Landmarks in German Short Prose (Britische Und Irische Studien Zur Deutschen Sprache Und Literatur, No. 33.)

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Landmarks in German Short Prose

Peter Hutchinson Editor

PETER LANG


Britische und Irische Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur British and Irish Studies in German Language and Literature Etudes britanniques et irlandaises sur la langue et la littérature allemandes

Edited by H.S. Reiss and W.E. Yates Band 33

PETER LANG Oxford

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Bern

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Berlin

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Bruxelles

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Frankfurt/M.

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New York

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Wien

Landmarks in German Short Prose East and West German Literary Responses to Unification Untertitel

Peter Hutchinson (ed.)

PETER LANG Oxford

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Bern

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Berlin

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Bruxelles

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Frankfurt/M.

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New York

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Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at ‹http://dnb.ddb.de›. British Library and Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain, and from The Library of Congress, USA

ISSN 0171-6662 ISBN 3-03910-003-3 US-ISBN 0-8204-5922-4

© Peter Lang AG, European Academic Publishers, Bern 2003 Hochfeldstrasse 32, Postfach 746, CH-3000 Bern 9, Switzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. Printed in Germany

Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................ 7 NICHOLAS BOYLE, Goethe, Novelle ................................................ 11 CHARLOTTE WOODFORD, Kleist, Michael Kohlhaas ................... 29 RITCHIE ROBERTSON, Eichendorff, Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts .................................................................................. 45 ANITA BUNYAN, Heine, Die Harzreise ............................................ 61 ERIKA SWALES, Büchner, Lenz ........................................................ 79 MICHAEL MINDEN, Grillparzer, Der arme Spielmann .................... 95 JOHN GUTHRIE, Droste-Hülshoff, Die Judenbuche ....................... 111 NICHOLAS SAUL, Keller, Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe ........... 125 MARY STEWART, Hauptmann, Bahnwärter Thiel ......................... 141 PETER HUTCHINSON, Mann, Der Tod in Venedig ........................ 157 ANDREW WEBBER, Kafka, Die Verwandlung ............................... 175 DAVID MIDGLEY, Walser, Ein fliehendes Pferd ............................ 191 Notes on Contributors ......................................................................... 207

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Introduction

The opening essay of this volume may deal with the greatest figure of German literature, yet Goethe was not the first – and certainly not the most important – to write successful short fiction in the German language. But in giving his story a generic title – ‘Novelle’ – Goethe promoted widespread popularity of the term. Although the word had actually been applied and discussed by Wieland as early as 1764, it took long to gain clear acceptance, even by Goethe, whose Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderter of 1795 actually contain clearer examples of the form than his 1828 story. The plain title of the latter, seemingly plucked from the air during a conversation between Goethe and his secretary Eckermann, both classified and also claimed for the piece an exemplary quality; while Goethe’s further observations on what a ‘Novelle’ might actually comprise, still remain the most important remarks on the genre. Short fiction had actually been held in low esteem in Germany for much of its early existence – it was considered inferior to drama, poetry, and even the novel, which had emanated from it. There was not much short prose, let alone successful prose, before Goethe’s Unterhaltungen, and the scene was only transformed by the time of Kleist and the Romantics, whose fascinating Märchen remain significant, as do the collections of tales by the Brothers Grimm. But almost by definition, landmarks come out of the blue and are quite unrelated to what has preceded. They may come in immediate succession – like Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig and Kafka’s Die Verwandlung – or there may be decades between them – like Kafka’s masterpiece and Walser’s Ein fliehendes Pferd. The present volume reveals a remarkable clustering in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, and it is striking how landmarks in short prose are spread so differently from those in poetry, drama, and the novel. Interestingly, though, many of the authors featured here were prominent in these other genres. Storm claimed that the Novelle was ‘die Schwester des Dramas’, and it may be significant that five of the authors featured in this volume were successful dramatists, while three of the others made serious efforts in that genre; four of them

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(there is some overlap with the dramatists) were also successful poets; eight of them wrote novels. The best examples of short prose are thus written by those who are versatile. The nineteenth-century produced a good number of important short prose writers beyond those represented in this volume: in Switzerland, Gotthelf and Meyer; in Austria, Stifter and Schnitzler; and in Germany, Hoffmann and Storm. Yet none of these careful craftsmen quite reached the heights of those whose works can be claimed as ‘landmarks’. The possible exceptions are Storm, who may not have changed the Novelle in any significant way but whose later works provide the peak of German Poetic Realism; and Schnitzler, whose Leutnant Gustl is the first truly successful extended piece of interior monologue in European literature (but which appeared, of course, in 1901). By contrast with this fertile epoch, the twentieth-century has proved a disappointment. Early successes by Hofmannsthal and Musil are quickly superseded by the power of Mann and Kafka, and Schnitzler’s late work Fräulein Else (1924) provides psychological analysis to a degree never before achieved. But by then the novel is taking over the key position in prose, and it has held its pre-eminence to the present day. Although we do find interesting examples of short prose after 1945 – pieces by Böll above all, Borchert, and Schnurre – there is nothing truly arresting. British anthologies compiled in the ’fifties and ’sixties list mainly forgotten authors or texts with principally sociological or political interest. The last general collection of German short stories to be published in the UK appeared as long ago as 1973, and that was devoted to fiction from an unknown land: the GDR. Hochhuth’s fourvolume Deutschsprachige Erzähler der Gegenwart (1981) would struggle to find a market today. Although a case could be made for certain figures writing in the last quarter of the twentieth century – Christa Wolf, Ingeborg Bachmann – it is the longer prose by these which has entered the canon. The exception, of course, is Walser’s Ein fliehendes Pferd, which stands out for its subtlety, complexity, and social and psychological insight. Contributors to this volume, with the exception of Nicholas Boyle, pay little attention to questions of definition or the issue of what distinguishes Erzählung from Novelle. This matter has been pursued frequently elsewhere, especially in the standard volumes on the Novelle by Walter Silz, John Ellis, Martin Swales, and Roger Paulin, all


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mentioned by several contributors. Most of the pieces featured in this volume could be classified as Novellen without difficulty, but that is not the case with the iconoclastic Heine and his brilliantly facetious traveller’s tale, while Kleist’s wild ‘chronicle’ also fits uneasily into this category, even if contemporaries were content to apply the label. The concept has, quite simply, changed with succeeding generations of writers and critics, and there is little point in pursuing it further here. One might, however, note a development away from the Novelle towards the Erzählung and Kurzgeschichte in the twentieth century, and particularly since 1945, with some writers (Grass, Hochhuth, Walser) actually deciding to append the sub-title ‘Novelle’ in order to make a point. A ‘landmark’ is not an aesthetic category, and one of the simplest ways of identifying such phenomena is to review the amount of critical response they have inspired. By this criterion the selection of most – but not all – of the texts featured in the following essays was straightforward. The stories by Mann, Kafka, Hauptmann, Droste, are by far the most discussed among each respective author’s short prose works – indeed, in German literature as a whole. But the same procedure for identifying what is significant would suggest that there have been omissions: some figures not represented here have generated much critical discussion, including certain writers who have achieved very considerable sales and media commentary in the 1990s and early twentyfirst century. Some of this work may, however, have achieved success partly through its topical and sensational content, and partly through the shrewd marketing strategies of its publishers. It seems unlikely that much of it will be read in fifty years’ time. We can be confident that every text discussed in this volume will retain its fascination for future generations. These essays were all originally delivered as lectures, which have been revised for publication. I am, once again, grateful to my colleagues for their cheerful co-operation at all stages of the process. I am also grateful to Gar Yates, Co-General Editor of the Series, for his valuable advice and comments. Peter Hutchinson


NICHOLAS BOYLE

Goethe, Novelle

Goethe’s Novelle (1828)1 is not the earliest of the landmarks in German short prose that are considered in this volume, but it seems right to deal with it first, if only because its title apparently claims for it an exemplary status which a long tradition of literary criticism has been happy to endorse. This is, or says it is, what a ‘Novelle’ ought to be.2 Well, we shall see. Goethe’s original title for a work on the theme of the escape of exotic beasts, such as lions and tigers, into the German forest was to be Die Jagd. But the work which he discussed under this title with Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1796 was to be an epic poem in hexameters, like Herrmann und Dorothea (which at that point he had nearly completed), but dealing more fully, if more symbolically, with the origin and nature of the French Revolution than he had at that stage done in Herrmann und Dorothea.3 He did not, however, return to the theme until 1826–7, and then he treated it in a new form, as a short story, and under a new title. At first, though, he had great difficulty in finding a title at all and in his diary and conversation, when he referred to what he was writing, he used the term ‘Novelle’ simply as a loose characterization of the genre to which it belonged.4 On 22 October 1826, when he was still only halfway through his first draft, he wrote to Wilhelm von Humboldt to tell him he had taken up again that plan they had first talked about thirty years before and that it was to be realized in prose ‘da es dann für eine Novelle gelten mag, eine Rubrik unter welcher gar vieles wunderliche Zeug cursirt’.5 Under the date of 29 January 1827 Eckermann records that he 1 2 3 4 5

Quotations and page references are from Goethes Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Bänden, ed. by E. Trunz (Munich, 1988) (hereafter HA), Vol. 6, pp. 491–513. E.g. F. Gundolf, Goethe (Berlin, 1916): ‘Schon der abstrakte Titel, Novelle, verrät daß Goethe hier das Muster einer Gattung hat aufstellen wollen’ (p. 743). N. Boyle, Goethe. The Poet and the Age, 2 (Oxford, 2000), p. 487. H. G. Gräf, Goethe über seine Dichtungen, I. i. (Frankfurt am Main, 1901), pp. 220–1. Gräf, I. i., p. 221.

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and Goethe discussed various possible titles for the story but though some suited the beginning and some the end none seemed right for the whole: ‘Wissen Sie was’, sagte Goethe, ‘wir wollen es “die Novelle” nennen, denn was ist eine Novelle anders als eine sich ereignete unerhörte Begebenheit. Diess ist der eigentliche Begriff, und so vieles, was in Deutschland unter dem Titel Novelle geht, ist gar keine Novelle, sondern bloß Erzählung oder was Sie sonst wollen. In jenem ursprünglichen Sinne einer unerhörten Begebenheit kommt auch die Novelle in den “Wahlverwandtschaften” vor.’6

The decision on a title for the story was thus linked by Goethe with a deliberate and enormously influential statement about, or apparently about, the genre to which the story belonged. Eckermann’s report of the statement indeed has been so influential that we must look at it more closely. Is that famous statement really a definition of a literary genre? For it does not look like one. To say a Novelle ‘is’ an event is a strange manner of speaking if you are defining a literary work or genre: it would seem essential to say at least ‘is an account of an event’, for a literary work ‘is’ a structure of words, it is not just the object or happening that the words describe or discuss. It would be particularly strange for Goethe to telescope a literary definition in this way since all his life, certainly since the first reviews of his Werther, he had defended literature against the attacks of moralizing critics by arguing that literature was art, and art was not to be confused with the people, things or actions that it represented. Something seems to have gone wrong with Eckermann’s report of this conversation: Eckermann seems anxious to make Goethe appear to be defining a genre (perhaps he wants to fire off a salvo against contemporary prose writers in 1836 when this conversation was first published) while defining a genre was not quite Goethe’s purpose, not at any rate when he was saying these particular words. What Goethe’s purpose was is indicated by the phrase Eckermann reports him using after giving his definition, the phrase ‘in jenem ursprünglichen Sinn’ – 6

Gräf, I. i., p. 232. Gräf corrects Eckermann’s original punctuation (‘die “Novelle”’), in accordance with Goethe’s intentions for the title throughout 1827 (p. 236, footnote 1). In 1828 he decided to omit the article – for a reason, he said, but he never revealed what it was (p. 238). Space does not permit me to speculate further here.

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Goethe is plainly talking about the difference between the original and later or derived senses of a word. He is not in the first instance setting out to define a genre but telling Eckermann what a word – the word Novelle – means. And there is of course a sense in which the word Novelle – perhaps we should give it its original Italian or late Latin form, ‘novella’ – means ‘eine sich ereignete unerhörte Begebenheit’, the sense of ‘a piece of news’. The modern Italian language – which Goethe knew very well – still preserves that sense, as does French, which he also read and spoke fluently, and in which ‘mes nouvelles’ might mean ‘the short stories I have written’ but is more likely to mean ‘news about me’. In German this sense of the romance word ‘novella’ is usually represented by ‘Neuigkeit’ or ‘Novum’ – not, except in very specialist contexts, by the German form ‘Novelle’, which is why Goethe has to draw Eckermann’s attention to what the word originally means. Now plainly this exercise in etymology is part of a discussion about literary forms. But unfortunately Eckermann does not give us the link which Goethe actually made between the etymological discussion and the literary discussion, between the fact that the original sense of the word novella was ‘an item of news’ and three quite distinct literary phenomena: (1) the first Italian and French collections of short stories which present themselves as true accounts of unusual occurrences, therefore deserving the name ‘novelle’ or ‘nouvelles’, the work of Boccaccio or the anonymous Cent nouvelles nouvelles which Goethe had studied when he was writing the Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten, and for that matter the ‘Novelas’ of Cervantes which he enjoyed at the same time;7 (2) the contemporary, early nineteenth-century German short fiction which was widely described as ‘Novellen’, even though many such stories bore little resemblance to the work of Boccaccio; (3) his own story which had begun as Die Jagd and was shortly to be entitled Novelle. We simply cannot tell from Eckermann’s account whether Goethe was saying that his story was like one of Boccaccio’s (which it plainly isn’t) and therefore deserved the title ‘Novelle’, or whether he was saying, as he had said to Wilhelm von Humboldt, that it was like much now being written in nineteenth-century Germany and so had as much right to be called Novelle as anything in a ladies’ almanac; or whether he was saying that although his story was the product of an age which played fast and loose 7

Letter to Schiller, 17 December 1795.

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with the term ‘Novelle’ it still had enough in common with the original meaning of the term for him to give it that title. It is possible that Goethe said any of these things, it is possible that he said something else altogether, but Eckermann’s account gives us no way of deciding between the possibilities, and I doubt whether as he wrote it he remembered any longer the logic that connected the unforgettable phrases that stood out in his mind. To sum up my conclusions in order of probability: Goethe almost certainly said that the original meaning of the Italian word ‘novella’ was ‘eine sich ereignete unerhörte Begebenheit’; he may well have gone on to say that the early Italian and French ‘novelle’ and ‘nouvelles’ were properly so called because they retained the character of reports of news; it is possible that he said that a modern story should be called a ‘Novelle’ only if it bore a clear resemblance to the work of Boccaccio and the nouvellistes in this crucial respect; it is unlikely that he expressed the opinion that short fictional prose as it was developing in his day in Germany was formally illegitimate, even though it is clear he would have preferred to see a wider use of the term ‘Erzählung’; and it is quite absurd to hunt through the stories of later writers, such as Stifter, Storm or Thomas Mann, looking for ‘eine sich ereignete unerhörte Begebenheit’, as if that had been Goethe’s prescription for how they should write – except, of course, in so far as they may have been influenced by their understanding of Goethe’s views as represented, or misrepresented, by Eckermann and may therefore have tried to incorporate some such element in their work. Enough of the title: we must now turn to the content of Novelle, its structure, and meaning. The story starts in the mists of the early morning. It is autumn, probably Michaelmas, in the 1820s in the capital of a small, unnamed German principality lying, like one of the Thuringian duchies, between forested mountains and populous plains. One of the main markets of the year, virtually a fair, is in progress, goods from all quarters are being exchanged, and to entertain the many important guests who have arrived the ruling prince has at last yielded to the urgings of his master of hounds and agreed to take them out hunting. The young wife, whom the prince has only recently married – hence perhaps his reluctance to go – has to be left behind in the residence in the care of his uncle Prince Friedrich and the handsome young courtier Honorio (the name suggests the

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combination of a true heart with a certain romantic Mediterranean dash). Prince Friedrich entertains the princess with some artists’ views of the principality’s old castle, high up on the mountainside overlooking the town. Abandoned for 150 years, it is shown in these drawings as gradually reverting to forest in a titanic but immensely slow struggle between the remnants of human artifice and the ever-renewed and ever-growing powers of nature. Within a ring of outer stone walls lies the keep and within that, overshadowed by the massive trees which have taken root in the ruins, a circular courtyard to which access has only recently been gained by the excavation of a secret passage. Above the courtyard rises a tower which affords a limitless panorama, an ‘unbegrenzte [...] Aussicht’ (p. 494). The princess, who has already trained a telescope on this object of her curiosity, is fired by the desire to see the reality of which Uncle Friedrich has shown her the image: ‘lassen Sie mich in der Wirklichkeit sehen, was Sie mir hier im Bilde zeigten!’ (p. 495). The old prince says it is too soon, the place is not yet ready, not yet the enchanted castle, the ‘Zauberschloss’, which we later learn he intends it to become (p. 507). The princess however insists that ‘ich habe große Lust, mich heute weit in der Welt umzusehen’ (p. 495): Friedrich gives way but again has to caution her, this time against her chosen route to the castle: not straight up into the hills, but first down into the town through the market place, so that she can see for herself the busy processes of commerce which her husband explained to her only the day before. Friedrich has a claustrophobic aversion to such places, being haunted by his memory of a narrow escape from a hotel in a distant city when the market caught fire during the night. But the princess has her way again and, accompanied by Friedrich and Honorio, she rides down into the town. The market-place is as crowded as Friedrich expected and in their slow progress through the throng the princess has time to notice and be taken aback by features of commerce for which her husband’s brief lecture on basic economics had not prepared her: its dependence on human desire not just for the necessities of life but for luxury and excess, and the brashness and violence of the imagery with which it publicly advertises the exotic entertainments it puts on sale. This latter point is impressed on the princess by a menagerie of tropical animals surrounded by large, crude, and garish pictures of a lion and a tiger pouncing on a blackamoor. Behind the hoardings the lion is heard to roar. The party emerges from the town and rides slowly up through orchards and

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meadows to a first viewpoint from which through the tops of the trees they can glimpse the town, with the princely palace, and the fertile country in which it lies. But the princess’s desire – indeed by now the whole party’s desire – for a wider view, having been whetted, is not so easily sated and they ride further up towards the castle. The ground is now steep, bare and rocky, the horses are tethered and they climb on foot over the difficult terrain to a spot beneath the sheer walls of the old fortress from which, with the aid of the telescope, they can see every detail of the town illuminated by the noontime sunshine of a perfect day. The eerie stillness is broken by a cry from Honorio who has seen flames on the marketplace: there is soon no doubt that fire has broken out, the party quickly mount up again, and the princess urges Friedrich to return at once to the town to take charge of operations while she and Honorio follow behind at a more cautious pace. The conflagration is described only as a scarcely visible flicker of distant flame (the origin of one of Stifter’s most characteristic narrative devices), but the princess’s mind is filled with recollections of the horrors experienced by uncle Friedrich during his night in that distant hotel, recounted by him again and again and rehearsed for us now as a kind of proxy for a description of what may or may not be going on down in the market-place. Distracted and fearful, thanks to these mental images, the princess is horrified to see a tiger appear from among the trees – plainly it has escaped from the menagerie she saw earlier – and at Honorio’s urging she turns her horse to flee back up the steep and stony slope. Honorio fires at the animal but misses and succeeds only in infuriating it. With Honorio in hot pursuit behind it, it bounds towards the princess. Her horse stumbles and falls on the impossible ground, but a second shot from Honorio kills the tiger just as it reaches them. If we pay careful attention to the detail of the narration of this episode, we notice that at no point is any original savagery of mood or intention attributed to the tiger: its behaviour is purely a response to the fears and aggression of the human participants. Honorio, having enraged the animal, virtually drives it on to the princess. The narrator, in order to praise his skill as a huntsman, recalls the accuracy with which he had shot or impaled the dummy of a blackamoor in the palace tiltyard and so in our minds, through the association with the pictures on the menagerie hoardings, Honorio is identified with the pouncing, tigerish image, and the tiger itself is identified with the blackamoor, the shivering victim.

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The imagery of impaling, and tilting at the ring, is of course strongly erotic and there follows a highly charged scene between Honorio and the princess. Honorio is kneeling beside the tiger to ensure that it is dead and so, in relation to the princess, is in the posture of a beseeching lover, a posture which social decorum would, as he points out, never otherwise allow him to adopt. In this position – which, despite the princess’s command, he refuses to abandon – Honorio first offers the princess the tiger’s pelt as the spoils of victory and then asks a boon which he admits her husband has repeatedly refused him: will she help him get permission to travel the world? By thus claiming to be motivated by the same desire for the higher and broader view which has brought the princess so far up the mountain Honorio, innocently or not, has set her a trap. For if she says ‘yes’, she connives at a thwarting of her husband’s known will, and if she says ‘no’ she can scarcely avoid expressing a wish that Honorio should remain at court and in her company, a wish which she may very well feel. The princess evades the trap, if only barely, by taking the course which requires her to renounce Honorio’s dangerously attractive company, agreeing to intercede with her husband and giving as her reason the pure speculation that in refusing his permission so far he has probably been motivated by the desire to see Honorio reach maturity first. His act of heroism, she says, surely shows that that point has now come. Honorio, we are told, cannot quite suppress a pang of disappointment that the princess is so willing to see him leave the court, but the conversation is now interrupted and a new phase in the action begins. Two figures, a woman and a dark-haired boy holding a flute, hurry into view; strangely clad, they are clearly of foreign origin and the keepers of the menagerie. The woman throws herself weeping on the body of the tiger with a flood of lamentation and praise for the animal’s gentleness in a language said to be untranslatable, though the narrator translates it for us into an obviously Biblical phraseology. The ruling prince and the whole hunt now arrive, having turned back on seeing the column of smoke from the fire. For a moment the prince, surrounded by his followers, stands ‘vor dem seltsamen, unerhörten Ereignis’ (p. 505) – a phrase clearly related to Eckermann’s report of Goethe’s definition of the word ‘novella’ – and then, as he takes charge, another figure comes on the scene. This is the man from the menagerie-keepers’ family, and while he is delivering the news that the lion too has escaped the warden of the old

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castle comes running down the hillside to say that the beast is lying peacefully in the sunshine within its walls. The keeper begs the prince not to have the animal shot but to let the woman and the child keep it calm until it can be shut up in its cage, and the child begins to improvise on his flute a ‘melody that was none’ but that has a hypnotically soothing effect – on human beings it would seem as well as animals. For the prince, after some thought, orders Honorio and a few huntsmen to go on up and guard the castle gate so that at least the lion cannot re-emerge, and so implicitly gives his assent to the keeper’s request that it should be spared. The man then launches into another verbal rhapsody similar to that of the woman, and in even more evidently Biblical language, but this time praising the whole order of creation at the summit of which stands the human being, who, as the story of Daniel shows, can tame even lions. The child, who never speaks in prose, then breaks into a song which takes up the theme of Daniel, and he and the man alternate in singing and playing the flute to such effect that all are entranced, the powerful emotions of the last few moments are calmed, the prince and princess stand together as if reconciled, and silence falls. Then the prince gives his explicit permission for the attempt to capture the lion by the means proposed and he and the princess make their way down the hill and out of the story. The princess therefore has not reached the goal of the excursion on which she set out in the morning – the interior of the ruined castle and its tower – but we as readers now accompany the woman, the child, and the warden up to the gate. There we pass Honorio sitting looking out westwards to the declining sun, into regions which the princess has not seen but which he claimed to her he longed to experience. Like a prophet, the woman seems to read his mind and tells him, the murderer of her tiger, that, yes, there is much for him to conquer in the world but first he must conquer himself. With these words he too is left behind by the narration. Once inside the outer ring of walls the warden explains that the lion is lying close to the entrance to the secret passage that alone gives groundlevel access to the inner courtyard of the keep. If the child can lure the beast through the passage into the inner courtyard a gate can be shut behind them and the beast can be kept in safety. The child can then escape if he wishes by means of the stairways which lead through and over the ruined walls. Along these the party make their way to a vantage point overlooking the inner courtyard as if it were an amphitheatre. The

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child climbs down into the arena and disappears into the secret passage. For a moment we seem to hold our breath, as at the end of Die Zauberflöte, while the sound of the flute is first heard, then falls silent, and then is heard again as the boy comes out once more into the last rays of the setting sun, leading in the lion as in the famous chapter of Isaiah. In the image of a little child leading the lion, that chapter offers us an eschatological vision, a vision of the culmination of history in a perfect earthly order, but Goethe’s story caps that vision with two further elements. First, a recollection of the story of St Jerome8 and the lion: the beast puts its paw in the boy’s lap and the boy discovers in it a thorn which he draws out, bandaging the wounded foot with his neckerchief. And finally the story concludes not in prose at all but in a new strophe varying the themes of the song we have heard already, telling us how higher powers thwart our bad intentions and further our good deeds, and how even the lion can be tamed by ‘Frömmigkeit’ and the mysterious force of music. So much for the content of Novelle: it remains for us to consider the question of the story’s structure and meaning. But first we need to revisit the question of its title, since we can now be a little more precise about why it is called Novelle. We now know that at the climax of the story there is an image of something which Goethe explicitly describes in the terms he used to define the original sense of the word ‘novella’:9 the 8

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Trunz suggests the model of Androcles (HA 6, p. 755 ). But Goethe must have known from his childhood why the lion was the normal iconographic accompaniment of Jerome, and around the time that Novelle was being written he alluded to the popularity of the motif in medieval art in his essay ‘Landschaftliche Malerei’ (HA 12, p. 218). He had long known and admired Dürer’s 1514 engraving of Jerome in his study (with dozing lion) (letter to Lavater of 6 March 1780). Furthermore, the context in which Jerome is referred to in ‘Landschaftliche Malerei’ – the enriching of a landscape with, inter alia, exotic elements – was the nucleus of the inspiration for Die Jagd. It is possible that Eckermann’s report was phrased to echo these words. However there is no doubt that serious theoretical discussions took place on 24 and 25 January 1827. (Gräf, I. i. pp. 230–1; Gräf does not appreciate that the recollections which Eckermann assigned to 29 January belong to these dates, assuming they have any authenticity at all. There is no independent evidence that Goethe and Eckermann saw each other on the 29th. See Angelika Reimann, Goethes Leben von Tag zu Tag. Eine dokumentarische Chronik 7 (1821–1827) (Zurich, 1995), p. 700, cf. p. 697.) Even if Eckermann did borrow from the text of Novelle in order to reconstruct discussions, it is likely that he did so because he felt the conversations justified him.

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sight of Honorio and the Princess beside the dead tiger, explained to the Prince in a few words, is described with the phrase ‘dem seltsamen, unerhörten Ereignis’. ‘Princess saved from tiger in German forest’ – one can indeed imagine the headline: this is an item of news in Goethe’s basic sense. And this ‘novella’ is at the heart of a complex narrative structure which is certainly not like anything of Boccaccio’s or Marguerite de Navarre’s but can readily be called a ‘Novelle’ in the loose nineteenth-century German sense. It offers a musically varied but structured perspective on the concept ‘Novelle’ itself – just as at its close (which is actually about music) it uses musical techniques of repetition and variation in its treatment of the child’s song. Indeed we could say that it is a ‘Novelle’ – in the German sense of a story – about a novella – in the Italian sense of a piece of news. For we can no longer overlook the fact that the objection I first raised to interpreting Goethe’s famous remark as the definition of a literary genre – that a Novelle is not properly described as an event, but as an account of an event – applies even if we interpret it as the definition of an item of news – even an item of news is not an event, but the report of an event. The Prince is presented not simply with an image – ‘Anblick’ is the word used in the text – but with an interpretation of that image – ‘mit wenigen Worten erläutert’ is the phrase (p. 505) – and only the image together with its verbal interpretation makes up the ‘Ereignis’ with which he is confronted. If I say that Goethe’s Novelle is a ‘Novelle’ about a ‘novella’, I mean that like many if not most of his works it proves on closer examination to be about interpretation – about the morality and aesthetics of the human attempt to understand. In explanation of this possibly cryptic point, let us turn to the question of structure. In one sense the structure of the plot of Novelle is extremely straightforward: it is the story of the ascent of a mountain. The story begins in the courtyard of the new ‘Schloss’, crowded with huntsmen, and ends high above in the courtyard of the old ‘Schloss’, empty but for the lion and the child. After an opening detour which takes us downhill into the market-place, the lowest point on which we touch, the place of interaction between mountains and plains, every step in the narration is a step upwards, a step towards the goal represented by the tower rising above the innermost courtyard of the old castle, and the story stops when the courtyard is reached. From the town we move up to the first vantage-point at tree-top level, then to the second under the

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walls of the old castle, then past the castle-gate where Honorio is left sitting, and finally on into the amphitheatre – the tower, however, remains unclimbed. So far so simple – more or less. The issue becomes more complicated, however, when we ask: who is making the ascent? For there is no single figure in the story who passes through all these stages and in that sense the story has no central character. The figures we begin with – the Prince, the Princess, Prince Friedrich, Honorio – peel off one by one and are gradually replaced by a new set, the woman, the warden, and the child, all of whom climb through the last stages – while the inner courtyard itself is trodden only by the child and no one at all surmounts the tower. The only continuous presence, in fact, is our own, as readers: it is we who are being asked to ascend the mountain. We may take it that considerable importance attaches to the point when the first set of characters gives way to the second: this is a transition in which we too are involved. Before we can understand that transition, though, we need to clarify why the first set of characters are climbing towards the summit and what it is they are trying to reach. From the first mention of it, the distance and inaccessibility of the old castle is emphasized: the courtyard which leads to the tower from which a boundless view can be enjoyed has been closed off for 150 years and it has been necessary to use explosives to create the passageway through which the lion and the child will pass at the end. Clearly the princess is yielding to a disordered ambition in desiring to reach the summit: her disregard of her uncle’s warnings, the allusions both to the growing appetite for a less restricted view and to the unsatisfactory nature of the views when they are achieved, and the use of the telescope as an unnatural means of overcoming distance, all point us towards this interpretation of her motives. As a noble but inexperienced woman left on her own, she is in a situation which in many a fairy-tale gives temptation its opportunity: Goethe had already treated such a theme in the story of the Procurator in the Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten and in Die natürliche Tochter. The temptation dealt with in the first part of Novelle is of a particularly deep and subtle kind. The goal the princess sets out to reach is elaborately presented to us when Friedrich spreads out before her the drawings an artist has made of the old castle (and so, by the way, provides us with a clear exposition of the castle topography which we shall need in order to understand the final scenes of the story). In that presentation the boundless view to be had from the tower is almost incidental: the emphasis is

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rather on two features of the inner courtyard in particular. Firstly, its inviolate, almost sacred character, untouched and unseen for so long and even now in the care of two very marginal figures in the story: the artist, who has represented it without interfering with it, and the warden, who cares for the place but is wholly without understanding of its significance. Second, the castle, and particularly its mysterious heart, is represented as the place where nature and art, the natural and the human, merge and either become, or are originally, indistinguishable: art succumbs to nature as the trees cover the ruined walls and fill the deserted rooms, but this triumph of nature turns back into art in the drawings of the artist. Confronted with the artist’s portfolio, the reaction of the princess would be delightfully naïve if it were not breathtakingly foolhardy: she demands, we remember, to see ‘in der Wirklichkeit […] was Sie mir hier im Bilde zeigten!’ Her ascent of the mountain is an attempt to find the reality which she thinks lies behind, or is somehow distinct from, its image: she wants to see the courtyard in reality, but does not grasp that the significance of the courtyard lies in its representation by the artist. It is the place where art and nature meet only because the artist represents it as such in his paintings. The reality is in front of her, in the pictures – it is, as Goethe frequently says, an ‘offenbar Geheimnis’ – and if she understood that, she would not need to go on her expedition up the mountain at all. The first half of Novelle, then, the story of the Princess’s abortive attempt to climb the mountain, to see a reality which is already before her at the start, is the story of the moral consequences of an aesthetic mistake – a failure of the intellect, or, more precisely, of the imagination. In that, it closely resembles Die Wahlverwandtschaften. The princess allows herself to become the victim of her imagination: instead of using it to keep herself in touch with reality through the medium of true art (such as is exemplified by the artist’s pictures, in which the apparent struggle between the natural and the human is turned into harmonious beauty), she allows it to dominate her with images as discordant as they are unreal – the crude pictures on the menagerie, her uncle’s compulsively repeated reminiscences of a past that is safely over. As a result she sees the tiger when it appears only through the medium of her fears. And similarly Honorio sees the tiger only through the medium of his own disordered desires – aggression and, fuelling the aggression, lust. The conversation between them, over the dead body of the tiger, preserves

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almost complete outward propriety but is the concealed expression of desires which could destroy both of them and the prince as well. That conversation is a lie, in fact, for it completely misrepresents the truth about the events which have just occurred. Honorio assumes that he has just performed a heroic rescue, and the princess – who urges him to plunge his hunting-knife into the animal in case its claws hurt him – accepts that interpretation. But the truth is that the tiger was neither savage nor fearsome except in so far as the human beings cast it in that role; indeed Honorio virtually made the tiger into the instrument of his predatory feelings towards the princess. That truth is revealed to us immediately by the lament of the woman, who specifically denies that the tiger’s claws were dangerous. When therefore the prince reappears with his followers the scene which confronts him is, we know, completely misleading. There lies the dead tiger, before his wife, the battle-weary Honorio, and the weeping woman. It looks to him like the material for the news-story ‘Princess saved from tiger in German forest’. But we know that it has quite a different meaning. We know that, far from being a ‘novella’, an unprecedented novelty, the scene greeting the prince embodies one of the oldest of human stories; far from being an image of exotic adventure and selfless heroism it is an image of the all-too-familiar betrayal, or near betrayal, of love and marriage by undisciplined passions and an over-eager imagination. The meaning of the image, the ‘Anblick’, whether it is new or old, heroic or tragic, depends entirely on the words, the ‘wenige Worte’, with which it is explained. Despite the moments of silence which indicate that all is not yet grasped or under control, and perhaps known not to be so, the initial response of the Prince suggests that he is accepting the superficial, heroic, unashamedly violent interpretation of what he sees before him. He briskly questions the owner when he brings the news of the lion’s escape, and makes his dispositions, we are told, with the experience of a military man who expects the world to present him with situations where none of the envisageable outcomes is without loss, while the warden who announces that the lion is only yards away in the old castle loudly regrets the circumstances which have deprived him of his gun and so of his chance of getting a lionskin hearthrug and a lifelong excuse for boasting. Our story, that is, is still being defined by the terms used by Honorio to deceive himself and the Princess, even if their pretensions are reduced by a comically vulgar parallel with the warden.

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The characters are still using the language of the hunt, whether of beasts, or of women, or of honour, or of the knowledge of reality. Indeed, in the plan he drew up for the story, Goethe characterized this episode with the words ‘Erhöhte Jagdlust’ (p. 749). The transformation into harmony of this discordant mood of deceit and misunderstanding, of misdirected passion and unacknowledged guilt, the disappearance of the language of the hunt and the transition into the final section is achieved by art – that is, music – and by religion. All who hear the flute are entranced by its magic – they are ‘wie bezaubert’ (p. 507) – and the effect of the singers’ use of the language and imagery of the Old and New Testaments is even more powerful. Daniel entered the lions’ den unharmed, they sing, and Isaiah prophesied that the lion would lie down with the lamb; such a vision, they continue, is the fulfilment of faith and hope; and love, the mightiest of those three New Testament virtues, can work miracles when it is expressed in prayer to the Almighty.10 The truth of what they are singing becomes apparent almost immediately. Lost in the words and the music the listeners become aware of what they have experienced only when it has stopped, and by then the miracle referred to in the song has taken place. The strange family has conjured up a vision of reconciliation, of a harmony of nature and humanity, and by a mysterious process which consciousness cannot grasp – an ‘offenbar Geheimnis’, we might say, for it takes place in full view of everybody – the prince and the princess are reconciled. The burden of the past has dropped away, we are told, in words that are deliberately ambiguous, referring both to the false threat from the tiger and the real threat from the characters’ disordered minds and hearts: Der Fürst, als wenn er erst jetzt das Unheil übersähe, das ihn vor kurzem bedroht hatte, blickte nieder auf seine Gemahlin […] Es tat ihr wohl, die jugendliche Brust von dem Druck erleichtert zu fühlen, mit dem die vorhergehenden Minuten sie belastet hatten (p. 509)

With this they are ready to go down from the mountain – art and religion have given them a vision of the coming together of the natural and the human which has healed their lives, and so the princess has 10

On the Kantian origin of Goethe’s motif of thaumaturgic prayer – as in the story of Ferdinand in the Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten – see Goethe. The Poet and the Age, 2, pp. 46, 321–2.

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experienced the reality which the artist’s pictures represented without seeing the objects to which she thought those pictures must correspond. There is no need for her to go higher, she renounces any desire she may still have for the boundless view from the topmost tower, and she follows her spouse back down into the valley. At this point a new and final section of the story begins. We, as readers, continue upwards. The human story, the story as it might be told by a realistic psychologist, the sort of person who passes on news, ‘novelle’, about worldly personalities and their affairs, is now all but over. Once we have passed Honorio brooding on the great prospect of the future deeds which self-conquest will release him to perform, we are alone with characters to whom we have only recently been introduced. With them we enter the realm of the upper castle, the realm which, by comparison with the lower castle, where the realistic story began, could be called ideal, for it is here that we are allowed to see what the princess thought she was climbing the mountain to find: the reality, the ultimate truth, which Plato or Kant would call an ideal, corresponding to the artist’s pictures. We have entered the sacred realm, the influence of which has been felt in the princess’s life, but which neither she nor Honorio is yet mature enough to experience directly.11 Here we find as reality what in the transitional phase, when the prince and princess were being healed by the experience of art, was only a symbol or metaphor. Then the family chorus spoke and sang in the words of Daniel and Isaiah of the peaceful life together of men and lions, lions and lambs, and that was a symbol, or metaphor, of a healing power in the lives of particular people. Now the song is sung again, though by the child alone, and this time its metaphors have come true: the lion is no longer an image in a song, but a real lion, and he is really led by a little child. In the words Goethe uses at the end of Faust II, another story of infinite ascent, what was ‘Gleichnis’ has become ‘Ereignis’ (lines 12105, 12107). It therefore sheds a new, and perhaps unexpected, light on what a ‘Novelle’ might be. For this concluding episode, this ‘Ereignis’, is not a novelty, a surprising event for the curious, which is how the warden, who always 11

It goes without saying that Friedrich’s grotesque plan to make the ideal realm accessible to mass tourism by turning the castle into a ‘Zauberschloss’ (p. 507, cf. p. 493) is as much the product of a disordered imagination as his compulsively repetitive memories of the fire.

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gets things wrong, perceives it – ‘der seltene menschliche Fall’ it is called, as from his point of view (p. 511). But it is nothing of the kind. It is not an incident at all – it is not like the ambiguous human story of passion and recovery that has preceded. It is the embodiment of an eternal truth, a myth we might say: the physical enactment in the here and now of a story as old and familiar as the prophecy of Isaiah, as the story of Jerome and the Lion, as the ordeal of Pamino and Tamina in The Magic Flute. The true ‘novella’, the really new thing, we might say, turns out to be the coming into reality of the oldest thing on earth, the original cosmic harmony. Indeed it was because the song contained this ancient and eternal truth, which is now being enacted before us – though not before the figures in the human story – that it was able to have the healing power which to that human audience seemed magical, indeed miraculous. Honorio and the Princess had deceived themselves into thinking they were part of an unprecedented story of heroic courage, deserving to be broadcast to the world as a ‘novella’. Through the confrontation with the family of menagerie-keepers and the symbols in which they spoke and sang, that story was revealed as an all-too-familiar and all-too-human story of disordered ambition and was at the same time brought to a conciliatory conclusion for all involved. In a second sense, therefore, the story is a Novelle – it is a ‘moralische Erzählung’ in which the art of music plays a redemptive role. We, the readers, are privileged, however, on the last pages of the story to be shown a third and very Goethean sense in which it is a Novelle – the sense in which it gives new embodiment to a truth as old as the literary and mythological resources of our culture. We are shown the source of the redemptive power of art in a redemption that lies beyond art, in a divine intention to frustrate evil and further the good and the beautiful: ‘Böses Wollen zu verhindern,/ Zu befördern schöne Tat’ (p. 513). This revelation may come as a new insight to the individual, but only because it takes time for the individual to learn what the human race has always known. The new, in the deepest sense, is, in these last pages, not some unprecedented incident that bursts upon one, but an ancient truth that one has gradually learnt to discern: from every higher point on the mountain, we might say, it is not the view that is new – it is the climber who is a new arrival. Little more than a year before his death, in earthier language than anything we find in the story called Novelle, Goethe wrote to the musician Zelter what must surely count as his last word on that contentious piece of terminology:

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Das liebe, allerliebste, gegenwärtige Publicum meynt immer: das, was man ihm vorsetzt, müßten jedesmal warme Kräppel aus der Pfanne seyn. Es hat keinen Begriff, daß man sich zu jedem Neuen und wahrhaft Altneuen erst wieder zu bilden habe. (29 January 1831)

I hope, therefore, that I have shown a sense in which Goethe’s Novelle could be said to be a ‘Novelle’ about a ‘novella’. I hope also it has become clear that such a formula does not imply that the work is self-referential to the point of being trivial or meaningless. Novelle is the story of a quest for reality – for the ultimate reality which Kant calls ideal. It is the story of an ascent of a mountain, and on the mountain stands a castle, and within the castle there is a meaning, and that meaning none of the characters engaged on the quest is allowed to experience. What differentiates Goethe from later German writers, particularly of the twentieth century, is not that he is unaware of, or indifferent to, the perplexities and incompleteness of human life and the human quest for reality, an incompleteness of which those writers, notably Kafka, have created images powerful enough to count as modern myths. What makes Goethe different and his story into a landmark, not just in German but in world literature, is this: he does not compromise that disillusioned understanding of our lot, but he manages, like Shakespeare, to incorporate it in a literary work which, largely through its refusal to conform to the requirements of any particular genre, also includes intimations of wholeness, and assurances, however fleeting, of consolation. And without these neither the characters in the story, nor we its readers, would embark on that quest for reality in the first place.


CHARLOTTE WOODFORD

Kleist, Michael Kohlhaas

The Erzählungen of Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811), which appeared in two volumes in 1810 and 1811, are one of the most striking collections of short stories in the German literary tradition. Although Kleist avoids using the term Novelle to describe these pieces, they make an important contribution to the development of that genre in the nineteenth-century and beyond.1 Indeed, in 1812 Wilhelm Grimm recognised them as some of the most powerful short prose works yet to appear in German: Es verdienen diese Dichtungen vorzugsweise Novellen genannt zu werden, im eigentlichsten Sinne dieses Wortes; denn das wahrhaft Neue, das Seltne und Außerordentlichen in Charakteren, Begebenheiten, Lagen und Verhältnissen wird in ihnen dargestellt, mit einer solchen Kraft […] daß das Außerordentliche als so unbezweifelbar gewiß und so klar einleuchtend erscheint, wie die gewöhnliche Erfahrung.2

According to Grimm, a Novelle is not just any form of short prose fiction. Rather he regards it as defined by the newness of its subjectmatter, its concentration on an extraordinary event or situation, and its ability to make the unique seem a part of our every-day reality. Kleist’s stories are all based on an extraordinary event or character. They are remarkable for their narrative concision and their use of contrasts and paradoxes. They throw the reader straight into an astonishing situation in a matter of sentences, grabbing the attention instantly. The characters, such as ‘Graf F…’ and the father in Die Marquise von O..., or Nicolo and Piachi in Der Findling, are far from the plausible, average characters 1 2

See Denys Dyer, The Stories of Kleist: A Critical Study (London, 1977), p. 10. Also John M. Ellis, Narration in the German Novelle (London, 1974). Leipziger Literatur-Zeitung, 28 September 1812, reprinted in Dokumente zu Kleist, 2: Heinrich von Kleists Nachruhm. Eine Wirkungsgeschichte in Dokumenten, ed. by Helmut Sembdner (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), p. 524.

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of realist fiction. Instead they are prone to extremes of behaviour, and sudden, seemingly irrational actions. However, despite this focus on the extremes of human character, Grimm reminds us of the realist qualities of Kleist’s stories: the unique is carefully integrated into the real world and becomes recognisable to us as a part of our experience. Kleist was denied success during his lifetime. A misfit in a family of Prussian officers, and orphaned in his teens, he had left the army and become an outsider, misunderstood by most of his relatives. One of the major turning points in his life, the well-known ‘Kant crisis’, was triggered by his reading of a Kantian text, which he discusses in a letter to his fiancée Wilhelmine von Zenge written on 22 March 1801.3 It caused Kleist to reconsider how we make sense of the world. Some see this event as the key to the epistemological problems faced by the author’s characters. Kleist had previously held the Enlightenment view that human reason was eventually capable of achieving absolute knowledge of the world. The Kantian text shattered this idea, showing him that human perception was inadequate for an understanding of the universe. Indeed, Kleist came away with the pessimistic view that our senses provide us with an illusory perception of the world, and he likened this to seeing the world through ‘a pair of green glasses’. The problem of trusting one’s senses is thus a theme that recurs frequently in his works, notable examples including the deception of Alkmene by the God Jupiter in the guise of her husband in Amphitryon, and the confusion faced by Littegarde and her alleged lover Jakob der Rotbart in Der Zweikampf. It is, however, important not to attribute too many of Kleist’s personal problems to the Kant crisis. He constantly struggled to find fulfilment, suffered from periods of depression, and his lack of professional success reduced him to a state of poverty. His literary reputation was damaged by Goethe’s disastrous production of Der zerbrochene Krug in Weimar on 2 March 1808.4 Finally, he committed suicide with the terminally ill Adolphine Vogel at Wannsee near Berlin, on 21 November 1811. Their deaths were avidly reported in the press, not just in Germany but also abroad, and were the talk of society for long 3 4

For a good discussion of this event and its consequences, see Robert E. Helbling, The Major Works of Heinrich von Kleist (New York, 1975), pp. 23–34. See Hilda M. Brown, Heinrich von Kleist: The Ambiguity of Art and the Necessity of Form (Oxford, 1998), pp. 251–2.


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afterwards.5 One newspaper called it ‘eine höchst sonderbare und schauderhafte Begebenheit’, using language that makes it seem like the sensational starting point for a Kleistian Novelle.6 The Romantic Ludwig Tieck, a friend of Kleist’s, eventually made the author’s reputation. He edited Kleist’s unpublished work in 1821, and five years later an edition of the completed works. By the 1830s and 1840s, when critics such as Wolfgang Menzel (1798–1873), Heinrich Laube (1806–84) and Georg Gervinius (1805–71) were writing some of the first histories of modern German literature, the verdict had become overwhelmingly positive. Laube laments that ‘der frühe Tod dieses Mannes ist uns ein wesentlicher Verlust’.7 Menzel and Laube both draw the link between Kleist and the contemporary Romantic movement, Menzel commenting in 1836: ‘Heinrich von Kleist führte aus der katholischen Romantik herüber in die moderne Magie’.8 Yet Kleist was never a part of Romanticism, nor was he part of Classicism, his style and preoccupations defying pigeon-holing. It is Gervinius, however, who provides the greatest accolade, claiming Kleist as the greatest dramatist of the nineteenth century: ‘Unter allen den dramatischen Talenten, die in diesem Jahrhundert bei uns auftauchten, hat Kleist bei weitem die größte Berechtigung, den Dichternamen in Anspruch zu nehmen’.9 Kleist’s popularity was to remain strong. He was celebrated for his patriotism, and his style was linked to the search for a German identity: In seinen Dramen erkennen wir den spezifisch deutschen Dichter; wir haben namentlich an seiner Sprache das Bild eines wahrhaft nationalen Stils, der sich für Deutschland auf eine organische Weise hätte entwickeln können, wenn nicht das Beispiel Goethes und Schillers verwirrend dazwischen getreten ware.10

Later in the century his play Die Hermannsschlacht was revived by German nationalists. 5 6 7 8 9 10

See Sembdner, Dokumente, pp. 15–26. Allgemeine Moden-Zeitung, Leipzig, 3 December 1811, quoted in Sembdner, Dokumente, p. 17. Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (1840), Sembdner, Dokumente, p. 222. Die deutsche Literatur (1836), Sembdner, Dokumente, p. 222. Neuere Geschichte der poetischen National-Literatur (1842), Sembdner, Dokumente, p. 224. Julian Schmidt, Geschichte der deutschen Nationalliteratur im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (1853), quoted in Sembdner, Dokumente, p. 247.

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Kleist’s stories had a powerful effect on some of the most important writers of German short prose. In Die Serapionsbrüder, E.T.A. Hoffmann commented: ‘Wie ein Stoff bearbeitet oder vielmehr lebendig gestaltet werden kann, hat niemand herrlicher bewiesen als Heinrich Kleist in seiner vortrefflichen, klassisch gediegenen Erzählung von dem Roßhändler Kohlhaas’ (Sembdner, Dokumente, p. 534), while Heinrich Heine, on reading Kohlhaas, declared himself ‘voller Bewunderung für den Verfasser, kann nicht genug bedauern, daß er sich tot geschossen’.11 Fontane preferred Die Marquise von O… to Michael Kohlhaas. He thought Die Marquise was ‘eine Meisterarbeit’, but was irritated by the second half of Kohlhaas when the narrative moves away from the protagonist to focus on the court.12 In the twentieth century, Thomas Mann declared himself furious with Goethe for disliking Kohlhaas,13 and much critical attention has been given to Kafka’s admiration for Kleist’s narrative style.14 As celebrations marked the hundredth anniversary of Kleist’s death in 1911, evidence from Kafka’s diaries and letters suggest that he took a great interest in Kleist’s works and his biography (Grandin, p. 13), empathising with his estrangement from his family and difficulty fitting into society. A letter to Felice Bauer dated 10 February 1913 describes his fascination with Kohlhaas, which he had just read ‘wohl zum zehnten Male’: ‘Gestern habe ich Dir nicht geschrieben, weil es über Michael Kohlhaas zu spät geworden ist […], den ich bis auf einen kleinen Teil, den ich schon vorgestern gelesen hatte, in einem Zug gelesen habe. […] Das ist eine Geschichte, die ich mit wirklicher Gottesfurcht lese’ (Grandin, p. 14). Michael Kohlhaas, the longest and, as we see from the responses above arguably the most important of Kleist’s short stories, was begun in 1804 and published in 1810 as part of the first volume of Kleist’s

11 12 13 14

Letter to M. Moser, 14 December 1825, Sembdner, Dokumente, p. 538. ‘Aufzeichnungen. Krummhübel, Juli 1872’, Sembdner, Dokumente, p. 549. Thomas Mann to Heinrich Mann, Munich, 17 November 1910, Sembdner, Dokumente, p. 552. See for example F. G. Peters, ‘Kafka and Kleist: A Literary Relationship’, Oxford German Studies, 1 (1966), 114–62; David E. Smith, Gesture as a Stylistic Device in Kleist’s ‘Michael Kohlhaas’ and Kafka’s ‘Der Prozeß’ (Berne, 1976); and John M. Grandin, Kafka’s Prussian Advocate: A Study of the Influence of Heinrich von Kleist on Franz Kafka (Columbia, 1987).


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Erzählungen.15 However, the first section, concluding with Kohlhaas attacking the Tronkenburg, had already been published in 1808 in the short-lived periodical Phöbus, of which Kleist was co-editor. The subtitle for the story, ‘Aus einer alten Chronik’, is not simply a narrative strategy, for the story has some foundation in real events. In 1532, a trader, Hans Kohlhase, was on his way to Leipzig taking with him two horses.16 These were stolen from him by a local Junker under some legal pretext, and by the time Kohlhase was able to return and claim them, they had wasted away like the pair in Kleist’s story, and one of them died (Diesselhorst, pp. 335–7). Kohlhase, unable to achieve justice through the legal system, waged an illegal feud against Saxony and became an outlaw, even burning down houses in Wittenberg. He managed to escape being arrested by the Saxon authorities for some eight years, but was eventually captured in Berlin, where he was executed in February 1540 by being broken on the wheel (Diesselhort, p. 348). This is the punishment which Kleist’s Kohlhaas would have suffered in Saxony, had he not been rescued by the Elector of Brandenburg and condemned to the more honourable and quicker death by beheading. However, much of Kleist’s story is pure invention. He uses the tale of the original Kohlhase as a point of departure to provide the exciting event, or ‘unerhörte Begebenheit’, on which to base the narrative. He develops the story from his own imagination and raises issues recognisable from his other works as important concerns of his. These include the nature of justice, the relationship between man-made law and what is morally right, and the exploration of extremes of human behaviour. A striking feature in all of Kleist’s stories, but particularly evident in Michael Kohlhaas, is the instability of the narrative voice. The story is told in the third person, in retrospect, by a voice that we would expect 15

16

Quotations given in parenthesis after the text are taken from Heinrich von Kleist, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, Vol. 2, ed. by Helmut Sembdner, 9th ed. (Munich, 1993). See Malte Diesselhorst, ‘Hans Kohlhase/ Michael Kohlhaas’, Kleist-Jahrbuch (1988/89), 334–56 (p. 334). Also, Die Quellen zu Heinrich von Kleists Michael Kohlhaas, ed. by Rudolf Schlösser (Bonn, 1913), which includes the main source, Peter Haffitz’ Märckische Chronik, from ‘Diplomatische und curieuse Nachlese der Historie von Ober-Sachsen und angrenzenden Ländern’, by Christian Schöttgen and G. Kreysig, Part II (Dresden and Leipzig, 1731), pp. 528–41.

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not only to have prior knowledge of the events, and also to be omniscient and authoritative. These expectations are not always fulfilled. The subtitle, for example, ‘aus einer alten Chronik’, might lead us to assume that the narrator is a chronicler and that Kleist will adopt a sixteenth-century style.17 It is clear, though, that the narrator is not from the sixteenth century at all, for in the final sentence of the work, we are told that descendents of Kohlhaas were still alive ‘im vergangenen Jahrhundert’ (p. 103). This makes it seem likely that we are intended to imagine a narrator from Kleist’s own time. We are also told that we can read about the fate of the unfortunate Elector of Saxony ‘in der Geschichte’, clearly distancing the narrator in time from the events (ibid.). A chronicler would tend to narrate chronologically in a factual or sober style. However, the Kleistian narrative voice tantalises the reader with paradoxes such as the description of Kohlhaas as ‘einer der rechtschaffensten zugleich und entsetzlichsten Menschen seiner Zeit’ (p. 9). It also reveals the outcome of the story at the end of the first paragraph: ‘Das Rechtgefühl macht ihn zum Räuber und Mörder’ (ibid.). The narrator disrupts the chronology to reveal to us, for example, that Kohlhaas’s wife Lisabeth’s trip to Berlin does not have a happy outcome: ‘Diese Reise war aber von allen erfolglosen Schritten, die er in seiner Sache getan hatte, der allerunglücklichste’ (p. 29). The introduction of the gypsy woman four-fifths of the way through the story subverts the chronicle mode too, by retrospectively introducing a magical element which requires the re-telling of the story so far according to a different perspective. As Anthony Stephens points out, in the early part of the Novelle we are told that Kohlhaas waited three days after his wife’s funeral for Squire Wenzel von Tronka to return the horses to him in Kohlhaasenbrück, then set off for the Tronkenburg without stopping on the way.18 However, when Kohlhaas re-tells this episode to explain how he received the lead capsule from the gypsy woman in Jüterbock, the chronology is altered: ‘Sieben Monden mögen es etwa sein, genau am Tage nach dem Begräbnis meiner Frau; und von Kohlhaasenbrück […] war ich aufgebrochen’ (p. 82). The discrepancy between these two accounts may be coincidental, perhaps attributable to 17 18

As, for example, suggested by Brown, op. cit., pp. 98–9. Anthony Stephens, Heinrich von Kleist: The Dramas and Stories (Oxford, 1994), p. 251; see Werke, p. 31.


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the fact that the first part of Kohlhaas was written two years before the second, as mentioned above. On the other hand, it marks the shift to a section of narrative which is written according to different, less realistic conventions. The involvement of the gypsy woman takes the story a step beyond every-day reality. Coincidence follows coincidence, the most astonishing being the fact that the old woman whom Kunz von Tronka chooses to try and trick Kohlhaas into giving up the lead capsule turns out to be the original gypsy woman herself. The narrator affects embarrassment at this point, realising that this turn of events might require more than the average suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader: Und wie denn die Wahrscheinlichkeit nicht immer auf Seiten der Wahrheit ist, so traf es sich, daß hier etwas geschehen war, das wir zwar berichten: die Freiheit aber, daran zu zweifeln, demjenigen, dem es wohlgefällt, zugestehen müssen. (p. 96)

The narrative voice here is able to hide behind the convention that the story is taken from an old chronicle. It can claim to be reporting the story as it is taken from the sources, and distance itself from them by casting doubt on their veracity. The narrator is aligned to a certain extent with the reader, who wants to know what really happened but can no longer be certain of the facts at such distance from events. This conceit is used again when the narrator claims not to know the whereabouts of the Elector of Saxony in the days before Kohlhaas’s execution: ‘Wohin er eigentlich ging, und ob er sich nach Dessau wandte, lassen wir dahin gestellt sein, indem die Chroniken, aus deren Vergleichung wir Bericht erstatten, an dieser Stelle, auf befremdende Weise, einander widersprechen und aufheben’ (p. 99). The narrator claims to be drawing on several chronicles, and comparing them to establish the true story, as a historian would. Yet the chronicles contradict each other and so leave the narrator none the wiser. It might be supposed that this narrative strategy was the result of uncertainty caused by the appearance of the gypsy woman. However, the narrator adopted the technique of a lack of omniscience earlier in the story too. We never know what happens when Lisabeth goes to Berlin and receives her fatal injuries, for there were no witnesses connected with the Kohlhaas family, and Lisabeth does not regain consciousness

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long enough to explain: ‘Kohlhaas […] konnte nichts Zusammenhängendes über das, was dieses Unglück verursacht hatte, erfahren’ (p. 29). The information we receive is qualified by statements such as ‘wie der Knecht sagte’, ‘es schien’, and ‘wenigstens berichteten die Leute so, die sie, in bewußtlosen Zustand, gegen Abend in den Gasthof brachten’ (pp. 29–30). Similarly, when Kohlhaas is in the process of attacking towns in Saxony in the hope of finding Squire Wenzel, a mysterious declaration appears stating that Wenzel was in Dresden. However, the narrator does not know who wrote it: ‘man wußte nicht von wem’ (p. 42). This narrative style could be the result of a decision to adopt the persona of a chronicler, who is bound by the sources and unable to speculate beyond them. On the other hand, the techniques used in Michael Kohlhaas are reminiscent of those used to create suspense and add tension in Kleist’s other stories. For example, it is a similar technique to that of the restricted knowledge feigned by the narrator of Die Marquise von O…, when we are left assuming that Graf F. in has been killed in battle because the messenger had seen him lying dead with his own eyes: Der Kurier, der diese Nachricht nach M… brachte, hatte ihn mit eignen Augen, tödlich durch die Brust geschossen, nach P… tragen sehen, wo er, wie man sichere Nachricht hatte, in dem Augenblick, da ihn die Träger von den Schultern nehmen wollten, verblichen war. (Werke, p. 108)

In Der Zweikampf, the narrator leaves us in suspense, unable to unravel the mystery of Littegarde’s innocence, until a new character is introduced at the eleventh hour. The narrator’s comment, ‘man muß nämlich wissen, daß…’, suggests that the knowledge was deliberately withheld until the crucial moment (Werke, p. 256). While the gaps in Michael Kohlhaas are never filled, as they are in Die Marquise or Der Zweikampf, it is not necessary to the plot for the reader to have every detail cleared up. In fact, it increases the dramatic tension of the story to have the narrator tantalise us with mysteries from the past which he claims to be unable to solve. Importantly too, it highlights how the reader, just like the characters in the stories, is unable fully to understand the workings even of the fictional world.


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Usually, the reader relies on a narrator for a verdict on the actions of the protagonist. Are we meant to identify with the protagonist? Or are we meant to recoil from his actions? The narrator’s response to Kohlhaas fluctuates and leaves us with no certainty. Initially, we identify closely with him. One reason for this is that where we expect the narrator to give us an authoritative version of events, the narrator in fact often adopts Kohlhaas’s perspective. As Kohlhaas descends upon Wenzel’s castle, he is compared to the angel of judgement: ‘der Engel des Gerichts fährt also vom Himmel herab’ (p. 32). This anticipates Kohlhaas’s later identification of himself with Michael Archangel, come to punish the world ‘mit Feuer und Schwert’ (p. 41). Kohlhaas’s actions in the castle leave us uncertain how to react, however, particularly when he brutally throws Wenzel’s relative, Hans von Tronka, to the corner of the room, ‘daß er sein Hirn an den Steinen versprützte’, and murders the ‘Schloßvogt’ and bailiff with their wives and children (p. 32). Nevertheless, at this point, the narrator calls him ‘der unglückliche Kohlhaas’, because Junker Wenzel has escaped him, a judgement which we might find strange, given Kohlhaas’s bloodthirsty actions (p. 34). The narrator soon becomes more distanced, however. We are told how Kohlhaas had been plunged ‘in die Hölle unbefriedigter Rache’, reminding us of the fine line between justice and revenge, and one of his proclamations is described as ‘eine Schwärmerei krankhafter und mißgeschaffener Art’ (pp. 35, 36). When Kohlhaas first sets Wittenberg on fire, the narrator’s perspective shifts to the opinion of the townspeople. He uses their words to denounce Kohlhaas’s actions: ‘Das Entsetzen der Einwohner, über diesen unerhörten Frevel, war unbeschreiblich’ (p. 36). After Kohlhaas has set the town on fire for the third time, and has a band of over one hundred men, the narrator condemns him as ‘der Mordbrenner’, and then later on several occasions as ‘der rasende Mordbrenner’ (pp. 39–41). Not until the incident with the knacker from Döbbeln during the amnesty in Dresden does the narrator display a certain sympathy for the protagonist, who becomes ‘der arme Kohlhaas’ (p. 65), a victim of the corrupt legal system of the Saxon court. Kleist uses a simple conflict between a horse dealer and a minor nobleman to ask questions about the nature of justice in society and the relationship between the individual and the state. In the first paragraph, the narrator describes how Kohlhaas’s neighbours would testify to his

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‘Gerechtigkeit’ (p. 9); however, he concludes it with the emphatic, and seemingly paradoxical statement: ‘Das Rechtgefühl machte ihn zum Räuber und Mörder’ (p. 9). The difference between ‘Gerechtigkeit’ and ‘Rechtgefühl’ is significant. The former, ‘Gerechtigkeit’, is an absolute judgement, implying not only that the protagonist has a just nature, but that he acts justly and dispenses justice on his servants. Kohlhaas’s ‘Gerechtigkeit’ is recognised by those around him, implying that it is based on shared values, and most likely corresponds with the law of the land. It is part and parcel of his being ‘das Muster eines guten Staatsbürgers’ (ibid.). However, the latter, ‘Rechtgefühl’, a sense of justice, is far from absolute, and could be interpreted perhaps as ‘moral conscience’. It is an individual value, which may stand in opposition to society’s laws. Early in the text, we are given an indication that Kohlhaas already perceives the world with a degree of suspicion. He is irritated by the hoax surrounding the ‘Paßschein’, but returns to the Tronkenburg ‘ohne irgend weiter ein bitteres Gefühl, als das der allgemeinen Not der Welt’ (p. 13). This implies that Kohlhaas was reflecting on human nature, lamenting that there are people who go out of their way to irritate others. It seems to anticipate Kohlhaas’s thoughts as he rode back from the Tronkenburg, without his horses, to Kohlhaasenbrück: Denn ein richtiges, mit der gebrechlichen Einrichtung der Welt schon bekanntes Gefühl machte ihn, trotz der erlittenen Beleidigungen, geneigt, falls nur wirklich dem Knecht, wie der Schloßvogt behauptete, eine Art von Schuld beizumessen sei, den Verlust der Pferde, als eine gerechte Folge davon, zu verschmerzen (p. 15–16).

This complex syntax, in which several sub-clauses are embedded in one main clause, is typically Kleistian, and gives a clear impression of the workings of Kohlhaas’s mind on his journey home. Kohlhaas is weighing up the issues before coming to a definite conclusion about his course of action. The injustice suffered is at the forefront of his mind, but he remembers too that his servant may be to blame, in which case he would just have to get over the loss of his horses. Under those circumstances, these would be no more than a just consequence of the servant’s misplaced action. This famous phrase, ‘die gebrechliche Einrichtung der Welt’, echoes that of the narrator of Die Marquise von O…. where the Marquise is reconciled ‘um der gebrechlichen Einrichtung der Welt


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willen’ with Graf F., who is her saviour, but who paradoxically also raped her while she was unconscious and made her pregnant (Werke, p. 143). She becomes aware that the world is a complicated place, and that its inhabitants are not polarised into immoral people on the one hand, and virtuous people on the other. Just as Kohlhaas can be simultaneously ‘rechtschaffen’ and ‘entsetzlich’, Graf F. can be at once ‘Teufel’ and ‘Engel’ (ibid., p. 50). Human motivation is complex and hence human behaviour is unpredictable. While the Marquise only realised this at the end of the story, Kohlhaas has some appreciation of the complexity of human nature from the beginning. His knowledge of ‘die gebrechliche Einrichtung der Welt’ makes him realise that it might after all be Herse who is in the wrong, for no one in this world is completely trustworthy. Trust is important theme in Kleist’s works, taken to extremes in Amphitryon, in which Alkemene realises that she has been deceived by her own senses and cannot trust even her ‘innerstes Gefühl’ (II, iv; l. 1251). Just as Alkmene’s emotions are described as ‘die Goldwaage der Empfindung’ (l. 1396), the narrator tells us that Kohlhaas’s ‘Rechtgefühl [glich] einer Goldwaage’, a very finely balanced pair of scales for weighing tiny amounts of gold (p. 14). Kohlhaas is said to come to a judgement only after much hesitation, and only when he has all the facts in front of him. But although he claims to wait until speaking to Herse to decide whether to take action against Wenzel, his judgement is becoming more and more fixed as he rides home: [ein ebenso vortreffliches Gefühl] faßte tiefere und tiefere Wurzeln, in dem Maße, als er weiter ritt, und überall, wo er einkehrte, von den Ungerechtigkeiten hörte, die täglich auf der Tronkenburg gegen die Reisenden verübt wurden: daß wenn der ganze Vorfall, wie es allen Anschein habe, bloß abgekartet sein sollte, er mit seinen Kräften der Welt in der Pflicht verfallen sei, sich Genugtuung für die erlittene Kränkung, und Sicherheit für zukünftige seinen Mitbürgern zu verschaffen. (p. 16)

Again, we see how Kohlhaas’s ideas form as he continues on his way. Everywhere he goes he hears stories of injustices carried out by Squire Wenzel’s men. It is significant, however, that the narrator presents the stories as hearsay, and as readers we cannot be certain if they are true; the narrator avoids an opportunity to be authoritative. The stories colour Kohlhaas’s view of Wenzel such that it begins to seem certain to him that Wenzel is at fault in this instance too: the

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‘Goldwaage’ appears to be loaded against him. The narrator is distanced from Kohlhaas’s opinion by his use of the subjunctive. On the other hand, he does not question Kohlhaas’s conclusion that it is his duty to take action against Wenzel, leaving the reader bound by Kohlhaas’s perspective. The brief role of Kohlhaas’s wife, Lisabeth, in the conflict is a good example of the ambiguity of Kohlhaas’s relationship with justice. She appears to support her husband in his quest for satisfaction, and yet reminds us of the Christian principle of forgiveness, which might be expected to have some hold over the Lutheran Kohlhaas. When he first returns, she is pleased by his ‘Gelassenheit’ (p. 17), and tells him that it is ‘ein Werk Gottes’ to put a stop to behaviour like Tronka’s. We learn that Kohlhaas ‘hatte die Freude, zu sehen, daß sie ihn, in diesem Vorsatz, aus voller Seele bestärkte’ (p. 20). However, the narrator is distanced from this statement because we see Lisabeth’s actions through Kohlhaas’s eyes. The reader’s perception that Lisabeth agrees with him ‘aus voller Seele’ does not come from an omniscient narrator, but from a self-centred husband used to seeing his wife reflect his emotions. Later, the narrator shows us the dissonance between husband and wife when Kohlhaas decides to sell the farm and send his family away. Lisabeth is visibly shocked to hear him offer their house for sale to a neighbour: ‘Lisabeth, sein Weib, erblaßte bei diesen Worten. Sie wandte sich, und hob ihr Jüngstes auf, das hinter ihr auf dem Boden spielte, Blicke, in welchen sich der Tod malte, […] auf den Roßkamm’ (p. 25). As the men talk, she clutches the baby to her and kisses him, and as Kohlhaas explains the speed with which he wants to sell up: ‘Die Frau ging in der Stube auf und ab; ihre Brust flog, daß das Tuch, an welchem der Knabe gezupft hatte, ihr völlig von der Schulter herabzufallen drohte’ (p. 25–6). Lisabeth is no longer concerned with appearances; it is clear to the neighbour that she is distressed, but Kohlhaas continues in a matter of fact way to sell their livelihood. When the ‘Amtmann’ has gone, she throws herself at his feet, and cries out to him: Wenn du mich irgend […] mich und die Kinder, die ich dir geboren habe, in deinem Herzen trägst; wenn wir nicht im voraus schon, um welcher Ursach willen, weiß ich nicht, verstoßen sind: so sage mir, was diese entsetzlichen Anstalten zu bedeuten haben! (p. 27)


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This outburst contains echoes of the first paragraph of the story in the use of the adjective ‘entsetzlich’ in connection with Kohlhaas. It highlights how nothing, neither his children nor his wife, is more important for him than attaining justice. We realise, perhaps for the first time, to what extent Kohlhaas’s single-mindedness makes him ‘terrible’, at the same time as being ‘rechtschaffen’. Lisabeth’s use of the adjective ‘verstoßen’ is significant too, for it is the same word with which Kohlhaas describes to Luther how he has been cast out of society: ‘Der Krieg, den ich mit der Gemeinschaft der Menschen führe, ist eine Missetat, sobald ich aus ihr nicht, wie Ihr mir die Versicherung gegeben habt, verstoßen war!’ (p. 45). Kohlhaas perceives himself as having been cast out of the community which is the state; Lisabeth recognises, before Kohlhaas utters the words, that this emotion leads him to feel freed of his obligations to his family. By refusing to protect his rights, the state has abandoned Kohlhaas and broken its contract with him. In his eyes, he can therefore legitimately resort to primitive, anti-social violence to protect himself: ‘wer mir [den Schutz der Gesetzte] versagt, der stößt mich zu den Wilden der Einöde hinaus; er gibt mir, wie wollt Ihr das leugnen, die Keule, die mich selbst schützt, in die Hand’ (p. 47). Lisabeth rejects Kohlhaas’s suggestion that she and the children go and live with her relatives (p. 28). Her offer to go to Berlin and try to use her influence to gain access to the court could be regarded as some sort of compliance to Kohlhaas’s wishes. However, her opposition to Kohlhaas continuing his quest for justice is quite clear. When he asks her: ‘Soll ich meine Sache aufgeben?’, we are told: ‘Lisabeth wagte nicht: ja! ja! ja! zu sagen – sie schüttelte weinend mit dem Kopf, sie drückte ihn heftig an sich, und überdeckte mit heißen Küssen seine Brust’ (p. 28). She does not dare oppose Kohlhaas, but again her gestures betray her real feelings to the reader, if not to her single-minded husband. Her decision to go to Berlin and seek out a former admirer at the court is not compliance, so much as the only way she can seek to prevent herself and the children being sent away, leaving Kohlhaas to the ‘Waffen und Pferde’ of which she disapproves (ibid.). So her last words, when she takes the Bible from the Lutheran minister and points to the phrase, ‘Vergib deinen Feinden; tue wohl auch denen, die dich hassen’, are not a surprise (p. 30). She seems only ever to have been in favour of Kohlhaas gaining redress by legal means, and provides a counter-model to his fanaticism. Ironically, while Lisabeth tried to make Kohlhaas

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abandon his mission, her death pushes Kohlhaas over the edge and makes him unable to give it up. As he tells Luther, bound up with his quest for justice was from that moment onwards the attempt to prove, ‘daß sie in keinem ungerechten Handel umgekommen ist’ (p. 47). Lisabeth’s funeral, ‘das weniger für sie, als für eine Fürstin, angeordnet schien’ is a sign of Kohlhaas’s incipient megalomania (p. 30). In a striking example of narrative concision, it is on the day of the funeral that Kohlhaas receives the letter telling him that his most recent petition has been unsuccessful. We are told: Kohlhaas steckte den Brief ein, und ließ den Sarg auf den Wagen bringen. Sobald der Hügel geworfen, das Kreuz darauf gepflanzt, und die Gäste, die die Leiche bestattet hatten, entlassen waren, warf er sich noch einmal vor ihrem, nun verödeten Bette nieder, und übernahm sodann das Geschäft der Rache (p. 31).

The narrator describes how Kohlhaas pays his last respects to his wife in a series of detailed clauses depicting the actions of the funeral. Yet even the beginning of the sentence, ‘sobald’, looks forward to its incongruous climax, when, his wife barely cold in her grave, Kohlhaas immediately ignores her wishes, and goes out to seek what the narrator for the first time now calls ‘revenge’: a way of seeing Kohlhaas’s campaign which the protagonist never accepts. Later, when Lisabeth is tentatively identified with the figure of the gypsy woman who provides Kohlhaas with the lead capsule containing the secret of the Elector of Saxony’s future, it appears that she is trying to save Kohlhaas’s life, realising that his fanaticism will cost him dearly. She tries to tempt Kohlhaas to let the Elector of Saxony free him in return for the lead capsule, so that their children will not be left orphans. However, if Lisabeth is the gypsy woman, she underestimates Kohlhaas’s desire for revenge, not now directed at Wenzel, but at the Elector of Saxony. For Kohlhaas proclaims: ‘du kannst mich auf das Schafott bringen, ich aber kann dir weh tun, und ich wills!’ (p. 86). Despite receiving the Communion which Luther had at first denied him because of his refusal to forgive Wenzel (p. 48), he goes to his death with the satisfaction of revenge foremost in his mind. Michael Kohlhaas had a significant influence on later writers of prose fiction, such as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Heine and Kafka, whose works also challenge the reader not just with their content but also with their


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form. The story’s treatment of the themes of justice and morality is complex, Kohlhaas’s character is ambiguous, and the outcome paradoxical: Kohlhaas is executed, but his horses are restored, and his children honoured on his behalf. The impossibility for the reader of finding definite answers in the text mirrors the problem which so many of Kleist’s characters have in understanding ‘die gebrechliche Einrichtung der Welt’. Not just at second hand through the characters in the story, but in the very act of reading, we experience the loss of absolute certainty which troubled Kleist upon reading Kant. Although Kleist was writing at a time when short prose fiction was the poor relation of established literary genres such as the drama, Michael Kohlhaas certainly deserves its place at the beginning of a distinguished line of major short prose works of the nineteenth century.


RITCHIE ROBERTSON

Eichendorff, Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts

Perhaps the most impressive tribute to the lasting appeal of Eichendorff’s Novelle comes from the Marxist critic Georg Lukács. In the incongruous setting of Stalin’s Moscow, where he himself had narrowly escaped the purges, Lukács found relief in praising this ‘beautiful, untendentious idyll’, ‘at once fairy tale and reality’, whose author ‘grasps such profound emotional strands of the German people that the work’s popularity has remained unshaken to the present day’.1 Eichendorff’s tale has certainly endured since its warm reception in 1826. Yet the story itself is extremely slight. The protagonist is abruptly sent away to earn his living by his father, a miller, who brands him a ‘Taugenichts’ or ‘good-for-nothing’. His actual name, like those of most characters in the story, is never revealed. He sets off aimlessly to seek his fortune, with only his fiddle for company, but his violin-playing attracts the attention of two ladies who employ him as gardener and occasional musician at their castle outside Vienna. He falls in love with one of them, knowing her only as the ‘vielschöne gnädige Frau’. Above his head, however, a love-intrigue is going on, and in its course he is whisked off to Italy in a carriage, ending up in Rome. Although he does not understand his role in the slightest, he is being used by the eloping lovers to divert the attention of the disapproving relatives who want to separate them. On returning to Austria, the Taugenichts discovers that the ‘vielschöne gnädige Frau’, Aurelie, is not really of noble rank, though the Countess has kept her as a companion, but the orphaned niece of the Castle porter. There is therefore no obstacle to her marrying the Taugenichts, while the Countess’s daughter is to marry the young nobleman with whom she eloped. Hence the doubly happy ending:

1

Georg Lukács, German Realists in the Nineteenth Century, tr. Jeremy Gaines and Paul Keast (London, 1993), pp. 61, 59–60.

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Ritchie Robertson Sie lächelte still und sah mich recht vergnügt und freundlich an, und von fern schallte immerfort die Musik herüber, und Leuchtkugeln flogen vom Schloß durch die stille Nacht über die Gärten, und die Donau rauschte dazwischen herauf – und es war alles, alles gut! (p. 561)2

The music and fireworks which celebrate the wedding of the noble couple also form a background to the union of the Taugenichts and Aurelie. The happy ending forms part of the tale’s delightful holiday atmosphere, its ‘schwerelose Ferienhaftigkeit’.3 Revelling in idleness, the Taugenichts opposes the workaday world and its unimaginative inhabitants. His busy father typifies the people whom the Romantics lampooned as Philistines. Even the melting snow drips busily (‘emsig’) from the mill’s roof. To the Taugenichts, however, it is always Sunday, the day of rest: ‘Mir war es wie ein ewiger Sonntag im Gemüt’ (p. 448). His violin seems antithetical to labour. Whenever he plays it on his travels, people throw down their work and start dancing. But the violin also enables him to make a living. The two ladies who hear him playing on the highway immediately offer him employment as a musical servant. It was common in Austria, and still more so in Bohemia, to employ servants who could also play music for the family’s enjoyment.4 Thus the Taugenichts works as a gardener’s boy who can also play the violin when required, just as the porter at the castle plays the bassoon and the gardener the kettledrum (pp. 486, 558). That aside, the Taugenichts still manages to be idle, even though the gardener preaches him a sermon (‘Predigt’, p. 452) about diligence; he spends as much time as possible lying on his back smoking his pipe and watching the clouds. Later, when promoted to be toll-keeper, he has even less to do. In the garden behind his cottage he digs up the vegetables and plants flowers instead, because they are attractive even if unprofitable.

2

3

4

References in this form are to Joseph von Eichendorff, Werke, ed. by Wolfgang Frühwald, Brigitte Schillbach and Hartwig Schultz, 6 vols (Frankfurt a.M., 1985–93), Vol. 2: Ahnung und Gegenwart. Erzählungen I, ed. by Wolfgang Frühwald und Brigitte Schillbach (1985). Otto Friedrich Bollnow, ‘Das romantische Weltbild bei Eichendorff’, in his Unruhe und Geborgenheit im Weltbild neuerer Dichter (Stuttgart, 1953), pp. 227–59 (p. 259). See Robert Mühlher, Lebendige Allegorie. Studien zu Eichendorffs Leben und Werk (Sigmaringen, 1990), p. 189.


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In this idleness, Lukács discerns a hidden polemic against the Philistine work ethic and industrial spirit which would in reality have reduced the Taugenichts ‘to the level of average worker ants’ (Lukács, p. 65). His followers went further. Around 1970 the Taugenichts was seen as a protohippy who drops out of society.5 Such readings misunderstood what the Romantics meant by ‘Philister’. Philistines were only incidentally capitalists: primarily they were people whose limited imaginations hid from them the world’s beauty. In the song with which he sets out on his travels, the Taugenichts observes how much people miss if they concentrate only on their cares and duties, and concludes: Den lieben Gott laß ich nur walten; Der Bächlein, Lerchen, Wald und Feld Und Erd’ und Himmel will erhalten, Hat auch mein’ Sach’ auf’s Best’ bestellt. (p. 448)

This echoes Christ’s injunction to his disciples to take no thought for the morrow but to emulate the lilies of the field. It opens up another, crucial dimension of the story. Eichendorff, a Roman Catholic, has written a tale full of allegorical overtones.6 As Lukács notes, Eichendorff was unusual among the Romantics, not in being a Catholic, but in having a straightforward and untroubled relation to his religion. Others, like Friedrich and Dorothea Schlegel, were converts who displayed sometimes extravagant zeal; the convert Zacharias Werner entered the priesthood and became a charismatic preacher; Clemens Brentano, a cradle Catholic, ignored the Church for many years, then returned to it dramatically as part of a personal crisis, and appointed himself secretary to a visionary nun whose accounts of Christ’s life he diligently recorded. No such eccentricities appear in Eichendorff’s life or his works. His sober Catholicism has helped him to accomplish the difficult feat of writing a successful Christian allegory which has been enjoyed by a largely secular readership. How has he done it? Eichendorff’s achievement in Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts becomes clearer if we glance back at his novel Ahnung und Gegenwart 5 6

Alexander von Bormann, ‘Philister und Taugenichts. Zur Tragweite des romantischen Antikapitalismus’, Aurora, 30/31 (1970/71), pp. 94–112. Admirably explored by G.T. Hughes, Eichendorff: ‘Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts’ (London, 1961).

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(1815). Written in his early twenties, the novel shows a young man’s absolute certitude about what is wrong with the world. This certitude appears in narrative form as a complete congruence between the outlook of the protagonist Friedrich and that implied by the narrator. When Friedrich loftily rebukes Faber (a caricature of Goethe) for an insufficiently reverential attitude to poetry (pp. 82–83), dismisses the Bavarian Crown Prince as ineffectual and unmanly (p. 264), and finally rejects his entire age as hopelessly degenerate, the narrator implicitly affirms all these standpoints. Thus Eichendorff, like many authors with a clear religious or political message, comes close to writing an ‘authoritarian fiction’.7 Such a work, instead of offering its readers an active role in interpretation, seeks to imprison them in a position of passive obedience, where they can only accept unquestioningly the message proclaimed. It illustrates the problems of Christian writing in an age when Christian beliefs receive only minority assent. Heavy and dogmatic writing will win no adherents. Christian writers do much better to attract their readers by an adroit play with multiple perspectives, as in Gertrud von le Fort’s Der Papst aus dem Ghetto (1930); by exploiting suspense and surprise, as in Werner Bergengruen’s Der Großtyrann und das Gericht (1935); or by a superficially light and humorous approach, as in the earlier Evelyn Waugh. Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts combines humour with an unusual play with perspectives. In contrast to the rigid congruity imposed by Ahnung und Gegenwart, the narrator, the protagonist and the reader of the Taugenichts tale are all at odds.8 The Taugenichts is not in control of his own life. A chance encounter gains him employment; then he is carried off and lodged in an Italian castle as part of an intrigue which he does not understand. Although as a first-person narrator he appears to be recounting events once they are over, we never learn when, where, why or to whom he is telling them, and he provides no retrospective view which might help the reader to understand events. (The only exception is the place where the Taugenichts suddenly exclaims: ‘und ach, das alles ist so lange her!’ (p. 7 8

See Susan Rubin Suleiman, Authoritarian Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre (New York, 1983). See Dierk Rodewald, ‘Der “Taugenichts” und das Erzählen’, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 92 (1973), pp. 231–59; Loisa Nygaard, ‘Eichendorff’s Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts: “Eine leise Persiflage” der Romantik’, Studies in Romanticism, 19 (1980), pp. 193–216.


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458), making us wonder how enduring the story’s happy ending may have been.) Knowing little more than the Taugenichts, the reader does not understand the intrigue either. Even the closing explanations leave some details obscure. For the reader, moreover, the intrigue is not important in its own right, but serves merely as a device to send the Taugenichts on his travels. So neither the protagonist nor the reader is in control of the plot. Yet there is undoubtedly a plot to be understood. Almost everyone the Taugenichts meets in Rome is somehow involved in the intrigue. Even the Prague students whom he meets on his journey home include the cousin of the castle porter. There is a hidden order, a narrative providence, at work. It has a fictional analogue in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, where Wilhelm, far from controlling his life, commits a series of blunders which eventually reveal the hidden providence half-ironically personified by the Society of the Tower. In both books, the protagonist and the reader are decentred. Neither can grasp what is going on until the end. Both books suggest a hidden providential order, secular in Goethe’s case, while Eichendorff’s plot models the divine order. The Taugenichts tale provides reassurance that despite attacks of fear, loneliness and depression it is possible to find happiness in the world by trusting to divine providence. The tale’s protagonist contrasts sharply with Friedrich, the hero of Ahnung und Gegenwart, whom Eichendorff describes as a knight in shining armour, a warrior of God (p. 362). The Taugenichts has no such exalted destiny. He is not a hero, that is, not a person with exceptional gifts who is singled out for a special task. He is an ordinary person: a thoroughly physical, natural being, but he is also aware, intuitively rather than reflectively, of higher spiritual realities. If Friedrich corresponds to Mozart’s Tamino, obliged to resist temptation and undergo ordeals, the Taugenichts corresponds to Papageno. Friedrich and Tamino represent the spiritual man, Papageno and the Taugenichts the natural man, something much closer to the human norm. Even in Ahnung und Gegenwart, however, Eichendorff practises another form of writing which allows the reader a more active role in decoding the novel’s messages. This literary form is allegory, exemplified by the novel’s second paragraph, which describes a whirlpool on the Danube. Amid a desolate landscape, surrounded by the destructive energies of the whirlpool, stands a rock surmounted by a cross. The passage ends: ‘Der Mensch fühlt sich auf einmal verlassen in der Gewalt

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des feindseligen, unbekannten Elements, und das Kreuz auf dem Felsen tritt hier in seiner heiligsten und größten Bedeutung hervor’ (p. 58). Here a real phenomenon acquires an allegorical meaning as the destructive aspect of Nature, drawing all life down to death and annihilation. The Cross planted on the rock represents the assurance of eternal life. Despite the unmistakable guidance supplied by Eichendorff in the sentence quoted, this image requires active interpretation by the reader. Its meaning must be sought and found, not merely read off. And, even in prompting the reader, the novelist steps down from his position of authority and becomes instead a mediator. For the meaning he points out to the reader is not an arbitrary construction by the novelist, but is encoded in the natural world as created by God. It is sometimes claimed that the Romantics roundly rejected allegory in favour of symbolism. In fact, their use of the terms ‘allegory’ and ‘symbol’ is too inconsistent to permit a sharp distinction between the two. Rather, they rejected tedious and contrived allegories, which merely required the translation of abstract qualities into concrete equivalents. Hoffmann mocks such interpretations in Der Sandmann when his snufftaking Professor of Poetry and Eloquence explains away the story of Olimpia by saying: ‘Das ganze ist eine Allegorie – eine fortgeführte Metapher!’9 In contrast to such contrivances, Eichendorff assumes that allegorical meanings are not invented but discovered. Their provenance is explained by the Prague students who tell the Taugenichts why they are not at their studies: ‘laßt die Andern nur ihre Kompendien repetieren, wir studieren unterdes in dem großen Bilderbuche, das der liebe Gott uns draußen aufgeschlagen hat!’ (p. 545). The Romantics took up the ancient conception of the book of Nature.10 Alongside the revelation written in the Bible, God had inscribed His purposes also in the natural world by a series of coded signs, ciphers or hieroglyphs. Everything in nature, from the structure of crystals to the constellations, contained a meaning which might be disclosed at privileged moments. Allegory is an aspect of Eichendorff’s art that Lukács ignored. ‘Viewed individually,’ he says, ‘the portrayal of people, landscapes and 9 10

E.T.A. Hoffmann, Fantasie- und Nachtstücke, ed. Walter Müller-Seidel (Munich, 1960), p. 360. See Hans Blumenberg, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt (Frankfurt a.M., 1981); Klaus Köhnke, ‘Hieroglyphenschrift’. Untersuchungen zu Eichendorffs Erzählungen (Sigmaringen, 1986).


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towns is completely realistic and true to nature’ (p. 61). Eichendorff’s apparent realism, however, only feigns mimesis. The Taugenichts’ adventures are hard to fit into real coordinates of space and time. The castle where he works as a gardener is said to be within sight of the towers of Vienna and beside the Danube: Vienna’s extensive suburbs have been magically removed. Returning by foot from Rome, the Taugenichts finds himself ‘auf einem hohen Berg, wo man zum erstenmal nach Östreich hineinsehen kann’ (p. 541), presumably in the Alps, and there he meets the wandering students who propose that they should all return to Vienna by boat along the Danube, which is apparently nearby; yet in reality the Danube flows south-east from Vienna into Hungary, nowhere near the Alps. Eichendorff has rearranged geography to fit the demands of the imagination, just as he did in Ahnung und Gegenwart, where some characters emigrate to America from a seaport apparently located in South Germany. Time is even more bewildering. The Taugenichts leaves his father’s house in the thaw of early spring; yet later that same morning he is travelling among ‘leise wogenden Kornfeldern’ (p. 450). These inconsistencies belong to the teasing character of Eichendorff’s allegorical style. References to actual places and seasons lure us into a fictional structure which is really shaped by a symbolic system. Throughout Eichendorff’s works, for example, the different times of day have symbolic associations.11 Morning is a joyous time, often prefiguring the ultimate redemption, as in the poem ‘Abschied’, where daybreak in the forest prefigures the resurrection of the body ‘in junger Herrlichkeit’.12 Noon, the pagan hour of Pan, is sultry and sinister: the sun blazes down and the birds fall silent. It is at mid-day that Florio in Das Marmorbild (1819) strays into the garden of Frau Venus. The Taugenichts feels uneasy as mid-day approaches and everything grows ‘leer und schwül und still’ (p. 450). In Italy it is ‘an einem schwülen Nachmittag’ that he is overcome by homesickness (p. 515). Evening brings relief and often a wider perspective, as when the Taugenichts, descending into Italy, notices that ‘die Landstraße lief gerade durch eine prächtige Landschaft auf die untergehende Sonne zu, wohl wie in ein Meer von Glanz und Funken’ (p. 507). This last quotation also illustrates the character of 11 12

See Peter Paul Schwarz, Aurora: Zur romantischen Zeitstruktur bei Eichendorff (Bad Homburg, 1970). Werke, Vol. 1: Gedichte, Versepen, ed. by Hartwig Schultz (1987), p. 354.

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Eichendorff’s landscapes. His spatial world contains two boundaries: the standpoint of the observer and the remote distance. What lies between need only be vaguely indicated, for its importance lies in awakening a sensation of yearning. Travelling, in Eichendorff, is an expression of the divine discontent which cannot ultimately be satisfied with anything less than a heavenly destination. Only the Philistines, with their limited imaginations, are content to stay at home. The Taugenichts himself, as his anonymity suggests, is not a character constructed by the rules of nineteenth-century mimetic realism, but a representative figure. As ‘natural man’, he is in continual contact with nature. In the opening paragraph we find him sitting on his father’s doorstep, enjoying the spring sunshine and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, almost like an animal waking from hibernation. He is often compared to animals: a bittern (p. 460), a hedgehog (p. 486), an owl (ibid.). He also has a healthy appetite. On his journey to Italy he is very annoyed when suddenly summoned away from his meals to continue his journey: ‘oft, wenn ich im Wirtshause eben beim besten Essen war, blies der Postillon, ich mußte Messer und Gabel wegwerfen und wieder in den Wagen springen’ (p. 507). When staying in a castle in Italy, where, unbeknown to him, people think he is Countess Flora in men’s clothes, he amuses his attendants by eating lavishly: ‘Ich durfte nur sagen: “Tischchen deck’ dich!” so standen auch schon herrliche Speisen, Reis, Wein, Melonen und Parmesankäse da’ (p. 514). However, the Taugenichts rates the luxurious Italian fare less highly than the picnics he enjoys in a German setting. And finally he is glad to leave Italy with all its deceptions behind him: ‘Ich nahm mir nun fest vor, dem falschen Italien mit seinen verrückten Malern, Pomeranzen und Kammerjungfern auf ewig den Rücken zu kehren’ (p. 541). The Taugenichts’ journey to Italy is a gentle parody of the trip to Rome which many Romantics, inspired by Goethe, either performed (like the German painters in Rome) or wrote about (as Tieck did in Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen (1798)). Eichendorff’s humorous inversion of the familar pattern, making Germany superior to Italy on culinary grounds, is among the many criticisms of Romantic postures that he has worked into the Novelle.13

13

On the multiple literary allusions and parodies, see Otto Eberhardt, Eichendorffs ‘Taugenichts’: Quellen und Beziehungshintergrund (Würzburg, 2000).


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Like other characters in Eichendorff’s fiction, the Taugenichts is much given to climbing trees. Michael Perraudin has found a dozen instances within a smallish fictional corpus (two novels and six short stories).14 The Taugenichts is particularly fond of tree-climbing and does it four times in some eighty pages. This trait confirms his affinity with the natural world. But within Eichendorff’s framework it also suggests his aspiration to something higher. The Taugenichts’ spiritual aspirations are shown most decisively by his falling in love with a lady whom he believes to be above his station. Believing that Aurelie, the Countess’s companion, is herself of noble birth, he always refers to her as the ‘schöne gnädige Frau’. The story’s first version, which Eichendorff dropped after completing only two chapters, was entitled ‘Der neue Troubadour’. Its hero was intended as a modern equivalent of the medieval minstrel and poet who professed undying attachment to his unattainable lady-love. The spiritual effect of the Taugenichts’ love is twofold. First, it makes him dissatisfied with a merely natural, physical existence. It inspires a range of new emotions: yearning, melancholy, and sorrow. The first chapter, after he has sung a song to her, ends: Mir aber standen die Tränen in den Augen schon wie ich noch sang, das Herz wollte mir zerspringen von dem Liede vor Scham und vor Schmerz, es fiel mir jetzt auf einmal alles recht ein, wie Sie so schön ist und ich so arm bin und verspottet und verlassen von der Welt, und als sie alle hinter den Büschen verschwunden waren, da konnt’ ich mich nicht länger halten, ich warf mich in das Gras hin und weinte bitterlich (p. 464).

The phrase ‘weinte bitterlich’ has Biblical resonances. Peter wept bitterly when the crowing of the cock brought home to him that he had betrayed his Master. In Mimesis, Erich Auerbach discusses the New Testament story of Peter as an instance of tragic realism, where an ordinary humble person experiences profound emotions which are described in straightforward everyday language. The Taugenichts likewise feels profound emotions, and though they include nothing like Peter’s selfreproach, they do include ‘Scham’ and ‘Schmerz’ at the seeming futility of his aspirations. Thereafter the Taugenichts’ enjoyment of life alternates 14

Michael Perraudin, ‘“Das Bäumebesteigen nimmt... kein Ende”: Tree Climbing in Eichendorff’, German Life and Letters, 44 (1991), pp. 103–09.

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with states of melancholy, loneliness, even boredom (e.g. pp. 474, 480, 496). Commentators have generally dismissed these on the grounds that the Taugenichts cannot have any deep feelings. But he does, and his emotional changes signalize his spiritual growth. Second, the spiritual character of the Taugenichts’s love is finely conveyed in the episode where he ferries the Countess, the ‘schöne gnädige Frau’, and some young gentleman and ladies over the pond. Aurelie is the only one untroubled by the rocking of the boat: Die schöne Frau welche eine Lilie in der Hand hielt, saß dicht am Bord des Schiffleins und sah stillächelnd in die klaren Wellen hinunter, die sie mit der Lilie berührte, so daß ihr ganzes Bild zwischen den widerscheinenden Wolken und Bäumen im Wasser noch einmal zu sehen war, wie ein Engel, der leise durch den tiefen blauen Himmelsgrund zieht (p. 462).

Here as elsewhere Aurelie is associated with flowers (natural growths, linking her with the Taugenichts as natural man). The lily in particular is part of the traditional iconography of the Virgin Mary. However, the Taugenichts sees not only the flesh-and-blood Aurelie but also her reflection in the water. Mirroring is a frequent motif in Romantic literature broadly defined, suggesting how things exist both in the physical world and also in the mental world of subjective reflection. Thus in Goethe’s ‘Auf dem See’, the stars are still reflected on the surface of the lake after they have faded from the sky, and the fruit-bearing trees at the end are seen reflected in the water. Hölderlin’s ‘Hälfte des Lebens’ similarly evokes the reflection of the shores in the lake: ‘Mit gelben Birnen hänget/ Und voll mit wilden Rosen/ Das Land in den See’. And in the archetypal poem of the Romantic imagination, Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’, we are told that Kubla’s pleasure-dome was reflected in water: ‘The shadow of the dome of pleasure/ Floated midway on the waves’. With Eichendorff, the motif of mirroring is nudged in a spiritual direction by the image of the angel moving against the background of the sky. The ambiguous word ‘tief’ projects the depth of the water onto the far greater expanses of the sky, the dual meaning of ‘Himmel’ thickens the devotional atmosphere, and since ‘Grund’ also means the background of a painting, one is led to think of paintings of the Annunciation in which the Virgin, clad in blue or seen against a blue background, and carrying a lily, receives a visit from the angel Gabriel. The Virgin features later in the text when the Taugenichts meets German artists in Rome, one of whom uses him as a


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model for a shepherd-boy in a painting of the adoration of the child Jesus by the shepherds. The painting prefigures the heavenly encounter with the Virgin which the painter anticipates in the next world: ‘Siehst du,’ sagte der Maler, ‘dem einen Hirtenknaben da will ich deinen Kopf aufsetzen, so kommt dein Gesicht doch auch etwas unter die Leute, und will’s Gott, sollen sie sich daran noch erfreuen, wenn wir beide schon lange begraben sind und selbst so still und fröhlich vor der heiligen Mutter und ihrem Sohn knien, wie die glücklichen Jungen hier.’ (p. 527)

Anyone familiar with Eichendorff will expect that when the Queen of Heaven is mentioned, her pagan counterpart, the goddess Venus, will also make an appearance. In the earlier story Das Marmorbild, Venus is the demonic female whose statue wakens to new life each spring and who tries to seduce the hero Florio away from his faith and virtue. The poet Fortunato, who serves as Florio’s guardian, describes how Christianity vanquished paganism, and the image of Venus was replaced by that of the Virgin (pp. 424–5). In Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts, the goddess Venus is evoked as the Taugenichts approaches Rome: Ich kam nun zuerst auf eine große, einsame Heide, auf der es so grau und still war, wie im Grabe. Nur hin und her stand ein altes verfallenes Gemäuer oder ein trockener wunderbar gewundener Strauch; manchmal schwirrten Nachtvögel durch die Lüfte, und mein eigener Schatten strich immerfort lang und dunkel in der Einsamkeit neben mir her. Sie sagen, daß hier eine uralte Stadt und die Frau Venus begraben liegt, und die alten Heiden zuweilen noch aus ihren Gräbern heraufsteigen und bei stiller Nacht über die Heide gehn und die Wanderer verwirren. Aber ich ging immer grade fort und ließ mich nichts anfechten. Denn die Stadt stieg immer deutlicher und prächtiger vor mir herauf, und die hohen Burgen und Tore und goldenen Kuppeln glänzten so herrlich im hellen Mondschein, als ständen wirklich die Engel in goldenen Gewändern auf den Zinnen und sängen durch die stille Nacht herüber. (p. 522)

Presumably the Taugenichts is approaching Rome along the Appian Way, which is lined by ancient tombs and ruined palaces. But real geography, as elsewhere in the story, has given way to symbolic topography. Though the Appian Way hardly crosses a heath, the word ‘Heide’ is used both to suggest a bleak, sinister landscape, and also, as Oskar Seidlin points out, for its association with ‘Heide’ meaning ‘pagan’

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(cf. English ‘heath’ and ‘heathen’).15 This is the Taugenichts’ confrontation with the pagan past, which centres on the cult of Venus, the goddess of unrestrained sexuality, and which still has ghostly survivals. In the previous paragraph, the city of Rome, seen from the distance, was compared to a long streak of cloud, and that in turn to a sleeping lion, surrounded by mountains like giants watching over him. The lion represents the dormant power of paganism, and the giants, the seven hills of Rome, are to be imagined not as protecting him but as protecting humanity against the danger that he might reawaken. There is a remarkable affinity here between Eichendorff and Heine, who repeatedly explored the conflict between Christianity and paganism. He was intrigued by the tradition that the classical gods, dethroned by Christianity, became demons, and by the legend of the Wild Hunt in which such beings rise again on Midsummer’s Night and ride through the sky, as they do in the narrative poem Atta Troll (1847). For Heine, the pagan gods symbolized irrational and destructive forces which could be reawakened by modern revolutionaries who unthinkingly made a cult of violence. Eichendorff, by contrast, does not politicize them. Rather, he contrasts the pagan past with the Christian future. For as the Taugenichts approaches Rome, it comes to look like the heavenly Jerusalem of the Revelation of St John, a city with lofty towers, gates, and golden domes, guarded by angels. The Taugenichts resists temptation, continues directly on his way, and finally attains his goal. The image of the heavenly city prefigures the ultimate spiritual goal of his life, as does his appearance in the painting of the Adoration of the Shepherds. Although allegory here occupies the foreground, the story does not need to be equally allegorical throughout. Its tone accordingly changes when the Taugenichts actually enters Rome: we are in modern Rome, and almost the only people he meets there are German painters. Some gentle satire on Eichendorff’s contemporaries now ensues. The painters evidently belong to the Nazarene school which was founded by German artists in Rome around 1810 in the hope of reviving the religious art of Raphael and other Renaissance painters. The artist who paints the Taugenichts is thought to be modelled on Eichendorff’s friend Philipp Veit, one of

15

Oskar Seidlin, ‘Der Taugenichts ante portas’, in his Versuche über Eichendorff (Göttingen, 1965), pp. 14–30.


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Dorothea Schlegel’s sons by her first marriage.16 But he is treated with humour. Motifs of comic failure and frustration abound. When he takes the Taugenichts back to his garret room, he finds that the key is inside the locked room, and has to kick the door open. The room proves to be so untidy that it takes some time to find a knife with which to prepare bread and butter. More seriously, the attic is reached by a whole series of dark staircases, ‘als wenn wir in den Himmel hineinsteigen wollten’ (p. 526). This suggests the Biblical Tower of Babel which was intended to reach to heaven, but was cast down by divine intervention; the builders all found themselves speaking different languages so that they could not collaborate on any other impious enterprise. There is some verbal confusion at this point in Eichendorff’s story: the painter mentions Leonardo da Vinci and Guido Reni, and the Taugenichts naively identifies them with the ‘Leonardo’ and ‘Guido’ (actually the young Count and Flora in disguise) who sent him off to Italy in the first place; soon afterwards he encounters a parrot and tries to begin a conversation with it, but the parrot only says ‘furfante’ (rogue), and the two are at cross-purposes: ‘je mehr ich auf Deutsch schimpfte, je mehr gurgelte er auf italienisch wieder auf mich los’ (p. 530). By these light touches, Eichendorff suggests that art risks setting itself up as a rival to religion, an alternative way to heaven, like the Tower of Babel.17 Once the painter has rescued him from his quarrel with the parrot, the Taugenichts is taken to a leafy bower where a number of people are sitting round a table. One is singing, another is playing the guitar, and a third is beating time. The conductor presently explains that they are enacting a tableau based on a description of a painting (a frequent social pastime, described also in Goethe’s Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809)).18 He tells an intruder: ‘Barbar! [...] du rennst da mitten in das sinnreiche Tableau von der schönen Beschreibung hinein, welche der selige Hoffmann, Seite 347 des “Frauentaschenbuchs für 1816”, von dem schönsten Hummelschen Bilde gibt, das im Herbst 1814 auf der Berliner Kunstausstellung zu sehen war!’ (p. 531) The story by Hoffmann, Die Fermate (1819), does 16 17

18

See Hughes, op. cit., p. 45. See Margret Walter-Schneider and Martina Hasler, ‘Die Kunst in Rom. Zum 7. und 8. Kapitel von Eichendorffs Erzählung Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts’, Aurora, 45 (1985), 49–62. See August Langen, ‘Attitüde und Tableau in der Goethezeit’, Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schiller-Gesellschaft, 12 (1968), pp. 194–258.

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indeed begin by evoking a painting, ‘Gesellschaft in einer italienischen Locanda’, by Johann Erdmann Hummel (1769–1852), a professor at the Berlin Academy.19 Eichendorff’s carefully composed tableau represents a satire on elite conceptions of sophisticated art. High art, we are given to understand, is a reproduction of a reproduction. The tableau reproduces a written description which in turn reproduces a painting which itself depicts a natural scene. Reality is many removes away, and the reproduction is dominated by the mechanical beat of the conductor’s baton. Though often seen as an arch-Romantic, Eichendorff was sceptical about many aspects of Romanticism. His play Krieg den Philistern (1824) shows ‘die Poetischen’ at war with the Philistines, but both sides are equally satirized: the former include devotees of Romantic philosophy and Romantic nationalism, including a bloodthirsty ‘Felddichter’. Finally both sides are swept away by the ancient giant Grobianus, another warning against stirring up primeval forces. The genuine art that Eichendorff admires is embodied in the Taugenichts himself and in his fiddle. His music is not only spontaneous but expresses a range of feelings: at one time, his love for the ‘schöne gnädige Frau’; at another, his courage when lost amid a wood where the birdsong gives him confidence: ‘Ich befahl mich daher Gottes Führung, zog meine Violine hervor und spielte alle meine liebsten Stücke durch, daß es recht fröhlich in dem einsamen Wald erklang’ (p. 491); at another, his pleasure at again finding himself among people: ‘ich spielte nur so aus Freude, weil ich wieder bei Menschen wäre’ (p. 493). As an exponent of folk-song, he embodies the value placed by Herder and the Romantics on folk-song as the genuine expression of the national soul. But Eichendorff explicitly satirizes the conventional Romantic view of folk-poetry by introducing a bespectacled young man who, on hearing the Taugenichts’ singing, declares that a ‘Volkslied’ is ‘die Seele der National-Seele’ (p. 462). For, unlike Romantic nationalists, Eichendorff places art in a religious context. When setting out on his journey, the Taugenichts addresses his violin: ‘komm du her, du getreues Instrument! Unser Reich ist nicht von dieser Welt!’ (p. 488), echoing Jesus’ words in St John’s Gospel: ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ (John 18:36).

19

Hummel’s painting is reproduced facing page 31 of the helpful edition of the text (with introduction and notes) by J. M. Ritchie (London, 1970).


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The Taugenichts thus embodies a union of nature, art and religion that might seem diametrically opposed to the world of unimaginative labour, typified by the Taugenichts’ father working in the mill with his nightcap on his head. But even that is not quite true. Eichendorff avoids the polarity of artist and Philistine that we find in other Romantics, whether polemically in Brentano or good-naturedly in Hoffmann. In the castle, the role of the workaday Philistine is played by the porter. When the Taugenichts first meets him, he seems constantly busy, an ‘unheimliche Gestalt [...] die immerfort wie der Perpendikel einer Turmuhr in der Halle auf und ab wandelte’ (p. 452). Presently they become good friends, though the Taugenichts gets annoyed by the porter’s unromantic outlook. When the Taugenichts is enraptured by the sound of hunting-horns, the porter describes what it is like to take part in a hunt, getting one’s feet wet and having constant colds and chills (p. 470). The Taugenichts suddenly finds the porter unendurable: ‘Mir war auf einmal der ganze Kerl mit seinem langweiligen Mantel, die ewigen Füße, sein Tabaksschnupfen, die große Nase und alles abscheulich’ (p. 470). The word ‘langweilig’ and the motif of tobacco are hallmarks of the Philistine; but the porter speaks from experience, while his enthusiasm for hunting makes the Taugenichts a naive exponent of Romantic attitudes, and the reader needs some dexterity to balance these two perspectives. Finally, however, the Taugenichts and the porter are reconciled. The Taugenichts, about to marry his niece, professes to be delighted that the porter is ‘unser Onkel’, claiming him also as his own relative. The porter is indeed the character who is mentioned most often in the story, apart from the supposed ‘gnädige Frau’. The conclusion looks like a reconciliation between work and poetry. The Taugenichts proposes to his bride that they should undertake another journey to Italy: ‘und gleich nach der Trauung reisen wir fort nach Italien, nach Rom, da gehn die schönen Wasserkünste, und nehmen die Prager Studenten mit und den Portier!’ (p. 561) Wolfgang Frühwald reads it as an allegorical tableau depicting the harmonious relationship of art with love, learning, and active life.20 If we accept that the story does end by reconciling the worlds of poetry and work, then the view of Lukács and his followers that the Taugenichts by his idleness is in unwitting rebellion against the forces of 20

Wolfgang Frühwald, ‘Der Regierungsrat Joseph von Eichendorff’, Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, 4 (1979), pp. 37–63 (p. 59).

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Philistinism cannot be upheld. Admittedly, the Taugenichts talks of going off on holiday; he does not actually set to work, like the hero of such Bildungsromane as Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and Lukács’s favourite, Keller’s Der grüne Heinrich (1880). The reconciliation occurs through allegory, as expressed in the Taugenichts’ last sentence, and to understand it requires some practice in reading allegory. Its final accommodation to the workaday world accompanies the transformation of the ‘schöne gnädige Frau’ from an idealized lady-love to a real, flesh-and-blood girlfriend, whom we last see sitting beside the Taugenichts companionably cracking nuts. These two adjustments to the reality principle make Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts not so much a Romantic work as a Biedermeier one. Although it may have become a landmark of Romanticism in the eyes of generations of German readers, it satirizes Romanticism by showing how much Romantic art has declined into posturing, and it gently debunks Romantic illusions by providing a happy ending, marriage to a real, compatible, affectionate woman, and even an admission that the Philistines are not so bad after all.

ANITA BUNYAN

Heine, Die Harzreise

On 2 October 1824 Heinrich Heine, then a twenty-six year old law student at the University of Göttingen, was granted an audience with the venerable Goethe who, at the age of seventy-five, still dominated the German literary scene. The historic visit was the culmination – or rather, the anticlimax – of a walking tour that Heine had taken that autumn, and the prose work inspired by the journey quickly became a landmark in German literature. The memorable encounters that characterise the Harzreise are held together by a fictional travel itinerary based on the actual route followed by Heine when he embarked on his journey through the Harz region in the autumn of 1824. Taking Göttingen as his starting point, the narrator makes his way through various villages to the small town of Osterode. From there he travels to Clausthal-Zellerfeld to view the famous silver mines of the region before stopping off to view the sights of Goslar. After an unintended detour towards Bad Harzburg he ascends the increasingly popular tourist destination, the Brocken mountain, and concludes his journey in the picturesque river valleys of the Ilse, the Bode and the Selke. In the context of Heine’s work as a whole the Harzreise constituted a considerable achievement. The first and most popular of all his prose writings, the author regarded it as the work that first established his name with the reading public. Early supporters such as Karl Varnhagen von Ense were quick to spot his highly original literary talent and even Heine’s early critical detractors had to concede the poetic talent and range of the newcomer. Contemporaries immediately recognised that Heine had, at the very least, established a new form of travel writing, so popular at the time. Heine was very conscious of writing in a Classical and Romantic tradition of travel literature in general and of travel writing

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on the Harz, a popular repository of myth and legend, in particular.1 The work is also shot through with comic allusions to the sober and rather pedantic topographical prose of contemporary travel writers on the Harz.2 Indeed, the first sentence of the work is a parody of such prose: Die Stadt Göttingen, berühmt durch ihre Würste und Universität, gehört dem Könige von Hannover, und enthält 999 Feuerstellen, diverse Kirchen, eine Entbindungsanstalt, eine Sternwarte, einen Karzer, eine Bibliothek und einen Rathskeller, wo das Bier sehr gut ist. (p.83)

Undoubtedly attracted by the relative freedom of the genre, Heine produced in the Harzreise a colourful and imaginatively eclectic version of travel writing that drew on various forms and registers of travel literature – from the pastoral, sentimental and Romantic to the encyclopedic. Other critics discerned immediately that they were dealing not just with a new genre of travel literature but with a new form of prose writing. To contemporary sensibilities, the contemporaneity and intermittent realism, the energetic humour, and the combination of poetic sensitivity and irreverence to be found in Heine’s work were totally new. Its quality was recognised by Varnhagen who praised Heine’s incomparable insight into the foibles of his age and contrasted the Harzreise with what he perceived to be the feminised, conventional literary salon culture of the era: Auch versteht er seine Zeit, kennt ihren Gehalt und ihre Gebrechen, und giebt ihr die Süßigkeiten und Bitterkeiten, deren sie bedarf, ohne viel zu achten, was sie dafür in manchen Individuen ihm für Gesichter schneidet.3

1

2 3

See Heinrich Heine, Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke, ed. by Manfred Windfuhr, Vol. 6 (Hamburg, 1973), pp. 522–24 (hereafter DHA). All following page references from Die Harzreise are taken from this edition. See also Heinrich Heine. Selected Prose, translated and edited with an introduction by Ritchie Robertson (London, 1993). Gerhard Höhn, Heine-Handbuch. Zeit, Person, Werk (Stuttgart/Weimar, 1997), p. 193. Review by Varnhagen von Ense, Gesellschafter, 162, 6 October 1830. Quoted in DHA, p. 551.


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The contemporary satire of the prose is interspersed on occasion with passages of striking realism, almost naturalism, such as the narrator’s description of his visit to the silver mines of Clausthal. This contrasted with the magical, symbolic rendition familiar to readers from the works of Hoffmann and Tieck. Yet, the irreverent humour and, at times deeply scornful, satire are interspersed with poetic passages and visions of true beauty and humane sympathy. This mixing of tones, this ‘ganz eigenthümliche Mischung von zartestem Gefühl und bitterstem Hohn’4 as Varnhagen put it, seemed highly original to critics at the time.5 What most struck them, however, was the unusual narrative form and perspective of the work, a completely new development in prose writing. The narrative is made up of an eclectic mix of satirical anecdotes, descriptions of nature, poems, historical reminiscences and references to local myths and legends. Daytime encounters with peasants, miners, townspeople and fellow travellers alternate with nighttime dream sequences peopled with legendary figures, intellectuals and potential lovers. Much of the action is derived from these encounters and dream sequences. The narrative is driven forward by the technique of association as the narrator’s powerful imagination, memory and capacity for dreams are brought to bear on the landscape and people of the region. This technique of narrative association is not as radical as the tour de force to be found in Heine’s Ideen. Das Buch le Grand of 1827, but it anticipates that masterpiece in many respects. The superficial formlessness of the work, however, belies a deeper underlying structure in which the social conventions of polite society are juxtaposed with the realm of authentic emotion, culture appears to be pitted against nature, and academic learning against the realms of the heart and the spirit. Unsurprisingly, many critics were at a loss to know how to evaluate such a narrative form. A significant number rejected what they found to be the formless, disharmonious and inorganic quality of the prose. In some quarters the narrative form was evaluated according to blatent moral and ideological criteria and denounced as a product of indulgent subjectivity which was obscene, corrosive and unGerman in nature and in its mockery of everything held sacred by society.6 4 5 6

DHA, p. 540. DHA, p. 552 DHA, pp. 544, 554–55 .

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The Harzreise was thus appreciated or reviled by contemporaries as a landmark in the development of travel literature in particular and modern prose writing in general. In retrospect it can also be seen as a transitional work, incorporating many quintessential nineteenth-century concerns. It offers a gentle critique of Romanticism and the harmonious Romantic view of the natural world. ‘Wie ein guter Dichter, liebt die Natur keine schroffen Uebergänge’ (p. 91), the narrator comments ironically as he gazes at the skyscape. The work hints at the dangers of the legendary, Romantic vision (p. 134). It doubts man’s capacity to recapture the naivety and authenticity of the world of the Romantic imagination – ‘mir ist als hätt’ ich/ Sie schon früher mahl geschaut’, the narrator observes ruefully when he visits the room of a peasant girl in a mountain hut – and the work wrestles with the burdens of reflection borne by modern cultured man (p. 91). The Harzreise also constitutes an attempt to break with the German Classical-Romantic aesthetic of unpolitical literature. Twentieth-century critics have, for ideological reasons, perhaps been rather over-anxious to stress the political implications of the work.7 Positive allusions to the French and American revolutions (p. 94), to Napoleon, and to contemporary champions of liberalism such as the Göttingen historian Georg Sartorius (p. 135) are certainly evident, and the text climaxes on several occasions in poetic visions of an emancipated future. Yet, undercutting such visions are suggestions that the educated German public, the peasantry and even the narrator himself are not yet ready to embrace social and political progress.8 The shepherd who is transformed into a King in the poem ‘König ist der Hirtenknabe’ prefers love to ruling, and the legendary Princess Ilse encourages the poet narrator to evade the concerns of the real world when she says to him: ‘Doch dich soll mein Arm

7

8

See Höhn, Heine-Handbuch, p. 180 and Norbert Altenhofer, ‘Harzreise in die Zeit. Zum Funktionszusammenhang von Traum, Witz und Zensur in Heines früher Prosa’, in Altenhofer, Die verlorene Augensprache. Über Heinrich Heine, ed. by Volker Bohn (Frankfurt/Leipzig, 1993), p. 7. Altenhofer, ‘Harzreise in die Zeit’, p. 46; Markus Winkler, Mythisches Denken zwischen Romantik und Realismus. Zur Erfahrung kultureller Fremdheit im Werk Heinrich Heines (Tübingen, 1995), p. 117; Azade Seyhan, ‘Poetic discourse as metanarrative: the critical map of Heine’s Harzreise’, The German Quarterly, 59 (1986), pp. 19–33 (p. 28).


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umschlingen,/ Wie er Kaiser Heinrich umschlang;/ Ich hielt ihm zu die Ohren,/ Wenn die Trompet’ erklang. (p.133) Most of these points about the Harzreise have been well rehearsed by literary commentators. Yet few critics have acknowledged the extent to which the text constitutes a landmark in another important respect, as a key document in the development of German-Jewish prose writing.9 This is not to relativise the broader literary significance of the work. Nor would one wish to reduce a reading of the work to considerations of Heine’s biography or to suggest that Jewish concerns constitute the only thematic focus of a work that is famously multilayered and steeped in allusions to a breathtakingly broad range of themes. But the Harzreise gives remarkably fruitful voice to the experience of the modern German, and indeed European, Jew and a consideration of the work from this perspective may help us to understand something of the inspiration behind its force and insight. It is worth bearing in mind that the Harzreise was written in the same year as the first instalment of Heine’s unfinished Jewish historical novel, Der Rabbi von Bacherach, and about six months before his pragmatic conversion to Protestantism in June 1825. Conversion was not a step that Heine took lightly.10 Indeed, it appears to have been the humiliating culmination of a fraught, yet highly productive, period in his 9

10

Critics have only recently begun to turn their attention to Jewish concerns in the Harzreise. In 1983, of course, Prawer looked at caricatures of Jews and Jew-haters in the Harzreise in the context of his study of Jewish figures in Heine’s work. He did not, however, develop the implications of these depictions for the form and content of the Harzreise as a whole. (S.S. Prawer, Heine’s Jewish Comedy. A Study of his Portraits of Jews and Judaism (Oxford, 1983), pp. 97–112). Bernd Leistner has made an important start by focusing on the contextual significance for the work of Heine’s position as a young and defiant German-Jewish intellectual characterised by ‘Liebesverlangen und der Wunsch, geliebt zu werden’ (Bernd Leistner, ‘Heinrich Heine: Die Harzreise’, in Deutsche Erzählprosa der frühen Restaurationszeit: Studien zu ausgewählten Texten, ed. Bernd Leistner (Tübingen, 1995), p. 279). See also Ritchie Robertson’s study of the narrator’s fictional identity in the Harzreise: ‘“Herr Peregrinus”: persona, race and gender in Heinrich Heine’s Die Harzreise’, in Brücken über dem Abgrund. Auseinandersetzungen mit jüdischer Leidenserfahrung, Antisemitismus und Exil, ed. by Amy Colin and Elisabeth Strenger (Munich, 1994), pp. 145–57. See Heine to Moses Moser, 30 September 1823, Säkularausgabe. Werke, Briefwechsel, Lebenszeugnisse, Vol. 20 (Berlin/Paris, 1970–), p. 113. Hereafter HSA.

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life in the early 1820s when the tension caused by Heine’s attempt to reconcile his Jewish heritage with his effort to establish himself as a German writer became particularly acute.11 This was due in part to the emergence in Restoration Germany of a climate increasingly hostile to German Jews. An economic crisis in 1819 had precipitated a particularly violent wave of attacks on Jewish public and private property throughout the German Confederation. Of greater direct relevance for Heine, however, was the fact that in the early 1820s much of the emancipatory legislation introduced in 1812 in the context of the Prussian reform movement was revoked. The brief interlude when Jews could pursue careers as officials of the Prussian state thus came to an end. Heine was also acutely aware of contemporary debates about the nature of German identity in the context of a resurgent German nationalism. He makes explicit reference in his correspondence of 1824 to attempts by nationalist academics like Christian Friedrich Rühs and Jakob Friedrich Fries to deny Jews a German identity.12 Moreover, it seems likely that his expulsion from a nationalist fraternity at the University of Göttingen in December 1820 was related to a decision taken at a convention of Burschenschaftler in 1820 to exclude Jews from the movement of nationalist fraternities.13 A move to Berlin did not solve the problem, where anti-semitic tensions appear to have led Heine to withdraw from the literary circle centred on the dramatist Christian Dietrich Grabbe.14 Crucially for Heine, this hostile climate intersected with a phase in his life when he was trying to establish a career for himself. Failed as a businessman, Heine had hoped to earn a living as a lawyer or an academic, but circumstances seemed destined to deny him that possibility. This was also the period of his first sustained encounters with 11

12 13

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See Robert Holub, ‘Confessions of an apostate: Heine’s conversion and its psychic displacement’, in Heinrich Heine’s Contested Identities. Politics, Religion, and Nationalism in Nineteenth-century Germany, ed. by Jost Hermand and Robert Holub (New York, 1999), pp. 69–70; See also Jeffrey Sammons, ‘Who did Heine think he was?’, in Heinrich Heine’s contested identities, p. 9; and Ritchie Robertson, Heine (London, 1988), p. 11. Heine to Rudolf Christiani, 7 March 1824. HSA, 20, p. 147. See Eberhard Galley, ‘Heine und die Burschenschaft. Ein Kapitel aus Heines politischem Werdegang zwischen 1819 und 1830’, in Heine Jahrbuch, 11 (1972), p. 72. Christian Liedtke, Heinrich Heine (Hamburg, 1997), pp. 49–50.


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German-Jewish intellectuals who shared his predicament. Enrolled as a student at the University of Berlin in 1821, Heine began to frequent the celebrated salon of Rahel and Karl August Varnhagen von Ense. Rahel Varnhagen made a deep impression on Heine who wrote to her husband in 1826 that ‘mich niemand so tief versteht und kennt wie Fr[au] v. V[arnhagen]’, referring presumably to the predicament of the Jewish intellectual in Germany.15 The empathy was mutual. Rahel in turn claimed that Heine’s works expressed the ‘Text aus meinem alten beleidigten Herzen’.16 It was at the Varnhagen salon that Heine first made the acquaintance of the young Jewish legal historian Eduard Gans.17 Gans introduced Heine to the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft des Judentums. The Verein was shortlived but high-powered. It brought together progressive and confident young German-Jewish intellectuals, many of whom were to go on to distinguish themselves in later life. The aim of the association was assimilationist and its impulse was secular. Heine joined the association in August 1822 and attended meetings regularly until he left Berlin in May 1823. He became vice-secretary of the association’s academic institute where he gave lectures on a voluntary basis in history, French, and German to young Jews preparing for university entrance examinations. There is little doubt that membership of the association ignited Heine’s interest in Jewish history. Returning to Göttingen in early 1824, he wrote to his friend Moses Moser that he was now pursuing viel Chronikenstudium und ganz besonders viel historia judaica. […] Ganz eigene Gefühle bewegen mich wenn ich jene traurige Analen durchblättre; eine Fülle der Belehrung und des Schmerzes. Der Geist der jüdischen Geschichte offenbart sich mir immer mehr und mehr, und diese geistige Rüstung wird mir gewiß in der Folge sehr zu statten kommen.18

15 16 17

18

Heine to Varnhagen, 29 July 1826. HSA 20, p. 254 Rahel Varnhagen to Heine, 21 September 1830. HSA 24, p. 61. Michael Werner, ‘Heinrich Heine – über die Interdependenz von jüdischer, deutscher und europäischer Identität in seinem Werk’, in Juden im Vormärz und in der Revolution von 1848, ed. by Walter Grab and Julius Schoeps (Stuttgart, 1983), p. 13. Heine to Moser, 25 July 1824. HSA 20, p. 167

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This cultural crisis of the early 1820s and Heine’s subsequent immersion in studies of Jewish history certainly did find expression in his writings of the period. However, critics writing about this phase of Heine’s life have tended to focus on a small number of texts that deal more or less overtly with the Jewish question.19 His early drama Almansor, published in 1820, for example, is an obviously allegorical exploration of the problem of assimilation and transposes the issue onto the tragic predicament of a Moorish hero in fifteenth-century Spain.20 His journalistic essay on Poland, published in 1822, devoted considerable attention to the plight of the Polish Jews, and a year later Heine wrote ‘Donna Clara’, his first poem to deal publically with the theme of anti-Semitism.21 Most famously, of course, Heine’s intensive study of Jewish history in Berlin and Göttingen inspired him to embark in 1824 on his Jewish historical novel, the Rabbi von Bacherach. The project stalled, however, perhaps because of the personal and professional strain of dealing so overtly with the themes of anti-semitism, persecution and conversion, and the work was published as a fragment only in 1840. At this stage Heine does not seem to have been optimistic about the chances of effecting a productive cultural reconciliation between his German and Jewish identities and certainly was unprepared to present himself publically as a Jewish writer.22 Bearing this context in mind, it is not surprising that other works written by Heine at this time deal more covertly with issues raised by his Jewish heritage and the Harzreise proves to be a particularly interesting example of this approach. Central to the Harzreise is the satire on the oppressive social conventions of contemporary polite society. Heine’s position as a Jew meant that he felt the strictures of social convention more keenly than most. The verses with which the text opens present a society that is depicted as oppressive, inauthentic and heartless: ‘Schwarze Röcke, seid’ne Strümpfe,/ Weiße, höfliche Manschetten,/ Sanfte Reden, Embrassiren – / Ach, wenn sie nur Herzen hätten!’ (p. 83). This is a society where people seek refuge from authentic experience and emotion 19 20 21 22

Most recently Holub, ‘Confessions of an apostate’, p. 75. Philipp Veit, ‘Heine: the Marrano pose’, Monatshefte für deutschen Unterricht, 66 (1974), pp. 145–56 (p. 148). Heine to Moser, 6 November 1823, HSA 20, pp. 122–23. Werner, ‘Heinrich Heine’, pp. 17–18.


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in the realm of conventional phrases. With their ‘schmutzigen Gesichtern und weissen Rechnungen’ (p. 84), the conventional and unimaginative German philistines appear as a butt of the narrator’s satire. He delights in directing a trio of gullible tourists, who desire above all else to find lodgings with ‘ordentliche Leute’ in Göttingen, to the local prison (p. 87). The local nationalist student fraternities are also lampooned by the narrator who mocks the absurdities of their regulations and the sheeplike quality of their members who can be found marauding ‘hordenweis’(p. 84) around the Harz. This satire takes on somewhat darker implications when one considers Heine’s exclusion from the Burschenschaft in Göttingen, and the uncritical mentality of the students appears worryingly symptomatic of society at large. The pressure exerted by social convention is also linked to the tendency of the philistine tourists to commodify not only material objects, but also the natural world around them. Nature is no longer a refuge from society, an alternative world. Instead it is subsumed by society and transformed into a sight for consumption.23 This process, one could further argue, is also an expression of the uncritical assimilatory pressures exercised by a society that wishes to render everything in its own image. Uncritical convention and inauthenticity also characterise the cultural and literary tastes of the society depicted in the Harzreise. The pathetic poetic aspirations of tourists visiting the ‘Brockenhaus’ at the summit of the Brocken mountain are ruthlessly mocked by the narrator in his observations on the scribblings in the inn’s visitors’ book (pp.128– 9). And the conventional and inauthentic discourse of the contemporary educated salon is replicated in the narrator’s encounter with a wealthy and educated middle-aged woman on the Brocken: [Sie] frug mich ob ich den Werther gelesen? Ich glaube wir sprachen auch von Angorakatzen, etruskischen Vasen, türkischen Shawls, Makaroni und Lord Byron, aus dessen Gedichten die ältere Dame einige Sonnenuntergangsstellen, recht hübsch lispelnd und seufzend, rezitirte. (p. 120)

The manner in which contemporaries trivialised the works of German Empfindsamkeit is also mercilessly ridiculed. Two youths paying homage to an open wardrobe while spouting translations of Ossian, 23

Heinz-Dieter Weber, ‘Heines Harzreise und der Tourismus’, Der Deutschunterricht, 38, 1 (1986), pp. 51–64 (p. 59).

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gleaned verbatim from the pages of Goethe’s Werther, are promptly shoved into the wardrobe by a drunken fellow guest (pp. 124–6). Insalubrious reality clashes with flights of literary fancy and both are rendered ridiculous. In general, then, the text is shot through with a deep unease about the society to which German Jews of Heine’s generation were called to assimilate. Moreover, the work makes veiled references to the antiJewish stereotypes prevalent in German society. The narrator’s allusion to the efforts of the Prussians to convert those ‘die sich so gut aufs Rechnen verstehen’ (p. 92) and his wry reference to his own – allegedly unJewish – lack of financial acumen (p. 93) play ironically with the conventional stereotype of Jews as commercial-minded and moneygrubbing. In a more personal vein, the narrator alludes to the rejection of his poetic work on anti-Semitic grounds by the Theegesellschaften or salons of the day: ‘doch, als sie auch auf den “Ratkliff” und “Almansor” geriethen, und dem Verfasser alle Frömmigkeit und Christlichkeit absprachen, da sträubte sich das Haar des jungen Mannes, Entsetzen ergriff ihn – ich gab dem Pferde die Sporen und jagte vorüber’ (p. 116). The depth of feeling generated by such daily experiences of antisemitism should not be underestimated. In the Harzreise the dream narratives reveal the deep-seated desires and fears of the narrator.24 The encounter between the narrator and the philistine salesman – memorably described as ‘ein langes Brechpulver in einem braunen Oberrock’ (p. 117) – who shares his room in the Brockenhaus is interesting in this respect. This rather ridiculous character quickly reveals himself to be an anti-semite and the narrator reacts to this discovery by airily warning his roommate of his tendency to sleepwalk: Er war ein Frankfurt-am-Mayner, und folglich sprach er gleich von den Juden, die alles Gefühl für das Schöne und Edle verloren haben, und die englischen Waaren 25 Prozent unter dem Fabrikpreis verkaufen. Es ergriff mich die Lust, ihn etwas zu mystifiziren; deshalb sagte ich ihm: ich sey ein Nachtwandler, und müsse im Voraus um Entschuldigung bitten, für den Fall, daß ich ihn etwa im Schlafe stören möchte. Der arme Mensch hat deßhalb, wie er mir den andern Tag gestand, die

24

Altenhofer reveals the importance of the dream narratives as ‘Protokolle des Unbewußten’ (‘Harzreise in die Zeit’, pp. 17–22). See also Maria Carolina Foi, ‘Die Harzreise: Heine und die Rechtskultur seiner Zeit’, Jahrbuch der Schillergesellschaft, 41 (1997), p. 239.


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ganze Nacht nicht geschlafen, da er die Besorgniß hegte, ich könnte mit meinen Pistolen, die vor meinem Bette lagen, im Nachtwandlerzustande ein Malheur anrichten. (pp. 126–27)

In the act of sleepwalking, it seems, the suppressed, perhaps even unconscious, hostility of the narrator towards the antisemite threatens to reveal itself with terrible consequences. Militant opposition is not, however, a dominant feature of the narrator’s conscious response to society. By contrast, he periodically reveals a desire to integrate and be accepted by those he encounters.25 In his attempt to ingratiate himself with the female tourists on the Brocken, for example, the narrator finds himself adopting the conversational style appropriate to the intellectually less challenging salons of the day and indeed expressing the conventional view of Byron’s shortcomings, ‘Gottlosigkeit, Lieblosigkeit, Trostlosigkeit, und der Himmel weiß was noch mehr’ (p. 120) Exclusion does not bring a sense of liberation from the constraints of social expectations; it magnifies them. There can be little doubt that assimilatory pressures such as those alluded to in the text intensified the modern experience of social alienation as experienced by modern Jews. This experience of alienation is memorably captured in the narrator’s visit to the mining communities of Clausthal where he encounters an elderly woman: Die steinalte, zitternde Frau, die, dem großen Schranke gegenüber, hinterm Ofen saß, mag dort schon ein Vierteljahrhundert lang gesessen haben, und ihr Denken und Fühlen ist gewiß innig verwachsen mit allen Ecken dieses Ofens und allen Schnitzeleyen dieses Schrankes. Und Schrank und Ofen leben, denn ein Mensch hat ihnen einen Theil seiner Seele eingeflößt. (p. 96)

Educated and peripatetic modern man, by contrast, has lost any kind of organic relationship to his possessions and environment: Jetzt sind wir ausgewachsene, vornehme Leute; wir beziehen oft neue Wohnungen, die Magd räumt täglich auf, und verändert nach Gutdünken die Stellung der Möbeln, die uns wenig interessiren, da sie entweder neu sind oder heute dem Hans, 25

Altenhofer analyses the narrator’s interaction with tourists on the Brocken and notes his ‘Perspektive einer punktuellen Identifikation mit konventionellen Erlebnismustern’ (‘Harzreise in die Zeit’, p. 15). Leistner also notes the narrator’s ‘Teilhabebegehren’ (‘Heinrich Heine: Die Harzreise’, p. 295).

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Anita Bunyan morgen dem Isaak gehören; […] wir wechseln ja so oft wie möglich mit Kleidungsstücken, keines derselben bleibt im Zusammenhange mit unserer inneren und äußeren Geschichte. (p. 97)

On one level this passage ruefully highlights the contrast between closeknit traditional communities and cultivated modern man. But as the telling reference to ‘Isaak’ suggests, it also has implications for Jewish identity at the time and gives striking expression to the intensified sense of alienation that secular Jews experienced not only from the majority culture but from their own traditional communities.26 The Harzreise should not, however, be read as an expression of a desire to recreate the allegedly unproblematic and tightly-knit folk communities of the past. Certainly, the narrator displays uncharacteristic sympathy for the mountain miners, anticipating perhaps the similarly uncharacteristic display of solidarity with the Silesian weavers later to be found in Heine’s poem Die schlesischen Weber. The narrator also yearns intermittently for the simplicity and authenticity of folk life, despite its obvious limitations and deprivations: ‘So stillstehend ruhig auch das Leben dieser Leute erscheint, so ist es dennoch ein wahrhaftes, lebendiges Leben’ (p. 96). He contrasts the mentality and modes of perception of the child and the ordinary ‘Volk’ with those of the educated who laboriously exchange ‘das klare Gold der Anschauung für das Papiergeld der Bücherdefinizionen’ (p. 97). This positive portrait of the German ‘Volk’ gives expression to a desire for authenticity, community and integration. But it is a limited existence. The ‘Volk’ inhabit a world of tradition but also stasis, as exemplified in the ambiguous image of the grandmother’s stories that are passed on through generations of miners: Ihr Urenkel, ein als Bergmann gekleideter, blonder blitzäugiger Knabe, saß zu ihren Füßen und zählte die Blumen ihres Rockes, und sie mag ihm von diesem Rocke wohl schon viele Geschichten erzählt haben, viele ernsthafte, hübsche Geschichten, die der Junge gewiß nicht so bald vergißt, die ihm noch oft vorschweben werden, wenn er bald, als erwachsener Mann, in den nächtlichen Stollen der Carolina einsam arbeitet, und die er vielleicht wieder erzählt, wenn die liebe Großmutter längst todt ist, und er selber, ein silberhaariger, erloschener Greis, im Kreise seiner Enkel sitzt, dem großen Schranke gegenüber, hinterm Ofen. (p. 97) 26

Robertson notes that this passage anticipates Georg Simmel’s analysis of the commodification of modern life. See ‘Herr Peregrinus’, p. 149.


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The image of the story passed on from generation to generation symbolises stability and continuity, but this is undercut by the transformation of the blond, bright-eyed young boy into the silverhaired, lifeless old man, his spirit crushed by a lifetime of lonely night-time shifts in the local mines. Moreover, the narrator, though sympathetic to the miners, clearly deplores their subservience to the authorities. He satirises their ‘pudelldeutsche Natur’ in an ironic passage ostensibly in praise of German loyalty and political quietism: Andere Völker mögen gewandter seyn, und witziger und ergötzlicher, aber keines ist so treu, wie das treue deutsche Volk. (p. 95)

The recreation of the traditional but obviously limited communities of the past is therefore an inadequate response to the modern crisis of identity experienced by Heine’s generation, Jewish and non-Jewish alike.27 Alternative responses are needed and the Harzreise goes beyond a mere representation of the modern Jewish experience to suggest ways forward. One thing the text certainly does not advocate is a retreat into a defensive Jewish cultural solidarity and Jews were just as likely as anyone else to find themselves the butts of Heine’s satire. The Harzreise openly and gently lampoons the neo-Kantian rationalism of the Jewish champion of emancipation, Saul Ascher, for example. The ghost of Ascher, caricatured as ‘eine personifizirte grade Linie’, makes a star appearance in one of the narrator’s dreams where he confidently attempts to explain away the existence of ghosts with the aid of Kantian rationalist methodology. Inconvenient facts that contravene such explanations are suppressed – Ascher’s ghost pulls a handful of worms from his pocket, unwelcome proof of his recent demise and ghostly reappearance, only to stuff them hastily back in again. The narrator also pokes fun at Joseph Meyer Friedländer, a wealthy Jewish trader from Hamburg, who appears in the text as ‘den schwarzen, noch ungehenkten Makler, der […] mit seinem spitzbübischen Manufakturwaaren-Gesicht einherläuft’. Friedländer was distinctly unimpressed and is alleged to have attacked Heine physically on the street, though Heine was quick to 27

See Foi’s illuminating discussion of the figure of the harlequin as a symbol of the problematic figure of the modern, emancipated intellectual who cannot commit himself to traditional value systems and pays the price of exclusion (‘Die Harzreise’, p. 249).

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deny the rumour in a letter to Moser: ‘Daß ein stinkiger Jude in Hamburg überall herumgelogen hat er habe mich geprügelt, wirst Du gehört haben.’28 That the most violent reaction to the Harzreise came unexpectedly from a Jewish quarter is perhaps symptomatic of the innercommunal tensions to be found in that community, under pressure to prove itself to the majority culture.29 Having rejected the recreation of traditional communal ties as the way forward, the Harzreise also alludes to conversion, the path of unconditional rejection of communal ties. Questioned by a peasant girl about his faith, the poet-narrator refers to his childhood belief in ‘Gott den Vater,/ Der da waltet gut und groß’ and to the manner in which he then grew up ‘Und begriff, und ward vernünftig,/ Und ich glaub auch an den Sohn’ (pp. 108–9). And, indeed, the original version concluded with the passage where the narrator ‘in meiner Seelennoth’ and ‘von Schwindel erfasst’ desperately embraces the iron cross at the precipice of the Ilsenstein. (p. 134). Although conversion was the option reluctantly chosen in reality by the author Heine, the text considers more farreaching solutions to the problems of identity and social integration and concentrates instead on undermining modes of thought that seek to categorise and label people. The satire on contemporary academic epistemology and writing can be read in this light. Pedantic classification, it is suggested, distorts truth and denies access to real knowledge of the human condition. Göttingen, the seat of academic learning where Heine studied law, is depicted as a hotbed of academic snobbery and pedantry, devoid of new ideas and true wisdom. The over-systematic and schematic style of academic prose obstructs the development of real insight. This is parodied by the narrator, for example, in the passage that alludes ironically to the failure of a local academic to refute allegations that the women of Gottingen were endowed with particularly large feet. The narrator claims to have spent years studying the problem in great depth, to have taken up the study of comparative anatomy and to have spent hours on the street examining the feet of female passers-by before publishing the results of his findings:

28 29

Heine to Moser, 14 October 1826, HSA 20, pp. 267–68 DHA, p. 537.


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und in der grundgelehrten Abhandlung […] spreche ich 1° von den Füßen überhaupt, 2° von den Füßen bey den Alten, 3° von den Füßen der Elephanten, 4° von den Füßen der Göttingenerinnen, 5° stelle ich Alles zusammen, was über diese Füße auf Ullrichs Garten schon gesagt worden (pp. 84–5).

Open-ended and fragmentary modes of perception, it seems, may do more justice to complex human reality than pedantic systems of classification. Closely related to the open-ended and fragmentary narrative structure of the Harzreise is the multi-faceted identity of the narrator himself.30 He assumes the identity of a student, a ‘Schriftsteller’, a lover, a knight and a harlequin, to mention but several of his guises, and delights in ‘mystifying’ or pulling the leg of those he encounters. And this fractured, notoriously elusive, identity can perhaps be interpreted as part of a strategy to avoid being classified and dismissed.31 The psychological consequences of such social rejection can perhaps be discerned in the aloof defensiveness encapsulated in the narrator’s descriptions of himself as a prickly, angular plant, capable nevertheless of great love (p. 137), and as a scornful outsider: ‘Auf die Berge will ich steigen,/ Lachend auf Euch niederschauen’ (p. 83). In an incident on the Brocken one of the philistines responds to the sight of a beautiful flower by showing off his knowledge of its botanical classification. The narrator reacts angrily to this penchant for classification according to external characteristics by declaring: Es ärgert mich jedesmal, wenn ich sehe, daß man auch Gottes liebe Blumen, eben so wie uns, in Casten getheilt hat, und nach ähnlichen Aeußerlichkeiten, nämlich nach Staubfäden-Verschiedenheit. Soll doch mahl eine Eintheilung statt finden, so folge man dem Vorschlage Theophrasts, der die Blumen mehr nach dem Geiste, nämlich nach ihrem Geruch, eintheilen wollte. (p. 129)

The prospect that new modes of thought and perception might indeed come into being and be applied to social and perhaps political life is reinforced by the progressive, ultimately optimistic philosophy of 30 31

Altenhofer links this fragmented identity to the ‘generelle Problematik des modernen Schrifsteller-Ichs’ (‘Harzreise in die Zeit’, p. 12). Ritchie Robertson has argued that this fictional identity enables the narrator to maintain a critical distance from German and Jewish identities (‘Herr Peregrinus’, p. 156).

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history that underpins the Harzreise. The poems and concluding passages offer regenerative, if somewhat vague, visions of the victory of love, youth and freedom, though the absence of a fixed narratorial perspective should make us wary of accepting these visions at face value. Indeed, the irony and competing discourses of the text make it notoriously difficult for us to pin down the message of the work. Yet these competing discourses and perspectives constitute a modern narrative strategy that reveals not only the complex nature of modern reality, but also something about the nature of modern individual and social identity. The reluctance of the narrator to be classified and the competing voices of the work radically question the assumptions that underpin the notion of assimilation to a monolithic culture and society, i.e. the notion that there is a monolithic entity called society or German culture to which the individual, Jewish or otherwise, is called to assimilate. The problem in the Harzreise is that this very modern attempt to question a monolithic understanding of culture and society is undercut by Heine’s incomparable talent for satirising what he regarded as the stereotypical behaviour of social and cultural types. On the one hand he is acutely aware of the damage caused by stereotypes and desires to challenge and subvert them. On the other hand he applies them with gusto to his subject-matter to achieve his desired satirical effect. The Brocken mountain, for example, is presented as the stereotypical German, oscillating between philistine and romantic excess: Durch seinen Kahlkopf, den er zuweilen mit einer weißen Nebelkappe bedeckt, giebt er sich zwar einen Anstrich Philiströsität; aber, wie bey manchen andern großen Deutschen, geschieht es aus purer Ironie. Es ist sogar notorisch, daß der Brocken seine burschikosen, phantastischen Zeiten hat, z.B. die erste Maynacht. Dann wirft er seine Nebelkappe jubelnd in die Lüfte, und wird, eben so gut wie wir Uebrigen, recht echtdeutsch romantisch verrückt. (p. 118)

Heine’s capacity for stereotyping was reinforced by his great talent for visual caricature.32 Who can forget the image of the tailor’s

32

See Prawer, Jewish Comedy and Frankenstein’s Island. England and the English in the Writings of Heinrich Heine (Cambridge, 1986); T. J. Reed, ‘History in nutshells: Heine as a cartoonist’, in Heinrich Heine and the Occident. Multiple


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apprentice ‘so dünn, daß die Sterne durchschimmern konnten, wie durch Ossians Nebelgeister’(p. 90) or the ironic caricature of the conventional charms of the female tourists, one whose ‘ganze ausgekochte Gestalt glich einem Freitisch für arme Theologen’, the other eine gar große, weitläufige Dame, ein rothes Quadratmeilen Gesicht mit Grübchen in den Wangen, die wie Spucknäpfe für Liebesgötter aussahen, ein langfleischig herabhängendes Unterkinn, das eine schlechte Fortsetzung des Gesichts zu seyn schien, und ein hochaufgestapelter Busen, der mit steifen Spitzen und vielzackig festonirten Krägen, wie mit Thürmchen und Bastionen umbaut war. (p. 87)

Indeed, the emphasis on physiognomy and dress is telling here and appears to contradict the narrator’s professed desire to distance himself from modes of perception that classify according to external appearance.33 And the representation of women in particular rarely seems to transcend the realm of the stereotype. They are portrayed alternately as teasing, playful, entrapping lovers and harbingers of false emotion, or as elemental figures in tune with nature and superior to the rational male sex (p. 113). Ultimately, this contradictory approach to the problem of the stereotype, and to social and cultural classification, is one of the many tensions in Heine’s work that remains unresolved. This is unsurprising. The challenge of reconciling cultural identities was great, and in the Harzreise, at least, there is no easy resolution.

33

Identities, Multiple Receptions, ed. by Peter Uwe Hohendahl and Sander Gilman (Lincoln, 1991), pp. 163–86. Leistner interprets Heine’s use of physical caricature as an act of revenge on those who caricature Jews using physical stereotypes. He goes on to conclude that Heine’s texts ‘jeglicher Borniertheit, jeder stumpfen Einsinningkeit opponierte’ without considering the contradiction inherent in Heine’s approach (‘Heinrich Heine: Die Harzreise’, pp. 295–97, p. 315).


ERIKA SWALES

Büchner, Lenz ‘Was nennt Ihr denn gesetzlichen Zustand? [...] dies Gesetz ist eine ewige rohe Gewalt, angetan dem Recht und der gesunden Vernunft.’1 ‘Ich bin ein Automat; die Seele ist mir genommen’ (p. 257).

These two extracts from Büchner’s letters articulate the intense patterns of explosive and implosive energy which mark the author’s short life (1813–37) and works. On the one hand there is the radical, who studies French utopian socialism, co-founds, in despair at the conditions in Hessen, a ‘Gesellschaft der Menschenrechte’, and collaborates with Ludwig Weidig on the revolutionary pamphlet Der hessische Landbote (1834). In his letters of this period, Büchner denounces the prevailing power relations – ‘Der Aristokratismus ist die schändlichste Verachtung des Heiligen Geistes im Menschen’ – and he is unambiguous in his insistence that only violence can change the ‘ewigen Gewaltzustand’ (p. 248). His reflections on the necessity of violence within a violent system echo eighteenth-century French materialist philosophy and anticipate Darwinian or Marxian thought – but one notes an inherent friction: on the one hand, there is a humanist stance which abhors contempt for any human being – ‘Ich verachte Niemanden’ (p. 253) – yet, on the other hand, his language is as ruthless as his advocacy of fiercest struggle. It is this tension which Karl Gutzkow pinpointed when he told Büchner: ‘Sie haben selbst viel Ähnlichkeit mit Ihrem Danton: genial und träge’ (p. 301). The letters of the depressive Büchner are shot through with references to feelings of collapse, of ‘Starrkrampf’, and ‘das Gefühl des Gestorbenseins’ (p. 255). The motif of being buried alive haunts all his works and is particularly pronounced in Dantons Tod and in Lenz. It reflects not only Büchner’s individual disposition, but the

1

Georg Büchner, Werke und Briefe, (Munich, 1980), p. 248. All subsequent page references are to this edition.

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temper of his times: the philosophical ‘Weltschmerz’, as epitomized in Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy, and the sense of political frustration which dominates the 1830s. As a cultural mood and mode, melancholia also haunted the would-be rebels of the Sturm und Drang in the 1770s, in particular the writer Jakob Michael Lenz, whom Büchner’s narrative re-members as a kindred spirit in kindred times, a mixture of provocation and resignation. In order to situate my argument, let me briefly recall the outlines of the text: it traces the mental breakdown which Lenz suffered in the winter of 1778. Following in the footsteps of his father, he had studied theology, but then turned to creative writing and incurred unforgiving paternal anger. As is apparent from his own writings and comments by his contemporaries, Lenz was of highly unstable disposition, notorious for his unsettling whimsicality. Büchner’s text starts with Lenz crossing the Alsatian mountains, hoping to find a measure of peace in the isolated village of Waldbach, in the vicarage of Pastor Oberlin, who was known for his Pietist humaneness. To a degree, Oberlin’s fatherly calm has a soothing effect: Lenz experiences moments of serenity, and his parish sermon gives him a sense of meaning. Roughly at the centre of the story, an oasis of clarity opens up: Lenz is visited by Kaufmann, a close friend, and in the ensuing debate on aesthetics, Lenz utterly dominates. But when Kaufmann pleads with him to heed his father’s will and return home, he violently refuses. The consequences are bitterly ironic – Kaufmann and Oberlin leave for a trip to Switzerland, and the loss of his adoptive father proves catastrophic for Lenz: his mental health rapidly declines. Compelled by a ‘fixe Idee’ (p. 81), he attempts to resurrect a dead girl, and the failure drives him into the grip of atheism, yet also sheer horror at the enormity of his sin. After a few days, Oberlin returns, but cannot stop Lenz’s slide into the ‘wüste Chaos seines Geistes’ (p. 80). Finally, he is transported back to Strasbourg – Büchner’s last sentence reads: ‘So lebte er hin’ (p. 89). The historical Lenz lived for another fourteen years, trapped in his illness. Büchner owned his collected works, and he started to focus on the figure of Lenz in the spring of 1835 when he was working on Dantons Tod. He also had access to some letters by Lenz and a written account by Pastor Oberlin which records those distressing three weeks. Intriguingly, Büchner’s references to the project vary strikingly: he

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speaks of an ‘Aufsatz’ (p. 276) and of a ‘Novelle’ (p. 303). The text was to be published in the Deutsche Revue, but, under the pressures of censorship, the journal closed down. It was only in 1839 that Gutzkow published Lenz in Telegraph für Deutschland. Editorial problems have kept academics busy over decades: the original manuscript is lost, as is the copy which Büchner’s fiancé, Minna Jaeglé, had made. In the history of German literature, Lenz figures as a scandalous text, on a par with Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774). Such notions as consolation and redemption, which are central to many nineteenth-century German Novellen do not come into play in Büchner’s text. Or rather, they do, but, as in all his works, only in negated form, in possibilities glimpsed and lost. In this sense, the opening chords foreshadow the essence of the subsequent text: they sound such motifs as ‘suchen’, ‘nicht finden’, and ‘verlorene Träume’ (p. 69). In other words: the quest is there, overwhelmingly so, but, as the dominant mode of the subjunctive suggests, it is doomed. As Lenz slips into the night, there is no comfort – and we are not even granted the solace of aesthetic beauty, for Lenz is uncompromising: it is writing of utter provocation. Perhaps this is the reason why, over the years, critics have striven to tame it, to hold it on the leash of the familiar German ‘Novelle’ genre by focusing on such traditional norms as the ‘sich ereignete, unerhörte Begebenheit’ or a central ‘Wendepunkt’. Nowadays, critical reception is largely free from constraining classification. Some of us have even come to cope with the gaps and view the fragmentary aspect of the text as an integral part of the whole: the text is, after all, ‘about’ processes of fragmentation. The landmark status of Lenz is beyond dispute. Ever since Gerhart Hauptmann’s lectures on Büchner in 1887, the text has figured as a seminal work in German prose writing. Even in the history of medicine, it stands as an unsurpassed, literary study of schizophrenia.2 Also, it is a measure of its force that the narrative reverberates in such twentieth century variations as Peter Schneider’s Lenz (1973) or Ulrich Plenzdorf’s Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. (1973), which is driven not only by Goethe’s Werther, but also by its intertextual connections with Lenz.

2

See, for example, Burghard Dedner, Georg Büchner: ‘Lenz’. Text und Kommentar, Suhrkamp Basis Bibliothek (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), p. 110.

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Given this extraordinary degree of fame, it is difficult to add anything new to the vast secondary literature. In the following, therefore, I shall touch on familiar aspects, but combine them with a structural argument and its interpretative ramifications. In the concluding section, I shall focus on those features which make the work so distinctively part of its surrounding culture. Let me begin by addressing the basic presupposition on which Lenz rests and which, I think, may affect our interpretative approach. The story-line is perfectly clear, even in the above summary form. But, in fact, my account includes extra-textual information, some details in respect of the historical Lenz, Pastor Oberlin, and Christoph Kaufmann. I now add that such names as Stilling (p. 75) and Lavater (p. 78) refer to figures central to German culture in the late eighteenth century. This extra-textual aspect is, in my view, highly significant: Büchner’s text presupposes a degree of knowledge which is most unusual for a nineteenth-century Novelle. But: what if we do not have this knowledge? Is an ignorant reading bound to be inadequate – or could it actually enrich our response, generating interpretative issues beyond the historical specificity of the text? The double-edged function of knowledge acquires particular urgency in respect of Lenz: to put it in a nutshell, I would argue that the more knowledge we have of Lenz as a historical figure, the more likely are we to view the text in terms of a psychological documentary. This was clearly the case in the 1830s. At that time, the image of Lenz was very much fixed, both positively and negatively. For the radical intelligentsia, he was an icon of revolt, as though their frustrations were mirrored in his doomed ‘Sturm und Drang’ voice of protest. In this context, the title under which Gutzkow published the text is most revealing – it reads: Lenz. Eine Reliquie von Georg Büchner. ‘Reliquie’, like our term ‘relic’ can mean a mere remnant or a fragment held in reverence, be that in a religious or secular sense. Gutzkow’s edition clearly banks on both meanings: the text is a fragment, yet it is proffered in a spirit of reverence. Placed at the very centre, the term ‘Reliquie’ lends both Lenz and Büchner a saintly aura. At the other end of the scale, the counter-image of Lenz was equally fixed. For example, G.G. Gervinus sees Lenz as both victim and perpetrator of the excesses

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associated with ‘Sturm und Drang’ and ‘Empfindsamkeit’, and he condemns his lack of ‘Sittlichkeit’, his disorderly mind-set.3 Julian Schmidt, advocate of Poetic Realism, recognises Büchner’s genius, but accuses him of wasting and degrading artistic energy by focusing on an unworthy protagonist, trapped in notions of ‘absolutes Nichts’.4 In short, in the nineteenth century, knowledge of the historical Lenz is such that Büchner’s text tends to be read through ideologically tinged lenses: Lenz figures either as an elegiac tribute to the doomed hero of freedom, or as a documentary which warns against extravagant subjectivity. This polarisation again reminds one of Werther, its fluctuating reception history. Whilst twentieth-century interpretations are much subtler, the interpretative model of Lenz as a documentary remains in place – in the modern guise of pathography, the writing of suffering. By far the best account is by Burghard Dedner, but he, too, imposes a purpose on the work: he holds that the text will refine our perception of mental illness, change our ‘moralischen Reaktionen und Urteile’,5 and further our humane, compassionate capacity. This conception probably captures most readers’ experience – the story is indeed compelling as an account of mental agony. However, on a critical-theoretical perspective, the model of pathography poses a problem which, in the case of Lenz, is particularly acute. Generally speaking, pathography, unless it is autobiographical, figures its protagonist as an object, which is, in quasi-voyeuristic manner, spectated by the author as writing subject and by the reader. In this sense, non-autobiographical pathography runs at the very least the risk of exerting a measure of coercion over its object. As Christa Wolf reflects on the re-figuring of protagonist Christa T: ‘Ich verfüge über sie. [...] Etwas von Zwang ist unleugbar dabei.’6 Given this element of coercion, a reading of Lenz along the lines of pathography may go against the very grain of Büchner’s aesthetics, their ethical and political foundations which denounce any form of domination. To put it somewhat crassly: if we adopt pathography as an interpretative model, we are potentially in danger of replicating the Doktor in Woyzeck who presides as lofty 3 4 5 6

Quoted by Dedner, op. cit., pp. 94–6. Georg Büchner: ‘Lenz’. Erläuterungen und Dokumente (Stuttgart,1987), pp. 96–7. Dedner, op. cit., p. 55. Nachdenken über Christa T., (Berlin und Weimar, 1968), pp. 7, 9.

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subject over his abject medical object. Arguably, Dedner’s conception of Lenz as pathography in the service of compassionate comprehension is a way out – but the function of pity has been a controversial issue since antiquity: at the very least potentially, pity is a form of domination. Is Lenz, then, irrevocably caught up in power relations which run counter to Büchner’s ethically grounded aesthetics? I do not think so. Rather, as I shall argue in the following, the poetic construction is such that the work moves beyond the traps of pathography. In this context, let us look at Büchner’s main source, Pastor Oberlin’s account, Der Dichter Lenz, im Steinthale.7 His report is a documentary, and it shows all the marks of domination. He narrates as subject in the first person, and Lenz figures as object, monitored and, at times, judged. Oberlin follows the conventions of his time and argues, for example, that Lenz’s mental agonies are due to a loose life-style and his rebellion against paternal authority.8 However, at the very end of his account, Oberlin adopts a strikingly different stance: he now concedes that moral judgment is subjective – and, far more crucially, he admits that his account is fundamentally deficient because it remains trapped in descriptive representation, in the sayable: Jeder urteilt nach seinem besonderen Temperament [...] und nach der Vorstellung, die er sich von der ganzen Sache macht; die aber unmöglich getreu und richtig sein kann [...] weil es unmöglich wäre sie getreu zu beschreiben, und doch oft in einem Ton, in einem Blick, der nicht beschrieben werden kann, etwas steckt, das mehr 9 bedeutet, als vorhergegangene erzählbare Handlungen.

By stressing three times that the truth about Lenz lies beyond ‘beschreiben’, ‘beschrieben werden’ and ‘erzählbare Handlungen’, Oberlin abrogates the power of the narrating subject over narrated object. As though heeding Oberlin’s insights, Büchner situates his narrative at the margin of description, and adopts a compositional mode which turns narrative convention on its head. This much is anticipated at the very start of the text. As Lenz crosses the mountains, we are told 7

8 9

Reprinted in Dedner, op. cit., pp. 63–76. See also John J. Parker: ‘Some Reflections on Georg Büchner’s Lenz and its principal source, the Oberlin record’, German Life & Letters, 21 (1967–8), 103–11. Dedner, op. cit., p. 73. Dedner, op. cit., p. 76.

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‘Müdigkeit spürte er keine, nur war es ihm manchmal unangenehm, daß er nicht auf dem Kopf gehn konnte’ (p. 69). Similarly, at a later point, we read ‘er amüsierte sich, die Häuser auf die Dächer zu stellen’ (p. 86). These two passages link back to my reflections on the hermeneutic function of knowledge and ignorance: if we are familiar with the historical figure of Lenz, we are likely to view these lines as documentary references to his notorious whimsicality. Conversely, if we do not have that knowledge – or choose not to bring it into play – we might see them as self-reflective pointers to precisely those narrative strategies in Lenz which turn conventional narrative and conceptual ‘Häuser’ on their ‘Dächer’. Let me elaborate on the key features. As we know, Büchner reduces the traditional narratorial voice to a minimum. True, he records ‘erzählbare Handlungen’, and such temporal markers as ‘den andern Tag’ (p. 71) or ‘gegen Abend’ (p. 72) establish a chronological sequence. But overall, the narrator does not figure as a guiding, interpreting voice. Instead, he largely disappears in free indirect speech, the perspective of the protagonist. In other words: although there is narratorial distance in such recurrent phrases as ‘er meinte’ (p. 69) or ‘es war ihm’ (p. 74), the overall momentum of the narrative is so strong that it overrides such fine points of distinction. Consider here the extraordinary extent to which Büchner turns his back on narrative gradualness: he replaces it by suddenness, nonmediation, and sheer speed. We may know such traits from the works of Kleist, but in Lenz they are radicalised. They are systemic properties, informing every aspect – the narrative and stylistic structure, and the very lexis of the text. Take the opening paragraph which plunges us into the midst of things. Without the slightest exposition, we join Lenz suddenly, mid-walk, as he gropes his way across the mountain. er stand, keuchend, den Leib vorwärts gebogen, Augen und Mund weit offen, er meinte, er müsse den Sturm in sich ziehen, Alles in sich fassen, er dehnte sich aus und lag über der Erde, er wühlte sich in das All hinein, es war eine Lust, die ihm wehe tat; oder er stand still und legte das Haupt in’s Moos und schloß die Augen halb [...]. Aber es waren nur Augenblicke, und dann erhob er sich nüchtern, fest, ruhig. (pp. 69–70)

Both referentially and stylistically, these lines anticipate pervasive patterns in the subsequent text: unmediated twists and turns of Lenz’s

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mood, behaviour, and dress, and the unpredictable flux of expansive sentences abruptly alternating with sharp, short, often syntactically incomplete phrases. On the level of lexis, there are similar discontinuities: for example, Lenz’s urge to walk on his head may take us aback, but the real sting lies in the fact that his inability to do so strikes him as ‘unangenehm’. The word belongs to the social code of inconvenience, irritation, and hence is sharply discordant within the context. This one word anticipates the increasing collapse of common lexical and conceptual distinctions as epitomised in Lenz‘s reference to a screaming‚ ‘entsetzliche Stimme [...] die man gewöhnlich die Stille heißt’ (p. 88), or the passage: ‘Er jagte mit rasender Schnelligkeit sein Leben durch und dann sagte er: “konsequent, konsequent”; wenn Jemand was sprach: “inkonsequent, inkonsequent”’ (p. 87). For the reader, all this generates a sense of increasing dizziness. As Friedrich Gundolf observes of Lenz: ‘Die Grammatik selbst hat Eile’.10 But, crucially, all this speed amounts to stasis. This text runs on the spot, for the protagonist’s medical fate is sealed. This conjunction of speed and stasis is such that we are sucked into the maelstrom of both the narrative and its protagonist: the objectively distinct blends into a dense continuum – the continuum of circularity, the vicious circle of Lenz’s mind-set. Here, Goethe’s Werther may again come to mind: Lenz is in many ways a highly accelerated version of that novel. However, within the mono-perspectival narrative, Goethe does grant some space for critical reflection – Büchner does not. Given that both the author and the reader double the vortex of Lenz’s perception, the question arises if this is a textual black hole – textual matter so dense that it threatens to suck everything into its own abyss, on a par with some of Kafka’s works, or, say, Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape and Thomas Bernhard’s Beton. Not quite. Büchner’s elliptic text and its protagonist are poised on the brink of the void, but on that very brink something remarkable happens: here, the force of the poetic turns Lenz on his head – turns him from object to subject. True, on the referential level, Lenz is and will remain a powerless object, trapped in the grip of his medical condition, the all-pervasive ‘Es’ of drives beyond his control. But, in contrast to Oberlin’s account, the very fabric of Büchner’s text absorbs and reworks the pathology of 10

In Georg Büchner, ed. by Wolfgang Martens, (Darmstadt, 1965), p. 92.

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schizophrenia such that key symptoms turn into poetic properties: Lenz’s speech, with its fractured syntax and abrupt changes, turns into the very art of parataxis and ellipsis, the mastery of construction without connective particles; the violent changes of his behaviour and the frenzied ‘Schnelligkeit’ (p. 87) of his movements re-appear as musical tempo and rhythm; and his illogical associations are transmuted into passages of lyrical intensity. In short, Lenz as a patient is doomed, but by his very condition he becomes the poetic voice, the subject of the narrative. As such, he attains, to quote a key phrase from the ‘Kunstgespräch’, ‘Leben, Möglichkeit des Daseins’ (p. 76). As this suggest, I view the compositional principle of inversion as the most far-reaching aspect of Lenz. It re-interprets two features which were later to become central criteria of the German Novelle: the ‘unerhörte Begebenheit’ and the ‘Wendepunkt’. Of course, on the referential level, the extraordinary event is retained in the shape of Lenz’s mental condition. But far more radically, the narrative act itself, with its uncompromising provocative disposition, constitutes the ‘unerhörte Begebenheit’. Hence, the notion of ‘Wendepunkt’ – peripeteia – also takes on a new meaning: it does not figure as a specific point, but becomes a process, a ceaseless flux of in-, re- and diversion as epitomised in this passage: Er lag in den heißesten Tränen, und dann bekam er plötzlich eine Stärke, und erhob sich kalt und gleichgültig, seine Tränen waren ihm dann wie Eis, er mußte lachen. Je höher er sich aufriß, desto tiefer stürzte er hinunter. (p. 80)

Admittedly, Büchner’s subject matter, the condition of schizophrenia and the historical data, have in themselves a disorientating energy; but it takes a poetic genius to condense and re-configure those facts such that they acquire highest destabilising intensity. Take the very title: cut down to a minimum, it gains an interpretative potency which is utterly lacking in Oberlin’s Der Dichter Lenz, im Steinthale: in the nineteenth century, the word ‘Lenz’ would signal poeticised, romantic spring-time. The opening setting – the figure of the ‘Wanderer’, the motifs of ‘Wald’, ‘Wasser’, ‘grün’ (p. 69), and of the village Waldbach (p. 70), crucially abridged from the real name Waldersbach, reinforce this expectation. One thinks of the 1820s, of Schubert’s songs, of Heine’s Harzreise. Yet: Lenz as a bitterly ironic

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peripeteia traces the descent into the permafrost of mental winter. Similarly, the name Friederike spells peace, but generates horror instead. I also suspect that Büchner, so attuned to word play, was aware of the semantic tensions in the name Oberlin: the conjunction of the comparative ‘upper’ with the diminutive ‘lin’ may be read as a pointer to the Pastor’s superior position modified by his profound kindness, or as a quasi ironic pointer to the discrepancy between his spiritual authority and powerlessness over Lenz. Whilst this is debatable, it is a matter of textual fact that Büchner builds frequently a ‘Wendepunkt’ into the very lexis and the motifs of his narrative. As we know, the text is dominated by such binary oppositions as cold/hot, close/far, high/low, ‘weinen’/‘lachen’, and several others. These oppositions turn things quite literally on their head, and are thus central to the text’s strategies of inversion. But above all, there are leitmotifs whose meaning is split. Take for example the most dominating – ‘Ruhe’. At times, it signifies total union, the Romantic dream of German ‘Naturphilosophie’: ‘die mächtige Ruhe, die uns über der ruhenden Natur, im tiefen Wald, in mondhellen schmelzenden Mondnächten überfällt, schien ihm noch näher, in diesem ruhigen Auge’ (p. 72). But ‘Ruhe’ also figures as the opposite, the calm of the void. The grip of atheism seizes Lenz ‘ganz sicher und ruhig und fest’ (p. 82), and at the end, ‘Ruhe’ spells the catatonic sense of resignation: on the journey back to Strasbourg, ‘blieb er ganz ruhig sitzen; er war vollkommen gleichgültig’ (p. 88). Or take the leitmotif of ‘Traum’ and ‘träumen’. On one level, it echoes Werther, the dream for harmonious fusion, Lenz’s urge to ‘traumartig jedes Wesen in der Natur in sich aufzunehmen’ (p. 75). It also figures as the dream of domestic paradise. The vicarage, with its ‘heimliche Zimmer und die stillen Gesichter’ (p. 70), brings back memories of yore: ‘Er wurde ruhig, es war ihm als träten alte Gestalten, vergessene Gesichter wieder aus dem Dunkeln, alte Lieder wachten auf, er war weg, weit weg’ (p. 71). But on another level, the motif denotes Lenz’s loss of grip on reality – ‘als sei alles nur sein Traum’ (p. 71) – his waning sense of selfhood – ‘er war sich selbst ein Traum’ (p. 71) – and finally the nightmare of ‘fieberhafte Träume’ (p. 80). If such dominating terms are riddled with split meaning, it is hardly surprising that entire thematic strands may tip over and stand on their

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head. Take the clusters to do with religious faith, church, prayer. In one sense, they underwrite established Christian values: Oberlin’s vicarage and the Sunday service suggest humane spiritual communion – ‘die Menschenstimmen begegneten sich im reinen hellen Klang’ (p. 74). Yet, turned upside down, the same clusters take on a critical edge and pinpoint religiosity as a sinister, oppressive force. We remember the peaceful image of Oberlin’s family (p. 70), the Dutch painting of a woman who ‘sitzt in ihrer Kammer, das Gebetbuch in der Hand’ (p. 77), the calm figure of Madame Oberlin with her ‘schwarze Gesangbuch’ (p. 80), and the women of the parish in their ‘ernsten schwarzen Tracht, das weiße gefaltete Schnupftuch auf dem Gesangbuche’ (p. 72). Yet this comforting strand turns into its opposite when Lenz visits an isolated dwelling: here, ‘das heimliche Zimmer’ (p. 70) of the vicarage is terrifyingly transformed into a nightmarish scenario. A critically ill girl writhes on her bed, an old woman sings in the shadows ‘mit schnarrender Stimme aus einem Gesangbuch’, and they are joined by an old man, ‘lang und hager’, ‘mit unruhigem, verwirrten Gesicht’ (p. 79). All three figures are trapped in manic religiosity: throughout the night, the singing continues, the girl, in her religious hallucinations, joins in; and as morning dawns, the narrator conjures up a horrendously inverted vision of resurrection: Der Mann erwachte, seine Augen trafen auf ein erleuchtetes Bild an der Wand, sie richteten sich fest und starr darauf, nun fing er an die Lippen zu bewegen und betete leise, dann laut und immer lauter. Indem kamen Leute zur Hütte herein, sie warfen sich schweigend nieder. Das Mädchen lag in Zuckungen, die Alte schnarrte ihr Lied und plauderte mit den Nachbarn. (p. 80)

At such points, religiosity figures as a terrifying, dehumanising force – and it is but a small step from these critical illumination to Lenz’s rebellion against God and his contemptuous response to Oberlin’s faith: ‘Ja, wenn ich so glücklich wäre, wie Sie, einen so behaglichen Zeitvertreib aufzufinden [...] Alles aus Müßiggang. Denn die Meisten beten aus Langeweile’ (p. 84). A similar inversion affects the motif of domesticity, which is so prevalent in nineteenth-century German writing, particularly in the era of Biedermeier. Oberlin, his vicarage and his wife’s calm presence spell blissful security. Here, Lenz, the restless ‘Wanderer’, finds peace – just

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as, back in the 1770s Goethe’s Faust and Werther find peace in the domestic order of Gretchen and Lotte. The motif of idyllic domesticity is further underpinned by Lenz’s invocation of Dutch painting in the seventeenth century: ‘Es ist sonntäglich aufgeputzt, der Sand gestreut, so heimlich rein und warm’ (p. 77). And yet: at the most critical point of the narrative, the very notion of domesticity is violently rejected: Lenz the prodigal son refuses to return home. Büchner only hints at the conflict between the historical Lenz and his father, but he stresses the sheer stifling force of domesticity, the family as a breeding ground of neurosis. As Lenz exclaims: ‘und dann wieder herunter in’s Haus, durch den Garten gehn, und zum Fenster hineinsehen, – ich würde toll! toll!’(p.78) The tensions which inform Büchner’s representation of domestic space culminate in his handling of traditional spatial markers of security, of law and order: overall, he both invokes and erases them. The ‘Pfarrhaus’ and the ‘Schulhaus’, where Lenz sleeps, epitomise spaces of nomos, representing stabilising systems and institutions, be that in the religious or secular sense. However their force disintegrates as Lenz invades and, like a menacing Poltergeist, plays havoc.11 As the disturbance reaches crisis point, Oberlin finds a guard, the schoolmaster Sebastian, who in turn calls for further help from his brother: ‘und nun hatte Lenz zwei Aufseher statt einen’ (p. 85). Yet even now he escapes, ‘wie ein Blitz’ (p. 85), the clutches of control, until, exhausted, he finally surrenders. The above patterns of split meaning and inversion reflect deepseated patterns of irresolution, and they link with some of the most crucial intellectual currents of his time. So let us now, in conclusion, look at the literary-cultural location of Lenz. Of course, in the most immediate sense, the discontinuities which I have traced reflect Lenz’s medical condition. But beyond this, they mirror the cultural schizophrenia of both the late eighteenth century and above all the 1830s. Here, mutually incompatible strands merge: late Romanticism alongside Biedermeier, Christian legacy alongside the growing critique of religion, humanist thought next to the materialist discourse of science, and conservatism next to revolutionary politics. Like a cultural kaleidoscope,

11

This culminates in the struggle between Lenz and Oberlin’s cat. Quite overtly, Büchner’s description relies here on the code of the horror tale (p. 86). The motif of the ‘Katze’ reappears in Woyzeck.

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Lenz mirrors the shifting patterns of these often contrary aspects and in this sense it is, to use Gérard Genette’s term, truly transtextual. As there is no space here to touch on the many links with nineteenth-century thought, I shall largely focus on the issue of religion which is a thematic centre in the text. Let us turn first to the anthropological thinker Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72). He would, I suspect, keenly appreciate that both Woyzeck and Lenz focus on mental illness and that even Dantons Tod is as much about the mind as it is about politics: in his search for a better humanity in the here and now, Feuerbach invokes the method of medical diagnosis and is driven by the aim to explore the internal and external factors which contribute to the diseases of the head and of the heart of mankind. Like Büchner, he vehemently rejects German idealism and replaces the abstract ‘Idee’ by a fundamental stress on sensuous love and interpersonal community. However, as regards the representation of religion in Lenz, he would have some reservations. As we know, Feuerbach dismantles the notion of a transcendental deity and instead advocates faith in the divine force of love inherent in humanity. Hence he would approve of Lenz’s rebellion against god: its revolutionary energy anticipates his own equation of orthodox theology and oppressive monarchy: Er rannte auf und ab. In seiner Brust war ein Triumph-Gesang der Hölle. Der Wind klang wie ein Titanenlied, es war ihm, als könnte er eine ungeheure Faust hinauf in den Himmel ballen und Gott herbei reißen und zwischen seinen Wolken schleifen. (p. 82)

However, Feuerbach would abhor the nihilism of the concluding moment – ‘als könnte er die Welt mit den Zähnen zermalmen und sie dem Schöpfer in’s Gesicht speien’ (p. 82). To this degree, he would share Lenz’s subsequent horror, but would re-interpret ‘die Sünde wider den heiligen Geist’ (p. 82) as sin against the divine spirit of love for humanity. Overall, Feuerbach would argue that Lenz’s schizophrenia is an acute case of self-alienation, of man split from himself, brought about by his preoccupation with Christian theology. In particular, he would trace neurotic feelings of guilt back to Lenz’s reading the Bible, above all the apocalyptic visions of Revelations (p. 75). At this juncture we might recall Karl Marx (1818–83) – not the young Marx, who still invokes the traditional deity, but the later thinker

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who defined the task of philosophy as the critique of religion which would ultimately lead to the exposure of all conditions debasing the human being. As we know from his Thesen über Feuerbach (1845), Marx would remind us that although Feuerbach remains trapped in abstraction, his efforts to reveal religion as a form of self-alienation are praiseworthy. As regards Lenz, I suspect the greatest stumbling block for Marx would be the recurrent passages of idyllic domesticity, and above all those sections which seem to endorse the Christian theology of suffering. Take the the verse which Büchner adds to a standard Pietist hymn and which speaks of ‘heil’gen Schmerzen’, of suffering as worship: Leiden sei all mein Gewinst, Leiden sei mein Gottesdienst. (p. 74)

At this point, discussion would get rather heated: Marx would either condemn the passage, or he would propose to read it as a bitterly ironic reflection of Christian false consciousness, which veils the stifling socioeconomic and cultural conditions in Waldbach – and all the communities which it represents in both the eighteenth and nineteenth century. In his defence, Marx would invoke those sections in the text where, as in Dantons Tod, suffering functions as the bedrock of atheism. As Lenz puts it: ‘wär’ ich allmächtig, sehen Sie, wenn ich so wäre, ich könnte das Leiden nicht ertragen, ich würde retten, retten’ (p. 87). Marx has a point: the function of religious faith in Büchner’s life and work remains an open question.12 To lend this debate a twentieth century angle, let us turn briefly to Freud. He would of course agree that religion is an illusory comfort, but would then, presumably, launch into a lengthy psycho-analytical reading of the text. One can imagine him homing in on Lenz’s feelings of guilt towards his father on earth and in heaven, his mother and his beloved Friederike – and, surely, he would theorise Lenz’s compulsive urge to ‘baden’ in the fountain of the vicarage. In his account, Oberlin notes at one point: ‘Er stürzte sich, wie gewöhnlich, in den Brunnentrog, patschte drin, wieder heraus und hinauf in sein Zimmer, wieder hinunter in den Trog, und so einige Mal – endlich wurde es still’ (p. 364). Büchner 12

See, for example, the letter to his family of 1 January 1836 (Werke, p. 279).

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quotes this passage almost verbatim, and the motif of ‘baden’ recurs with such intensity that Freud would, rightly, insist on reading it as Lenz’s neurotic need to cleanse himself of his feelings of guilt and to re-enact the ritual of Christian baptism. I would suggest, however, that we might adopt a further interpretative perspective: given that patterns of inversion are so central to Lenz, we might give the motif a Feuerbachian twist as it were: on this perspective, Lenz’s urge to ‘baden’ shifts from a pathological trait to a rebellious contrafacture, which turns the submissive immersion of Christian baptism on its head. This brings us back to the centre of my argument – Lenz as a text of and about inversion. It is this aspect which, I think, links the work most profoundly to nineteenth-century German thought. Inversion is, in one form or the other, central to the thought of Feuerbach, Marx and Engels with their trope of the Camera obscura or retina which perceive things ‘auf den Kopf gestellt’, as ‘Umdrehung’,13 and it culminates in Friedrich Nietzsche. The connections between Büchner and Nietzsche are considerable, but let me sketch in some key points in respect of Lenz. Take the issue of ‘beschreiben’ and ‘erzählbare Handlungen’. Like most critics, I pointed out that the sequence of facts, which are often closely observed, remains unexplained in the absence of an interpretatively guiding narrator. As Arnold Zweig put it so succinctly: ‘Ein Mensch wird wahnsinnig, punktum, und das wird erzählt.’14 As we know, the reader, let alone the critic, finds it hard to live with the nonmediated given, with the ‘Punktum’ that is also the very basis of Kafka’s Die Verwandlung or Der Proceß where the chaplain, at the end of the penultimate chapter, drives home the tantalising point of interpretation: ‘Die Schrift ist unveränderlich, und die Meinungen sind oft nur ein Ausdruck der Verzweiflung darüber.’ It is Nietzsche who captures that sense of despair when he notes: ‘Wir beschreiben besser – wir erklären ebensowenig, wie alle Früheren.’15 As regards Lenz, he would, with Büchner, turn him from object to subject. Even without philosophical knowledge, most readers surely sense that the protagonist’s dislocated 13 14 15

See Die deutsche Ideologie, in Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Werke, [East] Berlin, 1969, Vol. 3, p. 26. Quoted by Dedner, op.cit., p. 105. Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, Werke, Vol. 2, ed. by K. Schlechta (Munich, 1955), p. 119.

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perception has at times that revelatory authority which we associate with so-called mad figures, be that in ancient Greek mythology, in Shakespeare, or in Büchner’s Woyzeck. At their most unsettling, such voices show up both the sanity of insanity and the insanity of sanity.16 As Gräfin Orsina, the abandoned, ‘mad’ woman, in Lessing’s Emilia Galotti (1772), points out: ‘Wer über gewisse Dinge den Verstand nicht verlieret, der hat keinen zu verlieren.’ (IV, 7); and if Büchner’s Danton could have read Lenz, he would surely have commented: ‘Das lautet verrückt, es ist aber doch was Wahres daran’ (p. 55). In Lenz, the pathological condition of schizophrenia repeatedly takes on an epistemological force. Within nineteenth-century philosophy, Lenz’s (and Woyzeck’s) difficulty with articulation, the common meaning of things, and the elliptical nature of the text as such acquire a powerful anticipatory force: they point forward to Nietzsche‘s conclusion that the authority of language and logic is but illusory, that ‘die Worte liegen uns im Wege’17 – and, ultimately, they anticipate the very basis of ‘Sprachkritik’ in twentieth-century philosophy. The deadly calm of Lenz’s life back in Strasbourg may remind us of the recognition at the heart of Nietzsche’s Morgenröte – the insight into ‘die Unmöglichkeit der Erkenntnis’?18 – and of his insistence on that highest form of wisdom which simply endures personal and the world’s suffering: a ‘Weisheit [...] die sich ungetäuscht [...] mit unbewegtem Blicke dem Gesamtbild der Welt zuwendet’.19 But the difference is telling: Nietzsche insists on the cathartic force of the tragic – Lenz grants us no such solace: Er schien ganz vernünftig, sprach mit den Leuten; er tat Alles wie es die Andern taten, es war aber eine entsetzliche Leere in ihm, er fühlte keine Angst mehr, kein Verlangen; sein Dasein war ihm eine notwendige Last. – So lebte er hin.

16 17 18 19

See, for example, Janet K. King, ‘Lenz viewed sane’, The Germanic Review, 49 (1974), 146–53. Morgenröte, ed. cit., Vol. 1, p. 1045. Loc. cit., p. 1242. Die Geburt der Tragödie, ed. cit., Vol. 1, p. 101.

MICHAEL MINDEN

Grillparzer, Der arme Spielmann

Grillparzer’s Der arme Spielmann has provoked contradictory opinions. For instance, in 1871 Gottfried Keller said: ‘Es liegt ein tiefer Sinn in der scheinbar leichten Arbeit: die Gewalt der absolut reinen Seele in der Welt.’1 One hundred years later John Irving, in The World according to Garp, had his eponymous hero express the view that ‘Grillparzer’s famous story was a ludicrous melodrama […] ineptly told and baldly sentimental’, to which his mother adds the view ‘Trash. Simplistic. Maudlin. Cream puff.’2 Kafka, who can be relied upon to produce a contradiction all on his own, famously claimed to Milena that he was as ashamed of the story as if he had written it himself.3 * * * Der arme Spielmann is the tale of a poor musician whose heart is pure but whose playing is awful. It is told by a narrator (a playwright) who notices the violin-playing beggar in a crowd, befriends him, and elicits his story. Jakob, the ‘arme Spielmann’ of the title, is the son of an eminent and influential public figure. Unlike his more mentally agile brothers, he is a slow learner, and is cruelly rejected by his father, who sends him out to work in a chancery office where he ends up as a copy clerk. From his lonely room at the back of his father’s house, he can hear a neighbouring girl sing a popular song, and this inspires him to pick up his violin again – until then nothing more than a reminder of another childhood failure – and begin playing it. He makes the acquaintance of the girl, whose name is Barbara, because she sells snacks for the busy 1 2

3

Cited in Helmut Bachmaier (ed.), Franz Grillparzer, ‘Der arme Spielmann’: Erläuterungen und Dokumente (Stuttgart, 1986), p. 130. John Irving, ‘Garp’s Dismissal of the Poor Fiddler’, in Clifford Albrecht Bernd (ed.), Grillparzer’s ‘Der arme Spielmann’. New Directions in Criticism (Columbia, SC, 1988), pp. 45–47. Cited in Bachmaier, Erläuterungen und Dokumente, p.135.

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employees at his workplace. Although she is not his social peer (the daughter of a grocer, while his father is a holder of public office and the recipient of the honorific title of ‘Hofrat’), he forms a tentative relationship with her and her father, with the prospect of marriage becoming a reality on the death of his own father and Jakob’s inheritance. When he loses his inheritance as a result of the same ineptitude that characterises all his attempts to do anything practical at all, the girl rejects him too, quite properly since he cannot offer her realistic prospects, and she marries a butcher, who can. Although devastated by this turn of events, the poor musician recovers and makes his deeply inadequate music into his life’s content, both seeking an extremely modest living by means of it, and playing it as a form of private religious devotion. The end of the story moves forward from the time of the opening encounter to take in the aftermath of the death of the poor musician, his funeral and a visit by the narrator to the butcher’s family, from which it becomes clear that Barbara’s feelings about Jakob were deep and genuine, although we do not know exactly what they were. * * * Two things happened in 1830 that are germane. There was a revolution in Paris and a flood in Vienna. When, in 1831, Franz Grillparzer began to compose Der arme Spielmann, these two events will have been present to his mind along with a third – the ancient St Bridget’s Day celebrations which took place every year on the Brigittenau, a then still more or less undeveloped area separated by the Danube Canal from the inner city of Vienna. He wove them together to compose the framing narrative of his story. The text begins with an extended description of the popular festival, which is the occasion upon which Jakob attracts the narrator’s attention. The masses that pour from the inner city across the bridge to the Brigittenau, are likened to the waterway itself that streams at a right angle to them. The – in 1831 – inevitably disturbing connotation of any large popular crowd movement is hinted at, although Grillparzer actually softened – but did not remove – the allusion to the recent unrest in Paris (which in fact left Vienna undisturbed)


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when he returned to the story later.4 The story encourages this political association anyway in the first paragraph by referring to the levelling nature of the occasion, at which social privilege is suspended for the duration of the festivities. The crowd, released from the constriction of the bridge, is described as ‘ein weiter, tosender See, sich ergießend in alles deckender Überschwemmung’ (p. 37). At the end, this metaphor has become reality. It is in the course of the great flood which in January 1830 inundated the low-lying parts of Vienna, especially the Leopoldstadt, causing upwards of 70 fatalities and great devastation, that Jakob has met his death. In a final variant of the image cluster,5 tears stream down the face of the woman he loved but was too inept to win, and on this point the story ends. Grillparzer left the manuscript for years, and only took it up again in the early 1840s, when there was talk that urban expansion and neglect was about to put an end to the famous traditional Brigittenkirchtag in its familiar form for ever. The Novelle was finally published in 1847, but with an 1848 imprint, a year in which the floods of history did indeed enter the city of Vienna. Counterposed against this complex setting, made up of objective forces with differing moral implications, we have the encounter between playwright-narrator and the educated but inept musician. These two artist figures add up to something like Franz Grillparzer.6 Grillparzer is Austria’s most celebrated neo-classical playwright: his dates are 1791– 1872. He enjoyed some outstanding successes (notably Sappho, first performed 1818, Ein treuer Diener seines Herrn, performed 1828, Der 4

5 6

See Franz Grillparzer, Sämtliche Werke. Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. by August Sauer and Reinhold Backmann, 42 vols (Vienna, 1909–1948), Prosaschriften I (1930), p. 334. All further references to the text (and the editorial apparatus to it) are to this edition (henceforward HKA), and given in the main body of the text. This symbolic link has been established at least since Grillparzer’s editors noted it in 1930 (HKA, p. 351). See Walter Silz in Realism and Reality. Studies in the German Novelle of Poetic Realism (Chapel Hill, 1954), p. 72, and Heinz Politzer, Franz Grillparzer oder Das abgründige Biedermeier (Vienna/Munich/Zürich, 1972), pp. 385–86. See also Naomi Ritter, ‘Poet and Carnival: Goethe, Grillparzer, Baudelaire’, in Bernd (ed.), New Directions, pp. 337–351 (p. 349). The elaborate deconstructions of the narrator’s character as inhuman, etc. (notoriously John M. Ellis in Narration in the German Novelle (Cambridge, 1974)) seem to me to be red herrings.

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Traum ein Leben, performed 1834, and he was a figure of distinction, even brilliance, in the censorship-ridden culture of Vienna during the Metternich years. Words of his were set to music by Schubert, whose death, as well as that of Beethoven, he publicly commemorated. Yet despite his fame he suffered from the very start of his public career (the fate tragedy Die Ahnfrau, premiered in 1817) from a sense of shame at the self-exposure involved in writing plays for public performance: ‘Es ist etwas in mir, das sagt, es sei eben so unschicklich das Innere nackt zu zeigen als das Äußere’7 (a remark that might throw some light on Kafka’s gnomic judgement). And throughout his life he was plagued by doubts about his talent. Demoralisation over the failure of his adaptation of the Hero and Leander myth, Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen, performed at the famous Burgtheater in 1831, is thought to have been the reason he stopped work on Der arme Spielmann. A further failure (Weh dem, der lügt, 1838) led to his withdrawal from all public performance of his works. His relationships with women were as complicated as Kafka’s,8 and it is noteworthy in our context that he accused himself of cold-heartedness in observing one of his mistresses in order to provide material for his dramatisation of the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, Das goldene Vliess.9 Grillparzer’s experience as an artist, was therefore deeply divided. On one hand, that of being in fact a public figure, with the confidence but also the sense of emotional vampirism that this can entail. On the other, that of being inwardly ashamed of the self-betrayal entailed by artistic activity and the associated anxiety of being without the talent to redeem this subjectivity by objectifying it as art. These two aspects are channelled into the two fictional figures of our Novelle. The author splits himself into two, the detached and cold observer and the hopeless but authentic performer,10 and stages an encounter between them which gives us the story. In a loose and general sense we can talk about a self-encounter, yet this is not a straightforwardly introspective or autobiographical work. The kind of gesture of self-consciousness, perhaps we might call it self7 8 9 10

HKA, Tagebücher und literarische Skizzenhefte I (1914), p. 91 [1817, T204]. Cf. Bachmaier, Erläuterungen und Dokumente, p. 68. See W.E.Yates, Franz Grillparzer. A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 7, 18. Basing him in fact upon a character Grillparzer knew who disappeared from Leopoldstadt during the flood, see HKA, p. 308.


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examination or self-doubt, involved, can be suggested by reference to the question of genre. It was rare for Grillparzer to write literature about the present: his plays tend, in neo-classical and Shakespearean style, to be universalising, drawing plots from fable, myth or history. In this prose text by a dramatist the distance required by literary decorum from self and contemporary circumstances is reduced. At the same time, remember that for Grillparzer, as for Kleist, whose Erzählungen incidentally Grillparzer admired,11 to write in prose was a step down from the poetry of – often verse – drama, towards a more demotic idiom. In a diary entry in 1837, Grillparzer wrote: ‘Die Novelle ist das Herabneigen der Poesie zur Prosa, der Roman das Heraufstreben der Prosa zur Poesie’.12 The proper generic ascription for the story is a matter for debate.13 Grillparzer insisted that it should not be designated a Novelle when he sent the manuscript to the publisher in 1847, for fear that his work should be confused with that of the Romantics.14 Yet when Paul Heyse rescued the tale from oblivion in 1871 by publishing it in his Deutscher Novellenschatz, Grillparzer no longer had an objection to the term as applied to his story. What is especially revealing in our context here, namely the question of the work in relation to authorial selfconsciousness, is that the story itself, as we read and think about it, seems to play between these two kinds of prose: one looking down from poetry to prose, the other up the other way. Generically, it takes place in a contested space between poetry and prose. The encounter on the occasion of St Bridget’s day has a distinct Novelle feel about it, not only in that we are here within a framing device, but also in the symbolic figure of the poor player, the very oddity of which seems to ask for the kind of Novelle-like heightening and

11 12 13

14

See HKA, pp. 287–91. HKA, Tagebücher und literarische Skizzenhefte, 4 (no year), p. 194 [1837, T3281]. See, for instance, Benno von Wiese, ‘Franz Grillparzer. Der arme Spielmann’, in Die deutsche Novelle von Goethe bis Kafka. Interpretationen (Düsseldorf, 1956), pp. 134–53, esp. pp. 150–51. See, for instance, Wolfgang Paulsen, ‘Der gute Bürger Jakob. Zur Satire in Grillparzers “Armem Spielmann”’, Colloquia Germanica, 2 (1968), 272–98, (291– 92).

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interpretation we might expect from a man of letters such as we know the narrator to be.15 But when Jakob’s story proper starts, we find ourselves in a world which feels much more like a proper novel than a Novelle.16 The anomalous symbolic apparition immediately assumes a social identity: my father was so and so, a name the narrator recognises, such that the symbol and its interpreter are levelled to the same historical-social plane. With this, the tension of the story switches from: ‘what is the deeper significance of this strange apparition?’ to the essentially novelistic question of: ‘how did that identity come to be exchanged for this one?’ In the realistic modern city world of the novel, unlike the basically rural world of the Novelle, identity changes because society is mobile. There are rises and falls, surprises, and especially disappointments, all embedded in the primarily financial causality of modern life. As befits the world of the novel, Jakob’s destiny is determined by a mixture of psychological and financial considerations. His simplicity condemns him to demotion within what is clearly a predatory environment. The topography of the city with its juxtapositon of the classes leads to the danger of contamination across class divides. There are details of business practices. Barbara’s father has suspect tips about investment. Jakob’s ambition to start his own business with his paternal inheritance reflects the proliferation of industrial information and transcription bureaux in the Vienna of the 1840s.17 But for his excessive gullibility he might have succeeded, and with a bit of luck he might have held off long enough to be able to put his paternal inheritance into the proposition of Barbara’s to buy up the Putzladen down the street and make a go of it. Ways into commercial life are open to him. The commodification of services beckons. As things fall out, he is condemned to his destiny as a pauper because he loses his inheritance through the sort of fraud you expect in the nineteenth-century metropolis, and with it his slim chance of marriage. 15

16 17

For the theme of interpretation in the story, see Roland Heine, ‘Ästhetische oder existentielle Integration? Ein hermeneutisches Problem des 19. Jahrhunderts in Grillparzers Erzählung “Der arme Spielmann”’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 46 (1972), 650–83. Friedrich Gundolf saw an anticipation of Zola and Maupassant in Grillparzer’s story. See Bachmaier, Erläuterungen und Dokumente, p. 137. See HKA, p. 311.


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But it would be a misrepresentation to claim that Jakob’s story was entirely novelistically secular. It is also a religious parable about naïve piety, with strong essentialist elements. Jakob’s core experience is a convergence of desire with a sense of religious revelation and euphoria about the possibility of expressing this all through the medium of the violin. When he hits upon the idea of picking up his old instrument to frame a response to the feelings inspired in him by Barbara’s song: ‘da war es, als ob Gottes Finger mich angerührt hätte. Der Ton drang in mein Inneres hinein und aus dem Innern wieder heraus’ (p. 54). His attitude to music in general is peculiar. He wants to play the song he has heard Barbara sing and that means so much to him, however he does not have the music: ‘Ich konnte daher nicht das und das, sondern nur überhaupt spielen’ (p. 55, my emphasis). His experience of music is religious: ‘das jeweilige Was der Musik, mit Ausnahme jenes Lieds, [war mir] immer gleichgültig […] und [ist es auch] geblieben […] bis zum heutigen Tag. Sie spielen den Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart und den Sebastian Bach, aber den lieben Gott spielt Keiner’ (p. 55). The effect of this juxtaposition of the metonymic novelistic world and the symbolic Novelle world within Jakob’s story is that they constantly jostle each other, trying to keep distinct from each other, then colliding and mutually distorting one another, sometimes catastrophically, sometimes comically. Jakob’s first response to the narrator’s remark that he is ‘lüstern’ to hear the old man’s history is to resist from his timeless religious place: ‘Ich habe keine Geschichte. Heute wie gestern, und morgen wie heute. Übermorgen freilich und weiter hinaus, wer kann das wissen? Doch Gott wird sorgen, der weiß es’ (p. 50). Yet he then discovers himself, as it were, in the time-space continuum of novelistic reality, ‘es gibt denn doch eine Art Geschichte. Erzählen wir die Geschichte!’ (p. 53). Jakob’s living circumstances – the very terms after all in which his metaphorical being is realistically located in the topography of the city – convey this non-dialectical push-and-pull relation between symbol and ordinary circumstances. He lives at 34 Gärtnergasse: there is something metropolitan and novelistic about knowing the exact address. But this address is deeply symbolic, it not only combines the rural and the urban (the gardener’s alley), but also contains within it the transcendental and the material (the number 34 links the Trinity and the four elements – it is the number of Hans Castorp’s room in the Der Zauberberg). Jakob lives

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on the first floor, which, as the narrator observes, would suggest that he lives among ‘die Vornehmen’ (as would befit his real social identity), but which in one sense is not there at all: ‘Das Haus hat zwar eigentlich nur ein Erdgeschoß’, says Jakob (p. 45). He thus lives symbolically above the ordinary real inhabitants of the city, but in reality he lives in reduced inner-city circumstances: next to the roof-space of this single storey building there is a little room which he shares with two apprentice boys. Within the room there is the best-known example of all of this strange mingling of registers. Jakob has drawn a chalk line down the middle of the room to demarcate the territories. On his side everything is perfectly tidy – so to speak symbolic – on the other everything is in total squalor. The non-reciprocal or non-dialectic nature of this juxtaposition is then wittily conveyed when Jakob explains to the narrator that although the apprentices don’t respect the tidy line he has drawn, he does. The most striking melodramatic or tragi-comic effects of this mixing of styles arise in the context of Jakob’s love for Barbara.18 There is a tradition of idealising women in German literature, but there is also an inverted version of this, whereby the woman is ‘idealised’ as real so that the man can be represented as problematic. Examples are Gretchen in Faust and Nettchen in Keller’s Kleider machen Leute. Barbara belongs to this tradition, indeed she anticipates Nettchen’s famous ‘keine Romane mehr’ when she says ‘Lassen Sie das Musizieren und denken Sie auf die Notwendigkeit’ (p. 72). Yet there is a categorical divide between Barbara, playing this role on the realistic side, and Jakob playing his role (and his violin) on the symbolic one. On the realistic side they never mention the musical experience that gave rise to their relationship, if their chaste, tentative acquaintance really deserves that name. Barbara feels that you should either sing or shut up about it, and the mundane circumstances of their ordinary lives mean that singing itself is out of the question – you can’t sing in the shop, and Jakob is not permitted to enter the back room of the premises which Barbara shares with her father. One day Jakob enters the shop unnoticed as Barbara is singing quietly to herself: ‘es war das Lied, mein Lied!’ Suddenly the naturalistic setting is invaded by an army of diminutives, emissaries of 18

The representation of Barbara is a link to contemporary melodrama; see HKA, p. 320.


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an embarrassing folksy lyricism: ‘Sie aber zwitscherte wie eine Grasmücke, die am Bache das Hälsein wäscht und das Köpfchen herumwirft und die Federn sträubt und wieder glättet mit dem Schnäblein’. Jakob is suddenly in the poetic countryside ‘Mir war, als ginge ich auf grünen Wiesen’. At once his core experience, the undivided state is present: ‘[ich] war schon so nahe, daß das Lied nicht mehr von außen, daß es aus mir herauszutönen schien, ein Gesang der Seelen’ (pp. 68–69). Transported he embraces her from behind – one can imagine how welcome this surprise will have been to one stretching on tiptoe to try and reach something on a high shelf. She spins round furiously and delivers one of the Ohrfeigen for which she is – as it now turns out, justly – renowned. This juddering effects of this collision continue. Jakob’s head is in a spin from the gigantic blow he has just sustained, but the stars before his eyes seem to him like ‘Himmelslichter’. Barbara herself bounces back and, again as you would expect, feels sorry for her over-reaction and kisses Jakob on the cheek. You get the distinct sense that Jakob, in recounting this moment, can still feel the touch of the two warm real human lips. It’s out of time… At the time he loses control again, and lunges after her. She runs into the living room and closes the glass door behind her. He then – another famous moment – returns the kiss, but through the pane of glass. The interior fixture doubles as a symbol of an invisible but uncrossable divide. The mixture of pathos and bathos, embarrassment and sublimity, is conveyed by the circumstance that this sad episode from a comically inept courtship remains with Jakob as ‘Der Glückstag meines Lebens’ (p. 70). Jakob’s musicianship also bears the marks of two different worlds. Gordon Birrell argues that the horrendous caterwauling produced by Jakob with his playing is not simply the effect of a lack of talent and of his cracked instrument. On the contrary, Jakob knows very well what he is doing, namely employing only pure tonal relationships, whilst ignoring all sense of rhythm – that is, of time – in his music. In his solitary devotion – his nightly extemporising – he repeats natural intervals over and over again, in what Birrell calls ‘a theology of music. The presence of God is mediated tonally.’19 When he plays for public consumption he makes a compromise to the extent that he plays the compositions of 19

‘Time, Timelessness, and Music in Grillparzer’s Spielmann’, in Bernd (ed.), New Directions, pp. 233–53 (p. 241).

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famous composers – rather than the pure meditation of his private prayer – but since he plays them according to his own impossibly pure atemporal musical practice they are unintelligible to the listener. Jakob is forced to bring himself into the world, and this produces distortion. It is the same with his ‘Geschichte’. Once he begins to tell it, as we saw, the pure moments – the music, the kiss – are communicable only embedded in a narrative which distorts them and is distorted by them, into a farcical, melodramatic tragi-comedy. So much, then, for Jakob’s story. When it is over the narrator does what he does best: distance himself. We return to the frame, and with it, so it seems, to the aesthetic space of the Novelle, with its Will to symbol and style. The closing of a frame is indicated by the fact that the final scene falls on a Sunday, just as the first one had done. The general effect of the closing part of the frame is to transfigure Jakob from a holy fool incongruously caught in the nineteenth-century metropolis into a symbolic image. It is a process of intensification like that described by Nicholas Boyle in the first essay in this volume. A symbolic configuration, the trademark of the German Novelle as a literary art form, is distilled from the poor musician’s story. This happens in stages. First, there is the fact that the poor musician is dead. His life has therefore acceded to its complete meaning, and whatever that may be, it cannot change. The moment of his death seems to have confirmed the authenticity of what his inner ear can hear: ‘[er] richtete […] sich plötzlich im Bette auf, wendete Kopf und Ohr seitwärts, als ob er in der Entfernung etwas gar Schönes hörte, lächelte, sank zurück und war tot’ (p. 79). Then there is the manner of his death. It encapsulates his life. On one hand, he has demonstrated the invisible heroism that guarantees the authenticity of the other-worldly light that shines within him. On the other, he has demonstrated the characteristic ineptitude of his every attempt to engage with the real – which is to say commercial – world, catching his death needlessly by returning to the flooded building downstairs in order to rescue his landlord’s tax ledgers and an insignificant amount of paper money. His death has therefore summed up his life, leaving in concentrated and final form an impression of this ambiguous figure. Jakob’s symbolic apotheosis is then reinforced by the presence of his violin on the wall of Barbara’s dining room, alongside a mirror ‘mit einer Art Symmetrie geordnet’ and opposite a crucifix (p. 81). Although


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one might argue about the exact weight of this symbolism, what one can say about it, and this is perhaps the main thing, it that it is a symbol. Indubitably, it links the musician with Christ, and the presence of the mirror, in which only the crucifix, yet not the violin is reflected, might be held to remind us that the inner Jakob was turned towards God, but innocent of all vanity about himself as an artist. A further transfiguring intensification takes place when Barbara takes the violin down off the wall, unwilling to sell it to the narrator who has made a generous offer to buy it, dusts it down and places it in a drawer, and, in the final tableau of the story, is revealed in a flood of tears. This repeats the worst day of Jakob’s life, when Barbara had also performed the office of a wife for him by doing his laundry and bringing it to him and placing it in a drawer, had then told him that she could never marry him, had likewise been in floods of tears, and had left making a sign of the cross in the air to bless the poor man who was beyond her help in any more practical way. Yet the repetition of this earlier melodramatic, but nevertheless terrible scene of separation, is also its artistic redemption, since Jakob’s suffering is now removed from it, and it stands instead as the symbolically purified image of suffering, reminscent, as such, of the Cross itself. Barbara is now no longer a snivelling, panting real woman, miserable, angry, disappointed yet pragmatic, as she had been in the realist-melodramatic mode, but a weeping icon upon whose unspeaking affect the story closes.20 The repetition of the earlier scene but on another, symbolic level seems to rescue Jakob once and for all from the risk that, in his perfect inadequacy, he could disappear without trace in the undifferentiating and loveless world of the modern city. But on the other hand: if the symbolic construction I have just outlined transfigures the ambiguity of the poor musician, it also by the same token retains, indeed amplifies, it. The circumstances of Jakob’s death in the flood are as pathetic as they are sublime. We note also that the symmetrical configuration on the wall is given only to be taken away, when Barbara removes the violin and puts it out of sight. Her tears at the end are certainly a silent expression of affect, in an artistically very

20

Some commentators have argued that Barbara becomes a mythical figure at the end of the story. See Heine, ‘Ästhetische oder existentielle Integration?’, p. 680.

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prominent place at the end of the text, but they are also the hapless response of an ordinary woman. Looked at in this way, the story could not be less like Goethe’s exemplary Novelle. There the little boy played a melody ‘die keine war’ on his flute, but one that was yet beautiful and a step in the upward stylistic pathway from prose to poetry, from novella to Novelle, ‘eine Tonfolge ohne Gesetz, und vielleicht eben deswegen so herzergreifend.’21 Here the magic has definitely failed, and the innocent figure produces only a ‘höllisches Konzert’. Moreover, there is something strange about this frame, this circle that goes, yes, from Sunday to Sunday, and offers a sort of apotheosis in poetry of the inner meaning of the urban anecdote with which it opened. What kind of frame is it that is in fact constructed from the repeated and complex image of inundation? The crowd streaming across the boundaries of the city, the intimations of revolution, the terrible catastrophe at the end in which our hero perishes? Framing is one thing, flooding seems more or less the opposite! So, we need to correct our original description of the impression with which the story leaves us. What we have is the achieved image of the poor musician, set against a series of images which betoken inundation.22 That is, after all, how we first encountered him, standing out anomalously against the tide of the crowd; it is what caught the narrator’s eye, and what led to the story we have just read. The incongruity remains, despite the gesture of framing and shaping which we might justifiably expect to have rounded off the transformation of the anomalous ‘unerhörte Begebenheit’ into a meaningful ‘symbolisches Ereignis’. What are we to make of this? In order to answer this question, I need to return to the opening part of the frame. By the end, as we have just argued, the text as a whole has given us an aesthetically divided impression. On the one hand, the old 21

22

Goethes Werke, ed. by E. Trunz, (‘Hamburger Ausgabe’), 14 vols (Hamburg then Munich, 1951–68), Vol. 6, p. 507. In fact, the motif of music as a social-aesthetic integrating factor was already an anachronism at the same time that Goethe was offering it. See Thomas Horst, ‘Musik als Motiv in der neueren Erzählliteratur’, Bachmaier, Erläuterungen und Dokumente, pp. 104–113 (p. 109). Note too how the poetically represented death of the poor fiddler is juxtaposed with the unassimilated carnage caused by the flood, which surpasses the ability of ‘gerichtliche Konstatierung’ (p. 78) to contain it, and of the narrator to describe it.


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fiddler, the Novellenhaftes symbol, and on the other the forces of nature and history poised to efface all trace of it. The whole effort and progress of the text has therefore failed really to integrate and transfigure aesthetically the anomaly which first gave rise to it. Now this implies a significant defeat for the order of representation very confidently set before us at the start. This is the lengthy and assured, but rather thoughtless, description by the narrator, of the St Bridget’s Day celebration. It is a discourse intertextually suspended between Goethe’s travel writing and contemporary journalism.23 They are the words of a man not plagued by doubts about the constitution of the world and his own place in it. He identifies himself as both independent, and drawn to the world as a passionate but ironic observer: – als ein Liebhaber der Menschen […] besonders wenn sie in Massen für einige Zeit der einzelnen Zwecke vergessen und sich als Teile des Ganzen fühlen, in dem denn doch zuletzt das Göttliche liegt – als einem solchen ist mir jedes Volksfest ein eigentliches Seelenfest, eine Wallfahrt, eine Andacht. (p. 39)

There is a tendency to think in maxims, to generalise confidently, even complacently. There is something of the cultural organicism of Herder in this holistic assertion.24 And just as there is an untroubled coherence embracing the narrator’s attitude to himself, the crowd and God, so for him there is no discontinuity – although there is a distinction – between the phenomena of real life and the heightened reflection of it in art: Von dem Wortwechsel weinerhitzter Karrenschieber spinnt sich ein unsichtbarer, aber ununterbrochener Faden bis zum Zwist der Göttersöhne, und in der jungen Magd, die halb wider Willen, dem drängenden Liebhaber seitab vom Gewühl der Tanzenden folgt, liegen als Embryo die Julien, die Didos und die Medeen. (p. 39)25

This, then, is the order of representation that is thrown into doubt by the appearance of the poor musician, a doubt that the whole text does 23 24 25

See HKA, pp. 333–38. On Grillparzer’s representation of the carnival, see Ritter, ‘Poet and Carnival’. See Politzer, Das abgründige Biedermeier, p. 385. Such is the hubristic confidence that Grillparzer is attributing to his narrator-self that no distinction is made between one of his own creations (Medea) and that of Shakespeare (Juliet).

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not overcome. If we approach the text as registering disorder in the field of representation, as I suggest we should, then the flooding motif can be seen to include in its implications Grillparzer’s frequently expressed dismay at the blurring of the boundaries between poetry and prose,26 for which he felt the forces of modernity, foremost among them Romanticism, to be responsible. For him, this undermined the basis upon which any literary art was possible. In the tides of this historical levelling, what once had had the cultural and spiritual status of literary art is now lamentably exposed. The poor musician has the symbolic function of representing not the art of music, but the art in literature.27 The use of music to stand in the place of poetry is a meaningful substitution. Whatever the specific differential is between poetry and language in general, it now appears incoherent, grotesque and homeless. At the point where once literary (specifically dramatic) art had stood there now stands ‘der arme Spielmann’, the disinherited son of Schiller’s ‘Spieltrieb’, by means of which German idealism had only recently still dreamed of stemming and sublimating the forces of nature and history.28 Now, only distorted attitudes can arise in response to this sad anachronism, and about these Grillparzer and his story are quite precise. The first is that of the narrator. This is Grillparzer’s preferred selfimage, the one he needs and desires if he is to continue as a public artist. But, as we have suggested, the discourse by means of which this selfimage is held in place is challenged by the story. He fails to transform this urban anecdote into art. The fact is that he has no access to the inner value represented by Jakob, whatever that may be. His response is purely external. This is in contrast to the more admiring rewriting of Grillparzer’s story by Adalbert Stifter, Der arme Wohltäter (later Kalkstein). Stifter thought Der arme Spielmann a ‘masterpiece’,29 and in his version the inner worth of a social misfit is the moral yield of the text. This is not the case here. The narrator’s interest in Jakob is determined by a desire for gratification (for instance, he ‘zittert vor Begierde 26 27 28 29

See, for instance, Yates, Franz Grillparzer, pp. 229–34; Bachmaier, Erläuterungen und Dokumente, p. 36. Cf. HKA, p. 314. For the literary-historical implications of ‘Spielmann’, see Paulsen, ‘Der gute Bürger Jakob’, p. 287. See Bachmaier, Erläuterungen und Dokumente, p. 124.


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nach dem Zusammenhange’ of the old man’s story (p. 42)). For him Jakob can only be accessed by means of his exchange value. Repeatedly he offers money where respect would have been in place (pp. 45, 77–78, 81). But more than this, in telling this story (a telling which is a part, but only a part, of Grillparzer’s fiction), he appropriates and resells the curious figure of the poor fiddler. He is driven by a mixture of higher and lower materialism, ‘anthropologischer Heißhunger’ (p. 42), to get a ‘story’ for the modern reader’s consumption. As such the narrator, despite himself, is identified as part of the tide of commercial exploitation that pervades the story.30 This is one aspect of the distortion that threatens to engulf literary art, once the distinction between poetry and prose has been undermined by the Romantics. If the material life of poetry is now undefended against commodification, its inner meaning is undefended against sentimentality. Hence the misunderstanding on the part of John Irving’s characters quoted at the beginning of this essay. The story is not sentimental, but it is about sentimentality. Barbara has both feet on the ground, but her inner life – realistically – is sentimental. Her appreciation of Jakob has no purchase in the practical world. It is an attachment to unlived possibilities that might be redeemed in poetry, but is only weakness or indulgence in the age of prose. Her song is no Herderian expression of the folk soul, but a purchasable Gassenhauer. When she takes the violin off the wall, she may defend it against the threat of commodification – she is preventing the narrator from buying it – but she also draws it down into the domestic world and hides it from sight. Like the song, it becomes no more than an artifact briefly coloured by private affect, with no cultural significance. It is in this sense that the flood of her tears connects compellingly with the other floods of the story’s leaking frame. They announce the incursion of kitsch into the domain of art. The story thus expresses an unhappy sense on the part of Grillparzer that the very meaning of literary or dramatic art is changing forever. It – and he – are undefended against the levelling effects of Romantic modernity: commodification and sentimentality. But this cultural-historical insight is not, I think, what makes the story so good. 30

On commercialism in the story, see Ehrhard Bahr, ‘Geld und Liebe im Armen Spielmann: Versuch einer sozioliterarischen Interpretation’, in Bernd (ed.), New Directions, pp. 300–10.

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What makes it outstanding is that it does not side either with art or with the forces that threaten it. It does not condemn the musician, nor his two significant others who can do no other than fail to frame an adequate response to him, but nor does it moralise or sentimentalise or see value where there is none to be seen. It neither bewails the passing of the symbolic mode, nor does it ignore this passing, but uses symbolism to express it. This means effectively – and this is surely a landmark achievement – that it it creates a timeless image of the sense that timelessness is a thing of the past.

JOHN GUTHRIE

Droste-Hülshoff, Die Judenbuche

‘Ringsum kein Baum außer der Judenbuche’:1 this uncanny image, couched in one of those brief, chilling statements which are so typical of the Novelle, reinforces that sense of the mysterious in Die Judenbuche (1842) – quite apart from its status as a ‘mystery story’. This is something which was felt fairly early on in the history of the work’s reception2 and it has been reiterated in recent times. Of the other examples of shorter prose fiction in this volume, it is the only one with a tree as its title, a part of nature, a feature of the landscape. That tree, with its enigmatic Hebrew inscription beckoning for interpretation, is one that has given rise to considerable speculation. As a Novelle, Die Judenbuche is in other ways unique. It is the first and only completed story by the Westphalian woman poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. It is the work by which she became known (briefly) during her own lifetime, and it is probably the work by which she is best known, though some of her poems would also compete for that distinction. (She wrote mostly poetry and letters, though there is a narrative element in both of them.) Just as the story stands isolated in her career, so it is isolated in the landscape of nineteenth-century German prose

1

2

All references are to Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, ed. by Winfried Woesler, Vol. 5, 1: Prosa: Text, ed. by Walter Huge (Tübingen, 1978). Quotation here from p. 41. By Julian Schmidt: ‘mancher Umstand [bleibt] im Dunkeln’. Die Grenzboten Vol. 4 (Leipzig, 1859), p. 449, quoted in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, ‘Die Judenbuche’. Erläuterungen und Dokumente, ed. by Walter Huge (Stuttgart, 1983), pp. 60–62. We may distinguish between such readings, which locate mystery in the events of the story itself, and more recent ones that suggest the story’s concern with the relativity of all judgement, e.g., the influential interpretation by Heinrich Henel, ‘Annette von Droste-Hülshoff: Erzählstil und Wirklichkeit’, in Festschrift für Bernhard Blume, ed. by Egon Schwarz et al. (Göttingen, 1967), pp. 146–72.

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fiction. It can be seen as an early monument of German Poetic Realism,3 but the more we consider it, the more unique it appears. Attempts to account for it in histories of the German Novelle are also not entirely satisfactory. At first appearance there seems to be the Goethean ‘unerhörte Begebenheit’, but the Jew’s murder is not in fact a unique event, it is one of a series of murders. And if we say that Friedrich’s life is the main focus, we might just squeeze it into the idea of an ‘EntwicklungsNovelle’ – but this would be to stretch a point. As for ‘Wendepunkte’, there is no general agreement, and as I also hope to show, the idea of a ‘Dingsymbol’ is problematic. Die Judenbuche seems to stand apart from the mainstream, both from the popular literature of its time and the polished and formally perfect Novelle that flourished in the nineteenth century. It cannot be said that it became a model for modern German prose writing, it did not found a school, or become a landmark in the development of modern fiction (as was the case with Heine’s Die Harzreise), if we except perhaps a few feminist writers who, however, seem to be drawn towards Droste more for biographical than stylistic reasons. Its uniqueness, of course, is also a sign of originality, proof of the difficulty of imitation and of its being a landmark. I think the story’s uniqueness is due in no small measure to a blend of different elements that can be appreciated by looking at its origins. It is, to begin with, deeply rooted in its landscape: it breathes the atmosphere of provincial Westphalia in the eighteenth century, its language, its social customs and problems, the characteristics of its people, their physiognomy, their prejudices and beliefs. Indeed, one of the main impetuses for writing the work was ethnographical, for Droste was interested in a kind of amateur sociology and the piece was planned as part of a larger scale work on regional life. Combined with this is the interest that Droste had in story-telling and in criminal literature, in which she was well read. The other main source for her story is the account given by her uncle, August von Haxthausen, of a murderer, Hannes Winckelhannes, which she heard often retold and which had been published as Geschichte eines Algierer-Sklaven.4 It is a crude but authentic story set in 3 4

Walter Silz, ‘Die Judenbuche’, Realism and Reality. Studies in the German Novelle of Poetic Realism (Chapel Hill, 1954), pp. 36–51. Reprinted in, for example, Peter Leiser, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, ‘Die Judenbuche’. Interpretation und Hinweise (Hollfeld, 1983).


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Northern Africa, in which the facts are cut and dried and in which considerable emphasis is placed on the murderer’s time in exile. Droste changes this emphasis and introduces many features which contribute to making the work a gripping piece of mystery. ‘Ringsumher kein Baum außer der Judenbuche.’ This is actually the fourth mention of the tree – if we discount the title – and it occurs on the penultimate page. It again raises the question of how far we are to see this tree as the story’s central symbol, an idea already established in our minds by the title (a title with which Droste was apparently happy, although she did not invent it herself).5 At the end of the story the tree becomes especially prominent: with its brutal inscription it acts as a reminder of the Jew’s murder and the idea of revenge and retribution, ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ It is not just a human idea of justice, but one which seems to be linked to nature itself as well as with the psyche of the murderer, and therefore to human nature. It is consistent with the mysterious atmosphere that emanates from the landscape. The tree seems to tower above its observers and act as a reminder of the inescapability of the consequences of one’s acts. It is here, therefore, at the end of the story that we feel the tree is fully established as a memorable symbol. Indeed, half of the six mentions of the tree that occur in the story occur here, on its last two pages. It is not therefore ubiquitous. And this leads me to suggest another way of approaching the story. If we think back over its course and ask whether this tree has really figured as its central symbol, then the answer is a clear ‘no’: it does not have the importance that a central symbol normally would have. It is only the title and the ending that draw attention to it. In fact, with the first mention of the ‘Buche’ it is not even clear that the same tree is meant. There is thus something mysterious about the tree itself. Symbols normally act as a kind of nodal point where meaning is brought together. Here, however, mystery and ambiguity seem to emanate from the very nature and identity of the tree.

5

For the standard view, see the edition of the Novelle by Peter Foulkes (Oxford, 1989), p. 60. Benno von Wiese regards the beech tree as a ‘Dingsymbol’ and attributes to it timeless, metaphysical qualities. See his analysis in Die deutsche Novelle von Goethe bis Kafka. Interpretationen, Vol. 1 (Düsseldorf, 1956), pp. 154–75.

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I would suggest that there is another network of symbolism fundamental to an understanding of the story. It is both distinct from and attached to the tree of the title. Droste has a very visual, pictorial style,6 and I think we understand the story best if we approach it through its imagery, in particular that of the animals. Critics have occasionally pointed this out, though they have also been slow to see its importance and recently it has been ignored. Interestingly, in the ‘Kulturkampf’ of the late nineteenth century, when Droste-Hülshoff was claimed as a Catholic author, words like ‘Schwein’ and ‘krepieren’ were expunged from the text. Margreth’s wonderfully earthy line, ‘Da bringen sie mir das Schwein wieder’ became the bland ‘Da bringen sie mir ihn wieder’. It is of course only to be expected that in a story set in a small rural village in the eighteenth century animal life should play a role; and this is part of the story’s texture of realism. But it also spills over into the area of its central symbols and meaning. It is important when considering the latter to approach the world in which the characters live, and this is not only the world of humans. In Droste’s source-story there are only two mentions of animals (‘Wild’; ‘Hunde’). In her reworking, however, she obviously intended them to have a prominent place. The most common animals in the story are pigs. The word is used, as it is now, as a term of abuse, and pigs are slaughtered for food. Running behind the pigs, a close second in terms of number, are cows and possibly goats. Friedrich, of course, becomes a cowherd. The cows (and goats) are followed numerically by dogs. In addition, there are occasional mentions of several different types of bird, of fish, cats, insects and (the corpse of) a horse. The animals in the story actually outnumber the humans, and there is an entire community of animals living alongside the human beings in this story. Humans are dependent on them for their existence, and to a large extent they are in control of them. In the eighteenth century, knowledge of animals advanced greatly, and the understanding of man’s relationship to animals also changed. In the Enlightenment – and we should remember that our story spans the period of the Enlightenment in Germany – the belief that man was at the top of the ladder of animal life, which had pertained for ages, became coupled with an optimistic belief in progress. There was the belief that man was closer to God than any other living being, and the fact that he could 6

See Silz, Realism and Reality, p. 43.


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understand this relationship, the confidence in his cognitive faculties and spiritual potential, are expressions of this. The diversity of the animal kingdom was held up as proof of God’s existence and praised especially in the nature poetry of the day,7 with even the smallest insect being celebrated in this way. Droste’s story does not, however, show an enlightened community. Prejudice is rife, education does not seem to be available, and even someone like the Baron of S., at the top of the social scale, thinks in terms of black-and-white categories. The legal system is basic, and religion does not play much of a role in regulating the lives of those in the community. There is perhaps just a glimmer of hope to be seen at the end of the story when Friedrich returns at Christmas to his native village and, walking through it, hears the soft strains of a carol (‘ein leiser Gesang’, p. 35) celebrating the birth of Christ. Perhaps the message is here that through poetry and music a community is able to transcend its horizons, reach out and feel itself part of the wider community of mankind. But this hope is disappointed with the story’s conclusion in which the Old Testament idea of justice seems to win the day. To return to the animal imagery. The overwhelming tendency in the story is to view them negatively, and pig, cow and dog are used as terms of abuse. Occasionally, however, there is some ambiguity, and it is these instances I want to consider first. After the meeting with Brandis, Friedrich is described as someone who glides through the half overgrown path with the careful long steps of the trade as quietly as a fox climbing up a chicken ladder (p. 20), or, a little later on, his eloquence is compared to that of a cock (p. 27), and his blond shock of hair is said to bob up and down like the head of a pike (p. 27). Now, while these comparisons might conceivably be positive or negative depending on the context, they are clearly intended to be ironical here. Hence: ‘Friedrich stolzierte umher wie ein Hahn’ (p. 27; my italics) implies the arrogance with which Friedrich behaves. These comparisons are all made by the narrator, who, on the one hand, is sharing the perspective of members of the community. On the other hand, however, the narrator stands outside the community and uses the animal comparison to make a comment on 7

Examples can be found in particular in the poetry of Brockes, Haller and Klopstock. Droste knew these writers, as she did much other literature of the eighteenth century. See Bernd Kortländer, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff und die deutsche Literatur: Kenntnis, ‘Beurteilung’, Beeinflussung (Münster, 1979).

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that community itself. For here is a community that allows some of its members to parade around others like a coxcomb, and they are apparently taken in by it. The comment which follows the comparison is: ‘und machte sein Recht als erster Elegant geltend’ (p. 27). While Friedrich may therefore appear to us as something of a slick young dandy, those at the event promote such behaviour. Thus Droste uses narrative perspective to enter the minds of members of a community as well as to comment on it. The other associations of animal imagery in the story can be divided into groups: those suggesting natural qualities and closeness to nature; those suggesting abject qualities; those suggesting social qualities and finally, those linked to death. To some extent the life associated with animals, the life of the forest, is shown to have positive aspects. The image of Friedrich lying in the grass with his dog (pp. 17, 18) is intended to conjure up the atmosphere of the idyll. The description of the moon and the sky, the fresh morning air, Friedrich leading the quiet life of a shepherd, whittling away at a willow branch, the birds twittering as dawn approaches, it seems like a care-free life. We might think we are in the same world as Goethe’s Werther.8 Friedrich himself had been earlier likened by Hülsmeyer to a deer (p. 10), which suggests that in nature he enjoys some measure of freedom. But this sense of the idyll is deceptive. No series of images or symbols is created that would suggest the permanent prospect of closeness to a natural way of life through the association with animals (in contrast to the nature poetry of the period). When the idyll is disturbed, it is by a sudden distracting light. Friedrich’s first reaction is animal-like. He starts up like a hunting dog and his next reaction is to blame his dog for failing to notice what has been happening. The idyll continues to be disrupted by the dialogue between Friedrich and Brandis, which is dominated by insult and abuse (based on animal language) and leads indirectly, with Friedrich’s misdirecting him, to the death of Brandis. Generalising, one might say that problems begin with social life; when 8

The story has several times been compared with Goethe’s novel, particularly its style and ending. See Karl Philip Moritz, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, ‘Die Judenbuche’. Sittengemälde und Kriminalnovelle, 2nd edn (Paderborn, 1989), p. 65.


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Friedrich meets people, things go wrong. The link between maladjustment in social life and nature is clear; the moral wrong of wood thieving is used as an example of the destruction of nature but also as a phenomenon that causes social problems. The inability to share the resources of nature amongst the members of a community has implications for the wider community. This can be seen against the background of the depiction of the nature idyll in German literature. I have referred to eighteenth-century traditions, but Droste had also rejected the example of Romanticism closer to her own time, in which, famously in Tieck, the woodland bird (‘Waldvogel’) is seen to be a symbol of the primeval unity and harmony of nature.9 Here the birds disappear; the song is replaced by the discord of human discourse. In the story, the ‘Waldvögel’ are not to be heard. They are replaced later by cocks and ostriches and more ominously, ravens. The latter suggests more a Wagnerian world: in Götterdämmerung, the final part of Wagner’s operatic tetralogy, the ‘Waldvögel’ of Siegfried’s idyll are replaced by the ravens coming home to Wotan. Droste’s world is even gloomier still, for there is no triumphant redemption through love. In her story these symbols are not Romantic clichés either, they are naturalistic images which grow organically into symbols. Animals, then, are associated with unpleasant aspects of human behaviour. This is nothing new, but it is the frequency with which this happens in a comparatively short story which calls for comment. Friedrich’s father is compared early in the story to a pig. The woodthieves are like goats; they are referred to as being led by their leading goat (‘Leitbock’, p. 4). Brandis, in the dialogue referred to, says he wishes to beat Friedrich like a dog (p. 19) and that he and his mother belong in a dog’s hovel (‘Hundeloch’, p. 19). When Johannes’ theft of butter is discovered at the village wedding Friedrich calls him ‘Lumpenhund!’ (p. 28). Public shame is linked to the animal name. Animal comparisons characterize not only interpersonal relationships at the lower end of society, they are used at all levels: the Baron notices on his return from village festivities a couple of figures he sees running before his carriage whom he refers to as ostriches, then as pigs (p. 29). Relationships between communities are also seen in terms of animal 9

Silz, Realism and Reality, pp. 40–41, suggests echoes of Tieck, but he does not enlarge on this.

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comparisons: ‘Packt den Juden! Wiegt ihn gegen ein Schwein!’ (p. 29), and the Turks think the Christians no better than dogs (p. 38). The language might be a result of the war being waged between them, but it is also a pointer to the lack of civility in the smallest community in Germany, the absence of friendship and humanity at all levels. It is significant that the only friendship between two individuals in the story, that between Friedrich and Johannes (incidentally a swineherd) is defined negatively, by the latter’s name, Niemand, by the confusion that exists between them, and by their gradual loss of identity. The source of the antagonism between groups in this society, e.g. that between the blue smocks and the rest of the community, or between the Jews and the rest of the community, is to be sought at the most basic level of interpersonal relationships. Human relationships, one might be tempted to say, have ‘gone to the dogs’. Animal comparisons are generally used to highlight negative aspects of human behaviour and relationships. One of the first and most striking comparisons to be made is between Friedrich’s uncle Simon and a pike. It is the pike’s eyes that distinguish the fish. In Westphalian folklore this is a symbol of shrewdness, sharpness, cunning, evil. It fits what else we know of him in the story where he is also described as a ‘feuriger Mann’ (p. 11), which Droste designates as a Westphalian type. His enterprising nature has another side to it. He comes to an unfortunate end after having been involved in shady deals. His influence on Friederich appears to be negative: he offers him brandy, he takes him into the woods alone and shows him the place where he father was found dead. There is a family resemblance between the two – Friedrich is later described as a pike when his shock of blond hair bobs up and down at a social gathering – and if one assumes that Friedrich becomes the murderer, then it seems logical to attribute some blame to his uncle Simon. But it is not as simple as this because Simon also appears to be capable of warmer feelings (p. 16), gives Friedrich money when he works for him, and misses him when he goes. The idea that Johannes Niemand is Simon’s illegitimate son (whom he has denied on the Bible) is essentially an idea that Friedrich’s mother entertains and which, like so much else, remains unconfirmed. All in all, it is a mixed, ambiguous picture that we receive of Simon, which means he certainly cannot be the sole cause of his nephew’s decline, and it is difficult to sympathise with critics who want to make him into the devil or enlist him in the service of


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other religious interpretations.10 The point of the animal comparison here seems to be that it highlights little more than some of those unappealing aspects of his behaviour as they appear to others. As if to alert us to the ambiguity of the text the narrator, after mentioning the family resemblance between Friedrich and his uncle, notes that when Friedrich followed him around with his eyes fixed to him it was like someone looking into a magic mirror with perturbed attentiveness (‘verstörter Aufmerksamkeit’, p. 11). Mirrors are notoriously unreliable predictors – as readers of Joanne K. Rowling’s books will know. Another character associated with animals is the Jew Aaron, who appears, decisively, as Friedrich’s creditor and adversary at the wedding. As well as being a money-lender Aaron is a butcher. Of course this would have been for religious reasons, but it is noteworthy that it should be highlighted and that the one murdered should also be a ‘murderer’. Aaron’s death is also linked to animals. He goes out one night to buy animals for slaughter and stay at his fellow butcher friend Salomon’s house. When he does not return, it is his wife who goes out with the ‘Schlächterhund’ to look for him. At the beech tree the dog wanders off and finds the body. If Aaron has been brutally murdered in search of animals, it is ironical that he is found by one. It is further ironical that Aaron’s putative murderer Friedrich is also found by a dog at the end of the story. It is not unusual for bodies to be found by dogs, it might be objected. But there is a parallelism in the story which goes beyond the ordinary. Friedrich not only treated his dog badly but was described as a hunting dog himself, as a deer and a fox, and now turns out to be hunted. So far I have been talking only of the male characters in the story. Male behaviour is traditionally more dog-like than is female. But Droste does not exempt her only named female character, Margret, from comparison with animals. When Mergel is married a second time and continues on the slippery slope of decline, ending up at night where animals sleep, in the barn, Margreth goes out, digs around in the earth, picks some herbs and returns to the house. As Peter Foulkes notes, the scene ‘has been subjected to much critical conjecture, ranging from 10

E.g. Heinz Rölleke, ‘Erzähltes Mysterium, Studie zur “Judenbuche” der Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistegeschichte, 42 (1968), pp. 399–426, discusses biblical allusions and points out that in the Bible Simon is father of Judas, who hanged himself on a tree.

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suggestions that her digging in the soil represents a death wish, to speculation that she picked herbs in order to prepare a sleeping potion, or indeed a poison’.11 What is missing here is the observation that this is really very animal-like behaviour. The expression, ‘die Erde aufwühlen’ reminds one of a dog or a mole rather than a human being. As such it appears to be an instinctive expression of frustration, the ultimate aim of which is indeed unclear. But it acquires significance by virtue of its link with the stratum of animal imagery in the story. In particular, it links up with Margreth’s own name, Mergel, about which, once again, there has been no small amount of speculation, ranging from the idea that ‘Mergel’, marl, represents the idea of being ‘ausgebrannt, mürbe’12 and therefore symbolises the fate of the family, to the idea that it helps the author to expose ‘layer by layer the conditions that even before the child was born or conceived, determined the man’s character or fate’.13 Rather than speculating on the metaphysical significance of the geological composition of marl, I would suggest its meaning can be seen it somewhat plainer terms: that marl, as earth, is the habitat of animals, from dogs to worms. It is where they live and die. Seen this way, its role chimes with the fatalism of the Old Testament inscription on the tree, evoking the idea of ‘dust to dust, ashes to ashes’. I have been implying that part of Droste’s aim was to provide a counterweight to possible idyllic and Romantic interpretations of nature through references to animals. Indeed, it is the case that the world of animals is much more closely associated with death than with life. When he is drunk at night, Friedrich’s father crawls into the barn and beds down on the straw. Later he is compared with a pig. And in what is perhaps one of the story’s few touching moments – Droste generally avoids sentimentality – he is laid by Friedrich, after having been found dead near an oak tree in the forest, onto a bed of straw. In an uncannily similar way, Simon, when he is found dead, is found on straw in a barn. Shortly before this, when he returns to the village after twenty eight years, Friedrich is offered, because of the lack of a real bed, a bed of 11 12

13

Die Judenbuche, p. 46. Heinz Rölleke, ‘“Kann man das Wesen gewöhnlich aus dem Namen lesen?” Zur Bedeutung der Namen in der “Judenbuche” der Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’, Euphorion, 70 (1976), pp. 409–14. Silz, Realism and Reality, p. 47.


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straw. That would not have been so exceptional in the eighteenth century, were it not for the fact that soon afterwards, he too is found dead. These references to barns and straw, the natural abode of animals, act as a kind of framework for the Novelle. Connecting these incidents is the fact that they are lonely deaths, ending lives without friendship and meaning. Man may be seen to have reverted to his animal state. There are other allusions to death linked to animals, which are woven into the story to support this view. One, of course, is the reference to the devastation of the forest caused by wood thieves who are compared with ‘Wanderraupen’ (p. 17). There is no Romantic attitude to the smallest insect here, simply the image of destruction caused by rampant animals. But there are more subtle allusions to this theme. When Friedrich is lying with his dog in the grass, he is not thinking of the insects (like Werther), he is carving a piece of wood. What he carves is the rough shape of the head of an animal (p. 17). The German is ‘ungeschlacht’. Although this word is derived from ‘Geschlecht’ rather than ‘schlachten’, to slaughter, the image of Friedrich carving the head of an animal is nevertheless a powerful one, suggesting perhaps a kind of instinctive behaviour which could result in harm; when we put it together with the fact of his maltreatment of his dog and the conversation with Brandis, it seems at least to imply something uncaring in his nature. I think it links up with the other mention of a dead animal, the retrieval of the skeleton of a horse on the Baron’s property. Even though this is supposed to be an anti-dark-arts-charm, the Baron connects it with theft and the find occurs three days or so before the disappearance of Aaron. But of course, and here we are up against the ambiguity of the text, the image of Friedrich carving the head of an animal can suggest other things. It may be suggesting even an affection for the world of animals, the desire to cling to an association with that world. I think it is erroneous to attribute unambiguous meaning to such images and symbols. This is a trap that scholars have often fallen into, and I hope to have shown why it is wrong by looking at the case of the animals. The story relies for its power on its naturalism as much as on the multivalency of its symbolism. It might be objected that this is a case of not seeing the trees for the animals. What we are left with at the end of the story is, after all, the tree with its Hebrew inscription, which is translated into German for us and in a sense links up neatly and tidily with the story’s title. Isn’t that the final image we are left with?

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‘Ringsumher kein Baum außer der Judenbuche.’ Yes, of course. But it is also a notoriously ambiguous image and one which has been the subject of much speculation, suggestions ranging from religious interpretations to Freudian ones (the tree as circumcised phallus)14 or symbols of alterity. But we have to be wary of barking up the wrong tree. What I have been suggesting is that we might see the tree as a feature of the landscape, which in turn is part of an environment inhabited by men and animals. It is that relationship with which the story is concerned. Let us remember that it is a dog that finds Friedrich’s body – Brandis’ son thinks it might be a cat which the animal has found.15 In a sense then, Friedrich has returned to the animal world. The Hebrew inscription may imply Old Testament justice, but it also represents simply the damage that has been done to nature by human nature when his animal instincts emerge. Walter Silz has summed this up by suggesting that Friedrich’s death is ‘inwardly […] a completely amoral situation, like the killing of a

14

15

See Andrew Webber, ‘Traumatic identities: race and gender in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s Die Judenbuche and Freud’s Der Mann Moses’, in Harmony in Discord: German Women Writers in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. by Laura Martin (Berne, etc, 2001), pp. 185–205, (pp. 196–97). The conclusion has a number of hidden allusions to a work of literature already mentioned explicitly in it earlier (p. 24) – Homer’s Odyssey – which presents an archetypal image of lasting affection and faithfulness between animal and human worlds. Friedrich shares with Odysseus the scar which serves as a means of identification on his return from exile (in Odysseus’ case twenty years, in Friedrich’s twenty-eight). In the Odyssey, Odysseus’ faithful dog Argos, whom he had trained and taken with him to hunt wild animals, is the only one to recognise his master in beggar’s clothes on his return, causing him to weep. Odysseus finds him on a dung heap, now serving no useful function and sees in him an image of himself. In Droste’s story it is the dog, though not Friedrich’s, who finds his corpse. It would have been a touching example of faithfulness if Friedrich’s own dog had found him there, but such a conclusion is not possible here. Friedrich had in any case treated his own dog cruelly, despite his name being ‘Fidel’. Unlike Odysseus’ dog, who ends up on the dung heap and dies, it is Friedrich himself who does so (Homer, The Odyssey XVII, 300–27). For a recent discussion of some of the allusions to The Odyssey, see Jutta Linder, ‘Strafe oder Gnade? Zur Judenbuche der Droste’, Droste-Jahrbuch 3 (1991–1996), pp. 83–114. Linder, who does not mention Argos, argues that Mergel’s homecoming is a search for God’s grace, which he is given, but the denial of a Christian burial seems to contradict this.


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hunted animal’.16 The bleakness of this ending compares with another work of modern German literature, Kafka’s Der Proceß, in which the hero Josef K. dies ‘wie ein Hund’. The question arises: is the world depicted here one without hope? We notice the phrase towards the end of the text, ‘Alles hin, alles tot!’ (p. 37), which Friedrich (alias Johannes) speaks on return to the village. These words remind us more of Büchner’s world. No doubt it is possible to read a pessimistic message into Droste’s story or to see it as hinting at depravity on a larger scale. But I do not think that this is her wish. Let us go back to the point when Friedrich returns to his native village after twenty-eight years. He is looking for somewhere to stay; it is Christmas Eve; the villagers are celebrating the birth of Christ. We find him at first unable to share in communal worship. When he hears the carol, he sinks onto his knees and tries to sing with a trembling voice, but only produces a loud sobbing and tears: ‘Der Mann am Hange war in die Knie gesunken und versuchte mit zitternder Stimme einzufallen; es ward nur ein lautes Schluchzen daraus, und schwere, heiße Tropfen fielen in den Schnee’ (pp. 35–36). In fact, though, he does find himself briefly able to join in the prayers. He is subsequently offered friendship and hospitality. The straw bed he is offered (there is no room elsewhere), evokes not as before animals and death, but the animals at the nativity. It is nothing other than an allusion to the birth of faith. The faith in evidence here does not result in reconciliation and forgiveness; the ending is grim; if Friedrich it is who commits suicide, then the message has not got though. But I think that alongside the grimness of its ending and the lack of trust, self-respect and humanity, which this symbolizes, the story is nevertheless asking us to acknowledge the possibility of faith and hope. I talked earlier about the Enlightenment and the backwardness of the community Droste depicts, and to that backwardness belongs the inability to put into practice fundamental religious and moral principles. This is not to make the story into a religious allegory. That would do damage to its unique mixture of symbolism and naturalism. I would suggest instead that the story’s meaning is to be found not in a key symbol, but in its narrative perspective, the narrator’s dual function. As we have seen from this consideration of symbolism and imagery, the narrator shares some of the fallibility of the characters she depicts and yet in some 16

Realism and Reality, p. 50.

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respects stands outside their minds. The story concludes with a translation of the Hebrew inscription on the tree, without any comment or interpretation. The narrator is careful not to be moralistic, it is apparent that she is intrigued by the inscription just as much as those who find Friedrich’s body. There is thus indeed something mysterious about Die Judenbuche, and the story’s conclusion takes us back to its beginning, where we had another quotation, also presented without commentary. We may well see in those opening verses, especially in the words, ‘beschränkten Hirnes Wirren’ and ‘eitlen Blutes Drang’, allusions to animal instincts, a reference to those animal comparisons in the story which underline the pre-rational, pre-verbal and instinctive, and a gentle warning not to be arrogant or categorical in our judgements lest we descend into bestiality: ‘Laß ruhn den Stein – er trifft dein eigenes Haupt!’

NICHOLAS SAUL

Keller, Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe

The best-known German treatment of the ‘Romeo and Juliet’ theme is the most popular of Gottfried Keller’s output. His Novelle Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe (1856)1 is also one of the most successful, traditionally viewed both as a major representative of the form and of the concept of ‘poetic realism’. In addition to this, though, it is a sociopsychological study of considerable power as well as a central example of the problems of social integration and the representation of outsider figures in German literature. Whilst it has freqently been treated elsewhere,2 this essay argues that more remains to be said. In what follows the focus is first on the received concept of poetic realism associated with Keller, then on the relationship of his text with Shakespeare and the ‘Dorfgeschichte’, and lastly on the function of the outsider figure in the tale, known as the ‘schwarze Geiger’. Poetic realism, along with other varieties of German literary realism in the nineteenth century, has long had a low reputation in European or world-literary contexts. The traditional justification for this usually links political and and literary history. Germany in its ‘long nineteenth century’3 was a relatively unprogressive nation. It never had a successful political revolution, and lacked both a capital city and a national parliament until it became a nation state in 1871. The trends toward industrialisation, capitalism, technologisation, mass urban 1

2

3

All references to Keller’s literary writings are to Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Thomas Böning, Gerhard Kaiser, Dominik Müller, 7 vols (Frankfurt am Main, 1985–96), cited henceforth as SW. Romeo und Julia forms part of the Novelle collection Die Leute von Seldwyla (1856–1874), Vol. 4 (1989), pp. 69–144. All references are to the later version authorised by Keller. See, for example, the introduction to edition of the story by Erika and Martin Swales (Bristol, 1996); and Erika Swales’s The Poetics of Scepticism: Gottfried Keller and the ‘Leute von Seldwyla’ (Oxford, New York, 1994), pp. 80–97. See David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century. A History of Germany 1780–1918 (New York, Oxford, 1997).

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society and colonialism all emerged late. As a result, German political and cultural life remained provincial in character. German literature, like German history, followed its European peers at a respectful distance.4 In the nineteenth century both the European and the German novel subscribe to realism. But the European novel is pre-eminently a social novel, that is to say, foregrounds the increased, indeed the dominant impact of the social context on the inner life of its protagonists. The German novel by contrast, whilst it does admittedly show traces of engagement with the social, nevertheless tends to focus regressively and one-dimensionally on the individual’s inner life. It remains in the Bildungsroman tradition,5 and so inevitably becomes an irrelevance or a form of escapism.6 Hence too the popularity of the Novelle tradition in Germany, with its focus on the subjective and its limited scope for engagement with large-scale external dynamics. The German concept of realism, then, was as under-developed, regressive, and inward-looking as the German nation. German nineteenth-century literary theory and practice do of course offer some evidence for this view. For example Otto Ludwig, who coined the term ‘poetic realism’, defines it in his ShakespeareStudien (1872)7 strategically in contrast to undiluted realism, as the legitimate tendency of literature to transfigure the real (TBR, pp. 149f.). Poetic realism, he argues, is an aesthetic middle way between the equal and opposite errors of idealisation and naturalism. Naturalism is a banal attempt at imaginative duplication of the world, which focuses excessively on matter and multiplicity and so fails to make transparent its 4

5

6 7

Martin Swales has repeatedly engaged with this view. See ‘The Problem of nineteenth-century German Realism’, in Nicholas Boyle, Martin Swales (eds.), Realism in European Literature. Essays in Honour of J.P. Stern (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 68–84 and Martin Swales, Studies of German Prose Fiction in the Age of European Realism (Lewiston, Queenstown, Lampeter, 1995), pp. 1–5, 7–20. For energetic dissent see Jeffrey L. Sammons, ‘The Mystery of the missing Bildungsroman, Or: What happened to Wilhelm Meister’s legacy?’, in Genre 14 (1981), 229–46 and J.L. Sammons, Wilhelm Raabe: The Fiction of the Alternative Community (Princeton, 1987), pp. xif. Michael Minden, accepting this view, turns it to his advantage in The German Bildungsroman: Incest and Inheritance (Cambridge, 1997). Quotations are taken for ease of reference from the extract in the anthology by Gerhard Plumpe (ed.), Theorien des bürgerlichen Realismus. Eine Textsammlung (Stuttgart, 1997), pp. 148–50, henceforth as TBR.


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inner intellectual structure. Idealism goes to the other extreme, and indulges in an excess of intellectual unity at the expense of the real. Poetic realism is the golden mean, underpins the cognitive pattern of the world with enough reality to make it plausible, and so delivers ‘ein erhöhtes Spiegelbild des Gegenstandes’ (p. 150). A similar apology of moderate idealisation informs Friedrich Theodor Vischer’s aesthetics. Following Hegel, Vischer insists in his Ästhetik oder Wissenschaft des Schönen (1846–57)8 that modernity is the age of prose and of the alienation of the subject from the great forms of public life (TBR, pp. 240ff.). But the purpose of the novel, for example, is not examination of this supra-personal dimension. Instead, it attempts to revalorise the ancient rights of poesy in the modern domain of prose. The modern writer must therefore seek out the ‘grüne [...] Stellen mitten in der eingetretenen Prosa’ (p. 241). Those green spaces of the poetic are always to be found outside the everyday world of the bourgeois hero: in interesting situations where the norm is dislocated (revolutions and suchlike), in interestingly deviant social groupings (such as the decadent nobility, artists, Gypsies, and robbers), or in peculiar concatenations of chance events. Encounters with these oases of the poetic mediate ‘Humanität’ (p. 244), a treasury of insight into the human psyche, to the single central protagonist. Of this ‘Humanität’, however, in the end nothing much comes, as Vischer readily concedes. In the end, the modern disjunction of the individual from the totality, his imprisonment in the private sphere and subjection to prose, is merely revalidated (p. 245). Mutatis mutandis, the same applies to the Novelle, and we shall of course be encountering an inhabitant of those green poetic spaces before much longer. Peter Stern, one of the most authoritative of the older generation of critics, used to call this sort of thing (in words borrowed from T. S. Eliot) ‘Erhebung without motion’.9 Another tale from Die Leute von Seldwyla, ‘Kleider machen Leute’ seems plausibly to exemplify this Sternian tradition of interpretation. This is the story of a humble tailor who, thanks to his good looks and 8 9

See TBR, pp. 240–47, passim. See Idylls and Realities: Studies in Nineteenth-Century German Literature (London, 1971), p. 104. (Stern is thinking of course of Stifter, but also of poetic realism as a whole.)

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careful dressing, is mistaken by the affluent citizens of Goldach for a much more noble personage. He tries to withdraw from this false identity, but a combination of chance circumstances (including falling in love) conspires against him. Finally his willing yet unwilling pretence is detected, and he is humiliatingly exposed. But the woman he loves stands by him, he stays on, and eventually builds up a successful marriage and tailoring career. The brief summary exposes clearly an inner structure of moral tale or parable. What rescues the tailor and secures his happiness despite everything is his genuineness. But underneath the keen social satire we can also easily recognise allusions to another genre, fairytale, in this case the Grimms’ ‘Das tapfere Schneiderlein’. There another humble tailor also profits from appearing to be something he is not. Keller obviously uses this resonance to point up his depiction of the real – transfigure, in the sense of Ludwig or Vischer. Hence Stern tended amiably to dismiss Keller as a poetic realist, as ultimately – despite his satirical bite – a writer of fairytales.10 In this he is of course following no less an authority than Theodor Fontane.11 And yet there is more to Keller’s writing (and by extension to German poetic realism) than this line of interpretation can disclose. If we dwell on ‘Kleider machen Leute’ a little longer, the trace of the fairytale is the clue. This is evidently an intentional allusion by Keller in one genre, a modern Novelle, to another, historical genre. Now an ostensibly realist text, being as Stern says ‘innocent of all epistemology’,12 should in theory orientate its referentiality unproblematically towards the world, outside of itself. But Keller’s text has a dual referentiality: both to the world of extra-textual reality, of course, and to another world: that of a literary model, the fairytale, which it evokes. This intertextuality clearly contributes as a major factor to the realisation of intentional meaning, and perhaps not quite so naively as Stern seems to imply.13 Equally clearly, this, compared to my previous discussion, gives in Keller’s case quite a new twist to the received term 10 11 12

13

Idylls and Realities, p. 138. See SW 4, p. 644. Idylls and Realities, p. 16. Compare Robert C. Holub, Reflections of Realism: Paradox, Norm and Ideology in Nineteenth-Century German Prose (Detroit, 1991), pp. 16f. Compare also Erika Swales’s view in The Poetics of Scepticism, especially. pp. 124–39.


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‘poetic realism’. In terms of literary theory, Keller is writing in a significantly more sophisticated, modern idiom, producing in ‘Kleider machen Leute’ an example of what Gérard Génette has called the literary palimpsest, one text written over another:14 literature that acknowledges the extent to which it is made not only out of life but also other literature. The relation of text and represented reality is complicated, by comparison with the theoretical framework of Vischer and Ludwig, to a second degree. The classic example of a literary palimpsest is Joyce’s modernist Bible Ulysses. Poldy Bloom’s day out in Dublin is of course patterned with humorous yet precise literary scholarship upon the erratic course of Ulysses’ (Odysseus’s) ten-year wandering through the Mediterranean away from and back to Ithaca, as imagined in Homer’s Odyssey. It is well known what semantic potential Joyce’s modern epic derives from its dual referentiality: the intrinsic relation not only to the experiential reality of Dublin (which is evoked as well as any realist has ever evoked a life-world), but also to the classical model of the literary epic (witness the modernist, epiphanic structuring of time, which humorously equates ten years with a single day). In recent years, this approach to Keller has made much ground. It is now recognised that Homer’s Odyssey is also a basic point of reference for many of Keller’s narratives. Odysseus’s eccentric journey back home to wife (and/or sister or mother) recurs, as Hans Wysling showed,15 again and again as the deep structure of texts from Keller’s Bildungsroman Der grüne Heinrich to his Novelle of Seldwyla ‘Pankraz der Schmoller’. Nor is this an isolated example. Keller’s Sinngedicht, we know, is modelled both on an epigram by Friedrich von Logau about Pygmalion and Galatea16 and Goethe’s 14

15

16

See Gérard Génette, Palimpsestes: la littérature au second degré (Paris, 1982). On modernism and intertextuality see Uwe Japp, Literatur und Modernität (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1987), esp. 185–224. See Hans Wysling, ‘Und immer wieder kehrt Odysseus heim. Das “Fabelhafte” bei Gottfried Keller’, in Hans Wysling (ed.), Gottfried Keller. Elf Essays zu seinem Werk (Munich, 1990), pp. 151–62. The pioneering work on Keller’s selfconscious literariness is Klaus Jeziorkowski, Literarität und Historismus: Beobachtungen zu ihrer Erscheinungsform im 19. Jahrhundert am Beispiel Gottfried Kellers (Heidelberg, 1979). See Gerhard Neumann, ‘Der Körper des Menschen und die belebte Statue. Zu einer Grundformel in Gottfried Kellers Sinngedicht’, in Mathias Meyer, Gerhard

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Faust, his Sieben Legenden on devotional texts by the Rügen poet Kosegarten.17 All this tells us something hitherto rarely foregrounded about Keller’s approach to writing, something not particularly congruent with the received notion of the backward and rather comfortable author of provincial idylls trapped in a Germanic retardation of historical development. This Keller may be tied to the provincial world. But he is a deeply self-conscious writer, who is well aware not only of the social, political, existential reality on which he comments, but also of the fictional, the made quality of the form in which those comments are cast. His texts operate at this dual level, both as literature about reality and as literature – in some as yet undefined way – about literature. All this leads us to our main text. First, a brief summary. Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe is the tragic story of young lovers Sali and Vrenchen. These children of the respectable peasant farmers Manz and Marti become victims of the unremitting enmity which develops between the fathers following a dispute over ownership of an apparently abandoned strip of land between their plots. Marti finally purchases it. Yet in previous years each of them, Marti and Manz, has by tacit consensus illegally ploughed away and so appropriated a strip of land from the middle acre. Manz demands this triangular portion back from Marti, who refuses. The ensuing spiral of conflict ends in a legal dispute ruinous for both and a violent confrontation between Sali and Marti. Their love impossible, Sali and Vrenchen celebrate an unofficial and paradisal wedding day, before committing suicide in the deep river. Like Joyce’s Ulysses, Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe hardly makes a secret of its defining intertextual status. The title in fact declares a double intertextual referentiality, both to the Shakespeare play and to the niche poetic realist genre of the ‘Dorfgeschichte’, a Biedermeier Novelle variant popularised by writers like Auerbach and Gotthelf which focuses exclusively on the everyday life of a simple peasant farmer community. Obviously Keller derives his village setting

17

Neumann (eds.), Die Geschichte des Mythos in der abendländischen Kultur (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1997), pp. 555–91. SW 6, pp. 836ff.; see also Sämtliche Werke und ausgewählte Briefe, ed. Clemens Heselhaus, 3 vols (Munich, 1958) [henceforth as SWAB], Vol. 3, p. 1180. (Keller to Freiligrath, 22 April 1860).


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therefrom.18 Of this more anon. But what does Keller make of the Shakespeare? The first thing we notice is how frank Keller is with his foregrounding of the link to another text. In this he is rather more open than, for example, Shakespeare. Shakespeare omits to highlight the fact that his Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie, of Romeo and Juliet (c. 1595)19 is not the original realisation of the motif of lovers from enemy families This, as any cursory acquaintance with scholarship reveals,20 goes back to Masuccio’s ‘Il novellino’ (1476), which underwent several modifications before Shakespeare used it, and itself goes back at least as far as the antique myth of Hero and Leander. There are of course a number of German versions of Romeo and Juliet before Keller: Kleist’s Die Familie Schroffenstein springs to mind. But even the drastically declarative title is not enough for Keller. In the opening lines his narrator leaps into self-reflexive, apologetic and didactic mode: Diese Geschichte zu erzählen, würde eine müßige Erfindung sein, wenn sie nicht auf einem wahren Vorfall beruhte, zum Beweise, wie tief im Menschenleben jede der schönen Fabeln wurzelt, auf welche ein großes Dichterwerk gegründet ist. Die Zahl solcher Fabeln ist mäßig, gleich der Zahl der Metalle, aber sie ereignen sich immer wieder auf’s Neue mit veränderten Umständen und in der wunderlichsten Verkleidung. (SW 4, 69)

Obviously, one concern here is self-defence against the philistine charge of plagiarism.21 But that is not Keller’s major point, which is to justify his literary aesthetic and suggest how to read what follows. Hence he expands the notion of intertextuality with which we have just become acquainted. There is, he says, nothing new in literature under the sun.22 We have only a small repertoire of stories about human nature. But this is no disadvantage. For these primordial texts are so profoundly rooted in the stuff of human life that, like Chomsky’s 18

19 20 21 22

See Jürgen Hein (ed.), Gottfried Keller. Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe. Erläuterungen und Dokumente (Stuttgart, 1977), pp. 27–9; see also Jürgen Hein, Dorfgeschichte (Stuttgart, 1976). References to the relevant volume in The Works of Shakespeare, ed. by John Dover Wilson et al., (Cambridge, 1977; first edition, 1955), pp. 1–111. See Hein, op. cit., pp. 23ff. Compare Keller’s letter to Auerbach, 3 June 1856, SWAB 3, p. 1168. Compare ‘Am Mythenstein’, SW 7, p. 185.

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famous deep-structural grammatical rules, they can generate infinite varieties of new and (this being the point) meaningful literary utterances. Shakespeare’s actualisation of the primordial story is but one, admittedly classical, variant, the real newspaper text to which he alludes23 is another, his own still a third, and so forth.24 They are not all equally valuable. Rather, they have to legitimate themselves, as Keller said to the literary historian Hermann Hettner, ‘aus der Dialektik der Kulturbewegung’25 – from the complex engagement with contemporary cultural reality. This is why in this highly self-conscious work the narrative is framed by the hermeneutic alternatives adumbrated here: the contrastive comparison with Shakespeare at the beginning and still another rendition of the primal motif, the dismissive and moralising fictive newspaper report of the lovers’ death at the end (SW 4, p. 144). The reader must therefore consciously reflect on which version adequately captures the human reality of the case. What then, apart from the obvious mechanical transfers of time and place, does Keller’s actualisation of the motif contribute? In sheer literary terms, a lot. Keller is clearly concerned to maximise the tragic affect of his version, and ruthlessly strips away the intrinsic flaws in Shakespeare’s. Romeo and Juliet suffers from a dual concept of tragedy.26 It is at one level the pre-modern tragedy of ‘star-crossed’ lovers (Romeo and Juliet, p. 3) who are the victims of inexorable, supra-personal fate. At another level however Shakespeare applies a modern concept of tragedy by internalising fate, suggesting that the lovers accept some responsibility for their downfall. But there are problems with both aspects of the tragedy. The lovers’ downfall is in fact due less to the inexorability of fate than to a bit of bad luck with the post between Verona and Mantua, so that Romeo is not informed in time about Friar Lawrence’s plot with the herbal poison. Moreover, Romeo’s temperament is too inconsistent for a modern tragic character. He loves Juliet eternally, but has only just stopped being deeply in love with Rosaline. True, Rosaline did not reciprocate his love. But that is 23 24

25 26

From the Zürcher Zeitung, 3 September 1847; SW 4, p. 690. Johannes R. Becher continues the intertextual chain with ‘Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe. Nach der gleichnamigen Erzählung von Gottfried Keller’, in Romane in Versen (Berlin, 1946), pp. 7–20. Letter, 24 June 1854 (SWAB 3, p. 1139). See the editor’s introduction to Romeo and Juliet, esp. pp. xxviff.


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hardly the point. Equally, Romeo experiences great difficulties meeting Juliet on enemy territory (he exploits the carnevalesque masked ball). Rosaline is of course as much a Capulet as Juliet (p. 14). Yet Romeo seems to have had no problem meeting her. With Rosaline, in short, one wonders why the issue is raised at all. Similarly, given that Romeo qua hero is presented as well capable of slaughtering the opposition’s best man Tybalt and his rival Paris, he is also embarrassingly unmanned by the mere news of his banishment. All this Keller (student of drama that he was in his long Berlin years) leaves out, or, dare we say it, improves. He motivates the love of Sali and Vrenchen far more powerfully than Shakespeare, by making them childhood friends, and by setting the motif in an isolated rural, ‘Dorfgeschichte’ location. Thus little competitive love-interest (such as Rosaline) can arise, and the hatred between the families is conveniently sparked only after a period of firm friendship (and complicity in crime) between the fathers. Similarly, the conflict with Tybalt is skilfully reduced to the fist-fight of Sali and Marti. More fundamentally, the tragic motivation for suicide is improved (which is not to comment on Shakespeare’s supreme lovepoetry). In the Shakespeare, neither Romeo nor Juliet really wants to commit suicide. There is no pact of a joint love-death, no climactic night of fulfilled love as anticipatory compensation for life unlived, and they kill themselves in reaction to misapprehension and accident. The lovedeath of Sali and Vrenchen of course is superlatively motivated in the materialistic and possessive mentality of the fathers and the village society, which they share to a mild extent, but which still destroys them. But what then is the ultimate purpose of the ostentative intertextual reference to Shakespeare? It lies both in the superlative and seamless adaptation of the motif to Swiss-German nineteenth-century cultural circumstances and in the foregrounded title allusion. ‘[F]ür einen Poeten ist die Schweiz ein Holzboden’ (SWAB 3, p. 1085) Keller said once, alluding to the familiar theme of provinciality. If the story of Manz and Marti, Sali and Vrenchen implicitly overcomes the charge of provinciality, then the intertextual title makes the claim for German literature explicit: German literature of the nineteenth century, despite its provincial matter, is as much world literature (in Goethe’s sense) as

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Shakespeare. It is, if you like, Keller’s anticipatory response to the later rebuke.27 Provinciality and its negation brings us to the last part of this essay: Romeo und Julia, the ‘schwarze Geiger’, and the problem of identity. For placing the action in a village rather than a capital city not only permits Keller, as we saw, to reduce the personnel drastically, and so maximise tragic affect. I have already hinted at the significance of Keller’s choice of the ‘Dorfgeschichte’ tradition, which as Elizabeth Boa has recently shown,28 functioned and functions as a major medium in German culture for reflection on the location of home and the nature of German identity, a tradition stretching at least from Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea (1795) to Edgar Reitz’s 1980s film Heimat. If this is an obvious deviation from the Shakespeare, it is also connected with another, equally obvious one. Keller not only decreases the personnel vis-à-vis Shakespeare, he also increases it in one important respect, which links with the Heimatliteratur identity theme: there is no ‘schwarzer Geiger’ in Romeo and Juliet. This, surely the most prominently contoured figure in the Novelle, both evokes another aspect of Keller’s self-conscious literariness and makes a comment on the nineteenth-century model of Swiss-German identity. Recall the role of this uncanny figure.29 The strong foregrounding of the Romeo and Juliet motif tends rather to take our eye off him, and directly or indirectly he only appears in three scenes. But it is he who focuses the contemporary social thematics most sharply, for in this Novelle of Heimat he is the outsider who, through his otherness, through the negation of his identity by the villagers, as a foil, stabilises the identity of the isolated and otherwise shapeless provincial community. He is first and foremost dispossessed, vagrant. It becomes clear in the early exchange between Manz and Marti that he is probably the true 27

28 29

Stern, with another cognitive interest, mis-states this case when he sees Keller’s version as ‘enacting a European theme’; see Re-interpretations: Seven Studies in Nineteenth-Century German Literature (Cambridge, 1981), p. 310. See Elizabeth Boa, ‘Hermann und Dorothea: An early example of Heimatliteratur?’, PEGS, 69, (2000), pp. 20–36. On the ‘schwarze Geiger’ as figuration of nature see E. Swales, Poetics of Scepticism, pp. 87f.; also M. Swales, ‘Gottfried Keller’s Romeo und Julia auf den Dorfe’, in Hartmut Steinecke (ed.), Zu Gottfried Keller (Stuttgart, 1984), pp. 56– 67.


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owner of the disputed acre. The evidence for this is written in his remarkable face (SW 4, pp. 72f.), with its huge, strangely-formed nose and disproportionately tiny, round, puffing and whistling mouth (p. 103). It is a face made for a trumpet player, you might think, and he does indeed bear a great resemblance to the last known recorded owner, the village trumpeter, who long since disappeared to join the local group of vagrants with whom the fiddler has always lived. Unfortunately his face alone is not evidence enough to prove his right to the land. Unchristened, he possesses no certificate of baptism which would prove his identity. (Significantly, the narrator never names him or his father.) Hence he also has no ‘Heimatsrecht’ (p. 72), no right of abode in the village community, and still less does he as a legal unperson have a right to the land.30 All this opens the way for the initial crime of his father’s neighbours. Now Simon Schama31 has written eloquently of the extent to which human modification of land into landscape inscribes into the very stuff of the land the story of our relationship with it, and his study Landscape and Memory is an attempt to recover that lost or buried writing. Keller’s peasants reverse this process. The furrows they plough symbolically overwrite the existence of the border between their land and his, and so obliterate the last material trace of the black fiddler’s provenance. When the peasants refuse to witness the fiddler’s unmistakable family resemblance to the previous owner (pp. 72f.), they merely fulfil the final condition of possibility for the compulsory purchase of land, which legalises the initial crime. Their later refusal to accept the oral testimony of other vagrants who were present at the fiddler’s birth even makes it impossible for the fiddler to receive the money paid to the municipality, which would have permitted a new life elsewhere (p. 103) – if only at the price of uncovering (yet accepting) the original crime. Thus the great pyramid of stones left on Manz’s disputed strip (p. 81) – a landmark of German literature indeed – is the last monument to the otherwise effaced original crime and touchstone of the fiddler’s identity. It is appropriately here, then, that the fiddler appears in person for the first time. Perched atop the great pile like an 30

31

On the problem of ‘Heimatsrecht’ and vagrancy, see a writer Keller valued, Theodor Mügge, Die Schweiz und ihre Zustände, Vol. 1 (Hannover, 1847), pp. 270–73, in Hein (ed.), Erläuterungen, pp. 77f. See too SWAB 3, p. 1106. Landscape and Memory (London, 1995), p. 7.

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oracle of higher truth from beyond the contingent domain of culture, he reveals to Sali and Vrenchen the guilt of their parents, rejoices in their families’ downfall, and predicts the two lovers’ early demise. If until now it is clear that the fiddler has been reduced to a pre-cultural state of nature, his later appearance capitalises on his strangeness to turn him into the modern, objective correlate of the lovers’ Nemesis. Once their fate is sealed, they cannot but encounter him at every turn. But he is not a vengeful figure. Unbaptised, he nevertheless performs an alternative marriage ceremony over the lovers (p. 139). His wild, Dionysian music merely provides the appropriate accompaniment to the lovers on the final stage of their journey to self-dissolution, as they wander to the symbolical ‘Paradiesgärtlein’ (p. 132) tavern and perform their dance of death. As his extemporised music echoes into nothingness, so the two lovers leave the furrowed path of their fathers (p. 102) they have till now followed for the trackless waters beyond language and memory. The non-Shakespearean figure of the black fiddler thus offers us as focaliser of the tale the proper perspective to pass judgement on the Shakespearean lovers. Sali and Vrenchen understand his significance very well. In this highly self-conscious Novelle, of course they reflect unceasingly on their predicament. They know that their situation represents not only an existential crisis but also a crisis in their relation to the Heimat. A mark of that is the pathetic gesture of self-interpretation they make, of purchasing a gingerbread house at the harvest festival fair (p. 129), for this metonym of Heimat is all the home that they will have (p. 130). They also understand that the black fiddler is the harbinger of the homelessness that awaits them, and what it means when the gingerbread house is crushed during the last dance (p. 133). When therefore they reject the black fiddler’s offer to them to join his vagrant band and live in (a kind of) freedom beyond the domain of the written law (pp. 137f.) – he makes it knowing full well that they will die before him (p. 103) – they know that it means not only death, but also a rejection of the alternative values of the unsettled folk, or, better, a continued, paradoxical affirmation of the social value system which has driven them to this point. Keller’s apology of their suicide32 is thus

32

Keller possessed a highly differentiated view of the moral problem of suicide; see SWAB 3, pp. 1265f.


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ambivalent to this extent. Which is of course hardly to diminish the heightened ‘Humanität’ he so memorably confers on them. But if there is no conformability of world-view between the lovers and the black fiddler, that cannot be said of the narrator’s – and possibly Keller’s – relationship to him. It is no coincidence that the black fiddler is an artist figure. He is of course at the meta-level of the text a symbol of the true artist, an expatriated voice resident in a realm transcending the borders of materialistic nineteenth-century culture. He may be powerless to effect change (and indeed incapable of writing), yet he discloses the truth despite all attempts to efface it. But only thanks to the narrator. It is the latter’s Novelle, even more than the stone pyramid or the fiddler’s speech (and music) which stands as a permanent, commemorative monument to the fiddler and the truth. Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe is in this sense a celebration of art in art. But the black fiddler is not only an artist figure. He also has literary antecendents. We might, for example, see in him yet another variation on Keller’s favourite Odysseus figure, who this time cannot find his way home. But perhaps the inspiration lies closer to home than Classical antiquity. As a vagrant, he is of course one of those Gypsy-like outsider figures identified by Friedrich Theodor Vischer as offering the epic writer in the modern prosaic world one of those green places for recuperating the poetic and the truly humane. Still more precisely, he is an indicator of Keller’s rarely-acknowledged debt to the Romantic tradition.33 For if there is one single figure which encapsulates the Romantic world-view, it is that of the poetic Gypsy. Romantic (and not only Romantic) texts around 1800 are, as I have argued elsewhere,34 filled with idealised, poetic Gypsy figures. In Clemens Brentano’s Die mehreren Wehmüller (1817),35 for example, which feature the beautiful Gypsy dancer 33 34

35

For Keller on Romanticism, see his equally differentiated comments in ‘Die Romantik und die Gegenwart’ (1849) in SW 7, pp. 689ff. ‘Leiche und Humor. Clemens Brentanos Schauspielfragment Zigeunerin und der Patriotismus um 1813’, Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts, (1998), pp. 111–66, esp. pp. 134ff. ‘Die mehreren Wehmüller und ungarischen Nationalgesichter’, in Gerhard Schaub (ed.), Clemens Brentano. Sämtliche Erzählungen (Munich, 1991) (first edition, 1984), pp. 142–188. On Michaly as ‘neuer Orpheus’ and the role of the Gypsy as a figure of utopian counter-culture in German literary history, see Nicholas Saul and Susan Tebbutt, ‘Gypsies, utopias and counter-cultures in German cultural

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Mitidika and her brother, the virtuoso fiddler Michaly, these exotic outsider figures, with their glossy dark skin and brilliant white teeth, their lithe, androgynous bodies, their transcendence of any kind of legal, moral, sexual border, their Indian provenance, their cosmopolitan ability to be at home nowhere and everywhere, their spontaneous poetry, their closeness to nature – and their tragic fate – are (by contrast to the parallel case of the Jews) ultimate symbols of human fulfilment and emblems of the Romantics’ poetic self-understanding. The Romantic paradigm of the Gypsy36 has very little to do with the actual Gypsies37 – unsurprisingly, for they are after all Romanticised. Despite the best critical efforts of cultural anthropologists, it has nonetheless successfully persisted to the present day,38 via figures such as Esmeralda in Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris. But the black fiddler’s vagrancy, his homely homelessness, his fiddling, his abstract freedom, his closeness to nature, the sexual licence characteristic of his domain, his tinkering, his un-Germanic black colour, all these mark him out as a literary descendant of the Romantic Gypsy outsider. But if this fiddler is a descendant of the Romantic literary tradition, then we should also take account of Keller’s re-writing of the figure. That means for one thing that this fiddler, by contrast to his Romantic forebears, is real, and ugly. He really inverts the romantic personification of poetry, and Keller’s poetic realism is in this light more like an unpoetic realism. Moreover, we must also take account of the fact that this Gypsy-like figure, despite the obvious appeal to the literary model,

36 37

38

history’, in Steve Giles, Maike Oergel (eds.), Counter-Cultures (Munich, New York, forthcoming 2003). It has its origin in Miguel Cervantes’s ‘The little Gypsy girl’, in Exemplary Tales, translated by C.A. Jones (Harmondsworth, 1972), pp. 19–94. See the major source of cultural and anthropological information on the Gypsies around 1800: Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann, Historischer Versuch über die Zigeuner betreffend die Lebensart und Verfassung Sitten und Schicksale dieses Volks seit seiner Erscheinung in Europa, und dessen Ursprung, (Göttingen, 1787) (first edition, Dessau, Leipzig, 1783). On the physical appearance of the Gypsies, pp. 35–41; also my essay, passim. See on this the (sometimes drastic) Wim Willems, In Search of the True Gypsy. From Enlightenment to the Final Solution (London, Portland, 1997); for a pragmatic history of the Romany nations see Angus Fraser, The Gypsies (Oxford, 1992); on the German tradition Susan Tebbutt (ed.), Sinti and Roma: Gypsies in German-Speaking Society and Literature (New York, Oxford, 1998).


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is explicitly not a true Gypsy.39 His parents are from the village: ‘seine Eltern [haben sich] einmal unter die Heimatlosen begeben’ (p. 72). Exotic as he may be, he is in truth one of them. And this is the key. Keller has adopted the literary tradition for the representation of the outsider, but he has modified it for his own ends. This outsider is indeed the outcast logically required to promote internal coherence of a closed, non-pluralist society or culture. But he comes, or came, from inside. In all members of the community, Keller seems to be saying, is an inner Gypsy, in all those secure in their unreflected homely identity lies hidden the exotic other.40 And this is the inner structure of identity formation. A sense of the intertextuality of Keller’s figure thus not only leads the reader backwards to the literary pre-text, but also outwards to the extra-textual referent (reality, that is) with a profound critique of the received, provincial Heimat mentality. With Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe, then, we have an interesting landmark on the Germanophone road from realism to modernism. Keller, it is clear, is anything but an epistemologically naive realist who reductively transfigures the manifold richness of the life-world in the light of some extramundane realm. His commitment to realism never lessens, but it is finally revealed as a sophisticated and self-conscious modernist understanding of reality (including social reality) as a complex construction.41 This fine sensibility for literary pre-formations of perception (as with the example of the fiddler) is the instrument for a profound analysis of reality’s inner structure as representation, which marks the Swiss provincial’s truly international status. 39

40

41

Nor, of course, is the figure who inaugurates the literary tradition, Cervantes’s Preciosa. This is a common feature of the literary tradition, which recurs (for example) in Kotzebue’s Die kleine Zigeunerin and Wolzogen’s Die Zigeuner. As a device, it generally functions to ‘redeem’ the figure ideologically from his apparent provenance in a socially despised ethnic group. Not so in Keller. Compare parallel locations of the exotic in the domestic in Goethe by Boa, Hermann und Dorothea, p. 23 and in Keller by Helmut Pfotenhauer, ‘Die Wiederkehr der Einbildungen: Kellers Pankraz, der Schmoller’, in Sprachbilder. Untersuchungen zur Literatur seit dem achtzehnten Jahrundert, (Würzburg, 2000), pp. 175–186 (here p. 179). Compare Gerhard Plumpe’s case for the fundamentally modernist (if reactionary) character of German realist aesthetics in his ‘Einleitung’ to Edward McInnes, G.P. (eds.), Bürgerlicher Realismus und Gründerzeit 1848–1890 (Munich, 1996), pp. 17–83, esp. pp. 79–83.

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This is hardly the last word on Keller’s use of intertextuality, either as a whole or with regard to Die Leute von Seldwyla. There is insufficient space here to discuss either the self-conscious palindromic mirror structure of the collection as a whole, in which stories 10 to 6 can be taken to mirror, and relativise, the themes and statements of stories 1 to 5. ‘Dietegen’, number nine in the series, was written especially to complement no. 2 in the 1874 edition, ‘Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe’. It too treats the theme of love and death, but this time inverts the scheme, with death being conquered in a sense by love, and it too reprises Shakespeare, in the love of Dietegen and Küngolt from the enemy towns Ruechenstein and Seldwyla. And of course the opening Novelle in the sequence, ‘Pankraz der Schmoller’, also has something to say about the relation of Shakespearean lovers and reality. But even without dealing on these features, it should be clear by now that the careful structuring of the whole sequence, like that of the Novelle itself, paradoxically reflects how far Keller’s equivocal approach challenges any received order.

MARY STEWART

Hauptmann, Bahnwärter Thiel

If there is one short story which has found a place amongst German ‘classics’ in both Germany and England, it is Hauptmann’s Bahnwärter Thiel. Its popularity may seem at first glance puzzling: the author is much better known for his dramatic works, and the subject matter is very narrowly located in time and place – though it is certainly true that the strongly delineated plot still has the power to shock, whilst also offering the reader satisfyingly comprehensible tragedy. However, there are good grounds beyond this for the enduring interest in this Novelle, although critics differ considerably on what they might be, just as they do on the relationship of the text to Hauptmann’s own later writing. Despite such divergence, however, it is clearly justifiable to call this story a ‘landmark’, not least since it marks the entry of the modern physical world into mainstream German literature, and in fact its modernity goes much deeper than mere physical detail. Gerhart Hauptmann’s early writing had been quasi-classical rather than explicitly modern in inspiration. He had paid himself for the printing of some poems and ‘dramatische Entwürfe’ such as Germanen und Römer and Promethidenlos in 1880, but at that point in his life he was still seeking to pursue a career as a sculptor. He made abortive attempts at this, including a stay in Rome which ended in serious illness, so after his marriage to the wealthy Maria Thienemann the couple moved to Erkner outside Berlin in 1885 for the sake of Hauptmann’s health. There he was able to devote himself more fully to his literary interests, and he made contact with literary circles in and around Berlin, most particularly the enthusiastically reformist group Durch, where he met younger figures such as the founders of the new journal Kritische Waffengänge, Heinrich and Julius Hart, who were dedicated to rethinking the nature and function of ‘modern’ literature. Hauptmann himself read widely and gave a paper to the group on Georg Büchner, an interest which was to influence his own writing as well as the future reception of that long-neglected figure. However, though the need for ‘realism’ in

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literature was endlessly discussed,1 there were few contemporary German models for Hauptmann to follow, indeed there was no consensus on what ‘Naturalism’ might mean in a German context, despite considerable enthusiasm for such foreign writers as Zola and Ibsen. Such recent writing as had declared itself consciously ‘modern’ was primarily poetry, notably the anthology Moderne Dichtercharaktere,2 although one of the latter’s contributors, Hermann Conradi, had also already published a number of short prose texts with proletarian settings, albeit to less than general acclaim. The concept of ‘konsequenter Naturalismus’ was yet to be defined by Arno Holz, whose seminal prose work of minutely detailed realism – Papa Hamlet – did not appear until the end of the decade3. In fact it was in poetry that Hauptmann first made the transition from classical subject matter to physical detail from the late nineteenthcentury world, in ‘Im Nachtzug’, for instance;4 later in 1887 he then published his first mature prose work, the short story Fasching,5 and began to find a contemporary focus for that abiding awareness of suffering which loosely informs even his earliest work. The obscure place of publication chosen for this story meant that it was scarcely noted by critics until very much later, but already it marks Hauptmann out as attempting something quite new. It is based on documented contemporary events – the drowning of a couple and their child in a lake near Erkner – and displays a dispassionate observation of life-style and circumstances which supply a clearly determining causality. There is no obvious desire to shock, as in some of Conradi’s stories, but an analytical approach to social tragedy. Hauptmann later recorded that he already had a ‘burning desire’ to make his mark as a writer.6 In the latter part of 1887, whilst he and his

1 2 3 4

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See, for example, Erich Ruprecht, Literarische Manifeste des Naturalismus 1880– 1892 (Stuttgart, 1962). Wilhelm Arent (ed.), Moderne Dichtercharaktere (Leipzig, 1885). Published jointly by Arno Holz and Johannes Schlaf under the pseuonym Bjarne P. Holmsen (Leipzig, 1889). First published on 12 February 1887 in Allgemeine Deutsche Universitäts-Zeitung. See Gerhart Hauptmann, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Hans-Egon Hass (Frankfurt a. M./Berlin, 1963–), Vol. 4, pp. 54–6. All future references will be to this edition. First published in the periodical Siegfried in Beerfelden, Hessen, in August 1887. See ‘Das Abenteuer meiner Jugend’, Sämtliche Werke, Vol. 7, p. 1044.

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wife were expecting their second child, he worked on Bahnwärter Thiel,7 which was indeed to be his breakthrough. With canny good sense this time, Hauptmann submitted it to Michael Georg Conrad, the Munichbased founder of the other journal significant for the history of Naturalism in Germany, Die Gesellschaft. Conrad accepted it eagerly and thus it was first published in his journal in 1888.8 Almost immediately it received wide critical attention9 and has gone on doing so up to the present day.10 The story is in outline a not unfamiliar one from folk- and fairytale: a father left with a motherless child, and a resultant disastrous second marriage ending in terrible violence. However, there is much that is strikingly new about this text. Its setting, both in terms of time and locality, is absolutely contemporary; the lower-class protagonist is in keeping with the young Naturalists’ desire to widen the social reference of literature; there is an obvious sense too in which environment and, if not heredity, then certainly psychological make-up determine events. What is missing from any simple account, however, is a sense of the tone and balance of the work, and above all of its symbolism. Its descriptions of both railway and natural world are laden with obviously symbolic sub-texts which have given rise to very divergent interpretations. For instance, Irene Herdeegen11 reads Thiel’s simple religiosity, which inclines him to guilt-laden visions of his first wife, as passive (but not yet truly and productively proletarian) resistance to the oppressive capitalist circumstances of his life and places the text firmly, but rather narrowly, in a Marxist framework. Fritz Martini12 and Hanno Möbius13 on the other hand read Thiel’s tendency to mystically heightened perception as evidence of a universal human ‘Urdrama’ where 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

See Sämtliche Werke, Vol. 7, pp. 1044f. Die Gesellschaft. Realistische Wochenschrift für Literatur, Kunst und öffentliches Leben, Jg. 4, Heft 10. See Volker Neuhaus, Gerhart Hauptmann: ‘Bahnwärter Thiel’. Erläuterungen und Dokumente, bibliographisch ergänzte Ausgabe (Stuttgart, 1995). For a recent response see Volker Neuhaus and Helmut Scheuer, Bahnwärter Thiel in the series ‘Reclam Klassiker auf CD-Rom.’ ‘Gerhart Hauptmanns Novelle “Bahnwärter Thiel”’, Weimarer Beiträge, 4 (1958), pp. 348–60. Das Wagnis der Sprache, (Stuttgart, 1954), pp. 56–98. Der Naturalismus (Heidelberg, 1982), pp. 66–78.

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spirituality and sensuality are locked in battle. Benno von Wiese sees in the symbolically heightened descriptions of both nature and railway evidence of ‘unbegreifliche Mächte’ which are at work in both man and nature.14 Klaus D. Post15 argues that the work exemplifies something akin to Bachofen’s belief in the universal significance of the Mother figure (crucially and disastrously missing here), whereas John M. Ellis16 stresses much more the way in which the description of the railway and the forest function as metaphors of Thiel’s own latent violence and the gradual mental ‘overload’ which builds up to explosive action. All of these interpretations, and many others, give illuminatingly close attention to some of the textual detail and stress the many obvious strong contrasts in the text: spirituality set against brute sexuality, the delicate wife with the suggestive name Minna (echoing ‘Minne’, ‘courtly love’) against the robust ‘Kuhmagd’ Lene, technology against nature, and so on. Yet many tend to over-inflate some detail at the expense of other features, in particular where there is a desire to claim wider, even universal and timeless significance for the tale. What may easily be lost sight of is the internal patterning of the text. It is abundantly clear that the work is structured around a series of stark contrasts, and indeed it is this which perhaps most clearly reveals Hauptmann’s nascent dramatic talent. Closer reading, however, suggests that precisely well defined contrasts and extreme polar positions are gradually and subtly subverted; much of the text has a liminal quality, where borders and separation mark not the achievement of distinctions, but the very problem of distinguishing and separating. There are three main areas where a kind of ‘slippage’ takes place: in the relationships between nature (including Man) and technology, between spirit and sexuality, and between adulthood and childhood. All of these areas have been minutely examined by others in one way or another, and some of the following observations are far from new, but the overall trend in the text towards ‘liminality’ does put in question some of the more

14 15 16

Die deutsche Novelle von Goethe bis Kafka (Düsseldorf, 1964), Vol. 1, pp. 268– 83. Gerhart Hauptmann, ‘Bahnwärter Thiel’: Text, Materialien, Kommentar (Munich/Vienna, 1979). Narration in the German Novelle (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 169–187.


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deterministic approaches, and may also shed some light on the problems of this text’s narrative perspective. To consider firstly the relationship of nature/life and technology in the text: it is all too easy to read the first descriptions of the railway as suggesting absolute destructiveness and invasiveness. We are told on the very first page that Thiel’s ten-year period of service had so far been interrupted only by two periods of incapacity when he had been hit on the first occasion by a lump of coal falling from the tender, and on the second by a bottle thrown from a train. Moreover, an early description of the rails seems to stress the enmity, as it were, of track and forest: Die Strecke schnitt rechts und links gradlinig in den unabsehbaren, grünen Forst hinein; zu ihren beiden Seiten stauten die Nadelmassen gleichsam zurück, zwischen sich eine Gasse freilassend, die der rötlichbraune, kiesbestreute Bahndamm ausfüllte.17

The track cuts actively and with sharp linearity into the otherwise unmeasurable forest, and the trees seem actively to draw back from it. The service of technology also seems to constrict life more generally. Whilst Thiel and his family live in what is still just recognisable as a village whose significance was once clearly in its position on the banks of the Spree, their lives are dedicated to the rhythms not of nature or the seasons any more, but to those demanded of its employees by the Reichsbahn: shift work and strictly regulated duties. Only in his hours off does Thiel manage to be outside and help the children play ancient games, in an almost parodistic echo of archetypal ‘natural’ society. For most of his time Thiel himself is merely a tiny cog within the big, modern machine of a well-run railway linking what are effectively remote places, Berlin and Breslau. It is as though machines had broken into a coherent Stifter landscape and insisted on connecting it, exposing it to an alien world outside. The railway is, of course, the immediate cause of little Tobias’ death, which is described in a manner which stresses not so much actual gore as depersonalisation, a helpless ‘Ausgeliefertsein’: ‘Eine dunkle Masse war unter den Zug geraten und wurde zwischen den Rädern wie ein Gummiball hin und her geworfen’ (p. 58). It seems clear that a strident contrast is being made between 17

Sämtliche Werke, Vol. 6, pp. 48f. All further page references will be to this volume.

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‘natural life’ and technology. Yet it is also paradoxically that selfsame – in the broadest sense – inhuman machinery which through its orderedness offers time and space for Thiel to cultivate his dreamy side for which there is no room in his domestic life, allows him to dwell on the forest as he walks to work, or stands at his crossing and watches the sunset. Whilst it is true that at one point grazing deer are frightened off the track and back into ‘their’ apparently distinct domain by an approaching train, it is also true that the sunset seems to unite nature and technology, allowing them to serve as images of each other: Die Sonne, welche soeben unter dem Rande mächtiger Wolken herabhing, um in das schwarzgrüne Wipfelmeer zu versinken, goss Ströme von Purpur über den Forst. Die Säulenarkaden der Kiefernstämme jenseits des Dammes entzündeten sich gleichsam von innen heraus und glühten wie Eisen. Auch die Geleise begannen zu glühen, feurigen Schlangen gleich […] (p. 49, my italics)

Nature and technology are interwoven here; there is majesty, vitality, and, of course, threat in both. Moreover, it is the secluded isolation of the crossing, referred to repeatedly as Thiel’s ‘Einöde’, with overtones of both barrenness and holiness, which offers him not just depersonalising servitude to an incomprehensible system, but also the only means to deal with just that very human ‘otherness’ which it seems to exclude: Thiel’s second form of bondage, the shaming sexual dependence on his second wife. As long as he can pursue his cult of adoring remembrance of his first wife in his lonely signal-box, he can hold his fractured life and psyche in some kind of balance. Rigid order thus not only constrains, but sustains; so the oppositions and distinctions between what is ‘natural’ and what is not, what are human qualities and those of machines, are never as clear-cut as they may at first seem. The same is true for the second category, that of spirit versus the physical that is sexuality, which forms the basis for Martini’s interpretation of an ‘Urdrama’ in modern guise. In alerting us to the fine psychological detail of the text this approach has much to offer, although as Peter Sprengel has pointed out, the term ‘Urdrama’ does not appear in Hauptmann’s own writing until 1905,18 and there is a real danger of reading too much grandeur of intent into this early work from the perspective of his later preoccupations. Of course the internal battle in 18

Gerhart Hauptmann. Epoche–Werk–Wirkung (Munich, 1984), p. 192.


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Thiel is at the very heart of the text, and it is perhaps here that Büchner’s influence is most evident; like Woyzeck, without the intellectual capacity for full self-analysis or the verbal ability to articulate feelings clearly, Thiel is unable to resolve his dichotomous character. He has a naïve longing for decency and purity, but a powerful sexual drive too, hinted at from the very start with the images of him attending church with his delicate, pale first wife, but contrasted to her by his Herculean figure which seems to bespeak physical appetite. The final tragedy grows out of just this; as others have often pointed out, his murder of Lene and their joint child is not simply revenge for the loss of Tobias, but an act of desperate rage against the evidence of his own enslavement and his failure to conquer it. Yet once again there are moments when the lines seem not quite so clearly drawn. It has frequently been noted that similar imagery – that of nets and spiders’ webs – is used to describe both the railway and the telegraph lines on the one hand, and on the other the powerful effect of Lene on Thiel: Eine Kraft schien von dem Weibe auszugehen, unbezwingbar, unentrinnbar, der Thiel sich nicht gewachsen fühlte. Leicht gleich einem feinen Spinngewebe und doch fest wie ein Netz von Eisen legte es sich um ihn, fesselnd, überwindend, erschlaffend. (p. 47)

The powerful hold Lene has on him is described in a way which is another crossover point between nature and technology, as is the description of Lene digging vigorously ‘like a machine’ (p.56), suggesting both Darwinian fitness for survival in the technological world and potent sexual promise. That hold is however also invested with a force which, whilst certainly not superhuman, is psychic as well as physical, a product in a sense of Thiel’s own mystical leanings. Even though the wording quoted above, as so often in the text, is clearly not Thiel’s own, it suggests – as does his Minna-cult rather more immediately – a capacity to ‘read’ the world, however confusedly, rather than just suffer it, and without that degree of consciousness, that sense of himself as sentient being, the power of his second wife would not be so complex and ineluctable. Mind and body are not distinct or oppositional; they feed off each other intensively, for good and ill. This disturbance of reassuring distinctions is also embodied in other images in the text which can be read psychologically. It is striking, for instance, that again and again

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‘boundedness’ is opened up, broken through. There are three main areas of security and enclosure in Thiel’s life before tragedy strikes: his home, the forest and his hut. His home is where he can resume being a ‘normal’ human each day, the forest is the realm through which, once more enclosed within himself, he walks peacefully away from his troubles, and his hut is the magical space in which he can commune with Minna. Yet each of these spaces is subject to change and desecration in the course of the text. It is in his home in which he is ‘exposed’ to the greatest problem of his humanity in his relationship with Lene; the forest through which he moves so securely and in which little Tobias once mistakenly thinks he is seeing God in a squirrel, becomes the scene of anguish, of exposure to overpowering disaster, and its description moves from glowing fiery grandeur to the colours of decay and threat; the signal-box, once the shrine, becomes the setting for nightmares in which the symbol of his ordered life, his treasured watch, crashes to the floor and breaks and the warning bells seem not just part of everyday routine but the warning knell of doom. No secure space is left, all enclosure is broken open, and Thiel is increasingly exposed to the uncontrollable forces of his life. The story is one of a journey out of the security of neat definitions or defined spaces into confused, uncharted spheres, in which even his apparently de-physicalized adoration of Minna can be read as less than innocent, for as with the courtly love at which her name hints, albeit less consciously, exclusion of overt sexuality here serves only to realize and intensify precisely that which is excluded. Small wonder, perhaps, that his vision of the fleeing Minna (pp. 52f.) seems to have something of both Pietà and terrified Romantic heroine in flight from an abuser. The third category is the apparent opposition of adulthood and childhood. Post reads a great deal into the triangle relationship of father, stepmother and child, seeing profound and universal significance in the loss of the ‘real’ mother for whom Thiel tries vainly to substitute. ‘Gerhart Hauptmann […] führt das Leiden des Menschen auf den Verlust jenes bei Bachofen so eindringlich beschriebenen Prinzips des gebärenden und lebenserhaltenden Muttertums.’19 Whilst Post’s reading of Hauptmann in the light of Bachofen offers great rewards with later texts, where the lost mother becomes a significant and conscious motif, 19

Gerhart Hauptmann, ‘Bahnwärter Thiel’, p. 116.


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there is no evidence of such mythic thinking so early in Hauptmann’s work. Yet the relationship of Thiel and the child Tobias is of great interest. Tobias represents a kind of pre-adult innocence; in his ungainliness he is symbolically as well as actually set apart from the normal world, his name reminds us of the story of Tobias and the angel, and his childish conversation is entirely free of guile or calculation; whilst at other moments in the text animals seem slightly sinister – the laughing or indifferently hammering woodpecker – it is Tobias who seems to see God in a squirrel. It is certainly true that this innocence represents for Thiel both an awkward responsibility as single parent, and later an uncomfortable reminder of his own helplessness, his neglectful dependence on Lene. Post emphasises this fraught emotional relationship, seeing Tobias as ‘eine amplifizierende Spiegelung der Hilflosigkeit und Liebe suchenden Abhängigkeit Thiels, aber auch als Zeichen der unterlassenen Liebespflicht, als Abbild seiner Schuld.’20 Rather than relate this to some notional general theory about a world that has lost touch with the ‘Urmutter’, however, one can perhaps take this link more productively as a kind of doubling. Andrew Webber has shown how potent a figure the double is in German literature, especially in the nineteenth-century.21 Although it might seem surprising to suggest that the motif is still lurking here, in a work which seems to display such groundedness in the concrete everyday world, it is helpful to see Tobias as Thiel’s ‘other’: not just as the image of the literally childlike qualities in Thiel which are evident in his liking of children’s company and his tendency towards dependence on others, as Post indicates, but perhaps rather as the externalised image of a problematic inner self. Tobias’ birth, traumatically distorting any notion of unsullied nature in both the event and its wider consequences, is symbolically inscribed on his ungainly body, and his childhood accidents seem also specifically to mirror those we are told Thiel suffers, indicating a parallelism between them. In some senses, then, this child of the idealized first marriage may be said to represent from the very start the falsity of the child-adult (as well as spirit-body) distinction. His large head, which gives him immediately an old-young appearance, and his later grown-up composure as abused child are not only sadly realistic, but mirror the confusion of 20 21

Op. cit., p. 63. The Doppelgänger. Double Visions in German Literature (Oxford, 1996).

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Thiel’s own psyche. The man who seems firmly in control of his regularized routine actions is in fact anything but in control, his motivation for action unclear from the very start; even his romantic choice and later adoration of Minna suggest evasion of the ‘other’ as much as reverence, and our exclusion as readers from closer knowledge of his motivation replicates, as so often with this text’s lacunae, Thiel’s own incomprehension. The product of that unresolved relationship, the imperfect Tobias, functions not only as a reminder of his failure as parent to help his abused child, but makes the latter an image of Thiel’s own emotional trauma, his failure from the start to ‘connect’ in a broader sense, to grasp his own physicality and its consequences; indeed one could read his story as a merely half-understood expulsion from Paradise, in which full knowledge is resisted and re-entry repeatedly sought. As an appropriately flawed image of identity, Tobias enacts and makes manifest Thiel’s own mix of childlike/adult qualities, his capacity both for dependency and abuse, pointing again to the vanity of simple categorization. Not surprisingly, perhaps, even Thiel’s rage at the end, when he is dragged from the railway line, remains ambiguous: has he at last begun to own and acknowledge his pain, or is he still trying to displace it onto others, as with the murder? Equally, when he is taken from prison to the Charité hospital, still clutching his son’s ‘Pudelmütze’ it seems an act of both adult protectiveness and childish seeking for protection. (There is, incidentally, an interesting echo here of the ending of Büchner’s Lenz; in both texts total mental collapse and the compliant behaviour which society ultimately requires are disturbingly similar. Society’s capacity to infantilize is not, however, a developed theme here.) Once again, then we have a motif which resists simple reduction. This is ironic, in that from the very start the text tempts us into believing that definition, limitation is possible: it bears a very specific name, is set in a very specific place, indeed so much so that critics have found it hard to believe that there was no traceable source figure.22 But perhaps more significant than this seeming certainty and fixedness is the fact that our 22

See Walter Requardt and Martin Machatzke, Gerhart Hauptmann und Erkner (Berlin, 1980), p. 115. A specific claim is made in Gerhart Hauptman: Neue Akzente – neue Aspekte. Vorträge im Gerhart-Hauptmann-Museum Erkner, ed. by Gustav Erdmann (Berlin, 1992), pp. 13ff.


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attention is repeatedly drawn to the possible metaphorical significance of what Thiel does. The way that the warning bell marking the advent of trains takes on much deeper meaning at the point of crisis has already been mentioned; in addition it is not insignificant, perhaps, that Thiel is the guardian of a transition point, a crossing, at which he often stands dreamingly gazing, losing his sense of time: our attention is thus specifically drawn to the liminal, as it is when we read that he has to cross a river to reach his home. It is also striking how often our attention is drawn to faces and eyes. Of course this can be seen merely as part of the attempt to render the physical world visible to the reader, or may indicate, as Ellis suggests,23 Thiel’s own unintellectuality and thus susceptibility to visual impressions, but moments of awakening vision are noticeably frightening, two in particular. There is the point at which Thiel comes home unexpectedly and finds his wife ‘kreidebleich vor Zorn’ (p.47) as she maltreats Tobias. Thiel is speechless, is all eyes as he takes in the unthinkable, whilst Lene turns her head away and the milk she is pouring overflows the jug. This is surely an indication of Thiel’s, and our own, need to ‘read’ the world afresh, and to recognise its ‘overflowing’, its refusal to fit neat categories. The second profoundly significant moment comes a little later, in the early hours of the day before the accident, when Lene suddenly feels Thiel’s eyes fixed upon her as she dresses: Plötzlich fuhr sie herum, ohne selbst zu wissen, aus welchem Grund, und blickte in das von Leidenschaften verzerrte, erdfarbene Gesicht ihres Mannes, der sie, halbaufgerichtet, die Hände auf der Bettkante, mit brennenden Augen anstarrte. (p. 55)

Once again our attention is drawn to a sudden new way of looking, as Thiel seems almost out of control, governed by terrifying unpredictable lust, or by some deeper horrified prescience more to do with himself than with Lene. In other words, we are constantly being invited to look again, to revise the assurance with which the tale initially provides us, that the world is known and knowable. Small wonder that the trains which feature so large in the text seem both mundane and demonic, and that the lines they travel are both objects of everyday work and pointers 23

See Ellis, Narration in the German Novelle, p. 180.

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into infinity, or that the final crisis begins when the neat division between home and work is eroded by Lene’s appropriation of land next to Thiel’s workplace. Most interesting of all in this context is the detail we are given of Thiel’s murder of Lene, that she lay in her blood ‘das Gesicht unkenntlich’ (p. 66). Is it too fanciful to suggest that, as with his vision of Minna’s terrible gaze (p. 53), Thiel could not bear above all what her gaze reflected in him? It is this constantly varied stress on the liminal, on the impossibility of reading the world in terms of simple categorization, which may help to explain some of the problems which arise with the narrative perspective in this text. Although earlier critics, perhaps overly aware of the rich physical and very ‘modern’ detail, often described the story as maintaining a consistent objectivity, it has become increasingly obvious to commentators that this is a false perception. There is not an explicitly commentating narrative voice ‘above’ Thiel; although many of the descriptions, particularly of the forest in its various moods, express perceptions of a complexity and in a language beyond that of the uneducated Thiel, they do not simply distance us from him, for they do not analyse so much as articulate changes of mood which are readily construed as part of his subconscious awareness in simpler form. Furthermore there are moments when the largely external narration seems to slip into something much closer to Thiel’s own perspective, for example at the death of his first wife. ‘[…] und plötzlich saß der Bahnwärter wieder allein wie zuvor. An einem der vorangegangen Wochentage hatte die Sterbeglocke geläutet; das war das Ganze’ (p. 37). That last phrase could be construed as the narrative voice summarizing, but it also seems to ape what the hard-pressed (and at this point ironically deluded) Thiel himself might have said, as ‘erlebte Rede.’ Soon afterwards we read that Thiel had moments when he was less composed: ‘Es war dies immer anlässlich solcher Dinge, die Tobiaschen betrafen.’ (p. 39). In that one word ‘Tobiaschen’ we are given a brief entry into Thiel’s own perspective on his child, which explains the behaviour which the narrative voice is highlighting. There are several possible reasons for this apparent uncertainty, or doubling, of perspective. There is an inherent problem, as for Büchner with his Woyzeck, in ‘dramatising’ a simple, inarticulate man credibly; his inner life is potentially far beyond the reach of his own words, so that the narrator must somehow supply richer insight. For Ron Speirs this remains an


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unresolved problem of German Naturalism,24 and it may suggest one reason why Hauptmann soon opted for the immediate, visual medium of drama, which would allow him at least potentially to emancipate his characters more easily from authorial control. This is in any case a very early work by an author who had not yet received critical feedback from others, moreover one who is perhaps caught between the bourgeois superiority typical of many other Naturalist writers and the sympathetic insight into tortured souls which will become his hallmark. However, it may also be that the story’s constant circling around the liminal has rendered the sense of perspective problematic, in a manner which might have been much more subtly and consistently developed by a more experienced author. Certainly this narrative perspective, fluctuating between and at times conflating external and internal, adds to the sense in which this text both confirms the existence of an external, objectively real world, yet at the same time problematizes the very notion of objectivity. There are of course also other ways in which the text might be said to reveal a lack of sophistication. Its treatment of female figures, for instance, seems at first reading evidence of a quite daring openness about sexual needs and obsession, and it is certainly true that Thiel’s sexual dependence, or Hörigkeit to use the more evocative German term, is powerfully evoked in the shaming self-awareness it creates for an otherwise rather romantic man. On closer reading, however, this picture seems both more coy and less adventurous than the theme itself implies. There is a rather bourgeois reticence about explicit sexual detail, which is again not perhaps surprising in view of Hauptmann’s own social origins, but it is problematic in that the power and overwhelming presence of the physical is a fundamental element in the story, whilst its seemingly more ‘acceptable’ opposite pole, Thiel’s dreamy spirituality, is explored at considerable length. Thiel is thus to some extent sanitized, as it were, even patronized despite the overall sensitivity of the portrayal by the controlling function of a censoring narrator, and his final violence is rendered less fully comprehensible. Moreover, as Helmut Scheuer has pointed out, the two women in the tale, Minna and Lene, fit fairly obviously into widespread late nineteenth-century stereotypes of the 24

‘Between pathos and irony: the rhetoric of the early short stories’, in The Narrative Fiction of Heinrich Böll, ed. by Michael Butler (Cambridge, 1994), p. 58.

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female: those of the femme fragile and of the more powerful, even demonic woman who both attracts and terrifies men.25 If she seems at moments the stereotypical ‘wicked stepmother’ of fairy-tale, Lene is also reminiscent of many figures in both the literature and the visual arts of the period whose disruptive image is the projection of male fear and desire,26 and thus the representation of women here represents less a powerful new insight into female psychology than another fairly predictable contribution to the male-dominated discourse of sexuality in the late nineteenth-century. None of the above is intended to deny the significance of a text which takes the German short story from its conventional nineteenthcentury realm of largely unsullied nature into the world of organised labour, technology and machines. Martini rightly emphasizes that it forms a transition point between the imaginatively heightened worlds of Romanticism and Poetic Realism and the harshly constraining facts of a new age, something perhaps indicated by its sub-title of ‘novellistische Studie.’ It thereby acknowledges a tradition, from which it indeed draws much in terms of the desire for concentration and controlled focus (it even has a ‘Dingssymbol’ in the railway); yet it refuses to be bound by earlier models or expectations, the term ‘Studie’ announces the quasiscientific pretentions of Naturalism to come, with its aim of experimenting à la Claude Bernard or Zola with observed actual/real phenomena as analytical work in progress rather than polished work of art. Above all it is this sense of something still open within an overtly complete text which perhaps best suggests what it most fascinating and important about it: its combination of certitude and uncertainty. This is so absolutely the existing, concrete world of the late nineteenth-century that it has, as noted above, given rise to the assumption of some specific source, yet what is being enacted is the breakdown of contextualisation. Of course many Novellen and short stories in the preceding decades had played with boundaries and limits, but here we have in stark form the enactment of the end of security. Even if it is not possible to argue that Thiel is a typical proletarian or that Hauptmann conveys the social background with a clarity and focus suggestive of activist intentions, it 25 26

‘Interpretation’, note xi, p. 41f. See Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity. Fantasies of Feminine Evil in fin-de-siècle Culture (Oxford, New York, 1986).


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remains true that it contains potentially very important insights. All the old social structures have been undermined by a new age demanding not craftsmanship but subordination to the broad needs of cities (Lene was a ‘Kuhmagd’) and to depersonalising industry. These changes merely reinforce and deepen social division (e.g. the difference between the train passengers and workers, the latter providing a mere spectacle for the former, however charitable their response to the tragedy); the family life which might have functioned as refuge is utterly dependent upon that employment and is shaped by it (the choice of the stronger Lene as wife and her need to grow food to supplement a low income, for instance.) For a sensitive man like Thiel, as for Woyzeck and Lenz before him, neither nature nor society offers support any longer, and retreat into himself uncovers only further complexity. This is ultimately a story about the liminal, about the impossibility of drawing neat boundaries, and to that extent it is not only a portrayal of individual emotional and psychological uncertainty, but also an undermining of the fundamental premise of realism – the possibility of distinction and separation. What makes it a ‘landmark’ is its position at the very start of the modern world, its recognition that that world is a paradoxical one, in which the vulnerable are both liable to be alienated from older certainties and thrown into doubt and confusion about themselves, whilst at the same time remaining inexorably trapped in the physical space and time which are in some measure the very cause of that deracination. Though Mann and Kafka would of course soon develop far more radical and sophisticated expressions of alienation, this story does represent a threshhold. The apparent concrete certainty of its title which seems to place it in a knowable world of secure identities, in fact could be said rather to function ironically, merely locating a position, a man-shaped space within which all is uncertainty, pain and dissolution. Thiel’s clearly identifying name and very specific guarding function are in the end the most uninformative, even misleading things about him, and that renders this text a very significant indicator of the fundamental change in modes of understanding and representing the world which would soon begin to transform German – and not only German – narrative. Like its rural/ technological setting, Bahnwärter Thiel as a whole evokes a wider, more sophisticated world to which connections already exist, but which is still just out of view.


PETER HUTCHINSON

Mann, Der Tod in Venedig

Thomas Mann’s semi-autobiographical story of the infatuated artist marks a turning point in the author’s literary career and the bold treatment of a taboo subject. Completed in 1912, it was Mann’s first clearly successful work since the collection Tristan of 1903 – a sophisticated contrast to the melodramatic play Fiorenza, to the long-winded novel Königliche Hoheit, and to a troubling succession of uncompleted works which are actually mentioned in Der Tod in Venedig itself. Mann urgently needed a firmly based success to confirm the status he had been granted by Buddenbrooks and which seemed to be slipping from his grasp; this Novelle, written in parts very much from the heart, gave him confidence for the next decade and for the writing of Der Zauberberg. Despite its subject-matter the story was quickly acclaimed as a masterpiece, and it has enjoyed considerable international attention.1 Quite uncharacteristically for such a self-critical author, Mann himself actually 1

The most searching investigations have been by T . J . Reed, notably in Death in Venice. Making and Unmaking a Master (New York, 1994), which incorporates earlier work from Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition (Oxford, 1974), and from his two excellent editions of the Novelle, one with English apparatus (originally Oxford, 1971, revised Bristol, 1996), and the other German (‘Der Tod in Venedig’: Text, Materialien, Kommentar, Munich, 1983); the latter includes Mann’s working notes and is particularly valuable for the German translation of the Classics which Mann exploited; Reed’s latest study is ‘The frustrated Poet: Homosexuality and Taboo in Der Tod in Venedig’, in Taboos in German Literature, ed. by David Jackson (Providence, Oxford, 1996), pp. 119–34. Other important studies include the Reclam collection Thomas Mann: ‘Der Tod in Venedig’. Erläuterungen und Dokumente, ed. by Ehrhard Bahr (Stuttgart, 1991), which comprises the usual excellent apparatus as well as Mann’s working notes as originally presented by Reed; Jeffrey B. Berlin (ed.), Approaches to Teaching Mann’s ‘Death in Venice’ and other Short Fiction (New York, 1992); Werner Frizen, Thomas Mann: ‘Der Tod in Venedig’ (Munich, 1993); Ritchie Robertson, ‘Classicism and its Pitfalls: Death in Venice’ in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann ed. by Ritchie Robertson (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 95–106. All the above contain extensive bibliographies.

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expressed total satisfaction with this composition: ‘Es scheint, daß mir hier einmal etwas vollkommen geglückt ist […]. Es stimmt einmal Alles, es schießt zusammen, und der Kristall ist rein.’2 The central theme of the story is the erosion of restraint, control, decorum and morality by the upsurge of an unqualified admiration which swiftly leads to barely disguised sexual desire. With precision and heavily ironic touches, Mann traces the gradual loss of dignity, the collapse of ethical values, and ultimately the death of a man who becomes infatuated with something which, we sense from the beginning, is dangerous and destructive. The conflict within this character is couched in terms of ‘Zucht’ on the one hand, and a range of opposing forces on the other (‘Bequemlichkeit’, ‘das Leidenschaftliche’, ‘das Schöne’, ‘das Übel’), and many of Mann’s other famous oppositions can be seen under this umbrella: not obvious here, but nonetheless significant, are those of ‘Bürger’ and ‘Künstler’, of feeling and insight, order and chaos. The standard geographical symbolism is also present, but amended so that it is not presented here solely in the famous ‘North’ and ‘South’ oppositions of his earlier works (evident in the ‘northern’ Aschenbach lured into his fate by the attractions of Venice, and the antipathy of northern and southern guests in the ‘Hotel Excelsior’), but also of West (that is Europe, with its coolness, self-control and moderation), and East (heat, immorality, undisguised sexual urges, the savagery of the jungle). Mann explores these contrasts on numerous planes, in his customarily systematic manner, encouraging us to recognise the interdependence of them all by use of linking irony, analogy, symbol and perspective, each plane seeking to consolidate the other: the sexual, for example, is underpinned and reinforced by the metaphysical, the philosophical, the psychological, even the Classical. The force of this Novelle may derive in part from the fact that many of the details of character and situation are taken directly from the author’s own experiences. In May 1911 the Mann family steamed into Venice for a holiday. On the boat they were upset by an elderly homosexual whose behaviour and make-up were excessive; they took a gondolier who proved to be unlicensed; at the hotel there was a Polish family with three girls and a remarkably attractive young boy. As we 2

Letter of 12 March 1913 to Philipp Witkop, in Dichter über ihre Dichtungen: Thomas Mann, Vol. 1, ed. by Hans Wysling (Munich, 1975) p. 401.


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now know from correspondence and testimony, not least from Thomas Mann’s own wife, Thomas conceived an erotic attraction towards him.3 One evening a vile street singer, with yellow, leering face, performed in the grounds of the hotel. People began to leave, and a rumour spread that cholera was invading the city. The boy and his family left, and the Manns departed shortly afterwards. Mann was sometimes shameless in exposing his own weaknesses, and especially those of others, in print, and as he was later to remark in his Lebensabriß, nothing is invented in the Novelle. All he needed to do, he claimed, was to arrange the elements of a family holiday in a way to bring out the themes he wished to convey. He did this with some difficulty, although reasonably swiftly, with the selective help of several key figures: especially Plato and Nietzsche. Mann’s questionable hero, the writer Gustav von Aschenbach, has not matured in a balanced manner. His ancestors have given him a certain toughness, or rather, they have given him the need to show to the outside world that he is tough; and so playing the role of the triumphalist over adversity characterises his life, the content of his writing, and his very style. His favourite slogan is that of Frederick the Great, ‘Durchhalten’, and this is a pose he maintains despite the weakness of his own body and despite his inward desire not to hold out, but rather to give in. Because, we learn through brief items of relevant information, Aschenbach is not a physically strong individual, but one who forces himself through life and whose conception of art is that it is created ‘trotzdem’, that is, in spite of all that opposes the creative mind (including ‘Qual, Armut […] Körperschwäche […] Leidenschaft’).4 The origins of this triumph of mind over matter are, of course, hereditary. ‘Zucht war ja zum Glücke’ – and given the narrative perspective we cannot be sure whether this expression of gratitude comes from the mind of Aschenbach or from the narrator – ‘sein eingeborenes Erbteil von väterlicher Seite’ (p. 567). Now Mann does not show us the two sides of Aschenbach’s character alongside each other, as he had done, rather simplistically, in 3

4

For details of the event, and a reading of the story from the point of view of Mann’s sexuality, see, for example, Anthony Heilbut, Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature (London, 1996), pp. 246–67. Gesammelte Werke in Einzelbänden: Frühe Erzählungen, ed. by Peter de Mendelssohn (Frankfurt am Main, 1981), p. 568. All further quotation from this edition.

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Tonio Kröger, another self-exposure of artistic division. As if he had learnt from the excesses of the earlier Novelle, Mann’s control here is worthy of Aschenbach himself, for the source of the problem has actually been raised two pages earlier: ‘rascheres, sinnlicheres Blut war der Familie in der vorigen Generation durch die Mutter des Dichters, Tochter eines böhmischen Kapellmeisters, zugekommen’. Now although the words ‘sinnlicheres Blut’ may not recur (unlike the word ‘Zucht’), there are motifs and symbols which constantly recall it: they take the form only rarely of allusions to music, far more often as references to the East, which is seen solely as a place where restraint is absent, a place of excitement and adventure, heat and disease. The development of the plot shows the awakening and finally the triumph of this maternal side of Aschenbach’s personality, a side he has kept under control for so long. He has never in his life relaxed, and the early brief anecdote about his determination not to – as all details in this Novelle – links up with the middle of the story and its conclusion: äußerte ein feiner Beobachter über ihn in Gesellschaft: ‘Sehen Sie, Aschenbach hat von jeher nur so gelebt’ – und der Sprecher schloß die Finger seiner Linken fest zur Faust – ; ‘niemals so’ – und er ließ die geöffnete Hand bequem von der Lehne des Sessels hängen’. (p. 566)

It is the apparently harmless ‘bequem’ which is so telling here. In the course of the Novelle we see Aschenbach’s increasing pleasure in comfort and relaxation: on the first occasion the narrator does not actually use the epithet ‘bequem’ but emphasises the state by fourfold reference to pleasurable sensations. As Aschenbach sprawls cosily, but initially guiltily in the soft cushions of the coffin-like gondola, we find the use of ‘weich’, ‘höchst angenehm’, ‘ein Bann der Trägheit’, ‘sanft gewiegt’ (p. 581); then in the chair where he lingers, even though dinner has been announced, but from which, ‘übrigens’, as if this were an incidental factor, he can appreciate the beauty of the young boy, Tadzio (‘behaglich aufgehoben und übrigens das Schöne vor Augen’ p. 586); finally, we find ‘bequem’ itself as Aschenbach relaxes in the deckchair from which he proposes to watch the beautiful youth (‘machte es sich bequem in seinem Lehnstuhl’, p. 590, ‘den Kopf bequem an der Lehne des Stuhls’, p. 592); then, of course, in the barber’s chair, where he finally allows himself to be rejuvenated by the dyeing of his hair and


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with make-up (‘bequem ruhend’, p. 635). Perhaps the most telling moment, the key turning point, is when Aschenbach returns to his hotel after his half-hearted attempt to leave Venice. In a movement which recalls that of the ‘sharp observer’ quoted above, we have confirmation that he has now relaxed fully: Dann hob er den Kopf und beschrieb mit beiden schlaff über die Lehne des Sessels hinabhängenden Armen eine langsam drehende und hebende Bewegung, die Handflächen vorwärtskehrend, so, als deute er Öffnen und Ausbreiten der Arme an. Es war eine bereitwillig willkommen heißende, gelassen aufnehmende Gebärde. (p. 602)

The arms of the chair, the arms of Aschenbach, but above all, Aschenbach’s palms, how perfectly they run counter to that earlier image of the writer with the clenched fist who could never relax. And note here too the rhythm, the contrast between first and second sentences, a form of release after tension, to which I shall later return. In all these positions of comfort Aschenbach finds resistance impossible: it’s so much easier to give in than to make a stand. Even the very decision to travel in the first place can easily be seen in retrospect as the beginnings of surrender. He cannot force himself on with his writing any longer, and so he capitulates, he travels, and then he travels again. At no stage whatsoever in this text does he ‘durchhalten’. His journey is a sequence of stages of losing control, the erosion of the ‘väterliche Zucht’ by the ‘sinnlicheres Blut der Mutter’. He doesn’t only lose control physically, of course, but morally, for as in so many of Mann’s works, the physical and the moral are interdependent. But one might even go further than this, of course, and say that Aschenbach doesn’t simply lose control: he is never in control. Everything is actually determined by forces from without, and he is subservient to them, starting with the opening, innocent afternoon walk. Here it had been his intention to return home on foot, but nature, in the form of a threatening storm, encourages him to take the public transport. This decision takes him to the tram stop by the cemetery. But the tram is not there, he must wait, and so he meets a wild-looking stranger who arouses in him a powerful ‘jugendlich durstiges Verlangen in die Ferne’. He wants to leave Munich straight away, but he is held up by various trivial commitments, and thus it goes on. The weather is against him in his first resort, and so he is

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pushed further, with the most striking moment of helplessness being on the boat to Venice, where he is powerless in front of the diabolical purser – in an appropriate (‘höhlenartig’) cabin – who sells him the ticket; and the vessel itself is almost out of control, with its cheerful captain carousing below deck with the passengers; when he arrives in Venice the unlicensed gondolier takes over and disregards his – half-hearted – commands; when Aschenbach tries to leave Venice, his luggage goes astray and he declares there is no alternative but to return to the hotel. It is all summed up laconically in the simple French of the smiling man who operates the lift: ‘Pas de chance, monsieur.’ It may all be seen as ‘bad luck’, just as indulging in over-ripe strawberries apparently brings illness and death. Aschenbach, it may seem, is a victim: of nature, demonic forces, a sudden need to relax, bad luck. There is, however, an alternative way of considering the situation, and it is relevant to a number of Mann’s other works.5 Does Aschenbach decline inwardly and morally because of what happens to him, or was he broken anyway, at the beginning of the Novelle, and that is why it happens to him? Is not the encounter with all these figures presaging death and the experience all this ‘bad luck’ precisely a result of his current state? The author of that monumental work on Frederick the Great would never have noticed these strange figures before, his commands would have been instantly obeyed, he would not have been seduced by images of questionable beauty. But his ‘Zucht’ has collapsed, his ‘Wille’ is broken, and all else follows as a natural consequence. This ‘Zucht’ of which so much is made by Aschenbach in his life and writing, is not to be seen simply as an attitude. It is a whole philosophy, and it is essentially that of ‘Bürgertum’. But Aschenbach, in adopting the code of the paternal side of his family, has denied the maternal part of his inner self; his philosophy of ‘trotzdem’ has represented a suppression of his own ‘rascheres, sinnlicheres Blut’, of warmth, comfort, physical satisfaction, unconditional affection. And this is clearly underlined in the famous sentence which opens the second chapter of the Novelle with its list of Aschenbach’s major literary 5

See, for example, the comments by T.J. Reed on the ambiguity surrounding such figures as Hans Castorp and Adrian Leverkühn, where alternative readings of the ‘central riddle’ are consistently preserved (Der Tod in Venedig, Bristol edition, pp. 45–6).


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achievements: the very subject-matter of his publications promulgates this idea of ‘overcoming’, of triumph over all seductive forces. This element of the Novelle owes much to Nietzsche, who had influenced Mann’s work from his earliest publications. The inspirational source here is Die Geburt der Tragodie aus dem Geiste der Musik, that famous early work in which the forces of the ‘Apolline’ and the ‘Dionsyian’ are described and opposed. For Nietzsche, the ancient Greeks were not the serene figures which earlier European tradition had invoked; in order to create their art they had to balance powerful contradictory forces embodying violent primal impuses on the one hand, and control over form on the other. Nietzsche used the Greek pairing of the Gods of Dionysus and Apollo to embody this view of art, with Dionysus as the creative, but also destructive, force, and Apollo as that of clarity and form. When these were held in tension, the effect was positive, the resultant art possessing both power and form. But clearly, if there is imbalance, there is the risk of either Dionysian chaos on the one hand, or lifeless Apolline form on the other. The ideal is a blend of the two, highlighted in the text as ‘Instinktverschmelzung von Zucht und Zügellosigkeit’ (p. 609). Mann was an early disciple of Nietzsche’s philosophy (and not only this aspect of it), and the warring forces of creative art provide the ideas as well as some of the language of his early work. In Der Tod in Venedig too, we find significant use of key terms from this Nietzschean text, and perhaps the most striking is the remarkable comment just before Aschenbach has his nightmare: ‘Was galt ihm noch Kunst und Tugend gegenüber den Vorteilen des Chaos?’ (p. 631). This is very boldly formulated ‘erlebte Rede’, opposing so firmly what Aschenbach now effectively sees as the two sides of life, of formal art and virtue as opposed to the pleasures of chaos, ‘Zucht’ against abandonment of control: the irony, of course, is that chaos is now seen as an advantage, as productive. The nightmare itself is heavily dependent on Nietzschean terminology, with its references to ‘Rausch’ and ‘Trunkenheit’ above all. The forces within Aschenbach provide not only for some of the language of the Novelle, but also hint at the way in which the author may have wished his text to be understood. For Nietzsche, and this is taken over by Mann, the Apolline suggests control, insight, clarity; the apolline figure embodies dignity, sobriety, contemplation. The dionysian figure, on the other hand, reveals a preference for immoderation, intoxication,

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ecstasy, the self is forgotten and a new realm may be reached through abandonment of control. The Apolline is expressed best through sculpture; the Dionysian through music, another neat link with Aschenbach’s mother. The Dionysian is attractive, but, like the music of Wagner, dangerous; for in releasing oneself, in submitting to unrestrained excitement and pleasure, the individual may be overcome. And this is what happens to Aschenbach. One of numerous ironies is that in his heightened state he is granted a page and a half of exquisite prose. This is composed in his chair on the beach, from which he has been indulging in the delights of the Dionysian. But this achievement – briefly, almost incidentally, mentioned – takes us back, as so many parts of this text, to earlier comments by the narrator: those on artistic creation and the whole question of whether the public would really like to know the circumstances under which ‘great art’ is composed. At that earlier point the narrator has quickly moved on, yet the text itself goes on to give a particular answer: the public might indeed recoil from the dionysian inspiration of certain ‘great works’, and in this respect the Novelle may be seen as confessionary self-commentary. For all these serious undertones, much of the text is also playful and allusive, echoing, quoting, or even misquoting various Classical writers. The most striking parody of Classical style occurs at the beginning of Chapter Four, when Aschenbach’s mood of elation is reflected in the standard Classical comparison of the sun with a chariot being driven across the sky: ‘Nun lenkte Tag für Tag der Gott mit den hitzigen Wangen nackend sein gluthauchendes Viergespann durch die Räume des Himmels, und sein gelbes Gelock flatterte im zugleich ausstürmenden Ostwind’. Dual interpretation, as so commonly in the text, is here possible: this may be the narrator (as he gently mocks the situation), or ‘erlebte Rede’ (as Aschenbach revels in the glory of Grecian expression). The pomposity of the image, the wildness and the heat, the evocation of a different epoch, all combine to place the hero in a world far removed from the decorum of the Hotel Excelsior and the occasional troubling smell of decay from the lagoon. Yet the tension between these two worlds is ever-present; we are constantly aware of a facade. The learned Aschenbach is, of course, totally at home in this Classical world, quoting from Homer’s Odyssey to describe an early impression of Tadzio, or quoting Xenophon recalling Socrates’ advice to


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Critobulos when he sees one of Tadzio’s companions bestow a kiss on him. Such allusions are highlighted and may have been relatively accessible to the educated reading public of the day. But Mann goes further than simple quotation: using above all Plato’s philosophical dialogues the Phaedrus and the Symposium, texts which deal in part with the essence of love and of beauty, he explores their nature from various perspectives, both idealised and cynical.6 In contrast to the straightforward use of Nietzsche’s interpretation of Classical concepts, the use of the other Classical writers is far more ambiguous: Mann presents the latter’s ideas in a complex, sometimes disingenuous manner. The most striking instance is to be found in Aschenbach’s final day-dream as he sits by the well after eating the fateful strawberries. Aschenbach here constructs a strange montage of ideas on beauty and love, the natural tendency of the educator towards the ‘Abgrund’, and the seduction of the artist by Beauty into ‘Rausch und Begierde’. The constant address to ‘Phaidros’ suggests that the whole passage is quotation from the Phaedrus itself (or possibly The Symposium) which may thus give it a sense of authority and suggest an explanation of Aschenbach’s behaviour from the point of view of the Ancient World. But the day-dream is prefaced by a comment that it is ‘seltsame Traumlogik’, so Mann actually denies its legitimacy before it has begun – a point, however, we have surely forgotten by the end! Yet, of course, as Ron Gray has pointed out, ‘standing where it does, the Socrates passage can easily give the impression of summing up the arguments of the story as a whole’.7 Thus, typically, Mann complicates his text by the careful preservation of ambiguity to a degree never before attempted in German literature. We remain uncertain of the author’s view of Beauty, of the Artist – and of Aschenbach. The beauty with which Aschenbach becomes infatuated is presented to us in an questionable light. Just as in Tonio Kröger Hans and Ingeborg are rather suspicious ideals of Life, so too is Tadzio a very questionable ideal of Beauty, or of outward form. For much of the text he is seen through Aschenbach’s eyes, yet, even at the earliest stage, Aschenbach is aware of a beauty which is sickly. Tadzio is actually the 6 7

For full details of Mann’s exploitation of these, and other Classical writers, see especially T . J . Reed, Death in Venice, pp. 54–8 and 67–8. The German Tradition in Literature 1871–1945 (Cambridge, 1965), p. 148.

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opposite of everything Aschenbach has stood for in his external career. Tadzio, for example, is not strong. He does not embody the ideal of ‘durchhalten’. He is spoilt, and the point is made repeatedly in contrast to the ‘Zucht’ in which his sisters are kept. Although it initially appears that Aschenbach admires him for his grace and beauty in a Platonic, nonsexual sense, his attitude changes, and his nightmare, inspired by the world of the East, reveals his infatuation is primarily sexual. Now although the age of Plato himself may have prized homosexual love above heterosexual, within the context of the Novelle Aschenbach’s yearnings and behaviour are seen to be reproachable and immoral – and they are so because there are parallels to his situation in which comparable behaviour is unequivocably condemned. The two most prominent are the behaviour of the old man on the boat, and the attitude of the Venetian authorities to the outbreak of cholera. With the fomer, the man’s makeup and affected youth are violently rejected by Aschenbach (in rhythms which mirror his disgust), yet Aschenbach himself will later indulge in exactly the same false pursuit of wishing to appear more attractive to the object of his admiration; in the second case, that of the Venetian authorities who suppress all news of the outbreak of cholera, Aschenbach himself will do exactly the same in order not to lose his idol. In both instances sexual infatuation is seen to have corrupted the artist totally: pursuit of what is ‘beautiful’ has led him to accepting what he knows to be false, and then shameful. Mann’s technique here, of delicately linking parts of his text in order that they might illuminate each other, was firmly established in Buddenbrooks. In Der Tod the method is developed considerably; it is part of the author’s general liking for irony, but it may also be seen as part of his sense of superiority over his reader and control over his material. In some respects, though, such handling of ideas is mischievous: the partial concealment of suggestion and commentary is essentially playful, and in parts may be seen as a form of duplicity. It is not a technique with which one would associate Aschenbach himself, and a brief allusion to the latter’s inability to approach his material in such a manner may carry a clue to Mann’s self-perception. Following the subtle technique of gentle signals in the Novelle as a whole, the narrator suggests in one place why the hero feels unfulfilled by his achievements:


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Aber er selbst, während die Nation sie ehrte, er ward ihrer nicht froh, und es schien ihm als ermangle sein Werke jener Merkmale feurig spielender Laune, die, ein Erzeugnis der Freude, mehr als irgendein innerer Gehalt, ein gewichtigerer Vorzug, die Freude der genießenden Welt bildeten. (p. 564 [my italics])

The formulation and the vocabulary here, as frequently in this text, are tantalising. What is this fiery, playful element which is missing from his work, and which is actually superior to any content in its capacity to bring pleasure to the reader? Is this observation in part self-referential? Is it Thomas Mann speaking about the superiority of his own approach to art, in contrast to Aschenbach’s failure? As I have suggested, the Novelle in parts reflects the formally controlled, immaculately crafted style which Aschenbach himself is deemed to compose. But within this there is a strong sense of playfulness: it may be far from the ‘feurig spielende Laune’ which Aschenbach feels he lacks, but it is nonetheless provocative and demands our reaction, both intellectual and emotional. We have already seen this in the intertextuality, and I should like to explore it further in such different areas as Mann’s handling of mythological references, his concealment of Aschenbach’s age, and the play with sentence structure. The mythological references are frequent and reasonably clear. The first symbolic figure of the plot is the strange man who appears outside the cemetery: physically he has certain striking characteristics which will reappear in the course of the narrative, one of these being the deep furrows in his brow (which clearly suggest the horns of the devil), while in other respects he seems suggestive of Hermes, who traditionally accompanied dead souls to the Underworld. He foreshadows such other sinister figures as the purser, the gondolier and the street singer, and although the reader may recognise the similarity between these demonic characters, the hero himself fails to do so. Some of these may seem to relate to the title of the Novelle and the question of what the precise nature of the ‘death’ in Venice might be: is it these mythological figures (all associated with aspects of death), is it the cholera, or is it the demise of a specific individual? The author plays with various possibilities, but all come together in the final lines. As Aschenbach is plainly dying – and thus fulfilling one aspect of the title – he thinks he sees a figure beckoning him. He has been looking at Tadzio, and now we have the critical line: ‘Ihm war, als ob der bleiche und liebliche Psychagog dort draußen

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ihm lächle, ihm winke’. A ‘psychagog’ is a conductor of souls to the Underworld, one of the functions of such figures as Hermes and Charon who have been hinted at in such characters as the wild stranger or the gondolier. So now Tadzio, the figure of beauty, has actually turned into another figure of ‘death in Venice’. This may come as a shock, but it is typical of Mann’s play with mythology: it may temporarily tantalise or amuse or challenge us to see its relevance to character and idea, but in the end it has deeply disturbing implications. A second playful, but troubling, aspect of the text is Mann’s engagement with dates and the question of Aschenbach’s age. In his working papers for the story the author did some basic calculations: giving 1911 as one date, he subtracted 53 from it to produce 1858; alongside this he put ‘geboren’.8 But Aschenbach is never given this age in the Novelle and the text actually suggests a very different figure.9 The very opening sentence supplies the first date, informing us that the action took place in the Spring of ‘19…’ But, the narrator, continues, that was a year in which for months the peace of the continent was threatened. Given publication in 1912, the year in question must precede that, so it’s most probably 1911, with its famous Agadir crisis. This is an easy date to arrive at, as was the next for Mann’s contemporaries – far less so for us. We learn that Aschenbach was raised to the nobility on his fiftieth birthday by ‘ein deutscher Fürst, soeben zum Thron gelangt’. This is the second occasion that we have been told the writer has been ennobled, and now Mann slips in an extra, apparently superfluous detail: ‘soeben’. But all these apparently ‘casual’ and insignificant adverbs and particles have a role to play: as Reed neatly puts it, ‘using the casual to suggest the causal is [a] feature of the code of contrariness’ in the text.10 8

9

10

See, for example, T . J . Reed, Der Tod in Venedig (Hanser edition), p. 114. Alongside this Mann has ‘1858’ and ‘30’, adding them to produce ‘1888’. Reed suggests this is part of Mann’s planning of Aschenbach’s career, the point at which he achieves international significance. The text itself, however, notes that it is by the age of forty that he is overwhelmed by international correspondence, showing again, perhaps, that the working notes were not always followed in the actual composition. This issue is generally overlooked in interpretation. To my knowledge the only critic to raise it is Wolfgang Frühwald, ‘Repräsentant des Zeitalters. Zu Thomas Manns Erzählung “Der Tod in Venedig”’, Analele Universitatii Bucuresti, 22 (1973), 51–59 (52). Death in Venice, p. 48.


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So we are not being told this act took place immediately after accession unless we are being invited to work out the year. Who might this ‘Fürst’ have been, and in which year did he accede? There may have been a number of minor ‘Fürsten’ in that period, but the narrator mentions this event in such a way that he is making it clear this Prince was important and that we should be able to work out the date of his coronation. And so we travel back from 1911 to find a year in which a Prince is crowned. Contemporaries might have had little difficulty in recalling a very famous year: the ‘Drei-Kaiser-Jahr’ of 1888. It is, of course, quite irrelevant whether the man who ennobled Aschenbach was Friedrich III or Wilhelm II: the point is simply that in 1888 Aschenbach was fifty years old, so in 1911 he is 73. Now whereas it may seem comprehensible but unusual for a 53-year-old to fall in love with an adolescent, it verges on the grotesque for a man 20 years older to do so. Yet it is not unknown. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, aged 74, fell passionately in love with a 17-year-old girl. As early as 1906 Mann had thought of treating Goethe’s late love-experience in a simple re-narration of the event (‘Goethe in Marienbad’); the visit to Venice allowed him to present aspects of it in a much more modern, and far more disquieting guise.11 This cryptic play with dates invites us to see Aschenbach, sarcastically described at one point as ‘der Meister’, in the light of the acknowledged ‘master’ of German literature. As a final example of the author’s attempts to engage his reader in playful manner, I should like to focus on aspects of the text’s language and style. Mann steeped himself in the later Goethe for the writing of the Novelle, especially Die Wahlverwandtschaften, and his approach may be seen either as neo-classical or as a parody of Aschenbach’s own method – which itself must take as its model the classics. But Mann goes beyond this: the linguistic flourishes of this text, its consistently elevated register, its extended encapsulated subordinate clauses, and its ironic and mocking stylisation, these are sufficiently intense to make reading a demanding process, principally because it involves the reader in the 11

Mann’s correspondence contains several claims that his original intention was to portray Goethe’s final love affair. See, for example, Dichter über ihre Dichtungen: Thomas Mann, Vol. 1, pp. 400, 407, 415. For ways in which Mann follows formal features of Goethe’s classical narratives, see Ritchie Robertson, ‘Classicism and its pitfalls’, pp. 97–8. Robertson neatly observes that Aschenbach’s ‘classicism’ is to be seen in conjunction with his Romantic affinities.

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careful savouring of so many levels of appreciation. Further, Mann’s control of language often reflects that basic conflict on which I began, between ‘Zucht’ and ‘Bequemlichkeit’, between the strict sense of ‘order’, the way above all in which the grammar tautly controls complex syntax, and the ‘release’ of short and simple main clauses. Aschenbach has, we learn at one point, followed Louis XIV in pruning his language of every common expression – and Mann’s text clearly follows this practice. This is the sort of German in which Aschenbach himself must write, and it is therefore a form of parody, a form of mimicry in which we can take delight, while recognising that the euphemisms, the elevated register, the pretension to classical eloquence, and above all the rhythms of the text, represent a control of form in which something else may be being suppressed. The very length of the sentences is in itself an indication of the control and the artificiality: the very first, for example consists of 44 words, the second of 71. The first sentence of the second chapter, that famous description of Aschenbach’s achievements to date, consists of 115 words, and many of these are compound nouns. But these phenomenal constructions must be seen in context: in the third, final sentence of the opening paragraph we find a mere 27 words, so the development in the paragraph as a whole is 44 : 71 : 27.12 And if we look closely at the first sentence of Chapter Two, we find it actually breaks into two distinct sections: the triumphant outline of Aschenbach’s achievements, then a colon, followed by a simple statement of where he was born. So those 115 words divide into 98 in the first section, and only 17 in the second. Our experience on reading is quite marked: the release of tension is pronounced. These examples are extreme, but the principle is evident elsewhere throughout the Novelle, reflecting the pleasure of ease, simplicity, lack of effort, to which Aschenbach willingly succumbs. But Mann’s play with sentence length is also often employed to mirror changes in Aschenbach’s mood; for example, from the discomfort of the descent from the steamer to the pleasures of the gondola trip; or the jerky sentences of that awkward journey to the railway station succeeded by the lyrical description of his emotions on ‘failing’ to escape Venice, the curt sentences describing his 12

The sentence reveals remarkable ‘balance’ in that the number of words in the first and third sentences (44 + 27) is exactly the same as those in the middle one (71). This strikes me as deeply concealed playfulness rather than coincidence.


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reception back at the hotel, and then the blissful release in his chair as he finally relaxes. Reading prose of this sort is intellectually exacting, and the very process of reading is actually highlighted, in Latin, in the second sentence of the story. Aschenbach’s inner driving force is here described as that ‘motus animi continuus’, that constant movement of the mind which, the narrator declares, is ‘according to Cicero’ the essence of eloquence. One of the problems here is that Cicero said no such thing, it was Flaubert (a simple mistake by Mann rather than a subtle way of characterising the narrator as pretentious),13 but it is striking that a central aim of this prose is highlighted, in a Classical language, in the second sentence of the story. Mann’s aim is indeed a ‘constant movement of the mind’, our brains are allowed no respite as we are obliged to wrestle with the multiple implications of events and comments, not to mention the language in which they are couched. A more prominent aspect of language use is to be found in the alliterative doublets and triplets (for example Tadzio’s smile, ‘mit Lippen, die sich im Lächeln erst langsam öffneten’ (p. 614)), as well as the euphony and general richness of sound, which is created after Tadzio appears on the scene. Before this point there have been relatively few individually striking features – the occasional doublet, as if to suggest a more sensuous element which wants to break free, but nothing extended. At points the language seems deliberately unsensuous, with a number of foreign words, especially French, being employed: ‘die Konzeption’, for example, ‘betoniert’, ‘die Laxheit’, ‘das Office’, ‘das Bureau’, ‘der Lift’, ‘die Plattform’, ‘der Lunch’. A change comes with the appearance of Tadzio, whose ‘honigfarbenes Haar’ (a repeated phrase) is the first true suggestion of harmony and richness. But the breakout is not complete until Aschenbach’s ‘failure’ to escape Venice, and we see his relaxed acceptance of his destiny. In the very next sentence the narrator revels in a lyrical profusion of alliteration and classical allusion, and from then on doublets tend to be constant whenever Tadzio is present. The narrator’s 13

See John Conley, ‘Thomas Mann on the Sources of Two Passages in Death in Venice’, The German Quarterly, 40 (1967), pp. 152–4, and Herbert Lehnert, ‘Another Note on “motus animi continuus” and the Clenched-Fist-Image in Der Tod in Venedig’, The German Quarterly (40) 1967, pp. 452–3. The error may be seen as typical of Mann’s relaxed attitude towards scholarly accuracy, which, of course, lends for ambiguity in the interpretation of ‘sources’.

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language mirrors the sensation of Aschenbach that ‘nie hatte er die Lust des Wortes süßer empfunden, nie so gewußt, daß Eros im Worte sei’ (p. 608). The linguistic technique to which critics have drawn most attention is the use of abstract and adjectival nouns in the frequent use of such concepts as ‘das Schöne’ or ‘das Übel’ on the one hand, or a series of terms to describe Aschenbach himself. These begin on the second page with the neutral ‘der Wartende’ as he waits for the tram, then ‘der Einsam-Stumme’ or ‘der Aufbrechende’. But the neutral terms give way to judgmental ones, and as the Novelle develops we find ‘der Betörte’, ‘der Starrsinnige’, ‘der Heimgesuchte’. There are probably several reasons for the use of this technique. Most obviously, it could be seen as a means by which the narrator shows his increasing distance from Aschenbach, preferring not to use his name, but, by employing overdignified terminology, revealing emotional and moral disapproval. The irony rests partly in the fact that Aschenbach himself would have couched it thus. This language might seem to echo that of the Platonic dialogues, but it might also be seen as one of the condensing features of the style, for condensation is a key aim in this text, with much being crammed into the long sentences: so many words, both abstract and concrete, appear related to our interpretation of character and event. For all the play with language and rhythm, such humour cannot disguise the most troubling element of the story, that which is again brought up in the ironically phrased final line: Aschenbach’s death is greeted by ‘eine respektvoll erschütterte Welt’ (my italics). The unexpected adverb draws attention to the perverseness of this response and takes us back to the question of whether ‘the world’ would, in fact, have any respect for authors if they knew the conditions under which ‘great art’ was produced. What really motivated that page and a half of ‘exquisite prose’ which Aschenbach composed on the beach in the presence of Tadzio? Should that piece of writing be viewed in the light of the conditions which stimulated it? Was it inspired by the sight of pure ‘beauty’, or by something more disquieting? Aschenbach/the narrator may seek to explain his muse in terms of ‘das Schöne’, and as we have seen, he is also content to dismiss the whole issue of ‘inspiration’ as detrimental to appreciation of the work of art. Yet although Aschenbach may choose to evade such matters, the reader is constantly aware of self-deception, not least in the denial of


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the true nature of Aschenbach’s attraction to Tadzio. The ‘immorality’ of his infatuation may in part be mitigated by references to an era when homosexual love was prized above heterosexual, but the real point here, never, I think, properly raised before, is that his passion is not homosexual – acceptable to many – as much as paedophilic – acceptable to none. It is not simply Tadzio’s ‘beauty’ which Aschenbach reveres, but the childish elements in it. The boy’s age is, significantly, never mentioned, and there several references to his immature qualities, to the ringlets in his hair, to childish games and high-pitched (i.e. unbroken) voices; and a key suggestion comes in one of those ‘asides’ which are so fundamental to interpretation, where we hear praise of Tadzio’s armpits ‘still’ being as ‘smooth’ as those of a statue (p. 605): this child has no axillary hair, in other words, and is therefore in the pre-pubertal phase of physical development. Aschenbach’s perfect lines of prose have thus been created in a relaxed state in which illicit, unacceptable, urges have been able to break free. Through a richness of textual patterning never before achieved in German literature, and through complex use of allusion, irony, and perspective, Der Tod in Venedig explores key questions associated with Beauty, interpretation, and the creative process. It has thus become the most exhaustively studied of all Mann’s shorter pieces. But it should also, perhaps, be recognised as the most outstanding covert German treatment of paedophilia.


ANDREW WEBBER

Kafka, Die Verwandlung

There can be no doubt about the status of Kafka’s Die Verwandlung as a landmark of short prose writing in German, indeed as an iconic work in the wider tradition of modern literature. It is arguably the text which has given most immediate and compelling focus to the understanding of Kafka as a paradigmatic writer of the modern condition, the state of alienated subjectivity and perverse social experience which has come to be known, axiomatically, as ‘the Kafkaesque’. It has also been subject to an extraordinary range of critical interpretations, and, if any consensus has emerged over the meaning of the text, it is that it resists any straightforward act of interpretation. It has landmark status, then, not just for modern fiction, but also for modern literary criticism, providing a model for the distrust of closed systems of understanding which is fundamental to so much modern thinking about literary texts. Die Verwandlung was written in several feverish bouts between 17 November and 7 December 1912. It was first published in the journal Die weißen Blätter in October 1915 and subsequently in the series Der jüngste Tag in November of the same year. Plans to combine it with either Das Urteil and Der Heizer, under the hypothetical title Söhne, or with Das Urteil and In der Strafkolonie, under the title Strafen, failed to come to fruition. These projects, however, point up the continuity of interest that Kafka perceived in his early writings, especially as organised around filial relations and questions of putative crime and appropriate punishment. Kafka famously describes the writing of Das Urteil, earlier in 1912, as a painfully ecstatic birthing experience, bringing the story whole, with the ‘Schmutz und Schleim’ of its afterbirth, into the world.1 The language he uses here is characteristic also of his commentary on the writing of Die Verwandlung: this is literature as a corporeal act, an 1

Franz Kafka, Tagebücher: kritische Ausgabe, ed. by Hans-Gerd Koch et al. (Frankfurt a. M., 1990), p. 491.

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invasion of, and expulsion from, the body, focused on physical dirtiness and the need for cleansing in the act of writing. While Das Urteil was figured as a single energetic act of birth, Die Verwandlung proved a more difficult, protracted labour. The conception, gestation, and eventual birth are recorded in the letters to Kafka’s fiancée Felice Bauer, which serve as a sort of parallel text for his fictional work, glossing it, bolstering it, and competing with it for nocturnal writing time. If Das Urteil is described as coming into the world in an excremental state, covered in filth and slime, the textual body of Die Verwandlung is, like its verminous insect of a protagonist, no less an object of repulsion. Kafka describes it thus in a letter written in the night of 23/24 November 1912: Liebste! Was ist das doch für eine ausnehmend ekelhafte Geschichte […] ekelhaft ist sie grenzenlos und solche Dinge, siehst Du, kommen aus dem gleichen Herzen, in dem Du wohnst und das Du als Wohnung duldest. Sei darüber nicht traurig, denn, wer weiß, je mehr ich schreibe und je mehr ich mich befreie, desto reiner und würdiger werde ich vielleicht für Dich, aber sicher ist noch vieles aus mir hinauszuwerfen und die Nächte können gar nicht lang genug sein für dieses übrigens äußerst wollüstige Geschäft.2

The writing of the ‘ekelhafte Geschichte’ disturbs fundamental categories of inside and outside, dirt and cleanliness, pleasure and disgust, male and female functions. If the story is ‘ekelhaft’, then it appeals to the notion of the abject, as developed by the theorist Julia Kristeva.3 The abject, according to Kristeva, is that which has to be expelled for identity to prevail. It at once organises social and psychical life by establishing borders between inside and outside, clean and dirty, sacred and profane, but also tends to transgress those same borders, rendering them unsafe for ritual control. Die Verwandlung can be said to be about the abject in this double sense, a text about structures of inclusion and exclusion, and the confusion of the two. We might 2 3

Franz Kafka, Briefe an Felice und andere Korrespondenz aus der Verlobungszeit, ed. by Erich Heller and Jürgen Born (Frankfurt a. M., 1967), p. 117. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York, 1982). While our approaches are distinct, I concur with Eric Santner that the abject in Kafka’s text represents an impossibility of being in any defined category. See Eric Santner, ‘Kafka’s Metamorphosis and the Writing of Abjection’, in Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis, ed. and trans. by Stanley Corngold (New York, London, 1996), pp. 195–210.


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consider, for instance, the relay of effluents that leads from the brown fluid that drips from Gregor’s wounded mouth, to the coffee that spills on the floor and that he strives to drink, the tears that drip onto his rotten food, and the medicine that splashes painfully into his wounded face. The order of liquids, and their regulated passage between inside and out through drinking and the excretion of body fluids, is confounded here. The abject beetle has a drinking disorder which mixes coffee and blood, food and tears,4 and medicine has become a poison or acid for the outside of the body rather than a remedy from within for the condition of abjection. For Kafka, the production of the story is an abjection, in that it casts what is perceived as filthy and monstrous out of his inner world in an ostensible act of personal hygiene. But if the abject is defined as ‘grenzenlos’, not contained by borders, then its ejection is an impossible act. It remains inner even as it is thrown out. At the same time it exposes the similar sorts of monstrosity which are harboured in the same inner space as Felice is given in his heart, as an anticipation of the ‘Wohnung’ they might one day share. It is not only the Samsa flat which harbours an incontinent and parasitic beast, vying for space with its human inhabitants, leaving its filth and needing to be cleaned out. The beast is, at least on one level, the writing itself, and Kafka writes of his writing to Felice in order to expose to her the disgusting reality of her state of cohabitation. That Kafka’s nightwork is also described as an ‘äußerst wollüstiges Geschäft’, indicates that the birth is also a sort of nocturnal emission,5 a pollution which has to be recorded in the voluptuous confessional writing of the letters. And the voluptuous act incorporates its own selfsacrifice. The completion of the act of creation is given by the death of the monster, revealing that his narrative of transformation has only been a sort of stillbirth, which can duly be ejected from the flat by the cleaning woman. Writing here is at once an act of sex and of birth and one of mortification and sanitation.

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This can be compared to the Kafkan eating disorders discussed by Winfried Menninghaus in his Ekel: Theorie und Geschichte einer starken Empfindung (Frankfurt a. M., 1999). Elizabeth Boa reads the awakening of Gregor to his animal body in just these terms in her Kafka: Gender, Class, and Race in the Letters and Fiction (Oxford, 1996), p. 111.

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If I have introduced the story through this lurid account of its creation as an act that confuses the fundamental categories of existence, sex, birth, and death, it is in order to establish the guiding idea of my reading of Die Verwandlung. It is a text, I would argue, which describes, in almost clinical style, at once a struggle for definition, for the imposition of categories of being and understanding, and the liability of those categories to slip and become reversed or confused. As we shall see, this extends to all aspects and functions, to the contours of the body, to language, to perspective, to human relations, and to the categories of genus, genre, and gender. The idea of the confusion of categories is given from the start by the title of the work: it is about, or it embodies, transformation. It is too late of course to translate Die Verwandlung as anything other than Metamorphosis or The Metamorphosis, but it is certainly worthwhile to scrutinise the terms. Die Verwandlung should be, or should have been, translated as The Transformation. Metamorphosis gives it a particularity that is arguably unwarranted. The two categories which the term suggests, the sequential morphing of organic forms and the changing of humans into animals and plants after the mythological accounts of Ovid, are of course both valid here. But ‘Verwandlung’ appeals beyond these categories to a more general sense of, precisely, the revision of categories of shape and identity. Thus, it is the term familiar from the lexicon of the Märchen, where it is used to describe changes of outward shape, but also of time and space. And it is, on the other hand, a key term from the language of theatrical illusion. It is the change of a theatrical set or the change of outward appearance effected by the ‘Verwandlungskünstler’. If Die Verwandlung can transform itself in this way between the magical world of myth and the illusionism of the quick-change artist, then it indicates a textual world where categories of truth and fiction, the real and the theatrical, will resist fixture by being in an ongoing state of transformation. As Walter Benjamin notes, Kafka’s fictions describe a stage-world. If humanity is for Kafka, as Benjamin suggests, ‘von Haus aus auf der Bühne’,6 then this suggests that the theatre has been incorporated into the narratives of the domestic sphere. Caught between the media of narrative fiction and theatrical performance, and between the 6

Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, Vol. 2.2 (Frankfurt a. M., 1977), p. 422.


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genres of fairy-tale and the variety act, the title of this self-transforming text signals a fundamental hybridity of structure and intent. The ‘birth’ of the text is a characteristic one, in that it marks a transformation, from the category of sleep to that of waking experience. The story begins, much like Der Proceß, with awakening as a sense of precipitation after the fact into a state of affairs that can no longer properly be gauged. Like the trial of Josef K., this would mean that the transformation is a not a narratable act but a matter of potentially interminable process, one which is inevitable but which is never experienced in its proper time and place. To adopt the terms of the Novelle genre, to which Die Verwandlung has been ascribed, the ‘unerhörte Begebenheit’, which is supposed to provide the dramatic turning-point of the narrative, has happened before the narrative was able to describe it. It can only record attempts to recuperate the meaning of that missed moment. The awakening of the text could thus be understood after the model of contemporary theories of trauma. It is a traumatic narrative structure in the sense that Cathy Caruth develops on the basis of Freudian theory.7 Trauma is here posited as a wound that is sustained in a moment that the traumatised subject cannot know in a direct, present fashion, but can only come to apprehend indirectly through the symptomatic disorder that the trauma will come to inflict. The traumatic model seems a particularly apt one for a writer like Kafka, so given to the condition of wounding. The wounds that the beetle Gregor Samsa will come to sustain as physical transformations in the course of his narrative of ‘Verwandlung’, are the repeated embodiment of the traumatic transformation he could not know at the time. The carapace of the ‘panzerartig harten Rücken’ (V p. 115)8 with which he awakes may be understood as a covering of human skin by scar tissue, a comprehensive scabbing of the body (later his whole left side seems like a single scar (p. 143)). This parasitic body not only has wounds in it but, like the worm in the wound of Ein Landarzt, it is embedded in a condition of woundedness. Far from protecting the protagonist, the scar skin will be subject to repetitive symptoms of pain; it is in the nature of traumatic damage to be reawak7 8

Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore, London, 1996). All references to Die Verwandlung are to: Franz Kafka, Drucke zu Lebzeiten: Kritische Ausgabe, ed. by Wolf Kittler et al. (Frankfurt a. M., 1994), pp. 115–200.

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ened as psychosomatic pain when the situation is conducive: ‘Und die Wunde im Rücken fing Gregor wie neu zu schmerzen an, wenn Mutter und Schwester […] nahe zusammenrückten’ (p. 176). Between the trauma that would have been the moment of transformation and the trauma that is the re-wounding of the transformed body, Gregor Samsa’s experience is described in the classic style of the trauma narrative, where shock is registered anaesthetically, with little sense of what has happened. The famous opening sentence of the text establishes this paradox of extremity of experience and apparent lack of distress: ‘Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt’ (p. 115). The sentence registers the lack of available categories for apprehending what has occurred and its effects. The ‘ungeheueres Ungeziefer’ is a categorical monstrosity, exceeding any conventional distinctions. Not for nothing is Gregor’s new state marked by the repeated negation of the ‘un-’ prefix. ‘Ungeheuer’ represents the negative of what is ‘geheuer’, familiar and so comprehensible in shape and scale; and ‘Ungeziefer’ denotes an anti-class of animals that is defined by its negation of the normal standards of species definition. Specifically, as Stanley Corngold points out, the term ‘Ungeziefer’ derives from the class of beasts that are considered too unclean for ritual slaughter.9 The ‘Ungeziefer’ thus embodies the abject in the Kristevan sense, an entity which is taboo, ruled outside of human use, one which cannot be sacrificed, but will, in the course of the narrative, interfere with the human sphere and so be made to adopt some form of sacrificial role after all. The ‘un-species’, identified by the maid as amateur entomologist as the most abject, excremental form of beetle, the ‘Mistkäfer’ (p. 179), resists being fitted into any functional identity or role. The sister’s categorisation of the beast as ‘Untier’ (p. 189) is telling. Not only is this a negation of the human, but also of the most lowly animal species that might be opposed to it. The doubly negated non- or un-species introduces in drastic form the paradox of indefinite definition that characterises the narrative on every level.

9

Stanley Corngold notes this in his essay ‘Kafka’s Metamorphosis: The metamorphosis of metaphor’, citing sources for the late Middle High German form which Kafka is likely to have known (see Corngold, op. cit., pp. 79–107 (p. 87)).


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To follow the terms set out in the study of Kafka by Deleuze and Guattari, the text and its figures are subject to processes of transformation which resist any categorical placement. They see the leitmotif of ‘becoming animal’ (beetle, ape, dog, mouse, etc.) in Kafka’s writing as a function of a more general sense of ‘deterritorialisation’, a suspension of conventional coordinates for the placement of identity and relationships.10 In particular, they contest the stock psychoanalytic view that Kafka’s text can be confined to the territory of the Oedipal conflict. Their reading works against the idea that this could be the case history of the Beetle Man, held in an Oedipal clinch after the model of Freud’s Wolf Man. The term ‘minor literature’ encompasses at once the minority condition of the Prague Jew writing in German and a more general sense of cultural, textual, and epistemological displacement. Kafka was bemused by an early example of how his text could make itself available to contrary readings, when it was adopted by early reviewers as both archetypally Germanic and essentially Jewish: In der letzten Neuen Rundschau wird die ‘Verwandlung’ erwähnt, mit vernünftiger Begründung da abgelehnt und dann heißt es etwa: ‘K’s Erzählungskunst besitzt etwas Urdeutsches.’ In Maxens Aufsatz dagegen: ‘K’s Erzählungen gehören zu den jüdischesten Dokumenten unserer Zeit.’ Ein schwerer Fall. Bin ich ein Cirkusreiter auf 2 Pferden? Leider bin ich kein Reiter, sondern liege am Boden.11

With his story of the son of a family which may or may not be Prague Jews who have adopted the Catholic confession, Kafka perceives himself as in an impossible double-bind, performing on two horses. The circus is a prime Kafkan site for the performance of states of transformation or hybridity; it is a space of deterritorialisation, one where the artist is liable to perform only a condition of displacement from his supposed role. In an arch case of linguistic deterritorialisation, an act of linguistic counter-performance, the idea of a ‘schwerer Fall’, or difficult case, is displaced into another meaning, the heavy fall which has thrown the trick-rider onto the floor. 10 11

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (Minneapolis, 1986). Briefe an Felice, pp. 719–20. The reference is to Kafka’s friend, the writer Max Brod.

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This emblematic Kafkan scene indicates that his texts are always in more than one place, executing mixed and paradoxical performances. Perhaps the most fundamental aspect of the paradox is that of narrative perspective. Generations of readers have been perplexed by the almost clinical sense of control that the Kafkan narrative exercises over the most preposterous circumstances. The narrative adopts the tenor of the Realist text in its focused identification of character, place, and situation in its first sentence, but it springs into this objective frame of reference the sort of monstrous distortion of the subject which is associated with the antiRealist aesthetic of the fairy-tale or indeed of Expressionism. As Peter Hutchinson and Michael Minden note in their edition of the text, the combination of Expressionistic transformation and realist setting seems designed to hold readerly interpretation in suspense, each ‘holds the other open’.12 If the narrative voice of the opening sentence thus seems to be split between contrary modes of understanding and representation, this also prepares for the text to transform itself from the third-person social exteriority of nineteenth-century realism into the first-person psychical interiority privileged by early twentieth-century Modernism; or rather, to suspend itself somewhere between the two. The second paragraph begins with a third-person account of the protagonist’s inner voice, as he interrogates his transformation, and then the second sentence projects the narrative into the transformed mode which will hold sway over it. ‘Es war kein Traum’ (p. 115) it proclaims, but with what authority? Is this sentence, as has been assumed by many commentators, in the thirdperson voice of an omniscient narrator? Or is it rather a classic instance of ‘erlebte Rede’, a transmission by the narrative voice of the bewildered protagonist’s own thought processes? The fact is that this sentence is constantly self-transforming, readable at once as absolutely or minimally authoritative. And the judgement which is made here, defining what is to come as waking reality rather than dream, is of course all important for the framing of the narrative. ‘Es war kein Traum’ is a classic statement of Kafka’s Law, one that constructs a variation on the logic of the Cretan Liar paradox. It can only be read as true if it is taken to be from the perspective of actual truth. If Gregor Samsa is in fact dreaming, and the 12

Franz Kafka, Die Verwandlung, ed. by Peter Hutchinson and Michael Minden (London, 1993), p. 14.


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judgement is his, then it becomes self-negating. To pronounce a state of affairs as not a dream, from within a dream, is to be in the judgemental double-bind of the Kafkaesque. These opening narratorial acts of judgement operate through the eyes of the protagonist and introduce the text as bound to the visual. The judgement that this is no dream is made on the strength of the visual familiarity of his surroundings; though, as others before me have noted, there is something rather uncanny in the use of the tautological term ‘Menschenzimmer’ (p. 115), as though the category of room as human habitation might be susceptible to appropriation by other species. Having first fixed his and our perspective upon his own body, and then upon the room that contains him, Gregor then scans items designed for viewing. In his ‘Musterkollektion’ (p. 115), laid out as if for perusal, he sees a collection of commodity fetishes, specimen parts which provide the pattern for the anticipated whole of the commodity item. The collection of sample pieces is like the assemblage of disjunctive parts which Gregor experiences in his new body. The combination of the human body transformed into a monstrosity and the collection of patterns for viewing might remind us of Christa Wolf’s novel Kindheitsmuster, where the shared etymological roots of ‘Muster’ and ‘Monstrum’ (derived from ‘monstrare’ – to show) are exposed.13 The logic is that the parading of models always involves its inverse, the parading of monstrosity, and Kafka’s text suggests that this is the logic of commodity culture, indeed arguably of the modern condition as such, as much as that of totalitarian ideology in Wolf’s analysis. If ‘Muster’ and ‘Monstrum’ are indeed counterparts, then the second object of the protagonist’s fetishistic viewing is strikingly apt. From the textile samples, his eye is drawn to the picture of the woman in furs, an image which combines the figures of the monster and the fetish. The image is cut out of its context in a magazine and framed for viewing, working again as part for whole. The covering of the woman’s body parts in fur pelts reflects the animal skin of Gregor’s monstrous body parts. Like the ‘Musterkollektion’, the image is made for viewing, proffering itself to the ‘Beschauer’ as erotic or fashion image. But it is also fundamentally withdrawn from viewing, as indicated by the hiding of the body in what it offers to the observer, the fur muff ‘in dem ihr 13

Christa Wolf, Kindheitsmuster (Darmstadt, 1979), p. 39.

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ganzer Unterarm verschwunden war’ (p. 116). Readers are inevitably fascinated by this image, partaking in its fetishistic investment and lending it a special significance in the economy of the narrative. They quite plausibly see in it a quotation from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s fin-de-siècle narrative of fetishism and masochism, Venus im Pelz, and so supplement the tantalizing part-image with the elaborated fantasies of that text. The assumption that the woman is naked underneath her furs is an example of this form of projection. In fact, the picture shows us only what it is described as showing to the protagonist. It is a sort of monstrosity, a collection of human body parts consumed and transformed by animal coverings. It fascinates the beholding eye but offers it only a teasing view and thus functions as a self-reflexive emblem, a mise-en-abyme, for the text at large. The partial view extends to any attempt to understand the meaning of the image for the protagonist. On the model of Venus im Pelz, we might assume that the image represents the masochistic attachment of an erotomaniac to a total woman, but Sacher-Masoch’s text is a distinctly unreliable source for this. The hyperbolic feminity of his Venus in furs leads the protagonist into a theatre of sexual, not least homosexual role-play.14 This image of costume fetishism might thus be a counterpart to the queer goings-on in the lumber-room of Der Proceß. The desires of Kafka’s bachelors are never straightforward. The correspondence between the two bodies as monstrosities is confirmed later in the narrative, when Gregor covers the image with his body. This is the desperate clinging of the parasite to another body, but the host body is merely a representational substitute. The mounting of a furry woman by a beetle-man is an impossible intercourse of monsters. And as Gregor presses himself against the framed image on the wall, what he shows above all is his own condition of monstrosity, making a picture and a spectacle of himself. If in his other framed image, as a young soldier in his uniform, he is in the mode of ‘Muster’, a model paraded for viewing, here he is in the counterpart mode of the monster.

14

Kafka was intrigued by the reference to Die Verwandlung in the book Onanie und Homosexualität: Krankhafte Störungen des Trieb- und Affektlebens (Berlin, 1917) by the renegade Freudian Wilhelm Stekel. Many of Stekel’s homosexual case histories bear tantalising resemblances to Kafka’s text.


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He is on show to the reader after the style of the circus and variety ‘Monstrositätenschau’ which so fascinated Kafka.15 The scrutiny of fetishistic objects in the opening scene of the narrative at once establishes the structure of spectacle and spectatorship which will inform this text in classic Kafkan fashion, and indicates that that structure is defined by what is left wanting. The monster of a naked body that is put on show as a specimen at the start of the narrative is at once an object of grotesque exhibitionism and one of elusive mystery. This is the same paradoxical logic which leads Kafka to impose a taboo on the pictorial representation of the beetle-body in publications of the text. Notwithstanding the intensive visuality of the text, its scenes and images are only ever supposed to be visible in part and so to provoke uncertain or partial judgements. The little white points on his body which Gregor perceives as having some symptomatic meaning but one which eludes his understanding as signs ‘die er nicht zu beurteilen verstand’ (p. 117) are a symptom above all of significant details which remain an epistemological enigma. The visual sign here means nothing with any certainty but such a condition of transformation. This principle can be seen at work in perhaps the key scene, or act, of the narrative, a burlesque rewriting of the peformance of filial trust in the Wilhelm Tell legend, where the murderous patriarch Herr Samsa pelts his son with apples. The apple-throwing scene can be seen as a characteristic example of Kafka’s writing as ‘Verwandlungskunst’, the sort of histrionically physical scene which leads Benjamin to see him as a theatrical writer or Adorno to connect his texts to the gesticulatory drama of silent film.16 It is a scene between quick-changing actors and one characterised by double vision, where the father who seemed buried alive puts in an uncanny performance of virile potency: ‘Trotzdem, trotzdem, war das noch der Vater?’ (p. 168). These are the sort of dialectically uncertain optics which Kafka describes as prevailing in Das Urteil, when he claims that the friend in Russia may be understandable as the 15

16

See Walter Bauer-Wabnegg, ‘Monster und Maschinen, Artisten und Technik in Kafkas Werk’, in Wolf Kittler and Gerhard Neumann (eds), Franz Kafka: Schriftverkehr (Freiburg, 1990), pp. 316–82. Given that both Adorno and Benjamin focus on the performative aspect of ‘Gestus’ in Kafka’s writing, it seems suitable that Brecht had a project to make a film of Die Verwandlung.

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‘perspektivische Wechsel der Beziehungen’ between father and son.17 The struggle for power is played out in both actual and symbolic fashion as one for control of the visual field, of the perspective on things. This perspectival exchange extends to the narrative perspective of the story, as this moves in and out of Gregor’s own point of view. And the exchange of perspectives also functions on the level of potential explanatory frameworks. Which discourse or model of understanding should we take to the story, and in particular to this climactic scene? Kafka’s fiction seems actively to court contradictory interpretations, thus playing with the perspectives of the reader. In this scene, two of the discourses that have proved most appealing, but also mutually inimical, as models for interpretation of Kafka, religion and psychoanalysis, are put into play with each other. The apples inevitably tease the reader into allegorical interpretation. Their most ready frame of reference for the Western reader would be as the original symbolic objects of the Old Testament story of the creation and the fall from grace. According to this framework, Gregor is not lured like Adam into eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, but directly mortified with it by a wrathful father and so marked out as belonging to the genus of crawling beasts that are identified as abject in the Biblical account. At the same time, the description of Gregor as ‘wie festgenagelt’ (p. 171) by the apple suggests a radical foreshortening and confounding of the Biblical story. The latter-day Adam apparently becomes a stigmatic Christ-figure, still victim to a vengeful father, a travesty of the Christian ‘Gott’ (p. 116) and ‘Himmlischer Vater’ (p. 118) to whom Gregor appeals earlier in the narrative. It seems that at this point Gregor’s photograph as the model soldier and his self-imaging as he covers the woman in furs is joined by a third grotesque iconic figuring of his body, this time as an image of crucifixion, the crucifix perhaps in the family living-room.18 If this is indeed a performance of the crucifixion, then its relation to the redemptive model of the Christian story is at best uncertain, probably parodic.

17 18

Briefe an Felice, p. 397. This potential reading might suggest an intertextual link with the key objects of violin and crucifix in a narrative that fascinated Kafka, Grillparzer’s Der arme Spielmann.


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If Adam at least gains carnal knowledge in his eating of the prohibited fruit, the apple lodged in Gregor’s back seems ill-designed to give him knowledge. What knowledge it can give the reader is another question. The answer would have to be that it gives the knowledge that the reader brings to it. Biblical knowledge is fairly general amongst most of Kafka’s readers, but psychoanalytic knowledge is a more specialised, if not controversial, quantity. The one form of knowledge is also anathema to the other. Critics with any knowledge of psychoanalysis have inevitably been drawn to the climax of the scene as what seems like a self-evident enactment of the scene that is as originary for psychoanalysis as is the Garden of Eden for the Christian and Judaic traditions – what Freud calls the ‘Urszene’ or primal scene. This is the scene where the child is said to witness in reality or fantasy an act of intercourse between the parents and thereby to begin to acquire unconscious sexual knowledge under the sign of Oedipus. The primal scene is, in other words, a counterpart to the fall into sexual knowledge of the original father and mother, Adam and Eve. When ‘die Mutter’, her underskirts falling about her feet, throws herself into the arms of ‘den Vater’ in an act of ‘gänzlicher Vereinigung mit ihm’ (p. 171), she performs the primal scene before Gregor’s eyes; or rather an inverted version of it, where it is the mother who penetrates the father – ‘auf den Vater eindrang’ (p. 171). Gregor, meanwhile, can witness this scene only at the cost of his sight, his ‘Sehkraft’, which is of course the penalty which psychoanalysis tells us is exacted for Oedipal transgression, the blinding as symbolic castration which was duly imposed on the mythical Oedipus. The Christ-like wounding is thus followed by one in the Oedipal style. According to this logic, the act of sexual penetration runs through the scene in the language of ‘eindringen’ and its cognates. It starts with the tumescent gaze of the transformed father – ‘unter den buschigen Augenbrauen drang der Blick der schwarzen Augen frisch und aufmerksam hervor’ (p. 169) and continues with the projection of the apple into the back: ‘Ein ihm sofort nachfliegender drang dagegen förmlich in Gregors Rücken ein’ (p. 171). The crucifixion of the beetle’s body is here alternatively readable, and was indeed read as early as 1931 by a psychoanalytic critic, as rape by the father.19 A canny Freudian might 19

Hellmuth Kaiser, ‘Franz Kafkas Inferno: Eine psychologische Deutung seiner Strafphantasie’, Imago, 17 (1931), pp. 41–103.

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also see in the combination of the apple and the gaze as projections of virile power in this scene a symbolic mobilisation of the ‘Augapfel’, working through a logic of condensation and displacement after the model of Freud’s dreamwork. This would follow Adorno’s suggestion that Kafka takes dreams ‘à la lettre’, experimenting with what would happen ‘wenn die Befunde der Psychoanalyse allesamt nicht metaphorisch und mental, sondern leibhaft zuträfen’.20 If we accept the now standard argument that one of the figures of speech which Kafka’s texts literalise is that of direct experience as being felt ‘am eigenen Leibe’ pp. 136–7), then the ‘Augapfel’ as the most treasured object seems an appropriate figure to be felt in the body of the latter-day Oedipus, marking him out as abjected from the status of the treasured son. The transformation of Gregor’s grammatical gender to ‘es’ (pp. 190–1) would then be seen as marking both a castration of the male subject and a more general transformation of personal identity into an indeterminate, neuter category. If the scene features an elaborate agon, a theatrical conflict, between father and son, it also enacts a struggle between antagonistic critical perspectives. And ‘enacts’ here should be understood in a full theatrical sense, as the heightened performance of a struggle for control. The two interpretative models at once approach each other, with their alternative versions of a primal parental scene, and are drastically incompatible as forms of knowledge. At the same time Kafka teases out internal incompatibilities in his appeal to each of the two systems. As we saw, Adam gets crossed with Christ, and the mother takes the penetrative role from the father in the primal scene. In Kafka’s ‘Verwandlungskunst’, critical perspectives are engaged performatively by the text, treated, that is, as part of the apparatus of the textual theatre. The sacrificial language of crucifixion undercuts the psychoanalytic reading, but also represents a schism in the system of religion, the New Testament splitting of the two horses of the Christian and Jewish traditions into an impossibly fraught theological double-act. While Die Verwandlung displays the language and ritual of Catholicism, and might even be understood in this light as a sort of latter-day, domestic Passion play, it is enacted in the melodramatic, burlesque style that is arguably 20

Theodor W. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann, Vol. 10.1 (Frankfurt a. M., 1977), p. 262.


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derived from more popular forms of theatre to which Kafka was devoted. The key frame of reference here would be the Yiddish theatre. It has been assumed that the reference to ‘Ungeziefer’ as the key term of Gregor Samsa’s transformation relates to Kafka’s father’s attack on his son’s friend, the Yiddish actor Yitzchak Löwy, as cited in the text Brief an den Vater.21 If, in the same text, Kafka also casts himself, in the eyes of his father, as a parasitic ‘Ungeziefer’,22 this suggests that he and Löwy, as his performing alter ego,23 are established in a shared relation of abjection from patriarchy. The incorporation of the term into Die Verwandlung may also encode the aesthetic transformation of the Oedipal tragedy-cum-Passion play into the histrionic framework of the Yiddish theatre, creating a further sort of monstrous hybridity. The apple-throwing scene, with its tantalising sense of multiple allusion, its paradoxical, and perhaps farcical, figuring of the wounding of the human condition through a figure in a condition which is hardly human, gives some sense of why this text has attained landmark status. It is a text which, to borrow Ritchie Robertson’s words, highlights ‘the eclecticism with which Kafka […] combined psychological, philosophical, legal, and literary imagery to form systems that are astonishingly radical and original’.24 Perhaps, though, this judgement should be qualified in two ways. The ‘imagery’ to which Robertson refers is mobilised always with a sense of citation or performance, and the systems which emerge from Kafka’s orchestration of the imagery are as allusive and contradictory as they are radical and original. Many of the texts featured in this landmark series are forms of Künstlernovelle, focused especially on the violinist figures that appear in so many of them. The indefinable yearning, erotic or aesthetic, vampiric or esoteric, which the beetle Gregor feels for his sister’s violin playing indicates a certain continuity with that tradition. But, the violin performance is but one act in a story that is perhaps better understood after the model of 21 22 23

24

Franz Kafka, Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente: Kritische Ausgabe, ed. by Jost Schillemeit (Frankfurt a. M., 1992), p. 154. Ibid., p. 215. The correspondence with Felice is shadowed by that with Löwy, and Kafka even performs his friend’s demotic description of Felice’s street in Berlin in a letter to her (Briefe an Felice, p. 75). Ritchie Robertson, ‘In search of the historical Kafka: A selective review of research, 1980–92’, Modern Language Review, 89 (1994), pp. 107–37 (p. 120).

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variety theatre, as a sequence of turns or attractions, confounding the sorts of conventional shape and logic that are taken to define the Novelle genre. Gregor Samsa is the consummate ‘Verwandlungskünstler’. Just as he had caused astonishment by his magical transformation of work into money for his family (p. 152), and more still by his animal act, drawing the attention of the ‘Zimmerherren’ from his sister’s musical performance, he even appears to be performing in death, when, in his final transformation he is taken to be playing ‘den Beleidigten’ (p. 194).25 If this text that confounds categorisation is to be set in a generic category then, the only way of doing it reasonable justice would be to grant it a genre of its own, and one which defies any stable definition. It is, I would suggest, the Verwandlungskünstlernovelle par excellence. It is a remarkable demonstration of what a challenging act the modern human condition is to perform and to understand, thereby transforming the act of reading in its turn into an extraordinary kind of quick-change performance. As such, it undoubtedly stands as a landmark of modern narrative.

25

It is plausible to read Gregor’s tortured movements, expressed through the recurrent language of turning, as the performative turns of a contortionist. When he tries to turn the key in the lock, he is described indeed as ‘dancing round it’ (p. 133).

DAVID MIDGLEY

Walser, Ein fliehendes Pferd

In the first essay of this volume, Nicholas Boyle points out how human emotions and impulses are displaced onto supposedly savage animals in Goethe’s Novelle, and in Martin Walser’s Ein fliehendes Pferd, with which we conclude, we again find animals used to reflect human predicaments. But as was noted in one of the earliest articles on Walser’s text,1 a comparison of the two works shows up a shift of emphasis which is indicative of the social changes that have occurred over the last two hundred years. The animals are no longer wild, but domesticated – they include a lapdog as well as the runaway horse of the title – and whereas Goethe’s Novelle had celebrated the need for the protective semblance (the Scheinhaftigkeit) of aristocratic convention, Ein fliehendes Pferd is concerned with the more mundane, and evidently pernicious pressure to maintain outward appearances (Schein) in response to the demands of a consumerist society. There are other examples of short prose writing in German from the period between Kafka’s Die Verwandlung and the present day for which landmark status could be claimed. There are other fascinating experimental texts from the Expressionist decade, and examples of gritty neorealism from the 1920s; and from the post-1945 period there are the texts in which Günter Grass evokes the sense of complicity in the Nazi past and the complexities of confronting past traumas, Katz und Maus (1963) and Im Krebsgang (2002), and Thomas Bernhard’s treatment of the perils of intellectual modernity in Wittgensteins Neffe (1982). On the face of it the storyline of Ein fliehendes Pferd is disarmingly simple by comparison with these. It tells of a middle-aged couple taking their holiday on Lake Constance, of how they meet up with an old schoolfriend of the husband’s, and of the embarrassing episodes which subsequently take place, after which the couple gets on a train with a 1

Herbert Knorr, ‘Gezähmter Löwe – fliehendes Pferd. Zu Novellen von Goethe und Martin Walser’, Literatur für Leser 2 (1979), pp. 139–57.

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view to continuing their holiday elsewhere. But on closer inspection, the banal encounter depicted in Walser’s text brings out the underlying existential concerns which haunt the lives of his protagonists, and in doing so captures the shared dilemmas of contemporary society – not just the way it spends its leisure hours, but the awareness it has of itself and of the potential it offers for individual lives. The critical acclaim that the text immediately received when it was published in 1978 had a lot to do with the extent to which contemporary Germans could recognise themselves in it, and it could be viewed as a landmark for that reason alone. But as I shall try to show, there are deeper reasons for seeing Ein fliehendes Pferd as a classic of its time. It is one of those short narrative texts which not only give voice to issues that are highly significant for the time in which they were written, but which achieve a singular coherence in the expression of those issues that points beyond the immediate self-perceptions of the society of that time, or indeed of the author. This last point is worth stressing, because recent events have made it unlikely that any reader will approach a text by Martin Walser without some degree of preconception about the author. Walser has courted controversy throughout his writing career. His early novels, Ehen in Philippsburg (1957) and Halbzeit (1960), attracted attention for their rather acerbic social criticism. In the 1960s he stirred debate with plays which attacked the failure to come to terms with the Nazi past (notably Eiche und Angora. Eine deutsche Chronik (1962/3), and he actively supported the West German Communist Party as the most effective alternative to the stolid conservatism of the post-war establishment. But increasingly he turned to a defence of the private sphere and the assertion of individuality against the conformist pressures of the public domain. In the 1980s he went out on a limb again by seeming to espouse German unification before there was any sign that it might become a political reality, a form of cultural utopianism which was interpreted by some as a revival of nationalist sentiment.2 And in 1998, when he was awarded one of Germany’s most prestigious literary prizes, the ‘Friedenspreis des 2

See Helmut Peitsch, ‘“Antipoden” im “Gewissen der Nation”? Günter Grass’ und Martin Walsers “deutsche Fragen”’, in Dichter und ihre Nation, ed. by Helmut Scheuer (Frankfurt a . M ., 1993), pp. 459–89; K. Stuart Parkes, Understanding Contemporary Germany (London, 1997), pp. 178–81, 195–203.


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deutschen Buchhandels’, he made a speech which became the focus of a furious controversy because of the open manner in which he had voiced his resentment of the way the Holocaust is publicly memorialised. This was the occasion on which Walser spoke of the persistent display of horrors prompting him only to look away, of the public wielding of the word ‘Auschwitz’ as a ‘moral cosh’ (Moralkeule), and of the planned Holocaust monument in Berlin as a ‘nightmare’.3 At the time of writing, too, Walser has come under attack in the German press over the satirical depiction of the literary critic and television celebrity Marcel ReichRanicki, who is Jewish (and who led the way in hailing Walser’s achievement in Ein fliehendes Pferd when it first appeared), in his latest novel, Tod eines Kritikers.4 Walser’s public stance can thus appear to be a perversely selfcontradictory one.5 But if there is a unifying thread to be found among his seemingly disparate positions, then it is surely the wary critical attitude Walser has maintained towards the public sphere and the tyranny of convention which it exercises over the individual citizen. That is precisely the theme I see achieving singular coherent expression in Ein fliehendes Pferd. Helmut Halm, from whose perspective the story is predominantly told, is a teacher at a prestigious Stuttgart Gymnasium, now in his midforties, who cultivates his private existence all the more assiduously, the more he finds himself at odds with the dominant attitudes of the public domain. He resents the atmosphere of erotic freedom that characterises the society round about him, particularly the uninhibited display that the schoolgirls make of their sexuality – he doesn’t call it shameless, he calls it ‘ruthless’ (‘rücksichtslos’), perhaps because it once nearly got him into 3

4 5

See Frank Schirrmacher (ed.), Die Walser-Bubis-Debatte. Eine Dokumentation (Frankfurt, 1999); Wilfried van der Will, ‘Die Unausweichlichkeit der Provokation: Kultur- und literaturtheoretische Anmerkungen zu Martin Walsers Ein springender Brunnen und zu seiner Friedenspreisrede’, in The Writers’ Morality / Die Moral der Schriftsteller. Festschrift for Michael Butler, ed. by Ronald Speirs (Oxford, 2000), pp. 143–78; Dieter Borchmeyer, Martin Walser und die Öffentlichkeit (Frankfurt a . M ., 2001). Frankfurt, 2002. For further details, see my review of this work in London Review of Books, 8 August 2002. Cf. K. Stuart Parkes, Writers and Politics in West Germany (Beckenham, 1986), pp. 205–23.

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trouble (p. 20)6 – and he has developed his own form of protection against it, concealing his erotic interest by fixing his eyes on the ground. This habit has earned him the nickname ‘Bodenspecht’ (ibid.) at school: it is as if he drills the ground at his feet with his gaze. Helmut is haunted by the memory of an earlier holiday in Italy, when the sounds of energetic sexual activity from the next room had induced in him a sense of hopeless inhibition, and had also reinforced his conviction that to be out of step with the pervasive sexual ‘Leistungsethik’ of the times, as purveyed in the press, is like being exposed on the pillory (pp. 66–69). In fact, there is a yawning inconsistency between the way he ostensibly goes with the spirit of the times in his professional capacity as a schoolteacher, priding himself on cultivating the image of an ‘enlightened’ figure, and the diminution of ‘Lust’ that he practises in his marriage, partly, as he tells himself, as a reaction against the universal ‘Ächtung der Unlust’, i.e. the way that any deficiency in sexual desire is proscribed, in the public sphere (pp. 68f.). Now he is on holiday again, but the last thing he wants to do is comply with the cliché images of being ‘on holiday’. He and his wife have been using the same holiday flat for the last eleven years, and he willingly complies with the expectations that his holiday landlady has of ‘someone on holiday’, but what he prizes in this stereotypical relationship is the combination of reassurance and personal distance that it affords him: ‘die jährlich wachsende, aber völlig annäherungslose Vertrautheit zueinander’ (pp. 15f.). As we learn from the introductory characterisation of him, Helmut determinedly seeks to live incognito, whether at work, at home, or on holiday. It is all the more embarrassing to him that he should find himself compelled to share this holiday with an old classmate, Klaus Buch, whose lifestyle is emphatically orientated towards the public domain. As a writer, a journalist, and a self-styled expert on health foods and herbal remedies, Buch is representative of a social type which actively helps to determine the character of that public domain and of a leisure ethos which defines itself in opposition to the ‘work ethic’ that it disdainfully looks down on (p. 97). The fact that he drives a car with a Starnberg number plate (p. 94) instantly evokes an association with the trendsetting economic elite of contemporary German society. Klaus Buch 6

Page references incorporated in the text are to Martin Walser, Ein fliehendes Pferd (Frankfurt a . M ., 1978).


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insists not only on taking over the organisation of holiday activities, but also on recalling at length and in lurid detail the activities in which he and Halm had participated as adolescent schoolboys (more to the embarrassment of Helmut than to that of the ladies, who are apparently quite amused at what the ‘little men’ had got up to). In terms of plot development, Walser has nicely set up a pair of couples whose contrasting lifestyles are as if designed to provoke and unsettle each other. Helmut and Sabine have sustained their marriage of twenty years’ standing; Klaus has abandoned his first wife and married Helene, who is nearly twenty years younger than himself. In the terms of current jargon, Helene is a ‘trophy wife’, and that is indeed how she is described (p. 21). Helmut and Sabine favour a sedentary lifestyle, and they have the physique to prove it; Buch and his young wife are healthand-fitness enthusiasts. Helmut is capable of sinking two bottles of Burgundy at a sitting; the Buchs drink only mineral water, and fastidiously consume their salad before attacking the steak. Klaus is dedicated to recapturing the past, particularly the period for which he ‘had no witnesses’ (p. 27), with a fanaticism that is more than equal to Helmut’s obsession with suppressing it. Klaus Buch, with his zeal for organising outdoor activities and his insatiable appetite for anecdotal reminiscences, is destined to become Helmut Halm’s tormentor. The emotional effect of Klaus’s enthusiasms on Helmut is signalled with growing intensity in the text. On the first evening, when they simply sit down for a meal together and the contrasting lifestyles become apparent, Helmut succeeds in politely holding him at a distance. But he is not allowed to get away with saying ‘Well, thank you, it was nice meeting you, goodbye’, because Klaus insists they go for a ride in his sailing boat the next day. Helmut and Sabine become self-consciously comical passengers on the boat, treated very much as the elder generation – ‘wie ein Konditorehepaar, das sich zur Feier der Goldenen Hochzeit zu einer viel zu sportlichen Bootsfahrt hatte einladen lassen’ (p. 47) – and when Klaus comes out with his sexually explicit reminiscences from schooldays, Helmut’s exasperation mounts, but he feels obliged to mask it by laughing louder and longer than anyone else. The latent aggression in the rivalry between the two men becomes apparent when Helmut suggests, in the terms of the conventional educational psychology with which he operates professionally, that Klaus’s adolescent behaviour had been

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‘compensatory’ (p. 53), and Klaus resists the notion in terms which anticipate an almost physical struggle between them: Du, um diesen Punkt werde ich noch ringen mit dir, sagte Klaus Buch. Es muss nicht jetzt sein. Aber dass du die heiligsten Momente unserer Kindheit zum Hirngespinst machen willst, das lass ich dir nicht durch. Solche Kindheitsflämmchen tritt man nicht einfach aus. (p. 53)

But ultimately Helmut maintains the pretence of cordial relations by expressing his delight with the excursion as fervently as any of the others. The following day they take a walk in the woods, which is ostensibly left to Helmut to organise, since he knows the area better, and which echoes the terms in which Helmut’s yearning to flee has been evoked at earlier points of the text: his ideal of a holiday destination is somewhere where he can make himself totally inaccessible, a remote rocky island or a ‘mega-Neuschwanstein’ set in interminable forests (p. 13; cf. pp. 76, 85). It is at Helmut’s suggestion that they head for the highest heights, ‘den Höchsten’ (p. 75), but increasingly it is Klaus Buch to whom the ladies turn when problems occur – when it rains, when they need to identify the direction from which the clouds are coming, when they need to take shelter (pp. 77f.). Helmut’s discomfiture mounts to seething hatred, but this remains concealed to all but the reader (p. 79). He acknowledges his helplessness in outdoor life, and outwardly displays a cultivated jolliness. But at the ‘Aussichtslokal’ where they take shelter, and which turns out to be the destination Helmut had had in mind all along – this is ‘der Höchste’, where they can sit down and have lunch – something odd happens. Helene sits down at the pub piano and starts to play, not any old piece, but one of the bravura pieces of the piano repertoire, Schubert’s Wanderer-Fantasie. Partly this is a self-evident parody of the situation – she and Klaus expect a ‘Wanderung’ to last at least six hours – but it also has an extraordinary effect on Klaus, who runs back out into the rain, leans against a tree in evident distress, and has to be coaxed back into the restaurant by his young wife. Klaus seems to overcome his sense of exasperation rapidly. At table he and Helene exchange jokes like children, and cast Helmut explicitly in the role of ‘Papa’. On the way back down through the woods Klaus is in his element again, fulminating against the practice of paying drought premiums to farmers


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and landowners (pp. 85f.); and once again, Helmut finds that the only way to be accepted in company is to conform and echo the same sentiments. It is during their descent, in a clearing in the woods, that they encounter the runaway horse of the title (p. 88). It is a massive beast, which thunders out from between the houses of a small settlement, with its owners in pursuit. And Klaus responds to the situation as a challenge, stalks it, succeeds in mounting it, clings on when it takes off again, and eventually rides it back, accompanied by disapproving comments from the villagers, who incidentally mistake Klaus for Helmut’s son. When it starts raining again, it is of course Klaus who runs to fetch the car and is hailed as the hero of the hour. Helmut is left with no option but to join in the chorus of praise more loudly than ever, but inwardly he feels that he is losing the very ground beneath his feet, that he is in danger of being swept off his rock – again the image of his sought-after isolation is evoked – by a raging torrent (p. 92); and whereas he had at least found reassurance in the way his wife, Sabine, had comfortingly stated the obvious about their location and the weather conditions, now a state of mute incomprehension has developed between them. What we witness emerging in the relationship between Helmut and Sabine is a kind of sexual dislocation. Helmut is privately yielding to the attractions of young Helene (who, incidentally, has no inhibitions about stripping to the waist when they are on the boat, and when it rains while they are out walking). We find him romantically toying with the affinity suggested by their forenames, Helmut and Helene (p. 91), while Sabine admits openly, and a little provocatively, that she is in danger of ‘falling in love’ with Klaus Buch (p. 103). Critics were not slow to recognise the echoes of Goethe in Walser’s text, not only in the relation between the human protagonists and the runaway horse, of which I shall have more to say, but also in the self-conscious allusion in the text to that famous constellation of married couple, younger woman and old male friend in Goethe’s Die Wahlverwandtschaften. Helmut, the schoolteacher, even seems to recall explicitly the crucial moment in Goethe’s novel – the spiritual adultery which takes place in the marriage bed – when he says to Sabine that if they were to have sex after spending a day with the Buchs, then Helmut would be thinking of Helene, and Sabine of Klaus (p. 104). Another similarity between the two texts is that the catastrophe, when it comes, again takes place on a boat. But what the comparison

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inescapably makes apparent is the sense in which the lived reality of the late twentieth century entails a banalisation of motifs which were laden with symbolic significance in Goethe’s day. In Die Wahlverwandtschaften, the name Otto serves as an indicator of mystic affinity between characters; in Ein fliehendes Pferd Otto is the name of the Halms’s lapdog, who functions as a source of comfort to Helmut, but is neurotically perceived as a threat by Klaus. To confuse matters further, Otto is a bitch. Waltraud Wiethölter, who provides a thorough investigation of the connections between Die Wahlverwandtschaften and Ein fliehendes Pferd, is surely right to conclude that Walser’s treatment of such motifs is parodistic, or even self-parodistic, but over-zealous in her pursuit of evidence of reciprocality in the relationship between Helmut and Klaus which she can relate to the intimation of mirror-imaging in that palindromic name ‘Otto’.7 For there is more to this relationship than a subliminal desire of each to be the other. In addition to unsettling his relationship with Sabine, Klaus’s behaviour and attitudinising have another effect on Helmut, which is perhaps more revealing still. Helmut is inwardly prompted to contradict the attitudes that Klaus adopts, and to define his own sense of identity in opposition to them, while still keeping his emotional responses to himself. Most notably this occurs when Klaus denounces the work routines and quietistic attitudes which are traditionally associated with the ‘Kleinbürger’, and in his private thoughts Helmut responds with the words, ‘Wenn ich überhaupt etwas bin, dann ein Kleinbürger. Und wenn ich überhaupt auf etwas stolz bin, dann darauf.’ (p. 96) There is no further development of the point in Walser’s text, but the passage nevertheless carries considerable resonance because of the derogatory way in which the term ‘Kleinbürger’ has normally been used in German, ever since it was coined in the early nineteenth century. Moreover, there is a striking parallel between this moment in Walser’s story and an essay by Hans Magnus Enzensberger on the irrepressibility of the ‘Kleinbürger’, which appeared only two years earlier, in 1976.8 7

8

Waltraut Wiethö lter, ‘ “ Otto” oder sind Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften auf den Hund gekommen? Anmerkungen zu Martin Walsers Novelle Ein fliehendes Pferd’, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 102 (1983), pp. 240– 59. Enzensberger’s essay, ‘Von der Unaufhaltsamkeit des Kleinbürgers. Eine soziologische Grille’, first appeared in Kursbuch 45 (1976), and subsequently in Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Politische Brosamen (Frankfurt, 1982), pp. 195–206.


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Enzensberger, too, was provocatively challenging the traditional use of the term and suggesting that, both culturally and politically, the ‘Kleinbürger’ – the petty bourgeois – had in fact become the dominant class of the time. They did not fit the familiar categories of Marxist social analysis because they neither owned the means of production, nor did their work create surplus value; as a class they had only ever been perceived in diffuse terms, and could only be defined by what they were not. They lacked the sense of coherent identity needed to exercise political power, they therefore wielded power only by saying what they disliked, and they were accustomed to establish personal identity only by denying that they belonged to any social group. But the evidence of their domination of modern society was everywhere to be seen, in the popular trends, fashions, and movements of the contemporary world, in the tastes and mentalities to which modern advertising appeals, and also in the very clichés of philistinism with which the petty bourgeoisie was fashionably denounced. Enzensberger was puckishly drawing attention to the increasing tendency of modern Western societies to be dominated by the dynamics of mass consumption, mass publicity and mass media, and to the inescapability of the historical process which was absorbing even such critically aware intellectuals as himself into the amorphous class of the ‘Kleinbürger’. What Enzensberger makes explicit about the significance of the term, it seems to me, helps to explicate not only Walser’s use of it, but also his general characterisation of Helmut Halm and Klaus Buch. Both men display behaviour patterns which are irretrievably characteristic of the world Enzensberger describes: both Klaus, with his denunciation of the ‘Kleinbürger’, and Helmut with his affirmation of a quietistic withdrawal from the demands of the social world, confirm themselves as ‘Kleinbürger’ in Enzensberger’s sense of the term. This sense of how both Klaus and Helmut belong to their social world, even while conceiving their personal identity in opposition to it, also helps to explain the deeper existential concerns that can be recognised in Walser’s depiction of the relationship between them. It emerges that both men are experiencing some kind of threat to their sense of the person they are and of the meaning in their lives: they are both looking An English translation, under the title “On the inevitability of the middle classes: A social caprice”, can be found in Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Critical Essays, ed. by R. Grimm and B. Armstrong (New York, 1982), pp. 224–32.

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for a way out (a rescue, or perhaps even salvation: Rettung). This is what makes the runaway horse a potent symbol for the situation of either of them, and thus a good example of one of the traditional hallmarks of the German Novelle, precisely because its significance cannot be discerned independently of the lives of the main characters, and indeed because its significance differs according to whose perspective it is viewed from.9 For Klaus, the horse is a phenomenon of nature which he can seek to master; for Helmut it is a phenomenon which he seeks to understand and internalise intellectually. When Klaus explains what you need to know about such a horse in order to catch it – ‘Einem fliehenden Pferd kannst du dich nicht in den Weg stellen. Es muss das Gefühl haben, sein Weg bleibt frei.’ (p. 90) – Helmut, who is himself an experienced rider, openly acknowledges the truth of this precept, but it apparently does not occur to him to act on it as Klaus does. There is a very obvious clue to the existential issues that are being touched on here in the explicit allusions made in Walser’s text to the writings of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. As with the echoes of Goethe, there is a playful irony at work in these allusions. Most notably, Helmut has taken Kierkegaard’s diaries on holiday with him in the conviction that whatever he finds written there will be neither intimate nor trivial, but when he finally has a chance to start reading, what he finds Kierkegaard describing is what he did on his holidays – including a buried allusion to the emotional stirrings of Helmut’s private life in the fact that the local place of pilgrimage Kierkegaard refers to is called the ‘Helenenquelle’ (pp. 128, 147). With equally manifest irony, Walser prefaces his story with a quotation from Kierkegaard’s preface to Either/Or describing how we are about to encounter two characters who have contrasting outlooks on life and who, we are assured, are never going to be able to persuade each other of the rightness of their own outlook: Man trifft zuweilen auf Novellen, in denen bestimmte Personen entgegengesetzte Lebensanschauungen vortragen. Das endet dann gerne damit, dass der eine den anderen überzeugt. Anstatt dass also die Anschauung für sich sprechen muss, wird der Leser mit dem historischen Ergebnis bereichert, dass der andere überzeugt

9

Cf. Hans-Erich Struck, Martin Walser: Ein fliehendes Pferd. Interpretation (Munich, 1988), pp. 26–31.


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worden ist. Ich sehe es für ein Glück an, dass in solcher Hinsicht diese Papiere eine Aufklärung nicht gewähren.

The reference to Either/Or nevertheless serves as a reminder of the serious issues which Kierkegaard discusses in that work in terms of the competing demands of an aesthetic and an ethical existence. As Siegfried Weing has convincingly argued, Klaus and Helmut are characterised in terms which do not correspond respectively to Kierkegaard’s conception of the aesthetic and the ethical life, but which do bear a clear relation to two complementary sub-varieties of the aesthete: the Don Juan in the case of Klaus, and the Faustian intellectual (with additional aspects of the third sub-variety Kierkegaard identifies, the ‘wandering Jew’ Ahasver) in the case of Helmut.10 As variants on the ‘aesthetic’ mode of existence, they both want for a sense of deeper connectedness in their personal lives. Temperamentally, Helmut recoils from the frenzied activity which characterises Klaus’s lifestyle. His own attitude to life is characterised by a total absence of adventure, and a striving for mortification suggestive of self-loathing: ‘Sein Ziel war es, schon die eigene Gegenwart in einen Zustand zu überführen, der der Vernichtetheit des Vergangenen so ähnlich als möglich war’ (p. 30). Around the mid-point of the text, where we are made aware of the sterility of his relationship with Sabine, he even has a dream of lying in his coffin (pp. 69–74), and the thought which spontaneously comes to him as he awakens from it is that of a ‘new life’. The apparent fullness of Klaus’s existence has triggered feelings of envy in him (p. 28). But while Klaus outwardly exudes an insatiable lust for life, his fanatical athleticism, his sexual triumphalism, and his relentlessly possessive attitude towards Helmut, increasingly suggest that he is desperately trying to break out of a sense of isolation of his own. Cumulatively we are shown the indications of the deception he is practising on himself and the world at large. He speaks disdainfully of those who submit to a regular work routine (the ‘Kleinbürger’), but we later learn that even on holiday he has been working every day in order to sustain that lifestyle of outward display which he can barely afford, the ‘phoney steamship’ of a self-constructed paradise on the Starnberger 10

Siegfried Weing, ‘Kierkegaardian Reflections in Martin Walser’s Ein fliehendes Pferd’, Colloquia Germanica, 25 (1992), pp. 275–88.

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See, as Helene puts it (pp. 137f.). Outwardly his relationship with Helene is playful, but as she later makes explicit, the frequently recurring routine in which he says ‘Du magst mich nicht mehr, gell?’ and she pouts her lips for a kiss, is his way of masking his self-contempt (pp. 139f.). Indeed, we learn that he has insisted on taking over her life, determining precisely how she should earn her living by writing, and depriving her of the career she might have had as a pianist (pp. 81, 140f.) – which explains his petulant reaction at the mountain restaurant when she sits down and plays Schubert’s Wanderer-Fantasie. It is when the two men go out alone in Klaus’s boat that it finally becomes clear what Klaus is looking for in Helmut. He remembers Helmut, not only as having been a martyr to puberty (pp. 23, 50ff.), but also as the boy who is famed for having read Nietzsche’s Zarathustra at the age of fourteen (p. 109), as the expert ‘in geistigen Sachen’, who he now expects to help him overcome his fear of ‘stagnation’. Evidently the ‘Geist’ he is looking for is still that of Nietzsche rather than Kierkegaard.11 Klaus even wants Helmut to uproot his own existence, leave Sabine if need be, and go off with him to start a new life in the Bahamas (pp. 111f.). While Klaus has been unfolding these plans, a heavy calm has hung over Lake Constance, and he has punctuated his exposé by berating the lake for its lifelessness and impotence; when he addresses it as ‘Lethe’ (p. 106), his denial and defiance of the prospect of death is underscored. But his challenge is answered. Suddenly a storm brews up, the waters are agitated by violent winds, and after giving Helmut some rapid instruction in seamanship, Klaus attempts to ride the waves as he had previously ridden the runaway horse, braving the elements with elemental glee, until Helmut – convinced that the boat is going to capsize if he allows these foolhardy manoeuvres to continue – kicks the rudder out of Klaus’s hand, and Klaus falls overboard, leaving Helmut to wrestle with his conscience (pp. 120f.). It later transpires that Klaus has not drowned. He turns up, dramatically, to collect Helene, just as she is unburdening herself to the Halms – not about how distraught she is to have lost him, but about how unbearable life has been with him. Supposing him to have died, she has changed her manner of dress, accepts liberal offers of coffee, cake, cigarettes and alcohol, which she had assiduously avoided while he was 11

Cf. Struck, Martin Walser: Ein fliehendes Pferd, pp. 42–45.


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alive, and compares the experience of living with him to that of holding a drowning man above water, ever afraid that he might pull them both under. In an advanced state of inebriation she imagines herself playing the Wanderer-Fantasie again; but she meekly returns with Klaus to Starnberg when he asks her to do so. Helmut, too, undergoes an apparent behavioural change following the supposed death of Klaus. He insists on buying tracksuits and bicycles, although the destination for the excursion he plans remains the depths of the woods, and he even finds himself involuntarily using fashionable slang phrases that have been previously associated with Klaus (p. 130). It is as if the impulse to assert his individuality is at this point inextricably entangled with the effects of guilt and remorse. But two things have stuck in Helmut’s mind about that fateful moment in the boat, and they are also inextricably linked: he remembers it as the moment when he had let his mask drop – ‘eine Sekunde lang hast du den Schein nicht geschafft’ (p. 129) – and he remembers the last look that Klaus gives him (because their eyes never meet again) as the moment when someone saw right through him. We are left with the sense that Helmut’s attitude to life can never be the same again after that experience, that his customary pretence of living incognito has in an important sense become unsustainable. The ending of the text is sufficiently enigmatic to have given rise to a number of competing interpretations. Since it ends with the same words that began it (a device which Walser also uses in other works of short fiction), some have concluded that the story of Helmut’s life takes the form of an endless and inescapable loop, while others see the ending, on the contrary, as open and indeterminate.12 What we are told is that Helmut peremptorily insists on settling the bill for the four weeks he and Sabine would have spent on Lake Constance and heading straight for the railway station; he greets the locomotive when it comes in with words from the Catholic liturgy which traditionally precede an act of confession (‘qui tollis peccata mundi’); and once settled in the train he promises to tell his wife ‘all about this couple Helmut and Sabine’. But where are they going, and what does it all signify? The departure has been an impulsive act of escape, but written into the account of it there are indications that Helmut and Sabine cannot 12

Cf. Weing, ‘Kierkegaardian Reflections’, pp. 285–86.

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break free of the network of associations which constitute the story of their lives. At the ticket office, Helmut initially asks for single tickets to Merano, but when Sabine demurs and suggests Montpellier instead, that is where they head for (p. 149). Both destinations have figured previously in the text: Merano is where Klaus Buch had previously managed to catch and ride a runaway horse, and Montpellier is where Helene Buch had once studied for a semester, and she remembers it for its remarkably thick walls. Sabine, indeed, impishly recalls this particular detail, implying perhaps that if they go to Montpellier they will not have to contend with the problem of hotel rooms with thin walls. At the very moment in which Helmut takes flight, then, we are reminded of aspects of his personal past which will always be with him. But when Helmut begins to tell his story using the very words with which the text had begun, the implication is not necessarily that he is trapped in an act of sterile repetition. If we bear in mind the evident change that has come over him since the incident on the boat, the willingness he has professed to acknowledge his own past in narrative form, and the way this contrasts with his earlier practice of deliberately cutting himself off from the past, then surely we are seeing him take a step which might lead to a more constructive (ethical) attitude to his own life, and taking that step moreover in communication with another, namely Sabine. There is a great deal more that could be said about the interwoven themes of this text and how they might be interpreted. There are further aspects of both the social and the sexual behaviour of the characters, as well as the contrasting attitudes of the two men as they encounter middle age, which are undoubtedly well observed; and there are intricacies in the depiction of Helmut’s attitude to Sabine, ranging from the yearning for solidarity and reassurance to brutal jealousy and the use of her as a measure of how far he is himself ‘progressing’ in his quest for detachment from the dominant culture of the times (pp. 65, 102), which would undoubtedly repay closer investigation. What I want to emphasise about the text, however, is that no one element provides the ultimate key to what the narrative as a whole signifies. There are moments in the text which foreground the repercussions of sexual frustration or the possible psychological determining effects of adolescent experience; but the manner in which such moments are foregrounded is also an indicator of how psychoanalytic theory had become one conventional strand amongst others in the public discourse of the time in which the story is set.


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Sexuality does not provide an ultimate explanation for the problems the characters experience, but is merely one terrain amongst others on which their sense of a problem with their own lives is played out. There are also clearly senses in which this text gives us a snapshot of German society in the 1970s; but if we approach it only in the expectation that it will reflect some immediate trends of the times – the climate of sexual liberation, the fashionable interest in ecology, and the equally fashionable interest in mid-life crises – then again we shall miss the full sense in which Ein fliehendes Pferd is a critical reflection of its time. And if we approach it in the expectation that an adequate interpretation can only be expressed in the categories of Kierkegaard’s reflections on the ethical life, then again we shall be disappointed to find that the questions raised by those categories remain largely unanswered at the end. This is what I mean when I speak of this piece of short fiction as providing a singular expression of some key issues of its time. Ein fliehendes Pferd brings together psychological, sociological, and ethical factors into a coherent narrative which resists schematic interpretation in terms of any one set of such factors. Its critical potential resides in the questioning attitude it evokes towards the character of a modern affluent society with its own peculiar manifestations of the tyranny of convention, and it invites us to contemplate how the individual should seek selffulfilment in such a society. Should he (or she) seek to ride the tides of conventional expectation, as Klaus does? Should he hide himself away from them, as Helmut attempts to do? Or should he try to establish his personal identity by actively engaging with the relationship of tension in which it stands to the demands of the public sphere? This, arguably, is what Helmut begins to do at the end of Walser’s text, and it is arguably what Walser’s text as a whole – through its irritation of established attitudes and conventional assumptions – is prompting the reader to do.


Notes on Contributors

NICHOLAS BOYLE is Professor of German Literary and Intellectual History in the University of Cambridge, Fellow of Magdalene College, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He has published numerous articles on the classical period of German literature and studies of modern political, philosophical, and literary culture, and is currently working on the third volume of his literary biography of Goethe. ANITA BUNYAN is College Lecturer and Director of Studies in Modern Languages at Caius College, Cambridge. She has a lively interest in German-Jewish culture and is a specialist on the Vormärz, on which she has published a book and several articles. JOHN GUTHRIE is Newton Lecturer in German in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of New Hall. He has published several essays on Droste-Hülshoff, as well as a full-length study, and has also written on various aspects of German drama and dramatic theory. PETER HUTCHINSON is Reader in German in the University of Cambridge and Director of Studies in Modern Languages at Trinity Hall. He has published widely on aspects of German literature from the eighteenth century to the present day and has edited a number of studies of German literature. DAVID MIDGLEY is Senior Lecturer in German in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St John’s College. He is a specialist on the literature of Modernism and has recently published a study of the Weimar period, Writing Weimar. MICHAEL MINDEN is Senior Lecturer in German in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Jesus College. He has published much on German literature since 1750, especially on the development of the Bildungsroman, and he has a particular interest in literature and film of the twentieth century.

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Notes on Contributors

RITCHIE ROBERTSON is Professor of German in the University of Oxford, where he is a Fellow of St John’s College He has published extensively on German and Austrian literature, and his books include Kafka (1985), Heine (1988), and The Jewish Question in German Literature (1999). He is currently working on a study of the Austrian Enlightement and its aftermath. NICHOLAS SAUL is Professor of German in the University of Liverpool. He has published widely on aspects of German literature, especially Romanticism, but he has a broad interest in German culture, including philosophy and the history of ideas. He is currently working on the Gypsies as a symbol of counter-culture in German literary realism and modernism. MARY STEWART is Senior Lecturer in German in the University of Cambridge and Deputy Warden of Robinson College. She has published on various aspects of German literature from the Romantic era to the present day, and has a particular interest in Naturalism and late nineteenth-century writing. ERIKA SWALES is a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. She has published widely on German literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including volumes on Goethe, Keller, Schiller and Stifter. She is currently developing her interest in Thomas Bernhard and in women’s writing in Germany. ANDREW WEBBER is Senior Lecturer in German in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Churchill College. He has published a number of books and articles on aspects of German literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and has a particular interest in theory and film. CHARLOTTE WOODFORD is a Fellow and College Lecturer in German at Selwyn College, Cambridge. She is currently working on the question of national identity in the historical fiction of the Gründerzeit, and also has a particular interest in the early modern period. Her study, Nuns as Historians in Early Modern Germany, has recently been published by OUP.

Britische und Irische Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur

Nr. 1 Geoffrey Perkins: Contemporary Theory of Expressionism, 1974. 182 S. Nr. 2 Paul Kussmaul: Bertolt Brecht und das englische Drama der Renaissance, 1974. 175 S. Nr. 3 Eudo C. Mason: Hölderlin and Goethe, 1975. 145 S. Nr. 4 W.E. Yates: Tradition in the German Sonnet, 1981. 98 S. Nr. 5 Rhys W. Williams: Carl Sternheim. A Critical Study, 1982. 282 S. Nr. 6 Roger H. Stephenson: Goethe’s Wisdom Literature, 1983. 274 S. Nr. 7 John Hennig: Goethe and the English Speaking World, 1983. 288 S. Nr. 8 John R.P. McKenzie: Social Comedy in Austria and Germany 1890–1933, 1992. 262 S., 2nd Edition 1996. Nr. 9 David Basker: Chaos, Control and Consistency: The Narrative Vision of Wolfgang Koeppen, 1993. 352 S. Nr. 10 John Klapper: Stefan Andres. The Christian Humanist as a Critic of his Times, 1995. 188 S. Nr. 11 Anthony Grenville: Cockpit of Ideologies. The Literature and Political History of the Weimar Republic, 1995. 394 S. Nr. 12 T.M. Holmes: The Rehearsal of Revolution. Georg Büchner’s Politics and his Drama Dantons Tod, 1995. 214 S. Nr. 13 Andrew Plowman: The Radical Subject. Social Change and the Self in Recent German Autobiography, 1998. 168 S. Nr. 14 David Barnett: Literature versus Theatre. Textual Problems and Theatrical Realization in the Later Plays of Heiner Müller, 1998. 293 S. Nr. 15 Stephen Parker: Peter Huchel. A Literary Life in 20th-Century Germany, 1998. 617 S. Nr. 16 Deborah Smail: White-collar Workers, Mass Culture and Neue Sachlichkeit in Weimar Berlin. A Reading of Hans Fallada’s Kleiner Mann – Was nun?, Erich Kästner’s Fabian and Irmgard Keun’s Das kunstseidene Mädchen, 1999. 236 S. Nr. 17 Ian Roe and John Warren (eds.): The Biedermeier and Beyond. Selected Papers from the Symposium held at St. Peter’s College, Oxford from 19– 21 September 1997, 1999. 253 S. Nr. 18 James Trainer (ed.): Liebe und Trennung. Charlotte von Ahlefelds Briefe an Christian Friedrich Tieck, 1999. 235 S. Nr. 19 Anthony J. Harper and Margaret C. Ives (eds.): Sappho in the Shadows. Essays on the work of German women poets of the age of Goethe (1749– 1832), with translations of their poetry into English, 2000. 280 S. Nr. 20 Peter Hutchinson (ed.): Landmarks in German Poetry, 2000. 218 S. Nr. 21 Rachel Palfreyman: Edgar Reitz’s Heimat. Histories, Traditions, Fictions, 2000. 237 S. Nr. 22 Meg Tait: Taking Sides. Stefan Heym’s Historical Fiction. 2001. 208 S.

Nr. 23 Fred Whalley: The Elusive Transcendent. The Role of Religion in the Plays of Frank Wedekind, 2002. 204 S. Nr. 24 Philip Ward: Hofmannsthal and Greek Myth: Expression and Performance, 2002. 295 S. Nr. 25 Florian Krobb and Jeff Morrison (eds.): Poetry Project. Irish Germanists Interpret German Verse, 2003. 276 S. Nr. 26 Forthcoming. Nr. 27 Peter Hutchinson (ed.): Landmarks in German Drama, 2002. 244 S. Nr. 28 W. E. Yates, Allyson Fiddler and John Warren (eds.): From Perinet to Jelinek. Viennese Theatre in its Political and Intellectual Context, 2001. 290 S. Nr. 29 Hannah Burdekin: The Ambivalent Author. Five German Writers and their Jewish Characters, 1848–1914, 2002. 338 S. Nr. 30 Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby: Models of Wholeness. Some Attitudes to Language, Art and Life in the Age of Goethe. Edited by Jeremy Adler, Martin Swales and Ann Weaver, 2002. 271 S. Nr. 31 Martin Kane (ed.): Legacies and Identity. East and West German Literary Responses to Unification, 2002. 209 S. Nr. 32 Peter Hutchinson and Reinhard K. Zachau (eds.): Stefan Heym: Socialist – Dissenter – Jew; Stefan Heym: Sozialist – Dissident – Jude, 2003, 220 S. Nr. 33 Peter Hutchinson (ed.): Landmarks in German Short Prose, 2003, 208 S.

Peter Hutchinson (ed.)

Landmarks in German Drama Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt/M., New York, Wien, 2002. 244 pp. British and Irish Studies in German Language and Literature. Vol. 27 General Editors: H.S. Reiss and W.E. Yates ISBN 3-906766-47-0 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5333-1 pb. sFr. 61.00 / €1* 39.40 / €2** 36.80 / £ 26.00 / US-$ 40.95 * The €1-price includes VAT and is only valid for Germany and Austria. ** The €2-price does not include VAT.

The contributors to this volume treat fourteen plays of key significance in the history of German literature and show the way in which each dramatist has engaged with important social and theatrical issues of the age. Essays range from that on Lessing’s Nathan der Weise (a key text in the history of ‘tolerance’ in Germany) to Jelinek’s Krankheit oder moderne Frauen (a critique of theatrical representation, gender roles and the authority of the text), that is, from German classicism to the contemporary avant-garde. Each major movement in German literary history is represented, and the volume as a whole thus provides a partial history of German drama. The essays, all by specialists in the field, were originally delivered as lectures in the University of Cambridge. Contents: H.B. Nisbet: Lessing, Nathan der Weise: A Landmark in the History of Tolerance – John Guthrie: Schiller, Kabale und Liebe – Roger Paulin: Schiller, Wallenstein – Martin Swales: Goethe, Faust I – F.J. Lamport: Kleist, Prinz Friedrich von Homburg – Andrew Webber: Büchner, Woyzeck – W.E. Yates: Grillparzer, Die Jüdin von Toledo – Mary Stewart: Hauptmann, Vor Sonnenaufgang – David Midgley: Wedekind, Erdgeist – Seán Allan: Kaiser, Von morgens bis mitternachts – Peter Hutchinson: Brecht, Die Dreigroschenoper – Ronald Speirs: Brecht, Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder – Michael Minden: Weiss, Marat/Sade – Ben Morgan: Jelinek, Krankheit oder moderne Frauen. The Editor: Peter Hutchinson is Senior Lecturer in German in the University of Cambridge and Vice-Master of Trinity Hall. He has published widely on German literature and has edited a number of texts and collections of essays.

P E T E R L A NG Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt/M. · New York · Oxford · Wien

Peter Hutchinson / Reinhard K. Zachau (Eds./Hrsg.)

Stefan Heym: Socialist – Dissenter – Jew Stefan Heym: Sozialist – Dissident – Jude Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt/M., New York, Wien, 2003. 220 pp. British and Irish Studies in German Language and Literature/ Britische und Irische Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur. Vol. 32 General Editors: H.S. Reiss und W.E. Yates ISBN 3-906769-71-2 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5908-9 pb. sFr. 58.– / €1* 39.50 / €2** 36.90 / £ 24.– / US-$ 34.95 * The €1-price includes VAT and is only valid for Germany and Austria. ** The €2-price does not include VAT. * Der €1-Preis ist inkl. MWSt. und nur gültig für Deutschland und Österreich. ** Der €2-Preis ist exkl. MWSt.

Stefan Heym (1913-2001) was an important catalyst for the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a writer-politician who from the very beginning of his long and often dangerous career saw himself as a fighter for a better society. The twelve essays in this volume explore his involvement with the major political issues of his age, as well as less well known aspects of his activities – his operations in US psychological warfare, for example, and the attempts by organs of GDR government to obstruct his critical publications. The emphasis is above all on his commitment to aspects of Socialism. The wide geographical range of the contributors (from six different countries) reflects the increasing interest in Heym throughout the world. Stefan Heym (1913-2001) hatte eine wichtige Vermittlerfunktion im Rahmen der deutschen Wiedervereinigung. Er war ein Dichter und Politiker, der sich während seines langen und oft gefährlichen Lebens als Kämpfer für eine bessere Gesellschaft sah. Die zwölf Aufsätze in diesem Band analysieren Heyms Engagement für die großen politischen Fragen seiner Zeit. Sie befassen sich auch mit weniger bekannten Aspekten von Heyms Tätigkeit – z.B. mit seinen Aktivitäten in der amerikanischen psychologischen Kriegsführung, und die Versuche der DDR-Zensur, seine regimekritischen Veröffentlichungen zu unterbinden. Das Schwergewicht der Beiträge liegt auf Heyms Verpflichtung zum Sozialismus. Die geographische Bandbreite der Beiträge (aus sechs verschiedenen Ländern) zeigt das weltweit zunehmende Interesse an Heym.

P E T E R L A NG Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt/M. · New York · Oxford · Wien

Landmarks in German Short Prose (Britische Und Irische Studien Zur Deutschen Sprache Und Literatur, No. 33.)

Unzuverlassiges Erzahlen und literarische Moderne (Studien Zur Deutschen Literatur) German

Anonymität und Autorschaft: Zur Literatur- und Rechtsgeschichte der Namenlosigkeit (Studien und Texte zur Sozialgeschichte der Literatur)

Medizinische Schreibweisen: Ausdifferenzierung und Transfer zwischen Medizin und Literatur (16001900) (Studien Und Texte Zur Sozialgeschichte Der Literatur) (German Edition)

Sprache, Kultur und Zielgruppen German

Regel und Witz: Wittgensteinsche Perspektiven auf Mathematik, Sprache und Moral (Quellen Und Studien Zur Philosophie) (German Edition)

Stamm und Landschaft: Josef Nadlers Konzeption der deutschen Literaturgeschichte (Quellen Und Forschungen Zur Literatur- Und Kulturgeschichte) German

Die Joyce-Rezeption in der deutschsprachigen Erzahlliteratur nach 1945 (Studien Zur Deutschen Literatur) (German Edition)

Mediale Erregungen?: Autonomie und Aufmerksamkeit im Literatur- und Kulturbetrieb der Gegenwart (Studien Und Texte Zur Sozialgeschichte Der Literatur)

Glauben, Wissen und Sagen: Studien zu Wissen und Wissenskritik im 'Zauberberg', in den 'Schlafwandlern' und im 'Mann ohne Eigenschaften' (Studien Zur Deutschen Literatur)

Schizophrenie und Sprache. Zur Psychologie der Dichtung

Sprache und Regeln: Zur Normativitat von Bedeutung

Die Quellenangaben bei Herodot: Studien z. Erzahlkunst Herodots (Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte) (German Edition)

Lockes Sprachkonzeption (Quellen Und Studien Zur Philosophie) (German Edition)

Eigentum, Anarchie und Staat: Studien zur Theorie des Kapitalismus GERMAN

Studien zur Geschichte und Archaologie des byzantinischen Cherson GERMAN

Amicus und Amelius: Kriegerfreundschaft und Gewalt in mittelalterlicher Erzählertradition (Quellen Und Forschungen Zur Literatur- Und Kulturgeschichte)

Imaginationsprozesse - Verfahren phantastischen Erzählens in Franz Kafkas Frühwerk (Quellen und Forschungen zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte) German

Arbeit und Burgerstatus: Studien zur sozialen und industriellen Demokratie

Technik, Wissenschaft und Politik: Studien zur Techniksoziologie und Technikgovernance

Sprache und Politik

Schizophrenie und Sprache

Poietischer Realismus: Zur Novelle der Jahre 1848–1888. Stifter, Keller, Meyer, Storm (Studien Zur Deutschen Literatur)

Sprache und Politik

Sprache und Politik

W.G. Sebald Die dialektische Imagination (Quellen Und Forschunger Zur Literatur Und Kulturgeschichte) (German Edition)

Paulus, der Heidenapostel, Band I. Studien zur Chronologie (Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 123)

Beutepanzer im Ersten Weltkrieg: Britische, franzosische und russische Kampf- und Panzerwagen im deutschen Heer

Grammatik der deutschen Sprache. Bertelsmann Worterbuch. Sprachsystem und Sprachgebrauch

Geschichte der deutschen Sprache

Das Ende des Anthropozentrismus: Anthropologie und Geschichtskritik in der deutschen Literatur zwischen 1930 und 1950

Landmarks in German Short Prose (Britische Und Irische Studien Zur Deutschen Sprache Und Literatur, No. 33.)

Unzuverlassiges Erzahlen und literarische Moderne (Studien Zur Deutschen Literatur) German

Anonymität und Autorschaft: Zur Literatur- und Rechtsgeschichte der Namenlosigkeit (Studien und Texte zur Sozialgeschichte der Literatur)

Medizinische Schreibweisen: Ausdifferenzierung und Transfer zwischen Medizin und Literatur (16001900) (Studien Und Texte Zur Sozialgeschichte Der Literatur) (German Edition)

Sprache, Kultur und Zielgruppen German

Regel und Witz: Wittgensteinsche Perspektiven auf Mathematik, Sprache und Moral (Quellen Und Studien Zur Philosophie) (German Edition)

Stamm und Landschaft: Josef Nadlers Konzeption der deutschen Literaturgeschichte (Quellen Und Forschungen Zur Literatur- Und Kulturgeschichte) German

Die Joyce-Rezeption in der deutschsprachigen Erzahlliteratur nach 1945 (Studien Zur Deutschen Literatur) (German Edition)

Mediale Erregungen?: Autonomie und Aufmerksamkeit im Literatur- und Kulturbetrieb der Gegenwart (Studien Und Texte Zur Sozialgeschichte Der Literatur)

Glauben, Wissen und Sagen: Studien zu Wissen und Wissenskritik im 'Zauberberg', in den 'Schlafwandlern' und im 'Mann ohne Eigenschaften' (Studien Zur Deutschen Literatur)

Schizophrenie und Sprache. Zur Psychologie der Dichtung

Sprache und Regeln: Zur Normativitat von Bedeutung

Die Quellenangaben bei Herodot: Studien z. Erzahlkunst Herodots (Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte) (German Edition)

Lockes Sprachkonzeption (Quellen Und Studien Zur Philosophie) (German Edition)

Eigentum, Anarchie und Staat: Studien zur Theorie des Kapitalismus GERMAN

Studien zur Geschichte und Archaologie des byzantinischen Cherson GERMAN

Amicus und Amelius: Kriegerfreundschaft und Gewalt in mittelalterlicher Erzählertradition (Quellen Und Forschungen Zur Literatur- Und Kulturgeschichte)

Imaginationsprozesse - Verfahren phantastischen Erzählens in Franz Kafkas Frühwerk (Quellen und Forschungen zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte) German

Arbeit und Burgerstatus: Studien zur sozialen und industriellen Demokratie

Technik, Wissenschaft und Politik: Studien zur Techniksoziologie und Technikgovernance

Sprache und Politik

Schizophrenie und Sprache

Poietischer Realismus: Zur Novelle der Jahre 1848–1888. Stifter, Keller, Meyer, Storm (Studien Zur Deutschen Literatur)

Sprache und Politik

Sprache und Politik

W.G. Sebald Die dialektische Imagination (Quellen Und Forschunger Zur Literatur Und Kulturgeschichte) (German Edition)

Paulus, der Heidenapostel, Band I. Studien zur Chronologie (Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 123)

Beutepanzer im Ersten Weltkrieg: Britische, franzosische und russische Kampf- und Panzerwagen im deutschen Heer

Grammatik der deutschen Sprache. Bertelsmann Worterbuch. Sprachsystem und Sprachgebrauch

Geschichte der deutschen Sprache

Das Ende des Anthropozentrismus: Anthropologie und Geschichtskritik in der deutschen Literatur zwischen 1930 und 1950

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