repräsentiert wird« (458). The aim of this dialogue is ultimately to establish, as a common truth between the two speakers [»da wir gemeinschaftlich Wahrheit suchen« (460–461)], that a monarch could fulfill these requirements just as well as a republican government, if not better. Later in the dialogue, Wilibald claims as much: monarchy and democracy each have their advantages and disadvantages, he says, but »wenn sie genau gegen einander abgewogen werden, so dürfte wohl, wie ich mir zu behaupten getraue, der Vorzug auf Seiten der Monarchie seyn« (462). The remaining dialogue aims to provide arguments for Wilibald’s point, and Heribert proves to be an accomplice, rather than an antagonist, for his comments merely support Wilibald’s argumentation. A comment from Wilibald evokes the narrative style of the verse epics, namely, the impetus to consider a matter from many sides. Wilibald argues that if we consider the question of whether a monarchy or a democracy is preferable from »all sides,« we will be convinced that monarchy can be just as advantageous as democracy. Je genauer wir die Sache von allen Seiten betrachten, desto einleuchtender, däucht mir, muß es uns werden […] Es lebt sich ganz leidlich in der Republik, wie in der Monarchie, vorausgesetzt, daß beide mit Gerechtigkeit und Weisheit regiert werden. Wenn der Monarch die Tugenden Mark-Aurels mit der Klugheit Augusts und der Tapferkeit und Mäßigung Trajans in sich vereiniget; wenn in der Republik das Direktorium und seine Ministerialen, die gesetzgebenden Kollegien, die Gerichtshöfe und die Heerführerstellen mit lauter Männern, wie Aristides, Perikles, Epaminondas, Facion, Timoleon, Paul Ämil, Regulus, Kato, u. s. w. besetzt sind: so werden gute und verständige Menschen (die nicht mehr verlangen als was billig ist) sich unter beiderley Regierungsformen wohl genug befinden um keine Änderung zu wünschen. (467–468)

discuss modern political ideas – the people, democracy, sovereignty – and the two are friends, who nonetheless disagree with one another.

137

To be sure, the argument that democracy and monarchy can be equally advantageous does not seem to support Wilibald’s earlier claim that monarchy is preferable. Nevertheless, he concludes that there could be no reason to change from monarchy to democracy – here, we have a thinly-veiled reference to the political condition in Germany, and from the dialogue we can infer that the speakers agree that there is no reason to convert to a democracy in the German principalities. Yet the implicit critique of republican government remains, especially in light of the list of names who would be required to work as functionaries within a republic, should it hope to succeed. Furthermore, right before Wilibald can utter his reproaches to a republic (»In der Republik hingegen – «) the argument is interrupted, a narrative technique common to the narrative style in Wieland’s verse and prose fiction, and a moment of light-heartedness is introduced. Heribert yawns and asks what is being performed that evening, to which Wilibald replies, »Die Zauberflöte« (468).54 Despite the differences of genre, we nonetheless find continuities between the earlier verse epics, the novels, and later political writings.55 Bernd Weyergraf’s argument that, »Der ideale Staatsmann ist für Wieland der vielseitig gebildete Monarch, der die Mittel und die Möglichkeiten seines Landes zu überblicken vermag«56 seems to find its parallels in the versatile, clever narrator whose hypotactic style presides over verse epics and reports from the National Convention. Only the sovereign narrator, however, possesses the education and ability to oversee one’s territory, even if, as the collapse of the theater metaphor shows, such distance to one’s own political, cultural, or moral project proves to be impossible. We might say that Wieland’s epic imaginary relies on the fictions of both a monarchical narrator and a form of enlightened absolutist narration, so to speak, that cannot uphold its own fictions of omniscience.57

54

55

56 57

138

The speaker’s evocation of »Die Zauberflöte« opens a rich semantic field. In this context, in particular, the connection to secret societies should not be overlooked. See: Jan Assmann, Die Zauberflöte. Oper und Mysterium, Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 2008, p. 147–166. Another parallel is to be found in Tieck’s Der gestiefelte Kater, which appeared around the same time in 1797. A similar »silencing« of a potentially volatile public in the face of a collapse of theatrical bounderies happens by way of the insertion of a section from the Zauberflöte during the performance, which deploys entertainment to distract the public from the revolutionary aspect of the play being performed. »In dieser Absicht der Geschmackserziehung, der Herausbildung der Urteilskraft, der Befreiung von Vorurteilen und der Verfeinerung der Sitten steht Wielands ›Teutscher Merkur‹ neben seinen übrigen Werken.« (Manger, »Wielands kulturelle Programmatik,« p. 74–75). C. M. Wieland, Der skeptische Bürger: Wielands Schriften zur Französischen Revolution, J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 1972, p. 6. Wieland even wrote a »Staatsroman« for Joseph II, Der Goldne Spiegel, in which he thematizes a modern form of patronage, according to which the intellectual educates the monarch and continually offers the monarch critical advice. On this: W. Daniel Wilson, »Intellekt und Herrschaft. Wielands Goldner Spiegel, Joseph II. und das Ideal eines kritischen Mäzenats im aufgeklärten Absolutismus.« In: MLN 99:3 (April 1984),

In Wieland’s own parlance, however, this narrator is more properly identified as a cosmopolitan. In yet another political tract for Der Teutsche Merkur, »Das Geheimniß der Kosmopoliten« (written in 1788, one year before the outbreak of the French Revolution), Wieland defines a cosmopolitan as a world citizen (»Weltbürger«) dedicated to limiting all that perniciously plagues humanity and to increasing the sum of the good (333). This cosmopolitan goal entails the improvement of humanity and the rule of reason »over the animalistic part of human nature« [»über den thierischen Theil der menschlichen Natur«] (339). Furthermore, Wieland emphasizes the filial commonality of humanity, the fact that every »rational being« is a citizen of the world. Sie [die Weltbürger] betrachten alle Völker des Erdbodens als eben so viele Zweige einer einzigen Familie, und das Universum als einen Staat, worin sie mit unzählichen andern vernünftigen Wesen Bürger sind, um unter allgemeinen Naturgesetzen die Vollkommenheit des Ganzen zu befördern, indem jedes nach seiner besondern Art und Weise für seinen eigenen Wohlstand geschäftigt ist. (328)

However, in this version of the epic imaginary cosmopolitan activities are ascribed again to a sphere outside of politics.58 The common cause of improving humanity unifies cosmopolitans as world citizens, who thus stand above divisive party politics (332). Furthermore, the cosmopolitan »lives always as a good and peaceful citizen« within bourgeois society [»so lebt er immer als ein guter und ruhiger Bürger«], and should never incite or resort to violence (334). This is an important limitation on the activity of the cosmopolitan, for it prohibits the cosmopolitan’s sphere of activity from encroaching upon political acts of the state. Wieland’s cosmopolitan should not interfere with political administration, but nonetheless indirectly affects politics through the exercise of critique on behalf of morality vis-à-vis the state. Here, Wieland is echoed by Reinhart Koselleck’s argument in Kritik und Krise: Wie sich die Maurer kraft des Geheimnisses vom Staat absetzen, zunächst, um sich seinem Einfluß zu entziehen, dann aber, um gerade auf Grund dieses Entzuges den Staat scheinbar unpolitisch zu okkupieren, so spart sich die Kritik zunächst aus dem Staate aus, um dann gerade auf Grund dieser Aussparung sich scheinbar neutral auf den Staat auszuweiten und ihn ihrem Richterspruch zu unterwerfen.59

58

59

p. 479–502; Jürgen Fohrmann, »Utopie, Reflexion, Erzählung: Wielands Goldner Spiegel.« In: Utopieforschung. Interdisziplinäre Studien zur neuzeitlichen Utopie, ed. by Wilhelm Voßkamp, vol. 3, Frankfurt/M. 1985, p. 24–49; Helge Jordheim, Der Staatsroman im Werk Wielands und Jean Pauls: Gattungsverhandlungen zwischen Poetologie und Politik, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2007, p. 147–198. Klaus Manger has described Wieland’s preference for an imaginary cosmopolitan brotherhood over actually existing organizations: »Insofern, als er keine Verfassung, keine Organisationsform hat, ist er ein imagnärer Orden. Darin liegt sein Vorzug vor den anderen Vergesellschaftungen.« (K. Manger, »Wielands Kosmopoliten« (1996). In: Wieland-Studien 6, p. 95–121, here: p. 111). Reinhart Koselleck, Kritik und Krise: Ein Beitrag zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt, Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg and München 1959, p. 81.

139

This gesture toward indirectly political or moral critique is confirmed in the passage quoted above from the »Ausführliche Darstellung,« where Wieland draws a line between a »political« interest in the French Revolution and a »moral« interest: »Je weniger aber unser eigenes Vaterland bey den dermahligen Nazionalbegebenheiten unsrer westlichen Nachbarn politisch interessiert ist, desto größer ist das moralische Interesse, welches wir bloß als Menschen dabey haben« (216). From this intentional separation of critique and politics it follows that the cosmopolitan’s critique should never disturb the peace, or interfere with matters of state; no cosmopolitan, Wieland says, has ever participated in a conspiracy, revolt, civil war, revolution, or regicide (336). According to Wieland, then, the French Revolution is not cosmopolitan strictly speaking, though he calls it a »cosmopolitan drama« in the »Ausführliche Darstellung« analyzed above. This paradoxical displacement of Wieland’s discursive logic can be attributed to the collapse of the dramatic structure of his presentation of the French Revolution that strives for a strict demarcation of critique and politics that it cannot uphold. For that matter, neither Brutus or Milton were cosmopolitans (336). Wieland ascribes to the cosmopolitan the »duty« to resist political injustice, but such resistance must be limited to the exercise of reason: In solchen Fällen ist Widerstand sogar eine ihrer Ordenspflichten; nur sind ihnen dazu keine andere Waffen als die Waffen der Vernunft erlaubt. Diese mögen sie mit so viel Witz, Beredsamkeit, Scharfsinn und Stärke, als sie nur immer in ihrer Gewalt haben, zum Besten der guten Sache brauchen und in dieser Art von Krieg, vertheidigungs- und angriffsweise so viel Verstand, Klugheit, Standhaftigkeit, Freymüthigkeit und Beharrlichkeit zeigen, als nur immer möglich ist: wenn sie alles gethan haben, so haben sie weiter nichts als ihrer Kosmopolitenpflicht genug gethan. (336)

The »weapons of reason« – »Witz, Beredsamkeit, Scharfsinn und Stärke« – are no less than the instruments of Wieland’s narrative sovereignty. Here, sovereignty does not mean the ability to decide a state of exception, which is closer, for instance, to Wieland’s speaker Wilibald’s claim in the »Nähere Beleuchtung« dialogue: »Der wahre Suverän im Staat ist derjenige, der das Recht hat die höchste Gewalt auszuüben« (461).60 A narrator’s sovereignty emerges in the clever act of parodying the 60

140

Wieland would above all disagree with Schmitt’s emphasis on violence as intrinsic to sovereignty. Even Wieland’s reference to the sovereign’s »right« to exercise violence differs from Schmitt’s insistence that the violent act of decision forms the basis of every normative system. »Die Ausnahme ist das nicht Subsumierbare; sie entzieht sich der generellen Fassung, aber gleichzeitig offenbart sie ein spezifisch-juristisches Formelement, die Dezision, in absoluter Reinheit. In seiner absoluten Gestalt ist der Ausnahmefall dann eingetreten, wenn erst die Situation geschaffen werden muß, in der Rechtssätze gelten können.« (Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie. Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 51990, p. 19). However, Wieland comes close to advocating a non-secularized political theology in his essay, »Über das göttliche Recht der Obrigkeit« (1777), where he claims that the sovereign is simply the regent or group who seizes power, because the strongest is always the one who is capable of fulfi lling any

political sovereign’s exercise of power. This gesture of parody unleashes an infinite regress of normativity to the point of evacuating all normative claims; the narrator is thus left in command of the mere force of critique. Wieland’s parodic narrators and narrative technique are in this sense »cosmopolitan« in Wieland’s parlance. Although narrative sovereignty, and hence the poet’s legitimacy, may come at the price of political sovereignty for the poet, Wieland does not regard poetry as autonomous. In an essay from 1773, »Über Nationalpoesie,« Wieland both aligns poetry with cosmopolitanism and identifies a social function for poetry. Arguing against an isolationist celebration of national identity, Wieland posits a dialectical relation between national and world culture: Je ungeselliger ein Volk ist; je mehr es, wie die alten Egyptier, und noch jetzt die Chineser und Japaner, für sich selbst und von allen andern abgeschnitten lebt: je besser erhält es sich freylich in seinem National-Charakter; aber desto unvollkommner bleibt auch sein National-Zustand.61

A nation is more developed the more contact it has to others, which necessarily involves a process of cultural exchange across borders. Thus, Wieland sees no reason for contemporary German poets to work on exclusively »Germanic« material, but rather to contribute in their own ways to the canon of world literature.62 Literary experimentation has a social function, moreover, for poetry’s task is to »embellish« and »ennoble« human nature: Der Dichtkunst wahre Bestimmung ist die Verschönerung und Veredlung der menschlichen Natur; und wenn sie auf diesen grossen Zweck in Vereinigung mit der Philosophie und mit ihren andern Schwester-Künsten, den bildenden sowohl als den musicalischen arbeitete, wer kan die Grenzen des wohl-thätigen Einflusses ziehen, den sie auf die menschliche Gesellschaft haben könnte? Aber damit sie diesen Zweck erreiche, muß sie sich über die blosse Nachahmung der individuellen Natur, über die engen Begriffe einzelner Gesellschaften, über die unvollkommnen Modelle einzelner Kunstwerke er-

61 62

given function. On the aesthetic and anthropological presuppositions of this statement, see Jaumann’s article: Jaumann, »Politische Vernunft, anthropologischer Vorbehalt, dichterische Fiktion.« Christoph Martin Wieland, Ausgewählte Prosa aus dem Teutschen Merkur, ed. by Hans Werner Seiffert, Schiller-Nationalmuseum, Marbach 1963, p 19. As Irmtraut Sahmland concludes regarding Wieland’s cosmopolitanism: »Ausgehend von seiner Prämisse, daß mit zunehmender Aufklärung nationale Schranken überwunden werden und die Kultur auf eine ›internationale‹, also kosmopolitische Ebene ausgerichtet sein müsse, lehnt er alle Bemühungen ab, betont nationale Elemente in die Dichtung einzubringen. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist die Kritik am ›Barden-Unwesen‹ zu verstehen, aber auch seine distanzierte Einstellung gegenüber den Forderungen nach deutschen Originalwerken, mit denen insbesondere auch das Postulat verbunden ist, deutsche Verhältnisse in der Literatur darzustellen, einheimische Sitten zu schildern, etc.« (Irmtraut Sahmland, Christoph Martin Wieland und die deutsche Nation. Zwischen Patriotismus, Kosmopolitismus und Griechentum, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1990, p. 366).

141

heben, aus den gesammelten Zügen des über die ganze Natur ausgegossenen Schönen sich ideale Formen bilden, und aus diesen die Urbilder zusammen setzen, nach denen sie arbeitet.63

Poetry, in collaboration with philosophy and the fine arts, could fulfill a valuable social function, when executed properly. Precisely what the »improvement« and »embellishment« of human nature entails remains vague here, but if we consider the function of Wieland’s poetics within the construction of an epic imaginary – that is, in combination with the verse epics and political writings – poetry goes hand in hand with the cosmopolitan ideal of cultivating »das Volk« through a form of aesthetic education. However, as we have seen, this project gains sovereign purchase as a parodic mode of narration through its renunciation of political power, although, indirectly, the ideal sovereign would learn from the poet, and hence act accordingly. Poetry decides whom, how, and when to parody on behalf of the »ennoblement« of human nature. I thus conclude with a caveat for interpretations of the epic imaginary in a parodic mode: that we be skeptical of celebrations of parody, for as the case of Wieland shows, parody and mockery, playful or not, can become a powerful tool of both narrative and political sovereignty. In the end, literature’s task after the unpredictable public’s entrance onto the political stage – as part of the performance – converges with the activities of a Versammeln that in fact is reiterated by Wieland’s own discordant metaphor of a »zusammengetztes Urbild« in the above passage. If aesthetic education entails the re-inscription of its own interferences through »Verschönerung« in order to bring the imagined public onto the stage, then the entire »Volk« (composed as an »Urbild«) could only ever appear as a versammeltes »vielzüngiges Thier« on stage.

Irregularity in Wieland’s Humanism: Oberon Beyond Parody Bearing these criticisms of Wieland’s narrative style in mind with respect to his political, educational, and poetic ambitions, I suggest that an alternative humanist narration can be found in Oberon. Following Lotman, I have mentioned that internal irregularity marks Wieland’s semiospheric humanism. Oberon’s narration demonstrates a semiotic irregularity, in Lotman’s sense, when compared with the other verse epics and the political editorials, and it is here, I argue, that we find a more flexible epic imaginary that uses narrative technique to represent more sympathetically the complex interaction of inner emotion and outer action of its characters. This humanist poetics of what can be termed an embodied subjectivity arises at a moment in Wieland’s writing when he abandons the distanced, narrative meta-critique characteristic of his self-reflective novels, in favor of a versification

63

142

Wieland, »Über Nationalpoesie,« p. 19.

borrowed from Ariosto’s form of romance narrative that challenge the modeling function of parody. Two stanzas in the last canto depict a joust organized by Kaiser Karl, in which the rhythm and structure of the epic periods create an experience of the inner emotional states of the characters, the dynamics of their actions, and their embededness within social relations. Rather than anchoring meta-critique in irony, as Herbert Jaumann has argued with reference to Wieland’s political writings, the narrative technique in Oberon strives to forge linkages between reader, narrated, and narrator.64 In this respect, I agree with Jaumann’s statement regarding Wieland’s political writings: »Die eigentliche Sphäre der Metakritik des Politischen ist die ästhetische Erfahrung der konkreten Subjektivität«65; however, in the particular case of Oberon, this aesthetic experience arises from a counter-mode of narration that emphasizes an embodied humanism – in which abstract values find expression as both psychological states and physical action within the depicted social environment – which the rhythm and rhyme of the verse attempt to create and enact. The two examples from the joust scene are exemplary, not exceptional, instances of the narrative technique in Oberon. First: Auf, waffne mich, ruft Hüon voller Freuden; Willkommner konnte mir kein’ andre Botschaft seyn. Was die Geburt mir gab, sey nun durch Tugend mein! Verdien’ ich’s nicht, so mag’s der Kaiser dem bescheiden Der’s würdig ist! – Er sagt’s, und siehet Rezia Ihm lächelnd stillen Beyfall nicken. Ihr Busen klopft ihm Sieg! – In wenig Augenblicken Steht glänzend schon ihr Held in voller Rüstung da. (XII, 82)

The stanza begins with Hüon’s excited call to arms, but his excitement is initially contained by the commas, semicolon, and period; however, the enjambment and assonance maintain an upbeat pace. From the third line on, the exclamation marks, parataxis, enjambment, and dashes enable the verse to move quickly.66 In the fifth and sixth lines, Rezia’s »quiet nod of approval« provides a backdrop which contrasts 64

65 66

This almost results in a paradox in which the conscious artifice of the verse creates greater empathy, or at least models a potential identification among events, figures and audience. My argument thus takes issue with Hannelore Schlaffer’s claim that »der Vers aber schafft eine bewusste Künstlichkeit, die eine hinreichende Distanz garantiert: zu den Ereignissen, den Philosophien und Theorien, die in der Verserzählung untergebracht worden sind.« (Schlaffer, »Poesie und Prosa,« p. 157). Jaumann, »Politische Vernunft,« p. 475. The dynamism of the verse controls the tempo of the narrative progression as well by introducing variation. Hofmann argues that this technique displays continuity with the parodic verse epics: »Wieland [vermeidet] noch im Oberon jedes monotone Fortschreiten und den Text durch Enjambements, durch die wechselnde Zahl der Versfüße und durch betonende Wortstellungen auflockert.« (Hofmann, Reine Seele und komische Ritter, p. 76).

143

with Hüon’s excitement at the opportunity to demonstrate his virtue, a normatively coded form of activity that depends in large part on Rezia’s recognition of it. Her recognition of Hüon’s virtue – expressed externally as a nod, and by definition requiring social conferral – is experienced by Rezia/Amanda subjectively as her beating heart. His triumph, then, is inextricable from her participation in the event. Her quiet approval supplies the necessary background for Hüon’s display of virtue – which, by the way, is also bolstered within the narrative temporality (Hüon’s perception takes primacy over her recognition in the narrative sequence). In the statement, »Was die Geburt mir gab, sey nun durch Tugend mein!,« the verse constructs a contrast between the rigidity of aristocratic privilege and the dynamic action of the protagonist. His fiery action, emphasized by the aid of the vowels and exclamation mark in creating a fast verse, »sey nun durch Tugend mein!,« explodes the rigidity of aristocratic privilege. We are told that Hüon’s deeds will show that he deserves what is his by right. His eagerness to display his virtue is confirmed in the last two lines, as he almost instantly re-appears fully armored and prepared to joust (– only subsequently do we learn that he has even left the scene). A few stanzas later, Hüon prepares for the joust: Er wiegt und wählt aus einem Haufen Speere Sich den, der ihm die meiste Schwere Zu haben scheint, schwingt ihn mit leichter Hand, Und stellt, voll Zuversicht, sich nun an seinen Stand. Wie klopft Amandens Herz! Wie feurige Gebete Schickt sie zu Oberon und allen Engeln ab, Als itzt die schmetternde Trompete Den Ungeduldigen zum Rennen Urlaub gab! (XII, 86)

The vocabulary, exclamation marks, and enjambment create, on the one hand, an effect of excitement and movement, while the use of caesura, punctuated by commas and a period, on the other hand, halts the movement, most noticeably in the second verse, when he picks up the heaviest sword, and, in the fourth verse, when he mounts his horse. This pause in the verse mirrors Hüon’s own act of assuming an indomitable pose atop his horse, an image which itself concretizes the concept of »confidence (Zuversicht).« In his reflections on poetics, Wieland describes »Einbildungskraft« as the ability to invent forms which embody the spiritual and elevate the material to the spiritual,67 as this representation of Hüon embodying »confidence« illustrates. In the next lines, the tempo increases, as Rezia/Amanda’s inner emotional state is reflected in the verse’s metrical movement: the tempo of the verse reflects her »fiery prayers« and quickly beating heart. Furthermore, her emotional state is bound up

67

144

Wolfgang Preisendanz argues this point in reference to Wieland’s »Briefe an einen jungen Dichter« (1782). (Preisendanz, »Die Kunst der Darstellung in Wielands Oberon,« p. 243).

with the action of the joust. Her emotional state, her perspective of the event, forms the foreground of the narrative discourse: her beating heart and fiery prayers take priority – in the narration – over the event that actually causes this emotional state, the »blaring trumpets.« This act of foregrounding reflects, as Wolfgang Preisendanz has shown, how Wieland’s mastery of the epic period orders temporal relationality to emphasize the meaningful connections within a symbol, rather than to merely report empirically each causal sequence.68 Moreover, the verse seeks to depict the interconnectedness between the inner states of the characters to the events unfolding and to others experiencing those events in a manner that transports the reader to the scene of action: Amanda’s beating heart, and the participants in the joust – the narrator refers to them as »die Ungeduldigen« – all display an impatience, depicted through the dialectics of movement and repose within the verse, which connects inner human states to the events unfolding as well as each of the participants to one another.69 In Oberon we thus find a counter-tendency to the parodic mode of narration otherwise so prevalent in Wieland’s humanism. Finally, this type of irregularity in the semiosphere offers a humanist narration that abandons playful distance to treat more earnestly the human experience as its subject matter. The narrative procedures create an aesthetically-reflected anthropology that portrays human subjectivity as situated bodies constituted through ideas and emotions, and always in relation to one another. Yet in Wieland’s Oberon we encounter a complicated relationship between form and content, for Wieland’s texts are caught here between a poetics of embodied subjectivity and the simultaneous creation and rejection of the multitude, due to a normative coding of individual or collective unity as threatened by the crowd. To present its Christian or Enlightenment ideal of a pure love and morality that is not subordinate to natural forces, the Muslim characters in Oberon are vilified in the narrative as representing sexual lecherousness and cruelty, with the effect, as W. Daniel Wilson argues, »daß die alten Vorurteile gegen den Islam und sogar ein christlicher Heilsplan dem Gedicht zugrundeliegen.«70 Taking issue with Wilson’s univocal identification of the epic’s moral message with Christianity, Michael Hofmann argues that Oberon narrates Enlightenment self-enlightenment, posed as a question of how to judge fallible human behavior, which ultimately places poetic construction in the service of a critical didacticism.71 In the process: »Die komische Reflexion [der früheren Versepen (C. P.)] erfährt im Oberon eine poeti-

68 69

70 71

Preisendanz, »Die Kunst der Darstellung in Wielands Oberon,« p. 251. On Wieland’s poetics of movement and repose, see: Laura Auteri, Stille und Bewegung. Zur dichterischen Form bei Wieland, Verlag Hans Dieter Heinz, Stuttgart 1998. The analysis of these two stanzas is mine, but I draw heavily on her insights and poetic analysis. Wilson, Humanität und Kreuzzugsideologie um 1780, p. 42–43. »Nicht ein engstirniger Moralismus, sondern eine Position, welche die menschliche Schwäche berücksichtigt und psychologische Konstellationen ernst nimmt, wird als

145

sche Aufhebung, indem die kritische Analyse menschlichen Verhaltens durch eine symbolische Darstellung eines erfüllten Ideals ergänzt wird. An die Stelle der Desillusionierung tritt die hypothetische Veranschaulichung eines vorbildlichen Zustandes.« The symbolic construction of an ideal of pure love is accomplished, Hofmann argues, at the expense of the »heathens« who come to represent unsublimated sensuality – namely, »Lüsternheit« and »Grausamkeit.«72 However, both Wilson’s and Hofmann’s studies neglect the function of the rhythm and rhyme of the verse in creating the Muslim, Christian, or individually human figures. If we compare the poetic representations of the Muslim characters with the depictions of the two major characters, Hüon and Rezia/Amanda, we find the same degree of depiction of social relationality intertwined with the subjective experience of inner states and external actions, narrated through the dialectics of movement and repose within the verse, as we find in the depictions of the »Christian« or »Western« protagonists. The difference resides in the semantic values assigned to their actions and emotions. The character traits and behavior of the sultan and his wife are thus consistent with the portrayal of them as slave-holding tyrants. For instance, the verse below underscores the representation of the supposed lechery and cruelty of the sultan’s wife in Tunis, Almansaris. Against Hüon’s »resistance,« »fidelity,« and »courage« – abstractions which are all embodied by the slowness of the second, third, and fourth lines that the caesurae punctuated by the commas and period create – the anaphora in the fifth verse mobilizes a quicklypaced rhythm to list Almansaris’ behavior as arousing, threatening, and entreating. She can only fall to the ground in desperation, a passionate act that the enjambment between the fifth and sixth verses and the assonance in the sixth verse accentuate. The comma after »Schmerz« temporarily halts the quick rhythm, as if to drive the pain home, but is then quickly released as she falls to Hüon’s knee, only to be once again rejected by the »doch« of his indomitable »fester Sinn.« Almansaris, aufs äußerste getrieben Durch seinen Widerstand, sie wendet alles an, Was seine Treu’ durch alle Stufen üben Und seinen Muth ermüden kann. Sie reitzt, sie droht, sie fleht, sie fällt, verloren In Lieb’ und Schmerz, vor ihm auf ihre Kniee hin: Doch unbeweglich bleibt des Helden fester Sinn, Und rein und Treu’, die er Amanden zugeschworen. (XII, 37)

The next canto describes Almansaris’ angry response: So stirb denn, weil du willst! – ruft sie, des Athems schier Vor Wuth beraubt: ich selbst, ich will and deinem Leiden

72

146

adäquate Einstellung einer über sich selbst aufgeklärten Aufklärung exponiert.« (Hofmann, Reine Seele und komische Ritter, p. 303). Hofmann, Reine Seelen und komische Ritter, p. 314, and 341.

Mein gierig Aug’ mit heißer Wollust weiden! Stirb als ein Thor! des Starrsinns Opferthier! Schreyt sie mit funkelndem Aug’, und flucht der ersten Stunde Da sie ihn sah, verwünscht mit bebendem Munde Sich selbst, und stürmt hinweg, und hinter ihr Schließt wieder klirrend sich des Kerkers Eisenthür. (XII, 38)

Almansaris responds to Hüons rejection with a rash animosity, which the vocabulary, enjambment, alliteration, and use of dash and exclamation points accentuate. She repeatedly – and angrily (»Vor Wuth beraubt«) – screams to him that he will die. The assonance and consonance through which the verse illustrates her as having a »trembling mouth« reflects the trembling of both her emotional state and the rhythm of the verse. Her image in this scene, staring angrily at Hüon with a trembling mouth, is an outward expression of her inner emotional state that is tied to the rhythmic flow of the verse. The quick movement of the verse represents her fierce anger and death command as mercurial, physical expressions of her inner emotional state. Thus, the same narrative techniques anchored in the rhythm of the verse in the depiction of the Muslim Almansaris are at work that are used to portray Hüon and Rezia/Amanda. If we consider the depiction of the earlier scenes in which Hüon encounters the Muslims in Baghdad, we again find the same poetic techniques employed to describe the other characters. The sultan of Baghdad, Rezia/Amanda’s father, is understandably angry at Hüon’s intrusion upon the wedding ceremony and demands for the sultan’s teeth, beard and conversion to Christianity in the name of Kaiser Karl. His anger, moreover, is equally conveyed as the physical embodiment – through a verse constructed out of the dialectics of movement and repose – of his emotional state, intertwined with both Hüon’s intrusive act and demand, and the angered response of his fellow Muslims (described here as »heathens«) in the room. So fängt der alte Schach wie ein Beseßner an Zu schrey’n, zu stampfen und zu pochen, Und sein Verstand tritt gänzlich aus der Bahn. Die Heiden all’ in tolem Eifer springen Von ihren Sitzen auf mit Schnauben und mit Dräun, Und Lanzen, Säbel, Dolche dringen Auf Mahoms Feind von allen Seiten ein. (V, 64)

Similar to the verses analyzed above, this verse creates a kinetic atmosphere to parallel the action sequence. Such frenzied action is narrated with the use of enjambment, anaphora (»Zu schrey’n, zu stampfen und zu pochen,«), rhyme (»Verstand« and »Bahn«), assonance (»Heiden« and »Eifer«; »Auf Mohams Feind von allen Seiten ein«) and alliteration (»Dolche dringen«). Rezia’s father, the sultan, is thus no exception to the poetic rule governing the verse narrative. This does not prevent his actions and inner states, however, from being assigned a negative semantic value connoting irrational, cruel, and lecherous character traits. In short, the traits identified with these figures are presented as barbaric qualities that need to be overcome 147

by a moral human being. The semantic contrast is immediately apparent in the description of »der jugendliche Held« Hüon invading the sultan’s wedding party, as »an Kraft und Schönheit einem Boten/Des Himmels gleich,« who »So mannhaft spricht, so muthig dar sich stellt« (V, 63). A mode of representation that includes both Christian and Muslim figures contains an impulse toward formal integration of all figures within the narrative space. And yet formal integration into the language of the verse conspires with an imperial world view within the epic imaginary that dictates that all representation conforms to the language of the victors. The result is that the particular verse of Oberon reaffirms the programmatic function of the epic genre as an agent of cultural and political unity in the service of legitimating political power. Here the verse becomes an accomplice of the unifying forces of national language and culture. What Bakhtin describes as the »incorporation of barbarians and lower social strata into a unitary language of culture and truth,« unfolds within Wieland’s Oberon as the attempt to disarm polyphonic elements by designating their semantic value within the epic imaginary.73 In the scene above, the Christian knight wins both the battle against the Muslim barbarians with the help of the fairy Oberon and the heart of the sultan’s daughter Rezia by virtue of his good looks and bravery. Consideration of the verse hence introduces yet another dimension to Wilson’s statement about the Orientalist prejudices of Oberon: »Die Vertreter der moslemischen Welt [werden] nicht als Menschen behandelt, sondern als Typen, sogar als Objekte. […] Andererseits aber hat das moslemische ›Kostüm‹ hier auch den Effekt der Entindividualisierung, sogar die Entmenschlichung: Die Moslems werden sämtlich als Ungeheur gesehen.«74 The Muslim figures are not so monstrous as to be denied the same form of embodied subjectivity, represented through the dialectics of movement and repose within the verse, as that which is granted the individualized characters in Oberon. This, finally, is the interruptive narrative tendency I have described as the (non-parodic) irregularity within Wieland’s parodic humanism, an interruption that disturbs the finesse of a narrator digressing in the name of reason, but that does not allow for the interferences of polyphony.

73

74

148

Michail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. by Michael Holquist, trans. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, University of Texas Press, Austin 1981, p. 271. A study which considers Bakhtin’s notion of the fate of »heteroglossia« in the history of linguistics and poetic discourse with reference to his reflections on the differences between the genres of epic and novel, to then thoughtfully contrast Bakhtin’s account with Franco Moretti’s idosyncratic one in Modern Epic, is: Simon Dentith, Epic and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York 2006, p. 115–126. Wilson, Humanität und Kreuzzugsideologie um 1780, p. 43. A thorough study of Orientalism in German-language literature and culture of the nineteenth century is: Polaschegg, Der andere Orientalismus.

The particular relation between the characters is striking in the wedding scene in Baghdad, and Wilson is right that we find an effect of de-individuation. As soon as the sultan loses control of his reason – »Und sein Verstand tritt gänzlich aus der Bahn« – the heathens form a threatening mob of lances, sables, and daggers bent on killing the foe of their religion and kingdom. This image of enthusiastic, bloodthirsty Muslims losing control of reason and forming a violent mob is later echoed in Wieland’s portrayal, in the »Ausführliche Darstellung,« of the Revolutionary mob whose lack of reason sways the decisions in the French National Convention. In this scene, we thus find the construction of a border separating individuated – yet always socially embedded – rational characters and a violent mob, which is then construed as a difference between Christians and Muslims. On the one hand, Wieland’s Oberon deploys an innovative form of narration that seeks to portray embodied subjectivity as a complex interaction of singular affect and outer action within social relations. This is Wieland’s crowning achievement among eighteenth-century efforts to narrate personal ties among members of a community. On the other hand, here as in other writings, the multitude persists as a political, moral, and poetic problem for the narrative techniques of Wieland’s epic imaginary, and the text runs into particular trouble once this internal, mutually generative difference between moral individual and »Menge« is figured as a comparison between »Völker« or cultures, that is to say, between the allegedly different moral systems of Christians and Muslims. Except for Rezia-Amanda, the Muslim characters are not even offered the chance to be cultivated, even if it is the verse technique itself that makes these discrepancies among characters legible within the empire of this particular epic imaginary. The construction of a border between Christians and Muslims contradicts the romantic ideal of the story, or, formulated the other way around, the ideal of pure love derives from the construction of semiotic borders. The relationship between Hüon and Rezia/Amanda offers a model of an ideal love whose lasting fidelity transcends mere sensuality. This ideal love is depicted at the end of the fifth canto as »limitless«: Allmählich wiegt die Wonnetrunkenheit Das volle Herz in zauberischen Schlummer; Die Augen sinken zu, die Sinne werden Stummer, Die Seele dünkt vom Leibe sich befreyt, In Ein Gefühl beschränkt, so fest von ihm umschlungen! So inniglich von ihm durchathmet und durchdrungen! Beschränkt in Eins, in diesem Einen bloß Sich fühlend – Aber, o dieß Eins, wie grenzenlos! (V, 86)

The establishment and transgression of borders constitute the plot of Oberon. Jurij Lotman defines the process by which events become a plot as the crossing of a semiotic border by a character within the story: »The essence of plot lies in selecting the events, which are the discrete units of plot, then giving them meaning and a 149

temporal or causal or some other ordering.«75 A character is either mobile or immobile depending upon whether he or she is capable of crossing the semantic frontiers within a text. Hüon is undeniably a mobile protagonist in the narrative, for Hüon leaves the familiar life at court to travel to Baghdad, a passage that thereby marks the crossing of a semantic field. His love for the sultan’s daughter and her removal from her family, groom, and religion mark other significant transgressions of semiotic borders. As the change of name over the course of the narrative denotes, Rezia/Amanda, becomes a protagonist by choosing to leave her milieu and convert to Christianity. In fact, Oberon’s plot consists of a series of border crossings. Hüon and Rezia/Amanda jump from a ship and live an idyllic bourgeois life for a while on an island; later, they must leave the island and enter the environs of the sultan and his wife in Tunis; on their way from Tunis to Paris, they even cross worlds and enter as guests the utopian palace of Oberon and Titania. The two constantly prove that they are capable of overcoming limits and thus help to propel the narrative forward by constituting events, whereas the Muslim characters are mere functions of the plot-space.76 Whether mobile or immobile, all characters participate in the movement within and across the verses of Oberon as these verses seek a humanist depiction of the relationships between internal states and external events, whereas on the level of creating linkages among these events through semantic interpretations, this is also a humanism whose semiotic axes create a border between Christianity and Islam, and Europeans and Turks. In the manner of Enlightenment autocritique, the text’s moral paradigm – the reconciliation of an apparent struggle between »Sittlichkeit« and »Sinnlichkeit« – must negotiate a process of inclusion and exclusion, according to which the definition of Wieland’s humanism within the epic imaginary – as seemingly »limitless« – requires the invention of an external culture, nation, or religion marked as cruel and lecherous, from which it can delineate itself. The dynamics of this particular humanist vision are predicated upon mechanisms of exclusion as well as upon ossified articulations of the semantics of such imaginary entities as the »foreign« and the »familiar.« By equally distributing narrative form among the

75

76

150

Such is Jurij Lotman’s definition of plot in: J. Lotman, Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture, introduction by Umberto Eco, trans. by Ann Shukman, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis 2000, p. 170. That definition expands into a cognitive principle his early definition of a strictly literary event: »Ein Ereignis im Text ist die Versetzung einer Figur über die Grenze eines semantischen Feldes.« (J. Lotman, Die Struktur literarischer Texte, trans. by Rolf-Dietrich Keil, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 4 1993, p. 332). Lotman lists three indispensable elements of a plot: »1. ein bestimmtes semantisches Feld, das in zwei sich ergänzende Teilmengen gegliedert ist; 2. eine Grenze zwischen diesen Teilen, die unter normalen Umständen unüberschreitbar ist, sich jedoch im vorliegenden Fall (ein Sujet-Text spricht immer von dem vorliegenden Fall ) für den Helden als Handlungsträger doch als überwindbar erweist; 3. der Held als Handlungsträger.« (Lotman, Die Struktur literarischer Texte, p. 341).

characters, Wieland’s Oberon presents the crossing of borders as constitutive of human morality and social relations, and yet such movements between psychic and political realms come at the expense of those elements coded as wayward. Regardless of Wieland’s intentions, the moral vision of pure love, as the union of fidelity and sexual attraction within a couple that is able to withstand all temptation to become disloyal, is proven to be the result of processes of establishing and crossing imagined cultural, social, and geographic borders, not to mention the initial transport across time and space to a fictive world of knights and fairies announced at the opening by the narrator. The equal distribution of a dynamic verse is the precondition that enables these processes to become legible within Wieland’s non-parodic poetics of humanism; Wieland’s parodic humanism, on the other hand, centers all representation around the sovereignty of its jocular narrator, and thereby subjects all unrefined elements to mockery and potentially discredits them within its semiotic register. What might, as an alternative, a convincing hybrid of these two impulses look like, in which the dynamism of the verse were teamed up with the subversive potential of romance narrative in order to consequently undermine the sovereignty of the narrator and the cultural and political borderlines that he polices in the name of reason and virtue? Such an alternative textual model would entail the opening of a narrative space for additional perspectives and veritable polyphony that would not simply be appropriated by the narrator in singleminded pursuit of a particular cultural order or moral code.

151

Epilogue: Brentano’s Romanzen vom Rosenkranz and the Romantic Epic

The role of rhythm in verse epic and its importance for the construction of community have been recurring focal points throughout this study. For Romantic experimentation with the epic genre the song-like quality of epic verse persists as a poetic possibility, as an analysis of perhaps the most significant experiment with verse epic in the Romantic period, Brentano’s Romanzen vom Rosenkranz, will show in consideration alongside A. W. Schlegel’s reflections on the anthropology of rhythm and the invention of meter.1 Brentano’s epic approaches the aesthetic construction of community through the beauty of song with caution, suggesting that the seduction of verse can have deleterious effects on community. Brentano’s caveat comes as a surprise given his collaboration with Arnim on the collection of »Volkslieder,« Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a project that sought a return to communal roots to be found and founded in the »organic« experience of folk song. In contrast to the Volkslieder, the Romanzen vom Rosenkranz stands on the side of the Frühromantik investment in poetry as the aesthetically-reflected, counterfactual antidote to the occlusion of community in modern society. Yet Brentano’s epic turns this Romantic vision of poetic community on its head, calling into question the viability of a community organized solely around song, in order to suggest that religion provides the necessary tie that binds a community and to tell an epic story of art’s initial confrontation and eventual reconciliation with religion in the form and function of song in the service of devotional rituals of community. In both Des Knaben Wunderhorn and the Romanzen, poetic community, in a more expressly political sense, hinges on the semantic distinctions between »Pöbel,« »Menge,« and »Volk.« Yet the two projects treat these categories with varying degrees of distance. The collection of folk songs aims to stage an experience of orality that would return the »Volk« to itself through song, whereas the Romanzen presents song as an aesthetically-mediated performance on the part of the artist, on whom community is (dangerously) dependent. In her study of the organicism of Brentano’s and Arnim’s folk song collection, Ethel Matala de Mazza argues that Des Knaben Wunderhorn represents a form of

1

152

A thorough study of the genesis of Brentano’s verse epic, which situates it the within the literary history of the genre, is provided by: Dietmar Pravida, Die Erfindung des Rosenkranzes. Untersuchungen zu Clemens Brentanos Versepos, Forschungen zum Junghegelianismus vol. 13, Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 2005, p. 179–238.

political romanticism that sets itself against the Enlightenment’s mobilization of literature as a project aimed at the Bildung of the »people.«2 Arnim describes how this orientation toward anti-Bildung rejects especially the Enlightenment theater’s preoccupation with class, »die Beschränkung aller Theatererscheinungen in Klassen und für Klassen der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, die entweder ganz unfähig der Poesie oder unbestimmt in ihrem Geschmacke geworden.«3 For Arnim, in Matala de Mazza’s words, »geht es, im Gegenteil, um die Rehabilitierung jener als ›Pöbel‹ in den kulturellen Mißkredit geratenen Schicht der Geringen, die zum Ausgleich nun die Weihen eines ›besseren poetischen Theiles vom Volke‹ empfängt.«4 According to this view of the »Volk,« »[die] Nation wird zur Gefühlssache – und ihr Körper zum Resonanz-Körper einer sich im Singen und Sprechen selbst vernehmenden Natur.«5 A privileging of common affective experience is being described here as the groundstone of national community, not unlike Klopstock’s vision of the sublime nation; yet in contrast to Klopstock’s imaginary, this one is not mediated by a technical prosody designed to produce those very affects. Rather, the folk songs need merely be collected and re-presented to the people from whom they arose in the first place, a procedure that includes the inventive contribution of the editor in his function as composing poet. Arnim describes the circular logic of this process thus: »Es ist, als hätten wir lange nach der Musik etwas gesucht und fänden endlich die Musik, die uns suchte!«6 Matala de Mazza directs our attention to the key closing sentence of Arnim’s »Zweite Nachschrift an den Leser« from 1818, written on the occasion of the publishing of the second edition of the first volume of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, where Arnim explains his intention as co-editor. Arnim writes, Sucht jeder sinnige Leser, wenn ihn eins dieser Lieder innerlich berührt, alles ihn Störende hinwegzuräumen, alles hinzuzufügen, was es in ihm bildete und anregte, so hat unser Bemühen sein höchstes Ziel erreicht, und wir verschwinden unter der Menge sorgfältiger und erfindsamer Mitherausgeber des Wunderhorns.7

Arnim claims that he and Brentano »disappear« behind the many readers who would be moved by the songs collected in the volume, and that the process of returning the songs back to the very »people« who had produced them in the first place would then be completed in a simultaneity of singers, readers and listeners who would immediately be returned to themselves. Matala de Mazza concludes:

2 3 4 5 6 7

E. Matala de Mazza, Der verfaßte Körper. Zum Projekt einer organischen Gemeinschaft in der Politischen Romantik, Rombach Verlag, Freiburg im Br. 1999. Achim von Arnim, Schriften, vol. 6, ed. by Roswitha Burwick, Jürgen Knaack, and Hermann F. Weiss, DKV, Frankfurt/M. 1992, p. 170. Matala de Mazza, Der verfaßte Körper, p. 353. Matala de Mazza, Der verfaßte Körper, p. 360. Arnim, Schriften, vol. 6, p. 174. Achim von Arnim, »Zweite Nachschrift an den Leser.« In: Clemens Brentano, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, vol. 8: Des Knaben Wunderhorn, part III, ed. by Heinz Rölleke, Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln, and Mainz 1977, p. 379.

153

Von dem Unbehagen Goethes in der illiteraten Volkskultur unberührt, delegiert er daher […] auf das eigene Herausgeberprivileg willig Verzicht leistend, das künftige Schicksal der gesammelten Lieder an die Gesamtheit einer Nation, die als empfindsame Gemeinschaft »unverbildeter« Hörer zugleich eine erfindsame Herausgeberschaft singender Leser ist.8

Matala de Mazza thus finds confirmation of her overall thesis that Arnim and Brentano are invested in a productive vitalism supposedly embodied by the »Volk.« Yet I argue that Arnim’s wording in the passage above suggests even further that it is rather the productive forces of a »Menge« that are activated in the circuit of singers, readers, and listeners of the folk songs, in other words, that a second distinction is made on the level of a populace that might get organized or not. Here the »Volk« seems to exist only in the presence of a »Menge,« an uncultivated multitude. The »Volk« is neither a cultivated elite nor an indiscernible mass or multitude, but occupies a tenuous position between these two poles, which draws its life-force from both the side of the educated elite who collect and continue to create new songs and the side of its vital elements that seek expression in the first place. The point for Arnim and Brentano as co-editors of the collection of folk songs is not to create a »Volk« out of a »Menge,« to eradicate the volatility of the multitude, but rather to bring the »Volk« back to itself by re-aligning it with its vital condition of being a multitude, a vitality that certain variations of the Romantic epic imaginary seek to inscribe within an anthropology of the rhythmic quality of song.9 Two interrelated problems emerge out of this constellation: one is how to activate, isolate, and then find the correct alignment of these twin aspects of community, the organized group and the volatile multitude, through conscientious literary techniques of collection, presentation, and invention; the other problem concerns the paradoxical status of the poet in this scheme as both one singer among others and privileged custodian or instigator of the process, who must determine what degree of refinement of elementary impulses, as well as how much self-effacement on the part of the singular artist, will guarantee a harmonious community.10

8 9

10

154

Matala de Mazza, Der verfaßte Körper, p. 361. Caroline Pross argues that Brentano’s view of language and texts as essentially »dynamic,« as entailing variation in repetition whenever songs are performed in different contexts by different singers at different times, encourages a practice of transmission that allows for the participation of others and the gradual altering of texts in processes of their constitution as unending and »living« texts (Caroline Pross, »Texte in Bewegung. Zur Typologie intertextuellen Schreibens in der Romantik: Clemens Brentano, Wien 1813/14.« In: Gabe, Tausch, Verwandlung. Übertragungsökonomien im Werk Clemens Brentanos, ed. by Ulrike Landfester and Ralf Simon, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2009, p. 109–126). For a discussion of Brentano’s approach to intertextuality with specfic reference to his work on folksongs with Arnim and in conjunction with Herder’s view of language and popular song, see p. 109–117. Hartwig Schultz argues that Brentano and Arnim develop a »tone of artistic naiveté« in the simple verse form of the folks song to strike the correct balance between these

It is to A. W. Schlegel’s elaboration of an anthropological origin of song that I now turn, in order to afterwards trace the links between these reflections and the invention of Romantic epic. The invention of Romantic epic signals a shift away from the view within the eighteenth-century epic imaginary which treats epics as narrating foundational myths of a community to the search for the mythological foundations of epic poetry in nature and history. As we will see when we then consider Brentano’s verse epic in conjunction with A. W. Schlegel’s speculative anthropology of rhythm as a fundament of the invention of Romantic epic, the activation of community through song is regarded however as threatening to perpetuate an original sin and hence as ultimately requiring divine intervention and appropriate forms of religious observance.

A. W. Schlegel’s Anthropology of Poetry: Or, the Birth of Meter out of the Nature of Rhythm An early text of aesthetic theory by August Wilhelm Schlegel, which was published in Schiller’s Horen in 1795 with the title Briefe über Poesie, Silbenmaß und Sprache, ventures an explanation for the origins of poetic meter. A. W. Schlegel’s account of the emergence of poetic meter hinges upon the assertion that meter is constitutive of poetry itself (Poesie), and not merely its ornamental addition, a relationship which he describes as familial: »Überall finden wir die Poesie vom Silbenmaß begleitet, damit verschwistert, davon unzertrennlich.«11 To account for this organic or hereditary claim for meter Schlegel postulates an entire set of assumptions about poetry and anthropology, as well as their interrelations, but most importantly he theorizes the invention of meter out of the triadic unity of poetry, music, and dance: »In ihrem Ursprunge macht Poesie mit Musik und Tanz ein unteilbares Ganzes aus« (145). For it is out of this triadic constellation that rhythm emerges as an anthropological constant:

11

competing impulses: »Die Entscheidung für die schlichte Form, die ein ›Einsingen‹ des natürlichen Satzrhythmus in das Metrum erlaubt – wie Herder es verlangt hatte – und also die deutsche Sprache nicht verfremden wie etwa die Odenformen Klopstocks oder die Xenien der Klassiker, war ebenso folgenreich für die Entwicklung der deutschen Lyrik wie die Art der Quellenverarbeitung. Brentano und Arnim ›kontaminieren‹ und konstruieren, sie erzeugen eine künstliche Patina und haben keine Skrupel, Altes und Neues in einem artifiziellen Kunstwerk zu verschmelzen, das simpel und naiv scheint.« (H. Schultz, »Von Jena nach Heidelberg. Die Entfaltung von Brentanos Poetik.« In: Clemens Brentano. 1778–1842. Zum 150. Todestag, ed. by Hartwig Schultz, Peter Lang, Bern 1993, p. 11–30, here: p. 23–24). August Wilhelm Schlegel, Briefe über Poesie, Silbenmaß und Sprache. In: Schlegel, Kritische Schriften und Briefe. vol. 1: Sprache und Poetik, ed. by Edgar Lohner, Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1962, p. 141–180, here: p. 143. Henceforth cited parenthetically.

155

Hieraus folgt unleugbar, daß der rhythmische Gang der Poesie dem Menschen nicht weniger natürlich ist als sie selbst. Beides ist keine überlieferte Erfindung, sondern ebenso einheimisch in den erstarrten Wüsten längs dem Eismeere wie auf den liebelichen Südseeinseln; am Ontario wie am Ganges. Überall, wo nur Menschen atmeten und lebten, empfangen und sprachen, da dichteten und sangen sie auch. Dies bezeugt die älteste Sage der Vorwelt, die selbst nur durch den Mund der Poesie zu uns redet; die Beobachtung ungebildeter roher Völker legt es uns täglich vor Augen. (144–145)

The fact that only poetry can bear witness to this anthropological origin of rhythm is a key feature of Schlegel’s argument, which I will analyze in greater detail below, but first Schlegel’s account of rhythm requires further elaboration. Schlegel’s argument consists of three parts. He argues first that rhythm is constitutive of poetry (»Poesie [tritt] überall und zu allen Zeiten in irgendeiner gemessenen Bewegung auf«); in a second step, that rhythm is an anthropological constant rooted in human nature (»Dies muß, wie jede durchaus allgemeine Sitte, seinen Grund in der menschlichen Natur haben, dem man am leichtesten im Ursprunge derselben nachspüren kann«); and thirdly, that »Poesie entstand gemeinschaftlich mit Musik und Tanz,« and that meter »war das sinnliche Band ihrer Vereinigung mit diesen verschwisterten Künsten« (148).12 The quest for the origins of meter here reads at first glance like a history of the Fall, but alters the expected narrative course. According to Schlegel’s conjectural historical sketch, the original triadic unity of poetry, music, and dance was disbanded by the progressive isolation of reason from the art of combination – which Schlegel considers the ultimate vocation of poetry itself – until reason ultimately prevailed in the process of specialization as ordering principle, as principle of ordering according to concepts, over the sensual and expressive signification of things in their immediacy. The ascendancy of reason came at the price of those practices of combination which could not be assigned to conceptual referents. Although all other forms of connectivity were henceforth either denied existence or relegated to the realm of the mysterious, Schlegel argues, their effects cannot be denied only because they are felt instead of understood by us (145). Schlegel’s imagined unity of the arts implies a semiotic »utopia« in which the power of language resides »im notwendigen Zusammenhange zwischen den Zeichen der Mitteilung und dem Bezeichneten« (145).13 According to this semiotic utopia, language forms a self-ref-

12

13

156

This notion apparently has a long shelf-life. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s recent arguments for »Stimmung« as a category of literary study and description of the experience of reading seem to confirm the view that prosody is the »sinnliches Band« to which Schlegel refers (H. U. Gumbrecht, Stimmungen Lesen. Über eine verdeckte Wirklichkeit der Literatur, Carl Hanser Verlag, München 2011). On the semiotic utopia of linguistic authenticity in Schlegel’s essay, see: Susanne Holmes, Synthesis der Vielheit. Die Begründung der Gattungstheorie bei August Wilhelm Schlegel, Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn, München, Wien, and Zürich 2006, p. 66. As well as: Georg Braungart, »Die Lyriktheorie August Wilhelm Schlegels.« In: Akten des X. Internationalen Germanistenkongresses Wien 2000. Zeitenwende –

erential circuit between the human being and the natural order out of which the human arises and of which it is inextricably a part. Language is »die wunderbarste Schöpfung des menschlichen Dichtungsvermögens, gleichsam das große, nie vollendete Gedicht, worin die menschliche Natur sich selbst darstellt« (145). It is both the creation of the human capacity for poetry and the archive of human nature through which the human being represents its history as continual natural history. The term natural history is not Schlegel’s but mine, and is not to be taken in what follows in a strictly technical sense (if it is even possible to speak of an agreed upon technical definition of the term, for the meaning of the term has always been highly contentious). Developing what I call a type of conjectural anthropology of rhythm and meter, Schlegel attempts to account for the organic rise of human imitation out of the natural environment. Human freedom is posited as an effect of nature, and the transition from the given-ness of nature to human community is situated at the analytic juncture of speculation about anthropological origins and the observation of natural phenomena.14 Poetic language retains the capacity to express the »lebendige Fülle der Töne« that derives from the »grenzlose Mannigfaltigkeit der Natur« (145), the sensual nature of the human, and his or her »angeborener Trieb, anderen von seinem innersten Dasein Zeugnis zu geben, und es dadurch in ihnen zu vervielfältigen« (146). The communication of these sensations is as essential to human nature as the ability to experience the manifold stimuli of the natural world. Poetry is poetry and »nicht bloß Übung des Verstandes« whenever it re-activates this original connection to music and dance and thus continues the project: »die Sprache durch eine höhere Vollendung zu ihrer ursprünglichen Kraft zurükzuführen und Zeichen der Verabredung durch die Art des Gebrauches beinah in natürliche und an sich bedeutende Zeichen umzuschaffen« (148). In short: meter is at once the trace of and ongoing quest for a recovery of poetic beauty. The rise of meter is intertwined with an imagined origin of language. The whimper of an infant, the groan of a dying man, sad facial expressions, as well as the lively delivery of a speech through variations in tone and the use of gestures attest to the fact that »der Mensch ebensowohl für seine Empfindungen als für seine Gedanken Zeichen der Mitteilung hat« (151–152), which run the gamut of speech acts from a scream to a song (154–155). Such signifiers express both reactions to the sensations of the outer world and the inner states of the one expressing them, and

14

Die Germanistik auf dem Weg vom 20. ins 21. Jahrhundert, ed. by Peter Wiesinger, vol. 6, Peter Lang Verlag, Bern a. o. 2002, p. 191–199. Natural history as I use the term here thus includes temporal and spatial dimensions within an organicist account of culture. On the intrusion of historical perspective within spatial systems of classification in eighteenth-century discourses of natural history and the history of nature, see: Wolf Lepenies, Das Ende der Naturgeschichte. Wandel kultureller Selbstverständlichkeiten in den Wissenschaften des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, Carl Hanser Verlag, München and Wien 1976, p. 29–51.

157

presuppose the ability of both sender and recipient to participate in the communication of emotions (and thoughts) with the aid of empathy: [W]ohl uns, daß ein innigeres Band des Mitgefühls als der eigennützige Ideenhandel des Verstandes, das menschliche Geschlecht zu einem Ganzen verknüpft! Wir würden sonst mitten in der Gesellschaft einsam, im Leiden von aller Teilnahme verlassen, im Glücke selbst zu den toten Freuden des Egoismus verdammt sein. (152)

Sensation and expression are constitutive activities of humans as singular and social beings.15 Yet Schlegel declares previous and contemporary debates about the origin of language (whether language derives from the sounds of sensations, the imitation of objects, or out of a combination of both) to be historically unknowable. Based on his previous remarks about the internal and external traffic of signifiers of sensation within and about the human organism, he insists upon the presumption of the presence of these sensations at the origin of language and in its further stages of historical development. This might be a presence that is less empirical than imaginary, yet it is therefore no less real: Freilich läßt sich ihr Werk nicht an einzelnen Worten darlegen; auch in der ganzen Masse einer Sprache ist sie nicht sichtbar vorhanden und gleichsam mit Händen zu greifen, ebensowenig, wie man den lebhaften Vortrag einer Rede in Schriftzüge würde auffassen können. Es ist eine geistige Gegenwart, wie die der Luft in so vielen von ihr durchdrungenen Körpern unsichtbar und belebend. (156)

The same is true for the origin of poetry. Despite the impossibility of recovering historical origins, the affiliation of poetry with music can be postulated in analogy to the dual nature of language as a system of both imagistic similarity and accentuated passions. Historisch wissen wir davon ebensowenig als von der Entstehung der Sprache. Denn, obgleich die fabelnden Sagen einzelner Völker darüber vielleicht auf manchen wirklichen Umstand in ihrer frühesten Geschichte anspielen, so sind sie doch immer an ihre besondere Szene gebunden; und das wunderbare Altertum, wohin sie alles zurückschieben, ist jung neben dem Menschengeschlechte. Die erwachsene Muse mochte sich von ihrer Kindheit einiges dunkel erinnern: wie hätte sie es von dem ersten Augenblicke ihres Daseins gekonnt? Wir müssen uns also mit den allgemeinen Aufschlüssen begnügen, die uns die Lehre vom Ursprunge der Sprache geben kann. Aus der Beschaffenheit des Bodens, woruas der erste Keim der Poesie aufsproßte, läßt sich ungefähr vermuten, wie er gediehen sein mag. War die älteste Sprache wirklich das Werk jener beiden vereinigt wirkenden Anlagen der menschlichen Natur, denen wir sie zugeschrieben haben, so war sie auch zuverlässig ganz Bild und Gleichnis, ganz Akzent der Leidenschaften. Die sinnlichen Gegenstände lebten und bewegten sich in ihr, und das Herz bewegte sich mit allen. Dies ist es, was man so oft gesagt hat und was doch nur in einem gewissen Sinne wahr ist: Poesie und Musik sei vom Anfange an dagewesen und gleichalt mit der Sprache. (157)

15

158

Susanne Holmes, Synthesis der Vielheit. Die Begründung der Gattungstheorie bei August Wilhelm Schlegel, Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn, München, Wien, and Zürich 2006, p. 66–68.

The co-constituency of language, poetry, and music explains the continuity of expressions from cries to song found in nature. Yet the problem of origin is replaced by the phylogenetic issue of trajectory. What at first glance resembles a pseudo state of nature is merely an early stage in the human development of social groups. The anthropological question is how a natural human inclination for emotive expression, coupled with an inborn capacity for empathy, transformed eventually into the phenomena enjoyed as the fine arts. Schlegel seeks an explanation for the rise of a »Gesetz der äußeren Form« to account for the transition from the primal scene of human song to the discovery and voluntary articulation of words in measured intervals of rhythm: Zwar brauchte nur einmal die Freiheit von äußeren Bedürfnissen und ungewöhnlich starke Regung der inneren Lebensfülle in einer Stunde zusammenzutreffen, so mischte sich die noch ungeübte rauhe Kehle des Menschen unter die übrigen Waldgesänge und stimmte den ersten Hymnus an. Allein wie kam eine gleichförmige Bewegung, ein Zeitmaß in seinen Gesang, oder (denn beides war ja ursprünglich eins) ein Rhythmus, sei er auch noch so unförmlich gewesen in seine Worte? Mußten sie nicht vielmehr, den augenblicklich wechselnden Antrieben gemäß, regellos hinströmen? Und wie verfiel der freie Sohn der Natur darauf, dem Ungestüm seiner Phantasie und seiner Gefühle selbst irgendeinen Zügel anzulegen? (157)

The third of the Briefe über Poesie, Silbenmaß und Sprache delves into the structural, psychological, and poetic functions of rhythm as the external form of song (poetry and music) in order to account for its invention. More than merely a principle of order, rhythm as external form exhibits the quality of »geordnete Freiheit.« As alternation of impressions through the mixture of long and short durations of tone, which can have an »Einfluß auf unser Gemüt […], es erwecken oder beruhigen« (161), rhythm names the poetic art of ordering movements into dance and tones into verse, as well as the anthropological determination of human beings as both natural and volitional – rhythm as »geordnete Freiheit« is hence a figure of the organization of humans and nature. In light of the potentially overwhelming experience of excitation on the human body, which might invoke either positive or negative feelings (»Freude oder Betrübnis«), the human being seeks words, calls, and gestures with which to externalize these intense affects in order to prevent them from harmfully turning against or exhausting the body (167). Rhythm thus emerges as a benignly self-regulating mechanism of nature – Schlegel calls it rather a »wohltätige Zaubermacht« (169) – a product of natural instinct which enables the satisfaction of a human requirement to express positive and negative passions, in order to inoculate the human organism against the potentially deleterious effects of the passions. Once discovered, this strategy for regulating the passions according to a type of pleasure principle was then adopted as a non-compulsory technique for mitigating pain and concentrating joviality that could be repeated. Deriving from primordial experiences of internal and external excitation that cause the body to respond to the soul’s demands for free expression with movements arranged into modulating intervals, song and dance are the product of the body and soul finding harmony in the »geordnete Freiheit« of rhythm. 159

Die Seele, von der Natur allein erzogen und keine Fesseln gewohnt, forderte Freiheit in ihrer äußeren Verkündigung; der Körper bedurfte, um nicht der anhaltenden Heftigkeit derselben zu unterliegen, ein Maß, worauf seine innere Einrichtung ihn fühlbar leitete. Ein geordneter Rhythmus der Bewegungen und Töne vereinigte beides, und darin lag ursprünglich seine wohltätige Zaubermacht. So wäre es denn erklärt, was uns sonst so äußerst fremd dünkt, wie etwas, das uns, die wir so vieles bedürfen, entbehrlicher Überfluß oder höchstens ein angenehmer geselliger Luxus scheint, Tanz und Gesang, für den beschränkten, einfältigen Wilden unter die ersten Notwendigkeiten des Lebens gehören kann. (169)

Rhythm as »geordnete Freiheit« encapsulates the simultaneously aesthetic and anthropological principle of interaction between body and soul, internal and external life of the human being and its natural world, which Schlegel claims generated or, in his parlance, led to the »invention« of music and movement measured in units of time (169). The trope of »orderly freedom« thereby assumes a high degree of semantic density. For it is assigned the task of designating the organic relation not only of meter to poetry, song, and dance but also of the human being to nature. Song and dance are not the sole property of humans, but do however distinguish humans from other natural creatures in degree and according to their »organization.« If all movements, including the use of voice, are either motivated by or express pleasure and pain »ganz nach inneren Gesetzen des körperlichen Baues« (170), and both humans and animals react to and seek expressions for pleasure and pain, the human being has a naturally endowed faculty with which to regulate these emotions through orderly movement. Such particularly human regulation is »die Fähigkeit, Bewegungen in gemessenen Zeiten vorzunehmen« (172), which in contrast to animals enables humans to extract emotions and expressions from the immediate sensations of a given environment and moment in order to reproduce them at a later time and in other contexts. The human »hat das Vermögen, Vorstellungen selbsttätig festzuhalten und zu erwecken« (173). This faculty for regulating movements in and through time enables humans to arrest the noxious abundance of passions (»Leidenschaften«), by which humans in a child-like state of »Wildheit« are compelled (173), in order to attain a repose of body and soul with the help of rhythm’s »geordnete Freiheit«: Die anfangs unwillkürliche und instinktmäßige Beobachtung des Zeitmaßes in ausdrückenden Bewegungen und Tönen stellte das Gleichgewicht zwischen Seele und Körper wieder her, welches durch die Übermacht wilder Gemütsbewegungen und des gleich starken Triebes, sie auszulassen, aufgehoben worden war. Hatte der Mensch diese wohltätige Wirkung erst mal erfahren, so kehrte er natürlicher Weise bei jedem neuen Anlasse zu dem zurück, was sie ihm verschafft hatte, und machte es sich zur Gewohnheit. Die geordnete Freiheit, die er in seinem Innern noch nicht kannte, mußte ihm doch in den äußeren Verkündigungen desselben gefallen: er ahnte darin entfernt seine höhere Bestimmung. Indem er sich seiner Leidenschaft ungebunden hingab, schmeichelte ihm ein gemessener Rhythmus mit einer Art von Herrschaft über sie. (174)16

16

160

For a discussion of Schiller’s influence on Schlegel’s argument in the fourth letter of the essay, see: Holmes, Synthesis der Vielheit, p. 76–77.

A complex logic is at work in Schlegel’s anthropology of rhythm, according to which rhythm is both the natural form through which the human body expresses its passions and the expression of nature’s own passion for helping the human to find forms of freedom. Through the natural expression of emotions through rhythm, human beings in turn experience pleasure in such ordered expressions – their bodies are affected and transformed by them – and thus seek to reproduce these rhythmic expressions through meter. This elusive point of transition from constraint to freedom parallels the remarkable shift from expression to imitation as a source of amusement, and hence the birth of poetry, song, and dance – as forms of mimetic art(ifice) – out of the pleasurable nature of rhythm: Das erste Aufdämmern des vorher schlafenden Triebes nach Schönheit eröffnet wieder eine ganz neue, weite Aussicht künftiger Entwicklungen der drei rhythmischen Künste. Die Seele fing an, sich im Ausdrucke ihrer Gefühle, wenigstens solcher, die nicht geradezu schmerzlich sind, zu gefallen und wiederholte ihn daher gern, auch wenn das Bedürfnis, welches sie anfangs dazu gedrungen hatte, schon gestillt war. Nun erst wurde also Tanz und Gesang als Ergötzung getrieben. Es mußte endlich dahin kommen, daß man sich durch Hilfe der Phantasie freiwillig aus einem ruhigen Zustande in lebhafte Regungen versetzte. So entstand eigentliche Dichtung; so kam Nachahmung zum Vorschein; denn alles Vorhergehende war reine, unvermischte Wahrheit gewesen. (178)

Moreover, the active transformation of emotions through their transmission in rhythm is according to Schlegel one of the pillars of human community. In light of the human capacity for expression and empathy, Schlegel argues, there must be a means for controlling the unbridled expression and sensation of emotions among a gathering of human beings. The »Chaos von Kräften« must be channeled (Schlegel indeed uses the metaphor of »wildlaufende Wasser […] in einem Strom versammelt«) into a »Stimme, die [den allgemeinen Willen] rein und vernehmlich verkündige; wenn die Eintracht einer versammelten Menge nicht mit sinnlicher Gegenwart in ihrer Mitte erscheint, so ist sie so gut als nicht vorhanden« (176). Rhythm as law of movement in song and dance supplies precisely the experience (and representation) of regulated affect that is the precondition for lawful social interaction based on the willing subordination of each individual’s passions to a common political order. Ein solches Mittel ist aber Gesang und Tanz, sobald beide durch das Zeitmaß geordnet sind, denn das wird wesentlich erfordert, wenn man nicht bacchantisch durcheinander toben soll. Dieses könnte man als die zweite Art ansehen, wie der Rhythmus, bloß als Gesetz der Bewegung betrachtet, den wilden Menschen ein wohltätiger, göttlicher Orpheus ward. Er war es, der ausdrückende Gebärden und Töne, in denen sonst nur uneingeschränkte, hartnäckige Willkür geherrscht, an ein friedliches Nebeneinandersein gewöhnte, sie zum Bande der Geselligkeit und zugleich zu ihrem schönsten Sinnbilde umschuf. (177)

Rhythm rendered into meter, the corporal formalization of expression as repetition and change and as an object of amusement, provides both a technique for the cultivation of social harmony and the harmonious representation of this form of 161

sociality. It is the embodied principle of the incorporation of a multitude of bodies into a body politic. Rhythm is no less than a technical name for the border and traffic of nature and culture. According to this conjectural anthropological scenario, nature operates as a self-regulating intermediary of the border separating nature and culture, for meter as a mimetic form of cultural expression is said to be invented by nature itself.17 Yet of course this very scenario of organic purposiveness can only be conceptualized from the side of a cultural anthropology, that is to say, from the spatio-temporal perspective of a necessarily cultural philosophy of the link between culture and nature. In short, rhythm is only accessible as meter. And yet meter’s status as both an archaic and organic institution of human life that occupies the threshold of natural and cultural history cannot even be verified by historical documentation. As Schlegel is well aware, »keine historischen Nachrichten« refer back to an empirical origin or purport to chronicle rhythm’s historical development (174), which is why the figure of Orpheus takes on such a prominent role in Schlegel’s account. Only a handful of myths attest in any respect to the organic rise of society alongside rhythm: Die Anfänge des gesitteten Lebens werden mit der Erfindung der Musik zusammengestellt; die als Götter oder Heroen verehrten Stifter beider, Osiris und Isis bei den Ägyptern, bei den Griechen vorzüglich Orpheus, sollen sich der Macht des Gesanges bedient haben, um die rohen Gemüter zu zähmen. […] Der älteste Orpheus war wohl nirgends persönlich gegenwärtig. Er wohnte überall verborgen im tierischen Menschen, und als er zum erstenmal göttlich hervortrat und das wüste Toben der Leidenschaft durch melodischen Rhythmus fesselte und zähmte, konnte kein Ohr und kein Herz seiner Zaubergewalt widerstehen. (175–176)

A case for the organic invention of meter can only be made as myth.18 Just as the Orpheus myth allegorizes the natural human fascination with rhythm, so too is 17

18

162

The origin of meter is thus conceived as an organic birth in the sense of the topical complex of art, production, and birth that crystallizes around 1800: »In diesem Sinne ist der Komplex Kunst – Zeugung – Geburt als ein Topos zu begreifen, an dem die paradoxe Einheit der semantischen Unterscheidung Natur/Kultur verhandelt wird. […] Bei der semantischen Verdichtung von biologischer und sinnmäßiger (Re-)Produktion handelt es sich um eine anthropologische Grundfigur, die aufgrund ihrer schwebenden Mehrdeutigkeit eine unverzichtbare Ressource kultureller Selbstthematisierung abgibt.« (David E. Wellbery, »Kunst – Zeugung – Geburt. Überlegungen zu einer anthropologischen Grundfigur.« In: Kunst – Zeugung – Geburt. Theorien und Metaphern ästhetischer Produktion in der Neuzeit, ed. by Christian Begemann and David E. Wellbery, Rombach, Freiburg am Br. 2002, p. 9–36, here: p. 13). For an overview of years of research into the function of myth in eighteenth-century anthropology, see: Ulrich Gaier, »Anthropologie der Neuen Mythologie. Zu Funktion und Verfahren konjekturalen Denkens im 18. Jahrhundert.« In: Zwischen Empirisierung und Konstruktionsleistung: Anthropologie im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. by Jörn Garber and Heinz Thoma, Hallesche Beiträge zur Europäischen Aufklärung vol. 24, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2004, p. 193–218. Gaier and his associates analyze the application of

this very fascination transmitted in myths by the sensory pleasures aroused and regulated by meter. In form, function, and (mythological) content, poetry becomes the archive of natural human history: »Poesie wurde nachher das einzige Mittel, wodurch jedes Geschlecht dem folgenden die Haupteindrücke seines Lebens als den köstlichen Nachlaß übergab« (175). By transmitting the memories of past experiences of an immediate physical passion, poetry re-activates the perception of a sensory connection to the world and other human beings. Moreover, Schlegel states explicitly that the poetry of such mythical transmission is lyrical: »Poesie sei ursprünglich von der Art gewesen, die man in der Kunstsprache lyrisch nennt« (178). The implications of this image of the world as fundamentally mytho-poetic and lyrical are tremendous. For within the epic imaginary it means that the definition of narrative’s connection to political legitimacy – for instance, as supplying narratives of the foundations of political communities, and the ensuing poetics unleashed by such a functionalization – has transformed into a narrative of the origins of poetry itself. Furthermore, if poetry is originally lyrical, the very transmission of its archive would have to be lyrical too. For Orpheus as mythic figure of the presence of rhythm is only imaginable in and through song. The archive of the natural history of human life then turns out to be hermetic insofar as it inhabits a closed circuit of poetic transmission that emerges whenever the sensory bonds regulating communities get re-activated as meter. Poetry archives, then, a history of community spanning an unknowable beginning and an unforeseeable end. Resonances of these and other implications of A. W. Schlegel’s anthropological theory of meter emerge in Clemens Brentano’s later attempt to activate the poetic archive in his Romanzen vom Rosenkranz.

the conjectural form of thought as an attempt to resolve fundamental contradictions of modern anthropology, for instance, how the human being can be both sensual and moral. Myths provide a »bestmögliche Konjektur über eine unerkennbare Macht der Wirkkraft. Der Entwurfscharakter der Konjektur bedingt, daß die Vermutung modifiziert oder ersetzt werden kann; daraus resultiert die Bewegbarkeit der Mythen. Er bedingt ferner, daß der Entwurf auf die Probe gestellt werden muß« (194). The »neue Mythologie,« according to Gaier, »ist dreistellig: hier die unbekannte Wirkkraft, da das seinen Erkenntniszugang wählende Subjekt, dort die gewählte Konjektur« (195). What A. W. Schlegel undertakes with respect to the conjectural origin of meter seems at first glance to correspond to Gaier’s analysis, but with a second look appears even more complex. To start, Schlegel assigns nature and Orpheus equal weight as mythical points of reference, in order to ultimately posit a connection between music, poetry, and nature. Furthermore, Schlegel’s recourse to the »old« myth of Orpheus does not suggest a labile conjecture, but posits an unknowable but necessary origin that will always reverberate in poetic song. Here the instance of a reflection on myth enters the picture, for »das wählende Subjekt« is aware of the conjectural and fictional nature of such myths, which is perhaps why A. W. Schlegel frames his anthropological conjecture as a fictive letter exchange.

163

Philological Legitimacy and the Invention of Romantic Epic A. W. Schlegel’s early attempt to ground an aesthetics of meter in a speculative anthropology signals another shift in the epic imaginary at the end of the eighteenthcentury toward a renewed interest in programmatic definitions placed explicitly in the service of an institutionalization of the study of literary texts as the domain of a historical science of national philology.19 The explication of conceptual categories with which to approach literary history would become the focus of A. W. Schlegel’s ensuing lectures at the universities of Jena and Berlin around the turn of the century. His efforts belong to a strand within the epic imaginary of the eighteenth century which Pascale Casanova has labeled the »Herderian Revolution.«20 The identification of literary authority with political authority, affiliated with either territorial political domains or experiences of trans-regional nationality, was a major concern of the epic imaginary. Herder’s unique contribution to controversies about the nature of the link between the two lies in challenging the very terms of the debate.21 For Herder rejected the narrative travelling out of French literary circles that divided the world into ancient and modern epochs – the so-called »Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes« – in the service of establishing the universal legitimacy of a notion of French Classicism. In Von deutscher Art und Kunst from 1773, Herder famously invoked Homer, Ossian, and Shakespeare to contest the widely accepted view, propagated in Germany as well, that great literature had to conform to the rules of poetics laid out by the reception of Aristotle in France, a view that was enforced by the overwhelming legitimacy accorded to French Classicism. Herder’s critique of the French model consisted of two parts. With reference to Homer and Ossian, he emphatically articulated the notion of a »natural« poetic expression that, although pre-literate, is by virtue of this orality all the more immediate, lively, and hence expressive of the ways of a particular group of people without thereby sacrificing any of its poetic

19

20 21

164

See: Jürgen Fohrmann, Das Projekt der deutschen Literaturgeschichte. Entstehung und Scheitern einer nationalen Poesiegeschichtsschreibung zwischen Humanismus und deutschem Kaiserreich, Metzler, Stuttgart 1989, and: J. Forhmann, »Literaturgeschichte als Stiftung von Ordnung. Das Konzept der Literaturgeschichte bei Herder, August Wilhelm und Friedrich Schlegel.« In: Kontroversen, alte und neue. Akten des VII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongress in Göttingen. 1985, vol. 11, ed. by Albrecht Schöne, Niemeyer, Tübingen 1986, p. 75–84. Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters, trans. by M. B. Debevoise, Harvard University Press, Cambridge and London 2004, p. 75–81. For a contextualization of this debate, see: Hinrich C. Seeba, »Nationalliteratur. Zur Ästhetisierung der politischen Funktion von Geschichtsschreibung.« In: Akten des VII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses Göttingen 1985. Kontroversen, alte und neue, ed. by Albrecht Schöne, vol. 9: Deutsche Literatur in der Weltliteratur – Kulturnation statt politischer Nation?, ed. by Franz Norbert Mennemeyer and Conrad Wiedemann, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1986, p. 197–207.

attributes. This natural form of expression reflects the naturalness of the people from which such poetry emanates, and hence supplies the presumed natural bond between art and identity that is freed from the constraints of arbitrary conventions imposed from without: »je lebendiger, je freiwirkender ein Volk ist, […] desto wilder, d. i. desto lebendiger, freier, sinnlicher, lyrisch handelnder müssen auch, wenn es Lieder hat, seine Lieder sein!«22 Herder links the immediacy of poetic expression in Homer or Ossian to the expression of historical cultural identity in his celebration of Shakespeare as a great dramatist who does not conform to the Aristotelianism or the aristocratic taste prescribed by the poetic rulebook of French Classicism. The genius of Shakespeare resides in his decision to create poetic art instead of merely imitating rigid codes of literary conduct. Herder formulated his argument in the form of a sardonic hypothetical that does not conceal its French target and proposes that true poetic genius draws upon the wealth of the cultural identity from which it springs, that indeed such particularities of history provide the legitimate source of poetic material as well as the measure of success in literary representation: Lasset uns also ein Volk setzen, das aus Umständen, die wir nicht untersuchen mögen, Lust hätte, sich statt nachzuäffen und mit der Walnußschalle davon zu laufen, selbst lieber sein Drama zu erfinden: so ists, dünkt mich, wieder erste Frage: wenn? wo? unter welchen Umständen? woraus solls das tun? und es braucht keines Beweises, daß die Erfindung nichts als Resultat dieser Fragen sein wird und sein kann. […] Es wird sich, wo möglich, sein Drama nach seiner Geschichte, nach Zeitgeist, Sitten, Meinungen, Sprache, Nationalvorurteilen, Traditionen, und Liebhabereien, wenn auch aus Fastnachtsund Marionettenspiel (eben, wie die edlen Griechen aus dem Chor) erfinden – und das Erfundne wird Drama sein, wenn es bei diesem Volk dramatischen Zweck erreicht. Man sieht, wir sind bei den toto divisis ab orbe Britannis und ihrem großen Shakespear.23

Herder asserts here the necessity of drawing upon the cultural history of a particular group of people for the poetic resources and successful reception of a literary text, in this case, of a drama. Considered alongside his remarks about the natural expressiveness of the epics of Homer and Ossian, his is a plea for the parochial, historical, and unrefined or popular as principles of literary value. Literary works acquire value in proportion to the originality of their representations of the particular historical identity of their nation, their ability to convey the variety of national qualities, to represent precisely the defining features of a nation that distinguish it from all others, including the ancient Greeks: Geschichte, Tradition, Sitten, Religion, Geist der Zeit, des Volks, der Rührung, der Sprache – wie weit von Griechenland weg! […] Und wenn nun in dieser glücklich oder unglücklich veränderten Zeit, es eben Ein Alter, Ein Genie gäbe, das aus seinem Stoff so natürlich, groß, und original eine dramatische Schöpfung zöge, als die Griechen aus

22

23

Johann Gottfried Herder, Schriften zur Ästhetik und Literatur 1767–1781. In: Herder, Werke in zehn Bänden, ed. by Martin Bollacher, vol. 2, ed. by Gunter E. Grimm, DKV, Frankfurt/M. 1993, p. 452. Herder, Schriften zur Ästhetik und Literatur 1767–1781, p. 506–507.

165

dem Ihren – und diese Schöpfung eben auf den verschiedensten Wegen dieselbe Absicht erreichte, wenigstens an sich ein weit vielfach Einfaltiger und Einfach vielfältiger – also (nach aller metaphysischen Definition) ein vollkommenes Ganzes wäre – was für ein Tor, der nun vergliche und gar verdammte, weil dies Zweite nicht das Erste sei? Und alle sein Wesen, Tugend und Vollkommenheit beruht ja darauf, daß es nicht das Erste ist: daß aus dem Boden der Zeit, eben die andre Pflanze erwuchs.24

Herder not only emphasized differences of time and place for the discussion of national canon formation, but elevated this insistence on historical difference to a new standard for assessing the poetic quality of the representations within a literary text and determining relationships between poetics and history. Herder’s contestation of French cultural hegemony in the eighteenth century dispersed the accumulation of literary capital in France by reallocating the source of literary authority among a rich plurality of national traditions. Pascale Casanova emphasizes the radical alteration of criteria for legitimacy inaugurated by Herder’s intervention: »By granting each country and each people the right to an existence and a dignity equal in principle to those of others, in the name of ›popular traditions‹ from which sprang a country’s entire cultural and historical development, and by locating the source of artistic fertility in the ›soul‹ of peoples, Herder shattered all the hierarchies, all the assumptions that until then had unchallengably constituted literary ›nobility‹ – and this for a very long time.«25 Furthermore, Herder’s revolutionary approach to writing literary history consisted in arguing against a principle of linearity and a closed system of classifying literary production according to a universally valid notion of the classical, in favor of a principle of succession, according to which a core cultural identity developed over time. The concept of a nation became that element within this structure of literary history which united the axis of historical contingency with a presumed core of continually developing identity (understood now as a matter of national character). Whereas the nation became the identifying marker of historical and cultural difference, the notion of a canon of national classics reconciled historical contingency with a desire for standards of cultural value.26 The Schlegels took up the Herderian challenge to canons of an accepted »Aristotelian« classicism by granting poetic value to previously neglected authors, periods, and genres of European literary history. The result was the invention of a Romantic tradition of literature as a self-consciously modern

24 25 26

166

Herder, Schriften zur Ästhetik und Literatur 1767–1781, p. 507–508. Casanova, The World Republic of Letters, p. 76–77. As Jürgen Fohrmann argues: »Sukzessionsachse und Zentrum müssen also mit demselben Begriff besetzt werden. Bereits das späte 18. und frühe 19. Jahrhundert hat hier den Begriff der Nation funktional plaziert und wird später die gelungene Vermischung im Konzept der nationalen Klassik feiern.« (J. Fohrmann, »Literaturgeschichte als Stiftung von Ordnung. Das Konzept der Literaturgeschichte bei Herder, August Wilhelm und Friedrich Schlegel.« In: Kontroversen, alte und neue. Akten des VII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses in Göttingen 1985, ed. by Albrecht Schöne, vol. 11, Niemeyer, Tübingen 1986, p. 75–84, here: p. 81).

form of poetic art that encompasses works from the period of the »old« moderns of the Renaissance up to the literary present of the »new« moderns represented by Romantic writers such as the Schlegels themselves. Ernst Behler describes the Schlegels’ philological revision of the conventions of a technique of literary canonization based on the rules of legitimacy articulated and enforced by a predominant »Classicist« paradigm: Mit der hier ihren Anfang nehmenden klassizistischen Auslegung des Aristoteles verband sich eine klassizistische Kanonisierung der europäischen Literatur, die im Endeffekt sogar zur Unterdrückung der großen Dichtung der italienischen Renaissance führte, insofern deren Vertreter nicht den sich etablierenden Regeln des Klassizismus zu entsprechen schienen. Den Brüdern Schlegel ging es in entscheidendem Maße um die Revision dieses zu ihrer Zeit noch vorherrschenden Kanons des Klassizismus und die Wiederentdeckung jener »romantischen« Tradition der europäischen Literatur, die von Autoren wie Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Cervantes und Shakespeare vertreten wurde, aber unter der Vorherrschaft des Klassizismus keine Bedeutung für das moderne europäische Literaturbewußtsein erlangt hatte.27

My intention is not to reconstruct the institutional parameters or semantic depth of the discourse of philology generated at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the »Herderian Revolution.« This would require a substantial monograph of its own, and such studies do already exist.28 My aim is rather to consider some of the ramifications of A. W. Schlegel’s speculative anthropology of meter for a Romantic poetics of community. The invention of a genre of Romantic epic grounded in A. W. Schlegel’s theory of poetry goes hand in hand with the rise of a philological method for the study of literary texts that is codified by a complex interrelation of theorizing about literature and writing literary history. A. W. Schlegel systematically outlines the presuppositions and research fields of a philological method in part three of the Vorlesungen über Encyklopädie from 1803, where he explicitly connects the study of language to literary history and the history of science.29 This intricate process of codification is entangled with institutional factors, negotiations of disciplinary boundaries, and competition for intellectual and professional recognition. Such struggles have since been condensed into signposts and sorted according to names like Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, the Grimm brothers,

27

28

29

Ernst Behler, »Die italienische Renaissance in der Literaturtheorie der Brüder Schlegel.« In: Romantik und Renaissance. Die Rezeption der italienischeen Renaissance in der deutschen Romantik, ed. by Silvio Vietta, J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 1994: p. 176–195, here: p. 181. For instance: Edith Höltenschmidt, Die Mittelalter-Rezeption der Brüder Schlegel, Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, München, Wien, and Zürich 2000; Fohrmann, Das Projekt der deutschen Literaturgeschichte. A. W. Schlegel, Vorlesungen über Encyklopädie. In: Schlegel, Kritische Ausgaben der Vorlesungen [KAV], ed. by Georg Braungart, founded by Ernst Behler in cooperation with Frank Jolles, Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn, München, Wien, and Zürich 1989 et seq., vol. III, p. 285–373.

167

Achim von Arnim, Savigny, and so on; are mapped onto territorial markers such as Heidelberg, Jena, and Berlin; aligned according to such university disciplines as Germanistik, law, and philosophy; and ordered into temporal schemes like early and late Romanticism or around historical events like the Napoleonic occupation or Restoration era.30 Nevertheless, a certain logic can be identified as emerging out of A. W. Schlegel’s anthropological theory of meter, the traces of which I would like to follow to Brentano’s rendering of these logics as a poetic problem in the Romanze vom Rosenkranz. If we try to map aspects of A. W. Schlegel’s later scholarship on the theory and history of literature onto the anthropological scenario outlined in his Briefe über Silbenmaß und Sprache, then we are confronted with a set of conceptual issues with practical implications for the epic imaginary. We have already seen how Schlegel’s quest for the origin of meter led him to speculate about the coeval origins of poetry, language, and community. The links between poetry and myth are avowed as much as history and theory are thus fully and explicitly intertwined by this quest. In contrast to previous renditions of the epic imaginary that declared the anachronisms of ancient, Christian, or other heathen religious myths, A. W. and Friedrich Schlegel lionize those works that they claim continue to transmit mythological fantasy through symbolic poetic language.31 They seek rather to conceptualize the essence of poetry and chart literary history according to the category of the »Romantic,« which Friedrich Schlegel famously defines in the Gespräch über Poesie as »was uns einen sentimentalen Stoff in einer fantastischen Form darstellt,« and identifies with a particular canon of literary texts: »Da suche und finde ich das Romantische, bei den ältern Modernen, bei Shakespeare, Cervantes, in der italiänischen Poesie, in jenem Zeitalter der Ritter, der Liebe und der Märchen, aus welchem die Sache und das Wort selbst herstammt.«32 To name a historical text cor-

30 31

32

168

Theodore Ziolkowski, German Romanticism and Its Institutions, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1990. Ernst Behler shows that this distinguishes the Schlegels from other contemporaries, such as Hegel and Schelling, who argue for the impossibility of a modern epic poetry due to their equation of ancient epic representation with the essence of beauty, understood as a balance of subjective and objective moments in the work of art. While following very similar argumentative structures and aesthetic theories, the Schlegels nonetheless reached the alternative conclusion that the self-consciousness of modern art does not make it inferior to the »objectivity« of epic narrative. Rather, the prominence of the author in the representation, the mark of irony, enables the creation of a new mythology in epic representation: »Worum sich die Modernen deshalb bemühen sollen, ist nicht die Wiederherstellung der klassischen Mythologie, sondern die Erschaffung einer zeitgerechten ›neuen Mythologie,‹ nicht die Wiederbelebung des Homerischen Epos als eines universalen objektiven Gedichtes, sondern die Hervorbringung des modernen Romans als Ausdruck subjektiver, reflexiver, ironischer Tranzendentalpoesie.« (Behler, »Die italienische Renaissance in der Literaturtheorie der Brüder Schlegel,« p. 187). Friedrich Schlegel, Gespräch über die Poesie. In: Schlegel, Kritische Friedrich Schlegel Ausgabe, ed. by Ernst Behler, with assistance of Jean-Jacques Anstett, Hans Eichner, and others, Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1958, vol. 2, p. 333 and p. 335.

pus as well as an epoch that extends from the modern back to the medieval period »romantic« and elevate this designation to a normative standard of literary production implies of course a historical cut from the truly mythological era of antiquity, an occlusion that would seem to run counter to A. W. Schlegel’s anthropology as sketched in his reflections on meter. A. W. Schlegel’s lectures in Jena and Berlin can be regarded as attempts to elaborate philological answers to this postulate of historical difference. One way to propose a solution to this conundrum was to introduce a further differentiation of poetry into the subcategories of natural and artistic poetry. This distinction maps on to the model developed in the Briefe über Poesie, Silbenmaß und Sprache which sought to account for the organic rise of meter out of the natural form of rhythmic expression. In this essay, Schlegel construed meter as the volitional human art of imitating such rhythmic expressions for the sake of a pleasurable regulation of the passions. A natural faculty for ordering movement according to temporal intervals enables humans to repeat expressions and hence consciously arrange them into repeated objects of amusement. With certain modifications, the relationship between natural and artistic poetry functions similarly. Underlying this secondary distinction between types of poetry is the postulate laid out in the anthropology of meter and further explicated shortly thereafter in the Jena lectures that mythology marks a »symbolisches poetisches Ur-Vermögen.«33 According to A. W. Schlegel’s account in the Briefe über Poesie, Silbenmaß und Sprache, Orpheus emerges as a mythological figure in the moment that the natural human capacity for rhythmic expression finds symbolic expression. Orpheus thus symbolizes a presumed but not historically knowable transformation of invisible, both communal and individual, emotion into the art of expression. Poetic acts as the art of symbolizing the invisible thus coincide with the myths of their origin. All later poetry thus retains a kernel of its original (mythic) power of representation, just as all myths index this human capacity for symbolization in poetic fantasy. What changes over time is the relationship between the experience of the natural and social world and its ideals. With the advent of Christianity, for instance, ideals such as belief, love, and hope become associated with an eternal hereafter, whereas justice, temperance, valor, and wisdom become virtues attainable through worldly conduct.34 This separation of belief and action generates allegorical forms of representation and

33

34

Höltenschmidt tracks the development of A. W. Schlegel’s reflections on mythology and poetry in the Jena and Berlin lectures: »Am einläßlichsten hat sich A. W. Schlegel zur Mythologie im ersten Kursus der Berliner Vorlesungen geäußert. Dabei fußt er im wesentlichen auf den entsprechenden Passagen der Jenaer Vorlesungen, wo er die Mythologie als symbolisierendes poetisches Urvermögen bestimmt, welches das Unsichtbar sichtbar macht oder das Unendliche zur Erscheinung bringt. – Kraft ihres Symbolismus fällt die Mythologie letztlich mit dem Wesen der Poesie zusammen.« (Höltenschmidt, Die Mittelalter-Rezeption der Brüder Schlegel, p. 360). Höltenschmidt, Die Mittelalter-Rezeption der Brüder Schlegel, p. 363.

169

heightened modes of reflection, themes already discussed in earlier manifestations of the epic imaginary in the eighteenth century (see Chapter 1), which nonetheless attest to the powers of human fantasy. A. W. Schlegel’s task is to reconcile his view of poetry as an anthropological constant with the philological requirements of a discerning approach to historical difference and national tradition inaugurated by the »Herderian Revolution.« His sub-distinction of natural and artistic poetry in the Berlin lectures attempts a step in this direction and guides his approach to the invention of a Romantic epic. Da alle Poesie ein mythologisches Fundament haben muß, um selbständig auf sich zu ruhen, so wird es vor allen Dingen wichtig sein zu untersuchen, inwiefern sich noch eine deutsche Mythologie, oder Reste derselben, oder überhaupt eine romantische erhalten. Dies führt uns von selbst auf die ältesten vorhandenen Dichtungen aus dem Mittelalter, vermittelst deren wir auch die spätere Kunstpoesie genetisch begreifen müssen. (BV, III, 80)

Analogous to A. W. Schlegel’s treatment of meter as a transitional figure of the (explicitly organic) passage from nature to culture, historical Romantic epic becomes in his (implicitly nationalist) literary history the poetic genre in which mythology passes from natural to artistic poetry. Edith Höltenschmidt explains how the remarks in this passage about the fundamental connection between mythology and epic poetry are tied to his understanding of the emergence of the epic as a formal genre with differentiated conventions: Die Rittermythologie bildet also das erste Stadium der romantischen Poesie, in dem sich die Kreativität dieser Poesie in mythischer Weltansicht manifestiere und dabei die mittelalterliche Geisteshaltung reflektiere. Auf A. W. Schlegels Schema von der Entwicklung der Mythologie und Poesie übertragen, entspricht die Rittermythologie somit dem letzten Stadium der Naturpoesie, wo sich die Mythologie herausgebildet habe. Außerdem spiegelt die Rittermythologie mit ihrer formalen Einbindung in die epische Gattung zugleich den angenommenen Übergang der Naturpoesie in die sich nach Gattungen ausdifferenzierende Kunstpoesie wider, der sich im Epos, als der am stärksten mythologischen Gattung, vollziehe.35

Natural poetry is the reservoir of an immediate unity of mythology and poetic representation in the sensory practice of symbolization exemplified by archaic modes of storytelling and song, whereas artistic poetry consciously imitates natural symbolization by finding differentiated forms with which to reproduce the sensuality of mythological song. Repeating a fundamental gesture of the eighteenth-century epic imaginary, Schlegel equates the epic genre with the essence of poetic art itself in his Berlin lectures in 1801–1802. In the section on the literary arts (Poesie), almost the entire sub-section on types of poetry is devoted to the epic genre. This is because, despite a thorough catalogue of specific attributes of the genre that derive from his definition of the epic as »eine ruhige Darstellung des Fortschreitenden« (BV,

35

170

Höltenschmidt, Die Mittelalter-Rezeption der Brüder Schlegel, p. 366.

I, 463), the epic issues from a primeval expression of a raw human nature that has not yet been divided into tragic or comic forms of representation, »durch welche die verschiedenen Bestandtheile der menschlichen Natur erst nach Kunstgesetzen geschieden werden,« and is hence »durchaus parteylos, unbestimmt und universell« (BV, I, 471–472). The epic genre stands in for the timeless order of the beautiful within poetic art that is both its constitutive element and excluded from historical change, the remnant of natural within artistic poetry.36 Schlegel thus aligns epic poetry with primary traits of human nature and its rhythmic forms of representation as well as with the popular belief in a »pre-historic« or »mythic« era in which deities intervened in the events of the human world: »in so fern der Anfangspunkt der Historie eben da ist, wo diese geglaubte Einwirkung [der höheren Mächte] aufhört; die frühere Vermischung der Götter und Menschenwelt ist mythisch« (BV, I, 470–471). In the medieval period (and afterwards), the »Rittermythologie« provides the fantastical content and motivates the symbolic expression of myths in the stories told through poetic song; a continual process of reflected differentiation of this elementary form of poetry into genres, accompanied by transformations in Christianity as a system of belief over time, overlaps with the political history and the rise of poetic traditions in different parts of Europe, such as the crystallization of a »school of romantic poetics« in Renaissance Italy and Spain (BV, III, 12), to constitute a literary history of Europe organized according to »Hauptnationen« of poetic traditions.37 Although Schlegel claims that he wants to avoid the »Torheit« of an enthusiastic patriotism (15) and that his term »Hauptnationen des neueren Europa« does not correspond to diplomatic or geographic designations (9), his theoretical history of romantic literature is no less concerned with a foundational myth of political power: »Deutsche Stämme waren es welche durch den Umsturz des abendländischen Römischen Reichs im Süden, dann durch Ausbreitung im Norden das neuere Europa gründeten und erfüllten. Auf dieser Seite des Erdbodens waren die Deutschen nach den Römern die zweyten großen Welteroberer« (10). Schlegel’s lectures seek to reconstruct the literary history of Europe by deriving its literary present – and the particularly Germanic contribution of Romanticism – from the cultural history of its foundations, that is to say, from Europe’s tradition of medieval Christian and knightly mythology following the migratory conquests of the Roman empire to contemporary incarnations of a highly reflective Romanticism in German poetry

36 37

Fohrmann, »Literaturgeschichte als Stiftung von Ordnung,« p. 81. »Nationalliteraturen zugeordnet werden: dem deutschen Mythos aus burgundischer und lombardischer Zeit (Niebelungenlied und Heldenbuch) – der F. Schlegels ›nordischer Schule‹ entspricht, weiter den brittannischen und nordfranzösischen Mythen um Artus und seine Tafelrunde sowie den Fabeln von Karl dem Großen, und schließlich den spanischen Ritterromanen von Amadis – welch letztere alle F. Schlegels ›romantischer Schule des Mittelalters zuzuordnen wären.‹« (Höltenschmidt, Die Mittelalter-Rezeption der Brüder Schlegel, p. 366).

171

(14). Despite the importance placed on Christianity as the universal mythology of the eras of post-antiquity, the overall reference to European history, and the organizing concept of world literature, the central point of orientation remains the category of the nation.38 Moreover, as Jürgen Fohrmann explains, the plurality of a comparative history of national literatures can be appropriated by the foundational myth of a particular nation within this structure of literary history, once one nation assumes the central position within a genealogy of Romantic literature: Wenn nun im gemeinsamen nationalen Ursprung das Zentrum liegt, so kann das Nebeneinander der »Hauptnationen« beseitigt werden, wenn es gelingt, eine Nation zumindest genetisch zum Bedingungspunkt der romantischen Geschichte zu machen. Die Ursprungsfigur kann dann neu besetzt werden. Schon zwischen 1801 und 1804 wird von beiden Schlegels der deutschen Nation diese Rolle dann zugedacht. August Wilhelm Schlegel gebraucht in seiner »Geschichte der romantischen Literatur« das Bild von Deutschland als jener Mutter, die stirbt, um ihren Kindern fortzuleben und auch jetzt am nächsten daran ist, das mannigfaltig Pittoreske zu neuer Einheit zusammenzufügen.39

The very name »romantic« is thus rooted in the political history of Europe, whose literary history derives from the German mythology of knightly adventure that is reconstructed by A. W. Schlegel. As Schlegel explains in the introductory lecture in Berlin: Ich will hier bemerken, daß der Name romantische Poesie auch in dieser historischen Rücksicht treffend gewählt sey. Denn Romanisch, Romance, nannte man die neuen aus der Vermischung des Lateinischen mit der Sprache der Eroberer entstandnen Dialekte; daher Romane, die darin geschriebnen Dichtungen, woher denn romantisch abgeleitet ist, und ist der Charakter dieser Poesie Verschmelzung des altdeutschen mit dem späteren, d. h. christlich gewordnen Römischen, so werden auch ihre Elemente schon durch den Namen angedeutet. (12)

Romantic poetry is hence inseparable from the dialects that cropped up in different regions of Europa. And yet although the dialects of Romantic literature are »Volkssprache,« or vernacular, in distinction to the official Latin of Church and Empire, Schlegel makes a further distinction between »Volkspoesie« and »Naturpoesie,« in contrast to some of his contemporaries, for he holds the more reflective forms of »Kunstpoesie« in higher regard as outgrowths of »Naturpoesie.«40 This distinction reaches a curious apotheosis in his treatment of the »Romanze,« a form that he categorizes as popular song of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and

38

39 40

172

»Beide Schlegels bemühen zwar auch die universalisierende Kraft des Christentums, in erster Linie aber soll die Nation zum Fundierungspunkt der romantischen Entwicklung gemacht werden. Nation wird zum Zentrum der Geschichte – trotz Europakonzeption und trotz des weiten Blicks auf ›Weltliteratur.‹« (Fohrmann, »Literaturgeschichte als Stiftung von Ordnung,« p. 83). Fohrmann, »Literaturgeschichte als Stiftung von Ordnung,« p. 83. Hence Schlegel’s disagreement with Herder, J. Grimm, Achim von Arnim and Brentano. See: Höltenschmidt, Die Mittelalter-Rezeption der Brüder Schlegel, p. 465–478.

that enjoyed a renaissance of its own among his contemporaries in the Romantic movement.41 Schlegel uses the term »Romanze« here to designate a type of popular song in which a story is depicted »in leichtem Gesang« (BV, III, 124). The fact that the genre transmits a more primitive form of song composed in a »national« dialect does not make it natural poetry, but rather has to do with its emanation from less educated strata of society: man hat gar zu oft Naturpoesie überhaupt mit eigentlicher Volkspoesie verwechselt; auch Herder, in der Vorrede zu seinen Volksliedern begeht diesen Fehler, er zieht den Homer, Hesiodus, Orpheus, und Ossian herbey. Dieß ist aber ganz unrichtig: Poesie, worin sich die höchste Bildung, welche ein Zeitalter besitzt, ausdrückt, kan man unmöglich Volkspoesie nenen, wenn dieß Wort überhaupt etwas bedeuten soll. Sondern man muß es beschränken auf Lieder, welche ausdrücklich für die geringeren Stände und unter ihnen gedichtet worden, während die höheren eine andre ihnen ausschließend eigne Bildung, und auch derselben angemeßne poetische Producte besaßen. (BV III, 124)

The popular quality of the genre distinguishes it from more refined forms of romance of the same era – for instance, works by Ariosto, Tasso, or Spenser – in which fantastic tales of errant knights and chivalry are told in verse.42 In light of 41

42

This interest seems to have been particularly acute within the Jena scene: »Die Jenaer Romantiker begeistern sich zwar für die Mignon-Lieder des Wilhelm Meisters, scheinen jedoch mehr von der Sehnsucht nach Italien beeindruckt als von der Idee einer Naturpoesie, sofern man darunter die volkstümlichen, schlichten Lieder der deutschen Tradition versteht. Die eigentliche Neuentdeckung der Jenaer Romantik sind die italienischen und spanischen Formen. Neben dem Sonett werden die Variation (Glosse), das Madrigal, die Romanze und eine Reihe von komplizierten Formen der mediteranen Tradition erprobt – Versexperimente, die heute keiner mehr kennt und die in der Tradition der deutschen Lyrik kaum Resonanz fanden.« (Schultz, »Von Jena nach Heidelberg,« p. 23). Given the Schlegels’ praise for the romance epics of the Renaissance, their notorious scorn for Wieland is all the more surprising. And yet their regard for his contribution to romantic literature is in fact ambivalent. The animosity was probably initially caused by Wieland’s failure to respond to one of their Shakespeare translations, but then erupted in a full-fledged critique of the quality of Wieland’s work. The charge of eclecticism with connotations of a negative cosmopolitanism surfaces in the analysis of modern German poetry in A. W. Schlegel’s Berlin lectures from 1801–1804. Wieland is described on these occasions as imitating Ariosto and is criticized for being too »French« in the sense of both imposing lifeless rules on poetic language and introducing too many foreign words, as well as displaying »lax prolixity« in his versification. (Ernst Behler, »Das Wieland-Bild der Brüder Schlegel.« In: Christoph Martin Wieland. Nordamerikanische Forschungsbeiträge zur 250. Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages 1983, ed. by Hansjörg Schelle, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1984, p. 349–392, here: p. 383–385). A. W. Schlegel’s harsh words in this context contradict his overall praise for Oberon throughout the long history of his reflections on literary theory and philology. As Edith Höltenschmidt points out, A. W. Schlegel was impressed by his early reading of Oberon as a literary adventure into the knightly tales of the middle ages, and even in his Jena lectures of 1798–1799, which were contemporary to his lambasting of Wieland in the Athenäum, he considers Wieland alongside Ariosto as positively exemplifying the revival of knightly poetry in the modern period: »Wieland wird als derjenige gewürdigt, ›der durch seinen Oberon

173

the absence of a systematic collection of remnants of this popular variant within Germanic culture, Schlegel suggests a parallel with the old Catholic hymnals, »Die Deutschen Kirchenlieder.« For their similar »Unvollkommenheiten der Sprache und des Versbaues, wo oft eine Assonanz oder sonst ein unvollkommner Gleichlaut die Stelle des Reimes vertreten muß, beweisen, daß die Verfasser gar keine Ansprüche auf gelehrte oder gebildete Poesie machten« (129). He posits here a connection between these songs, the religious festivals associated with them, and the legends narrated by them – but also with their social function as repositories of local memory: Man weiß, wie die Gebräuche des katholischen Gottesdienstes lokale Erinnerungen rege zu erhalten wissen, wie sich wahre Volksfeste an sie anknüpfen, besonders bey den öffentlichen feyerlichen Wallfahrten. Die sich darauf beziehenden Kirchenlieder haben daher natürlich ganz den Ton der Volkspoesie. Wenn nun die Legende dazu erzählt wird, wie bey dem Wallfahrtsliede zu den 14 Heiligen in Franken, so ist die Romanze fertig. (BV, III, 129)

It is precisely at this juncture that I would like to consider Clemens Brentano’s Romanzen vom Rosenkranz. For as a contemporary incarnation of Romantic epic Brentano’s verse epic explores a number of Schlegel’s reflections on the anthropological foundation of poetic song. Brentano does so within an intricate framework, however, in which his text puts a twist on his own work with Achim von Arnim on a collection of folklore. The Romanzen vom Rosenkranz is indeed situated at precisely the intersection of natural/artistic poetry and folklore elaborated in Schlegel’s Berlin lectures. In short, Brentano’s text could be described in Schlegel’s terms as an artistic rendering of popular song, as a modern, and hence reflective, Romantic creation in the form of popular »Romanzen.« Yet my focus is on how Brentano’s text invents a particular form of Romantic epic to explore the implications of an anthropology of rhythm. The Romanzen elaborate points of transition from natural to artistic poetry within the framework of a Christian mythology of the rosary and particular communal rituals associated with Brentano’s rendition of this legend. Brentano’s Romanzen can thus be productively juxtaposed with Schlegel’s epic imaginary of poetic song as the archival repository of an originary unity of sensual expression and mythology in rhythm. Schlegel’s remarks in the passage above on how the genre of the »Romanze,« as a version of popular song linked to Catholic

und andere Erzählungen diese Dichtungsart wieder einheimisch gemacht‹ habe, vor allen Dingen habe er im Oberon dem englischen Mythos ›Ernst und Würde‹ gegeben« (Höltenschmidt, Die Mittelalter-Rezeption der Brüder Schlegel, p. 26; see KAV, p. 111). Ernst Behler reports that Friedrich Schlegel’s »größtes literaturwissenschaftliches Werk,« Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur (a lecture delivered in Vienna in 1812, published as a book in 1814), echoes his brother’s favorable assessment of Oberon as exploring the material of the middle ages in the fantastical mode of Ariosto that Klopstock had left untouched in his treatment of Christian (Messias) and Nordic (Hermann) mythology (Behler, »Das Wieland-Bild der Brüder Schlegel,« p. 390).

174

customs in his example, »keeps local memories alive« must be considered alongside his earlier assertion in the Briefe über Poesie, Silbenmaß und Sprache that poetic rhythm is the archive of the natural history of culture. In the earlier text, he characterized the poetic archive of rhythm thus: Welches Altertum viele Sagen der Völker auch von sich rühmen mögen, so sind sie doch gewiß alle viel späteren Ursprungs, und nur der Geist des Wunderbaren, welcher in ihnen herrscht, entrückt sie in jene dämmernde Ferne. Poesie wurde nachher das einzige Mittel, wodurch jedes Geschlecht dem folgenden die Haupteindrücke seines Lebens als den köstlichen Nachlaß übergab. (174–175)

Poetry supplies an archive of the history of sensual experiences and expressions of the world, in its specific historical and cultural manifestations, to future generations every time that this potential for symbolic expression is re-activated and transmitted by poetic language. The same would seem to be true on a local scale for the poetic impulses contained and enacted within the Catholic hymnals. Assonance and rhyme, characterized by Schlegel as primitive musical devices, provide the poetic technique of this form of rhythmic transmission. The questions posed by the epic imaginary elaborated by Schlegel and Brentano is whether Romantic epic renders epic myth as an archive of poetry as such, in other words, whether poetry thereby sings merely its own origins as a hermetic archive of itself, and then what the implications of this recursive conundrum might be for the communities enacted and transmitted in the process.

Romanzen vom Rosenkranz Brentano began the Romanzen vom Rosenkranz in 1802, worked sporadically on the text until 1812, in some more intense spurts than others, and yet the text remained unfinished and was not published until 1852.43 Only nineteen of the planned twenty-four »Romanze« were completed, as Brentano abandoned the project in the middle of writing the twentieth. The project was initially motivated by a newly sparked interest in forms of Italian and Spanish Renaissance poetry within Romantic circles, most notably the experiments with the Spanish verse consisting of versos redondillos (four-stressed trochees) in A. W. Schlegel’s poem »Leonardo da Vinci« (1800) and Tieck’s »Die Zeichen im Walde« written at the same time that Brentano began his Romanzen in 1802.44 In 1805, the first volume of Des Knaben Wunderhorn

43

44

For the publication history of the text and biographical references to this period of Brentano’s writing, I rely on: Werner Hoffmann, Clemens Brentano. Leben und Werk, Francke Verlag, Bern und München 1966, p. 242–255; and the most recent study: Pravida, Die Erfindung des Rosenkranzes. Dietmar Pravida insists that the designation versos redondillos does not properly apply to the type of verse used in the Romanzen vom Rosenkranz (Pravida, Die Erfindung des

175

appeared, and thus the two projects overlap, though as I have suggested diverge from one another in significant ways. If the editors of the folk songs disappear behind the multitude of »co-editors« who sing the songs collected in Des Knaben Wunderhorn, then the poet-author comes to the foreground of the Romanzen.45 The Romanzen opens with a »Selbstbiographie als Einleitung zu den Romanzen.« Gabriele Brandstetter argues that Brentano thereby grounds, »die Geburt seines phantasierenden, dichtenden und betenden Ich poetisch.« 46 This birth, moreover, is grounded in the terza rima verse form, which is significant because the verse form places the opening »Selbstbiographie« of the epic in the tradition of Dante’s Divine Comedy, which renders the story of the birth of an artist as a story of salvation; throughout, guilt and grace are repeated motifs, and yet this is not a story of salvation along the lines of the Christian passion. Not the promise of Christ’s sacrifice guarantees a narrative of salvation, but rather the magical intervention of Catholic symbols appears as saving grace in the story.47 Moreover, within the actual Romanzen, the use of »Spanish trochee« form (four lines of four-stressed trochee with alternating assonance and occasional rhyme) connects this story of salvation and art to music, for the verse form lends itself to alliteration and assonance, thus producing a song-like rhythm and rhyme. This musicality of the verse is furthermore linked to the thematization of music itself, as in the following stanza from the introductory »Selbstbiographie,« wherein form and content are closely interlocked: »Nun hörte ich durch Blumen Garten Hecken,/ Die Orgel aus der Kirche rührend klingen,/ Mich faßte da ein nie gefühlt Erschrecken.«48 The antithetical figures and

45

46 47 48

176

Rosenkranzes, p. 219). Furthermore, Pravida identifies the publication of Herder’s translation of the story of Cid in 1803/1804 as marking the invention of the »Romanzen-Epos« as a genre in the German-language context (215). Unlike Brentano’s Romanzen, Herder’s Cid does not make use of assonance: »Während Herder den achtsilbigen spanischen Romanzenvers in stichischer Form als assonanzlosen trochäischen Vierheber wiedergibt und damit auch der prosaischen Schlichtheit der spanischen Versform näherkommt als die Romantiker, hält sich Brentano an den von August Wilhelm Schlegel und Tieck erstmals verwendeten vierhebigen trochäischen Vers mit Assonanz und durchgehend weiblichem Versgeschlecht« (217). This approach is also what distinguishes Brentano’s epic from his work on a public drama in Vienna shortly after his decision to abandon the Romanzen project. »Brentanos dramatische Produktion aus den Jahren 1813 und 1814 zielt mithin nicht auf literarische Monumentalität ab. Sie ist von der Absicht geleitet, mit Hilfe einer öffentlich wirksamen und auf ihre ›gesellige‹ Wirkung hin berechneten Dichtung der Vergemeinschaftung der durch Versammlungsverbote separierten Bevölkerung Vorschub zu leisten. Ihr Fluchtpunkt ist daher weniger das auf Nachruhm hin entworfene Werk oder eine auf Repräsentativität bedachte Kunst, sondern das in der gemeinschaftlichen Zusammenkunft des Publikums sich vollendende Fest.« (Pross, Kunstfeste, p. 254) G. Brandstetter, Erotik und Religiosität. Zur Lyrik Clemens Brentanos, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 1986, p. 15. Werner Hoffmann thus terms this version of religion, a »magical Catholicism.« (Hoffmann, Clemens Brentano, p. 250–251). C. Brentano, Romanzen vom Rosenkranz, ed. by Clemens Rauschenberg, In: Brenta-

structure of the verse, the prevalence of oxymoron – here the association of a garden, a church, and the sound of an organ with the emotion of fright – provide the guiding stylistic principle of the entire verse epic and forecast the recurrent theme of danger and delight in music.49 The nineteen of the unfinished Romanzen cycle are set in thirteenth-century Bologna – thus, the Romanzen avoid a narrow identification with German patriotism by immersing the story and characters in a historical time, place, and within institutions that have emerged in the Christian era – and narrate the story of the painter Kosme’s family, which is entangled in an inheritance of sin, guilt, and the prospect of grace. With his wife Rosalaeta, Kosme fathered three sons – Jakopone, Meliore, and Pietro – but, succumbing to carnal passions, seduced Rosalaeta’s sister Rosatristis, with whom he fathered three daughters – Rosarosa, Rosadora, and Rosablanka.50 The siblings are not aware of their kinship at first, and most of the plot revolves around the temptation and hindrance of incest, as their genealogy is revealed to some of them over the course of the narrative. Although Jakopone and Rosarosa marry, their chaste relationship prevents incest. Meliore loves Rosadora, who also enjoys a career as the singer Biondetta – and, as we will see, the risk of an incestuous relationship between them provides the central problem of the epic – just as Pietro is attracted to Rosablanka, who is herself attracted to Meliore. The perverse entanglement of love, attraction, and family represents the fundamental tension between poetic song as the sensory bond of humanity with nature, and the seductive nature of this bond, at the same time that it casts primary concerns of the life of community in terms of familial relations.51

49 50

51

no, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe. Historisch-Kritische Ausgabe [Frankfurter Brentano Ausgabe], vol. 10, ed. by Jürgen Behrens, Konrad Feilchenfeldt, Wolfgang Frühwald, Christoph Perels, and Hartwig Schultz, Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, Berlin, and Köln 1994. »Selbstbiographie,« p. 127–29. All subsequent quotes from the Romanzen vom Rosenkranz will be cited parenthetically with the number of each Romanze followed by a colon and line numbers. Hoffmann, Clemens Brentano, p. 251. Roman Polsakiewicz suggests allegorical parallels of Rosablanka with nature, Biondetta with art, and Rosarosa with belief, which supply the alternative pole to the personification of evil by their uncle Apo and his henchman Moles (R. Polsakiewicz, Weltgeschichte als Heilsgeschichte. Untersuchungen zur Geschichtsauffassung Clemens Brentanos, Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt/M., Bern, and New York 1986, p. 49). I analyze Biondetta’s personification of song below. Moles’ name conveys the association with evil, for it can be read as a contraction of Mephistopheles. See: Marlies Janz, Marmorbilder. Weiblichkeit und Tod bei Clemens Brentano und Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Athanäum Verlag, Königstein 1986, p. 74. The constitution of familial bonds serves as a metaphor for the constitution of state and society throughout Brentano’s writings. See: Gerhard Kluge, »Clemens Brentanos Erzählungen aus den Jahren 1810–1818.« In: Clemens Brentano. Beiträge des Kolloquiums im Freien Deutsche Hochstift 1978, ed. by Detlev Lüders, Niemeyer, Tübingen 1980, p. 102–134.

177

Poetic song assumes in the Romanzen vom Rosenkranz similar functions of transmission to those assigned to it in A. W. Schlegel’s anthropology of rhythm as outlined in the Briefe über Poesie, Silbenmaß und Sprache and the lectures on Romantic poetry. For in addition to being treated as the sensory bond with the phenomenal world, the songs are regarded as archiving this original symbolic and hence mythological connection to nature and history as well as the genealogy of this bond.52 This is a bond between family, community, and Christian myth that is evoked by visual symbols and perpetuated by poetic song, spans mythic origins of sin and future prospects of grace, and seemingly has no end. In a letter to the painter Philipp Otto Runge from 1810, whom Brentano had hoped to convince to contribute illustrations for the book, Brentano summarizes the general plot-line of his epic: »Das ganze ist ein apokryphisch religiöses Gedicht, in welchem sich eine unendliche Erbschuld, die durch mehrere Geschlechter geht und noch bey Jesu Leben entspringt, durch die Erfindung des Katholischen Rosenkranzes löset.«53 The story of infidelity and struggle against incest that constitutes the kernel of the published Romanzen is only part of a greater narrative that was never entirely integrated into the text, and can only be reconstructed with reference to paratextual sources collected by the editors of Brentano’s texts.54 The hereditary »original sin« to which Brentano refers in the letter to Runge is not exactly that of the Fall from the Garden of Eden and the promise of salvation guaranteed by the story of Christ, but instead a family curse that indeed stems from the time of Christ. According to Brentano’s legend, the misfortune haunting Kosme’s family, the hereditary guilt for which his family must atone, has its source in the misdeeds of Kosme’s ancestors. On their way to Egypt, the holy family stayed overnight at the house of Lilith and Uriel. The young son of their landlords, Agnus castus, plays with the baby Jesus and wants to give him his lamb and bird. Yet the fiancé of Agnus castus’ older sister Zinga works for Herod and wants to kill the baby Jesus, with the help of Lilieth and Uriel, who hope to pose as the holy family with Agnus castus in the role of Jesus. Their children thwart the plan by informing Maria and helping the holy family to safety. However, Zinga cannot prevent her fiancé from stealing the treasure chest of the three holy kings as well as Marias wedding ring. After discovering the theft,

52

53

54

178

While the epic might also be considered as an encyclopedia of knowledge about the world, in accordance with conventions of the epic genre, I am more concerned with the archival quality of the verse. On the notion of an »encyclopedia of apocraphyl knowledge,« see: Pravida, Die Erfindung des Rosenkranzes, p. 201–204. The letter to Runge from 18/26 March 1810. In: C. Brentano, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, Historisch-Kritische Ausgabe [Frankfurter Brentano-Ausgabe=FBA], ed. by Jürgen Behrens, Konrad Feilchenfeldt, Wolfgang Frühwald, Christoph Perels, and Hartwig Schultz, Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, Berlin, and Köln 1994, vol. 32, p. 266–267. For the background story, see: »Notizen zur Vorgeschichte und zu weiteren Romanzen.« In: Brentano, FBA, vol. 11.1, p. 595–602. For Brentano’s planned continuation, see: »Notizen zu den letzten Romanzen und Auszüge aus Ghirardacci.« In: FBA, vol. 11.1, p. 612–617.

Maria prophesizes to Zinga in front of a rosebush from Jericho with red, white, and yellow blooms, that her family guilt will not be atoned until the three roses come to life. In the meantime, during the time of the crusades, one of Zima’s progeny bears the same name and lives with a knight with whom she has two sons out of wedlock, Tannhäuser and Amber. She later marries and has two daughters, Dolores and Zingara, but since the two brothers do not know their half-sisters, they fall prey to incest. Tannhäuser and Zingara bear two sons, the painter Kosme and the philosopher-necromancer Apo, who carries on the seed of the original thief (Zinga’s fiancé). Amber also commits incest with Dolores and fathers the two sons who are the forefathers of Jacopone and Pietro in one version; yet in a later version, Jacopone, Pietro, and Meliore are the sons of Kosme from his marriage to Rosaläta. Here the actual plot of the Romanzen picks up from the paratextual legend: The three roses prophesized by Maria come to life through the birth of Kosme’s daughters Rosarosa, Rosablanka and Rosadore-Biondetta out of the affair with Rosatristis, whom Kosme seduced while she posed as a model for a portrait of Mary. Seduction is thus explicitly coeval with artistic representation in this part of the story, although visual art is an accomplice here, as well as an opportunity for atonement. According to Brentano’s plans for the continuation of the story, the curse of incest is broken by Kosme’s children; the story would end when, after avoiding incest with Biondetta, Meliore becomes a painter like his father, withdraws from society, and completes the process of atonement by inventing the rosary.55 The transmission of sin and guilt within a family legacy becomes an allegorical microcosm of processes of transmission within the archive of Romantic community. This archive is constituted by an economy of symbols (and not only the over-arching one of the rosary) that circulate as processes of gift-giving (such as Agnus castus’ gift of the lamb and bird to the baby Jesus), exchange (for instance, the circulation of Mary’s wedding ring), and transformation (not only of the roses coming to life but also of Rosadora turning into Biondetta).56 These processes of circulation on the level of plot and within the text’s economy of imagery are then

55

56

Brentano’s interest in the etiological legend of the rosary and the legend itself are reconstructed in Pravida, Die Erfindung des Rosenkranzes, p. 253–257. Pravida concludes: »Deswegen muß auch der Status der Anspielung auf die aitiologische Legende unklar bleiben, da sich nicht angeben läßt, ob sie als eine Vorwegnahme des Schlusses gedacht war (was gleichwohl wahrscheinlich ist), oder ob es sich nur um eine aitiologische Variante handelt, auf die wie in Vergils Anspielungen auf mythologische Varianten en passant verwiesen wird« (257). In addition, Pravida explains the sources of some of the other legends and motifs constituting the different plot strands, figures, and imagery, such as the Tannhäuser figure, immaculate conception, Pietro the hermit and the crusades, hagiography, and the Enimma bolognese, among others (239–341). In light of these logics of transmission, it is surprising that an analysis of the Romanzen vom Rosenkranz is missing from the essays collected in: Gabe, Tausch, Verwandlung. Übertragungsökonomien im Werk Brentanos, ed. by Ulrike Landfester and Ralph Simon, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2009.

179

lent form and communicated to an audience by the rhythmic song of the verses. The mythological world transmitted by the poetic archive enacted by these songs has its mythic origins in the legend of Kosme’s family, an origin that is expressed by the mythic symbolism affiliated with the Christian doctrine of original sin. The poetic symbolism is thus invested with the potential to archive both an origin and an act of atonement, which is itself a poetic act of creation and perhaps of necessity apocryphal – the invention of the rosary.57 Whether one seeks an explanation for Brentano’s failure to complete the Romanzen in the illustrator Runge’s death in December of 1810, in Brentano’s pious rejection of his youthful immorality, in his interest in more popular and public forms of performance, or in the philosophical impossibility of a reconciliation of the ideal of Christian purity espoused throughout the text with the impurity of representation constituting the text as a text: the poetic archive conceived by a Romantic anthropology that associates the mythic power of language with unknowable origins and ends of human community is both hermetically sealed and indefinite. Through the performance of song, poetry might evoke the traces of its communal origins and the origins of the community whose song it sings, but it can not sing for a community that would be extraneous to the archive. If »[s]ein Thema ist eine unendliche Melodie, für die es keine Schlußkadenz gibt,«58 then the activation of this mythic topic can only ever be accomplished within and by the poetic song of the archive, and the conclusion of the plot would entail the silencing of song, which, due to a filial complicity with music, certainly no creative act of symbolization such as the invention of the rosary would ever be able to enforce. In the tenth Romanze, »Biondetta in dem Theater,« the themes of religion and art, community and song, come together in order to explore the topic of the relationship between an individual singer to the vital elements of a community. Biondetta is the stage name for the one sister Rosadora, an orphean singer-dancerharpist,59 whose embodiment of musical, poetic, and physical talents mirrors A. W. Schlegel’s positing of an originary unity of these arts in the essay on meter. The tenth Romanze narrates her last performance on stage in Bologna. The city inhabit-

57

58 59

180

As Roman Polsakiewicz argues: »Es ist die Sünde schlechthin, die eine regulative Rolle in der Geschichte spielt. Sie ist es, die den Menschen zuerst um seinen harmonischen Urzustand bringt und ihn an die Zeitlichkeit ausliefert. Gleichzeitig mit ihr entsteht der andere, dem Menschen innewohnende Wert, die Sühne, bzw. das Opfer. Im Spannungsfeld dieser polaren Kräfte von Sünde – Sühne/Opfer realisiert sich Geschichte.« (Polsakiewicz, Weltgeschichte als Heilsgeschichte, p. 52). Hoffmann, Clemens Brentano, p. 244. John F. Fetzer, Romantic Orpheus: Profi les of Clemens Brentano, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1974. As the study’s title suggests, Fetzer interprets Brentano’s literary output from the prism of the »Orpheus« myth, which is important for my emphasis on the musical dimension of Brentano’s epic imaginary as well, and I argue links Brentano’s text to A. W. Schlegel’s reflections on the mythological anthropology of rhythm/meter.

ants flock to the theater dressed in black, for all are sad that Biondetta is renouncing her career as an artist to dedicate herself to a life of religious observance. Denn die herrliche Biondette, Wird der Bühne heut entsagen Morgen dann den Schleier nehmen In der Kirche zu Sanckt Klaren. (X, 5–8)

In her introductory speech, Biondetta likens the theater to a sacred place of worship, only to then describe her departure from the theater as a move to an even more »pure« temple: Züchtig sprach sie, Hochgeehrte! Schonend habt ihr mich vor Jahren, Aufgenommen in dem Tempel, Habt geduldet mich seit Jahren Wollet heute auch in Ehren Eure Dienerinn entlaßen, Daß mich rein ein reinrer Tempel Aus der Künste Haus empfange. (X, 65–72)

Art is here likened to religion, yet presented as an impure form of service and worship. Important, however, is the effect that Biondetta’s music has upon the audience, when she plays her golden harp. Schweigend glich das Volck dem Meere Ueber dem ein Gott hin wandelt Also ruht und wogt die Menge In Biondettens Sang und Harfe, Und es sind des Meeres Wellen An der Jungfrau Lied gebannet Weh und Wonnefluthen, ebben Wie sie will in allen Adern Hell auf Meerumwogten Felsen Hebt sich über ewges Waßer Ein Marienbild, des Meeres Stern auf ihrem Haupte flammet (X, 93–104)

The narration represents the audience at first as an actively silent »Volk,« its state of activity indicated by the present participle »schweigend.« As »schweigend,« the »Volk« resembles a sea beneath a god, but the sea is not exactly fi xed, for it stirs and surges (»ruht und wogt«) by virtue of Biondetta’s song and harp. This entity that stirs and surges is described as a »Menge,« which is then figured as the waves which make up the ocean. The dynamic »Menge« is bound together or riveted (»gebannet«) by the virgin’s, Biondetta’s, song – who is herself elevated to the status of the 181

image of Mary – which completes the circular transformation of the »Menge« into a »Volk.« An undecidable logic informs the process: The »Volk« is shown to be a »Menge« through song which then reinstates the »Menge« as »Volk.« The movement from silent »Volk« to surging »Menge« enlivens the »Volk« at the same time that it figures it as oceanic, a figure which evokes a natural life-force that is cyclical or rhythmic like the music of Biondetta’s harp. Biondetta’s art on stage might provide such a construction of community, but it is also described later in the tenth Romanze as illusory. At the end of her performance, Biondetta delivers her departing words for the theater. The use of apostrophe signals the theatricality of the moment: Aber schaut, nun steht Biondette Hoch am duncklen Thor des Waldes Nieder kniet sie, und singt betend, In die Welt, die sie verlaßen, Lebet Wohl ihr falschen Farben Eitler Thränen Regenbogen Sterne, die mit falschem Glanze Dienet einem Flitter Monde, (X, 363–370)

Biondetta calls attention to the »fake colors« and »fake luster« of the tears, rainbow and stars which serve a tinsel moon created on stage. She is leaving the illusory life of art for the salvation afforded by grace, »Biß die Schuld ist hingenommen« (X, 374). Biondetta’s renunciation of art for grace has an odd effect on the community just constructed through her song. The »Volk«–»Menge« relationship is now narrated as a different process than as the one in the earlier passage: Und das Volck lauscht tief beweget Denn die Sonne wiederstrahlend Spielet, die nicht auszusprechen Lieder durch die goldne Harfe. Und so stille war die Menge Daß man hört die Thrähnen fallen Und die heißen Seufzer wehen, Und die bangen Herzen schlagen, Wie ein Kahn auf stillen Meere Mond umspielet, träumend Wancket, Und der Fischer hingestrecket, Schlummert ein in dem Gesange. (X, 399–410)

Melancholy pervades these stanzas, no doubt induced by her announcement that she has decided to renounce the life of musical performance on stage and will leave an empty space in the life of the community that will henceforth have to exist 182

without her song. The »Volk« already constituted through song listens to the last resonances of the song that merge serenely into the sunlight. At an indiscernible point, however, the quiet audience becomes a »Menge« that is now a biological conglomeration of discernable »tears,« »sighs,« and »worried hearts.« This melancholic configuration of affects gets figured as a boat and slumbering fisherman; no longer is the »Menge« the ocean beneath the sky, but now the boat and fisherman rocking above the water. The rhythm of song which has gathered the affects of a multitude becomes one with the natural rhythm of the sea. Nature and culture find harmony as the fisherman sleeps in the boat he has crafted, lulled to sleep by the rhythmic waves of the quiet sea that has merged with peaceful rhythms of song into a kind of imperceptible vanishing point of nature and song becoming quiet. The retreating song has a soporific and consoling effect on the melancholic »Menge«: Also waren alle Schmerzen In Biondettens Lied entschlafen, Scheiden kann sie von den Herzen, Die in Wunderträumen wandeln. (X, 411–414)

Reflecting the antithetical dimensions of the text, metrical form and narrated content diverge in the scene at the theater. Whereas the image is of a peaceful audience swaying in unity like a fisherman in a boat on the water, and the tempo of the verses depicting this effect slow down as the assonances are evenly distributed and punctuated, this narcotic moment of poetic illusion is likely to erupt at any moment, for the peacefulness described within these verses is just as incommensurate with the fiery language of the majority of the verses as all of Biondetta’s talk of renunciation and chastity. The narcosis induced here is only one type of the poetic intoxication that pervades the stanzas of the epic.60 For as Biondetta tries to leave the dreaming »Menge«-turned-fisherman and boat, a fire breaks out in the theater, awakening the dreamers and causing panic. Here it is important that the panicking, disbanded audience is consistently described as a »Menge,« first as surging toward escape, »Und die Menge des Parterres/ Will sich wogend überschlagen« (X, 433–434), and then again as a muddle of actions, objects, sounds, and affects, which nonetheless hang together in the verse: Schreien, Weinen, Fluchen, Beten, Steigen, klettern, Ohnmacht fallen, Trommelschlag, und Brandtrompeten, Wagenraßeln, Glockenschlagen. (X, 451–454)

60

The apt terms »narcosis« and »intoxication« used to describe the poetic effects of Brentano’s language come from: Janz, Marmorbilder. Janz identifies this tension in the theater scene: »Aber das gewaltige Opus dieser Verse mit ihren überschwenglichen Assonanzen ist doch ein einziger Sprachrausch, ein bacchantischer, wilder Zug von Worten, der alle fromme Moral, die da gepredigt wird, gleichgültig werden läßt« (72).

183

This group remains a »Menge« as order is restored: Und schon ordnet sich die Menge, Maßen bilden sich und Straßen, Alles stehet, geht und kehret, Keiner hindert mehr den andern. (X, 467–470)

Yet the »Menge« suddenly transforms into a »Volk« when a student saves Biondetta and avoids being engulfed in flames, in response to which the »Volk« cries out »Mirackel!« (X, 498). Rescue interpreted as religious intervention thus constitutes, in this instance, the »Volk,« which is then confirmed as, »das Volk kniet rings um betend« (X, 503). Community moves in these stanzas from listening »Volk« to melancholic and then dreaming »Menge« in the theater, on to panicking »Menge« reacting to the life-threatening fire, and then back to a »Volk« united by belief in the presence of a miracle and the act of praying. The suggestion here is that the consolations of Biondetta’s song are not enough to protect the community from the very real threat of a fire ignited by pernicious elements that might infiltrate its ranks, and that only religion can ultimately sustain the community. The external threat of a fire ignited by an evil force within society is indistinguishable from the fiery potential of poetic language as such, and Brentano’s verse in particular. Both the theater and Biondetta ultimately have to be sacrificed by the very poetic art that they represent and by which they are represented as the theater burns up in the flames of the verse; although Biondetta escapes the fire in the theater, she ultimately commits suicide in order to attain the chastity that her lascivious uncle Apos threatens to deny her.61 The salvation of religion, conceived as above all a dialectic of sin and grace, takes on an ever more prominent place within the narrative. In the process, art is portrayed as not only illusion, as in Biondetta’s renunciation of the theater, but even more poignantly as a seductive type of community formation that can lead to

61

184

The result is a ritual of sacrifice, in which poetic language is sacrificed to its own flames: »Biondettes Theater brennt, die Kunst brennt, Brentanos Sprache brennt in den ›Romanzen vom Rosenkranz.‹ Diese Sprache ist ein Opferritual. Die Sprache selbst wird geliebt und gehaßt, in Flammen gesetzt, zum Leuchten gebracht und zu Asche verbrannt.« (Janz, Marmorbilder, p. 73). Janz further concludes that Brentano’s poetry enacts a »Selbstverbrennung der Sprache, als Opfer, Rausch und Wunde« (75). While I agree with her assessment of the intoxicating effects of Brentano’s poetic language and her likening of his poetic experiment to a sacrificial ritual, I hesitate to follow her connection of these procedures to an iconography of the mother-figure. For Janz there is a clear connection between linguistic creativity and the maternal, and thus between biography and text: »Der Sprachrausch der Romanzen lebt von einem ambivalenten Verhältnis zur Sprache, in die sich das Urtrauma der Ambivalenz gegenüber der Mutter transformiert hat. Die poetische Sprache soll gleichzeitig zum Leben erglühen und abgetötet, verbrannt werden und konstituiert sich überhaupt erst in dieser Ambivalenz« (73).

sin – namely, to incest. The incest theme is incarnated by Biondetta’s uncle, Apo, who set the theater on fire. John Fetzer describes Apo and the threat he evokes as: the perverse scholar-philosopher-necromancer Apo; the roaring inferno reflects not only his illicit (and incestuous) passion for the songstress, but also serves as reminder of the ever-present danger posed by the sensual nature of man, a force that can thwart even the loftiest manifestation of art.62

The sensuality of both human sexuality and artistic song are equated in the text with danger. Apo also happens to be a magician, philosopher, and scholar, which suggests that not only sensuality is at the root of sin. Regardless of these oblique caveats about knowledge and the occult, the sensuality of song and human passion overshadow these additional forebodings, as Biondetta comes close to risking an illicit encounter with her half brother, Meliore. The subsequent fourteenth Romanze, »Meliore und Biondetta. Biondettas Hohes Lied,« illustrates the danger of artistic song to spark incest. Biondetta’s half-brother Meliore has been wounded with poison by Apo, and Biondetta sings Solomon’s »Song of Songs« to rescue him. Incest threatens the two throughout the scene, as for instance she treats the poisoned Meliore in her room, and she is described as feeling »baneful delight«: Und sie fühlt in allen Sinnen Ein unheiliges Ergötzen Wild durch ihre Adern rinnen Und sie muß die Zucht verlezzen. (XIV, 177–180)

In order to bring him back to life, Biondetta sings to him, but the narrator (falsely) warns the reader that her attempt will fail, because »poisonous songs« will not overcome a »chaste death,« and he will not see her again: Und die Harfe nimmt die süße Läst die Saiten wild erbeben Ach die heißen Liebes grüße Können nicht sein Aug erheben, Keuscher Tod, du drückst sie nieder, Solche Raserei zu sehen In dem Klang der Giftgen Lieder Soll er sie nicht wieder sehen. (XIV, 205–212)

Yet Meliore returns to life to find Biondetta in a trance-like state of song and desire, such that she doesn’t hear him call her »sister«: »Aber Wehe nicht vernimmet/ Sie den schweren Nahmen Schwester« (XIV, 337–338). Meliore awakens with blurred vision and a sense that he has ascended to heaven:

62

Fetzer, Romantic Orpheus, p. 49.

185

Wer erklärt ihm die Gesichte Wer ergießt des Himmels Segen, Ist so mild das Weltgerichte Kömmt die Gottheit ihm entgegen, Süßer Tod, den ich erlitte Goldne Töne mir zu gehen, Selig in des Himmels mitte Soll ich wieder auferstehen. Aus Biondettens frommen Minen Strömet ihm das selge Wähnen Gottes Mutter sei erschienen Und er betet unter Trähnen. (XIV, 417–428)

Meliore sees not Biondetta, but instead an image of the Virgin Mary. Fetzer concludes that Brentano resorts to a deus ex machina here »to avoid the tragedy of incest«; »Biondetta and Meliore gain eternal salvation because a benign Christian deity prevents them from ›seeing‹.«63 I would add to Fetzer’s interpretation that this scene in the fourteenth Romanze both complements and contrasts the depiction of the relationship between song and community in Biondetta’s theatrical performance in the tenth Romanze. Whereas in the tenth Romanze Biondetta’s song calls forth the vitality of the »Menge« constitutive of the audience as »Volk,« in the fourteenth Romanze the magic of Biondetta’s »Song of Songs« threatens to form an incestuous bond between brother and sister. In both cases, music holds the power to unite, yet the question seems to be: to what end? The text suggests that the magic of artistic song is highly dubious. Fetzer rightfully concludes: Engrossed in the autonomous and hermetically sealed world of artistic magic, Biondette loses touch with the actual circumstances. It was such a self-contained, self-centered aesthetic universe, a realm of ›art for art’s sake‹ without religious or metaphysical ties, which Brentano eventually rejected as untenable.64

Only a divine intervention saves Biondetta and Meliore from perpetuating the family curse through an incestuous bond, a bond which would rather form an antisocial, endogamous community, as well as serve to perpetuate original sin as the foundation of this community. Not the erotic magic and sensuality of song holds community together, but rather the miraculous salvation of religion, according to the mythic worldview of the text. The nineteenth Romanze of the incomplete epic cycle more explicitly takes up the topic of community in political terms. By then, the power of Biondetta’s art has already been discredited to a large extent and now only the practice of religious rites tenuously binds the community together. Here the community in question is

63 64

186

Fetzer, Romantic Orpheus, p. 55–56. Fetzer, Romantic Orpheus, p. 54.

officially ruled by the government in Bologna, which we have learned previously in the eleventh Romanze is divided into a people’s party and an aristocratic party: Und Bologna war getrennet, In Parteien, die des Volckes Sich die Gieremei nennen, Stritten für das Recht des Volkes. Lambertaci waren Gegner, Für des Adels Recht erhoben, Von zwei feindlichen Geschlechtern War der Nahmen angenommen. (XI, 1065–1072)

The entire town respects the legal scholar Jakopone, including each of the fighting parties who appeal to him for advice: Oft ertheilte den Geschlechtern Seinen Rath auch Jakopone, Und in ihrer Mitte stehend Muste Freund und Feind ihn loben. (XI, 1081–1084)

The two parties thus show their respect for Jakopone by agreeing to set aside their strife temporarily, in order to dutifully and respectfully pay tribute to his deceased wife at the funeral procession. Jakopone’s devout wife, Rosarosa, died in the fire at the theater during Biondetta’s performance the one time that she ventured a public appearance at a site of entertainment. Despondent, Jakopone has decided to donate his property to the city and build a church in place of the burnt theater house. All the city inhabitants are thus assembled to join him in mourning. To be sure, the assembled townspeople are described as a »Gedränge« and »rege Menge« (XIX, 25, 27), but the oldest of the eight consuls of the city instructs the crowd: Und ich wollte die verkünden, Daß im wogenden Gedränge, Sich kein Streiten mög entzünden, Wo die Straßen krumm und enge. Denn wir wissen uns zum Leide, Daß in unsren treuen Mauern Zwei Parhein zu bösem Streite Immer auf den Anstoß Lauren. Laßt uns nicht den Tag entweihen Einer Tugendhaften Toden, Eintracht möge Gott verleihen Unser Gruß sei euch entboten. (XIX, 101–12)

The town’s »harmony« (»Eintracht«) is to come from God and to be exercised in the respectful mourning for Jakopone. The »Gedränge« is then described as a »Volk« 187

(Übers Volck wie aus dem Meere) (XIX, 133), but soon thereafter once again as a »bunte Menge« (XIX, 214). A curious simultaneity of both the »Volk« and »Menge« is described here, which even stretches the definition of the »Volk« to connote a threatening presence, which must in turn be checked by the threat of physical violence by political authorities, for eight knights from the Giremei and eight from the Lambertaci (the two battling political parties) stand guard before Jakopone’s house: »Daß das Volk ihn nicht berühre/Hüten sechszehn Ritter ihn« (XIX, 243–244). The flow of rounded vowels from the one verb to the next in »berühre/Hüten« almost causes them to merge phonetically into a series of doubled monophthongs, suggesting on a semantic level that where one might be touched physically or figuratively in proximity to an assembled group or as a member of a community, vigilance or protection is required. The connection between these two ambivalent meanings established by the assonance, however, implies as well that this is not a conflictual relationship, and that the antithesis itself might be resolvable in the same way that the two rival political groups form an alliance to guard Jakopone during the funeral rites. It is not at all clear whether the »Volk,« Menge,« or »Gedränge« is threatening – in fact, the three terms seem to be interchangeable in this particular song. No distinction is made between the two categories, and they seem nonetheless to co-exist, but only insofar as they are held together as a unity by the »harmony« lent to them by God within the scene depicted and by the assonance of the verse doing the depicting. Considering the reliance on a deus ex machina and the insistence upon acts of supplication, Brentano’s text presents a highly sacralized image of community, in contrast to the other versions of community analyzed throughout this study. For Klopstock, Wieland, and Goethe – as well as for their counterparts among the literary critics – the narrative conventions of the epic genre were sufficient for the poetic construction of modern community (or at least for bold attempts to imagine alternative communities), but as we have seen in the case of Brentano, such poetic techniques threaten to result in sin. However, Brentano’s investment in the power of religion to unite a »Volk« is not exactly sentimental, does not, that is, resort to a narrative of lost harmony like Lukács’ theory of the novel does. Both indeed share a sense of dread for a world stricken by the traces of original sin. For the preMarxist Lukács, however, modernity is an age of »absolute sinfulness,« whereas the untainted epic mode of representation belongs to an age that knows no discord between soul and nature, human beings and community.65 According to Lukács, Brentano’s Romanzen would thus represent an ironic attempt to poetically recreate (lost) community through the subjectivity of the artist in lyric form.66 Yet as we

65 66

188

Hence, »Der Roman ist die Form der Epoche der vollendeten Sündhaftigkeit.« (Lukács, Die Theorie des Romans, p. 137). Verse is in any case for Lukács only »ein tiefes Symptom« (Lukács, Die Theorie des Romans, p. 47), and the lyrical subject of poetry is a symptom of a metaphysical disjunction

have seen, Brentano’s text contains a self-reflexive critique of that very subjective lyrical project. Furthermore, it is incorrect to view Brentano’s narrative as a sentimental reconstruction of lost community, for if we consider his »Fragment über die ideale Periode der Staaten« we find a narrative of the history of community that does not recount a story of loss. The narrative in Brentano’s »Fragment« is neither that of a story of loss nor that of a story of progress, which sets it apart from teleological narratives usually imputed to the Enlightenment as well as from narratives commonly associated with a reactionary story of modernity as the Fall. The ambivalent status of the Fall supplies an important mythological point of reference within the dense semiotic web of the Romanzen vom Rosenkranz. While the incest theme pervades the interactions among the characters and motivates the plot by virtue of its provenance in a mythical legend of hereditary sin, this microcosmic problem of the transmission of a hereditary sin through the enchantment of song encapsulates certain themes deriving from biblical myths of original sin and the Fall. Yet Brentano’s version of the Fall is no less arcane than the rest of the bizarre legends and symbols circulating within and around the Romanzen. Moreover, it is Moles who tells Apo the story of the Creation and Fall in the ninth Romanze. The fact that this devil incarnate narrates the story raises the question of whether his account is trustworthy; to say the least, it can by no means be prudent. But at the same time, Moles’ role as demonic narrator points to the necessary contamination of all knowledge and its transmission in history. That Moles is even granted the opportunity to narrate the story of the Fall is consistent with a tendency to interrupt the linear trajectory and singular narrative voice of the epic through the introduction of parallel plot-lines and the narration of a single event from the perspective of different characters, a technique which places Brentano’s verse epic in the tradition of romance narrative inaugurated by Lucan.67 The only conclusion to be made under such circumstances is that both the authority and teleology of all stories of the Fall might thus be haunted by demonic narration.

67

within a fallen world: »Die Lyrik kann das Phänomenalwerden der ersten Natur ignorieren und aus der konstitutiven Kraft dieses Ignorierens heraus eine proteische Mythologie der substantiellen Subjektivität schaffen: für sie ist nur der große Augenblick da, und in diesem ist die sinnvolle Einheit von Natur und Seele oder ihr sinnvolles Getrenntsein, die notwendige und bejahte Einsamkeit der Seele ewig geworden: losgerissen von der wahllos abfließenden Dauer, herausgehoben aus der trüb bedingten Vielheit der Dinge, gerinnt im lyrischen Augenblick die reinste Innerlichkeit der Seele zur Substanz, und die fremde und unerkennbare Natur ballt sich von innen getrieben zum durch und durch erleuchteten Symbol. Aber nur in den lyrischen Augenblicken ist diese Beziehung zwischen Seele und Natur herstellbar.« (53–54). Pravida, Die Erfindung des Rosenkranzes, p. 209. This anti-linear type of narrative, which draws attention to the contingent aspects of history and narrative, also seems to situate Brentano’s epic on the side of the »losers« in political history, in David Quint’s terms. On the birth of romance narrative out of the epic of the defeated inaugurated by Lucan’s Pharsalia, see: Quint, Epic and Empire, p. 131- 157.

189

Moles’ account starts with an Ur-Adam, who was so marvelous that the animals and spirits began to worship him, and an envious God who subsequently reduced his stature. This God next created the malevolent woman Lilith out of seven evil angels to give Adam companionship. After Lilith refused to become subservient to Adam and fled, God created Heva out of Adam’s rib. What is surprising about this alternative version of the story is that Adam is already human before the Fall. Adam and Eve immediately have sexual intercourse after her creation: »Und die Rippe wird zum Weibe, Heva hatt er sie genannt,/ Sie war Fleisch von Adams Leibe/ Und sie haben sich erkennt« (IX, 325–328). As Hans-Walter Schmidt has pointed out, Adam not only gets to know Eva in the »biblical« sense, but also receives the book of knowledge (»Aller Schöpfung Heimlichkeiten/ In dem Buch verzeichnet stehn« [IX, 357–358]) as a wedding gift from God: »Frau und Buch als göttliche Gaben eröffnen Adam die Möglichkeit zu ›erkennen‹ (im sexuellen und intellektuellen Doppelsinn des Worts), ohne erst vom Baum der Erkenntnis essen zu müssen; sie belehnen Adam mit Wissen und Lust.«68 Knowledge, lust, and powers of expression already constituted the Adamic state in the Garden of Eden. The Ur-Adam had already possessed a power of expression that distinguished him from both the natural environment and from God in terms reminiscent of the theory of language in A. W. Schlegel’s anthropology of rhythm. As he is confronted with the manifold creatures of the natural world, Adam signals his perception of them through an articulate scream: »Doch da sie ihm näher schreiten/ Haben sie erst erkennt,/ Da er schrie, die Herrlichkeiten Gottes sind ohn Zahl und End« (IX, 213–216). Here the standard account resumes, as the couple’s transgression of God’s command not to eat the forbidden fruit, which he had informed them »ist tödlich: und entschwebt« (IX, 356–357), caused their banishment from the Garden of Eden. Bored by Adam’s immersion in the book of the secrets of creation, Eva followed Samuel, who, wanting to »lead her to freedom« (IX, 371), told her that he had read in the book of knowledge that eating from the forbidden fruit will make her God’s equal. So that she would not have to die alone, and »Daß kein Weib ihn mehr Erwerb,« Eva then convinced Adam to also eat the fruit (IX, 389–392). The establishment of a social bond among mortals thus also originates in and from the Fall. Eva sought his loyal companionship in the act of »sharing the sin« (»die Sünde er getheilet«), which however issues from her own unwillingness to share Adam with other women. The cut from the Adamic condition marks not only human mortality but also a fissure between divine knowledge and signification that God instated when he refused to let Adam take the »absolute book« with him (»Und aus Adams Händen schwebt/ Weg das Buch, daß er mit Leide/ Seinem Blick zu Gott erhebt.« [IX,

68

190

Hans-Walter Schmidt, Erlösung der Schrift. Zum Buchmotiv im Werk Clemens Brentanos, Passagen Verlag, Wien 1991, p. 78. My account of Moles’ myth of the Fall is indebted to Schmidt’s insights.

397–400]). Like the fallen angels who attempted to copy the text of God’s absolute book as Adam read from it at the wedding – »Hinter seinem Rücken schreibet/ Ab das Buch der Samuel,/ Luzifer dazu ihn treibet,/ Daß auch nicht ein Buchstab fehl!« (IX, 361–364) – any book by Adam would henceforth have to imitate the language miraculously created by God.69 Thus while the expulsion from Paradise enabled Adam’s transformation from passive reader of the secrets of God’s creations to creator of his own works of books in the elusive pursuit of absolute knowledge, his literary output would never amount to more than a reproduction of God’s creations. Moreover, the content of the first book written by Adam was corrupted by the heterogeneous elements structured by the divisions of the universe into good and evil. Before Adam and Eve were re-united and gave birth to their first child together, Kain, Adam had to live in Lucifer’s domain and was forced to conceive dwarfs and giants with the evil Lilith, while Eve was forced to bear demonic children with Samuel. The book that Adam wrote before his death thus consisted of impressions and lessons from those evil realms mixed with memories of what he had learned from the book of knowledge. The impurity and incompleteness that constituted Adam’s heterogeneous book also condition its transmission to future generations as history: Mündlich, schriftlich, stets erweitert, Geht es durch die trübe Welt, Die es mit der Kunst erheitert Mit Erkenntnißen erhellt. (IX, 465–468)

Meliore’s myth thus locates the Fall at the level of the transmission of knowledge and amusement, a mythical origin whose transmission is itself contaminated by the perspective of its transmitting narrator; in other words, the Fall is not the product of the seductions of knowledge and sexuality as such, but concerns the relationship between culture and nature both in Paradise and on earth. Rather than acquire knowledge by reading the book that God gave them or simply enjoy having sex with one another, Adam and Eve sought immediate communion with both knowledge and nature by eating the forbidden fruit, by seeking to physically incorporate God’s omniscience into their bodies.70 The price of this form of communion with nature is barred access to all the secrets of creation and mortality. Their banishment from Paradise gave them an experience of nature by subjecting them and their progeny

69 70

»Von Anfang an steht Autorschaft buchstäblich im Zeichen der imitatio dei.« (Schmidt, Erlösung der Schrift, p. 90). »Verglichen mit der Kulturtechnik Lesen stellt der Versuch, zur Teilhabe am Absoluten durch einen rein körperlich[en] Akt, durch Einverleibung jener durch Verbot erhöhten Speise zu gelangen, einen Rückfall in Natur dar. Das Essen der Frucht wird verknüpft mit der Erwartung, daß das Absolute sich mitteile, daß es ›Eingang finde‹ – lediglich durch Inanspruchnahme einer biologischen Funktion.« (Schmidt, Erlösung der Schrift, p. 81).

191

to natural forces and situating transmission at an unknowable vanishing point of nature and culture. Just as Adam’s book of knowledge is written, expanded, and passed along with the tools of a language invented by God, the »amusement« of art, as counterpart of knowledge, also springs from a divine source. This lyrical aspect of transmission is not explained within Meliore’s account of the Fall, but is thematized in another context: when Biondetta sings at Rosarosa’s deathbed in the twelfth song. Whereas a stark tendency to question the artist’s song characterized the scenes in the theater (which led to Rosarosa’s own deadly »fall« in the physical sense) and with Meliore (in which incest was narrowly averted by divine intervention), Biondetta’s song for the dying Rosarosa links the capacity for music to the archaic sensuality of divine creation. Rosarosa implores her to sing, »Mit des Himmels Nachtigallen«: In den Schatten meines Todes Laße Gottes Lob erschallen Und es sang nun Rosadore Zu dem Klang der goldnen Harfe. Solch ein Lied, so selgen Todes Hat nur da die Luft getragen, Als der Heiland ward geboren, Und die Engel Gloria sangen. Also sang des Lichtes Bogen Da den Lustkreiß aller Farben Gott durch seinen Raum hinrollte In dem Glanz des ersten Tages. Also tönt des Wassers Woge Mit dem Rund des Erdenballes Selig spielend, in der Sonne Jauchzend an dem ersten Tage In so süßen Tones Strome War die Luft aus Gottes Athem Um die junge Welt ergoßen In der Lust des ersten Tages Und die neue Erde rollte Unter also freudgem Klange In den Kreis von Mond und Sonne Jubelnd an dem ersten Tage. Also sang das Blut ergoßen Durch des neuen Menschen Adern Also sang der Mensch voll Wonne Da er zu der Welt erwachte. (XII, 900–928)

192

The creation of the world is depicted as the combination of sounds in song, hence equating natural phenomena with the pulsing and flowing elements of a song, identifying God as the instantiating singer of the universe, and song as the sensual archive of creation. The sensory qualities of nature constitute the experience of a »Lust des ersten Tages,« provide the life-force of human nature and its connection to the divine (»das Blut […] des nuen Menschen Adern«), and find expression in and as the »blissful« song of this newly »awakened« human being, whose first act is to sing. The evocation of this mythical creation in Biondetta’s performance at Rosarosa’s request indicates that her song bears these sensory traces of God’s song of creation. Human nature’s division into the two principles of a pursuit of ideational knowledge and a pursuit of sensual pleasure is thus coded in terms of gender as the respective male and female principles embodied by Jakopone’s and Apo’s ancestry with Adam and Biondetta’s with Eva. Biondetta’s lineage to Eva – and the gendered coding of seduction and natural sensuality with »woman« – is by no means a univocally negative connotation, as Biondetta’s song is uttered from the same breath as God’s creative and vital melody (»die Luft aus Gottes Athem«). The ambivalence of this account of the Fall parallels Brentano’s oblique notion of an ideal phase in the life of political communities in his »Fragment über die ideale Periode der Staaten.« The scholarship considers Brentano’s »Fragment« to be a response to Novalis’ »Die Christenheit oder Europa« from 1799. No reliable sources enable us to date Brentano’s »Fragment,« except that it must have been written after the summer of 1802 – around the time that he began writing the Romanzen. Novalis’ text, however, narrates an odd mix of history and ideal; it is very much a story of loss, as indicated by the opening lines written in the past tense: Es waren schöne glänzende Zeiten, wo Europa ein christliches Land war, wo Eine Christenheit diesen menschlich gestalteten Welttheil bewohnte; Ein großes gemeinschaftliches Interesse verband die entlegensten Provinzen dieses weiten geistlichen Reichs.71

If we compare these opening lines to the opening sentence of Brentano’s »Fragment,« we find a much different narrative trajectory: Jeder Staat hat in seiner Geschichte eine Periode, in der er ganz gesund ist, und Leib und Seele gesund, dann geschieht alles Gute ohne Geräusch, dann gilt die Gerechtigkeit so ewig und untadelhaft, und ohne irgend jemandes Verwunderung wie die Gestirne des Himmels, die nur der anstaunet denen nur der Loblieder singet, dem sie ein Beruf Wissenschaftlicher Untersuchung, oder ein Anstoß religiöser Rührung geworden.72

Despite its speculative nature, this is above all a declaration about the condition of all states, uttered in the present tense; it is not a narrative of a lost »golden age«

71 72

Novalis, Werke in einem Band, ed. by Hans-Joachim Mähl and Richard Samuel, DTV, München 1995, p. 526. The fragment can be found in: Bernhard Gajek, Homo Poeta. Zur Kontinuität der Problematik bei Clemens Brentano, Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1971, p. 471–472.

193

of states, but rather a description of an ideal period in the history of all states. Moreover, it does not narrate the story of all of Europe bound together, but rather describes a universal fact that »every state« enjoys such a period in its history, without saying at what point in a nation’s history a state experiences this »healthy« condition.73 In any case, this is an ideal period in which justice, science, religion, and art are complementary, before they become distinct disciplines all in wonder of this prior condition. The reference to »Geräusch« – if we consider the »Fragment« alongside the Romanzen – suggests that this era is experienced as the assonance of harmonious song without the interference of additional noise. This is because, in terms resembling the blending of natural elements with the rhythmical sounds in the account of the song of creation, art is a requirement of everyday social and spiritual life, just as human beings require water for nourishment: [D]ie ewig lebendigen Kinder der Kunst treten in die Hallen der Kenner und fühlenden Freunde, und das Heiligste und Herrlichste wird eben so sehr der Hausgenoß der Menschen, als es auf dem Markte in treflichen Bildsäulen den Strale der Brunnen in den Eimer des schöpfenden Volkes gießt, und die Tempel Gottes und die Palläste der Gerechtigkeit, zur Andacht und Ehrfurcht ausschmücket.

To return to the view of community espoused in the Romanzen, we can conclude that this ideal state is not a lost condition to be allegorically narrated by art, but rather a condition of the social life of communities that can be activated in the supplication of a »harmony« delivered from God and archived, however ambivalently, by poetic song. In the nineteenth Romanze, as we have seen, such supplication is enacted through communal rituals, in this case through the observance of rites of mourning for an esteemed member of the community, and is thus a symbolic activity not limited to the seductively beautiful song of the artist but which functions as an organized communal activity. According to Brentano’s version of the Romantic epic imaginary, art and religion would have to exist in impossible accordance in order to bring forth a harmonious community impervious to the »noise« of both

73

194

My comparison of Brentano’s to Novalis’ fragment thus disagrees with Schultz’ argument that Brentano’s poetics follow Novalis’ triadic model of history only to the extent that I do not regard the poetic archive constructed by Brentano in the Romanzen as concerned with recovering »ruins of an archaic paradise«: »[E]s ist das bereits bei Novalis entworfene triadische Geschichtsmodell, das für Brentanos Poetik bedeutsam bleibt. Erst die Erinnerung an jene – geschichtlich kaum zu fi xierende – Urzeit ermöglicht es dem Dichter, eine in die Zukunft weisende Kunst zu produzieren. […] Der Dichter sucht in der Tradition der Dichtung nach den Trümmern der paradiesischen Urzeit und entwickelt bei der Verarbeitung dieser Quellentexte eine neue zukunftsweisende Poesie. […] Dabei ist wichtig, daß die publizierten Texte sowohl alt als auch neu wirken.« For the archive I have traced is just as continuous (albeit hermetically) as poetry is both coeval with Christian myth and indefinite, as Brentano’s reference to the »eternally lively children of art« attests (Schultz, »Von Jena nach Heidelberg,« p. 25–26). Hans-Walter Schmidt shows that, unlike Novalis, Brentano is not concerned with totality (Schmidt, Erlösung der Schrift, p. 94–97).

modern life and the distortive elements of community; here, the aesthetic does not replace religion in secularized modernity, but marks instead the persistence of religion as an indispensable tie that binds community together. Romantic epic thus assumes in Brentano’s poetics the function of the old vernacular church hymnals which A. W. Schlegel identifies, in his treatment of the »Romanze« genre in the lectures on Romantic literature, as verbal repositories of local memory. Such songs are as inseparable from the religious festivals and legends they help commemorate as they are from the community out of which they allegedly sprung.

195

Bibliography

Adorno, Theodor W., »Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda.« In: Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann, with assistance of Gretel Adorno, Susan Buck-Morss, and Klaus Schultz, vol. 8, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1997. Albrecht, Andrea, Kosmopolitismus. Weltbürgerdiskurse in Literatur, Philosophie und Publizistik um 1800, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 2005. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, London and New York 1991. Arendt, Hannah, »Von der Menschlichkeit in finsteren Zeiten.« In: Arendt, Rede am 28. September 1959 bei der Entgegennahme des Lessing-Preises der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, with an essay of Ingeborg Nordmann, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1999. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. by Gerald F. Else, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 2000. Arnim, Achim von, Schriften. In: Arnim, Werke in sechs Bänden, ed. by Roswitha Burwick, Jürgen Knaack, and Hermann F. Weiss, vol. 6, DKV, Frankfurt/M. 1992. – »Zweite Nachschrift an den Leser.« In: Clemens Brentano, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, vol. 8: Des Knaben Wunderhorn, part III, ed. by Heinz Rölleke, Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln, and Mainz 1977. Assmann, Jan, Die Zauberflöte. Oper und Mysterium, Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 2008. Auteri, Laura, Stille und Bewegung. Zur dichterischen Form bei Wieland, Verlag Hans Dieter Heinz, Stuttgart 1998. Badiou, Alain, Saint Paul. The Foundation of Universalism, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2003. – Logics of Worlds. Being and Event II, trans. by Alberto Toscano, Continuum, London and New York 2009. Bakhtin, Michael M., The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. by Michael Holquist, trans. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, University of Texas Press, Austin 1981. Balibar, Etienne, Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy before and after Marx, trans. by James Swenson, Routledge, New York 1994. Behler, Ernst, »Das Wieland-Bild der Brüder Schlegel.« In: Christoph Martin Wieland. North American Scholarly Contributions on the Occasion of the 250th Anniversary of his Birth 1983, ed. by Hansjörg Schelle, Max Niemeyer, Tübingen 1984, p. 349–392. – »Die italienische Renaissance in der Literaturtheorie der Brüder Schlegel.« In: Romantik und Renaissance. Die Rezeption der italienischen Renaissance in der deutschen Romantik, ed. by Silvio Vietta, J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart und Weimar 1994, p.176–195. Bender, Wolfgang, J. J. Bodmer und J. J. Breitinger, J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung Stuttgart 1973. Bennett, Benjamin, Beyond Theory: Eighteenth-Century German Literature and the Poetics of Irony, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London 1993. Benning, Hildegard, Rhetorische Ästhetik. Die poetologische Konzeption Klopstocks im Kontext der Dichtungstheorie des 18. Jahrhunderts, M & P Verlag, Stuttgart 1997. – »Ut Pictura Poesis – Ut Musica Poesis. Paradigmenwechsel im poetologischen Denken Klopstocks.« In: Klopstock an der Grenze der Epochen, ed. by Kevin Hilliard and Kat-

197

rin Kohl, with Klopstock bibliography 1972–1992 by Helmut Riege, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1995, p. 80–96. Bernofsky, Susan, Foreign Words: Translator-Authors in the Age of Goethe, Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2005. Blankenburg, Christian Friedrich von, Versuch über den Roman, reprint of the edition of 1774, J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1965. – Literarische Zusätze zu Johann Georg Sulzers allgemeiner Theorie der schönen Künste (1796–1798), reprint of the 3rd edition, 2 vols, Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1972. Blitz, Han-Martin, Aus Liebe zum Vaterland. Die deutsche Nation im 18. Jahrhundert, Hamburg Edition, Hamburg 2000. Bodmer, Johann Jacob, Critische Abhandlung von dem Wunderbaren in der Poesie und dessen Verbindung mit dem Wahrscheinlichen in einer Vertheidigung des Gedichtes Joh. Miltons von dem verlohrnen Paradiese, J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1966 (reprint of the edition of 1740). – Johann Miltons Episches Gedichte von dem Verlohrnen Paradiese, reprint of Bodmer’s translation 1742, ed. by Wolfgang Bender, J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1965. Bosse, Heinrich, »Klopstocks Kriegslied (1749). Militarische Poesiepolitik im 18. Jahrhundert.« In: Jahrbuch des freien Deutschen Hochstifts (2000), p. 50–84. – »Patriotismus und Öffentlichkeit.« In: Volk – Nation – Vaterland, ed. by Ulrich Herrmann, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1996, p. 67–88. Brandstetter, Gabriele, Erotik und Religiosität. Zur Lyrik Clemens Brentanos, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 1986. Braungart, Georg, »Die Lyriktheorie August Wilhelm Schlegels.« In: Akten des X. Internationalen Germanistenkongresses Wien 2000: »Zeitenwende – Die Germanistik auf dem Weg vom 20. ins 21. Jahrhundert«, ed. by Peter Wiesinger, vol. 6, Lang, Bern a. o. 2002, p. 191–199. Breitinger, Johann Jakob, Critische Dichtkunst, reprint of the edition of 1740, 2 vols, J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1966. Brentano, Clemens, Romanzen vom Rosenkranz, ed. by Clemens Rauschenberg. In: Brentano, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe. Historisch-Kritische Ausgabe [Frankfurter Brentano Ausgabe], vol. 10, ed. by Jürgen Behrens, Konrad Feilchenfeldt, Wolfgang Frühwald, Christoph Perels, and Hartwig Schultz, Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, Berlin, and Köln 1994. – »Fragment über die ideale Periode der Staaten.« In: Homo Poeta. Zur Kontinuität der Problematik bei Clemens Brentano, ed. by Bernhard Gajek, Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1971, p. 471–472. Brockes, Barthold Heinrich, Auszug der vornehmsten Gedichte aus dem Irdischen Vergnügen in Gott, reprint of the edition of 1738, with an afterword by Dietrich Bode, J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1965. Bürger, Christa, »Hermann und Dorothea oder: Die Wirklichkeit als Ideal.« In: Unser Commercium. Goethes und Schillers Literaturpolitik, ed. by Wilfried Barner, Eberhard Lämmert, and Norbert Oellers, Cotta, Stuttgart 1984, p. 485–505. Campe, Rüdiger, Affekt und Ausdruck. Zur Umwandlung der literarischen Rede im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1990. – »Agathon und deutscher Shakespeare. Zu Wielands Stellung im Wissen der Literatur.« In: Wieland/Übersetzen. Sprachen, Gattungen, Räume, ed. by Bettine Menke, Wolfgang Struck, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 2010, p. 206–221. Casanova, Pascale, The World Republic of Letters, trans. by M. B. DeBevoise, Harvard University Press, Cambridge and London 2004. Castoriadis, Cornelius, Gesellschaft als imaginäre Institution. Entwurf einer politischen Philosophie, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1990.

198

Christians, Heiko, Der Traum vom Epos. Romankritik und politische Poetik in Deutschland (1750–2000), Rombach Verlag, Freiburg 2004. Cramer, Carl Friedrich, Klopstock. Er; und über ihn, vol. 1: 1724–1747, Schniebes, Hamburg 1780. de Man, Paul, »The Rhetoric of Temporality.« In: de Man, Blindness and Insight. Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1983, p. 187–228. Dentith, Simon, Epic and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York 2006. Döring, Sabine A., »Vom nation-building zum Identifi kationsfeld. Zur Integrationsfunktion nationaler Mythen in der Literatur.« In: Kulturelle Grenzziehungen im Spiegel der Literaturen: Nationalismus, Regionalismus, Fundamentalismus, ed. by Horst Turk, Brigitte Schultze, and Roberto Simanowski, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 1998, p. 63–83. Dumont, Franz, »Georg Forster als Demokrat: Theorie und Praxis eines deutschen Revolutionärs.« In: Georg Forster Studien 1 (1997), p. 125–154. Dürbeck, Gabriele, Einbildungskraft und Aufklärung. Perspektiven der Philosophie, Anthropologie und Ästhetik um 1750, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1998. Eibl, Karl, »Anamnesis des ›Augenblicks.‹ Goethes poetischer Gesellschaftsentwurf.« In: DVjs 58 (1984), p. 111–138. Engels, Frederick, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, International Publishers, New York 1993. Fetzer, John F., Romantic Orpheus: Profi les of Clemens Brentano, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London 1974. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, Reden an die deutsche Nation, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1978. Fischer, Bernd, Das Eigene und das Eigentliche: Klopstock, Herder, Fichte, Kleist, Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1995. Fohrmann, Jürgen, Das Projekt der deutschen Literaturgeschichte. Entstehung und Scheitern einer nationalen Poesiegeschichtsschreibung zwischen Humanismus und deutschem Kaiserreich, J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 1989. – »Literaturgeschichte als Stiftung von Ordnung. Das Konzept der Literaturgeschichte bei Herder, August Wilhelm und Friedrich Schlegel.« In: Kontroversen, alte und neue, ed. by Albrecht Schöne, Akten des VII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses in Göttingen 1985, vol. 11, Niemeyer, Tübingen 1986, p. 75–84. – »Utopie, Reflexion, Erzählung: Wielands Goldner Spiegel.« In: Utopieforschung. Interdisziplinäre Studien zur neuzeitlichen Utopie, ed. by Wilhelm Voßkamp, vol. 3, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1985, p. 24–49. Forster, Edward Morgan, Aspects of the Novel, Methuen, London 1927. Forster, Georg, Parisische Umrisse. In: Forster, Im Anblick des großen Rades, ed. by RalphRainer Wuthenow, Luchterhand, Darmstadt 1981. Foucault, Michel, »What is an Author?« In: Foucault, Language, Counter-memory, Practice, ed. by Donald F. Bouchard, Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1980, p. 124–127. Fromm, Hans, »Epos.« In: Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft, ed by. Klaus Weimar a. o., vol. 1, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 31997, p. 480–484. Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford 2000. – Fables of Identity. Studies in Poetic Mythology, Harcourt, Brace & Worl, New York and Burlingame 1963. Gaier, Ulrich, »Anthropologie der Neuen Mythologie. Zu Funktion und Verfahren konjekturalen Denkens im 18. Jahrhundert.« In: Zwischen Empirisierung und Konstruktionsleistung: Anthropologie im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. by Jörn Garber and Heinz Thoma, Hallesche Beiträge zur Europäischen Aufklärung 24, Niemeyer, Tübingen 2004, p. 193–218.

199

Gailus, Andreas, Passions of the Sign: Revolution and Language in Kant, Goethe, Kleist, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2006. Gajek, Bernhard, Homo Poeta. Zur Kontinuität der Problematik bei Clemens Brentano, Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1971. Gelzer, Florian, Konversation, Galanterie und Abenteuer. Romaneskes Erzählen zwischen Thomasius und Wieland, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2007. Genette, Gérard, Narrative Discourse: An Essay on Method, trans. by Jane E. Lewin, Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1980. – Paratexte, foreword by Harald Weinrich, trans. by Dieter Hornig, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/M. and New York 1989. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Correspondence between Goethe and Schiller 1794–1805, trans. by Liselotte Dieckmann, Peter Lang Verlag, New York 1994. – Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe in den Jahren 1794 bis 1805, ed. by Manfred Beetz. In: Goethe, Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens. Münchener Ausgabe, ed. by Karl Richter, in cooperation with Herbert G. Göpfert, Norbert Miller, and Gerhard Sauder, Carl Hanser Verlag, München and Wien 1990, vol. 8.1. – »Literarischer Sanscülottismus.« In: Goethe, Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens. Münchner Ausgabe, ed. by Karl Richter in cooperation with Herbert G. Göpfert, Norbert Miller, and Gerhard Sauder, Carl Hanser Verlag, München and Wien 1990, vol. 4.2, p. 15–20. – Collected Works, ed. by Victor Lange, Eric Blackall, and Cyrus Hamlin, 12 vols, Suhrkamp, New York 1983–1989. – Goethes Werke, ed. by Erich Trunz, Christian Wegner Verlag, Hamburg 1968. – Goethes Briefe in 4 Bänden, textkritisch durchgesehen und mit Anmerkungen versehen von Karl Robert Mandelkow. [Hamburger Ausgabe], Christian Wegner Verlag, Hamburg 1964. Gottsched, Johann Christoph, Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst, reprint of the 4th edition of 1751, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 51962. Graevenitz, Gerhart von, »Innerlichkeit und Öffentlichkeit. Aspekte ›bürgerlicher‹ Literatur im frühen 18. Jahrhundert.« In: DVjs Sonderheft »18. Jahrhundert« 49 (1975), p. 1–82. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich, Stimmungen Lesen. Über eine verdeckte Wirklichkeit der Literatur, Carl Hanser Verlag, München 2011. Hamann, Johann Georg, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Joseph Nadler, vol. 2, Verlag Herder, Wien 1950. Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. by Thomas Burger, with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence, MIT Press, Cambridge 1998. – Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1990. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, 3 vols, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1993. Helfer, Martha, The Retreat of Representation: The Concept of Darstellung in German Critical Discourse, State University of New York Press, Albany 1996. Hellmuth, Hans-Heinrich, Metrische Erfindung und metrische Theorie bei Klopstock, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 1973. Herder, Johann Gottfried, Schriften zur Ästhetik und Literatur 1767–1781. In: Herder, Werke in zehn Bänden, ed. by Martin Bollacher a. o., vol. 2, ed. by Gunter E. Grimm, DKV, Frankfurt/M. 1993. – Frühe Schriften 1764–1772. In: Herder, Werke in zehn Bänden, ed. by Martin Bollacher a. o., vol. 1, ed. by Ulrich Gaier, DKV, Frankfurt/M. 1985. – Adrastea. In: Herder, Herders Sämmtliche Werke, ed. by Bernhard Euphan, vol. 24, Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1886. Herrmann, Hans Peter, Hans-Martin Blitz, Susanna Mossmann, Machtphantasie Deutsch-

200

land: Nationalismus, Männlichkeit und Fremdenhass im Vaterlandsdiskurs deutscher Schriftsteller des 18. Jahrhunderts, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1996. Herrmann, Hans Peter, Naturnachahmung und Einbildungskraft. Zur Entwicklung der deutschen Poetik von 1670–1740, Gehlen, Bad Homburg 1970. Hiebel, Hans, Individualität und Totalität. Zur Geschichte und Kritik des bürgerlichen Poesiebegriffs von Gottsched bis Hegel anhand der Theorien über Epos und Roman, Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, Bonn 1974. Hilliard, Kevin, Philosophy, Letters, and the Fine Arts in Klopstock’s Thought, Humanities Press, London 1987. Hilliard, Kevin and Katrin Kohl (ed.), Wort und Schrift – Das Werk Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstocks, Hallesche Forschungen vol. 27, Niemeyer, Tübingen 2008. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger (ed.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York 2003. Hoffmann, Werner, Clemens Brentano. Leben und Werk, Francke Verlag, Bern and München 1966. Hofmann, Michael, Reine Seelen und komische Ritter. Aspekte literarischer Aufklärung in Christoph Martin Wielands Versepik, J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 1998. Holmes, Susanne, Synthesis der Vielheit. Die Begründung der Gattungstheorie bei August Wilhelm Schlegel, Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn, München, Wien, and Zürich 2006. Höltenschmidt, Edith, Die Mittelalter-Rezeption der Brüder Schlegel, Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn, München, Wien, and Zürich 2000. Horch, Hans Otto and Georg-Michael Schulz, Das Wunderbare und die Poetik der Frühaufklärung. Gottsched und die Schweizer, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1988. Hörisch, Jochen, Brot und Wein. Die Poesie des Abendmahls, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1992. Iser, Wolfgang, Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre. Perspektiven literarischer Anthropologie, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1991. – »The Aesthetic and the Imaginary.« In: The States of »Theory«: History, Art, and Critical Discourse, ed. by David Carroll, Columbia University Press, New York 1990, p. 201– 220. Jacob, Joachim, Heilige Poesie: Zu einem literarischen Modell bei Pyra, Klopstock und Wieland, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1997. Jäger, Hans-Wolf, Politische Kategorien in Poetik und Rhetorik der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts, J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1970. Janz, Marlies, Marmorbilder. Weiblichkeit und Tod bei Clemens Brentano und Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Athenäum Verlag, Königstein 1986. Jaumann, Herbert, »Politische Vernunft, anthropologischer Vorbehalt, dichterische Fiktion. Zu Wielands Kritik des Politischen.« In: MLN 99:3 (April 1984), p. 461–78. – »Vom ›klassischen Nationalautor‹ zum ›negativen Classiker.‹ Wandel literaturgesellschaftlicher Institutionen und Wirkungsgeschichte, am Beispiel Wielands.« In: Klassik und Moderne. Die Weimarer Klassik als historisches Ereignis und Herausforderung im kulturgeschichtlichen Prozeß, ed. by Karl Richter and Jörg Schönert, J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 1983, p. 3–26. Jordheim, Helge, Der Staatsroman im Werk Wielands und Jean Pauls: Gattungsverhandlungen zwischen Poetologie und Politik, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2007. Jørgensen, Sven-Aage, Herbert Jaumann, John McCarthy, and Horst Thomé, Wieland. Epoche-Werk-Wirkung, C. H. Beck, München 1994. Jørgensen, Sven-Aage, »Nachwort.« In: Christoph Martin Wieland, Oberon, Reclam, Stuttgart 1990, p. 328–357. – »Sing, komische Muse, in freyer irrenden Tönen…« Zur Museninvokation im ironischen

201

Märchenepyllion des 18. Jahrhunderts.« In: Idee, Gestalt, Geschichte. Festschrift für Klaus von See, ed. by Gerd W. Weber, Odense University Press, Odense 1988, p. 467–479. Kaiser, Gerhard, Klopstock. Religion und Dichtung, Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, Gütersloh 1963. – Pietismus und Patriotismus im literarischen Deutschland. Ein Beitrag zum Problem der Säkularisation, Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1961. Kant, Immanuel, Kritik der Urteilskraft, Felix Meiner, Hamburg 2001. – Critique of Judgment, trans. by Werner S. Pluhar, Hackett, Indianapolis 1987. Kermode, Frank, The Sense of an Ending. Studies in the Theory of Fiction, Oxford University Press, New York 1967. Kittler, Friedrich A., »Über die Sozialisation Wilhelm Meisters.« In: Gerhard Kaiser and Friedrich A. Kittler, Dichtung als Sozialisationsspiel, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1978, p. 13–125. Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, Werke und Briefe. Hamburger Klopstock-Ausgabe [HKA], founded by Adolf Beck, Karl Ludwig Schneider, and Hermann Tiemann, ed. by Horst Gronemeyer, Elisabeth Höpker-Herberg, Klaus Hurlebusch, and Rose-Maria Hurlebusch, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1974 et seq. – Der Messias. In: Klopstock, HKA, vol. 1–3, ed. by Elisabeth Höpker-Herberg, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1996. – Die deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik. In: Klopstock, HKA, vol. VII/1 and VII.2, ed. by Rose-Maria Hurlebusch, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1975. – Briefe 1738–1750. In: Klopstock, HKA, Briefe, vol. I, ed. by Horst Gronemeyer, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1979. – Gedanken über die Natur der Poesie. Dichtungstheoretische Schriften, ed. by Winfried Menninghaus, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1989. – Ausgewählte Werke, ed. by Karl August Schleiden, Carl Hanser Verlag, München 1962. Kluge, Gerhard, »Hermann und Dorothea. Die Revolution und Hermanns Schlußrede – zwei ›schmerzliche Zeichen‹?« In: Goethe Jahrbuch 109 (1992), p. 61–68. – »Clemens Brentanos Erzählungen aus den Jahren 1810–1818.« In: Clemens Brentano. Beiträge des Kolloquiums im Freien Deutsche Hochstift 1978, ed. by Detlev Lüders, Niemeyer, Tübingen 1980, p. 102–134. Kohl, Katrin, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 2000. – »Kulturstiftung durch Sprache. Rede und Schrift in der Deutschen Gelehrtenrepublik.« In: Wort und Schrift – Das Werk Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstocks, ed. by Kevin Hilliard and Katrin Kohl, Hallesche Forschungen vol. 27, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2008, p. 145–171. Koschorke, Albrecht, Körperströme und Schriftverkehr: Mediologie des 18. Jahrhunderts, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 1999. – with Susanne Lüdemann, Thomas Frank, and Ethel Matala de Mazza, Der fi ktive Staat. Konstruktionen des politischen Körpers in der Geschichte Europas, Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 2007. – »Macht und Fiktion.« In: Des Kaisers neue Kleider. Über das Imaginäre politischer Herrschaft. Texte, Bilder, Lektüre, ed. by Thomas Frank, Albrecht Koschorke, Susanne Lüdemann, and Ethel Matala de Mazza, with assistance of Andreas Kraß, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 2002, p. 73–84. – »Götterzeichen und Gründungsverbrechen. Die zwei Anfänge des Staates.« http://www. uni-konstanz.de/kulturtheorie/KoschorkeRomulus.pdf. Koselleck, Reinhart, Kritik und Krise: Ein Beitrag zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt, Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg and München 1959. – »Einleitung: Volk-Nation-Nationalismus-Masse.« In: Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, vol. 7, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1992, p. 142–151.

202

Koselleck, Reinhart and Hans Maier, »Demokratie (IV). Das Zeitalter der Französischen Revolution.« In: Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politischsozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, vol. 1, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1972, p. 847–861. Laak, Lothar van, »Sprachbildlichkeit und Musikalität. Zur ästhetischen Erfahrung bei Klopstock.« In: Wort und Schrift – Das Werk Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstocks, ed. by Kevin Hilliard and Katrin Kohl, Hallesche Forschungen vol. 27, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2008, p. 221–239. Landfester, Ulrike and Ralf Simon (ed.), Gabe, Tausch, Verwandlung. Übertragungsökonomien im Werk Clemens Brentano, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2009. Laplanche, Jean and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, Urphantasie. Phantasien über den Ursprung, Ursprünge der Phantasie, trans. by Max Looser, Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1992. Lepenies, Wolf, Das Ende der Naturgeschichte. Wandel kultureller Selbstverständlichkeiten in den Wissenschaften des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, Carl Hanser Verlag, München and Wien 1976. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, Werke und Briefe in zwölf Bänden, ed. by Wilfried Barner with Klaus Bohnen, Gunter E. Grimm, Helmuth Kiesel, Arno Sschilson, Jürgen Stenzel, and Conrad Wiedemann, vol. 11/2, DKV, Frankfurt/M. 1987. – Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry, trans. with an introduction and notes by Edward Allen McCormick, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London 1984. – Werke, ed. by Herbert G. Göpfert, vol. III, Carl Hanser Verlag, München 1972. Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Structural Anthropology, trans. by Claire Jacobson and Brooke G. Schoepf, Basic Books, New York 1963. Lotman, Jurij, Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture, introduction by Umberto Eco, trans. by Ann Shukman, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis 2000. – Die Struktur literarischer Texte, trans. by Rolf-Dietrich Keil, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 4 1993. – »Über die Semiosphäre.« In: Zeitschrift für Semiotik 12:4 (1990), p. 287–305. Lüdemann, Susanne, Metaphern der Gesellschaft. Studien zum soziologischen und politischen Imaginären, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 2004. Luhmann, Niklas, »Kultur als historischer Begriff.« In: Luhmann, Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik: Studien zur Wissenssoziologie der modernen Gesellschaft, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1999, p. 31–54. – »Religion als Kultur.« In: Das Europa der Religionen. Ein Kontinent zwischen Säkularisierung und Fundamentalismus, ed. by Otto Kallscheuer, Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1996, p. 291–315. Lukács, Georg, The Theory of the Novel, trans. by Anna Bostock, MIT Press, Cambridge 1999. – Die Theorie des Romans. Ein geschichtsphilosophischer Versuch über die Formen der großen Epik, DTV, München 1994. – Goethe and His Age, trans. by Robert Anchor, Merlin Press, London 1968. Lupton, Julia Reinhard, Citizen-Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2005. Lützeler, Paul Michael, »Hermann und Dorothea« in Goethes Erzählwerk, Reclam, Stuttgart 1998. Lypp, Maria, »Bürger und Weltbürger in Goethes Hermann und Dorothea.« In: Goethe 31 (1969), p. 129–142. Maier, Hans, »Zur Geschichte des Demokratiebegriffs.« In: Theorie und Politik. Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag von Carl Joachim Friedrich, ed. by Klaus von Beyme, Nijhoff, Den Haag 1971, p. 127–161.

203

Maiworm, Heinrich, Neue deutsche Epik, Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1968. – Die Wiederbelebung des Epos im 18. Jahrhundert, dissertation, Tübingen 1949. Maler, Anselm, Der Held im Salon. Zum antiheroischen Programm deutscher RokokoEpik, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1974. Manger, Klaus, »Unvermindert Aktuell. Wielands Digression im ›Oberon‹ und Goethes Intermezzo im ›Faust‹« (2004). In: Wieland Studien 6. Sibi Res Non Se Rebus Submittere. Festschrift für Klaus Manger zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Jutta Heinz, Universitätsverlag Carl Winter, Heidelberg 2010, p. 179–194. – »Wielands Kosmopoliten« (1996). In: Wieland-Studien 6.Sibi Res Non Se Rebus Submittere. Festschrift für Klaus Manger zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Jutta Heinz, Universitätsverlag Carl Winter, Heidelberg 2010, p. 95–121. – »Wielands kulturelle Programmatik als Zeitschriftenherausgeber« (1994). In: Wieland Studien 6. Sibi Res Non Se Rebus Submittere. Festschrift für Klaus Manger zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Jutta Heinz, Universitätsverlag Carl Winter, Heidelberg 2010, p. 68–76. Marcuse, Herbert, »The Affirmative Character of Culture.« In: Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, trans. by Jeremy J. Shapiro, Allen Lane The Penguin Press, London 1969, p. 88–133. Martin, Dieter, Das deutsche Versepos im 18. Jahrhundert. Studien und kommentierte Gattungsbibliographie, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1993. – »Klopstocks Messias und die Verinnerlichung der Deutschen Epik im 18. Jahrhundert.« In: Klopstock an der Grenze der Epochen, ed. by Kevin Hilliard and Katrin Kohl, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1995, p. 97–116. Martínez, Matías, »Gelungene und mißlungene Kanonisierung: Dantes Commedia und Klopstocks Messias.« In: Kanon-Macht-Kultur. Theoretische, historische und soziale Aspekte ästhetischer Kanonbildungen, ed. by Renate von Heydebrand, J.B Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 1998, p. 215–229. Martus, Steffen, Werkpolitik. Zur Literaturgeschichte kritischer Kommunikation vom 17. bis ins 20. Jahrhundert mit Studien zu Klopstock, Tieck, Goethe und George, Historia Hermeneutica vol. 3, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 2007. Matala de Mazza, Ethel, Der verfaßte Körper. Zum Projekt einer organischen Gemeinschaft in der Politischen Romantik, Rombach Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1999. – »Zugänge zum Machthaber. Über Spiegel und andere Medien.« In: Die Macht und das Imaginäre, ed. by Rudolf Behrens and Jörn Steigerwald, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, p. 71–88. Mayer, Hans, Zur Deutschen Klassik und Romantik, Neske, Pfullingen 1963. McCarthy, John, »Wielands Metamorphose.« In: DVjs 49 Sonderheft »18. Jahrhundert« (1975), p. 149–167. Menke, Bettine and Wolfgang Struck (ed.), Wieland/Übersetzen. Sprachen, Gattungen, Räume, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 2010. Menninghaus, Winfried, »Klopstocks Poetik der schnellen ›Bewegung‹.« In: Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Gedanken über die Natur der Poesie, Dichtungstheoretische Schriften, ed. by Winfried Menninghaus, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1989, p. 259–351. Merck, Johann Heinrich, »Ueber den Mangel des Epischen Geistes in unserm lieben Vaterland.« In: Merck, Werke, ed. by Arthur Henkel, with an introduction by Peter Berglar, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1968, p. 385–391. Meuthen, Erich, Selbst-Überredung. Rhetorik und Roman im 18. Jahrhundert, Rombach Verlag, Freiburg im Br. 1994. Michel, Sascha, Ordnungen der Kontingenz. Figurationen der Unterbrechung in Erzähldiskursen um 1800 (Wieland – Jean Paul – Brentano), Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2006. Mieszkowski, Jan, »Patriot Acts: Heinrich von Kleist and the Language of Heil.« In: Romanticism and Patriotism, ed. by Orrin Wang, Romantic Circles Praxis Series (May 2006).

204

Miller, Seven R., Die Figur des Erzählers in Wielands Romanen, Verlag Alfred Kümmerle, Göppingen 1970. Milton, John, Paradise Lost, Penguin, London 2000. Moenninghoff, Burkhard, Intertextualität im scherzhaften Epos des 18. Jahrhunderts, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1991. Möller, Uwe, Rhetorische Überlieferung und Dichtungstheorie im frühen 18. Jahrhundert. Studien zu Gottsched, Breitinger und G.Fr. Meier, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 1983. Moretti, Franco, Modern Epic: The World-System from Goethe to García Márquez, trans. by Quintin Hoare, Verso, London and New York 1996. Morgan, Peter, »The Polarization of Utopian Idealism and Practical Politics in the Idyll: The Role of the First ›Bräutigam‹ in Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea.« In: German Quarterly 57:4 (Fall 1984), p. 532–45. Mücke, Dorothea E. von, The Seduction of the Occult and the Rise of the Fantastic Tale, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2003. – Virtue and the Veil of Illusion: Generic Innovation and the Pedagogical Project in Eighteenth-Century Literature, Stanford University Press, Stanford 1991. Mülder-Bach, Inka, Im Zeichen Pygmalions. Das Modell der Statue und die Entdeckung der »Darstellung« im 18. Jahrhundert, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 1998. Nagy, Gregory, »Epic as Genre.« In: Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World. The Poetics of Community, ed. by Margaret Beissinger, Jane Tylus, and Susanne Wofford, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1999, p. 21–32. Nancy, Jean-Luc, The Inoperative Community, ed. by Peter Connor, trans. by Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus, Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1991. Novalis, Werke in einem Band, ed. by Hans-Joachim Mähl and Richard Samuel, DTV München 1995. Oehme, Mathias, »Epos und Geschichte in Herders ›Adrastea‹.« In: Weimarer Beiträge 30:5 (1984), p. 777–792. Oettinger, Klaus, Phantasie und Erfahrung. Studien zur Erzählpoetik Christoph Martin Wielands, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 1970. Palmer, Robert R., »Notes on the use of the word ›democracy‹ 1789–1799.« In: Political Science Quarterly 68 (1953), p. 203–226. Peter, Emanuel, Geselligkeiten. Literatur, Gruppenbildung und kultureller Wandel im 18. Jahrhundert, Studien zur deutschen Literatur vol. 153, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1999. Polaschegg, Andrea, Der andere Orientalismus. Regeln deutsch-morgenländischer Imagination im 19. Jahrhundert, Quellen und Forschungen zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte vol. 35, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2005. Polsakiewicz, Roman, Weltgeschichte als Heilsgeschichte. Untersuchungen zur Geschichtsauffassung Clemens Brentanos, Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt/M., Bern, and New York 1986. Pollmann, Leo, »Das Renaissanceepos.« In: Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft, ed. by Klaus von See, vol. 9, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, Frankfurt/M. 1972. Pornschlegel, Clemens, Der literarische Souverän. Studien zur politischen Funktion der deutschen Dichtung, Rombach Verlag, Freiburg im Br. 1994. Pravida, Dietmar, Die Erfindung des Rosenkranzes. Untersuchungen zu Clemens Brentanos Versepos, Forschungen zum Junghegelianismus vol. 13, Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 2005. Preisendanz, Wolfgang, »Die Kunst der Darstellung in Wielands Oberon.« In: Formenwan-

205

del. Festschrift zum Geburtstag von Paul Böckmann, Hoffmann und Campe Verlag, Hamburg 1964, p. 236–57. – »Wieland und die Verserzählung des 18. Jahrhunderts.« In: Germanisch-Romanische Monatschrift 12 (1962), p. 17–31. Prince, Gerald, A Dictionary of Narratology, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London 1989. Pross, Caroline, Kunstfeste. Drama, Politik und Öffentlichkeit in der Romantik, Rombach Verlag, Freiburg im Br. 2001. Quint, David, Epic and Empire. Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1993. Riedel, Friedrich Just, Briefe über das Publikum, ed. by Eckart Feldmeier, Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Wien 1973. Sahmland, Irmtraut, Christoph Martin Wieland und die deutsche Nation. Zwischen Patriotismus, Kosmopolitismus und Griechentum, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1990. Saine, Thomas P., Black Bread – White Bread. German Intellectuals and the French Revolution, Camden House, Columbia 1988. Scherpe, Klaus R., Gattungspoetik im 18. Jahrhundert: Historische Entwicklung von Gottsched bis Herder, J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1968. Schiller, Friedrich, Philosophische Schriften. Erster Teil. In: Schiller, Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe, ed. by Benno von Wiese, with assistance of Helmut Koopmann, vol. 20/1, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, Weimar 1962. Schlaffer, Hannelore, »Poesie und Prosa. Wielands Verserzählungen.« In: Wissen – Erzählen – Tradition. Wielands Spätwerk, ed. by Walter Erhart and Lothar van Laak, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, and New York 2010, p. 153–176. Schlaffer, Heinz, Der Bürger als Held. Sozialgeschichtliche Auflösungen literarischer Widersprüche, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1973. Schlegel, August Wilhelm, Kritische Ausgabe der Vorlesungen [KAV], ed. by Georg Braungart, founded by Ernst Behler in cooperation with Frank Jolles, Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn, München, Wien, and Zürich 1989 et seq. – Vorlesungen über Ästhetik. In: Schlegel, KAV, vol. I (1798–1803). – Vorlesungen über Ästhetik. In: Schlegel, KAV, vol. II/1 (1803–1827). – »Hermann und Dorothea.« In: Schlegel, Kritische Schriften, ed. by Emil Staiger, Artemis Verlag, Zürich 1962. – »Briefe über Poesie, Silbenmaß und Sprache.« In: Schlegel, Kritische Schriften und Briefe, ed. by Edgar Lohner, vol. 1: Sprache und Poetik, Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1962, p. 141–180. Schlegel, Friedrich, Gespräch über die Poesie. In: Schlegel, Kritische Friedrich Schlegel Ausgabe, ed. by Ernst Behler, with assistance of Jean-Jacques Anstett, Hans Eichner, and others, vol. 2, Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1958. Schmidt, Hans-Walter, Erlösung der Schrift. Zum Buchmotiv im Werk Clemens Brentanos, Passagen Verlag, Wien 1991. Schmidt, Horst-Michael, Sinnlichkeit und Verstand. Zur philosophischen und poetologischen Begründung von Erfahrung und Urteil in der deutschen Aufklärung. Leibniz, Wolff, Gottsched, Bodmer und Breitinger, Baumgarten, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 1982. Schmitt, Carl, Politische Theologie. Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 51990. Schneider, Karl Ludwig, Klopstock und die Erneuerung der deutschen Dichtersprache im 18. Jahrhundert, Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1960. Schneider, Manfred, »Imagination des Staates.« In: Die Macht und das Imaginäre, ed. by Rudolf Behrens and Jörn Steigerwald, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, p. 41–58. – »Luther mit McLuhan. Zur Medientheorie und Semiotik heiliger Zeichen.« In: Diskurs-

206

analysen 1 – Medien, ed. by. Friedrich Kittler, Manfred Schneider, and Samuel Weber, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1987, p. 13–25. Schön, Erich, Der Verlust der Sinnlichkeit oder die Verwandlungen des Lesers. Mentalitätswandel um 1800, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1993. Schultz, Hartwig, »Von Jena nach Heidelberg. Die Entfaltung von Brentanos Poetik.« In: Clemens Brentano. 1778–1842. Zum 150. Todestag, ed. by Hartwig Schultz, Peter Lang Verlag, Bern 1993, p. 11–30. Seeba, Hinrich C., »Nationalliteratur. Zur Ästhetisierung der politischen Funktion von Geschichtsschreibung.« In: Akten des VII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses Göttingen 1985. Kontroversen, alte und neue, ed. by Albrecht Schöne, vol. 9, Deutsche Literatur in der Weltliteratur – Kulturnation statt politischer Nation?, ed. by Franz Norbert Mennemeyer and Conrad Wiedemann, Tübingen 1986, p. 197–207. Seidlin, Oskar, »Über Hermann und Dorothea.« In: Klassische und moderne Klassiker, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1972. Sengle, Friedrich, Wieland, J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 1949. Staiger, Emil, Basic Concepts of Poetics, trans. by Janette C. Hudson and Luanne T. Frank, Penn State University Press, University Park 1991. Stellmacher, Wolfgang, »Herders Fabeln, Parabeln, Legenden als Versuche einer ›abgerissenen‹ und ›verstummenden‹ Poesie.« In: Herder Jahrbuch/ Herder Yearbook 6 (2002), p. 115–127. Stöckmann, Ingo, Vor der Literatur. Eine Evolutionstheorie der Poetik Alteuropas, Communicatio vol. 28, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2001. Till, Dietmar, Das doppelte Erhabene. Eine Argumentationsfigur von der Antike bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2006. Todorov, Tzvetan, The Poetics of Prose, trans. by Richard Howard, Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1995. Torra-Mattenklot, Caroline, Metaphorologie der Rührung. Ästhetische Theorie und Mechanik im 18. Jahrhundert, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 2002. Trappen, Stefan, Gattungspoetik: Studien zur Poetik des 16. bis 19. Jahrhunderts und zur Geschichte der triadischen Gattungslehre, Universitätsverlag Carl Winter, Heidelberg 2001. Unger, Thorsten, Handeln im Drama. Theorie und Praxis bei J.Chr. Gottsched und J. M. R. Lenz, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1993. Viles, George Burridge, Comparison of Bodmer’s Translation of Paradise Lost with the Original, Emil Glausch Verlag, Leipzig 1902. Virgil’s Aeneid, trans. by John Dryden, Penguin, London 1997. Voltaire, La Henriade. In: Voltaire, Edition critique par O. R. Taylor. Les Œuvres Completes de Voltaire, Theodore Besterman, vol. 2, Geneve 1970. Wagner-Egelhaaf, Martina, »Klopstock! Oder: Medien des nationalen Imaginären. Zu den Hermann-Bardieten.« In: Hermann Schlachten. Zur Literaturgeschichte eines nationalen Mythos, ed. by Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, Veröffentlichungen der Literaturkommission für Westfalen vol. 32, Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2008, p. 195–214. Wegmann, Nikolaus, Diskurse der Empfindsamkeit. Zur Geschichte eines Gefühls in der Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts, J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 1988. Weimar, Klaus, »Theologische Metrik. Überlegungen zu Klopstocks Arbeit am ›Messias.‹« In: Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 16 (1969/70), p. 142–157. Weitin, Thomas, Zeugenschaft. Das Recht der Literatur, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 2009. Wellbery, David E., The Specular Moment: Goethe’s Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism, Stanford University Press, Stanford 1996. – Lessing’s Laocoon: Semiotics and Aesthetics in the Age of Reason, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984. – »Kunst – Zeugung – Geburt. Überlegungen zu einer anthropologischen Grundfigur.«

207

In: Kunst – Zeugung – Geburt. Theorien und Metaphern ästhetischer Produktion in der Neuzeit, ed. by Christian Begmann and David E. Wellbery, Rombach Verlag, Freiburg im Br. 2002, p. 9–36. Weyergraf, Bernd, Der skeptische Bürger: Wielands Schriften zur Französischen Revolution, J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 1972. Wiedemann, Conrad, »Zwischen Nationalgeist und Kosmopolitismus. Über die Schwierigkeit der deutschen Klassiker, einen Nationalhelden zu finden.« In: Patriotism, ed. by Günter Birtsch, Meiner, Hamburg 1991, p. 75–101. Wieland, Christoph Martin, Politische Schriften, insbesondere zur Französischen Revolution, 3 vols, Franz Greno, Nördlingen 1988. – Der skeptische Bürger: Wielands Schriften zur Französischen Revolution, J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 1972. – Ausgewählte Prosa aus dem Teutschen Merkur, ed. by Hans Werner Seiffert, SchillerNationalmuseum, Marbach 1963. – Oberon: A Poetical Romance in Twelve Books, trans. by John Quincy Adams, ed. with an intro by A. B. Faust, F. S. Crofts & Co., New York 1940. – Dichtungen 2. 1780–1812. In: Wieland, Wielands Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by the Deutsche Kommision der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. I/13, ed. by Wilhelm Kurrelmeyer, Weidmann, Berlin 1935. Wild, Christopher J., Theater der Keuschheit, Keuschheit des Theaters. Zu einer Geschichte der (Anti-)Theatralität von Gryphius bis Kleist, Rombach Verlag, Freiburg im Br. 2003. Wilke, Jürgen, »Der deutsch-schweizerische Literaturstreit.« In: Formen und Formgeschichte des Streitens. Der Literaturstreit, ed. by Franz Josef Worstbrock and Helmut Koopmann, Akten des VII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses Göttingen 1985, Kontroversen, alte und neue, ed. by Albrecht Schöne vol. 2, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1986, p. 140–151. Wilson, W. Daniel, Humanität und Kreuzzugsideologie um 1780. Die »Türkenoper« im 18. Jahrhundert und das Rettungsmotiv in Wielands »Oberon«, Lessings »Nathan«, und Goethes »Iphigenie«, Peter Lang Verlag, New York, Bern, Frankfurt/M., and Nancy 1984. – »Intellekt und Herrschaft. Wielands Goldner Spiegel, Joseph II. und das Ideal eines kritischen Mäzenats im aufgeklärten Absolutismus.« In: MLN 99:3 (April 1984), p. 479– 502. Wolf, Friedrich August, Prolegomena to Homer. Trans. with introduction and notes by Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and James E. G. Zetzel, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1985. Woloch, Alex, The One vs. The Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2003. Wollny, Peter (ed.), Klopstock und die Musik, Ortus-Musikverlag, Beeskow 2005. Zedler, Johann Heinrich, Grosses Vollständiges Universal-Lexikon, vol. 12: H-He, Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz 1961. Ziolkowski, Theodore, German Romanticism and Its Institutions, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1990. Žižek, Slavoj, The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?, Verso, London and New York 2001.

208

Index of Subjects

act 2, 23, 25, 30, 36, 80–81, 108, 111, 190, 193 heroic 11–12, 41 of comparison 16 of creation 52 of disrobing 51 of narration 135 of parody 140 poetic 66–68, 169, 180 action 31–32, 50n, 96, 129, 142–149, 183 affect 55, 56, 67–68, 73, 79, 81–85, 149, 153, 159, 161, 183 allegory 5, 22, 34, 63, 71–72, 74, 91, 128n, 169, 177n, 194 in Wieland 121 Forster’s »allegorical« humanism and citizenship 88, 113 anthropology 134n, 145 romantic 152, 154–163, 180 applause 134 archive 21, 157, 163, 175, 179–180, 193–194 assonance 143, 146–147, 176, 183, 188, 194 audience 21, 26, 29, 32, 34, 44, 47n, 59, 71–78, 82, 85, 107, 127, 143n, 180–186 author-function 28 authority 2, 20, 29, 36, 122, 129, 132, 164, 166, 189 beauty 20, 28, 88 Marcuse on, 90n, 97 of Oberon 123 of song 152, 157, 168n Bildung 52, 77n, 99–102, 106, 153, 173 Bildungsroman 96, 99–100, 102, 173 body 51, 160–161 politic 4, 54n, 162 border(s) 1, 4–5, 14, 49, 51, 54, 85, 121, 135, 141, 149–151, 162 character 16n, 26, 31–32, 35–36, 42, 54n, 87–116, 121–130, 142–151, 177, 189 national 166

Christian(ity) 9, 34, 51–60, 64, 68–74, 78–79, 80–85, 87, 115, 120, 124, 128, 130, 145–150, 168–180, 186, 194n citizen(s) (Bürger) 31, 90, 94, 100, 139 citizenship 109 literary citizenship 115 collective 4–5, 13–14, 17, 32, 54n, 60–61, 117, 128–129 identity 19 nationality 47 story 105, 108 unity 145 community 2, 4, 12–18, 26–27, 36, 45, 53–61, 64–79, 87, 89–90, 109, 129, 137, 149, 152–155, 157, 161, 163, 167–168, 177–189, 194–195 Badiou vs. Klopstock on 82–85 epic 114–115 comparison 30 practice of 15–16 composure (Besonnenheit) 95 contingency 4, 15, 23, 43, 96, 127, 128n, 166 conversation 39, 136 cosmopolitan 14–15, 112 according to Wieland 118, 119, 132, 139–142 Oberon as 121 recognition 30 cosmopolitanism 11n, 54n, 132–133, 135, 173n culture 15–16, 30, 58, 74–78 affirmative 90n national 114–115, 174 national vs. world in Wieland 141, 148–150 nature and 162, 170, 175, 183, 191–192 deed see also act, 21, 30–32, 35–41, 45, 96, 98 in Hermann und Dorothea 108–109, 122 in Oberon 144 mis- 178 democracy 89–93, 100–101, 106, 112–113, 119, 132, 135, 137–138

209

desire 11, 13–14, 43, 46, 49, 54n, 77, 128–129, 166, 185 destiny 17, 27, 43, 80–81, 96, 126–127 deus ex machina 120, 186, 188 diegesis 67 Dichtung 4, 7, 37, 41n, 52, 71 dichten 25, 176. drama 10n, 24, 44, 68n, 74n, 88, 94–97, 114, 165, 176n cosmopolitan 132–135, 140

French Revolution 87–116, 117–119, 131, 136–137, 140, 149 freedom 87–90, 95, 106–114, 157, 160–161, 190

empire 2, 22, 73, 122, 125n, 149 enjambment 143–144, 146–147 Enlightenment 10, 18, 51, 54n, 90, 92, 98, 112–114, 117, 129, 145, 150, 153, 189 epic comic 15 heroic 8n, 10–11, 15n, 21, 55n, 56, 108–109 naiveté 38–39, 47n, 61, 63, 78, 154n populist 39 retardation 95–97, 102–103, 116, 117 epic imaginary 4, 7–8, 10–11, 14–18, 23n, 24, 30, 32, 35, 39–40, 45, 47, 50, 57, 77–78, 82, 87, 89–92, 97–98, 112, 114, 117–119, 122, 129, 131–132, 138–139, 142, 148–150, 154–155, 163–164, 168, 170, 175, 180n, 194 episode 26, 72, 124–127 Epopee 19, 22, 31, 44, 55 see also Epic; Epos; Heldengedicht Epos 7–10, 12–15, 39, 123n, 176 Herder on 42–44 A.W. Schlegel on 99–100, 170 equality 87–90, 106, 109, 113–114 Europe 2n, 17n, 37n, 38, 124, 150, 166, 171–172, 194 event 31, 34–36, 39, 42, 55, 67–68, 72, 80–82, 84, 96, 98n, 118, 124–130, 132–133, 143n, 144–145, 149–150, 168, 171, 189 exclusion 57, 77, 84–85, 109, 150

Heldengedicht see also Epic, Epopee, Epos; 8–9, 10n, 11, 19, 20–22, 31–34, 37–38, 55 hero(es) 11, 20–23, 26, 32–36, 40, 43–44, 52, 96, 98, 122, 128n, 162 (anti-)heroes 15 hexameter 7, 8n, 11, 40, 42, 47, 50, 55, 61–77, 82–84, 86–88, 100, 108, 114–115, 119 history 3–4, 10, 12, 15–16, 19, 20, 32, 35, 38, 40n, 43–44, 46, 51, 62, 65, 81, 82n, 89, 98, 104, 113, 115, 117, 121, 155, 162–175, 178, 189, 191, 193–194 humanism 81–84, 88–92, 98–101, 112–114, 118–119, 129, 131–132, 135–136, 142–145, 148–151 humanity 11, 15, 16n, 36, 68, 82–84, 93, 100, 113, 118, 177 Fichte on 82n improvement of 139 Klopstocks »fatherland of« 56–57 Marcuse on 90 hypotaxis 134, 138

fable, (Fabel ), fabula 21–30, 40–44, 99, 121, 123, 128 Christian 80–85 Fall 30, 156, 178, 189–193 fantasy 6n, 48–51, 75, 122, 168–170 fate 47–48, 97–98, 127 fiction 1, 5–6, 16–18, 32n, 54, 72n, 76, 97, 120n, 135, 138, 163n flesh 81, 84

210

genealogy 15, 20, 22, 40–41, 172, 177–178 genre 1, 3–4, 7–15, 19–45, 46, 47n, 50, 52, 54, 78, 87–90, 96, 115, 117, 119–122, 136, 138, 148, 152, 166–167, 170–174, 176n, 178n, 188, 195

identity Badiou on 81 bourgeois 112 collective 19, 65 Herder on 165–166 national 16, 17n, 54n, 55n, 121, 141 image 5n, 29, 33n, 51, 63, 71n, 72n, 90n, 96, 105, 107, 110–113, 117, 120, 126, 129–130, 144, 147, 149, 163, 179, 183, 188 of Virgin Mary 182, 186 imaginary 1, 10, 53–54, 98, 134, 139n, 150, 153, 158 aesthetic 97 defined 4–7 see also epic imaginary imagination (Einbildungskraft) 5, 13, 38, 49, 51, 76, 78, 87, 95, 97–98, 122

imitation (Nachahmung) 20, 23, 52, 55, 104, 141, 191 A.W. Schlegel on 157–158, 161 Klopstock‘s version of 61–64, 66n, 78 imperial 3 oppressors 91 unity 128 worldview 148 see also empire inclusion 21, 57, 150 institution(s) 15, 31, 58, 61, 79, 85, 129, 164, 167, 177 literature as 55, 75–77, 115 meter as 163 political 1–6 interruption 129, 148 of myth 115 invention 25, 63, 65, 78, 150, 152, 154–155 of meter 159–162 of romantic epic 164, 166–167, 170, 176n of rosary 180 invisible 169 community 57 realm of the soul 51 world 25, 27, 30–31 judge in Hermann und Dorothea, 93–94, 103, 105–110, 116 judgment 32, 145 language 14, 51, 80, 83–84, 148, 154n, 156–159, 167–168, 180, 190–192 national 38, 50, 62, 74–75, 87 poetic 11 13n, 17, 27–30, 37, 53, 57, 65n, 66, 68, 70n, 71, 82, 173n, 175, 183–184 politics of 5, 76 law 2, 81–82, 161, 168 of cause and effect 125 poetic 19, 87–88, 90, 93–97, 107, 109n, 113–114, 116 legal system 1–2 legitimation 1–4, 8, 12, 14, 15n, 19–20, 22–23, 28, 35, 45, 148, 165 love 1, 11, 46, 49, 81–82, 84–85, 103, 121, 123–128, 131, 145–146, 149–151, 169, 177 loyalty 124–129 marriage 88, 91, 100, 103–104, 106, 109–112, 179 marvelous (das Wunderbare) 8–9, 24,

26–30, 37–38, 40, 43, 120–121, 157–158, 175, 190 mass (Menge) 87, 104–105, 109, 112–113, 116n, 135–137, 154 medieval period 15n, 38, 43, 168, 171 meter 7, 11, 62, 71, 164, 167–170, 180 invention of 152, 155–157, 161–163 mimesis 49, 61–71, 119n modernity 1n, 5n, 9, 10n, 13, 16n, 19n, 33–37, 43, 47n, 50–51, 54, 59, 61–63, 81, 82n, 87–89, 90n, 93, 97, 100, 152, 164, 167–169, 173n, 188–189, 195 monarchy 22, 74, 132, 137–138 morality 20–24, 26, 32, 45, 50n, 73, 76, 118, 122, 124–125, 126n, 128–129, 131–135, 138–140, 145, 148–151, 163n, 180 movement 15, 27, 67, 151 metrical 68–71, 82–83, 115, 144–150 narrative 95, 102n, 103 of the soul 65–66 physical 119, 121 multitude (Menge) 20, 100, 103–106, 109, 111, 113–114, 145, 149, 152–154, 161–162, 176, 181–188 music 48, 78, 141, 155–160, 163n, 175–177, 180–182, 186, 192 Muslim(s) 122, 126, 128–129, 145–150 myth 1, 9–10, 13n, 14–18, 21–22, 34–35, 38, 44–45, 51–52, 57, 63, 80, 82–83, 98, 115, 118, 120–122, 131, 135, 162–163, 168–175, 178–180, 186, 189–193 foundational 2, 5n, 19, 55, 155 of humanism 99, 109 Romulus 2–4 narrative 1–4, 5n, 11, 14–17, 21, 25–30, 32–34, 47, 67–68, 72n, 75, 78, 80, 84–85, 87–116, 119–151, 156, 163–164, 168n, 176–178, 188–193 and Klopstock‘s paradox 55, 58, 64–65 auctorial 134 foundational 3, 19, 58, 82, 163 Herder on 40–45 sovereignty 117, 119, 132–142 nation 1–2, 5, 11n, 12, 14–17, 19–22, 26, 29–32, 36, 38, 40–44, 47, 53–60, 63–65, 71, 74–78, 82–84, 86–89, 92, 98–99, 112, 115, 121, 132, 137, 141, 148, 150, 153–154, 164–166, 170–174, 194 nature 25, 30, 43, 46–50, 93, 155–163, 170, 177–178, 183, 188–193

211

human 118–125, 129, 139–142, 156–157, 171, 193 natural history 157, 162–163, 175 noise 105, 194 murmuring as 137 novel 10, 11n, 12–15, 30–36, 46, 47n, 77, 88–90, 96–101, 118, 122, 128, 135, 142, 148n, 188 Ontosemiologie 58–60 Paradise Lost 24, 27–30, 55n, 84 parody 16, 117, 119, 122, 132–143 patriotism 26n, 36, 54–56, 76, 132, 171, 177 performative 17, 55, 60–61, 69n, 75, 78, 83–85 plot 21–22, 26, 31–32, 42–43, 45, 50, 55, 60, 63, 93–96, 99–103, 117, 131 marriage 106, 109 of Oberon 119, 123, 125, 129–130, 149–150 of the Romanzen vom Rosenkranz 177– 180, 189 Poesie 10n, 19, 25, 27–28, 33n, 41n, 66, 91, 98, 104, 122n, 141, 153, 155–159, 163, 168–175, 194n heilige 56n, 57, 66, 85 Volks- 130, 173–175 power 14–18, 28–29, 52, 58, 73, 124, 186–190 mental 37, 170 of desire 128 of language 156, 168, 180 of love 82–84, 130 of reason 129 political 1–7, 19, 53, 106, 117, 123, 129, 132, 140n, 141–142, 148 prosody 14n, 17, 54–61, 65–68, 76n, 77–78, 82–87, 115, 153, 156n Reformation 57, 61, 65, 74 refugee(s) 88, 91–94, 100, 103–116 Renaissance 15n, 43, 122, 130n, 167, 168n, 171, 173n, 175 republic 1n, 3, 17n, 100–101, 112–113, 132, 135–138 revolution 71 French 87–97, 100, 103–117, 119, 131–140, 149 Herderian 164–170 of communication 60n

212

rhyme 48, 55n, 86, 119, 143, 146–147, 175–176 rhythm 42, 65n, 66, 70n, 71–72, 86, 114, 119, 143, 146–147, 152, 154–163, 169, 171, 174–183, 190, 194 romance narrative 3–4, 7, 15–16, 33, 37–38, 117, 122–124, 128–131, 143, 151, 172, 173n, 189 Romantic 40, 45, 64n, 152–155, 178 180 community 179 epic 164–175, 194–195 rosary (Rosenkranz) 174, 179–180 sacrament 57–59, 69n, 78 sanctity 63 of the nation 26–30 Schein 25, 27, 36, 93, 102, 108, 161 semiosphere 118, 132, 134, 145 Semontologie 58 sentimental 46–51, 63, 168, 188 novels 77 song 105n, 152–155, 157, 159–163, 170–195 sovereignty 1n, 5, 119 narrative 117, 131–142, 151 spectrality 109 speech act 157 sacrament as 59, 61n spirit 43, 51, 62, 72, 81–84, 111–113, 126, 131, 144, 190 holy 52–53 state 1n, 2, 5n, 21, 40, 54, 81, 132–133, 139–140, 177n, 193–194 sublime 51, 58–71, 72n, 77n, 78, 82–84, 86 subscription 76–77 supernatural (das Wunderbare) 8, 27, 32 see also marvelous symbol 26–27, 30, 42, 45, 46, 50–53, 54n, 58n, 88–101, 109–113, 120, 126, 129, 145–146, 168–180, 189n, 194 teleology 4, 15, 18n, 33, 124, 131, 189 Teutscher Merkur 119, 131, 136–139 transmission 115, 154n, 163, 178, 191–192 of colloquial stories 41 of emotion 161 of sin 179, 189 rhythmic 175 truth 27–30, 64, 80–84, 90n, 92, 122, 128, 135–137, 148 moral 20–26, 45 sensual 46

understanding (Verstand ) faculty of, 48–49, 95, 98, 113 unity 21, 42–44, 53–55, 90n, 116n, 128, 134, 145, 148, 155–156, 170, 174, 180, 183, 188 organic 97 universal(ism) 12, 14–16, 35, 51, 54, 57, 80–85, 87–91, 97, 106, 111–114, 164–166, 172n, 194 Versfuß 69 visuality 78, 93, 105, 107, 178

voice 21, 87, 91, 101–104, 109–112, 117, 128, 134–137, 160, 189 Volk 5n, 13n, 20, 26, 31, 34, 37–38, 40–44, 55, 82n, 99, 104, 112, 135–142, 152–154, 165, 172–174, 181–188, 194 war 11, 41, 54n, 98n, 99–100, 140 world citizen (Weltbürger) 14n, 87, 90–97, 103–116, 139 Wortfuß 69 Zauberflöte 138

213

Index of Names

Adam and Eva 190–193 Anderson, Benedict 5, 78 Arendt, Hannah 136n Ariosto 128–129, 143, 173 Aristotle 20, 22, 28, 164 Arnim, Achim von 152–154, 168, 172n, 174 Badiou, Alain 80–84 Bakhtin, Michail 148 Balibar, Étienne 87, 114, 116n Blankenburg, Christian Friedrich von 11n, 19, 30–38, 42, 99, 122, 128 Bodmer, Johann Jacob 7–8, 11, 24–31, 43, 55n, 64, 119 Breitinger, Johann Jakob 19, 24–30, 31, 43, 45, 64 Brentano, Clemens 4, 24, 45, 152–155, 163, 168, 174–195 Brockes, Berthold Heinrich 11 Campe, Rüdiger 67n, 128 Casanova, Pascale 164, 166 Castoriadis, Cornelius 5n, 6 Christians, Heiko 12–14 Cicero 30 Dante

167, 176

Fetzer, John 180n, 185–186 Forster, Georg 88, 89n, 110–113 Foucault, Michel 28 Frye, Northrop 16–17, 47n, 124n Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 4, 10n, 11, 12, 17n, 23n, 24, 46, 50, 77–78, 117, 120, 154, 188 Dichtung und Wahrheit 86–87, 98–99 Hermann und Dorothea 86–116 »Literarischer Sanscülottismus« 77n »Über epische und dramatische Dichtung« 78n, 95

214

Gottsched, Johann Christoph 7–11, 19–23, 24, 28n, 32, 45, 55, 68n, 99 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 10n, 33n, 47n, 64n, 168n Herder, Johann Gottfried 19, 40–45, 48n, 50n, 121, 155n, 164–167, 170, 172n, 173, 176n Hofmann, Michael 118n, 121n, 125n, 126n, 127, 129n, 143n, 145–146 Homer 8–9, 15–16, 19n, 20–22, 27–28, 33n, 35–36, 39, 41–44, 52, 63, 71, 75, 87n, 88, 99, 108, 115, 117, 164–165, 168n, 173 Horace 61 Hörisch, Jochen 58, 60n, 61n Iser, Wolfgang

6, 18n

Jaumann, Herbert 118n, 119n, 134n, 141n, 143 Kaiser, Gerhard 50n, 51, 52n, 54n, 67n, 73n Kant, Immanuel 19n, 47, 49n, 64n, 78 Kermode, Frank 17 Koselleck, Reinhart 14n, 90n, 139 Kleist, Hermann von 26n, 91 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb 4, 7, 11–12, 14n, 17, 23–24, 34n, 45, 46–79, 86–87, 117, 153, 155n, 174n, 188 and demythologization 52, 120 Die deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik 76–77 Herder on 43 vs. Badiou 80–85 Messias 7–8, 12, 34n, 46–53, 55n, 56n, 57, 60, 63–77, 80–84, 117, 120, 174n Kluge, Gerhard 104, 108n, 112, 177n Koschorke, Albrecht 2–4, 5n, 13n, 49n, 135n Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 19n, 24, 52–53, 65n, 100, 136n Lotman, Jurij 118, 132, 134, 142, 149, 150n

Lukács, Georg 10n, 47n, 88–89, 97, 188 Lüdemann, Susanne 4n, 5, 6n Luhmann, Niklas 15, 133n Lupton, Julia Reinhard 115 Luther, Martin 55, 57–60, 69n, 76, 85 Martin, Dieter 7–12, 14, 41n, 50, 51n, 63n, 87n, 99n, 119n Martínez, Matías 53 Matala de Mazza, Ethel 2n, 4n, 5n, 152–154 Menninghaus, Winfried 64n, 65n, 68, 70n, 71 Merck, Johann Heinrich 19, 38–40 Miller, Steven R. 135–136 Milton, John 8, 24–25, 27–30, 43, 52, 55, 84, 140

Riedel, Friedrich Justus 8–10 Romulus and Remus 2–4 Runge, Philipp Otto 178, 180 Saine, Thomas 110n, 112 Schiller, Friedrich 34n, 46–51, 57n, 62– 63, 65n, 77–78, 87–90, 93–99, 102–104, 107n, 113–116, 155, 160n Schlaffer, Hannelore 122, 125n, 129, 143n Schlegel, August Wilhelm 66n, 99–100, 104, 152, 155–164, 166–180, 190, 195 Schlegel, Friedrich 166–168 Schmidt, Hans-Walter 190, 191n, 194n Shakespeare, William 115, 121, 123, 164–168, 173n Tieck, Ludwig

Nancy, Jean-Luc 17n, 115 Novalis 193, 194n Oettinger, Klaus 120n, 122 Orpheus 162–163, 169, 173, 180n

138n, 175

Virgil 3, 15, 19n, 22, 28, 30, 34–36, 75, 117, 124n, 129

Paul 5, 80–85, 137 Pornschlegel, Clemens 1n, 5n, 60n Preisendanz, Wolfgang 117n, 119n, 144n, 145

Wieland, Christoph Martin 4, 7–11, 15n, 16, 19n, 24, 43, 45, 117–151, 173n, 188 Oberon 11, 117–131, 142–151, 173n Wilson, W. Daniel 138n, 145–149 Wolf, Friedrich August 41n, 99 Woloch, Alex 101–102

Quint, David 3–4, 15n, 33–34, 117, 125, 128, 189n

Zedler, Johann Heinrich 22–23, 55, 64 Zizek, Slavoj 109

215